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Sean Connery has died

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Sean Connery has died

#211

Post by ljm »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #203
unabst wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s obviously a quick PR filler piece Now that you've made up your mind, anything to the contrary is a conspiracy. Did you actually listen to what Sean said? He starts by saying it's wrong to hit women. He knows it's wrong. What he's saying is if a woman doesn't know when to shut up, they could get themselves slapped and it wasn't beneath him either. He's justifying physical retaliation to verbal abuse. That's ver…

>Today it's still okay by most for a woman to hit a man. The context here is that a woman can't threaten a man with violence due to being unable to injure or harm the man (I'm excluding stinging for a few seconds from a slap). Whereas a woman is always at a great disadvantage for defending herself against a man, so if a man hits her, even if it's just a slap, it indicates that he is willing to hit her, and might hit…

But that's not a true context is it? It's the sexist one that says women are weaker and must be harmless. A woman can absolutely threaten a man with violence. We see it every day in all of the broken marriages, divorce settlements, and situations where children become weapons. The whole situation with Johnny Depp and Amber Heard is one where the traditional roles are reversed.

The truth is that a human being is capable of untold destruction in many forms, and history proves it over and over again. It can be physical, emotional, torturous...you can't make good and evil out of it.

Re: Sean Connery has died

#213

Post by hermitcrab »

kthejoker2 wrote: post #73
at_a_remove wrote: post #21

Whenever someone of this stature goes, I tend to gather together their films, what I have of them, and work through them. So here I am looking at Outland (which isn't as terrible as Harlan Ellison said but goodness it isn't great), Zardoz , In the Name of the Rose , The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (it's fun, I will grant it that), Time Bandits and was left wondering: what films had his iconic performances? What…

His top 5 performances in my mind * The Man Who Would Be King * The Offense * Last Crusade * The Untouchables * The Wind and the Lion He wasn't as bad of an actor as people say (compared to the greats), but he didn't take a lot of challenging roles. I wish he'd played more villains/anti heroes.

'The Man Who Would Be King' is a wonderful film. He was also in some stinkers ('Highlander' springs to mind).

Re: Sean Connery has died

#215

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

ljm wrote: post #197
approxim8ion wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 'innocent', I'm not sure why I went for that choice of word. I think an earlier version of the comment in my head had "killed" instead of "starved" but that would include war casualties which are more ambiguous so the innocent thing. Either way, it was incoherent and you're right that "people" was a better choice of word. English isn't my native language but it's no excuse because I've been speaking and writing…

> it is relevant to acknowledge the portions of someone's legacy that aren't clean For sure. I think this gets complicated, especially in the middle of heated discussions or on the internet, when this stuff is brought up ad-hominem. Or close enough. It's why I don't want to bring anger into this discussion and create another pro/anti divide, because we're all going to see it different ways. I challenge anyone to come…

It has nothing to do with people having a squeaky clean legacy.

If a world famous celebrity uses the megaphone of a televised interview to double down on and expand on views that it’s ok to slap women, that is a huge, dramatic event. That’s not just some small “we all make mistakes” transgression to be forgiven while we remember that person at his best. It is a huge, intentional literal broadcast of a very harmful belief, that we should not minimize or ignore or even set aside to remember other things about them, due to its level of severity and the sustained commitment to it over years that he displayed.

I think it’s very specious and very disingenuous to try to bring in any type of “let he who is sinless cast the first stone” or “let’s remember the good with the bad because he is only human” type of defense. That is just not acceptable in a case like this.

Re: Sean Connery has died

#216

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

ljm wrote: post #200
fao_ wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I find it amusing that you went straight to an authoritarian, and particularly uncharitable answer, when it is clear what my comment means in context of my previous comment. You know, the one that you read and responded to. It's interesting that you went to that place when the TL;DR of my post is: Can you really become a better person if you haven't attempted to undo harm you caused? If you have changed, part…

I'm sorry, but your response is far more uncharitable as you're making the case that I didn't read it and need a summary that isn't really that close to what you actually said. I thought we were having a conversation. I don't know who you're arguing with, but it's not with me or what I wrote. But let's address it: let's say that someone raped another person. The rapist serves a prison sentence for his crime and he co…

Your response here is very poor. In the present discussion the correct analogy with Connery’s behavior would not be that the rapist served the sentence, but that they served the sentence and after they got released, went on a nationally televised news program and stated unequivocally that they did not regret what they did and in fact believed that their victim “wouldn’t shut up” which in some sense meant the victim brought it on themselves.

If someone did that, they deserve to have those words brought up and used to identify their poor character, regardless of whether they “served their time.”

Just as in Connery’s behavior - he doubled down on saying (extremely publicly) that he was ok with women being slapped and gave some extremely contrived misogynistic reasoning about what they could do to deserve it. Connery didn’t just say that and then later apologize or clear the record. He said it once, then years later said it again in response to a direct interview question about that exact topic, and doubled down on not changing his mind, and then never in the rest of his life did he explicitly apologize or retract it.

That is such a forceful application of misogyny that it goes beyond an unfortunate character flaw we should overlook and instead is borderline a defining characteristic of his legacy.

Re: Sean Connery has died

#217

Post by pachico »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #53
Bluestein wrote: post #35

Merchant Navy, milkman, nude model, lifeguard, truck driver, bricklayer, boxer, bodybuilder, street brawler (he once beat a gang of four while hanging out with Michael Caine, and another time, he defeated six people in a street fight.) ... ... and, finally, backstage maintenance worker at the King’s Theatre in Edinburgh. The rest is history.- A 20th century icon.- RIP.-

Don’t forget he was also an unapologetic advocate of spousal abuse, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mzXkbJwrN38

Why was this downvoted?

Re: Sean Connery has died

#218

Post by watwut »

wackget wrote: post #117
joe_momma wrote: post #6

The guy defined what it meant to be classy, hip, and bad ass all at the same time. Mere mortals can barely do just a single one of those.

Wasn't he known for saying that "women need to be hit now and then" or something? Real classy.

It sounded cool and tough guy thing at the time to quite a lot of people. And the books also contain open racism.

Let's chalk it to improvement over time. It is not cool not classy anymore. But it is also good to remember that it used to be acceptable thing to say for cool guy, so that we don't idealize past.

Re: Sean Connery has died

#219

Post by xeromal »

Arete314159 wrote: post #208
umvi wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I think it's a terrible mistake to hold historical figures to modern standards and morals. I'm sure there are things even the best among us do today that could be harshly judged in the future. "Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future" -- Winston Churchill

Ok, but Winston Churchill committed a genocide by starvation of 3 million Indians: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/winst...

You're missing the point of the quote. Just ignore who said it. lol

Re: Sean Connery has died

#220

Post by fao_ »

ljm wrote: post #200
fao_ wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I find it amusing that you went straight to an authoritarian, and particularly uncharitable answer, when it is clear what my comment means in context of my previous comment. You know, the one that you read and responded to. It's interesting that you went to that place when the TL;DR of my post is: Can you really become a better person if you haven't attempted to undo harm you caused? If you have changed, part…

I'm sorry, but your response is far more uncharitable as you're making the case that I didn't read it and need a summary that isn't really that close to what you actually said. I thought we were having a conversation. I don't know who you're arguing with, but it's not with me or what I wrote. But let's address it: let's say that someone raped another person. The rapist serves a prison sentence for his crime and he co…

> and need a summary that isn't really that close to what you actually said.

Aha, so this:

> Such is the way of living in a community, where your actions will affect other people. Part of reforming yourself is attempting to undo the damage that you have caused in the past. And so part of that reformation would inherently have to be, retracting or attempting to undo the damage caused by those public statements.

> A different way to put this would be: Is it possible to reform yourself and not try to undo the damage of your past actions in some way? Are you truly reformed if you wave your hand and do not take responsibility for them?

is not at all similar to this:

> Can you really become a better person if you haven't attempted to undo harm you caused? If you have changed, part of that change is acknowledging that you harmed people, and how those actions were harmful. You can't acknowledge that you have harmed people, and then handwave that harm by ignoring it, and still say you are a changed person.

> It's inherent to self-improvement that you would want to undo the harm that you have caused, if you understand it.

> And if you don't, then can you be said to have improved?

Because to me they are relatively close retellings of the other.

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