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NinjaMarmoset

~ rants & reflections of Martin Jameson, writer, director & grizzled media gunslinger.

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Category Archives: Free Speech

Adult Human Female (or Please Can We Have a Non Binary Debate About Trans)

16 Friday Dec 2022

Posted by Martin Jameson in Film Criticism, Free Speech, Sexual Politics, Trans

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Adult Human Female, Edinburgh University

A couple of days ago, a screening at Edinburgh University of Adult Human Female, a documentary which poses the feminist argument against aspects of radical trans activism had to be abandoned – for reasons of public safety – after protestors blocked people from entering the screening rooms on the basis (as I understand it) that the protestors believed the premise of the film to be transphobic.

I looked for a picture of the protest to balance this image but that would have meant identifying individuals which I think would be inappropriate for a variety of reasons.

There was a good deal of angry traffic about it on Twitter of course, but I sought out a variety of sources to try to get a handle on what had actually happened. Here’s the take from the BBC. For another angle check out The National (a pro Scottish Independence daily). Here’s what The Times said if you can get past the paywall. I’m offering these links because, significantly, The Guardian, at the time of writing, doesn’t appear to have covered it at all, and more worryingly Edinburgh University’s own student paper (helpfully called The Student Paper) made an editorial decision not to cover the story for the bewildering reason that to do so would be to platform hate. To which I did find myself thinking, regardless of the rights and wrongs of the film itself, ‘good luck with your journalistic careers’.

Whether Adult Human Female is or it isn’t transphobic, a University – supposedly a place of learning and a place for the exploration of ideas – is absolutely the last place where a screening of pretty much anything should be banned, as long as the content in question isn’t a direct incitement to violence. The idea of whether something is an incitement to hatred is harder to define. I know this because my cousin, a highly respected QC, had the job of trying to prove in court that Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party, was guilty of incitement to racial hatred. I mean, how hard can that be? Well my cousin (of whom I’m very proud) knows his legal onions and there were two attempts to get a conviction, both of which failed. So even if a group of students feel a film, presenting a set of ideas, could be seen as an incitement to hatred, that doesn’t mean it is – there is a good deal of subjectivity involved, not to mention the matter of the free will of the audience – and again, a university should be somewhere where all sorts of ideas that people find challenging can be explored, free from intimidation by those who disagree. As Mrs Merton used to say, always with a mischievous smile, ‘Let’s have a heated debate!’.

The late, great Caroline Aherne as chat show host Mrs Merton who always encouraged her audience to have a ‘heated debate’.

But, hey, I’m a writer, and addicted to ideas so I sat down to watch Adult Human Female for myself to see whether censoring others from seeing it was in any way valid.

Well… there are some issues with it. The most immediate one is that there is some lazy visual editorialising which is completely unnecessary and which undermines the thoughtfulness of the speakers’ contributions. 

There is also a tendency throughout to generalise about ‘The Trans Community’ as if it were a single homogeneous thing – an overuse of the word ‘they’ without the viewer being clear who ‘they’ refers to. I’ve known and worked with at least five people who openly identify as Trans in one form or other, and they’re all different, all individuals, just as the members of any community are. I balk at anyone lumping the Jewish community into one, and we all know the dangers of judging Muslim communities by the behaviour and beliefs of radical, fundamentalist Islamists.

I imagine that many of the speakers in the documentary would have prefaced their comments by clarifying that they are talking specifically about the more extreme end of radical trans activism – with whom there is the noisiest conflict – and indeed there are moments when this is stated explicitly, but it needs more of that. I suspect that some of that defining of terms was simply edited out, but of course I can’t be sure.

On this theme, there is a tendency to turn anecdote, or the account of something specific, into a generality. Of course there are always extreme examples of behaviour in any demographic, but one needs to be careful about citing a specific event – which may well be absolutely true – but then extrapolating that outwards, suggesting that it necessarily represents a generalised truth. There are also a few generalised statements and assumptions which desperately need a bit of statistical backup, and may have even the staunchest gender critic saying ‘hang on a minute!’ 

I’m not itemising examples here, as I think it’s best if people who are interested enough come to their own conclusions.

But having said all of that, on the fundamentals of the politics; of why self ID is problematic; the confusion between sex and gender; why the term ‘cis’ is problematic; why the mantra ‘trans women are women’ is problematic; the issues around gender therapy/medical interventions and young people; why the progressive left is in such a tangle over gender politics; the role of lobby groups; and a few other issues besides, I’m on board with 85% of what the speakers (predominantly from the feminist left) have to say.

So… it’s a flawed piece which suffers from a lack of editorial/journalistic rigour but there’s much in it of value, and much there which could and should be shared, communally, as a prompt for fair and open discussion – and while it’s over 90 minutes long I found it engrossing and, despite moments of superimposed editorial pettiness, the speakers are intelligent and thoughtful.

Is it an incitement to hatred? Well, there’s a good deal of annoyance, frustration and arguably a bit of anger, but that’s not the same as hate – unless you’re the sort of person who has never encountered actual hate nor looked it up in a dictionary, and you’re confusing it with disagreement. And it’s not in any way an incitement to anyone to do anything, aside from being an appeal to those holding one set of views to listen to some counter arguments.

It’s terrifically depressing that proponents of a cause that is supposed to be about breaking down binary preconceptions, by attempting to stifle the debate, create the ultimate binary dynamic.

Of course you can only have the non-binary, nuanced view of this film if you actually watch it.

So here’s the link.

(If you’re new to the Marmoset and interested in anything you read on the blog page please find out more by clicking here and having a little explore)

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Yes, Jeremy IS the problem

27 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by Martin Jameson in Anti-semitism, Free Speech, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Leadership, Labour Party, Main Stream Media, Racism

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Anti-semitism, Islamism, Middle East, Politics, Racism

For anyone who, perhaps, still doesn’t get quite why there is a specific problem with Jeremy Corbyn’s relationship to anti-semitism and quite why it’s problematic, I think this video clip – which I chanced upon in my researches – illuminates the nuances and consequences of his behaviour very well.

Click here to watch a clip of Jeremy Corbyn presenting the Comment section on PressTV in March 2010

Jeremy Corbyn on PressTV 6.3.2010

Jeremy Corbyn on Press TV in March 2010 – you can view the video at https://vimeo.com/262008952

Press TV is an Iranian backed news network affiliated to IRIB, The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. There’s no reason why Jezzer shouldn’t have appeared on that network if he wanted to and he doesn’t say anything anti semitic whatsoever.

BUT.

The caller’s complaint is that the BBC is supposed to be objective, but continually invites ‘Zionist liars’ onto its news programmes and ‘never corrects them, never ever’.

Again this is an opinion from a caller to an Iranian TV station – albeit factually incorrect – and on its own, weeeeell it’s on the borders of antisemitism… Is it okay to talk about Zionists critically? Sure. But when you mix that with the implication that the BBC is colluding with ‘Zionist liars’… well suddenly we’re into Zionist media conspiracy territory, which is often code for notions of Jewish conspiracy. It certainly trades on that well worn trope.

So what does Jeremy do? He nods and says ‘good point’ and advises the caller to complain to the BBC. Well, the advice to complain to the BBC is fine. But is it a ‘good point’?

No, it isn’t. It’s factually incorrect.

Unless Jeremy has a mind set that thinks: ‘Hmmm… yes, actually the BBC does have a pro Zionist agenda…’ which then puts him into playing along with those tired old tropes of Jewish conspiracy.

Jezzer and his apologists might say: ‘Be fair… he’s presenting on Iranian backed TV. He’s hardly going to tell a caller that they might be wrong about the BBC colluding with Zionist liars. So, basically he’s just being polite, like not trying to start a family row when racist granddad starts up during Christmas dinner.’ On its own, maybe that’s a fair excuse.

But then he ‘didn’t look at the Mear One mural properly… and was just making a general point about freedom of expression’ (which is odd because a couple of years earlier he spoke out publicly against the Danish cartoons. Apparently freedom of expression didn’t apply in that context.). And then there are all the dodgy FB groups he’s signed up to. ‘Well you know how it is, you just get signed up to these things and you don’t really pay full attention…’ Oh yes, then there are his ‘friends’ in Hamas. He’s just being polite again in the name of dialogue.

Sorry peeps – but it won’t fly.

This is a pattern. At best – being as generous as I can muster – it’s about having a tin ear to anti-semitism and the subtle ways it can manifest, which works differently from actually saying explicitly Jew hating, racist things.

However, I do think it’s worse than that. On a conscious level I’m prepared to believe he is utterly genuine when he talks about opposing anti semitism and being militant against racism. The trouble is, he doesn’t appear to understand what anti-semitism is, or how it works. He doesn’t apply the same standards to his own behaviour that he would, say, with regard to skin colour racism, sexism, homophobia or disability prejudice. Most of us in this modern liberal world of ours, accept that we can all manifest traits and tropes from ingrained or institutionalised prejudice. I know I still question my own attitudes in all sorts of situations, which is tough for me (!) because I love a bit of political incorrectness!

The one person you can’t trust is the person who declares that they are somehow immune of these very human foibles concerning difference.

Screen Shot 2018-03-27 at 13.19.31

When Chris Mullin spends the day  on Twitter saying ‘Jeremy doesn’t have a racist bone in his body’ my immediate reaction is – yes he does – even if it’s one of those tiny tiny tiny bones in the inner ear… especially if it’s one of the tiny ones in his ear! Small though they are, they are somewhat crucial in how we perceive the world.

Screen Shot 2018-03-27 at 13.24.48

The precise location of Jeremy Corbyn’s racist bone…?

Everyone clunks from time to time…  oooh whoops, here’s Chris Mullin again:

Screen Shot 2018-03-27 at 13.20.07

Mullin in full paranoid ‘goysplaining’ mode here as he causally negates any claims of anti-semitism dismissing them as Jewish Leaders ‘ganging up’ … Ganging up..? Oh that’ll be those bloody conspiring Jews again, will it Chris?

As for clunking, sadly Jeremy does it more than most as this pattern demonstrates.

So, yes, this is about Jeremy, and it is about his leadership. I’ve seen more anti semitism on FB and Twitter in the last couple of years than I’ve encountered in my lifetime. And pretty much all of it from the left. Well obviously my social media feed is self selecting – because I am of the left. So I’m aware that it has become amplified, and right wing anti-semitism has become less visible to me – but that doesn’t make left wing anti semitism ok. It’s not a competition.

It’s clear to me that Corbyn’s tenure has made these views – sometimes expressed very subtly – far more acceptable for those who want to find a home for them in the left.

Here are some tips for Jeremy and his team: If you don’t want to be considered anti-semitic don’t endorse the viewpoints of people who imagine a Zionist conspiracy at the BBC; don’t call Hamas your friends; don’t casually ‘fail to see’ eye poppingly anti semitic murals; don’t sign up to anti semitic FB groups; and take a long look at your public profile.

You can SAY you’re opposed to anti semitism all you like, but it’s hard to find the public appearances and actions and engagement with the Jewish community that actually prove that to be the case. It’s rather easy to find actions that suggest the opposite.
Jeremy Corbyn is the leader. He can blame ‘pockets’ all he likes… but I would argue they take their cue from him. He gives them permission.

He nods and says: ‘Good point’.

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What Just Happened (Or Didn’t) OR The Irresistible Rise of Jeremy Corbyn Mark II

13 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by Martin Jameson in Free Speech, General Election 2017, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Leadership, Labour Party, Political Satire, Politics, Satire, Social Media, Theresa May

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Irony, Realpolitik

On the figurative morning after the figurative night before, heads spinning from too much late night Wine and Dimbleby – phrases like ‘political earthquake’ spewing from the commentariat cliché machine like little sausages filled with pungently seasoned paté de cliché – with the heady whiff of a seemingly inevitable Tory defeat in our nostrils, wafting tantalisingly from the horizon ahead of us and the absolutely understandable desire for the many not the few to whoop with joy…

….and despite an opening sentence far too long for its own good…

…it’s easy to be simplistic, it’s easy to generalise, it’s easy to be binary, it’s easy to be revisionist. So let’s try not to do any of that.

daviddimbleby

(sings in the style of Cliff Richard) ‘Election time, Dimbleby and wine….’

Someone asked me recently: ‘Why NinjaMarmoset?’ Well aside from it being an anagram of my name, once my old university mucker George Dillon suggested it, I knew that the implicit cocktail of tufted monkey cuddliness and Japanese ninjutsu stealth, espionage and assassination was the dialectical blog moniker for me. In light of that, I was quite amused when three different people suggested – or demanded – on Friday June 9th, the day after the general election – that I might like to ‘apologise’ for having been so vocal in my criticism of one J Corbyn esquire over the last two years. Aside from the somewhat creepy and controlling tenor of this suggestion – ‘May the apostates be lined up and made to recant!‘ – I think the time would be better spent having an analytical and ambivalent simian nibble at five things that actually did or didn’t happen on June 8th 2017. It’s taken me a few days, but that’s because I was running low on goat vellum.

Marmoset_copy

The Marmoset takes a sideways look

1) It was a stunning victory for Jeremy Corbyn / Labour Lost

The stats have been much ruminated upon in more authoritative organs than this, but whilst it was undoubtedly an extraordinary and surprising poll turnaround, the Labour Party – plus all the oppositional left of centre parties combined – lost the election. That’s in terms of parliamentary seats, of course, but even if you dig into vote share – and the popular vote itself – Theresa May still pulled in over 13.5 million votes, increased the Tory vote share by five and a half per cent, and at 42.4% is up there with Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and John Major, all of whom enjoyed huge popular mandates with similar or lesser percentages.

So when Shami Chakrabarti went onto the BBC the night after the election and claimed that ‘[Jeremy Corbyn] effectively won’, in reality that was the one thing that hadn’t happened. Achievement or no achievement, ‘effectively’ Labour lost.

This isn’t about pouring cold water on the phenomenon of a Conservative poll lead of twenty points on 18th April falling to just three per cent on June 8th, it’s about looking the numbers in the eye and asking what they mean. US President Lyndon B Johnson famously said that the first rule of politics is that ‘its practitioners need to be able to count’. No matter how you spin this, a minority isn’t a majority, so Labour and its supporters mustn’t fall into the trap of believing that it is, and now, more than ever, must ask serious questions as to why it isn’t, and how the next hurdle can be o’erleapt.

Theresa May ran the worst Conservative election campaign in living memory (certainly in my adult life and that’s going back a fair way!) – was the least inspiring and most robotic candidate – launched a disastrous manifesto, which she promptly dumped etc etc etc and yet she still had those extremely impressive voting stats. Yes! Impressive! You think Jeremy Corbyn wouldn’t hail numbers like that as a mandate?

And yet many in print and online media have hailed Labour’s result as a nation waking up to Jeremy Corbyn’s message of hope. It isn’t. It’s less than half of a nation, and one that remains more emphatically divided than ever. Whilst it’s understandable that most of the commentary since last Thursday has been about Jeremy Corbyn’s success, by far the more important question is why Labour still lost.

Of course, if there were an election tomorrow – with May still in charge (once the screams of horror at the very thought had died down) – Labour would romp home without a doubt. Right now – in the cold light of morning – it feels very much as if the period of Tory hegemony that began in 2010 is well and truly over (apart from the next five years of course…). But the election won’t be happening tomorrow. And it won’t be happening with Theresa May as Tory leader either.

Several commentators – including Owen Jones – have made comparison to the poll turnaround of 1945 which saw a 12% swing to Labour bring in Attlee’s epoch defining government. Hmm. As returnees to this page will know, comparisons to Attlee turn me into a werewolf (scroll down to the final section of this blog from last year…). Yes it was a 12% swing from the election result at the previous election, ten years and a world war away in 1935, but opinion polling such as it was had Labour creeping into the lead as early as 1942 despite patriotic support for Churchill as war leader. Of course this can be interpreted at least two ways. The Corbyn disciple can say: ‘Well there you go! Jeremy achieved in three weeks what Clement Attlee did in three years!’ A more circumspect observer might counsel caution. Like a dodgy share portfolio, values can go down as well as up, and such rapid change often indicates a high degree of unpredictable volatility, and a fragility to the numbers as an insecure electorate grasp at whatever straws of hope are wafted their way; or in dangerous times, at whatever least-worst solutions appear to offer themselves. Attlee built his victory on years at the helm as deputy prime minister alongside Churchill during a world war, and in that respect had become something of a trusted – or trustable – brand for whom waverers could chance their vote. Corbyn does not yet have that brand reliability in the centre ground, and will need to replace it with something of equal solidity if current polling isn’t to be proved transitory in the face of a new Tory foe showing the basics of competence.

And if anyone reading this is asking: ‘Why does this scuzzy little tree rat only bang on about Labour’s problems? Why’s he being so negative?’ It’s because these questions cannot be ducked. The Tories ‘won’ in real terms – ! – but they’re sure as hell asking themselves why they didn’t win big enough. Both sides have questions to answer, and Labour’s are just as tough, and any serious politician knows that the next election belongs to the party with the best and most hard-faced answers.

2) It Was The Youth Wot Won It!

Well… yes, and no.

hqdefault

That’s the whole point of this blog, so you’d better get used to it!

At the time of writing, the exact voting demographics aren’t out yet, but it seems reasonable to assert just by looking at where the big swings took place (university towns such as Canterbury…) that young voters, many registering for the first time, got stuck in and helped to tip the balance in certain places. So far, so youthful (and middle class and aspirational…).

But before we get too carried away, just go back to the beginning here.

Labour didn’t win. Labour lost. The Youth didn’t win it.

I’ve rattled on pretty tediously over the last couple of years how campaigning to the disenfranchised and those who habitually don’t vote is, by definition, a fairly fruitless enterprise. Whilst I stand partially corrected that insofar as clearly there has been an impact this time, my point still stands. According to some psephologists there are only seventy-five constituencies in which the youth vote alone can effectively outnumber an older, more conservative demographic, and before last Thursday, fifty-seven of those were already in Labour hands. Perhaps this explains at least in part why Labour didn’t make even greater gains than they did. But it also tells us that some of these impressive and unexpected swings and/or gains were to do with marginal voting patterns… most probably (no evidence as yet) older voters alienated by Tory manifesto proposals on Social Care, the Triple Lock, and universal Winter Fuel allowances. If this proves to be the case then you can argue that it’s those marginal voters who really hold the keys to 10 Downing Street.

If/when Labour get in next time – it’ll be the crumblies wot win it.

It’s still the case, as it always is and always will be, that in order to win a general election – especially an absolute majority not dependent on a progressive alliance with the SNP or the LibDems – a crucial body of people, who already vote, who are not tribal, and are open to changing their minds, are there to be persuaded by whoever seriously aspires to power.

4) This Was The Brexit Election / This Wasn’t The Brexit Election

Well… it was… and it wasn’t.

Or to put it another, and equally contradictory way: it was supposed to be; but then it wasn’t; but all along everything about it actually was; everything can be traced back to it; and will continue to be Brexit flavoured for the foreseeable future.

In some ways this is the most depressing aspect of this whole awful election – and it seems to me that pretty much everyone is culpable. The only reason we ended up with Theresa May in the first place was because of Brexit. The reason she wanted a bigger mandate was to give herself a free hand on Brexit. Labour was (is) hopelessly split and confused and wilfully, teeth-grindingly vague on Brexit – as of course the Tories are and have been for forty years. The public trusted May on Brexit. And then they found out she didn’t have a bloody clue either. Both teams decided that Brexit was the policy that dare not speak it’s name and stopped talking about it altogether. The electorate were sick of Brexit and didn’t understand the horrific complexity of it either, so we were happy to move on to other things. Tim Farron stuck his hand up and said; ‘Let’s talk about Brexit’… and the whole country told him to shut up.

And no one gave a flying f*ck what Paul Nuttall had to say about it.

Then terrorists started murdering people on our streets and in our concert arenas and suddenly it didn’t seem so important.

Despite a lame effort in the closing stages, we never got back on track. This may yet prove to the defining national disaster of the twenty first century and Theresa May’s negotiating stance ended up being the one thing we didn’t really discuss beyond the vaguest of details. Labour barely challenged it, because they knew that their multi billion pound spending pledges are absolutely meaningless without a successful outcome, and they can’t promise that either.

elephant

And as for us, the electorate? Basically we’ve been sticking out fingers in our ears and hoping for the best. Every second that we didn’t discuss Brexit and demand clarity and forensic detail about how the next ten years was going to work – was in itself an example of how Brexit was shaping everything that happened. We should all be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves.

CLwZrkFUEAAv3G3

Overly cynical perhaps, but this is how discussion of Brexit felt for much of the election…

Negotiations start next week.

4) Main Stream Media Was Finally Shown The Door

Weeeellll….. (wheedle, wheedle, wheedle) …it depends how you look at it…

…and frankly I’m not sure I can be arsed to go into great detail here, having explored the issue many times on these pages, but let me have one more go.

According to Kerry-Anne Mendoza, The Canary’s editor-in-chief interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme (click here and scroll to 25.25 to hear the relevent extract), in the run-up to the election her website had 25 million hits – outperforming Reuters, The Economist, New Statesman, The Spectator and The Times.

This poses two crucial questions. The first is one concerns the most fundamental of life’s questions:

chicken-egg

This is actually my favourite joke… ever

Given the partisan nature of The Canary surely its job isn’t to persuade the politically neutral, but to give voice to the new activism on the Corbyn/Momentum left. People choose to go there because they already believe in those ideas. There’s nothing wrong with that – apart from the appalling quality of the journalism. Similarly, the Mail is read by people who go to that paper because it reinforces their world view. There’s nothing wrong with that either – apart from the appalling quality of the journalism.

The one major exception in print journalism is the London Evening Standard which is free and browsed at some point by everyone on public transport in the capital. That one paper does have an ability to shape opinion, rather than simply to follow it in order to sell units.

The second question – and perhaps far more important – is that with those kinds of numbers, who exactly is the Main Stream Media now? And if it’s not broadcast or print media, then do organs such as The Canary see themselves as exempt from the kind of criticisms hitherto aimed at minnows such as those owned by the Murdoch empire?

3833081-6535156727-quote

An important thing to remember for anyone spinning a line…

5) It’s Time For Corbyn’s Critics To Eat Large Portions Of Humble Pie 

I completely get why formerly critical members of the Parliamentary Labour Party are queuing up to eat humble pie all over the tellybox over Corbyn’s relative success last week. They can sniff victory – should the May government collapse any time soon – and so a public realignment behind a now successful figurehead is most definitely the new realpolitik.

humble-pie_1758649

Humble Pie lookin’ tasty!!

I use the word ‘figurehead’ advisedly. My guess is (and it can only be a guess) that many of them still harbour deep reservations about Corbyn’s core skills – that much has been evident from several TV interviews not least Hillary Benn’s politely evasive exchange with Evan Davis (Newsnight 13th June 2017) – but see a Labour victory by any means as superseding those concerns. Go for it!! Why not?

I’m not a member of the Labour Party any more – something I find incredibly liberating – so luckily for me I don’t have to suspend my judgement, turn a blind eye, or get behind anyone.

So what just happened (or didn’t) to bring about this transformation?

Let’s not get revisionist about this. Three weeks into the campaign and it was all still extremely grim. Jeremy was stumbling and carping through TV interviews; the polls were terrible; his campaign was rooted in declarations of class war, threats to come after Mike Ashleigh and Philip Green, and a desperate vision of Britain that was like something out of Hieronymus Bosch. Labour candidates were apologetically pleading on the doorsteps for votes on the basis that Jeremy couldn’t possibly get into Number Ten…

And then manifesto week came along – and Jeremy Corbyn Mark II was born!!! Cue heavenly choirs!!

choir-of-heaven

If you’ve got it, flaunt it!!

He didn’t do well because his critics were wrong. He did well because at the eleventh hour he – or someone in his campaign team – woke up to the reality that many of the criticisms were correct and needed addressing pronto. He did well because Theresa May decided to self destruct in a manner never before witnessed in a UK election campaign – and take what was left of the Tory brand down with her. And he did well because he concentrated on what he is good at. If you’ve got it, flaunt it!!

Disingenuous? That’s not my intention. Seriously. Let’s look at the evidence, take a ride through the checklist of design faults on the old Jeremy Corbyn Mark I. I think there was one in an edition of What Party Leader. Let me dig it out….

Image: For the last two years those of us not so enamoured of the old model have despaired of the ill fitting suits, the scruffy beard, the the wince inducing Lenin cap. Fans of the original leapt to his defence. ‘It’s authentic!’ they opined. ‘Jeremy the Saviour is above such superficialities!’ David Cameron mocked The Chosen One in parliament, passing on Mama Cam’s advice that he should ‘put on a proper suit and do up his tie’. Jeremy has done just that – got a decent haircut and trimmed his beard – and now at least he vaguely looks the part.
Corbyn Mk I rating 3/10     Corbyn Mk II rating 8/10

Manner: Up until the launch of the manifesto on May 16th, Corbyn’s encounters with the media were uniformly tetchy and defensive. He would regularly struggle to hold his temper, and bark spiky rebukes to any journalist daring to ask a difficult question. Again the disciples cried unto the heavens: ‘Go, Jeremy, go! For they are all unbelievers massed against you!! Tetch away, Lord! The World will know of their bias and You will show them!!’
Unfortunately for the disciples, some wise head in Labour HQ said: ‘You know what Jezza, you don’t half come across as a grumpy old twat. Why don’t you loosen up? Smile! Your smiles become thee well! Appear cross-gartered and in yellow stockings!’
Ehm, no, they didn’t say that last bit, although a nip of Twelfth Night never did anybody any harm. Yer man has had some solid media training. He hasn’t lost his temper on air for nearly a month now! Whahoooo! And he doesn’t worry about the questions – choosing to answer whatever is thrown at him in his own way. It’s pretty basic stuff but at last – AT LAST!! – he seems to have got the hang of it.
Having said that, since the election, he has come over as a bit smug. As a lot smug, if Sunday’s Andrew Marr show is anything to go by. He’ll need to watch that. The British public love an underdog, but they hate a smug bastard.
Corbyn Mk I rating 2/10     Corbyn Mk II rating 8/10 (or 7/10 factoring in smugness)

Corbyn is a Campaigner, not a Politician: The apostates spake unto the acolytes: ‘I know you love him an’ everything, but he’s spent 35 years on the back benches, voting against his party more than 500 times and organising demos. He hasn’t got a clue about parliamentary politics, or actually getting things done, which is a team sport, dependent on cunning strategems, machiavellian deals etc etc.’
‘Ah,’ they sang in shimmering harmony, ‘but He speaks of a New Politics – Straight Talking and Honest – like one of those loan consolidation packages advertised by Carol Vorderman on daytime TV!’
Well… the jury’s out on this one. The very nature of What Just Happened is about him doing what he does best – i.e. campaigning. Huge rallies of adoring crowds who have come to be filled with the Jezzy spirit. He’s clearly had some debate training but dealing forensically with counter argument is still not his strong point. We’re yet to see whether He-That-Is-Jez can persuade the hard core doubters, or operate within the febrile atmosphere of a hung parliament for what could be a lot longer than people anticipate. Whilst I’m dubious of comparisons to 1974, let no one forget that the Wilson/Callaghan government lasted for the full five years.

And that’s before we even get to considering the realities of what it means to actually govern, should that come to pass at some point.
Campaign rating (Both models) 9/10     Politics rating (Both models) – tbc

The next category is a double header:

Jeremy Corbyn is too extreme: Personally speaking, this has never been the issue for me, as I’ve said many times on these pages. My beef has been far more about competence and the superficial politics-subsidiary-Santa-list nature of his policies, but rooting around the track record of JC, McDonnell and other the apostles, there are certainly traces of alarming fundamentalism knocking about. I won’t evidence that here, simply because there’s no point. With a dazzling starburst of realpolitik, the team have moved on – to a far tastier, easy to chew left of centre populism. Which leads us to…

He needs to woo the Centre Ground: Anyone who dared suggest this on social media during the two leadership campaigns was roundly abused as Blairite Scum, Tory Lite, NeoLib Bastard etc etc etc. Jeremy was True Labour, the Authentic Voice of the Working Class, the Disenfranchised etc etc but of course the centre is where UK elections are won. There is no getting away from it. Corbyn’s team know it. And so, Alice-like, we have gone through the looking glass and, as explored in a previous blog, the glittering utopia of the Labour manifesto and subsequent pledges is full of fabulous retail offers to an anxious middle class wanting to hang on to their cash – not to mention promises of legions of armed police and increased surveillance. Hey! I’m not knocking it. It’s a good thing – apart from the small matter of a tax and spend model that is probably unsustainable in the long term.

But, hey… we can deal with that later…

…can’t we???
Corbyn Mk I rating 5/10     Corbyn Mk II rating 7½/10

Corbyn is divisive and anti-aspirational: One of Corbyn’s more dreary character traits has been the constant portrayal of the country in a state of collapse. This may yet come to pass if Brexit proves as problematic as it threatens to be – for which Mr J should be held as responsible as any other Brexit politician – see below – but at the moment, despite huge inequalities, eye-watering stresses on public services etc etc we still live in one of the most prosperous and privileged countries on the planet. To get people on board with working together to create a fairer society, the focus has to be on aspiration, not the constant reiteration of everything that’s wrong. Defining the country purely in terms of the Have-Nots versus the Haves may reflect a certain truth but it ends up smearing and dividing everyone.

Right up to the campaign launch in Manchester on May 8th, JC Mk I was still in the ascendent, a wide eyed sooth sayer, stirring the masses to an angry war against Mike Ashleigh and Sir Philip Green who ‘would have reason to be afraid’! Whether or not these guys deserve a kicking, anyone with entrepreneurial aspirations would have good cause to feel nervous.

I think someone had a word.

He may well have gone on saying that at rallies – I have no idea – but he kept such pitchfork-and-torches talk to himself when in front of a TV camera. The media advisers know exactly how it looks.

Eight days later, when the Labour manifesto hit the table, it was utopia all the way. Lots of free money, and an industrial paradise where five per cent of the population would see us all right by paying ‘a little bit more’.

Whether or not this can work in practice is for another blog, but it’s certainly the way to go if you want to win an election – and the other lot aren’t saying anything apart from: ‘It’s going to be shit, and I’m the best person to deal with quite how shit it’s going to be… oh and by the way, I want your house.’

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A Labour family watch a nuclear strike in the sure and certain knowledge that we won’t be retaliating … What??? That’s a good thing, isn’t it?

Corbyn Mk I rating 1/10     Corbyn Mk II rating 8/10

Anti Semitism / Terrorist Sympathies: Shortly before the election I wrote on these pages about my reasons for not voting Labour in the light of the Manchester bomb attack so I won’t reiterate that here. Keyboard apologists are keen to poo-poo such concerns, but in some darkened room, Labour strategists know full well quite how vulnerable they are on these flanks. Whether Diane Abbott is truly unwell is not for me to say, but rest assured they slept a little easier once both she and Ken Livingstone were safely consigned to the annexe… you know, the one with the sound proof walls and double padlocks.

Meanwhile on social media the narrative is that if it’s ok for Theresa May to snuggle up to the DUP then it’s okay for Jezza to get cosy with Sinn Fein/IRA. Aside from the ahistorical mismatch, the logic doesn’t work at all. As far as I’m concerned it’s a good reason not to vote for either of them, and you can bet your bottom Euro that Labour brains are praying that Sinn Fein don’t suddenly decide to take their seats at Westminster. That could kill Corbyn’s chances stone dead at the next election.

Meanwhile Corbyn has to tread very carefully in his dealings with the DUP.  He might need their help if he wants to defeat May on key policies, and if he lays into them with the hand wringing self assurance of many on social media he will end up being just as destabilising to the NI peace process as his Tory counterpart. This is his opportunity to rise above prejudice and act like a statesman.

Corbyn Mk I rating 1/10     Corbyn Mk II rating 5/10

Defence: This is still a mess. Labour Party policy is still multilateralist. Jeremy is – and forever will be – unilateralist. He got away with it this time because the two terrorist attacks shifted the focus from ICBM to IED… and so the irreconcilable confusion over nuclear policy was forgotten, but it might not be next time and a newly united Labour party will have to get its shit together. Always worth remembering that the electorate aren’t unilateralist, and I doubt they ever will be, as Neil Kinnock learned to his cost. Where Corbyn goes on this might be his ultimate realpolitikal hurdle.

Corbyn Mk I rating 2/10     Corbyn Mk II rating 4/10

Jeremy Corbyn is an intellectual lightweight: Sorry peeps, nothing I’ve seen, no matter how adoring his crowds, no matter how confident he has become in a TV one-to-one has changed this. Polling success or not, no one can sprout IQ overnight. Although, having said that, when the incumbent Tory administration is as utterly shite as it is at the moment perhaps brains cease to matter.

Until of course he actually gets into power.

This is what really worries me when I consider the prospect of a Corbyn premiership. I still don’t think he has the intellectual chops, or political fleetfootedness to handle the job. That’s me being polite. And that’s before we get to some of the utter dimwits taking up space on the front bench after the so-called coup of 2016. He has one or two strong political players – Emily Thornberry, Sturdy Starmer, and the effete bruiser that is Barry ‘Creepy’ Gardiner… but Diane Abbott? Richard Burgon? Seriously?

And yet… who knows? The change in fortunes over the last month seems to have woken the spirit of realpolitik in the Corbyn team, and once that happens quite a few smarts fall into place as a matter of course. My personal jury will take a lot of convincing, and he’ll need to bring in some the more experienced players back onto the field if he wants to be taken seriously by floating voters remaining to be convinced. Yvette Cooper for Shadow Home Secretary anyone?
Corbyn Mk I rating 2/10     Corbyn Mk II rating 2/10

Corbyn failed the country over the EU Referendum: Don’t give me that ‘he-was-campaigning-really, the-media-didn’t-report-it’ bollox. Seriously, just don’t. I might not be responsible for my actions. He didn’t, ok? Get used to it. Own it. No one but the most revisionist Corbotee seriously believes he did. As I’ve said elsewhere, THIS is what campaigning looks like: the smart suit, the smiling ‘vote-for-me’ face, the rallies, the passion – not going on Channel 4 and giving the EU 7½ out of 10; not calling for Article 50 to be invoked on live TV the morning after the referendum before he’s consulted a single cabinet colleague (and people wonder why they all resigned????).

On one hand, what’s done is done. But on the other I still can’t forgive him. If Jeremy Corbyn (with the help of a Tory meltdown) can knock seventeen points of a twenty point Conservative poll lead – swinging millions of votes – then don’t try to tell me he couldn’t have swung the 600,000 votes we needed to overcome the 1.2 million majority enjoyed by the Leave campaign. If he’d got his shit together last year none of this would be happening right now. None of it.

None of it.

For me, it remains one of the greatest acts of political sabotage – (Neglect? Carelessness? Stupidity? There’s no good way to spin it) – of my lifetime. And now he has the gall to knock at Number Ten’s door on the back of the votes of the very generation whose future he has betrayed.
Corbyn Mk I rating 0/10   Corbyn Mk II rating 0/10

…

A quick tot-up gives a total score of 25/100 for Corbo one-point-zero, up to 51.5/100 for the election reboot. So, if The Inquisition will allow me, I’ll settle for saying that the New Model Corbyn is a hundred per cent better than the prototype sent to What Party Leader last year. And yes it absolutely did confound expectations. I stand amazed, and even corrected. But that’s starting from a low base, and frankly who knows what would have happened had Theresa May not decided to do a big greasy shit over her core demographic. Let’s hope that Jeremy Corbyn Mark III will take a little less than 35 years to hit the market.

If all of this seems a little lemon lipped, rest assured…

Lemon Marmoset

…I love lemons, and on Friday morning I woke up thinking that, messy, chaotic, and frightening though the next few years may be, democracy had triumphed and we had got a result that precisely reflected the wishes of the country. Jeremy Corbyn hadn’t yet earned the nation’s trust, but Theresa May had lost it; a majority preferred the Tory brand despite her shortcomings and chose that, with May stripped of her power and the worst excesses of the manifesto neutralised by the lack of parliamentary numbers. With regard to Brexit, it’s not completely out of the ball park to suggest that this result is the country’s way of telling the politicians to work together to sort this out. A wise Mrs May would convene a cross party negotiating team to deal with the most crucial realignment of the UK’s position in the world since World War 2. And as for Mr C himself… well, as far as I can see he got the perfect result. No one loves a heroic defeat more than a British lefty (such noble defeatism doesn’t exist in the Tory canon) – and this way he gets all the plaudits, he gets his PLP on side, and he doesn’t have to deliver on a single manifesto pledge or disappoint anyone.

And if he really is finding some smarts down the back of the Labour sofa, he will ask himself the very tough questions about why he lost this time, and what he needs to do to win the next. If he does he will be unstoppable.

And if you think that all of this is being wise after the event, please may I indulge myself (when did I do anything else?) by sharing a Facebook post I wrote on 18th April, the day Theresa May announced her ill fated election and the polls were fifteen to twenty per cent in her favour…

Screen Shot 2017-06-12 at 14.51.55

I was wrong about the LibDems and I didn’t factor in the NI parties, but otherwise…

 

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If You Don’t Like This Film You Are Officially a Bastard

08 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by Martin Jameson in Film, Film Criticism, Free Speech, Ken Loach, Manchester Home, Writing

≈ 8 Comments

I have something to tell you.

(Shuffles nervously… looks at the floor)

The thing is…

How can I put this?

Oh for God’s sake, I’m just going to come out and say it!!!

“I am the NinjaMarmoset and I don’t like I, Daniel Blake.”

i-daniel-blake-3

I love Dave Johns. He did a gig at the Heatons Comedy Club and was bloody hilarious.

I actually declared this out loud in a social setting the other night and was greeted with looks of utter horror – jaws dropped, visibly, in front of me – as if I’d publicly stoved in the head of kitten with a paperweight fashioned into the shape of ex work and pensions minister Iain Duncan Smith.

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It’s not hard to imagine IDS as a paperweight, or even a snow globe. I’m sure I don’t need to post a picture of a kitten.

‘But these people have never been given a voice before!!’ one complainant wailed, eyes wide, starting to well with anger and distress. ‘And… I know lots of social workers – I’ve got social workers in my family!! – and it’s TRUE!’

As I started to explain where I was coming from, choosing to bypass the largely irrelevant detail that I’m actually married to a social worker, they stormed off in disgust. And the following day, they had wielded that most vicious of modern punishments… they blocked me from their Facebook page!!!! Not just unfriended me, mind, but blocked me altogether. Wow. They were REALLY angry. It’s a dagger through my heart, I tell you!!!

thumb_6154_film_poster_big

Everything has added weight when translated into French

Yes, yes, I know, the film has won the Palme D’Or at the world’s most prestigious film festival; yes, I know it has received unanimous four and five star reviews, hailed as a ‘battle cry for the dispossessed’ by The Guardian; and yes, I know the only people to publicly criticise it are bile filled right wing poverty deniers such as the objectionable Toby Young – or government ministers who haven’t actually seen the movie.

Sorry. I still really dislike it, and, uncharacteristically, I was intending to keep this to myself. After we came out of the movie, I quipped to my companion: ‘There’s no way I’m posting anything about it on Facebook – I’ll be lynched!’ 

But the mere fact I was even saying this – and that my flip comment came true (if you count being blocked from Facebook as the modern equivalent of lynching) – suggests that there are some bloody innards here that are worth a poke around amongst.

There’s a reason you don’t see anybody on social media left of, say, Ken Clarke, voicing criticism of this film because, basically, if you don’t like I, Daniel Blake then you are officially a bastard.

Or I’m the only (left of centre) person in the world who doesn’t like it. That’s possible, I suppose.

What the-Daniel-Blake is going on here?

Let’s start with the film itself:

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT

spoiler_t-2

I’m not messing around!! Here be spoilers.

Daniel Blake’s a Geordie joiner who’s had a major heart attack. His doctors say he is too ill to work, but he is turned down for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and declared fit by the privately run Work Capability Assessment ‘decision maker’. The movie recounts Daniel’s attempts to get the ruling overturned, and his descent into abject poverty. Along the way he meets single mum Katie and her two children Dylan and Daisy. She’s had all sorts of terrible shit happen to her, and starves herself to feed her kids. She dreams of going to college, but ends up working as a prostitute. Daniel becomes a surrogate father and grandfather to her family, and she helps him when he finally gets his appeal for ESA. On the day of the hearing which intends to prove that he really does have a terrible heart condition…

…well if you can’t guess what happens in the toilets just before he’s about to speak then clearly you have never been to the cinema before.

I am fully aware that everything depicted in this film happens on a regular basis to people all round the country. The degrading Kafkaesque insanities of living in poverty and the benefits system are rehearsed many times every day, as they have been for decades.

They are part of my DNA.

One of my earliest memories is the bailiff coming to call when I was four years old. Apparently he told my stepmother (an out-of-work social worker, as it happens) that we didn’t have anything worth taking apart from the radiogram (here’s a link for younger readers)…

_57

Basically the iPod of the 1960s

…but as we didn’t have any electricity at the time, the loss of it wasn’t the greatest of tragedies. Trying to feed the family on a single bag of potatoes for a week was far more distressing for her. Later we had the gas disconnected, and our phone too. In those days there were no pay-as-you-go inclusive-minutes mobiles, such as are used by the characters in I, Daniel Blake. After narrowly avoiding eviction a few years after that, things did get a lot better, and apart from a year or two (on and off) on the dole in my early twenties (even in the rosy 1980s signing on could be a pretty grim experience) I have led a comfortable life.

But the visceral reality of having nothing – the fear of it – the shame of it – never leaves you.

So I should love I, Daniel Blake, right?

Well, no. I don’t go to the cinema to see things because they are ‘real’. Or because they are a statement of something that is ‘factually true’. That’s not drama. If I want facts, or an exposé, I can watch an episode of Dispatches or Panorama or read an article in The Guardian or The Canary (NB One of the outlets listed in that sentence is not actually somewhere that deals in factual journalism and was included for purely humorous purposes). I already know what’s going on, as did – I would posit – every liberally minded middle class film enthusiast in Screen 1 of Manchester’s Home, the independent cinema where I watched the film. Toby Young may not believe the plot of Daniel Blake, but I would be amazed if a single person came out of that screening saying; ‘We blow me down with a feather, I had no idea!’

A lot of the audience were in tears, so the visceral power of the film couldn’t be denied (except to me, for whom the visceral power of actually having nothing is still more potent). So what was my problem? Hard hearted bastard? Or is it a ‘writer’ thing? It’s my job and I’m applying professional standards to a work of political cinema whose qualities go beyond the normal tenets of dramatic film making…?

If I were doing a blind assessment of this script (as my work often demands of me), I would doubtless admire its intent but I would be pretty forthright about its technical failings.

The story is clunkingly linear and schematic – reliant on acres of spoon fed, off-screen, uncontested back story (clearly no one is interested in the concept of the unreliable narrator in this movie). Lovely, lovable people are brutalised by nasty jobsworths working for the state machine. The characters – good and bad – are two dimensional. They have no inner contradictions, no complexity. Both Daniel and Katie are flawless salt-of-the-earth types. Daniel is a martyr in the great Christian tradition – a saint in fact – more than a saint! He’s a carpenter (a bit like… hmmm… let me think); he can conjure useful things from nothing – bookcases, food, heat from flowerpots and bubblewrap…  (…but sadly not wine, as he’s teetotal); at one point he actually cures a small boy of ADHD (it’s like… its like… it’s like… a miracle!); he befriends a prostitute (see where I’m going with this?); and then dies for all our sins at the end (‘Tonight Matthew I shall be Jesus Christ Himself!’).

jesus-the-carpenter

I, Jesus Christ

A two dimensional cipher – and in Blake’s case, entirely passive. His only transgression throughout the movie is a little bit of illegal graffiti. When I was on the dole I found ‘ways’ to subsidise my income. Everybody did – and they still do. The fact that we had to is no less politically significant than what happens to the eponymous victim of Laverty’s screenplay.

Presumably this is the point – these are ‘blameless’ good people beaten to a pulp by the system. Even if you play by the rules you will be destroyed, because the rules are designed to destroy you. We are left feeling outraged, a little bit guilty… but ultimately virtuous, because we have shared Daniel’s pain.

But passivity is not dramatic. Watching a puppy being strangled for two hours might be grimly distressing, but without even a moment where the puppy turns to snap at its attacker, what we are witnessing is a ritual sacrifice… not a story, not a drama.

I’ve always been allergic to didacticism and polemicism – and I say that having contributed to quite a bit of it as a young actor, deviser, director etc in the 1980s. My hackles rise the second I sense I’m being ‘told’ what to think – and boy oh boy does IDB tell us what to think. It pins us back in our seats, puts its moralistic hand around our collective throats and leaves us no option whatsoever to think for ourselves… right to the final speech – the eulogy at Blake’s funeral – Loach and Laverty hammering us over the head with their message. There is only one conclusion to be drawn from this film, resistance is futile.

eeeee

How the Marmoset felt at the end of I, Daniel Blake

I find it manipulative – patronising – tedious – suffocating – a form of political dumbing down. And when voicing any kind of dissent becomes a pariah-inducing social gaffe, then it becomes a form of bullying.

Drama isn’t there to ‘tell us’ stuff. Drama exists to enlighten, to enrich our lives by using the contradictions and conflicts of character and story to illuminate the world around us. Not to show us facts – but to throw light from surprising angles on what reality actually means, in all its messy ambivalent glory. It’s the difference between something being ‘truthful’ and simply ‘true’. It’s about asking questions, not answering them.

Shakespeare wrote: ‘To be or not to be, that is the question’, and Hamlet remains a great play because it leaves the audience to wrestle with the answer – with the million imponderables it poses.

Of course, I’m comparing Apples and PCs here. Hamlet isn’t a polemic, and I, Daniel Blake unashamedly is. It’s in the great tradition of political, campaigning cinema (NB to my horrified Facebook blocker, should you ever read this, there have been hundreds of films giving voice to the lives of the dispossessed, you just haven’t seen them). And, fair enough, just because this particular marmoset goes all ninja about it, it doesn’t render the movie somehow invalid. That’s just a matter of taste, isn’t it?

Well, let’s explore the polemic – Daniel as martyr to the wilful destruction of the welfare state – as a ‘battle cry for the dispossessed’ – who can argue with it? And if it ‘converts’ a single callous heart to the cause of compassionate welfare provision then surely that trumps all artistic criticism – just as Cathy Come Home was integral to the foundation of the charity, Shelter in the 1960s and Jimmy McGovern’s Hillsborough TV drama brought the crimes and injustice surrounding that disaster into the public consciousness in the 1990s.

Actually yes, probably, that is true, but I’m still fascinated as to exactly how IDB achieves its goal.

So… there I am, I’m watching the movie… but something is knocking at the back door of my political consciousness, and it’s really pissing me off. I ignore it, content that whilst the movie may not be to my taste, clearly it is an important event for a lot of people.

Then, hours later, in the middle of the night, I slip into my dressing gown, climb down the stairs of my inner contrarian and open the back door, and who should be on my back step, shivering in the rain, firmly dumped there by Ken Loach and Paul Laverty, but… Tiny Tim.

Yes! Seriously. It was him…

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Tiny Tim – 1960s activist, ukulele player and falsetto singer.

No!! Not him!! This guy!!

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Tiny Tim – blameless Dickensian poverty icon!

Sorry.

Yes! That’s what I don’t like about the polemicism of I, Daniel Blake – it’s dependant on a quasi Victorian – and arguably reactionary – notion of ‘the deserving poor’.

Who, reading this, doesn’t find their teeth set on edge when politicians start intoning about ‘doing their best for hard working families’? Why? Because of course everyone wants to help ‘hard working families’. It’s a meaningless thing to say. The test of a truly compassionate society is how we deal with ‘slightly indolent families’ – or ‘downright lazy families’ or ‘dangerous anti-social families’ who have gone completely off the rails.

What audience member could ever begrudge Daniel Blake his ESA benefit? He’s worked all his life. He’s paid his dues. He’s cared for his dying wife. He cures the sick. He deserves every penny. He’s the epitome of the deserving poor. But getting angry at Daniel’s injustice isn’t really what this country has to wrestle with right now. What if Daniel didn’t ‘deserve’ it?

Let’s imagine The Marmoset had written I, Daniel Blake (indulge me!).

Daniel’s a joiner – a competent, if mediocre joiner – who regularly knocks stuff off from his building site – and does cash-in-hand jobs on the side to avoid – no, evade – a bit of tax. He’s got an invalid wife and caring for her doesn’t come cheap. Like 49.3% of his fellow Newcastle citizens he votes for Brexit on June 23rd largely because he sees his mates priced out of jobs by cheap EU labour, and he’s particularly incensed when he learns that the Slovakian family in the flat next door are claiming benefits. Sitting in our lovely indy cinema drinking craft beer from plastic cups, he makes us uncomfortable, but we forgive him, because his wife is dying.

And then, bloody hell, she actually turns up her toes. Daniel’s grief-stricken – and he loses whatever meagre allowances were coming his way as his wife’s carer. He is hit by the bedroom tax. He has a heart attack. He can’t work, but is ruled capable and has to go through a lengthy and Kafkaesque process to appeal it. He is so angry and humiliated that he takes out his frustration on the Slovakian family who he knows are collecting benefits seemingly without hindrance.

Wow… now we’re feeling REALLY uncomfortable. This appeals process sure is cruel and dehumanising, but perhaps Daniel deserves it!

So my goal as a writer – wanting to interrogate the subject thoroughly and challenge my very intelligent audience – is to take Daniel on the most difficult journey I can throw at him. Everyone is angry when the ‘saintly’ Daniel Blake of Loach’s film is humiliated and dehumanised but I want to make the audience equally angry at the humiliation and dehumanisation of tax-dodging, Brexit voting, marginally racist Daniel Blake…

…because the core of a civilised welfare state is that benefits are provided according to need, not because we deem a fictional character morally worthy.

But if we are going to use fiction to throw light on a difficult subject, and if we are truly compassionate, then the humiliation of ‘bad’ Daniel must be no less wrong that that of ‘good’ Daniel… and to make the story narratively satisfying, Daniel can learn this too. He realises – just in time – that his anger at his neighbours is nothing to do with them, per se. They have been set at each other’s throats by the failings in the system, and by the inequalities in the macro-economics that drove them here in the first place. Daniel and his neighbours have more in common than they ever realised. If they understand this in time, the film is uplifting and feel-good. If Daniel realises this too late, then it’s grim social realism and we have to have another very expensive craft beer in the bar before we go home and watch something on Netflix.

The alternative – the one we see on screen now – is lazy. It’s lazy and simplistic, and it allows – encourages – the audience to be lazy and simplistic too.

irony-alert-ironic

I’m about to make a highly ironic comment

Perhaps that’s why the film, as it stands, is more commercially successful than the marmoset’s version would ever be.

irony-alert-ironic

The last sentence was layered with multiple ironies, just in case you didn’t notice

Well… perhaps that’s unfair.  As I said earlier, perhaps that’s the point.

Perhaps there’s a reason that Loach (who has directed a few nuanced masterpieces in his time – Kes being one of them) has opted for the melodrama of Victorian philanthropic guilt as his chosen dramatic form this time. Perhaps he and Laverty believe that the times are so Victorian, the audience must be spoken to as Victorians.

On the one hand, I hope that’s true, because at least it makes some kind of sense, and I can happily shut up moaning about it; on the other, I sense it isn’t, and a great film maker has fallen into a depressing and reductive trope which paralyses the debate by reducing the issue of welfare to simplistic, immutable and ultimately sentimental moral absolutes.

I, Tiny Tim and all that.

And on the subject of Tiny Tim, if you’ve never heard the guy – or if you remember him fondly… have a click on this.

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If A Racist Shouts In An Empty Forest…

07 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by Martin Jameson in Art, Art Criticism, Free Speech, Racism, Thomas Schütte, Whitworth Art Gallery

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Art, Irony

It being a sunny Easter bank holiday weekend – when Manchester makes its annual grab at looking fresh, clean and full of expectation for the summer ahead – seeking chilled out stimulation Gail and I took a long overdue trip to the recently refurbished and extended Whitworth Art Gallery.

The new Restaurant extension at The Whitworth – expect to see this featured in many a Manchester based TV drama

Firstly, I should say that walking anywhere in the vicinity of Whitworth Park in springtime does something to my head as it reminds me of a blossomy day in May 1981 when I, and a group of university chums consumed an ample quantity of magic mushrooms and wandered around giggling and touching things randomly. How appropriate that the same park is now dotted with abstract sculpture although in these days of stern realities, there is no space for hallucinated re-imaginings of anything.  Only a drug addled idiot could possibly mistake this sculpture in the shape of a climbing frame for an actual climbing frame.  Duh!

I’m so glad I took all my drugs before the age of Health & Safety

Inside the gallery, the architects and curators have done a fine job. The new spaces are inviting, beautifully lit… and full of interesting artsy STUFF. I could easily write a critique of the art and installations therein – seriously, if you’re in Manchester, make some time for a visit, it’s an excellent series of displays – some are better than others…

…but the thing that really caught my eye was this official ‘warning’ posted at either end of one of the new exhibition spaces:

My pulse quickens. My expectations are high. I am about to be SHOCKED.

So what is this piece of art so offensive that the gallery offers the services of its staff to guide you through it unoffended?

I’ve been known to rail loudly against gallery zombies who wander round with their iPhones taking pictures of pictures they are absolutely never ever going to look at again (the ultimate double fail – they didn’t look at the paintings then, and they’re not going to look at them later either), so I hope you’ll forgive my hypocrisy on this occasion, just to illustrate this blog.

Wandering around Low Tide Wandering

Schütte’s installation – entitled Low Tide Wandering (admittedly the sort of title that makes me sigh) comprises a sequence of prints/sketches/etchings, pegged to ‘washing lines’ across a gallery thoroughfare, through which the viewer has to weave.  The images are eclectic – portaits of friends, doodles (there’s one of a plate of Strudel), cartoons, satirical observations. My initial response is that it’s pretty good. Certainly it’s the kind of thing I enjoy, although Grayson Perry has a lot to answer for – 80% of new art I see these days is stuff with writing on. Enough with the scribbling guys!! But taken on its own it’s funny, smart, astute. A sort of artist-thinker’s mind map hung out to dry labyrinth stylie. It’s fun.

Gail has wandered off to explore it on her own. ‘It’s over here!!’ She calls to me merrily. I go over, and hanging in no particular pride of place, not far from the strudel, is a minimalist doodle of a black American jazz trumpeter, and the single algebraic supremo of racial slurs. The n word.

Now, obviously, the interpretation of any artistic piece – pretty much anything at all actually – is by its very nature subjective, but I would confidently venture that Schütte isn’t endorsing racial labelling. He’s clearly (well, clearly to me, anyway) juxtaposing the iconic imagery twentieth century music making with a racist label, and asking the viewer to explore their response to the disparity between the two.

Nearby, not far from the Strudel, there’s a cartoon of the Twin Towers, adorned by the caption: ‘Holy Shit’. Do I need to explain that here? Of course I don’t. I’m sure you get the drift. This is an artist who deals in multiple meanings. It’s hardly the stuff of a PhD on semiotics and irony.

Hmm.

I go over to the young, keen and highly articulate gallery attendant. I ask her whether anyone has requested, as the gallery plaques offer, to be guided through the installation avoiding the depiction of the racist word. ‘No,’ she says, ‘but I have had people come up to me asking for me to point it out so they can look at it.’

Whoa. Say that again. I mean, let me get this absolutely clear: The gallery are warning people that the installation contains images and words that may be considered offensive, and offering to assist people so that they don’t see this stuff, but actually what people are doing is asking the staff to point them out to them, so they don’t have to hunt for them or stumble across them as the ‘wandering’ part of the title – (see picture above) – clearly intends. And all of this after the gallery has explained the meaning of the work – the artist’s intention – in case they take one of the prints literally as a racist attack on a black jazz musician.

‘Uh huh.’

And no one has asked to be shown an inoffensive route through the exhibition?

‘Not from me, no.’  She explains that sometimes people come up to her, unsure which of the prints is supposed to offend them the most, and they just want to check with her to be sure.

Whoa, whoa, whoa!  Irony overload.

The Gallery attendant doesn’t see it as being in anyway ironic. She’s quite a serious soul. She then tells me that one of the people who asked to be guided to the ‘n’ word picture was an African American woman who had heard that there was a racist art work on display at the gallery.  She had come especially to check up on the piece, and demanded to be directed straight to the offending item, to judge for herself whether it was indeed offending.

‘What did she decide?’ I ask.

The attendant tells me that after lengthy consideration the woman had come to the conclusion that it was racist and offensive, because although the word was in the context of an artistic juxtaposition of ideas, and she understood that, and she understood Schütte’s intention, Schütte is a white German artist and therefore the word is not his to use.

Oh my pirouetting aunt.

Hang on a minute. So even if the viewer understands that the intention isn’t racist, and appreciates that the artist isn’t racist, the mere existence of the word on that piece of paper, put there by the wrong person renders it racist.

Was that a noisy tree I just heard falling in that empty forest…?

Well… in the eye of the beholder and all that, and I know that just as I find this whole thing beyond satire, equally one can’t tell someone not to be offended, you can’t tell them that something they find to be personally racist isn’t racist… but really, really?!?

The level headed Gallery Attendant is admonishing of my bewilderment.  ‘I get it,’ she says. ‘The woman was African American and the word is far more potent for her.’

My brain is short circuiting now, like a confused super computer in an episode of Star Trek. So are we talking about the wrong artist and the right viewer? Or the wrong viewer and the right artist? Or is it the wrong artist and the wrong viewer? Or is it the right artist and the right viewer and her offence is part of the art work as a whole?  I don’t think so (to that last one) because it seems to me that the Whitworth Gallery has completely lost trust in their visitors to simply look at stuff and make their own minds up.  Like you normally do with art. Suddenly we’re ‘warning’ people which creates a prurient attraction to a racist word – and then telling them how they’re supposed to respond. This is surely light years adrift from Schütte’s original intention.

The attendant tells me that the gallery’s first response to complaints about the picture (I don’t know who from, or how many) was to remove the print in question.  Then they had a change of heart – something of a censorship issue there I guess – and put it back and opted for the warning plaques.

Look, I get that it’s an offensive word, and that it’s incredibly potent… but I do squirm at the idea that words are owned by anybody (isn’t that how racism and prejudice kick off and are empowered to start with?). It’s about context. And that may not be a black and white thing. I choose that phrase quite deliberately, and in the spirit of Schütte’s ambiguity. I appreciate that context can be harder to justify when an ‘outsider’ starts to play artistically with someone else’s keyword of oppression. But hang on a minute – racism affects everyone, so everyone needs the space to talk about it – and that means that I should be able to type the word nigger right here if I feel I need to, and be trusted that I’m not endorsing Southern lynchings by doing so.

I feel the same about a word like yid. I hope I have the sense to understand that a non jew using the word may well do so for the best of reasons, and that if I understand it, and I understand the context of it, the mere existence of it on a piece of paper in an art gallery isn’t somehow validating the holocaust.

I’m aware that there are plenty of jews who don’t share my feelings – but I believe that, in itself, to be equally problematic. A sort of territorial clinging to the instruments of our own oppression. It skews everything. But perhaps that’s a subject for a different blog…

Back to The Whitworth’s artistic safety notices! The minute we stop trusting audiences to think for themselves, we kill our art stone dead. Ambiguity and context – and the pursuit of meaning – are at the heart of what makes art, art. But when I see an explanatory warning plaque in an art gallery I fear we’re developing a suffocating fear of ambiguity. Is this the stifling undertow of Charlie Hebdo – a literalist fundamentalism that turns everything to a frightened grey sludge?

It’s feeling like a new thing to me, but then I’m reminded of something that happened to me in 1983. I had just left Cardiff University where I had been studying for a postgraduate diploma in Theatre Studies at The Sherman Theatre, and along with a bunch of mates (not the mushrooming ones) we decided to sell-out every performance of a show for the Edinburgh Festival and actually make a bit of cash, by calling it Live Sex On Stage. Utterly shameless? Most definitely. But as satirical reviews about pornography go, this one was not bad at all. Here’s the poster:

Avert your eyes if easily offended!

Avert your eyes if easily offended!

Just to clarify, that’s the whole poster; a dayglo trompe l’oeil of a peeling tacky sex club poster pasted onto a brick wall emblazoned with the title ‘Live Sex On Stage!’ in crude lettering. Assuming people to be generally intelligent, making the poster a poster OF a poster, we modestly hoped it was clear that our poster WASN’T an ACTUAL Live Sex poster but a poster for a show ABOUT a live sex show.

Not so. In Hull, our show (which contained neither sex nor nudity, above the elbow) was closely scrutinised by two very disappointed members of the local Vice Squad (who had to watch from the lighting box because the performance was sold out, and to stand at the back of the auditorium would have infringed fire regulations).

In Worcester, moral panic set in a lot earlier. We were playing a council run venue and apparently there were complaints about the graphic nature of the poster. I’ve hunted high and low for the clipping so I could reproduce it here, but thirty years on it appears to be mislaid, so I ask you to trust my account of it. The gist of the article in the local rag was as follows: ‘Following complaints about the graphic nature of a poster for fringe theatre show, entitled “Live Sex On Stage!”, due to play at the blah venue next month, council officials have agreed that the word “Sex” be blanked out on all posters advertising the show displayed in council run premises. Councillors agreed that uncensored posters, with the word “Sex” fully visible, would be displayed openly at the Central Library.

To this day I cherish the thought of the good folk of Worcester trooping into the centre of town to look at a three letter word on a poster of a poster on a wall to decide whether they were titillated/outraged (delete where not applicable).

Wait a moment. Am I trivialising The Whitworth’s n-word controversy by comparing a vicious racist noun with a piece of ridiculous parochial prudery?

Well perhaps, but, equally perhaps the Worcester response gets to the nub of it. Terrified by the mere sight of the word ‘sex’, the authorities there decided that it would be permissible for the word to be seen in at least one library where, after all, the same word could probably be found in hundreds of worthy volumes. They trusted that people going to a library accepted that there were all sorts of words, with sticky connotations, which had a right to exist as part of the grand panoply of human experience contained (safely) within the walls of a municipal oasis of learning.

In a swimming pool, or on a bus stop a poster with the words ‘Live Sex On Stage!’ is just that. In a seat of learning, those who venture within are expected to search for deeper meanings.

Shouldn’t the same apply to an Art Gallery?

I would say so, but on the other hand I know those who would insist that that was an elitist view. The n word is racist in any context – stick Schütte’s picture on a bus stop and it’s a hate crime – putting it in a gallery doesn’t exempt it. To which I say, an art gallery is only elitist if you restrict those who might go there to an elite. The Whitworth is free to enter, and located within easy walking distance of the university to one side, and several deprived residential areas to the other.

Let’s not hijack social liberalism to say that it’s somehow wrong to hail our galleries, theatre and indeed central libraries as safe spaces for difficult, distasteful or even dangerous ideas.

And of course, there will always be an element of censorship and/or selection, but having agreed to display the thing, for god’s sake – for art’s sake, for humanity’s sake – please don’t put up signs recommending that people close their eyes.  It’s an art gallery! If there’s anywhere where signs should be crying out for people to walk around with their eyes – and their minds – wide, wide open, it’s here.

***

We headed downstairs, through Sarah Lucas’s wonderful and witty ‘Tits In Space’ installation, to where the gallery had regained its sense of irony…

 

…much to my wife’s disappointment.

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No, really, je suis un proper Charlie

14 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by Martin Jameson in Charlie Hebdo, Free Speech, Islamism

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Billy Bragg, Charlie Hebdo, Gary Younge, Je Suis Charlie, Mehdi Hassan, religion

The instant I heard about the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo last week and saw the hashtag ‘Je Suis Charlie’ – I had no hesitation in posting the slogan as my Facebook cover photo. It was an angry and emotional reaction.  I’m a writer – I deal in ideas, words, satire – the attack felt personal.

A week later, and the papers and the internet are full of counter headlines:
‘I am not Charlie!’; ‘Ok, well I might be a bit Charlie, but only on these strict conditions…’ ; ‘Some of my best friends are Charlie’; ‘Charlie isn’t my darling’; ‘You’re a racist, repugnant, free-speech fundamentalist, hypocritical ignoramus if you jump on the Charabanc de Charlie…!!’; ‘You’re the kind of Charlie who doesn’t care about massacres in Nigeria or what the west has done to the middle east, you bastard (did I mention that you were a racist?)!!!’; ‘Ehm…. has anyone got any Charlie?’ (Sorry, that last one was a flashback to a conversation I heard in the Groucho Club about fifteen years ago).

It’s a shoal of shifting opinion, caught in a sudden flash of light; a million panicky, quivering fish, all changing direction together.

Well, I’ve read lots of this stuff (and let’s be honest, it’s getting pretty tedious), and now, for your pleasure, The Ninja Marmoset is going to ride headlong into Charliegeddon.

The thing is, last week I was unthinking, emotional, angry, affronted Charlie. But now, the more the shoal tugs at the current of opinion, fogging the water with opinionated silt…

…the more I feel clearly confident that yes, I am, in the most considered of ways, l’homme qui s’appelle Charlie, a proper Charlie (as opposed to ‘un Charlie propre’ which would be something else altogether).

I’m wittering, but that’s because this whole debate is wittering…. it’s turning into a sequence of rants and semantic squabbles, and competitions as to who can worry the most about the offence caused (mainly) to other people; and what is offence; and over-the-garden-fence like a gaggle of neighbours at war. It’s apparently complex and nuanced…. I mean WHERE DO WE DRAW THE LINE???!?!?!?!

But I’m starting to wonder if it is complex and nuanced at all.  Isn’t it really quite simple? What’s the big deal?

Haven’t we got it covered anyway?

Ok.  Take offence…
What?  You want me to take offence?  You haven’t said anything offensive yet.
No, no, no, I mean ‘take “offence”, for example…’
Oh right.  Does that mean you’re not going to offend me, but you’re going to lecture me on the nature of offence instead?
Yes.
Do you have to?  I think I’d rather you were rude to me.
Shut up and listen!The thing is, we’ve already got laws about this stuff.  Essentially it goes something like this: sexuality isn’t a choice; race isn’t a choice; gender isn’t a choice; disability isn’t a choice; age isn’t a choice. So we have laws that protect people against discrimination, hatred, violence on the basis of what they actually are. Excellent. It’s taken a while to get here, but I’d say we’re doing pretty well so far…

Religion, however, is an idea. It is a choice. When you choose that faith then you choose everything that comes with it. The religion itself has no inherent rights of its own – Gods in a secular society are in the mind of man, or if, perchance, they turn out actually to exist, omnipotent and can look after themselves. However a religion’s followers do have rights to worship in peace, without fear of violence or intimidation, and not be discriminated against. Other than that, like any idea, it is fair game.

The right to worship in peace is a crucial idea that goes two ways. No one must threaten you with violence or prohibit your worship – and neither must you use your worship to intimidate or threaten others.

The same goes for the right not to worship by the way – which covers apostasy, in case anyone thought I was forgetting about that by glibly declaring that religion is an easy choice.

So what about mockery?  As long as it adheres to the basic laws of discrimination outlined above, which are already established in our society, as Adam Ant once warbled: ‘Ridicule is, ridicule is, ridicule is nothing to be scared of….’

Crucially, mocking a religion, or the deeds of its followers, is not racism, nor is it any kind of excuse for racism. It just isn’t. And by the way, if individuals choose to use the religion/race distinction to cloak their own inherent racial prejudices that’s extremely frustrating, but it doesn’t undermine the logic of this vitally important distinction. Anyone with kids will know the difference between telling a child ‘you’re naughty’ and saying ‘that was a naughty thing to do’. The first degrades and belittles; the second may simply be a statement of fact, however hard for the child to hear.

In the case of Islam, the majority of Muslims are probably brown or black skinned – and if they are mocked on the basis of their colour, and for the simple state of being Muslim in the first place, then that is racism. But criticising a religion, its prophets (who are dead and legally beyond libel – no, seriously they are, I’m not being flippant…), the deities (see above for omnipotence or non existence) or people who do shite things in its name is not racism. Because Islam is largely associated with a couple of racial groups it’s easy to see where the conflation creeps in, but it is just that, a conflation. I’ve looked at quite a few Charlie Hebdo cartoons and covers – and they’re tough, uncompromising, arguably unpleasant, certainly lacking in taste at times – but I don’t get that they are crossing that line.

But, the argument runs, just because you have the right to offend, it doesn’t mean that you have to?  Isn’t the act of depicting anything that you know will offend, even in a satirical cause, deliberately targeting a group in order to hurt them? Isn’t that at best a fundamentalist aggressive use of free speech, or at worst the ‘r’ word again?!

Well it would be if you ran into a mosque waving the cartoon ‘A Star Is Born’ around.

Mohammed: A Star Is Born

Tough, tasteless, unpleasant. Yes, I know some may question my use of this cartoon at this point, but please stay with me…. there’s a payoff later, I promise.

That would be just plain rude, and you’d rightly get a punch in the face, or worse. However…

The rule not to depict Mohammed is one that applies (as I understand it) to Muslims, and that’s absolutely fine. But since when did we enter a world where one religion’s rule applied to non believers? Jews don’t expect non Jews to abstain from pork…. Or Catholics insist that Anglicans abstain from contraception or not have terminations (they may protest against abortion, but mostly adhere to the democratically accepted law of the land)… I could go on at length. Obviously, when I go into a mosque I remove my shoes, because I am a guest, and I cover my head in a synagogue, and take my hat off in a church… I can equally understand the logic that says that a public broadcaster paid for by everyone and going into their homes might choose to respect this edict (I understand it, although I don’t personally agree with it)…  But no one reasonably expects that any religion can dictate my diet or clothing in the secular public arena.  I simply don’t understand why Muslims alone among all religions should dictate what other people can draw or look at?  After all, there are 1.6 billion Muslims world wide and only 30,000 people paying for the privilege of being offended by Charlie Hebdo in a normal week. And it is a privilege – one I doubt that many of those who might be offended need encounter if they don’t want to. It’s hardly an act of bullying or oppression.

Yes but yes but yes but yes but… what about a cartoon depicting Jews in the holocaust, or someone falling from the Twin Towers, or a black man with a banana in a tree…

This is always said as if there’s only one answer to it, but there isn’t.  A cartoon is a form of art, and so the answer is: ‘It depends’. If you say in your cartoon that ‘all Jews are hook-nosed money grubbing bastards and isn’t it funny they all got gassed mwah ha ha’ then you’re into the realms of racial hatred, and incitement to genocide. If, however, you draw Benjamin Netenyahu building a wall, reminiscent of the nazi ghettos, to imprison the Palestinians, you are evoking the holocaust in order to comment on the behaviour of a modern Jewish state… and it’s fair comment about someone’s behaviour.

image

Many Jews find this sort of thing highly offensive, but it’s rightly not illegal, and speaking as someone who is (half) Jewish I have no problem with that. There’s no problem using any stereotype in a cartoon – or in any work of art – it’s all about context. If we take context out of the equation suddenly we’re applying a literalist set of rules to satire which is anti humour, anti satire, anti art, anti intelligence…!

Yes but yes but yes but yes but!!!!  Who are you to decide what’s acceptable, Charlie-chops, you self satisfied white secular slightly Jewish Guardian reading liberal?! Even The Guardian doesn’t support you these days – spinning on its moralistic tail and disappearing up its own comment columns in a puff of semantics!! This free speech fundamentalism just won’t wash!! It’s a form of cultural arrogance! It’s impossible to come to any kind of judgement that doesn’t offend someone who lives round the corner so let’s grab the magic marker of fear and draw that mythical line RIGHT BACK HERE!!

Ehm.  Actually, we do already know how to do this.  Every day, Ofcom, The British Board of Film Censors, BBC Editorial Policy, the itv Compliance Unit make considered and rational decisions about things loitering on the grey and shifting boundaries of taste, decency and acceptability. It’s not so hard really.

Then there’s Billy Bragg. Remember him? The voice of solidarity. He was a miner apparently, and a docker, and a railway man – no really, he was! – but it turns out he’s a bit wobbly about being a Charlie. His reasoning goes, that Islam is ‘plagued by extremists’ (his words) and the non muslim world needs to extend the hand of friendship and agree to self censor in order to secure the help of moderate muslims in fighting the aberrant forces within its own ranks (I paraphrase).

Really? Is this some kind of trade-off of values? Who agreed the exchange rate? I mean it’s big of him and everything, but did he check first that ‘moderate Muslims’, or potentially extremist muslims were up for this swap, or did he just decide on his own that this would sort it? ‘They’ll be happy with that – where’s my guitar, I need to write another song about freedom and solidarity…’

I’ve got a feeling that the causes of young muslim alienation might run a little deeper than this.

We know they do, because hundreds of people are dying in Nigeria, Syria, Iraq and apparently we’re all trivialising hypocrites because we’re getting wound up about a few french cartoonists.

Racist.  Fundamentalist.  Hypocrite. It’s so easy to throw these words around, isn’t it? Extremely easy to call anyone a hypocrite because no one is entirely consistent – especially a line of world leaders who look like they’re doing a bizarre hokey cokey.

Hebdo Hokey Cokey

It’s also extremely easy to accuse people of protesting against the wrong thing – there’s always a list of stuff more important you ought to be protesting about. It’s an easy accusation and just a bit meaningless. Why are you eating carrots???? You should be eating peas!!!

No. We’re not marching about Nigeria – not because we don’t care about Nigeria, but because we’re marching about what this attack represents, which does embody some fundamental principles.

And, crucially, having fundamental principles does not make a person a fundamentalist in the knee jerk pejorative sense of the word; just as failing to adhere precisely to a fundamental does not make a person a hypocrite. All principles are inherently aspirational. The declaring of principle is important because we publicly declare a benchmark against which we can be judged. The scornful cry of ‘hypocrite’ is a cry of defeat. Like all the other labels it closes the discussion down. No one can stand up for anything – and no one is fit to lead. Isn’t the world shit?

Well, actually, no it isn’t.

I’ll leave the last word to Charlie Hebdo. This week they came back with a commemorative issue featuring a front cover depicting Mohammed holding a Je Suis Charlie placard, a tear falling from his eye, and above him, the legend: ‘All is forgiven’.

All Is Forgiven - or is it?

By and large this was reported positively – including by the BBC. A moving response by the surviving members of the Hebdo team… provocative in its insistence on depicting the prophet, but reconciliatory in tone.  Awwww….

But hang on a sec. Flick your eyes up this (lengthy) blog (sorry!). Take a look at the “A Star Is Born” cartoon. Notice any similarity? Yup, Mohammed’s family jewels in all their glory echoed in the prophet’s headdress – the penile drip now a mournful tear.

As yet I’ve not heard Huw Edwards on the six o’clock news describe this as a picture of the prophet Mohammed with a cock and balls on his head – and that’s probably wise – but ignoring it altogether is a lost opportunity. It is cheeky, scurrilous, mischievous. Some might see it as a spiteful slap in the face. Personally I read it as saying: ‘Yes, we must forgive each other, but we’re still going to rip the shit out of you, because that’s what this is all about’.

I think it’s brilliant; it’s smart, it challenges the viewer to look with intelligence and think about a whole narrative that extends over years. It demands that you look at it with a sense of context. It is funny…. and it is art.

It has many different things to say and like all good art it acknowledges that more than one thing can be emotionally true at one time.

The right to do this without fear is why I am – fundamentally – Charlie.

 

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