FILMS, CONTINUED
FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS (2016) D- Stephen Frears
Being the strange tale of the New York socialite who thought she could sing and even hired huge auditoria to demonstrate the fact to packed crowds who paid good money to hear her mangle some of the world's greatest arias.
Graced by a strong Meryl Streep in the title role, ably supported by Hugh Grant as her live-in (if strictly under wraps) lover and directed by one the brightest talents in British film making, this couldn't go wrong. Strangely, it wasn't a big hit at the box office; perhaps a modern public couldn't buy the improbable reality of the piece. FFJ was real, and couldn't understand serious music critics who panned her performances, preferring to bask in the applause (ironic, presumably, though loud enough) from an (apparently) adoring audience. Fascinating.
CLASH (2016) D- Mohammed Diab (Egypt)
In the chaos following the ousting of democratically elected Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in the aftermath of the downfall of President Mubarak, conflicting groups of demonstrators clash on the streets of Cairo. Stuck in the middle, the police wade into the crowds and arrest anyone handy and shove them in the back of a Black Maria. A cross section of Egyptian society begins to form in the van. But whose side are they on, and will they continue their strife once locked inside the van? Meanwhile, less political considerations come to the fore. Will they be attacked by the mob themselves, will they expire from dehydration and how does a young girl relieve herself in the presence of so many men?
This movie is extraordinary in several ways. First, it is shot exclusively in the back of a police van. Only occasionally are we allowed to peep outside through the steamed up windows, and when we do it's scary: opposing factions hurling themselves at each other, high velocity bullets sometimes penetrating the van itself. Who is firing? Does it matter? Inside, factions develop just as on the outside, and hierarchies too. Who's in charge? In reality, the police are, though they have no idea what is going on either and are as scared as anyone. What emerges is a film of great power and originality. I've heard people say they can't handle subtitle films- they take your attention away from the action, they don't like having to squint to read them, whatever. Don't let your prejudice against subtitles stop you catching this movie. There are a few, but they are hardly necessary: it's all there on the screen in a series of dazzling cuts and takes, placing us in the heart of a dangerous and confusing reality: Egypt today.
THE SWIMMER (1968) D- Frank Perry
An upper class guy in Connecticut (Burt Lancaster) decides he is going to "swim across the county" by traversing the pools of all the houses which lie along his route home. It starts well enough, in the mellow late summer, with him receiving a warm welcome at the first pool he visits. But then things deteriorate. The next family he reaches is surprised, and not particularly pleased, to see him. And the season seems to be transmuting into autumn. Soon he is meeting with outright hostility from his pool hosts, and the weather is taking a further turn for the worse. What started out as a fun idea seems to be turning into a Connecticut nightmare...
Based on the famous short story by John Cheever, this film received mixed reviews at the time. I saw it on TV in 1969 and could not get with the programme. I found it extremely irritating if you must know. But I, and the critics too it seems, seem to have matured in the interim, because it is now seen as a thoughtful, intriguing piece of cinema by many of the critics who didn't get it at the time, and I too on a second view found it brilliantly original and innovative, if no less strange than the first time I saw it. Give it a go, but leave your preconceptions behind first...
Tuesday, 30 May 2017
May 2017 book and film review
FILMS
KAJAKE: THE TRUE STORY (aka Kilo 2 Bravo) (2014) D- Paul Katis
A squad of British troops in Afghan stray into an unmarked minefield. It's not surprsisng it isn't marked: it was laid, not by the Taliban but the Ruskies, nearly 40 years ago. One by one, the hapless squaddies step on mines and get various bits of them blown off. The only hope is to be lifted out by helicopter, but the Taliban are out there, waiting with their rocket launcher to blow any chopper that ventures into their range out of the sky. Tricky...
"Based on a true story" as the saying goes, this is certainly one of the most true-to-life portrayals of the Afghan War ever seen on the screen. Moving, horrific, even funny at times, the language is what you might expect from a crew of soldiers in jeopardy, and it isn't always easy to pick up the dialogue. But that only seems to add to the realism. Harrowing, but gripping stuff.
NIGHTCRAWLER (2014) D- Dan Gilroy
A young man in LA wishes to make his name photographing human tragedies as they unfold on its mean streets. Of course there's no shortage of material, gangland slayings, multi-car pile-ups and so on, but it's also a crowded market. There is a slew of professional and semi-professional film crews out there, and whoever arrives on the scene first gets to sell their footage to the network news channels. Soon our hero (Jake Gylenhaal) realizes he must leave his ethical considerations at home if he is to get to the top...
Loosely based on the celebrated work of New York photojournalist WeeGee (though we hope the latter behaved rather better than the character in this film) we see how a young man, gifted with strong self-promotional skills over and above his prowess with a camera, gains the world but threatens to lose his soul in the dog-eat-dog world of freelance news gathering. Powerful stuff.
LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (1962) D- David Miller
A cowboy out of his time (Kirk Douglas) finds himself at odds with a society which has moved on without him. Fiercely individualistic, he gets into a fight with the police over some trivia and finds himself in jail. It's almost like he wants to be there, except, no, he's soon looking for a way to bust out of there. Then he does, and laid-back cop Walter Matthau is given the job of bringing him in. Thing is, he has a sort of brooding admiration for Douglas's misfit and isn't sure he wants to catch him...
Kirk Douglas regarded this film as the one had most satisfaction being part of, yet it isn't very well known now. It's hard not to see it as a western, even though it is set around 1960, because its themes are very much from the golden days of the Old West. Terrific little movie.
For more movies, see next blog...
KAJAKE: THE TRUE STORY (aka Kilo 2 Bravo) (2014) D- Paul Katis
A squad of British troops in Afghan stray into an unmarked minefield. It's not surprsisng it isn't marked: it was laid, not by the Taliban but the Ruskies, nearly 40 years ago. One by one, the hapless squaddies step on mines and get various bits of them blown off. The only hope is to be lifted out by helicopter, but the Taliban are out there, waiting with their rocket launcher to blow any chopper that ventures into their range out of the sky. Tricky...
"Based on a true story" as the saying goes, this is certainly one of the most true-to-life portrayals of the Afghan War ever seen on the screen. Moving, horrific, even funny at times, the language is what you might expect from a crew of soldiers in jeopardy, and it isn't always easy to pick up the dialogue. But that only seems to add to the realism. Harrowing, but gripping stuff.
NIGHTCRAWLER (2014) D- Dan Gilroy
A young man in LA wishes to make his name photographing human tragedies as they unfold on its mean streets. Of course there's no shortage of material, gangland slayings, multi-car pile-ups and so on, but it's also a crowded market. There is a slew of professional and semi-professional film crews out there, and whoever arrives on the scene first gets to sell their footage to the network news channels. Soon our hero (Jake Gylenhaal) realizes he must leave his ethical considerations at home if he is to get to the top...
Loosely based on the celebrated work of New York photojournalist WeeGee (though we hope the latter behaved rather better than the character in this film) we see how a young man, gifted with strong self-promotional skills over and above his prowess with a camera, gains the world but threatens to lose his soul in the dog-eat-dog world of freelance news gathering. Powerful stuff.
LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (1962) D- David Miller
A cowboy out of his time (Kirk Douglas) finds himself at odds with a society which has moved on without him. Fiercely individualistic, he gets into a fight with the police over some trivia and finds himself in jail. It's almost like he wants to be there, except, no, he's soon looking for a way to bust out of there. Then he does, and laid-back cop Walter Matthau is given the job of bringing him in. Thing is, he has a sort of brooding admiration for Douglas's misfit and isn't sure he wants to catch him...
Kirk Douglas regarded this film as the one had most satisfaction being part of, yet it isn't very well known now. It's hard not to see it as a western, even though it is set around 1960, because its themes are very much from the golden days of the Old West. Terrific little movie.
For more movies, see next blog...
May 2017 book and film review
BOOKS
PNIN, by Vladimir Nabokov
A Russian emigree academic comes to roost in an east-coast American university. He finds a room to rent with a fellow lecturer. His needs are small, especially since his wife left him and took their son with her to shack up with yet another academic on the west coast. Here he hopes to find some peace, but will his colleagues allow it? His strange, OCD-type ways irritate the other staff, even if his students love him, and soon ways are found to get rid of him...
Painting a character not a million miles from himself (Nabokov escaped Russia at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, wandering around Europe for a while before finding himself in America, as an academic himself), Nabokov here is at his literary and stylistic height: writing prose of unmatched quality and telling a story of beauty and, at times, great poignancy. Not to be missed.
ON BEAUTY, by Zadie Smith
A British art lecturer with a Caribbean wife and family, lives and works in Massachusetts. Then an old nemesis arrives from Britain and takes up a post in the same university. Sparks fly. Various characters become besotted with beauty of various kinds, teenage black girls with spectacular bottoms, young black dudes with a talent for rap, skinny poets with a unique way with verse. Affairs begin, end, infatuations form, unform; meanwhile only the old and grey seem to know what is really important in life...
Zadie Smith herself is young, gifted and black (and beautiful, come to that), and has the world at her feet right now. Her books are received with critical acclaim, and sell well into the bargain. She is, we have to concede, the real deal. Reading On Beauty we can see why. She is able to tap into the zeitgeist, not only of British middle class society, but American too, with great skill and considerable subtlety. Truly she is one of the most exciting writing talents to have come out of the UK in a long time.
A TIME OF GIFTS, by Patrick Leigh Fermor
In the autumn of 1933 an 18 year-old lad decides to walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. On the way he journeys up the Rhine and down the Danube on a magical journey into European history. On the way he is taken into the homes of the nobility who seem to recognize instinctively, despite his vagabond appearance, that they are dealing with a most exceptional young man...
Expelled from the venerable Kings School, Canterbury for canoodling with a local girl, and described as possessing "a dangerous mix of sophistication and recklessness" by his tutors, Paddy Leigh Fermor has here produced what is widely recognized as one the finest travel books ever written. It is easy to see why. His prose style is measured, clean, articulate and unblievably beautiful. Take this passage, for instance, when he is walking through Holland:
"...These vague broodings brought me to the foot of a vertiginous belfry... I was inside it and up half a dozen ladders in a minute and gazing down through the cobwebbed louvres. The whole kingdom was revealed. The two great rivers loitered across it with their scattering of ships and their barge processions and their tributaries. There were the polders and the dykes and the long willow bordered canals, the heath and arable and pasture dotted with stationary and expectant cattle, windmills and farms and answering belfries, bare rookeries with their wheeling specks just within earshot and a castle or two, half concealed among a ruffle of woods..."
Or this, when he is offering his impressions of Prague:
"...The streets are as empty as the thoroughfares in an architectural print. Nothing but a few historical phantoms survive; a muffled drum... the milling citizens, the rushing traffic vanish and the voices of a bilingual city sink to a whisper. I can just remember a chestnut-woman in a kerchief stamping beside a brazier to keep warm and a hurrying Franciscan with a dozen loaves of bread under his arm. Three cab-drivers nursing their tall whips and drinking schnapps in the outside bar of a wine cellar materialise for a moment above the sawdust, their noses scarlet from the cold or drink or both, and evaporate again, red noses last, like rear-lamps fading through a fog..."
For a long time I have wanted to "do" the Rhine, with its profusion of medieval castles and vineyards; now I see I should also explore the upper reaches of Western Europe's greatest river, the Danube, as well. Leigh Fermor brings them to life in a uniquely engaging way, discussing the history that saturates Central Europe, from the Romans, through the Barbarians, the Holy Roman Emperors, on to Empress Elizabeth, aka the "Winter Queen", direct ancestor to our current queen and then tragic Princess Elizabeth, better known as "Sissi". Want to know more about any of these, and join Paddy on his extraordinary walking tour into the bargain? Read on...
For film review, see next blog...
PNIN, by Vladimir Nabokov
A Russian emigree academic comes to roost in an east-coast American university. He finds a room to rent with a fellow lecturer. His needs are small, especially since his wife left him and took their son with her to shack up with yet another academic on the west coast. Here he hopes to find some peace, but will his colleagues allow it? His strange, OCD-type ways irritate the other staff, even if his students love him, and soon ways are found to get rid of him...
Painting a character not a million miles from himself (Nabokov escaped Russia at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, wandering around Europe for a while before finding himself in America, as an academic himself), Nabokov here is at his literary and stylistic height: writing prose of unmatched quality and telling a story of beauty and, at times, great poignancy. Not to be missed.
ON BEAUTY, by Zadie Smith
A British art lecturer with a Caribbean wife and family, lives and works in Massachusetts. Then an old nemesis arrives from Britain and takes up a post in the same university. Sparks fly. Various characters become besotted with beauty of various kinds, teenage black girls with spectacular bottoms, young black dudes with a talent for rap, skinny poets with a unique way with verse. Affairs begin, end, infatuations form, unform; meanwhile only the old and grey seem to know what is really important in life...
Zadie Smith herself is young, gifted and black (and beautiful, come to that), and has the world at her feet right now. Her books are received with critical acclaim, and sell well into the bargain. She is, we have to concede, the real deal. Reading On Beauty we can see why. She is able to tap into the zeitgeist, not only of British middle class society, but American too, with great skill and considerable subtlety. Truly she is one of the most exciting writing talents to have come out of the UK in a long time.
A TIME OF GIFTS, by Patrick Leigh Fermor
In the autumn of 1933 an 18 year-old lad decides to walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. On the way he journeys up the Rhine and down the Danube on a magical journey into European history. On the way he is taken into the homes of the nobility who seem to recognize instinctively, despite his vagabond appearance, that they are dealing with a most exceptional young man...
Expelled from the venerable Kings School, Canterbury for canoodling with a local girl, and described as possessing "a dangerous mix of sophistication and recklessness" by his tutors, Paddy Leigh Fermor has here produced what is widely recognized as one the finest travel books ever written. It is easy to see why. His prose style is measured, clean, articulate and unblievably beautiful. Take this passage, for instance, when he is walking through Holland:
"...These vague broodings brought me to the foot of a vertiginous belfry... I was inside it and up half a dozen ladders in a minute and gazing down through the cobwebbed louvres. The whole kingdom was revealed. The two great rivers loitered across it with their scattering of ships and their barge processions and their tributaries. There were the polders and the dykes and the long willow bordered canals, the heath and arable and pasture dotted with stationary and expectant cattle, windmills and farms and answering belfries, bare rookeries with their wheeling specks just within earshot and a castle or two, half concealed among a ruffle of woods..."
Or this, when he is offering his impressions of Prague:
"...The streets are as empty as the thoroughfares in an architectural print. Nothing but a few historical phantoms survive; a muffled drum... the milling citizens, the rushing traffic vanish and the voices of a bilingual city sink to a whisper. I can just remember a chestnut-woman in a kerchief stamping beside a brazier to keep warm and a hurrying Franciscan with a dozen loaves of bread under his arm. Three cab-drivers nursing their tall whips and drinking schnapps in the outside bar of a wine cellar materialise for a moment above the sawdust, their noses scarlet from the cold or drink or both, and evaporate again, red noses last, like rear-lamps fading through a fog..."
For a long time I have wanted to "do" the Rhine, with its profusion of medieval castles and vineyards; now I see I should also explore the upper reaches of Western Europe's greatest river, the Danube, as well. Leigh Fermor brings them to life in a uniquely engaging way, discussing the history that saturates Central Europe, from the Romans, through the Barbarians, the Holy Roman Emperors, on to Empress Elizabeth, aka the "Winter Queen", direct ancestor to our current queen and then tragic Princess Elizabeth, better known as "Sissi". Want to know more about any of these, and join Paddy on his extraordinary walking tour into the bargain? Read on...
For film review, see next blog...
Sunday, 28 May 2017
The Crucible: Lessons for today too.
Last night my wife and I attended a performance of Arthur Miller's famous play "The Crucible" at Cardiff's New Theatre. It tells the terrifying story of the Salem witch trials in America's New England in the 1690s. An impressionable young girl starts accusing various members of her community of indulging in witchcraft, a hanging offence at the time, and she is believed by the authorities, driven by a fierce Puritanism and and an underlying agenda to keep the people, especially women, in their place. Eventually, a man is accused, even though it is clear he has nothing to do with witchcraft, but is thought to be a lapsed Christian: he doesn't go to church very often and has even been seen working on the Sabbath!
Miller's play was quickly seen for what it was: a devastating attack on the hypocrisy of HUAC- the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy. In the paranoid atmosphere of post war America, when everyone could see a red under the bed, ready to subvert American society and turn the US into a Soviet satellite state, anyone with any leftist tendency in their background could be hauled before the committee and interrogated about their beliefs. If they came clean about it and, preferably, implicated others in the "plot", they got off relatively lightly. If they denied, or refused to answer they could be sent to prison, lose their jobs and be blacklisted. This is the heart of Miller's play. People suspected of being witches (or wizards) could receive mercy form the courts if they confessed- if not they hanged.
Arthur Miller's courageous stand against the new "witch hunts" nearly landed him in jail, though now he is seen as a hero of freedom of speech and a champion of diversity. But there is a new witch hunt going on today, in Britain, and as I was watching the play last night I realized the lessons of Arthur Miller's play will have to be learned all over again.
Today it is possible for someone to accuse others of historical sexual abuse, for the police, acting on guidelines issued from the very top of law enforcement, to believe these accusations unquestioningly, arrest the accused and interrogate them for hours or days at a time.
The police then hand the results of their investigation to the CPS, who are likewise admonished from the top to believe the accuser, and in most cases, prefer charges against the accused. The usual "better than 50% chance of conviction" rule is waived in such cases: nearly all cases are simply put to the jury, Pontus Pilate style, for them to decide. The accused will then have to spend their life savings defending themselves in court, though the damage to their reputations is impossible to put right.
There are genuine cases of historical sexual abuse, and the perpetrators should be brought to book. But there is a growing band of innocent people who are being placed in "the crucible" on a minimum of evidence in this new witch hunt. This doesn't happen in the US or in mainland Europe. It is a British obsession, and is the result, primarily, of the guilt surrounding Jimmy Savile and the fact he was never brought to account in his lifetime. But there is a solution. The police should certainly investigate allegations of abuse, but do so in an objective and impartial way, not starting from a point of view of unquestioning belief as they seem to do now. And the CPS should behave likewise.
Miller's play was quickly seen for what it was: a devastating attack on the hypocrisy of HUAC- the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy. In the paranoid atmosphere of post war America, when everyone could see a red under the bed, ready to subvert American society and turn the US into a Soviet satellite state, anyone with any leftist tendency in their background could be hauled before the committee and interrogated about their beliefs. If they came clean about it and, preferably, implicated others in the "plot", they got off relatively lightly. If they denied, or refused to answer they could be sent to prison, lose their jobs and be blacklisted. This is the heart of Miller's play. People suspected of being witches (or wizards) could receive mercy form the courts if they confessed- if not they hanged.
Arthur Miller's courageous stand against the new "witch hunts" nearly landed him in jail, though now he is seen as a hero of freedom of speech and a champion of diversity. But there is a new witch hunt going on today, in Britain, and as I was watching the play last night I realized the lessons of Arthur Miller's play will have to be learned all over again.
Today it is possible for someone to accuse others of historical sexual abuse, for the police, acting on guidelines issued from the very top of law enforcement, to believe these accusations unquestioningly, arrest the accused and interrogate them for hours or days at a time.
The police then hand the results of their investigation to the CPS, who are likewise admonished from the top to believe the accuser, and in most cases, prefer charges against the accused. The usual "better than 50% chance of conviction" rule is waived in such cases: nearly all cases are simply put to the jury, Pontus Pilate style, for them to decide. The accused will then have to spend their life savings defending themselves in court, though the damage to their reputations is impossible to put right.
There are genuine cases of historical sexual abuse, and the perpetrators should be brought to book. But there is a growing band of innocent people who are being placed in "the crucible" on a minimum of evidence in this new witch hunt. This doesn't happen in the US or in mainland Europe. It is a British obsession, and is the result, primarily, of the guilt surrounding Jimmy Savile and the fact he was never brought to account in his lifetime. But there is a solution. The police should certainly investigate allegations of abuse, but do so in an objective and impartial way, not starting from a point of view of unquestioning belief as they seem to do now. And the CPS should behave likewise.
Saturday, 27 May 2017
Farewell, mini heatwave
What is the definition of a heatwave? Here's my attempt:
"5 days or more in succession where daily summer temperatures exceed the average by five degrees or more"
Heatwaves, as you may have noticed, are rare in Britain. Charles II, who spent his years in exile in Europe, where they know how to do a proper summer, described English summers as "two fine days followed by a thunderstorm". You have to admit, he wasn't far wrong. And indeed, thus ended our mini heatwave here in South Wales, after just two days.
Our house is not well equipped to deal with heat. It builds up through the day, accumulating on the upper floors, so that by bedtime the bedroom is unbearably oppressive. Windows flung open make no difference, or even make it worse. A large, powerful fan only seems to push hot air around. Then follow nights of fitful sleep, continually waking into hot sweats, menopause notwithstanding. Yet to some extent I love the heat. One can wander around scantily clad, revelling in the brilliant sunlight, working on our homegrown tan and hoping, paradoxically, that it is going to last.
I can remember three proper heatwaves in my life: 1959, in my childhood, when a glorious summer seemed to last forever, at least in my memory, 1976, the year of the Great Drought, when water supplies were rationed and even cut off for hours at a time, except for me, as I was living in a hospital apartment at the time. Friends would come round just to avail themselves of my shower facilities. Finally, 2003, the daddy of them all, when for weeks on end the temperatures rose into the 30s and, the day before it finally came to an end, just outside London, a temperature of over 38 degrees (100 degrees in old money) was recorded for the first time in 300 years.
Usually the hottest day of a heatwave does indeed occur on the day before it ends. Yesterday the temperature at 3pm in our garden reached 31 degrees. (The previous day it reached 28 degrees in the north of Scotland, where, bizarrely, it was the hottest place in Britain, a situation that happens no more than twice a year, and even then it is usually winter when it does happen.) Then at two in the morning a plume of damp, slightly cooler air swept in from the Atlantic and a chain of thunderstorms drifted eastwards across southern Britain. It woke me, though strangely not my wife, who must have been more sleep-deprived than me from the previous sticky night.
Tonight will be a cooler night, but even so I feel a sense of sadness. A heatwave ending is like losing a lover, a beautiful, tempestuous and even dangerous lover, one we are besotted with, one we are probably better off losing, but one we miss nonetheless. Perhaps one day she will come back, and we can re-enter that strange, love/hate thing all over again...
"5 days or more in succession where daily summer temperatures exceed the average by five degrees or more"
Heatwaves, as you may have noticed, are rare in Britain. Charles II, who spent his years in exile in Europe, where they know how to do a proper summer, described English summers as "two fine days followed by a thunderstorm". You have to admit, he wasn't far wrong. And indeed, thus ended our mini heatwave here in South Wales, after just two days.
Our house is not well equipped to deal with heat. It builds up through the day, accumulating on the upper floors, so that by bedtime the bedroom is unbearably oppressive. Windows flung open make no difference, or even make it worse. A large, powerful fan only seems to push hot air around. Then follow nights of fitful sleep, continually waking into hot sweats, menopause notwithstanding. Yet to some extent I love the heat. One can wander around scantily clad, revelling in the brilliant sunlight, working on our homegrown tan and hoping, paradoxically, that it is going to last.
I can remember three proper heatwaves in my life: 1959, in my childhood, when a glorious summer seemed to last forever, at least in my memory, 1976, the year of the Great Drought, when water supplies were rationed and even cut off for hours at a time, except for me, as I was living in a hospital apartment at the time. Friends would come round just to avail themselves of my shower facilities. Finally, 2003, the daddy of them all, when for weeks on end the temperatures rose into the 30s and, the day before it finally came to an end, just outside London, a temperature of over 38 degrees (100 degrees in old money) was recorded for the first time in 300 years.
Usually the hottest day of a heatwave does indeed occur on the day before it ends. Yesterday the temperature at 3pm in our garden reached 31 degrees. (The previous day it reached 28 degrees in the north of Scotland, where, bizarrely, it was the hottest place in Britain, a situation that happens no more than twice a year, and even then it is usually winter when it does happen.) Then at two in the morning a plume of damp, slightly cooler air swept in from the Atlantic and a chain of thunderstorms drifted eastwards across southern Britain. It woke me, though strangely not my wife, who must have been more sleep-deprived than me from the previous sticky night.
Tonight will be a cooler night, but even so I feel a sense of sadness. A heatwave ending is like losing a lover, a beautiful, tempestuous and even dangerous lover, one we are besotted with, one we are probably better off losing, but one we miss nonetheless. Perhaps one day she will come back, and we can re-enter that strange, love/hate thing all over again...
Tuesday, 23 May 2017
A despicable attack certainly, but a cowardly attack? No.
Lat's get one thing clear. A man dying for what he believes in is not a coward. The 9/11 bombers were very brave men, misguided, duped even, utterly ruthless without any doubt, but courageous, by the standards most of us understand. One might call the bomber crews that flew over Germany and Japan in 1945 cowards, because by then defenses were virtually non-existent, and they were able to kill from a distance without any fear for their own lives.
The Ariana Grande bomber, as he will doubtless be known, died for what he believed in, whatever that was. Here are some speculations on what kind of a man he was, based on the demographics of other outrages committed in the name of Islam in the last few years: I'd be willing to bet he had a horrific childhood, flowed by a prison record, perhaps for crimes of violence. He probably travelled to Syria or Afghanistan to learn his trade, having been recruited in prison. He may have been ethnically Arab, though possibly not. He may have been of limited intelligence, making him fertile ground for the kind of hate-filled rhetoric peddled by the disciples of the Wahabi clerics in Saudi Arabia, mentors to IS, Al Qaida, Boco Haram and Al Shabbab.
When Donald Trump was in Israel yesterday, he wisely steered clear of any pronouncements about the problems in that troubled region and concentrated instead on the evils of Iran- which had just held democratic elections and voted in a political moderate. The day before he had been in Saudi (a land where there is little if any democracy) signing a $110 billion arms deal with a Saudi King so terrified of alienating those fundamentalist clerics he does pretty much anything they tell him to. If he loses their support there could be an uprising in Arabia- and the Royal family could be out on their ears.
The outrage in Manchester last night was terrible crime against humanity and must be condemned for what it is, but let us not make the mistake of thinking it was, as Teresa May insists on calling it: an act of cowardice.
The Ariana Grande bomber, as he will doubtless be known, died for what he believed in, whatever that was. Here are some speculations on what kind of a man he was, based on the demographics of other outrages committed in the name of Islam in the last few years: I'd be willing to bet he had a horrific childhood, flowed by a prison record, perhaps for crimes of violence. He probably travelled to Syria or Afghanistan to learn his trade, having been recruited in prison. He may have been ethnically Arab, though possibly not. He may have been of limited intelligence, making him fertile ground for the kind of hate-filled rhetoric peddled by the disciples of the Wahabi clerics in Saudi Arabia, mentors to IS, Al Qaida, Boco Haram and Al Shabbab.
When Donald Trump was in Israel yesterday, he wisely steered clear of any pronouncements about the problems in that troubled region and concentrated instead on the evils of Iran- which had just held democratic elections and voted in a political moderate. The day before he had been in Saudi (a land where there is little if any democracy) signing a $110 billion arms deal with a Saudi King so terrified of alienating those fundamentalist clerics he does pretty much anything they tell him to. If he loses their support there could be an uprising in Arabia- and the Royal family could be out on their ears.
The outrage in Manchester last night was terrible crime against humanity and must be condemned for what it is, but let us not make the mistake of thinking it was, as Teresa May insists on calling it: an act of cowardice.
Monday, 22 May 2017
Media review: OJ: Made in America
I spent most evenings last week enthralled in one of the best TV documentaries I have seen for years:: "OJ: Made in America", directed by Ezra Edelman.
Why should we care about the Simpson case? Because it says so much about the character of our principle ally, that country which, as George Bernard Shaw, is separated from us by a common language.
The film was called "Made in America" for a good reason. It attempted to show OJ's roots as a poor black boy growing up in an America still under the "Jim Crow" laws which made discrimination against black people, not only legal but mandatory. As soon as he could, OJ escaped from his roots and found fame as a running back in the college football system, playing for prestigious University of Southern California (USC). Beloved even by a highly racist public, tacitly awarded what could be called "honorary white" status, OJ had little interest in the struggle for civil rights at that time convulsing the nation. He was earning his own civil rights through his prowess in football, and that was all he cared about.
Later as the 70s dawned he joined NFL side the Buffalo Bills and achieved iconic status as one of the greatest running backs of all time. And all this time he made his friends, not among fellow blacks but in the white community. He had married a black girl when very young though it soon emerged that it was white flesh he preferred. It wasn't long before he abandoned his first wife and had a succession of white girlfriends, culminating in his marriage to beautiful, slender, white, Nicole Brown.
But unfortunately for her, he had a jealous and controlling streak which resulted in numerous and escalating incidents of domestic violence. Finally she had enough and left him. But he wouldn't let it go as easily as that and continued to stalk and bully her. Finally he snapped and the rest is highly disputed history.
While all this was going on the race issue was bubbling away in American society. In 1992 a group of white cops were videod beating the holy shite out of a black guy, Rodney King. Despite the apparently conclusive footage all were acquitted, sparking riots in Los Angeles that left many dead and laying waste to dozens of city blocks.
And now we come to the crux: for at OJ's trial, it wasn't the fumbling antics of the LAPD, nor the incompetence of the prosecution team, nor the lies of Mark Fuhrman (he said on the stand he never used the word "nigger", then a tape was produced of him saying just that, time after time) nor even the brilliance of OJ's defence team especially Johnny Cochran that secured his "not guilty" verdict, it was payback for Rodney King.
The jurors were perfectly clear about it. This was their chance to reverse years of injustice meted out to the black man, and they didn't really care if Simpson had viciously slashed two human beings to death or not. They were going to send a message to whitey- you ain't gonna lynch another one of our people this time.
It's hard for us to understand the enormity of the OJ case. It is as if David Beckham had murdered Posh, though that doesn't really encompass it because Becks is a white man in a still predominantly white society. No, the US and the UK are so different there isn't really a meaningful comparison to be made. All I would say that I understood a lot more about this strange, beautiful but terrible country after watching this film, and can only urge you to find it on iplayer and see it for yourself.
Why should we care about the Simpson case? Because it says so much about the character of our principle ally, that country which, as George Bernard Shaw, is separated from us by a common language.
The film was called "Made in America" for a good reason. It attempted to show OJ's roots as a poor black boy growing up in an America still under the "Jim Crow" laws which made discrimination against black people, not only legal but mandatory. As soon as he could, OJ escaped from his roots and found fame as a running back in the college football system, playing for prestigious University of Southern California (USC). Beloved even by a highly racist public, tacitly awarded what could be called "honorary white" status, OJ had little interest in the struggle for civil rights at that time convulsing the nation. He was earning his own civil rights through his prowess in football, and that was all he cared about.
Later as the 70s dawned he joined NFL side the Buffalo Bills and achieved iconic status as one of the greatest running backs of all time. And all this time he made his friends, not among fellow blacks but in the white community. He had married a black girl when very young though it soon emerged that it was white flesh he preferred. It wasn't long before he abandoned his first wife and had a succession of white girlfriends, culminating in his marriage to beautiful, slender, white, Nicole Brown.
But unfortunately for her, he had a jealous and controlling streak which resulted in numerous and escalating incidents of domestic violence. Finally she had enough and left him. But he wouldn't let it go as easily as that and continued to stalk and bully her. Finally he snapped and the rest is highly disputed history.
While all this was going on the race issue was bubbling away in American society. In 1992 a group of white cops were videod beating the holy shite out of a black guy, Rodney King. Despite the apparently conclusive footage all were acquitted, sparking riots in Los Angeles that left many dead and laying waste to dozens of city blocks.
And now we come to the crux: for at OJ's trial, it wasn't the fumbling antics of the LAPD, nor the incompetence of the prosecution team, nor the lies of Mark Fuhrman (he said on the stand he never used the word "nigger", then a tape was produced of him saying just that, time after time) nor even the brilliance of OJ's defence team especially Johnny Cochran that secured his "not guilty" verdict, it was payback for Rodney King.
The jurors were perfectly clear about it. This was their chance to reverse years of injustice meted out to the black man, and they didn't really care if Simpson had viciously slashed two human beings to death or not. They were going to send a message to whitey- you ain't gonna lynch another one of our people this time.
It's hard for us to understand the enormity of the OJ case. It is as if David Beckham had murdered Posh, though that doesn't really encompass it because Becks is a white man in a still predominantly white society. No, the US and the UK are so different there isn't really a meaningful comparison to be made. All I would say that I understood a lot more about this strange, beautiful but terrible country after watching this film, and can only urge you to find it on iplayer and see it for yourself.
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