Blob Title

My gut reaction to this was "I wouldn't, fuck him", but then I realised that I do actually have thoughts about this.

Open with a white-text-on-black-screen intro that explains that dialogue in this film has been taken wherever possible from historic recordings. Where it couldn't be, it has been constructed from records of the relevant parliament/private discussions that are on record, even if not word for word. Add that all events depicted are real. And, to reinforce this, a huge load-bearing pillar of the marketing for the film would emphasise that this is extremely limited in artistic interpretation, it's all things the man actually said and did. This, the marketing would stress, is the REAL Churchill, in all his complexity. This is the nuanced and complex and very human guy we don't see in the history books, strengths and flaws and all of it.

The first... half, maybe even two thirds of the film would be pre-WW2. A full account of all his actions in power, painting the picture of the man he was. His belligerence disguised as wit, sending in the army against striking Welsh miners, his initial admiration for fascism and eugenics, all of it. All reproduced from things he actually said and did.

Then, the realisation that Hitler included Britain in his fascist plans. The U-turn into hating the guy, all while believing in the same underlying points.

Then, most of the WW2 section would be in montage form. And at this point, the audience sees why he was actually fairly well suited to the task of opposing Hitler, because all those flaws meant he was ego-driven to resist the Nazis or die trying, and that was what was needed at the time. We've set up that ego, that belligerence, that eloquence. Here it is, in context, actually being useful.

But, this would be juxtaposed with all the things we're carefully not told, that are nonetheless historic record. The starving of India to get food to Britain. The lack of bomb shelters in London, and then claiming credit for sending people into the Underground when they thought to do it. The use and abuse of non-British Commonwealth troops in roles kept from the white soldiers. All of that goes in.

And then, once the war was done, the fallout. The rest of the film would cover his fall from power, first of all - the fuck up at the Potsdam Conference, then his continued use of lurid and hyperbolic war rhetoric in the general election campaign that basically made Clement Atlee and let Labour win.

Labour's creation of the NHS, and national parks, and other such things. Churchill's opposition. The fallout to places like India, the Suez, etc.

And then his return for a final term as Prime Minister in which he was unpopular, unsuccessful, and also very unwell; he was 77 and had multiple strokes, which were hidden from the public. He was against the dissolution of the empire, but Labour had already pulled the trigger on it, so his final years were basically a lot of war crimes and whining as countries declared independence; which won't be a surprise to the audience, because we've literally heard his views on eugenics and imperialism already. Of course those didn't go away with WW2. All that congealed ego and imperialist drive, so useful against Hitler while keeping the worst costs away from the UK, made him a fossil unsuited to the role of peacetime leadership in a post-war recovering nation beginning to decolonise.

And finish on how, at the end, he supported the UK's application to join the EEC - the precursor to the EU.

The whole thing would make the Churchill cultists so fucking angry. They'd 100% claim liberal bias and piss themselves. But that's why you'd have to go so hard on stressing in the marketing that all of it is true; he literally said this. He literally did this. It's all real. Even the EU bit. Yeah, you voted against Churchill.

We have got to stop framing our oppression in ways that promote the idea that other people cannot relate to our struggles. Not only does it isolate comrades in the struggle, it actively diminishes recognition of other struggles--often including those even more horrific than what we are at risk of. And this happens especially between Gay and Black struggles.

"when have straight people ever had to check what states were safe for them?" Sundown towns are still a thing. Starlight tours. What states have abortion access? What states have open carry? What states have stand your ground? What states have 3-strike rules? Women, people of color, disabled people, immigrants, and more have had to be abundantly cautious where they travel to. Straight trans people have much more travel risk right now than gay cis people.

It's a new iteration of the same tired question: "imagine if straight people weren't allowed to marry" interracial marriage in the US is younger than my parents. We disgrace people of color by forgetting their history and contemporary struggles, and we abandon queer people of color, Black queer people, by segmenting their overlapping fights.

An autistic man with a special interest in the Harry Potter series has made the decision to value the lives and dignity of his trans friends more than a book about a wizard who grows up to be a cop, leaving you with no excuse whatsoever to keep wearing that Hufflepuff scarf, sources have reported.

Jack Harrington, 38, grew up reading the popular children’s stories, and soon developed an intense fascination with the world of the books, including knowing all about the suspiciously depicted money-hungry goblins, and that one time it was revealed that slavery is commonplace and accepted in the wizarding world.

In spite of this, however, Harrington has recently worked to redirect his interest towards media created by someone less troublingly focused on his friends’ genitalia.

“It was hard to do,” Harrington said. “I really love collecting things, and there’s so much merchandise to collect! But once I realised that it’s possible to collect things in a way that doesn’t make it harder for my mates to go for a piss when out and about, it really was a no-brainer.”