how curses work

April 14, 2012

How Curses Work 3.5: Mythoimperialismo

Jack Grahamcolonialism, conrad, fanaticism, how curses work, imperialism, myth, patriarchy, sexism, you're not actually reading this are you?3

Imperialism lies not just in the physical violence of invasion, domination, exploitation and subjugation, but also in the cultural violence of the appropriation and representation of the subjugated.

This is how exploitation and domination always works. Patriarchy’s domination of women is expressed in the marginalization, infantilization and suffocating sexualization of the female image in culture, the relentless portrayal of the woman as secondary, as an adjunct, as a commodity, as a servant or helpmate, as a source of male pleasure and satisfaction. So the violence of imperialism is also expressed in the representation of the subjugated peoples as inferior and/or dangerous, by the plundering of their stories, histories, images, ideas, practices, customs, languages, discourses, art, architecture, etc., and their transformation into aspects of the dominant culture of the imperialist.

The subject culture is usually thus shown to be inherently deserving of domination, inherently savage, childlike, irrational and sinister. If the subject culture is not demonized, it is usually infantilized, fanaticized (even their bravery is not real bravery but rather fanatical zeal from savages who do not feel pain or fear death the way we civilized people do), or shown as shambolic, idiotic and comic. Needless to say, any resistance to imperial domination, or violent reaction against it, is generalised and used as evidence of the fanaticism and savagery of the dominated.

The imperialism of the modern age – beyond the brutal reality of bullets and plunder, and beyond the underlying system of states competing globally when their geopolitical priorities converge with those of their national concentrations of capital – is a system of myths. It is as important to promulgate myths among the people of the imperial nation as it is to foist them on the victims. One of the most enduring myths of imperialism is that the victims are to blame for their own plight. This, together with a whole raft of inferiority complexes, is internalized by colonized people. But it is also internalized by the colonizing nation. This manifests itself in various versions. There is, for instance, the ‘it’s for their own good’ version, which says that the colonized benefit from colonialism, because colonialism brings them the benefits of ‘civilization’ (i.e. white Anglo-Saxon Christianity or modern secular liberal democracy, depending on which era the ideology comes from) to people who desperately need it. This is closely related to the demonizing of the colonized. The dual nature of the ‘native’ in all colonialist ideology is that they are “half-devil and half-child”.

Our imperialism needs its ideological myths, just as much as the imperialism of the past… the really scary thing is that we keep coming up with the same myths about the same people… probably because we keep needing those myths as a cultural blindfold to stop ourselves seeing imperialism for what it is.

These are the merest banalities.

…

April 3, 2012

How Curses Work 3: That Whole Rabbits/Tennis Connection There

Jack Grahamcity of death, david aaronovitch, death to the daleks, eurocentrism, how curses work, Mars, NASA, nigel kneale, pyramids of mars, robert holmes, von daniken, you're not actually reading this are you?4

I always dimly assumed that Stephen Harris – whatever combination of real people he may pseudonymically represent – got the idea for a story about pyramids on Mars from all that guff about there supposedly being pyramids and giant monkey faces on Mars.

However, I learn that the ‘face’ and ‘pyramids’ on Mars were not ‘discovered’ until the NASA Viking missions, which didn’t snap pictures of the region of Mars known as Cydonia (where all the pyramids, town squares and giant useless chimp portraits are said to be) until after ‘Pyramids of Mars’ was broadcast.

The whole pyramids / Mars thing is alive and well today, beyond Who-dom. Viz, this species of utter balls:

This kind of drivel has not been stopped – or even slowed – by better and more detailed images taken by NASA since.

Here, for instance is an image of the ‘pyramid’, taken by Mars Global Surveyor in 2001:

Self-evidently NOT an artificial, architectural structure, I’m sure you’ll agree. (If you don’t, you have no business reading this blog. Go away immediately.)

Here, is the spooky ‘simian’ ‘face’ on Mars, imaged by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2007:

Looks exactly like Roddy McDowell in Planet of Apes, doesn’t it?

And yet, despite the fact that we now have very detailed images of this LUMP OF ROCK clearly showing it to NOT be a sculpted face, a brief (and depressing) googling session will turn up wonders such as this…

Sometimes, scientists must wonder why they bloody bloody bloody-well bloody bother.

But, yet again it seems, good old Who may claim to have ‘got there first’. Hinchcliffe and Holmes did the pyramids / Mars thing before anybody thought there were any Martian pyramids. That’s almost as good as predicting a woman Prime Minister and the existence of Jim’ll Fix It… and it tops Bob Holmes’ previous best of satirising Star Trek: The Next Generation before most British people had even seen Kirk and Spock.

Back before Viking, if Mars had structures (an idea which the Mariner missions had already dented), they were supposed to be canals… even though the guy who first talked about Martian canals was being metaphorical. In Italian.

Of course, most of ‘Pyramids of Mars’ is a concentrated rip-off of Hammer’s The Mummy with some von Daniken-esque seasoning… but still, it seems to have done something original. ”Egyptology and Mars”, as Lawrence Scarman put it, before such a connection had appeared elsewhere.

(If anyone knows of previous connections, please do let me know.)

Even some of those who take the pyramid/face stuff seriously seem happily aware of Doctor Who‘s prior claim:

So – without wanting to become like one of those pompous bumholes like David Aaronovitch (yes, a relation) who write smug, chin-scratchy things about conspiracy theorists and homeopaths – what does this all mean?

After a cursory glance at many of the sites where people pick over photos of Mars looking for evidence of alien buildings, I’m very tempted to wonder about the readiness of our culture to associate Mars with the motifs of the ancient East.…

March 30, 2012

How Curses Work 2: This Fez is Loaded

Jack Graham60s, 70s, colonialism, edward said, george pastell, gothic, how curses work, islamophobia, jack shaheen, orientalism, philip sandifer, pyramids of mars, racism, tomb of the cybermen3

The utility to Western imperialism of depicting Arabs with the kind of culturalist discourse of modern vs. pre-modern, secularism vs. cultish religion, democracy vs. theocracy, civilisation vs. medievalism, rationalism vs. fanaticism (translated out of code: good Westerners vs. bad Arabs) that followed in the wake of the “war on terror” is obvious.

This way of constructing Arab and/or Middle Eastern cultural identities in Western art, literature, media and ideology, is very old.

Edward Said‘s seminal book Orientalism outlines the way in which the West has constructed the East as an exotic, romantic, cruel, sensuous, decadent, fanatical, inscrutable Other. (…though it is occasionally weakened – in my presumptuous and insignificant opinion – by the problems underlying Foucault’s notion of ‘discourse’, which Said utilises.)

Jack Shaheen‘s book Reel Bad Arabs reveals how Hollywood has vilified and dehumanized Arabs. Here’s a great short documentary demonstrating his thesis. It’s central message may not come as a surprise to you, but it’s still salutary to see the evidence collated and concentrated.

Such representations of Arabs pop up in the Doctor Who story ‘Pyramids of Mars’ (1975) as part of the show’s tactic, at that time, of raiding the motifs of the pop-gothic… with Hammer as a major influence. The Hammer version of The Mummy is the place, above all others, where the Egyptian Fanatic (that character we were talking about in the previous post) is best seen. The character in that film, played by George Pastell, is the template for Namin in ‘Pyramids of Mars’.

“Where ‘dem infidels at???”

Namin is a murderous, raging fanatic. He goes one better than Pastell’s character in the Hammer Mummy: he actually takes over the English country mansion of the Explorer, invading it using forged (or coerced) letters of authority from the Explorer, taking up the Explorer’s place, raging at the Explorer’s servant, barring the Explorer’s brother, insulting and shooting the Explorer’s friend, etc. Inverting real history, the Egyptian invades England, violently taking over. Terrance Dicks’ novelisation makes it clear that Namin is the last in a long line of fanatical worshippers of the old gods, as per standard stereotypes. At one point, Namin even insinuates that Dr Warlock is being racist – or at least xenophobic – in suspecting him of nefarious activities, asking sarcastically if Warlock will report him to the police for being “a foreigner”. Warlock then gets to smash such petty and self-serving nonsense aside. Don’t bring up racism; I only suspect you because you’re a wrong’un. Thus is the depiction of the Arab as a sinister, fanatical invader self-alibied, self-excused… with all criticism automatically and pre-emptively effaced in a “Political correctness gone mad!” moment avant la lettre. It’s a moment when Doctor Who itself says “bloody minorities, coming over here… and then squealing about ‘racism’ when we complain about what they get up to!” It’s one of the ugliest moments in the history of the show.

But Namin isn’t just an evil Arab. He’s an evil religious Arab. In the original version of his essay about ‘Pyramids of Mars’ at his TARDIS Eruditorum blog, Philip Sandifer (while, it should be stressed, criticising the use of nasty stereotypes) accidentally referred to Namin as a Muslim… and got taken to task for it in the comments.…

March 16, 2012

How Curses Work

Jack Grahameden, egypt, gladstone, how curses work, imperialism, islamophobia, orientalism, pyramids of mars, racism, suez, winston churchill1

We’ve all seen him. He’s swarthy, usually (though not always) with a dark beard. He’s often wearing a fez (no, I’m not going to say it) and robes of some kind.

A fanatic. And friend.

Sometimes, he leaves his home desert and comes to England. He may be dressed in Western clothes and live in a house with Western furnishings, but he’s got a secret room, or a shrine, or a sanctum behind a billowing curtain, in which he keeps his infernal idols amidst clouds of suffocating incense.

He’s…

(cue dramatic music)

…the Egyptian Fanatic!

When he comes to England, he becomes the mirror image of the English Explorer Who Has Just Returned from Egypt (henceforth, the Explorer). This man goes to Egypt for the love of antiquities and discovery, and comes back enchanted and bewitched by the place (by the place, mind, not the people); filling his big, wood-panelled home with Egyptiana. The question of whether the Explorer has any right to this Egyptiana is raised only by the Egyptian Fanatic in England (henceforth, the Fanatic).

The Fanatic has come to England from his native land in search of something, some inscrutable justice, some devilish retribution. He nurses a grudge. He clothes himself in Anglo, middle-class normalcy. He speaks impeccable English, albeit in a heavy accent. (It doesn’t have to be an ‘Egyptian accent’, just a generic foreign one will do.) He is usually treated with courtesy (at first) by the bemused English middle classes amongst whom he mixes by default because of his wealth. These people may come to suspect and despise him, but they’re often tolerant enough at the start, though a working class or yokel character may get to utter some ignorant dislike of “strangers”. The middle class characters may even initially tut at this sort of hostility (what with them being so open minded and everything) but it will turn out that the yokel’s xenophobia was (accidentally) quite justified.

I’m a racist stereotype. Racist stereotypes are cool.

Because the Fanatic is there to cause trouble. To raise the mummified body of a long-dead Egyptian High Priest from its slumber inside a sarcophagus and set it the task of killing all those infidels who dared to trespass upon the sacred resting place of the Pharaoh, etc. The Explorer will be the target of the Fanatic’s superstitious rage (it will continue to be looked upon as superstition, despite the fact that the spells work and the mummy really does come to life). The Explorer was just trying to further the cause of science and knowledge, to preserve the ancient Egyptian past, perhaps to delve into mysteries Better Left Undisturbed… sometimes the Explorer has been arrogant in his treatment of the Egyptians, sometimes he was rude and dismissive to the particular Egyptian Fanatic who is now persecuting him, usually when said Egyptian Fanatic turned up and begged him not to open the pyramid / break the seal on the scroll / disturb the body / take the mummy to display in England. …