Westminster Wisdom

Baby Face Nelson (1957)

2009-07-15T00:04:00.004+01:00

Simplicity in cinema is an underrated virtue. It is what the New Wave were striving towards- if they never quite got there with their arty Parisian view of the world and what increasingly directors strive to present. Reality or simplicity- the twin hopes of over subtle intellectuals is to reach something real or something simple- to reduce the world to a theorem and find a law which explains circumstance. On screen that can take the form of Breathless, a film about a girl and a gun, or of the Dogme movement and Lars von Trier- but both of those instances are actually complex. The first the work of a film theoretician (Goddard) trying to reduce film into its purest elements- the second the work of a self conscious auteur who wants to force constriction on his medium to stimulate creativity. No, for simplicity in cinema and its attendant virtues, you should turn to a film like Baby Face Nelson- made for no budget by Don Speigel in 1957, starring Mickey Rooney and a mixture of character actors and actresses (the criminally underrated Elisha Cook Jr. amongst them) about the gangster of the same name. Baby Face Nelson was a real person- who shot and killed his way through the halls of American banks with the Dillinger gang- beyond those facts the film has little to do with his actual life, the name and that of Dillinger are useful hooks to hang the audience's anticipation upon.

Self consciously this is an anachronistic film. It begins as many of the thirties gangster films did with a voice over and a sociological announcement- about the virtues of the FBI, about the vices that the prison system hoped to cure. Then it dives into the action: Nelson has just been released from prison, a local Mr Big Rocco attempts to get him involved in crime, Nelson turns down the opportunity so Rocco implicates him in a murder and lets him take the rap for it. Nelson of course escapes prison and finds Rocco and shoots him as full of holes as a piece of Emmental cheese- then in a sanitarium run by an underworld doctor, he links up with the Dillinger gang. Add to that mixture one of the sexiest gangster molls ever- Sue- whose face is a perfect picture of her emotions and you have the classic ingredients of a gangster film. The voice over, the girl, the guns, the banks, the gangs- they are mixed together with style but without self conscious style- and over the top comes a jazz score which moves with the action but does not obstruct it.

The construction is simple- the point is simple too. Baby Face Nelson's character is uncomplicated but it does not really matter. The film knows its merits- it isn't there to be a sociological documentary but to entertain. To a certain degree it is a nostalgia piece- in 1957 the era of the Public Enemies was twenty years in the past and the film is anchored in a time where prohibition was as much a constant in American life as dark suits and black hats seemed to be for thirties cinematic criminals. It evokes the past but does not laud it. Indeed it goes at such a pace- the entire film is a mere 83 minutes that it does not have time to (note to aspiring directors, an entertaining film is often a short film!) That it condemns gangsters is as evident as the fact that it celebrates the verve and vigour of their lives- the audience like Nelson's girl feel his attraction and vitality- but we also see his brutality. The G-Men are portrayed as being sturdy and upright but no match for the little guy with the machine gun.

This film is pure and absolute fun- seldom have I seen a film which was such pure escapism. It is film making at its most simple- we go to the cinema to be excited and entertained- Baby Face Nelson does that as well as any film I know of.

The Doll's House (1973)

2009-07-12T22:42:00.003+01:00

The Doll's House isn't one of the greatest films that was ever made. It came out in 1973 at the same time as another film, made from the same play, and was released on television rather than in cinemas and it vanished pretty quickly after that. The makers included illustrious members of the aristocracy of the cinema- Joseph Losey, Trevor Howard and Jane Fonda- but the film has fallen into obscurity. Its fall into obscurity is pretty just- the film does not succeed really and as a failure I think its a worthy one. The Doll's House is a play by Ibsen about the constrictions of nineteenth century marriage- the way that it constrained women and meant that their lives were ornamental to their husband's lives rather than instrumental to their own good. It is one of the most famous plays of the century and that enduced Losey and company to an over respectful treatment- the play is set in 19th Century Norway, the swish of long skirts and the rustling of monocles dropping into pockets is the visual accompaniment to Ibsen's dialogue. There isn't anything neccessarily wrong in attempting authenticity in your treatment but you have to give the script life and vibrancy- the respectful treatment of the text translates in this case into a kind of lifeless stagy acting. The acting isn't wrong and every line is pronounced rightly but the overall effect is that the actors are trying to act rather than acting themselves.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Jane Fonda's performance. Ms Fonda here has to act as a silly girl growing into a mature young woman who demands her own liberty to define her own life. That transition has to be made subtly- in this case it is not. Suddenly in five minutes Ms Fonda's character makes that transition. Losey decided that Ibsen's dialogue needed improving so he added scenes of exposition to the beggining of the play. In those scenes Ms Fonda does nothing so heartily as she irritates- she gives a performance of being a giddy girl without constraint. The missing element is any depth or colour- Ms Fonda's transitions in this film are between moods but she does not convey a character. The film in a sense like Fonda makes too much of an effort- the most irritating effect to my mind was ponderous music draped over the first ten minutes telling me what to think of the scenes, telling me how to react. Music can serve films well- Scorsese's Mean Streets made a couple of years after this shows you how it should be used- but in this film it was not used well. Furthermore those scenes of exposition deprive the rest of the plot of its mystery and leave the main point of the story as the political feminist point but the feminist point emerges slowly and for too much of the film, this viewer knew what was going to happen and could not be interested because he could not be surprised.

The film's point is a good one. Fonda's character Nora married a man named Torvald and secretly through borrowing money got him to go to Italy, a move which, in the context of the film, we have to accept saved his life. Later on, Torvald treats her as though she were an ornament- his little bird, his little this, that and the other. He patronises her and refuses to acknowledge her existance. His code of honour seems to have little place for female personhood within it but more to exist within a patriachal universe in which only men and their moral selves exist. He ultimately gets a comeuppance for this particular example of sexism. The point is well made and perfectly illustrated and the last ten minutes in which the point is made are the most impressive ten minutes of the entire movie- but that does not excuse all that has come before.

Having a good ten minutes though does not make a good film- obscurity in this case was thoroughly deserved.

Dragging up the Druids

2009-07-11T23:19:00.004+01:00

The history of Druidism is odd. For a tradition which boasts of its antiquity with several ancient orders of the druids around, the history of Druidic practices does not go that far back. Though Caesar and Tacitus mention them, as Ronald Hutton explains in his latest book (and Tom Shippey in a review of it in the London Review of Books concurs), the ancient evidence for them as sparce. It could be put together in about a dozen pages. There is no archaeological evidence to speak for. There are almost no monuments that can be associated with druids (Stonehenge is much older than the first mentions of druids that we have). Furthermore there are almost no Celtic traditions about the druids- these are all medieval and there are no medieval references to medieval druids, if there was a druidic tradition it managed to avoid Malory, Geoffrey of Monmouth and all the chroniclers of medieval Britain. Even the ancient evidence that we do have is unreliable- Pliny's writings about them are credulous, Caesar's justify Rome's imperial mission- a couple of pages here and there, introduced for local colour, by authors whose true focus is not Britain but Rome does not give us much to base a history of druidry upon.

What Hutton and Shippey argue therefore is that it is much more interesting to look at modern druids. Think of the analogy to King Arthur- there is almost nothing that we can know about the historical King Arthur but the modern King Arthur is an eco campaigner who has done interviews. Ultimately the two historians here are more concerned about the reflection of whatever ancient druidry was upon the modern and early modern world. What they suggest is interesting- Hutton's book, and Shippey accepts his conclusions, suggests that the druids were part of an invented tradition of welshness, created by the talented Welsh immigrants who streamed into London in the early modern period in the eighteenth century. This invented tradition was buttressed by the insane, the fraudulent and the fantastical until it became what we know today as druidism. Druidism has nothing to do with ancient druids- but it is interesting because enough people beleive that it does have something to do with them and that this is important to make it important in the modern world.

The Girl cut in Two

2009-07-09T23:37:00.004+01:00

The Girl cut in Two comes with some substantial reccomendations- Claude Chabrol the director is one of the elder statesman of European cinema, Ludivine Sagnier the star is someone who has an interesting and enviable back catalogue of films behind her: these two figures deserve respect. Whether the film they have created together does is another matter. I watched this film and want to confess to two reactions- the first is that I was engrossed. The film has a marvellous storyline- a pretty weather girl meets two men, an old writer and roue and a young mentally unstable millionaire- both fall in love with her and she alternates between the two as the movie goes through, her alternations produce nothing but corruption- the corruption of a person through the ancient novelist and the corruption of a system through the young millionaire. The second thing that I will confess to is that I did not grow to like any of the characters beyond Sagnier's character, everyone important was vile, and to some extent, if it is true that we can judge people by the company they keep, then Sagnier's character is condemned by her friends. The film is involving but I could not get involved with the characters- and wondered out of the cinema wondering what a spectacle of decadence, sex (none seen but plenty implied) and violence was enacted to say.

In a sense I think my reaction is the one that the film drives towards. Lets take for a start the look of the film- a good place to start because we absorb films first through our eyes. Sagnier is stunning and dressed to look stunning in this film. M St Denis, the writer, looks debonaire and well preserved, M Gaudens the millionaire looks unstable and foppish- a kind of dangerous almost Byronic figure. The portrait here is one of exoticism and Chabrol uses as well the minor characters- particularly those who surround Sagnier's character as she presents the weather to give us that note of exoticism. These are TV personalities- brash and living in a world where champagne floats round a hall, where cameras are more familiar than kids. St Denis's world is one of oak fittings which conceal sex clubs, auctions where you buy pornography and the full range of Parisian taste- or at least the kind of taste that Englishmen of the eighteenth century would go to France to sample on the grand tour. It is the taste of Sade- and it is unsurprising that another glossy lover compares St Denis to Sade at one point. Gaudens inhabits fast cars, slick haircuts and shiny resturants- again wealth comes out but not the wealth of tradition and aphorism, the wealth of ostentation. Gabrielle, Sagnier's character, is being fought over by the Marquis de Sade and Cristiano Ronaldo, by Valmont and David Coulthard.

I do not think those associations are unimportant to what Chabrol is trying to do here- the spectacle of a film is often as important as its words. Chabrol is countering to us two worlds and their demands upon Gabrielle perhaps their demands upon us all. The first and second world share secrets- the first world has a secret decadence- M St Denis goes on the television to speak aphoristically of nunish behaviour (a reference to Diderot's pornographic nun, n'est ce pas- for such a learned film one would not presume the answer was no) and hides a liking to watch his beauties defiled by his friends. Gaudens has secrets about violence- he attempts Gabrielle in a dark alley and is stopped by his friend- footballers of the world would sympathise with that issue. St Denis and Gaudens hate each other from the beggining of the film because they each embody a different kind of celebrity- St Denis a witty aristocratic with pictures of naked women hanging inside his house and mistresses filing in sports cars to his door- Gaudens, idle, young, innocent expecting life to fall into his lap as he has the chance to have the wealth that others long for. Chabrol's view is that neither is healthy- and we see that in their impacts on Gabrielle- but that the former may present the possibility of survival whereas the latter may not.

Let us go a bit deeper here for the theme of the establishment brings us to a new level- a level which I think is the fundemental level of the film- the level of secret. Ultimately this is a film not about love nor class but about secrets. Everywhere you look there are secrets- even in the final denoument we see a secret enacted and when Chabrol moves his camera in on Sagnier's beaming face towards the end where she is literally cut in two, he moves us in to contemplate the secret. Recasting the film in terms of secrets brings in a final male character, Sagnier's uncle, a magician who has trade secrets of his own. He flits around Europe and the world- never where you expect him- his location is a secret. Bringing him in allows us to see what the film might actually be about- it is about a transition for the character of Gabrielle- a journey through different kinds of secret and a discovery about what kind of secret is comfortable as a fit for humanity. In a sense the film is what it says it is repeatedly- through the mouth of St Denis, through the mouth of Gabrielle's mother, through the mouth of Gaudens's mother- it is a film about growing up and growing up is about dealing with secrets.

Recast the film in your thoughts and imagine it now as a bildingsroman. Start with Gabrielle and take her through three relationships. In the first she loves St Denis because of his secrets- because he can show her how to do it- whether that it is oral sex or poetry matters not at all, the point is that it is an it. It is something that she does not know and hopes he can reveal- can take her beyond the oak pannelling into the world that we are not able to see but only hear about. The second relationship she has is with Gaudens. Here she has grown to see Gaudens's secret from the inside- she has accepted it to some extent though she does not realise its power- she does not realise that Gaudens is controlled by his secret madness. The story of her relationship with Gaudens is the story of that secret spinning out of control and destroying both their lives. The third and last secret concerns herself- she is not being cut in half- it is a magic trick- but she, her uncle and the audience all know it is a magic trick. From the charm of knowledge to the possession of knowledge, she has journeyed one step further to the control of knowledge: she has reached the point at which St Denis was in the film, fulfilled, sipping her champagne, in control of her secrets- having confronted them and explained them to herself. Confessing myself still ambiguous, I am not sure that the process is one of learning, however much it is one of growing.

I do not pretend that this does anymore than take another skin off the onion of the film's interpretation- it could do no more. But I do not feel this is an easy film to interpret. There is something unpleasant about watching old men ogle young women- something unpleasant about St Denis's lifestyle. The film of course is modelled on a real case- that of Stanford White- and Chabrol in that case was not completely in charge of his story- though he did of course choose to dramatise it and not another. Rather he has spun its focus away from the mad millionaire and the decadent roue to the girl- for the final key question at the end od the film is why, after all that has happened, is Gabrielle smiling? I'd suggest the reason is a secret.

Book Review: Soldiers and Strangers: An Ethnic History of the English Civil War

2009-07-05T12:38:00.004+01:00

The English Civil Wars started in Scotland and finished in Ireland. They involved huge incursions by Welshmen, Cornishmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen and even Europeans into England but they fundementally were always about the position of England in the Atlantic Archipelago. The problem of England in seventeenth century Britain (like the problem of Germany in nineteenth Century Europe) was central to the civil war. Religion and other issues (as we shall see) drove the war- but what Mark Stoyle impressively argues here was that the English Civil War was a war in which the other nationalities of the British Isles fought to maintain their ways of life and traditional independence against an English chauvinist imperialism represented by Parliament and particularly by the New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Fairfax. Stoyle's approach is so unique and interesting because he has taken on a strand of the recent historiography, that under the guidance of two of the master spirits of that discussion- John Pocock and John Morrill, has begun to represent the war in its three kingdoms context, and he has extended it. Stoyle uses the approach of concentrating on ethnicity and nationality to explain fundemental moments within the civil war in England as well as in the wider Britain.

Since the revisionist challenge of the 1970s, most historians accept that the main issue confronting us has been explaining where the royal army came from. Parliament raised its forces from London and the South East. One answer to the problem of where the royal army came from is to focus, as Stoyle has done, upon what threat that South Eastern force posed to the rest of the British Isles. The King and his propagandists skilfully allied themselves with the Celtic fringe (and the Northern counties fearfull of Parliament's religious allies the Scots)- the King's armies therefore came from Cornwall and Wales. Armies such as Sir Ralph Hopton's in the South West embarrassed Parliamentary forces in the early 40s- leading to the Royalists seizing Bristol for example. Welsh units crossed the border to support the King's forces- so much so that Stoyle argues the royalist defeat at Naseby was as much a Welsh defeat as a royalist defeat. The King's main strength in his second main army (the Western army commanded by Prince Maurice and then by Lord Goring) was either Welsh and Cornish foot or recruited mercenaries from the continent. These men joined up because Charles promised that Wales and Cornwall would maintain their rights and freedoms- because ultimately Parliament was an English institution whereas the monarchy was a British institution.

Stoyle's account is much more subtle than that- he shows how the King directly attempted to appeal to his Celtic subjects whereas Parliamentary propaganda concentrated on diminishing them and disparaging them. The one exception was of course the Scots- tempted to fight with Parliament because of a common allegiance to a radical Protestant religious settlement. However as the war continued, Stoyle also shows that this nationalistic commitment to royalism brought problems as well as manpower. This was evident from the first days of the war when Cornish soldiers refused to march across the Tamar- and it continued right up until the end of the war in 1646 when Welsh troops defected continually from the King's English army in order to defend their homeland. Parliament found it easy to buy off the Celtic forces through promising to appease their concerns in Wales or Cornwall- easy because ultimately their priority was not a King on the throne of England but the independence of their own national community. Stoyle's account presents us thus with a new account of how the royalist armies were created and a new account of how they disappeared- how Charles in the aftermath of one battle (Naseby) went from controlling half the country to controlling almost none of the country.

Stoyle's narrative is more complex and detailed than a brief review can cover- but I hope that sums up the majority of his argument. Stoyle's argument stops with the end of war in 1647- it stops there because Stoyle's argument fails to explain what happens later. Afterall if negotiated settlement worked in Wales and Cornwall, why did not Parliamentarian generals try it in Ireland- they had equated the Irish to the Cornish and the Welsh, what ended up being so different? That question reveals that nationalism is only part of the answer- religion ended up feeding into the way that Parliament felt about the nationalities that it imposed settlements upon. Stoyle never sets out to deal with the religious angle because he abandons his account as soon as Parliament starts governing, and therefore distinguishing between the Celtic fringes. This halt suggests that a true account of civil war nationalism and ethnicity ultimately has to fuse itself with an account of civil war religion: if Stoyle points out rightly that we have ignored nationalism to concentrate on religion, it is important that historians do not swing the other way and make the opposite mistake.

Lastly it is worth noting that Stoyle provides a further interesting dimension to the civil war when he discusses the 'outlanders'- those who came from Europe to the British Isles as mercenaries, as ideologically connected zealots or as liege subjects and relatives of participants. Characters like Princes Rupert and Maurice on the Royalist side and Isaac Dorislaus on the Parliamentary are interesting in themselves. Stoyle demonstrates an intriguing political subtext where the foreigners were blamed for the violence of the civil war- hated for the invention of plunder (which Englishmen assured themselves was a German word) and loathed for not being loyal enough. He sees the reason for the creation of the New Model Army in 1645 as lying in part in the attempt by Parliamentary independents to distance themselves from foreign mercenaries- who in their view were untrustworthy. It gives a new light on Cromwell's lauding of 'russet coated captains' when one realises that the opposite was a proffessional soldier from the thirty years war who fought for money and not for beliefs. Having said all that, I would like to have heard more from Stoyle about the re-immigrants, men like Hugh Peters who returned from America to fight in the English civil war, I suspect there is another article to be written about those men.

Stoyle's book is an important and interesting contribution to the topics he writes about- it is a partial view of the war but it is a corrective and one of the perils of being a historian is realising that ultimately all views are partial. Stoyle has introduced to us something that we should have realised- as I read his book, I sat rebuking myself for not noticing how many times Parliament declared that it fought for English liberties. One of the greatest honours in any academic discipline is to receive that accolade that you have started a debate- Mark Stoyle should receive that accolade.

Katyn

2009-07-04T22:42:00.003+01:00

On 3 April 1940 around 22,000 Polish officers, intellectuals and professionals were taken to a forest near Smolensk. They were all shot by NKVD agents for the Russian state and their bodies left in a mass grave. The incident at Katyn Forest has become one of the iconographic moments of the second world war, defining the pure evil of the Stalinist Russian state and for many in Poland providing yet another reason, even to this day, to fear Russian intervention in their country. Katyn was denied for years by the Russian state who only admitted what they had done in 1990- even today it is not classified in Russia as an act of genocide nor have the victims been officially rehabilitated within Russia. Katyn in a sense is a symbol, both of the crimes of the Stalinist state during the second world war to other peoples- particularly Eastern Europeans, and of the violence and aggression that Russia participated in as an equal partner with Germany from the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty until the outbreak of war in 1941. Making a film about this moment in history is a brave enterprise- the problem is that the atrocity overshadows almost everything else that you could surround it with.

So how do Andrzej Wajda and his cast do? The answer is mixed. There were times in this film when I thought I was watching a television piece rather than a film- there is something uncinematic about the way that the film is shot which did not convince me. The film mostly concerns itself with the women who were left behind when their menfolk were shot at Katyn- their stories are interesting but are obscured by the central fact of the massacre. In a sense the horror of the massacre drives the story forwrads but also inhibits it. Furthermore with many of the women short scenes with few lines of dialogue mean that they merge into one greiving whole rather than becoming real individuals. The director could have focussed on one character's response and grief but instead chose to encapsulate all types of grief- the defiant, mournful and forgetful and the responses of the next generation- his frequent change of focus leaves you wondering where some characters have gone and makes it hard to relate to others. For example at one point we see a woman berate a Pole who has joined the Russian army after the war- this is when discussion of Katyn is forbidden- for betraying his comrades- we know what happens to him, but we never find out what happens to her. We also see her earlier being intimidated by the Nazi state but we never find out whether she gave in- something that is important to the later scene (how complicit is she in giving in to the temptations of accord with totalitarian powers). Stories are left hanging and one never really identifies with the characters- they appear and disappear- often going through great terrors (how did a Polish woman cross the frontier between Germany and Russia in late 1940 early 1941 without coming to any harm for example) without any explanation.

I sense and this is another major flaw of the film, that this is because Wajda has deliberately set out to make a nationalistic Polish film. He dedicated the film to the Polish Prime Minister for example and the film is filled with discussions of what it is to be Polish and what isn't Polish behaviour. Of course this misses out the fact that Poles were complicit in the oppression of the Nazi and Soviet period- the Polish treatment of Jews during the Holocaust is not a happy episode in that nation's history. Nor was the officer corps entirely beneficent itself- whilst nothing on the scale of its neighbours to the West and East, the Polish government was unpleasant, for instance in the 1930s Jews in Poland were forbidden from receiving welfare benefits and had to sit on special ghetto benches at universities. Russian and German crimes- at Katyn and elsewhere- cannot allow anyone to whitewash the Polish prewar regime. A nationalistic Polish film creates a simple opposition between resistance and compliance- between principle and opportunism- whereas actually Polish attitudes to the Nazis and Soviets were more complex. The Katyn Forest incident was a shocking demonstration of the Soviet disregard for human rights and disarms a certain simplistic understanding of Russian history (promoted by President Putin amongst others) but it must not be fitted into a simplistic portrait of Polish history either.

There are things I liked about this film though- and perhaps it is only because it takes on such an important subject that I hold it to these high standards. I think that the decision to concentrate on the women waiting at home and the people after the war is a very interesting one- perhaps it would have been better to focus either on the women in 1941-5 or the people afterwards but not on both. Its interesting because it shows you how much it is the reverberations of something like Katyn that matter and not simply the incident itself. The Holocaust still affects the grandchildren of those who were killed, the First World War's shadow hangs over 21st Century Britain and the shadow of Katyn hangs over post war Poland, particularly over the Poland that emerged into the Cold War. I liked all of that- but I still felt it was disjointed, still felt getting more intimately engaged with the characters and being less self consciously national about the portrait might have presented a more compelling argument and more interesting film. I should note that others do disagree with me- this for example is a very good and positive review- but I ultimately found something missing in this movie for me.

I would still recomend seeing it for the closing scenes and for a sense of Polish history (an important history that is not as known in the West as it should be)- this may not be the perfect film but it is about a subject that everyone should know about.

Thomas and Felix Platter

2009-07-01T22:52:00.000+01:00

Thomas Platter was a Swiss peasant boy who learnt how to read and write, became wealthy comparatively, a printer and a teacher in later life. Felix was his son, a doctor in Switzerland as well. What is interesting about both of them is that they left memoirs of their lives- memoirs that have become as vital for the history of early modern Switzerland as the Paston letters are for medieval England. They give a vital and important portrait of the way that the Swiss lived from the early 16th to early 17th Century. But for one moment I think we should halt. Here we have the lives of a son and a father- the latter self made, the former taught and brought up by tutors, a citizen of one of the great cities of Reformation Europe. Amongst the vivid impressions that you can garner from Emannuel Le Roy Ladourie's encounter with the two memoirs is the two different personalities- the encounter is an interesting one and demonstrates the change between generations that a change in fortunes can evoke. To some extent the father's success is demonstrated by the fact that the son cannot understand his legacy.

The first difference between them is in the nature of their memoirs. Thomas's memoir is matter of fact- a catalogue of facts. Felix's more ornate with classical tags and quotations. Thomas was a more religious man flirting with the radical protestantism of the 1520s, Felix was conventionally religious. For Thomas the ladder to success was represented by writing and reading- for Felix writing and reading were things that he learnt quickly, music was where his true love lay and that love was shaped not as Thomas's by need but by a love of the texture of story and song itself. Not all of this is explained by the differences in background- it might well be differences in character as well- differences in the complex ways that humans orientate their lives. Others though are differences created by the different generations. Thomas was a teacher and had sought to be a doctor: his son was able to exercise that option and become a medic. Thomas was comfortable returning to and living in the mountains that he had come from, Felix hated them and was addicted to smooth fashions and a smoother lifestyle.

There may not be anything in these contrasts- but I think they are important and potentially interesting. We remember that these gulfs exist in the modern era- between parents and children who have lived in different worlds as social mobility propells people upwards and downwards- but the truth is that they existed in the medieval world too. One of the segmentations that is easy to forget is the segmentation between the generations in interest and condition of life- it is something that you can see in the distinction between Felix and Thomas. Ultimately Felix's context was completely different from his father's, his outlook was too- the enduring effect of social mobility or even the narrowing or widening of social divisions is the way that people understand and look to their lives, what they like and what they believe is possible to do.

North by Northwest

2009-06-29T22:25:00.001+01:00

North by Northwest was part of the golden run that Alfred Hitchcock enjoyed through the mid-twentieth century- it is hard to think of a dud that Hitchcock made from Notorious to Psycho and he collaborated with the greatest actors and actresses of Hollywood (Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, James Mason, Eva Maria Saint, Grace Kelly, Claude Rains and others) in order to make a succession of films that nobody can see without gasping. Because of that it is easy to dismiss some of the features- Vertigo and Rear Window seem to stand the test of any critic's eye, but Rope is dismissed as a parlour game, To Catch a Thief as a light drama and North by Northwest as a silly nonsense. Of course in the hands of Hitchcock it is anything but- and whilst it is entertaining- the film has an argument, a thought behind it about the nature of normality and the ways that human beings behave. North by Northwest is a farce- its a classic tale in which identities are confused- Cary Grant's advertising executive Roger Thornhill is believed to be a US agent- or in which they are secret, James Mason's and Eva Maria Saint's characters retain an elusive nature right through the entire film. But farces make serious points- anyone who knows Shakespeare ought to know that comedies focusing on mistaken identity can become great literature, and even though Hitchcock is now Shakespeare, North by Northwest has considerable virtues.

One of those virtues is its description of the world of spying. Of course the plot resolution is ludicrous and several incidents (Cary Grant chased across the American midwest by a plane) are foolish but the view of the world of spies is not so silly but is deadly serious. Hitchcock unlike the producers of several James Bond movies since demonstrates that the fundemental life of a spy is boring, unglamorous and sad. Cary Grant spends most of his time hiding in Eva Maria Saint's train compartment- the two lovers Saint and Grant cannot consumate their relationship through marriage until they can leave the world of spies- the Professor, a CIA 'boss' is reduced to callousness by the demands of his service- James Mason's character (Grant's double within the film- a point I will move to) exerts his power through being a devious and deviant monster. Spying is a world without friendship- but a world without friendship is a world not worth living in- and never are the characters so happy as when they leave or are not within the world of spying. Spying subverts justice, it has nothing to do with justice, it exposes the ugly side of life to full view. Hitchcock ultimately presents us with a view of spying that may be thrilling but is also deeply antagonising.

What that means is that a film about concealment is actually a film about the pleasures of straightforwardness. Thornhill, and the viewer who inhabits his eyes, is a character who wants to know what is going on- wants to understand- and never really until the last moments of the film does. Thornhill is a charming suave and sophisticated man- played by Grant a tramp would be suave and sophisticated- but the key about him is that he is straightforward. Oppose him to the doppleganger he confronts. James Mason's character is suave and sophisticated- as mannered and polite as Grant and as intelligent but Mason, unlike Grant, hides depths of duplicity and depravity within that exterior. His mistress becomes convinced of that after she sees miscellanious photographs of his deviancies- we can have no doubt that Grant has no such photographs in his attic. If Thornhill's character comes from the world of Romantic Comedy and movies like His Girl Friday, then Mason's emerges out of the slime that gave birth to Harry Lime- they may be brothers under the cravat, but they are estranged by their different moral characters.

Grant and Mason have two distinct and important characters who rule the film as part of a triumvirate- between them is one of the most interesting actresses of the fifties, Eva Maria Saint. Saint's role in North by Northwest is interesting- but in order to discuss it I must warn you that spoilers lie ahead. She is a spy, working for the American government. She is Mason's mistress- a good time girl that he picked up at a party and yet she turns out to be intelligent and skilled, patriotic and virtuous. In a sense she is Ingrid Bergman's character from Notorious, had she met Grant's years after and Rains been the villain of that film. Saint's choice we have discussed above- but her fundemental character is that of a woman who is thoroughly in charge of her emotions. In a sense to reverse the gender roles, Grant's Thornhill is a blundering innocent, dangerously putting lives at risk in a hysterical way: Saint's Eve Kendall is cool, calm under pressure, virtuous and willing to sacrafice herself even unto death for the greater good. Saint is the warrior, Grant is the civilian. Saint is sexually aggressive, Grant is responsive. Hitchcock leaves us in no doubt though that Saint like Grant shares a sincerity- neither character lies to the other in the entire film. Like Mason they artfully talk and flirt, unlike Mason behind talk lies truth, behind flirtation might lie love.

And here lies what I think is an interesting Hitchcock twist for he leaves us in doubt over whether the good time girl and the three times divorced Grant are telling each other the truth. THe sincerity that they express is the sincerity of a moment- both are afterall practitioners through advertising and spying of different kinds of acting. What Hitchcock though wants us to reflect on is the kind of acting that they embody, both of them act the truth- and whilst Mason's act is an act, their act is a temporary truth.

The End of the Affair

2009-06-28T23:39:00.003+01:00

The End of the Affair, a novel by Graham Greene, written in the shadow of the Blitz and the devastation of war, is a private drama about the lives of three individuals- Maurice, Henry and Sarah- who are bound together by ties of love and religion. Henry is a civil servant working in a senior capacity within the wartime government. His life is his work- filled with plans for pensions and provisions. Sarah is his wife- a woman who married young and who has no children, but retains her glamour- a beauty that has not faded since she married. Maurice is a writer, still unsuccessful enough to be literary but gradually beggining to emerge from the seraphical sphere that snobs look to. He had an affair with Sarah and the novel begins about two years after that moment. She walked out on him in the midst of a missile attack by the Germans and never returned again. The novel in a sense is a long explanation of that moment, she did not hate him indeed at that moment she loved him as much as she loved him before. Maurice's jealous love cannot believe it but slowly as he sets a private detective on her trail, slowly as he meets Henry in pubs on Clapham Common and surveys the wonderland of Oxford Street, he works towards that realisation.

In a sense the novel is bound up in that moment- so it is worth considering what moment that is when she leaves him. A missile, a V2, crashes into the house in which the lovers are lying in bed. It submerges Maurice's body under wreckage but Sarah survives- she survives and takes from that moment a lesson that since she prayed Maurice should survive and vowed to God that she would give up Maurice should he survive, and he does survive, that God exists and binds her to her vow. Sarah comes in that sense to the crisis of her life- she faces the alternatives that the man she loves should not exist or that the man she loves should exist but not with her and chooses. Her choice rules the fates of both Maurice and Henry. But it goes further than that for her choice is a choice to beleive- it is the invisible line that Julia speaks of in Brideshead revisited that is being reeled in, the Catholic returning to the choir. In a sense Greene's novel therefore is the otherside of Brideshead, whereas that novel is about the recall of tradition and the power of the church, the priests that appear here are pathetic but it is war that recalls a generation to the fundementals of Catholicism and to the wisdom in the traditions of Rome.

Make no mistake, this is a book about Catholicism. All of the characters are one might say afflicted with Protestant problems- with the issue of individual conscience and the desire for rationalistic explanation. Sarah who finally rises out of that, rises out of it by learning to relent her conscience, to disclaim her ability to understand and to enjoy the pain that authority- God- inflicts. In a sense this is the religion of sado-psychology- seeing in suffering the end of human nature and fufilment the idea of separation. Maurice's character in this sense is both the least and most resistant- for unlike Henry, whose suffering seems outside himself, unlike Sarah whose interior we only infrequently see, Maurice's suffering and guilt we see always. His guilt and suffering are related to her but by the end of the book we are beggining to see that he is progressing along a Platonic line, from hate of a woman to love of a woman, from disbelief in God to hatred of God to love of God. This is the progression that Greene marks out for the atheist- the end of the affair might well be titled the stairway to heaven and that would not give away its argument.

The psychology is believable because the guilt that all the main characters feel is beleivable- that guilt is directed to each other for obvious reasons. The interesting way that Greene makes it feel natural that this guilt then becomes directed to a fourth person God is really the centre of the book and the most thought provoking thing about it. The only criticism I have of the book is that- and it is fundemental- I wondered reading it whether it preached to the converted more than to those who were not converted. The Platonic stairway ultimately seems constructed- I can see the balustrades and steps- it all seems too logical and theological- and the novel in a sense becomes as it turns religious an examination rather than a portrait.

Woyzeck

2009-06-27T11:17:00.002+01:00

This review contains spoilers.

An image remains from Woyzeck, Werner Herzog's film starring Klaus Kinski, it is Kinski's soldier, Woyzeck, holding the body of a dying woman that he has just stabbed, her hands reach up to touch his jacket and smear his elbow with blood. On Kinski's face is a look of absolute horror, the look that tells you that no matter where this character goes- no matter what he does- this moment will stay with him for the rest of his life and he will be inhabited by it. Kinski's character has just murdered this woman because she was his wife and he suspected her of infidelity- in that sense Herzog is telling a story that is as old as stories and the world itself. Othello and Desdemona might tell the same story- yet here Woyzeck is correct, Maria his wife has committed adultery with a drum major. But that is only the beggining of the indignities poured upon Woyzeck's head- this is not a tale about jealousy, it is a tale about the slow disappearance of a man's mind under the pressure of hierarchy, under the pressure of being normal.

Lets go back for a moment, let me describe a key scene- the scene in which Maria commits adultery with the drum major. She makes him march up and down. She then strokes his arms and hands and proclaims them the arms and hands of a 'real man'. He fumbles with the top of her dress, feeling inside to her breasts and pronounces that she is a 'real woman'. Woyzeck of course is neither of those things- later on when he encounters the drum major, the young man flings him aside like a rag doll. The contrast between the vast and handsome drum major- a caricature of a manly man- and Woyzeck who apologises for his presense at every moment. The drum major runs his hands over Maria's breasts and forces her to accede to his sexual desires, whereas Woyzeck passes through his rooms and her house like a shadow, a ghost of a man who mumbles his entrances and exits, coming to present money but not romance and not even having a real role in the life of his son.

This makes it all the more ironic that Woyzeck's second major relationship in the film is with a doctor who wishes to examine what men are. He has been asked to eat peas for an entire year and nothing else. Woyzeck's humiliation in the service of science is a deadly business and it reveals two things. The first is the blindness of a scientist who concentrates callously upon the content of his experiment, ignoring its wider context. The doctor who does the experiments is not interested in Woyzeck the man but Woyzeck the specimen. The doctor's failure of interest is a moral failure- but more importantly it is a schematic failure. The doctor's role is to analyse and understand Woyzeck's madness- but of course what he misses is the danger of Woyzeck's depression. What Herzog therefore argues is that the doctor just like the drum major is complicit in Woyzeck's depression, by treating him as less than a man- and that unlike the drum major whose function is to seduce, the doctor fails in his function.

Like the doctor, the third major character that stands over Woyzeck is his captain. Again the issue is the captain's blindness to Woyzeck. The captain too is not really enacting his function- he gives a little speech, Flashmanlike, on the value of cowardice in the army (in that sense he is the opposite to the drum major). But furthermore the captain is offensive and ignorant about his subordinate- he treats Woyzeck when he shaves him as a screen to rebound ideas off and not a human being. In a sense Herzog in the relationship between Woyzeck and the captain is making a point about the alienation of workers from their employers- it is an alienation visible here in a hierarchical bureacratic system and reminds us that the responsibility of command is to contradict alienation, also that the most fatal critique of command is alienation. In a similar way to the doctor, the captain fuels the later crisis- in the doctor's case it was a failure of epistemology in a scientist, in the captain's it is a failure of pastoralism in a superior- in both cases, they betray in Woyzeck's case the definition of their role and their betrayel causes the terrible events of the later film.

The complexities of the film I think are complexities that Herzog diagnoses in modern society. This is meant to be a commentary on human life- in a sense Herzog is showing us that the consequence of repression is terrible. But it is also a commentary on the social and hierarchical relationships that enthuse society and drive repression. Woyzeck's life is ruined- he then ruins the lives of others but Herzog is much more interested in the first part of that phrase than the latter. Woyzeck's decisions happen inside his head: what could have been changed is the factors which led to them.

The Birthday Party (1968)

2009-06-23T22:00:00.004+01:00

Roger Ebert wrote about the lead actor in this film of Harold Pinter's play in his review of it,

Thirty seconds after Shaw appeared on the screen, I was still waiting for his entrance.

Ebert gets the feel of this film exactly right- Shaw's character, Stanley, is so unsure at the end of the play of his own existance that he has lost his own ability to make a speech. Everything happens in this play somewhere else- every part of the story is not revealed to us. We see the spirals of the galaxy, the jagged edges of the star, but not the interior, not the thing that links together the story and makes it make sense. The story sounds simple: in a sordid building society somewhere in an English town ('on the list' (What list?) according to the landlady, lives Stanley. Stanley may have once been a pianist- or he may not have been- he possibly came from Maidenhead, at least that is what he tells us but we have no way of knowing that it is true and all the way through the film Stanley's ability as a narrator are cast in darkness. Anyway two men turn up, Goldberg and McCann who might know Stanley or might not. The landlady, Meg, tells them it is Stanley's birthday- they organise a party and after a grim drunken night, Meg ends up with a headache, Stanley with a mental breakdown and their neighbour Lulu loses her virtue.

So what's going on? Well lets start with something we can talk about and make sense about. The environment in which this film takes place ressembles somewhere that Pinter once stayed at. Its dirty and horrible- its the kind of boarding house that you can still find in places in Britain (I've stayed in one in Durham and one in Sheffield) and its not the kind of place you would ever want to go back to much. Slices of fried toast are the extremes of culinary perfectionalism, the tea is cold, the cups are dirty, there is dust everywhere and noone ever washes up anything. Stanley is there as a boarder and has been there for a year- and he looks it. His clothes are dirty and threadbear- he wears glasses that are off kilter and hasn't had a shave in a month. Meg is also dirty, fat and disgusting- her jowels almost have another unkind part in the film. She is a stupid and yet bossily arrogant woman whose breezy sensuality is that of a fetid rotting corpse. Her husband Petey, with one exception at the end, has turned from a man into a shell- nothing lives inside him save the ghost of his own resignation to the fate and foilibles of life. Into this come Goldberg and Mccann- the one the very exemplar of cheap charm, the other a gloomy sullen Irishman.

I have moved from environment to manner- and in a sense the film allows us to do that- though let us be in no doubt that whereas Petey and Meg might have some reality to them, Goldberg and Mccann perform rather than exist. Goldberg is he tells us an expert on the neccessary and the possible- at least he tells Lulu as he seduces her- the neccessary comes before the possible he states and in a sense both he and McCann are possible performances of neccessary characters- they develop out of themselves but they are themselves merely performances. Pinter draws attention here to the artificiality both of personality and of the distinction between the character that we create and the character that we are- cleverly the film creates both the sense that character is and is not fully formed. Perhaps though it is with Stanley that the film's development of character is most important: William Friedkin the director coaxed out of Robert Shaw the actor one of the great performances of all time in this film.

Shaw's performance alternates between fear, agression, flirtation, bemusement and finally nothingness. He is able to portray a man who is insistant about his own identity ('do you know to whom you are speaking' he asks Meg) and yet who by the end of the film, through some horrifying moment, is completely broken down, positioned like a doll in the suit and ready to be sent to the Kafkaesque Monty. Stanley in a sense is an everyman- the moments where the film is seen through someone's eyes it is Stanley's eyes it is seen through. We receive a point of view shot from his perspective both when he loses his glasses and when temporarily he loses his sight- in this sense he represents all of us, guilty because he has a past and that past is not one he favours recalling. Stanley draws our attention to the disgusting environs, he reacts without lying (see Goldberg) or illusion (see Meg) but by realising how awful a state he is in, sitting in a boarding house drinking cold tea. In a sense he is an existential hero- a hero whose existance is in peril and because we know so little about him- this pianist down on his luck- and all we know might be lies- his peril is that that confronts us all, the moment when character dissolves into memory, when psyche dissolves into subconscious Jungian imagery.

I cited Kafka above- and he is the spirit of European literature who most reminds me of this film. Josef K was woken from his bed by investigators, Stanley is interrupted at breakfast- but the motif is the same. The political subtext may be obviously antitotalitarian (and is particularly good on C.S. Lewis's bete noir the medicalisation of political discourse- in that sense Lewis's NICE and Pinter's Monty anticipate the ghastly psychiatric wards of Soviet Russia)- though there are things I do not understand about that, why Goldberg and McCann are Jewish and Irish, whether the fact that they belong to an organisation denotes that Pinter envisaged the privatisation of terror, what the link between sexual corruption and political corruption (a deliberate swipe at Orwell's 1984 no doubt in which puritanism is the handmaid of totalitarianism) is. I do not pretend to understand this or understand the plot on the first point but I hope this article has tempted you to watch this film and work it out for yourself.

Suicide in the Middle Ages: Volume 1 The Violent against themselves

2009-06-21T21:18:00.003+01:00

Suicide in the Middle Ages is not easy to detect. Societal stigma and legal prohibition meant that families and friends were eager to conceal a suicide rather than reveal it. Alexander Murray in his history of suicide in the medieval period therefore sets himself a harsh and possibly impossibly exacting task: to summarise the levels and types of suicide and compare them to modern suicide rates and early modern ones. This task is one that he partially succeeds in performing- and yet what he does has to be seen against the context of an evidence base that omits to record suicide more than it exagerrates its incidence. Murray is conscious of this problem and his book, unusually, is not divided by theme or by chronological period but by type of source. He suggests that there are three basic sources that record suicide in the Middle Ages: the historical chronicle, the legal text and the religious memoir. These three sources have different characteristics and their authors different interests- none of them are interested per se in suicide as a topic in the way that a modern psychologist might be- but all of them were interested.

If Murray's history is led by its sources, then one of its most interesting aspects is what it tells you about those sources. So for example, he writes clearly and interestingly about the distinction in the volumes of legal sources that he comes up with. Most of his legal sources come from the English Coroner's roles and judicial eyres- the coroner, an office created by the crown, and the eyre, where a judge was sent to a county to make sure that local justice and national justice were the same, were both creations of a mighty royal power. English absolutism (if I may be forgiven for the anachronism) was the source of a fertile legal record which contains the majority of Professor Murray's cases. French courts though too yield up records to him but the different nature of the powers of the French crown- governed largely by the fact that it had within it a dukedom that was held by another King (Normandy)- mean that the record in France is very different. It is largely twofold- the legal records of Abbeys attempting to preserve their jurisdictions and that of the French crown, seeking to entrench a right of appeal to Paris in its remote comital provinces. In Italy and Germany the distinct nature of politics there means that legal records are those of towns. Ultimately the structures of medieval monarchy- the fact that the property of the suicide went to the crown- and the differing interests of those courts whose records survive in protecting or defeating the powers of the crown govern their explicitness about suicide. Even there though the information reported is only the information that the court deemed interesting: Murray's frustration is evident when he records that an English court was more likely to report the value of the items used to commit suicide than the motive itself.

Clerical records are sparcer but give more in the way of motivations- chronicles seek to deny that suicide existed at all (save for in the cases of the parvenu). Professor Murray's thorough examination of his sources is too his credit- as is what he finds there. He finds story after story of medieval suicide- much of which shines a fascinating light on attitudes and mores within the period and countries that he anatomises. For example there is the story that Caesarius of Heisterbach tells about a nun who fell in love, refused permission by the sisters to leave the order, 'driven by her grief' she died by jumping down a well. Murray evaluates these sources rigorously- for instance he argues that bad stories are better than good ones if they are placed in a clerical account to prove an argument. A 'bad' story that does not fully suggest the moral or suggests it alongside other elements may be evidence that the monk in question was using a real moment, too good a story which fits the moral too well may suggest that the writer was elaborating too much. Murray finds time to make excursions into medieval social history in general- commenting for example that stories about miracles took off as government fell away, particularly miracles about the capture and punishment of criminals. He writes as well perceptively about the Judas myth and the way that that presented a useful hook for writers to hang suicide upon: Judas Iscariot was a type of suicide that others could resemble and that reminds us of the importance of scripture in even forming the accounts that we are left. Also interesting is the way that he beleives that women are hidden in our sources: how much more shocking than suicide was a suicidal woman.

Murray's last two chapters cover what might be said about the statistics of suicide in the Middle Ages. Based on the judicial eyre of Essex in the 14th Century he comes up with a tiny figure of suicides per head of population- 0.88- a figure which he admits is unrealistically low and maybe because of the tendency of the justices on eyre to ignore reporting on a whole county, concentrating on the major roads alone instead. He does bring some interesting detail to bear though- for example about the time of suicide and how it tied into the sequences of harvest and crop yield. One fascinating thing is that he draws out the methods of suicide and suggests that methods of suicide have remained constant as proportions of overall suicide figures- or at least did from the Middle Ages to the 19th Century- with something like 50% of suicides being hangings for example. Ratios of suicide to homicide are fascinating: Murray implies that the ratio was very low in the Middle Ages- though also suggests that that may be deformed (what better way of suicide for a knight than charging recklessly into battle!) Furthermore using evidence from the 16th Century and 20th Century Italy, he suggests that suicide may rise with intrusive government. He plucks sex ratios as well from his evidence- suicide ratios seem to be fairly constant with relation to sex until the modern era, with more men dying than women by a ratio of about 2 or 3 to 1, that only now seems to be changing (perhaps a cost of sexism is increased male suicide?). There are interesting points to the statistics- but you cannot help feeling that the samples are too small. There are for instances only 100 suicides for which we can know the occupation of the suicide. Family data has to be deduced from who was the first person on the scene to find the suicide and so on.

These flaws are not Murray's but flaws within the evidence. Overall this is a fascinating book. It is of course the first in a trilogy and to some extent judgement should be withheld until the rest of the trilogy is complete- but this is a good begining. As to another important concept which Murray does not fully explicate- he begins his volume by stating that suicide may have risen in the modern era and hoping that the medieval sources might tell us why. He does not really and probably cannot actually answer that question- even though he suggests (against much current scholarship) that suicide as well as reporting of suicide rose into the sixteenth century. It is also worth noting here Murray's style: he is one of the most charming guides to the landscape of the forlorn that I have ever come across. As a historian he combines erudition, passion and obvious wit- so much so that it is easy to forget the flimsy evidential basis upon which he has to rely. This is a fascinating and important book- the general conclusions are interesting, but it is the anecdotes, the faces in the crowd of suicides that Murray necromances from the grave that I will remember. Last and most important amongst the lessons Murray has to teach is perhaps one that we often forget, that the people of the past were people and that the costs and perils they faced were as real as ours.

Why the Economist works

2009-06-19T22:00:00.002+01:00

There are two magazines that I regularly buy and read- the Economist and Private Eye. There are a selection of magazines- Prospect, the New Statesman, the Spectator, the Times Literary Supplement and London Review of Books that I often buy or consider buying- but my two staples are the Economist and Private Eye. I'm telling you this because of an article in the Atlantic monthly about the success the Economist has had in growing in an era when news magazines in general have been in decline. In part that growth ressembles that of the Financial Times in the Uk- the only paper to see its circulation continue to rise- and it may be due to the extension of a market- professionals with degrees- that the expansion of higher education in the last quarter century has acheived. But the Economist's success is interesting because I think it points to something else- and that is what we demand of magazines and why we read them.

One of the most important things to remember about any publication is that almost noone reads the entire thing- unless you are stuck in a hotel room in Milton Keynes with nothing else to do (an experience that sadly I have had) or on a long coach journey between Oxford and Cambridge (ditto- that journey last four hours and takes you through every byway in southern England) you are likely to read those bits of a magazine that attract you. So for example to take my own reading habits, foreign news, economics, politics of a certain type and book reviews of historical and literary tomes attract me, reporting about technology, scandal and disaster does not: you may have a different set of preferences, it does not really matter, the point is that you like me and like every other individual on the planet have a set of preferences about what you want to read and what you want to ignore.

The virtue of a magazine like the Economist in this context then- and the same is true of Private Eye- is not so much the quality of its reporting and writing as the content. A set of varied short articles (none more than a page and a bit long) allows a wide variety of readers to find something that they like regularly in the magazine. Compare that to Prospect or the New Yorker- often in those magazines you will find intelligent and thoughtful articles but if you don't like all three of the three main features, there isn't much point in buying the magazine. If you don't like the Economist's leaders, you have the rest of the paper. The same is true of the Spectator and New Statesman. The writer in the Atlantic says that the Economist in this sense mirrors the web- I'm not so sure about that, the Economist is more authoritative than many blogs for example. What is interesting is that the success of the magazine with a wide range points to a strength and a weakness of the web.

The strength is obvious: it is the heterodoxy of the internet. If you want provocative rightwing comment, here is the Corner, if you want magisterial analysis of the middle East, turn to Juan Cole, etc. What the internet lacks and one of the reasons that sites like Daily Kos and Liberal Conspiracy which begin to provide this demonstrates, is the editor. The problem with the internet is navigation and the weakness of the blogosphere as a product is its impenetrability to those who do not know it already. I find it difficult even to find blogs which say interesting and important things in a thoughtful way. A magazine in a sense does not have that problem- which is why something like the Economist that combines editorship with variety is a winning package and why entrepreunerially the challenge on the internet is to combine the virtues of variety found on the blogosphere with guides and platforms which allow people to assess it and find quality.

Anonymous Authors

2009-06-18T22:41:00.003+01:00

This week's Times Literary Supplement was filled with articles which, though superficially about other themes, were really about one single issue- that of the relationship between authors and their works. Karl Orend for example argued that Louis Ferdinand Celine was an important figure in French literary history despite his collaboration with the Nazis and his anti-semitic conspiracy theories. Adam Zamoyski introduced a new biography of Adam Mickiewicz by demonstrating where Mickiewicz had been and what political movements and sexual piccadillos he had been attached to, but hardly mentioned the poetry for which Mickiewicz is justly famous. Peter Ghosh reminded us that in the world of ideas, 'Weber's extraordinary clear-sightedness in the analysis of major problems such as the epistemology of the social sciences and German foreign policy before 1914 is much more important than the torments he suffered because of insomnia and wet dreams'. This all strikes me as incredibly topical, given the fact that this week saw the exposure of an anonymous blogger in the UK and hence questions about the degree to which in order to know the work you have to understand the writer who wrote that work. If Peter Ghosh is right, and I happen to believe he is, then what use is it to know who wrote something- why do we want to know?

I think there are two reasons which are interesting for our curiosity in the lives of authors. The first is about credentials. As I browse my local bookstore I try and assess each of the books on the shelves- I pass over some and I purchase others. Obviously one thing that attracts me to a book is an interesting title and theme. Another thing which arouses my interest is my knowledge of the author's work- some authors (Orhan Pamuk and Chinua Achebe come to mind) are remarkably good and consistently so. A third thing though is the credentials and experience of the author. Someone who can demonstrate to me that they have published with a credible academic publisher, someone who can demonstrate that they have expertise in a subject (hold a post at a university or have received a doctorate) and someone who has a history of work in the area that they study is always going to interest me more than someone who does not. As I judge which pieces of information to examine more closely the identity of the person who created that information is a crucial piece in my analysis of whether it is worth my time to examine their work.

The second thing I think that is going on is described best by S here. What she suggests, correctly, is that there is a part of reading which involves making the author into your possession. In a sense in a fictional setting, you inhabit the author's imagination for a while, survey its circumference, distort it in your own image- but you are following his or her guide. It can happen in non-fiction too- for example Alexander Murray's recent history of medieval suicide is filled with the author's genial and gentle personality. The author in this sense is our guide through a journey, he is the Virgil to our Dante, and we are tempted to ask our guide, even as he stretches his hand out to the wonders he shows us, what he thinks of them and where they came to him from. In a sense therefore the curiosity that S displays about Salinger is a curiosity stimulated by the work- because learning about him allows her to learn why her guide selected this part of the country to view and not that. It does not alter the work as a perception of reality but it alters it her reasoning about why it was produced and where it flowed from.

Here we enter what historians of ideas have called illocution. Quentin Skinner and others have argued that if you are to assess a work of philosophy or history or literature, you have to assess it against a context. Its author meant that work to do something in the world as we know it: a work is supposed to fill a perceived gap, to persuade or show someone something. You can only understand it historically, in this view, if you understand the intentions of the author- and you can only understand those if you understand his or her point of view about their context. What were they trying to do- to get money to buy food, to impress a girl or boy, to change the world or just to fill the passing hour. In a sense the case of the anonymous blog is clearest about this: if I write about work, it is important to know whether I resent or like my colleagues and bosses, whether I enjoy what I do or hate it, and a thousand other considerations. There are good reasons to maintain anonymity, but as Skinner and others have suggested there are reasons as well to say that until you understand the context in which the author produced the work, you are unlikely to understand all of its meaning and purpose.

Fargo the relationship between love and money

2009-06-17T22:41:00.003+01:00

In Fargo, a pregnant police officer hunts down a man who has paid some hitmen to try and kidnap his wife. That is the basic plot- and from that basic plot you could derive should you choose to most of what I am going to write in this article. For Fargo sets off against each other two relationships- one between the policewoman and her husband and the other between the kidnap organiser and his wife. Those two relationships are the central plot devices of the film but they are also important because they sketch out alternative moral universes in all sorts of ways which the film could contrast. Ultimately Fargo is about marriage- and about the way that marriage can become a mask of tradition or a genuine commitment- it is about in a sense the ways that words create relationships of power and relationships of trust.

The film opens with what might seem a traditional scene- a respectable man walks into a bar and orders a drink. Actually what he does is order some hitmen to go and kidnap his wife. Jerry Lundegard, the protagonist, asks the men to do this because he wants them to share the ransom that he presumes his rich father in law will pay with him. He wants the money to be able to set up an investment opportunity in Minnesota. Of course the kidnap goes wrong, the wife is taken but somehow the kidnappers end up committing murder and Jerry's lines of communication to them are sundered. More important though than that is the relationship that this presumes between Jerry and his wife- his consideration for her is secondary to his consideration for the money that he might receive through her ransom. In a sense we are allowed to wonder whether Jerry has always focussed on the millions in his father-in-law's bank account and not his wife.

Oppose that to Marge, the police officer, and her husband. Here the relationship is completely different- with Marge performing the traditional male role of bread winner and her husband being involved in his art. Through thier bedroom scenes you get the impression of mutual support but what is more the idea that money does not full their plans. Here the words of the marriage service are something that a relationship has grown out towards rather than grown backwards from: Marge is perfectly willing to praise her husband's triumph (getting a picture on a stamp) even though it has no pecuniary advantage. Indeed neither partner seems to see the other's triumphs and disasters as a threat because power is not at issue.

In a sense therefore when the film ends with Marge saying to one of the hitmen that she has no idea why he does what he does 'for a little bit of money' she voices the incomprehension that she from her relationship with her husband feels for Jerry. Marge comes across as a shrewd detective but this simple question reveals that though she has put the facts together, she has not understood the depths to which the characters she investigated have sunk/

Work and Blogging

2009-06-12T08:00:00.002+01:00

I worked for the BBC back in the day as a researcher on a documentary about the civil war. One of the things that frustrated me about that documentary and historical documentaries in general was how bad it was and they are. For a person who actually is interested in history and knows a little about it, the average historical documentary doesn't really seem to give you a good understanding of the history that it talks about. I was voicing this complaint to a friend of mine working with me at the time when she turned around and made me see the whole business of documentary making in a different way, she told me that people watch documentaries after they come home from work and that they could not cope with a deep and complex picture of the world at that point but wanted something to relax to. I know what she meant. Having done a job now for days on end, it is not easy to come back and immediately keep working on intellectual matters- the mind like the body needs a rest.

I am not writing this because it just struck me for no reason, but because of a post that Ashok wrote about blogging. Ashok has two complaints about blogging- one is that most blogs are stupid and the other is that most blogs are anti-social. I don't want to argue with his suggestion that the internet is much less sociable than it might seem- I have some durable relationships through the net but not that many. But I want to suggest that what Ashok diagnoses as stupid solipsism on the net- and there is much of it (this blog is not immune!)- is caused by something and something that may be of interest to us when we think about the general cultural levels of the population at large. If you as many people do spend between 9 and 5 working, or 9 and 6 or 9 and 7, then you'll know that one of the main conditions of modern life is tiredness. Not necessarily physical tiredness but mental tiredness. Much of what people do on the blogosphere is actually displacement activity- its an activity for their spare time and whilst they want their blogs to be good, they don't want to feel the pressure of being excellent and they don't want necessarily to be Newton on their blog when they have to be Boyle at work.

Work is the subject of our lives and so you would expect the internet, which is the activity of spare time, not to be as intense or powerful as working life. That is one of the many reasons I'm sceptical about net revolutions- not that I don't think the net has power (Amazon and Daily Kos in different ways demonstrate that) but that I do not think either a great truth or a great political movement will emerge purely from the internet. My scepticism arises from my sense that people's lives take place more off the internet than on it- and lack the leisure at present to engage fully all the time with what they read online. Ultimately the problem here is not necessarily a lack of engagement but could be a lack of spare leisure to spend on hard analysis or political engagement.

The Browning Version

2009-06-11T22:14:00.002+01:00

Anthony Asquith's Browning Version is a study in failure. Let us start from first things though, the film concerns a classics teacher, Andrew Crocker Harris, at an unnamed public school in southern England. Crocker Harris came to the school with glowing academic credentials from Oxford, he came but he did not conquer. In the early years as a master he reveals he was mocked, now he is merely disliked- the Himmler of the lower fifth. Crocker Harris has failed as a teacher- Taplow (pictured above with Crocker Harris) for example bemoans the fact that the school master does not teach the classics as stories in their own right but as examples of Latin and Greek grammar. He cannot convey to his pupils the feeling of beauty that he himself gets from those august works of antiquity- he attempted, we learn, once to do so through poetry but was unable to render Aeschylus into English or to finish his translation. His efforts in the school room are just as flawed. Crocker Harris's class room is a zone of orderliness and boredom- as he hands down Latin witticisms from his chair, the boys in the pews whisper their discontent, calling him the Crock behind his back and speculating over whether he is really human.

Life as a failure taints every aspect of his existance. This film contains one of the bitterest portraits of marital breakdown in cinema- Crocker Harris's wife believed when she married him that he might make master of Eton, instead he has made a master of a small public school and is being retired. She despises him, she cannot pity him. She has turned her husband's failure into a reason to hate him- furthermore he is not the romantic hero that she imagined to have married. Instead she turns to affairs. But it is her callousness towards Andrew Crocker-Harris rather than her sexual incontinence that repels the viewer: one can understand however when you see how Crocker Harris behaves to his pupils that a life with him could be a life of slow torture. Overly punctilious and precise, under emotional and verbose, Andrew Crocker Harris is neither exciting nor sympathetic- that his wife's repulsion adds to his sad condition and his condition to her repulsion is a cycle of sad negative feedback that one feels was set in motion from the first day of their marriage.

Failure is not an easy condition- nor, as this film demonstrates, is it a sympathetic condition. Crocker Harris is frequently referred to as dead- his pupils say he is dead and even he says that he is dead. A corpse is not good company. The problem is that failure as the film demonstrates builds on itself. Crocker Harris's failure has led to him becoming impassive- he will not answer back, will not stand in the way of the disrespect for him from others, he has become both an unpleasant caricature and a coward but for understandable reasons. What the film implies though is something that a cognitive behavioural therapist might argue, Crocker Harris if he is to acheive recovery has to acheive bravery. In a sense part of the problem, the film implies, with the man is that he looks back on his past not forward on his future- he looks to obligation rather than to opportunity. Of course the film complicates and muddies this perception- Crocker Harris's colleague and cuckolder Mr Hunter thinks rather too much of opportunity and too little of obligation and learns the opposite lesson, but Crocker Harris's condition is worse. An addiction to tradition and obligation have turned him from a conservative into a fossil- incapable of preserving even that (the classics) that he cares so much for.

An account of a most strange and barbarous action

2009-06-09T21:53:00.002+01:00

On Sunday 22nd March 1685, we read in the pamphlet by the same title as my article (for those interested its Wing Number is A188C and it is located on EEBO (subscription needed)), Smith (the wife of a sawyer Michael Smith in the city of London) jumped out of the window of Blackfriars jail, to her death below. The pamphlet suggests why Smith did this. Her husband Michael Smith had been 15 to 16 weeks in prison- the pamphlet does not mention why and a search of the Old Bailey online for "Michael Smith" between January 1684 and March 1685 produces no results. But at any rate, Smith was living in considerable penury, according to our anonymous writer the 'long and tedious imprisonment had reduced them to a very poor and low condition, as having been forced to sell even their household goods for a present maintenance'. Smith, 'despairing of his inlargement, asked him after they had dined to go upon the leads of the prison, having been there some time discoursing together'. After he had gone down to fetch more drink, she flung herself so our source says from the leads 'into Black-Fryers, which is at least four stories high, so that she was bruised to peices and was carried to a House adjacent'.

The story seems straightforward. Smith was distressed by her husband's condition and after a depressing conversation about his continued imprisonment, as soon as he was absent decided enough was enough and committed suicide. However there are a number of features of the pamphlet which are interesting to me and I think maybe to you. Firstly there is the fact that whereas the husband, Michael Smith, is named and the location and nature of his business is given, the wife's first name is ommitted. Secondly the pamphlet is about one and a half pages long, and yet the story of the suicide covers only the bottom of the first folio and the top of the second. It is preceded by a long discussion of 'how sad and dismal a thing it [suicide] is to consider', how it violates the law of natural self preservation and is the work of the devil. The concept of suicide itself is not actually placed into the story until a last clarifying words which lament the 'horrid sin of Self-Murther'. The two facts are tied together and give us an interesting insight not merely into Smith's condition when she tumbled from the leads, but also into the author's thinking about suicide.

The author's view of suicide is tied up with his view of the soul. The Devil 'tempts us to sin' and 'attaques us', he makes the 'strongest assaults upon our weakest guard', he is a 'cunning and subtile... Enemy'. The author's argument, particularly his emphasis on suicide's unnaturalness, moves the seat of the action away from Smith and towards the tempter. Of course she was down, but her tempter is the instigator, the real actor in this drama. He first conceived of suicide and she followed his direction, succumbed to his assault. The naming of the wife as Smith fits into this model: suicide is a sin, it is a betrayel of the law of God and more importantly the law of nature which motivates the heathen and christian. I would suggest that given the way her husband is clearly identified, Smith's identity is no mystery- but that the author wants to stress the gravity of the crime by depriving her of her name. Coyly he can therefore both identify her and also maintain the mystique of a crime whose name he does not mention until his own last words.

The pamphlet thus exposes an interesting aspect of the past. The anonymous author (and there are other interesting questions to ask, like who is writing and why- may we detect a neighbour or rival of Michael Smith) provides us with a fascinating insight into his own psychology and the way that he views his audience.

Capua

2009-06-07T11:05:00.003+01:00

From now on the wars described will be of greater importance. Our enemies were more powerful and campaigns lasted longer and were mounted in remote areas. For this (343 BC) was the year an attack was launched against the Samnians, a people who were strong in both resources and arms. After the Samnite war, which was inconclusive, Pyrrhus was the enemy, and after him the Carthaginians. What a series of momentous events! How often were we in mortal danger, to enable us to raise up our empire to its present height of grandeur, where only with difficulty is it sustained. (VII 30)

Livy begins his account of the First Samnite war with this statement. In a sense he is right- the Samnite war led to Rome's dominance of central Italy, the war with Pyrrhus to its dominance of the south and that with Carthage to its dominance of the western meditereanean. These wars were of a different scale in the historian's opinion to the wars before- what we have been dealing with up until now are the adventures of a city state, leading a confederacy of neighbours, however now we begin to deal with an empire. Livy begins his account of this imperial quest for Rome which leads in his view from the early Republic to Augustus, with an account of Rome's first subjection- Capua. I want to pause over this subjection because the manner of it is important ideologically within Livy's history and within the mission of Rome to become an empire, and of course the idea of empire within the West.

Capua, the principle city of Campania, sat to the south of Rome and was threatened by the Samnites who inhabited the south and central Appenines. According to Livy its envoys came to Rome and requested the aid of the Romans within the Senate. Their argument for aid is interesting:

The people of Campania have sent us as envoys to you Conscript Fathers, to beg for your aid at the present moment and your friendship for all time. If we had sought this friendship when times were happier for us, though this could have arisen more quickly, the ties binding us would not have been so strong; for in that case we could have recalled that we had entered friendship with you on equal terms and though perhaps as much your friends as we are now, we would have been less obliged and beholden to you. As things are won over by your pity, defended by your assistance in times of trouble, we must have no less in our heart the benefit we have received from you, lest we appear ungrateful and unworthy of all aid human and divine.... We Campanians even if you present situation prevents our boasting, are not inferior to any people, except yourselves, in the grandeur of our city and fertility of our soil and our contribution to your prosperity in becoming your friends will not, I believe be insignificant. (VII 30)

The Senate did not rush to judgement in hearing this speech, after which the Campanians made even clearer their argument:

Since you refuse to take justly violent action to protect what is ours against violence and injustice, at least defend what is your own. To your authority Conscript Fathers and that of the Roman people, we therefore submit the people of Campania, the city of Capua, our territory [and] the shrines of the Gods' (VII 30)

This last speech clarifies the previous one- the offer from Capua to Rome (and in a sense the model of provincial requests to the centre) was an exchange of freedom for protection. Livy is doing two things here- firstly he is suggesting conjecturally a reason for the development of Rome as an imperial state. It made sense for its subjects to be subject to a fellow city rather than fall to a tribe like the Samnites. But he is also developing a powerful weapon of argument- the argument is for how the Empire developed and for why it is a good thing.

Modern understandings of imperialism rest mostly on violent acquisition- we think of Kitchener's soldiers mowing down the Sudanese at Omdurman or some such other violent event. Livy's justification though for Rome's empire is not based on violence- he does not assert here the right of conquest (though that right was to be asserted by others as a legitimate way of attaining government- witness Robert Brady on the Norman Conquest for example) but he asserts that empire was invited and was for the protection of the subject. Livy here is providing us with a new state formation in a sense- Capua has contracted with Rome. Where Rome can provide protection, Capua can provide subjection. In a sense what we have here is a voluntary assent to empire- a model that Rome was to employ in later cases and becomes a type for the Roman Empire as a whole. This is important for it shows that empire was not a selfish enterprise- the selfishness is that of the enemies who would harass the provincial populations- but a mutual enterprise. Rome of course was keen to isolate its own benefits and the senate discuss the ways that Campania, known for its grain, will strengthen Rome: but Livy is trying to present here the benefits for the Campanians as well as the Romans.

The problem of course at the heart of this is whether the Campanians can perform the contract that they are offering: we are in a sense at the heart of a dilemma for most liberal and Western philosophers- can someone actually alienate their freedom. Livy subsumes this question within a narrative about Rome's mission (one reason I suspect why the opening paragraph is there) which is to fulfill the imperial contract and the ways that this contract reflects back onto the history of Rome. What we do not have, and would wait to Tacitus to have, is the account of the other side: Livy will tell us the effect on Rome of the imperial signature, what we do not have from him is an account of what the colonial signature does to the colony.

Bullets or Ballots

2009-06-06T11:42:00.004+01:00

There are two alternative ways of governing a modern city- bullets or ballots. In a sense cinema is the chronicle of the modern city- the gangster films of Cagney or De Niro, the romances of Rosalind Russell or Meg Ryan are all about how to live in a modern city. Bullets or Ballots is not about how to live in a modern city but how to govern that city- how to manufacture and implement authority within the context of a community of millions. The struggle in Bullets or Ballots is an ideological argument about how to do this- how to get your orders and laws obeyed- the struggle is framed by a struggle between the police and gangsters but in reality that is not the centre of the film. That struggle is the problem that must be solved either by the gangsters or by the police- what the film is actually about is the argument within the police and within the gangsters about how best to win this war. Its an argument about the way that force ought to be displayed.

In a Bank in the middle of New York three executives, we are never told who they are but merely that they are extremely powerful men, coordinate the activities of the mob below on the street. They use as their contact a particular individual- a boss of bosses- beneath him there are others who run various rackets, various protection schemes and attempts to siphon off money from legitimate trades. In a sense the set up is the same as On the Waterfront's- the bankers and the businessmen sit at the top of a long trail which leads to the men taking the money out of slot machines and the unionists taking funds from the ships going into New York Harbour. This is pure and simple government: taxes are extracted from a community, they are backed up by coercive action- and there is an infrastructure erected to channel those funds upwards towards those who profit from the government they introduce. The police obviously through John Blake (played by Edward G Robinson) want to crack the mob and set Blake to do it.

The film's argument is largely played out within the mob itself- this group have become a business which likes the profits and doesn't like disquiet. Humphrey Bogart plays Fenner an ancient type of gangster for whom violence and individual effort are more important than the corporate ethos- in a sense whereas the other gangsters are evolving slowly into capitalists, Bogart is evolving into a feudal baron. Bogart's violence at several points threatens the power of the gangsters themselves for it creates attention- bringing down on them the fury of the law. Into this atmosphere comes John Blake, the ultimate in honesty. But Blake comes in as a double agent- what Blake's behaviour shows is two things. Fenner is the only person who detects and can provide a remedy to Blake's falseness- for he lives by his wits and his guns. Ultimately the only protection for the corporate gangster is the feudal gangster- for he is the only person prepared to exert the sanction that authority depends upon. And yet Blake too is the only person on his side, the police side to be able to exert that sanction- again his behaviour risks the state's authority being unmasked but without him the state's authority is merely words.

Ultimately this film is about the balance between the velvet glove and the iron fist. The real issue here is that force lies behind power- it is the threat of death that is the source of human power, authority though rests with the velvet insinuations of persuasion. Persuasion avoids confrontation with other sources of power and the naked use of force is always vulnerable to the next revolution: Fenner and Blake both are vulnerable to a quicker shot and a rougher fist, but without them the states, criminal and civil, that they support have an authority that cannot enforce. The riddle of Ballots or Bullets is a riddle exposed a long time ago by Thomas Hobbes, its terms have not changed since.

Reflections on Tony Benn's early life

2009-06-05T05:07:00.001+01:00

I thought after the last post I'd briefly give a few thoughts on aspects of Benn's life particularly ones i picked up from the biography. This is no way meant to be a summary or a proper appreciation of this fascinating man or his historic impact! For this post at least I will address some thoughts trigged by aspects of his early life.

One is the degree to which British Socialism particularly in its middle class more ideological form was a continuation of radical liberalism. Benn's father Wedgwood Benn latter Viscount Stansgate (given to represent the Labour party in the lords) was a radical liberal a supporter of such trendy post Gladstonian causes as home rule, colonial rights etc. He was also a massive supporter of planning like many radical liberals. His transition into a Socialist in the 1920's happened without any obvious change in views at all. Indeed even in the late 1950's he was agitated strongly for faster decolonisation-and was on the left of the Labour party as he had been on the liberal party. Indeed he seems more radical than the young Benn ( at one point Jennie Lee the leading left winger said to him of his son his becoming a "right little tory" ) and the Labour leadership. Benn himself shared his enthusiasm for colonial independence-and this gave him much of his left wing credentials in this era. Whether or not Labour owed more to Methodism to Marx, it seems fairly clear to me that it owed more to the "new liberalism" which sought to use government action (Rather than the withdrawal of it) as a battering ram against privilege than either.

Another is the system of controls and restricions that were mostly imposed during the war out of necessity and kept by Labour for numerous reasons-but perhaps foremost the desire to build a better Socialst world. There is a fascinating individal anecdote which I think sums up why Labour ended up losing the 1950 election. Benn and his new wife found they couldn't' bring all her stuff back from American-because of these controls, he is clearly very annoyed in his accounts at the time by this. And let this was Benn- the son of a Labour peer, seeking to become a Labour mp himself. This helps explain why Labour lost the 1950's election. They lost middle class support and the liberals melted down among the middle classes-their voters went massively g for the conservatives who were runniong on "set the people free" ending this system of control and offering the middle classes the hope of something resembling pre war (middle) class standards. This was not due to fall in Labour support among the working class-it rose sharply so much sao that the 1951 election (which they lost due to the electoral system) saw the highest % of the vote Labour has ever got at any election-a tribute to how popular so much of the Labour record (particulary perhaps on health) was. But the middle class backgrounds against less ideological committed middle class progressive "Benn's" nearly obliterated theri majority in 1950 and threw them out altogether a year latter.

The Christian Socialist (arguably Christan radically liberal) nature of Benn's family is very compelling. His elder brother (who was supposed to inherit the peerage that nearly killed Benn's career) who died in a plane accident was very devout-so much so he concluded war was wrong even as he served loyally in the British military.Nor was this confined to him. Strafford Cripps praising his sucessor emphasised his commitment to christianity (to Benn's apparent embarrassment- this was more or less as he was losing his previous faith) as well as socialism. One is tempted to say that the Benn family may not be unrepresentative in keeping their religious attitudes whilst dropping their beliefi n formalised religon one of the biggest changes among the radical left (and arguably the political class in general) over the last few decades. One thing that struck me about the piety of Benn's family is what a high view of humanity it had by traditional Christian standards - indeed Benn's brother in the same moving letters talks of his belief humans can easily work together and become good people. This tempts one to suggest semi seriously that what has held together the British left secular and religious is a high view of human capacity and a belief in the fundamental vulnerability of human evil-or to put it antoher way a renunciation of the traditoinal view of the inherent limits of human character.

Another interesting aspect of the Young Benn is Technology. As his opponent Lord Rodgers pointed out and Jacks' biography shows in greater detail he was a massive pioneer of television and television methods in a very sophisticated form (his main pre political job was for the BBC's world service). This is very interesting given what an old fashioned politician Benn seems today love him or loathe him. It's an indicator that being human politicians tend to become set in their ways - so technologies that come along in the middle of their career they are much less adept with than ones they are More acculturated to. Benn's diaries show he has the discipline which is perhaps the most essential element of a blogger. NO doubt pioneering media politicians of today Will one day seem just as old fashioned as Benn.

They will be lucky if they've had anything like the same impact in the meantime though.

Ian Jack on Tony Benn a biography to be read but not revered.

2009-06-04T23:22:00.001+01:00

This biography of Tony Benn by Jad Adams written in the early 1990'sis of one of Britain's most interesting politicians. . Tony Benn had a parliamentary career stretching around half a century. He was at the centre of major events including the Wilson administration cabinets, the crisis he predicted that allowed peers to renounce their seats to. He is one of the most important politicians never to become Prime Minister or a party leader in the last half a century-and is also an amazing survival. A man who was elected to parliament succeeding Sir Stafford Cripps under Atlee was a leading left wing rebel under Blair. In between he precipiptated reform (rather slight) in the early 1960's Lords and was a technocratic cabinet minister under Wilson organising many important chants in UK life. In the 1970's and 1980's he emerged as a leader of the "left" followed by a time as leader of the "hard left" of the Labour Party.

This biography has many virtues. The author is sympathetic to Benn's politics without quite sharing them (arguably the best position for an author). At a guess I'd state the author has politics very close to those of the Guardian newspaper- "bourgeois" and not quite as radical on foreign policy as the late Benn but otherwise very left wing on the British political spectrum. He had a great of access to Benn, his family and his friends-getting some fascinating insights into Benn and his life ( i particularly liked the 1970's "demonstration" against him not doing household chores by his daughter-he organised a counter one!) . I get the distinct impression that Adams is completely honest- huge rarely pulls his punches (and when one does I thick one can mostly tell.

He provides some good insight into Benn's personality including some that might surprise the casual student of Benn. For example he notes that Benn rarely reads (though conscientious when reading is part of his work) and tends to work through oral contact. Similar he points out that not only when Benn born in the 1920's but his (remarkable -the wikipedia entry is sadly inadequate ) father was old when he was born-so in some ways Benn is something of a late Victorian in personal attitude and approach. He also gives some feel for Benn's obvious enormous charisma and his enormous debating skill.

He does an excellent service in puncturing old myth about Benn particularly personal one. Though Benn's old enemy Lord Rodgers may be right he is biased in Benn's favour he makes some very good (and mostly convincing point). For example he punctures the myth of the enormous American wealth of Caroline Benn ( though he ignores the obvious fact it was still rather wealthier than the average Tory or Labour voter). He shows that far from being a later affection he was always known to his friends as "Tony" and that his family strangely actually called him James! At the same time he does a great deal showing the biased and inaccurate shocking level of so much press coverage of their hate figures- with the telling of lies to a Psychiatrist being only an extreme example.

He also provides information - I learnt a lot about the whole of Benn's life apart from the early 1980s. I did know till I read these books that he invented our current system of post codes for example. He goes into the affair of the pirate pop music radio station of the 1960's and Benn's obsession with crushing them- for motives that could barely be more different than suggested in this film.

There is an understanding of the tragedy of Tony Benn- the prime minster who came about because he managed to allow renouciation of peerage was not Benn but Sir Alex douglas-Home, his changes to the labour election rules managed to help Neil Kinnock and arguably Tony Blair and Thatcher-but his only bid for the leadership under them they actually further reduced what would have already been a pathetic share of the vote.

However this book is not without flaws. Two are very common for biographies particularly though from exclusively or invariably journalist ones. These are is a lack of appreciation for the wider context-and linked a lack of appreciation for those who disagree or fall out with Benn. A classic example of both is his (very interesting) description of Benn's visit to the United States in the late 1940's as a debtor. He records Americans believing that austerity was purely the deliberate result of Socials policies-and Benn's understandable annoyance. However he neglects to point out that there was at least an element of truth in this position-rationing was kept partly to prevent social inequality and to promote planning. Perhaps the most obvious proof of this-was it was removed years earlier in Germany (where contrary to British myth the damage of the war was much greater) where there was a much more right wing and free market government (who indeed liberalised over opposition for the Americans) There were all kinds of arguments for this- for example social equality but the Americans were exaggerating not hallucinating.

Even in terms of Benn's life there are some important gaps. I was enormously disappointed to learn so little about the early 1980's for example- this is partly because much less is devoted to it than say his role in the 1960's. But it was arguably in terms of the impact on political life his biggest impact on the British nation. The labour party seems to surge to the left and then the right like Brownian motion-no notion of agency is given. He fails to explain clearly enough in what ways he differed from the left minority of the Labour party in the 1950's (he was arguably on the left of the Labour party as he claims strenuously even then-but that's different from being part of its left wing minority)

Even in terms of Benn's internal life there seem some big gaps. one gets the distinct impression his remarkable wife Caroline Benn has had a huge impact-for example in making Benn an enemy of private education and a supporter of feminism (at least politically speaking). But very little impression of her views or reasons for them is given outside some individual policies (particularly the House of Lords). I suspect Benn's ideological journey owes a great deal to his religion. Very pious when young he seems to have lost a great deal of his personal belief in the supernatural around 1950 without any explanation being given (it seems to me suspiciously close in time to his marriage but that is not stated as a reason). He identified very strongly with the nonconformist tradition whilst being an Anglican. All this goes unexplored and the complexities and how they affected his politics are not really explored.

Finally Adams's own political inclinations cause a great deal of bias. Where Benn agrees with him (or Adams at least has sympathy) then there is who0le surge of support (e.g. during the Gulf war-in fact one of the most popular wars the UK has ever thought). If Adams strongly disagrees with Benn on the other hand then the public is invariably against him. After the defeat of the push for UK withdrawal Benn is condemned for continuing to advocate it 9as I said Adams's politics are very Guardian). Leaving aside issues such as the inaccuracy of some of the "neutral" information or Benn's desire to achieve a planned economy-it's important to note that very rapidly public opinion turned back towards Benn's position-you would not gather this from Adams.

Indeed when a dirty tricks leaflet about Benn was traced back to a copying machine of the European Movement (open too many of their volunteers rather than just staff) Adams very strongly indicates this must have been a cover for elements of the secret services-since obviously the European movement would now have no cover for Benn. This rather naive position ignores that a) the Europe issue was far from dead (besides anything else many members of the European movement wanted much further integration-a goal they have since achieved) as the elections tomorrow for the European Parliament will probably indicate) the secret services presumably have access to more secure copying machines. This is just one example. I'm not seeking to deny the possibly of secret service involvement merely to give you some idea of the absences of the book when discussing such situation –these points are scarcely difficult ones but Adams’s biases seem to blind him to them.

Having said that this books is fascinating, well written, honest and fairly extensive. It's well worth reading-but as I've just said not revering.

The legacy of Throne and altar religous minorities and confessional states

2009-06-03T23:48:00.000+01:00

These blog posts raise an interesting historical question the nature of religious minorities in Confessional states- whether Catholics in the Netherlands or the (by the 19th century much smaller) protestant population of say.

A confessional state is simply speaking a state whose laws privilege a particular religious denomination (or conceivably several denominations). In that Sense the United Kingdom is such a state the "Anglican” Church of England is established in England, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland in Scotland and the British monarch on coronation affirms Christianity and Protestantism as the faith of the land. Similar situations exist in some Scandinavian countries (including Finland which has the very large established church of Lutheranism and the very small one of Orthodoxy. Even today dissident Christian denominations in Sweden and groups (such as Jehovah witnesses) outside a small circle of semi-established ones in Germany, face genuine legal problems

However for this article I mean something very different by the term "confessional state". I mean the state's that were routine in Europe till well into the 19th century. States where not only is one confession established by law but confessions that do not meet the law are discriminated against formally in access to political office. This was true in every state in Western Europe in 1780-even states such as Great Britain and the Netherlands long notorious for their tolerance. In less tolerant states very exacting legal penalties could exist quite late-Sweden eliminated exile as the penalty for Catholicism in the 1850's. Political office was mostly or entirely restricted to members of the "established faith" , taxes went to the state churches (and were a much higher % of taxation than the few religious taxes left in the likes of Germany) and were legally privilege in a host of ways.

In such states the religious minorities understandably felt outsiders to the political system. In the French Revolution and afterwards the system of the confessional states (along with linked power systems such as the power of the monarchs) came under huge attack. The early 19th century saw a backlash-or rather a cacophony of backlashes against this "the union of throne and altar" was endorsed in one form or another (including countries like the UK with very few used altars in those churches) in just about every European country. In a sense this created the whole concepts of right and left- and arguably still shapes them they can be seen as those who wish to push relative to the status quo away or towards (right and left respectively) a radical version or extension of French Revolutionary principals Obviously though the debate has rather moved on -but in the 19th century "established church" meant something much fiercer than the current Church of England or even the Lutheran church of Sweden in terms of political rights

Not surprisingly the Confession ally excluded tended to be rather more hostile to the confessional states and sympathetic to a pluralistic or secular system. This took the form of disproportionate support for parties of the left. I have posted about this in the context of the Dutch liberals (till Kuyper reshaped Dutch politics) but it's equally true elsewhere. For example late 19th century British politics can in very crude and broad brush terms be seen as a three way between the party of Anglicans Scottish Presbyterians and Irish Protestants ( Tories) , the party of British Catholics and Nonconformist liberals nod the party of Irish Catholics (home rulers). Similarly in France the most protestant areas of France tended to be among the most radical-and latter socialist and this still tends to be true today.

The legacy of this can still be seen today. In just about every European country the adherents of denominations which were excluded by the confessional state are more likely to support the left than those who were not (this is particularly true if one allows for religiosity). Exceptions tend to be the rare exceptions that prove the rule. So for example in Germany Catholics are more likely to support the CDU than Protestants but a) Self declared Catholics are more pious in Germany than self declared Protestants and b) the heavily Catholic areas of Germany-Bavaria etc the Confessional states were classically Catholic. Indeed I recall reading an interview this a devout evangelical Christian in Baravia in the 1950's saying she could no vote Social Democratic since it was atheistical or Christian Social Union because it was Catholic.

The superb religious sociologist Steve Bruce has seen these differences as fundamentally being a matter of the conservatism and traditionalism of the Catholic Church naturally making it the party of the right. He interprets the Catholic tendency to vote for the left (at least till very recently) in Anglo-Saxon countries as a matter of class. Respectufly I think this will not work- in Scotland in the 1950's (bear in mind this is the height of class politics in Britain) working class Protestants were more conservative than middle class Catholics! I think the interpretation should be found in the history of confessional states-and even their death. of which religions were the” traditional” one. So where "tradition" was protestants Catholic naturally lean(Ed) to the left, where Catholic to the right. This can link up and overlap with a religiosity cleavage which are often newer. So in France Protestants vote more Socialist than Catholic but churchgoing Protestants and Catholics alike vote massively more for the right than the non churchgoing.

However this tendency to support the parties of the "left" for religious minorities was not invariable even at the height of tensions. So in the late 1820's Catholic Emancipation (whether Catholics who could vote-very liberal for the time, could also sit in Parliament) dominated "left" and "right" in UK Politics. And yet in the mid 19th century there were Catholic Tory mps!

Part of the explanation was that members of the minority could accept a lesser status either as the best possible deal, as an attentive to a secularism which might be more hostile (in the late 19th century for example British Catholics were more likely to vote Tory in school board elections-because Tories were much more pro church schools and host8le to secular education than liberals) or because they believed in the system-even if they were excluded in it . A combination of this helps explain for example why the Popes tended to be very sceptical of leftwing movements in most non Catholic Countries. . I have already explained how this helps explain why the catholic south of the Netherlands did not join the revolt that created Belgium. In England (not the UK) it was so strong that the "restoration of the hierarchy" provoked outrage among English Catholics. The Duke of Norfolk the foremost Catholic aristocrat (indeed the foremost aristocrat the dukes of Norfolk are to the aristocracy of England what the Archbishops of Canterbury are to the bishops Primus inter pares) was so outraged he took communion in an Anglican church (then even more than now against canon law) to express his fury!

So the story of confessional minorities in the nineteenth century has fascinating nuances but the basic story- of minorities being driven to the liberal of radical left is one that still shapes the politics of the western world today.

The picture is of Henry Fitzwilliam Howard- 15 duke of Norfolk a title so old they are the first aristocrats of England (roughly equivalent to the Archbishop of Canterbury among bishops) but an outsider due to his Catholicism.

Revolutionary Road

2009-06-01T17:48:00.004+01:00

From the first reel of Revolutionary Road we know that Frank and April's marriage is in trouble- we see the couple having the kind of fight that only long years of companionship can support. Their dilemma though is wider, as we slowly discover, than a simple marital dispute. They are unhappy with the stuff of their lives. Frank works as a corporate drone- alternating fiddling with the filing and the secretaries. April's life is incredibly exciting- if you find discussing the plants to put up in the drive and the minutiae of suburban gossip and semi-sophisticated snobbery alluring- I and more to the point she don't. They have this idea one night that they might escape and go to Paris- Paris will help April find a job and Frank find a mission in life. Their kids, their money will all be fine- but Paris will rejuvenate their souls. In a sense the film is a story about two people who never read Lucy Kellaway, the FT's management and career's columnist, who argues work is meant to be boring: they want work to be entertaining, they want life to be thrilling. They want their world to be about the moment that Frank walked into fire on the front in the Second World War or that April and Frank first made love- they want excitement.

Neither of them are sure though about what they really want- they haven't decided what their excitement actually lies in. Neither of them has a vocation- save to be interesting- an interest save in fascination. Indeed they meet through a shared amusement and a shared confusion about what is interesting in the world. Paris fades like a dream because April becomes pregnant and Frank gets offered a job- but you get the sense that that is really not an alternative for these two as much as it is a panacea that will turn sour. What the two of them are protesting about is life itself- the endless mundanity of getting up in the morning, washing dishes, waking kids, going to work with uninteresting people and being a mere cog in a machine. Given that they realise in the course of the film the central fact of their lives is that they aren't brilliant- this is the life that they have to look forward to. Or at least it is the life that they have to look forward to in this kind of society and sociological system- the film never develops a political angle and leaves it as implicit that the world of Frank and April will continue for all recorded time (April may get to the office, and that's all that will change).

There is an aspect here of artists telling the rest of us why they are so happy they made the decisions that they made- the condescension of some of the sequences to those of us who do work in offices is palpable and rather unpleasant. Mr. Mendes ought to grow up and realise that adjusting interest rates might bring more human happiness than a film may. But leaving that aside there is a serious point here- work and family have consumed April and Frank, have rendered them husks without interests. Partly this is because they started out as husks- they started out without interests and thoughts of their own. They only knew that they wanted to live but didn't know how- in that sense their lives are vacuums waiting to be filled, and as the mathematician John points out to them at one point, in his role as an idiot savant (a rather tired piece of plot device) they are drifting, passively accepting their roles as suburbanites. Or at least that is what Frank is doing- passively accepting his role within the universe of the corporate man.

April's passivity is of another type. Her passivity is a reluctance to attempt to transcend her situation and a willingness to blame all its faults on others. She never fully seizes control of her life because like alabaster she throws the blame and hence the responsibility and initiative for shaping it on to others. Should something go wrong, she never finds a reason to live in that new reality- she cannot accept what is not perfect. Here in a sense we have the most fundemental reason why neither Frank nor April can fully cope with their lives. The film demonstrates that in earthly terms, Milton's Satan was right

"The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven./ What matter where, if I be still the same".

Bad theology may be good psychology. April setting her heart on the shibboleth of Paris misunderstands that actually her problems lie closer to home- the mind can craft itself an interesting reality, it does not need the Eiffel Tower. Perhaps ultimately these two are locked together because they are locked in a search for the reason that they feel their lives are futile- both of them have decided that futility is now their end and have to work out how to blame each other.

This film is by turns irritating but also tragic. Mr Di Caprio and Miss Winslet are good actors- Mr Mendes can definitely direct. There are problems within it but there are also great strengths- some of the accusations between the couple are distinctly uncomfortable. The physical weight of pregnancy is brought home with a painful immediacy. The temptations they are exposed to are also there. What Mr Mendes and his cast maybe do not realise is that suburbia is not so much a geographical state as a state of mind- in their semi-sophisticated politeness April and Frank would remain trapped even if they did go to Paris in lives whose only frustration is its futility. To escape that requires not merely the humility to realise ones ignorance, but the discipline to avoid the geraniums and do something about it.

The Caretaker

2009-05-31T10:33:00.002+01:00

When Harold Pinter the British playwright won the nobel prize for literature a couple of years ago it was less for his expletive laden denounciations of Bush and Blair than for works like the Caretaker. Filmed in the early 60s and financed by several of the great and good in British culture (Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Sellers and Noel Coward amongst them) the play made the transition to cinema well. What it concerns, as ever with a Pinter play, is not entirely clear. On a snowy night in London a tramp is picked up by a lonely man, Aston, who invites him home to stay. The tramp, Davies, sleeps at Aston's that night and is surprised in the morning by Mick, Aston's brother, and the actual owner of the house in which Aston lives. The three men then circle each other for the rest of the film- Aston with his hopes of constructing a shed at the bottom of the garden, Davies with his hopes of getting to Sidcup to find his papers and rebuild his life and Mick who longs to turn the house into luxury appartments and transcend his Hackney upbringing to become a cultured man. As ever with Pinter the play is also about power- as Davies attempts to play Mick, the 'normal' brother against Aston who has had mental difficulties in the past.

Critics and commentators have covered those aspects of the film and play well enough and also argued that it is part, along with Samuel Beckett's work, of a movement towards the theatre of the absurd. In that sense they have brought to the play a consciousness of its timelessness- they have taken the Hackney of the sixties out of the play and brought the play into the modern era. That approach is completely sound and there are good reasons to read the play as about a contest for power. Davies ultimately is defeated because he misunderstands the fact that Mick will never abandon Aston- he attempts to play the two off against each other and ends up creating an alliance between them to repudiate Aston's latest insane act, bringing Davies to the house and offering him shelter. Davies is excluded and thrown out onto the winter street to roam and wander and eventually one presumes, die alone. That defeat for him is an exile from sanctuary- the sanctuary that we have seen him in for the film, the sanctuary that Donald Pleasance conveys through a marvellous performance he fears he may be forced to leave.

Davies is always keen to concentrate on the fact he has worked in the past and Pinter's psychology of homelessness is acute. Davies feels ashamed of being homeless- assuming that when Aston asks him whether the bed is unusual and this is why he is restless that what Aston means is that he doesn't know how to sleep in a bed, he talks constantly of jobs he does and wants to do but never of his constant state of unemployment. Aston's psychology is as acute. I think Pinter here captures the dilemma of mental illness better than anyone I have ever seen on stage or screen manage it. What he does is tell us that Aston faces a dilemma between treatment that does not help, human beings who send him for treatment rather than opening up their faces and kindnesses to him and staying silent. Eventually Aston chooses to remain silent- to have visions but not to talk because he knows that to talk is to invite rejection- and so he concentrates on the lonely occupation of building the shed and seeks friendship with the one person, Davies, who he feels is as powerless as himself and therefore cannot threaten him. In this reading of the film, Mick, deus ex machina at the beggining and conclusion, is a guardian who cannot understand how to help what he guards. He cannot help Aston out of the dark night of the soul because it is implied, noone can. He has realised unlike their mother that Aston cannot be helped by doctors, all he can do is wait and expect a miracle.

Equally the play is about a period of time- all those comments relating to mental illness relate to that period of time rather than now. But the periodisation is important in other ways. Davies is a former soldier- he served, he tells us, in the colonies. He wants to go to Sidcup- and this is unstated- because it is the base of the Royal Artillery- Davies wants to get there to establish his true identity in a world in which his forged identity "Bernard Jenkins" has worn out its use. This is the world of Britain post world war two- post the era of mass military service- when a man like Davies, an 'old man' could wander as a veteran tramp through an England that had forgotten him. But it is also a world of squalor- its the world of Britain in decline, particularly economic decline. In a sense we have here a generational conflict alongside a personal one: Davies's strenght is ebbing, Astons' is too though he is a younger man- whilst Mick remains vital and strong- unpredictable and terrifying with his ability to surprise and his 'sense of humour'. Aston is predictable and steady- the epitome of the fifties- Davies damaged and poor- the forties, and Mick a representative of swinging London, an Austin Powers man. But of course given this is Pinter- we have those stereotypes twisted into bitterness, the forties man, a tramp, the man of the fifties a madman and the man of the sixties, delusional.

This is a great film- there is no question about that and with great performances to boot. Its intense and melancholy but it is also charming and thoughtful. The ending leaves us looking in like Davies upon the brotherly bond- we can concentrate on the intensity and warmth of the last smile between Mick and Aston as they throw the tramp out on the street or on Davies's fear as he is consigned to a life and death under Waterloo Bridge. Its up to us, whether we empathise with the tramp in the snow or the madman asleep calmly in his bed, Pinter as ever does not direct our sympathy or interpretation, he leaves us with the stage and the gaps between the words. Our task as in life is to supply the story that makes them make sense.