Clownfish TV: Audio Edition
Doctor Who Actress SLAMS Cancel Culture! Isn’t Watching New Series?!
Doctor Who actress Alex Kingston (River Song) is slamming cancel culture in a new interview, saying that her generation has to walk on eggshells over stuff like pronoun usage (which he says is confusing) and it’s stupid. When asked about the new series of Doctor Who... she’s not even watching it. I mean, WHO is? The ratings are terrible. ➡️ Tip Jar and Fan Support: http://ClownfishSupport.com ➡️ Official Merch Store: http://ShopClownfish.com ➡️ Official Website: http://ClownfishTV.com ➡️ Audio Edition: https://open.spotify.com/show/6qJc5C6OkQkaZnGCeuVOD1 Actress Alex Kingston criticizes cancel culture, likening it to fascism and expressing concern about generational divides in acceptable beliefs, and calls out narcissism and selfishness in only supporting those with aligned beliefs. 00:00 Actress Alex Kingston criticizes cancel culture and warns that it will eventually turn on everyone, including those who initially supported it. 02:47 Cancel culture silences critics in Hollywood, celebrities are targeted for their political views, and the speaker admits to not watching their own show. 05:43 Doctor Who actress Alex Kingston criticizes cancel culture, likening it to fascism and expressing concern about generational divides in acceptable beliefs, and calls out narcissism and selfishness in only supporting those with aligned beliefs. 07:59 Actress Alex King criticizes cancel culture as terrifying and dangerous, expressing confusion about pronoun usage. 09:52 Cancel culture leads to people trying to get others fired for expressing opinions on social media, even if they are valuable employees. 11:15 Cancel culture lacks empathy and thoughtful communication, allowing a vocal minority to dictate decisions and targeting people for trivial reasons without understanding the actual problem. 14:20 Actress criticizes cancel culture and advocates for a sensible middle ground in authentic casting, expressing concern about the influence of mentally ill individuals in the industry. 16:47 Actress criticizes cancel culture, doubts return to Doctor Who, and speculates about River being turned into a man. Viewers have dropped since her time on the show. About Us: Clownfish TV is an independent, opinionated news and commentary channel that covers Entertainment and Tech from a consumer’s point of view. We talk about Gaming, Comics, Anime, TV, Movies, Animation and more. Hosted by Kneon and Geeky Sparkles. Disclaimer: This series is produced by Clownfish Studios and WebReef Media, and is part of ClownfishTV.com. Opinions expressed by our contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of our guests, affiliates, sponsors, or advertisers. ClownfishTV.com is an unofficial news source and has no connection to any company that we may cover. This channel and website and the content made available through this site are for educational, entertainment and informational purposes only. These so-called “fair uses” are permitted even if the use of the work would otherwise be infringing. #DoctorWho #BBC #Streaming #Television #Disney #News #Commentary #Reaction #Podcast #Comedy #Entertainment #Hollywood #PopCulture #Tech
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This is Neon, not here with geeky Sparkles in this video, so I'm going to talk about Doctor Who because she does not care anymore about Doctor Who. We're going to talk about Alex Kingston who played River Song on Doctor Who for many years and how she is coming out against cancel culture, and she's also not saying much about the new incarnation of Doctor Who. I don't think she likes the show very much. I don't think she likes the direction of the show. Now she could be biased because she's not in it, but yeah, because they wrapped up her storyline with Steven Moffat with the Husbands of River Song, which I thought was a fantastic episode by the way. I love that. I was actually one of my favorite Peter Capaldi episodes of Doctor Who. But yeah, she's coming out against cancel culture, and I think more and more celebrities are going to come out against cancel culture because we've been saying that the way the mob mentality works is they might eat you last, but they're absolutely going to turn on you when they run out of other targets, and what we have seen happen time and time and time again is people bite their lips when cancel culture goes after people they don't like, whether it's a rival or a long thinker, somebody whose political ideology is 180 from yours. It's okay if cancel culture goes after them. But as we've been seeing, once the easy pickings are picked, once they get eaten, once the stragglers get eaten, they start turning their attention toward everybody else, even people on their own side. And we've been seeing more and more and more of this lately. So I think more celebrities need to speak out against it, at least, you know, at least put that out there. I think it makes them harder to cancel because if they've already spoken out against it and they've already gotten ahead of it, you know, like Jerry Seinfeld's going to be very hard to cancel him completely because he's been speaking out against cancel culture for years. And they're going to be like, "Well, of course they're going after him because he's calling it out," right? Dave Chappelle, same thing. So I think that you kind of need to get ahead of it and just be like, "Yeah, we're not on board with this." And you don't want people thinking that you are because it's for pussies, okay? It really is for pussies to find very nebulous reasons to cancel people. And that's across the board. I mean, you know, digging up old interviews, digging up old tweets, whatever, unless somebody has done something really egregious, you know, people are allowed to have their different opinions. Now, cancel culture, I believe, has been used to get rid of critics. It's been used to get rid of potential rivals. I think the situation with Roseanne Barr in particular, I think that was more about a power struggle over the TV show than it was about the stuff she said, not that I necessarily condoned the stuff she said. But I think it was the people on the show, Sarah Gilbert in particular, wanted control of the show. I think in the case of people appointed to Tim Allen, who was not canceled from Disney, by the way, not all of Disney, but with Lightyear, I think there were people at Pixar that did not like him because he actually did come out in support of Donald Trump. But for the most part, I don't think he really talks much about politics. I don't think he does. I mean, there are some people that are openly conservative in Hollywood that aren't constantly beating the drum and they try to pressure them. Look at Chris Pratt, man, like they keep trying to pressure Chris Pratt to come out and say this or say that just to make sure he's on the right side of history. But really what they're looking for is a reason to get rid of him because he's voicing half the characters in Hollywood and animation right now. You know, I think there are people that would love to have him canceled. But yeah, you got a standard ground, you know, again, unless it's really egregious, people should be allowed to have different opinions. And again, that is on both sides of the aisle. You don't have to agree with them. Nobody's asking you to agree with them. You know, but you know, we live in an era where everybody's thoughts are out there for the world to see. I think that back in the day, the reason it seemed like celebrities didn't say as much is because, you know, the PR machine was very guarded in what they were allowed to say. Occasionally you'd see an interview like TV Guide or something. But most of the time it was about the show, the project, the stuff they've worked on, it wasn't necessarily about their politics. The only time you really knew a celebrity was political is if they were hyper-political, like Barbara Streisand or something. You know what I'm saying? Like you really didn't know politics, but now because everybody's got Twitter or social media and you've got access to these people, you know, that you've never had before. And now everybody is trying to trip people up to get them to say something, to get rid of them, you know, just because they don't like them for whatever reason. And that's, that's bullshit. I mean, let's, let's talk about this. God, I've been going on for five minutes and we haven't even gotten into it yet. Let's talk about this before you get into it a further, please subscribe for pop culture news, views and rants guys. We have an audio version of clownfish TV out on Spotify, on Amazon, iTunes, wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find it. So if you miss an episode on YouTube, check the audio version. You don't really need to see us bobbing up and down. It's kind of annoying. I admit, I don't even watch this. I don't even watch this, watch this. Like if I'm listening to a show and make sure I didn't forget to cut something out, I'm always listening to it and not actually watching it. It's coming from bounding in the comics. So hat, tip to them. And they got it from the telegraph, Doctor Who actress Alex Kingston decries cancel culture. I don't think people realize how dangerous canceling people is. Yeah, she says it's fascism. She says it's fascism. The original headline says cancel culture is fascistic. Is that a word? Fascistic. My generation is treading on eggshells. Yeah. And a lot of times it's older liberals. I think she's, I mean, she's older than we are, but we're seeing a definite divide between like Gen X and older millennials and younger millennials and even Gen Z in terms of what is and what is not acceptable to say or do or whatever to believe. And there's this fairy tale like belief system. I think that a lot of millennials and Gen Z have that their celebrities have to be like idols overseas, right? Like they have to have this perfect blemish free life or you can't support them. And whatever you deem is being perfect, right? They have to agree with everything you agree with or they have to be canceled. And it's so weird, like this is so damn weird. I mean, when I was a kid, there were celebrities out there that believed some really batshit stuff and comics, especially like Neil Adams, one of the most talented comic book artists who have, who has ever lived, believed some batshit crazy stuff about the like hollow earth theory and all that. But that's fine. I could still appreciate his art. I could still have a conversation with him at a convention. Yeah, in the back of my mind, it might be like, dude, how can you believe in like the lizard people that live underground and the earth and all that? But whatever, whatever, whatever, you believe what you want to believe? That's cool. You know what I'm saying? But now it's just like, yeah, you have to the person, you're not allowed to support the person unless everything they do aligns with what you believe, which is so damn weird. I need to see myself represented on screen. That's just narcissism. It is. Like if you can't, if you can't accept other people's points of view, then then you're just a narcissist. Like most sane individuals in the world, Alex Kingston is both absolutely fed up with and ready to move past the entire unforgiving concept of cancel culture. It's about damn time. Kingston who played River Song and Doctor Who and Dinah Lance and Arrow offered her criticism of cancel culture during a recent interview given the UK news outlet, the Telegraph in Promotion of an appearance on Douglas is canceled, an ITV drama in which it's titular. God, there's that word again, titular news anchor finds himself under fire from society after making an off-color joke while on air. And that would totally happen too. It would happen if you made it off air. Somebody would be recording you. And if you made some joke about something, something stupid, like, hey, is that a gun in your pocket? Are you happy to see me? And oh, I thought it was a she. You'd be canceled. Yeah. I'm using that as an example. I'm not actually saying, I'm just saying you would be canceled. Pressed by the outlets, Gabriel Tate for her thoughts on the entire phenomenon. She said cancel culture is terrifying, sort of fascistic, really. I don't think people realize how dangerous canceling people is and what that has meant historically. Well, Gina Crono knew she knew she knew she knew how dangerous it was and she commented at how dangerous it was. And guess what? She got canceled. She got the irony in this, Gina Crono got canceled for talking about how dangerous canceled culture actually is. I mean, seriously, but that was a couple of years ago, right? Expanding on her viewpoint, Kingston continued, my generation is treading on eggshells, not knowing whether what you say will unintentionally hurt somebody. I get really confused about pronouns. For instance, I'm just not confident with how and when to use them. Most people, most normal people, even if they use the, they, them pronouns, if you slip or something, that's fine, they're, you know, a for effort. But anymore, it's like you intentionally misgendered me. I'm going to, I'm going to get you fired from your job. I mean, God, we've seen this. We've seen it in comics and we've seen it in animation like they will literally, if they don't like your, your hot takes on comic books or cartoon shows, they will call your place of work and they will try to get you fired be like, just, just, just, just so you know, you've got a bigot and a Nazi working for you and you should fire them because they said mean things on Twitter about a comic book character. Like what person in the right mind is going to listen to that and be like, oh, you know, you're right. They said mean things about gay Superman. I should fire them immediately, even if they're one of my best employees and they make me lots of money. Yeah. Because, because they don't like the fictional gay Superman character, Superman's kid, and they made a YouTube video about I'm going to go where I'm going to fire them right now. Absolutely random internet person who's clearly got a lot of mental issues and I have no idea who the fuck you are. We've actually gotten phone calls like that. We've gotten phone calls like that. We've gotten emails like that. Trying to get me fired from my own business. That's absolutely hilarious, but I'm like, like you, like there are always these randos and you listen to the messages and they sound unhinged. I mean, the people sound like they've got clear mental issues and again, this goes back to having access to people that you normally would not have had access to. I don't think any of this would happen without social media. I don't think any of this would be happening because again, a lot of, you know, back in the day, like actors do you know what the hell was going on unless they're PR people told them what was going on. You know, there's definitely several barriers, barriers to entry to get to somebody, which was probably for the best, honestly, because there are a lot of really mental people out there. Again, now you've got unfettered access to people. There's no empathy or sympathy. She says opinions are immediate and black and white. I hope we'll start coming back to a place where people can be kinder to each other, both in thinking about what they're going to say and hearing what's being said. No, no, a lot of people don't want to hear and again, you're dealing with a lot of people now that are either just vicious and cruel for the sake of being vicious and cruel, or they've got legitimate mental issues. Like these studios have listened to people who have legitimate mental illness and they've let them dictate how they spend millions of dollars and who they hire and fire and it's a very, very vocal minority. These people never would have gotten through the filter 20 years ago. Like they would have sent some crazy ass letter to a studio in Burbank or something and look at it and be like, yeah, this is what the hell is this into the garbage can it goes. And now, because everybody can tweet everything, everybody can post on Facebook and a lot of these mentally ill people are actually working as pop culture journalists and they can get blast their opinions out there. Now things are very different. Again, there used to be a vetting process now there isn't and it's a double edged sword. I mean, it's great in the fact that there are no real gatekeepers anymore, but in some cases, I think it's wise to have layers of protection and, you know, a vetting process for opinions to kind of be like, yeah, well, this is, this is one person with like 15 all accounts and they've got this whole message board dedicated to this ship. Maybe we shouldn't listen to them because they're trying to get this actor, actress canceled because their character is in love with this other character that they think should be with his other character. And it sounds ridiculous when you actually spell it out, but that that literally is sometimes what is at the root of cancel culture. I mean, it's so bizarre. It's really like, like I would love to sit these people that hate Chris Pratt, I'd love to sit them down and be like, what the fuck is your actual problem with Chris Pratt? Like what is your actual problem with him? Because everybody's like, let's cancel Chris Pratt again, because he maybe is conservative, maybe, maybe. What is your actual problem with him? Did he kick your puppy? Did he eat your puppy? Did you know what I'm saying? What is the deal? And then you find out that like they don't even know they're just kind of like joining in on the, on the mob is trending to try to cancel Chris Pratt. Like he's trending. So everybody jumps on the bandwagon, right? Then she addressed the ever growing discourse around the concept of authentic casting, casting actors and role based on whether or not they show the exact immutable personal traits as a given character. I said society can reach a balance where parts are open potentially to everyone, but within the right context. Basically, it doesn't make sense to cast, you know, a bunch of black people to be aristocrats in England in the 1800s or whatever, you know what I'm saying? Like that doesn't make a lot of sense. But we keep seeing this with Netflix and nobody bats an eye like, oh, okay. Well, the queen. Yeah, she's, she's a black lesbian now. That's okay. That's okay. Google AI said it was okay, Gemini said it was fine. We, we, we googled it and their AI told us that this is historically accurate. Sometimes you want to be historically accurate. You've got to face the reality of what would have, that would have meant in casting terms. People should be allowed to explore roles. You would not have been able to explore before and also not be deprived of roles or even of writing roles because they don't actually physically apply to them. We need a sensible fertile middle ground. I, I do agree. I think in cases where you make it explicitly clear that this is a historical drama or comedy or a pair or whatever and it's not a hundred percent historically accurate. I think it's totally fine, but try to represent, you know, history differently or to exclude people from the writers room just because they're not the right kind of person. You know, you can't, you're a man, you can only write men and we don't want men in our show. So you're, you're fired. And that's what the, look, that's what the point is in a lot of these people, again, not only have the mentally ill people taken over social media, taken over journalism, a lot of them are now working in the industry and they're pushing their mental illness and their grudges and their vendettas. You know what I'm saying? It's like this, this is just nonsense. The whole thing it's, we've got to get back to center. And I know that there are people like, no, no, we have to go back to characters sleeping in separate beds on screen and everybody's straight. No, that's not what I'm saying either. That's not Sam Eagle. That's not what, you know, that's not what I'm saying either. I'm saying, can we just roll it back to like the nineties? I'd be happy with that. I'd be happy to rolling it back to the nineties. So here's what's interesting, right? She will not comment on current doctor who said been too busy to watch anything that needs my focus and attention. I'm behind on shooting in the whole new world of Disney plus the fans will bring me up to date, no doubt. Uh, yeah, let's talk about that because when she was in the tardis, let's see, this would have been around what, uh, 2010, the 2014, 2015, the average rating for doctor who was 8.3 million, 7.75 million, 8.28 million, 8.09 million, 7.34 million. And now we're down to four, three, like half of that, the viewership, the viewership has been halved since, since she was in the tardis. And I think this, I want to say 2016 was probably her last time on doctor who was at the, uh, the husbands of River song, which I freaking, I, I love that episode so much. I thought I would have loved to see more River song with Peter Capaldi's doctor. I think that it worked very well. I think those two actually worked better together than Matt Smith and David Tennant. I think they would, it would have been fantastic. I would watch the whole season of that. I think they played off each other very well, but even that was almost 8 million. And we're just dropping off the cliff now, uh, since Jody Waker five, we had, let's see, a little bit of a bump here, seven, seven, um, five, five, four, uh, we had four episodes, 7.27 million. I guess it was okay. Is that right? Is that right? But now we're down to 3.5. So yeah, it's not, it's not good. Um, I think a lot of people are noping out. I think it is funny that she will not comment on the new doctor who now she was not Russell T. Davies character either. She was definitely, uh, Moffat's, um, I don't know if you call her Mary Sue, but, you know, she was, she was Moffat's character. So I don't see her coming back in West Moffat, you know, writes another episode and of course we know Shudi's doctor is very gay. So I don't think they're going to be doing anything unless they turn a river into a man which they could totally do. I could totally see them doing that, you know, just, just because. But anyway, I'm going to wrap this up guys. Uh, thanks so much for listening. Please subscribe. What do you think? What do you think about, uh, Alex Kingston and cancel culture and, uh, all of this nonsense going on? Uh, leave a comment. We'll talk later. Thanks again for listening. More news and videos are available on our website at www.clownfishtv.com and on our YouTube channel, ClownfishTV. You can buy official merchandise, clownfish comic books and more at shopclownfish.com. If you like this show, please consider subscribing and leaving us a positive review on iTunes and other podcast platforms. If you're looking to help support this show financially, go to clownfishsupport.com. If you'd like to sponsor an episode of this show, send us an email at business@webrief.io. This podcast is a production of Clownfish Studios LLC and Web Reef Media proudly made in Pittsburgh, USA. (soft music)