http://www.syberberg.de/Syberberg2/Hitler_full_eng_QT2.html
Like everything else, this is really just here for posterity. Widely regarded as Syberberg's masterpiece, H:AFFG's running time does seem a bit daunting but I have no doubt it's worth every minute.
Wednesday 17 December 2008
Saturday 29 November 2008
Life in Salo
A casual glance at my previous blog entries reveals a disdain for the capitalist machine, the "liberal democracy," we find ourselves cogs in, so if I'm treading old ground forgive me. It has occurred to me again and again that perhaps the most distasteful operation of this mechanism is the system's pretence of arguing with itself. The difference between this and "totalitarian" states, it seems, is that in totalitarian states, the lack of democratic choice was blatantly transparent (and perhaps the fact our leaders have moved from the Kremlin to Wall Street). They never thought to set up something as insultingly partisan as Prime Minister's Questions to convince the public there were other options, for instance, but instead preferred childish scapegoatism of figures like Trotsky (famously parodied in George Orwell's Animal Farm) or Jews that were both bankers and communists. We have managed to convince ourselves that totalitarianism died and the liberal democracy triumphed at the end of the Cold War rather than seeing we are, as ever, living in the result of a non-impartial dialectic, the product of a patriarchal marriage. This reverse-nostalgia is potentially more damaging than it first appears.
Pier Paolo Pasolini's last film before his brutal murder, Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, has been the subject of much discussion, debate, criticism, controversy and denouncement since its release in 1975. However, it has also long been hailed as a must-see film, and it absolutely is for any fan of film or philosophy (Roland Barthes, incidentally, collaborated on the screenplay, I believe). It is ostensibly an attack on fascism, specifically Mussolini's Republic of Salo, but we are led to believe it was banned (it was only compartively recently made available in the UK) for its obscenity rather than the fact it hits too close to home.
You may think that, by praising this film as I am about to do, I am being hypocritical. I did of course acrimoniously throw V For Vendetta's credentials as anti-establishment cinema out of the window because of how dated the establishment it was critiquing was. It is not a brave knight who thrusts his lance through the heart of a dead dragon. However, what sets Salo apart is that it's attack on Mussolini's dictatorship is actually a thinly veiled attack on what came afterwards in Italy: an embrace of capitalism. This is evidenced clearly by the shit-eating scenes, which Pasolini maintained was a metaphor for the consumer society's insatiable hunger for junk food. If the success of McDonald's has taught us anything, it's that if an authority tells you eating shit is a special treat, you will willingly buy and ingest massive amounts of it. The storytelling each evening by the three women, meant to titilate the captors and catives, seems obviously reminiscent of television (a medium which, unlike film, has never lived up to its potential and has utterly failed to retain artistic integrity, but that's a rant for another time). Also extremely relevant is the marriage scene, in which a boy and a girl are chosen for each other, wed and forced to copulate in front of the eyes of their libertine captors. When it is decided they are doing it wrong, the leaders forcibly insert themselves into the marriage bed. A more graphic summation of the recent Proposition 8 controversy in California could not be imagined.
The film then moves from clear fascism at the start (uniforms, marches, expulsion of religion) into the capitalist liberal democracy. The guards, who at the start were necessary to keep order, are seen in fewer and fewer number. Religion worms its way back in. The prisoners are praised, rewarded, allocated quantums of power. Just as we in the real world are encouraged to inform the government of benefit cheats, the captives save themselves from the wrath of the captors by snitching on each other's rulebreaking. The critic Geoff Andrew denigrated Salo and claimed it offered no insight into power or fascism because the captives willingly went along with whatever the libertines tried to force them to do; to me there could not be a more contradictory statement. What exactly do we do when reductions of our freedoms are proposed? We go out and vote for them. As Pasolini himself put it: "Fascism . . . had not been capable of even scratching the soul of the Italian people; this new fascism, armed with new means of communication and information . . . has not only scratched the soul of the Italian people but has lacerated, raped, and besmirched it forever.”
Life in Salo becomes easier and easier for the victims. By the time they're brutalised in the torture yard at the film's completion, there has not been a physical resistance to the system since a young girl desperately tried to break through a window at the film's start. Towards the end, the captives are willingly sleeping with the captors. They eat their own shit and joke about it. Any rebellion is quashed not because of the overwhelming physical presence of their captors, but because they turn against each other to cowardly re-establish the status quo. Physically, the libertines are weak, almost impotent and in smaller and smaller number. But now the guards are psychological ones and cannot be overcome, nor do the captives seem to wish to. If I believed in a fascist term like "human spirit," I would say that at this point it has been quashed as the human beings slip into servitude, little more than machines themselves. One is reminded of Baudrillard and Fukyama's passive embrace of "The End of History," (though I will say Baudrillard never seemed as fetishistic about this phenomena as Fukyama does) final stop to rebellions, idelogical clashes and revolutionary propositions of new world orders. If pigs could talk, like in Animal Farm, they'd be singing the praises of the farmer on the way to the slaughterhouse. We, it seems, are no different.
Pier Paolo Pasolini's last film before his brutal murder, Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, has been the subject of much discussion, debate, criticism, controversy and denouncement since its release in 1975. However, it has also long been hailed as a must-see film, and it absolutely is for any fan of film or philosophy (Roland Barthes, incidentally, collaborated on the screenplay, I believe). It is ostensibly an attack on fascism, specifically Mussolini's Republic of Salo, but we are led to believe it was banned (it was only compartively recently made available in the UK) for its obscenity rather than the fact it hits too close to home.
You may think that, by praising this film as I am about to do, I am being hypocritical. I did of course acrimoniously throw V For Vendetta's credentials as anti-establishment cinema out of the window because of how dated the establishment it was critiquing was. It is not a brave knight who thrusts his lance through the heart of a dead dragon. However, what sets Salo apart is that it's attack on Mussolini's dictatorship is actually a thinly veiled attack on what came afterwards in Italy: an embrace of capitalism. This is evidenced clearly by the shit-eating scenes, which Pasolini maintained was a metaphor for the consumer society's insatiable hunger for junk food. If the success of McDonald's has taught us anything, it's that if an authority tells you eating shit is a special treat, you will willingly buy and ingest massive amounts of it. The storytelling each evening by the three women, meant to titilate the captors and catives, seems obviously reminiscent of television (a medium which, unlike film, has never lived up to its potential and has utterly failed to retain artistic integrity, but that's a rant for another time). Also extremely relevant is the marriage scene, in which a boy and a girl are chosen for each other, wed and forced to copulate in front of the eyes of their libertine captors. When it is decided they are doing it wrong, the leaders forcibly insert themselves into the marriage bed. A more graphic summation of the recent Proposition 8 controversy in California could not be imagined.
The film then moves from clear fascism at the start (uniforms, marches, expulsion of religion) into the capitalist liberal democracy. The guards, who at the start were necessary to keep order, are seen in fewer and fewer number. Religion worms its way back in. The prisoners are praised, rewarded, allocated quantums of power. Just as we in the real world are encouraged to inform the government of benefit cheats, the captives save themselves from the wrath of the captors by snitching on each other's rulebreaking. The critic Geoff Andrew denigrated Salo and claimed it offered no insight into power or fascism because the captives willingly went along with whatever the libertines tried to force them to do; to me there could not be a more contradictory statement. What exactly do we do when reductions of our freedoms are proposed? We go out and vote for them. As Pasolini himself put it: "Fascism . . . had not been capable of even scratching the soul of the Italian people; this new fascism, armed with new means of communication and information . . . has not only scratched the soul of the Italian people but has lacerated, raped, and besmirched it forever.”
Life in Salo becomes easier and easier for the victims. By the time they're brutalised in the torture yard at the film's completion, there has not been a physical resistance to the system since a young girl desperately tried to break through a window at the film's start. Towards the end, the captives are willingly sleeping with the captors. They eat their own shit and joke about it. Any rebellion is quashed not because of the overwhelming physical presence of their captors, but because they turn against each other to cowardly re-establish the status quo. Physically, the libertines are weak, almost impotent and in smaller and smaller number. But now the guards are psychological ones and cannot be overcome, nor do the captives seem to wish to. If I believed in a fascist term like "human spirit," I would say that at this point it has been quashed as the human beings slip into servitude, little more than machines themselves. One is reminded of Baudrillard and Fukyama's passive embrace of "The End of History," (though I will say Baudrillard never seemed as fetishistic about this phenomena as Fukyama does) final stop to rebellions, idelogical clashes and revolutionary propositions of new world orders. If pigs could talk, like in Animal Farm, they'd be singing the praises of the farmer on the way to the slaughterhouse. We, it seems, are no different.
Thursday 27 November 2008
Beatrix Kiddo vs the Female Ubermensch
When Kill Bill was released in 2004, it was denigrated for lot of reasons. Some claimed it was too violent, others that it was a case of style of substance, yet more disliked the genre-splicing. Of course, it had its fans (I suppose I am one of them). The stylistic action and dialogue notwithstanding, many seem to agree with Tarantino himself when he described the project as a “feminist statement” and claimed it was all about “girl power.”
We’ve heard this shit before, of course. The Charlie’s Angels films too claimed to be about female empowerment regardless of the transparent appeal to adolescent boys. But unlike these degrading exercises in titillation dressed up as “feminist” films, the Kill Bill experience contains few if any instances of scantily-dressed females.
However, Kill Bill is still a deeply sexist film that reveals a lot about Tarantino’s mindset, beyond the usual blatantly obvious cult film geekery and foot fetish. The theme of male dominance in this film is absolutely overwhelming to the point where it’s almost impossible to believe any claim he made to the contrary. Yes, perhaps, on the surface, The Bride is physically dominant, able to dispatch hordes of male combatants with relative ease and is only in trouble in the first volume when she comes across another woman. However, she is only tough and empowered so long as she conforms to the male action hero archetype: a revenge-seeking, one-liner-dropping, martially-skilled, decisive, composed, pain-tolerant assassin. She first wears a yellow jump suit in order to be reminiscent of male action star Bruce Lee, and later adopts jeans, cowboy boots and a t-shirt.
Her other overwhelming character trait is an obsession with a man. It quite simply could not have been an accident that the centre of the film, the sun around which all the violent female planets revolve, is the eponymous Bill. Bill is the leader of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, the Bride’s targets and former peers, and it was he who selected their dangerous missions and presumably portioned out payment for. That he is perfectly analogous to a pimp is difficult to get around: women are (forcibly in the case of O’Ren Ishi, another supposedly “empowered” woman) indebted to him whilst he retains an air of cool, again archetypal with cultural depictions of pimps. Not, might I add, the first time Tarantino has stuck his oar into stereotypic black culture.
Tellingly, Bill's father figure, Esteban, actually is a pimp. Even more tellingly is that if the Bride is Uma Thurman's screen persona (that Thurman and Tarantino came up with the character together is suggested as much in interviews) then the supercool, comic-book referencing director-of-all-events Bill is so obviously Tarantino's. Where the power lies is never in doubt.
The film does not even continue its idea of only women being a threat to the Bride into the second volume. She is outsmarted and defeated in a humiliating manner by Bud, Bill’s slow-witted hick brother, before reminiscing about her defeat, humiliation and tutelage by her male mentor, Pai Mei (described indifferently as her “master,” ostensibly a reference to classic samurai/martial art revenge movies but functionally degrading). If the Deadly Vipers are the assassination equivalent of a brothel, Pai Mei is the captain of the ship the prostitutes are smuggled into the country on, and it is under him they learn how to please their predominantly male world. Pai Mei is utterly unbeatable in fair combat, and can only be overcome by the female treachery of Elle Driver, who poisons him. By the time we come to the climax, a thinly-veiled lament for father’s rights, the Bride is just about permitted to defeat a drunken, elderly and washed up Bill, and all pretences of feminism are in tatters. Her life, having up to now been defined entirely by Bill's actions, is now dedicated to raising Bill's child whilst Bill fades with Pai Mei into martial arts legend.
Kill Bill is not, though, an uncommon phenomenon in today’s society. At feminism’s start, it was required to define itself by male dominance in order to oppose it. But as we move closer and closer to a world of equal gender rights within the liberal democracy, the feminist movement has still not yet begun to define women by anything else than their male oppressors. There has, plainly speaking, never been a female Nietzsche. Nietzsche, you may remember, became famous for the statement “God is dead,” which was an avatar for the ubermensch, the next stage in man’s spiritual evolution. The ubermensch, as Nietzsche describes him in the seminal Thus Spoke Zarathustra (my first and still favourite work of philosophy), has overcome nihilism and is able to put together his own moral code completely undefined by any that had gone before or exists around him, specifically religion within the context. General cultural feminism cannot get to that stage of independent introversion and still clings to these male-defined female heroines such as the Bride. Most damning is the fact I hear a lot of women saying they came out of Kill Bill feeling strong and empowered and wanting to take up karate.
This may just be another case of Tarantino being a snake-oil salesman. But it may also be an intrinsic fault in the diamond that is feminist theory, a fault already noted by Third-Wave feminists or post-feminists who have been powerless to do anything about it. Even the attempted reclaiming of words like “bitch” and “whore” suggested by the likes of Inga Muscio has its origins in a male-defined worldview. Like in Kill Bill, women are still victims desperately trying to reassert control over their world, rather than true adventurers for whom the world is their birthright. Perhaps the first novel to concentrate on the plight of women was Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, the eponymous heroine of which is born not under a male thumb but in Newgate prison, the closest thing 18th century England had to limbo. Whilst her career is then based around the exploitation of men through sexual pragmatism and ethical survivalism, it’s worth remembering her voidesque starting point is somewhere she desperately doesn’t want to visit again, and thus being back at the beginning is the most she has to lose. There’s an attitude there that should be considered. Women should not consider themselves to be born from the head of Zeus but anywhere they damn please.
We’ve heard this shit before, of course. The Charlie’s Angels films too claimed to be about female empowerment regardless of the transparent appeal to adolescent boys. But unlike these degrading exercises in titillation dressed up as “feminist” films, the Kill Bill experience contains few if any instances of scantily-dressed females.
However, Kill Bill is still a deeply sexist film that reveals a lot about Tarantino’s mindset, beyond the usual blatantly obvious cult film geekery and foot fetish. The theme of male dominance in this film is absolutely overwhelming to the point where it’s almost impossible to believe any claim he made to the contrary. Yes, perhaps, on the surface, The Bride is physically dominant, able to dispatch hordes of male combatants with relative ease and is only in trouble in the first volume when she comes across another woman. However, she is only tough and empowered so long as she conforms to the male action hero archetype: a revenge-seeking, one-liner-dropping, martially-skilled, decisive, composed, pain-tolerant assassin. She first wears a yellow jump suit in order to be reminiscent of male action star Bruce Lee, and later adopts jeans, cowboy boots and a t-shirt.
Her other overwhelming character trait is an obsession with a man. It quite simply could not have been an accident that the centre of the film, the sun around which all the violent female planets revolve, is the eponymous Bill. Bill is the leader of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, the Bride’s targets and former peers, and it was he who selected their dangerous missions and presumably portioned out payment for. That he is perfectly analogous to a pimp is difficult to get around: women are (forcibly in the case of O’Ren Ishi, another supposedly “empowered” woman) indebted to him whilst he retains an air of cool, again archetypal with cultural depictions of pimps. Not, might I add, the first time Tarantino has stuck his oar into stereotypic black culture.
Tellingly, Bill's father figure, Esteban, actually is a pimp. Even more tellingly is that if the Bride is Uma Thurman's screen persona (that Thurman and Tarantino came up with the character together is suggested as much in interviews) then the supercool, comic-book referencing director-of-all-events Bill is so obviously Tarantino's. Where the power lies is never in doubt.
The film does not even continue its idea of only women being a threat to the Bride into the second volume. She is outsmarted and defeated in a humiliating manner by Bud, Bill’s slow-witted hick brother, before reminiscing about her defeat, humiliation and tutelage by her male mentor, Pai Mei (described indifferently as her “master,” ostensibly a reference to classic samurai/martial art revenge movies but functionally degrading). If the Deadly Vipers are the assassination equivalent of a brothel, Pai Mei is the captain of the ship the prostitutes are smuggled into the country on, and it is under him they learn how to please their predominantly male world. Pai Mei is utterly unbeatable in fair combat, and can only be overcome by the female treachery of Elle Driver, who poisons him. By the time we come to the climax, a thinly-veiled lament for father’s rights, the Bride is just about permitted to defeat a drunken, elderly and washed up Bill, and all pretences of feminism are in tatters. Her life, having up to now been defined entirely by Bill's actions, is now dedicated to raising Bill's child whilst Bill fades with Pai Mei into martial arts legend.
Kill Bill is not, though, an uncommon phenomenon in today’s society. At feminism’s start, it was required to define itself by male dominance in order to oppose it. But as we move closer and closer to a world of equal gender rights within the liberal democracy, the feminist movement has still not yet begun to define women by anything else than their male oppressors. There has, plainly speaking, never been a female Nietzsche. Nietzsche, you may remember, became famous for the statement “God is dead,” which was an avatar for the ubermensch, the next stage in man’s spiritual evolution. The ubermensch, as Nietzsche describes him in the seminal Thus Spoke Zarathustra (my first and still favourite work of philosophy), has overcome nihilism and is able to put together his own moral code completely undefined by any that had gone before or exists around him, specifically religion within the context. General cultural feminism cannot get to that stage of independent introversion and still clings to these male-defined female heroines such as the Bride. Most damning is the fact I hear a lot of women saying they came out of Kill Bill feeling strong and empowered and wanting to take up karate.
This may just be another case of Tarantino being a snake-oil salesman. But it may also be an intrinsic fault in the diamond that is feminist theory, a fault already noted by Third-Wave feminists or post-feminists who have been powerless to do anything about it. Even the attempted reclaiming of words like “bitch” and “whore” suggested by the likes of Inga Muscio has its origins in a male-defined worldview. Like in Kill Bill, women are still victims desperately trying to reassert control over their world, rather than true adventurers for whom the world is their birthright. Perhaps the first novel to concentrate on the plight of women was Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, the eponymous heroine of which is born not under a male thumb but in Newgate prison, the closest thing 18th century England had to limbo. Whilst her career is then based around the exploitation of men through sexual pragmatism and ethical survivalism, it’s worth remembering her voidesque starting point is somewhere she desperately doesn’t want to visit again, and thus being back at the beginning is the most she has to lose. There’s an attitude there that should be considered. Women should not consider themselves to be born from the head of Zeus but anywhere they damn please.
Saturday 22 November 2008
The rise and fall and rise and fall of Liverpool
British cinema has never been known for paying due respect to its home grown talent in the manner of, say, its French counterpart, but the extent to which Terence Davies has been maligned and forgotten about is more than just a little bit shocking. After testing the waters with his fondly thought of Robert Tucker trilogy in the seventies and early eighties, Davies exploded onto a nearly non-existent independent British scene with Distant Voices, Still Lives, a film that would be all but consigned to the dustbin of history were it not for the recently revived British Film Institute. Critical acclaim followed, the cheques didn’t, and soon the former dried up, too: The House of Mirth and The Neon Bible, Davies’ attempted comebacks, were met with derision and indifference.
Now Davies returns once more, to cinema and to his early themes of regional identity and homosexuality, with Of Time And The City. Functionally, Of Time and the City is a collection of documentary and news footage about Liverpool through the ages book-ended by a few cityscopes Davies has recently shot himself, a obvious departure from his narrative films. It’s fascinating that Davies, who has covered Liverpool so often in his works, would choose this as a format to pay tribute to his home town, and a cynic might read it as an admission that Davies no longer believes he possesses the deep filmic understanding and masterful cinematic hand required to live up to his previous opera. However, this is no easy way out (or easy way back in) Davies has attempted, no cobbling together of old newsreels set to self-congratulatory narration and snobbish music. Somehow, he has managed to assemble the clips into a portrait of his vision of an evolving and self-renewing place, in the documentary style of Humphrey Jennings’ Listen to Britain. We follow the development of Davies and Liverpool through the desperation of the 40s and 50s, the hopeful innocence of the 60s, the working class nightmare of the 70s and 80s to the revitalised city of today, and you feel nothing has been left unsaid. This is a work that speaks for generations, and yet seems deeply personal.
If it is a visual poem, it is Larkinesque, and an angry one at times. Davies unsurprisingly turns his witty vitriol (witriol? One to remember) on the Catholic Church ("Pope Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI and Clitoris the Umpteenth"), the monarchy ("the Betty Windsor Show") and the Thatcherite boot delivered to the working classes, but also attacks more unconventional targets. He speaks disparagingly about the rise of The Beatles, which to him represented the death of subtle songwriting (here I agree with him), and even admits he feels nostalgic for the Liverpool prior to its renovation. The illogic of this pining for times gone by is rendered impotent by a director so adept at capturing and reviving ephemera as Davies is, and we feel his opinions as though they are our own. His non-partisan integrity on these issues in the midst of the self-congratulatory Capital of Culture celebrations is nothing short of admirable. We have Sibelius, Bruckner, Mahler and The Hollies in place of John, Paul, George and Ringo, and instead of Patten, Henri and McGough, Davies quotes Marlowe, Houseman, Raleigh, Joyce, Shelley and Eliot. In a city that has long been so insular, defining itself by itself, this knitting of Scouse values and memories with universal writers and artists is deliciously refreshing.
At the tail end of a year where Liverpool has looked towards the future whilst Britain teeters on the precipice, this film was sorely needed, not just to document times that would have been more forgotten than Davies himself had become (perhaps this is why he feels such an affinity with pasttimes like going to New Brighton for a fun afternoon), but to reiterate the warning whispered by Distant Voices: the good times don’t last. But at least in the 80s, Liverpool was in no danger of forgetting itself. Can we still say that today? Hopefully, if this is Davies’ foot in the door rather than his career eulogy, yes. Technically brilliant, emotionally moving, Of Time and the City is required viewing for Liverpudlians, historians, political theorists, poets, philosophers and film fans alike.
Now Davies returns once more, to cinema and to his early themes of regional identity and homosexuality, with Of Time And The City. Functionally, Of Time and the City is a collection of documentary and news footage about Liverpool through the ages book-ended by a few cityscopes Davies has recently shot himself, a obvious departure from his narrative films. It’s fascinating that Davies, who has covered Liverpool so often in his works, would choose this as a format to pay tribute to his home town, and a cynic might read it as an admission that Davies no longer believes he possesses the deep filmic understanding and masterful cinematic hand required to live up to his previous opera. However, this is no easy way out (or easy way back in) Davies has attempted, no cobbling together of old newsreels set to self-congratulatory narration and snobbish music. Somehow, he has managed to assemble the clips into a portrait of his vision of an evolving and self-renewing place, in the documentary style of Humphrey Jennings’ Listen to Britain. We follow the development of Davies and Liverpool through the desperation of the 40s and 50s, the hopeful innocence of the 60s, the working class nightmare of the 70s and 80s to the revitalised city of today, and you feel nothing has been left unsaid. This is a work that speaks for generations, and yet seems deeply personal.
If it is a visual poem, it is Larkinesque, and an angry one at times. Davies unsurprisingly turns his witty vitriol (witriol? One to remember) on the Catholic Church ("Pope Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI and Clitoris the Umpteenth"), the monarchy ("the Betty Windsor Show") and the Thatcherite boot delivered to the working classes, but also attacks more unconventional targets. He speaks disparagingly about the rise of The Beatles, which to him represented the death of subtle songwriting (here I agree with him), and even admits he feels nostalgic for the Liverpool prior to its renovation. The illogic of this pining for times gone by is rendered impotent by a director so adept at capturing and reviving ephemera as Davies is, and we feel his opinions as though they are our own. His non-partisan integrity on these issues in the midst of the self-congratulatory Capital of Culture celebrations is nothing short of admirable. We have Sibelius, Bruckner, Mahler and The Hollies in place of John, Paul, George and Ringo, and instead of Patten, Henri and McGough, Davies quotes Marlowe, Houseman, Raleigh, Joyce, Shelley and Eliot. In a city that has long been so insular, defining itself by itself, this knitting of Scouse values and memories with universal writers and artists is deliciously refreshing.
At the tail end of a year where Liverpool has looked towards the future whilst Britain teeters on the precipice, this film was sorely needed, not just to document times that would have been more forgotten than Davies himself had become (perhaps this is why he feels such an affinity with pasttimes like going to New Brighton for a fun afternoon), but to reiterate the warning whispered by Distant Voices: the good times don’t last. But at least in the 80s, Liverpool was in no danger of forgetting itself. Can we still say that today? Hopefully, if this is Davies’ foot in the door rather than his career eulogy, yes. Technically brilliant, emotionally moving, Of Time and the City is required viewing for Liverpudlians, historians, political theorists, poets, philosophers and film fans alike.
Monday 17 November 2008
Every Stone Left Unturned
I have been able to take time out of my lazy schedule to go to the cinema recently, which is just as well considering the amount of films that have been vying for my attention. Alexandra, Burn After Reading, Quantum of Solace... all three of these heavyweights were barely pushed aside by W., but were all massacred by Of Time And The City, the two I elected to see.
W. is empty, lazy entertainment. It has its strengths, most notably the performances of almost every actor in the film, most notably Toby Jones (Karl Rove), Jeffrey Wright (Colin Powell) and Brolin himself, but Oliver Stone permits nobody to rise above the level of caricature. Thandie Newton is certainly ugly enough to be Condoleeza Rice, but instead plays Bush’s PA, curiously going by the same name, and she might as well not be there. Ellen Burstyn is completely wasted on Barbara Bush. Richard Dreyfuss (Dick Cheney) and Scott Glenn (Donald Rumsfeld) are devious pantomime villains. And Ioan Gruffudd’s 20 second cameo as Tony Blair is borderline insulting. Whereas in real life, Blair was publically calling for “a long-overdue appointment” with Saddam Hussein as early as 1998 following the Nato-assisted fall of Slobodan Milosevic, in Stone’s world he is a weak English stereotype swiftly bullied into going along with the 2003 invasion (contrasted with the heroic refusals of Jacques Chirac and Vladimir Putin, the latter being made reference to in a scatological joke by the childish, tantrum throwing Bush) presumably after a brief stint playing quarterback for the London Silly Nannies. Truly, the only characters that escape with any dignity intact are Laura Welch (an uninspired Elizabeth banks) and Powell, although since both are defecated upon by their peers this may seem a contentious statement.
And what of Dubya himself? As noted by several other reviewers, here Stone has taken the easy way out. Instead of portraying him as a complex, intelligent individual who made the wrong choices for good or for bad, Stone has him pencilled in as the redneck buffoon he played in public. As hard as Brolin has worked to overcome his lack of immediate similarity with the President, all Stone’s graft has already been done by the real life Bush. This biopic is fun, but it is neither insightful nor realistic. Some vague idea that it was Bush’s Congressional District defeat to Kent Hance that inflamed his desire to not be “out-Christianed and out-Texaned” again may seem like a revelation to some, but this was a paraphrasing of the real-life Bush anyway. And that’s really where the film finds itself: educating to people who don’t follow politics, unimportant to those that do, and uninspiring for film aficionados. There are genuinely funny moments (“Wait, guys, I think we’ve missed the side road,” says Bush to his cabinet as they walk around the grounds to the Robin Hood theme, preparing for war) but this is a subject that needs to be tackled by a serious director, not the lazy, confused one Stone is.
A review of Of Time And The City is pending.
W. is empty, lazy entertainment. It has its strengths, most notably the performances of almost every actor in the film, most notably Toby Jones (Karl Rove), Jeffrey Wright (Colin Powell) and Brolin himself, but Oliver Stone permits nobody to rise above the level of caricature. Thandie Newton is certainly ugly enough to be Condoleeza Rice, but instead plays Bush’s PA, curiously going by the same name, and she might as well not be there. Ellen Burstyn is completely wasted on Barbara Bush. Richard Dreyfuss (Dick Cheney) and Scott Glenn (Donald Rumsfeld) are devious pantomime villains. And Ioan Gruffudd’s 20 second cameo as Tony Blair is borderline insulting. Whereas in real life, Blair was publically calling for “a long-overdue appointment” with Saddam Hussein as early as 1998 following the Nato-assisted fall of Slobodan Milosevic, in Stone’s world he is a weak English stereotype swiftly bullied into going along with the 2003 invasion (contrasted with the heroic refusals of Jacques Chirac and Vladimir Putin, the latter being made reference to in a scatological joke by the childish, tantrum throwing Bush) presumably after a brief stint playing quarterback for the London Silly Nannies. Truly, the only characters that escape with any dignity intact are Laura Welch (an uninspired Elizabeth banks) and Powell, although since both are defecated upon by their peers this may seem a contentious statement.
And what of Dubya himself? As noted by several other reviewers, here Stone has taken the easy way out. Instead of portraying him as a complex, intelligent individual who made the wrong choices for good or for bad, Stone has him pencilled in as the redneck buffoon he played in public. As hard as Brolin has worked to overcome his lack of immediate similarity with the President, all Stone’s graft has already been done by the real life Bush. This biopic is fun, but it is neither insightful nor realistic. Some vague idea that it was Bush’s Congressional District defeat to Kent Hance that inflamed his desire to not be “out-Christianed and out-Texaned” again may seem like a revelation to some, but this was a paraphrasing of the real-life Bush anyway. And that’s really where the film finds itself: educating to people who don’t follow politics, unimportant to those that do, and uninspiring for film aficionados. There are genuinely funny moments (“Wait, guys, I think we’ve missed the side road,” says Bush to his cabinet as they walk around the grounds to the Robin Hood theme, preparing for war) but this is a subject that needs to be tackled by a serious director, not the lazy, confused one Stone is.
A review of Of Time And The City is pending.
Thursday 6 November 2008
My cynicism takes a brief interlude
“Everybody knows the dice are loaded, everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over, everybody knows the good guys lost.”
- Leonard Cohen
I have in recent months criticised the simply abominable focus on race that both the American and British media are responsible for as per the US elections. However, even I have to admit, in the early hours of the day we Brits celebrate as Guy Fawkes Night, it was difficult not to be overawed with the American historical significance as for the first time in their history, the most powerful country in the world elected a black man as their leader.
The USA has always struck me as something of a missed opportunity. I am an admirer of the values it was founded upon, the contributions it has made to literature and the arts, and that it has always ostensibly stood for “something better.” But slavery and civil rights disputes always hung over what should have been the standard bearer for fairness and liberalism. It is one of the cruellest paradoxes in history that Thomas Jefferson, to whom so many of us owe our freedoms directly or indirectly, was a slave owner. And what of Lincoln? Anyone with a more concise view of history than “Lincoln freed the slaves” would be all the more cynical about America if these are arguably its two greatest presidents.
Then we had FDR. And the 60s, of course. And Dr King. But by the time of the Bush regime, through which the US has stumbled and its reputation cheyne-stoked painfully, the best we had to hope for was their promise of a post-Reagan compassionate conservatism (a promise that was never delivered on). It is ridiculous to mention the next president in the same revered or reviled tones as these men and I do not announce Mr Obama as a great president-elect. However, the significance of his victory cannot be undermined. The next day when the BBC chose to splice violent clips from the Civil Rights disputes with Jesse Jackson’s tears of joy at the announcement of Barack Obama’s win, it was impossible not to feel a certain euphoria.
This is not to say John McCain is a bad guy. His campaign has been criticised on one hand for not doing enough, and on another for being too negative (Christopher Hitchens, whom to my delight the BBC hired for their panel on Tuesday night, described it as something like disgusting). This is one of the reasons I predict that in 10 years if not before we will be talking about Rovian or post-Rovian politics, so it was refreshing to see that McCain and his allies, whilst not running the best or most gracious campaign, seemed to ignore almost every filthy tactic Karl Rove employed on behalf of George W. Bush. The fact McCain lost and Bush won, however, might serve as further endorsement of the ethics of the evil piggy-eyed shithead who has dictated US politics over the past decade. It is terrifying to combine this fear with the thought Sarah Palin is expected to run in 2012.
But, and this is the only time I will endorse this behaviour, let’s not allow cynicism about the future to cloud politics. My friend Pvt. Steven Hildreth supported John McCain and has vehemently opposed Obama (even denouncing him as a Communist), and on his blog can be read “R.I.P. the United States of America: 1776-2008.” In a way I agree with that epitaph. The racial debate may be far from over, but the United States have finally come full circle symbolically by doing something none of the white-dominated so-called European intelligencia countries have done: put their fate into the hands of a man from a minority. There is an oneiric quality to the fact that this has taken place so soon after 9/11, which some foresaw as the beginning of the end of multiculturalism.
Perhaps Barack Obama will not be able to deliver on his Achitophelian rhetoric. Perhaps he won because he is black, and we have traded one form of racism for another. Perhaps he has won on the strength of a catchphrase, namely “Change.” But an ideological shift has often benefitted the nation before. And after over 200 years of bigotry, unspent potential and broken promises, this finally felt like the good guys had won.
Everybody knows the war is over, everybody knows the good guys lost.”
- Leonard Cohen
I have in recent months criticised the simply abominable focus on race that both the American and British media are responsible for as per the US elections. However, even I have to admit, in the early hours of the day we Brits celebrate as Guy Fawkes Night, it was difficult not to be overawed with the American historical significance as for the first time in their history, the most powerful country in the world elected a black man as their leader.
The USA has always struck me as something of a missed opportunity. I am an admirer of the values it was founded upon, the contributions it has made to literature and the arts, and that it has always ostensibly stood for “something better.” But slavery and civil rights disputes always hung over what should have been the standard bearer for fairness and liberalism. It is one of the cruellest paradoxes in history that Thomas Jefferson, to whom so many of us owe our freedoms directly or indirectly, was a slave owner. And what of Lincoln? Anyone with a more concise view of history than “Lincoln freed the slaves” would be all the more cynical about America if these are arguably its two greatest presidents.
Then we had FDR. And the 60s, of course. And Dr King. But by the time of the Bush regime, through which the US has stumbled and its reputation cheyne-stoked painfully, the best we had to hope for was their promise of a post-Reagan compassionate conservatism (a promise that was never delivered on). It is ridiculous to mention the next president in the same revered or reviled tones as these men and I do not announce Mr Obama as a great president-elect. However, the significance of his victory cannot be undermined. The next day when the BBC chose to splice violent clips from the Civil Rights disputes with Jesse Jackson’s tears of joy at the announcement of Barack Obama’s win, it was impossible not to feel a certain euphoria.
This is not to say John McCain is a bad guy. His campaign has been criticised on one hand for not doing enough, and on another for being too negative (Christopher Hitchens, whom to my delight the BBC hired for their panel on Tuesday night, described it as something like disgusting). This is one of the reasons I predict that in 10 years if not before we will be talking about Rovian or post-Rovian politics, so it was refreshing to see that McCain and his allies, whilst not running the best or most gracious campaign, seemed to ignore almost every filthy tactic Karl Rove employed on behalf of George W. Bush. The fact McCain lost and Bush won, however, might serve as further endorsement of the ethics of the evil piggy-eyed shithead who has dictated US politics over the past decade. It is terrifying to combine this fear with the thought Sarah Palin is expected to run in 2012.
But, and this is the only time I will endorse this behaviour, let’s not allow cynicism about the future to cloud politics. My friend Pvt. Steven Hildreth supported John McCain and has vehemently opposed Obama (even denouncing him as a Communist), and on his blog can be read “R.I.P. the United States of America: 1776-2008.” In a way I agree with that epitaph. The racial debate may be far from over, but the United States have finally come full circle symbolically by doing something none of the white-dominated so-called European intelligencia countries have done: put their fate into the hands of a man from a minority. There is an oneiric quality to the fact that this has taken place so soon after 9/11, which some foresaw as the beginning of the end of multiculturalism.
Perhaps Barack Obama will not be able to deliver on his Achitophelian rhetoric. Perhaps he won because he is black, and we have traded one form of racism for another. Perhaps he has won on the strength of a catchphrase, namely “Change.” But an ideological shift has often benefitted the nation before. And after over 200 years of bigotry, unspent potential and broken promises, this finally felt like the good guys had won.
Tuesday 21 October 2008
The Root of All Evil?
The most prominent critics of religion currently active roll off the tongue: Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris, etc. I myself am often a critic of religion, but whenever I watch, listen to or read the works of one of these men, I never find myself in full agreement. Don't get me wrong, I respect some of them greatly. Hitchens I find an infinitely entertaining journalist and speaker. Professor Dawkins was kind enough to sign my copy of The Selfish Gene. But for me, religion's biggest crime today is the promotion of ignorance, not the causing of conflict, whereas the common assertion seems to be that everything from the Inquisition to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the Irish Troubles is in some way its fault.
The common response: what about Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot? These arguments are, of course, deficient. At least on the surface. Totalitarian systems, and these included, so often exploit religious iconography and convention that to call any of these 20th century examples atheist would be absurd even before we look at the connections between Stalin and the Russian Orthodox Church, between Nazi-brand fascism and Catholicism. However, they were not theocracies, either: this I am sure we can agree on. But where do the similarities come from?
Watching 2001: A Space Odyssey is a fascinating experience as it charters man's regression through progression. We discover tools, yes, and use them to murder in order to master the world. In space we are infants once more, needing to be potty trained and taught how to eat and walk again. Finally, our tools rebel, and our next stage of evolution is into a state of innocence from rationality: we return to the Garden of Eden. Whilst nobody would pretend this is a realistic portrayal of man's evolution, it is at least a symbolically sound one. What's worth noticing in this instance is not the fact the Monolith inspired the apes to use tools, but that the film post-Monolith deliberately sets up a far clearer tribal divide between the species. The fight over the watering hole becomes more obviously a battle, with well-defined armies driven by testosterone and territorial awareness.
This pattern is recurrent throughout nature. Compare the ant colony or the wolf pack with a group of sports fans. They have no real discernible difference with fans of another sports club, yet meetings often erupt into disputes and even violence. I have often found myself making derogatory comments towards fans of Newcastle or Spurs, but what really separates us in general? Upbringing and location, and no more.
This should instantly remind you of nationalism and, of course, religion. Why? Because they are essentially the same thing. The belief that one thing is inherently superior to another because of personal affinity or kinship. The killing of something by a member of its own species may seem negative and deficient in an evolutionary sense, but this is simply a fire man had to stoke in order to master the world. Through loving one thing he neglects another, and through conflict he thrives. So many medical, technological and cultural advances could not have taken place where it not for this vestigial territorialism or tsambouka, of which nationalism, family, regional identity and religion all result.It is no wonder nobody can make up their minds whether the Israeli-Palestine conflict is a religious, cultural or territorial one: they are all essentially the same thing. We are misunderstanding when we hope for an IRA gunman to read Jesus' messages of peace. Do we really believe he will shoot someone for not accepting the succession of bishops, or acknowledging the divinity of the host? No. The words "Catholic" or "Protestant" or "Unionist" or "Loyalist" or "middle-class" or "Arab" or "kike" or "nigger" or "fag" simply mean "you're on the other team." They are the Other in the Lacanian sense.
This isn't a religious trait. Nor is it merely a human one. It is rather an animalistic attribute. Religion is simply one of the many excuses for this sort of behaviour. The irony is that in setting themselves up as separate (Dennett and Dawkins are patrons/founders of the Brights movement, an attempt to assign a positive moniker to atheism in the way that "gay" was to homosexuality) intellectually and philosophically, these "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" are behaving in the same way. No, they aren't, as is often claimed by asinine critics, priests or prophets, but they are very proud of what sets them apart: McDonald's theology. As much as I like Dawkins and Hitchens, they more and more seem to fit G.K. Chesterton's description of "the village atheists shouting at the village idiots."
The common response: what about Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot? These arguments are, of course, deficient. At least on the surface. Totalitarian systems, and these included, so often exploit religious iconography and convention that to call any of these 20th century examples atheist would be absurd even before we look at the connections between Stalin and the Russian Orthodox Church, between Nazi-brand fascism and Catholicism. However, they were not theocracies, either: this I am sure we can agree on. But where do the similarities come from?
Watching 2001: A Space Odyssey is a fascinating experience as it charters man's regression through progression. We discover tools, yes, and use them to murder in order to master the world. In space we are infants once more, needing to be potty trained and taught how to eat and walk again. Finally, our tools rebel, and our next stage of evolution is into a state of innocence from rationality: we return to the Garden of Eden. Whilst nobody would pretend this is a realistic portrayal of man's evolution, it is at least a symbolically sound one. What's worth noticing in this instance is not the fact the Monolith inspired the apes to use tools, but that the film post-Monolith deliberately sets up a far clearer tribal divide between the species. The fight over the watering hole becomes more obviously a battle, with well-defined armies driven by testosterone and territorial awareness.
This pattern is recurrent throughout nature. Compare the ant colony or the wolf pack with a group of sports fans. They have no real discernible difference with fans of another sports club, yet meetings often erupt into disputes and even violence. I have often found myself making derogatory comments towards fans of Newcastle or Spurs, but what really separates us in general? Upbringing and location, and no more.
This should instantly remind you of nationalism and, of course, religion. Why? Because they are essentially the same thing. The belief that one thing is inherently superior to another because of personal affinity or kinship. The killing of something by a member of its own species may seem negative and deficient in an evolutionary sense, but this is simply a fire man had to stoke in order to master the world. Through loving one thing he neglects another, and through conflict he thrives. So many medical, technological and cultural advances could not have taken place where it not for this vestigial territorialism or tsambouka, of which nationalism, family, regional identity and religion all result.It is no wonder nobody can make up their minds whether the Israeli-Palestine conflict is a religious, cultural or territorial one: they are all essentially the same thing. We are misunderstanding when we hope for an IRA gunman to read Jesus' messages of peace. Do we really believe he will shoot someone for not accepting the succession of bishops, or acknowledging the divinity of the host? No. The words "Catholic" or "Protestant" or "Unionist" or "Loyalist" or "middle-class" or "Arab" or "kike" or "nigger" or "fag" simply mean "you're on the other team." They are the Other in the Lacanian sense.
This isn't a religious trait. Nor is it merely a human one. It is rather an animalistic attribute. Religion is simply one of the many excuses for this sort of behaviour. The irony is that in setting themselves up as separate (Dennett and Dawkins are patrons/founders of the Brights movement, an attempt to assign a positive moniker to atheism in the way that "gay" was to homosexuality) intellectually and philosophically, these "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" are behaving in the same way. No, they aren't, as is often claimed by asinine critics, priests or prophets, but they are very proud of what sets them apart: McDonald's theology. As much as I like Dawkins and Hitchens, they more and more seem to fit G.K. Chesterton's description of "the village atheists shouting at the village idiots."
Saturday 18 October 2008
The Church of Everything
Slavoj Zizek, the Marxist philosopher and critic of, well, just about everything, is fond of pointing out the oppression of today's society, but I personally feel it's a point that is often missed. Surely today's society is less oppressive than, say, Soviet Russia? Or totalitarian European states that existed prior to the English Civil War?
A western society like the United Kingdom can be represented as much as anything by the outcome of the Hegelian dialectic, the equation put forward by the German philosopher Johan Fichte that reads thesis + antithesis = synthesis. One of the most common misunderstandings about the theory of evolution is the belief that there is a difference between transitional species and the species we see around us today, this arrogant worldview that we are in some way the finished product of a previous equation. This is simply incorrect: the process is still ongoing with no end in sight, and it is equally important to remember that the synthesis of the Hegelian dialectic is always a thesis and an antithesis in a successive equation; indeed, to do otherwise is dangerous (as it among other things leads to apathy). To write the Hegelian dialectic out in full would require a blackboard the length and width of the universe itself, so for the sake of limitation we must start with a synthesis and work backwards. This is easy with Britain, as it is so obviously a halfway house between authoritarianism and anarchism, a great example of a Western libertarian society because the vestigal organs are still alive in Buckingham Palace. We enjoy many freedoms and support sensible limitations: we can dress how we like (to a point), we can speak our minds (to a point), we can have sex with whatever we want (to a point), we can marry whom we please (to a point). But again human arrogance arises: 21st century liberal democracy is right, everything that led to it is wrong.
It is easy to look back and criticise from a position of hindsight. We see Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany as the ultimate dystopias, and criticisms of them that are too late to be relevant are held up as anti-establishment thought (see V For Vendetta). In my previous posts I have mentioned how apathy posits a political problem today, but there is a philosophical assault by the liberal democracy championed by the likes of Francis Fukyama: the oppression of tolerance. It was his criticism of tolerance that first drew me to Zizek, as tolerance has always struck me as an unpleasant word, and indeed it is also an unpleasant concept.
Since I am unashamedly ripping Slavoj off here, I will use his example: a classic, authoritarian father might say to you, "You are going to visit your grandmother today, whether you like it or not." The postmodern, liberal democratic father you might find today is far more likely to say, "You don't have to visit your grandmother, only go if you want to." The obligation to go is still there, but you have to like it, too. On a larger scale, whereas in the past homosexuality was illegal, now it is "tolerated," along with criticism of it. Yes, you can go out and say queering doesn't make the world work, but you will be frowned upon. We are no longer kept in place by armed police, but by society's expectation and the inner pain it can inflict.
Is this a good thing? Well, it means that the target has moved from the homosexual to the homophobe, which is a positive. But the enforcing of it is extremely dishonest. And it is only through conditioning that we even see this as positive. The late, great pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty noted that as a teacher he was no different from the progandists that were employed in Nazi Germany. He conditioned his students so that they were no longer bigots because he believed, as do I, that it was right to do so, just as a Nazi teacher would have conditioned his students to be bigots because he believed it was right to do so. Who has the moral advantage? It lies only in the balance of the synthesis.
I once ridiculed Ann Coulter for her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism. In fact, she had an excellent point, whether she knew it or not. However preferable a secular democracy seems to us compared with a fascist theocracy, the enforcement of the former at the expense of what had gone before is as ironic as it is unjustifed. It's worth noting that there was never an explicit rule in Soviet Russia about criticising the communist society, but if you did you would undoubtedly disappear. Now? There is no criticism of the liberal democracy. Why? Because we no longer pander to utopias. Why? Because the 20th century seems to have borne out Antonin Artaud's belief that, since suffering is vital to human existence, utopias must always become dystopias. The truth is that nothing has changed as much as we'd like to think it has. We are still on leashes, they're just invisible now. And we are all still very, very partial to indoctrination.
A western society like the United Kingdom can be represented as much as anything by the outcome of the Hegelian dialectic, the equation put forward by the German philosopher Johan Fichte that reads thesis + antithesis = synthesis. One of the most common misunderstandings about the theory of evolution is the belief that there is a difference between transitional species and the species we see around us today, this arrogant worldview that we are in some way the finished product of a previous equation. This is simply incorrect: the process is still ongoing with no end in sight, and it is equally important to remember that the synthesis of the Hegelian dialectic is always a thesis and an antithesis in a successive equation; indeed, to do otherwise is dangerous (as it among other things leads to apathy). To write the Hegelian dialectic out in full would require a blackboard the length and width of the universe itself, so for the sake of limitation we must start with a synthesis and work backwards. This is easy with Britain, as it is so obviously a halfway house between authoritarianism and anarchism, a great example of a Western libertarian society because the vestigal organs are still alive in Buckingham Palace. We enjoy many freedoms and support sensible limitations: we can dress how we like (to a point), we can speak our minds (to a point), we can have sex with whatever we want (to a point), we can marry whom we please (to a point). But again human arrogance arises: 21st century liberal democracy is right, everything that led to it is wrong.
It is easy to look back and criticise from a position of hindsight. We see Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany as the ultimate dystopias, and criticisms of them that are too late to be relevant are held up as anti-establishment thought (see V For Vendetta). In my previous posts I have mentioned how apathy posits a political problem today, but there is a philosophical assault by the liberal democracy championed by the likes of Francis Fukyama: the oppression of tolerance. It was his criticism of tolerance that first drew me to Zizek, as tolerance has always struck me as an unpleasant word, and indeed it is also an unpleasant concept.
Since I am unashamedly ripping Slavoj off here, I will use his example: a classic, authoritarian father might say to you, "You are going to visit your grandmother today, whether you like it or not." The postmodern, liberal democratic father you might find today is far more likely to say, "You don't have to visit your grandmother, only go if you want to." The obligation to go is still there, but you have to like it, too. On a larger scale, whereas in the past homosexuality was illegal, now it is "tolerated," along with criticism of it. Yes, you can go out and say queering doesn't make the world work, but you will be frowned upon. We are no longer kept in place by armed police, but by society's expectation and the inner pain it can inflict.
Is this a good thing? Well, it means that the target has moved from the homosexual to the homophobe, which is a positive. But the enforcing of it is extremely dishonest. And it is only through conditioning that we even see this as positive. The late, great pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty noted that as a teacher he was no different from the progandists that were employed in Nazi Germany. He conditioned his students so that they were no longer bigots because he believed, as do I, that it was right to do so, just as a Nazi teacher would have conditioned his students to be bigots because he believed it was right to do so. Who has the moral advantage? It lies only in the balance of the synthesis.
I once ridiculed Ann Coulter for her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism. In fact, she had an excellent point, whether she knew it or not. However preferable a secular democracy seems to us compared with a fascist theocracy, the enforcement of the former at the expense of what had gone before is as ironic as it is unjustifed. It's worth noting that there was never an explicit rule in Soviet Russia about criticising the communist society, but if you did you would undoubtedly disappear. Now? There is no criticism of the liberal democracy. Why? Because we no longer pander to utopias. Why? Because the 20th century seems to have borne out Antonin Artaud's belief that, since suffering is vital to human existence, utopias must always become dystopias. The truth is that nothing has changed as much as we'd like to think it has. We are still on leashes, they're just invisible now. And we are all still very, very partial to indoctrination.
Monday 13 October 2008
A Tale of Two Countries
I must say, with all the excitement generated by our pals across the pond I almost forgot that we had politics of our own. The US elections are fascinating to watch because of how backwards they seem to us. This is not at all to say that the British governmental system is superior (see my earlier posts), but that what is and what isn't a contentious point in the US makes the candidates seem immensely prosophobic. For instance, Barack Obama was labelled a radical by Sarah Palin for taking a stance that would allow a failed abortion to continue. Going back a bit, Dennis Kucinich has long been pinned by similar labels for, among other things, advocating a national heath service. This, I was made to believe, made him among the most socialist of candidates and therefore unelectable.
I wonder how these people would respond if they were to discover that the UK, one of their greatest foreign allies, has been a socialist country since at least 1948 (and indeed one might contend that the Liberal party that was voted in in 1906 was actually a late comer in taking advantage of Keir Hardian socialist ideas). I don't remember any serious political figure even suggesting the NHS should be privitised, let alone got rid of completely. And the right to buy handguns? You'd be laughed out of the Commons.
Abortion, of course, is a contentious issue whichever side of the Atlantic Ocean it rears its head, but at least both major parties over here support a woman's right to choose. There seems to be no consensus between Republicans on this, and indeed even individuals have trouble making their minds up. Does anyone know what Rudy Giuliani's stance was in the end? Say what you like about New Labour and the Third Way, but after following American politics for a while it seems ludicrous to imagine a Catholic-sympathising (and later convert) leader of a conservative political party, as Tony Blair was, championing pro-choice and gay rights, yet an eyebrow was hardly raised in the UK because it seemed sensible. Last year was the 40th anniversary of the Abortion Act (the UK's version of Roe vs Wade in that it didn't overturn a previous ruling but rather clarified it) and the resultant protesting by pro-lifers was generally regarded to be the actions of outsiders, projecting images onto the Houses of Parliament and distributing leaflets that compared abortion to the Holocaust (if memory serves, 6 million abortions had taken place in the UK since 1967). It was rather telling when the campaigners couldn't muster a single woman to represent them in a BBC interview.
But this is simply evidence of how stagnated British politics has become. We're at a key stage of ecomonic interest, Labour having in the past few months nationalised two banks, first Northern Rock and then Bradford & Bingley, yet where is the ideological bickering? I can only imagine the uproar that would have resulted in the US, judging by how every "socialist" movement (at least by the Democrats: George W. Bush, if you remember him, has just agreed to the largest socialist suggestion in US history) is treated with extreme scrutiny and suspicion. Naturally, there was criticism by the Conservatives (in the Commons and through soundbites), but it was hardly vociferous enough to be newsworthy. In fact, I had to sit through the Tory Conference in Birmingham a few weeks ago before I heard a soapbox-worthy whisper about it.
Urgh, I sort of wish I hadn't. It was one of the most patronising experiences of my life (and I realise this blog is on the verge of being purely criticism of the Tories). Highlights included banter between Boris Johnson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, a hall full of senile upper class toffs trying to figure out why there were black people blowing into their hands on stage, and Andrew Mitchell (I think, they all sort of look the same) wheeling out Uncle Tom, MP, who had a double-barrelled surname, presumably to show they weren't racist. They also played The Killers during intervals to show how this party is so, like, with it. But it was George Osborne, and only George Osborne, who led me to believe he had read a newspaper in the past four months. Unfortunately, his contest, whilst delivered with a clear, self-righteous tenor, was too contradictory to clarify anything for me. On one hand, he asserted that ten years of Labour's irresponsible free-market policies were to blame for this economic crisis. On the other, he decried the nationalisation of banks and warned of the idiocy of the Left. So not only are Labour decadent ultracapitalists, but also fiendish Marxist dogs at the same time. The crowd applauded wildly at this concise summing up of Comrade Brown and Comrade Darling, whilst I changed the channel to Fox News.
Perhaps I just enjoy being outraged. But with all the idealism gone from British politics, it's no wonder how apathetic we are. And who would have thought that apathy, rather than war, could lead to a country's downfall? Surely, not even Orwell. In my last post of this nature, I warned that the BNP is the fastest growing party in Britain. A few months down the line and Stoke seems to be the first city in England to be within Nick Griffin's conceivable grasp. A warning to any Americans: the grass may be greener over here, but it so very, very dry.
I wonder how these people would respond if they were to discover that the UK, one of their greatest foreign allies, has been a socialist country since at least 1948 (and indeed one might contend that the Liberal party that was voted in in 1906 was actually a late comer in taking advantage of Keir Hardian socialist ideas). I don't remember any serious political figure even suggesting the NHS should be privitised, let alone got rid of completely. And the right to buy handguns? You'd be laughed out of the Commons.
Abortion, of course, is a contentious issue whichever side of the Atlantic Ocean it rears its head, but at least both major parties over here support a woman's right to choose. There seems to be no consensus between Republicans on this, and indeed even individuals have trouble making their minds up. Does anyone know what Rudy Giuliani's stance was in the end? Say what you like about New Labour and the Third Way, but after following American politics for a while it seems ludicrous to imagine a Catholic-sympathising (and later convert) leader of a conservative political party, as Tony Blair was, championing pro-choice and gay rights, yet an eyebrow was hardly raised in the UK because it seemed sensible. Last year was the 40th anniversary of the Abortion Act (the UK's version of Roe vs Wade in that it didn't overturn a previous ruling but rather clarified it) and the resultant protesting by pro-lifers was generally regarded to be the actions of outsiders, projecting images onto the Houses of Parliament and distributing leaflets that compared abortion to the Holocaust (if memory serves, 6 million abortions had taken place in the UK since 1967). It was rather telling when the campaigners couldn't muster a single woman to represent them in a BBC interview.
But this is simply evidence of how stagnated British politics has become. We're at a key stage of ecomonic interest, Labour having in the past few months nationalised two banks, first Northern Rock and then Bradford & Bingley, yet where is the ideological bickering? I can only imagine the uproar that would have resulted in the US, judging by how every "socialist" movement (at least by the Democrats: George W. Bush, if you remember him, has just agreed to the largest socialist suggestion in US history) is treated with extreme scrutiny and suspicion. Naturally, there was criticism by the Conservatives (in the Commons and through soundbites), but it was hardly vociferous enough to be newsworthy. In fact, I had to sit through the Tory Conference in Birmingham a few weeks ago before I heard a soapbox-worthy whisper about it.
Urgh, I sort of wish I hadn't. It was one of the most patronising experiences of my life (and I realise this blog is on the verge of being purely criticism of the Tories). Highlights included banter between Boris Johnson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, a hall full of senile upper class toffs trying to figure out why there were black people blowing into their hands on stage, and Andrew Mitchell (I think, they all sort of look the same) wheeling out Uncle Tom, MP, who had a double-barrelled surname, presumably to show they weren't racist. They also played The Killers during intervals to show how this party is so, like, with it. But it was George Osborne, and only George Osborne, who led me to believe he had read a newspaper in the past four months. Unfortunately, his contest, whilst delivered with a clear, self-righteous tenor, was too contradictory to clarify anything for me. On one hand, he asserted that ten years of Labour's irresponsible free-market policies were to blame for this economic crisis. On the other, he decried the nationalisation of banks and warned of the idiocy of the Left. So not only are Labour decadent ultracapitalists, but also fiendish Marxist dogs at the same time. The crowd applauded wildly at this concise summing up of Comrade Brown and Comrade Darling, whilst I changed the channel to Fox News.
Perhaps I just enjoy being outraged. But with all the idealism gone from British politics, it's no wonder how apathetic we are. And who would have thought that apathy, rather than war, could lead to a country's downfall? Surely, not even Orwell. In my last post of this nature, I warned that the BNP is the fastest growing party in Britain. A few months down the line and Stoke seems to be the first city in England to be within Nick Griffin's conceivable grasp. A warning to any Americans: the grass may be greener over here, but it so very, very dry.
Sunday 12 October 2008
Poem to Commemorate Liverpool, 2008 European Capital of Culture...
...(and The Fantastic Work Done By City Officials to Tackle Social Problems in Poor Areas and to Thus Ensure The Award Was Not Focused on Silly Fireworks Displays in the City Centre)
Around my berd deh do dere stand
Fellas from every city
From Bermingham to London town
And they do all smell quite shitty.
But itud be a crime to start,
To do them in right now
Aside from the fact the busies are here
Shes a ugly fuckin cow.
So me mate I only see
One possible course of action
I might end up in the nick
But at least I won’t be in traction:
Al wait until we get home
Where there won’t be quite so many
Al start a row, she’ll throw a plate
An al kick’er in the fanny.
Around my berd deh do dere stand
Fellas from every city
From Bermingham to London town
And they do all smell quite shitty.
But itud be a crime to start,
To do them in right now
Aside from the fact the busies are here
Shes a ugly fuckin cow.
So me mate I only see
One possible course of action
I might end up in the nick
But at least I won’t be in traction:
Al wait until we get home
Where there won’t be quite so many
Al start a row, she’ll throw a plate
An al kick’er in the fanny.
Saturday 27 September 2008
Distant Voices, Still Lives
It's wonderful when you discover a cult classic for the first time. You ache for its undeserved low-profile, yet revel in the fact it feels so much more personal and intimate for it. Withnail & I (Bruce Robinson, 1986) is one of those films I loved so much I had to show it to my friends; others, like Demoni (Lamberto Bava, 1985) or Salome's Last Dance (Ken Russell, 1988) I had to more or less keep to myself (anyone who's seen the latter particularly will probably know why).
I am unsure under which category Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davis, 1988) falls. Even compared to some other examples of cult films I've given on this blog, this is one that really fell off the face of the earth. For years I couldn't even acquire a second hand copy on VHS; really, "golddust" doesn't quite cover it. Thankfully, those lovely appreciative people at the British Film Institute have finally brought the film to DVD, complete with a booklet, interviews with the director, a theatrical trailer and so forth. The grauniad, of course, jumped on the bandwagon and now the film is finally getting some recogntion after years wandering movie wilderness, perhaps occasionally bumping into Hurlements en faveur de Sade or French Dressing.
But is it any good?
Yes, absolutely. In fact, I cannot think of a better film to come from these so humble Isles.
And that's the most frightening thing about the film. This isn't simply a generation experiencing hard times, but a self-renewing purgatory to test Sisyphus. As children the women can't understand why their loving mother has married such a bullying scumbag, as adults they marry into the same breed. And they know it, too. The charcters' only release is song, which they crave like junkies seek heroin, singing to release themselves from the threat of complete mental breakdown. It is in this way that the film is the purest of musicals, using song not merely to entertain or as a stylistic choice, but to uncover truths about the world.
Of course, the stifling and claustrophobic social boundaries that families like the Davises suffered would have been broken down somewhat by the 60s and the advent of free love, social rebellion, and The Beatles, but this is still ten years away for the film's characters and seems like so much longer. And as Davis, having made the film in the 1980s, realises, it would be his hellish conservative vision of Liverpool that returned in a new form. If this makes the film sound like a depressing experience, fear not. Between the intelligent, often beautiful camerawork, urban-poetic characterisation, music and several key performances (Debi Jones as Mickie is an absolute treat), this film is wholly enjoyable. It also benefits hugely from an intellectual deep focus: the director is as conscious of the physical context of his film as he is the political and emotional, and therefore several presents in store for anyone who knows anything about the era of 40s and 50s Liverpool, including cameos from long forgotten favourite drinks from a wartime pub and The Futurist.
It's rare you get a film that makes you laugh through tears it's induced, but this is one of them, a brave, honest, intelligent, thoroughly interesting masterpiece from almost every angle.
I am unsure under which category Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davis, 1988) falls. Even compared to some other examples of cult films I've given on this blog, this is one that really fell off the face of the earth. For years I couldn't even acquire a second hand copy on VHS; really, "golddust" doesn't quite cover it. Thankfully, those lovely appreciative people at the British Film Institute have finally brought the film to DVD, complete with a booklet, interviews with the director, a theatrical trailer and so forth. The grauniad, of course, jumped on the bandwagon and now the film is finally getting some recogntion after years wandering movie wilderness, perhaps occasionally bumping into Hurlements en faveur de Sade or French Dressing.
But is it any good?
Yes, absolutely. In fact, I cannot think of a better film to come from these so humble Isles.
Distant Voices, Still Lives ostensibly chronicles personal memories of Davies' own working class family through the '40s and '50s, but truly this is a universal film. From the very first shot we know our perspective is in the hands of an extremely competent director, and the content of the film does not disappoint the formalism. Though like Angela's Ashes (Alan Parker, 1999) it portrays a class defecated upon by circumstances beyond their control, it isn't interested in whining, nor shocking the upper classes into action or shaming a government through propaganda like countless other films I could mention, but instead deals in facts presented naked, with a brutal honesty that sends up the chosen microcosm as just as faulted morally as their situation.
It isn't simply a film about class, but also gender. The women in the film are truly fascinating. Note the silence of the mother, the wavering sentimentality of the daughters, the headstrong bravado of the friend: all crumbling rocks against which the domineering men crash, (The males are, with a few exceptions, bastards) from Pete Postlethwaite's chilling and abusive patriarch to Michael Starke's (Sinbad~!) slothful waster of a husband.And that's the most frightening thing about the film. This isn't simply a generation experiencing hard times, but a self-renewing purgatory to test Sisyphus. As children the women can't understand why their loving mother has married such a bullying scumbag, as adults they marry into the same breed. And they know it, too. The charcters' only release is song, which they crave like junkies seek heroin, singing to release themselves from the threat of complete mental breakdown. It is in this way that the film is the purest of musicals, using song not merely to entertain or as a stylistic choice, but to uncover truths about the world.
Of course, the stifling and claustrophobic social boundaries that families like the Davises suffered would have been broken down somewhat by the 60s and the advent of free love, social rebellion, and The Beatles, but this is still ten years away for the film's characters and seems like so much longer. And as Davis, having made the film in the 1980s, realises, it would be his hellish conservative vision of Liverpool that returned in a new form. If this makes the film sound like a depressing experience, fear not. Between the intelligent, often beautiful camerawork, urban-poetic characterisation, music and several key performances (Debi Jones as Mickie is an absolute treat), this film is wholly enjoyable. It also benefits hugely from an intellectual deep focus: the director is as conscious of the physical context of his film as he is the political and emotional, and therefore several presents in store for anyone who knows anything about the era of 40s and 50s Liverpool, including cameos from long forgotten favourite drinks from a wartime pub and The Futurist.
It's rare you get a film that makes you laugh through tears it's induced, but this is one of them, a brave, honest, intelligent, thoroughly interesting masterpiece from almost every angle.
Thursday 25 September 2008
The best film of the 2000s is a David Lynch film
...And it isn't Mulholland Drive.
As I alluded to in my last entry, people rarely like being taken out of their comfort zones. In a rather unfortunate twist of fate, there are few things I enjoy more, but it rarely happens. I've not seen nearly enough films to be desensitised, of course, but the films that are accepted into the general zeitgeist as "great films" are hardly ever brave enough. I'm not merely talking about the general Oscar fodder, like Crash, Brokeback Mountain, There Will Be Blood, the latest Clint Eastwood film, etc., but even the also-rans that come up when the surface is scratched. The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford is currently being held up by a small but loud minority as an all-time classic Western, and even, I've heard, a deep and philosophical masterpiece that was simply too ambitious to be mentioned in the Academy Awards. Yes, a Brad Pitt film is apparently too cult-y for the status quo. It's like Fight Club all over again.
This isn't snobbery. I was, after all, a big fan of No Country For Old Men. I'm not going to pretend, however, it was particularly groundbreaking. The problem is that even the aforementioned reactionaries still pull for films that have standard (albeit wandering) narratives and beautiful cinematography. Occasionally there might be a "great" Hollywood performance to buck up its chances. The main mistake is defining a film by the Oscars it did or didn't win.
I don't think even David Lynch, the supposed king of cult, understands this. He after all campaigned two years ago for Laura Dern's Academy credentials, recalling to mind Robert Rodriguez' championing of Frank Miller and acrimonious departure from the Director's Guild. Although I have never been a huge fan of Lynch, I would be sad to see him fall into the Tarantino Club for sidelined directors who appeal to teenagers angry at an unseen, disembodied force tentatively labelled as "the Establishment." (if he hasn't already.)
Lynch's film Mulholland Drive is not quite in the Assassination of Jesse James... category, owing to the fact it is a vastly superior work, but the murmurings of discontent still bubbled to the surface when Lynch failed to win Best Director and had to settle for a round of Golden Globes. You've heard most of the acclaim, I'm sure: it's the best film of the 2000s, it's the film Lynch has been working towards his whole life, etc. Even Roger Ebert, who was a vehement critic of the director's earlier efforts, praised it for being a Lynch film that didn't "shatter the test tubes."
For me, the fact it didn't is why it isn't Lynch's crowning achievement. Like Blue Velvet, a work that seems to be unanimously accepted as Lynch's other masterwork, it is fascinating in parts and cherishable, but doesn't push the envelope as much as I have now been convinced Lynch can.
By contrast, no test tube could ever hope to contain Inland Empire. The film is in parts beautiful, thought-provoking, embracing, alienating, funny and genuinely terrifying. It never limits itself to anyone else's philosophy, never sells itself short through references. One is reminded of Felini's 8½, another film that refused to compromise or bend to what had gone before, but with respect to the Italian master, even that comparison does not do justice to how far Lynch has allowed himself to go. All conventions are shunned, all pretentions of coherent storytelling are cruelly torn down to make way for a psychological rollercoaster.
The character listed in the credits as The Phantom is perhaps the epitome of this. He haunts the film (truly I would love to draw lines between Dern's character's world, her subconsciousness and the film-within-the-film just to organise my thoughts, but this would be doing a disservice to Lynch's anarchaic blending that has rendered such concepts as metafiction irrelevant until they adapt to the film and begin to take on new meanings), silently, without introduction or narrative explanation. The theme, and the reactions of the characters, are the only elements that acknowledge him as a threat, and therefore so do we. His final appearance is the pinnacle of shocks in cinema, too unconscious and unreasonable a fright to be made sense of by a mammal reliant on his reasoning and functioning frontal lobe.
I want to tell you more, but truly this is the most Brechtian and Lynchian of films in the sense that it requires you to bring more of yourself to the table than any of its predecessors. It's one of about three films that has ever taken me outside of my comfort zone, and the first while I've been an adult. It is only the second film (after Tarkovsky's The Mirror) that I have felt deserves to share György Lukács "criticism" of Joyce's Ulysses as an ultimate example of borgeois decadence.
Unfortunately, it's seemingly been shunned in every which way. A book I own, called The 1001 Films To See Before You Die, offers Little Miss Sunshine, The Prestige, Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men, The Last King of Scotland, Borat, Babel, The Queen, Apocalypto and The Departed as better uses of your time from the same year. One cannot help but wonder, though, whether Vertigo would have been listed had the book been compiled in 1958. The truth is that whatever popular opinion change now, it is guaranteed to change in the future, and there is perhaps no more fickle area of criticism than film (does anyone remember when There Will Be Blood was being offered up not only as the film of the year, but a classic superior even to Citizen Kane or The Godfather?). I am confident that in 20 years Inland Empire will be accepted as the cinematic landmark it so deserves to be, rather than the brave folly it is perceived as now. Hey, maybe even Tarr's Satantango is only 10 years short of that particular club membership.
29/11/08 revision: A Freudian slip on my part, as I misattributed a criticism of Ulysses to Terry Eagleton rather than György Lukács
As I alluded to in my last entry, people rarely like being taken out of their comfort zones. In a rather unfortunate twist of fate, there are few things I enjoy more, but it rarely happens. I've not seen nearly enough films to be desensitised, of course, but the films that are accepted into the general zeitgeist as "great films" are hardly ever brave enough. I'm not merely talking about the general Oscar fodder, like Crash, Brokeback Mountain, There Will Be Blood, the latest Clint Eastwood film, etc., but even the also-rans that come up when the surface is scratched. The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford is currently being held up by a small but loud minority as an all-time classic Western, and even, I've heard, a deep and philosophical masterpiece that was simply too ambitious to be mentioned in the Academy Awards. Yes, a Brad Pitt film is apparently too cult-y for the status quo. It's like Fight Club all over again.
This isn't snobbery. I was, after all, a big fan of No Country For Old Men. I'm not going to pretend, however, it was particularly groundbreaking. The problem is that even the aforementioned reactionaries still pull for films that have standard (albeit wandering) narratives and beautiful cinematography. Occasionally there might be a "great" Hollywood performance to buck up its chances. The main mistake is defining a film by the Oscars it did or didn't win.
I don't think even David Lynch, the supposed king of cult, understands this. He after all campaigned two years ago for Laura Dern's Academy credentials, recalling to mind Robert Rodriguez' championing of Frank Miller and acrimonious departure from the Director's Guild. Although I have never been a huge fan of Lynch, I would be sad to see him fall into the Tarantino Club for sidelined directors who appeal to teenagers angry at an unseen, disembodied force tentatively labelled as "the Establishment." (if he hasn't already.)
Lynch's film Mulholland Drive is not quite in the Assassination of Jesse James... category, owing to the fact it is a vastly superior work, but the murmurings of discontent still bubbled to the surface when Lynch failed to win Best Director and had to settle for a round of Golden Globes. You've heard most of the acclaim, I'm sure: it's the best film of the 2000s, it's the film Lynch has been working towards his whole life, etc. Even Roger Ebert, who was a vehement critic of the director's earlier efforts, praised it for being a Lynch film that didn't "shatter the test tubes."
For me, the fact it didn't is why it isn't Lynch's crowning achievement. Like Blue Velvet, a work that seems to be unanimously accepted as Lynch's other masterwork, it is fascinating in parts and cherishable, but doesn't push the envelope as much as I have now been convinced Lynch can.
By contrast, no test tube could ever hope to contain Inland Empire. The film is in parts beautiful, thought-provoking, embracing, alienating, funny and genuinely terrifying. It never limits itself to anyone else's philosophy, never sells itself short through references. One is reminded of Felini's 8½, another film that refused to compromise or bend to what had gone before, but with respect to the Italian master, even that comparison does not do justice to how far Lynch has allowed himself to go. All conventions are shunned, all pretentions of coherent storytelling are cruelly torn down to make way for a psychological rollercoaster.
The character listed in the credits as The Phantom is perhaps the epitome of this. He haunts the film (truly I would love to draw lines between Dern's character's world, her subconsciousness and the film-within-the-film just to organise my thoughts, but this would be doing a disservice to Lynch's anarchaic blending that has rendered such concepts as metafiction irrelevant until they adapt to the film and begin to take on new meanings), silently, without introduction or narrative explanation. The theme, and the reactions of the characters, are the only elements that acknowledge him as a threat, and therefore so do we. His final appearance is the pinnacle of shocks in cinema, too unconscious and unreasonable a fright to be made sense of by a mammal reliant on his reasoning and functioning frontal lobe.
I want to tell you more, but truly this is the most Brechtian and Lynchian of films in the sense that it requires you to bring more of yourself to the table than any of its predecessors. It's one of about three films that has ever taken me outside of my comfort zone, and the first while I've been an adult. It is only the second film (after Tarkovsky's The Mirror) that I have felt deserves to share György Lukács "criticism" of Joyce's Ulysses as an ultimate example of borgeois decadence.
Unfortunately, it's seemingly been shunned in every which way. A book I own, called The 1001 Films To See Before You Die, offers Little Miss Sunshine, The Prestige, Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men, The Last King of Scotland, Borat, Babel, The Queen, Apocalypto and The Departed as better uses of your time from the same year. One cannot help but wonder, though, whether Vertigo would have been listed had the book been compiled in 1958. The truth is that whatever popular opinion change now, it is guaranteed to change in the future, and there is perhaps no more fickle area of criticism than film (does anyone remember when There Will Be Blood was being offered up not only as the film of the year, but a classic superior even to Citizen Kane or The Godfather?). I am confident that in 20 years Inland Empire will be accepted as the cinematic landmark it so deserves to be, rather than the brave folly it is perceived as now. Hey, maybe even Tarr's Satantango is only 10 years short of that particular club membership.
29/11/08 revision: A Freudian slip on my part, as I misattributed a criticism of Ulysses to Terry Eagleton rather than György Lukács
Wednesday 3 September 2008
Liverpool under attack
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/videos-pictures/videos/videos-news/2008/09/02/huge-creature-appears-in-city-centre-64375-21664141/
Wednesday 3rd September
Dawn The creature appears suspended on the side of Concourse Tower.
08.00h Press briefing – with photo and interview opportunities.
10.00h A Research Base is set up at the Echo Arena at the ACC.
16.00h Scientists arrive at Concourse Tower to set up searchlights to light the creature.
20.30h Scientists switch on searchlights, which stay lit overnight.
Thursday 4th September
11.30h The creature is craned off Concourse Tower.
12.30h The convoy carries the creature and sets off for the Research base at ACC.
13.00h The convoy arrives at the Research Base.
14.00h Press briefing with a member of the French artistic team.
Friday 5th September
11.30h The scientists perform experiments on the creature using different special effects to see how it responds to different stimuli. The creature wakes up and is prevented from running away by a wall of Chinese firecrackers and by a fire effect. Eventually the creature is sent to sleep by a snow machine.
13.00h Interview / photo / filming opps - member of the French artistic team,representative from Liverpool Culture Company, members of Artichoke production team.
18.00h The creature wakes and parades to Salthouse Dock.
19.30h The creature arrives at the Dock and takes a bath, accompanied by live music.
After her bath, she is dried and perfumed.
20.30h The creature sets off for Cunard Building.
21.00h The creature arrives at Cunard Building. It begins to snow gently and she falls asleep.
Saturday 6th September
11.30h The creature wakes up in the middle of a magical snowscape, and is serenaded with music.
12.30h The creature goes to sleep again.
13.00h Press briefing with a member of the French artistic team.
14.45h The creature leaves Cunard Building and walks up Water Street.
15.30h The creature arrives at Town Hall – smoke effect.
15.40h The creature walks towards Derby Square along Castle Street.
16.00h Water ballet at Derby Square.
16.15h The creature walks down Lord Street to Holy Corner where it is snowing.
17.00h The creature sleeps.
18.30h The creature wakes and walks down Parker Street, serenaded on the way.
20.00h A tempest rages at Ranelagh Place.
20.30h The creature arrives at Concourse Tower, climbs up the tower and goes to sleep.
Sunday 7th September
15.00h The creature wakes up and is prepared for the evening’s entertainment.
16.00h The creature goes back to sleep.
19.30h Cherry-pickers and musicians arrive.
20.00h The creature is removed from the tower with a crane.
20.30h The convoy leaves the tower and parades to Queensway Tunnel entrance.
21.15h The creature tries to escape, but is prevented from doing so by the special effect machines.
21.30h The creature escapes via the tunnel.
Escapes? Not without its wheels being taken.
Wednesday 3rd September
Dawn The creature appears suspended on the side of Concourse Tower.
08.00h Press briefing – with photo and interview opportunities.
10.00h A Research Base is set up at the Echo Arena at the ACC.
16.00h Scientists arrive at Concourse Tower to set up searchlights to light the creature.
20.30h Scientists switch on searchlights, which stay lit overnight.
Thursday 4th September
11.30h The creature is craned off Concourse Tower.
12.30h The convoy carries the creature and sets off for the Research base at ACC.
13.00h The convoy arrives at the Research Base.
14.00h Press briefing with a member of the French artistic team.
Friday 5th September
11.30h The scientists perform experiments on the creature using different special effects to see how it responds to different stimuli. The creature wakes up and is prevented from running away by a wall of Chinese firecrackers and by a fire effect. Eventually the creature is sent to sleep by a snow machine.
13.00h Interview / photo / filming opps - member of the French artistic team,representative from Liverpool Culture Company, members of Artichoke production team.
18.00h The creature wakes and parades to Salthouse Dock.
19.30h The creature arrives at the Dock and takes a bath, accompanied by live music.
After her bath, she is dried and perfumed.
20.30h The creature sets off for Cunard Building.
21.00h The creature arrives at Cunard Building. It begins to snow gently and she falls asleep.
Saturday 6th September
11.30h The creature wakes up in the middle of a magical snowscape, and is serenaded with music.
12.30h The creature goes to sleep again.
13.00h Press briefing with a member of the French artistic team.
14.45h The creature leaves Cunard Building and walks up Water Street.
15.30h The creature arrives at Town Hall – smoke effect.
15.40h The creature walks towards Derby Square along Castle Street.
16.00h Water ballet at Derby Square.
16.15h The creature walks down Lord Street to Holy Corner where it is snowing.
17.00h The creature sleeps.
18.30h The creature wakes and walks down Parker Street, serenaded on the way.
20.00h A tempest rages at Ranelagh Place.
20.30h The creature arrives at Concourse Tower, climbs up the tower and goes to sleep.
Sunday 7th September
15.00h The creature wakes up and is prepared for the evening’s entertainment.
16.00h The creature goes back to sleep.
19.30h Cherry-pickers and musicians arrive.
20.00h The creature is removed from the tower with a crane.
20.30h The convoy leaves the tower and parades to Queensway Tunnel entrance.
21.15h The creature tries to escape, but is prevented from doing so by the special effect machines.
21.30h The creature escapes via the tunnel.
Escapes? Not without its wheels being taken.
Tuesday 2 September 2008
V For Vendetta and The Establishment
Recently I was involved in a discussion about anti-establishment films, and which films sought to subvert the order in the most admirably artistic way. Admittedly, there were some great suggestions. Punishment Park (Peter Watkins, 1971) was brought up. If... (Lindsey Anderson, 1968). Guy Debord's films, too. Perhaps the most obscure was a Turkish film called Yol (Yılmaz Güney and Şerif Gören, 1982), a cruel indictment of the post-1980 coup Turkish prison system written by Güney whilst he himself was jailed (an "assimilated Kurd," he later escaped and finished the film in Switzerland). I had never heard of the film before, but as a supporter of a united Kurdistan, it definitely appeals.
There were, too, some ridiculous suggestions. Yes, V For Vendetta was brought up. I'm treading old ground here, but bear with me. It's vaguely terrifying that a film made by a major studio can today be seen as anti-establishment, but actually terrifying that it is in this case one so pro-establishment as this, a capitalist parable in which social liberation is withheld by a tangible political force and won, not by violence, but by docile submission. I need not remind you of what the revolting proles do when they amass in London, but I will anyway: they stand quietly transfixed by fireworks. Ironic, because this is exactly what the audience do, before going away contented by what they have seen rather than outraged at the real life government.
This is typical of a society that has been Prozaced to the point where "Orwellian" is a cliche term that clatters, useless and hollow on the ground, when someone spies a speed camera coming off the motorway. It seems that the imagination of the average cinema-goer only stretches as far as to see the symbols of V For Vendetta (the raised fists in the rain, victims dragged away in the night, the shaved heads of the prisoners, the giant red-and-black icons of fascism) as genuine subversive social criticism rather than cardboard cut-out relics of an early 20th century fear that can no longer hurt us. True irony rang unknowingly in the voices of the film's defenders as they criticised us for being elitist.
Perhaps this mirrors the political apathy in Britain, which can be laid square at the door of New Labour. Some in the 1970s and 80s, outraged at how far the UK could be privatised by Thatcher's Conservatives, foresaw political revolution. Surely this strike at the membrane of the welfare state could only result in a vicious recoil?
These people were hopelessly optimistic, and the government was allowed to continue castrating the unions and placing basic human needs such as gas in the hands of cynical corporations until, quite simply, nobody cared any more. When the Tories could no longer be controversial idealogically, they slipped into sleaze and irrelevance, to be replaced in the 90s by a cleaner, rebranded version of themselves: the Labour Party. Once a bastion of the British left-wing, Labour simply kept privitised Britain ticking over the way Thatcherites had intended. Again, I recall celebration by naive old socialists eleven years ago: if the Tories had not been overthrown, at least they had been replaced by a new, sensible centralist party. But what have been their most controversial and newsworthy policies? Tony Blair's legacy is to be found far from home, all the way in the Middle East, whilst a bill to reduce freedom of speech was not just a sideline issue but actually supported by hordes of university students who campaigned outside the Old Bailey for Nick Griffin to be imprisoned for speaking his mind more or less in private.
The irony is that the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, have become so indistinguishable that the battle between them is no longer fought on ideology but on image. Just as Labour defeated Tory in 1997 due to the latter's sleazy image, David Cameron's party is poised to take over from Labour because of clever rebranding. No Conservative voter I have talked to has been able to name ten polices of theirs that differ from Labour's. After the credit crunch, the fall of the housing market, the loss of personal data and several other high-profile cock-ups by Labour, the general consensus among political commentators is that the Tories are going to win not on their own merits but simply because they aren't Labour. This is seen as the pinnacle of political stagnation. The truth is far more horrfying: the truth is that they are going to win because they are Labour, a new, shiner Labour, just as Blair's Labour was a new, shiny Conservative Party. The same fortnight tired Gordon Brown unwisely compared himself to Heathcliffe, David Cameron began his campaign against fat and poor people and a Tory front bencher used the word "nigger" in the House of Lords, and, a month or two later, one of Cameron's favourite think tanks came to the conclusion that Northern English cities such as Newcastle and Liverpool, which have successfully undergone major refurbishment in the past few years, were beyond hope and should be abandoned altogether. But which of these four stories made the front pages? Yep, the Heathcliffe comparison.
There is an opportunity for change, however. The fastest growing party in the UK resembles neither of the Big Two. It is the British National Party, once a stalwart of the National Front of the 1980s that believed Thatcher's Conservatives had the right idea but weren't nearly right-wing enough. To give you an insight into what they stand for, in Stoke, one of their high-ranking bullies has become a martyr for their cause after pushing his Muslim next door neighbour too far (reports indicate a campaign of racial abuse years long, including Mr Khan's son being beaten into unconsciousness) and being stabbed in response.
A return to Gladstonian liberalism now seems impossible. We've become so anaethetised politically and artistically that borderline fascism is now waiting in the wings to strike. This is the ultimate sad irony that escapes those that champion partisan wankery like V For Vendetta as a defender of our right to be subversive and to think and live outside the box.
There were, too, some ridiculous suggestions. Yes, V For Vendetta was brought up. I'm treading old ground here, but bear with me. It's vaguely terrifying that a film made by a major studio can today be seen as anti-establishment, but actually terrifying that it is in this case one so pro-establishment as this, a capitalist parable in which social liberation is withheld by a tangible political force and won, not by violence, but by docile submission. I need not remind you of what the revolting proles do when they amass in London, but I will anyway: they stand quietly transfixed by fireworks. Ironic, because this is exactly what the audience do, before going away contented by what they have seen rather than outraged at the real life government.
This is typical of a society that has been Prozaced to the point where "Orwellian" is a cliche term that clatters, useless and hollow on the ground, when someone spies a speed camera coming off the motorway. It seems that the imagination of the average cinema-goer only stretches as far as to see the symbols of V For Vendetta (the raised fists in the rain, victims dragged away in the night, the shaved heads of the prisoners, the giant red-and-black icons of fascism) as genuine subversive social criticism rather than cardboard cut-out relics of an early 20th century fear that can no longer hurt us. True irony rang unknowingly in the voices of the film's defenders as they criticised us for being elitist.
Perhaps this mirrors the political apathy in Britain, which can be laid square at the door of New Labour. Some in the 1970s and 80s, outraged at how far the UK could be privatised by Thatcher's Conservatives, foresaw political revolution. Surely this strike at the membrane of the welfare state could only result in a vicious recoil?
These people were hopelessly optimistic, and the government was allowed to continue castrating the unions and placing basic human needs such as gas in the hands of cynical corporations until, quite simply, nobody cared any more. When the Tories could no longer be controversial idealogically, they slipped into sleaze and irrelevance, to be replaced in the 90s by a cleaner, rebranded version of themselves: the Labour Party. Once a bastion of the British left-wing, Labour simply kept privitised Britain ticking over the way Thatcherites had intended. Again, I recall celebration by naive old socialists eleven years ago: if the Tories had not been overthrown, at least they had been replaced by a new, sensible centralist party. But what have been their most controversial and newsworthy policies? Tony Blair's legacy is to be found far from home, all the way in the Middle East, whilst a bill to reduce freedom of speech was not just a sideline issue but actually supported by hordes of university students who campaigned outside the Old Bailey for Nick Griffin to be imprisoned for speaking his mind more or less in private.
The irony is that the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, have become so indistinguishable that the battle between them is no longer fought on ideology but on image. Just as Labour defeated Tory in 1997 due to the latter's sleazy image, David Cameron's party is poised to take over from Labour because of clever rebranding. No Conservative voter I have talked to has been able to name ten polices of theirs that differ from Labour's. After the credit crunch, the fall of the housing market, the loss of personal data and several other high-profile cock-ups by Labour, the general consensus among political commentators is that the Tories are going to win not on their own merits but simply because they aren't Labour. This is seen as the pinnacle of political stagnation. The truth is far more horrfying: the truth is that they are going to win because they are Labour, a new, shiner Labour, just as Blair's Labour was a new, shiny Conservative Party. The same fortnight tired Gordon Brown unwisely compared himself to Heathcliffe, David Cameron began his campaign against fat and poor people and a Tory front bencher used the word "nigger" in the House of Lords, and, a month or two later, one of Cameron's favourite think tanks came to the conclusion that Northern English cities such as Newcastle and Liverpool, which have successfully undergone major refurbishment in the past few years, were beyond hope and should be abandoned altogether. But which of these four stories made the front pages? Yep, the Heathcliffe comparison.
There is an opportunity for change, however. The fastest growing party in the UK resembles neither of the Big Two. It is the British National Party, once a stalwart of the National Front of the 1980s that believed Thatcher's Conservatives had the right idea but weren't nearly right-wing enough. To give you an insight into what they stand for, in Stoke, one of their high-ranking bullies has become a martyr for their cause after pushing his Muslim next door neighbour too far (reports indicate a campaign of racial abuse years long, including Mr Khan's son being beaten into unconsciousness) and being stabbed in response.
A return to Gladstonian liberalism now seems impossible. We've become so anaethetised politically and artistically that borderline fascism is now waiting in the wings to strike. This is the ultimate sad irony that escapes those that champion partisan wankery like V For Vendetta as a defender of our right to be subversive and to think and live outside the box.
Friday 2 May 2008
Monday 28 April 2008
My Anti-Drug
Sometimes you don't know how bad you felt until you have an eggy in the basket the next morning.
I've been doing an experiment involving cheese and bad dreams, and it's working. The fact I know about the experiment is probably throwing off the accuracy somewhat, and some would question why I'd want to have a bad dream, but to hell with it. Every dreamless sleep is, in my opinion, a missed opportunity. I'm at a stage where I'm using Red Leicester to trip and egg in a basket to come down again, and if that doesn't make me the envy of Englishmen everywhere, then nothing will.
Halfway through my breakfast I was reminded of V For Vendetta. I've recently re-read it, having had all happy memories bludgeoned out of me by the film version. And it's actually as good as it ever was. I'm not going to wax lyrical on how Alan Moore is the Thomas Pynchon of comic books, but, as everyone and his dog knows by now, he's a beast and a half.
Perhaps, though, I was a bit mean to the film the first time around. It did have Stephen Fry. It did have John Hurt. It did have Stephen Rea, if I remember correctly. It did have a man in a Guy Fawkes mask doing in a party of fascists. It did influence Anonymous. And it did piss off religious groups and homophobes.
Here's a runthrough of what I said about it the first time:
"The Wachowskis sink their fat jaws into the neck of Alan Moore's story and suck all the interest out of it, leaving a corpse of a film for McTeigue to put a mask and a silly wig on. If you're sad enough to have read the graphic novel then my complaints become clear.
Originally the story was a commentary on Thatcherism. Very British, very meaningful, very poetic even in its politics. It was about anarchism vs fascism, two awful ideals battling over Britain's future and leaving the reader unsure who to root for. The film is intended as a criticism on W. Bush's less libertarian policies such as the Patriot Act. It's about a freedom fighter vs the Nazis: totally uninteresting. Even when V resorts to more extreme methods (putting Evey in jail) he comes across as no more psychotic as a parent playing a prank on a child.
It's truly a testament to the mollycoddled, easily-offended sensibilities of the Baby Boomer generation that such a watered-down, unimportant film like this created such an uproar in certain circles. Portman's acting is dreadful, and while "cool" action sequences have their place, you can't approach subject matter intended to be taken seriously with such a cartoonish feel. It's not quite as dreadful as the other adaptations of Moore's work, but that's not saying a lot."
Hmm...nah, actually, I can stick by that. The book has a power undeniable to anyone who is English and, with the sinking feeling of one slipping into a nightmare, doesn't dare switch off the news; whereas the film was basically an American liberal wetdream represented by a cartoon. This outright rejection probably has something to do with my being a philosophical anarchist as well, I suppose. Though, I think even if I wasn't I would have thought the film was a pile.
But then... Stephen Fry. Making eggy in a basket.
I'll give it another watch just for that.
I've been doing an experiment involving cheese and bad dreams, and it's working. The fact I know about the experiment is probably throwing off the accuracy somewhat, and some would question why I'd want to have a bad dream, but to hell with it. Every dreamless sleep is, in my opinion, a missed opportunity. I'm at a stage where I'm using Red Leicester to trip and egg in a basket to come down again, and if that doesn't make me the envy of Englishmen everywhere, then nothing will.
Halfway through my breakfast I was reminded of V For Vendetta. I've recently re-read it, having had all happy memories bludgeoned out of me by the film version. And it's actually as good as it ever was. I'm not going to wax lyrical on how Alan Moore is the Thomas Pynchon of comic books, but, as everyone and his dog knows by now, he's a beast and a half.
Perhaps, though, I was a bit mean to the film the first time around. It did have Stephen Fry. It did have John Hurt. It did have Stephen Rea, if I remember correctly. It did have a man in a Guy Fawkes mask doing in a party of fascists. It did influence Anonymous. And it did piss off religious groups and homophobes.
Here's a runthrough of what I said about it the first time:
"The Wachowskis sink their fat jaws into the neck of Alan Moore's story and suck all the interest out of it, leaving a corpse of a film for McTeigue to put a mask and a silly wig on. If you're sad enough to have read the graphic novel then my complaints become clear.
Originally the story was a commentary on Thatcherism. Very British, very meaningful, very poetic even in its politics. It was about anarchism vs fascism, two awful ideals battling over Britain's future and leaving the reader unsure who to root for. The film is intended as a criticism on W. Bush's less libertarian policies such as the Patriot Act. It's about a freedom fighter vs the Nazis: totally uninteresting. Even when V resorts to more extreme methods (putting Evey in jail) he comes across as no more psychotic as a parent playing a prank on a child.
It's truly a testament to the mollycoddled, easily-offended sensibilities of the Baby Boomer generation that such a watered-down, unimportant film like this created such an uproar in certain circles. Portman's acting is dreadful, and while "cool" action sequences have their place, you can't approach subject matter intended to be taken seriously with such a cartoonish feel. It's not quite as dreadful as the other adaptations of Moore's work, but that's not saying a lot."
Hmm...nah, actually, I can stick by that. The book has a power undeniable to anyone who is English and, with the sinking feeling of one slipping into a nightmare, doesn't dare switch off the news; whereas the film was basically an American liberal wetdream represented by a cartoon. This outright rejection probably has something to do with my being a philosophical anarchist as well, I suppose. Though, I think even if I wasn't I would have thought the film was a pile.
But then... Stephen Fry. Making eggy in a basket.
I'll give it another watch just for that.
Friday 25 April 2008
Only Skin
Bored, I smoked a vial of 20X salvia and made my way across town to the ‘Sk-Interface’ exhibition I’d seen advertised at FACT. I tried to picture the person who’d come up with the name ‘Sk-Interface,’ but my imagination failed me after ‘dropped out of college in second year to explore east Asia.’
What first struck me wasn’t the darkness, or the fear of the unknown. It was the feeling I’d arrived somewhere.
I walked past two students crouched together on the floor. They were laughing about something.
Sometimes it’s difficult to imagine I’m a student too. They all fit so many stereotypes in that they’re trying to escape stereotypes. Autumn-coloured scarves, long or spiked hair, satchels, Converses. Proud avatars being washed unwittingly away in a sea of conformity. They might as well be wearing uniforms. Maybe the next dictator will let people choose what they conform into forever.
I approached the first exhibit. To say it was repulsive would be akin to calling the Eiffel Tower tall: in the right area but nowhere near the right word. They were what appeared to be threads of skin hanging in round glass jars. My guidebook informed me they were ‘semi-living’ sculptures in the form of miniature jackets. ‘Victimless leather.’ I knew somewhere someone was celebrating, but just for the moment I couldn’t imagine why.
Supposedly, due to the value of the incubators, they were still growing, and would continue to throughout the exhibition. Maybe if I came back in a week they would fit a mouse.
My way only sparsely lit, I made it over to the far wall, where a projection showed an operation taking place. Despite an eerie David Lynch-esque soundtrack and the mechanical whirring of a nearby 3D clinostat providing the only narration, I quickly got the picture: a man was having an artificial ear inserted into the inside of his forearm. This, I later discovered, was an ear with Internet and Bluetooth capability. Again, I’m quite sure I missed the point.
It reminded me of an Australian I’d once met who’d had rare earth magnets installed under his fingertips. When asked what was the point, he told a long-winded story about being able to distinguish between different types of catfood tins. He claimed he was able to amuse himself for hours on end simply going through his girlfriend’s cupboards and handling her cat’s meals for the week. I had to ask whether there was any practical benefit (besides becoming a serial molester and connoisseur of tin cans) before he told me it had saved his life. Once, whilst working on a construction site, he had very nearly laid his hand on an unlabelled electric cable before a sensory phenomenon in his fingertips warned him not to. He learned not soon after that the cable contained a voltage charge of around 1,000. Consider, he told me, that it would only take about 60-100 volts to kill a man of his size through atrial fibrillation. When I asked him why he hadn’t been wearing gloves the conversation quickly dissipated.
Other exhibitions were equally ‘alternative.’ A magnetic resonance scan of an artist’s brain filled out with luminescent moss. A patchwork quilt of animal cells, both human and non-human. A collection of vaginal cells with a shape cut into them, designed to symbolically ‘re-virginize’ continually.
After that I needed a bit of a breather, so I knelt in a corner before the surgical video. Hopefully, this made me look mysterious. By the minimal light I read through what exhibits I had not yet visited. They were located in Gallery 2, which I knew was upstairs by the bar. Simply thinking of going back out into the light, away from the vacant faces of artsy students and the comforting sound of the Random Positioning Machine, felt akin to having to get out of bed too early in the morning. My sense of ‘arriving’ had been replaced by one of belonging. As little as I liked it, this gallery of grotesqueries had briefly become my world.
A girl stood by me staring in my direction. She was dressed like an art chick; boots, tied back hair, glasses, scarf, overcoat, fingerless gloves. I’m sure I’d never seen someone stand so still before. I thought she was looking at me, but as I came to my senses somewhat, I realised she was looking above me, reading the description of the ear man’s surgical procedure. From her face beneath her bifocals, I imagined she got the point far better than I did. But it was only imagining.
She left me crouching beneath a 50 x 50 photo of white-gloved hands scissoring through someone’s skin. Soon after, I too stepped out into the light.
The light, and two other exhibits. One, above me, was a series of national flags made out of leathered skin. They repulsed me until it dawned on me that that was the desired effect. Beside me was a corridor of coloured fabrics, painted with ‘thermochronic inks.’ A troupe of teenage girls were having fun pushing their hands and faces into the fabric, then recoiling to see the perfect white imprints they had left behind. Aware that people were watching me deface this work of art, my slightly-trembling hand likewise pushed hard against a strip of bright purple, and made a similar impression in the ink. I put it back on again slightly skewed, so it looked like I had ten fingers.
Upstairs held perhaps the most unnerving exhibit. A small, out-of-the-way area was bathed apathetically in a white light that, while pale, was enough of a contrast to the rest of the gallery to make it seem like a twisted, metallic version of the corridor promised us when we near death. I had to squint.
Slightly thrown by a feeling of uncertainty (perhaps mirroring the comfort this white semi-corridor seemed to have with itself), all I could register was writing on the far wall, and a woman sitting perfectly still to my right. I wondered if she was part of the effect, or even whether I should be there. I didn’t look at her but I could feel her stare in my temples.
I began to read. The piece read like a confession, or a manifesto. It told me things about Randy, things I wish I could remember. All I know is that Randy is not like you or me. He’s a concept, a clown, something to be feared and pitied, a dark spokesman. I don’t know why I remember this but I do. The light was too bright.
You can go through there if you like, the woman said to me.
Where?
There’s a door. There.
She pointed to the end of the corridor. Stepping forward, I saw a white outline of a doorway. I thanked her and, after a brief hesitation, gingerly pushed my way through.
I immediately wished I hadn’t. The tiny, badly-lit room I found myself in struck my brain hard through the salvia. I thought of war bunkers and clanking steel and the Ministry of Love. Worse, there was a noise I found infuriating. Supposedly, it was the same wavelength interrogators use in sensory deprivation torture.
There was furniture in the room. A desk, a cabinet, and a television table. On the television was something’s face: a round mass of curly black hair with a foam ball for a nose, wearing dark sunglasses. This, I fancied, was Randy. The film treated me to his face and body from a series of angles. The psychological effect was undeniable. I wanted out but I couldn’t help stay. My feeling of curiosity was undulled by drug-and-audio-assisted fear.
In a drawer of the cabinet I found a portable television showing the same film of Randy. I left, only catching the other exhibits briefly on the way out.
Techo-advanced gimp suits. The effect of napalm on human cells. Through door, sunlight. Streets and streets of vacant faces all branches in the hive. If you're looking for a good time. Vomit on Seel Street and a drone becomes a queen briefly before losing itself in the crowd once more. Honey for the children.
What first struck me wasn’t the darkness, or the fear of the unknown. It was the feeling I’d arrived somewhere.
I walked past two students crouched together on the floor. They were laughing about something.
Sometimes it’s difficult to imagine I’m a student too. They all fit so many stereotypes in that they’re trying to escape stereotypes. Autumn-coloured scarves, long or spiked hair, satchels, Converses. Proud avatars being washed unwittingly away in a sea of conformity. They might as well be wearing uniforms. Maybe the next dictator will let people choose what they conform into forever.
I approached the first exhibit. To say it was repulsive would be akin to calling the Eiffel Tower tall: in the right area but nowhere near the right word. They were what appeared to be threads of skin hanging in round glass jars. My guidebook informed me they were ‘semi-living’ sculptures in the form of miniature jackets. ‘Victimless leather.’ I knew somewhere someone was celebrating, but just for the moment I couldn’t imagine why.
Supposedly, due to the value of the incubators, they were still growing, and would continue to throughout the exhibition. Maybe if I came back in a week they would fit a mouse.
My way only sparsely lit, I made it over to the far wall, where a projection showed an operation taking place. Despite an eerie David Lynch-esque soundtrack and the mechanical whirring of a nearby 3D clinostat providing the only narration, I quickly got the picture: a man was having an artificial ear inserted into the inside of his forearm. This, I later discovered, was an ear with Internet and Bluetooth capability. Again, I’m quite sure I missed the point.
It reminded me of an Australian I’d once met who’d had rare earth magnets installed under his fingertips. When asked what was the point, he told a long-winded story about being able to distinguish between different types of catfood tins. He claimed he was able to amuse himself for hours on end simply going through his girlfriend’s cupboards and handling her cat’s meals for the week. I had to ask whether there was any practical benefit (besides becoming a serial molester and connoisseur of tin cans) before he told me it had saved his life. Once, whilst working on a construction site, he had very nearly laid his hand on an unlabelled electric cable before a sensory phenomenon in his fingertips warned him not to. He learned not soon after that the cable contained a voltage charge of around 1,000. Consider, he told me, that it would only take about 60-100 volts to kill a man of his size through atrial fibrillation. When I asked him why he hadn’t been wearing gloves the conversation quickly dissipated.
Other exhibitions were equally ‘alternative.’ A magnetic resonance scan of an artist’s brain filled out with luminescent moss. A patchwork quilt of animal cells, both human and non-human. A collection of vaginal cells with a shape cut into them, designed to symbolically ‘re-virginize’ continually.
After that I needed a bit of a breather, so I knelt in a corner before the surgical video. Hopefully, this made me look mysterious. By the minimal light I read through what exhibits I had not yet visited. They were located in Gallery 2, which I knew was upstairs by the bar. Simply thinking of going back out into the light, away from the vacant faces of artsy students and the comforting sound of the Random Positioning Machine, felt akin to having to get out of bed too early in the morning. My sense of ‘arriving’ had been replaced by one of belonging. As little as I liked it, this gallery of grotesqueries had briefly become my world.
A girl stood by me staring in my direction. She was dressed like an art chick; boots, tied back hair, glasses, scarf, overcoat, fingerless gloves. I’m sure I’d never seen someone stand so still before. I thought she was looking at me, but as I came to my senses somewhat, I realised she was looking above me, reading the description of the ear man’s surgical procedure. From her face beneath her bifocals, I imagined she got the point far better than I did. But it was only imagining.
She left me crouching beneath a 50 x 50 photo of white-gloved hands scissoring through someone’s skin. Soon after, I too stepped out into the light.
The light, and two other exhibits. One, above me, was a series of national flags made out of leathered skin. They repulsed me until it dawned on me that that was the desired effect. Beside me was a corridor of coloured fabrics, painted with ‘thermochronic inks.’ A troupe of teenage girls were having fun pushing their hands and faces into the fabric, then recoiling to see the perfect white imprints they had left behind. Aware that people were watching me deface this work of art, my slightly-trembling hand likewise pushed hard against a strip of bright purple, and made a similar impression in the ink. I put it back on again slightly skewed, so it looked like I had ten fingers.
Upstairs held perhaps the most unnerving exhibit. A small, out-of-the-way area was bathed apathetically in a white light that, while pale, was enough of a contrast to the rest of the gallery to make it seem like a twisted, metallic version of the corridor promised us when we near death. I had to squint.
Slightly thrown by a feeling of uncertainty (perhaps mirroring the comfort this white semi-corridor seemed to have with itself), all I could register was writing on the far wall, and a woman sitting perfectly still to my right. I wondered if she was part of the effect, or even whether I should be there. I didn’t look at her but I could feel her stare in my temples.
I began to read. The piece read like a confession, or a manifesto. It told me things about Randy, things I wish I could remember. All I know is that Randy is not like you or me. He’s a concept, a clown, something to be feared and pitied, a dark spokesman. I don’t know why I remember this but I do. The light was too bright.
You can go through there if you like, the woman said to me.
Where?
There’s a door. There.
She pointed to the end of the corridor. Stepping forward, I saw a white outline of a doorway. I thanked her and, after a brief hesitation, gingerly pushed my way through.
I immediately wished I hadn’t. The tiny, badly-lit room I found myself in struck my brain hard through the salvia. I thought of war bunkers and clanking steel and the Ministry of Love. Worse, there was a noise I found infuriating. Supposedly, it was the same wavelength interrogators use in sensory deprivation torture.
There was furniture in the room. A desk, a cabinet, and a television table. On the television was something’s face: a round mass of curly black hair with a foam ball for a nose, wearing dark sunglasses. This, I fancied, was Randy. The film treated me to his face and body from a series of angles. The psychological effect was undeniable. I wanted out but I couldn’t help stay. My feeling of curiosity was undulled by drug-and-audio-assisted fear.
In a drawer of the cabinet I found a portable television showing the same film of Randy. I left, only catching the other exhibits briefly on the way out.
Techo-advanced gimp suits. The effect of napalm on human cells. Through door, sunlight. Streets and streets of vacant faces all branches in the hive. If you're looking for a good time. Vomit on Seel Street and a drone becomes a queen briefly before losing itself in the crowd once more. Honey for the children.
Culture
This year, I've had the opportunity to attend lectures by Slavoj Zizek, Terry Eagleton and, conversely, Richard Dawkins (who very kindly signed my copy of The Selfish Gene). Unfortunately, for two of them I was pretty slaughtered (the Zizek lecture was St Patrick's Day), but that's not the point. The point is that we can now name another thing the Capital of Culture award has brought to Liverpool: world-renowned philosophers, social critics and... well, I can't bring myself to call Dawkins anything other than a biologist. Even more importantly, I got to listen to Zizek natter away excitedly about They Live with his incredible, life-changingly-awesome lisp.
Because you're jealous, here is the great man ranting about love and the universe. Imagine him going on about a Rowdy Roddy Piper film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJPhA9TGRls
Because you're jealous, here is the great man ranting about love and the universe. Imagine him going on about a Rowdy Roddy Piper film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJPhA9TGRls
Thursday 24 April 2008
The Triangle Man
There he was at last, the Triangle Man come to take from me what was mine. He was a child's sketch of a child's sketch, a thinly-veiled attempt at striking the world a new angle, conceived in rage and confusion. I laughed at my defeated defences, a set of traps I'd dreamt up while high (or was that low? or sideways?) on stilnox. All that was between us now was silence, a silence thick with almost sexual anticipation of the battle to come. I thought of an axe, an energy drink, and a pink door closing, and how darn-right good it would feel to rid the Triangle Man of that slack smile he wore across his all-two dimensional, all-too isoceles existence. How right Einstein was when he said e=mc2, what delicious sense it all made to me now.
I decided it was high time I showed the cut of my jib. I gave the Triangle Man enough of a clop on the head to wobble his id, just to let him know I wasn't messing around. I think it was then that he faltered, all too early. Still grinning, he felt his reality bend within him: you could see it in his face. I took ahold of the strands that made up his hypoteneuse and tugged. The air around him tasted like battery acid all of a sudden, a sure sign of victory. I tugged harder and he screamed in my brain and bled dark matter from his cookie eyes. He wasn't a triangle anymore, more of a rhombus made of space and matted animal fur. One last attack, directed at my throat. I'd gotten overconfident as soon as he'd started to sweat, and he knew it. A fearsome thought raced across my mind like a news highlight: what if none of it - my payments on my car, Pythagoras, spell-checks, my neighbour's noisy dog, Tiscali broadband for fourteen ninety-nine a month - what if none of it mattered?
Jolity, pure hilarious nonsense. A tutted at my foolishness as I took the fight to the alley and ended it there. His equilibrium was shot, I didn't even have to prise his electric talons from my neck. They just fell off like so much razor dust. How now, brown cow! I exclaimed as I walked away. I felt his scream, the refuge of the defeated, anger at my childish taunts, and I chuckled to myself, lighting a cigarette on my boot. I knew I'd have to hide the corpse later, but now was time for baloons. I reached into my mouth and cracked out one of my broken teeth, a crunching reminder that nothing is certain. Chuckling, I flicked it at him, seeing the fleck of gummy flesh all too late. Had I underestimated the Velvet Squad from the very beginning?
I decided it was high time I showed the cut of my jib. I gave the Triangle Man enough of a clop on the head to wobble his id, just to let him know I wasn't messing around. I think it was then that he faltered, all too early. Still grinning, he felt his reality bend within him: you could see it in his face. I took ahold of the strands that made up his hypoteneuse and tugged. The air around him tasted like battery acid all of a sudden, a sure sign of victory. I tugged harder and he screamed in my brain and bled dark matter from his cookie eyes. He wasn't a triangle anymore, more of a rhombus made of space and matted animal fur. One last attack, directed at my throat. I'd gotten overconfident as soon as he'd started to sweat, and he knew it. A fearsome thought raced across my mind like a news highlight: what if none of it - my payments on my car, Pythagoras, spell-checks, my neighbour's noisy dog, Tiscali broadband for fourteen ninety-nine a month - what if none of it mattered?
Jolity, pure hilarious nonsense. A tutted at my foolishness as I took the fight to the alley and ended it there. His equilibrium was shot, I didn't even have to prise his electric talons from my neck. They just fell off like so much razor dust. How now, brown cow! I exclaimed as I walked away. I felt his scream, the refuge of the defeated, anger at my childish taunts, and I chuckled to myself, lighting a cigarette on my boot. I knew I'd have to hide the corpse later, but now was time for baloons. I reached into my mouth and cracked out one of my broken teeth, a crunching reminder that nothing is certain. Chuckling, I flicked it at him, seeing the fleck of gummy flesh all too late. Had I underestimated the Velvet Squad from the very beginning?
Wednesday 23 April 2008
Manifesto
THOMPSON FOR SHERIFF OF BIRKENHEAD
- Legalisation of mescaline, LSD, DMT, peyote, psilocybian mushrooms and marijuana on a recreational basis but fierce punishments for profiteering drug dealers
- Legalisation of prostitution, but fierce punishments for pimps
- Introduction of rehabilitation centres for heroin addicts
- Legalisation of graffiti on public property
- Parking lots and other concrete areas to be torn up and replaced with grassy areas
Those fucking stupid bastard chainlink railings outside of Stairways to be removed before any other poor fucker falls over them
- Fierce ON THE SPOT punishments for anyone assaulting, stealing from, harassing or otherwise BULLYING anyone weaker or in fewer number than them, to be doled out by the Sheriff or one of his handpicked Deputies. Sheriff and Deputies to carry any non-lethal weapons for these purposes, including but not limited to pepper spray and rounded-off Buford Pusser-esque 2x4s
- Birkenhead to now be officially called "Birkenvegas"
- Bam Buddha and the Latin Quarter to now carry the signs "Birkenvegas: European Capital of Culture"
- Introduction of "Twattin’ Centres" wherein disputes are settled in a boxing ring after participants petition the Sheriff’s Office. Resulting fights will be public events and under Marquess of Queensbury rules. Participants must shake hands after fights.
- More youth clubs
- Anyone caught wearing a hooded top, a polo shirt, hoops, trackie-bottoms, or any of these in combination with tacky jewellery, Burberry and/or trainers must also wear a top hat with a carnation in it, pink eyeliner and pince-nez
- Complete reform of public transport. The bus will be free for under 16s, students and pensioners. There will be at least one authority figure on each bus other than the driver to sort out any problems. This will be paid for by selling those expensive Merseytravel pieces of shit with high-tech LCD screens reading "BUS STOPPING" and fancy plastic poles, and reverting to cheap but functional ones. Taxis to grassy areas are free of charge
- Legalisation of smoking in public areas. Smoking in privately-run enclosed areas, such as workplaces, pubs, clubs etc. to be left up to the discretion of owner/s.
- Freedom of speech and expression, including the freedom to criticise on the grounds of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion and authority, to be held as an unalienable right. Calling the police "pigs" will not only be tolerated, but encouraged.
- Fierce punishments for perpetrators of domestic violence or sexually/racially-motivated attacks, including arse-kickings and losing all alcohol privileges.
- Enforcement of Lenin’s principle of He who does not work, neither shall he eat. The able-bodied and unemployed will be employed within the authority or down the docks in some capacity. No more slacker welfare culture
- Enforcement of Parry’s principle of Where there be grass, there be football permitted. Rain, snow, sleet or shine, bitches.
- Prosecution as stalkers of the fucking cunts who follow around tramps and Stephanie the tranny with their mobile phones and taking videos to be put on YouTube
- Skating and rollerblading to be legal everywhere
- Over 18s will be given an "alcohol licence" which they can then use to buy alcohol anonymously. Anyone found guilty of committing crimes under the influence of alcohol will have their licence revoked on a three-strike basis, to be replaced with a provisional licence allowing them to only drink alcohol in their own homes. None of this applies to alcohol fermented in the home: brewing your own booze FOR YOURSELF is an unalienable right
- Introduction of Bastard Tax, which will target anyone found guilty of any aforementioned crimes until they have stopped committing them. Repeated offenders will be subject to a Fucking Bastard Tax, which will work on the same principle but on a larger scale
- Legalisation of prostitution, but fierce punishments for pimps
- Introduction of rehabilitation centres for heroin addicts
- Legalisation of graffiti on public property
- Parking lots and other concrete areas to be torn up and replaced with grassy areas
Those fucking stupid bastard chainlink railings outside of Stairways to be removed before any other poor fucker falls over them
- Fierce ON THE SPOT punishments for anyone assaulting, stealing from, harassing or otherwise BULLYING anyone weaker or in fewer number than them, to be doled out by the Sheriff or one of his handpicked Deputies. Sheriff and Deputies to carry any non-lethal weapons for these purposes, including but not limited to pepper spray and rounded-off Buford Pusser-esque 2x4s
- Birkenhead to now be officially called "Birkenvegas"
- Bam Buddha and the Latin Quarter to now carry the signs "Birkenvegas: European Capital of Culture"
- Introduction of "Twattin’ Centres" wherein disputes are settled in a boxing ring after participants petition the Sheriff’s Office. Resulting fights will be public events and under Marquess of Queensbury rules. Participants must shake hands after fights.
- More youth clubs
- Anyone caught wearing a hooded top, a polo shirt, hoops, trackie-bottoms, or any of these in combination with tacky jewellery, Burberry and/or trainers must also wear a top hat with a carnation in it, pink eyeliner and pince-nez
- Complete reform of public transport. The bus will be free for under 16s, students and pensioners. There will be at least one authority figure on each bus other than the driver to sort out any problems. This will be paid for by selling those expensive Merseytravel pieces of shit with high-tech LCD screens reading "BUS STOPPING" and fancy plastic poles, and reverting to cheap but functional ones. Taxis to grassy areas are free of charge
- Legalisation of smoking in public areas. Smoking in privately-run enclosed areas, such as workplaces, pubs, clubs etc. to be left up to the discretion of owner/s.
- Freedom of speech and expression, including the freedom to criticise on the grounds of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion and authority, to be held as an unalienable right. Calling the police "pigs" will not only be tolerated, but encouraged.
- Fierce punishments for perpetrators of domestic violence or sexually/racially-motivated attacks, including arse-kickings and losing all alcohol privileges.
- Enforcement of Lenin’s principle of He who does not work, neither shall he eat. The able-bodied and unemployed will be employed within the authority or down the docks in some capacity. No more slacker welfare culture
- Enforcement of Parry’s principle of Where there be grass, there be football permitted. Rain, snow, sleet or shine, bitches.
- Prosecution as stalkers of the fucking cunts who follow around tramps and Stephanie the tranny with their mobile phones and taking videos to be put on YouTube
- Skating and rollerblading to be legal everywhere
- Over 18s will be given an "alcohol licence" which they can then use to buy alcohol anonymously. Anyone found guilty of committing crimes under the influence of alcohol will have their licence revoked on a three-strike basis, to be replaced with a provisional licence allowing them to only drink alcohol in their own homes. None of this applies to alcohol fermented in the home: brewing your own booze FOR YOURSELF is an unalienable right
- Introduction of Bastard Tax, which will target anyone found guilty of any aforementioned crimes until they have stopped committing them. Repeated offenders will be subject to a Fucking Bastard Tax, which will work on the same principle but on a larger scale
Hospitals are for joeys
I'll tell you what, Arrowe Park may be a big brick pile of Woolly shit. But the nurses there are the nicest people on the whole Wirral, which really is saying something when you think of all the smackheads they have to put up with on a daily basis. And if you need your stomach pumped, there's no better place.
I didn’t exactly get my stomach pumped, it was just an endoscopy. Or, roughly probe you with a camera until you choke, more like. The thing is, I started laughing before it was halfway down my throat. Fit of the giggles, I guess. Laughed my arse off, damn near. This happens whenever some shit is going down and I can picture myself as someone else. This is why I never get any sympathy; but then, who wants sympathy when you can laugh yourself half to death?
Plus, my mate got a camera shoved up his backside when they had to take pictures of his insides. I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't find this shit funny, too.
I didn’t exactly get my stomach pumped, it was just an endoscopy. Or, roughly probe you with a camera until you choke, more like. The thing is, I started laughing before it was halfway down my throat. Fit of the giggles, I guess. Laughed my arse off, damn near. This happens whenever some shit is going down and I can picture myself as someone else. This is why I never get any sympathy; but then, who wants sympathy when you can laugh yourself half to death?
Plus, my mate got a camera shoved up his backside when they had to take pictures of his insides. I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't find this shit funny, too.
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