Wednesday, February 24, 2016 

The X Files: my part in its downfall.


(This is long, and if you'd prefer not to read about my adolescent love of The X Files, you can skip to halfway through where I review the new series.  If that's your bag.  Oh, and spoilers.)

I honestly cannot recall how I first came to watch The X Files.  I've got a nagging feeling that it might well have been when it was repeated on BBC2 late on a Friday night, although I might be confusing that with how I'm fairly sure the BBC repeated the first season later in the 90s.  My failure of memory seems fitting for how the show itself always held itself in a sort of vagueness: you could never truly trust what it seemed to be telling you was happening, just as Mulder and Scully couldn't trust anyone except themselves.

It's become something of an obvious go to that The X Files is symbolic of the 90s.  A decade that began with the dissolution of an empire, the crumbling, apparent extinction of any ideology other than ones that regarded the market as sacrosanct and unquestionable, the turn away from certainty towards the conspiratorial and the cynical, why wouldn't a show that contended we were all being lied to on a grand scale by governments and corporations and yet eschewed politics almost entirely be a smash hit?

On a personal level, though, The X Files to me truly is the 90s.  Memories fade of your actual day to day life, but the television shows, the films and the music you love remain, available not just to remind you but for you to relive.  It was a time before life, before I, got serious.  Quite why I somewhat precociously loved the show, as I must have started watching it when I was around 11, I again can't put my finger on exactly.  That said, I definitely identified with Mulder: the heroic, brainiac outsider, laughed at by his colleagues, toiling away down in the basement, trying to find the evidence that would prove him to be right.  In the first year of secondary school I put "Mulder" as my middle name on exercise books, and drove the English teacher up the wall with my constant reviewing of the novelisations of episodes, as well as naming characters in stories Fox and Dana.

And of course, you can't be an almost teenager on the cusp of puberty and not also have more than a bit of a crush on Scully/Gillian Anderson, as I'm sure a whole generation of boys (and girls no doubt too) did.  Unlike with other characters in shows that are often there to be little more than eye candy, or the token gorgeous woman among the males, there's not really anything to be embarrassed about in retrospect either.  Scully is attractive most of all because she develops into by far the most rounded character on the show, thanks not just to the writing but to Anderson's remarkable acting ability; she plays a character originally not much more than a foil to Mulder with such nuance, bearing and determination that after the first season she truly is his partner, rather than the sceptical subordinate following in his wake.

As for how when you think The X Files you think aliens and the paranormal, which angered a few of the more literal minded critics who saw it as being part of the Mumbo Jumbo takeover, that was never the important part for me.  I didn't then and definitely don't now believe in the supernatural, at least not the supernatural phenomenon they investigated.  I was far more interested in the "mythology" of the show than the possibility there could be some truth to the conspiracies featured.  Why would I want to get involved in looking to see if there's something more to our very dull reality when the one depicted in the show needed such deciphering on its own?

Looking back now, what once was satisfying because it didn't end, because nothing was ever truly, fully explained, is the show's biggest flaw.  The mythology doesn't add up, and those episodes centred on Mulder's pursuit of the truth, regardless of the danger it puts him and Scully in, resulting in the murder of his father and Scully's sister Melissa, Scully's cancer and miracle recovery, start to drag after you reach the fifth season.  By contrast, grown exponentially in my estimation have been the "monster of the week" episodes, the self-contained shows, the best of which are very special indeed.  Vince Gilligan, who as any fule kno got his start proper on The X Files before he went on to create Breaking Bad, is easily the most consistent, capable of both the deadly serious, as in Pusher or the light-hearted, such as in Je Souhaite.  What Darin Morgan started with his comedic episodes Gilligan perfected with Bad Blood, the 5th's season magnum opus, a vampire tale told from Mulder and then Scully's very different perspectives, and where you can see just how much fun everyone was having without it impacting on the quality as it so easily can.

As with so much else in life, the difficulty is in knowing when to let go.  The X Files really should have ended with season 7, as it was thought for a time would be the case.  Accordingly, the loose ends were sort of tied up: the syndicate behind the conspiracy involving the alien takeover of the planet was destroyed by the rebel aliens; Mulder discovered "the truth" behind his sister's disappearance; and in the last episode, Mulder himself is abducted and Scully reveals she is pregnant, despite having been rendered barren by her own abduction in the second season.  As it turned out, the show went on with David Duchovny, who having clearly tired of his role as can be seen in his performances, only appearing in a few of the 8th season's episodes. Robert Patrick, aka the T-1000, took over, with Scully becoming the believer and Patrick's character Doggett the sceptic.

While season 8 was in fact a significant improvement on season 7, this was the point where the "mythology" ought to have been stopped by the Colonel from Monty Python for having gotten too silly.  Mulder is returned, dead, half way through the season.  Only he's not dead, and is dug up, alive, after Scully realises their mistake.  Scully's pregnancy progresses, only for her to discover that her pregnancy is clearly incredibly special, such are the people who want her unborn child either dead or alive.  The season finishes with Scully giving birth witnessed by "super soldiers", actually alien replacements of humans, whom are under the impression that her son will be the leader of the resistance to their rule once the invasion begins.  They leave having decided this is not the case, only for it to turn out come the 9th season that William is indeed a special baby, so special indeed that he can turn the mobile above his cot purely with his mind.  Unable to protect him, and with Mulder on the run due to Duchovny leaving the show proper, she gives this telekinetic child up for adoption.

The series concluded for what is now the first time with Mulder on trial before a military tribunal for the murder of one of the "unkillable" super soldiers; duly found guilty, he somewhat easily escapes their clutches, the Cigarette Smoking Man receives a hellfire missile right up him, and Mulder and Scully put their faith in God preventing the alien invasion from taking place, religion having increasingly become an influence on the series courtesy of creator Chris Carter.

With it always having been the intention for there to be a series of X Files films, 2008's I Want to Believe wasn't the greatest shock when it came about.  Despite its critical reception, it's also rather good: a self-contained story about a psychic paedophile priest and his connection with one of his victims, it ends with Mulder and Scully in bed, again, apparently together and happy as the "shippers" always wanted.

Why then a new "event" series in 2015, other than for ratings and the money?  Are there still stories to be told about these two characters, indefatigable and apparently immortal as they are?  Is the time right, this far removed from 9/11, which by itself seemed to cleave the the justification for The X Files still existing in two, even while the series itself struggled on for another year and a bit?

The answer is possibly, so long as Carter does a George Lucas and gives someone else full control of any follow on.  For sadly, the reboot/event/whatever just about worked so long as he wasn't the person doing the writing.  The three episodes written by James Wong, Darin Morgan, and Glen Morgan, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th respectively are decent, brilliant and good.  James Wong's sort-of follow on from Carter's reintroduction episode is quick paced, features classic X Files motifs and themes with the genetic experimentation on children with rare diseases and syndromes plot, and has some satisfyingly nasty special effects.  Darin Morgan's Were-Monster episode is a complete joy, as though he and Mulder and Scully have never been away.  Filled with references to his past work, it's funny, makes fun of the show and the characters respectfully without for a moment mocking them, and is an answer in itself to the questions as to why all involved are still keeping on keeping on.  His brother's episode would have been a solid monster of the week back in the day: those familiar with It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia might not be able to get by how the monster is known as the Trashman, a being willed into existence by a graffiti artist opposed to the displacement of the homeless and which takes revenge on those responsible, but otherwise it's as fine an entry into the canon as we had any reason to expect at this remove.

The same cannot be said for Carter's episodes.  The first show was always going to be partially about reminding of us how things were left off, and does have a few good lines.  Duchovny and Anderson are straight back into their roles, and well, that's about it.  As incomplete, contradictory and confusing as the "mythology" often was, why on earth would you suggest, yet again, that Mulder and by definition we also had been wrong all along?  Why would you make the deliverer of this truth a smarmy Alex Jones/Bill O'Reilly hybrid, and why would Skinner have ever taken him seriously enough to contact Mulder in the first place?  Why would Tad O'Malley have not just gone public with the alien replica vehicle he's constructed?  Surely the proof would have been enough regardless of the messenger?  Why would you apparently knock all this down again at the conclusion only to then reveal it was the truth all along in the event finale?

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.  The penultimate episode sees Carter decide to introduce jihadism to The X Files, for reasons known only to himself.  A suicide bomber miraculously survives the blast, and the FBI wants to extract any information it possibly can from the comatose fundamentalist, by any means necessary.  In what can only be put down to Carter writing the episode while on something himself, Mulder's proposed method is to trip on magic mushrooms, get on the same astral plane as the bomber and converse with him there.  We also meet two young FBI agents, and wouldn't you know it, but one's female, a redhead, a scientist and a sceptic, and the other's male, handsome and wants to believe.  Oh, and in a you really can't get away with this Chris palm to the face moment, the female agent's name is Einstein.  No, honest, it is.  Their existence can only be ascribed to Carter holding out the hope of continuing the series with these two if either Duchovny or Anderson decide not to go on, despite neither showing anything to suggest they could equal Doggett and Reyes, let alone Mulder and Scully.  The conceit turns out that Mulder goes on a clichéd journey into his mind in spite of only being given a placebo by Einstein, and he naturally does talk to the bomber, preventing a much larger cell from carrying out their attacks.  Someone I respect described it as the worst episode of the show full stop.

That accolade really should go to the finale instead, so lacking was everything about it.  What seems like a good half of the episode we spend with Scully explaining what's happening, or rather what isn't to Einstein, as though the two actresses are trying to convince themselves that the plot makes sense.  We must act quickly, Scully says more than once, reminding of Mark Kermode's review of Revenge of the Sith and his escalating anger at Lucas's own reliance on exposition.  Tad O'Malley it turns out was right all along, and rather than an alien invasion, as we thought was meant to happen on the 21st of December 2012 as the mythology previously implied, instead the takeover is to be heralded by a mass extinction of human life via DNA implanted in everyone through the smallpox vaccination, achieved once activated by the collapse of the immune system.  This is meant to explain why the invasion didn't happen and we're here now but just doesn't work, not least because Scully we learn via the re-emergence of Agent Reyes is one of the "chosen few" to survive, her DNA having been altered during her abduction.  This makes absolutely no sense, as Scully's survival along with the rest of those abducted and subjected to tests by the military in an attempt to current an alien-human hybrid depended on the chip implanted in her neck, with most of those subject to multiple abductions having had them removed and succumbing to cancer as Scully so nearly did herself.

Thankfully, Scully realises that her alien DNA can be used to create a vaccine against the now activated part of the err, smallpox vaccination, activated we're told via Tad O'Malley's show by chemtrails and possibly microwaves also.  Mulder meanwhile has been for the umpteenth time in the lair of CSM, who somehow managed to survive the massive explosion that happened right in his face and is still apparently in control of events.  Each meeting and showdown between Mulder and CSM since he first confronted him proper way back when Scully was returned in season 2's One Breath has been less climactic, and the pattern remains here.  With Scully having apparently saved the world, she rushes to find Mulder, himself stricken despite having also been abducted and tested on, only for an alien ship (or is it?) to appear overhead and the event to end on a completely miserable cliffhanger.

Could it have been any different?  Would it have been possible to resurrect the series without discounting the old mythology to an extent?  Perhaps not, but it could have been so much cleaner, so much better executed, not so seemingly lazy while also feeling strained.  Carter, it's sad to say, just seems to have ran out of ideas.  The show previously didn't, couldn't rely on him as much, not least when the shortest season was the ninth and which still came in at 18 episodes, and it meant that if you didn't enjoy the mythology then other writers with different ideas would be along shortly.  Here, and constrained to just the six episodes, there was barely any escape.

The X Files event was then a failure, albeit a noble one.  Mulder and Scully might be as strong personalities as ever, played with the same skill as was the case for the majority of the original run by Duchovny and Anderson, and yet they don't feel right in the middle of the 2010s.  The world has changed, and where our cellphone and internet using heroes were once ahead of the curve back in the 90s, they feel out of time now.  I hope this really is the end as the title legend of the concluding episode said, that characters I and so many others grew up with are allowed to go out with some dignity remaining, only that lack of ending suggests they won't be allowed to do so.  We never want to say goodbye to our friends and loved ones, but as we ought to have learned, in the end we have to.

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2/24/2016 10:29:00 pm | |

Monday, January 26, 2015 

TV review (of sorts): Bitter Lake.

It's perhaps something of an exaggeration to say there's been a critical backlash against Adam Curtis of late, but no longer have his films been almost universally applauded by those vaguely on the left.  Certainly, his five-minute slot in Charlie Brooker's 2014 Wipe was met by just as much befuddlement as it was adulation by those who see Curtis as something of a prophet, just as Chris Morris once was.  Morris of course responded to this unwanted status with Nathan Barley, co-written with Brooker, with it being difficult not to see the character Dan Ashcroft, a writer admired by idiots who declares he's not a "preacher man" as partly formed by Morris's own anxieties.

In truth, much of this backlash has been due to the decline in quality of Curtis's work.  He without doubt peaked with Century of the Self, which as an introduction into how the work of Freud, Jung and Laing among others was appropriated by business and politics is hard to beat.  Power of Nightmares, despite the brickbats thrown at it continues to stand up, but with The Trap, despite remaining a work of the kind you simply don't get on TV, the rot set in.  All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace followed, and while by no means bad, it just didn't hold up against what had come before.

The main criticisms of Curtis's style of documentary, that he covers up a lack of original ideas and content with inspired music choices and use of stock footage unlikely to have been seen before has been somewhat answered by his irregularly updated blog.  While the questions remain over his answers or lack of them, what can't be complained about is the way he draws you in through his prose, without there being any need to watch the clips accompanying the text.  With the apparent full BBC archive at his disposal, with all the oddities and forgotten shows contained therein, one post resurrects a 70s documentary on the Hells Angels while the next might be about vegetables.  Yes, really.

The announcement that Bitter Lake would only be available on the iPlayer then, and would clock in at just over 2 hours 15 minutes, allowing Curtis to create something not "restrained by the rigid formats and schedules of network television" set alarm bells ringing.  Curtis's past work hasn't shown any indication of being restrained by exactly those forces, which is precisely why so many of us boring gits loved them: long-form documentaries, set to ambient/electronic music, dealing with ideas rarely so much as broached on mainstream television, let alone in depth or with the allowed space to make up your own mind.  One word instantly came to mind: indulgence.  Much as we might delight in TV that plays out a story over 6 or 10 weeks, there's also nothing quite like a 90 minute nuts and bolts film that does the job and then gets its coat.  Editors are often there for very good reasons (ahem).

Sadly, those suspicions were very much confirmed by Bitter Lake.  This isn't to say that in spots it's very, very good: it draws heavily on a number of posts Curtis has made on his blog on Afghanistan, and coming the week the Saudi king finally did the decent thing, prompting our freedom loving leaders to go and pay their respects, the emphasis on how the kingdom has spread the Wahhabist doctrine which so underpins jihadism is very welcome.  Curtis makes extensive use of the footage shot by BBC cameramen in Afghanistan that has never previously been seen, the rushes normally consigned to the cutting room floor.  If nothing else, this does a service to the men and women behind the equipment who rarely get any credit, something now rectified when they journey alongside TV hacks into warzones at least.  As you'll no doubt expect from a Curtis film, some of this footage is extremely banal while other clips are little short of breath-taking: we see Afghan soldiers dancing to a lone, virtuoso trumpeter; a British soldier coaxes a tame pigeon, probably an escaped pet, first off his gun onto his hand, stroking its breast, before it jumps onto his helmeted head, to the absolute wonder and delight of the infantryman; American and British troops whoop up airstrikes on the enemy; and the attempted assassination of Hamid Karzai is witnessed by a cameraman just feet away from the former president, his security team all but abandoning him as he lays on the seat of his SUV.

The problem is this footage takes up far more of the running time than would ever be allowed on TV for good reason.  As beguiling as it often is, it doesn't add anything to the narrative, which is extremely sparse for the first 90 minutes.  The question then is whether it adds anything to a documentary you have to make an active choice to watch, and even on that score much of it doesn't.  For every one piece that does push it forward, such as the remarkable archive of a British student teaching a class of Afghans about Duchamp's urinal, something that came about as part of the post-invasion this is wot Western education is about like initiative, to their bewilderment and the student's own realisation she's wasting her time, the assumptions of all being challenged and judged, there's 5 clips that just drag.  It all feels disjointed, and seeing as Curtis's thesis is that Western politicians responded to the crises of the 70s, caused in part by the empowerment of Saudi Arabia, with a simplification of everything down to good and evil, often his narration of how this came to be is guilty of precisely the same thing.

It's especially a shame as within the running time there's a couple of hour-long documentaries that ought to be made.  The first on how the West's relationship with Saudi Arabia has and continues to shape policy; and the second on how the British presence in Afghanistan descended into such ignominy, with the army gamed into attacking anyone they were told were Taliban, such was the incompetence of those in charge.

Bitter Lake does nonetheless succeed in showing the way history has repeated in that benighted country.  The Afghan king first sought out American help to develop his nation, before then playing off the Americans and Russians against each other.  As drop-out Westerners journeyed to the country in the 70s in search of something different, Afghans educated in the West brought left-wing radicalism back with them.  Neither their idea of what freedom was, nor that of the Russians when they intervened or ourselves has taken root.  Western ideals of human rights and equality rubbed up against the fundamentalism of the madrasas funded by the Saudis, regardless of whether the West supported the mujahideen in the 80s, or opposed its spawn in the 2000s.

This doesn't however prove Curtis's point: regardless of the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq, the mere dropping of demanding the immediate removal of President Assad from power in Syria doesn't mean this dilution of everything into absolutes has been abandoned.  Policy on Syria continues to make not the slightest bit of sense when the "good" rebels are set to be trained to fight the "bad" ones.  Indeed, the only possible outcome would appear to be that which befell Kabul in the 90s: the destruction of everything with the eventual victors likely to be the most ruthless of all.  We continue to oppose the enemies of the Saudis whether it's in our interests or not, for which see the way the oil price is being used against Iran as we're trying desperately to reach a deal over their nuclear programme.  Whether this makes either Iran or Russia more belligerent or more inclined to reach a compromise we don't and can't possibly know.

In the meantime we'll go on telling ourselves we're on the side of the good regardless of our actions, we'll make idols out of schoolgirls to make ourselves feel better, and we'll do as little as possible to examine the mistakes we've made.  For all the criticisms of Curtis and the failings of Bitter Lake, his work continues to take viewers places others fear to go, and few pose the questions he does to such a wide audience.  His answers and conclusions may be faulty, but whose aren't?

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1/26/2015 09:47:00 pm | |

Tuesday, January 06, 2015 

It was alright in the 2010s.

Tempting as it is to just deride Mark Pritchard's call for the law on anonymity concerning sexual assault to be reviewed, to be falsely accused of anything is, as he says, an awful thing.

Pritchard wasn't really put through what you'd call the wringer, though, let's be clear: he was never charged so he didn't face trial, and  we only learned of his arrest due to the quirk of the arrest of MPs being required to be reported on that day's order papers.  The naming of those arrested but not charged is rare, usually happening only when there is wider media interest, or when someone provides a tip-off.  No, it isn't pleasant to face the uncertainty of not knowing if you'll be charged with something you haven't done, but there are extremely good reasons why those charged should be named, for which see the events of the past couple of years, while the complainant should never be, for which, err, see the events of the past couple of years.

Which brings us, extremely tenuously, to Christmas TV.  It's in part a perennial whinge and a sign I'm getting older, but the fare on offer apart from the terrestrial TV film premieres seemed more dismal than ever.  When the most watched show features a man dressed as a woman falling over and swearing, and the second featured a woman falling over and not swearing while breaking the fourth wall, it's a sign there was some fairly weak sauce being served up.  And indeed, if you didn't get enough of the woman falling over, you could see her falling over also in Call the Midwife, the utterly bizarre drama that sort of does and sort of doesn't sentimentalise the grinding poverty of the East End in the post-war period, and is sort of sick-making and sort of isn't in the same way.

I don't watch a lot of TV, and it's something I credit for my sanity almost remaining in tact. Certainly, if I had nothing better to do than watch dreck like Channel 4's It Was Alright in the 1970s, which I had the misfortune to see a repeat of while flipping through channels one night, and which is, dear reader, the extremely tenuously link to the above, I'd probably be chewing the carpet more than I do already.  Once, we had Days Like These (a UK remake of the US hit That 70s Show), which Lee and Herring were pointing out back in 1999 was comedy at its laziest and most banal, laughing at how things were different in the past, because lol, people styled their hair differently and wore different clothes and did different things.  Then we had I Love the 70s and so on, with celebrity talking heads telling us how great it was to be a kid back then, just as for most people it's great to be a kid regardless, except for those for whom it isn't.

Clearly the format was due a reboot, only with new faces responding with sometimes real and sometimes faked shock and anger to cherry-picked examples of sexism, racism, dirty old men being perverts, and barely above the age of consent young women, if that, portrayed as gagging for it.  To be fair to the programme makers for a second, it would be foolish to deny there are examples of 70s television retrograde even for the time, or which were obviously misjudged.  Curry and Chips for instance, regardless of Spike Milligan and Johnny Speight's intentions, or the skin crawling example shown of Casanova starring Leslie Phillips, with his fictional niece begging the lothario relative to teach her in the ways of love.

This was then presented though as being part of the explanation for why only now we're discovering the dark side of the period, complete with plentiful backslapping for how much more enlightened we are these days.  Except this line of thought doesn't follow: yes, perhaps TV suggested predatory behaviour was normal, but if that was the case wouldn't there have been a response far sooner?  After all, the rise of alternative comedy at the turn of the decade was as much a response to the overt racism and attitudes of the era's stand-ups as it was politics in general.

Moreover, the slightest evidence of alleged perversion was seized upon, including a conversation lifted from the Likely Lads of the characters discussing being attracted to schoolgirls in uniform, with talk of gymslips and all the rest.  You don't have to be Pamela Stephenson to realise this fetish, if you can even call it that, springs just as much as from young people becoming sexually aware while wearing those same clothes as it does from still being attracted to post-pubescent but underage girls once an adult.  An awful lot of men, and yes women too, are attracted to sexually mature but on the cusp of adulthood young people, it's just something we'd rather not talk about, only acting surprised and outraged when teachers of both sexes are exposed as having had relationships with their pupils.

In general that seemed to be the message the programme was pushing.  It's better not to approach difficult subjects at all than it is to see them broached in comedy; also deemed outrageous was an elderly man complimenting his granddaughter on her looks and talking about sex in general, as old people can't be sexual beings once they reach a certain age.  Old men making comments about or becoming aroused when washed by their young carers or nurses is an everyday occurrence, but that's too icky and embarrassing to so much as think about.  Also picked on was Windy Miller of all things, as in one episode of Camberwick Green he gets drunk on his strong cider; you can object on the grounds he just falls asleep rather than gets in a terrible mess due to his drinking, but really, can kids before a certain age not comprehend or deal with characters in programmes specifically for them imbibing?  Did it result in the children of the time heading straight for the corner shop for a bottle of White Ace, any more than the current generation does?

Besides, are things all that much better today?  Another section of the programme looked at the game shows of the time draping women over the prizes, because that doesn't happen now does it, and we don't have beer advertised by bros playing beach volleyball with sexy ladies in bikinis, or deodorant shown as being so irresistible to the opposite sex that even angels will come down from heaven to bang the bloke on the moped who uses it.  Nor do we have alleged comedians making gags about violently threatening women into showing their breasts mistakenly being given their own TV series.  Yes, TV's so much better now we don't make fun of people on their basis of their skin colour or creed, especially when you can film both the underclass and the stupidly rich to serve the same purpose and describe the former as telling "the stories of the most distressed parts of society", decrying criticism as being an attempt to censor.  As for sexual abuse, that's all in the past too.

Perhaps I took it too seriously, and it was all meant to be a bit of fun to see how TV used to be.  I don't suppose the intention was to treat the viewer as a complete moron, to patronise them, to ram home quite how superior we are now that we're all far more sensitive and considered in our dealings with each other.  That's why Matt Lucas was the narrator.  You know, the comedian who satirised the national character so effectively in Little Britain.  And who blacked up, but in an ironic way.  Forgive me, but I get the impression a commissioner in Horseferry Road is laughing even now.

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1/06/2015 09:47:00 pm | |

Tuesday, July 02, 2013 

Glastonbury: the view from at home.

There is but one thing everyone knows about Glastonbury.  Every year, regardless of the weather, regardless of the quality of the music, regardless of how many people have their possessions stolen and regardless of how long it takes for everyone to first reach the site, and then when the time sadly comes, to leave, it's The Best Festival Ever.  Michael Eavis himself says so.  Every Saturday night headliner is the best ever.  Ever John Peel stage line up is the best ever.  Every section of fence that keeps the hoi polloi out and the gathered white, middle class masses in is the best ever.  Every Lauren Laverne appearance is the best ever.  And so on.

I speak, naturally, as someone who has never been and has no intention of going.  I simply don't understand how amazing an experience it must be to stand in a field with approximately 100,000 other people, barely being able to move, hardly being able to hear the Rolling Stones and also barely being able to see them, when I could instead be sitting at home, able to go to the bog at the moment of my choosing, and both hear and see the band better than practically anyone who's there.  I also won't have paid a small fortune for the privilege, nor should it have been a wet year will I have experienced conditions that could pass for the Somme during one of the lulls in fighting.  For every account of how wonderful Glastonbury is, how spiritual it is, and how if you want to you can go and not even see a single band and have a great time, there is someone who will have had an experience akin to the one Stuart Campbell did back in 1998.  Doubtless, things probably have improved since then. Probably.

All those of us back home can judge the festival on then is the music, the way the BBC deigns to showcase it, and how the rest of the media hype the whole thing up to the point at which it isn't just a festival in Somerset, it's the Greatest Weekend of the Year. This year at least the BBC finally realised that this internet thing means we ought to be able to choose what we'd like to see, so you could watch the West Holts stage all day if that's the sort of thing that floats your boat. This also meant you could dispense entirely with the BBC's hosts, and so I succeeded in going the whole weekend without once seeing the aforementioned Lauren Laverne. Sadly, I did still encounter Jo Whiley and the "presenters" on BBC3, but at least Whiley was alongside Mark Radcliffe.

The only problem was that the site was temperamental at best, and delighted in repeatedly locking Firefox up. It worked slightly better in IE, but still wasn't perfect. It would be remiss though not to comment on the main nightly show, and the BBC still insists on the same practice year in year out of having "up and coming" bands and artists playing live in the studio. If there is a single person watching outside of their friends and families that wants to see them rather than a few more highlights from the day itself, I'd really like to meet them.

The other obvious flaw with the BBC's offerings was that while most of the stages were represented, apart from the Essential Mix on Radio 1 on Friday night there was no coverage whatsoever of the dance tents. Considering this is the year when it's been decided that the likes of Disclosure are the New Big Thing and when house in general has made a resurgence, this is baffling at best. True, it would mean more expense, and DJs aren't always happy to have their sets live streamed if they play new stuff which then instantly gets put up on YouTube, but when the Beeb can pay out £50m to former managers it can surely afford to spend a bit more on Glasto.

That we can also now choose not to watch the Pyramid stage was a very good thing considering the line up and also, sadly, some of the performances.  With the exception of Nick Cave, and the Stones towards the end of their performance, the main stage was a bit of a horlicks all round.  Very little needs to said about Mumford and Sons, while it continues to astonish me how Primal Scream continue to get to headline festivals despite having only produced one decent album, and that was 20 years ago.  The Vaccines are equally perplexing: how does a band that sounds like the Cribs did on their terrible first album without having any of their charm receive such adulation?

Arctic Monkeys were also disappointing, but then the crowd were easy enough to please, singing Yellow by Coldplay when Alex Turner jokingly played the first couple of chords.  What it did bring home was just how ghastly their debut is: I wasn't completely won over by it back in 06, but with the exception of When the Sun Goes Down and Mardy Bum it's now all but unlistenable.  I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor sounded like what it is, one of the first songs written by a young band who would go on to much greater things.  That it was probably the best received track they played was rather sad.
 
Away from the Pyramid, there was some great stuff amongst the dreck.  Portishead were, as they always are, incredible, all the more so for coming on after a tepid showing by Foals, who I really like, and the depressingly average Alt-J, who somehow won last year's Mercury.  Crystal Castles on the Peel stage were promising, until either they or the BBC decided it was time to cut the stream; that the cameramen seemed to be trying their best to point their lenses up Alice Glass' skirt might have had something to do with it.  Continuing tribute as it is to John Peel to have a stage named after him, it's more than slightly incongruous when he would have never played some of the bands scheduled to appear on it; while you can quite easily imagine he would have stuck on James Blake, Crystal Castles and Odd Future, he's probably turning in his grave at how Tom Odell and the ghastly Courteeners were also plying their turgid wares there.

Only the West Holts stage seemed to get the headliner right each night (although the Park stage came close, Fuck Buttons' intensity not coming across, at least not at home): Chic, Public Enemy and Bobby Womack providing the antidote to so much of the tosh on the bill elsewhere.  The xx also defied expectations: their intimate, stripped back sound, not instantly translatable to festivals, was the perfect contrast to the self-aggrandising of the Mumfords and they seemed genuinely overwhelmed by the way they were received.

It was hardly then what you would call a classic festival, and it's likely to be remembered only for the Stones, regardless of how they could never live up to the hype and didn't seem to try.  That they probably had the biggest audience ever at the festival seems more down to the fact you have to pay close to what you would for a Glastonbury ticket to see just them than anything else.  And as this seems to be pay the way concerts and festivals are going, there's likely to be many more of us watching from home.

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7/02/2013 11:33:00 pm | |

Tuesday, May 21, 2013 

A sort-of review of The Fall.

Whenever someone says that films or TV designed to be frightening don't scare them, it's difficult not to regard it as a boast.  It is after all typically blokeish to maintain that regardless of the atmosphere a movie tries to create, despite how much ketchup is thrown against the lens and however loud the bang that signals it's time for the audience to jump is, none of it has ever and will ever faze *me*.

The problem is that I'm most certainly not one of "those" men, and yet it's been a hell of a long time since anything I've watched on a screen with the intent of freaking me out has done so.  I do get scared, most certainly, often at myself more than anything, and there are other things I just can't watch, or rather, simply won't, but as for the mainstream it doesn't tend to happen.  The closest I've come recently was during re-watching the Exorcist, and that was thinking you can see why someone like James Ferman genuinely thought this film could scar adolescent girls for life.  He was clearly wrong, but you can see why.

Instead of being scared, I tend to be either troubled, worried, uncomfortable or even close to being upset by certain content, most often sexual violence.  Our betters at the BBFC feel the same way, except they often seem to reach bizarre conclusions on the kind of scene which in their view "eroticises" sexual violence and therefore has to be cut lest it affect the impressionable.  In theory this is a worthy system, and clearly there's a responsibility on film-makers to treat scenes of rape differently to how they would mere violence, but where's the line drawn when a film instead skirts around the edges of both?

I ask this having watched last night's episode of The Fall on BBC2.  Where the episode last week introduced us to the characters of Stella Gibson, played by Gillian Anderson (the main reason I tuned in, I have to admit) and Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan), the chief investigating officer and the killer respectively, and also led inexorably to Spector murdering Sarah Kay (Laura Donnelly), the woman he had been stalking, this week's opened with an around 8-minute long sequence cutting between Spector meticulously cleaning and then posing the body of his victim, and Gibson having meaningless sex with the officer she propositioned last week.  If those switching between channels may well have been slightly surprised at a man carrying the naked, clearly lifeless body of a woman between a bath and bed so soon after the watershed, then I have to say I felt distinctly uneasy as well.  Not because there were any taboos being broken, or that the juxtaposition was unwise, more at the length and the distinct feel of reality involved.

Most certainly, I've watched films that are either more graphic or downright nasty in the way in which they depict the work of serial killers or abductors.  H6: Diary of a Serial Killer and Lucker the Necrophagus come to mind, the former being a far superior film in every way to the latter, yet neither caused me to actually pause and wonder whether someone could possibly be influenced or informed by what was depicted.  Even closer to the knuckle is the sub-genre of exploitation films that have attempted to portray the lives of real serial killers, Bundy and the Hillside Strangler being prominent examples, both of which are utterly tasteless, even if not utterly without merit.

Perhaps closer to the disquiet I felt was some of the worry that surrounded Irreversible when it was released a decade ago.  The controversy surrounded not the rape itself, which compared to some others isn't particularly graphic, but the violence that accompanies it, the sheer length of the scene, which goes on for an excruciating 9 minutes and consists of a single take, and that a penis was digitally added to the finish. The film's defenders argued that as well as being realistic, in that it accurately depicted the brutality of a stranger rape where the act is seldom over quickly, there was also no ambiguity: no one could possibly find it arousing. While it certainly doesn't eroticise the rape, the length still seems problematic: movies often make killing another human look far easier than it is in actuality, with a few notable exceptions. The Passion of the Christ is one such, and is one of the most wretched films in recent memory as a result. Irreversible isn't a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination, but it's also one that's impossible to actively like or recommend.

Which is much the same as I feel about The Fall so far. It's a cold and clinical production, the soundtrack is either lo-fi or silent, and the camera work is unorthodox, all things I admire in any work, yet the lingering on the victims, without being gratuitous, still seems a step beyond what's truly necessary to establish the calculation and perversion of this otherwise seemingly normal family man.  It also seems more than just a little clichéd that a drama set in Belfast that is otherwise so tightly scripted has to involve the continuing stand-off between the police and paramilitaries as a sub-plot.  That could yet turn out to be integral to the main plot, and with three episodes to go, there's plenty of time to make such criticisms seem short sighted.  Much like me in general. 

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5/21/2013 10:15:00 pm | |

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 

Are you a fucking horse?

The Thick of It has come to what seems likely to be the end.  For an ostensibly political comedy, its influence is difficult to overstate: it went in four series from satirising New Labour's spin machine to err, providing lines for the now in opposition Labour party to use against the government.  In Malcolm Tucker Armando Iannucci, the other writers, and of course Peter Capaldi have created one of most terrifyingly brutal and yet still likeable characters in recent sitcom history, a man who doesn't so much wield the power he has as use it to cosh everyone who screws up around him, which happens to be everyone.  In the hour-long special Rise of the Nutters, when Ollie somehow finds it within himself to accuse Malcolm of bullying, Tucker is insulted: "I am so much worse than that".

Tucker isn't just Alastair Campbell, just as the Tory spin doctor Stewart Pearson introduced in the specials isn't just Steve Hilton (although clearly, "The Fucker" is Andy Coulson).  Iannucci maintains he based him not wholly on Campbell as much as Hollywood agents and producers, but what he's come to symbolise and be is the political dark arts, the plotting, the sniping, the manoeuvring, the smearing, the treachery, the threatening and the double dealing which we've now come to associate with media management.  The Thick of It's success is that it took all these things, and managed to make them flesh.  Tucker is, as he's variously described throughout the series, a force of nature, a "bad Gandalf".  He seems to appear out of nowhere, and then as soon as he does he's gone, leaving little trace.  Moreover, he's a survivor of negative media coverage, plots by rival spinners and of eventual electoral defeat.  He's only finally brought low by doing things that are arguably in the public interest: bringing down a useless leader of his party while leaking information about a vulnerable man who's being treated appallingly by the government.

Just as remarkable is that The Thick of It isn't a cynical show, or at least isn't about politics itself.  In an age where the refrain often heard "is they're all the same", The Thick of It always presented the actual politicians not necessarily in a good light but almost never in a wholly bad one.  Chris Langham's wonderful performance as Hugh Abbott showcased a minister who's out of his depth, incompetent, false and desperate to cling on to his job, but also as demonstrably human.  He hates that he has to push through policies which he personally disagrees with but does it anyway, has almost no family life due to the long hours that leave him perpetually tired, and at one point even asks Malcolm if he gets lonely, only for both men to step back from admitting and talking about their problems.  The episode where Abbott is forced to give up the London flat that gives him a small amount of respite came before the expenses scandal, but touched upon whether while dismissing our representatives, we also expect too much of them, as does the episode where Nicola Murray is forced by Tucker into deciding whether her husband leaves his job in PFI or her daughter goes to a comprehensive instead of an independent school.

Indeed, arguably the only politicians to be presented as truly irredeemable are Fergus, Peter Mannion's Liberal Democrat junior minister at DoSAC (he's making me hate politicians and I am one, remarks Mannion when Fergus emotes for the cameras after the death of Mr Tickell) and Dan Miller, the horribly slimy, charmless Labour minister who eventually manages to become leader.  That Miller is also the most obviously electable politician on the show is a highly satirical comment on who we seem to keep electing: those who aspire for power or who believe they were born to rule when both qualities ought to rule those very individuals out.

In fact, with the notable exception of the spinners and special advisers other than Tucker, the rest of the cast also fit the "flawed but sympathetic and likeable" trait.  Chief civil servant Terri is hopeless, obtuse and hates her job but does her best while everyone insults her; her assistant Robyn provides additional comic relief; Glenn's the human sponge who realises he's wasted the majority of his life working for and with backstabbing bastards; and Angela Heaney is the journalist repeatedly caught in the middle of the spin storm.

Where the show's ire is squarely aimed is at the careerist young advisers from both sides of the political spectrum.  Ollie is as morally bankrupt as Terri describes him when asked by Nicola, and also dangerously unreliable, typified by when he screwed over Glenn to get in Malcolm's good books.  He effectively defenestrates his party's leader twice, on both occasions at the bidding of Tucker, for the reason that he one day wants to be him.  Mannion's junior SpAd Phil Smith meanwhile is the archetypal Tory child of the 80s, a nerd who could only possibly fit in amongst the weirdos and obsessives in politics, whereas Emma is an "insipid rich bitch" interested only in herself and her career trajectory, sucking up to anyone who she thinks might help her along the way.  These people aren't in politics to help anyone, or make life better in general, nor are they there because they believe in anything beyond an outline; it's just another job, or what seemed like the obvious thing to do after getting a PPE degree from Oxford.

It does in the end though all come back to Tucker.  As he puts it in his monologue at the end of the hour long inquiry special, this is a political class which has given up on morality for the sake of popularity at all costs, and he's the one tasked with achieving it, regardless of how.  The Thick of It says the blame for having reached this situation should be spread around liberally: with the fickle, cynical public, who often are as Mannion once referred to them, "fucking horrible", the media, for whom a crisis must always also be a drama and who allow no respite, and the politicians who can't do anything without a focus group or the advice of someone who's never had a real job in their life.  As for those who sit in judgement, they themselves had to bend the rules to get into that lofty position.  All are guilty, but all are human.

Which is why the show worked.  You might not believe they could all be as imaginatively sweary, but you can believe all these characters are reflections of real, flawed people with real, flawed ideas, all trying to stay on a ride that none of them truly enjoy, but who do it because they don't know anything else.

And I haven't even mentioned Jamie.

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10/30/2012 09:20:00 pm | |

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