An alternative present

With a week to go before the proper release of V for vendetta at the pictures, here's something I originally wrote for my MA in spaceships. I've updated it a bit, but the original version was written in early 1997 - during the 12-month period in which the book's set.

It goes on a bit, and inevitably contains a wealth of SPOILERS for the book (and therefore also the film).

The Alternative Present in "V For Vendetta"
Simon Guerrier

It’s a comic. It’s twenty-five years old. It’s set in a 1990s that never happened. Why bother with it now?

First, a little background. The plot: a decade after a nuclear war, England in 1997 is run by an oppressive and authoritarian fascist government. On the fifth of November, a masked vigilante, begins his attack on the regime by blowing up the Houses of Parliament. His name is V (for clarity, I'll refer throughout to the comic itself in full, and to the character as "V"). The same night, he rescues a sixteen year old girl, Evey, who, over the course of the novel, he encourages to appreciate the practicalities of anarchy.

The comic: originally serialised in black and white in the UK magazine, Warrior (1982-3), V For Vendetta was only two thirds of the way through when Warrior folded. DC Comics later commissioned Moore and Lloyd to complete the tale, which was published, in colour, in a ten-issue comic series (1988-9), including two short interludes and "Behind the painted smile" - a text article by Moore on the genesis of the story.

DC - a large US company - are best known for comics characters that have become icons of popular culture: ‘Batman’ and ‘Superman’. The main character of V For Vendetta, and the story itself, is influenced by the traditions of the costumed super hero genre, but the novel deconstructs and reconfigures many of the ideological elements of that tradition.

V is a costumed hero. "The appearance of a costumed character in a story will generate a specific set of expectations - a state of affairs which the writer and artist can work with or against," says Richard Reynolds in "Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology". Clothes can be read like signposts, and the costumes of super heroes signify ‘super-heroism’.

The styles and colours of this clothing are also signs of kinds of super heroism. "Batman’s dark, bat-like costume is one utterance within the code [of super hero attire] that elegantly speaks the proper range of associations: night, fear, the supernatural. It also suggests Batman’s mode of operation: stealth, concealment and surprise," says Reynolds.

V wears a ‘Guy Fawkes’ mask, period clothes, cloak and hat. This not only serves to contrast him with the functionally dressed ‘ordinary’ people in the story. His clothes also conjure a sense of theatre and of history to the reader.

Theatre is crucial to V. In the opening panels of the story, we witness V dressing himself. Around him are theatrical props - further signifiers. He dons his costume at a dressing table, which has a long wall mirror surrounded by light bulbs: vaudevillian. There are posters for old films on the walls. This contrasts with Evey; who dresses herself in a ‘seedy’, ‘real world’ way; as a prostitute.

V’s clothes also connote history. He uses daggers not guns. The 17th century clothes may hark back to historical values and politics. Moore admits in 'Behind the painted smile' that V’s mask configured him as a "resurrected Guy Fawkes". The Gunpowder Plot in 1605 began a century that saw the Civil War and the beheading of King Charles I for tyranny. Both attacks on English government construed the government as repressive. The first few pages of Moore’s novel show us more directly the ways such associations link to V.

Richard Reynolds has compiled a working definition of super-heroism, constituting seven contingents all of which V fits. V is marked clearly out from the rest of society. His devotion to justice is above his devotion to law. The ‘extraordinary’ V contrasts with the ‘ordinary’ people. He is above the law, yet capable of patriotism and moral loyalty to the state, though not to the letter of the law. The story is mythical, and uses science and magic indiscriminately to create a sense of wonder. I will deal with both this ‘convenient’ use of science, and V’s political aspirations, shortly.

The remaining two qualities of super-heroism are also relevant to V, though less directly. V does not have super-human powers, nor does he act like an earthbound God. However, he can also get into almost anywhere - no matter how secure. He can apparently do anything he pleases, and for most of the novel seems immortal. He has access to materials and information, including his own version of the government’s Fate super-computer - the system that maintains the government’s panoptic surveillance of London.

In fact, he is equipped in much the same way as many other non-God-like super heroes, perhaps most obviously Batman, with his Batcave. Thus, while not a super-human, he is a super-able human.

The last of Reynolds's defining factors is conflict caused by the super hero’s ‘mundane’ alter-ego. Such is the genre expectation that the anticipation of V’s unmasking is a major element of the narrative. This expectation is frustrated. We never discover his ‘true’ identity. In fact, the narrative purposefully reveals his identity to be unimportant. This, again, has serious implications.

But despite its theatrical and almost magical lead character, the narrative is continually based in gritty realism. There is a definite sense of logical cause and effect. There is a very definite sense of pain. Violence is seen as horrific rather than titillating, as is so common in super hero comics. Characters’ actions have very real, often very unpleasant consequences.

Even the theatrical and enigmatic V, while not unmasked, is to some extent explained. We learn to recognise rooms and the connections between them in his initially estranging home, ‘The Shadow Gallery’. On pages 104-5 of the main text, as well as in the interlude, ‘Vincent’, we see him stealing documents and artefacts connected to his inspiration, Valerie. This is the only evidence we are given as to the way in which he has stocked his home. It suggests he’s assembled his collection of books, music and paintings through tangible means.

We are even, finally, able to locate the mysterious Shadow Gallery in ‘our’ world: the detective, Eric Finch, finds his way in from Victoria Underground station. We see V’s own version of the government’s Fate computer, and thus appreciate how he has been able to operate. We see ‘behind the scenes’ of the mythic presentation he makes of himself, even without actually knowing who he is. We learn what he is and how he does what he does. All the flamboyant and rather magical tricks he has performed for us throughout the story are ultimately explicable. Thus is it possible for Evey to take his place.

David Lloyd’s illustrations for V For Vendetta are also ‘realistic’ - not the muscle-bound exaggeration typical of traditional super hero adventures. The proportions of the people we see are ‘normal’ rather than ‘improved’. Even the colouring of the originally black and white pictures is stark and simplistic, with a plain mix of tones.

V For Vendetta is presented in a very cinematic form, using elements of cinematic story-telling rather than conventional comic story-telling. John Byrne used a similar technique when drawing the super hero comic, The X-Men, between 1977 and 1980.

"Byrne employed a sequential art that was ‘cinematic’ in the sense that it constantly interpreted each panel and each segment of the narrative from an implied and subjective point of view. The reader was drawn in, invited to take sides in the characters’ conflicts."

Reynolds, Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology, p. 86.

In V For Vendetta, however, these ‘cinematic’ qualities are taken further. Much of the story is told through silent panels and dialogue. Often, there are pages, occasionally even whole chapters, with only one or two captions. There are no thought balloons or sound effects whatsoever. This adds a seriousness and bleakness to the narrative.

Thought balloons in comic strips make blatant a character’s feelings. Moore had been concerned that this self-imposed restriction would make it impossible to confer what he calls (in "Beyond the painted smile"), "nuances of character". Rather, it means that instead of being ‘told’ what characters are feeling, the reader must scrutinise the dialogue and illustrations for such inflections. Sound effects highlight narrative peaks. V For Vendetta has to express these elements within the dialogue and framing of the scenes.

This all means that the reader must be more active in decoding and negotiating the story - reading the panels carefully to follow the characters’ responses. Readers are ‘shown’ the characters’ emotional responses rather being than ‘told’ them. This also makes the text more ‘real’.

While reality is important to the narrative, there are, however, a number of implausible aspects. There are several plot-holes that we can nit-pick. For example, V’s own abilities and provisions are extraordinary. While we see how he has stocked the Shadow Gallery with material with regard to Valerie, it is altogether harder to accept that he has constructed his own working version of the government’s Fate computer. Evey replaces V apparently without anyone else noticing. Yet she is clearly shorter than he, of a different build and has, presumably, a different voice. V has already caused great problems for the government by removing the ‘voice’ behind their news broadcasts. We see listeners shocked because ‘There is something wrong with the Voice of Fate’ (p.36). V’s iconography suffers no such propaganda upset.

The England of V For Vendetta is perhaps just as unlikely. It is difficult to understand how the regime operates. It makes great use of the video cameras it has on every street corner and in many rooms, but surely these can only be used in London and urban areas. What about in the country? A television programme addresses ‘senseless terrorist acts’ in Aberdeen and Glasgow, and the announcer promises that the next edition of the programme has ‘satellite pictures of the Soviet wheat-crop failures and asks Is Russia Facing Another Revolution?’ (p. 110). V comments that ‘riot-zone soap operas’ still broadcast after he has sabotaged the state’s broadcasting (p. 220).

Despite this acknowledgement of a chaotic world outside the unnatural city, it is not substantial. We see very little of the world outside London. Finch visits both Norfolk and Larkhill, but both have been deserted for years. We see little of the economics of the alternate world, get no idea, for example, where food comes from. Only the city - the realm in which V operates - is available to us.

More importantly, this whole post-holocaust locale of the story is at best, ‘convenient’. Moore admits as much in his introduction to the DC edition of the novel. "Back in 1981, the term “nuclear winter” had not passed into common currency," he says (p. 6). As a scientific study of the climatic effects of nuclear war concluded,

"... even in regions far from the conflict the survivors would be imperilled by starvation, hypothermia, radiation sickness, weakening of the human immune system, epidemics and other dire consequences."

Richard P Turco, Owen B Toon, Thomas Ackerman, James B Pollack and Carl Sagan, ‘The Climatic Effects of Nuclear War’, Scientific American, Vol. 251, no. 2 (August 1984), p. 23.

Through Evey’s memories - of a ‘yellow and black’ sky, and of the disintegration of civilisation (‘There was no food. And the sewers were flooded and everybody got sick. Mum died in 1991’ (p. 28).) – there’s some appreciation of the difficulties involved in surviving nuclear war.

However, Moore doesn’t go far enough, and his idea that a nuclear war of a scale enough to destroy Europe and Africa could have left a demilitarised England hungry but alive is not at all likely. The global debilitation of major nuclear conflict had been explored in novels such as Neville Shute’s On The Beach (1957), subsequently made into a film.

This raises the question of plausibility. In his introduction to the DC edition, Moore goes on to argue that nuclear war is not necessarily what will push England into the fascist state he depicts. His contention, writing in 1988, is that we are headed in that direction anyway. In our own world, according to Moore, "the tabloid press are circulating the idea of concentration camps for persons with AIDS. The new riot police wear black visors, as do their horses, and their vans have rotating cameras on top. The government has expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality, even as an abstract concept, and one can only speculate as to which minority will be the next legislated against," (p. 6).

In the twenty-first century, elections have been dogged by race riots in various English towns and cities, even before we mention the attacks on buildings in the US [NB this was originally written prior to 11 September, 2001]. That’s not to say that there are direct correlations between the book and the real world of today, but rather that many of its key features remain pertinent and terrifying.

When it was begun in 1981, the novel was a projection into the future, starting out on the near-future assumption that Labour would win the 1983 General Election. Even before the story had finished being written however, this scenario had been ruled out by history. The narrative was no longer a future projection but an experiment in alternative history.

Alternative histories are interesting because they are about considering other possibilities. The world as we know it is logically reconfigured from some point in history. As one historian has put the case,

"To understand [the world] is to make it coherent. The coherence is ours and in it, the loose ends of mere possibilities have no place."

Carr’s argument, as cited in Geoffrey Hawthorn, Plausible Worlds: Possibility and Understanding in History and the Social Sciences (Cambridge, 1991), p. 9.

That totality of coherence is likely an ideal rather than achievable goal. Alternative histories rethink the ‘coherence’ with which we ascribe our world. By rethinking the choices made, they reconsider what our society is and how it has come to be. They are a philosophical exercise in practical history, working in gaps left by absolutist historians.

As Moore’s comments about contemporary government mirroring the nightmare regime of his imaginings show, the politics of the novel are relevant to the present, despite the debunking of the novel as a plausible future. V For Vendetta is an alternative present. It is set between November 5th, 1997 and November 10th, 1998, but it is ‘present’ because it’s about a way we could be living now.

That it offers a world we recognise to be ‘wrong’, to be clearly different to the world we exist in, is crucial. The alternative present compels the reader to compare and contrast the ‘real’ present and the ‘alternative’, to acknowledge (and critique) the ways in which our own society operates.

This intrinsic questioning of the constructs of our own ‘present’ is key to V’s mission itself. V encourages the people of England to question their government. The alternative present therefore echoes V’s own political mission. And because it is this concept that is crucial to the novel, the authenticity of the location, the plausibility of the chosen divergence, is unimportant. The parameters of the alternate present are set, we require only some basic explanation of the divergence.

What is important is that by following through the consequences of this difference, and doing so ‘realistically’ and in a way that involves the reader actively, it is conveniently possible to explore a range of contemporary political issues. The settings and solutions of the story are cataclysmic. The oppositions in conflict are foregrounded by the alternative present setting.

This makes the issues very evocative and effective. In reality, the conflicts are not so obvious. As Moore acknowledges, however, the kind of fascism he depicts is still visible in the ‘real’ world. More than ten years later, and despite a change of government, for example, legislation on homosexuality, such as Section 28, is still (contentiously) in place. As the report into the climatic effects of nuclear war concludes, it is long-term environmental damage that,

"... might in the end prove even more devastating for the human species than the awesome short-term destructive effects of nuclear explosions."

Turco, et al., p. 33.

It is, however, convenient to highlight the ideological conflicts in a more immediate setting. This is what V For Vendetta is essentially involved in. As Moore asserts, "Since both Dave and myself share a similar brand of political pessimism, the future world [is] pretty grim, bleak and totalitarian, thus giving us a convenient antagonist to play our hero off against," ("Beyond the painted smile", p. 270).

For the state itself to be the enemy of the costumed super hero is a radical departure from traditional comics. In the adventures of traditional super heroes, says Reynolds, "the initial plot development predictably leads to a violent confrontation with a costumed villain. A five-page fight scene is the obligatory result," (p. 50).

Yet V is not defending the regime from super villains, he is defending ‘the people’ (in the opening chapter he saves Evey from the police, as the novel progresses, he frees the people of England) from the regime itself. This is a much more serious and politically charged theme than usual for a costumed super hero.

Ideologically, this is radical for the genre. Mostly in super hero stories, "the villains are concerned with change and the heroes with the maintenance of the status quo" (Reynolds, p. 51). V is not the ‘traditional’, passive figure, reacting only when provoked by the villainous actions of others. He is the instigator of change, disrupting the status quo, from the beginning of the novel destroying the icons with which the regime has presented itself.

V consciously lives what in the 1990s was referred to as the ‘DIY lifestyle’, wherein,

"... new agendas are being set, often outside the traditional framework of British constitutional politics, and employing and developing strategies of direct action"

George McKay, Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties (London, 1996), p. 1.

V belongs to the traditions of counter-culture and oppositional politics of the late 70s and early 80s. The ‘slogans of resistance’ over these years - 1970s: Reality is a substitute for utopia, 1980s: Fight war not wars, power not people’ (cited in ibid., pp. 5-6) - might be seen as V’s own agenda.

We might also argue that V uses similar strategies as those of ‘punk’ to spread his message amongst the people: scandalous broadcasting, self-conscious explanation of his motives, iconography, even something of "a streak of English Puritanism" (McKay, p. 78, while studying the anarchic bricolage used by punk band ‘Crass’ pp. 78-90). While V is not himself a ‘punk’, he uses similar means to spread his political agenda. His attributes are iconic: easily recognisable and repeatable.

V is emblematic. Items associated with the letter ‘V’ itself, are left behind him. As the title of the novel tells us, the letter ‘V’ stands for the vendetta against the state. The encircled ‘V’ that V graphities beside his victims itself reminds us of the encircled ‘A’ of anarchy. All we know of him is that at the concentration camp in which he was incarcerated, he was ‘The Man in Room V’ (‘Five’ in Roman Numerals). Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony plays in the background as he kills the Bishop of Westminster - as Finch points out, the "da da da dum!" is Morse code for the letter V.

Extra-diegetically, this stylistic can be found in the novel’s chapter headings, for example, ‘The Villain’, ‘The Voice’ and ‘Victims’. These constructs confer mythic significance to V. The icons of V are adopted by the people. One young girl spray-paints the encircled V logo symbol alongside the word ‘Bolucs’ in defiance of the sabotaged street cameras (p. 189). A strip club has a character in a version of V’s costume placing a banger into the knickers of characters in approximated military uniforms (p. 192).

But because V has no ‘mundane’ alter-ego, these iconic elements, the ‘myth of V’, are all there is to him. Thus there is not so much a character to V as an idea. This iconic concept of V is far more effective in spreading itself than any ‘mundane’ individual. As he says to Finch after being shot, "There’s no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There’s only an idea. Ideas are bullet-proof,"(p. 236).

And because the importance of V is not ‘who’ he is, but ‘what’ he is, as Evey discovers, it is possible for her to succeed him. She, in turn, takes in her own eventual successor. V is not so much an individual as an inheritance.

Even gender is not important to the ‘idea’ of V. It is Evey, a young girl, who becomes V’s undisputed replacement. We know that he is male, but V is sexed not sexual. Evey suspects him to be her long lost father on the basis that he has made no sexual advances on her. She has lost this prejudice by the end of the novel, and comes to realise why she must not know who V is. Her - and everyone else’s - ignorance of his individual identity ensures his immortality.

The ‘mythic’ V confronts the myth of the state. In Althusser’s definition of ideology,

"... in order to ensure that political power remains the preserve of a dominant class, individual ‘subjects’ are assigned particular positions in society. A whole range of institutions, such as the Church, the family and the education system, are the means through which a particular hierarchy of values is disseminated"

Althusser, cited in ‘Ideology’, Marion Wynne-Davies (ed.), Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature, The New Authority on English Literature (London, 1989), p. 615.

Those that the government sees as threatening ‘other’ - the socialists, the minorities such as Blacks, Asians and homosexuals - have been forcibly removed. The remaining populace are continually monitored and coerced to adhere to the system.

V’s attitude to this compartmentalisation is clear. "Authority allows two roles: the torturer and the tortured; twists people into joyless mannequins that fear and hate, while culture plunges into the abyss. Authority deforms their children, makes a cockfight of their love..." he says (p. 199).

The novel gives us plenty of evidence for V’s assertions. We see a large and diverse dramatis personae, all finding the society in which they live difficult and imposing. At the start of the novel, Evey is at the bottom of the hierarchic pyramid, and is forced into attempting prostitution, being so short of both food and money. Policeman (and thus agent of the state) Derek Almond is bitter and abusive to his wife, and it’s inferred that this comes from the pressure he’s under to rise in the hierarchy.

Crowds cheer and wave as the Leader, Adam Susan, is driven past – but they only do so when made to at gunpoint (p. 232). Susan is at the time in mid-soliloquy as to his elite status, disassociated from everybody else. He is emotionally detached and has admitted earlier the Spartan nature of his position:

"I am not loved. I know that. Not in soul or body. I have never known the soft whisper of endearment. Never known the peace that lies between the thighs of a woman. But I am respected. I am feared. And that will suffice."

Adam Susan, V For Vendetta, p. 38.

The mythic ideology serves only to be self-fulfilling. Nobody is happy. Nobody is fulfilled.

"Social change occurs when the ideology of the dominant class is no longer able to contain the contradictions existing in real social relations,"

Althusser, cited in ‘Ideology’, Marion Wynne-Davies (ed.), Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature, The New Authority on English Literature (London, 1989), ibid.

Thus, the emotionally debilitating effects of the fascist regime are made apparent through the relationships and interactions of a massive cast. We do not just follow the story of V and Evey, we have repeated insights into the lives of Adam Susan, detective Eric Finch, the adulterous Helen Heyer, the widowed and impoverished Rosemary Almond, the thug Harper, and many more. Even V’s victims are given depth.

The cast are assigned characters as well as roles in the narrative. These interact continually throughout the novel. While we see little of the outside world, the people of London in V For Vendetta express themselves as a convincing social body.

We can navigate a whole series of causes leading to different effects, perhaps most notably the butterfly effect by which the widowed Rosemary Almond, un-provided for after her husband’s death, kills Susan, the Leader. We have followed this progression of emotional and physical events, and appreciate why she has taken this action.

In this way, the novel suggests something about the way society operates in general. After Moore’s comments on the ‘real’ England of 1988, it is no great leap to recall Margaret Thatcher’s infamous "There’s no such thing as society" comments made the previous year. The structure of V For Vendetta would rather suggest otherwise.

However, in her autobiography, Thatcher is keen to point out that her comments have been widely misrepresented, and goes on to qualify the point. Rather than society, she continues, in neo-classical vein,

"there are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then to look after our neighbour"

Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London, 1993), p. 626.

She sees society as an excuse rather than an obligation. Thatcher’s problem is with what she calls the ‘dependency culture’, whereby the population expect the state to take care of them. V is also involved in motivating the populace, but in a diametrically opposed way. Rather than belittling the problems and unhappiness people visibly suffer in the social body in which they live, V encourages those who are not happy to protest.

Thatcher’s argument is that government shouldn’t exist to provide for the people. V’s argument is government shouldn’t exist. George McKay sees the 1990s DIY lifestyle I’ve already linked V to as constituting "a politics of the disenfranchised, wherein the youth and marginals left out of Thatcher’s revolution find their voices and use them to express their resentment and opposition," (McKay, p.1).

Because the government has become separate from the civic society, the excluded develop a new mode of political expression. Un-provided-for and desperate widow, Rosemary Almond is perhaps the most drastic of those V has liberated. Like Evey, she has stood up to the disenfranchisement imposed upon her. V has given her the freedom to express herself profoundly.

The ending of the novel concretises the issues here. Frederic Jameson argues that, through plot, science fiction dramatises the contradiction between the need for narrative totality (the need for a clear ‘ending’) and the fact that,

"closure or the narrative ending is the mark beyond which thought cannot go,"

Frederic Jameson, "Progress Versus Utopia, Or, Can We Imagine the Future?", Science Fiction Studies #27, vol. 9, part 2 (1982), p. 148.

This is because, he continues, science fiction’s intrinsic "vision of future history cannot know any punctual ending of this kind, at the same time that its novelistic expression demands some such ending". His argument is that an ‘ending’ closes the speculation that the science fiction genre requires fundamentally.

V For Vendetta remains open and speculative. It ends ambiguously. Despite all the various characters reaching novelistically satisfying ‘end points’ in the narrative, there is still no certainty about what the future will bring. This is exemplified by the final images of Finch walking out of rioting London, and away up the M1. As we have already seen, there’s little clue as to what lies outside London, of what Finch will find in Hatfield and the North. If anything, the characters we have been following as central to the plot are no longer of individual importance to the anarchy V has provoked.

Either through death or marginalisation, each member of Moore’s huge dramatis personae is removed from the limelight. Even Evey, who takes on V’s mantle, is rendered no longer individually important. She merely takes her place as figurehead of the ideal. She maintains the all-important V iconography.

What V has done is turn the balance of power away from those who lead - the fascist elite - and, in doing so, passed it over to ‘the people’. It is no longer the ‘extraordinary’ V who must stand against the regime for the benefit of the oppressed. The oppressed must make the stand. V does not deal with the Leader of the regime, it is the ‘ordinary’ Rosemary Almond who kills him.

Thus Finch walks out at the close of the novel into a future that, while it is still dark, violent and uncertain, is no longer mediated by people determined (ideologically) as having ‘importance’. As V reassured Evey at the start, "Everybody is special. Everybody," (p. 26). All are equal. Effectively, V has turned the future over to everybody else. This includes the novel’s readers.

Jameson believes that the "most obvious ways in which an SF novel can wrap its story up - as in some atomic explosion that destroys the universe, or the static image of some future totalitarian world-state - are also clearly the places in which our own ideological limits are the most surely inscribed," (ibid). As he later argues, science fiction is not a way of imagining the future, but is intrinsically "a contemplation of our own [contemporary] absolute limits," (ibid, p. 153).

V For Vendetta’s ambiguous ending merely confirms that our ideology/ies are only limited so far as we allow them to be. Nancy A Collins believes that the novel,

"... should be on the reading lists of all those genuinely interested in the accessibility of alternative philosophies in popular culture,"

Nancy A Collins, "Eye Tracks: reviews and opinions", SF Eye, vol. 2, no. 7 (August 1990), p. 84.

It is not only an alternative, ‘nightmare’ version of our present, it offers our present an alternative political agenda - actively involved, oppositional and anarchic.

"Anarchy wears two faces, both creator and destroyer. Thus destroyers topple empires; make a canvas of clean rubble where creators can then build a better world."

V, p. 222.

(If you're still reading this far, there's plenty more analysis at the V for Vendetta Shrine.)

Shock tactics

"There's not many kids that got into fights in the street because some kid calls your dad a 'reactionary class traitor'. It was like living in one of them books written by Chinese women about life during the Cultural Revolution."

Alexei Sayle, Overtaken, p. 11.

Having raved to my mate Peter a few weeks ago about the really rather t'riffic Barcelona Plates and The Dog Catcher, he was really rather t'riffic and sent me Sayle's novel, Overtaken.

First, it's a much more leisuredly read than the boy's bumper book of space.

Secondly, it's got the same sharp observation as his short stories, the same wicked turn-of-phrase and sudden reversals so out of left field that they overturn the whole tale in a sentence. Yet it's not quite the revelatory experience as the shorts - which are perhaps the best examples of the medium I've ever read.

I've been trying to understand why I feel a bit disappointed, despite all the good stuff packed into the book.

Comic novels often have the feel of sitcoms and comic stage plays, with extreme sorts of people in contrived situations. But prose, being slower and less immediate, and with the reader in control of the speed it plays out, leaves plenty of space for real character depth, to explore motivation, to add detail.

What might play out fine and frenetic between actors can therefore feel vapid in print. Farces are facile and silly, but keep the audience busy in just keeping up, and they won't notice until long after it's over.

The plot itself reminded me in some ways of another disappointment - Iain Banks's Dead Air. A crass, ranty rogue as narrator is shocked by cataclysmic tragedy and decides to show a few of life's bastards the error of their ways - in a variety of crass, ranty ways. Having been shown by example, the narrator uses shock therapy to enact ethical change... This sets up all kinds of unlikely adventures, with both the villains and narrator maybe learning something along the way.

In this case, narrator Kelvin is a 30-something property developer without a care in the world. He's just as crass and unthinking as those he comes up against, and for all the places and plays they've been to, his life with his five best friends is witless and banal, a stream of mobile phonecalls saying nothing.

(You never overhear anything intersting being said into a mobile, do you? Not ever...)

As well as talking through any journey, they natter through films and plays without a thought for anyone else. That they drive to the same places in different cars is a good indicator of their casual selfishness, as well as becoming a bit of a plot point.

Trouble is, in my head it comes with the voice of a bloke I used to know who'd regularly say stupid, crass things for effect. Stuff about race and class and women you'd find, if you argued him down long enough, that he really didn't believe in or care about. It was a cynical stabbing of people's emotional buttons, to make conversations a bit more abrasive.

More to the point, though you're clearly not meant to like Kelvin, there was never any point where I was rooting for him, either. Even when terrible things happen to him, he's a hard bloke to sympathise for.

Sayle's book is chock-full of wild, grotesque archetypes doing wild, grotesque things. More importantly, there's plenty of times when he leaps artfully out of the way of such cynical plotting. For example, what looks like another crude set-up with Kelvin (the narrator) and an old queen turns out to be a deft little gag about yo-yos.

It's constantly funny and diverting, with deft flashes of something more substantial. The result is something that doesn't quite reach genius (as I genuinely think the short stories do), but whose fingertips brush against it at times.

Looking forward to Sayle's next, Weeping Women Hotel - when I eventually get to it.

Hello Neil

...and hello to everyone who's found their way here from Neil's journal. My, but there are a lot of you. I'll just put the kettle on, and see what we got left in the way of jaffa cakes...

"It's also worth pointing out that writers don't have any say in casting. Occasionally we get a vote but it's only a vote."

Neil Gaiman, "Why I won't do homework".

Sometimes we get asked our opinions, and sometimes we can even think of people. Clive Mantle, for example, sprung to mind 'cos I knew it'd please my mum.

ETA: You might like to read my comment on Neil's talk in London last year, or on his Anansi Boys.

Happy goths

My interview with Dave McKean is now live, to accompany my review of Mirrormask.

Enjoyed Nimbos blogging our trip to the goth wossname at Tate Britain last week (well done with the title there, fella).

The Dr particularly like Fuseli's "Brunhild Watching Gunther Suspended from The Ceiling on their Wedding Night" (1807), in which some German bird ties up her new husband so that she can sleep unmolested. Bit bothered that this one's her favourite.

In fact, a lot of the stuff is about immasculated blokes, conquered by women or nature. I dared suggest this was showing the awfulness ensuing when the proper order of things is undone.

Definitions of goth are about as myriad, and useless, as definitions of science fiction. But it struck me, gawping at the pictures and the other vamps who'd come to see them, that the late eighteenth century was also the time of enlightenment, of experiment and proveable fact. Fact which, in building a scientific model for the world around us, underminded folk tales and myth.

So, I'd venture, gothicism is a conscious denial of the rational in favour of "dressing up" in the superstitious and strange. It's playing with monsters and nightmares when we know better; in the best possible terms, it's an affectation.

Yes, other defintions of goth are available, and I'm sure people will write in.

Whatever the case, goth is never the most subtle of art-forms, and the drawings on offer here are full of struggling and straining women whose clothes have fallen off, and naked, beef-cakey chaps with small winkies.

"And some quite big ones," said my friend C. as we headed to the pub down the road. Poor girl.

The pub was fun too, with a quiet upstairs done out in slightly tatty victoriana - which was just the Dr's thing. I chatted with a mate of S.'s about how writing and fighting are the same. No, really: there are those who just talk about it, and those who just get on with doing it. And it's most effective to keep your moves simple and to the point.

You can’t teach physics to a dog

“Einstein refused to accept quantum mechanics fully. And even Niels Bohr, one of the central pioneers of quantum theory, and one of it’s strongest proponents, once remarked that if you do not get dizzy sometimes when you think about quantum mechanics, then you have not really understood it.”

Brian Greene, The elegant universe – superstrings, hidden dimensions and the quest for the ultimate theory, p. 88.

It took a little over a fortnight, but I’ve finally finished the book on string theory which Nimbos got me for Christmas.

The book is about how clever people have spent the last 100 years trying to tie together two mutually exclusive ideas – one about how gravity works, the other about how light comes in lumps.

I’ve always been a bit of a plodder in understanding clever stuff, especially in the “real” subjects where you can’t just make it up. For the last two thirds of the book I was mostly just reading the individuals words and hoping that somehow my subconscious would put it all together later.

(Which is more or less my technique with Dombey & Son in my teens. And it worked.)

Greene admits himself that things get pretty weird and he’s often advising the layman to skip ahead (which I didn’t as I’m tough). Physics at the smaller-than-the-atom stage is counter-intuitive to an ape brain that sees in three dimensions, (a sense developed, I guess, from falling out of trees).

There seems, to me at least, an element of creative accountancy involved in string theory – that is, moving numbers around the page until the story adds up. That may just be my missing the sums, though (which I’d not have a hope of intuiting). The mathematics involved gets so complex – Greene says – that a lot of the weird stuff has to be taken on trust.

Hauling my eyes over speak of pan-dimensional Calabi-Yau shapes and the different kinds of oddly named quark (up, down, hot, carrot and Basingstoke), I felt the same “well, okay” response to the minutiae of theology. I broadly, for example, understand the difference between homoousios and homoiousio (and did before it was in Dr Who, and all) but not why it matters to anyone whether Jesus is exactly or pretty much like his dad.

But strings, Greene insists, aren’t philosophy. It’s all very well saying there’s this very, very small stringy bits that waggles in seven dimensions we can’t sense. The clever bit is working out how to test the theory, to prove that they really are there. Which is what Top Men like my mate Dr Kelly are struggling to fathom out now.

Am now working through Greene’s attention-deficit TV show version of the book, which Psychonomy kindly leant. “They can smell reality!” declares one of the talking-head boffins.

Yet for all I’ve rolled my eyes at the lame jokes and set-ups – or is that an epileptic response to the flashy graphics? – I can still nod my way through it comprehendingly. Yeah, a bit to my amazement, I get it.

So, in fact, no I don’t. QED.

Lazy boy

Many things to speak of, which I don't have time for right now. Some writing things happening, and work all very busy. Some films and an exhibition seen. Some indulgences had. A I've finally finished a book that was making my eyes bleed.

Will endeavour to catch up in the week. In the meantime, here is what my wee brother is working on. Will remind you to check back on the 12th, but tell your friends.

www.crocjohn.com

Bad grammar

After getting it howlingly wrong yesterday – thanks to everyone who posted – I’ve read up a bit on the Tripartite system.

Blimey. Had assumed that ‘76, in banning selection on grounds of ability, saw the end of the grammar school system, and what remained were entrance exams for particular, snobby schools (like mine).

Turns out it’s all a lot more complex than that, depending on where you live. And it’s got more complex as time has gone on.

“Estelle Morris has left us with independent schools, over 160 grammar schools, church and faith schools, specialist schools, advanced specialist schools, beacon schools, city academies, city technology colleges, ‘fresh start’ schools, ‘contract’ schools – in addition to ‘ordinary’ comprehensives and secondary moderns. No wonder many parents are confused!”

Clyde Chitty, “The right to a comprehensive education”, Second Caroline Benn memorial lecture, 16 November 2002.

Chitty’s lecture is really interesting; an honest assessment of the pros and cons of the comprehensive system. Wikipedia also links to Michael Portillo’s counter-argument, in favour of grammar schools’ elitism.

Admissions policy is, of course, a major part of the newly unveiled Education Bill. "There will be no return to the 11-plus,’ said the White Paper. Oh yes?

I’ve muttered before that foundation schools seem very able to keep out the wrong sorts. Admissions policies suit the schools rather than the pupils. Imagine if, for example, hospitals decided only to treat the “right sort” of sickness, rather than the immediate needs of the surrounding community.

Oh, hang on, that’s what they’re doing.

My brother was at St Mary's

Not sure what the press embargo stuff is on V for Vendetta, and don't want to steal the thunder of Boss Joe's forthcoming review on Film Focus, but that was not nearly as bad as it might have been.

As a general rule, any time they stray from the comic the logic starts to unravel. Yeah, the effort to update it, to make it about political shit now, kind of works - and they get some good gags out of it. But John Hurt being a Tory is 10 years out of date, and wish they'd asked if we still do the 11+, or checked a map to see where the tube runs. Natalie's accent wobbles a bit, bless her, and they'd lost some of my favourite stuff.

Of course, I'm hugely protective of the comic 'cos it really blew my head off as a kid. A friend at school - St Mary's, as it happens - leant me the DC run. Wrote GCSE and MA coursework about it, trying to understand why. Will look out the latter as a bonus-post here sometime.

But basically, it works. It's the first good adaptation of an Alan Moore comic, which is something of a feat in itself. (Though he's foregone a credit, so its oddly described as "Based on the comic illustrated by David Lloyd".) The Dr, who won points the first time I met her for saying she too loved the comic, was also very pleased.

Odd to watch work exploding, too. Right, back to the Terroism Bill.

"The slightly less funny version..."

Just off the phone to Dave McKean, interviewing him for Film Focus. My review of Mirrormask is now up, and there’ll be a transcript of our chat shortly (am about halfway through typing).

It’s odd getting to speak to your heroes. I remember discussing McKean’s work in “The Face” (a hip style magazine) with my sister, back when we both lived at home. Didn’t know who had done these weird, scary images – or how you could even do that with photos – but his were the ones I stuck into my notebooks.

Always been in awe of people who can draw well and make things. Spend most of my time these days working on Word documents, which don’t ever look much when I hand them in. Clever people transform the words I come up with into lavish magazine spreads, proper-looking books, or bring them alive on CD.

Of course it’s the design we see first, then the words. But the design doesn’t just draw our eye, it shapes our reading as well.

McKean’s stuff is certainly striking. Liadnan bought Varjak Paw for my birthday some years ago just on the strength of the cover, and I suspect a lot of Sandman got shifted on the same principle. That’s how I first read it, anyway.

And he seems, in the 28 minutes and 10 seconds that I spoke to him, a decent enough sort of fellow.

My review of Kidulthood is also now available. And I like this story, via a chum, about a shotgun wedding for a goat.

Now hurrying off to see V.

Sixth weekday

Today I wrote a review, chased some things and sent notes on three scripts. One more set of “No, do this!” to go for the year. Hopefully Monday.

Still hoping to speak to Someone about Something that day, but no details have yet been sent. Fingers crossed, but now have an exciting booking at 6 which may scupper everything. Will speak more of both the Someone and the booking when I can.

My dad rang to discuss a trip over to France in June, though explaining how we’ll have to make our own way home because his car will be full of booze. “Wanted to fix this before you both got booked up,” he said as we compared diaries. “Oh, actually you’re mother and I are quite busy that month…”

The wee brother flies to Australia on Monday to begin his shoot. There’s a website but am unsure whether I’m meant to link to it yet. Just rang to see, and he’s having a last tea with his mrs. Will endeavour to get my instructions some time tomorrow.

Also washed up, done the cat poo, and generally moved some things around the house. Cat has already claimed the rocking chair which the in-laws dropped round yesterday. The rocking bit took some getting used to, though. I think he shifts about all the time just to check it keeps happening.

The Dr is in Birmingham at one of her clever things, so am about to make my own tea. The last time this happened (on Monday) I ate four chicken breasts in one go. Num. Wonder what there is left I shouldn't touch...

Bright helm

Spent much of the day in Brighton today, discussing and agreeing the Great Plan. Announcments of things in due course, of course, but it's all a bit exciting in my mind.

Brighton was freezing bloody cold - and my idea of strolling up a bit of the beach seemed somewhat less genius after quarter of an hour. Still, the sun was out and the goth ruin of a pier seemed all the more eerie and cool. In fact, with the wintry sun flattening everything bleakly, the skeletal structure seemed to float above the sea.

Or perhaps that's just frostbite of the brain.

Back home in the afternoon to buy meat and admire our new chair. Then some phonecalls and chasing of work stuff. Have two Very Exciting Things as work on Monday, of which more as and when.

And now off to eat tea and watch Mirrormask.

Links effect

Sometimes it is more fun just to link to other people’s nice things. Cannot be fagged with my own thoughts.

• Rob has a blog again (and also does Droo tours of Swansea); this old post made be snicker
• Geofftech has reclaimed Beck’s tube map for the South
• The LRB’s concise explanation of MRSA is online, and suddenly things all make sense
• Everyone’s already heard Tom, but it is spiffing and this is for the historical record anyway

I think I'm buff

Yesterday's post needn't have worried. Last night's movie got cancelled (or misplaced) and tonights was rilly, rilly good. Alarming and awful in subject, but brilliant and funny as well.

Proper review of Kidulthood to follow shortly, but I won't be chucking Noel Clarke...

Yeah well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man

Matt Michael seems chuffed with the History of Christmas in the shiny new DWM. He’s impressed that there are “no stinkers” - which I’m very pleased about – and singles out some for high praise. So hooray!

Off to the pictures tonight and tomorrow, to declare them hit, miss or maybe. Reviews to follow on Film Focus sometime.

Chatted with a colleague only last week about being both a judge and defendant. It changes your perspective slating some trashy film when you can be / have been similarly bashed. Or, at least, it ought to.

No one has to like what you do, and reviewers aren’t required to engage with what you’ve done or explain their marks out of ten. Responding to critics, and explaining what you meant, is really quite rubbish.

You’re not owed anything, let alone love.

Many friends simply avoid reading reviews of their efforts, and are probably much happier that way.

But what do you do when you don’t like something a friend’s written? Do you back out of reviewing it, or use a pseudonym, or try a kindly critique of why it fails to excite?

The latter is a bit like splitting up with someone. Saying, “It’s not you, it’s me…” doesn’t actually lessen the blow. It’s more about assuaging your own guilt. Nor does it help forewarning your target, nor offering to buy them pints.

No, if you’re giving someone a bad review (or chucking them), you have to accept you’re the villain. If you really have to be the villain, just get on with it. Be honest, be clear, be concise. Be as nice about it as you can be.

But it’s not your call whether you’re still best mates afterwards.

Zoonoses

Learnt this splendid word today for work-type reasons, and am annoyed not to have spotted it in the increasingly squawky coverage of bird flu. Perhaps I’m not reading the hysteria with due diligence.

Playing with the BBC’s flu spreader wossname, it looks like, you know, not that bad. Your normal flu drops people far more readily.

(Entirely crass, of course, to try some lame gag about the difference between bird and bloke flu, and how they exhibit almost entirely the same symptoms, but you can still struggle into work if it’s bird flu. No, I shall not stoop to such depths.)

Zoonoses is the proper name for diseases we can catch off animals – rabies, BSE, and cheery things like that.

WHO says (more or less) that it’s newly found-out-about zoonoses that gets the mob worked up, while ones we already know about are simply not as cool. Even in sickness there’s fashion.

Sadly, it’s not “zoo noses” like what orang-utans sniff with. Being a technical word, it’s got the same, double-syllable “zoo” as “zoology”, rather than rhyming with “goo”. And the -ses is pronounced “seize” – that is, the same long plural of an –sis ending you get in “analyses” and “crises”.

Oh well. It still looks good on the page and screen.

Also for work-type reasons (therefore being paid for the privilege) I have discussed such a thing as an oocyst of cryptosporidium. It’s like black-ops, radar-invisible transport for top-secret spores (the cryptosporidium) to get about in.

Grown up stuff

Window people turned up at half seven yesterday, which was a bit of a shock after a night on the tiles seeing A. off. The Dr scooted into the shower and then into work, and I spent the day making tea and keeping the cat from escaping.

Blimey, I'd recommend Crystal to anyone thinking mature thoughts about double-glazing. Quick and efficient, the whole job done even before the football was over.

(Look, it wasn't like that. Me and the cat were shut up in the living room, which was the one they'd windowed first. And I was tidying up with the telly on. No, really. But goaaaaal!)

Once they'd gone, I did some more tidying (and txtd some Scouser chums). There is dust just everywhere, and no sooner have you dysoned than it's there again.

But the place is suddenly so weirdly quiet - we can now barely hear the trains, cars and youths passing the house. And the cat approves of the window sills.

Then, shagged out, I nestled down with the cat to watch some Quatermass. Report on that sometime else.

Also came up with some pitch ideas, and worked on something that's not going to be easy at all to make happen. Ng.

The Dr rolled in from work and we did some tidying, dusting and unblocked the drain. She also had news that C. is up the duff. Wahey! We were then off to see chums in Greenwich, where much booze and good stew got ate. And I got to play with the baby.

Late up today, but we've got more tidying to do, and a clever bloke coming with a drill to sort out curtain rails. Ah, domestic bliss.

Today just happens to be the sixth anniversary of a party in Catford where I stumbled up drunkenly to the not-then-a-Doctor and said I thought her fantastic. We tend do things today rather than Valentine's day, but this year got caught up with windows. So, just to really annoy her: you're still fantastic, dear.

The picture is by Nimbos, taken on Friday night on our way back from a caff that sold wine (hooray!). The eminent academic and seriously minded sage is cooing over this. 

300 and 9

Do this morning was rather sweet, though the grooms were both wearing sweaters.

Nipped off afterward to a gig near Waterloo, and this afternoon I’ve learnt something. They’ve changed how you calculate UCAS points.

In 1994 I had 24 points (and got seven rejections on one day). According to this helpful calculator, my stock’s now at 300.

A rise of merely 1250% in 12 years. I should have invested.

Also, got sent this list which is as baffling as it is brilliant. The boss says he’ll check to see if it’s in any way not Damn, Damn Lies. But blimey.

(Historical note, in case the page is updated or I happen to wake up: Gardner’s top 10 bestsellers this month has Time Travellers at number 9. I’m fast catching up Dan Brown, Penny Vincenzi and a book of Scrabble challenges. And I beat that Cartmel fellow, too.)

Will we both wear white?

It's all been a bit last minute, but tomorrow I attend my first civil partnership. The girls in the office are flapping about what to wear. M'colleague A. and I have just manfully discussed the delicate subject of jackets.

Keen to see how the order of service will go, because civil partnerships are emphatically not to be seen as gay marriages. Though, er, that is what they are, isn't it?

So, will we be allowed readings, confetti and things? And will there be bubbly drinks? I can't wait.

Since it's a civil do, you can't make mention of God - not even to acknowledge his poor, breaking heart. Having opted for a secular wedding ourselves, the Dr and I weren't allowed any of the God stuff (despite the best efforts of our mothers). Which meant we missed out on some of the madder bits of the Book of Common Prayer.

Looking up the reference to such joyous, puritanical roaring, was entertained to see it begins:

"[Matrimony] is commended of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men..."

The Form of Solemnization of Matrimony, The Book of Common Prayer (1662).

That sounds worrying like official sanction for the hitching of chaps who can't catch. Don't try protesting that the use of "men" isn't gender specific and means "all mankind". That's balls; especially since the thing's then so keen to point out the fundamental differences between men ("love her, comfort her...") and women ("obey him, service him..."). If it meant "men and women", it could say "men and women".

Anyway, the bit I'd have quite happily wed to comes next:

"...and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding..."

ibid.

That's right, marriage is for shackling down the rutting beast within. Down boy!

"It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body."

ibid.

Now I realise that "continency" is referring to being able to contain one's urges, rather than being incontinent. But I love even the wilful misreading that the church wants us married to stop us pooing ourselves.

They invented gayness

After a morning rushing about getting keys cut and important bits of paper signed, I ambled my way to Ladbroke Grove for reasons which will be made clear in time. Met some chums, and some talented people I'd not met before. Discussed the joys of real swearing, the problems of when there's too many people, and the various ploys of my Great Plan.

Also nattered to Scottie about Simon Goldhill's Love, Sex and Tragedy - Why Classics Matters, which I finished last week. The Dr bought it ages ago as part of her ongoing efforts to civilise me. It's excellent, divided into sections that cover our attitudes to sex, Christianity, politics, culture and history, and detailing the debt each of these owes to the Greeks and Romans of old.

There's some fascinating top facts. It was the Victorians who invented homosexuality, for instance. At least, they came up with the term. The development of the early church is also seen as a reaction to Roman religion, which in some cases is just boggling.

The stuff on politics was also very interesting.

"The Athenian citizen was expected to attend the Assembly, to serve on the Council at some point, to act as a juror on occasion, to vote, to do the business of the deme, to take part in festivals and to fight in the state's army or navy. Modern democracies talk obsessively about rights. Ancient democracy thought of citizenship more as an issue of duties and activities."

Simon Goldhill, Love, Sex and Tragedy - Why Classics Matters, pp. 179-180.

No armchair anarchists in Anthens, then. You had to get your hands dirty.

The Dr tells me that the Guardian review of the book, though generally very impressed, felt the book could have covered imperialism. It also lacks any great detail on scientific enquiry and the enlightenment's debt to classics.

Also, Goldhill's argument falls into two kinds. The first - that our attitudes to sex, religion, politics etc. cannot be understood without knowledge of their Greek and Roman origins - is strongly articulated and, in some cases, amazing. But Goldhill, when he can't give evidence of such direct inheritance, also argues that the "different-ness" of the ancient world is therefore a model by which we can scrutinise our own society.

This, I feel, is less effective an argument, because surely any "different" culture would work just as well as a mirror. A study of the Navaho, or the court of Kublai Khan, would likewise challenge our social assumptions by not taking them for granted.

Home

Found my way to the War Tunnels yesterday, which were pretty amazing. Slave-built by the Nazis, the place was meant to be a hospital. Now it's an eerie memorial to the occupation. You get an identity card as an entrance ticket, and afterwards get to check whether your card is that of a restistance martyr or collaborator. Mine was a collobarator.

Then to the airport, where I fended calls from estate agents and brothers. Took an age to get home from City Airport, and the Dr seemed pleased with her toys. We nattered into the small hours. And this morning I have poetry.

Off for a day's running about across London sorting things out, now. To right is a picture of the offending bear.