[I wasn’t sure if this is the right forum, but since the issue is ultimately a medical one I thought I’d try here first. There may follow a “great debate,” but that’s only possible from a place of ignorance, so I didn’t want to emphasize that aspect when beginning the conversation. I didn’t put it in Cafe Society because the setting for the occurrence seems completely incidental.]
As I’m sure we’re all aware by now, last night at the BAFTAs, John Davidson, who is the subject of the movie I Swearabout his lifetime suffering from a rare form of Tourette’s Syndrome called Coprolalia (literally translated: shit-talking), involuntarily shouted out the Nword when there were two African American men in the stage.
To read about it online, it seems like too many people are pushing the misconception that Tourette’s does nothing more than lower the subjects inhibitions; that, like alcohol, it just makes a person feel free to more honestly express their hidden feelings.
This is in fact the opposite of the truth. Coprolalia “chooses” its unconscious vocabulary based on the sufferer’s conscious awareness of the most offensive possible speech in a given situation; the words that specifically offend himself the most. It’s essentially proof that he understands the words to be wrong.*
So I guess this post is less a question than a suggested answer: for the many, many people who don’t understand what really happened last night.
Hopefully someone with more medical experience than I have will check in here to confirm or question my own understanding of the condition. My information is almost entirely from watching the movie, for which Robert Aramayo, the actor portraying Davidson, beat out Chalamet and DiCaprio to win Best Actor at last night’s BAFTAs.
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*When receiving the MBE for his Tourette’s awareness activism from Queen Elizabeth, he shouted “Fuck the Queen!”
A number of outbursts could be heard throughout the BAFTA ceremony, including “shut the fuck up” being shouted during an introductory speech from BAFTA chair Sara Putt and “fuck you” when the directors of “Boong,” which won the BAFTA for best children’s and family film, accepted their award. During another outburst, the audience inside the BAFTAs heard Davidson shout the N-word when Michael B, Jordan and Delroy Lindo presented the award for best visual effects to “Avatar: Fire and Ash.”
Yes, it is unfair and stigmatizing to criticize Mr. Davidson for this.
However, apparently the tape-delayed version of the ceremony aired in other time zones didn’t edit that outburst out, where they did edit out several other shouts from the crowd such as “Free Palestine!”. Happy to Pit whoever made that decision.
First, that’s a completely separate issue. My purpose in starting this thread was to open a discussion in the medical condition, not the policy decisions of media in response.
Second, the choice they made has brought an immense amount of attention–and hopefully awareness–to sufferers of Coprolalia. The incident would have “gotten out” eventually, inevitably, and then editing it out would have suggested a condemnation. By ignoring it they emphasized the only humane way to handle such a situation.
I disagree with the decision to edit out the “Free Palastine,” but to equate the two expressions can only come from ignorance. The “rule” they went by is clearly not to censor any speech that might be disagreeable to some members of the audience; but to distinguish between political speech and an involuntary outburst.
Yes, but that’s a stupid rule. They should have been using the former criteria rather than the latter. Or distinguish between speech from people who were on the podium at the time and those who weren’t. People don’t need to actually hear it in order to understand what happened, and it’s insensitive to force people to hear racial slurs while watching an awards show, no matter what the context.
That runs explicitly against the spirit and value of the film’s awareness-raising. These poor people can’t live a normal life until the rest of us learn to just let it go.
My thinking is that it’s analogous to a disease that makes people randomly projectile vomit without warning. If I had such a disease, I would certainly hope that people would have compassion for me and recognize that I should be allowed to participate in polite society, despite my inability to conform to some of what are usually considered basic expectations thereof. But I wouldn’t think that people were being disrespectful to me by cleaning up the puke.
Also, we need to be sensitive to the feelings of Black people based on their history of racial trauma. It’s one thing to educate people by saying “This is a highly unique circumstance where it is actually not appropriate for you to be offended by someone screaming that word”. It’s another thing entirely to say “Therefore, there’s no good reason for you to be in any way disturbed by hearing it”.
In a statement Davidson said he was “deeply mortified if anyone considers my involuntary tics to be intentional or to carry any meaning”. He added: “I have spent my life trying to support and empower the Tourette’s community and to teach empathy, kindness and understanding from others and I will continue to do so. I chose to leave the auditorium early into the ceremony as I was aware of the distress my tics were causing.”
I may not hang out in sufficiently stupid corners of the internet, but every story I’ve seen on this is about people being appropriately pissed off about the BBC’s failure to edit it out on the tape delay. The only person I’ve heard quoted as being inappropriately pissed off at Davidson himself is known moron Jamie Foxx.
It is understood that the producers overseeing the ceremony for the BBC were doing so from a truck and say they simply did not hear the slur
Why would that make a difference unless this was something the audience could here but wasn’t picked up by the microphones? And if that was the case why would it need to be edited out?
Their response makes no sense because the show was time-delayed for everyone. It was not live with only a few seconds delay and something they would have to catch and bleep in the moment like it would be for the Oscars. I can believe they didn’t hear it in the truck because I didn’t hear it while watching the broadcast on E! (I heard several loud shouts throughout the show but couldn’t make out words) but there were several hours between the actual awards and when it aired and they definitely should have known by then and edited it out. From Deadline:
Two Deadline journalists were in the room and clearly heard Davidson, almost immediately noting his comments in our WhatsApp group chat. The remark was not, however, intelligible in the media room, where the ceremony was streamed live. This suggests that it could have been possible for those in the OB truck to miss the slur, but it does not explain why nobody inside the Royal Festival Hall was able to alert producers about the incident in time for broadcast. If Deadline had real-time intelligence from inside the room, why not the BBC?