This might seem overly philosophical and to some extent represents the fact that my brain seemed to wake up after falling into disuse over the weekend. I thought of a lot of things to blog, but given my poor memory have forgotten most of them, bar this one, but I hope they will come back to mind, probably when I am driving down the motorway and can do nothing about it. Recently at the company I work for I was interviewed by a woman and the only recording device she had was her mobile phone. The first time I have seen an hour's recording captured that way. Anyway, today's posting was prompted by a review in 'The Guardian' newspaper on Saturday of 'The History Man' by Malcolm Bradbury (1975; TV series 1981 - I actually sat behind the author once in a cinema, a nice man, appeared very much as you would expect). A lot of the review was about the economical writing of the book and the focus on the outward perception of things rather than any concern for inner thoughts. However, the part that provoked my thinking was the novel's exploration of the weakness of liberal humanism with, to quote, 'its built-in tolreance and self-doubt' in the face of 'those convinced they have a monopoly of the truth'. When it was written Marxism (represented in the book by the 'hero' Howard Kirk, a university lecturer in sociology) seemed to be the prime source of those who felt they had the monopoly on the truth. Soon after though came two more sources to eclipse the Marxists - the New Right and Religious Fundamentalists. These are the two broad groups who seem to challenge liberal humanism today.
Now, I know for US readers anything called 'liberal' seems dirty, sordid, corrupt even. The USA is the only country in the English-speaking world where you can insult someone by calling them a liberal, maybe because they have more of the truth monopolists of both the New Right and the Religious Fundamentalist categories than anywhere else. For the rest of us, liberal humanism is what marks out life in the early 21st century from that of the early 20th century. It seeks to protect us from the random nature of life which can lay low even the most wealthy and wreck the lives of anyone else less rich. In particular it encourages us to have a 'safety net' for people made vulnerable through disease, poverty, old age, war, ignorance, bigotry and so on. It also tries to stop the spread of violence, corruption, narcotics, etc. reducing us all to barbarians. It makes war seem like something to avoid and embrace instead getting along with people and respecting them. Of course it is a constant battle and one that in many parts of the World is being lost, but that does not mean there is any reason to give up the fight.
People may argue that liberal humanism appeared at the time of the Enlightenment in the 18th century, but it has been around lurking in the background for many millenia. In Ancient Rome you had slavery and gladiatorial fights but you also had the chance for manumission and the grain 'dole'. In the Middle Ages there was constant warring and narrow-minded attitudes and persecution from churches but there was also alms-giving, hospitals and concepts of chivalry (however idealised they may have been) that sought to dissuade people from abusing the poor, slaughtering prisoners and raping women.
Yes, liberal humanism does embrace self-doubt and tolerance. If it did not embrace tolerance then it could not exist, it would not embrace humans and humanity in all of its diversity. To have any feeling for humans obliges you to be tolerant. As to self-doubt, I would argue that it is not really doubt, rather it is self-questioning and self-verifying. You may argue then how does it verify that what it is doing is correct, and certainly approaches can be contested. However, surely it is better to actually seek to verify your actions rather than steam ahead dogmatically. In addition, the truth monopolists are not free from doubt and in fact are often fearful of defeat, part of the motive for driving them on. Take one example, the Nazi regime in Germany. The Nazis argued their empire would last 1000 years, yet on the other hand they were so fearful of the Jews that they felt they had to wipe them out. Yet, in turn, they thought the Jews were weak compared to the Aryan race and corrupt, so you might ask them 'why do you fear these people if they are so weak compared to you?' Thus, to say that fundamentalism lacks self-doubt is wrong. Every revolutionary body or fundamentalist religious group has a tendency to fragment which may show confidence in oneself, but doubt in the self of the broader grouping as it previously existed.
Liberal humanism is certainly under threat, possibly because it is hard to sell the necessary positive image when there seem to so many fears. The threat of nuclear war which it seemed able to address has now been replaced by the threat of terrorism (though of course it has been around for decades, it has just started to be used in a much more aggressive way as a threat) and ironically environmental damage which requires liberal humanism to effectively address. The fact that liberal humanism is still alive at all, reflects the huge leap in communications of the past two decades. Without the internet I imagine we would be living in much more authoritarian times. It is no wonder that dictatorships such as China and Singapore (until it found it was too expensive to continue doing) censor their people's access to the internet. The shift of the post-war consensus, notable in the UK towards the so-called Thatcher Consensus, but common across the Western world with the rise of the New Right in the 1980s matched by similar rise of authoritarian attitudes in many Muslim states made it easier to make the step to the next stage in the 2000s which is a rapid erosion of civil liberties, ironically in the name of protecting freedom in the face of comparatively small threats which have been exacerbated by bigoted, aggressive moves in the first place. In this world it is now normal to accept detention without trial for a month or even years (once you reach Guantanamo Bay), the use of torture by even low-level soldiers, invasion of countries to secure resources, greater control of movement of people and a general sustained hysteria.
How can liberal humanism survive? To some extent by becoming devout. It might seem weird to say 'yes, I am a devout liberal humanist'. Whatever people might say, in fact that is not contradictory with saying 'I am also a Christian/a Muslim/American'. All gods love the people they oversee so any worshipper should love humans too. Religions and the American constitution tend to praise mercy and respect for people and it is there in the Bible, Koran, Torah, US Constitution if you look no matter what people might tell you. The key thing is to see what the key tenets are of liberal humanism. They are few and are easily applicable in many circumstances, it is just that all decent people have to keep saying them loud and proud. The key aspect is to treat people like people. Even to treat people like animals in this age of increased rights for animals, would be a step up in many places in the World. Do not torture, do not detain without charge, do not make people homeless, do not deny them drugs you can afford to give them, do not deny them food you throw away in vast quantities, do not kill or harm someone because they look different from you or follow a different view, let people meet, let people speak, let people travel. Everything we expect for ourselves is the minimum we should allow others.
I passed two postcards in people's windows over the past few months. One showed a refugee family behind a barbed wire fence, with the text explaining how they had fled to the country portrayed to escape repression only to step into repression. The other showed the Statue of Liberty against the Stars and Stripes, and said that the USA that person believes in would never torture people. Liberal humanism is not weak and people need to see that. It is a far better counter to fear and danger than any amount of repression and authoritarian attitudes. What will destroy it is people believing it has no tenets and that it is already dead. The bulk of you know what the World needs because for most people it is what they, as a human like all the rest of us, needs.
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
Sunday, 13 January 2008
How do you Kill a Vampire in the 21st Century?
This is a bit of a continuation of the previous posting and covers some thoughts about the changing aesthetic of the portrayal of vampires in media. I feel that I should be addressing more serious content, but I have to confess that I am exhausted. I have been in bed by 20.00 all this week and yet the return to work has been much more of a burden than I had anticipated and is really taking a physical toll on me. Consequently despite having lots of ideas for posts I am really lacking the mental energy to articulate them properly and the physical energy to stay up and type them into the blog. This is a pity as having steamed ahead with many of my writing projects over the Christmas period I had hoped to be able to continue that momentum now, but I suppose that is the price one pays for getting old.
So, today's posting is nothing very erudite, but when I was thinking about how the fashions associated with vampires had changed, reflecting shifts and interests within contemporary society, I also thought about how vampires are shown to be destroyed in movies, books and games has changed too. Partly this is because vampires since the 1990s have shifted from purely horror movies really into the action genre and consequently there is a desire to be able to blast away at them with excessive amounts of ammunition and yet ultimately be able to kill them. Even when guns are not used, as in the 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' series (1997-2003), there is much more martial arts involved before Buffy can shove her stake into the vampire's heart. In addition, typically the vampire dissolves very quickly into dust rather than dying slowly and in a way that they can be resurrected for the next movie.
The ability to resurrect a seemingly destroyed vampire is an interesting one. In movies in which the stake simply keeps the vampire dead, of course, it can be later removed and the vampire can come back to 'life'. I am trying to think of a movie in which I have seen this happen. These days vampires usually dissolve dramatically into a shower of blood or ash. Interestingly in 'Ultraviolet' this ash is collected up and then stored in a chilled repository. However, in the final episode the dust of a vampire (played by Stephen Moyer who apparently plays the lead vampire in 'True Blood') is brought back into existence by pouring the blood of another vampire on him. What is fascinating is that his clothes are perfectly restored too, probably a good thing as he is on a bridge in London at the time and runs off into the streets.
In recent tradition, vampires are killed by exposure to sunlight or having a stake driven through their hearts. In addition if their 'sire', the vampire who made them a vampire is killed, they may die or return to being a human. This is what happens at the end of 'The Lost Boys' (1987) when the grandfather literally drives a vast stake into the chief vampire. Destroying the coffin in which the vampire is supposed to sleep (and often contains earth from where they were conceived) is another way. Vampires are generally thought to be able to be burned by fire and also die if they have their heads chopped off. They also suffer damage from having holy water thrown over them and are repelled by crucifixes and by garlic. The probable reason for garlic being a factor is that it is good for improving people's blood circulation and there is an association between vampires and coagulating blood. Flowing water can either repel or damage a vampire depending on the story.
To some degree the shift in killing them comes from a move from the portrayal of vampirism as something spiritually evil or inherent in a vampire to something more like a disease that potentially anyone can catch. There are some exceptions to this. In 'Dance of the Vampires' (1967; known as 'The Fearless Vampire Killers' in the USA) there is a Jewish vampire not repelled by a crucifix.
The long-running UK science fiction series, 'Doctor Who' has had a couple of vampire stories. In November 1980 there was the 4-part 'State of Decay', with Tom Baker as the Doctor, in which there are ordinary vampires and Great Vampires, an alien race from E-Space. Once the last Great Vampire has a spaceship rammed through his heart all the others die. However, a more interesting twist came in the series in 1988 in 'The Curse of Fenric' which features alien 'haemovores' (literally blood eaters) in North-East England in 1943. The so-called Ancient Haemovores come from Earth's future when the planet has been wrecked by pollution. They transform humans into standard haemovores. In contrast to other vampires they can operate during daylight (or certainly as grey as the light is in Northumberland) but they are immune to bullets. However, they are not immune to faith, but not necessarily just Christian faith and a Soviet soldier who is one of a number at the base where the haemovores appears, manages to destroy one through his faith in Soviet Communism and the Doctor himself uses his faith in his past companions to do likewise; the vicar like the priest in 'From Dusk to Dawn' is impotent because he has lost his faith, in this story because of the inhumanity of the war. So, there are occasionally slightly different methods, but even the newest of these is now 20 years old and pre-dates the growth of Matrix-influenced vampire movies.
Stakes through the heart still seem to work, though in 'Lifeforce' (1985) and another movie I saw that I cannot remember the name of, it is the solar plexus, which many people, such as those who study tai-chi see as the source of human energy, that has to be the target for it to work. Possibly this is because vampires are supposed to have no pulse so there is doubt whether their hearts would be working.
So, what other ways are vampires killed in modern day stories? Many in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' seem able to knock away crucifixes even if they burn them, suggesting only a very large one would do them serious harm. Many even run around in daylight, simply smoking as they are exposed and able to deflect that by covering themselves in blankets, though sustained exposure will kill them. The most extreme example of this is in 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' (2003) movie in which Mina Harker a vampire, is shown standing in brilliant sunlight sunning herself on the deck of the 'Nautilus'. We never find out what can kill her, she seems to be very powerful, leaping up buildings and turning into a flock of bats when running around Venice.
The issue of immunity to sunlight same seems to apply to some extent in 'Underworld' (2003) though in the unnamed East European city it is set in (one guesses it is Hungarian) there rarely seems to be much daylight anyway. Instead, the werewolves against whom the vampires battle fire bullets containing ultra-violet light sources in them which is like sunlight exposure from the inside out. Artificial light sources are used in 'Blade II' (2002) and in a steampunk way in 19th-century set 'Van Helsing' (2004) (which, to balance back the other way, also permits holy water to harm vampires).
The nature of bullets which harm vampires is an interesting point. Generally the standard lead ones inflict no damage. Interestingly in the UK television series 'Ultraviolet' (1998, not to be confused with recent movies and games) saw the unit opposing vampires firing carbon bullets (there is a mention of wooden bullets being used previously). The sense here is that carbon is the basis of organic chemistry; organic effectively implying 'life' and so life as opposed to death or undeath of vampires. In addition, in fact, a wooden stake really is just a big carbon-based bullet. More controversial is in the 'Blade' series in which it is silver which is said to harm vampires. Everyone knows it is werewolves that are harmed by silver (its similarity in appearance to the Moon); though in 'Underworld' it simply burns and stops the transformation of werewolves. Consequently, the vampires have to use silver nitrate, a form of silver that is liquid at room temperature which kills the werewolves by harming their blood circulation.
Given the connection with blood and perception of vampirism as a disease, there are medical approaches to quelling it. In 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' (1992) and 'Blade', characters see through the microscope how the balance of red and white blood cells change in vampires making them need blood to survive. In 'Near Dark' (1987) two characters are cured from being vampires by blood transfusions and in 'Blade' the hero is supplied with an intense anti-coagulant which causes vampires to expand in seconds and burst dramatically. In fact, you would think it would be the reverse and something that stopped blood flow would harm them more. However, the vampires simply kind of suffocating would be less visually dramatic than their bloody explosions.
Water, bar in the game 'BloodRayne' recently mentioned here, no longer seems to do any damage. Though in some traditions vampires cannot pass flowing water let alone go into it. However, in narrative terms this restricts them even further than sunlight, not allowing them out of the average Romanian village. In 'From Dusk til Dawn', holy water works when the priest recovers his faith which he does supririsingly easily. It shows why (holy) water is less popular as a weapon against vampires in movies as I guess it would remove the drama if we saw vampires being levelled by people with water pistols, power showers and hosepipes. A lot of action movies need the hero to act with ingenuity and anything too simple would undermine that.
As noted above, the villain has to be destroyable, but not too easily. It is interesting in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer', when Dracula appeared, he proved to be basically indestructable and it was only through the heroine showing him how tiresome it would be for him to keep rematerialising and being killed again and again that he effectively gave up. Vampires are renowned for taking many forms, usually bats of different sizes, sometimes wolves and occasionally as clouds, but that does through up the issue of what happens if when in that form someone simply sucked them into a vacuum cleaner or dispersed them with a fan or something; probably why that form of manifestation is no longer common.
Another issue is reflections. Again, this partly stems for vampires being seen as effectively dead and so deemed not to have reflections. There is a great scene in 'Van Helsing' in which the heroine sees in a mirror that she is the only human in the crowded ballroom. Other movies do not worry so much about this aspect as it does seem a bit strange that somehow plain glass reacts differently to the light bouncing off vampires compared to that coming off humans, animals and in fact almost everything in the world. Maybe the suggestion is that the vampires absorb the light. In the UK children's televisions series, 'Young Dracula' (2007-2008), Dracula can only see his own reflection when he is actually inhabiting the body of Van Helsing. The most extreme example of no reflections is in the 'Ultraviolet' series. In it vampires cannot even be captured by audio or video recording devices meaning they are invisible to cameras and have to use artificially created voices when they want to telephone people.
It is interesting to see the different rules which apply to vampires in current media and how vampires are becoming more robust, with fewer weaknesses than they once would have had. This reflects the desire of writers to have strong opponents and ones who can stray much farther afield than down from the castle to the local village. I am sure there will be many more twists and re-interpretations in the coming years. I recognise I have only seen a fraction of the relevant movies and very few books, so it would be great to know other different examples of how to kill vampires that you have seen.
P.P. 04/10/2009
With the unending supply of vampire series appearing there seems to be weekly new examples of how vampires can be killed or not. Not having much time or the patience for reading these my input is mainly from television and movies. 'Twilight' (2008) shows vampires sweating in a gleaming crystalline way when standing in bright sunlight, but not burning up. In fact the 'Twilight' the vampires are probably the hardest to kill of all of these movies and series, as, to destroy them both in the book and the movie, you have to rip them 'to shreds' and burn the pieces because otherwise these pieces can reassemble.
Having re-watched 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' (1992) recently I was reminded that even the original Dracula was immune to daylight, though he was weakened. I remind the woman in my house of this when she complains that vampires should burn up rapidly in daylight as they sometimes do in 'Blade' and certainly in 'Ultraviolet'. This point is questioned even on the IMDB entry for the 1992 movie, but as that was very close to the original novel, it seems what Bram Stoker intended and certainly overcomes the difficulties of writing vampires to be so vulnerable.
I have started watching 'Moonlight' (2007-8) series which, despite the title, is about vampires rather than werewolves. It is interesting to note it stars Sophia Myles who played vampire Erika in 'Underworld' (2003), but this time as a human, Beth Turner, a television reporter. She teams up with vampire private detective, Mick St. John. In this series vampires can walk in daylight (if wearing sunglasses) but bright sunlight weakens them steadily. Silver simply paralyses them rather than kills them. I have not seen many episodes but generally the only way to kill vampires is to behead them or blow them up. Interestingly in this series, vampires images could not be captured by traditional celluloid photography but can be caught by digital photography which is a variation on the rules in 'Ultraviolet', though when that series was produced digital photography had not yet become common.
I watched the entire series of 'Blood Ties' (2007; series 2 about to be released on DVD) which is set in Canada rather than the USA. In some ways the set up is similar to 'Moonlight', though in this the heroine Vicki Nelson is the private detective and Henry Fitzoy, (Duke of Richmond and illegitimate son of King Henry VIII) is a vampire graphic novelist who assists her. In this story vampires are 'dead' during daylight hours and will burn up if exposed to sunlight. There is also a device called an 'Iluminación del Sol' (Illumination of the Sun) which is a flat circular metal object from which extend claws that dig into a vampire, weaken them and allow them to be controlled by whoever put the device on them. In this series most of those who are killed are other creatures from different mythologies as diverse as Amerindian and Greek, so we see a variety of ways of killing these creatures rather than vampires.
The acclaimed series 'True Blood' has come to the UK on a pretty obscure channel that I cannot receive but is due to move on to Channel 4 which I can get. As yet I do not know what vampires can be killed with in this series, so I will check back here with a discussion of it when I know.
P.P. 04/06/2011
I have now watched three series of 'True Blood'. There are a couple of interesting ways to harm/kill vampires in the story. Silver burns and in sufficient quantities paralyses vampires without killing them. At one stage a vampire is threatened with being locked in a silver coffin for five years as punishment for killing another vampire. The prime way to kill vampires is to ram a wooden stake through their hearts at which stage they inconveniently turn into sticky strands of blood occupying as much space as their bodies did rather than the easier to clean up dust of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. The vampires are harmed by sunlight which steadily burns them though does not kill them instantly. In both the first and the third series various vampires are out in the sunlight being burnt but are able to recover after a good meal of blood. In the first series a small group of vampires are destroyed by fire when the house they are sleeping in is torched.
So, today's posting is nothing very erudite, but when I was thinking about how the fashions associated with vampires had changed, reflecting shifts and interests within contemporary society, I also thought about how vampires are shown to be destroyed in movies, books and games has changed too. Partly this is because vampires since the 1990s have shifted from purely horror movies really into the action genre and consequently there is a desire to be able to blast away at them with excessive amounts of ammunition and yet ultimately be able to kill them. Even when guns are not used, as in the 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' series (1997-2003), there is much more martial arts involved before Buffy can shove her stake into the vampire's heart. In addition, typically the vampire dissolves very quickly into dust rather than dying slowly and in a way that they can be resurrected for the next movie.
The ability to resurrect a seemingly destroyed vampire is an interesting one. In movies in which the stake simply keeps the vampire dead, of course, it can be later removed and the vampire can come back to 'life'. I am trying to think of a movie in which I have seen this happen. These days vampires usually dissolve dramatically into a shower of blood or ash. Interestingly in 'Ultraviolet' this ash is collected up and then stored in a chilled repository. However, in the final episode the dust of a vampire (played by Stephen Moyer who apparently plays the lead vampire in 'True Blood') is brought back into existence by pouring the blood of another vampire on him. What is fascinating is that his clothes are perfectly restored too, probably a good thing as he is on a bridge in London at the time and runs off into the streets.
In recent tradition, vampires are killed by exposure to sunlight or having a stake driven through their hearts. In addition if their 'sire', the vampire who made them a vampire is killed, they may die or return to being a human. This is what happens at the end of 'The Lost Boys' (1987) when the grandfather literally drives a vast stake into the chief vampire. Destroying the coffin in which the vampire is supposed to sleep (and often contains earth from where they were conceived) is another way. Vampires are generally thought to be able to be burned by fire and also die if they have their heads chopped off. They also suffer damage from having holy water thrown over them and are repelled by crucifixes and by garlic. The probable reason for garlic being a factor is that it is good for improving people's blood circulation and there is an association between vampires and coagulating blood. Flowing water can either repel or damage a vampire depending on the story.
To some degree the shift in killing them comes from a move from the portrayal of vampirism as something spiritually evil or inherent in a vampire to something more like a disease that potentially anyone can catch. There are some exceptions to this. In 'Dance of the Vampires' (1967; known as 'The Fearless Vampire Killers' in the USA) there is a Jewish vampire not repelled by a crucifix.
The long-running UK science fiction series, 'Doctor Who' has had a couple of vampire stories. In November 1980 there was the 4-part 'State of Decay', with Tom Baker as the Doctor, in which there are ordinary vampires and Great Vampires, an alien race from E-Space. Once the last Great Vampire has a spaceship rammed through his heart all the others die. However, a more interesting twist came in the series in 1988 in 'The Curse of Fenric' which features alien 'haemovores' (literally blood eaters) in North-East England in 1943. The so-called Ancient Haemovores come from Earth's future when the planet has been wrecked by pollution. They transform humans into standard haemovores. In contrast to other vampires they can operate during daylight (or certainly as grey as the light is in Northumberland) but they are immune to bullets. However, they are not immune to faith, but not necessarily just Christian faith and a Soviet soldier who is one of a number at the base where the haemovores appears, manages to destroy one through his faith in Soviet Communism and the Doctor himself uses his faith in his past companions to do likewise; the vicar like the priest in 'From Dusk to Dawn' is impotent because he has lost his faith, in this story because of the inhumanity of the war. So, there are occasionally slightly different methods, but even the newest of these is now 20 years old and pre-dates the growth of Matrix-influenced vampire movies.
Stakes through the heart still seem to work, though in 'Lifeforce' (1985) and another movie I saw that I cannot remember the name of, it is the solar plexus, which many people, such as those who study tai-chi see as the source of human energy, that has to be the target for it to work. Possibly this is because vampires are supposed to have no pulse so there is doubt whether their hearts would be working.
So, what other ways are vampires killed in modern day stories? Many in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' seem able to knock away crucifixes even if they burn them, suggesting only a very large one would do them serious harm. Many even run around in daylight, simply smoking as they are exposed and able to deflect that by covering themselves in blankets, though sustained exposure will kill them. The most extreme example of this is in 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' (2003) movie in which Mina Harker a vampire, is shown standing in brilliant sunlight sunning herself on the deck of the 'Nautilus'. We never find out what can kill her, she seems to be very powerful, leaping up buildings and turning into a flock of bats when running around Venice.
The issue of immunity to sunlight same seems to apply to some extent in 'Underworld' (2003) though in the unnamed East European city it is set in (one guesses it is Hungarian) there rarely seems to be much daylight anyway. Instead, the werewolves against whom the vampires battle fire bullets containing ultra-violet light sources in them which is like sunlight exposure from the inside out. Artificial light sources are used in 'Blade II' (2002) and in a steampunk way in 19th-century set 'Van Helsing' (2004) (which, to balance back the other way, also permits holy water to harm vampires).
The nature of bullets which harm vampires is an interesting point. Generally the standard lead ones inflict no damage. Interestingly in the UK television series 'Ultraviolet' (1998, not to be confused with recent movies and games) saw the unit opposing vampires firing carbon bullets (there is a mention of wooden bullets being used previously). The sense here is that carbon is the basis of organic chemistry; organic effectively implying 'life' and so life as opposed to death or undeath of vampires. In addition, in fact, a wooden stake really is just a big carbon-based bullet. More controversial is in the 'Blade' series in which it is silver which is said to harm vampires. Everyone knows it is werewolves that are harmed by silver (its similarity in appearance to the Moon); though in 'Underworld' it simply burns and stops the transformation of werewolves. Consequently, the vampires have to use silver nitrate, a form of silver that is liquid at room temperature which kills the werewolves by harming their blood circulation.
Given the connection with blood and perception of vampirism as a disease, there are medical approaches to quelling it. In 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' (1992) and 'Blade', characters see through the microscope how the balance of red and white blood cells change in vampires making them need blood to survive. In 'Near Dark' (1987) two characters are cured from being vampires by blood transfusions and in 'Blade' the hero is supplied with an intense anti-coagulant which causes vampires to expand in seconds and burst dramatically. In fact, you would think it would be the reverse and something that stopped blood flow would harm them more. However, the vampires simply kind of suffocating would be less visually dramatic than their bloody explosions.
Water, bar in the game 'BloodRayne' recently mentioned here, no longer seems to do any damage. Though in some traditions vampires cannot pass flowing water let alone go into it. However, in narrative terms this restricts them even further than sunlight, not allowing them out of the average Romanian village. In 'From Dusk til Dawn', holy water works when the priest recovers his faith which he does supririsingly easily. It shows why (holy) water is less popular as a weapon against vampires in movies as I guess it would remove the drama if we saw vampires being levelled by people with water pistols, power showers and hosepipes. A lot of action movies need the hero to act with ingenuity and anything too simple would undermine that.
As noted above, the villain has to be destroyable, but not too easily. It is interesting in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer', when Dracula appeared, he proved to be basically indestructable and it was only through the heroine showing him how tiresome it would be for him to keep rematerialising and being killed again and again that he effectively gave up. Vampires are renowned for taking many forms, usually bats of different sizes, sometimes wolves and occasionally as clouds, but that does through up the issue of what happens if when in that form someone simply sucked them into a vacuum cleaner or dispersed them with a fan or something; probably why that form of manifestation is no longer common.
Another issue is reflections. Again, this partly stems for vampires being seen as effectively dead and so deemed not to have reflections. There is a great scene in 'Van Helsing' in which the heroine sees in a mirror that she is the only human in the crowded ballroom. Other movies do not worry so much about this aspect as it does seem a bit strange that somehow plain glass reacts differently to the light bouncing off vampires compared to that coming off humans, animals and in fact almost everything in the world. Maybe the suggestion is that the vampires absorb the light. In the UK children's televisions series, 'Young Dracula' (2007-2008), Dracula can only see his own reflection when he is actually inhabiting the body of Van Helsing. The most extreme example of no reflections is in the 'Ultraviolet' series. In it vampires cannot even be captured by audio or video recording devices meaning they are invisible to cameras and have to use artificially created voices when they want to telephone people.
It is interesting to see the different rules which apply to vampires in current media and how vampires are becoming more robust, with fewer weaknesses than they once would have had. This reflects the desire of writers to have strong opponents and ones who can stray much farther afield than down from the castle to the local village. I am sure there will be many more twists and re-interpretations in the coming years. I recognise I have only seen a fraction of the relevant movies and very few books, so it would be great to know other different examples of how to kill vampires that you have seen.
P.P. 04/10/2009
With the unending supply of vampire series appearing there seems to be weekly new examples of how vampires can be killed or not. Not having much time or the patience for reading these my input is mainly from television and movies. 'Twilight' (2008) shows vampires sweating in a gleaming crystalline way when standing in bright sunlight, but not burning up. In fact the 'Twilight' the vampires are probably the hardest to kill of all of these movies and series, as, to destroy them both in the book and the movie, you have to rip them 'to shreds' and burn the pieces because otherwise these pieces can reassemble.
Having re-watched 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' (1992) recently I was reminded that even the original Dracula was immune to daylight, though he was weakened. I remind the woman in my house of this when she complains that vampires should burn up rapidly in daylight as they sometimes do in 'Blade' and certainly in 'Ultraviolet'. This point is questioned even on the IMDB entry for the 1992 movie, but as that was very close to the original novel, it seems what Bram Stoker intended and certainly overcomes the difficulties of writing vampires to be so vulnerable.
I have started watching 'Moonlight' (2007-8) series which, despite the title, is about vampires rather than werewolves. It is interesting to note it stars Sophia Myles who played vampire Erika in 'Underworld' (2003), but this time as a human, Beth Turner, a television reporter. She teams up with vampire private detective, Mick St. John. In this series vampires can walk in daylight (if wearing sunglasses) but bright sunlight weakens them steadily. Silver simply paralyses them rather than kills them. I have not seen many episodes but generally the only way to kill vampires is to behead them or blow them up. Interestingly in this series, vampires images could not be captured by traditional celluloid photography but can be caught by digital photography which is a variation on the rules in 'Ultraviolet', though when that series was produced digital photography had not yet become common.
I watched the entire series of 'Blood Ties' (2007; series 2 about to be released on DVD) which is set in Canada rather than the USA. In some ways the set up is similar to 'Moonlight', though in this the heroine Vicki Nelson is the private detective and Henry Fitzoy, (Duke of Richmond and illegitimate son of King Henry VIII) is a vampire graphic novelist who assists her. In this story vampires are 'dead' during daylight hours and will burn up if exposed to sunlight. There is also a device called an 'Iluminación del Sol' (Illumination of the Sun) which is a flat circular metal object from which extend claws that dig into a vampire, weaken them and allow them to be controlled by whoever put the device on them. In this series most of those who are killed are other creatures from different mythologies as diverse as Amerindian and Greek, so we see a variety of ways of killing these creatures rather than vampires.
The acclaimed series 'True Blood' has come to the UK on a pretty obscure channel that I cannot receive but is due to move on to Channel 4 which I can get. As yet I do not know what vampires can be killed with in this series, so I will check back here with a discussion of it when I know.
P.P. 04/06/2011
I have now watched three series of 'True Blood'. There are a couple of interesting ways to harm/kill vampires in the story. Silver burns and in sufficient quantities paralyses vampires without killing them. At one stage a vampire is threatened with being locked in a silver coffin for five years as punishment for killing another vampire. The prime way to kill vampires is to ram a wooden stake through their hearts at which stage they inconveniently turn into sticky strands of blood occupying as much space as their bodies did rather than the easier to clean up dust of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. The vampires are harmed by sunlight which steadily burns them though does not kill them instantly. In both the first and the third series various vampires are out in the sunlight being burnt but are able to recover after a good meal of blood. In the first series a small group of vampires are destroyed by fire when the house they are sleeping in is torched.
Monday, 7 January 2008
The Contemporary Vampire Aesthetic
One area which I promised to focus on in this blog which has been pretty much neglected is contemporary Gothic culture, something I am part of, but seems to be hard to sustain surrounded by so many chavs and all the pressures of life. Vampire aesthetics informed the Gothic (Revival) movement of the 19th century as well as its 20th century manifestation.
I am a keen computer-game player (Is that a prerequisite for being a blogger? Possibly) and tiring of wargames I dug through my collection of PC games looking for something immediate. Computer games are my retail therapy. A few years ago I acknowledged that I actually enjoyed buying the games and reading the little booklets as much as I enjoyed playing them. I never pay full price but enjoy scouring charity shops for obscure titles. Consequently I have a few boxes of games I have never played that I turn to in moments of ennui (such as an extended Christmas holiday with bad weather) and came upon 'Bloodrayne' (2002; a very poor movie came out in 2006 surprisingly with Ben Kingsley and Michael Madsen). It features a half-vampire woman battling against various demons and mutants in Louisiana in 1933 and Argentina and Germany 1938. The story owes a lot to sources such as 'The Raiders of the Lost Ark' (1981) movie with the Nazis digging for powerful esoteric relics; the Anne Rice vampire novels set in New Orleans; the Blade comics graphic novels (1973 so to some degree in itself an element of the so-called 'blaxploitation' trend of the early 1970s as Blade is black; 1999-2000) and movies (1998; 2002; 2004) in that Rayne is a 'dhampir' half-human, half-vampire like Blade; it also has shared elements with 'Hellboy' (graphic novels since 1993; movie 2004) notably the Oberst 'Kommando' character resembles Oberst Karl Rupprecht Kroenen from the Hellboy stories and the Thule Society appears in both.
The game is surprisingly unbuggy for a first-person shooter game; the story is interesting (an organisation called The Brimstone Society but it is incredibly hard not because the controls are poor, they are good, more that so many opponents are thrown at you and water and poison gas are additional hazards that it is incredibly difficult to stay alive even on 'Easy' mode; fortunately the game designers provide simple facilities for cheats to replenish energy and so on, otherwise you would miss out on so much of the game. One notable characteristic of the game I have not seen in many others (but then again I am not a big first-person game player) is the ability to execute balletic assaults on opponents even with a function to slow down to 'bullet time' to allow the kind of violent acrobatics of the kind seen in 'The Matrix' (1999).
The game also taps into the 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' (movie 1992; series 1997-2003) with a female protagonist fighting vampires and demons and clearly aimed at the teenaged boy market. It also draws on the modern, almost fetish, styling of contemporary vampires and that started me thinking about when did vampires in books and movies change from having silk capes to leather trenchcoats and in fact has one approach replaced the other or are they running in parallel?
To some degree the styling for vampires has fed off the Gothic style in itself just as Goths have often modelled themselves on how vampires are shown. This stems from the fact that the explosion of popular vampire fiction in the 19th century portrays them in clothing of that time including capes and formal suits; long dresses and corsets. Movies reflected how the vampires were shown in 19th century fiction and we see such clothing replicated in Gothic clothing from the 1980s onwards. The traditional portrayal was strong in the Hammer horror movies of the 1970s and is sustained in many versions of vampire stories more recently, notably 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' (1992) and 'Van Helsing' (2004) though in Van Helsing's clothing with styles similar to something Blade would wear.
The shift from vampires being nobility in Eastern Europe to being more of an ordinary background can be seen as stemming from 'The Lost Boys' (1987) which portrayed vampires in a small coastal US town as a youth gang and referenced comic books as a source of information for fighting vampires. The vampires for the first time dressed in contemporary clothing of teenagers rather than the garb of nobility. Other movies showing similar vampires of ordinary status were 'Near Dark' (1987) with working class vampires in Oklahoma (in the small category of rural American vampire movies you can also include 'From Dusk to Dawn' (1996) set just over the border in Mexico) and to a lesser extent 'Fright Night' (1985) with suburban vampirism typical of the Buffy series, though with Peter Vincent played by Roddy McDowell referencing the 1970s Hammer horror movies with Peter Cushing and Vincent Price. The Buffy series early on shows that shift in series 2 with the arrival of Spike a British, kind of punk Vampire to displace the more old fashioned approach of 'The Annointed' and 'The Master' vampires who had preceded him in Sunnydale. It is unsurprising that vampire movies took this step. It was in line with the shift in other genres of horror movie too and the fact that mundane evil, the kind you could encounter in your own home is far more frightening than more fantastical horror. If you live in downtown Baltimore or Luton you are very unlikely to encounter a windswept Transylvanian castle. Even the more traditional style vampire movies had been moving in this direction with things such as 'Dracula A.D. 1972' (1972). However, making the vampire genre seem relevant to the teenagers queuing to see slasher movies was important commercially and would revive what by the mid-1980s seemed a very tired genre (e.g. 'Nosferatu' (1922) can be seen as the first vampire movie giving the films a 50-year lifespan even by the mid-1970s).
Another aspect is that vampire movies have rediscovered the analogies to disease. In the era of prevalent syphillis of the Victorian era you find a number of analogies to the illness. The 19th century saw an interest in the workings of the mind particularly of obsessions which formed the foundation of the science of psychology and psycho-analysis in the 20th century. There was also the issue of eugenics and of 'blood' often on a racialist (and in turn provoking racist views) and the characteristics they implied. It is unsurprising that with the era of AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s that people have that as a background and vampirism is portrayed as a disease. Maybe the first contemporary movie to engage with this was 'The Hunger' (1983) maybe influenced by the venereal herpes outbreaks of the 1980s as the lead vampire is eventually destroyed by all those he has 'infected' through draining their blood. In 'Near Dark' the hero's vampirism is cured through a blood transfusion. The disease perspective is notable in 'Blade' (1998) as Blade takes an antidote to his illness and works with a doctor specialising in blood conditions to develop antibodies to vampires. In 'Blade II' things go further with vampires seeking to genetically engineer and even more ferocious type of vampire creature. Similarly in 'Underworld' (2003) werewolf scientists are working at selective breeding in order to create a werewolf-vampire hybrid. In this movie vampirism is not simply a disease but one being addressed through genetic engineering. Thus, it plays on concerns and fears of the present day in the way that some 19th century vampire stories did.
So the vampire was made more of the mainstream and tackling contemporary concerns. This meant that really anyone could become a vampire, opening up a wider range of character types than the simple count in the castle on the hill side. Vampires even became the heros. Blade is a half-vampire and wipes out vampires, though in 'Blade II' (2002) he allies with a kind of vampire special forces unit. In 'Underworld' the heroine, Selene is a vampire herself very much wrapped up in the traditions of the species; though interesting the lead vampire, when revived is connected to a very high-tech drip system to revive him. With vampires as heros you need something far more evil still for them to fight. In 'Underworld' the heroine battles werewolves and conspirators among the vampire community. In Blade II, it is against the mutant vampire creatures and similarly in the computer games 'BloodRayne' and 'Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines' (2004) against mutated creatures coming out of vampire backgrounds ('Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines', a first person/third person shooter/slasher had a fascinating storyline featuring different clans of vampire operating in Los Angeles each with different characteristics and a culture with different vampire organisations. The morality of it is deliberately ambivalent. However, it must have been the most bug-infested game released commercially and took years of patches even after the production company Troika had collapsed to make it playable. The fact that so much effort was put into it showed how engaging the storyline and settings were. It is the only game I have played which has had truly frightening locations and settings).
It is probably unsurprsing that vampire movies touch on disease because as there has long been an association between vampires and sexual activity. As someone noted Dracula is all about fore-play, nibbling at the women without actually going for the intercourse an approach to sex that some women would appreciate. Dracula was generally portrayed as suave and enchanting and also promises love that lasts an eternity; elements often missing in contemporary men's approaches to 'wooing' a woman. He wears dark, sleek clothing and lives well. The vampire women are always beautiful, voluptuous and dressed provocatively. This aspect has further influenced the aesthetic of vampire movies and certainly with the 'Underworld' movie and its sequel 'Underworld: Evolution' (2006) has crossed over into fetish clothing with Kate Beckinsale's character eschewing velvet dresses in favour of a rubber catsuit and long boots. In the same way Goth styling with corsets and long leather coats has found fetishists butting up against it in style; sometimes to the great unease of Goths, though many are open-minded they tend to seek more complex relationship with sustained equality between the partners whereas the fetishists often seek power exchange (though typically within what is beneath the surface an equal relationship). In addition, whilst the Goth clothing is similar there is a great deal more intellectually to being Goth than simply dressing up sexily. Thus, the lines are muddied and with the Goth clearly leaking into mainstream fashion especially in winter styles for women with purples and blacks and corsets, one can see how what is established as the vampire aesthetic in movies, books and games actually begins straying into our lives, most particularly of people like Goths most easily influenced by it. In the age of the 'kidult' and women dressed in pink and fluffy, this provides a far more mature, serious, even dangerous look for people seeking something different.
So where does the vampire genre stand in 2008? Well in terms of novels I could not hope to even scrape the surface of the number being written. Authors such as Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite have been joined by many others in writing both historic and contemporary vampire novels. A third Underworld movie is predicted if Kate Beckinsale gives her costume back to the studio after using it for her Halloween outfit this past year. Vampire stories are likely to stay popular in these nervous times as they touch on physical, medical and mental concerns we have; provide action; are sexy and give us a look that appears grown-up.
I am a keen computer-game player (Is that a prerequisite for being a blogger? Possibly) and tiring of wargames I dug through my collection of PC games looking for something immediate. Computer games are my retail therapy. A few years ago I acknowledged that I actually enjoyed buying the games and reading the little booklets as much as I enjoyed playing them. I never pay full price but enjoy scouring charity shops for obscure titles. Consequently I have a few boxes of games I have never played that I turn to in moments of ennui (such as an extended Christmas holiday with bad weather) and came upon 'Bloodrayne' (2002; a very poor movie came out in 2006 surprisingly with Ben Kingsley and Michael Madsen). It features a half-vampire woman battling against various demons and mutants in Louisiana in 1933 and Argentina and Germany 1938. The story owes a lot to sources such as 'The Raiders of the Lost Ark' (1981) movie with the Nazis digging for powerful esoteric relics; the Anne Rice vampire novels set in New Orleans; the Blade comics graphic novels (1973 so to some degree in itself an element of the so-called 'blaxploitation' trend of the early 1970s as Blade is black; 1999-2000) and movies (1998; 2002; 2004) in that Rayne is a 'dhampir' half-human, half-vampire like Blade; it also has shared elements with 'Hellboy' (graphic novels since 1993; movie 2004) notably the Oberst 'Kommando' character resembles Oberst Karl Rupprecht Kroenen from the Hellboy stories and the Thule Society appears in both.
The game is surprisingly unbuggy for a first-person shooter game; the story is interesting (an organisation called The Brimstone Society but it is incredibly hard not because the controls are poor, they are good, more that so many opponents are thrown at you and water and poison gas are additional hazards that it is incredibly difficult to stay alive even on 'Easy' mode; fortunately the game designers provide simple facilities for cheats to replenish energy and so on, otherwise you would miss out on so much of the game. One notable characteristic of the game I have not seen in many others (but then again I am not a big first-person game player) is the ability to execute balletic assaults on opponents even with a function to slow down to 'bullet time' to allow the kind of violent acrobatics of the kind seen in 'The Matrix' (1999).
The game also taps into the 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' (movie 1992; series 1997-2003) with a female protagonist fighting vampires and demons and clearly aimed at the teenaged boy market. It also draws on the modern, almost fetish, styling of contemporary vampires and that started me thinking about when did vampires in books and movies change from having silk capes to leather trenchcoats and in fact has one approach replaced the other or are they running in parallel?
To some degree the styling for vampires has fed off the Gothic style in itself just as Goths have often modelled themselves on how vampires are shown. This stems from the fact that the explosion of popular vampire fiction in the 19th century portrays them in clothing of that time including capes and formal suits; long dresses and corsets. Movies reflected how the vampires were shown in 19th century fiction and we see such clothing replicated in Gothic clothing from the 1980s onwards. The traditional portrayal was strong in the Hammer horror movies of the 1970s and is sustained in many versions of vampire stories more recently, notably 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' (1992) and 'Van Helsing' (2004) though in Van Helsing's clothing with styles similar to something Blade would wear.
The shift from vampires being nobility in Eastern Europe to being more of an ordinary background can be seen as stemming from 'The Lost Boys' (1987) which portrayed vampires in a small coastal US town as a youth gang and referenced comic books as a source of information for fighting vampires. The vampires for the first time dressed in contemporary clothing of teenagers rather than the garb of nobility. Other movies showing similar vampires of ordinary status were 'Near Dark' (1987) with working class vampires in Oklahoma (in the small category of rural American vampire movies you can also include 'From Dusk to Dawn' (1996) set just over the border in Mexico) and to a lesser extent 'Fright Night' (1985) with suburban vampirism typical of the Buffy series, though with Peter Vincent played by Roddy McDowell referencing the 1970s Hammer horror movies with Peter Cushing and Vincent Price. The Buffy series early on shows that shift in series 2 with the arrival of Spike a British, kind of punk Vampire to displace the more old fashioned approach of 'The Annointed' and 'The Master' vampires who had preceded him in Sunnydale. It is unsurprising that vampire movies took this step. It was in line with the shift in other genres of horror movie too and the fact that mundane evil, the kind you could encounter in your own home is far more frightening than more fantastical horror. If you live in downtown Baltimore or Luton you are very unlikely to encounter a windswept Transylvanian castle. Even the more traditional style vampire movies had been moving in this direction with things such as 'Dracula A.D. 1972' (1972). However, making the vampire genre seem relevant to the teenagers queuing to see slasher movies was important commercially and would revive what by the mid-1980s seemed a very tired genre (e.g. 'Nosferatu' (1922) can be seen as the first vampire movie giving the films a 50-year lifespan even by the mid-1970s).
Another aspect is that vampire movies have rediscovered the analogies to disease. In the era of prevalent syphillis of the Victorian era you find a number of analogies to the illness. The 19th century saw an interest in the workings of the mind particularly of obsessions which formed the foundation of the science of psychology and psycho-analysis in the 20th century. There was also the issue of eugenics and of 'blood' often on a racialist (and in turn provoking racist views) and the characteristics they implied. It is unsurprising that with the era of AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s that people have that as a background and vampirism is portrayed as a disease. Maybe the first contemporary movie to engage with this was 'The Hunger' (1983) maybe influenced by the venereal herpes outbreaks of the 1980s as the lead vampire is eventually destroyed by all those he has 'infected' through draining their blood. In 'Near Dark' the hero's vampirism is cured through a blood transfusion. The disease perspective is notable in 'Blade' (1998) as Blade takes an antidote to his illness and works with a doctor specialising in blood conditions to develop antibodies to vampires. In 'Blade II' things go further with vampires seeking to genetically engineer and even more ferocious type of vampire creature. Similarly in 'Underworld' (2003) werewolf scientists are working at selective breeding in order to create a werewolf-vampire hybrid. In this movie vampirism is not simply a disease but one being addressed through genetic engineering. Thus, it plays on concerns and fears of the present day in the way that some 19th century vampire stories did.
So the vampire was made more of the mainstream and tackling contemporary concerns. This meant that really anyone could become a vampire, opening up a wider range of character types than the simple count in the castle on the hill side. Vampires even became the heros. Blade is a half-vampire and wipes out vampires, though in 'Blade II' (2002) he allies with a kind of vampire special forces unit. In 'Underworld' the heroine, Selene is a vampire herself very much wrapped up in the traditions of the species; though interesting the lead vampire, when revived is connected to a very high-tech drip system to revive him. With vampires as heros you need something far more evil still for them to fight. In 'Underworld' the heroine battles werewolves and conspirators among the vampire community. In Blade II, it is against the mutant vampire creatures and similarly in the computer games 'BloodRayne' and 'Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines' (2004) against mutated creatures coming out of vampire backgrounds ('Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines', a first person/third person shooter/slasher had a fascinating storyline featuring different clans of vampire operating in Los Angeles each with different characteristics and a culture with different vampire organisations. The morality of it is deliberately ambivalent. However, it must have been the most bug-infested game released commercially and took years of patches even after the production company Troika had collapsed to make it playable. The fact that so much effort was put into it showed how engaging the storyline and settings were. It is the only game I have played which has had truly frightening locations and settings).
It is probably unsurprsing that vampire movies touch on disease because as there has long been an association between vampires and sexual activity. As someone noted Dracula is all about fore-play, nibbling at the women without actually going for the intercourse an approach to sex that some women would appreciate. Dracula was generally portrayed as suave and enchanting and also promises love that lasts an eternity; elements often missing in contemporary men's approaches to 'wooing' a woman. He wears dark, sleek clothing and lives well. The vampire women are always beautiful, voluptuous and dressed provocatively. This aspect has further influenced the aesthetic of vampire movies and certainly with the 'Underworld' movie and its sequel 'Underworld: Evolution' (2006) has crossed over into fetish clothing with Kate Beckinsale's character eschewing velvet dresses in favour of a rubber catsuit and long boots. In the same way Goth styling with corsets and long leather coats has found fetishists butting up against it in style; sometimes to the great unease of Goths, though many are open-minded they tend to seek more complex relationship with sustained equality between the partners whereas the fetishists often seek power exchange (though typically within what is beneath the surface an equal relationship). In addition, whilst the Goth clothing is similar there is a great deal more intellectually to being Goth than simply dressing up sexily. Thus, the lines are muddied and with the Goth clearly leaking into mainstream fashion especially in winter styles for women with purples and blacks and corsets, one can see how what is established as the vampire aesthetic in movies, books and games actually begins straying into our lives, most particularly of people like Goths most easily influenced by it. In the age of the 'kidult' and women dressed in pink and fluffy, this provides a far more mature, serious, even dangerous look for people seeking something different.
So where does the vampire genre stand in 2008? Well in terms of novels I could not hope to even scrape the surface of the number being written. Authors such as Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite have been joined by many others in writing both historic and contemporary vampire novels. A third Underworld movie is predicted if Kate Beckinsale gives her costume back to the studio after using it for her Halloween outfit this past year. Vampire stories are likely to stay popular in these nervous times as they touch on physical, medical and mental concerns we have; provide action; are sexy and give us a look that appears grown-up.
Does Barack Obama's Success Mark Growing Maturity in US Politics?
For citizens of the UK, especially in recent years, we look on the US presidential race with a combination of alarm and powerlessness. Certainly since the Reagan era we have known that because the UK is bound so tightly (though I am glad that the bonds are loosening a little compared to the Thatcher-Major-Blair years) the type of US President that is elected affects many lives in the UK. If Al Gore had been properly appointed in 2000, hundreds of UK citizens would still be alive, not having died in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is that clear a correlation. Thus, the choice of American electors impacts heavily on us British and yet we have no control over the electoral process at all. Though we sometimes elect malicious or misguided people to be our prime minister, we do not elect morons in the way Americans do. Reagan and George W. Bush certainly seemed to lack the abilities necessary to fulfil the post they held and you could even question the capabilities of Jimmy Carter. Nixon was bright but oversaw a bitterly divided party and his obsession with power (similar in some ways to our own Tony Blair's) made his term of office infamous. Similarly Clinton let other obsessions, notably sex, get in the way of putting his abilities to full use.
It does seem rare that the US electorate, their opinions distorted through the electoral college system (though even with direct voting Bush would have made a clean sweep in 2004 there is no denying that), actually pick a candidate by their policies, they pick the person (up until now always a man) that appeals to them, and in fact often who resembles them. This might seem the ultimate form of democracy, but for electing someone to the most powerful position (debatably now the second most powerful after the Chairman of the People's Republic of China given China's rapid economic growth [including recent financial support to leading Western banks], the size of its armed forces and a population 5 times larger than the USA) in the world it is not about class but have the personal capabilities to fulfil the role. A rich man can be stupid; a poor man can be intelligent. US voters tend to vote for stupid, rich men.
Now among the potential candidates for the US presidential election there are ones who are very different to what we have seen ever since the USA was founded. On the Democrat side, Barack Obama who won the primary in Iowa (apparently the fourth 'most white' state in the USA) is the first black candidate (and to people in the UK his skin tone looks incredibly pale for a 'black' person as we define them, but I accept he is racially in the US category of African-American, though he is mixed-race) since Jesse Jackson and also a woman Hillary Clinton. Now, Clinton despite her gender actually fits the recent (last 50 years) mode of candidates in that she comes from a presidential dynasty (like the Roosevelts, Kennedys (effectively I know none of them was elected after John) and the Bushes) and is well-off and less commonly, though not uniquely is intelligent. She and Obama are neck-and-neck for New Hampshire. Ultimately I doubt it matters which of the two of them wins as Obama has now established himself strongly enough and Clinton is holding on well enough that either would have to consider the other as their vice-presidential candidate. Could it really be that by 2009 we have a black man and a woman as President/Vice-President or Vice-President/President? Possibly.
I doubt a Democrat victory because the USA is currently running in a very Republican direction. Bush picked up an additional 3 million votes in 2004 over his 2000 victory. The New Right has continued to be successful in scaring the US population into backing harsh measures against the continued supposed threat of al-Qaeda and in turn to try to wriggle out of any limits on US industry implied by climate change legislation. Attitudes counter to this are currently not popular in the USA. However, as I say the US electorate will often look past any policies to elect the person they like. No-one seems to have noticed that Reagan made a 180° turn between his first and second terms of office from condemning the USSR as the 'evil empire' to meeting with its leader. Whatever he said, however, contradictory it was, was accepted because Americans liked Ronnie (and the rest of the world was terrified of him). I watched '1983 - Brink of Armageddon' last night and it revealed how close nuclear war came on 10th November 1983 and it seems to vindicate that unilateral disarmanent would have reduced global tensions, let alone multilateral disarmanent, and that Reagan's posturing was actually endangering world stability in the way many of us warned).
The difference may be that Obama is mobilising people who are generally politically inactive or non-committed and he may be able to get enough of these to tip the balance against the Republicans in some states. However, given the entrenchment of the New Right and just general Republicans throughout the US system I imagine that if he comes close they will pull off some electoral shenanigans as we saw in 2000 (and we witnessed in the UK in 1992 especially in South-West England). In addition, I think since the moment when Obama won the Iowa primary he became the top candidate for assassination in the USA. The closer he comes to even being a presidential or vice-presidential candidate the more risk he will be under, just remember the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968 and he probably stood less chance of winning the candidature than Obama does at this moment. Of course many on the extreme right-wing of US politics have opted out of the political system and are preferring to run around in militia rather than at hustings and I just hope the secret service can defend Obama.
So, does Obama's success mark a shift in the USA? To some degree, no. Despite his background Obama draws on solid roots. He combines the rhetoric of the chapel with the tones of the civil rights movement (which in fact can easily translate into civil rights for the poor as well as the black). Christianity is always a good thing to have on your side in US politics and drawing on the words of the great and good of history is always a good idea too (though sensibly Obama has quoted Martin Luther King sparingly). It seems that his emphasis that freedom is not immoral but actually stems for a decent morality, appeals to usually apolitical people who are beginning to chafe against the restrictions imposed by the perceived threat of terrorism but are in fact more about increasing authoritarian control in line with New Right ideas and about nice wars overseas to control raw materials and provide business opportunities for the President's friends rather than freeing oppressed people. So to some degree people are waking up to the fact that a smiling face does not make their lives better, it is actual policies aimed at the broad sweep of US society rather than a narrow elite. As Bush admitted himself in October 2000 where addressing a dinner costing $800 (£400; €556 at today's rather than 2000 exchange rates) per plate: "This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base." How can even the middle class vote for a man with such a focus. So maybe we are seeing a changing approach to US politics which can only be for the good for both the average person in the USA and hopefully for the rest of the world. Though, of course policies can be brilliant for US people and damage the rest of the world, the two do not have to correlate, look at cheap fuel in the USA for example. In addition, if Obama does get to be President he might have to be even tougher than another candidate would have been, as given the prevailing hysteria is under attack from a SPECTRE-like organisation named (by the Americans themselves) al-Qaeda, this would be to prove that he is not 'soft' on terrorism an accusation which people will lay against him because of his race and political background.
A victory for Obama or Clinton as president, however unlikely would mark a step forward, showing that actually people from different backgrounds can progress to the highest level. The Bush governments seem to have suggest by their very personalities that only the elites can aspire to such a role. Neither Obama or Clinton are from even lower middle class backgrounds, but they are not white men from rich families which was beginning to seem the only criteria for becoming president. As I have noted before, the level to which a person can rise in a society reverberates through that society and with a black or female president many blacks and women can aspire to more realistically to become manager of their factory or store or wherever. That is the role of symbolism, but also moving to policies which will improve US society which is really decaying and a foreign policy which does not wreak death and destruction wherever it touches would be great things for have not only for the USA and the West but also the broader world. Hopefully the US electorate can see that, though I doubt it and we may have to wait a few more decades yet.
It does seem rare that the US electorate, their opinions distorted through the electoral college system (though even with direct voting Bush would have made a clean sweep in 2004 there is no denying that), actually pick a candidate by their policies, they pick the person (up until now always a man) that appeals to them, and in fact often who resembles them. This might seem the ultimate form of democracy, but for electing someone to the most powerful position (debatably now the second most powerful after the Chairman of the People's Republic of China given China's rapid economic growth [including recent financial support to leading Western banks], the size of its armed forces and a population 5 times larger than the USA) in the world it is not about class but have the personal capabilities to fulfil the role. A rich man can be stupid; a poor man can be intelligent. US voters tend to vote for stupid, rich men.
Now among the potential candidates for the US presidential election there are ones who are very different to what we have seen ever since the USA was founded. On the Democrat side, Barack Obama who won the primary in Iowa (apparently the fourth 'most white' state in the USA) is the first black candidate (and to people in the UK his skin tone looks incredibly pale for a 'black' person as we define them, but I accept he is racially in the US category of African-American, though he is mixed-race) since Jesse Jackson and also a woman Hillary Clinton. Now, Clinton despite her gender actually fits the recent (last 50 years) mode of candidates in that she comes from a presidential dynasty (like the Roosevelts, Kennedys (effectively I know none of them was elected after John) and the Bushes) and is well-off and less commonly, though not uniquely is intelligent. She and Obama are neck-and-neck for New Hampshire. Ultimately I doubt it matters which of the two of them wins as Obama has now established himself strongly enough and Clinton is holding on well enough that either would have to consider the other as their vice-presidential candidate. Could it really be that by 2009 we have a black man and a woman as President/Vice-President or Vice-President/President? Possibly.
I doubt a Democrat victory because the USA is currently running in a very Republican direction. Bush picked up an additional 3 million votes in 2004 over his 2000 victory. The New Right has continued to be successful in scaring the US population into backing harsh measures against the continued supposed threat of al-Qaeda and in turn to try to wriggle out of any limits on US industry implied by climate change legislation. Attitudes counter to this are currently not popular in the USA. However, as I say the US electorate will often look past any policies to elect the person they like. No-one seems to have noticed that Reagan made a 180° turn between his first and second terms of office from condemning the USSR as the 'evil empire' to meeting with its leader. Whatever he said, however, contradictory it was, was accepted because Americans liked Ronnie (and the rest of the world was terrified of him). I watched '1983 - Brink of Armageddon' last night and it revealed how close nuclear war came on 10th November 1983 and it seems to vindicate that unilateral disarmanent would have reduced global tensions, let alone multilateral disarmanent, and that Reagan's posturing was actually endangering world stability in the way many of us warned).
The difference may be that Obama is mobilising people who are generally politically inactive or non-committed and he may be able to get enough of these to tip the balance against the Republicans in some states. However, given the entrenchment of the New Right and just general Republicans throughout the US system I imagine that if he comes close they will pull off some electoral shenanigans as we saw in 2000 (and we witnessed in the UK in 1992 especially in South-West England). In addition, I think since the moment when Obama won the Iowa primary he became the top candidate for assassination in the USA. The closer he comes to even being a presidential or vice-presidential candidate the more risk he will be under, just remember the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968 and he probably stood less chance of winning the candidature than Obama does at this moment. Of course many on the extreme right-wing of US politics have opted out of the political system and are preferring to run around in militia rather than at hustings and I just hope the secret service can defend Obama.
So, does Obama's success mark a shift in the USA? To some degree, no. Despite his background Obama draws on solid roots. He combines the rhetoric of the chapel with the tones of the civil rights movement (which in fact can easily translate into civil rights for the poor as well as the black). Christianity is always a good thing to have on your side in US politics and drawing on the words of the great and good of history is always a good idea too (though sensibly Obama has quoted Martin Luther King sparingly). It seems that his emphasis that freedom is not immoral but actually stems for a decent morality, appeals to usually apolitical people who are beginning to chafe against the restrictions imposed by the perceived threat of terrorism but are in fact more about increasing authoritarian control in line with New Right ideas and about nice wars overseas to control raw materials and provide business opportunities for the President's friends rather than freeing oppressed people. So to some degree people are waking up to the fact that a smiling face does not make their lives better, it is actual policies aimed at the broad sweep of US society rather than a narrow elite. As Bush admitted himself in October 2000 where addressing a dinner costing $800 (£400; €556 at today's rather than 2000 exchange rates) per plate: "This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base." How can even the middle class vote for a man with such a focus. So maybe we are seeing a changing approach to US politics which can only be for the good for both the average person in the USA and hopefully for the rest of the world. Though, of course policies can be brilliant for US people and damage the rest of the world, the two do not have to correlate, look at cheap fuel in the USA for example. In addition, if Obama does get to be President he might have to be even tougher than another candidate would have been, as given the prevailing hysteria is under attack from a SPECTRE-like organisation named (by the Americans themselves) al-Qaeda, this would be to prove that he is not 'soft' on terrorism an accusation which people will lay against him because of his race and political background.
A victory for Obama or Clinton as president, however unlikely would mark a step forward, showing that actually people from different backgrounds can progress to the highest level. The Bush governments seem to have suggest by their very personalities that only the elites can aspire to such a role. Neither Obama or Clinton are from even lower middle class backgrounds, but they are not white men from rich families which was beginning to seem the only criteria for becoming president. As I have noted before, the level to which a person can rise in a society reverberates through that society and with a black or female president many blacks and women can aspire to more realistically to become manager of their factory or store or wherever. That is the role of symbolism, but also moving to policies which will improve US society which is really decaying and a foreign policy which does not wreak death and destruction wherever it touches would be great things for have not only for the USA and the West but also the broader world. Hopefully the US electorate can see that, though I doubt it and we may have to wait a few more decades yet.
Thursday, 3 January 2008
If This Is The Start Of The Rest Of My Life Why Should I Bother?
As readers of this blog will know I turned 40 in 2007 and have really been feeling my age. It seems to be getting far worse. I accept that I had had many health problems in my life, but it is the difficulty of getting through an ordinary day. Today was no exception and I am not (I was about to say 'I am lucky not to even be back at work yet' but given how mad I am going sitting at home, maybe 'lucky' is the wrong word), even back at work yet. I found it almost impossible to drag myself out of bed today and walked around the supermarket as if I was a zombie. I have slept the bulk of the afternoon away and feel no better; just incredibly lethargic. I tried playing a computer game with a 6-year old who was keen to have a human partner and was utterly humiliated, I could not get any of my forces even in range of his and many of them died even without me having fired a shot. He did not even have to attack me in order to win and even started shooting his own men in an attempt to try and balance the game for me. It was not that I lost badly or even lost, it was that I could not even engage in the game sufficiently to even give him an easy challenge. I know children assume adults can do anything they can do but better when in fact, especially with anything computer-based they are far better and this proved the case. However, it did seem to emphasise to me how irrelevant I am in the world of the late 2000s. My memory is deteriorating quickly, I now meet people I have no memory of though they reveal I have spoken with them at length just days before; I forget names and faces and even worse tell people things they have actually told me in the first place. If I feel this bad when I have no obvious symptoms - I am not suffering a cold or flu, I have had no accidents or anything else that signals a problem, I am simply lacking in energy and my body is still in various places (my knees in particular ache, but I have heard that becomes common for most men beyond the age of 30). I am not overweight, in fact I lost a lot of weight before Christmas due to the fortnight of moving heavy boxes and furniture up and downstairs. So, I can only think it must be down to old age. If I was a caveman I would be elderly by now; even in 1900 the average life expectancy of a worker was only 45, so maybe we just keep ourselves alive artificially long periods these days. I feel like the Struldbruggs in 'Gulliver's Travels' the people of Luggnagg who are immortal, but their faculties deteriorate over time so the bulk of them are blind and deaf and all are entirely bored, desperate for something new in their lives. I also suffer that and find no interest in books and television, let alone the computer.
What worries me is, if I feel this bad now at 40, what is it going to be like if I live to 60? Do I face two decades of dragging my increasingly debilitated body around; bored out of my mind and unable to interact with the increasingly complex computer-focused world of the 2010s and 2020s, let alone to make a worthwhile contribution to it? What if the young people I meet only use systems that I cannot even press the correct buttons to access? Will I be cut out of forms of communication. Clearly one fear, with my work contract expiring in 2009, is that I will find it difficult to get a job now and that I face another 25 years on unemployment and other benefits, being pressured to retrain myself so that I can get a 'McJob' though of course unless I am behind the scenes all these problems of communication will continue and in any post the lethargy which seems to be taking me will still hamper my work. So it is likely that I face 25 years at lower wages than at present before sliding into poverty when I retire. In the UK many people fall one or two or more social classes on retirement. This is as measured by the census which has 8 social categories with '8' being the 'underclass' of homeless people; on retirement people in categories 3 or 4 will commonly drop from category to 5, 6 or even 7 because of the fall in income and status; something exacerbated by chief executives of companies running off with pension funds. People in categories 1 and 2 are in that bracket where they are sufficiently wealthy that they can ignore the normal rules of society. The end of so many company pension schemes in the UK and the poor performance and mis-selling of so many private schemes means lots of working and middle class UK people will be in poverty in old age.
I had intended to end my life in August 2007 ahead of my 40th birthday in October and was dissuaded by my housemates. However, increasingly it seems to have been a mistake and it is something I need to rethink as I have no desire to face another two decades of feeling as bad as this and being slowly day-by-day being demonstrated that I am of no use to society and in fact lack the abilities to properly engage with what it requires. I am no rich now but falling into even tighter financial straits is not an attractive proposition and is something which is liable to start from 2009 onwards. I did say that I was going to avoid making this blog a journal of my deterioration, but being a 40-year old in the UK today it seems impossible to avoid it. Hopefully there will not be many months left in which I can experience the humiliation and discomfort of being a middle aged British person alive in 2008.
What worries me is, if I feel this bad now at 40, what is it going to be like if I live to 60? Do I face two decades of dragging my increasingly debilitated body around; bored out of my mind and unable to interact with the increasingly complex computer-focused world of the 2010s and 2020s, let alone to make a worthwhile contribution to it? What if the young people I meet only use systems that I cannot even press the correct buttons to access? Will I be cut out of forms of communication. Clearly one fear, with my work contract expiring in 2009, is that I will find it difficult to get a job now and that I face another 25 years on unemployment and other benefits, being pressured to retrain myself so that I can get a 'McJob' though of course unless I am behind the scenes all these problems of communication will continue and in any post the lethargy which seems to be taking me will still hamper my work. So it is likely that I face 25 years at lower wages than at present before sliding into poverty when I retire. In the UK many people fall one or two or more social classes on retirement. This is as measured by the census which has 8 social categories with '8' being the 'underclass' of homeless people; on retirement people in categories 3 or 4 will commonly drop from category to 5, 6 or even 7 because of the fall in income and status; something exacerbated by chief executives of companies running off with pension funds. People in categories 1 and 2 are in that bracket where they are sufficiently wealthy that they can ignore the normal rules of society. The end of so many company pension schemes in the UK and the poor performance and mis-selling of so many private schemes means lots of working and middle class UK people will be in poverty in old age.
I had intended to end my life in August 2007 ahead of my 40th birthday in October and was dissuaded by my housemates. However, increasingly it seems to have been a mistake and it is something I need to rethink as I have no desire to face another two decades of feeling as bad as this and being slowly day-by-day being demonstrated that I am of no use to society and in fact lack the abilities to properly engage with what it requires. I am no rich now but falling into even tighter financial straits is not an attractive proposition and is something which is liable to start from 2009 onwards. I did say that I was going to avoid making this blog a journal of my deterioration, but being a 40-year old in the UK today it seems impossible to avoid it. Hopefully there will not be many months left in which I can experience the humiliation and discomfort of being a middle aged British person alive in 2008.
Wednesday, 2 January 2008
Books I Read in 2007
This is a feature that I cannot claim any credit for as it appears on numerous blogs. I was a little concerned that it was a touch arrogant to outline the books I have read. However, given that things I have read often prompt blog postings and people might be interested in reading these books, combined with me being able to recommend things or, possibly more importantly, warn people away from wasting their time on poor books, I think it is a valid element of my blog. Of course, I only started this blog in May 2007. However, I have been keeping a diary since 1978 and so have a lot of paper-based records to draw upon. Of course, some time has passed since I have read some of these books and so my reviews will not be as accurate as if done at the time. I find I forget plots very quickly, but hopefully have sufficient memory of the overall gist of the books to be able to make worthwhile comments on them.
I read to a very fixed pattern: 1 detective/murder mystery novel, 1 science fiction or fantasy novel; 1 novel not fitting those previous categories; 1 non-fiction book then back around that four-book cycle. I started this some years ago to ensure that I do not simply stick to reading one sort of book. I think I was in part prompted to do this by an acquaintance who was re-reading 'Gorky Park' by Martin Cruz Smith for the third time because he had no idea what to read next. It is a good novel (the plotting of the movie is even better, certainly with a more feasible final act) but he had no idea what to turn to next. In my youth I would go through a string of crime novels or fantasy novels. While I still like to read the entirety of a series written by a particular novelist, I think it is better to mix this in with a wider range of genres so that I do not become weary of the particular writing or characters.
I rarely by books new, so my choices tend to be driven by what is available in charity shops. When I was a teenager every charity shop I went in had a copy of 'Jaws' (1974) by Peter Benchley and later things like 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' (1993) by Louis de Bernières and most recently 'The Da Vinci Code' (2003) by Dan Brown. In any given set of charity shops (and I have now lived in two towns with 7-8 charity shops grouped within a five-minute walk of each other) you will find each holding a copy of that book. Of course, other more random stuff turns up and the low prices mean I am willing to take a gamble on it than if I was buying it new. It does mean that I sometimes make terrible mistakes and end up reading books that are terrible. However, at least I have not wasted £8.99 on them. After me the books go to my father who consumes books in vast quantities and then back to another charity shop, presumably cycling round until they wear out.
Anyway, rather than list the books in strict chronological order in which I read them, I have grouped them into fiction and non-fiction and furthermore have clustered books featuring the same characters or by the same author or focusing on the same topic to allow me to make general comments about them.
Fiction
'Reigning Cats and Dogs' by Tanith Lee.
A strange, almost steampunk novel set in a Victorian London in which there is a lot of debauchery and secret societies releasing ancient forces, notably connected to the Egyptian god Anubis. It seems an interesting idea but somehow lacked punch, perhaps it was trying too hard.
'The 47 Rōnin Story' by John Allyn.
This story, of course, is not actually by John Allyn as it is drawn from real events in the 18th century Japan in which 47 samurai left masterless, i.e. rōnin, took revenge on their master's persecutors. It is a renowned story in Japanese culture and is reasonably well known in the West. I enjoyed this rendering of it which combined the cunning of the 47 trying to mislead those anticipating an attack by them and the action. If you have any interest in a good action story with a range of interesting characters then I recommend this.
'Roman Blood'; 'Arms of Nemesis'; 'A Murder on the Appian Way'; 'A Mist of Prophecies' all by Steven Saylor
These are the 1st, 3rd, 7th and 10th books in Steven Saylor's series featuring Roman investigator Gordianus. The random nature of the ones I read stemmed from what I turned up in charity shops. The 12 novels in the series cover the period 80 BCE - 46 BCE; the first was published in 1991 and the latest in 2008. They are very engaging stories which because they stretch over such a long period are able to mesh with numerous major events in the period when the Roman Republic came to an end and the empire began. Though there is a political background, the stories are basically police procedural novels, featuring well drawn fictional and historical characters. Saylor certainly has an ability to conjure up the city of Rome and other locations across the Roman world without drowning you in historical detail.
'Blade Runner": The Edge of Human' by K.W. Jeter.
This is a sequel to the original 'Blade Runner' (1982) movie rather than the novel it was based on, 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' (1968) by Philip K. Dick or the director's cut version of the movie which came out in 1992 nor the 'final cut' version of 2007. I found the book weak. It really had nowhere to go. Without the imperative of hunting down replicants a lot of the edge was missing, you did not really feel any genuine threat to Rick Deckard nor really any advance in the question about whether he too was a replicant. This was a disappointment to me.
'The Last English King'; 'Knights of Albion' and 'A Very English Agent' all by Julian Rathbone.
The first features the adventures of one of King Harold II's (the king who was killed at the Battle of Hastings thus deemed the last 'English' king) housecarls wandering Europe and the Near East bemoaning his failure to die for his king. The settings from southern England as far as Byzantine Anatolia and details of this early medieval period are well portrayed, but the story rather runs out of steam. The hero eventually gives up, not reaching Jerusalem and simply returns to Norman-occupied England.
This tapering off is a similar complaint you can lay at the door of 'Knights of Albion'. This is set in the fifteenth century and features travellers from the advanced Indian state of Vijayanagara, a real place, travelling to France and England in search of ambassadors sent to enlist help from the Europeans for Vijayanagara's own difficulties. They find Europe uncivilised. There is some humour in seeing medieval Europe through the eyes of outsiders but this is rather laboured and again, the story lacks strong direction and tapers off at the end rather than having a clear conclusion. Perhaps I am missing the point of Rathbone's stories. I love the portrayal of the periods he is writing about but yearn for more narrative drive.
In this respect 'A Very English Agent' is better. It features the adventures of Charles Bosham an agent provocateur for the repressive British governments of the post-Napoleonic Wars era as they faced social unrest such as Peterloo and the Tolpuddle Martyrs. People have likened Bosham to Flashman in the novels of George MacDonald Fraser. Bosham seems to be at every major event in the political history of the 1810s and 1820s, though he is a highly unreliable narrator. Rathbone handles the humour better and because the story is necessarily episodic there is less trouble with him not being able to come to a strong conclusion. A sequel, 'Birth of a Nation' (2005) featured Bosham in the Americas in the 1840s. Readers often dislike the intentional anachronistic references in Rathbone's historical novels. However, I am just seeking a bit more clarity in where they are going.
'Dinotopia Lost' by Alan Dean Foster.
I had read the original picture book 'Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time' (1992) by James Gurney when it came out. It is set in the 1860s about a fictional island where humans and dinosaurs live in harmony. It has spawned numerous books for children and a mini-series on television. Part of the delight of the original was the Orientalist style paintings that fitted the era portrayed, but instead of showing Turkey or Egypt, featuring dinosaurs and humans on the island. This un-illustrated full length novel had classic themes of pirates washed up in Dinotopia seeking to exploit it. I was probably too old for this book, it was alright but nothing special.
'Queen Victoria's Bomb' by Ronald Clark
I have mentioned this before as being a steampunk classic. It owes a lot to the concerns of the time when it was published (1967) regarding the risk of nuclear war, but it is also fascinating in moving the atomic bomb back a century and finding out the potential impact. It is a bit episodic in that the story builds up to climaxes each time the bomb is to be used. However, it manages to make you entirely accept that a bomb of that kind was possible and then present early Victorians rather than mid-20th century people with the moral dilemmas. It also contains a chilling warning of the hazards of nuclear weapons testing. By showing Imperial Britons to be callous to the concerns of those they ruled over especially in India, it challenges the contemporary reader to see if they are any more caring. This is a classic book, well executed and should be on the reading list of anyone interested in steampunk and/or 'what if?' stories and I know you are out there.
'The Shores of Death' by Michael Moorcock.
This novel is also known as 'The Twilight Man'. I read it in a single day. It was very much a story in the style of 'The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus' (1604) by Christopher Marlowe in that people seeking escape from death have their wishes fulfilled but in unpleasant ways by a powerful being whose malevolence stems from people's ignorance of what they are truly wishing for. It is set on an alien world. I did not like it. I guess it made me uneasy in the way 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' (1962; movie 1983 with screenplay by Bradbury) by Ray Bradbury. I think people have a hard enough time dealing with life, death and loss without them being punished through tricks just for wishing for something better.
'The Junkers' by Piers Paul Read
This was a pretty decent book, perhaps showing its age a little (it was published in 1968) but weaving an interesting story jumping between Nazi Germany and 1960s West Germany to look at the dynamics of a prosperous German family working to cover up their secrets while continuing to prosper through changes of regime. The characters are engaging and probably in the late 1960s it would have seemed more distinctive than today, but reading it was certainly not a wasted experience. Whilst it could have fallen into the same trap as Rathbone's novels discussed above, it had a satisfying conclusion rather than tapering off.
'The Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria'; 'The Dragon King's Palace'; 'The Perfumed Sleeve' all by Laura Joh Rowland
These are the 7th, 8th and 9th books in Rowland's Sano Ichiro series of detective novels set in Japan of the 17th century. Sano Ichiro is a civil servant working for the 4th Tokugawa Shōgun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. The first book in the series came out in 1991 and the 12th, last year. Part of the problem with many police series is that when the detective is successful and rises he becomes distanced from the operational aspects of investigations and to some degree as the Ichiro books have progressed, while the hero does investigate crimes, the political aspects of the Shōgun's court take on as much importance. In this the rivalry of other powerful officials is as important as the criminals Ichiro encounters. I enjoy these stories, they show a lot about life in Japan of the time, again without you feeling drowned in the detail. The key problem is that beside the devious officials and criminals that Ichiro encounters, he seems rather bland. He is hung up around his duties to the code of Bushido when they conflict with investigations but his traits seem a little pale and you end up becoming more involved with his opponents who display an interesting if unappealing set of characteristics. The 'Dragon King' a bandit leader is a classic example.
'The War Book' by James Sallis.
This is an anthology of science fiction stories from the late 1960s. However, none of them have stuck out in my mind and I have forgotten this book incredibly quickly. James Sallis is rated as a writer, much in Michael Moorcock's generation; the two have collaborated. I should have made notes about this book before I despatched it to my father.
'A Rough Shoot' by Geoffrey Household.
This was one of the 'Classic Thrillers' reprints of action and adventure stories from the early and mid-20th century. This one was a 1950s about a reasonably well off middle class man hiring some land in Dorset to do some shooting to supplement his family's groceries with meat. He stumbles across a plot to bring neo-Fascists into Britain. He works to thwart this and towards the end is aided by the authorities. The story has the feel of something written in the 1920s or 1930s and it is nice to see a thriller from this era not focused on the Soviet 'threat'. It is a fast moving, enjoyable adventure. What marks it out is the sense of place in southern England and the characters are credible and well drawn, better than in many stories of this ilk. This book is less well known than similar stories by John Buchan and Eric Ambler, but I would certainly recommend it to anyone who enjoys that kind of story.
'John McNab' by John Buchan.
This is a lighter story than 'A Rough Shoot' or the bulk of Buchan's stories. There is no dastardly political threat afoot, rather three bored, well-off gentlemen aim to trespass on their neighbours' lands, having forewarned them, and yet seek to carry off game or fish from each. It is rather about an upper class game, set in the Scottish scenery that Buchan loved. It sums up a time and a class, though Buchan does not stick entirely to the expectations and the women are pretty feisty. This is a relaxing novel without much challenge, but pretty well crafted for its kind.
Non-Fiction
'The Devil's Horsemen' by James Chambers.
This is a concise (190 pages) but chilling account of the Mongol invasions of Europe in the 13th century. It moves along briskly and manages to detail the successful tactics and the utterly terrifying methods of the invaders. You can really understand the fear of those facing these attacks. The accounts are so unpleasant that I dislike recalling them. Finishing the book I had a complete loathing for the people that inflicted these atrocities and had to rein in my distaste for contemporary Mongolia's lauding of its murderous ancestors. This is a quick and effective way of learning about the Mongol invasions and whilst dispassionate in itself, may, as in me, stir up strong feelings.
'The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century' by Will Hutton.
This is really two books and I think Hutton would have done better to separate them out. The coverage of contemporary China and how it has got to where it is today in terms of politics, economics and society is well handled. However, the second half of the book is really a repeat of Hutton's earlier works in advocating the kind of society and economy he feels the West needs. This is him repeating his old song, just using the 'threat' of China to try to drive it on. Read the first half.
'The Chinese' by Jasper Becker.
This book is an excellent antidote to all of those books out there lauding how successful the Chinese economy is and what wonders the country is doing. Becker is a clear critic of Communist China but he shows up its totalitarian state and what it has done in an effective and dispassionate way. He has excellent attention to detail and yet is able to make the stories of those millions of people who have been part of different aspects of China's turbulent history come to you in a personal way. I certainly recommend this as a book to show you the reality of China beneath the glitz and warn you of the dangers of dealing with such a dictatorship.
'China: A New History' by John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman.
In fact by the time I got around to reading this book, it was pretty much an old history as it was published at the end of the 1980s and did not cover the latest developments in China. Goldman updated Fairbank's earlier edition of this book and it is interesting that Goldman has a real belief that China will have to move to democracy. This is a common flaw among Americans who seem to cling to the Hayekian view that free economies mean democracy and planned economies mean dictatorship. You only have to compare France and China to see this is not true. Fairbank had a much more realistic perception of China and I feel his view has been borne out by what we see in China now. This book is solid if you want a decent coverage of China in the past couple of hundred years, but you would need something newer for the latter decades that we have witnessed.
'The Lion and the Dragon: British Voices from the China Coast' by Christopher Cook.
I think this book was produced in conjunction with a 1980s television series. It is a highly illustrated (with photograph) oral history of life among those Britons who worked in China in the 1920s-40s. It would be a great source book for novels in that setting. Despite the title it does also feature stories from Britons working in the interior. Notable are accounts of incidents of kidnapping and of the raucous social life that the expatriates lived in the coastal cities, notably Shanghai. An interesting slice of a lost experience.
'The Templars' by Piers Paul Read.
Given that the Knights Templar turn up in so much fiction these days and are attributed with having been involved with a whole range of fantastical activities, notably guarding the Holy Grail, whatever that might be, it is interesting to read a lucid, sober account of them. Read's conclusion is that they were a lot less exciting than anyone thinks and were pretty mundane warrior monks who got mixed up in politics and the greed/need of monarchs for their money. This was a straight forward history.
'A Brief History of the Crusades' by Geoffrey Hindley.
I really rate this book. Whilst others will give you more blow-by-blow detail of the medieval crusades to the Levant, this really deepens your understanding about what was going on. I particularly enjoyed the details on society in the Crusader States and aspects such as the different position of women there compared to back in Europe. This book gives you a real flavour of the life of the crusaders and those who worked with and who opposed them. A very engaging book that I would read again.
'The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon' by Ivan Morris.
A 'pillow book' is less lascivious than it sounds, it was simply a book a woman in medieval Japan would keep in the drawer in the side of her wooden pillow. Usually it was something like a diary or scrapbook. It was written by a courtier Sei Shōnagon at the court of the Empress Consort in the 990s CE up to 1002. It has small scraps of stories and observations about life at court and so is ideal for dipping into or reading right through. I have likened it to a modern day blog. It is certainly a lot less tiresome than reading either 'The Tale of Genji' a novel by another Japanese female courtier, Murasaki Shikibu, written some years after Sei Shōnagon's pillow book or Cao Xueqin's 18th century novel about the Chinese court, 'A Dream of Red Mansions' both of which I read in the late 1980s and have none of the wit of this book.
'What If ...?' Explorations in Social Science Fiction' edited by Nelson W. Polsby.
Strictly this is not non-fiction as it speculates on history that did not happen. However, it seeks to do this in an academic way. Unfortunately as with the worst counter-factual writing too many of the authors have been permitted to use their counter-factuals to whine about things they see wrong with their own society (USA of the early 1980s). The best is probably about a confederal as opposed to federal USA being established, which came very close to happening. There is a good chapter on Napoleon's global plans too. Otherwise I was disappointed by this book and I guess all I will take from it is a few ideas for 'what if?'s to analyse myself.
'Invasion. The Alternate History of the German Invasion of England, July 1940' by Kenneth Macksey.
This is obviously another counter-factual book. It is pretty workerlike in its rendering of a history of a successful German invasion of England, going into immense detail about the various units on both sides and their engagement. I suppose this would be useful if you wanted to wargame such an invasion, but I felt myself wanting more on the impact on Britain and so after a while found it rather sterile. I read histories of warfare, but guess that in this case I wanted more speculation beyond simply what occurred on the battelfield.
'Invasion 1940' by Walter Schellenberg.
This is a translation of the documents produced by SS Brigadeführer (Major-General) Walter Schellenberg regarding Britain ahead of the German invasion planned for 1940. Schellenberg worked in Office VI of the SD, the German counter-intelligence body, with resposibility for such work outside Germany. He survived the war and was released from prison in 1951, dying the following year at the age of 42. The book gives background from a Nazi perspective of British society and how it was seen to function. It also includes lists of those who would have been arrested on the occupation of Britain. These are interesting aspects, though after a while the long lists get tedious.
I read to a very fixed pattern: 1 detective/murder mystery novel, 1 science fiction or fantasy novel; 1 novel not fitting those previous categories; 1 non-fiction book then back around that four-book cycle. I started this some years ago to ensure that I do not simply stick to reading one sort of book. I think I was in part prompted to do this by an acquaintance who was re-reading 'Gorky Park' by Martin Cruz Smith for the third time because he had no idea what to read next. It is a good novel (the plotting of the movie is even better, certainly with a more feasible final act) but he had no idea what to turn to next. In my youth I would go through a string of crime novels or fantasy novels. While I still like to read the entirety of a series written by a particular novelist, I think it is better to mix this in with a wider range of genres so that I do not become weary of the particular writing or characters.
I rarely by books new, so my choices tend to be driven by what is available in charity shops. When I was a teenager every charity shop I went in had a copy of 'Jaws' (1974) by Peter Benchley and later things like 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' (1993) by Louis de Bernières and most recently 'The Da Vinci Code' (2003) by Dan Brown. In any given set of charity shops (and I have now lived in two towns with 7-8 charity shops grouped within a five-minute walk of each other) you will find each holding a copy of that book. Of course, other more random stuff turns up and the low prices mean I am willing to take a gamble on it than if I was buying it new. It does mean that I sometimes make terrible mistakes and end up reading books that are terrible. However, at least I have not wasted £8.99 on them. After me the books go to my father who consumes books in vast quantities and then back to another charity shop, presumably cycling round until they wear out.
Anyway, rather than list the books in strict chronological order in which I read them, I have grouped them into fiction and non-fiction and furthermore have clustered books featuring the same characters or by the same author or focusing on the same topic to allow me to make general comments about them.
Fiction
'Reigning Cats and Dogs' by Tanith Lee.
A strange, almost steampunk novel set in a Victorian London in which there is a lot of debauchery and secret societies releasing ancient forces, notably connected to the Egyptian god Anubis. It seems an interesting idea but somehow lacked punch, perhaps it was trying too hard.
'The 47 Rōnin Story' by John Allyn.
This story, of course, is not actually by John Allyn as it is drawn from real events in the 18th century Japan in which 47 samurai left masterless, i.e. rōnin, took revenge on their master's persecutors. It is a renowned story in Japanese culture and is reasonably well known in the West. I enjoyed this rendering of it which combined the cunning of the 47 trying to mislead those anticipating an attack by them and the action. If you have any interest in a good action story with a range of interesting characters then I recommend this.
'Roman Blood'; 'Arms of Nemesis'; 'A Murder on the Appian Way'; 'A Mist of Prophecies' all by Steven Saylor
These are the 1st, 3rd, 7th and 10th books in Steven Saylor's series featuring Roman investigator Gordianus. The random nature of the ones I read stemmed from what I turned up in charity shops. The 12 novels in the series cover the period 80 BCE - 46 BCE; the first was published in 1991 and the latest in 2008. They are very engaging stories which because they stretch over such a long period are able to mesh with numerous major events in the period when the Roman Republic came to an end and the empire began. Though there is a political background, the stories are basically police procedural novels, featuring well drawn fictional and historical characters. Saylor certainly has an ability to conjure up the city of Rome and other locations across the Roman world without drowning you in historical detail.
'Blade Runner": The Edge of Human' by K.W. Jeter.
This is a sequel to the original 'Blade Runner' (1982) movie rather than the novel it was based on, 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' (1968) by Philip K. Dick or the director's cut version of the movie which came out in 1992 nor the 'final cut' version of 2007. I found the book weak. It really had nowhere to go. Without the imperative of hunting down replicants a lot of the edge was missing, you did not really feel any genuine threat to Rick Deckard nor really any advance in the question about whether he too was a replicant. This was a disappointment to me.
'The Last English King'; 'Knights of Albion' and 'A Very English Agent' all by Julian Rathbone.
The first features the adventures of one of King Harold II's (the king who was killed at the Battle of Hastings thus deemed the last 'English' king) housecarls wandering Europe and the Near East bemoaning his failure to die for his king. The settings from southern England as far as Byzantine Anatolia and details of this early medieval period are well portrayed, but the story rather runs out of steam. The hero eventually gives up, not reaching Jerusalem and simply returns to Norman-occupied England.
This tapering off is a similar complaint you can lay at the door of 'Knights of Albion'. This is set in the fifteenth century and features travellers from the advanced Indian state of Vijayanagara, a real place, travelling to France and England in search of ambassadors sent to enlist help from the Europeans for Vijayanagara's own difficulties. They find Europe uncivilised. There is some humour in seeing medieval Europe through the eyes of outsiders but this is rather laboured and again, the story lacks strong direction and tapers off at the end rather than having a clear conclusion. Perhaps I am missing the point of Rathbone's stories. I love the portrayal of the periods he is writing about but yearn for more narrative drive.
In this respect 'A Very English Agent' is better. It features the adventures of Charles Bosham an agent provocateur for the repressive British governments of the post-Napoleonic Wars era as they faced social unrest such as Peterloo and the Tolpuddle Martyrs. People have likened Bosham to Flashman in the novels of George MacDonald Fraser. Bosham seems to be at every major event in the political history of the 1810s and 1820s, though he is a highly unreliable narrator. Rathbone handles the humour better and because the story is necessarily episodic there is less trouble with him not being able to come to a strong conclusion. A sequel, 'Birth of a Nation' (2005) featured Bosham in the Americas in the 1840s. Readers often dislike the intentional anachronistic references in Rathbone's historical novels. However, I am just seeking a bit more clarity in where they are going.
'Dinotopia Lost' by Alan Dean Foster.
I had read the original picture book 'Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time' (1992) by James Gurney when it came out. It is set in the 1860s about a fictional island where humans and dinosaurs live in harmony. It has spawned numerous books for children and a mini-series on television. Part of the delight of the original was the Orientalist style paintings that fitted the era portrayed, but instead of showing Turkey or Egypt, featuring dinosaurs and humans on the island. This un-illustrated full length novel had classic themes of pirates washed up in Dinotopia seeking to exploit it. I was probably too old for this book, it was alright but nothing special.
'Queen Victoria's Bomb' by Ronald Clark
I have mentioned this before as being a steampunk classic. It owes a lot to the concerns of the time when it was published (1967) regarding the risk of nuclear war, but it is also fascinating in moving the atomic bomb back a century and finding out the potential impact. It is a bit episodic in that the story builds up to climaxes each time the bomb is to be used. However, it manages to make you entirely accept that a bomb of that kind was possible and then present early Victorians rather than mid-20th century people with the moral dilemmas. It also contains a chilling warning of the hazards of nuclear weapons testing. By showing Imperial Britons to be callous to the concerns of those they ruled over especially in India, it challenges the contemporary reader to see if they are any more caring. This is a classic book, well executed and should be on the reading list of anyone interested in steampunk and/or 'what if?' stories and I know you are out there.
'The Shores of Death' by Michael Moorcock.
This novel is also known as 'The Twilight Man'. I read it in a single day. It was very much a story in the style of 'The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus' (1604) by Christopher Marlowe in that people seeking escape from death have their wishes fulfilled but in unpleasant ways by a powerful being whose malevolence stems from people's ignorance of what they are truly wishing for. It is set on an alien world. I did not like it. I guess it made me uneasy in the way 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' (1962; movie 1983 with screenplay by Bradbury) by Ray Bradbury. I think people have a hard enough time dealing with life, death and loss without them being punished through tricks just for wishing for something better.
'The Junkers' by Piers Paul Read
This was a pretty decent book, perhaps showing its age a little (it was published in 1968) but weaving an interesting story jumping between Nazi Germany and 1960s West Germany to look at the dynamics of a prosperous German family working to cover up their secrets while continuing to prosper through changes of regime. The characters are engaging and probably in the late 1960s it would have seemed more distinctive than today, but reading it was certainly not a wasted experience. Whilst it could have fallen into the same trap as Rathbone's novels discussed above, it had a satisfying conclusion rather than tapering off.
'The Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria'; 'The Dragon King's Palace'; 'The Perfumed Sleeve' all by Laura Joh Rowland
These are the 7th, 8th and 9th books in Rowland's Sano Ichiro series of detective novels set in Japan of the 17th century. Sano Ichiro is a civil servant working for the 4th Tokugawa Shōgun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. The first book in the series came out in 1991 and the 12th, last year. Part of the problem with many police series is that when the detective is successful and rises he becomes distanced from the operational aspects of investigations and to some degree as the Ichiro books have progressed, while the hero does investigate crimes, the political aspects of the Shōgun's court take on as much importance. In this the rivalry of other powerful officials is as important as the criminals Ichiro encounters. I enjoy these stories, they show a lot about life in Japan of the time, again without you feeling drowned in the detail. The key problem is that beside the devious officials and criminals that Ichiro encounters, he seems rather bland. He is hung up around his duties to the code of Bushido when they conflict with investigations but his traits seem a little pale and you end up becoming more involved with his opponents who display an interesting if unappealing set of characteristics. The 'Dragon King' a bandit leader is a classic example.
'The War Book' by James Sallis.
This is an anthology of science fiction stories from the late 1960s. However, none of them have stuck out in my mind and I have forgotten this book incredibly quickly. James Sallis is rated as a writer, much in Michael Moorcock's generation; the two have collaborated. I should have made notes about this book before I despatched it to my father.
'A Rough Shoot' by Geoffrey Household.
This was one of the 'Classic Thrillers' reprints of action and adventure stories from the early and mid-20th century. This one was a 1950s about a reasonably well off middle class man hiring some land in Dorset to do some shooting to supplement his family's groceries with meat. He stumbles across a plot to bring neo-Fascists into Britain. He works to thwart this and towards the end is aided by the authorities. The story has the feel of something written in the 1920s or 1930s and it is nice to see a thriller from this era not focused on the Soviet 'threat'. It is a fast moving, enjoyable adventure. What marks it out is the sense of place in southern England and the characters are credible and well drawn, better than in many stories of this ilk. This book is less well known than similar stories by John Buchan and Eric Ambler, but I would certainly recommend it to anyone who enjoys that kind of story.
'John McNab' by John Buchan.
This is a lighter story than 'A Rough Shoot' or the bulk of Buchan's stories. There is no dastardly political threat afoot, rather three bored, well-off gentlemen aim to trespass on their neighbours' lands, having forewarned them, and yet seek to carry off game or fish from each. It is rather about an upper class game, set in the Scottish scenery that Buchan loved. It sums up a time and a class, though Buchan does not stick entirely to the expectations and the women are pretty feisty. This is a relaxing novel without much challenge, but pretty well crafted for its kind.
Non-Fiction
'The Devil's Horsemen' by James Chambers.
This is a concise (190 pages) but chilling account of the Mongol invasions of Europe in the 13th century. It moves along briskly and manages to detail the successful tactics and the utterly terrifying methods of the invaders. You can really understand the fear of those facing these attacks. The accounts are so unpleasant that I dislike recalling them. Finishing the book I had a complete loathing for the people that inflicted these atrocities and had to rein in my distaste for contemporary Mongolia's lauding of its murderous ancestors. This is a quick and effective way of learning about the Mongol invasions and whilst dispassionate in itself, may, as in me, stir up strong feelings.
'The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century' by Will Hutton.
This is really two books and I think Hutton would have done better to separate them out. The coverage of contemporary China and how it has got to where it is today in terms of politics, economics and society is well handled. However, the second half of the book is really a repeat of Hutton's earlier works in advocating the kind of society and economy he feels the West needs. This is him repeating his old song, just using the 'threat' of China to try to drive it on. Read the first half.
'The Chinese' by Jasper Becker.
This book is an excellent antidote to all of those books out there lauding how successful the Chinese economy is and what wonders the country is doing. Becker is a clear critic of Communist China but he shows up its totalitarian state and what it has done in an effective and dispassionate way. He has excellent attention to detail and yet is able to make the stories of those millions of people who have been part of different aspects of China's turbulent history come to you in a personal way. I certainly recommend this as a book to show you the reality of China beneath the glitz and warn you of the dangers of dealing with such a dictatorship.
'China: A New History' by John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman.
In fact by the time I got around to reading this book, it was pretty much an old history as it was published at the end of the 1980s and did not cover the latest developments in China. Goldman updated Fairbank's earlier edition of this book and it is interesting that Goldman has a real belief that China will have to move to democracy. This is a common flaw among Americans who seem to cling to the Hayekian view that free economies mean democracy and planned economies mean dictatorship. You only have to compare France and China to see this is not true. Fairbank had a much more realistic perception of China and I feel his view has been borne out by what we see in China now. This book is solid if you want a decent coverage of China in the past couple of hundred years, but you would need something newer for the latter decades that we have witnessed.
'The Lion and the Dragon: British Voices from the China Coast' by Christopher Cook.
I think this book was produced in conjunction with a 1980s television series. It is a highly illustrated (with photograph) oral history of life among those Britons who worked in China in the 1920s-40s. It would be a great source book for novels in that setting. Despite the title it does also feature stories from Britons working in the interior. Notable are accounts of incidents of kidnapping and of the raucous social life that the expatriates lived in the coastal cities, notably Shanghai. An interesting slice of a lost experience.
'The Templars' by Piers Paul Read.
Given that the Knights Templar turn up in so much fiction these days and are attributed with having been involved with a whole range of fantastical activities, notably guarding the Holy Grail, whatever that might be, it is interesting to read a lucid, sober account of them. Read's conclusion is that they were a lot less exciting than anyone thinks and were pretty mundane warrior monks who got mixed up in politics and the greed/need of monarchs for their money. This was a straight forward history.
'A Brief History of the Crusades' by Geoffrey Hindley.
I really rate this book. Whilst others will give you more blow-by-blow detail of the medieval crusades to the Levant, this really deepens your understanding about what was going on. I particularly enjoyed the details on society in the Crusader States and aspects such as the different position of women there compared to back in Europe. This book gives you a real flavour of the life of the crusaders and those who worked with and who opposed them. A very engaging book that I would read again.
'The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon' by Ivan Morris.
A 'pillow book' is less lascivious than it sounds, it was simply a book a woman in medieval Japan would keep in the drawer in the side of her wooden pillow. Usually it was something like a diary or scrapbook. It was written by a courtier Sei Shōnagon at the court of the Empress Consort in the 990s CE up to 1002. It has small scraps of stories and observations about life at court and so is ideal for dipping into or reading right through. I have likened it to a modern day blog. It is certainly a lot less tiresome than reading either 'The Tale of Genji' a novel by another Japanese female courtier, Murasaki Shikibu, written some years after Sei Shōnagon's pillow book or Cao Xueqin's 18th century novel about the Chinese court, 'A Dream of Red Mansions' both of which I read in the late 1980s and have none of the wit of this book.
'What If ...?' Explorations in Social Science Fiction' edited by Nelson W. Polsby.
Strictly this is not non-fiction as it speculates on history that did not happen. However, it seeks to do this in an academic way. Unfortunately as with the worst counter-factual writing too many of the authors have been permitted to use their counter-factuals to whine about things they see wrong with their own society (USA of the early 1980s). The best is probably about a confederal as opposed to federal USA being established, which came very close to happening. There is a good chapter on Napoleon's global plans too. Otherwise I was disappointed by this book and I guess all I will take from it is a few ideas for 'what if?'s to analyse myself.
'Invasion. The Alternate History of the German Invasion of England, July 1940' by Kenneth Macksey.
This is obviously another counter-factual book. It is pretty workerlike in its rendering of a history of a successful German invasion of England, going into immense detail about the various units on both sides and their engagement. I suppose this would be useful if you wanted to wargame such an invasion, but I felt myself wanting more on the impact on Britain and so after a while found it rather sterile. I read histories of warfare, but guess that in this case I wanted more speculation beyond simply what occurred on the battelfield.
'Invasion 1940' by Walter Schellenberg.
This is a translation of the documents produced by SS Brigadeführer (Major-General) Walter Schellenberg regarding Britain ahead of the German invasion planned for 1940. Schellenberg worked in Office VI of the SD, the German counter-intelligence body, with resposibility for such work outside Germany. He survived the war and was released from prison in 1951, dying the following year at the age of 42. The book gives background from a Nazi perspective of British society and how it was seen to function. It also includes lists of those who would have been arrested on the occupation of Britain. These are interesting aspects, though after a while the long lists get tedious.
Tuesday, 1 January 2008
The Hazards Of Post-Feminism Going Awry
Well, I hope 2008 is going well for you. Having paid a visit to the local accident and emergency department of my local hospital this morning (my flatmate had headaches and limb paralysis which seemed like getting worse; fortunately the diagnosis was stress rather than concussion after to a bang on the head earlier this week - cooker hoods are a nightmare if you are over 5'8" (1.70m)) I have found many of the town's residents with food injuries and gashes from tripping over on the way home from celebrations, they were still processing the 02.00 intake at 08.00 and the security guards were rushed off their feet dealing with violent patients, one of the guards is starting 2008 with a broken arm courtesy of one of the patients. So, in terms of Britain's binge-drinking culture and its consequences, the local report is 'no change'. I do hope for improvement in life in the UK and across the World. There are loads of things that could be done simply in the UK to make life better. We could start with just taking a more relaxed attitude. Anger at the moment causes so many problems: car crashes, injuries, stress (especially for retail sector workers), if everyone just slowed down a bit and did not feel they had to keep on asserting themselves at every occasion, especially when driving, then the life of the UK would improve immediately (and the hospitals could deal with real illness not the self-inflicted kind) and traffic would flow better if you were not having to slow up every 10 minutes to get past another 'shunt' caused by impatience and anger. Sorry, I am beginning to sound like the Archbishop of Canterbury and his new year message.
My posting today might seem an odd one to start off with. I find the break from work gives me lots of time to think and finally seeming to have shaken off the writing block I have been suffering I have been working on fiction and hopefully sometime by the Spring will be able to post my latest steampunk story. Having just watched 'The Rocketeer' (1991) which is kind of post-steampunk but similar anachronistic invention story (and 'The Shadow in the North' a TV dramatisation of a Philip Pullman novel set in the 1880s and featuring a train-mounted, steam-powered [literally the steam pushing out the bullets] machine gun for policing Russia), I suppose you could term it 'bakelitepunk' (after the brown early plastic of the 1930s used for radios and other high-tech items of the era), I feel quite inspired. However, the break also leaves me time to think about other issues that interest me, such as UK society. It was also partly inspired by the hospital visit and the fact that the A&E (Accident & Emergency; formerly Casualty) department was filled with people who seem to embody many of the problems I see with the gender balance in the UK today.
I have written before about how men feel ourselves to be pretty obsolete in the present day, with an ever greater emphasis on communication, group work and language skills that women excel in rather than more assertive, active skills of the past that men tend to be stronger at (whilst acknowledging many individuals go against any supposed tendencies of their gender). I have also commented on the over-feminisation of girls and in turn of women, with the 'princess obsession' so prevalent in the UK, pushed hard by the retail sector. Today I am going to look at what I see, and I emphasise this is a personal view, as at the heart of many of some current social problems. One is increased aggressiveness predominantly by men and the sense that you cannot be a 'real man' unless you drive a big car very fast, and swear and punch anyone else (whether male or female) who dares slur (or you feel slurs) your reputation. The other is the converse increased submissiveness of women, the emphasis on feminine styles but also what is perceived as feminine behaviour drawing on attitudes of the past (the irony here is people point back to the 1950s and also to the Jane Austen era of the 1820s and of course in both times, despite the possibly more feminine garb, in fact at the time a lot of women worked hard, in tough circumstances and would perceive many of their counterparts of the 2000s as failing womankind).
As is commonly known feminism grew out of the late 1960s movements for greater equality such as in terms of race. It increased in influence in the 1970s, leading in the UK, and other industrialised countries to gender equality legislation aimed at evening out the pay discrepancy and the restriction on opportunities for women. A lot has been achieved in the UK but we are still not fully there yet: women still are likely to earn less than their male counterparts and are often under-represented in many professions (though we now produce 12% more female law graduates than male ones each year, there are still very few female judges and women are heavily under-represented among members of parliament). Feminism is less visible as a movement now, though women's groups remain, there has been a tendency to move to 'post-feminism'. To some extent post-feminism grew from women who found much of the feminist movement to be a little too 'raw' even ironically too masculine for them and they wished to recapture some of the aspects of femininity; the stereotype was wearing a dress rather than a pair of dungarees. Many also, wrongly felt that feminism predicated against heterosexual relationships. It is true than in the 1970s and even today some strong feminists felt that fraternising with men was fraternising with the 'enemy'. Of course parallel to the feminist movement was the movement for gay rights (and of course 'homosexual' does not come from 'love of men' in that form of 'homo' as in homo sapiens, it comes from the same root as homogenous, in other words it means 'love of the same', and so is contrasted with heterosexual in the way homogenous and heterogenous are contrasted - sorry, a grammar point that irritates me when people get it wrong, I am being very pedantic at present) and lesbians have straddled the two strands confusing the perceptions of the two movements in the minds of many people.
I first encountered post-feminism in the late 1980s when on a college course. Women were in the large majority in English literature courses at the institution and the bulk of them came from well-off middle class homes in the South of England. Their tutors were of the woman's movement generation and so their take on literature was informed by that. They thought such an approach would excite their students and had a rude awakening when the students went on strike demanding an end to the 'Marxist feminist' attitudes that they felt were being peddled to them and wanted a return to 'the proper study of literature'. (Of course being the 1980s with Thatcherism very strong anything which was more liberal than Margaret Thatcher's New Right attitudes was seen as 'Marxist'). This was women bringing the attitudes back to what they saw as proper position and outlook for women. A couple of years later I was startled when on a holiday with friends that I had to fight with the two women present to be allowed along with a male friend to cook for the group. The two women who were in their 20s and self-employed seemed to feel it was improper for a man to cook when women were present. I felt as if I had gone into some time warp, but in fact I was arriving in post-feminist Britain. It did not need men to undermine feminism, women were happy to do it for themselves. The mistake being made is that to put on a dress, wear make-up, enjoy weepy movies, or whatever does not mean having to give up your rights to be treated equally. Somehow many ordinary women seem to feel that to have one it is compulsory to have both. I can accept the feminist line that dresses and make-up can be seen as the trappings of submissiveness anyway (and I accept that some women, like some men enjoy being submissive in a sexual way, but that typically is based on consent with someone who will dominate, with get out clauses and there are equally very dominant women in that context), but then surely it is up to the woman wearing the dress and make-up not to let herself be perceived as automatically subscribing to a servile role.
Part of the problem was that this rather twisted post-feminism was twisted further by the British political scene. All regimes face a challenge, many like the Nazis and Italian Fascists, seek to put women into a subservient, in particular baby-producing role; infamously the Nazis referred to the 'three Ks' for German women: Kinder, Kirche, Kuche (i.e. children, church, kitchen) and yet these regimes always really needed female workers. As we know women increasingly provide more of the workforce than men, especially in an information-focused, service-sector and unskilled workplace. Both the Thatcher and the Blair regimes suffered the same dichotomy. As I have noted before, Blair's outlook was terribly wrapped up in the views of the authoritarian Vichy regime of France and its emphasis on 'family, work, nation'. Like Thatcher he wanted mothers to get out and work (at low wages predominantly) yet he also wanted (partly due to the Catholic influence on his policies) them to have more children. Thus the emphasis was on fewer single-parent families and more two-parent families, which it was somehow assumed would permit child care (which is often too expensive to be in the reach of the average mother) and so allow the mothers to work rather than be dependent on the state (which was a standard assumption from the Thatcher years that all single mothers were on state benefits whereas despite the high teenage birthrate in the UK the majority were divorced middle class women). More maternity and paternity leave was granted (and I am not saying that is at all a bad thing) but with all this came the assumption that women should be tied up with men and by implication put up with any bad behaviour from the men (who, as I will outline below, are actually failing far more than ever to grow up to be decent husbands and fathers). I remember a single-mother journalist writing that when she had been unemployed in the 1990s almost being told this explicitly by the job centre staff she spoke to.
The 1990s did see the burgeoning of 'chick lit' which did seem to straddle being feminine without giving up equality and the ability to assert oneself. If you look at 'Bridget Jones's Diary' by Helen Fielding (1996; based on a newspaper column from 1995), probably the bestselling example in the UK, you do see a woman looking for romance, but not at any cost. She dumps the men who mistreat her and even her 'hero' she remains sceptical of. She has her own circle of friends not dependent on a man and she has a career and ambitions to advance it. She strives for a mature relationship with her parents. None of this stops her liking romantic things and being vulnerable at times, to be that is not to give up all the strong points of her life. All of us are weak and vulnerable at times, it is not a monopoly of women, and if we try to pretend that we are not those things periodically then we are denying our humanity. Of course what makes this interesting is that 'Bridget Jones's Diary' was an unashamed 'remake' of 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen (1813) who is the goddess of the post-feminist movement, even though many of her heroines would kick the average post-feminist in 2008 up the bum and tell them to be stronger and go out there and get what they want, however constrained by society they might feel.
So, where has this twisted form of post-feminism left us? Increasingly women feel they need to be passive, even submissive to men, to be perceived properly in society. They lap up the consumer products which simply reinforce this, hence the shift to everything in pink which is the one female colour par excellence (too little purple which was the feminist colour). Fashions that sexualise women have been common but these days they are combined with logos which push the woman wearing them in the role of almost being perceived as a prostitute. A female friend of mine says she shudders when she sees women wearing the local 'Criminal' (a UK designer brand, I believe) across the backs of their jeans. Hair is long, earrings are huge, jeans are tight, skirts very short (this brings me back to the women in A&E this morning). The attempt to combine female sexualisation with some female emancipation came in the short-lived form of 'girl power' especially fostered by The Spice Girls in the 1990s; look at the current counterparts, The Sugarbabes (though they manage a little female empowerment at times), The Pussycat Dolls (just look at the name) and despite their name, Girls Aloud (of course, they are actually women). It might seem bizarre but The Spice Girls reuniting might actually be good for young women in Britain, at least each member had an identity (however manufactured) and they were not simply replicas of each other, all offering themselves up sexually. So the twisted post-feminism has put women back in a position of effectively sexual servants. I know this is occurring all across the Western world, but in Britain, where it is unrestrained by the religion of the USA and the common sense and maturity of the Netherlands, it is having the most severe effect. Girls rush to dress like their mothers and elder sisters with no time to explore different aspects of being female only that of a sexual 'product' (note all the adverts for 'make-over' kits of girls which are terribly unnerving). I know that teenage pregnancies in the UK are slowly falling, but we still have the highest level in Europe and I imagine the fall will bottom out or reverse if society continues to emphasise that a woman is only to be (I was going to say 'respected' but in fact it is really the reverse) seen as legitimate if she is sexually appealing (within the mainstream definition which is incredibly narrow) and making babies. Of course there is nothing wrong with being sexually appealing when you are an adult, or in having babies, it is just when society makes that the only seemingly acceptable option or excludes you.
So, the twisting of post-feminism has done a lot of damage to the status of (young) women in UK society and provides an excuse for those who still wish to discriminate against them in the workplace and use sexual politics to manipulate them (rape convictions and successful sexual harassment cases still remain the exception rather than commonplace). I will argue it has also damaged the role of men in society. It is easy to blame rap culture for a lot of this, but for the average teenage boy this is one of the two prime sources of his information about aspirations and also, importantly, how to behave in society (for pre-pubescent boys there is WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) full of over-muscled men simulating violence (which to many of the boys looks real), shouting, being aggressive and surrounded by nubile women who often they fight over; this is barbarism made entertainment and packaged for 11 year olds). The second place is the internet. My mother who grew up in the 1940s said that the way young men and women found out what to do in a relationship was by watching movies. They saw how couples kissed and held each other and would often replicate it, literally right there in the cinema or otherwise later. Of course the limited portrayals of the era meant that there were a lot of unanswered questions especially once you have got beyond the kissing and cuddling. However, importantly it also showed 'sexual' manners, how to treat a woman properly. Men who were violent to women in movies always came off badly and did not 'get the girl' ultimately.
When I was a teenager in the 1980s access to pornography was pretty difficult and usually amounted to stuff found round the back of the newsagents or filched from fathers or older brothers. Nowadays not only every time you log on to your email account are you being offered up the stuff it is so easy to find free pornographic videos in seconds. I am staggered by how much stuff is out there. In addition, its spread is immense. When I was a teenager, you saw generally soft porn of a woman posing naked, occasionally playing with herself. However, on the internet you can see women of all kinds performing the widest range of acts available and things like sado-masochism seem normal. It is interesting to note that recently 'The Guardian' reported that many young women dislike the fact that their boyfriends ejaculate in their faces without asking permission yet they feel they are not in a position to protest as it is seen as 'normal'. That is because online pornography shows pornographic sex which is not about the participants as sex should be, it is about the audience. I imagine very few women like being ejaculated on their faces, but of course someone watching a pornographic video wants to see the so-called 'money shot' to prove the sex is 'real'. It is as if I sit down and watch 'Die Hard 4.0' or 'Bullitt' or 'The French Connection' and then go out and drive that way because I think that driving full speed through a city crashing into cars is the 'normal' way to drive. Crucially, due to the post-feminism, these young women are doing nothing to contest their boyfriends' behaviour or seemingly even discuss sex in a mature way. They have been given a submissive role by society and feel obliged to stick to it, however much they might protest about the consequences to other women.
So sexual knowledge for men (less so for young women who tend to read more and so probably get a wider experience from novels) comes from apeing a performance rather than actuality or any authentic portrayal (no movie I know shows the farts, burps, itchy skin, sudden cramp, need to urinate, difficulty getting on condom, etc. that normal sex involves). They are given the green light to use this performance sex on women by, in particular, music videos which generally show women in a half-dressed state shaking their bodies around provocatively whilst the man strides around boasting how he is better than everyone else, is so rich, has a big car and so on. The women fall into his lap, never contest his right to use their bodies and so on. Now, female artists do often portray a stronger role for women in their videos even if dressed in stunning outfits that make them look incredibly sexy; notably Beyonce and Christine Aguillera among others have done songs contesting violence towards women and Jennifer Lopez has appeared in a movie on the theme. Interestingly, though they do not contest sexual submissiveness, (I am hoping that Pink will release 'Don't Cum In My Face Without Asking' in 2008; 'U + Ur Hand' came close in 2007). For some reason these individual songs do not penetrate so strongly as the 'lifestyle' videos of male performers.
The twisted post-feminism, however, does not only cause problems in the sexual intercourse sphere but also in other aspects of men's lives. To complement submissive women, men increasingly feel that they have to be aggressive. This is no way going back to the Jane Austen era, when at a time when life could be lost easily, manners and respect reined in male aggression, but to some far more primitive time and even then I doubt the average caveman sought out someone to beat up in a car park on Friday night as he knew he had to be in a fit state to get up and hunt the next morning and an injury could kill him; plus alcohol had not been invented. I see fathers with sons at primary school (pre-11 years old) actively encouraging them to be aggressive in their toys even in their play. I accept that boys need to be tough, we all do in the modern world, but we now have aggression for aggression's sake, not to defend your family or your land or your life, but because somehow if you are not angry and aggressive you are somehow not male. Just as for girls, to be seen these days as not feminine, even not a princess (with all the traits of demanding things and service not simply being feminine) is the worst accusation for boys it is even worse to be seen as not being a man. Hence we have rising numbers of boys carrying knives and stabbing people. I live in a suburban area and we have a stabbing every fortnight and someone being kicked to death or into hospital once per month; other parts of the UK have many more and have shootings too, increasingly of school-aged boys. Fatherhood in itself is becoming perverted into ensuring that your son can kick to pieces anyone he fancies taking on and that your daughter will be standing on the sidelines applauding ready to offer herself sexually to the victor. The battle is everywhere, fighting to get at the front of the queue and in particular driving to push everyone off the road to assert your identity as a man.
This is not masculinity, this is barbarism. Look at less developed societies. You do not see tribespeople in the Amazon basin kicking each other to death or stabbing each other just because one has run in front of the other. They know what life costs and that violence and aggression have their place and that we have to draw limits or otherwise their society collapses. Back in the 1990s I heard Eric Hobsbawm speak on 'Barbarism: A Users' Guide' and he spoke about the problems of Yugoslavia breaking up. It was a developed country which had firearms around but also a framework of norms about how one behaved with them and how you treated your neighbours and how men treated women too. Then the war began and rather than adhering to common decency all the brakes came off and the situation was far more dangerous than in less developed societies. You ended up with the mass raping, the death camps, the snipers firing at market queues. This is where a society which has fallen back to the survival of the fittest; male strong-female submissive culture. Unless in the UK we can address this unhealthy imbalance between men and women which is triggering off so many other unpleasant consequences, and see that men and women are different, but neither side should be forced, cajoled, bribed, bullied, bought off into filling that assigned role to the utmost, then there is nothing to stop even worse things happening.
My posting today might seem an odd one to start off with. I find the break from work gives me lots of time to think and finally seeming to have shaken off the writing block I have been suffering I have been working on fiction and hopefully sometime by the Spring will be able to post my latest steampunk story. Having just watched 'The Rocketeer' (1991) which is kind of post-steampunk but similar anachronistic invention story (and 'The Shadow in the North' a TV dramatisation of a Philip Pullman novel set in the 1880s and featuring a train-mounted, steam-powered [literally the steam pushing out the bullets] machine gun for policing Russia), I suppose you could term it 'bakelitepunk' (after the brown early plastic of the 1930s used for radios and other high-tech items of the era), I feel quite inspired. However, the break also leaves me time to think about other issues that interest me, such as UK society. It was also partly inspired by the hospital visit and the fact that the A&E (Accident & Emergency; formerly Casualty) department was filled with people who seem to embody many of the problems I see with the gender balance in the UK today.
I have written before about how men feel ourselves to be pretty obsolete in the present day, with an ever greater emphasis on communication, group work and language skills that women excel in rather than more assertive, active skills of the past that men tend to be stronger at (whilst acknowledging many individuals go against any supposed tendencies of their gender). I have also commented on the over-feminisation of girls and in turn of women, with the 'princess obsession' so prevalent in the UK, pushed hard by the retail sector. Today I am going to look at what I see, and I emphasise this is a personal view, as at the heart of many of some current social problems. One is increased aggressiveness predominantly by men and the sense that you cannot be a 'real man' unless you drive a big car very fast, and swear and punch anyone else (whether male or female) who dares slur (or you feel slurs) your reputation. The other is the converse increased submissiveness of women, the emphasis on feminine styles but also what is perceived as feminine behaviour drawing on attitudes of the past (the irony here is people point back to the 1950s and also to the Jane Austen era of the 1820s and of course in both times, despite the possibly more feminine garb, in fact at the time a lot of women worked hard, in tough circumstances and would perceive many of their counterparts of the 2000s as failing womankind).
As is commonly known feminism grew out of the late 1960s movements for greater equality such as in terms of race. It increased in influence in the 1970s, leading in the UK, and other industrialised countries to gender equality legislation aimed at evening out the pay discrepancy and the restriction on opportunities for women. A lot has been achieved in the UK but we are still not fully there yet: women still are likely to earn less than their male counterparts and are often under-represented in many professions (though we now produce 12% more female law graduates than male ones each year, there are still very few female judges and women are heavily under-represented among members of parliament). Feminism is less visible as a movement now, though women's groups remain, there has been a tendency to move to 'post-feminism'. To some extent post-feminism grew from women who found much of the feminist movement to be a little too 'raw' even ironically too masculine for them and they wished to recapture some of the aspects of femininity; the stereotype was wearing a dress rather than a pair of dungarees. Many also, wrongly felt that feminism predicated against heterosexual relationships. It is true than in the 1970s and even today some strong feminists felt that fraternising with men was fraternising with the 'enemy'. Of course parallel to the feminist movement was the movement for gay rights (and of course 'homosexual' does not come from 'love of men' in that form of 'homo' as in homo sapiens, it comes from the same root as homogenous, in other words it means 'love of the same', and so is contrasted with heterosexual in the way homogenous and heterogenous are contrasted - sorry, a grammar point that irritates me when people get it wrong, I am being very pedantic at present) and lesbians have straddled the two strands confusing the perceptions of the two movements in the minds of many people.
I first encountered post-feminism in the late 1980s when on a college course. Women were in the large majority in English literature courses at the institution and the bulk of them came from well-off middle class homes in the South of England. Their tutors were of the woman's movement generation and so their take on literature was informed by that. They thought such an approach would excite their students and had a rude awakening when the students went on strike demanding an end to the 'Marxist feminist' attitudes that they felt were being peddled to them and wanted a return to 'the proper study of literature'. (Of course being the 1980s with Thatcherism very strong anything which was more liberal than Margaret Thatcher's New Right attitudes was seen as 'Marxist'). This was women bringing the attitudes back to what they saw as proper position and outlook for women. A couple of years later I was startled when on a holiday with friends that I had to fight with the two women present to be allowed along with a male friend to cook for the group. The two women who were in their 20s and self-employed seemed to feel it was improper for a man to cook when women were present. I felt as if I had gone into some time warp, but in fact I was arriving in post-feminist Britain. It did not need men to undermine feminism, women were happy to do it for themselves. The mistake being made is that to put on a dress, wear make-up, enjoy weepy movies, or whatever does not mean having to give up your rights to be treated equally. Somehow many ordinary women seem to feel that to have one it is compulsory to have both. I can accept the feminist line that dresses and make-up can be seen as the trappings of submissiveness anyway (and I accept that some women, like some men enjoy being submissive in a sexual way, but that typically is based on consent with someone who will dominate, with get out clauses and there are equally very dominant women in that context), but then surely it is up to the woman wearing the dress and make-up not to let herself be perceived as automatically subscribing to a servile role.
Part of the problem was that this rather twisted post-feminism was twisted further by the British political scene. All regimes face a challenge, many like the Nazis and Italian Fascists, seek to put women into a subservient, in particular baby-producing role; infamously the Nazis referred to the 'three Ks' for German women: Kinder, Kirche, Kuche (i.e. children, church, kitchen) and yet these regimes always really needed female workers. As we know women increasingly provide more of the workforce than men, especially in an information-focused, service-sector and unskilled workplace. Both the Thatcher and the Blair regimes suffered the same dichotomy. As I have noted before, Blair's outlook was terribly wrapped up in the views of the authoritarian Vichy regime of France and its emphasis on 'family, work, nation'. Like Thatcher he wanted mothers to get out and work (at low wages predominantly) yet he also wanted (partly due to the Catholic influence on his policies) them to have more children. Thus the emphasis was on fewer single-parent families and more two-parent families, which it was somehow assumed would permit child care (which is often too expensive to be in the reach of the average mother) and so allow the mothers to work rather than be dependent on the state (which was a standard assumption from the Thatcher years that all single mothers were on state benefits whereas despite the high teenage birthrate in the UK the majority were divorced middle class women). More maternity and paternity leave was granted (and I am not saying that is at all a bad thing) but with all this came the assumption that women should be tied up with men and by implication put up with any bad behaviour from the men (who, as I will outline below, are actually failing far more than ever to grow up to be decent husbands and fathers). I remember a single-mother journalist writing that when she had been unemployed in the 1990s almost being told this explicitly by the job centre staff she spoke to.
The 1990s did see the burgeoning of 'chick lit' which did seem to straddle being feminine without giving up equality and the ability to assert oneself. If you look at 'Bridget Jones's Diary' by Helen Fielding (1996; based on a newspaper column from 1995), probably the bestselling example in the UK, you do see a woman looking for romance, but not at any cost. She dumps the men who mistreat her and even her 'hero' she remains sceptical of. She has her own circle of friends not dependent on a man and she has a career and ambitions to advance it. She strives for a mature relationship with her parents. None of this stops her liking romantic things and being vulnerable at times, to be that is not to give up all the strong points of her life. All of us are weak and vulnerable at times, it is not a monopoly of women, and if we try to pretend that we are not those things periodically then we are denying our humanity. Of course what makes this interesting is that 'Bridget Jones's Diary' was an unashamed 'remake' of 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen (1813) who is the goddess of the post-feminist movement, even though many of her heroines would kick the average post-feminist in 2008 up the bum and tell them to be stronger and go out there and get what they want, however constrained by society they might feel.
So, where has this twisted form of post-feminism left us? Increasingly women feel they need to be passive, even submissive to men, to be perceived properly in society. They lap up the consumer products which simply reinforce this, hence the shift to everything in pink which is the one female colour par excellence (too little purple which was the feminist colour). Fashions that sexualise women have been common but these days they are combined with logos which push the woman wearing them in the role of almost being perceived as a prostitute. A female friend of mine says she shudders when she sees women wearing the local 'Criminal' (a UK designer brand, I believe) across the backs of their jeans. Hair is long, earrings are huge, jeans are tight, skirts very short (this brings me back to the women in A&E this morning). The attempt to combine female sexualisation with some female emancipation came in the short-lived form of 'girl power' especially fostered by The Spice Girls in the 1990s; look at the current counterparts, The Sugarbabes (though they manage a little female empowerment at times), The Pussycat Dolls (just look at the name) and despite their name, Girls Aloud (of course, they are actually women). It might seem bizarre but The Spice Girls reuniting might actually be good for young women in Britain, at least each member had an identity (however manufactured) and they were not simply replicas of each other, all offering themselves up sexually. So the twisted post-feminism has put women back in a position of effectively sexual servants. I know this is occurring all across the Western world, but in Britain, where it is unrestrained by the religion of the USA and the common sense and maturity of the Netherlands, it is having the most severe effect. Girls rush to dress like their mothers and elder sisters with no time to explore different aspects of being female only that of a sexual 'product' (note all the adverts for 'make-over' kits of girls which are terribly unnerving). I know that teenage pregnancies in the UK are slowly falling, but we still have the highest level in Europe and I imagine the fall will bottom out or reverse if society continues to emphasise that a woman is only to be (I was going to say 'respected' but in fact it is really the reverse) seen as legitimate if she is sexually appealing (within the mainstream definition which is incredibly narrow) and making babies. Of course there is nothing wrong with being sexually appealing when you are an adult, or in having babies, it is just when society makes that the only seemingly acceptable option or excludes you.
So, the twisting of post-feminism has done a lot of damage to the status of (young) women in UK society and provides an excuse for those who still wish to discriminate against them in the workplace and use sexual politics to manipulate them (rape convictions and successful sexual harassment cases still remain the exception rather than commonplace). I will argue it has also damaged the role of men in society. It is easy to blame rap culture for a lot of this, but for the average teenage boy this is one of the two prime sources of his information about aspirations and also, importantly, how to behave in society (for pre-pubescent boys there is WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) full of over-muscled men simulating violence (which to many of the boys looks real), shouting, being aggressive and surrounded by nubile women who often they fight over; this is barbarism made entertainment and packaged for 11 year olds). The second place is the internet. My mother who grew up in the 1940s said that the way young men and women found out what to do in a relationship was by watching movies. They saw how couples kissed and held each other and would often replicate it, literally right there in the cinema or otherwise later. Of course the limited portrayals of the era meant that there were a lot of unanswered questions especially once you have got beyond the kissing and cuddling. However, importantly it also showed 'sexual' manners, how to treat a woman properly. Men who were violent to women in movies always came off badly and did not 'get the girl' ultimately.
When I was a teenager in the 1980s access to pornography was pretty difficult and usually amounted to stuff found round the back of the newsagents or filched from fathers or older brothers. Nowadays not only every time you log on to your email account are you being offered up the stuff it is so easy to find free pornographic videos in seconds. I am staggered by how much stuff is out there. In addition, its spread is immense. When I was a teenager, you saw generally soft porn of a woman posing naked, occasionally playing with herself. However, on the internet you can see women of all kinds performing the widest range of acts available and things like sado-masochism seem normal. It is interesting to note that recently 'The Guardian' reported that many young women dislike the fact that their boyfriends ejaculate in their faces without asking permission yet they feel they are not in a position to protest as it is seen as 'normal'. That is because online pornography shows pornographic sex which is not about the participants as sex should be, it is about the audience. I imagine very few women like being ejaculated on their faces, but of course someone watching a pornographic video wants to see the so-called 'money shot' to prove the sex is 'real'. It is as if I sit down and watch 'Die Hard 4.0' or 'Bullitt' or 'The French Connection' and then go out and drive that way because I think that driving full speed through a city crashing into cars is the 'normal' way to drive. Crucially, due to the post-feminism, these young women are doing nothing to contest their boyfriends' behaviour or seemingly even discuss sex in a mature way. They have been given a submissive role by society and feel obliged to stick to it, however much they might protest about the consequences to other women.
So sexual knowledge for men (less so for young women who tend to read more and so probably get a wider experience from novels) comes from apeing a performance rather than actuality or any authentic portrayal (no movie I know shows the farts, burps, itchy skin, sudden cramp, need to urinate, difficulty getting on condom, etc. that normal sex involves). They are given the green light to use this performance sex on women by, in particular, music videos which generally show women in a half-dressed state shaking their bodies around provocatively whilst the man strides around boasting how he is better than everyone else, is so rich, has a big car and so on. The women fall into his lap, never contest his right to use their bodies and so on. Now, female artists do often portray a stronger role for women in their videos even if dressed in stunning outfits that make them look incredibly sexy; notably Beyonce and Christine Aguillera among others have done songs contesting violence towards women and Jennifer Lopez has appeared in a movie on the theme. Interestingly, though they do not contest sexual submissiveness, (I am hoping that Pink will release 'Don't Cum In My Face Without Asking' in 2008; 'U + Ur Hand' came close in 2007). For some reason these individual songs do not penetrate so strongly as the 'lifestyle' videos of male performers.
The twisted post-feminism, however, does not only cause problems in the sexual intercourse sphere but also in other aspects of men's lives. To complement submissive women, men increasingly feel that they have to be aggressive. This is no way going back to the Jane Austen era, when at a time when life could be lost easily, manners and respect reined in male aggression, but to some far more primitive time and even then I doubt the average caveman sought out someone to beat up in a car park on Friday night as he knew he had to be in a fit state to get up and hunt the next morning and an injury could kill him; plus alcohol had not been invented. I see fathers with sons at primary school (pre-11 years old) actively encouraging them to be aggressive in their toys even in their play. I accept that boys need to be tough, we all do in the modern world, but we now have aggression for aggression's sake, not to defend your family or your land or your life, but because somehow if you are not angry and aggressive you are somehow not male. Just as for girls, to be seen these days as not feminine, even not a princess (with all the traits of demanding things and service not simply being feminine) is the worst accusation for boys it is even worse to be seen as not being a man. Hence we have rising numbers of boys carrying knives and stabbing people. I live in a suburban area and we have a stabbing every fortnight and someone being kicked to death or into hospital once per month; other parts of the UK have many more and have shootings too, increasingly of school-aged boys. Fatherhood in itself is becoming perverted into ensuring that your son can kick to pieces anyone he fancies taking on and that your daughter will be standing on the sidelines applauding ready to offer herself sexually to the victor. The battle is everywhere, fighting to get at the front of the queue and in particular driving to push everyone off the road to assert your identity as a man.
This is not masculinity, this is barbarism. Look at less developed societies. You do not see tribespeople in the Amazon basin kicking each other to death or stabbing each other just because one has run in front of the other. They know what life costs and that violence and aggression have their place and that we have to draw limits or otherwise their society collapses. Back in the 1990s I heard Eric Hobsbawm speak on 'Barbarism: A Users' Guide' and he spoke about the problems of Yugoslavia breaking up. It was a developed country which had firearms around but also a framework of norms about how one behaved with them and how you treated your neighbours and how men treated women too. Then the war began and rather than adhering to common decency all the brakes came off and the situation was far more dangerous than in less developed societies. You ended up with the mass raping, the death camps, the snipers firing at market queues. This is where a society which has fallen back to the survival of the fittest; male strong-female submissive culture. Unless in the UK we can address this unhealthy imbalance between men and women which is triggering off so many other unpleasant consequences, and see that men and women are different, but neither side should be forced, cajoled, bribed, bullied, bought off into filling that assigned role to the utmost, then there is nothing to stop even worse things happening.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
