...now there's a temporary solution

6 posts on one day after a massive gap between my first posts and today's - i'm a binge blogger :-S

The Devil's Whore

I just felt I had to note the fantastic drama, broadcast on Channel 4 that was The Devil’s Whore. A fresh take on dramas on the English Civil War it presented the story of the fictional Angelica Fanshawe and her many adventures. Married three times, once to a close cousin, friend and aristocrat, then to a Leveller and then to a reformed mercenary soldier with a heart-of-gold. It all seems rather far-fetched but was highly successful, not only being acted well but also I feel for readdressing commonly held ideas about the Civil War and that arch-hypocrite Oliver Cromwell. Too often Oliver Cromwell is remembered as some sort of classic English liberator, an all too simplistic, if not wholly untrue, depiction of the man. Cromwell was a religious radical and fought for freedom of worship and the rights of Parliament only as far as they suited him. This is well demonstrated in the drama where Cromwell betrays all those who had supported him and became King in all but name making a mockery of all those who sacrificed themselves for freedom from suppression and tyranny. Don’t get me wrong I’m not about to portray Charles I as some sort of saint (although I believe he has been canonised by the Anglican Church for defending its marriage of catholic and reformed principles against rabid puritanical Protestantism – no I’m not convinced either) but at least he – as shown in The Devil’s Whore – is a man of his principles, no mater how repugnant they may have been, unlike Cromwell who sold his down the river at the first opportunity to exert full power and authoritarianism. It is of course folly to make moral judgements about the past, we can never wholly understand those people we study, but Oliver Cromwell’s popular reputation is undeservingly good for a man who was essentially the English Early Modern equivalent of Colonel Gaddafi or President Musharraf. For those of you who are turned off by such affected debates on dead white men, the drama had little of this and married love stories and great battle sequences well so I can recommend you 4OD it!

Bush - urgh -

Bush brushed off the recent shoe-pummelling he got saying "All I can report is it is a size 10” and hailing it as an expression of democracy in Iraq - moron.

I once laughed at 'Bushisms' in my rather Guardian-ista patronising way. I now bear a bitter resentment, finding them mildly insulting.

Father it has been three months since my last confession...

I love Christmas songs! There I’ve said it now and can finally embrace myself ;)
Everything from 'God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen' to 'All I want for Christmas is You' brings the biggest grin to my face and makes me incomprehensibly giddy! Perhaps it's my love of Christmas generally that makes it so, the cold weather only makes staying warm inside with a snowball all the more enjoyable and as a confirmed glutton I cannot get enough of Christmas dinner - with all the trimmings! However, I have a great love affair with Christmas songs of all types and genres. Whilst writing my final essay of 2008 (and listening to Radio 1 on the library computers) 'Fairytale of New York' came down my headphones - it was the beginning of Christmas for me (f**k the coke advert, the song's a classic!). Yes they're cheesy and often unbelievably contrived but they take me back to a time when Christmas was... wait for the clichéd description... magical. Only being 19 years old (although I’m very much on the verge of a quarter-life crisis) such a time was not all that far away but a Pan-esque fear of growing up - or is that of embracing responsibility #vomit# - makes me run to these songs at Yuletide to make me feel about 5 again. So shout your favourite Christmas songs loud and shout 'em proud!

SantoGOLD!

A recent questionnaire circulated at my university asked some students to vote for their favourite album of the year. Whilst the nominees certainly deserved (or at least I imagine they were, some of them, I must shamefully admit I hadn’t heard of) their place on the list, I felt that a major omission was Santogold’s debut album. This is without doubt my album of the year. Track after track demonstrates her lyrical dexterity wowed me to such an extent that I could complain the album wasn’t long enough. In some ways the album does appear to end too soon and the final (non-bonus) track didn’t leave me wholly satisfied with my musical fix but then that can surely only be a shrewd commercial move come the arrival of her next album. All the same the album delighted me at every turn, but the stand-out track for me was ‘You’ll Find a Way’. It achieved that musical feat of encapsulating the psychological ‘fight or flight’ complex. This might appear an odd comment to make about a track (panic attacks might not seem to characterise a good song) but I definitely mean it as a compliment. It’s the sense of urgency in the song that I love and which makes it my favourite on the album, it runs with the listener and raises their heart-rate, these all seem good aspects to me! This all seems to be turning a little pretentious in its language but the album is amazing and I would urge you, if you haven’t already, to buy and listen to it. I await her (difficult?) second album and hope it doesn’t disappoint.

Pull yourself together!

Two aspects of Saturday night's X-Factor Final were unforgivable. The first is that monstrosity that was created on Alexandra Burke's head; the woman looked like a cocker spaniel, her stylist deserves to be sacked (if not shot). The second was the wholly undignified display that Alexandra undertook (and undertook more and more as we progressed towards the final) that bordered on an emotional breakdown. What ever happened to the good old British stiff upper lip? It loathes me to take such a Daily Mail tone but Alexandra's reaction was completely over the top and cringe-makingly embarrassing. I know, I know, tears and tantrums are part of the course as far as reality TV shows go but she seemed to take it to a new level. Surely by her third and fourth performances she might have been able to master her emotions? As for actually falling on the floor when the result was announced, words escape me. She must have realised that she was within a strong chance of winning (not least as she was the bookies' favourite!). I'm not expecting her to show no emotion but the displays of tears which have become overly common-place on the X-Factor, particularly from our new winner, are just horrendous and have become so cliché that they now seem completely insincere! I can only hope that next year's competition is not such a tear-fest or I fear I shall be tuning out!

It's a small world after all!

Watching the so-called ‘World Music Awards’ on Channel 4 on Sunday 23rd November I finally noticed how pervasive American culture really is. The majority of acts (at least to my count) who performed or received awards were American and indeed almost all of the artists, with the exception of indie and dance acts, performed music that was also American in origin. This is not necessarily a critique of ‘Americana’ indeed I as much as the next man undoubtedly subscribe to the all-powerful media and cultural power-house that the United States of America has become throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Personally my musical tastes largely lie with the British and European music scene. With the obvious exceptions of The Stokes and the Kings of Leon I can think of few American indie bands who have achieved musical and commercial success to the same extent as their British and European cousins. The same is true of the dance and electronica genres. Nevertheless most other contemporary music very much has its roots or is influenced by Amercian music. Blues, jazz, rock n’ roll and pop can find their origins in the USA. Whilst pop in the UK and in Europe has been increasingly influenced by the indie and dance scenes of late it also owes a debt to RnB and Hip-Hop, undeniably American phenomena. Commercial success in America has become a badge-of-honour for many non-American artists, proving their credibility in their music’s country-of-origin. Anyway back to my main point, in many ways it seemed that the idea of the ‘World Music Awards’ was some what of a sham. It wasn’t so much ‘world music’ but American music which had experienced considerable commercial success in countries outside the USA (or indeed those few British and European acts which had achieved success in America). This is of course to dismiss those few European artists who were acknowledged during the show who had achieved fame across Europe as well as other artists from the Middle-East, Africa and Asia who were featured, though few and far-between. It is perhaps not surprising, however, that there are often backlashes of anti-American feeling in many areas of the world. It seems that the American music industry saturates the world market in much the same way as it does the food markets of the African continent, where surplus American rice ensures that it continually undermines the prices that their own farmers have to charge. The ‘World Music Awards’ demonstrates that while American (and to an extent British) artists may be recognised world-wide the same cannot be said of artists from the other six continents of the world. These artists are not deemed worthy of air-time in the USA or the UK, which may well appear to be reasonable if it were not for the fact that they undoubtedly have to compete with artists from these countries in their own. Indeed the winner of the award for ‘Best African Artist’ was Akon, whose African descent is undeniable and yet probably as strong in terms of the music he produces as Barack Obama’s is in terms of his politics. This immense American influence has undoubtedly professionalised music elsewhere, and yet it also comes (as do their promises of democratic reform for the world) with a smug self-importance. Artists from other areas of the world are allowed to perform as long as they fit the American-mould, and in the end it is American artists who dominate as they invariably ‘do it right’ or so we are led to believe. I cannot help but think that the ‘World Music Awards’ would have benefitted much more from a more egalitarian approach to exposure. This way those of us in the West may get the opportunity to sample some of the music that has made it big in other parts of the world, though I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to guarantee viewing figures for Channel 4.

here come the girls...?...

Far too often I hear women of my own generation rejecting feminism. Such is the stigma surrounding the ideology, created by decades of reactionary comment that even women who have benefitted from a century and half’s worth of activism feel that they have to distance themselves from the movement. This has become more apparent to me recently due to an increased furrow into women’s and gender history for my degree. Whilst I realise that this may bias me, and indeed many women of my age believe that most, if not all, of the battles in the course of the fight for gender equality have been won, I still believe that the feminist cause is one worthy of support in the present day. Those female friends of mine who dismiss the cause of their sisters often argue that they support equality but that feminists go too far, insinuating that they wish to enforce a form of oppressive matriarchy. However, I feel often they confuse the real aims of feminism with the exaggerations of the reactionaries (often concerned to maintain a privileged position for men) and with those of feminism’s more radical currents. The likes of Sheila Jeffreys and her Love Your Enemy? The Debate Between Heterosexual Feminism and Political Lesbianism, (1979) which questioned the commitment that heterosexual women could have to the feminist cause, has been jumped upon by some as “exposing” the “true” aims of feminism, and left many women uncomfortable identifying themselves as feminists. The fear for many women seems to be that by embracing feminism they reject their femininity (something not helped by Germaine Greer’s recent comments about Cheryl Cole being too thin to be a feminist) and potential relationships with men, in whatever form these may take, but this is not and does not have to be the case. Mainstream feminism today focuses upon cementing and protecting that which as been won and by ensuring that misogynistic practices in the workplace, at home and in politics which have gone unreformed are reformed and protecting against a resurgence of such ideas. This is thus a call to the women (and indeed the men who have as much right to self-define as feminists) of my generation not to disown feminism. It is an important movement which secures practical equalities such as the vote, property ownership and education and also ensures that women are not relegated to the position of the ‘second sex’ merely due to natural processes such as menstruation, pregnancy and lactation. Without it and the other reforms and civil rights and social rights movements it inspired many of us would not enjoy the positions and choices we do today.