political correctness – Page 2 – don't confuse the narrator

unconsidered trifles and other seasonal fayre

Today is the shortest day, but that doesn’t mean there is any less to do than usual, so rather than try and write a well-planned single-theme post, I am going to gather together a whole host of notes I’ve jotted down over the last few weeks, none of which is really worthy of more than a few lines:

Last week, I posted about the hippo at the manger; since then, it’s been pointed out to me that it isn’t really so out-of-line in these days of modern nativities, and perhaps if I’d seen the lobster scene from Love Actually I might have been less surprised.

The hippos weren’t the only things to catch my eye at the local exhibition, though; there was a Russian nativity scene that had me pondering:

Does Mary really bring forth an angel, a donkey and the Baby Jesus?
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u-certificate

garden gnomes (Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs) on shop shelf

Having found this tiny Snow White amongst a veritable army of dwarfs in a local store, I was going to call this post “size matters”.

I’d probably have gone on to talk about the poor thing slaving away to cook and clean simply because she was terrified of the monsters she lived with. But perhaps female subjugation isn’t a very nice subject to treat so superficially, so I did a quick search on trivia associated with the film to see what else I could write.

Over on IMDB, I found that the certification of the original Disney film was controversial: although The British Board of Film Censors gave the film an A-certificate because they thought the enchanted forest and the witch were too frightening for younger audiences, most local authorities overrode the censor’s decision and gave the film a U-certificate.

In fact, it seems as if the censors knew what they were talking about and many of the young audiences wet themselves in fear. I can only wonder what would have happened if the dwarfs had been giants.

poetical preconceptions

Last night, not having very much new to take for discussion at the writers’ group, I took along the poem That certain feeling (included in last week’s post not enough poetry).

It is such an old piece that I didn’t think anyone in the group would have seen it, and although I don’t really expect to go back and re-write it, I thought it might provoke some discussion, particularly as it’s quite unlike the pieces I’ve taken to the meeting in recent months.

It did in fact provoke some interesting comments about line breaks and line length, as well as drawing my attention once more to the subject of narrators.
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contradictionary

In a story on 20 Minutos, the on-line version of one of Spain’s free newspapers, The Secretary of the Real Academia Española, Darío Villanueva is quoted as having said:

“El Diccionario no puede ser políticamente correcto porque la lengua sirve para amar, pero también para insultar. No podemos suprimir las palabras que usamos cuando nos enfadamos o cuando somos injustos, arbitrarios o canallas.” *

I find this odd, as I thought the whole point of the RAE was prescription not description.
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insults and anger

Under the headline “The demon head,” today’s digital edition of the (UK) Metro is running a story about a primary school headteacher banned “after a torrent of racist outbursts.”

The disciplinary panel chairman is reported as saying that the headmaster demonstrated ‘racial and religious prejudice’ and made ‘offensive and derogatory’ comments, and the Metro claims that: