Bloody bad show at the BAFTAs

[ZoWie]

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) is their version of our Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). Like AMPAS, they give out awards for merit in various disciplines related to motion picture production.

Like the Oscars, the Bafta Awards are a much bigger whoopie than common sense would justify, but that is the world we have made and I just live in it.

Anyway, this year one of the films nominated for a Bafta Award was about Tourette's Syndrome. You know, that's the brain dysfunction that causes verbal tics. Victims make funny noises, flop around, or cuss for no reason. I don't understand the brain process that would cause involuntary cussing, since my degree is in movies. I just know that it happens, and it is truly involuntary.

Well well well... one expects the movie industry to bring out the worst in people, and that seems to work even for a dysfunction as inexplicable as Tourette's. Someone made a documentary movie about it. It's a good movie, and it won a BAFTA Award. Like the documentaries that win Oscars, maybe about 0.0001% of the potential audience ever actually saw it, but the voters did because they can't vote until they prove they've seen all the nominees. (I had it once described to me by an Academy voter as, "You see an awful lot of movies, and a lot of awful movies.")

OK, so some above-the-line type comes up to accept, and goes into his speech. Thank you, thank you, thank you. This speaker happens to be Black. No biggie, we're cool in this business. Good people come in all shapes sizes colors. Problem was that a white upper class Tourette's activist who has done good work was invited to attend, and since he has Tourette's, he involuntarily shouted the infamous "N" word for everyone to hear.

Big trouble.

Not for the guy. He has a disease. We all understand that. Everybody's got something.

For the BBC, who aired the awards. They didn't show them live. They had two hours to edit out the N-word, and didn't, despite their making other edits. Big flap. Still going on. Making headlines on both sides of the Pond.

Developing...