*Theme music*
Hello and welcome to This Week in Social Justice.
I'm Daisy Cousens and I'll be discussing all the biggest and baddest social
justice fails of the past seven days. This week we have the critics who hate
Bohemian Rhapsody for lacking all the right identity politics; JanuHairy the
latest and greatest feminist obsession and depending on how long I feel like
talking about the first two topics we may even get time for a bonus topic.
So let's get started. Another year, another award show the 2019 Golden Globe Awards
have come and gone and of course there was the usual speculation as to who
would win what. However it was an apparently unexpected
double victory for Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. The film beat frontrunners
A Star Is Born and Black Panther to take out Best Picture and leading actor
Rami Malek won Best Actor for his performance of Freddie Mercury -- and I personally was
thrilled to bits. When I saw Bohemian Rhapsody a couple of
months ago I went in a Queen novice and I left the cinema wondering why I hadn't
been a die-hard Queen fan all my life. The film was in my humble layperson
opinion wonderful. Now of course there was some who disagreed with my
starry-eyed view namely diehard Queen fans who'd followed the band all of
their lives and thought that the film was biased or revisionist or glossed
over key details. Fair enough there are certainly solid technical
arguments to be made as to why the film should or shouldn't have won the top
award. I actually enjoyed reading some of the reviews that were critical of
Bohemian Rhapsody if only to learn more about Queen, however when I came across
the oh so progressive HuffPost's take on the situation it did cause me to raise
an eyebrow. See rather than critique the film's inaccuracies or direction or
performances or costume design etc HuffPost Marina Fang took issue with the
fact the film's focus was not Freddie's so-called identity. -- Bohemian Rhapsody
winning for Best Motion Picture drama was a questionable choice. the
Globes rewarded a standard music biopic that doesn't adequately address Queen
frontman Freddie Mercury's queer and Parsi identity. - This sentiment was echoed
by Out Magazine's Matthew Rodriguez - Bohemian Rhapsody goes to great lengths
to paint Mercury's sexuality as a problem. Though he's shown to be deeply
in love with a woman all of his dalliances with men are either seedy or
with snakes looking to use him for his money. - And of course the usual Twitter
crowd were making all of the same noises. This criticism of the film is not new
there were articles again from HuffPost and others stating similar just after
the film's release and there were even complaints about this made right back
when the trailer was released in early 2018. - Anyone else mildly annoyed enough
to tweet about it that the Bohemian Rhapsody trailer features gay / bi
superstar Freddie Mercury flirting with and twirling with a woman but no
indication of his love of men. - While those who are perplexed are perfectly
entitled to their opinion this obsession with identity politics is getting a
little old-fashioned. That a film good enough to win a Golden Globe with a
leading player proficient enough to win Best Actor can be fobbed off as
'problematic' by team woke for literally not being gay enough presents as a
little tedious especially when the film makers had good reason for making it so.
The film's intention as asserted by Queen bandmembers Brian May and Roger
Taylor was to focus on the band's journey not their front man's personal
life. As for Mercury's Parsi identity, well it wasn't key to Queens rise to stardom
so why would it be given any more credence than necessary. The film these
team woke critics were salivating for would have been entitled "Freddie Mercury: A Life"
not Bohemian Rhapsody. In addition presenting Mercury's sexuality as the
centerpiece of the film would have been historically inaccurate. Attitudes to the
LGBTQ community was sadly different in the 1980s.
According to Queen biographer Lesley Ann Jones - Queens management spent
decades trying to convince the world that Freddie was heterosexual while he
was alive but then conceded to his homosexuality after he had died. All
their efforts to preserve Freddie in memory as effectively a straight man who
was in love with one woman, his soulmate Mary, but who was corrupted by factions
of the music industry and wasn't really gay are ridiculous to me. - But historical
and contextual accuracy are not enough for team woke
they would sooner alter the perception of history, than have their preferred
progressive narrative temporarily out of the spotlight. You remember that really
bad take on Dunkirk by USA TODAY's Brian Truitt? - The fact that there are only a
couple of women and no lead actors of color may rub some the wrong way - This
Bohemian Rhapsody thing is almost as bad. Now look we shouldn't really be too
surprised at this identity politics infested criticism of Bohemian Rhapsody
because it is totally in line with the general tone of this year's Golden
Globes. Much fuss was made of Crazy Rich Asians and Black Panther not because
they were terrific films but because of their largely non-white casts which is a
terrible shame because in the case of Crazy Rich Asians (I haven't seen Black Panther)
I absolutely loved it because it was a cracking good film. I didn't care
about the ethnicity of the cast. It was also left no secret that actress Sandra Oh
was the first woman of Asian descent to host the ceremony and that she was
the first in 39 years to win Best Actress in a TV drama. - I said yes to the
fear of being on this stage tonight because -- because I wanted to be here to
look out into this audience and witness this moment of change and I'm not
fooling myself -- I'm not fooling myself next year could
be different it probably will be but right now this moment is real.
- How ironic then that Rami Malek, whose parents are Egyptian, was not met with
the same diversity accolades when he won his award. Evidently if you do not 100%
fits the team woke narrative, you don't get any sort of credit no matter how
brilliant you are. Huge massive social justice fail on this one.
It's only January and already we are seeing the latest and greatest feminist obsession
of 2019. Welcome to JanuHairy -- when women all
over the world are ditching the razors and letting their body hair grow wild
and free for all to see. I'm talking armpits, legs and everywhere in between.
So why are they doing it well nobody's really sure.
See this removal of body hair thing is being presented as a kind of sticking it
to patriarchal status cause apparently women are forced to remove all of their
body hair from the neck down lest they attract the disapproval of men. Now
thirty years ago this was true, women were very much held to a standard of
beauty with not a lot of wiggle room so back then a woman growing out her body
hair was in fact an act of rebellion. But the thing is feminists have already won
that culture war, they won it decades ago nowadays -- no one cares
Being a woman nowadays and growing out your body hair is about as radical and
original as pink fairy floss. Go to any University campus or inner city coffee
bar and you'll find plenty of hairy-pitted ladies sipping lattes while
manspreading and talking loudly about how much they hate Donald Trump. The only
people nowadays who make a fuss about women's body hair are women whose bread
and butter literally depends on them having things to complain about. - So well
one thing my armpit hair does is it filters out the kind of men who think
that's important. As far as I'm concerned that's an absolute plus that's a straight-up win. Already
somebody in the vicinity who's going to make a fuss about something as natural
and normal as that - Actually the one ones making a fuss are people like you who are engaging
publicly in JanuHairy. - Now you'd think that was the social justice fail right?
*Trump montage* The real fail here is
that the main reason the campaign was created in the first place is not
getting anywhere near enough attention. JanuHairy was created by 21 year old Laura Jackson
a drama student who grew out her hair for a role and despite receiving a
few raised eyebrows and questions from family and friends decided she liked it
and wanted to keep it. So she started the campaign and a GoFundMe to raise funds
for Body Gossip which is a body positivity charity and no I'm not
talking about this kind of body positivity.
I mean the promotion of being genuinely comfortable with who you are as a person.
However aside from a few tokenistic mentions here and there, usually half way
down the pages of The Guardian I feel that Laura Jackson is getting
proportionately very little credit for creating something that is a really good
initiative. Instead the movement of course has been
hijacked by people like Kate Smurthwaite who are using it to push this idea that
their brand of victim feminism is somehow relevant.
Look if you're a woman and you like growing out your body hair all power to you but don't go acting
like it's some sort of countercultural act of resistance or bravery. It's not
and it hasn't been for several years. So and credit where credit is due I have
put the link to Laura Jackson's GoFundMe and also a link to Body Gossip in the
video description please feel free to check it out it is a good cause. Enormous
huge massive social justice fail on behalf of feminists attention seekers on
this one. Unfortunately I have talked for so long about the first two topics that
we don't have time for a bonus topic but tune in next time cuz you never know you
might get lucky. If you like that video please remember to like, subscribe, share,
leave me a comment and if you really really liked it then check out the video
description for other ways you can support me.