William & Kate

[anjulibai]

I hate watched an episode. It was bad. Very, very bad. It doesn't even make sense as parody. The Windsors was a decent parody. This is just crass and cringy. I can't believe this was picked up by HBO. They must realize how bad it is because apparently they didn't promote it at all. 

[viii]

I believe there’s already been a reference to Charlotte’s weight on the show. Absolutely vile. 

[tabitha2]

Surprised the H&M aren’t speaking out complaining. Figures.  When we need them to they don’t. Maybe they get a kick out of seeing his family caricatured and made fun of.  

[viii]

Well, Orlando Bloom plays Prince Harry so it’s not like him and Meghan aren’t portrayed on the show. I am curious what they think of it since they commented on The Crown. They’re probably hiding their time and waiting to see which way the tide will flow. 

[tabitha2]

If it’s popular they may milk it. If it’s a bust they say nothing or complain . Go where the money and trend is right? 

[just_ordinary]

It’s already out there. I just hope we will see some kind of reverse effect. If his character is written well, he could become a favourite with people. Very similar to Stewie. A snarky, bitchy and aloof PG might give him an unexpected fan base. But I am no fan of this project. What I find irritatingly obvious is that they very clearly didn’t include A and were hyper careful when drawing M. Because we all no otherwise they would have been sued AND called racist and got cancelled. And while I do understand why caricature drawing of POC would be met with criticism, I think using children to make money is just as bad. 
I don’t know how successful a lawsuit would be. I am also undecided if a statement would be wise or not. Or just a remark if they get confronted with it. In the end I think mocking minors and exploiting them for money shows at the very least a massive lack of better judgment with everyone involved. At worst it makes then cruel bullying assholes.

[tabitha2]

Just gonna leave this here… at the Bond premiere with husband and In Laws

 

Damn. 

[viii]

She looks stunning. 

[WiseGirl]

Just a fashion moment for Kate's 40th. I like the black and white pictures and her hair without the blowout. 

https://people.com/royals/kate-middleton-releases-special-portrait-for-her-40th-birthday/

 

[viii]

They’re so photoshopped. The only super cringe one is the closeup. 

[MamaJunebug]

Has she had recent work done? Honestly I didn’t recognize her in either photo. 

[Karma]

They’re lovely photos, but the shape of her face - her jaw in particular - looks so different to normal that, together with the hair blowing out, I wouldn’t have recognised her. 

[just_ordinary]

I think the b/w photos are nice enough. Maybe a bit as if Taryn did some blur magic but still. Are they great for the occasion? Not exactly. At least not the side profile, even though I like it. 
The red dress one is horrible. I didn’t recognise her at all and she has only ever once looked similar (November 2021, Royal Variety). Everyone noticed the different make up and hairstyles that completely changed her face. The make up makes her lips extremely thin and her eyes very small, while her nose looks so much wider. The pose is also very un-like her. Scrolling by she looks more like CP Mary than herself. It’s not a good look in my POV. You can think about her classic standard make up what you want, it definitely plays up her strengths and gives her face a nicer definition than this. 
With her normal styling, the red dress photo would have been great too. 
Comparing them to the portraits of other Royal Household for the occasion, the side profile should have been only released as an extra blooper. Instead they should have put her in a more “professional regal” pose (not vintage aetheral royal raphaelite) and put the Halo or Papyrus tiara on her head.

Edited January 10, 2022 by just_ordinary

[Seahorse Wrangler]

On 1/10/2022 at 10:09 AM, just_ordinary said:

 put the Halo or Papyrus tiara on her head.

I read that as platypus tiara and had a very surreal mental image.

[EmCatlyn]

Just thinking about the way some people have responded to William’s statement about the war in Ukraine.

Apparently, he said, "For our generation, it’s very alien to see this in Europe. We’re all right behind you. We’re thinking about you. We feel so useless.”

This was construed as a statement that wars in “alien” countries (Africa, the Middle-East, etc.) are expected or less serious than wars in Europe.

There was blow-back and the original reporter clarified that he had misheard and there was no reference to Africa and so forth.

However, many people -including MLK’s daughter Bernice King- have argued that just the use of the phrase “alien to Europe” is racist.

Bernice King tweeted, “I believe that language matters in that work. And that it is harmful for a global figure to express war as “alien to Europe.”

Source: Washington Examiner 

I agree that language matters, and that is why I think the part where he says, “for our generation,” matters.  I am of a different generation.  For me, “war” and “Europe,” are not alien concepts at all.  Although I was born after WWII and on a different continent, my family lived through it. My parents spoke of it often, and we knew families that were refugees. During the Cold War, there were several instances of near-war in Europe, and certainly the occupation of parts of Eastern Europe by the Soviets was seen as an extension of “war in Europe.”

I think William should have used “unfamiliar” instead of “alien,” but I think the sense of what he was saying had less to do with seeing Europe as a place where war couldn’t/shouldn’t happen as than with his sense that he thought war in Europe was something of the past, of the history his grandmother and grandfather had lived through.

Focusing on the word “alien” overlooks the comment he was making about how his generation has not had to experience or know war in Europe (implying, I think, a realization that older generations did). So, yeah, he should have used another word.

[Pleiades_06]

35 minutes ago, EmCatlyn said:

his generation has not had to experience or know war in Europe (implying, I think, a realization that older generations did)

The Bosnian war happened when he was a pre-teen. That’s his generation, right?

There are so many other ways he could have framed his statement-in my opinion this wasn’t great.

[EmCatlyn]

52 minutes ago, Pleiades_06 said:

The Bosnian war happened when he was a pre-teen. That’s his generation, right?

There are so many other ways he could have framed his statement-in my opinion this wasn’t great.

I agree that he phrased it wrong.  As I said above, “unfamiliar” would have been a better choice.

The war in Bosnia was essentially a civil war. As I remember, it happened when Yugoslavia broke up and different regions and ethnic groups wanted dominance.  Although it was appalling and heartbreaking, it did not feel like the beginning of a major war that could escalate to world war proportions.  The war in Ukraine does.

I have no idea what William was thinking, and definitely he spoke carelessly, but I am interested in the point I think he was trying to make about how his generation being shocked by a war they never anticipated.  A lot of people have jumped to assume that his comment meant thar he thought wars were “alien” and war was something that happened in non-Western countries.  It’s possible, but it also bears another interpretation. 🤷🏻‍♀️

 

 

[just_ordinary]

Also, „alien“ does not equal „never“. Alien has at least three meanings in the Cambridge Dictionary. It’s tricky because it has a cultural/race meaning but it can also mean „unfamiliar and strange“. The English Oxford Dictionary gore even further: “Strange and frightening; different from what you are used to, synonym with hostile”. So that’s very probably what he meant.
 

That doesn’t mean, it never happened but that it’s just very rare. Croatia and Kosovo both happened over 20 years ago. That’s a whole generation. The Crimea Annexation was 2014 and while I agree we should have seen the foreshadowing of today’s events, no one wanted to actually believe we could run into this scenario. 
And here comes the very ugly part: Non of those conflicts have threatened Europe as the Ukrainian war in 2022. We weren’t actually threatened by nuclear aggression, we didn’t feel the money running out of our purses. It was easy to take the moral high ground and to stay detached to a certain point. We have lived mostly in complete peace, with stable borders, ever since WWII. And not only in peace but with quite amicable relationships to all the countries around us. This war is putting real pressure on the individual. People are not just thinking twice about using their car, the ones that already struggled financially have a real problem already. Flour, vegetable oil and semolina (pasta) will get more expensive (it’s time to prepare the fields and the sowing period is about to start). Some people have already started to turn down the heating. Now, that’s all still very easy and bareable compared to living in/fleeing a war zone. But it’s also the most we have ever been impacted compared to almost all other conflicts since WWII.

If you want to be extra correct, you could even argue that his comment holds if you take the cultural meaning. We are lucky, because compared to Africa and Asia (and South America) we haven’t had major conflicts (wars, civil unrest, political upheaval or revolutions) in over 75 years. And while we shouldn’t forget that the West plays a rather dark role in those conflicts (our life is still build on oppression, we just use other „nicer“ tools today, and every single one of us benefits and is guilty by association and omission), those conflicts are not something that we actually experience.

So his choice of words, albeit clumsy, was not wrong. I definitely wouldn’t have used it, but more so because I did not think about it as a fitting word because we are not talking about space aliens. I also wouldn’t think of it to describe another human culture for exactly that reason.

Edited March 11, 2022 by just_ordinary

[Pleiades_06]

6 hours ago, EmCatlyn said:

The war in Bosnia was essentially a civil war. As I remember, it happened when Yugoslavia broke up and different regions and ethnic groups wanted dominance.  Although it was appalling and heartbreaking, it did not feel like the beginning of a major war that could escalate to world war proportions.  The war in Ukraine does

It’s defined as an international conflict: NATO was involved and al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia sent fighters. There are still former refugees from that war in Germany and the US. I remember clearly the fear of it escalating into bigger conflict, so it wasn’t insignificant.

William should have said this is the first major war the UK could get involved in since then. His comments are show how, like many Westerners, how Eurocentric he is. It’s normal to be focused on the region you live in, but seeing as he’s going to be king of commonwealth nations all over the world, it’s not a great look. 

[viii]

Yeah, I think his heart was in the right place but his words were clumsy. He definitely should have thought that statement through better and I'm guessing it'll be a good lesson for him to learn. 

[louisa05]

2 hours ago, viii said:

Yeah, I think his heart was in the right place but his words were clumsy. He definitely should have thought that statement through better and I'm guessing it'll be a good lesson for him to learn. 

It was not a “statement”. It was a conversation. And not a formal or inherently political one. 
It’s also been pointed out that “alien” is not used as a reference to foreign residents/immigrants in the UK the way it is in the US. I’ve seen a number of Americans imposing a racist interpretation on this based on the assumption that he somehow meant brown people. The usage of the word in British English would not ever imply that.  

[viii]

2 hours ago, louisa05 said:

It was not a “statement”. It was a conversation. And not a formal or inherently political one. 

It doesn't matter if it's a statement or conversation. William is held to a higher standard when speaking in public because he is 24/7 representing the Crown, which means he always needs to choose his words with care. 

Had the editor of the article not twisted his words, I don't think there would have been anyone criticizing the usage of 'alien', I definitely think that only came because of the first error. However, it's still a good learning lesson for William that just because a word might not be offensive in British English, doesn't mean that it's not necessarily that way in other places. 

[just_ordinary]

I will just say, if we start judging words and whatnot on a global scale, almost everything will be offensive to someone in the end. That’s just not viable. BE and AE are basically different languages at this point. We often talk about, how the same words can carry VERY different connotations and just accept it.

Of course he is more vulnerable to this because he will be a HoS at some point. And I do think he needs to put more effort in not putting his foot into his mouth. It’s not his first comment/conversation were he looked a bit careless or insensitive. He could have easily used rare or unfamiliar to get the exact same point across. I have no problem with him being visibly a bit more closed up and socially awkward. He falls right in line with some of his great predecessors, but I would still like to see a bit more of a learning curve in terms of phrasing his thoughts.

[EmCatlyn]

17 hours ago, just_ordinary said:

Also, „alien“ does not equal „never“. Alien has at least three meanings in the Cambridge Dictionary. It’s tricky because it has a cultural/race meaning but it can also mean „unfamiliar and strange“. The English Oxford Dictionary gore even further: “Strange and frightening; different from what you are used to, synonym with hostile”. So that’s very probably what he meant.
 

That doesn’t mean, it never happened but that it’s just very rare. Croatia and Kosovo both happened over 20 years ago. That’s a whole generation. The Crimea Annexation was 2014 and while I agree we should have seen the foreshadowing of today’s events, no one wanted to actually believe we could run into this scenario. 
And here comes the very ugly part: Non of those conflicts have threatened Europe as the Ukrainian war in 2022. We weren’t actually threatened by nuclear aggression, we didn’t feel the money running out of our purses. It was easy to take the moral high ground and to stay detached to a certain point. We have lived mostly in complete peace, with stable borders, ever since WWII. And not only in peace but with quite amicable relationships to all the countries around us. This war is putting real pressure on the individual. People are not just thinking twice about using their car, the ones that already struggled financially have a real problem already. Flour, vegetable oil and semolina (pasta) will get more expensive (it’s time to prepare the fields and the sowing period is about to start). Some people have already started to turn down the heating. Now, that’s all still very easy and bareable compared to living in/fleeing a war zone. But it’s also the most we have ever been impacted compared to almost all other conflicts since WWII.

If you want to be extra correct, you could even argue that his comment holds if you take the cultural meaning. We are lucky, because compared to Africa and Asia (and South America) we haven’t had major conflicts (wars, civil unrest, political upheaval or revolutions) in over 75 years. And while we shouldn’t forget that the West plays a rather dark role in those conflicts (our life is still build on oppression, we just use other „nicer“ tools today, and every single one of us benefits and is guilty by association and omission), those conflicts are not something that we actually experience.

So his choice of words, albeit clumsy, was not wrong. I definitely wouldn’t have used it, but more so because I did not think about it as a fitting word because we are not talking about space aliens. I also wouldn’t think of it to describe another human culture for exactly that reason.

I think William clearly meant “unfamiliar” when he used the word “alien.”  He used it to refer to his experience (he said it was “alien” to his generation).  He did not use it as a noun to refer to people (either foreigners or space aliens). He did not use it to refer to countries or cultures.  Unfortunately, the word “alien” has gradually acquired negative baggage that links it to establishing distance (“us” versus “them”) and people pounced on it.  He does need to pick his words extra-carefully because he is an heir to the crown, etc., but people also are not listening to what he actually said.

[EmCatlyn]

13 hours ago, Pleiades_06 said:

It’s defined as an international conflict: NATO was involved and al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia sent fighters. There are still former refugees from that war in Germany and the US. I remember clearly the fear of it escalating into bigger conflict, so it wasn’t insignificant.

William should have said this is the first major war the UK could get involved in since then. His comments are show how, like many Westerners, how Eurocentric he is. It’s normal to be focused on the region you live in, but seeing as he’s going to be king of commonwealth nations all over the world, it’s not a great look. 

It was an “international conflict” in the sense that it involved many countries, who came in to “help,” but the basic conflict was between neighboring communities which were split by ideology, religion and perceived ethnic differences.  In that sense, despite the involvement of NATO and so forth, it was a civil war.  This doesn’t make it less horrible.  I know people who were there. I remember donating to help the refugees. It definitely was a major crisis in Eastern Europe.

In my opinion, however, Prince William, who was a young teenager at a time may easily be forgiven for putting that “international conflict” in a different category from what is happening in Ukraine.  This isn’t a group of pro-Russian Ukrainians rebelling against the current government and starting a civil war that Russia and Belarus join in on.  This was aggression of one country against another.  It is the first large invasion since WWII, and I truly believe that the WW II parallels (how Hitler wasn’t stopped when he started) is what a lot of people would have been talking about around William.

And all he said was that for his generation a war such as the one happening in Ukraine was totally unexpected.  

Edited March 11, 2022 by EmCatlyn
Clarify and clean up.