Rambo 4: the world's worst movie?

Some people think that there is no objectively bad art: well there is, its called Rambo and at 120 minutes long, it is 120 minutes too long. Put simply, nothing in this film is any good- a better budget means that it just passes the Hills have Eyes 2 in my refuse collection- but apart from that it has no redeeming features. Sylvester Stallone who stars in and directs this movie should be thoroughly ashamed of himself- he has stunningly managed to craft a film without the least shred of a redeeming feature, in which the contest for worst performance is only won by the actors playing the Burmese army because their depictions are comically racist, whereas his of Rambo is just comically crap. The film is awful- do not rent or buy this movie or go and see it- any popularity it gets demonstrates that Western civilisation is truly in trouble and deserves to decline and fall.

Rambo 4 tells the story of John Rambo, now out in Thailand strangling snakes for a living, who is hired by a group of Christians to escort them into Burma. He then is joined by a group of hired skinheads to go and rescue the said Christians from the Burmese prison camp in which they have been held. I'm sorry if this breaks the overwhelming suspense but Rambo does indeed rescue the Christians, just before the young pretty female one is about to be raped by an evil oriental (the wording is deliberate- this is a racist movie) and just as one of them is eaten by pigs- all the better to show you some graphic CGI blood, my friend. (Incidentally the budget for CGI blood was really large on this film, there are several wonderful CGI reconstructions of how a human body breaks up, wonderful apart from one fact, that they would be obvious to a one eyed village idiot!)

Sylvester Stallone in the title role acts badly, well that's inaccurate actually, he has one expression throughout the entire movie. When he is happy, Rambo scowls like a tough guy. Sad he scowls like a tough guy. Killing people he scowls like a tough guy. Even going home to a sentimental family reunion he scowls in exactly the same manner. He just scowls and stares- there is no hint here of growth or development in the character- when he, at the beggining of the film, is being unsuccessfully petitioned by the Christian group leader to take them down the river and when moments afterwards he is petitioned by the sexy girl to take them down the river, he looks exactly the same even though the lines show he has much more sympathy with the latter than the former.

Lines, yes, script. Ummm, most Hollywood films employ a scriptwriter. Sometimes they aren't that good. Art Monterastelli and Sylvester Stallone should never work again on dialogue or in films. The dialogue is incredible. Nobody speaks like they speak in this film. This is worse than a school play written by a bunch of five year olds. Poor Julie Benz has to at one point say "Maybe you've lost your faith in people. But you must still be faithfulto something. You must still care about something. Maybe we can'tchange what is. But trying to save a life isn't wasting your life, is it?" The lines don't really get better- but hey it doesn't matter because the quality of the acting would make up for the weaknesses in Sly's performance and the shit script, well they don't. Most of the actors get nothing to do- and when they do they do it badly. I never thought I'd see a worse Cockney tough guy than Vinnie Jones but Graham McTavish manages to make me regret they didn't cast a professional footballer in his role.

And as to the ethics of the film. Matt Sinclair thinks the film is pagan- I think Matt is being too kind by a long way. This film doesn't have an ethic beyond the utility of psycopathic murder- oh and the idea that its so much better to go in and kill people than be nice to them. Its an insult to paganism to describe the cretinous morality of the film as having anything to do with paganism. Mark Kermode got it right on Radio 5 recently- there is a lot of atrocity in order to make you feel happy when atrocious murders happen later on. The Burmese soldiers here have no character- they are just vicious thugs, who strip and rape girls (though only when Rambo turns up- so he can rescue her immediatly). They have no humanity. This is not a pagan film, this is a fascist film. It invites us to reject the other and enjoy the torture of the other. It wants us to enjoy the fact that the Burmese soldiers are killed in horrific ways. Furthermore the Burmese soldiers all have comedy evil sneers- this is racism combined with a revenge movie with the subtlety of a yob chanting insults. The film is filled with dodgy sexual imagery as well: its a paean to homosexual sado masochism (ah we're all brutish thugs together kind of thing) but its one female character is there as a literal adornment. She is a kind of Christian Scherahazde, good at persuading men with her sexy figure, but in battle or even in other scenes just too hysterical to be any use. Every time she is on the screen you can feel the film's sexism, and every time you see Rambo you can feel its prehistoric view of masculinity.

This movie is a disgrace- its the kind of film that did I not support free speech I would support laws against. It perpetuates the worst image of manhood around- the least interesting view of the world, the least interesting cinematographic skill, it is quite simply atrocious and has no redeeming image apart from its budget. This film is quite simply shit.

Crossposted at Bits of News.

The Political Compass

Courtesy of James, I just did this test for fun to see where I come out- this was the result

Economic Left/Right: -1.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.64

As always with such things, its imperfect but that actually captures my position- at least with regard to my segment- fairly accurately- I am quite surprised. On these kind of things I've ended up being told I beleive in all sorts of things- normally because the questions are badly drafted. Anyway have a go yourself...

There will be Blood: the loneliness of creating a nation.

I am still digesting 'There will be Blood' which I saw last night at the Odeon in Covent Garden. I am not entirely sure about what to say about the film- save that I agree with Roger Ebert's review that it is a portrait of madness. There is something else though that the film really is about: the creation of the United States- and I think those two themes- madness and creation- are tied together in this film in an interesting provocative way. Madness becomes the impulse towards creation- and authority follows the mad lust for gold or for oil.

In Citizen Kane, Mr Bernstein says to his interviewer that 'It's easy to make a lot of money, if that's all you want to do is make a lot of money.' He is talking about the banker Thatcher but also about Kane himself and the way that Kane didn't seek to make a lot of money but rather spent it. Kane afterall is the generation after the great oil profiteers and all of Kane's ambitions from running newspapers to running for office are aspirations within a civilised society. The interesting thing about this film is that it is set in the generation before Charles Foster Kane- the generation who made the wealth upon which Kane lived. The generation who were out in the oil fields and gold mines physically hewing out of the ground what turned into the fuel for the industrial super power that was the United States by 1920. This film begins with the end of the gold rushes of the 19th Century in the 1890s and ends in the great crash of 1929.

Its hero is a character who creates a civilisation therefore. We are in early California- a sparcely populated area of the United States whose population hovered around the million mark at the turn of the twentieth century. We don't see an officer of the government at all- and law out here is a cursory thing enforced merely in the buying and selling of land. Rather what we see is the two great traditional powers of pre-civil states- the Church and the coin. The Church is represented by Eli Sunday- a charismatic preacher who inspires his flock and purports to drive devils out of them and drive their illnesses away. The coin is represented by Daniel Plainview- our hero- whose hands and money are creating oil fields around the town- and in the Sunday ranch. His power is the sucking out of resources from the land- whereas Eli sucks out the inspiration from his parishioners. The two men are involved in a confrontation; a confrontation that takes us through the whole film. But its a confrontation that in many ways merely exemplifies the real underlying theme of the film- both men are utterly vicious and ruthless, both are willing to humiliate the other and both are unpleasant to the extreme- it is that unpleasantness that lies at the centre of the film.

Daniel Plainview is a hero. He is the kind of man who founds towns and schools- but he is also immoral and angry. He hates almost everyone in the world he confesses at one point. He has no friends- he even alienates, abandons and attacks his adopted son. He is also grows in madness through the film- his meglamonia becomes more and more pronounced as the film proceeds. His anger and loneliness reflect each other. This is the type of man who makes a state- the type of man who thrives when everything comes down to his own talents. Plainview is virtu personified- he shapes history by despising all of its frontiers- in many ways he mirrors the Russian oligarchs of today or the British industrialists of the 18th Century. What the film invites us to do is to judge him as a human being- to weigh him in the balance and find him wanting.

But it also invites us to observe his trajectory- as the inspired prospector turns from man into monster. It invites us to see the personal consequences of overbearing wealth- like Kane, Plainview ends up alone in Xanadu, alone in a palace of pleasures, strolling empty corridors and whipping out in drunken rages at subordinates or indeed anyone who comes near. That madness is born of loneliness: Plainview has created a nation, there is none like him. It seems to me watching the film that as the movie progresses increasingly Plainview has less and less to do with lives around him- the world of civility leaves him behind. By 1927 as the film ends, the world is made for men like his son, the Kanes of the world, who have adjusted to civility and its constraints- who don't murder in their rages, who don't drink whisky by the gallon, who don't hate the world and all who live in it. The last scenes of the movie are crucial because- and I won't let on to what happens, they bring Plainview's last rejection of any collegiality, any claim of affection, they show his final decline into madness- like Gloria Swansson at the end of Sunset Boulevard, the lights focus as the character dies.

Plainview's character evolves as the movie goes on- but he is always lonely and never demonstrates wide degrees of affection- possibly he does towards his son but mostly he seems impassive to others but emotional about himself. He is a competitive man- lives for and through competition- and that is his incentive to develop his oil wells. The same goes for the preacher Eli- who is also fueled by rage- a sublimated rage as opposed to Plainview's overt alcoholic rage. Both though are the type of man who forms a world, who creates a nation. This story is their story and it demonstrates the unattractiveness and the neccessity of that type of person. This review is incomplete because my thoughts about the film are incomplete- but ultimately there is something here of the loneliness, rage and hatred that fueled men who wanted to create power, to create states. That rage promoted by some old injustice, or as in this case inequality in settled society, leads to the creation of great things- at great personal costs. This film is not about present society because its not about civil society- it is about the creation of civil society. Its not about the brutality of capitalism or the brutality of evangelical christianity but about the brutality of both before the state- when gold and God are there to reinforce authority instead of existing within the bounds set by authority.

The roar and coat of the a lion is beautiful viewed from afar through the prism of history, but come up close and the blood dripping from its fangs and the loneliness of its supremacy are far less impressive.

The Conformist: Fascism's beauty and Liberalism's untidy charm

The Conformist has just been re-released in the UK- it was made in 1970, one of the first films of the Italian director, and now elder statesman of cinema, Bernard Bertolucci. It is about the career trajectory of a Fascist secret policeman in the Italy of the 30s and 40s, the reasons for his Fascism and the things that he has to do- including murder his old Professor- in order to maintain his career in the secret police. Its a fascinating film on many levels- for what it reveals about the cod-Freudianism of the 1970s for example- and it is a beautiful film, with some truly spectacular shots. It is this beauty which actually is the point at which the film reaches profundity and says something which is important about Fascism as a concept and conformity as an ideal. Bertolucci was trying to say something about the aesthetic of the movement in the 20s and 30s and also about the aesthetic of liberalism, he was trying to demonstrate to us something about different kinds of beauty and their political value and through the film, through the use of different shots to deal with different characters and the use of situation, he manages to demonstrate this approach.

The first scenes of the film involve mainly our fascist character, Marcello Clerici, crossing vacant corridors, saluting pristine guards etc. Dressed in a sharp suit, and moving at a comically fast pace, reminiscent of some film noir sequences- the character embodies a certain aesthetic. Bertolucci is keen to photograph Clerici's fascist period at oblique angles- in one sequence a car drive is photographed diagonally upwards from the wheel. He dwells on the long corridors and lines of the Fascist aesthetic. When Clerici meets his future wife, Giulia, she is dressed in a skirt which is crossed by black and white lines. You get the sense that the Fascist aesthetic is about forcing the natural curves of a woman's body into lines, into the strict artificiality of a political system. The point is of course that the same could be said of Clerici's conscience, he too is being forced from curves into lines, from complication into loyalty by dictatorship. You see the image repeated all over the place. Clerici's father confined to a mental asylum repeats a description of freedom endlessly, but repeats it in a stark void. A white prison, sanitised, whose benches stretch out in seemingly endless lines without a break for an individual to sit upon them. The white artificiality of the scene reminds us of the purification that Fascism involves- a single solution to every problem- and a diagnosis of madness for those who do not adhere exactly- for those that maintain their individuality.

However the film does not merely portray fascism, it also portrays liberalism. Clerici is sent by his Fascist bosses to assacinate his old Professor who lives in Paris. When he goes to see his old Professor, he goes with his newly wed wife, Giulia, and meets the Professor's wife, Anna. In reality the meeting with the Professor turns into a complicated sexual game- as Anna seduces Clerici and spiritually seduces Giulia, the Professor spiritually seduces Giulia and the two men fence ideologically. But the key point here is the conception of beauty. Counterposing Anna, in her classical dress- looking very like Anna Karina in Goddard, to Giulia in the first scene she appears in is intriguing and demonstrative (Giulia eventually ends up dressing like Anna more and more, a conversion to liberalism in sartorial form). Anna's dresses are elegant but they run with her body not against it- they emphasize her shape, they don't tyrannise over it. We could mention other things too- the aesthetic of the places that they go in Paris is again different to the aesthetic of the long corridors and lonely saluting functionaries of Italy. Firstly Paris is filled with people- people are always everywhere- even when the Professor's colleagues (and ideological sympathisers) escort Clerici to see him, these are people dressed not in uniform but their own style. Secondly Parisian architecture is not so bleak and linear- but curves and the spaces are confined.

Perhaps the most important element in which Paris and Italy differ in the film is sexual though. In liberal Paris sex is available and emotional. The sexual escape that Clerici finds with Anna is an expression of freedom, desire and emotional commitment. Clerici, Anna tells us is a coward, we know that though already for he is getting married in order to avoid sexual commitment. He is getting married precisely to fulfil the bourgeois ideal, a family uncontaminated with the dirt of sex, with the difficulties of emotional entanglement. For Clerici there is only the relationship with the prostitute and the wife- both of them clean of entanglement- both of which are endorsed by the Catholic priest in confession and both of which are imprisoning. Anna though and her husband offer something different: sex for them is something to be enjoyed, to be sensed and to be welcomed. The liberal aesthetic is liberating literally- and it is hedonistic. The Fascist aesthetic is repressive. Nowhere is this less evident than in a scene at the end of the Parisian phase of the movie. The four characters go to a dance and the two women- Anna and Giulia- dance together in an exceedingly sensual and sexual manner- they then lead a conga off from the dance hall, leaving Clerici and his fascist 'minder' alone together for a moment. Clerici walks into the middle of the hall and the conga returns surrounding him in his confusion. While everyone else in the room is filled with joie de vivre, Clerici is upset and confused by the spectacle of the joy of other people, by the liberating neglect of persona to fulfil personal happiness.

In a sense, Bertolucci offers us an aesthetic commentary on Orwell. Orwell, in 1984, tells us that for Julia and Winston Smith the ultimate act of liberation was no holds barred sex- the act in itself, purged of the misplaced purity that Big Brother granted it, was the ultimate revolution against totalitarianism. For Bertolucci, that much is true as well. But Bertolucci is making a more subtle aesthetic point- the Fascist aesthetic confines and requires conformity. Requires a man to marry a wife he does not love, to abandon the principal of enjoyment for a spurious sacrafice to the desires of society, requires strict linear fashion. The liberal aesthetic is more natural and based on pleasure- like C.S. Lewis's God, the Liberal is a hedonist at heart, promising pleasures evermore. The point of the film is not so much about the origins of conformity- as about its nature. Conformity by its very nature is forced and requires a human being to give up their own desire in pursuit of that which society offers- salutes, huge offices and long corridors. Bertolucci is keen to make us realise that of course this is suppression- the Fascists have mistresses- and it leads to unhappiness and to mental asylums confining those who talk of freedom. What it doesn't lead to is spontaneity, pleasure and happiness, what it doesn't lead to is all the quirky, difficult and different relationships that humans construct in order to help themselves live in comfort on this planet. What it doesn't lead to is the emotional entanglements of actual life- in attempting to reduce life, art and sex to the prism of perfection, it drains them of their meaning and imposes upon the world a falsehood that the world eventually cannot bear. The conformist finds a conga- an expression of undiluted pleasure- a scary revelation of the fact that pleasure is both spontaneous and untidy.

In the film, we see Fascism's endpoint as well as its beggining. The conformist uses that end point of course to reveal to the new authorities- a mob singing revolutionary songs- the Fascist careers of others. But in reality he has not changed- he has not discovered the essence of liberalism- the spontaneous untidiness of life, rather he wants to force people into a new line. Unforgiving he is the puritan inquisitor, the communist show trial prosecutor, the fascist secret policeman, forever worried about what society demands as social or sexual or aesthetic tithe. But he cannot acheive either happiness or spontaneity!

Film Classification

Over at the cornerstone blog, Julian Brazier, the Conservative MP, has called for a tightening of the law on Video Nasties. He describes his bill in this passage

My bill aims to make the British Board of Film Classification accountable to Parliament. It would give a Parliamentary committee the power to review and veto key appointments and the guidelines the BBFC works to. It would also introduce a new Parliamentary appeal against videos - at the moment the only appeals allowed are by the industry in favour of them. In Australia anyone can appeal.

I can see what he wants to do and appreciate why. Films have an effect on their audience- and if they didn't, they wouldn't be made. I have said before that I think we worry far too much about sex and too little about violence in the cinema- but also Mr Brazier needs to worry about context. I've said before that in some films violence is clearly indefensible but in some films, it is neccessary to make a point or to illustrate something that I need to see. For instance, the film Downfall is so powerful because it shows the violence produced as a result of Hitler's unreal refusal to surrender, Saving Private Ryan's realism illuminates the horrors of even a virtuous war, Goodfellas demonstrates the poverty of life as a mafiosi through the use of violence: other films use graphic sexual content to make points- I've just seen the Bertolucci film- the Conformist- where the sexual relations between a man and his wife and mistress illustrate the fundemental realities of Fascism. Context is all important in deciding what kind of violence or sexual image is being used and whether it should be banned.

But is Parliament the right place to handle this kind of issue. Mr Brazier forgets, what Conservatives in the past would never have forgot, that Parliament has defects as well as perfections. MPs often react on the basis of an emotive tabloid headline and not from a reasoned appreciation of the issues. Furthermore Parliament is overloaded with business at the moment- it often spends far too little time on major issues- and probably wouldn't have the time to really consider this kind of thing adequately. Parliamentary oversight, if it meant anything, could easily lead to a more puritanical restatement of what we already have- which is not the direction I think we need to go in. I think we need to adjust the balance between violence and sex and also need to adjust the balance against purposeless nudity or violence on screen- Parliament is more likely to keep the balances the same in all instance and tighten up. And furthermore it is likely to do that on an adhoc basis- paying attention only when the media pays attention. There is a whole argument about standards of censorship- but I'm not sure that Parliament is the appropriate place to make decisions about the minutiae or hear appeals.

Furthermore in setting guidelines, I think its right to err on the side of liberty. The problem is that MPs are more likely to err on the side of caution and make the guidelines stricter than they need be. I wonder whether the natural authoritarianism of politicians and the press might create a real problem here of censorship- it would be a real loss if for instance Casino or Goodfellas were not allowed to be shown in the UK because of the decision of various members of Parliament. Of course this is an argument against all regulation- and it doesn't work all the time- but speech is a central and important freedom, without which democracy becomes difficult to secure. It isn't easy to censor speech- that's why personally I prefer a voluntary code that says more about who can watch a film (depending on age) than on what everyone should watch. This is not an easy issue- but I'd prefer that we have to endure a couple Hills have Eyes Two, if the choice is between that and Parliamentary regulation of what can be said on film, lets err on the side of free speech.

Anne Boleyn

I haven't seen the Other Boleyn Girl yet, but as an early modernist I suppose I'm obliged to at some point! I do think though that its interesting that its this aspect of Anne's story that we highlight in drama and in movies- the recent Henry VIII series on the BBC was similar. Anne Boleyn for those who don't know successfully managed the transition from being Henry's queen's lady in waiting to Henry's mistress to his wife and queen. But in a way that's the least interesting thing about her: Boleyn was an incredibly interesting woman in her own right, without thinking about her connection with Henry. She was a patron of the careers of many Protestants at Henry's court- and though we don't know how much influence she had on Henry's policy in the Reformation, there is a good case for saying that she was one of the drivers behind the Reformation. She was also an incredibly intelligent woman- Henry was attracted by her intelligence at first but then repulsed by the fact that she refused to bow to him all the time, by her temper and her sharpness. Her fall which flowed from her character and her enthusiasm for Protestantism in some ways is much more interesting than her rise- pretty women attract compliments and royal patrons all the time- but Anne wasn't just a pretty woman, she was an intelligent, skilful player of the court game, with an ideological coterie around her of radical protestants and a strong temper and sense of herself. I doubt we'll see that in the movie (except maybe as a negative and an adjunct to her charm)- and I do think its interesting that whenever you see this queen displayed on screen, her sexiness is emphasized at the expense of her intelligence. Partly that's because cinema likes a pretty body more than an interesting mind- but partly one suspects a residual sexism in the way that we approach Anne. We don't see the intelligent woman, as much as the sexy schemer.

Artistic Beauty

An interesting article in today's Boston Globe makes me re-think the whole concept of artistic beauty. We often think that artistic beauty is an objective standard: that there are some things, a landscape by Constable or Van Gogh that just have as part of their inherent nature, beauty. That's true to an extent. The article in the Boston Globe though draws attention to research that casts doubt on the status of artistic judgement or rather on what it is actually judging. The study involved people judging the respective merits of various types of wine- the people were invited to rank the wines in order to merit. They did, and the orders of merit followed the prices that they were told that the wine cost, but what the scientists didn't tell them was that all the wine cost exactly the same ammount because they were exactly the same wine. Consequently the right judgement was that the wine had the same degree of merit because it was the same wine.

But why did people judge it differently? Well lets go backwards a little, why do we find anything artistic beautiful. Its quite clear why I find a beautiful woman beautiful (and others might find a beautiful man beautiful)- there is a clear evolutionary reason and though types of beauty change over time, I don't need to be taught that. But I do need to be taught about art, about music and about wine. We all learn about that, whether its through school, the guides at museums or art galleries or even friends and families- our taste is inherited from other people. And our taste is a way of communicating with other people- we tend to respect people who see the same piece of art in the same way as we do. I do it with books: one of my best friends from Oxford is a friend who I realised I had to know when she spoke about how much she loved Jane Austen. Many of my other friends are friends because of what they and I mutually like- that I'm sure is true of some of the readers of this blog and some of the blogs I also visit regularly. Shared appreciation is a means of communication.

So lets come back to the wine. To what extent are we, when we respond to art, responding not so much to the art, as attempting to say something about ourselves. There are genuine likes and dislikes- we all have them. Part of those likes and dislikes are disagreements about what in the real world constitutes a desirable value- your well written sentence and mine may be different entities. You may applaud say William F. Buckley's perambulations through language, I may like the plainer style of George Orwell. The point though is that to some degree our artistic judgements are also social. They are judgements about conventions. In that sense the people, who were studied by the scientists in the study reported by the Boston Globe, acted perfectly rationally. Price is a conventional market of quality- it is what a person will agree to pay for something and the higher the price, the higher the conventional merit assigned. So when I say to you that conventionally this wine is thought to be better than this, there are strong reasons for you agreeing. As recognising artistic beauty is in part a means of showing you 'get it', then recognising the beauty of the higher priced wine and its superiority to the lower priced wine, shows that you 'get it' and are part of the group that 'gets it'.

I'm not suggesting that all judgements like this are social judgements- just that in part they all are. What is interesting about this study is that it shows how far the idea of artistic beauty is a language with which we demonstrate our taste and personality to others. Its a signifier of what we beleive ourselves or want ourselves to be.

Now ain't the time for your tears: Orlando Figes's The Whisperers

Sofia Antonov-Ovseyenko was arrested on 14th October 1937, she wrote a letter to her husband Vladimir, not knowing that he too had been arrested on the same day.

M[oscow] 16/X. Prison
My darling. I do not know if you will receive this, but somehow I sense that I am writing to you for the last time. Do you recall how we always said that if someone in our country was arrested it must be for good reason, for some crime- that is for something? No doubt there is something in my case as well but what it is I do not know. Everything I know, you know as well, because our lives have been inseperable and harmonious. Whatever happens to me now, I shall always be thankful for the day we met. I lived in the reflection of your glory and was proud of it. For the last three days I have been thinking through my life, preparing for death. I cannot think of anything (apart from the normal shortcomings that differentiate a human being from an 'angel') that could be considered criminal either in relation to other human beings or in relation to our state and government... I thought exactly as you thought- and is there anybody more dedicated than you are to our party and country? You know what is in my heart, you know the truth of my actions, of my thoughts and words. But the fact that I am here must mean that I have committed some wrong- what I do not know... I cannot bear the thought that you might not believe me... It has been oppressing me for three days now. It burns inside my brain. I know your intolerance of all dishonesty, but even you can be mistaken. Lenin was mistaken too it seems. So please believe me when I say that I did nothing wrong. Beleive me, my loved one... One more thing: it is time for Valichka (Sofia's daughter) to join the Komsomol (youth Communist party). This will no doubt stand in her way. My heart is full of sorrow at the thought she will think her mother is a scoundrel. The full horror of my situation is that people do not beleive me. I cannot live like that... I beg forgiveness from everyone I love for bringing them such misfortune... Forgive me my loved one. If only I knew that you beleived me and forgave me! Your Sofia

Reading that letter, I do not know of any conceivable human reaction but to weep. But of course the fate of Sofia was the fate of millions of Russians, arrested and taken to Labour camps and some of them shot, during the Stalinist terror of the 1930s and 1940s. Orlando Figes, the British historian of Russia, has produced in his new book an account of their lives, particularly the lives of Russia's 'twentieth century' generation who were born in the twenties and lived into the nineties and 2000s. These children lived through the destruction of their parent's lives through the purges, fought in the Second World War, lived through the resumption of Stalinist terror in the forties, then were disorientated by the Kruschev thaw and retired as the Soviet Union trembled and collapsed in the eighties and nineties. The average age of the people that Figes interviewed in coming up with his latest book- The Whisperers was eighty- and his team interviewed them in 2002.

The book takes the form of a series of thematic chapters based around time periods or types of experience under Stalin. What Figes has done is to leave the contemporary accounts to speak for themselves. This is as much a collection of documents as a history- it is a history because Figes provides a compelling narrative, but the long quotations and Figes's approach which is to provide personal stories and accounts of moments of the Soviet past, gives that historical account a wonderful vividness. Again and again, you think that you cannot see a grimmer reality, time after time the barbarity of the Stalinist regime stuns you. For example, at one point during the war, those who turned up 20 minutes late for work were prosecuted for desertion from the domestic front. Tragic stories multiply and following families through the Soviet era you see how unending suffering repeated generation unto generation. Particularly sad though is not the direct destruction of lives: but the realisation that around everyone who went into the machinery of death left behind them mothers, daughters, sons, husbands, fathers, wives and other family members. Family members who immediatly acquired a stigma to their names- but who also lost their family member. Children in particular were left as orphans, often waking up one morning without parents and struggling to continue in schools. Teachers emerge as the heroes of Figes's story. Ida Slavina lost her mother and father, within five months both were arrested. From then on, she was passed round between the families of her classmates, eventually she found a job as a cleaner and worked there in order to raise the money to rent a small room. She was assisted by her teacher Klavdiia Alekseyeva. Klavdiia stopped anyone denouncing 'enemies of the people' in the classroom and noone was expelled for their parents' arrest at school, she sought to inspire her pupils by telling them their parents wanted them to continue at school. In some cases she directly supported them, for example she paid eleven children's school fees so they could continue to stay at school.

Relationships between people changed as a result of the terror. Many prisoners when eventually released just could not come back to families. The terror went on as the pace of urbanisation was raised. Often several families were packed into small living quarters. There was effectively no privacy and the realisation that anyone might inform on you, meant that families kept themselves to themselves. Guarding their portion of the kitchen sink intensely and not speaking to each other about anything that might give them away. In a society where you might be arrested for an anti-Soviet joke, it was not worth saying anything to anyone else. Children were brought up implicitly to keep secrets about their parents, conversations would stop or change direction if someone not from the family came into the room. Figes shows how people were thrown back on their families: for fear that others might hand them into the secret police. Though even families might split- he has stories of children being sent away as their parents were arrested and seeing aunts and uncles shut doors in their faces, terrified of being seen as an enemy of the people. The society of whisperers that was created- hence the title of the book- was a society where private life had to retreat. Everything according to the state was public: and that meant that people withdrew into their internal world- sometimes scribbling diaries in code- in order to protect themselves from being arrested.

Figes's book is a masterpiece because it sketches the unknown, to me, dimensions of this totalitarian silence. But he also sketches its development. The Second World war brought a new kind of liberty and solidarity. The state had to relax its controls. Priests for example were allowed to function once more and prisoners in the Gulag had their conditions relaxed slightly. Many children of enemies of the people were permitted to take up key jobs in order to aid the war effort. Those who had been purged felt useless and suddenly the war gave them a sense of purpose- their contribution they often said was to work hard in the Gulag, to work hard in the army. This kind of sentiment made the war a uniquely liberating experience for the Soviet population- whilst of course being horrific in its other effects. But the forties saw another burst of repression as again people were rounded up and taken into the Gulag. Figes wonderfully creates through the testimony of the individuals who he documents the sense that persisted right through to the present day, that someone was following them and that somehow any period of grace would be ended. Its something that endures today. It definitely effected the population's understanding of the Kruschev thaw as well- and the population were right because under Brezhnev Stalin was rehabilitated. The Soviet state was also very keen not to rehabilitate those it had arrested unjustly. Rehabilitation did happen in the 1950s, and many especially Communist party members desired it fervently: to have a clean passport was something that everyone wanted, because it was a signal that they would not be arrested again. But even then the sense persisted- a population lived with a paranoia about the state, about everyone else in their society sometimes even about their own children.

'One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic', that quote is attributed to Stalin, and it sums up something that is actually very true. What I found particularly poignant about Figes's book is that he brings alive some of those individual stories- some of those tragic stories. Bob Dylan's song about the death of Hattie Carroll told us repeatedly that now ain't the time for your tears as his story dived further into tragedy, this book feels like on every page it has written that now ain't the time for your tears. The stories just stand on each other, one after the other, and the immensity of Stalin's crimes is demonstrated because though we only have a fraction here of the estimate of his effects, we can see the devastation of what he did. Bringing to life these personal stories creates for me at least a much more real sense of what those statistics mean. It also creates a sense of the historical scale of what happened- for the consequences of the Stalinist terror doubled and redoubled down the generations. Millions were imprisoned which meant that millions of children grew up as orphans effectively, millions of relationships were damaged, millions of lives were destroyed, millions of families were left with a traumatic memory of fear and terror. A French psychologist travelling to Russia in the 1970s said he had never seen a population with so many facial tics- he wasn't wrong, I suspect just as the effect of the first and second war endures in the rest of Europe, the effect of the terror endures in Russia. But much more profoundly because the tyranny which created the terror lasted right up until the 1990s- though there were thaws, the Communist party remained in control till Yeltsin and under President Putin efforts are being made to rehabilitate Joseph Stalin and deny the purges. (One reason why I cannot abide or support Putin, is the thought that he wants Russian textbooks to under report the Terror, having read this testimony I'm not sure what words can convey how objectionable Putin's comments about exageration of the Stalin regime's evil are.)

I don't think I can convey the immense nature of what this book does- Figes's reporting isn't central to it, he has done a good job but its a self effacing job. Ultimately the quality of the book is in the collection of primary evidence about the Terror and how it effected people- there are so many other aspects to it as well- he concentrates on the Kulaks and the way they were stigmatised for no reason, on the role of women and the Spartan lives of the early Bolsheviks compared to the new generation of Bolsheviks coming through in the thirties. I just don't have space. But I do have space to say this- go back and read the letter with which I began this review, reread it and remember that millions of Russians in the 1930s could have and did write letters like that. Many of them like Sofia who were committed communists, others who weren't but all incredulous that they had been arrested because they were not guilty. Some of them though lied, they told their children as they went that they weren't guilty so that their kids could fit into Soviet society. Remember that, oh and remember that many Russian citizens only found out what had happened to their arrested family members in the eighties and nineties when the archives were finally opened: wives waited twenty or thirty years for husbands who had been shot the night that they were arrested. Remember and remember that every time you remember, now ain't the time for your tears, there is so much more to remember and to weep over.

Unproductive work

James Higham rightly points to some ludicrous research investigations- into whether men and women differ evolutionarily in the ways that they perceive colour or into the ways in which owning a cat reduces heart disease or an over consumption of marzipan leads to death- in one of his latest articles. I do agree with James that there are some areas of research, particularly in the humanities that I don't understand, but it is worth remembering that research that often looks useless can turn out to be anything but. Much research activity in the sciences and arts that has looked useless in the past actually turned out to be very useful in the end. One of the inventors of chaos theory for example, used to love taking planes to random places, just in order to look out the window and sketch cloud formations. Fractals, an underlying part of current mathematics, were invented in 1917 before they could ever actually be used or tested. Research is a fairly hit and miss activity and an anomaly, which seems trivial, may be a way into a subject which leads eventually to the discovery of a new way of thinking. Take the cat research that James laughs at, he might well be right to laugh at it, but say that I generated through that a way of understanding companionship to have physical and neurological results which ultimately saved people's life and enabled us to understand the human organism in a better way, would he be laughing then?

I am not saying James is wrong to question all this, just its worth bearing in mind the ways that research can often be productive even when to an outsider it seems stupid or perverse. There are every day things which once established- say the chemicals inside marzipan and what it is that kills a human being when over consumed- that can help us in solving other more inaccessible problems. Going from a different angle, often elucidates things that others don't understand and its always worth asking why a certain piece of research is being done before rejecting it immediatly.

Eastern Promises

David Cronenberg is one of Hollywood's leading figures at the moment. The History of Violence, his last film, is a truly astonishing piece of work that stars Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello. It examines the ways that people are not what they seem and family life masks all sorts of compromises between violence and civility. Eastern Promises is another film about the dark underbelly of life- again Mortensen is a figure trapped between civility and darkness, violins and violence- and again Cronenberg wants us to examine the way that we live our lives and what lies just beyond our vision, round the corner, out of sight, behind our backs, in the dark crannies of consciousness. He wants us to remember that everywhere you go, a rat is only 6 metres away from you, despite the cleanliness of the surfaces you are eating off, there are rodents in the dark chewing at the things you throw away.

Cronenberg's canvass is wider in Eastern Promises. It is London- the city of immigrants- in many ways the defining city of our era. London is my city- and its wonderful to see a director use it as his canvass, without needing to provide Big Ben and the monumental architecture of neo-Gothic Victorians. Rather Cronenberg focuses on London as it really exists- or it really exists alongside that other existance in Westminster- the London of the East End, of Brixton and of suburbia. Its this London, filled with resturants, bars, drab barber shops and costcutter supermarkets, windy and rainy and dirty that he focuses on. Its a London filled with immigrants from every nation on earth, selling their own food and drink, socialising amongst themselves, talking in their own languages, and communicating with the wider society as well.

The sense of this city's social architecture and the way that so many groups co-exist on its fringes owes something to films like Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. Here, as in Goodfellas, we see a family involved in the mob from an ethnic minority that essentially runs that community inside London. There is a patriarch, Semyon and his objectionable son Kiril. Into this world comes Naomi Watts's Anna. Anna turns up in their world because as a midwife in a hospital she delivered a child from a mother- this child was different though because the mother died without providing any data to recover who she was. And Anna therefore embarks on a search to find out who the baby is and where its relatives live- a search which takes her directly into the world of the Russian mafia and into the lives of these three characters, Semyon, his son Kiril and his driver (played by Mortensen).

The stage is set, and it would be unfair to tell the rest of the plot, suffice it to say that several murders are involved, that there is copious reference to the illegal world of smuggling and of prostitution and that the solution to it all is complex and allows us to reevaluate at least one of the major characters. Its a stunning film. The acting in particular is good. Mortensen has never been better- or rather if you have only seen him as Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings, you have missed out on his extraordinary work for Cronenberg. He has such presence on screen that its difficult to take your eyes off him and he inhabits his character entirely. Watts again is an actress of real class, she has done it before (Mullhulland Drive is one of the best performances by any actress for years) and though the part doesn't require extraordinary work, she does what she is required to do.

In my judgement this isn't up there with the History of Violence, there is something slightly more random and slightly more normal about this film than about that masterpiece where an innocent world just blew up in front of you. But its still well worth seeing- this film shows us a real cinematic intelligence striving with a very contemporary issue. The way that our societies have become fractured and separated and the way that even in a small space like London, stories of unbelievable brutality may be happening just next door or down the street without you knowing. In part this is a fable of urban life- a Jack the Ripper de nos jours- reminding us that these are mean streets and the key to this film is that you have to be mean in part to walk down them yourself.

The Peshawar Spring?

There has been a lot of euphoria about Pakistan's election results- see for example here. And there is lots to be euphoric about- the extremists have been routed as have the military and liberal democratic parties seem to have won the polls. But lets not get over exuberant. Pakistan still has a long way to go before it becomes a liberal democracy- and furthermore we have been here before with all the parties involved. Both Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto (now dead whose husband, Asif Ali Zardawi, nicknamed Mr. 10% for his corrupt activities when she was last Prime Minister) had had goes at ruling Pakistan and neither made a particularly good fist of it before. It was under Benazir that the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, it was under Sharif that they cemented that power. Furthermore both parties have until now, hated each other, accusing each other, rightly, of corruption. We should not imagine such attitudes are going to be dropped.

Pakistan's problems go much further than a one-off election can resolve. Good government is a part of liberal democracy as well democratic institutions. Take one example, last year when the earthquakes hit northern Afghanistan, the effort, as File on 4 (the radio 4 documentary program) found to help many of the poor caught in the tragedy was organised by religious charities with political connections to terrorist organisations. Radical Islam was being spread by aid. That's a function of the fact that the Pakistani state is weak in many parts of its territory. Under 50% of the population are literate and under 40% of women are literate (according to the CIA). Debt is still over 50% of GDP. Its terrifying to think of the prospects for a democratic regime where only 49% can read election literature and in some regions that will be far lower. Furthermore the government to come faces real problems- how to diminish public debt, how to cope with a fall in the US economy (a fifth of Pakistan's exports go to the US, a twentieth go to the UK, so a fall in those two economies could prove disastrous), how to cope with the Taliban and the tribal areas? Furthermore what will any future administration's relations be with the army and with President Musharraf? Sharif was not a success as Prime Minister- and the leadership of Bhutto's old party is still confused.

I'm not saying that the elections in Pakistan weren't a good thing- they were. But lets reign back on the euphoria. Pakistan is going to need a hell of a lot of luck and help and aid to acheive a proper stable democracy any time soon. Furthermore its going to need patience from its allies- should we as Senator Obama reccomended invade to kill militants, then we could risk making any government in power even more unpopular. Pakistan is a vast place. There are areas which are incredibly peaceful. There are other areas where it is less so. Part of the problem for us as Westerners looking at Pakistan is to remember how vast and how complex it is- and also to try and keep sober. Not everything in as disastrous as it seems, not everything is as great as it seems. There are signs of hope in Pakistan, but to turn this into a real Peshawar Spring will require many more years of luck yet.

Action Aid

A mate of mine who runs an advertising company is working for someone called Action Aid- who campaigns to regulate the places that supermarkets buy food. Anyway the campaign's objectives are good- to regulate the way that supermarkets treat their suppliers and in particular the way that the workers for those suppliers are treated. Anyway here is me, Tiberius Gracchus, explaining it in a funky banana costume (so much better than a page of print!)...

Action Aid's website is here, and other videos are here.

Debasing the Currency: the Decline of Political Journals

Don Paskini is right when he says that in general British political weeklies are not in an amazing state. My own view for what it is worth is that only the Economist, for its breadth, and Prospect (occasionally), for its depth, are worth reading (I disagree on the first with the Don)- the New Statesman is the same standerd as what you get in the Comment section of the Guardian every day, and the Spectator is about the same with respect to the Telegraph. One cause, as Paskini rightly argues, is that comment is now truly much freer. The internet allows you to surf sites that will beat the regular journals out of the ground- just by reading Matt Sinclair, James Hamilton, Chris Dillow, Vino Sangripillai, Unity, you can easily read as many quality articles in a day as are put out by the major journals and on as wide a variety of subject. I chose the five bloggers above to reflect what I mean- just take a brief look across them, Matt gives you political thought, James takes one area of society and provides rigorous analysis, Chris is one of the best economists out there in the blogosphere, Vino looks at all sorts of stuff briefly but often interestingly and Unity is the man for sweeping long investigations- by reading those five and more like them, you get everything you would want from a magazine that costs you a fiver (and that's in the immature British blogosphere, in the American the mind boggles as to the ammount of quality stuff)! Competition has drained the unique nature of the magazine and makes the Olympian look less austere.

But the magazines are less austere in themselves. You see ultimately all of us have day jobs, whilst the writers from the journals don't and therefore could be distinguished by specialist knowledge and research and to some extent in the Prospect and Economist that is what you get. But that is not always true. Journals have been killed in many ways by their own successes. Its interesting for example to read Byron York's essay on the American Spectator and wonder about the applicability of its doctrine more generally. York argued that the American Spectator had been killed by getting a burst of readers from a set of scoops about President Clinton: the journal bet that the scoops would continue and that the increased numbers would continue and it changed its nature and eventually it was destroyed by that change, in spectacular ways. Now noone in the UK publishing industry is being so foolish, but sometimes I wonder if in a more minature version that kind of thing is happening to the New Statesman and the Spectator in particular.

Take for example the most recent episode at the New Statesman. The journal published a poorly researched article from a journalist under the thesis that global warming had stopped: shortly after it published a rebuttal from its environmental editor. But that wasn't before the original article had caused a storm on the net and furthermore had undermined the magazine's reputation. You can imagine though the thought which led the editors to want to publish the original flawed piece- even though it was awful, it would create a buzz and a buzz is what leads to journals getting readers and hence money. The business plan seems to be to shock someone into buying the magazine in question. That means that often the quality of the article in question is neglected in the cause of its shock value. Whether that is a successful longterm strategy, I'll leave others to consider, but essentially the Spectator and New Statesman have sought to create larger readerships or to stop the decline in their readerships by getting people to sit up and notice. And its not a recent phenomena: the reason I decided never to buy the Spectator again was when they carried an item at some point in the nineties about the political preferences of the Spice Girls. The intrusion of more competition means that for the journalist its easier to rely on what they have (and what others definitely don't have- with a few exceptions) the story and to neglect analysis which its harder to be good at. In a sense the reason to read the journal becomes the inside knowledge that the journalist has, that none of us has. Whereas analysis is found elsewhere. Journalists do that because its easy in part, and because its an easy distinction to spot. I have never met Tony Blair, they have.

You see when I and Don Paskini complain about the major journals, I suspect we are really talking past their editors. What I want from a journal is something I cannot get from a blog- an involved, well written, thoughtful analysis done at a perspective. Something longer than a blog article, but shorter than a think tank report. Something digestible in ten minutes. And I want it written by someone who knows the subject, who may not be known to me, but who has worked on something for years and is telling me what they know about it: something like the TLS for example but about politics. What I get from the journals is hooraying for either side (something that I'm quite capable of imagining on my own or consuming from the papers, news or blogs) or gossip. Often in the New Statesman and the Spectator its gossip which takes itself seriously- the Peter Oborne school of journalism finds a trend in a government and proclaims the age of the lie or some such nonsense- and that reflects the desire the distinguish the magazine from the newspaper. That's why increasingly its the comment sections that the journals look like. I don't know that that is a viable business plan- to be distinct from your blogging competitors because you are in Westminster and they aren't and to be distinct from your newspaper competitors because you offer a facile kind of analysis. What I do know is that its not what I want from a journal, I'd prefer them to have people working on each article for three weeks and telling me something new- but then I'm not the consumer they want and nor I think is Don Paskini.

Ultimately I want analysis- and with a few notable exceptions there seem to be few journalists out there willing to provide anything that hasn't been said three thousand times before. The Decline of the Journal is a result of the Decline of Analysis and that proceeds out of many different forces within our society- market forces, both in terms of how journalists want to work and what they think their consumers want them to produce.

Barack Obama- Communist

Yes apparantly. Because according to Lisa Schiffren over at the National Review, there are two quite obvious reasons to think someone is a communist. One is that they go out with someone with another race and even marry them: it stands to reason that they must be a goddamn commie- and if they are the kid of an interracial marriage that's even more true- afterall when you run for office, its legitimate to begin investigating everyone back to your forefather's forefather.

It is a terrible piece of journalism and illustrates to me that this isn't going to be a pleasant campaign- the knives are out. This is McCarthyism of the worst kind- its deeply unpleasant and should have no place in political journalism. Lisa Schiffren should be sacked by the National Review.

The Man who shot Liberty Valance and the Story of America: Republican Solitude to Democratic sociability

John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart came together in 1962 to make with John Ford, the Man who shot Liberty Valance. The posters advertised the fact that the two great actors of the Western had been united together in one film- what they didn't say was that here we see the two actors as opposites, opposites that reflect the earlier histories of their careers and the history of the United States. Ford showed in the film how America had in the course of the early twentieth century chosen a future and a way forwards and had neglected and destroyed its past. In that sense the Man who shot Liberty Valance, a flawed film because in part it is too didactic (and in part because of the age of its stars- both Stewart and Wayne were in their late fifties when the film was made and don't quite come off as fresh faced heroes) is an extended meditation on the American frontier and its place within America. Far from being the society of the frontier, America, Ford implied, was the society that had turned its back on the frontier and the West and its future was the East coast.

The situation in Ford's film is not difficult to understand. On a windswept night, before the coming of the railway, a young lawyer, played by Stewart, called Ransom Stoddard comes into down on a stagecoach. The coach is held up by a gang of desperadoes, led by Liberty Valance (played by Lee Marvin) and Stewart's naive insistance that Valance live by his coscience ends with him getting beaten up. He arrives at town a couple of days later and settles down in the town cafe. The family there care for him. In town he meets a couple of key characters- a cowardly marshall (Andy Devine doing what Andy Devine was great at doing), a drunken, unstable and yet brilliant journalist, a girl called Hallie and her lover Tom Doniphon. Doniphon is the only one who can physically stand up to Liberty Valance, the outlaw, and protects Stoddard on various occasions. Stoddard arrives at the very moment that Valance is being used by the neighbouring big farmers to stop the territory applying to join the United States (which would dilute their powers). By educating the people of the town, Stoddard persuades them to vote for statehood against the farmers and eventually that leads directly to a confrontation between Stoddard and Valance and the revelation of the man who really did shoot Liberty Valance. Stoddard gets the girl (Hallie) and ends up a senator. Doniphon tries to kill himself and almost succeeds and his life after that moment is wasted and consumed in dissapation.

Stewart and Wayne are here playing roles that they had constructed over the previous thirty years of their careers. Stewart had been playing naive democrats who triumphed over circumstances since the 1930s- he had diversified in the late 40s and 50s working for Alfred Hitchcock and making Westerns- but those earlier parts in films such as Mr Smith goes to Washington still resonated. Wayne too had monopolised the tough westerner, grim and complicated. His earlier work in the Searchers is a great example of this aspect of Wayne. For Ford, placing them together, enabled him to balance two perceptions of America's past: the democratic and civic and the wild frontiersman. But the film represents less an examination of those two ideas than the examination of the decline of the second and the rise of the first. There is no sense that Doniphon would ever move East, but its significant that Stewart's character follows the advice of Horace Greeley to 'go west, young man' and conquers the minds of the people of the town.

Conquest and violence are motifs running through the film. When Stoddard arrives in town, Doniphon tells him he has to get a gun to resist Liberty Valance. That advice is repeated again and again. But the real conquest here is the conquest of Doniphon's territory by Stoddard. Through education, the townsmen seek to exclude Valance by election and law, not self defence. Stoddard offers Hallie the gift of reading, Doniphon offers her a house that he built himself, and Hallie chooses the teacher over the practical man. Through publicity, Stoddard's reputation conquers and effaces Doniphon's. After the progress of several years, noone can remember the great Doniphon, whereas everyone from the moment he arrives recognises and remembers Stoddard. The pen triumphs in this film over the sword (despite the fact that the only resolution that can work with Valance relies on a quick and calm hand on a gun). The pen though obliterates those that use the sword: Doniphon's virtue is forgotten and Stoddard's is remembered.

America has changed. Doniphon of course is independent of anyone else. He constructs and destroys himself. Stoddard is dependent on others for his own safety and his own approval. The one is a product of lonely virtuous pride- a Cincinnatus who denies any civic office. The second though is a product of the modern age- social and sociable. By the time Stoddard returns the town has become his and Doniphon's funeral is a lonely one. But Stoddard feels a regret of sorts. He feels a regret that the memory of Doniphon has faded. A regret that the honourable man he knew has lost his reputation in the wastes of time and a regret as well that he has migrated from a town that loves him, to the cities which don't. There is a strong sense in the film of community: community that may be under threat in the early days but that is looked back at with nostalgia by those that have left it. One wonders if Stoddard when he moves back to Shinbone feels that loss of community and regrets the way it has departed. He seems to want to have that lifestyle again: setting up his own law practise in a small town but he can never reach the self sufficiency of Doniphon.

The world was changing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the frontier. The change was inevitable: this film reinforces that, without Stoddard's educational work the town wouldn't have known about the plots to subvert its rights. But equally something is lost: what is lost is the magnificent personality of Doniphon. Wayne's performance is the most charismatic in the film, Ford allows it, and he allows it in order to demonstrate how the independence of the hero is lost in the rush to modernity. Stewart's character is the future for America, but its a future that leaves behind the pioneers that made America. A future for democracy and liberalism but not for classical republicanism: no matter whether you think the world America lost (of independent farmers) was worth retreiving, it is undeniable that Ford's historical analysis was right. And there is something in the emotional appeal that Doniphon has over the modern citizen Stoddard.

But in a tough minded film, its demonstrated that the emotional appeal isn't enough: with modernity comes inevitable loss and rightly the democratic character triumphs.

Student Lifestyles

Alex Singleton posts rather interestingly about student lifestyles. Its interesting- Alex sees contemporary studenthood as being too puritanical and too priggish. Too many people are focussed on careers in the City, too few on getting drunk and having a good time. I agree in part with him: the students I knew at Oxford were almost all unbeleivably stressed. One of my friends had grey hairs fall out as she did her finals (finals at Oxford are all done in a week and the results from them determine your entire degree). Partly I agree with Alex, though I think its worth having hard degrees which make people stressed. They signify more.

Where I completely agree is the focus on careers. Almost all students I knew worried about what they would do afterwards. The point that neither universities nor schools make to people is that you can make a mistake at the age of 16, 18 or 21 and change your mind still. Its perfectly sensible for people to try things and find out what they like. Career choices at university are presented as life and death moments upon which everything hinges: but they are not. Many people have not fully made up their minds at 21 and its perfectly fine to change and switch careers say until a little later in life: those who aren't lawyers by the age of 23 are not failures.

I disagree with Alex partially though. When I was a student- the one thing that really suffered was not people's social lives, but people's intellectual lives. I went to Oxford, expecting to find an intellectual nirvana, what I found were a number who were kindred spirits. But so many were doubtful and disdainful of intellectual things. Some were open say to some things (art history) and not to others (physics) which is more excusable (vice versa happened to). But the real tragedy was seeing intelligent people whose minds were shut to anything that would not earn them money in the future. That's a slight caricature, but there is a grain of truth in it, it was anti-intellectualism in universities and not the lack of party spirit that I thought was the real tragedy.

I don't know how to solve that, there may not be a solution, and I think its part of a society which occasionally prioritises wealth over other things. Partly its also about the insecurity of student life, when you get to 21 you don't realise that you can get a job and security- and part of the issue is that I wonder whether students do degrees too early in their lives, before they lose their anxiety. Its an interesting problem- but I don't agree with Alex ultimately- my issues with university were far more about how few seemed to love their subjects and some seemed to love their subjects less after doing an undergraduate course.

Should Chris Dillow be hated for living in England?

Chris Dillow justifies class hatred over on his blog: for him it is a payback for the fact that the middle class have so many advantages in life from educated parents to moneyed lives and even nepotism. Chris argues this with his usual persuasiveness- but his case is pretty bad and even Chris can't really sustain it. Its available to attack on so many different measures but I wish to concentrate on two particular reasons why Chris is wrong to laud class hatred. (Particularly as I like Chris want to erode class with policies that would promote equality.)

1. Class is not the only way of distinguishing advantage. I know plenty of middle class people who were born with MS, ME, deep diseases of the mind and body- does Chris believe that the ill are entitled to hate the well, that the depressed entitled to hate the happy. Furthermore would he not agree that irrespective of the vast class divisions in England, they are as nothing compared to the vast divisions between nations. Would Chris not agree that on the same logic he advances for class hatred, then Zimbabweans and Bangladeshis should hate that epitome of white privilege, Mr Dillow? Hating people for what they cannot change is foolish, and its even more foolish when you consider that though evaluating the desert of various classes is easy, evaluating the desert of individuals is much harder. Would Chris not agree that he deserves hatred because he was born with, completely irrespective of his merits, the talent to get a job- the genetic inheritance to do well and the luck of life to exploit that inheritance.

2. Hatred is a destructive emotion. It does not help anyone who feels it, less than those who don't. We have had hundreds of years of class hatred- but I don't see the working class storming the barricades. Rather I think hatred encourages people to try and stuff the middle class by earning more than their contemporaries who went to Harrow. Far from encouraging egalitarianism, this is a different form of Toryism: its the argument that if only we could have a pure meritocracy, the people at the top would deserve their places there in some sense. Genetic advantage good, environmental advantage bad. Class hatred, just like the even more justified ethnic hatred that on Chris's argument Africans ought to feel for anyone in the West, often makes people throw their hands up in frustration rather than achieving things in life. And some of those that succeed- assume that they are so justified by their success, that they spend money and time combatting any attempts to make society more equal. (Chris suggests that anyone middle class who hasn't ended class deserves hatred: I'm not sure why its only background that he mentions there- surely that applies to those who become middle class as well).

The truth is that noone in society deserves their wealth. We are all the product of random events from our birth forwards, and if we are successful, we are purely lucky. Genetics, environmental factors, even the moment when we got an interview and the other guy didn't all add up to make me suspect that it would take only a slight misstep for all our destinies to change completely. If we are to hate privilege, then we should hate success- which would produce interesting incentives within society. Furthermore we should pay much more attention to what people do with their wealth, than how they got it. If Chris wants to really hate someone, then why not look at the percentages of money that people give to charity from their own fortunes.

Ultimately I think that Peter Moores deserves more praise than Piers Morgan. The first went to Oxford and Eton, but then proceeded to give away 141 million pounds to charity- helping struggling artists get their lives together. The second went to a comprehensive and is nothing but a scumbag and an idiot and has used his success to hurt and destroy other people. The same could be said of leading economist J.M. Keynes, impecably leftwing and middle class, and the McCarthyite yet working class Horatio Bottomley. Ultimately it doesn't matter in life where you came from, its what you do with what abilities you have, in particular whether you use them to help your fellow man that matters.

Rejoice, Rejoice

Fidel Castro's resignation is something that all right thinking people should rejoice about. Whilst the rest of Latin America has gradually cast off the tyrants of earlier years- Pinochet and Peron are no more- and come to democracy, Cuba has been isolated in its perpetuation of a dictatorial system. Perhaps the day of Cuban liberty is still far off- Raul Castro may continue his brother's repression indeed he almost certainly will- but this is one sign that the Castro dynasty may be ending. Its vital that all friends of liberty turn their thoughts now to what happens after the monstrous dictators are removed and how we can help Cuba accomplish the transition towards what, for most of the continent is becoming the norm, Democracy.

Leo Strauss

A lot of nonsense is written about Leo Strauss, mostly by people who believe him to have founded neo-conservatism, and very few interesting examinations of his thought are put out there. I think from the little I have read of Strauss, Lady Strange's recent post sums up some of his most important contributions to western thought. I would reccomend it for anyone who wants to understand what Strauss was about- and in particular how his thought is an attempt to redefine the boundaries of what we think of as political. Strauss wanted to exclude many of the political sciences as we know them now from the purview of politics. I do not neccessarily agree with his point- though I would suggest in focussing on the character of the statesman he was absolutely right- but I still think he is interesting to look at, particularly given the influence he still has in the United States, its worth knowing about what he was on about.

Mistaken Identity

I just went and looked at who has linked to this blog and was really thrilled when I saw that Reason Magazine had linked- oh but then I realised they attributed my article on jury trial and Twelve Angry Men to Matt Sinclair- its a good article, but I'm not sure its a Sinclair masterpiece!

Note to self, obviously too many discussions about the Archbishop of Canterbury are leading to people confusing me with Matt- time for another subject! :)

A fistful of Dollars

Often rightly described as the first of the Spaghetti westerns, a Fistful of Dollars began the careers of so many greats in modern cinema. From Clint Eastwood's mesmeric performance to Sergio Leone's debut as a Western director, this is a film where history runs red on the screen. Its influences were profound- whether on its participant's own careers or on the careers of film makers like Sam Peckinpah who took the operatic nature of violence and advanced it another level- and to some extent Eastwood's taciturn character in the film defines the Western drama for years to come. The man with no name (though the town gravedigger calls him Joe) has no family, no friends and never tells anyone about himself. He just strides across the screen infusing it with authority and making the other characters- desperadoes included- crouch in his charisma. Only in the scene where Eastwood is tortured is there any doubt that 'with the cavalry arriving in town, and the American so quick on the draw' Eastwood controls every scene he is in. Repeatedly refusing to tell others where they stand in the story that he creates- he forsees most conclusions and creates most of the plot.

The plot is simple- with themes going back to Shakespeare and beyond- it is largely derived from a Japanese film Yojimbo made by Akira Kurosawa. The town of San Miguel is split in two between two mafiosi like gangs (one even presided over by a formidable matriarch). The Baxters and the Rojas have been at each other's throats for years: they despise each other and have been at war. The plot goes on with the man with no name standing between them- attempting via a heist performed on the US army- to manipulate them to destroy each other. He has no particular reason to do this, no particular love or hatred for the town (at one point he shows some sympathy but its shortlived), the man with no name seeks destruction for its own sake and his character is a vacant canvass upon which we put the images that we would like to see. Gnarled features and a perpetual cigar hanging from lips, with a hand used to holding a pistol, the man with no name is a force of nature that blows everything off course.

So what is this film about. It is not about character- though Leone's closeups are incredible- it is about politics. The film is a fable about the creation of states and the creation of order within a community. At the beggining of the film one of the Desperadoes comments that he wants to create peace which is why he has hired the man with no name. Of course the point is that the man with no name works for noone- he has no loyalty accept to himself and ends up destroying every other kind of power in the land save for that of the self. He sends both of the mafiosi cliques to their deaths through their suspisions of each other and by the end of the film, the last shots show an emptied town. However its not quite an empty town. The last lines of the film 'you mean the Mexican government on one side, the American maybe on the other and me smack in the middle' parallel earlier lines that the man with no name says about the Rojas and the Baxters, but with one difference the new situation is 'too dangerous' even for the greatest psychopath of them all. Order has been created in the final frames because the power of the mafiosi has been destroyed and replaced with the power of the states.

Another way of looking at that is to look at the role of the modern in the film. Throughout it all the characters make indications that the modern world is here to stay. They use Winchester rifles and take target shots at the armour of Conquistadors. The state is here the ultimate in modernity: Winchester Rifles can be defeated with pistols and the armour of Conquistadors can repel bullets- but what Leone is saying here is something greater that the most powerful invention of modern life is not technological but political. The state can be defeated by neither a quick hand nor an armoured chest, the state has the power to control far in advance of any gang of mafiosi and a man with no name cannot exist save beyond the frontier. In that sense Leone creates a much more vicious and primitive West than some of his colleagues in direction at the time, and he also demonstrates how the power of the state, more than any technological force, changes society and creates the possibility of perpetual peace.

Business Reporting

Guido is entirely right in this post: he is right both as the substantive issue which is the way that Newsnight misreports the market results, and more importantly right on a broader issue which is the way that the media reports about economics and business. I am not an economist nor am I a mathemetician: but I'm underwhelmed by the way that I see reporting on economics done- I think it turns people off and doesn't help them understand and often perpetuates bad ideas. (There are obvious exceptions). Lets take some basic starting points. The media's reporting about economics is often jargon filled and explanation light. So for example at the moment we have had many reports about the Governor of the Bank of England's statements that interest rates may have to stay high in order to diffuse inflationary pressure. We have almost no explanation though of why it is neccessary to stop inflation rising too fast, no explanation of what interest rates do to inflation and why they do it. I've never seen a journalist really explain that inflation isn't a measure of the level of prices but a measure of the rise in prices: when we talk about inflation rising or falling, we are talking about the speed of the rise in prices quickening or slowing. And this permeates right across economics: for example, we seldom hear about the real debate over council tax which is between those who are capital rich and income poor (pensioners with houses) and those who are capital poor and income rich (new entrants to the labour market often), or about the principles which underlie the concept of free trade.

It strikes me that this is important. As politics becomes more technocratic, more coded in vocabulary, and less about class conflict as it has become over the last twenty or thirty years, its vital that to remain democratic, we still understand what's going on. I often think that the real problem with politicians and levels of public trust in them, is that often politicians of all parties seem to be speaking in code. And people only speak in code when they want to fool you. Or politicians speak in simplicities which everyone knows they don't really believe. Compare say the debate over Northern Rock with the debate over Iraq: whatever your views on both issues, I think that the public were much more informed about Iraq than about Northern Rock. And it wasn't just that they were more interested (for obvious reasons) in Iraq. Whatever you think of the debate, the debate was conducted in simple terms and using profound ideas. Economics strikes me as one of the areas in which governmental practice and what people imagine government does diverges radically. Take regulation, the Financial Services Authority which regulates banks (but not credit cards??????) applies a 'principles based approach'- there are good reasons why they do that- but its not what I think most people think a regulator does. The FSA doesn't walk around with a code, like a Banking parking inspector, pointing to yellow lines. It regulates in a different way but I doubt that many members of the public know that.

If it matters, then why is economic literacy a problem? Firstly I do think that political literacy is a problem. I've said before that I'm not sure how far the population can run the country if they don't understand what it is that they are running. But I do think that there are bigger problems in economics. Partly its because in a broad sense the economic arguments are over: there aren't many communists left, and most unabashed capitalists at least pretend that they want a welfare state. The argument is over levels and degrees, its over principles but principles which are in some sense shared on both sides. Economics has a scientific aspect, as well as a normative underpinning. You can't have a good economic viewpoint unless you get the morality right: but once you have done that you do need to do mathematics, and particularly calculus (which is the study of the gradients of graphs) in order to turn that viewpoint into policy. Mathematics terrifies people in a way that most other subjects don't. And its a subject that has been particularly affected by jargon: partly because it is the abstract depiction of human beings rendered as integers. Economics aspires to be a kind of physics of humanity- seeing humans as particles and measuring their interraction.

I don't think that there is neccessarily a solution to this: but it opens up a political problem. Increasingly politics is becoming less democratic because the population doesn't understand the government: that's what I think distrust in politicians is really about. And that has damaging ramifications, take the rising protectionist sentiment in the United States or the absense of public discussion about pensions in Europe, we risk inventing problems and ignoring them and we risk the stability of our political system when we do that.

George Osborne's choice of schools

Apparantly George Osborne, the shadow Chancellor, has got his kids into private schools. Mike Ion is not impressed, he thinks that this represents the abandonment of progressive politics by the Cameron conservatives, and that Osborne should have chosen a state school rather than becoming part of the problem by sending his kids to a private school.

I have always found such arguments unconvincing. Ultimately as far as I see it, every person in the UK has the right to send their kids to private school if they have the money. Yes they may be perpetuating inequality: but a variety of other choices also perpetuate inequality as well- buying houses in 'nice' neighbourhoods or having books available to your kids at home or even the type of food you buy for your children and yourself. Furthermore we are criticising Osbourne without knowing the reasons he wants to send his kids to private school: he may have really good reasons for choosing that private school over this state school for his children. It is not for us to second guess the choice of other people.

It is not my opinion that Osbourne needs to justify his choice of school for his children, anymore than he needs to justify his choice of supermarket. What he does need to do is provide an analysis of the state system and how to make it better for everyone else: that is his job as a politician but once his job is over and he goes back home and spends the money he has earnt, I don't think it is any of my business that he spends it one way or another (providing its legal). Focusing on where he sends his kids to school misses the issue- its what he wants to do to the system in which so many others send their kids to school that's the real issue. At the moment it seems to me our political system does not let politicians get away with poor personal decisions, but lets them get away with poor policy decisions.

That's the wrong way round: lets ask the Tories complicated policy questions and not about their personal lives.

Reasons to love Cricket

Stephen Fleming has just announced he will retire as New Zealand captain. On his resignation he has asked how he wanted to be remembered and he said he would want to be remembered as a thinker about the game, as someone who could bring together a team and make them more than the sum of their parts. If anyone needs a justification for watching sport, then the fascination of human psychology under pressure is a great one- cricket shows that often at its best. Its fiendishly complicated and incredibly thoughtful as the bowler, captain and fielders conspire to trap the batsman into playing a shot he doesn't want to play. I'm sure the Umpire will have something to say as will James Hamilton: but I think its interesting that the bit of cricket that Fleming declared he enjoyed was the thinking, the way the game could be shaped by leadership and tactics. Its one of the things I enjoy watching team sports- you can see the tactics being played out on the field.

Campaign Chaos

Hillary Clinton hasn't been doing as well as predicted since the New Year: she was expected by some to have the nomination sown up at that point, some even predicted that Super Tuesday would be a coronation. They were wrong and the result seems to have been widespread discontent in her campaign for the Presidency with her long term aid, Patti Solis, leaving Clinton this week. The Atlantic has a fine article covering Solis's resignation, rumours had been swirling even before Solis left about the disfunctional structure of 'Hillaryland' and journalists had picked up on those rumours. Hillary's team is obviously involved in mutual recrimination about how they have lost their frontrunner status.

Both of the articles I have quoted above suggest that what this demonstrates is how uniquely disfunctional Hillary's campaign has been. I don't think that's true. Seasoned observers of US Politics have commented to me before that Clinton has run an almost perfect campaign- obviously it hasn't worked but on the other hand, she hasn't self destructed and Obama has run a brilliant campaign. Furthermore any campaign faces downturns and moments of pressure: pressure produces internal stresses however tight the team of people put together by the candidate. It also produces a kind of focus that makes the inner circle unable to see the wider picture: hence the need to bring in new blood in order to give new advice to a candidate. What we are seeing with Clinton is really the effect of a long campaign.

What's interesting is not what this tells us about Clinton- but what this tells us about politics and campaigning. I think the articles and the events of the last few days capture the intense closeness of politics: the suffocating claustrophobia of living in a campaign where every leading article is a major event. Sometimes that can obscure the longer term issues or even policy discussions: it produces fierce rivalries as well. Understanding the lives that politicians live is indispensible to understanding the kind of decisions they will take: I think what the Clinton campaign illustrates is the way that politics is a very visceral experience, altering day by day. Politicians have to cope both with the intensity of living in a perpetual drama and complete alterations in fortune: their psychology has to contain the confidence to survive that and be brutal to their allies and friends.

That atmosphere determines exactly what kind of politicians and hence leaders that we get at the end of the process- the Clinton campaign's breakup is a useful indicator of the way that politics works in the United States and by implication in most of the West.

Two issues

There are two issues with Matt Sinclair's latest riposte to me on the subject of Rowan Williams- two issues that I think need to be dealt with in what is really a debating post and not an argument.

1. When I mentioned the lecture on neo-scholastic art, or one could mention the archbishop's points about the inequity of economic life, I was responding to Matt who said that the Archbishop seldom or never made interesting points. I then said that I liked an intellectual who did make interesting points in public life. Matt can't have it both ways: sneering at someone for being stupid and then saying that when he is provided evidence that they aren't, that those who provide him with that evidence are intellectual snobs. That's just too typical- not of the unintelligent mass- but of the much more thick group of hacks at the top of politics today. Matt is too bright for this kind of rhetoric- if you want a debate, please don't use these cheap tactics.

2. Secondly Matt more forgivably misunderstands the point of my remarks and that may be because I skipped ahead a couple of stages in my argument. You see I think the real issue that the Archbishop was attempting to solve was not a multiculturalist one- though some of that muddled set of thoughts may have smoothed his path to that conclusion- but this set of thoughts.

a. in an increasingly secular society law becomes increasingly secular

b. that creates problems of conscience (and he mentions some with regard to doctors and abortion for example) which the religious people of all faiths face.

c. one way around that is to have supplementary or plural jurisdictions which don't annull or replace civil rights, but which are voluntarily accepted by people who beleive in order to avoid issues of conscience.

d. without that you undermine community cohesion- between those who live with a sincere belief in God and those who don't- the most important set of values for the former group being their commitment to theism.

Ok- that's it laid out simply and straightforwardly. I think its a repugnant political doctrine because I want no relation between the law and politics. As I have said before- and its worth recycling this I DISAGREE FUNDEMENTALLY AND PROFOUNDLY WITH THE ARCHBISHOP, I THINK HE IS WRONG TO ARGUE IN THE WAY THAT HE ARGUES. I also think that the speech could have bad effects in other countries and am quite happy to concede that the Archbishop has been bad at publicity.

But what he is trying to argue is that religious people ought to live under their own laws to a certain extent (with qualifiers) something I think that is a theologically valid statement and then to fit that into a context where all religious people should have the same right. I disagree with the premise for reasons based on political theory- the Archbishop's endpoint was a bad political place to get to- but he is willing to discount that based on a theological vision of man that sees the virtue of private law as being over and above the virtue of political peace.

This whole controversy illustrates to me a fundemental truth about the West at the moment- our political discourse is well formed for say discussing economics, but when we get near theology for instance we collapse into incoherence.

I hope that gets that across....