Breaking Good

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by Media • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Well it has been a while since I listed the television programs I thought were great, and why, and I thought it was time for an update, having seen some good stuff in the meantime.

Much of it on DVD I hasten to add, and some of it a very belated catching up of stuff I had missed years ago. I am so stubborn that I tend to see a lot of people saying something is good as a reason to avoid seeing it. What’s that old saying about noses and faces?

Anyway you will recall that I divided programs into comedy and drama, concluding that while British tv was far and away the best at comedy, and at short drama, the Americans had proved themselves masters at long drama series.

A year or so further on and I have confirmed my views (often happens, surprisingly). Some comedy series to add, all British:

IT crowd
Whites
Getting On
The thick of it
Outnumbered

Some hesitation on the last of those, not sure it (like Malcolm in the Middle) will stand the test of time, but something I have been known to laugh out loud at, frequently. The other four on the other hand are almost certainly classic material, all combining that wonderful mix of comedy and tragedy, humour and sadness, that is the mark of great comedy from Shakespeare to now.

And now four drama series to add to my list:

Millenium trilogy (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo etc)
Forbrydelsen
Deadwood
Breaking Bad

The first two of these, somewhat surprisingly, are Scandinavian. Now for all I know the Scandinavian countries may have a rich heritage of crime drama. But if they did it wasn’t obvious to the outside world until the Millenium Trilogy books, by Stieg Larsson, became an astonishing worldwide hit just after the poor fellow died. Interesting books, combining as they did murder/crime mystery with media, contemporary politics and new technology, and then they made the film/tv series which were just as good, with interesting characters (including a unique female lead) and cliff-hanging horror set against the bland and sterile Swedish landscape. Well worth watching.

As was the “Forbrydelsen” series (the name translated as “The Killing” for English-speaking audiences but actually just meaning “The Crime”) from Denmark. Again a unique female strong lead, but this time walking the mean streets of Copenhagen, mostly at night. And again blending in politics and other contemporary issues, with many many cliff-hanger events and more false leads than in Agatha Christie’s entire oeuvre.

There is apparently another good Scandinavian series called “The Bridge” which I haven’t seen, and one called “Wallender” which was apparently much better in its Swedish version than the English one I’m now watching (there is also similarly a poor American version of Millenium). So quite a Scandinavian crime renaissance. I wouldn’t put any of it into my top five (because of limitation of the genre and the fact that they essentially represent single stories), but they certainly belong in the top twenty.

Which brings me to the final two. I was very late to Deadwood. Criminally late. Have only seen first series so far, but it is astonishingly good. I would say the best western series ever made, but that doesn’t cover it. That it is a western is almost irrelevant. Or only relevant in the way that Shakespeare being set among New York gangs, or 1930s fascists, is relevant. The setting, the acting, the plot are all excellent, the characters are good and evil, weak and strong, brutal and tender, greedy and generous, honest and crooked, mad, bad and dangerous to know. Be prepared for extreme bad language and a lot of violence but be prepared to be dazzled. The final episode of this first series is the best conclusion to any series I have seen in fifty years of television watching. Breathtakingly good. As good as Sopranos if not slightly better. It would be first or second on my all time list if not for the fact that I have also been watching Breaking Bad over recent months.

Ah, Breaking Bad, what can you say? Four series so far, fifth and final series to start broadcasting in America 15 July. Another astonishing achievement which is Shakespearian in quality. If Deadwood could be compared to history plays like Henry Fourth or Fifth, then Breaking Bad is more your Macbeth or Lear. The whole series begins with a chance event which leads to a bad decision. All else flows from that. Again acting and setting are amazing, and the compelling plot is character driven. The two incredibly good lead actors, two people who couldn’t be more different but have become through circumstance thrown together, are locked in an embrace which is driving them on through the nightmare world they have found themselves in.

As with Deadwood (and Sopranos) BB contains lots of extreme violence and bad language. Don’t let that deter you. From the first moments you will be enthralled. Vince Gilligan (like Ball, Sorkin, Milch, Chase) has that rare genius that lets you know you are in safe hands right from the start, and he never lets you down. This is a gem of rare quality. It is, quite simply, the best television drama ever made.

Slumming it

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by Climate Change, Economics, Environment • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Whenever I hear a conservative attack environmentalists; sneer at all conservation measures; demand an end to “green tape”; spit on Rachel Carson’s grave; assert that there are no limits to growth; talk about scientific conspiracies; rant about new world governments; ask what importance the earless lizard has; demand to dump mine tailings on the Great Barrier Reef; cover up after massive ocean oil spills; demand endless population growth; promote uranium mining and nuclear power ….

…. I picture their home. The sewerage outlet has become blocked and toilet contents spill out of the bathroom; termites are eating through the walls; the roof is full of holes and water drips from ceiling; in the garage underneath a car is running, the fumes rising up; cockroaches infest the kitchen; cigarette butts are strewn all over floor and carpet is smouldering, smoke rising up; windows are broken and the wind howls through; and rats nest in cupboards.

I guess they are too busy making money to look after the place where they live. And our place.

Charade

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by Economics, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

My apologies for yet another lacuna in what should be a regular stream of blog posts. Sick again (and this blog now more resembles a series of House than a series of West Wing!) although only flu this time. Which seems to be going around, I caught it on twitter, apparently.

Any way, while suffering from “just the flu”, wrapped in blanket, huddled on the lounge, sneezing and coughing, I watched some DVDs. One, for about the fifth or sixth time in my life, was of that ultimate comfort food movie “Charade”. I originally saw it as a new movie, just out (a staggering 49 years ago. It was made fifty years ago, a fact, like so many fifty-year anniversaries including the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Beach Boys, and my starting university, I find impossible to believe. Why it was only yesterday … But yesterday’s gone, back to the story). It starred of course, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, and some lesser lights, a marvellous pairing. After a silly beginning (I mean, who is going to believe that the husband has really left Hepburn for another woman? Yeah, right) it turns into this terrific kind of murder-crime-mystery-game, where the murder and crime are just kinda cartoony and incidental. Both the hero and villain (yes, ok, Walter Matthau is in the movie too. And George Kennedy. And a young James Coburn) change identities, in opposite directions, as the movie progresses. Grant has 5 different identities, if I didn’t lose count, each one perfectly believable, and the transitions logically explained. Even the glittering prize, the stolen money, is hidden in a quite different identity (no, I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it). And the wonderful, insanely addictive theme (yes, Mancini of course), also suggests shape-shifting identity in the way that a piece by Bach does. So there you are, if you haven’t seen it, get hold of it, do. Oh, it has the odd clumsy moment that reminds you it was indeed made half a century (gulp) ago, but just drift along in the stream with it and you will be rewarded.

Apart from taking my mind off the viruses, identity changed since the last flu outbreak my immune system adjusted to by the inexorable force of evolution, seeing Charade again made me think of modern politics. Once upon a time, says Old Man Watermelon (just keeps rollin’ along), you knew where you were with politicians, what you saw was what you got. Think of the presidents from Roosevelt right up to and including Bush 1. Agree or disagree with them, allow for their secret activities (especially Nixon of course), but you knew what they were. Take Eisenhower’s mask off and underneath he was Eisenhower. Ditto the others. Same with British and Australian politicians up to about the same time.

But starting with Blair and Clinton we saw the new “Third Way” (Blair) or triangulation. Billed as seeking an intermediate path between left and right extremes, this approach led to even more identity changing than Cary Grant. Both Blair and Clinton tried to be all things to all people, shifting identity depending on the audience, and consequently were nothing to anybody. GW Bush was both a compassionate conservative and a gung ho warrior, Obama was an agent of progressive change and a saviour of the big banks (as are they all, secretly, hiding that identity). In Australia first Rudd and then Gillard followed the same recipe. In Britain Cameron and Clegg seemed to morph into each other, separated only by tie colour, as they sold the most conservative government since Thatcher as being soft and caring. In the current US election year Romney went all the way to the Tea Party and beyond in portraying himself as the worst right wing bastard in the Republican Party (against stiff competition) while pretending he had never been a relatively progressive governor of Massachusetts, and now, having won the nomination, is sliding back again. Obama, one day launching predator drones to kill mostly innocent poor people, the next is talking health care to save other innocent poor people. In Russia, spared by the Russian equivalent of Diebold from having to do much to win elections, Putin and Medvedev don’t bother changing personalities, but actually change personnel as they waltz through the decades taking it in turns at top and second top jobs. At least this is an honest version of what happens elsewhere.

The US, Russia, UK and Australia, just like China and North Korea are not going to change much as President Tweedledums and Prime Minister Tweedledees revolve through the top jobs. But in Europe at least the chance of change, the chance of choice, seems to be at least partly active in the Mediterranean fringe of democracy. The removal of Berlusconi and Sarkozy from their respective countries seems to have had some impact in changing the identities of those countries. Greece recently had an opportunity to make a change but squibbed at the last minute and finished back at the place where they had begun. The danger for all those countries in financial trouble is that they have become places in which there is government of the banks, by the banks and for the banks. In fact it would be easier if the “financial markets” simply allocated banker technocrat leaders to each country. I guess they have been doing that for years anyway.

Hiding it under multiple disguises like the characters in Charade. Hiding the money trail as cleverly as the ex-husband hid the loot. But, in the end the bankers are revealed as the ones in charge in every country these days.

And democracy is the charade.

Just Disorderly

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by Uncategorized • Tags: , , ,

Sorry for lack of posts recently but has been a bad week in various ways, although ironically, and annoyingly, I have been pretty healthy really. But not feeling myself, one way and another, and that is an essential precondition of writing.

Have a whole lot of seedstock posts ready for germination but so far the seed is falling on barren ground (which reminds me, inevitably, as it will remind you, of Dorothy Parker’s pet bird who she named Onan). Will try to get my scattered seed, sorry, wits, together soon and get back into the Passing Parade. Which reminds me, and will remind one or two of my more senior readers, of yet another feature of times past, the picture theatre newsreel. This ran before the major film, and was the only chance we had, in those pre-tv days, of seeing actual moving talking images of, say Churchill, Eisenhower, Olympic Games, wars, and other events, albeit in Perth some days after the things happened, because it took a while to fly the films in (just as it would take, if the Sun blew up, 8 minutes for us to become aware of the explosion, in Perth if World War Three had begun in the 1950s we would not have known for several days that the world was over). So popular were these newsreels that there was a small theatre, the Mayfair, which ran only newsreels interspersed with short comedies, notably The Three Stooges (not inappropriately), on a continuous rotation. You could enter at any time, guided in the dark by an usher with a torch, and sit for an hour or so until the segment was on that you had first seen when you came in.

OK, now back to where we were when you first came in. Have been doing a very occasional twitter series about things that annoy me (yes, yes, it’s a long list) and I thought I would do a more extended one here that wouldn’t fit twitter.

Often when there is discussion about, say, a racist incident, where for example football fans scream racial abuse at a black player (as happened, once again, this week at the European Soccer championships); Or homophobia; Or misogyny up to and including violence against women; Or violence in the streets; Or criminal behaviour of some kind, the cry will go up from family, friends, lawyers, oh, he didn’t mean it, he is a really nice fellow, he was drunk. He was not himself, in short, because of Demon Drink.

Nonsense. I don’t do any of that stuff when I am drunk (I alternate between raucous, maudlin, and going to sleep on the sofa) and I don’t know anyone who does. Those who do are not behaving “out of character” but totally in character as the firewater releases inhibitions. You want an excuse for behaving badly? Alcohol isn’t it. Perhaps you could blame your parents?

Royal Progress

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , ,

There are Australian people who express the kind of adoration for the royal family of Britain (and of Denmark more recently) that others reserve for footballers and celebrities and religious leaders. When I see or hear one of these mad people, trotted out by the media every time there is the faintest whiff of a Republic in the eucalypt-scented air, I wonder about their powers of logic, just as I do when I hear a creationist or climate change denier.

As best I understand it, at the very moment in 1066 that William of Normandy planted his flag in the corpse of the last Anglo Saxon King of part of England, god infused his DNA with a quality of royalness. So, from that moment to now and well into the 21st century (assuming young Willie manages to put a bit of DNA into Kate), a thousand years later, anyone having a bit of that DNA passed on through, what, 50 generations, gets to be the monarch of Britain and to be worshipped by ordinary people without the DNA. I’m sure you can see a flaw or two in the proposition. In the first place, leaving aside the whole god-royal DNA thingy which might just have a tiny problem or two, whatever the merits of William’s DNA, his offspring had only half of it, their offspring a quarter, and as soon as ten generations we are down to les than one thousandth of the essence of William. I will leave it to you to work out where we are after 50 generations.

But even that calculation of course makes the assumption that old Normandy Bill passed on his genetic makeup in an unbroken line down to our own dear queen and beyond. Anyone with even a smattering of recollection of the British Monarch-based history universally taught in Australia when I was a lad will recall the odd hiccup along that smooth unbroken line of succession. For most of the 1000 years the one who became king was the one not with the most William DNA but the one with the big battalions, and bigger sword. There are interlopers, and sidetracks, and dead ends, and usurpers to such a tangled web we weave that the chances of even the slightest bit of royal William the Conqueror’s DNA remaining are zero, zilch, non-existent, less than none. Remember, even in recent times, that our dear queen is a fluke, not meant to hold the royal sceptre, get the sacred oil put on her head. That if she had a brother her life would have been like that of sister Maggie, since lacking a y chromosome stops the royalness of the DNA becoming realised. Similarly her dad wasn’t meant to have a crown, being the younger brother and all, and only first sons get the full benefit of royal DNA. But then old Eddie fell for a scarlet woman, and since a woman who isn’t a virgin can’t act as a receptacle for royal DNA because having had intercourse with a non-royal pollutes her uterus (a belief still held by some breeders of sheep and cattle), old Eddie had to pass on his royalness to Bertie, via a secret handshake, and take his woman, and their rather unfortunate political allegiances, away from the land that William once conquered for Normandy.

The queen’s great grandmother of course, she who passed on, as well as royal DNA, an unfortunate gene that wiped out potential royals by making them bleed to death, only became queen as a result of the unfortunate and barren circumstances of her two predecessors. And their predecessors were only royal by a fluke after sailing in from distant Hanover. And all that only takes us back some 250 years. So I suppose the question for monarchists is, if you really think you are worshipping the current holder of a bit of DNA derived from chance events (Harold of course being bloody unlucky, really, to be dead) in the eleventh century on the south coast of England, how do you imagine that DNA got to young William?

But maybe you haven’t thought through the DNA stuff. Fine. Do you think instead that there has been some kind of legal and constitutional passing on of the kingship like an extended torch relay? That, you know, “the king is dead, long live the king” and so on. Again, I hate to remind you, same problem as the DNA. Remember (of just a few moments) “my horse my horse, my kingdom” etc, crown found on the battlefield, dead princes in tower, Mary dying before she could kill Lizzie, the ride to Scotland to announce that there was a kingship of England going if the king of Scotland wanted it, James driven out by a Dutchman, the phone call to the Elector of Hanover, you remember all that? So sure, the winning king each time rewrote the rule books to ensure that everything was now, in retrospect, legal and above board, and the succession had passed on properly, but we all know that is bullshit, yes?

So given all the extra-legal shenanigans of crown passing-on at times (and I haven’t even mentioned the gaggle of royal consorts from all over Europe, including H8′s six attempts to find a suitable batch of DNA to mix with his) what current monarchists seem to be saying is this. George 6, nice enough fellow, not sharpest knife in the drawer and never seen as foreman material, but scrubbed up all right when the stammer was gone. Pity no son, but you can’t have everything, and not being pro-Nazi a big plus. So King George, hands to QE2, hands to C3 (no, you don’t get a vote, wanna have your royal cake and eat it too?), hands to W5, hands to baby bump. There, that’s a proper legal succession with not too much dilution of Bertie’s blood eh?

But if this is the structure of the monarchist world, then what the hell is it about? Of 30 million people, was Bertie Wooster (sorry G6) really the one you’d choose to be the boss of your country if you had your druthers? QE2, ok, mostly harmless, but put her in a room with a thousand of her exact female peers and I bet you wouldn’t pick her out. And then C3. I mean, he’s um, well, nutty, not to put too fine a point on it. If he’s applying for a job with you as office boy against a field of three, do you think you’d give it to him? Of 60 million people, is he really the best and the brightest?

And then William. Nice enough lad it seems, but if he had swapped identities with a fellow student at St Andrews, would you have been any the wiser? Helicopter pilot, great, uniquely for a royal heir he has a trade, but is he capable of anything but driving a helicopter and impregnating fair lady?

So here’s this bunch of imperfectly ordinary, at times dysfunctional, extended family whose only claims to fame is inherited wealth, the ability to say nothing at length, and, somewhere on their persons, a tattooed royal barcode ready to be scanned when earlier lives draw peacefully to close.

Sorry, but what the hell is it about this system that brings apparently normal people to tears and hero worship? Why on earth would you want this gaggle of unemployable people given the job of heading up not just one country but many including some on other side of world. What the hell do you imagine the advantage is of worshipping this crew rather than electing, every five years, someone with talent and wit, from among your fellow citizens, to do the job, such as it is?

Am I missing something here?

It couldn’t be, could it, that monarchists still believe in that other aspect of kingship that old Billy passed down to his heirs, that the way to rule people was to put the fear of god into them. That kings were not merely a man among other men, primus inter pares, but were in fact god’s representative on earth, ready to make a preliminary judgement on whether people had been naughty or nice before they even got to the pearly gates. That kings could heal people with a touch or kill people with a gesture, and god was behind them all the way. That behind every good king was a good, or a bad, depending, god. That getting a crown wasn’t just like getting the ultimate Boy Scout badge for kingship, but, held over a head by a priest, was a signal to god that here was a new God Rep, ready to be sworn in to the heavenly gang. That the holy oil with which the priest anointed kings was, like the biscuit thingy at mass, actually a real thing with real powers. I mean our modern monarchists, in Australia, in the year 2012, couldn’t actually still believe in the divine right of kings.

Could they?

Note – This post was inspired by a challenge from Matt da Silva on completing a post on royalty at his blog.

I have had other goes at this family of Saxe-Coburg-Gothas and their Australian cheerleaders on this blog
here
and here
and at last here

The Right Dishonourable

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , ,

At the height of the Ottoman Empire the method of succession was that as soon as the old Sultan died the eldest son of the chief concubine had all his half brothers killed so they could never be threats to his rule. England had a slightly more indirect process – the Wars of the Roses, for example, went on until there was only one possible king left, and there were numerous other battles, invasions, murders. In most countries indeed, at various times, potential kings battled it out with each other until the rivals were dead. And many of their subjects, especially if they had picked the wrong side. Same true for some countries after disposing of kings and becoming republics, notably Revolutionary France and the Soviet Union – jails full and bodies disposed of.

You could easily argue that while the emergence of democracies was a means of letting first the rich, then ordinary citizens, and finally women, vote to choose their leaders, an even more important advance of a democracy was in establishing a permanent structure of government which included a legal opposition (“His Majesty’s loyal opposition” in England to make it really official), an alternative government. Well and good, until some of the leaders elected by the people began to think that they should rule, in the interests of the people of course, forever, and in that circumstance having an opposition, an “alternative government” was not only unnecessary but might confuse the voters.

So in parts of the world governments began killing, jailing, demonising, silencing, opposition parties and leaders. Originally in countries including Germany, Chile, Argentina, Soviet Union, Indonesia, China. More recently in countries such as Malaysia, Russia, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Ukraine, Burma. Not democracies – a democracy could be defined as one which has free and fearless opposition parties, alternative governments in both name and reality.

This sort of thing didn’t happen in western democracies of course, including our own (although the aftermath of the Qld election is worrying). Governments didn’t like oppositions, but generally treated them according to the old adage “be nice to people on your way up because you will meet them again on your way down”. But more recently in America, quickly followed by here, the opposition parties decided they would turn the tables. Allowing for different systems, Republicans and Liberals have blocked as much govt legislation as possible, blocked appointments, attacked public servants, put gunsights on pictures of opponents, called for killing, tried to delegitimise the leaders of the governments, set up fake protest groups, screamed abuse and disrupted parliamentary proceedings, and, recently here, have tried to destroy the careers of the Speaker of the House, and one of the MPs, in order to bring down the government.

Same approach, in reverse, as from those dictatorships. Just as damaging to a democracy.