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The Bible in the Arts

April 22nd, 2011 | Add a Comment

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Aslan from Narnia: Representing Jesus - Sam Stearman

Stories, images, morals, parables and history from the Holy Bible have long inspired artists of every description to portray the great sweep of our fallible human life.

Because so much of the Bible is made up of narrative, solid story-telling, it is natural that its influences will find their ways into a range of literature down the years. On one level they are moral tales, history recorded, parables for living; on another they are the spoken word of the creator God and his plans for redemption. This is the stuff of fiction writing, too.

The Bible in Literature

CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia are a version of the message at the heart of the Christian story. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan the Lion is Jesus who dies in order that another (Edmund) may live and escape punishment. This one has made it onto the stage as a play, several TV versions and a film, proving that good yarns with unusual features of adventure, secret worlds and great battles, still appeal widely.

The Hobbit and Lords of the Ring works by JRR Tolkien are steeped in the effect of Roman Catholicism on him. It is not possible to separate the man, his faith, his writings and his dealing of issues like virtue, free will, creation and sacrifice.

However, while there are Christian novels that put Biblical chapters into different contexts, others use Biblical themes without acknowledging the debt to the Bible. Steinbeck’s East of Eden and Jeffery Archer’s Kane and Abel are not the only novels to use the Cain-Abel and/or prodigal son stories.

From the Herculean tasks of building Soloman’s temple or the Ark; the battle of the small David against the mighty Goliath; to the stories of men’s and women’s betrayals are common themes in literature. Eve’s seducing Adam to eat of the Tree of Knowledge; Delilah cutting the hair that symbolises Samson’s strength while he slept; Salome and John the Baptist’s head; Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son; to the trials of Moses in the desert for forty years after escaping from Egypt, all are inspirational themes strongly bound up in human life, human frailty, human treachery.

There is a genre of fiction that uses Christian-themes and quasi-religion as inspiration, such as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003) and The Lost Symbol (2009) that is appealing and commercially successful, especially when translated into movies.

Sometimes the Bible can be such a magnet, that writers from other genres are drawn to it. Orson Scott Card, a successful science fiction author, has also written Women of Genesis, telling the Biblical accounts of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah as if they are novels. His mastery of storylining and plot bring the ancient women and their lives to a new reality.

The Bible in Art Works

Giotto’s Judas Betrays Christ, or The Pact of Judas, painted in the Arena Chapel, Padua, Italy between 1304-06, is from Mark’s Gospel 14:10. For thirty pieces of silver, Judas betrays Christ. Judas is in yellow, the colour of jealousy in those days.

Hieronymous Bosch, medieval Dutch painter lived in times when fear of the plague stalked Europe, so his work echoes death fear, horror, the power of sin and the devil and catastrophe. He was a devout man, and his work (25 paintings and 8 drawings) is entirely based on Biblical symbolism.

Ecce Homo (John 19:5); Garden of Earthly Delight, fountain, creation, Hell (Genesis 6:2, 1:10, 2:25, 3.6; Numbers 16:33; Revelation 19:21) and The Adoration of the Magi (Matthew 2:11) are famous masterpieces unashamedly illustrating the teachings of the Bible.

The Bible in the Theatre

In the book and the play, The Hiding Place, the Ten Boom family’s heroic hiding of Jews in their clock shop during the Nazi occupation of Holland, truth shines out alongside passion, Christian compassion, love and family values. This play is layered with praising God in all circumstances, despite it being “evil’s hour”, and for the woman after all she had suffered to be able to embrace a former guard from a concentration camp at the finale and say: “I forgive you with all my heart”, is moving and gets the (Christian) message across.

The Passion Play performed in Oberammergau once every ten years by villagers, began in 1633 and has become an enduring expression of Christian faith and a unique theatrical experience, drawing thousands from around the world. Medieval mystery plays did the same thing, and are occasionally revived, including one in Zulu and English telling the story of the death of Jesus.

Whether a story is sung, painted, written as a book or acted on stage or made into a movie, it’s the Bible that still ranks as the greatest source of inspiration of all time, because it is the story of mankind.

First published on Suite 101, 26 March 2010.

Photo: Aslan from Narnia: Representing Jesus – Sam Stearman

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Infamous Things Said By Famous Politicians

April 11th, 2011 | Add a Comment

What Politicians Said and Didn’t Say, But People Think They Did

There Are Known Knowns - US Air Force


Politicians love to coin a winning catchphrase, but often the media do it for them, even if it wasn’t what they actually said. That can be a great political help or not.

Former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was lampooned mercilessly for saying: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know”. In the context of government and war, it is possibly factually correct.

Things That They Actually Said

For him, it was but one of many gems, (‘the way to do well, is to do well”), yet he followed in the well-trodden path of a predecessor, Vice President Dan Quayle, who coined such classics as: “I have made good judgements in the Past. I have made good judgements in the Future”. And, “It’s time for the human race to enter the solar system”. Perhaps his best was: “When I have been asked who caused the riots in LA, my answer is simple. Who is to blame for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings? The killers are to blame”.

Both men actually said the words attributed to them. In the UK, many politicians are associated with phrases they never actually spoke. As Secretary of State for Employment facing rising job losses in manufacturing and subsequent rioting, Norman Tebbit was quoted as telling jobseekers to “get on your bikes” and go look for work. What he in fact said was: “I grew up in the ’30s with an unemployed father. He didn’t riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking ’til he found it”.

Headline Writers Dream-up Catchphrases

The one-time UK Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South West, Enoch Powell’s April 1968 speech warned about rivers of blood in the land over too many immigrants. It made him famous and controversial, helped the Conservatives win the 1970 election and got him dismissed from the Shadow Cabinet. However, the phrase ‘rivers of blood” never appeared in the speech at all; but it was a powerful headline.

As was, “Crisis, What Crisis,’ blazoned across the tabloids when “Sunny” Jim Callaghan, Labour Prime Minister, returned to Britain in 1979 after 4 days in Guadeloupe attending an international summit. Strikes had gripped industrial output in protest at the government’s 5% pay rise limit. The press asked him at the airport if he would declare a state of emergency.

He said: “I promise if you look at it from the outside, I don’t think other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos”. That is rather more wordy, cumbersome and unappealing in media terms than what was used.

The media also played loose with Callaghan’s Chancellor, Denis Healey, who growled: “I warn you there are going to be howls of anguish from those rich enough to pay over 75% on their last slice of earnings”. That became: “Tax the rich till the pips squeak”. However, the Healey phrase, “Silly Billy” was actually created by impressionist Mike Yarwood and not the media, nor by Healey himself being misinterpreted.

Current Leader of the Opposition, David Cameron, is credited with the cry: ‘hug a hoodie’, implying that young, often disaffected youth wear hoods as a statement of disillusion with the world they are in, and all they need is an affectionate hug to be at peace with their lives and the rest of us. In fact, he said that hoodies are ‘more defensive than aggressive’. The misquote sits better on a newspaper front page, of course.

So perhaps the message for all politicians is ‘be careful what you say’. But in the age of 24-hour news, the internet, social networking, leaks, a media hungry for exclusives and bite-sized, easy to sell catchphrases, it will make little difference what they say. It’s what they are perceived to say that matters.

First published on Suite 101, 23 March 2010.

Photo: There Are Known Knowns – US Air Force

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Circus Is All-Round Entertainment

April 9th, 2011 | 1 Comment

On Film or on Sawdust, Thrill-Seekers Love Circus Spectacle

Tradional Circus Spectacle - Usien
Today’s sophisticated all-age audiences are still thrilled by animal-free Big Tops. Film of circus, film about circus or live circus – there is no show on earth like it.

Troupes like Cirque du Soleil bring to the circus genre, a standard of live performance skills that is second to none. Whether in a tent, a theatre, an arena or on film, circus spectacle is unique, enjoying a rich history and a bright future as people demand and enjoy more spectacle, more thrills, more integrated performing arts.

Definition of Spectacle

One definition of spectacle is an event or situation, memorable for the appearance it creates. “Stop making a spectacle of yourself”, is still a well-used and understood exhortation. It inspired most comic moments on stage, in literature and on film. Equally, the natural world can supply serious spectacular beauty in abundance.

Circus is best performed in a circular arena, stemming from the Roman gladiatorial places seating thousands of watchers of chariot races, battles and physical skills. The clowning part grew out of the Italian comedy, the Commedia dell’Arte, but the trapeze, contortion,dance, juggling, tumbling and stunt skills married to it, arise from impressing crowds that is at the heart of showbusiness in all its guises.

Sometimes, static objects are spectacular, neither scary nor comic – as Edison’s Eiffel Tower was or Lumiere’s film of a train arriving at a station in the 1890s. By the time we reach the late Twentieth Century, the demand for film, performance and theme park ride spectacle is driving technological advances.

The Greatest Show On Earth

Circus is spectacular – the greatest show on earth, roar of the crowd, smell of the greasepaint. Even in Circus of Horrors, Psycho Circus or Zombie Circus, people suffering stress, bizarre and cruel twists of life drive the movies to satisfy thrill-seeking in an audience..

For The Circus (1928), Charlie Chaplin practised for weeks to walk the tightrope, to be fugitive from the law, stumbling across a carnival and becoming the main act. It’s a Chaplin spectacle – he produced, edited, directed, wrote music for and starred in it, but it links a spectacular setting easily identified by audiences of film and circus to a human situation: romance and comedy.

The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) won Best Picture award because the circus itself is like a character in the story. There’s smooth blending of real circus with actors. Other films share elements of circus spectacle with reality of life: Marx Brothers at the Circus (1938), Trapeze (1956) and Circus World (1964).

Ben Hur (1959) is praised as an achievement in cinematic history. Nothing was computer generated, no effects, no simulation, only thousands of real extras. The acting is worthy of a master-class. The chariot race is pure adrenalin-rushing spectacle that still thrills today.

Circus excitement is echoed in the Roman Empire crisis of Spartacus (1960) and Gladiator (2000), where the arena of the death-circus is an exhilarating spectacle. The arena-gladiatorial contest is exploited in The Phantom Menace (1999) where the pod race is both fun and a crowd-pleasing spectacle.

Only Surviving Purpose-Built Total Circus

The only purpose-built, total circus surviving in Great Britain is the Hippodrome at Great Yarmouth, built in 1903. It has a unique water feature in which synchronised swimmers stage spectacular finales. Only three others operate in the world: Moscow, Blackpool and the newest show at Las Vegas.

Other large venues such as the Albert Hall, large regional theatres and civic buildings around the world host travelling circus today. Some circuses still pitch their Big Tops in public parks and gardens, bringing the history and culture, the glamour and the sheer hard work of one of the most effective live theatre spectacles anybody can experience.

First published on Suite 101, 21st March 2010.

Photo: Traditional Circus Spectacle – Usien

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Will Technology Kill Off the Actor?

April 7th, 2011 | Add a Comment

Simulation Wizardry Could Replace Human Beings in Movies

Anaheim Wax Works Titanic Replica of Simulation - Cliff
As movie-3D on the back of other recent and ongoing technological advances sweeps all before it, are human performers’ days numbered, or is a human actor irreplaceable?

Film-goers expect to enjoy realistic and convincing settings in movies, from wild places to dingy tenements, from outer space to city skylines. all usually real, un-enhanced backdrops. Audiences have grown up with seeing how people interact with and respond to their situations/environments.

The image of the terrified victim in a horror setting, paralysed by fear, the rabbit in the headlights, is not only an abiding memory of virtually everything ever made in the genre, but is what drives horror itself. Whether the unspeakable is a creature (Jaws, King Kong), a natural threat (Tornado, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012) or a person (Cape Fear). It covers the night, the unknown, nightmares, unspecified dangers and hideous deformities, before which our heroes and heroines are transfixed: all need actors to suffer for us.

Actors Representing Humanity

Titanic (although the ship was generated), Saving Private Ryan, The Godfather trilogy, How the West Was Won, for example, all require actors representing humanity to interpret the experiences against big backdrops for us. We are drawn in as if part of the action, chewing over the dilemma, finding the last ounce of moral, physical or emotional strength to overcome and win the day with those nuances of human behaviour that we all share.

Toy Story (1995), A Bug’s Life (1998) and Avatar (2009) allow us to impose human characteristics, emotions and features onto inanimate toys, insects and aliens, so demonstrating again, that people (actors) are as essential now as ever. Even if the actor is a puppet, like Yoda in the Star Wars franchise, by the time of The Phantom Menace (1999), he has become computer generated, but with human voice and characteristics.

Today’s audiences love to see life manipulated – man acrobatically avoiding time-slowed bullets, to name but one example (The Matrix, 1999). Jurassic Park (1993) would not have worked without artificially-generated, believable prehistoric creatures. Nowadays modern monsters, spaceships and wars rely on computer realism. Digital props, weather, crashes, explosions have become the norm.

Nobody Notices When Images Are Faked

The real and the fake interact together – from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) on. Nobody objects – indeed, few notice, when computer gadgetry enhances and reinforces the real world we set our real lives against. Lord of the Rings (2001) creates beautiful scenery and fantasy worlds, but combines them with the skills of real actors.

Hollywood already has the power to make digital doubles of famous, high-class actors. They can also generate totally convincing replicas of actors now dead. They can light them, animate them, reconfigure them, perfect them. Soon, some critics believe, they will add emotion, depth of complexity that makes the human being unique.

For now this motion-capture technology may only be used to reshoot scenes where the actor is no longer available, or make a quick rough-cut film as a pilot. However, it’s only a matter of time before budget constraints lead some executives to think it a good idea to make movies without real, famous (expensive) actors and instead use totally generated, famous actors (cheap).

In a world of physical artificiality, where aging and illness are banished, where everything is controlled by computers and robotics, we may see perfect films. We’ll access movies made by digital animators, computer puppeteers that raise us to the very heights of emotional response, starring every famous performer ever born.

But how will young people learn their acting crafts? Perhaps that will not matter then.

First published at Suite 101, 21 March 2010, deleted by them in a Google algorithm purge January 2012.

Photo: Anaheim Wax Works Titanic Replica of Simulation – Cliff

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50 Crazy Ways to Call Someone Mad

April 6th, 2011 | Comments Off on 50 Crazy Ways to Call Someone Mad

A Writer’s List of Words and Phrases to Describe Insanity

Alabama Insane Hospital 1907 - Unknown

You need a good way to describe someone as barking. Many English cliches & expressions describe somebody others call mad. Some terms are funny; others cruel.

In writing, any author is bound eventually to need to describe a character who is regarded as off the wall. People often account for the behaviour of themselves or others, as a moment of madness. But what is it? It’s a relatively permanent mind disorder. In North America ‘mad’ is a way of describing anger or irritation, but that is not common usage in most parts of the English speaking world..

Lunacy and Insanity Describe Madness

Lunacy is an obsolete legal definition for insanity. It stemmed originally from the moon (lunar): howling or baying at a full moon like a mad or rabid dog or wolf. This, in turn, probably led to the expression barking mad. A loony-bin is a popular word for a mental asylum, and funny farm is another which gave rise to – ‘call the farm; tell them a turnip is missing’.

To describe someone or their activities as manic or demented is a slight twist on the madness theme. A manic episode may be evidence of what is now called bipolar disorder, but in the past manic behaviour was a descriptor of insanity.

Albert Einstein is one of many people credited with describing insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Insanity is better described as mental illness or derangement. From it we get insane, with its implication that the affected person is unaware he or she is afflicted.

More Light Hearted Words for Doolally

This is an anglicised version of an Indian place name: Deolali Sanatorium, and the original was that someone had the doolally tap, meaning they were off their heads, off their rockers, out of their mind. Loopy means full of loops, confused, befuddled.

Bonkers, nuts, bananas all kindly describe a state of some madness, perhaps more eccentric than swivel-eyed craziness. Having a screw loose, not all there, sending for the men in white coats or for the little green van with yellow wheels: these all suggest mild barminess. Psycho is much harsher, and links to psychosis and psychopathic.

To be called mad as a hatter may hark back to the days when hat-makers found their nervous systems affected by the mercury that was used in the making of hats, so they trembled and appeared insane. To be crazy stems from the original crazy like a loon. A loon was a species of bird with a weird, haunting cry, so suggesting to observers the howls of the insane.

To be off your trolley or off the rails most likely came from the days of electric tramcars or trolleys, where the rods linking vehicles to cables easily became disconnected, or the whole tram could slip out of the rail grove.

Modern and Amusing Terms for Being Whacky or Whacko

The media dubbed the late Michael Jackson as Wacko because of his eccentric lifestyle; it made a good headline. Other current terms include: he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest (from the play and movie set in a mental treatment facility), he doesn’t have both oars in the water, he’s one sandwich short of the full picnic, or he’s out to lunch.

Other delights include: He’s from the shallow end of the gene pool; when they were giving out brains, he got pushed to the back; his brother was an only child; the lights are on but nobody’s home; he’s not playing with a full deck; if brains were taxed, he’d get a refund and the wheel’s spinning but the hamster is dead.

Finally, perhaps in these politically correct times, a person inflicted by idiocy may be better called: mentally challenged, differently brained, terminal alternative reality view and has kicked the sanity habit.

First published on Suite 101, 19 March 2010.

Photo: Alabama Insane Hospital 1907 – Unknown

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Psychedelia: The Hippie Art Legacy

April 5th, 2011 | Add a Comment

All the Rage in the 1960s, It Was Both Mind-Expanding and Delusional


Hippie Market Culture - Andres G


Psychedelia, loved by hippies as an explanation and by detractors as a term of abuse, came to be a catch-all descriptor for hippie ’60s culture.

Psychedelic came from Greek words meaning psyche, or soul and to manifest. This became mind-expanding, or a way of saying ‘find yourself’, without ever having to fully explain.

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out

US Professor, writer, futurist and advocate of the therapeutic, spiritual and emotional benefits of LSD, Timothy O’Leary, coined the phrase, ‘Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out’, which epitomised the drugs culture in the mid to late ’60s. It was often an excuse for non-conformist behaviour, which became known as the counter-culture.

A psychedelic (hallucinatory) experience is regarded as getting in touch with one’s inner mind and/or a perception of reality not shared by people who are not taking the drug, or trip. It’s popularly was supposed to be a liberating, sometimes mystical, experience.

However, for many, the trips became more of a nightmare as some experienced psychotic incidents and became drug dependent. This is a dark side of the rosy illusion that many who lived through the 1960s don’t dwell on, in their enthusiasm for the music, the clothes, the vibration, the free love of that decade.

Psychedelic Popular Culture

Antonin Artaud, theatre practitioner and poet, described his use of peyote in Journey to the Land of the Tarahumara in 1937. Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), a futuristic novel showing chemical-induced happiness, drug-ordered pain and thinking-immunity in a loveless world, also preceded the hippie era, but he is sometimes regarded as the father of psychedelia by default. However, the hippies of the ’60s were far removed from state approved drug taking.

“The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators” as the title of their 1966 album by 13th Floor Elevators really put the word into common usage. A flood of songs about and/or influenced by hallucinatory drugs followed. From 2000 Light Years From Home, Mother’s Little Helper (Rolling Stones), via Heroin, I’m Waiting for the Man (The Velvet Underground) to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Strawberry Fields Forever (The Beatles).

There was Time of the Season (The Zombies), Hurdy Gurdy Man (Donovan),Lucifer Sam (Pink Floyd), 8 Miles High (The Byrds) and Cloud Nine (The Temptations). Songs by the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead used drug culture as inspiration. More recent artists include Black Sabbath, Green Day, Steely Dan, Daniel Merryweather, Nirvana, Oasis, Guns ‘N Roses and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Not all drug-inspired songs belong in the psychedelic genre. From the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco in 1966 to the world during the Summer of Love 1967, psychedelia in music had become psychedelic rock, which in turn fed other art forms.

Kaleidoscopic Swirling Patterns

Gradually the word meant any fluorescent, technicoloured artwork, tie-dye clothing, album covers, concert posters, murals/graffiti, comics, underground publications, psychedelic light shows for concerts or actual paintings. Often reflections of swirling patterns of hallucination, some works also took on a political, anti-establishment edge.

Santana used a painting from 1961 (again, early psychedelia) called Annunciation by Mati Klarwein for the Abraxas album cover. Pink Floyd’s album A Saucerful of Secrets was also in the psychedelic mould. Many commentators see links with surrealistic art in psychedelia, and while that may be so, the rebellion/deliberate challenge to the status quo that drug-inspired arts make is an entirely separate analysis.

In 2005 Tate, Liverpool created an exhibition celebrating the flowering of psychedelia in art in the Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era. Works by artists such as Andy Warhol and Yayoi Kusama illustrate how psychedelia added to the complexities of art and culture then and, by inference, now.

First published at Suite 101, 18 March 2010.

Photo: Hippie Market Culture – Andres G.

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Black Shuck: Devil Dog Inspires the Arts

April 4th, 2011 | 2 Comments

 

The Darkness Wrote A Song About Black Shuck - mark dr

A Local Folk Tale Gives Rise to All Sorts of Fiction

Black Shuck shows how a myth appears in different art forms today. It all began in the wilder parts of the UK’s Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex, probably in Viking times.

Sightings of a ghostly, huge black dog were frequently reported over the centuries as it roamed freely, terrorising the minds of people eking out lives that were often brutal, short and vulnerable to powers beyond their control. Black Shuck was also known as Devil or Black Dog.

Dog Bogeyman Story

Britain’s wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill was prone to moods of depression that he called his ‘black dog’. But the phantom dog that featured in many creative pieces was a bogeyman story to keep children in order. It spread evil with its flaming red or green eyes.

The idea that it was a dog may have come from an Old English word for demon or hairy. It was often said to be a harbinger of death of either the hapless, terrified victim who felt its hot breath on his or her face or stared into its malevolent eyes; or the demise of a close relative. Other versions told of a benign dog who saw lone women home safely at night

Dog Killed People at Bungay and Blythburgh

On 4th August 1577 at Holy Trinity Church, Blythburgh, records indicate that Black Dog burst in, ran down the nave, killed a man and a boy and ran out, leaving scorch marks on the north door, still visible today. Later that same day, it appeared 14 miles away at St Mary’s Church, Bungay, where it apparently wrung the necks of two people kneeling at prayer before leaving scorch marks on that door.

It is easily understood how superstitious people during a lightening storm in a very dark church would imagine they had seen a satanic black dog.  Imagination can run wild. Terror and suggestion build one upon another, as the makers of horror films can attest.

Black Shuck in the Arts

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s crime novel The Hound of the Baskervilles was inspired by the Black Shuck legend, heard by Doyle when he played golf at Cromer. However, he set this Sherlock Holmes novel on Dartmoor, near the prison. The Bungay version has also appeared in Runton Werewolf , a children’s story by Ritchie Perry and in The Kettle Chronicles: The Black Dog, a novel set in 1577 by Steve Morgan, former vicar of Bungay.

There is a panel picture/reference to Shuck in the comic book Hector Plasm: De Mortius, and an appearance in Supernatural: Origins comics. Philip Pullman mentions it in Northern Lights, the 1995 opener of His Dark Materials trilogy, as an animal-made shape-shifter of a soul. It featured in an episode of Mystery Hunters, the children’s documentary series.

British rock band The Darkness, most of whom hailed from Lowestoft, 17 miles from Bungay, 14 from Blythburgh, wrote a song called Black Shuck on their hit album Permission to Land, creating lyrics that meant little to people outside East Anglia.

Singer-songwriter Nick Drake wrote and recorded Black-Eyed Dog, drawing freely on the legend’s foretelling doom and death. In the children’s action fantasy May Birds and the Ever After, first published in 2005 by Jodi Lynn Anderson, further inspiration is drawn. In the 2000 AD series London Falling, the dog is the leader of mythological characters; the subject of the musical drama The Storm Hound, besides being the champion of the Shadowdancers in the online role-playing game Lusternia, Age of Ascension.

Black Shuck has become part of our culture down the years. His name is used in songs, fiction and films, but also in public houses, streets, a marathon run in Bungay to this day, and even a motorcycle club.

First published at Suite 101, 17 March 2010.

Photo: The Darkness Wrote A Song About Black Shuck – mark dr

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Physical Theatre: Commedia dell’Arte

April 2nd, 2011 | 3 Comments

Four Centuries-Old Mother of Many Art and Theatre Forms

Traditional Punch & Judy - chazzvid
A visual performance art form from late 16th century Italy still resonates today, as it gave birth to separate but linked genres that speak universally to audiences.

Since Greek/Roman times two traditions of theatre in Europe developed – the written and memorised, and the spontaneously improvised. Sometimes one would dominate, then the other. Occasionally they would converge. Plays are still written and performed by actors who have learned their lines. Spontaneous improvisation of the travelling troubadour lives on in circus clowning, English pantomime and Punch & Judy.

Stock Characters On Stage

The Commedia dell’Arte (which means art, skill or craft of comedy or the masked comedy) used stock (stereotypical) characters to tell well-honed tales. It relied on physical theatre, mime with some words, presented often in-the-round, using informal performance spaces.

  • Harlequin, or Arlecchino was extremely agile, the master of disguise, he would mimic everybody he came in contact with.
  • Pulchinella, moved like a rather demented hunchback cockerel with a beaked nose, and was empty-headed and violent without morals.
  • Columbina was usually the pretty servant girl, a happy-go-lucky joker, often keen on matters to do with sex.
  • Pantalone was aged, greedy, trying to hide his age and his endless lust for the women; in short, a dirty, mean, old man.
  • Pierrot was often a servant, a sad, silent type, a dreamer who was capable of sudden and acrobatic movement.
  • Isabella was graceful, classy and pure, usually lusted over by the men in the pieces.
  • There was also often a Doctor or Professor, a boring old know-all.

Circus Clowning Tradition

There is a line between the greedy, dirty old man and the cunning servant in simple plot terms. This, linked with the attraction of the beautiful girl to all, is the base ingredient for many clowning set-ups. The clown wants something (money, food, the girl or to make a fool of the authority figure). The funny gag is what he does to achieve his goal.

Zanni means a low-status servant who talked directly to the audience, often winking and including them in what humiliation was about to be inflicted on the Doctor or Pantalone. It became our word zany, meaning a little off-the wall, whacky.

Circus itself grew more out of the Greek and Roman amphitheatres and later complete circles of tiered seating to enjoy a mass spectacle, like war on the ground or at sea. However, the clowning element came straight out of the Commedia: simple tricks, large mime and gesture.

Punch and Judy

The knockabout, amoral violence of Pulchinella lead directly to the puppet called Punch, that was once part of the British seaside tradition. He sits in a cast of other characters, all derived from the notion of stock characters playing a straight-forward part in a narrative of familiar humour.

That he escapes justice by hanging the hangman through a trick, links to the clown who gets away with tormenting a pompous superior. However, that the story of the baby, the crocodile, the Chinaman and the sausages nowadays gets past the guardians of child safety, obesity, racial offence, domestic violence and disrespect for authority and is shown to young children, is perhaps something to ponder over.

Punch is a trickster, in the line of the medieval Lord of Misrule, while Judy his wife is a mix of the female characters, but grown older with the cares of motherhood and a selfish husband. He in turn has no respect for her, and would have been an amusing butt of humour in previous generations.

English Pantomimes Attract Audiences

The origins of panto go back to the Elizabethan masques, or colourful, masked dances and musical pageants. Later the influence of the comic Commedia dell’Arte was apparent in the now stock characters of the Dame, the idiots/fools and other clown-like figures who make fun of the central baddie, or evil character, aided by the often simple young hero.

Most of the routines, plot lines, jokes and characters have nowadays become stereotyped, which is what attracts audiences around the country to theatres every winter season. They like to know what to expect and join in with shouting, punchlines and songs, as moved by the atmosphere.

Pantomime, like other art forms, constantly updates itself with what is happening in the world, making fun of different aspects of life. But that’s the same for all the comedies – from stand-up to circus, sit-coms to satire. It’s what keeps it fresh, and alive and profitable.

First published at Suite 101, 16 March 2010.

Photo: Traditional Punch & Judy – chazzvid

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Fixed Term Parliament: Panacea or Straitjacket?

April 2nd, 2011 | Add a Comment

UK Prime Ministers Call General Elections at Best-Chance Times


Obama Knows When Election Is Coming - IowaPolitics.com

At any time, the Prime Minister of the day can ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament for an election, unless a government’s five years are up. Then there’s no choice left.

All Parliaments end on the fifth year, unless a Prime Minister decides he/she wants to go to the country earlier, because the chances of winning are higher. This might be because of some perceived success (eg. war or conflict, massive reduction in taxes and cost of living), or some bad news is coming (eg, economic wipe-out and fiscal collapse).

Vote of Confidence in the House of Commons

An election would come ahead of time and very speedily if a Government lost a vote of confidence in the House of Commons, or had too small a majority or lost it’s majority through deaths and defections. Of course, an election may still not produce an outright winner, in which case we would face a hung Parliament till a new election became inevitable.

In the USA, Presidential elections are held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November every fourth year. The fact that campaigns start the moment the last one is over, doesn’t alter the fact that American voters know when they can next vote for a President. If he/she dies in office, the Vice President takes over. Failing that, the Speaker of the Senate takes over.

First Past the Post System

Whatever happens, there is never a Presidential election midterm. Equally with Congress and the Senate, it’s fixed terms all round. Their system appears to be more complex than ours, but to others, our first-past-the-post tradition is outdated and doesn’t serve us best. It takes more votes to elect a Conservative MP than a Labour or Lib-Dem one because of inequality of Parliamentary boundaries and sizes of electorates.

In the European Parliament (every five years by law) and in our own local authorities – everybody knows when elections will fall, and there is certainty. Some councils elect by thirds every year to ensure some continuity of power. Only Westminster in our system has no fixed date for the next election.

If a government has a large, working majority, then everybody knows it will run between four to five years. It’s when it has a small majority over other parties in the House of Commons and a government cannot get all its legislation through, that the Prime Minister may be forced to go early to break a deadlock and give the country some stability of governance. We had two elections for that reason in 1974 – February and October.

Prime Minister’s Electoral Advantage

The campaign against that prerogative argues that no Prime Minister should have the unfair advantage of choosing a date. It is in the interest of planning public services, finances, education, healthcare and defence if we all know when it is coming. This is the panacea solution to politics – that fixing the length of every Parliament, all problems will be solved.

The alternative view – the straitjacket argument – is for the same reasons of planning public services, education, healthcare and defence, a lame-duck government should be ended, but as rapidly as possibly, and certainly well before the full five years is up. Therefore, no Prime Minister should be constrained to cling onto office for five years if circumstances no longer favour it.

In the meantime, we manage with the time-hallowed system we have. If the next government enjoys a large majority, the issue will go to sleep for a time. If it doesn’t, fixed terms will be a live issue again, while we brace ourselves for another election. Soon.

First published on Suite 101, 13 March 2010.

Photo: Obama Knows When Election Is Coming – IowaPolitics.com

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Time Is a Political Issue

March 31st, 2011 | Add a Comment

Changing Time in Our Lives is a Trap for Any Government

Parliamentary Time and Big Ben - Sarah C-M


Whether it’s abolishing British Summer Time, fixing Easter Sunday or changing school terms and day timings, governments undertake such controversy at their peril.

Christmas Day is fixed, Remembrance Sunday is always the nearest one to 11th November. So how hard is to agree on Easter? Well, an Act of Parliament of 1928 allows it to be the nearest Sunday to 12 April, but it requires agreement of the churches. In the meantime, our Easter floats variously between 22 March and 25 April each year.

Scrapping British Summer Time

As governments run out of time, they sometimes focus on issues they hope will distract public and media. The old idea of abolishing British Summer Time is back; so is adding a Bank Holiday to bridge the gap between late August and Christmas.

Undoubtedly there are fewer accidents in daylight when children go to school and adults to work. The same argument applies when they go home at the day’s end. However, we cannot create more total light per day in the winter, so it’s either mornings or afternoons.

Therefore the working day itself becomes contentious. In Scotland it’s darker earlier in winter than in southern England, so the discussion polarises geographically. During World War II all Britain had double Summer Time to extend factory working and many people were sorry it ended in 1945.

There are campaigns for Summer Time in winter and Double Summer Time in summer, while others want us to adopt Central European Time, to bring us in line with the rest of Europe. However, both Europe and the USA live in many time zones comfortably.

The changing of long-held licensing laws to extend availability of alcohol almost all day every day was meant as a boost to the hospitality sector with a more continental-cafe culture. It may be that the problems and costs of anti-social behaviour and healthcare outweigh the benefits.

The School Day and Term Times

The British school day and term times are based on the factory and farm cycles of previous generations. Some localities now embrace a 4-term year, avoiding the six week summer holiday; others prefer earlier starts and finishes each day to allow sports, arts and community activities to be experienced.

Difficulties of getting siblings to and from schools with different timings/holidays, child care arrangements for staff, the tiredness of teenagers in the mornings – are all part of the fabric of dissent that weaves our land together. There is no uniformity, and it would be a brave or foolish government that tried to impose it.

When Napoleon introduced a 10 day week between 1793 and 1805, there was strong peasant-worker resistance, as they went from one day in seven off to one in ten. During the miners’ strike in 1973-74, factories were subjected to a maximum 3-day working week and homes to a rota of power shutdowns to save energy. A war-time spirit of endurance ensued, but it wasn’t a happy time.

With the recession endangering employment, the prospect of working less to save jobs has been a hot issue. As have been the questions of whether new nuclear power stations, windfarms and wave tide schemes with years needed to come on stream, are sufficient to quench our ever-growing love of electricity. Use of precious time resource is always controversial.

Parliamentary Time is Debatable

Even the Parliamentary allocation of time is divisive. Should a government guillotine business and stifle debate (dissent)? Should Parliament sit for a three day week, to allow more constituency time for MPs? Were late or all-night sittings such a bad thing? Should the Parliamentary year should be less?

Business/working hours, full or partial Sunday trading, how long to detain terror suspects, how long should a custodial sentence be – these are just some of the issues we settle from time to time, only to see them come back with new thinking for the next generation.

First published on Suite 101, 12 March 2010.

Photo: Parliamentary Time and Big Ben – Sarah C-M

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