Sorry, not sorry. I’ve got the post-EU blues.

First published Sunday 26th June 2016

 

On the complaints of ‘sour grapes’ against remain voters who can’t ‘just get over it’, you have to understand that this momentous win for you Leave voters has affected the expected future and plans of all of us and our families.

We didn’t want this referendum; Cameron’s political gamble put everything at risk, with no road map or plan offered should the nation choose ‘option B’. Or as I see it, the ‘what’s in the mystery box?’ prize.

Furthermore, Leave was a hideously divisive campaign, playing on fears and misinformation to wrench a division in the British people, separating us into two camps, then igniting that rift toward a winner-takes-all, one-off political opportunity.

Either winner could have claimed it as a victory for democracy. Unfortunately if democracy becomes just about victory for the 51%, then inevitably the other 49% of the country is going to have to lose. Unlike gradual policy changes through Parliament, with the referendum when your half gets what it wants, ours gets stuffed. Yaaaay democracy.

Seeing your preferred national future (by the way, the relatively stable one that was already in place and kind of working) gambled away, and being condemned to the main debate topic continuing to be the vile political football of immigration, via such a wretched farce of a campaign… is as easy to accept as being ippy-dippied to death.

So I’m sorry if, when we voice our fears over the now drastically uncertain future, and lament the immediate effects on free travel, health care, revenue streams and existing securities, these complaints seem mealy-mouthed to you. But we all now have to live with your decision.

So perhaps, once you’ve finished shouting nur-nur-nur nur nurrr and celebrating your win, perhaps it’s time you used all that newfound democratic passion to ensure that all those Leave campaign promises are met, and maybe insist that they give you an even half thought out description of what it is you’ve just won.

You win. It’s on you now.

Imagine what Boris Johnson’s post EU referendum Brexit Britain will look like…

First published Friday 24th June 2016

 

I have a terrible vision. Boris Johnson, in full Prime Ministerial jester costume, dances and cavorts in front of a delighted British populace whilst behind him, the brand new, UKIP-reinforced Conservative Party jackboots triumphantly over discarded worker and human rights banners toward the glory of total free market sovereignty, weapons of NHS destruction and privatisation plans in hand…

On the day of a momentous, historic, and quite possibly tragic referendum decision to leave the European Union, I have little in the way of optimism to offer. A divisive, bigotry-fueled campaign provided the platform for the disenfranchised UK electorate to unite – well, for 52% of the nation to unite – against a common scapegoat; those bloody foreigners. Based on the highly informed decision that ‘we’ve had it with them telling us what to do’ a majority of my nation has voted us out of the EU.

‘Enough!’, ‘No more!’ ‘Undemocratic!’ the internet trolls, a large number unbidden strangers, shouted at me via Facebook comments. Some shouted a lot of other unsavoury things too, but that level of bile was expected from the Leave campaign’s xenophobic base. However, left-wing and centrist campaigners alike often evoked the wonderful world of possibility and freedom that escaping from the, um, diktats of the ‘undemocratic’ EU Central Commission (to the safety of our democratic House of Lords?)… that escaping their imposed laws would… umm… they said something about possible, exciting new trade deals we could be making across the world, or at least just the trusty old Commonwealth… and… err…

I don’t know. I didn’t agree with their arguments then either but they certainly all sounded pretty definite when they were describing these fairytale futures. ‘Imagine it!’ they said, ‘imagine getting Cameron out, and having an election and the new, post-EU, truly democratic world of a once again Great Britain!’

Fine, here’s my vision of England’s brave new world. It’s not positive, but what do you expect? A decision that affects the immediate economic and cultural future of my nation was decided by the political equivalent of an X-Factor contest. The phones have closed and the result is… we’re out. So what happens next?

As the dust settles and the final decision is confirmed, three relationships begin to collapse, one immediate, one imminent and one impending. Firstly, David Cameron resigns. His decision to hold a referendum on the most important decision of our nation for fifty years, a ‘political necessity’ of Eurosceptic appeasement if he was to stem the flow of Tory voters to UKIP and re-unite his party, is a ploy that fails. Rightfully, after gambling our nation’s future on his political ambition to entice the right-wing back in, then losing it all, he resigns and crawls away. Stepping down, he returns to a life out of the public eye, taking solace in a simpler existence; that of humbly investing his father’s tax avoidance fortune.

Our fifty year, stormy love affair with the EU ends abruptly, and the decision to Leave is received acrimoniously. They take some time to think, to accept our departure and come to terms with the UK’s decision to walk out. Surprisingly quickly, the EU gets over it. All of the UK’s old stuff gets dumped on the pavement, and lengthy, acrimonious trade renegotiations have to be discussed, now under the heavy cloud of betrayal. Determined to make sure that nothing like this happens to it again, the EU takes away the UK’s mate’s rates, and imposes a number of harsh penalties; a public beat-down to show what happens when you throw away a fifty year relationship overnight. Finding that it isn’t as popular as it thought it was, the UK loses a number of friends through the breakup, but over half of the populace remains stays positive, recalling the Leave campaign’s assurances of meeting wonderful new people and starting fantastic new trade relationships literally anywhere else in the world.

On our political horizon, another referendum looms as our on-again, off-again relationship with Scotland hits the rocks. So close to ruin just two years ago, Scotland, seeing the warning signs of the UK’s continuing unwillingness to reduce the power of Westminster rule under Boris Johnson and Labour’s resurgent Blairite influence, asks its people a second time if they really want to stay in partnership with an increasingly unpopular, continentally clout-less England.

But ‘Fear not!’ the New Conservatives bellow uproariously after their victory, as a second Bullingdon leader rises from Cameron’s ashes, conveniently unencumbered by irksome national elections. An ever-buoyant Boris Johnson pinwheels to centrestage, where his consistently, if surprisingly effective media strategy of appearing everywhere, like a politically-empowered clown, bibbling and guffawing from every media outlet, effectively mollifies the Conservative faithful.

Post-referendum, the widely popular, mop-topped face of the Tory right-wing enjoys an immediately reinvigorated electoral map, making political headway into the once Labour-strongholds of the north, as they lure the UKIP-friendly voter base toward the Conservative flock. The Conservative fight against Farage’s racists gains traction, as those voters originally disenfranchised by free market economics and Tory austerity, then driven toward xenophobic scapegoating are assured that the less-odious-than-UKIP Tories are the Party to speak for their fears. Johnson makes an impassioned plea against aggressive campaign tactics, and pledges to bring about the return to a calmer type of politics, saying more reasonable things like ‘I’m not racist but…’ and making efforts to not so overtly incite anyone to shoot anyone else.

The general election proves to be a vastly different battleground to the one expected before the referendum. The media fight for the hearts and minds of the electorate lurches to the right after the loss on June 23^rd, as the press more avidly pursues 52% of the public’s stated mandate. They won, fair and square, Rupert Murdoch explains publically to his staff, so the agenda rightly becomes one of ‘us’ over ‘them’.

The referendum gifts Boris Johnson a golden ticket, and he utilises his newfound support base and two years of UK premiership to stride forward with a decisive legislative agenda. Finally, the publically demanded clamp-down on shirkers and welfare state scroungers begins. Those troublesome human rights and worker rights regulations foisted on the UK by the EU are sent back where they came from (‘yeah!’), with the removal of restrictive leave and benefits rights finally enabling our workers to compete in a free market against the less costly workforces of Korea, China and Eastern Europe. Sadly, and despite the New Conservative’s best efforts to save it, the NHS proves to be just too economically unviable to continue in its current form. However, a series of complex plans and initiatives emerge, offering salvation via a more robust investment framework. These are put in place just in time to rescue the limping institution. And there was much rejoicing.

The Tory electoral message focuses on speaking to the more important issues, such as stricter immigration laws to deter ISIS terrorists and the urgency of addressing these BIG issues first, before getting around to all that other stuff.  The slogan ‘Trust Us Like You Always Have’ launches the Conservative election campaign, and polls react favourably, showing important issue campaigns such as ‘Immigrants, are they all bloody foreigners?’ and ‘Invest in our NHS’ ensuring popularity across their most vital demographics, especially in the 65+ age group.

With the New Conservatives marching to the political right to share chest-bumps with their fellow UKIP victors, the political centre becomes alluringly free again. With the referendum having effectively proved that the liberal-left youth vote has no power to deliver a victory, at least until most of our racist grandparents have died, the electoral viability of a shiny Blairite candidate ripples through the Parliamentary Labour Party. The polarising effect of the referendum instills the idea of a similarly charged ‘us versus them’ general election in the style of the upcoming US election. This proves an opportunity for the PLP to call for a change in leadership and direction, to install ‘a Clinton’ to counter the Conservative’s Trump caricature. The knives that were being sharpened for Jeremy Corbyn ever since his victory on 12th September last year, were finally unsheathed. Corbyn and his scruffy, unelectable idea of a return to a grassroots politics Labour movement die on the senate floor, his last words echoing around the chamber, ‘Et tu, Burnham?’

As New New Labour positions itself back in the comfy chairs of centrist politics, much protesting and dissent appears from the increasingly radicalised left-wing, but fortunately new laws and enforcement measures prove highly effective in managing these outbursts, and the public is reassured across the media to see Boris actively taking charge. Whether it’s Prime Minister Johnson blustering entertainingly through any dwindling media dissent, Boris humorously fluffing part of his speech at a youth rally or BoJo manning a water cannon, it is universally agreed that the PM works tirelessly to put the public’s fears to rest.

With Corbyn’s reinvigorated Labour membership now unrepresented again, the general election takes on a more recognisable format. The paradigm of an ineffective centrist Labour jostling with an uncaring right wing Conservative Party seems oddly familiar to the ‘electorate’, and the illusion of stability is reassuring to the now democratically apathetic English public.

‘Well, what can you do?’ they say to reporters as public services fail and become unaffordable, just as social mobility reaches all-time highs. ‘Oh dear’, they opine as the health services continue on their mandated erosion schedule and seepage into private hands. Nevertheless, the public gets to chuckle from time to time too, as Boris jingles his shiny jester bells whilst taking an embarrassing tumble amongst the rubble of a demolished hospital.

With schools failing and inequality soaring, a new class division begins to take form in England. As both of these groups, the Gentrified and the Wetherspooners, look toward a general election that neither has any interest of voting in, an old and familiar sense of peace begins to settle in the English mind-set.

Something creeps in from all of those nostalgia-laced leave campaigns, an attitude of acceptance from an older time leaks through, and a phrase begins to rise in our national memory. A phrase so ingrained and so English that it perfectly encapsulates the apathy of the modern voter.

A phrase half-forgotten through decades of living under the delusion of national democratic importance. A phrase from a time when the public knew its place.

‘Mustn’t grumble.’

A Farage of Convenience

The stanzas should be read using the same rhyme each time;
Farage, bandarge, carriarge, etc.

 

Pint-holding Nigel, the great white English saviour
With his disgusting, despicable, unsavoury behaviour.

We see in the papers his gurning visage
Hear the hatred inherent in his Eurosceptic message
As that wholly detestable racist, Nigel Farage
Adopts the methods of fear and inflammatory language.

Spewing bile and disenchantment, he couldn’t be clearer
This wretched fear-merchant is the Enoch Powell of our era.

The champion of UKIP’s bigotry barrage
Bolsters his causes’s political advantage
By playing on poverty and disenchantment to enlarge
Underlying feelings of national heritage.

So why doesn’t Nigel pronounce his name Englishly, as Farridge?
Can he really be a Euro-hater, if connected to a German by marriage?

Perhaps all his bluster is merely mirage?
Maybe it’s carefully concocted faux outrage?
Might it all be sly, coy camouflage
As he calls himself, with a wink, Mr Farage?

Is he expressing his name in the European style
To hide his desire to aspire to be Europhile?

No. Sadly, we see his only intention; to sabotage.
See the greed clearly through every shit-grin image.
Would that there were a reason we could legally charge
This fading hater, for having held our nation hostage.

Inciting fear via blame they revive spiteful nomenclature
Employing means unbecoming of any true Englishman’s nature.

Backed by the right-wings most boisterously beastly entourage,
Fuelled by their media-condoned hate-speech garbage
This attack on our identity is akin to espionage
Attempting to inflict a form of cultural haemorrhage.

Pint-holding Nigel, the great white English saviour
With his disgusting, despicable, unsavoury behaviour.

A Eugoogly for Jim Crow, my best friend

It has been twelve years since the loss of my best friend Jim Crow and recently, while moving home, I found the eulogy I read for him at his funeral.

The funeral was humanist (a religious ceremony was not going to be an option), and instead friends and family told stories and shared memories of Jim. When it came to my turn and I shuffled to the front, I realised that I had left the eulogy in my coat. Five minutes away in the car park.

Fortunately, this type of foolishness was well expected from me and, again fortunately, everyone laughed. Uproariously. At me.

I think Jim would have liked that.

 

A Eugoogly for Jim Crow

I’ve known Jim for nine years. We first became friends on a bus journey from Havant to Horndean. I was quite surprised when he interrupted my conversation to launch an unnecessary attack on David Bowie. We spent the rest of the bus journey happily arguing, and continued this for the next nine years. Jim has recently become part of a David Bowie tribute band so I know I won that argument at least.

Whether talking about subjects as diverse as the merits and drawbacks of Marxism, to the importance of texture in the enjoyment of a cheese cracker, Jim would enter into any debate with the same level of passion.

It is this passion that I will always remember Jim for, his ability to absorb vast amounts of mundane information or his voracious reading, his distinctive and often embarrassing dress sense, his love of music and the way he played the guitar with a lit cigarette stuck in his ear.

He was my best friend and I will miss him for the rest of my life.

 

Leonardo DiCaprio has NEVER deserved to win an Oscar. Why should he care? The Academy Awards are shit

The annual wailing has begun to annoy me now. As each awards season rolls around, so begins the bleating of Leonardo DiCaprio groupies at the injustice of the Academy ‘not giving Leo his Oscar’. I’m sorry, but he has never deserved one.

That is not to say that he isn’t a damn good actor, he showed this potential in strong early roles such as What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? and The Basketball Diaries. These are two great performances for a young actor, despite the rest of his film output in the 1990s otherwise consisting of primarily teen-bait trash (I include both Romeo and Juliet and Titanic in this list) and that I found Leo himself, and his self-designated ‘pussy posse’, to be absolutely loathsome during this period.

Since 2000 onwards, DiCaprio’s film choices, which must have been easier to dictate after becoming an established A-list star, and his subsequent performances, have improved drastically. The Beach, though no showpiece of particularly impressive acting, demonstrated a knack for spotting a challenging subject, at least from the original source material. Collaborating on the boisterous Catch Me If You Can and attempting to portray a less savoury character in Gangs of New York were more progressive acting choices and DiCaprio’s determination to be recognised as an actor of substance can be noted from The Departed through to his powerful cameo in Django Unchained.

However, of the performances for which he was nominated Best Actor, none of them have been of high enough quality to earn him an Oscar. Martin Scorcese’s biopic of Howard Hughes, The Aviator, was cinematically beautiful but lightweight and frivolous; neither the subject nor the performance was challenging enough to trouble the eventual winner, Jamie Foxx for his portrayal of the life of the legendary blues singer Ray Charles.

Leo’s choices of lead roles in biopics and period-piece films, so often a rich hunting ground for actors seeking Oscars, was not to bring him those rewards either. The Great Gatsby was grandiose and resplendent but the central themes of the original, the corruption and degradation of The American Dream, were left untouched, with DiCaprio’s Gatsby embodying the charm but lacking the mysterious allure of the eponymous protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s American classic. However, I would apportion the lion’s share of the blame for The Great Gatsby’s failings to the director Baz Luhrmann and his unswerving devotion to style over content.

 J Edgar was a prime opportunity for DiCaprio to portray one of America’s more intriguingly divisive political figures but, uninspiringly, the film chose to adopt a sympathetic focus on the notorious former FBI Director’s social limitations and his issues of repressed sexuality, whilst omitting all but the slightest suggestion of the cross-dressing which was, reportedly, how Hoover’s sexual proclivities manifested. More damagingly to both the film and the role, it also completely sidesteps Hoover’s insidious attacks upon the civil rights movements in the US or how his fear of Communism and ties with Joseph McCarthy created much of the injustice and fear associated with the Second Red Scare.

For me, DiCaprio’s most noteworthy lead role performance to date was in Blood Diamond. Finally (or so it seems to me) he threw off the restraint of being likeable and pretty on camera and the amoral, mercenary character he creates is one of his most believable and human performances. He would still not receive a Best Actor plaudit in 2006, due to being surpassed by Forest Whitaker, whose portrayal of the brutal and conflicted Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland was immense.

The braying of the DiCaprio sycophants reached its crescendo last year, as the Leophytes threw their faeces at The Academy for having the temerity to deny Leo his sacred golden figurine yet again. However, his performance in The Wolf of Wall Street is, to my mind, the least deserving of DiCaprio’s nominations to date. His acting is adequate but uninspiring, as is the film. Seemingly it tries to emulate the wit and introspection of Goodfellas but fails to capture any of the cult gangster film’s depth and cynicism, and instead plays out like a three-hour version of The Hangover. Even dismissing the indulgent  limitations of the film itself DiCaprio would still not have won, as his also-nominated peers all outshone him; Matthew McConaughey’s winning turn in The Dallas Buyer’s Club, Chiwatel Ejiofor’s harrowing 12 Years a Slave and Christian Bale’s fraudster in American Hustle all demonstrated far superior, nuanced performances. The one redeeming feature of The Woeful of Wall Street was Jonah Hill’s film-stealing comic performance.

With the 2016 Academy Awards almost upon us the clamour of online campaigning has begun again in earnest, this time for DiCaprio’s lead in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s bear-wrangling survival-fest The Revenant. His fans insist that, surely this time, the role and the hardships he endured filming it must finally ensure him his rightful academy award. And perhaps it will, I’ve not seen The Revenant yet, nor its competitors, so I cannot argue their comparative merits.

The only time that I think DiCaprio had a valid claim on an Oscar was the Best Supporting Actor nomination he received for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? Yet, even with his delicate portrayal of Jonny Depp’s mentally retarded younger brother Arnie he should probably have still lost out due to Ralph Fiennes’ powerhouse performance as Commandant Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List. As it was, neither won, the award that year inexplicably going to Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive, for his portrayal of, well, Tommy Lee Jones…

And here lies my final issue, one which we are all aware of; that Oscars are not awarded on merit. They no longer represent the highest level of commendation, by the leading lights of the industry, conferred to the most worthy recipient of the year. Past controversies have highlighted the politicking and bribery which have, in favour of preferred and political academy choices, denied recognition to such undeniably wonderful performances as Peter O’Toole’s Lawrence of Arabia or Glenn Close’s in Dangerous Liaisons.

I would support a campaign to remove campaigning, both industry and public, from Oscar selections. It is supposed to be The Academy’s award, not the people’s choice, but for the Oscars to hold any value the Academy must have integrity, and these days the currency of the Oscars are as devalued as the Nobel Peace Prize. They are acquired, bribed and bought through elaborate publicity campaigns by the studios and actors.  They are the banker’s bonuses of the film world.

The Oscars are shit.

And DiCaprio can do better.

A Calm and Reasoned Response to Politics

 

Fuck all you self-serving politicians, of these last thirty selfish years,

All you insidious, parasitic wealth amassers, and all you hereditary peers.

Fuck Thatcher and her cronies for the damage they have wrought.

Fuck every member of Parliament whom corporate interest has since bought.

 

Fuck they who were profitably complicit in the dismantling of our industries

And all those who stood by or benefited, as we were stripped of our liberties.

Fuck those that stoked and, to this day still invoke, the ‘glory’ of the Falklands War,

For inciting otherwise well-natured folk to ‘go and give those Argies what-for’.

 

Fuck them for enabling NATO in their numerous illegal, economically imperial wars,

For the fostering of fear and hatred, and justifying every radicalist’s cause.

Fuck each and every politician, whether they be politically of the Left or the Right

Who, for profit or by plot, conveniently forgot the people for which they were meant to fight.

 

Fuck the “Bullah, Bullah” Bullingdon cunts for their amoral, elitist stance

And fuck that pig-fucker Cameron for hastening this Capitapocalyptic advance.

Fuck that war criminal Tony Blair for enfeebling the natural opposition from The Left

That should have challenged the ‘greed is good’ fallacy which now glorifies institutional theft.

 

Fuck the sacrificial offering of our media industry to that tyrant fuck Rupert Murdoch.

Fuck our parent’s generation for letting those hard-fought-for lessons of emancipation be forgot.

Fuck the lot of you! Fuck God! Hell, why not? Fuck that mysterious, imperious such and such

But you know what, most of all fuck me; for doing so fucking little and yet swearing so fucking much.

Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others

Our elitist overlords, lest we forget

Though educated and well-versed in etiquette

Peer down from ivory-towered parapets

Upon us, their fiscal marionettes,

 

As we plebs, alarmed by erratically rising rents,

Scurry, in futility, between concrete tenements

Our government, unfettered by moral conscience

Exert their wealth and power for malign influence.

 

Their spin doctors, committees and political whips

Concoct the financially vicious economic edicts

Which then spew from the caviar-stained, rictus-grin lips

Of these harbingers, these horsemen, of the Torypocalypse.

 

The flop-topped Boris Johnson champions the heroics

Of ‘The City’ and those bankers who fucked up our economic

Situation, but don’t be fooled by his goofball antics,

For only his name is honest; Johnson means dick

 

Whilst Osborne (born Gideon, not George, as he’d like to insist),

Looking like the escaped, evil dummy of a ventriloquist

Serves as Satan’s accountant and chief Neoconomist

Implementing the policies and levies designed to brutally fist…

 

…All of us in this fixed fiscal hegemony

Which falls far short of the ‘free market’ they purport it to be

Yet Cameron demonstrates stock market support symbolically

By injecting both his semen and faith into the pork belly.

 

This plastic facsimile of a human strives to obfuscate,

Using false sincerity as a foil, a construct to placate,

To mask the gulf between the elite and the electorate

Enabling his party to enact their destructive mandate.

 

Their agenda has remained constant since Pitt ousted the Whigs

The protection, by election, of selectively favourable economics

Entrenching their entitlement to all profits, while we pay the vig

Ensuring that, although we’re aware they’re pig fuckers, we remain the pigs.

Tusk – How Kevin Smith Kind Of Made Walrus Horror Work

Kevin Smith dips into the horror genre with his most recent directorial outing. Tusk produces an odd but compelling effect, fusing Smith’s trademark style of comic dialogue with a unique twist on torture-horror. Justin Long is his rudely abrasive protagonist, one ill-fated to be kidnapped, tortured and transformed into a Walrus.

Ok, I know that it sounds ridiculous when you get to that last word… and ok, yes, it is ridiculous, of course it is, but still… it kind of works.

Justin Long plays Wallace Bryton, a podcast host chasing a follow-up story after featuring a video clip of an accident gone horribly wrong, only to find that the caller has since committed suicide. Temporarily stranded in the Canadian backwaters, he finds an interesting note on a local bar noticeboard which leads him to seek out its author Howard Howe, played by Michael Parks. Howe tells him an even more amazing tale, of being stranded on a frozen Alaskan island, with his only friend a walrus called Gregory. As Wallace’s girlfriend and his best friend search for him, Howe begins the agonising process of surgically transforming Wallace into a Walrus, as well as beginning his behavioural re-training.

Despite the bizarre premise, Smith’s delivery of the horror side of the film is spot on and underscored by Michael Parks’ fantastically driven performance as the eloquent, raving and monstrous villain, while Long is commendably strong and convincing as his initially cocksure victim. At first Wallace is arrogant and obnoxious, the big city arsehole looking down on the lives of the backwater locals, up until his abduction. His second half performance though, is superb; the terror and anguish he portrays whilst being tortured is honestly harrowing, or would be, if it weren’t so bizarre. Even when completely transformed, with bulbous flesh and surgical augmentations covering him, you can just about see Justin Long’s little face at the centre of it, screaming in horror. It’s really him in there, and it actually is kind of terrifying.

Or it would be, if the comedy side of the film wasn’t keeping you off-balance throughout. Jonny Depp cameos as goofball French private detective Guy LaPointe, and seems to revel in making the role as outlandish as possible. Depp and Smith’s daughters also feature, sharing two scenes together ahead of their appearance in Yoga Hosers, the second of his planned True North Trilogy. The comedy scenes are all quite funny, but whether the directorial intent was just to dilute the tension of the torture scenes, or to leave the viewer in a midway state of horrified bemusement, I’m not sure. Either way, it still kind of works.

Although his own podcast work (from where the story idea came) and other projects have been successful, Kevin Smith’s reputation as a film director has suffered over the last decade. I love his debut film, Clerks.  It was inspirational when it came out; a low budget, misanthropic indie film, driven by often caustic, always comic dialogue. Smith bolstered his reputation when he advanced beyond the stoner comedy antics of Mallrats to produce more dramatic, higher production value films like Chasing Amy and Dogma. His output became more erratic though. I do love Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and enjoyed the return of Randall in Clerks 2 but it was still just more fanboy movie fare, and with Mallrats 2 in the making, it has left some of his dramatic output lacking.

The awful, turgid Jersey Girl was extremely damaging, while Cop Out rarely produced more than a half-hearted smile; the shoddy script and misbalanced comedy dynamic of Bruce Willis, Tracy Jordan and Sean William Scott only managing to churn out a dull rehash of the already-tired buddy-cop genre. However, Red State was a serious dramatic detour for Smith, and it was interesting, as well as being another showcase of Michael Parks talents, as he delivers another maniacally villainous performance.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Tusk is a return to form, as I don’t know if Smith will ever reproduce the levels of his early work, and it is unlike all of his other films. However, Tusk is a worthy and courageous addition to Smith’s filmography. It requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief but Smith builds the story well, with Justin Long’s Wallace as doomed as Psycho’s Marion Crane, but his fate is more hideous; from the Human Centipede end of the shock-horror spectrum. But it delivers. The mixture of comedy, grotesquery and outright horror is unsettlingly effective. It kind of works.

Possibly the most terrifying moment for me was when I first realised that Wallace’s best friend  was none other than Haley Joel Osment. He’s gained some weight, is scruffily bearded and looks disconcertingly like Kevin Smith. So much so that I wondered what had happened to him in the years since AI. I wondered if, possibly, Smith had kidnapped him, adapting and transforming him into this strange Osment-Smith creature? Was the entire film merely an elaborate parody, an on-screen confession of Smith’s crimes against Osment?

Because if you peer past the bulbous flesh and surgical augmentations covering him, you can just about see the little face of that boy from Sixth Sense at the centre of it, screaming in horror. It’s really him in there, and that actually is kind of terrifying.

Jeremy Clarkson: Too Bigot To Fail?

It’s boring, isn’t it? Watching, as the circus that is the annual Clarkson kerfuffle rolls around again? Oh blimey, what’s he said now? How has he managed to be too offensive/racist/sexist/insert-unacceptable-behaviour-here this time? It’s become typical, up to the point where it almost seems to be a big fuss about nothing. Especially with the continuing tensions in the Middle-East, the increase of religious fundamentalism, NATO’s stand-off with Russia over the Ukraine and the ongoing crush of austerity. It almost seems somewhat trivial.

Because, surely, Clarkson doesn’t say anything that bad, does he? And even if he did, was it really racism? It’s just Jezza, that’s what he’s like. I mean, are we still having this discussion?

It does seem trivial. But it shouldn’t. It would be a trivial matter, except that Clarkson is still in his job.

It is quite possible that he will still be presenting   Top Gear even after  this latest unnecessary transgression has trundled past. But he shouldn’t be. The fact that he has not been fired is an insult to every hard-working person in any of the nations that Top Gear is shown in. Why? Because you would have been sacked for any one of those offences, let alone for punching a co-worker! Immediately. And not one of us would have questioned the decision. So why not Clarkson?

Jeremy Clarkson has provoked this conflict, as he has the majority of Top Gear’s numerous controversies. He knows that this is not a moral issue, but a contractual one. This is about Clarkson’s earning power, and how rich or influential you need to be in order to get away with it.

Every year, when the latest outrage surfaces, I repost Steve Coogan’s wonderfully articulated response to Top Gear’s now-habitual incident of contemptuousness, whereby Coogan expressed something we all agree on, that although Top Gear has proved itself to be consistently entertaining and, despite everything, we tend to like the three presenters… enough is enough. The article resonated with me because it was a not a banshee-wail for Clarkson’s removal but rather it is an impassioned plea that the Top Gear boys just tone it down and stop being so unnecessarily callous.

However, Coogan’s article was written in 2011, referring to Top Gear statements at the time that Mexican cars were, much like Mexicans themselves, ‘lazy’ and ‘feckless’ and that their food resembled ‘sick with cheese on it’, yet little appears to have changed since. That year’s series also elicited complaints due to homophobic comments about George Michael and, even more deplorably (although made outside of Top Gear), Clarkson’s comments that public sector workers, who were striking at that time to demand fairer pay, be ‘executed in front of their families’.

Since that incident, the lads have managed to cause offense in India, including driving a Jaguar with a toilet mounted on it around a slum, while 2013 saw the surfacing of Clarkson’s (initially unaired) muttering of ‘eeny, meeny, miny moe, catch a nigger by his toe…’ gaffe, for which he received a ‘final warning’. Last year actually saw a rise in instances of controversy, with Jeremy in Thailand joking about a ‘slope on a bridge’ and October’s inflammatory Argentina trip, which resulted in the Top Gear crew being attacked with stones and forced to flee the country.

Now Jeremy has punched a producer for not having organised his food on time. Clarkson seems to have no shame regarding the act, nor any fear of reprisal. He just doesn’t care. Most likely, it is because he knows that he and the Top Gear brand are big business. With profits of £50 million worldwide per year, broadcasting to more than 50 countries and with a worldwide audience of 350 million, we understand why the decision is a difficult one, financially speaking.

But this kind of thinking is backwards. The very fact that Top Gear has such global appeal and a massive fan-base should be a case for ensuring that its presenters conduct themselves admirably, that they act as respected and beloved international statesmen. It should not be a license for three rich, white men to indulge in casual racism, dangerous stereotyping and seemingly thoughtless social insensitivity. None of us would get away with the kind of wanton behaviour they indulge in and keep our job, so neither should they. It is similar to the defence extended to the Liverpool footballer Luis Suarez, who repeatedly bit opponents on the pitch but was too important to punish severely, and too valuable to fire. A vast amount of money had been invested in him, so only a lip service to punishment was meted out. Money buys impunity, and even if it doesn’t, it certainly takes the sting out of taking risks that could lose you your job.

Such wealth makes it very difficult to punish these people, as they have very little to lose. And this power is what Clarkson appears to be demonstrating, that he is too rich and important, too big to fail, for the BBC to do anything about it. Clarkson resides up there with the über-wealthy right, next to the unimpeachable Rupert Murdoch and alongside the tax cheats of HSBC. His friend and neighbour David Cameron, another of the ‘Chipping Norton Set’, has already defended him publically.

They seem to be making a unified statement; that when someone becomes this rich, influential or powerful, then such lowly concerns as assaulting a co-worker (let alone subversion of the law, tax evasion, etc.) are below them. These are the setbacks that afflict the lives of the plebs, not the ultra-rich.

In Murdoch and HSBC’s cases, their defence is made by our government, corporate law and politics, but with Top Gear’s immense public popularity, the issue becomes more muddled. That we enjoy Top Gear should not mean that we have to accept the casual racism Clarkson champions and with its fantastic production values the show would surely outlast his demise. However, by signing the petition to reinstate him, you are tacitly agreeing to a two-tier class system, whereby we serfs must accept one set of living standards, rules and punishments, whereas those with wealth and influence are given free rein to do as they please.

No one, in a fair and equal society, is untouchable. Jeremy Clarkson should be sacked for his continued, and continuing, disregard for the rules, let alone the unabated, and unarguably unacceptable, offensive statements he chooses to make. He should, at the very least, be punishable in a way that might force him to change his public behaviour.

If not, then, despite his popularity, he is just a pompous, bigoted and self-serving aristocrat.

A Farage in an unreasonably priced car.

On the Passing of Terry Pratchett

‘The storm walked around the hills on legs of lightning, shouting and grumbling.
The wizard disappeared around the bend in the track and the goats went back to their damp grazing.
Until something else caused them to look up. They stiffened, their eyes widening, their nostrils flaring.
This was strange, because there was nothing on the path. But the goats still watched it pass by until it was out of sight.’
– Equal Rites

I was eight year’s old when I read my first Terry Pratchett novel. My friends from Yorkshire had loaned me a copy of Equal Rites  while on holiday in France. Although it is, chronologically, the third Discworld novel, it was a great entry point into Pratchett’s fantastical alternative world. It was a compelling read for me, not due to the wizards and witches battling each other but for the humour that soaked every page and paragraph.

I quickly caught up, reading The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic in quick succession and was hooked, eagerly devouring each new book from that moment on. On Thursday, just shy of thirty years later, the news came through that Terry Pratchett had died, after an eight year battle with Alzheimer’s.

It is profoundly sad when a literary voice, one which has been your companion for the largest part of your life goes silent. Especially a voice that contained such wry insight, one that was always willing to poke fun at the frailties of the human condition in such an unwaveringly positive and light-hearted manner.

‘What sort of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.’
– Going Postal

The world in which Pratchett’s stories come to life exist in what is, irrefutably, a fantasy universe. His Discworld is flat, circular, and held together by magic and belief. It rests on the backs of four huge elephants who in turn are transported through the cosmos atop the shell of Great A’Tuin, the star turtle. No, this is not our world.

And yet, undeniably, it is. Ideas leak through from here into the Discworld, simple concepts or advancements that appear too unnaturally ‘normal’, and preposterous, within this magical world. Yet to Pratchett, ideas were cross-dimensional forces that have power, ones which change the Discworld, forcing its societies to modernise, to lurch dangerously forward with each novel, until they more closely resemble ours.

‘A third proposition, that the city be governed by a choice of respectable members of the community who would promise not to give themselves airs or betray the public trust at every turn, was instantly the subject of music-hall jokes all over the city.’
– Unseen Academicals

Pratchett’s vast universe has been constructed, brick by conceptual brick, over the course of forty books. His writing skilfully intertwines parody and satire, each story toying with the effects of these different emerging societal concepts, a list which, while including themes such as the emergence of the printing press, law, belief systems and cinema, goes on and on. Amidst these shifting tides of change, Pratchett’s (generally woefully inept) protagonists struggle to maintain a compassionate, or at least brutally reasonable social order against the constant threat of the more dominant and dumb human vices of greed, cowardice and stupidity.

Many of these seemingly hapless heroes continue their own branches of stories, often continuing a thematic genre with each, such as the detective style of Commander Vimes and the City Watch, Granny Weatherwax and the witches, defending common people from the dangerous temptations of belief and ambition or Death’s struggles with the concepts of fate, mortality and identity.

‘LET ME PUT FORWARD ANOTHER SUGGESTION: THAT YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A LUCKY SPECIES OF APE THAT IS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITIES OF CREATION VIA A LANGUAGE THAT EVOLVED IN ORDER TO TELL ONE ANOTHER WHERE THE RIPE FRUIT WAS?’
– Death and What Comes Next

Even the transitory characters who appear, sometimes momentarily before being killed, are fully fleshed-out personalities; humanly flawed and conflicted, confused and bewildered. They bear witness to grander movements that they can have no comprehension of and have no power to affect. Whether they are ‘good’, ‘bad’ or inconsequential, they are, recognisably, us.

‘Of course, Ankh-Morpork’s citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure in any case. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed.’
– Sourcery

The dirty, sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork, a mirror image of London, is a character in itself, one as ‘colourful as a bruise and as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound.’ This was Pratchett’s magical ability; that he could build this preposterous world, populate it, convey all that is least noble and most dangerous about the actions of humans en masse and yet maintain a consistent level of positivity, instilling a distinctive comedic flourish to every scene, dialogue and monologue, a humour that is laugh-out-loud funny, to the extent that I have been publically embarrassed by it.

Terry Pratchett’s style of writing and the short, breakneck chapters that propel you through the books appeals to both children and adults alike. The intricacy of the plots and the frantic adventures form a foundation from which the satirical parodies can be enjoyed and they consistently provide a deeply rewarding experience.

Moreover, what resonates throughout is the spirit of Terry Pratchett himself. His insight, sense of humour and optimism permeate every page of his work, as well as coming through in his public conduct. The manner in which he faced the onset of Alzheimer’s was inspiring, and his championing of the assisted dying cause was admirable.

Pratchett’s literary output was prolific and across his collaborations and children’s books totalled over seventy novels. I am glad that he has left behind him such a large body of work, and that the Discworld will also continue to expand through his daughter’s writing, but with Terry Pratchett’s passing, it does feel like the loss of a lifelong friend.

So thank you, Terry Pratchett, for teaching me that satire and social commentary could be so compelling and so consistently, ridiculously funny.

‘I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE.’
– Feet of Clay