In a display of reactionary misogyny as naked and fully exposed as their women, Nuts have responded to Gail Trimble's 15 minutes of fame (she's that Oxford student who gets lots of answers right on university challenge) by asking her to pose naked. It's a mind bogglingly visible attempt to undermine a women who seems superior in her intelligence and competitive in her attitude.
We're lucky in a way - attitudes such as these don't often reveal themselves quite this explicitly and in all of their hideous oozing glory. Continued comments about her attractiveness were nibbles, pawing, a murmur of the need to dominate powerful women from deep within the shadows of the collective unconcious, and so difficult to confront. The Nuts thing is a throat ripping all out attack. There needs to be something urgent and specific to startle these attitudes out the undergrowth, so we can see them, and shoot them down cleanly.
I think in this case it's a lot to do with that weird quiz show/pub quiz mentality. People watch stuff like this to test their own knowledge and make-believe contestanthood. No one watches quiz shows without trying to guess the answers. And obviously some people think of them as a genuine personal measure of themselves. Think of the pub quiz episode of The Office. So, as opposed to a situation where Gail is a famous scientist or businesswoman, both of which also threaten traditionally masculine spheres but would probably elicit a less extreme response from the average university challenge viewer on the street, there's a more direct threat present here - a direct and cutting comparison between Gail and viewer. In response to which, viewer demands to see Gail naked.
So, to formulate a more detailed accusation, she's not being attacked for the fact of her being an intelligent woman in the public eye, so much as the method of attack differs for the fact her being a woman and is more venomous for its ease and its well worn path of use.
And there exists a constant, constant stream of these kinds of attacks on publicly visible, authoritative or successful women - a war of attrition against them. Swiftly following her winning an Oscar, the Metro was chortling away about Hugh Hefner's comments that he'd like Kate Winslet become a playboy bunny. You think you're so big cause you won an Oscar, lets just see how big you are in a bunny outfit, is the sentiment. American feminist campaign site The Women's Media Centre, documents an endless catalogue of sexual put-downs aimed at female journalists and politicians, largely in response to political and ideological differences.
And who could forget the grotesque, heaving and unmissable Akira-monster of phallic rage against Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton during the US elections. Again grown in fertile greenhouse of public visibility and political heat, there was no hiding or suppressing the mindset that women are always at least a little bit instrumentally sexual by their very nature, and must be treated as such. Both women were either sexually worshipped or derided in view of their politics - one right wing commentator said he would vote for Sarah Palin because he could imagine her lying next to him in bed. Hilary Clinton was frequently derided for being 'ugly'. I must hastily disclaim, I realise that women play thier part in producing this kind of commentary as well, though I think that for all the forms this mindless appearance based critique can take, the pure source is a well spring of misogyny.
This is an interesting article, in Esquire no less. It's entitled 'Hilary Clinton has a sexy mouth', and though it begins by dissecting Clinton's physical features in terms of their sexual merits, it promisingly goes on to recognise the bizarre but universal nature of this attitude towards female politicians. He gently analyses his and others strange compulsion to instantly sexualise Clinton, and seems genuinely bemused, and curious.
And that, I think, is the first tentative step. Maybe these remarks are, as the Esquire article would suggest, parasitical upon legitimate opinions about public figures, rising up from the primal unconscious, unbidden but also unquestioned. A man opens his mouth to disagree with a woman's policies, and instead volunteers a remark about her tits. He knows not why. Its the clinging traces of a past system of structured interaction between the sexes which will not go quietly. The only way out is confrontation with this noisy atavism.
Wednesday 25 February 2009
Tuesday 17 February 2009
Animal Rights: Forcing myself to care
Animal rights - the one moral issue to which I've responded to for years with a kind of theraptutic apathy. It's like a soothing balm on my over-used moral indignation.
It's not entirely true, I do care a bit - I wouldn't actively condone the beating of puppies. And I'd say I was against cruel farming methods, don't buy eggs from caged hens etc. etc. But I would say I've never engaged with the issue in the same way that someone who is against the wanton torture of old ladies couldn't be said, on that merit, to be engaged with civil liberties. It's the kind of apathy where you end up holding populist moral views that are absorbed by osmosis in lieu of any active engagement - no caged eggs etc etc. Your basic animal welfare position.
Back to what set me thinking about all of this. Today, I saw an advert for so called Peace Silk- this is Silk that lets the pupae (yes, pupae) live out its natural life, fall in love, witness a sunset, laugh, cry and so on. As opposed to the conventional silk making method in which it is 'boiled to death'. And, lets be honest, that phrase sits comfortably with no one. But - really - should I care? What are the consequences for my moral code if being anti cruelty to pupae becomes integrated within it? I've actively condoned the mass slaughter of an entire community of maggots before now, using a similar death-by-boiling method. Should I now reproach myself? It's a moral maze!
Maybe I'm being facetious. Making these distinctions maybe I risk neutering with technicality an argument that's essentially about respect for life. Though Singers argument hinges on the thing in question having an 'interest' or being capable of suffering, which is questionable I think, when it comes to Pupae. Maybe Peace Silk would gain more truck if it took PETA's fish/sea kittens approach and re-branded them baby butterflies.
I think this confused attitude is largely reflected in the state of left leaning politics - animal rights are an issue which have become dislocated from the main body of lefty activism, despite, or even because of the fact that animal rights have been discussed and worried over since the 1600's. Yes, far left publications like Schnews and Indymedia still give radical animal activism a lot of space. But the New Internationalist has not really mentioned any of God's little creatures since the early nineties. This neglect by the fringe may be because the issue of animal welfare (rather than the more radical and marginalized animal liberation) has plenty of support from the mainstream - Jamie Oliver and his pigs, Hugh Fernly-Wittingstall and his chickens - and so the whole animal thing seems like a non issue in terms of raising awareness.
It's more noteworthy that the radical animal liberation movement, as well it knows, has been abandoned by much of the Guardian-reading left, in a way that conservative speculation has somehow missed, still lumping 'greenies, animal rights nuts and climate change fascists' together in a sentence. Ugly headlines have left their mark, and it seems like a good idea for any one taking direct action to distance their cause from animal activism, lest it be smeared with granny defilement. The most recent edition of Schnews bemoans this fact, accusing the 'moderate' left of taking up the fight for civil liberties only when their own are threatened. They claim that animal rights activists have been single handedly defending themselves against authoritarian measures to suppress them for years. In fact, there's actually an awful lot of bitterness in the far left publication on the alienation of animal rights activists from other forms of left wing activism. Stage an anti war march, and every single person with a complaint against the government turns up. Animal rights rallies tend to be given a wide berth. Schnews also claims that animal libbers receive harsher treatment by the law. It's this sentiment that has lead to mistrust of Guardian Blogger Henry Porters Convention for Modern Liberty Coalition, not least because of the involvement of the hated Countryside Alliance.
Animal libbers' difficult relationship with feminism over the years might also go a small way to explaining their isolation. Women were the primary target of the anti fur campaign, and the phrase 'rich bitch! poor bitch' adorning a poster was a source of contention. Even today, one of the first things you witness on PETA's website is a pro-veggie advert featuring provocatively dressed women caressing themselves with vegetables*. Yes, its clearly meant to be funny, but there's also some Uncle Tom-ing going on in the way of the what-are-we-supposed-to-do-sex-gets-attention attitude, which has long been the excuse of the advertising industry for saturating cultural space with rigid and unhelpful sexual images of women. Veggie feminists may well be frustrated at their being forced to choose between their ethics and their dignity on this one.
So we have ourselves an outpost, whose members grow more and more resentful of the 'moderate left', whilst further becoming demonised by the mainstream. Is there any hope we might all pull together? Is there any reason to?
Having somehow brought up feminism, it seems neatly fitting at this point to come full circle and mention the arguments of feminists such as Josephine Donavan. In her view, 'theorizing animals is inevitable for feminism' because their 'oppression' is symptomatic of the kind of patriarchy that renders other creatures subservient to it. Feminists and defenders of civil liberties campaigners should by this argument promote animal rights in their quest to overthrow the arbitrary dominance over and the instrumental use of other creatures by the status quo.
To bring this entry back to me personally. In explaining my apathy, I believe I've chosen other battles**. And this is a common attitude - where these orphan issues lie so close to the boundaries of your interests that you feel obliged to explain why they've not been taken on board and cared for as one of your own - often its felt that there's no time, there's limited resources and they must ruthlessly be directed where they are needed the most. Also, giving time to animal rights might be seen as avoiding the larger problem, and treating a symptom rather than the illness as a whole.
But I think it merits examining exactly what your political beliefs entail. For instance, a large section of contemporary feminism increasingly disavows the antiporn movement, and the kind of politics that involves itself in condemning the beauty industry. Certain feminist voices will say that this kind of campaigning detracts from the 'real issue' of the glass ceiling and the pay gap. I would argue that you cannot be concerned with one without recognising the other, particularly with the recent study linking the observation of sexfully dressed women with activity in the part of the male brain that deals with 'use of tools'. And possibly it's the same attitude that campaigns for civil liberties but sneers at animal rights activism (or vice versa). Maybe civil rights campaigners should be paying more attention to what they have in common with their shovel-wielding, puppy-humping pals. They could certainly do with the legitimacy.
Oblique, fun-times-with-postmodernism post colonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak coined the term 'strategic essentialism' to try to untangle this very mess. Simplistically it describes a the uniting disparate minority groups against a common enemy. Though she emphasised this must be brief, political and strategic, without buying into the follies of philosophical essentialism. But then, she didn't give a shit about animals either.
So what's the lesson? Maybe I should learn to be more nuanced at recognising who is actually engaged in the same battles as me, who actually shares the same root attitude, despite expressing it in an unfamiliar way. I certainly didn't mean to write about feminism, but up it cropped. I've learned something today.
I still don't know what I think about animal rights though, but maybe gazing at these pictures of a bowl of delicious deep fried silkworm pupae, and collection of equally delicious kittens will help shed some light on the matter.
*the list of reasons it was denied airtime during the Superbowl is actually quite funny - see 'touching her breast with her hand while eating broccoli'
**By 'battles' I obviously mean 'things to sit around and complain about'
It's not entirely true, I do care a bit - I wouldn't actively condone the beating of puppies. And I'd say I was against cruel farming methods, don't buy eggs from caged hens etc. etc. But I would say I've never engaged with the issue in the same way that someone who is against the wanton torture of old ladies couldn't be said, on that merit, to be engaged with civil liberties. It's the kind of apathy where you end up holding populist moral views that are absorbed by osmosis in lieu of any active engagement - no caged eggs etc etc. Your basic animal welfare position.
Back to what set me thinking about all of this. Today, I saw an advert for so called Peace Silk- this is Silk that lets the pupae (yes, pupae) live out its natural life, fall in love, witness a sunset, laugh, cry and so on. As opposed to the conventional silk making method in which it is 'boiled to death'. And, lets be honest, that phrase sits comfortably with no one. But - really - should I care? What are the consequences for my moral code if being anti cruelty to pupae becomes integrated within it? I've actively condoned the mass slaughter of an entire community of maggots before now, using a similar death-by-boiling method. Should I now reproach myself? It's a moral maze!
Maybe I'm being facetious. Making these distinctions maybe I risk neutering with technicality an argument that's essentially about respect for life. Though Singers argument hinges on the thing in question having an 'interest' or being capable of suffering, which is questionable I think, when it comes to Pupae. Maybe Peace Silk would gain more truck if it took PETA's fish/sea kittens approach and re-branded them baby butterflies.
I think this confused attitude is largely reflected in the state of left leaning politics - animal rights are an issue which have become dislocated from the main body of lefty activism, despite, or even because of the fact that animal rights have been discussed and worried over since the 1600's. Yes, far left publications like Schnews and Indymedia still give radical animal activism a lot of space. But the New Internationalist has not really mentioned any of God's little creatures since the early nineties. This neglect by the fringe may be because the issue of animal welfare (rather than the more radical and marginalized animal liberation) has plenty of support from the mainstream - Jamie Oliver and his pigs, Hugh Fernly-Wittingstall and his chickens - and so the whole animal thing seems like a non issue in terms of raising awareness.
It's more noteworthy that the radical animal liberation movement, as well it knows, has been abandoned by much of the Guardian-reading left, in a way that conservative speculation has somehow missed, still lumping 'greenies, animal rights nuts and climate change fascists' together in a sentence. Ugly headlines have left their mark, and it seems like a good idea for any one taking direct action to distance their cause from animal activism, lest it be smeared with granny defilement. The most recent edition of Schnews bemoans this fact, accusing the 'moderate' left of taking up the fight for civil liberties only when their own are threatened. They claim that animal rights activists have been single handedly defending themselves against authoritarian measures to suppress them for years. In fact, there's actually an awful lot of bitterness in the far left publication on the alienation of animal rights activists from other forms of left wing activism. Stage an anti war march, and every single person with a complaint against the government turns up. Animal rights rallies tend to be given a wide berth. Schnews also claims that animal libbers receive harsher treatment by the law. It's this sentiment that has lead to mistrust of Guardian Blogger Henry Porters Convention for Modern Liberty Coalition, not least because of the involvement of the hated Countryside Alliance.
Animal libbers' difficult relationship with feminism over the years might also go a small way to explaining their isolation. Women were the primary target of the anti fur campaign, and the phrase 'rich bitch! poor bitch' adorning a poster was a source of contention. Even today, one of the first things you witness on PETA's website is a pro-veggie advert featuring provocatively dressed women caressing themselves with vegetables*. Yes, its clearly meant to be funny, but there's also some Uncle Tom-ing going on in the way of the what-are-we-supposed-to-do-sex-gets-attention attitude, which has long been the excuse of the advertising industry for saturating cultural space with rigid and unhelpful sexual images of women. Veggie feminists may well be frustrated at their being forced to choose between their ethics and their dignity on this one.
So we have ourselves an outpost, whose members grow more and more resentful of the 'moderate left', whilst further becoming demonised by the mainstream. Is there any hope we might all pull together? Is there any reason to?
Having somehow brought up feminism, it seems neatly fitting at this point to come full circle and mention the arguments of feminists such as Josephine Donavan. In her view, 'theorizing animals is inevitable for feminism' because their 'oppression' is symptomatic of the kind of patriarchy that renders other creatures subservient to it. Feminists and defenders of civil liberties campaigners should by this argument promote animal rights in their quest to overthrow the arbitrary dominance over and the instrumental use of other creatures by the status quo.
To bring this entry back to me personally. In explaining my apathy, I believe I've chosen other battles**. And this is a common attitude - where these orphan issues lie so close to the boundaries of your interests that you feel obliged to explain why they've not been taken on board and cared for as one of your own - often its felt that there's no time, there's limited resources and they must ruthlessly be directed where they are needed the most. Also, giving time to animal rights might be seen as avoiding the larger problem, and treating a symptom rather than the illness as a whole.
But I think it merits examining exactly what your political beliefs entail. For instance, a large section of contemporary feminism increasingly disavows the antiporn movement, and the kind of politics that involves itself in condemning the beauty industry. Certain feminist voices will say that this kind of campaigning detracts from the 'real issue' of the glass ceiling and the pay gap. I would argue that you cannot be concerned with one without recognising the other, particularly with the recent study linking the observation of sexfully dressed women with activity in the part of the male brain that deals with 'use of tools'. And possibly it's the same attitude that campaigns for civil liberties but sneers at animal rights activism (or vice versa). Maybe civil rights campaigners should be paying more attention to what they have in common with their shovel-wielding, puppy-humping pals. They could certainly do with the legitimacy.
Oblique, fun-times-with-postmodernism post colonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak coined the term 'strategic essentialism' to try to untangle this very mess. Simplistically it describes a the uniting disparate minority groups against a common enemy. Though she emphasised this must be brief, political and strategic, without buying into the follies of philosophical essentialism. But then, she didn't give a shit about animals either.
So what's the lesson? Maybe I should learn to be more nuanced at recognising who is actually engaged in the same battles as me, who actually shares the same root attitude, despite expressing it in an unfamiliar way. I certainly didn't mean to write about feminism, but up it cropped. I've learned something today.
I still don't know what I think about animal rights though, but maybe gazing at these pictures of a bowl of delicious deep fried silkworm pupae, and collection of equally delicious kittens will help shed some light on the matter.
*the list of reasons it was denied airtime during the Superbowl is actually quite funny - see 'touching her breast with her hand while eating broccoli'
**By 'battles' I obviously mean 'things to sit around and complain about'
Tuesday 9 December 2008
Broken Britain And Other Stories
Broken Britain - a reality that many Daily Mail Columnists wake up to every day. In the last few weeks, Karen Matthews, no longer a woman but a symbol, has been packaged up and sold back to us by the tabloids as supremely indicative of this dramatic overview of British life.
And not only do we find the story here being ruthlessly exploited to sell sensational headlines, but glance around and it's there being used to promote myths about a particular underclass - single mothers and benefits claimants - in order to soften the reception of certain harsh welfare reforms
In the last fortnight, James Purnell unbelievably held her story aloft in support of his initiative to force single mothers on benefits into work. Simultaneously, we read Cameron using her to vent his black tory heart in the secure, sensationalist conservative womb of the Daily Mail. It's okay now Dave, you're safe here. Say what you like. Here's some choice prose:
'if only this were a one-off story' - translates as 'if this doesn't merit an excuse to make crude generalizations, what does?'
'Children whose toys are dad’s discarded drink bottles; whose role models are criminals, liars and layabouts; whose innocence is lost before their first milk tooth' My god, it's like the beginning of a fairy tale. When will a smug Eaton tory twat arrive on his shining horse to save us all?
The phrase 'broken Britain' (or variant 'broken society') has appeared, at a glance, around 20 times in the mail in the last few months. A good solid handful of those references can be attributed to Cameron, as he busily casts himself as the saviour of this engulfing dystopian fantasy. To quote one columnist in the full heat of moralistic self righteous ecstasy 'if this isn't a broken society, what is?' And what exactly is a broken society? Other than a vague, one size fits all term parodied by Chris Morris in the Brass Eye episode 'moral decline', designed ease confusion by doing away with detail.
It's tempting, only too tempting, whilst skimming through such manipulative gutter journalism to spend a couple of seconds making dismissive noises and have done with. Particularly when the neon-blindingly cynical wooing of a convenient symbol of the popular masses such as the mail by a slimy toff seems too open and shut even to bother with. But the persistent murmur of broken Britain isn't just a top down imposed narrative. It more cloyingly rises up the social ladder like damp in a way that's much harder to pin down or critique, emanating from such a confusing multitude. Certain obscured hand- wringers occasionally crop up and warn liberals that by ignoring the real and valid concerns of the working class, they're forcing them to join the BNP. While this remains a distasteful ploy for the forcing of the anti immigration agenda into the mainstream, and an unrealistic reduction of a vast and nebulous social group (the 'working class') a central point can be extracted. We can't dismiss popular unease - we can reject it's colonisation by the conservatives.
It isn't just the generalization of certain characters that gives rise to murky neurotic worlds of fiction such as the world of 'Broken Britain', it's the construction of the characters themselves. The face of Karen Matthews hasn't just been copied and pasted onto the face of every single mother in the country - it's also been read, distanced and de-humanized. And that's the dark centre of the broken Britain myth - a process of Othering that demonises and divides, and gives people something to struggle and define their morally superior selves against. An alien underclass, among us, but not like us. There's a parallel to be made with the character assassination of women who report being raped, particularly if the claim happens to be made against, plucking a random example from the very air, a footballer. In an analysis of attitudes of authority figures to individuals reporting rape, feminist academic Liz Kelly contends that 'practitioners draw more on the safety of cliches and long held beliefs than on evidence'. The ghost of the lying harpy walks abroad, imposing herself on every single woman who dares to lodge an accusation. She's the Karen Matthews of the rape world. But does she exist? Does it matter? She embodies a certain distancing attitude of people towards people. It's not just that one woman is being generalized onto many - this in itself doesn't lead to unjust policy making. It's that, in terms of understanding, a superficial and un-nuanced portrait of a woman is being generalized onto many.
So how should we refute these crude fictions? As a starting point, we shouldn't confuse, as Polly Toynbee seems to when she contends that majority of single mothers are in employment, fact with ideology. A significant proportion of single mothers are unemployed. Just because this particular fact operates at the heart of an ideology designed to alienate and punish the less fortunate, doesn't mean it should be abandoned to the dark side. We can't ignore this just because it makes it easier for Purnell et al. to cut back on the carrots and get out the big stick. As satisfying as it is to be able to say, actually, most single mothers have one child and are over 35 (true), we risk getting into an endless cycle of trading and manipulating stats. We should not allow ourselves to become distracted from refuting the subtext of this mythological character construction, or its implicit contention that victims of social deprivation are somehow lesser beings.
And not only do we find the story here being ruthlessly exploited to sell sensational headlines, but glance around and it's there being used to promote myths about a particular underclass - single mothers and benefits claimants - in order to soften the reception of certain harsh welfare reforms
In the last fortnight, James Purnell unbelievably held her story aloft in support of his initiative to force single mothers on benefits into work. Simultaneously, we read Cameron using her to vent his black tory heart in the secure, sensationalist conservative womb of the Daily Mail. It's okay now Dave, you're safe here. Say what you like. Here's some choice prose:
'if only this were a one-off story' - translates as 'if this doesn't merit an excuse to make crude generalizations, what does?'
'Children whose toys are dad’s discarded drink bottles; whose role models are criminals, liars and layabouts; whose innocence is lost before their first milk tooth' My god, it's like the beginning of a fairy tale. When will a smug Eaton tory twat arrive on his shining horse to save us all?
The phrase 'broken Britain' (or variant 'broken society') has appeared, at a glance, around 20 times in the mail in the last few months. A good solid handful of those references can be attributed to Cameron, as he busily casts himself as the saviour of this engulfing dystopian fantasy. To quote one columnist in the full heat of moralistic self righteous ecstasy 'if this isn't a broken society, what is?' And what exactly is a broken society? Other than a vague, one size fits all term parodied by Chris Morris in the Brass Eye episode 'moral decline', designed ease confusion by doing away with detail.
It's tempting, only too tempting, whilst skimming through such manipulative gutter journalism to spend a couple of seconds making dismissive noises and have done with. Particularly when the neon-blindingly cynical wooing of a convenient symbol of the popular masses such as the mail by a slimy toff seems too open and shut even to bother with. But the persistent murmur of broken Britain isn't just a top down imposed narrative. It more cloyingly rises up the social ladder like damp in a way that's much harder to pin down or critique, emanating from such a confusing multitude. Certain obscured hand- wringers occasionally crop up and warn liberals that by ignoring the real and valid concerns of the working class, they're forcing them to join the BNP. While this remains a distasteful ploy for the forcing of the anti immigration agenda into the mainstream, and an unrealistic reduction of a vast and nebulous social group (the 'working class') a central point can be extracted. We can't dismiss popular unease - we can reject it's colonisation by the conservatives.
It isn't just the generalization of certain characters that gives rise to murky neurotic worlds of fiction such as the world of 'Broken Britain', it's the construction of the characters themselves. The face of Karen Matthews hasn't just been copied and pasted onto the face of every single mother in the country - it's also been read, distanced and de-humanized. And that's the dark centre of the broken Britain myth - a process of Othering that demonises and divides, and gives people something to struggle and define their morally superior selves against. An alien underclass, among us, but not like us. There's a parallel to be made with the character assassination of women who report being raped, particularly if the claim happens to be made against, plucking a random example from the very air, a footballer. In an analysis of attitudes of authority figures to individuals reporting rape, feminist academic Liz Kelly contends that 'practitioners draw more on the safety of cliches and long held beliefs than on evidence'. The ghost of the lying harpy walks abroad, imposing herself on every single woman who dares to lodge an accusation. She's the Karen Matthews of the rape world. But does she exist? Does it matter? She embodies a certain distancing attitude of people towards people. It's not just that one woman is being generalized onto many - this in itself doesn't lead to unjust policy making. It's that, in terms of understanding, a superficial and un-nuanced portrait of a woman is being generalized onto many.
So how should we refute these crude fictions? As a starting point, we shouldn't confuse, as Polly Toynbee seems to when she contends that majority of single mothers are in employment, fact with ideology. A significant proportion of single mothers are unemployed. Just because this particular fact operates at the heart of an ideology designed to alienate and punish the less fortunate, doesn't mean it should be abandoned to the dark side. We can't ignore this just because it makes it easier for Purnell et al. to cut back on the carrots and get out the big stick. As satisfying as it is to be able to say, actually, most single mothers have one child and are over 35 (true), we risk getting into an endless cycle of trading and manipulating stats. We should not allow ourselves to become distracted from refuting the subtext of this mythological character construction, or its implicit contention that victims of social deprivation are somehow lesser beings.
Thursday 6 November 2008
Prostituting yourself for the Good Life
Watching River Cottage at dinner time. Aw, Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall is making jam. How lovely. Out he goes to collect fruit for it with some middle aged lady in some rich autumnal paradise, outside a picturesquely crumbling manor house. Its a picture of wholesome pantheism. There he is....mixing the jam. And, as if painfully self conscious that he is in fact on television, not casually completing some pleasant Sunday chores before shuffling off to read the paper, and that making jam might not be the most riveting thing to watch, he tries alarmingly to wring some kind of sexual innuendo from the situation! And directs it at the middle aged woman! 'Nothing wrong with a bit of poking and prodding in the kitchen', he mutters, followed by a comment provoked by some so called 'leather fruit' - to do with whips, and bondage. I'm not even making this up. Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall is suggesting to a middle aged woman the joys of whipping, restraining and fucking someone. Over jam. She sort of smiles half heartedly. He looks like he wants to cry. It's so awkwardly constructed, you know there's a twatty young producer somewhere gleefully orchestrating this.
What's going on? The cynicism! The implication that the average viewer cannot sustain themselves on television that's merely about cooking!
Dear Channel Four..........outraged etc, moral rupugnancy etc etc the good old days etc etc etc. Yes I know. But still.
What's going on? The cynicism! The implication that the average viewer cannot sustain themselves on television that's merely about cooking!
Dear Channel Four..........outraged etc, moral rupugnancy etc etc the good old days etc etc etc. Yes I know. But still.
Wednesday 29 October 2008
Darwin fucks Bloggers?
I'm sorry. It's just that I've wanted to use a ridiculously provocative title for ages now. Competing for attention online is notoriously heated. Which just so happens to be my theme.
A few days ago, Wired announced the 'Death of Blogging', and produced a torrent of sniggering anger from the online community. You can't really write a blog and ignore it - it's the shame of being insulted directly and doing nothing about it but blush and look at your shoes. So I'm preparing to join the wave of meta-activity, commenting on commenting, opinioning about opinioning, blogging about blogging.
Wired's piece bases itself on the contention that Blogging is only fun, worthwhile or even meaningful if it produces a lot of interest and is heard. 'It's impossible to get noticed', they sighed resignedly. Basically because garden variety Joe blogger is now competing with paid up so-called 'sweat shops' of blogging journo's working for online magazines like, well, Wired.
The Times Tech Central and its commentors are taking a laissez faire survival of the fittest approach, 'readers are more likely to find what they're looking for', we're told. 'Perhaps the end of rubbish blogs' triumphs a loyalist. What we are seeing now is the Internet following an apparently organic and inevitable pattern which sees those that provide the best quality service rising to the top. It's voting with your credit card all over again, except this time, the consumer votes with their mouse. Have we voted out the solitary hobbyist blogger? And is this desirable in terms of the democratic and representative ideals of Internet communication?
One Twitterer on the subject remembered a relevant article by an essayist and network theorist responding to similar rumours who pointed out that website traffic follows a Power Law Distribution: In a big social network where a lot of people get to choose from a lot of opinions, a large proportion of the traffic, and therefore a large proportion of influence will rest with a small number of the websites/blogs. This is a situation that libertarian political philosopher/tosser (RIP etc) Robert Nozick might also nod approvingly at, fitting as it does with his idea of Justice springing naturally from whatever occurs in the course of everyone making the best of whatever resources they happen to end up with. The Blogs with the most time and money deserve to hold the most sway over the online world. It looks as though the internet, the very embodiment of freedom of expression has spoken, and not with the plurality of voice that we might expect.
Not only does the worry exist that multiplicity is drowned out by the loud voice of the few, but in the scrabble to compete, pieces are getting shorter, sharper and therefore somewhat dilute of message. Books and Culture blogger Alan Jacobs finished his Blog back in 2007 on the worrying note "Right now, and for the foreseeable future, the Blogosphere is the friend of information but the enemy of thought". Wired claimed that Bloggers were moving to places such as Twitter to take advantage of its brevity. Writing complex and attention grabbing Blog articles at the volume required to compete was too exhausting, last year even seeing the deaths three prolific Bloggers, all of heart attacks.
Now, the irony of writing about the fast paced precarious burn out world of blogging on a blog that contains seven whole entries and has to my knowledge no traffic at all isn't lost on me. but then I don't want to die or anything. I never thought I might be able to politicize the personal as it were and hold myself up as on-trend. Though, while I doubt I could find anything with so much tree falling in the forest silence going for it, I have managed to find a couple of illustrative elements. The first is that I probably see this Blog as an accessible portfolio, that I can reference when I need to show anyone what my style of writing is like. It's basically something I think I might be able use when I'm fighting for writing jobs, which is typical I guess of the vicious utilitarianism apparently involved. No one writes Blogs for the joy of writing, we're told, but to be heard - communication first, joy of expression second. Secondly, and more encouragingly, I have read one Blogger sum up what I think is a fairly representative motivation, that is that his blog was for high quality communication between a small but dedicated crowd of friends and like minders. Now, my Blog currently is for nobody, but I am screwing up the courage to actually encourage people I know to visit. I think I'm happy enough for my scope to be limited to real world social microcosm, particularly as certain entries may be the end result of ongoing and co-operative discussion and debate.
Blogging, the Internet community has retaliated, is not as dead as all that. A glance at Twitter tells me not only that this is a contentious and little agreed with notion, but as if to prove it, everybody's little 140 word 'Tweet' seems to link to their Blog, where their initial aphorism goes into more detail. And this very act of information gleening (in fact most of this Twitter-researched entry) tells me that whilst Twitter is useful for the rapidity and quantity that Blogs are unable to sustain, Blogging still serves a purpose. And while it may no longer serve as a net of opinion which you can cast over the entire Internet community, your communication will always be valuable as long as it reaches somebody. Meanwhile, there are still many many ways to be heard on a large scale.
And, on an interesting side note, it's worth looking at the consequences for the Social Darwinism that seems to have seeped into the debate. Ex-banker Bernard Lietaer mentioned in his book 'The future of money' a theory of evolution which placed emphasis on cooperation between organisms and the environment rather than competition between individuals. He said this in a bid to strengthen his argument that the monetary system should be organised around principles of co-operation rather than competition. Interesting then that it is the blogs which have large numbers of people working on them, together, operating as a unit that thrive whilst the individual blogger is lost. Under a certain set of circumstances this surely is a good thing for online democracy. You will only be heard through compromise and co-operation, and it is not one voice which rises to the top, but many.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/technology/2008/10/is-blogging-dea.html
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/16-11/st_essay
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/technology/06sweat.html?pagewanted=print
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/october/13.22.html
http://ash10.com/2008/10/two-points-about-the-alleged-death-of-blogging/
http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html
http://www.timelineindex.com/content/view/1038
A few days ago, Wired announced the 'Death of Blogging', and produced a torrent of sniggering anger from the online community. You can't really write a blog and ignore it - it's the shame of being insulted directly and doing nothing about it but blush and look at your shoes. So I'm preparing to join the wave of meta-activity, commenting on commenting, opinioning about opinioning, blogging about blogging.
Wired's piece bases itself on the contention that Blogging is only fun, worthwhile or even meaningful if it produces a lot of interest and is heard. 'It's impossible to get noticed', they sighed resignedly. Basically because garden variety Joe blogger is now competing with paid up so-called 'sweat shops' of blogging journo's working for online magazines like, well, Wired.
The Times Tech Central and its commentors are taking a laissez faire survival of the fittest approach, 'readers are more likely to find what they're looking for', we're told. 'Perhaps the end of rubbish blogs' triumphs a loyalist. What we are seeing now is the Internet following an apparently organic and inevitable pattern which sees those that provide the best quality service rising to the top. It's voting with your credit card all over again, except this time, the consumer votes with their mouse. Have we voted out the solitary hobbyist blogger? And is this desirable in terms of the democratic and representative ideals of Internet communication?
One Twitterer on the subject remembered a relevant article by an essayist and network theorist responding to similar rumours who pointed out that website traffic follows a Power Law Distribution: In a big social network where a lot of people get to choose from a lot of opinions, a large proportion of the traffic, and therefore a large proportion of influence will rest with a small number of the websites/blogs. This is a situation that libertarian political philosopher/tosser (RIP etc) Robert Nozick might also nod approvingly at, fitting as it does with his idea of Justice springing naturally from whatever occurs in the course of everyone making the best of whatever resources they happen to end up with. The Blogs with the most time and money deserve to hold the most sway over the online world. It looks as though the internet, the very embodiment of freedom of expression has spoken, and not with the plurality of voice that we might expect.
Not only does the worry exist that multiplicity is drowned out by the loud voice of the few, but in the scrabble to compete, pieces are getting shorter, sharper and therefore somewhat dilute of message. Books and Culture blogger Alan Jacobs finished his Blog back in 2007 on the worrying note "Right now, and for the foreseeable future, the Blogosphere is the friend of information but the enemy of thought". Wired claimed that Bloggers were moving to places such as Twitter to take advantage of its brevity. Writing complex and attention grabbing Blog articles at the volume required to compete was too exhausting, last year even seeing the deaths three prolific Bloggers, all of heart attacks.
Now, the irony of writing about the fast paced precarious burn out world of blogging on a blog that contains seven whole entries and has to my knowledge no traffic at all isn't lost on me. but then I don't want to die or anything. I never thought I might be able to politicize the personal as it were and hold myself up as on-trend. Though, while I doubt I could find anything with so much tree falling in the forest silence going for it, I have managed to find a couple of illustrative elements. The first is that I probably see this Blog as an accessible portfolio, that I can reference when I need to show anyone what my style of writing is like. It's basically something I think I might be able use when I'm fighting for writing jobs, which is typical I guess of the vicious utilitarianism apparently involved. No one writes Blogs for the joy of writing, we're told, but to be heard - communication first, joy of expression second. Secondly, and more encouragingly, I have read one Blogger sum up what I think is a fairly representative motivation, that is that his blog was for high quality communication between a small but dedicated crowd of friends and like minders. Now, my Blog currently is for nobody, but I am screwing up the courage to actually encourage people I know to visit. I think I'm happy enough for my scope to be limited to real world social microcosm, particularly as certain entries may be the end result of ongoing and co-operative discussion and debate.
Blogging, the Internet community has retaliated, is not as dead as all that. A glance at Twitter tells me not only that this is a contentious and little agreed with notion, but as if to prove it, everybody's little 140 word 'Tweet' seems to link to their Blog, where their initial aphorism goes into more detail. And this very act of information gleening (in fact most of this Twitter-researched entry) tells me that whilst Twitter is useful for the rapidity and quantity that Blogs are unable to sustain, Blogging still serves a purpose. And while it may no longer serve as a net of opinion which you can cast over the entire Internet community, your communication will always be valuable as long as it reaches somebody. Meanwhile, there are still many many ways to be heard on a large scale.
And, on an interesting side note, it's worth looking at the consequences for the Social Darwinism that seems to have seeped into the debate. Ex-banker Bernard Lietaer mentioned in his book 'The future of money' a theory of evolution which placed emphasis on cooperation between organisms and the environment rather than competition between individuals. He said this in a bid to strengthen his argument that the monetary system should be organised around principles of co-operation rather than competition. Interesting then that it is the blogs which have large numbers of people working on them, together, operating as a unit that thrive whilst the individual blogger is lost. Under a certain set of circumstances this surely is a good thing for online democracy. You will only be heard through compromise and co-operation, and it is not one voice which rises to the top, but many.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/technology/2008/10/is-blogging-dea.html
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/16-11/st_essay
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/technology/06sweat.html?pagewanted=print
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/october/13.22.html
http://ash10.com/2008/10/two-points-about-the-alleged-death-of-blogging/
http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html
http://www.timelineindex.com/content/view/1038
Monday 13 October 2008
Watching the 42-day-dentention-bill live: an overview
Apparently, you can watch these things live, but only if you're severely unemployed. So I sat down with pen, paper and popcorn...
3 minutes to go. Lord Laird has said that he would be 'staggered' if the bill goes through. 42 writers have poured their outrage into a series of angry poems and stories about the bill (why do I find that funny? Maybe I'm a Bad Person) Amnesty and a host of other NGO's have condemned it, as has Andy Hayman, former Assistant Commissioner for Special Operations at Scotland Yard.
And so begins nearly 4 hours of earnest, if repetitive debate in those sonorous, cut-glass accents. And there's some great phrases ('shabby charade' is one of the good ones). Six clear cut reasons are presented against the governments case, which re-occur frequently throughout the proceedings.
Firstly, the point is made that there has not as yet been any evidence to indicate that the police have ever run out of time whilst detaining a terrorist suspect without charge. The longest time that a suspect has so far been held is 14 days, well within the current 28 day limit.
The second point is that no other western or comparable country has extended detention beyond 12 days (Australia), the US and Canada only detaining for 1 and 2 days respectively. Later in the debate, as this point is raised time and time again, opponents dismiss the comparative argument as irrelevant, stating that it need only be argued that the bill is by its own merit humane.
The aforementioned NGO's, the DPP, and particularly Andy Hayman are gleefully paraded as examples of qualified objectors. A host of phrases accorded to Hayman are quoted directly from The Times - damning quotes such as 'bureaucratic and unworkable', and 'cumbersome'. Later a sneaky remark, delivered as a side-point is made about 'being out of the job for a while'.
It is asserted that the existing law can be made to serve the new purpose of matching what have already been acknowledged by all to be more difficult and complex times for police investigating terrorist cases. The proposal is made that more serious charges should be brought forth only when they come to light, and not on the basis of a series of maverick hunches.
Finally, the broader points are made that the bill would justify terrorist propaganda concerning the persecution of certain communities, would alienate and villify innocent sections of society and erode hard won civil liberties. The speaker finishes, with a classical and therefore weighty (if somewhat misguided) flourish by quoting from the magna carta: 'we will not delay right or justice'.
(later this leads the debate off into a brief but definately rather bizarre tangent about the sexism/racism of the magna carta)
The bumbling ex commissioner, Sir Ian Blair is quoted as asserting that (the police) have never put forward a case which demonstrates the need for detention. Another quotable classic is produced as debaters grapple with the difficulties of prediction - 'anything is possible, but is it remotely likely?'
A fairly powerful (if true) pincer-style point emerges that even if the bill were desirable, it is flawed on numerous practical levels, and therefore 'unworkable'.
Police reliability and the possible abuse of power is discussed hotly throughout the debate, supporters in the later stages take the opportunity to accuse opponents of the bill of mistrusting the police. 'why would anyone put a suspect through that, for a laugh?' one speaker muses. No one dares mention recent expositions of institutionalized police racism that have been freshly re-visited after years and years of festering.
A breathless gentleman uses the phrase 'death in computers', as if the fear of lurking zealots has driven him to a state of incoherency.
There's some similarly pointless and emotive ranting about our poor possibly blown-up children (won't somebody please think of the children?). Also, young people in 'dance halls'.
The Joint Select Committee for Human Rights delivers its unanimous and unwavering support for the contention that the bill is unnecessary, I stretch my cramping limbs, and the outcome is just as predictable as everybody thought.
The end.
3 minutes to go. Lord Laird has said that he would be 'staggered' if the bill goes through. 42 writers have poured their outrage into a series of angry poems and stories about the bill (why do I find that funny? Maybe I'm a Bad Person) Amnesty and a host of other NGO's have condemned it, as has Andy Hayman, former Assistant Commissioner for Special Operations at Scotland Yard.
And so begins nearly 4 hours of earnest, if repetitive debate in those sonorous, cut-glass accents. And there's some great phrases ('shabby charade' is one of the good ones). Six clear cut reasons are presented against the governments case, which re-occur frequently throughout the proceedings.
Firstly, the point is made that there has not as yet been any evidence to indicate that the police have ever run out of time whilst detaining a terrorist suspect without charge. The longest time that a suspect has so far been held is 14 days, well within the current 28 day limit.
The second point is that no other western or comparable country has extended detention beyond 12 days (Australia), the US and Canada only detaining for 1 and 2 days respectively. Later in the debate, as this point is raised time and time again, opponents dismiss the comparative argument as irrelevant, stating that it need only be argued that the bill is by its own merit humane.
The aforementioned NGO's, the DPP, and particularly Andy Hayman are gleefully paraded as examples of qualified objectors. A host of phrases accorded to Hayman are quoted directly from The Times - damning quotes such as 'bureaucratic and unworkable', and 'cumbersome'. Later a sneaky remark, delivered as a side-point is made about 'being out of the job for a while'.
It is asserted that the existing law can be made to serve the new purpose of matching what have already been acknowledged by all to be more difficult and complex times for police investigating terrorist cases. The proposal is made that more serious charges should be brought forth only when they come to light, and not on the basis of a series of maverick hunches.
Finally, the broader points are made that the bill would justify terrorist propaganda concerning the persecution of certain communities, would alienate and villify innocent sections of society and erode hard won civil liberties. The speaker finishes, with a classical and therefore weighty (if somewhat misguided) flourish by quoting from the magna carta: 'we will not delay right or justice'.
(later this leads the debate off into a brief but definately rather bizarre tangent about the sexism/racism of the magna carta)
The bumbling ex commissioner, Sir Ian Blair is quoted as asserting that (the police) have never put forward a case which demonstrates the need for detention. Another quotable classic is produced as debaters grapple with the difficulties of prediction - 'anything is possible, but is it remotely likely?'
A fairly powerful (if true) pincer-style point emerges that even if the bill were desirable, it is flawed on numerous practical levels, and therefore 'unworkable'.
Police reliability and the possible abuse of power is discussed hotly throughout the debate, supporters in the later stages take the opportunity to accuse opponents of the bill of mistrusting the police. 'why would anyone put a suspect through that, for a laugh?' one speaker muses. No one dares mention recent expositions of institutionalized police racism that have been freshly re-visited after years and years of festering.
A breathless gentleman uses the phrase 'death in computers', as if the fear of lurking zealots has driven him to a state of incoherency.
There's some similarly pointless and emotive ranting about our poor possibly blown-up children (won't somebody please think of the children?). Also, young people in 'dance halls'.
The Joint Select Committee for Human Rights delivers its unanimous and unwavering support for the contention that the bill is unnecessary, I stretch my cramping limbs, and the outcome is just as predictable as everybody thought.
The end.
Saturday 11 October 2008
I fought the law
The last cover of the Sonny Curtis 50's classic by the Dead Kennedys saw the lyrics changed to 'I fought the law and I won', in recognition of 70's San Francisco Mayor-Murderer Dan White's successfully altering his charge from murder to man-slaughter. In view of the recent Kingsnorth victory, which saw protestors cleared of criminal damage after painting Gordon Brown's name on a chimney and costing the plant £35000, perhaps someone should do another re-hash in honor of the 6 lucky Greenpeace activists. (A good car game by the way is to actually try to sing the song replacing 'I' with 'Greenpeace'. The excessive emphasis on 'peace' makes it sound like piss)
I thought of Kingsnorth whilst reading through the governments 'Learning together to be safe' initiative - in its own words 'a toolkit to help schools contribute to the prevention of violent extremism'. Now, I'm sure the reasons that young people turn to violent political solutions are complex and varied, but I'm fairly sure it's not for lack of government sanctioned, bloodless and potentially bitterly ironic 'happy lessons'. Another aspect that may rile the casual reader is the mindless and repetitive use of words like 'democracy', 'freedom' and 'community' without any attempt to engage with what they actually mean, thus rending them totally impotent.
The phrase that particularly caught my eye though asserted that one of the aims of the teaching guidelines was to ensure that children were taught that 'violent solutions were criminal'. Not immoral, not emotionally backward, not simply 'bad' but 'criminal'. The implication being that criminal actions can be equated with actions being wrong in themselves. Fair enough coming from a government document you might think - a governments purpose must surely be to convince the young populace that its laws are the embodiment of right.
Except the Kingsnorth case has surely proven that this is not true.
Obviously the jury did not acquit the activists on the basis that they were right to break the law - it was found that technically they were acting within the law, that they had a 'lawful excuse' on the basis that they were attempting to prevent the greater criminal damage that a coal-fired power station would eventually cause to property, vicariously through global warming.
So why has no court case been launched against Kingsnorth? Because they, rightly or wrongly, have the law on their side. The jury in this instance asserted that, while the activists were breaking the law - and they were - they were acting morally and therefore did not deserve to be punished. The Jury stood up and questioned the morally impervious nature of the law, or rather the morally impervious nature of our duty to obey the law.
In terms of education, these progressive decisions should surely should be taken into account. Teachers should be issuing children with reasons rather than directives (the same goes for governments and citizens, respectively). And maybe a broad moral education and an amount of trust is preferable to hurling massive words such as 'criminal' and 'freedom' at small children and their educators with an an abandon that undermines the multi-faceted and changing nature of these concepts.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cleared-jury-decides-that-threat-of-global-warming-justifies-breaking-the-law-925561.html.
I thought of Kingsnorth whilst reading through the governments 'Learning together to be safe' initiative - in its own words 'a toolkit to help schools contribute to the prevention of violent extremism'. Now, I'm sure the reasons that young people turn to violent political solutions are complex and varied, but I'm fairly sure it's not for lack of government sanctioned, bloodless and potentially bitterly ironic 'happy lessons'. Another aspect that may rile the casual reader is the mindless and repetitive use of words like 'democracy', 'freedom' and 'community' without any attempt to engage with what they actually mean, thus rending them totally impotent.
The phrase that particularly caught my eye though asserted that one of the aims of the teaching guidelines was to ensure that children were taught that 'violent solutions were criminal'. Not immoral, not emotionally backward, not simply 'bad' but 'criminal'. The implication being that criminal actions can be equated with actions being wrong in themselves. Fair enough coming from a government document you might think - a governments purpose must surely be to convince the young populace that its laws are the embodiment of right.
Except the Kingsnorth case has surely proven that this is not true.
Obviously the jury did not acquit the activists on the basis that they were right to break the law - it was found that technically they were acting within the law, that they had a 'lawful excuse' on the basis that they were attempting to prevent the greater criminal damage that a coal-fired power station would eventually cause to property, vicariously through global warming.
So why has no court case been launched against Kingsnorth? Because they, rightly or wrongly, have the law on their side. The jury in this instance asserted that, while the activists were breaking the law - and they were - they were acting morally and therefore did not deserve to be punished. The Jury stood up and questioned the morally impervious nature of the law, or rather the morally impervious nature of our duty to obey the law.
In terms of education, these progressive decisions should surely should be taken into account. Teachers should be issuing children with reasons rather than directives (the same goes for governments and citizens, respectively). And maybe a broad moral education and an amount of trust is preferable to hurling massive words such as 'criminal' and 'freedom' at small children and their educators with an an abandon that undermines the multi-faceted and changing nature of these concepts.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cleared-jury-decides-that-threat-of-global-warming-justifies-breaking-the-law-925561.html.
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