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For anyone who doesn’t know, Tourette Syndrome is characterised by tics, both physical and vocal. People with Tourette’s often swear involuntarily. This is what happened at the BAFTAs the other night where the film, I Swear, won two awards (Best Actor Robert Aramayo and Best Casting Lauren Evans) from five nominations. The film is based on the life of real life Tourette’s campaigner, John Davidson.
All of that is great. When disabilities are highlighted for the general public, surely it is a good thing. Apparently, though, this is not the case at all.
During the ceremony, two black Americans were presenting an award when Mr Davidson suddenly and involuntarily, yelled out the N word. They were not impressed. Also, unimpressed were viewers of the awards ceremony on the BBC given the word was not bleeped out of the broadcast. There was a flurry of indignation that ears were forced to hear a word often reserved for black actors.
Okay, perhaps the broadcasting of such things should be after the watershed but, if you ask me, it surely highlights the syndrome which, in this instance, was being highlighted by a very well regarded film. Surely the sensitivities of viewers’ ears do not need to be spared what is, in effect, a disability.
Should wheelchair users also be removed from TV screens? Obviously not; it’s ridiculous.
Let it go, Elsa, it’s just a word.
Speaking of words, sort of, this blog was down for a lot of yesterday due to another attack on the servers of the host. There were a few swear words uttered here while I tried to make it work. I was, basically, at sea with no boat. Of course, the host fixed the problem and all was well by the evening.
I use a plugin called Jetpack which, along with other things, lets me know when and if the blog is down then back up. Jetpack sends me emails with these alerts. This is what my emails were like during the day:
And so it continued. So f****** annoying. It was a good job the BBC wasn’t filming in my study.
By the way, on the BAFTA website, one of their stated aims is that “Behind the scenes we work to break down barriers to opportunity.” I am assuming this excludes those that broadcast people who suffer from certain disabilities.
PS: Isn’t it funny how it’s perfectly acceptable to write the initial letter of a word, then a number of asterisks, and people will know what it means, and that is preferable to writing the whole word it represents instead?
