Jerry Sadowitz

I agree with that. There is a strong quasi-religious fervour at work, but there are no true priests, and so no official path to seek atonement.

The 'sin', whatever it was, is never forgiven.

modernity and the death of religion was supposed to free us from guilt.

I've seen writing about secularism and humanism operating like religious systems from John Gray, and Mary Harrington, probably others whose names I forget!

Hm. Some of the first to speak up against it also come from those fields.

I agree that critical thinking and analysis need to be taught more widely, and yes, ideally from school age. There is a great tendency to present one orthodoxy as fact, supported by various narratives.

Schools are pretty good at picking a subject and pushing it as a campaign, rather than presenting facts and encouraging children to research and come to their own conclusions. I think often this is an attempt to get children to be 'good citizens', which is fair enough, but offering ready made opinions/solutions is jumping the gun a bit.

Then again, maybe creating 'good citizens' is about obediently following doctrine more than proactively researching and evaluating information.

They aren't being all that analytical though. Maybe that represents a failure in education.

Most of those jobs/roles entail looking at society in order to analyse, respond, react to it. So it may be that those people are just more aware of and sensitive to social trends.

I think it’s notable that lines of work that are quite precarious (publishing, writing, acting, comedy, social media influencer, even we now know, being a barrister), where you’re often self employed and need some sort of personal brand, have been the ones to pick up genderism most strongly. They’ve also been the most vicious in enforcing orthodoxy

no psychological safety in those professions it seems

I read a really interesting article last year, unfortunately I cannot remember where it came from, about the idea that modernity and the death of religion was supposed to free us from guilt. Freud and Nietzche created a world where we could lay all that down and simply work out our problems and move on.

Instead what's happened is that we still have the guilt but there is no mechanism at all to lay it down and move on. It's not only to the 7th generation, if you were wrong or your ancestors were wrong there is nothing for it but to continuously repent in the public sphere.

They are scared of damnation by an unjust, unforgiving god, that's why. They fear an eternity in hell, with all the fervour of a medieval peasant, except unlike the peasant, they know the hell they dread exists and they have seen the face of the god who deals the punishment. It is called 'Cancellation, Social Ostracism and Forced Unemployment" and the god is the Mob itself.

Meanwhile, over in another plush theatre elsewhere in Edinburgh, Tim Crouch proclaims it's all over, we are done, we are all fucked to 5 stars reviews in a packed theatre and standing ovations. If you've got MH problems probably best one to avoid - guidance 14+ .

You see, the reason why the Fool disappears from King Lear halfway through is because he can’t take it any more. Or at least Crouch, the actor supposedly playing him in that plush, corporate-sponsored playhouse, can’t. A world gone mad, on the brink of collapse, with debased royal figures feeding on themselves and everyone else, those in power ignoring all rules of civility and civilisation, cruelty and intolerance abounding – this is not a world he can bear.
And this, Crouch says, is the world we are all living in. We thought it was all OK, we thought the arc of the moral universe was long but it was bending towards justice. We were wrong.

www.alledinburghtheatre.com/tim-crouch-truths-a-dog-must-to-kennel-edfringe-2022-review/

I'll report it to MNHQ and get it taken down immediately then ...

Well quite.

If you follow this through to its logical conclusion, where theatre can't go beyond real life norms, then that's murder mysteries, dystopia, sci fi etc all out of bounds. Would be very dull. Special effects banned.

Political correctness was part of the same thing that's going on now. Anyone that thought it was just "politeness" didn't understand what was going on or where the term came from and why it was used.

We are in the place that led to.

Makes him Dim Davidson then, really. It's hardly as if any venue is spoiled for choice for accessible seating to start with.

Jim thought it was a good idea to move them because he was worried that when he launched into his ableist material the other audience members might think he was aiming it specifically at the diabled people in the front row.

Yes everything can be 'challenged' but how can comedy or theatre explore difficult subjects if characters are held to the same standards as people in everyday life or speaking on stage as oneself?

Exactly.

Art is not life. Theatre is not life. Look at the language: play, show, stage, act, actor. The clue is right there.

I'm not aware of any other species other than human beings who create art. Far cleverer people than me have written about why this might be, and about what function it serves in our lives. I don't fully understand it myself but what I do believe very strongly is that it should not be the role of art to either replicate life or to create a 'better' society. I think that any attempt to enforce that line of thinking - however well-intentioned - takes us down a slippery, steep and ultimately very dark path.

Seems reasonable to me.

I can't see it catching on. Comedians clearing the front row of any demographic that they might risk offending.

And yet those people in wheelchairs obviously didn't feel "unsafe" to attend a Jim Davidson comedy gig in the first place.
No-one on planet earth booking tickets for him wouldn't know that he was an insulting, racist, homophobic, misogynistic foul mouthed person.

Maybe in those days people were able to understand a)they had the right to attend or not to attend a gig b)that words are not literal violence c)that just because they are disabled doesn't mean they would be terminally offended by a joke about disabled people d)they could leave like adults if they found the show wasn't for them

I think Jim Davidson is vile. I don't find him funny.
Ergo, I don't go to his shows.

These people understood that. They wanted to go, so they did.

Freedom of choice.
Adults being responsible for themselves.

From the article -

He hit the headlines in October 2003 when he cancelled a show in Plymouth after managers refused to move a group of people in wheelchairs from the front row to the side aisles.

At the time, Mr Davidson said: 'As all the people in the front row were in wheelchairs I feared it would appear I was specifically targeting disabled people.'

Seems reasonable to me.

They are clearly trying the "We know more than you" paternalistic approach that's been used to justify censorship down the ages.

The thing is you need to be bought up to call that out as total bullshit from an early age, or you'll simply swallow it. Which is great, but if we carry the underlying logic to it's conclusion then it removes the vote from the masses and takes us back to the Peasants Revolt. Because you invariably end up being ruled by people "who know best" and "for your own good". I have no doubt that had the Sarah Everard vigil prosecutions gone ahead, the Met Police would have justified their actions as being "for the protestors own good", and that a sizeable proportion of people on this thread would have agreed.

Actually this is the controversy that I remember...

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2032922/Jim-Davidson-banned-theatre-manager-claims-refused-accept-policy-wheelchair-users.html

Seems he wanted to have wheelchair users removed from the front row and was rude to staff.

IMO cancellation is justified in these circumstances.

Nobody expected it.

I didn't expect that.

And the new use of ‘unsafe’ to refer to feeling uncomfortable makes me want to rip telephone directories in half

how are people to refer to things that are genuinely dangerous when that word has been taken to mean ‘bum clenchingly embarrassing’ or similar

Yes, venues are completely at liberty not to run shows, even if there is a demand for them. Of course they are.

the problem here is The Pleasance’s complete inability to explain why they reacted in such an extreme way.

it makes me wonder if even they know why they did it