If I have to be so fucking morose and dysfunctional at the moment, then I may as well leak some writing out. Until such time as I become less of a miserable cunt.
I entitle this piece ‘A Collection of Emo Bullshit Scribbled Down Whilst Laying in Sorry-for-Self Heap on Sofa Between 7.15 and 7.25 pm on a Sunday Night’.
(It should be shown directly before the seminal work ‘Thoughts I Tried to Cheer Myself Up With Before Resorting to a Therapeutic Wank’)
(please note, in many regards this is also a therapeutic wank...)
Loneliness stings; the drop drop drop of lemon juice into the paper cut in my soul.
I orbit society; just me in my pod.
Sometimes -
I think I’m making contact!
It’s not just me; my pod; the universe!
But the signals fool me.
Just random noise after all.
When my gaze alights on my love, some rogue magician turns my heart into bunch of flowers, bobbing right there in my chest. But he is not mine. And no sooner do the flowers bloom than they wither and choke my heart, and rot my soul. Tears seep silently from my whole being. But I smile. I stand. I sing.
I am trying to hold myself together. I am gathering a flock of birds in my arms. I puff and swipe. But they big-bang forth in every direction.
My skin is too small for me. They gave me the size too small. I don’t fit. Can’t breathe. I need to break through, but it gives and smothers like latex. If I could just cut here. And a little here. And here. Here and here. Aaahhh - a deep red breath.
How will I mate? What for, these blushing petals and dimpled bud? But tethered to my stem...
I will puff my pollen into the ether until it reaches you. I will scribble; hosing my spore onto cyberspace. You will intersect.
About Me
Sunday, 13 December 2009
Tuesday, 26 May 2009
Slug
My brain glistens with memory of slug
who slavishly spirals my lobes
spreading his seed like syrup as he goes.
He wends his course precisely
coating sulki and gyri
a paintbrush adroitly driven
by each flaccid contraction.
Finishing he begins afresh
keeping his gauche whale wet with residue.
Maybe it’s his breadcrumbs or ball of wool
for the change of wind
that will rewind me to infancy.
Then at night without glint the world is his oyster.
Through an ear or pore he seeps uncoiling
my tethered pink sausages before him surfing
their red carpet. Only the moon
catches a hint of silver highway smeared
like a blurted confession. My bedroom
disgraced with shiny plump tubes as if Mondrian
forgot his canvas and ruler and took
his pencil for a walk.
13/03/01
who slavishly spirals my lobes
spreading his seed like syrup as he goes.
He wends his course precisely
coating sulki and gyri
a paintbrush adroitly driven
by each flaccid contraction.
Finishing he begins afresh
keeping his gauche whale wet with residue.
Maybe it’s his breadcrumbs or ball of wool
for the change of wind
that will rewind me to infancy.
Then at night without glint the world is his oyster.
Through an ear or pore he seeps uncoiling
my tethered pink sausages before him surfing
their red carpet. Only the moon
catches a hint of silver highway smeared
like a blurted confession. My bedroom
disgraced with shiny plump tubes as if Mondrian
forgot his canvas and ruler and took
his pencil for a walk.
13/03/01
Saturday, 23 May 2009
Letter to Hospicom, July '08
Further to a recent and infuriating experience, thought this letter may amuse others similarly outraged. Will I get my money back? Watch this space.
Dear Sir or Madam
I recently had the misfortune of spending some time in hospital (The Treatment Centre, Milton Keynes General Hospital, Bay 2, Bed 1, Thu 3rd July ’08). Unfortunately I had the further misfortune of being exposed to your Hospicom multimedia product, which not only didn’t work (depriving me of a phone, internet access, and my favourite television programme) but swallowed £6 of my money in the process of demonstrating to me that it didn’t work.
After hijacking a hapless nurse to help me massage the thing into action, we gave it up as a lost cause, and I set about finding out how to recoup my losses. I was told that a rep sometimes came in the afternoon, but I would be discharged before that, and that all I should do was to ring your number when I got home. After a few further days of recovery, this I duly did.
It galls me that, if such services must be privatized, I, as the end user, have no consumer choice – yours is the only product made available to me. Then, as a captive market, it further galls me not only that your product was so shoddy it didn’t actually work, but that it stole money from me for the privilege of watching it not work. But what really takes the biscuit is, after doing everything in my power as a consumer to find out how to recoup my losses, I am told by some computer-says-no automaton that because I can’t ‘prove’ I put £6 on a card, you will not deign to refund the money you have stolen from me.
I think by this point I don’t need to make it explicit to you that the suggestion that I, whilst enfeebled and recuperating, am trying to rip you off for the grand sum of £6, makes me very angry. Very angry indeed. And do you know what makes me even angrier? Do you know what the most grotesque thing about this is? That you, as a corporation, have made the commercial decision that, given your market is ensnared and choiceless, it is better for you to refuse to refund your dissatisfied customers than to retain customer goodwill – because if you have a monopoly, customer satisfaction or loyalty has no relevance or value to you. Given that your captive consumers are sick and powerless patients at one of the most vulnerable times of their lives, this is particularly despicable, don’t you think?
Such is your dedication to capitalism and the bottom line above all ethical considerations that perhaps you should consider diversifying – I’m sure there’s some Chinese six-year-olds that have yet to get a job, or a place of special scientific interest that hasn’t yet been drilled to smithereens for oil. I hear they’re giving out free tobacco in Africa to create the next market of addicts – if you got into that game you could generate more lung-cancer-ridden consumers for Hospicom all in one fell swoop. There you have it: vertical integration!
So – in short: Give me my money back – all £6 of it – you greedy profiteering capitalist bastards.
Thank you
Anna Berry
Also published for general edification on Facebook 11/07/08
(by the way - I did recoup my money)
Dear Sir or Madam
I recently had the misfortune of spending some time in hospital (The Treatment Centre, Milton Keynes General Hospital, Bay 2, Bed 1, Thu 3rd July ’08). Unfortunately I had the further misfortune of being exposed to your Hospicom multimedia product, which not only didn’t work (depriving me of a phone, internet access, and my favourite television programme) but swallowed £6 of my money in the process of demonstrating to me that it didn’t work.
After hijacking a hapless nurse to help me massage the thing into action, we gave it up as a lost cause, and I set about finding out how to recoup my losses. I was told that a rep sometimes came in the afternoon, but I would be discharged before that, and that all I should do was to ring your number when I got home. After a few further days of recovery, this I duly did.
It galls me that, if such services must be privatized, I, as the end user, have no consumer choice – yours is the only product made available to me. Then, as a captive market, it further galls me not only that your product was so shoddy it didn’t actually work, but that it stole money from me for the privilege of watching it not work. But what really takes the biscuit is, after doing everything in my power as a consumer to find out how to recoup my losses, I am told by some computer-says-no automaton that because I can’t ‘prove’ I put £6 on a card, you will not deign to refund the money you have stolen from me.
I think by this point I don’t need to make it explicit to you that the suggestion that I, whilst enfeebled and recuperating, am trying to rip you off for the grand sum of £6, makes me very angry. Very angry indeed. And do you know what makes me even angrier? Do you know what the most grotesque thing about this is? That you, as a corporation, have made the commercial decision that, given your market is ensnared and choiceless, it is better for you to refuse to refund your dissatisfied customers than to retain customer goodwill – because if you have a monopoly, customer satisfaction or loyalty has no relevance or value to you. Given that your captive consumers are sick and powerless patients at one of the most vulnerable times of their lives, this is particularly despicable, don’t you think?
Such is your dedication to capitalism and the bottom line above all ethical considerations that perhaps you should consider diversifying – I’m sure there’s some Chinese six-year-olds that have yet to get a job, or a place of special scientific interest that hasn’t yet been drilled to smithereens for oil. I hear they’re giving out free tobacco in Africa to create the next market of addicts – if you got into that game you could generate more lung-cancer-ridden consumers for Hospicom all in one fell swoop. There you have it: vertical integration!
So – in short: Give me my money back – all £6 of it – you greedy profiteering capitalist bastards.
Thank you
Anna Berry
Also published for general edification on Facebook 11/07/08
(by the way - I did recoup my money)
Clarifying my Thoughts after an Argument about Gender
Firstly, we must make explicit the distinction between sex and gender – sex exists, XX, XY (albeit with some grey areas – double Y, intersex babies, etc.). If you believe gender to simply mean the same as sex then the word ‘gender’ is redundant.
Gender is a cultural/sociological/psychological concept. Part of the concept of female gender, for example, will encompass biological femaleness. But it also encompasses a lot of other ideas that are culturally-specific, era-specific, geographically-specific, etc., and have no intrinsic link to sex at all. (Clearly the argument that women are predisposed to liking the colour pink, or shopping, or whatever, is not the kind of argument that will be graced with a response.) The problem comes when we try to marry these two concepts of sex and gender – we fail to make the distinction, and try to ascribe aspects of gender (something non-intrinsic, non-biological) to sex.
There are always plenty of people who are biologically one sex but fail to meet the criteria for our ideas of gender. We reserve words like ‘queer’ for them! Homophobia exists because people want to link sex and gender too closely – they are uncomfortable with, and have little tolerance for, those who would not inhabit the gender box society has prescribed for them. Humans have the tendency to want to ‘cement’ what are cultural and environmental norms by thinking about them as biological (there are various theories in psychology about this phenomenon). This then allows us to call those who would vary from those norms ‘unnatural’ (which is why I have such a problem with gender stereotypes and generalizations – it implies there is one natural and good way, and pathologizes those who would not adhere to it).
So we have men and we have women, biologically speaking. Some XXs and some XYs. What you’re trying to do is ascribe further characteristics to them based upon their genetic sex: i.e., ‘this is an XX and therefore we can further say a, b, and c about them, because that’s what we know about XXs’. But this is all statistics. What we are saying is ‘this is a way that a certain percentage of women tend to behave’, ‘this is something that a certain percentage of men are not good at’, etc.
Firstly, these statistical differences that we find in men’s and women’s abilities/traits/behaviours: how are we going to decide that they are intrinsic, when boys and girls are treated completely differently from birth? How are we going to separate what is biological from what is environmental? We never get the (in my opinion, utopian) situation where children are treated identically (or rather, treated all uniquely and as individuals, with absolutely no regard for gender or other such culture-laden and constrictive categories) so that we can construct such an experiment.
Secondly: If I take an arbitrary grouping – people with blonde hair vs. people who haven’t, people who had cornflakes for breakfast vs. those who didn’t – I bet I can also come up with a host of statistically significant factors. That doesn’t really mean that these two groups are ‘real’, that the members of each group actually have anything significant (in the non-statistical sense) in common with each other beyond that which initially categorized them. I remain unconvinced that we can really extrapolate beyond genetics to further characteristics.
But, thirdly, even if we can: say, we come up with a whole load of statistical stuff about people based on biological characteristics – race, gender, whatever. How do we use the information – and how useful is it? Shall we search more black guys than white when looking for a mugger because statistically it’s more likely to have been a black guy? Can you see no conflict with the interests of the individual in the use of such statistics (‘statistics’ here is interchangeable with ‘generalizations’)? (Again – my principle issue with the gender stereotyping – it inevitably works against the interests of the individual.) Are you going to tell me, for example, that the reason I am not good at manoeuvring my vehicle is because I’m a woman, based on statistics? In fact, you don’t know why I may not be good at this. It may be because I’m a woman, it may not be. On a case-by-case basis you don’t have any way of knowing how and whether gender is affecting somebody’s abilities, traits, and behaviours. On a case-by-case basis, the line of causation is not clear – speculating about causation on an individual level can only ever be conjecture, no matter what the status of the statistics. You have no way of knowing if you’re in error. In fact, what you do by referring to such statistics (even if they are accurate) is to reinforce gender roles that constrict the individual. (This urge to reinforce and streamline cultural divisions is, incidentally, exactly why we do this – not, as we convince ourselves, that we are factually correct when it comes to gender, as I go on to explain.)
And why? To reinforce and cement ideas which only need such reinforcement because they are vague, and certainly not self-evident, nor scientifically supported. Ironically it’s our sociobiological urge to create cohesive resilient group structures and identities that leads us to want to find the biological where it is not. To create a biological gender, ironically, has been to our evolutionary advantage and is, in itself, genuinely biological. We need to be aware that we all have a tendency towards making what is called in psychology the ‘fundamental attribution error’ – and we must remind ourselves of this when we feel the inclination to ascribe traits to intrinsic factors. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to ascribe characteristics to intrinsic factors mistakenly, or when we simply don’t have enough information to do so. For example: I see someone wearing a Xmas jumper – my conclusion is that he’s a geek. It may well be the case that it’s laundry day and he has nothing else to wear. In fact I simply don’t have enough information to draw conclusions, no genuine basis from which to extrapolate. Nevertheless, it is a human tendency to do so, and something which (most psychologists think) we do for evolutionary reasons (there are any number of evolutionary advantages to making a snap forced choice, even when there is not sufficient information). I would certainly argue that it comes into play in constantly streamlining and reinforcing gender division and stereotypes.
Now lets depart from these nature–nurture–type arguments, and introduce one based on philosophy, linguistics, and cultural theory.
The older I get, the more I’m seduced by structuralist and post-structuralist ideas about the extent to which we create our reality based on our cognitive schemas and vocabulary. Structuralism says that meanings of words are relational – no word can be defined in isolation of other similar words – it depends on the word’s status in a ‘paradigmatic chain’ (a set of words related in function or meaning). For example: ‘hovel, shed, hut, house, mansion, palace’. The meaning of one of these words would be altered if another was removed from the chain (didn’t exist). So: ‘hut’ and ‘shed’ are similar but subtley different – one implies something used primarily for shelter (for a security guard, say), the other primarily for storage (in a garden, for example). If either word didn’t exist, the meaning would have to be encompassed by the other word. Likewise we can define a mansion as being bigger and more grand than a house, but not as big and grand as a palace. Thus we define mansion in terms of how it relates to the words either side of it in the paradigmatic chain. This mutually defining aspect of words is even more apparent in paired opposites – no concept of ‘day’ without the paired concept of ‘night’, no concept of the feeling of ‘good’ without ‘bad’ to define against it. So, for example, the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ mainly have meaning in relation to each other – each designates the absence of the characteristics included in the other. ‘Male’ can be seen as meaning mainly ‘not female’ and vice versa. Saussure (Swiss linguist, and father of structuralism) said: “In a language there are only differences without fixed terms”.
He used a famous example of the 8.25 Geneva to Paris express train to explain this more fully. Is there anything material which gives the train its identity? Given that, each day it will have different engine, carriages, drivers, passengers, etc.? If it’s late, it won’t even leave at 8.25. It may not even be a train – we are all sadly familiar in this country with the replacement bus service! What gives it its identity is its position in a structure of differences: it comes between the 7.25 and the 9.25 – that is, its identity is purely relational.
So: language doesn’t just record or label our world – it constitutes it. Meanings are attributed by the human mind and constructed or expressed through language – it is not already contained in the thing itself. A famous example of this process would be the choice between paired alternatives like ‘terrorist’ or ‘freedom fighter’. There is no neutral or objective way of designating such a person – merely a choice of two terms which ‘construct’ that person in certain ways.
(If we, however, have the courage of our convictions in such a philosophy, the consequences are a rather radical epistemology. We must enter a universe of extreme uncertainty, since we have no access to any fixed landmark which is beyond linguistic processing, no fixed standards by which to benchmark or measure anything.)
All this pertains to the discussion on gender simply in that, people who are dogmatic about gender differences are simply failing to realize how fluid and relative any category is.
So: can you see how the ‘men are men and women are women’ argument is mind-blowingly naïve, poorly thought out, and simply doesn’t engage with the issues, let alone challenge them?
28/05/06
Gender is a cultural/sociological/psychological concept. Part of the concept of female gender, for example, will encompass biological femaleness. But it also encompasses a lot of other ideas that are culturally-specific, era-specific, geographically-specific, etc., and have no intrinsic link to sex at all. (Clearly the argument that women are predisposed to liking the colour pink, or shopping, or whatever, is not the kind of argument that will be graced with a response.) The problem comes when we try to marry these two concepts of sex and gender – we fail to make the distinction, and try to ascribe aspects of gender (something non-intrinsic, non-biological) to sex.
There are always plenty of people who are biologically one sex but fail to meet the criteria for our ideas of gender. We reserve words like ‘queer’ for them! Homophobia exists because people want to link sex and gender too closely – they are uncomfortable with, and have little tolerance for, those who would not inhabit the gender box society has prescribed for them. Humans have the tendency to want to ‘cement’ what are cultural and environmental norms by thinking about them as biological (there are various theories in psychology about this phenomenon). This then allows us to call those who would vary from those norms ‘unnatural’ (which is why I have such a problem with gender stereotypes and generalizations – it implies there is one natural and good way, and pathologizes those who would not adhere to it).
So we have men and we have women, biologically speaking. Some XXs and some XYs. What you’re trying to do is ascribe further characteristics to them based upon their genetic sex: i.e., ‘this is an XX and therefore we can further say a, b, and c about them, because that’s what we know about XXs’. But this is all statistics. What we are saying is ‘this is a way that a certain percentage of women tend to behave’, ‘this is something that a certain percentage of men are not good at’, etc.
Firstly, these statistical differences that we find in men’s and women’s abilities/traits/behaviours: how are we going to decide that they are intrinsic, when boys and girls are treated completely differently from birth? How are we going to separate what is biological from what is environmental? We never get the (in my opinion, utopian) situation where children are treated identically (or rather, treated all uniquely and as individuals, with absolutely no regard for gender or other such culture-laden and constrictive categories) so that we can construct such an experiment.
Secondly: If I take an arbitrary grouping – people with blonde hair vs. people who haven’t, people who had cornflakes for breakfast vs. those who didn’t – I bet I can also come up with a host of statistically significant factors. That doesn’t really mean that these two groups are ‘real’, that the members of each group actually have anything significant (in the non-statistical sense) in common with each other beyond that which initially categorized them. I remain unconvinced that we can really extrapolate beyond genetics to further characteristics.
But, thirdly, even if we can: say, we come up with a whole load of statistical stuff about people based on biological characteristics – race, gender, whatever. How do we use the information – and how useful is it? Shall we search more black guys than white when looking for a mugger because statistically it’s more likely to have been a black guy? Can you see no conflict with the interests of the individual in the use of such statistics (‘statistics’ here is interchangeable with ‘generalizations’)? (Again – my principle issue with the gender stereotyping – it inevitably works against the interests of the individual.) Are you going to tell me, for example, that the reason I am not good at manoeuvring my vehicle is because I’m a woman, based on statistics? In fact, you don’t know why I may not be good at this. It may be because I’m a woman, it may not be. On a case-by-case basis you don’t have any way of knowing how and whether gender is affecting somebody’s abilities, traits, and behaviours. On a case-by-case basis, the line of causation is not clear – speculating about causation on an individual level can only ever be conjecture, no matter what the status of the statistics. You have no way of knowing if you’re in error. In fact, what you do by referring to such statistics (even if they are accurate) is to reinforce gender roles that constrict the individual. (This urge to reinforce and streamline cultural divisions is, incidentally, exactly why we do this – not, as we convince ourselves, that we are factually correct when it comes to gender, as I go on to explain.)
And why? To reinforce and cement ideas which only need such reinforcement because they are vague, and certainly not self-evident, nor scientifically supported. Ironically it’s our sociobiological urge to create cohesive resilient group structures and identities that leads us to want to find the biological where it is not. To create a biological gender, ironically, has been to our evolutionary advantage and is, in itself, genuinely biological. We need to be aware that we all have a tendency towards making what is called in psychology the ‘fundamental attribution error’ – and we must remind ourselves of this when we feel the inclination to ascribe traits to intrinsic factors. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to ascribe characteristics to intrinsic factors mistakenly, or when we simply don’t have enough information to do so. For example: I see someone wearing a Xmas jumper – my conclusion is that he’s a geek. It may well be the case that it’s laundry day and he has nothing else to wear. In fact I simply don’t have enough information to draw conclusions, no genuine basis from which to extrapolate. Nevertheless, it is a human tendency to do so, and something which (most psychologists think) we do for evolutionary reasons (there are any number of evolutionary advantages to making a snap forced choice, even when there is not sufficient information). I would certainly argue that it comes into play in constantly streamlining and reinforcing gender division and stereotypes.
Now lets depart from these nature–nurture–type arguments, and introduce one based on philosophy, linguistics, and cultural theory.
The older I get, the more I’m seduced by structuralist and post-structuralist ideas about the extent to which we create our reality based on our cognitive schemas and vocabulary. Structuralism says that meanings of words are relational – no word can be defined in isolation of other similar words – it depends on the word’s status in a ‘paradigmatic chain’ (a set of words related in function or meaning). For example: ‘hovel, shed, hut, house, mansion, palace’. The meaning of one of these words would be altered if another was removed from the chain (didn’t exist). So: ‘hut’ and ‘shed’ are similar but subtley different – one implies something used primarily for shelter (for a security guard, say), the other primarily for storage (in a garden, for example). If either word didn’t exist, the meaning would have to be encompassed by the other word. Likewise we can define a mansion as being bigger and more grand than a house, but not as big and grand as a palace. Thus we define mansion in terms of how it relates to the words either side of it in the paradigmatic chain. This mutually defining aspect of words is even more apparent in paired opposites – no concept of ‘day’ without the paired concept of ‘night’, no concept of the feeling of ‘good’ without ‘bad’ to define against it. So, for example, the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ mainly have meaning in relation to each other – each designates the absence of the characteristics included in the other. ‘Male’ can be seen as meaning mainly ‘not female’ and vice versa. Saussure (Swiss linguist, and father of structuralism) said: “In a language there are only differences without fixed terms”.
He used a famous example of the 8.25 Geneva to Paris express train to explain this more fully. Is there anything material which gives the train its identity? Given that, each day it will have different engine, carriages, drivers, passengers, etc.? If it’s late, it won’t even leave at 8.25. It may not even be a train – we are all sadly familiar in this country with the replacement bus service! What gives it its identity is its position in a structure of differences: it comes between the 7.25 and the 9.25 – that is, its identity is purely relational.
So: language doesn’t just record or label our world – it constitutes it. Meanings are attributed by the human mind and constructed or expressed through language – it is not already contained in the thing itself. A famous example of this process would be the choice between paired alternatives like ‘terrorist’ or ‘freedom fighter’. There is no neutral or objective way of designating such a person – merely a choice of two terms which ‘construct’ that person in certain ways.
(If we, however, have the courage of our convictions in such a philosophy, the consequences are a rather radical epistemology. We must enter a universe of extreme uncertainty, since we have no access to any fixed landmark which is beyond linguistic processing, no fixed standards by which to benchmark or measure anything.)
All this pertains to the discussion on gender simply in that, people who are dogmatic about gender differences are simply failing to realize how fluid and relative any category is.
So: can you see how the ‘men are men and women are women’ argument is mind-blowingly naïve, poorly thought out, and simply doesn’t engage with the issues, let alone challenge them?
28/05/06
The Failure of Feminism in Contemporary British and American Society
“I can’t stand whingeing women”1. I find it disappointing that this was the response of a successful female MP upon being asked whether it was difficult being a woman in the male-dominated sphere of British politics. However, I think few people today would be surprised by this attitude. More and more it is socially unacceptable to acknowledge that opportunities for women still do not match those for men, let alone admit to being a feminist. Indeed, feminism is often something that embarrasses women, particularly young women, many of whom feel that there is genuinely no gender inequality in contemporary society, and hence no effort to be made. So deceived are people that we live in a society of equal opportunity that anyone who questions this is an embarrassment; a ‘whingeing’ feminist. We have been fooled in much the same way that the rhetoric of the American dream has duped the U.S.: it is believed that everyone has equal opportunity in the land of the free. I would argue that subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) it is widely accepted there that anyone who lives in poverty, or who hasn’t achieved the middle-class ideal, has only themselves to blame. (This is revealed, for example, in the collective attitude towards the homeless, who are referred to as ‘bums’ – ‘bumming’ is a term both for borrowing without returning [to bum a cigarette] and social loafing [bumming around]). A fairly unforgiving attitude may be inferred from this terminology.) In the same way, if Western society is indeed a level playing field, yet men still reside at the top of most professions (there are only two female CEOs of FTSE 100 companies), then we must come to the conclusion that women are intrinsically inferior. I think most of us, whether feminists or no, would reject that; hence we must accept that we still live in an overwhelmingly gender-biased culture.
So why is it so taboo to voice this? Are we to accept injustice as part of our lot, with silent dignity and the proverbial British upper lip? Is it now gracious to turn a blind eye to oppression and inequality? Perhaps this holds the key – it is considered womanly to be ‘gracious’ and, more to the point, decidedly unwomanly to be ungracious. To complain about injustice is certainly not gracious. Women and men alike are conditioned to believe that women are innately passive. In order for a woman to protest this limiting categorization she must first shun her conditioning and disbelieve it. Furthermore, the rest of society must shun their conditioning to listen and take her seriously. What happens in reality is that protestations about women’s lot somehow ‘jar’ because of the fundamental clash the act of protest has with our deeply-inured ideas about gender, and are dismissed or ignored as something slightly undignified or even fanatical. Further to this, feminism simply threatens the status quo in general by challenging it – something that people find psychologically very difficult to cope with. It is even more of a threat to those who are most influential; those at the top: if society is unequal, and they thrive, then it is a short step to the conclusion that they are at fault (although not a step I would necessarily take). The psychological need to protect themselves from such culpability is a compelling reason to ‘fail’ to see truth. (I do not think that in most cases white middle-class men have a comprehensive apprehension of the extent to which the balance is tipped in their favour and consciously conspire to keep it that way, as is sometimes intimated.)
Some women are not only embarrassed by feminism, but feel it has actively done them a disservice by cultivating an orthodoxy by which it is necessary for women to have a career if they want to be considered successful. As having a family is also, for most, desirable, the upshot of the feminist movement has been to increase the pressure on women. It is a common trope in the epicentres of pop-psychology – women’s magazines and daytime television – to devote much discussion to the expectations placed on women to be ‘superwomen’ or ‘supermums’. Furthermore, as the emancipated woman is thus far proving to be less attractive to the un-emancipated man, feminism is also held responsible for the loneliness of some women – many believe that there is an epidemic of unhappily single women (the Bridget Jones phenomenon) and that this is women’s own fault for encroaching on elements of what has traditionally been the male role. One way of dealing with this problem has been to reject the progress made thus far. Many women pretend to be less independent and successful than they really are because (apparently) women’s success emasculates men. In America, The Rules by Ellen Fein and Shelley Schneider2 has become the definitive women’s guide to dating. It takes a classic sexist ‘men are men, women are women’ stance, advising women to always allow men to pay for meals, not to ask men to dance, etc.
Of course, the real reason why it is so hard to be a woman in today’s Western society is because that society is still as male-orientated as it is dominated by Judeo-Christian values. I would argue that the changes women have seen thus far are largely pragmatic in nature – for example, enfranchisement, the right to own property, employment legislation etc. – so, in a sense, superficial. The greatest hurdle – that of society’s collective attitude towards gender roles – has yet to be tackled. Women are still seen as essentially passive, are required to uphold a standard of appearance, etc. They have taken on new roles, whilst retaining all the pressures of their old ones; hence the current difficulties. I think it is very sad that because we have not yet made the giant leaps necessary such anti-progressive strategies as The Rules have been adopted. As is often the case when achieving something that is worthwhile, the interim stage is a tough one, but it is extremely short-sighted to give up at that point. Whilst it is true that women moving in on male territory can threaten men, it also paves the way for men to break free of their gender stereotypes and behave in ways more traditionally associated with the female role – for example, taking a more proactive part in child-rearing is be a great pleasure for many men. It is often overlooked that feminism can be beneficial to men as well, allowing them greater liberty also. This puts ‘emasculation’ in a positive light.
It is interesting to note that many rejectors of feminism, whilst denying being feminist, actually espouse some feminist tenets. Without knowing really what it is, or that it is a philosophy to which they do in part subscribe, they reject it outright because of its currently unfashionable status. For example, I think it would be uncontroversial to assert that most people in our society, both male and female, believe men and women (however separate their skills are perceived to be) are ‘equal’ (in some undefined way) and as such deserving of equal rights and opportunities. Few under forty claim that they expect the female in (heterosexual) relationships to bear the significant proportion of responsibility for household tasks or cooking. Neither do I think that most regard women as less intelligent or less capable. However, I believe in many individuals there is some tension between the lofty egalitarian ideologies that are held abstractly, and the more ‘concrete’ beliefs that lie behind the plethora of sexist behaviour we observe moment to moment. This is what I call ‘passive sexism’. Whilst aggressive sexism no doubt thrives as well (bum-slapping bosses alas cannot yet be consigned to the museum of quaint tradition), this conduct is so patently unreasonable as not to be a threat – there is no chance that society will be insidiously subverted. Passive sexism, however, is proving remarkably tricky to unseat. Whilst it is difficult to defend the weight of domestic chores being the woman’s responsibility when both partners have full-time jobs, in reality, this traditional domestic arrangement remains predominant. Similarly, whilst it may be regarded as unfair by many that women’s social status is still dependent upon their physical attributes, this too shows little sign of changing. Again, this is down to individual psychology and the conviction with which we hold the validity of the traditional gender characteristics. Incidentally, I don’t think the tension between what I refer to as concrete and abstract belief is peculiar to the issue of sexism – there often appears to be a rift between people’s moral convictions and their behaviour: for example, I cannot think many would condone sweatshop manufacturing and child labour, yet despite much publicity of the fair-trade issue, most people perpetuate it with their consumption habits.
The decline of feminism can also be attributed to the worrying general trend towards anti-liberalism, currently enjoying mainstream status in the U.S. (where ‘liberalism’ is now a dirty word, often prefixed by ‘bleeding heart’) and becoming increasingly acceptable here (much to the delight of contributors to the Telegraph letters page, in which ‘liberalism’ is invariably preceded by the epithet ‘woolly’). Dare to criticize the middle-class middle-aged white male and one is dismissed with contempt as PC. Indeed, the backlash against political correctness is a fascinating microcosm of the anti-liberal phenomenon. Much like feminism, the term ‘political correctness’ has been subverted by conservatives to mean something pejorative. To be politically correct is to avoid using language that will offend and (more controversially) to change terminology in which prejudice is inherent. Like feminism, in reality this is a practice which most of us adopt (although unlike feminism, it is adopted in a very practical way) – few would find it acceptable to employ the terms ‘nigger’ or ‘Kraut’ (I acknowledge that the former has recently been reclaimed by the black community, much as the term ‘suffragette’ [initially a snide anti-suffrage moniker] was by women and ‘queer’ by homosexuals). The avoidance of such terminology is political correctness in action, as is avoiding linguistic stereotyping and racist or homophobic jokes. (It is interesting to note how much better the anti-racism and gay-rights movements have fared compared to feminism – whilst the stereotyping of ethnic minorities and homosexuals is now taboo, as is telling jokes at their expense, sexist jokes are still prevalent and gender stereotyping remains the norm.) Political correctness also extends to linguistic engineering; the adulterating of innately prejudiced terminology: for example, where the word ‘mankind’ would be employed, the term ‘humankind’ might be substituted. The problem here is, of course, that people differ greatly on their ideas of what is prejudiced. Often perceived as a kind of linguistic fascism, this is the aspect of political correctness most often pounced on and decried: “McCarthyism to counteract imagined totalitarianism”3.
Political correctness has now come to be used in a context outwith language simply pertaining to self-consciously democratic policies. This plays right into the hands of conservatives, as it has become a way to demean those who actively practise non-prejudice. “Something is rotten in the United States of America and it threatens the whole basis of that great society’s role as a protector of the free world and inspiration for those who yearn to be free. American politics is being corrupted and diminished by the doctrine of Political Correctness which demands rigid adherence to the political attitudes and social mores of the liberal-left, and which exhibits a malevolent intolerance to anybody who dares not to comply with them.”4 I, for one, do not wish to be ‘tolerant’ of, for example, racism. Do we allow atrocities to be committed because to forbid them infringes someone’s right to commit them? The couching of anti-political-correctness in the terminology of libertarianism is a classic ploy. There is a line between protecting decency and infringing civil rights, and accusing political correctness of crossing it is a cheap shot. The anti-political-correctness movement provides a refuge for racists and sexists and, like the new sanitized face of the BNP, allows them to appear reasonable. I’m not an enthusiastic advocate of linguistic engineering, but I object far more to the objectors; those who are vociferously against it. Find me a PC objector and I will point you out a bigot. Arguably there is a silly element to political correctness, and where the line is to be drawn between justified and silly is a moot point. However, to use it as an excuse to condone the unjustifiable is outrageous.
Some cultural commentators5 believe the decline of feminism to be symptomatic of increasing political apathy. I don’t think this is a particularly helpful diagnosis because this only shifts the focus of the problem (what causes the political apathy?). Whilst they are related, it seems to me that both are effects of the same cause: a complacent faith in the political and corporate establishment. People are dimly aware that injustices still exist, but perceive them to be anomalies not indicative of a problem with the system. In fact, there is a delusion that democracy has all but been fully realized in 21st century Anglo-American society, (despite history teaching us that this is highly unlikely to be the case). So why is this conviction held? Because it has been ‘sold’ to us by the increasingly honed PR machines of the political and corporate establishment.
PR was invented by Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, who was employed by government and corporations to create and manipulate consumers. Using Freud’s insights, he designed stunts and campaigns to appeal to the subconscious, manipulating people by bypassing their rational minds. (Freud supported the creation of consumer society because he believed that within the subconscious lurked dangerous urges, and the creation of consumer zombies would be an effective method of social control.) Psychology was (and still is) cynically used to control the masses. This is still not seen as undemocratic or undermining of individuality. One early job saw Bernays contracted by a conglomerate of America’s most powerful businesses, including General Motors, to persuade people that without capitalism, democracy was not possible, and that business and not politicians were responsible for the great modern America. This discredited Roosevelt’s government whose socialist New Deal was costing corporate America a great deal of revenue. So began the corporate takeover. From the beginning PR was also used to whitewash corporate-political atrocities, such as the American bombing of Guatemala. In the early ‘50s, most of Guatemala was owned by United Fruits. The democratically elected government made it their policy to reclaim the land. United Fruits hired Bernays, who created a communist threat to democracy and American values (in fact, the Guatemalan government was democratic socialist and had no connection to Moscow). Whilst Bernays was in Guatemala there was an anti-American demonstration; many think he staged it. He also set up a false news agency, releasing the fabrication that Moscow was using Guatemala as part of an invasion plan – a soviet outpost in New Orleans’s backyard. The CIA were instructed to organize a coup. They trained soldiers and waged a terror campaign that included dropping bombs. Meanwhile Bernays had convinced America that this was a freedom crusade. In 1954 the elected president fled and a stooge favourably inclined towards United Fruits was installed in his place. Marxist literature was planted and then ‘found’. It was said that there would now be “prosperity and liberty” for the people. This was an instance pure fascism, in the name of consumerism.
I cite these examples to show that even during its first few stumbling steps, PR was a breathtakingly effective tool for social control. Today, this industry has come a long way and its skills have had fifty years and billions of dollars of fine-tuning. Capitalism has established a strangle-hold and PR gurus excel at convincing people there is no crisis, whatever the magnitude of a problem (even if it means warmongering to deflect attention from domestic shortcomings – there’s nothing like xenophobia to unite people). Whilst people are aware of political glibness they remain apathetic for two reasons. Firstly many feel unrepresented by the increasingly inappropriate, but self-perpetuating two-party system in both Britain and America. The parties have become all but indistinguishable in policies, which discourages people from voting. If no party represents your values, and neither varies to any great degree from the other, then not voting is eminently understandable. It has been established that in a two-party system, many will vote with their allegiances, no matter what the campaign platforms. The 1992 Clinton campaign in the U.S. was the first in which the majority of policies were tailored to appeal only to a very small minority – the swing voters. Consequently non-issues, such as seatbelts on school buses, became huge campaign platforms because this pacified a particular (in this case, middle class, suburban) swing-vote demographic. Of course, the prominence of such issues is bewildering to the majority of voters, who don’t care about school buses, and is the other reason for low election turn-out. (In Britain, Blair’s government has taken this even further, not only using this tactic to gain power, but to maintain their popularity once election victory has been achieved. Endless spin fronts nothing but a vacuum where substantive policy used to be.)
In short, as a result of increasingly sophisticated methods of social control using public relations, we have become greater consumers, politically apathetic, and convinced that no crisis need ever be responded to: zombified. I believe the decline of feminism can be attributed in large part to the fact that we are now virtually incapable of independent anti-establishment thought. Whilst Tony Blair smiles at us from under an expensive suit, nobody will believe that anything can really be wrong with our society. Nobody thinks that important-looking seemingly-capable white men in suits will really do anything that bad. Much as people are unenamoured of our political parties and system, deep down they actually have an unshakable faith in the corporate, political, and cultural establishment. This is evidenced by society’s reaction to those who demur: the feminists, the environmentalists, the anti-capitalists, and so on, are treated as fanatics whose opinions are invalid by virtue of their non-adherence to the socio-cultural norms. It has always been the case that to question the establishment has been psychologically difficult for humans as a result of our overwhelming herding instinct. As Einstein, a young upstart who dared to question Newton, said “the foolish faith in authority is the enemy of truth”: humanity’s downfall is the ease with which we accept the status quo, and our disinclination to question it. However, the problem is much worse now than in Einstein’s day, when the PR beast had not yet reared its ugly head.
Again, we come back to the weakness of the human mind as being the real enemy of feminism and, indeed, all revolutionary movements. However, it must be noted that society does change, and cultural norms have evolved over time. Such changes always begin with a minority who eventually exert what is called ‘minority influence’ upon the majority. Certain factors affect the extent and speed of this influence or indeed dictate whether there is influence or no, for example, the within-group consistency of the minority, and the consistency over time of the minority position. Lack of consistency may be a problem in the case of feminism (and tends to be a problem in general with left-wing philosophies) as there are many schools of thought splintering from the central idea, some of which have changed over the decades. However I think there is more to the failure of the educated minority to promote change in the case of feminism. Let us compare the relative success of the anti-racism movement. One of the catalysts in combating slavery was when black people adopted some of the cultural traditions of white people (e.g., becoming Christian)6, thus highlighting for the whites their similarities. Of course, it is highly undesirable for a culture to be sacrificed in order that it might be assimilated without prejudice into another culture, but as an interim (if unfortunate) step it could be considered a success in the battle for racial equality. Similarly what has thus far been achieved by feminism is showcasing women’s ability to do things that it was formerly considered only men could do. The main causes of racism are ignorance, unfamiliarity, and fear. After the initial hurdle of proving some common ground, this can (and in many cases has been) combated – integration and education dispel ignorance and unfamiliarity, and with them departs fear. However, sexism is not perpetuated by the same factors, but rather by cultural transference. Where ignorance can be educated away, social construct is much harder to demolish, paradoxically because of its arbitrary nature. The gender gulf is greatly exaggerated and upheld in almost all cultures. The extent of the intrinsic gender gap is a matter for science and debate, however I would contend it that clearly it is minimal, and furthermore, rendered irrelevant in the face of individual differences, which are significant. I think that in the case of the gender difference, the lady protests too much (or rather, society protests the lady too much). In order to perpetuate what is essentially an arbitrary categorization (like nationality and most other in-group/out-group distinctions) a rigid and exaggerated gender stereotype has evolved.
There is a social psychological phenomenon called the fundamental attribution error, whereby people are overinclined to attribute the behaviour of another to their enduring characteristics rather than to external circumstance. For example, in one experiment7 students were given some pro-Castro and anti-Castro essays to read and informed that the authors had been told to write pro- or anti-Castro essays respectively. They were then asked to judge the real attitude of the author. It was thought that the evidence of the essay content would be discounted; however, this was not the case. The subjects seemed to attribute the essays’ contents to the disposition of the authors, despite convincing evidence that in fact situational factors were predominant. I think there is some similarity between this phenomenon and the mechanism employed to perpetuate gender stereotypes in that this also relies on an error of attribution. The gender element as a causative factor is constantly overemphasized. For example, if a man is a bad driver, then he is just a bad driver, yet if the bad driver is a woman, then it is invariably inferred that she is a bad driver because she is a women (when in reality her bad driving probably has very little to do with her gender status). Although the parallel falls down by way of the characteristic of bad driving also being an internal factor, I believe the overattribution of gender factors is another sort of consistent attribution error. In this manner people are brainwashed by their gender conditioning, which, unlike the causes of racism, is self-perpetuating.
It seems to me that the failure of the feminist ethos to affect real social change boils down to the weakness of human psychology. The predominance of spin in today’s society discourages individual thought, reinforcing an inherent psychological flaw: our unwillingness to challenge the orthodoxy. Fundamentally what oppresses women is the cultural legacy of gender conditioning, something that has thus far proved impervious to intellectual attack. Inculcation of gender stereotypes is self-perpetuating – we must all create ourselves in such a fashion that we thrive, and we can only thrive by adhering to the cultural norms. We may have evolved perfect sociobiological tools for ensuring group survival on the Serengeti ten thousand years ago, but for a truly egalitarian society we are less than equipped. We must examine the very mechanics by which this cultural transmission is perpetuated, which may or may not involve some form of instinctive attribution error. Feminism currently has a poor public image, being perceived as largely irrelevant, embarrassing, or even damaging because its achievements thus far have arguably made life in the short term more difficult for women. This, along with the modern trope of anti-liberalism means that feminism is unlikely to affect change in the near future.
1Former shadow-home-secretary Ann Widdecombe on BBC television’s Parkinson, 2002.
2 1995, Warner Books.
3 Jasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent, 11 Aug 1993
4 Sunday Times (20th October 1991)
5 e.g., Noreena Hertz in The Silent Takeover, William Heinemann, 2001
6 See The Interesting Narrative, Olaudah Equiano, 1789.
04/01/03
So why is it so taboo to voice this? Are we to accept injustice as part of our lot, with silent dignity and the proverbial British upper lip? Is it now gracious to turn a blind eye to oppression and inequality? Perhaps this holds the key – it is considered womanly to be ‘gracious’ and, more to the point, decidedly unwomanly to be ungracious. To complain about injustice is certainly not gracious. Women and men alike are conditioned to believe that women are innately passive. In order for a woman to protest this limiting categorization she must first shun her conditioning and disbelieve it. Furthermore, the rest of society must shun their conditioning to listen and take her seriously. What happens in reality is that protestations about women’s lot somehow ‘jar’ because of the fundamental clash the act of protest has with our deeply-inured ideas about gender, and are dismissed or ignored as something slightly undignified or even fanatical. Further to this, feminism simply threatens the status quo in general by challenging it – something that people find psychologically very difficult to cope with. It is even more of a threat to those who are most influential; those at the top: if society is unequal, and they thrive, then it is a short step to the conclusion that they are at fault (although not a step I would necessarily take). The psychological need to protect themselves from such culpability is a compelling reason to ‘fail’ to see truth. (I do not think that in most cases white middle-class men have a comprehensive apprehension of the extent to which the balance is tipped in their favour and consciously conspire to keep it that way, as is sometimes intimated.)
Some women are not only embarrassed by feminism, but feel it has actively done them a disservice by cultivating an orthodoxy by which it is necessary for women to have a career if they want to be considered successful. As having a family is also, for most, desirable, the upshot of the feminist movement has been to increase the pressure on women. It is a common trope in the epicentres of pop-psychology – women’s magazines and daytime television – to devote much discussion to the expectations placed on women to be ‘superwomen’ or ‘supermums’. Furthermore, as the emancipated woman is thus far proving to be less attractive to the un-emancipated man, feminism is also held responsible for the loneliness of some women – many believe that there is an epidemic of unhappily single women (the Bridget Jones phenomenon) and that this is women’s own fault for encroaching on elements of what has traditionally been the male role. One way of dealing with this problem has been to reject the progress made thus far. Many women pretend to be less independent and successful than they really are because (apparently) women’s success emasculates men. In America, The Rules by Ellen Fein and Shelley Schneider2 has become the definitive women’s guide to dating. It takes a classic sexist ‘men are men, women are women’ stance, advising women to always allow men to pay for meals, not to ask men to dance, etc.
Of course, the real reason why it is so hard to be a woman in today’s Western society is because that society is still as male-orientated as it is dominated by Judeo-Christian values. I would argue that the changes women have seen thus far are largely pragmatic in nature – for example, enfranchisement, the right to own property, employment legislation etc. – so, in a sense, superficial. The greatest hurdle – that of society’s collective attitude towards gender roles – has yet to be tackled. Women are still seen as essentially passive, are required to uphold a standard of appearance, etc. They have taken on new roles, whilst retaining all the pressures of their old ones; hence the current difficulties. I think it is very sad that because we have not yet made the giant leaps necessary such anti-progressive strategies as The Rules have been adopted. As is often the case when achieving something that is worthwhile, the interim stage is a tough one, but it is extremely short-sighted to give up at that point. Whilst it is true that women moving in on male territory can threaten men, it also paves the way for men to break free of their gender stereotypes and behave in ways more traditionally associated with the female role – for example, taking a more proactive part in child-rearing is be a great pleasure for many men. It is often overlooked that feminism can be beneficial to men as well, allowing them greater liberty also. This puts ‘emasculation’ in a positive light.
It is interesting to note that many rejectors of feminism, whilst denying being feminist, actually espouse some feminist tenets. Without knowing really what it is, or that it is a philosophy to which they do in part subscribe, they reject it outright because of its currently unfashionable status. For example, I think it would be uncontroversial to assert that most people in our society, both male and female, believe men and women (however separate their skills are perceived to be) are ‘equal’ (in some undefined way) and as such deserving of equal rights and opportunities. Few under forty claim that they expect the female in (heterosexual) relationships to bear the significant proportion of responsibility for household tasks or cooking. Neither do I think that most regard women as less intelligent or less capable. However, I believe in many individuals there is some tension between the lofty egalitarian ideologies that are held abstractly, and the more ‘concrete’ beliefs that lie behind the plethora of sexist behaviour we observe moment to moment. This is what I call ‘passive sexism’. Whilst aggressive sexism no doubt thrives as well (bum-slapping bosses alas cannot yet be consigned to the museum of quaint tradition), this conduct is so patently unreasonable as not to be a threat – there is no chance that society will be insidiously subverted. Passive sexism, however, is proving remarkably tricky to unseat. Whilst it is difficult to defend the weight of domestic chores being the woman’s responsibility when both partners have full-time jobs, in reality, this traditional domestic arrangement remains predominant. Similarly, whilst it may be regarded as unfair by many that women’s social status is still dependent upon their physical attributes, this too shows little sign of changing. Again, this is down to individual psychology and the conviction with which we hold the validity of the traditional gender characteristics. Incidentally, I don’t think the tension between what I refer to as concrete and abstract belief is peculiar to the issue of sexism – there often appears to be a rift between people’s moral convictions and their behaviour: for example, I cannot think many would condone sweatshop manufacturing and child labour, yet despite much publicity of the fair-trade issue, most people perpetuate it with their consumption habits.
The decline of feminism can also be attributed to the worrying general trend towards anti-liberalism, currently enjoying mainstream status in the U.S. (where ‘liberalism’ is now a dirty word, often prefixed by ‘bleeding heart’) and becoming increasingly acceptable here (much to the delight of contributors to the Telegraph letters page, in which ‘liberalism’ is invariably preceded by the epithet ‘woolly’). Dare to criticize the middle-class middle-aged white male and one is dismissed with contempt as PC. Indeed, the backlash against political correctness is a fascinating microcosm of the anti-liberal phenomenon. Much like feminism, the term ‘political correctness’ has been subverted by conservatives to mean something pejorative. To be politically correct is to avoid using language that will offend and (more controversially) to change terminology in which prejudice is inherent. Like feminism, in reality this is a practice which most of us adopt (although unlike feminism, it is adopted in a very practical way) – few would find it acceptable to employ the terms ‘nigger’ or ‘Kraut’ (I acknowledge that the former has recently been reclaimed by the black community, much as the term ‘suffragette’ [initially a snide anti-suffrage moniker] was by women and ‘queer’ by homosexuals). The avoidance of such terminology is political correctness in action, as is avoiding linguistic stereotyping and racist or homophobic jokes. (It is interesting to note how much better the anti-racism and gay-rights movements have fared compared to feminism – whilst the stereotyping of ethnic minorities and homosexuals is now taboo, as is telling jokes at their expense, sexist jokes are still prevalent and gender stereotyping remains the norm.) Political correctness also extends to linguistic engineering; the adulterating of innately prejudiced terminology: for example, where the word ‘mankind’ would be employed, the term ‘humankind’ might be substituted. The problem here is, of course, that people differ greatly on their ideas of what is prejudiced. Often perceived as a kind of linguistic fascism, this is the aspect of political correctness most often pounced on and decried: “McCarthyism to counteract imagined totalitarianism”3.
Political correctness has now come to be used in a context outwith language simply pertaining to self-consciously democratic policies. This plays right into the hands of conservatives, as it has become a way to demean those who actively practise non-prejudice. “Something is rotten in the United States of America and it threatens the whole basis of that great society’s role as a protector of the free world and inspiration for those who yearn to be free. American politics is being corrupted and diminished by the doctrine of Political Correctness which demands rigid adherence to the political attitudes and social mores of the liberal-left, and which exhibits a malevolent intolerance to anybody who dares not to comply with them.”4 I, for one, do not wish to be ‘tolerant’ of, for example, racism. Do we allow atrocities to be committed because to forbid them infringes someone’s right to commit them? The couching of anti-political-correctness in the terminology of libertarianism is a classic ploy. There is a line between protecting decency and infringing civil rights, and accusing political correctness of crossing it is a cheap shot. The anti-political-correctness movement provides a refuge for racists and sexists and, like the new sanitized face of the BNP, allows them to appear reasonable. I’m not an enthusiastic advocate of linguistic engineering, but I object far more to the objectors; those who are vociferously against it. Find me a PC objector and I will point you out a bigot. Arguably there is a silly element to political correctness, and where the line is to be drawn between justified and silly is a moot point. However, to use it as an excuse to condone the unjustifiable is outrageous.
Some cultural commentators5 believe the decline of feminism to be symptomatic of increasing political apathy. I don’t think this is a particularly helpful diagnosis because this only shifts the focus of the problem (what causes the political apathy?). Whilst they are related, it seems to me that both are effects of the same cause: a complacent faith in the political and corporate establishment. People are dimly aware that injustices still exist, but perceive them to be anomalies not indicative of a problem with the system. In fact, there is a delusion that democracy has all but been fully realized in 21st century Anglo-American society, (despite history teaching us that this is highly unlikely to be the case). So why is this conviction held? Because it has been ‘sold’ to us by the increasingly honed PR machines of the political and corporate establishment.
PR was invented by Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, who was employed by government and corporations to create and manipulate consumers. Using Freud’s insights, he designed stunts and campaigns to appeal to the subconscious, manipulating people by bypassing their rational minds. (Freud supported the creation of consumer society because he believed that within the subconscious lurked dangerous urges, and the creation of consumer zombies would be an effective method of social control.) Psychology was (and still is) cynically used to control the masses. This is still not seen as undemocratic or undermining of individuality. One early job saw Bernays contracted by a conglomerate of America’s most powerful businesses, including General Motors, to persuade people that without capitalism, democracy was not possible, and that business and not politicians were responsible for the great modern America. This discredited Roosevelt’s government whose socialist New Deal was costing corporate America a great deal of revenue. So began the corporate takeover. From the beginning PR was also used to whitewash corporate-political atrocities, such as the American bombing of Guatemala. In the early ‘50s, most of Guatemala was owned by United Fruits. The democratically elected government made it their policy to reclaim the land. United Fruits hired Bernays, who created a communist threat to democracy and American values (in fact, the Guatemalan government was democratic socialist and had no connection to Moscow). Whilst Bernays was in Guatemala there was an anti-American demonstration; many think he staged it. He also set up a false news agency, releasing the fabrication that Moscow was using Guatemala as part of an invasion plan – a soviet outpost in New Orleans’s backyard. The CIA were instructed to organize a coup. They trained soldiers and waged a terror campaign that included dropping bombs. Meanwhile Bernays had convinced America that this was a freedom crusade. In 1954 the elected president fled and a stooge favourably inclined towards United Fruits was installed in his place. Marxist literature was planted and then ‘found’. It was said that there would now be “prosperity and liberty” for the people. This was an instance pure fascism, in the name of consumerism.
I cite these examples to show that even during its first few stumbling steps, PR was a breathtakingly effective tool for social control. Today, this industry has come a long way and its skills have had fifty years and billions of dollars of fine-tuning. Capitalism has established a strangle-hold and PR gurus excel at convincing people there is no crisis, whatever the magnitude of a problem (even if it means warmongering to deflect attention from domestic shortcomings – there’s nothing like xenophobia to unite people). Whilst people are aware of political glibness they remain apathetic for two reasons. Firstly many feel unrepresented by the increasingly inappropriate, but self-perpetuating two-party system in both Britain and America. The parties have become all but indistinguishable in policies, which discourages people from voting. If no party represents your values, and neither varies to any great degree from the other, then not voting is eminently understandable. It has been established that in a two-party system, many will vote with their allegiances, no matter what the campaign platforms. The 1992 Clinton campaign in the U.S. was the first in which the majority of policies were tailored to appeal only to a very small minority – the swing voters. Consequently non-issues, such as seatbelts on school buses, became huge campaign platforms because this pacified a particular (in this case, middle class, suburban) swing-vote demographic. Of course, the prominence of such issues is bewildering to the majority of voters, who don’t care about school buses, and is the other reason for low election turn-out. (In Britain, Blair’s government has taken this even further, not only using this tactic to gain power, but to maintain their popularity once election victory has been achieved. Endless spin fronts nothing but a vacuum where substantive policy used to be.)
In short, as a result of increasingly sophisticated methods of social control using public relations, we have become greater consumers, politically apathetic, and convinced that no crisis need ever be responded to: zombified. I believe the decline of feminism can be attributed in large part to the fact that we are now virtually incapable of independent anti-establishment thought. Whilst Tony Blair smiles at us from under an expensive suit, nobody will believe that anything can really be wrong with our society. Nobody thinks that important-looking seemingly-capable white men in suits will really do anything that bad. Much as people are unenamoured of our political parties and system, deep down they actually have an unshakable faith in the corporate, political, and cultural establishment. This is evidenced by society’s reaction to those who demur: the feminists, the environmentalists, the anti-capitalists, and so on, are treated as fanatics whose opinions are invalid by virtue of their non-adherence to the socio-cultural norms. It has always been the case that to question the establishment has been psychologically difficult for humans as a result of our overwhelming herding instinct. As Einstein, a young upstart who dared to question Newton, said “the foolish faith in authority is the enemy of truth”: humanity’s downfall is the ease with which we accept the status quo, and our disinclination to question it. However, the problem is much worse now than in Einstein’s day, when the PR beast had not yet reared its ugly head.
Again, we come back to the weakness of the human mind as being the real enemy of feminism and, indeed, all revolutionary movements. However, it must be noted that society does change, and cultural norms have evolved over time. Such changes always begin with a minority who eventually exert what is called ‘minority influence’ upon the majority. Certain factors affect the extent and speed of this influence or indeed dictate whether there is influence or no, for example, the within-group consistency of the minority, and the consistency over time of the minority position. Lack of consistency may be a problem in the case of feminism (and tends to be a problem in general with left-wing philosophies) as there are many schools of thought splintering from the central idea, some of which have changed over the decades. However I think there is more to the failure of the educated minority to promote change in the case of feminism. Let us compare the relative success of the anti-racism movement. One of the catalysts in combating slavery was when black people adopted some of the cultural traditions of white people (e.g., becoming Christian)6, thus highlighting for the whites their similarities. Of course, it is highly undesirable for a culture to be sacrificed in order that it might be assimilated without prejudice into another culture, but as an interim (if unfortunate) step it could be considered a success in the battle for racial equality. Similarly what has thus far been achieved by feminism is showcasing women’s ability to do things that it was formerly considered only men could do. The main causes of racism are ignorance, unfamiliarity, and fear. After the initial hurdle of proving some common ground, this can (and in many cases has been) combated – integration and education dispel ignorance and unfamiliarity, and with them departs fear. However, sexism is not perpetuated by the same factors, but rather by cultural transference. Where ignorance can be educated away, social construct is much harder to demolish, paradoxically because of its arbitrary nature. The gender gulf is greatly exaggerated and upheld in almost all cultures. The extent of the intrinsic gender gap is a matter for science and debate, however I would contend it that clearly it is minimal, and furthermore, rendered irrelevant in the face of individual differences, which are significant. I think that in the case of the gender difference, the lady protests too much (or rather, society protests the lady too much). In order to perpetuate what is essentially an arbitrary categorization (like nationality and most other in-group/out-group distinctions) a rigid and exaggerated gender stereotype has evolved.
There is a social psychological phenomenon called the fundamental attribution error, whereby people are overinclined to attribute the behaviour of another to their enduring characteristics rather than to external circumstance. For example, in one experiment7 students were given some pro-Castro and anti-Castro essays to read and informed that the authors had been told to write pro- or anti-Castro essays respectively. They were then asked to judge the real attitude of the author. It was thought that the evidence of the essay content would be discounted; however, this was not the case. The subjects seemed to attribute the essays’ contents to the disposition of the authors, despite convincing evidence that in fact situational factors were predominant. I think there is some similarity between this phenomenon and the mechanism employed to perpetuate gender stereotypes in that this also relies on an error of attribution. The gender element as a causative factor is constantly overemphasized. For example, if a man is a bad driver, then he is just a bad driver, yet if the bad driver is a woman, then it is invariably inferred that she is a bad driver because she is a women (when in reality her bad driving probably has very little to do with her gender status). Although the parallel falls down by way of the characteristic of bad driving also being an internal factor, I believe the overattribution of gender factors is another sort of consistent attribution error. In this manner people are brainwashed by their gender conditioning, which, unlike the causes of racism, is self-perpetuating.
It seems to me that the failure of the feminist ethos to affect real social change boils down to the weakness of human psychology. The predominance of spin in today’s society discourages individual thought, reinforcing an inherent psychological flaw: our unwillingness to challenge the orthodoxy. Fundamentally what oppresses women is the cultural legacy of gender conditioning, something that has thus far proved impervious to intellectual attack. Inculcation of gender stereotypes is self-perpetuating – we must all create ourselves in such a fashion that we thrive, and we can only thrive by adhering to the cultural norms. We may have evolved perfect sociobiological tools for ensuring group survival on the Serengeti ten thousand years ago, but for a truly egalitarian society we are less than equipped. We must examine the very mechanics by which this cultural transmission is perpetuated, which may or may not involve some form of instinctive attribution error. Feminism currently has a poor public image, being perceived as largely irrelevant, embarrassing, or even damaging because its achievements thus far have arguably made life in the short term more difficult for women. This, along with the modern trope of anti-liberalism means that feminism is unlikely to affect change in the near future.
1Former shadow-home-secretary Ann Widdecombe on BBC television’s Parkinson, 2002.
2 1995, Warner Books.
3 Jasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent, 11 Aug 1993
4 Sunday Times (20th October 1991)
5 e.g., Noreena Hertz in The Silent Takeover, William Heinemann, 2001
6 See The Interesting Narrative, Olaudah Equiano, 1789.
04/01/03
Letter Pulished (abridged) in TLS regarding debate on Tuition Fees
Dear Sir
Whilst I am shocked and disappointed at the government’s proposals for the payment of university fees, I am even more disappointed with the surrounding discussion, which has addressed only the topic of the extent to which the new fee structure will act as a disincentive to students from deprived backgrounds. Undoubtedly this is important, but has obscured the equally important issue of the increasing trend towards vocational degrees such measures will encourage. While a £20 000 debt may be small fry to somebody with a law degree under their belt, if one reads, say, philosophy, the ability to pay this off after graduation will be greatly diminished. The upshot of this policy will be to discourage applications for purely academic subjects in favour of less rigorous, applied fields. The university system will become a production line for managers, accountants, and lawyers; Oxford and Cambridge will become merely pit-stops between public school and The City (in light of the government’s recent misguided apoplexy over the Laura Spence affair, this highlights its blatant hypocrisy). It is very difficult at the moment to pursue Arts or Humanities to a post-graduate level, as funding is mainly provided by corporations for scientific places (explaining, for example, the preponderance of research on economically efficient oil-drilling, and the lack of research into alternative energy, organic food, etc.). Things can only get worse under this proposed regime. The government looks more and more to America for policy precedent. It seems that we are to follow the U.S. down the route of anti-intellectualism as well. Take the inane justification of why one should pay more to go to Oxford by Higher Education minister Margaret Hodge to John Humphries on BBC’s On The Record (Sun 17th Nov) : “don't let's pretend that a degree in theology … from Luton is the same as a degree in accountancy from Oxford.” She is justifying top-up fees on the basis that some degrees are more valuable and more employable than others. However, being a highly academic institution Oxford offers very few applied subjects, and certainly doesn’t offer a degree in the intellectually-void discipline of accountancy. One can, however, take a challenging course in theology. This betrays the government’s lack of regard for intellectualism. If we are to follow the government’s message to its conclusion, there is only worth in education as a means to get well-paid employment; there is no value in academia, intellectualism, or knowledge for knowledge’s sake.
Anna Berry
Bucks
This was published years ago, around the time of the Laura Spence affair. I'm not sure if the facts have changed - perhaps these days the Said Business School offers an accountancy course?
Whilst I am shocked and disappointed at the government’s proposals for the payment of university fees, I am even more disappointed with the surrounding discussion, which has addressed only the topic of the extent to which the new fee structure will act as a disincentive to students from deprived backgrounds. Undoubtedly this is important, but has obscured the equally important issue of the increasing trend towards vocational degrees such measures will encourage. While a £20 000 debt may be small fry to somebody with a law degree under their belt, if one reads, say, philosophy, the ability to pay this off after graduation will be greatly diminished. The upshot of this policy will be to discourage applications for purely academic subjects in favour of less rigorous, applied fields. The university system will become a production line for managers, accountants, and lawyers; Oxford and Cambridge will become merely pit-stops between public school and The City (in light of the government’s recent misguided apoplexy over the Laura Spence affair, this highlights its blatant hypocrisy). It is very difficult at the moment to pursue Arts or Humanities to a post-graduate level, as funding is mainly provided by corporations for scientific places (explaining, for example, the preponderance of research on economically efficient oil-drilling, and the lack of research into alternative energy, organic food, etc.). Things can only get worse under this proposed regime. The government looks more and more to America for policy precedent. It seems that we are to follow the U.S. down the route of anti-intellectualism as well. Take the inane justification of why one should pay more to go to Oxford by Higher Education minister Margaret Hodge to John Humphries on BBC’s On The Record (Sun 17th Nov) : “don't let's pretend that a degree in theology … from Luton is the same as a degree in accountancy from Oxford.” She is justifying top-up fees on the basis that some degrees are more valuable and more employable than others. However, being a highly academic institution Oxford offers very few applied subjects, and certainly doesn’t offer a degree in the intellectually-void discipline of accountancy. One can, however, take a challenging course in theology. This betrays the government’s lack of regard for intellectualism. If we are to follow the government’s message to its conclusion, there is only worth in education as a means to get well-paid employment; there is no value in academia, intellectualism, or knowledge for knowledge’s sake.
Anna Berry
Bucks
This was published years ago, around the time of the Laura Spence affair. I'm not sure if the facts have changed - perhaps these days the Said Business School offers an accountancy course?
The Othering of Orcs: A Post-Colonial Reading of Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings Trilogy
In this essay I will show that the Lord of the Rings trilogy is underpinned by racist, sexist, and classist values inherent in the language and imagery employed. Furthermore, the success of the films can be attributed to the familiarity with and acceptance of that language and imagery by western society.
Let me come clean at the beginning – I admit it; I enjoyed every minute of Peter Jackson’s fantasy immensely. At every set-back and every battle, I was right there with our heroes; and at the end of each installment, I was ready to rewind and start again (having prepared with a rigorous programme of dehydration). As a westerner and die-hard atheist, I suspect that swords and sorcery fulfils the same function as religion does in those for whom god is the poison of choice; indeed, it seems to inspire a similar brand of fanaticism. For my own part, whilst in no way being a fantasy geek (no aspersions cast), I find an escapism here qualitatively different from that supplied by movies of a more vérité persuasion. There is something reassuring about a simplified world in which there is good and evil, and one can be clearly differentiated from the other. My mind seeks to order the inherently chaotic, and when it treads the well-worn paths of myth, there is a sense of relief in inhabiting a space without shades of grey. Furthermore, within this realm I can realize frustrated desires. Who doesn’t want to be afforded the privilege of making a sacrifice for the good? But who notices a sacrifice in our world? Where is the nobility; the honour? Such concepts don’t map squarely onto the world as I see it, messy and grey, in which there is no good and evil: only actions and consequences.
Some try to export the simplified world of fantasy into their everyday lives, searching out the black and white and, when it cannot be found, imposing it1. Things that have no connection become irrevocably intertwined: the relationships between concepts like white and good; dark and bad; ugly and bad; female and passive; and female and unimportant linger in the subconscious, and for some, in the conscious mind. By the same token, that which is intimately connected becomes separate. I find myself celebrating the houses of the aristocracy, tramping round them on a Sunday National-Trust day-out, while at the same time decrying the principles underpinning their existence. Yet, beyond my intellect, I can find no contradiction, and can keep the celebration and the decrying separate. In the same way, there is remarkable ongoing blindness in the west to the intimacy of the relationship between our high standard of living and exploitation in the developing world.
Is the desire for the regular engendered, or at least awakened, in the first place by exposure to these mythical templates? Perhaps. Or perhaps such templates adhere to conventions that exist in someway beyond the individual stories that comprise them, born of a Freudian imperative for self-protection. Whatever the case may be, the overshadowing presence of such myths is undeniable, as is the ease with which their language and symbolism is understood.
The first film in the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, opens with a mythology lesson, intoned by an English middle-class narrator. Without commenting on the clumsiness of this device, learning a new mythology of another world is not as complex as one would have thought; in fact it is just the old north European mythologies (e.g., Norse, Arthurian), albeit manipulated. Hence, right from the start we are grounded in myth, and a viewpoint is established. We are comfortable with these ideas both because they are not new, and because they are delivered to us in a voice that we perceive to be authoritative.
The language and imagery of myth reduces difficult issues to black and white: there is simply good and evil, and it is easy to tell which is which (I wonder how many fantasy movies George Bush has watched?). For example, in the world of Lord of the Rings, not only is a creature born to be either good or evil, but is recognisable as such by virtue of their race. With ethnicity comes anonymity; each race is homogenous; you’ve seen one elf, you’ve seen them all (replace ‘elf’ with ‘orc’, ‘hobbit’, ‘dwarf’, etc. at your discretion). The notable exception to this rule is that ostensibly good creatures can be corrupted by the ring – a creature born to a non-Other race, such as Saruman, or Gollum, can be ‘turned bad’ by acquiring the ring2. Social mobility! (However, if one is ‘born bad’, for example, an orc, there is no redemption.)
This is especially problematic in the current climate of western islamophobia. John Rhys Davies, who plays Gimley has said that he believes the films to be about defending western civilization against the threat of Islam, both in terms of immigration and terror3:
“I think that Tolkien says that some generations will be challenged, and if they do not rise to meet that challenge, they will lose their civilization. That does have a real resonance with me ... What is unconscionable is that too many of … [you] do not understand how precarious Western civilization is, and what a jewel it is.”
In this view, the films teach that, just as isolationism and appeasement was not the answer to Hitler, so isolationism and appeasement is not the answer to the advance of Islam. Rohan is clearly wrong to retreat to Helm’s Deep; the Ents learn that the best form of defence is attack. However, there is a profound inconsistency here, as much of the currency of Nazism (e.g., racism; an idealized vision of the peasant class) is celebrated by the films.
It is no coincidence that Mordor is ruled despotically; a system of government typically associated, in the west, with eastern nations. In the films, the dire consequences of this kind of regime are underscored by the ugliness of Mordor, emphasized through cinematography and music. It is always dark. There appears to be no vegetation; merely rock (what do they eat?). The darkness is punctuated only by runnels of molten larva. There are no gentle shapes – just sharp corners and jutting angles. Images of this hell are accompanied in turn by a dissonant cacophony and portentous choral music – a staple of the horror genre. Mordor, of course, is in the south and east.
This contrasts with Rivendell and the Shire, which are in the north and west. Both Rivendell and the Shire share a fertile landscape and ever-blue skies. Whilst Rivendell has waterfalls and scenic valleys, the Shire has rolling hills, meadows, and agriculture. The cinematography accentuates this verdancy; the greens are edenic; preternaturally green. In Rivendell, the architecture and jewellery is naturalistic and of a twisted Celtic style. In the Shire, everything is particularly rounded (including the inhabitants); abodes are small hollow hills (I expect the teletubbies will file suit any day now). Furthermore, the Shire is identifiably English – specifically, a kind of idealized rural southern England. It’s a haven of peace, with lush meadows, brown bread and cottages, merry artisans, plenty of hair, food, and flowers, quaint names such as ‘Hardbottle’: a picture of pastoral innocence.
The western world is a civilized idyll, in contrast to the east and south, which are full of adventure and exoticism, but also danger and malevolence. This is a eurocentric projection. Even the animals reflect this: goodies have horses (which imperialists used to terrorize indigenous peoples), whilst the orcs’ beasts are thinly-veiled variations on rhinos and elephants4.
The prevailing system of government in the kingdoms of the goodies is kind of a benevolent hereditary monarchy, divine right, and all. Furthermore, the film advocates this modus operandi, taking an anti-republican stance: Boromir is redeemed by accepting his ‘rightful’ king, Aragorn, before he dies; the guardian of Gondor is mad apparently because he has held onto a throne that is not rightfully his – order is restored at the resolution of the trilogy when Aragorn, the true king by virtue of his ancestry, is crowned. This is held up in contrast with the despotism of Mordor. In fact this reveals another internal inconsistency: in reality, these are similarly undemocratic systems of government.
Even more pernicious is the racial contrast drawn between good and Other. Good guys are caucasian, bad guys are black as well as Other5. There is a hierarchy of races, at the top of which reside the elves, who are “immortal, wisest, and fairest of all beings”: a master race. The elves have particularly long faces, and are thin with long flowing straight hair. They are especially pale, and tend to be fair; their features are unrounded. Clearly actors whose appearances could conform to this were selected, and then the ‘whiteness’ of their features further exaggerated with make-up and prosthetics. Goodies, particularly elves, are often graced with celestial light, soft-focus, and pseudo-religious western choral music.
This is reinforced by the representation of the denizens of Mordor, who conform to a very different racial stereotype. The orcs have dark skins and can often be recognized by their deformed features (which suggests a connection between moral fibre and physical appearance – deformity being indicitive of flawed character). Many orcs also sport overtly Asian or African features, such as flatter noses; the first ‘battle orc’ we see has dreadlocks. Orcs are always lit in a harsh dramatic way with only a few low light-sources. The music that accompanies them in the mines of Moria is an African tribal-sounding drumbeat. We are also shown the process of scarification inflicted on the orcs (a white Saruman handprint somewhere on their head or torso), tribalizing them; again a western vision of African practices6.
Blackness is further identified with uncivilized behaviour. Orcs are barbarous, bestial7, and philistine8; they are sub-human. They don’t talk much (they grunt when they do) and give no indication that anything is going on in their heads. They are not born in a mammalian sense, but hatched in some infernal process involving earth and fire (for this reason there appear to be no orc women – women’s use, apparently, is purely procreative). Indeed they are associated with the underground via their mining, their presence in Moria, and the birthing process. They reproduce at a startling rate – from nothing there is a giant army in no time at all – and there are many references to their superior numbers. Indeed, orcs are almost always presented en masse; as a collective; swarming9. They appear to be almost of a collective mind. This is reflective of orientalist fears.
Further points (er, haven't quite gotten around to finishing this yet!):
Gender:
Class:
In the language of myth, that which is familiar is presented as good, just as that which is Other is bad. This language of myth made the film not only intelligible, but attractive, to a western audience, but is problematic, particularly in the current political climate, as it encourages issues to be viewed in a polarized way. Furthermore, the perspective of the film is eurocentric, and its conception of the Other is orientalist in character.
1 I acknowledge the problems associated with making generalizations, however, I am struggling to express what I believe to be a common way of thinking.
2 There is some ‘grey’, but it is an anomaly in the film overall, and services the crass religious imagery: in a lapsarian reference, the white wizard fell to the dark side, leaving the grey wizard to represent us; he is, however, soon reborn as white.
3 Rhys Davies also recently spoke on television about an (unrelated) book that gave him “an insight into ‘the oriental mind’”.
4 Ring wraiths have horses, but that is because they are “disguised as riders”4 Ring wraiths have horses, but that is because they are “disguised as riders”
5 In fact, we are told that “orcs were elves, taken by dark powers and tortured and mutilated”. Black is a corrupt and inferior version of white.
6 Compare this with the great store invested in the Elves’ Celtic trinkets and other regalia.
7 e.g., they are cannibalistic.
8 e.g., they hurl rocks at the White City – bringing down civilization.
9 e.g., in the mines of Moria.
10 See, ‘Reginal Order’, Geoffrey Grigson, 1933.
01/11/04
11 e.g., Merry and Pippin in the farmer’s field.
Let me come clean at the beginning – I admit it; I enjoyed every minute of Peter Jackson’s fantasy immensely. At every set-back and every battle, I was right there with our heroes; and at the end of each installment, I was ready to rewind and start again (having prepared with a rigorous programme of dehydration). As a westerner and die-hard atheist, I suspect that swords and sorcery fulfils the same function as religion does in those for whom god is the poison of choice; indeed, it seems to inspire a similar brand of fanaticism. For my own part, whilst in no way being a fantasy geek (no aspersions cast), I find an escapism here qualitatively different from that supplied by movies of a more vérité persuasion. There is something reassuring about a simplified world in which there is good and evil, and one can be clearly differentiated from the other. My mind seeks to order the inherently chaotic, and when it treads the well-worn paths of myth, there is a sense of relief in inhabiting a space without shades of grey. Furthermore, within this realm I can realize frustrated desires. Who doesn’t want to be afforded the privilege of making a sacrifice for the good? But who notices a sacrifice in our world? Where is the nobility; the honour? Such concepts don’t map squarely onto the world as I see it, messy and grey, in which there is no good and evil: only actions and consequences.
Some try to export the simplified world of fantasy into their everyday lives, searching out the black and white and, when it cannot be found, imposing it1. Things that have no connection become irrevocably intertwined: the relationships between concepts like white and good; dark and bad; ugly and bad; female and passive; and female and unimportant linger in the subconscious, and for some, in the conscious mind. By the same token, that which is intimately connected becomes separate. I find myself celebrating the houses of the aristocracy, tramping round them on a Sunday National-Trust day-out, while at the same time decrying the principles underpinning their existence. Yet, beyond my intellect, I can find no contradiction, and can keep the celebration and the decrying separate. In the same way, there is remarkable ongoing blindness in the west to the intimacy of the relationship between our high standard of living and exploitation in the developing world.
Is the desire for the regular engendered, or at least awakened, in the first place by exposure to these mythical templates? Perhaps. Or perhaps such templates adhere to conventions that exist in someway beyond the individual stories that comprise them, born of a Freudian imperative for self-protection. Whatever the case may be, the overshadowing presence of such myths is undeniable, as is the ease with which their language and symbolism is understood.
The first film in the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, opens with a mythology lesson, intoned by an English middle-class narrator. Without commenting on the clumsiness of this device, learning a new mythology of another world is not as complex as one would have thought; in fact it is just the old north European mythologies (e.g., Norse, Arthurian), albeit manipulated. Hence, right from the start we are grounded in myth, and a viewpoint is established. We are comfortable with these ideas both because they are not new, and because they are delivered to us in a voice that we perceive to be authoritative.
The language and imagery of myth reduces difficult issues to black and white: there is simply good and evil, and it is easy to tell which is which (I wonder how many fantasy movies George Bush has watched?). For example, in the world of Lord of the Rings, not only is a creature born to be either good or evil, but is recognisable as such by virtue of their race. With ethnicity comes anonymity; each race is homogenous; you’ve seen one elf, you’ve seen them all (replace ‘elf’ with ‘orc’, ‘hobbit’, ‘dwarf’, etc. at your discretion). The notable exception to this rule is that ostensibly good creatures can be corrupted by the ring – a creature born to a non-Other race, such as Saruman, or Gollum, can be ‘turned bad’ by acquiring the ring2. Social mobility! (However, if one is ‘born bad’, for example, an orc, there is no redemption.)
This is especially problematic in the current climate of western islamophobia. John Rhys Davies, who plays Gimley has said that he believes the films to be about defending western civilization against the threat of Islam, both in terms of immigration and terror3:
“I think that Tolkien says that some generations will be challenged, and if they do not rise to meet that challenge, they will lose their civilization. That does have a real resonance with me ... What is unconscionable is that too many of … [you] do not understand how precarious Western civilization is, and what a jewel it is.”
In this view, the films teach that, just as isolationism and appeasement was not the answer to Hitler, so isolationism and appeasement is not the answer to the advance of Islam. Rohan is clearly wrong to retreat to Helm’s Deep; the Ents learn that the best form of defence is attack. However, there is a profound inconsistency here, as much of the currency of Nazism (e.g., racism; an idealized vision of the peasant class) is celebrated by the films.
It is no coincidence that Mordor is ruled despotically; a system of government typically associated, in the west, with eastern nations. In the films, the dire consequences of this kind of regime are underscored by the ugliness of Mordor, emphasized through cinematography and music. It is always dark. There appears to be no vegetation; merely rock (what do they eat?). The darkness is punctuated only by runnels of molten larva. There are no gentle shapes – just sharp corners and jutting angles. Images of this hell are accompanied in turn by a dissonant cacophony and portentous choral music – a staple of the horror genre. Mordor, of course, is in the south and east.
This contrasts with Rivendell and the Shire, which are in the north and west. Both Rivendell and the Shire share a fertile landscape and ever-blue skies. Whilst Rivendell has waterfalls and scenic valleys, the Shire has rolling hills, meadows, and agriculture. The cinematography accentuates this verdancy; the greens are edenic; preternaturally green. In Rivendell, the architecture and jewellery is naturalistic and of a twisted Celtic style. In the Shire, everything is particularly rounded (including the inhabitants); abodes are small hollow hills (I expect the teletubbies will file suit any day now). Furthermore, the Shire is identifiably English – specifically, a kind of idealized rural southern England. It’s a haven of peace, with lush meadows, brown bread and cottages, merry artisans, plenty of hair, food, and flowers, quaint names such as ‘Hardbottle’: a picture of pastoral innocence.
The western world is a civilized idyll, in contrast to the east and south, which are full of adventure and exoticism, but also danger and malevolence. This is a eurocentric projection. Even the animals reflect this: goodies have horses (which imperialists used to terrorize indigenous peoples), whilst the orcs’ beasts are thinly-veiled variations on rhinos and elephants4.
The prevailing system of government in the kingdoms of the goodies is kind of a benevolent hereditary monarchy, divine right, and all. Furthermore, the film advocates this modus operandi, taking an anti-republican stance: Boromir is redeemed by accepting his ‘rightful’ king, Aragorn, before he dies; the guardian of Gondor is mad apparently because he has held onto a throne that is not rightfully his – order is restored at the resolution of the trilogy when Aragorn, the true king by virtue of his ancestry, is crowned. This is held up in contrast with the despotism of Mordor. In fact this reveals another internal inconsistency: in reality, these are similarly undemocratic systems of government.
Even more pernicious is the racial contrast drawn between good and Other. Good guys are caucasian, bad guys are black as well as Other5. There is a hierarchy of races, at the top of which reside the elves, who are “immortal, wisest, and fairest of all beings”: a master race. The elves have particularly long faces, and are thin with long flowing straight hair. They are especially pale, and tend to be fair; their features are unrounded. Clearly actors whose appearances could conform to this were selected, and then the ‘whiteness’ of their features further exaggerated with make-up and prosthetics. Goodies, particularly elves, are often graced with celestial light, soft-focus, and pseudo-religious western choral music.
This is reinforced by the representation of the denizens of Mordor, who conform to a very different racial stereotype. The orcs have dark skins and can often be recognized by their deformed features (which suggests a connection between moral fibre and physical appearance – deformity being indicitive of flawed character). Many orcs also sport overtly Asian or African features, such as flatter noses; the first ‘battle orc’ we see has dreadlocks. Orcs are always lit in a harsh dramatic way with only a few low light-sources. The music that accompanies them in the mines of Moria is an African tribal-sounding drumbeat. We are also shown the process of scarification inflicted on the orcs (a white Saruman handprint somewhere on their head or torso), tribalizing them; again a western vision of African practices6.
Blackness is further identified with uncivilized behaviour. Orcs are barbarous, bestial7, and philistine8; they are sub-human. They don’t talk much (they grunt when they do) and give no indication that anything is going on in their heads. They are not born in a mammalian sense, but hatched in some infernal process involving earth and fire (for this reason there appear to be no orc women – women’s use, apparently, is purely procreative). Indeed they are associated with the underground via their mining, their presence in Moria, and the birthing process. They reproduce at a startling rate – from nothing there is a giant army in no time at all – and there are many references to their superior numbers. Indeed, orcs are almost always presented en masse; as a collective; swarming9. They appear to be almost of a collective mind. This is reflective of orientalist fears.
Further points (er, haven't quite gotten around to finishing this yet!):
Gender:
- Women as child-bearers – the Shire fecund with plump fertile females; absence of orc women.
- Hobbit women – maidens or housewives; one of few female moments given over to portrayal of nagging.
- Women and sacrifice – Arwen sacrifices, both to heal Frodo, and her eternal life to bear Aragorn’s children.
- Aeowen – although a warrior, still requires romantic love. Warrior status not seemly enough to gain Aragorn.
- Lack of female roles and screen time – serious shortcoming. Modernist sensibility of thirties poets when confronted with women’s increasingly visible sexuality and role in the important spheres of life10.
- Women’s exclusion – must have nothing to do with important quest. At end Sam marries: women reserved for when real business of the world is finished.
- Another homoerotic male companionship film – frisson between Frodo and Sam palpable in final film; the class element – very Ted and Ralph.
Class:
- Orcs as working class – evil symbolized by deforestation, mining, smelting, and organized labour; post-industrialization manufacturing
- Contrast with Shire’s bumbling agricultural economy; Shire is small-scale, cooperative, not mechanized, artisans, and, most importantly, self-contained.
- The real threat – the unthinkable spread of industrialization to rural England.
- Industrial working class as invasive – Shire is comfortable vision of working class because self-contained, orcs uncomfortable vision of lower class because not self-contained. Liberal imperialist worries about slum conditions; eugenicist worries/Malthusian spawning in slums.
- Hobbits as working class – Sam, Frodo’s gardener (agricultural, pre-industrial worker) portrayed with patronizing affection. Clearly knows his place, suitably deferential to Frodo – always addresses him as “Mr. Frodo”. West-country accent counterpoint to Frodo’s middle-class one. Little credit given for his pivotal role.
- Romanticism/celebration of noble savage.
- Condescension/patronization of hobbits – wide-eyed; salt of the earth/simple folk; childlike. Regarded from a lofty height. (Whimsical music [compare fellowship’s evocative romantic/epic music]; moments of comic relief11).
- Nationalism encouraged – by exaggerated Disney England, like Celtic revivalist’s reinvention of Irish myths.
In the language of myth, that which is familiar is presented as good, just as that which is Other is bad. This language of myth made the film not only intelligible, but attractive, to a western audience, but is problematic, particularly in the current political climate, as it encourages issues to be viewed in a polarized way. Furthermore, the perspective of the film is eurocentric, and its conception of the Other is orientalist in character.
1 I acknowledge the problems associated with making generalizations, however, I am struggling to express what I believe to be a common way of thinking.
2 There is some ‘grey’, but it is an anomaly in the film overall, and services the crass religious imagery: in a lapsarian reference, the white wizard fell to the dark side, leaving the grey wizard to represent us; he is, however, soon reborn as white.
3 Rhys Davies also recently spoke on television about an (unrelated) book that gave him “an insight into ‘the oriental mind’”.
4 Ring wraiths have horses, but that is because they are “disguised as riders”4 Ring wraiths have horses, but that is because they are “disguised as riders”
5 In fact, we are told that “orcs were elves, taken by dark powers and tortured and mutilated”. Black is a corrupt and inferior version of white.
6 Compare this with the great store invested in the Elves’ Celtic trinkets and other regalia.
7 e.g., they are cannibalistic.
8 e.g., they hurl rocks at the White City – bringing down civilization.
9 e.g., in the mines of Moria.
10 See, ‘Reginal Order’, Geoffrey Grigson, 1933.
01/11/04
11 e.g., Merry and Pippin in the farmer’s field.
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