About silos

From Disobedience, by Naomi Alderman:

Because in Hendon there are plenty of people just dying to explain the meaning of life to you. I guess that’s true in New York too, but in New York everyone seems to disagree with everyone else about what the meaning of life is. In Hendon, at least the Hendon I grew up in, everything faced in one direction, there was nowhere to get a grip. You needed that disagreement, we all do, so that we can realize that the world isn’t smooth and even, not everyone agrees with everyone else. You need a window into another world to work out what you thought of your own.

Alderman wrote this in the mid-2000s but it has had special resonance in recent days. For example, in the aftermath of the Kirk shooting it became clear that a great many Americans on the political right were completely unaware of the murders in June of the Minnesota legislator Melissa Dortman and her husband. It wasn’t that they didn’t care, or regarded the Dortmans as being less worthy of sympathy. They simply didn’t know the deaths had happened. They’re all in a big silo, all facing in one direction.

In Alderman’s novel, the protagonist (who was brought up in an Orthdox Jewish community in north London) recalls escaping from her own cultural silo by perusing the magazines in WH Smith:

I didn’t properly understand the differences between them. I couldn’t have told you about their target audiences or demographics. I read Loaded and Vogue, Woman’s Own and the NME, PC World and The Tablet. In my mind they became jumbled, those scraps of other lives. There seemed to be so many different things to know about: music, films, TV, fashion, celebrities and sex.

And if you got your information this way, selecting your favoured text from the vast swathe of titles on the newsagent’s shelves, you inevitably pick up other data, almost by osmosis. Even if your own magazine didn’t cover the Hortman killings, or the new Primal Scream album, or Versace’s autumn/winter collection, or which Hollyoaks startlet is posing in her pants, glimpsing the cover lines of the others gives you a few droplets of fact. You may not have the full story but you know these things exist.

We blame the clunky algorithms of social media for forcing us into these political and cultural silos but maybe that’s looking at the problem in the wrong way. Rather than the presence of social media, it’s more specifically the absence of what it replaced, scanning the headlines as you grabbed a paper from the station kiosk or browsing aimlessly in Smith’s on the way home from school, that ensured we knew at least a bit of stuff from the other side.

(Godwin’s Law alert.) Also nudged into the light by the Kirk thing, with specific reference to the silencing of Jimmy Kimmel et al:

About patron saints

A tiny snippet in my ongoing effort to determine that which we are expected to know. On ITV’s The Chase this afternoon, a contestant was asked, “Who is the patron saint of surfers?” Now, I didn’t know the answer. Given the options (Valentine, Peter, Christopher), I would have guessed Christopher, because of the myth of him carrying Jesus across the water, but it would have been a guess.

The contestant didn’t know either, which is fair enough. But more than that, she didn’t understand the question. I’m not inferring that from her look of bafflement: she actually said as much. She didn’t understand what a patron saint was. Maybe she didn’t understand what a saint was. In the end she picked Valentine, because maybe he surfed.

About Father Christmas

Several points arising from the tale of Rev Dr Paul Chamberlain, who apparently brought a group of schoolchildren to tears when he told them that Santa’s not real and their parents eat the biscuits supposedly left for him. The first and most obvious is how easy it is for devotees of one myth to brusquely dismiss another. How would the reverend gentleman react if someone else told the children that Santa is real, but Jesus is just a fairy story to make people behave themselves?

Also, when I saw the headlines, I assumed the traumatised kids were five at most. In fact, they were all in Year 6, which makes them 10 or 11 years old. And they’re still shocked by the revelation that Santa is a fraud? Isn’t that a bit weird?

About Bacchus

(For some reason I suddenly find myself unable to post pictures here. It may be a signal from the digital deities that I need to upgrade my computer, or migrate from Blogger or knock the whole archaic blogging thing on the head just as I’m staggering towards my 20th anniversary but for the moment at least I’ll take as a cue to rely on text alone, an OuLiPo-like constraint that may or may not enhance my creativity. And just to demonstrate how constrained that creativity is, the post is almost certainly going to be shorter than this mundane preamble.)

Performative outrage aplenty at the images of a female tourist simulating coitus with Giambologna’s statue of Bacchus. Except that I can’t help but think that if you’re going to dry-hump a deity, who better to do it with than the god of fertility and madness?

[IMAGINE SUITABLY DIONYSIAN PIC HERE]

PS: Previous collisions of fleshy and carved naughtiness, but in Cambodia.

PPS: And in Olympic news, apparently it’s wrong to mock Christian images but it turns out to have been nothing more than a bunch of Greek gods after all, so that’s OK.

About syrup

The clever people who sell Lyle’s Golden Syrup are removing the image of bees swarming round a dead lion from at least some of its packaging. “Our fresh, contemporary design brings Lyle’s into the modern day, appealing to the everyday British household while still feeling nostalgic and authentically Lyle’s,” says the brand director, which obviously means nothing whatsoever, so others have stepped in to fill the gap. “The story of it coming from religious belief could put the brand in an exclusionary space, especially if it was to go viral on X or TikTok,” suggests a marketing academic. “It’s woke!” screech the readers of the Daily Mail, but frankly, what isn’t these days, as far as they’re concerned?

I know as much as they do, so here’s my guess. They wanted to get away from the Biblical reference (“Out of the strong came forth sweetness,” Judges, chapter 14) not because it might offend anybody’s sensibilities, religious or otherwise, not because they’ve finally realised a rotting cat isn’t the most appetising way to sell sweet goop, but because nobody understands it. Nobody knows who Samson (who supposedly said it) is, and nobody really cares. Why would you buy something that confronts you with your own ignorance every day? The semi-abstract lion’s face that replaces it doesn’t particularly refer to anything, doesn't challenge or provoke anything, especially not curiosity.

Of course, being a pedant above all things, my main objection to the logo is that the quote’s about honey, rather than syrup, which is a different product. But who cares about that?

PS: This may or may not be relevant. But I’m pretty sure it’s true.

About Salman Rushdie

 Can’t think of much to add to the conversation, but this says it all.

"Il va falloir répéter encore et encore que rien ne justifie une fatwa. De quel droit des individus, dont on se fout totalement de savoir qu’ils sont des religieux, s’arrogent le droit de dire que quelqu’un doit mourir ?" #SalmanRushdie https://t.co/XCoQJTVIQN

— Charlie Hebdo (@Charlie_Hebdo_) August 12, 2022

About pronouns

I must admit, I do have issues with the current vogue for preferred pronouns, not least because the singular “they” has always grated (give me a neopronoun any day), even before it was adopted by non-binary people. But if it makes people happy with themselves, and makes everyday discourse easier, that trumps my instinctive pedantry. I’ve never gone so far as wanting to eradicate a whole part of speech, which would appear to be the crusade of one Lavern Spicer, Congressional Candidate for the 24th District of Florida. Here are some of her recent pronouncements. 

There are no pronouns in the Constitution.

— Lavern Spicer 🇺🇸 (@lavern_spicer) July 26, 2022

(Although the very first word is a pronoun.) 

Jesus Christ never introduced himself using pronouns.

— Lavern Spicer 🇺🇸 (@lavern_spicer) July 26, 2022

(John 14:6)

So many people want to try and tell me about pronouns today and try to convince me that the Lord himself introduced himself to Moses using pronouns.

I can't believe how far some of y'all have gone down the rabbit hole with these pronouns.

God bless your hearts!

— Lavern Spicer 🇺🇸 (@lavern_spicer) July 26, 2022

(Exodus 3:4) 

I always speak my mind and I think y’all have LOST your minds when you got the Vice President introducing herself with PRONOUNS.

I have never used a pronoun in my life nor do I go around calling people Filipinx or Latinx.

Y’all went so woke your brains went & fell asleep.

— Lavern Spicer 🇺🇸 (@lavern_spicer) July 26, 2022

The really amusing bit is that these comments sit alongside Lavern’s tirades about the failings of the American public education system. The less amusing bit is that, as the clown juggernaut of the Tory leadership contest proceeds up its own fundament, we Brits can’t really point and laugh at the silly colonials, can we?

About offence

Yesterday afternoon, two things occurred that got me thinking back to my Religious Studies O-level. On Radio 4’s Any Answers programme, the subject under discussion was the Assisted Dying bill currently in the House of Lords, and a woman called in to describe the last, horrible, cancer-ridden days of her mother. It was a grim but entirely necessary lesson, even as she relived the end-stage faecal vomiting; but it was her utterance of the dread word “shit” that prompted Anita Anand to apologise to listeners for any offence caused.

No blame lies with Anand, who was just following Corporation guidelines. My issue is with the people who make those guidelines necessary, who are more agitated by a slang term for bodily wastes than hearing about an old woman’s pain and humiliation, something that might have been relieved had more enlightened legislation been in place.

Minutes later, at the Crystal Palace-Newcastle match, fans of the south London club wielded a banner detailing the moral failings of the Saudi Arabian government, the effective owners of the visiting team. And inevitably the police response was to deal with the “offensive” material.

Motes and beams, anyone?

About the weather

This weekend, I visited a Hindu temple. I don’t think I’m likely to be persuaded as to the divine attributes of Shiva and Ganesh but the cool marble interiors did provide a welcome respite from the brutal heat, not to mention the Ballardian grimness of the nearby North Circular.

And if shelter from the swelter is a way to lead us to God, why not to art as well?

A friendly reminder that even if you hate art, we do have air conditioning

— Royal Academy (@royalacademy) July 19, 2021

About Gen Z

I once came across an English Language school textbook from the mid-1960s. The author clearly wanted to make a connection with the new breed of teens who formed his audience and one of the tasks he set was to create some publicity material for a fictional new “Pop” (because I’m sure it was within quotes) Group formed by their school friends. He was even good enough to think up a name for the combo – “THE GAY SWINGERS”.

And, more than half a century later, it continues....

About Madonnas (various)

#BlackLivesMatter has prompted an number of entertainers and groups, including Joey Negro, Lady Antebellum and the Dixie Chicks to reconsider the propriety of their adopted names. The latest is the Black Madonna, who now prefers to be known as the Blessed Madonna. The DJ (real name Marea Stamper) takes her name from Catholic and Orthodox icons that present the Virgin and Child with dark skin; no word yet as to whether they’ll be changing their names too.

Nor, indeed, whether Stamper will be Blessed much longer, seeing as how one David Adams has set up a petition complaining that her new name is also offensive, but to Christians this time; indeed, he co-opts the language of the BLM protesters, accusing her of cultural appropriation, although since Stamper chose the name in the first place because of her own Catholic upbringing, I’m not sure how that works.

Still, to give Adams his credit, he’s dogged in his pursuit of musical miscreants:

I have contacted Black Sabbath, Madonna, and the Jesus Lizard, but as of yet have had no response.

About Good Omens

I rather enjoyed the TV adaptation of Gaiman/Pratchett’s eschatological bromance Good Omens, and I suppose the fact that 20,000 Christians have petitioned Netflix to have it cancelled (one of their complaints is that God is depicted as having a female voice) is something akin to a badge of honour.

Especially since the show was actually made by Amazon Prime.

About Notre Dame and Nick Cave

Everything that needs to be said about Notre Dame, and plenty that needn’t, has been said. But it does tie in, however loosely, with what I wrote here last week about whether the morals of the artist should have impact on our response to that art; more specifically, the addendum from Nick Cave, who argued that “art must be wrestled from the hands of the pious”.

Except that pious people do make good art, always have. Think of Michelangelo, Bach, Evelyn Waugh. Although the flames ripping through the cathedral prompted grief and despair in the hearts of many non-believers, Notre Dame is almost wholly the work of the pious. Pious people who were doubtless, by the standards of our own time, fervent sexists and homophobes; pious people who were vociferous in their support for Crusades against the infidels and Inquisitions against the heretics; pious people who killed women accused of witchcraft; pious people who sought to silence anyone daring to suggest that the Earth revolves around the Sun, or that life on said Earth took a bit more than seven days to pull together. Ultimately, the combined sins of the people who funded and designed and built Notre Dame easily dwarf anything of which Michael Jackson or Woody Allen might be accused.

And yet, quite rightly, we all cried when the spire fell.

PS: And sticking with piety, a really good piece by Adiyta Chakrabortty about the billionaires noisily chipping in to rebuild the cathedral:

Not least among this litany of ironies is that it takes a Catholic cathedral to remind us that we have barely advanced an inch from the medieval buying of indulgences, when the rich could amass their fortunes in as filthy a fashion as they liked – and then donate to the Church to launder their reputations and ensure their salvation.

About Monkey Jesus

Older readers may recall the tale of the fresco in a Spanish church that was subjected to an overenthusiastic restoration job, resulting in what was immediately dubbed The Monkey Jesus.

It did provoke a few heated discussions about the intersections between artistic accomplishment, religious devotion and tourist dollars, especially when the revised version started attracting far more punters to the church than it had in its earlier form. But is the whole notion of a Simian Redeemer so unusual? Ambling through the V&A yesterday, I came across this, from 14th-century Bohemia. And I suspect it’s not the only example.

About silence

I haven’t seen the movie A Quiet Place yet, but the concept sounds fun and anything that shows up the noisy eaters has to be good. That said, it does reinforce the idea that silence per se is vanishingly rare; removing sound only reveals more sound beneath, as these Quakers found when they squeezed their 30 minutes of quiet into a podcast.

But, as usual, someone got there first:

About Sarah Huckabee Sanders

White House press spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders has said it doesn’t matter whether the videos tweeted by Donald Trump were real; what’s important is that “the threat is real”. If only Jean Baudrillard were with us today.

About mother!

And so I went to see the much-hyped, heavily spoiler-alerted, highly-controversial-or-bust, orthographically wacky mother!, the new film by Darren Aronofsky. It begins as a mid-period Woody Allen movie, then pulls in elements of Rosemary’s Baby, Straw Dogs and Monty Python’s Life of Brian, but ultimately it’s just another home improvement TV show gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Ahmed Aboutaleb says “fuck off” (or does he?)

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and associated horrible events, the mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, has told Muslims who don’t like the city’s chilled pluralism and might consider taking violent offence at the contents of a newspaper to “rot toch op”, which has been translated in the British media — with varying numbers of asterisks — as “fuck off”. I don’t speak Dutch; some contacts have suggested that in reality Aboutaleb’s words might be translated as a rather milder “go to hell” or even just “go away”, but he’s still earned plaudits for his straight-talking approach to the enemies of freedom. Of course, Mr Aboutaleb is of Moroccan extraction, so he can probably use more direct language than some other civic leaders could get away with, without being accused of racism or Islamophobia. (I’m thinking of Boris Johnson, his Turkish ancestry notwithstanding.)

But the discussion did get me thinking about what an odd beast our favourite expletive construction really is. If we accept that “fuck” means to copulate, how exactly does one “fuck off”? It creates images of someone copulating so forcefully that he or she is propelled bodily from the bed or other surface, rather in the manner of Viz’s Johnny Fartpants being sent skywards by the power of his own bottom burps. The American “fuck yourself” is more satisfying as an insult, casting the recipient as a sort of carnal oureboros, pleasuring and consuming himself at once, the ultimate in squalid self-indulgence. But then the “off” does reinforce that your ultimate goal is for the person in question to leave your presence entirely, which I guess was Mr Aboutaleb’s main point. Maybe in celebration of this excellent fellow we should recalibrate our default swear mode to “rot toch op”. And unless we’re telling a Dutch person where to go, only we know how rude we’re being.

PS: This:

#JeSuisCharlie and David Bowie’s teeth

I realise I’ve been rather slack of late in the attention I’ve been paying to this silly little blog, but really, does it matter what I write or don’t write. I did have a few vague ideas for writing something about the apparent modest upsurge in sales of print books versus e-books, with particular reference to the covetable designs of the past two or three Murakami titles; and I also toyed with being sardonic about the fact that someone made a sculpture based on David Bowie’s teeth. But ultimately, I was thinking, hey, it’s just a blog, who cares?

And then, on the way back from a visit to review a restaurant (it was very good, by the way, thanks for asking) I found out about the Charlie Hebdo attack. And you think you’ve become, immune, numb to such horrors, and in terms of numbers it wasn’t even the worst terrorist attack of the day but something about the scenario in Paris overwhelmed me. Some people drew some silly cartoons, so some other people went round and killed them. All sorts of words came to mind, disproportionate, barbaric, counter-productive but the one that kept banging around my head was “stupid”. This wasn’t really about religion or politics, it was about people who have invested their whole selves in an identity of wilful, blinkered stupidity and when they see anything that challenges it (because even if a cartoon is silly, it can still be clever) their only response is bullets or bombs. Just like the recent school attacks by the Taliban and Boko Haram, this was about not being able to cope with any manifestation of intelligence or curiosity or critical that might threaten one’s own lumpen, black-and-white view of the world. And I started spewing on social media, mainly links to some of the other cartoons that people have been drawing in recent hours in support of their slain colleagues. And ultimately it doesn’t really matter what I say on Twitter, what pictures I put on Facebook or Flickr, or even whether I go back to regular postings on this blog. Except that it does matter, because I can say things and suddenly it’s very important that if I can, I do. And the same applies to all of you. Say it. Write it. Draw it. Because you can. Because the fact that you can matters and it suddenly matters even more.

Sorry, I’m still so sad and angry that this isn’t really going anywhere. In a few days I’ll come back and it’ll be all about Bowie’s teeth again. But for now I’ll just repeat something I wrote on Twitter a few hours ago, that felt like howling into the void but a few people said they appreciated it: If your faith is so fragile that it can be troubled by a silly cartoon, is it worth even being faithful?

The Interview: but is it art?

Until a few days ago, the Seth Rogen/James Franco movie The Interview appeared to be nothing more than a crass, schlocky, buddy movie with a bit of heavy-handed politics thrown in. But then things got interesting. First came the cyber-attack against Sony that may or may not have had something to do with North Korea (although they said “it’s not us, guv”). Then the big cinema chains in the United States, mindful of the rhetoric emanating from Pyongyang, announced that they wouldn’t be showing the film, and Obama weighed in to say that the Koreans were acting like terrorists and the Koreans said “oh yeah, well you’re the real terrorists” and then he said that he was disappointed in Sony Pictures and Sony Pictures said “it’s not us, guv” and then someone knocked out the whole internet in North Korea and most of us said “but we didn’t think they had the internet in North Korea” and now it turns out that The Interview will be shown in cinemas after all, but only in a few small independents and art houses. And Obama said, gee, I’m proud of you guys, Merry Christmas.

 

A few thoughts. First, I’m sure I’m not the first person to wonder whether this might be the most deviously brilliant marketing campaign ever, worthy — if this isn’t getting just a tad too self-referential — of a movie in its own right. Then, if the terrorist threats were indeed credible, are we supposed to assume that a few earnest cinephiles munching vegan brownies would be a tolerable level of collateral damage whereas the loss of a packed cineplex would be beyond the pale? And finally, if The Interview is now to be shown in art houses, does its context at the centre of a geopolitical shouting match mean that it has suddenly become art?

On similar lines, it would appear that Cecilia Giménez’s cack-handed restoration of a fresco at the church in her hometown of Borja, Spain, has attracted 150,000 visitors over the past couple of years, numbers that would make many provincial galleries salivate. Maybe that’s the answer when it comes to The Interview: yes, it’s art, but nobody said it had to be good art.