Doing Drama

I wasn’t previously familiar with Rosanna Arquette, an “actress, poet and activist,” but goodness, she puts on a show:

But then, this isn’t her first rodeo:

It’s an existential shame, apparently:

So, are we witnessing a kind of neurotic contagion in which those so gripped believe such things, and spend their days agonised and weepy, or a kind of neurotic contagion in which they feel compelled to pretend such things, thereby asserting some elevated status? A kind of, “I am better than you because I pretend to feel worse.” And if the latter, is that significantly saner?

Via Neontaster.

Comments

[Hopp Singg]

She's only ashamed she can't win the Remorseful Olympics.

[David]

But see her agonies. See how they catch the light.

Like political jewellery.

[Haha]

She should do the "23 and me" routine. She just might luck out and find a N-word in the wood pile and lighten her angst a bit.

[[+]]

"Official Twitter for Rosanna Arquette, mother ,activist ,actor director ..producer. resisting fascism on a daily basis. silence is complicity."

Honk.

[Joan]

Good job you took screengrabs. She's protected her account now. Wonder why? ;-D

[Clam]

And if the latter, is that significantly saner?

No.

[David]

No.

Well, quite. Either way, we’re seeing something peculiar happening. And I think it’s fair to say it’s not a happy development.

Pretentious racial shame is one of those things that may suit the means and modish lifestyle of a well-heeled celebrity, or a well-heeled student at an elite university - generally in an attempt to elicit kudos and applause, and therefore status, if only in the minds of equally delusional or pretentious people. But I’m not sure that it would be beneficial to anyone from a much more modest background who might mimic such behaviour and even internalise it.

Pretentious racial shame is, it seems, a luxury good, and not for just anyone.

[Pogonip]

No. Yes. No.

[GandalFish]

If the great and the good want to mean ' threat to existence ' they should say so, and not say ' existential threat '.

While the philosophy can (like most) be a bit opaque, their therapists ( the only people who really use the expression day-to-day) should have explained it to them better. The classic 'existential crises' and threats are the realizations that there are cold hard realities to human existence (death, isolation - no one knows what really goes on inside your head but you, free choice necessitates taking responsibility, the only 'meaning to life' is what you make it) and you just have to suck it up.

The cynical interpretation is that the know EXACTLY what they mean and are using it as a back door when some boofhead takes it to mean (and I'm looking at you Bernie Sanders) that the world is coming to an end, justifying anything you like.

[Lord T]

Can you do late term abortion at her age in California? That should balance her books.

[Ten]

“actress, poet and activist”

Technically it's:

mother ,activist ,actor director ..producer.

Because precision. Then:

resisting fascism on a daily basis.

Must be the Nazis didn't escape to Argentina but LA.

silence is complicity.

Ergo, woke is obnoxious.

[Tony Tea]

She's not ashamed to be stupid.

[David]

She’s protected her account now.

Well, those aren’t load-bearing opinions. They’re only there for show. Rather like the piles of cardboard boxes that get driven through in 1970s cop dramas.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

"I'm sorry I was born white and privileged. It disgusts me. And I feel so much shame."

[Also a typical scene in Hollywoodland...]

"Oh Consuela, can you bring me another herbal tea, and if you see Xavier, ask him to trim the bougainvillea by the pool back, I can't see the ocean, and tell D'various I'll need the Range Rover at 2 this afternoon for my meditative massage at Miss Kim's."

[prm]

Pretentious racial shame is, it seems, a luxury good, and not for just anyone.

Time to drag out the article on positional goods again...

[David]

Time to drag out the article on positional goods again...

Here’s one I made earlier.

[David]

She’s not ashamed to be stupid.

Thing is, if it were just one batty leftwing actress with an armful of failed marriages, it would merely be pathetic. But it’s a sentiment that’s now actively propagated on any number of campuses, where it has become a marker of woke status, an obligatory pose. Which is not just wretched, but creepy and pernicious.

[TheTooner]

She's an actress. I.e. she makes her living dressing up in costumes, posing, and saying things that other people make up for her to say. Filled to overflowing with emptiness.

[Ray]

You live a sheltered life, David. Her brother Alexis is an autofellationist (amongst other things). Famous for it, in fact.

[David]

You live a sheltered life, David.

I’ve been saying this for years, but the heathen rabble don’t believe me.

[WTP]

OK, at work and not sure what an autofellationist might be...unless it's a new fancy word for dead. But autofellationist sounds rather bendy not...uh...stiff. He died about three years ago. I think "he" became a "she"...if perhaps maybe that's what autofellationist is. But I suppose I've lived a sheltered life.

[Another Calgary Marc]

Pretentious racial shame is, it seems, a luxury good, and not for just anyone.

This and the woke thing...for the soyboys, it's all about signalling availability for an exchange of bodily fluids, except for the truly deranged. But most real dudes don't want to fish in those waters anyway. As to the lady-folk (less the deranged rad-fems etc)...I don't get the game there. Is it all about hen-pecking for hierarchical establishment? Ego stroking? Desperation for acknowledgement and approval? The mind boggles....

[Pst314]

You live a sheltered life, David.

As do I. And I was better off not knowing who those idiots are/were.

[Patrick Brown]

Let's dig into this a bit. Rosanna Arquette is certainly privileged - she's part of a large and successful family of film and TV actors. By focusing on her white privilege, she implies she only had the opportunities that any white person would have, and owes nothing to the influence of her grandfather, father and siblings in the business. It's a humblebrag, basically.

[Gene]

She could lose that privilege, in various ways, by sacrificing most or all of the best parts of her life. She has agency, right? Seems a small price to pay to no longer disgust oneself. Such a project would also better occupy the time she is now spending annoying the sane.

[David]

It’s a humblebrag, basically.

Somewhat related, the second item here:

[The aristocratic Peggy McIntosh] simply reclassified her manifest economic advantage as racial privilege and then dumped this newly discovered original sin onto every person who happens to share her skin colour. Without, of course, actually redistributing any of the wealth that, by her own account, she had done nothing to deserve.

Again, theatrical fretting about “white privilege” is very much an indulgence, a luxury good.

[Uma Thurmond's Feet]

She sounded pretty sane on Gilbert Gottfried's podcast recently, but he doesn't ask questions about her wokeness.

[Killer Marmot]

There's an underlying belief or philosophy held by the far left - and icreasingly by the moderate left - that is rarely talked about or recognized.

Which is this: individuals re not individuals, but are tied to a larger gestalt based on gender, race, ancestry, and so on,with which they share guilt and victimization status, no matter how they have conducted their lives.

it's a pernicious philosophy, even when uses to demonize oneself, one that has caused horrendous atrocities throughout history.

[Daniel Ream]

She's an actress.

Assumes facts not in evidence.

As to the lady-folk [...] I don't get the game there.

David has nailed it repeatedly - it's a positional good, a status symbol. It's a form of intrasexual competition; where men compete physically for physical dominance, women compete socially for social dominance. Shaming and ostracism is their primary weapon, and also exploiting the tendency of the herd to follow the leader as a way of duping the lower-status women into lowering their status even further.

Consider: short hair is pretty much universally seen as less attractive by men. It comes into fashion now and again, and that fashion is driven by women who are already extremely attractive. They can afford to take the hit, but if they can (and they can) convince other women to follow suit, then the women who are less attractive will do comparatively more damage to their status by following suit.

It's the same tactic at play here. Wealthy, famous, attractive, powerful female celebrities can afford ostentatious public histrionics and self-abasement because it doesn't affect them as much as it will the lower status people that will follow the celebrity's every move. Hairstyles, diet fads, environmental posturing, etc., etc.

[Ten]

Which is this: individuals re not individuals, but are tied to a larger gestalt based on gender, race, ancestry, and so on,with which they share guilt and victimization status, no matter how they have conducted their lives.

it's a pernicious philosophy, even when uses to demonize oneself, one that has caused horrendous atrocities throughout history.

Interesting. I have to wonder if the latter stems too from an adjunct abolition of previously essential morals in order to introduce, apply, and project The One Moral To Rule Them All.

I am therefore exempt from other guilt - as my personal ethics, lifestyle, social class, and philosophy manifest - if I penance myself solely to the ersatz morality of identity politics.

And to be doubly sure, flagellate my sole remaining offense. In public. As a means to fill the abyss with a manufactured identity I insist you consume. Intolerantly.

The socprogg leftist is a creature of coercion.

https://youtu.be/b87WQj3q0_w

[Patrick Brown]

women who are already extremely attractive.. can afford to take the hit

Very true. See also tattoos and facial piercings.

(I have a bit of a fixation on beautiful women with short hair. I put it down to seeing Nastassja Kinski in Cat People at a very impressionable age.)

[Uma Thurmond's Feet]

Wealthy, famous, attractive, powerful female celebrities can afford ostentatious public histrionics and self-abasement because it doesn't affect them as much as it will the lower status people that will follow the celebrity's every move. Hairstyles, diet fads, environmental posturing, etc., etc.

This also applies to broken marriages, fatherless homes, drug addiction and crime.

Thus, we see People magazine praising Andy Cohen for having a baby at 50, while erasing the biological mother who carried the baby to term wiped from the story. Andy Cohen, who according to his diaries spends much of his time away from home when he's not traveling to foreign locations with Anderson Cooper and other gay men.

This is the environment that boy is going to grow up in. Assuming Andy doesn't drop off the twig, he'll attend his son's high school graduation at 68.

Children are resilient, and I'm sure baby Cohen will do all right. I'm less certain about anyone further down the ladder who emulates him.

[Uma Thurmond's Feet]

Speaking of families getting along: HuffPro writer might cuts kids off from MAGA-loving grandparents.

[aelfheld]

Remorse for immutable characteristics is no more substantial than Birnam Wood.

[fnord]

Well, if she rubs a stick of butter all over and jumps into a 350 degree oven for a couple of hours she should brown up quite nicely.

Problem solved.
Next!

[fnord]

Filled to overflowing with emptiness

I like that, consider it stolen involuntarily donated to serve the needs of Duh Peeple.

[friend]

A classic xenophiliac.

[Fred the Fourth]

She's a narcissist with a publicist.

[Sort-Of-Mad Max]

Arquette was popularly regarded as the inspiration for Toto's 'Rosanna', a song about a pretty young girl.

'Rosanna' was recorded in 1981.

Tempus fugit, and wokeness is all that's left.

[Spiny Norman]

Patrick Brown,

I have a bit of a fixation on beautiful women with short hair. I put it down to seeing Nastassja Kinski in Cat People at a very impressionable age.

As do I. In my case, it was seeing Dorothy Hamill in the 1976 Winter Olympics at a very impressionable age. (Ms Hamill is still extraordinarily attractive at 63, and still wears her hair cut short.)

[David]

This also applies to broken marriages, fatherless homes,

Very much related. Again, imagine the likely consequences for those of modest means who are credulous enough to take her advice.

[Chester Draws]

I prefer short hair on women. In my case I'm pretty sure it was the female pilots in Captain Scarlet. (I'm not quite sure what it means if your first fixation is a puppet, but in my defence I wasn't very old.)

But the same point with tattoos and piercings resonates with me. At least hair grows back.

[Stevie of Sweden]

Since her mother is of Jewish descent, she can easily pretend that she's really not white, but a brown woman of Middle Eastern descent. And since her father was a convert to Islam, she can "revert" to Islam and do what Linda Sarsour did: "When I wasn’t wearing a hijab I was just some ordinary white girl from New York City." Now Sarsour is a "woman of color"!

[Ten]

Arquette was popularly regarded as the inspiration for Toto's 'Rosanna', a song about a pretty young girl.

She did a good job in The Big Blue, too, one of Besson's best.

https://youtu.be/FQ4w0XflrZo

[David]

I’m not quite sure what it means if your first fixation is a puppet,

[ Reaches under bar, activates hidden tape recorder. ]

[Burnsie]

For Arquette, it's probably not guilt about being white but rather guilt about being a raging bitch to her Latino help for the past 40 years.

White privilege is just a handy crutch that even earns her virtue points.

[Jay Guevara]

This also applies to broken marriages, fatherless homes,

Very much related. Again, imagine the likely consequences for those of modest means who are credulous enough to take her advice.,

Yes, the "Murphy Brown effect." (For those who were spared this, Candace Bergen's (wooden) character decides to bear and raise a child on her own. This was widely praised by the soi-disant elites, leading lots of less well-heeled women to follow suit, with dire consequences.)

As for Rosanna Arquette, I'm not that happy that she's white, either, so we're on the same page.

[Forse in HK]

David (slightly OT): shouldn’t Power, the fellow who fretted over oppressive male dominance at BBQs, be called a GuardianistO, not Guardianista?
( wouldn’t want to confuse our gender agreements…)

[Tabb]

Handicap principle displays are all well and good for exceptional people, but they're being promoted as viable life choices or style choices for unexceptional people. It's elitism masquerading as egalitarianism.

[I sneeze in threes]

CALLING ALL TRANS PEOPLE OF COLOUR!!!

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Register here at:

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[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

CALLING ALL TRANS PEOPLE OF COLOUR!!!

This INDOOR retreat holds space for 12 attendees ages 18-99!

A good estimate would be that is about twice all of them.

I am sorry to express that our venue is not wheelchair accessible...

Need some help here, do I need a solicitor, or a barrister to sue these ableist bastards ?

[Faversham to You Too!]

I’m ashamed that I once thought that this chick was cute. Wasn’t she the inspiration for the Toto hit Rosanna? Here’s a great analysis of that tune.
(https://youtu.be/QLoh8zHjGUI)

[Squires]

it's a pernicious philosophy

It’s a shame culture that has been peddled to impressionable members of a guilt culture, to serve as a leash on those who will believe it and as a disruptive cognitohazard on society as a whole. Sowing disfunction, a divorce from reality, is its very purpose.

[JML]

Rosanna pretty much ruins any movie she appears in. She's especially bad in the otherwise excellent "The Big Blue". Her sister Patricia is a much better actress.

[Daniel Ream]

Yes, the "Murphy Brown effect."

What I remember most about that plotline is when she gets knocked up by her roving reporter one night stand and decides to keep the baby, the show made quite a big deal about the baby having a father figure in the form of the live-in painter[1].

Except the show got cancelled after that season and the writers promptly wrote the painter out with the subplot that he was moving to Italy, leaving the baby fatherless.

The harder any media tries to feminist, the more it ends up revealing how morally bankrupt the whole ideology is.

[1] It made sense in context.

[Antipholus Papps]

Patricia’s not just a better actress, she’s always been the hotter of the two! True romance! Hubba hubba!

[Darleen]

I'll take things that didn't happen for $200, Alex.

[Sonny Wayz]

women who are already extremely attractive.. can afford to take the hit

Very true. See also tattoos and facial piercings.

I left a comment at Tim N's place a couple of months back, saying that the male equivalent is an Alpha male with a Corvette, which eventually trickles down to a minimum wage guy with a 20 year old Camaro beater*.

* Automotive model references specific to North America. Feel free to substitute vehicles appropriate to your locale.

[John Square]

On short haired women at formative times of life: Annie Lennox, Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams video

[Surreptitious Evil]

Short haired women - Servalan (Jacqueline Pearce), Blake’s 7.