"Saul" called off

[Old Grumpy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/28/better-call-saul-off-but-isnt-opera-exactly-why-trigger-warnings-were-invented

[teamsaint]

As Bobby Womack might have said…
” Saul Over Now”

Anyway, I think I I agree with the article , but it is somewhat wordy, and in any case my own view ( publish and be damned) is unlikely to change.
A shame , really.

[Bryn]

As Bobby Womack might have said…
” Saul Over Now”

Anyway, I think I I agree with the article , but it is somewhat wordy, and in any case my own view ( publish and be damned) is u likely to change.
A shame , really.

Can't be doing with it. I think I will dig out and listen to the Baudo recording of Honegger's "Le Roi David".

[oddoneout]

As Bobby Womack might have said…
” Saul Over Now”

Anyway, I think I I agree with the article , but it is somewhat wordy, and in any case my own view ( publish and be damned) is unlikely to change.
A shame , really.

I ploughed my way through the article when it first appeared(and had intended to post on the Forum but forgot) and thought it a pity that the writing made it difficult ( as far as I was concerned)to properly consider the arguments and opinions she put forward - perhaps it needed to be(or was originally and had been poorly edited) a longer piece.
Increasingly I feel that the more such agonising about the past happens the more it seems to impede progress now and for the future.

[RichardB]

( publish and be damned)

Yes exactly. It's part of a discussion that needs to be had. That is one of the things theatre can do that other artforms can't.

[richardfinegold]

Very derelict of Handel not to foresee political events 400 years in the future. Put him in the penalty box alongside Tchaikovsky

[Old Grumpy]

I ploughed my way through the article when it first appeared(and had intended to post on the Forum but forgot) and thought it a pity that the writing made it difficult ( as far as I was concerned)to properly consider the arguments and opinions she put forward - perhaps it needed to be(or was originally and had been poorly edited) a longer piece.
Increasingly I feel that the more such agonising about the past happens the more it seems to impede progress now and for the future.

[smittims]

I'm vigorously opposed to this sort of thing. Revisionism, cultural relativity, political correctness, cancel culture, etc. It all stinks.

I've read that when Athens was beseiged by the Spartans, the Athenians were staging plays criticising their government. The point was that free speech was one of the things they were fighting for.

Once you start cancelling something because it contradicts someone's political view, you open up the possibility of something being cancelled because someone pretends that's the case, when in fact it's a private grudge against the person involved. It's all very bad for a just society.

[Serial_Apologist]

Would that include cancelling anything verbally expressed, though? We used to have a No Platform for Racists and Fascists position back in my politically active days. I would have thought that still goes. On the one hand no one is responsible for his or her race, sex or sexuality, which no one should attack even verbally, surely? On the other hand none of us can be held responsible for events or persecutions carried out before we were born. But it's never a done and dusted issue: I myself nonetheless find myself ashamed for not having questioned certain racist assumptions implanted in my childhood brain at the time, but small children are hardwired to trust adults' thoughts, opinions and values passed on to us in childhood until we reach a stage when, if we are lucky enough and correctly informed, we are enabled to question such assumptions.

[RichardB]

We used to have a No Platform for Racists and Fascists position back in my politically active days. I would have thought that still goes. On the one hand no one is responsible for his or her race, sex or sexuality, which no one should attack even verbally, surely?

Indeed. But finding and expressing parallels between an oratorio performed in the 1730s and the political realities of today doesn't come into any of those categories, does it? If people have something to say, have a public discussion after every performance, instead of sweeping the whole issue under the carpet in what seems to me a pusillanimous kind of way.

[Serial_Apologist]

Indeed. But finding and expressing parallels between an oratorio performed in the 1730s and the political realities of today doesn't come into any of those categories, does it? If people have something to say, have a public discussion after every performance, instead of sweeping the whole issue under the carpet in what seems to me a pusillanimous kind of way.

Absolutely.

[smittims]

Hi, S-A, yes,it's a difficult decision where to draw the line. I think I'd allow racists and fascists to state their opinions, if we allow Marxists to do the same. In other words, I'm an 18th-century middle-ish good sense happy medium person. The trouble with 'no-platforming' is that it's subjective, it's saying ' I won't allow your opinions to be voiced because I think they're wrong, but of course the opinions I agree with must be voiced becasue they're the truth , aren't they?' Well, how do we know if the other side aren't allowed to speak?

[RichardB]

I'd allow racists and fascists to state their opinions, if we allow Marxists to do the same.

That implies a symmetry between the two positions which is very far from being the case, smittims. For example, fascists are in fact against free speech, free association and freedom of thought, whereas socialism is committed to those things. That means that one might have quite different approaches to whether one or other position deserves a platform or not. We do know what fascists and socialists believe in. And, as JK has pointed out here before, there is no "happy medium" between racism and anti-racism.

[Joseph K]

Hi, S-A, yes,it's a difficult decision where to draw the line. I think I'd allow racists and fascists to state their opinions, if we allow Marxists to do the same. In other words, I'm an 18th-century middle-ish good sense happy medium person. The trouble with 'no-platforming' is that it's subjective, it's saying ' I won't allow your opinions to be voiced because I think they're wrong, but of course the opinions I agree with must be voiced becasue they're the truth , aren't they?' Well, how do we know if the other side aren't allowed to speak?

If there is a problem with no-platforming, it is emphatically not that it is subjective - the difference between Marxism and fascism is absolutely real. There is no equivalence between them and as Richard B says, no symmetry.
Like Serial Apologist I have been engaged in antifascist activism in the past, and I just felt it necessary to make my voice and presence against fascists to register, even if all it meant in practice was that the police protect said fascists. Now I think that things like that, while absolutely necessary, can't really do much to unravel how racism and fascism come about in this society. But I think this is very different to the kind of no-platforming we've seen recently in the wake of the Hamas attacks in Israel, where a few Muslim presenters (including Medhi Hasan) were taken off air, and people have lost jobs owing to their criticism of Israel.
So I am ambivalent. But I will say that for a long time, from recent history to older history establishment politicians of the 'centre' have shown far more fear at the idea of leftists gaining power than of the right. Freedom of speech doesn't exist in some sort of vacuum does it? It has to be seen from the perspective of power. And people like Bertrand Russell refused to debate Oswald Moseley because of his intense dislike of what he stood for.
Such are my not entirely coherent thoughts on the matter...

[smittims]

Thank you for your comments. I expected this would be an area for string feelings.