25. The Big Reunion - ITV2
24. Arne Dahl - BBC Four
23. Burton and Taylor - BBC Four
22. Run - Channel 4
21. Imagine: David Bowie - Cracked Actor - BBC Four
20. The Sound of Cinema: The Music that Made the Movies - BBC Four
19. Utopia - Channel 4
18. Dancing on the Edge - BBC One
17. The Americans - ITV1
16. Borgen - BBC Four
15. The Day of The Doctor - BBC One
14. Clare Balding's Secret of a Suffragette - Channel 4
13. Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic - BBC Four
12. It's Kevin - BBC Two
11. David Bowie - Five Years - BBC Two
10. Das Auto: The Germans, Their Cars and Us - BBC Four
9. An Adventure in Space and Time - BBC Two
8. Stephen Fry's Out There - BBC One
7. Top of the Lake - BBC One
6. Toast of London - Channel 4
5. Storyville: Pussy Riot - A Punk Prayer - BBC Four
4. Storyville: From the Land to the Sea Beyond - BBC Four
3. Mad Men - Sky Atlantic
2. The Fall - BBC One
1. Hillsborough: How they Buried the Truth - BBC One
Friday 20 December 2013
Jocky's Top 25 TV Shows of 2013
Thursday 19 December 2013
Jocky's Top 25 Albums of 2013
25. Days are Gone - Haim
24. Shaking the Habitual - The Knife
23. Comedown Machine - The Strokes
22. Push the Sky Away - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
21. Bankrupt! - Phoenix
20. Praxis Makes Perfect - Neon Neon
19. mbv - My Bloody Valentine
18. Sticky Wickets - The Duckworth Lewis Method
17. The Electric Lady - Janelle Monáe
16. Arc - Everything Everything
15. Light Up Gold - Parquet Courts
14. Holy Fire - Foals
13. Amok - Atoms for Peace
12. Reflektor - Arcade Fire
11. AM - Arctic Monkeys
10. ...Like Clockwork - Queens of the Stone Age
9. Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action - Franz Ferdinand
8. Silence Yourself - Savages
7. Machineries of Joy - British Sea Power
6. Electric - Pet Shop Boys
5. Rewind the Film - Manic Street Preachers
4. Bloodsports - Suede
3. Modern Vampires of the City - Vampire Weekend
2. Random Access Memories - Daft Punk
1. The Next Day - David Bowie
Thursday 5 December 2013
Bigger on the Inside — What to make of 50 years of Who?
.jpg)
The BBC celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the first airing of Doctor Who are now being confined to our collective memory but what did this global televisual event really symbolise for Planet Earth…?
Like me, you’re probably suffering from an acute case of Whovian fatigue, so ubiquitous was the raft of programming dedicated to the science fiction phenomenon as it approached its half century. It left one feeling somewhat over exposed. Much of the fanfare, it has to be said, took the form of self-referential, superlative waff, but to dismiss the nostalgiafest as wholly vacuous would also be extremely unkind.
Like me, you’re probably suffering from an acute case of Whovian fatigue, so ubiquitous was the raft of programming dedicated to the science fiction phenomenon as it approached its half century. It left one feeling somewhat over exposed. Much of the fanfare, it has to be said, took the form of self-referential, superlative waff, but to dismiss the nostalgiafest as wholly vacuous would also be extremely unkind.
For any television programme to have existed so long in today’s fast moving and fickle world of entertainment is an achievement worthy of note. One only trumped on UK television by Blue Peter, The Sooty Show and ITV’s soap opera Coronation Street.
Although here’s where you could argue the BBC is being somewhat disingenuous. All those shows have run continuously since their inception but the BBC’s opinion of Doctor Who hasn’t always been so affectionate. The Corporation cancelled the show in 1989 and, with the exception of one aborted attempted to resurrect the series in 1996, Doctor Who was de facto defunct for 15 years between 1990 and 2004. Only now, due to the unexpected global audience the show has garnered since its 2005 rebirth, are the BBC confident enough to go ‘all in’ on the ‘Who ha’!
Even from a critical standing it all seems a bit much, bearing in mind the show's second coming has only occasionally spun the considerable chaff of a full seven series into the rarest of TV gold.
However, just as I was tiring of all things TARDIS, along came Mark Gatiss’s ode to the First Doctor, a dramatisation of the show’s origin story. As I settled in to 'An Adventure In Space And Time', a practically perfect love letter to Doctor Who, I began to feel all my cynicism ebb away.
For here was the essence of what makes Doctor Who special. David Bradley’s excellent embodiment of William Hartnell, the insecure, ageing ‘character actor’ whose ill health eventually led to the regeneration conceit, was truly something to behold. To see the despair in his realisation that his time as the Doctor is coming to an end is both heartbreaking and portentous, symbolising at it does, the fear we all feel at the transience of our limited time on Earth, that our existence is but a mere, insignificant footnote in the history of humanity.
Imagine you were the only actor to have played the role, how gut wrenching it would be to consider it continuing in your absence. As Hartnell meets his successor in the form of Reece Sheersmith’s Patrick Troughton, it becomes clear the game is finally up – “Why does everything have to change?” he bleats, but, of course, it must; the only permanence in our lives being impermanence.
Yet what he couldn't realise at the time was how the foundation he laid would still be bearing the weight of the whole Doctor Who canon some 50 years in the future.
Many viewers of the anniversary episode, screened simultaneously worldwide, would have registered a similar feeling to Hartnell’s melancholy. For those younger than me, it would have been at the appearance of David Tennant’s Doctor, for those older, the cameo from Tom Baker.
But, then, perhaps the passing of an everlasting torch from one (re)generation to the next is our only salvation from the spectre of our inevitable mortality; whether it be the ideals, beliefs and knowledge that a parent passes to a child or the skills and experience a mentor passes to a trainee?
After all, if even the Lord of all time and space can’t free himself from that one great certainty, then perhaps we humans shouldn't feel so aggrieved we are also denied an eternity.
Doctor Who is to be cherished for so much – its morality, its faith in science, its wonderful escapism – but perhaps it is the sense of belonging that each generation’s Doctor gives to their audience that makes the show a true diamond in the rough? It has delivered a different meaning to different sets of fans the world over, each imprinting on their version of the Doctor their own, distinct, self-image.
Doctor Who is to be cherished for so much – its morality, its faith in science, its wonderful escapism – but perhaps it is the sense of belonging that each generation’s Doctor gives to their audience that makes the show a true diamond in the rough? It has delivered a different meaning to different sets of fans the world over, each imprinting on their version of the Doctor their own, distinct, self-image.
Wednesday 27 November 2013
Bruce Almighty
“Good evening ladies, gentleman and children welcome to Strictly Come Dancing…”With these lines the great entertainer Bruce Forsyth introduces the latest in a long line of prime time television shows he has presented since his career begun almost half a century ago.
Yet, I wonder, do you notice anything unusual about this otherwise seemingly functional welcome…?
The inclusion of the word ‘children’.
Only Bruce would care to make the distinction. Only Bruce would think to address children directly for the sake of inclusivity. Admittedly, those children watching will undoubtedly pay it no heed, they probably think Bruce a doddery, odd character, well-meaning but somewhat jarring with their preconceived, if fledgling, idea of what constitutes light entertainment in the modern age. They’re probably right!
Nonetheless, to me this seemingly inconsequential nicety speaks volumes as to why Brucie’s continuing appearance on our televisions should be cherished dearly by us all.
His skill at fostering a warm and genuine environment for family entertainment is unsurpassed. For example: taking time to lead the studio audience in an impromptu chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ for ‘former Bond girl’ Fiona Fullerton; breaking off in the middle of a link to chastise the floor manager for pointing him in the direction of the correct camera — “I know which camera it is, I’m not an idiot”; pretending to be caught unawares in mid-conversation with a member of the studio audience as his co-host hands back to him — all surprisingly anarchic but loveable elements of his repertoire that no doubt drive those behind the cameras to distraction.
Of course, not even his greatest fan could ever truly suggest his presentation is slick and refined, fumbling as he does every other line, regularly emphasising the wrong word in sentences and occasionally fluffing a punch line to the miffed reaction of a silent crowd. The autocue is certainly not his friend.
Yet none of this matters, partly because of his inherent charm but also because, when he lets loose - improvising and reacting to events unfolding before him - he produces spontaneous moments of pure, unadulterated rapport.
His genius (and it is a genius) is to be constantly aware of the inherent absurdity bred of live television, of the constructs that can be bent and sometimes broken in the otherwise necessarily restrictive format of a live game show. Despite his seemingly old fashioned approach, he’s an incredibly subversive presence, yet always showing an empathy towards his contestants as well as maintaining an air of irreverence.
During his time presenting ‘The Generation Game’ in the 1970s — a show where members of the public attempted various skilful acts, from creating a clay pot on a potter’s wheel to acting famous parts in parodies of stage plays — he was particularly adept at walking the fine line between affected sympathy and outright condescension.
Anyone witness to his perennial trope of making notes in a notebook as over excited contestants unveil their embarrassing foibles see this dynamic at work, muttering audibly under his breath “This one’s trouble”.
For he is at once for the contestant and the audience, sharing the latters desire to laugh at those making fools of themselves whilst also respecting the contestants courage in willingly doing so. That takes an especially rare and delicate touch.
In the age of the hectoring bully of a presenter or, worse still, the chummy, anodyne best friend, Forsyth walks a middle path, one that shows an honesty, sensitivity and affinity with the public and, above all, an acute fondness for the medium in which he operates.
His enduring career has weaved from association with the Trans-Atlantic giants of entertainment — Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jnr — to the home grown UK totems of British comedy — Barker, Corbett, Cooper and Dawson for instance. He clearly idolises them, studies them, is in love with their oeuvre. It shows. He now embodies the heritage of over half a century of the best of light entertainment.
His inevitable final curtain call will sever us eternally from that heritage, no longer evident on contemporary Saturday night television but confined to the BBC Four retrospective, the youTube video and the satire of the impressionist.
Mock him, of course, how could you not? His distinct voice, mannerisms, catchphrases—let alone his chin—all
demand it. Yet, don’t ever be under the misapprehension you’re
witnessing a flummoxed old has-been. Here is a master at work; a special
talent that defines an age soon to be lost forever.
“Apologies for missing last week’s show. As you know, I’ve been ill recently and I’d just like to say, Craig [Strictly Come Dancing judge], thank you for the flowers… they were the most beautiful wreath I’ve ever seen.”
Tuesday 10 September 2013
Frost/Thatcher
The disarming of Nixon will always be considered his defining moment but this Margaret Thatcher interview is equally revealing…
As the career retrospectives started to appear across news sites following David Frost’s death, I was quick to peruse the accompanying video clips, as if I were a magpie seeking a prize titbit with which to line my nest, a nest within which my final opinion of the journalist and TV presenter could begin to gestate.
For that’s the aim of the ‘career spanning’ article, is it not? Offer the reader — someone who may have no preconceived idea of the merits of such an individual — an easily digestible morsel of generalisation, an insubstantial, introductory aperitif, suitable for the unrefined pallet of even the most fledgling chick?
I would usually baulk at this ‘Buzz Feed’ approach, especially when the subject’s work spans decades, but, incredibly, exceptionally, one of the clips I happened upon managed to encapsulate precisely the qualities of the man, and in little over ten minutes.
Yet, more than that, it displayed exactly how Frost’s skills as an interviewer could unveil a defining characteristic in his interviewee as well, coaxing out from the cracked egg shell, with a gentle tap, the yolk of his subject’s soul, bared for all to see.
The clip is taken from an 1985 interview with the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. It concerns a pivotal point in the Falklands War, a conflict in which Thatcher had been widely criticised for attacking and sinking the Belgrano, an Argentine vessel which was later discovered to be posing no immediate threat, sailing, as it was, away from the British fleet.
Watch how Frost remains resolute in the face of the Prime Minister’s deflection, particularly regarding a possible cover up, and at all times is calm, charismatic and polite. At no point does he feel the need to become aggressive in his questioning and despite Thatcher’s best efforts to undermine him, she is the one left with egg on her face.
Remarkably, it all serves to utterly expose the cold-hearted, bludgeoning morality that would come to define Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister.
If you want David Frost — or Margaret Thatcher — in a nutshell, then look no further. Here is the explanation for the high regard in which he was held and why her legacy remains that of the most divisive British leader in living memory. Just a few moments TV defines them both. It is compelling viewing…
As the career retrospectives started to appear across news sites following David Frost’s death, I was quick to peruse the accompanying video clips, as if I were a magpie seeking a prize titbit with which to line my nest, a nest within which my final opinion of the journalist and TV presenter could begin to gestate.
For that’s the aim of the ‘career spanning’ article, is it not? Offer the reader — someone who may have no preconceived idea of the merits of such an individual — an easily digestible morsel of generalisation, an insubstantial, introductory aperitif, suitable for the unrefined pallet of even the most fledgling chick?
I would usually baulk at this ‘Buzz Feed’ approach, especially when the subject’s work spans decades, but, incredibly, exceptionally, one of the clips I happened upon managed to encapsulate precisely the qualities of the man, and in little over ten minutes.
Yet, more than that, it displayed exactly how Frost’s skills as an interviewer could unveil a defining characteristic in his interviewee as well, coaxing out from the cracked egg shell, with a gentle tap, the yolk of his subject’s soul, bared for all to see.
The clip is taken from an 1985 interview with the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. It concerns a pivotal point in the Falklands War, a conflict in which Thatcher had been widely criticised for attacking and sinking the Belgrano, an Argentine vessel which was later discovered to be posing no immediate threat, sailing, as it was, away from the British fleet.
Watch how Frost remains resolute in the face of the Prime Minister’s deflection, particularly regarding a possible cover up, and at all times is calm, charismatic and polite. At no point does he feel the need to become aggressive in his questioning and despite Thatcher’s best efforts to undermine him, she is the one left with egg on her face.
Remarkably, it all serves to utterly expose the cold-hearted, bludgeoning morality that would come to define Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister.
If you want David Frost — or Margaret Thatcher — in a nutshell, then look no further. Here is the explanation for the high regard in which he was held and why her legacy remains that of the most divisive British leader in living memory. Just a few moments TV defines them both. It is compelling viewing…
‘Back to Reality’ — 14 Days Without Twitter (the Search for Self-Knowledge)
How a family holiday, a cult comedy and sexism led to a fortnight without Twitter.
There’s a cult sci-fi comedy show which used to air on the BBC called Red Dwarf. The title’s taken from the name given to a mining vessel marooned in deep space, its rag tag crew of obsessive compulsive android, vain mutant feline, cowardly hologram and lone remaining human, bumble their way from one alien encounter to another, discovering new species, new dimensions and futuristic technologies. It’s like Star Trek but for idiots!
Except that in its finer moments the show isn’t really for idiots at all. It can, in fact, be quite profound. I was recently brought to mind of perhaps its most loved episode, ‘Back to Reality’, in which all crew members hallucinate that, rather than being stranded in an over-sized tin can in the far reaches of the cosmos, they’ve been playing an extremely elaborate form of virtual reality computer game back home on Earth. Not only that but they’ve been playing it badly!
When confronted with what they believe to be reality, they don’t feel relieved nor delighted to have finally returned to Earth — that which they’ve been endlessly striving for —rather they become so depressed and disillusioned with each of their own personal realities that they decide to commit collective suicide. Thankfully, of course, the effects of the hallucinogen wear off just before they manage to do so.
Before journeying on family holiday to the rural wilderness of Dartmoor in the UK county of Devon, I’d been struck by two unrelated tweets which, together with the trolling of female journalists following Caroline Criado-Perez’s successful campaign to install the image of a woman — author Jane Austen — on the Bank of England’s ten pound note, pricked my, until then, unbridled belief in Twitter as a universally good thing.
The first missive — the exact 140 characters of which escape me now — suggested a futility in filling your Twitter feed with the musings of those who share your outlook on life. ‘Does it not somewhat narrow your horizons?’ the tweet suggested. ‘Does it not render Twitter nothing more than an enormous echo chamber?’
The second tweet opined that perhaps for most of us Twitter is tantamount to screaming into an empty pint glass, not only for those sexists venting their fury at successful, unobtainable women but also for those attempting to be creative, share knowledge or add to humanity’s collective understanding (this is a lot to cram into two tweets I grant you but the implication was clear).
After all, the intellectual rigour and wit of Oscar Wilde at his pithiest could easily be lost to the ether were he followed solely by Jedward. More tragically, were he to forget to append the #justsaying hashtag.
These tweets and the cacophony of horrific abuse re-tweeted by the female journalists and writers I follow triggered in me a long unconscious thought: ‘Am I really making any contribution to universal understanding through my tweets or merely adding to the incessant din? Am I just subconsciously patting myself on the back from within my own tiny cyber-clique? Am I, like the worst of the trolls, attempting in vain to dissuade the fear of my own infinite insignificance?’
What a wonderful feeling it was to spend a prolonged period of time without tweeting. Living life, loving my wife, playing with my child, joking with family friends and experiencing the simple pleasures of the countryside in the summertime.
A trip to the zoo, hopping over stepping stones in the river Dart, making sandcastles for the boys, cooking pancakes for breakfast, cricket in the garden and talking. Talking to real, live people…in a room…in a cottage…in the middle of nowhere.
For a while, I thought I’d had an epiphany. I could just forget about writing anything ever again, forget reading, never post another puerile tweet for the rest of my days. Live! Live in tactile reality apart from the digital dissonance of the online community. I could do it. Of course I could do it! I’d gone 14 days, why not 140? Why not forever!?
Those first few tweets on my return from holiday were painful. I detested myself even as I tapped the areas of my phone screen designed to look like keys on a keyboard. In the halcyon Neverland of a summer holiday it was easy to resist the caterwauling. In the monotonous mangle of the daily commute it was impossible to ignore.
I’m unable to quit Twitter, I realise this now. Not only do I have an inherent need to express my opinions, hopefully in a creative and informative way, but I also feel it’s a duty to do so as a human being. To somehow, in some small way at least, attempt to add value, even if it blurs the lines between my ‘virtual’ and ‘actual’ reality; even if, ultimately, my thoughts (hopefully not screamed) travel no further than the bottom of the empty pint glass.
The alternative is to leave Twitter to the ignorant — not an option based on the abhorrent sexism currently evident across the site — and therefore admit a total defeat. I suppose, in a manner of speaking, to be a Twitter quitter is to turn ones back on society itself and I, for one, am not ready to indulge in so morose an act as that very nearly undertaken by the crew of Red Dwarf.
Twitter, like Red Dwarf, is for idiots! Except,in its finer moments, it isn’t really for idiots at all.
There’s a cult sci-fi comedy show which used to air on the BBC called Red Dwarf. The title’s taken from the name given to a mining vessel marooned in deep space, its rag tag crew of obsessive compulsive android, vain mutant feline, cowardly hologram and lone remaining human, bumble their way from one alien encounter to another, discovering new species, new dimensions and futuristic technologies. It’s like Star Trek but for idiots!
Except that in its finer moments the show isn’t really for idiots at all. It can, in fact, be quite profound. I was recently brought to mind of perhaps its most loved episode, ‘Back to Reality’, in which all crew members hallucinate that, rather than being stranded in an over-sized tin can in the far reaches of the cosmos, they’ve been playing an extremely elaborate form of virtual reality computer game back home on Earth. Not only that but they’ve been playing it badly!
When confronted with what they believe to be reality, they don’t feel relieved nor delighted to have finally returned to Earth — that which they’ve been endlessly striving for —rather they become so depressed and disillusioned with each of their own personal realities that they decide to commit collective suicide. Thankfully, of course, the effects of the hallucinogen wear off just before they manage to do so.
Before journeying on family holiday to the rural wilderness of Dartmoor in the UK county of Devon, I’d been struck by two unrelated tweets which, together with the trolling of female journalists following Caroline Criado-Perez’s successful campaign to install the image of a woman — author Jane Austen — on the Bank of England’s ten pound note, pricked my, until then, unbridled belief in Twitter as a universally good thing.
The first missive — the exact 140 characters of which escape me now — suggested a futility in filling your Twitter feed with the musings of those who share your outlook on life. ‘Does it not somewhat narrow your horizons?’ the tweet suggested. ‘Does it not render Twitter nothing more than an enormous echo chamber?’
The second tweet opined that perhaps for most of us Twitter is tantamount to screaming into an empty pint glass, not only for those sexists venting their fury at successful, unobtainable women but also for those attempting to be creative, share knowledge or add to humanity’s collective understanding (this is a lot to cram into two tweets I grant you but the implication was clear).
After all, the intellectual rigour and wit of Oscar Wilde at his pithiest could easily be lost to the ether were he followed solely by Jedward. More tragically, were he to forget to append the #justsaying hashtag.
These tweets and the cacophony of horrific abuse re-tweeted by the female journalists and writers I follow triggered in me a long unconscious thought: ‘Am I really making any contribution to universal understanding through my tweets or merely adding to the incessant din? Am I just subconsciously patting myself on the back from within my own tiny cyber-clique? Am I, like the worst of the trolls, attempting in vain to dissuade the fear of my own infinite insignificance?’
What a wonderful feeling it was to spend a prolonged period of time without tweeting. Living life, loving my wife, playing with my child, joking with family friends and experiencing the simple pleasures of the countryside in the summertime.
A trip to the zoo, hopping over stepping stones in the river Dart, making sandcastles for the boys, cooking pancakes for breakfast, cricket in the garden and talking. Talking to real, live people…in a room…in a cottage…in the middle of nowhere.
For a while, I thought I’d had an epiphany. I could just forget about writing anything ever again, forget reading, never post another puerile tweet for the rest of my days. Live! Live in tactile reality apart from the digital dissonance of the online community. I could do it. Of course I could do it! I’d gone 14 days, why not 140? Why not forever!?
Those first few tweets on my return from holiday were painful. I detested myself even as I tapped the areas of my phone screen designed to look like keys on a keyboard. In the halcyon Neverland of a summer holiday it was easy to resist the caterwauling. In the monotonous mangle of the daily commute it was impossible to ignore.
I’m unable to quit Twitter, I realise this now. Not only do I have an inherent need to express my opinions, hopefully in a creative and informative way, but I also feel it’s a duty to do so as a human being. To somehow, in some small way at least, attempt to add value, even if it blurs the lines between my ‘virtual’ and ‘actual’ reality; even if, ultimately, my thoughts (hopefully not screamed) travel no further than the bottom of the empty pint glass.
The alternative is to leave Twitter to the ignorant — not an option based on the abhorrent sexism currently evident across the site — and therefore admit a total defeat. I suppose, in a manner of speaking, to be a Twitter quitter is to turn ones back on society itself and I, for one, am not ready to indulge in so morose an act as that very nearly undertaken by the crew of Red Dwarf.
Twitter, like Red Dwarf, is for idiots! Except,in its finer moments, it isn’t really for idiots at all.
Wednesday 14 August 2013
"A Republican walks into a pub..." - Humour and the new Royal arrival
Should we first turn to humour in the fight against public outpourings of emotion?
Throughout
the surreal build up to the birth of Prince George of Cambridge I
posted a series of silly tweets imagining the new heir to the British
throne’s imminent arrival as that of a hotly anticipated studio album
from a popular recording artist.
 |
| How we laughed… @jockyblue82 twitter feed 19th July 2013 |
It
was my way of coping with the frustration at Britain’s ongoing
adoration for the institution of monarchy, so totally and completely at
odds to my own ideals that I want to scream defiantly into my cup of
tea. As those around me debated appropriate names for the privileged
sprog, it took great resolve to prevent myself from snapping like
Michael Douglas’ character in the film ‘Falling Down’.
Those tweets were a puerile way of dealing with my own anger I’ll admit but then better than the alternative. For nothing has left me more moribund this week than the cawing Republicans, as equally and effortlessly dull as the servile ‘cootchy, cootchy cooing’ Royalists.
Sometimes a point of disagreement is so fundamental that it’s hopeless debating it. Like negotiating with terrorists or arguing the finer points of immigration law with a member of the English Defence League, you simply risk adding fuel to the fire.
Thankfully, however, there is refuge from the maelstrom and it can be found in that other defining British character trait: when all else fails and the tide of public emotion seems to have unequivocally burst over the sea wall of sanity, we at least have our sense of humour to fall back on.
By way of example, The Guardian newspaper’s temporary “Republican?” setting — hiding all coverage of the Royal baby from its website — was an excellently tongue-in-cheek admission of opposition, yet perhaps this sheltering in the darkly comic was best displayed by BBC reporter Simon McCoy, whose evident frustration at being forced to report relentlessly on nothing at all manifested itself in this wonderfully self-sacrificial piece from outside the Lindo Wing of London’s St Mary’s Hospital.
As McCoy dead pans his “none of it news” quip he is at once part of, and in on, the joke, with an acceptance of absurdity that borders on the epiphanic. Yet it’s true, isn’t it, that when we laugh — and McCoy’s report was certainly very funny — our minds are far more open to new possibilities, responsive to new ideas?
I’m not suggesting this was the reporter’s attempt to douse a burning desire for regicide, thus installing a new British Republic in the process, but it did have a certain power in emanating from the ‘belly of the beast’ as it were.
Of course, there was plenty more straightforward anti-royalist rhetoric published in the run up to the birth, yet, when in the eye of the storm, I wonder if it’s productive to stand quite so affronted, quoting the total figure of babies born into poverty in a desperate attempt to arrest attention from the main event?
We need to be more cunning than that, more Machiavellian perhaps? For in Machiavelli’s most famous work we learn how, to retain power, we must carefully maintain the sociopolitical institutions to which the people are accustomed. Or at least appear to.
It’s time we naysayers used humour as a tool to challenge and subvert the dominant contemporary norms. Perhaps if you can appear to be ploughing the same furrow of popular opinion whilst occasionally sowing the odd seed of doubt, you’re far more likely to make people think twice.
Humour is adept at conveying a subtlety otherwise out of reach. It is a means to an end as well as an end in and of itself.
For Republican’s seeking to undermine the sycophancy currently surrounding them, it is important not to forget the solace to be found in a laugh. And about that I am deadly serious.
Those tweets were a puerile way of dealing with my own anger I’ll admit but then better than the alternative. For nothing has left me more moribund this week than the cawing Republicans, as equally and effortlessly dull as the servile ‘cootchy, cootchy cooing’ Royalists.
Sometimes a point of disagreement is so fundamental that it’s hopeless debating it. Like negotiating with terrorists or arguing the finer points of immigration law with a member of the English Defence League, you simply risk adding fuel to the fire.
Thankfully, however, there is refuge from the maelstrom and it can be found in that other defining British character trait: when all else fails and the tide of public emotion seems to have unequivocally burst over the sea wall of sanity, we at least have our sense of humour to fall back on.
By way of example, The Guardian newspaper’s temporary “Republican?” setting — hiding all coverage of the Royal baby from its website — was an excellently tongue-in-cheek admission of opposition, yet perhaps this sheltering in the darkly comic was best displayed by BBC reporter Simon McCoy, whose evident frustration at being forced to report relentlessly on nothing at all manifested itself in this wonderfully self-sacrificial piece from outside the Lindo Wing of London’s St Mary’s Hospital.
As McCoy dead pans his “none of it news” quip he is at once part of, and in on, the joke, with an acceptance of absurdity that borders on the epiphanic. Yet it’s true, isn’t it, that when we laugh — and McCoy’s report was certainly very funny — our minds are far more open to new possibilities, responsive to new ideas?
I’m not suggesting this was the reporter’s attempt to douse a burning desire for regicide, thus installing a new British Republic in the process, but it did have a certain power in emanating from the ‘belly of the beast’ as it were.
Of course, there was plenty more straightforward anti-royalist rhetoric published in the run up to the birth, yet, when in the eye of the storm, I wonder if it’s productive to stand quite so affronted, quoting the total figure of babies born into poverty in a desperate attempt to arrest attention from the main event?
We need to be more cunning than that, more Machiavellian perhaps? For in Machiavelli’s most famous work we learn how, to retain power, we must carefully maintain the sociopolitical institutions to which the people are accustomed. Or at least appear to.
It’s time we naysayers used humour as a tool to challenge and subvert the dominant contemporary norms. Perhaps if you can appear to be ploughing the same furrow of popular opinion whilst occasionally sowing the odd seed of doubt, you’re far more likely to make people think twice.
Humour is adept at conveying a subtlety otherwise out of reach. It is a means to an end as well as an end in and of itself.
For Republican’s seeking to undermine the sycophancy currently surrounding them, it is important not to forget the solace to be found in a laugh. And about that I am deadly serious.
Friday 19 July 2013
"It isn't hard to do..."
 |
| Fransico Goya's "Witches Sabbath" |
‘Imagine’ by John Lennon is one of the 'go-to' songs for those wishing to convey a message of world peace. You can hear it as the backdrop to ceremonial occasions the world over, it’s ever present, becoming almost as ubiquitous as the releasing of a white dove.
It's a little strange given that it asks us to imagine a world with no religion. How many heads of state and other notable dignitaries have unconsciously endorsed the striking of religion from our lives?
But what if we did live in a religion free world? Many would think us destined to descend into an irreversible chaos.
One of the most influential books I read whilst at school was "Introducing Marxism: A Graphic Guide". It was probably my first step towards political awareness (ably assisted by cartoon illustrations).
I remember an early chapter on the symbiotic relationship of the ruling class and religious belief. How Marx believed religion, particularly the fear of God, was a bourgeois tool with which to control the populous and maintain a stranglehold on power.
By instilling the belief that reward would come only in death, and only to those who had lived by the ethical code of a religious doctrine, the elite could quash the desire for rebellion in the working class, rendering the populous placid, docile and compliant to the whims of the bourgeoisie.
As Marx himself put it, "Religion is the opium of the people".
Nothing I have read before or since has been so damaging to my personal belief in the divine and although I can appreciate the many merits of religious community, the premise on which they are founded has long been beyond my acceptance.
On the contrary, the French philosopher of the Enlightenment period, Voltaire, argues that if God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him, that people need to believe in a higher power for comfort, to give their lives meaning, to rationalise or form a narrative of why things are.
But wouldn't it be nice to think that humans could make do without? Could accept this finite lifetime for all its natural beauty and absurdity, to be moral, ethical and just without the dangling carrot of a heavenly reward or the looming stick of a hellish comeuppance?
Biologist and primatologist Frans de Waal certainly thinks so, suggesting most of northern Europe, where the vast majority of people are now non-religious, is currently undergoing a form of organic social experiment to see whether a society in which religion isn't the dominant force can still remain a moral one.
de Waal refutes what, he suggests, is the oft held belief that religion was the birth of moral behaviour, claiming that religious morality was somewhat 'tacked on' to pre-existing moral codes, perhaps to "sway morality in a direction that we might prefer".
It does seem to chime with Marx's idea of religion as a primary means to control, and certainly the proliferation of secular societies and charities aiming to better humanity's plight suggests the desire to 'do good' doesn't solely rely on a religious belief.
Morality covered then, but what of the other great pillar of religious purpose - meaning?
Whilst at university in 2001, I remember sitting down with a friend and watching the Sam Mendes film American Beauty on VHS, borrowed from the campus library. Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham, a middle aged, middle class man fed up with modern life.
By quitting his insufferable job, taking up a strict fitness regime, smoking marijuana, buying a fast car and listening to loud rock music, he begins to free himself from the prison of his own disillusionment. A mid-life crisis it may be but by the end of the film his pursuit of happiness seems, almost by happenstance, to have reached an end. In fact, the point is, it wasn't really a 'pursuit' at all. More accurately, he has come to an acceptance of his own existence...
It's a sentiment easy to mock, yet another article, again from the endlessly excellent BigThink website, takes up this idea in the context of the Samuel Beckett play 'Waiting for Godot'...
"Like most postmodern literature it’s unclear what, exactly, Waiting for Godot is about. But that’s the point. You create meaning for yourself ... In other words, we’re spending our lives searching for meaning – waiting for our Godot – and failing. The problem, paradoxically, is just that: we’re searching....we know that the search for happiness and meaning is self-defeating: if you’re looking for either, you’ve already failed."
Perhaps one day we'll live in a global society where morality and meaning are intrinsically woven into the very fabric of our existence, hardwired into the minutiae of our everyday lives without us having to seek the approval of a higher being or the validation of a higher reason.
It may seem twee, but there is surely enough beauty and wonder in even the most seemingly insignificant aspect of existence to make us grateful for every single moment of our "stupid, little" lives.
At the end of American Beauty, Lester is somewhat flippantly asked "How are you?". Perhaps we too will be able to pause for a moment, consider the reality of the question and answer, truthfully, "I feel great".
Thursday 11 July 2013
"The folkish summer romance" - Or how Andy Murray conquered the All England Club
 |
| yvettemn via flickr |
Of all the sports writing I've devoured since Andy Murray's triumph at Wimbledon, Barney Ronay's article in The Guardian has perhaps best encapsulated the giddy height of his accomplishment...
"It is a genuinely gold-standard achievement for the man from Dunblane, given weight not just by the burden of history and the folkish annual summer romance of Wimbledon itself, but by the fact he is competing in one of the great periods of elite men's tennis."
Indeed, Murray has won the most coveted prize in tennis at a time when, as Billie Jean King recently put it, the sport boasts possibly the four greatest players ever to grace the game - Nadal, Federer, Djokovic and Murray himself.
Yet, despite this undoubtedly remarkable feat of sporting excellence, it is the reference to a 'folkish summer romance' I find particularly interesting.
For isn't it true that the annual fortnight of lawn tennis at the All England Club brings with it a very peculiar strain of English behaviour? It cultivates a quasi-religious fervour in those who have barely a passing interest in tennis for the remaining 50 weeks of the year.
For isn't it true that the annual fortnight of lawn tennis at the All England Club brings with it a very peculiar strain of English behaviour? It cultivates a quasi-religious fervour in those who have barely a passing interest in tennis for the remaining 50 weeks of the year.
On the eve of the final they find themselves inexplicably queuing overnight, not for tickets, but for the chance to perch on a proximitous patch of grass, officially called the Aorangi Terrace but also taking on the mythical monikers of Henman Hill or Murray Mound (I prefer to call it Bates' Barrow, a tongue in cheek reminder of the desperate era when Jeremy Bates was our great British white hope - Bates never progressed passed round 4).
So why this bizarre form of mass hysteria?
So why this bizarre form of mass hysteria?
In clement weather the All England Club takes on a guise of the ultimate garden party, with those lucky enough to attend initiated into an intimate other-world, replete with sporting colossi and celebrity glamour but also stamped with Royal approval. It symbolises a very English sense of propriety and privilege, the grounds dressed in politely disarming whites and greens but also purple - the colour of Royalty.
For so many in the middle class majority, it seems Wimbledon allows them to transcend the divide between their own social status and that of the elite.
As much as I love the BBC, it portrays and fuels this same self-aggrandisement delivering a relentlessly gushing celebrity sycophancy, punctuating the pauses in play with shots of the rich and famous.
It's part of a somewhat callous mystique that surrounds Wimbledon, pervading the general discourse continually. You can hear it when your mother calls the evening after the final, conversation momentarily happening upon the sporting prowess on display before quickly turning to an in-depth sartorial analysis of those in the Royal Box.
It makes its voice heard again when 'Beeb' presenter John Inverdale remarks on ladies champion Marion Bartoli not being the best 'looker'!
It veritably screams at you when, following Murray's final victory, the headline on the front cover of the Daily Mail reads not "Champion" nor "He's done it!" nor even a histrionic "Our hero" but instead opts for the following... "Now it'll be arise Sir Andy". How galling that potentially being bestowed a Queen's Honour is given more import than the skillful artistry of the sporting achievement itself?
It veritably screams at you when, following Murray's final victory, the headline on the front cover of the Daily Mail reads not "Champion" nor "He's done it!" nor even a histrionic "Our hero" but instead opts for the following... "Now it'll be arise Sir Andy". How galling that potentially being bestowed a Queen's Honour is given more import than the skillful artistry of the sporting achievement itself?
Yet, even though I suspect he would accept such an honour gracefully and is certainly happy to channel the heady energy of the Centre Court crowd to his own advantage in a match, what makes Andy Murray such a fascinating character is that he always appears one step removed from the madness around him.
Of course, the clambering English public disliked this fact initially, they want to submerge him in all that Wimbledon represents to them, they want him to get recklessly caught up in the hazy summer vibe, to ultimately validate their own sense of occasion.
Indeed Murray's tears after last year's final loss to Federer temporarily gave them the chink in the armour they craved. Suddenly the relationship between player and public thawed. However, that outpouring of emotion was momentary, no longer relevant after the claiming of the US Open confirmed that Murray's career need not be defined by Wimbledon alone.
To Murray's credit he seems aware of the ongoing circus surrounding him, batting away the wild interview questions with a disregarding pragmatism. Some still choose to interpret this as a stereotypical dourness but it's nothing of the sort. He simply won't play their games nor pander to their pandemonium.
It is that feature of his personality which allows him to shed the burden and, despite overwhelming pressure and expectation, find a way to win.
Of course, the clambering English public disliked this fact initially, they want to submerge him in all that Wimbledon represents to them, they want him to get recklessly caught up in the hazy summer vibe, to ultimately validate their own sense of occasion.
Indeed Murray's tears after last year's final loss to Federer temporarily gave them the chink in the armour they craved. Suddenly the relationship between player and public thawed. However, that outpouring of emotion was momentary, no longer relevant after the claiming of the US Open confirmed that Murray's career need not be defined by Wimbledon alone.
To Murray's credit he seems aware of the ongoing circus surrounding him, batting away the wild interview questions with a disregarding pragmatism. Some still choose to interpret this as a stereotypical dourness but it's nothing of the sort. He simply won't play their games nor pander to their pandemonium.
It is that feature of his personality which allows him to shed the burden and, despite overwhelming pressure and expectation, find a way to win.
For Murray is, undoubtedly, a winner, and though in many ways the English love him for ending 77 year wait for a British male champion, there's a small but significantly dark corner of their collective psyche that resents him a little too. It suggests that he'll always be somewhat of an outsider. After all, winning just isn't English is it? Then again, neither is Andy Murray.
Tuesday 4 June 2013
Empathy, empathy! They've all got it empathy
I'd champion an ability to empathise over most human traits but in some circumstances can it actually hinder the progress of humanity?
Previously, I've waxed lyrical on the readiness of celebrities to associate with charity but on reading this article last week, I've finally been able to put my finger on a different aspect of prime-time fundraising television that has always disconcerted me...
I always suspect the organisers (and the public for that matter) are far more concerned with which BBC newsreaders will be wheeled out for the annual dance routine. At least Bob Geldof physically and metaphorically loomed over Thatcher in the run up to Live Aid. He wasn't just looking on dutifully as an African child showed him round their woefully inadequate home. He wasn't just yelling "Give us yer money!"
It's this lack of focus on the 'systemic problems' that I can't abide. After all, isn't prevention always better than cure?
Children in Need alone raised over £26million in 2012. A fantastic sum. However, put into context (and this is where I wave the red flag), UK bankers bonuses alone totalled £13billion in 2012. That's more than the total GDP of Equitorial Guinea; a country, lest we forget, crippled by the cost of its debts to us in the developed world.
Contrary to the article I quote here, I don't really think that empathy is the problem - you can't have enough of that in society to my mind - rather it's the action this "victim identification" catalyses.
It's an objective and politically engaged response we need rather than a guilt relieving, emotive knee-jerk reaction. After all, however much we raise financially, we won't cure the problem. 12 months later we'll see the same upsetting images on our TV screens again.
Next year I suggest that, instead of Bill Turnbull and Charlie Stayt performing Abba for our amusement, we should demand David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the rest of the House of Commons take their place. We might suddenly find there's a permanent change for the better. A change that money can't buy.
Previously, I've waxed lyrical on the readiness of celebrities to associate with charity but on reading this article last week, I've finally been able to put my finger on a different aspect of prime-time fundraising television that has always disconcerted me...
"The concept of empathy—putting yourself into another's shoes—has fuelled political and moral thinking of late, inspiring presidents and academics to hail the feeling of another's pain as necessary to curing the world's ills. Crucial to empathy is "victim identification", by which we come to know the human face of tragedy. As a result, we are far more likely to give donations to a person whose picture we see on the news than seek solutions for systemic problems, such as underfunded hospitals, that affect the lives of far more individuals. In other words, empathy can result in the sacrificing of the many for the one." - The Case Against Empathy - bigthink.comChildren In Need and Comic Relief clearly fall into this trap because of their desire to show the "human face of tragedy" so forcefully. In doing so they miss a key facet of what should be the overarching question i.e. 'why have the political powers responsible not addressed the issues that led to this suffering?'
I always suspect the organisers (and the public for that matter) are far more concerned with which BBC newsreaders will be wheeled out for the annual dance routine. At least Bob Geldof physically and metaphorically loomed over Thatcher in the run up to Live Aid. He wasn't just looking on dutifully as an African child showed him round their woefully inadequate home. He wasn't just yelling "Give us yer money!"
It's this lack of focus on the 'systemic problems' that I can't abide. After all, isn't prevention always better than cure?
Children in Need alone raised over £26million in 2012. A fantastic sum. However, put into context (and this is where I wave the red flag), UK bankers bonuses alone totalled £13billion in 2012. That's more than the total GDP of Equitorial Guinea; a country, lest we forget, crippled by the cost of its debts to us in the developed world.
"Even though Africa has only 5 percent of the developing world's income, it carries about two thirds of the debt - over $300 billion. Because of this, the average African country spends three times more of its scarce resources on repaying debt than it does on providing basic services" - allAfrica.comThe funds and awareness that charities raise for their cause are extremely important; the good will and kindness of those that work for a charity is to be commended, yet, however good the intention, when we ourselves donate, I wonder whether we aren't just letting our politicians off the hook? Whether we aren't just perpetuating the status quo (and I don't just mean prolonging the careers of Francis Rossi and Rick Parfit. I've moved on from Live Aid now)?
Contrary to the article I quote here, I don't really think that empathy is the problem - you can't have enough of that in society to my mind - rather it's the action this "victim identification" catalyses.
It's an objective and politically engaged response we need rather than a guilt relieving, emotive knee-jerk reaction. After all, however much we raise financially, we won't cure the problem. 12 months later we'll see the same upsetting images on our TV screens again.
Next year I suggest that, instead of Bill Turnbull and Charlie Stayt performing Abba for our amusement, we should demand David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the rest of the House of Commons take their place. We might suddenly find there's a permanent change for the better. A change that money can't buy.
Wednesday 22 May 2013
"We Know What We Are..."
I love football. I've always loved it and I always will. Despite wrangling with my conscience in the very pages of this blog, it's a fact I've come to accept.
In my adult years, as I've begun to embrace the anti-masculinity of cultural icons such as Bowie and The Smiths and developed a fulsome affinity with the politics of the left, I've found my infatuation with football - synonymous with male bravado and extreme financial speculation - somewhat troublesome.
My fandom for Chelsea, a club dependent on the oil-money of an enigmatic Russian Oligarch, only adds to the love/hate dichotomy battling away in the midfield engine room of my conscience.
And yet, from out of this dizzying nausea, I now find myself reaching a formative 'age of reason'. Somewhat unexpectedly, Chelsea's Europa League triumph has provided the keystone bridging the turbulent sea of uncertainty.
As the trophy was jointly raised by Frank Lampard and John Terry, I came to recognise them as yin and yang respectively - Lampard the consummate professional, who in a difficult season, has proved his talent and dignity amidst the furore over his lapsing contract, and John Terry, the self important, delusional captain, declining further in skill and self-awareness the longer his influence within the walls of Stamford Bridge remains.
Terry and Lampard, once peas from the same pod, now as polar opposites.
Yet, it's not just watching my football club that inspires this conflicting thought process. To return to The Smiths, Morrissey himself recently posed for a picture with Mel Gibson (and Tom Jones somewhat bizarrely) which was published on an authoritative fan site. That it was Gibson, a man recently lambasted for controversial statements of an anti-Semitic nature, only lends more weight to the critical voices chastening Morrissey's own plethora of concerning comments on race and immigration.
Can the same man who showed such empathy towards the oppressed in his art really turn out to be a racist? With those spectacles!? With that quiff!? Or is this a man who's made opposition to established ideals such a lifelong mission that he can't help but be contrary in all matters? More significantly, if we air on the side of the former, does it mark as null and void all the positive traits he represented during his mid-eighties alliance with Johnny Marr?
Perhaps a question for another day but this moral quandary emphasises the fact we don't enter this world fully formed, physically, emotionally or intellectually. One of the great joy's of life is seeking a greater knowledge of the world and oneself through experience, learning and education. As a result our lives are messy; a hotch-potch of sometimes counter-intuitive beliefs, our whole concept of right and wrong balancing on a knife's edge.
Can the same man who showed such empathy towards the oppressed in his art really turn out to be a racist? With those spectacles!? With that quiff!? Or is this a man who's made opposition to established ideals such a lifelong mission that he can't help but be contrary in all matters? More significantly, if we air on the side of the former, does it mark as null and void all the positive traits he represented during his mid-eighties alliance with Johnny Marr?
Perhaps a question for another day but this moral quandary emphasises the fact we don't enter this world fully formed, physically, emotionally or intellectually. One of the great joy's of life is seeking a greater knowledge of the world and oneself through experience, learning and education. As a result our lives are messy; a hotch-potch of sometimes counter-intuitive beliefs, our whole concept of right and wrong balancing on a knife's edge.
An admittedly trite example: I'd never think of myself as inherently conservative, yet - as inversion of the strict rules on dress enforced by the All England Lawn Tennis Club - I could never bring myself to play football in anything other than a predominantly black coloured boot. Ridiculous I know but my father's no-nonsense approach to sporting apparel has scorched itself into my psyche more indelibly than the image of the sun on my retina were I to aim my vision directly at its rays.
Similarly, my undying affiliation for the footballing totem of south London establishment will always grate against the more latterly formed facets of my personality. Yet, you know what? I think that's probably okay isn't it? After all, supporting Chelsea isn't a vote for the Tories and it isn't an endorsement of super-capitalism either.
If I was to support a football club based on political ideals, I suppose it might be Liverpool, borne of the north-western socialism embodied by the figurehead of Bill Shankly, their fans victimised by establishment cover ups in the wake of this country's greatest footballing tragedy. Yet they, as with that other great sporting working-class signifier Manchester United, are also now owned by multi-millionaire businessmen.
Regardless, I couldn't possibly support a team that isn't borne of my south London roots, that would quite obviously be absurd, as my dear old Dad would no doubt attest.
Perhaps I should form an allegiance to AFC Wimbledon, owned by their fans, who take an equal financial responsibility for the state of their club and are impassioned by the betrayal of their former team upping sticks to Milton Keynes?
Yet, could I really bring myself to do that?! It would undermine all my history with the club I've supported since I was a boy. My first game a 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace in 1991, the FA Cup triumph in 1997 when I was 15 years old and all the ups and downs that followed would be as good as erased from existence? No.
I realise that chasing these arguments round and round in my head is as pointless as were I that character in Monty Python's 'Life of Brian', attempting to choose between joining the 'People's Front of Judea' or the 'Judean People's Front' (as it happens, I'd probably plump for the 'Popular People's Front' - I've never liked crowds). In fact, the important thing is I haven't chosen at all! Couldn't choose. No more than I could choose my parents or the place I was born.
As the traditional po-going of the victorious team begun in the Amsterdam Arena on Wednesday night and the blue and white ticker tape fell from the skies to collect at the bottom of that inverted traffic cone of a cup, I put an end to these futile attempts to square all the circles.
As with any human being, group of individuals, sector of society, rock band, pop icon etc.; a football club - indeed a sport - is never perfect; they/it will always let you down. In essence, in the forming of your own identity you can only ever pick up on the good stuff and run with it...
In that case I suppose I am a proud Chelsea fan and, perhaps, for the first time in my living memory, there is a suggested positive identity forming around the boys in blue - one of dogged determination and willpower residing despite the obscene monetary and moral maze in which Chelsea perennially find themselves lost.
It pleases me as much as Super Frank's record breaking 203 goal haul and I'll squeeze every ounce of pleasure I can from the claiming of another trophy in that image. That the winning goal in the final came from Ivanovic, a shy, retiring, unsung hero of the team is a bonus. John Terry's costume changes will be left to evaporate in the mists of my mind.
I realise that chasing these arguments round and round in my head is as pointless as were I that character in Monty Python's 'Life of Brian', attempting to choose between joining the 'People's Front of Judea' or the 'Judean People's Front' (as it happens, I'd probably plump for the 'Popular People's Front' - I've never liked crowds). In fact, the important thing is I haven't chosen at all! Couldn't choose. No more than I could choose my parents or the place I was born.
As the traditional po-going of the victorious team begun in the Amsterdam Arena on Wednesday night and the blue and white ticker tape fell from the skies to collect at the bottom of that inverted traffic cone of a cup, I put an end to these futile attempts to square all the circles.
As with any human being, group of individuals, sector of society, rock band, pop icon etc.; a football club - indeed a sport - is never perfect; they/it will always let you down. In essence, in the forming of your own identity you can only ever pick up on the good stuff and run with it...
In that case I suppose I am a proud Chelsea fan and, perhaps, for the first time in my living memory, there is a suggested positive identity forming around the boys in blue - one of dogged determination and willpower residing despite the obscene monetary and moral maze in which Chelsea perennially find themselves lost.
It pleases me as much as Super Frank's record breaking 203 goal haul and I'll squeeze every ounce of pleasure I can from the claiming of another trophy in that image. That the winning goal in the final came from Ivanovic, a shy, retiring, unsung hero of the team is a bonus. John Terry's costume changes will be left to evaporate in the mists of my mind.
Wednesday 17 April 2013
Don't let the debate leave you feeling MT
Frankly, I'm not writing this for you, I'm writing this for me. I have to write it; a final cathartic, unburdening, underlining and, hopefully, ending of the obsession I have been indulging since the news of her passing.
Like you, I've read just about enough commentary on the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to last a lifetime. I completely understand if you turn away from this blog and head back to your facebook profiles, twitter feeds and instagram filters.
Yet those complaining of the blanket coverage, or youngsters understandably bewildered by the fuss, perhaps don't realise that Thatcherism is still the pivotal political ideal around which British society revolves today.
Even Tony Blair, the man who could have been our hero, was in thrall to many elements of Thatcherism, and Cameron, although careful to initially portray himself as a new kind of 'compassionate' Conservative, has come to demonstrate that, on the contrary, he holds dear to his heart (stony and cold) many of the harshest tropes of the Thatcher government. The current battle over history's perception of her legacy therefore feels utterly vital to our future.
I can't rejoice at Thatcher's death, I couldn't rejoice at anyone's death. That would display the kind of reactionary behaviour I so often criticise of those on the right. I was only a child when she was in power and my view of her time at the sharp end of politics is appropriated from all I have read since I left school not through any personal experience.
As rightly pointed out to me, my reaction to Margaret Thatcher's death can therefore only be cerebral, never visceral. My family and I, nor the community we lived in, were affected by the closure of the mines, we lived in the environs of London, the one place in the UK that didn't suffer from Thatcher's iron will. Perhaps I, like many of those damning the revellers, have no right to do so from this detached position?
And yet, her passing, and the following struggle to define her time as leader, feels like an opportunity for the left to rise above the caterwauling and demonstrate to those on the right a compassion they so often lack. To lead by example. The idea excites me because this feels like an opportunity to reassess what we as Britons want from our government, what we want the country we live in to really be like.
After the Olympics and, more pointedly, the Paralympics, I hoped that the wonderful compassion and inclusivity of those summer months, ripe with a public booing of George Osborne, may have sown a seed in the conscience of the majority of Britons, that they might see the possibility of another way - the current debate feels like the possibility is being tested.
Of course, in reality, the real test will only come at the General Election in 2015 but it's now that the seas of change have to swell. It may well be that Thatcherism has indeed indelibly inked itself into the tapestry of British society never to be erased, yet the notable dissenting voice this past week - however distasteful - suggests that Thatcher's legacy will remain a divisive one.
Perhaps the traits I cling to most - compassion, empathy, care for the most vulnerable in our society, the repulsion of greed and the fostering of equal opportunity haven't, in fact, died along with the leader who's actions so fiercely sought to eradicate them?
I hope those who voted for Thatcher - elected her three times no less - did so because they were somehow blinded to the alternative, that they felt they had no choice. As a socialist I choose to believe this is true. In fact I have to. The death of Margaret Thatcher is a chance to raise the spectre of that choice once more.
Like you, I've read just about enough commentary on the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to last a lifetime. I completely understand if you turn away from this blog and head back to your facebook profiles, twitter feeds and instagram filters.
Yet those complaining of the blanket coverage, or youngsters understandably bewildered by the fuss, perhaps don't realise that Thatcherism is still the pivotal political ideal around which British society revolves today.
Even Tony Blair, the man who could have been our hero, was in thrall to many elements of Thatcherism, and Cameron, although careful to initially portray himself as a new kind of 'compassionate' Conservative, has come to demonstrate that, on the contrary, he holds dear to his heart (stony and cold) many of the harshest tropes of the Thatcher government. The current battle over history's perception of her legacy therefore feels utterly vital to our future.
I can't rejoice at Thatcher's death, I couldn't rejoice at anyone's death. That would display the kind of reactionary behaviour I so often criticise of those on the right. I was only a child when she was in power and my view of her time at the sharp end of politics is appropriated from all I have read since I left school not through any personal experience.
As rightly pointed out to me, my reaction to Margaret Thatcher's death can therefore only be cerebral, never visceral. My family and I, nor the community we lived in, were affected by the closure of the mines, we lived in the environs of London, the one place in the UK that didn't suffer from Thatcher's iron will. Perhaps I, like many of those damning the revellers, have no right to do so from this detached position?
And yet, her passing, and the following struggle to define her time as leader, feels like an opportunity for the left to rise above the caterwauling and demonstrate to those on the right a compassion they so often lack. To lead by example. The idea excites me because this feels like an opportunity to reassess what we as Britons want from our government, what we want the country we live in to really be like.
After the Olympics and, more pointedly, the Paralympics, I hoped that the wonderful compassion and inclusivity of those summer months, ripe with a public booing of George Osborne, may have sown a seed in the conscience of the majority of Britons, that they might see the possibility of another way - the current debate feels like the possibility is being tested.
Of course, in reality, the real test will only come at the General Election in 2015 but it's now that the seas of change have to swell. It may well be that Thatcherism has indeed indelibly inked itself into the tapestry of British society never to be erased, yet the notable dissenting voice this past week - however distasteful - suggests that Thatcher's legacy will remain a divisive one.
Perhaps the traits I cling to most - compassion, empathy, care for the most vulnerable in our society, the repulsion of greed and the fostering of equal opportunity haven't, in fact, died along with the leader who's actions so fiercely sought to eradicate them?
I hope those who voted for Thatcher - elected her three times no less - did so because they were somehow blinded to the alternative, that they felt they had no choice. As a socialist I choose to believe this is true. In fact I have to. The death of Margaret Thatcher is a chance to raise the spectre of that choice once more.
Thursday 28 March 2013
Don't call it a comeback
"Here I am, not quite dying. My body left to rot in a hollow tree. Its branches throwing shadows on the gallows for me. And the next day and the next day and another day."
It's early days I'll grant you but culturally 2013 already appears to be defined by the comeback. The question is what does the resurgence of our past favourites really mean for the future of popular music?
There have always been comebacks. From Lazarus to Elvis Presley history is littered with them but 2013 has already seen David Bowie, Suede and My Bloody Valentine release their first music in a decade.
Of course with Bowie, as ever, the music is only half the story, and its no coincidence that the release of 'The Next Day' coincides with the V&A's retrospective exhibition 'David Bowie Is'.
When married to the self defacing 'anti' artwork of the album's sleeve and its reference to past glories therein you realise that, in PR terms, the guy's played a blinder.
I don't particularly care for the music of My Bloody Valentine but certainly the return of Suede has set my pulse racing. Their new album, Bloodsports, is a string of glamorous hooks and blood curdling ballads pulling on every last heart string.
Bowie, rumoured to be ill and widely regarded as in retirement, and Suede, who's last album defined a nadir for the band, both appear to be of the realisation that this is their last opportunity to define their legacy.
You might argue that with Bowie's glittering career there is hardly any need, yet it's to the credit of both performers that their artistic integrity forces them to redefine themselves in an age that could have quite easily rejected them.
On the contrary, as it turns out, they've been embraced! The Bowie exhibition is claimed to be the cultural event of the year by the Guardian newspaper - in March!
Unexpectedly, it's taken a 66 year old man and his 40 year old prodigies to shake us from our slumber. Surely this isn't the way it's supposed to be!?
Yet even the 'manufactured pop' clique, defined by their obsession for fashion and fad, has been in reflective mood of late. ITV2's The Big Reunion has been a gem of a show. Despite following many of the now tired reality TV tropes, the coming together of a clutch of 90's popstars has, against the odds, been a wonder to behold!
The genuine drama of the group members maturely and profoundly addressing the issues that once ripped them asunder is utterly compelling and the stark illumination of record label tyranny with relation to the well being of their young adult employees is refreshingly confronted.
When the groups nervously jump back in the saddle, the camaraderie between them is touching and genuine, with the self awareness to realise the transient nature of the fleeting moment they are in.
Atomic Kitten, 911, B'witched: all are seen for what essential they are - mildly talented individuals who took the chance of a lifetime and ran with it. You can hardly blame them for that and, in fact, when you see the price many of them paid you feel a genuine empathy.
Yet it's the joyful exuberance of boy band 5ive that steals the show, their likely lad banter and no nonsense approach an antidote to the incredibly intense members of B'witched in particular, struggling to control emotion and ego.
Even when perennial naysayer Sean appears close to the brink, band mate Abs comforts and cajoles him in a tender and quite touching manner.
So there we have it, pop and the avant garde stunned into an endearing, self knowing retrospect. I find myself looking in vain for some significance.
Is my love for Bowie, Suede and 5ive merely evidence of reaching an age of post modernist affection for the past twisted into a disappointment in the contemporary or simply that young artists are somehow no longer enabled or willing to commit to cultural revolution?
Political, social and economic circumstance wills that they should be surely? Or perhaps this current reality is in fact the norm? We've passed through so many iterations of popular music that the lines between the past and the future have been forever blurred?
The children of the revolution are now adults, yet are delightfully still hard wired to break for the corners of the envelope.
At thirty myself, I'm not sure whether I find this a comfort or a concern but then does it matter the age of those teetering on the edge of now? Why not grasp for another day in the sun if there happens to be one breaking around you?
After all, Suede's Brett Anderson sings, "When we touch we are young."
Friday 1 March 2013
The album is dead. Long live the album
Has the rise of digital really killed off the 'album' or do we need to separate our sadness at the loss of a medium from our frustration at a lack of innovation?
There's been a tumult of recent commentary revolving around (no doubt at 33⅓ rpm) the potential decline of what was once the 'LP' and now is the 'album'. The BBC has been the main culprit with admittedly excellent documentaries such as "The Golden Age of the Album" and "The Great Album Showdown" all indulging in a warm and fuzzy nostalgia for a time when vinyl ruled the world.
The love of vinyl is no bad thing, all that's associated with the physical means of 'putting on a record' makes sense to me despite my growing up in a predominantly post-LP era. The tangible nature of the format, the opportunities to indulge in extensive artwork and the obvious emotional investment required in taking time to care for the object itself are all facets of the black disc's appeal I can readily recognise.
Unfortunately, the underlining implication in all this retrospective affection is an erroneous assumption that the artistic validity of the album format itself (i.e. a collection of songs over approximately 45 mins) died along with the drop in vinyl production at the turn of the 1980's.
This patently isn't true; the subtext exemplar of an albeit understandable, rose-tinted fondness for the past, a rejection of the musical validity of the new, easily afforded by the distinguishable 'line in the sand' that is the 'death' of a format. It's too convenient to associate this with the perceived end of an art form, a perception which is, no doubt, subjugation for a notional tide mark representing the moment a glorious youth was lost forever.
Ironically, those who never experienced the proliferation of the 12 inch such as I - more familiar with the compact disc than anything - are now, themselves, superseded by a generation who may never experience a physical format of any kind.
It's tempting for those with vast CD collections to take a similar approach to the contemporary rise of digital music.
When we remember the unfettered excitement of a midnight album release (and the associated queues around the block they created) and then see the 'pilfering' of individual tracks from across the iTunes store filling out 'On-the-go' playlists with greatest hits, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine ourselves, at fifty something, plastered, pot-bellied and pie-eyed, across our own BBC Four programme, falling into the self-same traps as our fore-bearers.
Surely, one glance at any greatest album list published in the past 30 years would be enough to assuage any doubts about the album's continuing cultural significance.
Radiohead's paranoic distillation of millennial meltdown in 'OK Computer', The Strokes cathartic destruction of bloated, arse-end Britpop in 'Is This It?' and the romantic never world of hedonistic possibility The Libertines brought to 'Up The Bracket'; just three albums that, in their own, very different ways, successfully encapsulated the impact, appeal and artistic achievement of the best 'LP's of yore.
Radiohead, of course, were responsible for a defining moment in the digital music age, releasing the elegiac 'In Rainbows' as a download at the apparent drop of a hat.
This year, too, has already seen David Bowie unexpectedly release his first single in 10 years without anyone realising he was going to do so and My Bloody Valentine causing a twitter storm with the follow up to 'Loveless' released via their website.
The ease with which established artists can now make their work available is something to be cherished (even if it is questionable whether up and coming acts benefit from such a phenomenon - see Arctic Monkeys for a potential exception to the rule).
However, all examples appear to nod towards an as yet unseen potential for artistic expression and innovation afforded by the digital format. Without the restrictions of having to print artwork, surely the possibilities and scope are endless?
Rather than just an album cover and sleeve notes, why not a separate image for each track? Digital booklets are already a done thing but it feels like the tip of the iceberg and it doesn't just stop with artwork.
Perhaps - just as when LP's were first used solely for movie soundtracks, before artists like Dylan realised their full potential to be something much more - we too are in the fledgling era of today's digital format, waiting for somebody to utilise its possibilities, to create something that will in itself generate another paradigm shift in the development of the album, one as radical as that the LP catalysed some 60 years prior.
The only question is when and who?
We're waiting...
There's been a tumult of recent commentary revolving around (no doubt at 33⅓ rpm) the potential decline of what was once the 'LP' and now is the 'album'. The BBC has been the main culprit with admittedly excellent documentaries such as "The Golden Age of the Album" and "The Great Album Showdown" all indulging in a warm and fuzzy nostalgia for a time when vinyl ruled the world.
The love of vinyl is no bad thing, all that's associated with the physical means of 'putting on a record' makes sense to me despite my growing up in a predominantly post-LP era. The tangible nature of the format, the opportunities to indulge in extensive artwork and the obvious emotional investment required in taking time to care for the object itself are all facets of the black disc's appeal I can readily recognise.
Unfortunately, the underlining implication in all this retrospective affection is an erroneous assumption that the artistic validity of the album format itself (i.e. a collection of songs over approximately 45 mins) died along with the drop in vinyl production at the turn of the 1980's.
This patently isn't true; the subtext exemplar of an albeit understandable, rose-tinted fondness for the past, a rejection of the musical validity of the new, easily afforded by the distinguishable 'line in the sand' that is the 'death' of a format. It's too convenient to associate this with the perceived end of an art form, a perception which is, no doubt, subjugation for a notional tide mark representing the moment a glorious youth was lost forever.
Ironically, those who never experienced the proliferation of the 12 inch such as I - more familiar with the compact disc than anything - are now, themselves, superseded by a generation who may never experience a physical format of any kind.
It's tempting for those with vast CD collections to take a similar approach to the contemporary rise of digital music.
When we remember the unfettered excitement of a midnight album release (and the associated queues around the block they created) and then see the 'pilfering' of individual tracks from across the iTunes store filling out 'On-the-go' playlists with greatest hits, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine ourselves, at fifty something, plastered, pot-bellied and pie-eyed, across our own BBC Four programme, falling into the self-same traps as our fore-bearers.
Surely, one glance at any greatest album list published in the past 30 years would be enough to assuage any doubts about the album's continuing cultural significance.
Radiohead's paranoic distillation of millennial meltdown in 'OK Computer', The Strokes cathartic destruction of bloated, arse-end Britpop in 'Is This It?' and the romantic never world of hedonistic possibility The Libertines brought to 'Up The Bracket'; just three albums that, in their own, very different ways, successfully encapsulated the impact, appeal and artistic achievement of the best 'LP's of yore.
Radiohead, of course, were responsible for a defining moment in the digital music age, releasing the elegiac 'In Rainbows' as a download at the apparent drop of a hat.
This year, too, has already seen David Bowie unexpectedly release his first single in 10 years without anyone realising he was going to do so and My Bloody Valentine causing a twitter storm with the follow up to 'Loveless' released via their website.
The ease with which established artists can now make their work available is something to be cherished (even if it is questionable whether up and coming acts benefit from such a phenomenon - see Arctic Monkeys for a potential exception to the rule).
However, all examples appear to nod towards an as yet unseen potential for artistic expression and innovation afforded by the digital format. Without the restrictions of having to print artwork, surely the possibilities and scope are endless?
Rather than just an album cover and sleeve notes, why not a separate image for each track? Digital booklets are already a done thing but it feels like the tip of the iceberg and it doesn't just stop with artwork.
Perhaps - just as when LP's were first used solely for movie soundtracks, before artists like Dylan realised their full potential to be something much more - we too are in the fledgling era of today's digital format, waiting for somebody to utilise its possibilities, to create something that will in itself generate another paradigm shift in the development of the album, one as radical as that the LP catalysed some 60 years prior.
The only question is when and who?
We're waiting...
Thursday 17 January 2013
His Master's Voice
"All I have is memories, and reminders of mortality."
The apparent demise of the high street record store HMV has triggered a whirlpool of personal emotions, not dissimilar, I imagine, to those experienced by Nipper the dog, the company's iconic trademark appropriated from an original painting by artist Francis Barraud.
Barraud's vision depicts a Jack Russell listening intently to 'his master's voice' played on a phonograph. With added poignancy, some suggest both sit atop a coffin, Nipper a demonstrable picture of loyalty and melancholy.
Although I could never show quite such sentiment towards what was, after all, another profit making corporation, its passing does, nonetheless, compel me to contemplate the passing of my own misspent youth and a period in time to which I feel I very much belonged.
If it's not that HMV going into administration makes me feel old, then, at least, it makes me feel no longer young, confused by the implications of a new era of music consumption seeming to threaten that which I most loved about the popular music world in the first place.
For all the sins of Virgin, Our Price and others, HMV was the last, ubiquitous bastion of music on the high street, the final totem of a time not solely about the music alone but about the experience of falling in love with bands and what they represent. We still have independent record stores, of course, but perhaps never again will the wider public appreciate that special environment in which to immerse oneself in something 'other'.
At the same time, I realise I may need to simply accept that fact. I find myself raging against a drift into lazy nostalgia, of thinking yester-year was unanimously better than now, disproved by nothing more than the fact that, despite all I've said, I actually can't even remember the last time I purchased a record from HMV!
I was going to write a fuller treatise on the theme until I came across the piece from which the opening quote of this blog is taken. Written by Guardian columnist Stuart Jeffries, it says all I want to say, including how, of all the high street names lost in this recession, the departure of HMV from our national conscience strikes harder to our hearts due to the emotive pull of music in all our lives.
Omnipresent access to music online is a wonderful thing and perhaps someone soon will fully utilise all the new opportunities for artistic expression it may afford the modern music artist. Yet, I see no signs of it to date and in the mean time such a wealth of music at my fingertips feels as much an inhibitor as an enabler.
Could it be I prefer less choice? Or is it that I've never loved 'music' just for the music itself but for something much, much more? Something the faceless, commitment free download of bytes of data can't help but undermine?
Thursday 10 January 2013
For posterity...
...my intake in 2012...
Read...
Foundation - Issac Asimov
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
Nobody Ever Says Thank You: A Biography of Brian Clough - Jonathan Wilson
Foundation and Earth - Issac Asimov
2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C Clarke
Strange Maps - Cartographic curiosities
Pushing Ahead of the Dame - David Bowie Song by Song - Chris O'Leary
Letters of Note - Shaun Usher
The Blizzard Issue 5 - Jonathan Wilson (Editor)
Proud Man Walking - Claudio Ranieri
XKCD - A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math and Language
The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex - Mark Kermode
The Blizzard Issue 4 - Jonathan Wilson (Editor)
Revolution in the Head - Ian MacDonald
Despatches from the Sofa: The Collected Wisdom of Frank Skinner - Frank Skinner
Heard...
Battle Born - The Killers
The 2nd Law - Muse
Ocean Rain - Echo & The Bunnymen
Inside the Huddle Podcast - NFL UK
One Day I'm Going To Soar - Dexys
Four - Bloc Party
Coexist - The xx
Remain In Light - Talking Heads
Marquee Moon - Television
Greatest Hits II - Queen
Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast
New Boots and Panties - Ian Dury and the Blockheads
Searching for the Young Soul Rebels - Dexys Midnight Runners
Drive - The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - Various
1982 - Status Quo
In the Belly of the Brazen Bull - The Cribs
Complete - The Smiths (CD Boxset)
Radlands - Mystery Jets
Rant - The Futureheads
Blunderbuss - Jack White
Sweet Heart, Sweet Light - Spiritualized
A+E - Graham Coxon
The Ladykiller - Ce Lo Green
Sonik Kicks - Paul Weller
Django Django - Django Django
Dizzy Heights - The Lightning Seeds
Like You Do...The Best Of - The Lightning Seeds
The ArchAndroid - Janelle Monáe
Exile on Main Street (Deluxe Edition) - The Rolling Stones
Help! (Remastered) - The Beatles
Watched...
Slade in Flame - BBC4
The Girl - BBC1
Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender - BBC4
Mad Men - Season 5 (Blu-Ray)
The Killing III - BBC4
Storyville: From the Land to the Sea Beyond - BBC4
The Hour - BBC1
Crossfire Hurricane: The Rolling Stones - BBC2
Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (Blu-ray)
Skyfall
50 Years of Bond Cars: A Top Gear Special - BBC2
Chas & Dave: Last Orders - BBC4
Avengers Assemble (Blu-ray)
Dr Who - BBC1
The Hunger Games (Blu-ray)
The Woman In Black (Blu-ray)
Kill List (Blu-ray)
Planet of the Apes - Film4
The Thick of It - BBC2
Russell Brand: From Addiction to Recovery - BBC3
Alien 3 - Film4
Brief Encounter - Film4
The Descendants (Blu-ray)
The Muppets (Blu-ray)
Aliens - Film4
When I Get Older - BBC1
Faster, Higher, Stronger: Stories of the Olympic Games - BBC2
Nowhere Boy - Film4
Alien (DVD)
Quadrophenia: Can You See the Real Me? - BBC4
The Secret History of Our Streets - BBC2
Make Bradford British - C4
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars - BBC4
The Genius of David Bowie - BBC4
David Bowie and the Story of Ziggy Stardust - BBC4
The Artist (Blu-Ray)
The Guard (Blu-Ray)
Evidently...John Cooper Clark - BBC4
Punk Britannia - BBC4
The Armando Iannucci Shows (DVD)
Marion and Geoff (DVD)
Twilight - Breaking Dawn Part 1 (Blu-Ray)
Hugo (Blu-Ray)
Mark Lawson talks to...Mark Gatiss - BBC4
The 70's - BBC2
Tyrannosaur (Blu-Ray)
We Need To Talk About Kevin (Blu-Ray)
Mark Lawson talks to...Frank Skinner - BBC4
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Blu-Ray)
Drive (Blu-Ray)
Being Human - BBC3
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (DVD)
Upstairs, Downstairs - BBC1
Time Team - C4
Call the Midwife - BBC1
Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy - E4
Room 101 - BBC2
Blade Runner (Blu-Ray)
Armando's Tale of Charles Dickens - BBC2
Sherlock - BBC1
My New Year's Resolution, for the second year in a row, is to read more.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)