Blair's Rhetoric: The Guardian

War and politics; war as politics; the rhetoric of war. The wisdom of the decision to go to Iraq remains questioned by many. Many innocent Iraqis have been destroyed in the effort to overthrow Saddam's regime - as well as many American and coalition troops. And while the dictator is now gone, we are left with the aftermath... which again begs questions regarding the wisdom of sticking our noses in.

Blair however attempts to justify his decision to support the Bush administration in a recentGuardian interview. The interview reveals that he was in a difficult position when asked point blank to admit whether or not going to Iraq was a mistake:

He writes of his anger when Sir John Chilcot concluded the session by asking: "Do you have any regrets?"

Blair writes: "It was a headline question. It had to have a headline answer. Answer 'yes' and I knew the outcome: 'Blair apologises for war', 'at last he says sorry'. Choose a variant. The impact would be the same.

"Those who had opposed the war would rejoice; those who had supported it would be dismayed, imagining their support and in some cases their sacrifice had been in vain. Answer 'no' and you seem like some callous brute, indifferent to the suffering or perhaps worse, stubbornly resistant, not because of strength but because you know nothing else to do."

The interview ends by stating:

Blair admits that the intelligence that Saddam possessed a WMD programme "turned out to be incorrect".

 Despite admitting this error, he says the invasion was still the correct course of action by citing a 2004 report by the weapons inspector Charles Duelfer. This included interviews with senior figures in Saddam's regime and an interview with the ex-Iraqi president conducted by an FBI agent, George Piro. The report uncovered tapes of meetings between Saddam and senior staff at which the WMD programme was discussed. Blair writes that Saddam made a "tactical decision to put such a programme into abeyance, not a strategic decision to abandon it". (See:http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/31/tony-blair-iraq-nightmare#send-share-box.)

"... and the next day they start the bombing"

Just read a fab article on Paul Weller from The Guardian website.  The URL is here: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/aug/26/paul-weller-interview>. Here's my favourite bit:

"Our guitarist Steve Cradock was 41 yesterday, and someone bought him a 1969 DVD which went through the year. Man landing on the moon and all that. And it had the investiture of the Prince of Wales. How fuckin' ridiculous that whole scene and system is. How fuckin' anachronistic and absurd. Especially as he's not even fuckin' Welsh! It's such an insult to the Welsh people. I can't believe it's the modern age and it's still here." Moments later, he's erupting about X Factor-induced apathy ("Millions of people watching a third-rate vocalist seem great amongst a sea of mediocrity. You enlarge that to society and it's quite worrying, really") and the state of British democracy ("You've got a million people marching against the Iraq war and the next day they start the bombing"). With Weller in this mood, even the recession becomes little more than a deception: "It's a way of diverting people's attention from what's really going on. Not that people aren't being hit by it – but how much are they spending in the Gulf war? Fuckin' millions! And they're asking the poor people to tighten their belts. We were watching the newsreels from 1969 and nothing's changed." No wonder Weller turned down a CBE in the Queen's birthday honours list in 2006.

 It's great to hear such verve.

Pygmalion (1938)

I have to confess I am ignorant of the famous film My Fair Lady, starring Audrey Hepburn.  I have been told that adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion is far superior to this version, which is apparently joint directed by Anthony Asquith and and Leslie Howard (who also played the starring role of Professor Henry Higgins).  While Shaw also had a hand on the script, it is clear that this 1938 adaptation operated on a far lower budget - and without the uber-magnetism and beauty of the likes of Audrey Hepburn.  Indeed, the Eliza Doolittle here, played by Wendy Hiller, is decidedly plain in comparison - even after her 'transformation' into a Lady.  The film has its charm and its moments, but ultimately I found this film unsatisfying.  


Cinderella-like, the story follows the protagonists journey from rags to riches, from a common flower-girl to someone miraculously transformed by the knowledge, and ultimately the love, of a well-to-do professor of linguistics.  I say 'miraculous' because I thought it was unbelievable and basically incredibly romantic - a wish fulfillment of class transcendence.  The message is: love can conquer all.  Oh dear.  The opportunity for a real discussion of the horrid class system of early twentieth century England is sidestepped by this gross, sentimental romanticism.  I am interested now to read Shaw's original play to see his original take on it - and I understand that it is less than happy or at least much more ambiguous.   I don't mind a fairy tale but how about we make it compelling?


The real killer here is the ending: Eliza apparently elopes with Freddy Eynsford-Hill - only to suddenly return to her true love and (dare I say it) creator, the professor.  It seems clumsy, forced and rushed - it's not clear where her planned elopement went wrong.  IMHO it would have been better for her to leave - for this narrative to have an unhappy ending.  At least it would seem more realistic and less saccharine.  In fairness, though, this would fly in the face of what audiences wanted during the first productions of Shaw's play as well as what they obviously want in mainstream cinema.  It may not be Hollywood, but British cinema here relents to Hollywood values.  Bleurgh.  


But this is also, perhaps, the residue of the Romanticism that has been built up around the Victorian reception of the ancient Greek narrative of Pygmalion.  Exquisite here is the pre-Raphaelite painter Burne-Jones and his gorgeous painting: who cares about class politics when there is beauty and love, right? Ahh, the dream of a perfect woman...

Structurally speaking, the narrative of the Prodigal Son here becomes the Prodigal Daughter - who transforms into the prodigal wife.  The transformation from "daughter" to "wife" occurs at the moment of Eliza's self-realization, her individuation, her refusal to take on the role of merely being the professor's creation.  And in this strangely psychological narrative there are hints of Frankenstein: it raises moral questions about how "scientific" knowledge is used (here it is linguistics/phonetics).  But there is also a whiff of Victorian misogyny: the narrative of a man creating a woman recalls the Genesis narrative of Eve, which surely constitutes one of the Ur-narratives of misogyny in our culture?  It would be interesting to see if there are examples of a literary creation narrative that worked the other way around! 


To its credit, there are some incredibly funny one-liners from the professor, particularly when he is being scathing towards Eliza.  They are outrageous and hilarious.  The most famous one:

Yes, you squashed cabbage leaf, you disgrace to the noble architecture of these columns, you incarnate insult to the English language, I could pass you off as the Queen of Sheba! 

And there are lines that invite interpretation: for example when the professor says that as far as he is concerned even the best looking women "may as well be blocks of wood".  Perhaps the professor in the end also transforms: from gay, acid-tongued, flippant upper-crust bachelor to dedicated heterosexual, romantic husband.  Hmmm.  Cinderfella?

Recommended for historical reasons, **1/2 stars.

The African Queen (1952)

100 min, dir John Huston, Produced by S.P. Eagle

I enjoyed this film and it obviously alluded rather heavily to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which was interesting.  I did wonder, however, about its believability.  The missionary life of Rose Sayer (Katherine Hepburn) and her brother Samuel Sayer (Robert Morley) seemed unbelievable somehow.  Would a brother and sister team really stay in an isolated place, by themselves, for ten years?  And did they not have family or even a mother Church to refer back to?  The futility of their mission of conversion in this film was so apparent and obvious that it was two dimensional.  Who orchestrated and inaugurated their authority?  This was a glaring omission in this film and, as a result of this omission, it had a sense of unreality about it from the start.

I also found a couple of things about the ending to be rather odd.  For example, the couple insisted on raising the British Flag while the German target was looking for them.  Isn’t this rather stupid given that they are intending on sneaking up on the Germans to bomb them with a home-made torpedo?  I also wasn’t sure if the hanging punishment that the Germans were to inflict on them for spying was historically accurate – surely it would have been easier to just shoot them?  If the film ascribed to the stereotype of German efficiency (and Humphrey Bogart’s character Charlie Aunt refers explicitly to this) then the German’s would no doubt prefer this method of execution.

The request for marriage in the end fitted, I suppose, a Hollywood ending.  This provided the fatal mistake for the Germans, as it allowed the couple a little extra time and as providence would have it, the Louisa (the German boat) accidentally ran into their now overturned old ship (the namesake of the film, The African Queen) and blew up (the torpedoes now went off).  And there comes the happy ending!  The message is “god works in mysterious ways”!

What was good, however, was the setting and the acting of Bogart.  He played the gin-swilling almost-alcoholic quite well.  Katherine Hepburn was good at playing the prude – she looks the part!  But she looked painfully thin, even anorexic here.  Possibly this was because she was ill at the time of shooting (hence the title of her book – The Making of The African Queen: Or, How I Went to Africa With Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind).  The scenery of the Congo was the star of this film, though – it was great to see it, after imagining it via Conrad’s novella for so long.  It wasn’t clear which parts were shot in England and which parts in Africa, which is perhaps interesting in itself but in any case the scenery was impressive.

***1/2 stars

A New Beginning?

Well, here is the start of it all.... who knows what I will write about.  I have no preconceptions other than that I will write on things of interest to me.  I won't dedicate it to music or film or politics or technology but anything that interests me at the time. We'll see if a certain focus develops.  More likely it will be dropped altogether, but I may be a pessimist.  It seems weird "diarising" to an unknown audience (even assuming that there is one) and I've always thought it weird of others.

I am, for example, interested in online technology as a social medium and mechanism.  Obviously commerce is changing and will continue to change as technology changes.  And writing this blog also comes with such issues attached: Blogger, it seems, is encouraging bloggers that use its system to "monetize".  A summary is provided here: http://buzz.blogger.com/2009/12/blogger-integrates-with-amazon.html   

The thing is - it seems to be the default option.  And I find this rather sleazy - and I have said no to it, even though I will be discussing some things that no doubt you can buy off Amazon etc (and I will no doubt refer to Amazon etc in my posts).  But it's as if bloggers SHOULD be the advertisers for such big corporations.  Grrr.   And I'm very skeptical at how much the powers that be would be willing to pay in any case....

Anyways, here is to the beginning of Kalistos 2000!