So, I've been gone a while.  In that time, I've got myself awarded a PhD, narrowly missed out on a very good job, and  done a fair bit of work tutoring at the university.  As you can imagine, I've been busy - professional writing always wins out over bits of fun.  Nature of the beast, and all that.

However, I'm back, because writing in my spare time is more productive than half the other things I get up to, and reading (and re-reading) some very high-quality writing recently has reminded me that I need to get back in practice lest I turn into some kind of History-monster who can only write in academicese.

Re-reading Orwell, in particular, has reminded me of a peculiar fact about my writing influences: namely, that my favourite twentieth century essayists - Orwell on the one hand, and on the other Chesterton and Thurber - have diametrically opposed styles of writing, and indeed mental approaches to life.

Orwell's approach is closer to my academic predilection: disciplined, restrained, politically reflective.  But Chesterton and Thurber (whose 'The Secret life of James Thurber' appears to be behind a New Yorker paywall these days, sadly) have a witty, anarchic bent that tempers insight with humour.  All of them are more or less defined by their cultivation of personas of self-conscious moderation; yet the way they communicate themselves as authors is sharply different.

Since I have detected a distinct lack of anarchy in my writing of late, I decided to do something about it.

Characters upon the keyboard (part I):

Much of my thesis-life, I thought, was spent in the presence of a sole, brave companion - like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (I'll let you figure out who is who) we spent our outstretched days and evenings tilting at academic windmills.  I refer, of course, to my keyboard.  But of late I have come to realise that in fact I am consorting with not one companion, but many: the keyboard is as replete with human characters as any grimy proto-industrial village, and it would be frankly unchivalrous to go on treating them as an amoebic mass of dots and squiggles (which is quite how one perceives them after the twelfth hour of trying to write about the anachronistic and teleological implications of conceiving expressions of national solidarity as 'collective identity').  They richly deserve their own photographic portraits, starchy black-and-white poses and all; fully aware of this pressing need, I have given them nothing of the sort.  Blotchy, candid street-caricatures it is!

() - Parentheses, like the slightly musty-smelling great-uncle of the keyboard, make us realise that the distraction is often much more interesting than the thing to which we are supposed to be paying attention.  They are essentially apolitical - they just want to be left to take their damp-socked country walks in peace - but there's a reason they resemble that archaic symbol of the English, the Yeoman's longbow: they can pack a punch if you are so foolish as to try to deny them their liberties.  The natural enemy of the square bracket (and unable to comprehend the elaborate squiggly-bracket), they prefer the company of numbers, who are at least quiet and don't mind the odd set of boot-prints meandering across the azalea patch.

[] - The square bracket is the fascist of the keyboard.  All hard lines and edges, it insists in butting its head into your business, and never lets you explain yourself in your own words.  Instead, it paraphrases, usually with the subtlety of a jackboot to the groin.  Don't worry, citizen, the square bracket removes the horrid inconvenience of letting the longwinded bewilder you with their subtleties - there's a reason why it superimposes itself on the baroque squiggly-bracket - and instead frees you to gratefully receive the author's doubleplusgood version.

{} - The squiggly bracket is the unmotivated child-prodigy on drugs.  Obsessively expressive, you'd almost think it was drawn freehand, except that then it'd be all wonky and it never quite turns out right when you do it and WHY WON'T THE CURVES BE THE SAME SHAPE?  And yet it effortlessly embraces mathematical expressions while doodling intricate airships left-handed on the mahogany desk with a protractor.  Scritch, scritch.  Rendered slightly less aggravating by the knowledge that no-one in the real world has a job for him.

@ - The millennial child of the keyboard.  Deeply ironic that it should coexist with number 2, because it is all about #1 (Oh wait, it's between them.  Of course.  Part of the in-crowd, eh?).  Once, when it was just a weird little glint in it's daddy's eye, it resembled a cheap pair of fluffy handcuffs, occasionally brought out for a bit of obscenity, but otherwise stuffed in a box under the bed.  Then, some idiot got careless with the protection, and suddenly it was all over everyone's email like a rash, spreading into inefficient text-speak for the terminally lazy (it saves one character and not a single button-press, you idiots), before finally confirming its delinquency by getting into 'tagging' (at least it's not hash).

^ - The caret (caretus superior) is the grumpy old codger of the keyboard.  Doesn't really understand that he has long since made redundant by the medium (have you ever actually used this to insert something above the line of text?).  Emotionally incomprehensible to the younger generation, who seem to misread his raised eyebrows as senile bliss, but they keep him alive so they don't end up feeding his cats.

More of our brave companions may follow in future weeks.

Destruction and criticism

So, I was reading The Credibility Circus' 'Creation and criticism' and thought it apt to give something of a reply, from a rather different perspective.  Go and give that a read for context, though I will quickly summarise the points with which I wish to engage, for the teal deer amongst you.

1 - A disagreement with the academic claim that "the creative facility resides in one hemisphere of our brain and the critical in the other, and that our brains are not capable of creating and criticising simultaneously," based on the idea that "A successful poet's mind is intrinsically different to that of other people, in that it has sufficient cross-hemisphere communication to simultaneously create and criticise."

I think this response is too narrow.  I actually would disagree with the academic claim on more general grounds: simultaneously creating and criticising is a skill, which is perfectly accessible to a majority of people if given the correct training.  I will give a few examples of what I would count as 'simultaneously creating and criticising'.

A) Writing parody or satire, or, more generally, using humour to make a point.  It seems strange to think that one must, in separate steps, employ the creativity needed to imagine the humour in a situation, and the critical mindfulness to make it 'hit' a given serious target.  Instead, these processes overlap and feed one another.
B) Improvised debating (the skill of argument).  This requires creativity, in shaping style and wit for maximum stylistic effect, but also criticism, in attacking a perspective or concept in a methodical, precise way.  They must be synchronous or the effect is lost.
C) Sketching or performing political caricatures.  Such a process is creatively visual, but obviously follows certain critical mental processes (what is to be exaggerated? Why?).
D) Analytical writing.  Anyone who says that creativity is not required for analysis does not really understand what analysis is.  Finding novel ways to attack or defend a proposition is not a matter of just assessing existing options, but of imagining unexpected ones.

Simultaneously creating and criticising is the skill I most value in myself, and one which I endeavour to foster in those who I tutor on a regular basis.  I am fortunate to have something of a talent for this process (though I believe this is just as much a result of attitude as aptitude), and find it relatively easy.  Others do not, and need to be taught the skills involved.  Those skills are, principally:

- The ability to automate multiple critical processes to the point that they are almost unconscious (identifying language techniques, common fallacies, the meaning of visual symbols, etc.).
- The confidence to experiment with the unknown (wordplay, sympathy and empathy, experimental images, novel combinations of arguments) and a willingness to get it wrong a few times and try again.
- The ability to be self-aware about internal emotional states and beliefs, and aware of those of others (awareness of what kinds of things / thoughts make us laugh, feel angry, intrigued or moved, what we believe in, and how to manipulate the emotions and ideas of others).

These skills can be taught, or at least learned.  Some are harder than others.  I do not believe poets are a unique exception, though I certainly agree that the way poets work seems a good example of these skills in action.

The teaching and learning process, particularly of the third skill set, can be deeply personal.  One-on-one teaching is ideal, I think, for all three, but most useful relative to classroom teaching in the third case, as the student can be approached as an individual rather than as a member of a group.

2 - The idea that disagreement with an authoritative claim functions as a "cognitive cattle prod" - I call it an 'analytical trigger' - which leads to contemplation, enlightenment and (later) confirmation.

Here, I certainly agree.  A certain young whipper-snapper seems to have rather pioneered this approach recently, and his ideas strongly inform my response to the next point.

3 - A personal account of the conflict between a "know-it-all" nature and the desire to employ humility in regards to those who claim academic authority.

Now, speaking for the devil's advocate, I have to say that in an academic context, I see great value in mischievous, sometimes cynical (though not trivial) arguments - that is, arguments that are designed to raise uncomfortable, challenging and/or confronting questions for a teacher, lecturer or other authority figure.  As a skeptic of sorts, I see great value in challenging arguments whether or not I personally agree with them.  One of my favoured approaches to ethics tutorials was to argue one position for the first thirty minutes, persuade as many people as possible to agree with it, and then promptly shred it to pieces in the second half hour, taking the opposite position.  For all that this sometimes caused obvious discomfort, challenging deeply held orthodoxies and beliefs amongst my teachers and peers, the educational benefits were immense for those who had the self-discipline to remember that we were here to think, not just to believe.

In short, being a mischievous smart-arse is at the core of the skill of blending the creative and the critical.  It promotes the automation of analytical skills, a willingness to experiment and take risks, self-awareness, and awareness of how others think and function.

Of course, there are good and bad times to apply this smart-arsery, this creatively critical knack for mayhem.  In the context of personal life, it can often be a cruel and counter-productive approach when used indiscriminately. A basic credo in which I believe is that one should be utterly ruthless with one's self, but, wherever possible, forgiving of others: but I also hold that the field of education, and especially secondary and tertiary education, is an exception: one should be ruthlessly critical with all ideas, no matter who believes them or how they feel.  If the object of education is to think critically, then nobody can be excused, and nobody should be protected, from the most powerful of critical arguments, no matter how many sacred cows they slaughter.

Education is at the core of critical thinking, and nothing - nothing! -  is sacred in the arena of critical thinking.  Nothing.  For if one belief is protected, why not others?  If I cannot question your beliefs about religion or abortion or human rights, how can I question a racist's beliefs, or a misogynist's, or a fascist's? How can you, without being a hypocrite? Taste and tact are important, but not that important, by comparison.

Additionally, I generally feel that people often overvalue humility in education. The quiet, humble student does not ask the question, does not understand the material, does not grow, becomes confused, and ends up falling behind. I spend much of my time tutoring such students, addressing the cause as well as the symptoms, making them question, challenge, assert themselves, giving them the confidence to take control of their education.

Perhaps, as part of the minority of difficult, smart-arsed students, I made some of my less confident peers worse.  But I do know that we prompted many of them to come out swinging, to argue, to call bullshit. To learn to think on their feet. Just occasionally, hearing someone else argue like that inspired them. We asked lecturers questions that made them squirm, and did not let them off the hook until they (a) justified themselves, or (b) admitted defeat.  I was not the only one, but several lecturers frankly admitted to me that they wished they had more like us.  One of the saddest moments of my education was hearing Martin Stone, one of the most inspiringly brilliant lecturers I ever saw, talk about why he was retiring: he loved teaching, but he was sick of being sandwiched by mediocrity: between the bureaucracy on high, and the facile majority of the student body.  Smart-arses are, apparently, a dying breed.


So, in conclusion, when it comes to education, be a smart-arse.  It's good for your brain.

Is Suckerpunch an art film?

People seem genuinely surprised when I say that I like Zack Snyder's films.  Particularly 300, a film that takes history that I love and know a great deal about, and massacres it, turning it into an orgy of comic-book sex and violence.  I don't enjoy graphic novels or comic books - I find the genre to be a kind of bad compromise between the arts of writing and of film, with the strengths and main challenges of neither and the annoyances of both.  I also don't usually have much tolerance for fiction screwing with history - the Jasper Fforde Thursday Next books, for example, were totally unreadable for me because their alternative history bugged me too much to make the writing (witty and reasonably clever) worth staying for. I should hate this film, then, people say!  Why don't I hate it?  How can I not hate it?

Merely saying I like it sounds to others like a confession - opening up about a guilty pleasure.  Certainly people seem to believe it must be a guilty pleasure for me, the arch-realist, the skeptic, to enjoy 'this kind of trash'.

I liked 300, though, because it doesn't even try to be serious, to suspend disbelief.  It doesn't need to have a meaning, a real life purpose.  It's a baroque indulgence in the aesthetic: to hell with the truth, let's have some Art!  See, 300 focuses almost entirely on aesthetics: from the drowned out colour schemes in golds and reds and greys (Snyder's trademark), to the super-slow motion blood splatter, each drop shimmering and spinning as the camera winds around it, the film is almost entirely dominated by a straightforward and direct appeal to the senses.  It takes liberties, and doesn't care.  In short, 300 is an art film.

These days, it seems to me that critics want ideas in their art.  Of course they do!  So they condemn films like Snyder's as being at best trivial and shallow and at worst morally degrading.  While they may have a point about the implicit racism in 300, I thought that ironically, that was historically accurate: it mirrored the way the Greeks imagined the barbarity of the East very nicely.  In fact, as I kept telling people, 300 beautifully adapted to a modern audience the way that the Greeks told stories, full of exaggeration and caricature and at times liberal with the truth.

The problem with ideas, and therefore idea-driven films, is that you either like the ideas or you don't, and liking them is as much subject to trends and fashions as anything else.  What most people I know dislike about art critics is their pompous tone, and their belief that they are somehow well-placed to judge ideas, to tell us how we should think.  The margaret pomeranz-type left-leaning film critic with  keen eye to 'social issues' is of course mocked and derided for this tone, even if her beliefs are on the whole pretty decent and we might agree with her basic ideas: she has no right to tell us how we should think.

Now, go watch the trailer to Suckerpunch.  I wanted to see it since I heard about it, because it's a safe bet that even if the plot is non-existent, I'd enjoy the aesthetics.  A lot of films try to be clever and disappoint (Inception didn't, but that's the only recent one I've seen that springs to mind), and that annoys me; a film that doesn't try, and just tries to be good at looking pretty, isn't going to disappoint - at least not when it's made by a guy who is probably the best at pretty shiny violence.

This brings me to a point about violence.  Anybody who decries 300 and Suckerpunch as a mere 'orgy of violence' should first have a bit of a look at the history of art (and history in general).  Parthenon Friezes?  They're classical art, right?  Have a close look at them?  If you did, you'd see people stabbing, hacking, cutting, from in front and behind.  Do we condemn them because they depict an 'orgy of violence'?  No!  And that's just one case.  Art is full of violence.  It's as legitimate a thing to use in art as anything else.

For that matter, the aesthetic of violence in recent film has another virtue: it lacks the presumption of high art.  When Neo, in the Matrix, says he wants 'guns, lots of guns', we get a little kick from the sheer blunt indulgence of it: this film is not going to spin us some abstract, 'power comes from the inside' line (yet - that's later in the film), but instead gives us in-your-face indulgence in something simple: the appeal of the action movie.  That's not an artistic appeal, in the classical sense - it's visceral, populist.  Does that make it any less?  I don't think so.  The film then goes on to make the action movie beautiful: the guns become a matter of aesthetics, as the film gives us that 'orgy of violence' that critics seem to deplore, but it does so using a camera style that focuses more on the movement, the appearance of the violence than its human consequences.

And no, art does *not* have an obligation to deplore violence for those human consequences.  That attitude is just the kind of pompous 'moral' presumption that annoys us about some critics.  Yes, cinemagoers understand that it's not real.  Yes, they get that it's a story!  Just because it's on a screen doesn't mean we assume that it's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!  Read the Iliad, and then tell me that film violence is more visceral!  Tell me that it doesn't actively glorify violence - even if it also shows its tragedy.  I was shocked when I first read it, at the graphic depictions of violence.  Sure, it's not on a screen, but for heaven's sake, when will some idiots stop telling us that just because it's on a screen we somehow can't distinguish it from reality!

The funny thing about all of this is that Snyder's films, for all that they are all about the aesthetics of violence, actually say some fairly interesting things about it.  To me, they seem to engage with the (politically incorrect but arguably legitimate) idea that sometimes more violence is the only answer to some categories of violent attacks.  Now, as a historian, this is basically a truth: appeasement before World War II is the classic example that demonstrates that sometimes the *only* thing to do is to fight against those who would fight you.  Pacifism only works against foes who give a crap, and plenty simply don't.  What do we do then?

We fight back.  This may be a politically incorrect position in a society that wants its kids to be sheltered from violence, leading peaceful innocent lives, but that desire to shelter and protect can be misguided.  Art, the critics keep telling us, should confront us!  Should make us think!  Why can't it make us think about when violence is appropriate or necessary?

Which brings us to Suckerpunch.  This is a film that, as you'll see in the trailer, pretends (to get us in our seats) to be full of titillation in what could almost be described as a kink-porn context: bunch of girls are locked in a corrupt psychiatric institution and forced to essentially become erotic dancers and sex slaves, degraded and humiliated for the sadistic pleasure of the audience (both in the story, and in the cinema).  Add in some *extremely* shiny fantasy-type violence, and you have a honeytrap: a film that seems to cater to the most base (and cliche'd) desires of the supposed 'target audience': young men.  No doubt this is what the critics lined up to see: a film they could condemn outright as the lowest of the low.

Now, I'm not going to deny that the sex-and-violence line has a certain appeal to the baser instincts.  But who does it appeal to?  Funnily enough, all the people who wanted me to come and see the film when it came out were girls.  The appeal?  They like the pretty people and pretty violence.  OK, maybe my female friends are unusual, but it's worth pointing out that the most keen people to see this movie (in my experience) were precisely those that 'should', if you think that the trailer paints a degrading picture of women, have been appalled by it.  Instead, they thought it was awesome: 'Pretty girls kicking arse' seems to be something they enjoy.

When I took my seat, and the film began playing, I was immediately confronted by the thought that the trailer couldn't represent the film.  If a trailer can get away with being suggestive of sexual violence as appealing entertainment, a film almost certainly cannot - at least, not and be shown at public cinemas!  It would be ghoulish if Suckerpunch actually portrayed sexual violence in a voyeuristic manner, as the trailer implies. How was Snyder going to get out of this pickle? I wondered, as I settled in to a film that started screwing with the fourth wall from the opening moment, putting us in front of the curtains of the stage on which the girls would be performing later, before moving through them to meet our protagonist crying in her room.  Surely, we are the voyeurs here?

The irony is that as it turns out, there's nothing to see.  In fact, the film does something very interesting instead.  Every time Babydoll (the protagonist, who looks about 15) dances, we cut to the hyper-violence of her and her fellow prisoners' imagined world.  Explicitly, we're told that in this world, she is safe, and can find a way to fight back, and eventually escape.  Her dancing (and sexuality) becomes a weapon that she can use to defeat and destroy those villains (and they really are *villains* - disgusting and pathetic in equal measure) who are abusing her and her fellow prisoners (note that I don't say *victims* - they learn, very quickly, not to be).  But it is a weapon that is off-screen - instead we see fantasy violence, directly replacing it, showing us figuratively, rather than literally, the power she is wielding.

Suddenly, realisation dawns: there will *be* no voyeurism of sexual violence or degradation in this film - not for the audience.  We've been slipped away, split from the 'audience' in the story, who are rendered helpless by their voyeurism and for whom it is their downfall.  Instead, we see the girls fighting to be free.  Just as in 300, the violence is justified as a response to violence and threats to their freedom - but here, it is also a way of making a point: the voyeuristic urge to watch violence is ok, but the same urge towards sexual violence is not.

And here we have the core of the film: the point that in Hollywood, violence is fine, but sex is not.  You can show a man being decapitated in an MA movie (though, interestingly, the enemies in the fantasy violence sequences are not human, but robots, steampunk skeletons torn straight from WWI and II propaganda posters, and faceless monsters - making the violence in the 'real world' sequences much more raw and powerful) but graphic sex leads to censorship unless handled with cliche'd and trite work-arounds.  Voyeurism about violence is cool, about sex it's not - at least not in the cinema!  So he doesn't let us see the sexual violence, but instead treats us to fantasy violence in the most over-the-top aesthetically dominated way that we've seen so far.

In 300, we saw sex in the context of a loving relationship, but the filming was a bit awkward, as it always is when censorship is involved: sex (of the romantic, loving variety) can be a source of strength and happiness, but the censors insist it cannot be fully revealed, so it becomes an artistic problem area.  Snyder's Watchmen is similarly slightly awkward about showing the positive side of sex, and is much more artistically convincing and powerful when dealing with the unpleasant and awkward reality of sexual violence. Of course, 300 also contained implied non-consensual (or at least coerced) sex, off camera.  This sexual violence leads to the true climax of the film (ironically, not on the battlefield at all), in which the queen stabs the man involved, and in doing so, reclaims her dignity and saves her country.  Violence, for Snyder, seems to be a fair response to sexual degradation or assault. 

I'm not sure that I disagree.

I certainly think that non-consensual sex, and sexual violence, is a special kind of violence, a 'worse' kind.  Worse enough that if someone is attacked in this way, I think it might well be legitimate to respond with deadly force.

Moreover, this idea leads us out of the 'girls as victims who need society's (read: men's) protection' bullshit.  Girls can, should, and do, fight their own battles, in Snyder's films.  It's worth noting that the only non-corrupt men in Suckerpunch are the guide (who is more or less imaginary, and simply tells them that they need to free themselves) and the Doctor and some of the guards, right towards the end, who begin to question the system, and (in the doctor's case) start to realise, to their horror, that they've been conned into being part of something deeply unpleasant.  They are distinctly unable to help the girls until the girls act to save themselves.  The women, on the other hand, turn out to be strong, heroic, and capable of gaining their own revenge (albeit at a hideous, tragic, and surprisingly moving price) despite the ridiculous odds and the whole system stacked against them.

Suckerpunch contains something rather unexpected, then: a form of feminism that is confronting, but also rather persuasive.  I rather like it.  It manipulates us into coming into the film for the voyeurism of sex and violence, and ends up showing us something rather unexpected: that violence is not always a force of evil, and that women need not be victims.

So no, I'm not ashamed for liking Zack Snyder's films.  Suckerpunch is a good film, well-made, cleverly crafted, full of art and aesthetics, but asking some genuinely challenging questions as well.  Ironically, it turns out to be a film of challenging ideas, after all.