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Wednesday 27 January 2010

LYNCH, MURAKAMI AND DARKNESS...


NOTE: If I start talking about Britishness, electoral reform or pornography (my previous posts) in the staffroom it will start a discussion. If, on the other hand, I start ranting about the works of Haruki Murakami, I will empty the staffroom! I know therefore that this is the self-indulgent post. Forgive me it and don’t unsubscribe! Some might find it of interest (possibly?!)



I was asked a great question at work last week – the sort that rather lends itself to imminent blogging. It went something along the lines of ‘how come you, despite being on your moral high horse (well that’s what he meant), are so drawn to darkness in movies and books?’. Interesting question – and slightly flattering as it frames me as deep and edgy. In reality, it doesn’t paint the whole picture – Back to the Future, Butch Cassidy and Chariots of Fire all have a claim at getting into my top ten... However, he does have a point.


The rather lesser trinity to which I subscribe would consist of film-maker David Lynch, writer Haruki Murakami and the band Radiohead. In each case, I don’t just appreciate their output, it matters deeply to me. Leaving music out of the equation for today, there is no doubt that a certain mood does indeed tie the more profound works of Lynch and Murakami – you may call it darkness, I call it emotional truth. The fact is they are really truly frightening, but in equal measure they are really truly beautiful. Quite often they are simultaneously both, bringing about a deeply intense viewing experience. Much of it is down to the opaque nature of the story-telling. Most people tie their stories up neatly, all questions answered. That’s not how life works. These guys don’t pander to the conventional narrative arc, and thus anything can happen in any given scene/chapter, whilst loose ties generally remain untied. In the same way people talk of opera bringing them to tears despite their ignorance of the language (a technique literally used in the ‘Silencio’ scene of Lynch’s Mulholland Drive), both Murakami and Lynch can profoundly move you with something you’ll never quite grasp - although each revisiting reveals a little more.


As for being drawn to darkness... well maybe it is partly attributable to my worldview. Christianity is certainly not all about the happy clappy – it carries within it acceptance of concepts such as Hell, demonic activity or the inevitability of sin. Neither do you have to be that way inclined to see the dark side all around. We all deal with the reality of crime, disease and, above all, the fact we’re heading for the grave. Many, understandably, deal with such weighty truths by escapism – enjoying happily ever afters. They have their place, but I often blanch at the inanity. Thus I admire output that seeks to engage with that darkness within and without, and that finds something to say about the battles fought. (Framed slightly differently, it probably suggests depressive tendencies, but let’s not go there!)


Spoiler alert! I’d like to briefly examine one work each of Lynch and Murakami, looking at what it has to say. My favourite book of all time is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by the latter. It is hard to explain the vast and strange story in a few sentences, but the basic idea is that there is a deep darkness (right-wing nationalism, basically) running through the 20th Century, surfacing in key individuals capable of great evil. Toru Okada is a humdrum everyman in the Japanese suburbs, but his wife has vanished, and her brother, whom Toru hates, is somehow gaining in insidious power and national influence. Guided by various strangers, Toru will find his way, via a path to nowhere, toward the dried well of a cursed house, from which he can metaphysically visit another place; a hotel to which a familiar woman is calling him – a place in which he is in true danger, but where, in the pitch black, he can violently confront his nemesis before it is too late.


Of Lynch’s creations, the Wind-Up Bird hotel feels closest to the ‘other place’ in Twin Peaks. However, the film of his I feel most resonates is Lost Highway. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to everyone – it is truly 18-rated in every way. However, it has a raw and visceral power in its dream-like logic. A married man, Fred, feels inadequate and consumed by sexual jealousy in his suspicion his wife is cheating. On some level he resolves to kill her, a fact symbolised by the appearance of a strange demonic man who, approaching Fred at a party, informs him he invited him there and that he is ‘in his house, right now’. That night, the wife is murdered. In his death row cell, Fred is unable to cope with the reality of his predicament and, in a schizophrenic escapist episode, literally becomes someone else. This doppelganger is everything Fred wasn’t – young, virile and irresistible to one particular strange and dangerous woman (apparently Fred’s wife, in a blonde wig). However, reality can’t be escaped; before long he is again guilty of murder and is again losing the girl (key quote: ‘you’ll never have me!’). The last moment of the film is the same as the first – there is truly no escape from this nightmare…


Both these pieces of work are deep and dark. I wouldn’t have them any other way. To differing extents, so are Jacob’s Ladder, Chinatown, Pan’s Labyrinth, No Country For Old Men, Blade Runner, Donnie Darko and most of my favourites. IF YOU KNOW OF A FILM I MIGHT NOT HAVE SEEN THAT WOULD BE EQUALLY GREAT PLEASE DO LET ME KNOW! I don’t know what I’m saying in this post, if anything. But, I tell you what, I’ve never seen a neater or more coherent summary of Lost Highway than that. Signing out smugly… (and still under 1,000 words)


Monday 25 January 2010

GIRL POWER!

Always a dodgy one, men writing in defence of women. Too often, the women feel patronised and the men feel only scorn. To be frank, a bloke shaking his head indignantly at pornography either comes across as a eunuch or a hypocrite… and almost certainly under the thumb. Well I’m not the first, I am the second and I’m probably the latter…

But, for what it’s worth, in all honesty, I feel strongly on the subject. As a teacher? As a husband? As a Christian? I'm not sure; either way I just worry we’re damaging ourselves significantly, particularly our young, by this obsessive, all-pervading sexualisation of society – by our unchecked mutual obsession with (usually airbrushed) female nudity.

So why am I a hypocrite? Well I’ve seen my fair share of what Peter Kay calls a 'bit of blue' (although not for a long while now, I hasten to add), and I’m plenty tempted to see more. But right there is the first thing wrong – too much and too ready access to that which is bad for us. Men have always been suckers for cheap titillation, but there’s never been so much of it. Few would previously have gone out of their way to seek out that which wasn’t readily available (bear in mind, much of today's online adult material would have been recently illegal in the UK) – it would have taken a fairly determined effort, accompanied by the risk of damage to career or reputation. Now it’s just a click of a button or a 10-second Bluetooth transfer, it’s as depraved as the mind can conjure, and it’s addictive. The bottom shelf of WH Smith is more explicit than the top shelf cover material 20 years ago – so is the latest advert for Walkers’ Crisps, for goodness sake! And it IS bad for us; a constant point of comparison and competition for our wives and girlfriends – those who should be our queens, our ultimate… not our compromise with reality. And, as for the participants? Well everyone seems to be playing the denial game – pretending their viewing doesn’t endorse sex-trafficking, abuse, drug-dependence, organised crime. Pretending these ever willing girls aren’t someone’s daughter, sister or mother.

But back to the young. It’s the lads I teach I feel most worried for. Attending a boys’ school, half of them have barely talked to a girl until a fairly late stage! And yet their computers and phones are heavy-laden with filth; this is their view, their expectation, of sex and femininity. They’re far more familiar, as voyeurs, with bedroom gymnastics than they are with conversation or commitment. The reality is likely to disappoint! And what of the girls? Well, the damage is certainly being done. They know what’s going on and what boys increasingly expect. The increasing sexualisation of teen girls – their dress, dieting, language and behaviour, is there for all to see. Increasing instances of rape, eating disorders, teen pregnancies and STDs are merely the tangible evidence of the pressures faced. Who is honestly surprised by the recent controversy over provocative underwear marketed at pre-teens in Tesco or BHS? Any teacher can tell you of the increasing number of girls giving their career ambition as the desire to ‘glamour’ model or marry a footballer. This is our enlightened post-feminist liberal reality; women are most visible in the public realm as eye candy, placed to prompt male gratification or female self-improvement.

In this internet age, I’m not sure there’s a way back. I don’t endorse state censorship – I don’t trust the state with it, for a start. Neither do I think that people are going to read this and take a vow. More likely you’re ready to invite me off my self-righteous high horse. However, all I’m suggesting, in the first instance, is that we at least acknowledge this state of affairs as not great. Plenty of my mates are now starting to have children; I may even get around to joining them one of these days! We must surely want something better than this for them?

Thursday 21 January 2010

ELECTION!



Who will I vote for this year? I don’t know, to be frank. The frustration is that the system doesn’t work. By which I don’t write off democracy – but rather our current mess of a constitution. First in the dock is an electoral system rigged ludicrously in favour of the two main parties – Labour currently have 55% of the seats with just 35% of the votes (it’s actually less than a quarter of the population if we factor in those who chose to stay at home); indeed, in theory under the current FPTP system, a competitor could have 49.9% of the national vote and still not take a single seat. To have a seat any individual or party must actually win an outright victory in one area of the country, something very unlikely to happen for an outsider given the funds, profile and insider status of the main party machines. Yes it gives strong government, yes it prevents extremists – but it also leaves a bored, stay-at-home populous wishing they had a real choice, or someone who speaks for them with a chance of getting their voice heard. Do we really celebrate for its strength a system that thus provided the massive majority allowing Labour to spend the entire country’s life savings on bullets and bankers, unhindered by such a thing as effective opposition? Someone within their own ranks might have said a little more, were not the government-controlled party whips in control of their future career prospects and, thus, salaries.



Even more fundamentally, there is the schizophrenia of the fact I will be placing a vote for a local representative charged with attending Westminster on my behalf, when in fact every part of the machine (the parties, the media, the analysis) informs me I’m participating in a Presidential election between Brown and Cameron (and perhaps Clegg, at a stretch). The anachronism of this is best represented by the fact Brown was able to sneak into power via an uncontested leadership contest shortly after election time; an ascension no more approved by the people than was that of the Queen. Technically it doesn’t matter – we don’t choose our Prime Minister anyway, just a local MP from whom will be drawn the ‘first among equals’. But that’s nonsense and we all know it.


So here’s my dilemma. I don’t want Brown to win. He’s a deluded control-freak looking out only for his own survival, at odds with his party and responsible for seriously endangering our future standing as a nation. Yet I very much like my local Labour MP Sadiq Khan. He has integrity, a knowledge and passion for the local area, great communication and real ability. Do I choose my best representative and get counted as a Brownite? Or do I jettison the best man for Tooting in my desire to topple the President? I’ll let you know what I eventually decide…

Link to Electoral Reform Society 


Tuesday 19 January 2010

OUR YEAR WITH THE NHS


There is much brilliant about the NHS. We are privileged within Britain, and particularly within London, to have ready access to such high quality medical care. During this past ‘Year of the Brain Tumour’ (my wife, not me, if you’re reading and don’t know us) we have come into contact with numerous superb and skilled professionals. However, the system they operate within has also been a cause of untold frustrations. It just seems so systematically dysfunctional that no political idea is going to suddenly make things better. It’s been a strange old year, and previously meaningless Westminster phrases like ‘joined up thinking’ or ‘bureaucratic waste’ now in fact mean a great deal to me.



To explain: my wife only got her fateful brain scan in the first place because she had a tantrum in her latest of many appointments about the fact she’d lost the hearing in one ear. Up to then every single appointment was with someone different – they were all in a hurry and running behind schedule. None of them ever had access to the ‘big picture’ based on the combined judgements of each – it was just isolated shots in the dark (a personal favourite being the fact she had water in her ear…). There was a notable reluctance to allow her that scan – a reluctance based on the cost involved and the statistics game; a tumour being statistically a most improbable cause.


Once through that hurdle and onto the level of being taken seriously (and once you get here the professionals, particularly at St George’s, really are experts) the main problem became, and indeed remains, communication. There are no integrated computerized systems. No – there is a beige folder with my wife’s name on it, and it can only be in one place at a time. It often appears to be in the wrong place. What address it has on it I’m not sure, but even after this past year there is still a consistent problem with anything being sent to our address. Random important bits of mail continue to show up, eventually, at my wife’s parents’ house – an address at which she last lived about 7 years ago. There were delays at her initial appointment because the doctor’s referral letter – literally a bit of paper – couldn’t be found. There were delays in arranging the operation as the actual scan photos were somewhere in the post. For six months after the operation, nobody saw her about her eye (in that whole time it had been unable to close) because no-one ever notified that department. Even now, we await notification of an appointment to learn of the results of her follow up brain scan carried out over a month ago. It’s proved impossible to get anyone on the phone about it.


In each case the problem eventually gets solved by the personal initiative of willing individuals within the system – of which there are many. But the mind boggles at how many of them must be traipsing around vast sites, or waiting on hold, in order to track down these pieces of paper circling the country – or indeed what that costs the taxpayer. And it could have been much, much worse. We have the country’s specialised brain unit within walking distance and I already knew the brain surgeon (the country’s best for this procedure) personally. I’m not at all convinced my wife would have been operated on yet, even now, had she been starting this process of enquiry whilst living in the middle of nowhere (well, at least not unless the symptoms had worsened dangerously).


To conclude, I look at those David Cameron posters talking about him not cutting the NHS and I don’t even know what that means. Like so many problems, chucking money at it or withdrawing it doesn’t seem to be the issue – rather systems and good management. Perhaps a better idea would be give the cash to Accenture so they can get in there and institute processes that work! Let me say once again in closing; the NHS hosts many of the cleverest and hardest working people this country has available. I just want to see their resources more effectively deployed.


PS Only fair to say, since writing this we’ve found a channel that works. An email to the hospital via the website led to a response within an hour, followed by a call from the relevant department within the next couple of days. A good discovery!


Thursday 14 January 2010

BEING BRITISH


I recently read a ferocious book called ‘Up the British’ by Richard Osborne. It argues basically that ‘Britishness’ is a wholly unpalatable construct based upon the unsavoury foundations of an exploitative, racist Empire; a misplaced superiority complex; and our wildly over-inflated opinions regarding the cherished likes of Shakespeare and Churchill. What’s more, it suggests that this notion of our national identity is primarily used to keep the many in their places, propping up an anachronistic class system whilst impeding our national progress or a realistic self-appraisal.

Do I agree? Well, it’s easy to see his point... but no, I don’t. The idea of Britishness fascinates me – and I certainly agree with Osborne in seeing its importance. I’m a History teacher and I entirely believe the current is explained by the past – just as our personality and views are so much explained by upbringing and background. In this there are negatives – the arrogance of our sunburned chanting masses abroad is for example very much based on a heady heritage of ‘Two World Wars and one World Cup’.

But it’s not all bad. Like it or not, our little island has indeed contributed a great deal – whether industrial advancement, language, elements of liberal democratic government or the Rule of Law, Fawlty Towers, sports such as football and cricket, etc etc. To disown all that seems to be to suggest a complete disconnection with what has gone before – as if each generation is an island. That surely can’t be the case – we bear the genes of our ancestors, and it’s legitimate to take pride in their achievements as we follow in their footsteps.

Should we also feel ashamed for their failings? Yes, of course. As a teacher, I would hope to honestly depict that, whilst the British did more than any to end slavery, it made a heck of a lot of money from it first. Likewise, the British Empire – a subject I’ve much enjoyed teaching and examining over the years – should be vividly depicted in its moral failings (the preventable deaths of millions in Indian famines springs to mind) as well as in its achievements. But neither should the actions of 19th Century men be examined entirely in the light of a 21st Century outlook. Unreasonable as colonialism may now seem, those who participated did at times have decent intentions. Some, alas, didn’t. But, to take one example, it’s worth noting that the Indian Mutiny against us in 1857, whilst fuelled partly by our seizing land and profits, was as much prompted by the British desire to end local infanticide, the burning of widows and ritual murder. If the British had just stayed at home throughout, blissful and uninterrupted native development would not have been the result; rather a French colony quite probably more inhumane.

And as for the charge that Britishness keeps us in our place - propping up an antiquated class system? Well, it's easy to go there. I see the irony in the Union Jack being perhaps most beloved by the odd fellowship of braying polo-set boarders and by the BNP-fodder 'salt of the earth' working classes (I use the term with hesitation - it would take another article to work out what it means nowadays). It's a strange communion most observable in wartime - where the former pile out of Sandhurst, ordering the latter in the direction of the bullets. It most certainly reminds all concerned that we are far from equal.

But then, and allow me a controversial moment here, equality is bunk! It really is and it always has been. Life in Britain isn’t fair and much is dictated by the ‘accident of birth’. That’s not a swindle – it’s inevitable. For a start, the genetic material we bear means some are going to be more intelligent, more attractive and more whatever else it takes to achieve success. Due to the nature of these things, they are likely to be the offspring of those for whom the same could have been said in the previous generation. Socio-economically the same applies. Those born into money are usually those born to parents who have made money or who at least have stewarded it well. If that happens to one day be me... well then I demand the right to have my children benefit from such prudence! Compassion is imperative, at every level, but I certainly resist the idea of an artificial and punitive equalisation that pretends we're all the same.

Now I’d like to see a Britain that rewards nurses over arms-dealers, or that is less impressed by a plummy accent. But, again, it's not all terrible. Opportunities for all do exist. Universities have been opened up, perhaps even to the extent of devaluing the degree! I went to the same school, sat in the same lessons, and had the same access to higher education as many living on ropey local council estates. If there was a difference between us it was perhaps one of expectation or ability, but not of opportunity. There are certainly many countries in which neither one of us could have pursued higher education or a professional career whilst lacking a starting point of wealth or connections. Thankfully Britain is not among them.


So am I proud to be British? Yes I am, frustrating as it can sometimes be. The weather’s awful, the trains are late and FAR too many people read the Daily Mail. But I love our sense of humour, multicultural London, the fact we‘ve qualified comfortably for the World Cup (well, England has!) and that we’re incorrupt enough to care we helped pay for a politician’s duckhouse. And, perhaps above all, I’m proud that, despite our timeless failings, we have done at least as much as anyone else to help shape the modern world. 

BRIEF INTRO

Hello - I'm Andy. I'm sitting in a very cold flat in Streatham ready to start my blog. I won't waste too many words justifying it - after all, the whole idea anyone would want to read my views on the world is self-indulgent and egotistic enough. However, I will set out a couple of ground rules:
Firstly, I will never post anything with a 4-digit word count. It has been known in the past and it's just silly; you don;t want to read a book, and I don't have time to write one.
Secondly, I won't let it devour important working or social time - there are most certainly more important things in life and my obsessive nature is at times my worst enemy.
Thirdly, I will never use this as a glorified Twitter/Facebook status update - when I post it will be with genuine articles about something tangible, identifiable from the title.
Fourthly, I will cover a range of topics. This isn't a blog about one thing in particular - I reserve the right to talk about football one day and theology the next. Subscribe and I may one day write about something you find interesting, despite everything...
Fifthly, I will never block or ridicule a comment unless it's obscene, irrelevant or spam. I'm doing this primarily for selfish reasons (I have always sorted my thoughts and views through assembling them in written form - I feel the need for an outlet to motivate me!), but if it stimulates debate at any stage... well that would be brilliant.

Enjoy!