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The Citizen, 2016-03-10, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2016. PAGE 5. Other Views Amazingly graceless on the page /yearn to be graceful. I want to be 'Le Gros Jean' — Big Jean Beliveau, captain of the Montreal Canadians, elegant, magisterial, circling centre ice like a Lipizzaner stallion in a whirl of ice chips. So far, it hasn't panned out. I have, pretty much since I tumbled from the womb, cartwheeled and pratfallen through life as a ham-fisted, foggy -minded maladroit. I've tried to compensate by at least being graceful with words, but that hasn't panned out either. Take my present conundrum. I have received, unsolicited, an eight -and -a -half - pound manuscript of a novel from a guy I met 10 years ago. He wants me to review it. The manuscript is, not to put too fine a point on it, a dog. But I don't want to crush the guy. I know how hard it is to write a book and I know how utterly ruthless some book reviewers can be. Make no mistake, inside many mild- mannered book reviewers there lurks a barracuda lusting to rip into some writerly flesh. And nobody does it nastier than a writer reviewing another writer. Hugh Leonard writing about the author of Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim: "Reading Joseph Conrad is like gargling with broken glass." George Jean Nathan on George Bernard Shaw: "He writes his plays for the ages — the ages between five and 12". Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman: "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'a' and 'the". And listen to Dylan Thomas tearing a strip off Dame Edith Sitwell: "Isn't she a poisonous thing of a woman, lying, concealing, flipping, plagiarizing, misquoting and being as clever a crooked literary publicist as ever." The Dame could give as good as she got. Here she is slipping the stiletto to Virginia Woolf: "Woolf's writing is no more than glamorous knitting. I believe she must have a pattern somewhere" And check out Ms. Woolf putting the boots to James Joyce's Ulysses: "The work of a In all things, This isn't about the Academy Awards or anyone's lives mattering more or less than anyone else's. It's also not about the sins of past cinema stars or those currently ongoing. What this is about is source material and staying true to it. When I was in high school, I had my first brush with Photoshop and learned a very important lesson; source is sacred. In the computer world, what this means is you never save edits to source material. If you're working with an image you keep the original image somewhere away from your working files so you never accidentally save over it. The reason behind this is you never know when something might go wrong. You may have to start over, and if you do, you will need that original image to work from. It's a lesson that has served me well. Regardless of what I'm doing with photos at work (be it preparing them for North Huron Publishing's website's photo of the day section or getting them ready for the newspaper) I always keep the original safely tucked away in a different file to make sure nothing gets accidentally deleted or over-ridden. So, how does this relate to cinema, the Academy Awards or lives? Well, recently, there has been a lot of talk in the press about the racial divide when it comes to movies. Whether it's the Academy Awards or actors being cast in roles that they aren't quite right for due to being a different race than the character, everyone is talking about about race in film. As anyone who watched the awards (or passed by a television, a computer screen, a smart phone, a tablet... pretty much anything that functions as an information aggregate) knows, race was a huge part of the event. Host Chris Rock pointed out, at length, that black actors and actresses were not exactly well represented at the event. The awards were "whitewashed" according to critics of the event. To be fair, there were a lot of white people nominated for awards and that could be indicative of a kind of racial preference in the community. Other complaints are being made of the film industry. Look at Gods of Egypt. The film, which is a fantasy adventure featuring several white actors as Egyptians or Egyptian gods, has been panned because of several reasons (including just not being very good) but one source is that keeps rising to the surface is the fact that there are prominent white actors like Gerard Butler and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (of Game of Thrones fame) playing Egyptians. It's understandable. Were there not enough Egyptian actors to take these roles? I don't know. What I do know is you're dealing with an Egyptian story so you should stay as close to that as possible. Other complaints are being made about Zoe Saldana who was recently cast as Nina Simone, a black singer who tackled significant racist issues with her music last century. Saldana had to wear a prosthetic nose and have her skin darkened for the role. Saldana is a great actress in my opinion, but I get it. She isn't representative of Simone. Members of Simone's family fall on the same side of the argument; saying that it was a mistake to cast Saldana, but do so in different ways. A family friend of Simone aimed a harsh Tweet at Saldana, however Simone's daughter defended Saldana, saying she was a fine actress, just maybe not right for the role. The sanctity of the source material must be respected be it a fictional character in a movie or a biographical film, however, that sanctity swings both ways. While we have people complaining that Saldana isn't black enough or that Gods of Egypt was whitewashed, we also have people complaining that actor Idris Elba was denied a chance at being 007 agent James Bond because he was "too street", according to Bond author Anthony Horowitz (who has continued the work started by Ian Fleming who initially created Bond). We also have people talking about Michael B. Jordan (not the basketball player) who was recently cast in the unsuccessful reboot of The Fantastic Four as Johnny Storm, a well-known white character that has decades of history in the comic book industry. Jordan has also been named as a potential star of a second remake of The Thomas Crown queasy undergraduate squeezing his pimples". Ouch. When it comes to literary incisors, the author who gave us Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn could bare them as required. Mark Twain managed to eviscerate two literary icons in a single sentence: "(Edgar Allen) Poe's prose is unreadable, like Jane Austin's." But when it comes to literary disembowelments Dorothy Parker was the Piranha Princess. Writing under the deceptively pacific byline `Constant Reader', Ms. Parker left a lot of blood in the water. Of one author's work she said: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force". Reviewing A.A.Milne's The House of Pooh Corner, Parker acknowledged that "speaking ill of Mr. Milne puts one immediately in the ranks of one who sets fire to orphanages" but then the sickly sweet 'fiddly -porn' excesses of Milne's style got to her and she finished her review with "Tonstant Weader fwowed up" Heady stuff, but hardly graceful. Here's what I came up with for the eight -and -a -half - pound novel that guy wants me to review: "I cannot recommend this book too highly." Pass the puck, Big Jean! I'm open on the wing here! sacred Affair which originally starred Steve McQueen and, in a 1990s remake, starred Pierce Brosnan. Both Jordan and Idris are talented actors in my opinion, however, no one is exempt from the idea that source material should be followed, regardless of how great an actor they are. Of course, all of this had a catalyst in my mind and that catalyst was the dramatization of one of my favourite collection of books: Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. The series is a bit of a departure from the horror for which King is best known. It focuses on Roland Deschain, a gunslinger from a fantasy world who pulls his companions from worlds very similar to our own. It's a mash -up of fantasy, wild west and relatively modern times. The problem with Elba being cast as Deschain isn't that the character was white, but that there is actual focus, in the story, put on Deschain being white in his interactions with one of the other characters (who is black). As a matter of fact, this character, who is incredibly intricate, has moments of extreme racism, referring to Deschain (and other white people) in racist terms. Unless the filmmakers change this character and have this woman portrayed as a racist white person (which shouldn't happen), a major character dynamic will have to be removed. Race is a huge issue in the relationship between the main characters. The casting is a mistake. However, to get back to the over -arching theme here, whether it's someone white playing an Egyptian or someone black playing a character somewhat based on Clint Eastwood's western characters, it shouldn't be done. If there is an established narrative, be it fictional or non -fictional, it should be respected and followed. The problem with Hollywood, in my humble opinion, is that the stories being told are all about white people and that is why white actors and actresses are being thrust into the limelight of awards shows. We don't need to start shoe -horning people into roles not fit for them, we need to have more roles created for people who aren't white. Like I said earlier, the sword has to swing both ways for racism to be exorcised from entertainment. Shawn 10•15iii" Loughlin Shawn's Sense Suspended reality Everyone knows that I wouldn't exactly be the first person to say this in recent years, but common sense isn't really very common these days, is it? As anyone who knows me or who reads this column regularly knows, I am steadfast in my support of emergency services workers. Whether it be police officers, firefighters or paramedics — and of course Canadian soldiers — I tend to side with these brave men and women vastly more often than not. These folks have a hard job. Very often, situations can elevate from routine to life -or - death in a matter of split -seconds. This was gravely evident in the case of slain OPP officer Vu Pham several years ago. What began as a routine traffic stop transformed into the murder of a police officer and a bloody shootout in a matter of seconds. Therefore, split-second decisions have to be made. And these employees are trained with that in mind. If there is a moment's hesitation by a firefighter or a police officer, it could make all the difference. It is this kind of pressure that has recently been at the heart of some of the most heated debates in both Canada and the U.S. when officers have made split-second decisions that have proven to be wrong. However, when the right decision is made and a life is saved, this should be cause for celebration and perhaps commendation. This is not the case, however, in a Virginia case late last month, as volunteer firefighters, forced to think on their feet, saved the life of an unresponsive 18 -month-old girl. The choice before volunteer firefighter Captain James Kelley was simple: wait for paramedics — whose timeline was unknown — or take the child to the hospital himself. Kelley did the latter and saved the girl's life. In doing so, however, he also got himself, and another fellow firefighter, suspended. The reason: a fire truck has been deemed an inappropriate vehicle with which to transport someone in medical need. In an interview after receiving word of his suspension, Kelley said he was aware of the rules, but made the decision anyway. He also stated that he was at peace with what he did. Kelley's Chief, Christopher Smith, has also come to his aid. "This is one of those situations where actions outweigh policy," Smith said. I often heard first-hand stories of the internal struggle between need and policy from my father, a 33 -year veteran of the Toronto Police Services. In the 1980s and 1990s when fear of HIV and AIDS were sweeping North America, he and his fellow officers were instructed to don rubber gloves before assisting someone in need when blood was present. This is standard now, with officers often wearing mechanics' or baseball batting gloves at all times. Back then, however, this was a change, and it went against instinct. My dad would tell me that if he arrived at the scene of a car accident and someone was in grave need of attention, he was not planning on losing precious response time — again, in a situation where seconds could mean the difference between life and death — to clumsily put on rubber gloves. We trust these men and women to make decisions when we're at our most vulnerable — to do what's in our best interests when we are in trouble, minor or major. Saving a life without endangering another should be rewarded. Yes, policies are often in place for a reason, but we need common sense exceptions when lives are on the line.