Rat Salad Days - Why The Browne Report Is A Load Of Brown Stuff.

As the findings of the Browne Report sink in (in summary, 'Pay Up or Piss Off'), let’s dwell on the real issues at stake here.

Like the hypocrisy. Some pampered had-it-all boomers love to whine that in their day only the top 5% got into university and the rest got jobs. (Ergo, all the young 'uns today should pay through the nose for what their predecessors got for free.) I feel a strange urge to shout back that this is just another spin on the 'Do As I Say, Not As I Do' argument. And then brick their windows.

Plus it sort of misses the fact that in those days there were other options for post-A Level students. Like lots of jobs that didn't need a degree. You'd be surprised at just how many shit-shovelling, low-level, braindead office, reception and call centre jobs require a BA now. Images of some blessed soul in bellbottoms climbing the ladder to paradise and then kicking it away somehow leap to mind. There was a time when you didn't need a degree to be a nurse, for example. Or, for that matter, a businessman or a bank manager. You just needed a brain, and debt was seen - for some reason - as a Very Bad Thing.

Or how about the doublethink? Many a free market maven (or 'dogmatic arsehole' as I like to call them) scream that students gain the most from their degrees so should pay most of the cost. This sounds like a strong argument until you realise, by definition, that the whole point of education is to benefit the recipient. I may well have greater earning power by having a degree, but I also earn more for being able to add up and read too. By such a standard should we also charge for GCSEs, Primary Schools and Infant Schools? Actually, pretend I didn't say that. It might give them ideas.

Then there's the old chestnut - 'why should the dustman who didn't go to university pay for those that do?' Well, Mr. Dustman will no doubt change his tune pretty damn fast when one of the Dustchildren gets into Leeds Met. Secondly, we already pay for things that do not have a direct benefit for us, but are still for the greater good. Like Mr. Dustman's medical care and pension or his children's benefits if they are unemployed, even if it means not a jot for you if they live or die. You see, that's how society works - we help each other out, even if there isn't a direct payback.

But the argument is flawed in another way too. If degrees really do improve the lives of students* then any (economic) gains are threatened by saddling those same students with crushing debts. Therefore, these people are arguing that students should be benefited by education but only in a way that does not benefit them. That makes sense if you are an idiot.

What doesn't make sense, though, are the social costs. There is the knock-on effect of parents having to divert their finances to helping their kids through the BA/BSc grinder. And then there are those graduates who have to put off buying a house or having children because of the debts they are servicing. This does not bode well for healthy, secure societies. But hey! They get a degree!

Ultimately, it is the lack of honesty that is most galling. What most fees advocates really want is all the (economic) windfalls of a well-educated society, but they sure as hell don't actually want to cough up for it. Hence why sane ideas like a graduate tax were dropped by the Coalition. No one wants to spread the cost even though this would be both more just and sensible. And curiously, very few recipients of free university education seem willing to pay for the benefits their degrees have given them over the years and decades. Nor do they seem to feel any shame for betraying the young in that artful way that horrible old bastards tend to do in this country.

Nor does anyone admit that universities are now just another cog in the economy. Joyless and miserablist as this is, it is also very naive. The skills we all thought the country needed in 1970 or 2008 were quite different from the ones that turned out to be useful. And society needs thinkers as well as doers and office fodder. Adam Smith didn't have an MBA, after all. He was a philosopher.

But what does it say about us? We are willing to condemn future generations to £35k debts, if they’re lucky. And yet we still vote for white elephants like the Olympics, Trident and a bloated NHS bureaucracy. It is a hard-faced penny-pinching age we live in, in part through necessity. But the thing to remember about misers is that in the end they are the living embodiments of false economy.

* Considering that Alan Turing's Maths degree and Sylvia Plath's English MA didn't stop them topping themselves, one must presume this is solely an economic argument.

Teabaggers & The Grizzly Paradox.

The Tea Party movement is fundamentally self-defeating. It is founded on grievance, has a naively malign view of politics and has a sort of paranoid nuttiness that would be funny if it wasn't so frightening.

Yes, it's the Militant Tendency reincarnated as a right wing* nutjob fringe, with the only hope being that they will make the Republican Party as unelectable as the UK Labour Party in the 1980s, as it is equally culpable in letting its rogues take over and run amok. The parallels between both Militant and Tea Party are surprising, and yet clear - both emerged from a deep trauma in the parts of the body politic they represent, and in the end did or will do even more harm to them.

The centre, meanwhile always prevails eventually, and it is foolish to stake so much on a lumpen WASP ragemob (token exceptions notwithstanding**) just at the point when that demographic starts to fade away into also-ran status with all the other adjective-Americans. Regardless of the harm they do on their way down, this is the death spasm of a certain kind of America, with certain values, outlooks, hypocrisies and ethno-religious make-ups that no longer hold sway for better or worse.

But if all else fails, one can sit on the sidelines and laugh as the dolts realise they've been duped and used by billionaire backers who wouldn't piss on them otherwise. The right has its own useful idiots, though that is already a cliché to say. That they will be their own primary victims in the end is another.

So let's dwell instead on Daft Bint Meets Serena Joy Sarah Palin, only two years away from doing a Michael Foot and partying like it's 1983. She describes herself and her female supporters as 'Mama Grizzlies', and this easy metaphor is taken up by the teabaggers with glee.

But in a way, this description says more than just 'wild and free and innit for da cubz'. A bear after all is a solitary creature at odds with its omnivorous, inquisitive nature. It is drawn towards human settlements yet is volatile and unpredictable. It sometimes eats its own, hibernates whilst other animals are forced to live on their wits, needs space yet roams widely, and whilst resourceful and clever, is not quite able to find a place for itself in the modern world it keeps interacting with. It also shits in the wood, much as the teabaggers shit on their own doorsteps.

So in that sense, the Tea Party is profoundly Grizzly. And like many a bear, its rank and file have seen what is happening to the natural order it used to benefit from - and realise, in the end, that the game is up. No wonder they're getting rowdy.

* I hesitate to use the term Libertarian as this is a broad term and Libs don't herd.

** Whatever the merits or lack thereof of Lloyd Marcus' argument, he does it no good simply by whom he is associating with.

You Don't Need An E-Reader To Read.

Ever seen that Kindle advert, where the two Bohos sit on a beach and read their e-book readers, no doubt feeling smug that they've spent a small fortune on a fashionable toy?

Well, that's part of the problem with e-readers; that they sell you a problem as well as a solution - namely, that you somehow need an electronic device to store your books whereas before you could just pick a few paperbacks and shove them in your suitcase.

But the point is that you don't need an e-reader. Books still work perfectly well, and you are in fact being taken for a ride. It's simply that - through the power of advertising - Kindles and their ilk are 'cool' (because the TV told you so!) and books are 'old-fashioned' (because in today's culture, reading is something you're forced to do at school or university). You're being sold something you've effectively already got. Ever been to a library or spent time in a second hand bookshop? Usually the answer is no, because they can't afford to advertise like Amazon or Apple or Samsung... You’ve been had.

We certainly don't need Kindles in the way that we need washing machines, medical advances, computers, flushing toilets and so on. Far from being a technophobic rant, this article is more than willing to declare that technology is great and has made things considerably better. The challenge is now not to create superfluous electronic toys but to make our consumer products ever more energy efficient, more long lasting and more affordable. That's not so sexy as, say, an e-reader, though, so we buy the products with the most allure, the most street cred - the most media exposure.

Nor are e-readers an advance that improves an existing technology like mobile phones or digital cameras/recorders. Instead, it's just conspicuous consumption, just like its equally superfluous (and smug) cousin, the iPhone. They're not really about making your life better and more about waving them about (preferably far away from any passing muggers) to impress the rest of the cool kids and make the naff kids feel guilty about having skint parents (or being skint parents). It's so petty and far, far away from the joy of reading those naff things on shelves that are made from paper.

And so what if e-readers gets people reading? If they need gimmicks and a multi-million ad campaign to do this then maybe they're not the people who should be reading books. Their time might be better spent on finding some substance to their lives. And if the book trade really wants to save its hide, then maybe it needs to focus on why people are reading less and less, or why they are not buying books as much as they used to.

And something else is being lost here - the very physicality of the book, the fact that you can hold it, feel it and know what page to turn to and when. The value of owning something (rather than a stream of data) is being lost, and this threatens our connection with the world around us as we lose the joy of that contact. It’s already happened to music – too many people live for the quick thrill of a download and ignore the joy of owning a CD or discovering an old vinyl album, the joy of actually being able to hold something. In the end, what e-readers represent is another step in our relentless march away from our surroundings and into a shallow, empty inner world of instant gratification. No wonder they’re popular.

The Road to Coronation Street: Now 100% Florizel Free!

PLANET NORTH

"The Road to Coronation Street”
16/09/2010
BBC Four

Often it’s not the end product that’s interesting so much as the process that gives rise to it. Anyone who’s watched ‘making of’ documentaries or heard a decent DVD commentary may have noticed this. Once you’ve seen all the effort and hard work those goes into the end product, it seems much less exciting and interesting in comparison.

Such is the case with ‘The Road to Coronation Street’, a drama from ITV broadcast – confusingly – on BBC4 last night. (But more on that later.) This tells of how Street creator and writer Tony Warren fought, often tooth and nail, to get the UK’s longest running soap onto our screens. As drama goes, it is concise, focussed, well structured and flowing, with some great dialogue and characterisation. Which is to say, this story about how UK soaps came into being is much more fun than the soaps themselves these days.

The cast certainly helps. David Dawson plays Tony Warren as a sort of souped-up, gayed-out, speed riddled Ken Barlow on a mission. (The ‘real’ Ken Barlow, or William Roache, is meanwhile played with a sort of delusional ‘I’m too good for this’ pathos by his son, James.)

Elsewhere, Jessie Wallace (yes, ‘er from Eastenders) camps it up with brassy glee as Pat Phoenix, the audition scene between her and Dawson crackling with electricity. Meanwhile, surfacing as a sort of everyman amongst the carnival of elephantine egos is director Derek Bennet, played with both humanity and normality by Shaun Dooley.

And then, in the final act of the drama, comes along Lynda Baron, rumbling into view with a Godzilla-like presence as Violet Carson, invoking the spirit of Ena Sharples with harridan vigour and resigned fatalism in equal measure.

The story itself is a good balance of drama and fact, taking obvious liberties with the events and participants whilst not obscuring them with too much schmaltz. (Though some of the Pat Phoenix scenes do slap it on with a trowel.) The simmering professional, class and personal tensions are well depicted too, being reined in enough to not obscure the drama, but shocking enough when they do surface.

For it's telling that back in 1960, the thought of northern plebs played by northern thesps was seen as too radical and not commercial enough. This thinking remains, but has merely moved onto other pariahs who are seen as the kiss of death, unless they’re splayed out for all to see on sleazy reality TV.

And it’s telling too where this excellent drama was shown. Made by ITV Studios for the BBC, it was shown on BBC 4, light years away from the mass market ITV1 and BBC 1& 2 schedules. Almost in spite of itself, ‘The Road to Coronation Street’ leaves us wondering whether a modern Tony Warren would even get a twitch of an eyebrow from the fickle powers that be, convinced as they are that they, and they alone, know what the public wants.

BARLOWNESS: 8/10

Edgar Wright vs. The Law of Diminishing Returns (A Scott Pilgrim Movie Review).

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Universal, 2010
Dir. By Edgar Wright
Starring Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead et al

Much ink has been spilt, and equal amounts of bandwidth wasted, on why comic book adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs. the World flopped at the Box Office. (Indeed, you could even say it Bob-ombed! Arf!)

Hypotheses range from the fact that it was badly marketed or that it came out at the wrong time or that it was aimed at geeks, who are unfortunately all two-faced, treacherous thieving c*nts with a bloated sense of entitlement.

Perhaps these are all correct, but let me propose another reason. Maybe the film wasn't that good in the first place?

True, at first this heavily stylised tale does sort of work. The first third of the film crackles with wit, sharp dialogue and the wonderful visual effects make a great impression. The problem, though, is that all the sight gags, SFX flourishes and one-liners get repetitive very quickly, and soon all the other flaws start to surface too.

Like the two leads. Michael Cera is awful, a flaccid lettuce with a ghastly Winnie-The-Pooh voice who brings neither passion nor life to yet another outing as a sort of everyhipster. Meanwhile, Scott's paramour cum McGuffin, Ramona Flowers, is played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead with a studied insouciance, but that's all she bothers to do for the entire film.

The rest of the cast does what it can with roles as 2D as cardboard, which is to say, not very well at all. Only Kieran Culkin, playing Scott's man-eating gay flatmate and moral compass Wallace, really delivers the goods as he tears through every scene he's in with a strong presence and a depth and soul the film otherwise lacks.

The film also suffers because its source material, a six volume comic epic set in Toronto, is basically unfilmable, at least all in one go. The Scott Pilgrim graphic novels are too epic and nuanced to translate well onto the screen in such a truncated manner (and people had the nerve to complain about Watchmen!), with the film trying desperately to include as much of the story as possible and so barely doing any of it any justice. 960+ pages just do not fit into 112 minutes, especially when most of the audience haven't even heard of the comic book in question.

What stands out is what's missed out. One major theme of the graphic novels that Scott is actually a bit of a swine, and how he overcomes his own turd behaviour. This doesn't even make it into the film, in part because the script hasn't got the room, and also because Cera's so insipid, he could rape a dog and shoot nuns, and you'd still barely even register it. Fans of the comics may well spend their viewing spotting all the bits either cut out or just ignored. Even the in-film art care of creator Bryan Lee O'Malley just serves to remind you what you're missing in the original comics. This is a film that simply isn't compatible with its source material,

It just proves that Indy comics and mass media simply don't mix. Daniel Clowes' script for the Ghost World movie was by necessity a departure from his original comic strip. Peter Bagge's forlorn quest to whore out and get a TV series will never come true. Robert Crumb won't even try, and Evan Dorkin will never be the cultural colossus he deserves to be. Why? Because by definition, any art form which rejects the mainstream will always have problems when it tries to rejoin it. And that goes for cult comics from Canada too.

Curiously, the film has strong parallels with Spiderman 2 (apart from the box office takings), in that it starts strong but overdoes it and runs out of steam, and so ends up trying desperately to recapture its original spark. The main difference was that Spiderman 2 had a bigger audience to play with and could afford to lose the plot a bit. SPVW couldn't but does so anyway.

Much too has been made of British director Edgar Wright being in charge. Tellingly, though, his most successful films - Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz - were disciplined, low budget, made for the screen in mind, had good characterisation and never alienated their audiences despite their geek heritage. SPVW is none of these things, and so is a far inferior product. At heart, the film is less a Scott Pilgrim spin-off, and more an overlong Spaced episode at its most tiresome and self-indulgent.

Put simply, it didn't work and didn't deserve to succeed. And it hasn't.

EPICNESS 4/10

Ultimate Big Brother: Josie's Twilight of the Sods

ULTIMATE BIG BROTHER

Channel 4

August-September 2010

When they look back and chronicle the many ups and downs of British civilisation, one moment that will stand out is when Josie 'Farmyward Boogie' Gibson looked away from the 2010 Big Brother diary room camera with wet, puffy eyes and wept 'I'm not a celebrity. I'M NORMAL!!!'

Once, everyone wanted to be a celebrity. No one strictly knew what a celebrity was, other than a kind of pliant attention whore with no or little talent, or a glorified freak show performer with added douchebaggery thrown in for good measure.

The long and the short was - they were Faces and Heels, pointless, but successful. And they appealed to a culture where actually having enough individuality or talent to be properly successful was sneered at because it was too much hard work, and we were all too afraid to admit that maybe we didn't have what it took, and we were condemned to be non-entitites. It's a bitter truth to accept in today's narcissistic, shallow hellhole culture. 'Slebdom' was the ultimate expression of that, where you could aspire to succeed without actually having to earn that success or face up to your shortcomings.

The net result of this was a whole culture driven towards the flicker of dozens of cameras or hateful, mind-numbingly bad celebrity magazines that obsessed with women's bodies in that hideous way that only other women could stoop to. You too could be a success as long as you looked malnourished and had no noticeable human flaws that reminded others of your or their own humanity.

And then came along Josie, a somewhat well fed, non-airbrushed and mundane, yet charismatic and likeable individual in a Big Brother house of mainly nice people (for once). Tellingly, most of them weren't celebrity material because they seemed too real, not shallow enough to really be celebrity fodder, and too human to really want to be one of those shrieking cardboard cutouts. The show's last series ended not as a casting couch but more like the contest between everymen that it was originally meant to be.

Sam Pepper came close to the sort of utter prat cum performing monkey that used to prosper under the old system, but he was evicted and didn't even make it into the final. Instead, the dwindling 'sleb' faithful subscribed to that most niche of outlets - his Twitter feed - leaving the rest of the country to vote for someone they actually could empathise with.

And what then did this year's winner, Josie, do when she then found herself in a house full of 'classic' Big Brother contestants, those shrieking and empty yet loud and ostentatious shallow Gods of a preposterous age? She wigged out, and left. She wasn't one of them, and - most importantly - she didn't want to be. She chose anonymity and mundanity over a fake and glittering life under never-ending scrutiny. Reality TV yielded to reality. It was a turning point; the real had triumphed over reality. Celebrity lost to humanity.

Reviewing the Ads: Nesquik Bunny Death Spiral

This then is the new Nesquik advert:

LINK

Yes, it's yet another use of emotional blackmail, junk sentiment and bowlderised reality to make mothers give in whenever their mewling little shits demand sugar-coated, processed crap. O a promo for a yummy milkshake - you may delete according to taste.

But what stands out is the almost rasping, laboured voice of the Nesquik bunny. He sounds like Joe Pasquale with severe constipation. Or like he's terminally ill, the corporate mascot recording his final poignant work even as they read the Last Rites and the hospice nurse inserts a rubber tube up his bottom.

"They only grow up once!" he gasps as his lungs collapse and his pupils dilate. It's the sort of thing an old nanna in Eastenders says to her estranged daughter just before she dies during the harrowing Xmas special, where Little Mo is later ripped apart by Yuletide weasels.

Maybe this is deliberate? You can imagine the conversation. "Mummy, why does the rabbit sound so unwell?" "Just drink your Nesquik, darling, and maybe he'll get better..." Mission accomplished, at least for the milkshake peddlers.