Tuesday, August 30, 2022

Review of Baltasar Kormakur’s Beast – decent and suspenseful

Not a bad movie. Quite entertaining. 

This film is an iteration of the Man vs Monster formula. 

That man is the recently-widowed Dr Nate Samuels (Elba) and he is trying to redeem himself over his ostensible past failures with his two daughters (Jeffries and Halley). Although Beast offers no real surprises, it is good at setting out what it wants to achieve; and then it does it. The film has pretty good jumpy scary scenes (especially the scenes of Dr Samuels in the lake) and Kormakur is good at creating tense moments.

The underlying premise involves a lion that has gone rouge. This is reminiscent of the 90s film The Ghost and the Darkness. Particularly when a wounded villager warns that he was attacked by “diabolos”. (This film itself was based on accounts during the British Empire regarding two African lions in Tsavo, Kenya. See YouTube – The Man-Eating Lions of Tsavo). At any rate, in Beast, the lion gets tranquilised, tumbles off a cliff, gets burned, and then finally stabbed! Surely it would make more sense to have made him demonic (as per the 90s version).

To me, the problem with the lion is the Hollywood insistence on casting the villain as being a hapless victim of cruelty as opposed to being inherently evil. So the lion went rogue because we made him do so. What a yawn. If the movie Jaws was being produced today, that shark would be framed as the victim of the marine overfishing, or his pups were savagely hunted by a villager, or the shark is upset about global warming! 

Some of the dialogue is a bit clunky, and there isn’t a whole lot of creativity in the film. Indeed, there is some plain silliness in the plot. Why would anyone venture out of the safety of the car when there’s a lion patrolling the area? Or wade through waterways despite having seen crocodiles plunging in at shore?

The ending of Beast – with Elba punching the lion (!) and getting mauled – reminded me of the film The Grey. In that moving film, Liam Neeson’s character was lost and destroyed following the death of his wife. The film is mostly about a man struggling with grief and surrounded by death. At the start of the film, he’s intent on ending his own life with a rifle. Towards the end - in the love and memory of his former wife - he decides to fight for his life as opposed to throwing it away. It’s a moving scene that connects on a deeper level. (See: The Grey - Once More Into the Fray). Thus, by contrast, Idris’s “fight” with the lion feels hollow, and a bit silly.

Nevertheless, this film is a decent adrenaline hit particularly through a sluggish cinema season. It’s good fun but don’t expect a whole lot.

Review: Nope by Jordan Peele – first-rate horror and mystery thriller

I really enjoyed this film.

Jordan Peele – who wrote, produced, and directed this film – is a true original. His films bleed suspense and horror with a latent social commentary.

The films Get Out and Us were masterful in their suspense and unsettling aspect. Above all, for me, they added another dimension to the post-cinema chitchat.

To this list, Peele gives us Nope. It’s an unsettling disturbing film in which the horror gradually unfurls. Nope works best as a genuine mystery, and a thrilling. Like the characters, the audience must ferret out what is going on, and this is critical to the advancing unease of the film’s arc. There are no ‘experts’ in the film to nudge us along. We accept the inchoate and foggy assumptions of the film’s protagonists as to what is going on. To that extent, we never really form a complete and total understanding of the substance. But, perhaps we don’t really need to.

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Daniel Kaluuya plays the rancher OJ with his sister Emerald (Keke Palmer). They are trying to keep their father’s struggling horse-wrangling company alive. The chemistry between them is sweet and adds a charming bonhomie to the film’s narrative. OJ’s general reserved and phlegmatic disposition is at odds with his sister’s ebullience and humour. The yin-and-yang energy gives the movie its heart.

However, promptly, they both realise that they are being stalked by a mysterious cloud-like entity in the skies. Interesting to note that, as with the Roswell incident, UFO/UAP are associated with weather balloons; and so this film gives us the marauding carnivorous cloud. To save the indebted company and their home, they then try to capture film footage of the alien-like visitation in the hopes of a huge television network payout.

The mystery of the film is the audience and characters trying to understand what this alien is and how it operates. The cinematics surrounding the alien (noises it emits, quick, fleeting sharp motions, opaque concealments) are excellently done. The film’s Texas desert mountain-valley landscape is beautiful; and it is, after all, the clichiac epicentre of UFO sightings (Chinati Peak etc.).

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However, as I see it, the problem in the film is Peele’s social commentary vis-a-vis Steven Yeun as Ricky “Jupe” Park and the film’s occasional focus on the black rider in Eadweard Muybridge’s first moving picture.

Firstly, and with respect to the latter issue, I suspect it’s Peele’s side-glance to the history of slavery in America’s cinematic history. But, this is probably ahistorical. The ‘man on horse’ frames concerned a bet as to whether a horse had all four feet off the ground while it was running. According to Wikipedia:

In 1872, the former governor of California, Leland Stanford, a businessman and race-horse owner, hired Muybridge for a portfolio depicting his mansion and other possessions, including his racehorse Occident. Stanford also wanted a proper picture of the horse at full speed, and was frustrated that the existing depictions and descriptions seemed incorrect. The human eye could not fully break down the action at the quick gaits of the trot and gallop. Up until this time, most artists painted horses at a trot with one foot always on the ground; and at a full gallop with the front legs extended forward and the hind legs extended to the rear, and all feet off the ground. There are stories that Stanford had made a $25,000 bet on his theories about horse locomotion, but no evidence has been found of such a wager.

Twenty-four cameras were attached to tripwires creating “frames” along a stretch of a raceway. As the horse ran, it triggered the tripwires which set off cameras in succession. In our times, we are used to “movies” with actors being credited. But this was not a “movie” so much as an experiment. It proved that horses do indeed have all four feet off the ground for a moment while running. It’s only afterwards that a string of photos were then arranged together to make ‘motion’ (in the sense that we understand of “movies”). 

So, the underlying sense of exploitation – inherent in the historical reference – is a bit forced through its ahistoricism. It assumes a contemporary perception about film and cinema which it superimposes on a different historical context.

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Secondly, the other problem, relates to the backstory of the chimp (‘Gordy’) with Steven Yeun’s character (‘Jup’) and the fuzzy way that that ties into the alien storyline. It’s unclear to me whether Jup felt that he had a special connection with Gordy; but I think we can assume so as he later tries to recreate a similar ‘relationship’ via taming the alien predator.

The problem here is that this idea is explored, through the chimpanzee, in a half-hearted way. It does feel shoehorned into the movie which made for a confused viewing at those particular moments, and a disjointed feel to the flow of the movie. It feels like an attempt to squeeze in disturbing scenes at the expense of Jup’s characterisation.

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Nevertheless, the predator-prey motif governs the movie (e.g. director watching clips of a tiger and a snake in mortal combat) and it’s a subject which Peele excels in showcasing.

In Nope, there are haunting scenes in which people get consumed by the predator. The screeching piercing screams of people getting sucked into the object and not dying immediately. They’re enveloped by the monstrous alien into tight moist spaces with enough space to wriggle and scream (and presumably breath) but not enough for any control. It’s only after a while that they are consumed by the alien; by which time we have been wondering what horrors await them.

The above discussions about the subtext does not diminish the film’s amalgam of mystery thriller with disturbing horror.

Monday, August 22, 2022

The Criminal Bar and its indefinite strike

What a great headline. Go hard or go home.

And yet, it’s also forlorn. 

For years, but especially under the Conservatives, the state has been tapering the legal aid budget due to the expectation ( justified, I think) that most voters just don’t care. 

Alongside court closures, it’s just easy pickings. And, this is the end result: an exodus from the criminal bar, and courts scheduling trials two years hence.

I think the problem is that people associate legal aid with the welfare state. For me, I think it’s far more elemental. It hinges on the most legitimate function of government. It’s the concept of ‘innocent til proven guilty’. A public defender is necessary because the State – with its armoury and treasury – is the accuser. Legal aid concerns peoples’ access to the law and should be a necessary aspect of the judicial machinery (as with court ushers, jury expenses, judicial pensions etc.) otherwise an inadequate defence is mere show trial (which is a feature of tyranny as opposed to the rule of law.)

In an article by Jonathan Este’s, he shows that both Labour and Conservative governments have both conspired, since the inception of legal aid, to strip it to the bone. (See: Legal aid at 70: how decades of cuts have diminished the right to legal equality). Under Tony Blair, the 1997/98 government briefed the press on “fat cat” legally aided lawyers which helped solidify an impression. This then paved the way for opportunistic governments to maintain these enduring cuts. Thus, I think this assault on legal aid actually ‘cuts’ across both parties. Of course, it is not to suggest that Tories are not to blame for the preceding twelve years, but it does predate them. To that extent, I don’t really expect much from Keir Starmer or any future government. 

So, day-to-day, as the wheels of our underfunded and neglected justice system turn, the fabric of our society frays ever more.

As for today’s news, I expect the government will denounce the profession that invariably acts as a safeguard against its policies.

Let's see what happens.

The government's "Online Safety Bill": form of censorship?

The very words "Online Safety Bill" should be a red flag. 

Ever-greater state power is draped in the language of protection and safety. In order to be protected by the state, as the logic goes, we must surrender some autonomy; and that way, everybody can be more effectively controlled and thus "safe". So, it's really a cliche because the other side of coin is 'control'.

Nevertheless, this traditional state power has been 'delegated' or 'devolved' to tech companies. Although separate from the state, they effectively give effect to state power. It's an interesting change in the political landscape and allows for a level of censorship that a government could not ordinarily bring into effect - without express Parliamentary authorisation. And that makes it a little bit different. Repeated calls have been clamouring for someone to "do something" about misinformation, online trolling and abuse, and child safety which are very popular with the electorate.

The problem is that there is no way of truly controlling interaction between people over the internet, with a view of eliminate ostensible harms, without diminishing a level of the interfacing. But, like other forms of prohibition, alternatives will emerge to provide the same original service – e.g. VPNs. I have no idea how effective age verification checks would be on websites, but I imagine – as usual prohibitions have shown – they incentivise more elaborate means of evading 'checks' to inappropriate websites. It seems to me that the more one seeks to try to control these things, the more likely a different end will be accomplished.

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The heart of this bill, when it comes to users, is to put the onus on tech companies to "protect from harmful content" as well as illegal stuff. But, how can anyone protect us from "harmful content"? What exactly is considered 'harmful'? Can entire subjects be framed as "harmful" on account of their controversy or inconvenience. Companies would be placed in the invidious position of picking sides to a controversy (or even an argument) and picking the people deemed 'correct' or 'fit' to engage in it. Enormous AI systems would be needed which would be inapt to recognise subtleties and shades, and thus blanket-rules will be introduced by the tech companies to 'protect' us. And as we have seen in recent artificial intelligence, they are only ever as good as their design and architecture and carry the inherent biases of their developers (see: New York Times, Who Is Making Sure the A.I. Machines Aren't Racist?).

The new so-called "duty" creates an enormous range of obligations which are unworkable for normal businesses other than the tech giants. Since this new duty entails enormous penalties, tech companies would be enormously empowered to minimise litigation and fees, and will lean on the 'better safe than sorry' approach with a heavy-handed clamp down. As Matthew Lesh has written, it will involve a pre-scanning of user messages before uploading and then a determination about what the company believes might be illegal. Further:

What is amazing is the sheer audacity and scale involved. The burden in companies must be incredible. Also, the proposed increase to OFCOM's remit must be hugely costly and onerous for the purpose of regulating websites. 

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Lord Sumption's first-class criticisms of the Online Safety Bill is also well worth a full read = The hidden harms in the Online Safety Bill.

Sunday, August 21, 2022

On the attack on Salman Rushdie and free speech

Despite Salman Rushdie being stabbed ten to fifteen times in a vicious attack in New York; he’s on the road to recovery. He's 75 years old. At that age, visits to the hospital are usually after a nasty tumble, never mind stab wounds. What a soldier.

Salman Rushdie

On the BBC, according to his son Zafar Rushdie, Salman’s sense of humour was undiminished. I love that. How apposite. The man’s humour and irony set in opposition to the mirthless demented fanatism of his assailant.

Salman Rushdie really is a hero. His steadfast defiance to persevere against fanaticism and absolutism has to be a towering inspiration for people who may be persecuted for their non-conformity. 

The way I see it, the right to offend is an indispensable component of free speech. But today, we live in a world where expressing an unwelcome opinion publicly, or, as in this case, even telling a story, can make you a target. The focus is not the art, but the artist; it’s not the argument, but the speaker. The protection of artistic and literary freedoms should be paramount; but, in practice, finding something ‘offensive’ is generally enough for its prohibition.

The principle of free speech ought to be a worthwhile and valuable aspect of our culture and life. So, it really extends way beyond the confines of government. As we know, free speech exists as a creature of legal right, but it’s a cultural heritage, writ large. It is our civic duty to try to engage with other people in good faith and to listen to their points of view and their arguments, and to ensure that we grant people the benefit of the doubt and opportunity to express themselves.

Wednesday, August 17, 2022

The courts and life-support cases: Archie Battersbee

The recent Archie Battersbee case has been in the news. (Archie Battersbee: How did life support battle end up in court? - BBC News)

There are two interesting thoughts here. The first relates to a theoretical aspect made by Lord Sumption in his Reith lectures. The second point relates to the shocking facts of the case as per the judgment.

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1. In Trials of the State by Lord Sumption questioned the efficacy of legal adjudication as a means of resolving essentially political or moral issues. Formerly, morality was confined to the autonomy of individual choice. But, nowadays, he argues that "we tend to regard social and moral values as belonging to the community as a whole, as matters for collective and not personal decision". 

He illustrated the point with reference to the Charlie Gard case. That case concerned a dispute between doctors and parents vis-a-vis the best interests of a gravely ill baby. The overarching point here is that by regarding the moral issue as a "collective" matter (notwithstanding the lack of harm to others in society), it renders it apt to being resolved via the public decision-making fora of the courts of law. 

The Children Act 1989 shifted the final decision as to the welfare of the child into the realm of institutional authorities (e.g. hospitals) on the basis of what was best for the child (as opposed to the parent). 

I think Lord Sumption's point was that this moral question has been usurped by the state with the consequence that the parental voice is legally qualified. In the Charlie Gard case, as Lord Sumption pointed out, the law did not grant parents the choice of pursuing medical treatment abroad.

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2. Having read Hayden J’s judgment (para 29-33); it seems to me that this poor child had already been dead for several months.

Arbuthnot J concluded that Archie’s brainstem, the part of the brain which regulates breathing (and other involuntary functions) was dead (para 85-95). In fact, it had turned necrotic which means that the cells were decaying. Once the brain stem is dead, there is no possibility of recovery. It’s not like a coma. Towards the end, even Archie's mother had resigned herself to this reality as she tried to get him moved to a hospice. However, it was thought he would die in transit. Hayden J described him as being so malnourished as incapable of food absorption.

It seems to me - even from the outset - that there was no real legal argument at all. It’s tantamount to a an abuse of a corpse.

Monday, August 15, 2022

Review: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

For this review, and before plunging into various elements, I thought I’d begin with a brief precis; and then turn to three interesting issues. Firstly, I would like to discuss Margaret Atwood’s literary style. Then, I would like to critique two very interesting facets of the totalitarian in The Handmaid’s Tale; and then, lastly, weigh the novel’s standing as a dystopian fiction.

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Precis

This novel is set in the “near future”. Its protagonist, Offred, is a young “handmaid” who has been seized and corralled by the burgeoning theocratic regime. She is inculcated and reprogrammed with the regnant “ideology” of the androcratic theocracy. She is then designated the chattel of the “Commander” and his wife. 

In this dystopia, as a result of war and toxicity levels, birth rates have dived perilously low. Viable offspring is the preeminent concern. Offred is valued for her ovaries. Everything else is mere ephemera that distracts her from that overriding ‘duty’. She is not allowed to read, wear make-up, or adorn herself in anything beyond monastic nun-like vestments. She is permitted to go shopping once-a-day but, otherwise, must bear the Commander a healthy new-born.

However, Offred wasn’t born into this regime. She preceded it. She has memories of former times as an independent woman with a job, husband and daughter. No indoctrination can allay her mind; her ability to retrieve images of happier times. But, that’s mere memory. Her present existence in the Republic of Gilead is fragile and fugacious. That is the world she must navigate.

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Literary style

Generally speaking, I quite enjoyed Atwood’s prose. Although, throughout the novel, via the first person, we are made to think that Offred ‘speaks’ to us. In reality, that voice is both Offred and Atwood. Atwood’s ability as a wordsmith is quite evident. However, there are occasional moments in which, for me, Atwood may be trying too hard to strike a profound philosophical note; though, as I say, these are mere occasional. 

I do place a very high premium on a novelist’s aesthetic craft and decorative prose over-and-above traditional elements of the novel, such as the plot. So, I suspect ‘conventional’ readers may recoil at Atwood’s lack of ‘traditional’ punctuation conveying speech, or the occasional concatenation of short sentences in her descriptive prose, etc. A further criticism may be its bathos and its seemingly flimsy conventional beginning, middle and end.

These criticisms, though, must be weighed against the structure of the novel which is essentially a transcript of audio recordings. Since the oral recordings were essentially Offred’s nuncupative testament, it goes without saying that the vocal inflections and modulations of the human voice were not suited to being codified into traditional prose by Professor Pieixoto. The discursive manner of human discourse can’t be fully systematised into formal prose. Indeed, it is probably Atwood’s intention – through her words on the page – to share an insight into such a dystopian experience; as opposed to a conventional story.

As I mentioned, Atwood is a witty wordsmith. The following lines were interesting:

We are being looked at, assessed, whispered about; we can feel it, like tiny ants running on our bare skins.

Now there’s a space to be filled, in the too-warm air of my room, and a time also; a space-time, between here and now and there and then, punctuated by dinner. The arrival of the tray, carried up the stairs as if for an invalid. An invalid, one who has been invalidated. No valid passport. No exit.

Late afternoon, the sky hazy, the sunlight diffuse but heavy and everywhere, like bronze dust. I glide with Ofglen along the sidewalk; the pair of us, and in front of us another pair, and across the street another. We must look good from a distance: picturesque, like Dutch milkmaids on a wallpaper frieze, like a shelf full of period-costume ceramic salt and pepper shakers, like a flotilla of swans or anything that repeats itself with at least minimum grace and without variation. Soothing to the eye, the eyes, the Eyes, for that’s who this show is for. We’re off to the Prayvaganza, to demonstrate how obedient and pious we are.

The “ants running on our bare skin” is evocative. The shades of meaning in the term “invalid” attests to Atwood’s wit, and her similes are quite forceful. I think the “flotilla of swans” is a stirring suggestive contrast. 

However, there are certain discordant lines in the novel that don’t quite mesh for me. The attempt is made to strike a profound philosophical note but which, for one reason or another, seem flat. I cite two examples:

The minimalist life. Pleasure is an egg. Blessings that can be counted, on the fingers of one hand. But possibly this is how I am expected to react. If I have an egg, what more can I want?

I appreciate that the veiled metaphor of an egg, which in the world of Gilead, relates to the singular primacy of philoprogeniture. But, this childbearing analogy – in the context of a breakfast at a table – is rendered otiose by the fact that Offred doesn’t really believe her Handmaid ‘purpose’ is her only source of pleasure. Offred strives to give birth as a matter of prudence and practicality as opposed to a sincere ideological commitment. The rhetorical question “what more can I want” can only resonate within the mind of a completely brainwashed Handmaid. But that is not Offred. She sees through the patriarchal fascist system and hasn’t fully imbibed its chilling precepts. She has her own mind. So, the above passage doesn’t quite seem to work with Offred and feels rather strained.

Additionally, later on, Offred says:

I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story, because after all I want you to hear it, as I will hear yours too if I ever get the chance, if I meet you or if you escape, in the future or in Heaven or in prison or underground, some other place. What they have in common is that they’re not here. By telling you anything at all I’m at least believing in you, I believe you’re there, I believe you into being. Because I’m telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are.

This allusion to Descartes doesn’t seem to make any sense. In the novel, Offred has never evinced any consideration to philosophical debates. It doesn’t seem at all relevant. Indeed, the mere act of reading a novel wouldn’t necessarily imply anything.

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The totalitarian

There are many aspects of the novel which throb to the totalitarian rhythm. It’s replete with the usual signatures of fascism; the book burnings, control via a cashless society, mob panic and crowd psychology, hangings, schizoid personality, paranoia, and so on. However, in this review, I shall focus on two interesting elements.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Aunt Lydia, in particular, repeatedly invokes an inspiring and utopian-esque vision of the future for women. For example, she says:

The women will live in harmony together, all in one family; you will be like daughters to them, and when the population level is up to scratch again we’ll no longer have to transfer you from one house to another because there will be enough to go round.

This rehearsal of the glorious sunlight future is an enduring aspect of such brutal regimes. It’s also prevalent in Orwell’s dystopian novels (which I plan to review in due course). 

For me, the above quote underlies a sense of pathos. In the French Revolution, the most poignant observation by Robespierre related to the question of what it would take to accomplish the Revolution’s utmost aim of a virtuous society. In his private notations in his “Catechism”, he realised that the revolution was never going to succeed. Even at the outset of his leadership of the Committee of Public Safety, his realisation was that the struggle itself was never going to burgeon the Jacobin promised land. In other words, the struggle itself was perpetual. It was interminable. The struggle was its own end. The excerpted passage below contains the essential aspects of Robespierre’s catechism to that effect;

What is our aim?
It is the use of the Constitution for the benefit of the people.
[...]
The people – what other obstacle is there to their instruction?
Their destitution.
When then will the people be educated?
When they have enough bread to eat, when the rich and the government stop bribing treacherous pens and tongues to deceive them, and instead identify their own interests with those of the people.
When will this be?
Never.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Aunt Lydia’s invocation of the revolution’s ‘noble’ ends is merely the insecurity of the revolution. It’s her attempt to wrestle with the horrifying knowledge that it’s all for absolutely nothing.

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Another interesting aspect of totalitarianism is the role of history and memory.

In George Orwell’s 1984, there is a long wistful discussion between Winston Smith and a ‘prole’ at a pub. In the passage excerpted below, Winston Smith is agonising over acquiring some handle over history, a grip over the truth;

‘You are very much older than I am,’ said Winston. ‘You must have been a grown man before I was born. You can remember what it was like in the old days, before the Revolution. People of my age don’t really know anything about those times. We can only read about them in books, and what it says in the books may not be true. I should like your opinion on that. The history books say that life before the Revolution was completely different from what it is now. There was the most terrible oppression, injustice, poverty worse than anything we can imagine. Here in London, the great mass of the people never had enough to eat from birth to death. Half of them hadn’t even boots on their feet. They worked twelve hours a day, they left school at nine, they slept ten in a room. And at the same time there were a very few people, only a few thousands -- the capitalists, they were called -- who were rich and powerful. They owned everything that there was to own. They lived in great gorgeous houses with thirty servants, they rode about in motor-cars and four-horse carriages, they drank champagne, they wore top hats’

In The Handmaid’s Tale, as Offred watches a marriage ceremony, she laments the approaching eclipse of tangible memories and perspective. She says:

The marriages are of course arranged. These girls haven’t been allowed to be alone with a man for years; for however many years we’ve all been doing this. Are they old enough to remember anything of the time before, playing baseball, in jeans and sneakers, riding their bicycles? Reading books, all by themselves? Even though some of them are no more than fourteen – start them soon is the policy, there’s not a moment to be lost – still they’ll remember. And the ones after them will, for three or four or five years; but after that they won’t

In a nutshell, having a sense of history and a cultural repository of memory empowers people. It endows society with a sense of perspective. It gives a frame of reference to compare and contrast. It accords a kind of intuition – an Aanschauung, as Germans would say – about the world and the regime.

I intend to exhaust this subject in a forthcoming post on 1984; but, presently, and briefly, I think my generation has suffered a significant deterioration in general historical awareness and understanding. Speaking from personal observation, I have noticed an almost generational decline in the awareness of Britain’s broader historical context and tradition. As an example, the kind of rich cultural and historical knowledge that my own grandparents had was deep and striking. They knew a lot more about a plethora of cities, dates, peoples, countries, battles; and all without wikipedia. It really puts my generation to shame.

According to Niall Ferguson, in surveys among university history students, they couldn’t name a single 19th century British Prime Minister; or that school leavers were unable to name the British Monarch during the Spanish Armada. Recently, I read that two-thirds of millennials were unaware of what Auschwitz was! (Washington Post)

This historical ignorance must be linked to a sense of cultural and political disintegration. Such societies must be ripe for totalitarianism because they have no sense of historical direction or perspective. Of course, we are not that bad; but it is worth noting that Orwell was inspired by his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. Stalinist communists would be re-writing historical events for their propaganda and planting untrue accounts claiming credit for other loyalist forces. Indeed, Stalin was quite famous for having ‘eliminated’ various figures from historical narratives.

As illustrated in The Handmaid’s Tale, without a resilient understanding of our traditional liberties and heritage, tyrants would be able to rewrite the past to shape the future.

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Dystopia or science fiction

When people wade through a dystopian novel, I think they read with a view of comparing the dejected cheerless two-dimensional environs of the literary landscape against the tangible and palpable real-world around us. 

To my mind, Atwood’s novel unfurls a critical problem inherent in dystopian fiction. The problem is not the sheer extremity or the total barking madness of the totalitarian. It is that we never grasp how we have come to be nested in such a howling barren wilderness. 

In The Handmaid’s Tale, the broader social commentary pivots on the intimate and personal account of Offred. The horrors of her world is her proximate reality, and, to that extent, we are deprived of much deeper and more multifarious layers of perception and understanding. For example, all the broader dimensions of The Republic of Gilead emerge from Offred’s discussions with the Commander; and these are sparse and terse. We are apprised of a military coup d’état, the execution of the President of the United States and most of the US Congress. Then, the Constitution was suspended. And that is more-or-less it, as regards the government.

The problem is that the attendant barbarism and inhumanity of totalitarian regimes do not emerge at once, or spontaneously, like a thunderbolt. They are marked by a series of gradual changes in society, bit-by-bit. This is illustrated in the ubiquitous, and thankfully apocryphal, metaphor of the boiling frog. It is said that if you lower a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out immediately to escape. However, if placed in a pot of lukewarm or cool water but in which the temperature is slowly raised; it will boil to death.

Thus, if a dystopia is to serve a practical meaningful purpose, it must surely pose a reflective cultural mirror cautioning us: ‘this is a possible alternative reality’. As forceful and as didactic as Atwood’s reality is in illuminating the heart-sickening depravity and horror of evil governments and societies; we must have some idea as to how such waywardness came about. A dystopia is not merely an admonition; it’s a call to action.

Consider Adolf Hitler. He became leader of the Nazi Party which, at the outset, was just one of many radical German groupuscules that were ultra-nationalistic, anti-democratic with latent residual resentments and anger as regards Germany’s malaise and, especially, against Jews. Discounting pro tem Hitler’s Munich putsch, what is interesting is how gradually Hitler consolidated power within the Weimar government. He was never popular with the masses and lost the 1932 Reich Presidency vote to Paul von Hindenburg (Hitler’s much smaller tally of 36% against Hindenburg’s 53%). Hindenburg, for a multitude of misguided reasons, offered Hitler a Cabinet seat (reflecting the Reichstag’s Parliamentary system). Hitler refused cooperation and demanded nothing short of the Chancellorship. This risky strategy worked and Hitler was then appointed Chancellor in 1933. The following year, Hindenburg died, aged eighty-six; and, on that very day, Hitler fused the Chancellorship and the Presidency into a single authority: the Führer, within the machinery of government.

The above discussion doesn’t even broach the cultural antisemitism of the 19th century (coterminous with the Dreyfus affair in France, for example) and the Nazi party’s flammable antisemitism. So, as an illustration, there were ubiquitous rumours during WWI that German Jews within the military had eschewed battle and were even profiteering from it. So much so, the Prussian government carried out “Judenzählung” (“Jew count”) to establish the proportion of Jews to non-Jews on the frontlines. Afterwards, similarly, the “Dolchstosslegende” assigned moral blame for Germany’s defeat and subsequent humiliation on the ostensible disloyalty of Jewish Bolsheviks within German society.

In contrast, apropos The Handmaid’s Tale, we are never really told why, or how, this sulphuric level of cruelty and debasing inhumanity towards women ever emerged. It is simply taken for granted.

For example, what is the balanced reader supposed to think of the pathetic character of Luke, Offred’s erstwhile husband? He seems, at best, oblivious; and, at worst, tacitly acquiescent of the regime. When Offred’s mother seems to have disappeared and her home was burgled, he appears to coldly counter her impulse to call the police. Similarly, when Offred fumes over women’s loss of property rights and their inability to work, Luke placidly reassures her that he’ll “always take care of” her. Or the fact that he wishes to make love on the very day she lost her job. This, we are made to think, in the absence of any other context or explanation, is what Atwood intends to represent the average “well-intentioned” male. This is either comically ridiculous or utterly insulting to men who have both the faculty of empathy as well as mothers, aunts, girlfriends, wives and daughters on whom to empathise. 

As I say, the broader problem in the dystopia – and to which I have alluded – is that one is expected to entertain the premise that our contemporary society actually view women as mere objects whose sole purpose is procreation and to which they may be regularly and ceremoniously raped. With pre-WWII Germany, there were pre-existing convulsions prior to the bitter recrudescence of antisemitism which accompanied the crash of 1929 and the reparations of Versailles. Not helped by the fact that, harking back to Renaissance Florence, Jewry had been associated with banking and money-lending (arising from prohibitions in the Old Testament against Christians charging usury on loans to other Christians). 

In our world, in contrast, as Steven Pinker explained in The Better Angels of Our Nature, our postmodern society has been getting much better, with greater secularism, more humanism, greater emphasis on rights of minorities to which feminism has undergone several “waves”. Indeed, according to the Russel Sage, women have been outpacing men in education standards (Russel Sage Foundation). This is important because the education of women is inversely proportional to the childbearing fertility rates across the world. Thus, there is really no comparison with fascism and totalitarianism. Whereas, Jews had propaganda campaigns against them, curfews and travel restrictions imposed, required wearing of insignia of abasement, the boycott of Jewish-owned businesses etc… and that’s well before any Jews were sent to the camps.

Nevertheless, there is a presumed undertone that there are sufficient tracts of modern society where either ‘conservative’ or sufficiently religious (or some other presumably anti-abortion specimens) are endemically or inherently misogynistic. Furthermore, it is also presumed that these misogynists aren’t merely the grumbling lonely types: but are either actively or contentedly acquiescent in the imposition of barbaric slavery on womenfolk. 

This may sound risible but that is more-or-less the contrived background which Atwood sets in her novel to make the plot and characters come alive. Since this novel is set, not in hundreds-of-years in the future, but within our own lifetime, I find it almost impossible to accept it as any dystopia.

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On a different note, the Commander’s rationalisation of the inhumanity and slavery of women – which is presumably reflective of the ideology of Gilead – is like listening to a mentally-deficient child complaining. It is completely devoid of any reason or perspective. I genuinely don’t quite understand what Atwood’s Commander’s grumble on womanhood is meant to convey. For example, at one point, he says:

The main problem was with the men. There was nothing for them anymore … There was nothing for them to do with women … I’m not talking about sex, he says. That was part of it, the sex was too easy. Anyone could just buy it. There was nothing to work for. We have the stats from that time. You know what they were complaining about the most? Inability to feel. Men were turning off on sex, even. They were turning off on marriage.

In the above passage, which is reflective of his general tone, the Commander contends that “there was nothing for them to do with women”. What on Earth is this supposed to mean? It’s like an eight-year-old child, arms crossed, grumpily declaring “I don’t like girls because they don’t want to play with me”. 

We are not informed what he means when remarking that they had “nothing to do with women”? What about shopping? Going to the theatre? Playing games, like chess? Watching cinema films? Smiling and laughing together? Companionship? Friendship? Raising a family? Going to church? None of this is accounted for and this is problematic because the Commander does likes to chat, laugh and play games with Offred. So, clearly, he cannot genuinely endorse such a crude, reductionistic, and monochromatic view of women. Moreover, to the extent that the Commander may be justified; how does that even address or vindicate the tyranny? How does it account for the denial of human dignity, human liberty, freedom of conscience, the propagation of slavery, the death penalty, the ritualised ceremonial predation of rape, the gruesome “particicutions”, the banishing of “unwomen” to “colonies”, and all the various horrors of Gilead! It really doesn’t make any sense. 

I think this detachment impedes the object of a dystopian novel which, as I mentioned earlier, is a call to action. It should rouse our sense of complacency. However, The Handmaid’s Tale feels remote from our contemporary reality. Thus, in spite of observed phenomena of group psychology and conformity, the idea that totalitarian slavery, abject misogyny and systematic rape would be visited on an entire continent out-of-thin-air leaves a hollowness at the heart of the dystopian novel.

Friday, August 5, 2022

Photo of Wimpole Mews W1 – Home of the Profumo scandal

I walked by this famous road yesterday and took this photograph.

In the 1960s, this little lane was the heart of treachery and espionage: the Profumo scandal.

Mr John Profumo resigned over his “affair” with Christine Keeler and his subsequent lies over it all. It seems she was probably a KGB spy. As per Jonathan Haslam, statement by Keeler was “to the effect that only a few weeks previously, she had been asked by Mr Ward to try to obtain secret information from Mr Profumo”. Dr Ward was a pro-Soviet osteopath. Days later, a double-agent reported to American handlers that “the Russians had in fact received a lot of useful - information from Profumo from Christine Keeler, with whom Ivanov had established contact, and in whose apartment Ivanov had even been able to lay on eavesdropping operations at appropriate times”.

The ancient and medieval history of quarantining

Interesting historical perspective on quarantines.

SourceThe concept of quarantine in history: from plague to SARS, Gian Franco Gensini, Magdi H. Yacoub, Andrea A. Conti, Journal of Infection (2004) 49, 257–261.

Notes from the Ancients:

From ancient times different populations have adopted varying strategies to prevent and contain disease. One of these is exactly what we would now call isolation. The Old Testament evidences how individuals affected by diseases were separated from others, and people with leprosy, as Leviticus informs, had to live isolated all their lives. In the New Testament, too, leprosy continues to be considered a reason for social discrimination, and is represented as curable only through the phenomenon of a divine intervention. The isolation, temporary or otherwise, of sick people has thus always been extensively used as one of the approaches to limit the spread of disease. Another strategy was the establishment of a time limit to the manifestation of diseases. In the V century B.C. Hippocratic teaching had established that an acute illness only manifested itself within forty days. The case of plague was representative with respect to this; since a disease manifesting itself after 40 days could not be acute, but chronic, it could not be plague. In the ancient past the term pestis (plague) was used in a broad way to indicate every epidemic characterised by high mortality, and magical practices were implemented to fight different diseases since the idea of preventive instruments (such as quarantine) was still not present. With regard to the real plague (the disease caused by Yersinia pestis), one may remember the first great pandemic wave of the Greek–Roman period, and the recurrent epidemics throughout Europe in the VI and VII centuries A.D. Against acute, fatal diseases such as bubonic plague attempts were made by healthy communities to prevent entry of goods and people from infected communities. In the VII century A.D. armed guards were stationed between plague-stricken Provence and the diocese of Cahors. Particularly virulent was the impact of the disease on the whole of Europe in the middle of the XIV century, when the plague spread from southern Europe to Germany and Russia, causing the death of more than 30% of the European population.

Medieval Republic of Ragusa:

The concept of (modern) preventive quarantine is strictly related to plague and dates back to 1377, when the Rector of the seaport of Ragusa, today called Dubrovnik (Croatia), officially issued the so-called ‘trentina’ (an Italian word derived from ‘trenta’, that is, the number 30), a 30-day isolation period. Ships coming from infected or suspected to be infected sites were to stay at anchor for thirty days before docking. This same period of time became 40 days for land travellers, probably because the shorter period was not considered sufficient to prevent the spread of disease, and precisely from the Italian number forty (‘quaranta’) comes the term quarantine. Furthermore, the chief physician of Ragusa, Jacob of Padua, also advised establishing a place outside the city walls for the treatment of sick (or suspected to be infected) citizens. The imposition to remain 30– 40 days in an isolated site was determined not only by health reasons, but also by economic necessity, since the quality and safety of the trade network needed to be protected from the Black Death. The attention dedicated by the Ragusan rulers to the plague was, therefore, responsible for the creation of the first ‘official’ quarantining as a legal system aimed at defending both health and commercial aspects. The following were the main tenets of the 1377 law of Ragusa: visitors from areas where plague was endemic would not be admitted into Ragusa until they had remained in isolation for a month; whoever did not observe this law would be fined and subjected to a month of isolation; no one from Ragusa was allowed to go to the isolation area; people not assigned by the Great Council to care for quarantined persons were not allowed to bring food to isolated people. In 1423 Venice set up one of the first known ‘lazaretto’ (quarantine station) on an island near the city, and the Venetian system became a model for other European countries.

Medieval Dubrovnik, aka Ragusa. Photo: Pinterest.

Thursday, August 4, 2022

Goodbye Peckham

I have now moved out of Peckham. Moved into that area of London during the pandemic with my partner.

I am currently in the North London suburbs of Waltham Forest until I move to Cambridge in a few weeks.

I am looking forward to visiting the local Walthamstow Wetlands Wildlife Trust with my camera.

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I do a miss Peckham a bit, including the cinema Peckhamplex. I miss the 90s look, and the £5 price for any film. Good times.

Peckhamplex Peckham
The Peckhamplex

Peckhamplex Peckham
Pretty graffiti

Tuesday, August 2, 2022

Review of Lady Gaga’s London concert: The Chromatica Ball

I think this is my third or fourth Gaga concert; and my goodness, it was worth every penny.

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Lady Gaga is a gay icon. In A Star is Born, she performs at gay bars with a bunch of drag queens. That’s a genuine aspect about her; especially before she became famous. It takes an effort to remember now but there weren’t, and probably still aren’t, many artists who really speak for the gay community. A lot of people have an emotional tie to her music because it probably bolstered them and helped them in darker times with a message of love and acceptance, and loving oneself (Born This Way). Initially, radio stations embargoed her song Just Dance, the breakthrough hit, because of her very close ties with the gay community. Indeed, Alejandro was a song that Gaga devoted to gay men which caused another controversy. 

This concert reinforced Gaga’s relevance in music, more generally. But it also confirmed the enormous influence Gaga had, and continues to have, with loads of gays and the arty-types who may be a bit eccentric or don’t fit in. “Thank you for loving a weirdo like me”, Gaga softly interjected, through a song, as her fingers settled on the piano. You’re very welcome. I am not a huge fan of many other pop artists, but Lady Gaga means a lot.

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The Chromatica Ball was Lady Gaga’s twice rescheduled concert. I went with one of my closest friends on July 29th to the Tottenham Hotspur stadium.

So what was it like? Here’s the thing about Lady Gaga: she gives you everything and then some. An incredible singer with terrific vocals, loads of incredible outfits and costume changes, complicated choreography, raucous thumping club mixes with some gentle ballads, and then the force of her personality.

She’s a very authentic artist and you can feel her energy and emotion. She tears down the dancefloor with some crazy choreo through smokes of dry-ice. She has so many outfits which speaks to how much of an artist she is. Beginning with an alien-esque look and then full on sci-fi fashion extravaganza. Homage made to Alexander McQueen and there was just a touch of vogueing mid-way.

There is something very captivating about Gaga on the piano. It feels very intimate and personal with her soulful range. You can see just how much energy and passion she pours into her performances. Some of the songs in the album were a bit dark (on trauma and pain). So, I think the stage and costumes also reflected some darkness, at times. I did like the harsh brutalist architectural vibe on the stadium.

On the whole, this concert was a terrific tour de force.

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My only complaints: I wish the stage offered a better viewing platform to better project Gaga. It can, at times, feel like viewing angles were restricted and she was closed off. There should have been a catwalk runway type of deal sticking out in the middle. She also left Artpop completely out of the setlist and had quite a few ballads. Can’t complain too much with other classics.

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Selection of Photos

Queues around Tottenham Hotspurs stadium.

Both of us in a queue. Big smiles.

Queuing.

Me, Ian and some new friends.

Opening act. Gaga carapaced.






Beautiful, artistic.




Up, close and personal.

Rain On Me.

Home time.

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Selection of videos of The Chromatica Ball setlist

Poker Face

Just Dance

Alice (one of my favourite songs)

Replay

911

Sour Candy

Sour Candy

Telephone

Rain On Me