{"id":1034,"date":"2021-09-23T21:38:38","date_gmt":"2021-09-23T20:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/?p=1034"},"modified":"2021-09-23T21:38:39","modified_gmt":"2021-09-23T20:38:39","slug":"alphaday-2-bulletin-season-xviii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/alphaday-2-bulletin-season-xviii\/","title":{"rendered":"Alphaday 2 Bulletin &#8211; Season XVIII"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Hi Alphas,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Welcome to Alphaday 2, Season XVIII. It looks like we\u2019re slipping into our familiar routine with amazing ease even at this early stage, well before our scheduled activities have reached their full volume. We\u2019re building up to it with everybody contributing to our shared enjoyment of writerly matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today\u2019s agenda adds several essential parts to the overall picture as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Alphaday 2 agenda:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>This bulletin from me<\/li><li>The collated entries for the internal monologue challenge, ready for you to read and provide feedback, from Maria<\/li><li>The brief for Challenge 2 from Phil<\/li><li>The Log with your writerly news from Phil<\/li><li>A Writers\u2019 Reads prompt to discuss an aspect of your reading habits from Christine. The novelty here is that this will take place on the Discussion Board. More about this later!<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>That should keep you occupied for a while. Next Alphaday the agenda will be up to full capacity and hopefully you\u2019ll all find it so inspiring that you\u2019ll participate with gusto in everything we propose and give us your personal take on the matters in hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>General news:<\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How are you getting on with woke culture or cancel culture? I was somewhat perturbed when I came across the following news item about Shakespeare\u2019s \u2018The Tempest\u2019:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u2018It is claimed that scenes such as Prospero arriving at the play\u2019s island setting and suppressing its inhabitants, and the spirit Ariel and the monstrous Caliban, have \u201cviolent colonial implications\u201d.\u2019<\/em><em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was suggested that the play needed to be adjusted to avoid such connotations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is true, of course, that Prospero was a manipulative, Machiavellian tyrant who invaded an island and enslaved its native inhabitants; in other words, the worst type of villain in the cancel culture\u2019s books. Perhaps it doesn\u2019t matter that Prospero at the end got rid of his powers. He broke his staff and drowned his magic book \u201cdeeper than did ever plummet sound.\u201d He then let the younger generation, Miranda and Ferdinand, proceed to their \u201cbrave new world\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It wouldn\u2019t be the first time a Shakespeare play was deemed unfit for a sensitive public either. The Victorians famously gave King Lear a happy ending with Lear and Cordelia living happily ever after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Censorship is a tricky issue these days when social media can blast children and other vulnerable persons with filth. That\u2019s one aspect of the problem. But to superimpose a modern day sensitivity on the classics is a different matter. When \u2018Lady Chatterley\u2019s Lover\u2019 was declared not guilty of obscenity in 1960, this seemed like a major victory for art. \u201cIt\u2019s art, not smut\u201d they proclaimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A few years later Mary Whitehouse started her \u2018Clean up TV Campaign\u2019, methodically scanning every programme for smut \u2013 not interested in art. She might be applauding the present cancel culture from her grave. The smut they\u2019re looking for now is not exactly Mary Whitehouse\u2019s bugbears of blasphemy, sex, violence and war, but the search for offenders is as bloodthirsty as ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So how do we writers react? Do we join the vigilantes and hunt out offenders? Do we carefully avoid controversial themes and language? Or do we write as we please and not worry about being caught putting our foot in it? As Shakespeare did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi Alphas, Welcome to Alphaday 2, Season XVIII. It looks like we\u2019re slipping into our familiar routine with amazing ease even at this early stage, well before our scheduled activities have reached&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-1034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alphaday-bulletins","tag-alphaday-bulletins-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}