The main insight from this morning's LBC interview with Starmer is that Labour is going to get hit with a whole bunch of culture war wedge issues in the run-up to the next election. Those issues say a lot more about the distorted concerns of Westminster/media than the country.
I'm not sure "women's rights & safety" are a "distorted concern"....
There are a lot of 'yebbuts' in those sorts of issues. For example, the man in the pub is initially against whatever it is, but then says 'yebbut' and turns out that on reflection he thinks it's quite a good idea. Like gay marriage. Your average 'straight' isn't bothered, finds it mildly amusing, but if it's not hurting anyone, and it protects the survivors rights on death, why not?
I've some sympathy with Cyclefree's view as I have two friends who feel equally strongly. But it is nonetheless not something that comes up much on the doorstep even if one feels it should, and taking sides in culture wars is as fundamental a mistake as a councillor taking sides in a neighbour dispute - everybody involved (including whoever you back) feels you're not sufficiently on their side, need to say more, etc., and you just get sucked in. Meanwhile, everyone else thinks you're obsessed with something they don't care about because they've never met a trans person.
It's a big deal in the Green Party, where quite a few activists are very deeply entrenched on both sides - I know some senior party people who said they'd quit if the leadership candidate with the "wrong" view got elected.
In general people who feel strongly about an issue are often incapable of accepting that others may not feel strongly (let's not even consider them accepting the validity of opposing views). There also appears to be a significant lump of folk who are desperate for it to be a wedge issue.
BBC Scotland recently did a survey on public attitudes to trans issues and GRA reform in Scotland; the general consensus seemed to be that folk weren't that bothered and in general had a mild preference that life should be made a bit easier for trans people. You could almost see the cloud of thwarted disappointment above Pacific Quay.
Quite.
And whatever Tyndall thinks, as I said most trans people are invariably non-violent.
Of course a few slip through or, worse, use this as a cover but there's violence everywhere and they are in the extreme. I've seen very violent cis women in ladies loos after a few drinks.
Ah not just a scumbag but an ignorant scumbag.
Invariably definition - "in every case or on every occasion; always."
So if a 'few slip through' then they cannot be 'invariably' non-violent.
Richard, Richard, Richard.
I know you sometimes have a problem and form with this but it is entirely possible to have an exchange on PB without immediately insulting your interlocutor. The last thing we want is for you to get yourself into so much of a tizzy that you ban yourself again.
Not when that interlocutor is an apologist for rape. Politics between you and me is one thing. Defending the rights of people to commit sexual assault on the grounds of their sexual orientation is something completely different.
And I don't see insulting people to be a problem at all. Practically everything about you is insulting to humanity but I wouldn't want to ban you.
Much better with some humour.
As to the issue before because the red mist had descended you didn't read what @Heathener wrote. She (I'm assuming) didn't at all excuse rape. She said that the occasions of transgender women raping other women represented a tiny proportion of crimes and that the vast majority of trans people are non-violent.
You, meanwhile, seem to be saying that because someone commits murder with a candlestick we should ban all candlesticks.
Nobody is talking about trans women. The issue is men who are not trans women pretending they are trans women. their victims are a. real women on whom they prey and b. genuine trans women. there is no doubt that these men exist, unless you believe for instance that the number of trans women among the male at birth Scottish prison population is about 10,000 times as high as in the population at large. Create a loophole, expect it to be exploited.
Yes that is a valid concern. There must be a mechanism to avoid that. I don't want to put words into @Heathener's mouth but I think it was that the instances of this are tiny compared with other crimes and also crimes against trans people. But, and I know you have cited that 10,000x figure previously, this is not to say that a solution must not be found for this particular example.
That 10k figure is odd. 0.5% of the general population are trans according to NHS Scotland estimates (probably a low ball number). And in a prison population of 8k, about 10-20 are trans (12 in 2020). That makes the prison population under-represented.
That and home office stats say the vast majority of trans prisoners identify as Male.
I'm absolutely not saying that safeguarding people (especially women) against (especially violent) bad actors is not important, but the vehemence, panic, and whipping-up is not helpful in negotiating a complex and developing part of our approach to the vulnerable and marginalized.
PB vigilantes: bloody left full of snowflakes demanding comedians are cancelled because they make "offensive" jokes.
Also PB vigilantes: excellent news that a comedian got a slap for being offensive.
Not the same thing though, are they. Chris Rock getting what was due after insulting another man's wife isn't the same as wanting him to be cancelled. I've got no issue with him doing tours or hosting next year's event if they ask him.
Mate I applaud you for what you did to the people who were bullying you.
But this is a comedian being a comedian (making a joke about one of the most powerful Hollywood couples) and you think it's great to slap them for it. Can present the show next year but rightly gets a black eye if someone takes offence to what he says. Have a word with yourself.
He didn't make a joke about a couple (Rebel Wilson did recently) he made a joke about her illness.
Use someone's health as a punchline you deserve what's coming to you. Not to be cancelled though.
Hi BR
My level of interest in Hollywood, Oscars, and the like is next door to zero but I just want to make one very small point.
I've had alopecia since I was twenty. I've never thought of it as an 'illness'. It's never stopped me from doing anything I want to, apart perhaps from looking in the mirror to admire myself.
It was overtaken by natural male-pattern baldness when I was in my thirties so now the only visible sign of it is the mottled appearance of my naked scalp. I have to be a bit careful with sunburn but the idea that this affliction should warrant any kind of sympathy is ridiculous.
Be proud of your old bald head, that's what I say!
PB vigilantes: bloody left full of snowflakes demanding comedians are cancelled because they make "offensive" jokes.
Also PB vigilantes: excellent news that a comedian got a slap for being offensive.
Not the same thing though, are they. Chris Rock getting what was due after insulting another man's wife isn't the same as wanting him to be cancelled. I've got no issue with him doing tours or hosting next year's event if they ask him.
Mate I applaud you for what you did to the people who were bullying you.
But this is a comedian being a comedian (making a joke about one of the most powerful Hollywood couples) and you think it's great to slap them for it. Can present the show next year but rightly gets a black eye if someone takes offence to what he says. Have a word with yourself.
Nah, you've misread the scenario if you think that's what this is about. Will Smith and Chris Rock have got a long standing mutual loathing of each other, my reading of it (and this has been confirmed by a studio exec this morning) is that Chris Rock wanted to have a go at Will Smith because he was odds on to win the award just for the sake of getting a dig in against a long standing rival. If he'd gone direct we wouldn't be talking about it but Chris Rock went indirect, insulted Will Smith's wife and made fun of her medical condition which all insiders say she's pretty sensitive about, loads were praising her bravery for coming to the ceremony without wearing a weave or a wig. Chris Rock made it personal and ultimately got what was coming to him. He should have realised if he was going to shit chat another man's wife this was a likely result.
Someone said it on here earlier, there's loads of things people say anonymously on the internet they wouldn't say to someone's face, well Chris Rock tested and proved that theory.
I get all that but I don't think it should end in violence. It's a comedian making a joke and the response was the act of a bully. Imagine instead of Chris Rock it had been The Rock. That would have been worth watching.
You're missing the point then, Dwayne Johnson wouldn't be making that joke. This is Chris Rock wanting to shit on Will Smith's big day in the sun, no more, no less. He got what was coming to him. Chris Rock abused his position as the host to have a pop at someone who he's already got a beef with, there's a word for people who abuse their authority.
I understand that - it was Chris Rock's golden opportunity to get at the Smiths. And he did so by making fun (not what he said but who cares) of Mrs Smith. And he got a slap for it. That is the law of the jungle. If the bully you beat up at school had come back with 10 of his brothers and slapped the fuck out of you then what? Once you are on that train you don't know where it's going to go.
Say what you like about Gavin Williamson, he never thumped anyone at the annual "Fireplace Salesman of the Year" awards.
He wasn’t put between a rock and fireplace
The Rock - further evidence that baldies can make it to the top.....
A mistake I have only just learned I have been making all these years: Chris Rock <> Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The latter is bald, the former was slapped by Will Smith.
It’s always an interesting wake up call on pb realising how disconnected a lot of people are from modern culture. Comments like not being able to recognise Will Smith in the street. Really?
Even The Rock’s gross box office is over $5bn, the 20th highest grossing actor of all time. And that’s his second successful career (as per Will Smith).
A hilariously self-torpedoing post, because The Rock is Dwayne Johnson, while Chris Rock is Chris Rock.
Laughing at people for medical conditions is supposed to be well beyond the pale nowadays so I wonder if this incident will mean that now everybody hates Chris?
So we're pro cancel culture now?
I thought it was a reference to the TV show of the same name.
No I know, I just wondered if PB had an opinion as we seem to be anti cancel culture sometimes but at other times not
It depends who is being cancelled. The same people appalled at someone they agree with Is cancelled is happy when someone they don’t agree with is cancelled. Hypocrites.
Cancellers getting cancelled is a bit justified morally but I err strongly towards anti-cancel and for a high level of free speech because the alternatives are much worse.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
The decline is in the quality of the films honoured, not in the ceremony itself (which has indeed been awful for as long as I can remember). But, the main awards - particularly Best Picture - used fairly often to be films lots of people had actually seen: the last one to break $100m at the US box office was in 2013, and the last to break $200m was Lord of the Rings in 2004.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I really doubt there is any link between the Oscars and American puissance.
The decline you mention is perhaps predictable in an age of social media. There’s too many demands on people’s time to sit down and wait to see who won best costume design this year.
Then, you have the Netflix x Covid effect. The last two years have been abominable for the film industry, people have switched off.
The Power of the Dog was nominated and released almost entirely on Netflix. However the issue is too many films the public like get ignored at the Oscars
PB vigilantes: bloody left full of snowflakes demanding comedians are cancelled because they make "offensive" jokes.
Also PB vigilantes: excellent news that a comedian got a slap for being offensive.
Not the same thing though, are they. Chris Rock getting what was due after insulting another man's wife isn't the same as wanting him to be cancelled. I've got no issue with him doing tours or hosting next year's event if they ask him.
Mate I applaud you for what you did to the people who were bullying you.
But this is a comedian being a comedian (making a joke about one of the most powerful Hollywood couples) and you think it's great to slap them for it. Can present the show next year but rightly gets a black eye if someone takes offence to what he says. Have a word with yourself.
Nah, you've misread the scenario if you think that's what this is about. Will Smith and Chris Rock have got a long standing mutual loathing of each other, my reading of it (and this has been confirmed by a studio exec this morning) is that Chris Rock wanted to have a go at Will Smith because he was odds on to win the award just for the sake of getting a dig in against a long standing rival. If he'd gone direct we wouldn't be talking about it but Chris Rock went indirect, insulted Will Smith's wife and made fun of her medical condition which all insiders say she's pretty sensitive about, loads were praising her bravery for coming to the ceremony without wearing a weave or a wig. Chris Rock made it personal and ultimately got what was coming to him. He should have realised if he was going to shit chat another man's wife this was a likely result.
Someone said it on here earlier, there's loads of things people say anonymously on the internet they wouldn't say to someone's face, well Chris Rock tested and proved that theory.
I get all that but I don't think it should end in violence. It's a comedian making a joke and the response was the act of a bully. Imagine instead of Chris Rock it had been The Rock. That would have been worth watching.
You're missing the point then, Dwayne Johnson wouldn't be making that joke. This is Chris Rock wanting to shit on Will Smith's big day in the sun, no more, no less. He got what was coming to him. Chris Rock abused his position as the host to have a pop at someone who he's already got a beef with, there's a word for people who abuse their authority.
I understand that - it was Chris Rock's golden opportunity to get at the Smiths. And he did so by making fun (not what he said but who cares) of Mrs Smith. And he got a slap for it. That is the law of the jungle. If the bully you beat up at school had come back with 10 of his brothers and slapped the fuck out of you then what? Once you are on that train you don't know where it's going to go.
My point is that Chris Rock invited the law of the jungle into the room, those who live by the sword will ultimately die by it.
In my situation, I honestly felt as though I had nothing to lose. My life couldn't have got much worse anyway and (horrifyingly) I had thought of the outcome you mentioned and I thought if they killed me someone might finally realise what was going on. I'm still ashamed of thinking that, to this day.
Say what you like about Gavin Williamson, he never thumped anyone at the annual "Fireplace Salesman of the Year" awards.
He wasn’t put between a rock and fireplace
The Rock - further evidence that baldies can make it to the top.....
A mistake I have only just learned I have been making all these years: Chris Rock <> Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The latter is bald, the former was slapped by Will Smith.
It’s always an interesting wake up call on pb realising how disconnected a lot of people are from modern culture. Comments like not being able to recognise Will Smith in the street. Really?
Even The Rock’s gross box office is over $5bn, the 20th highest grossing actor of all time. And that’s his second successful career (as per Will Smith).
A hilariously self-torpedoing post, because The Rock is Dwayne Johnson, while Chris Rock is Chris Rock.
Laughing at people for medical conditions is supposed to be well beyond the pale nowadays so I wonder if this incident will mean that now everybody hates Chris?
No I got the reference, I just wondered if we are or not
If you want a serious answer: No.
I have no desire to see Chris Rock get cancelled, nor do I think its bad that he got what was quite frankly a well-deserved slap. So he might think twice before using someone's wife's medical condition as a punchline again, but he shouldn't be cancelled.
Quite frankly I think Will Smith both slapping Chris Rock, then apologising for doing so, and that being the end of the matter is probably the right sequence of events to have happened.
Him then winning the oscar and doing his speech is imo what pushed this story into ledge territory.
Interestingly no clear right/left, leave/remain, mods/rocker binary split on what the correct take is. People are all over the place.
Probably just a touch of 'Will in the wrong' on the left and 'in the right' on the right.
My centrist dad hot take: wrong, if understandable; ultimately not that big a deal.
You're not a centrist dad, c'mon! The dad bit, yes, but not the other.
Anyway here's our (woke left) line to take. It's quite circumspect as you can see. 4 strands -
"Assault is wrong.
Alopecia is a painful experience that many Black women go through and should not be joked about.
The concept of being ‘the protector’ can be a form of toxic masculinity.
Black women are rarely protected and deserve to be protected."
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I had no idea the Oscars were even on until I saw the headline about Chris Rock being punched.
It would have been more interesting if it had been The Rock rather than Chris Rock.
PB vigilantes: bloody left full of snowflakes demanding comedians are cancelled because they make "offensive" jokes.
Also PB vigilantes: excellent news that a comedian got a slap for being offensive.
Not the same thing though, are they. Chris Rock getting what was due after insulting another man's wife isn't the same as wanting him to be cancelled. I've got no issue with him doing tours or hosting next year's event if they ask him.
Mate I applaud you for what you did to the people who were bullying you.
But this is a comedian being a comedian (making a joke about one of the most powerful Hollywood couples) and you think it's great to slap them for it. Can present the show next year but rightly gets a black eye if someone takes offence to what he says. Have a word with yourself.
Nah, you've misread the scenario if you think that's what this is about. Will Smith and Chris Rock have got a long standing mutual loathing of each other, my reading of it (and this has been confirmed by a studio exec this morning) is that Chris Rock wanted to have a go at Will Smith because he was odds on to win the award just for the sake of getting a dig in against a long standing rival. If he'd gone direct we wouldn't be talking about it but Chris Rock went indirect, insulted Will Smith's wife and made fun of her medical condition which all insiders say she's pretty sensitive about, loads were praising her bravery for coming to the ceremony without wearing a weave or a wig. Chris Rock made it personal and ultimately got what was coming to him. He should have realised if he was going to shit chat another man's wife this was a likely result.
Someone said it on here earlier, there's loads of things people say anonymously on the internet they wouldn't say to someone's face, well Chris Rock tested and proved that theory.
I get all that but I don't think it should end in violence. It's a comedian making a joke and the response was the act of a bully. Imagine instead of Chris Rock it had been The Rock. That would have been worth watching.
You're missing the point then, Dwayne Johnson wouldn't be making that joke. This is Chris Rock wanting to shit on Will Smith's big day in the sun, no more, no less. He got what was coming to him. Chris Rock abused his position as the host to have a pop at someone who he's already got a beef with, there's a word for people who abuse their authority.
I understand that - it was Chris Rock's golden opportunity to get at the Smiths. And he did so by making fun (not what he said but who cares) of Mrs Smith. And he got a slap for it. That is the law of the jungle. If the bully you beat up at school had come back with 10 of his brothers and slapped the fuck out of you then what? Once you are on that train you don't know where it's going to go.
My point is that Chris Rock invited the law of the jungle into the room, those who live by the sword will ultimately die by it.
In my situation, I honestly felt as though I had nothing to lose. My life couldn't have got much worse anyway and (horrifyingly) I had thought of the outcome you mentioned and I thought if they killed me someone might finally realise what was going on. I'm still ashamed of thinking that, to this day.
Blimmin' heck 2x well done you that is awful. Without wishing to take you back there was no one in authority in a position to help?
Edit: and it seems trivial vs the above and I think people know my view on it now but I don't think a comedian telling an offensive joke is inviting the law of the jungle into the room...
The main insight from this morning's LBC interview with Starmer is that Labour is going to get hit with a whole bunch of culture war wedge issues in the run-up to the next election. Those issues say a lot more about the distorted concerns of Westminster/media than the country.
I'm not sure "women's rights & safety" are a "distorted concern"....
There are a lot of 'yebbuts' in those sorts of issues. For example, the man in the pub is initially against whatever it is, but then says 'yebbut' and turns out that on reflection he thinks it's quite a good idea. Like gay marriage. Your average 'straight' isn't bothered, finds it mildly amusing, but if it's not hurting anyone, and it protects the survivors rights on death, why not?
I've some sympathy with Cyclefree's view as I have two friends who feel equally strongly. But it is nonetheless not something that comes up much on the doorstep even if one feels it should, and taking sides in culture wars is as fundamental a mistake as a councillor taking sides in a neighbour dispute - everybody involved (including whoever you back) feels you're not sufficiently on their side, need to say more, etc., and you just get sucked in. Meanwhile, everyone else thinks you're obsessed with something they don't care about because they've never met a trans person.
It's a big deal in the Green Party, where quite a few activists are very deeply entrenched on both sides - I know some senior party people who said they'd quit if the leadership candidate with the "wrong" view got elected.
In general people who feel strongly about an issue are often incapable of accepting that others may not feel strongly (let's not even consider them accepting the validity of opposing views). There also appears to be a significant lump of folk who are desperate for it to be a wedge issue.
BBC Scotland recently did a survey on public attitudes to trans issues and GRA reform in Scotland; the general consensus seemed to be that folk weren't that bothered and in general had a mild preference that life should be made a bit easier for trans people. You could almost see the cloud of thwarted disappointment above Pacific Quay.
Quite.
And whatever Tyndall thinks, as I said most trans people are invariably non-violent.
Of course a few slip through or, worse, use this as a cover but there's violence everywhere and they are in the extreme. I've seen very violent cis women in ladies loos after a few drinks.
Ah not just a scumbag but an ignorant scumbag.
Invariably definition - "in every case or on every occasion; always."
So if a 'few slip through' then they cannot be 'invariably' non-violent.
Richard, Richard, Richard.
I know you sometimes have a problem and form with this but it is entirely possible to have an exchange on PB without immediately insulting your interlocutor. The last thing we want is for you to get yourself into so much of a tizzy that you ban yourself again.
Not when that interlocutor is an apologist for rape. Politics between you and me is one thing. Defending the rights of people to commit sexual assault on the grounds of their sexual orientation is something completely different.
And I don't see insulting people to be a problem at all. Practically everything about you is insulting to humanity but I wouldn't want to ban you.
Much better with some humour.
As to the issue before because the red mist had descended you didn't read what @Heathener wrote. She (I'm assuming) didn't at all excuse rape. She said that the occasions of transgender women raping other women represented a tiny proportion of crimes and that the vast majority of trans people are non-violent.
You, meanwhile, seem to be saying that because someone commits murder with a candlestick we should ban all candlesticks.
Nobody is talking about trans women. The issue is men who are not trans women pretending they are trans women. their victims are a. real women on whom they prey and b. genuine trans women. there is no doubt that these men exist, unless you believe for instance that the number of trans women among the male at birth Scottish prison population is about 10,000 times as high as in the population at large. Create a loophole, expect it to be exploited.
Yes that is a valid concern. There must be a mechanism to avoid that. I don't want to put words into @Heathener's mouth but I think it was that the instances of this are tiny compared with other crimes and also crimes against trans people. But, and I know you have cited that 10,000x figure previously, this is not to say that a solution must not be found for this particular example.
That 10k figure is odd. 0.5% of the general population are trans according to NHS Scotland estimates (probably a low ball number). And in a prison population of 8k, about 10-20 are trans (12 in 2020). That makes the prison population under-represented.
One half of one percent of everybody is transsexual?
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
The decline is in the quality of the films honoured, not in the ceremony itself (which has indeed been awful for as long as I can remember). But, the main awards - particularly Best Picture - used fairly often to be films lots of people had actually seen: the last one to break $100m at the US box office was in 2013, and the last to break $200m was Lord of the Rings in 2004.
Yes, fair.
Hollywood has been fucked by a combination of Marvel and Netflix.
I struggle to care about many new films these days. Yet I’d seen every film on that 1994 list published upthread.
PB vigilantes: bloody left full of snowflakes demanding comedians are cancelled because they make "offensive" jokes.
Also PB vigilantes: excellent news that a comedian got a slap for being offensive.
Not the same thing though, are they. Chris Rock getting what was due after insulting another man's wife isn't the same as wanting him to be cancelled. I've got no issue with him doing tours or hosting next year's event if they ask him.
Mate I applaud you for what you did to the people who were bullying you.
But this is a comedian being a comedian (making a joke about one of the most powerful Hollywood couples) and you think it's great to slap them for it. Can present the show next year but rightly gets a black eye if someone takes offence to what he says. Have a word with yourself.
He didn't make a joke about a couple (Rebel Wilson did recently) he made a joke about her illness.
Use someone's health as a punchline you deserve what's coming to you. Not to be cancelled though.
Hi BR
My level of interest in Hollywood, Oscars, and the like is next door to zero but I just want to make one very small point.
I've had alopecia since I was twenty. I've never thought of it as an 'illness'. It's never stopped me from doing anything I want to, apart perhaps from looking in the mirror to admire myself.
It was overtaken by natural male-pattern baldness when I was in my thirties so now the only visible sign of it is the mottled appearance of my naked scalp. I have to be a bit careful with sunburn but the idea that this affliction should warrant any kind of sympathy is ridiculous.
Be proud of your old bald head, that's what I say!
With due respect, it is far more difficult for a woman to come to grips with male pattern baldness.
My mother suffered with it, so I have some insight.
Say what you like about Gavin Williamson, he never thumped anyone at the annual "Fireplace Salesman of the Year" awards.
He wasn’t put between a rock and fireplace
The Rock - further evidence that baldies can make it to the top.....
A mistake I have only just learned I have been making all these years: Chris Rock <> Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The latter is bald, the former was slapped by Will Smith.
It’s always an interesting wake up call on pb realising how disconnected a lot of people are from modern culture. Comments like not being able to recognise Will Smith in the street. Really?
Even The Rock’s gross box office is over $5bn, the 20th highest grossing actor of all time. And that’s his second successful career (as per Will Smith).
A hilariously self-torpedoing post, because The Rock is Dwayne Johnson, while Chris Rock is Chris Rock.
Laughing at people for medical conditions is supposed to be well beyond the pale nowadays so I wonder if this incident will mean that now everybody hates Chris?
No I got the reference, I just wondered if we are or not
If you want a serious answer: No.
I have no desire to see Chris Rock get cancelled, nor do I think its bad that he got what was quite frankly a well-deserved slap. So he might think twice before using someone's wife's medical condition as a punchline again, but he shouldn't be cancelled.
Quite frankly I think Will Smith both slapping Chris Rock, then apologising for doing so, and that being the end of the matter is probably the right sequence of events to have happened.
Him then winning the oscar and doing his speech is imo what pushed this story into ledge territory.
Interestingly no clear right/left, leave/remain, mods/rocker binary split on what the correct take is. People are all over the place.
Probably just a touch of 'Will in the wrong' on the left and 'in the right' on the right.
My centrist dad hot take: wrong, if understandable; ultimately not that big a deal.
No, the more I think about it, the worse it is
The Oscars are already in dire trouble for being - or perceived to be - woke, boring, banal, and up-themselves, a bunch of rich people clapping each other on the back, or being mawkishly sentimental, by turns.
The one thing that could save them, or stem the decline, is a return to edginess, that means a host willing to mock the millionaire film stars cruelly (like Gervais). Now that we've seen an edgy joke can get you slapped and humiliated live on air who will want to have a go next time?
The Awards will now shrivel even further into inane self congratulation. I can't see how they can be saved. Perhaps streaming, the Net and Youtube would always have killed them off, anyway, they've just accelerated their decline with some self harming idiocy
I don't know, I think someone getting punched in the face might be considered fairly edgy. And I doubt it has done Chris Rock's career any harm. The Oscars will continue to be what they have always been, an awards ceremony for the US film industry, which people who have no interest in the US film industry may not find very interesting. I have never watched it.
Does anyone in the UK watch it? I’ve never seen it. I don’t recall anyone ever telling me they saw it.
Americans on the other hand, are obsessed with this kind of shit, but that’s the difference between Americans and the rest of the world.
I used to watch it. I don't now but the reason for that is just age and needing to be tucked up by 9.30.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I really doubt there is any link between the Oscars and American puissance.
The decline you mention is perhaps predictable in an age of social media. There’s too many demands on people’s time to sit down and wait to see who won best costume design this year.
Then, you have the Netflix x Covid effect. The last two years have been abominable for the film industry, people have switched off.
The Power of the Dog was nominated and released almost entirely on Netflix. However the issue is too many films the public like get ignored at the Oscars
No, the issue is that Hollywood doesn’t really make popular films that have a quotient of critical acceptability any more.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I really doubt there is any link between the Oscars and American puissance.
The decline you mention is perhaps predictable in an age of social media. There’s too many demands on people’s time to sit down and wait to see who won best costume design this year.
Then, you have the Netflix x Covid effect. The last two years have been abominable for the film industry, people have switched off.
The Power of the Dog was nominated and released almost entirely on Netflix. However the issue is too many films the public like get ignored at the Oscars
Absolutely. Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie was criminally ignored for honours.
PB vigilantes: bloody left full of snowflakes demanding comedians are cancelled because they make "offensive" jokes.
Also PB vigilantes: excellent news that a comedian got a slap for being offensive.
Not the same thing though, are they. Chris Rock getting what was due after insulting another man's wife isn't the same as wanting him to be cancelled. I've got no issue with him doing tours or hosting next year's event if they ask him.
Mate I applaud you for what you did to the people who were bullying you.
But this is a comedian being a comedian (making a joke about one of the most powerful Hollywood couples) and you think it's great to slap them for it. Can present the show next year but rightly gets a black eye if someone takes offence to what he says. Have a word with yourself.
Nah, you've misread the scenario if you think that's what this is about. Will Smith and Chris Rock have got a long standing mutual loathing of each other, my reading of it (and this has been confirmed by a studio exec this morning) is that Chris Rock wanted to have a go at Will Smith because he was odds on to win the award just for the sake of getting a dig in against a long standing rival. If he'd gone direct we wouldn't be talking about it but Chris Rock went indirect, insulted Will Smith's wife and made fun of her medical condition which all insiders say she's pretty sensitive about, loads were praising her bravery for coming to the ceremony without wearing a weave or a wig. Chris Rock made it personal and ultimately got what was coming to him. He should have realised if he was going to shit chat another man's wife this was a likely result.
Someone said it on here earlier, there's loads of things people say anonymously on the internet they wouldn't say to someone's face, well Chris Rock tested and proved that theory.
I get all that but I don't think it should end in violence. It's a comedian making a joke and the response was the act of a bully. Imagine instead of Chris Rock it had been The Rock. That would have been worth watching.
Dwayne Johnson seems to have enough self respect not to abuse someone's medical conditions as a punchline.
On the other hand, I doubt Will Smith would have done it if it had been The Rock. He did it because he knew he could get away with it. It does pose an interesting dilemma however. What spoken words cross a line such that physical violence is acceptable? For me, I can't think of anything. Violence just creates more violence.
I am fortunate to still have a full head of hair, but during first lockdown i shaved my head, 0 graded it. Other than looking a bit of a hard nut, i rather put me at ease should I start to thin that I probably just shave it all off. Upside was definitely much reduced maintenance, no wasting time styling it or £20 every month at the barbers.
PB vigilantes: bloody left full of snowflakes demanding comedians are cancelled because they make "offensive" jokes.
Also PB vigilantes: excellent news that a comedian got a slap for being offensive.
Not the same thing though, are they. Chris Rock getting what was due after insulting another man's wife isn't the same as wanting him to be cancelled. I've got no issue with him doing tours or hosting next year's event if they ask him.
Mate I applaud you for what you did to the people who were bullying you.
But this is a comedian being a comedian (making a joke about one of the most powerful Hollywood couples) and you think it's great to slap them for it. Can present the show next year but rightly gets a black eye if someone takes offence to what he says. Have a word with yourself.
He didn't make a joke about a couple (Rebel Wilson did recently) he made a joke about her illness.
Use someone's health as a punchline you deserve what's coming to you. Not to be cancelled though.
Hi BR
My level of interest in Hollywood, Oscars, and the like is next door to zero but I just want to make one very small point.
I've had alopecia since I was twenty. I've never thought of it as an 'illness'. It's never stopped me from doing anything I want to, apart perhaps from looking in the mirror to admire myself.
It was overtaken by natural male-pattern baldness when I was in my thirties so now the only visible sign of it is the mottled appearance of my naked scalp. I have to be a bit careful with sunburn but the idea that this affliction should warrant any kind of sympathy is ridiculous.
Be proud of your old bald head, that's what I say!
With due respect, it is far more difficult for a woman to come to grips with male pattern baldness.
My mother suffered with it, so I have some insight.
I'm sure some feel it more than others, but as a positive example I give you Joanna Rowsell, Britain's talented and gorgeous Olympic cyclist.
It's really pushing it to call it an illness. Even in its most extreme forms - and Rowsell has it about as bad as it gets - it isn't much more than a mild skin complaint which some consider disfiguring.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I really doubt there is any link between the Oscars and American puissance.
The decline you mention is perhaps predictable in an age of social media. There’s too many demands on people’s time to sit down and wait to see who won best costume design this year.
Then, you have the Netflix x Covid effect. The last two years have been abominable for the film industry, people have switched off.
The Power of the Dog was nominated and released almost entirely on Netflix. However the issue is too many films the public like get ignored at the Oscars
No, the issue is that Hollywood doesn’t really make popular films that have a quotient of critical acceptability any more.
Was Braveheart a film of such critical brilliance? Or Rocky? Or Titanic? All won the Best Picture Oscar and I doubt they were really miles better than Spiderman or The Batman or Thor or the Avengers which get most of the box office big bucks today.
Yet even when Hollywood does produce a film of critical acceptability that does well at the box office too, eg La La Land, the Academy snubbed it. Even Warren Beatty could not believe it when Moonlight won in 2017 hence he read out the wrong winner
The main insight from this morning's LBC interview with Starmer is that Labour is going to get hit with a whole bunch of culture war wedge issues in the run-up to the next election. Those issues say a lot more about the distorted concerns of Westminster/media than the country.
I'm not sure "women's rights & safety" are a "distorted concern"....
There are a lot of 'yebbuts' in those sorts of issues. For example, the man in the pub is initially against whatever it is, but then says 'yebbut' and turns out that on reflection he thinks it's quite a good idea. Like gay marriage. Your average 'straight' isn't bothered, finds it mildly amusing, but if it's not hurting anyone, and it protects the survivors rights on death, why not?
I've some sympathy with Cyclefree's view as I have two friends who feel equally strongly. But it is nonetheless not something that comes up much on the doorstep even if one feels it should, and taking sides in culture wars is as fundamental a mistake as a councillor taking sides in a neighbour dispute - everybody involved (including whoever you back) feels you're not sufficiently on their side, need to say more, etc., and you just get sucked in. Meanwhile, everyone else thinks you're obsessed with something they don't care about because they've never met a trans person.
It's a big deal in the Green Party, where quite a few activists are very deeply entrenched on both sides - I know some senior party people who said they'd quit if the leadership candidate with the "wrong" view got elected.
In general people who feel strongly about an issue are often incapable of accepting that others may not feel strongly (let's not even consider them accepting the validity of opposing views). There also appears to be a significant lump of folk who are desperate for it to be a wedge issue.
BBC Scotland recently did a survey on public attitudes to trans issues and GRA reform in Scotland; the general consensus seemed to be that folk weren't that bothered and in general had a mild preference that life should be made a bit easier for trans people. You could almost see the cloud of thwarted disappointment above Pacific Quay.
Quite.
And whatever Tyndall thinks, as I said most trans people are invariably non-violent.
Of course a few slip through or, worse, use this as a cover but there's violence everywhere and they are in the extreme. I've seen very violent cis women in ladies loos after a few drinks.
Ah not just a scumbag but an ignorant scumbag.
Invariably definition - "in every case or on every occasion; always."
So if a 'few slip through' then they cannot be 'invariably' non-violent.
Richard, Richard, Richard.
I know you sometimes have a problem and form with this but it is entirely possible to have an exchange on PB without immediately insulting your interlocutor. The last thing we want is for you to get yourself into so much of a tizzy that you ban yourself again.
Not when that interlocutor is an apologist for rape. Politics between you and me is one thing. Defending the rights of people to commit sexual assault on the grounds of their sexual orientation is something completely different.
And I don't see insulting people to be a problem at all. Practically everything about you is insulting to humanity but I wouldn't want to ban you.
Much better with some humour.
As to the issue before because the red mist had descended you didn't read what @Heathener wrote. She (I'm assuming) didn't at all excuse rape. She said that the occasions of transgender women raping other women represented a tiny proportion of crimes and that the vast majority of trans people are non-violent.
You, meanwhile, seem to be saying that because someone commits murder with a candlestick we should ban all candlesticks.
Nobody is talking about trans women. The issue is men who are not trans women pretending they are trans women. their victims are a. real women on whom they prey and b. genuine trans women. there is no doubt that these men exist, unless you believe for instance that the number of trans women among the male at birth Scottish prison population is about 10,000 times as high as in the population at large. Create a loophole, expect it to be exploited.
Yes that is a valid concern. There must be a mechanism to avoid that. I don't want to put words into @Heathener's mouth but I think it was that the instances of this are tiny compared with other crimes and also crimes against trans people. But, and I know you have cited that 10,000x figure previously, this is not to say that a solution must not be found for this particular example.
That 10k figure is odd. 0.5% of the general population are trans according to NHS Scotland estimates (probably a low ball number). And in a prison population of 8k, about 10-20 are trans (12 in 2020). That makes the prison population under-represented.
One half of one percent of everybody is transsexual?
Isn't the xaplanation there " However, these numbers are likely an underestimate because they only account for trans people diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder and/or people receiving services at gender clinics, which we know are not inclusive of all trans people."
1 in 200 would accord with my experience. I think there's the possibility it will move higher in the immediate future, but unlikely to exceed 1%.
So what are we learning on here today? Violence against a man who gave some verbal is okay; if you don't do violence, you're a 'door mat'.
But all trans people have to be despised and hated because *a few* do bad things?
If we really wanted to stop violence of all sorts - and yes, against women - we would talk much more about the former, and not excuse it because you're an alpha-male wannabe idiot.
No what you're learning today is that violence in self-defence of those you love is sometimes appropriate.
Yes that includes tackling bullies sometimes.
Chris Rock deserved the smack. Smith was right to apologise to others but he notably and appropriately didn't apologise to Chris Rock, and nor should he.
He acted in self-defence of his wife. Nothing wrong with that.
Utter rubbish. Breaking the law because someone is rude to your wife is not acceptable - apart from the illegality and the example it sets to the impressionable it is not proportionate either. The idiot made a crap joke - the best response would have been not to laugh at it. My understanding is that to laugh was Smith's first reaction before displaying his machismo for all the world to see.
The main insight from this morning's LBC interview with Starmer is that Labour is going to get hit with a whole bunch of culture war wedge issues in the run-up to the next election. Those issues say a lot more about the distorted concerns of Westminster/media than the country.
I'm not sure "women's rights & safety" are a "distorted concern"....
There are a lot of 'yebbuts' in those sorts of issues. For example, the man in the pub is initially against whatever it is, but then says 'yebbut' and turns out that on reflection he thinks it's quite a good idea. Like gay marriage. Your average 'straight' isn't bothered, finds it mildly amusing, but if it's not hurting anyone, and it protects the survivors rights on death, why not?
I've some sympathy with Cyclefree's view as I have two friends who feel equally strongly. But it is nonetheless not something that comes up much on the doorstep even if one feels it should, and taking sides in culture wars is as fundamental a mistake as a councillor taking sides in a neighbour dispute - everybody involved (including whoever you back) feels you're not sufficiently on their side, need to say more, etc., and you just get sucked in. Meanwhile, everyone else thinks you're obsessed with something they don't care about because they've never met a trans person.
It's a big deal in the Green Party, where quite a few activists are very deeply entrenched on both sides - I know some senior party people who said they'd quit if the leadership candidate with the "wrong" view got elected.
In general people who feel strongly about an issue are often incapable of accepting that others may not feel strongly (let's not even consider them accepting the validity of opposing views). There also appears to be a significant lump of folk who are desperate for it to be a wedge issue.
BBC Scotland recently did a survey on public attitudes to trans issues and GRA reform in Scotland; the general consensus seemed to be that folk weren't that bothered and in general had a mild preference that life should be made a bit easier for trans people. You could almost see the cloud of thwarted disappointment above Pacific Quay.
Quite.
And whatever Tyndall thinks, as I said most trans people are invariably non-violent.
Of course a few slip through or, worse, use this as a cover but there's violence everywhere and they are in the extreme. I've seen very violent cis women in ladies loos after a few drinks.
Ah not just a scumbag but an ignorant scumbag.
Invariably definition - "in every case or on every occasion; always."
So if a 'few slip through' then they cannot be 'invariably' non-violent.
Richard, Richard, Richard.
I know you sometimes have a problem and form with this but it is entirely possible to have an exchange on PB without immediately insulting your interlocutor. The last thing we want is for you to get yourself into so much of a tizzy that you ban yourself again.
Not when that interlocutor is an apologist for rape. Politics between you and me is one thing. Defending the rights of people to commit sexual assault on the grounds of their sexual orientation is something completely different.
And I don't see insulting people to be a problem at all. Practically everything about you is insulting to humanity but I wouldn't want to ban you.
Much better with some humour.
As to the issue before because the red mist had descended you didn't read what @Heathener wrote. She (I'm assuming) didn't at all excuse rape. She said that the occasions of transgender women raping other women represented a tiny proportion of crimes and that the vast majority of trans people are non-violent.
You, meanwhile, seem to be saying that because someone commits murder with a candlestick we should ban all candlesticks.
Nobody is talking about trans women. The issue is men who are not trans women pretending they are trans women. their victims are a. real women on whom they prey and b. genuine trans women. there is no doubt that these men exist, unless you believe for instance that the number of trans women among the male at birth Scottish prison population is about 10,000 times as high as in the population at large. Create a loophole, expect it to be exploited.
Yes that is a valid concern. There must be a mechanism to avoid that. I don't want to put words into @Heathener's mouth but I think it was that the instances of this are tiny compared with other crimes and also crimes against trans people. But, and I know you have cited that 10,000x figure previously, this is not to say that a solution must not be found for this particular example.
That 10k figure is odd. 0.5% of the general population are trans according to NHS Scotland estimates (probably a low ball number). And in a prison population of 8k, about 10-20 are trans (12 in 2020). That makes the prison population under-represented.
One half of one percent of everybody is transsexual?
"There is not a definitive figure for the number of transgender people in Scotland but an NHS report published in May 2018 cited an estimate of 0.5% of the population, or some 24,000 adults.
The report said the number of trans people accessing NHS gender identity services had risen sharply between 2014 and 2017."
PB vigilantes: bloody left full of snowflakes demanding comedians are cancelled because they make "offensive" jokes.
Also PB vigilantes: excellent news that a comedian got a slap for being offensive.
Not the same thing though, are they. Chris Rock getting what was due after insulting another man's wife isn't the same as wanting him to be cancelled. I've got no issue with him doing tours or hosting next year's event if they ask him.
Mate I applaud you for what you did to the people who were bullying you.
But this is a comedian being a comedian (making a joke about one of the most powerful Hollywood couples) and you think it's great to slap them for it. Can present the show next year but rightly gets a black eye if someone takes offence to what he says. Have a word with yourself.
Nah, you've misread the scenario if you think that's what this is about. Will Smith and Chris Rock have got a long standing mutual loathing of each other, my reading of it (and this has been confirmed by a studio exec this morning) is that Chris Rock wanted to have a go at Will Smith because he was odds on to win the award just for the sake of getting a dig in against a long standing rival. If he'd gone direct we wouldn't be talking about it but Chris Rock went indirect, insulted Will Smith's wife and made fun of her medical condition which all insiders say she's pretty sensitive about, loads were praising her bravery for coming to the ceremony without wearing a weave or a wig. Chris Rock made it personal and ultimately got what was coming to him. He should have realised if he was going to shit chat another man's wife this was a likely result.
Someone said it on here earlier, there's loads of things people say anonymously on the internet they wouldn't say to someone's face, well Chris Rock tested and proved that theory.
I get all that but I don't think it should end in violence. It's a comedian making a joke and the response was the act of a bully. Imagine instead of Chris Rock it had been The Rock. That would have been worth watching.
You're missing the point then, Dwayne Johnson wouldn't be making that joke. This is Chris Rock wanting to shit on Will Smith's big day in the sun, no more, no less. He got what was coming to him. Chris Rock abused his position as the host to have a pop at someone who he's already got a beef with, there's a word for people who abuse their authority.
I understand that - it was Chris Rock's golden opportunity to get at the Smiths. And he did so by making fun (not what he said but who cares) of Mrs Smith. And he got a slap for it. That is the law of the jungle. If the bully you beat up at school had come back with 10 of his brothers and slapped the fuck out of you then what? Once you are on that train you don't know where it's going to go.
My point is that Chris Rock invited the law of the jungle into the room, those who live by the sword will ultimately die by it.
In my situation, I honestly felt as though I had nothing to lose. My life couldn't have got much worse anyway and (horrifyingly) I had thought of the outcome you mentioned and I thought if they killed me someone might finally realise what was going on. I'm still ashamed of thinking that, to this day.
Blimmin' heck 2x well done you that is awful. Without wishing to take you back there was no one in authority in a position to help?
Edit: and it seems trivial vs the above and I think people know my view on it now but I don't think a comedian telling an offensive joke is inviting the law of the jungle into the room...
That's the thing with bullies, they make it seem as though there is no way out. The school was fucking useless, my dad was working basically 7am to 11pm and when he was home I didn't want to worry him with my trivial problems and my mum has eerily similar views to JJ about suffering in silence and waiting for God to deliver us from pain.
The only way out seemed to be a confrontation for which I was poorly prepared. In the end he was even less well prepared and once I had pushed him to the ground a few kicks to his head and body were enough to make him back off. It was only a few days later in the "clear the air" meeting between the two families that the headmaster realised what had been going on for almost two years. It was that realisation and the eventual coming forwards of other bullied kids that actually helped keep me in the school and, probably, the other bullies away.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I really doubt there is any link between the Oscars and American puissance.
The decline you mention is perhaps predictable in an age of social media. There’s too many demands on people’s time to sit down and wait to see who won best costume design this year.
Then, you have the Netflix x Covid effect. The last two years have been abominable for the film industry, people have switched off.
The Power of the Dog was nominated and released almost entirely on Netflix. However the issue is too many films the public like get ignored at the Oscars
Absolutely. Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie was criminally ignored for honours.
Don't mock, Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie had nine times the box office takings of Coda, which won the Oscar
The main insight from this morning's LBC interview with Starmer is that Labour is going to get hit with a whole bunch of culture war wedge issues in the run-up to the next election. Those issues say a lot more about the distorted concerns of Westminster/media than the country.
I'm not sure "women's rights & safety" are a "distorted concern"....
There are a lot of 'yebbuts' in those sorts of issues. For example, the man in the pub is initially against whatever it is, but then says 'yebbut' and turns out that on reflection he thinks it's quite a good idea. Like gay marriage. Your average 'straight' isn't bothered, finds it mildly amusing, but if it's not hurting anyone, and it protects the survivors rights on death, why not?
I've some sympathy with Cyclefree's view as I have two friends who feel equally strongly. But it is nonetheless not something that comes up much on the doorstep even if one feels it should, and taking sides in culture wars is as fundamental a mistake as a councillor taking sides in a neighbour dispute - everybody involved (including whoever you back) feels you're not sufficiently on their side, need to say more, etc., and you just get sucked in. Meanwhile, everyone else thinks you're obsessed with something they don't care about because they've never met a trans person.
It's a big deal in the Green Party, where quite a few activists are very deeply entrenched on both sides - I know some senior party people who said they'd quit if the leadership candidate with the "wrong" view got elected.
In general people who feel strongly about an issue are often incapable of accepting that others may not feel strongly (let's not even consider them accepting the validity of opposing views). There also appears to be a significant lump of folk who are desperate for it to be a wedge issue.
BBC Scotland recently did a survey on public attitudes to trans issues and GRA reform in Scotland; the general consensus seemed to be that folk weren't that bothered and in general had a mild preference that life should be made a bit easier for trans people. You could almost see the cloud of thwarted disappointment above Pacific Quay.
Quite.
And whatever Tyndall thinks, as I said most trans people are invariably non-violent.
Of course a few slip through or, worse, use this as a cover but there's violence everywhere and they are in the extreme. I've seen very violent cis women in ladies loos after a few drinks.
Ah not just a scumbag but an ignorant scumbag.
Invariably definition - "in every case or on every occasion; always."
So if a 'few slip through' then they cannot be 'invariably' non-violent.
Richard, Richard, Richard.
I know you sometimes have a problem and form with this but it is entirely possible to have an exchange on PB without immediately insulting your interlocutor. The last thing we want is for you to get yourself into so much of a tizzy that you ban yourself again.
Not when that interlocutor is an apologist for rape. Politics between you and me is one thing. Defending the rights of people to commit sexual assault on the grounds of their sexual orientation is something completely different.
And I don't see insulting people to be a problem at all. Practically everything about you is insulting to humanity but I wouldn't want to ban you.
Much better with some humour.
As to the issue before because the red mist had descended you didn't read what @Heathener wrote. She (I'm assuming) didn't at all excuse rape. She said that the occasions of transgender women raping other women represented a tiny proportion of crimes and that the vast majority of trans people are non-violent.
You, meanwhile, seem to be saying that because someone commits murder with a candlestick we should ban all candlesticks.
Nobody is talking about trans women. The issue is men who are not trans women pretending they are trans women. their victims are a. real women on whom they prey and b. genuine trans women. there is no doubt that these men exist, unless you believe for instance that the number of trans women among the male at birth Scottish prison population is about 10,000 times as high as in the population at large. Create a loophole, expect it to be exploited.
Yes that is a valid concern. There must be a mechanism to avoid that. I don't want to put words into @Heathener's mouth but I think it was that the instances of this are tiny compared with other crimes and also crimes against trans people. But, and I know you have cited that 10,000x figure previously, this is not to say that a solution must not be found for this particular example.
That 10k figure is odd. 0.5% of the general population are trans according to NHS Scotland estimates (probably a low ball number). And in a prison population of 8k, about 10-20 are trans (12 in 2020). That makes the prison population under-represented.
One half of one percent of everybody is transsexual?
"There is not a definitive figure for the number of transgender people in Scotland but an NHS report published in May 2018 cited an estimate of 0.5% of the population, or some 24,000 adults.
The report said the number of trans people accessing NHS gender identity services had risen sharply between 2014 and 2017."
(I can believe that in the US a figure based in a "gender identity disorder" diagnosis and using their clinics significantly underestimates the numbers.)
Talking of rocks and the oscars, The Rock (the film) is one of my favourite films. I think that the Hollywood Great and Good would rather gnaw off their own fingers than give Michael Bay any kind of award.
So what are we learning on here today? Violence against a man who gave some verbal is okay; if you don't do violence, you're a 'door mat'.
But all trans people have to be despised and hated because *a few* do bad things?
If we really wanted to stop violence of all sorts - and yes, against women - we would talk much more about the former, and not excuse it because you're an alpha-male wannabe idiot.
No what you're learning today is that violence in self-defence of those you love is sometimes appropriate.
Yes that includes tackling bullies sometimes.
Chris Rock deserved the smack. Smith was right to apologise to others but he notably and appropriately didn't apologise to Chris Rock, and nor should he.
He acted in self-defence of his wife. Nothing wrong with that.
Utter rubbish. Breaking the law because someone is rude to your wife is not acceptable - apart from the illegality and the example it sets to the impressionable it is not proportionate either. The idiot made a crap joke - the best response would have been not to laugh at it. My understanding is that to laugh was Smith's first reaction before displaying his machismo for all the world to see.
He had apparently sat through the same joke in the rehearsal.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
The decline is in the quality of the films honoured, not in the ceremony itself (which has indeed been awful for as long as I can remember). But, the main awards - particularly Best Picture - used fairly often to be films lots of people had actually seen: the last one to break $100m at the US box office was in 2013, and the last to break $200m was Lord of the Rings in 2004.
Yes, fair.
Hollywood has been fucked by a combination of Marvel and Netflix.
I struggle to care about many new films these days. Yet I’d seen every film on that 1994 list published upthread.
And no, it’s not just age.
I've seen a couple of persuasive essays which make this point. Movies (like music) have got objectively worse in the last two decades. It's not just nostalgia and Fings Aint Wot They Used To Be, it is a real and measurable decline: even the vocabulary in the scripts has got simpler and more child-like
There are multiple reasons, from the death of the (hugely profitable) DVD to the decline in budgets to the advent of streaming to the atomising of audiences
One big reason is the rise of the Chinese and other markets. These are huge and irresistible for Hollywood studios under financial pressure, so movies are dumbed down so they can cross all cultures, and sell in Beijing as well as Brooklyn (hence all the Marvel/superhero/Star Wars bollocks); meanwhile the arthouse movie audience has almost completely vanished, decamped to watch excellent TV drama (which doesn't need Chinese/Indian/Brazilian audiences so can be really smart/meta/witty/rude)
It's a golden age for TV drama and video games. It's decline and fall for movies and music. Discuss
Talking of rocks and the oscars, The Rock (the film) is one of my favourite films. I think that the Hollywood Great and Good would rather gnaw off their own fingers than give Michael Bay any kind of award.
Say what you like about Gavin Williamson, he never thumped anyone at the annual "Fireplace Salesman of the Year" awards.
He wasn’t put between a rock and fireplace
The Rock - further evidence that baldies can make it to the top.....
A mistake I have only just learned I have been making all these years: Chris Rock <> Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The latter is bald, the former was slapped by Will Smith.
It’s always an interesting wake up call on pb realising how disconnected a lot of people are from modern culture. Comments like not being able to recognise Will Smith in the street. Really?
Even The Rock’s gross box office is over $5bn, the 20th highest grossing actor of all time. And that’s his second successful career (as per Will Smith).
A hilariously self-torpedoing post, because The Rock is Dwayne Johnson, while Chris Rock is Chris Rock.
Laughing at people for medical conditions is supposed to be well beyond the pale nowadays so I wonder if this incident will mean that now everybody hates Chris?
No I got the reference, I just wondered if we are or not
If you want a serious answer: No.
I have no desire to see Chris Rock get cancelled, nor do I think its bad that he got what was quite frankly a well-deserved slap. So he might think twice before using someone's wife's medical condition as a punchline again, but he shouldn't be cancelled.
Quite frankly I think Will Smith both slapping Chris Rock, then apologising for doing so, and that being the end of the matter is probably the right sequence of events to have happened.
Him then winning the oscar and doing his speech is imo what pushed this story into ledge territory.
Interestingly no clear right/left, leave/remain, mods/rocker binary split on what the correct take is. People are all over the place.
Probably just a touch of 'Will in the wrong' on the left and 'in the right' on the right.
My centrist dad hot take: wrong, if understandable; ultimately not that big a deal.
You're not a centrist dad, c'mon! The dad bit, yes, but not the other.
Anyway here's our (woke left) line to take. It's quite circumspect as you can see. 4 strands -
"Assault is wrong.
Alopecia is a painful experience that many Black women go through and should not be joked about.
The concept of being ‘the protector’ can be a form of toxic masculinity.
Black women are rarely protected and deserve to be protected."
(from Owen's twitter)
Possible alternative take: to paraphrase Homer Simpson, maybe there is no lesson: it was just a bunch of stuff that happened. We don't need to take sides on absolutely everything. A scuffle at an industry awards do.
Laura Kuenssberg @bbclaurak · 1h I'm extremely happy to say that I'll be in the BBC politics chair on Sunday mornings from September - it's a genuine honour and real thrill to be working with an amazing team on the show, can't wait to get started!
===
Hard on Raworth, she is doing very well in the slot. Marr has returned to what he is far better at - political writing, not broadcasting imho.
PB vigilantes: bloody left full of snowflakes demanding comedians are cancelled because they make "offensive" jokes.
Also PB vigilantes: excellent news that a comedian got a slap for being offensive.
Not the same thing though, are they. Chris Rock getting what was due after insulting another man's wife isn't the same as wanting him to be cancelled. I've got no issue with him doing tours or hosting next year's event if they ask him.
Mate I applaud you for what you did to the people who were bullying you.
But this is a comedian being a comedian (making a joke about one of the most powerful Hollywood couples) and you think it's great to slap them for it. Can present the show next year but rightly gets a black eye if someone takes offence to what he says. Have a word with yourself.
Nah, you've misread the scenario if you think that's what this is about. Will Smith and Chris Rock have got a long standing mutual loathing of each other, my reading of it (and this has been confirmed by a studio exec this morning) is that Chris Rock wanted to have a go at Will Smith because he was odds on to win the award just for the sake of getting a dig in against a long standing rival. If he'd gone direct we wouldn't be talking about it but Chris Rock went indirect, insulted Will Smith's wife and made fun of her medical condition which all insiders say she's pretty sensitive about, loads were praising her bravery for coming to the ceremony without wearing a weave or a wig. Chris Rock made it personal and ultimately got what was coming to him. He should have realised if he was going to shit chat another man's wife this was a likely result.
Someone said it on here earlier, there's loads of things people say anonymously on the internet they wouldn't say to someone's face, well Chris Rock tested and proved that theory.
I get all that but I don't think it should end in violence. It's a comedian making a joke and the response was the act of a bully. Imagine instead of Chris Rock it had been The Rock. That would have been worth watching.
You're missing the point then, Dwayne Johnson wouldn't be making that joke. This is Chris Rock wanting to shit on Will Smith's big day in the sun, no more, no less. He got what was coming to him. Chris Rock abused his position as the host to have a pop at someone who he's already got a beef with, there's a word for people who abuse their authority.
I understand that - it was Chris Rock's golden opportunity to get at the Smiths. And he did so by making fun (not what he said but who cares) of Mrs Smith. And he got a slap for it. That is the law of the jungle. If the bully you beat up at school had come back with 10 of his brothers and slapped the fuck out of you then what? Once you are on that train you don't know where it's going to go.
My point is that Chris Rock invited the law of the jungle into the room, those who live by the sword will ultimately die by it.
In my situation, I honestly felt as though I had nothing to lose. My life couldn't have got much worse anyway and (horrifyingly) I had thought of the outcome you mentioned and I thought if they killed me someone might finally realise what was going on. I'm still ashamed of thinking that, to this day.
Blimmin' heck 2x well done you that is awful. Without wishing to take you back there was no one in authority in a position to help?
Edit: and it seems trivial vs the above and I think people know my view on it now but I don't think a comedian telling an offensive joke is inviting the law of the jungle into the room...
That's the thing with bullies, they make it seem as though there is no way out. The school was fucking useless, my dad was working basically 7am to 11pm and when he was home I didn't want to worry him with my trivial problems and my mum has eerily similar views to JJ about suffering in silence and waiting for God to deliver us from pain.
The only way out seemed to be a confrontation for which I was poorly prepared. In the end he was even less well prepared and once I had pushed him to the ground a few kicks to his head and body were enough to make him back off. It was only a few days later in the "clear the air" meeting between the two families that the headmaster realised what had been going on for almost two years. It was that realisation and the eventual coming forwards of other bullied kids that actually helped keep me in the school and, probably, the other bullies away.
Interesting thanks. And I presume the staff had dismissed it as boys being boys previously. And of course you could have killed him with a "few kicks to the head".
But I would rather not use yours as a case study as you did what you had to to, it was wholly admirable then, and achieved its aim and I am not intending to discuss it with any kind of smart-arse hindsight.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
The decline is in the quality of the films honoured, not in the ceremony itself (which has indeed been awful for as long as I can remember). But, the main awards - particularly Best Picture - used fairly often to be films lots of people had actually seen: the last one to break $100m at the US box office was in 2013, and the last to break $200m was Lord of the Rings in 2004.
Yes, fair.
Hollywood has been fucked by a combination of Marvel and Netflix.
I struggle to care about many new films these days. Yet I’d seen every film on that 1994 list published upthread.
And no, it’s not just age.
I've seen a couple of persuasive essays which make this point. Movies (like music) have got objectively worse in the last two decades. It's not just nostalgia and Fings Aint Wot They Used To Be, it is a real and measurable decline: even the vocabulary in the scripts has got simpler and more child-like
There are multiple reasons, from the death of the (hugely profitable) DVD to the decline in budgets to the advent of streaming to the atomising of audiences
One big reason is the rise of the Chinese and other markets. These are huge and irresistible for Hollywood studios under financial pressure, so movies are dumbed down so they can cross all cultures, and sell in Beijing as well as Brooklyn (hence all the Marvel/superhero/Star Wars bollocks); meanwhile the arthouse movie audience has almost completely vanished, decamped to watch excellent TV drama (which doesn't need Chinese/Indian/Brazilian audiences so can be really smart/meta/witty/rude)
It's a golden age for TV drama and video games. It's decline and fall for movies and music. Discuss
Not just about dumbing down for Chinese market, because limited slots per year for a Western film and the very strict censorship rules, you are going to resort to a certain type of film.
I think TV is somewhat in a slump at the moment. A lot of the big budget tv shows / primetime slots for the big networks like HBO aren't really very good. The big hit of the last few months, a weird South Korean show. Stuff like the Foundation on Apple+ weren't very good, despite mega bucks being plowed into it. There is nothing at the moment I am desperate to see the next episode. Severance is vaguely interesting.
Say what you like about Gavin Williamson, he never thumped anyone at the annual "Fireplace Salesman of the Year" awards.
He wasn’t put between a rock and fireplace
The Rock - further evidence that baldies can make it to the top.....
A mistake I have only just learned I have been making all these years: Chris Rock <> Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The latter is bald, the former was slapped by Will Smith.
It’s always an interesting wake up call on pb realising how disconnected a lot of people are from modern culture. Comments like not being able to recognise Will Smith in the street. Really?
Even The Rock’s gross box office is over $5bn, the 20th highest grossing actor of all time. And that’s his second successful career (as per Will Smith).
A hilariously self-torpedoing post, because The Rock is Dwayne Johnson, while Chris Rock is Chris Rock.
Laughing at people for medical conditions is supposed to be well beyond the pale nowadays so I wonder if this incident will mean that now everybody hates Chris?
No I got the reference, I just wondered if we are or not
If you want a serious answer: No.
I have no desire to see Chris Rock get cancelled, nor do I think its bad that he got what was quite frankly a well-deserved slap. So he might think twice before using someone's wife's medical condition as a punchline again, but he shouldn't be cancelled.
Quite frankly I think Will Smith both slapping Chris Rock, then apologising for doing so, and that being the end of the matter is probably the right sequence of events to have happened.
Him then winning the oscar and doing his speech is imo what pushed this story into ledge territory.
Interestingly no clear right/left, leave/remain, mods/rocker binary split on what the correct take is. People are all over the place.
Probably just a touch of 'Will in the wrong' on the left and 'in the right' on the right.
My centrist dad hot take: wrong, if understandable; ultimately not that big a deal.
No, the more I think about it, the worse it is
The Oscars are already in dire trouble for being - or perceived to be - woke, boring, banal, and up-themselves, a bunch of rich people clapping each other on the back, or being mawkishly sentimental, by turns.
The one thing that could save them, or stem the decline, is a return to edginess, that means a host willing to mock the millionaire film stars cruelly (like Gervais). Now that we've seen an edgy joke can get you slapped and humiliated live on air who will want to have a go next time?
The Awards will now shrivel even further into inane self congratulation. I can't see how they can be saved. Perhaps streaming, the Net and Youtube would always have killed them off, anyway, they've just accelerated their decline with some self harming idiocy
That 'cruel' Gervaisy hosting stuff is imo becoming a cliche. It's getting tedious, predictable, boring, embarrassing. Ditto the 'luvviness'. I think it's 2 cheeks of the same arse. They earn the right to be luvvy by taking lots of crap and pretending to be good sports. I'd like to call that grand bargain off. Dispense with both cheeks and thus with the whole arse.
Fact is, the oscars are inherently interesting and important if you're into film (which is one of the great modern artforms). So let's see the ceremony just played serious and straight.
In general, I'm increasingly finding the constant need for jokes and pisstaking about everything a turn-off. Could be age again, I guess. I do allow that possibility.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I really doubt there is any link between the Oscars and American puissance.
The decline you mention is perhaps predictable in an age of social media. There’s too many demands on people’s time to sit down and wait to see who won best costume design this year.
Then, you have the Netflix x Covid effect. The last two years have been abominable for the film industry, people have switched off.
The Power of the Dog was nominated and released almost entirely on Netflix. However the issue is too many films the public like get ignored at the Oscars
No, the issue is that Hollywood doesn’t really make popular films that have a quotient of critical acceptability any more.
Was Braveheart a film of such critical brilliance? Or Rocky? Or Titanic? All won the Best Picture Oscar and I doubt they were really miles better than Spiderman or The Batman or Thor or the Avengers which get most of the box office big bucks today.
Yet even when Hollywood does produce a film of critical acceptability that does well at the box office too, eg La La Land, the Academy snubbed it. Even Warren Beatty could not believe it when Moonlight won in 2017 hence he read out the wrong winner
Braveheart was kitsch but also stirring, passionate and memorable (we can all quote lines today). Rocky was a superb rags to riches fairtytale with real passion (also quite hammy, but nothing is perfect). Titanic was an enormous spectacle and a triumph of cinematography, and also rather moving (and with good music), and it grossed trillions, despite a seriously lame script
So, yes, these are all flawed movies but they are all excellent, too, in their own way, and worthy winners. Films that can and will be re-watched for many years, and enjoyed
You just can't say that about Thor or the Avengers. They are mediocre kids/teen movies with enormous CGI budgets that are forgotten days later
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
The decline is in the quality of the films honoured, not in the ceremony itself (which has indeed been awful for as long as I can remember). But, the main awards - particularly Best Picture - used fairly often to be films lots of people had actually seen: the last one to break $100m at the US box office was in 2013, and the last to break $200m was Lord of the Rings in 2004.
Yes, fair.
Hollywood has been fucked by a combination of Marvel and Netflix.
I struggle to care about many new films these days. Yet I’d seen every film on that 1994 list published upthread.
And no, it’s not just age.
I've seen a couple of persuasive essays which make this point. Movies (like music) have got objectively worse in the last two decades. It's not just nostalgia and Fings Aint Wot They Used To Be, it is a real and measurable decline: even the vocabulary in the scripts has got simpler and more child-like
There are multiple reasons, from the death of the (hugely profitable) DVD to the decline in budgets to the advent of streaming to the atomising of audiences
One big reason is the rise of the Chinese and other markets. These are huge and irresistible for Hollywood studios under financial pressure, so movies are dumbed down so they can cross all cultures, and sell in Beijing as well as Brooklyn (hence all the Marvel/superhero/Star Wars bollocks); meanwhile the arthouse movie audience has almost completely vanished, decamped to watch excellent TV drama (which doesn't need Chinese/Indian/Brazilian audiences so can be really smart/meta/witty/rude)
It's a golden age for TV drama and video games. It's decline and fall for movies and music. Discuss
Not just about dumbing down for Chinese market, because limited slots per year for a Western film and the very strict censorship rules, you are going to resort to a certain type of film.
I think TV is somewhat in a slump at the moment. A lot of the big budget tv shows / primetime slots for the big networks like HBO aren't really very good. The big hit of the last few months, a weird South Korean show. Stuff like the Foundation on Apple+ weren't very good, despite mega bucks being plowed into it. There is nothing at the moment I am desperate to see the next episode. Severance is vaguely interesting.
There's a definitely a dip in TV quality. Foundation is ponderous, as is the other big fantasy thing, whose name escapes me it is so ephemeral (yet cost $$$$$)
However I am still finding decent stuff. The new Vikings Valhalla is a pretty good iteration (despite the hint of Woke creeping in). I am enjoying an excellent Danish history, 1864 (I think it's a few years old) about a mad nationalist invasion of another European country (it is incredibly timely, of course, but it is also good. Recommended). Mare of Easttown is gritty and moving. Succession is superb
And of course there is THE GREAT. Probably the funniest historical comedy ever made, a work of genius, and renewed for a new season
The quality is somewhat down, but we have been feasting on absolute riches for years, and maybe this is just a Covid hiatus, and the real good times will return
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I really doubt there is any link between the Oscars and American puissance.
The decline you mention is perhaps predictable in an age of social media. There’s too many demands on people’s time to sit down and wait to see who won best costume design this year.
Then, you have the Netflix x Covid effect. The last two years have been abominable for the film industry, people have switched off.
The Power of the Dog was nominated and released almost entirely on Netflix. However the issue is too many films the public like get ignored at the Oscars
No, the issue is that Hollywood doesn’t really make popular films that have a quotient of critical acceptability any more.
Was Braveheart a film of such critical brilliance? Or Rocky? Or Titanic? All won the Best Picture Oscar and I doubt they were really miles better than Spiderman or The Batman or Thor or the Avengers which get most of the box office big bucks today.
Yet even when Hollywood does produce a film of critical acceptability that does well at the box office too, eg La La Land, the Academy snubbed it. Even Warren Beatty could not believe it when Moonlight won in 2017 hence he read out the wrong winner
Braveheart was kitsch but also stirring, passionate and memorable (we can all quote lines today). Rocky was a superb rags to riches fairtytale with real passion (also quite hammy, but nothing is perfect). Titanic was an enormous spectacle and a triumph of cinematography, and also rather moving (and with good music), and it grossed trillions, despite a seriously lame script
So, yes, these are all flawed movies but they are all excellent, too, in their own way, and worthy winners. Films that can and will be re-watched for many years, and enjoyed
You just can't say that about Thor or the Avengers. They are mediocre kids/teen movies with enormous CGI budgets that are forgotten days later
I haven't forgotten about Infinity War. Not sure I've enjoyed a film as much as that one.
PB vigilantes: bloody left full of snowflakes demanding comedians are cancelled because they make "offensive" jokes.
Also PB vigilantes: excellent news that a comedian got a slap for being offensive.
Not the same thing though, are they. Chris Rock getting what was due after insulting another man's wife isn't the same as wanting him to be cancelled. I've got no issue with him doing tours or hosting next year's event if they ask him.
Mate I applaud you for what you did to the people who were bullying you.
But this is a comedian being a comedian (making a joke about one of the most powerful Hollywood couples) and you think it's great to slap them for it. Can present the show next year but rightly gets a black eye if someone takes offence to what he says. Have a word with yourself.
Nah, you've misread the scenario if you think that's what this is about. Will Smith and Chris Rock have got a long standing mutual loathing of each other, my reading of it (and this has been confirmed by a studio exec this morning) is that Chris Rock wanted to have a go at Will Smith because he was odds on to win the award just for the sake of getting a dig in against a long standing rival. If he'd gone direct we wouldn't be talking about it but Chris Rock went indirect, insulted Will Smith's wife and made fun of her medical condition which all insiders say she's pretty sensitive about, loads were praising her bravery for coming to the ceremony without wearing a weave or a wig. Chris Rock made it personal and ultimately got what was coming to him. He should have realised if he was going to shit chat another man's wife this was a likely result.
Someone said it on here earlier, there's loads of things people say anonymously on the internet they wouldn't say to someone's face, well Chris Rock tested and proved that theory.
I get all that but I don't think it should end in violence. It's a comedian making a joke and the response was the act of a bully. Imagine instead of Chris Rock it had been The Rock. That would have been worth watching.
You're missing the point then, Dwayne Johnson wouldn't be making that joke. This is Chris Rock wanting to shit on Will Smith's big day in the sun, no more, no less. He got what was coming to him. Chris Rock abused his position as the host to have a pop at someone who he's already got a beef with, there's a word for people who abuse their authority.
I understand that - it was Chris Rock's golden opportunity to get at the Smiths. And he did so by making fun (not what he said but who cares) of Mrs Smith. And he got a slap for it. That is the law of the jungle. If the bully you beat up at school had come back with 10 of his brothers and slapped the fuck out of you then what? Once you are on that train you don't know where it's going to go.
My point is that Chris Rock invited the law of the jungle into the room, those who live by the sword will ultimately die by it.
In my situation, I honestly felt as though I had nothing to lose. My life couldn't have got much worse anyway and (horrifyingly) I had thought of the outcome you mentioned and I thought if they killed me someone might finally realise what was going on. I'm still ashamed of thinking that, to this day.
Blimmin' heck 2x well done you that is awful. Without wishing to take you back there was no one in authority in a position to help?
Edit: and it seems trivial vs the above and I think people know my view on it now but I don't think a comedian telling an offensive joke is inviting the law of the jungle into the room...
That's the thing with bullies, they make it seem as though there is no way out. The school was fucking useless, my dad was working basically 7am to 11pm and when he was home I didn't want to worry him with my trivial problems and my mum has eerily similar views to JJ about suffering in silence and waiting for God to deliver us from pain.
The only way out seemed to be a confrontation for which I was poorly prepared. In the end he was even less well prepared and once I had pushed him to the ground a few kicks to his head and body were enough to make him back off. It was only a few days later in the "clear the air" meeting between the two families that the headmaster realised what had been going on for almost two years. It was that realisation and the eventual coming forwards of other bullied kids that actually helped keep me in the school and, probably, the other bullies away.
Interesting thanks. And I presume the staff had dismissed it as boys being boys previously. And of course you could have killed him with a "few kicks to the head".
But I would rather not use yours as a case study as you did what you had to to, it was wholly admirable then, and achieved its aim and I am not intending to discuss it with any kind of smart-arse hindsight.
Back to Chris & Will!!
Worse than that, it was a boys school so there was a culture of not snitching and the teachers were very much part of pushing that culture. As I've said, the authorities, whether it's teachers at school or the police either seem to not care or simply don't want to know. Sadly, not much has changed in the 20 or so years since my experience, I'd say it's probably got worse, especially for girls.
Anyway, I'm heading off for a late lunch but I hope you can see why comments like "maybe you handled it incorrectly" from the likes of @JosiasJessop really, really annoy me. I think anyone who has been seriously bullied will recognise what I went through and also find his comment repulsive. Bullies don't give you a nice easy way out which is why so many victims commit suicide. It's almost as though people like him would rather that happen than people choosing to fight back because "violence is never the answer" which to me is such a hugely bullshit phrase, sometimes the situation requires words and reasoning, in other situations fighting might be the only way out.
On a similar note, my kid(s) is going to some kind of personal combat classes from early on, just to ensure they are prepared for what's out there so they've always got that way out if they need it. I never had that and had to hope the other kid wasn't much of a fighter either, I don't ever want my kid(s) to be in the same situation.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
The decline is in the quality of the films honoured, not in the ceremony itself (which has indeed been awful for as long as I can remember). But, the main awards - particularly Best Picture - used fairly often to be films lots of people had actually seen: the last one to break $100m at the US box office was in 2013, and the last to break $200m was Lord of the Rings in 2004.
Yes, fair.
Hollywood has been fucked by a combination of Marvel and Netflix.
I struggle to care about many new films these days. Yet I’d seen every film on that 1994 list published upthread.
And no, it’s not just age.
I've seen a couple of persuasive essays which make this point. Movies (like music) have got objectively worse in the last two decades. It's not just nostalgia and Fings Aint Wot They Used To Be, it is a real and measurable decline: even the vocabulary in the scripts has got simpler and more child-like
There are multiple reasons, from the death of the (hugely profitable) DVD to the decline in budgets to the advent of streaming to the atomising of audiences
One big reason is the rise of the Chinese and other markets. These are huge and irresistible for Hollywood studios under financial pressure, so movies are dumbed down so they can cross all cultures, and sell in Beijing as well as Brooklyn (hence all the Marvel/superhero/Star Wars bollocks); meanwhile the arthouse movie audience has almost completely vanished, decamped to watch excellent TV drama (which doesn't need Chinese/Indian/Brazilian audiences so can be really smart/meta/witty/rude)
It's a golden age for TV drama and video games. It's decline and fall for movies and music. Discuss
I think another reason is the preceived need to be woke, and avoid anything that might conceivably cause the slightest offence to anybody anywhere at any time. So you have token characters shoved unrealistically into stories where they don't belong while mediocre actors, writers and comedians are given opportunities far above their abilities.
I was amazed when a very left-wing friend of mine complained about this to me and a couple of mutual friends a few weeks ago. He was talking about the London standup scene, but it doubtless applies across the whole entertainment industry.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
The decline is in the quality of the films honoured, not in the ceremony itself (which has indeed been awful for as long as I can remember). But, the main awards - particularly Best Picture - used fairly often to be films lots of people had actually seen: the last one to break $100m at the US box office was in 2013, and the last to break $200m was Lord of the Rings in 2004.
Yes, fair.
Hollywood has been fucked by a combination of Marvel and Netflix.
I struggle to care about many new films these days. Yet I’d seen every film on that 1994 list published upthread.
And no, it’s not just age.
I've seen a couple of persuasive essays which make this point. Movies (like music) have got objectively worse in the last two decades. It's not just nostalgia and Fings Aint Wot They Used To Be, it is a real and measurable decline: even the vocabulary in the scripts has got simpler and more child-like
There are multiple reasons, from the death of the (hugely profitable) DVD to the decline in budgets to the advent of streaming to the atomising of audiences
One big reason is the rise of the Chinese and other markets. These are huge and irresistible for Hollywood studios under financial pressure, so movies are dumbed down so they can cross all cultures, and sell in Beijing as well as Brooklyn (hence all the Marvel/superhero/Star Wars bollocks); meanwhile the arthouse movie audience has almost completely vanished, decamped to watch excellent TV drama (which doesn't need Chinese/Indian/Brazilian audiences so can be really smart/meta/witty/rude)
It's a golden age for TV drama and video games. It's decline and fall for movies and music. Discuss
If you were to draw a graph of the music I listen to there would be a readily identifiable peak about 1990, declining steeply after about 1995. But I don't buy the argument that music nowadays is worse per se. It is a symptom of the splintering of culture: niches are so readily available that you don't really need to occupy the mainstream at all, nor even to know what's going on in it. Back in the 80s or 90s you would know a lot of current music even if you didn't particularly like it; nowadays you can opt out almost completely. I listen to radio 6 and XS Manchester; 90% of musical popular culture passes me by entirely.
That said, I did take it upon myself to listen to every album on the Mercury music shortlist last September. And that was, largely, awful, and painfully woke. An album about the travails of being non-binary. An album about the travails of being an immigrant. An album about the travails of being black. Something about women, probably. All of which have their place, of course, but it made me pine for some Led Zeppelin or Iron Maiden. The Mogwai album was great though.
Say what you like about Gavin Williamson, he never thumped anyone at the annual "Fireplace Salesman of the Year" awards.
He wasn’t put between a rock and fireplace
The Rock - further evidence that baldies can make it to the top.....
A mistake I have only just learned I have been making all these years: Chris Rock <> Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The latter is bald, the former was slapped by Will Smith.
It’s always an interesting wake up call on pb realising how disconnected a lot of people are from modern culture. Comments like not being able to recognise Will Smith in the street. Really?
Even The Rock’s gross box office is over $5bn, the 20th highest grossing actor of all time. And that’s his second successful career (as per Will Smith).
A hilariously self-torpedoing post, because The Rock is Dwayne Johnson, while Chris Rock is Chris Rock.
Laughing at people for medical conditions is supposed to be well beyond the pale nowadays so I wonder if this incident will mean that now everybody hates Chris?
No I got the reference, I just wondered if we are or not
If you want a serious answer: No.
I have no desire to see Chris Rock get cancelled, nor do I think its bad that he got what was quite frankly a well-deserved slap. So he might think twice before using someone's wife's medical condition as a punchline again, but he shouldn't be cancelled.
Quite frankly I think Will Smith both slapping Chris Rock, then apologising for doing so, and that being the end of the matter is probably the right sequence of events to have happened.
Him then winning the oscar and doing his speech is imo what pushed this story into ledge territory.
Interestingly no clear right/left, leave/remain, mods/rocker binary split on what the correct take is. People are all over the place.
Probably just a touch of 'Will in the wrong' on the left and 'in the right' on the right.
My centrist dad hot take: wrong, if understandable; ultimately not that big a deal.
You're not a centrist dad, c'mon! The dad bit, yes, but not the other.
Anyway here's our (woke left) line to take. It's quite circumspect as you can see. 4 strands -
"Assault is wrong.
Alopecia is a painful experience that many Black women go through and should not be joked about.
The concept of being ‘the protector’ can be a form of toxic masculinity.
Black women are rarely protected and deserve to be protected."
(from Owen's twitter)
Possible alternative take: to paraphrase Homer Simpson, maybe there is no lesson: it was just a bunch of stuff that happened. We don't need to take sides on absolutely everything. A scuffle at an industry awards do.
Yep, to not have a take is a perfectly ok take. In fact it's pretty much mine on this one. Smith wrongish but no big deal from a moral or philosophical or political perspective.
And yet again it could be age - sorry to keep repeating that - but I find myself increasingly weary of non-stop strong combative definitive opinions from people about every little thing that goes down.
People with strong combative definitive opinions about everything are WANKERS.
Say what you like about Gavin Williamson, he never thumped anyone at the annual "Fireplace Salesman of the Year" awards.
He wasn’t put between a rock and fireplace
The Rock - further evidence that baldies can make it to the top.....
A mistake I have only just learned I have been making all these years: Chris Rock <> Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The latter is bald, the former was slapped by Will Smith.
It’s always an interesting wake up call on pb realising how disconnected a lot of people are from modern culture. Comments like not being able to recognise Will Smith in the street. Really?
Even The Rock’s gross box office is over $5bn, the 20th highest grossing actor of all time. And that’s his second successful career (as per Will Smith).
A hilariously self-torpedoing post, because The Rock is Dwayne Johnson, while Chris Rock is Chris Rock.
Laughing at people for medical conditions is supposed to be well beyond the pale nowadays so I wonder if this incident will mean that now everybody hates Chris?
No I got the reference, I just wondered if we are or not
If you want a serious answer: No.
I have no desire to see Chris Rock get cancelled, nor do I think its bad that he got what was quite frankly a well-deserved slap. So he might think twice before using someone's wife's medical condition as a punchline again, but he shouldn't be cancelled.
Quite frankly I think Will Smith both slapping Chris Rock, then apologising for doing so, and that being the end of the matter is probably the right sequence of events to have happened.
Him then winning the oscar and doing his speech is imo what pushed this story into ledge territory.
Interestingly no clear right/left, leave/remain, mods/rocker binary split on what the correct take is. People are all over the place.
Probably just a touch of 'Will in the wrong' on the left and 'in the right' on the right.
My centrist dad hot take: wrong, if understandable; ultimately not that big a deal.
You're not a centrist dad, c'mon! The dad bit, yes, but not the other.
Anyway here's our (woke left) line to take. It's quite circumspect as you can see. 4 strands -
"Assault is wrong.
Alopecia is a painful experience that many Black women go through and should not be joked about.
The concept of being ‘the protector’ can be a form of toxic masculinity.
Black women are rarely protected and deserve to be protected."
(from Owen's twitter)
Possible alternative take: to paraphrase Homer Simpson, maybe there is no lesson: it was just a bunch of stuff that happened. We don't need to take sides on absolutely everything. A scuffle at an industry awards do.
I don’t know why films quality has been in decline. Perhaps, as someone mentioned upthread, the decline of DVD sales.
Films now have massive, massive budgets and MUST succeed (hence the screaming popularity of the Marvel films, which are guaranteed box office), or they are low budget indies.
And the low budget indies are perhaps overly introverted, for some reason?
In the late 60s, American cinema was in a funk. Films had got completely overblown; Hollywood was convinced you either had to make a grand song and dance musical or a biblical epic.
Then along came Easy Rider, and all those “indie” films, which heralded a new golden age. And they somehow seemed relevant and spoke to a new generation.
I’m not really convinced that indie films are doing their job? Mass generalisation of course.
Say what you like about Gavin Williamson, he never thumped anyone at the annual "Fireplace Salesman of the Year" awards.
He wasn’t put between a rock and fireplace
The Rock - further evidence that baldies can make it to the top.....
A mistake I have only just learned I have been making all these years: Chris Rock <> Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The latter is bald, the former was slapped by Will Smith.
It’s always an interesting wake up call on pb realising how disconnected a lot of people are from modern culture. Comments like not being able to recognise Will Smith in the street. Really?
Even The Rock’s gross box office is over $5bn, the 20th highest grossing actor of all time. And that’s his second successful career (as per Will Smith).
A hilariously self-torpedoing post, because The Rock is Dwayne Johnson, while Chris Rock is Chris Rock.
Laughing at people for medical conditions is supposed to be well beyond the pale nowadays so I wonder if this incident will mean that now everybody hates Chris?
No I got the reference, I just wondered if we are or not
If you want a serious answer: No.
I have no desire to see Chris Rock get cancelled, nor do I think its bad that he got what was quite frankly a well-deserved slap. So he might think twice before using someone's wife's medical condition as a punchline again, but he shouldn't be cancelled.
Quite frankly I think Will Smith both slapping Chris Rock, then apologising for doing so, and that being the end of the matter is probably the right sequence of events to have happened.
Him then winning the oscar and doing his speech is imo what pushed this story into ledge territory.
Interestingly no clear right/left, leave/remain, mods/rocker binary split on what the correct take is. People are all over the place.
Probably just a touch of 'Will in the wrong' on the left and 'in the right' on the right.
My centrist dad hot take: wrong, if understandable; ultimately not that big a deal.
You're not a centrist dad, c'mon! The dad bit, yes, but not the other.
Anyway here's our (woke left) line to take. It's quite circumspect as you can see. 4 strands -
"Assault is wrong.
Alopecia is a painful experience that many Black women go through and should not be joked about.
The concept of being ‘the protector’ can be a form of toxic masculinity.
Black women are rarely protected and deserve to be protected."
(from Owen's twitter)
I feel a gag about those 4 strands being arranged into a woke combover brewing.
Say what you like about Gavin Williamson, he never thumped anyone at the annual "Fireplace Salesman of the Year" awards.
He wasn’t put between a rock and fireplace
The Rock - further evidence that baldies can make it to the top.....
A mistake I have only just learned I have been making all these years: Chris Rock <> Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The latter is bald, the former was slapped by Will Smith.
It’s always an interesting wake up call on pb realising how disconnected a lot of people are from modern culture. Comments like not being able to recognise Will Smith in the street. Really?
Even The Rock’s gross box office is over $5bn, the 20th highest grossing actor of all time. And that’s his second successful career (as per Will Smith).
A hilariously self-torpedoing post, because The Rock is Dwayne Johnson, while Chris Rock is Chris Rock.
Laughing at people for medical conditions is supposed to be well beyond the pale nowadays so I wonder if this incident will mean that now everybody hates Chris?
No I got the reference, I just wondered if we are or not
If you want a serious answer: No.
I have no desire to see Chris Rock get cancelled, nor do I think its bad that he got what was quite frankly a well-deserved slap. So he might think twice before using someone's wife's medical condition as a punchline again, but he shouldn't be cancelled.
Quite frankly I think Will Smith both slapping Chris Rock, then apologising for doing so, and that being the end of the matter is probably the right sequence of events to have happened.
Him then winning the oscar and doing his speech is imo what pushed this story into ledge territory.
Interestingly no clear right/left, leave/remain, mods/rocker binary split on what the correct take is. People are all over the place.
Probably just a touch of 'Will in the wrong' on the left and 'in the right' on the right.
My centrist dad hot take: wrong, if understandable; ultimately not that big a deal.
You're not a centrist dad, c'mon! The dad bit, yes, but not the other.
Anyway here's our (woke left) line to take. It's quite circumspect as you can see. 4 strands -
"Assault is wrong.
Alopecia is a painful experience that many Black women go through and should not be joked about.
The concept of being ‘the protector’ can be a form of toxic masculinity.
Black women are rarely protected and deserve to be protected."
(from Owen's twitter)
Possible alternative take: to paraphrase Homer Simpson, maybe there is no lesson: it was just a bunch of stuff that happened. We don't need to take sides on absolutely everything. A scuffle at an industry awards do.
Yeah - and who knew she kept goats?
I was at an ophthalmology conference/industry shindig where a fistfight broke out under very similar circumstances.
PB vigilantes: bloody left full of snowflakes demanding comedians are cancelled because they make "offensive" jokes.
Also PB vigilantes: excellent news that a comedian got a slap for being offensive.
Not the same thing though, are they. Chris Rock getting what was due after insulting another man's wife isn't the same as wanting him to be cancelled. I've got no issue with him doing tours or hosting next year's event if they ask him.
Mate I applaud you for what you did to the people who were bullying you.
But this is a comedian being a comedian (making a joke about one of the most powerful Hollywood couples) and you think it's great to slap them for it. Can present the show next year but rightly gets a black eye if someone takes offence to what he says. Have a word with yourself.
Nah, you've misread the scenario if you think that's what this is about. Will Smith and Chris Rock have got a long standing mutual loathing of each other, my reading of it (and this has been confirmed by a studio exec this morning) is that Chris Rock wanted to have a go at Will Smith because he was odds on to win the award just for the sake of getting a dig in against a long standing rival. If he'd gone direct we wouldn't be talking about it but Chris Rock went indirect, insulted Will Smith's wife and made fun of her medical condition which all insiders say she's pretty sensitive about, loads were praising her bravery for coming to the ceremony without wearing a weave or a wig. Chris Rock made it personal and ultimately got what was coming to him. He should have realised if he was going to shit chat another man's wife this was a likely result.
Someone said it on here earlier, there's loads of things people say anonymously on the internet they wouldn't say to someone's face, well Chris Rock tested and proved that theory.
I get all that but I don't think it should end in violence. It's a comedian making a joke and the response was the act of a bully. Imagine instead of Chris Rock it had been The Rock. That would have been worth watching.
You're missing the point then, Dwayne Johnson wouldn't be making that joke. This is Chris Rock wanting to shit on Will Smith's big day in the sun, no more, no less. He got what was coming to him. Chris Rock abused his position as the host to have a pop at someone who he's already got a beef with, there's a word for people who abuse their authority.
Dwayne, and his alter ego The Rock, would certainly make crass and insensitive comments.
The Rock could work a mic in the wwe as good as anyone and a fair bit of what wrestlers say to each other goes beyond the pale and does get personal where they have a beef with each other.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I really doubt there is any link between the Oscars and American puissance.
The decline you mention is perhaps predictable in an age of social media. There’s too many demands on people’s time to sit down and wait to see who won best costume design this year.
Then, you have the Netflix x Covid effect. The last two years have been abominable for the film industry, people have switched off.
The Power of the Dog was nominated and released almost entirely on Netflix. However the issue is too many films the public like get ignored at the Oscars
Absolutely. Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie was criminally ignored for honours.
Don't mock, Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie had nine times the box office takings of Coda, which won the Oscar
I've not seen d'movie but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Mrs Brown's Boys. I mean, it's not Brecht obviously but the few times I've watched it it did at least make me laugh, which is more than I can say for some much-feted "comedy" programmes like the absurdly over-rated Fleabag.
Say what you like about Gavin Williamson, he never thumped anyone at the annual "Fireplace Salesman of the Year" awards.
He wasn’t put between a rock and fireplace
The Rock - further evidence that baldies can make it to the top.....
A mistake I have only just learned I have been making all these years: Chris Rock <> Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The latter is bald, the former was slapped by Will Smith.
It’s always an interesting wake up call on pb realising how disconnected a lot of people are from modern culture. Comments like not being able to recognise Will Smith in the street. Really?
Even The Rock’s gross box office is over $5bn, the 20th highest grossing actor of all time. And that’s his second successful career (as per Will Smith).
A hilariously self-torpedoing post, because The Rock is Dwayne Johnson, while Chris Rock is Chris Rock.
Laughing at people for medical conditions is supposed to be well beyond the pale nowadays so I wonder if this incident will mean that now everybody hates Chris?
No I got the reference, I just wondered if we are or not
If you want a serious answer: No.
I have no desire to see Chris Rock get cancelled, nor do I think its bad that he got what was quite frankly a well-deserved slap. So he might think twice before using someone's wife's medical condition as a punchline again, but he shouldn't be cancelled.
Quite frankly I think Will Smith both slapping Chris Rock, then apologising for doing so, and that being the end of the matter is probably the right sequence of events to have happened.
Him then winning the oscar and doing his speech is imo what pushed this story into ledge territory.
Interestingly no clear right/left, leave/remain, mods/rocker binary split on what the correct take is. People are all over the place.
Probably just a touch of 'Will in the wrong' on the left and 'in the right' on the right.
My centrist dad hot take: wrong, if understandable; ultimately not that big a deal.
You're not a centrist dad, c'mon! The dad bit, yes, but not the other.
Anyway here's our (woke left) line to take. It's quite circumspect as you can see. 4 strands -
"Assault is wrong.
Alopecia is a painful experience that many Black women go through and should not be joked about.
The concept of being ‘the protector’ can be a form of toxic masculinity.
Black women are rarely protected and deserve to be protected."
(from Owen's twitter)
Possible alternative take: to paraphrase Homer Simpson, maybe there is no lesson: it was just a bunch of stuff that happened. We don't need to take sides on absolutely everything. A scuffle at an industry awards do.
Yep, to not have a take is a perfectly ok take. In fact it's pretty much mine on this one. Smith wrongish but no big deal from a moral or philosophical or political perspective.
And yet again it could be age - sorry to keep repeating that - but I find myself increasingly weary of non-stop strong combative definitive opinions from people about every little thing that goes down.
People with strong combative definitive opinions about everything are WANKERS.
“If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.”
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
The decline is in the quality of the films honoured, not in the ceremony itself (which has indeed been awful for as long as I can remember). But, the main awards - particularly Best Picture - used fairly often to be films lots of people had actually seen: the last one to break $100m at the US box office was in 2013, and the last to break $200m was Lord of the Rings in 2004.
Yes, fair.
Hollywood has been fucked by a combination of Marvel and Netflix.
I struggle to care about many new films these days. Yet I’d seen every film on that 1994 list published upthread.
And no, it’s not just age.
I've seen a couple of persuasive essays which make this point. Movies (like music) have got objectively worse in the last two decades. It's not just nostalgia and Fings Aint Wot They Used To Be, it is a real and measurable decline: even the vocabulary in the scripts has got simpler and more child-like
There are multiple reasons, from the death of the (hugely profitable) DVD to the decline in budgets to the advent of streaming to the atomising of audiences
One big reason is the rise of the Chinese and other markets. These are huge and irresistible for Hollywood studios under financial pressure, so movies are dumbed down so they can cross all cultures, and sell in Beijing as well as Brooklyn (hence all the Marvel/superhero/Star Wars bollocks); meanwhile the arthouse movie audience has almost completely vanished, decamped to watch excellent TV drama (which doesn't need Chinese/Indian/Brazilian audiences so can be really smart/meta/witty/rude)
It's a golden age for TV drama and video games. It's decline and fall for movies and music. Discuss
If you were to draw a graph of the music I listen to there would be a readily identifiable peak about 1990, declining steeply after about 1995. But I don't buy the argument that music nowadays is worse per se. It is a symptom of the splintering of culture: niches are so readily available that you don't really need to occupy the mainstream at all, nor even to know what's going on in it. Back in the 80s or 90s you would know a lot of current music even if you didn't particularly like it; nowadays you can opt out almost completely. I listen to radio 6 and XS Manchester; 90% of musical popular culture passes me by entirely.
That said, I did take it upon myself to listen to every album on the Mercury music shortlist last September. And that was, largely, awful, and painfully woke. An album about the travails of being non-binary. An album about the travails of being an immigrant. An album about the travails of being black. Something about women, probably. All of which have their place, of course, but it made me pine for some Led Zeppelin or Iron Maiden. The Mogwai album was great though.
I am sure the trend to everything been written by a very niche group of people. You only have to look at the Ed Sheeran case to see the two guys who are his co-defendants, they are involved in an insane proportion of mainstream musical releases. Same with comedians, they all have writers, often the same ones e.g. Mock the Week, apparently they are told Monday what all the questions will be, and they sit with writers to create a big crib sheet of gags, which they film on the Wednesday. No surprise that everybody has the same take on things.
Of course all of this has existed, even way back, Barry Cryer wrote for comedians, musicians had songs written for them, but it appears to now to be on an industrial scale and way wider than just the top teenie-bopper popstar or a comedian hosting a late night talk show (who needs new gags every night).
On a similar note, my kid(s) is going to some kind of personal combat classes from early on, just to ensure they are prepared for what's out there so they've always got that way out if they need it. I never had that and had to hope the other kid wasn't much of a fighter either, I don't ever want my kid(s) to be in the same situation.
I would advise anyone of any age to learn some form of combat skill. It does wonders for confidence, bearing, and a whole other bunch of stuff. Perhaps most importantly it can, if taught correctly, instill a non-victim mentality which in itself can head off problems before they become problems.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I really doubt there is any link between the Oscars and American puissance.
The decline you mention is perhaps predictable in an age of social media. There’s too many demands on people’s time to sit down and wait to see who won best costume design this year.
Then, you have the Netflix x Covid effect. The last two years have been abominable for the film industry, people have switched off.
The Power of the Dog was nominated and released almost entirely on Netflix. However the issue is too many films the public like get ignored at the Oscars
Absolutely. Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie was criminally ignored for honours.
Don't mock, Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie had nine times the box office takings of Coda, which won the Oscar
I've not seen d'movie but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Mrs Brown's Boys. I mean, it's not Brecht obviously but the few times I've watched it it did at least make me laugh, which is more than I can say for some much-feted "comedy" programmes like the absurdly over-rated Fleabag.
The fact that you, a PB lefty, have actually laughed at, and enjoyed, Mrs Brown's Boys explains much of the last fifteen years of leftwing PB commentary, and for that, much thanks
PB vigilantes: bloody left full of snowflakes demanding comedians are cancelled because they make "offensive" jokes.
Also PB vigilantes: excellent news that a comedian got a slap for being offensive.
Not the same thing though, are they. Chris Rock getting what was due after insulting another man's wife isn't the same as wanting him to be cancelled. I've got no issue with him doing tours or hosting next year's event if they ask him.
Mate I applaud you for what you did to the people who were bullying you.
But this is a comedian being a comedian (making a joke about one of the most powerful Hollywood couples) and you think it's great to slap them for it. Can present the show next year but rightly gets a black eye if someone takes offence to what he says. Have a word with yourself.
Nah, you've misread the scenario if you think that's what this is about. Will Smith and Chris Rock have got a long standing mutual loathing of each other, my reading of it (and this has been confirmed by a studio exec this morning) is that Chris Rock wanted to have a go at Will Smith because he was odds on to win the award just for the sake of getting a dig in against a long standing rival. If he'd gone direct we wouldn't be talking about it but Chris Rock went indirect, insulted Will Smith's wife and made fun of her medical condition which all insiders say she's pretty sensitive about, loads were praising her bravery for coming to the ceremony without wearing a weave or a wig. Chris Rock made it personal and ultimately got what was coming to him. He should have realised if he was going to shit chat another man's wife this was a likely result.
Someone said it on here earlier, there's loads of things people say anonymously on the internet they wouldn't say to someone's face, well Chris Rock tested and proved that theory.
I get all that but I don't think it should end in violence. It's a comedian making a joke and the response was the act of a bully. Imagine instead of Chris Rock it had been The Rock. That would have been worth watching.
Dwayne Johnson seems to have enough self respect not to abuse someone's medical conditions as a punchline.
Twatting the guy is totally out of order on Smiths part and indicative of little more than his own failings and fragile toxic masculinity. Violence is rarely the solution.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
The decline is in the quality of the films honoured, not in the ceremony itself (which has indeed been awful for as long as I can remember). But, the main awards - particularly Best Picture - used fairly often to be films lots of people had actually seen: the last one to break $100m at the US box office was in 2013, and the last to break $200m was Lord of the Rings in 2004.
Yes, fair.
Hollywood has been fucked by a combination of Marvel and Netflix.
I struggle to care about many new films these days. Yet I’d seen every film on that 1994 list published upthread.
And no, it’s not just age.
I've seen a couple of persuasive essays which make this point. Movies (like music) have got objectively worse in the last two decades. It's not just nostalgia and Fings Aint Wot They Used To Be, it is a real and measurable decline: even the vocabulary in the scripts has got simpler and more child-like
There are multiple reasons, from the death of the (hugely profitable) DVD to the decline in budgets to the advent of streaming to the atomising of audiences
One big reason is the rise of the Chinese and other markets. These are huge and irresistible for Hollywood studios under financial pressure, so movies are dumbed down so they can cross all cultures, and sell in Beijing as well as Brooklyn (hence all the Marvel/superhero/Star Wars bollocks); meanwhile the arthouse movie audience has almost completely vanished, decamped to watch excellent TV drama (which doesn't need Chinese/Indian/Brazilian audiences so can be really smart/meta/witty/rude)
It's a golden age for TV drama and video games. It's decline and fall for movies and music. Discuss
If you were to draw a graph of the music I listen to there would be a readily identifiable peak about 1990, declining steeply after about 1995. But I don't buy the argument that music nowadays is worse per se. It is a symptom of the splintering of culture: niches are so readily available that you don't really need to occupy the mainstream at all, nor even to know what's going on in it. Back in the 80s or 90s you would know a lot of current music even if you didn't particularly like it; nowadays you can opt out almost completely. I listen to radio 6 and XS Manchester; 90% of musical popular culture passes me by entirely.
That said, I did take it upon myself to listen to every album on the Mercury music shortlist last September. And that was, largely, awful, and painfully woke. An album about the travails of being non-binary. An album about the travails of being an immigrant. An album about the travails of being black. Something about women, probably. All of which have their place, of course, but it made me pine for some Led Zeppelin or Iron Maiden. The Mogwai album was great though.
I am sure the trend to everything been written by a very niche group of people. You only have to look at the Ed Sheeran case to see the two guys who are his co-defendants, they are involved in an insane proportion of mainstream musical releases. Same with comedians, they all have writers, often the same ones e.g. Mock the Week, apparently they are told Monday what all the questions will be, and they sit with writers to create a big crib sheet of gags, which they film on the Wednesday. No surprise that everybody has the same take on things.
Of course all of this has existed, even way back, Barry Cryer wrote for comedians, musicians had songs written for them, but it appears to now to be on an industrial scale and way wider than just the top teenie-bopper popstar or a comedian hosting a late night talk show (who needs new gags every night).
For "Things you wouldn't hear" on Mock the Week the timeframe is longer than Monday to Wednesday. Back in a think 2018 Gary Delaney was trying out jokes a good week before the recording.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I really doubt there is any link between the Oscars and American puissance.
The decline you mention is perhaps predictable in an age of social media. There’s too many demands on people’s time to sit down and wait to see who won best costume design this year.
Then, you have the Netflix x Covid effect. The last two years have been abominable for the film industry, people have switched off.
The Power of the Dog was nominated and released almost entirely on Netflix. However the issue is too many films the public like get ignored at the Oscars
No, the issue is that Hollywood doesn’t really make popular films that have a quotient of critical acceptability any more.
Was Braveheart a film of such critical brilliance? Or Rocky? Or Titanic? All won the Best Picture Oscar and I doubt they were really miles better than Spiderman or The Batman or Thor or the Avengers which get most of the box office big bucks today.
Yet even when Hollywood does produce a film of critical acceptability that does well at the box office too, eg La La Land, the Academy snubbed it. Even Warren Beatty could not believe it when Moonlight won in 2017 hence he read out the wrong winner
Say what you like about Gavin Williamson, he never thumped anyone at the annual "Fireplace Salesman of the Year" awards.
He wasn’t put between a rock and fireplace
The Rock - further evidence that baldies can make it to the top.....
A mistake I have only just learned I have been making all these years: Chris Rock <> Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The latter is bald, the former was slapped by Will Smith.
It’s always an interesting wake up call on pb realising how disconnected a lot of people are from modern culture. Comments like not being able to recognise Will Smith in the street. Really?
Even The Rock’s gross box office is over $5bn, the 20th highest grossing actor of all time. And that’s his second successful career (as per Will Smith).
A hilariously self-torpedoing post, because The Rock is Dwayne Johnson, while Chris Rock is Chris Rock.
Laughing at people for medical conditions is supposed to be well beyond the pale nowadays so I wonder if this incident will mean that now everybody hates Chris?
No I got the reference, I just wondered if we are or not
If you want a serious answer: No.
I have no desire to see Chris Rock get cancelled, nor do I think its bad that he got what was quite frankly a well-deserved slap. So he might think twice before using someone's wife's medical condition as a punchline again, but he shouldn't be cancelled.
Quite frankly I think Will Smith both slapping Chris Rock, then apologising for doing so, and that being the end of the matter is probably the right sequence of events to have happened.
Him then winning the oscar and doing his speech is imo what pushed this story into ledge territory.
Interestingly no clear right/left, leave/remain, mods/rocker binary split on what the correct take is. People are all over the place.
Probably just a touch of 'Will in the wrong' on the left and 'in the right' on the right.
My centrist dad hot take: wrong, if understandable; ultimately not that big a deal.
You're not a centrist dad, c'mon! The dad bit, yes, but not the other.
Anyway here's our (woke left) line to take. It's quite circumspect as you can see. 4 strands -
"Assault is wrong.
Alopecia is a painful experience that many Black women go through and should not be joked about.
The concept of being ‘the protector’ can be a form of toxic masculinity.
Black women are rarely protected and deserve to be protected."
(from Owen's twitter)
I feel a gag about those 4 strands being arranged into a woke combover brewing.
- We are no match for their untamed wit.
Eg Tory MP yesterday on Twitter with an absolute classic (!) for Mothers Day.
Smiling pic of him and his Ma captioned: "Lovely to pop over to Mansfield today to wish the cisgender adult human female (she/her) who gave birth to me all the best! #HappyMothersDay!"
You know when you're beat.
Anyway, I have a prog to pitch the BBC. A kind of "The Trip" or "Gone Fishing" with Lawrence Fox and Neil Oliver. The love and chemistry between those 2 guys is something else.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
The decline is in the quality of the films honoured, not in the ceremony itself (which has indeed been awful for as long as I can remember). But, the main awards - particularly Best Picture - used fairly often to be films lots of people had actually seen: the last one to break $100m at the US box office was in 2013, and the last to break $200m was Lord of the Rings in 2004.
Yes, fair.
Hollywood has been fucked by a combination of Marvel and Netflix.
I struggle to care about many new films these days. Yet I’d seen every film on that 1994 list published upthread.
And no, it’s not just age.
I've seen a couple of persuasive essays which make this point. Movies (like music) have got objectively worse in the last two decades. It's not just nostalgia and Fings Aint Wot They Used To Be, it is a real and measurable decline: even the vocabulary in the scripts has got simpler and more child-like
There are multiple reasons, from the death of the (hugely profitable) DVD to the decline in budgets to the advent of streaming to the atomising of audiences
One big reason is the rise of the Chinese and other markets. These are huge and irresistible for Hollywood studios under financial pressure, so movies are dumbed down so they can cross all cultures, and sell in Beijing as well as Brooklyn (hence all the Marvel/superhero/Star Wars bollocks); meanwhile the arthouse movie audience has almost completely vanished, decamped to watch excellent TV drama (which doesn't need Chinese/Indian/Brazilian audiences so can be really smart/meta/witty/rude)
It's a golden age for TV drama and video games. It's decline and fall for movies and music. Discuss
If you were to draw a graph of the music I listen to there would be a readily identifiable peak about 1990, declining steeply after about 1995. But I don't buy the argument that music nowadays is worse per se. It is a symptom of the splintering of culture: niches are so readily available that you don't really need to occupy the mainstream at all, nor even to know what's going on in it. Back in the 80s or 90s you would know a lot of current music even if you didn't particularly like it; nowadays you can opt out almost completely. I listen to radio 6 and XS Manchester; 90% of musical popular culture passes me by entirely.
That said, I did take it upon myself to listen to every album on the Mercury music shortlist last September. And that was, largely, awful, and painfully woke. An album about the travails of being non-binary. An album about the travails of being an immigrant. An album about the travails of being black. Something about women, probably. All of which have their place, of course, but it made me pine for some Led Zeppelin or Iron Maiden. The Mogwai album was great though.
I am sure the trend to everything been written by a very niche group of people. You only have to look at the Ed Sheeran case to see the two guys who are his co-defendants, they are involved in an insane proportion of mainstream musical releases. Same with comedians, they all have writers, often the same ones e.g. Mock the Week, apparently they are told Monday what all the questions will be, and they sit with writers to create a big crib sheet of gags, which they film on the Wednesday. No surprise that everybody has the same take on things.
Of course all of this has existed, even way back, Barry Cryer wrote for comedians, musicians had songs written for them, but it appears to now to be on an industrial scale and way wider than just the top teenie-bopper popstar or a comedian hosting a late night talk show (who needs new gags every night).
For "Things you wouldn't hear" on Mock the Week the timeframe is longer than Monday to Wednesday. Back in a think 2018 Gary Delaney was trying out jokes a good week before the recording.
That doesn't surprise me. I presume they write them ahead of the season and wouldn't be surprised if written by the same team of writers who come up with them, also help with the punch lines...
Again, I don't think anybody thinks these people are coming up with all the razor sharp one-liners without having had prior warning of what the topics will be, I was more interested to hear that for many (if not all) of those appearing what they say is a result of a collaborative effort with a team.
The comedian I had talk about it made it sound rather a kin to going to work in an office or factory. Clock on Monday morning, write the gags for that week Monday / Tues with the team, perform them Wednesday.
So what are we learning on here today? Violence against a man who gave some verbal is okay; if you don't do violence, you're a 'door mat'.
But all trans people have to be despised and hated because *a few* do bad things?
If we really wanted to stop violence of all sorts - and yes, against women - we would talk much more about the former, and not excuse it because you're an alpha-male wannabe idiot.
Nah mate, you're the guy who launches an inquiry after a school kid commits suicide after being bullied and says "lessons must be learned" then repeats the exercise as needed, learning precisely zero lessons in the process.
No, I really am not. In fact, I have mentioned the horrible levels of violence in this country on several occasions. If you know more than a few dozen people, you will know someone who has suffered domestic abuse in the last year, Often suffering in silence; invisibly.
Your comment demeans you.
But suffering in silence is what your proposed solution always seems to be, just take it on the chin and hope for a better world. Bullies need to be confronted, whether that's at school or someone using a privileged position to insult others, the confrontation is necessary, and yes, that may mean violence. I was bullied at school for being a "paki" and while you might have simply suffered in silence, I beat the shit out of one of them who did it and guess what? The bullying stopped, I got a week's worth of detention (including two Saturdays) but it was worth it. I don't think my dad has ever been more proud than he was when I he had to come and pick me up early because I'd been in a fight with the racist bully.
IME the person resorting to violence is more often the bully.
I'm sorry to hear about your experience, but perhaps, just perhaps, you tackled it the wrong way.
In what way did I handle it incorrectly? The bullying stopped almost immediately and that racist kid actually stopped being a racist to the other Asian kids as well. All it took was his head getting kicked in a couple of times.
As I said, you're the guy who won't ever learn any lessons from those kids committing suicide after being relentlessly bullied. A lot of the time the bullies do need a beat down, whether that's from the person being being bullied or someone else. I guarantee you that Chris Rock won't be making any jokes about bald women again.
Where do you draw the line though Max?
Because your attitude is what Johnson says about the journalist he had beaten up
FYI, might be worth pointing out for legal reasons, no journalist was beaten up. It was a discussion of what should be done to him, another individual wanted to arrange to have him beaten and Boris said he could provide the journalists address.
That smells a lot like conspiracy.
You can bet your boots if I had been recorded saying what Johnson said to Guppy and plod heard it, I would have been a long way up S*** Street.
Boris will be Boris. Rules (and laws) don't apply.
Say what you like about Gavin Williamson, he never thumped anyone at the annual "Fireplace Salesman of the Year" awards.
He wasn’t put between a rock and fireplace
The Rock - further evidence that baldies can make it to the top.....
A mistake I have only just learned I have been making all these years: Chris Rock <> Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The latter is bald, the former was slapped by Will Smith.
It’s always an interesting wake up call on pb realising how disconnected a lot of people are from modern culture. Comments like not being able to recognise Will Smith in the street. Really?
Even The Rock’s gross box office is over $5bn, the 20th highest grossing actor of all time. And that’s his second successful career (as per Will Smith).
A hilariously self-torpedoing post, because The Rock is Dwayne Johnson, while Chris Rock is Chris Rock.
Laughing at people for medical conditions is supposed to be well beyond the pale nowadays so I wonder if this incident will mean that now everybody hates Chris?
No I got the reference, I just wondered if we are or not
If you want a serious answer: No.
I have no desire to see Chris Rock get cancelled, nor do I think its bad that he got what was quite frankly a well-deserved slap. So he might think twice before using someone's wife's medical condition as a punchline again, but he shouldn't be cancelled.
Quite frankly I think Will Smith both slapping Chris Rock, then apologising for doing so, and that being the end of the matter is probably the right sequence of events to have happened.
Him then winning the oscar and doing his speech is imo what pushed this story into ledge territory.
Interestingly no clear right/left, leave/remain, mods/rocker binary split on what the correct take is. People are all over the place.
Probably just a touch of 'Will in the wrong' on the left and 'in the right' on the right.
My centrist dad hot take: wrong, if understandable; ultimately not that big a deal.
You're not a centrist dad, c'mon! The dad bit, yes, but not the other.
Anyway here's our (woke left) line to take. It's quite circumspect as you can see. 4 strands -
"Assault is wrong.
Alopecia is a painful experience that many Black women go through and should not be joked about.
The concept of being ‘the protector’ can be a form of toxic masculinity.
Black women are rarely protected and deserve to be protected."
(from Owen's twitter)
I feel a gag about those 4 strands being arranged into a woke combover brewing.
- We are no match for their untamed wit.
Eg Tory MP yesterday on Twitter with an absolute classic (!) for Mothers Day.
Smiling pic of him and his Ma captioned: "Lovely to pop over to Mansfield today to wish the cisgender adult human female (she/her) who gave birth to me all the best! #HappyMothersDay!"
You know when you're beat.
Anyway, I have a prog to pitch the BBC. A kind of "The Trip" or "Gone Fishing" with Lawrence Fox and Neil Oliver. The love and chemistry between those 2 guys is something else.
So what are we learning on here today? Violence against a man who gave some verbal is okay; if you don't do violence, you're a 'door mat'.
But all trans people have to be despised and hated because *a few* do bad things?
If we really wanted to stop violence of all sorts - and yes, against women - we would talk much more about the former, and not excuse it because you're an alpha-male wannabe idiot.
Nobody said that , you are making it up
Which bit?
On the previous thread, I said; "A life tip: don't go around hitting people just because they're an ass."
To which someone replied: "Nah, that's not a good tip. Maybe if you're one of life's doormats."
As for my second para; just look at the tone on here towards trans people.
As for my third: I think that's true. We need to talk about it more.
The second one, I have not seen any one saying anything bad about trans people, in fact what is being said is that women's rights need to be protected. You don't protect rights by taking away 50% of the population's rights just to mollify a teeny minority who want something.
PB vigilantes: bloody left full of snowflakes demanding comedians are cancelled because they make "offensive" jokes.
Also PB vigilantes: excellent news that a comedian got a slap for being offensive.
Not the same thing though, are they. Chris Rock getting what was due after insulting another man's wife isn't the same as wanting him to be cancelled. I've got no issue with him doing tours or hosting next year's event if they ask him.
Mate I applaud you for what you did to the people who were bullying you.
But this is a comedian being a comedian (making a joke about one of the most powerful Hollywood couples) and you think it's great to slap them for it. Can present the show next year but rightly gets a black eye if someone takes offence to what he says. Have a word with yourself.
Nah, you've misread the scenario if you think that's what this is about. Will Smith and Chris Rock have got a long standing mutual loathing of each other, my reading of it (and this has been confirmed by a studio exec this morning) is that Chris Rock wanted to have a go at Will Smith because he was odds on to win the award just for the sake of getting a dig in against a long standing rival. If he'd gone direct we wouldn't be talking about it but Chris Rock went indirect, insulted Will Smith's wife and made fun of her medical condition which all insiders say she's pretty sensitive about, loads were praising her bravery for coming to the ceremony without wearing a weave or a wig. Chris Rock made it personal and ultimately got what was coming to him. He should have realised if he was going to shit chat another man's wife this was a likely result.
Someone said it on here earlier, there's loads of things people say anonymously on the internet they wouldn't say to someone's face, well Chris Rock tested and proved that theory.
I get all that but I don't think it should end in violence. It's a comedian making a joke and the response was the act of a bully. Imagine instead of Chris Rock it had been The Rock. That would have been worth watching.
You're missing the point then, Dwayne Johnson wouldn't be making that joke. This is Chris Rock wanting to shit on Will Smith's big day in the sun, no more, no less. He got what was coming to him. Chris Rock abused his position as the host to have a pop at someone who he's already got a beef with, there's a word for people who abuse their authority.
I understand that - it was Chris Rock's golden opportunity to get at the Smiths. And he did so by making fun (not what he said but who cares) of Mrs Smith. And he got a slap for it. That is the law of the jungle. If the bully you beat up at school had come back with 10 of his brothers and slapped the fuck out of you then what? Once you are on that train you don't know where it's going to go.
My point is that Chris Rock invited the law of the jungle into the room, those who live by the sword will ultimately die by it.
In my situation, I honestly felt as though I had nothing to lose. My life couldn't have got much worse anyway and (horrifyingly) I had thought of the outcome you mentioned and I thought if they killed me someone might finally realise what was going on. I'm still ashamed of thinking that, to this day.
Blimmin' heck 2x well done you that is awful. Without wishing to take you back there was no one in authority in a position to help?
Edit: and it seems trivial vs the above and I think people know my view on it now but I don't think a comedian telling an offensive joke is inviting the law of the jungle into the room...
That's the thing with bullies, they make it seem as though there is no way out. The school was fucking useless, my dad was working basically 7am to 11pm and when he was home I didn't want to worry him with my trivial problems and my mum has eerily similar views to JJ about suffering in silence and waiting for God to deliver us from pain.
The only way out seemed to be a confrontation for which I was poorly prepared. In the end he was even less well prepared and once I had pushed him to the ground a few kicks to his head and body were enough to make him back off. It was only a few days later in the "clear the air" meeting between the two families that the headmaster realised what had been going on for almost two years. It was that realisation and the eventual coming forwards of other bullied kids that actually helped keep me in the school and, probably, the other bullies away.
Interesting thanks. And I presume the staff had dismissed it as boys being boys previously. And of course you could have killed him with a "few kicks to the head".
But I would rather not use yours as a case study as you did what you had to to, it was wholly admirable then, and achieved its aim and I am not intending to discuss it with any kind of smart-arse hindsight.
Back to Chris & Will!!
Worse than that, it was a boys school so there was a culture of not snitching and the teachers were very much part of pushing that culture. As I've said, the authorities, whether it's teachers at school or the police either seem to not care or simply don't want to know. Sadly, not much has changed in the 20 or so years since my experience, I'd say it's probably got worse, especially for girls.
Anyway, I'm heading off for a late lunch but I hope you can see why comments like "maybe you handled it incorrectly" from the likes of @JosiasJessop really, really annoy me. I think anyone who has been seriously bullied will recognise what I went through and also find his comment repulsive. Bullies don't give you a nice easy way out which is why so many victims commit suicide. It's almost as though people like him would rather that happen than people choosing to fight back because "violence is never the answer" which to me is such a hugely bullshit phrase, sometimes the situation requires words and reasoning, in other situations fighting might be the only way out.
On a similar note, my kid(s) is going to some kind of personal combat classes from early on, just to ensure they are prepared for what's out there so they've always got that way out if they need it. I never had that and had to hope the other kid wasn't much of a fighter either, I don't ever want my kid(s) to be in the same situation.
Thanks, Max. As I said, if you've read my comments previously, you'll know a different angle on this.
And a final note: behaviour that may be okay as a child may not be okay as an adult. It's called growing up.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I really doubt there is any link between the Oscars and American puissance.
The decline you mention is perhaps predictable in an age of social media. There’s too many demands on people’s time to sit down and wait to see who won best costume design this year.
Then, you have the Netflix x Covid effect. The last two years have been abominable for the film industry, people have switched off.
The Power of the Dog was nominated and released almost entirely on Netflix. However the issue is too many films the public like get ignored at the Oscars
Absolutely. Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie was criminally ignored for honours.
Don't mock, Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie had nine times the box office takings of Coda, which won the Oscar
I've not seen d'movie but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Mrs Brown's Boys. I mean, it's not Brecht obviously but the few times I've watched it it did at least make me laugh, which is more than I can say for some much-feted "comedy" programmes like the absurdly over-rated Fleabag.
I am not a huge fan but many do like it.
However Remainers less so. 53% of those who dislike Mrs Brown's Boys voted Remain while 62% of those who like the programme voted Leave.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I really doubt there is any link between the Oscars and American puissance.
The decline you mention is perhaps predictable in an age of social media. There’s too many demands on people’s time to sit down and wait to see who won best costume design this year.
Then, you have the Netflix x Covid effect. The last two years have been abominable for the film industry, people have switched off.
The Power of the Dog was nominated and released almost entirely on Netflix. However the issue is too many films the public like get ignored at the Oscars
Absolutely. Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie was criminally ignored for honours.
Don't mock, Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie had nine times the box office takings of Coda, which won the Oscar
I've not seen d'movie but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Mrs Brown's Boys. I mean, it's not Brecht obviously but the few times I've watched it it did at least make me laugh, which is more than I can say for some much-feted "comedy" programmes like the absurdly over-rated Fleabag.
The fact that you, a PB lefty, have actually laughed at, and enjoyed, Mrs Brown's Boys explains much of the last fifteen years of leftwing PB commentary, and for that, much thanks
You're not a fan then? It's kind of like panto, lots of fairly broad humour but plenty of heart, self-deprecating and a bit knowing. Not noticeably woke either. It's not something I would make room in my schedule to watch but when I've caught it a few times I thought it was definitely better than I had been led to believe by TV snobs. Next you're going to tell me you don't like Death in Paradise!
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I really doubt there is any link between the Oscars and American puissance.
The decline you mention is perhaps predictable in an age of social media. There’s too many demands on people’s time to sit down and wait to see who won best costume design this year.
Then, you have the Netflix x Covid effect. The last two years have been abominable for the film industry, people have switched off.
The Power of the Dog was nominated and released almost entirely on Netflix. However the issue is too many films the public like get ignored at the Oscars
Absolutely. Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie was criminally ignored for honours.
Don't mock, Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie had nine times the box office takings of Coda, which won the Oscar
I've not seen d'movie but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Mrs Brown's Boys. I mean, it's not Brecht obviously but the few times I've watched it it did at least make me laugh, which is more than I can say for some much-feted "comedy" programmes like the absurdly over-rated Fleabag.
I am not a huge fan but many do like it.
However Remainers less so. 53% of those who dislike Mrs Brown's Boys voted Remain while 62% of those who like the programme voted Leave.
Say what you like about Gavin Williamson, he never thumped anyone at the annual "Fireplace Salesman of the Year" awards.
He wasn’t put between a rock and fireplace
The Rock - further evidence that baldies can make it to the top.....
A mistake I have only just learned I have been making all these years: Chris Rock <> Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The latter is bald, the former was slapped by Will Smith.
It’s always an interesting wake up call on pb realising how disconnected a lot of people are from modern culture. Comments like not being able to recognise Will Smith in the street. Really?
Even The Rock’s gross box office is over $5bn, the 20th highest grossing actor of all time. And that’s his second successful career (as per Will Smith).
A hilariously self-torpedoing post, because The Rock is Dwayne Johnson, while Chris Rock is Chris Rock.
Laughing at people for medical conditions is supposed to be well beyond the pale nowadays so I wonder if this incident will mean that now everybody hates Chris?
No I got the reference, I just wondered if we are or not
If you want a serious answer: No.
I have no desire to see Chris Rock get cancelled, nor do I think its bad that he got what was quite frankly a well-deserved slap. So he might think twice before using someone's wife's medical condition as a punchline again, but he shouldn't be cancelled.
Quite frankly I think Will Smith both slapping Chris Rock, then apologising for doing so, and that being the end of the matter is probably the right sequence of events to have happened.
Him then winning the oscar and doing his speech is imo what pushed this story into ledge territory.
Interestingly no clear right/left, leave/remain, mods/rocker binary split on what the correct take is. People are all over the place.
Probably just a touch of 'Will in the wrong' on the left and 'in the right' on the right.
My centrist dad hot take: wrong, if understandable; ultimately not that big a deal.
You're not a centrist dad, c'mon! The dad bit, yes, but not the other.
Anyway here's our (woke left) line to take. It's quite circumspect as you can see. 4 strands -
"Assault is wrong.
Alopecia is a painful experience that many Black women go through and should not be joked about.
The concept of being ‘the protector’ can be a form of toxic masculinity.
Black women are rarely protected and deserve to be protected."
(from Owen's twitter)
Possible alternative take: to paraphrase Homer Simpson, maybe there is no lesson: it was just a bunch of stuff that happened. We don't need to take sides on absolutely everything. A scuffle at an industry awards do.
Yep, to not have a take is a perfectly ok take. In fact it's pretty much mine on this one. Smith wrongish but no big deal from a moral or philosophical or political perspective.
And yet again it could be age - sorry to keep repeating that - but I find myself increasingly weary of non-stop strong combative definitive opinions from people about every little thing that goes down.
People with strong combative definitive opinions about everything are WANKERS.
I'm not sure that your last sentence is true, though it may be. (He says, just to prove he's not a wanker).
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I really doubt there is any link between the Oscars and American puissance.
The decline you mention is perhaps predictable in an age of social media. There’s too many demands on people’s time to sit down and wait to see who won best costume design this year.
Then, you have the Netflix x Covid effect. The last two years have been abominable for the film industry, people have switched off.
The Power of the Dog was nominated and released almost entirely on Netflix. However the issue is too many films the public like get ignored at the Oscars
Absolutely. Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie was criminally ignored for honours.
Don't mock, Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie had nine times the box office takings of Coda, which won the Oscar
I've not seen d'movie but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Mrs Brown's Boys. I mean, it's not Brecht obviously but the few times I've watched it it did at least make me laugh, which is more than I can say for some much-feted "comedy" programmes like the absurdly over-rated Fleabag.
I am not a huge fan but many do like it.
However Remainers less so. 53% of those who dislike Mrs Brown's Boys voted Remain while 62% of those who like the programme voted Leave.
I don’t know why films quality has been in decline. Perhaps, as someone mentioned upthread, the decline of DVD sales.
Films now have massive, massive budgets and MUST succeed (hence the screaming popularity of the Marvel films, which are guaranteed box office), or they are low budget indies.
And the low budget indies are perhaps overly introverted, for some reason?
In the late 60s, American cinema was in a funk. Films had got completely overblown; Hollywood was convinced you either had to make a grand song and dance musical or a biblical epic.
Then along came Easy Rider, and all those “indie” films, which heralded a new golden age. And they somehow seemed relevant and spoke to a new generation.
I’m not really convinced that indie films are doing their job? Mass generalisation of course.
One thing that is notable about any film these days is how many fingers are stuck in the pie.
For the big-budget films this will be about risk-sharing. Better to part-fund ten films, than to wholly fund one film. For the "indie" films it's the same sort of risk-averse approach, but with different funders - art councils, etc. (I guess this also means that "indie" films are not really independent)
To get your film made you have to get it funded, and you have to convince a wider range of people to provide that funding. I'm not sure that is going to help the sort of risk-taking that might produce something new and memorable.
I don’t know why films quality has been in decline. Perhaps, as someone mentioned upthread, the decline of DVD sales.
Films now have massive, massive budgets and MUST succeed (hence the screaming popularity of the Marvel films, which are guaranteed box office), or they are low budget indies.
And the low budget indies are perhaps overly introverted, for some reason?
In the late 60s, American cinema was in a funk. Films had got completely overblown; Hollywood was convinced you either had to make a grand song and dance musical or a biblical epic.
Then along came Easy Rider, and all those “indie” films, which heralded a new golden age. And they somehow seemed relevant and spoke to a new generation.
I’m not really convinced that indie films are doing their job? Mass generalisation of course.
One thing that is notable about any film these days is how many fingers are stuck in the pie.
For the big-budget films this will be about risk-sharing. Better to part-fund ten films, than to wholly fund one film. For the "indie" films it's the same sort of risk-averse approach, but with different funders - art councils, etc. (I guess this also means that "indie" films are not really independent)
To get your film made you have to get it funded, and you have to convince a wider range of people to provide that funding. I'm not sure that is going to help the sort of risk-taking that might produce something new and memorable.
The money side of film making....people bang on about Amazon and Starbucks "tax efficiency" schemes....Hollywood are world leaders in it. The whole setup from day dot of any film with aim of ensuring this.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I really doubt there is any link between the Oscars and American puissance.
The decline you mention is perhaps predictable in an age of social media. There’s too many demands on people’s time to sit down and wait to see who won best costume design this year.
Then, you have the Netflix x Covid effect. The last two years have been abominable for the film industry, people have switched off.
The Power of the Dog was nominated and released almost entirely on Netflix. However the issue is too many films the public like get ignored at the Oscars
No, the issue is that Hollywood doesn’t really make popular films that have a quotient of critical acceptability any more.
Was Braveheart a film of such critical brilliance? Or Rocky? Or Titanic? All won the Best Picture Oscar and I doubt they were really miles better than Spiderman or The Batman or Thor or the Avengers which get most of the box office big bucks today.
Yet even when Hollywood does produce a film of critical acceptability that does well at the box office too, eg La La Land, the Academy snubbed it. Even Warren Beatty could not believe it when Moonlight won in 2017 hence he read out the wrong winner
Titanic is one of the greatest films of all time.
In the space of two posts you've admitted to rating Mrs Brown's Boys over Fleabag and argued that Titanic deserved best film.
And I see we're back to people on PB advocating violence against a comedian and saying that he deserved it because he looked at someone's missus in the wrong way.
And they are only saying this because in their fantasy, dare I say keyboard world, the person doing the slapping (themselves, in a blaze of glory and to the admiration of their womenfolk) emerge victorious.
But in a real situation when the aggressor might be oh I don't know I used the example of Tyson Fury this morning, they would far from so simply judge that that person needed a slap and that would be that.
It is not the most pressing issue of the day or even year but Will Smith was absolutely wrong to march up on stage and slap a comedian for being a comedian.
Jeez the very same people who applaud it demand the right for people to be offended. But not when it's Will Smith being a bully by slapping someone he outweighs and who he towers over.
So what are we learning on here today? Violence against a man who gave some verbal is okay; if you don't do violence, you're a 'door mat'.
But all trans people have to be despised and hated because *a few* do bad things?
If we really wanted to stop violence of all sorts - and yes, against women - we would talk much more about the former, and not excuse it because you're an alpha-male wannabe idiot.
Nobody said that , you are making it up
Which bit?
On the previous thread, I said; "A life tip: don't go around hitting people just because they're an ass."
To which someone replied: "Nah, that's not a good tip. Maybe if you're one of life's doormats."
As for my second para; just look at the tone on here towards trans people.
As for my third: I think that's true. We need to talk about it more.
The second one, I have not seen any one saying anything bad about trans people, in fact what is being said is that women's rights need to be protected. You don't protect rights by taking away 50% of the population's rights just to mollify a teeny minority who want something.
It’s bizarre that the trans lobby deliberately misrepresents the wish of gender critical feminists to protect their rights and spaces as wanting trans people To not exist. It’s nonsense.
JK Rowling has never said anything hateful about trans people. I would love to know what people see as hateful in what she has said. She has been on the receiving end of threats of violence from some on social media. She has never threatened anyone or denied anyones existence
The male lead looks like he couldn’t slap Chris Rock at an awards ceremony, and the female lead has the charisma of Herman Von Rompuy.
They’ve spent a lot of time watching the original though so they can pastiche the fuck out of it.
I didn't find it crap as such. Just a bit disappointing that they hadn't really made more of it given the running time and budget.
I'm going to give ‘Slow Horses’ a go when it starts on Friday though. I haven't read the books so I don't have as much baggage as I do with The Ipcress File.
The main insight from this morning's LBC interview with Starmer is that Labour is going to get hit with a whole bunch of culture war wedge issues in the run-up to the next election. Those issues say a lot more about the distorted concerns of Westminster/media than the country.
I'm not sure "women's rights & safety" are a "distorted concern"....
There are a lot of 'yebbuts' in those sorts of issues. For example, the man in the pub is initially against whatever it is, but then says 'yebbut' and turns out that on reflection he thinks it's quite a good idea. Like gay marriage. Your average 'straight' isn't bothered, finds it mildly amusing, but if it's not hurting anyone, and it protects the survivors rights on death, why not?
I've some sympathy with Cyclefree's view as I have two friends who feel equally strongly. But it is nonetheless not something that comes up much on the doorstep even if one feels it should, and taking sides in culture wars is as fundamental a mistake as a councillor taking sides in a neighbour dispute - everybody involved (including whoever you back) feels you're not sufficiently on their side, need to say more, etc., and you just get sucked in. Meanwhile, everyone else thinks you're obsessed with something they don't care about because they've never met a trans person.
It's a big deal in the Green Party, where quite a few activists are very deeply entrenched on both sides - I know some senior party people who said they'd quit if the leadership candidate with the "wrong" view got elected.
In general people who feel strongly about an issue are often incapable of accepting that others may not feel strongly (let's not even consider them accepting the validity of opposing views). There also appears to be a significant lump of folk who are desperate for it to be a wedge issue.
BBC Scotland recently did a survey on public attitudes to trans issues and GRA reform in Scotland; the general consensus seemed to be that folk weren't that bothered and in general had a mild preference that life should be made a bit easier for trans people. You could almost see the cloud of thwarted disappointment above Pacific Quay.
Quite.
And whatever Tyndall thinks, as I said most trans people are invariably non-violent.
Of course a few slip through or, worse, use this as a cover but there's violence everywhere and they are in the extreme. I've seen very violent cis women in ladies loos after a few drinks.
Ah not just a scumbag but an ignorant scumbag.
Invariably definition - "in every case or on every occasion; always."
So if a 'few slip through' then they cannot be 'invariably' non-violent.
Richard, Richard, Richard.
I know you sometimes have a problem and form with this but it is entirely possible to have an exchange on PB without immediately insulting your interlocutor. The last thing we want is for you to get yourself into so much of a tizzy that you ban yourself again.
Not when that interlocutor is an apologist for rape. Politics between you and me is one thing. Defending the rights of people to commit sexual assault on the grounds of their sexual orientation is something completely different.
And I don't see insulting people to be a problem at all. Practically everything about you is insulting to humanity but I wouldn't want to ban you.
Much better with some humour.
As to the issue before because the red mist had descended you didn't read what @Heathener wrote. She (I'm assuming) didn't at all excuse rape. She said that the occasions of transgender women raping other women represented a tiny proportion of crimes and that the vast majority of trans people are non-violent.
You, meanwhile, seem to be saying that because someone commits murder with a candlestick we should ban all candlesticks.
Nobody is talking about trans women. The issue is men who are not trans women pretending they are trans women. their victims are a. real women on whom they prey and b. genuine trans women. there is no doubt that these men exist, unless you believe for instance that the number of trans women among the male at birth Scottish prison population is about 10,000 times as high as in the population at large. Create a loophole, expect it to be exploited.
Yes that is a valid concern. There must be a mechanism to avoid that. I don't want to put words into @Heathener's mouth but I think it was that the instances of this are tiny compared with other crimes and also crimes against trans people. But, and I know you have cited that 10,000x figure previously, this is not to say that a solution must not be found for this particular example.
That 10k figure is odd. 0.5% of the general population are trans according to NHS Scotland estimates (probably a low ball number). And in a prison population of 8k, about 10-20 are trans (12 in 2020). That makes the prison population under-represented.
That and home office stats say the vast majority of trans prisoners identify as Male.
I'm absolutely not saying that safeguarding people (especially women) against (especially violent) bad actors is not important, but the vehemence, panic, and whipping-up is not helpful in negotiating a complex and developing part of our approach to the vulnerable and marginalized.
It is very simple , nothing being whipped up other than they want womens rights to be trashed to suit a handful of people's whinge about wanting more rights.
So what are we learning on here today? Violence against a man who gave some verbal is okay; if you don't do violence, you're a 'door mat'.
But all trans people have to be despised and hated because *a few* do bad things?
If we really wanted to stop violence of all sorts - and yes, against women - we would talk much more about the former, and not excuse it because you're an alpha-male wannabe idiot.
Nah mate, you're the guy who launches an inquiry after a school kid commits suicide after being bullied and says "lessons must be learned" then repeats the exercise as needed, learning precisely zero lessons in the process.
No, I really am not. In fact, I have mentioned the horrible levels of violence in this country on several occasions. If you know more than a few dozen people, you will know someone who has suffered domestic abuse in the last year, Often suffering in silence; invisibly.
Your comment demeans you.
But suffering in silence is what your proposed solution always seems to be, just take it on the chin and hope for a better world. Bullies need to be confronted, whether that's at school or someone using a privileged position to insult others, the confrontation is necessary, and yes, that may mean violence. I was bullied at school for being a "paki" and while you might have simply suffered in silence, I beat the shit out of one of them who did it and guess what? The bullying stopped, I got a week's worth of detention (including two Saturdays) but it was worth it. I don't think my dad has ever been more proud than he was when I he had to come and pick me up early because I'd been in a fight with the racist bully.
IME the person resorting to violence is more often the bully.
I'm sorry to hear about your experience, but perhaps, just perhaps, you tackled it the wrong way.
In what way did I handle it incorrectly? The bullying stopped almost immediately and that racist kid actually stopped being a racist to the other Asian kids as well. All it took was his head getting kicked in a couple of times.
As I said, you're the guy who won't ever learn any lessons from those kids committing suicide after being relentlessly bullied. A lot of the time the bullies do need a beat down, whether that's from the person being being bullied or someone else. I guarantee you that Chris Rock won't be making any jokes about bald women again.
No, I am really not like that. And if you knew anything about my history, or any grace, you'd retract that.
But I don't expect you will.
So what should kids being bullied at school do? Please, I'd like to know your thoughts on it (really, I'm not being a dick, I do want to know).
Report it. The bullied kids should talk to their parents, then the parents should talk to the school. If the school's anywhere near good, they should deal with it. Particularly as bullies are often kids with problems, who may well have been the target of bullies previously. They may need help themselves. Whatever, the school should know about what's going on.
If the school's bad, I'm unsure how the bullied child going around hitting others is going to solve anything except create another potential bully.
Having said that, a big problem is when bullying occurs outside school, and the school turns a blind eye.
I managed to get through school without a) particularly bullying anyone, or b) hitting anyone.
Despite being, as one boy put it, a 'crip'.
At Middle School there were two prominent bullies. They mostly left me alone, but one died in a stolen car a few years later (sadly, he wiped out an elderly couple). The other's life has gone down the pan. They made their life choices. I made mine. I'm happy.
(Note: I am not saying that physical violence cannot be used in self-defence: if you're threatened physically, you can protect yourself. But hitting someone because they give you verbal makes it your problem, not yours, IMO.)
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
You haven't been watching its ratings decline, then
In 2004 (when Lord of the Rings won) the Oscars were watched by 43 million Americans. Since then there has been a slow decline, followed by a very fast decline (like the famous description of going bankrupt). Last year's awards were watched by just 10m, the lowest ever, down from 13m the year before. It's not Covid, it is an inherent, long-lasting problem
The Oscars are an important part of American soft power as they help to project Hollywood across the world.
If they disappear into ratings obscurity, just another local awards show (and that is where they are headed, maybe inevitably) that really is quite a big issue for the American movie industry, and for America itself, as a cultural superpower and soft power centre
I really doubt there is any link between the Oscars and American puissance.
The decline you mention is perhaps predictable in an age of social media. There’s too many demands on people’s time to sit down and wait to see who won best costume design this year.
Then, you have the Netflix x Covid effect. The last two years have been abominable for the film industry, people have switched off.
The Power of the Dog was nominated and released almost entirely on Netflix. However the issue is too many films the public like get ignored at the Oscars
Absolutely. Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie was criminally ignored for honours.
Don't mock, Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie had nine times the box office takings of Coda, which won the Oscar
I've not seen d'movie but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Mrs Brown's Boys. I mean, it's not Brecht obviously but the few times I've watched it it did at least make me laugh, which is more than I can say for some much-feted "comedy" programmes like the absurdly over-rated Fleabag.
The fact that you, a PB lefty, have actually laughed at, and enjoyed, Mrs Brown's Boys explains much of the last fifteen years of leftwing PB commentary, and for that, much thanks
You're not a fan then? It's kind of like panto, lots of fairly broad humour but plenty of heart, self-deprecating and a bit knowing. Not noticeably woke either. It's not something I would make room in my schedule to watch but when I've caught it a few times I thought it was definitely better than I had been led to believe by TV snobs. Next you're going to tell me you don't like Death in Paradise!
Death in Paradise is great fun. Extremely formulaic but fine.
Mrs Browns Boys isn’t my thing but I don’t get why people are sniffy about people,who like it. It’s all personal preference.
The Oscars have always been about backslapping bullshit. The idea anyone could bemoan a decline in quality is risible.
The decline is in the quality of the films honoured, not in the ceremony itself (which has indeed been awful for as long as I can remember). But, the main awards - particularly Best Picture - used fairly often to be films lots of people had actually seen: the last one to break $100m at the US box office was in 2013, and the last to break $200m was Lord of the Rings in 2004.
Yes, fair.
Hollywood has been fucked by a combination of Marvel and Netflix.
I struggle to care about many new films these days. Yet I’d seen every film on that 1994 list published upthread.
And no, it’s not just age.
I've seen a couple of persuasive essays which make this point. Movies (like music) have got objectively worse in the last two decades. It's not just nostalgia and Fings Aint Wot They Used To Be, it is a real and measurable decline: even the vocabulary in the scripts has got simpler and more child-like
There are multiple reasons, from the death of the (hugely profitable) DVD to the decline in budgets to the advent of streaming to the atomising of audiences
One big reason is the rise of the Chinese and other markets. These are huge and irresistible for Hollywood studios under financial pressure, so movies are dumbed down so they can cross all cultures, and sell in Beijing as well as Brooklyn (hence all the Marvel/superhero/Star Wars bollocks); meanwhile the arthouse movie audience has almost completely vanished, decamped to watch excellent TV drama (which doesn't need Chinese/Indian/Brazilian audiences so can be really smart/meta/witty/rude)
It's a golden age for TV drama and video games. It's decline and fall for movies and music. Discuss
Not just about dumbing down for Chinese market, because limited slots per year for a Western film and the very strict censorship rules, you are going to resort to a certain type of film.
I think TV is somewhat in a slump at the moment. A lot of the big budget tv shows / primetime slots for the big networks like HBO aren't really very good. The big hit of the last few months, a weird South Korean show. Stuff like the Foundation on Apple+ weren't very good, despite mega bucks being plowed into it. There is nothing at the moment I am desperate to see the next episode. Severance is vaguely interesting.
There's a definitely a dip in TV quality. Foundation is ponderous, as is the other big fantasy thing, whose name escapes me it is so ephemeral (yet cost $$$$$)
However I am still finding decent stuff. The new Vikings Valhalla is a pretty good iteration (despite the hint of Woke creeping in). I am enjoying an excellent Danish history, 1864 (I think it's a few years old) about a mad nationalist invasion of another European country (it is incredibly timely, of course, but it is also good. Recommended). Mare of Easttown is gritty and moving. Succession is superb
And of course there is THE GREAT. Probably the funniest historical comedy ever made, a work of genius, and renewed for a new season
The quality is somewhat down, but we have been feasting on absolute riches for years, and maybe this is just a Covid hiatus, and the real good times will return
TV has always had good years and had years.
In the last two decades, we've had the Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Mad Men, Succession, Curb Your Enthusiasm and also a bunch of utter shit.
There have been an awful lot of decent first series, that failed in their second or third, that we don't remember (or just remember the decline): Ted Lasso, Shut Eye, Lost, Desperate Housewives.
I think that's a pretty good haul for the last two decades.
Comments
I'm absolutely not saying that safeguarding people (especially women) against (especially violent) bad actors is not important, but the vehemence, panic, and whipping-up is not helpful in negotiating a complex and developing part of our approach to the vulnerable and marginalized.
My level of interest in Hollywood, Oscars, and the like is next door to zero but I just want to make one very small point.
I've had alopecia since I was twenty. I've never thought of it as an 'illness'. It's never stopped me from doing anything I want to, apart perhaps from looking in the mirror to admire myself.
It was overtaken by natural male-pattern baldness when I was in my thirties so now the only visible sign of it is the mottled appearance of my naked scalp. I have to be a bit careful with sunburn but the idea that this affliction should warrant any kind of sympathy is ridiculous.
Be proud of your old bald head, that's what I say!
What do you want, equality of opportunity and judgement based on merit? You fascist!
I take a positive view, though, and consider myself aerodynamically enhanced.
In fact I am thinking of taking out insurance against the hair growing back.
In my situation, I honestly felt as though I had nothing to lose. My life couldn't have got much worse anyway and (horrifyingly) I had thought of the outcome you mentioned and I thought if they killed me someone might finally realise what was going on. I'm still ashamed of thinking that, to this day.
Anyway here's our (woke left) line to take. It's quite circumspect as you can see. 4 strands -
"Assault is wrong.
Alopecia is a painful experience that many Black women go through and should not be joked about.
The concept of being ‘the protector’ can be a form of toxic masculinity.
Black women are rarely protected and deserve to be protected."
(from Owen's twitter)
It would have been more interesting if it had been The Rock rather than Chris Rock.
Edit: and it seems trivial vs the above and I think people know my view on it now but I don't think a comedian telling an offensive joke is inviting the law of the jungle into the room...
I was working off a figure of 1 in 30,000.
https://prevention.ucsf.edu/transhealth/education/data-recs-summary
Hollywood has been fucked by a combination of Marvel and Netflix.
I struggle to care about many new films these days. Yet I’d seen every film on that 1994 list published upthread.
And no, it’s not just age.
My mother suffered with it, so I have some insight.
It's really pushing it to call it an illness. Even in its most extreme forms - and Rowsell has it about as bad as it gets - it isn't much more than a mild skin complaint which some consider disfiguring.
Yet even when Hollywood does produce a film of critical acceptability that does well at the box office too, eg La La Land, the Academy snubbed it. Even Warren Beatty could not believe it when Moonlight won in 2017 hence he read out the wrong winner
1 in 200 would accord with my experience. I think there's the possibility it will move higher in the immediate future, but unlikely to exceed 1%.
The report said the number of trans people accessing NHS gender identity services had risen sharply between 2014 and 2017."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-51445579#:~:text=There is not a definitive figure for the,services had risen sharply between 2014 and 2017.
The only way out seemed to be a confrontation for which I was poorly prepared. In the end he was even less well prepared and once I had pushed him to the ground a few kicks to his head and body were enough to make him back off. It was only a few days later in the "clear the air" meeting between the two families that the headmaster realised what had been going on for almost two years. It was that realisation and the eventual coming forwards of other bullied kids that actually helped keep me in the school and, probably, the other bullies away.
Would it be better/worse for society if Mrs Johnson had slapped her and there the matter ended?
There are multiple reasons, from the death of the (hugely profitable) DVD to the decline in budgets to the advent of streaming to the atomising of audiences
One big reason is the rise of the Chinese and other markets. These are huge and irresistible for Hollywood studios under financial pressure, so movies are dumbed down so they can cross all cultures, and sell in Beijing as well as Brooklyn (hence all the Marvel/superhero/Star Wars bollocks); meanwhile the arthouse movie audience has almost completely vanished, decamped to watch excellent TV drama (which doesn't need Chinese/Indian/Brazilian audiences so can be really smart/meta/witty/rude)
It's a golden age for TV drama and video games. It's decline and fall for movies and music. Discuss
@bbclaurak
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1h
I'm extremely happy to say that I'll be in the BBC politics chair on Sunday mornings from September - it's a genuine honour and real thrill to be working with an amazing team on the show, can't wait to get started!
===
Hard on Raworth, she is doing very well in the slot. Marr has returned to what he is far better at - political writing, not broadcasting imho.
But I would rather not use yours as a case study as you did what you had to to, it was wholly admirable then, and achieved its aim and I am not intending to discuss it with any kind of smart-arse hindsight.
Back to Chris & Will!!
I think TV is somewhat in a slump at the moment. A lot of the big budget tv shows / primetime slots for the big networks like HBO aren't really very good. The big hit of the last few months, a weird South Korean show. Stuff like the Foundation on Apple+ weren't very good, despite mega bucks being plowed into it. There is nothing at the moment I am desperate to see the next episode. Severance is vaguely interesting.
Fact is, the oscars are inherently interesting and important if you're into film (which is one of the great modern artforms). So let's see the ceremony just played serious and straight.
In general, I'm increasingly finding the constant need for jokes and pisstaking about everything a turn-off. Could be age again, I guess. I do allow that possibility.
Netflix has put its prices up but really don't think they are worth it anymore.
I do have a sore throat so am cuddled up in front of the fire and wondering whether it is too early to get back into bed.
So, yes, these are all flawed movies but they are all excellent, too, in their own way, and worthy winners. Films that can and will be re-watched for many years, and enjoyed
You just can't say that about Thor or the Avengers. They are mediocre kids/teen movies with enormous CGI budgets that are forgotten days later
I really not seen anything at the moment that I think is stellar.
However I am still finding decent stuff. The new Vikings Valhalla is a pretty good iteration (despite the hint of Woke creeping in). I am enjoying an excellent Danish history, 1864 (I think it's a few years old) about a mad nationalist invasion of another European country (it is incredibly timely, of course, but it is also good. Recommended). Mare of Easttown is gritty and moving. Succession is superb
And of course there is THE GREAT. Probably the funniest historical comedy ever made, a work of genius, and renewed for a new season
The quality is somewhat down, but we have been feasting on absolute riches for years, and maybe this is just a Covid hiatus, and the real good times will return
Anyway, I'm heading off for a late lunch but I hope you can see why comments like "maybe you handled it incorrectly" from the likes of @JosiasJessop really, really annoy me. I think anyone who has been seriously bullied will recognise what I went through and also find his comment repulsive. Bullies don't give you a nice easy way out which is why so many victims commit suicide. It's almost as though people like him would rather that happen than people choosing to fight back because "violence is never the answer" which to me is such a hugely bullshit phrase, sometimes the situation requires words and reasoning, in other situations fighting might be the only way out.
On a similar note, my kid(s) is going to some kind of personal combat classes from early on, just to ensure they are prepared for what's out there so they've always got that way out if they need it. I never had that and had to hope the other kid wasn't much of a fighter either, I don't ever want my kid(s) to be in the same situation.
I was amazed when a very left-wing friend of mine complained about this to me and a couple of mutual friends a few weeks ago. He was talking about the London standup scene, but it doubtless applies across the whole entertainment industry.
But I don't buy the argument that music nowadays is worse per se. It is a symptom of the splintering of culture: niches are so readily available that you don't really need to occupy the mainstream at all, nor even to know what's going on in it. Back in the 80s or 90s you would know a lot of current music even if you didn't particularly like it; nowadays you can opt out almost completely. I listen to radio 6 and XS Manchester; 90% of musical popular culture passes me by entirely.
That said, I did take it upon myself to listen to every album on the Mercury music shortlist last September. And that was, largely, awful, and painfully woke. An album about the travails of being non-binary. An album about the travails of being an immigrant. An album about the travails of being black. Something about women, probably. All of which have their place, of course, but it made me pine for some Led Zeppelin or Iron Maiden.
The Mogwai album was great though.
And yet again it could be age - sorry to keep repeating that - but I find myself increasingly weary of non-stop strong combative definitive opinions from people about every little thing that goes down.
People with strong combative definitive opinions about everything are WANKERS.
Films now have massive, massive budgets and MUST succeed (hence the screaming popularity of the Marvel films, which are guaranteed box office), or they are low budget indies.
And the low budget indies are perhaps overly introverted, for some reason?
In the late 60s, American cinema was in a funk. Films had got completely overblown; Hollywood was convinced you either had to make a grand song and dance musical or a biblical epic.
Then along came Easy Rider, and all those “indie” films, which heralded a new golden age. And they somehow seemed relevant and spoke to a new generation.
I’m not really convinced that indie films are doing their job? Mass generalisation of course.
I expect we'll both survive this appalling snub by people I neither know nor care about.
As for Chris Rock - I know little other than he was crap in Fargo 4.
It didn't merit press attention.
The Rock could work a mic in the wwe as good as anyone and a fair bit of what wrestlers say to each other goes beyond the pale and does get personal where they have a beef with each other.
https://radaronline.com/p/dwayne-johnson-controversial-past-woman-tranny-chinese-impression/
The male lead looks like he couldn’t slap Chris Rock at an awards ceremony, and the female lead has the charisma of Herman Von Rompuy.
They’ve spent a lot of time watching the original though so they can pastiche the fuck out of it.
Of course all of this has existed, even way back, Barry Cryer wrote for comedians, musicians had songs written for them, but it appears to now to be on an industrial scale and way wider than just the top teenie-bopper popstar or a comedian hosting a late night talk show (who needs new gags every night).
Perhaps she’ll be better in the soft-soaping Andrew Marr role.
Good job I didn’t have a gob full of tea when I read that.
Eg Tory MP yesterday on Twitter with an absolute classic (!) for Mothers Day.
Smiling pic of him and his Ma captioned: "Lovely to pop over to Mansfield today to wish the cisgender adult human female (she/her) who gave birth to me all the best! #HappyMothersDay!"
You know when you're beat.
Anyway, I have a prog to pitch the BBC. A kind of "The Trip" or "Gone Fishing" with Lawrence Fox and Neil Oliver. The love and chemistry between those 2 guys is something else.
I'd watch it anyway.
Again, I don't think anybody thinks these people are coming up with all the razor sharp one-liners without having had prior warning of what the topics will be, I was more interested to hear that for many (if not all) of those appearing what they say is a result of a collaborative effort with a team.
The comedian I had talk about it made it sound rather a kin to going to work in an office or factory. Clock on Monday morning, write the gags for that week Monday / Tues with the team, perform them Wednesday.
You can bet your boots if I had been recorded saying what Johnson said to Guppy and plod heard it, I would have been a long way up S*** Street.
Boris will be Boris. Rules (and laws) don't apply.
I also liked this
And a final note: behaviour that may be okay as a child may not be okay as an adult. It's called growing up.
You should try it.
However Remainers less so. 53% of those who dislike Mrs Brown's Boys voted Remain while 62% of those who like the programme voted Leave.
52% of those who like the programme too are working class, 67% of those who dislike it are middle class
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/01/13/mrs-browns-britain
Next you're going to tell me you don't like Death in Paradise!
On one hand: it was great to see everyone together in the school hall for the first time in a couple of years.
On the other hand: it was a primary school play.
For the big-budget films this will be about risk-sharing. Better to part-fund ten films, than to wholly fund one film. For the "indie" films it's the same sort of risk-averse approach, but with different funders - art councils, etc. (I guess this also means that "indie" films are not really independent)
To get your film made you have to get it funded, and you have to convince a wider range of people to provide that funding. I'm not sure that is going to help the sort of risk-taking that might produce something new and memorable.
The Economics of Hollywood
https://youtu.be/hm4y8uqfu7I
Just thought I'd point it out.
JK Rowling has never said anything hateful about trans people. I would love to know what people see as hateful in what she has said. She has been on the receiving end of threats of violence from some on social media. She has never threatened anyone or denied anyones existence
I'm going to give ‘Slow Horses’ a go when it starts on Friday though. I haven't read the books so I don't have as much baggage as I do with The Ipcress File.
If the school's bad, I'm unsure how the bullied child going around hitting others is going to solve anything except create another potential bully.
Having said that, a big problem is when bullying occurs outside school, and the school turns a blind eye.
I managed to get through school without a) particularly bullying anyone, or b) hitting anyone.
Despite being, as one boy put it, a 'crip'.
At Middle School there were two prominent bullies. They mostly left me alone, but one died in a stolen car a few years later (sadly, he wiped out an elderly couple). The other's life has gone down the pan. They made their life choices. I made mine. I'm happy.
(Note: I am not saying that physical violence cannot be used in self-defence: if you're threatened physically, you can protect yourself. But hitting someone because they give you verbal makes it your problem, not yours, IMO.)
Mrs Browns Boys isn’t my thing but I don’t get why people are sniffy about people,who like it. It’s all personal preference.
In the last two decades, we've had the Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Mad Men, Succession, Curb Your Enthusiasm and also a bunch of utter shit.
There have been an awful lot of decent first series, that failed in their second or third, that we don't remember (or just remember the decline): Ted Lasso, Shut Eye, Lost, Desperate Housewives.
I think that's a pretty good haul for the last two decades.