Whether it's your first Bonnaroo or you’re a music festival veteran, we welcome you to Inforoo.
Here you'll find info about artists, rumors, camping tips, and the infamous Roo Clues. Have a look around then create an account and join in the fun. See you at Bonnaroo!!
from what i recall, he was just aggressively suggestive/implicative and it didn't get into assault territory. him admitting that he needed to evaluate his attitude towards women and reevaluate his past interactions, and feeling regret that he ever made anyone feel scared, was something. and certainly more than louis has done from what ive seen.
I re-watched his intro just to make sure I didn't miss anything and it was still "I thought about a lot of things". Like I don't honestly know what you're referring to here.
Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but I remember Louis return to comedy being more in line with what ITM was saying and I just don't think Aziz made light of it as much
Post by 3post1jack1 on Aug 10, 2020 12:16:56 GMT -5
I also remember being satisfied with the way Aziz addressed the topic in his special, but I haven't watched it since it premiered. but my bias was in favor of him going in, since i always viewed that situation as he was just kind of a dick on a date. not excusing aggressive male behavior, i'm all for the movement to change norms on that, but none of his actions were enough for me to consider cutting him out of my life.
actually an interesting comparison of Louis vs. Aziz, we started a rewatch of Parks and Rec. Early in the run Louis shows up as a romantic interest for Leslie for a few episodes. I remember being delighted when I first saw Louis pop up on Parks when I watched this live back in 2009. He was still kind of just a comedy nerd's comic back then, so it was cool to see him on a major network show. But it's hard to see him now without thinking about all the bullshit. On the flipside when I see Aziz I don't think at all about his situation, it is pretty much a non-issue for me.
Louis actually came to my city this past January and I went to the show. It was pretty funny, but he definitely leaned more heavily into shock humor. He's always been a shocking comic but he seemed to relish it more now. My least favorite hour of his by far, but he's still really good at what he does. He did address the masturbation situation in the last bit of the show, but it was all kind of just fun and games without being serious about it, mostly self-deprecation.
I think in his mind he has a fetish, and that fetish ended up hurting some people in ways he didn't intend. To get into the gross nuts and bolts of it, I don't think it was a power thing for him, because he was asking to jack off in front of females long before he had any power, and he seemed to stop once he realized he was in a position of power. Not excusing it or trying to be an edgelord internet rationalist, just saying that's my take on it. I think he paid a significant financial and social price for it, and he'll never be widely loved again. but he'll always have his now niche audience who sticks with him, and will make a fine living playing clubs and theaters for the rest of his life.
for me personally i doubt he'll ever get any of my money again. even if i don't think he should be thrown in jail, i do have the power to vote with my wallet, and what he's selling i just don't think i want anymore. if i want well crafted shock humor there is plenty of that to go around.
We also started a run of parks and I found myself being less bothered by Louis than I would be rewatching Louie but mostly because he's playing more of a character and he does a fantastic job.
But also in doing best TV show listbi put Louie in because it was legitimately great and some of the episodes are just phenomenal
Post by piggy pablo on Aug 10, 2020 15:22:03 GMT -5
I saw Aziz as just being a little douchy when I read it a couple years ago or whatever but reading it again last night the things alleged were quite bad. Like, ignoring "no", insisting on oral sex, repeatedly sticking his fingers in her mouth. Just completely unacceptable and fucked up.
It's also worth noting, as the accuser did, that Aziz wrote a book about *modern relationships* or whatever, so he projects this air of intellectualism and understanding, something quite different from the way he was accused of acting with this woman in his apartment. That further makes him look like a predator and a creep.
When I think back on Louis CK and Aziz, my first thought is to a quote from Dave Chappelle during one of his specials. When discussing Louis, #MeToo, and the fucked up history of Hollywood in general, he related it all to Apartheid in South Africa:
“The end of apartheid should have been a f—ing bloodbath by any metric in human history, and it wasn’t,” says Chappelle, in a serious moment. “The only reason it wasn’t is because Desmond Tutu and Mandela and all these guys figured out that if a system is corrupt, then the people who adhere to the system, and are incentivized by that system, are not criminals. They are victims. The system itself must be tried. But… the only way we can figure out what the system is, is if everyone says what they did. Tell them how you participated.” (Time.com "A Radical Idea for Predatory Men: Confession, then Amnesty")
Now, obviously, Louis and Aziz did not come out and confess to these things prior to being accused. And just because systemic toxic masculinity and rape culture exists, it doesn't mean that every man has at some point in their past violated a woman. It's just so damned complicated.
I personally hate cancel culture. I 100% believe that past errors and secret violations have every right to be brought to light and be judged accordingly. And those in the wrong must also first admit their wrongdoings prior to being accused. Otherwise, it always come across as phony when they apologize.
But there must be an available path to forgiveness. A lot of people are getting cancelled for things that they did or believed in the past, things that don't represent who they are today. I, like I'm sure many of you, did things in my past when I was younger that I'm very regretful about. No one is going to admit to things they regret if it will permanently end their careers. There has to be pathway to redemption. We all admit to things we did, the systemic problems are all brought to light, and then we collectively work to dismantle the systems. Cancel culture just results in backlash. There are some obvious exceptions (Bill Cosby, for example) but some of this stuff is ridiculous.
Post by itrainmonkeys on Aug 10, 2020 16:36:29 GMT -5
I go back and forth a bit depending on context but I don't really consider "cancel culture" to be that real of a thing and is more of a buzzword type of thing. It gets overblown and magnified on twitter but who, really, has been "cancelled" in a meaningful way. I'm not talking about Weinstein and Cosby types because that's beyond "cancelling" someone and is actual criminal acts that are abhorrent being finally addressed.
Louis CK is still releasing material, doing shows, and selling things through his website and email. I guarantee he'll eventually be back in a bigger way. He just lost some of his audience for his gross acts that were revealed.
Aziz is still doing stand up and will ultimately be okay.
Mel Gibson's got movies coming out. Emile Hirsch is still getting acting work.
Even if you go through this thread there's people brought up like Katy Perry, Terry Crews, and Priyanka Chopra who are all doing perfectly fine. It's really the people who have been accused of multiple illegal and disgusting acts who have taken a hit but even Louis CK's making his way back slowly but surely.
People act like "cancel culture" is locking people up and throwing away the key while I feel it's a bit more like "spotlighting this shitty act/opinion/comment and calling it out for what it is".
Post by itrainmonkeys on Aug 10, 2020 17:52:13 GMT -5
Now that I think about my post I also want to add that I'm mostly talking about the celebrity type of "cancel culture". I wasn't really talking about the kind of thing where someone gets called out and shamed completely for an act in public. There are definitely people out there who have lost their jobs and statuses and had to deal with a lot of shit. There's certainly an element to "normal" people having their privacy lost, careers ended, and endless threats of violence for something they did or said. The BBQ becky's and the woman who called the cops on a black man birdwatching and lied about fearing for her safety when he asked her to put a leash on her dog. I think she did a really shitty thing and highlighted a major problem in our society but I don't think her life should be ruined over something like that. But then again, if you find out someone has repeatedly done racist, hateful, shitty things (like George Zimmerman, for example, who still jokes and profits off of murdering a black child)....then yeah. Fuck those people. I'm fine with cancelling George Zimmerman.
Mostly my previous post was about celebrity cancel culture and using that as an excuse when people want to hold you accountable. Bryan Callen, comedian from Mad TV and Goldbergs, was recently called out for some old accusations from women and he placed the blame on "cancel culture" and denied the shitty allegations. That stuff makes me roll my eyes hard.
Post by 3post1jack1 on Aug 10, 2020 21:22:57 GMT -5
like a lot of things that get argued about these days, it's tough to discuss cancel culture because there is not one definition for it.
i agree that maybe almost zero celebrities have been truly cancelled for a non-criminal act. like maybe they take a little bit of heat for a while but ultimately they are fine. but like ITT was saying I do hate when i hear about just a regular person, or an academic or something, getting fired over some bullshit they tweeted. they may still not be "cancelled" but i imagine if you become radioactive in a non-creative field it could make it difficult to find a job.
having said that, if you define cancel culture as when people on social media do a big pile on to somebody because of words and demand that they be fired, i generally don't like that. but it all depends on the words i suppose.
coincidentally, The Daily podcast started a series on Cancel Culture today. It said "pt 1" anyway so they'll be at least one more part. They get into where the phrase came from, and what it's come to mean. it was neat. there was kanye content.
I think cancel culture has turned pretty toxic. It has eliminated the grey area on some things and taken away the ability to have a second chance. (Of course I’m not talking about extremely fucked up shit people do, but just like digging into peoples past tweets or content from like 10 years ago when the person has clearly changed.)
Jenna Marbles and Shane Dawson are great examples of this. Some people dug through Jenna’s past videos and called her out on some things she did in like 2011/12 and even tho she’s clearly not that person anymore she decided that the hate she was getting was damaging to her personally so she left YT. Shane Dawson, on the other hand, has persistently demonstrated racist and pedophilic behaviour over the past decade and he kept getting called out, but yet never got demonetized or anything until recently. Jenna & Shane are not the same situation, yet they were both treated the same in the eyes of cancel culture.
Also, I saw Aziz live last year. Idk what he said in the special, but in his live set I saw he came across as totally sincerely apologetic of the situation. He did a whole little part where he discussed it without any humour and talked about it very seriously. I also think his situation got lumped in the Weinsteins of the world bc it happened in that wave of me too in late 2017. Aziz was wrong, but he isn’t a predator. So to paint him with the same brush is again, the problem with cancel culture.
And don’t even get me started on Louis CK. That was an open secret in the industry. Several female comedians had called him out on it over the years and he was a “repeat offender” for lack of a better term. If you don’t think what Louis did was that bad, but what happened with Aziz bothers you, then that’s a bigger problem.
I think cancel culture has turned pretty toxic. It has eliminated the grey area on some things and taken away the ability to have a second chance. (Of course I’m not talking about extremely fucked up shit people do, but just like digging into peoples past tweets or content from like 10 years ago when the person has clearly changed.)
Jenna Marbles and Shane Dawson are great examples of this. Some people dug through Jenna’s past videos and called her out on some things she did in like 2011/12 and even tho she’s clearly not that person anymore she decided that the hate she was getting was damaging to her personally so she left YT. Shane Dawson, on the other hand, has persistently demonstrated racist and pedophilic behaviour over the past decade and he kept getting called out, but yet never got demonetized or anything until recently. Jenna & Shane are not the same situation, yet they were both treated the same in the eyes of cancel culture.
Also, I saw Aziz live last year. Idk what he said in the special, but in his live set I saw he came across as totally sincerely apologetic of the situation. He did a whole little part where he discussed it without any humour and talked about it very seriously. I also think his situation got lumped in the Weinsteins of the world bc it happened in that wave of me too in late 2017. Aziz was wrong, but he isn’t a predator. So to paint him with the same brush is again, the problem with cancel culture.
And don’t even get me started on Louis CK. That was an open secret in the industry. Several female comedians had called him out on it over the years and he was a “repeat offender” for lack of a better term. If you don’t think what Louis did was that bad, but what happened with Aziz bothers you, then that’s a bigger problem.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
Honestly, I’m just quoting this so it’s here twice. Maybe someone will read it again and it’ll finally click.
Post by piggy pablo on Aug 11, 2020 18:49:59 GMT -5
I look at it like this: being famous doesn't mean you should always be famous, just like being rich doesn't mean you should always be rich. If someone extremely wealthy and famous treats women like shit, fine. Ruin their careers. A lot of people work really hard and are super funny and never get to the level Louis or Aziz did. Give those people a chance, instead of giving those guys a second chance. In Louis's case, he clearly ruined careers. Aziz, I'm not so sure. Either way, time to give another person a self-indulgent Netflix show that they win Golden Globes for even though it's just ok. (Referring to Master of None. Louie was genuinely great.)
"Just after Valentine’s Day in 2019, the musician FKA twigs was in a car speeding toward Los Angeles. At the wheel was her boyfriend, the actor Shia LaBeouf. He was driving recklessly, she said in a lawsuit filed on Friday, removing his seatbelt and threatening to crash unless she professed her love for him.
They were returning from the desert, where Mr. LaBeouf, the star of “Transformers,” had raged at her throughout the trip, FKA twigs said in the lawsuit, once waking her up in the middle of the night, choking her. After she begged to be let out of the car, she said he pulled over at a gas station and she took her bags from the trunk. But Mr. LaBeouf followed, and assaulted her, throwing her against the car while screaming in her face, according to the suit. He then forced her back in the car.
The gas station incident is at the heart of the lawsuit that says Mr. LaBeouf, 34, abused FKA twigs physically, emotionally and mentally many times in a relationship that lasted just short of a year. Her aim in coming forward, she said in an interview, was to explain how even a critically acclaimed artist with money, a home and a strong network of supporters could be caught in such a cycle.
“I’d like to be able to raise awareness on the tactics that abusers use to control you and take away your agency,” FKA twigs, 32, born Tahliah Debrett Barnett, said.
Mr. LaBeouf responded Thursday to the concerns raised by Ms. Barnett, and a second former girlfriend who has accused him of abusive behavior, in an email that broadly addressed his conduct.
“I’m not in any position to tell anyone how my behavior made them feel,” he said in an email to The New York Times. “I have no excuses for my alcoholism or aggression, only rationalizations. I have been abusive to myself and everyone around me for years. I have a history of hurting the people closest to me. I’m ashamed of that history and am sorry to those I hurt. There is nothing else I can really say.”
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, says that Mr. LaBeouf knowingly gave Ms. Barnett a sexually transmitted disease. It accuses him of “relentless abuse,” including sexual battery, assault and infliction of emotional distress.
Mr. LaBeouf and his representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
"I have no excuses for my alcoholism or aggression, only rationalizations,” Mr. LaBeouf wrote in an email to The New York Times. Responding to specific accusations in another email, he wrote that “many of these allegations are not true.”
Karolyn Pho, a stylist who is another of Mr. LaBeouf’s former girlfriends, described similarly tumultuous experiences to The Times, some of which are also outlined in the lawsuit. Once, the suit says, he drunkenly pinned her to a bed and head-butted her, enough that she bled. Afterward, she began to grapple with the idea that he was abusing her. “So much goes into breaking down a man or woman to make them OK with a certain kind of treatment,” she said in an interview.
Presented with a detailed account of the claims that the women made against him, in interviews and subsequently in the lawsuit, Mr. LaBeouf, responding in a separate email, wrote that “many of these allegations are not true.” But, he continued, he owed the women “the opportunity to air their statements publicly and accept accountability for those things I have done.”
He added that he was “a sober member of a 12-step program” and in therapy. “I am not cured of my PTSD and alcoholism," he wrote, “but I am committed to doing what I need to do to recover, and I will forever be sorry to the people that I may have harmed along the way.”
Mr. LaBeouf has a long history of turbulent behavior. He has been arrested several times on charges that have been dismissed, including assault and disorderly conduct, according to newspaper reports and public records. In 2015, strangers recorded video of him arguing with his girlfriend at the time, the actress Mia Goth, telling her, “This is the kind of thing that makes a person abusive.” After the men recording Mr. LaBeouf gave him a ride, he told them: “If I’d have stayed there, I would’ve killed her,” according to the video.
Ms. Barnett said Mr. LaBeouf would squeeze or grab her to the point of bruising. But she did not go to the police, she said, first out of a misguided concern about harming his career, and later because she thought her account would not be taken seriously, and it would be futile.
Though many states have laws that treat gender-based, sexual or domestic violence as a civil rights violation, tort suits of the kind Ms. Barnett is pursuing, with a daunting account of painful moments, are relatively uncommon; most often, allegations arise amid divorce or custody proceedings, or while seeking orders of protection. But there has been a slight uptick in civil claims since the #MeToo movement, amid more attention on the complex nature of abuse, said Julie Goldscheid, a law professor at CUNY Law School who studies gender violence and civil rights.
Three women die each day at the hands of their abusers, according to the National Organization for Women. The pandemic has exacerbated dangerous situations by forcing partners to stay without interruption in close quarters, law enforcement officials said, and hotlines around the world have reported an increase in calls for help.
In the lawsuit, Ms. Barnett describes how she met Mr. LaBeouf in 2018, when she was cast in “Honey Boy,” a mostly autobiographical film he wrote, and they started dating after the movie wrapped. The early days of their relationship were marked by his “over-the-top displays of affection,” she says in the lawsuit, which helped earn her trust.
In an abusive relationship, there’s often a “honeymoon phase,” as some experts call it, that builds intimacy and sets a benchmark for how happy the romance could be. It serves as a powerful lure; though flashes of bliss may remain, they are meted out through increasingly controlling demands and impossible standards of behavior.
In the lawsuit, Ms. Barnett and Ms. Pho said that Mr. LaBeouf did not like it if they spoke to or looked at male waiters; in an interview, Ms. Barnett said she learned to keep her eyes down when men spoke to her. She also stated in the suit that Mr. LaBeouf had rules about how many times a day she had to kiss and touch him, which he enforced with constant haranguing and criticism.
Mr. LaBeouf convinced Ms. Barnett to stay with him in Los Angeles, she said, rather than move back to London where she and her professional circle lived. It was a step toward her isolation, she said. And he would often say that her creative team used her, a message that eventually led her to doubt them.
But living with him became frightening, she said. The lawsuit says that he kept a loaded firearm by the bed and that she was scared to use the bathroom at night lest he mistake her for an intruder and shoot her. He didn’t let her wear clothing to bed, and would spin a trifling disagreement — over an artist she liked and he didn’t, for example — into an all-night fight, depriving her of sleep, the suit says.
The situation came just as she was completing what became her most critically lauded album, “Magdalene.” Ms. Barnett said she found herself in stasis, struggling to fulfill her professional duties, and confounding her friends and colleagues. “Twigs is always the driving force behind her career — always a step ahead of everyone else,” said her longtime manager, Michael Stirton. “This was an extreme change in her personality and character.” The album’s release was delayed multiple times, and a tour was rescheduled at great cost, Mr. Stirton said, as Ms. Barnett receded. “I could speak to her,” he said. “But I couldn’t reach her.”
As Ms. Barnett grew more isolated, she said she felt as though her safety nets were unraveling. The gas station incident had happened in public, she said, and no one stepped to her aid; an early attempt she made to tell a colleague was brushed off. “I just thought to myself, no one is ever going to believe me,” she said in an interview. “I’m unconventional. And I’m a person of color who is a female.”
Slowly, with the help of a therapist, she began to strategize her exit. While she was packing to leave in spring 2019, Mr. LaBeouf turned up unannounced and terrorized her, according to a sworn statement from a witness, her housekeeper, in the lawsuit. When Ms. Barnett wouldn’t leave with him, the statement says, he “violently grabbed” her, picked her up and locked her in another room, where he yelled at her.
Escaping him began to seem “both difficult and dangerous,” the lawsuit says. And even as she grew in resolve, she felt overwhelmed, she told her therapist, in an email The Times has reviewed. Though she had the means, it took several attempts for Ms. Barnett to extricate herself, she said in an interview. And it was only afterward that she realized how broken down she had become.
“The whole time I was with him, I could have bought myself a business-flight plane ticket back to my four-story townhouse in Hackney,” in London, she said. And yet she didn’t. “He brought me so low, below myself, that the idea of leaving him and having to work myself back up just seemed impossible,” she said.
In her lawsuit, Ms. Barnett said she plans to donate a significant portion of any monetary damages to domestic-violence charities. “It was actually very expensive, and a massive undertaking of time and resources, to get out,” she said in an interview.
Her status makes her situation unusual, she said. But she wanted to share her story because it was otherwise so common.
“What I went through with Shia was the worst thing I’ve ever been through in the whole of my life,” she said. “I don’t think people would ever think that it would happen to me. But I think that’s the thing. It can happen to anybody.”
