Latest news with #Stalinesque
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Sentence before verdict: Trump's attack on Obama is straight out of Alice in Wonderland
Almost every American knows that in our legal system, people accused of crimes are presumed innocent. The burden is on the government to overcome that presumption and prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Those simple but powerful maxims were once a source of national pride. They distinguished the United States from countries where government officials and political leaders branded the opponents guilty before they were charged with a crime or brought to trial. In Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, the Alice-in-Wonderland world of 'sentence first-verdict afterwards' came to life in infamous show trials. Those trials lacked all the requisites of fairness. Evidence was manufactured to demonstrate the guilt of the regime's enemies. Show trials told the story the government wanted told and were designed to signal that anyone, innocent or not, could be convicted of a crime against the state. So far, at least, this country has avoided Stalinesque show trials. But the logic of the show trial was very much on display this week in the Oval Office. In a now-familiar scene, during a meeting with the Philippines president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, Donald Trump went off script. He turned a reporter's question about the unfolding Jeffrey Epstein scandal into an occasion to say that former president Barack Obama had committed 'treason' by interfering in the 2016 presidential election. 'He's guilty,' Trump asserted, 'This was treason. This was every word you can think of.' Speaking after the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, released a report on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, the president said: 'Obama was trying to lead a coup. And it was with Hillary Clinton.' Republican congressmen and senators, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who investigated allegations of Obama's involvement five years ago, found nothing to support them. But none of that mattered to the president on Tuesday. As Trump put it: 'Whether it's right or wrong, it's time to go after people. Obama's been caught directly.' Not hiding his motives, Trump said: 'It's time to start after what they did to me.' Guilt first. Charges, trials and other legal niceties come later. This is American justice, Donald Trump-style. He wants no part of the long and storied tradition in which presidents kept an arms-length relationship with the justice department and did not interfere with its decisions about whether and whom to prosecute for crimes. What Trump said about Obama is, the New York Times notes, 'a stark example of his campaign of retribution against an ever-growing list of enemies that has little analogue in American history'. Putting one of his predecessors on trial also would take some of the sting out of Trump's own dubious distinction of being the only former president to have been convicted of a felony. Some may be tempted to write off the president's latest Oval Office pronouncements as an unhinged rant or only an effort to distract attention from Trump's Epstein troubles. But that would be a mistake. A recent article by the neuroscientist Tali Sharot and the law professor Cass Sunstein helps explain why. That article is titled: 'Will We Habituate to the Decline of Democracy?' Sharot and Sunstein argue that America is on the cusp of a dangerous moment in its political history. They say that we can understand why by turning to neuroscience, not to political science. Neuroscience teaches us that 'people are less likely to respond to or even notice gradual changes. That is largely due to habituation, which is the brain's tendency to react less and less to things that are constant or that change slowly.' In politics, 'when democratic norms are violated repeatedly, people begin to adjust. The first time a president refuses to concede an election, it's a crisis. The second time, it's a controversy. By the third time, it may be just another headline. Each new breach of democratic principles … politicizing the justice system … feels less outrageous than the last.' Americans must resist that tendency. To do so, Sharot and Sunstein argue, we need 'to see things not in light of the deterioration of recent years but in light of our best historical practices, our highest ideals, and our highest aspirations'. In the realm of respect for the rule of law and the presumption of innocence, we can trace those practices, ideals and aspirations back to 1770, when John Adams, a patriot, practicing lawyer and later the second president of the United States, agreed to defend British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre. Adams did so because he believed that everyone, no matter how reprehensible their act, was entitled to a defense. That principle meant that people needed to learn to withhold judgment, to respect evidence and to hear both sides of a story before making up their minds. That was a valuable lesson for those who would later want to lead our constitutional republic, as well as for its citizens. The trial of the British soldiers turned out, as the author Christopher Klein writes, to be 'the first time reasonable doubt had ever been used as a standard'. Fast forward to 1940, and the memorable speech of the attorney general, Robert Jackson, to a gathering of United States attorneys. What he said about their role might also be said about the president's assertions about Obama. Jackson observed that US attorneys had 'more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America'. A prosecutor, he explained, 'can have citizens investigated and, if he is that kind of person, he can have this done to the tune of public statements and veiled or unveiled intimations … The prosecutor can order arrests … and on the basis of his one-sided presentation of the facts, can cause the citizen to be indicted and held for trial.' Sound familiar? The president is not a prosecutor, but since he has returned to power, President Trump has behaved and encouraged those in the justice department to ignore Jackson's warnings that a prosecutor should focus on 'cases that need to be prosecuted' rather than 'people that he thinks he should get'. Targeting people, not crimes, means that the people prosecuted will be those who are 'unpopular with the predominant or governing group' or are 'attached to the wrong political views, or [are] personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself'. Jackson restated a long-cherished American ideal, namely that those with the power to ruin lives and reputations should seek 'truth and not victims' and serve 'the law and not factional purposes'. Since then, presidents of both parties, in even the most controversial cases and those involving allies or opponents, have heeded Jackson's warnings. They have said nothing about pending cases, let alone announcing that it's time 'to go after' people. But no more. The justice department seems ready and willing to do the president's bidding, even though there is no evidence that President Obama did anything wrong in regard to the 2016 election. In addition, he may have immunity from criminal prosecution for anything he did in his official capacity. Trump's attack on the 'traitorous' Obama may be predictable. But it should not be acceptable to any of us. Sharot and Sunstein get it right when they say, 'To avoid habituating ourselves to the torrent of President Trump's assaults on democracy and the rule of law, we need to keep our best practices, ideals, and aspirations firmly in view what we've done.' We need 'to compare what is happening today not to what happened yesterday or the day before, but to what we hope will happen tomorrow'. To get to that world, it is important to recall the words of John Adams and Robert Jackson and work to give them life again. Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's Death Penalty
Scroll.in
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
Our memories are biased, unreliable, extensively rewritten – and that's a good thing
Milan Kundera opens his novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting with a scene from the winter of 1948. Klement Gottwald, leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, is giving a speech to the masses from a palace balcony, surrounded by fellow party members. Comrade Vladimir Clementis thoughtfully places his fur hat on Gottwald's bare head; the hat then features in an iconic photograph. Four years later, Clementis is found guilty of being a bourgeois nationalist and hanged. His ashes are strewn on a Prague street. The propaganda section of the party removes him from written history and erases him from the photograph. 'Nothing remains of Clementis,' writes Kundera, 'but the fur hat on Gottwald's head'. Efforts to enforce political forgetting are often associated with totalitarian regimes. The state endeavours to control not only its citizens, but also the past. To create a narrative that glorifies the present and idealises the future, history must be rewritten or even completely obliterated. In a famous article on 'the totalitarian ego', the social psychologist Anthony Greenwald argued that individual selves operate in the same way. We deploy an array of cognitive biases to maintain a sense of control, and to shape and reshape our personal history. We distort the present and fabricate the past to ensure we remain the heroes of our life narratives. Likening the individual to a destructive political system might sound extreme, but it has an element of truth. Memory Lane, a new book by Irish psychology researchers Ciara Greene and Gillian Murphy, shows how autobiographical memory has a capacity to rewrite history that is almost Stalinesque. There is no shortage of books on memory, from self-help guides for the anxiously ageing to scholarly works of history. Memory Lane is distinctive for taking the standpoint of applied cognitive psychology. Emphasising how memory functions in everyday life, Greene and Murphy explore the processes of memory and the influences that shape them. What memory is not The key message of the book is that the memory system is not a recording device. We may be tempted to see memory as a vault where past experience is faithfully preserved, but in fact it is fundamentally reconstructive. Memories are constantly revised in acts of recollection. They change in predictable ways over time, moulded by new information, our prior beliefs and current emotions, other people's versions of events, or an interviewer's leading questions. According to Greene and Murphy's preferred analogy, memory is like a Lego tower. A memory is initially constructed from a set of elements, but over time some will be lost as the structure simplifies to preserve the gist of the event. Elements may also be added as new information is incorporated and the memory is refashioned to align with the person's beliefs and expectations. The malleability of memory might look like a weakness, especially by comparison to digital records. Memory Lane presents it as a strength. Humans did not evolve to log objective truths for posterity, but to operate flexibly in a complex and changing world. From an adaptive standpoint, the past only matters insofar as it helps us function in the present. Our knowledge should be updated by new information. We should assimilate experiences to already learned patterns. And we should be tuned to our social environment, rather than insulated from it. 'If all our memories existed in some kind of mental quarantine, separate from the rest of our knowledge and experiences,' the authors write, 'it would be like using a slow, inefficient computer program that could only show you one file at a time, never drawing connections or updating incorrect impressions.' Simplifying and discarding memories is also beneficial because our cognitive capacity is limited. It is better to filter out what matters from the deluge of past experiences than to be overwhelmed with irrelevancies. Greene and Murphy present the case of a woman with exceptional autobiographical memory, who is plagued by the triggering of obsolete memories. Forgetting doesn't merely de-clutter memory; it also serves emotional ends. Selectively deleting unpleasant memories increases happiness. Sanding off out-of-character experiences fosters a clear and stable sense of self. 'Hindsight bias' boosts this feeling of personal continuity by bringing our recollections into line with our current beliefs. Revisionist history it may be, but it is carried out in the service of personal identity. Eyewitness memories and misinformation Memory Lane pays special attention to situations in which memory errors have serious consequences, such as eyewitness testimony. Innocent people can be convicted on the basis of inaccurate eyewitness identifications. An array of biases make these more likely and they are especially common in interracial contexts. Recollections can also be influenced by the testimony of other witnesses, and even by the language used during questioning. In a classic study, participants who viewed videos of car accidents estimated the car's speed as substantially faster when the cars were described as having 'smashed' rather than 'contacted'. These distortions are not temporary: new information overwrites and overrides the original memory. Misinformation works in a similar way and with equally dire consequences, such as vaccination avoidance. False information not only modifies existing memories but can even produce false memories, especially when it aligns with our preexisting beliefs and ideologies. Greene and Murphy present intriguing experimental evidence that false memories are prevalent and easy to implant. Children and older adults seem especially susceptible to misinformation, but no one is immune, regardless of education or intelligence. Reassuringly, perhaps, digital image manipulation and deepfake videos are no more likely to induce false memories than good old-fashioned verbiage. A doctored picture may not be worth a thousand words when it comes to warping memory. Memory Lane devotes some time to the ' memory wars ' of the 1980s and 1990s, when debate raged over the existence of repressed memories. Greene and Murphy argue the now mainstream view that many traumatic memories supposedly recovered in therapy were false memories induced by therapists. Memories for traumatic events are not repressed, they argue, and traumatic memories are neither qualitatively different from other memories, nor stored separately from them. Here the science of memory runs contrary to the wildly popular claims of writers such as psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of the bestseller The Body Keeps the Score. Misunderstanding memory The authors of Memory Lane contend that we hold memory to unrealistic standards of accuracy, completeness and stability. When people misremember the past or change their recollections, we query their honesty or mental health. When our own memories are hazy, we worry about cognitive decline. Greene and Murphy argue that it is in the very nature of memory to be fallible, malleable and limited. This message is heartening, but it does not clarify why we would expect memory to be more capacious, coherent and durable in the first place. Nor does it explain why we persist with this wrongheaded expectation, despite so much evidence to the contrary. The authors hint that our mistake might have its roots in dominant metaphors of memory. If we now understand the mind as computer-like, we will see memories as digital traces that sit, silent and unchanging, in a vast storage system. 'Many of the catastrophic consequences of memory distortion arise not because our individual memories are terrible,' they argue, 'but because we have unrealistic expectations about how memory works, treating it as a video camera rather than a reconstruction.' In earlier times, when memory was likened to a telephone switchboard or to books or, for the ancient Greeks, to wax tablets, memory errors and erasures may have seemed less surprising and more tolerable. These shifting technological analogies, explored historically in Douwe Draaisma's Metaphors of Memory, may partly account for our extravagant expectations for memory. Expecting silicon chip performance from carbon-based organisms, who evolved to care more about adaptation than truth, would be foolish. But there is surely more to this than metaphor. All aspects of our lives are increasingly recorded and datafied, a process that demands objectivity, accuracy and consistency. The recorded facts of the matter determine who should be rewarded, punished and regulated. The bounded and mutable nature of human memory presents a challenge to this digital regime. Human memory is also increasingly taxed by the overwhelming and accelerating volume of information that assails us. Our frustration with its limitations reflects the desperate mismatch we feel between human nature and the impersonal systems of data in which we live. Greene and Murphy urge us to relax. We should be humbler about our memory, and more realistic and forgiving about the memories of others. We should not be judgemental about the errors and inconsistencies of friends, or overconfident about our own recollections. And we should remember that, although memory is fallible, it is fallible in beneficial ways. A person whose memory system always kept an accurate record of our lives would be profoundly impaired, Greene and Murphy argue. Such a person 'would struggle to plan for the future, learn from the past, or respond flexibly to unexpected events'. Brimming with insights such as these, Memory Lane offers an informative and readable account of how the apparent weaknesses of human memory may be strengths in disguise.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Opinion - What happened to Terry Moran: Echos of Edward R. Murrow
You seldom see anything really new on television. But this weekend proved an exception. For the first time ever, we saw the live performance of a Broadway play: CNN's broadcast of the hit Broadway show 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' starring George Clooney. It was an entertainment triumph. The acting was superb. The story was compelling. The staging was excellent. There were no commercial breaks. And the play's powerful message could not have been more timely. Indeed, the story of how legendary CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow took on the phony anti-communist campaign of Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) is an ominous foretelling of what we are witnessing today. Murrow exposed the lack of evidence behind McCarthy's attacks on alleged communists in the State Department. McCarthy fought back, accusing Murrow himself of being a communist sympathizer. And CBS folded, demoting Murrow from prime-time Tuesday night to low-rated Sunday afternoon. Sound familiar? In fact, the very next day, Murrow's experience from the 1950s played out again in real time. In a personal tweet, ABC News senior national correspondent Terry Moran called President Trump and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller 'world-class haters.' The White House protested. And ABC folded, suspending Moran indefinitely. Now, one could argue that Moran has earned his reputation as one of America's best journalists. In April, President Trump even chose Moran for his first second-term Oval Office interview. One could also argue that their anti-immigrant rhetoric in the first and second Trump terms qualify Trump and Miller as 'world-class haters.' But that's an argument for another day. The important point for today is: This latest media blow-up over Terry Moran should worry anybody who believes in how important a free media is to our democracy. Because it proves once again how incredibly thin-skinned are members of the Trump administration, starting with the president himself — and how shamefully spineless are the CEOs of the nation's media companies. This, of course, is not the first time ABC folded. In December 2024, it paid Trump $15 million rather than fight a defamation lawsuit many legal scholars said ABC could easily have won. Other media chiefs have been equally spineless. Jeff Bezos of the Washington Post and Patrick Soon-Shiong of the Los Angeles Times killed editorials endorsing Kamala Harris. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg paid Trump $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit and tossed in another $1 million for Trump's inauguration fund. Paramount Global, CBS's parent company, is reportedly considering settling a baseless Trump lawsuit challenging how '60 Minutes' edited its interview with Kamala Harris in October 2024. The collective, corporate caving-in to Donald Trump is disgusting. Especially in light of the fact that Trump has only intensified his own attacks on the media, to which he still applies the Stalinesque label 'enemy of the American people.' During his first term, Trump lobbed personal attacks against many White House reporters. He called then-CNN reporter Jim Acosta 'a rude, terrible person' and temporarily suspended him from the press corps. He viciously attacked NBC's Peter Alexander, calling him a 'terrible reporter' for asking a 'nasty question.' He singled out three African-American female reporters for contempt, accusing CNN's Abby Phillip of asking 'a stupid question,' describing then-Urban Radio Network's April Ryan as 'a loser,' and calling NPR's Yamiche Alcindor a 'racist.' He dismissed NBC's Katy Tur as a 'third-rate reporter,' and ridiculed the New York Times's Maggie Haberman as a 'Crooked H flunkie.' Trump Two has brought more of the same. The White House has exiled Associated Press for refusing to adopt the 'Gulf of America.' Some outlets have been banned from the press pool. The president routinely asks reporters whom they work for before answering, or belittling, their questions. He has targeted for personal abuse the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, ABC's Rachel Scott, and even Fox News's Jacqui Heinrich, whom he called 'absolutely terrible.' But what happened to Terry Moran proves that media criticism is a one-way street. The president and his aides can level the most vicious personal attacks against reporters, but if any reporter dares fire back, he or she could well be fired for telling the truth. Edward R. Murrow summed up the difficulties he faced at CBS in attempting to reporting the facts about McCarthy in this chilling phrase: 'The terror is in this room.' The same could be said of many newsrooms today. Under such unrelenting attacks, it makes you wonder whether a free and independent media can even survive. Good night, and good luck. Bill Press is host of 'The Bill Press Pod.' He is the author of 'From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hill
What happened to Terry Moran: Echos of Edward R. Murrow
You seldom see anything really new on television. But this weekend proved an exception. For the first time ever, we saw the live performance of a Broadway play: CNN's broadcast of the hit Broadway show 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' starring George Clooney. It was an entertainment triumph. The acting was superb. The story was compelling. The staging was excellent. There were no commercial breaks. And the play's powerful message could not have been more timely. Indeed, the story of how legendary CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow took on the phony anti-communist campaign of Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) is an ominous foretelling of what we are witnessing today. Murrow exposed the lack of evidence behind McCarthy's attacks on alleged communists in the State Department. McCarthy fought back, accusing Murrow himself of being a communist sympathizer. And CBS folded, demoting Murrow from prime-time Tuesday night to low-rated Sunday afternoon. Sound familiar? In fact, the very next day, Murrow's experience from the 1950s played out again in real time. In a personal tweet, ABC News senior national correspondent Terry Moran called President Trump and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller 'world-class haters.' The White House protested. And ABC folded, suspending Moran indefinitely. Now, one could argue that Moran has earned his reputation as one of America's best journalists. In April, President Trump even chose Moran for his first second-term Oval Office interview. One could also argue that their anti-immigrant rhetoric in the first and second Trump terms qualify Trump and Miller as 'world-class haters.' But that's an argument for another day. The important point for today is: This latest media blow-up over Terry Moran should worry anybody who believes in how important a free media is to our democracy. Because it proves once again how incredibly thin-skinned are members of the Trump administration, starting with the president himself — and how shamefully spineless are the CEOs of the nation's media companies. This, of course, is not the first time ABC folded. In December 2024, it paid Trump $15 million rather than fight a defamation lawsuit many legal scholars said ABC could easily have won. Other media chiefs have been equally spineless. Jeff Bezos of the Washington Post and Patrick Soon-Shiong of the Los Angeles Times killed editorials endorsing Kamala Harris. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg paid Trump $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit and tossed in another $1 million for Trump's inauguration fund. Paramount Global, CBS's parent company, is reportedly considering settling a baseless Trump lawsuit challenging how '60 Minutes' edited its interview with Kamala Harris in October 2024. The collective, corporate caving-in to Donald Trump is disgusting. Especially in light of the fact that Trump has only intensified his own attacks on the media, to which he still applies the Stalinesque label 'enemy of the American people.' During his first term, Trump lobbed personal attacks against many White House reporters. He called then-CNN reporter Jim Acosta 'a rude, terrible person' and temporarily suspended him from the press corps. He viciously attacked NBC's Peter Alexander, calling him a 'terrible reporter' for asking a 'nasty question.' He singled out three African-American female reporters for contempt, accusing CNN's Abby Phillip of asking 'a stupid question,' describing then-Urban Radio Network's April Ryan as 'a loser,' and calling NPR's Yamiche Alcindor a 'racist.' He dismissed NBC's Katy Tur as a 'third-rate reporter,' and ridiculed the New York Times's Maggie Haberman as a 'Crooked H flunkie.' Trump Two has brought more of the same. The White House has exiled Associated Press for refusing to adopt the 'Gulf of America.' Some outlets have been banned from the press pool. The president routinely asks reporters whom they work for before answering, or belittling, their questions. He has targeted for personal abuse the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, ABC's Rachel Scott, and even Fox News's Jacqui Heinrich, whom he called 'absolutely terrible.' But what happened to Terry Moran proves that media criticism is a one-way street. The president and his aides can level the most vicious personal attacks against reporters, but if any reporter dares fire back, he or she could well be fired for telling the truth. Edward R. Murrow summed up the difficulties he faced at CBS in attempting to reporting the facts about McCarthy in this chilling phrase: 'The terror is in this room.' The same could be said of many newsrooms today. Under such unrelenting attacks, it makes you wonder whether a free and independent media can even survive. Good night, and good luck. Bill Press is host of 'The Bill Press Pod.' He is the author of 'From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.'
Daily Mail
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Exit, Stage Left (If you're a white male writer): Inside the theatre summit where banning white men was seriously on the table
It was meant to be a gathering designed to bring together some of the leading voices in British theatre. But at Soho Place in the West End on Wednesday, a proposal to ban staging plays by white male writers for a year nearly stole the show - and divided the room. The proposal came from director Katie Gilchrist, who presented the idea as part of The Stage's 'Big Ideas' symposium. The intention behind the proposal was to challenge existing programming norms in an industry often accused of gatekeeping. But the idea of a year-long exclusion of works by white male playwrights was met with mixed reactions. Some saw it as an opportunity to address underrepresentation, while others viewed it as an exclusionary move. There was no open-floor debate during the symposium. Delegates were required to submit questions through an app, with only the most 'liked' questions being answered. 'It was Stalinesque – very controlling, very woke way of censoring different views of things. It's divisive and alienating,' said one attendee. Following the proposal, an anonymous delegate asked: 'What about white working-class men? What about disabled/neurodiverse white men? What about trans men?' The response to this question was: 'As Katie mentioned in her speech, there were no trans writers of any kind being programmed on the West End. Implying trans men will lose out as a result of this idea is a straw man – rising tides raise all boats.' This comment received 11 likes. Another delegate responded: 'The immediate 'whataboutery' in these comments is exactly why this is important. A brave, big idea, thank you Katie.' However, not all attendees were in agreement. One delegate, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of being blacklisted, told MailOnline: 'Banning white male playwrights for a year is idiotic, right-on nonsense. 'The Stage should not have platformed such a divisive idea, especially when around 50% of the room was white and male. What's more alarming is that not one of them spoke out against it for fear of being labelled a 'misogynist'. It's bonkers.' In the end, Ms Gilchrist's proposal was not adopted. The idea that gained the most support—receiving 40% of the vote—was to devolve the National Theatre. Actor and director Rob Myles raised the question: 'Labour has made devolution a central policy elsewhere – why not in this industry?' When asked whether the proposed ban would include Shakespeare or Ibsen, moderator Amanda Parker, a Royal Shakespeare Company board member, 'just laughed.' All this played out the same week the National Theatre announced its new season—prompting fresh criticism about ideological orthodoxy in British theatre. 'They go on about tolerance, but only want one kind,' said one delegate. 'The theatre world is agenda-driven and resent differing views.' In response, a spokesperson for The Stage said: 'The description of the day is inaccurate. No debate was restricted – on the contrary, delegates were encouraged throughout the day to share their thoughts and comments. 'The whole conference was a platform for open, generous and lively debate. It also included an extended panel discussion that explored issues of censorship and freedom of expression. 'All six open-sourced presentations put forward as part of our Big Ideas strand were received warmly in the room. A proposal for a devolved National Theatre won an open vote as the conference's favourite proposal of the six.' The controversy didn't come out of nowhere. Days before the event, Ms Gilchrist's pitch had already raised eyebrows after it was announced it would be among the final six ideas presented to senior theatre figures. In her own words, Ms Gilchrist described the idea as 'an invitation for us to critically examine whose voices dominate our stages and what it could mean to shift that balance… even for the historical equivalent of an exhale'. The suggestion would have excluded virtually every foundational playwright of the Western canon - from Shakespeare and Marlowe to Ibsen and Pinter. Writer Patrick Kidd called the idea 'batty, sexist and divisive', remarking: 'Art should offer opportunities without banning a group of writers. Perhaps she would also like to exclude white men from theatre audiences?' Gilchrist, who has directed regional productions of Mamma Mia!, Steel Magnolias and Dial M for Murder, was one of two Americans to make the shortlist. Another finalist, Catherine Russell - general manager of New York's Theater Center -proposed live AI translation of theatre into more than 60 languages. Last year, former prime minister Rishi Sunak condemned theatres that hosted 'Black Out' performances - nights reserved for black-only audiences - as 'wrong and divisive'. It comes as ticket buyers attending its upcoming production of Shakespeare's Hamlet have been advised that the play contains themes of death, grief, suicide, madness and coercive behaviour. The play, a cornerstone of English literature and widely taught in schools, ends with a fatal duel that sees most of the principal characters - including the prince himself - dead by the final curtain. The production, which opens in September as part of Indhu Rubasingham's inaugural season as artistic director, stars Olivier Award-winner Hiran Abeysekera as the Danish prince. Alongside casting announcements, the theatre slapped the production with a trigger warning, stating: 'This production contains themes of grief and death, including suicide and the loss of a parent, depictions of madness, violence, and coercive behaviour.' The warning prompted raised eyebrows among some theatre-goers and commentators, who questioned whether audiences need advance notice that a four-hundred-year-old tragedy contains tragic elements. Roy Schwartz, a historian and author, told the Mail: 'A trigger warning is meant to alert that something contains potentially distressing material. It's gratuitous to include it in something that's well-known to have mature subject matter, and it's frankly ridiculous to include it in a classic like Hamlet. For that matter, why not have a trigger warning in every history book? Every Bible and Sunday sermon? 'Coddling audiences against reality only serves to infantilise culture. A trigger warning is fair when the audience might not expect something 'triggering,' not in the most famous play in history.'
