Unarmed But Dangerous [2009]

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TS: The whole film in pre-production and when we were filming was funny and I did think to myself all the way through the process “I can’t believe that we are creating a film as off the wall as this!”

Discourse analytical considerations also provided guidance to conduct the analyses of communication sequences. Unlike some adherents of conversation analysis seem to suggest (see Flader and Trotha, 1988), sequences of communication do not emerge from the data. Their discovery rather depends on preconceptions. Without the knowledge of the workings of discourses of political correctness, e.g., some of Trump’s utterances could not adequately be set in relation with neither comments and publications of news media nor their communicative environments in general. OOPS I nearly forgot. It's got Faye from Steps in too! Apart from showing more cleavage than a Hugh Hefner special, and accidentally dowsing herself in acid (Ouch) she doesn't demonstrate any talent for thespianism at all. No wonder, when the offer came for her old band to reunite, she accepted even before the question had been asked. So it seems only fair I should end with some topical gags now... This movie is such a Tragedy, Words Are Not Enough. You'll Be Sorry if you see it... It's Better Best Forgotten. PH: How do you go about being original or creative with a limited budget in a genre that has seen pretty much everything? What was your approach?XL: When Frank Harper threw a hammer at Beau Baptiste – it was an amazing unplanned moment. It really freaked the art department as it nearly hit an antique silver platter, that they persuaded someone to lend us – apparently it was worth a fair bit. In the course of the preparations for a broader study on populist communication, data have been collected of publicly available political communication. The data comprise communication offers of governmental officials, news media publications, influential social media content, and public protest messages. The process of organizing and preliminarily examining the data in view of the theoretical preconceptions outlined above led to the tentative formulation of the following hypotheses: 1) News media as well as the dynamics of political communication based on the difference of friend and enemy help legitimizing populist claims and directing public attention toward them while feeding into a narrative of a diffuse category of threats that creates objects of angst and thereby enhances social cohesion. 2) With resources derived from popular culture such as reality TV, commodities, and pop songs, populists exploit the culture of political correctness, which is facilitated through the ascription of authenticity 4 (preliminarily understood in the everyday language sense as the interpretation of action as not governed by social norms or expectations but by the actor’s genuine inclinations and convictions). On March 18, a tweet of Trump’s account announces that he signed the “Defense Production Act” enabling him to use resources from the private sector to combat the virus, underlining that “we are all in this TOGETHER!” Beside emphasizing his alleged achievements regarding telehealth, he introduces the theme of increasing domestic manufacturing, i.e. “Made in the United States,” in response to the virus, and again asserts that Democrats and Republicans are unified by the effort of overcoming the crisis. During a press conference on the same day, Trump places COVID-19 in the proximity of natural disasters for the first time. Despite its performances for the constitution of society and enhancement of cohesion, Rico et al. (2017), e.g., do not regard the listeners’ fear (or, respectively, angst) as an emotion that populism benefits from. According to these authors, fear does not motivate action but the cognitive examination of unclear circumstances. This argument neglects the sociation function of angst and the fact that even in evolution-theoretical accounts fear is often connected to flight behavior. Zaccaria (2018) does recognize the functionality of a rhetoric of fear. He describes how the threat of losing important goods can translate into aggressions toward the people allegedly responsible for the feared loss. Zaccaria, however, also does not pay tribute to the sociating effects of fear. Some of the reasons for this heated emotional climate might lie in the changes in the political landscape. According to Fraser (2003), the left has shifted toward a politics of recognition, giving up their politics of redistribution. This includes a shift to multiculturalism. “The ethnopluralist claim has allowed the radical right to redefine the enemy and redraw the antagonistic field of contestation central to populist discourse. For the radical right, the traditional left-right conflict has largely become obsolete, having been replaced by a new front line pitting the defenders of identity against the advocates of multiculturalism.” ( Betz, 2018) As has been shown by the example of Trump, the contemporary right engages in identity politics, capitalizing on the opposition of news media and political elites by promoting itself “as the lone voice of ordinary citizens […]; as indefatigable advocates of the silent majority, victimized by multiculturalism and political correctness” (ibid.).

The dataset shows that Trump violates the expectations of political correctness in numerous situations. This is most obvious when Trump uses the terms under consideration and becomes particularly visible as a breach of expectations when he is criticized like during a press conference on March 18: “Question: Why do you keep calling this the ‘Chinese virus’? There are reports of dozens of incidents of bias against Chinese Americans in this country. […] Trump: Because it comes from China. Comment: People say it’s racist. Trump: It’s not racist at all. […] It comes from China. That’s why. […] I want to be accurate. […] I have great love for all of the people from our country. But […] China tried to say […] that it was caused by American soldiers.” Trump banalizes the use of the terms just like in the following quote from March 26: “I talk about the Chinese virus and, and I mean it. That’s where it came from. You know, if you look at Ebola, if you look at […] Lyme. Right? Lyme, Connecticut. You look at all these different, horrible diseases, they seem to come with a name with the location. And this was a Chinese virus.” On March 30, Trump again affirms that he locates the origin of COVID-19 in China with the help of the expression “Chinese virus” to repudiate the claim that the virus originated among US soldiers. Identifying his own statements as “very strong against China,” Trump evokes the impression that he stands up against injustice in spite of unfavorable consequences. These considerations can be condensed to the following assumptions. 1) Political communication in general is guided by the distinction of friend and enemy. 2) In populist communication this distinction appears as the difference of the people and allegedly corrupt elites, including news media. 3) Angst enhances social cohesion among the audiences of populist speakers either directly or mediated by fear. 4) Populist communication is more likely to produce a type of fear that populists benefit from when it depicts the elite as a diffuse category composed of various interlinked enemies.I caught up with the films Producer and co-star Terry Stone and director Xavier Leret to talk about the what, how’s and why’s of what’s set to be this years most talked about Independent action film. XL: Two more Flids. I'm helping some friends out on the 'Codfather', 'Exit Strategy' (a friend of mine was kidnapped outside of Fallujah just as heads were rolling), 'Burning Tree Drive'... Jimmy races desperately to save Lu although once again I can’t work out how he knows where to go. There is a bizarre diversion at this point as he takes a ride in a taxi driven by a slightly loopy devout Catholic who witters on about things and has a small Christ figure on his dashboard. I couldn’t work out the point of the character - perhaps it’s meant to be a comic interlude - but the plastic Messiah later becomes relevant. Although even scholars like Schell (2020) suggest that particularly the rise of Xi Jinping renders the traditional “framework of engagement” of US China policy obsolete and creates the need for a paradigm shift, Trump overshoots the mark by denying common interests and reducing the relations between the two countries to one single dimension: an economic zero-sum game. Trump turns inward, redefining China as an adversary in the name of the people. He leaves the missionary project of supporting China to build prosperity by fostering democracy and a free market. The US ceases to be a “freedom-fighter and purveyor of enlightenment and universal human values.” ( Vukovich, 2012) The narrative of “becoming the same” seems obsolete. From the viewpoint of past approaches to China, it might appear that China’s recent development made these adjustments necessary. The inside views of China, however, may suggest that China had been misunderstood in the past as assimilating, as being on the way to becoming like the West (ibid.). In this sense, Trump’s approach appears to be less colonialist and assertive regarding cultural differences. Expressed positively, Trump promotes an external politics of recognition ( Taylor, 1994).

Kung Fu Flid’ may get the Daily Mail crowd up on their podiums but with a host of the UK’s best acting and fight talent both in front and behind the cameras, a knowing, referential script and some hardcore action, it will be a film that will get people talking for all the right reasons. TS: Basically not having enough money to do what we wanted to and being let down a couple of times due to budget restrictions on locations etc. But having said all that we did have some amazing cast and crew who really put in a massive effort and without their help and dedication, this film would never have happened. PH: It’s a challenge making ANY kind of movie in this day and age, let alone one where the budget is limited. What was the hardest part of making the film? The news media, however, took a different stance. The Guardian calls “Kung flu”“racist language” on June 21. On the same day, Business Insider refers to the expression as a “racist term.” Vox calls it Trump’s “latest effort to stoke xenophobia” on June 23. Critical voices also come from Daily Mail on June 21, NBC News on June 23, Sky News on June 24, The Globe Post on June 29, etc. During a press conference on June 22, White House press secretary McEnany confronts criticism by journalists regarding Trump’s use of “Kung flu.” Her justification follows Trump’s narrative: “What the president does do is point to the fact that the origin of the virus is China. It’s a fair thing to point out, as China tries to ridiculously rewrite history, ridiculously blame the coronavirus on American soldiers.” ( rev.com) She goes on citing mass media using similar terms like “Wuhan virus,”“Chinese coronavirus,”“Chinese virus” on different occasions. Confronted with the claim that “‘Kung flu’ is extremely offensive to many people in the Asian-American community,” she asserts that “the media is trying to play games with the terminology of this virus, where the focus should be on the fact that China let this out of their country. The same phrase that the media roundly now condemns has been used by the media […].” Trump as the People’s President Trump’s public utterances are increasingly repetitive in the time period under consideration. The basic themes in the context of expressions that relate COVID-19 to China, however, were present almost from the start. Narratives were adapted to new situations but did not fundamentally change. This section starts with a chronology of events. Subsequently, Trump’s claims of being a people’s president will be examined, followed by an analysis of how Trump depicts the people’s enemies. The section concludes with a depiction of how Trump exploits the culture of political correctness with the help of popular culture. A Chronology of EventsTrump also uses a rhetoric of anger, resentment, and indignation, which is not necessarily perceptible in his nonverbal expressions but can be inferred by the contents of speech. The antecedents of these emotions are usually described as an experienced injustice whereas the behavioral manifestations consist in standing up against it (e.g., Averill, 1980, Averill, 1986; Demertzis, 2014), which in the present case is expressed, e.g., by using terms that situate the origin of COVID-19 in China. Counterintuitively, the data did not show that Trump has an unorthodox relation to the truth regarding his claims that the media used some of those terms first. This fact supports Trump’s narrative of being unjustly persecuted by media and Democrats. Trump’s criticism of NATO and the EU may elicit the impression that Trump represents a thin type of populism ( Dzur and Hendriks, 2018), aiming not at improving participatory institutions but at abolishing them. Closer examination reveals, however, that the results of the study, unlike Trump’s post-electoral behavior, are not conclusive in this respect.