Life’s Too Short. That was one of Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant’s creations. The one where Liam Neeson wanted to get into comedy (standup, anecdotes, that sort of thing) was piss your pants funny. Warwick headed up a talent agency for dwarves but kept keeping all the good parts for himself.
In all honesty, I’m starting to wonder how long it’ll take for this to be tackled in some of the D&D forums I hang out at. I wouldn’t be surprised to see questions about whether or not it’s okay have dwarves in the game.
I think he should take up the issue with the people who chose to use the name of a fantasy race to describe a set of disabilities. Perhaps we should stop making any movies which feature monkeys because at one point a bunch of asshats used that term as a racial derogative.
I’m all for calling him and his fellow little people anything at all they choose, let’s leave Dwarves to the fantasy writers where they belong.
This is definitely on-point. We’re doing a bit of tea-leaves-reading here, taking what was clearly a venting session and reverse-engineering the philosophical/sociological underpinnings of it. I’d love to hear him make the case when he’s actually making the case instead of snark-venting on a podcast.
I was thinking that the characters who were aspiring dwarf actors on the show would probably be eager to compete for roles as one of the seven dwarfs.
In LOTR all the dwarf characters were portrayed by average height actors. They did use little people on set for stand-ins. So even if Disney barreled ahead with the remake there’s no guarantee they’d use any dwarf actors as leads anyway.
I think that most people just haven’t listened to the Podcast and take this one clip and are running with it. Dinklage actually said if they do this progressive spin on it, it would be ok. He just doesn’t see Disney doing it, but he seemed open to be surprised by them. Though even there, the argument is clipped a bit by being as podcast.
So, “European society circa the 14th century?”
I hear they’re not returning phone calls these days.
Fair enough, but isn’t it a term that should have been corrected by the modern medical community like mongolism, moron, and gay bowel syndrome?
Yeah, I’m thinking it’s a lot easier to change the name of a medical condition or a group of people than to excise a common word from the language.
FWIW as a pediatric physician my patients over the decades with extreme short stature conditions, like achondroplasia (and others e.g. mucopolysaccharidosis) have been individuals with the specific condition in their problem lists. I don’t recall the word “dwarf” being used in any communication from any specialist or in any professional conversation. (Yes one can find textbooks with “achondroplastic dwarfism”as a section heading though.)
What those with those conditions choose to call themselves is of course their choice.
For kicks I just pulled down my two volume Pediatrics textbook (Nelson’s) … the achondroplasia section does not use the word “dwarfism” at all.
You know, many have gone on about that kiss. IMHO it is no more “sexual assault” than giving the Kiss of life CPR to a stranger. One is not expected to get consent when saving a unconscious dying person. If the Prince had not given Snow the “kiss of life” she would have never lived.
Of course opinions differ.
However, we can agree that the story is quite dated, being made in 1937. Things were different back then. Although I would never change the original, a remake needs to be more modern. It could have “short people” acting as dwarves- or not.
And I have no doubt that many “short people” have had people say things like “Oh, so you are Grumpy, today eh?” and that it could grate. But there is always a “reason” to give people a hard time- their name, hair color (Blonde Jokes, Polish jokes, etc) and of course height (very tall people get kidded too)- and not matter what we do, this will continue. It is not the fault of a 1937 film.
FYI, CPR isn’t kissing.
Yes, of course. But it is called “the kiss of life” and certainly if you did that to a stranger who wasn’t in difficulties, the Police and victim would say “he was trying to kiss me!”.
In any case, the Prince’s kiss brought her back to life, and she was grateful of course.
Hell, to bring people back to life they crack the chest open and massage the heart sometimes, which would be a felony if taken out of context. Context is everything. If Snow was just sleeping and gonna wake up normally, that kiss would be “ewww”- but she was never waking up otherwise.
fyi, if the person is conscious, you need to get their consent before you can perform any first aid, including CPR. Otherwise it’s assault. If they are unconscious, the law presumes consent for attempts to save their life, unless they have a DNR (and sometimes even then.) The intent of the person who interacts with that unconscious body matters. Are you trying to save their life? Enjoying sexual contact? Something else?
I haven’t read the story in ages, but my recollection is that the prince saw a beautiful woman and was moved to kiss her, and then was surprised that she came back to life. So we are still pretty far into “eww” territory.
In the movie, the dwarfs and the prince think she’s dead. The prince had already briefly met her at the beginning of the movie, and was now searching for her. When he found her, he gave her a brief, pretty chaste kiss on the lips, and she woke up.
Now in Sleeping Beauty, Prince Phillip and Aurora had already spent an afternoon together and had another date planned for that evening before the whole spinning wheel/dragon unpleasantness occurred. And Phillip had been told by multiple sources, including the originators of the curse, that the only thing that would wake Aurora was true love’s kiss. So I certainly think he was in the clear.
There are multiple versions of the story. I seem to recall a version where the prince dislodged a piece of poisoned apple that had lodged in Snow White’s throat, and that was what revived her. (So, less CPR than Heimlich.)
Not the prince, but the prince’s servant. Then again, maybe it was the prince in one of the other million versions of this tale.
I think that’s from the original Grimm’s fairy-tale: Snow White eats the poisoned apple, dies, is put in a coffin of glass by the dwarfs. prince (who never met Snow White before) rides along, sees a beautiful girl in a glass coffin, kisses her and the poisoned apple piece is dislodged, Snow White resurrects and all live happily ever after. Always had a necrophiliac vibe for me.
ETA: I forgot, there’s a coda. The wicked stepmother is forced to wear hot-glowing iron shoes and dances to death. The end. Nice ending, Disney should’ve kept that…