Ho-hum. There’s been a bit of a fall-out on Comment Is Free after Umree Khan wrote a piece saying a few nasty things about ‘The Wire’ and it’s audience. The reaction could be cheerfully understated as ‘fierce’, given that the comments posted underneath the article required more moderation effort than is normally spent on a week of CiF blogs. Highlights of the commenting included questioning whether Umree’s degree was in journalism or hotel management and posting quotations from some (to put it kindly) underdeveloped pieces she wrote for her student rag. In fact as someone who participated vigorously in this attempted crucifixion, I can attest to how nice it was to be part of a movement that united all genders, races and creeds in a common purpose. In light of this it might be worth spending a few hundred words working out how she got it so wrong.
Her opening volley launches the charge of misogyny at the Wire, a fairly serious accusation that has been inexplicably overlooked by every critic, male and female, who has ever reviewed the show. I may however be able shed a little light on this critical lapse - ‘The Wire’ is a feminist show. It does not do women the disservice of portraying them glibly, pretending that sexism in Baltimore doesn’t exist and that the men of the institutions depicted have allowed women to progress to a neat 50/50 mix of their respective workforces. In fact it pays women the ultimate accolade my portraying them realistically within the context of their environments.
The female characters, like their male counterparts, are capable of great altruism or base-self interest and are every bit as well-drawn. Witness Kima Greggs - in Season One she refuses to implicate a man who shot her because she can’t satisfy her conscience that he was the perpetrator and yet in Season Four, a variety of forces in her work place and homelife cause her to begin an affair, causing great pain to her partner. A character arc like this raises her character from a tokenistic gender role into the realms of a developed, morally complex character. In a TV landscape where women are less characterised and more designed, like Ally McBeal or Carrie Bradshaw, to please a demographic, the Wire should be applauded for it’s detailed and exhaustive exploration of women’s experience within the American city.
The bits that really landed Urmee in hot water occurred when she moved onto to examine The Wire’s treatment of race and her perception of the sort of audience this treatment attracts. She summarises this in a few neat phrases; relationships depicted are ‘denuded’ of their racial context and the supposed white, male middle class and cerebal(?) audience gain vicarious thrills through observing the 'elemental' violence granted to their Grandfathers, but denied them. To call this arrant nonsense is to run the risk of arguing without sufficient vigour.
Race runs through ‘The Wire’ like the name of a seaside resort runs through a stick of rock. Where the Wire differs from many TV shows is that both overt, subtle and perceived racism are put under the microscope, rather than the easier, but less useful, option of merely including a racist cop. It is true that for Bunk Moreland and Jimmy McNulty race is not a significant factor in determining their interaction, but cast the net a little wider and we find rich race focussed narratives from the Carcetti mayoral campaign to the brutality of Sergeant Hauk. It is a deep shame for Umree that she finds relationships lacking in racial tension implausible, but it may explain why she so readily ascribes such vicious outlooks to people not of her race and gender.
Indeed, finding much to say about Umree’s views on The Wire’s audience is difficult as they are so utterly groundless. She offers no audience demographics to support her thesis, and even assuming she gets this right, no evidence that the attitudes she attributes to said audience exist. The desire to experience the violence of the second World War or the disadvantages of being in a minority is part of no masculine discourse commonly expressed and is so gratuitously hateful, it can be dismissed without further comment.
I happily offer my DVDs of the series for loan to Umree with this sentiment, ‘Don’t let your prejudices deny you this great work of art.’
Friday, 27 July 2007
Monday, 7 May 2007
Madeleine Bunting - Can we get back to the debate, please?
Madeleine Bunting, Guardian columnist and perennial penner of articles excoriating anyone with a firmly held opinion, has written yet another editorial denouncing Richard Dawkins and his ilk for being too forceful in their writings. Whilst she attacks their style as too polemic to engage a religious audience, it is surprising how little she chooses to engage with their arguments herself – instead relying on a well rehearsed set of ad hominems.
She strongly implies throughout the article that the authors of the current breed of pop-atheism books are motivated either by a desire for a quick buck, through a spot on the bestseller charts, or a raise in celebrity status. Sam Harris, for example, is a ‘previously unknown neuro-science graduate’ whilst all these books are good for ‘boosting the pension fund’. This last line of attack is particularly odd from a journalist who makes money by writing articles on religious faith.
The personality attacks continue with a series of short quotes from each of the author’s works, designed to illustrate their general unpleasantness. Hitchens is shown to have attacked Martin Luther King and a Sam Harris quote purporting to demonstrate his support for a new inquisition against those of religious faith are both held up to be examples of the poison poured into the debate by their contributors. However these quotes are suspiciously short and out of context, and Bunting makes no effort to explore them, nevermind examine any of the broader and more crucial lines of argument used by atheists against religious thought, including the most telling of all questions: What grounds do we have for establishing the truth of God’s existence?
In fact she repudiates the need to establish this truth through the back-door method of asserting –
“In recent years, research has thrown up some remarkable benefits - the faithful live longer, recover from surgery quicker, are happier, less prone to mental illness and so the list goes on. If religion declines, what gaps does it leave in the functioning of individuals and social groups?”
It would be helpful if sources were attributed for this research, so we could judge exactly what conclusions she is referring to, however as one of the commentators beneath her article has shown, there is at least some research that suggests what she states may be true. But in accepting this we should continue beyond the premise and paradoxically ask, is this increase in wellbeing is a good thing?
The answer is, of course, that there are many lies which if told to people would increase their happiness - imagine the joy of living in a world in which you are told there is no poverty, illness, or death. Yet few people would choose this anaesthetised existence and those who did would have no cause to struggle against such evils. Whatever joy religion brings and however benign, it always remains a comforting lie, numbing the desire for a more painful, but more worthy inquiry into what it means to be human.
Bunting actually accuses her opponents of not being willing to take part in this inquiry themselves when she says they have no interest in solving the question of religion’s place in the science of evolutionary psychology. This is simply false - despite the fact it would be contradictory to espouse the importance and nobility of science in this area and then ignore it's results, almost all of the people mentioned have shown a willingness to engage these matters. Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, both discussed these questions heavily at the ‘Beyond Belief’ conference in 2006, videos of which can be found here.
All these criticisms build into the suggestion that the debate isn’t helped by the savage prose and strong personalities of those offering arguments and no converts will be obtained through these methods, but even if we allow ourselves to be distracted from the debate itself into this side question of how the debate should be conducted, it’s doubtful her point is true. Persuasive argument is often forceful as any fire-and-brimstone preacher will tell you, and although it is deeply unlikely that anyone will renounce strongly held beliefs, to those who have not begun to think in this area these books provide strong provocation to do so. Converting outlooks and ways of thought are not seismic shifts accomplished in the reading of one book, however each book read marks a milestone on the road of thought.
Madeleine Bunting should focus less on the personalities and the nature of the debate between the religious and secular worlds and more on the fundamental questions of the debate itself.
She strongly implies throughout the article that the authors of the current breed of pop-atheism books are motivated either by a desire for a quick buck, through a spot on the bestseller charts, or a raise in celebrity status. Sam Harris, for example, is a ‘previously unknown neuro-science graduate’ whilst all these books are good for ‘boosting the pension fund’. This last line of attack is particularly odd from a journalist who makes money by writing articles on religious faith.
The personality attacks continue with a series of short quotes from each of the author’s works, designed to illustrate their general unpleasantness. Hitchens is shown to have attacked Martin Luther King and a Sam Harris quote purporting to demonstrate his support for a new inquisition against those of religious faith are both held up to be examples of the poison poured into the debate by their contributors. However these quotes are suspiciously short and out of context, and Bunting makes no effort to explore them, nevermind examine any of the broader and more crucial lines of argument used by atheists against religious thought, including the most telling of all questions: What grounds do we have for establishing the truth of God’s existence?
In fact she repudiates the need to establish this truth through the back-door method of asserting –
“In recent years, research has thrown up some remarkable benefits - the faithful live longer, recover from surgery quicker, are happier, less prone to mental illness and so the list goes on. If religion declines, what gaps does it leave in the functioning of individuals and social groups?”
It would be helpful if sources were attributed for this research, so we could judge exactly what conclusions she is referring to, however as one of the commentators beneath her article has shown, there is at least some research that suggests what she states may be true. But in accepting this we should continue beyond the premise and paradoxically ask, is this increase in wellbeing is a good thing?
The answer is, of course, that there are many lies which if told to people would increase their happiness - imagine the joy of living in a world in which you are told there is no poverty, illness, or death. Yet few people would choose this anaesthetised existence and those who did would have no cause to struggle against such evils. Whatever joy religion brings and however benign, it always remains a comforting lie, numbing the desire for a more painful, but more worthy inquiry into what it means to be human.
Bunting actually accuses her opponents of not being willing to take part in this inquiry themselves when she says they have no interest in solving the question of religion’s place in the science of evolutionary psychology. This is simply false - despite the fact it would be contradictory to espouse the importance and nobility of science in this area and then ignore it's results, almost all of the people mentioned have shown a willingness to engage these matters. Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, both discussed these questions heavily at the ‘Beyond Belief’ conference in 2006, videos of which can be found here.
All these criticisms build into the suggestion that the debate isn’t helped by the savage prose and strong personalities of those offering arguments and no converts will be obtained through these methods, but even if we allow ourselves to be distracted from the debate itself into this side question of how the debate should be conducted, it’s doubtful her point is true. Persuasive argument is often forceful as any fire-and-brimstone preacher will tell you, and although it is deeply unlikely that anyone will renounce strongly held beliefs, to those who have not begun to think in this area these books provide strong provocation to do so. Converting outlooks and ways of thought are not seismic shifts accomplished in the reading of one book, however each book read marks a milestone on the road of thought.
Madeleine Bunting should focus less on the personalities and the nature of the debate between the religious and secular worlds and more on the fundamental questions of the debate itself.
Saturday, 5 May 2007
The Quiet American(1958)
Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Graham Greene’s classic story of idealism, involvement, love and betrayal displays many of the characteristics and themes shown in his other work. There is the inclusion of the ever-present ‘Greeneland’ setting of late colonial Vietnam, an inter-generational love affair between a middle-aged man and a girl half his age as well as elements of the typical spy-story, the genre in which Greene was best known to the mainstream audience. It is not surprising therefore that there have been two film adaptations of the novel, director Joseph Mankiewicz’s in 1958 and Phillip Noyce’s in 2002.
Of these films Noyce’s is by far the more successful, and indeed Greene himself hated the earlier film dismissing it as ‘propaganda’. It is not hard to see why Greene loathed it so much, given the number of blunders it swaggers into, chief amongst which is the collapsing of the uncertainty around the motives and morality of Fowler into a trite ending in which he cathartically, but superficially, accepts his misdeeds. This brutal betrayal of Greene’s original ending in which Fowler’s actions are directed both by self-interest and a desire to prevent suffering is unforgivable, especially in light of the weak story-telling in other parts of the films.
Excessive narration, often interrupting the dialogue of a scene, as well as blatantly expositional speech rob the audience of their participation in the story whilst the misrepresentation of the characters’ fundamental nature, ensures that the likelihood of even passive enjoyment is remote. The pity that should be felt for Fowler’s loneliness is obliterated by the arrogance he demonstrates. Where as Pile’s arrogance, implicit in the novel from his actions, here destroys the sympathy we would otherwise feel for someone with his naïve, but dangerous philosophies.
When the film does try to reclaim some sympathy for Pile, by absolving him of guilt, it again betrays it’s source, by removing one of the book’s central themes – the destructive nature of American foreign policy. Also gone from the story is much of the emphasis on the source of Pile’s thinking - the theoretical idealisms of York Harding. Instead Pile is inspired in a broader way by American notions of liberty and freedom in his pursuance of a ‘Third Force’. This aborts any inquiry into the contrast between Pile’s abstractionism and Fowler’s pragmatism and substitutes it with crude Americanism and cheap sentiment. This conspicuous flaw is not committed in Noyce’s version, released as it was in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
One of the novel’s chief flaws was it’s over-reliance on male-perspective, Phuong in the book is under-developed with limited and predictable responses to the machinations of the two male sides of her love-triangle. The film however compounds these errors with 2D characterisation and a rather flat performance from Giorgia Moll. In a further departure from the novel, Phuong’s actions become contradictory and inconsistent: she leaves Fowler for pragmatic reasons, but won’t return to him as a matter of principle.
Also gone is the short poem Greene used to illustrate one of his central ideas -
"The people they stare, and ask who I am;
And if I should chance to run over a cad,
I can pay for the damage if ever so bad.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money.”
This is a far better piece of writing than anything on offer in the script of this tepid film.
Graham Greene’s classic story of idealism, involvement, love and betrayal displays many of the characteristics and themes shown in his other work. There is the inclusion of the ever-present ‘Greeneland’ setting of late colonial Vietnam, an inter-generational love affair between a middle-aged man and a girl half his age as well as elements of the typical spy-story, the genre in which Greene was best known to the mainstream audience. It is not surprising therefore that there have been two film adaptations of the novel, director Joseph Mankiewicz’s in 1958 and Phillip Noyce’s in 2002.
Of these films Noyce’s is by far the more successful, and indeed Greene himself hated the earlier film dismissing it as ‘propaganda’. It is not hard to see why Greene loathed it so much, given the number of blunders it swaggers into, chief amongst which is the collapsing of the uncertainty around the motives and morality of Fowler into a trite ending in which he cathartically, but superficially, accepts his misdeeds. This brutal betrayal of Greene’s original ending in which Fowler’s actions are directed both by self-interest and a desire to prevent suffering is unforgivable, especially in light of the weak story-telling in other parts of the films.
Excessive narration, often interrupting the dialogue of a scene, as well as blatantly expositional speech rob the audience of their participation in the story whilst the misrepresentation of the characters’ fundamental nature, ensures that the likelihood of even passive enjoyment is remote. The pity that should be felt for Fowler’s loneliness is obliterated by the arrogance he demonstrates. Where as Pile’s arrogance, implicit in the novel from his actions, here destroys the sympathy we would otherwise feel for someone with his naïve, but dangerous philosophies.
When the film does try to reclaim some sympathy for Pile, by absolving him of guilt, it again betrays it’s source, by removing one of the book’s central themes – the destructive nature of American foreign policy. Also gone from the story is much of the emphasis on the source of Pile’s thinking - the theoretical idealisms of York Harding. Instead Pile is inspired in a broader way by American notions of liberty and freedom in his pursuance of a ‘Third Force’. This aborts any inquiry into the contrast between Pile’s abstractionism and Fowler’s pragmatism and substitutes it with crude Americanism and cheap sentiment. This conspicuous flaw is not committed in Noyce’s version, released as it was in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
One of the novel’s chief flaws was it’s over-reliance on male-perspective, Phuong in the book is under-developed with limited and predictable responses to the machinations of the two male sides of her love-triangle. The film however compounds these errors with 2D characterisation and a rather flat performance from Giorgia Moll. In a further departure from the novel, Phuong’s actions become contradictory and inconsistent: she leaves Fowler for pragmatic reasons, but won’t return to him as a matter of principle.
Also gone is the short poem Greene used to illustrate one of his central ideas -
"The people they stare, and ask who I am;
And if I should chance to run over a cad,
I can pay for the damage if ever so bad.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money.”
This is a far better piece of writing than anything on offer in the script of this tepid film.
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