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🦃 CURMUDGEONS' CORNER XIX 🦃

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Posts

  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,090
    For centuries, young men and boys played female parts in plays because it was unseemly for women to display themselves on stage in public.   How many white men have blacked up to play Othello?  Do you have to be a Jew to play Shylock? Or Danish to play Hamlet or Italian to play Romeo or Juliet?

    I think not.

    A good actor makes you forget their size, colour, gender and everything else if they get the performance right.
    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • Lizzie27Lizzie27 Posts: 12,494
    Two curmudgeons tonight;

     1. The 'Colston Four' have, rather predictably, been acquitted of causing criminal damage to Colston's statue, meaning anybody, anywhere has a good excuse of committing similar damage to any statue, building,  picture or book they don't like.
     
    2. A 73 year old woman who was formally diagnosed with dementia has won her case against Tesco's for age and disability discrimination just because a manager had asked her if she wanted to retire. How can a company be expected to run a business when daft decisions like this are taken? It's a complete nonsense.
    North East Somerset - Clay soil over limestone
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    Sir John Gielgud had a healthy career playing straight men  … it seems unfair not to allow straight chaps to take on gay roles. 

    I have no evidence for the comparative number of gay and straight roles in western film and theatre … I suspect there are more straight than gay roles … wouldn’t it be limiting gay chaps’ career opportunities if they were no longer able to play straight roles?

    And as has been said, acting is about making a convincing portrayal of someone that you are not. 

    For some reason, following the aspirations for freedom and liberty that spread around the world with the peace and love of my youth, now the world has swung the other way and is inventing boundaries and limits and putting folk back into boxes. 😢 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • raisingirlraisingirl Posts: 7,093
    Insisting that only Jewish actors can play Jewish roles, and therefore, by implication, that Jewish actors can only play Jewish roles, is discriminatory, surely?
    Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon

    “It's still magic even if you know how it's done.” 
  • fidgetbonesfidgetbones Posts: 17,618
    Is it racial appropriation if a person with afro caribbean type hair, then straightens it ? I have straight hair that won't curl. My mum has straight hair that gets permed every six weeks into tight curls. Why can't we just be what we want to be within reason? I don't take offence if someone straightens their hair.  I do take offence if a person with a penis wants to use the female changing room while females (born without a penis) and young girls may be in there.  It strikes me that people being so woke that they think that is OK need to take a step back and have a think about the charter for perverts that is being promoted in the cause of everyone refusing to say that someone is actually wrong, for fear of  offending someone.  Some people are permanently offended.
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    Rock Hudson  played straight men.
    Is straight offensive to straight people? Surely they are not all as unyeilding and boringly rigid as the adjective might suggest.
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • KT53KT53 Posts: 9,016
    The whole situation of who can play which part is ridiculous.  Where is the line drawn?  As mentioned should gays be allowed to play straight parts, and vice versa.  Should a person of one faith be banned from playing a person of another, or none?  Should Tom Cruise at 170cm be permitted to play a character described in the books as nearly 2m tall?  To the final question I would say a resounding "No he should not!"  but purely because he is so ill fitted to the role for other reasons as well.
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    "A film noir star of the 1940s, Alan Ladd would sometimes stand on boxes to appear as though he was as tall as his female co-stars. Ladd was 5 feet 6 inches tall. Other tricks of the trade back then included women wearing ballet flats or lowering their heights by standing in trenches, "
    They would also hold conversations on staircases,I seem to remember.🤔
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • SuesynSuesyn Posts: 664
    What religion or sexual orientation has to do with anyone else or the ability to perform one's job I don't know.
    What one does in ones private life is precisely that, private, and nobody else's business. 
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    I remember a time when it was bad form to mention your sexuality, your religion or your financial status. It was no acquaintance's business.
    In London. Keen but lazy.
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