trigger warnings

Believe It or Not! The Murder Wasn’t The Most Disturbing Aspect Of The Charlotte Stabbing

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

It seems incredible, but Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska’s murder on a Charlotte light rail train was not the most disturbing aspect of her murder by a deranged man who just decided to kill her for no discernible reason. Nor is the fact that the killer had been arrested 14 times and turned back into the streets as part of the Mad Left’s urban “de-incarceration” agenda the worst aspect of the story, or even the deliberate burying of the event by the mainstream media, which felt that the public didn’t need to know this occurred because it undermines so many Axis narratives (gun control, how safe Democrat-run big cities are despite all evidence to the contrary, “Black on white crime? What black on white crime?,” the virtues of public transportation). And it isn’t the fact that so many Americans have been brainwashed that many (including commenters on this blog) have defended the media’s censorship of inconvenient reality.

No, I have concluded upon watching the various surveillance camera videos that the worst aspect of the incident is that even after the young woman was stabbed and was bleeding out in her seat, not one of her fellow passengers lifted a finger to try to save her life.

That’s some community you have there, Charlotte. Be proud…

Continue reading →

So It’s Come To This…The Great Stupid Still Reigns!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

A trigger warning for “The Pirates of Penzance”! I suppose we should be grateful that the weenification of Britannia has advanced so far, as we Colonists can now witness what lies ahead if we don’t get control over the culture and rescue it from the maw of The Great Stupid but quick.

“The Pirates of Penzance” is, of course, one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s most popular operettas, written during the Victorian era when almost everything was considered a justification for pearl-clutching. I have directed the show twice, performed it once, and seen it, oh, maybe 15 times not counting the mostly excellent film version starring Kevin Kline and Linda Ronstadt. A child above the age of three showing alarm at this silly, satirical musical comedy about tender-hearted pirates who kidnap young maidens to marry them with the assistance of a “doctor of divinity” and the conflicted buccaneer apprentice who is the victim of a legal technicality ought to provoke a visit to the kid’s home by child services. An adult traumatized by the show belongs in a rest home.

If “The Pirates of Penzance” gets a trigger warning of even two sentences, the average Shakespeare tragedy must require a brochure. “Titus Andronicus” would need a recitation of possible PTSD side effect like at the end of a TV drug commercial.

Seeing symptoms like this makes me despair of ever freeing Western civilization from The Great Stupid. I fear that it is now embedded in the human species’ DNA, just as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), the chemical found in Teflon, is believed to be contaminating every American’s blood.

No Wonder Today’s Great Britain Is Choking With Woke Insanity, Censorship and Weeny-ism…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Hollywood version of the Broadway cult musical “Wicked” appears to be a holiday box office smash. I suppose I’m going to have to see it, though “Wizard of Oz” worship alienated me long ago and how they can justify making a two hour, 45 minute film of just Act I of a three hour musical mystifies me. However, there is something to be learned from the nanny state’s British Board of Film Classifications (BBFC) felt that it had to put out these ridiculous trigger warnings for what is essentially a family movie:

Continue reading →

On James Bond, The BFI’s Trigger Warnings, and “Poisoning the Well.”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

And now for something completely stupid…The British Film Institute, which screens classic films in its Southbank location in London and has the mission of preserving British cinema, has slapped a ridiculous trigger warning on the early James Bond movies, along with some others from the same period. It reads,

“Please note that many of these films contain language, images or other content that reflect views prevalent in its time, but will cause offence today (as they did then). The titles are included here for historical, cultural or aesthetic reasons and these views are in no way endorsed by the BFI or its partners.“

The “Look out! You’re going to be offended if you are right-thinking Brit!” is offensive itself for many reasons, as that description might suggest. The BFI is for adults, not children; there’s no need to warn grown-ups about characters smoking, naughty bits, violence and the terminology of the time. The date should be enough: “Oh, right, this film is six decades old! Things were different then!” The BFI is treating viewers like idiots, as well as imposing its woke, nanny sensibilities on others.

Continue reading →

The Constitution Was Signed On This Date In 1787. Meanwhile, The National Archives Thinks Some May Find It “Offensive”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

us-constitution-01a

That would be Democrats and progressives, presumably. They’d have this country under their thumb permanently it it weren’t for that damn thing. This whole day must be traumatic for them.

I’d vote for a different party to be in control of the White House and Congress just to stop utter crap like this.

The National Archives Records Administration placed a “harmful content” warning on all documents across the Archives’ cataloged website, including the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, labeling the founding documents of the United States as “harmful or difficult to view.” The warning:

Continue reading →

A Deeper Dive Into The Western Washington University “No Exit” Protest

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

empty seast

Guest Post by Rick Jones

[Before I turn the floor over to Rick, also known here as “Curmie,” a couple of comments are in order. I had hoped that the post yesterday about the Western Washington University student protest over the decision to produce “No Exit,” the 1944 existential drama by Jean-Paul Sartre, would generate commentary from Rick, for several reasons. First, he is one of my favorite bloggers on his own, the proprietor of Curmudgeon Central, which has a new post up right now regarding the George Floyd incident one year mark. More relevant to our topic right here and now, Rick is a distinguished college professor, drama teacher and stage director, who has special insight into university students and live theater. As he reveals in the article to come, he also is better qualified to discuss “No Exit” than I; indeed, he has now convinced me to give the work another chance, since it has been decades since I read or saw it.

I also was thrilled to receive this submission from Rick because I feel very strongly that live theater is imperiled in the U.S. I know most readers here do not share my dedication to theater; few Americans do, and fewer all the time. But I have lived a double life (as a character in Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Inspector Hound” adds “At least!”), spending  as much of my passions and energies on theater as any other pursuit from high school until to five years ago, when I ended the 20-year run of my small, maverick, professional theater company. My timing was excellent, because the panic-driven lockdown has killed many of The American Century Theater’s competitors here in the D.C. area, maybe most of them, and a year of using Zoom and streaming services has undoubtedly convinced many one time audience members that live theater isn’t worth the time, inconvenience or expense. In the same period, toxic political correctness, political obsession and woke fanaticism has grown exponentially, and these were existential threats to theater already.

The “No Exit” controversy is a symptom of a very serious threat to live performance art, which has been a force for uniting societies and enlightening the public for centuries. We need it more than ever now. A lot is at stake. JM]

***

My department has produced “No Exit”(which, by the way, I like a lot more than you do, Jack) twice in the last decade.  The first of these was directed by a talented and intelligent female student (an ardent feminist, by the way) who went on to earn a Master’s from a prestigious university overseas.  And we also did an online-only production last fall, directed by a colleague who’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, with a PhD in Theatre from arguably the best doctoral program in the country.  Oh, did I mention that she’s a lesbian? 

And, of course, the sense of isolation in the play was a major reason the play was chosen: because we all have a greater understanding of that phenomenon now than even the most creative thinkers could have managed a year earlier.  Moreover, please forgive me if I think that perhaps my colleague, who has published and taught courses on Queer Theatre, might have a more sophisticated understanding of the concepts at play in that particular theoretical framework than would a gaggle of pretentiously woke undergrads.

I am apparently lucky not to be at WWU.  When I announced my show for this spring as Jean Genet’s “The Maids”and described the two central characters as “would-be murderers who engage in sado-masochistic lesbian incest,” it generated interest on the part of most of our best actresses; if there was any dissent—from either very liberal students or a very conservative larger community—I never heard about it.  (Side note: although it wasn’t produced until later, “The Maids” was chosen and announced prior to”No Exit” which was a late substitution for a play we were unable to do.  I wouldn’t have chosen to do two existential French dramas from the 1940s in the same season, but that’s what we ended up with.)

But revenons à nos moutons.  When I started this response, I intended to go point by point through the students’ commentary, but that got really long, as virtually everything they say is nonsense.  So: a few general points:

Continue reading →

Ethics Half-Hero: Western Washington University

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

noexit07a

When it comes to colleges and universities standing up to political correctness and woke demands for intellectual non-diversity, half-heroes are still better than the norm. The norm is abject cowardice and the ethical integrity of a sea sponge.

At Western Washington University, theater students attempted to cancel the Theater Department’s fall production of “No Exit,” the 1944 existential drama by Jean-Paul Sartre. (Full disclosure: I would rather be cursed to organize a thousand sock drawers than watch or read that play again.)

A letter of protest from students echoed many of the rationalizations for censorship and political cleansing of the arts that have metastasized into serious threats to intellectual freedom and creative liberty across the nation. Not to keep you in unnecessary suspense, the school did not cave to the student demands, nor grovel an apology for daring to arouse their ire, as most colleges (and high schools) would do today. “No Exit” will still be produced in the Fall. The school still only gets a half-hero rating for its verdict of no exit from “No Exit,” however, because it has agreed to provide “trigger warnings” for audience members.

As to the latter: Yecchh. By capitulating to this degree, the school has allowed the camel’s nose of faux ideological trauma into the metaphorical tent of the arts. Art, especially performance art, is intended to provoke strong reactions by introducing new and unexpected experiences and ideas into the unique dynamic of an audience. Someone who is so emotionally (read “politically programmed to be..) fragile that they have to be warned so they can avoid uncomfortable, jarring or, more frightening yet to crypto-totalitarians, non-conforming ideas should avoid the theater, like a tone deaf man who only appreciates commercial jingles should avoid the opera. By pandering to this part of the student demands, the school has abandoned a crucial principle without which theater cannot survive.

Continue reading →

HBO Max Adds A Disclaimer For Morons Onto “Blazing Saddles”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

You know: morons.

HBO Max thinks people are so stupid and shallow that they must have  “Blazing Saddles” explained to them, lest someone—one will do–think it’s intended to advance “systemic racism” rather than to ridicule it. I do not believe in hating people, but it takes every bit of principle and energy I can muster not to hate both the political correctness dictators who  believe in “trigger warnings,” and the hoards of dim bulbs and sheep-human hybrids who appreciate them. I’m still looking for the complete text of the introduction HBO Max has slapped on Mel Brooks’ masterpiece, but I know enough.

It is intoned  by University of Chicago professor of cinema studies and TCM host Jacqueline Stewart, who also delivered the disclaimer added to “Gone with the Wind.” I like Stewart, who is smart and knowledgeable, but I would have liked her better if she refused to participate in this insulting exercise.

“This movie is an overt and audacious spoof on classic Westerns,'” Stewart says. This, writes Kyle Smith in the New York Post, is to “set things up for anyone who might be clicking on the Mel Brooks comedy thinking they’re in for Swedish drama about the lingonberry harvest.” “It’s as provocative today as it was when it premiered back in 1974,” she says. No, tragically, it is more provocative. Thanks to the racial politics of censorship and ruthless power-seeking that has metastasized on the Left in the George Floyd Freakout, professors are losing their jobs and being “cancelled” for mentioning the word that Blazing Saddles uses repeatedly as a punchline. Any professor who analyzed the use of racist language in “Blazing Saddles” would risk being called a racist by the student body. Continue reading →

Ethics Catch-Up 11/14/2009: Better Late Than Never

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Good morning!

Good Afternoon!

Good Night!

I started this post at about 10 am, and again, and again, and each time another post topic intervened, pushing the daily Warm-Up from the beginning of the day to the end of it…

1. Yet another shield becomes a sword…Add caller ID to the list of useful developments ruined by unscrupulous technology. I was recently tricked by what my phone said was a call by the Social Security Administration, and it included a phone number that I had recently received a legitimate call from, via an agent. This call was a scam. Investigating, I found that there are inexpensive apps available at the Android and Apple app stores with no limitations on who can purchase them that have few if any legal of legitimate purpose. SpoofCard, TraceBust, Fake Call Plus and more  allow a caller to enter any ID they choose, and any number. They also offer menus of background sounds, various voice pitches and other features to facilitate fraud.

When ethics fail, the law must step in, and these apps should be illegal.

2. Mona Lisa Ethics. “Leonardo’s painting is a security hazard, an educational obstacle and not even a satisfying bucket-list item. It’s time the Louvre moved it out of the way” shouted a New York Times sub-headline.” It’s hard to argue with the article’s conclusion….or its author’s contempt.  Here’s a photo of the typical crowd in the Louvre’s room where the Va Vinci painting is exhibited:

The Times observes…

Content in the 20th century to be merely famous, she has become, in this age of mass tourism and digital narcissism, a black hole of anti-art who has turned the museum inside out…Relocated to the Richelieu painting wing, the Mona Lisa reduced the museum’s Flemish collection into wallpaper for a cattle pen, where guards shooed along irritated, sweaty selfie-snappers who’d endured a half-hour line. The overcrowding was so bad, the museum had to shut its doors on several days. “The Louvre is suffocating,” said a statement from the union of the museum’s security staff, who went on strike…[The author] went up with the crowds recently. Things were no better. Now, you must line up in a hideous, T.S.A.-style snake of retractable barriers that ends about 12 feet from the Leonardo — which, for a painting that’s just two and a half feet tall, is too far for looking… visitors…could hardly see the thing, and we were shunted off in less than a minute. …Pathetic new signs [read]: “The Mona Lisa is surrounded by other masterpieces — take a look around the room.”

Morons. These are the fruits of celebrity culture and the spread of the sick addiction to self-celebration. Taking selfies of an art masterpiece only has the objective of proving an idiot was there, for other idiots who are impressed. Meanwhile, those who might really appreciate the painting are  prevented from doing so. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “A Trigger Warning About A Trigger Warning: Audiences Should Walk Out Of The Movie Theater When This Appears”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“For May wol have no slogardie a-night.
The seson priketh every gentil herte,
And maketh him out of his slepe to sterte.”

  Now who can argue with that?  The passage is from a story Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” “The Knightes Tale,” the English  classic written between 1387 and 1400. I did not expect a substantive comment regarding Chaucer to follow an Ethics Alarms post (Chaucer has been mentioned in passing here in the context of the evolution of the English language), but there it was: Michael West revealed his fascinating discovery that Chaucer may have been a pioneer in more than just English literature. Michael’s Comment of the Day is unusual in another way besides its erudition. It was a comment on a post that is nearly two years old. It concerned the jaw-dropping warning that preceded the “Darkest Hour,” the acclaimed film about the wartime heroism and brilliance of  Winston Churchill:

“The depictions of tobacco smoking contained in this film are based solely on artistic consideration and are not intended to promote tobacco consumption. The surgeon general has determined that there are serious health risks associated with smoking and with secondhand smoke.”

I wrote at the time,

Winston Churchill, you see, smoked cigars. Actually he chain-smoked them, and inhaled. They were among his trademarks. Any adult who doesn’t know that should not have graduated from high school. Interestingly, shooting and bombing people are also serious health risks, so I don’t know why it wasn’t noted that the “depictions of warfare contained in this film are based solely on artistic consideration.”

Whatever “based solely on artistic consideration” is supposed to mean…

Of course, showing Churchill smoking cigars is not an “artistic consideration,” but one of historical accuracy and integrity. Does this mean that there was really a debate in the studio about whether or not Churchill should be shown smoking, so as not to trigger good little progressive totalitarians, who believe in changing the past for the greater good of the present? I wonder if they considered making Winston, who was fat, appear slim and ripped, since the surgeon general has determined that there are serious health risks associated with obesity and over-eating. I don’t see why they wouldn’t, if they felt that showing people smoking in the 1930s, when almost everyone smoked,  might be interpreted as promoting smoking today.  Churchill also drank like Bluto in “Animal House.” Why no warning about that? Uh-oh—does this mean that the film, for artistic considerations, only shows Winston sipping soda water and prune juice?

That warning says to me, “We, your Hollywood moral exemplars, think you are an ignorant, illiterate  dummy who can’t tell the difference between a historical drama and a tobacco commercial. We also support the government’s belief that it should impose on every aspect of your life, including your entertainment, to protect you from yourself.”

I had, mercifully, completely forgotten about that asinine warning, and now I’m ticked off all over again. Gee, thanks, Michael, for reminding me.

Here is Michael West’s Comment of the Day on the post, “A Trigger Warning About A Trigger Warning: Audiences Should Walk Out Of The Movie Theater When This Appears”... Continue reading →