"Joshua Kaplan, 45, the American playwright... [a] longtime 'Harry Potter' fan... said that the idea for ['TERF' came when he saw] that Daniel Radcliffe... had written a blog post..."

"... criticizing Rowling’s social media posts. It felt like witnessing a bitter family feud 'playing out in the public eye,' Kaplan said in an interview — perfect material for a play. Onstage, Rowling (Laura Kay Bailey) attends an upmarket dinner with three actors from her films: Daniel Radcliffe (Piers MacKenzie), Emma Watson (Trelawny Kean) and Rupert Grint (Tom Longmire). When the stars confront Rowling about her social media comments, the cordial dinner descends into farce and detours into imagined scenes from Rowling’s life that have nothing to do with transgender people."

From "A Play About J.K. Rowling Stirred Outrage. Until It Opened. The muted reaction to the Edinburgh Fringe show 'TERF' suggests that when activists engage with potentially inflammatory art, offense can quickly vanish" (NYT).

"Barry Church-Woods, a producer of 'TERF,' said that a handful of would-be protesters had attended the play’s premiere. They sat with signs in their laps, apparently ready to demonstrate, he said, but they never raised them. The play, which presents views from both camps, was too balanced to cause serious upset, he added."

Which way were the protesters planning to protest?

I like that the playwright conceptualized the socio-political issue as a family squabble. Family squabbles make the best theater, no? That reminds me, my tickets for APT's "King Lear" arrived in the mail yesterday.

"The more serious that an artist takes themselves, the easier it is to lampoon them, because it doesn’t take much to pop the bubble of pretentiousness."

"And thankfully [Nirvana had] a good sense of humor about it, too. But there are some songs that people are just, like, waiting for the Weird Al treatment: 'Oh, Al’s going to step in and, like, take this down a peg.'... [S]ometimes my parody didn’t work so well, because I was parodying something that was already perceived as not all that serious.... Most artists in pop culture are very serious.... But I always like to make sure that the artist and songwriters feel respected."

Said Weird Al, quoted in "How Weird Al Spoofed Himself/In a new bio-pic, the singer applies his talents to a surprising subject: his own rise to stardom" (The New Yorker).

Al reveals that the reason Daniel Radcliffe was chosen to play the lead in the bio-pic is that he'd done this...

 

"Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations..."

"... who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either [Rowling] or I," writes Daniel Radcliffe — the actor who played Rowling's character Harry Potter — distancing himself from the elaborate essay J.K. Rowling published yesterday.

Radcliffe's statement is fascinating, because it stands so clearly apart from any interest in pursuing truth. The statement has 3 parts:

1. "Transgender women are women." This is a slogan, as simple and absolute as you can get. You could say it more elaborately: In my book, in my way of living, the word "women" will always be understood to include transgender women. To put it like that would be to make it more obvious that Radcliffe is actively involved in creating the culture that he wants to become pervasive, but to stick to the simple form, the slogan, is to perform creatively. It is effective. Daniel Radcliffe communicates that this is what we, the good people, are saying.

Part 2:  "Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people." This is a warning. Failure to get inside the performance of the idea that we are making pervasive within the culture is hurting people. Don't say anything inconsistent with "Transgender women are women" or you are doing something harmful. You might imagine that it's worthwhile to speak openly about many different ideas or that searching for "the truth" is healthy and valuable, but you're doing damage along the way, and you shouldn't want that. Daniel Radcliffe doesn't want to hurt people.

Part 3:  "Any statement to the contrary... goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either [Rowling] or I." There are experts, but they're not offering expertise on the subject of whether "Transgender women are women." That's beside the point. The expertise is on the subject of what will be helpful for people who have a health care issue, and these experts are saying that what we ought to do is manifest belief that "Transgender women are women." All other forms of expression are in defiance of the advice about what needs to be done to be helpful to people with a health care issue, and Daniel Radcliffe doesn't want to be that sort of person. He wants you to know that.

"... I’ve already been asked by several different people, virtually verbatim, 'Have you seen the movie where Daniel Radcliffe plays a farting corpse?'"

"Yes, I did, dear reader. I did indeed watch a movie where Daniel Radcliffe plays a farting corpse that Paul Dano rides across the ocean like a jet-ski, propelled by the power of Radcliffe’s post-mortem flatulence. This is also a movie where Dano and Radcliffe make out underwater while Dano is dressed like Mary Elizabeth Winstead, a movie where Radcliffe pukes up buckets of water that Dano eagerly swigs, and a movie where Radcliffe stares at a musty Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and then grows a stiff and mighty erection, which Dano then uses as a compass to point the way back to civilization...."

***

By the way, there was a farting corpse in the critically acclaimed 1976 Lina Wertmuller movie "Seven Beauties." ("[W]hen the anti-hero kills the gangster who has humiliated him and sent his sister into prostitution... the corpse farts incessantly as he tries to dispose of it. Wertmüller seems more comfortable to revel in the grottiness of humanity than consider anything even slightly uplifting.")