the public gets what the public wants...

As we were travelling down to London on Saturday afternoon, a guy and his wife boarded at Bedford and sat down in the seats opposite us around the table.  Inasmuch as you can tell from a first impression, they looked to be a friendly pair, with the chap in particular having a friendly face and something of a cheerful demeanour. They were maybe fractionally older than me, although I must confess to losing my ability to judge things like this, and could easily have been my age or a little younger.

As they made themselves comfortable and the train pulled out of the station, the guy turns to his wife and says:
"Now then.  Let's find out what's going on with the election"
He then reached into a WHSmiths back and pulled out a copy of the Sun, which he proceeded to read cover to cover over the course of a full fifteen minutes.

I trust he found enlightenment.

We really are doomed, aren't we?

FACTS

This from the New Yorker today.  As brought to my attention by my friend Marissa.

2016 is pretty much this, isn't it?

Post-truth, post-facts, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

lord above...

When Nadiya Hussain won the Great British Bake Off last year, people went a bit crazy. We live in a time when many (stupid) people associate Islam with terrorists who burn people in cages and blow people up with homemade bombs… and here was a lovely, charming lady in a hijab baking cakes in a big tent. She seemed nice and loved her family and everything.  Imagine! And she won! Well done Britain. What a bloody lovely, inclusive country we are, etc. She even baked the bloody Queen a cake for her birthday. Well, for one of her birthdays, anyway.

Lovely Nadiya, living embodiment of how wonderful Britain is, has been given her own TV show. It’s called - working title at least - “The Chronicles of Nadiya”.

Do you see what they did there?

Well, perhaps it’s just me, or is it a tiny little bit odd to name a show presented a Muslim after a series of books that are well-known Christian allegories? Aslan is JESUS, you see….

Am I overthinking this and just spoiling some REALLY CLEVER WORDPLAY, yeah?

Maybe she just presents the whole thing from inside a wardrobe surrounded by fur coats.

I’d watch that.

puts you there where things are hollow...

We need to talk about David Beckham.

On our flight back from Austria last week, British Airways had kindly provided us with one of those magazines aimed at the aspirational businessman they imagine their clientele are. In it, there was an article about David Beckham: the man and the brand. It was filled with gushing hyperbole about the supposed genius of a man who is probably earning more now he has retired than he ever earned as a footballer. One brand expert was particularly effusive in his praise, going as far to say that, when he spoke to Beckham for the first time, he was struck by the far-sighted genius of someone who always had a very clear idea of the value of his personal brand and a strategic focus on how he meant to exploit it. Now, with all due respect, surely anyone who has ever heard Beckham speaking will struggle with the idea that he’s a far-sighted, strategic thinking genius….

Don’t get me wrong: I have no beef with David Beckham. He was a very good footballer – not near the same class of player as the likes of Ronaldo or Messi by a long-shot, but someone who worked extremely hard to wring the absolute maximum from the talent he had and was a very decent player in his own right. He played for some of the biggest clubs in the world and won over 100 caps for his country, many as captain. He also seems like a decent guy who genuinely cares for his family and who does a lot of work for charity. But something has happened over the last few years that has seen his public image take off into the stratosphere. Perhaps it was his work on the 2012 Olympic bid that was the tipping point, but David Beckham is now – in most people’s eyes – something of a secular saint; an ambassadorial figure; a role model. Everything he touches and everything he endorses turns to gold.

I’m not buying it.

I don’t doubt that Beckham does a lot of good work for charity and is an all-round nice chap… I just don’t see him as anything much to look up to. I actually had this argument with a friend of mine the other day. She’s a fan, and she decided to take me to task about not being all that bothered about the sainted David Beckham. He was a great England captain. Was he? As well as all those quarter final exits, the thing I remember most about Beckham as captain is that it was always about him. Apparently, his media conferences were so distracting that they were forced to conduct them in a completely separate hotel to the rest of the team. He clearly loved being captain. This isn’t in itself necessarily a bad thing, and I’m not for a moment questioning his commitment to the team, but he always seemed to love the extra attention just a little bit too much, didn't he? Remember when Alex Ferguson kicked a stray boot and it hit Beckham in the face? Do you remember the gratuitous plasters he wore over the cut to draw attention to it and to himself? Remember all those haircuts? The media are certainly complicit in playing the game and providing Beckham the attention he craved, but it wasn’t all down to them and not every player of a similar stature feels the need to draw the media onto themselves in the same way (take Steven Gerrard, for example, or even Wayne Rooney).

He’s a great parent though, yeah? Well, like almost everyone else, I only know what I’ve seen in the media and he does appear to be a doting and attentive father who enjoys spending time with his kids. On the other hand, Brooklyn Beckham. Did he become the face (and also apparently the photographer) of Burberry on the back of his own talent? I hesitate to form an opinion based upon what I’ve seen in the papers, and maybe Brooklyn’s a lovely kid, but it’s not exactly normal is it? Hanging out and shooting the breeze with Rocco Ritchie and all that. Not every famous parent brings their child up in the limelight or allows them that kind of exposure when they’re still so young (Brooklyn is sixteen years old).

I watched a bit of a documentary on Beckham the other week. He's long been associated with a number of children’s charities and is a UNICEF ambassador. The programme followed Beckham in his role with UNICEF, travelling around a number of countries, meeting children and playing a bit of football with them. I don’t doubt that the exposure Beckham brings these charities is priceless and his commitment genuine, but the programme was essentially one long trail for David Beckham, showing him flying around in a private jet, bantering with his team, driving a Land Rover and wearing an assortment of designer clothes and sunglasses. The charity work seemed like an excuse to make an advertorial for David Beckham.

Did you see his ALS Ice Bucket challenge? Perhaps you read about it in Hello Magazine? Beckham has the ice water poured over himself and then nominates Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Leonardo di Caprio to take part. Perhaps I’m being unfair, but I can’t help compare this with the videos produced by the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch, who went the extra mile and made the whole thing very funny and personal (and self-deprecating) and ultimately all about the charity, or Sir Patrick Stewart, who carefully gets out an ice bucket, puts some ice in a glass and writes a cheque to the charity as he enjoys a scotch on the rocks. Even Charlie Sheen manages to make an actual $10,000 financial donation out of his ice bucket video… Beckham’s video is about him and about his celebrity pulling power and the charity simply doesn't get a look in.

Ach.

 Maybe I’m just being mean-spirited. I don’t bear any ill-will towards Beckham at all. I don’t resent him for his money or his family or his tattoos or anything (although I did see a guy in the gym a while back with the same crucifix tattoo on his back. Quite why you’d want someone else’s tattoo, I don’t know…). I’m happy that people are inspired by him and want to buy his line of clothes from H&M or his perfumes. But do I see Beckham as an inspiring figure; as one of the greatest living Englishmen; as a branding genius with far-sighted strategic vision; as a shoe-in for the elected president of an imaginary British Republic?

No. I don’t.

Why would anyone – including David Beckham himself - need or want any of that nonsense projected at them?

a million shards of glass...

We watched “Spectre” yesterday, and I have to say that I enjoyed it. No spoilers here, btw.

Yes, it’s manifestly ridiculous and I’m certain the plot doesn’t stand up to any kind of scrutiny… but it was a lot of fun, right from the stylish opening sequence set in Mexico City during the Day of the Dead. (sidebar: I read an interesting discussion about cultural appropriation and the day of the dead here)

I was speaking to a friend yesterday who was saying how Daniel Craig was his least favourite of all of the actors to have played Bond. I couldn’t disagree more: I’m starting to think that he might well be the best, although this film feels like a natural full-stop for his time in the role.  Ian Fleming apparently approved of the casting of Sean Connery because of the way that he walked like a panther, full of controlled menace. Watching Daniel Craig as he walked along the edge of a hotel balcony in Mexico and stepped down air-conditioning units and across the gaps between buildings, the very same thought struck me too… he walks like a panther, full of grace and threat.

He’s a physically impressive specimen (at the age of 47, poor old boy), but he’s also managed to capture a tender side to 007 that we haven't seen in the past. This was apparent in his very first outing, in Casino Royale, when he comforted Vesper in the shower, and you can see it here when, at a crucial moment, he holds a woman’s hand because she is scared. The Daniel Craig era has seen a significant move away from the misogynism that was part-and-parcel of the Bond film canon. Women are not just objects in these films, and they are not just victims either.  Daniel Craig's Bond is often surrounded by powerful and empowered women, most notably (but not exclusively) Judi Dench's M. At a couple of key moments in this film, it is the woman who is making the decisions about their relationship and not Bond.  It's not really what you could exactly call a subtle film, but it has some nice touches amid all the crash, bang, wallop.

One thing I particularly enjoyed in Spectre was the referencing of older Bond tropes: some were more obvious than others (I won't mention the most obvious, but the mountain-top retreat was a nice touch, although sadly no skiing away from black-suited bad guys with guns).  The one that made me laugh out loud was a beautifully subtle reference to a Fleming short story in the "For Your Eyes Only" collection.  If you haven't read "The Hildebrand Rarity", then I highly recommend it.  In fact, I would recommend any of the Bond short stories.  "Quantum of Solace" (from the same collection) is definitely worth a read and is absolutely nothing like the film.  Nothing.  For starters, it's a story told *to* Bond and doesn't feature 007 at all.  "Octopussy" is a corker too.

I enjoyed all the books.  They're products of their time, for sure, and you find yourself wincing at some of it (negroes can't whistle?  What? But they're really very good.  If I was a film producer, I'd be looking at making a proper period Bond that faithfully follows the books. "Moonraker" would be my choice.  Again -- notice the theme? -- that book's nothing much like the film either.

So Spectre: yes. Well, I can take or leave the theme song.... but apart from that, I enjoyed it.  If you can find a cinema showing it, then you should check it out.

freedom of speech won't feed my children....

"1984" by George Orwell @ Nottingham Playhouse, 19th September 2015

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit this, but I’ve never read “1984”. I haven’t even seen the film adaptation – made in 1984, naturally – starring John Hurt. Because the book has been so influential and because references to it litter our every day lives, I had a bluffer’s knowledge of the plot and themes, but I was quite excited to really see first-hand an adaptation of such a famous piece of literature. The book was written in 1948, but many of the themes seem to be more relevant than ever before, but by the end of the play, I wasn’t sure whether that was because Orwell was particularly prescient or because so many of the themes of the book have simply been absorbed into our language and into our cultural reference points. I’m not sure that a cheap reality TV show starring a parade of vacuous show-offs was quite what Orwell had in mind, but Big Brother has been on our screens now since 2000, and the phrase “Big Brother is watching you” was well understood long before that. Most people will be familiar too with the concept of “Room 101”, albeit perhaps thinking it’s somewhere that minor celebrities send things that mildly irritate them for our entertainment, rather than somewhere a cage of ravenous rats might be strapped onto your face. We live in a CCTV culture and we read stories of how our emails and mobile conversations are eavesdropped; spin doctors have been selling us “newspeak” for years; hell, even the Architect in the Matrix films seems to be echoing concepts from the book. It works the other way around too: when Orwell writes in 1948,
“Sanity is not statistical – being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad” is he, consciously or unconsciously, echoing Gandhi’s (d. 1948) famous “Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth”.

Much of the play just seems so familiar.

So did I enjoy this production, one that’s been very well reviewed and is about to go on a world tour after a successful run in the West End? Hmm. Sort of. At the beginning, there was an awful lot of repetition. You know that thing that Stewart Lee does where he repeats the same joke over and over again, to the point where it stops being funny and beyond… hopefully to the point where it starts being funny again? I hate it when he does that. To me, it’s just repetition and it doesn’t make the joke any funnier as he repeats it and deconstructs it and reassembles it. It is possible to be too clever for your own good. This play reminded me of that, and it took me a good half hour before I started to settle into the plot and to actually begin to find it interesting rather than just annoying (at one point I thought I couldn't be bothered and contemplated walking out). The acting is mostly good; not very subtle perhaps, but decent (and is the stage, darling). The staging was fairly simple, but they made some nice use of off-stage locations and handheld cameras to show us what was going on, albeit it in a slightly over-stylised way, perhaps.  Oh look!  Winston and Julia think they are safe from being observed, but we're observing them on the screen, so that kind of makes us Big Brother, yeah?  Some of it was also visceral and shocking, which I imagine it is entirely meant to be - and hats off to Matthew Spencer as Winston and Tim Dutton as O'Brien in those scenes, as well as to Janine Harouni as Julia.

I’m pleased that I went, but I wouldn’t say that I especially enjoyed my time. Watching the play did, however, make me more determined to actually read the book for myself (and, to be fair, some of my criticisms of the play might derive from the original)…. So I suppose from that point of view, it’s been a success.  A partial one, at least.

1984 does sound like something that was directed by John Hughes and starring Andrew McCarthy and Molly Ringwald though. It really does. I imagine that would be a different kind of beast entirely.
Probably with a much better soundtrack.

bad to the bone...

I don’t know about you, but when it comes to boxsets, I have the best of intentions. The last few years have seen loads of quality tv shows, but if you’re anything like me, you miss the start and, by the time you’ve heard they are worth watching, you don’t want to jump on part of the way through and decide that you’ll just watch the boxset whenever that comes out. And then never quite get around to it. I’ve been fully intending to watch the Sopranos from start to finish for probably more than a decade now. I haven’t watched a single episode yet. I’ve done a bit better with things like Curb Your Enthusiasm and The West Wing, in that I’ve watched bits a pieces of them here and there… but I keep meaning to watch them properly, but still haven’t got around to it. I did watch Band of Brothers from start to finish when it was first on tv, but I still have the box set of the follow-up, Pacific, in shrink wrap next to my DVD player.

The arrival of streaming video services seems to have helped. Amazon Prime offers a number of shows that I want to watch, and I actually sat down and worked my way steadily through all three seasons of Vikings over the last couple of months, and it was great. Ridiculously, it felt a bit of a wrench going back to a physical DVD after streaming, even though it’s barely any additional effort at all to put a disc into the machine to watch three episodes. Luckily, I was able to overcome that absurd inertia to start watching Breaking Bad last week, a box set that I have had for a couple of years now.

Surprise, surprise…. This critically acclaimed TV show turns out to be really, really good. Who knew? I’m now working my way through at a rate of a couple of episodes a day.

I was a little taken aback at how dark it is, which is daft because I knew what the basic premise was before I started watching. But somehow it still took me aback, with a real turning point being the scene with the bathtub in the second episode. It’s gripping. Why didn’t anyone tell me about this before?

One thing though: If this was set in the UK, it wouldn’t have lasted for five seasons.

I’m not sure what’s next….. Sons of Anarchy, maybe (which I think is on Prime), I probably ought to bite the bullet and buy the West Wing too. Parks & Rec, maybe.

How on earth did we watch TV before? Adverts.... WTF?

a frozen heart worth mining (?)

Those of you that know me, may well know that I take a perverse amount of pleasure from the list of films that everyone has seen that I haven't seen: Grease (although I have seen Grease 2 starring Maxwell Caulfield and Michelle Pfeiffer, and I just plain don't see how it can be topped), Titanic, ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Dirty Dancing, Ghost.... that kind of thing.

Frozen is also on that list.

It really isn't that much of a big deal, except that as the film has become more and more successful, it's a cultural reference point that I simply don't have.  But I'm a 41 year old man and I don't have any children: why would I watch it?  So why do people think I'm weird for not having seen it? Wouldn't it actually be weirder if I had? Kind of like those guys who know all the words to "I Will Survive", because they think it makes them more attractive to women and definitely NOT creepy?

It's creeping up on me though.

First, I saw that a "Frozen Heart" / "Let It Go" medley was on the setlist for the summer season at choir (although, all Disney princesses are sopranos, so I'm not entirely convinced their will be all that much in the voice part for a bass to get all that interested about).  Amazing though it may seem, when I saw that, I still hadn't even heard "Let It Go".... and then over Easter, I caught the last five minutes of a countdown programme on the telly listing the best ever Disney songs.  Somewhat bizarrely, this was hosted by Jamie and Louise Redknapp, and when I tuned in, they were just finishing off "Whole New World" at number 3, playing "The Bare Necessities" at number 2 and finishing - inevitably - with "Let It Go" at number one.  Leaving aside the fact that two of the top three are completely wrong, this was the very first time I had actually heard this song all the way through.  Well, it's no "King of the Swingers", is it?  I'm not even sure it's a "Chim-chimerney" either.

That was bad enough, but look what arrived in the post for me today:

Oh, my friends are such a scream.

I surrender.

Can't hold it back anymore..... (do you see what I did there?)

reflector or director?

I watched Game of Thrones last night.  I've tried hard to make what follows spoiler free, but if you're following the programme and you're not right up to date, then please approach with caution.

Still with me?  OK.

I watched the latest episode, "The Viper and the Mountain".  Then, as I usually do, I headed over to the Guardian's series blog for GoT to have a look at what other fans of the show thought.  The show airs on Sunday night in the US, and the blog usually goes up straight after that, but as we only get to see the show on a Monday night, there's already been a few hours to get the discussion started and there's already a lot to catch up on.  It's one of those blogs where, if you can read between the trolls and the smug book readers wanting to discuss things that haven't happened yet, the readers are as interesting as the author.

Pretty early in the discussion, DMcCool had this to say:

"I have to admit this was the point where I finally "got" Game of Thrones message, the Red Wedding had enough clues in it here they really rammed the message home. A horrendously bleak and grotesque view of humanity and an obsession with everything gruesome and ugly.The level of gore and constant brutal deaths for every sympathetic character carries GoT over into the realm of the SAW films. After coming close at the end of the last season, I think this was enough for me, I'm finally off the ride. I don't want to spend any more time in this joyless and cruel world. The saving grace of this episode (and in my opinion the best scene this season by a mile) was surely the conversation between Tyrion and Jaime, and the flashes of actual friendship there, but it is far too rare a thing in Westeros; everyone is either a psychopath or a bleating victim. It's just a horribly nasty view of humanity; it's humanity stripped of humanness with just the dull statistics "so and so killed so and so for such a political reason" left. [plot point redacted to avoid spoiler], but then GRRM has to play his one trick again and kill [a] character in the most gruesome and horrible way he can think of. It's getting old, and I can see where this story is going. I finally committed viewer suicide and spoilered myself to kill off any curiosity, freeing me from this joyless and depressing fantasy world."

You know what?  I actually kind of agree with him.  I'm not a prude and I have been known to enjoy 18 certificate films from time to time.  I'm not going to stop watching the show, but last night's episode really excelled itself in the utterly gratuitous amount of violence and gore displayed on the screen.  I knew what was coming because I've read the books, but I was actually still shocked by what I saw depicted on the screen.  These images didn't just flash up on the screen, the camera lingered lovingly on them the way that it sometimes lingers on the also-fairly-gratuitous (mostly female) nudity.

Listen, I know that G.R.R.Martin is portraying a world based loosely upon Wars of the Roses era England, and that war in the period was horrific: people died horrible deaths and were literally cut to pieces by swords and other pointy objects or bludgeoned to death by blunt objects;  people were tortured; people were and raped.  I get it.  Martin was actually forced to come out and defend scenes of rape in a previous episode in this season.  His defence was that it would be dishonest to back away from that side of war.

Hmm.

I don't like watching films in 3-D.  The reason that I give is that I don't believe it adds enough to the viewing experience.  I read books and I'm perfectly capable of using my imagination.  I don't need to see objects appearing to come out of a cinema screen to believe that I'm watching a 3-D world and not a projection on a flat screen.  I feel much the same way about the massive use of CGI in films.  Just because you can make it look like an entire city has been laid waste doesn't necessarily mean that you should always lay waste to a city.  Sometimes less is more.

This week's Game of Thrones did not depart massively from the book, and the most upsetting scene in particular is pretty clearly laid out there too over a couple of sentences.  It's horrible in the book too.... but somehow it's so much worse seeing the whole thing laid out lovingly and lingeringly in high definition.  I'm positive they could have achieved exactly the same shocking effect without such a gratuitous display of blood and gore.

This is a good show, and I'm going to tune in again next week, obviously.... but so graphic was the violence that I have at least asked myself the question as to why I'm still watching and you can't help but wonder what kind of impact exposure to these kind of images may have on some people.  It can't be healthy, can it?  What does it say about us that this is how we like to be entertained? The Romans liked seeing people being butchered in the arena, and it's widely agreed that this was a symptom of a sick, brutalised society.  The magic of television means that no one actually died to bring me this episode of Game of Thrones, but although I might be entertained, I'm hardly edified by the experience.

As the song said way back in 1992:

Because a child watches 1500 murders before he's
twelve years old and we wonder why we've created
a Jason generation that learns to laugh
rather than to abhor the horror

Television... breeding ignorance and feeding radiation for the best part of a century.

Are you not entertained?

say, what's in this drink?

(I really can't stay) But baby it's cold outside
(Got to go away) But baby it's cold outside

Oh come on, sing along.  I'm sure you know it.  Pick your own favourite version and sing along! It's a festive classic.  Isn't it?

(This evening has been) Been hoping you'd drop in
(So very nice) I'll hold your hands they're just like ice

Well, I thought so.... but apparently some people think it's offensive.  Jenni posted a link yesterday to an article on Salon.com that posed the question, "Is 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' a date-rape anthem?"

(My mother will start to worry) Beautiful watch you're wearing
(My father will be pacing the floor) Listen to the fireplace roar

This isn't a new debate, for sure.... but it's all a bit tiresome, isn't it?

(So really I'd better scurry) Beautiful please don't hurry
(Well maybe just half a drink) Put some records on while I pour

Morals are not absolute, and surely only an idiot or a simpleton would think that they are.  Not only do they shift across time, but they also change from person to person.  In fact, I don't even think they're fixed within any individual: a soldier may think it's generally unacceptable to kill people, but within a certain context they might do it without a second thought.

(The neighbors might think) Baby it's bad out there
(Say what's in this drink) No cabs to be had out there

Yeah.  Morality is pretty hard to judge.  Who writes the guidelines?  Who decides what is acceptable and what is not? Do we reach a collective understanding at any given point in time?  Well it varies, doesn't it: from place to place as well as from person to person.  Most people in western democracies think that it's a bit extreme to cut the hands off thieves, but at the same time, the death penalty is a fact of life in many US states and considered unacceptable by most people in the UK.  Go figure.

(I wish I knew how) Your eyes are like starlight now
(To break this spell) I'll take your hat your hair looks swell

If morality is hard to pin down now, then imagine how much harder it is to make that judgement across time.  Things change: after all, it's really not so very long ago that sex before marriage was considered unacceptable and a woman's role was considered to be in the home.  Ha!  Imagine that.

(I ought to say no no) Mind if I move in closer
(At least I'm going to say I tried) What's the sense of hurting my pride

This song was written in 1949.  That's a long time ago.  63 years.  A lot has changed in the world since then.   If we take the same step back in time again from 1949, we're in 1886.  Think of how much changed between 1886 and 1949.  World War One; the Holocaust; cars; the atomic bomb.... Do you think that the people of 1949 had the same attitudes as the people of 1886?  How could they?  So, it would be daft to expect the values of 1949 to be the same as those in 2012, right?

(I really can't stay) Baby don't hold out
(Both) Baby it's cold outside

When the song was written, the two parts were labelled as "mouse" and "wolf".  Aha!  So someone is predator and someone is prey!  Um, well... yes.  But that doesn't necessarily mean that someone is drugging someone else's drink, does it?  Besides, is there really enough evidence in the song for you to get your pitchfork out and form a mob to lynch the wolf?  Hardly.

(I simply must go) Baby it's cold outside
(The answer is no) Baby it's cold outside

Sexual mores have changed a lot since 1949.  That was a more innocent time. Mind you, in the week that I was born, there was a song in the chart by the (then) 34-year old Ringo Starr called "You're Sixteen, You're Beautiful and You're Mine".  I don't think you'd get away with that in the post-Jimmy Savile world, but it was apparently absolutely fine then (although, to be clear, a different set of social attitudes towards sixteen year olds is not an excuse or explanation for pedophilia, but it does set a historical context).

(The welcome has been) How lucky that you dropped in
(So nice and warm) Look out the window at the storm

Two decades on from that, in 1994, that sort of thing was apparently still okay with Britain as a nation: a national newspaper ran a countdown over a number of months to the occasion of Linsey Dawn McKenzie's sixteenth birthday.  On the big day itself, they ran topless pictures of the birthday girl.  Is that acceptable now?  I don't think it is.  What's changed?

(My sister will be suspicious) Gosh your lips look delicious
(My brother will be there at the door) Waves upon a tropical shore

So should we really be getting upset about this song?  Written in 1949, only a few years after the almost unimaginable horrors of the Second World War, this was surely only intended as an innocent bit of fun.  So why are we trying to read a modern agenda into the song now?  Putting all moral relativism aside, I don't honestly see anything wrong with this song.  It's just playful, isn't it?  There's a bit of flirting going on, sure... but if you read anything else into it, then that's up to you.

(My maiden aunt's mind is vicious) Gosh your lips are delicious
(But maybe just a cigarette) Never such a blizzard before

There have been many, many versions of this song, and I'd be the first to agree with you that Tom Jones is a bit creepy at the best of times.... but most of the others are fine.  My favourite version is the Dean Martin and Doris Day duet, where the joust sounds beautifully playful: the wolf is definitely after something and is perhaps not being entirely sincere in his concern, but the mouse sounds like she knows what she really wants to do.   It's charming.  Isn't it?  Reading a date-rape agenda into this, I think, says far more about you than it does about the song.

(I got to get home) But baby you'd freeze out there
(Say lend me a comb) It's up to your knees out there

You know what the very worst thing about that Salon.com article is?  Its this:
"If we have to hear the Mouse make the same mistake every year, even when it’s not all that cold outside, here’s a humble suggestion: Switch the parts. Have the woman play the Wolf and the man play the Mouse. Or have two men or two women sing the song. Play around with the gender roles and sexual orientations".

(You've really been grand) I thrill when you touch my hand
(But don't you see) How can you do this to me

Wait, so let me get this straight: you'd be happy with this apparently toxic song about date-rape if the gender roles were reversed?  So it's okay as long as it's the woman doing the raping?  What kind of sense does that make?  Even if you had a point before, doesn't that completely explode it?

(There's bound to be talk tomorrow) Think of my life long sorrow
(At least they'll be plenty implied) If you caught pneumonia and died

Besides, if you want to hear a version with the genders reversed, then allow me to point you at the version that Zooey Deschanel did last year on the She & Him Christmas album.  It's not my favourite version of the song, by any means, but the gender reversal at least adds a twist to a much covered standard.

(I really can't stay) Get over that old doubt
(Both) Baby it's cold
(Both) Baby it's cold outside

There are plenty of things in this world worth getting upset about.  I'm saying that this song isn't one of them.  Relax and enjoy it.

bad moon....

A little while ago, I started watching a charming British sitcom that was screened on BBC3. It has a killer pitch: a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost share a flat. What do they do? Well, they mainly make endless cups of tea. “Being Human” was very popular (by BBC3 standards) and spawned a US remake (the posters for which, when I saw them in New York last year, featured the pitch prominently. Well, it is a great pitch. They also featured a rakishly handsome vampire… well, if it ain’t broke…).

As is often the way though, as the series got bigger, I started to drift away. It wasn’t so much that it was becoming popular – I wasn’t on board right at the start, after all – it was more that the plots themselves were becoming bigger. The domesticity was, for me, getting lost as the vampire and werewolf politics got bigger and bigger and instead of tea being made, whole scenes were now awash with blood. It’s not that I object to the blood, it’s just that I thought the initial pitch was much more interesting and original. After all, vampires v werewolves has hardly ever been done…. *yawns*

I sat all the way through the third series when it was screened last year, but increasingly this wasn’t for me. I didn’t even notice the fourth series was starting until I spotted that it fell into the convenient little gap in my Sunday evening before the new series of True Blood started (C. loves True Blood… for some reason she finds Alexander Skarsgard irresistible….). So I sat and watched.

At the very beginning of the programme, the BBC displayed the hashtag #BEINGHUMAN and the voiceover guy encouraged us to tweet our thoughts as the programme was going on. Well, I thought it was shit, and tweeted as much. Writer Toby Whithouse cut his chops working on programmes like Doctor Who, and I’m starting to seriously wonder if the BBC actually have any writers who aren’t part of the Stephen Moffat/Russell T Davies/Mark Gatiss clique. What used to be a breath of fresh air is rapidly going stale. Russell Tovey (of Doctor Who and Sherlock fame.. .because apparently there aren’t many other actors around the place either) is capable of being brilliant, but he just seemed to spend most of this episode bellowing and BEING UPSET… just as he did in the Hounds of Baskerville episode of Sherlock earlier this year. The plot veered wildly around, occasionally zooming forwards in time several decades to a future that looked to have been stolen from “I Am Legend” with Welsh actors attempting American accents. New facts that seemed extraneous at the time were casually dropped into dialogue and then *gasp* became significant later on (obviously, werewolf blood is toxic to vampires. Who doesn’t know that already after three series? Tsk.). I thought it was ludicrous, culminating in a scene where George, Tovey’s character and a werewolf, managed a partial transformation after STARING REALLY HARD at a picture of the full moon. Well it stands to reason, after all, we all know that pictures of the moon can cause local tidal anomalies….especially REALLY BIG PICTURES.

…a quick look at the hashtag comments on Twitter quickly revealed that I was apparently in a minority of one in disliking what I was seeing. Literally every other person on there was GUSHING about what they were seeing.

Eh?

I thought that Twitter was where the lynch mobs came out and identified candidates for the latest witch hunt…. What’s with all this positivity? If you read a comments thread underneath a TV review on a newspaper online – or, indeed, under ANY article published online – then you usually only see a torrent of complaints (the BBC “have your say” threads are one obvious example of this where people never get tired of complaining that their licence fee has been spent on x, y or z….but you can pretty much pick anything online and see much the same…except maybe the recipe pages of the Guardian, which are a blissful haven and a surprisingly useful resource for tips on how to make the best damson gin or beef stew….).

When did Twitter get so positive? What happened to all the snark?

And over something so crap, too? What a missed snark opportunity.

People are weird.

As a footnote, in spite of deciding that I wasn’t going to bother with Being Human any more, I actually watched the next episode too (it is such a convenient TV watching slot in our house). It was lots better. I didn’t bother with the hashtag this week, mind. Maybe they all hate it now.