Human Stock Crisis; Depleted

 "And the opposite of socialist is not capitalist. Our party is older than capitalism, and wider than any class. It grew up in the first place out of concern for liberties, traditions and morals. It has evolved a good deal in the past three centuries yet it has retained its essential character; its area of concern is the whole of public life and all matters which should be of public interest down to the treatment of every man, woman and child."

...

"Such words as good and evil, such stress on self-discipline and on standards have been out of favour since the war with the new establishment. They have preferred the permissive society, and, at the same time, the collectivised society. At first sight this paradox might seem inexplicable. Why should people who believe in strict state control over economic life, who disfavour private enterprise, independent education, private pension schemes, private medicine, so strongly favour what they call permissiveness in social life? How is it that those who claim to oppose the exploitation of man by man and what they call commercialism should favour the commercial exploitation of indecency, the commercial exploitation of woman by man?"

...


"The decline is spreading. We know that some universities have been constrained to lower their standards for entrants from comprehensives, discriminating against more the talented [sic] because they come from grammar or independent schools. We see how the demand for absolute equality turns into the new inequality.

In the universities, which should be sanctuaries for the pursuit of truth, the bully-boys of the left have bean giving us a foretaste of what leftwing dictatorship would endeavour to achieve, actively cheered on by the casuistry of some members of the university staffs, cuckoos in our democratic nest, and by the pusillanimity of others, by the apathy of many and, I must add, by moral cowardice in public life.

...


"It was the radical Socialist writer and patriot, the late George Orwell , who described the left-wing intellectuals as men motivated primarily by hatred of their own country. Socialists who spoke most about brotherhood of man [sic] could not bear their fellow-Englishmen, he complained. Their well-orchestrated sneers from their strongpoint in the educational system and media have weakened the national will to transmit to future generations those values, standards and aspirations which made England admired the world over.

It is just because their message is that self-discipline is out of date and that the poor cannot be expected to help themselves, that they want the state to do more. That is why they believe in state ownership and control of economic life, education, health. Their wish to end parental choice in where and how their children shall be educated, in spending their money on better education and health for their children instead of on a new car, leisure, pleasure, is all part of the attempt to diminish self and self-discipline and real freedoms in favour of the state, ruled by socialists, the new class, as one disillusioned communist leader called them."

...

"It was Freud who argued that repression of instincts is the price we pay for civilisation. He considered the price well-paid. So can we, now. But we must see the dilemmas, we must argue it out among ourselves, to find a way through these moral dilemmas, while we fight for our ideals in wider fora through words and deeds. But you may ask what can fallible politicians in short-lived governments do in the face of all these tidal forces? Most of what needs to be done, I have stressed, is for individuals as themselves and as members of all manner of bodies. But some tasks are for government, and to these I will return on a future occasion.

This could be a watershed in our national existence. Are we to move towards moral decline reflected and intensified by economic decline, by the corrosive effects of inflation? Or can we remoralise our national life, of which the economy is an integral part? It is up to us, to people like you and me."

Keef lays it out in 1974; the eugenics arguments near the end of the speech possibly cost  him leadership of the Party, but did provide the example for Thatcher to cloak 'moral responsibility Toryisms' in euphemism and wordplay. The conception of the left as some pervasive conspiracy is staggering, as is the thought that Joseph was at the helm of Thatcher's policy decisions. As I recall from Peter Henessy's The Secret State, he was also one of the politicians assigned to the government's Cotswolds bunker in the event of nuclear war. Enoch Powell too. Brr.

The little caesars of the welfare state

The late Sir Rhodes Boyson openly admitted that during his time as headmaster he dealt with misbehaviour in the following ways. With a boy who had climbed onto a roof: “I climbed the drainpipe, collected the boy and we came down the drainpipe together. I held him by various parts of his anatomy, thumping and kicking him all the way down.” With a group of girls smoking in the bogs: “I instructed my caretaking staff to obtain lengths of fire hose and connect these to the water hydrants.” And then hosed them down. These stories are repeated in his Telegraph obituary.

As they say, you don't need to be a Freudian to think something odd was going on there. Boyson was, in his prime, a representative type: a mid-ranking functionary of the welfare state. Short back and sides, clean collar and ties, polished shoes. People of little humour or small talk. Total belief that their own correctness and in 'the rules'. They expected the children, patient or tenants they oversaw to know their place.

These people were reliable servants of collectivism and sincere believers in public service. Boyson began his political career as a Labour Councillor and was head of a comprehensive. (His father was Christian Socialist.) But it's not hard to see how some public servants became supporters of Thatcherism, especially the appeal to restore social discipline in face of open challenge to their authority. Phil has suggested that the left in Britain believes in a 'myth of neo-liberalism' - we were all happy collectivists until an elite group of monetarists took over and ruined it. This is why the current nostalgia for the post-1945 period, extending even to calls to bring back factory work, is myopic. Both the left and the right currently conspire to not understand what all the unrest in the 1970s was actually about. 

In Jack Rosenthal’s drama about prospective London cab drivers trying to pass 'the Knowledge', Nigel Hawthorne plays a terrifying examiner, Mr Burgess. It is a perfect distillation of this social type and made me think of Martin in Brimstone and Treacle. Or perhaps he is a public sector cousin of Basil Fawlty. 20 years later a BBC documentary about 'the Knowledge' focused partly on the creepy Mr Ormes, who clearly enjoys toying with the pupils. The class hierarchies are very starkly drawn in the both the drama and the documentary. The little Caesar types were still going strong in the Public Carriage Office and perhaps elsewhere too.

"Bob, Rupert Is A Gentleman!"

Essential reading from Adam Curtis' blog about the Great Old One Rupert Murdoch, and his aggressive, underhanded entry into 'the establishment'. Have to admit I've been kind of semi-obsessed with the reader-retarding, lying, union-busting, racist, sexist, homophobic, lying, tax-dodging, blackmailing, war-mongering, lying, neoliberal bastard since about the age of twelve. Not least because so many lives would have turned out much differently/happier/longer if not for his seemingly invincible, cancerous influence on entertainment, sport, political discourse, business practices, public policy and the general intelligence levels of the UK/US since the 70s. That's as Fair and Balanced an assessment as I can offer.

Social Sitcom

Steptoe And Son (1962 - 1974)

Rag and bone men Albert (father) and Harold (son) live together in claustrophobic poverty. Harold daydreams of escaping his lonely situation via love, culture and 'bettering himself'. These attempts are doomed to failure, and undermined by his father, who nevertheless wishes to protect his son from disappointment and rejection.

Some Mothers Do 'Ave Em (1973 - 1978)

Accident-prone, well-meaning Frank attempts to hold down a job to support his young family. Despite his enthusiasm and good nature, he always encounters catastrophe at the workplace. He inadvertently inspires outright hostility from employers (sometimes at interview stage), and repeatedly returns to unemployment.

Porridge (1974 - 1977)

Repeat offender Fletcher shares a cell with naive first-time offender Godber. Taking the younger inmate under his wing, Fletcher tries to encourage Godber's attempts to rehabilitate and 'better himself'. However these attempts are frequently undermined by the inherent limits, corruption and brutality of prison life.

Rising Damp (1974 - 1979)

Lonely, petty landlord Rigsby rents out to tenants Ms. Jones, Philip and Alan in his dilapidated boarding house. Despite racial, political and sexual tensions between them, they are united by an acute sense of personal failure; desperately veiled behind fantasy and facade.

Only Fools And Horses (1980 - 1991)

Orphaned, unemployed brothers Del and Rodney (assisted by Grandad/Uncle Albert) aspire to escape their miserable existence in an overcrowded council flat; through farcial, semi-legal business ventures that inevitably end in failure. Yet at the end of the 80s, Del marries and becomes a father; while Rodney secures a well-paid job at a successful IT firm and marries into the upper-middle class. Then, upon randomly discovering a rare antique watch, Del, Rodney and Uncle Albert become multi-millionaires.

Death Of A Princess, Birth Of Enemies

"On April 9, 1980, Associated Television showed Death of a Princess to an estimated 10 million Britons. Although "rejecting Saudi pleas that the film be amended or scrapped..." ATV agreed to include an introductory comment that said: "… The program you are about to see is a dramatized reconstruction of certain events which took place in the Arab world between 1976 and 1978. We have been asked to point out that equality for all before the law is regarded as paramount in the Moslem world. …" And the next day, the British Foreign Office released a statement saying: "We profoundly regret any offence which the program may have caused in Saudi Arabia. We have, of course, no power to interfere with the editorial content of programs, still less to ban them."

"On April 11, the Saudi Embassy in London called "Death of a Princess": "… an unprincipled attack on the religion of Islam and its 600 million people and on the way of life of Saudi Arabia, which is at the heart of the world of Islam." On the twenty-third of April, the government of Saudi Arabia requested Great Britain to withdraw its Ambassador to Jeddah, James Craig. Although a serious step, it was thought to be temporary. The British Foreign Office said that the Embassy staff would stay in Jeddah and the Embassy would remain open."

"The decision to make this request, reached at a meeting of the Council headed by then Crown Prince Fahd was, according to the government-owned Saudi press agency: "… in the light of the British Government's negative attitude toward the screening of the shameful film." At that time, the Saudis also issued a statement saying it had carefully examined economic relations between the Kingdom and Britain, and especially the activity of British companies in the Kingdom. …"

And For Our Younger Viewers, The Class War

Starting in 1968 (!), Magpie was broadcast with the stated aim of being a "working class Blue Peter". Out went the cuddly militarism of the latter's theme tune for the bold electric riffs of the Spencer Davis Group. Good deeds didn't require elaborate gimmicks, good contacts and a well-stocked home. Magpie cut the bullshit and simply asked it's viewers to hand over their money. Beneficiaries of said appeals were not required to keep smiling, and their woes were hardly whitewashed (even the title hinted at childhood's most important lesson: Shit Happens). Regional accents, however broad, were welcome in the studio. Its presenters (resembling characters from Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man) were unafraid to venture outside suburbia, feeling more comfortable with a multicultural, dynamic society than well-groomed pets. Out went rictus grins and polite consensus, in came unscripted interviews and even some debate. To those for whom Valerie Singleton etc. were as alien as daleks, Magpie was a welcome alternative. Within a year of the 1979 election, it was off our screens. Blue Peter continues to this day, a little more multicultural and poptastic, but the smiles and certainties remain in place. Its minor scandals generate headlines, but its doubtful even in the 70s Magpie would be troubled by the revelation that its presenters had sex lives.

In Magpie's final years came the emergence of Tiswas, which made the former look a little too worthy for its own good. Where Magpie asked it's viewers to hang out with them after school and contemplate, Tiswas fully exploited its Saturday slot and the dormant energies of its audience. The new wave bands tentatively welcomed by Magpie were fully embraced by Tiswas, where the Bee Gees were just another joke and Ian Dury was up for having a laugh. Unashamedly regional (Birmingham) and collaged with whatever they could grab (guests ranged from Jasper Carrot to Muhammed Ali, ad lib sketches and fortean mysteries vied with 40s cartoons or clips from Blazing Saddles), it let the kids take over the studio space, where they could throw goo, water and pies at their own parents and presenters, and expect the same in return. By the time of Thatcher's 1983 victory, it too was gone; to be replaced by defeated, deflated imitations. It's influence eventually spread to Janet Street-Porter, The Word and their repositioning of 'youth' as an overgrown eight-year old with too much money to waste.

Ending around the same time as Tiswas was its 'upmarket' competitor Swap Shop, followed by the near-identical successor Saturday Superstore. It was only as 'multicoloured' as the garish products it fetishised. There was no room here for gurning bands, satire, hyperactive audiences or poor housekeeping. Once again, pets were a handy studio substitute for those noisy urban kids. Its main concern was the polite order of a virtual marketplace - where exchange and use maintained steady value (actual labour long banished to schools programming) under the shock-proof, often scolding, business sense of Noel Edmonds and his humourless, ambitious associates recruited from Radio 1. Woe betide participating audiences if they failed to accord pop stars, athletes, entrepreneurs, royals or the Iron Lady herself due respect, never mind bombard them with pies. Keith Chegwin appeared across shows to play the childlike northern buffoon, until his own personal recession made the good cheer go pop. He made a Cool Britannia comeback revealing his Full Monty on Channel 5, to predictable press outrage.

The items exchanged on Swap Shop rarely generated excitement in young viewers. It was rather the system of the shiny tidy Saturday Superswap Store that aimed to enthrall: Bizarre interludes of slow panning across the available tat, with market demands written below in perfect grammar. There were one or two amusing bursts of revolt, but the BBC's micro-managed communications rendered such acts as futile as swearing down the phone at call centre employees. It felt as though the childhood addressed by Magpie was already decades in the past. The BBC embraced the very marketplace that sought to destroy it, and if it meant delivering a pre-teen audience to Mrs. Thatcher, so be it. Everything now had a price, and everyone had to know their place. Children had new rules to learn, before they could grow up to drink a cup of vomit on The Word.

Forget What's Legal. Do What's Right!

Another kind of folk hero emerged in the 70s. With the decline of the western (or at least it's conservative tradition), came the emergence of the urban vigilante. With 'indians' out the way, the new frontier was supposedly mollycoddled and multicultural. The new frontiersman fought against against "queens, dopers, junkies, fairies, sick" (Taxi Driver), where "the niggers are gettin' all the money" and the stagflated "dollar ain't worth shit!" (Joe). In the permissive Great Society where you can "screw, have babies and get paid for it" (Joe again), what other option was there but to "throw a net over the whole lot of 'em" (Dirty Harry)?

The outrage/celebration that greeted Dirty Harry and Death Wish is widely documented. Less known nowadays is the huge hit Joe (1970), with Peter Boyle* in the title role. Years before the vigilante flick found it's sequel-friendly formula (sometime around Death Wish 2, 1982), Joe was somewhat peculiar in the openness of his hate and resentment - and also as a comedy of sorts. Hard hat** Joe, cheered on by many an American audience, made no bones about his hatred for blacks, hippies, gays, liberals - or combos of the above ("42 per cent of liberals are queer!"). The meek adman, accompanying Joe on this mission of righteous vengeance, has with him the oldest of Hollywood motives: the rescue of a beautiful young white girl (here Susan Sarandon), from the forces of the not-so-white (dope-addled hippies and their black friends). No spoilers here, but let's just say what audiences cheered on for most of the movie isn't exactly rewarded at the end.

This is one of the first films to use the same formula as The Searchers in a modern, urban setting. Namely, a defeated, disillusioned patriarch/lawman/soldier takes up the big mission of rescuing a corrupted white girl from a permissive society/uncivilised 'tribe' - or her own misguided idea of liberation. The basic narrative angle is as old as this charming little caper:

What was novel was how this urbanised formula, previously reserved for imperial swashbucklers and westerns, became a movie staple from Nixon to Reagan (now being revived somewhat with The Brave One, Law-Abiding Citizen etc.). The Searchers itself is all over 'New Hollywood' - in Taxi Driver, Dirty Harry, Prime Cut, The Wind and The Lion, Star Wars, The Deer Hunter (albeit a homoerotic variation) and Paul Schrader's Hardcore, with porn as the permissive evil. It's even the basis of a chat-up line in Scorsese's Who's That Knocking On My Door? It was the cult movie of the 'movie brat' film makers, for all its ideological confusion; and found itself applied to all environments during the 70s.

With the emergence of the full-on vigilante cycle, the formula was consolidated in that 'the girl' was seldom rescued - the story was frequently based on her being dead, or experiencing a fate considered worse. Revenge outweighed the notion of rescue - punishment was its own reward. The niggling doubts of Joe or Taxi Driver were ironed out in time for Reagan's Morning in America. The rhetoric became less verbally explicit, but the violence much more so (Charles Bronson would never say the n-word, but his bullets did the talking). It had it's 80s variations, as in the rape revenge cycle, or M.I.A. rescue fantasies (on which Ross Perot pitched his bid for president). But the violence and rage never lost it's intensity. Nor did the ideological conflict.

Not everyone may remember how divisive these films were. Accusations of fascism were common, until their attitudes became the basis for tabloid discourse and neoliberal jurisprudence during the 80s. I'd argue that the vigilante genre lost its potency with the emergence of talk radio and TV. The place where a million Joes can yell blue murder against the very same people Peter Boyle did forty years ago, spurred on by presenters 'telling it like it is.' Where those in opposition (if only by birth) to the rule of Capital are the ones "gettin' all the money" in the shape of welfare, civil rights, healthcare, union recognition etc. Where similar attitudes inform the negative solidarity of those viewing the world upside down. Where the only 'rebellious' option available to god-fearing 'hard-working families' is subjecting society's 'undesirables' to a violence far more direct than the economic, and asking questions later.

*Despite instant stardom, left-liberal Boyle was so appalled by audience reactions to his character (it was even cited as inspiration for a copycat massacre), that he resolved never to play a violent part again. Director John Alvidsen went on to direct Rocky, who went on to beat Soviet ass after regaining the heavyweight championship for blue collar white America.

**'Hard Hats' - Christian, militantly white, blue collar, hawkish and patriotic - became something of a 'movement' around the time of Joe. The rift between this wing of the American working class and the 'commie hippie faggots' of the New Left hasn't quite healed yet.

Permissive Society, Raging Bulls

Just some of the leading actresses (as they were then known) of the 70s who had key roles as victims of sexual violence:

Sissy Spacek, Nancy Allen, Faye Dunaway, Isabel Huppert, Jodie Foster, Jane Fonda, Julie Christie, Susan George, Diana Ross, Raquel Welch, Diane Keaton, Liv Ullmann, Mia Farrow, Charlotte Rampling, Joan Collins, Catherine Deneuve, Candice Bergen, Jessica Lange, Margot Kidder, Angie Dickinson, Stephanie Beacham, Sally Kellerman, Pam Grier, Mariel & Margeaux Hemingway, Farrah Fawcett, Lesley Anne Downe, Barbara Hershey, Genevieve Bujold, Brooke Shields, Charlotte Rampling, Sylvia Krystel, Barbara Hershey, Susan Sarandon.*

Directors of the 70s - who used sexual violence in their key films:

Sam Pekinpah, Martin Scorcese, Brian Depalma, Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, Bernardo Bertollucci, Michael Winner, Don Seigel, Robert Altman, Claude Chabrol, John Carpenter, Nicholas Roeg, Ken Russell, Clint Eastwood, Alan J. Pakula, Pasolini, Jodorowsky, Wes Craven, George A. Romero, Jonathan Demme, Michael Ritchie, Paul Schrader, Marco Ferreri, Bertrand Blier, William Friedkin, Sidney Lumet, Ingmar Bergman, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Richard Brooks, Arthur Penn, Luis Bunuel, Ridley Scott, and the grandaddy of them all... Alfred Hitchcock.**

These lists only cover the 70s 'mainstream' - we'll leave aside the endless reels of porn, exploitation, and 'video nasties' for now (or the many emerging national cinemas of the period). But the question remains: why, even if we allow for the easing of censorship, was rape such a defining motif of the 70s? How did its 'legendary' directors make such a name for themselves with an unprecedented level of visual misogyny? Why, from '68 onwards, was rape used so frequently, 'humorous' to horrific, left-wing to right-wing, leading the plot or as background incident, overwhelmingly man on woman, but also incorporating man-on-man, paedophilia, incest, necrophilia, bestiality... and even between humans and demons, viruses, machines or aliens? Particularly telling is how almost every genre and market (however 'niche') indulged in scenes of rape of some kind.

It's now common currency that late 70s/80s cinema was a restoration of sorts, but even then rape continued to march across screens regardless; this time with the 'rape revenge' cycle, in line with the right-wing agenda of the 'rehabilitated' hero on the side of law and order, family values, and imperial wish fulfillment. But for many films of the 70s that (at the very least) had deeply ambivalent attitudes towards the traditional hero and the ideology he represented, rape became the brutality du jour - standing in for capital in many cases, sometimes for the urban/ethnic hordes in need of 'cleansing', at other times for the unaccountable power of government and military, or uncontainable 'rebelliousness'.

The (re)emergence of feminism at the dawn of the 70s had a part to play, of course - but was it seen as that threatening so early? Unlike 40s noir (itself revived in a big way during the 70s), 70s male confusion and anxiety was reluctant to blame women outright for their woes. It instead became a ritual, a motif present in the most inappropriate of narrative arcs. A shorthand way of telling us the Hero Isn't a Nice Guy, or Capitalism Is Cruel, or The Orgy's Gone Too Far. Most telling of all, rape was something for men to deal with (or dramatically fail to deal with). Such ambiguities were often closed to the women concerned. If they were 'lucky', then it was a one night stand and/or silenced with a door slammed in their face. Otherwise it was rape, a gaping wound, or a long take of their mutilated remains to get the second act in gear.

It is perhaps telling how 'iconic' some of these films - and their 'maverick' auteurs - now are. Long awaited 'uncut' versions generate hype (among boys of all ages) restoring the kind of misogyny that censors and county councils once thought beyond the pale. How far we've come in the name of 'liberation'!

*You may find some of these names obscure. Of those that survived the increasingly juvenile casting demands of the 80s/90s, many continued in parts where they fight institutional misogyny (but win over the 'liberal' self-flattery of tinseltown). With the 'redemption' requirements of later Hollywood, they often came up trumps on a 'personal' level. A case in point being Jodie Foster, who went from being a twelve-year old prostitute (nearly all these actresses played prostitutes), to a court case/academy award winning gang rape victim, to her most successful role as a plucky FBI agent who melts the heart of a cannibalistic serial killer... to her current niche as maternal vigilante who's mad as hell and won't take it anymore.

**Of the surviving directors, many have the convenient niche of cynical hackery or basically remaking the same film over and over again, until that darn oscar shows up. They overcame misogyny by pushing female characters as far back as is narratively possible, and making maleness it's own melodrama.

And I Mean It Sincerely, Folks!

Uncharacteristically interesting article from Alexis Petridis (despite his characteristically crass conclusion), if only for the dreadful ghosts it conjures up - the kind that lurk on the edges of popular consciousness, despite the best efforts of our custodians of pop culture. For all the talk of 'hauntological', this is what haunts those of us born before the 80s: something that was very much 'there', and present in every living room, until the manufacture of 'Cool Britannia' and its groovy vicar.

For many who would vote for Mrs. Thatcher (the harshest judge of 'talent' in her time), this was the 'normality' in need of emergency care by 1979. The world of 'decent people', unaffected but deeply troubled by the sexual ambiguities, racial assertions, permissiveness and hedonism of what Mojo-consensus pretends 'we' were all listening to in the 70s. Those who felt at home in the white, smiling, warm world of 'pure entertainment' and its ideology, where opportunity always knocks. The upbeat world of schlagermusik (standard entertainment on both sides of the Iron Curtain) kept it's chin up through the great unrest of the 70s and 80s; confirming final, globalised victory with the resistable rise of this ubermensch:

Stand up and be counted indeed.