American Gangster

Iago is one of Shakespeare's most interesting characters, a motiveless malignity according to Coleridge. We should be interested in Iago and his motivation because it brings up the question of what evil is, why men do evil and why they seek the fruits of evil. Ridley Scott's new film, American Gangster brings that question to the fore as well. Based on the life of the first generation of black drug barons in Harlem, Scott focuses on Frank Lucas, a key player in the late sixties and early seventies. Scott though presents us with not one but two characters, much in the mould of Scorsese's Departed, we have the cop and the criminal. And here, again as with Scorsese, they are presented as two sides of the same coin, but what we come back to again and again is their motivation.

Lucas is played with charismatic elan by Denzel Washington and the cop, Richie Roberts by longtime Scott colaborator Russel Crowe. The film concentrates on their stories- particularly that of Lucas and explicitly contrasts the two men. It shows how Lucas arose from the backstreets of Harlem, using South Asian heroine to finance his rise. He sold it cheaper and purer than the competition, effectively breaking the mob's control on it. He used his family to courrier it around and sell it themselves as he trusted noone else. Lucas was not taken in by the glamour of the criminal lifestyle, he sought to hide. He enjoyed his wealth to a limited and covert extent, finding a beauty queen Puerto Rican wife and houses for his mother and brothers to match his new riches. Ultimately Lucas is always in control in every shot of the film that he bestrides.

Roberts, the cop, is not so much in control of his private life. His most important moment there is an admission that he can't cope, not a declaration that he can. He sleeps with anything he can find- the audience of film critics visibly tittered at one unintentionally funny moment when his lawyer begged him to 'fuck me like a cop' and child support officers are always likely to turn up just as he has finished screwing an air hostess! But like Lucas he has rules to which he adheres. Whilst on the job he is a cop, nothing more, nothing less and is defined by his job. So he will hand in his partner if his partner commits a crime. He will give a million pounds back to the police department even if there would be no consequences to taking it. Everything he does in searching for Lucas is methodical, is cautious and thoughtful. Like a master spider, you know throughout the movie he will catch his fly simply because of his policing ethics.

The two men though share something else- and its a question asked of both of them- why? For Lucas the moment comes just after a boxing fight. He realises that he has become a target, because he yielded to his affectionate wife and wore a fur coat to the fight, he became conspicuous. He tosses the fur coat into the fire and watches the flames lick around it. His wife stares at him, uncomprehendingly, asking in her eyes the question why have you done that? For Crowe it comes towards the end of the film and this time its Lucas asking the question. Lucas points out that the million pounds that Crowe handed in would have ended up in the hands of corrupt police officials anyway, he points out to Crowe that whatever he does to Lucas the world will continue to operate and heroine will continue to be sold, why, Lucas asks, bother with this methodical investigation? Why not just take the money and head into the distance, taking back your wife, and living the high life?

Does the film give us an answer? It does through the words of an old mafia boss that Lucas arranges his distribution through. That boss turns to Lucas and says you have a choice, you can be successful and find enemies or you can be unsuccessful and have friends, but you can't be successful and have friends. What he points out is what for Lucas is quite clear, being a successful gangster has a price, the price is the ability to enjoy the fruits of success. The price of victory is eternal vigilance. Ultimately both for Lucas and Roberts ambition has conquered their souls. Lucas could of course run to enjoy the fruits of his success, but he doesn't because he wants to make the final deal. Roberts could leave with his wife and child, but that isn't even in question. He'll stay to catch the villain.

This is a well acted film. Washington commands the screen with a presence unlike most other actors of this age. In one scene, a confrontation between Lucas and Roberts outside a church, Washington stands with all the command and poise of a Spanish aristocrat, a sneer of cold command twisting his lips looking down on this wreck of a man below. Crowe gives a much less overstated performance, but he captures the private shambles and public purity of the cop he plays. It is worth noting that neither man was quite like this in real life- Lucas liked the high life more than Washington did, and Roberts didn't sleep with anything in a skirt. But dramatically the contrast- the tension between desire and ambition makes more sense- its something that Scott and his actors can explore.

That tension is explored less often than it deserves. More films explore the tensions say between family and relationships and ambition- take A Devil wears Prada, superficially a very different film but actually about a similar subject. Scott though is more realistic in the way that he explores family ties and ambition and their confluence. On the one hand, both Lucas and Roberts risk losing their families because of their ambition, but on the other their ambition, we can see, is what allows them families in the first place. In Lucas's case the Puerto Rican beauty that he marries is someone who he never would meet without his nefarious success. There is something of the American Dream here. Both Characters aspire to bring the money home for doing a good job. However in neither case does the model work. Lucas seeks to employ everyone else in his family in his business but ultimately is deserted by them when he falls. Roberts works all hours for his job, only to lose his wife and kids partly because his dedication to being a good man means that he won't take bribes to establish them in life. Again what we see is this contrast- ambition creates a situation where you can help your family, but letting it let rip means that in the end you neglect them or lose them.

There are some problems here too. Ridley Scott loses his complexity when he puts in a corrupt police officer, whose only role in the film seems to be to act with his buddies as a bully and provide a focus of villainy. In that sense Scott offers understanding to the real villain, Lucas, and not to those corrupt enough to be seduced by Lucas- he focuses on Eve and Adam not the snake. Russell Crowe does do his performance rather well- but he is becoming a caricature as well- this performance drunken, manly, tough is becoming the signature tune of an actor who has more interesting work within him. The women characters aren't sketched out well either- neither Lucas's wife nor Roberts's wife are really given any character.

Turning back to the central dilemma, what is interesting about it is the way that American Gangster reflects a society in which doing your job has become the substitute for an ethic. We all know why that is- in the longterm it is sensible not to be pettily corrupt- but that doesn't work obviously with all levels of potential income and the truth is that if you discount public service, there is no reason not to aim for what you can collect. The ethos of ego clashes in this film with the ethos of the job and it isn't obvious that the job wins- its clear that in the long run letting your ego rip leads to disaster, in the long run we are all dead, but it is also clear that not doing so leaves us with the question we would like to ask Iago:

What is the motive of a motiveless malignity?

Poor Novels, Great Films

A fairly interesting article in the Guardian today about the writer behind Rosemary's Baby, Ira Levin. Xan Brooks notes that it is often the worst books that produce the best films- with the exception of Rebecca Hitchcock adapted mainly material which was not classic. The same goes for many of the film noir films, one of the great and productive American genres, which were adapted sometimes from the highly literate work of Raymond Chandler but often from lesser known authors whose reputation today has vanished. We could go on- the same is true perhaps of Truffaut and the French new Wave.

There must be a reason that bad novels make great films- I think it partly rests in what Xan says. That great films expand on the novels- directors get a good story and then expand on its complexity and psychological impact after they get it. In that way they are the authors of the complexity and the interest, but they have a plot provided to them for their use. It simplifies that bit of the work that involves subtle research into plotting, whereas it allows them to concentrate on developing plausible characters on screen. A good novel doesn't allow you to do as much as a director to interpret the book in the same way- because the author has already done that bit- so either you react to the author and show a different motivation, or you follow the author, but you aren't being handed a blank slate.

I do think that that blank slate argument is important though and it accounts for the fact that great novels tend not to produce great films!

The Bungling of Bunglawala

Free speech is a value often abused and misunderstood. A curious case came up earlier this week which made me question some of the statements of that much maligned organisation the MCB.

You see yesterday, Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the MCB, condemned the imprisonment of the lyrical terrorist (so called because she is a girl who likes writing poems about killing people like me on the net) because of what she had said and because she had downloaded manuals to make bombs from the internet, because it was a violation of free speech. Fair enough I thought, there is an absolutist argument about free speech that might suggest that conclusion.

Then I got rather confused. Because I was browsing, as you do, the socialist worker website and I came across a familiar name. That's right twas young Inayat and he was writing about that bill on religious hatred that everyone got up in arms about. Now I'd presumed that Inayat would be taking the same absolutist stance, but oh no. Look over here at the bottom section of the article and you'll find our friend's views about freedom of speech, it is important apparently to balance that against the potential harm and public good of the speech in question.

An interestingly contradictory set of statements one might think! Inayat believes and does not believe in absolute freedom of expression depending on the moment- it is my fundamental right to say that I want to bomb you, my fundamental right to download materials from the internet about bombing and to write poems about how nice your brains would look if only they were blown from your skull, but if I criticise a hegemonic religion and religious establishment that should be banned. Somehow I get the impression that Inayat is more worried about the power of priests than the sensibilities of people, somehow I get the impression that Inayat doesn't really care about Muslims, he cares about Islam as an institutional and ideological reality.

Somehow I think he is opposed to the very set of ideas which promote freedom of speech in the first place- to liberalism itself. Or perhaps its because Inayat just doesn't think blowing up people (Muslim, Christian, Jewish and atheist) is as important as the dignity of his particular Church.

The Salon

Jesse Browner has written a fascinating article in Bookforum tracing the social origins of the salon in early seventeenth century France. A Salon was the indispensible forum for the French Enlightenment- authors like Rousseau owed their importance in part to the charm they exercised in a salon. Browner shows that the earliest salon was that linked to Catharine de Vivonne, a leading aristocrat in early seventeenth century France and patron of arts. Catharine de Vivonne withdrew from the court early on in her life, setting up an aesthetical court nearby to which she attracted writers, artists, noblemen and wits. Her influence grew and even notables like the Prince de Conde, a plausible contender for the French throne in the mid century, went to her to pay her court. In doing so they entered a realm in which wit was the only passport, commoners and women found themselves treated equally at the table so long as they were entertaining conversationalists.

Browner links this phenomena to the rise of the epistolary novel- something that he is surely right to do. He should though link it to a greater extent to the rise of French philosophy- from Pascal to Voltaire, French philosophers relied on the salon for finding patrons and evaluating rivals. Furthermore Browner is too literary in his dating of the Salon's ending. He finds its end in a satire written by Moliere in 1658 which mocks the pretensions of the aristocratic patrons and their literary clients. Moliere's satire may well be devestating but the salon outlasted it- surviving right into the eighteenth century and becoming like the English coffee house a model which spread across Europe. Tolstoy mocks the artificiality of the salon in War and Peace, where Pierre is seduced by the beautiful Helene in the superficial surroundings of the Salon. The Salon like Helene is we are allowed to infer superficial and rests upon the pretence of civilisation and not its reality.

The Salon therefore survived, despite attacks on it right up until the nineteenth century. It survived as a locus of aristocratic female patronage of the arts, particularly in France and those places which emulated the French model of enlightenment. Consequently it gave birth to an ideal of female intellectual engagement and conversation that was one of the motors behind the enlightenment and the emancipation of women. Madame de Stael, the formidable patroness and thinker, would have been impossible without the Salon's creation. It was accused of fostering a society that had left behind martial virtue for female wiles, but its historical consequences were much less obvious than its opponents suspected. Martial virtue, for all the jeremaids of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has not evaporated and indeed coping with its excesses seems to be one of the major tasks of our own time. The Salon though aided the cultivation of an intellectual revival which is one of our main tools to resist chaos and disorder, it also strengthened the position of women within aristocratic society, something that may have contributed to the great acheivement in the West of this century, the emancipation of half the human population.

The article, with which we started is worth reading, there are further implications to be drawn as I suggest about the Salon form, but its interesting to discuss the seed from which so much art and thought grew.

Terrorists and Gangs

I'm linking to an article I've written for the liberal conspiracy on Terrorism and its relationship to Gang Violence- I think there is something interesting lurking there about the nature of the terrorist threat that we face. Increasingly I have to say I'm coming to a very pessimistic conclusion. Not that we won't defeat Al Qaeda, I think that eventually Bin Laden and his cronies will be caught. But that we will increasingly see this kind of violence repeated all over the world by different groups from different cultures. There is a huge mixture of things going on with terrorism- but I think investigating the nature of violent so called third generational gangs is the way to go. Can I make a plea incidentally that people don't comment here but go and look at the broader article on the Liberal conspiracy site- I think the point is made with more evidence over there and its probably easier to argue if everyone has seen the evidence.

Lions for Lambs

Lions for Lambs is one of many films to recently come out and explore the meaning behind events in the War on Terror over the last couple of years. It has a three foci, three meetings between two people each time that it profiles and seeks to use to explain the disaster that the war on terror has become over the past couple of years. In Washington we see the experienced and canny reporter Janine Roth coming to interview the young rightwing senator Jasper Irvine, in a West Coast University, the academic Professor Stephen Malley has invited along a good but cynical student for a pep talk and out in Afghanistan two friends who studied under Malley get ready to fly out on a doomed mission. All three of these meetings interweave with each other. Irvine is the man whose plan is sending those two soldiers out into the rugged mountainous terrain of Afghanistan. The reason that those two are there though is that Malley encouraged them to think of a life of public service, something he is now encouraging Todd Hayes to think about as well. The contrasts and the connections are supposed to make us think- but they don't and the film fails because they don't.

One of the problems is that dramatically only one of these encounters actually works. The encounter between Meryl Streep playing the journalist and Tom Cruise playing the Senator is wonderfully handled- Cruise has never in his career been this affective or frightening, Streep is at her typically perfect level of performance and the meeting is a real battle of wits and personalities. The two actors throw themselves at the roles- interepreting them with a wonderful degree of subtlety and of course neither of them are ever completely innocent. Were that degree of balance true of the other two meetings then the film would work, but it isn't there. Robert Redford is just too good an actor for his counterpart, playing the student, Andrew Garfield to cope with. Redford dominates their discussion. Furthermore the two soldiers who are swiftly shot down and left alone on the field don't really have much to say to each other, they just suffer and shoot in the darkness, their scenes become purposelessly monotonous (not even obviously monotonous because the director intercuts them with the other scenes) and the audience swiftly gets tired of the lack of action.

The pity is that there is a really interesting film struggling to get out of this not so good film. The encounter between the journalist and the senator is about as good as political film making gets. One could imagine something with the psychological depth of Interview coming out of the dialogue between Streep and Cruise and there is something most definitely there. Their encounter is filled with passion- anyone who has seen the more polished supporters of the war in America will recognise Cruise's character. He blasts Streep off the stage at times with his prenouncement that America cannot lose, cannot lose the war on terror, that there are only two choices and one of them is defeat. You feel the sophistry but find it difficult to resist as does Streep. The point of the dialogue though is that often it is subtle, it requires thought to follow what is happening and were it to be abstracted from the film it might be the most intelligent thing yet filmed about the war on terror, with nuances on both sides.

But the problem is that the director, Redford, doesn't want us to think. He wants to hammer home his points. So we have the other two segments which are meant to remind us of the Senator's indifference to human life. We see young soldiers sent to war and dying in that war, in their countries' service. We see their ex-Professor discuss with a student the injustice of a country which sends the poorest off to fight and die for their oppressors, we see him argue with that student's modish cynicism. And somehow those two lecturing stories seem not to work. The deaths of the soldiers are sad and terribly sad. The lecture of the Professor is impressive to some extent. It is true that I think as I'm sure many others think of the bravery of those off in the wars of our world. But ultimately all those questions are dealt with without nuance. Ultimately the most affecting moment about the public interest is in observing not the virtuous cardboard characters of the soldiers, nor the sophistical sparring of student and teacher, but in the conversation between journalist and senator when the senator reminds her of her responsibilities as a journalist and how she has failed the nation. That is the moment at which it bit home to me that there was a public interest- not in the sermons but in the revelation that she too was a sinner.

We can see it as well in the argument about the war on terror too. One of the major issues about Cruise's character lies in the way that he uses emotion to make his arguments- the emotion of September 11th 2001, the emotional appeals against the evildoers and terrorists. The point that is being made is that we should use our reason- but then that point is lost through an emotional battering ram as crude as Cruise's. Soldiers are dying in Afghanistan, but people were dying before we got there and would definitely die if we left, their deaths are as legitimate. Emotion gets us nowhere- we need to work out the wisdom of courses of action using reason. We might get to the same conclusions as the film makers- indeed I think we would but the emotional appeal cheapens the argument and makes the film a counterpart to the appeals from the right that it seeks to satire.

Ultimately films don't stand or fall by faulty politics- great films were made in the service of hideous regimes, one thinks of Eisenstein's masterpieces in the 1920s. They stand or fall by their cinematic quality- the problem with Lions for Lambs is that the cinematic quality of the film falls short. Ultimately the stories don't mesh well together- the film is too obviously didactic, too emotional in its appeals. The pity is that there is a really good film embedded into this- if only Redford had let Streep and Cruise do their bit we could have had something fascinating, examining both politician and journalist and all the other themes he wanted to bring out. Instead we have a mess, in which the good and the bad coexist and you are left shaking your head at the end, knowing that so much talent went into this, seeing at least three good performances but emerging from the cinema dissatisfied.

This film tries to be great, but it fails. Its a worthy effort but it isn't a successful one.

CORRECTION Both Matt Sinclair and Lord N thought that I really enjoyed the film. I should highlight I didn't. Maybe this review doesn't convey enough what I thought but I thought that the film was preachy and over emotional, not reasoned. The thing is I thought there could have been an interesting film made of the conversation between Streep and Cruise- but that was not the film that came out in the cinemas. I hope that makes sense of the above- and apologise for not being clear.

Crossposted at Bits of News.

Henry's Cat

This was one of my favourite cartoons as a kid- and this is its theme tune- it is the Casablanca of Kid's cartoons.

Greek Homosexuality

An interesting article about ancient Greek homosexuality. Its interesting- I can't vouch for its accuracy as this is a subject on which I'm woefully ignorant but have always been partly intrigued by given the many references in Plato to the practise. It turns out as you would expect that homosexuality in Greece evolved over the years- particularly by the end of the Athenian democracy you had people who were as the author suggests what we would recognise as homosexuals. Homosexuality for some men was a stage in development between asexual youth and the marriage bed- but others seemed to delight more in the company of men than of women. Its an interesting subject and if anyone knows more please enlighten me as to whether the assessment in the article is right or not.

The Tomb of an Emperor

The first Emperor of China is a historical character and his legacy defines in many ways what China is today. He originally was not Emperor of China, but the Prince of a powerful western Kingdom Qin. During his reign as King of Qin, he conquered the other kingdoms which constituted ancient China. The King of Qin became an emperor in 221BC over a vast landmass, stretching perhaps over a third of what is modern China today. His power was extensive- Chinese histories credit him with an almost totalitarian ideology, an aim of unification which stretched to the elimination of any possible rival, including the massacre of 460 scholars and the destruction of older feudal patterns of service and government. He brought in a single currency and connected together the walls that previous Chinese governments had constructed to the north, to build the first defensive Great Wall. The Emperor's dynasty lasted a very short time- within years of his death in 210BC, his son the second Emperor was killed and chaos descended before the rise of the Han Emperors beggining in 202BC.

The Emperor though left much behind him. The Han reigned to some extent in conformity with his principles especially of unity- and the shape of the currency that he had originally drafted remained the same right up until the early 20th Century. Much of our account of his acheivement comes from the Han historian, Sima Qian, who was born in 145BC and whose histories cover the whole of Chinese history from its mythical origins to his own lifetime. Sima Qian was hostile to the Qin Emperor partly because his dynasty replaced that of the Qin, and his history is not a history as we would recognise it in modern terms. Sima Qian writes fables and chronicles and treatises on subjects, the past for him is a set of exempla and a set of dates. He doesn't dwell as we might like him to on subjects relevant to us, but rather has the preoccupations of a Han civil servant: so his book tells us of stories about assassins, stories about how to govern and how not to govern, chronicles of dates and all from a perspective that denegrates the Qin. Despite that Sima Qian is one of the great historians of the ancient world- his name deserves to be up there with the great classical historians.

However we are incredibly lucky when it comes to the Qin Emperor, for in the mid-1970s a peasant in China came across a stupendous find. In the soil his spade hit a terracotta head, and archaeologists coming across to work on the site found not one but thousands of terracotta bodies and artefacts scattered in the soil. Having reconstructed what the site must have been, they worked out that these terracotta bodies constituted a seperate state that the Qin Emperor hoped to rule in his afterlife. At the British Museum in London at the moment, some of those finds are being exhibited. You see all sorts of people that the Emperor required in his afterlife: he has strong men, acrobats, musicians, civil servants, soldiers of all types and even a royal charioteer. Some of these artefacts bring to life stories from Sima Qian's accounts. For example on the Emperor's death, his senior civil servant Li Si kept the Imperial demise secret. He did so by maintaining the illusion that the Emperor was still alive giving orders from his Imperial chariot- and to some extent when one sees the chariot, one can imagine how that worked. The Emperor closeted and secretive and Li Si and a couple of others conspicuously running in and out to receive orders.

The terracotta army itself is shown in all its glory. It is incredible what the craftsmen (probably conscripted) could do. The skill with which the faces in particular are rendered is stunning- the visual impressiveness of what you see makes you reel back, considering that these are faces looking straight at you from thousands of years ago. The picture in particular of a fiery Turkish looking light infantryman stayed in my mind all of last night. The Museum have organised the exhibition in a very proffessional way- first they show you some Qin artefacts and describe the role of the Qin Emperor in Chinese history, avoiding much of the detail but trying to give a non-sinologist a good understanding of what this man was and what he represents. Then you proceed to see the terracotta army and court itself- which is a stunning experience and having it put in context before you see it, it becomes more impressive. The Emperor constructed this army to protect him in his afterlife- it appears they were stationed on the only open access route to his tomb in order to guard it. His tomb itself has never been opened and apart from Sima Qian's fantastic descriptions and some scientific work above the site on concentrations of metals found underneath, noone knows what is there. What we have though is these soldiers- we know they were painted and so their rather mundane colours today aren't as impressive as the gaudy way they were decorated- we know that irises for instance were painted in the eyes and we can tell all this thanks to chemical analysis of the surface of the statues. They are beautifully vibrant and vital. Each has its own character and facial expression, beard and overall look.

China is one of the hardest societies I have ever tried to understand. I have only been there once- but that's once more than most Westerners. Reading its literature and looking at its art is a very foreign experience in the way that reading Islamic literature or even Indian literature is not. Through accidents of history, China seems like another region of the earth from Europe. But its an increasingly powerful and important place- from films by great directors like Zhang Yimou to its economic importance, China is not merely an object of curious interest for the West, it is a place we have to understand. This exhibition therefore is a wonderful opportunity to learn something about China and the way that it was created and its history. The terracotta warriors are so impressive that they are a reminder of the grandeur of Chinese civilisation. They are also an incentive because of their beauty to try and understand more about the culture from which they sprang, seeing their beauty inspired me to buy translated fragments from Sima Qian's history. An exhibition like this is precisely the thing that the world's museums should increasingly engage in- if there is to be dialogue between our cultures then this is a wonderful way of expressing it and I hope some British treasures make their way temporarily to Beijing.

The Museum's exhibition reminds one of the importance of Chinese civilisation and the importance of cultivating an understanding of it. It also reminded me very visibly of the difficulties of historical research. There is so much that we do not know and will never know about the first Emperor. The history that we have is fragmented and written long after the Emperor's death. We have these artefacts but with many of them we are not sure of their use- and we have not yet seen inside the tomb of the Emperor to see what clues lie there.

One thing I do regret about the museum's exhibition is that there was not more outside or inside from historians of the era, Chinese and Western, discussing the Emperor. There wasn't even a good academic biography for sale- an unpardonable lapse! Another gap was that the First Emperor's attitude to religion was left untouched. We were invited to see the army as a simplistic guard for the afterlife or as a manifestation of the Emperor's meglamania: but I would have liked to see something more about what Chinese people of that time beleived about the afterlife and how that connected to what the Emperor did. One interesting question that wasn't touched upon was why none of his successors made this kind of tomb- it could be that they did and the tombs are lost waiting a farmer to discover them, it could be that his example discredited the practice, it could be that beliefs had shifted, it could be that this is one of many such tombs, leaving the exhibition I was none the wiser. One felt like screaming for more information. But having said that, that is possibly the churlish attitude to take. The exhibition is wonderful- the fact that these statues have left China must have been a great diplomatic acheivement and the museum has arranged them suitably well.

The First Emperor is one of those figures whose actions had momentous consequences spreading out through time, doubling and redoubling until his creation, a unified China, became one of the great powers of a globalised world in the 20th Century. Seeing the terracotta warriors, seeing the artefacts he collected around himself in his afterlife, one gets a sense of the immense power that he wielded, the creative wills that bent to his commanding will and the strength of his shortlived imperium.

Government minister resigns...

to race cars. Lord Drayson has fallen on his sword in order to join the Le Mans race. I have to say that I have no idea about Drayson's record as a minister but as soon as I saw this, I rejoiced, long live the politicians for whom the hinterland matters more than the greasy pole!

Mark Steyn and Culture

Mark Steyn has a way of shocking me by producing some really good articles at times- I think he does this out of spite, he knows that I don't like some of his work and he wants me to be spinning in confusion unsure whether to like or dislike him. Sorry my sense of humour got the better of me tonight!

Anyway today Steyn has produced I think an excellent article about popular music and the need for a canon. It is really a wonderful defence of learning for the sake of appreciation. Basically Steyn's point is that you can't understand why the Beatles are great unless you understand why Bach is great. The two go together- to understand the one is to understand the other. He makes a point about the way that in order to understand something's greatness, you have to be able to see it in its context, to see what developed around it, why that move was important. Its crucial that Picasso could paint landscapes and had been trained because then his other paintings developed a meaning, its vital that Duke Ellington could play the classic solos because then he could use them in his own work. I agree completely with him: one of the wonders of artistic knowledge is the way that it supports itself. Every time I watch a new film, or read a new book (those being the two art forms I know) they tell me something about all those previous artworks I've seen and watched. And there is a strict heirarchy of knowledge in art- I would listen to Martin Scorsese for hours on film if I could because he has watched everything, and has interesting ideas about all of what he has seen.

Music is something sadly on which I'm not able to comment. One of the most illuminating moments of my life was sitting with a friend who understood music in a jazz bar in Prague. He described to me the way that what I saw as a cool sound, was actually the product of a complex interweaving of notes, a lattice of harmonies. Suddenly I saw music for a moment as this beautiful structure, which people played with, understood and manipulated- suddenly it became more than a simple nice tune, it became art, something I cared for and might grow to love. I think that appreciation is to be valued. It isn't easy to get to- appreciation of the arts is a real cost. Its something that takes time and effort, its something that you have to struggle to get to and it is something that relies on context. To take writing, its because I understand the history of English poetry that I can appreciate the opening line of the Wasteland, that April is the cruellest month- in that opening line Elliot tells us that everything that has gone before resting on Chaucer is wrong. That April is not the month of gentle showers but the month of cruelty. Poetry and novels are echoing always with previous works- the anxiety of influence was a disease that Harold Bloom diagnosed flowing through each and every author.

The great writers though manage to combine that with accessibility. I learnt to read novels- and I have to say watch films (the great twentieth century entertainment) because I began through enjoying them, I ended appreciating the same books. Most of the early readers started the same way, Jonathan Rose writes illuminatingly about the way that the first Labour MPs for example read Dickens, Carlyle, Ruskin and others and thought about them in their own way. There is a wonderful novel which really describes this process which unfortunately I can't lay my hands on right now- as soon as I find my copy I'll review it- but what shines through that book is the importance of embibing cultural classics to discovering the world of culture. The route to Austen is the route through Austen, the same goes for all the great writers and indeed for filmmakers from Orson Welles and Michael Curtiz to David Cronenberg. Its when you are bitten with the bug that you know that you have fallen in love and through falling in love you learn to appreciate and to link everything together and understand this lattice of things which all have been created partly for your pleasure.

Steyn is entirely right- you can enjoy the arts (I enjoy Music in this sense) without knowing much, but you enjoy them a hell of a lot more when you have exposed yourself to even more. Part of life is a continual adventure in self improvement- I definitely think that there are 'miles to go before I sleep' and probably will be when I'm dead- and I think that goes for art as well as anything else. There is always something 'further up and further in' to look at, there is always something which can prompt you to understand more or to reevaluate what was once familiar and now is strange. Sometimes I think in modern life we are too comfortable, the truth is that life is an adventure of understanding. For us who lag, it is worth looking up to those who are scaling the heights, but if they are worth looking up to then they are looking in admiration at the next climber. Nobody arrives at the summit, but the effort is what makes everything worth while- because by mastering that interesting novel you suddenly have another angle on human experience. Sitting down and saying no further is surrendering that knowledge and beauty that you might acquire by going up another notch- the world is limitless and its beauties are vast.

Steyn is right. To step back is folly, to stop is folly, and in this quest the canon (the works judged before by others as good) is a useful if not flawless guide. Relaxing in a comfort zone of the works written in your own culture or your own time is a waste- there is more to see and life is too short not to read that Egyptian novelist, see that Iranian film, find out about that twelfth century monk's poetry and listen to some Beethoven before going to watch Belle and Sebastien.

The End of Greek Asia Minor

At the end of the First World War, the great empires of Eastern Europe, the Russian, Austrian, Prussian and Ottoman all collapsed and were replaced with a variety of successor states. Some of those states were carved out by the treaties like Lausanne and Versailles after the war, others were essentially created by military facts on the ground- and in most cases the treaty recognised what had already happened. Its worth remembering that most of the territorial changes in Europe occurred far away from the areas in which the dominant powers at Versailles- the US, UK and France- had their troops- ie the North East corner of France. Look at a map of Western Europe in 1914 and the frontiers haven't changed really that much up to today, look at a map of Eastern Europe and the world is completely different.

What happened in 1918 in order to accomplish that, and happened in 1945 as well, was the massive transfer of populations across frontiers. We often think of that as a fairly harmless process- it wasn't. To take one example, for centuries, for millennia, numerous Greeks had lived in Asia Minor. Thales one of the first philosophers, if not the first, lived for example in Miletus on the coast of modern day Turkey. By the time of the Ottoman Empire, those people calling themselves Greeks still lived there- still constituted a large minority in cities like Istanbul, Smyrna and other places. In the period after World War One the Greeks and Turks battled over the frontier between their states, in 1922 the Greeks finally lost and withdrew from Asia Minor and as they did, the Greeks living there were forced out as well. I thought of this when I first heard of it, doing my history GCSE, as a fact of history, a bloodless fact- in fact of course it wasn't- there was great brutality.

Just to appreciate how horrible that process of ethnic movement was, its worth looking at some of the accounts from Greeks at the time. Thalia Pandiri has collected some and published translations in the International Literary Quarterly- I suggest you go and have a read, but what she describes is truly horrifying. Women with sticks driven through their bodies till they emerge coming out of their mouths. Some of the stories are equally horrifying for the poverty they display- women feeding children flour in water for example or walking for miles with a bag gripped between their teeth and a child in each hand. When they arrived in Greece, many of them found a less than hospitable reception awaiting them as well. Many of them afterall looked not to the new Greece but to the Russian Tsar, traditional protector of orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, as their prince.

Bringing up old atrocities has more purpose to just wallowing in misfortune. The experience of Greeks moving from Asia Minor to European Greece was horrific, but it is relatively unknown. It highlights something though of worth to consider- that moving populations is always difficult. You encounter the fact that people don't want to leave their homes, you encounter the fact that newcomers aren't always welcome when they arrive. That is even true, when unlike say in Palestine, the moving population are in the end absorbed by another population- as in the Greek case where most of the immigrants report that they did eventually become successful Greeks. Ultimately though the experience of the Greeks moving across from Asia to Europe reminds us of two things: firstly that we should not be blase about moving populations around the globe- should for example climate change result in the destruction of Bangladesh we would see the events of Asia Minor on an even greater scale even if we found somewhere for those people to go. Secondly and perhaps more importantly, it reminds us of our own powerlessness. By the end of World War One, there was barely an army around apart from those of the Western Allies and even then in Eastern Europe, it was the facts on the ground that mattered, not the pious declarations from Paris, London and Washington. International politics requires modesty as well as ambition.

Al Qaeda targets 15 year olds

An interesting piece in the Guardian reports comments from the MI5 head, Jonathan Evans, that increasingly Al Qaeda is targetting its recruitment efforts at younger and younger Muslims. In particular the organisation is looking to young British Muslims in their teens. Obviously the teenage years are amongst the prime years for people to form adult identities. One of the issues surrounding that is that people in their teenage years are often uncomfortable or unsure about where they are and what they are. They are thus prime for recruitment by groups like Al Qaeda which offer a strong identity and a purpose to life at a time when most people are going through confused emotional tempests.

Part of the problem of course is what we do about this- ultimately it comes down in part to a working education system which isn't segregated (segregation is a wonderful way to manufacture resentment from afar). No doubt, youth workers, youth organisations, parents and mosques (as well as a host of others that I've forgotten) can help as well but the spectacle of the teenage suicide bomber may grow depressingly familiar as we go into the future.

Conspiring with them Liberal Lefties

Well the Liberal Left Conspiracy came to the internet today- obviously as a group it has existed for a long time- liberals and lefties, the gay mafia, the illuminati and the free masons not to mention commies and various others have been conspiring for years which is why they have been quite so successful on both sides of the Atlantic in maintaining their control over the world. I am one of the conspirators as anyone looking at the roster will know- and I have to say I'm proud to be. The right has organised brilliantly on the internet- and Conservative Home is a really good clearing house for rightwing ideas- I know some of the best rightwing bloggers like say Matt Sinclair have written there. There isn't really any equivalent place to meet leftwing people and discuss politics on the net- Labour home is not as good as Conservative Home, its often too insular and focused in on Labour party internal affairs, other places are dominated by different sectional interests- its time the left came together in the UK on the net- and this is one option, lets hope it succeeds for doing that.

Ok lets turn to the whole idea of the liberal left- what does it mean to be on the liberal left and why do those words fit together. Lets define them first: broadly speaking I think that to be on the left is to be concerned about equality, and that to be liberal is to be concerned about freedom. The point about equality is that it produces freedom. Wealth is power- money would be nothing unless it had a value and that value is the goods and services it commands. The more wealth that someone has and the more independent that wealth from the interference of others, the freer they are to gain what they want in life. Rightwingers believe that the only obstacle to a free will is a state: they are right that the state can be a significant obstacle to the exercise of a free will, noone with any knowledge of this century could deny that and many on the left stood against the state as it limited the freedom of will (Orwell is a great example) but rightwingers are wrong to say that it is only the state which obstructs freedom. Corporations do too- and even the wealthy can obstruct liberty- both can use the state as well in their own interests- you could argue that that is what the British libel laws do.

Equality is married to freedom thus at a fundamental level- because without equality I cannot be free. Its encapsulated in that old piece of wisdom that beggars can't be choosers- something that the right tend to forget. This isn't an argument for state socialism, it could be but it isn't. It isn't an argument for any particular vision of society. But it is an argument that you cannot have real freedom without having equality, that you cannot be concerned about liberal things, without being concerned about leftwing things. And that goes as well for many of the other battles that the left are involved in, freeing women from the dominion of their husbands, freeing homosexual people from the legal restrictions of those that don't share their morality, freeing the innocent from the tyranny of a despot who would rather hold us all in jail than listen to any of us. All these things are both leftwing and liberal- how they are achieved is a totally separate issue but they can only be acheived if we think about equality and freedom together and try to acheive both through our policies.

That's why I'm conspiring for the liberal left (though I have to say this blog will remain basically what it has always been)!

Cultural Amnesia

Clive James is a figure unlike most others in our world- James has made a career of being an omnivore. From the chatshow couch to the comic circuit to the learned essay, James has succeeded everywhere he has gone. Writing and broadcasting, he has turned his natural wit to good account and provided a series of sparkling memoirs to furnish the bookshelves of the learned with. Cultural Amnesia, his latest book, is a fine effort to capture the unique folds of James's own mental landscape- he provides a short essay on over 100 cultural characters mainly from the last century. All the essays come out of a single quote- and often James doesn't even pause to ponder the life, instead pondering the importance of that quote.

The quoted range from Duke Ellington to Hegel, Federico Fellini to Margerate Thatcher, from Tacitus and Edward Gibbon to Coco Chanel and Adolf Hitler. The range is astonishing- though the absense of any scientists is equally astonishing. James mentions an Albert Einstein but its the musician not his more famous namesake and relative the physicist. Indeed science is one of the leading absenses from the collection which is biassed very much towards the arts. Analytical philosophy is also underepresented- we have an essay on Wittgenstein but characteristically in it philosophy students are dismissed for giving him the 'credit for everything that would have struck them if they had ever been left along with the merest metaphysical lyric from the early seventeenth century.' The Wittgenstein that matters to philosophers is the one that 'they can prove only to each other' and what James is interested in is the Wittgenstein that matters to the writer- to the humanist.

For that is what this book really is, a monument to what we might call humanism. A humanism that sees the limits of the human as surely as it does the extent of his range. James is limited- but to stress that is to undermine really his acheivement here- which is to gather and express particles of knowledge and understanding across many fields and many languages. He gets some judgements wrong- he dismisses Edward Gibbon as a poor stylist. James tells us that 'what he [Gibbon] wrote rarely lets you forget that it has been written'- possibly that's true but its also Gibbon's virtue and not to see that is to miss what Gibbon was trying to do and therefore to criticise him by a standerd he wasn't attempting to reach. James doesn't get Gibbon's historical breadth or depth either- doesn't see that the styllistic tics are made up for by the fact that Gibbon was another such as James who spanned centuries in a massive project that will probably never be attempted let alone completed again.Quotation has this feature that it inspires you to seek out the epigram- the fragment that illuminates rather than the rolling cadence of prose. Martial the great Latin poet is perhaps the most eminently quotable of Latin poets in that what he wrote was bitchy and short, James in these essays has the same quality. Like the greatest essayists he can skewer wonderfully. He can also at his best capture real nuance- his description of Edward Said in this sentence is perfect, 'As a critic and man of letters he has an enviable scope but it is continually invaded by his political strictness'. It captures the many sidedness of Said- the political lack of nuance which led him to some cartoonish descriptions of orientalists and of the orient but also the greatness- for Said who always recognised Israel and wanted Palestinians to recognise the sorrows of the Jews was a great man. James is able to capture that and through a quotation of Said's about the Battle of Algiers, bring to life the double sidedness of Said.

But this book is not all nuance. James is more often than not on the good side and vows war against those who cravenly boosted tyranny. He writes eloquently about the Manns- Heinrich, Thomas and Golo- all of whom resisted Hitler from outside the boundaries of exile. Of all the praise though it is that devoted to Sophie Scholl which most resonated with me. Scholl, James tells us, 'was probably a saint' and died in complete silence. What James wants to do with praise is make us think- he points to the fact that in his judgement despite the fact that there is a perfect actress for the role alive today (Natalie Portman) Scholl should never be portrayed by Hollywood. The finality of her end is her tragedy- far better for it to be a more obscure German film starring the unknown Julia Jenstch to portray her for the public so that they too understand the finality of the fall of the ax upon her neck shut out one of the true heroines of the twentieth century and sent her to darkness.

If Scholl volunteered to die, despite the fact she did not have to, to make a point against an odious regime, then James rightly eviscerates those who have supported those odious regimes. Though Sartre is his betenoir- he hates Sartre's evading of responsibility, hates the fact that 'Sartre was called profound because it sounded if he was either that or nothing' but ultimately his essay on Sartre is not the most interesting. Rather I think it is the essay on a much slighter figure- Peirre Drieu La Rochelle- a leading intellectual of Vichy that really made me think. For what he captures in that essay is the moment of victory in 1945, when the Germans were driven out and La Rochelle committed suicide. The key fact for James though is to evaluate the hysteria- a hysteria he informs us drily that Sartre backed and that Camus (who actually had a resistance record) disdained (though Camus thought there ought to be a reckoning). He leaves us in no doubt of the guilt of Pierre Drieu La Rochelle- but also paints a picture of France in those years which is terrifyingly accurate.

Totalitarianism is one of the foci of this book- James argues long and hard against it. Whether it is Communist or Fascist, he suggests it is deeply repugnant and you get the sense that he thinks that clear writing, thinking and reading are its enemies. As he said recently to Stephen Colbert, intellectuals get things wrong all the time- but they get them wrong less than those who don't open themselves to intellectual pursuits. In reality this book is a book about heroes- but it is not a book about heroism. The essay structure enables there to be a convincing absense of structure- in the sense that James is not interested in archetypes but in individuals- his essays are at their most effective when they describe either of two things- the impact of writing upon him as an individual or the way that this individual's career worked. An essay on Nadezhda Mandelstam is incredibly effective at making you realise the pain that she must have felt as the Stalinist machinery of death whirled past her windows. It drives you to the reality of the statistics.

Though James is reassuringly committed to the dry substance of the real world, he is most acute when he focuses on individual experiences, exploring them and rendering them to his reader. His selection is driven, as he argues in his essay on Chris Marker, by the solidity of the facts that he sees and understands but his talent is for explaining experience. This is a book which is unashamedly focused on reality- James gives postmodernism and its creeds of unreality very short shrift indeed. He is openly contemptuous of philosophical relativism and disdain for truth- openly praises the empirical and solidly researched. He bases his love for art upon a respect for reality.

James's range of understanding in this book is incredible. James is a great evoker of what other authors do and write and film and play. He can convey the meaning of others' statements in such a way as to make you want to read and listen to and watch their books, music and films. He makes you want to stroll down the streets of Vienna in particular and pop into the cafes to hear the arguments and consume the culture. He makes you want to open the books, to understand what Contini means when he says that you need to learn poetry. He creates a desire in you to leap from cultural tree to tree- as James himself in these essays does- referring for instance in an essay on Marc Bloch to the seductions and disappointments of Pound's poetry. He made me want to learn languages- to read these authors in their original tongues and capture the calligraphy of sound that they all employed.

Ultimately there isn't a greater compliment for a book like this than to say that- to say that this book is like the trunk of a great tree, along whose branches if you pursue them are fruit much more gaudy than anything found in the original bark. This is a book that leads to other books. Its a book that can be read at one sitting or dipped into- yes there are mistakes and there are manifold errors. But to forgive someone for misunderstanding that Gibbon is amongst the greatest English historians requires a great acheivement and this book is a great and interesting acheivement.

Scorsese interview

Martin Scorsese being interviewed in the late nineties- always a treat.

Analytical Blogging again

The other day I wrote an article on analytical blogging, which got some negative attention from Dizzy, who makes a fairly amusing point against it though personally I'm not as convinced as he is that intelligence is only reserved for the elite. Its interesting as well that modern conservatives often have tended towards being unabashedly in favour of populism- that reinforces one of my feelings that modern conservatism and other historical forms of conservatism are not the same- I can't imagine Edmund Burke or Hayek even giving three cheers for the Sun in the way that Dizzy does!

However that isn't the main point of this post. Matt Sinclair asks a much more interesting question about smart people and blogging, and I think he is right to ask it and the answer in the case of this blog demonstrates something which I think is interesting. Matt asks "Why should someone with interesting and novel things to say use the blogosphere as a medium?", he goes on to deliver some interesting answers, all of which depend mostly on the community as a whole providing a forum. Matt imagines that blogging is a bit like an intellectual salon on the net, in which we can throw around ideas, as he rightly points out that presumes a membership, there is no point talking to onesself.

Somebody asked me on my thread about this, why I don't do more analytical work on politics. I do a bit, but nowhere near what Chris Dillow does on Stumbling and Mumbling- and I think this ties into another reason to maintain a blog, which is one of the basic reasons that Westminster Wisdom (the title is partly ironic) exists. This blog really isn't an analytical policy blog- though I do occasionally rummage through politics and policy, its really a purely egoistic exercise. For me a blog is the equivalent of an 18th Century common place book, ie its where I put down my impressions of the world so I can go back to them. An interesting quote, a fun video, a film review, even a review of a novel, anything which makes me remember how I reacted to something for the first time.

I think that is a valid reason to keep a blog- partly because experience flows past me at such a rate that I can never really grab hold of it. Throughout my life, amongst my major vices is forgetfulness, and that means that I often lose hold of what I should know or should remember. Here I have a resource to which I can turn, when I want to, to find out about say Rousseau's walks or Bresson's Joan of Arc. Part of that is it forces me to think about what I see and read more acutely than ever before: because I know I'm going to have to write an article up here on it. That makes me look deeper and try and understand more. Its also a good resource to remember what an idiot I am occasionally- there are moments on this blog where I know I've been a complete fool- reminding onesself of that is a good thing and doing it on a blog is fairly harmless. (Which in a way brings me back to Dizzy, acute mockery of your own pretensions is always a good thing to read!)

In answer to Matt's question therefore- I think there is another reason- in addition to the good ones he has given- for a person to keep a blog and that is as an online diary. Afterall that is what blogs started off being- and I wonder whether in the end that will be their principle use.

LATER Incidentally Dizzy should probably go and watch this.

Glamour Politics

Chris suggests on his blog that all those that report on politics are interested in is glamour not policy. I was quite stunned to read that, having just seen the perfect example, a BBC reporter reporting on the latest report to call into question the efficacy of the government's education spending on literacy didn't bother to analyse whether the report was right or not- oh no she dived straight into what the political consequences of the report might be. No words about how we might evaluate it, what the basis of it was, what teachers thought, why this spending hadn't worked, no real indication about how to judge it for the viewing public, just the kind of reporting that would suffice for a playground- oh there's been a supernova, that means Gordon's down and Dave's up and its all good. That report and the general gossipy tone of BBC news is a great argument for ditching the entire organisation- and sacking all those involved for doltish stupidity!

Averages

The Political Umpire wonderfully fisks Melanie Phillips's bigotry at his blog. He also points out I think something that Melanie and indeed many seem not to grasp- the distinction between an average and a definition. If for instance it were true that on average people with blonde hair are cleverer than those with brown hair, it wouldn't mean anything in terms of whether a particular blonde person was cleverer or less clever than the average brunette. If however it is part of the definition of say a dolphin to be less articulate than a monkey, then it is indeed justifiable to treat them differently. That Phillips doesn't understand that distinction is worrying. That the Political Umpire does is reassuring.

Two interesting articles

I thought I'd note two articles that have been published.

Firstly there is my own article about Leon for the Bright Lights Film Journal. Leon is a really interesting film that makes you reflect about what it means to be adult. What I would argue is that there is a teleology within Leon which is very interesting. Leon is a film in which one of the characters may die because he has fully become adult. That is an interesting and constant idea throughout human life- we talk of a full life implying that a life may be complete. We talk of the culmination of acheivements, which implies that there is such a thing. Its a very interesting mental trick that we perform- and is a thought which recurs through major philosophies and religions. The idea of culmination and an end to a process I think is about our use of the analogy of life as a task. Ultimately we tend to imagine life is something like an exam- we work to its completion. But actually it isn't- my own experience demonstrates that life is much more incomplete, much less teleological than that. Most lives end not at a full stop but mid-sentence. To imply otherwise is comfortingly incorrect.

Secondly there is an article, which thankfully is not by me. This article reflects on the scientific facts behind rumours of Vampires, Ghosts and various other ghouls. It is a very interesting discussion. The discussion of zombies in particular is interesting because it brings me to something which I think is one of the distinguishing marks of scientific thought. Ultimately in the cases of zombiefication, which these two attribute to a particular method of poisoning, the people concerned did see something which was similar to a zombie but their attribution of the cause of that was wrong. The magical explanation infers a vast other world of supernatural power- whereas actually all we need to discuss is the particular poison found in a particular fish. It isn't that the people observing are incorrect, it is that their assumption that the occurance is magical is incorrect- they assume too much to explain that which they cannot understand and don't conceive of the fact that there are more facts about the natural world to be discovered, rather than a whole other world that exists to explain ours.

Both of these ideas- teleology and magical explanation- are buttresses to much of our philosophy and religion. Both are in my view contrary to experience and consequently to be rejected, but they seem attractive. Our mental equipment is rigged for evolutionary reasons in various ways- to accept the definition of existance in anthropomorthic ways- as a task to be completed for example- which helps us survive but doesn't help us to explain the world in which we live.

The Halloween Blogpower Roundup!

I am honoured today to be rounding up some of the best posts from the Blogpower collective over the last month- Hallowe'en having just passed (thanks to the ever precise Higham for a spellcheck), we have the ghoulish and the ghostly and the downright despicable, there are skeletons falling out of cupboards, poltergeists messing with the constitution, fiends in the comment boxes and other nasty surprises. Oh yes this is one for you to read with a nice cup of tea by a warm fire as the wind whispers the names of the long dead in your ears.

And so our tale begins, on a dark and windswept night, with curious Yew Berries deposited through the forest, I made my way with some friends over to the Blogpower camp. LadyM waxed lyrical about dinners she had had in Morocco, but even she was struck dumb when she saw how Welshcakes welcomed in the winter. Everyone was feeling good: leaning back and looking at the planets with Crushed by Ingsoc, marvelling with Mutley at the decline of the Chuckle Brothers, just agreeing with Ruthie that having Little C around makes everything worthwhile and looking at Age in the Mind's snaps of Tokyo James was sitting in a corner wondering about being alone until his commenters came over with one of Tuscan Tony's ice cream black puddings- James looked quite green for the rest of the evening! To be honest I got slightly worried when all these people started chatting with Ellee about how they weren't superstitious but believed in ghosts- slight logical problem methinks and often logical problems lead to disaster in the blogosphere!

But all seemed quiet, all was pleasant and we were all settling down in sleeping bags- though Ruthie was absorbing the patter of the rain on her tent wall, self imposed insomnia she calls it whilst JMB lay dreaming of things that might have been. Suddenly there was a scream- no it wasn't Baht at seeing a last remnant of the Bradford textile industry, it wasn't even the Pub Philosopher having another nightmare as he tried to work out Gordon's Bill of Rights it was much much worse than that. It wasn't even as bad as that image of Gordon and a Badger that Harry had put into my brain earlier that evening. My bones rattle as I tell of this horror. It was the sight of a government, that doesn't and I tremble to type the words, know right from wrong.

That is right, screams clogged the frosty air as we all realised, as we all saw houses demolished before our very eyes, Ian from Shades of Grey heard a spectral voice intoning the Queen's Speech, one voice tried to lure Stephen Bainbridge away from his tent with promises of liberty, Stephen like a sane fellow was able to resist and one very odd ghost kept on turning round and round talking about the morality of marriageBut all around us a cacophony of voices were raised in mutinous tumult. All around us the threat grew- the threat we realised of dead speechwriters arisen from their graves and coming back to torment us- the Dodo team had told us of their deaths why oh why hadn't we listened and realised they might return. I felt as isolated as George Bush. In all this noise no artist could hope to be heard without aggressive marketing. Not even a dog hero or a good strategy to get us out of Iraq could save us now. Indeed now down came hordes of creepy things, personages of absolute vileness, some of us later dressed up like them and JMB got the pics- imagine those things flying out of a darkened forest on a rainy windy night!

Well as I'm sure you are all aware, the Blogpower universe has special resources. Yeah that's right some of us can give numbers and words colours, some of us can imagine a room with a view anywhere we go. While Jams wracked his brains about what we could learn from nuclear disasters when facing ghosts and Andrew stoically reminded everyone that as David Cameron has just found out a week is a long time in politics and these guys couldn't go on for ever, Crushed distracted the ghosts on Ian Appleby's site with a history of the Catholic Church's attitude to science. Just as he finished up popped Theo with a story about pilots in World War Two and how two had found each other years later. But it was a new man, on his first outing, who worked it out- suddenly the long haired hippy by my side struck his head and said "I know its those long commenters, get a code of conduct and we can drive away the trolls on whom the ghosts rely for food"- everyone nodded and we all started frantically deleting all those long ad hominem anonymous commenters! Nothing if not resourceful, Heather suddenly said hey this is just informational overload, what we need is a strategy to filter the ghosts and take them on one by one, just like the internet you can't deal with more than one ghost at a time or more than one website.

They were still attacking but now we had their measure. Welshcakes found a particularly repellent ghoul and sent him away by telling him he would repress the internet, Tony sent Jacques Delors's ghost reeling by summing up Europe in about 200 words. The Tin Drummer struck with a well aimed literary joke. The Wardman Wire punched Alex Salmond back to the ropes with a great hit. It was swinging our way! These weren't ghosts, they were just politicians armed with faulty statistics and alarmist health reports. Thunderdragon caught one of the health scares and stripped him of his white cloak and found a host of untruths hiding below. The Norfolk Blogger recognised how self interested they were, protecting their own funding. Ghosts hate generosity so when Tom Paine threw out a link to Prodicus they shuddered.We were all in accord and the ghosts, they vanished as quickly as they had come, the noise repressed, the arguments destroyed, the ghouls vanquished!

We fell to a swift slumber- and then morning arrived and time to discuss what had happened. James was absolutely clear, the bloggers have neglected the main issue again, we'd let the ghost's take over. He nominated that we all reread what Crushed said about a UK President. His Lordship pointed out that too much idiocy existed in the world, I argued that there weren't any good lists of geniuses out there. The meeting dissolved in chaos- but at least we had driven off the ghosts and ghouls- that is until next month!

John Bull can't Blog

Sunny Hundal is one of the best bloggers in the UK, and he has identified a real problem in the British blogosphere. With certain exceptions most British blogs have tended to fit, to use Matt's categories most British blogs tend to be either investigative or gossip blogs. There aren't that many analytical blogs around- though I've metntioned two of the best there are very few, and the emphasis on getting better as a blogger is on attracting readers through stories. The main focus amongst British bloggers is in finding the latest ministerial scandal or in working out the latest infraction by the European Union. The problem is as Sunny rightly says, that that means that the British blogosphere is impoverished. There aren't many British counterparts say to Dan Drezner or Crooked Timber in the States, who whatever you think of them, publish a great deal of detailed academic material and attempt to work with it.

The problem is not that there aren't any such bloggers around- I've cited both Matt Sinclair and Chris Dillow and there are more out there who could and do this kind of blogging. Part of the problem is promotion- myself and Ashok and Ian Appleby have often had discussions about how to promote analytical blogs and blogging. I'm not sure as to how to make that work- but I do think that it is something that is missing from the whole British blogging scene. The British blogging scene at the moment is little more than an echo chamber to the mainstream media- someone like Guido for all his vaunted efforts- echoes the ideas and concepts of the media. Even a blogger like Mr Eugenides who takes apart the efforts of the mainstream media still follows its agenda- real analytical bloggers are the only way to actually make this medium independent from the mainstream media. The first indication that bloggers aren't parasitic will come when the bloggers actually start manufacturing ideas which cross into the real world. Despite the critiques of Eugenides or the scandals found by Guido the real moment of independence is when the blogosphere actually becomes somewhere which manufactures thought and concepts.

We shall see if that ever happens, but Sunny is right, until then the British blogosphere remains what it has been for a long time- a rather large parasite but nothing more than that and definitely nothing of significance.

Lady Thatcher

Lady Thatcher is a genius. Like most sensible people she has decided to get a cat not a dog. One of the great divides in life is between cat people and dog people, let me say that I'm really pleased that Lady Thatcher is on the right side of that divide!

Nightmare Alley

"Is it some quality of the crystal itself or does the gazer merely use it to turn his gaze inward"

Nightmare Alley is not an easily classifiable film- it deals with all sorts of topics from alcoholism to promiscuity to psychology to the con artists at a carnival. No statement can be taken to mean what you might think it does- this is a film in which everyone is a con artist, repeating each other's cons. Indeed the line I quote above recurs twice in the film- first mouthed by an old decaying drunk, secondly by the main character as he decays into drunkenness himself. Made by the Hollywood star Tyrone Power but supressed for years by a legal dispute, the film chronicles the rise and fall of the Great Stanton, a carnival magician who rises to become an artist at exploiting and manipulating the follies of upper class Chicagans. He uses a code with his wife to guess the content of questions, the way that she accents words and the way that she asks him what the questions are gives him the clue to perform an act of translation and tell his audience what the questions are even though he has not seen them. The Great Stanton is linked throughout his career to three women, a older woman Zeena who gives him the code, a younger woman, Molly, who he has an affair with and then marries and a psychiatrist Lilith whose information he uses to con wealthy clients.

The tale involves more than just mesmerism though. It is in part an inquisition into the principle of holding an immoral job. Stanton rises by fooling and lying his way through society for the good ends of others- he offers them consolations that they have no way of detecting as fakes. Stanton suggests to them that their dead loved ones are happy, that their futures are fortunate and that their lives are bound to improve. The only accurate predictions in this film though are pessimistic- Stanford sells his prescriptions like sugared sweets to children. By the end of the film though Stan is reduced to becoming a carnival Geek, the man who swallows live chickens and beetles, who performs every disgusting act in order to curl up in a dry corner with a bottle of whisky. As Stan tells the carnival operator who offers him the job, he was 'made for it'. The revelation though isn't a revelation- he has been a Geek throughout, prostituting what he enjoys to what he needs. He needs the corner and the whisky, and in a sense all his fraudulent activity has been committed throughout to providing what a Geek provides- entertainment at the price of indignity and immorality. This criticism of capitalism reduces all employment to geekdom- as Matt Sinclair argues it is other regarding but it directs itself to the deepest wells of human immorality, the desire to see a freak eating a live chicken, the desire for fake reassurance and accomplishes those ends through fraud, deception and degredation.

The quote I just mentioned above lends itself to a further examination of the film, for this film is also all about perception. Most of the characters speak endlessly about the truth- whether its the truth of a psychologist like Lilith or of a carnival girl who believes in God and tarot cards like Molly. Both the psychologist and the carnival people are in a profession that demands that they claim knowledge of the truth. In both cases the central idea is that they are lying, betraying the truth to convince the chumps with money that they are, as Stanton tells a client, like a prophet of old. Soothing truths like balm to wounded souls, become poison as the deception is revealed- or else remain merely potentially poisonous as the truth is not revealed. Ultimately at the heart of the carnival is a certain truth- in that Molly and the others actually believe to a certain extent in God and fortune, tarot cards and angels. Whether Lilith believes anything is another matter- she convinces people that they are mad to twist them to her own ends. And as for Stanton he unites his desires to his morality, wedding them together, he persuades himself that what he wants is good and those desires are too fraudulently deceive. There are no truths here which are immune from the huxter's profession, that every boy has a dog, that every human has desires and the point is to convince them of the truth that suits them, the truth that they want and not the truth that exists. In that sense capitalism creates the lie.

The movie is underwritten by a spiritualist position which sees that lie as important. The writer of the original book, Bill Gresham (married to Joy Gresham who later became C.S. Lewis's wife) evolved from being a communist to being a Christian- I to be honest couldn't swear as to where in his evolution the concepts of the book evolved from. But definitely here there is a very sexist view of women- masculine women are to be shunned, feminine women to be embraced and there are several indications that there is some reality behind spiritual phenomena. Furthermore in the character of Molly we are offered an alternative ethical vision to the capitalist, a vision of self denying, self sacraficing love as the pillar of existance. A love for one man that only acknowledges one other obligation, that to the moral code of the creator. The film cares so deeply about the lies its characters tell in the service of their careers precisely because it considers that the truth is important- leaving open the question of whether like me you disagree with the truth advanced, you can disagree that the lie is important.

The movie is Christian in one particularly interesting way- like most Christian philosophy it places a huge emphasis on relationships. The point of the film is that all of its relationships are corroded and broken up by the economic imperative of greed. Stanford goes through three women in the film. His first relationship he enters into with an older woman to get the code that she knows to con crowds of people. He sleeps with her for that code and in the end obtains it. But because its a fraudulent relationship as soon as he gets that code he discards her in favour of the girl he really loves, Molly. His relationship with Molly is broken by the fact that he Stanton refuses to live a good life. Molly in the end deserts him because of that- though at the end of the film when all his ability to do evil is destroyed there is an implication that she returns to him. Lastly there is Lilith, who uses him for her own ends- again its a relationship where there is real passion but again the passion is overlaid by greed and again that fact means that it is doomed.

What we see with Molly is a moral individual being held up to the light of the screen. That moral individual enables us to get some anchors in the world again- otherwise we might decay into hermiticism. The problem is that really the issue here is with other people and the distinction between appearance and reality. It brings back the argument between Rousseau and Smith. Gresham seems to argue that some kind of moral principle is neccessary to living with others- some kind of 'real' other regarding or 'real' sympathy. He doesn't define this and possibly he can't. The issue though that he exposes is less a positive vision than a negative one- it is that capitalism allows even constrains us to fake sympathy and morality in order to immoral and ultimately unsympathetic ends. Matt argues that capitalism promotes morality, what Gresham suggests is that it doesn't promote morality, it promotes the appearance of morality. His point is Rousseau's against Smith, that true sympathy is not created by capitalism, only a fake sympathy. People are regarded as objects to be deceived not as entities to be loved. In that way Molly though she too works in a deception is a true human being because she still loves, but she will never be as successful as Lilith is because she has a mark at which she stops her deceits.

If Nightmare Alley propounds a view of the world ultimately that view of capitalism is very very pessimistic. Unlike Matt, no watcher of this film can be sure that other regarding actions neccessarily proceed from a system in which your value depends on others, fraud and deception abound in the world of the film not merely in the world of the carnival. Indeed there are ways in which the carnival world is more moral than the world of the upper class caricatured in the second half of the movie. Molly's tricks are less repulsive than Lilith's partly because Molly has not been captured by her tricks, wheras Lilith wealthier and more selfish has. Personally I find the spiritual dimension of the film less convincing, that's partly I think because Gresham was moving between various positions and had not yet adopted one (I'm not sure what an orthodox Christian would think of Tarot Cards!) but also because the film doesn't really explore it- there are many things which could be spiritual but also could be purely natural. And one thing the film does teach you is to beware that there could be a huxter round every corner waiting to deceive you.

This is a fascinating film- and there is much more to it than just what I have written- as ever there are interesting things to think about here which I haven't touched on from sex to alcoholism and the nature of addiction. But central to it all I think is this perception of the corrosive influence of capitalism upon our habits, that living in an other regarding society can turn us all into fraudsters and destroy our closest relationships as we seek that popularity known as profit. The point is extreme and in its extremity wrong- not all employment is geekdom. But the point that capitalism undermines true sympathy is an accurate one- and the issue that that points to in morality is a central problem that we live with constantly. This is neither a Randian individualistic manifesto (we are looking for real sympathy and not to abolish sympathy) nor is it a particularly positive manifesto (these problems may be endemic). What it does though is offer a corrective to the too easy view that if an action is other regarding, it is sympathetic. Gresham and the director and actors suggest it isn't.

Ultimately capitalism at its worst turns us from relationships to dependance, from love to avarice and most importantly from truth to deceit. The film invites us to look into the crystal of the screen and perceive there the deformation of our own eye.

Ideology and Politics

Gary Kamiya argues at Salon that one of the consequences of the Bush administration is the ideological defeat of a certain strand of American Conservatism. Kamiya is not alone in doing such analysis- many political commentators have proved over the years surprisingly inept at describing ideological change- and particularly at predicting when it will happen. That is in part because as in Kamiya's case most predictions are actually aiming for persuasion and not prediction: the pundit argues that the national trend goes in a certain way because he wants others to follow that trend. Partly and this is the case here, the commentator overestimates the impact of either conventional wisdom today or of the reputation and competence of a particular political figure.

For example, the conventional wisdom today holds that George Bush was wrong to invade Iraq and would be wrong to invade Iran. Those are both perfectly legitimate opinions- indeed I myself incline to both of them- and yet they are opinions that may well be discredited by events. Conventional Wisdom in 2003 said the opposite and was wrong and it may well be as wrong today in predicting disaster in the Middle East should the present strategy continue. We may change our minds about this historical moment- it is difficult to see in the present hour through the fog of uncertainty- and it is worth remembering that Presidents before have been unpopular only to become popular later on. Harry Truman was hated when he left office- but now is lauded by everyone across party for his policies in the Cold War. That isn't to imply that Bush's reputation will neccessarily change- and too many on the right take comfort from the fact that reputations have changed in the past (some of course did not change- Lord North is still seen as an incompetent as he was at the time)- but equally its worth remembering that in ten years or twenty years time things may have changed.

One thing though will have changed and that is this. Ten years from now, George Bush will not be the most prominent conservative politician in America. In four years time, it will be someone else who is the big issue for the country heading into another Presidential election. Politics is an unforgiving business and once you are in the past, you are history. Bush therefore won't neccessarily still be the name the public associates with conservatism in the next twenty years- other figures will emerge. And that means that some of Bush's most egregious faults- his incompetence in particular will fade from the public consciousness. We should not mistake ideological decline for the decline of individuals within the political sphere- we should not mistake the temporary effects of a bad Presidency for something longterm. Afterall it is still very possible for a Republican to win in 2008. Furthermore it is not always bad Presidencies or Presidents that end ideological dominance- Warren Harding was one of the worst Presidents of the century and yet he was succeeded by two Republicans. Herbert Hoover may have been one of the best qualified but was faced by a crisis that he couldn't deal with and so it was with his Presidency that the Republican run ended and the Democrats took the White House for the next twenty years.

Political commentators tend in my observation to believe too much in hidden historical rules and moments of intellectual confusion. In truth there are defenders even of Bush's strategy in Iraq, something that should give us pause to think. Ideological change happens often on a much more personal level- one might think in the US for instance of the way that each President gives his party a temporary brand. Margerat Thatcher was indispensible to Conservative ideological change in the UK- no great force propelled her forwards, had Whitelaw or Howe been leader the history of the party and country might well have been very different. Its worth remembering the role of accident in all of this as well- history is a chaotic set of events- as chaotic as an individual life (and its worth remembering how chaotic one's life is- one of my best mates in the blogosphere is Ashok, I met him because I was searching for a post for a philosophy carnival I was running which was on a post 1900 philosopher, did a blogsearch for Heidegger and his blog came up). That being said some ideologies are obviously vulnerable to not providing an agenda which meets the needs of a particular moment- one wonders how a depression would change the consensus around globalisation- but we should be cautious. Mr Bush's departure will change America and American conservatism in particular, but the ways that it does that are not obvious even now- and would be very different depending on whether its President Huckabee, President Giuliani, President Clinton or President Obama in 2009.

Genius!

Well it had to happen- a management consultancy has come up with a list of geniuses for us to marvel at. Save of course, once you examine their methodology more critically what they seem to have done is to have worked out who were the most famous clever people in the world and come up with a list of them and then given them points on an arbitrary list and come up up with a list of the world's top geniuses. There is something slightly imperfect about this- a hole that gapes open before the idiots who did this survey- and that is quite simple. Knowledge has become so specialised that it is hard even for those who have completed undergraduate studies in an area to be accurately aware of the merits of work done by their academics or by specialists. As a historian moving from undergraduate to graduate work I observed this. And furthermore in subjects that I know little about- mathematics or physics I have no clue about how to compare the intelligence say of a Feynman and a Bohr or even whether they would play in the same league! This list furthermore is a disaster when it comes to art- many of the great artists of a particular period only acquire recognition later. Judging the world's literature and say putting Dario Fo in the top ten, when you don't have a panel that can read all the world's languages and tell us about them seems equally foolish. To publish a list like this furthermore implies that you only need to engage with ten people to engage with the whole world, like lists of the greatest novels or the greatest music, this is intellectual suburbanisation- if you only tackle this and this you have become learned. Sorry that's not true- lets put this list with all the others on a pyre and let the smoke carry a signal out that learning doesn't stop at the margins of a list, but begins with a canon and heads through canon after canon, on an everlasting quest for an eternally unreachable comprehension of everything of worth ever done or discovered.

Best Tabloid Headline

I have been memed again! [Expletive Deleted] Dave Cole (whose fantastic blog has a new address by the way now) decided to give me this virus, anyway the idea is to come up with the dream tabloid headline, so here's mine:

Asylum-seeker, Diana's ghost and Britney Spears in Threesome: House Prices Forecast to Fall!

I'm sure that there are many of you that could come up with a better- so why don't you go for it Thunder Dragon, James, Mutley and anyone else who fancies their hand at crafting something worthy of the Sun.

Incidentally another thought for the last couple of days- which links to an article I wrote at Bits about it (guess the story before you click the link), anyway here is the headline,

Who's Jorry now: Martin's a Smartin at Spurs!

Right now before I lose all my respect for myself and others- I must leave the banks of the fetid swamp- to all you readers who have blogs, have a go yourselves at this, its quite fun!

LATER Ok I've got the bug, but this is worth it, what about

Princess Diana ate my Hamster

Wonderful definition of the Abortion Debate

by Jon Stewart here about half way through,

Do you condone what some would consider rape to prevent what some would consider murder?