lance parkin

July 4, 2015

Shabgraff in Wonderland (Shabcast 7)

Jack Graham alice in wonderland, jane, josh marsfelder, lance parkin, podcasting, shabcast, TV 2

“[T]he speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life.”

– Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

Today is the 150th anniversary of the origins of Alice in Wonderland. A century-and-a-half ago today, Lewis Carroll took a boat trip with the Liddell family, and told the children a story. Alice Liddell asked him to write it down. He started the next day.

To celebrate, follow me down the rabbit hole and listen to Shabcast 7 – here.

A special one, this. I’m once again joined by Josh Marsfelder (of Vaka Rangi) and for the first time by the wonderful Jane of many fames. We watch (and chat about) the neglected 1966 Jonathan Miller TV version of Alice in Wonderland. A forgotten masterpiece. Well, maybe not forgotten… but not exactly remembered either.

This podcast had various titles before I settled on my final choice: ‘Alice Narrates Herself’. It was going to be called ‘Cobwebs on the Tea Urn’, then ‘Mock Turtles all the Way Down’, then ‘Pig Latin’… I even toyed with a facile but amusing ‘Shabcast Madness Returns’. I eventually settled on a title which reflected something myself and my guests all seemed to notice and cherish: the fact that this production gives control of the narrative to Alice herself, and lets her tell the story. One of the many things which makes this production unique.

I’m very proud of this episode, not just because I was lucky enough to get Jane to guest with myself and Josh, but also because the dynamic of the discussion is lovely. The three of us attend a tea party, detached from time (it’s the evening for them, the middle of the night for me) and talk at cross purposes for ages… though, of course, unlike the Hatter and his friends, we’re hopefully not talking nonsense. I love the way our distinct perspectives each hook into something different about the story we’re watching, and the way we overlap and converge. We don’t always end up in exactly the same territory… but we get to read and enjoy each other’s maps.

What could be more apt?

UPDATE (Same day):

I somehow forgot to link to Josh’s pieces about Alice. Here they are:
http://forest-of-illusions.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/pet-hobby-of-mine-has-always-been.html
http://vakarangi.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/and-when-i-grow-up-ill-write-one-once_26.html
http://forest-of-illusions.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/the-second-song-of-queen-aliissa.html

And here’s Jane’s essay about LOST, mentioned in the Shabcast:
http://www.philipsandifer.com/2013/11/pop-between-realities-home-in-time-for_27.html

EDIT (Also same day):

In the original version of this post I mistakenly claimed that today was the 150th anniversary of the publication of the book. I have corrected this howler. …

June 25, 2015

Insider Trading

Jack Graham big finish, capitalism, christopher lee, cinema, complicity, davros, economics, lance parkin, shining 6

Remember Lance Parkin’s Big Finish audio ‘Davros’? It’s quite good, isn’t it… if far too long. But he does some interesting stuff with Davros’ backstory, subverting your expectations a bit. (It’s got really good music too.)

Interesting stuff in it. The Doctor is depicted as wanting to stop the fall of the corporations. And, actually, I can see his point. At the moment, anyway. And as long as we’re talking about a sudden, instant fall.

Simply remove capitalism at the touch of a button today and human civilisation as it stands would fall, and the human race might die out… for much the same reason that the animals in a battery farm would all die if you murdered all the farm workers and the crime went undiscovered for weeks. As bad as it is, it is currently how things work. The system doesn’t function efficiently, or for human benefit, but it does basically function, and it relies upon keeping a sufficient number of people alive, and a sufficient level of social wellbeing going, simply because it lives off its human livestock. So it keeps the livestock alive by propping up the support systems that keep them alive, at least as a mass.

On the other hand, isn’t the continuation of capitalism itself a kind of slow-mo apocalypse? Is the damage currently being wrought upon the planet’s ecosystem not going to add up to the end of the world? Does not the system as it stands condemn millions to death every year, and billions more to an alienated and impoverished living death? There’s a case for saying that quotidian reality itself is a crisis, that our day-to-day world is not only leading us to armageddon but that, even if we survive it, that would not automatically for the best? Couldn’t we reasonably say that the fall of the system, even in flames and mass-starvation, would not be inherently worse than allowing it to continue?

It’s tempting to not only appreciate the aesthetics of apocalypse, but to go beyond such an appreciation as an asesthetic statement and turn it into a political one. As cold-blooded as this sounds, isn’t it possible to see the end of the world – millions of deaths and all – as a price worth paying for the end of capitalism? The end of the world… I mean the end of the world as it stands economically, politically, culturally, structurally… would at least be general. As the man said: “the thing about chaos is it’s fair”. It could be seen as having greater moral integrity to say ‘let it all come down’ as opposed to ‘prop it up at all costs until we can change it piecemeal and as peacefully as poss’. Propping it up doesn’t have such terrible consequences for me and a lot of other comfortable Western leftists and liberals. I’m not personally all that harmed by day-to-day capitalism. I don’t like it, but my outrage is mainly on behalf of others, and on behalf of humanity generally. …