Arts & Entertainment

In Spain, Putting Little People Out Of Work In Order To Save Them

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The cognitive dissonance created by the use of little people, aka. dwarfs and midgets, to make normal size people laugh has bothered me for a very long time. I remember attending the final game of Baltimore Orioles great Brooks Robinson in 1977 (he retired when he decided he could no longer play up to his standards, rather than hanging on and collecting his contract salary to the bitter end. Those were the days…). As a part of the ceremony, the crowd was treated to the spectacle of a 3’8″ man wearing Robinson’s number re-enacting some of his most famous fielding plays at third base.

The audience roared; my family and I were appalled, but then, that was Baltimore. I decided, after pondering the matter, that eventually the bad taste of such performances would make them obsolete, which would be a boon to civilization, but if height-challenged individuals consented to participating in the acts and were paid, the “entertainment” was at least arguably ethical. It wasn’t unethical. And sure enough, when the Orioles franchise was sold a few years later, the use of Little People as gags and mascots ended.

Now comes the news that Spain’s parliament last week banned bullfighting featuring dwarfs in costumes, including routines where the the Little People pretended to be bull-fighters. In those instances, they “fought” small bulls and calves but didn’t hurt them, unlike the full-size matadors who stab and kill the full-size bulls. Little People also have entertained bull-fight crowds in Spain for decades by performing like American rodeo clowns, chasing and being chased by the bulls. As with the Baltimore Orioles’ small performers, the practice is slowly losing support and popularity.

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“Phantom” And Lyrical Integrity

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

“The Phantom of the Opera” finally closed on Broadway last month after running more than 35 years and a record-setting 13,981 performances. Most of the musicals on the list of the longest-running shows are junk between “Phantom” and #17, “Fiddler on the Roof” (though not #7, “A Chorus Line”), but “The Phantom of the Opera” isn’t, though more for its staging and atmospherics than its music. I saw the show long ago at the West End in London, prepared to find it over-rated, but it really isn’t.

However, before it passes into history (and you’re not going to see a lot of high school, college and community theater productions of this monster), I have to mention something about the lyrics (by Charles Hart; Andrew Lloyd Webber composed the music) that bothered me the first time I heard the score, when I saw the show, and now. The ethics issue is integrity, and I know some readers are going to decide that the topic of cheating in hit Broadway show lyrics is too trivial to think about. Au contraire, as the Phantom might say (the show does take place in Paris, after all). Nothing involving ethics is too trivial to think about: that’s been the operating principle here from the beginning. Besides, I write song lyrics as part of what is laughingly called my job. I care about doing it right.

In the title song of “The Phantom of the Opera” (called, as I bet you could guess, “The Phantom of the Opera”) the rather central word “opera” is pronounced two different ways to fit with the music. “Opera” is generally pronounced in English as a two-syllable word (“op-ra”), and indeed it is in part of the song, as you will note in the ridiculous music video made with the show’s original “Christine,” Sarah Brightman, above. However, through most of the song, opera is sung as three-syllable word, “op-er-a.”

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Jerry Springer (RIP) Was An Ethics Corrupter

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Jerry Springer has died at 79. I’m not glad he’s dead, but when someone has as damaging an effect on the culture as he did, the fact belongs in his obituary. Attention should be paid.

Springer was the epitome of an ethics corrupter. He held the poor, uneducated, non-too-bright and badly socialized up to public ridicule. He encouraged foolish people to embarrass themselves on TV. He also sent the message to many of his less civilized, socialized and mature viewers that the best way to deal with conflict is a punch in the chops.

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Comment Of The Day: “If Cleopatra Was Black, Maybe I Am Too!”

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Once again I am confronted with the phenomenon of a Comment of the Day that is better written than the Ethics Alarms post at issue. This happens a lot (Curmie, today’s author, is a repeat offender). I am torn about it, actually: the comments here contribute greatly to the value of the blog, and my original concept was to create a colloquy of articulate readers interested in ethics who also bring different backgrounds and perspectives to the issues. The high quality of commentary obviously validates that mission; it’s only my fragile ego that suffers. Curmie, like several others who participate regularly here, is an experienced blogger himself. He’s also a better proof-reader than I am (though I found one typo this time, making my day).

But I digress. The topic of Curmie’s Comment of the Day is the controversy over Netflix suggesting that Cleopatra was black in a new series, a matter Ethics Alarms raised in the post, “If Cleopatra Was Black, Maybe I Am Too!”

From here on, it’s all Curmie; I’m just going to sit by quietly feeling inadequate…

***

There are several differences, I think, between this story and the brouhaha over the black Anne Boleyn a couple of years ago.

First is a fundamental difference in the way the casting of a major role was presented. The BBC would have us believe that race doesn’t matter in the casting of the title character in the “Anne Boleyn” mini-series so long as it’s “surprising.” (As you noted, Jack, a block of cheese would also have been surprising in the role.) The forthcoming Netflix series is at least honest that being black (or mixed race and appearing black, in this case) was a prerequisite for an actress being considered for the role of Cleopatra, who almost certainly was, shall we say, significantly lighter-complected.

This is apparent in the nonsensical utterances in the promotional video, in which anonymous voices are treated as authorities. If they had a legitimate historian who supported the cause, that person would be identified as such. That omission is more than a little telling.

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If Cleopatra Was Black, Maybe I Am Too!

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Netflix is telling its subscribers that Cleopatra was black, but both Cleopatra and I come from Greek stock, so if she was black, I must be too. This is just the break I have been waiting for after seeing my legal ethics training business torn to pieces by the stupid Wuhan virus lockdown, and income reduced to trickle that cannot be restored to its previous whoosh! Now that I can market my services as one of the very few blacks in the field, whole new vistas are open to me. Thanks, Netflix!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Sorry, I’m just giddy.

A new Netflix new docu-series, “African Queens: Queen Cleopatra,” stars black British actress Adele James as the fabled Egyptian ruler. Producer Jada Pinkett Smith (yes, she’s the one her husband slapped Chis Rock over) has said that “she wanted to tell the story because ‘”we don’t often get to see or hear stories about black queens.” Somebody should tell Jada that one reason for that is that they prefer to tell the stories of white queens and pretend they are black, as when the very white second wife of King Henry the VIII was cast as being black in 2021 British mini-series. As I pointed out in the linked post, this kind of fantasy revisionism is considered benign—DEI, man!—-while casting a white women to play a black one would be “whitewashing” and racist. Similarly, casting a black actress to play the red-haired, fishy-white Little Mermaid in Disney’s life action version of the animated classic is hunky-dory, but using computer magic to make the black version of whitefish Ariel white again is racist. Clear?

I sure hope not.

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More Big Brother “Whack-A-Mole”: The Woke Censors Come For Jeeves And Bertie

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The good news is, as we are periodically reminded, this isn’t the U.K. (Thank-you, George, Tom, John, Paul and Ben!). The bad news is that the totalitarian virus embedded in The Great Stupid is contagious, and far greater threat to civilization than any pandemic. Great Britain has reached a level of unethical literary censorship—for the greater good, to eradicate “WrongThink,” you know—that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.

I thought the effort by British publishers to re-write the works of Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming was just a temporary outbreak, and that the miscreants had received so much ridicule and criticism that the madness had been contained. As is so often the case, I was tragically wrong. Now these ethics villains have come for…I can’t believe I am writing this…P.G. Wodehouse.

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Lyric Political Correctness In “The Little Mermaid”: Not Unethical, Just “The Great Stupid” Doing What It Does…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

From the Ethics Alarms mailbag came an inquiry about the latest kerfuffle over the upcoming live action version of “The Little Mermaid.” There are two great production numbers in the original, both sung by a crab: the Academy Award-winning “Under the Sea” and the more sedate “Kiss the Girl,” in which Ariel’s devoted crustacean friend urges Prince Eric, Ariel’s secret love, to take the plunge and kiss the magically land-bound fish-woman.

Here are the original lyrics:

There you see her
Sitting there across the way
She don’t got a lot to say
But there’s something about her
And you don’t know why
But you’re dying to try
You wanna kiss the girl

Yes, you want her
Look at her, you know you do
Possible she wants you too
There is one way to ask her
It don’t take a word
Not a single word
Go on and kiss the girl

Sing with me now
Sha-la-la-la-la-la
My oh my
Look like the boy too shy
Ain’t gonna kiss the girl
Sha-la-la-la-la-la
Ain’t that sad?
Ain’t it a shame?
Too bad, he gonna miss the girl

Now’s your moment (ya, ya, ya)
Floating in a blue lagoon (ya, ya, ya)
Boy, you better do it soon
No time will be better (ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya)
She don’t say a word
And she won’t say a word
Until you kiss the girl

Sha-la-la-la-la-la
Don’t be scared (sha-la, sha-la-la ya, ya, ya)
You got the mood prepared (woah, woah)
Go on and kiss the girl
Sha-la-la-la-la-la
Don’t stop now (sha-la, sha-la-la ya, ya, ya)
Don’t try to hide it how
You want to kiss the girl (woah, woah)
Sha-la-la-la-la-la
Float along (sha-la, sha-la-la)
And listen to the song
The song say kiss the girl (woah, woah)
Sha-la-la-la-la-la
The music play (ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya)
Do what the music say
You got to kiss the girl
You’ve got to kiss the girl
Oh, don’t you wanna kiss the girl
You’ve gotta kiss the girl
Go on and kiss the girl

Via the surviving member of the team that wrote the songs in “Mermaid” (and better yet, “Little Shop of Horrors”), Alan Menken, we learned this week that Disney, which is too woke for its own good these days (and ours), ordered up some lyric changes in the song because “people have gotten very sensitive about the idea that [Prince Eric] would, in any way, force himself on [Ariel].”

Oh, please.

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Ethics Quiz: National Anthem Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

You can’t really blame Frank Drebin for massacring “The Star Spangled Banner” in “The Naked Gun”—after all, he had to impersonate an opera singer so he could get on the field and protect Queen Elizabeth from being assassinated by Reggie Jackson. Rosanne Barr’s rendition, however…

…was something else again, an obnoxious, deliberate and unfunny insult by any ethical standards.

But what is your ethics verdict on this rendition of the National Anthem sprung as a surprise on the packed Busch Stadium in St. Louis, when the Cardinals’ veteran starting pitcher of 17 years, Adam Wainwright, now entering his final season, stepped to the microphone in uniform on Opening Day and sang…

…one of the most off-key, pitch-shaky versions of the song ever heard outside of a saloon, or “The Naked Gun”?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is it ethical to sing the National Anthem as a solo in public when you can’t do it well?

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“Ick” Or Ethics? Michael Crichton’s 1981 Film “Looker” Is Coming True…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

In “Looker,” a 1981 science fiction thriller starring Albert Finney, James Coburn and Susan Dey, involves a high tech research firm that concludes that real, live models, even after cosmetic surgery, can’t approach the physical perfection that will optimally influence consumers. Models are offered a contracts to have their faces and figures scanned to create 3D computer-generated avatars, indistinguishable from them, which are animated for use in commercials. Once their bodies duplicated digitally, they get lifetime paychecks (though not for as much as Miguel Cabrera, currently at $400,410,623 and counting, gets) and can retire, since their computer-generated, more perfect dopplegangers will be doing their work for them. For some reason, the evil tech firms has all of the models murdered, but that part of the plot is irrelevant here.

42 years later, Levi Strauss & Co. announced in a press release yesterday that it is partnering with an AI company to “increase the number and diversity of our models for our products in a sustainable way.” Yeah, those digital models in “Looker” were also “sustainable,” even though the models’ flesh and blood models were disposable. Levi’s will test the use of AI models to “supplement” real-life models later in 2023.

“While AI will likely never fully replace human models for us”, “—-yeah, tell it to Susan Dey—-we are excited for the potential capabilities this may afford us for the consumer experience,” said Dr. Amy Gershkoff Bolles, global head of digital and emerging technology strategy at Levi Strauss & Co, sounding a lot like James Coburn, the evil advertising genius in “Looker.”

Meanwhile, in arguably related news, Levi Strauss & Co. will be laying off 800 employees — almost 20% of its corporate jobs.

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The “Shizzle My Nizzle” Saga

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

There are a lot of angles that I was tempted to apply to this Weird Tale from The Great Stupid about a longtime, popular talking head for a Jackson, Miss. news broadcast. It is obviously a “when ethics alarms don’t ring” story, for example. It could be used as evidence of persistent racial insensitivity in Mississippi, or the South, or the nation. The episode might be cited as more evidence that public apologies are usually meaningless, and that after-the-fact trainings for employees who utter words that suggest they have, let’s say, racial, gender and ethnic biases are window dressing and just about useless.

However, I’m going to cite the episode as an example of how broadcast journalists are hired more for their non-intellectual assets than any genuine talent in analysis and reporting, and also to illustrate how incomprehensible the current rules are regarding who can say what during The Great Stupid.

Barbie Bassett (above) was a popular news anchor, weather lady and a traffic reporter for WLBT, an NBC affiliate in Jackson, Mississippi. The former beauty queen—beauty queens are innately talented as journalists, did you know that?—has been a fixture at the station for 23 years, but hasn’t been seen on the air since March 8 though the station hasn’t make any official announcement. She has apparently been sacked, since her image and any traces of her have been purged from the station’s website.

Bassett’s demise was triggered when she participated in a segment on a new variety of wine from Snoop Dogg’s Snoop Cali Blanc wine collection. (Now there’s news the public has a right to know!) Barbie was chattering away and quoted Snoop’s trademark gibberish, “Fo’ shizzle, my nizzle!” “Nizzle” is Snoop for “nigga.” Even though the rapper is featured in national TV ads for a couple of products and treated as a cute and harmless celebrity, white people aren’t allowed to say “nizzle,” though heaven knows why they would want to.

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