British subversive cinema

Britain and cinema. Sigh. For many cinephiles out there, the two just don't go together. Jean-Luc Godard once cruelly and unfairly quipped 'you could only lose hope in British cinema if you believed in it the first place.' (Inaccurate quote - that's how I remember it. Don't kill me. This is just any old blog on the old inter-web, not an academic paper, so I can get away with this kind of sloppiness!) Cinema is a modern invention. It is an art that spawned out of the dawn of modernistic progress. Cinematographic equipment was a landmark discovery. So much so that it is no exaggeration to rank all kinds of optics as one of the greatest scientific inventions of all time. When cinema came in Europe, before Hollywood became the major industry that it is today, it was a new and exciting art. This was alongside radical politics - fascism, communism, psychoanalysis etc. were wildly popular with those bohemian werewolves who congregated in Viennese and Parisian coffee houses.

Put that alongside the UK and the two don't quite fit. The UK has never really had a tradition of radical politics. (If you were a Marxist, you generally joined the Labour party, which was largely founded to attenuate those radical impulses and to realise them in a more compromised and pragmatic fashion.) The UK had, and still has in many ways, a deeply ingrained class system. You could make the claim, without being at all controversial, that it is the most valuable country in the history of literature. Shakespeare, after all, graced these shores, as did Dickens. But then, British literature has always being considered far too parochial - still is. As great as all those 19th century novels are, I was put off from reading them as a teenager. It's only now, in my mid twenties, that I would dare pick them up and read them with relish. As a teenager, why would I want to read about upper class frumpy housewives, balls and men wearing top-hats? I wanted to read about sodomy, transgression, porn, violence - all of that exciting and lovely stuff! (Or metaphysical philosophical fiction or dystopian fiction... you get the picture. The kind of stuff that excites idealistic, angry, shy, confused, cerebral, reclusive, lonely and neglected teenage boys....) I knew even then that many of these novels satirised class divisions etc. But then, British satire struck me - well, it still does - as a little too gentle. When modernism came along, Britian was quite possibly the top player. (Although Ireland had both Joyce and Beckett, which would put anyone to shame...) But... but... you still can't shake off the pungent whiff of parochialism when you read most of the British modernists. Virginia Woolf might be the best example. Stream of consciousness, temporally non-linear, wordplay etc. etc. - all that kind of stuff. Yet she thought literature should be refined and well-mannered. The content - or lack of content... - was straight out of the most tedious and execrable 19th century novel. About the only reason why she didn't think Joyce was quite the best thing since Shakespeare, from what I can make out, was that she thought his toilet humour was naughty and that it made her squeamish.

Hence, the cinematographic medium and the British sensibility just didn't seem to be made for each other. Granted, the UK made some really great films. But then, they suffered very much from the Virginia Woolf syndrome... or from everything else I was talking about in the paragraph above this one. The brilliant Ealing Studio films summarised this perfectly well. A land of quirky eccentrics, with a peculiar sense of humour, a fondness for a cup of tea and for fish and chips... and always getting into scrapes. They were brilliantly funny and they made for brilliant cinema. But that hardly meant that Britain could even begin to dream that they could compete with what countries like France, Germany and Italy were up to at the time. I really like the Ealing studio films, but those films maybe are a bad example. Maybe I should have cited something with a bit of gravitas... Brief Encounter is often cited as one of the best British films. Great film. It's a film I can watch many times and enjoy. I think that the real reason why I like it is that it makes me nostalgic for a period in history I never lived in but some of my grandparents (mainly on my maternal side) did. (Actually, my parental grandparents went to the UK from Latin America to fight in the second world war. Like me, they also had British passports. So they were there at the time of the film. Don't know why I'm even mentioning this in parentheses.) Real life wasn't quite like that, but that's how the media represented it at the time. People spoke stiffly and bookishly. Very politely. Very posh and deferential. Plummy accents. Because I've now spent so much of my life with my nose buried in books I find that I  speak a bit like that now. Actually, I get that a lot now! 'Why do you speak so posh?'

 Interestingly, because things were so up-in-the-air at the time, social mores broke down a lot more and there was a lot of infidelity. Aha, the nuclear family was under threat! After the second world war, the Labour Atlee government wanted to end deference and class division. They didn't quite succeed (ironically, Thatcher really was the death knell to deference...), but they did give us the NHS and the welfare state. Anyway, however interesting I might find them, let's put an end to these convoluted digressions. The main point I'm trying to make is that Brief Encounter is a product of its time - shows a period in history wonderfully and has a lot of Rachmaninov, trains and people drinking tea. It's really nicely filmed, too. Though however well-plotted the drama might be and however fully realised the characterisation is, it's still a little... soppy, no? More to the point, it is a film about infidelity. Because of the time it was made in, and because it is British, it didn't go all the way to satirise and subvert these social mores which were suffocating and restricting moon-eyed housewives.

Hence, Britain could never really overcome this type of parochialism. This was even the case when it tried to be a little more cosmopolitan. The Third Man, another contender for Best British Film Ever, is actually a better film than Brief Encounter. It is set in Vienna just after the end of the mighty Second World War. This is the problem when Britain ventures abroad, either in its books or films: it can only see foreign cultures or anything outside it through the prism of unmitigated Englishness. (Or Britishness. Or whatever. Those are very fine distinctions.) Although the film is about a black market after WWII in Vienna, we hardly get a perspective on the locals... Again, very English. (Or British. Scots aren't as parochial, though. We have the term 'Little Englander,' but have you ever heard of the term 'Little Scottishman'? No! So, I vow, so as not to offend any Scottish readers, if I have any, not to call Scots parochial!) It is very English to go to foreign countries, do quintessentially English things and not take an interest in the culture of the place you're visiting. So it is no surprise that when Carol Reed took over his cumbersome 1940s camera equipment that, when it rolled in the streets of Vienna, that he should not take any interest in the context in which his film was set? Also, would the film be as historic without the fabulous presence of Orson Welles? I think not. Is Orson Welles an Englishman? I think not. The iconic 'Cuckoo Clock' monologue was ad-libbed by Welles; it wasn't in Graham Greene's script. Welles might have been posh and Waspish. But he grew up in the United States, a country founded in the midst of the fervour of the American frontier, the gold rush and Enlightenment politics. Because he grew up in such conditions, he had more of a cosmopolitan outlook. The whole of Europe loved him to bits. So it took all that to push something within really 'great film' territory to something within 'best British film of all time' territory. And let's not forget the terrible legacy of British imperialism. We see this in the Powell/Pressburg films. Brits go abroad and everyone does everything they can to ensure these lovely people with their lovely plummy accents get the best possible treatment. These films came out only a few decades after having plundered many third world countries. When the hero in a Powell/Pressburg flick makes friends with even a German or Frenchman, it is presented as something very exotic indeed. But how could the UK even begin to understand the rest of the world when it cannot understand how much it did to destroy it?

So there we have it. All this is a relative shame. There is so much material in Britain for the subversive to rip to shreds. Many subversives have. The problem is that most British people - and, by extension, most British artists - are so steeped in British culture that they can't recognise that the things they have grown up with for years are very peculiar. They also don't realise that most of their little traditions are horseshit. What other country of the world is so obsessed with its pomp and circumstance? How can it cling on to the House of Lords and its silly wigs for cripes' sake? All this makes them myopic when it comes to critiquing their own culture.

The aim of this blog post is to point out that there are some British films which can be subversive. This makes them unusual. And exciting. And, for all of their edgy material, you could easily say that they are all quintessentially British films! These three films are If.... (1968) by Lindsay Anderson, The Devils (1971) by Ken Russell and Naked (1993) by Mike Leigh. Why do you need to look for one of these seditious artsy-fartsy French (pseudo-)intellectuals when you can occasionally find them in your own backyard? Take that, Jean-Luc!

If.... came out just when the May '68 revolts in Paris were going on. To many, the film tapped in to the revolutionary fervour that was sweeping across Europe. It would, I think, be a mistake to equate it with anything going on in Paris. This is a very British revolution. The Parisian students were Marxists, Sartrians, Foucaultians and ascribed to a load of nonsensical theory that melded a whole swathe of academic disciplines and that no-one really fully understood. (If you went up to, say, Lacan and asked him what his theories meant... if you told him 'cut the bullshit, give me a straight answer!'... and he gave you an answer... I don't think that you'd leave particularly convinced...) The revolts in this film are a response to years of rigid social codes, deference and the imperiousness of the upper classes which had gone in Britain, well, forever.

So, what 'theory' informs the revolts led by Malcolm McDowell and his fellow peers? Let's drop the word 'theory'. It's largely nonsense. What thought informs their revolts? The lads in the film, in many ways, are what I was like aged 17, except that they show their emotions and aren't pathologically shy. They are full of angst, nihilism and seditious contempt for their authorities (the 'dons' who lead their boarding school). Like many a young angry thoughtful boy, they start thinking about death, rebellion and nihilism. Unlike the purely Marxist revolts in Paris, the students in this fictional film take an interest in mysticism and religion. At the beginning of the film, one of the students enthusiastically sputters about an experiment in asceticism (the topic of my masters dissertation, which I will start writing and have finished a year away from now). This is the young pseud we have inside all of us but, over the years, undergoes a gradual death. Mine is alive and kicking, as you might tell. (I don't understand why anyone would want to grow out of all this adolescent stuff - it's great!) So, the 'thought' which leads to the revolt is largely a brew of Nietzsche, Freud (plenty of all that 'unconscious' stuff - more on that later), a smidgen of revolutionary Marx, religious mysticism and anthropological thinkers (like Levi-Strauss, maybe?) who prompted posh idiots/academics to impartially look into foreign cultures. There's some brilliant African music ('Sanctus' by Missa Luba. I urge you to look it up. You won't. So here it is.) that the McDowell character takes an interest in. It's used to great effect.

The film doesn't celebrate revolution because it believes in the idea of a better society. That's a very socialist idea. This isn't a socialist film. It celebrates revolution because it destroys a society that is decadent and repressive. It wants law and order to degenerate into anarchy. (By anarchy I don't mean in the collective organised sense. I mean in the everyday use of the word - pandemonium on the streets.) We must bear in mind that all the hippie-dippie 'let's make love, not war' stuff was turning into something nastier in parts of the world. The drugs these flower power kids were taking were turning a lot of them into psychotic murderers. Think of Charles Manson. Paul Thomas Anderson's Thomas Pynchon adaptation Inherent Vice makes this point. The idealistic political yearnings of this generation evaporated very quickly. The 'hippie dream' collapsed. It collapsed because of all the drugs they were taking and also because their free-spirited lifestyle just wasn't financially sustainable. (The film is a very literal adaptation, apparently, so by extension it's really Pynchon's idea. I haven't read that particular Pynchon book, so I'm going by what I saw in the film.) Going back to If.... .... ('Jesus'! you're thinking. Your eyes are rolling! 'Just stick to the bloody film you're meant to be writing about!' Aha, I retort! These tangents are relevant! Anyway, reader, you are right to an extent. And I really shouldn't assume what you are thinking. I may or may not know you. Most rude.)  So, this is a nihilistic conservative film. (I must admit, I am partial to a bit of jargon. Especially when it is italicised.) It is individualistic, not collectivist. It doesn't care a jot about improving the lives of others. It sees humans as intrinsically flawed, not good. Nothing can be done to improve humans. Everything, essentially, sucks. What to do? Get some machine guns and start shooting people.

So, like Freud and like Nietzsche, Lindsay Anderson believes that there is an evil animal lurking inside all of us. My favourite scene in the film is where McDowell character/friend go to a café where a sexy young girl serves them some yummy coffee. (Coffee back then was very yucky in the UK, so I'm told. One of the things I am thankful to Thatcher for is good coffee. Daft point, I admit, but the good coffee you can get hold of in the UK is thanks largely to globalisation. So that coffee wasn't yummy, it was yucky. Instant stuff. It just looks yummy because it is served by a sexy young girl. Geeeesh.) McDowell/compadre reveal said inner 'evil animal' (sounds trite, I know, but people do generally resort to this kind of language when discussing all this unconscious stuff) when approaching the girl sexually. McDowell puts the 'Sanctus' record on. (This bit is odd. He goes to a jukebox. How on earth would any old café in 1968 have an African record available? ...) The girl starts talking about how 'sometimes I think that I am a tiger. When I look at my eyes in the mirror they get bigger and bigger. I like tigers. Grraaaar!' They start to hiss at each other and to chase each other around the room. After that they have sex on the floor. What makes me slightly uncomfortable about this scene, I  must admit, is that Anderson recourses to African music to represent the id. (I am more than comfortable with the raunchy sex...) There is a sense here that Africa is baser and more animalistic. British imperialism covertly at work again?

And, of course, another thrilling bit is saved right for the end. You know that I said that a lot of British traditions are 'horseshit' before, right? What's so thrilling about the closing sequence is that it giddily, childishly even, says likewise. It essentially says 'You know, deference is a stupid idea, as is class. A lot of British traditions, actually, are fucking stupid. You know what? Let's blow it all up. Let's send them all to hell.' And they do. There is a lot of humour in the film. Before, there are a lot of absurd 'what the fuck is going on?' moments. Here it just gets ridiculous. It was pointless for Monty Python to parody this scene. The entire sequence is incredibly Pythonesque as it is.

It is easy to write If.... off as an inordinately dated relic with no relevance to the present day. That would be a huge mistake. These public schools, as you well know, still exist. They are thriving. Their students still graduate and get all the best jobs in politics and in the media. The politics in the film at a micro level still applies. Buggery, bullying, petty competition and psychological abuse still take place in these schools. As a matter of fact, with digital media, it is accentuated. (At Eton, parents have been urging teachers to teach their children about the alleged dangers of internet porn at sex ed.) At a macro level, the kind of hierarchical structure we see in the school still persists. For all of the efforts of 1960s political idealism that this film is associated with, the privileged few still tower above the many. (Ughr. Horribly put. Sorry.) In fact, income inequality is a lot worse than it was in the 1960s. In fact, the historical period in which the film is set is actually the high point in terms of equality and wealth distribution in the UK.

And this is where things get weird get weird and uncomfortable. If.... is David Cameron's favourite film. I know what your reaction is - 'he's trying to be trendy and cool.' (I'm really not selling this film to you, am I?) I think not. This isn't like Gordon Brown trying to get down with the kids by saying that he liked the Arctic Monkeys. To point out the obvious, Cameron can see himself in these characters because he also went to a posh boarding school. To dig in a little deeper, could Cameron see If.... as his ultimate wet dream? I don't think Cameron is particularly fond with being deferential to these old fogeys from the Second World War. He is the party's moderniser in that sense when it comes to social issues. He did, after all, send his party into cahoots by legalising gay marriage. Perhaps he, too, relishes the idea of getting machine guns and grenades and killing all the old-fashioned teachers he had at school. (If (!) a film were made about people getting machine guns and grenades and blowing up poor people on benefits, perhaps that would knock If.... off its pedestal for Cameron. But he wouldn't own up to liking that particular film, would he? And, after he slashed funding for British cinema, it is not like that film is going to be made any time soon, is it?) The film also is ambiguous about the bullying that goes on in boarding schools. Perhaps Anderson looks back on that somewhat affectionately, or at least a little ambivalently? And Cameron, having no compassion, does so too?

If.... (1968)

And now let's move on to Ken Russell's The Devils. The reason why I think I'll have less to say about this film is that I am at odds to explain why I like it so much. It's bizarre, 'out there,' fantastical, exciting, thrilling, funny - all that stuff. But why? Ineffably so, in many ways. But there's no good for me to write a blog post about a film (well, maybe less than 1/3 of a blog post about a film...) and for me to say 'oooooh, it's so ineffable and mysterious.' So I will try to explain why I like it.

I just noticed that I said nothing about the visuals in If, either about the cinematography or its mise-en-scene.... (There's quite a bit to say about that. It alternates between black-and-white and colour, out of pecuniary expediency rather than an intentional aesthetic choice.) So I'll start talking as to how The Devils is such a visually ravishing film.

It is somewhat tawdry, yet elaborately baroque. The director Derek Jarman built sets for the film. In the image below, you can see how a nunnery is made out of materials for a toilet. (Obviously, this is very sacrilegious...) There are many ridiculous, somewhat camp, costumes. So that accounts for the tawdriness. The main reason why I want to emphasise the visual aspect of the film is that it reminds me of paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, a painter that I am very fond of. There is all of the sexual stuff - nuns are dying to have sex with priests, Jesus Christ wounds are licked and everyone is  fucking right-left-and-centre - so there is a sense of this very sanctimonious society going down a moral, as well as a literal, hell. Bosch painted during the Renaissance. As such, his painting were cryptic cautionary warnings. They were definitely preaching piety. They were images portending an apocalyptic hell. Yet many of his images have led many critics to view him as a forefather of surrealism. You could easily look at some of his images and mistake them for something by Salvador Dali. They look surreal to us now, but there is no way, considering the epoch in which he lived, that Bosch espoused the worldview of the surrealists. The Devils not only looks like a Bosch painting because of these resonances. (There are alligators been thrown into furnaces, for example.) It also goes to great lengths to capture the density of a Bosch painting, the level of detail. It suffused with the symbolism, which is the inevitable baggage which comes with Catholicism. Many scenes are crowded with ridiculous figures. There are tonnes of statues all over the place. I can look at a painting by Bosch for hours because I keep spotting new things. The Devils is pleasing on the eye because it is has a similar kind of visual richness.

Russell converted to Catholicism a few years before this film was made. I'm not sure how seriously he took it. I think he liked the spectacle, the abundant iconography, of this religious denomination. I think this aspect of this filmmaking is perhaps is why I'm not so keen on him as a director. I saw his film Mahler. By God, was that crap! I was especially keen to see it because I like Mahler's music and I really like novels and films about the lives of composers. I have written a few short stories based on composer biographies. But these fantastical scenes were so outlandish and ridiculous... ughr. I've been warned that his film on Franz Lizst is worse in this sense, so I'll steer clear of that. In The Devils, this kind of visual 'spectacle' is a lot more controlled. It stands out from the rest of his output for this reason. Though many critics have also criticised this film for being overblown, too.

If you want to be transgressive, religion has to be one of the easiest targets you could go for. You can do something aesthetically really bad, offend religious pieties and still get lauded. Piss Christ by Andrés Serrano consists of a crucifix of Christ... well, submerged in a glass of piss. Just a photograph of that. End of story. And, because of the silly commercialised art world that I've vented my spleen on in this blog before, it attracted a lot of praise. If you want to be edgy, raising a middle finger to the church is a facile way of going about that. Religious pieties are sensitive. They are deeply entrenched. Most religious people, it goes without saying, get easily upset if you say something blasphemous. Most of of our taboos are because of religion.

I'll just develop that last sentence a little bit more. Transgression involves the overcoming of taboos. Since most taboos have been installed by religion, all transgression in a sense is about the upsetting of religious codes and practices. The Devils isn't gratuitously blasphemous. It's hard to say that about a film which involves a nun's sexual fantasy about licking Christ's festering wounds. The Devils principally wants to understand the (here comes a veeeery convoluted phrase - apologies) psychology of the madness in religion. (Couldn't think of another way of phrasing that more succinctly. Well, I could. And it would take about ten minutes. And I really should go to bed now.) The nuns in the film are crazy and sex-obsessed. Psychological studies have revealed that religious people do have a tendency for all kinds of hallucinations. This is a film about religion, for sure. But it's also a film about a descent into madness and paranoia. The idea of taking a vow of celibacy is a bit problematic. Just masturbating every day of your life would make you a bit crazy, wouldn't it?

There is a conflict between good/evil, justice/deceit, piety/sacrilege etc. in the film. What I like about seeing a lot of those Renaissance paintings, of seeing devils whispering naughty things into the ears of angels, is the level of conflict and tension. It's two polar worlds at war with each other. This is why I found the bits I read of Milton's Paradise Lost so exciting. I think that if you transferred the same level of tension in one of those paintings into the narrative of a motion picture, you would end up with something like The Devils. A war between heaven and hell. This is despite the fact that nothing supernatural happens. The principal priest is accused of witchcraft by a horny nun infatuated with him. Once she finds she can't get to have sex with him, she grows to resent him. The priest is sexually promiscuous, impregnates a young girl, she finds that she he won't do anything to help her and she also plots against him. He breaks another major Catholic piety by getting married 'for love' with a sensitive and pious girl by having a secret ceremony in his house. ('Aha!' you say. 'So only now you are divulging something about the plot! Some people do watch these films mainly because of the story, you know?' Well, so do I. I am partial to a good yarn, too, and I like the story in this film! I already promised not to tell you what you are thinking because I already said that it's 'most rude.' I have broken that third wall a lot of times in this blog post. And it's not like I'm being remotely original or interesting with it. Woody Allen made it mainstream when he addressed the camera in Annie Hall. It's even a bit of a cliché now! Ahgr!)

The film is based on events that occurred in 17th century France, in a town called Loudon. The horny and irreverent priest was called Urbain Grandier. Many heroic religious figures who confront authority and get accused of blasphemy go on to become saints. The whole Loudon affair was a little too lurid, even for a denomination as obsessed with sex and death as Catholicism, for that to happen. Many theologians, occultist weirdos, historians and philosophers have since written at length about the event. It has been dramatised a lot. This particular version was based on the play by the 'author of ideas' par exellence, Aldous Huxley. (He was a fucking clunky writer, though. If you have both great ideas and you don't write clunky prose I salute you, sir! Or madame.) Huxley also wrote a long essay (longer than this stupid blog post, I can guarantee - it was a whole book!) on the topic and it informed Russell's film, too.

I mentioned the word 'lurid' in the paragraph above. The whole film could be said to explore the aesthetics of luridness. (I think that I'll just italicise a phrase of mine when it just gets too ridiculous.) There are lot of gory wounds. There's a lot sex with gory wounds. As a result, this film tends to appeal to horror fans. As a matter of fact I think it is even considered by most to be a horror film. If this film appeals to any film scholar, it would appeals to a scholar of horror films. David Cronenberg, the main go-to guy if you want to know anything about 'the aesthetics of luridness,' is a huge Ken Russell fan. (He is also very scholarly for a film director, let alone one who makes horror movies.) Cronenberg is fascinated with people who become obsessed and who develop sexual fetishes for wounds and gory stuff. Cronenberg is an atheist. Atheism is a very variegated field, if you can even call it a field! (It's not as a matter of fact. Most atheists are blassé about being atheists. When you press most of them about it, they just go 'meh.' It's only a select few who develop whole thought systems around atheism.) Cronenberg looks at these pathologies almost from a psychiatric point of view. How does a crazy fucked up person develop a sexual fetish for yucky wounds? Russell is a Catholic. Wounds and all that gory stuff are central to Catholicism. If nuns develop sexual fetishes for wounds, then it's because that means they get turned on by the figure of Christ. If you think about it, that's not at all odd. (In the secular societies which Cronenberg dissects, it is.) They spend their whole lives locked up in convents. Like the rest of us, they are human. Like the rest of us, they have sexual proclivities. Like the rest of us, they get horny by looking at certain sensory stimuli. If they are homosexual, they'll get horny by looking at other nuns. (Lesbian nuns. Exciting. For the love of God, let's not get into that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) If they are heterosexual, they'll get horny by looking at whatever male sensory stimuli is available to them. If they see many figures of Christ, they'll get horny over that. Christ is also a figure they revere more than any other. They are told that they shouldn't even think of him as a human; they should look at him as someone who transcends human limitations. It's taboo to look at him sexually. Breaking taboos is exciting to anyone, especially in repressive clerical societies. Hence, they'll get horny over the figure of Christ and they'll have fantasies about licking Christ's wounds. Many nuns must have wanked themselves stupid over that thought for thousands of years!

In many ways, you could argue that only a Catholic could appreciate this film. 'What?! This film is an insult to all Catholics! It is blasphemous!' Well, oddly enough, I think that I'm in the right on this one. So does none other that Mr. Revered Transgressive Author himself, J. G. Ballard! When David Cronenberg's adaptation of Barllard's cult classic Crash came out, there was mass uproar in parts of the world. Where did this uproar take place? In the UK. In the US. In Germany. In Scandinavia. It took place in Protestant countries. Ballard claimed that protestants couldn't handle Cronenberg's provocative adaptation because 1) Catholics have death at the centre of their religion, 2) Protestants have a grey view of the world where you can never have fun whereas Catholics, to some extent, do allow themselves to have some fun now and then, largely out of frustration and 3) they don't put much emphasis on free will. When The Devils came out in the UK, it was also very controversial. (It was a big hit in Japan, though, because they like their gory sex over there. Japs have such great taste.) But then, protestants are such dullards, aren't they? Theirs is such a desiccated world-view. Luther said (again, I'm just going by memory, so this is once more inaccurate): 'I believe in free will, but it's only for grazing and milking cows.' He took all the passion and excitement out of Christianity. Now that Europe and the US is secularised, that means that they just inherit the Protestantism of years gone by. If they criticise films like Crash and The Devils, they do so out of moral outrage couched in Prostestant rhetoric. The real reason might be, and I am speculating here, that British cinema is largely a bit dull because of its Protestant heritage. Britain is also very parochial, not only because it is an island but also, again, because of its Protestant heritage. This is perhaps why someone like me, who was raised in a Catholic country like Chile, is pulling his hairs after living 13/14 years in the UK and can't wait to leave.  This is also, perhaps, why I chose as an undergrad to study something with a more cosmopolitan slant like Comparative Literature. Modules in English courses largely looked tedious to me.
   
If you were a Marxist and, as a result, were a dialectical materialist, you'd be inclined to read a lot of the historical accounts in Loudon as a farce. Huxley was a bit of a hippie-dippie guy (or a proto-hippie-dippie guy...) with mystical inclinations. Most Marxists, come to think of it, wouldn't even be interested in this in the first place. Most Marxists are extremely well-read, but I think they'd just gloss over this historical incident. Anyway, Huxley was something of a mystic. He was, however, someone with a training in biology and he came from a family of distinguished biologists. He abandoned a career in biology because of poor eye-sight. Anyway, he is one of the commentators of this event who read it from a materialistic stand-point. He said that the people who mounted the accusations on Grandier manufactured them. 'Aha,' you say! 'Anyone would think that! Anyone with half a brain would think that!' The thing is, dear reader, is that it's only since very recently that we don't believe in spirits and miracles and all that stuff. That's why it was so novel for Marx to say 'I am going to look at history from a materialistic standpoint. What's more, I am going to do it dialectically.' So, Huxley, who was not a Marxist, but came way after Marx, said that in his essayistic book about Loudon. (He was interested in Marx, though. The main character in Brave New World is called Bernard Marx.) And Russell incorporated it into his film. Although a Catholic, he sided with Huxley. And although he was a Catholic he did have a wild imagination, so he also saw Grandier as a heroic figure. If Ken Russell had been the pope - he wouldn't exactly have been a model figure considering that he he drank a lot and had a lot of wives - then he might have beatified Grandier.  

The Devils (1971)

So there we have it. I thought I wouldn't write very much about that film, but I ended up writing more about it than If.... .... Now onto Mike Leigh's Naked. I know that this will seem daft. No, it will seem disingenuous. No, it will seem like I am having you on. And, by the time you have finally finished this interminable drivel, you'll have thought: 'This guy ripped me off, even though reading this crock of shit was free. I want to punch him in the face.' Anyway.  I really think I'll really have less to say about Naked. I can't say with any certainty because, well, these things just seem to groooow. It's like that cliché those writers say when interviewed: 'Oh, well, you know. I, I.... I don't really know what my novel really means, you know. I started writing it and it just grew... the end result really surprised me. These characters took a life of their own.' And you, dear reader, may have been reading me for way over six or seven years. You might have thought that a lot of my posts have been a bit humourless, but you do expect a degree of self-control and discipline. By the time you finish reading this, you'll have thrown the towel in. You'll cease to read my blog. This is a pretty radical stylistic change on my part. I had a tiny little audience and it will have deserted me after this. How could I have possibly held your attention for this long, anyway? 

The reason why I think I'll have less to say about Naked - I promise I'm not bullshitting you with this one - is that I only saw it once, six years ago. It struck me as an overpowering piece of work. After all these years, I'm really itching to see it again. The other two films I wrote about I saw for the first time a few years later and I have seen them twice. So with my little analysis-cum-waffle below, I'm relying on fairly hazy memories. I did see a few scenes from the film on You Tube to refresh my memory earlier today, though.

The main thing to write about is the main character, Johnny, played the magnificent David Thewlis. Johnny is a street-philosopher, a tramp and a rapist. He is aggressive, intelligent, a bully and a misogynist. I generally identify with unusual fictional characters and this is no different with Johnny. I would probably have ended up something like him now if I hadn't gotten my life back on track aged 17. (Minus the raping, I hope.) When he speaks, his words are just a stream of unmediated bile, a violent riposte to a world he hates and that seems to connive against him. There was one line that struck me in one of those You Tube videos. It struck me as one of the horrible things I would say as a 17-year-old: 'No, I wasn't fucking bored. I'm never bored. That's the trouble with everybody, you're all so bored. You've had nature explained to ya' and you're bored with it. You've had the living body explained to ya' and you're bored with it. You've had the universe explained to ya' and you're bored with it. So now you just want cheap thrills, and you want plenty of them, and it don't matter how tawdry and vacuous they are as long as it's new, as long as it's new, as long as it flashes and bleeps in forty different fucking colours. Whatever else you say about me, I'm not fucking bored.' This signifies a kind of restlessness I shared at time. I felt restless to learn, but I was just overwhelmed by the body of knowledge. Still am. Other people's complacency unsettled me. Fads unsettled me. The educational system I had just gone through was bemused by me, didn't know what to make out of me and had branded me an idiot. I was angry against this world which I perceived  as idiotic and that seemed to perceive me as idiotic. 

Johnny baulks at the idea of ever being 'bored.' For all of his snide cynicism and sarcasm, he is a Romantic and idealist. He is a rugged individualist. To be bored in such a rich world teeming with knowledge, to him, is a crime. To divert oneself with faff, to him, is a crime. He won't compromise and take on a job. He thus ends up on the streets. I remember being 17, with long unbrushed hair and dishevelled clothing, and very much looking like a tramp... I remember walking past the streets at night and seeing middle-aged women ironing in their cosy living rooms in front of the TV set. Seeing this, for some reason, filled me with rage.

His character might seem incongruous. A philosopher, rapist and a tramp? Surely philosophy is incompatible with the other two? People who read too much philosophy, who are already a bit mentally unstable as it is and who think too much can end up being psychopathic. This can lead to, perhaps, something nasty like rape. Someone as staunchly individualistic and non-conformist as Johnny, can easily end up on the streets. I'm not saying that this warped logic applies to everyone. I'm not generalising here. This warped logic applies to Johnny. The character, I am saying, is believable. 

Ok, I'll admit that calling Johnny a philosopher is a huge stretch. But that's only by modern standards. And educated standards. (Come to think of it, all sorts of crap seems to qualify as philosophy, especially the 'pop' variety. A lot of new age drivel calls itself 'philosophy.') A philosopher is someone who is incredibly rigorous and logical when presenting an argument. Johnny isn't at all rigorous nor is he logical. When he rabbits on about his strange and complex ideas to strangers, he is led to a myriad unconnected thoughts. He is led to some rather mystical conclusions. And to some conspiracy theories. But then, philosophers generally just have conversations with other philosophers. Most of them are academics. They are Ivory Tower types, not tramps scavenging the streets. This, largely, wasn't the case in the 19th century. A lot of philosophers then weren't academics, they were like novelists. (Ok, so Kant - 18th century guy - and Hegel might represent the archetypal academics. But then there were people like Rousseau, another 18th century guy, and Schopenhauer.) Johnny might have felt more at home at some point in Ancient Greece. He would have led the lifestyle of a tramp, but people would have paid attention to his utterances. He may have garnered a following. Others may have started mimicking his lifestyle and deliberately chosen destitution and his demeanour. Philosophy then was largely seen as a way of guiding life. It was ethical. It was not seen as some abstract, almost mathematical, enterprise in solipsistic self-absorption. It was just one big thing trying to understand everything. This is very much Johnny's prerogative. Now philosophy is more modest and compartmentalised.   

So this is Thatcherite Britain in a nutshell. This is how an individualistic society repays the ultimate individualist. This is how an incredibly intelligent guy ends up in the bottom of the rung in the most veritable meritocracy. You see a similar kind of despair in a lot of social realist films depicting working class people in 1980s Britain.

Mike Leigh is drawn to the dregs as well as the polite middle classes. This is one his films about 'the dregs.' A lot of his films involve characters who are messed up and struggle to make ends meet. A lot of them live in shabby apartments or end up like Johnny. The real poetry and the real philosophy lies with these people. In a society as deferential as the UK, most poets and philosophers are Oxford graduates. And that is why there is oh so little subversion. 

Naked (1993)

So, a few closing remarks. What makes these films subversive? If.... is about destroying tiresome conservative British practices. It argues that destruction is healthy, necessary and beautiful. I mainly used the word 'transgression' when looking into The Devils. Let's be a bit discerning. What's the difference? 'Transgression' is about overcoming barriers. It is about breaking moral codes. It is about doing something society thinks is forbidden. It is definitely more moral whereas subversion could be seen as being more in the realm of aesthetics and politics. I also, perhaps rather weakly, argued that it is subversive because it came out in a protestant country like the UK and thus offends British sensibilities. Naked is subversive, in many ways, because it is a positive treatment of an anti-hero. In this case, a rapist.   

I like this new style. It's sillier. It reads like this: You get together to drink coffee with me. After I have finished drinking black coffee no. 2 I am high as a kite. You tell me, 'Simon, please talk to me about British subversive cinema. I am all ears. I won't interrupt you.' So I prattle on and on for an hour about British subversive cinema. You have brought recording equipment with you. You press the play and pause buttons on and off. You transcribe the recording. It is an incredibly laborious process. You end up with this. But I must say, I prefer this type of writing. It is very much on an academic topic. If I were to submit this as an academic paper, though, my lecturer would return it with a shit mark and would tell me: 'I really enjoyed reading this, but you didn't adhere to academic standards. Hence, I have to give you a shit mark.' (The lecturer would own up to enjoying it because he/she secretly would like academic writing to be this way.) I wouldn't be able to get it published in any publication. The person who runs whichever magazine, if pressed, would tell me: 'A few of your ideas here are vaguely interesting. Most of them are just eccentric. The article is an unstructured mess. Go back and work on it a lot. Come back with the tenth draft. Only then will I read it again.' That's why blogs are such handy devices. Fuck writing in a faux-academic style. Fuck writing in a faux-journalistic style. You can write like this.

Ahoy Facebook!

A lot of the writing I send out into the web-sphere is now on Facebook. The thing with that inordinately self-important, narcissistic, inane and self-absorbed social network is that is more interactive. People respond to what you write and you can often start some pretty lively discussions. Blogger is less interactive in that sense. I definitely, definitely 100% prefer Blogger. You can write discursively and have your own column. You might get a lot of visits, but there ain't as much interaction.

Facebook is a sad little place, really. Big place, rather. Very big place. The biggest place in the world, even if it's virtual. Everyone takes an interest in each other's petty little lives. A few people even taken an interest in mine. I don't write about myself though, I write little micro opinion pieces. I say 'micro,' when they're actually some of the longest statuses out there. (Insert rant as to how culture is decadent and dumbed down here.) But it does generate mild interest from some people, mind you.

I have written about some of the topics on this blog here. If haven't, it means that I intend to write about them here time soon. Therefore, it's perfectly reasonable to post these little bits and bobs here.

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The free market is competitive. In fact, that's all it is - competition. The free market also says: if you end up with the best job, earn millions, have a swanky car in your green lawn, you have WON. You have MERIT. You are better than a person living in some shack. The free market is like nature, a constant tug-of-war to be the best. A weakling/weirdo cannot compete because he lacks the confidence and stamina. If you are such a person, you think to yourself - 'fuck it, this is stupid.' You cut off all ties with the other competitors. You go a cabin in the woods to write strange novels and abstruse essays. It might not seem like it but, if you follow their terminology, you have won. Their quest for competition is ephemeral. You, on the other hand, have accomplished what western civilisation has venerated since ancient antiquity: the desire to create an isolated object which might potentially last. It probably won't, but you might as well have a stab at something far nobler than competition: posterity.

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Something I find disturbing about a lot of hard leftists is the way they seem to deflect blame from foreign tyrants and despots. Yes, I do agree that US foreign policy SHOULD be severely criticised. Yes, the war against Iraq DID create a failed state in Iraq whereby Isis could make a lot of ground. But does that in any way absolve Isis' heinous behaviour? And I don't see how EU foreign policy is overly connected with Putin's annexation of Crimea and sending military support to Russian rebels. Yes, perhaps sanctions are not the best strategy. But does that make Putin any less of a repressive despot? Can't we recognise this? Can't we have a more nuanced view of the world whereby we recognise war crimes committed by foreign despots as well as those committed by the US and Europe?

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What pisses me off about contemporary secular humanists is that they assume that science is a force that can provide meaning. It never can and it never will. Science can explain causality, but it can't explain the meaning of causality. Science is now displacing religion and philosophy. If you have psychological problems, you don't turn to a priest nor to a therapist. You turn to a scientist. If you want to know about morality, you turn to a neuroscientist who gives you some bogus statistics saying 'this is morality.' If you want a 'scientific society' with over-inflated claims about what science can do, you only need to take a cursory glance at Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

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An injustice: as a teenager you have all the time in the world to write and read when your efforts are sophomoric and immature and you don't have much knowledge. When you're older you mature your style and content, and you broaden your knowledge and interests, but you have no time to exert any of it as you have to work or study!

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Last night I dreamed that I found a book called 'Space, Time and Infinity' in an underground cellar without gravity. I searched for the title online and it so transpires that a book with that title really exists. It's a collection of essays on sci-fi and fantastic literature whereas the title that appeared in my dream was a philosophy book:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3141720-space-time-and-infinity?from_search=true&search_version=service

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Ornette Coleman, alto saxophonist and pioneer of free jazz, passed away yesterday. I remember when I was about 14/15 I only had about 20 records I cared about and I spent most of my time listening to them. 'The Shape of Jazz to Come' was among them (alongside Zappa, Miles Davis, Beefheart and a couple of other artists!). I've always loved Ornette's idiosyncratic style on the sax - it is quirky, peculiar and highly expressive. There's a lot more melody than people recognise in all of his records (even 'Free Jazz') and, by the standards of later freestyle jazz, he sounds quite conservative. Sometimes you scratch your head and think - why did some guy smash his saxophone in disgust? Why did he create such an uproar? This stuff's great! 'Lonely Woman' might well be my favourite jazz tune. RIP.

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Idea for a utopian society: all labour, all industry and all aspects of the economy are completed by machines/robots. This creates capital which is evenly distributed to all citizens. All citizens have seminars/discussions on philosophy, the arts, political theory and the sciences. Without the burden of labour, the average individual is free to pursue creative/intellectual inquiry and his individual interests. Everything I wrote above is masturbatory nonsense. Why? Because humans, despite economic and political changes, remain the same - imperfect.

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Political correctness is often desirable. I don't think black people should be called 'niggers,' I don't think gay people should be called 'fags,' I don't think Pakistani people should be called 'pakis' and I don't think think that women should be called 'bitches.' But there are limits. Can't we play around ironically with these stereotypes within fictional or satirical contexts? As soon as any of the words above are uttered, a witch-hunt often ensues. What's more, I don't think anyone should be turned into persona non grata for holding any of these views. (I'm thinking of the scientist who made those 'sexist' remarks and was stripped of his academic role.) If you disagree with him, you should engage in a discussion as to why you find those views repellent. In a democracy, you have discussion. What we have now, in many ways, is a new form of liberal authoritarianism.

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Apparently Jeremy Corbyn is a 'radical leftist.' This just goes to show what a really topsy-turvy world we live in now. None of his policies would have been an iota controversial 35 years ago. Renationalise the railways? Not at all controversial 35 years ago. (In fact, the railways were under public ownership until not so long ago...) Nuclear disarmament? Perfectly normal position to take 35 years ago. Anti-austerity? Again, perfectly normal 35 years ago. I tremble to think what the press would say if any of the rabid socialists and unionists from 1979's winter of discontent were around today. The world has really take a 180 degree turn. The worse thing is that these 'radical leftist' beliefs are shared by rather large proportion of the population.

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John Gray has written that Margaret Thatcher, through her economic policies, would create a truly conservative society that harked back to the 1950s. He writes that she, in fact, did the opposite - she destroyed deference and helped foster irresponsible/loutish behaviour, market individualism and social liberalism. I would go further. What the Conservatives feel so nostalgic about - Gray recognises this, actually - is post-war Labour collectivism. The Conservatives are actually the ones who have done the least for conservatism. The whole feel of that era - prosperity, prim and proper behaviour, the nuclear family - was thanks to social democracy. The people who did the most for conservatism in this country were British socialists.

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Cuando era chico era lector ávido de la historieta 'Barrabases.' Básicamente involucraba los cuentos más absurdos en el mundo: Chile le gana a todos los equipos fácilmente. Chile históricamente ha generalmente sido un equipo tan penoso que a muchos niños les consolaba leer esos comics. Ahora, con esta gran generación, ha transcurrido un partido que podría haber sido un episodio de Barrabases: Chile, de manera aguerrida y heroica, le gana a Argentina en la final de la Copa América. Un sueño.

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Camille Paglia makes for a thoroughly entertaining thinker. Yes, her conclusions a lot of the time are reactionary and simplistic. And yes, her rhetoric is shrill and hyperbolic. But I still have more time for her than most feminist thinkers. This is because 1) she acknowledges basic truths about male sexuality - that it's aggressive and that men inevitably tend to objectify the female form + 2) rejects the silly-assed post-modern idea that there's no difference between gender, which goes against common sense and biology. Still, she can go off the boil when she argues that 1) men historically have enjoyed more privileges because they are 'stronger' and hence get top notch positions for that reason and 2) argues that women shouldn't feel victimised when they get raped once having blatantly flaunted their sexuality. Negative point no.2 is obviously very contentious and somewhat attention-seeking. Nonetheless, it is good to entertain shocking ideas rather than rejecting them on the grounds of 'moral outrage.'

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This typewriter was my birthday present. It finally arrived. Typewriters are sexy but cumbersome things, so I'm unsure if I'll use it that much. The idea for the gift germinated after I mentioned an idea for a PHD thesis. It's just an idea that I'm entertaining, but I that I hope don't get too serious about. The PHD title would be 'The Typewriter as an Agent of Literary Creativity in Film.' I would use David Cronenberg's 'Naked Lunch' and the Coen Brothers' 'Barton Fink' as examples. This would allow me to research and analyse literature as well as film. I would also get to write to write about William Burroughs and, to a lesser extent, William Faulkner (only a minor character in 'Barton Fink'). The reasons why I wouldn't do the PHD are: 1) Most academics and PHD students are a lot more intelligent and knowledgeable than me. That intidimadates me. 2) I don't think that my academic acumen is that, that sky-rocketingly high to do a PHD. 3) It would be stressful and a fuck-load of work. 4) Embarking on this for 3/4 + years mean that I wouldn't get to read all of the books I'm really keen to read nor write my little creative literary projects. However, good reasons to do it are: 1) Most jobs are fucking shit and they do your head in. 2) I'm waaaaaaay too weak to compete in this dog-eat-dog free market economy. 3) I like the idea of being a perpetual student and a perpetual teenager who doesn't have to engage with the real world.

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Very, very encouraged by the election of Tim Farron for the Liberal Democrats and the possible election of Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour party. I have always being stuck by the utter vacuity of arguments given by modernisers. What's the point in mimicking the Conservatives just so as to get elected? What difference does that even make? The election of Blair might well have just been a historical freak. Also, think about it logically. If the electorate are presented with option A which really means what it says and an insincere + ingratiating option B that doesn't mean what it says, then the electorate is going to vote for option A. They're going to vote for the real thing. All political parties should remain true to their principles and to their founding ethos. Otherwise, political discourse degenerates into nothing more than bland sameness.

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I was watching the last minute or so of one of the many Labour leadership debates on the telly. Each candidate finished by summarising their main campaign strategy. Andy Burnham predictably said 'Westminster is an isolated elite common people feel isolated from. Politics is the game of a privileged elite. Yada-yada-yada.' Ok, it's perfectly fine to say that as a general comment. It's nothing earth-shattering. It's a bit banal. It's even a bit of a truism. But how does that amount to a campaign strategy, you stupid idiot?! The more I read and hear about Burnham, the less I find. I think that I may even go for Yvette Cooper as my second choice and I have NEVER liked Yvette Cooper.

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Mark E. Smith's lyrics are usually so cryptic and arcane that when he comes up with something really quite direct, it surprises you. These songs are usually his most moving. (The song 'Bill is Dead' simply has the line 'These are the best days of my life.') What I like about this song is that Smith is acknowledging the fact that most people find him incomprehensible and cranky: 'Trying to get stuff out you is like getting blood out of a stone.' This is like James Joyce in his death bed who, before dying, was heard to say 'does anyone understand me?'

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Arthouse cinemas aren't making as much money because of internet and other digital media. What has their response being? To gentrify them. To go to an arthouse is now like going to the opera house or the theatre. Before you go in, you pay for £10 for a bottle of wine. They charge £10 for the ticket itself. The seats are deluxe with plenty of leg room. What the heck?! This is catering both to the hipster market and to toffs. This is the 'Curzon' aesthetic. Hipsters like these cinemas because they think that they are 'cool' (and they usually have a lot of money). Toffs like them because they are effete and sophisticated. Riff-raff/losers like me, who are obsessed with these films, can't get in all the time because losers by their very nature can't make money. The aesthetic of an arthouse cinema has always being to screen these obscure international films and classics in abandoned warehouses, to project them on a wall with plaster peeling off. Gentrification and money-making enterprises are never a good thing.

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I have a new terrorist project in my mind for people with so-called 'sophisticated' musical taste: 'Avant-Garde Musical Terrorism.' It's just simply a case of frustration and retaliation. I have had enough of being subjected to horrendous synthetic pop. Anywhere I go it is there - very loudly. If we people like us are subjected to this all the time, can't we let other people at least know, fleetingly, how we feel? So, in clothe shops that play horrible music, in clubs that play horrible music, maybe even concerts of horrible music, we send talented musicians there. So, a trombonist marauds into a club and starts playing a dissonant bar of Schoenberg. A cellist starts playing some Webern in a café blaring out some horrid pop whilst we people of supposedly 'good' taste are trying to have conversations or reading the newspaper. In a horrid music concert, a jazz player interrupts the concert by improvising atonally. (This may going a bit too far seeing that we wouldn't usually go to those concerts in the first place.) Enough is enough. Avant-garde music lovers of the world unite!

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What I really think is a positive outcome of the whole 'Corbynmania' thing is that it is making younger people familiar with Labour's history and what they have traditionally stood for. All they really know about is Blair. I really think that if Miliband had articulated some of his arguments more clearly and made more of an effort to get it out to people, that a lot of SNP, Green and even UKIP voters would have voted Labour. I have always voted Labour and I really think that it is the only realistic way for a party of government to effect change and to push for more progressive policies and causes. Corbyn might be a Bennite, and might well represent the most radical faction in the party, but I really think that he has made an effort to attenuate the crazy things about Bennism. Benn called for mass nationalisation. Corbyn's pitch - renationalise the railways and some public utilities, high taxes on the upper crust and big business, more robust market regulation - isn't crazily radical and a lot of normal folk, not crazy lefties, have been calling for these things for a long time.

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I like to read and hear Roger Scruton talk because he will purposefully write a column in a left-of-centre publication to piss off someone like me (i.e. lefty political views and a strong predilection for modernistic art). In many ways, I could be considered the ideal reader he wants to target and say 'everything you believe in is based on a mistake.' I like the fact that we have in public discourse someone who has spent most of his life sequestered in university libraries and who is deeply familiar with philosophy and the classics. I like the fact that he often holds crude reactionary views and uses these as bait against progressives. I also like the fact - and here is where our interests really align - that although he is an analytic philosopher he his drawn to the German idealists and holds their view of their world to be more truthful than the staid worldviews of people like Russell, Ayer, etc. I first encountered him when I bought his fab 'A Very Short Introduction to Kant.'

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Mike Patton's immense popularity in Chile has always bemused somewhat. He is mainstream over there. A lot of people even take an interest in his niche avant-garde projects. At age 16, the height of my obsession with his music, I was thunderstruck to wander the streets of Santiago and to see all these shops selling Fantomas and Mr. Bungle CDs. How many countries in the world have both Mike Patton and Marcelo Bielsa as national treasures?

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Peter Wilby in his little column in the New Statesman more than adequately expresses my feelings about Blair/Blairism: 'Blair's strength, according to John Rentoul, a sympathetic biographer, was his ability to "to pick up and reflect the banality of the majority." David Cameron does that perfectly well. Tony Blair and his supporters have nothing else to offer, and they should shut up.'

Disco Volante

I have been away from this blog for a loooong time. Basically, I've been working full-time in a horrendous sandwich factory/bakery for 2 1/2 months (on a a zero-hour contract). I've been saving up money to help start pay rent and other living expenses for the second year of my masters. (I'm no longer getting any help from the very generous mum and dad bank.) I've saved up enough money to see me through the first couple of months without having to worry too much about money. Whilst I could get a lot of writing done to begin with, and I made quite a lot of progress with my novel, in the end I was left completely drained and didn't do any writing, or any reading, at all. All I had time for in the end was sleep (where I had nightmares about conveyor belts...). The horrors of being a responsible adult! And I'm experiencing this very late on in my mid-twenties! I've stopped working now, so I can get back to doin' what I love. I'll get back to writing my novel and reading books (I have a lot of interesting stuff on my bed-side table). I also want to get back to blogging a lot more. I will be going on a summer holiday in a lovely town near Barcelona for a week (in about five or six hours - without getting much sleep in my system!), so that will be put on hold for a little while. But what a lovely way to get back into blogging than with a lengthy post on Mr. Bungle's brilliant 1995 album Disco Volante! I intended it to be one of my usual punchy/brief posts, but it grew into a much longer piece. (Helped no doubt by track-by-track analysis!) By late September/early October I hope to finish my (first) novel Planet Zhelanie. By then, I will busy with my masters and with another full-time job (I think I'll go for an office job of some sort, not some horrendous mind-numbing menial thing), so I dunno if I'll have time to blog as much. Still, stick around my friend as I'm sure there will be a lot more silly-assed/half-baked writings to come! You seem to care about this stuff! That means the world to me! And I care more about these overgrown adolescent ventures more than anyone else! I never want to grow out of this shit!

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It is not very often that you find in the annals of recorded music a major record label releasing an album as ferociously experimental as Mr. Bungle's Disco Volante. The very same label that released this album, Warner Brothers, released Zappa's late 60s output as well as Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica. (When you read about Beefheart, it is often made out as if back then he was underground. Beefheart was a very popular phenomenon - most vaguely intellectual and vaguely middle-class people who lived at the time can remember him - and Trout Mask made it to 21 in the UK charts.) But back then the avant-garde was marketable. Mainstream publications wrote about avant-garde composers and the counter cultural youth were always sniffing around for the trippiest and most 'out there' thing.

Indeed, not coincidentally, as the global economic model in the late 70s changed and as industry as a whole become more marketised, the music industry was no exception. Even Zappa caved in, albeit in a very sarcastic and mean-spirited manner, by releasing goofy records which sounded vaguely commercial but snidely insulted commercialism. MTV came along and monopolised popular music. Before MTV, pop was a lot more multifarious. There were hundreds of record stations offering different varieties of music.  In the 70s, you could listen to avant-garde jazz, interesting contemporary composers, interesting prog-rock, world music, etc.. This was epitomised by Zappa, a tremendously popular rock star who was essentially an avant-garde composer. Even when punk came along - which, with the Sex Pistols, admittedly had commercial roots and it was a commercial movement - it led to interesting directions. It meant that many young people who were not musically literate and were listening to all this interesting stuff realised that they had in them to make interesting music.

Mr. Bungle were formed in 1985 whilst the band were in high school. They grew up in quite a bohemian town in Los Angeles called Eureka, though they were anything but bohemian. They were eccentric and alienated teenagers who would regularly get beaten up in school. (They named the group after a cheesy educational 1950s video about how to be a responsible and sanitised teenager. The clumsy 'Mr. Bungle' kid featured in the video is the antithesis of what a 1950s kid must follow. When I was a clumsy/weird teen and, sometimes ridiculed for being this weird specimen at school, when I first got into Bungle I could really identify with this. You can watch the video here.)  As with many teenagers/pre-teens who first get into music, and I no doubt count myself as being one of them, they became obsessed with heavy metal. They were steeped in bands like Sodom and Slayer. In fact, when they first formed they were a death metal band. When people get more serious about music and look around for different stuff, they discover new things. The young Bungle members discovered other varieties of pop music as well as jazz and avant-garde classical music. They correctly realised, and this at the time was a very radical, that hard metal and punk are not mutually exclusive from avant-garde classical and jazz. They realised that the more dissonant elements from those genres melded superbly well with the dissonance of metal. When Bungle guitarist Trey Spraunce first heard Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, he immediately made a connection with death metal and thought of the ways he could play metal with the unusual chords and harmonies deployed by Stravinsky. As a 15-year-old kid who had gone from hearing bands like Metallica to listening to composers like Stravinsky and jazz players like Miles Davis, Mr. Bungle were just the kind of thing that I was looking for.

Mr. Bungle soon became a post-modern genre-hopping band which acquired a niche local audience. At the time, they would sometimes vary from concert to concert. If they were confronted with a local punk audience, they would play punk. If they were confronted with a metal audience, they would play metal.  If they were confronted with some gentrified mums and dads, they would switch to something more palatable and play some lounge. Their aesthetic soon became to frenetically alternate from genre to genre within the same song in a matter of minutes or even seconds. South Francisco group Faith No More chanced across a Mr. Bungle demo and offered Mike Patton a chance to be their lead singer. Patton accepted. They recorded The Real Thing and their take on west coast funk-metal proved to be ridiculously popular. They sold millions of records worldwide. Their song 'Epic' became an MTV mega hit and received heavy rotation. FNM played stadiums around the world. Patton, a very handsome chap and very popular among the ladies, became an MTV pin-up. Although his behaviour was very erratic and he got up to some very unusual antics, this may just have been dismissed as irreverent 'rock 'n roll behaviour' and it was inconceivable back then that he would soon choose to stake out a wilfully obscure career in avant-garde music.

All this meant that Mike Patton's very experimental and very weird group Mr. Bungle landed a contract with Warner Brothers. The scene that was pioneering 'post-modern genre-hopping' the most was the New York downtown one. Its leading practitioner was, and still is, John Zorn. Zorn led his his iconic punk-jazz and-everything-else group Naked City at the time. Zorn was really one of the first people to fuse punk with free jazz. Bungle sought him out to produce their record and Zorn and Patton have gone on to collaborate extensively over the years. Zorn served as Patton and Bungle's mentor. The album had very novel ideas and there certainly was nothing like it at the time. (The closest thing to it was Zorn's Naked City group.) They used a lot of odd and distinctive chords called 'tritones.' Still, the material was culled from material they had largely played as teenagers. The lyrics, to put it politely, are juvenile. Whilst listening to 'The Girls of Porn' might well have been exceedingly fun as a teenager, it grates to listen to that track now. The emphasis on ska-funk means that big chunks of the album are pretty dull to revisit for me. At times the album can seem like one big frat party, albeit one played with astonishing musicianship and a keen desire to experiment. (As a result, Bungle managed to annex Zappa's fan base very quickly, though they have never professed any interest in his music.) For all of its creativity and its highly original arrangements, the album influenced some extremely rancid stuff. Nu-metal bands such Korn, Limp Bizkit and Slipknot mystifyingly cited Bungle and this album in particular as an influence (as well as FNM's more left-field outing Angel Dust, where Patton was a lot more involved with the song writing). All of the Mr. Bungle members would feel awkward when this was posed to them and they always insisted that they should not be held in any way responsible for that music.

But it was with their follow-up four years later, Disco Volante, where Bungle really came together. Without doubt it is one my favourite albums. And without doubt, it is my favourite album from the 1990s - in any genre and released either by a major or a small record label. All of the band's both high-brow and low-brow influences are thrown into the mix. All the members had developed their skills having played in a plethora of jazzy and avant projects. Whilst Bungle always had a lot of these influences even as teenagers in the 1980s, they now had the know-how of how to develop the genre-hopping approach into something a little more advanced and sophisticated.

It is clear from the beginning that the band is making no concessions. The opening track 'Everyone I knew From High School is Dead' is deliberately noisy and chaotic. It has a very basic riff that soon degenerates into noisy noodling and crashing cymbals. Patton in this album utilised avant-garde vocal techniques for the first time. Singers such as Yamataka Eye from The Boredoms get very shouty with it and it becomes tedious. But Patton usually uses it purposefully and creatively and he has an extremely versatile vocal range through which to create a whole range of effects. On this track there is a vocal chant which sounds like a crowd of people, but is buried well within the mix of the thundering bass and sludgy guitar.

The next track 'Chemical Marriage' is very influenced by Ennio Moriconne (as if it's taken from some strange sci-fi film that he'd scored), lounge and smooth jazz. It is also embellished with a lot of exotic arabic percussion. It is interspersed with Patton scat-singing. It becomes clear by this track that he won't sing in any normal way - and certainly not within the staid paramaters of verse-chorus-verse.

Though it is with the track 'Carry Stress in the Jaw' that the album really starts to kick in and when it starts to completely blow me away. It is essentially a fusion of free jazz and speed metal. Written by bassist Trevor Dunn, he starts playing a devilishly complex line with the sax player. The track moves onto some sinister synth sounds, a fast though quiet bass line and an equally fast though hushed percussion accompaniment. Patton starts singing in a creepy voice. His lyrics are drawn from an Edgar Allan Poe poem, which adds to the sense of horror and dread. A brief blast of loud metal is followed again by a similar passage. This is followed by a jazz passage where the sax stars improvising atonally. The whole band are very much playing in a jazz idiom, but Trey Spruance storms in with a speed metal riff. The rest of the band joins him and Mike Patton starts shrieking. This again degenerates into some pretty noisy metal as Patton gurgles. This is followed by a line of music played the guitar, drums and keys. In counterpoint to this, the bass and vocals start playing a separate line as Patton continues to recite the Poe poem. This is a convoluted and meandering line of music, which starts to gain more and more urgency, with Patton raising his voice as it develops. This leads to an exhilarating speed metal passage, with Patton raucously screaming. This is followed by the same free jazz, speed metal and 'sinister synth passages' in quick succession, with some virtuosic drum soloing to boot. By the time that's over, it's just four minutes of music and I'm completely blown away.

However, on the same track we have a separate song called 'Secret Song.' Apparently they wrote this song without Trevor Dunn being aware of it and always kept it secret from him. (Patton plays bass on it instead.) Well after the track had already been recorded, Dunn found it and wrote some lyrics as to how 'they've kicked me out of the band.' This plays in to the band's absurdist humour as well as their desire to simply indulge and arse around whilst playing this music. Patton sings the lyrics in a 'Grandpa Simpson' voice which is hilarious. The track is funky and has some surf-music elements. There is a Bond-theme aspect to the guitar-playing. The album title 'Disco Volante' actually references a car in a James Bond film.

And again, just after you thought the album couldn't possibly get any better we get 'Desert Search for Techno Allah.' The track fuses middle eastern music, techno AND metal. If that sounds incongruous,  believe me, it's simply incredible how all those elements are merged into the fold of a very coherent song. There is a middle eastern melody (written by Trey Spruance, who has researched Persian scales and harmonic principles extensively) as well as some arabic percussion. This is in addition to a techno groove. Soon a heavy metal guitar starts playing a chord a few times, creating plenty of feedback. By this point, there are a lot of overdubs and a lot of strands of music. Patton creates sundry unusual vocal effects which are mixed at different volumes and appear at different points in the song.

The next track 'Violenza Domestica' is another favourite. (How many am I allowed?!) This track reveals Patton's penchant for Italian pop and Ennio Moriconne. Patton sings (well, recites, croons, squeals, mutters, whispers and shouts...) the lyrics in Italian. Patton had married an Italian woman and had a house in Italy at this point. The track also features a lot of tango. There are some virtuosic classical cello and piano passages, which lend the track an added veneer of musical sophistication. These are all segued by loud blasts of metal. There are also some unusual percussive noises (such as breaking glass and rustling knives) which may have been influenced by Harry Partch.

'After School Special' is as close as the band get to a straight rock song in the album. You could put this on at a party and no one would storm out of the room. Like the opening track 'Everyone I Knew From High School is Dead,' the lyrics are written by Dunn. It is clear that at this point he still felt bitter about his alienating adolescent experiences and still had not quite managed to move on. (It happens to a lot of us. In many ways, I haven't and still brood about a lot of those experiences.)

The next track 'Phleghmatics' was driven by Trevor Dunn's desire to write a twelve-tone piece for a rock band. There is a serial line of music played by the guitar and sung by Patton. Dunn, meanwhile, plays a stuttering bass line and the drums do plenty of blast beats. This is followed by a slow brooding metal passage played as a backdrop to a serial line of music played by two wind instruments. Soon the metal backdrop stops the wind instruments continue to play the line of music unaccompanied. They soon simply start doing some free jazz shronks and shrieks. Then the metal backdrops returns, the wind instruments play the line of music again, the song gains urgency and is then resolved. The lyrics are about paranoia, insomnia, anxiety and depression. One of the other tracks is called 'The Bends' and, as with the Edgar Allan Poe lyric, there is a really dark streak running throughout the album - in both the lyrics and in the art work.

'Ma Meeshka Mow Skowz' revisits the carnival/circus music aspect found in their self-titled album. There is a very dramatic and a somewhat quasi-Bach line played by an organ that starts the song. A jazzy sax plays the main line of music, which is revisited again and again and mimicked by Patton. The bass and drums are especially frenetic and impatient. Patton maniacally sings in his own made-up language (hence the odd title). As ever, there are plenty of metal chords and Spruance features with some fine guitar soloing.

The track 'The Bends' sees the band exploring avant-garde musique concrete. The track is comprised by  of about six different segments and runs for about nine minutes. In these avant-garde sounds, we hear the influence of Varese, Stockhausen and Penderecki. As stated before,  there is a very dark, brooding and menacing quality running throughout the album and this track in particular.

The next track 'Backstrokin'' is a little more light-hearted and runs just about three minutes. There is a funky bass and and some jazzy keys. The title references Patton's obsessive proclivity for masturbation, which he has not kept secret from anyone. It also reminds us that Bungle have not lost their boyish and cheeky sense of humour. As the song ends, Patton mutters 'fartin,' pissin,' and strokin' my fucking dick.'

The song 'Platypus' is manic and frenetic and may be referencing Patton's interest in cartoon music (which he has touched on in several other projects and has basically derived from Zorn's own obsession with the genre). The song is by and large also a chance for Dunn to highlight his virtuosic bass playing. This track is especially jazzy and there is a section where the whole band starts improving in a jazzy fashion and it becomes increasingly chaotic and it all falls apart. The sax squawks and makes animal noises in a highly Zorn-esque way. The lyrics are all about the animal platypus, which Trevor Dunn developed a peculiar fascination for. There is a quasi-scientific/biological slant to the lyrics and there are times when Patton recites them as if he were a television presenter in a Attenborough-esque nature programme.

The final track 'Merry go Bye Bye' ends the album in an incredibly climactic and overpowering way. The lyrics, written by Spruance (he also wrote all of the music on this track), wistfully and nostalgically evokes people taking telescopes to find in the starry heavens relatives and friends who have passed away. The track starts very powerfully, in a mellow rock fashion. There is nothing that unusual about it until it abruptly moves onto death metal. This section is especially stimulating and Patton showcases his death metal growls. This is followed by some harsh white noise and other avant-garde electronic sounds. Then we get more death metal (!) followed by some ethereal electronic sounds. This is when Bungle bring the emotional element in, without being at all mawkish. They play some arresting chords, with undistorted guitar, and Patton powerfully and beautifully sings as 'to how I will come back to you.' This song ends the album and, after way over an hour of music, we have gone through a lot.

You would have thought that Bungle had wrapped things nicely and in a somewhat more compromised way. This would be expecting too much. There is a hidden track full of hideous noises. They are just arsing around in the studio and they are pissing themselves with laughter. (In the liner notes it is called 'Nothing' and is credited to drummer Danny Heifietz and wind player Theo Lengyel, referencing the fact that neither band member contributed to any of the song writing.) If any case were to be made that Mr. Bungle is nothing more than masturbatory self-indulgence, one could point to this track. But then, the group may not deny it either. By including these noises at the end, the band is subversively recognising the fact that they are pretty much free to do whatever they want on a major record label. They are pretty much telling a mainstream audience 'take this, this is what we do and what we are interested in - lump it or leave it.'

Four years later Mr. Bungle returned after another lengthy hiatus with California. That was a much poppier album where they brought their crazy genre-hopping and avant-garde approach into a more focused song-oriented format. It was another brilliant record. After a supporting tour, the band seems to have acrimoniously broken up in 2000. This disappointed a lot of hardcore fans who were hoping that Patton would focus more on Mr. Bungle after having more time on his hands following the break up of Faith No More in 1998. It seems that a rift developed between Trey Spruance and the rest of the members. The reunion of Faith No More in 2009 raised hopes for a Bungle reunion, but nothing seems to have happened. (Though Spruance and Patton seem to be in good terms after having played a Faith No More concert together in Chile.) Mr. Bungle is without doubt the best and most exciting project for every musician involved. Mike Patton, Trey Spruance and Trevor Dunn have done some brilliant stuff in all of their extensive and eclectic projects. But in Bungle their creative outlooks marry in a wonderful and synergetic way. Patton formed the extreme experimental metal band Fantomas where he has played  some frenetic Zorn/Naked City-derived stuff. This is in addition to collaborating with Zorn himself in a number of projects, most notably the occultist experimental metal band Moonchild. He has played more straight-ahead noise rock with Tomahawk. He has even ventured into synthetic pop music with Peeping Tom (in his own eccentric way, of course). He has done film music. Most recently, he hired an orchestra to perform some Italian pop oldies. The list goes on and on! Trevor Dunn is even busier, with hundreds of credits as side-man in a variety of records. He has become bassist of choice for John Zorn and has featured in most of his endless spate of releases (including the Moonchild group where his bass playing features prominently). He formed his own group Trevor Dunn's Trio-Convulsant, which plays jazz fused with heavy metal and power chords. He plays in a lot of New York jazz groups (where he moved from San Francisco a over a decade ago to ingratiate himself with the Downtown scene). He formed a rock group called Mad Love, citing his neglect of rock music in recent years. He also toured and recorded with the iconic post-punk/grunge/sludge metal group Melvins recently. I would say that Trey Spurance is the one who has had the most interesting career of the three. He has said that the crazy prolificacy of the avant-garde scene worries him and that he prefers to take time out to think through his music. He has said that avant-garde music has become to more market-oriented and that it turns too much attention to its eclectic nature and its careerist musicians instead of focusing on substance. His group Secret Chiefs 3 are an outlet for his interest in ancient Persian/Indian/middle eastern music. (As well as occasionally indulging in some death metal and west coast surf music.) He is a very well-read guy with a deep understanding of music theory and history. But as I said, these three creative individuals create their most earth-shattering stuff when performing together as Mr. Bungle.

Two parodies: Why I Want to Fuck Theresa May/Principle of Sufficient Inebriation

WHY I WANT TO FUCK THERESA MAY *

1)      Her aggressive élan as she addresses the cameras of the world. The way she purses her lips, brushing off interlopers of the higher truth – the Conservative project.

2)      The putrid stench emanating from her labia as she rises from her palatial seat in Westminster.

3)      The angular contours of her jutting lips.

4)      The power she wields. She is able to extradite thousands of innocents immigrants. She is able to extradite thousands of innocent foreign students. All by a mere snap decision.

5)      Enforcer of law, order and justice.

6)      Her scientific precision. She believes in reacting immediately, in finding temporary expedients. This is in stark contrast to the unscientific Michael Gove, a most unsubtle Conservative, who believes in radical reform.

7)      Her thaumaturgic appearance. She is capable of sorcery.

8)      Her oppressive aura. She is leader of the ‘the nasty party.’ She can use this appellation to undermine and oppress anyone.

9)      Her grit and determination.

10)   Margaret Thatcher was called a ‘witch.’ May, in many ways, will follow through on this lineage and, upon becoming prime minister, will create a dynasty of witches. Yet, despite her occultist inclinations, she approaches it with scientific precision.

11)   Once metadata has a record of this, she can bring me to account and penalise me.

Parody of J. G. Ballard.

Principle of Sufficient Inebriation 

All inebriation has a reason. Here I propose a ‘principle of sufficient inebriation.’ This brief tract is meant to gauge how inebriation comes about. 
                First of all, time and space, which are known to us a priori, are muddled. We lose are ability to discern abstract concepts. Indeed, the phenomenon which appears to us is in direct contradiction with the intellect. As a result, we can make no sense of the phenomenon. The intellect cannot discern between things as they are and his knowledge.
                When a person does not know where he is, who he is or where he came from, the principle of sufficient inebriation accounts for this. Indeed, he is so drunk that he cannot use his intellect to mediate between phenomena and abstract concepts. He is confused when he talks. His a priori understanding of causality is confused. Objects organised in space can appear smaller or larger than they really are. He does not understand why a cause comes about. It surprises him if a person appears on the other end of the room, when just a second ago he was right next to him.
                How do we reach the principle of sufficient inebriation? This is relative. It depends on the person. In the case of this writer – Simon King speaking rather confusedly as Arthur Schopenhauer – just two glasses of red wine will suffice. Other people need a little more, some a little less.
                

 Parody of Arthur Schopenhauer