Review: The Snow Queen at Bristol Old Vic

It's always a challenge to find the story that'll make a Christmas play that isn't a panto or done to death already. The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson might seem like a good candidate in that it's pretty wintery, with lots of opportunities for ice and Christmassyness and a bit of central-European scariness all wrapped up in a nice, heartwarming message. In other respects it isn't, as the story is long and rambling and thus, quite difficult to adapt to stage.

This production met some of these challenges magnificently, while falling foul of others. It's a lavish, technically adapt production which wows with effects and fantastic stage design. The Snow Queen herself is a puppet, and a rather scary one. There's goblins and turtles and reindeer and talking parrots and various sub-stories of the main adventure, all created in neat little scenarios, which in their own right are funny and engaging. The costumes are great, the music brilliant, the design amazing.

Photo (c) Mark Douet/BOV

And yet, even as an adult, there's so many twists and turns it's hard to keep up with the story. This wasn't helped by the theatre makers adding another layer, in which the lead male character is clearly having gender issues and nobody in the village understands him, because y'know, they're peasants. The central relationship between the boy and girl characters is redrawn as 'friendship' in which they 'love each other as they are' blah blah. Because having a boy and a girl whose love overcomes evil in a happy ending is obviously too heteronormative these days. There was also a cringy scene in which the supporting characters recap what the heroine learned as a person on her journey, as if there's some sort of Oftsed review due and they're afraid she might not have met her key learning outcomes. It was so Peak Guardian, I can't even.

Anyway, apart from that there were lots of things to enjoy. What there wasn't, in my opinion, was enough snow. I wanted a bit more peril, a bit more cold, a bit more ice and sparkling frostiness, a bit more Northern European menace. The best bits were with the actual Snow Queen, who was genuinely scary. I know I'm old now but when I was a kid, being forced to consider a bleak wasteland of Scandinavian hopelessness was thought to be good for your education. All in all, could have done with a bit more Scandi-noir, a bit less Generation Snowflake. Also: MORE CHRISTMAS.

Verdict
Puppets: yay!
Politics: yikes.
 

Review: Kneehigh Theatre, The Flying lovers of Vitebsk

The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk is the last thing to be directed for Cornish Company Kneehigh by acclaimed director Emma Rice, who is going on to be the Artistic Director at the Globe Theatre in London. This is a very well deserved promotion, since Rice has directed a few absolute corkers for Kneehigh, and in a theatre world which is as sexist as the movies, is probably Britain's foremost female theatre director. 

Kneehigh are also great, with or without Rice, and so I went along to this with pretty high expectations. The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk is about the painter Marc Chagall, and his wife Bella, both born in Vitebsk in Belarus, in what was then Imperial Russia. I knew very little about them, but it's a fascinating story with plenty of theatrical material to milk, passing through love-at-first-sight, a rich-girl/poor-boy wedding, World War One, the Russian Revolution, the artistic revolutions of expressionism and cubism, Paris in the 20s, World War Two, and a flight from occupied France.

However, I felt like all this, in a play, presented a bit of a problem. There were lots of 'explaining history to the audience' moments going on, and what felt like more speech directed at us, the audience, than between the characters. Kneehigh usually make ensemble pieces, with quite a few actors, but this had just two actors and two musicians, and I felt like there might have been less explaining if they'd splashed out on a couple of extra performers.

Apart from this, it's undeniably an enjoyable production, with lovely music and singing, and great dancing, especially from Audrey Brisson who played Bella. There isn't, despite the title, any flying: the title refers to Chagall's paintings.

One effect this production had is to make me want to see more of Chagall's art, so in that sense it could be called a success. Overall, a decent production, with lots of lovely moments, but I felt it was a bit let down by the script.

The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk is at Bristol Old Vic until June 11th.

I'm planning a crime spree for christmas

I dunno about you, but I'm planning a bit of a crime spree over Christmas. Christmas is a bit stressful, and I always find a bit of murder gets me through nicely. It has to be the right kind of murder, though: none of yer scarcely-clad nymphettes pornographically displayed for viewers' delectation around here, thank you! Modern crime is so tedious. I prefer a good old fashioned killing that actually taxes my brain a bit. Glamorous locations are a plus, of course, and anything involving cocktails is a bonus.

If you are looking for a suitable cocktail to do away with some of your offensive relatives, you may be disappointed by A is for Arsenic by Kathryn Harkup, which despite telling in forensic detail how Agatha Christie committed dozens of poisonings, is sadly little help in planning to do away with that great-aunt who just refuses to die. Harkup is a chemist and Agatha Christie fanatic and writes with enormous enthusiasm and knowledge about Christie's favourite modus operandi of murder.

Each chapter details a particular poison and goes through how it works, the history and symptoms, which of Christie's books it features in, examples of real-life poisonings, and the forensic history of how these poisons became detectable. It covers all sorts of weird and strange real-life crimes I'd never heard of, such as a Belgian lady serial killer who killed up to 20 people in the 1930s.

A is For Arsenic is quite fascinating if you are interested in Agatha Christie, or indeed in forensic science or the link between science and literature. Of course I adore Christie for her classic whodunnits, but I had no idea how carefully she constructed her fictional murders, using knowledge she gained working in a hospital pharmacy during World War One.

My main worry about A is for Arsenic was that it would be riddled with spoilers, but Harkup cleverly talks about the murders in Christie's books without giving too much away. Which is good, as my other Christmas reading is this.

A number of Christie's novels were set in the Middle East, which she often visited with her second husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan. Mallowan was fourteen years younger than her. "An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her," Christie once quipped. If you go to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, you can see a beautiful necklace made of ancient beads which Mallowan excavated and had made into a necklace for her.

After years of awful pulpy-looking editions of Christie, the current 30s-themed paperbacks are really handsome. This particular copy came from Topping and Co in Bath, who have the best selection of Agatha Christies, hardback and paperback, I've ever seen in a bookshop. (They are also well stocked with the British Library's Crime Classics series, which includes many other classic 30s whodunnits. I read A Mystery in White last Christmas, and thoroughly enjoyed it.)

If you've only ever watched Christie as a TV adaptation, I really recommend you purchase yourself a book. While the TV adaptations are enjoyable, to appreciate Christie's real cleverness you need to read the text, and experience the full frustration of knowing you read all the clues and still didn't have a clue whodunnit.

There are a few things that you can rely on in a Christie. Apart from murder, these are: an interesting location, poison, and that several suspects will have committed some crime other than the murder. Watching a TV adaptation, its easy to think of it all as twee, but reading the books, with their jealous, grasping families and lying servants, you see Christie had a far from rosy view of humanity, and positively revelled in the less pleasant side of human nature. What she didn't, though, was lay out murder victims as gory, bloody thrills, like many modern crime dramas do. An Agatha Christie may be dark, but it is an exercise in intellectual puzzling rather than voyeurism. Behind the antique detailing, she is quietly subversive too. Her heroes are easily dismissed: an effete little refugee (yes, Hercule Poirot is a refugee) and a little old spinster that nobody takes any notice of.

If you really are too besozzled by Christmas to read a book, there is a new adaptation of And Then There Were None starting on BBC1 on Boxing day.

I'll be watching, of course, but I don't feel British TV does crime that well, it's either a bit creepy, like godawful sexy-serial-killer outing The Fall, or too predictable. Who wants to see a miserable detective trying to solve a murder when you already know the answer?

I am however a big fan Scandi-Noir thriller the Bridge. I like to think Christie would have approved of the Bridge's Autistic Lady Detective and everybody-has-a-motive plotlines, so I may just dig in with a box set of that.

It's not over till the fat lady's carved

Last week I was lucky enough to meet this tiny yet voluptuous lady, who is 25,000 years old. At the time she was carved, Europe was deep in the Ice Age, and mammoths still walked the tundra.

What you can't see from the photograph is that she really is beautiful, lovingly and stunningly carved. There are other statues, of similar age, and similar type, in existence, but this one is jaw-droppingly good. Every roll of flesh is sinuously and sensuously curved, full of comfort in power. If you put it in a room of 20th century sculpture, it would still stand out as a piece of genius amongst the other, lesser works.

The Venus of Willendorf is held in the Natural History Museum in Vienna, rather than in the art museum, which I found odd. The two museums are opposite each other. In between is a statue of Empress Maria Theresa, the Hapsburg Empress who ruled over Austria, and about half of Europe besides, from 1740 to 1780. In the Art Museum opposite, you can see all the artistic and cultural glories the Hapsburgs collected, from paintings by Rubens to clocks and jewelled automata.

Maria Theresa rebuilt the massive Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna, the seat of Hapsburg power. It is an enormous construction, oozing power and luxury, a monument to the height of European civilisation before modernity, in the shape of the industrial revolution, and often violent movements towards democracy, tore it apart. Opulent, overwhelming, over-decorated, as complacent as it is brilliant, the palace in the end witnessed the last death throes of the world it ruled.

The Venus of Willendorf is tiny, and the Palace of Schoenbrunn is huge, yet they have more than one thing in common. The Venus has been described as a fertility goddess, but I couldn't help wondering why it should be an image of anyone more imaginary than the flesh and and blood empress. Maria Theresa had 16 children, and farmed them out in marriage to the royal families of Europe, to secure her empire's power. The most famous of them, Marie Antoinette, lost her head in the French Revolution.

I wonder if, were we to lose the records of 18th-century Europe, and in a few millennia dig up the statue of Maria-Theresa, whether we wouldn't call her a fertility goddess too. What if, like Maria-Theresa, the Venus too held very real political sway above the fertile Danube Valley?

But that is not the only thing they have in common. In each monument, there is a glimpse of something at its height and its apogee, a moment of brilliance and of confidence. Both have taken time, and a great deal of thought, and talent, to arrive at that place. They are not the product of humans searching perilously for food or safety or shelter. They are a statement of presence: here I am. Here we are, not preoccupied with the necessities of survival, but instead, proving that we have conquered all that. We are rich enough to get damn fat.

Maria Theresa presided over a court that fed on all the inventions of the enlightenment: ideas, culture and music, and a Europe that was about to gather itself into the convulsions of industry, and of violent demands for equality. It would never look back. The carver of the Venus of Willendorf, whether they knew it or not, lived in a time in which humanity gathered itself to move out of nomadism, and towards the thing we call civilisation. In each of these objects there is a spark, as if a point of light illuminates the next turn in the maze.

Of course, both these civilisations are gone. Nobody knows who the Willendorf Venus was, if she was anyone at all, if her many children gave her sway over the neighbouring tribes of Europe, if she prospered in peace, or in war. In 1914, Maria-Theresa's great grandson Franz Josef, the last, elderly Emperor of Austria - bereaved of his wife and children, and living more or less or in one convenient room of the mile-wide palace - finally signed the declaration that brought about World War One.

Vienna is now a charming backwater, full of memories and beautiful buildings. It did not slide gracefully into decline. Much the brilliance, intellectual, cultural, and artistic, that had outlived the Empire was murdered, destroyed and thrown into exile by the horrors of Nazism.

Looking at the evidence of these horrors, it easy to wonder if a plunge into darkness must follow the spark, as inevitably as night follows day. Despite this, I can't help feeling that at each little spark, we move forward, somehow.

I am fairly sure these sparks happen regularly, in the long haul of history, but never in the same place, or quite the same way. I wonder if anyone really knows, or notices, at the time, what they're witnessing. Do they feel changed? Did the person who carved that lady out of rock look at their finished work, and think 'we will never go back from here?' Or did they just get on with the next thing in hand, and wonder what might be for dinner?

As for myself, whether I live in a spark, or a horrible slide into the abyss, I have absolutely no idea.

Review: Terror and wonder: the Gothic Imagination at British Library

This week I was lucky to have work stuff in London, so I had a spare afternoon to visit 'Terror and Wonder: the Gothic Imagination' at the British Library. Bearing in mind that this is a library, not a museum, and the majority of the exhibits are books, you might be forgiven for expecting it to be a bit unchallenging. About four minutes in, I thought so too, then two hours later I was still there, poring over the exhibits.

The exhibition begins with the Castle of Otranto, by Walpole, the original British Gothic Novel written in the 18^th Century, and works its way through the Romantics, the influence of Gothic on Jane Austen, the Brontes, Victorian sensationalism, Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson, Dracula and the history of vampires, Hammer Horror and modern gothic, and finishes with an exhibition of photos by Martin Parr, of Goth Weekend in Whitby, 2014.

I was totally blown away by seeing original manuscripts of Frankenstein and Jane Eyre. Seeing them in their handwritten state is akin to looking at the innards of a bomb, as one suddenly realises what a massive effect such a small, fragile-looking thing may have when it explodes into being. Shelley was only 19 when she wrote Frankenstein, and it is chaotic and scribbled, with Percy Shelley's nerdy, pedantic handwriting in the margin, like the annoying boyfriend who thinks he knows better. Frankenstein is a book about technology and about nightmares, and was written when both the horrors and wonders of the industrial revolution were steaming into full gear. Looking at the manuscript, I felt a moment of unease, a lurching sideways like the deck of an unsteady ship, and I thought, what an upending of the old order, what a moment of terror, that nineteen-year-old girls might be let loose to document our fears and dreams, and set down the ghosts of the future, and all the the things that frighten us. I have seen all the usual things and images that anyone in the 21^st century has, but I honestly can't remember seeing anything more transgressive than those scribbles by Shelley and the Brontes, scraped away with a quill pen, in candlelight and darkness.

I was less fascinated by Dickens but it is interesting to be reminded that what now seems like cosy old-worldy Victorianism was actually written with the intention of revealing injustices and horrific poverty, and that he faced complaints and lawsuits because of it. Also, as the exhibition points out, how the background of gothic changed from one of rural horror to a very urban one. I was startled to find links between things that I was familiar with, but hadn't connected: that the play or Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde premiered at the theatre at the exact time that the Ripper murders were happening, and that the manager of said theatre was Mr Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. 

Some lovely non-book items from the 20^th century included costume and set design from theatre and horror movies, as well as a brief section detailing the rise of modern 'goth'. Martin Parr's photographs give their subjects dignity without concealing any flaws or oddities, and the homemade outfits portrayed are far more interesting than the one underwhelming dress by Alexander McQueen.

There was actually a huge amount to take in and think about, but what I particularly liked was that there was no attempt to dumb down a whistlestop tour of the subject, which nonetheless only touched on half the material it could. The subject is dealt with chronologically, not thematically, so you can see how the genre developed and changed as it went on, but that it keeps being rolled around to deal with the same issues – deep-seated unease around change, cultural identity, sexuality, and social conflict, that it first did right at the start of the industrial revolution. Also how, as a form of art often dismissed as 'trashy' – suitable for impressionable females and excitable poor people – it has consistently dealt with the big questions in society, like gender and sex, technology and colonialism, in the way that 'respectable' literature has not.

I really feel that the British Library should congratulate itself on this exhibition. It's like the kind of public communications that fell out of fashion a few decades ago, when somebody very intelligent and expert just explains something they know a hell of a lot about, with some fabulous and fragile objects, but no CGI. It made my brain hurt, in the best possible way. Also, I now have a reading list as long as my arm.

Finally, to go off at a tangent, if you think all this is only interesting in a historical, literary, intellectual sense, I have to point out you're wrong. Why? I'll tell you a story. Like a proper gothic story, it starts with a country bumpkin (me) who gets lost somewhere alien and terrifying (London underground). At night, obviously. I passed through Westminster, where the bomb blast doors protect the politicians, and up from the Jubilee Line, which looks like something designed for the set of Aliens. I ended up at Blackfriars, under the foot of the shard, where the cranes still worked at ten at night, and a human feels ant-sized, and the City squats like the operating headquarters of some alien invaders, over an older, more human-sized version of London. And then another station, I'd lost track of names by then, brand new and brutally designed in concrete and lit by a violent blue light. Why? Why has someone made these things like this? I am not an especially anxious person in foreign environments, but these places made me afraid. Because somebody made up a nightmare, then built it. These things are not frightening by accident, but because someone designed fear right into it. 

Humans are one big mush of fear and wonder, really, and we don't like to admit to it. But if you are able to recognise the shapes and tropes of it - and give those things names - then you will better see the strings and ropes of it. And remember that monsters always, have a weakness. 

XX

Review: Dracula, Bristol Old Vic

Like most people I love a good vampire story, preferably one in which no-one sparkles. If you too like vampires I can't recommend anything more than that you leg it down to Bristol Old Vic immediately to see Mark Bruce's dance version of Dracula. It's on in Bristol till Saturday and then at these other venues.

All photos: Farrows Creative

The story of Dracula has been told and retold so many times it's become little but camp and caricature in most versions, but this, which takes place on a half-dark stage filled with a wrought-iron gate, is genuinely scary. Despite the lack of dialogue the story is always easy to follow, and stays fairly true to the Victorian original.

Using ten performers, five male five female, events unfold via a variety of dance styles, all danced with passion and athleticism. There is plenty of darkness, plenty of blood, and plenty of death. Dracula is always awfully sexy, and the fact that he never speaks means his physical presence says more of his powers than any Hammer Horror ever could.

The original Dracula novel was written in 1897 by Bram Stoker, and for the time is startlingly modern in format: there is no writer commenting on the action, as in most Victorian novels, but the reader has to put the story together from fragments of letters and journals. One reason the story has stuck around is that it's about things that still bother us: sex, death, unnerving foreignors, and the eternal battle between civilised respectability and uncivilised passions. Most of these are things that bother us on a sub-verbal level, so there's probably few better ways to represent these conflicts than in an unspoken format.

One of the things I liked most about this production is that it had many contemporary resonances (at the beginning, a blood-crazed Dracula and his black-hooded wolves steal a baby from a screaming, head-scarfed peasant woman, like some awful news story from Iraq or Syria) without losing the quality of the time it was written in. The score used many beautiful (and unusual) pieces of classical music, the costumes were simple and appropriate, and the wrought iron gates, finally, festooned with the bodies of the vampire brides, looked like an Aubrey Beardsley drawing.

I would very happily sit through this production again, as I'm sure there were things I missed. Also, it was just beautiful.

Review: The Libertine, Bristol Old Vic

I am always a sucker for a few ruffles and double-entendres, so theoretically The Libertine, the latest thing at Bristol Old Vic's main house, should be right up my street.

Photo: Eoin Carey

This production, by Glasgow's Citizen's Theatre has lots to recommend it, from excellent sets and costumes to great acting and a witty script. It follows the fate of the real-life John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, who was a famous rake and poet at the court of Charles II. Rochester, who points out at the beginning of the play that he is quite unlikeable, then proceeds to drink, shag, and provoke other people until he finally ensures his own destruction.

I couldn't find anything to fault in any of the performances, and it was great to see a play with a whole bunch of functional female characters, who have personalities and motivations in their own right. There was certainly plenty of ruffles, and double-entendres, and I did genuinely laugh.

Nonetheless, I just couldn't get caught up in the earl's #seventeenthcenturyproblems enough to feel involved. The Earl is rich, he is privileged, he commands the love of several women, to whom he is routinely unfaithful. He might be a genius, but can't be arsed to write a play to prove it. It's true that the character says you will not like him, but at the end, I couldn't help wondering, really, is he an iconoclast, or just a bit of a self-indulgent bore? I mean this as no disrespect to the actor that played the part, since this is a question for the playwright.

The play the Libertine was written by Stephen Jeffreys 20 years ago, and the odd thing for me is not how much it whiffs of the Restoration, which it is supposed to evoke, but of the cultural mores of the baby-boomer generation, with their veneration of rock stars, and the cult of the drunken genius rebelling against conformity. Twenty years later, amidst the massive and unshifting corruption of politics, the unravelling of the ghastly sex offences of the rich and famous in a series of almost-televised trials, and the omnipresent lurk of pornography on the internet, the poor Earl's attempts at debauchery look positively mild.

To put it bluntly, if you find Russell Brand dangerous and edgy, you'll like this. If you don't, you won't. Personally, I find myself caring less and less for anti-heroes in any story I'm exposed to. I'm so cynical about cynicism, these days. Perhaps when one lives in harder times there seems less romance in self-destruction, and more in the simple act of surviving.

Review: Jane Eyre, Bristol Old Vic

I love Jane Eyre, it's one of my favourite books. I love film adaptations of it. Nonetheless, I'd have thought it a hard book to put on the stage, not least because it's quite long and complex, but also because lots of the action takes place in open, bleak locations.

This new production at Bristol Old Vic gets round the first issue by dividing the novel into two parts. It gets round the second by having almost no scenery at all, just a structure that the actors work round. When the play began I looked at this dubiously. I was even more dubious about the first five minutes, in which the infant Jane Eyre is born and orphaned. Fortunately, my doubts were swiftly dismissed as the play got into the swing of things. I was pleased they hadn't tried to modernise Charlotte Bronte's magnificent dialogue, instead picking judiciously from her words, adding a few new where necessary. But the stirring speeches in which Jane Eyre stakes her claim to justice, humanity and dignity are present and correct, and as moving as they should be.

Photo: Simon Annand

I was also really pleased that the costumes were undistracting, and era-appropriate. The plain set worked well, matched with the simple costumes and - though this might seem a strange thing to praise - absolutely brilliant lighting design. A number of lanterns did multiple duty as the stars, the windows of Thornfield, and also as the fires that the characters huddle over. It made for a very atmospheric production, in which there was often darkness or half-light on the stage. You really feel yourself clinging to the little warmth which warms poor frozen Jane, as she arrives at Thornfield for the very first time. In the scenes at Lowood School, they threw up the giant, terrifying shadow of the proprietor, making you feel you'd shrunk to the size of a child.

One thing which marked this version out from others I'd seen was that it was very much interested in the journey of Jane, and that Mr Rochester was only a part of this. In other versions the affair with Rochester is the story, with all else thrown into the background, whereas in this I felt that Jane Eyre herself, not Jane Eyre the romance, was really the item of interest. Whether this was because the production was directed by a woman, and so came out with a slightly different emphasis, I can't say. But I liked it. It's a subtle difference, but it's a difference between a story in which love wins the day, or one in which integrity and courage wins the day. This version, I think, was the latter.

Any actor who plays Jane Eyre has a challenge on her hands, as she needs to be both small physically and yet great as a person, and rather mousy, yet have enough attractive about her to drive a man to distraction. Madeleine Worral, as Jane Eyre, was absolutely and entirely perfect, being both dwarfed by the emptiness of the stage, and yet quite able to command it. As for Mr Rochester, played by Felix Hayes, he was fine, though a bit shouty for my tastes. But he had a hipster beard and I'm sorry, Mr Rochester should not have a hipster beard. Also, he was sometimes upstaged by his dog. The dog, played by Craig Edwards, was one of the highlights of the production. Another highlight was Melanie Marshall, whose beautiful, haunting singing was worth the ticket price alone. It's such a relief and a pleasure to see female performers who are not interchangeably blonde, and who have a bit of presence and force to offer.

My only quibble is that I'm not totally convinced they had to stretch it to two separate plays, and do think a bit of judicious cutting could have seen it off as one (maybe a three-act?) play. Nonetheless, a thoroughly excellent production, and one of the best things I've seen at Bristol Old Vic in a long time. I really hope it makes it beyond Bristol, as it definitely deserves more than a short run.

Jane Eyre Parts 1 and 2 is on till 29th march.

Borgen, and Other Kinds of Stories.

Saturday night, I watched Borgen on BBC4. I can't even begin to describe how much I love Borgen. In case you haven't watched or don't get it: it's a TV series, in Danish, about a fictional Prime Minister, Birgitte Nyborg, her spin-doctor and his journalist girlfriend. A typical episode will kick off with Birgitte wondering who to dispatch to Brussels to be Danish representative in the EU. It sounds so tedious you think of turning off entirely. Then somehow, 50 minutes later, you're screaming, Noooooooo, Birgittte! at the TV, have spilt beer down the sofa, and are possibly blubbing hopelessly.

It is, as well as being exceedingly good, all exceedingly Scandinavian.

I was thinking about this the other night when I'd gone to the cinema. I was sitting in there, waiting for the movie, and the trailers came on. Normally I like this bit. Anyway, the trailers started. I can't even remember what they were for, just what I thought as they rolled away. 'An American story', I thought, and then the same thing, and then the same thing again. There was something with lots of explosions, a man wrongly accused of an air crash and a film about Lincoln. And I felt like I'd seen them all, already.

Now, to be clear, I have nothing against a story told by Americans, made by Americans, with Americans in it. What I mean is the type of narrative, the underlying story which drives the thing along.

Personally, as somebody who writes stories, I think that stories are massively important to people. They help people make sense of the world around them. They also influence people in fundamental ways, in teaching them what is important, their place in the universe, and how they should deal with people.

Man with Gun: So very 20th Century

Now, regardless of genre, there is one story that Hollywood loves telling, over and over again. Hollywood grew up and boomed as America did, in the first half of the 20th Century. For years, it made films about how a man strode out into wilderness, defeated evil and brought home the lady. It still does, in a way. In the classic American narrative, one man (be he a soldier, president or explorer) goes out, and through his courage, strength and moral righteousness, saves the day.

It's not like the Americans are the only country whose films mirror their national obsessions. British films are often about class, French films are often about sex. The most successful German films in recent years have been about moral redemption from dictatorship and political excess: the only South African film to have been internationally successful is a comedy about conflict between species. It's just that the Americans have a larger and better-funded film and TV industry than the rest of these countries, and that's why, often, you're watching an American narrative, with all this entails.

Tired-looking woman making compromises: so very 21st Century.

Birgitte Nyborg is not like an American hero. She is the head of a shaky coalition government that is permanently on the verge of falling apart. Borgen would different if it was an American series. Probably, there would be a terrorist threat to Denmark, and Birgitte Nyborg would save the nation, in some kind of dramatic way. In the actual series, Birgitte never saves Denmark from anything. She spends too much time in an office, wrangling and shouting at people. She doesn't even always succeed: in one episode she undermines an ally to make him more compliant, only to find he has resigned and tipped the entire government into crisis. Her personal life falls apart: her husband leaves her, and her daughter has panic attacks.

And yet, I think this is why people like her. She is, in the end, like us: she lives in an ordinary house and struggles, on a daily basis, to do the right thing in trying, contradictory circumstances. She isn't always terribly ethical, and she isn't always right or successful. But unlike many of the politicians in the real world, she does have one redeeming quality, which is that she does actually care. Also, she keeps on caring, and trying to sort it out, long past the point where most of us would have thrown in the towel. And for that, she is a hero, and you're left in no doubt of it.

The thing is, she is a hero of a different kind. She doesn't ever stride out into the desert, or do anything alone. She is part of a web of people, some helpful, some compliant, some absolutely mad or malign. And this, this web of interdependence, is the thing that you will never see in an American story. And it was as I was sitting there, in the cinema, that I thought of how very very bored I was of seeing that same old story, played out again and again.

Literary Turkish Delight, anyone?

Dear blog-botherers, I am on my high horse again. Not strictly, because I don't have a horse. I really wanted a horse when I was a kid because we lived in the countryside but were too poor to afford a paddock. This formative experience has left me with a compensatory tendency to get on my high horse throughout my life. To be honest, I quite like it up here.

This week I am on my high horse about books. Yes, I know the middle east is falling apart and there's a eurozone crisis and double-dip recession an' all, so books might not seem like the most important thing in the universe, but (bear with me) I sort of think there's a connection. You see, books are a good place to find answers. They are also a good place to ask questions. And I may not be the only person, right now, who has a few questions. How did we end up here? Why did nobody notice while all that happened? Were we all asleep?

Just Eat This. Everything Will Be Fine.

To which I answer, no, we were lulled into a false sense of security. It's like when Edmund goes to Narnia and the White Witch gives him Turkish Delight. Everything goes all sugary and rosy and you just do what they tell you.

Ah, Narnia. It's all about the great struggle between good and evil, right? And hanging to your integrity despite all the temptations on the way. With a bit of Christian symbolism on top, though to be honest I never noticed that until somebody told me, what with us being a bit of heathen household.

Anyway, some of that Narnia stuff is quite dark, right, like the bit where they go underground and there's a whole race of people living there who've never seen sunlight, and there's the Prince tied to the chair and he's under a spell except for one hour a night when he's sane. Scared the crap out me, that one. Poor CS Lewis, he didn't live in the easiest of times. He served in WW1 and lived through another war, and his wife died of cancer. That's why, when you read his stuff, it's not especially comforting. There's a 100 year winter and Mr Tumnus get arrested by the secret police and people get tied to chairs and stuff.

Anyway, Narnia is all a bit mid-20th Century and for gods-sake-somebody-invent-central-heating, right? The 21st Century equivalent of Narnia is Harry Potter. Harry Potter, poor orphaned child, is unwanted and unloved but then he discovers he has special powers and is taken away to a special world where everyone is special and they have history and culture and weird sport and stuff that his vile relatives on the housing estate don't. He is so amazed to be taken in by the special world where everyone is special that he takes on board all its beliefs and values. And then he gets involved in a war against Voldemort, who is a bit like a terrorist, right? Except that the muggle people outside his special circle of People Who Understand don't understand or appeciate that he is fighting this war on behalf of them. They don't get it. How the special people are really doing all the stuff for them, the muggles, who just watch television, and make crap, stupid comments all the time.

Anyway, that's children's books. Who cares, they're just children's books, right? Real grown-ups read proper, grown-up books. Like, oh, lets take some bestsellers from the last decade, that are not only bestsellers but actually considered clever as well. Birdsong, for a start.

That's a novel by Sebastien Faulks, in which a young man goes to France and has an affair with a married Frenchwoman. Apparently, having an affair with a married Frenchwoman is the height of sophistication for middle class people. I can't slag it off too much, since I haven't read it. I did try, but I got as far as the sex scene where 'she surrendered to the impalement' whereupon I fell off my chair laughing. I considered it unwise, for my own safety, and that of the furniture, to continue. I don't know if Sebastien Faulks asked any women about sex, but I for one, have never 'surrendered to the impalement'. It sounds like something that'd happen if you tried to climb the park railings while drunk, slipped, and passed out in agony. I can't remember any of my female friends mentioning they'd surrendered to the impalement either, which I'm sincerely glad of, as park railings can do terrible things to a lady.

Sebastien Faulks wrote another book, Charlotte Gray, in which a woman goes to France in the war and has an affair with a Frenchman, to prove how sophisticated she is. Then she saves some Jewish Children, to prove what a great person she is. I haven't read that either, I was afraid there might be more impalement.

After this, Faulks wrote a James Bond novel, in which Bond retires, buys a run-down vinyard in France, and bangs on about it incessantly, thus revealing himself to be a crushing middle-class bore. I made that up. Sorry.

Anyway, I have read Atonement, by Ian McEwan, in which there is some confusion over somebody impaling something and some swearing, and also, France. Atonement is the ultimate post-modernist novel, in that it gets you all carey-sharey with the characters, and then it turns out, after a series of middle-bogglingly implausible plot devices, that they've been dead for ages, and what we're witnessing is a terribly terribly clever writer (hi, Ian!) messing with our heads and 'atoning' by writing their story. Which I'm sure will more than make it up to them, since they're DEAD.

Atonement takes place in a big house, which, apart from France, is one of the things that keeps popping up in successful novels from the last decade. Chocolat, anyone?

Anyway, the main male character in Atonement is terribly clever and honest and sexy and everything, but he's also a servant's son. So when he has the temerity to shag the upper-class daughter of the house in the library, thus proving He Does Not Know His Place in the World, he has to pay for it by getting sent to prison for a crime he hasn't committed, and then dying. But it's ok, because he gets immortalised by a really clever upper class person, the writer, who was controlling everything, all along.

(If you can't cope with all that post-modern layering, you could try bestselling Richard and Judy fave, The House At Riverton, which has er, remarkable similarities to Atonement, without the writerly layers)

Another of Ian McEwan's bestsellers is about a really clever upper-class person who controls everything: Saturday. In this 200 page apologia for Colonel Blair's Misadventures in the Middle East, a brain surgeon runs into a lower class man who is stupid, violent, and dying of a disease which only the clever upper class man can cure. Which he does, despite the stupid, violent lower class man sexually assaulting his daughter, who, to show she is classy, lives in France. In between that, he ruminates about how he has special knowledge about terrorism that shows that he is clever. Also, he owns a really nice townhouse.

So, in summation, if you were an alien and came and read some of the best-selling literature of the last decade, you would be forgiven in thinking that we had three main concerns as a society:

1) Big Houses.
2) Class (and sex)
3) France.

Which is kind of funny really because that was the decade that everyone belived that house prices would go up for ever. You were, in the naughties, kind of defined by how big your house was, and how many of them you had your hands on, how much money you could make from them. It was also the decade in which being working class became shameful, and they invented the word 'chav'. Everyone was aspirational. Nobody was going to do any manual work any more, except immigrants, who were to be taken advantage of, and pitied. As for sex, you could be distracted by as much of it as you liked - on TV, in magazines, as long as it was beautiful celebrities doing it. As for you and your yucky bits, take them away, please.

France. It's where upper middle class people go for their holidays. That's why it keeps rearing its head. If novelists were more working class, you'd be reading bestselling thrillers set in the Costa del Sol. Honest. It's also a metaphor for a more genteel country, in which there aren't loads of immigrants snuggling up to you on buses and playing their music too loud. Of course, in actual fact most of France isn't like that, but hey, the upper-middle class novelists don't go to cities, they go to Provence. Yawn.

What I am saying is that much of the best-selling literature of the last decade or so is staggeringly conservative and reactionary. It is obsessed with property. It is obsessed with the lifestyles of the upper and upper-middle classes: big houses, public schools, long holidays in France.

I do understand that we weren't forced to consume all this reactionary rubbish. Some of it is even quite well-written rubbish. I do understand that Harry Potter is magical, that it's fun to imagine having an affair in a great 1930's house. The trouble is, none of it provides any answers to anything. It doesn't even ask any questions. It's Turkish Delight.

And you know where that ends, Edmund. You wake up, imprisoned, freezing, and knowing that you made a complete prat of yourself.

__________________________________________________________

Incidentally, if anyone can point me at any recent fiction examining how or why we ended up in the shit, do please recommend it to me. Because I've looked, and I can't find any.

Thank you.

Film heroines: stop snivelling!

Ladies, I bring you depressing news. 'In her shoes' was on TV again last night. In case you had the good fortune to be doing something more exciting, I shall let you know what you missed. 'In Her Shoes' is a chick flick. You can tell its a chick flick, cos it mentions shoes.

In this film, Toni Collette is single and needy, her sister Cameron Diaz is a wino and thief, and their Gran Shirley Maclaine is lonely and heartless. The ladies' mother is, er, dead from mental illness. Yes, its a film for girls, girls, so it's about shoes, and neediness. With lots of boyfriend stuff thrown in. I wasn't watching this miserable specimen of a movie, but I did a while ago, one hapless evening.

Clara. Worth Saluting. Hell Yeah.

Next day, by coincidence, I'd booked a ticket to see a silent film. 'Wings', was the first film to win Best Picture Oscar, and it stars Clara Bow. To sum up the plot, tomboyish Clara is in love with the boy next door, and tries to get in there by helping him fix his car. Unfortunately he goes off to WW1, leaving Clara the car. She then signs up for ambulance driving in France, survives a bombardment, and catches up with him in a racy Paris nightclub, where she seizes him from the clutches of a baaad woman. She's about to get her wicked way, when he's summoned back to the front. She thinks he's dead, but he comes back to her in the end. And not once, ladies and gents, does Clara's lip wobble. Nor does she think about shoes.

'Wings' was made in 1927. 'In Her Shoes' was made in 2005. This puzzles me. Why, in 1927, did we have film heroines that fixed cars and fought wars and went hell-for-leather after a man, when 80 or so years later, we can't? Quite when did displaying courage, vim, vigour and wit, become hideously unfeminine? I mean, Clara Bow was hot. She was a hell of a lot sexier than some neurotic female weeping and obsessing about shoes.

I was pondering this again, a few weeks ago, while watching 'Aliens' on TV. Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley, otherwise known as Sigourney Weaver, first hit the screen in 1979. Weaver's most recent sci-fi role was mediocre 3D-fest 'Avatar', in which she didn't play the lead, was represented by a computerised animation much of the time, and looked bored when she wasn't. Which only reinforces my suspicion that as the years pass, the likelihood of feisty female characters in films gets worse, not better. 

In real life, women have made a lot of progress since 1927. Even since 1979, when Ripley first appeared on film. (I mean, we now have Hilary Clinton as the foreign secretary of the US. Hilary Clinton is a bit like Ripley, in that she can order a drone strike on your house, which is about the closest you can get to nuking it from orbit. I digress.) So I don't understand why, when it comes to movies, progress seems to be running in the opposite direction. Why are there all these films portraying women as dreadful, drippy twerps?

Ladies, we need to send a message to Hollywood. GIVE US CLARA BACK. OK, I know she's dead, but at least you could get someone to play her. Or at the very least, can somebody give Sigourney Weaver a decent job? Cause if I am subjected to one more film with shoes or dresses in the title, I am, personally, writing to the foreign secretary, and asking for a drone strike on Hollywood.

The Financial Crisis Explained, via Downton Abbey

I have lost my ability to watch news about the ongoing economic crisis. When I see Angela Merkel on TV, my brain blanks out what she's saying and goes: 'uh... lalala...ooh, she looks tired'. Christine Lagarde: 'yeah... blah... wow, nice suit'. No disrespect to either of these ladies, both of whom I hold in better regard than the average fuckwit who governs us, but I just can't concentrate on what they're saying.

I feel I am not alone. Last week a man in London lost $2billion, causing a slight raised eyebrow, followed by a wave of boredom. On thursday, the London Stock Exchange crashed through the 5000 barrier, causing millions across the nation to skip straight to the 2nd item in the newspaper.

Across the world, little numbers on people's computer screens are dying. And nobody, except the alleged owners of the alleged numbers, really cares. I have a theory about why. 1) Most people cannot understand economics. 2) Nobody believes that money is real anyway 3) Everyone has long-since concluded we are governed by a bunch of corrupt, incompetent theives, and frankly, we expect no less of 'em. 4) They are out panic-buying beans, before there's a queue for panic-buying beans.

The general and fundamental problem is that we have a ruling class who, despite the endless speeches, really have no idea how to deal with a massive crisis, because they were brought up in the previous century, when everything was hunky-dory. Bit like in 1914. Which brings me onto my next point. If the financial crisis isn't exercising the nation's imagination, I tell you what is: the return of Downton Abbey to our TV screens. I know, because I have a special twitometer which tells me these things. However, watching Downton Abbey is a bit like the financial crisis, and I'm going to explain why. Pay attention at the back, please!

1) The Big House = The Big Society. A small proportion of it loaf around, wondering about how they can best pass on their money, while the majority of the inhabitants are busy scrubbing floors. Chances of it surviving Series 2/Global Financial Crash 2 = depends who gets shot in the process.

 2) Violet, Dowager Countess Grantham, is Christine Largarde, while Isobel Crawley is Angela Merkel. Since one is Aristocratic/French and the other is Bourgeois/German, these two grand dames don't see eye to eye.

Dame Maggie Smith is

the Director of the IMF

Chances of surviving Series 2/Global Financial Crash 2 = Dowager Countess Lagarde will still be wearing great outfits and looking down aristocratic nose, long after last assault/austerity program has finished, while practical frumpster Isobel/Angela will try to implement lots of useful schemes to allievate disaster, making not much difference whatsoever. Penelope Wilton has, in fact, already signed to play Merkel in forthcoming movie Downfall 2: the Eurozone.*

Penelope Wilton is

The German Chancellor

3) The Earl of Crawley = politicians everywhere. Likes to think he's a decent, liberal sort of chap. In reality, unable to tie his shoelaces without staff doing it for him. Mostly thinks about how he can bequeath his title to a suitable successor, and is bit baffled by intrusion of real problem. Deluded by grandeur of own position. Chances of surviving Series 2/Global Financial Crash 2 = unlikely to go near any real explosions, at any time.

 4) Matthew = the middle classes. Initially derided for being a bit arriviste, and for doing actual work instead of just owning wealth, in a crisis his common sense, decency, and willingness to get on with the job in hand are showing his real value. Unfortunately, right now, his job in hand is to get slaughtered/shot at. Chances of surviving Series 2/Global Financial Crash 2 without being maimed, damaged, or otherwise traumatised = virtually nil.

5) Cora, Countess Crawley = The Americans. Having bailed everyone out during the backstory/Recession 1.0, they have no more cash to throw at anyone's problems. Chances of pulling something out of the hat to get everyone through Series 2/Global Financial Crash 2 without blood-letting = none whatsoever.

6) Lady Mary Crawley = The youth of Europe. Ideally would like to form an equal alliance with the middle classes, but may end up in soul-destroying bondage to some disgusting old man with money, in order to keep body and soul together. Chances of getting through Series 2/Global Financial Crash 2 with dignity intact = not much, though may hold out for a happy ending eventually, by advantage of being younger than everyone else.

7) Hot chauffeur Tom Branson = the indignados and associated activist class. Always banging on about socialism, is the only person who can work the latest technology, and has no respect for class and all that mumbo-jumbo. Chances of surviving Series 2/Global Financial Crash 2 without getting gassed, shot down, or imprisoned = absolutely nil. However back he will be, possibly in a position of influence, and probably a great deal angrier. May make off with:

8) Wibbly posh liberal Sybil Crawley = wibbly posh liberals everywhere. May succumb to the charm, tech-fiddling abilities and undeniable sex appeal of the above, or may fall back on inherent poshness and run scared. Chances of surviving Series 2/Global Financial Crash 2 without rampant disillusionment: none.

9) John Bates & Anna Smith = everyman & woman, everywhere. Just want to escape servitude and have a nice little business of their own, a bit of dignity and a couple of kids. Unfortunately for them, Mr Bates has previously signed an unwise contract with:

10) Comedy villian Vera Bates = the banks. Mrs Bates/the banks don't want the couple to settle and run a small business, rather she/they are determined to screw every last penny out of the poor man by fair means or foul. Chances of surviving Series 2/Global Financial Crash 2 = everyone else is waiting for this cardboard villian to go away and die, preferably quite horribly, so the long-suffering couple can live a quiet and inoffensive life, together. Not likely to be banished by early episodes, due to unerring willingness and ability to blackmail people.

Next on Downton Abbey, somebody gets shot or gassed, while lots of people wring their hands and say how awful it is. Next in the Global Financial Crisis: somebody gets shot or gassed, while lots of people... ok, you get my drift. See? I rest my case.

Downton Abbey will be on ITV on Sunday night at 9pm. The Global Financial Crisis will be on your TV for the next six months, or longer. Schedules may vary according to which part of Europe you live in.
*I made that bit up

I am a bit obsessed with these pictures

About two years ago, I bought a set of four postcards from World War 1. They were £1 each, in a slightly odd shop. Three have little homilies, like this one. Two have something scribbled on the back. The messages, scribbled in pencil, are only semi-decipherable. One looks like a bit of poem, and the other is a message home from a guy at the front. The words 'Ypres' and 'safety' are legible, as are the phrases 'love to both my boys' and 'your loving husband'.

It is signed by someone called George Ladd, or maybe Judd, and passed, anonymously, by field censor no 624.

Poor old George, I've no idea if he ever made it home.

Once I had purchased the postcards, I kept picking them up and looking at them, again and again. There are a number of things which are fascinating about them, not least the way the half-understood messages blur out of the past at you, like the echo of a person talking in the next room. The thing is, although the postcards themselves are 100% authentic, the pictures are completely fake. They are clearly photoshoots. First, the people in them look like silent screen actors: they probably are. Second, if you look at this one, you'll figure that the bandage on his arm has been put on after his jacket: otherwise, you'd never get the sleeve over it. Third, if you look carefully, you can see that the people have been superimposed on the background. In effect, they've been photoshopped, 1916 style.

There are also a lot of mixed messages going on. While the themes in the pictures - the mother saying goodbye to her son, the woman looking after her injured husband, the lady missing her special gentleman - must have been incredibly common, and painfully real, they are presented in a weird, saccharine way. The mother saying goodbye to her son is calm and dignified. And yet, if you read the rhyme on the card, it suggests they won't meet again till they're 'at Jesus feet' i.e. when they're both dead. She has no hope of seeing him again. Meanwhile, the chap who is injured has been wounded in a light, picturesque fashion, and is having a nice time, recuperating in the garden. No blood, no missing limbs, no pain or disfigurement. And the pretty lady (she looks quite keen, doesn't she, though I'm afraid he might be having second thoughts) wishing for a chance to get passionate with her hunky man-in-uniform, is imagining him, well - he's brylcreemed his hair, to start with. He's not shivering in a trench.

So the pictures at the same time tell a truth, and peddle total lies. With a little cheery line, they suggest you kiss your loved ones goodbye. And then on the back, there's George, loving husband, real person, missing his two boys.

I find that there is something creepy and fascistic about this. The collision of the real, and the fake, narrative. The sentimentalisation of an awful disaster, for the purposes of those who were in full charge of the disaster. It makes me wonder how people weren't screaming in the streets about the lies being told them.

Which is why I'm obsessed with these images. I keep trying to write a story, to get to the people in the images, reconcile the fake and the real in my own head. Because I feel that there's something that needs to be learnt in there, something about shouting stop before it's all too late. Not because I think we're replaying 1916, I know we won't. But just something about not letting your story be told by liars, and calling out on fakes.