Both long-time readers of this blog will be aware that when I’m not musing about the intricacies and indignities of free speech, I enjoy thinking about storytelling forms and structures. In particular, how new technology can inspire new narrative forms. This question was at the heart of the Sweet Fanny Adams in Eden project I worked on all the way back in 2003. Its also relevant to other shows I worked on with 59 Productions, and the also the ‘grammar’ of modern film and TV editing.
Many of us enjoy stories where the structures and conventions of one form of communication are deployed in a fictional context. Epistolary novels like Les Liaisons dangereuses are an old example of this – the conceit being that you are reading letters from different people, when in fact it’s all one author (the modern variant is the e-Epistolary novel, like Matt Beaumont’s E).
Other examples: Orson Wells’ version of War of the Worlds, done as a radio news bulletin; Jorge Luis Borges ficciones disguised as academic essays; fictional newspaper reviews; ‘mockumentaries’ like This Is Spinal Tap and The Office; and ostensibly ‘found’ footage like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield.
All of this is just preamble before I link to a couple of podcasts I enjoyed recently, that take the conventions of a new technology or media, and wrap a fiction around it. Continue reading
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Houses of Parliament at dusk. Photo by yrstruly on Flickr (CC licence)
Lost in the noise, this tweet from Labour Stephen Doughty MP:
https://twitter.com/SDoughtyMP/status/1072550760314007552
Events have over-taken this prospect. The Chair of the 1922 Committee received the required 48 letters on Tuesday, and so on Wednesday Theresa May had to weather a confidence motion from Conservative MPs. The opposition parties are keeping their powder dry on a confidence motion of their own. There is now no vote to avoid by proroguing parliament.
Nevertheless, the very thought of such manoeuvring should give us pause for thought. In the case of this Government and this embattled Prime Minister, the tactic would have surely backfired. While proroguing parliament is procedurally allowed, the British public would have considered it somehow ‘cheating’ and taken a dim view. Meanwhile, Members of the House of Commons would have been angry at having been denied the opportunity to censure the Government before Christmas, and would have returned in the New Year smarting for a confrontation. Continue reading
I just noticed that the International Observatory for Human Rights put up a video last month, publicising the demonstration they did outside the Embassy of Myanmar in September. The ‘occasion’, so to speak, was the ridiculous jailing of Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo.
I was at the demo, representing English PEN, and am featured briefly in the video, calling on The British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to put pressure on Aung San Suu Kyi.
https://vimeo.com/298423674
Continue reading
Both readers of this blog will be sufficiently aware of my position on free speech to be able to work out what I think about the news that six people are to be prosecuted for staging a racist ‘Grenfell’ Bonfire Night.
The group made a model of Grenfell Tower and set it alight, then posted pictures on social media.
My take is simple: it’s disgusting, racist and worthy of our opprobrium, but should not be a matter for the police. The ‘message’ of this particular stunt does not appear to have any merit, but its far too close to other kinds of political expression—in particular, satire—that we value, and which must be protected. Continue reading
In an essay entitled ‘What Do We Do About A Woman With A Penis‘ by Cassie Brighter, she writes:
Anecdoche — I stumbled into this word recently. It defines that condition when everyone is talking, and no one is listening. I see people expressing very polarized, angry views. I see people speaking from hurt, from fear and from hate.
For a moment I was slightly shocked that I had only just learnt the word now. It’s so useful and apt for the way online discourse (and indeed, political discourse in general) seems to unfold right now that it should be in common use.
It turns out that the word is a deliberate neologism, an invention of the Dictionary is Obscure Sorrows, a creation of John Koenig. Here’s his version:
a conversation in which everyone is talking but nobody is listening, simply overlaying disconnected words like a game of Scrabble, with each player borrowing bits of other anecdotes as a way to increase their own score, until we all run out of things to say.
While it’s great to be able to express this concept, it’s also slightly annoying, because the word does not mean what one might expect it to mean. Anecdoche is clearly a portmanteau of ‘anecdote’ and ‘synecdoche’.
- An anecdote is an account of a personal experience, usually retold to make a point or reveal some truth;
- Synecdoche is a part that stands for the whole. “Send me fifty swords” to mean, “send fifty people armed with swords”.
So an anecdoche could be a single story that becomes a stand-in for, and accepted truth of a particular issue.
This would be a useful word to have because this sort of thing happens all the time in political debates. It’s particularly relevant to transgender activism, which appears to have been reduced to a single, unhelpful question, over whether trans women should be able to use women’s toilets and gym changing rooms. The issue is way more complex and interesting than that.