The revolution will not be televised if they nick all the televisions

(Those who have been following me on Twitter over the past few hours may find some of these observations a little familiar. My only defence is that, in true postmodern spirit, I’m just looting myself.)

A year and a bit ago, there was a period of civil disturbance in Bangkok. I wrote something about it at the time. It’s not helpful – nor is it my place – to divide the participants into goodies and baddies, but I think it’s fair to say that most of the protesters originally came to the city with honestly held grievances. In their view, the democratic process had failed them, after elected governments aligned to Thaksin Shinawatra were forced out of office, first by the army, then by the courts. Non-violent protest degenerated into something nastier, 90 or more people were killed, and much damage was inflicted on the city. But, as far as I’m aware, nobody stole any flat-screen TVs.

Some of the more strident opponents of the protesters argued that if this is how ordinary Thais behaved when they had the merest sniff of democracy, it might be better for the country if it were sealed off from these new-fangled notions for a few years. To his credit, Prime Minister Abhisit rejected such a move, in due course called an election, and was soundly defeated by Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin’s sister/proxy. So the protesters got pretty much what they wanted but – crucially – they got it through the ballot box, not through brute force.

Recent events in London and beyond seem to have followed an initial trajectory that’s superficially similar to that of the Bangkok protests, with a peaceful demonstration against a perceived injustice getting out of control. But what happened next was at once less serious (nobody, so far as we know at the moment, is dead) and more reprehensible, as participants quickly ditched all pretence to a political motive and began to loot and burn for its own sake. Condemnation was quickly and rightly forthcoming from all quarters, even if some of the proposed responses (water cannons, troops on the street, martial law, shoot on sight) suggested that some people don’t follow recent events – those in Bangkok, for example – as closely as they might. And some other rumours banging around Twitter, such as the meme that the animals had been released from London Zoo, just prove that some people read too many John Irving books.

The looters in London and Birmingham and Liverpool and elsewhere don’t have the excuse that they were the victims of an anti-democratic fiddle; moreover, they’re considerably wealthier, in material terms, than most of the farmers and labourers who marched under Thaksin’s banner. The electoral system in Britain is far from perfect, but by chance, last year’s election gave an outcome that was closer to the intentions of the voters than many in recent times: as ever, no one party took an overall majority of votes, and unusually, no one party was able to govern unaided. It wasn’t the result I wanted, and maybe it wasn’t what the people lugging flat-screen TVs through smashed shop windows wanted (an analysis of voting behaviour among the hooded opportunists might throw up some surprises, although I suspect not) but it’s what happened.

But just because the looters aren’t noble, selfless freedom fighters, it doesn’t mean their behaviour doesn’t warrant analysis. It was in that spirit that I tweeted:

The looting is an unholy synthesis of welfare dependency and consumer capitalism. Discuss.

...and while some appreciated the contribution, and some agreed, and some didn’t, one or two hinted that such Hegelian chin-stroking is inappropriate right now, that our responses should be practical or emotional, but not intellectual; after all, not that many bookshops were ransacked over the past few nights. It’s pretty sad when the word “understanding” becomes freighted with negative connotations; if you’re trying to understand a criminal, does it really mean that you automatically want to hug him and forgive him and buy him a Wii? Surely it’s quite consistent to want to understand and analyse an act of wrongdoing, and at the same time to sympathise with the victims and punish the wrongdoers and try to prevent the whole fiasco from happening again.

Or should we just say fuck it, and wheel out the water cannons?

PS: Hurrah! Zoe Williams brings Baudrillard to the (street) party!

PPS: And at Prospect, David Goodhart throws a slug of Fukuyama into the punchbowl...

Androzani McCarthy

Despite the assertions from the producers that American money would not have a detrimental effect on the new series of Torchwood, things aren’t looking so good. It’s not just the bit where the undead CIA bloke had to have Wales explained to him, or the tiresome pants/trousers badinage; it’s the feeling that they’ll be using the show as a dumping ground for Brat Pack stars whose careers started to falter in the 1980s. In fact, the whole show could be seen as something akin to one of the overflow camps into which the should-be-deceased beneficiaries/victims of the Miracle are being herded.

In the most recent instalment, we were blessed not only with Mare Winningham (St Elmo’s Fire) but also a barely recognisable C Thomas Howell (The Outsiders and the frightful Soul Man); this coming on top of the President from Independence Day, Dennis Nedry from Jurassic Park and Winston from Ghostbusters, the whole thing is a delight for devotees of the “hey-didn’t-you-used-to-be...?” tribe. But surely it’s a warning sign as to where Torchwood, and the whole Whovian universe is headed. Within a couple of series, I can see Jack Harkness (Emilio Estevez) crashing his dad’s car because he’s so angry that Amy Pond (Molly Ringwald) won’t go to the Gallifrey Prom with him, preferring as she does the smooth charms of The Master (Rob Lowe, in a cap-sleeved t-shirt). Co-starring Ralph Macchio as Davros and Demi Moore as The Rani, with the theme tune arranged by Wang Chung.

Actually, it all sounds rather marvellous.

It’s all about meme meme meme

As AnnaLittleRedBoat suggests, the blogosphere isn’t – notwithstanding the haters – dead, but every now and then you do wonder whether it might be a bit kinder to whack it over the head with a shovel. (Whether or not it’s still social media or not I’ll leave to Patroclus.) Who remembers how it was in the olden days, like 2007 or something, when Amy Winehouse was always in the News of the World and we bloggers used to exchange memes? Well the dangerously brilliant and devilishly cute Annie Bookcrossing Slaminsky has deposited a new one in our collective digital lap. Feel free to pick it up and run with it:

1. Movie you love with a passion.
Casablanca. For all its flaws. Damn it, because of them.

2. Movie you vow to never watch.
That new Planet of the Apes thingy. The trailers seem specifically constructed to dissuade me.

3. Movie that literally left you speechless.
Festen. The whole audience stumbled into the light, as if we’d all been kicked in the face for the duration of the film.

4. Movie you always recommend.
Tampopo, because everyone who watches it feels hungry and frisky at the end, and they can’t decide which urge to satisfy first, which is a pleasant dilemma to have.

5. Actor/actress you always watch, no matter how crappy the movie.
A whole load of British character actors, especially those who were good at underplaying; let’s say Denholm Elliott. No, John Le Mesurier.

6. Actor/actress you don’t get the appeal for.
Jennifer Aniston. I don’t even get her hair.

7. Actor/actress, living or dead, you’d love to meet.
Orson Welles. Damn, that man could racont.

8. Sexiest actor/actress you’ve seen (with picture).

9. Dream cast.
The Misfits was a pretty good combination, although most of the actors had at least a toe in the grave.

10. Favorite actor pairing.
Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Brainy sex.

12. Favorite decade for movies
The 1940s.

13. Chick flick or action movie?
Action movies can distract you from their essential crassness with a big explosion or the like. Chick flicks can only deploy yet more crassness.

14. Hero, villain or anti-hero?
Anti-hero. Jean-Paul Belmondo in A Bout de Souffle.

15. Black and white or color?
Black and white; specifically, black and white films made from about 1960 onwards, when going mono became a conscious decision rather than a default position. (Whistle Down The Wind, The Manchurian Candidate, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, Branded To Kill, The Last Picture Show, Eraserhead, Manhattan, Down By Law, Clerks, Ed Wood...)

Your turn.

PS: Only just realised that I missed out question 11, which is:

Favorite movie setting

The Dali-designed dream landscape in Hitchcock’s Spellbound. I’m not a huge fan of Dali’s paintings, to be honest, but this makes me wish he’d done more set designs. 

Norris’s norks

Although it’s many years since I worked for Guinness World Records, some sort of primeval instinct asserts itself now and again when a relevant news story comes into view. Would I have included it in the book, I wonder? Would it have warranted a picture? Would I have had to mediate over tantrums regarding its validity? All these thoughts flashed through my mind when I heard of the good ladies of Worcester, who had attempted to break the record for the most bras linked together, but were forced to call it off when the relevant undergarments became entangled. As such, it wouldn’t have made the cut. But it is, in its own way, the perfect British silly season story, in that it combines three highly attractive narrative components: admirable charitable instincts; breasts; and plucky failure.

Never mind, maybe a nice picture of a young Charlotte Rampling in a bra will boost my viewing figures again.

You can’t touch this

In the New York Times, Nick Bilton describes his dilemma as he moves to a new city; what to with all his books. “What’s the point if I’m not going to use them? I have digital versions now on my Kindle,” he asks. “If I was talking about throwing away my CD or DVD collection, no one would bat an eyelid.”

The latter is probably true; but if he’d been talking about a collection of vinyl records, eyelids would bat like Stuart Broad with something to prove. Maybe I’m showing myself up – like Roger Ebert – as an analogue diehard, but might it be the case that when we can get hold of stuff by digital means, whether by downloading it or ordering it from Amazon, it ceases to mean that much; and is thus easier to jettison?

(That said, this post is based on a conversation that began on Google+, so maybe I’m not as analogue as I make out.)

PS: And here’s someone quietly raging against the dying of the reading light.

Stuck in a moment you can’t get out of (unless you buy a big new telly)

Marshall McLuhan was born 100 years ago this month. Here’s self-confessed McLuhagnostic and analogue native Roger Ebert to provide a personal/historical perspective – with the help of a couple of Russians – on MM’s “rearview-mirror” concept of the social and technological environment:

I grew up in a world of books, magazines, radio, black & white television, and movies that were shown in movie theaters. I was well enough established in that world that it created an “invisible environment.” It never occurred to me that there was anything new about those forms of media. When Gorky saw the first silent films, he called them “the Kingdom of Shadows,” and added: “If you only knew how strange it is to be there.” When Tolstoy saw a movie for the first time, he said: “You will see this little clicking contraption with the revolving handle will make a revolution in our life – in the life of writers. We shall have to adapt ourselves to the shadowy screen and the cold machine.” He rather liked movies. “The cinema has divined the mystery of motion. And that is its greatness.”

Have you ever (have I ever?) given much conscious thought to the fact that movies move? The very term “motion picture” was coined in a world in which pictures did not move. Yet within a few years after Gorky and Tolstoy saw the first films, Charlie Chaplin was the most famous man in the world, and nobody gave it a moment's thought. The invisible environment had changed to accommodate a new kind of visibility.

Or, as Douglas Adams put it:

...everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal; anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it; anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

(Image from picturesofwalls.com.)

Something to spray

Concern has been expressed at the ease with which someone was able to spray red paint over Poussin’s The Adoration of the Golden Calf in the National Gallery last week, and the event has prompted calls for security checks, protective glass and entrance fees to our great art collections. The latter argument is particularly odd, as it implies that someone with an insatiable urge to damage great art would be deterred if it cost a fiver or so to exercise his or her critical faculties.

In fact, responses to the Poussin attack became rather more measured once rumours arose that it wasn’t motivated by sheer philistinism, but by some quasi-mystical stack of conspiracy theories that wouldn’t seem out of place in a Dan Brown schlockbuster. It wasn’t just dumb vandalism, you see: it was, in a strange way, a work of art. The fact that the damage caused (minimal, as it turned out, thanks to the prompt action of the National’s resident troubleshooters) was just the same as if it had been some bored drunkard wielding the can is irrelevant, apparently.

The notion that it might be some kind of religious protest is certainly feasible; to be honest, I can’t think of an instance where an attack on a major work of art has turned out to have been conducted in the same spirit that possesses a disaffected, Adidas-clad 12-year-old inking a spunking cock and balls on the wall of an underpass. Such assaults usually turn out to be prompted either by genuine madness, or the desire to make some sort of political point (the suffragette who slashed the Rokeby Venus; the attack on Marcus Harvey’s Myra Hindley portrait). And then of course there are defacements sanctioned by the art world itself, such as the Chapman brothers’ hijacking of Goya etchings; or Duchamp’s doodle on the Mona Lisa. The danger invariably comes from someone pissing within the tent. The outsiders don’t care enough about Poussin’s work even to ruin it.

If there were any chance that some priceless work in the National’s collection were to fall victim to the nihilistic whims of a trackie-bottomed ned, it wouldn’t be entrance fees that dissuaded him; it would be the fact that it was in the National.

Truthy

(By gaping void)