Literally putting words in JKR's mouth.

[Pudmyboy]

https://unherd.com/?post_type=thepost&p=488325
Article in Unheard, JKR being 'interviewed' on her views on her views an Australian trans artist taking the part of JKR with 'cis' person taking the part of the 'trans' interviewer.......I cannot believe this is not slanderous! Or libelous if it's written for all to see......can this really go unchallenged by any legal or ethical avenue?

Wow. Fool and money sums up people going to see this.

Cosplaying women in order to denigrate them and ride roughshod over their rights?

Sounds like business as usual.

"I used to think that there was no way a man could become a woman, but then my mate Pauline put this post on facebook about clownfish and it all made sense." kind of thing?

Odd how it never strikes them that a sudden, overwhelming outbreak of apparent bigotry in a group that has previously been very reasonably fighting for equal rights in various guises might possibly be a sign that something is not quite right with their assessment of what’s going on…

And of course they won’t be representing our position. It’ll be hopelessly skewed because none of them are actually listening.

Australia doesn’t have any laws that specifically prohibit the use of another person's name, image or likeness & it’s unlikely anyone would assume JKR’s endorsement/involvement so that avenue’s out. Poor JKR: people endlessly projecting their mummy issues onto her - on top of everything else - must be utterly exhausting.

Thanks for this @NitroNine but the difference is that they are not just using her name or image, they are putting on an event which purports to be her point of view. I agree no-one could mistake Anna Piper Scott for JKR but the whole thing is well dodgy

Women of mumsnet: “Should we create an Ironman thread where we try to argue from the perspective of different characters?”
” No, I think that could be construed as offensive “
”I see where you’re coming from, let’s not do that then.”

TRA playwright: “I know, I’ll host an interview where I pretend to be JKR, and show how offensive her views are. I’ve just got so much empathy!”

Not an innuendo...

What is the basis for it getting a good review? That it was really good as it sounds just like something she might say if you didn’t like her and wanted to not like her more, so you came out the theatre feeling great that those fictitious words made you feel so right? That the man did a really good impression of a woman (that most people wouldn’t recognise the voice of so wouldn’t know if the impression was good anyway) saying horrible things so you felt good feeling horrible to her?

Nellodee · Yesterday 22:12

But matey isn't playing Devil's Advocate honestly, them is making up a load of emotive crap and putting it into JKR's mouth, as if she'd actually said it.

That's a huge difference.

If there hadn't been millions of words written and hundreds of hours of youtube videos already misrepresenting JKR's views...

At this point isn't more of a recap video than anything new or interesting?

$28.00! Is that how much they pay the audience to attend?

shakes head It’s not enough…

Not surprising it is in Melbourne.

Sounds a big pile of fictional tripe and gaslighting. The hilarious thing is that JKR could do a play vaguely along the same lines …. a factual biography on stage, her experience of getting into the debate, the threats on her life, the abuse, the fall out … I wonder if Sydney’s Fringe festival might provide JKR a stage next year?

@Pudmyboy - dodgy, absolutely, but that’s not illegal/actionable either.

Hopefully there is something that can be pursued; but it’s highly likely (especially in current sociology-political context in Australia) that this has already slithered through legal checks as artistic expression/freedom of speech. I’d be very surprised if materials put out by the show don’t have disclaimers (in very small print) stating that it’s all the work of the author & while inspired by Rowling’s published statements the author does not claim Rowling thinks/believes any of the things the show says she does.

The purpose of that thread would have been to really try and put ourselves into the perspective of the other person and argue their case as genuinely and compellingly as possible. Because the other side are generally unwilling to debate their positions. And it would have been generic "characters" coming at the debate from a particular perspective, not actual identifiable individuals.

It doesn't sound like that is what is happening here. Not least because JKR is more than willing to explain her own position, she doesn't need anyone to "play" her.

She already did quite a lot of that when she wrote The Ink Black Heart.

Actually, you've just described how I've "gotten where I've gotten" quite well.

Trans activists: JKR is a terrible transphobic bigot who wants to kill trans people!
Me: Are you sure? That doesn't sound very likely. I'd better go and find out what she has said.

Several hours later...

Me: OK so she clearly doesn't want to kill trans people. And...er...she's not wrong, is she?

Months later...

Me: WTF, why is there a male weightlifter competing in a women's category at the Olympics?

A year later...

Me: What the actual fucking fuck, female rape survivors who need single sex support aren't bigots!

A year later...

Me: Stop the world, I want to get off.

JKR essentially introduced me to the idea that not all of this rainbow stuff was as nice as it claimed to be.

It's a play. There are lots and lots of plays that feature real people as characters, with dialogue scripted by the writer, many of them not based on real life events and many of them controversial or portraying them in a bad light. King Charles III (written long before he was king) was an extremely popular West End play that reimagined the future of the royals and wasn't based on fact. Dear England (featuring a fictional version of Gareth Southgate) is the biggest hit play around. And of course there have been lots of TV shows, like the Crown and the Windsors, that use the royals as fictional versions of real people. The same person who wrote Dear England also wrote the Brexit movie which fictionalised Boris Johnson and others.

It's not illegal to put a fictional version of a real person on stage, and the law can't discriminate based on whether that portrayal matches our own politics or not. Either it's legal to represent real people on stage or it's not. If it's not, that means no one can ever write a play or movie or TV show about any political or historical figure, or about royalty. Or any movie based on real life events. You can't say "King Charles III is fine but not this play, because that play matched my opinions and this one doesn't."

If you want a blanket law banning all TV shows, movies, and stage plays about real people then fine, but you can't go "well the Crown is fine, or that movie about Margaret Thatcher was fine, but not this."

It's not a play.

The "character" concerned is a living person who regularly expresses her real views on this subject.

Her real views are frequently twisted by the mainstream media anyway. She will say something about women's rights and it will be reported as her "controversial views on transgender rights".

But given how open she is about what she really thinks, there's no need to use artistic licence to fill in the gaps. There are no gaps.

So are they going to have the actress playing JKR just sit there and read out her own tweets and other writing on this subject? And charge people money for that?

Or are they going to make shit up?

Apparently being on the right side of history gives you the right to straight up make things up now, also seen recently with Popbitch and Pink News fabricating stories about the supposed failure of Graham Linehan's book sales.

Oh dear lord no! That would be 'unsafe'!!!

Crikey we had the same journey to peak terf! 😁

Yes there are countless examples. Go back to Shakespeare. But this is different in that it’s an interview format that is deliberately and knowingly to everyone advertising that it is altering words and lying.

In Dear England I have to say there was a lot of chuntering in the audience when they disagreed with the accuracy of the tiniest football detail and the production had had fact checkers in the production process too. The same playwright also did the Best of Enemies, which I haven’t seen, which was a fictionalised debate format between two famous politicians but had various famous people as side characters. Which sounds like a much better and entertaining format than a 2 hander interview hit job.
I’d eat my theatre programme if this play had even a tenth of the mastery of a James Graham play.

I think part of the reason why JKR gets so much hate is because she's a big, big problem for trans activists.

She's someone who has always been on the right side of history. She's clearly not a bigot, no matter how badly they want to recast her as one. And most people, even the ones who don't like her books, think she is a decent person and that she is right about this.

That's why they're combing through books she wrote 30 years ago trying to find evidence of antisemitism and all sorts to "prove" that she was Voldemort in Dumbledore's clothing all along.

A couple of people have quoted my post. My aim was to draw a comparison between the care that our forum users take to not be offensive, and the complete lack elsewhere. It seems I didn’t signpost this well enough, so thanks to the posters who clarified the careful intentions of mumsnetters.