Samizdata

As promised to various Samizdata people, here is my posting on the Kettering Gang Show. I have lived in Kettering almost all my life, but I had never been to the Gang Show before.

For those who do not know a ‘Gang Show’ is not an event put on by street gangs, it is an entertainment event put on by Scouts (which include not only the young cubs, and the adult scout masters but, these days, girl Scouts). It is a matter of songs, dances and comedy – put on to aid Scout funds (supposedly on every night of the year there is a Gang Show going on someone in the world).

Well on a cold and windy night I walked to event, passing only few groups of youths hanging about on street corners (surely, whatever one thinks of groups like the Scouts, these youngsters would be better off joining in rather than just hanging about, they looked rather depressed – even by my standards).

The singing, dancing and comedy routines were not amazing – but they were not bad either. And I was rather moved by the effort the children put in (the speed of the costume changes alone was very impressive). Even us in the audience tried to do our bit – we stood up and sang “God Save the Queen” at the start, and did a bit of participation in one song and movement thing (yes we proved that we could not sing and were uncoordinated – but we had a go).

My strongest impression was of the attitude of everyone (entertainers, people selling stuff, people checking the tickets, St John’s people on call against anyway getting hurt or falling ill) – all seemed to have a good time and to show benevolence for others.

The Northamptonshire folk may not be wildly attractive (neither the large native Northamptonshire people, nor London overspill stock like me) and they may not be clever or knowledgeable (but intelligence and knowledge are not always an advantage in life – after all I have the ability to produce strong arguments showing how any situation is hopeless and it is pointless to try anything, and I can produce lots of facts and stats to back up my inactive despair), but their faces showed both courage and good will – and not just good will for the event.

The people there were clearly honest and good (if not beautiful or profound). Rather like Tolkien’s hobbits, they are clearly folk who are both decent enough companions in the ordinary run of life – but better companions if something terrible were to happen.

A few weeks back yours truly and Mrs P. decided to find out what all the hype was about and went to see the film Borat. I guess unless you have been living on the South Pole or some other remote part of planet Earth, you will not have heard of this film. Borat is a spoof “journalist” character created by Sasha Baron Cohen, the Jewish comedian who also created characters such as Ali G. The basic idea is that Borat goes to different places and countries and tricks folk into either revealing more about themselves and their views than they would otherwise do, or to simply make assholes of themselves. A few of his victims do misbehave although most seem to emerge with most, if not all, of their dignity intact.

I have mixed opinions about the film. Some parts of it were so funny that I laughed along with the rest of the cinema audience. He does want to send up the insanity of anti-Semitism, which seems to be the serious core of this film, if it has one at all. There is always the risk, I suppose, that some of the thicker viewers will not get the joke and think that anti-semitism has been legitimised by this movie, but you would have to be pretty dense to do so. Beyond that, though, I did not think the movie was all that funny, and not much beyond scatalogical humour of a basic sort. Part of the idea is to play on the natural desire of the victims – in this case, ordinary Americans – to be polite to strangers, even a crazy-looking chap with a big moustache claiming to come from central Asia. Some of the victims on the New York subway tell Borat to go away, but pretty much most of the victims put up with it up until the point when the behaviour gets too bad to ignore.

I guess if you want to see a film that makes you want to experience a deep fuzzy glow of superiority to supposedly simple redneck Americans, this is the movie for you. On the other hand, for comedy of genius that does not target the ordinary Joe but tries for genuine wit, I’ll be relying on my beloved Monty Pythons and Blackadder collection. And for the silly stuff, there is always Peter Sellers, Terry Thomas and those supremos, Laurel and Hardy. Their brilliance will never fade.

Richard North shares my opinion, although he is a bit harsher.

Alan K. Henderson has some seasonal musing to share on this day, the fifth of November. Warning… contains critique and therefore spoilers for ‘V for Vendetta’

This graphic novel V for Vendetta was first published as a comic book series which began in 1982. Many readers will laugh at author Alan Moore’s second-guessing of future history. In the story, the Thatcher government’s loss in the 1993 elections sets up a Labour government whose unilateral disarmament measures somehow keep Britain on the sidelines during a US-USSR nuclear confrontation. The war is triggered by an un-detailed situation analogous to the Cuban Missile Crisis – and there’s even a Kennedy in the White House (which Kennedy we are not told). Why a non-nuclear Africa gets wasted and a non-nuclear Britain survives is not explained.

The likelihood of the next major event – the rise of the Norsefire party into power – is debatable. Post-holocaust Britain would still have a strong domestic military presence. It would have to be weakened significantly for an insurrection to succeed. The story mentions that there were several insurgent factions; perhaps Norsefire sat back while these multiple rebellions sapped the military of its strength. It is also possible that some of these insurgents drew their membership in part from the military.

The story does accurately portray the function of a Fascist state. The church is nationalized but powerless, serving a mere ceremonial function. Surveillance cameras are everywhere (hey wait a minute, some social democracies are like that…) The government also conducts audio in addition to video espionage against its citizens. Separation of powers between executive, legislators, and judiciary is vastly diminished or non-existent. The economy is planned. Propaganda is pervasive. Citizens are forcibly resettled, and some like Evey are forcibly sent to work in certain industries. Undesirables are deported or incarcerated (and sometimes experimented upon). Policemen are granted latitude to allow certain criminals to ‘disappear’, as in Evey’s case. To formally prosecute her for prostitution makes it a matter of public record that the State is not meeting her economic needs as government propaganda promises.

Enter V… His identity unknown, he is one of the last four survivors of the Larkhill Resettlement Camp, where he was subjected to medical experiments involving hormone injections. having escaped, he now dons a Guy Fawkes costume and is orchestrating a vendetta against the Fascist government.

While Alan Moore himself allows the reader to determine whether or not V’s actions are warranted, many have described V as a morally ambiguous character. Such people are wrong; the direction of his moral compass is crystal clear. → Continue reading: Vendetta vs. Just War