This week in Woke: Actresses justly cancelled for committing atrocities

[Politesse]

Recourse to vagueness, since you know how stupid your analogy would sound if you compared a getting a few bad reviews to being beaten to death. And you've still presented no actual evidence to support your accusation that Berry is lying.about her true feelings on the matter.

First, it is not my analogy.

Second, there is no recourse to vagueness. Apart from the fact that the analogy was crystal clear to me from the beginning (I mean, it was really obvious what he was saying), he clarified it to when you (implicitly, but clearly and without reasons to believe so ) accused him of thinking she was like a slave for being Black (and earlier, he made the analogy after you accused him of not taking Berry's statement seriously because he was a woman).

Third, it is not "a few bad reviews", by the way. While it is obviously much less than getting beaten - perhaps to death, perhaps not -, the punishment is much more than just bad reviews. Her actions are morally condemned by many very loud Woke people (hmm maybe a term would be useful... maybe 'Wokes'- like Christians, Marxists, etc?). And they are willing to further punish those they condemn - apart from the condemnation, already a punishment. A good example would be Rowling - condemned for different actions, sure, but relevantly similar in this context (a serious breach of Woke ideology), and with similar motivation on the part of the Woke people involved. This isn't like getting another Razzie. This is about moral condemnation.

Rowling is the wealthiest and most powerful author now living. What deprivations are you referring to, exactly? And are you saying that Rowling, too, should be assumed to be an unwilling hostage of some kind, should she change her mind on the issue of contention later on down the road and apologize? There is, from this point onward, only one opinion she can hold without being deemed a liar or a victim, and that is to agree with you?

If you told Charles Darwin "I don't believe that your statements about evolution are valid, because scientists would clearly be angry with you if you stopped making them; you are very clearly the slave of a vocal minority of educated people and can no longer be trusted to know your own mind", he would laugh you off his porch and tell you to lay off the laudanum for a few months.

 

[ronburgundy]

What position?

Bomb#20 already explained it. As he pointed out, her statements " were made in the hearing of people who wanted to hear those statements and had the power to punish the respective speakers if they did not hear those respective statements. Consequently, the respective statements were made under duress. Statements made under duress are notoriously unreliable. Statements made under duress are worthless as evidence of a speaker's true beliefs."

Obviously, the punishment she would have suffered had she not made them (or similar ones) is a lot less than the punishment the slaves in the analogy would have suffered. But she would still have suffered - almost certainly - pretty significant punishment in the context of her career and personal life. The Woke are a force to be reckoned with.

Your assumption that a person worth $90 million was "under duress" to lie about her views and forfeit a job against her will by a handful of Twitter posters is utterly irrational and absurd. It is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence of which you and Bomb 20 have none. So, baring you meeting that burden of evidence, the only relevant evidence of her views is that she now views her prior decision as in error and is willingly (with her $90 million is economic and social power) doing what she thinks is right.

Regardless, the OP criticized her either for not knowing what acting is and thus quitting the role, or for caving to pressure. Either way, since the OP defines "canceling" as any random person saying negative things about something online, that means the OP has "canceled" Hale Berry, and Jodie Come just as much as the activists it is criticizing (and therefore also "cancelling").

 

[Metaphor]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/...celled-not-late-fight-says-JOHN-HUMPHRYS.html

It’s even happened to Jodie Comer, the brilliant actor who plays Villanelle in the hit BBC TV series Killing Eve.

Look, this cancellation is actually fair. What did she expect when she married literally Hitler?

So, by "cancelled", you mean that some people on Twitter criticized Comer's decision to date a supporter of anti-LGBT policies while playing an LGBT role, even when such criticism has no impact on the person's job. By your own definition, you have "cancelled" Halle Berry by criticizing her for apologizing and withdrawing from the role, claiming it shows she doesn't know what acting is. Also, you have
"cancelled" every transgender and every feminist that you've every been critical of.

By "cancelled" I mean a pile-on social media mob who get, or attempt to get, a person fired, or make it that a particular course of action untenable.

I have never tried to cancel a trans activists or feminist. I have never tried to lead a boycott or start a Twitter hashtag or pile-on nor have I even interacted with anyone in any way on Twitter (I have an account in order to view Tweets).

Indeed, no feminist or trans activists has ever expressed views where my reaction is "I want to ruin this person's life and livelihood forever".

 

[Metaphor]

Regardless, the OP criticized her either for not knowing what acting is and thus quitting the role, or for caving to pressure. Either way, since the OP defines "canceling" as any random person saying negative things about something online, that means the OP has "canceled" Hale Berry

That isn't how I define cancelling.

 

[Metaphor]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/...celled-not-late-fight-says-JOHN-HUMPHRYS.html



Halle Berry ought have realised 'acting' is not about playing roles that are not you. I do hope Berry has realised that going forward, she ought only consider roles where she plays a beautiful A-list actress at about whatever her current age is.



Look, this cancellation is actually fair. What did she expect when she married literally Hitler?

Not that Comer was the first actor to fall foul of the witch-hunt. Only last month, Florence Pugh, of Little Women fame, apologised for her so-called ‘white privilege’ after a picture surfaced of her with cornrows, a type of hairstyle favoured in the Caribbean.

It's a shame there were no future Canadian prime ministers there that could pull focus.

Well thank G`D you are an expert on her career where she can only play "beautiful" women. Misogynistic much?

I'm applying Woke ideology. Halle Berry hasn't had the lived experience of being a plain woman; for her to play that experience on screen is misappropriation.

 

[Politesse]

Well thank G`D you are an expert on her career where she can only play "beautiful" women. Misogynistic much?

I'm applying Woke ideology. Halle Berry hasn't had the lived experience of being a plain woman; for her to play that experience on screen is misappropriation.

Do you feel that casting, in general, should be gender-blind? Since, as you say, there shouldn't be anything stopping a man from portraying a woman effectively, or vice versa?

 

[krypton iodine sulfur]

Well thank G`D you are an expert on her career where she can only play "beautiful" women. Misogynistic much?

I'm applying Woke ideology.

Are you?

It has more to do with representation (and underrepresentation) than actors playing roles beyond their lived experience. If Halle Berry was cast to play a white man, it may not be the best casting decision, but it wouldn't be an issue with white men being underrepresented or with a history of minstrelsy (or similar treatment).

 

[Metaphor]

Well thank G`D you are an expert on her career where she can only play "beautiful" women. Misogynistic much?

I'm applying Woke ideology.

Are you?

It has more to do with representation (and underrepresentation) than actors playing roles beyond their lived experience. If Halle Berry was cast to play a white man, it may not be the best casting decision, but it wouldn't be an issue with white men being underrepresented or with a history of minstrelsy (or similar treatment).

Well, I recognise Woke rules are unfair, certainly, and they will be unfair in perpetuity. It's difficult to believe white actors will ever be able to play a non-white (even fictive or alien-race non-whites, perhaps) roles again without being cancelled, whereas BIPOC actors will be cast as white characters or historically white characters without censure.

 

[Metaphor]

Do you feel that casting, in general, should be gender-blind?

Do you mean sex-blind? I don't recall any casting director casting somebody based on their gender identity, but perhaps they do.

Since, as you say, there shouldn't be anything stopping a man from portraying a woman effectively, or vice versa?

It depends on what you mean, but in general I think the creative talent (the screenwriter, the director, the casting director) should decide for themselves. Whether it is 'successful' or not will ultimately be decided by the critics or the audience. If I were directing, however, I would either go for characters that already look the part (so if the character is black, I'd cast a black person, if the character is a man, I'd cast a man, etc). But I wouldn't ask or care about an actor's sexual orientation to cast them in a role. It's irrelevant. So is their gender identity.

 

[krypton iodine sulfur]

whereas BIPOC actors will be cast as white characters or historically white characters without censure.

You mean like Heimdallr in Thor, or Ariel in the live action Little Mermaid? 'Cause both were met with outcry. Hell, even Rue and Thresh in the Hunger Games elicited anger when black actors where cast to play black characters because some fans were too painfully fucking dumb to realize they weren't white in the books either.

 

[Bomb#20]

Recourse to vagueness, since you know how stupid your analogy would sound if you compared

Has no one ever explained to you how analogies work? The idea is to exhibit two unlike situations and point out an interesting parallel aspect of the two. If an analogy were automatically invalid simply because some other aspect of the situations are nonparallel, then the only valid analogy for anything would be itself.

a getting a few bad reviews to being beaten to death.

Um, "getting a few bad reviews" is hardly the risk she'd have been running if she'd declined to recite Woke pieties.

And you've still presented no actual evidence to support your accusation that Berry is lying.about her true feelings on the matter.

Now there's that reading comprehension problem of yours flaring up again. Neither A.M. nor I accused Berry of lying; and you have already been corrected on this point. We offered no opinion as to her true feelings about the matter. It was you who did that. So why are you putting words in other people's mouths?

So if she says she disagrees with them, they'll take her words at face value, and if she says anything else, it is under duress and she agrees with what they believe.

Literacy. Look into it.

Here's another analogy for you guys' edification. Agnosticism has been aptly defined as "I don't know if there's a God; and you don't know either." A.M. and I didn't make any claim about what Ms. Berry agrees with or about what she is or isn't "fine with". Politesse did that. Not being a believer in ESP, I asked if he had any evidence. You know, that thing freethinkers tend to care about? The only evidence he offered was a manifestly implausible claim that he'd asked her. Since Politesse has not asked Ms. Berry (in private, off-the-record, with plausible deniability) if she's fine with it, he doesn't know whether she's fine with it. Neither do you. Neither does A.M. Neither do I. See how it works?

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Rowling is the wealthiest and most powerful author now living. What deprivations are you referring to, exactly? And are you saying that Rowling, too, should be assumed to be an unwilling hostage of some kind, should she change her mind on the issue of contention later on down the road and apologize? There is, from this point onward, only one opinion she can hold without being deemed a liar or a victim, and that is to agree with you?

That is not remotely the case. It's a gross misrepresentation of what I said.

First, Rowling is a victim of the attacks by some Woke people regardless of whether or not she submits. Why? Because she will suffer negative consequences that she does not deserve, and that they mean to impose on her (they believe she deserves them of course, but that's not the issue).

Second, if Rowling were to say she changed her mind, I would not deem her "a liar". Rather, if she said she agreed that trans women are women, the fact that she is under threat would reduce the weight of her claim as evidence of her beliefs. How much that would be so is a matter that has to be assessed on a case-by-case basis, and her case is different from that of Berry.

Third, you seem to imply that not ruling out that she may be lying somehow is an accusation of wrongdoing, since the use of the expression "a liar" in common speech indicates criticism of a person's character. However, it is not always immoral to lie. I do not have enough information about their personal situation to ascertain whether it would be immoral for either Berry or Rowling to do so in this case. I'm inclined to think probably not. I have not seen anything in Bomb#20's posts suggesting he is accusing Berry of anything.

If you told Charles Darwin "I don't believe that your statements about evolution are valid, because scientists would clearly be angry with you if you stopped making them; you are very clearly the slave of a vocal minority of educated people and can no longer be trusted to know your own mind", he would laugh you off his porch and tell you to lay off the laudanum for a few months.

Again, the slave analogy was obviously and trivially an analogy. The fact of the matter is that things like loud moral condemnation by many, many people, online harassment, a few death threats, boycotts and social shunning, and so on, of course have a significant psychological impact on most human targets of them. How much they are affected and how they would react depends on the person and the circumstances, but of course, it would be irrational not to reduce less weigh to a person's claims submitting to an ideology/religion when made under such threats.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Your assumption that a person worth $90 million was "under duress" to lie about her views and forfeit a job against her will by a handful of Twitter posters is utterly irrational and absurd. It is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence of which you and Bomb 20 have none. So, baring you meeting that burden of evidence, the only relevant evidence of her views is that she now views her prior decision as in error and is willingly (with her $90 million is economic and social power) doing what she thinks is right.

It is not an assumption, but a rational assessment that she was under threat. Of course it is irrational not to take that into consideration while assessing her claims about her beliefs. Sure, that she has plenty of money reduces the impact of the threats. However, suffering the consequences failure to submit to Woke would likely impose on her - things like being ostracized and shunned in her social circle, morally condemned and insulted very loudly by at least thousands of people, the target of some death threats over it, and a good chance of losing her career - would definitely have weight on the mind of a reasonable person.

Regardless, the OP criticized her either for not knowing what acting is and thus quitting the role, or for caving to pressure. Either way, since the OP defines "canceling" as any random person saying negative things about something online, that means the OP has "canceled" Hale Berry, and Jodie Come just as much as the activists it is criticizing (and therefore also "cancelling").

It should be obvious to you that that is not what "cancelling" means in this context. At any rate, I have not said anything negative about Berry's character. And neither has B20.

 

[Politesse]

Rowling is the wealthiest and most powerful author now living. What deprivations are you referring to, exactly? And are you saying that Rowling, too, should be assumed to be an unwilling hostage of some kind, should she change her mind on the issue of contention later on down the road and apologize? There is, from this point onward, only one opinion she can hold without being deemed a liar or a victim, and that is to agree with you?

That is not remotely the case. It's a gross misrepresentation of what I said.

First, Rowling is a victim of the attacks by some Woke people regardless of whether or not she submits. Why? Because she will suffer negative consequences that she does not deserve, and that they mean to impose on her (they believe she deserves them of course, but that's not the issue).

Second, if Rowling were to say she changed her mind, I would not deem her "a liar". Rather, if she said she agreed that trans women are women, the fact that she is under threat would reduce the weight of her claim as evidence of her beliefs. How much that would be so is a matter that has to be assessed on a case-by-case basis, and her case is different from that of Berry.

Third, you seem to imply that not ruling out that she may be lying somehow is an accusation of wrongdoing, since the use of the expression "a liar" in common speech indicates criticism of a person's character. However, it is not always immoral to lie. I do not have enough information about their personal situation to ascertain whether it would be immoral for either Berry or Rowling to do so in this case. I'm inclined to think probably not. I have not seen anything in Bomb#20's posts suggesting he is accusing Berry of anything.

If you told Charles Darwin "I don't believe that your statements about evolution are valid, because scientists would clearly be angry with you if you stopped making them; you are very clearly the slave of a vocal minority of educated people and can no longer be trusted to know your own mind", he would laugh you off his porch and tell you to lay off the laudanum for a few months.

Again, the slave analogy was obviously and trivially an analogy. The fact of the matter is that things like loud moral condemnation by many, many people, online harassment, a few death threats, boycotts and social shunning, and so on, of course have a significant psychological impact on most human targets of them. How much they are affected and how they would react depends on the person and the circumstances, but of course, it would be irrational not to reduce less weigh to a person's claims submitting to an ideology/religion when made under such threats.

And have you any evidence whatsoever that those more serious things were happening to Halle Berry?

And comparing a black woman to a slave is such a disgusting analogy, that if it is trivial to do so it were better avoided, in my opinion. But that is just my opinion, not a death threat. Just so we're clear.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Second, if Rowling were to say she changed her mind, I would deem her "a liar". Rather, if she said she agreed that trans women are women, the fact that she is under threat would reduce the weight of her claim as evidence of her beliefs. How much that would be so is a matter that has to be assessed on a case-by-case basis, and her case is different from that of Berry.

In case it's not obvious, that was a typo. I mean that I would not deem her "a liar".

 

[Angra Mainyu]

And have you any evidence whatsoever that those more serious things were happening to Halle Berry?

Were happening?
No, I did not say they were happening. Rather, there is a pretty good chance that those things and others would have happened if she had failed to submit to Woke. Evidence of that is what is going on all around. The Woke is a strong rising religion in the West (and in some other places too). And it often punishes dissenters in the manners I described.

And comparing a black woman to a slave is such a disgusting analogy, that if it is trivial to do so it were better avoided, in my opinion. But that is just my opinion, not a death threat. Just so we're clear.

Why would the analogy be disgusting?

Remember, the analogy is not in any way saying anything negative about Berry or about Black people.

 

[Politesse]

And have you any evidence whatsoever that those more serious things were happening to Halle Berry?

Were happening?
No, I did not say they were happening. Rather, there is a pretty good chance that those things and others would have happened if she had failed to submit to Woke. Evidence of that is what is going on all around. The Woke is a strong rising religion in the West (and in some other places too). And it often punishes dissenters in the manners I described.

You aren't going to demonstrate that Berry was under duress, then, or any evidence that she felt she was threatened (rather than, as in her own words, simply convinced); you merely want to discount her words on the grounds of what you imagine might have happened if she hadn't said them.

 

[Bomb#20]

Haven't you heard? Woke is the new McCarthyism, only 10 times worse, so obviously this is extreme duress, and is tantamount to torture.

You can tell how bad it is by how "The Woke" (scare quotes for effect) have totally silenced the voice of outlets like the Daily Mail, not to mention the little guys like Metaphor and Bomb. They have been so cancelled, it is sickening to watch. The horror!

Funny story about that -- turns out that during the original McCarthyism period, American communists weren't all starving to death from being barred from earning a living. Rather, certain industries had campaigns to drive communists out. Most infamously, the movie industry.

The Daily Mail is actually one of ours. We use it to lure out wrongthinkers like moths to a flame. Our operatives haven't been able to locate the other two to take them to the reeducation camp.

Yeah, funny how anonymity makes people more willing to speak truth to power. If the Woke knew Metaphor's and my real names and where we worked then it's entirely plausible that some of their hotheads would be libeling us to our bosses and trying to get us fired. That's the whole reason doxing is a thing. That's why only an idiot would think that "the little guys like Metaphor and Bomb" not having been silenced qualifies as evidence that Halle Berry isn't being coerced. Halle Berry is her real name, and the Woke know where she works.

Halle Berry though? If her career survived Catwoman, what could we hope to do to her?

Finally, a substantive counterargument!

 

[Angra Mainyu]

And have you any evidence whatsoever that those more serious things were happening to Halle Berry?

Were happening?
No, I did not say they were happening. Rather, there is a pretty good chance that those things and others would have happened if she had failed to submit to Woke. Evidence of that is what is going on all around. The Woke is a strong rising religion in the West (and in some other places too). And it often punishes dissenters in the manners I described.

You aren't going to demonstrate that Berry was under duress, then, or any evidence that she felt she was threatened (rather than, as in her own words, simply convinced); you merely want to discount her words on the grounds of what you imagine might have happened if she hadn't said them.

No, I did not claim she felt threatened. I am saying she was obviously under threat. How she felt is another matter. Moreover, I do not want to dismiss her words. I am making an assessment of the probability that they might be sincere, on the basis of the available evidence.

That said, assuming hypothetically that she did not feel threatened and willfully made those remarks, then I would criticize her, for willfully promoting the belief that it's immoral on the part of people who are not trans to play the role of those who are.

 

[repoman]

This is a power and money struggle and people will not fight fair, or even if most do, the ones who don't get attention.

Yes, a goodly portion of transgender roles would be better served and avoid squeaky wheels if cast to transgenders. Also some transgenders can play cisgender to some limited degree of success and not kill suspension of disbelief. But not EVERY casting needs heat from social media on it.

For high school and amateur theatre there is not a lot of money involved so artistic considerations should prevail.