Pity the Poor Plebian

It’s not the first time I've felt compelled to write about Big Brother, but I just got a whiff of what troubles me about this latest, particularly twisted strain, of the show.

We dream that we can make sense of this bullshit, that we can we can contextualise the merit and meaning within. We can imagine we’re contributing to an important discourse on popular TV culture whn we reviiew an entire series... and we’ll valiantly critique an individual show for the whore-press, for a coupla hundred quid mate, or our M.A dissertation, for a smidgen of supposed kudos. Or we might cite a particular scene in our coffee break, noting its uncanny parallels with an episode in our house-share, our personnel department, or (very occaisionally, of course) amongst close friends…

But the truly unsettling thing about it lies behind the cover of the sensational. Its exactly that - the ability to cloak itself in mediocrity, whilst ruthlessly persecuting the stupid (and perhaps even the innocent). It, and it's genre siblings, tell us what we really need to know about where our civilisation is at right now. On the eve of Live8, in the midst of debacle that is peace in the middle east... we seem far happier watching ourselves tear each other apart, at close if vicarious quarters, just like in the Colliseum. This episode, moreso than all the variants that preceded it, demonstrates the emptiness of our epoch more astutely than even its heinous producers could have imagined.

The Mikose cider pogrom I saw tonight triggered the realisation that although it might purport to represent a worthwhile, novel, if distorted version of social realities we can all relate to, BB makes one distinction that belies these claims whole (and cold) heartedly. In real life the victims of such cruel and anarchic persecution usually, if not immediately, get an opportunity to face a jury, and more importantly be counselled in some fashion. These fuckers just don't stand a chance in hell.

So lets disregard the fact that I hold no significant respect for any of the specimens presently residing in this house house of cultural detention. My point is that these people are little more than rats in a laboratory – and they only learn the reality of their narciscism, and the lessons of the craving for notoriety, when it's too late and they are removed from the program(me), voted out of the experiment. Nobody is there to adise or debrief them, to console them… they face the prospect of being defined by their actions, and our responses to them, for the rest of their lives. Okay so they didn't have to do it, but that only demonstrates how mediated and mashed-up the contestants perception of their own lives is. And in this regard the grand concept of 'entertainment show' is exposed for what it really is, a fucking freakshow.

Standing still, on the road

The evening is a muggy and mellow one so I sat out "on the stoop" for a while - I only came in because the light is fading. Birds dart down the street in a flurry of excitement, demonstrating their X-Wing Fighter acrobatics, and then the quiet returns. Reading The Road to Oxiana, immediately captivated, hungry to continue. Thrilled by a recap of Bruce Chatwins introduction. When I look up from reading, my head was still in motion, like a victim of the guilotine.

Chatwin is all about exposure, a confrontation with an oblique and elemental form of poetic experience, the staccato-fire of the traveller-narrator. Exposed to his words, drawn from his own experiences (in this instance 60’s Afganistan), my soul aloft on a stream of warm air - a perfume as potent as any opiate to be found in Persia. He captures things that fly past the shutter of the photographer, escape the mannered brushstroke of the painter, or the zealous gaze of the missionary.

First entry for a while, but I’ve got no energy for a summary of recent events. The forecast 'warm' summer weather has, at last, arrived, and arrived in a big way. Like a Martian torch of fire, it ripped its way through the city streets, all day and long into the night, for the last 4 days. I’m feeling paradically stodgy and free. I feel abreast of, and aghast at, the events (and non-events) at hand. I'm contrastingly happy with what pained me, and dejected about that which seemed more reliable just one or two months ago. I’ve not thought about contextualising this observation, but the prevailing heatwave seems more than appropriate.

The world feels larger than usual... but I’m home, happy, and relatively content with a vicarious indulgence in a third-party travelogue, and all my windows are open…

Vapour Trail

Still on the Alkan compilation... wanna clarify something about my own sense of death. It is real, but my existence is just not defined by a fear of death. It's more abstracted, and perhaps I employ it to deflect a lot of the issues that I know pain a lot of my friends. I aknowledge the omnipotence and finality of death, but it's a tender and ambivalent thing. It's a beautiful thing, like this Ride cover version: You are a vapour trail, in a clear blue sky. Life is beautiful, and a big part of that is recognising that you're only here once, and you are not alone, but nobody knows what follows.

Art and Death

Quite literally the subject of tonights documentary - representations of death. From the early Etruscans to the SS, via decorated skulls of the Dead Sea, the genocidal sacrifices of the Inca, and the the fear of damnation instilled by the Christians. The motivation and aspiration underlying all of the above was, and always is, power. Images and motifs of death are the weapon of those in the ascendant, like the Totenkopf favoured by the Himmlers black-uniformed nastie. So death can be used to pacify and neutralise opposition, or to promise redemption, equally effectively as it is often employed to instill obedience and fear.

At the conclusion of the programme the crucifix was given particular distinction - it enjoyed the distinction of being the image capable of inciting reverential and fearful emotions with equal authority. The image of a dying man on a wooden cross, sometimes invoking gentle pathos and reassurance, at other times overwhelming us with extreme anxiety and despair. an omnipotent image if ever there was one.

The psychology tests (by Goldberg and Soloman?) were fascinating. In the first, they interupted a string of neutral words (at subliminal speeds) with the word 'death', and then measured the time respondents used to select their favourite images from a selection of deceased icons like Kennedy and Monroe. The second asked them to serve up a disgusting meal to political opponents, after being asked questions what they imagined death to be like. The conclusion was that you are more likely to meditate on death when you are subtly exposed images of it, and that you are more likely to have malicious (or murderous) thoughts when you are confronted and prompted to cognitively interact with the concept of death.

My mind wandered a few times, contemplating the visual spectacle of 40,000 Inca peasants filing up the steps to certain death, and more than once it wandered to images of 737's forging into shimmering towerblocks in the morning Manhatten sunlight. Listening now to Erol Alkan's Bugged In, and considering the bland and fruitless day at the office, I am certain that not only do I seem respectful but not fearful of death, but I also rejoice in the belief that I am immune to such atrocious and despicable propaganda, just as I soon outgrew the cheap trickery of the horror movie genre. If you want to scare me you've gotta have some sophistication buddy - Hitchcock's Vertigo genuinely disturbs me, but I don't recoil from The Towering Inferno.