Sex 'n Violence

A winning combination, sex and violence, used in dramas over the centuries: Romeo and Juliet, Cecil B. de-Mille films (with a dash, or rather a big splash, of religion thrown in), Psycho, Killing Them Softly. The last mentioned I saw last week and even I, inured over the years to the effects on my constitution of violence in films, even I found some of the scenes in this film painful to watch. OK, you can always tell yourself that the scenes aren't actually taking place, as you can when two people are in bed supposedly "having it away" on screen, but just the same when presented so realistically as it was here in "Killing Them Softly" it rather brought out the Mary Whitehouse in me: should they really be descending to such low levels in order to entertain or to make money - though when I was at the cinema watching he film there were only four other people there which says something about the attraction of the "sex n' violence" formula. Actually there was very little sex in the film, well, not visible activity, only a hooker being paid after the event.
Strangely coincidental I have been reading Somserset Maugham's book called "Ten Novels and their Authors" which, by the way is excellent in all respects but especially so for budding writers who would like to know something about novel writing and short story writing, the differences in the genres chiefly. In one passage of Maugham's introduction to the book, he draws attention to the prevalence of sex in modern literature and he writes thus: "Owing to the invention of  contraceptives, the high value that was once placed on chastity no longer obtains. Novelists have not been slow to notice the difference in the relation of the sexes and so, whenever they feel something must be done to sustain the reader's flagging interest, they cause their characters to indulge in copulation. I am not sure they are well-advised. Of sexual intercourse Lord Chesterfield said that the pleasure was momentary, the position ridiculous and the expense damnable; if he had lived to read modern fiction he might have added that there is a monotony about the act that renders reiterated narration of it excessively tedious."

Ed Milliband

I saw a film yesterday called "Killing Them Softly", a film about petty criminals and contract killers. As a sort of running background to the main action you were made aware of, on TVs in bars in which the killers sat to talk, pictures of Barack Obama and various other politicians of the period just before he became president, spouting stuff about how they were going to change America etc. (One of the themes of the film had to do with America being the same old place it always was, corrupt and occupied with big business - just like the underworld where the main protagonists of the film were located.) One of the themes of Obama's speech had to with "one nation". I thought to myself: "haven't I heard this theme before recently?" Of course, it was at the core of Ed Milliband's speech at the Labour Party conference. Just had Disraeli's speech of the late 1800's been a call for the country to become "one nation", so too was Ed Milliband's.
I thought: "some chance, mate". One nation with the Queen and company living in Buckingham Palace? One nation with bankers and their ilk trousering vast sums of cash to spend on skying trips and yachts? One nation with Eton and Oxford versus your local greasy-spoon comp?
But let them dream, these politicians. They've always have been hopeless dreamers. Clegg had a dream a few weeks ago at the Lib Dem do and no doubt, Cameron will have a dream next week.
But Milliband's speech, while idealistic and well delivered, didn't do much for me as it seemed to have done for the vast majority of the Press ("once we had the rack, now we have The Press" said Oscar Wilde). I'll tell you why. Because I can't get it out of my craw that Ed Milliband stood for leader of the Labour Party against his elder brother. Not because they had quarreled about some aspect of socialist policies that made them in fundamental disagreement but because he desired the position. Against his own brother! We are back with Esau and Jacob here. Or Abel and Cain maybe. Too strong perhaps but nonetheless I didn't like it and still don't like it.

Jimmy Savile

What I find amazing about this Jimmy Savile scandal, apart from the allegations of his abuse of children that no one in the BBC seemed to have any knowledge of (I don't think!), is that the BBC ever took him on the staff in the first place. I have always found him obnoxious. As far as I'm concerned, whenever his stupid face with that stupid hair and that stupid cigar appeared on the TV I rushed to shut it off. I just could not stand the sound of his voice. Really I could not stand anything about him. Yet, if I, as I sometimes did, voiced my objections to his TV appearances, I was always faced with the remark "Hah, but he does such good work; take Stoke Mandeville hospital for example". I wonder now if that generosity on his part had something to do with his celebrity status; maybe it was something he could boast about, something that made him safe from censure. It seems now that I'm right, it did make him safe because I have heard that he used the fact on a few occasions when reporters approached him about the rumours of his behaviour: "you print anything about those rumours and I'll withdraw all my money from Stoke Manderville".
Now Esther Rantzen says she is ashamed of having had him as a friend and feels that she and others like her colluded with him in his horrible acts. What on earth did she find so attractive in him to have him as a friend in the first place? It seems that Savile had tremendous power over his colleagues some of whom now admit this to be true.
Let us go back in time to the BBC run by Lord Reith shall we? It's beyond belief that Reith would have even contemplated employing a person of such low life, such a clown, such an oaf, such a talentless smoothy, such a monstrous caricature of a human being.
But there! Once upon a time the BBC had high taste; now it hasn't. Why? Because it wishes to compete with ITV etc to see, we must conclude, which of them can produce the tawdriest rubbish for a nation brought up on pop, rock, rap and crap.