"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
It is great to think how much progress we have made in the thirty plus years of The Simpsons. When it started, when I was a child, looking back so much has changed over that time.
It's good sometimes just to stop and think how much progress we have made. I wonder how much more progress we will make in the next thirty years? It's exciting to think about.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
You can tell the pickings are thin.
Surely if he can vote he is an immigrant not an expat.
Only Jonny Foreigner is a nasty immigrant. Plucky Brits are always noble Expats.
Immigrants and expats are different words with different meanings.
Bad and good? In that order.
No.
It's like the difference between borrow and lend, give or take, north or south. They are opposites.
Isn't good and bad an opposite?
Not that I can see immigrants and expats as diametrically opposed notions anyway.
Good and bad are opposites but I didn't like your connotation that I was implying such judgements for either.
They are diametrically opposed though. What is an expat? What is an immigrant? Do you know the difference?
there is no difference , an expat is just an immigrant in the country they move to and an emigrant of the country they moved from, it is your usual bollox made up rubbish so British unionists can try and feel superior, and not be classed as an immigrant.
Actually, this whole passage from 1984 is superbly prescient.
Orewell is describing Shouty Woman in the video below
"He was a man of about thirty, with a muscular throat and a large, mobile mouth. His head was thrown back a little, and because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes. What was slightly horrible, was that from the stream of sound that poured out of his mouth it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word."
"Just once Winston caught a phrase-’complete and final elimination of Goldsteinism’- jerked out very rapidly and, as it seemed, all in one piece, like a line of type cast solid. For the rest it was just a noise, a quackquack-quacking. And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was saying, you could not be in any doubt about its general nature. He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against thought- criminals and saboteurs, he might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian army, he might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar front-it made no difference. Whatever it was, you could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure INGSOC"
Oh that IS original and thought provoking - a bit of Orwell.
How about a bit of Turgenev:
"So ... you were convinced of all this and decided not to do anything serious yourselves." "And decided not to do anything serious," Bazarov repeated grimly. ... "But to confine yourselves to abuse?" "To confine ourselves to abuse." "And that is called nihilism?" "And that is called nihilism," Bazarov repeated again, this time with marked insolence.
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education systen crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
Rather embarrassingly, I studied Humanities at Brighton University as a 35 year old. In retrospect it was like an undercover mission into the wokiest of wokesville, a glimpse into the future at what Corbynism/BLM would be like. Teachers boycotting Tescos because it was Israeli, legitimising anti Israel sentiment at every opportunity, teaching Marxism as the truth, telling stories of evil Tories, quoting The Guardian as Gospel, refusing to believe a word that had been written in a right of centre paper...
Not a million miles from 2015 Tory posters views on here in 2020!
This implies you stuck out like a sore thumb. And yet I bet you didn't. So how can you explain that contradiction?
I did stick out like a sore thumb, so there's no contradiction to explain
Ah OK, fair enough. No, there isn't a contradiction there then.
But there's another oddity. On this account you would be (quite literally) the only person in history to have been turned into a UKIP voter by a surfeit of education.
Not true. I know several.
Extreme Woke education DOES have this effect on some people. It makes them very anti-Woke. I've seen it with my own eyes.
Not many go the whole hog and become UKIPpers (tho a few do), quite a lot are turned into Conservatives
I see a lot of graduates, albeit mostly in the job interview process. And I've done this for twenty odd years now.
I have noticed certain changes. And I've asked people about some of the things in Universities.
Now, maybe it's because I only see economics, finance, business, science, engineering, computing and philosophy students (and not sociology and critical race theory), but I've not actually noticed much (if anything) in the way of wokeness. Sure, people are broadly left of centre, and sure the Brits are mostly pro-EU, but most seem otherwise fairly normal.
The only area where there seems to have been a massive change in attitudes in terms of gay rights. Everyone who's twenty years old has a dozen gay friends, while I probably knew just two or three openly gay people at University.
Perhaps I'm being over optimistic. But when I was at University, by far the loudest most vocal group was Socialist Worker. I'd get a dozen leaflets to events, mostly anti-American and anti-Zionist and anti-Conservative (not a lot of positive thinking going on really...). Any wall of posters was dominated by Socialist Worker. But like Twitter is was representative of... well... only a very small minority of students.
Now, I'm not actually at University. And I probably only see the 65% of students who want well paid jobs in finance, and not the 35% who'd rather not bathe and would instead rail against injustice they don't understand. But I'm struggling to see the world as having changed as much as you think.
Perhaps I simply have more young friends than you.
Incidentally, I agree with Stuartinromford that a LOT of political correctness (certainly in earlier incarnations) was and is simply good manners. When I was young I heard anti-gay jokes and I kind of tolerated them simply because every one seemed to tolerate them.
Now I would reject them entirely, and vocally. This is clearly a good thing.
However, to me it seems foolishly blinkered to deny that a righteous movement for civility towards and equality for minorities has taken on a more aggressive, overtly political tinge, which potentially endangers liberalism in the traditional sense.
This is not 'cultural marxism', but identity politics. Identity politics has multiple sources including popular culture, ultra-capitalism, the demise of collectivism, and certain aspects of post-1960s critical thinking, but its not the same as a block called "cultural marxism" . Identity politics is now so pervasive that it's drenched the right.
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
You can tell the pickings are thin.
Surely if he can vote he is an immigrant not an expat.
Only Jonny Foreigner is a nasty immigrant. Plucky Brits are always noble Expats.
Immigrants and expats are different words with different meanings.
Bad and good? In that order.
No.
It's like the difference between borrow and lend, give or take, north or south. They are opposites.
Isn't good and bad an opposite?
Not that I can see immigrants and expats as diametrically opposed notions anyway.
Good and bad are opposites but I didn't like your connotation that I was implying such judgements for either.
They are diametrically opposed though. What is an expat? What is an immigrant? Do you know the difference?
there is no difference , an expat is just an immigrant in the country they move to and an emigrant of the country they moved from, it is your usual bollox made up rubbish so British unionists can try and feel superior, and not be classed as an immigrant.
That is one of the two differences yes. Perspective matters, an English expat in America is an immigrant in America from England. An English expat is not an immigrant in England.
Hence comparing it to the difference between borrow and lend: if I lend you £10 then you have borrowed £10 from me. You haven't lent £10 (though some people do use the word lend to mean borrow and it makes my teeth grate). Different words mean different things.
There is normally one other distinction as to which word is used.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
It's more an illustration of the Wokeists' irremediable stupidity. The job of an actor is - by definition - to pretend to be something they are not, not to actually be that thing.
That's why film studios don't cast actual crime-fighting vigilante billionaires to play Batman, or mass-murdering psychopaths to play the Joker, they get an actor who can convince us that they are that character using their skill and talent.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
The funny thing is the likely effect will be for shows to reduce the breadth of representation, you aren't going to hire an actor for every single intersection so you just won't have those characters at all.
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
You can tell the pickings are thin.
Surely if he can vote he is an immigrant not an expat.
Only Jonny Foreigner is a nasty immigrant. Plucky Brits are always noble Expats.
Immigrants and expats are different words with different meanings.
Bad and good? In that order.
No.
It's like the difference between borrow and lend, give or take, north or south. They are opposites.
Isn't good and bad an opposite?
Not that I can see immigrants and expats as diametrically opposed notions anyway.
Good and bad are opposites but I didn't like your connotation that I was implying such judgements for either.
They are diametrically opposed though. What is an expat? What is an immigrant? Do you know the difference?
there is no difference , an expat is just an immigrant in the country they move to and an emigrant of the country they moved from, it is your usual bollox made up rubbish so British unionists can try and feel superior, and not be classed as an immigrant.
That is one of the two differences yes. Perspective matters, an English expat in America is an immigrant in America from England. An English expat is not an immigrant in England.
Hence comparing it to the difference between borrow and lend: if I lend you £10 then you have borrowed £10 from me. You haven't lent £10 (though some people do use the word lend to mean borrow and it makes my teeth grate). Different words mean different things.
There is normally one other distinction as to which word is used.
If they are an expat then they are not in England, unless we are just talking about people on holiday and not immigration/emigration. If they started in England emigrated and came back then they are still just English. When I go on holiday to Spain I am not an expat , I am a holidaymaker/visitor or whatever. PS: As I said earlier it is bollox made up so they don't have to call themselves immigrants, they are so insecure they have to make up names so that they can feel superior to your commoner every day immigrant , try to make themselves feel superior.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
The funny thing is the likely effect will be for shows to reduce the breadth of representation, you aren't going to hire an actor for every single intersection so you just won't have those characters at all.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
It's more an illustration of the Wokeists' irremediable stupidity. The job of an actor is - by definition - to pretend to be something they are not, not to actually be that thing.
That's why film studios don't cast actual crime-fighting vigilante billionaires to play Batman, or mass-murdering psychopaths to play the Joker, they get an actor who can convince us that they are that character using their skill and talent.
Laurence Olivier said something similar to Dustin Hoffman I believe?
Actually, this whole passage from 1984 is superbly prescient.
Orewell is describing Shouty Woman in the video below
"He was a man of about thirty, with a muscular throat and a large, mobile mouth. His head was thrown back a little, and because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes. What was slightly horrible, was that from the stream of sound that poured out of his mouth it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word."
"Just once Winston caught a phrase-’complete and final elimination of Goldsteinism’- jerked out very rapidly and, as it seemed, all in one piece, like a line of type cast solid. For the rest it was just a noise, a quackquack-quacking. And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was saying, you could not be in any doubt about its general nature. He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against thought- criminals and saboteurs, he might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian army, he might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar front-it made no difference. Whatever it was, you could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure INGSOC"
Oh that IS original and thought provoking - a bit of Orwell.
How about a bit of Turgenev:
"So ... you were convinced of all this and decided not to do anything serious yourselves." "And decided not to do anything serious," Bazarov repeated grimly. ... "But to confine yourselves to abuse?" "To confine ourselves to abuse." "And that is called nihilism?" "And that is called nihilism," Bazarov repeated again, this time with marked insolence.
Except it doesn't. What it captures is keyboard warriordom. Of which there is loads on the "anti-woke" right.
See here - depending on who's around and what time of day it is.
It captures very well those who posture about slavery in central London but wont go and protest at the Mauretanian embassy.
No it doesn't. Not especially. You're projecting.
Why do you think these protestors have nothing to say about modern slavery?
Whats worse, actual slavery or some old statue with links to a practice civilised nations banned centuries ago?
Why do protesters seeking to highlight a big issue not at the same time attempt to highlight other big and possibly bigger issues? The answer - which seems rather obvious - is focus and bandwidth. Which begs a question in return for you. Why did you ask me this? Is it because you do not like the issue that IS being highlighted and thus want to (i) deflect attention away from it and (ii) tar the people doing it as hypocrites? I sense it might be.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education systen crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
Rather embarrassingly, I studied Humanities at Brighton University as a 35 year old. In retrospect it was like an undercover mission into the wokiest of wokesville, a glimpse into the future at what Corbynism/BLM would be like. Teachers boycotting Tescos because it was Israeli, legitimising anti Israel sentiment at every opportunity, teaching Marxism as the truth, telling stories of evil Tories, quoting The Guardian as Gospel, refusing to believe a word that had been written in a right of centre paper...
Not a million miles from 2015 Tory posters views on here in 2020!
This implies you stuck out like a sore thumb. And yet I bet you didn't. So how can you explain that contradiction?
I did stick out like a sore thumb, so there's no contradiction to explain
Ah OK, fair enough. No, there isn't a contradiction there then.
But there's another oddity. On this account you would be (quite literally) the only person in history to have been turned into a UKIP voter by a surfeit of education.
Not true. I know several.
Extreme Woke education DOES have this effect on some people. It makes them very anti-Woke. I've seen it with my own eyes.
Not many go the whole hog and become UKIPpers (tho a few do), quite a lot are turned into Conservatives
I see a lot of graduates, albeit mostly in the job interview process. And I've done this for twenty odd years now.
I have noticed certain changes. And I've asked people about some of the things in Universities.
Now, maybe it's because I only see economics, finance, business, science, engineering, computing and philosophy students (and not sociology and critical race theory), but I've not actually noticed much (if anything) in the way of wokeness. Sure, people are broadly left of centre, and sure the Brits are mostly pro-EU, but most seem otherwise fairly normal.
The only area where there seems to have been a massive change in attitudes in terms of gay rights. Everyone who's twenty years old has a dozen gay friends, while I probably knew just two or three openly gay people at University.
Perhaps I'm being over optimistic. But when I was at University, by far the loudest most vocal group was Socialist Worker. I'd get a dozen leaflets to events, mostly anti-American and anti-Zionist and anti-Conservative (not a lot of positive thinking going on really...). Any wall of posters was dominated by Socialist Worker. But like Twitter is was representative of... well... only a very small minority of students.
Now, I'm not actually at University. And I probably only see the 65% of students who want well paid jobs in finance, and not the 35% who'd rather not bathe and would instead rail against injustice they don't understand. But I'm struggling to see the world as having changed as much as you think.
Perhaps I simply have more young friends than you.
Incidentally, I agree with Stuartinromford that a LOT of political correctness (certainly in earlier incarnations) was and is simply good manners. When I was young I heard anti-gay jokes and I kind of tolerated them simply because every one seemed to tolerate them.
Now I would reject them entirely, and vocally. This is clearly a good thing.
However, to me it seems foolishly blinkered to deny that a righteous movement for civility towards and equality for minorities has taken on a more aggressive, overtly political tinge, which potentially endangers liberalism in the traditional sense.
This is not 'cultural marxism', but identity politics.
They merge one into the other in a kind of spectrum. Wokeness is possibly the best umbrella term
I agree with you that Cultural Marxism has been adopted by some alt-right loons a a bugbear, imagining a vast conspiracy of devious professor types, fanning out across the world to undermine the West.
BUT there really IS a kind of cultural Marxism, which seeks to radically change society, in a revolutionary Marxist way, but to do it via culture rather than economically: defund police, dismantle the nuclear family, close all prisons, etc - these are the stated aims of the Black Lives Matter movement, as an example:
Marxists have wanted to change culture before political structures since the early 1960s. A number of social aspects such as non-nuclear familes, multiculturalism, community sentences, for instance, have become largely normalised and widely accepted in the west as a result, without most of those doing the accepting also wanting a revolution.
The *form* that modern identity movements are taking is quite specific, and not just the result of the left, but partly the result of extremely individualised and atomised societies, and where, for capital, meaning also resides for capital in your advertising and marketing segment, by way of example. This is partly why corporations are becoming among the most strident about enforcing identitarian orthodoxy on issues such as trans and gay rights in public and on twitter, for instance.
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education systen crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
Rather embarrassingly, I studied Humanities at Brighton University as a 35 year old. In retrospect it was like an undercover mission into the wokiest of wokesville, a glimpse into the future at what Corbynism/BLM would be like. Teachers boycotting Tescos because it was Israeli, legitimising anti Israel sentiment at every opportunity, teaching Marxism as the truth, telling stories of evil Tories, quoting The Guardian as Gospel, refusing to believe a word that had been written in a right of centre paper...
Not a million miles from 2015 Tory posters views on here in 2020!
This implies you stuck out like a sore thumb. And yet I bet you didn't. So how can you explain that contradiction?
I did stick out like a sore thumb, so there's no contradiction to explain
Ah OK, fair enough. No, there isn't a contradiction there then.
But there's another oddity. On this account you would be (quite literally) the only person in history to have been turned into a UKIP voter by a surfeit of education.
Not true. I know several.
Extreme Woke education DOES have this effect on some people. It makes them very anti-Woke. I've seen it with my own eyes.
Not many go the whole hog and become UKIPpers (tho a few do), quite a lot are turned into Conservatives
I see a lot of graduates, albeit mostly in the job interview process. And I've done this for twenty odd years now.
I have noticed certain changes. And I've asked people about some of the things in Universities.
Now, maybe it's because I only see economics, finance, business, science, engineering, computing and philosophy students (and not sociology and critical race theory), but I've not actually noticed much (if anything) in the way of wokeness. Sure, people are broadly left of centre, and sure the Brits are mostly pro-EU, but most seem otherwise fairly normal.
The only area where there seems to have been a massive change in attitudes in terms of gay rights. Everyone who's twenty years old has a dozen gay friends, while I probably knew just two or three openly gay people at University.
Perhaps I'm being over optimistic. But when I was at University, by far the loudest most vocal group was Socialist Worker. I'd get a dozen leaflets to events, mostly anti-American and anti-Zionist and anti-Conservative (not a lot of positive thinking going on really...). Any wall of posters was dominated by Socialist Worker. But like Twitter is was representative of... well... only a very small minority of students.
Now, I'm not actually at University. And I probably only see the 65% of students who want well paid jobs in finance, and not the 35% who'd rather not bathe and would instead rail against injustice they don't understand. But I'm struggling to see the world as having changed as much as you think.
Spot on; it really hasn't changed that much. If anything, the Socialist Worker element has weakened since the reign of Thatcher.
And yes, this generation of young people has 'normalised' gay rights - being gay now is barely worthy of comment. I'd also maintain that positive progress has been made on misogyny. Many of the 1970s/80s far left SWP type groups were pretty misogynistic.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Star Trek is ******. Good luck finding any Klingon actors.
There's a rather significant difference in that good luck finding any Klingons offended by being stereotyped by how they're portrayed.
An Indian playing a role like Apu can tell the writers he objects to a scene because it is inappropriate or stereotyping in a way Azaria simply can't.
Bollox, he is paid to read a script and act a part, if he does not like it he should GTF and let someone who wants paid to get the part.
Bollocks.
Good actors always give feedback to the scripts they read. If the writers want to insist the words get read as written they can but good writers listen to good feedback.
My favourite example of an actor changing the script is a simple one from Empire Strikes Back when Leia says "I love you" to Han Solo and he says "I know". The script was originally that he'd say "I love you too" but Harrison Ford said that doesn't suit Solo and "I know" is a better line ... and I certainly was!
Incidentally re: Trump. How much comment has there been in the US of the impact of the Presidential race on the down ticket elections? Might there become a point that the down ticket Republicans (if forced to retain Trump as the Presidential candidate) start to actively try to distance themselves from him (obviously some might be able to do that more convincingly than others). And effectively begin to run a "vote Republican, against Trump" campaign?
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
Well, as most of the time it's the same person doing several characters it will mean a less diverse cast
Who cares whether it is one person doing all the voices as long as they are good at it and can make it sound real/believable. It has surely come to it when the complaints are about cartoons now. White people should be up in arms at being portrayed as thickos like Homer. It is called satire and these woke halfwits have a humour bypass. Time we had mandatory national service and get them in the infantry for a minimum 2 years, instead of poncing about at school pretending they are all there.
Actually, this whole passage from 1984 is superbly prescient.
Orewell is describing Shouty Woman in the video below
"He was a man of about thirty, with a muscular throat and a large, mobile mouth. His head was thrown back a little, and because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes. What was slightly horrible, was that from the stream of sound that poured out of his mouth it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word."
"Just once Winston caught a phrase-’complete and final elimination of Goldsteinism’- jerked out very rapidly and, as it seemed, all in one piece, like a line of type cast solid. For the rest it was just a noise, a quackquack-quacking. And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was saying, you could not be in any doubt about its general nature. He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against thought- criminals and saboteurs, he might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian army, he might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar front-it made no difference. Whatever it was, you could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure INGSOC"
Oh that IS original and thought provoking - a bit of Orwell.
How about a bit of Turgenev:
"So ... you were convinced of all this and decided not to do anything serious yourselves." "And decided not to do anything serious," Bazarov repeated grimly. ... "But to confine yourselves to abuse?" "To confine ourselves to abuse." "And that is called nihilism?" "And that is called nihilism," Bazarov repeated again, this time with marked insolence.
Except it doesn't. What it captures is keyboard warriordom. Of which there is loads on the "anti-woke" right.
See here - depending on who's around and what time of day it is.
It captures very well those who posture about slavery in central London but wont go and protest at the Mauretanian embassy.
No it doesn't. Not especially. You're projecting.
Why do you think these protestors have nothing to say about modern slavery?
Whats worse, actual slavery or some old statue with links to a practice civilised nations banned centuries ago?
Why do protesters seeking to highlight a big issue not at the same time attempt to highlight other big and possibly bigger issues? The answer - which seems rather obvious - is focus and bandwidth. Which begs a question in return for you. Why did you ask me this? Is it because you do not like the issue that IS being highlighted and thus want to (i) deflect attention away from it and (ii) tar the people doing it as hypocrites? I sense it might be.
Nope, not interested in deflecting - I do think they are hypocrites though
Tackle actual slavery
Its almost like slavery isn't actually the issue for some of the organisers.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
It's more an illustration of the Wokeists' irremediable stupidity. The job of an actor is - by definition - to pretend to be something they are not, not to actually be that thing.
That's why film studios don't cast actual crime-fighting vigilante billionaires to play Batman, or mass-murdering psychopaths to play the Joker, they get an actor who can convince us that they are that character using their skill and talent.
Here's a proposal. Let's allow businesses and creators to make their own decisions in this area. They are well placed to do it.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
Well, as most of the time it's the same person doing several characters it will mean a less diverse cast
Who cares whether it is one person doing all the voices as long as they are good at it and can make it sound real/believable. It has surely come to it when the complaints are about cartoons now. White people should be up in arms at being portrayed as thickos like Homer. It is called satire and these woke halfwits have a humour bypass. Time we had mandatory national service and get them in the infantry for a minimum 2 years, instead of poncing about at school pretending they are all there.
The main thing for me is that nowadays it is difficult to tell a white English persons voice from that of a Black or Asian English person from the same region, so as we have become more homogenised it should matter less which colour skin the voice actor has, but it seems to matter more
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Star Trek is ******. Good luck finding any Klingon actors.
There's a rather significant difference in that good luck finding any Klingons offended by being stereotyped by how they're portrayed.
An Indian playing a role like Apu can tell the writers he objects to a scene because it is inappropriate or stereotyping in a way Azaria simply can't.
Bollox, he is paid to read a script and act a part, if he does not like it he should GTF and let someone who wants paid to get the part.
Bollocks.
Good actors always give feedback to the scripts they read. If the writers want to insist the words get read as written they can but good writers listen to good feedback.
My favourite example of an actor changing the script is a simple one from Empire Strikes Back when Leia says "I love you" to Han Solo and he says "I know". The script was originally that he'd say "I love you too" but Harrison Ford said that doesn't suit Solo and "I know" is a better line ... and I certainly was!
Harrison Ford changed one word, I am convinced. Sure he gave the director a good telling to about stereotyping him as a lovestruck teenager , told him him how inappropriate it was for Hans to speak like a big jessie boy and forced him to strike out those 3 words. You need to go and lie down in a dark corner.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Actually, this whole passage from 1984 is superbly prescient.
Orewell is describing Shouty Woman in the video below
"He was a man of about thirty, with a muscular throat and a large, mobile mouth. His head was thrown back a little, and because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes. What was slightly horrible, was that from the stream of sound that poured out of his mouth it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word."
"Just once Winston caught a phrase-’complete and final elimination of Goldsteinism’- jerked out very rapidly and, as it seemed, all in one piece, like a line of type cast solid. For the rest it was just a noise, a quackquack-quacking. And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was saying, you could not be in any doubt about its general nature. He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against thought- criminals and saboteurs, he might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian army, he might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar front-it made no difference. Whatever it was, you could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure INGSOC"
Oh that IS original and thought provoking - a bit of Orwell.
How about a bit of Turgenev:
"So ... you were convinced of all this and decided not to do anything serious yourselves." "And decided not to do anything serious," Bazarov repeated grimly. ... "But to confine yourselves to abuse?" "To confine ourselves to abuse." "And that is called nihilism?" "And that is called nihilism," Bazarov repeated again, this time with marked insolence.
Except it doesn't. What it captures is keyboard warriordom. Of which there is loads on the "anti-woke" right.
See here - depending on who's around and what time of day it is.
It captures very well those who posture about slavery in central London but wont go and protest at the Mauretanian embassy.
No it doesn't. Not especially. You're projecting.
Why do you think these protestors have nothing to say about modern slavery?
Whats worse, actual slavery or some old statue with links to a practice civilised nations banned centuries ago?
Why do protesters seeking to highlight a big issue not at the same time attempt to highlight other big and possibly bigger issues? The answer - which seems rather obvious - is focus and bandwidth. Which begs a question in return for you. Why did you ask me this? Is it because you do not like the issue that IS being highlighted and thus want to (i) deflect attention away from it and (ii) tar the people doing it as hypocrites? I sense it might be.
Nope, not interested in deflecting - I do think they are hypocrites though
Tackle actual slavery
Its almost like slavery isn't actually the issue for some of the organisers.
Imagine that
That's really not fair at all on the poor dears - I'm sure they'll get around to it in a few hundred years, once they've dealt with all the urgent cases from the 18th and 19th centuries..
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
It's more an illustration of the Wokeists' irremediable stupidity. The job of an actor is - by definition - to pretend to be something they are not, not to actually be that thing.
That's why film studios don't cast actual crime-fighting vigilante billionaires to play Batman, or mass-murdering psychopaths to play the Joker, they get an actor who can convince us that they are that character using their skill and talent.
Here's a proposal. Let's allow businesses and creators to make their own decisions in this area. They are well placed to do it.
... and let's close down any discussion of said decisons? That's the progressive way!
The revelations about Trump are going to keep coming over the next few months, its going to be a constant drip about him. And they going to come from every angle and source.
For the un-initiated, his core vote (c42%) cannot get him elected and there is every sign that those outside that core who signed on in 2016 are not going to vote for Trump in anywhere near the same numbers.
It is going to take a huge hit on Biden or his campaign for him to lose.
If you are on the GOP, start worrying about Congress.
This is for confirmed cases in England, just selecting the data for today
Which just goes to show how remarkably inefficient the data gathering apparatus of the health service actually is. That chart would appear to suggest that it's not just deaths that happened months ago that they're only just getting round to adding to the statistics (today's NHS England death count includes a fatality from April 21st.) Some of those positive tests date all the way back to March.
Sometimes the number reduces by one or two on particular days. it is not always a positive number. They are very small noisy numbers and don't change the big picture except for the latest four or five days. That is why I ignore the last four days. Perhaps I should ignore the last five days.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
Well, as most of the time it's the same person doing several characters it will mean a less diverse cast
Who cares whether it is one person doing all the voices as long as they are good at it and can make it sound real/believable. It has surely come to it when the complaints are about cartoons now. White people should be up in arms at being portrayed as thickos like Homer. It is called satire and these woke halfwits have a humour bypass. Time we had mandatory national service and get them in the infantry for a minimum 2 years, instead of poncing about at school pretending they are all there.
The main thing for me is that nowadays it is difficult to tell a white English persons voice from that of a Black or Asian English person from the same region, so as we have become more homogenised it should matter less which colour skin the voice actor has, but it seems to matter more
Only to woke halfwits , BLM, and all these associated whiners. They need to get a life, I don't give a crap who does the voices in a cartoon as long as it sounds authentic. Why else do they call them actors.
On the question of a statements validity depending upon who wrote it, it depends upon both the statement and who wrote it. Some statements are objective but some are subjective.
Take the rather simple statement "I am a woman" - if Cyclefree writes that then I believe it. If LadyG writes it I don't.
Or if someone here posted medical advice - from most people I would take it with a pinch of salt but if it came from Foxy I'd take it more seriously.
I am defiantly non-binary, and have been since the age of 3, so I am not offended by your remarks
WTF is non-binary
Decimal. As in, there's at least ten of him now...
I always wondered if you could create a number system based around prime numbers. So the "columns" would be 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, etc. Could you create a set of rules that would allow you to count and do calculations in a meaningful way.
But then I usually remember I have a business to run and employees to traumatise.
We do. All our integer numbers are built from prime numbers. Do you mean sieve out all the composite numbers? In which case it would be a very sparse mathematics as most of the functions would produce results outside the system and be invalid/useless.
Take the rather simple statement "I am a woman" - if Cyclefree writes that then I believe it. If LadyG writes it I don't.
Are we still on the "what does the G stand for" sweepstake?
My theory is that it is Lady Glugalot, who along with Lord Glugalot played by our hero himself, will star in a new Frankie Howerd tribute film "Up the Vineyard" by Sean T Productions.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Star Trek is ******. Good luck finding any Klingon actors.
There's a rather significant difference in that good luck finding any Klingons offended by being stereotyped by how they're portrayed.
An Indian playing a role like Apu can tell the writers he objects to a scene because it is inappropriate or stereotyping in a way Azaria simply can't.
Bollox, he is paid to read a script and act a part, if he does not like it he should GTF and let someone who wants paid to get the part.
Bollocks.
Good actors always give feedback to the scripts they read. If the writers want to insist the words get read as written they can but good writers listen to good feedback.
My favourite example of an actor changing the script is a simple one from Empire Strikes Back when Leia says "I love you" to Han Solo and he says "I know". The script was originally that he'd say "I love you too" but Harrison Ford said that doesn't suit Solo and "I know" is a better line ... and I certainly was!
Harrison Ford changed one word, I am convinced. Sure he gave the director a good telling to about stereotyping him as a lovestruck teenager , told him him how inappropriate it was for Hans to speak like a big jessie boy and forced him to strike out those 3 words. You need to go and lie down in a dark corner.
No you do. It's not the end of the world to have actors give feedback, they do it regularly.
The Simpsons can easily afford to hire an Indian actor to voice Apu. They're not short of cash.
And it's not like it's South Park. If South Park wants someone to impersonate, badly, someone else that's a different matter. You watch that knowing it's trying to be offensive.
Actually, this whole passage from 1984 is superbly prescient.
Orewell is describing Shouty Woman in the video below
"He was a man of about thirty, with a muscular throat and a large, mobile mouth. His head was thrown back a little, and because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes. What was slightly horrible, was that from the stream of sound that poured out of his mouth it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word."
"Just once Winston caught a phrase-’complete and final elimination of Goldsteinism’- jerked out very rapidly and, as it seemed, all in one piece, like a line of type cast solid. For the rest it was just a noise, a quackquack-quacking. And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was saying, you could not be in any doubt about its general nature. He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against thought- criminals and saboteurs, he might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian army, he might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar front-it made no difference. Whatever it was, you could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure INGSOC"
Oh that IS original and thought provoking - a bit of Orwell.
How about a bit of Turgenev:
"So ... you were convinced of all this and decided not to do anything serious yourselves." "And decided not to do anything serious," Bazarov repeated grimly. ... "But to confine yourselves to abuse?" "To confine ourselves to abuse." "And that is called nihilism?" "And that is called nihilism," Bazarov repeated again, this time with marked insolence.
Except it doesn't. What it captures is keyboard warriordom. Of which there is loads on the "anti-woke" right.
See here - depending on who's around and what time of day it is.
It captures very well those who posture about slavery in central London but wont go and protest at the Mauretanian embassy.
No it doesn't. Not especially. You're projecting.
Why do you think these protestors have nothing to say about modern slavery?
Whats worse, actual slavery or some old statue with links to a practice civilised nations banned centuries ago?
Why do protesters seeking to highlight a big issue not at the same time attempt to highlight other big and possibly bigger issues? The answer - which seems rather obvious - is focus and bandwidth. Which begs a question in return for you. Why did you ask me this? Is it because you do not like the issue that IS being highlighted and thus want to (i) deflect attention away from it and (ii) tar the people doing it as hypocrites? I sense it might be.
Nope, not interested in deflecting - I do think they are hypocrites though
Tackle actual slavery
Its almost like slavery isn't actually the issue for some of the organisers.
Imagine that
We do tend to judge people and movements on what we think their real motives are. There is something very unconvincing about a sudden upsurge about slavery long ago unmatched by a track record of costly concern for the here and now. Sometimes the cause can be good enough, but the real agenda be a mixed and less impressive one.
Take the rather simple statement "I am a woman" - if Cyclefree writes that then I believe it. If LadyG writes it I don't.
Are we still on the "what does the G stand for" sweepstake?
My theory is that it is Lady Glugalot, who along with Lord Glugalot played by our hero himself, will star in a new Frankie Howerd tribute film "Up the Vineyard" by Sean T Productions.
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
You can tell the pickings are thin.
Surely if he can vote he is an immigrant not an expat.
Only Jonny Foreigner is a nasty immigrant. Plucky Brits are always noble Expats.
Immigrants and expats are different words with different meanings.
Bad and good? In that order.
No.
It's like the difference between borrow and lend, give or take, north or south. They are opposites.
Isn't good and bad an opposite?
Not that I can see immigrants and expats as diametrically opposed notions anyway.
Good and bad are opposites but I didn't like your connotation that I was implying such judgements for either.
They are diametrically opposed though. What is an expat? What is an immigrant? Do you know the difference?
there is no difference , an expat is just an immigrant in the country they move to and an emigrant of the country they moved from, it is your usual bollox made up rubbish so British unionists can try and feel superior, and not be classed as an immigrant.
That is one of the two differences yes. Perspective matters, an English expat in America is an immigrant in America from England. An English expat is not an immigrant in England.
Hence comparing it to the difference between borrow and lend: if I lend you £10 then you have borrowed £10 from me. You haven't lent £10 (though some people do use the word lend to mean borrow and it makes my teeth grate). Different words mean different things.
There is normally one other distinction as to which word is used.
Having been an expat in 6 countries and an immigrant in only one, I do think there is more than a semantic difference.
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
You can tell the pickings are thin.
Surely if he can vote he is an immigrant not an expat.
Only Jonny Foreigner is a nasty immigrant. Plucky Brits are always noble Expats.
Immigrants and expats are different words with different meanings.
Bad and good? In that order.
No.
It's like the difference between borrow and lend, give or take, north or south. They are opposites.
Isn't good and bad an opposite?
Not that I can see immigrants and expats as diametrically opposed notions anyway.
Good and bad are opposites but I didn't like your connotation that I was implying such judgements for either.
They are diametrically opposed though. What is an expat? What is an immigrant? Do you know the difference?
there is no difference , an expat is just an immigrant in the country they move to and an emigrant of the country they moved from, it is your usual bollox made up rubbish so British unionists can try and feel superior, and not be classed as an immigrant.
That is one of the two differences yes. Perspective matters, an English expat in America is an immigrant in America from England. An English expat is not an immigrant in England.
Hence comparing it to the difference between borrow and lend: if I lend you £10 then you have borrowed £10 from me. You haven't lent £10 (though some people do use the word lend to mean borrow and it makes my teeth grate). Different words mean different things.
There is normally one other distinction as to which word is used.
Having been an expat in 6 countries and an immigrant in only one, I do think there is more than a semantic difference.
Indeed. There is a very real difference which is what I was trying to get at. It's a shame some people aren't bright enough to cotton on.
Government blunder hands ownership of Help to Buy website over to third party for £40k
An unknown party has bought a prominent Government website for £40,000 after a blunder allowed ownership of the Help to Buy domain name to lapse, leading to fears its new owner could have fraudulent plans.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
On the question of a statements validity depending upon who wrote it, it depends upon both the statement and who wrote it. Some statements are objective but some are subjective.
Take the rather simple statement "I am a woman" - if Cyclefree writes that then I believe it. If LadyG writes it I don't.
Or if someone here posted medical advice - from most people I would take it with a pinch of salt but if it came from Foxy I'd take it more seriously.
I am defiantly non-binary, and have been since the age of 3, so I am not offended by your remarks
WTF is non-binary
Decimal. As in, there's at least ten of him now...
I always wondered if you could create a number system based around prime numbers. So the "columns" would be 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, etc. Could you create a set of rules that would allow you to count and do calculations in a meaningful way.
But then I usually remember I have a business to run and employees to traumatise.
We do. All our integer numbers are built from prime numbers. Do you mean sieve out all the composite numbers? In which case it would be a very sparse mathematics as most of the functions would produce results outside the system and be invalid/useless.
I think young Smithson means a primorial mixed radix, and he's not the first to propose it; however primorial-based mathematics isn't frequent enough to justify it.
"Given Trump’s championing of early re-opening, it should not be a hard task for the Democrats to pin blame on him for both the additional deaths and the job losses and bankruptcies that will follow a new round of restrictions"
Great header David. One thing I'd add to the quote above is that the cities in those swing states experiencing bad COVID figures right now are frustrated by GOP governors who are preventing them - at Trump's behest - from re-imposing lockdowns that meet local conditions. This, I think, not only reinforces the anti-Trump sentiment in cities and, importantly, their suburbs, but also will encourage across the slate anti-GOP voting. Expect this to seriously impact not just the presidential vote, but also the Senate and House votes in those states. And this sentiment of 'vote the bums out' across the slate will, I think, lead to a higher differential turnout against the GOP.
Maybe that is just my wishful thinking, but what I am picking up is a seething anger everywhere except the Trump base, and even there people are finding it ever harder to justify Trump. At some point, I think that dam will burst too.
My favorite and most useful Trump-supporting friend is an English Expat who will vote for the man come what may. It's very revealing however how he justifies this. His main themes currently are statues and the Seattle communists. Never mentions the virus, the economy, or international affairs of any kind.
You can tell the pickings are thin.
Surely if he can vote he is an immigrant not an expat.
Only Jonny Foreigner is a nasty immigrant. Plucky Brits are always noble Expats.
Immigrants and expats are different words with different meanings.
Bad and good? In that order.
No.
It's like the difference between borrow and lend, give or take, north or south. They are opposites.
Isn't good and bad an opposite?
Not that I can see immigrants and expats as diametrically opposed notions anyway.
Good and bad are opposites but I didn't like your connotation that I was implying such judgements for either.
They are diametrically opposed though. What is an expat? What is an immigrant? Do you know the difference?
there is no difference , an expat is just an immigrant in the country they move to and an emigrant of the country they moved from, it is your usual bollox made up rubbish so British unionists can try and feel superior, and not be classed as an immigrant.
That is one of the two differences yes. Perspective matters, an English expat in America is an immigrant in America from England. An English expat is not an immigrant in England.
Hence comparing it to the difference between borrow and lend: if I lend you £10 then you have borrowed £10 from me. You haven't lent £10 (though some people do use the word lend to mean borrow and it makes my teeth grate). Different words mean different things.
There is normally one other distinction as to which word is used.
Having been an expat in 6 countries and an immigrant in only one, I do think there is more than a semantic difference.
You were just an immigrant in 6 countries, stop kidding yourself.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
It's more an illustration of the Wokeists' irremediable stupidity. The job of an actor is - by definition - to pretend to be something they are not, not to actually be that thing.
That's why film studios don't cast actual crime-fighting vigilante billionaires to play Batman, or mass-murdering psychopaths to play the Joker, they get an actor who can convince us that they are that character using their skill and talent.
Here's a proposal. Let's allow businesses and creators to make their own decisions in this area. They are well placed to do it.
Except that those businesses and creators were making their own decisions for decades - for over 30 years they ran The Simpsons as they pleased and created one of the most successful programmes in TV history. This decision is the result of political pressure, not artistic inspiration - not important in the grand scheme of things, but another droplet gradually wearing away the soft sandstone of reason and liberty.
Latest data Not good for London. What happened about 12 days ago that triggered this?
The number of cases in London in very low, though bouncing around
Recent data -
Full series -
And when the total number of cases is low, R will tend to average around 1.0 but can pitch and roll around like a ship on a storm-tossed sea, and the fluctuations become more violent as the number continues to decrease. As per the recent outbreak in Germany, where R went up to somewhere near 3 and then crashed back down to below 1 again in a day. QED.
In London total number of cases is not that low yet. In time it will be hopefully.
Those pillar 1 stats posted by @Malmesbury appear to show a recent mean of around 15-20 cases a day for a city of close-on nine million people. That seems pretty low to me. And in any event that R number's only one opinion. If I'm remembering correctly from the most recent release of data on the subject, SAGE has stated the estimated R values for all regions of the UK to be in ranges with upper limits equal to or, in most cases, below 1.0
The population size doesn't matter. It is the SD of the number of cases. You are right that the recent mean for London is around 15-20 cases a day or about 130 a week. It has gone up slightly and so has the R slightly. It is a leading indicator. It wouldn't surprise me if there were a local tightening of advice for London or parts of London.
Actually, this whole passage from 1984 is superbly prescient.
Orewell is describing Shouty Woman in the video below
"He was a man of about thirty, with a muscular throat and a large, mobile mouth. His head was thrown back a little, and because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes. What was slightly horrible, was that from the stream of sound that poured out of his mouth it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word."
"Just once Winston caught a phrase-’complete and final elimination of Goldsteinism’- jerked out very rapidly and, as it seemed, all in one piece, like a line of type cast solid. For the rest it was just a noise, a quackquack-quacking. And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was saying, you could not be in any doubt about its general nature. He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against thought- criminals and saboteurs, he might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian army, he might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar front-it made no difference. Whatever it was, you could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure INGSOC"
Oh that IS original and thought provoking - a bit of Orwell.
How about a bit of Turgenev:
"So ... you were convinced of all this and decided not to do anything serious yourselves." "And decided not to do anything serious," Bazarov repeated grimly. ... "But to confine yourselves to abuse?" "To confine ourselves to abuse." "And that is called nihilism?" "And that is called nihilism," Bazarov repeated again, this time with marked insolence.
Except it doesn't. What it captures is keyboard warriordom. Of which there is loads on the "anti-woke" right.
See here - depending on who's around and what time of day it is.
It captures very well those who posture about slavery in central London but wont go and protest at the Mauretanian embassy.
No it doesn't. Not especially. You're projecting.
Why do you think these protestors have nothing to say about modern slavery?
Whats worse, actual slavery or some old statue with links to a practice civilised nations banned centuries ago?
Why do protesters seeking to highlight a big issue not at the same time attempt to highlight other big and possibly bigger issues? The answer - which seems rather obvious - is focus and bandwidth. Which begs a question in return for you. Why did you ask me this? Is it because you do not like the issue that IS being highlighted and thus want to (i) deflect attention away from it and (ii) tar the people doing it as hypocrites? I sense it might be.
Nope, not interested in deflecting - I do think they are hypocrites though
Tackle actual slavery
Its almost like slavery isn't actually the issue for some of the organisers.
Imagine that
That's really not fair at all on the poor dears - I'm sure they'll get around to it in a few hundred years, once they've dealt with all the urgent cases from the 18th and 19th centuries..
In the past I have err... prodded progressive types by mentioning Mauritania etc.
After they have looked up where it is, etc, they tend to come back with "It's not real slavery, they are actually part of the family" etc. etc.
It's interesting when a Corbynite Camdenite suddenly goes all NeoConfederate.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
Well, as most of the time it's the same person doing several characters it will mean a less diverse cast
Who cares whether it is one person doing all the voices as long as they are good at it and can make it sound real/believable. It has surely come to it when the complaints are about cartoons now. White people should be up in arms at being portrayed as thickos like Homer. It is called satire and these woke halfwits have a humour bypass. Time we had mandatory national service and get them in the infantry for a minimum 2 years, instead of poncing about at school pretending they are all there.
The main thing for me is that nowadays it is difficult to tell a white English persons voice from that of a Black or Asian English person from the same region, so as we have become more homogenised it should matter less which colour skin the voice actor has, but it seems to matter more
The issue with Apu is he isn't simply from Springfield who happens to be Indian. His background is an intrinsic part of the character being portrayed and has often been a crude stereotype which has caused offense where it probably wasn't the intention (again drawing a distinction between The Simpsons and South Park). An Indian actor playing Apu can portray the character differently to how Hank Azaria can. An Indian actor can get a script and suggest a rewrite of certain parts ... and the show is deliberately trying to be open to that.
It's not closing things down it's trying to engage more. If Apu just happened to be Indian but it wasn't really relevant to his character then that would be a different matter perhaps but it's not the case.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Star Trek is ******. Good luck finding any Klingon actors.
There's a rather significant difference in that good luck finding any Klingons offended by being stereotyped by how they're portrayed.
An Indian playing a role like Apu can tell the writers he objects to a scene because it is inappropriate or stereotyping in a way Azaria simply can't.
Bollox, he is paid to read a script and act a part, if he does not like it he should GTF and let someone who wants paid to get the part.
Bollocks.
Good actors always give feedback to the scripts they read. If the writers want to insist the words get read as written they can but good writers listen to good feedback.
My favourite example of an actor changing the script is a simple one from Empire Strikes Back when Leia says "I love you" to Han Solo and he says "I know". The script was originally that he'd say "I love you too" but Harrison Ford said that doesn't suit Solo and "I know" is a better line ... and I certainly was!
Harrison Ford changed one word, I am convinced. Sure he gave the director a good telling to about stereotyping him as a lovestruck teenager , told him him how inappropriate it was for Hans to speak like a big jessie boy and forced him to strike out those 3 words. You need to go and lie down in a dark corner.
Bill Murray in Ghostbusters basically ad-libbed his whole script. As did Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam. Orson Wells wrote the "Cuckoo clock" speech from the Third Man. Rutger Hauer wrote the "Tears in the Rain" monologue at the end of Blade Runner. Jack Nicholson got the director to change the whole emphasis of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest to make his character the spark for the rebellion.
Many of the greatest lines in cinema history came from changes suggested by the actors not the writers or directors.
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education systen crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
Rather embarrassingly, I studied Humanities at Brighton University as a 35 year old. In retrospect it was like an undercover mission into the wokiest of wokesville, a glimpse into the future at what Corbynism/BLM would be like. Teachers boycotting Tescos because it was Israeli, legitimising anti Israel sentiment at every opportunity, teaching Marxism as the truth, telling stories of evil Tories, quoting The Guardian as Gospel, refusing to believe a word that had been written in a right of centre paper...
Not a million miles from 2015 Tory posters views on here in 2020!
This implies you stuck out like a sore thumb. And yet I bet you didn't. So how can you explain that contradiction?
I did stick out like a sore thumb, so there's no contradiction to explain
Ah OK, fair enough. No, there isn't a contradiction there then.
But there's another oddity. On this account you would be (quite literally) the only person in history to have been turned into a UKIP voter by a surfeit of education.
Not true. I know several.
Extreme Woke education DOES have this effect on some people. It makes them very anti-Woke. I've seen it with my own eyes.
Not many go the whole hog and become UKIPpers (tho a few do), quite a lot are turned into Conservatives
I see a lot of graduates, albeit mostly in the job interview process. And I've done this for twenty odd years now.
I have noticed certain changes. And I've asked people about some of the things in Universities.
Now, maybe it's because I only see economics, finance, business, science, engineering, computing and philosophy students (and not sociology and critical race theory), but I've not actually noticed much (if anything) in the way of wokeness. Sure, people are broadly left of centre, and sure the Brits are mostly pro-EU, but most seem otherwise fairly normal.
The only area where there seems to have been a massive change in attitudes in terms of gay rights. Everyone who's twenty years old has a dozen gay friends, while I probably knew just two or three openly gay people at University.
Perhaps I'm being over optimistic. But when I was at University, by far the loudest most vocal group was Socialist Worker. I'd get a dozen leaflets to events, mostly anti-American and anti-Zionist and anti-Conservative (not a lot of positive thinking going on really...). Any wall of posters was dominated by Socialist Worker. But like Twitter is was representative of... well... only a very small minority of students.
Now, I'm not actually at University. And I probably only see the 65% of students who want well paid jobs in finance, and not the 35% who'd rather not bathe and would instead rail against injustice they don't understand. But I'm struggling to see the world as having changed as much as you think.
Perhaps I simply have more young friends than you.
Incidentally, I agree with Stuartinromford that a LOT of political correctness (certainly in earlier incarnations) was and is simply good manners. When I was young I heard anti-gay jokes and I kind of tolerated them simply because every one seemed to tolerate them.
Now I would reject them entirely, and vocally. This is clearly a good thing.
However, to me it seems foolishly blinkered to deny that a righteous movement for civility towards and equality for minorities has taken on a more aggressive, overtly political tinge, which potentially endangers liberalism in the traditional sense.
But there's a very effective, very conservative and Conservative playbook in this situation.
Embrace the necessary change, squeeze out the Marxism, tint it blue if possible.
Like with gay marriage.
So for the statues "let us have a conversation about where to put these statues, how to narrate them properly for the future so we can acknowledge the good and bad in all of us yada yada..." In other words, the sort of thing that ought to have happened in Bristol years ago, but didn't.
The trouble with that approach is that you don't get to play culture warrior yourself. There are people- including the government- playing with forces they don't understand.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Star Trek is ******. Good luck finding any Klingon actors.
There's a rather significant difference in that good luck finding any Klingons offended by being stereotyped by how they're portrayed.
An Indian playing a role like Apu can tell the writers he objects to a scene because it is inappropriate or stereotyping in a way Azaria simply can't.
Bollox, he is paid to read a script and act a part, if he does not like it he should GTF and let someone who wants paid to get the part.
Bollocks.
Good actors always give feedback to the scripts they read. If the writers want to insist the words get read as written they can but good writers listen to good feedback.
My favourite example of an actor changing the script is a simple one from Empire Strikes Back when Leia says "I love you" to Han Solo and he says "I know". The script was originally that he'd say "I love you too" but Harrison Ford said that doesn't suit Solo and "I know" is a better line ... and I certainly was!
Harrison Ford changed one word, I am convinced. Sure he gave the director a good telling to about stereotyping him as a lovestruck teenager , told him him how inappropriate it was for Hans to speak like a big jessie boy and forced him to strike out those 3 words. You need to go and lie down in a dark corner.
No you do. It's not the end of the world to have actors give feedback, they do it regularly.
The Simpsons can easily afford to hire an Indian actor to voice Apu. They're not short of cash.
And it's not like it's South Park. If South Park wants someone to impersonate, badly, someone else that's a different matter. You watch that knowing it's trying to be offensive.
But what if the actor who voiced Apu was actually the best person at voicing Apu? What if there's an Indian guy who is the best at voicing west African characters? What if there is a West African actor who is weirdly brilliant at doing posh white women? Should they all be forbidden from doing the work they are good at?
Once you disallow one kind of voiceover, because of inappropriate racial background, then you surely, in the end, disallow them all.
That would be a shame because it would mean we'd lose Edna Mode from the Incredibles
It is the thin end of the wedge, only fat people can play fatties , only baldies can play baldies , only big ears , one legged , one arm , etc , they will need to change actors half way through films if they get injured and lose any body parts.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
The funny thing is the likely effect will be for shows to reduce the breadth of representation, you aren't going to hire an actor for every single intersection so you just won't have those characters at all.
Exactly, they are as thick as mince.
Oh, you can be sure that any inadvertent drop in representation will be taken as evidence racism is getting worse and so more drastic measures are required to "fix" it.
Immigrants and expats are different words with different meanings.
Yes, that's an interesting point which people on both sides of the immigration debate should keep in mind. I knew many expats in Switzerland, people who came for the experience and the well-paid jobs but had little interest in local culture. (I thought they were missing out on a great experience but that's by the by.) The equivalent is a Polish builder who comes over for a few years, sends money home, and always intends to go back.
Some genuinely decide (from the start or later) to settle, and then became real immigrants. Swiss reservations about migrants mostly related to these - they were always relaxed about seasonal workers turning up and helping out with agriculture and tourism, and foreign experts were fine too, but a change in the permanent population was seen as a non-trivial issue. In Britain, by contrast, resentment mostly arises towards the temporary workers - "they're taking our jobs", "they don't even try to mix". People who make it clear they want to settle gradually become part of the landscape.
What do people from other countries call those who leave to live abroad? Is it the same as they call those who come from abroad to live there?
Emigres? (Or, if you are sufficiently Brexity, traitors!)
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
Well, as most of the time it's the same person doing several characters it will mean a less diverse cast
Who cares whether it is one person doing all the voices as long as they are good at it and can make it sound real/believable. It has surely come to it when the complaints are about cartoons now. White people should be up in arms at being portrayed as thickos like Homer. It is called satire and these woke halfwits have a humour bypass. Time we had mandatory national service and get them in the infantry for a minimum 2 years, instead of poncing about at school pretending they are all there.
The main thing for me is that nowadays it is difficult to tell a white English persons voice from that of a Black or Asian English person from the same region, so as we have become more homogenised it should matter less which colour skin the voice actor has, but it seems to matter more
The issue with Apu is he isn't simply from Springfield who happens to be Indian. His background is an intrinsic part of the character being portrayed and has often been a crude stereotype which has caused offense where it probably wasn't the intention (again drawing a distinction between The Simpsons and South Park). An Indian actor playing Apu can portray the character differently to how Hank Azaria can. An Indian actor can get a script and suggest a rewrite of certain parts ... and the show is deliberately trying to be open to that.
It's not closing things down it's trying to engage more. If Apu just happened to be Indian but it wasn't really relevant to his character then that would be a different matter perhaps but it's not the case.
The revelations about Trump are going to keep coming over the next few months, its going to be a constant drip about him. And they going to come from every angle and source.
For the un-initiated, his core vote (c42%) cannot get him elected and there is every sign that those outside that core who signed on in 2016 are not going to vote for Trump in anywhere near the same numbers.
It is going to take a huge hit on Biden or his campaign for him to lose.
If you are on the GOP, start worrying about Congress.
It's imo one single revelation. Or rather a truth now dawning on an evergrowing number. That Donald Trump is unfit to be President.
The revelations about Trump are going to keep coming over the next few months, its going to be a constant drip about him. And they going to come from every angle and source.
For the un-initiated, his core vote (c42%) cannot get him elected and there is every sign that those outside that core who signed on in 2016 are not going to vote for Trump in anywhere near the same numbers.
It is going to take a huge hit on Biden or his campaign for him to lose.
If you are on the GOP, start worrying about Congress.
It's imo one single revelation. Or rather a truth now dawning on an evergrowing number. That Donald Trump is unfit to be President.
Anyone who did not realise that at least 5 years ago must be pretty dumb
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Star Trek is ******. Good luck finding any Klingon actors.
There's a rather significant difference in that good luck finding any Klingons offended by being stereotyped by how they're portrayed.
An Indian playing a role like Apu can tell the writers he objects to a scene because it is inappropriate or stereotyping in a way Azaria simply can't.
Bollox, he is paid to read a script and act a part, if he does not like it he should GTF and let someone who wants paid to get the part.
Bollocks.
Good actors always give feedback to the scripts they read. If the writers want to insist the words get read as written they can but good writers listen to good feedback.
My favourite example of an actor changing the script is a simple one from Empire Strikes Back when Leia says "I love you" to Han Solo and he says "I know". The script was originally that he'd say "I love you too" but Harrison Ford said that doesn't suit Solo and "I know" is a better line ... and I certainly was!
Harrison Ford changed one word, I am convinced. Sure he gave the director a good telling to about stereotyping him as a lovestruck teenager , told him him how inappropriate it was for Hans to speak like a big jessie boy and forced him to strike out those 3 words. You need to go and lie down in a dark corner.
No you do. It's not the end of the world to have actors give feedback, they do it regularly.
The Simpsons can easily afford to hire an Indian actor to voice Apu. They're not short of cash.
And it's not like it's South Park. If South Park wants someone to impersonate, badly, someone else that's a different matter. You watch that knowing it's trying to be offensive.
But what if the actor who voiced Apu was actually the best person at voicing Apu? What if there's an Indian guy who is the best at voicing west African characters? What if there is a West African actor who is weirdly brilliant at doing posh white women? Should they all be forbidden from doing the work they are good at?
Once you disallow one kind of voiceover, because of inappropriate racial background, then you surely, in the end, disallow them all.
That would be a shame because it would mean we'd lose Edna Mode from the Incredibles
The revelations about Trump are going to keep coming over the next few months, its going to be a constant drip about him. And they going to come from every angle and source.
For the un-initiated, his core vote (c42%) cannot get him elected and there is every sign that those outside that core who signed on in 2016 are not going to vote for Trump in anywhere near the same numbers.
It is going to take a huge hit on Biden or his campaign for him to lose.
If you are on the GOP, start worrying about Congress.
It's imo one single revelation. Or rather a truth now dawning on an evergrowing number. That Donald Trump is unfit to be President.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Star Trek is ******. Good luck finding any Klingon actors.
There's a rather significant difference in that good luck finding any Klingons offended by being stereotyped by how they're portrayed.
An Indian playing a role like Apu can tell the writers he objects to a scene because it is inappropriate or stereotyping in a way Azaria simply can't.
Bollox, he is paid to read a script and act a part, if he does not like it he should GTF and let someone who wants paid to get the part.
Bollocks.
Good actors always give feedback to the scripts they read. If the writers want to insist the words get read as written they can but good writers listen to good feedback.
My favourite example of an actor changing the script is a simple one from Empire Strikes Back when Leia says "I love you" to Han Solo and he says "I know". The script was originally that he'd say "I love you too" but Harrison Ford said that doesn't suit Solo and "I know" is a better line ... and I certainly was!
Harrison Ford changed one word, I am convinced. Sure he gave the director a good telling to about stereotyping him as a lovestruck teenager , told him him how inappropriate it was for Hans to speak like a big jessie boy and forced him to strike out those 3 words. You need to go and lie down in a dark corner.
No you do. It's not the end of the world to have actors give feedback, they do it regularly.
The Simpsons can easily afford to hire an Indian actor to voice Apu. They're not short of cash.
And it's not like it's South Park. If South Park wants someone to impersonate, badly, someone else that's a different matter. You watch that knowing it's trying to be offensive.
But what if the actor who voiced Apu was actually the best person at voicing Apu? What if there's an Indian guy who is the best at voicing west African characters? What if there is a West African actor who is weirdly brilliant at doing posh white women? Should they all be forbidden from doing the work they are good at?
Once you disallow one kind of voiceover, because of inappropriate racial background, then you surely, in the end, disallow them all.
That would be a shame because it would mean we'd lose Edna Mode from the Incredibles
It is the thin end of the wedge, only fat people can play fatties , only baldies can play baldies , only big ears , one legged , one arm , etc , they will need to change actors half way through films if they get injured and lose any body parts.
Elon Musk will get all the roles as the EvulRichGuyWithRockets...
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Star Trek is ******. Good luck finding any Klingon actors.
There's a rather significant difference in that good luck finding any Klingons offended by being stereotyped by how they're portrayed.
An Indian playing a role like Apu can tell the writers he objects to a scene because it is inappropriate or stereotyping in a way Azaria simply can't.
Bollox, he is paid to read a script and act a part, if he does not like it he should GTF and let someone who wants paid to get the part.
Bollocks.
Good actors always give feedback to the scripts they read. If the writers want to insist the words get read as written they can but good writers listen to good feedback.
My favourite example of an actor changing the script is a simple one from Empire Strikes Back when Leia says "I love you" to Han Solo and he says "I know". The script was originally that he'd say "I love you too" but Harrison Ford said that doesn't suit Solo and "I know" is a better line ... and I certainly was!
Harrison Ford changed one word, I am convinced. Sure he gave the director a good telling to about stereotyping him as a lovestruck teenager , told him him how inappropriate it was for Hans to speak like a big jessie boy and forced him to strike out those 3 words. You need to go and lie down in a dark corner.
No you do. It's not the end of the world to have actors give feedback, they do it regularly.
The Simpsons can easily afford to hire an Indian actor to voice Apu. They're not short of cash.
And it's not like it's South Park. If South Park wants someone to impersonate, badly, someone else that's a different matter. You watch that knowing it's trying to be offensive.
But what if the actor who voiced Apu was actually the best person at voicing Apu? What if there's an Indian guy who is the best at voicing west African characters? What if there is a West African actor who is weirdly brilliant at doing posh white women? Should they all be forbidden from doing the work they are good at?
Once you disallow one kind of voiceover, because of inappropriate racial background, then you surely, in the end, disallow them all.
That would be a shame because it would mean we'd lose Edna Mode from the Incredibles
It is the thin end of the wedge, only fat people can play fatties , only baldies can play baldies , only big ears , one legged , one arm , etc , they will need to change actors half way through films if they get injured and lose any body parts.
Nobody's suggesting that, you're making up nonsense! 🤦♂️
If the show is written and directed by white people and they want to get a black actor or actress to do the voiceover for a white character then there's no harm in that in my eyes. The difference is Apu isn't being written and directed by Indians who happen to have a white person voicing him. They've had no Indians involved with the script or character development and that was a weakness that has been identified and now they're addressing it.
The Elizabethans thought it was best to have men play female roles as it was inappropriate for a woman to be on the stage. We've moved on from that and it's not caused society to collapse. We'll move on from this and life will go on.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
Well, as most of the time it's the same person doing several characters it will mean a less diverse cast
Who cares whether it is one person doing all the voices as long as they are good at it and can make it sound real/believable. It has surely come to it when the complaints are about cartoons now. White people should be up in arms at being portrayed as thickos like Homer. It is called satire and these woke halfwits have a humour bypass. Time we had mandatory national service and get them in the infantry for a minimum 2 years, instead of poncing about at school pretending they are all there.
The main thing for me is that nowadays it is difficult to tell a white English persons voice from that of a Black or Asian English person from the same region, so as we have become more homogenised it should matter less which colour skin the voice actor has, but it seems to matter more
The issue with Apu is he isn't simply from Springfield who happens to be Indian. His background is an intrinsic part of the character being portrayed and has often been a crude stereotype which has caused offense where it probably wasn't the intention (again drawing a distinction between The Simpsons and South Park). An Indian actor playing Apu can portray the character differently to how Hank Azaria can. An Indian actor can get a script and suggest a rewrite of certain parts ... and the show is deliberately trying to be open to that.
It's not closing things down it's trying to engage more. If Apu just happened to be Indian but it wasn't really relevant to his character then that would be a different matter perhaps but it's not the case.
WOKE WOKE WOKE
Do you remember Phillip going through a libertarian phase at one point? I do, but perhaps I'm mistaken.
Immigrants and expats are different words with different meanings.
Yes, that's an interesting point which people on both sides of the immigration debate should keep in mind. I knew many expats in Switzerland, people who came for the experience and the well-paid jobs but had little interest in local culture. (I thought they were missing out on a great experience but that's by the by.) The equivalent is a Polish builder who comes over for a few years, sends money home, and always intends to go back.
Some genuinely decide (from the start or later) to settle, and then became real immigrants. Swiss reservations about migrants mostly related to these - they were always relaxed about seasonal workers turning up and helping out with agriculture and tourism, and foreign experts were fine too, but a change in the permanent population was seen as a non-trivial issue. In Britain, by contrast, resentment mostly arises towards the temporary workers - "they're taking our jobs", "they don't even try to mix". People who make it clear they want to settle gradually become part of the landscape.
Where do you stand on things like Denmark enforcing the speaking of Danish?
I'd encourage it (free classes etc.) but not make it mandatory. Many of my English colleagues in Switzerland would have been appalled if they'd been made to learn German, and although I thought they were dolts (and in some cases arrogant dolts) about that (some only spoke minimal German after 20 years in Basel) they were generally doing good jobs, paying taxes and behaving themselves, so really it was just their loss. I feel much the same about the large subset of the Chinese community in Britain who don't engage at all - I think it's a great pity, but they're not really doing any harm.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
It's more an illustration of the Wokeists' irremediable stupidity. The job of an actor is - by definition - to pretend to be something they are not, not to actually be that thing.
That's why film studios don't cast actual crime-fighting vigilante billionaires to play Batman, or mass-murdering psychopaths to play the Joker, they get an actor who can convince us that they are that character using their skill and talent.
Here's a proposal. Let's allow businesses and creators to make their own decisions in this area. They are well placed to do it.
... and let's close down any discussion of said decisons? That's the progressive way!
That was me contributing to the discussion. Close it down? As if.
Interesting, though, how the most ardent advocates of companies making free decisions in free markets seem to lose their enthusiasm for it when they dislike the decisions made.
The irrational zealotry of the wokaphobic antiwokerati.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
Well, as most of the time it's the same person doing several characters it will mean a less diverse cast
Who cares whether it is one person doing all the voices as long as they are good at it and can make it sound real/believable. It has surely come to it when the complaints are about cartoons now. White people should be up in arms at being portrayed as thickos like Homer. It is called satire and these woke halfwits have a humour bypass. Time we had mandatory national service and get them in the infantry for a minimum 2 years, instead of poncing about at school pretending they are all there.
The main thing for me is that nowadays it is difficult to tell a white English persons voice from that of a Black or Asian English person from the same region, so as we have become more homogenised it should matter less which colour skin the voice actor has, but it seems to matter more
The issue with Apu is he isn't simply from Springfield who happens to be Indian. His background is an intrinsic part of the character being portrayed and has often been a crude stereotype which has caused offense where it probably wasn't the intention (again drawing a distinction between The Simpsons and South Park). An Indian actor playing Apu can portray the character differently to how Hank Azaria can. An Indian actor can get a script and suggest a rewrite of certain parts ... and the show is deliberately trying to be open to that.
It's not closing things down it's trying to engage more. If Apu just happened to be Indian but it wasn't really relevant to his character then that would be a different matter perhaps but it's not the case.
WOKE WOKE WOKE
Do you remember Phillip going through a libertarian phase at one point? I do, but perhaps I'm mistaken.
I am Libertarian. I'm not suggesting The Simpsons should be banned from hiring Hank Azaria as Apu. I am suggesting they're making the right decision for their own reasons. That's a libertarian solution. People making their own choices not having them forced on them.
I've specifically and repeatedly said casting people in such roles should be allowed (eg for a show wanting to cause offence like South Park).
Libertarian doesn't mean not having beliefs, it means having people make their own choices. As The Simpsons are doing. They're choosing to do this nobody is making them do it.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Star Trek is ******. Good luck finding any Klingon actors.
There's a rather significant difference in that good luck finding any Klingons offended by being stereotyped by how they're portrayed.
An Indian playing a role like Apu can tell the writers he objects to a scene because it is inappropriate or stereotyping in a way Azaria simply can't.
Bollox, he is paid to read a script and act a part, if he does not like it he should GTF and let someone who wants paid to get the part.
Bollocks.
Good actors always give feedback to the scripts they read. If the writers want to insist the words get read as written they can but good writers listen to good feedback.
My favourite example of an actor changing the script is a simple one from Empire Strikes Back when Leia says "I love you" to Han Solo and he says "I know". The script was originally that he'd say "I love you too" but Harrison Ford said that doesn't suit Solo and "I know" is a better line ... and I certainly was!
Harrison Ford changed one word, I am convinced. Sure he gave the director a good telling to about stereotyping him as a lovestruck teenager , told him him how inappropriate it was for Hans to speak like a big jessie boy and forced him to strike out those 3 words. You need to go and lie down in a dark corner.
No you do. It's not the end of the world to have actors give feedback, they do it regularly.
The Simpsons can easily afford to hire an Indian actor to voice Apu. They're not short of cash.
And it's not like it's South Park. If South Park wants someone to impersonate, badly, someone else that's a different matter. You watch that knowing it's trying to be offensive.
But what if the actor who voiced Apu was actually the best person at voicing Apu? What if there's an Indian guy who is the best at voicing west African characters? What if there is a West African actor who is weirdly brilliant at doing posh white women? Should they all be forbidden from doing the work they are good at?
Once you disallow one kind of voiceover, because of inappropriate racial background, then you surely, in the end, disallow them all.
That would be a shame because it would mean we'd lose Edna Mode from the Incredibles
It is the thin end of the wedge, only fat people can play fatties , only baldies can play baldies , only big ears , one legged , one arm , etc , they will need to change actors half way through films if they get injured and lose any body parts.
Nobody's suggesting that, you're making up nonsense! 🤦♂️
If the show is written and directed by white people and they want to get a black actor or actress to do the voiceover for a white character then there's no harm in that in my eyes. The difference is Apu isn't being written and directed by Indians who happen to have a white person voicing him. They've had no Indians involved with the script or character development and that was a weakness that has been identified and now they're addressing it.
The Elizabethans thought it was best to have men play female roles as it was inappropriate for a woman to be on the stage. We've moved on from that and it's not caused society to collapse. We'll move on from this and life will go on.
Your brain is mush, you are happy to discriminate against white people but not against anyone else. I have heard and seen some bollox in my days but your knickers must be fankled so far up your bollox it has addled your brain.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
Well, as most of the time it's the same person doing several characters it will mean a less diverse cast
Who cares whether it is one person doing all the voices as long as they are good at it and can make it sound real/believable. It has surely come to it when the complaints are about cartoons now. White people should be up in arms at being portrayed as thickos like Homer. It is called satire and these woke halfwits have a humour bypass. Time we had mandatory national service and get them in the infantry for a minimum 2 years, instead of poncing about at school pretending they are all there.
The main thing for me is that nowadays it is difficult to tell a white English persons voice from that of a Black or Asian English person from the same region, so as we have become more homogenised it should matter less which colour skin the voice actor has, but it seems to matter more
The issue with Apu is he isn't simply from Springfield who happens to be Indian. His background is an intrinsic part of the character being portrayed and has often been a crude stereotype which has caused offense where it probably wasn't the intention (again drawing a distinction between The Simpsons and South Park). An Indian actor playing Apu can portray the character differently to how Hank Azaria can. An Indian actor can get a script and suggest a rewrite of certain parts ... and the show is deliberately trying to be open to that.
It's not closing things down it's trying to engage more. If Apu just happened to be Indian but it wasn't really relevant to his character then that would be a different matter perhaps but it's not the case.
Immigrants and expats are different words with different meanings.
Yes, that's an interesting point which people on both sides of the immigration debate should keep in mind. I knew many expats in Switzerland, people who came for the experience and the well-paid jobs but had little interest in local culture. (I thought they were missing out on a great experience but that's by the by.) The equivalent is a Polish builder who comes over for a few years, sends money home, and always intends to go back.
Some genuinely decide (from the start or later) to settle, and then became real immigrants. Swiss reservations about migrants mostly related to these - they were always relaxed about seasonal workers turning up and helping out with agriculture and tourism, and foreign experts were fine too, but a change in the permanent population was seen as a non-trivial issue. In Britain, by contrast, resentment mostly arises towards the temporary workers - "they're taking our jobs", "they don't even try to mix". People who make it clear they want to settle gradually become part of the landscape.
Where do you stand on things like Denmark enforcing the speaking of Danish?
I'd encourage it (free classes etc.) but not make it mandatory. Many of my English colleagues in Switzerland would have been appalled if they'd been made to learn German, and although I thought they were dolts (and in some cases arrogant dolts) about that (some only spoke minimal German after 20 years in Basel) they were generally doing good jobs, paying taxes and behaving themselves, so really it was just their loss. I feel much the same about the large subset of the Chinese community in Britain who don't engage at all - I think it's a great pity, but they're not really doing any harm.
From another point of view - a friend is learning Danish as part of the long, slow process to become a Danish citizen. He reckons it is a good thing - you are forced to understand the Danish and at least some of their history.
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education systen crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
Rather embarrassingly, I studied Humanities at Brighton University as a 35 year old. In retrospect it was like an undercover mission into the wokiest of wokesville, a glimpse into the future at what Corbynism/BLM would be like. Teachers boycotting Tescos because it was Israeli, legitimising anti Israel sentiment at every opportunity, teaching Marxism as the truth, telling stories of evil Tories, quoting The Guardian as Gospel, refusing to believe a word that had been written in a right of centre paper...
Not a million miles from 2015 Tory posters views on here in 2020!
This implies you stuck out like a sore thumb. And yet I bet you didn't. So how can you explain that contradiction?
I did stick out like a sore thumb, so there's no contradiction to explain
Ah OK, fair enough. No, there isn't a contradiction there then.
But there's another oddity. On this account you would be (quite literally) the only person in history to have been turned into a UKIP voter by a surfeit of education.
Not true. I know several.
Extreme Woke education DOES have this effect on some people. It makes them very anti-Woke. I've seen it with my own eyes.
Not many go the whole hog and become UKIPpers (tho a few do), quite a lot are turned into Conservatives
I see a lot of graduates, albeit mostly in the job interview process. And I've done this for twenty odd years now.
I have noticed certain changes. And I've asked people about some of the things in Universities.
Now, maybe it's because I only see economics, finance, business, science, engineering, computing and philosophy students (and not sociology and critical race theory), but I've not actually noticed much (if anything) in the way of wokeness. Sure, people are broadly left of centre, and sure the Brits are mostly pro-EU, but most seem otherwise fairly normal.
The only area where there seems to have been a massive change in attitudes in terms of gay rights. Everyone who's twenty years old has a dozen gay friends, while I probably knew just two or three openly gay people at University.
Perhaps I'm being over optimistic. But when I was at University, by far the loudest most vocal group was Socialist Worker. I'd get a dozen leaflets to events, mostly anti-American and anti-Zionist and anti-Conservative (not a lot of positive thinking going on really...). Any wall of posters was dominated by Socialist Worker. But like Twitter is was representative of... well... only a very small minority of students.
Now, I'm not actually at University. And I probably only see the 65% of students who want well paid jobs in finance, and not the 35% who'd rather not bathe and would instead rail against injustice they don't understand. But I'm struggling to see the world as having changed as much as you think.
Perhaps I simply have more young friends than you.
Incidentally, I agree with Stuartinromford that a LOT of political correctness (certainly in earlier incarnations) was and is simply good manners. When I was young I heard anti-gay jokes and I kind of tolerated them simply because every one seemed to tolerate them.
Now I would reject them entirely, and vocally. This is clearly a good thing.
However, to me it seems foolishly blinkered to deny that a righteous movement for civility towards and equality for minorities has taken on a more aggressive, overtly political tinge, which potentially endangers liberalism in the traditional sense.
This is not 'cultural marxism', but identity politics.
They merge one into the other in a kind of spectrum. Wokeness is possibly the best umbrella term
I agree with you that Cultural Marxism has been adopted by some alt-right loons a a bugbear, imagining a vast conspiracy of devious professor types, fanning out across the world to undermine the West.
BUT there really IS a kind of cultural Marxism, which seeks to radically change society, in a revolutionary Marxist way, but to do it via culture rather than economically: defund police, dismantle the nuclear family, close all prisons, etc - these are the stated aims of the Black Lives Matter movement, as an example:
Marxists have wanted to change culture before political structures since the early 1960s. A number of social aspects such as non-nuclear familes, multiculturalism, community sentences, for instance, have become largely normalised and widely accepted in the west as a result, without most of those doing the accepting also wanting a revolution.
The *form* that modern identity movements are taking is quite specific, and not just the result of the left, but partly the result of extremely individualised and atomised societies, and where, for capital, meaning also resides for capital in your advertising and marketing segment, by way of example. This is partly why corporations are becoming among the most strident about enforcing identitarian orthodoxy on issues such as trans and gay rights in public and on twitter, for instance.
I can't argue with much of that. Though please note I never claimed this started in the 60s, it dates back in part to the Frankfurt School (as I am sure you know) but there are other strands, like the cultural anthropology of Margaret Mead (who was under Boas)
And yes, Corporate Wokeism is definitely a thing. A very big thing.
Re: the Frankfurt School, I do think some of the core Brexiter constituency might be a bit confused to find out that many of the things they view as "grassroots British culture", such as British rock bands of the 1970s, for instance, would not even have existed on any large scale without the cultural influence of the Frankfurt School, and the resultant 1960s determination to locate autonomous, resistant cultures.
However, overall, it's good to locate some points of agreement, as I prefer to ultimately with all posters here.
Immigrants and expats are different words with different meanings.
Yes, that's an interesting point which people on both sides of the immigration debate should keep in mind. I knew many expats in Switzerland, people who came for the experience and the well-paid jobs but had little interest in local culture. (I thought they were missing out on a great experience but that's by the by.) The equivalent is a Polish builder who comes over for a few years, sends money home, and always intends to go back.
Some genuinely decide (from the start or later) to settle, and then became real immigrants. Swiss reservations about migrants mostly related to these - they were always relaxed about seasonal workers turning up and helping out with agriculture and tourism, and foreign experts were fine too, but a change in the permanent population was seen as a non-trivial issue. In Britain, by contrast, resentment mostly arises towards the temporary workers - "they're taking our jobs", "they don't even try to mix". People who make it clear they want to settle gradually become part of the landscape.
Where do you stand on things like Denmark enforcing the speaking of Danish?
I'd encourage it (free classes etc.) but not make it mandatory. Many of my English colleagues in Switzerland would have been appalled if they'd been made to learn German, and although I thought they were dolts (and in some cases arrogant dolts) about that (some only spoke minimal German after 20 years in Basel) they were generally doing good jobs, paying taxes and behaving themselves, so really it was just their loss. I feel much the same about the large subset of the Chinese community in Britain who don't engage at all - I think it's a great pity, but they're not really doing any harm.
Isn't Swiss German basically a different language to the German spoken in Germany?
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
Well, as most of the time it's the same person doing several characters it will mean a less diverse cast
Who cares whether it is one person doing all the voices as long as they are good at it and can make it sound real/believable. It has surely come to it when the complaints are about cartoons now. White people should be up in arms at being portrayed as thickos like Homer. It is called satire and these woke halfwits have a humour bypass. Time we had mandatory national service and get them in the infantry for a minimum 2 years, instead of poncing about at school pretending they are all there.
The main thing for me is that nowadays it is difficult to tell a white English persons voice from that of a Black or Asian English person from the same region, so as we have become more homogenised it should matter less which colour skin the voice actor has, but it seems to matter more
The issue with Apu is he isn't simply from Springfield who happens to be Indian. His background is an intrinsic part of the character being portrayed and has often been a crude stereotype which has caused offense where it probably wasn't the intention (again drawing a distinction between The Simpsons and South Park). An Indian actor playing Apu can portray the character differently to how Hank Azaria can. An Indian actor can get a script and suggest a rewrite of certain parts ... and the show is deliberately trying to be open to that.
It's not closing things down it's trying to engage more. If Apu just happened to be Indian but it wasn't really relevant to his character then that would be a different matter perhaps but it's not the case.
The problem with that is that The Simpsons whole schtick is exaggerations/crude stereotypes of characters. Dopey fat Americans/Lazy drunks/bitter spinsters etc etc
What we will end up with is all the funny characters being white and all the BAME ones being fun sponges that no one likes.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
Well, as most of the time it's the same person doing several characters it will mean a less diverse cast
Who cares whether it is one person doing all the voices as long as they are good at it and can make it sound real/believable. It has surely come to it when the complaints are about cartoons now. White people should be up in arms at being portrayed as thickos like Homer. It is called satire and these woke halfwits have a humour bypass. Time we had mandatory national service and get them in the infantry for a minimum 2 years, instead of poncing about at school pretending they are all there.
The main thing for me is that nowadays it is difficult to tell a white English persons voice from that of a Black or Asian English person from the same region, so as we have become more homogenised it should matter less which colour skin the voice actor has, but it seems to matter more
The issue with Apu is he isn't simply from Springfield who happens to be Indian. His background is an intrinsic part of the character being portrayed and has often been a crude stereotype which has caused offense where it probably wasn't the intention (again drawing a distinction between The Simpsons and South Park). An Indian actor playing Apu can portray the character differently to how Hank Azaria can. An Indian actor can get a script and suggest a rewrite of certain parts ... and the show is deliberately trying to be open to that.
It's not closing things down it's trying to engage more. If Apu just happened to be Indian but it wasn't really relevant to his character then that would be a different matter perhaps but it's not the case.
WOKE WOKE WOKE
Do you remember Phillip going through a libertarian phase at one point? I do, but perhaps I'm mistaken.
You could not make it up , a libertarian that discriminates and censors only white people.
Looking again at Shouty Woman berating Dignified Man by the Emancipation Statue, I wonder if one of the side-effects of the Frenzy will be a reordering of the US education systen crisis and the government is defunding Humanities in favour of STEM
Rather embarrassingly, I studied Humanities at Brighton University as a 35 year old. In retrospect it was like an undercover mission into the wokiest of wokesville, a glimpse into the future at what Corbynism/BLM would be like. Teachers boycotting Tescos because it was Israeli, legitimising anti Israel sentiment at every opportunity, teaching Marxism as the truth, telling stories of evil Tories, quoting The Guardian as Gospel, refusing to believe a word that had been written in a right of centre paper...
Not a million miles from 2015 Tory posters views on here in 2020!
This implies you stuck out like a sore thumb. And yet I bet you didn't. So how can you explain that contradiction?
I did stick out like a sore thumb, so there's no contradiction to explain
Ah OK, fair enough. No, there isn't a contradiction there then.
But there's another oddity. On this account you would be (quite literally) the only person in history to have been turned into a UKIP voter by a surfeit of education.
Not true. I know several.
Extreme Woke education DOES have this effect on some people. It makes them very anti-Woke. I've seen it with my own eyes.
Not many go the whole hog and become UKIPpers (tho a few do), quite a lot are turned into Conservatives
I see a lot of graduates, albeit mostly in the job interview process. And I've done this for twenty odd years now.
I have noticed certain changes. And I've asked people about some of the things in Universities.
Now, maybe it's because I only see economics, finance, business, science, engineering, computing and philosophy students (and not sociology and critical race theory), but I've not actually noticed much (if anything) in the way of wokeness. Sure, people are broadly left of centre, and sure the Brits are mostly pro-EU, but most seem otherwise fairly normal.
The only area where there seems to have been a massive change in attitudes in terms of gay rights. Everyone who's twenty years old has a dozen gay friends, while I probably knew just two or three openly gay people at University.
Perhaps I'm being over optimistic. But when I was at University, by far the loudest most vocal group was Socialist Worker. I'd get a dozen leaflets to events, mostly anti-American and anti-Zionist and anti-Conservative (not a lot of positive thinking going on really...). Any wall of posters was dominated by Socialist Worker. But like Twitter is was representative of... well... only a very small minority of students.
Now, I'm not actually at University. And I probably only see the 65% of students who want well paid jobs in finance, and not the 35% who'd rather not bathe and would instead rail against injustice they don't understand. But I'm struggling to see the world as having changed as much as you think.
Perhaps I simply have more young friends than you.
Incidentally, I agree with Stuartinromford that a LOT of political correctness (certainly in earlier incarnations) was and is simply good manners. When I was young I heard anti-gay jokes and I kind of tolerated them simply because every one seemed to tolerate them.
Now I would reject them entirely, and vocally. This is clearly a good thing.
However, to me it seems foolishly blinkered to deny that a righteous movement for civility towards and equality for minorities has taken on a more aggressive, overtly political tinge, which potentially endangers liberalism in the traditional sense.
But there's a very effective, very conservative and Conservative playbook in this situation.
Embrace the necessary change, squeeze out the Marxism, tint it blue if possible.
Like with gay marriage.
So for the statues "let us have a conversation about where to put these statues, how to narrate them properly for the future so we can acknowledge the good and bad in all of us yada yada..." In other words, the sort of thing that ought to have happened in Bristol years ago, but didn't.
The trouble with that approach is that you don't get to play culture warrior yourself. There are people- including the government- playing with forces they don't understand.
There is almost no path to victory for Trump if he loses Florida. A Fox News survey released Thursday found Biden ahead there by 9 points. That’s a stunning margin for a state that rarely turns on more than 1 or 2 points.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
Well, as most of the time it's the same person doing several characters it will mean a less diverse cast
Who cares whether it is one person doing all the voices as long as they are good at it and can make it sound real/believable. It has surely come to it when the complaints are about cartoons now. White people should be up in arms at being portrayed as thickos like Homer. It is called satire and these woke halfwits have a humour bypass. Time we had mandatory national service and get them in the infantry for a minimum 2 years, instead of poncing about at school pretending they are all there.
The main thing for me is that nowadays it is difficult to tell a white English persons voice from that of a Black or Asian English person from the same region, so as we have become more homogenised it should matter less which colour skin the voice actor has, but it seems to matter more
The issue with Apu is he isn't simply from Springfield who happens to be Indian. His background is an intrinsic part of the character being portrayed and has often been a crude stereotype which has caused offense where it probably wasn't the intention (again drawing a distinction between The Simpsons and South Park). An Indian actor playing Apu can portray the character differently to how Hank Azaria can. An Indian actor can get a script and suggest a rewrite of certain parts ... and the show is deliberately trying to be open to that.
It's not closing things down it's trying to engage more. If Apu just happened to be Indian but it wasn't really relevant to his character then that would be a different matter perhaps but it's not the case.
WOKE WOKE WOKE
Do you remember Phillip going through a libertarian phase at one point? I do, but perhaps I'm mistaken.
I am Libertarian. I'm not suggesting The Simpsons should be banned from hiring Hank Azaria as Apu. I am suggesting they're making the right decision for their own reasons. That's a libertarian solution. People making their own choices not having them forced on them.
I've specifically and repeatedly said casting people in such roles should be allowed (eg for a show wanting to cause offence like South Park).
Libertarian doesn't mean not having beliefs, it means having people make their own choices. As The Simpsons are doing. They're choosing to do this nobody is making them do it.
Haha oooh no. no outside influence at all!
Premier League footballer's who decide not to do the BLM pose before a match would get just as many sponsorship deals as those who toe the line too, I suppose.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Yes, I saw that. Is it another scandalous caving in to the Wokerati that makes one fear for the future of all we hold dear?
Well, as most of the time it's the same person doing several characters it will mean a less diverse cast
But we can live with it?
Oh for Heaven's sake, get a grip. You all sound like those people in the 70s/80s leaving the country in case being gay was made compulsory.
The world is improving, people are being less tolerant of injustice and in 5 years time everyone will wonder what the fuss is about.
It is called progress
Very well said. The amount of knickers-in-twist about this stuff - most of it perfectly reasonable and benign - is quite remarkable. To me, it indicates some very odd thinking.
"US animated comedy series The Simpsons will no longer use white actors for the voices of characters from other ethnic backgrounds, the show's producers say."
Star Trek is ******. Good luck finding any Klingon actors.
There's a rather significant difference in that good luck finding any Klingons offended by being stereotyped by how they're portrayed.
An Indian playing a role like Apu can tell the writers he objects to a scene because it is inappropriate or stereotyping in a way Azaria simply can't.
Bollox, he is paid to read a script and act a part, if he does not like it he should GTF and let someone who wants paid to get the part.
Bollocks.
Good actors always give feedback to the scripts they read. If the writers want to insist the words get read as written they can but good writers listen to good feedback.
My favourite example of an actor changing the script is a simple one from Empire Strikes Back when Leia says "I love you" to Han Solo and he says "I know". The script was originally that he'd say "I love you too" but Harrison Ford said that doesn't suit Solo and "I know" is a better line ... and I certainly was!
Harrison Ford changed one word, I am convinced. Sure he gave the director a good telling to about stereotyping him as a lovestruck teenager , told him him how inappropriate it was for Hans to speak like a big jessie boy and forced him to strike out those 3 words. You need to go and lie down in a dark corner.
No you do. It's not the end of the world to have actors give feedback, they do it regularly.
The Simpsons can easily afford to hire an Indian actor to voice Apu. They're not short of cash.
And it's not like it's South Park. If South Park wants someone to impersonate, badly, someone else that's a different matter. You watch that knowing it's trying to be offensive.
But what if the actor who voiced Apu was actually the best person at voicing Apu? What if there's an Indian guy who is the best at voicing west African characters? What if there is a West African actor who is weirdly brilliant at doing posh white women? Should they all be forbidden from doing the work they are good at?
Once you disallow one kind of voiceover, because of inappropriate racial background, then you surely, in the end, disallow them all.
That would be a shame because it would mean we'd lose Edna Mode from the Incredibles
It is the thin end of the wedge, only fat people can play fatties , only baldies can play baldies , only big ears , one legged , one arm , etc , they will need to change actors half way through films if they get injured and lose any body parts.
Nobody's suggesting that, you're making up nonsense! 🤦♂️
If the show is written and directed by white people and they want to get a black actor or actress to do the voiceover for a white character then there's no harm in that in my eyes. The difference is Apu isn't being written and directed by Indians who happen to have a white person voicing him. They've had no Indians involved with the script or character development and that was a weakness that has been identified and now they're addressing it.
The Elizabethans thought it was best to have men play female roles as it was inappropriate for a woman to be on the stage. We've moved on from that and it's not caused society to collapse. We'll move on from this and life will go on.
Your brain is mush, you are happy to discriminate against white people but not against anyone else. I have heard and seen some bollox in my days but your knickers must be fankled so far up your bollox it has addled your brain.
Acting has always been a field with discrimination in it. When was the last time you saw a field good Christmas movie where Santa was played by a black woman?
If a company said they were hiring for a white character and were only looking to hire white actors for the role I wouldn't blink an eyelid at that. Their choice.
Comments
It's good sometimes just to stop and think how much progress we have made. I wonder how much more progress we will make in the next thirty years? It's exciting to think about.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1276868868359815169?s=19
Come on you Trump fluffers, explain how this will be good for Trump?
Whats worse, actual slavery or some old statue with links to a practice civilised nations banned centuries ago?
Brexit is identity politics.
Malcolm as the voice of reason in these febrile times
I am off for a lie down😂
Hence comparing it to the difference between borrow and lend: if I lend you £10 then you have borrowed £10 from me. You haven't lent £10 (though some people do use the word lend to mean borrow and it makes my teeth grate). Different words mean different things.
There is normally one other distinction as to which word is used.
Will admit I’ve never heard of her.
An Indian playing a role like Apu can tell the writers he objects to a scene because it is inappropriate or stereotyping in a way Azaria simply can't.
That's why film studios don't cast actual crime-fighting vigilante billionaires to play Batman, or mass-murdering psychopaths to play the Joker, they get an actor who can convince us that they are that character using their skill and talent.
Well played Keir, well played.
When I go on holiday to Spain I am not an expat , I am a holidaymaker/visitor or whatever.
PS: As I said earlier it is bollox made up so they don't have to call themselves immigrants, they are so insecure they have to make up names so that they can feel superior to your commoner every day immigrant , try to make themselves feel superior.
cheat atplay golf and pretend to be a businessman again.Is it fine for non-whites to voice white characters, I wonder?
The *form* that modern identity movements are taking is quite specific, and not just the result of the left, but partly the result of extremely individualised and atomised societies, and where, for capital, meaning also resides for capital in your advertising and marketing segment, by way of example. This is partly why corporations are becoming among the most strident about enforcing identitarian orthodoxy on issues such as trans and gay rights in public and on twitter, for instance.
And yes, this generation of young people has 'normalised' gay rights - being gay now is barely worthy of comment. I'd also maintain that positive progress has been made on misogyny. Many of the 1970s/80s far left SWP type groups were pretty misogynistic.
Good actors always give feedback to the scripts they read. If the writers want to insist the words get read as written they can but good writers listen to good feedback.
My favourite example of an actor changing the script is a simple one from Empire Strikes Back when Leia says "I love you" to Han Solo and he says "I know". The script was originally that he'd say "I love you too" but Harrison Ford said that doesn't suit Solo and "I know" is a better line ... and I certainly was!
What might a Biden landslide mean for the Senate?
Tackle actual slavery
Its almost like slavery isn't actually the issue for some of the organisers.
Imagine that
What are our immigration arrangements with Qo’noS? Don’t tell me Priti Patel hasn’t sorted something out yet.
You need to go and lie down in a dark corner.
The world is improving, people are being less tolerant of injustice and in 5 years time everyone will wonder what the fuss is about.
It is called progress
For the un-initiated, his core vote (c42%) cannot get him elected and there is every sign that those outside that core who signed on in 2016 are not going to vote for Trump in anywhere near the same numbers.
It is going to take a huge hit on Biden or his campaign for him to lose.
If you are on the GOP, start worrying about Congress.
"Told y'all he's always the smartest guy in the room. Threw it to sucker the suckers. Ha!"
And on that note, I must be off. Play nicely, everyone.
My theory is that it is Lady Glugalot, who along with Lord Glugalot played by our hero himself, will star in a new Frankie Howerd tribute film "Up the Vineyard" by Sean T Productions.
The Simpsons can easily afford to hire an Indian actor to voice Apu. They're not short of cash.
And it's not like it's South Park. If South Park wants someone to impersonate, badly, someone else that's a different matter. You watch that knowing it's trying to be offensive.
Sufficiently generic that they will only get it back by buying it.
After they have looked up where it is, etc, they tend to come back with "It's not real slavery, they are actually part of the family" etc. etc.
It's interesting when a Corbynite Camdenite suddenly goes all NeoConfederate.
Nice.
It's not closing things down it's trying to engage more. If Apu just happened to be Indian but it wasn't really relevant to his character then that would be a different matter perhaps but it's not the case.
As did Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam.
Orson Wells wrote the "Cuckoo clock" speech from the Third Man.
Rutger Hauer wrote the "Tears in the Rain" monologue at the end of Blade Runner.
Jack Nicholson got the director to change the whole emphasis of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest to make his character the spark for the rebellion.
Many of the greatest lines in cinema history came from changes suggested by the actors not the writers or directors.
Embrace the necessary change, squeeze out the Marxism, tint it blue if possible.
Like with gay marriage.
So for the statues "let us have a conversation about where to put these statues, how to narrate them properly for the future so we can acknowledge the good and bad in all of us yada yada..." In other words, the sort of thing that ought to have happened in Bristol years ago, but didn't.
The trouble with that approach is that you don't get to play culture warrior yourself. There are people- including the government- playing with forces they don't understand.
What's he going to say if he actually keeps his seat thanks to Keir?
If the show is written and directed by white people and they want to get a black actor or actress to do the voiceover for a white character then there's no harm in that in my eyes. The difference is Apu isn't being written and directed by Indians who happen to have a white person voicing him. They've had no Indians involved with the script or character development and that was a weakness that has been identified and now they're addressing it.
The Elizabethans thought it was best to have men play female roles as it was inappropriate for a woman to be on the stage. We've moved on from that and it's not caused society to collapse. We'll move on from this and life will go on.
Interesting, though, how the most ardent advocates of companies making free decisions in free markets seem to lose their enthusiasm for it when they dislike the decisions made.
The irrational zealotry of the wokaphobic antiwokerati.
I've specifically and repeatedly said casting people in such roles should be allowed (eg for a show wanting to cause offence like South Park).
Libertarian doesn't mean not having beliefs, it means having people make their own choices. As The Simpsons are doing. They're choosing to do this nobody is making them do it.
However, overall, it's good to locate some points of agreement, as I prefer to ultimately with all posters here.
What we will end up with is all the funny characters being white and all the BAME ones being fun sponges that no one likes.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/504790-where-things-stand-in-13-battleground-states
Premier League footballer's who decide not to do the BLM pose before a match would get just as many sponsorship deals as those who toe the line too, I suppose.
If a company said they were hiring for a white character and were only looking to hire white actors for the role I wouldn't blink an eyelid at that. Their choice.