Eruditorum Press

April 1, 2014

Jerusalem, Candle in the Wind, and Princess Diana: A Reply to Popular

So, this entire thing is a response to Tom Ewing’s fabulous post on his blog Popular on “Candle in the Wind ‘97,” which really is great, and probably worth having a look at. What follows is a rather lengthy reply that focuses on one specific aspect of his essay and runs with it for rather a lot of words. Enough words, in fact, that I thought it worth porting over here.

Specifically, I want to talk about the invocation of Blake’s “Jerusalem,” and use it to make a point that is only incidentally related to Elton John and Princess Diana, and really an excuse to highlight something that I’ve been meaning to find an excuse to talk about for years, which is that picking anything by William Blake as your de facto national anthem is the most amazingly and wonderfully fucked up thing ever.

For those playing along at home, in addition to writing the words to the hymn popularly known as “Jerusalem,” or, more accurately, to writing the poem that Hubert Parry set to music in 1916 and to writing that poem that misspelled “tiger” that you had to read in Intro to Poetry, William Blake was an outsider artist, printmaker, revolutionary, and poet who regularly had visions of angels that inspired his lengthy prophetic works in which he detailed his own personal mythology of gods and wondrous beasts battling for control of the very soul of the world.

In his reading of “Candle in the Wind ‘97,” Ewing makes the interesting note that the passing reference to “England’s greenest hills” in the lyrics in turn invokes “Jerusalem,” specifically its opening couplet “And did those feet in ancient time / Walk upon England’s mountains green.” Ewing reads this as a moment in which the vaguely messianic imagery surrounding the late Princess Diana almost coheres, gesturing towards “what England might have if we finally got rid of the Royal Family” due to the hymn-version of the poem’s status as an alternative national anthem to “God Save the Queen,” noting the spikiness of invoking this in the context of Diana’s fraught relationship with the Royal Family proper. Ewing labels this reading as “tenuous,” which is perhaps, fair, except the tenuousness fits perfectly into what “Jerusalem” actually is.

“Jerusalem” is in practice part of the preface to Blake’s second-longest completed prophecy Milton A Poem. Indeed, it is arguable whether this is even true – as with many of Blake’s works, Milton a Poem is a complex textual phenomenon. Four of the engraved and illuminated manuscripts that Blake himself prepared survive. Three of these, known as copies A, B, and C, were printed in 1811, while a fourth copy, D, was printed in 1818. Despite being printed along with Copies A and B, Blake tinkered with Copy C over the years, and it more closely resembles Copy D. As a result, five plates appear only in Copies C and D, and a sixth plate is unique to Copy D. A seventh plate, however, appears only in Copies A and B.…

March 31, 2014

The Alchemists of the Middle Ages Made Transmutation Their Main Aim in Life (The Beast Below)

Elizabeth Sandifer TARDIS Eruditorum smith 107

In this scene, Clara is cleverly disguised as the BBC logo.

It’s April 10^th, 2010. Scouting for Girls are at number one with “This Ain’t a Love Song,” with Plan B, Delirious, Tinie Tempah, and Inna also charting, as well as most of the crowd from last week. Including Bieber, yes. In news, the miners in Shanxi were rescued, and the next day a cole mine in West Virginia explodes, killing twenty-five. Wikileaks releases the “Collateral Murder” video, showing the killing of civilians by the US military in Iraq, which was leaked to them by Chelsea Manning. Riots continue in Kyrgyzstan, and Gordon Brown asked permission to dissolve parliament, triggering the election that will, in a month’s time, remove him from power.

On television, meanwhile, the Moffat era carries on with its second story. A story seemingly destined to always seem a bit out of place, The Beast Below was not quite what anybody expected and, perhaps more to the point, is not quite like anything that has come since. The knowledge that the production got away from the new team and that this story was thus made under very trying circumstances makes it easy to write the strangeness off as an artifact of a production team that was still learning what they were doing, much as Aliens of London/World War Three is often read in part as the result of the Davies/Gardner team finding themselves overwhelmed by the scope of what they were doing.

This is, of course, complete tosh. What’s bizarre about The Beast Below is that it’s unlike almost everything else Moffat has ever written for Doctor Who. This is in many ways an artifact not of the production circumstances on Series Five, but of the production circumstances on Series Six and Seven. Because the split season structure of Series Six and Seven, everything Moffat wrote after Series Five was either a season opener, a season finale, or a standalone special. With Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone existing to further the ongoing River Song plot, The Beast Below is therefore the only Moffat-penned story from his era to largely serve as a blank slate that Moffat can do as he pleases with. This is markedly unlike the Davies era, where every season provided Davies at least one opportunity to do something unusual and more personal: The Long Game, Love and Monsters, Gridlock, and Midnight being the obvious examples. (And notably, all of those stories feel at least a little strange in their respective seasons, much as this one does.) But The Beast Below is really the only instance in the Moffat era where we just get to see what Moffat is inclined to write when left to his own devices. Indeed, it’s one of the only times at all – Moffat’s Davies-era scripts may not have been rewritten, but they were generally prepared to specific briefs. Here, for the first and last time, Moffat just gets to come up with an idea and write it.

…

March 30, 2014

“I live my life like I’ve been raised by wolves”: Savage Syndrome

Forest of Illusions Star Trek Phase II 1

It’s Margaret Armen again. That’s really all you need to know.

It’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect Margaret Armen-penned Star Trek Phase II to be: Almost comically terrible, offensive and unworkable drivel that largely misses the entire point of the show. So structurally unsound as to actually become some kind of cosmic anti-structure and loaded up with the most unforgivably ghastly racism and misogyny you can think of, “Savage Syndrome” is without question the worst episode of the show to date. No contest. It’s also probably her very worst submission overall, which wow, we’re really hitting record lows here.

There’s no point in any kind of summary, but basically, the Enterprise gets hit with a space mine that “reverts” the crew to a “primitive”, “animalistic” mindset, all save for an away team comprised of Decker, Ilia and McCoy, conveniently the three crewmembers who could most easily resolve the plot at the end of the episode, who were conveniently off exploring a derelict spaceship and conveniently decided to use a shuttlecraft so they wouldn’t have to be beamed back aboard (no, the script does not explain why they just happened to decide to use a shuttlecraft on the precise mission where it was absolutely vital that they do so). And of course, Armen’s conception of “animal instinct” is the absolute worst it could possibly be, firstly totally misunderstanding how gender roles manifest in real life animals by embracing the patriarchal assumption that female animals are always submissive breeding stock for alpha males and the appallingly racist notion that evolution is linear and that indigenous cultures are closer to animals and thus more “primitive” and “savage”. I can’t even muster up the energy to get righteously angry at this shit anymore. It just sucks. That this evil, reactionary, talentless hack is still getting paid writing gigs in fucking 1978 is beyond belief. Fuck this.

(Ironically, in spite of all of this, “Savage Syndrome” is, somewhat horrifyingly, Decker and Ilia’s best outing yet. Both get really sizeable and important parts and carry the majority of the episode’s narrative weight, given that everyone else save McCoy is incapacitated. Ilia in particular is quite good: She does manage to get kidnapped a couple times, but she frees herself, and she uses her “Deltan powers of sensuality” to manipulate the male crewmembers because of course she does, but she runs all over the ship rerouting power and just generally fixing things and, scary as it is, this is her best episode to date.)

As it would be terrible for my patience, temper, mood and general mental well-being to do so, what I’d rather do instead of meticulously going through this episode’s litany of flaws is to talk about the story’s underlying assumption. This would be, in an attempt to strip away as much of the hideous racism as is possible, the idea that simplifying one’s life is tantamount to being retrograde, going against the idea of progress. The affected crewmembers, for example, do not know how to use the modern technology of the Enterprise and resort to fashioning basic implements out of metal rods and bars.…

March 29, 2014

Saturday Waffling (March 29, 2014)

Elizabeth Sandifer 14

Hello faithful readers. I’m off traveling on a family engagement and forgot to queue one of these before I left, so am quickly banging this out on an iPad. So I’ll be brief this week.

The engagement involves an unusually large amount of me cooking, and that venison post really did go over surprisingly well, and so let’s go with that. Two questions. What’s the best meal you’ve ever had, and are there any foods or food topics you’d really like to see me get around to covering some week, since apparently food posts are weirdly popular.

Have a good weekend, all.…

March 28, 2014

I’m At An Impressionable Age (The Last War in Albion Part 37: Boys from the Blackstuff, Skizz, D.R. & Quinch, O.C. and Stiggs)

Elizabeth Sandifer Last War in Albion book one, chapter six 8

This is the third of six parts of Chapter Six of The Last War in Albion, covering Alan Moore’s work on Skizz and D.R. & Quinch for 2000 AD. An ebook omnibus of all six parts, sans images, is available in ebook form from Amazon, Amazon UK, and Smashwords for $2.99. If you enjoy the project, please consider buying a copy of the omnibus to help ensure its continuation. The Last War in Albion now also has an imageblog on Tumblr.

The stories discussed in this chapter are available in the collections Skizz and The Complete D.R. & Quinch.

Previously in The Last War in Albion: Alan Moore finally got a regular strip in 2000 AD with Skizz, in which he combined the basic premise of the still forthcoming E.T. with the atmosphere of Alan Bleasdale’s then-popular television series Boys From the Blackstuff.

“I could still walk away from this. I could say I was kidnapped. I could say I was forced to do things. I’m at an impressionable age. And I haven’t killed anyone. Not yet.” – Grant Morrison, Kill Your Boyfriend

As with The Black Stuff, the point of Boys from the Blackstuff was the depiction of the difficulty of working class existence at that particular moment of British history. It is not a show about diagnosing the underlying causes of unemployment – there are no thorough and informative debates over monetarism, or close-readings of Friedrich Hayek. It simply attempts to show the experience of living at the bottom of society when times are getting harder. Its iconic episode was its fourth, “Yosser’s Story,” which focused on Yosser Hughes, the character responsible for getting drawn into the scam back in The Black Stuff.

Figure 274: The final image of “Yosser’s Story” is a freeze
frame on Yosser’s grotesquely contorted anguish at his own
survival.

In “Yosser’s Story” he is reduced to a broken shell of a man, and, over the course of the hour-long episode, broken down further as his children are taken away and he continues to fail to find employment. The character becomes steadily unhinged and erratic, unable or unwilling to grasp that his increasing desperation is making his situation worse at every turn. The episode culminates with Yosser attempting suicide by jumping into a lake, only to be hauled out by the police, the final shot being his face as he screams in horror at realizing he’s survived.

Figure 275: Desperate Dan (From The
Dandy #1258, 1966)

“Yosser’s Story” works by combining this brutally bleak story with the superlative acting of Bernard Hill, who sells the anguish of a simple man who never had much trying to make sense of having it all taken away from him. Hill’s performance makes Yosser at once pathetic and eminently quotable, especially with Bleasdale’s deft use of the catchphrases “Gizza job,” (that is, “give us a job”) and “I can do that,” often spoken in rapid succession as he fruitlessly hounds someone for employment.

…

March 27, 2014

“Rumors, conjectures, that’s a giant leap forward.”: Deadlock

Forest of Illusions Star Trek Phase II 1

“Deadlock” is incredibly frustrating. On the one hand, it’s the first Star Trek episode to deal overtly with the dark side of the Federation and Starfleet, but on the other hand it’s not because it doubles-back on itself and refuses to actually fully commit to the accusations it levels and issues it raises. It opens seemingly promising to make explicit a lot of the implicit concerns and reservations we’ve held about Star Trek from the very beginning, but because of its ultimate balking and painfully bog-standard climax and conclusion, it actually ends up feeling less satisfying and critical then previous efforts.

Answering a distress signal from the USS Intrepid (no, not that one) in “Uncharted Region 019”, the Enterprise is suddenly and inexplicably called away to Starbase 7, leaving Kirk suspicious and Decker enraged. Upon arrival, a Commodore Hunter informs Kirk that he called the Enterprise away to participate in a series of top-secret Starfleet psychological experiments. The crew’s first assignment is to shut down all power to the ship and await further orders from behavioural scientist Lang Cardon. Troubled, Kirk asks Scotty and Xon to come up with an algorithm that would allow them to take the ship from a cold stop to mission stations at the first sign of danger.

While powered down, the crew experiences a series of hypnotic, flashing psychedelic images. The crew becomes entranced, with the exception of Xon and Ilia, who have altogether different and disturbing experiences. Afterwards, Xon tells Kirk that he and Ilia had visions of grave danger, and a message: “Enterprise, you must escape! Report to Starfleet…A plot-Cardon is…”.After learning Cardon’s experiments had been suspended some months prior with no official explanation given, the crew decides to investigate the starbase themselves. Kirk beams over to check things over for himself, instructing Decker to wait an hour, at which point, if Kirk hasn’t checked in, he’s to seize and secure Starbase 7, using any means necessary.

While “Deadlock” initially seems like it’s going to be a deconstruction and criticism of Starfleet ethics and operational structure, what it in practice turns out to be is another of Star Trek’s semi-regular “let’s try and do a current events story” type of episodes. This time, it’s Star Trek’s stab at Project MKUltra, which was a series of CIA experiments looking into the feasibility of controlling human behaviour through various stimuli. From in the 1953 to 1973, Project MKUltra tested a whole suite of techniques running the gamut from illegal to unethical to completely ridiculous, such as sexual abuse, torture, hypnosis, sensory deprivation and, most famously, clandestinely dropping LSD into random people’s drinks to see if the ensuing acid trips could be used as a form of mind control. Some historians believe the endgame of Project MKUltra was to create a kind of mentally servile supersoldier, while others posit the theory that the more out-there experiments were deliberately emphasized by the CIA to draw attention away from its real purpose, which, according to this theory, was to find more effective means of that favourite government buzzword: “Enhanced interrogation”.…

March 27, 2014

The Perfect Companion

Jack Graham amy pond, clara, companions, neoliberalism, river song, steven moffat 12

Yes, the female companions of the Moffat era are smart, strong, capable, multi-talented, capable, prone to saving the day, etc.

But this is just the job of the companion. Even the worst of the classic series companions – Victoria, Dodo, etc – gets to be smart, strong, capable, etc when required. They don’t tend to save the day in the classic series, but they always do what is needed and expected of them. It’s a tautology: the companions do the companion things more or less successfully. That’s not something that’s entirely untroubling, but – for good or ill – it’s how this works. In the revived series, a great deal more is expected of the companions. It’s actually worrying just how much is expected of Martha. But the point is that they all step up because that’s what they’re in the text to do. The ones that don’t, fail to be companions (i.e. Adam).

You also have to look at what they do and what happens to them on top of their basic role as companion. Rose rejects the roles of shop worker, daughter, girlfriend, etc. in favour of gradually becoming a committed social actor. Sadly, she is reabsorbed into such roles by the end (a major disappointment). Martha throws herself into the role of social actor to a huge extent, ultimately rejecting the Doctor because he cannot satisfy her level of newly self-created level of self-esteem. Donna escapes her emotionally unsatisfying family life and work life to, once again, become a social actor. The theft of this from her is horrific, and is clearly meant to be. It all goes wrong by the end of the RTD era, with them all married off, etc. But this, however awful (and it is crushingly awful), is still a relatively late development.

The early-to-mid Moffat-era companions, by contrast, are given the arrangement of their domestic lives as their main extra-curricular activity (so to speak) on top of their ‘duties’ as a companion, right the way through.

Amy’s character – i.e. what she does, says and thinks on top of all the fulfilment of ‘companion duties’ – is focused upon getting married or not getting married, being a mother or not being a mother, having a domestic home life or not having a domestic home life, being a wife, saving her marriage, etc, etc etc. The Doctor actually intervenes, several times, to ensure that her personal life runs along the proper lines. Whereas, in the RTD era, the Doctor was a force that (selfishly) drew the women out of the confines of personal and work life and into the wider arena of social action, in the Moffat era the Doctor actively tries to provide Amy with a perfect, middle-class domestic idyll. House. Car. Marriage. Etc.

River is ostensibly an archaeologist, or sometimes an assassin, but her character arc (if the random string of things she does can be called a character arc) is all about her assimilation into stability via her romance with, and marriage to, the Doctor. …

March 27, 2014

Piece of Cake

Jack Graham art, criticism, culture, culture industry, dialectical materialism, jack's pathetic vanity, marxism 0

Someone nice on tumblr just asked me:

Do you think that it’s fair to criticize a work of art for the failings of the culture around it? This is a question I’ve been mulling over the past few days and I’m sure you have an interesting response.

My answer got a bit long, so I decided – opportunistically – to post it here.

I think the terms of the question are worth investigating.

What do we mean by ‘failings’?

What do we mean by ‘culture around it’?

Failure is, of course, subjectively judged. Something I think is bad may be seen as good – or neutral, or normal, or inescapable – by others.

It is perfectly possible for something that is a ‘failure’ with regards to general human wellbeing to be a ‘success’ for a social system. (The wellbeing of the working class, in any class society, always being more universal than that of the minority loafing class.)

Indeed, I think that if you look at the vast majority of mainstream media culture as it has existed in modern capitalist society – including and perhaps even especially with reference to narrative culture – then you see that it pretty unambiguously touts and celebrates values and/or activities that are failures when it comes to promoting general human wellbeing but successes when it comes to propping up and reproducing a social order dominated by the class that owns and controls capital.

*phew* long sentence.

This is the ‘culture around it’…

BUT…

I think it’s really important to realise that art doesn’t just sit there surrounded by culture. It is culture.

We would expect any product to bear the hallmarks of its production, or the materials from which it was produced. It’s just common sense to expect a cultural product to bear such hallmarks… and that’s without looking at any of the elaborate processes by which supply, demand, distribution, advertisement, hegemony, etc winnow cultural products out of circulation, or just prevent their production in the first place.

More deeply, just as the self is not a thing that exists in the world but is rather a dialectical process that we individuate from the wider set of processes that we call the world, so is art not a thing in the world but a chosen locus of relations, inter-relations and inter-reactions.

A cultural product is, from one standpoint, an individuated unit… but that standpoint is actually a form of commodity fetishism. The cultural product as an entity that lives in the world, that says things and thinks things. Thinking about cultural products that way is inescapable to a large extent, because it’s impossible for us to step outside of culture and look in.

The very fetishising of commodities which leads us create cultural products as things, and treat them like entities, is also what makes them very hard to perceive as anything else.

You could say that the entire project of modern criticism has been concerned with attempts to find ways through this maze.…

March 27, 2014

Video Blogs On The Eleventh Hour

Elizabeth Sandifer TARDIS Eruditorum guest post, smith 36

So, a while ago someone asked if I was going to do a video blog on The Eleventh Hour, and I declined, mainly because video blogs are time consuming and I didn’t have loads of it.

This turns out to have been a wonderful idea, as two separate people have proceeded to do video blogs on their own initiative, and both of them are way better than anything I would have done anyway.

First off is Alison Jane Campbell, who noticed that Jack Graham had tied her in guest posts and thus decided to get ahead again with this number, which I was planning on posting today.

Except then, yesterday, Bennett indulged in a wonderfully cheeky “video comment” on The Eleventh Hour, which was also brilliant, and so I figured I’d go ahead and throw it in too.

Seriously, both of them are utterly fantastic and say all sorts of great things that I will be shamelessly referencing in Moffat-era posts to come, and I can’t thank them enough.

And while we’re posting videos, this has been going around and seems a charming transition into Friday’s post.

Thank you to everyone who spared me from doing real work this week.

…

March 26, 2014

Policy Announcement

Jack Graham ableism, comments policy, shabgraff 0

I hate having to delete comments. You can leave a comment saying I’m wrong, disagreeing with me violently, that’s all fine. But I won’t publish comments that contain ableist slurs. I don’t refuse to publish comments lightly, but that’ll do it.

This is something the vast majority of my lovely comment-leavers would never do, of course. …

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