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Post by Repat Van on Nov 11, 2024 12:14:19 GMT
Maybe they asked Diane, by mistake. DADS. |
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mids
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Post by mids on Nov 11, 2024 13:46:11 GMT
Yes, we feel your pain.
"Some First Nations leaders have called the book "offensive", saying it contains language errors and contributes to the "erasure, trivialisation, and stereotyping of First Nations peoples and experiences".
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Post by Repat Van on Nov 11, 2024 13:51:13 GMT
Seriously the obsession conservatives have with that woman needs to be studied in universities. It’s not normal.
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Post by flatandy on Nov 11, 2024 14:14:25 GMT
Why does a chef think he can write a children's book? Celebrities should stay away from being authors, on the whole?
Also having "natives" who have magical abilities to communicate with plants and animals is a very tired old racist idea. Not quite the racism of an old Biggles book where the inscrutable Chinese would have some mystical power or the natives of the island would fire arrows and try and eat Biggles's mates. But still patronising racist "Oh, this isn't rude about them, this is about their amazing abilities". Tiresome toss.
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moggyonspeed
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"Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat."
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Post by moggyonspeed on Nov 11, 2024 14:36:08 GMT
The book is children's fiction, not non-fiction, and that is the ultimate determining factor here. If Oliver gets things "wrong" in the book, then his response should be "yes, it's fiction". Where does this "consultation" stop? Should we somehow think less of Shakespeare for (probably) not having consulted Venetian or Cypriot blacks before publishing Othello? Should George MacDonald Fraser have consulted each and every culture acting as a backdrop for his anti-hero Harry Flashman? Should Alexander McCall Smith, even though he was born in Rhodesia, have consulted black women in Botswana about his wanting to write the brilliant The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series? As I say - where does it stop? It doesn’t matter if it’s fiction. You do realise that authors also tend to do research for works of fiction too right? And it is their right and within their gift to do so. No problem with that.Do adequate research so that your depictions are characters not caricatures. |
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moggyonspeed
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"Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat."
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Post by moggyonspeed on Nov 11, 2024 14:39:31 GMT
Why does a chef think he can write a children's book? Celebrities should stay away from being authors, on the whole? Also having "natives" who have magical abilities to communicate with plants and animals is a very tired old racist idea. Not quite the racism of an old Biggles book where the inscrutable Chinese would have some mystical power or the natives of the island would fire arrows and try and eat Biggles's mates. But still patronising racist "Oh, this isn't rude about them, this is about their amazing abilities". Tiresome toss. That's my main takeaway from this story too. A celebrity's name is their brand, and that brand is often exploited to sometimes drown "the market" with "product". All this does is to point up, yet again, that age-old tension between quantity and quality. |
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Post by flatandy on Nov 11, 2024 14:48:20 GMT
Characters and caricatures make up a large part of fiction, and if readers cannot or will not see that then the problem is theirs. Not sure I'm convinced by this. As Shakespeare was brought up earlier (cough - as if Shakespeare and Jamie Oliver were equivalent), he did had a usurious hook nosed Jew as the rotten money lender demanding his pound of flesh in Venice. Now, there's a historical reason to have jews as money lenders in fiction set in western Europe. But that doesn't mean we don't now see it as a pretty grimly antisemitic depiction that might have been better avoided and we certainly wouldn't do that now. |
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mids
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Post by mids on Nov 11, 2024 14:56:01 GMT
It's a bit of an odd choice of subject and setting. Of course he might well know loads about Australia having taken a keen interest in its history for years. Alternatively he could have written a story about a magic cook.
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Post by Repat Van on Nov 11, 2024 15:10:30 GMT
It doesn’t matter if it’s fiction. You do realise that authors also tend to do research for works of fiction too right? And it is their right and within their gift to do so. No problem with that.Do adequate research so that your depictions are characters not caricatures. The fact that ethno-cultural caricatures exist in fiction does not make it right nor prevent people criticising them. It just comes across racist and of course people who rarely are depicted in the form of caricatures fail to see the issue with it. I mean there are people who defend black and white minstrels so…. |
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Post by Repat Van on Nov 11, 2024 15:15:00 GMT
Characters and caricatures make up a large part of fiction, and if readers cannot or will not see that then the problem is theirs. Not sure I'm convinced by this. As Shakespeare was brought up earlier (cough - as if Shakespeare and Jamie Oliver were equivalent), he did had a usurious hook nosed Jew as the rotten money lender demanding his pound of flesh in Venice. Now, there's a historical reason to have jews as money lenders in fiction set in western Europe. But that doesn't mean we don't now see it as a pretty grimly antisemitic depiction that might have been better avoided and we certainly wouldn't do that now. I remember reading The Merchant of Venice at school. It was so blatantly anti-Semitic and we read the role of Shylock with pity. Yet at the time apparently it would have been seen as a comedy. Oliver Twist too - wildly anti-semitic! |
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moggyonspeed
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"Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat."
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Post by moggyonspeed on Nov 11, 2024 16:20:53 GMT
Not sure I'm convinced by this. As Shakespeare was brought up earlier (cough - as if Shakespeare and Jamie Oliver were equivalent), he did had a usurious hook nosed Jew as the rotten money lender demanding his pound of flesh in Venice. Now, there's a historical reason to have jews as money lenders in fiction set in western Europe. But that doesn't mean we don't now see it as a pretty grimly antisemitic depiction that might have been better avoided and we certainly wouldn't do that now. I remember reading The Merchant of Venice at school. It was so blatantly anti-Semitic and we read the role of Shylock with pity. Yet at the time apparently it would have been seen as a comedy. Oliver Twist too - wildly anti-semitic! Shakespeare uses The Merchant of Venice to highlight key themes of the day including anti-Semitism, love, prejudice, religious intolerance, and wealth. Racism was certainly around in Shakespearean England but was undergoing great scrutiny by royalty, the nobility and academia at that time. Shylock's line in the play, "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" is an open invitation to the listener to see Shylock first-and-foremost as a human being. Was Shakespeare racist therefore? I doubt it. Othello on the other hand, written after The Merchant of Venice, clearly shows that our eponymous (and black) subject is an heroic general, any racist sentiment being down to others in the play - specifically Iago (one of Shakespeare's most cunning and evil characters - and white) and Brabantio, so again The Bard is inviting us to check whether our own beliefs and prejudices align more with evil white people, or a clearly undermined black hero. Dickens, on the other hand, was inconsistent in his treatment of humanity. Social justice, care for the poor and the hungry etc. were all front and centre in much of his writing - as long as the beneficiaries were white; those of a darker complexion, Indian and Aboriginal peoples in particular, were described by him using the harshest of language. Compared to Shakespeare, I fear that Dickens was indeed racist. |
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Post by wetkingcanute on Nov 11, 2024 17:02:34 GMT
I remember reading 'Biggles Flies Undone' at school and thinking it was a bit iffy.
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Post by Repat Van on Nov 11, 2024 19:27:07 GMT
I remember reading The Merchant of Venice at school. It was so blatantly anti-Semitic and we read the role of Shylock with pity. Yet at the time apparently it would have been seen as a comedy. Oliver Twist too - wildly anti-semitic! Shakespeare uses The Merchant of Venice to highlight key themes of the day including anti-Semitism, love, prejudice, religious intolerance, and wealth. Racism was certainly around in Shakespearean England but was undergoing great scrutiny by royalty, the nobility and academia at that time. Shylock's line in the play, "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" is an open invitation to the listener to see Shylock first-and-foremost as a human being. Was Shakespeare racist therefore? I doubt it. Othello on the other hand, written after The Merchant of Venice, clearly shows that our eponymous (and black) subject is an heroic general, any racist sentiment being down to others in the play - specifically Iago (one of Shakespeare's most cunning and evil characters - and white) and Brabantio, so again The Bard is inviting us to check whether our own beliefs and prejudices align more with evil white people, or a clearly undermined black hero. Dickens, on the other hand, was inconsistent in his treatment of humanity. Social justice, care for the poor and the hungry etc. were all front and centre in much of his writing - as long as the beneficiaries were white; those of a darker complexion, Indian and Aboriginal peoples in particular, were described by him using the harshest of language. Compared to Shakespeare, I fear that Dickens was indeed racist. LOL! Yes. That is what he was doing. “Highlighting the anti-semitism of the time”. It’s ok to accept your heroes have flaws you know. |
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Post by perrykneeham on Nov 13, 2024 11:00:10 GMT
This story is curiously cheering. Some things never change: grubby little men fiddling the system for a few quid www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz6j80j62evoThe fact that he's a Scouser only reinforces the agelessness of the tale. |
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Post by flatandy on Nov 13, 2024 14:20:53 GMT
The satellite and web TV services adore these stories. They probably paid the BBC to place what is otherwise a very minor story. Anything which says "You're going to prison if you pirate our broadcasts" is absolute gold to them.
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Post by perrykneeham on Nov 13, 2024 21:15:37 GMT
Well, to be fair, they have a perfect right to stop people nicking off them.
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Post by flatandy on Nov 13, 2024 22:19:00 GMT
Yeah. But it's a bit of a nothing story that if it was anything else being nicked wouldn't be on the BBC.
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Post by perrykneeham on Nov 14, 2024 11:35:40 GMT
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moggyonspeed
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"Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat."
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Post by moggyonspeed on Nov 14, 2024 14:29:25 GMT
Hardly. I've been through the story twice and cannot find the word "compensation" or anything like it.
The recent stories I've read about "khompo" are largely about compensation and insurance payouts for all the millions of pounds-worth of damage caused by the undemocratic Far Right's summer riots.
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Post by perrykneeham on Nov 14, 2024 15:09:17 GMT
Oh, you don't think the family won't follow up with a claim? Bless.
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