Together in my timeline last week, two tweets on memory:
https://twitter.com/JonathanHaynes/status/575224380831236096
Ben Philips had all his creative work deleted by hackers. Continue reading
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In my essay for the Sunday Herald I made the case for the necessity of the swearing and offensive chatter that makes up much of the dialogue in Black Watch:
They are working class, inarticulate and insecure boys with no prospects other than the army. And when these men speak, they swear. It is integral to their vernacular. To sanitize their words would be to silence them.
Unfortunately the constraints of the page forbade me from elaborating on this point…. but luckily, I have a blog.
The swearing of the enlisted men is also important because of the contrast it presents with the officer class, and the politicians who have sent Scottish soldiers into harm’s way for centuries. The show has a marvellous musical number where Lord Elgin, in full highland dress and regalia, prances around the stage, beckoning the young men to sign-up: “hurrah, hurrah!” He speaks the Queen’s English, and he is as mendacious as they come (“did I mention it would be all over by Christmas” he says as he sends the soldiers off to Flanders in 1914). In this context, the Fifer accents of the soldiers are a necessity. Homogenising the language would be an act of class warfare.
To my mind, the final genius of Black Watch lies in the juxtaposition between the coarse language and the stunning physical theatre. One reason why Steven Hoggett’s choreography is so powerful is because the precise and often tender movements emerge from characters who have been f-ing and c-ing just moments before. The combination jars the audience and is compelling, and it is the rude words that tee-up this possibility.
A headteacher in Kirriemuir has caused controversy by banner her pupils from studying Black Watch, the National Theatre of Scotland production that I worked on in 2006. What with this history, couple with the free speech work I do for English PEN, this is perhaps the perfect issue for me to write on. Over the weekend, The Sunday Herald published my essay setting the issue in its context.
Free speech controversies are like solar flares. They burn hot and bright. Right now, it is Angus that is feeling the heat. Last week, the Sunday Herald reported that one headteacher in Kirriemuir had pulled Black Watch off the Highers syllabus because it is “offensive”. Parents are angry at the decision, and have demanded an explanation. Continue reading
Ever since the ISIS murderer and propagandist ‘Jihadi John’ was revealed to be a British engineering graduate called Mohammed Emwazi, our news media has been saturated with reports about his school days, his personality, and the possible causes of his radicalisation: he ran into a goalpost as a kid; he went to school with Tulisa…
The coverage grates. Its full of cod-psychological comments from former pupils at his school, noting the fact that he was a ‘loner’. Reading these quotes, I’m reminded of one of the insights from Serial, the podcast phenomenon about the murder of a Baltimore schoolgirl Hae Min Lee in 1999. That series makes the point that people are susceptible to a confirmation bias in their memories. When told that someone is a murderer, people naturally recall those incidents where the person acted weird or like a ‘loner’. But alternatively, those who are convinced that the convicted person is innocent remember him as friendly and outgoing. Continue reading
I was listening Magic 105.4 earlier. They played Papa Don’t Preach by Madonna. The girl in the song pleads with her Dad to let her see someone he disapproves of.
Next in the playlist was Uptown Girl by Billy Joel. A young man laments that the woman he has fallen for is from a different social class.
It occurs to me that these two songs are Pop Pairs. They could be two views on the same relationship.
My sense is that you could probably make a Pop Pair out of any two songs where the singer declares their love for someone else. But the really great pop pairs will be two songs that present two sides of a less conventional relationship. For example, Young Girl by Gary Puckett, paired with Born Too Late by the Poni-Tails; or Money Money Money by ABBA, paired with Gold Digger by Kanye West.
Alternatively, where the sentiment is quite specific: The particular question asked by the Shirelles in Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow is answered quite specifically by the Waterboys in How Long Will I Love You?
Eternal Flame by the Bangles paired with Firestarter by Prodigy.