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One of the few drama series worth watching over at the BBC (sharp intake of breath!) is the programme Spooks, which purports to show how M15, Britain’s secret service, operates. A short while ago, an episode featured how the various operatives dealt with radical Islamic terrorism.
What interested me was the very fact that such a controversial topic would be aired by the BBC at all. The series tended to start off with a decidedly politically-correct slant, so broaching the topic of Islamo-fascist terror was quite brave. Makes me wonder how the script-writers were able to get this episode on screen.
Well, as this story shows, the episide triggered a number of complaints, claiming the programme was racially stereotyped. But then it is a bit difficult to do a programme about spies taking on the likes of al-Quaeda and it not to encounter such an issue, I would have thought.
More broadly, though, this got me thinking about how television and movie dramas have handled issues like this over the years. In the early James Bond movies, for example, the bad guys were either Russians or former Smersh agents, but as the series progressed and got ever more silly during the Roger Moore era, the villains became less ‘political’, no doubt to avoid the kind of complaints that Spooks has encountered.
There have always been a few interesting exceptions, though. Some of the Tom Clancy books adapted for film touched on issues like Northern Ireland, although often not very convincingly.
Do I detect a change in trend? The American series “24”, for example, makes no bones about enormously contentious issues. I think people want a bit more hard-edged realism in their dramas, and if that means upsetting some people, so be it.
However, I am not sure whether 007 will be staging his next adventure in Bagdhad any time soon.
Broken news, from whenever, but I didn’t know. Paul Johnson has written a book about Art. Thanks to Michael Blowhard for the news.
Its American publication date is October, which means it should be available in early-to-mid September. The publisher compares the book to Gombrich, and describes it as a comprehensive history of art that covers everything from rock painting up the present. I seem to remember that Johnson himself is a serious watercolorist and art fanatic, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the art-crit part of the book is as good as the history-telling will no doubt be. I’m also betting that the view he delivers of art history won’t be the standard one, to say the least. I’m especially curious to see how he treats the 20th century — a little birdy has already told me that Warhol gets not much more than one sentence in the book.
Can I wait until it piles up in the remainder shops? No, I don’t think that will happen.
Angelina Jolie, curvaceous star of the latest movie based on mega-hit computer game, Tomb Raider, reckons that the busty, heavily-armed heroine is a role model for women. Hmmm. An interesting thought. Croft knows how to handle guns, is mighty tough in a fight, and is rather easy on the eye (as Ms Jolie assuredly is). The ultimate libertarian heroine, perhaps?
A feature of popular culture in these past few years has been the ascent of the kick-ass female movie/tv star. Think of Buffy, for example; the character Trinity in the Matrix films, or the ladies on Charlies’ Angels. I think the whole thing got started with the likes of Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg in the old Avengers television series, and in some of the better James Bond movies.
One thing all these women have in common is that they are a million miles away from the ‘victim culture’. Nothing passive or helpless about them. It seems that popular culture is diverging increasingly from the political and legal realm. On the one hand, you have superheroes and heroines on the Big Screen. On the other, you have twerps suing fast-food joints for ‘making’ them fat.
I wonder what explains this divide?
Today I received the following email:
Brian,
Brian has started a webring of Brians with blogs. If you would like to join us, go and sign up here.
Brian
What is a webring? If I signed up to it, would the rest of my life be ruined? The Brian who sent me this email seems to be gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, consenting adults, some of my best friends…, I’m personally in favour of gay marriage, blah blah blah. But if I sign up, will I be bombarded with gay porn for the rest of my days?
In general, I feel that it is good that we Brians are getting together, and if a webring is what I think it may be, we can perhaps sit on one, in a circle, perhaps somewhere in the countryside, and discuss the Brian Issue. That is, we can discuss why cuckolded husbands, send-up substitutes for Jesus Christ, etc. etc., in the movies, all seem to be called Brian. Brian is not a cool name, is my point. Maybe we Brians can get together and change that. (The danger, of course, is that by getting together in such ways as these, we might merely confirm all the existing anti-Brian stereotypes, and cause Brianphobia to become even more deeply entrenched.)
Meanwhile, how many indisputably cool Brians can be assembled? I offer two outstanding contemporary sportsman: the West Indian cricket captain and ace batsman Brian Lara, and the Irish rugby captain and ace centre threequarter Brian O’Driscoll.
On his culture blog, Brian Micklethwait provides a reference to a preview of an American television program about the reactions of the muslim world to a perceived onslaught of American television and movies, and how they are perceived by many as “overt propaganda created to undermine their religious and cultural identity”, and yet that at the same time, people love to watch them.
Brian has some has some wise thoughts on the subject himself, and concludes by observing that inevitably the culture must move in two directions.
But all will eventually be well. They’ll make their own shows, that satisfy their young, but deflect the complaints of the complainers.
And then we’ll watch their shows too.
This all invites questions about just how cultural programming – television and movies – propagates around the modern globalised world, which is ultimately much more interesting than simply “America is trying to dominate the world with its propaganda”. It’s both simpler and much more complex. For one thing, American programs are not meant as overt propaganda, and they are certainly not aimed at the Muslim world. Hollywood is trying to make money, and that is all. The Muslim world is such a small market that Hollywood is essentially not paying attention at all, and this is even more so in the case of television than in the case of movies.
For there is a huge difference in the overseas reception of American television and American movies. American movies dominate the box office everywhere pretty much without exception. Local movies have a much smaller market share than American movies virtually everywhere, and Hollywood is selling the same movies to the entire world. Hollywood movies today make more money outside the US than they do inside the US (almost all of which comes from Europe and East Asia), so Hollywood is very conscious of what foreign audiences will want to see when making movies. Often this leads to what may be described as “lowest common denominator” film-making. Movies containing lots of explosions are popular everywhere. (Comedies travel far less well, which is why Hollywood makes fewer of them than it used to, and is why they have smaller budgets). However, rather than turning movies into “overt propaganda”, this tends to make movies bland. American film production does interact with the rest of the world, but in a slightly less direct way. Hollywood has a ferocious appetite for talent. Anything good that is done by filmmakers in the rest of the world tends to get co-opted by Hollywood. If audiences like Hong Kong style action sequences, then these will find their way into American film. The people making the films in America will often be the same people who made the ones in Hong Kong, working in Los Angeles and being paid far more (and working shorter hours) than was ever the case on the other side of the Pacific. When a film financed by a Hollywood studio but made by a Hong Kong filmmaker and filmed in Canada is shown in Spain, it’s a bit hard to tell just whose culture is being influenced by what. (I will be intrigued to see what happens when Iran becomes less oppressive, and some of the country’s many talented film-makers get the opportunity to make films in Hollywood. The thing stopping this is the political situation in Iran and certainly not that in Hollywood.)
The propagation of American television is totally different, although the final conclusion is perhaps the same. → Continue reading: Movies, Television, and Globalisation
Least you think all we talk about is politics here on Samizdata.net. I just got through watching a DVD of Dog Soldiers and it is proof positive that you do not need a famous cast of ‘Big Names’ or vast budget for special effects to make a rather good horror B-movie.
The script will not win any awards for originality but as anyone who knows British squaddies could tell you, the characters are well presented and credible: the slang and comportment are perfect. Also they react as one might expect when suddenly confronted with a seemingly unbelievable yet manifestly undeniable situation… which is to say they do not (initially) believe that they are being stalked by honest-to-goodness werewolves, but they do not deny the obvious either when they find themselves wading through gore and intestines.
Excellent stuff… if you are a connoisseur of B-movies, then your hard earned pounds/bucks/€uros could be far worse spent than renting or purchasing this dirty little gem of a movie. I have seen flicks ten times worse than this which cost one hundred times more to make.
Waahhhoooooooooooooooo!
Cloning is an understandably controversial subject, and it would appear that all the excitement about cloning humans may have been somewhat premature. But this sounds like a potentially most entertaining application of the principle:
After a six-year search Japanese scientists are preparing to clone prehistoric woolly mammoths from frozen DNA samples found in Siberia.
Inspired by Dolly the sheep – cloned from the cell of an adult ewe in Scotland in 1996 – and the film Jurassic Park, researchers from Kagoshima and Kinki universities and the Gifu Science and Technology Centre began the search in 1997 for sperm or tissue from mammoths preserved in the tundra.
The plan was to find a frozen male, recover samples of its sperm, inseminate a modern elephant and create a mammoth-elephant hybrid. No sperm was ever found. Several mammoths, preserved in the permafrost, have been identified in Siberia but the DNA was degraded.
So how are they doing?
The Japanese scientists collected samples of bone marrow, muscle and skin from mammoth remains found in Siberia last August. Yesterday, after a year fighting Russian bureaucracy, the samples arrived.
The researchers face a series of new hurdles. First, they have to confirm the samples are from mammoths, then see if they can isolate a full set of chromosomes. Then they would have to fuse an egg from a living relative – an elephant – with DNA from an extinct creature. Then there would be the challenge of implanting the embryo into the womb of a host mother.
Doesn’t sound very much like “cloning” to me. And since this is the Guardian, no article about a creature that thrives in a cold climate would be complete without a gratuitous reference to global warming.
If they overcame all these challenges, they would then be faced with the biggest of all: what to do with a lonely ice age mammal in a rapidly warming world.
Oh for heavens sake. Go north. Use a fridge. Biggest challenge of all indeed.
And as to what to do with it, hasn’t the Guardian heard of show business? That’s what all this is about. This is not “pure” science, which pure science seldom is anyway. Think Jurassic Park. Think Elephant Man. Or in this case Elephant Mammoth.
While post-modern lefties and ultra-nationalists tend to regard each other as polar opposites they are, in fact, afflicted with an identical inability to see non-white people as actual human beings. In the case of the latter they are an amorphous bloc of exotic invaders to be feared and in the case of the former they are an amorphous bloc of exotic clients to be fawned over.
It is precisely this fawning tendency that informs organisations such as the BBC and it results in painfully facile attempts to ‘attract more viewers from ethnic minorities’; as if this outcome is dependent on doing something other than simply making good TV shows.
However, I am pleased to note that this drive to establish a TV Ghetto appears to have fallen flat on its face:
The BBC’s attempts to attract more viewers and listeners from ethnic minorities have been “disappointing” with audiences actually falling, the corporation’s governors admitted today.
Despite the launch of two new national digital radio stations aimed at ethnic minorities and increased representation on mainstream TV and radio, there was “little evidence” the drive has worked at all, the governors concluded in the BBC annual report for 2002-2003.
Good. I was tempted to add something along the lines of a hope that the BBC producers have learned a lesson but they probably haven’t. Since their revenue is guaranteed by the taxpayer they are immune from the harsh market discipline that other broadcasters have to endure when their audiences plummet. In fact, they may even conclude that the audience decline stems from a failure to pursue ‘ethnic minorities’ with sufficient zeal.
I have not seen any of the shows supposedly aimed at ‘ethnics’ but I am willing to wager that they were uniformly dreadful. No wonder viewers of all races are staying away in droves. People, whatever their racial origin, watch television to be entertained not patronised and humiliated.
Now call me a big kid, if you will, and Stephen Pollard certainly doesn’t pull any punches in his article, on the topic, but I used to really enjoy reading the Harry Potter novels, even in public, even on trains, and even in preference to Murray N. Rothbard economics textbooks. (No, I hear you cry, how can you say such a thing?) But not any more.
For me the magic is either dying, or has already died. And it seems I’m not alone, for a Booker-winning author, A S Byatt, has also just slated the latest tome. Which is a relief, because I thought it was just me. → Continue reading: Potter losing his magic?
My chum Julian, who is a prince amongst men, contrived to acquire me a copy of Lara Croft’s latest outing for the PC… Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness. I have been very keen to see what could be done with this franchise now that all aspects of games technology have advanced so far.
Alas, although I am only about a third of the way through it so far, I am mightily unimpressed. The graphics are downright primitive: there is simply no excuse for representing tree branches and foliage with 2-D sprites these days. Character models are boringly drawn, lack detail and either do not lip-synch at all or do so very badly. Two female character in the part I have just finished use exactly the same face model, hands look like baseball gloves … if graphically speaking U2003 powered ‘Splinter Cell’ is the current state of the art, then Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness is at least two years behind the curve. It is little more than a re-hash of the last Tomb Raider, which was looking tired even back then. The some of the graphics purporting to show the game on the Internet are misleading to put it mildly. If there is a way to get it to look that way I have yet to discover it. And yes, I am using a fairly high-end PC with a good graphics card and half a gig of RAM.
Additionally, the voice acting is flat, the controls are a f**king nightmare when attempting precise manoeuvres, camera control is dreadful and sometimes simply does not work at all, the story line is just a re-hash of all that went before it… in short, the whole bloody thing is un-engaging and frustrating.
To make matters worse, the program is buggy as hell, with entire documented features apparently unimplemented (I have yet to get ‘sprint’ to work no matter what key I map it to and unarmed combat does not seem to do much either). One character (a bartender) chats to Lara whilst appearing to be turned inside-out and all manner of graphic anomalies are scattered throughout the game, strongly suggesting extremely sloppy beta testing by the makers. I honestly cannot think of a single positive thing to say about this game.
I will probably complete the game regardless but if they had managed as much humour and snappy dialogue as someone did with the promotional stuff for the game, I might not be playing with gritted teeth.
Given that the ‘Lara Croft’ franchise is such a valuable property, if I was a shareholder with money invested in this I would be looking for boardroom-heads-on-spikes about now. I am very glad I got this game as a present but I would not recommend it to anyone. Save your pounds/bucks/euros etc. and wait for Half Life 2 and Deus Ex: Invisible War.
Sharon Stone is getting divorced. Not good news for Sharon but a significant chunk of the rest of the planet rejoices at the news she is ‘back on the market’.
45 years old and still hot
Update: As a commenter reminded me… “Consider that a divorce”
Some weeks ago I saw a clip of an old Bogart movie and it started me thinking about the type of film it represented. That old Raymond Chandler thing: dark streets, smoke filled rooms, double and triple crosses, collaborators shot in the night… I forgot about it until a few days ago when Kathryn Hepburn died. Her obituary mentioned the classic movie “African Queen”.
We are in a perfect age for the return of Film Noir. Imagine a Bogart-like character in Baghdad. Think of the plot possibilities! You’ve secret caches of billions in gold, diamonds and dollars. There are buried hordes of poison gas, anthrax and smallpox. We can stretch reality for Hollywood’s sake and toss in an operational nuke or two, soon to be sold to a high ranking al Qaeda.
The Russians didn’t hold a candle to the Nazi’s for pure evil. Films about them didn’t have that stark manichean good versus evil quality of the era surrounding WWII… or of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. You have perfect villains, with no redeeming human qualities, in the members of his inner circle.
The escaped Arch-Villain Saddam in his secret hideaways is the nearest thing to a Fu Manchu class villain we are ever likely to see in reality.
Here’s a starter for our Hollywood readers (and I know you are out there Brian).
Bogart, a grizzled US Army veteran working in civil reconstruction, becomes involved with a beautiful Iraqi woman. Her brother is under threat by the Saddam Fedaheen and she wants Bogie’s help in extricating him. Our hero gets drawn deeper and deeper into a dark plot that sees him wandering the streets of old parts of Baghdad at night, shots flashing in the night, the occasional dead bad guy….
We end up in a finale with Bogie trying to save the girl and stop the nasty utterly evil guys from doing their utterly dasterdly deed against total innocents.
This stuff would sell like hotcakes in the US right now.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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