Every once in a while, I will grab a book off the library shelf at random. I will not recognize the title, and know nothing of the author. I do this to break out of ruts. I also like surprises. 

The latest volume consumed in this fashion Two Eerie Tales of Suspense by Paul
Torday. Admitedly, its selection was not completely random: I was actively looking for some eerie stories to augment my October reading. But the author was new to me: I knew nothing of nor had even heard of Paul Torday (or the record: a British writer who’d turned to writing rather late in life, found quick success, then sadly died of cancer at 67). 

What did I find? Well, while it’s true you can’t judge a book by its cover, you can learn a lot by how the publisher tries to market it. Here we have a dark cover, an illustration of a church steel and little graveyard, text alternating between pale beige and dark purple. Jacket description (that which is not obscured by the placement of the barcode) includes words “mysterious and sinister events”, “unexplained happenings”, “enigmatic”, “unique and compelling”. Words like “horror” or “supernatural” are carefully avoided, as is the insufferable cop-out “magic realism”. My diagnosis: a mainstream writer, realizing he’s got nothing to lose, tries his hand at genre writing. Nervous publishers try and reassure snobby mainstream audiences that it’s still worth reading. Possibly they’re hoping for crossover audience. 

Having finished the book (and Torday’s obituary), I’m convinced I wasn’t far off the mark. 

The two titular tales are “Breakfast at the Hotel Deja Vu” and “Theo”. The former is the most successful – it’s more complete, and more satisfying. Appropriately enough, I spent most of the story wondering where I’d read it before. There are shades of Dead in Venice, but only shades rather than real similarities. Possibly an episode of Twilight Zone. Whatever it was, the whole thing felt deeply familiar. Possibly the theme has just been dealt with time and again.  Seasoned genre readers will recognize fairly early what’s going on, and I do think they’re meant to – I don’t think the scenario’s meant to be a surprise. Rather, I think we’re meant to get caught up in the character’s journey and see the whole thing as symbolic of his inner struggles. 

Paul Torday

“Theo”, is a more conventional horror story, though I’m not sure the author would appreciate the appellation. It certainly feels like a horror story, not too different from any title in Mammoth Book of Horror anthologies. Not least because it shares their apparent allergy to denouement . Modern writers of supernatural really seem to really hate climax, preferring to end stories mid-stream. Where the old masters like Poe and Lovecraft liked   

to tell their readers things, Modern writers insist on telling us nothing. They don’t want us to feel shock or awe or surprise or even pleasure at having read a well-written story – they want us to scratch our heads and say “wtf?”. 

This is the Modernist curse, and “Theo” is not immune. I allowed myself to get pulled into the story of a reluctant vicar in an indifferent small town confronted with a potentially demonic phenomenon with a reasonable amount of curiosity an appreciation for the sympathetic an believable characters. But as the story continued and I noticed the page count, I had a sinking feeling that I knew exactly what was going to happen: absolutely nothing. Nothing would happen, nothing would be revealed, and I would have nothing to show for having read the story. 

As it turns out, it isn’t quite so bad as that, though I will say (without fear of spoilers) that Torday was apparently an adherent of the “show don’t tell” bullshit, with emphasis on the “don’t tell”. I suppose we’re meant to ponder and speculate what went down, but it’s hard to care enough to do so.  It’s disappointing because a great deal of time is spent establishing a recognizable world populated with believable and sympathetic people. It deserves a better narrative than the cop-out demanded by Modernism. 

I do wonder if Today had ever read The Green Man by Kingsley Amis, or anything by Ramsey Campbell, both of whom “Theo” somewhat reminded me of. I recommend reading them instead. Or maybe give “Deju Vu” a try. Maybe you’ll remember where you’d read it. 

Mikhail Sholokhov and the allure of fame. . .

 

Stalin’s Scribe: Literature, Ambition, and Survival: The Life and Times of Mikail Sholokhov by Brian J Boeck.

 Mikhail Sholokhov's main claim to fame in the west was winning the 1965 Nobel Prize for literature. I don't know if this means anyone in the west actually reads him, but you can find his book(s) in libraries if you look hard enough. He is still mighty popular in Russia, and required reading in a lot of schools. 

I've not read much of his stuff, but his story interests me as much as his stories. I believe that the Portrait of the Artist Under Authoritarianism can teach a lot. So, I dove headlong into Stalin's Scribe by Brian J Boeck. 

Reading Stalin’ Scribe, one thinks of Mikhail Sholokhov with both pity and contempt. Contempt because by the end of his life he gave up any pretence of writing and gave himself over totally to the needs of the regime. Pity though as well, because in Boek’s telling at least, fate really left no other path open to him. Circumstances made the man. If circumstances had been different, so too would have been the man, less famous perhaps, but with his soul intact. There is tragedy here.

 

Sholokhov owes his legacy to a single he wrote early on in life: Quiet Flows the Don. He never wrote anything of consequence after it; most scholars (including Boeck) think it was plagiarized. Stalin though loved the book, and made Sholokhov the literary face of the Worker’s State. He was showered with money, roomy apartments, country dachas, access to exclusive restaurants and fine foreign liquor. On the basis of that book, Sholokhov enjoyed privilege and luxury for the rest of his life.

 

In the early days, he would try to use his influence for good: he got friends out of the Lubianka, and managed to shield his home-village (or was it his adapted home-village? I forget which) from the worst parts of collectivization. As he grew older though, he became shill for the regime, reliably denouncing dissidents on demand, and sucking up to the Party. He churned out sickeningly sychophantic poems and speeches for whoever happened to be at the top, first Stalin, then Khrushchev than Brezhnev. He feuded with Solzhenitsyn. Quiet Flows the Don would win him a Nobel Prize, but it seems pretty clear this was more of a political sop to the USSR, who’d been grumbling that only Russian dissidents like Solzhenitsyn and Pasternak got the prize.

 

Brian J. Boeck

The Soviet Union could be very generous to writers it found useful. Stalin fancied himself a literati, and paid close attention what was being written. His recommendation could mean a lifetime of luxury for a writer, or imprisonment and execution. Often a combination of all three. He liked Quiet Flows the Don, even if it did humanize the Cossacks more than any good Bolshevik book strictly should have done. His blessing freed Sholokhov from such petty concerns as making a living or staying artistically relevant. Sholokhov got to travel widely and live lavishly off the public purse. But it came at a price.

           

Scrutiny from Stalin tended to be a protracted death sentence. It meant every word and deed was closely watched and anything at all could be a pretext for one’s liquidation. If at first Sholokhov tried to use his influence for good, he did it knowing that with one false move he’d be finished. He walked a razor thin tight-wire, tying to please this most hard to please of masters, outmanoeuvre his rivals and give his enemies no excuse to take him down. He had to second guess every damn thing he said or wrote, all the time never really knowing what was expected of him. There wasn’t a minute of any day that couldn’t be disrupted by a visit from the secret police.

 

Kremlin intrigue was a game few players survived, and yet Sholokhov did. He outlived Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. But the pressure tore him apart inside. He became a raging alcoholic, at one point downing up to three bottles of cognac a day, and would frequently embarrass himself at Party conferences. During his international travels he would be under strict instructions to abstain, so as not to make an ass of himself and his country in front of the foreign press. Once he even missed an important appointment with Stalin by stopping at the bar along the way and never making it out. How he survived that one is a miracle Boek doesn’t get into.

 

Under the circumstances though, one can hardly blame him. It was a nerve shattering existence. If he rarely wrote anything during this time, one has to remember that writing the wrong thing in the USSR could get you killed. Why risk it?

 

Sholokhov stayed alive by learning how the game was played. He realized early on that his survival depended on the good favour of the elite. So when Stalin died, Sholokhov ingratiated himself with Khrushchev, and when Khrushchev died he ingratiated himself with Brezhnev. And when Brezhnev died, Sholokhov himself was just too old for anyone to take notice. He played the game, and he won. His prize was the only one that mattered: he survived. Many in Communist Russia did not.

 

Sholokhov was not a particularly admirable figure. He was not a Pasternak or a Solzhenitsyn. But he wasn’t a Gorky either. He did what he needed to do to survive. If we wish that he hadn’t quite so vigorously supported the powerful against the powerless, or abetted the oppressors against the oppressed, we may ask ourselves if we would have done any better in his situation.

Doctor Doctor and the Halloween Apocalypse: In Which the Author Damns with Faint Praise

 I've got to say something about the Doctor. 

The new era's the pits - we all know that, (except for a bunch of really hysterical Twitterati, who protest too much methinks). So let's not dwell on it. I'm tired of complaining - at this point in life, I'm resigned to the probability of this little franchise never again doing what I most want it to do or most want it to be. So let's just put our expectations aside, take disappointment for granted, and just accept it for what it's become - a rather mindless children's program - and we'll all be much happier. 

Having done that, I can say I rather enjoyed it. 

John Bishop as Dan

It was fun and it was funny. Most of the one-liners came off, the deadly menace felt
thoroughly menacing, and I liked the new companion Dan (John Bishop). I liked the cliffhanger, an am anxious to see how it turns out. I liked all the different story threads it established. I thought the pacing and the tone were fine. What was there to complain of? 

Well, I thought the Kavinista (my North American ears kept hearing "Cabinet Minister") were daft. I do not think that slapping the head of a household pet onto a humanoid body is a great way to invent alien species (and don't go throwing the Garm from Terminus at me because I thought he was daft too).  I thought species bonding, with the resultant 7 billion ships, was a silly idea. It struck me as hasty, self consciously quirky. I wish they'd give up that cutesy crap and give a moment's thought to what kind of alien species might actually evolve on other planets. But the show's not about speculation, is it? It's about explosions. And there were plenty of those. 

Species bonded doggies

There I go again. 

I liked the return of the Sontarans. They looked appropriately ugly and sounded appropriately blood-thirsty. They do need rescuing from Dax. (While we're on the topic of "Looking at the Positives", can I just say I rather liked what Chibnal did with the Cybermen. . .) 

You know who. 

They seem to be doing something rather unprecedented this time around, which is establish all the storylines up front, presumably with the intention of resolving them later. I think it's a great idea. It piqued my interest. It tickled my curiosity, which is the thing I want most from a Doctor Who episode. It is the thing which will probably ensure my returning next week. (Though, to be honest, grouchy as I get, I could never intentionally miss an episode of Doctor Who. I'm rather stuck with it.)

So, there's plenty to love. Let's celebrate that and not worry that's it's become irretrievably unintellectual. Intelligence doesn't bring ratings, so we can forget about that.

Funny. I had indented this to be a positive review.  Is being better than what came before a celebration of the present or an indictment of the past? I suppose I'm still bitter over that Timeless Child nonsense, and it will take a really big bouquet of flowers to make me feel better. A full fledged Sontaran invasion might help. . .

Zappatistas. . .

 

So on the weekend I watched Zappa, the 2020 documentary by Alex Winter (whom you may remember as Bill S. Preston, Esq from the Wyld Stallions) . I wasn’t a huge fan: the first half seemed a bit dis-jointed for me, cribbing together footage from other documentaries, and interviews strung together in what struck me as a kind of haphazard fashion. I mean, it’s great to hear from  ______________, Ruth Underwood and Steve Vai, but they pop up without a whole lot of context – did they actually perform in the songs we just heard, or appear in the footage we just saw? An newcomer might be forgiven for missing who these people were or where they fit into things.

            That could go for most of the imagery and sounds from the first half of the film. What is all this? All these backstage antics, this decadent rock-pig excess, this random stock-footage, these crazy sounds – what are we watching? What are we listening to? Where was this filmed and is this even Zappa’s music? The intention seems to be creating a mood rather than informing an audience. And, in the spirit of the Lemmy[i] film, the focus is definitely the man rather than the music: at no point is a piece identified and allowed to run for more than a few seconds. From a crass commercial perspective, this is understandable - audiences prefer character to plot, as do judges at prestigious film festivals. They did the same thing with Last Days Here about Pentagram’s Bobby Liebling, and Anvil! The Story of Anvil. Leave the music out (especially if it’s niche music), concentrate on the personalities, and then maybe people who don’t like the music might still like the documentary. On one level it makes sense, but it does seem kind of perverse when the subjects are people who dedicated their lives to music. Doubly so with Zappa, as single-minded a musician as ever there was.

            I suppose it’s a matter of personal taste. As documentaries go, I preferred the Classic Albums installment for Over-Nite Sensation, which covered a lot of the same ground, but was firmly focussed on music. [ii]

              This could also be because that era and that line-up remain by far my favourite of the Zappa oeuvre. For my money, One Size Fits All is the cream of the crop, the jewel in the crown. It’s here where all the elements really gel, the absurdist humour, the subversive politics, the experimentation, and most all, the brilliant musicianship. Like a Swiss clock, filled with innumerable, interdependent bits, it all just fits. Every moment is fascinating, leading irresistibly to the next one, and over all too soon. Like a really good movie you just can’t tear your eyes away from.

            The legendary early period, really doesn’t do it for me. The early Mothers were indeed subversive, unpredictable, experimental, shocking etc, insert what adjective you will. But I can’t listen to much of it with any amount of pleasure. A lot of it feels like a prank rather than any coherent musical statement. I can’t help feeling we’re not really meant to enjoy it; after all, we are all the targets of the satire. 

        “Go home and check yourself. You think we’re singin’ about someone else.”  

            Yes indeed: look yourself in the mirror and question everything. You are not apart or above society after all. An important message, an important reminder, no question. But at the end of the day, it’s well-crafted songs and music one wants to hear.

            For all of Zappa’s silliness, there was unshakable sincerity at his core. This mostly came out in the instrumentals. “Watermelon”’s just about the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. And I defy anyone to miss the serious intent of “Strictly Genteel”, his long evolving classical piece.

            Some did of course. Hipster godfather Robert Christgau proved once again his uncanny ability to Absolutely Wrong about Absolutely Everything when he wrote that Zappa’s songs were “as hard to play as they easy to forget”. He must have had amnesia or dementia or both, for, love it or hate it, no one with a fully functional frontal lobe can forget a Zappa tune.  

            It's the music that made the man, more so than most when it came to Zappa. And yet, kinda like Lemmy, folks want to hear about the lifestyle. If it keeps the spotlight on the man, then this may yet be a necessary evil. 

           

---

[i] On a semi-related note, we learn here that Zappa did very nearly give his fist child the same name as a certain English Rock-band emerging at the time, who would begin to make waves right around the time of this child’s adolescence. Moon-Unit dodged a bullet.

[ii] Not to be confused with the aforementioned English Rock band’s album of the same name. Ah, the unintentional connections continue. . .

On Calendar dates and Flags. . .

 Yesterday was Canada Day and it rained all day, which seemed appropriate enough. No decent person should have been in the mood for celebrating. 

Oh don't get me wrong: in a world where oligarchs seem more popular than ever, arbitrary detention more arbitrary than ever, due process less due, press freedom less free. . .where race hatred and ethnic conflict and religious wars and civil wars go on and on and on. . . In such a world, there are worse places to be born. 

But that is a matter of sheer dumb luck, and going on like it's one's own personal achievement strikes me as more than a bit pathetic. And as mass graves are being uncovered each day, the unidentified remains of more than a thousand (and counting) children slaughtered by our beloved Fathers of Confederation. . . it would seem not quite the right time to wave flags and blow whistles (to say nothing of setting off bombs). 

To commemorate this much more solemn-than-usual occasion, the Toronto Star published this cartoon 

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorial_cartoon/2021/07/01/theo-moudakis-canada-day-2021.html

 which prompted this idiotic letter to the editor: 

"The Star does not have the right to deface and disrespect Canada's flag" 

Au contraire mon ami! It does. As do you and I. There are no laws in Canada against the desecration of the flag. 

Is it Crime to Burn the Canadian Flag? - Pyzer Criminal Lawyers (torontodefencelawyers.com) 

And thank god for that I say. Freedom of expression becomes pretty meaningless when exceptions are made for arbitrary symbols. I think the health a democracy can be measured inversely to the importance it places on things like flags, songs, and statues. As soon as things are held to be more important that people, or an image more sacred than a person's ability to question, critique, reinterpret, repurpose or think about it, then we have the start of authoritarianism. 

Nor will invoking the war-dead particularly impress me: read any veteran's account of war, and you'll find most of them were fighting to stay alive. Precious few mention flags (which for most of Canada's history wasn't even the Maple Leaf). I'm much more impressed by the idea of fighting for a system that doesn't include subservience to symbols. 

At its best, a flag represents an idea. Do not ever forget that it's the idea that's important, not the cloth. . .

 

Jesus Christ Megastar

 

Happy Easter!

            One thing I can’t help noticing this time of year, besides the dramatically improved weather, are the proliferations of bad Jesus Christ Superstar productions.

 

            It’s funny because I adore Jesus Christ Superstar. I watch it every year. I’ve it twice on stage, both with Ted Neeley. I’ve got my picture taken with Ian Gillan. I’ve practically memorized it, I could do the whole show for you playing every part. I can hit all the notes too, except maybe Caiaphas’.   So I am definitely a believer as far as this show’s concerned. But every year, I find myself enjoying new renditions of it less and less.

 

            Part of it is because the robust rock singing it requires has long gone out of style, and squeaky clean modern singers brought up on pop can’t do it.

 

            But even more than that, I feel like recent directors have obliterated what there was of substance with inflated style. Massive special effects and costumes and sets and props and huge casts doing huge numbers. It’s gaudy, tacky, shallow, gimmicky, and self-indulgent. At times it’s borderline obscene.

 

            At least two productions now have turned the finale into torture porn, with a singing and dancing Judas, flanked by sexy chorus girls, gloating over the broken body of Jesus. Not a trace of Christian redemption.  And audiences eat it up.  Truly, we are Pontius Pilot’s vultures.

 

            The shows also fully buy into the modern fetish for anachronism. Just as Shakespeare’s plays are rarely performed in their own era, JSC just about never seems to take place in ancient Israel. In 2012, Lawrence Connor put it smack dab into contemporary London, right after the riots. The Overture is drowned by BBC news announcers, balaclava clad Black Blockers swarm the stage and perform a pitched battle with riot cops. Then are tongues of fire bursting from the sides, and a massive laser show in the background of revolving anarchy logos. JSC as Kiss concert.

 

            Anachronism is a tricky thing. In small doses, it can keep you on your toes. It can broaden the scope of meaning. But to life a work wholesale from its time and place, and plunk it smack dab into a completely different time and place, robs it of its context. Words and actions that meant one thing at one time, can mean a very different thing at a different time. With JCS set in the modern world, what are we to make of Judas’ lines

“If you’d come today you could have reached a whole nation,

Israel in BC had no mass communication.”

 

Even as everyone around him is texting and presumably updating their Instagram accounts.

            How about removing the Roman occupation from a play where everyone complains about the Roman occupation?

            What about Judas’ prudery in “Strange Thing”? An Israelite nationalist from 4 BC might get away with it, but an anarchist captain, as he’s portrayed here? Would a guy like this even hold such views?

            Examples abound. In the new setting, the words just don’t mean the same thing anymore, if they mean anything at all.

            Some of the imagery aren’t entirely without meaning. Revolutionary Jesus is not a new motif, so putting him amidst the Occupy movement is not necessary a bad idea, if for no other reason than it would mightily piss-off the Mega-Church Pharisees who proclaim most loudly to follow him now. (This was probably the idea). But it has its risks. Putting Simon Zealot in a Che Guevara shirt makes sense because he and the others wanted Jesus to be more of a Che-Guevara figure. But Jesus wasn’t having it. “None of you understand what power is, understand what glory is.”  Having placed Christ firmly on the side of the demonstrators, did Connor really want to show him taking the wind out of their sails?

            Don’t forget either, that these adoring crowds all turned on him in the end. The rapturous fans waving palms at him as he entered Jerusalem on a donkey and the braying mobs demanding his execution were largely the same people. Are anti-poverty activists still the best analogy? It does present its own possibilities: could all those cries of “Cru-Ci-Fy HIM!” have been done over Twitter? Could not something be said about the fickle moods of crowds? Maybe, but that would have taken more nuance than analogies this forced can handle.

            To make a long story short: a possible analogy isn’t the same as parallel meaning.      

            I keep thinking back to the Norman Jewison film of 1973. It was far from perfect. At times it is very problematic. It’s as tacky as only the early 70’s could be.  Somehow though, it works.

            It was jam packed with anachronism. But it’s anachronisms were so small scale and impressionistic, all incongruous costumes and props, that, as the opening made clear, could all fit into a rental bus (well, maybe not the tanks). They fed the idea that this was a small-scale, impromptu performance put on by a travelling hippie troop, wandering into the desert. It certainly isn’t comparable to the multi-billion production Connor stages at the OC. With a little imagination, props can represent things, abstract ideas or just impressions of feelings, beyond time and space. When nothing’s left to the imagination though. . .nothing’s left.

            And the crucifixion itself. We’ve spoken of it already, the apparently popular idea of Judas as Christ’s chief torturer. Why do I feel that many of the same people who complain about nudity in horror films didn’t mind one bit all that T&A jiggling around a bloody victim getting dragged across the ground and strung up to a lighting fixture. You don’t need to be religious to find the lack of humanity appalling. (Do you?)

            Jewison handles it differently. Pilot, Herod, the Pharisees and the crowds disappear into a black void. The bruised, bloodied, and broken Jesus sheds his mutilated flesh, and becomes blindingly bright spirit. He reaches out to the audience, as if to say: “It’s alright. I’ll be fine. Come unto me, and go in Peace.”

            Cue Judas.

            Oh, he’s still the ultra-skeptic, still the doubter, still the questioner, but not an enemy. He’s sure as hell not gloating. Just now they’re both dead, they can talk about these things. There will always be room for doubt, but there’s no sadism anywhere. Maybe there’s even forgiveness.

            There’s enough of the Catholic left it me to still find it powerful and beautiful and moving. I’ll stick with that vision, and the Vultures can stick with theirs.

 

Reading Orwell, as one does. Not just the obvious ones, but his essays and radio broadcasts as well, which are no less important. It’s a cliché now to say he’s more relevant than ever – indeed, at a time when a lot of people – millions and millions – think that “truth” is whatever the former President says it is, Orwell is incredibly important.

                Even so, I can’t help thinking some of the direct historical parallels are no longer quite so invocable. I thought that today while reading one of his essays, on the response to atrocities of all things. “The worst thing about atrocities is that they happen,” he writes, in that way of his, making blindingly obvious statements that nevertheless sound profound because it didn’t occur to anyone else to say them. His point being that in the run-up to WWII, fascist atrocities, communist atrocities, imperialist atrocities and capitalist-bourgeois atrocities were only selectively reported and selectively condemned, depending on one’s traditional sympathy with the perpetrators. The Left and the Right accused each other of atrocities, but turned a blind eye to their own. When the Molotov-Rippentrop pact was signed, it got messier still, with the radical Left forgetting all about both.

                It’s a huge theme of his – arguably the central one – and essential for understanding 1984 and Animal Farm. It’s pointless to read either without understanding this context. Orwell was writing at a time when the perception of reality was being twisted to suit political agendas. At such a time, telling the truth, or insisting there was such thing as Truth, became a revolutionary act.

                It’s not hard to see the relevance of this today. Truth is more malleable than ever, and the concept itself more-or-less out of fashion.

                Yet it’s even weirder than what it was in Orwell’s time. Could Orwell have imagined that Flat-Earth-Theory would be in vogue again? That germ-theory would be widely disputed? That elections could be swayed by a belief that everything is controlled by hidden satanic child-sex cults? Civilization isn’t being crushed by competing tyrannies – it’s bleeding to death from a thousand delusional cuts.  Truth is broken mirror. What would Orwell have made of it all?

                When I was younger I did dabble in Marxist-Leninist circles. Orwell’s descriptions felt very familiar. I recognized the selective analysis of history, the selective condemnation of atrocity – only when committed by, or attributed to, the capitalist-bourgeois west, and selective memory required to rehabilitate Lenin and Trotsky. Orwell talked about those kind of things, and it all felt very close to home.

                That all feels so remote now. We’re pulled in so many different directions now, the old Left/Right divide seems positively quaint. There’s no monolithic Leftist bloc out there competing for legitimacy. China (literally) bought into capitalism a long time ago. There was some blinkered thinking around Chavez and Venezuela, but that was really just a blip. The response to Islamic terrorism provoked intense debate,  but no one denied that it happened – only what caused it and what to do about it. The dominant ideological-fault line these days seems to have formed around “Woke” culture, which is a poor substitute indeed.

                Even if you think it’s not completely ridiculous to compare university pronoun guidelines to Zhdanov’s address to the Soviet Writer’s Congress, one has to admit the stakes are so much lower here. No one’s been shot. No one’s been sent to a Gulag. That’s not what’s happening here. I doubt that Orwell – who picked up a rifle and literally fought fascism, and literally took a bullet – in the throat – for Democracy- would have had much truck with all this bellyaching over “cancel culture”. Nor would the author of “Politics and the English Language” care one bit for all these stupid buzz-terms flying around.

                All of which is to say the analogies seem less perfect now, the parallels less immediately obvious. We’re getting into really strange territory here, into situations and scenarios Orwell wouldn’t recognize, and maybe can’t help us with. If his analysis was intimately tied to the particulars of his time, it might not perfectly apply to the particulars of our time. Maybe not. But I think the gist of his thought – that Power lies, that language matters, and that truth is a thing – will always apply.       

 

Captain Maga Storms the Capitol: on the embrace of a Fascist Icon.

           There is a scene maybe three quarters of the way through Avengers Civil War when Tony “Iron Man” Stark hands Captain “America” Steve Rogers a pen to sign some agreement or other placing the Avengers under some regulation or other. Stark proudly explains it is the same pen his father, Howard, used to sign America’s first Lend Lease Bill, authorizing military aid to Britain in World War Two.

            Rogers is unimpressed. “Some people say that led us closer to war”

            Woh. Back up a bit. Did he really just say that? Holy shit, oh my God. Did anyone else catch this line?

            It's a tiny little line, but it's got profound implications. A little history's in order: Lend Lease was the US plan to lend war materiel to Hitler's enemies in WWII.  America itself wasn't at war yet - the idea was if it could supply Britain, it wouldn't have be. It had an ESSENTIAL role in Britain’s survival in the face of Naziism. It was very nearly too little too late. For Lend Lease was not popular – many people against it. Many people did say it would bring the country closer to war, just like the Cap said. You know who?

           Anti-semites, fascists and nazi sympathizers. United with misguided pacifists in an “America First” movement (sound familiar?), they didn't just try to keep the US out of the war, but from anyone who was. Lend Lease was opposed by people who didn’t want to help the enemies of Naziism.

            And Captain America just echoed them.

            This was the moment the Marvel Universe lost me forever. Captain America, as portrayed in Avengers Civil War is a fascist. If not a full blown one, then an embryonic one. At the very least, he is thick-skulled, self-righteous, dangerous and delusional. He is a Captain America for Trump’s America.  

            Lo and behold, more than a few of the Capitol rioters were spotted sporting Captain America paraphernalia. Colour me unsurprised.

            What does surprise me is how many other people seem surprised. “Captain America is the absolute antithesis of Donald Trump,” said Neil Kirby, son of the great Jack Kirby who created the Cap. Alas, I wish I could believe him. Maybe Cap did once represent all those idealistic notions America has about itself, back when Kirby first uniced him.  Maybe in those early comics, he is an emblem of the nation’s better natures. I’ll bet you anything the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers waving Starred and Stiped shields in the Senate chamber haven’t read those comics. I’ll bet you my left toe their entire experience of Captain America is from Avengers Civil War.

            Think of it this way: the titular civil war of the film is triggered when someone tries to hold Captain Steve Rogers America accountable for his actions.  He balks at the notion of being answerable to anyone but himself. He reserves the right to intervene where and when he sees fit with as much force as he please. He leaves a trail of destruction in his wake. He uses violence to solve his problems, beats up anyone in his way, including his friends, and law enforcement officers trying to do their jobs. His first act is to help a suspected terrorist evade arrest, and later aids and abets the killer of Howard and Maria Stark.  He has nothing but contempt for the rule of law, or civilian oversight. He is utterly incapable of self reflection. He treats the world like his personal battlefield/playground. He cannot be reasoned with. He doesn’t recognize higher authority, does not abide by decisions he doesn’t like, and take it upon himself to reverse said decisions, by force if necessary.

            Sound like anyone else?

Photograph: John Lamparski/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

            It is really not a stretch to see Civil War as an analogy for very different visions of how America should conduct itself in the world. Is it a citizen of the world, subject to the UN, the Paris Climate Agreement and the Geneva Convention? Or a freewheeling cowboy doing what it likes? It might actually have been thought provoking if it approached this with anything resembling even-handedness. But it doesn’t. Steve Rogers and his allies are clearly meant to be the heroes here. Not once do any of them question their actions or accept responsibility for the consequences. They don’t even recognize another side to their argument. Their foes on the other hand, are full of doubts. Tony Stark, who at least seems to have a conscience, questions his actions constantly. Rogers is full of blind faith and terrible certainty. The former is shown as weakness; the latter as righteousness.

            This sort of intellectual blockheadedness, crouched in blatantly nationalist colours, is already a indicator of fascism. Writing in “How to Spot a Fascist”, Umberto Eco writes that under fascism “Action is beautiful in itself, and therefore must be implemented before any form of reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation”. I think I’ve just spotted a fascist.

            I mean, he cast doubt on Lend Lease aid for God’s sake – LEND LEASE!

            Fascist or not, this particular Captain America is a superhero for whom personal conviction Trumps all, absence of restraint is the sum of all liberty, and getting one’s way the highest possible principle. It does not surprise me in the least that the Q-Anon types who honestly think their election’s been stolen would identify with him and do precisely what they think he would have done.

            Accept my analysis or not. But they were waving those shields. . .

 

 So Trump's supporters have stormed the Capitol building. 

They crashed through the gates, climbed the barriers and forced their way in. Guys wearing "Camp Auschwitz" sweaters and waving Confederate flags ransacked Senate offices, and roamed the Senate chambers brandishing zip-ties. Outside, they build a full sized scaffold and gallows. They beat a cop to death. They were there to restore their king and punish his enemies. 

All I can say is anyone who was surprised hasn't been paying attention.   

Sweeping Little x's Under the Carpet: Overturning a Pennsylvania Election.

The news gets worse and worse. 

Republicans in Pennsylvania are refusing to swear in a Democrat who won a seat in the Senate. 

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/pennsylvania-republicans-jim-brewster-state-senate-210000041.html 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/05/pennsylvania-senate-fetterman-brewster/

https://www.inquirer.com/politics/pennsylvania/spl/john-fetterman-pennsylvania-senate-removed-republicans-jim-brewster-20210105.html

At issue would seem to be the legitimacy of some of the mail-in ballots - apparently a bunch of them didn't have hand drawn dates on the envelopes. 

Apparently, under Pennsylvania law, that matters.  

If these ballots could be disqualified, then there would be just enough of them to overturn the results of the election. So that is just what Republican Senators are trying to do. Overturn the results of the election. Funny how that just rolls of the tongue, doesn't it? 

They would argue that they're just upholding the rule of law - rules are rules after all, and we wouldn't want anyone taking office by breaking the rules now, would we? That would be cheating. Technically, they would be right. So why do I find their argument so incredibly unconvincing? 

The short answer is I find that an incredibly stupid reason to disenfranchise someone. 

When I vote, I put a little 'x' on a little piece of paper, which represents my little say in who ought to run my little country. I consider that little 'x' a very big right, a fundamental, unalterable Right, that ought to be protected and not discounted on some flimsy bureaucratic pretext. If they told me they would not count my little 'x' because the paper had been folded incorrectly, or I used the wrong pencil, or my middle-name didn't appear on the register, or I didn't renew my license plate stickers on time, or took thirty seconds too long, or broke wind in the booth or whatever. . . my reaction would not be "Whoops! My bad." I would fight tooth and nail to make sure my little 'x' got counted. 

You see, I don't think voting should be a Kafkaesque process. It should not depend on successfully navigating an arcane administrative maze. It should not be cancelled by some procedural booby-trap. The Powers-That-Be ought to facilitate voting, not prevent it.  It should never be conditional on fine-print. It should not be comparable to a Chinese puzzle, a riddle, or a cryptic crossword. 

I take a dim view of my rights being contingent on arbitrary procedures. 

The important thing about the Pennsylvania ballots is that people voted, not that somebody somewhere forgot where to put some pencil markings. (And if we're going to indulge conspiracy theories, have any Republicans been caught carrying erasers lately?). This is a technicality being used to disenfranchise people and Overturn the Results of an Election. This is a Bad Thing. 

Just this morning, Andrew Coyne wrote in the Globe and Mail wrote "If the Republicans will not accept defeat in [November's] election, what reason is there to suppose they will accept it in any?" 

As we can see, we have no reason at all. 

The Noun of the Daleks in the Key of Schmaltz for Piano

 So, let’s start the year off on something light. No talk of pandemics, crisis in democracy, ecological degradation or the decaying of the public discourse. That doesn’t leave much, but fortunately there was a new seasonal Doctor Who special, so we can talk about that.

I can say it’s a vast improvement over last year’s New Year’s Eve special. More explosions, more extermination, fewer “inspiring” speeches. . .unfortunately, just as much, if not more, schmaltzy sentimentality.  

The curse of the Chibnall era has to be its painfully earnest tone. The monsters are fine, the villains are fine, the diabolical invasion plots are fine – but every episode the directors insist on bringing the action to a dead halt in-order to have these nauseating heart-to-hearts, complete with slow piano music. It’s contrived sentimentality with all the same cardboard emotions of a Celine Dion concert, a Mitch Albom pamphlet, or a Nancy Reagan after-school special. You can almost hear the mother-superior demanding you pay attention so you don’t miss the moral.

The world is ending, but let's stop and have a chat. . .

It’s not that Moffat or RTD didn’t have their share of sentimentality. But it seemed so much more smoothly integrated with the flow than now. Teary moments happened in the beginning or at the end, and were always kept brief. Now, they just drag on. And on. And on! How long did it take Ryan to say goodbye? I honestly don’t know – I watched on PVR and zapped the whole scene until we got the bicycles. It was not the first time during the episode I did that. 

I did want to stay positive though, so enough of that. The Daleks are great, and there’s even
a good plot reason for them to look different (And a great surprise internet spoilers failed to spoil. I love surprises. . .).  Captain Jack inserts a few moments of much needed life into the often leaden proceedings. And I would love to see Chris North return as Jack Robertson, who’d make a great recurring anti-villain, like the Meddling Monk, Sabalom Glitz, or Gene Hackman’s Lex Luther. In short, things were great as long as the principals stayed off the screen. 

No, that’s not quite fair – I don’t have such a hate-on for Whitaker as all that. But she does 
seem to be fed some of the worst lines. (Though hinting that she tried to eat through her prison bars was probably her most “Doctorish” moment yet). The trouble is they’ve turned eccentricity into immaturity, to the extent that she needs counselling from someone like Ryan. That does rather undermine the otherworldly, ancient wisdom the character is supposed to exude. Indeed, this whole business of "The Doctors needs humans to keep them grounded" is incredibly tiresome, and only really worked with Donna. 

In short (and this goes for the whole series, not just this New Year's Special), the supposedly emotional bits all feel contrived, overwrought buzzkill, as conducive to excitement as Question Period, or a bucket of ice, is to foreplay. Maybe we just need new companions, or new writers or TARDIS roundels. . .or new editors who can helpfully cut out the boring bits to make way for more Burger King ads.  Definitely ditch the piano interludes and let the audience decide what to feel and when to feel it.

Captain Jack: Much needed levity in a leaden cast 

A handful of other thoughts: 

Yaz: the Doctor has just spent the last decade in prison. She didn’t do it        to inconvenience you.   Do not act as if you are the suffering party here.

(Come to think of it, I can’t imagine the Doctor just sitting in jail for ten years waiting to be rescued!)

Ryan: for god’s sake, get over yourself and give your step-dad a fist bump! God forbid you lighten up a little. . .

At least they kept the theme tune and title credits. Thank God for small mercies. . .