The King's Speech

We went to see The King's Speech on Christmas Day, along with a surprisingly large number of other people - a mostly greying crowd of couples or small groups of friends. Somehow on Christmas Day, when it is otherwise so quiet, it can be a relief to see a bunch of strangers and participate in the same activity as them, to be part of a crowd without having to actively communicate with anyone - a comforting but very light polarity.

I'd heard about The King's Speech on the radio and thought it sounded interesting, but had wondered a little at how something so undramatic as a speech impediment and its treatment, and the friendship between patient (king or otherwise) and doctor, could be spun into a whole film. But it could - I thought it was excellent, and for the first time in quite a while never found myself glancing at my watch during a lull in interest. (In contrast - we went to see Tron 2 a few days ago, and there were only about ten minutes of it near the beginning that weren't a lull in interest. Not my type of film, of course, but I was surprised that it didn't even hold my attention with the visuals after the one quite striking game scene at the beginning, with its glowing motorbike trails. And the script was just appalling. I know it's not the point in such a film, but they still have to have paid someone money to write it...)

Lots of good acting in this film - and nicely understated. It was surprising (but gratifying) to see Guy Pearce acting as King Edward (or crown prince, for much of the film) and to remember that most of us first saw him as Mike in Neighbours. Very far from that! He's an interesting character in this film - irresponsible, selfish, and pointedly cruel at times, but with a more human side (for want of a better word) too. I suppose the same is true of each of the characters: complex knots of ambition, pride, fear, friendship and love.

The snobbery towards colonials that comes out when Lionel, the Australian therapist, auditions for Shakespeare (as well as in some of the King's outbursts) is well depicted too - it's something that still clearly exists in Britain today, that baseless sense of innate superiority, but I'm sure was much worse when backed up by Empire. A few days ago I was explaining modern Korean history, and reflecting on Japanese Imperial attitudes of the pre-war period - Japan annexed Korea in 1910, had Koreans learn Japanese and consider themselves subjects of the Emperor, yet they continued to treat Koreans as something lesser - so always presenting the Imperial task as helping another peoples up, but at the same time always making sure that the goal of equality was out of reach. British Empire seems to have worked in the same way, though with varying degrees of "lesser" depending on the colour of your skin. It's astounding to have a system where you expect loyalty to King/Queen and Empire from all subjects, no matter how far they live from the center, and then treat the ex-centric as ill-favoured and backward offspring who should be grateful for the scraps they get from the dinner table.

The way that the fairly simple interpersonal drama of King and therapist is painted against a historical backdrop, both overtly (rise of Hitler, outbreak of war) and more subtly with this exploration of attitudes makes it an engaging film. And all without sex, spurting blood and gore, or 3D effects!

Carols

Merry Christmas, everyone.

It's Christmas morning here in Denver, and I'm listening to my third carol service in three days on BBC Radio - more a freak of the time I've put the radio (computer) on than a planned activity: I have somehow caught Christmas Eve, Midnight Mass, and Christmas Day services while doing morning exercise, making dinner, and grumpily drinking my morning coffee respectively.

Well, I like listening to carol services as an antidote to the weeks of awful popular Christmas music in supermarkets. But after three services, I am driven to record my three most hated carols.

1. Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
I never even knew how much I disliked it until this year. It brings to mind Victorian Gothic, all that over-decoration, piousness, chastity and colonial pride. And it goes on forever. I especially hate that last chorus with all of those soaring triumphant sopranos above the main chorus line. Grotesque!

2. O Little Town of Bethlehem.
Eugh! Eugh! Skin-crawly cloying sweetness! Victorian faux-simplicity! Somehow I remember liking this when I was young, probably because it wasn't Away in a Manger but was easy for children to sing.

3. Away in a Manger.
Same cloying nature as O Little Town of Bethlehem, with a particular added dose of nauseating syrup for the fact that we were always made to sing it at primary school, presumably through adults' love of juxtaposing sweet little children with a Christmas song about sweet little babies in cribs. "Little Lord Jesus no crying he makes" is the worst possible line - patronizing and delusional - and the melody drones and drones (especially when sung by sweet little children).
But it does have the line that most puzzled me through my early childhood:
Stay by my side until morning is night.

Illiterate princesses

I've just finished reading Hans Christian Andersen's "The Wild Swans" to help with a translation I'm working on.

It seems to me that if they'd given the young princess her own diamond pencil and gold slate and sent her off to school with her brothers instead of having her sit at home on a plate-glass stool looking at her pretty picture book, she'd have been a lot better equipped to write things down when she was forbidden to talk in later life, and would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

Evidently, however, being beautiful and pious was much more important than being clever in these fairy tales. I'd like to think all has changed now, but a glance at the recent Target toys catalog that was delivered to us shows pretty clearly how we're shaping our children from early on. Girls: pink pages, princesses, castles, ovens, pink ovens that look like princesses' castles. Nourish, look beautiful. Be a little bitchy to other girls now and then if you have a bit of an edge. Boys, blue pages, guns, spaceships, building sets. Build, discover, destroy.

All the rivers of the world...

Last week I was driving to work thinking about the classes of the day and how I'd like to be back in bed, trying to keep enough attention on the road not to run into any people or kill any squirrels, and listening with about a fifth of one ear to an interview on NPR about Middle Eastern poetry, when I was suddenly jolted awake by this poem:

I live like a bird that does not know why it sings, like a tree that does not know why it grows, like a breeze that does not know why it blows, and like a fish that does not know why all the rivers of the world empty in the frying pans.

(I don't know where the line breaks are, though I can guess. The text is taken from the transcript on npr.org, where you can listen to the program too.)

It is by a contemporary Iranian poet Hamid Reza Rahimi, and is entitled "A Quarter to Destruction." It was the last line that caught me off guard - after three images of nature doing natural things (albeit without knowing why), unexpectedly the image of the fish, not swimming, but roasting in an incomprehensible drought that focuses the entire world, for the fish, in that inescapable frying pan.

Things I Find Strange and Foreign

Perhaps I need a series, though I've mentioned plenty before. Here we are, then -
Things I Find Strange and Foreign No. 1 - the extent to which the legal and judicial system in this country is intertwined with the political system. We see it in the fuss over confirmation of Supreme Court judges, but it goes down to the level of state politics too. In Colorado, there is some kind of a merit-based selection that goes on, but the electorate can vote to retain or remove judges at certain intervals. It happens during general elections like this upcoming one - in fact, there are so many things happening at once in this election that I wonder how many people really understand enough about the issues to make informed decisions. The ballot papers must be thick booklets. I wonder if they give you a seat in the polling booth? It seems you'd be there quite a while.

Anyway, as far as I can see, some judicial commission makes recommendations on the retention of judges in Colorado, and then the public votes on it. I've seen signs up in yards pressing for the removal of a couple of them recently, and I faintly remember reading why at some point, but I've forgotten. In essence, I don't think it's a bad idea to be able to get rid of poorly performing judges (as also to be able to get rid of ineffectual university professors, though the tenure system here prevents that happening at the senior levels), but wonder how qualified the general public is to make such decisions, and how far they can make the decisions based on competence in the courtroom rather than on some perception of political leaning. Wouldn't those working within the system be somewhat better placed to make a fair judgement?

What I find stranger, though, is the way that the legal profession seems often a springboard into politics. Our current Governor, Bill Ritter (Democrat), was District Attorney for Denver before he became governor. Ken Buck, our Republican nominee for the senate, is DA for Weld County, Colorado. Over in New York State, the Democratic candidate for governor is Andrew Cuomo, the Attorney General. Now, I am somewhat hazy on the way that Procurators Fiscal are appointed in Scotland, Attorneys General appointed in England, and where U.K. judges spring from, but it seems to me that the political link is at least much weaker. It would alarm me to be in a court room knowing that the person prosecuting me or the person judging me might be using my case simply to shore up their political credentials for some future election.

Which brings me to Things I Find Strange and Foreign No. 2 - sentencing in U.S. courts, where people seem to get wildly different sentences depending on state and on individual judge, and where sentences of "190 years," "320 years" or some such figure seem quite common. It's impossible! Why have sentences that are longer than the possible life of the criminal? What sense does that make? Shouldn't they be forced to keep the rotting bodies in a cell for the duration of the sentence?

Midterm Elections

At last, incredulity has shaken me from blogging apathy. I'm teaching at 9 a.m. this term, so each morning I drive to work as the main national and local news plays on NPR I've learned more about U.S. politics in recent weeks than in the rest of my six years here, and I find it all pretty alarming. But to beat all else, yesterday I heard the following clip of one of our candidates for State Governor, Tom Tancredo, speaking at the Tea Party convention a few months ago:



(Found on e on mediamatters.org)

There's a lot of talk of an "enthusiasm gap" - the (often extreme) right are vociferously fired up just now, while those who were so energized by Obama two years ago are apparently somewhat disillusioned and thus less likely to vote at all. Goodness knows, Obama is a little disappointing - he was almost bound to be so, arriving as he did on the wave of so much hope for change. I think the same happened with Blair after a couple of years, although unlike Blair with his strange messianic convictions, Obama instead reveals too much of the face of a negotiator, as he has proved lately in his statements on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." I saw him on TV basically saying, "Yes, we will change it, but it has to be done at the right time and with due process." Too much honesty! It would surely be better to make a forceful statement in public, and carry out the negotiations in private.

In any case, it seems to me that a lack of enthusiasm for Obama shouldn't stop people in the center and on the left (left for here, that is, where people can really accuse Obama of being a "committed socialist ideologue" and get cheered instead of laughed off stage) from getting fired up. These Tea Party candidates, Palin and her followers, seem to me to be dangerous people who revel in ignorance and bigotry. Shouldn't that be enough to get anyone to the polling station? If I had a vote, I'd be there.

Airport experiences

I've been in Philadelphia for a conference for the last few days. I came back yesterday afternoon. There are a few things to say about it, but for Monday morning I'll limit myself to the current U.S. airport experience, which seems to get worse every time I go.

When I got to the security line in Philadelphia yesterday, as usual I took off my coat and scarf and put them in a plastic tray to put through the machine; and my shoes; and my laptop; and then my small bag; and then I put my carry-on case through. I began to go through the metal detector, and the man sent me back to take my cardigan off and put it through the machine as well. I remarked to the woman putting herself back together next to me that soon we'd be undressing completely - and she said, "If only I believed it made us any safer...". I think this is how most of us feel about it.

When I walked away I realized that I'd forgotten completely to remove the little plastic bag of "liquids and gels" from my case and put them through separately, as I was supposed to (and I had a good number of items in there for a few days away), but no-one called me on it. I see the Moscow subway bombings in the news this morning, and think about riding around on the underground trains in Philadelphia yesterday, and wonder where this is going to go. It seems likely that we'll end up in police states being patted down at every move, but that at the same time we'll end up not a bit safer for it. I had my bags checked twice in Old Philadelphia yesterday morning, once to see Liberty Bell and once to see Independence Hall, oh, and I got called off for a random check at the gate in the airport too, so I was feeling a bit sensitive to it all by the end of the day.

To add to the pleasures of the airport experience, airlines here have recently started charging for checked luggage - a matter of about $25 per bag each way. I've always preferred to check my luggage and got irritated at all of those people bringing mini suitcases onto the plane and taking up all of the overhead locker space; but once the airline starts penalizing me for what I thought was responsible behaviour, then obviously I'm going to buy a carry-on case and behave like everyone else. But here's the thing: on the smaller planes in particular, such as the ones I got to Philadelphia by (it should have been a direct flight, but we had a spring snowstorm in Denver that resulted in the cancellation of my flight, and I was rerouted by Detroit), only two such bags can fit in for every four people, and since all members of the flight crew have their own bags that are in the lockers before the customers even begin boarding, you end up with the people who are allowed to board in the first two waves with their luggage spread down the plane (though they're seated at the front, so that when you land the orderly exiting from the front turns instead into a confused peristalsis); and then the later waves suddenly get stopped and told they have to have their luggage gate-checked, and then there is further hold-up as the harried gate staff are called back in to label it all.

Belated New Year entry

Happy New Year! I meant to write something last weekend, but of course got caught up instead in last minute preparations for the start of a new term - it started on Monday January 4th, which I suppose is still vastly better than two years ago when it started on January 2nd.

I wasted a few weeks at the end of the year fretting and trying not to fret over whether I might have lymphoma, after a CT scan that showed enlarged lymph glands through my chest. I'm relieved to say I don't. Between Christmas and New Year, I had a lymph node removed from just above my clavicle (the swelling that had made me visit the doctor in the first place) for biopsy, and was told on New Year's Eve that it wasn't anything cancerous. It made for much better celebrations that evening. I'd contemplated the possible need to change my blog over the next few months into a lengthy account of cancer care in the U.S. health care system. I'm sure it would have been a good topic, but I'll be quite happy not to have to discover for myself how good that care is, or whether my insurance would save me from being one of the alarming number of people in this country who end up declaring bankruptcy because of medical bills.

We went on a week's trip to Asheville, North Carolina, in the first half of December. It's the second time I've been to the "South," and as on my brief trip to Atlanta, I was delighted by how lovely it all was. Before I came to the States, my imaginary South was like Texas in the movies - dry and dusty, with sinister white police officers in reflective sunglasses cruising around the deserted roads and passing long and searching looks over strangers in town. In fact, the south-eastern states are (at least in my brief acquaintance with them) lush and green, with woodlands and rolling hills and fields or yards with black and white cows, donkeys, sheep, goats, ducks, chickens - somewhat like lowland Scotland, but less miserable. They feel familiar and well-worn, like the big green bath robe I wrap myself in every morning and evening.


Of course, my experiences are entirely superficial, and people who know better than me tell me of the problems with racism and narrow mindedness that lie just under this beautiful exterior, so maybe it's not so different from Scotland after all; but for the moment I will cling to my first impressions. Colorado is so dry and brown most of the time, and the mountains are impressive but they're definitely not conducive to life; to go from here to somewhere that drips green from every branch makes me feel mentally like a shrivelled old sponge suddenly plunged back into water. And they had good food there too, which is more than can be said for Denver.