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Post by kathryn on May 11, 2024 7:53:35 GMT
Well they made me laugh. YMMV, folks.
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Post by kathryn on May 10, 2024 22:39:01 GMT
I completely loved The Fall Guy!! I am seriously wondering whether other people saw the same film as me?
It’s a love-letter to old-fashioned action movies, playing with a lot of action movie tropes; a movie about the movies. It’s freaking hilarious and the leads have great chemistry and are giving pitch-perfect performances.
Yes, they are *meant* to be laid-back. They’re pretending they are not as into each other as they really are.
Maybe you need to be a bit of a film geek to get all the jokes??
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Post by kathryn on May 10, 2024 14:45:04 GMT
There are different kinds of mental illness, and you definitely can’t always tell from a brief interview with someone whether they have one or not. That is why professional diagnoses are necessary and specific assessment tools exist for different disorders.
A great many people who engage in stalking behaviour come across as perfectly reasonable - it’s one of the reasons why it has been historically hard to prosecute people and why the burden of gathering evidence falls on the victim. Typically the police have them in for a chat and they say ‘oh I only did it once or twice, I must have misread the signals, officer. I thought they might be interested after they bought me a drink that one time. Yes, I sent flowers - I thought they would be appreciated. Oh I am sorry to have taken up police time, yes of course I won’t contact them again’, and if the victim hasn’t documented thousands of emails, texts, tweets, and phone calls, and taken pictures of them hanging around their every night, there is no prospect of prosecution.
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Post by kathryn on May 7, 2024 20:24:31 GMT
Intersex I think is the safest one for me to use going forward for people who are born neither male of female. This is exactly why the term DSD/VSD is preferred over ‘intersex’ - it’s a misleading term. No-one is ‘born neither male or female’. People with DSDs are males/females whose reproductive system developed abnormally because of various reasons. The vast majority of DSDs are sex-specific - in that they only apply to one sex, or in that their symptoms differ in each sex. Symptoms of some DSDs are very serious indeed - they can be life-threatening - so accurate diagnoses are really important!
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Post by kathryn on May 7, 2024 13:25:15 GMT
‘Hermaphrodite’ is considered offensive by most (as well as being very inaccurate) because it is used to fetishize. ‘Intersex’ is used by LGBTQI+ activist groups and is the term in commonest usage, but rarely by people who actually have conditions affecting sexual development.
‘DSD’ (difference of sexual development) and ‘VSD’ (variation of sexual development) are the preferred umbrella terms by those who advocate for the rights of those with these conditions, but most would not describe themselves in that way as they would use the medical term for the actual condition they have. There is a huge range of different conditions with varying effects, so advocacy needs to be condition-specific.
I have yet to come across a group using the ‘intersex’ term that actually worked with people with medical conditions. I know the one in my workplace uses ‘I’ in the acronym but says they are not actually qualified to advocate for people with medical conditions, so it’s just included as a sort of vague gesture of solidarity.
People with DSDs don’t need special or separate bathrooms. .
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Post by kathryn on May 7, 2024 12:07:23 GMT
I’m not sure he’s saying it’s based on politics - but that audiences have become insular/unable to appreciate avant garde European musicals in the west end since Brexit apparently. Which is just as ridiculous a statement on many levels. Also makes me laugh as his music is hardly avant garde/experimental As I am sure we all know, it’s got nothing to do with Brexit or politics in general - avant Garde European musicals have never played well in the West End. Which is not to say that West End musical goers are not sophisticated - Sondheim tends to do better in the West End than on Broadway, and generally our tastes are a bit more adventurous than Broadway - but avant Garde European is an acquired taste that you generally find in the subsidised sector. And it’s definitely not what someone who likes that nice Sheridan Smith off the telly would expect from their annual West End treat trip.
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Post by kathryn on May 7, 2024 9:53:43 GMT
I haven’t seen this show.
I like Sheridan Smith a lot, but the last 3 Ivo van Hove shows I saw that used video on stage bored me.
I adored a few of his earlier shows - truly took my breath away - but the magic seemed to disappear the minute he became enamoured with filming.
Ivo, direct a movie already. Get it out of your system.
Rather presumptuous of Rufus to suggest that audience reaction is based on politics and not art.
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Post by kathryn on May 7, 2024 9:47:20 GMT
I noticed the RSC has turned one set of gents loos near the Swan Theatre into gender neutral ones but left the ladies as it is. That seemed a bit unfair although the loos at the RSC Theatre end of the building are still male and female I think. Would the simple idea if there was space to have a gender neutral loo like how you have a disabled one along with male and female ones. There needs to be a loo provision for people who are not male or female but there does need to be women's only loos too IMO. If you’re going to make one loo ‘gender neutral’ that is the only equitable way to do it - we all know that theatres never have enough ladies’ loos but the men can breeze in and out. Losing one gent’s loo to gender neutral won’t lead to queues for them,, and potentially reduces queues for the ladies’ if women are willing to use them. On a side note, there are no people who are not either male or female. Even people with DSDs are classifiable as male or female.
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Post by kathryn on May 4, 2024 20:39:27 GMT
Doxxing implies malicious intent which is clearly not the case here. There's certainly dishonesty when he claims he made her unrecognisable: quite the contrary, he and the production seem to have gone to great pains to cast an actress who looks, dresses, has the CV, has the speech patterns, actual cut and paste dialogue, and presumably accent of the alleged 'real Martha'. I’ve seen something like this happen before with news programmes that claim to have changed the names of people in anonymous interviews - they actually said that and put their real name in inverted commas. At the time I thought it a bit of a clever bait-and-switch, as you’ve just been told that the one name that is definitely not theirs is the one you have been given, even though it is. They should have checked whether the tweets still existed. They could have kept everything else exactly the same and got away with it not being identifying just by saying that they’d changed stuff to make sure she was not identifiable, because people would have discounted the details in the series
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Post by kathryn on Apr 16, 2024 21:42:42 GMT
Back To Black - ** 1/2 Is this going to be the way of things now with modern biopics? That we know so much and have so much real life content to compare to that everything just feels incredibly cringe? We should be getting the Robbie Williams biopic later this year, and reportedly it is an exercise in original filmmaking. So maybe if that is a success…
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Post by kathryn on Apr 16, 2024 21:36:01 GMT
Watched Damsel last night on Netflix.
2.5*
It’s fine as a switch-your-brain-off action-fantasy. It falls apart the minute you think about the premise or the world-building.
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Post by kathryn on Apr 15, 2024 12:19:38 GMT
. Freddie I can imagine would have enjoyed collaborating with some of the modern artists but I don't think he'd have been a big fan of social media unless it was to release his music or his "inner circle who all had the pet names" would have been a private group on whatever platform. Like John Deacon in the band he was a more private individual whilst Brian and Roger would appear on TV programmes more readily and had higher profile partners. . To continue to be annoyingly off topic, I am enjoying Robbie Williams on Instagram - he has been using it to showcase his visual art, make jokes, poll his followers for their favourite 80s films/songs, do art-collabs with other Instagram-artists, find deserving recipients of a flood of coordinated internet cuddles, and post pictures and videos of his pets. I can imagine Freddie getting well into #catsofinstagram and filling his grid with cat photos. And probably he’d have enjoyed the eye candy, but likely from a private account.
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Post by kathryn on Apr 14, 2024 22:30:29 GMT
And of course she was only 15!!
Only not really, because she is a character in a play and didn’t actually exist.
(Don’t tell the tourists that, though - they make a nice living down in Verona!)
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Post by kathryn on Apr 14, 2024 22:27:26 GMT
scarletmoodFreddie was a bundle of contradictions, which is what makes him fascinating still. 😁 Like being a ‘unique’ individual who deliberately adopted the ‘Castro Clone’ style because it helped him blend in. I think we sometimes forget just how different our culture is now to the 70s and 80s because of the way our media landscape has changed communication. Freddie could not have even imagined social media!
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Post by kathryn on Apr 14, 2024 22:21:16 GMT
When people start posts with "rolling my eyes so hard at this" or generally telling people off because they simply "wonder" about something on a flippin messageboard it really turns me off listening to their response however well worded or well-researched. Well worded and well-researched is all the response that's needed, and can keep the discussion going, without publicly humiliating someone and getting to be the boss who sent them to the naughty step. There’s an ignore function on this board. You can save yourself from reading my opinions any time by using it. But then you’d miss out on the fun of appearing holier-than-thou and telling me off for how I express myself, so I doubt you’ll do that!
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Post by kathryn on Apr 14, 2024 20:36:33 GMT
Sorry folks. Went on a Freddie Mercury hyperfixation binge a couple of years ago, and as a result people trying to re-write his personal life is particularly annoying to me!!
We truly don’t need to guess about this stuff about him because everyone even tangentially connected to him wrote a book! And the contents of his house just went up for auction. He actually told people before he died that he didn’t mind them cashing in on their stories and memorabilia. He had a pragmatist’s approach to it all and could be rather cynical.
To bring it slightly back on topic, he was cynical about Geldof’s motivations for Live Aid, and thought he was in it as much for the fame as helping people. Unsurprising that the musical doesn’t really mention that!
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Post by kathryn on Apr 14, 2024 18:02:30 GMT
It always makes me wonder what pronouns some of the flamboyant singers from that era would have used or how they might have identified. Bowie always seemed to be ahead of the curve somehow. I once heard the joke what came between Glam Rock and New Romantic and the answer is Freddie. Again the person playing Freddie can identify any which way they like but the performer had a very good voice and was well cast for the role which is all I care about. Please stop trying to ‘trans’ dead people. There were transvestites and transsexuals in existence when Freddie Mercury was alive; he was neither. He was a gay man. He was not particularly effeminate, even - he liked masculine men and he dressed and behaved in masculine ways. Glam rock was a fashion when Queen started their careers and so they followed it. Freddie was by all accounts very relieved when the fashion changed and he didn’t have to wear that get-up anymore. His favourite outfit when he was at home relaxing was a track suit and trainers. And we do actually know this for sure because his live-in personal assistant and his partner both wrote memoirs after his death, and they both included lots of candid photos.
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Post by kathryn on Apr 13, 2024 12:32:54 GMT
Bowie wouldn’t have ‘identified as’ in the current sense it is used. He was playing different characters as part of his art. He *was* an actor!
We used to have a culture that understood this - that actors *act*, they are not presenting their own ineffable and authentic essence. That characters don’t have authentic ‘identity’ and are always open to interpretation.
The idea that artists are representing a particular identity on stage - and therefore that they can’t play what they cannot, the essentialist trend - may well be implicated in this racist backlash. If you see Juliet as a ‘white character’ - because after all she was a 16th Century Italian from a noble family - then in theory her whiteness in as inherent to her identity as the ‘blackness’ of Othello is. And so the double-standard of insisting that Othello must always be played by a black actor but that Juliet can be played by an actor of any non-white race creates the backlash.
But that is a silly overreach of identity politics. The reason that Othello should be played by a black actor is that racial othering is an important part of the story.
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Post by kathryn on Apr 11, 2024 16:26:21 GMT
Indeed, social media has set progress back at least 10, perhaps 20 years. Trans, for example; which was almost no thing at all in 1972 when David Bowie was representing the whole thing at 7pm every Thursday on BBC1. Rolling my eyes hard here. Bowie was never Trans. He just played dress-up and took on a range of personas in order to get himself lots of attention and become famous. He has nothing at all to do with the present-day issue. There has always been a contingent of theatregoers who are vehemently opposed to colour blind or diverse casting. This subject has been discussed over and over again all the way back to the original WOS forum. It’s not a new thing - people just stopped talking about it. Whenever you stop people talking about these issues they build up a huge head of steam about them under the lid that eventually leads to an explosion of nastiness. I suspect it is probably true that there has been some bot-stoking of the online flames with this particular casting, that has pushed it to audiences who would not normally even hear about theatre productions. Because this casting is really no different from hundreds of others.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 6, 2024 10:36:19 GMT
know an invited Dress isn’t the best gauge of a proper audience- but I haven’t seen an audience react to the songs like that … since seeing this very show in NYC. Is there any way for mere mortals like many of us to ever get invited to an 'invited dress'? Seeing this week after next and VERY excited. Invest in the show. 😉
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Post by kathryn on Feb 29, 2024 10:57:41 GMT
There’s some research that shows trigger warnings are actually detrimental for the mental health of people who respond to those triggers.
This is separate from effects that trigger physical illnesses, like strobe lighting.
The theory is that trigger warning help people avoid things that trigger an anxiety response or to prepare themselves for them. But the research showed that the trigger warning increased the duration and intensity of the anxiety, because it led to the person anticipating the trigger and building up anxiety about their response to it, compared to people who were not forewarned, whose anxiety response had a shorter duration and therefore recovered quicker from the impact of it.
As for the issue of avoiding triggers entirely, the problem is that avoidance is a maladaptive response that actually increases anxiety overall. Every effective PTSD and anxiety treatment involves exposure to the trigger and processing the anxiety experienced to reduce the impact of it.
It’s like someone who has an obsessive compulsive fixation on germs who engages in hand washing rituals - if the whole family adopts those rituals to soothe their anxiety, it actually reinforces that the ritual is necessary and makes the overall anxiety worse. The correct treatment is not to reinforce the anxiety but to disrupt it, so that the behaviour can be reduced and eventually stopped.
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Post by kathryn on Feb 27, 2024 12:16:29 GMT
I do wonder why eight year olds are expected to cope fine with dated racial language their parents probably won't understand, but four year olds can't. I didn’t even spot that this was a racial reference as a child 30+ years ago, it was dated then. Particularly as people covered is soot are just people covered in soot and don’t actually look like a different race. It seemed like a made-up nonsense word. I can’t imagine a modern child recognising it at 8, 12 or 4. This change isn’t about the kids, is it. It’s about people who are much older than 12. But saying that, it is essentially harmless. I doubt anyone allowing their child to watch Mary Poppins is going to be unfamiliar enough with the film’s content to need an age-advisory. Only real impact might be to make some parents take a 12A rating more lightly that they should on new films. There’s some 12A films that are genuinely scary for little kids.
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Post by kathryn on Feb 22, 2024 16:35:41 GMT
Like saying the DNA is ‘flawed evidence’- it is evidence of sexual activity by multiple unidentified males in that bed, in a case where sexual activity with boys is being alleged to have taken place in that bed, when we know that lots of boys spent lot of time in that bed. We don’t have any evidence of adult males other than Jackson using the bed, we have lots of evidence of boys using it while Jackson was there. . We don’t need to know if there where other men having used that bed. Did the DNA found match any of the boys claiming sexual abuse. When you realise the answer is no, then there is no evidence that suggests sexual activity with those boys. Sworn testimony is evidence. There was a considerable amount of sworn testimony of sexual activity with boys. Including from a now-adult. The boys’ testimony includes descriptions of activities with them and other boys that would have led to the physical evidence found. The evidence indicated multiple individuals engaged in sexual activity in that room. It is a great shame that the physical evidence remaining was not matched to the boys who brought the complaint, and that multiple other boys with complaints settled their cases outside court, or refused to testify in the case. It is a great shame indeed that the owners of the fingerprints on the adult materials and DNA on the mattress could not be identified. Though I rather suspect that even if they could be traced to young boys who Jackson had stay in his bedroom with him, that would still not convince some fans. Because fans are motivated to give Jackson the benefit of the doubt, any doubt, any tiny slither of a reason at all they can grasp at to avoid believing that he was a paedophile. And that included some of the people selected for the jury.
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Post by kathryn on Feb 21, 2024 12:51:13 GMT
The jury stated that they were applying a much higher bar than would normally be expected in such a case, though. That’s my point - Jackson’s fame and his art gave him a leeway that a normal person would not get. Like saying the DNA is ‘flawed evidence’- it is evidence of sexual activity by multiple unidentified males in that bed, in a case where sexual activity with boys is being alleged to have taken place in that bed, when we know that lots of boys spent lot of time in that bed. We don’t have any evidence of adult males other than Jackson using the bed, we have lots of evidence of boys using it while Jackson was there.
It’s circumstantial evidence but it’s not ‘flawed’. One has to imagine scenarios which there is no evidence for in order to dismiss it entirely.
Jury members actively said after the trial that they were convinced Jackson was a paedophile, and had likely abused some children; one of the star defence witnesses now says that Jackson abused him, with a second accusation from someone who refused to testify in Jackson’s defence.
It baffles me that people can point to ‘he wasn’t convicted’ in those circumstances. No justice system is perfect and we know that many abusers escape conviction - particularly when they are rich and famous. Jimmy Saville was not convicted; R Kelly was acquitted in 2008 despite there being photo and video evidence of his abuse; he was not convicted of any crime until 2022 despite decades of allegations with really solid evidence.
Of course we will agree to disagree on this. I don’t expect to persuade anyone who has made up their mind.
I believe this musical is very much aimed at people who are content to disbelieve these allegations and are happy to ignore them as much as possible, rather than people who would acknowledge them but separate the art from the artist.
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Post by kathryn on Feb 21, 2024 9:35:12 GMT
Hm, I think the distinction here is the effect that fandom has on the assessment of the person’s behaviour.
No-one is going to Six because they think Henry VIII was a swell guy or an innocent victim, or because they are such a huge fan of Greensleeves.
The fact is that people’s love for Jackson’s art motivates them to excuse his behaviour, which had really serious consequences. The love for his art makes it hard to even accurately discuss his behaviour and its impact on people, and while he was alive it gave him license to act however he pleased, regardless of how damaging that was - for him as much as anyone else.
That is why it is uncomfortable. If we were all saying ‘terrible human being, but let’s separate the art from the artist’ that would be a different conversation than the one we have been having for the last several pages.
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Post by kathryn on Feb 20, 2024 19:39:49 GMT
Edit: if the standard of evidence to convict a paedophile of child abuse was ‘conclusive proof’, most cases would fail. It is very very hard to conclusively prove anything. The standard we use is ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. In most cases with evidence like MJ’s you would get a conviction. Put it this way - if you are on the fence about Jackson you should also be on the fence about Saville. The evidence is of the same type, there is no ‘conclusive proof’ of the Saville accusations either. None of the evidence against Saville has been discredited to the extent that the evidence against Jackson has. The extent that one believes the evidence against Jackson has been discredited really depends on how ardent a fan you are. No-one has had an incentive to attempt to discredit Saville’a accusers after his death. They were certainly discredited if they tried to report while he was still alive.
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Post by kathryn on Feb 20, 2024 19:33:56 GMT
The evidence he was sexually interested in children is the books of photos of boys, the pictures he put on his bedroom walls of children, the testimony of multiple about his behaviour, and his visible behaviour with them as testified to by his staff and caught on camera.
We all recognise that people like looking at pictures of the people who attract them, enjoy spending time around those people, want to hold their hands and cuddle them and be physically close to them.
The behaviour of Jackson would not have been unusual if the people had been adults - if either or both sexes - rather than children. He behaved around children how most people behaved with girlfriends and boyfriends.
As for the possibility that other family members used his bedroom in ways that would result in their DNA being in his bed, it’s not technically impossible, but it’s unlikely given that they had their own rooms. Quite frankly it’d be a weird thing to do and certainly would have been noticed by the cleaning staff who would have needed to clean the bed up before he returned. Also, it would be provable - you’d be able to DNA test family and staff and match them up. The defense didn’t even attempt that.
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Post by kathryn on Feb 20, 2024 19:07:29 GMT
There is no relationship between the forensic evidence and the perjury charges - they were entirely separate matters.
From what jury members said afterwards, the bar they had set themselves to convict was so high that the forensics didn’t affect their decision. Although it was persuasive evidence that sexual activity with some children was *likely* to have taken place, it wasn’t conclusive proof that the sexual activity with Arvizo had taken place.
It’s strong evidence that Jackson was a paedophile, though. You don’t actually need to prove that Jackson molested any particular boy to believe that he was sexually interested in children.
Edit: if the standard of evidence to convict a paedophile of child abuse was ‘conclusive proof’, most cases would fail. It is very very hard to conclusively prove anything. The standard we use is ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. In most cases with evidence like MJ’s you would get a conviction. Put it this way - if you are on the fence about Jackson you should also be on the fence about Saville. The evidence is of the same type, there is no ‘conclusive proof’ of the Saville accusations either.
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Post by kathryn on Feb 20, 2024 18:52:03 GMT
I can’t go into details on the forensics as it is not suitable for the board’s age limit.
I am sure you know that the ‘fraud and perjury’ charges were about not declaring the compensation payment on the welfare claim, which was the matter raised by the lawyers in court during the case. Truly irrelevant to whether MJ molested any kids.
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Post by kathryn on Feb 20, 2024 18:45:25 GMT
In America, the land where it is totally normal for people to fundraise for cancer treatment, a mother asking to help to pay for a child’s cancer treatment is hardly a grifter.
But it doesn’t matter if she was, it wouldn’t change the likelihood that Jackson was a paedophile based on how *he* behaved with her son and other young boys, and the forensic evidence gathered from his bedroom.
Kicking up dirt in the mother is a distraction tactic.
Poor woman - her kid got cancer, she tried her best to get him help, she made some stupid mistakes in the process, and she got her life ruined.
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