Past Mortem (Ben Elton)

A good "holiday read" beats a movie in so many ways.  A movie usually lasts a mere 2 hours, while a novel routinely quadruples the duration of pleasure.  A movie requires a fixed position in a fixed place, whereas a novel can be enjoyed in any and almost all locations with little or no technology support. Even the best movie CGI can't match vibrancy and emotional power of the imagination at work.  The novel is a exercise for developing the imagination.  The modern high impact movie generally succeeds in being literally stunning. It is often only after the movie, that we get to digest, speculate, review and use our imagination to pick holes in the universe that we passively experienced.  But most importantly, the movie usually only infers consciousness through the skills of the actors.  The dreaded voiceover is almost universally acknowledged as a last resort of a failing screenwriter.  On the other hand, the novel is usually built on the streams of consciousness of its participants.  Our perspective is bent and twisted by being inside their heads, often disagreeing with their narrative, and yet being powerless to influence their fate.  This, above all, is what makes the novel superior to film - emotionally, morally and intellectually.

Ben Elton is no Graeme Greene, but even his completely predictable movie style serial killer plot is so much more powerful than the movie of the book (that is yet to be made) could ever be.  We enjoy Newson's witty self-depreciating commentary, even more than his bizarre and unbelievable indiscretions.
Unfortunately, Elton bullies the novel completely out of shape to force his theme to the centre focus again and again. Elton shows no sympathy for his characters as they get slaughtered to keep the action moving.  The disgusting denouement is dramatic but also uncomfortably comic.
A great "holiday read", but one that leaves a sense of dissatisfaction not dissimilar to that felt after a B grade movie.

Stephen Digby

Transported by the Well Diggers Daughter

Last night, I was transported to the Alpilles region of France at the beginning of World War I.
The Well Diggers Daughter is the most recent film remake of the work of novelist film-maker Marcel Pagnol.

His novels and films evoke the rich beauty of the French countryside and the interplay of the material environment, distant war, cultural values and personality.

I normally consider films as creations that warrant less serious consideration than text, but the sequence of Pagnol films that I have watched so far have left impressions on me as powerful as any novel.

Pagnol, and the film-makers adapting his work, manage to weave a sense of authenticity as well as dramatic tension through the unpredictable mix of faults and virtues in the characters.
In other films, the short time frame available often results in characters being redrawn as caricature.  A person or a cultural value needs to be the "baddie" - the evil cause of the problem.  Redeeming features of the "baddy" risk confusion and reduced emotional impact.

This film is a delightful piece of literature in motion - as well as a starting point for planning a trip to rural France !

I look forward to more remakes as well as watching his originals as well.

To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf)

"Light" meaning "not deep"

The book is a set of excerpts from private remembrances while at the Ramsays family beach house.
The remembrances centre round Mrs Ramsay both while she is alive as well as after her death. There is s strong sense of melancholy about human transience set against the impassiveness of the house itself - and the lighthouse.
Just as the book begins to envelope me within the small world of the Ramsays, the self-conscious cleverness disturbs the engagement. My mind recedes from the Ramsays and instead sees Virginia Woolf sitting and thinking of some phrase for readers impressed more by cleverness than simple sincerity.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book for this cleverness of language, as well as the many short sections where I was transported, illuminated and intrigued.

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (Maryanne Wolf)

Reading - the greatest technology

Fascinating explanation of the way that human brains have not only evolved the capacity to create mental simulations based on anything "imaginable", but, just as importantly, to add these to the memory store of "experiences" that then inform future action.

Wolf's main focus then moves to the power of the written word to share these simulations with others - in effect sharing the imaginative capacity of the species across time and space.

The book then moves into highly specific (and thoroughly referenced) discussion of reading function and pathology.

The rather intriguing title is explained in the following excerpt:

In this book I use the celebrated French novelist Marcel Proust as metaphor and the largely under appreciated squid as analogy for two very different aspects of reading.  
Proust saw reading as a kind of intellectual "sanctuary", where human beings have access to thousands of different realities they might never encounter or understand otherwise.  Each of these new realities is capable of transforming reader' intellectual lives without ever requiring them to leave the comfort of their armchairs.
Scientists in the 1950's used the long central axon of the shy but cunning squid to understand how neurons fire and transmit to each other, and in some cases to see how neurons repair and compensate when something goes awry.  
At a different level of study, cognitive neuro-scientists today investigate how various cognitive (or mental) processes work in the brain.
The study of what the human brain has to do to read, and of its clever ways of adapting when things go wrong, is analogous to the study of the squid in earlier neuroscience.

Interestingly she does not reference Alain de Botton's "How Proust Can Change Your Life" (1998).

The Downfall of Parody ?

Just noticed the news story Hitler Downfall Videos Being Pulled From YouTube.

Of course that inspired me to have a look....

Love the one about taking down the rants: Hitler finds out about the Downfall Parodies

Commercialism - A Glogal Hegemony

Most behaviours with biological or cultural value are treated as commodities, so they can be regulated as “trade” e.g. the commodity of sex is controlled via laws of marriage/ prostitution/ incest/ paedophilia/ bestiality/ etc etc etc.

The global triumph of “commercialism” as a shallow but all pervading “philosophy” has been aggressively widening the definition of commodities to include all expressions of thought (speaking, writing, singing, painting etc). Their audience thus needs to be regulated at any original performance (e.g. did you realise it was illegal to sing a song that you heard at concert at the restaurant later that night ? (See Happy Birthday). Any subsequent expression made by any person exposed to this original performance is also subject to regulation if a court can be convinced that the expression is derivative from the exposure (e.g. your tune sounds similar, your book has similar lines, your film has similar scene etc etc ad nauseam).

As all language meanings are infinitely plastic, the law of copyright has expanded to truly ludicrous dimensions and is treated with contempt by a huge and growing number of the world’s population. Such threats to commercialism’s global hegemony are treated with campaigns of fear – random severe punishment targeted specifically at “ordinary” people.

Silencing Parody is no joke

The above attempts to remove the Hitler “Downfall” parodies from the global community is particularly pernicious.

Satire (unlike copyright) (involving techniques such as parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre) is a social activity crucial to free open society. It is a key point of difference between us and countries that we consider to be oppressive such as the Muslim theocracies, and other tyrannical regimes such as China, Russia, Korea, Sudan etc.
Parody is immensely powerful in highlighting the development of “sacred cows” and forcing justification of things considered "beyond question".

The right to parody all memes should be protected - especially when the parody offends, as this indicates that the parody actually has some power. In our culture, Hitler is perhaps the ONLY remaining universal symbol of evil and this elevates the importance of allowing parody in this specific instance.

Stephen Digby

El Laberinto del fauno (incorrectly translated to Pan's Labyrinth)

Entwining reality and fantasy evoked the inherent "uses of enchantment" as ways that children modify and extend as well as interpret reality. They attempt to crystallise horror from the elusive fluid of moral and physical chaos and then construct a vision of coherent hope. Archetypes, like Pan, reverberate through human culture and provide powerful masks and amplifiers for ideas that may be too frightening to confront overtly.
The director interview on the DVD was fascinating. He mentioned the concern over the renaming of Laberinto del fauno, El as Pan's Labyrinth. He only wanted the faun to faintly allude to Pan and dressed him more as an relic of tree growth. He felt the sexuality that is embedded in any Pan character would distort the relationship in the film.
His vision of a pre-pubescent girl attempt to find meaning while embroiled at the front line of resistance to Franco's new regime is made especially poignant by the historical context. The resistance fighters also live in a horrible moral chaos and despite their sacrifices, temporary local successes and hope at the impending allied victory, we know that they were unaided by the victors of WWII and would have been exterminated sometime during the subsequent decades of Franco's dictatorship.
The dream sequence that the child constructs to add meaning to her own death is an interesting commentary on the contemporary rejection of heaven as seen by "established" churches (especially the Roman Catholic church of Spain). These orthodox heavens have been corrupted by association with the institutions that control them. More and more people are exploring "alternative" religious expressions often made up of a convenient pastiche of influences from anywhere.

Stephen Digby

Reviews:

• New York Post
• Rolling Stone
• Washington Post
• AV Club
• Salon

The water of life

When my children were young and I was a little more frenetic about my work, I suggested to them a series of metaphors:

- if life was cruising, all was well within capacity
- if life was "going swimmingly", I was working hard but succeeding;
- if life was like "treading water", I was working hard but not seeming to get anywhere;
- if life gave one a "sinking feeling", then I was not coping....

It seemed to reach them, and, if I was inattentive, Lucy would sometimes ask spontaneously "are you swimming or treading water ?"