4/5 - Moan of Achilles

Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller - Review

I'm part of a book group on facebook, although honestly I'm rather behind; in part because I've been doing other things (not to mention reading other things) and in part because...well...we'll get to that in a minute.

The group decided to read Song of Achilles mainly, I think, because of its recent win of the Orange Prize for Fiction.  I was very pleased with the choice because of the subject matter - an interpretation of the relationship of Achilles and Patroclus: heroes of the Trojan War.  And when the book arrived, I was even more excited - in the extensive list of recommendations and panegyrics were ones from both Donna Tartt and Bettany Hughes *swoon*.

Now I must make it clear that I'm yet to finish the book.  We're about a hundred pages from the end.  But those hundred pages are beginning to look like the last twenty meters of a particularly long and hot walk over burning coals.

We are not enjoying the book.  Well, that's not entirely true - we've enjoyed laughing at a few bits.  But thus far there are some major problems.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the editing doesn't seem right.  There is a lot of repetition.  At first I thought this might be a stylistic thing - attempting to mirror the repetition you get in traditional oral storytelling (of which the Iliad is a major example).  However, in the first couple of chapters there were three separate references to Patroclus' thumbs.  I half wondered if I'd forgotten something important about this particular body part, but it just seems to be some little fetishistic detail that got left in.  Again, it makes sense that Achilles' feet are referred to on multiple occasions; he is, after all, swift footed Achilles.  But does there have to be so many?  And why do we have to read at least twice each chapter what he smells like?

And the smells, in general, are a bit funny.  It's like someone told the author that the key to writing is to describe what you see, hear and smell and if you do that you can't go wrong.  But, well, firstly that's not true.  And secondly, there's something odd about the smells.  It's like they live in a Greece that's at least two thirds Boots perfume counter.  Nothing ever smells bad, but it does often smell exactly the same over and over.

From my perspective, however, the most upsetting thing is the damage done to the story.  From the reviews I've read, people have been very impressed and moved by the story.  But the story is not hers.  And she really has hurt it in key ways.

Firstly, and most scarily, Patroclus is made as un-manly as possible.  Soldiering?  Not for our Patroclus - he can't fight.  Apart from in the last few pages where he's suddenly survived years and years of hand to hand combat without a scratch.  Being part of a homosexual couple, it would seem that Patroclus isn't allowed to be 'masculine'.  Achilles, meanwhile, becomes a serene photo of a character.  He's a poster on a teenager's bedroom wall, with much the same level of animation and spirit.  Diomedes is unrecognisable.  Odysseus is perhaps the most correct in translation, but the way that his story-telling dialogue is written is completely obtuse to anyone without knowledge of the myths and just not correct.

Not that any of the dialogue is correct.  Honestly, it is entirely flat.  And reading it out loud to each other (as we have been) really proves that point.

The result is a story that, thus far, has read like poor slash fan-fic.  The Iliad has been ravished and the characters rewritten to suit the fantasies of the author.  She inhabits Patroclus, allowing her to fondle Achilles who remains as 2D as the paper he's printed on.  And the worst part of the slash fan-fic style is that it ruins the *proper* relationship.  Ancient sexuality is not modern sexuality.  The early scenes in the palace are absolutely devoid of other homosexual relationships even though it's a veritable den of heterosexual iniquity.  It's as if Achilles and Patroclus are, not only 'the only gays in the village', but also the only gays in Greece.

This is pretty inexcusable.  It changes the relationships as much as the truly disturbing Troy solution - "Woah, we can't have two men kissing in an action film.  So how are we going to make sure that doesn't happen?  I know!  Let's make them cousins!"

It also makes the elements of heterosexual sex feel extremely weird.  And it would seem that there's more of that to come.

There are other modern moralities that really mess with the meaning of the story.  Patroclus and Achilles 'saving' women from a life of rape and slavery is a prime example.  I can understand why you'd do that...but it's an ancient story.  Your main character is a sulky brute who brings about the doom of his comrades because he's upset about a slave girl being taken because that reflects badly on his status not because of some kind of humanitarianism.  He's not compatible with the modern idea of hero.  But either you need to accept that and move on, or at least rewrite him properly.

The Iliad is a story about the universality of war and the experience of death.  It is also, in the wise words of Dr Nick Lowe, a book that tells you all you need to know about men.  All of this is gone.  The fighting is, thus far, the most competently written part of the book.  But it is neither interesting nor meaningful.  The motives of the characters are lost.  How can Achilles be sulky about a wound to his pride when, presumably, he'll be upset because a woman who is treated as free and meaningful is stolen?  How can his great decision (fame or life) be understood as the foundation of his entire existence when it's replaced with some third rate romantic obligation?

Why on earth did it win the Orange Prize?  Deb feels that it's down to the Classical themes combined with a study of a homosexual relationship.  I don't know.  I'm just horrified.  I just hope that people go on from The Song of Achilles to actually read the Iliad and realise what the true meaning of war and love is.

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.

Dan Simmons - Flashback (review)

Although it's sometimes a tricky process, I'll never say that writing a Christmas list is a hardship.  I feel there's something positive about listing dreams, and although there are times when I'm scared to name the big-picture, long-term, life-changing desires, I'm definitely at home to Mr Capitalist-Consumer.

So this year's Christmas list was an interesting mix of toys - from a kit to build your own camera right the way through to Ponyo on dvd(and just in case you're feeling generous - no one got them for me...).  It was a masterpiece of an Amazon wishlist...and being Amazon based (and being mine) it featured a fair number of books.  I ended up with several choice volumes - a work on Disaster Movies as a genre, Terry Pratchett's 'Snuff' and 'Flashback', a novel by Dan Simmons, author of the superb Ilium and Olympos, as well as the Hyperion and Endymion books.  This novel, however, sounded a bit different - still SF, but less far-reaching and potentially less strange.  I looked forward to any book brave enough to name its hero Nick Bottom.  A book about a drug allowing you to relive your past and how that might work in a Private Investigator-type story.  I pictured repeated investigations of memories and the subtleties of experience.  The questioning of reality.  And, this being a Dan Simmons novel, plenty of literary allusions.  And maybe a few literary illusions too.

I am utterly stunned having read it.  And not in a good way.  I almost feel bad writing this, but then having read 550 pages of hate-filled ranting and raving, I need to exorcise the experience by doing a bit of my own!

I had no idea about Dan Simmons' political ideology prior to reading this novel.  I think it's fair to say that none of his ponderings on modern life are a mystery to me now.  Whether it's national health care, Islam or modern architecture, no narrative was brave enough to get in the way of page after page of drivel describing how mad, bad and dangerous they all are.  Honestly at times it felt like sitting alone with an elderly relative, rendered aggressive by poorly chosen medication, listening to their spittle-barbed tirades against the world as they see it.

This was a detective story!  First and foremost it should be about interesting plot twists and a story that keeps you guessing.  And yet I would think that at least half of the book was taken up with unimportant discussions of politics which just left me shaking my head in horror.  In fact, the few errors I found in the story were so glaringly obvious in part because they stood out by not being a political message about Muslims or Socialism.  The 'I'm an evil madman mwahahaha!' speech at the end of the book is followed by the (and I use the word loosely) 'hero' saying that he couldn't help but agree with the gist of the rant.  That just doesn't work!  I know that good villains should be sympathetic.  But there's sympathy and there's...well...there's a scene when a self-proclaimed pacifist fantasises about hanging people from lamp-posts and nuking Muslims!

What's worse, while I've been getting more and more wound up by this book, so it's been eroding much of what I've enjoyed in his previous books.  I can now look back and rather than picking out the good, I end up thinking 'Oh yes, yet another 'nice' woman who is dead, an aggressively strong woman who is alive but not to be messed with, and...well...not many other women at all'.

This is my blog.  I'm allowed to witter on about whatever I like.  Because it's a blog.  If this were a novel, it'd be a pretty poor one.  But not as poor as Flashback.

Black Mirror: Fifteen Million Merits (2011)

My fingers were, indeed, crossed.  After TheNational Anthem I was dreading what might come.  Deliberately, I’d kept clear of the television guide, for fear that once more the plot of Black Mirror would come down to a single idea; inescapable as a ACME ton weight.

Within the first five minutes, my fingers unclenched and straightened.  Within the first thirty minutes my jaw had dropped a little.

But this time there was no disgust.  No horror.  And certainly no anger.  Black Mirror: Fifteen Million Merits was, it’s fair to say, the best piece of dystopian science fiction I have ever seen.  What made it so good?

Well, like The National Anthem, it had an appreciation and understanding of technology.  Where it departed from TNA, though, was its prescience.  Good SF takes concepts and grows them as surely as if they were genetically modified apples in laboratory trays of bio-gel solution.  Great SF does that and injects a metric ton of emotion.  FMM did that...with extra emoticons.

Characterisation was superb.  Every figure was deftly drawn and strongly acted.  We understood motivations, dreams and fears.  We empathised.  The key tragic plot points, therefore, were devastatingly effective. 

The narrative had light and shade, not to mention genuine humour.  The whole thing felt organic and true, especially when placed against the blindly single-minded concept of TNA.  Its conclusion may not have been the one I’d have chosen, but it certainly felt like a genuine, worthwhile tragedy – something that released emotion and stimulated thought.

In my review of TNA I suggested that it wouldn’t have been made if the main character had been female.  I felt that her resultant rape would not have been broadcast.  FMM disproved that to some extent.  I should perhaps now fill you in on the general story just in case you don’t intend to watch it.  But really...why wouldn’t you?

--- spoiler ---

In the world of FMM you pedal on an exercise bike to earn ‘merits’ through generation of electricity.  Everything you use in a day costs merits (so, for example, we see our main character ‘pay’ for toothpaste, lunch etc).  All the time you’re bombarded with television on huge screens (your abode is a seamlessly covered box of screens, you pedal in front of a screen, and even the urinal has a banner screen running along at head height).

Our main character is a pedalling chappy (played by an actor I’ll always think of as Tealeaf, Daniel Kaluuya) who falls in love with a girl (Jessica Brown-Findlay)...a girl who has a heartbreakingly beautiful voice.  Something fragile and true amongst the ‘black mirrors’ of the omnipresent screens.

The tragedy begins, however, when boy gives girl the funds to allow her to enter the not at all veiled SF version of the X-Factor.  Thrust into this particularly soulless section of a soulless world, girl is taken under the wing of the judges –not to become a famous singer (that’s so last season), but to join the biggest pornography network there is.

Alone in his room, the boy is haunted by the adverts which now feature the girl he loves become headline act for a porn channel.  He no longer has the merits to skip them.  If he looks away he’s bombarded with noise until he looks again.

So he pedals away, earning merits to allow him to confront the judges (and, of course, the millions of viewers) and vent his spleen, heart and assorted viscera.  Their response?

“You’ve got something real.  Something true.  I like you kid...here’s where I am....”

And so he’s swallowed up by the world against which he raged.  And that is as satisfying a tragic outcome as you could ask for.

---

So, we see that FMM did effectively show the rape of a female character.  I still argue that TNA was a very different story and much more problematic.  Although effectively raped by her society en masse, the love interest of FMM is not shown on anything other than adverts after the audition.  We are not shown her functioning normally after her public rape.  We see her die a little on screen, and know that there’s no turning back from this.

The use of advertising was also particularly clever.  Not being able to escape it really struck a chord with Deb, who is much more affected by advertising than I.  I am able to let these things flow over me, and although I may end up whistling music from the catchier examples, in general I’m not aware of what’s going on (as in most things, really...).  It’s as if Deb has a particularly sensitive and aware brain that’s forced to swallow all of these images.  Spotify, for example, is running an advert by Garmin which takes the beautiful Carol of the Bells and turns it into ‘Give a give a give a Garmin...give a give a give a Garmin...’.  Every time it starts playing, she turns a certain shade of puce and looks ready to headbutt the nearest wall.

Of course, being show on channel 4 there was another level to this entirely, as suddenly they would cut to a real advertising break.  Seeing young kids prancing around in front of an x-box, and to be force fed the message ‘if you love someone, buy them this’ made us shiver.

As much as I didn’t like TNA, I’d still like to praise the use in Black Mirror of the ‘one-off drama’ format.  Indeed, Charlie Brooker wrote about it here and it is true that the thing that this format does so well is introducing something fresh and different.  It is, of course, not the cheapest or safest means of making television.  You cannot reuse sets as easily, and you cannot create a hook by playing around with the long-running lives of characters (often in ways that make no narrative or human sense).  But that is exactly why they are worthwhile.

So yes.  Of course, I still can’t bring myself to admit that my love-rival did good.  Instead, I shall put all the praise firmly in the lap of Konnie Huq, Charlie Brooker’s wife and co-writer.  She honestly seems to have taken Brooker’s caustic wit and razor-sharp-satire and mounted it in a beautifully wrought handle.  The resultant safety razor has achieved its job of stripping the numbing fluff of ignorance and apathy from the chin of society whilst drawing as little blood as possible.  Beautiful, powerful and entirely appropriate.  I loved it.

The Oxford Greek Play 2011 - Clytemnestra

On Thursday we braved the M25/40 trudge (complimented by beautiful sweeping views of late, low autumn honey-lit landscapes and at least ten squillion red kites) in order to get to the Oxford Playhouse.  What had we gone to see?  Well, the choice was either ‘Mother Goose’ (I’m not sitting through a production described as an ‘eggs-travaganza’) or ‘Clytemnestra’.  Thankfully, the booking staff were excellent (or should that be ‘egg-celent’?) over the phone and we were sorted with three seats for the Oxford Greek Play.

The Oxford Greek play is performed in...well, Greek.  I wish I could say that I had no need for the big, clear subtitle screens on each side of the stage, but alas, my degree was entirely in translation.  Even without language skills, I was really looking forward to hearing the tragedy in the original language.  There is something particularly musical about ancient Greek which suits the long, rhythmical speeches so beloved of Aeschylus.  And this ‘Clytemnestra’, despite the name, was an Aeschylus play – specifically the Choephoroi or Libation Bearers (the second play of the great tragic trilogy of the Oresteia).

So, a quick run-down of the plot – Agamemnon, high king of the Greeks, has been a busy bunny.  Not only has he killed his own daughter for a good breeze to get his ships to Troy, he’s also sacked the city (albeit after ten years siege), and has come home, slave girl in tow.  His wife, Clytemnestra, however, was not impressed by this behaviour and, with her new beau, set about planning his end.  In the first play of the trilogy, she tangled him up in a net of fabric while he was in the bath and set to him with a knife.

So far, so Essex.

And to make matters worse, there are more kids involved.  The surviving daughter, Electra, being a girl, hasn't got much sway, but she is not impressed with mummy’s murderous ways.  Orestes (the son whose name graces the trilogy) had been exiled for fear he might interfere, but by the time the Libation Bearers kicks off he’s back in town hungry for revenge.  The great god Apollo had told him he must do something about the crime (the killing of his father, not his father’s massacre of a nation, the sacrifice of his own daughter or any of that stuff.  Priorities, you know?) and by doing what he’s told, he’ll be safe from any sort of come back.

The play, then, is all about Orestes’ revenge, and this comes down to murdering Clytemnestra’s new fella, and, eventually, killing his own mother as well.  Obviously, with such a heavy job to do, there’s a lot to talk about.  And this is what Aeschylus does so well...

So, on to the play itself.  Firstly, I object to the title.  Call me fussy, but I love the chorus of mourning women (especially in this cast – not a weak member) and as they not only start off the theme of the play, but also take charge of the narrative and force the outcome (rare in ancient Greek drama) it is appropriate that they influence the title.  Clytemnestra is really pretty inconsequential – it’s all about a man’s worth, a man’s revenge, and a man’s eventual justice (albeit with the aid of a female goddess, but that’s another play entirely...)

My other major criticism was the lack of the line “Bring me my MAN KILLING AXE”.  There has not been such an amazing line in drama before or since, and anyone who fails to use it also fails to appreciate the full weight of the drama.  It is not just a fatal axe.  It’s a MAN KILLING AXE!

Aside from that, it was bliss.  The actress who played Electra entered the stage with a fractured beauty, her voice suiting the language so well I could have wept.  The stage design (a nod to both the Greek and Oriental) worked perfectly, and there were balletic touches (the weaving of a ribbon simulating the pouring of a libation, for example) which complimented and raised the heavy verse.

My pain-killers had worn off by the end of the first half and I was in a pretty bad way.  The fresh dose kicked in as the curtains rose for the second half.  It was a rather magical moment as the light caught on metal.  In one of the best pieces of set design I have ever seen, they had constructed full size Doric columns from multiple lengths of chain suspended between solid capital and base.  Sadly, the Star Trek style door of the main building did not work (although I’d now like someone to set Medea in a hotel ala The Shining), but aside from that, the rest of the stage craft, including costume, was great.

Oh, and not to go on about things that were wrong in my opinion, but there was this:  I could see something I shouldn’t, and couldn’t something I should.  No, it’s not the pills.  You see, the ‘silent character’ is important to all the plays of the trilogy.  Agamemnon has the ‘silent’ figure of Clytemnestra (sits there for ages before screaming and leaping around) and the Libation Bearers has Pylades.  But poor Pylades was only there in name, and as such his one line (which effectively amounts to ‘go on, kill your mum, you know you have to’) becomes an uncomfortable aside.  This was a mistake.  Instead, plagued by his mothers curse, we see the Furies assaulting him when Orestes clearly tells us ‘you lot can’t see this, but...’.  I understand why they’ve done this (you get to meet the Furies in the third play of the trilogy, and they don’t want you to miss out on the ‘pleasure’ when you’re there just to see play number 2), but it somewhat misses the point of what’s so scary about the scene anyway.  If, under the influence of my pain-killers, I’d got up and started screaming about the purple spiders eating my arm-pit hair, part of the fear the audience would felt would have come from not seeing something that had so upset me.

Even so, this still remains the best tragedy I have ever seen.  Even better than the Hippolytus where Theseus tripped over his cloak when carrying his dead wife.  Yeah, I know, I don’t have a great frame of reference, but trust me, this was something special and I enjoyed it very much.

Finally, if I’d been the cast, I’d have set about the audience with an axe (fatal...man-killing...it doesn’t matter which).  I’ve never known so many people to laugh inappropriately, and how it didn’t put off the actors I’ll never know.  It just makes me respect them all the more.

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 - Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die review

Link to the MP3 for download

For the transcript, click here to visit Deborah's blog, Diary of a Goldfish

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.

Review - Cibelle and Julia Nunes

To follow my very out of date film review, I have a pair of albums which have caught my ear recently. In fact, while I’ve been working through Sophoclean tragedy, two ladies have been warbling on my speakers.

I’m a huge fan of antifolk and the New Weird America movement. It was through listening to Davendra Banhart that I came across a singer called Cibelle. The pair sang together on their track London, London which I found on youtube. From there I listened to tracks from her album The Shine of Dried Electric Leaves (yes, the title itself deserves attention). The first track, Green Grass, is very special indeed: a breathy dream of lost love, sinking into a plant-filled modern landscape. It is the closest thing I’ve found in modern music to a Sappho poem.

And she has a new album out! And what’s more, the title’s even better! Las Venus Resort Palace Hotel is both the name and the fictional location in which the songs take place. It is the last refuge of a world which has crumbled away

‘...a rock floating in space with a jungle on top and the ocean dripping into nowhere...’

She sings as Sonja Khalecallon in the voice of traditional Exotica. But, unlike the subversive voice of much antifolk, Cibelle ne Sonja shows huge respect for the genre and its messages. Well, she does come from Brazil, and she seems to be trying to share a bit of her native sunshine and love.

Of course, this isn’t 100% successful off the bat. Some of the songs are just too sugared for my taste. Even though I appreciate the idea of covering a song from a Bond film, Underneath the Mango Tree had me raising an eyebrow. Although I do think, having listened to it a few times now, that it does set up the rest of the album nicely. It is followed by Man from Mars, a song which perfectly balances a gentle steel drum track, multi-layered, soaring vocals (had me in mind of a sweet-voiced swarm of parrots) and sympathetic trip-hop beats and samples.

Lightworks (cover of Raymond Scott’s original) feels dangerous and slinky – far more Bond-ish than Mango Tree, while The Gun and the Knife sounds remarkably like something from a Tarantino film. Mr and Mrs Grey has a wonderful beat (and, later on, an angry twangy western six string) reminding me equal parts of Rasputina and Lilly Allen’s Not Fair.

I think, for me, the standout songs are half way through and are scarily diverse. Sad Piano is just as dreamy and beautiful as Green Grass but with a much darker tone. Heartbreaking is most definitely the word. But my main problem is that, as a connoisseur of bad jokes, I can’t help but hear her sing “I have a small piano” which does somewhat ruin it.

The main theme of Frankenstein makes me think of Ice Age or some other quest narrative animated film, but most important is the totally catchy rhythm and cyperpunk lyrics which cannot fail to lift the heart.

Love like science and alchemy

tonight the nightclubs are poetry

I need a lightning bolt to his heart

to kick-start my Frankenstein soul

Escute Bem sees Cibelle hit some notes that remind me of Beth Gibbons at her very best, coupled with great electronic noises and an exotic feel. It really is like doing the tango with a triple breasted prostitute on the surface of mars. And yes, I have been drinking.

You don’t need to have drunk anything, though, to find her cover of It’s Not Easy Being Green anything less than charming. What a way to end the album! It’s relatively low key, but with added sparkle. Kermit in a tutu, perhaps.

So what can you say? As a concept album it works absolutely perfectly, painting an image of the last chance saloon of exotica slowly crumbling into a void. As much as some songs are completely uplifting and transformative, I am left worrying about the relatively drab surroundings just outside my window. Perhaps it’s time to search ebay for a feather headdress...

Spotify link for the album.

-----

My next warbler was also happened upon on youtube, although in this case it was entirely by accident. Julia Nunes is one of those sickeningly talented young people that make you want to take up drinking whiskey just so you can complain about them in a suitably gnarled voice. She started at the age of 13 and more recently has been writing albums and compiling rather splendid music videos on youtube which demonstrate not just great talent and an ear for a good cover, but also show her great sense of humour and zest for life.

The first video I came across was her cover of Why Do You Build Me Up, Buttercup and on that occasion, I believe I played it through five times. Yes, I know, I’m boring like that. Seriously, take a look through her video stream – you won’t be disappointed.

Today, though, I’ve been listening to her album I Wrote These...which is made of songs that I believe she wrote. Now, I have a bit of a problem here, as I’m abnormally attracted to a cover. So I was a little worried to see how she’d go about constructing an album.

My first impressions were not bad, however. I’ve heard criticism of Cibelle’s voice, saying that it’s not really up to anything more than the fun twiddly bits but gets lost when you chuck a strong tune at it (a rather harsh and unfair criticism in my opinion), but Julia Nunes’ voice is, well, not the antithesis, as she can twiddle as good as the next person, but she has an extremely strong voice which holds a tune (and attention) with ease.

My only criticism was that one of two of the songs felt a little too strong...almost overpowering, in fact. But this is probably just a youth thing, with my poor elderly earlobes unable to keep up. I personally think, though, that she really shines with some of the gentler tracks: especially those which are ukulele-centric.

There’s been a bit of a resurgence in the ukulele business recently (probably because Deborah and I made one. What can I say? We’re trend setters.). But the humble uke has lost a little of its cheeky ‘jumping flea’ character, gaining a more off-key half-drunk weepiness (which I blame entirely on ER and the death scene of Mark Greene). Julia gets rid of this with a big smile and some cracking lyrics. And this is where I feel that Cibelle and Julia Nunes are so linked – they both feel related to a scene that’s too cool for a lot of the genuine sentiment from which their genres originate, and yet they bring a lot of that original light and joy back with the benefit of genre evolution.

I must also quickly point out that her lyrics are very important. I’m not usually too bothered by lyrics – in fact, I often never hear them, just listen to the sounds and enjoy them as such. But there’s something about the crispness of Julia’s voice and the emotion that she puts into things that really brings out the quirky poetry of her words. So I’ll be quoting a few for you.

Binoculars is my favourite of her guitar tracks. It gives voice to the humble neighbourhood peeping tom. No, really. ‘Please don’t be creeped out by me / you’re my miniature TV’ is perhaps my favourite line. It demonstrates perfectly her sense of humour. In fact, it reminds me very much of some Ben Folds work. And again, you must check the video.

Keeping with the guitar theme, Pen to Paper is an interesting one. There’s a very strong beat, and I like how the song is divided up into sections. But again, I’m drawn to her narrative! I can’t help it, really. It has got one of the best relationship-type lyrics since Emmy the Great sang;

I thought romance was pretty, then you went and spoiled it

Every time that I think of you, have to go to the toilet

Can’t tell if this is love or a stomach disorder

Or a massive grade-a typhoon inside my aorta

Julia’s romance is slightly less definite but certainly less icky;

I saw you ‘cross the room

we never really spoke but still I knew that

you and me were meant to be

close if not romantically

The Debt is a wonderful ukulele piece where the bouncy rhythm is helped along with various layered vocal effects and trills and is, perhaps, other than the harsher songs, one of the only ones where I’ve paid less attention to the lyrics. But I must confess - I actually bobbed. Yep, I almost dislocated something.

But the best song of the album without a doubt is Stairwell. It has the absolute perfect mix of wit, rhythm and tune. I’ll be whistling it for weeks to come at least. And what’s more, during those weeks it will never get annoying! Well, not to me, at least. I can’t speak for those who have to live nearby. Anyway, strangely enough, it’s perhaps the least cheery of all the songs. I mean, the opening lines are;

I’m lying here on the floor just like the man on the yellow cone

I guess the floor was wet, so I'm cold and all alone

It turns out that the protagonist has been finding it hard to live and so decided that throwing themselves down the stairs might be a good idea. But I tell you, I’ve never heard someone that depressed carry a tune so well.

Spotify link for the album.

So there you are. Listen to them both. And thank me by showering me with gifts.

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.