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The King’s Speech (1:57) by George Poles
MHRA Labelling (8:43) by Crispian Jago
Rational Vegetarianism (17:01) by Jennie Rigg
Significance Testing (23:14) by Drew Rae
Boxing Mr Firth (30:44) by James Firth
Diverse & Vibrant (37:32) by Frank Key
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In case anyone’s wondering my section was a talk in Pecha Kucha (20×20) format given at Guildford PKN 3 this week. That explains why I’m referring to imaginary slides such as my patent and Maxwell’s Equations!
Slides on YouTube here
[...] Elsewhere, global dominion continues apace with my diverse and vibrant wittering on Episode 72 of The Pod Delusion. [...]
iPadio not working – have to download and play in a media player. 21:35, Fr 18 Feb 2011.
I was dismayed to hear George Poles comments re The Kings Speech.
It seemed to me to be an over emotional socio-political rant against the haves and haves not and the working classes against the aristocracy and nothing to do with the film itself. TKS is a ‘human interest’ film – a ‘dramatisation’ (not an historically accurate account) of a man with a disability obliged to be King when his role in life was that of a naval officer – a man incidentally quite prepared in real life to partake in active wartime service. Even members of royalty are human beings with the same feelings you have Mr Poles. I was dismayed because I came to the Pod Delusion via the BHA link and this hate filled hateful diatribe is not the balanced thoughtful approach I would have expected. I suspect George Poles was prepared to hate TKS even before he saw it, does he really think that the writers knew whether Helena Bonham Carter has aristocratic ancestors? My interest in the film is that of linguistics (specifically the mechanics of how we speak) but I don’t project my personal agenda on the writers/directors/actors and expect my interests to have been taken into account. Perhaps he could listen to Jennie Riggs ‘rational’ intelligent, non-judgemental podcast or even more pertinently James Firth’s interesting offering about putting people into boxes, instead of his exercise in inverted snobbery. Luckily for me I kept listening otherwise I might have missed them!
Erica,
Glad you enjoyed the rest of the show at least! Hope you keep listening – we like to be controversial from time to time…
I don’t feel as strongly as Erica does, but I definitely got something different from The King’s Speech than George. I wonder if it comes down to how people feel about portrayal of difficult topics rather than belief in them. The film certainly portrayed “Bertie” as an imperfect person. It showed him as feeling entitled to respect based on his birth rather than his personal merits, but I didn’t feel that it championed these beliefs, just showed them realistically and sympathetically.
If a film portrays people being racist, is the film racist? Sometimes, but it’s hard to set clear rules. If the racists don’t get their come-uppance, does that make the film racist, or realistic? If the racists also do something good, is the film allowed to celebrate that without being accused of celebrating racism?