2/5 - Equestrian (War Horse - Stage vs Screen)

Today's blog post honours the Equestrian stages of the Olympics.  My mother's been glued to the telly since yesterday morning...

Two years before my thirtieth birthday I had decided that I wanted to see a theatre production in London called War Horse.  There had been an article on the national news and a documentary.  I was very interested even without the publicity, but seeing the images of massive, life-sized horse puppets on stage really caught my imagination.

I'm not a horsey person.  The few times as a child I was taken on a donkey ride, I always felt for the poor beast carrying me.  But I do adore to see horses moving on their own.  They are something wild and free, if you like the cliche.  The ancient poetry I love equates horses with dangerous sexuality.  Of course, this makes perfect sense if you feel a wife needs to be broken in the same way you might a horse.  But I think it's more than that.  Horses are other.  They are alien in the same way that, say, a dolphin is.  But in an accessible way that almost allows you a glimpse of another kind of life.

So, although not horsey, I do have a great love for the equine form.  Puppetry, also, is something I admire.  I feel much the same about animation.  Creating a world with a set of tools which otherwise would be inanimate and cold.  It's magic, and so it makes sense that people would try to catagorise it as something for children.  Because the world can be cruel and stupid some times.

Finally, like many people my age going through the UK education system, I've been fed a steady diet of WWI since I was little.  The first assembly I remember in secondary school was taken by Mr Wilson, who banged a wooden blackboard rubber on a desk next to the microphone every second for a minute and then said 'That's a little like what it was like being in a bombardment.'  Good old Mr Wilson.

By the time I was fourteen I had a WWI poetry book complete with a photo of a dead (American I believe, but I can't remember the uniform off hand) soldier who, lying in the trench, had had any exposed flesh removed  by rats.  So a nice plump corpse with a completely skeletal head.  I read Birdsong (how I hate that book), the Regeneration trilogy (*so* much better) and as much poetry as I possibly could and the result was top marks in those sections in both GCSE and A-Level.

So while many people feel a great distance between their life and the Great Wars of history, I feel closer to them than I do, say, the Beatles.

So then, War Horse is a play about the plight of horses (and a particular horse and his boy) during the First World War.  Puppetry is used to bring both nature and the horror of human creation onto the stage.  The stage itself is circular and set up so that it can rotate.  Surrounding the stage are slashes of white like huge torn strips of paper.  The backgrounds (pencil drawings making them look like pages from a sketchbook) are projected onto these.  The main horse puppets (there are more than one) are handled by a team of puppeteers.  They wear black and, through some kind of psychological magic of the brain, they dissapear into the background.  No, that takes away from their work - it is their magic.  They mirror the movements of the horse, provide the horse's voice, they become the anima of the horse...its aura...its soul.

The film is a live action piece using real horses (and not such a little CGI) to tell roughly the same story.  However, there are some interesting alterations and additions to the narrative which were shocking to someone so wedded to the theatre production.  However, familiarity and love are not souly to blame for my distaste.  I believe they damage the story.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the film has no blood or torn limbs.  There are no Saving Private Ryan flashes of gore.  The skeletal face forever associated in my soul with WWI never stares, eyeless, into the audience.  Of course, the theatre production never shows blood and gore either.  That'd be pretty difficult.  But using puppets they were able to provide us with horror by the bucket load.  So for example, there is a kindly captain who rides our horsey hero.  In the film his presumed death happens in cut away.  It's an interesting shot, but because we have no solid evidence for his demise, it feels somewhat lacking emotionally.  His death on stage, however, happens in slow motion agony, caught by a puppet shell.  Now the puppet shell I wasn't 100% convinced by.  But even so, it was better to see the men torn from their horses in the charge.  We felt their death.

One of the most upsetting things I have ever seen was the horses pulling artilery on the stage.  There was no way this could be done with real horses, or even CGI ones.  The horrific, ghost grey skeletal wrecks pulling the gun carriage and dying on stage were so important to the story.  You needed to see the real fate of these once fine beasts in order to understand the message of the narrative.

The eventual fate of both boy and horse are also both reduced and "enhanced".  So, if I've convinced you to watch the stage version, or you care about watching the film, you must stop reading now.

The mad flight of Joey the horse through the WWI battlefield is a CGI flop.  It loses a true sense of physics, and his eventual barbed-wire fate is far too over the top (to excuse the WWI pun).  The stage version is relatively slow and confined and so the wrapping of wire around the puppet and the noise...oh the noise.  The sheer truth.  And a boy blinded by gas...well, that's nothing to do with puppetry.  I was angry by how they handled that in the film.  It diminished the suffering of soldiers.  The reunion of horse and boy is a thing of blood, snot, tears and choking.  Anything less destroys the ending.

Speaking of which, the weird extension to the ending didn't make the film any better.  I felt they thought it needed that to show that everything would now be well.  Other examples of defference to an audience who might want easy answers - the elevation of the father from town drunk to 'gimpy' (oh the horror of that script) war veteran was very annoying.  It is an example of film narrative which cannot abide having less than positive people who aren't out and out villains.  On the stage, he does the wrong thing, people pay for that and they move on.  Such is life.

I think the horrors of war were pushed on the audience with the new (from the stage version - I should admit that I've not yet read the book) section involving the AWOL German children and their execution.  This felt like an invented section to allow us to feel hatred for the German soldiers.  Of course, we feel, the Brits would never do such a thing.  I mean, we even saw them stopping a child from signing up to war, when the Germans let any old (or not so old) child join up.  I really liked the inclusion in the stage play of the older German soldier who handles the horses.  His section really felt equal to the rest of the narrative.  It spoke of universals.  In the film, he's a bumbler who is very quickly dragged away, never to be seen again.

Also, what was up with the 'I'm so ill but with absolutely no physical sign of it and might die at any time' girl?  And the horse jumping over the tank??  Ugh, I should stop now.  But I probably won't.

So, there were problems with the narrative and with the use of live action horses.  What should they have done, presuming that they not just film the stage production (which I'd love to see, but which I'm also sure would lose a little something, with the audience not feeling the pounding of the horses on stage)?  I believe that animation would have given them options.  The story needs the use of abstract imagery in order to properly tell it.  You need to be able to see people thrown from horses and dying without necessarily seeing them splintered and bloody.  You need to be able to see horses mangled and dying.  You need to limit the sheer scope of the front so that you can take in even a fraction of the true horror.

Also, you need the humour which was almost completely removed (I say almost - I really liked the conversation about a hat).  Humour is life.  No matter how awful a situation, people still find things to laugh at.  Even if it's just my grammar.

And there's one more very important point.  I know that the soundtrack of the film was praised, but I felt that the work John Tams put into the stage soundtrack was immense.  The folk songs (and war songs) bought life to the people and the situation.

The stage production managed all the elements of the story and the truth about war in such a way that it was entirely accessible to everyone.  Humour, music, horror, beauty, truth and hope.  All the things that make up life perfectly balanced.  A child could see it, the Queen did see it, anyone can understand and empathise and grow.  The only ways I felt the film tried to make itself universal was to manage the blood and cursing.  That feels at best inauthentic and, at worst, manipulative entirely for the ultimate return of box-office gains.

I really will stop now.  The film's not necessarily a bad thing.  People spoke about the tears they shed feeling forced.  I didn't cry, but the times when I felt close were not because of the film, but because of the memories of the theatre production which, two years on, are still fresh and bright and living.  And I suspect they always will be.

Let the Right One In (Novel and Film) - Art and Editing

Art is anything you can do well. Anything you can do with Quality.
- Robert M. Pirsig

You know how it is – in an awful display of preciousness, you are put off something which is linked in any way with a piece of art you value greatly for fear of disappointment.  It's that fear that keeps us away from revisiting childhood wonders in case they implode and crumble like a tissue meeting a candle flame.  This fear was part of the reason why it took me so long to get around to reading the novel which was adapted into the best Vampire film of all time.  Namely 'Let the Right OneIn'.  Of course, this goes to show how very silly I can be – surely the sire (to borrow the phrase so buffyfied in my brain) to the amazing film couldn’t be anything other than special?

Sadly, being a man of my room (as opposed to a man of the world), my language skills are limited, so when writing about this novel, I feel I can't comment too much about the language.  But rest assured, anyone reading the English translation should be happy.

The general story, for those of you unfamiliar with book or film, goes like this - A young boy lives a rather bleak life in which he is constantly bullied.  He meets a pale child of his own age.  The friendship which develops encourages the boy to value himself and fight back against the bullying.  Of course, things are never that simple...

The Pirsig quote, although apt when looking at the story and translation, was actually something which came to my mind when I was pondering the job of adaptation.  In this case, the novel was adapted into the screenplay by the original author, John Ajvide Lindqvist.  Lindqvist seems to have a natural grasp of the best way to cut down a story to make a successful film narrative.  I've not sat there with a stop watch checking, but I'm pretty certain the entire film falls neatly into the Syd Field plot paradigm.

Beyond this, however, Lindqvist has been able to revise his original story and polish a couple of flat points.  The ending, for example.  The film features a lovely bit of ring structure, whereby the actions of Eli and Oskar earlier in the film (namely communication through morse code) reoccur in the final scene.  It's a tiny thing (the setting of the scene is exactly the same as that in the book, it's just the addition of an action) but it made for a pleasing feeling of completion.  And is also tremendously touching (and, for those of you familiar with morse code) a confirmation of feelings denied us by the medium of film (i.e. we can't be certain of the thoughts and feelings which are kept internal).

Content, which in the novel gets a little extreme, is toned down into something more appropriate for cinema viewing, whilst also retaining the possibility for reading between the lines.  I don’t want to spoil the biggest ‘cut’ to the novel narrative (*cough*) which was given away to me by the Great and Powerful Nick Lowe in his Mutant Popcorn film review of the American remake (which I am yet to see and of which I am, unsurprisingly, rather wary), but the editing does not spoil the narrative one bit.  In some ways it was nice to read the novel and have the screen narrative expanded.  I am imagine that, had I come at it from the opposite direction, the removal of parts of the story would still have not felt intrusive, thanks to the ambiguity left on screen.  Ambiguity as a narrative device should be used more often.  It costs nothing other than a certain degree of faith in your viewers.

So, back to Pirsig.  Quality and art really do go hand in hand.  It is the quality that defines the art rather than the item itself.  I’d like to think that a few things I have created in my life qualify as art.  But they are all constructed from different media – the words that fuel my writing, the wood I craft into objects, the light that I collect and form into a photograph.  Lindqvist has managed to create two pieces of artwork, separate to each other, crafted from words but becoming something more.  The revision of one does not lessen the other.  

Podcast - Catfish Review

Cross posted at Diary of a Goldfish




Link to the MP3 for download


Full Transcript:



D: Hello. We've decided to do an audio-review
of the film, Catfish, in order to test out Stephen's new microphone.
The film Catfish is one where there's no way to review it without
major spoilers, so if you want to watch the film and enjoy it in its
completeness, you need to stop listening now.

S: Quite right. And thank you very much for the microphone. It's very
beautiful, thank you.

D: You're welcome. Would you like to tell the listeners – I was about
to say “viewers” - would you like to tell the listeners what the film
is about?

S: I don't think the microphone is that good.

D: No.

S: The film is about – it's a documentary following a photographer,
who has an office in New York, who strikes up an on-line friendship
with “Abby” who is a seven year old girl from an American state
beginning with M.

D: Michigan.

S: Michigan. I keep on forgetting this. We've had a trial run and I
came up with Massachusetts and

D: Demure

S: Des Moines. Even I know that there isn't an American state called “Demure”

D: There isn't an American state called “Des Moines”.

S: Is there not? Is that a city?

D: I don't know but I know there aren't any

S: I so want to Google it and I can't really do an “Excuse me a minute
while I get out my phone”

Right so, Michigan.

D: It was Michigan.

S: Michigan. And he was in New York and apparently there is quite a
large space between those two places.

D: Cause it's in America.

S: Cause it's in America and America is big.

D: It's all spaced out.

S: Is it? News to me. Okay. So they strike up a friendship via
Facebook. She paints his photos that are published in various
magazines.

D: Makes paintings from his photos.

S: Yep, paintings of his photos. And he then becomes friendly with
her mother Angela and her sister Megan and in fact the relationship
with Megan becomes very romantically-inclined.

D: Yes, I think he thinks he's in love with her.

S: Yeah. And the thing is filmed by his two friends who both use his
office space. But the documentary starts out as really looking at his
relationship with this family. They call it the Facebook family
because he “friends” them all on Facebook. And we see all of these
lives meshed together. A brother who worries about how he's treating
Megan. And it's quite in depth and detailed. But the action takes a
bit of a tumble when he realises that a song that Megan claims to have
produced within about twenty minutes or something - he requests a song

D: Yeah, he requests a cover of a song and suddenly

S: Tennessee Stud, I believe it was.

D: Yes it was.

S: Yeah, see I can remember that. And Tennessee is somewhere in America.

D: And uh, yeah. No it wasn't, it's the name of a playright, Tennessee Williams.

S: Oh I see.

D: I think perhaps they named a place after Tennessee Williams.

S: It makes sense.

D: It's a bit like Denver and John Denver.

S: And Denzel Washington.

D: Yeah, I don't know, I think perhaps Washington was there before
Denzel Washington.

S: Okay. So, this song. He receives this song as an MP3 or whatever.
And I can't remember why but they go looking for other versions and
they actually find the song on Youtube.

D: I think it was a different song. They were getting lots of songs
and it was a different song that they searched for but they realised
that the recording sounded exactly the same as a cover on Youtube.

S: So they'd recorded the audio stream from Youtube and then sent it
on to him. So initially he thinks, “Oh no, this love of my life is a
plagiarist.” But the story unravels more and he ends up with his
friends – because they're relatively near to where these people live –
going and dropping in on them and so the secret unravels.

Now we were, prior to this point, or certainly you were convinced that
this was a “Mockumentary”.

D: Not a Mockumentary! I thought it was a “Blair Witch” style fake

S: A spooky unsettling horror type thing.

D: Or “Spinal Tap”. I thought it was a drama pretending to be a
documentary. And it is beautifully done.

S: Yes it is beautifully done. The filming, some of the scenes

D: The use of technology, the use of Google Earth when they're moving about

S: And Street View to kind of focus in on these places

D: Really nice use of tech, which is still quite rare in films, to use
on-line technology that looks like the on-line technology that we all
use. But it just, it is real. It really was real. I think we
realise this, without a doubt, when we finally meet the character of
Angela.

S: Or the person who is really Angela.

D: The person is really Angela, who doesn't look anything like the
photographs we've seen. And turns out to be responsible for all these
identities.

S: Twelve separate accounts on Facebook.

D: Which include the daughter. She does have a daughter, but the
daughter doesn't resemble – well she physically resembles but she
isn't a painter, she isn't this bright spark that has been having this
e-mail correspondence with the photographer. And the older daughter,
who the photographer believes himself in love with, as well as a
brother, some cousins, some friends. And she's fabricated the whole
thing. And we were talking about the way that that's changed. You
know, having been on-line since the late 90s, I think we feel a lot
safer with the people we meet on-line now because we are so
interconnected.

S: Yeah, the evolution of social media has created a smaller degree of
separation. Just the other day on Twitter, someone I follow who is
involved in electric vehicles ended up retweeting from someone I am
aware of through disability activism so the reality of both people
becomes more solid as they're both linked together.

D: And the people, certainly the people I know. I mean, I don't use
Facebook but the people I know through blogging and Twitter and all of
that, there are sort of strange connections between people. But you're
not having to appraise one person who could be fooling you, if they're
fooling you, they're fooling a lot of people. Because they're
interconnected. But of course this woman had created an entire
network of people, all of which were backing up this narrative. I
mean, she was a frustrated novelist really, she didn't know that
that's what she should have been doing with her time. But she was
managing twelve Facebook accounts and presumably Twitter accounts and
things, as well as having two mobile phones so she could pick up the
phone as herself and she could pick up the phone as her imaginary
daughter. And the whole thing, all these characters and interactions
and everything they were doing amongst themselves were an entire
fabrication.

S: And she had been the person producing these paintings. Really out
of a love for this

D: She was very much in love with the photographer.

S: He was – I think with his interest in dance, which she shared and

D: They did have a lot in common.

S: They did have a lot in common and they seemed to get on very well.

D: Except for the fact that she had obviously deceived him in a
terrific way. She'd made him fall in love with someone who didn't
exist. And she was terrifically in love with him.

S: Whilst being a married housewife. But we begin to understand her
situation as we begin to her house in – what I would say was a very
isolated community?

D: It's difficult to judge.

S: It's difficult to judge, but. And looking after, it would appear
looking after full time, two young men who were both physically and
mentally disabled. And she seemed to have a very empty life? Is that
fair?

D: I think she had a very frustrated life. She obviously had a lot of
time on her hands. And I think, compared to the life of a photographer
working in New York, going to all kinds of Arts things, I think she
felt very frustrated. She didn't have the access to that kind of art.
She had a very frustrating life.

S: And this had driven her to trying to create something better,
something richer. Which I think is a symptom of society that reduces a
degree of social care which is necessary. People need the connections
she was creating. People need rich lives.

D: She was one of these characters that you do know – I think, when
she appeared, you knew straight away that there was no doubt that this
was a genuine documentary because she was not a character you normally
get in films. She was a compulsive liar really, but she wasn't a
crafty criminal mastermind type. She sort of – she was a very
sympathetic character, you felt quite sorry for her even though you
could tell that she was

S: And even the break down of her life on film was heart-breaking.

D: It was.

S: Because she's confronted very gently. They did do very well. They
weren't angry with her.

D: I think they were a bit angry but they were keeping it under control.

S: They weren't vindictive, sorry.

D: No, they weren't malicious or... They could have humiliated her or
just bamboozled her with what she'd done.

S: Yeah. But the truth is relatively gently brought to light. And
she's given the opportunity to almost come clean. She doesn't quite
get there, she does produce quite a few more lies.

D: One of the things that really shoke – was very familiar was um...
She had very long hair which she was very proud of. And she'd sent
them a photograph that was supposed to be her and the only similarity
between that and her was that the woman in the photograph had very
long hair. She was complimented on this and she said, “Well, I won't
have it for long because I'm on chemotherapy.” Which really kind of
struck a chord because, of all the sort of stories that you hear of
romances that turn out to be other than they are, on-line, cancer does
seem to be a recurring theme.

S: And it also does stop any further conversation because it is the
topic to end all topics.

D: Yeah. In the late 90s, the very first one I came across was a
friend, a sort-of friend who had this girlfriend who was supposedly in
hospital dying of cancer, although she had internet access, which
seems unlikely given the time. And she had a PO Box address which
seemed a bit suspect. And it seemed unbelievable then to everybody.
Most of us hadn't been on-line very long and we just couldn't see how
someone could get sucked in like that. But the guy felt himself in
love.

And then a couple of years later there was another friend who was
exactly the same – well not exactly the same thing happened. But again
there was this guy who had seemed to have had a very tragic life and
then he had cancer and there wasn't much time and so the whole
relationship was very intense. And of course people do have cancer
and people do have very intense relationships at the end of their
lives but it does sort of, it is a bit too familiar, isn't it?

S: So this was the film. It was quite shocking. We were both – we
chose it because it would be – we had a choice between this and Titus
Andronicus and I think we went with the lighter option.

D: I still think it was probably the lighter option than Titus Andronicus.

S: Well you say that. Yeah perhaps okay. But we were both quite shocked.

D: Could we do like a Facebook version of Titus Andronicus?

S: Um, well Livinia does have her hands cut off which would limit her
options for, anyway. So we were both quite shocked by the end of the
film and as well as wanting to test the microphone, we wanted to talk
a bit about it because it moved us.

D: Yes, it was very moving. And we talked about, I mean we've both
been on-line since our... I don't know, how old were you?

S: I was a teenager still.

D: Well, I was a teenager still. I was going to say late teens and I
thought perhaps it was your mid teens.

S: It may have well been mid-teens.

D: When you were young and naïve.

S: And I was called “The Very Cowardly Lion”.

D: That's really – the very cowardly lion?

S: The very cowardly lion. I know, it's really sad isn't it? But anyway.

D: [pause] Yes. Um.

S: That's a bit of a stopper, isn't it? Sorry.

D: That's a bit of a stopper.

S: I wasn't. I was just called Stephen. That was what my username was,
it wasn't the Very Cowardly Lion. And I didn't go onto very early
chatrooms and not say much apart from “Hello, I'm the Very Cowardly
Lion.”

D: Yeah. I can't remember an awful lot of my old usernames and things.

S: That's probably for the best, I now feel very embarrassed. In fact
I may cut this bit.

D: I don't think you should. Because people will want to Google it to
see if there's any evidence of you.

S: I bet there isn't. That was in the days of Netscape.

D: Wow. So were you ever tempted to be someone you weren't?

S: Well I almost signed up for Second Life, after a friend of mine
joined. But I think there's a desire often with, especially people
who are ill and could be – aren't very satisfied with there lives, to
try and create a new, more fulfilling existence. And the internet's a
wonderful tool for this, because you don't have to show you're
physical form. You can build a physical form that works with your
idea of what you want to be.

D: Amanda Baggs, who blogs at Ballastexistenz. She is non-verbal
autistic and she is a wheelchair-user and she's talked about using
(bless you) using Second Life and that experience being completely
different, because she is non-verbal, to be able to talk and interact
and not be a wheelchair-user and her whole experience of life is
completely different.

S: And it allows an extra dimension to life.

D: I don't think that is on any level pretending to be other than you
are. I mean, Second Life, it is to do with a version of yourself, I
don't think it's even an idealised version of yourself.

S: It depends on the person.

D: Yeah. It's a bit like in the Matrix when he incorrectly says, I
think he says, “It's a mental picture of your digital self” when he
really means – it's one of those many points in the Matrix when he
gets his words wrong.

S: I did have a Yahoo chat account with several different identities.
And I used them for times when I didn't want to be contacted.

D: I think organised crime is another issue altogether.

S: Yeah, back in the days of the Yahoo Mob, yeah. No, that was when I
wanted to. When I was unable to socialise and yet wanted to be around
some form of people.

D: Like in a petri dish.

S: Yeah, when I used to experiment on these poor tormented internet
souls. I used to a put on a disguise to just sit quietly. But I
didn't use that to become someone else. I just had one that was a
Latin term and one that was actually a couple of words from a
Portishead lyric, both of whom allowed me to sit quietly in a room and
not be bothered.

D: Was that “Machine Gun”?
S: Um, no. It was “slave to sensation”. Which, if you've ever been to
Yahoo chat, makes you sound like, um...

D: I think we know what that makes you sound like.

S: And so you never ever get bothered, which is wonderful.

D: I'm quite surprised you don't get bothered. I'm quite surprised
people weren't interested in what particular sensations you were slave
to.

S: Anyway, that was a long time ago. And uh, sorry, I have forgotten
where I was.

D: I've pretended to be a man on-line.

S: Have you?

D: Yes, I put on a deep voice like this. [convincing masculine voice]
Hello. Hello darling. [resumes feminine voice] That's my

S: It's very convincing! I can almost hear the chest hair.

D: But I've not actually

S: Just a warning to anyone who hasn't watched the film and yet is
still listening to this, in which case shame on you. You do see an
awful lot of chest hair. He has, he has got an awful lot and you
know, in this society where chest hair is banished from the front of
magazines, it is quite shocking.

D: Okay. I have pretended to be a man on-line but not actually, to be
honest I didn't really try hard. I just let people refer to me in the
masculine and call me mister and so on, and not challenge them.
Especially when I was younger, I think I very much felt that people –
especially on political matters – I felt people took me more seriously
if they thought I was a man. I wouldn't do that now.

S: I'm glad.

D: Because I think the sort – I mean it's an implicit bias, so it's
not actually people who are horrendously sexist, but at the same time
I think it's better that I might be taken a little less seriously but
that people see that my point of view is that of a woman.

S: Yes.

D: A lady. I think it's particularly interesting for people who

S: have some sort of internet existence.

D: Yeah and also know people who are – I have know people who are – I
mean we've obviously both been isolated at different times. But
people who are isolated who turn to online communities to resolve
isolation and there's nothing unhealthy about that in itself. But I
think it sort of demonstrates where it can go.

S: The power of honesty. The importance of honesty. And the
inevitability of lies.

D: Because you meet people and you don't believe who they are. I mean
you meet people in real life and you don't buy, you know, there are
lots of people who are full of...

S: Yeah.

D: We need a word that isn't a swearword to describe...

S: I do have that Bleep App on my phone. But I'd have to go and get my phone.

D: Yeah. Okay, how about you go “Beep” and I say it? There are people
who are full of b....

S: [silence]

D: You've got to beep! There are people who are full of b...

S: I think you're all very glad I didn't beep, aren't you? Because
that was far more funny as it was. I think they get the point.

D: There are people who are full of [beep]. Can we beep that afterwards?

S: There are indeed. There are people who lie, and we do have to be
careful. But we also have to be caring because often people lie for a
reason, a reason that is... well no, often don't, some of them are
just idiots.

D: But lots of people do tell lies for a reason. Unfortunately
though, they do tend to carry on lying, in experience. I think this is
the thing. I think they get found out and, because it's a defence
mechanism and as such it is very difficult to help people who tell
lots of fibs.

S: So I think that's just about it.

D: Yes, I think it is.

S: So thank you for listening.

D: Yes, thank you. I hope we haven't wasted too much of your day.

S: And if we have, tough luck.

D: Yeah, you should have spent it on Facebook. [phone noise] Oops! Sorry.

S: And with that beep of modern technology, we bid you Adieu.

D: Goodbye.

Crash (Bang Wallop)

It often takes me a while to see films. I can't get to cinemas and, anyway, I object to paying for things I might not enjoy. When it came to Crash, created by Paul Haggis (who also did Due South - one of my personal favourites) and winner of three Oscars (including Best Picture), I had very few excuses. It had been available on dvd and shown at least twice on television. Still, I'd heard some raves and some rumbles and this is often enough to put me off. Indeed Deborah told me that she thought it was utterly disappointing.

But you know what men are like, so I watched it with every hope that Deb was wrong. How silly I was.

I believe that one of the things that most impressed people was that Crash speaks of racism in new ways. Well, that's great. But then, there's not been a film about cars which talks about the chemical properties of the magnetorheological fluid used in the dampers of some posh cars. There's a very good reason *why* a film has been made about cars which speaks in this voice. It's because the voice is one of those nasal ones that says 'actually' a lot. And yes, I've been known to slip into that voice at times.

Racism is a massive issue. It's possibly hard having grown up in Surrey to entirely relate to the America of this film. At my primary school there were perhaps one or two black pupils and only one Asian girl that I can remember. And yet this didn't seem to breed any 'racism' as such. In many ways they seemed to be quite popular having these differences.

But I'm not entirely removed from racism in this mainly white corner of Britain. I live near Slough which is famed for its racial tension. There are schools in which the pupils were said to cheer when 9/11 took place. There are also instances of gang violence between different races. And yes, there is also a strong distinction between the poor areas of immigration and the extremely rich areas of privilege. No doubt there is prejudice on both sides.

But I do not believe that there is universal racism. I don't believe that every single person in that area of the UK has racist views. And I don't believe that to be the case in the US either.

I think the idea of the film is fundamentally flawed. I get the impression that someone said 'ok, we're going to make one of those films where everything is interconnected. Now all we need is a theme...'. Racism was picked. And so every character and event has to relate to the theme of racism. But that's not how the world works.

The world has so many motives and ideas and thoughts and feelings that to limit them creates an artificial world. And to try to explore an issue as important as racism in a realistic environment in this way just does not work. I'm reminded of Seuss and the Sneetches. It's ok to simplify the world into Sneetches with stars and those without because it's not a real world. It makes the matter clear without denying the complexities of the real world.

Deborah has informed me that she blogged about Crash a long time ago, and in her blog she says;

It would have made for a better film had it included some suggestion as to how this human misery could be resolved; instead it actually suggested that whilst racism is not the exclusive domain of monsters, there’s not a lot that can be done about it.

This is very important. Seuss teaches by showing us a world where racism is institutional and unavoidable. It's only through their mutual swindling that they learn that racism is silly. The audience, though, aren't expected to tackle racism in the real world by inventing some race-on race-off machine. They are shown an error in a fictional world and so can relate the message to the real world.

Crash, as Deborah says, has no idea of resolution. "It's a bad thing", the film says...but that's it. That's only the first few lines of the Sneetches story!

I also object to the abusive cop. His molestation of a woman is explained away as being the result of having to look after a disabled father. Excuse me? It seems that there's no real explanation of racism, but it's ok to explain a sexual assault? Yes, it's difficult to live with someone who's ill, especially when you're not recieving the proper help and support. People can snap. But snap by sexually assaulting someone?

And so many of these scenes were exploitative. I felt like I'd perpetrated all these horrendous acts. I felt dirty. And although I get that that may have been the point of the film, it lacks any sort of catharsis. And I'm too much of a classicist to let that go.