Unbelievable!

I am lost for words. How an average film like Slumdog Millionaire can sweep eight Oscars is beyond me. A case of Emporer’s new clothes, perhaps? Whatever, it kind of makes one want to reconsider seeking employment in the field of scriptwriting.

Second Comedy detective novel published!

Poetry: Alive and well.

Just been looking on the BBC The One Show website where they are asking for viewers poetry

click here for bbc page.

Some really fine work, good to see there are so many writers out there.

Revealed : Channel Four. The Truth about the Druids.

So, looks like the Druids were, indeed, canniballistic human sacrificers, according to Pliny, the Romans in general and a few modern day archeological experts. I love the Romans, me: Always going on about stamping out barbaric practices and using it as a good excuse to go stomping over other cultures. Pliny? I would trust everything that man has written…have you seen some of the stuff he tried to pass off as true!

The noble Romans wiping out those barbaric Brits, this would be the same Romans who turned human sacrifice into a state institution and then sold tickets to come watch it? The blind blokes fighting the midgets, yep, that one always feels my heart with a sense of how civilised the Roman Empire was in comparison to the Celtic and other Barbaric clans. Getting animals to rip eachother to bits and then throw in a few Christians just to spice it up..lovely. They sure knew how to act in a dignified and life enhancing way. Maybe, the Celts sacrificed criminals and prisoners, but it was no worse than any other peoples behaved in those times. In fact, the Druids and the clans of this isle were probably pretty civilised in comparison to others, we didn’t ask for the bloody Romans to come marching over here anyway, we were doing very well on our own.

Bonekickers: Valuable artifact or just rubbish?

I thought the first episode was poor writing, not to mention atrociously loose with history.

The biggest slip being representing the Templars as some sort of Muslim slaying bunch of maniacs which is incorrect and quite insulting. For a start there were never enough of them to be in a position to conduct massacre and also the small point that one of the reasons they were finally tried for heresy, apart from the fact of their wealth and influence, was that they were, probably, too friendly with the followers of Islam. Look at the flowering of architecture that took place in Europe during and after the Crusade period? This came though Islamic knowledge, as did much new medicinal wisdom. Look at the style of Templar churches: They shared knowledge with the Muslim world and learnt much, to represent the Templars as blood thirsty haters of Islam is just drama writing trying to be so politically correct it is painful.

At one point our feisty archeologist referred to Vivienne as “a witch”. Tennyson used a form of Vivienne and the character is usually called this in Breton versions of Arthurian Mythology, but more often referred to as Nimue. She was the consort of Merlin. The original archetype was, probably, a Goddess figure. Only later when Christian influence began to denegrate the tales would she be referred to as a witch. You really would have thought a feminist, feisty woman who demonstrated a dislike for Christianity would have known this.

Lastly, a small point 666 is not the number of the beast, it is a translation error that occurred at some point when the Bible underwent one of its many translations.

Always happy to give a series a second chance, but the dialogue and exposition did not improve and this week we have a forward thinking and ethnically sound Washington fighting alongside renegade African Slaves against the nasty English. Just feel that political correctness. Some of the scenes on the tidal mud must have had colleagues of Tony Robinson whincing (is it just me or does the opening titles and music of Bonekickers bear a passing resemblance to that used by TimeTeam?)

This week I believe we have Boudica falling in love with a Roman: The woman who saw her husband killed and her daughters raped and responded by going on the warpath and castrating every Roman soldier she came across; the whole of the menfolk of St Albans if my memory serves me correctly. Can’t see her getting passionate with one of them.

Nothing to do with writing….

but you could not invent this stuff…I was just taking a look at other blogs on wordpress and found this

link

What do they say about truth being stranger than fiction?

snippet

Picasso regarded the shattered mirror. Looked at the myriad faces gazing back at him. Each viewing him from their own particular perspective and unique reality. All those eyes seeing a distinct and different him; the one observer in this scene. The origin of their existence and the single subject of their dispassionate gaze.

Jekyll: An interpretation. Part three

Many paths to enlightenment talk about integrating the two opposites within. From yogic texts, through alchemy and into Jungian Psychology and one of my interests the grail mythology. It is the aim for all those who wish to attain the enlightened state to integrate the opposites male/female, negative/positive. It is the yin/yang symbology, the hermaphrodite, the anima/animus.

Jekyll and Hyde always had this aspect at the heart of its story. Written at a time when the metaphysical and romantic poets had been challenging the Cartesian worldview of the enlightenment, where Gothic fiction had taken up this baton and continued to question the logical and the rational. It is a man divided, disparate, lacking this enlightened integration. The result: Death for both characters.

For further discussion on this aspect please see link to grailquesting

Steven Moffat’s Jekyll has taken the original story and introduce so many layers.

Last night’s episode five was one of the most tightly written and inspired pieces of drama I have witnessed in a long time. Something Jekyll said last night could be appropriated to sum up a lot of programming on TV these days. Speaking to the character Claire he said something along the lines of most things in this world bore me. I would say that was pretty true of the world of TV at times, with the unreal or stagnatingly depressing soaps, mindless quiz games, unfunny sit-coms, viewer votes programmes (won’t go into that too much…), etc.

This is writing of the highest quality though. Not only because it is well written but because it engages the viewers’ mind and it contains archetypal truths concerning the human condition. It is mythology in the true meaning of the word. The view of the Hyde aspect has always been, solely, as evil, no redeeming qualities at all. Bad and must be destroyed. Steven Moffat has brought more texture to this idea. There is no fixed line in the sand. To survive the two sides of the personality must be resolved, not buried, ignored or exiled to the deepest recesses of our unconscious, but seen, recognised and integrated into the personality.

Okay, I am reading a lot of crazy mumbojumbo into a piece of entertainment. How many hours of it do we watch, what do children grow up on? A lot of TV is about dysfunction, adults screaming at each other, arguing, distress, violence….dis-integration. (see myself climbing up on my soapbox about soaps here). A lot of TV seems to me to send out a negative message about what it is to be what we are, the human condition. The really good writers, and I would include Steven Moffat among them along with people like Dennis Potter and a few others, they create work that can change our view, make us think, become aware; entertain and educate, as the now much maligned and ignored Reithian ideal once championed.

Jekyll: An interpretation. Part two

We could view this in reference to the crisis of masculinity that has occurred over the last thirty or so years. The rise of the feminist movement fighting for equal rights in the face of a male dominated and chauvinistic society, the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction with emasculated and ineffectual new men of the 1980’s, the backlash of laddishness and the more considered response of the mytho-poetic men’s’ movement headed by such people as Robert Bly, seeking a balanced view of the masculine. Hyde, the pre-feminist “old” man and Jackman/Jekyll the sensitive, emotional “new” man.

It would be interesting to discover which aspect women find most attractive? Jackman the family man in a sexless marriage devoid of joy, interest or energy, or Hyde, the unreliable, potential lover promising mystery, danger and erotic pleasure.

Ultimately it is the character of Claire that is acting as the catalyst. In the first episode she was almost incidental to the plot, (though Gina Bellman’s onscreen presence can never be described as incidental), just the wife at home, a background character (in some ways, similar to the role of female leads in pre-feminist, pre-equality horror cinema, just there as a love interest, to scream and be rescued). She is, however, potential in waiting. Episode three contained a pivotal scene as Claire confronted Hyde for the first time and we began to see the strength and resolute belief ready to explode. I have the feeling that Gina Bellman’s portrayal could be a bit of a tour de force: I always considered that she did most in developing her character in the comedy series Coupling (also written by Steven Moffat), so we could see a transformation worthy of Jekyll and Hyde himself as she switches from meek wife to…..well, we shall have to wait and see! Link

BBC Jekyll homepage

Jekyll: An interpretation. Part one

Steven Moffat’s Jekyll (BBC1 Saturday 9.00pm), does seem to be taking the story into new and interesting places, incorporating new aspects, ones that have been presented in the werewolf mythology, and re-telling the story for a contemporary audience. It looks as if there is an institution, sinister in intent, with whom the individual must battle. Rather than be a posse, representing civil law abiding citizenship, intent on destroying the “monster” they represent an institution that can not be trusted who desire to capture, contain and exploit him for their own nefarious and greed/power driven ends: The corrupt officialdom. This concept is a new departure in the Jekyll and Hyde story.

It is also fascinating to follow the way Steven Moffat is developing both aspects of the persona, allowing them to, increasingly, dialogue with each other, a crossing over of memories, thoughts and ideals, almost to the point of some integration of the two distinct aspects of character and personality. It could almost be seen as some bi-polar dysfunction, a purely split personality, were it not for the actual visible and physical changes, more subtle than in most portrayals, but enough to signal to the audience that it is not, merely, a mental aberration, played with a fine balance of nuance by James Nesbitt. So we still have the conflict of inner archetypal personalities but presented in a contemporary framework of reference.

Another aspect to this is the fact that both personalities are necessary. The separated and extreme aspect of Hyde is immoral, a murderer (though not without provocation). He does seem to represent all that is taboo in civilised society, but he alone has protected the family unit. One feels that Jackman left to his own devices would be reasonably ineffectual at combating the evil corporation that seeks to harm and exploit him. He will do “the right thing” in the eyes of society, go to the police, turn himself in…to the very powers who are his enemy.

For more about Jekyll & Hyde and werewolf analogies please click here