Monday, 24 December 2012

Ziggy Snowflake and the Glider from (A)Far


It's Christmas Eve, and since I've been neglecting you of late, and in lieu of a real gift or indeed anything of much actual substance to say, here's an anecdote about my day's listless internet surfing. Hey, notice how no one calls it 'surfing' anymore? It's probably because the sense of fun has worn off. Using the internet at the close of 2012 feels more like slowly drowning. By this point I can almost hear the rattle of water in my lungs.

But anyway, I'm here to talk about The Snowman, the classic Christmas family cartoon and staple of the late December TV schedule for the past thirty years. You might have heard that tonight a sequel is being shown on Channel 4, The Snowman and the Snowdog, which judging from the title promises to be an 'out-there' conceptual re-imagining of truly pedestrian proportions. I was reading one of those typically hand-wringing articles about it on the Guardian website when I discovered that The Snowman was once introduced in a short video opening by a peroxided David Bowie dressed in beige chinos and a pastel sweater. AND that the whole thing was available on YouTube. Christmas, for me at least, had clearly come early this year.

We see David pottering around a darkened attic, wistfully resting on an old rocking-horse and reminiscing about his childhood. He speaks about this using the pronoun 'we', suggesting either that a) he still lives with his parents, or b) he's suffering from some form of split personality disorder, both of which would go some way to explaining the beige chinos and paisley sweater. Then he pulls a Snowman-decorated scarf from a drawer and tells us he was given it by 'a real snowman', and we cut to the beginning of the cartoon. The implication is that the child in it grows up to be David Bowie, which is a brilliant idea. It lends what has previously seemed a simple tale about childish wonder and the loss of innocence a new and nutty layer of meaning; as he clutches the sodden scarf and hat of his deceased friend at the cartoon's close, is he already dreaming up the piano riff for Ashes to Ashes? Is Starman, his hymn to an elusive, mind-blowing celestial figure who refuses to visit him, simply a veiled reference to another magical 'man' he once knew?  It's a psychoanalytical goldmine.

What was even more satisfying than then video. however, was reading the YouTube comments (always a fertile breeding ground for genius insight) and stumbling across this one, by  user TheRealVeterans.


At first this struck me as an odd observation. Seeing as the Snowman never speaks, it seems difficult to determine what his attitudes might be - for all we know he could be mentally reciting his favourite passages of Mein Kampf or chuckling at the memory of old road safety videos in which toddlers are catapulted through windshields as he gallivants around in the snow. Thus the only clue we have to his attitudes come from his actions - which, as I don't need to remind you, mainly involve abducting a small child and flying him to Lapland in clothing patently unsuited to the freezing conditions. Indeed, at one point the Snowman flies showily low over a Mosque, as if to say 'Look at the broken state of the nation we're escaping', before whisking him off to a gathering attended exclusively by giant white men for a spot of ritualistic chanting and dancing. None of which is suggestive of a particularly tolerant, enlightened mind. 

And as a final marker of his sheer callousness, the child having developed an evident emotional attachment to him, the Snowman chooses to melt in his back garden, leaving the poor kid to wake up on Christmas morning to the sight of his watery corpse. Yes, I know that the coming daylight meant that he was doomed to die, but if we acknowledge that this same Snowman only moments before waving goodbye to the boy had the power to fucking fly, you'd think he'd have done the decent thing and nipped off to behind a bush before dissolving into a messy pile of coal and knitwear. It's the equivalent of an elderly relative who, upon sensing the end is near, chooses not to go quietly but curl up underneath the Christmas Tree so that the kids come down not to presents but to the sight of Grandma's dead, bloated face. It rather puts a crimp in the festive spirit.

The video opening only reveals the extent of the psychological damaged cause; the boy has grown up to be weird, lilting manchild, pottering around an attic, fondling childhood heirlooms and talking to no one. It only takes one night with the Snowman, the cartoon suggests, to turn you forever into a living Ken doll. I can't help thinking that more people possessing the Snowman's attitudes can only make for a more disturbing, pastel-shaded world.

But then I realised - this isn't any old freak in an attic and jumper, it's David Bowie; possibly the greatest and most innovative British solo artist in the history of popular music. Seen in this light, it all begins to make sense; it isn't hard to see how the attentions of a child-abducting, racist and sadomasochistic Snowman might lead to you wanting to wear make-up and write The Laughing Gnome, and my golly isn't the world better off for it. What with today's charts being as bland and mass-produced as they are, we could probably do with a couple more snowmen to liven things up. Just imagine how much more exciting Ed Sheeran might sound if he'd had to face a bit more dismembered slush as he was growing up. So hear hear, I say to the TheRealVeterans's diagnosis. Bring on the frozen kid-snatchers. The rebirth of pop starts here.

Monday, 1 October 2012

Bard Times


After a summer in which I became a patriot, didn't get a job, barely wrote anything and discovered that braiding the hair around my gooch and tugging it until my eyes water is a painful but surprisingly pleasant way to spend a Sunday, I've headed back to Uni. Which of course means facing all of the holiday reading I so merrily consigned to the bottom of a drawer in late June. This summer's serving was a decidedly hearty selection of the complete works of Shakespeare and the American author Philip Roth. My Uni has a endearing quirk of offering handy 3-hour 'tests' at the end of every holiday as a way of making sure you're been sacrificing your free time with the required aplomb, which means I'm facing a morning's grilling of my Bard knowledge at the end of this week.

Now, contrary to form, I actually did do a small bit of reading over the summer; yet faced with a choice between the works of the most revered and established writer in English history, and those known mostly for their portraits of desperate men wanking themselves to death, it may come as little surprise that my efforts skewed mostly towards the latter option. So, as a way of testing how hot I currently am on Stratford's greatest son, and finding out the areas I need to bone up on, whilst at the same time perhaps providing you readers with a little enlightenment along the way, I present to you everything I currently know about the 38 plays of Shakespeare. Or maybe it's 39. We're off to a cracking start.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Four young people - two lovers, a suitor, and a suitor of the suitor - run off into the forest. Elsewhere a bunch of amateur dramatists are rehearsing a play. Fairies turn up. Everyone keeps falling asleep. One of the actors gets his head turned into a donkey's and back again. All the painful unrequited longing is cured with magic fairy dust, and everyone returns home and watches the play. There's a bit of innuendo with a wall. It's quite good.

All's Well That End's Well

Helen miraculously cures a the King of France but her chosen husband runs away to war to avoid her. He attempts to court the virtuous, virginal Diana (named after the goddess of virginity; it's that subtle) but Helen swaps beds with her in the dark and he's forced to marry her. This isn't weird or awful at all. The title is a beautifully bleak ironic joke.

Anthony and Cleopatra

A roman general spends all his time shagging some Egyptian floozy. She turns out to be a terrible fighter and they both commit suicide. There's some more innuedo with a fig, because they totally look like ladybits when they're cut open. I know this because I've had intimate experience of both. The seeds are the tastiest bit.

As You Like It

Features cross-dressing, another forest, and a lion. As well as the 'All The World's A Stage' speech, which you'll find embossed on the pencil-cases of every Japanese tourist ever. (Aporogies).

Coriolanus

Long, apparently. Has a lot of war. They did a film recently with Voldemort and the bloke from 300, go see that.

Cymbeline

A mash-up of every Shakespeare plot device ever. Despite that, it isn't great, though my mate Sam reminded me it does have one character planning to shag a princess on top of her decapitated husband, so maybe it's worth a re-read.

Hamlet

One of the obscure ones. Lol jk, it's the greatest work ever written in the English Language. Hamlet has to avenge his father's death by killing his uncle. He decides to put this off by going a bit bonkers, taunting his mum, killing and old man and driving his girlfriend to commit suicide, which all seems a bit counter-productive. Generally I find RedTube a much better way to procrastinate. His wi-fi must have been down.

Henry IV Part 1 

Prince Harry and his mate Falstaff spend their time drinking and sleeping around London. The king meanwhile, faces a rebellion by Hotspur, some jacked up little white-bread squit. The King tells his son he's disappointed him; the Prince immediately reforms, kills Hotspur, and saves the day. Falstaff gets to galavant around being a sot in a seemingly entirely separate play. It's brilliant. There's even a bit where they make fun of the Welsh.

Henry IV Part 2

The King faces another rebellion. Prince Harry grows up some more. Falstaff does more whoring and weedling. The King dies and Harry is crowned. Ends on a rather sour note when the English make a fake truce with the rebelling lords then have them executed, and Falstaff is permanently exiled from the court and thrown in prison, so is one of the 'darker' sequels. A bit like The Empire Strikes Back. 

Henry V

Essentially a further sequel. King Henry fights the french. Lots of rousing speeches, no Falstaff. I've not read it yet, but I'm pretty sure there's no Ewoks.

King Henry VI Part 1

King Henry VI Part 2

King Henry VI Part 3

I've no clue. Supposedly the first things Shakespeare wrote. Universally acknowledged to be pretty dismal. I'll probably end up reading them just to score some brownie points with the tutors however, because I lick arsehole like nobody's business.

King Henry VIII

Given that this play's subject is a king who had two of his wives beheaded and needed a system of pulleys to get out of bed, you'd hope it was a nice juicy barnstormer. Apparently not; since King James was a relative, Shakespeare was duty bound to portray him in a reverently bland light. But maybe it was a bigger hit with Jacobean audiences; cannons fired at its first performance led to the Globe Theatre burning down, so you might say it really set the house on fire! I'll stop now.

Julius Caesar

Caesar is popular but undemocratic. He's killed by Brutus and Cassius, but the popular Mark Anthony rouses the public against the conspirators and they are eventually killed. I've not read this one either, and it's supposed to be one of the stone-cold classics. I refuse to listen to your theoretically mentally judging me. Lalalalala.

King John 

King John is king despite his nephew Arthur having a stronger claim. He's at war with France, and they are both vying for the loyalty of a town. They come to a truce, which then ends; the Pope gets involved; the King orders Arthur to be executed; he takes it back; Arthur falls off a wall to his death anyway; the King is deposed. Oh, and a character called Philip the Bastard gets all portentous about things. Famously rubbish, I struggled through it in August when I could have been off enjoying myself, and now find I can't remember any of it except Arthur's death and Philip thanking his mother for shagging King Richard behind her husbands back. Fuck. I'm really hacked off now.

King Lear

King Lear divides his kingdom to his daughters corresponding to their professions of love for him; instead of playing along Cordelia decides to make a sarky point and ends up losing her stake, driving the King mad, plunging Britain into civil war and getting herself killed. I maintain she's the real villain of the piece. Nobody likes a smart arse. (Also as lots of good bits where Lear yells at his daughters and wishes they were infertile. A good 'un).

Love's Labour's Lost

Three male academics swear off women to concentrate on work; women turn up, breezy comedy ensues. Again, I bloody read this one and can't remember it at all. Has a 'lost' sequel. I hope they don't find it.

Macbeth

Scotland! Witches! Murder! What more do you want? Read it in year 9. The Roman Polanski version features the most depressing collection of naked breasts you've ever seen; they look like empty, fleshy socks.

Measure for Measure

No clue. One of the lesser comedies. Coincidentally, Measure for Measure is the name of a Shakespearean drinking game I've just invented, whereby two players attempt to match their drinks 'measure for measure' whilst not reading any Shakespeare. I'm planning on playing it every night for the rest of the year.

Much Ado About Nothing

Beatrice and Benedick wittily insult each-other until they're tricked into realising their mutual love for one another. Meanwhile, Claudio is tricked by Don John into believing his fiance Hero is unfaithful, and humiliates her at the alter. A priest comes up with a plan to pretend she's died that no one thinks is weird; Claudio forgives her, and everyone gets married. Actually has some relatively enlightened sexual politics for a change. It's probably my favourite.

Othello

Iago, resenting his master the moor Othello, convinces him his wife is being unfaithful. Othello fumes for a while and then suffocates her. Finding out the truth, he kills himself. Proof that inter-racial marriages don't work sexual jealousy is a destructive force.

Pericles

Of contentious authorship. Uhh. I've got nothing else.

Richard II

A prequel to the Henry IV's and V. Richard II is a vain, manipulative king. He's challenged and killed by Henry Bolingbroke, who becomes Henry IV. A bit sincere.

Richard III

Richard, Earl of Gloucester, resentful of his physical deformity and ugliness, sets about seizing the British crown through a process of seduction, manipulation and murder. He marries the wife of the bloke he killed and has the two Princes murdered in the Tower of London (depicted as intelligent and willful youths, they come across as such insufferably smug little gits you'll want to smother them to death yourself). Despised as king, he's rendered horseless and dead in the battle of Bosworth Field by the future King Henry VII. A very blackly comic play. Richard's a wonderfully irredeemable git.  But LONG.

Romeo and Juliet

Two star-cross'd lovers from warring families marry and consummate in secret, before familial in-fighting drives them to another hastily contrived Priest-sanctioned pretend death plot that ends up with them both committing suicide. It's pretty wonderful. Fun fact; I played Friar Lawrence in a school production of this play that had a 'mods and rockers' theme. I got to smoke shisha on stage. It was probably the peak of my entire life.

The Comedy of Errors

Two sets of identical twins are separated at birth by a storm and then spend the rest of the play being mistaken for one another. An early, trashy one, but pretty funny. Don't let the long fucking bit of exposition at the start put you off.

The Merchant of Venice

Bassanio wins a Portia's hand in marriage in a game of 16th century Venetian Deal or No Deal and the merchant Antonio rashly borrows money from the Jewish moneylender Shylock on the promise of a pound of flesh if he can't pay it back on time. He can't; the case goes to court; Antonio is defended by a mysterious lawyer delivering a speech on the quality of mercy and some linguistic wheedling; Shylock is treated very unmercifully at the end. A pretty miserable one, despite being a comedy. Little known fact; Woody Allen once played Shylock in his own re-written version of the play. His 'Hath not a Jew eyes? Are you kidding? The only thing a Jew doesn't have is full golf-club privileges' speech is a must see.

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Falstaff's back! Turning up in present day England for some reason, he plans to marry two Mistress's, who find out and play tricks on him. Lacks the weighty sullenness of the Henry IV plays for Falstaff to play against, but fun enough.

The Taming of the Shrew

Kate is a tempetuous, ill-mannered, difficult (n.b. read 'opinionated') woman who's refusal to marry prevents her hotter sister from doing so. All those with the hots for the sister employ Petruchio as wingman, who starves and imprisons Kate until her will breaks and she can make a speech bidding women to be servile to their husbands. If you can look past the misogyny it's actually pretty funny. But of course some people maintain it's all supposed to be ironic since the main plot is actually being performed for a drunken, foolish tramp. Meta! And bollocks.

The Tempest

A storm washes a bunch of people up on an island where the magician Prospero and his daugher live. The son of the captain falls in love with the daugher; the captain searches for his son, and two fools plot with Caliban to overthrow Prospero. More magic ensues everything turns out well, and Prospero forgoes his magic. A very late Shakespeare play. Saw a very nice out-door production at the beginning of the summer. Hangs together very well.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Unread. Presumably two gentleman from Verona are involved somehow. It's a comedy, so there'll probably be some cross dressing at some point to keep you occupied.

The Two Noble Kinsmen

Ditto. Presumably two...uhh...I literally can't be fucked. Lets move on.

The Winter's Tale

Ditto. Has a bit where the statue of the heroine, who is presumed dead, comes to life. You'd have more fun throwing your coppers at a living statue and watching him desperately grub around for them in the gutter. I know I would.

Timon of Athens

Ditto. Often performed in tandem with Pumba of Crete. I'm trying my best here.

Titus Andronicus

Ditto. Not to be confused with Titus Androgynous, which deals with the sexual identity crisis of an accomplished Sunderland defender. WHEN WILL THIS END?

Troilus and Cressida

Ditto. It's based off Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, which I read last year, so I should be fine, right guys?

Twelfth Night

Two twins wash up on an another fucking island after another fucking storm. One dresses up as a boy once a-fucking-gain and acts as go between between a duke and a widow. She falls for the former and is fallen for by the latter. Meanwhile the despised pen-pusher Malvolio is tricked into thinking his mistress loves him and should dress in yellow stockings. This sub-plot is better than the rest of it, which is fairly hum-drum. Stephen Fry's in it at the moment, go see it! Actually, go see QI instead. They put that on iPlayer.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand that's all folks! Apart from the poetry, which I'm ignoring 'cause poems are for gays. But otherwise I've not done too bad, thought clearly I need to bone up on the T's. Do a bit of a 'T-bone', you might say. Oh, leave me alone. I just summarised Shakespeare, motherfuckers. What did you do today? Read some tosspot's blog. Exactly.

Sunday, 12 August 2012

Lie Back And Think Of England


Ladies and gentlemen, I come today before you a changed man. Just two weeks ago I was your average, bog-standard prematurely-jaded middle-class layabout literature student. The ensuing fortnight has seen me utterly transformed; broken down beyond all recognition and built up again, piece by piece, into the unfathomable. As I sit, naked save for a Union flag draped around my shoulders, Mo Farah's name carved into my chest with a dirty biro, typing with one hand and spanking myself off over a photo-shopped image of Churchill fucking a double-decker bus with the other, I can proudly declare myself as that which I have hitherto always denounced. I am a British patriot.

Speaking of wankers who dress in the Union flag, Morrissey was kind enough to offer his ever-trenchant views on all the trumpeting that has taken place during the games. Accusing the flag wavers of "blustering jingoism" and asserting that "the spirit of 1939 Germany now pervades throughout media-brand Britain", he further cemented his likely candidacy for the country's worst theoretical party guest ever. At once a shrill cod-revolutionary and a shuddering racist, the only possible people who'd endure him in an intimate setting would be hardcore Morrissey fans, meaning that you'd have to invite an extra quotient of insufferable people just so things would proceed smoothly. Plus he'd complain about the cocktail sausages. The dick.

But it did get me thinking. Whilst I hope I've never voiced anything nearly as insensitive or idiotic, i've certainly felt versions of it. There isn't anything inherently wrong with love for one's country, but it has always seemed to me to have something 'off' about it, a whiff of curdled something hidden under the guise of zeal and passion. Obviously it's been used for centuries to make people to horrible things, or to justify sending them to pointless deaths, but even low-level affection has previously seemed a little untenable. Patriotism seemed like owning a pair of incontinency pants; you might justify having them, but you'll always go around giving off a faint whiff of urine. 

I've written before about how the British don't do patriotism very well. That was during the Royal Wedding, when we banded together as a nation to sort-of celebrate the union of two well-meaning but rather bland privileged people. Around a year later we had a jubilee, about which I felt much the same. This was the greatness of our nation personified; a sour-faced old pensioner being leisurely pursued by bunch of 'zany' monarchists in boats. Even the BBC couldn't seem to muster much enthusiasm; placing responsibility for presenting this moment to the country in the hands of Fearne Cotton, who always puts me in mind of a victim of child sex abuse desperately corroding the memories from her brain by chanting happy, meaningless phrases like 'Wicked!' and 'Mental!'

From here on in, we only had less to crow about. We crashed out of the Euro's on penalties, and reduced a man to tears through our own misguided expectations of him at Wimbledon. Elsewhere, little was changing; we were still ruled over by uncaring toffs, whose only chance of defeat lay with an overgrown sixth-former who looks like he's never touched a breast in his life. Our banks were run by shits. Our newspapers were run by shits. And all of them went to shit parties and came up with ways to spray more shit on everything. Britain was a diseased shambling mess, suited only to quietly committing suicide by shooting itself in the Scotland. 

And then the Olympics came. And suddenly we were celebrating things we could actually be proud of. Not a genetically-deficient dynasty but actual people from proper places who'd actually done real tangible things to get them where they were. And who could do things better than anyone else on the planet. And the music was great, and the experts and spectators were great, and this time the BBC wheeled out Clare Balding, who's so robust she probably eats child sex offenders for breakfast. And in just two weeks, a nation found its feet, and its reason to be.

So I'll hope you'll join me in performing a final act of mental celebration as you sink down into your beery, post closing-ceremony slumbers this evening. Lie back and think of England.

Monday, 30 July 2012

19

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Just over seven years ago, in our after lunch registration, our form teacher announced that London had won it's Olympic bid and would be hosting the games in the summer of 2012. I found the news only marginally less exciting that I found it up until my epiphanic viewing of Danny Boyle's opening ceremony (see previous) but what did fascinate me was thinking about the date itself. 2012? I'd be...two years into University (being a precocious little sod I'd already assumed University would be an inevitability). I'd be a hip and happening semi-adult, able to drink and drive and put my penis inside women with reckless abandon (though not, I reasoned, at the same time, even if the image of myself perishing in a car accident clutching a whiskey bottle with a screaming hooker on my lap did have a certain poetic appeal).

And now 2012 is here - and in only a few hours time, I'm turning twenty. Sitting in registration, dreaming up morbidly awesome car-crashes, I was twelve. The entirety of my teenage existence lies sandwiched somewhere between these moments - every drink I've had, every woman I've failed to cop off with, every stomach-full of half-digested gunk I've ejected into a friend's garden hedge is about to be filed away in the defunct 'teenaged' folder of my memory, consigned to the foggy ruins of time. A bit like the Ark of the Covenant at the end of the first Indiana Jones film.

At these junctures, it's customary (for me at least) to look back, take stock and think 'did I get what I wanted? Did I succeed?' But it's hard to quantify what succeeding as a teenager might look like. At twelve, I'm sure I had no idea. Beyond a few treasured goals such as 'grow a moustache' and 'touch a breast' I had no wider scheme in mind, no sense of a bar I was reaching for. So I don't need to feel guilty about not achieving some standard I'd set myself.

Yet if there was something I'd thought I would have gained, it was a sense of having arrived. I felt sure that at some point during the next seven years I'd have worked out that special trick it takes to really 'do' life, and I wouldn't have to think about living; it would come naturally. But now I'm almost twenty, I can confidently attest that there has been no point in which I thought life was getting easier. It's fucking difficult, man. I still don't even know what trousers we're supposed to wear.

In Martin Amis's novel The Rachel Papers, the main character, Charles Highway, creates the narrative of his life on the eve of his twentieth birthday from diaries and journals. What he ends up with is a rather limp story of a past love affair, along with an awful lot of himself being a pretentious, filthy-minded little arse. But maybe this is the point. I can't say I've succeeded at anything in particular, but I've fulfilled a lot of the teenage stereotypes. I've stormed upstairs and slammed doors, worn the same pants for weeks at a time, lusted aimlessly, written tiresomely wank teenage poetry, and generally pratted about. Holden Caulfield would be proud of me. Maybe it's doing these things that point of the whole venture.

And If I may be permitted a pinch of earnestness on the edge of my innocence, maybe it's not about 'arriving' during your teenage years, but all the ways in which you don't. And please kill me now, because that is the most awful thing I've ever written. Dear God. I'm am sorry x x x

Saturday, 28 July 2012

Daft Punk, Asterix and Croissants


After watching almost four hours of Olympic opening ceremony last night I've woken up with one abiding impression; fuck other nations. No, seriously, fuck them. What other nation on Earth can claim to come even vaguely close to the sheer ragtag madcap spangled brilliance of the British Isles? France? Fuck off. Go sit in the corner with an onion or something. No, don't get up til I say so. Don't even fucking look round. I'm not kidding.

I haven't written anything on the blog for an embarrassingly long while, and one of the reasons for this was apathy. Sure, I'd spent a good few dozen posts honing and establishing a serenely satirical, comedically ranting style. I had the Platt-blog framework down to pat. I'd take a topic, get a bit angry about it, make a few jokes, clangingly drop in a masturbation metaphor to please the hardcore fans, and the job was done. Except after a while, I ended up looking at things and thinking, you know, what's the point? Why bother?

Over the last few weeks I've tried desperately to think of something to say about the Olympics that's worth people taking a two minute detour from their Facebook feeds to read, and I just couldn't. Too corporate and shonkey to be praised, too earnest and genuinely heartfelt to be derided, there was no side to come down on. It was like anticipating a nativity performance involving an infant relative; it will no doubt be adorable, and he's put too much into it for you not be be proud of him, but he can't sing for shit and even under his shepherd's robe you can still see the gentle bulge of his budding man-tits. I had no angle to take.

And then I watched the ceremony. And it was amazing. It was inspiring. And it shook me to the core because it did what nothing about the preparation thus far has been able to do; remind us that, hey, wait a minute, we're fucking Britain.

Amongst all the run-up furore - the G4S debacle, the unsold stadium, the thousands of spare football tickets - and all the godawful marketing bollocks, it was hard to shake the infamously pessimistic self-image we've had of ourselves of late. Welcome to Britain, we seemed to be saying; our economy's shit, we're run by dickheads, and everything we do feels a bit second-rate, but don't be too mean about us and we'll promise to stop Phil Collins from emigrating again.

What I loved about the ceremony was that it started out predictably - a large spectacle show that illustrated a rather earnest aspect of our national history and ended up just being a series of raised fingers to the rest of the world. It's as if Danny Boyle did the whole countryside/industrial revolution transformation bit, looked around, saw the pleasant but not overtly astounded faces of the other nations and just wait; well, you know what, fuck it. We've got James Bond. James fucking Bond. And the Queen. In a helicopter. Parachuting. Yeah, fuck you. And you know what else? Free healthcare. That right, free motherfucking healthcare. And Voldemort. Fighting Mary Poppins. Fucking eat it, you bastards! And look! We've got Mr. Bean! And the Rolling Stones! And the Sex Pistols! And Alex Turner! And a Beatle! In the flesh! Are you watching France?!! Are you paying attention. Drink us in, you mothers! Drink, you inferior people of the world, you vermin, you slugs, drink in the might of this great nation! Kneel before us, maggots, kneel before us and DRINK!!!


What made it all the better was the knowledge that, had France been made the hosts in our place, they'd have fucked it up. They'd have got the Cirque de Soleil in, and some teenager with a piano, and a bunch of infants in wigs singing about diplomacy, and it would have been wank. You want to have a killer opening ceremony for the future, France. I've got your best bet right here. Daft Punk, Asterix and Croissants. On a motorcycle. In berets. You'd be set.


Wednesday, 4 April 2012

Green-Eyed Monsters


Regular visitors might have noticed I've kept pretty schtum throughout 2012 so far. The short answer is I've been quite busy. I co-directed a play. I edited a newspaper. I wrote a play meself, which is *SHAMELESS PLUG* being put on this May*. And during the bits in-between I was so bloated by my own arty smugness I could only sit breathing in the guff of my own farts and demanding sexual favours off my more star-struck acquaintances. But that's beside the point. In the eyes of my mother, and of society, all of this amounts to precisely nothing, because I should have spent the time applying for internships.

It was with surprise that, a few months ago, I first heard of the concept of the internship - heard it discussed, no less, not as some foreign novelty but as something that's been familiar to us since birth, like water or gravity. It took me a while to work out what an ‘internship’ was. I though it was the sort of thing you sent off empty Coco-Pops packets for. By the time I finally figured it out people were already mourning the application period’s passing - pining after the halcyon days when you could experiment with the font of your CV at your leisure. Then I went on my careers service website, found out that applying meant filling in a form, and abandoned all hope. It clearly wasn't meant to be.

It’s only now that I’m beginning realise what a grievous career error this has been. Actually, I didn’t realise I even had a career. As it turns out, I’ve had one for the last nineteen years - since I was born, in fact. And you have as well. Every moment up until this one should have been a calculated move toward furthering my professional life for the better, and having been temporarily distracted by prancing and scribbling, I’ve just taken a massive detour down fuck-up alley.

Now, I’ll have a pause at this moment and acknowledge it – yes, I’m speaking from the viewpoint of a tosspot English student, a student who’s never had to earn a penny in his life, who’s off gallivanting around with books and acting and crumpets at the taxpayer’s expense. I know all that. And a large degree of my issues with fixation upon job applications and CV’s is because I Don’t Know How To Be A Grown-up And Don’t Really Want To Try. A good kick up the arse and a ticking off by society is probably just what the doctor ordered for me.

But part of me resents this utter obsession, on all sides, upon the career, upon making money. This isn’t a particularly new viewpoint, but I think it’s gaining more traction during the recession.

The recession is teaching us to be obsessed by money. We’re in a time of Economic Hardship, says society. Look at the failing banks, look at the failing businesses. We need to counter that. We need to scrimp and save. We need to count every penny.

In one way this mindset is good, because it teaches us all to be more practical about money, which is a lesson we could all (and especially tosspot English students) do with. But it starts becoming poisonous at the point at which it pervades every discussion or debate about the way society is run.

When the government was arguing its case for collectively fucking over every academically promising teenager in the country through the raising of university tuition fees, the two main points offered up where these; one, one, no graduate would have to pay a penny of this before they were earning over £20,000, and two, the economic advantage in terms of earning power graduates gained outweighed the cost. Both of these arguments portrayed university as little more than an investment, a small purchase you made for the promise of a larger overall return in the future. 'Feeling the pinch? Fancy a few extra coppers to line your pockets? Try University®, the time-tested cash-generating solution, for only £9000 a year! Sit back and watch your savings groooooooooow!'

Which is a terrible way to view education – education, a concept which, surprisingly, doesn’t intrinsically involve money at all. If I’m honest with myself, I know the reason I and most other people went to University was this prospect of higher earning – but in my more sentimental moments, I like to think I’m here for other reasons too. You know, reasons like gaining knowledge, or having the opportunity to do things like edit a newspaper and put on a play, or working out what I want to spend the rest of my life doing. And I’m naive enough to believe that university can provide these things, and should do.

Raising a nation of young people fixated upon money and the process of earning it can be a dangerous thing. It might teach us all to be more pragmatic, yes, but what does the breeding of an obsession lead to? On the only hand, you’ll have among the toward the lower end of the economic spectrum a generation convinced that they don’t have any chance at improving their lot in life because they didn’t have a public school/posh university education, becoming resentful and apathetic as a result; whilst at the higher end a generation who see society as nothing but a system of monetary gains and losses that needs to be exploited at the expense of others. How anyone expects people to be happy and good under such a model is beyond me.

Now, I don’t really know what I want to do as a career. To be honest, I’d quite like to carry on for a bit with the prancing and scribbling and see where it takes me, but suggesting as such to my parents is like telling them I’m going to spent my life rubbing my cock-end against a radiator and hope people pay me for it, so I’m a little wary of saying so. But nevertheless, I think this desire is something that should always be okay to say, and something that society should allow for. Prancing idiot I might be, but I’d rather live in a nation of prancing idiots than ‘aspiring investment bankers’ any day.

P.S. In the event that I ever do cave and send off my application to Goldman Sachs this blog will have to be deleted. And in which case you never heard of me. So shush.


*15th to the 19th of May, at the Burton Taylor Studio in Oxford, in case you were wondering

Friday, 6 January 2012

Sherlock - A Study in Harlots


Have you watched the new 'Sherlock' yet? You really should. It has tits! Well, not really. Maybe a bit of side tit. A little cleft. Not much worth buffering for. But I was watching it with my parents, so the effect was heightened somewhat. It felt a little like seeing Lucy Pinder enter during a Victorian funeral. I could feel my Dad's mutton-chops bristle.

Then, all of a sudden, as I was loosening my breeches a little to accommodate the excitement, the dead six year old broke through the lid of its coffin, pointed a rotting finger at her and cried 'Sexism!', and I thought I should probably put my stovepipe away.

Sexism! The elephant in the room. Actually it's an elephant in the room that some people keep trying to point out, and others keep trying to ignore, whilst still more stand up and claim that the elephant stands for strong family values and the natural order of things, whilst it stumbles around bumping into furniture. It's a divisive elephant.

The elephant is present at this funeral (at this point both metaphors have completely broken down, so just ignore them) because of what the makers of the show have done with the character Irene Adler. Simply a bit of a vamp in the source material, she appears in the modern adaptation as a dominatrix with Sapphic tendencies, taking her kit off for the first scene in an attempt to throw poor Sherlock, changing his text alert tone to an orgasmic sigh, using her measurements as the code to unlocking her personal safe, etc, etc. Some key grievances here (plus lovely spoilers);

  • Her powers are sexual rather than intellectual. She's clearly smart, but no match for any of the rational men - outwitted by Sherlock and getting Moriarty to help her out with the trickier bits of her plan. She uses raw sexuality as her prime, but only real weapon.
  • In the end, her plan is foiled as a direct result of her attraction to Sherlock, who, though he spends a few days moping earlier in the episode when he believes her to be dead, never succumbs to such emotional fripperies.
  • The episode ends with her in a hijab, knealing down, about to be beheaded, which could almost symbolise her rightful punishment for her reckelss, immoral ways and the ultimate assertion of patriarchal authority. Then it turn out one of them is Sherlock in disguise, and her life is saved. By a man.
There are several ways you could respond to this. You could say 'It's just a bit of harmless fun.' This would be the stupid response, but if you're a Sun reader you should probably just stop here. However, if you had a least a few spare brain cells and a little typing time, you could probably mount a nicely robust defence of the episode. You could argue she was an enlightened, modern woman, using her sexuality to her advantage. You could go further; you could say that the episode was actually subversively feminist, in delivering the message that in a world dominated by patriarchal and bureaucratic authorities (notice that no other women occupy positions of dominance in the episode - it's pretty much a Sherlock/Mycroft/Moriary cock-fight) raw sexuality is the only power that she has access to, alienated and disenfranchised from any other method of asserting power. You could argue that, though she is indeed bested, one woman manages single-handedly to bring the government, and the country's best detective, to its knees. You could have a go, basically.

But I'm not here to call it either way. I'm just saying, it is possible to call it either way.

Feminism is a deeply complex ideological sphere, which involves intricate and often directly conflicting branches of thought. Which means that, at this level, the debate has progressed past the point of determining whether something is 'sexist' or not.

There's things that can be labelled sexist, but these are things that have an agenda, or that can be shown to be actively contributing to negative stereotypes and attitudes about women, or even that clearly betray prejudices on the behalf of the creators. When it gets to this level, where the sexual politics are contentious and blurred, we're cannot apply simple demarcation. It's more nuanced than that. We can look at the individual parts and try to discern what they say or imply about the role of women in society; we could even say that something contains sexist/misogynist elements. But we can't say Sherlock is sexist. As the master himself would agree, the evidence doesn't add up. Even if that bit at the end was just fucking ridiculous. It's not Doctor fucking Who, Stephen Moffat. Try harder.

This was supposed to be an anniversary post, but I got distracted. By breasts. It'll come eventually, don't fret.