"I like a man who stays put": Roy Batty, Blade Runner
Those of you who have been paying attention will know that yesterday I was speaking at the "Science Fiction and the Canon" conference in Cambridge. More about that soon, but for now there are more immediately appropriate things to talk about.
This particular doughnut comes to you from Heathrow Terminal 3, bare hours before the US leg of the tour (as I insist on calling it) begins. The queue for the security gate is the longest I've seen here, streaming all the way out of departures and no doubt well past the most disappointing Garfunkel's in London (chocolate cake can have many flavours, but surely onion isn't one of them). The queue is so big that people with more than two hours to wait before their flight are being asked not to join it. It's strangely heartening to see, especially since certain quarters of the media are treating long-haul airline passengers with the warmth and welcome usually reserved for paedophiles. I'm not a climate change denier (seeing George Monbiot take apart David Bellamy on the news a few years ago was a delight), but at the same time I'm intrigued by some of the subtexts of environmentalism. Whereas it once seemed a heterogeneous bunch of concerns, now it seems (in the popular media at least) concerned with the monolithic threat of CO2 emissions. Yet political stances always have their own ideological emissions, and the stuff coming out of environmentalism's exhaust is a weird kind of New Parochialism. So, while no doubt the Independent would frown on my transatlantic flight today, I don't really have a choice - I can't cycle to Northern California. But then, surely I have a choice of whether to go or not? Why should I? How far did the food in my kitchen travel? Why take 'unnecessary' journeys?
In the last few years, we've been introduced to two theoretical concepts: "food miles" and the "carbon footprint," both of which explicitly or implicitly attack the idea of not staying put. "Carbon footprint" in particular is as manipulative as anything Roland Barthes analysed in his Mythologies, with its central thesis that bourgeois myth operates by making the political or cultural seem natural and given. "Carbon footprint" seems to be the perfect example of culture masquerading as nature, with the added implication that it would be best if one left as few footprints as possible, of any kind. Travel, they used to say, broadens the mind; now, it's antisocial behaviour. I also wonder if there's a connection between the still quite recent democratisation of air travel and the middle-class media now deeming it unfashionable. This might explain the intriguing links recent writers of fiction have made between anarchism and the rejection of mobility. Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club features a memorable sequence on the disorienting experience of air travel, the procession of airports which all look alike. J. G. Ballard's Millennium People is closer still; dealing with an affluent anarchist set, the novel begins with an attack on Heathrow.
Perhaps I'm being unfair. I certainly don't want anyone to think I'm Jeremy Clarkson (as my friend Gareth Edwards has pointed out, the real life Alan Partridge). I don't drive, I use public transport, and agree that inefficient transport should be made as unattractive as possible where there are viable alternatives (why, really, would you need to fly within the UK?). And maybe my theoretical posturing, my 'New Parochialism,' is only going to get me in the Neophiles column of Private Eye. After all, the New Parochialism isn't so new after all. Developments in transportation have always been viewed with suspicion. Some of the crazier religious Victorians thought that building the London Underground would awaken Satanic forces; as my forthcoming (that is, forthcoming in the academic sense) cultural history will show, the Underground network has regularly been portrayed as a pathological space of danger, fear, and monsters. The bombers of July 7th 2005 drew on exactly these tropes, consciously or otherwise, just as the World Trade Center attacks borrowed the aesthetics of the action film, and grimly punned on the American emergency services phone number. And the anti-travellers of Fight Club and Millennium People have their ancestors in Xavier de Maistre's eighteenth century work A Voyage around my Room, and the Victorian French decadent Des Esseintes in Huysman's A Rebours (setting off for England, Des Esseintes gets no further than thinking about what being in England would be like). What goes around, comes around - so perhaps you'd be better staying at home.
Sunday 25 March 2007
Thursday 15 March 2007
The Cast of "Casualty" doing an Abba Medley
The BBC charity telethon is here again, reminding me of Alexei Sayle’s comment that Comic Relief was established by the people of the Third World to aid the struggling comedians of the UK. While in no way disputing the fine intentions of the campaign, or denying the need for such aid, I find it difficult to become moved by Comic Relief as a charitable event. It presents too much of a queasy mix of self-conscious irony (the reflex of the comedic personalities involved) and leaden earnestness (the very serious and real necessity for such campaigns), resulting in a smugness that becomes gradually unbearable.
The problem lies in Comic Relief’s central faith in the idea of comedy as progressive force, embodied in the feeble play on words of the title. The power of comedy to effect any kind of social or cultural change is much vaunted, but rarely demonstrated. British news media seems to have never heard of Chris Morris; The Simpsons, frequently cooed over for its ‘subversive’ content, was in fact always fairly safe, even more so now that its slide into self-indulgence and retreads of itself is now fully established (as Homer might say, "Mmm… law of diminishing returns"). South Park showed what subversive content really was, although its recent lurch towards the political right has made it somewhat resistant to the progressive politics usually associated with comedy (although in a way, this is taking comedic subversion to a new level). So Comic Relief’s faith in the power of laughter to heal the world seems, ironically, somewhat po-faced. It doesn’t help that the comedy routines are often somewhat self-satisfied in their references to "what we’re all here for tonight." A good example happened a few years ago when Comic Relief night featured an ‘episode’ of Only Fools And Horses, the first to appear since the series’ conclusion in 1996 (but before the ill-advised return to the series a few years later – only fools flog dead horses). The episode ran as normal until the final few minutes, when David Jason turned to camera and said that they didn’t know how to end the sketch, but then again it didn’t really matter because the real point was the charity. But this just struck me as poor writing. Did the charitable subtext need to be pointed out so clumsily? Did it need to be pointed out at all? Did the performers need to make it so clear that they were doing this for a good cause? Other fundraisers such as Band Aid were largely free of this kind of self-satisfaction because, in terms of the event, the appeal was almost incidental. People paid to see a rock show, and that money just happened to be used for a particular charity. Somehow, Comic Relief never seems content to let itself simply be a comedy show that uses its material to raise money.
It sounds as if I’m complaining that my thoughtless enjoyment of funnies is being compromised by boring old reminders of material want and the need for change. But compare Comic Relief with the BBC’s other charity, Children in Need, an equally valid cause but without the same sense of self-satisfaction. This is partially because the appeal isn’t inherently tied to a certain sector of the entertainment industry, so it doesn’t (on the whole) seem to act as a promotional opportunity or as the Comedians’ Union Showboat Bonanza. It’s also refreshingly free of the kind of "I’m cool and funny in real life, but tonight I’m letting my aloofness drop for the common good" self-satisfaction. It’s also striking that while Children in Need doesn’t have any kind of visual prize for donation, Comic Relief depends on the Red Nose as both fundraiser and promotional device. It’s all right if you’re not a professional comedian, you can at least have the temporary semblance of one. Just leave the actual jokes to the professionals – in the right hands they can save lives.
The charity telethon as a genre, however, is facing new challenges. Whereas shows like Children in Need used to give people the chance to see celebrities in different and usually embarrassing contexts, that kind of programming appears every night. The idea behind a twenty minute section on Children in Need ten years ago now gets hosted by Ant’n’Dec and shown sixty weeks a year on ITV2. You’re never further than eight hours away from the cast of Casualty doing an Abba medley. Resultantly, the charity shows are resorting to singers promoting their new album, or trailers for the current West End shows, which in turn gives rise to a new kind of self-promotion. Whether this is better than the old kind of self-promotion, we’ll have to see. Nevertheless, I’ll no doubt be hurling coins into a bucket on Friday, and it would be nice if you’d join me (ah, it does feel quite good after all).
The problem lies in Comic Relief’s central faith in the idea of comedy as progressive force, embodied in the feeble play on words of the title. The power of comedy to effect any kind of social or cultural change is much vaunted, but rarely demonstrated. British news media seems to have never heard of Chris Morris; The Simpsons, frequently cooed over for its ‘subversive’ content, was in fact always fairly safe, even more so now that its slide into self-indulgence and retreads of itself is now fully established (as Homer might say, "Mmm… law of diminishing returns"). South Park showed what subversive content really was, although its recent lurch towards the political right has made it somewhat resistant to the progressive politics usually associated with comedy (although in a way, this is taking comedic subversion to a new level). So Comic Relief’s faith in the power of laughter to heal the world seems, ironically, somewhat po-faced. It doesn’t help that the comedy routines are often somewhat self-satisfied in their references to "what we’re all here for tonight." A good example happened a few years ago when Comic Relief night featured an ‘episode’ of Only Fools And Horses, the first to appear since the series’ conclusion in 1996 (but before the ill-advised return to the series a few years later – only fools flog dead horses). The episode ran as normal until the final few minutes, when David Jason turned to camera and said that they didn’t know how to end the sketch, but then again it didn’t really matter because the real point was the charity. But this just struck me as poor writing. Did the charitable subtext need to be pointed out so clumsily? Did it need to be pointed out at all? Did the performers need to make it so clear that they were doing this for a good cause? Other fundraisers such as Band Aid were largely free of this kind of self-satisfaction because, in terms of the event, the appeal was almost incidental. People paid to see a rock show, and that money just happened to be used for a particular charity. Somehow, Comic Relief never seems content to let itself simply be a comedy show that uses its material to raise money.
It sounds as if I’m complaining that my thoughtless enjoyment of funnies is being compromised by boring old reminders of material want and the need for change. But compare Comic Relief with the BBC’s other charity, Children in Need, an equally valid cause but without the same sense of self-satisfaction. This is partially because the appeal isn’t inherently tied to a certain sector of the entertainment industry, so it doesn’t (on the whole) seem to act as a promotional opportunity or as the Comedians’ Union Showboat Bonanza. It’s also refreshingly free of the kind of "I’m cool and funny in real life, but tonight I’m letting my aloofness drop for the common good" self-satisfaction. It’s also striking that while Children in Need doesn’t have any kind of visual prize for donation, Comic Relief depends on the Red Nose as both fundraiser and promotional device. It’s all right if you’re not a professional comedian, you can at least have the temporary semblance of one. Just leave the actual jokes to the professionals – in the right hands they can save lives.
The charity telethon as a genre, however, is facing new challenges. Whereas shows like Children in Need used to give people the chance to see celebrities in different and usually embarrassing contexts, that kind of programming appears every night. The idea behind a twenty minute section on Children in Need ten years ago now gets hosted by Ant’n’Dec and shown sixty weeks a year on ITV2. You’re never further than eight hours away from the cast of Casualty doing an Abba medley. Resultantly, the charity shows are resorting to singers promoting their new album, or trailers for the current West End shows, which in turn gives rise to a new kind of self-promotion. Whether this is better than the old kind of self-promotion, we’ll have to see. Nevertheless, I’ll no doubt be hurling coins into a bucket on Friday, and it would be nice if you’d join me (ah, it does feel quite good after all).
Sunday 4 March 2007
Tour Dates
I promised the twin worlds of Victoriana and Academia, so I’d better pay up before this e-journal degenerates into hilarious accounts of weekend shopping (although I’m going to California towards the end of the month, prime territory for Curb Your Enthusiasm style misadventure). So the first instalment – which, incidentally, grows week by week into a partwork you and your family will treasure – is a sneak preview of material to be included in my next academic appearance, speaking at the Science Fiction and the Canon conference at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, on 24th March. Why not bag yourself a seat at the conference website here?:
http://www.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home/faculties/alss/deps/english_media/conference.html
So, "Dick/ens: Bleak House and the Dystopia of Blade Runner." I was so tempted to call this paper "‘It’s too bad she won’t live: but then again, who does?’: Esther Summerson as Replicant," but that wouldn’t have quite suited what I’m actually going to be talking about. What I am arguing will have to remain a mystery save for those who stump up to attend the conference. Although a tiny clue is that another rejected title was "Like Tears in Rain." In the end, I went for Dick/ens because it’s a beautiful half pun (or hun) and has superfluous typography in the title. Incidentally, at this year’s MLA convention, Joseph Valente gave a paper on academic titles discussing such flagrant use of punctuation. That particular panel was the most notorious of this year’s event, thanks to Paul Morrison’s infamous "Is the Rectum a Text?" I happened to be sitting behind a journalist at the time, so if you read of this panel in the American press (no doubt as an example of the theoretical decadence of the MLA), I was actually there. It’s something to tell the grandchildren.
Anyway, my trailer for the Cambridge conference constitutes an illustration from Punch in 1850 (I'm momentarily at a loss for a more specific reference than that, but it's on the way). The illustration reveals the extent of advertising in mid-nineteenth-century London, something I think a lot of people are apt to see as a modern, or even postmodern development (I see Microsoft Word dislikes the word postmodern, which is surprising since ‘Help’ seems to have been constructed by Jacques Derrida). Although the sensory overload (in the fashionable phrase) of street advertising really got going towards the end of the nineteenth century, here it's clearly already on the way. Like the most intriguing images, there are so many questions. Why are all the Ns reversed on the advertising cart except for those in "Van Dieman's Land" (that is, Tasmania, indicating a mid-Victorian liking for Antipodean flavoured sensationalism)? What's going on with the surprised looking man on the left (who, I must admit, looks like he's performing some sort of levitation trick - oh yes, magic is something else that's going to crop up a lot here as well)? Are those peaches in the girl's basket, and is there any psychoanalytic mileage in her fruity bounty, as well as what seems to be at least a police caution? As for my favourite part, I'm stuck between the two men advertising mixed somethings, and the poster on the far left. There's something amusing about the sudden leap from modern visual entertainment technologies to the more enduring aesthetic of the freakshow. I wonder if it would have had a similar effect to a poster today promising IMAX... Nintendo Wii... The Bearded Lady. Nonetheless, I hope that DIORAMA PANORAMA CYCLORAMA DWARF! will soon become a popular drinking game at the MLA convention.
It does say tour dates at the top; you can see me live at Cambridge on 24th March, before I head off to California on the 25th… and my next public appearance will be at the Daphne du Maurier International Centenary Conference, Fowey, 10th-11th May. Get your seats booked at:
http://www.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home/faculties/alss/deps/english_media/conference.html
So, "Dick/ens: Bleak House and the Dystopia of Blade Runner." I was so tempted to call this paper "‘It’s too bad she won’t live: but then again, who does?’: Esther Summerson as Replicant," but that wouldn’t have quite suited what I’m actually going to be talking about. What I am arguing will have to remain a mystery save for those who stump up to attend the conference. Although a tiny clue is that another rejected title was "Like Tears in Rain." In the end, I went for Dick/ens because it’s a beautiful half pun (or hun) and has superfluous typography in the title. Incidentally, at this year’s MLA convention, Joseph Valente gave a paper on academic titles discussing such flagrant use of punctuation. That particular panel was the most notorious of this year’s event, thanks to Paul Morrison’s infamous "Is the Rectum a Text?" I happened to be sitting behind a journalist at the time, so if you read of this panel in the American press (no doubt as an example of the theoretical decadence of the MLA), I was actually there. It’s something to tell the grandchildren.
Anyway, my trailer for the Cambridge conference constitutes an illustration from Punch in 1850 (I'm momentarily at a loss for a more specific reference than that, but it's on the way). The illustration reveals the extent of advertising in mid-nineteenth-century London, something I think a lot of people are apt to see as a modern, or even postmodern development (I see Microsoft Word dislikes the word postmodern, which is surprising since ‘Help’ seems to have been constructed by Jacques Derrida). Although the sensory overload (in the fashionable phrase) of street advertising really got going towards the end of the nineteenth century, here it's clearly already on the way. Like the most intriguing images, there are so many questions. Why are all the Ns reversed on the advertising cart except for those in "Van Dieman's Land" (that is, Tasmania, indicating a mid-Victorian liking for Antipodean flavoured sensationalism)? What's going on with the surprised looking man on the left (who, I must admit, looks like he's performing some sort of levitation trick - oh yes, magic is something else that's going to crop up a lot here as well)? Are those peaches in the girl's basket, and is there any psychoanalytic mileage in her fruity bounty, as well as what seems to be at least a police caution? As for my favourite part, I'm stuck between the two men advertising mixed somethings, and the poster on the far left. There's something amusing about the sudden leap from modern visual entertainment technologies to the more enduring aesthetic of the freakshow. I wonder if it would have had a similar effect to a poster today promising IMAX... Nintendo Wii... The Bearded Lady. Nonetheless, I hope that DIORAMA PANORAMA CYCLORAMA DWARF! will soon become a popular drinking game at the MLA convention.
It does say tour dates at the top; you can see me live at Cambridge on 24th March, before I head off to California on the 25th… and my next public appearance will be at the Daphne du Maurier International Centenary Conference, Fowey, 10th-11th May. Get your seats booked at:
This is being organised in association with the annual Daphne du Maurier Festival of Arts and Literature, which means that in one sense I’m on the same bill as Jethro Tull. More of them later.
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