The promotional panopticon is forcing you to confront your preconceptions about exactly what empowerment means.

I encountered this sentence written by Vanessa Friedman, in "Kristen Stewart Uses Naked Dressing to Make a Point/Her press tour for 'Love Lies Bleeding' was something to see" (NYT):

"Ms. Stewart and her stylist, Tara Swennen, have taken the film’s carnality and covert politics and translated them for the promotional panopticon, forcing anybody watching to confront their own preconceptions about women’s bodies, their sexuality and exactly what empowerment means, while at the same time undermining the whole circus of branded celebrity dressing."

"Did she really clear the room of staff by saying she wished to masturbate, or was it the cheddar and crackers I foolishly had before bed?"

"This is a total cheese dream of a film —did she really just eat a pearl? — but also it’s a riveting one as well as a thrillingly entertaining one. Plus it all somehow feels true even if it isn’t. Broken woman, unfeeling family. That seems about right.... It is billed as ‘a fable from a true tragedy,’ whatever that might mean, and Diana’s marriage to Charles is irrevocably on the rocks but the family still imagine she can be brought to heel.... Sandringham, with its endlessly long corridors, is like that hotel in The Shining, but colder....  At one point she pulls from her neck the pearl necklace Charles had given her — he gave the same one to Camilla — the pearls fall into her soup, and she eats them, with great cracking sounds. Crazy, but we get it.... [T]his film is so clever that you also understand why they loathed her, why she was so annoying...."

Writes Deborah Ross in "A riveting cheese dream of a film: Spencer reviewed/Kristen Stewart looks nothing like Diana but is somehow Diana. I think it’s called ‘great acting’" (The Spectator).

Ha ha. That made me want to see the movie, but I'm not willing to sit through a movie wearing a mask, so that leaves the question whether and where it's streaming. Too complicated!

"'Spencer' is, in many ways, baloney, abundantly spiced with slander. It is contemptuous of those whom it accuses..."

"... of treating Diana with contempt. Although [her confidante] Maggie says to her, 'Don’t see conspiracy everywhere,' the film sees nothing but. I can’t decide what made me laugh louder: the dead pheasant, stiffly positioned on the road at the entrance to Sandringham, like a prop from a Monty Python sketch, or the Prince of Wales informing his wife that 'you have to be able to make your body do things you hate.' He sounds like a Pilates instructor.... For all its follies, I would rather watch it again than sit through further episodes of 'The Crown.' The sight of that show clawing toward the credible, without ever quite getting there, is painful to behold, whereas [Spencer's director Pablo] Larraín is somehow freed by the liberties that he takes with historical facts.... [H]e tunes in to Diana’s high anxiety; the camera is constantly on her, with her, and around her, as if drunk on her perception of the world...."

Writes Anthony Lane in The New Yorker, reviewing the new movie "Spencer," about Princess Diana, played by Kristen Stewart. Here's a trailer for the movie.

"SCIENCE: Men and women apologize differently."

Writes Instapundit, but the link goes to a story about one woman's apology. If you keep reading there's a small grab bag of "science":

Without defaulting to the conventional wisdom that men have to protect fragile egos, there’s an aspect to apologizing that implies defeat, which the more competitive male gender is less inclined to concede. Tiger Woods, Anthony Wiener, and Bill Clinton all had personas shaped by winning and success, and their late-coming, highly crafted apologies lacked authenticity. They seemed more driven by those self-preserving, secondary motives of escaping punishment and guilt. It felt like none of them would have apologized had he never been caught, implying the regret originated in being exposed rather than in feeling bad.

And all of that drivel is true of the apology from the woman (Kristen Stewart) that's supposed to feel so sincere! Well, there's the answer: The perceiver of the apology has subjective feelings and is judging the woman differently (and patronizingly!).