I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
You should have seen how angry racists got when black characters turned up in BBC family entertainment Merlin.
Their suspension of disbelief in wizards and dragons was totally shattered by black people being knights.
Reminded me of this.
I've often wondered if all the medieval european artists, and people who viewed their work, genuinely thought it the case that Jesus was not just white but very pale, or if they considered it likely he was not but they used people as existed around them as templates.
Just how dark-skinned is your average Levantine though? Somewhere in between those two colours of Cheerios is my guess.
The best TV drama of 2020, without question. Superb in every department. Well done that man
Although, 2020 has on the whole been particularly shit on tv front.
I very much enjoyed “Plot Against America”. I feared it would be cliched tripe, but it was saved by a David Simon script and great acting.
I am 4/5 the way through Steve McQueen’s Little Axe movies.
The latter is an outstanding artistic achievement. The New York Times placed every single one of the five movies on their Best Films of 2020 list.
I forgot I had watched that, and not because it I though it forgettable!
We loved The Queens Gambit, & Normal People too. I also discovered Detectorists and The Crown, so quite an enjoyable tv year
Queen’s Gambit was excellent, but not perfect. (Slightly hackneyed first episode!).
The Crown is mostly high class fluff, but utterly addictive. I actually thought this season the best of them all so far, and the Charles-Diana story very well done.
I saw the first few episodes of the Detectorists and I know it has its fans, but it seems to be a bit of a Last of the Summer Wine rehash to me.
Mrs America is surely worth watching for PB fans. Cate Blanchett is worth the price of admission alone; it’s a wonderful ensemble piece and Tracey Ullman has a great part too.
I May Destroy You feels amazingly fresh and authentic but maybe a bit self-indulgent and too long?
I haven’t seen “The Third Day” with Jude Law, set on Osea, but hear good things. Apparently the serial killer “I’ll be Gone in the Dark” was also excellent.
There were new series of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Better Call Saul, and Ozark this year.
I bring bad news: The Third Day is terrible. Jude Law is not a great actor, but even by his lowish standards, the final episode is cringingly awful.
That’s annoying, because one thing I haven’t seen in a while is a proper thriller. We seem to have forgotten, as a culture, how to make them.
Bodyguard is really rather good. Not genius, but a highly watchable thriller, nonetheless
The Third Day has so many problems it is hard to know where to start. It was a queasy remake of the Wicker Man mixed with Broadchurch, like mixing offal with ice cream.
Hah. Even as I wrote that analogy I thought "I bet someone has actually tried to deliver that mixture".
It still sounds utterly disgusting.
I learnt not to dismiss apparently weird combinations, after being served rabbit in chocolate sauce with pine nuts in a Skye cottage many yerars ago. (A bitter sauce, actually.)
Chocolate with meat is a different thing. The Aztecs perfected it. Mole sauce. Can be delish
If that is your taste you should try rabot in borough market if you havent already.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
I would say that if the race of the character isn't important to the story, then the race of the actor doesn't matter.
I'd say the same on something like gender. People would (and probably did) disagree, but it never seemed to me that being a man was that central to the character of The Doctor in Doctor Who, nor race. Though as it is a very British show, they'd at least need to have a british accent even though the character is an alien. But what about a character like James Bond? I don't think race matters a jot there, but possibly being a man is a bit more important to the fundamentals of that character.
Certainly in a lot of modern settings it doesn't seem like it would matter much.
I dont really know a lot about James Bond, except that the extreme left at Brighton Uni HATE the character! But cant see how it would make much difference what race he was.
The difference is that a lot of black characters in majority white films are defined by their race, so only black actors can play them, whereas the same isnt true for the white characters, so it doesnt about matter the race of the actor. You cant really limit the job opportunities of non white actors by only allowing them to play 20th or 21st Century characters, or oppressed ones
Certainly not, and you can easily see why non-white actors in this country might find it annoying if too many period dramas are what is getting made for example, as it really limits their opportunities unless you do decide to throw authenticity out the window (which is a valid artistic choice to go with).
It also makes it understandable why people are more sensitivity about a character which had been non-white in one medium or previous version being played by a white actor, even if the race really is not critical to that character at all, given the more limited opportunities for a lot of roles, than they would be about characters (including historical ones) who were white being played by non-white actors.
But race and gender can still be important when casting depending on type of movie. You can go stupid with it though, like Samuel L Jackson initially criticising the casting of a British man in Get Out for not sharing the american experience of the character.
There's been quite a few pieces on opportunities for asian actors in Hollywood. I'm surprised we didn't get a glut of copycat movies after the success of Crazy Rich Asians (which was a fun movie).
Time to bring the drawbridge up on the M1 and the A1.
Would it make more sense to move patients to the Nightingale and borrow staff from other areas if possible rather than taking the London variant northwards?
Tier 5 soon...
Nightingales cannot support ICU level care. Fortunately intubated patients are low risk of transmission because of the filters in the system, and quality of PPE available.
Worth noting that such mutual aid has long been part of practice. We took some patients from the NW and Yorkshire earlier in the year in our ICU in Leicester, and get national referrals for ECMO.
My bro is COO for a London Trust and he tells me that the PPE is so good that not a single doctor or nurse involved in Covid treatment in his hospitals has caught the disease on duty since the pandemic began.
Also of the firm view that the Nightingales were a PR driven waste of resource.
Management of a London hospital doesn’t like anything that suggests he couldn’t cope?
If you think Britain is mismanaging Covid, this Guardian thread reveals that three days after vaccinations began in France, they have, so far, immunized..... 100 people.
That's not a typo. One hundred. 33 people a day. Should have full herd immunity just before the sun turns into a Red Giant, devouring the solar system.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
You should have seen how angry racists got when black characters turned up in BBC family entertainment Merlin.
Their suspension of disbelief in wizards and dragons was totally shattered by black people being knights.
Reminded me of this.
I've often wondered if all the medieval european artists, and people who viewed their work, genuinely thought it the case that Jesus was not just white but very pale, or if they considered it likely he was not but they used people as existed around them as templates.
Just how dark-skinned is your average Levantine though? Somewhere in between those two colours of Cheerios is my guess.
I don't think it was meant to be an entirely scientific display while still being able to make that point. Your average white person may not be as pale as the lighter cheerio either.
Time to bring the drawbridge up on the M1 and the A1.
Would it make more sense to move patients to the Nightingale and borrow staff from other areas if possible rather than taking the London variant northwards?
Tier 5 soon...
Nightingales cannot support ICU level care. Fortunately intubated patients are low risk of transmission because of the filters in the system, and quality of PPE available.
Worth noting that such mutual aid has long been part of practice. We took some patients from the NW and Yorkshire earlier in the year in our ICU in Leicester, and get national referrals for ECMO.
My bro is COO for a London Trust and he tells me that the PPE is so good that not a single doctor or nurse involved in Covid treatment in his hospitals has caught the disease on duty since the pandemic began.
Also of the firm view that the Nightingales were a PR driven waste of resource.
Management of a London hospital doesn’t like anything that suggests he couldn’t cope?
If you think Britain is mismanaging Covid, this Guardian thread reveals that three days after vaccinations began in France, they have, so far, immunized..... 100 people.
That's not a typo. One hundred. 33 people a day. Should have full herd immunity just before the sun turns into a Red Giant, devouring the solar system.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
You should have seen how angry racists got when black characters turned up in BBC family entertainment Merlin.
Their suspension of disbelief in wizards and dragons was totally shattered by black people being knights.
Reminded me of this.
I've often wondered if all the medieval european artists, and people who viewed their work, genuinely thought it the case that Jesus was not just white but very pale, or if they considered it likely he was not but they used people as existed around them as templates.
Looking at depictions of Christ around the world shows that "God Created Man in His Own Image" gets reflected back on depictions of Christ right down to contemporary clothing choices at times.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
If it is all just meant to be a bit of fun I don't think it matters, since authenticity of race won't add anything, but if it is meant to be serious and weighty then a really incongrous element might feel strange. Not that films or tv shows need a warning about lack of historical accuracy, but if it is not the point to comment, and it is meant to be serious, I can understand it causing a few head tilts.
That Mary Queen of Scots movie was very serious (though David Tennant was hilarious as John Knox) and had a few non-white actors in roles that seems improbable, and it didn't hurt the film exactly, but given its 'this is a serious historical film, no really' feel that it seemed to be going for, it did make me wonder why it went for that approach, and why not go further if the point was 'we don't care about race when casting this film'.
This is why I prefer fantasy fiction - sure people usually go for a more racist approach nations and races being entirely separate and genuinely distinct even beyond history, if you want a society to be racially diverse or tolerant of race and sexuality and the like, you can, and no one can complain about inaccuracy.
Hopefully Gal Gadot will still get to play Cleopatra in that movie she is trying to make. Mostly because she is Gal Gadot.
There is no reason besides ignorance and antisemitism for Gal Gadot not to play Cleopatra.
The second time it was reported on the BBC, when she was defending herself, it did seem to be struggling to find people wanting to be outraged, as it came down to 'But there is mystery over the identity of her mother, leading to speculation that Cleopatra may have been of mixed heritage'.
Doesnt seem able to sustain a twitterstorm sufficient to prevent production when looking for a whitewashing complaint, if even those complainaing have to rely on speculation. So it will probably be fine. 'Outrage' didn't stop Naomi Scott playing Princess Jasmine in Aladdin.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
They did with The Hollow Crown casting black actors and actresses in roles such as Edward, 2nd Duke of York and Margaret of Anjou.
They thought lets cast good actors and actresses in the role and let people deal with it and they did.
I get that, and I generally approve. But there is a point where it becomes utterly surreal, and maybe morally wrong.
Not least because there WERE some black people in late Georgian London: but they were imported servants, and freed slaves, and the like. they certainly weren't dukes from ancient families.
So, to me, it seems to be belittling and trivialising the difficult lived experience of black people in Britain in the early 19th century.
Also sailors, but they were also on the margin of London society - literally so also as they would have been concentrated in Docklands. Which reinforces your point.
Though there were a few imported children from West Indian planter/settler families, middle class and up.
Exactly. Early 19th century Britain was a racist society. No question (just like every other imperialist western nation at the time). This was before the Abolition of Slavery. In 1813 Britain was actively trading black people like they were farm animals.
And yet here is a series which says Oh forget all that, the reality is that Great Britain in 1813 was racially mixed and harmonious and there were lots of ancient black families living in Mayfair with dukedoms.
The sensitive viewer can, I think, be forgiven a little confusion.
Interestingly, the show is produced by Shonda Rhimes, the producer creator and show runner of Greys Anatomy - one of the best American TV series ever, in terms of sustaining interest over multiple years. Shonda Rhimes is black.
I wonder if this show would have been made this way if the producer was white? It is all rather bewildering.
Looking at depictions of Christ around the world shows that "God Created Man in His Own Image" gets reflected back on depictions of Christ right down to contemporary clothing choices at times.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
You should have seen how angry racists got when black characters turned up in BBC family entertainment Merlin.
Their suspension of disbelief in wizards and dragons was totally shattered by black people being knights.
Reminded me of this.
I've often wondered if all the medieval european artists, and people who viewed their work, genuinely thought it the case that Jesus was not just white but very pale, or if they considered it likely he was not but they used people as existed around them as templates.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
Generally, I find this sort of thing irritating. It distracts from versimilitude, which is what I crave.
I hope this doesn’t make me a screaming racist.
I guess, by the sounds of it though, Bridgerton is not really striving for authenticity, it’s just a visual spectacle. In which case, who cares?
Who are your favourite Othellos?
The RSC's 2015 production had a superb black Othello, Hugh Quarshie, but brilliantly, a black Iago too - Lucian Msamati. That turned alot of underlying assumptions about race on its head.
I enjoyed that new comedy the BBC was showing earlier in the year. You had that guy who used to present HIGNFY giving a satirical monologue focusing on current events and then him and a couple of guests would do some improv based on topics thrown out by folk via video link.
The catch phrases were a bit lame, mind.
I still crack up at "Next slide, please!". It's comedy gold! Up there with "where's me washboard?"
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
I would say that if the race of the character isn't important to the story, then the race of the actor doesn't matter. You cant have white actors playing slaves in the Deep South, or MLK, but conceivably they could play the role of a black character where their race isn't part of the story... I cant think of one though! So in my eyes, having black Edwardian Londoners doesn't really matter, even if there weren't really any, but it would be weird if their skin colour were mentioned as part of the story
Spot on.
Like you I can't think of a "story involving a black person where their race isn't relevant", I presume that is because we are a white-default country so any story/incident/history we know involving a black person is _beacuse_ it involves a black person interacting with white people in exceptional circumstances.
If we all lived in Nigeria I'm sure we'd be struggling to think of a story involving a white person where their whitness wasn't vitally important to the situation.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
You should have seen how angry racists got when black characters turned up in BBC family entertainment Merlin.
Their suspension of disbelief in wizards and dragons was totally shattered by black people being knights.
Reminded me of this.
I've often wondered if all the medieval european artists, and people who viewed their work, genuinely thought it the case that Jesus was not just white but very pale, or if they considered it likely he was not but they used people as existed around them as templates.
Looking at depictions of Christ around the world shows that "God Created Man in His Own Image" gets reflected back on depictions of Christ right down to contemporary clothing choices at times.
I hope that has stopped. Even as a non-believer I'm not sure I could accept a Jesus in skinny jeans in a modern portrayal.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
You should have seen how angry racists got when black characters turned up in BBC family entertainment Merlin.
Their suspension of disbelief in wizards and dragons was totally shattered by black people being knights.
Reminded me of this.
I've often wondered if all the medieval european artists, and people who viewed their work, genuinely thought it the case that Jesus was not just white but very pale, or if they considered it likely he was not but they used people as existed around them as templates.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
They did with The Hollow Crown casting black actors and actresses in roles such as Edward, 2nd Duke of York and Margaret of Anjou.
They thought lets cast good actors and actresses in the role and let people deal with it and they did.
I get that, and I generally approve. But there is a point where it becomes utterly surreal, and maybe morally wrong.
Not least because there WERE some black people in late Georgian London: but they were imported servants, and freed slaves, and the like. they certainly weren't dukes from ancient families.
So, to me, it seems to be belittling and trivialising the difficult lived experience of black people in Britain in the early 19th century.
Also sailors, but they were also on the margin of London society - literally so also as they would have been concentrated in Docklands. Which reinforces your point.
Though there were a few imported children from West Indian planter/settler families, middle class and up.
Exactly. Early 19th century Britain was a racist society. No question (just like every other imperialist western nation at the time). This was before the Abolition of Slavery. In 1813 Britain was actively trading black people like they were farm animals.
And yet here is a series which says Oh forget all that, the reality is that Great Britain in 1813 was racially mixed and harmonious and there were lots of ancient black families living in Mayfair with dukedoms.
The sensitive viewer can, I think, be forgiven a little confusion.
Interestingly, the show is produced by Shonda Rhimes, the producer creator and show runner of Greys Anatomy - one of the best American TV series ever, in terms of sustaining interest over multiple years. Shonda Rhimes is black.
I wonder if this show would have been made this way if the producer was white? It is all rather bewildering.
No, it’s just a bit alt-history. (As I presume are the books, though I’m not familiar with them.) Did you not pick that up ?
Time to bring the drawbridge up on the M1 and the A1.
Would it make more sense to move patients to the Nightingale and borrow staff from other areas if possible rather than taking the London variant northwards?
Tier 5 soon...
Nightingales cannot support ICU level care. Fortunately intubated patients are low risk of transmission because of the filters in the system, and quality of PPE available.
Worth noting that such mutual aid has long been part of practice. We took some patients from the NW and Yorkshire earlier in the year in our ICU in Leicester, and get national referrals for ECMO.
My bro is COO for a London Trust and he tells me that the PPE is so good that not a single doctor or nurse involved in Covid treatment in his hospitals has caught the disease on duty since the pandemic began.
Also of the firm view that the Nightingales were a PR driven waste of resource.
Management of a London hospital doesn’t like anything that suggests he couldn’t cope?
No. Something less psychologically interesting. The pure objective truth.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
You should have seen how angry racists got when black characters turned up in BBC family entertainment Merlin.
Their suspension of disbelief in wizards and dragons was totally shattered by black people being knights.
Reminded me of this.
I've often wondered if all the medieval european artists, and people who viewed their work, genuinely thought it the case that Jesus was not just white but very pale, or if they considered it likely he was not but they used people as existed around them as templates.
by Millais, which outraged Charles Dickens because it made Jesus look like a jew.
Blimey, he didn't hold back
Charles Dickens accused Millais of portraying Mary as an alcoholic who looks '...so hideous in her ugliness that ... she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin-shop in England'.
Critics also objected to the portrayal of Jesus, one complaining that it was "painful" to see "the youthful Saviour" depicted as "a red-headed Jew boy"
I'm really not one to suggest society is on some path of continuous improvement, or that we cannot devolve, but in this area at least we are, despite ongoing difficulties, definitely doing a bit better.
Depicting the family of christ as a poor family, a poor jewish family no less? The horror!
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
They did with The Hollow Crown casting black actors and actresses in roles such as Edward, 2nd Duke of York and Margaret of Anjou.
They thought lets cast good actors and actresses in the role and let people deal with it and they did.
I get that, and I generally approve. But there is a point where it becomes utterly surreal, and maybe morally wrong.
Not least because there WERE some black people in late Georgian London: but they were imported servants, and freed slaves, and the like. they certainly weren't dukes from ancient families.
So, to me, it seems to be belittling and trivialising the difficult lived experience of black people in Britain in the early 19th century.
Also sailors, but they were also on the margin of London society - literally so also as they would have been concentrated in Docklands. Which reinforces your point.
Though there were a few imported children from West Indian planter/settler families, middle class and up.
Exactly. Early 19th century Britain was a racist society. No question (just like every other imperialist western nation at the time). This was before the Abolition of Slavery. In 1813 Britain was actively trading black people like they were farm animals.
And yet here is a series which says Oh forget all that, the reality is that Great Britain in 1813 was racially mixed and harmonious and there were lots of ancient black families living in Mayfair with dukedoms.
The sensitive viewer can, I think, be forgiven a little confusion.
Interestingly, the show is produced by Shonda Rhimes, the producer creator and show runner of Greys Anatomy - one of the best American TV series ever, in terms of sustaining interest over multiple years. Shonda Rhimes is black.
I wonder if this show would have been made this way if the producer was white? It is all rather bewildering.
No, it’s just a bit alt-history. (As I presume are the books, though I’m not familiar with them.) Did you not pick that up ?
I don't think it is alt-history. Have you watched it? In many ways it makes a huge (and expensive) effort to be historically accurate.
No news on the Oxford vaccine - weren't the FT and Torygraph promising approval today?
My theory is that the AZ vaccine will be announced tomorrow then Boris Johnson will announce as part of the tier review due tomorrow we're all moving to tier 42 but we'll have everyone vaccinated by May so don't worry there's light at the end of the tunnel.
Are you saying Level 42 will be compulsory?
Just when you thought Covid couldn't take us any lower....
I agree but it was interesting to hear from Rashford who had noticed that the defender was suffering from a bit of cramp and wanted to run at him. He's a clever lad.
I enjoyed that new comedy the BBC was showing earlier in the year. You had that guy who used to present HIGNFY giving a satirical monologue focusing on current events and then him and a couple of guests would do some improv based on topics thrown out by folk via video link.
The catch phrases were a bit lame, mind.
I still crack up at "Next slide, please!". It's comedy gold! Up there with "where's me washboard?"
Got a bit samey though. No difference, one series to the next....
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
They did with The Hollow Crown casting black actors and actresses in roles such as Edward, 2nd Duke of York and Margaret of Anjou.
They thought lets cast good actors and actresses in the role and let people deal with it and they did.
I get that, and I generally approve. But there is a point where it becomes utterly surreal, and maybe morally wrong.
Not least because there WERE some black people in late Georgian London: but they were imported servants, and freed slaves, and the like. they certainly weren't dukes from ancient families.
So, to me, it seems to be belittling and trivialising the difficult lived experience of black people in Britain in the early 19th century.
Also sailors, but they were also on the margin of London society - literally so also as they would have been concentrated in Docklands. Which reinforces your point.
Though there were a few imported children from West Indian planter/settler families, middle class and up.
Exactly. Early 19th century Britain was a racist society. No question (just like every other imperialist western nation at the time). This was before the Abolition of Slavery. In 1813 Britain was actively trading black people like they were farm animals.
And yet here is a series which says Oh forget all that, the reality is that Great Britain in 1813 was racially mixed and harmonious and there were lots of ancient black families living in Mayfair with dukedoms.
The sensitive viewer can, I think, be forgiven a little confusion.
Interestingly, the show is produced by Shonda Rhimes, the producer creator and show runner of Greys Anatomy - one of the best American TV series ever, in terms of sustaining interest over multiple years. Shonda Rhimes is black.
I wonder if this show would have been made this way if the producer was white? It is all rather bewildering.
No, it’s just a bit alt-history. (As I presume are the books, though I’m not familiar with them.) Did you not pick that up ?
I don't think it is alt-history. Have you watched it? In many ways it makes a huge (and expensive) effort to be historically accurate.
What counts as alt-history though? Clearly parts of its setting are very ahistorical and intentionally so, but does that mean that a lot of the more unpalatable aspects of society at that (apparent) time period do not exist in that depicted reality, or do they exist alongside the ahisortical elements?
Obviously its not the sort of intended experience from the sounds of it where people are supposed to worry or think about that at all, and just have a good time, which Shonda Rhimes is certainly good at, but it is interesting when you go down that route what parts of the depicted societies are intended as 'traditional' and what are not? TV shows and movies use settings to shorthand a lot of information to us, so if it is in a specific time period we for example might expect certain attitudes to come up eg lack of women in certain roles, so when things deviate from the expected setting it will be noteworthy, usually intentionally so.
Sounds like it is worth a watch just to see how it will play around with expectations of the era setting.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
They did with The Hollow Crown casting black actors and actresses in roles such as Edward, 2nd Duke of York and Margaret of Anjou.
They thought lets cast good actors and actresses in the role and let people deal with it and they did.
I get that, and I generally approve. But there is a point where it becomes utterly surreal, and maybe morally wrong.
Not least because there WERE some black people in late Georgian London: but they were imported servants, and freed slaves, and the like. they certainly weren't dukes from ancient families.
So, to me, it seems to be belittling and trivialising the difficult lived experience of black people in Britain in the early 19th century.
Also sailors, but they were also on the margin of London society - literally so also as they would have been concentrated in Docklands. Which reinforces your point.
Though there were a few imported children from West Indian planter/settler families, middle class and up.
Exactly. Early 19th century Britain was a racist society. No question (just like every other imperialist western nation at the time). This was before the Abolition of Slavery. In 1813 Britain was actively trading black people like they were farm animals.
And yet here is a series which says Oh forget all that, the reality is that Great Britain in 1813 was racially mixed and harmonious and there were lots of ancient black families living in Mayfair with dukedoms.
The sensitive viewer can, I think, be forgiven a little confusion.
Interestingly, the show is produced by Shonda Rhimes, the producer creator and show runner of Greys Anatomy - one of the best American TV series ever, in terms of sustaining interest over multiple years. Shonda Rhimes is black.
I wonder if this show would have been made this way if the producer was white? It is all rather bewildering.
No, it’s just a bit alt-history. (As I presume are the books, though I’m not familiar with them.) Did you not pick that up ?
I don't think it is alt-history. Have you watched it? In many ways it makes a huge (and expensive) effort to be historically accurate.
Nope - I can’t remember the precise dialogue, but the queen makes specific reference to race. It came a bit out of the blue, several episodes in, and I’d previously assumed it was just colourblind casting, but quite evidently not.
What you mean regarding ‘historically accurate’ is that they spent a lot of dosh on the frocks.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
They did with The Hollow Crown casting black actors and actresses in roles such as Edward, 2nd Duke of York and Margaret of Anjou.
They thought lets cast good actors and actresses in the role and let people deal with it and they did.
I get that, and I generally approve. But there is a point where it becomes utterly surreal, and maybe morally wrong.
Not least because there WERE some black people in late Georgian London: but they were imported servants, and freed slaves, and the like. they certainly weren't dukes from ancient families.
So, to me, it seems to be belittling and trivialising the difficult lived experience of black people in Britain in the early 19th century.
Also sailors, but they were also on the margin of London society - literally so also as they would have been concentrated in Docklands. Which reinforces your point.
Though there were a few imported children from West Indian planter/settler families, middle class and up.
Exactly. Early 19th century Britain was a racist society. No question (just like every other imperialist western nation at the time). This was before the Abolition of Slavery. In 1813 Britain was actively trading black people like they were farm animals.
And yet here is a series which says Oh forget all that, the reality is that Great Britain in 1813 was racially mixed and harmonious and there were lots of ancient black families living in Mayfair with dukedoms.
The sensitive viewer can, I think, be forgiven a little confusion.
Interestingly, the show is produced by Shonda Rhimes, the producer creator and show runner of Greys Anatomy - one of the best American TV series ever, in terms of sustaining interest over multiple years. Shonda Rhimes is black.
I wonder if this show would have been made this way if the producer was white? It is all rather bewildering.
I won't deny it was a racist society but it was not a slave owning one. The export of slaves from the United Kingdom had been outlawed following the Somersett case of 1772 and that had drawn on legal arguments dating back to Elizabeth 1st which stated that slavery was not legal under English Common Law. That was accepted as an argument by the Lord Chief Justice in deciding the case.
"The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory.
It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged."
Slavery was explicitly outlawed in Scotland in 1778.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
I would say that if the race of the character isn't important to the story, then the race of the actor doesn't matter. You cant have white actors playing slaves in the Deep South, or MLK, but conceivably they could play the role of a black character where their race isn't part of the story... I cant think of one though! So in my eyes, having black Edwardian Londoners doesn't really matter, even if there weren't really any, but it would be weird if their skin colour were mentioned as part of the story
Spot on.
Like you I can't think of a "story involving a black person where their race isn't relevant", I presume that is because we are a white-default country so any story/incident/history we know involving a black person is _beacuse_ it involves a black person interacting with white people in exceptional circumstances.
If we all lived in Nigeria I'm sure we'd be struggling to think of a story involving a white person where their whitness wasn't vitally important to the situation.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
You should have seen how angry racists got when black characters turned up in BBC family entertainment Merlin.
Their suspension of disbelief in wizards and dragons was totally shattered by black people being knights.
Reminded me of this.
I've often wondered if all the medieval european artists, and people who viewed their work, genuinely thought it the case that Jesus was not just white but very pale, or if they considered it likely he was not but they used people as existed around them as templates.
Looking at depictions of Christ around the world shows that "God Created Man in His Own Image" gets reflected back on depictions of Christ right down to contemporary clothing choices at times.
I hope that has stopped. Even as a non-believer I'm not sure I could accept a Jesus in skinny jeans in a modern portrayal.
Why not?
The whole point of the incarnation is that God came to live amongst us, as a normal person, to share our lives. It is quite sound to depict him in contemporaneous dress.
I agree but it was interesting to hear from Rashford who had noticed that the defender was suffering from a bit of cramp and wanted to run at him. He's a clever lad.
He is very talented on and off the field and a credit to his Mum, the club and country
I enjoyed that new comedy the BBC was showing earlier in the year. You had that guy who used to present HIGNFY giving a satirical monologue focusing on current events and then him and a couple of guests would do some improv based on topics thrown out by folk via video link.
The catch phrases were a bit lame, mind.
I still crack up at "Next slide, please!". It's comedy gold! Up there with "where's me washboard?"
Got a bit samey though. No difference, one series to the next....
And the substitutes weren't really up to snuff. Hancock was not a patch on his namesake.
YouGov daily has 63% backing for voting for the deal, 12% against. In the second question only 18% think it a good deal, and 29% a bad one.
Basically voters think (like me) it is crap, but the alternative is even more crap.
It really isn't a ringing endorsement.
No it isn't, but if what you quote is right then is it saying voters think it is crap, but the alternative is even more crap? Since only 29% say it is bad and presumably most said 'don't know' given only 18% said it wsa good. So wouldn't it be that most people don't know if it is crap or not, but on the whole thing it should be approved regardless, not that they think it is crap?
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
I would say that if the race of the character isn't important to the story, then the race of the actor doesn't matter. You cant have white actors playing slaves in the Deep South, or MLK, but conceivably they could play the role of a black character where their race isn't part of the story... I cant think of one though! So in my eyes, having black Edwardian Londoners doesn't really matter, even if there weren't really any, but it would be weird if their skin colour were mentioned as part of the story
Spot on.
Like you I can't think of a "story involving a black person where their race isn't relevant", I presume that is because we are a white-default country so any story/incident/history we know involving a black person is _beacuse_ it involves a black person interacting with white people in exceptional circumstances.
If we all lived in Nigeria I'm sure we'd be struggling to think of a story involving a white person where their whitness wasn't vitally important to the situation.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
You should have seen how angry racists got when black characters turned up in BBC family entertainment Merlin.
Their suspension of disbelief in wizards and dragons was totally shattered by black people being knights.
Reminded me of this.
I've often wondered if all the medieval european artists, and people who viewed their work, genuinely thought it the case that Jesus was not just white but very pale, or if they considered it likely he was not but they used people as existed around them as templates.
Looking at depictions of Christ around the world shows that "God Created Man in His Own Image" gets reflected back on depictions of Christ right down to contemporary clothing choices at times.
I hope that has stopped. Even as a non-believer I'm not sure I could accept a Jesus in skinny jeans in a modern portrayal.
Why not?
The whole point of the incarnation is that God came to live amongst us, as a normal person, to share our lives. It is quite sound to depict him in contemporaneous dress.
Clearly hasn’t seen many productions of Jesus Christ, Superstar.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
If it is all just meant to be a bit of fun I don't think it matters, since authenticity of race won't add anything, but if it is meant to be serious and weighty then a really incongrous element might feel strange. Not that films or tv shows need a warning about lack of historical accuracy, but if it is not the point to comment, and it is meant to be serious, I can understand it causing a few head tilts.
That Mary Queen of Scots movie was very serious (though David Tennant was hilarious as John Knox) and had a few non-white actors in roles that seems improbable, and it didn't hurt the film exactly, but given its 'this is a serious historical film, no really' feel that it seemed to be going for, it did make me wonder why it went for that approach, and why not go further if the point was 'we don't care about race when casting this film'.
This is why I prefer fantasy fiction - sure people usually go for a more racist approach nations and races being entirely separate and genuinely distinct even beyond history, if you want a society to be racially diverse or tolerant of race and sexuality and the like, you can, and no one can complain about inaccuracy.
Hopefully Gal Gadot will still get to play Cleopatra in that movie she is trying to make. Mostly because she is Gal Gadot.
There is no reason besides ignorance and antisemitism for Gal Gadot not to play Cleopatra.
The second time it was reported on the BBC, when she was defending herself, it did seem to be struggling to find people wanting to be outraged, as it came down to 'But there is mystery over the identity of her mother, leading to speculation that Cleopatra may have been of mixed heritage'.
Doesnt seem able to sustain a twitterstorm sufficient to prevent production when looking for a whitewashing complaint, if even those complainaing have to rely on speculation. So it will probably be fine. 'Outrage' didn't stop Naomi Scott playing Princess Jasmine in Aladdin.
Given that the Ptolemaic dynasty practiced sibling marriage as the norm I would think the chances of Cleopatra not being of Macedonian descent are pretty slim.
I really don't know what to make of the extraordinary multiracial cast. As in: I don't know what it is trying to do or say to us.
Still good fun, tho.
No, and I can’t be arsed. Isn’t it just pap in Regency costume? Kind of like Emily in Paris, but in farthingales.
The multiracial David Copperfield film was very good, though.
It confuses me because, on the one hand, we are all supposed to be super-aware of race, Black Lives Matter, and all that, and yet here is a series with black Georgian dukes and duchesses and no one mentions their race or colour. So the series is telling us race and colour DON'T matter? So you could have a series about American slavery with whites playing slaves? Or War and Peace set very much in St Petersburg yet entirely cast with Chinese or Inuit actors?
It is extra confusing because in many ways the series strives hard to be historically accurate - it has high production values, it carefully recreates 1813 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (tho I am told the costumery is all over the shop, with bits of Regency mixed with bits of mid-Victorian)
Race is such a fucked-up subject, and no one knows quite how to handle it: perhaps the series is simply telling us THAT.
They did with The Hollow Crown casting black actors and actresses in roles such as Edward, 2nd Duke of York and Margaret of Anjou.
They thought lets cast good actors and actresses in the role and let people deal with it and they did.
I get that, and I generally approve. But there is a point where it becomes utterly surreal, and maybe morally wrong.
Not least because there WERE some black people in late Georgian London: but they were imported servants, and freed slaves, and the like. they certainly weren't dukes from ancient families.
So, to me, it seems to be belittling and trivialising the difficult lived experience of black people in Britain in the early 19th century.
Also sailors, but they were also on the margin of London society - literally so also as they would have been concentrated in Docklands. Which reinforces your point.
Though there were a few imported children from West Indian planter/settler families, middle class and up.
Exactly. Early 19th century Britain was a racist society. No question (just like every other imperialist western nation at the time). This was before the Abolition of Slavery. In 1813 Britain was actively trading black people like they were farm animals.
And yet here is a series which says Oh forget all that, the reality is that Great Britain in 1813 was racially mixed and harmonious and there were lots of ancient black families living in Mayfair with dukedoms.
The sensitive viewer can, I think, be forgiven a little confusion.
Interestingly, the show is produced by Shonda Rhimes, the producer creator and show runner of Greys Anatomy - one of the best American TV series ever, in terms of sustaining interest over multiple years. Shonda Rhimes is black.
I wonder if this show would have been made this way if the producer was white? It is all rather bewildering.
No, it’s just a bit alt-history. (As I presume are the books, though I’m not familiar with them.) Did you not pick that up ?
I don't think it is alt-history. Have you watched it? In many ways it makes a huge (and expensive) effort to be historically accurate.
What counts as alt-history though? Clearly parts of its setting are very ahistorical and intentionally so, but does that mean that a lot of the more unpalatable aspects of society at that (apparent) time period do not exist in that depicted reality, or do they exist alongside the ahisortical elements?
Obviously its not the sort of intended experience from the sounds of it where people are supposed to worry or think about that at all, and just have a good time, which Shonda Rhimes is certainly good at, but it is interesting when you go down that route what parts of the depicted societies are intended as 'traditional' and what are not? TV shows and movies use settings to shorthand a lot of information to us, so if it is in a specific time period we for example might expect certain attitudes to come up eg lack of women in certain roles, so when things deviate from the expected setting it will be noteworthy, usually intentionally so.
Sounds like it is worth a watch just to see how it will play around with expectations of the era setting.
Well, for a start, the whole series is quite a clever and accurate critique of early 19th century misogyny, and patriarchy. It has a feminist character who eloquently bemoans the way women are treated like cattle in the aristocratic marriage market, and the rest of the plot reflects that critical attitude. So this is not some alt-history steampunk fluff.
Also, it randomly picks and chooses when to sexualise black men (and occasionally women) for their blackness, and when to completely ignore it and pretend they are white. There is a poor black boxer who is matched against a white Irishman and race here becomes an issue. Yet there is a black Duke of Hastings (absurdly) whose colour is entirely ignored.
It's fun to watch and I like it, but I can't help feeling that if it had been made by a white production company, the Guardian would be slaughtering it daily as an outrage.
Anyway, back to episode 4. The heroine is luminously beautiful, which helps pass the time.
Surely this must be the LOWEST such gain for Conservatives from constituency boundary changes in a LONG time?
Since WW2 (in some places even before then) inner cities have been losing population, in contrast to population gains in suburbs and exurbs. Which has resulted in regular losses in safe (or at least safe-ish) for Labour, matched by regular gains for Conservatives.
Indeed, most of the political jockeying by the major UK parties - in and out of office - over seats & boundaries and their reallocation and adjustment, has been a direct reflection of this dynamic. Which Tories have tried to hasten, and Labour to delay, for obvious reasons. When push comes to shove, both (and other) parties have sought to gain further advantage - or shield themselves from the blow - via arguments & evidence in their favor before various UK boundary commissions.
BUT this time, the traditional demographic pattern has shifted. Why? Because while the burbs have continued to grow, this has NOT been at as fast a rate as previously, largely due to urban redevelopment, in particular increased housing and demand for more in the cities, by upscale & upwardly-mobile young & young-ish professionals and the like.
Thus the news is NOT that Tories will benefit from boundary changes.
Instead, it is that they will gain way less than in the not-so-distant past.
Didn't the mid-90s boundary reforms help Labour rather than the Tories?
From memory because Mandelson helped organise and ensure contributions to the Commission to help (by UK not US standards) gerrymander the seats to Labour's advantage.
The notionals had Con +7 and Lab +2, but the Tories were expecting to do much better than that, similar to 1983 when they got a big advantage, so Labour were regarded by most people as the winners of the review.
So based on the numbers, in 1990s Tories SHOULD have gained more than they did, because Labour outfoxed them at the boundary commissions?
This squares with what a Labour MP (from London, not NPxMP) told me back in 2000, that Labour had made significant gains (including re: his own west London constituency which Labour took from Conservatives in 1997) because their submissions to the boundary commission were better than what the Tories turned in, specifically with respect to specific arguments for particular boundaries based "community of interest" grounds outlined in law and implemented by the commission.
Do NOT know how things went THIS time, though reckon Conservatives have upped their game since way back then. However, this go-around the basic demographics have been LESS favorable, thanks the the (relative) urban revival.
Note that similar has occurred in parts of USA, for example in my own stomping grounds, Seattle & King County, Washington State.
Trend out here from mid-20th into the 21st century was population growth within City of Seattle being outstripped by massive, continued growth in the suburbs. After SCOTUS "one man, one vote" ruling in 1964, the result was decreasing number of legislative districts and legislators from Seattle, and greater numbers from the rest of King County.
However, since 2010, the growth rate in the burbs has slowed, and be outstripped by population increased within Seattle city limits, in particular in newly developed areas such as Belltown (north of Downtown) and Ballard where massive condos & apartment complexes now house tens of thousands of high-tech workers.
These changes will be reflected in 2021 congressional & legislative redistricting based on the 2020 census (warts and all). Note that WA will NOT gain another US Representative (like we did after 2000 census) but Seattle WILL increase it's share of legislative districts (each electing one state senator and two state reps) and thus (in theory at least) it's clout in Olympia, at the expense of areas with (relative) population decline, such as Eastern WA.
I enjoyed that new comedy the BBC was showing earlier in the year. You had that guy who used to present HIGNFY giving a satirical monologue focusing on current events and then him and a couple of guests would do some improv based on topics thrown out by folk via video link.
The catch phrases were a bit lame, mind.
I still crack up at "Next slide, please!". It's comedy gold! Up there with "where's me washboard?"
Got a bit samey though. No difference, one series to the next....
And the substitutes weren't really up to snuff. Hancock was not a patch on his namesake.
I enjoyed the fancy dress episodes. There was one guy pretending to be a senior army officer and a woman in a nurse's outfit. And then there was the running gag about penalty shoot-outs.
The best TV drama of 2020, without question. Superb in every department. Well done that man
Although, 2020 has on the whole been particularly shit on tv front.
I very much enjoyed “Plot Against America”. I feared it would be cliched tripe, but it was saved by a David Simon script and great acting.
I am 4/5 the way through Steve McQueen’s Little Axe movies.
The latter is an outstanding artistic achievement. The New York Times placed every single one of the five movies on their Best Films of 2020 list.
I forgot I had watched that, and not because it I though it forgettable!
We loved The Queens Gambit, & Normal People too. I also discovered Detectorists and The Crown, so quite an enjoyable tv year
Queen’s Gambit was excellent, but not perfect. (Slightly hackneyed first episode!).
The Crown is mostly high class fluff, but utterly addictive. I actually thought this season the best of them all so far, and the Charles-Diana story very well done.
I saw the first few episodes of the Detectorists and I know it has its fans, but it seems to be a bit of a Last of the Summer Wine rehash to me.
Mrs America is surely worth watching for PB fans. Cate Blanchett is worth the price of admission alone; it’s a wonderful ensemble piece and Tracey Ullman has a great part too.
I May Destroy You feels amazingly fresh and authentic but maybe a bit self-indulgent and too long?
I haven’t seen “The Third Day” with Jude Law, set on Osea, but hear good things. Apparently the serial killer “I’ll be Gone in the Dark” was also excellent.
There were new series of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Better Call Saul, and Ozark this year.
I bring bad news: The Third Day is terrible. Jude Law is not a great actor, but even by his lowish standards, the final episode is cringingly awful.
That’s annoying, because one thing I haven’t seen in a while is a proper thriller. We seem to have forgotten, as a culture, how to make them.
Bodyguard is really rather good. Not genius, but a highly watchable thriller, nonetheless
The Third Day has so many problems it is hard to know where to start. It was a queasy remake of the Wicker Man mixed with Broadchurch, like mixing offal with ice cream.
Hah. Even as I wrote that analogy I thought "I bet someone has actually tried to deliver that mixture".
It still sounds utterly disgusting.
I learnt not to dismiss apparently weird combinations, after being served rabbit in chocolate sauce with pine nuts in a Skye cottage many yerars ago. (A bitter sauce, actually.)
Comments
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1344039039620567044
It also makes it understandable why people are more sensitivity about a character which had been non-white in one medium or previous version being played by a white actor, even if the race really is not critical to that character at all, given the more limited opportunities for a lot of roles, than they would be about characters (including historical ones) who were white being played by non-white actors.
But race and gender can still be important when casting depending on type of movie. You can go stupid with it though, like Samuel L Jackson initially criticising the casting of a British man in Get Out for not sharing the american experience of the character.
There's been quite a few pieces on opportunities for asian actors in Hollywood. I'm surprised we didn't get a glut of copycat movies after the success of Crazy Rich Asians (which was a fun movie).
https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1342751465274806273
Doesnt seem able to sustain a twitterstorm sufficient to prevent production when looking for a whitewashing complaint, if even those complainaing have to rely on speculation. So it will probably be fine. 'Outrage' didn't stop Naomi Scott playing Princess Jasmine in Aladdin.
And yet here is a series which says Oh forget all that, the reality is that Great Britain in 1813 was racially mixed and harmonious and there were lots of ancient black families living in Mayfair with dukedoms.
The sensitive viewer can, I think, be forgiven a little confusion.
Interestingly, the show is produced by Shonda Rhimes, the producer creator and show runner of Greys Anatomy - one of the best American TV series ever, in terms of sustaining interest over multiple years. Shonda Rhimes is black.
I wonder if this show would have been made this way if the producer was white? It is all rather bewildering.
by Millais, which outraged Charles Dickens because it made Jesus look like a jew.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/premierleague/table
Did you not pick that up ?
Charles Dickens accused Millais of portraying Mary as an alcoholic who looks '...so hideous in her ugliness that ... she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin-shop in England'.
Critics also objected to the portrayal of Jesus, one complaining that it was "painful" to see "the youthful Saviour" depicted as "a red-headed Jew boy"
I'm really not one to suggest society is on some path of continuous improvement, or that we cannot devolve, but in this area at least we are, despite ongoing difficulties, definitely doing a bit better.
Depicting the family of christ as a poor family, a poor jewish family no less? The horror!
Just when you thought Covid couldn't take us any lower....
https://twitter.com/GuidoFawkes/status/1344024396307062784?s=20
Basically voters think (like me) it is crap, but the alternative is even more crap.
It really isn't a ringing endorsement.
Obviously its not the sort of intended experience from the sounds of it where people are supposed to worry or think about that at all, and just have a good time, which Shonda Rhimes is certainly good at, but it is interesting when you go down that route what parts of the depicted societies are intended as 'traditional' and what are not? TV shows and movies use settings to shorthand a lot of information to us, so if it is in a specific time period we for example might expect certain attitudes to come up eg lack of women in certain roles, so when things deviate from the expected setting it will be noteworthy, usually intentionally so.
Sounds like it is worth a watch just to see how it will play around with expectations of the era setting.
Maybe voters have moved on
What you mean regarding ‘historically accurate’ is that they spent a lot of dosh on the frocks.
"The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory.
It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged."
Slavery was explicitly outlawed in Scotland in 1778.
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1344044279782502401
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1344045566418800641
The whole point of the incarnation is that God came to live amongst us, as a normal person, to share our lives. It is quite sound to depict him in contemporaneous dress.
"Sorry about Christmas". Wanker.
NEW THREAD
Superior soap, beautifully done and enjoyable nonsense.
It's you that keeps bringing it up!
And I think Merton Lane made the odd (very odd) appearance.
Also, it randomly picks and chooses when to sexualise black men (and occasionally women) for their blackness, and when to completely ignore it and pretend they are white. There is a poor black boxer who is matched against a white Irishman and race here becomes an issue. Yet there is a black Duke of Hastings (absurdly) whose colour is entirely ignored.
It's fun to watch and I like it, but I can't help feeling that if it had been made by a white production company, the Guardian would be slaughtering it daily as an outrage.
Anyway, back to episode 4. The heroine is luminously beautiful, which helps pass the time.
This squares with what a Labour MP (from London, not NPxMP) told me back in 2000, that Labour had made significant gains (including re: his own west London constituency which Labour took from Conservatives in 1997) because their submissions to the boundary commission were better than what the Tories turned in, specifically with respect to specific arguments for particular boundaries based "community of interest" grounds outlined in law and implemented by the commission.
Do NOT know how things went THIS time, though reckon Conservatives have upped their game since way back then. However, this go-around the basic demographics have been LESS favorable, thanks the the (relative) urban revival.
Note that similar has occurred in parts of USA, for example in my own stomping grounds, Seattle & King County, Washington State.
Trend out here from mid-20th into the 21st century was population growth within City of Seattle being outstripped by massive, continued growth in the suburbs. After SCOTUS "one man, one vote" ruling in 1964, the result was decreasing number of legislative districts and legislators from Seattle, and greater numbers from the rest of King County.
However, since 2010, the growth rate in the burbs has slowed, and be outstripped by population increased within Seattle city limits, in particular in newly developed areas such as Belltown (north of Downtown) and Ballard where massive condos & apartment complexes now house tens of thousands of high-tech workers.
These changes will be reflected in 2021 congressional & legislative redistricting based on the 2020 census (warts and all). Note that WA will NOT gain another US Representative (like we did after 2000 census) but Seattle WILL increase it's share of legislative districts (each electing one state senator and two state reps) and thus (in theory at least) it's clout in Olympia, at the expense of areas with (relative) population decline, such as Eastern WA.
I reckon there'll be a new series in January.