The Death Of The Public Intellectual

For those of us with second-rate minds and of a certain age, the doings of public intellectuals used to be important. A.J.P. Taylor, Kenneth Clark, Jacob Bronowski et al had an impact on our ability to reason. I deliberately select three academic practitioners whose wider impact was televisual. That says much about how I imbibed my learning. 

Intellect has been privatised. And what brought all this to mind? Two missed opportunities that's what. Melvyn Bragg and Simon Schama are definitely public intellectuals. Lord Bragg (an entirely justified enoblememt by the way) brings us the staggering In Our Time every week on Radio 4 and his South Bank Show was a beacon of high-brow television. As for Schama, he has been bringing us provocative television for decades. All of which means that their recent offerings come as a disappointment. In Why Art Matters (Bragg), and The Story of Us (Schama) both men come across as weary - understandable maybe, but disappointing nonetheless.

Bragg's lament (I was going to call it a rant, but it is too quiet for that) at the dying of the artistic light in  modern Britain preaches to the choir. His Lordship interviews a succession of creatives and asks them to agree with his proposition that the arts are in crisis. All agree. Duh! Dissenting voices would have been interesting - maybe there aren't any. An opportunity missed. As I write this it occurs to me that I am being ungenerous - this may be so and perhaps Bragg is fully entitled to be exhausted after a working lifetime spent carrying the torch for the arts. Nonetheless, a disappointment.

Schama's The Story of Us, purports to be a modern cultural history of the United Kingdom. Schama too comes across as tired of carrying that torch. The three part series (the shortness of the series says much about the poverty of BBC commissioning) only really comes alive in its final portion when it considers Northern Ireland. Of all people it is Bono (I know, bloody Bono) who, interviewed by Schama, sheds a discerning light on the interaction of culture and politics. 

I feel mean writing this since both Bragg and Schama have plenty of credit in the cultural bank. They have more than done their bit.   

The Great Dictator

If pressed for an opinion (well, in fact, I rarely need pressing - I accept this) I would profess a preference for the silent works of Buster Keaton over those of Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin is too cloying, too mawkish. And this prejudice makes assessment of The Great Dictator difficult because what is an important piece of cinema descends into mush at its conclusion. Thus the film is condemned to be more important than it is good. 

Despite this final disappointment, this is a movie with much good in it. Taking the piss out of Hitler (Chaplin's character is the pathetic Adenoid Hynkel) and out of Mussolini (an outstanding performance from Jack Oakie - Trump should be made to watch it) is manifestly a good thing and it should be granted to Chapiln that it was a brave thing to do at a time when 'America First' was a loud siren cry,

Despite its faults, 76/100.

The Casting Of Doubt Upon Manifest Destiny

Despite my troubles with a lecturer who didn't take to me (in his defence I have to say that I reciprocated) I enjoyed the Film Studies module I took as part of my second degree. Within that module I enjoyed the theory of genres in film and my topic today (are you sitting comfortably?) is a sub-genre, the Revisionist Western. 

I have hinted at this recently with my rating of Shane and I am brought back to the subject by contemplation of The Man from Laramie (1955), directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart. We mustn't get carried away by the attraction of the topic - this is not remotely as eminent a movie as Shane although it shares some of its cinematic grandeur. It is however a very good one and (this is where the sub-genre bit comes in) it subverts the philosophy of your bog-standard western. The classic western is driven unquestioningly by the assumed beneficial operation of Manifest Destiny, itself the engine of the American project. The Man from Laramie has goodies and baddies (and some characters who float realistically between the extremes) but not a one is a Native American. 

Manifest Destiny is the impulse that feeds the wretched warped morality of MAGA, so expertly coralled by the odious Trump and the chilling Vance. Like Shane the Mann/Stewart film posits that bullies must be confronted. The Man from Laramie, 70/100.  

Self-Corroboration

I recall from my dim and distant past that there is, within the Law of Evidence, a rule against self-corroboration. Well, that rule does not have sovereignty in the realm of the OG.

I mention this merely because I yesterday came across a quotation from eminent sociologist Erving Goffman, itself quoted within Alan Bennett's Writing Home. Anyway, being as self-involved as anyone who writes a blog I lighted on Goffman's remarks as adding weight to what I said about Keir Starmer on 7 January.

Young psychiatrists in state mental hospitals who are sympathetic to the plight of the patients sometimes express distance from their administrative medical role by affecting shirts open at the collar, much as do socialists in their legislative offices .. What we have in these cases is a special kind of status symbol - a disidentifier ... telling others not what he is but what he isn't quite.

I see this appliance of the disidentifier in the dressing habits of my successors in the legal profession. As I write this I realise, of course, that Starmer is one such successor.

Sloppy logic, I know. This is not really self-corroboration. But you get what I'm driving at - these are my prejudices and I'm sticking to them, it's taken years to acquire them.

 

Days Of Wonder

I am here on the island, my ostensible reason being to see a roofer about the leaky chimney, but, in truth, mainly because I love it here. The only downside is that the Groupie has not been able to join me on this occasion. It has been a notable break.

For journeys up here I have abandoned the M6 even though it is potentially the quickest route - the expense of the M6 Toll cannot be justified and, besides, if you get held up on the motorway, you really do get held up. The shortest route is the old A5, also the most scenic. However I favour the A458/A55 - quickish (exactly three hours on Thursday) and scenicish. 

A very productive meeting with the roofer, RJE, on Friday. Like all the tradesmen on the island (in my experience) he is friendly, reasonable and charming. So far , so good then, but it was yesterday (Saturday) that turned into one of those days of wonder. Up early and drove to Anglesey Golf Club where I maintain country membership (ludicrously cheap compared to Birmingham) and I had bitten the bullet and entered a Stableford. Now playing with strangers can be daunting but not at The Anglesey. I was warmly greeted and paired with AJ, a Mancunian who served with the RAF at Valley and married a local girl and stayed here after he left the forces. The course was wet but eminently playable and there was a strong wind that made the back nine very challenging. We were round in three hours. The course won but I had a lovely time. If you see me, remind me to tell you about my birdie on the fourth. 

And as if that was not enough, as I drove back across Mon, Snowdonia (sorry, Eryri) glared at me, sun-kissed and snow lying on the northern slopes. Beautiful. 

I was back in plenty of time to open a bottle of Rioja (Gran Reserva naturally) and watch England subside to defeat to Ireland in the Six Nations. This much was predicatable and I won't bore you with another lecture on the problems besetting the grand old game in England. I then watched the recording of the Scotland v Italy match without knowing the result. Isn't Blair Kinghorn a good player!

Anchovies on brown toast for supper. 

You will notice that I have drawn a sensitive veil over the demolition of Wales by France on Friday evening. I find it best not to intrude on private grief. Mind you, DH the greenkeeper was kind enough to remember that I had been a player and elicited my opinion. I comforted him by saying that England would lose and that Wales have unearthed another quality player in their captain, Jac Morgan.

Slept like a baby. Days of wonder.

A Brief Illustrated Treatise On Morality

AMORAL: lacking a moral sense

IMMORAL: a person or behaviour that consciously goes against accepted morals.

Compare And Contrast

I am put in mind of the way examination questions used to be framed - compare contrast the treatments of villainy in George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. 

Both of these pictures were box-office successes, garnered awards, and the second, The Sting, reunited the two stars of the first with director George Roy Hill. The four year wait was worth it. Those stars, Paul Newman and Robert Redford, are, to this hetero eye, two of the best-looking men ever to have graced the screen. But beyond that quality (in fact well ahead of it) each is confident enough in his own presence not to go in search of scenes to steal - instead they play off each other beautifully.

Why do I mention villainy in my pretended exam question? Because beneath the wit and charm (and there is a lot of both) both characters in both films are unreconstituted crooks. The attractiveness of criminals is hardly a novel feature but rarely can it have been put in the hands of such reliable charm. You like Butch and Sundance; you pull for the grifters in The Sting. This ought (wearing a moralist's hat) to be a problem. that it is not, is commentary on the skill of the film-making and (getting all philosophical) on human nature. 

As I review my rabbiting on, I realise that I have not distinguished the treatments of villainy in the two films. And here's the clever answer - there is no difference when push comes to shove and moral relativism is a dangerous game to play, particularly for someone who made his living as a lawyer. So I'll shut up and merely recommend both movies - I can't split them - 76/100 each.