Blogging the Blog 12: Most Interest & Mostly Americans

I was looking around the various functions that this Blogger site provides for us bloggers and came across a tab I had not used before: Stats.  I took a look at it and it revealed interesting data about you, yes, the people who read my blog.  It was a little depressing but the information is not going to get me to change what I post here.  However, it is interesting to look at what I have found out.The first thing I looked at was where the 99,000+ hits on my blog had come from.  Over a third were from the USA and 16,000 were from the UK.  I guess that I should not be surprised that half of those visiting the site were from English-speaking countries and these two in particular given that I write a lot about the UK and often feature US movies.  The third highest source was Germany with 6,000 visitors followed reasonably closely behind by Canada and France, almost equal with each other; Australia in sixth place has provided 3,000 visitors, the Netherlands next with 2,000; Italy and interestingly, the Philippines both with 700+ and finally Sweden with just over 500.  I guess this spread may come from the topics I have covered.


The tools with which people reach my blog are varied though 84% have come from a machine using Windows and only 10% from a Macintosh.  Of new devices just over 900 used an iPhone, 713 used an iPad (one of those might have been myself), 223 an iPod and interestingly, 65 used a Playstation 3.  The search engine people who did not come direct used is unsurprising, with 45% coming through Internet Explorer (recently it was reported the average IQ of users of this search tool was only 80; I assume because it includes numerous school children); 29% used Firefox, 13% used Chrome, 9% used Safari (the default search tool on the iPad) and only 2% used Opera and <1% Iceweasel, the search tools that are supposed to be the ones favoured by the most intellectual web searchers.

The main ways in which people have reached my blog through other links is in terms of the maps of imaginary places, especially Narnia, because my inclusion of six maps of that world is referenced on Wikipedia in the footnotes. Other imaginary maps are also high in those pages on my blog which are visited with large continents and then tube maps in second and third place of this sub-set.  Getting featured on the 'Today in Alternate History' website has channelled more traffic to me and interestingly so has mlwodementia.blogspot, one which I was not familiar with but is proving to be the third highest channel through which direct traffic as opposed to searchers, is coming.  It turned out to be a blog which has been running since 2007 with over 50 postings per year and is focused on making and playing with fantasy lead figures.

When I turn to the topics of interest, however, I begin to be rather disheartened.  My most popular topic has been discussing James Bond villains, my first posting on this in April 2009 has attracted over 3,600 visits, the second posting over 11,000 and the third over 16,000.  This pattern in itself is shaped by the search terms that have brought people to my blog, the term 'Sophie Marceau' is by far and away the most popular term followed by 'Le Chiffre' though only warranting a tenth of the interest that Sophie has done.  He is followed by 'Robert Davi' and 'Toby Stevens' interesting pair of actors who have been Bond villains and the fifth most popular term is 'Tamriel'.  Interesting my two postings on steampunk pirates have received 7,500 hits for the first one and 8,500 hits for the second, partly through people looking for 'steampunk pirates' specifically as a search term and partly people coming across it looking for images of Japanese flags.   In terms of the counter-factual postings the top one with over 1,100 visits is 'What if the Bolshevik Revolution Failed?' followed far behind by 'What if Hitler Had Been Assassinated?' and 'What if Lenin Had Lived 10 Years Longer?'.  I would have expected more coming to the Second World War and other better known 'what ifs?' but I guess there are a lot of sites covering those that draw them off before they reach me as a result.  Whilst I know that some people have read my political postings and my fiction they must be so few in number so as not to turn up in the statistical returns.

I suppose we have perceptions of how people view our blog.  It seems apparent that mine mainly attracts Americans looking for pictures of Sophie Marceau, perhaps reading about James Bond villains and on occasion looking for maps of Narnia or something on steampunk pirates.  I guess I am filling a role that might not be filled by others, though I find it weird that people cannot source the hundreds of images of actors who have appeared in the James Bond movies from other places, there are hundreds of websites with this stuff on.  As I said when I launched this blog, it was primarily for my own peace of mind and I would always rather be right than read.  As time has passed I guess I did hope that people would at least read my views, but I need to be clear than unless I am commenting on James Bond or steampunk pirates then they are not, well, even then they are probably only here for the pictures rather than the text.  It is also frustrating that the bulk of visitors come to look at pages from 2008 and 2009.  I could easily have packed up after having posting something like 300 pages.  I guess this information is useful for people looking to attract visitors to their blog.  'The Guardian' has been running a column about how to create and 'monetise' your blog.  Clearly a good starting place is to whack on images of popular actresses and maps of fantasy places.

What Is Wrong With 'The Golden Compass'?

As well as watching DVDs: 'Buongiorno, notte' (2003) and 'Zwartboek' (2007), I actually strayed out to the cinema to see 'The Golden Compass' (2007) which is based on 'The Northern Lights' by Philip Pullman (1995) the first in his His Dark Materials trilogy. I also saw Mark Kermode comment on it in his round-up of movies of 2007 and give it a rather lacklustre review. He prefers 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy (2001-2003) for their darkness and 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' (2005) for being more warm-hearted. In fact I think that the Lord of the Rings movies have a similar chumminess about them, the hobbits in particular are there to stand in for the perspective of children and you know they are going to win through despite the odds. Conversely, the first Narnia film has real moments of nastiness such as when the faun is frozen and also when the boy is told that he has betrayed his friends for sweets (something particularly cutting at the time the film is set, the middle of the Second World War). Kermode feels that 'The Golden Compass' lacks the positive elements of these other fantasy films, over-simplifying the novel. This can be said for all of these films, plus the Harry Potter series too. Basically you can make a decent movie out of a novella or a short story. Much of the Philip K. Dick stories turned into movies are not his full length work. In contrast Pullman's work like that of Tolkien and Rowling runs to hundreds of pages; Lewis's work is easier to adapt as his books are the length of the old-fashioned length novel (i.e. say 150 pages) not the doorstops of today. Whole sections of the Lord of the Rings novels are left out from the movies and in the Harry Potter movies there is similar cutting and simplification. That is why movies are adaptations. To come close to a novel you need to do a series.



'The Golden Compass' does make one mistake for younger viewers especially in our illiterate age in that there are a number of instances of foreign languages being used which need sub-titles which it was clear many younger members of the audience around me needed to have read out to them. In the UK the film is rated 'PG' - Parental Guidance which means generally even pre-school children can get in if with a parent; typically children attend movies that are the next rating up from their age, so 12 year olds go to '15' movies and 15-year olds to '18' movies and so on, something few people seem to take into considerationg when making a movie. Sensibly in 'Babe' (1995) the mice read out all the text on screen for the pre-literate members of the audience but I have not seen a similar approach used in other movies.



'The Golden Compass' has done poorly in the USA and there are possibly two reasons for this. I disagree with Kermode that it is because it lacks the passion of these other fantasy blockbusters.I think it is because the agnostic view the movie takes (and it is not atheist despite what people might say as it has angels and a heaven, it is just the structure of these is different to the model set out by Christian churches notably the Roman Catholic Church and this is why the Catholic League in the USA pushed for a boycott of the movie). The USA is a far more religious country than the UK. On a Sunday more people go to DIY stores than churches in the UK. Despite the increased popularity of faith schools this has not increased actual church attendance very much and religion actually remains irrelevant to the bulk of the UK population. The picture is very different in the USA, something the country is well aware of. The second thing is that 'The Golden Compass' is a very British movie. It does not move into an alien fantasy realm like The Lord of the Rings or the Narnia stories which sometimes have parallels with the USA or people can at least draw parallels to the USA. American citizens are generally disinterested and unknowledgeable about things which happen even a short way outside their borders so a movie set in Britain is not going to interest them, especially when there is really only one US character: Lee Scoresby played by Sam Elliott. Neither is it the twee world of Britain as portrayed in the Harry Potter movies. We know US audiences have difficulties with 'alternate worlds', the 'Sliders' (1995-2000) series notwithstanding, just look at the problems they had with 'Fatherland' (novel 1992; movie 1994). 'The Golden Compass' does very well at showing a different UK where not only do people have their souls (yes and they have souls so it is not atheistic) outside them in the form of 'daemons' (maybe this word and the fact that the animals look like familiars also caused problems for Catholic USA), but history has run a different course.



Anyone who knows Oxford and/or London will recognise many buildings shown in the movie but between them are many others that are alien. The style of the country is 1930s fashions mixed with a combination of steampunk and magic as the characters travel in airships and yet there are magical devices too. This is not as easily accessible as a world of orcs, hobbits, dwarfs and wizards which has become so well established in our psyche. In addition, what does come across from Pullman's work is challenging for the average audience member. In Narnia there is a simple message: an allegory of Christianity - sacrifice of the chosen one (i.e. Aslan/Christ) and his rebirth leads to redemption for all who follow him. In the Middle Earth of The Lord of the Rings, there is a similar good vs. evil, with temptations (especially in terms of power) along the way even for the good at heart, but fellowship and faith will win through and allow the restoration of the correct hierarchy, i.e. the return of the King and there is analogies for the time that it was written in with Mordor representing the Nazis/Soviet Communism, the hobbits as the brave British and the elves as the Americans sailing to a new world. [



In 'The Golden Compass' things are intentionally not so clear. There is a young girl, Lyra (played very capably by Dakota Blue Richards who despite the name seems to be British or certainly can do an excellent British accent. Interestingly Christopher Lee (aged 85) continues his dominance of evil nobles in recent blockbusters, appearing as First High Councillor of the Magisterium (he was Saruman in The Lord of the Rings movies; Count Dooku in Star Wars II and III)), getting involved in adventures just like Lucy in 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' and similarly learning new strengths and skills. There is Lord of the Rings/Narnia style redemption for the deposed polar bear king, brought back from alcoholism to overthrow the usurper. However, there is more ambiguity even in the simpler form shown in the movie. Lyra finds out who her parents are and one clearly is devious if not outright evil. Unlike in traditional stories, including Harry Potter which in many ways is not of contemporary Britain but of an earlier age remembered, where being an orphan is seen as legitimate, Lyra turns out to be illegitimate and also the result of what turned into a bitter encounter between her parents; possibly more relevant to many children in the audience today than being orphaned, but again far more challenging and ambiguous than the other routes these epics offer. Above all there is the sense that authority should not tell us all the answers; as one of the witches says (and again this may upset some viewers that witches are heroines, very reminiscent of wartime resistance fighters - Eva Green an actress I admire plays the lead one so I accept I am biased) it is about free will, the ability to choose the wrong as well as the right path, in fact the opportunity to choose at all. 'The Golden Compass' has many of the trappings of other fantasy epics such as full-scale battles and a child heroine but it and its sequels (if they are ever made given the poor reception in the USA) will always challenge the audience's assumptions far more than these others and thus I doubt it will ever do well in the USA where the audience wants easy stories and demands a happy ending not a complex one and consequently without the US box office dollars it will not thrive in the way the more Christian-orientated fantasy epics will. In some ways, in our world, the battle Lyra is fighting in hers, is already lost.

An Atlas of Imaginary Worlds 1: Narnia

Following my brief journey into the bizarre and sinister world of the censoring of internet maps I have come across a range of different imaginary worlds that are mapped in detail. The leading one has to be the Middle Earth of The Lord of the Rings story, as you can see there are stacks of those of different kinds, though lawyers are keen to stamp them out. Next in terms of internet popularity comes Narnia. C.S. Lewis (1898-1963; the part of his life are shown in the movie 'Shadowlands' (1993). Like J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973 who apparently converted him to Christianity though Tolkien was Catholic and Lewis Church of England) he lectured at the University of Oxford in the 1950s, they were both in the 'Inklings' writers' club and used to drink in the 'Eagle and Child' pub which still exists in Oxford. Lewis's 'The Chronicles of Narnia' consisting of seven books (a heptology I suppose): 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' (1950), 'Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia' (1951), 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader' (1952), 'The Silver Chair' (1953), ' The Horse and His Boy' (1954), 'The Magician’s Nephew' (1955), 'The Last Battle' (1956). Like Tolkien's work they are adventure stories (though probably aimed at a younger audience than 'The Lord of the Rings' and certainly shorter in length) with moral themes, and Christian undertones (notably the character of Aslan the lion, who like Jesus Christ in Christian theology redeems characters through his death and rebirth).

As with 'The Lord of the Rings' the CGI capabilities of the 21st century enabled Lewis's work to be revived through a blockbuster movie, with 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' (2005). The scene in which the White Witch, Jadis, (very well played by Tilda Swinton who has a suitably otherworldly demeanour; the witch is white because she is icy rather than good) sneers at the boy Edmund Pevensie who betrayed his friends to her in return for sweets (he had admittedly come from Britain in the Second World War where sweets were unavailable) is a good lesson for today's very demanding youth.

Anyway, as with any decent fantasy novel, there is a map. Narnia, by the way, is named after a city North of Rome in ancient times. Like Tolkien and Robert E. Howard (more on him another post), Lewis drew on his knowledge of the Classical world to provide names and locations. He also used other cultures, for example Jadis comes from the Turkish word for witch. So, below is a selection of maps of his Narnia:

Whereas Tolkien's Middle Earth faces North-West, Narnia seems to face East. Wildlands or wastes of the North seem a common element, and probably reflects authors coming from northern Europe and North America. Maybe the fantasy worlds of authors from the Mediterranean, Africa or South America would be very different. I suppose another thing is that you need wide plains to ride across in dramatic fantasies and to counter this maybe why when we turn to the work of Le Guin and Moorcock who eschew their predecessors, you have lots of archiepelagos instead.