| Contents
NATO's Reign of
Terror in Kosovo
Michel Chossudovsky
The Academy Awards
William Clark
'You're twisting
my melon man'
William Clark
Good Proportions
for a good music
Fabienne Audéud
Criminal Justice
National Coalition
of Anti-Deportation Campaigns
Tales of the Great
Unwashed
Ian Brotherhood
Class-ifying Contemporary
Cinema
Tom Jennings
Zine & Comics
review
Mark Pawson
'It could be an
eye...'
Neil Mulholland
Tradgedy &
Hope
Robin Ramsay
Supplement
Non-place Urban
Realm
___________________________________________________________
NATO's Reign
of Terror in Kosovo
Michel Chossudovsky
In occupied Kosovo, the massacres
directed against Serbs, ethnic Albanians, Roma and other ethnic groups
have been conducted on the instructions of the military command of the
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Yet because NATO ostensibly denies KLA involvement,
these so-called "unmotivated acts of violence and retaliation" are not
categorised as "war crimes" and are therefore not included in the mandate
of the numerous FBI and Interpol police investigators dispatched to Kosovo
under the auspices of the Hague War Crimes Tribunal (ICTY). Moreover, whereas
NATO has tacitly endorsed the self-proclaimed KLA provisional government,
KFOR--the international security force in Kosovo--has provided protection
to the KLA military commanders responsible for the atrocities. In so doing,
both NATO and the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) have acquiesced to the massacres
of civilians.
In turn, public opinion has been
blatantly misled. In portraying the massacres, the western media have casually
overlooked the role of the KLA, not to mention its pervasive links to organised
crime. In the words of National Security Adviser Samuel Berger, "these
people [ethnic Albanians] come back ... with broken hearts and with some
of those hearts filled with anger."1 While
the massacres are seldom presented as the result of "deliberate decisions"
by the KLA military command, the evidence (and history of the KLA) amply
confirm that these atrocities are part of a policy of "ethnic cleansing"
directed mainly against the Serb population, but also against the Roma,
Montenegrins, Goranis, and Turks.
Assassinations: NATO Complicity
Under NATO's regency, the KLA has
also ordered assassinations of political opponents, including "loyalist"
ethnic Albanians and supporters of the Kosovo Democratic League (KDL),
headed by Ibrahim Rugova. The KLA has also abducted and killed numerous
professionals and intellectuals. These acts--ordered by the self-proclaimed
Provisional Government of Kosovo (PGK)--are being carried out in a totally
permissive environment. The leaders of the KLA, rather than being arrested
for war crimes, have been granted KFOR protection.
In May, Fehmi Agani, one of Rugova's
closest collaborators in the KDL, was killed. The Serbs were blamed by
NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea for having assassinated Agani. But according
to the Skopje, Macedonia, paper Makedonija Danas, Agani had been executed
on the orders of the KLA's self-appointed Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci.2
"If Thaci actually considered Rugova a threat, he would not hesitate to
have Rugova removed from the Kosovo political landscape."3
Both NATO and the UN prefer to turn
a blind eye. UN Interim Administrator Bernard Kouchner (a former French
Minister of Health) and KFOR Commander Sir Mike Jackson have established
a routine working relationship with Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and KLA
Chief of Staff Brigadier General Agim Ceku.
As western leaders trumpet their
support for democracy, state terrorism in Kosovo has become an integral
part of NATO's post-war design. The KLA's political role for the post-conflict
period had been carefully mapped out well in advance. Prior to the Rambouillet
Conference February [1999] the KLA had been promised a central role in
the formation of a post-conflict government. The "hidden agenda" consisted
of converting the KLA paramilitary into a legitimate and accomplished civilian
administration. "'We want to develop a good relationship with them [the
KLA] as they transform themselves into a politically oriented organisation,
... [W]e can provide [help] to them if they become precisely the kind of
political actor we would like to see them become.'"4
In other words, Washington had already
slated the KLA "provisional government" (PGK) to run civilian state institutions.
Under NATO's "Indirect Rule," the KLA has taken over municipal governments
and public services including schools and hospitals. Rame Buja, the KLA
"Minister for Local Administration," has appointed local prefects in 23
out of 25 municipalities.5
The self-proclaimed KLA administration
has largely been upheld by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation
in Europe (OSCE) entrusted by UNMIK with the post-war task of "democracy-building"
and "good governance." In turn, OSCE officials have already established
a working rapport with their KLA counterparts.6
The PGK is made up of the KLA's political wing together with the Democratic
Union Movement (LBD), a coalition of five opposition parties opposed to
Rugova's Democratic League (LDK). In addition to the position of prime
minister, the KLA controls the ministries of finance, public order and
defence. The KLA has a controlling voice on the UN-sponsored Kosovo Transitional
Council set up by Bernard Kouchner. The PGK has also established links
with a number of western governments.
Paramilitary Government
Under NATO occupation, the rule
of law has visibly been turned upside down. Criminals and terrorists are
to become law-enforcement officers. KLA troops--which have already taken
over police stations--will eventually form a 4,000-strong "civilian" police
force (to be trained by foreign police officers under the authority of
the UN) with a mandate to "protect civilians." Canadian Prime Minister
Jean Chretien has already pledged Canadian support to the formation of
a civilian police force.7 This force--which
has been entrusted to the OSCE--will eventually operate under the jurisdiction
of the KLA-controlled Ministry of Public Order.
Despite NATO's commitment to disarming
the KLA, the Kosovar paramilitary organisation is slated to be transformed
into a modem military force. So-called "security assistance" has already
been granted to the KLA by the US Congress under the Kosovar Independence
and Justice Act of 1999. Start-up funds of $20 million will largely be
"used for training and support for their [KLA] established self-defence
forces" modelled on the US National Guard.8
While the KLA maintains its links
to the Balkan narcotics trade that financed many of its terrorist activities,
the paramilitary organisation has now been granted an official seal of
approval as well as "legitimate" sources of funding. The pattern is similar
to that followed in Croatia and in the Bosnian Muslim-Croatian Federation
where so-called "equip and train" programs were put together by the Pentagon.
In turn, Washington's military aid package to the KLA has been entrusted
to Military Professional Resources, Inc.(MPRl), of Alexandria, Virginia,
a private mercenary outfit run by high-ranking former US military officers.9
MPRI's training concepts--which had
already been tested in Croatia and Bosnia--are based on imparting "offensive
tactics ... as the best form of defence." In the Kosovar context, this
so-called "defensive doctrine" transforms the KLA paramilitary into a modem
army without, however, eliminating its terrorist make-up.10
The ultimate objective is to transform an insurgent army into a modern
military armed police force which serves the Alliance's future strategic
objectives in the Balkans. MPRI has currently "ninety-one highly experienced,
former military professionals working in Bosnia & Herzegovina."11
The number of military officers working on contract with the KLA has not
been disclosed.
Croatian General Heads KLA
The massacres of civilians in Kosovo
are not disconnected acts of revenge by civilians or by so-called "rogue
elements" within the KLA, as claimed by NATO and the United Nations. They
are part of a consistent and coherent pattern. The intent (and result)
of the KLA-sponsored atrocities has been to trigger the ethnic cleansing
of Serbs, Roma, and other minorities in Kosovo.
KLA Commander Agim Ceku, referring
to the killings of 14 villagers at Gracko on July 24, claimed that: "We
[the KLA] do not know who did it, but I sincerely believe these people
have nothing to do with the KLA."12 In turn,
KFOR Lieutenant General Sir Mike Jackson has commended his KLA counterpart,
Commander Ceku, for "efforts undertaken" to disarm the KLA. In fact, very
few KLA weapons have been handed in. Moreover, the deadline for turning
in KLA weaponry has been extended. "I do not regard this as non-compliance"
said Jackson in a press conference, "but rather as an indication of the
seriousness with which General Ceku is taking this important issue."13
Yet what Jackson failed to mention
was that Commander Ceku (though never indicted as a war criminal) was,
according to Jane's Defence Weekly (June 10, 1999) "one of the key planners
of the successful Operation Storm.... led by the Croatian Armed Forces
against Krajina Serbs in 1995. General Jackson--who had served in Croatia
and Bosnia under the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR)--was fully
cognisant of the activities of the Croatian High Command during that period,
including the responsibilities imparted to General Ceku. In February 1999,
barely a month prior to the NATO bombings, Ceku left his position as Brigadier
General with the Croatian Armed Forces to join the KLA as Commander-in-Chief.
An internal report of the Hague
War Crimes Tribunal (leaked to the New York Times) confirmed that the Croatian
Army had been responsible for carrying out "summary executions, indiscriminate
shelling of civilian populations, and 'ethnic cleansing' in the Krajina
region of Croatia ...Operation Storm resulted in the massacre of several
hundred civilians in the course of a three day operation (August 4 to 7,
1995)."14 The massacres set the stage for
the ethnic cleansing of more than 200,000 Krajina Serbs.
In a section of the controversial
leaked ICTY document, The Indictment: Operation Storm, A Prima Facie Case,
the Tribunal inquiry confirms that:
During the course of the military
offensive, the Croatian armed forces and special police committed numerous
violations of international humanitarian law including but not limited
to, shelling of Knin and other cities... During, and in the 100 days following
the military offensive, at least 150 Serb civilians were summarily executed,
and many hundreds disappeared... In a widespread and systematic manner,
Croatian troops committed murder and other inhumane acts upon and against
Croatian Serbs.15
US Generals For Hire
The internal 150-page document concluded
that the ICTY has "sufficient material to establish that the three [Croatian]
generals who commanded the military operation" could be held accountable
under international law.16 The individuals
named had been directly involved in the military operation "in theater."
Those involved in "the planning of Operation Storm" were not mentioned:
The identity of the "American general"
referred to by Fenrick [a Tribunal staff member] is not known. The tribunal
would not allow Williamson or Fenrick to be interviewed. But Ms. Arbour,
the tribunal's chief prosecutor, suggested in a telephone interview last
week that Fenrick's comment had been 'a joking observation'. Ms. Arbour
had not been present during the meeting, and that is not how it was viewed
by some who were there. Several people who were at the meeting assumed
that Fenrick was referring to one of the retired US generals who worked
for Military Professional Resources Inc.... Questions remain about the
full extent of US involvement. In the course of the three-year investigation
into the assault, the United States has failed to provide critical evidence
requested by the tribunal, according to tribunal documents and officials,
adding to suspicion among some there that Washington is uneasy about the
investigation.... The Pentagon, however, has argued through US lawyers
at the tribunal that the shelling was a legitimate military activity, according
to tribunal documents and officials.17
The Tribunal was attempting to hide
what had already been disclosed in several press reports published in the
wake of Operation Storm. According to a US State Department spokesman,
MPRI had been helping the Croatians "avoid excesses or atrocities in military
operations."18 Fifteen senior US military
advisers headed by retired two-star General Richard Griffiths had been
dispatched to Croatia barely seven months before Operation Storm.19
According to one report, MPRI executive director General Carl E. Vuono
"held a secret top-level meeting at Brioni Island, off the coast of Croatia,
with Gen. Varimar Cervenko, the architect of the Krajina campaign. In the
five days preceding the attack, at least ten meetings were held between
General Vuono and officers involved in the campaign...."20
According to Ed Soyster, a senior
MPRI executive and former head of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA)
(interviewed by Time in early 1996):
MPRI's role in Croatia is limited
to classroom instruction on military-civil relations and doesn't involve
training in tactics or weapons. Other US military men say whatever MPRI
did for the Croats--and many suspect more than classroom instruction was
involved--it was worth every penny. "Carl Vuono and Butch [Crosbie] Saint
are hired guns and in it for the money," says Charles Boyd, a recently
retired four-star Air Force general who was the Pentagon's No. 2 man in
Europe until July [1995]. "They did a very good job for the Croats, and
I have no doubt they'll do a good job in Bosnia."21
The Hague Tribunal's Cover-up
The untimely leaking of the HCTY's
internal report on the Krajina massacres barely a few days before the onslaught
of NATO's air raids on Yugoslavia was the source of some embarrassment
to the Tribunal's Chief Prosecutor, Louise Arbour. The Tribunal attempted
to cover up the matter and trivialise the report's findings (including
the alleged role of the US military officers on contract with the Croatian
Armed Forces). Several Tribunal officials including American lawyer Clint
Williamson sought to discredit the testimony of Canadian peacekeeping officers
who witnessed the Krajina massacres in 1995.
Williamson, who described the shelling
of Knin as a "minor incident," said that the Pentagon had told him that
Knin was a legitimate military target.... The [Tribunal's] review concluded
by voting not to include the shelling of Knin in any indictment, a conclusion
that stunned and angered many at the tribunal.22
The findings of the Tribunal contained
in the leaked ICTY documents were down-played, their relevance was casually
dismissed as "expressions of opinion, arguments, and hypotheses from various
staff members of the OTP during the investigative process." According to
the Tribunal's spokesperson "the documents do not represent in any way
the concluded decisions of the Prosecutor."23
The report has not been released.
The staff member who had leaked the documents is (according to a Croatian
TV report) no longer working for the Tribunal. During the press conference,
the Tribunal's spokesman was asked "about the consequences for the person
who leaked the information. Blewitt [the ICTY spokesman] replied that he
did not want to go into that. He said that the OTP would strengthen the
existing procedures to prevent this from happening again; however he added
that you could not stop people from talking."24
Prior to the onslaught, Croatian
radio had broadcast a message by president Franjo Tudjman calling upon
"Croatian citizens of Serbian ethnicity ... to remain in their homes and
not to fear the Croatian authorities which will respect their minority
rights."25 While US military officers were
on hand advising the Croatian High Command, Canadian peacekeepers of the
Royal 22nd Regiment witnessed in theatre the atrocities committed by Croatian
troops in the Krajina offensive of September 1995: "Any Serbs who had failed
to evacuate their property were systematically 'cleansed' by roving death
squads. Every abandoned animal was slaughtered and any Serb household was
ransacked and torched."26
The 1993 Medak Massacre
According to Jane's Defence Weekly
(June 10,1999), Brigadier General Agim Ceku (now in charge of the KLA)
had also "masterminded the successful HV [Croatian Army] offensive at Medak"
in September 1993. In Medak, the combat operation was entitled "Scorched
Earth", resulting in the total destruction of the Serbian villages of Divoselo,
Pocitelj, and Citluk, and the massacre of over I00 civilians.27
These massacres were also witnessed
by Canadian peacekeepers under UN mandate:
As the sun rose over the horizon,
it revealed a Medak Valley engulfed in smoke and flames. As the frustrated
soldiers of 2PPCLI waited for the order to move forward into the pocket,
shots and screams still rang out as the ethnic cleansing continued....
About 20 members of the international press had tagged along, anxious to
see the Medak battleground. Calvin [a Canadian officer] called an informal
press conference at the head of the column and loudly accused the Croats
of trying to hide war Crimes against the Serb inhabitants. The Croats started
withdrawing back to their old lines, taking with them whatever loot they
hadn't destroyed.... French reconnaissance troops and the Canaclian command
element pushed up the valley and soon began to find bodies of Serb civilians
Some already decomposing, others freshly slaughtered.... Finally, on the
drizzly morning of Sept. 17, teams of UN civilian police arrived to probe
the smouldering ruins for murder victims. Rotting corpses lying out in
the open were catalogued, then turned over to the peacekeepers for burial.28
The massacres were reported to the
Canadian Minister of Defence and to the United Nations:
Senior defence bureaucrats back
in Ottawa had no way of predicting the outcome of the engagement in terms
of political fallout. To them, there was no point in calling media attention
to a situation that might easily backfire... So Medak was relegated to
the memory hole--no publicity, no recriminations, no official record. Except
for those soldiers involved, Canada's most lively military action since
the Korean War simply never happened.29
NATO's "Post-conflict Agenda"
Both the Medak Pocket massacre and
Operation Storm bear a direct relationship to the ongoing situation in
Kosovo and the massacres and ethnic cleansing committed by KLA troops.
While the circumstances are markedly different, several of today's key
actors in Kosovo were involved (under the auspices of the Croatian Armed
Forces) in the planning of both these operations. Moreover, the US mercenary
outfit MPRI, which collaborated with the Croatian Armed Forces in 1995,
is currently on contract with the KLA. NATO's casual response to the appointment
of Brigadier General Agim Ceku as KLA Chief of Staff was communicated by
Mr. Jamie Shea in a press briefing in May: "I have always made it clear,
and you have heard me say this, that NATO has no direct contacts with the
KLA. Who they appoint as their leaders, that is entirely their own affair
I don't have any comment on that whatever."30
While NATO says it "has no direct
contacts with the KLA," the evidence confirms the opposite. Amply documented,
KLA terrorism has been installed with NATO's tacit approval. The KLA had
(according to several reports) been receiving "covert support" and training
from the CIA and Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) since the mid-nineties.
Moreover. MPRI collaboration with the KLA predates the onslaught of the
bombing campaign.31
The building up of KLA forces was
part of NATO planning. By mid-1998, "covert support" had been replaced
by official ("overt") support by the military alliance, in violation of
several UN Security Council resolutions. NATO officials, western heads
of State and heads of government, and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan,
not to mention ICTY chief prosecutor Louise Arbour, were fully cognisant
of General Ceku's involvement in the planning of Operation Storm and Operation
Scorched Earth. Canadian Major General Lewis McKenzie, who served under
the UN, confirmed that "the same officer who masterminded the 1993 Medak
offensive in Croatia that saw Canadian soldiers using deadly force to stop
horrendous atrocities against Serb civilians [had also] ordered the overrunning
of lightly armed UN outposts, in blatant contravention of international
law. His influence within the KLA does not augur well for its trustworthiness
during Kosovo's political evolution."32 Surely,
some Questions should have been asked.
Yet what is shaping up visibly in
the wake of the bombings in Kosovo is the continuity of NATO's operation
in the Balkans. Alongside the transfer of General Ceku to Kosovo, NATO
military personnel and UN bureaucrats previously stationed in Croatia and
Bosnia have also been routinely reassigned to Kosovo.
KFOR Commander Mike Jackson had
been routinely assigned to Kosovo following his stint in Bosnia-Herzegovina
and Croatia. His experience in "ethnic warfare," however, predates the
Balkans. From his earlier posting in Northern Ireland as a young Captain,
Jackson was second in command in the "Bloody Sunday" massacre of civilians
in Derry in 1972. Under the orders of Lieutenant Colonel Derek Wilford,
Captain Jackson and 13 other soldiers of his parachute regiment opened
fire "on a peaceful protest by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association
opposing discrimination against Catholics. In just 30 minutes, 13 people
were shot dead and a further 13 injured. Those who died were killed by
a single bullet to the head or body, indicating that they had been deliberately
targeted. No weapons were found on any of the deceased."33
Jackson's ignominious role in Bloody
Sunday did not hinder his military career from Northern Ireland in the
1970s and 1980s, he was reassigned to the theatre of ethnic warfare in
the Balkans. In the immediate wake of Operation Storm and the ethnic massacres
in Krajina, Jackson was put in charge as IFOR Commander for organising
the return of Serbs "to lands taken by Croatian HVO forces in the 1995
Krajina offensive."34 And in this capacity
General Jackson had "urged that the resettlement [of Krajina Serbs] not
[be] rushed to avoid tension [with the Croatians]," while also warning
returning Serbs "of the extent of the [land] mine threat."35
In retrospect, recalling the events of early 1996, very few Krajina Serbs
were allowed to return to their homes under the protection of the UN. According
to Veritas, a Belgrade-based organisation of Serbian refugees from Croatia,
some ten to fifteen thousand Serbs were able to resettle in Croatia.
And a similar process is unfolding
in Kosovo. The conduct of senior military officers (including Jackson and
Ceku) conforms to a consistent pattern; the same key individuals and the
same US mercenary outfit are now involved in Kosovo. While token efforts
are displayed to protect Serb and Roma civilians, those who have fled Kosovo
are not encouraged to return under UN protection. In post-war Kosovo, ethnic
cleansing implemented by the KLA has largely been accepted by the international
community as a fait accompli.
Moreover, while calling for democracy
and "good governance" in the Balkans, the US and its allies have installed
in Kosovo a paramilitary government with links to organised crime. The
foreseeable outcome is the outright criminalization of civilian state institutions
and the establishment of what is best described as a Mafia State. The complicity
of NATO and the alliance governments (namely their relentless support to
the KLA) points to the de facto criminalization of KFOR and of the UN peacekeeping
apparatus in Kosovo. The donor agencies and governments providing financial
support to the KLA (including funds approved by the US Congress in violation
of several UN Security Council resolutions) are, in this regard, also accessories
to the de facto criminalization of state institutions. Through the intermediation
of a paramilitary group (created and financed by Washington and Bonn),
NATO ultimately bears the burden of responsibility for the massacres and
ethnic cleansing of civilians in Kosovo.
Terror And The Market
State terror and the free market
seem to go hand in hand. The concurrent criminalization of state institutions
in Kosovo is not incompatible with the West's economic and strategic objectives
in the Balkans. Notwithstanding the massacres of civilians, the self-proclaimed
KLA administration has committed itself to establishing a "secure and stable
environment" for foreign investors and international financial institutions.
The Minister of Finance Adem Grobozci and other representatives of the
provisional government invited to various donor conferences are all KLA
appointees. In contrast, members of the KDL of Ibrahim Rugova (duly elected
in parliamentary elections) were not even invited to attend the Stabilization
Summit in Sarajevo in late July.
"Free market reforms" are envisaged
for Kosovo under the supervision of the Bretton Woods institutions largely
replicating the structures of the Rambouillet Agreement. Article 1 (Chapter
4a) of the Rambouillet Agreement stipulated that: "The economy of Kosovo
shall function in accordance with free market principles." The KLA government
will largely be responsible for implementing these reforms and ensuring
that loan conditionalities are met.
In close liaison with NATO, the
Bretton Woods institutions had already analysed the consequences of an
eventual military intervention leading to the military occupation of Kosovo.
Almost a year prior to the beginning of the war, the World Bank conducted
"simulations" which "anticipated the possibility of an emergency scenario
arising out of the tensions in Kosovo."36
The eventual "reconstruction" of
Kosovo financed by international debt largely purports to transfer Kosovo's
extensive wealth in mineral resources and coal to multinational capital.
In this regard, the KLA has already occupied (pending their privatisation)
the largest coal mine at Belacevac in Dobro Selo, northwest of Pristina.
In turn, foreign capital has its eyes rivetted on the massive Trepca mining
complex which constitutes "the most valuable piece of real estate in the
Balkans, worth at least $5 billion."37 The
Trebca complex not only includes copper and large reserves of zinc, but
also cadmium, gold, and silver. It has several smelting plants, 17 metal
treatment sites, a power plant and Yugoslavia's largest battery plant.
Northern Kosovo also has estimated reserves of 17 billion tons of coal
and lignite
In the wake of the bombings, the
management of many of the state-owned enterprises and public utilities
were taken over by KLA appointees. In turn, the leaders of the Provisional
Government of Kosovo (PGK) have become the brokers of multinational capital,
committed to handing over the Kosovar economy at bargain prices to foreign
investors. The IMF's lethal economic therapy will be imposed, the provincial
economy will be dismantled, agriculture will be deregulated, local industrial
enterprises which have not been totally destroyed will be driven into bankruptcy.
The most profitable state assets
will eventually be transferred into the hands of foreign capital under
the World Bank-sponsored privatisation program. "Strong economic medicine"
imposed by external creditors will contribute to further boosting a criminal
economy (already firmly implanted in Albania) which feeds on poverty and
economic dislocation.
Moreover, the so-called reconstruction
of the Balkans by foreign capital will signify multi-billion dollar contracts
to foreign firms to rebuild Kosovo's infrastructure. More generally, the
proposed Marshall Plan for the Balkans financed by the World Bank and the
European Development Bank (EBRD) as well as private creditors will largely
benefit western mining, petroleum and construction companies while fuelling
the region's external debt well into the third millennium.
And Kosovo is slated to reimburse
this debt through the laundering of dirty money. Yugoslav banks in Kosovo
will be closed down, the banking system will be deregulated under the supervision
of western financial institutions. Narco-dollars from the multi-billion
dollar Balkans drug trade will be recycled toward servicing the external
debt as well as financing the costs of reconstruction. The lucrative flow
of narco-dollars thus ensures that foreign investors involved in the reconstruction
program will be able to reap substantial returns. In turn, the existence
of a Kosovar narco-State ensures the orderly reimbursement of international
donors and creditors. The latter are prepared to turn a blind eye. They
have a tacit vested interest in installing a government which facilitates
the laundering of drug money.
The pattern in Kosovo is, in this
regard, similar to that observed in neighbouring Albania. Since the early
1990s (culminating with the collapse of the financial pyramids in 1996-97),
the IMF's reforms have impoverished the Albanian population while spearheading
the national economy into bankruptcy. The IMF's deadly economic therapy
transforms countries into open territories. In Albania, and to a lesser
extent Macedonia, it has also contributed to fostering the growth of illicit
trade and the criminalization of state institutions.
Notes
1. PBS, Jim Lehrer Newsmaker Interview,
July 26 1999.
2. Tanjug Press Dispatch, May 14,
1999.
3. "Rugova Faced with a Choice of
Two Losses," Stratfor, July 29, 1999
4. New York Times, Feb. 2, 1999.
5. Financial Times (London), Aug.
4, 1999.
6. See OSCE Mission in Kosovo, Decision
305, Permanent Council, 237th Plenary Meeting, PC Journal No. 237, Agenda
item 2, Vienna, July 1, 1999.
7. Statement at Sarajevo Summit,
July 31, 1999.
8. House Resolution 1425, Apr. 15,
1999.
9. Phillip Sherwell, "SAS teams
move in to help KLA 'rise from the ashes,'" Sunday Telegraph (London),
Apr. 18, 1999.
10. See Tammy Arbucki, "Building
a Bosnian Army,". Jane's lnternational Defence Review, Aug 1997.
11. Military Professional Resources,
lnc., "Personnel Needs," http://www.mpri.com/current/personnel.htm.
12. Associated Press (AP).
13. ibid.
14. Quoted in Raymond Bonner, "War
Crimes Panel Finds Croat Troops Cleansed the Serbs," New York Times, Mar.
21, 1999. The actual number of civilians killed or missing was much larger.
15. ibid.
16. ibid.
17. Bonner, op. cit., n. 14.
18. Ken Silverstein, "Privatizing
War," The Nation, July 27, 1997.
19. See Mark Thompson, et al., "Generals
for Hire," Time, Jan.15, 1996, p.34.
20. Quoted in Silverstein, op cit.,
n. 18.
21. op cit., n. 19.
22. Bonner, op. cit., n. 14.
23. lCTY Weekly Press Briefing,
Mar. 24, 1999.
24. ibid.
25. Slobodna Dalmacija, Split, Croatia,
Aug. 5, 1996.
26. Scott Taylor and Brian Nolan,
The Sunday Sun (Toronto), Nov. 2, 1998.
27. See Memorandum on the Violation
or the Human and Civil Rights or the Serbian People in the Republic of
Croatia, http://serbianlinks.freehosting.net/memorandum.htm.
28. Excerpts from a book by Scott
Taylor and Brian Nolan published in the Toronto Sun, Nov. 1, 1998.
29. ibid.
30. NATO Press Briefing, May 14,
1999.
31. For further details, see Michel
Chossudovsky, "Kosovo 'Freedom Fighters' Financed by Organized Crime,"
Covert Action Quarterly, No. 67 (SpringSummer 1999), pp. 20-25.
32. Lewis McKenzie, "Soldier's View:
Nato Should Disarm the KLA 'Before It's Too Late,"' Vancouver Sun, June
12, 1999.
33. Julie Hyland, "Head of NATO
force in Kosovo was second-in-command at 'Bloody Sunday' massacre in lreland."
World Socialist Web Site, June 19, 1999.
34. Jane's Defence Weekly, Vol.
25, No. 7, Feb. 14, 1996.
35. ibid.
36. World Bank Development News,
Washington, D.C., Apr. 27, 1999.
37. Chris Hedges, "Below It All
in Kosovo, A War's Glittering Prize," New York Times, July 8, 1998.
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Duke University Press
In four sections: Movies and Money;
Cinema and Culture and lastly Independents and independence this is thirteen
essays from thirteen academics. Presumably it had no descending hierarchy
in mind, nor were they superstitious.
Funnily enough, the Academy in the
old days justified itself as something to be taken seriously by a kind
of morality of standards. It was all bound up with Religion. In the UK
this dates back to the inception of our oldest schools of learning and
religious characters such as Wycliffe and a theocratic approach. The process
of evaluation of evidence grew with scientific rationalism to mirror that
of the courts: opposing opinion being assayed and the different sides treated
with impartiality. At some point the blindfold comes off and the sword
of truth (a metaphor borrowed from the New Testament) divides, usually
wrongly, but not in such a manner as to call the higher processes (i.e.
conveniently God's) into question. But it was all about money really.
Today's experience tells us that
we can assume nothing with academic credentials. Many fine people may work
there but all manner of creatures end up in colleges and universities,
which are magnets for people with no talent just as Childrens' Homes are
magnets for abusers.
Several species of crackpot ideas
and foul gibberish pervade the educational institutions. Most people would
hold up film theory as harbouring particularly socially and intellectually
useless notions with which we can have no faith. What tends now to get
put on offer is an unconscious hierarchy of deranged standards as a prop
for little more than laughable attempts at self promotion.
Yes good old Money in the form of
Box office gross is a common enough determinant--even in the pretend egalitarian
world of college professors--of evaluative criteria, and surfaces throughout
the book. With the first paragraph of his own contribution, the editor
of the collection, Jon Lewis takes the trouble to illustrate (with some
crocodile tears) an aspect of film-making which he seems a little shocked
by:
"The system stinks. It's fed by
greed and ego...[Hollywood has] been changing and always in the same direction,
which is more about money and much less about what movies are. I hate it,
I hate it. But you can't ignore it. As much as you keep reminding yourself
with the mantra, "It's all about the movies; it's about the movies," it's
about the money.
Joe Roth, Chairman Disney Film Division"
So not all about cuddly little fluffy
bunnies then. Lewis' own contribution, in its serious focus on the Corporate
junk-bond financed leveraged mergers and acquisition era of the 80s traces
roots back to the intrigue surrounding the combination of so-called Paramount
decision (ostensibly to promote free trade) and the Hollywood blacklist
(to restrict filthy pinkos trading). This is all pretty well-trodden ground
by now. Cue Ronnie Reagan as the front man for the Screen Actors Guild
joining with management to implement the ban against some of its members
in the 50s, then cut to a flash forward as he unleashes 'Reaganomics' fronting
for much the same crew of gangsters.
With the second section what each
author determines to be cultural currency at times stretches into some
far-fetched notions of value and relevance. With the third: well in its
idealism all our hopes lie.
The wisdom of illustrating his theories
by choosing the first Rambo movie as the 'locus classicus' of 'The Male
Rampage Film' is not clear to me in Fred Pfeil's essay of the same name
in the second section. His logic squirms uncomfortably, simply because
'First Blood' doesn't particularly fit the bi-polar thesis he slavishly
tries to impose:
"...the mass audience for Hollywood
product in the 1970s was offered a choice between two kinds of anti-establishment
film: a "left" version, in which the protagonist uncovers an evil conspiracy
of power elites and is usually defeated and killed before he can publisize
or contest it in any effective way (Chinatown, 1974; The Parallax View,
1974); and a "right" version, in which the established authorities are
so corrupt or impotent that they leave the hero no choice but to wage his
own war against the scum who threaten him, his family, and All That Is
Decent from below (Dirty Harry, 1972; Walking Tall, 1973). If so, Rambo;
First Blood was one of the first movies of the 80s to dream these two sides
or cycles together and thus to offer us the sight of a downscale, deauthorized
figure going native ...Stallone as canny proto-Indian "savage"..."
The exception does not prove a rule.
Later Pfiel takes all the Rambo films to be the same thing, yet the fact
is the first Rambo movie is qualitatively different from the sequels. His
theorizing is meaningless. Leaving aside the fact that the hero does contest
in an effective way and that he has no family, First Blood (1982) was directed
by Ted Kotcheff, with writing credits David Morrell (who wrote the novel)
and Michael Kozoll. Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) was directed
by George P. Cosmatos with writing credits for Kevin Jarre (story) and
Sylvester Stallone. Rambo III (1988) was directed by our own Peter MacDonald
with writing credits Sheldon Lettich, Sylvester Stallone (the source is
www.imdb.com).
It would seem to me that Sly cleverly
took the brand name (you feel like reminding Pheil that Rambo isn't real)
and started writing according to a more commercial logic to fit with the
prevailing winds.
All the films bearing the Rambo
brand are tainted because of old Ronnie again, who happened to mention
his admiration for one of the later films and how he would like to adopt
some of the character's approach to foreign policy/murdering people. It
could be that Reagan 'thought' this one up himself, but it is more likely
that his speech writers (and/or campaign managers) were trying to appeal
to the bloodlust of their imaginary Joe Six-pack voter. The stupid amount
of attention given to it probably diverted media attention away from the
litany of crimes being committed by Oliver North and the gang.
The first movie starts on about
Agent Orange and how it slowly killed Rambo's black buddy from The Nam,
the main character spends most of the time shooting at the Cops and the
National Guard and at the end of the movie our tough hero breaks down blubbering
about the mind shattering horrors of war--but Pfeil casually places it along
side the bally-ho of Reagan's re-election in the mid-80s, saying he will
analyse it later, but never gets around to explaining the contradiction
in terms of his argument. The sources cited for his line of thought are
sparse and clearly not up-to-date. He is just prejudiced against Rambo--first
he feigns intellectual detachment then promises intelligent analysis, later
just referring to the film as 'obnoxious' (p 172).
In the early 80s when a spate of
violent action adventures were successfully mass-marketed they were ignored
by academia who criticised their audience as trash watching gratuitous
trash which would numb their minds and make them violent. Eventually feeling
left out and never ones to miss out on self-indulgence, gratuitous trash
suddenly became suitable for pseudo-intellectualisation and we had all
these bores going on about semiotics in Terminator and feminist theory
in Alien 2.
On the more comfortable subject
of Die Hard Pheil starts to provide us with a Greimasian rectangle (a wee
diagram). Presumably you print it out on acetate and hang it over the screen
while you're watching the movie. We'll leave him to it.
But the premium grade film theory
gibberish is purveyed by Tania Modleski. Her essay "a Rose Is a Rose?"
demolishes the terms surely and purely in its opening line:
"If there ever was a purely masculine
genre, it is surely the war film."
So what about the brilliance of
Larissa Shepitko's "The Ascent." Modleski's first footnote states that
she is for hire while boasting about some huge endowment she has just received.
Now we know what she is we can haggle about the price.
To make things surely and purely
preposterous the article is predicated on a quote from Gilbert Adair which
she thinks is a 'thoughtful critique' (here's that surely again):
"It is surely time that film-makers
learned that the meticulous detailed aping of an atrocity is an atrocity;
that the hyper-realistic depiction of an obscenity cannot avoid being contaminated
with that obscenity; and that the unmediated representation of violence
constitutes in itself an act of violence against the spectator."
Yes the map is the territory. Modleski
then goes on to do what she and Gilbert find so distasteful in others--meticulous
detailed aping. Let me commit an act of violence by quoting her:
"Thus, since "being there" has so
far been out of the question for women (who are prohibited from combat),
their authority on any issue related to war is discredited from the outset,
and insofar as they may be inclined to question or oppose war (except in
and on the terms granted them by men), they find themselves consigned to
the ranks of the always already defeated."
This type of perversity enhances
the victimisation of women and she is factually wrong on a prohibition
against women being in combat. Pathetically so, although the article is
about 'Vietnam films' it escapes her notice that many women fought and
died in the NVA; similarly Russian armed forces contained women--indeed
perhaps the most symbolic act of World War 2 was the planting of the Soviet
flag on the Reichstag building: an act bravely completed by a female Soviet
soldier.
To Modleski all 'Vietnam films'
are intrinsically evil. Speaking of Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of
July:
"Here we see an example of the commonplace
phenomenon in Vietnam films in which exploited people (in this instance,
the prostitutes) are further exploited by the films themselves for the
symbolic value that they hold for the hero. Thus do the films perpetuate
the social and cultural insensitivity that led to America's involvement
in the war and the atrocities committed there."
Imagine believing that someone acting
the part of a prostitute in a film is the same as a human catastrophe on
the scale of the Vietnam war. Modleski's pathetic revisions, with a slender
grasp of reality are of no use to anyone: male, female or somewhere in
between. On this evidence she is only capable of trying to infect other
minds with imprecise thought delivered with the insouciant arrogance of
someone who has been getting away with it for too long.
Christopher Sharrett's analysis
of the reactionary responses to Stone's JFK contains stimulating, well-researched
material expressing legitimate concern with America's 'Deep Politics'--the
clandestine institutional political culture:
"Garrison's investigation was roundly
condemned not for legal impropriety, but for its assertions about the legitimacy
of the state. Perhaps more important, this investigation (and those of
many independent researchers) ultimately forces us into a reassessment
of some commonly and blithely held assumptions about the political-economic
order. Students of this matter cannot help but intuit John Dewey's assertion
that government is but the shadow cast by business, thus assassinations,
coups, and other forms of political violence flow from economic assumptions.
Garrison's later writing placed the JFK assassination within the context
of the CIA support of coups in Guatemala, Iran, Chile, the Congo, and elsewhere;
this work, largely unknown to Stone's audience, stands with the most important
progressive indictments of the real dynamics of contemporary state power
as it serves specific class interests. Stone's adaptation of Garrison's
work prompted media commentators to suggest that further conspiracy talk
might push a nation already suffering a profound legitimation crisis into
catastrophe."
Sharrett was one of the consultants
to the US Congress' House select Committee on assassinations and is a much
needed saner voice than some of the psychobabble. It is a fair analysis
of Stone's work. It frees and opens up the implications--more is known now
about the reality of the US political culture and covert alliances of the
early 60s--of the dogged persistence of investigative journalists. That
this should find an expression in mass audience movies was too much for
the majority of commentators working for big business/the US press. And
it is also refreshing to see someone challenge the commonplace American
waking dream that the crimes associated with state power are so huge and
entrenched that they can only be taken as normality.
"...research shows that Shaw was
far more than an international businessman giving the odd tip to the CIA,
nor was he merely the shadowy protector, a la Monks in Oliver Twist, observing
the Ferrie/Banister gang of young anticommunist, anti-civil rights provocateurs,
which is the main role that the film ascribes to him. Cumulative study,
including work done by the Italian and Canadian media, suggests that Shaw
worked for U.S. intelligence since his service on the staff of General
Charles Thrasher, deputy commander of the Western theater of operations
during World War II. There is compelling evidence that Thrasher and Shaw
were among the U.S. army officers and other officials responsible for constructing
Operation Paperclip, which created the "rat lines" central to the migration
of nazi military brass, intelligence officials, and scientists, including
Reinhard Gehlen, who orchestrated the "Gehlen Org," a powerful arm of Western
intelligence within the eastern Bloc during the post war years; Klaus Barbie,
the notorious Butcher of Lyon; and Walter Dornberger and Wernher von Braun,
the scientists who pioneered the V-2 "buzz bomb" ballistic missile at Peenemunde
(murdering many slave laborers at the Nordhausen concentration camp in
the process) and became central to the construction of the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA). The "rat lines" project is chronicled
in documentary filmmaker Marcel Ophuls's Hotel Terminus (1988), among other
sources. During these operations, general Thrasher was simultaneously responsible
for the gratuitous murder of ordinary German POWs (mainly old men and boys)
while their officers actually became part of the U.S. state apparatus."
The title of the collection is now
something of an anachronism. I wonder if the 20th century will be romantically
thought of as being dominated by celluloid film which is now a medium no
longer required. What effect this will have on independent film makers,
distribution cartels and the whole junket marketing culture remains to
be seen. The last few screenings I have been to have been digital. Will
people still want to meet in the dark and watch a projection in complexes
whose screens are getting smaller as those at home get bigger?
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___________________________________________________________
'You're twisting
my melon man'
William Clark
Noise Water Meat (A History of
Sound in the Arts)
Douglas Kahn
£24.95, ISBN 0-262-11242-4,
MIT Press
It just deliberately ignores huge
developments, movements and forms of music in favour of devising fables
from his own vain contemplations. Revealed is a man who is shall we say...
a plastic jug short of a full tuppaware set. But the omissions are no loss:
there is rather, a feeling of relief that he said nothing about--say the
whole of Jazz and Blues. Anyone with the misfortune to be set this as desired
reading as part of some dubious media course will probably find themselves
going back to the introduction to find out what the hell he is on about.
His statements on his intentions are a whisker away from satire:
"The book focuses on inscriptive
practices (but is in no way restricted to them), whereas ideas of vibration
and transmission occur only intermittently and have not been addressed
directly. The book ends with a contrast between the manner in which, with
Burroughs's virus, inscription has been sunk from the surface of bodies
into each and every cell (a shift that itself should complicate notions
about writing or inscribing on bodies), and the energetic configuration
and situation of bodies and environments found in Artaud's post-Rodez work
and McClure's meat science. Their use of energetic flows, derived from
Eastern bodily practices and elsewhere, poses a challenge to techniques
and tropes of inscription that have so strongly informed and problematized
modernism and suggests that any theorization of contemporary aurality will
have to take into account not only the changed status of inscription and
the historical background of transmission but also a figure or phenomenon,
particle and wave, capable of spatial elaboration and vica versa, which
supersedes both."
So to utterly baffle the potential
reader Khan has chosen to 'contrast'--read perform the Vulcan mind meld
with--Burroughs (now that Wild Bill is safely full fathom five he feels
comfortable to exhibit his tiresome interpretations out of the range of
gun fire) with Artaud (let me take you to Junkie Town!) Just in case that
accidentally produces clarity of thought he will inject some McClure: that's
Michael, not Troy. Any persistent bloodhounds will be shaken off the trail
of meaning by the contortions of some ersatz Kundalini Yoga. He also couples
all this with uncritical musings on William Reich and--read them and weep--L.
Ron Hubbard. To go to such lengths to appear sophisticated must be a cry
for help.
Unbelievably that was presented
as an incentive to read this book. The pretence is that it is some kind
of new synthesis or approach to 'the' history of sound in the avant-garde,
yet if we dipped in at any point we read a poor misunderstood re-hash of
better material.
In actuality--if that is not too
intrusive--the book is an out-of-focus reinforcement dealing with ascription:
the old quasi-religious academic technique of giving the amen to something.
This is performed by a mind awash with all manner of acid-casualty-cosmic-debris
which was inscribed in his brain at some mid-eighties-post-modern-love-in
at a US west coast far-out, terminally groovey 'educational establishment.'
So on a more prosaic level--leaving aside the Goddess Shakti amongst many
other thousands of mutually exclusive terms he uses--it's a series of various
lectures (largely made up of quotes: some of which are interesting, and
padding) with his musing in between like some insipid but foul-smelling
glue. Reading his prose you get the feeling that the verbs and adjectives
are squabbling amongst themselves trying to run away from a series of oxymorons:
"As a dead Aristotle might have said." (page 221)
He is a devotee of the late John
Cage--who I have always thought seemed a bit of a non-event compared to
Victor Borge?!...
Much in the way people talk about
architecture as frozen music he has tried to merge...well who am I kidding
I haven't got a clue what he's trying to do. The book is impossible to
read because you disagree with every sentence. The Kundalini yoga stuff,
which just cuts in at any time like somebody selling Hare Krishna on the
streets, is like Newtonian Physics compared with his own scribbling which
sound like a cross between an encyclopedia salesman and some old showbiz
whore on the chat show circuit.
To properly review this book you
would have to hire a group of highly dedicated and knowledgeable experts,
get them to take years to sift through this thoroughly and then you could
come to the conclusion--which you knew all along--that this is an institutionalised
academic talking to other institutionalised academics. And who would want
to listen to that?
The quick way to review the book--the
method adopted tonight--is to go in through the back door: i.e. look up
the index and bibliography, weigh what he's selling, check for contentious
authors--he seems to be trying to replicate what Attali did in 'Noise'--unravel
his position on key issues; look what he recycles; look who he criticises,
look who he flatters and so on...
His general tone indicates that
Douglas Khan will probably never leave the safety of the institution and
join us on the streets. The students have left the auditorium but the professor,
thumbs behind lapels, still bellows out The Word:
"John Cage appears throughout the
book and is the subject of an entire section. He would occupy a central
position within any discussion of sound and art in this century because
of the importance and influence across the arts of his music, writings,
and ideas about sound throughout his long and prolific career. Moreover
, like Artaud he connects the first half with the second half of the century,
but unlike Artaud he lived to see the second half, almost all of it."
When it comes to other theorists
and musicians who are of an independent disposition and whose existence
and creative outlook could be said to challenge his worship of an image
of Cage he has constructed for himself, they are either wholly or partially
ignored or the subject of snide or pitifully inadequate remarks. Or all
three in the case of Pierre Schaeffer where the writing is nothing more
than a mis-reading of an interview in Re Records Magazine (vol. 2 Number
1) in 1987.
Unable to write anything of any
consequence on the matter he offers selective quotes to dismiss Schaeffer
(known for his seminal work in the late 40s with electronic recording at
Radio-diffusion-Television Francaise (RTF) in Paris, where he produced
several short studies in what he called Musique concrete).
Uncomprehending of Schaeffer's artistic
honesty and specific terms of reference he prefers to throw up a puerile
after-dinner anecdote--thinly disguised self-indulgence concerning you know
who:
"He returned to the notion that
no music was possible outside of conventional musical sounds: "It took
me forty years to conclude that nothing is possible outside DoReMi...In
other words , I wasted my life." In 1988 I had occasion to describe Schaeffer's
lament to John Cage over the dinner table. He quickly responded. "He should
have kept going up the scale!"
It would seem no dissent from this
transparently foolish orthodoxy is tolerated. Despite the fact that he
knows nothing about what has been going on in Europe, he has detected that
Chris Cutler, the editor of Re Records has committed a crime against the
inquisition leading him to pronounce his own aut'o-da-fé:
"After reviewing an article on the
history of live electronic music, he [Cutler] felt compelled to "resist
the unquestioning inclusion of a randomly derived aleatory and raw environmental
sound in what we understand when we use the work [sic] music." Pitted specifically
against the threat posed by Cage, he argued:
If, suddenly, all sound is "music",
then by definition, there can be no such thing as sound that is not music.
The word music becomes meaningless, or rather it means "sound". But sound
already means that. And when the word music has been long minted and nurtured
to refer to a particular activity in respect to sound--namely, its conscious
and deliberate organization within a definite aesthetic and tradition--I
can see no convincing argument at this late stage for throwing these useful
limitations into the dustbin."
That's not good enough for professor
Khan:
"Cutler tries to fend off the totalization
of Cagean thought, at a time when so much Cagean thought had been benignly
internalized, by rhetorically positing music as we know it and politically
marginalizing the other through common sense. The problems with Cage's
notion that all sound is music, which do not revolve around a music/not-music
distinction, will be taken up in chapter 6."
No we are not to use common sense,
we are to bow to whatever has been benignly inserted into us--here you have
his intentions in a nut shell: we must be followers: now bend over. His
chapter 6 vaunts itself as if it laid out some grand unification theory
relating to Cage's interest in sub-atomic vibration. It maintains that
if everything vibrates all the time then everything is always emitting
sound, Cutler's useful distinction on the human level of language and terms
is just not dealt with.
Much the same can be said of his
pat descriptions of the life (read the myth) of Burroughs: they are treatments
of grotesque veneration. Burroughs' irony remains undetected. Symbolism
becomes reality in the 'analysis'--if you can call this guff analysis:
"The Other half had become all others,
they had become all, and the theys were not necessarily biotic. Organism
has shifted the rise of the inorganic to the fall of the inorganic, all
on the wings of the life and death struggle of the virus, the internecine
being of the virus, fuckin' transitional bastard." (page 321)
The insidious elements to his ideas
on Burroughs are evident with well-rehearsed exclusions which reveal that
Professor Khan is just like all The Others:
"His own work was deeply informed
by a variety of scientific and quasi-scientific theories--by an obsession
with fact, as he was quick to say. It was within this culture of fact that
this notion of the virus grew and subsequently became well known among
a broad range of people, especially the beat and beyond literati, heady
punks, and other subcultured individuals, cybertypes, and urban degenerate
renegades."
You know: street scum--the people
who don't count. Where exactly did this the culture of fact lead to, could
that be academia perchance?
His observations are that an essay
on Burroughs' audio experiments "broke the scholarly ice on the topic of
sound and voice..." The footnotes reveal that this is from a magazine Khan
edited, published by MIT in 1992. So pathetic a claim to fame necessitates
that he has to discredit everybody else with any knowledge of Burroughs.
Bad Karma Khan.
It should be pointed out that this
book, in as much as it deals with music, succeeds in one thing: it excludes
almost all of the music which almost every potential reader has ever held
with lifelong affection or gained pleasure from. Imagine if you will a
book which mentions Yoko Ono (even her plumbing) but pretends the Beatles
did not exist. And she should think herself lucky: he states quite clearly
that he is excluding women due to "practicalities of time and resources."
He is not clear at all why the music of "Charlie Parker, John Coltrane,
Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Ornete Colman, and others and of African-American
poetries and linguistic play" are excluded, he would appear to explain
this by saying that there is "still much work to be done." Yes and part
of that is tackling meaningless exclusion.
The real reason though is to amplify
a smug little coterie's, cliques and claques which he aspires to join rather
than analyse.
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___________________________________________________________
good proportions
for a good music
Fabienne Audéud
On Saturday 27th November 1999, Sadie
Coles HQ and Cabinet Gallery presented a Rock 'n' Roll gig at the Scala,
London. Most of the performers were artists, playing Pop rock music in
front of an art crowd. Artist Angela Bulloch of Big Bottom was tediously
marking and counting the beat... Artist and curator Mathew Higgs was dancing
in front of the stage... Artist Wolfgang Tillmans was taking photos...
I wondered if it was comedy... but I seemed to be the only one to laugh.
The music reminded me at the time of Michael Nyman's or Steve Martland's
easy listening new music, sometimes too of a not-so-loud reference to noise
music, then of a more straight rock gig. What did they play?
When Frieze editor Mathew Slotover
is quoted in the Evening Standard's article 'Artful Rockers', saying that
Rock 'n' Roll "still carries connotations of rebellion and nonconformism"
and "some artists are still attracted to that kind of glamour" is it opening
or closing up the debate?
If music theory is often avoided
in art talks because it is too specialised and formalist, and Pop music
only dealt with from the consumer's point of view (that's what the music
people--and artists--like) then one is left with a safe realm, a realm where
"glamour and connotations of rebellion" can be performed through yet another
nice tune on a regular beat.
I can't deny the pleasure of all
the people who enjoyed the gig. But can music--which I would formally define
as creation of order (any order) in sound or noise, in what we hear--be
only a question of reference, taste, or a majority of taste?
In Noise1
J. Attali argues that in all culture noise is associated with destruction,
disorder, dirt, aggression, that noise is violence. For him, to make music
is a channelisation of noise, therefore a form of sacrifice. Since it is
a threat of death, noise is a concern of power and the function of music
is first ritualistic, it creates political order: "The game of music thus
resembles the game of power: to monopolise the right to violence. It provokes
anxiety and then provides a feeling of security..." Attali considers the
production of music as the creation, legitimisation and maintenance of
a form of order.
In Western cultures, the making
of music was for a long time the responsibility of performers/musicians.
In Antiquity they were often slaves, but mythology endowed them with supernatural
powers (Orpheus domesticated animals). Throughout the middle-ages, musicians
remained outside of society, condemned by the Church where music had started
to be written. They were itinerant, creating music and were circulating
it within all classes of society. From the 14th century, Church music became
secularised and autonomous from the Chant, and nobles would pay musicians
to play them light songs, solemn songs, to celebrate victories and to dance.
Musicians became professionals bound to a single master. Within three centuries,
the jongleurs had been replaced by salaried musicians playing scored music.
The notated tonal music produced
in Western Europe from the pre-Renaissance to the end of the 19th century
has been developed mainly through two groups, the hegemonic religions (Catholic
and Protestant churches) and the hegemonic social classes (initially the
aristocracy and later the bourgeoisie). What today we call 'classical music'
was created around the Platonic theories placing musical sounds on the
continuum of order/disorder. The fact that certain notes or chords sound
'right' with others was explained by mathematical rules.
But one should not confuse the mathematical
calculations of ratios with the way they are applied to the creation of
music and how they are used as a legitimisation of a specific order: in
fact their use value within the Western practice of music is more at a
cultural level than an influence on music itself. In the Theory of Harmonics2
in 1784, Keeble writes that "as their principles are in nature, they must
be fixed and immutable", claiming the universal validity of the Western
musical system. Until the end of the 19th century, so called 'classical
music' was composed around those rules.
Then composers and musicians started
to take non-western music more seriously, questioning the rules of tonality
and regularity of rhythm as the only way to hear and make music. The ratios
within sounds did not change: it was their use values. It is not because
Western ears are used to certain arrangements of notes and chords--around
the concept of the tension and the resolution of the tension--that composers
have to develop music only around those rules.
To simplify to the extreme a complex
evolution I will mention only some of the formal changes:
Chromatism (initiated by Wagner
and Debussy) replacing diatonism, the loss of hierarchy within the degrees,
complex chords and aggregates instead of chords in the traditional harmony,
dissonances that are not used to put the stability of the consonance into
focus but played for their own sound; Schonberg developing a system of
series as composition structures; Jazz introducing another form of scales;
Industrial noises regarded as musical sounds by the Futurists; Noises into
composition, Varese; Pierre Shaeffer using the recording techniques to
create a "musique concrete" through the editing of tapes, opening the way
to electroacoustic music; Boulez and Stockhausen following Schonberg's
work on systems of series and developing it into a 'total serialism' (rules
for heights, lengths, intensities); Xenakis using the computer for statistic
calculations as composition principles to create a scholastic music funded
on a structure of mass; Cage working on the idea of chance to create a
'non-interventionist' music; Reich and Riley using the repetitive process
to challenge the experience of music in time; La Monte Young and Max Neuhaus
transforming spaces into musical instruments; Improvising musicians extending
the technique on a variety of sound producing bodies as well as traditional
instruments, reclaiming the performance of music outside the hegemony of
the composer's score.
The composition rules that defined
the natural rightness of music and which were the base of 'classical music'
are the ones used for what I call Pop (which is different from popular).
Tonal composition on regular rhythm are to be found from traditional to
Progressive Rock, easy listening Jazz or reinterpretation of classical
melodies, most Dance music (Techno to Trance), to what I would describe
as the "musically-politically correct Pop" of the Scala's Gig. Of course
Pop is not consciously 'about' sounding 'right' and is not openly concerned
with the ratios within sound mentioned earlier. It is nevertheless the
way sound is used, as notes ordered on a classical scale (sometimes with
some so called "ethnic" influences) and arranged in tonal chords and melodies
on top of a metronome pace. The instruments are not clearly the ones from
the traditional orchestra (except that we see more and more violins around,
and that keyboards are built on the traditional tonal principle).
The other formal aspect of Pop that
is in accordance to the principles 'of the right music' is the regularity
of rhythm. Rhythm in Pop is the choice of rhythmical sequences repeated
throughout a piece, always on the 4/4 structure (some exceptions in Drum
& Bass on 3/4), marking the first beat. There are of course variations
in the way the sequences are produced and the pace but not, as far as I
know, in the reducing concept of rhythm as a repeated pattern. We all know
the overwhelming experience of a repeated pattern of rhythm, it is physical,
it makes us want to move, to dance. In Western cultures, people dance in
very defined circumstances. They don't always dance when they hear Pop--they
might think about it or remember dancing to certain music; but the argument
that Pop is based on regular rhythm because it is good to dance to does
not seem to be relevant to most situations where music is heard.
I am often given the example of
African music as the ultimate justification for the "natural and universal"
value of a regular rhythm. There is no Pop music that would slightly approach
the complexity of traditional African rhythms and on the other hand dance
and music making in traditional African Cultures are "interrelated components
of the same process" as Olly Wilson puts it in her article The Association
of Movement and Music as a Manifestation of a Black Conceptual Approach
to Music-Making3. She writes that "the Western
assumption of a division between consciously organised sound (music) and
movement associated with that sound (dance) usually does not exist there...
The music is the dance and the dance is the music." We are far from being
able to compare those practices with DJs playing for a crowd of dancers.
There are of course innovations
(or noise) within that Pop grid of regular rhythm and tonal melodies: the
rhythmical specificity of Punk was to accelerate the pace of Rock, the
way Rock had quickened the pace of Blues. Blues was cleaned by Rock of
its complexity and danger, and the melodies of Rock were simplified by
Punk. But the fact that the musicians didn't play their instruments in
the traditional way, over-amplification, noise, unsharp tuning or a raw
voice created what I call 'noise' within the Rock structure (and what I
find interesting in Punk), endangered it in a way. But the formal grid
was not fissured.
In Drum & Bass, the rhythm is
created mostly by the repetition of looped samples. There are real variations
and accelerations of pace through the juxtaposition of sequences, but within
an overall structure of extremely regular beats. In fact, the implacability
of the beats created by electronics tools is not endangered by the rhythmical
innovations (even if sometimes the drumming samples invert the traditional
hierarchy of instruments by creating the body of the music--the only noise
added to the frame).
Some dance music goes back to a
rhythmical structure where the first beat is not accentuated within the
rhythmical section by playing only the pace, the metronome becomes the
instrument. A simple melody (often in 4/4) would do the subdivisions. It
is as if the first bar of a dance piece or maybe a piano piece for children
of the classical period was quantized, sampled and looped. The level of
sound and the qualities of the chosen sounds change so that bits of classical
music can wear a contemporary sound and can be danced to.
The composition concept has moved
from the writing of a long musical sentence, with tensions and the resolutions
of tensions, to the repetition of shorter and shorter musical phrases.
In fact, the formal complexity of
classical and contemporary music can not be compared with Pop: the term
becomes irrelevant. It is the reason why Pop is usually talked about from
the audience point of view, within cultural studies and not in formal terms.
The fact that the musical tonal development is reduced is obvious, the
fact that rhythm is the repetition of a few patterns is clear, and this
is not about value judgements. Can the choice of ordering notes in a classical
way and repeating them on the base of identical rhythmical sequences be
neutral? How can such a choice avoid the reference to the political statement
of the "right order in music for the right sort of music?"
It seems to me that Pop music does
not need to legitimate its own order through an 'explanation', a musical
development, a sentence, a dense contrapuntic evolution, a long evolution
towards a resolution. It doesn't need to build itself from a simple order
(the right platonic one, the enlightenment one, the natural one) into a
more complex order (the simple order fully developed and illustrated through
for example: a symphony), it just needs to repeat itself because it is
not about representing a fixed order or power: it is power.
I hear Pop as a totalitarian formal
device, a well tested musical structure where power exercises itself. As
it does not illustrate, justify, question or endanger the order within
music, it plainly states it and loops it.
Pop has its strength in its ability
to integrate slight changes, stylistic variations, so called new sounds.
What I think Pop does is clean the dirt in music: Pop silences music.
Pop today is a formidable power
tool that co-opts opposition. Opposition within music (no atonal Rock but
progressive, avant garde Rock, never ever a rhythm that is not a repeated
pattern) and opposition within the political potency of music. It is the
slight flexibility of the frame that makes its strength. If it were rigid
it would break. It manages to carry and then annihilate social opposition,
political revolts, youth rebellions, identity or gender demarcations and
ethnic differences because what it does within the space of music, it also
does within the social realm. If classical music used to represent social
and gender order, I claim that Pop music now silences people, musicians,
listeners and everybody who hears it. What it states is just become 'normal',
obvious, unquestioned...
Pop carries its legitimisation in
its name: Pop-ular. But Pop is not popular, it is the prerogative of Pop
to be popular. It is a 'simplification/repetition' of the class-representation
structure, the class-ical one. It uses the support of the majority principle--which
is difficult to question without going into a political analyses of the
idea of democracy. It also uses the support of centuries of tradition (which
goes unnoticed or is even negated): Pop is rarely acknowledged as the dressed
& looped samples of the Platonic and Enlightenment theories of music,
but rather as the expression of a youth culture that it has the luxury
or duty to represent.
Pop benefits from the legitimisation
of the revolt of a generation and it sits comfortably on the credibility
of a repressed minority of Black American musicians through its roots in
Blues and Jazz. A lot of people who were not heard otherwise chose the
Pop medium "to express themselves".
It is difficult to split the music
and the visual spectacle of Pop. What Madonna, Boy George, Kurt Cobain
and many others address in terms of sexual and body politics is more at
a textual and visual level than a musical one. The political aspect of
their practice is probably quite successful because it uses a medium that
is in itself not dangerous and usually not critical, but what is said in
the other physical space which is sound is about obedience to a power structure.
They might not have any problem with that power but I do. I do not trust
a message that tells me "be sexually free... dress the way you want...
disobey the rules... fuck the power;" when the subtext is: "There is a
beat and it will be regular for ever... This is how sounds should be put
together as it is in nature, and it has been so for centuries and centuries...
This has always been the power of music and this is popular."
As a product, Pop doesn't need to
create markets. Dance music for example is left to grow and evolve in clubs
by the work of young musicians and DJs who bring innovation into the frame.
The consumer's reaction is instantly tested in the space where the product
is actually reinvented in the context of a quick changing (life-time of
a piece of music before its come back?) but safe realm.
Pop is the ideal capitalistic product:
started with the recording industry, no heavy inputs, no research, self
feeding, self tested, adaptable to quick adjustments (but never really
changing), same products for a majority of consumers; recycling friendly
with the come-backs and nostalgia phenomena; widely cross fertilising other
economical sectors: from fashion ('listen to his clothes!' as Frank Zappa
had it4), home recordings and music equipment,
sonorous decoration for supermarkets, images for any kind of stationery
goods to the constant feeding of certain press.
I am often told that a lot of small
labels keep a real subculture of Pop alive, that even if the industry holds
a monopoly in terms of production and distribution, other kinds of Pop
music are offered outside the few "majors." Progressive or avant-garde
Rock and their opposition to the recording industry (or their non-acceptance
by it) do not weaken the economic and political power of the Pop business.
On the contrary: they feed it, they create its solid ground, its vital,
"healthy" and quiet opposition. The 'creative' investment of the overall
Pop industry is taken care of by those who think they can work without
the economic power of the entertainment industry. The small labels are
the guardians of the temple as long as they produce a music according to
the same ruling principles. Their strictly musical input as well as their
political positions are quickly sucked out and managed, if not with the
very same people, then with more flexible individuals who will reproduce
the product: the music, the 'attitude' and the sub-products. The structure
is strong: The periphery regenerates the centre.
The actual making of music becomes
marginal to fit the given instruments, the given tonal and regular rhythm
grid and the capitalist structures of distribution--the making of music
as we saw it at la Scala fitted the given instruments, the given effect
pedals and samplers, the given tonal system, the given rhythmical grid.
The power of Pop music is not only about production, centralisation, colonisation
and total distribution within capitalism: it is the fact that its form
is in total harmony with it all. There is a shift from the representation
of power to the unquestioned exercise of it. As Alice Creicher writes in
her article The Genius in the Bourgeois Society5
"the star doesn't deliver representation anymore because it is promiscuous
like the media itself, it doesn't hide capital anymore, it states it."
On a practical level, Rock standards,
strictly Pop bands tracks, dance music and all their stylistic variations,
easy listening classical music, reinterpretation of traditional jazz pieces,
artists' Pop bands, and all the other costumes of Pop are occupying most
social aural landscapes. Everything with a regular beat that sounds right.
It's on television, in the streets, in shopping malls, inside the shops,
in bars, in pubs, in public places, in cars, in parties, in video art,
in performance art clubs, in galleries, in music venues rented out by galleries.
There is only one space outside of specialised venues where a non-Pop music
is represented: cinema. There, lyricism, the uncanny, the frightening,
the diabolical, the alien, the ridiculous are very effectively edited with
contemporary-style compositions or extracts of contemporary music pieces.
Music is mimicked or reduced to a melody, a stylisation, a phrase, a song
or an effect, into what Adorno would call the fetishization of musical
pieces. Except for the cinema sound track, every other space where there
is a social link between people is occupied by Pop. H. Draxler writes in
the exhibition catalogue for "Market" by Group Material:6
"Today the media's mass rituals of subjugation guarantee domination outside
politics...".
The ability to depoliticise the
message of Rock into Pop has become openly exposed: Janis Joplin's Blues
makes a perfect sound track for a Mercedes TV ad. Soft Drum & Bass
for a bank, Jimmy Hendrix for another car... a strings ensemble plays an
atonal chord for the flu symptoms: the message is clear.
In Unmarked7
Peggy Phelan writes that if visibility was an equalling power, then almost
naked women would rule the Western Culture...
Pop music--the notes arranged to
sound right on a regular rhythmic pattern--fulfils the aural space. It states
power through the reassertion of a fixed order to the people who share
the hearing. The social relations become defined by the power stated through
the music. It doesn't represent the divisions within society any more but
it creates unquestioned links between a redefined audience, a new social
contract. It co-opts opposition and empties political statements, the principle
of the right order in music for the right sort of music is disguised in
popular fun, in body politics through visual signifiers... in sonoric subjection.
Works cited:
1. Jacques Attali, Noise, the political
economy of music; Manchester University press, 1985.
2. John Keeble, The theory of harmonics;
London 1784; (quoted by Richard Leppert, in The sight of sound, Music,
Representation, and the History of the body; University of California Press).
3. Olly Wilson, The association
of movement and music as a manifestation of a black conceptual approach
to music making, in More Than Dancing, Essays on Afro-American music and
musicians, ed. by I.V. Jackson.
4. Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa
Book.
5. Alice Creicher, Das Genie als
Bederfnis der bergerlichen Gesellschaft, in Akademie, 1995.
6. Helmut Draxler, exhibition catalogue
for "Market", Group Material, 1995.
7. Peggy Phelan, Unmarked, the politics
of performance.
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___________________________________________________________
Criminal justice
Since coming to power in May 1997,
New Labour have deported over 93,000 people.
Enforcement figures for the first
9 months of 1999 are up 9.1% on the same period last year.
Deportations for the first 9 months
of 1999: 4,615 -- 625 less than the same period last year.
Refused and removed for the first
9 months of 1999: 22,650 -- 2,900 more than the same period in l998.
Total enforcements for the first
9 months of 1999: 27,365 -- 2,275 more than the same period in 1998.
Total enforcements under New Labour,
January to December 1998: 34,775.
Total enforcements under New Labour,
May to December 1997: 21,743.
On the 29 & 30 September 1999:
47 Asylum seekers had been detained
over 12 months, 171 Asylum seekers between 6 and 12 months.
Statistics from: Home Office
Research Development & Statistics Directorate. (All figures are provisional
and subject to revision.)
Immigration Laws Criminalise People--
The effect of immigration laws are
to criminalise people. It does not matter if they have committed any criminal
offence or not. The Immigration Act authorises detention and imprisonment
where there has been no offence, no charges no prosecution, no court intervention.
Criminalisation takes place through
language--
Under immigration law immigrants,
migrants and refugees can be defined as being in the UK "illegally" or
"unlawfully." In this way people are defined as non-persons and as being
outside of the law. Immigration Officers regularly describe Third World
people as "illegals"--as having no identity other than as being devoid of
status in the UK.
Those who lose their claim for asylum
become "Bogus." All these definitions are ways of criminalising people.
Immigration laws are not static, but are constantly being redefined, made
harsher and harder.
Criminalisation takes place through
Media Presentation--
On Saturday 26 February 2000 the
The Times ran the following story on page two:
'Refugees flock to Germany and Britain',
by Stewart Tendler, Crime Correspondent
BRITAIN attracts more asylum-seekers
than any other country in Europe bar Germany, according to Home Office
figures issued yesterday.
The United Kingdom had 71,160 applications
in 1999 compared with Germany's 95,115, a survey of ten European nations
showed. In all there were 365,745 applications for countries including
Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Kosovo and other parts of the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia accounted for more than 100,000 of the applications,
including 11,535 in the United Kingdom. Britain was also the most popular
country among asylum-seekers from Colombia, Croatia, Nigeria, Poland, Romania,
Somalia and Sri Lanka. The Home Office figures show that there were 6,110
applications in January against 7,180 in December. That is the lowest figure
for eight months. In May the number of applicants was 5,370 and since then
monthly figures have fluctuated between 6,130 and 7,355.
From November to January the average
was 6,570--a 40 per cent increase on the monthly average for the same period
in 1998-99. Processing applications rose steeply from 2,320 cases in December
to 4,040 in January, although the backlog continued to grow and has now
reached a record 104,890.
Kent County Council said yesterday
that dealing with child asylum-seekers will cost households an extra £3
next year on council tax.
This article should be condemned
in the strongest possible terms--not for its content but for the way 71,160
asylum applicants have been criminalised by the way the article has been
presented. By giving the story 'Refugees flock to Germany and Britain'
to a crime reporter The Times has labelled at one stroke 71,160 asylum
applicants as criminals. This is a grave injustice to those 71,160 people
seeking asylum. Surely this article should have and would normally come
under Home Affairs.
Criminalisation takes place through
images--
On the same day the Electronic version
of BBC World News ran a story on immigration with a picture of a Asylum
Seeker at an airport. The picture was of a women very advanced in pregnancy
(enough said).
Criminalisation takes place through
a rise in Council Tax--
On Friday 25th February 2000 Kent
County Council announced they were increasing its rates by £3 per
household to cover a £1.7m shortfall in funds caused by an influx
of asylum claimants. And there are rumours that many other councils will
follow suit unless the government pledges more money.
Interviewers were able to find any
number of people to condemn the rise "caused" by the asylum seekers but
no one was able or wanted to point out that this was less than 1 penny
per day.
Refugees are not criminals--So
why lock them up?
At any one time, up to 1,000 asylum-seekers
are imprisoned in Britain.
On Monday 20th March 2000, a new
detention centre opened in Oakington, at an old army barracks just north
of Cambridge. This centre will initially hold up to 400 more people. These
will be individuals who are not suspected of having committed any crimes,
and will include women and young children.
The centre will operate like a prison.
Detainees will not be able to leave
the site or move between buildings on the site unless escorted by security
guards. There will be constant surveillance through CCTV cameras, a 24hour
gatehouse, and regular patrols around the centre. The accommodation blocks
will be surrounded by high fences. The Home Office has refused to allow
refugee families to use the houses already on the site on the pretext that
they are too "comfortable." Large accommodation blocks will be used instead.
The Home Office claims that the
purpose of this centre is to allow "Fast-tracking" of asylum claims in
under ten days. Past experience has shown this is highly unrealistic: the
average length of time for a claim to be processed has been 18 months,
and there is a large backlog of undecided claims due to Home Office inefficiency.
It is quite likely that innocent refugees will be imprisoned for long periods
at Oakington, or else deported without proper consideration.
The centre will be run by a private
company, Group 4, for profit. Group 4 and the Home Office have already
been sternly criticised in reports by the Chief Inspector of Prisons following
visits to refugee detentions centres/prisons at Campsfield (Oxfordshire),
Tinsley House (Gatwick) and Rochester detention/prison.
Cambridgeshire Against Refugee
Detention (CARD) tel: 01223-462187
National Coalition of Anti-Deportation
Campaigns (NCADC)
email: ncadc@ncadc.demon.co.uk
http://www.ncadc.demon.co.uk/
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___________________________________________________________
Tales of the
great unwashed
Ian Brotherhood
Bill dropped one of the bags as he
struggled to get the pram into the close. The woman downstairs was right
behind and she picked it up for him.
'Some day Bill, eh?' she said, but
he didn't answer. He pulled the pram up the last of the four steps and
held the door open for her to get in out the rain. 'Thanks,' he said, hand
out, but she passed by still carrying the bag with the eggs and milk and
frozen stuff. He reached out to take the bag but she held onto it and walked
a bit ahead. 'You're alright son, I'll take this,' she said, and she looped
the carrier over the arm already bearing her own shopping, then used her
free hand to take off the wee square of plastic she used to cover her blue
hair. She was a nosey old bastard, always had been, that's what Sharon
said. He remembered then that he had to remind Sharon about that call earlier,
but he didn't know what it had been about. If he hadn't written it down
he'd have to do it as soon as he got in. Factors. Factories? The bastards
wanted money anyway.
'Aye, it's a filthy day to be out
with the weans right enough,' she said. Young Billy was already half-way
up the first flight. Bill shouted after him, 'Billy, get back here!' but
the lad kept climbing.
'He's coming on grand the wee one,'
she said then, all smiles and close enough to him that he could smell stale
milky tea and strong fags off her and it gave him the boak. Ever since
the 'accident' he'd hated the smell of cigarettes, even though he'd been
a heavy smoker himself before it.
'That's him two now eh?' she asked.
Questions again. Sharon said she
was going to bust the old bastard one of these days what with her always
asking about him and the weans, and were they still getting the health
visitor up, her knowing fine well it was the Social checking up and just
wanting to get a bit of gossip for her pals down at the bingo.
'Billy, I'm not going to tell you
again, I swear it, get down here now!' he shouted then, but the lad was
too busy staring at old Mrs whatever-the-fuck-she-was-called, now nearing
the top of the second flight and her own front door.
Bill went up the stairs fast, Louise
firmly under his arm, and Billy made a bid to start up the second flight,
laughing excitedly like it was some game or something, but Bill grabbed
his arm hard and yanked him down off the third step, and the lad sort of
swung in mid-air, his arm twisting too fast so Bill dropped him and he
hit the landing, cushioned by his thick quilted 'Broncos' jacket, and when
he got up again he grabbed onto the railings and made a swift descent of
the first flight as Bill followed him down.
So Billy took one of the carriers,
and Bill managed with the pram under one arm, Louise under the other, and
the other two carriers hanging from the fingers clasped under Louise. Old
fuck-face was already inside but Bill knew she'd be standing at her wee
peek-hole at the door, watching out and seeing if he was doing anything
to the weans, ready to pounce on the fucking phone and tell her pals.
But eventually they got in, and
even though it was just the third floor it might as well have been the
top dancer of a high-rise. His fingers were all stiff and cramped, red
and wet and freezing cold. The boy's face was the same colour, his chin
and mouth all wet with snot and slabbers.
Bill stuck the telly on for Billy,
then put Louise on the couch behind where the lad was sitting. 'Right,
you watch her son,' he said, and went to the bog for a quick slash before
getting some grub for them. Louise could wait until she woke again, and
she'd be due a feed. The trickle at the bottom of the bottle told him she'd
almost finished the last batch but he couldn't be sure when exactly he'd
given her that--just before they went to the shops? That must've been, two,
half-past? What was it now anyway? She had to be overdue for another feed,
but he'd let her sleep anyway.
It didn't take long to get the stuff
out and into the fridge, but most of it went into the freezer. He meant
to check all the stuff against the receipt but he'd forgotten all about
it until he found the receipt in the third bag, so he took out what he'd
already put in the fridge and freezer then started checking it. Then it
became a waste of time when he realised that he'd been putting tins of
beans and spaghetti into the fridge. Should've been the cupboard, so he
stopped checking against the receipt. Sharon always said you should, but
it would take too long. Anyway, if she really wanted to do it she could
do it herself later.
He poured most of a tin of beans
on top of the three potato waffles and stuck the lot into the micro for
five minutes. Sharon usually cooked the waffles first but it was all he
same. He stayed well away from the micro when it was on--Sharon always said
how it was bad rays and shite coming out the thing so he always made sure
that Billy was in the room when they were cooking so he wouldn't get blasted
and end up fucked-up like him.
Starting to think about the accident
always got him het up to fuck, so he left the kitchen and went to the bathroom
to get a towel to dry his hair. Bastard rain had been on all day. Summertime.
It was a song that came back then, just a snatch, Summertime and the living
is easy. So, it was alright anyway, that was the shopping in, and a few
quid left so he could maybe see the guys for a jar later if Sharon got
home on time. This was, what, Thursday, aye, had to be, so she'd be home
before seven.
He went back into the kitchen and
checked the calendar where Sharon marked up her hours in advance every
week. Thursday? Right--Thursday--eight to six. Billy helped him to get Louise
washed and changed and then it was back into the room and Billy wanted
to see even more cartoons, so that was okay, it kept him happy. Bill started
reading the paper, trying to get through the Sports pages, but it wasn't
really making much sense. He could get the headlines about this new signing
from some German club, but the name of the outfit stumped him time and
again and he kept having to go back to the start and try again. He had
to get the name right. That was the sort of thing the boys would laugh
at--if you tried to get your tongue round some foreign team or player's
name and made a cunt of it then you got a beasting for it. Fuck, wasn't
that how he'd had the 'accident' in the first place? Something trivial,
nothing at all really, but then there's a bit of name-calling and then
it's just mad fists and feet flying and jeers and strangers joining in
and it's just a bit of rough play but then he's on the deck and there's
that kick from nowhere and it all goes brilliant white then dead and it's
hospital-time, and will-you-be-bringing-charges, and sorry-we-can't keep
you and all that shite.
He eventually folded the paper and
let it lie in his lap. He was maybe dozing a bit what with the room getting
dry and too warm with the electric fire. That was making Lousie's skin
dry, so Sharon said, so he got up and turned it down a bit. Billy started
on about wanting crisps 'cos he knew they'd got some earlier, so he went
and got a couple of packets and that would keep him quiet for a wee while
anyway, and it was still more cartoons. It was almost six. Sharon would
be home soon if she managed her bus. That reminded him what he had to tell
her. That old bastard underneath. What the fuck was her name? He could
never get it, even though they'd been neighbours for what, three years,
more now? It didn't matter, but he would be sure to tell Sharon 'cos she
was a bit like-that with the old fuck, wanted to know if she put a foot
wrong. Something had been said one day, but he couldn't remember what it
was. It had put Sharon's nose out anyway, and she was dying for any excuse
to go down there and sort her out.
Something else to tell her. That
call. He went into the kitchenette and found a bit of paper, took it back
into the room, but there was no pen to be found. Into the bedroom. Billy
came in after him, not saying anything, just sort of girning stuff about
Mum and wanting something. What do you want? Moan, moan, girn. What is
it then? Grabbing at his legs, wanting lifted up, sucking his thumb and
all sorts. Back into the room and plonked him back in front of the telly.
The Superwings were coming on so Billy quieted again and slumped down at
the sofa.
Then it was old cartoons, the sort
Bill had watched himself when he was wee, different colours, different
faces altogether, but Billy didn't like them, started on about wanting
Superwings back. The phone started up, bastard thing was too loud, he'd
have to work out that volume button, get it turned down. Sharon. Late.
Something about that cow Julie not turning up, she had to stay 'til nine.
But there's a game on, I was going to go down see the boys and that--but
it's overtime, right, you're always moaning otherwise so tough, and that
was that.
He went back into the room. Louise
was still out for the count. Maybe seven before she'd wake again for a
feed. Half six? Billy was half conked out, eyelids giving it heavy close.
Fuck it then. He checked the paper. The game wasn't even on the telly,
only being on the satellite. Fuck all else on.
Bill checked what he had left. Twenty-three
quid and some change. Enough to get a few cans anyway and maybe a quarter-bottle,
that would never break the bank, and if she was getting a few extra hours
anyway, well, it was only fair seeing as he never got out the fucking door.
He made it quiet going down the
stairs. That old cow would know that Sharon wasn't home. He wasn't even
out the close when he remembered that he still had to write something down
about factories, factors, money overdue, whatever. He should've said to
her on the phone and that would've been that.
Round to the offy and a half-dozen
cans, but no quarter-bottle 'cos he remembered there was still some stuff
in the kitchen after the New Year, some brandy or rum or something that
Sharon had got in for her old dear coming up, so that would save a few
bob. Well, she could hardly complain if it was just a few cans. Then back
home rapid, quiet as fuck up the stairs, and Billy was asleep where he'd
left him, dead to the world.
It wasn't much past seven. Billy
looked alright, happy enough out for the count and Louise still breathing
nice and quiet right beside him. He kept the telly low, just some crappy
sit com but the jokes were too fast so he gave up watching and went back
to the paper. No point looking at the Sports pages either--why spend the
time trying to get the news on this and that, all foreign bastards anyway,
and he wouldn't get to see the lads tonight and tomorrow's gossip would
be all different. He went to the start of the paper, skipped all the heavy
politics shite with the usual beaming gobs and promises and election shite,
but then, near the start, came a familiar face, none other than good old
Elton, Elton John having his birthday. He was hardly recognisable, all
painted white face and done up in a dress and all sorts.
He put the paper down, remembering
that he had to write down that message before he forgot. The piece of paper
was still on the table where he'd left it earlier. He went through to the
kitchen and rooted about in the drawer under the cutlery drawer until he
got a pen, then went back in, wrote down 'facters called about money' and
then put it on the mantlepiece where Sharon would be sure to see it, so
that was that done.
He cracked open the third can. The
beer was sweet and warmish, nothing like drinking it in the pub. That reminded
him about the stuff that was left. In the cupboard over the cooker. He
went through. There were two bottles. One was dry vermouth, almost a full
half-bottle of that, and the other was some mad liqueur-type thing in a
cracking curvy dark-green bottle that had hardly been touched. Bendick,
Benidectin, fuck it, it was forty-odd percent so it was the real stuff.
Sharon would probably get back about
ten, what with the buses being a bit dodgy after six, so the wee one would
need fed and changed again before then. He went back in with the liqueur
stuff and a glass full of ice and checked on her. She was still sound.
The wee man had wakened again but was just lying looking up at the ceiling,
all sweaty and red. Alright son, he asked him, and the wee man just stared
on as if he was looking at something right through the roof, still dreaming
about something maybe. Bill fetched through some more crisps and a glass
of milk for Billy, but the boy just ate the crisps and got back to watching
the telly. It was a drama about vets, so he let him watch that, and went
back to the paper.
He found the page he'd been reading
earlier. That was it--old Elton was fifty, so he'd had a big party somewhere
and invited all and sundry who were pop stars or not, and it cost thirty
grand. He stopped and read it again. No, it wasn't thirty grand, it was
thirty grand for the cunt's outfit. No. He read it again. The fuck had
hired some hotel or other, and that cost him a hundred grand what with
the spread and all that and then the costume had cost twenty-something
grand to make, and then there was the cost of getting him to the place
because the whole outfit was so big, like a Marie Antoinette sort of get-up,
that he couldn't go in a car but it had to be a fucking removals van, and
he had the van all decked out with candelabra and all these hanger-on lads
dressed as angels and whatever and the whole thing altogether cost more
than three hundred grand. Three hundred thousand quid. He closed the paper
and went back to watching the box.
The liqueur stuff was nice. Very
very sweet, but nice with a bit of lemonade in it. Billy took some lemonade.
The glass of milk was still lying there, so Bill took that through and
stuck it in the fridge. Waste-not-want-not Sharon always said. So that
was alright.
After eight the wee one was overdue
again, and even though she hadn't really stirred, Bill woke her up and
gave her another bottle. Billy had fallen asleep on the sofa so Bill draped
the sofa cover over him and tucked it under his neck in case he caught
some of that draft from the door.
Louise would probably be needing
another change but he left her. He was feeling a bit knacked now, and didn't
really fancy fucking about with basins of water and all that. Besides,
Sharon would be home soon, so they could do it together then. She might
want a charge of this stuff. There was enough left for a couple each.
But she didn't come back. It was
half-nine, then it was ten. There was a film on. He'd started watching
it but wasn't really following what was happening. Black and white, war-time
stuff, lovers separated, all that shite. There was some good stuff with
fighter planes and beach-scenes, sort of Dunkirk stuff, but then it got
bogged down in some mad plot so he flicked about and it was this one on
about politics, and there was the news, and such another one was on about
fucking stock prices and shite so eventually he put it back to the film
and turned it right down and put a music tape on. It was songs that his
Dad used to sing when he got pissed, all sort of maudlin and supposedly
stirring and that, and he didn't even really know the words but he stuck
it on anyway and hummed along.
He cracked open the last can. It
was almost eleven. She must've gone out with her mates or something. So
fuck her anyway. Billy woke and started geting hyper, crying about Mum
and wanting something again, and it was what-do-you-want but no answer,
only crying, and the crying eventually woke up Louise and when he pulled
back the cover to take her up he got a waft of shite and knew he couldn't
get away with leaving her any longer, and there was Billy about his knees
pulling and crying to get up, and he half kicked him away so he could get
through the door to the kitchen to get her bottle. If he fed her first,
that would quieten her, then he could change her again.
He got back into the room and settled
down. Billy had eaten the piece-and-stork he'd made him, and was starting
again with trying to get up between him and Louise, so he told him to get
down between his legs and watch telly 'til he'd fed Louise, and he did
for a few minutes, sort of sobbing and whining and rubbing his eyes and
Bill tried to feed Louise, but she wouldn't take the bottle, jerking away
like she was getting wind or something and kept up this mad crying, like
really painful, and he put her over his shoulder just like Sharon would,
and patted her back and patted her arse and waved her to and fro and the
more he did it the more he felt kind of sick in himself like it would be
him to belch first or maybe even throw-up, then Billy was between his legs
again and pulling at his arms and giving it scream, bawl, about Mum and
where's Mum, and Bill shouted to him to shut-up, and then to fuck-up, but
the lad kept going, giving it full-tilt 'til he was that way that he was
crying so hard that he wasn't making any noise at all and his face was
just this big red blot of pure misery and pain, so Bill shouted to him
again to shut-the-fuck-up but he just screamed even louder, eyes screwed
shut and tears and snot everywhere, and Louise shook her wee head away
from the bottle and let out a roar and it was Billy's fault for upsetting
her so Bill shouted again for Billy to SHUT-THE-FUCK-UP and as he did he
banged his knees together on either side of the boy's head and he dropped
right away onto the carpet.
Bill tried to get Louise to take
more of the bottle, but then she screamed again and shook her face away
from the bottle and then he remembered that he hadn't checked the milk
so he shook some onto his wrist like Sharon always did and he got a shock
at how hot it was. He grabbed her up and through to the bedroom, put her
in her cot and went back to see Billy. The lad was face down on the carpet.
Bill picked him up, turned him to face him, but the lad was out. It was
time for bed anyway.
Bill put the wee man in the centre
of the double bed, then pulled the covers up to his chin. He remembered
that night again, the kicks coming in, the flash of lightning.
He went to the bog and honked up
until there was nothing left. When he got back into the room, the wee man
was exactly where he'd left him, eyelids twitching, slabbers making a damp
patch on the pillow. Bill sat on the edge of the bed, leaned over, and
palmed his hand across his son's head. Something shifted beneath the lad's
scalp, a slight movement of bone, a ridge where it should be flat.
She would be home soon.
back
to top
___________________________________________________________
Class-ifying
contemporary cinema
Tom Jennings
Even in the 'digital age' of advancing
video and computer markets, the scale and hype of Hollywood, its spin-offs
and the rest of the cinema industry lead films to dominate many peoples'
relationships with commercial popular culture. They tend to be the organising
centre for the private consumption of TV's visual wallpaper, while multiple
screens proliferate to cater for that special public submission to overwhelming
sounds and images. This strength of impact allows elements of film narratives,
styles and characters to become markers of experience and identity, so
that cinema is as thoroughly woven into social and cultural life as, say,
sport or music.
However, public discourse on cinema
has been surprisingly limited: film-as-art theory and philosophy, gee-whizz
journalism, technical studies, family viewing advice; all entailing a fair
degree of snobbery of one kind or another. But writing about films is now
catching up with the sophistication and diversity of the commodities it
addresses1, largely thanks to cultural and
media studies shifting the terms of debate on 'mass culture.' The sheer
complexity of responses to films, and thus the general significance of
cinema for modern cultures, can now be questioned along with the wider
social, economic and political dynamics of culture.
Established rhetorics of art, morality
and taste still have useful mileage for a range of interests: many films
are produced and marketed in terms of them being the 'cutting edge' of
experimental cinema as an art form. Claims made for their value relate
more to avant garde form and risky content, rather than any 'uplifting'
qualities; indeed, their controversial nature and success are more likely
to be attributed to regressive and reactionary tendencies, both of the
film maker and the audience. So-called independent or art-house films follow
commercial pressures just as much as the mainstream, but not necessarily
with the same budgets or agendas of Hollywood (that is, multinational)
companies. The films exploit niche marketing by targeting diverse audiences--combining
styles, genres and narrative structures in one product2.
This also makes them 'postmodern' so they tend to have cachet as art. And
as the major companies begin to exploit the profit potential of each new
wave of film makers, the names of the directors (as stars/auteurs) become
the promotional focus--rather than films being vehicles for their celebrity
actors or their titles functioning as commodities.
Hysterical images
One effect of the breaking down
of conventional categories of genre and narrative is that films may be
relatively open-ended, confusing to viewers, or even downright unintelligible.
Other films and media images are referred to as much as real situations,
using pastiche and parody, while nostalgic images and styles bring versions
of the past firmly into the present. Horrific, sublime, unpresentable aspects
of human experience are not funnelled off in embarrassment into specialised
genres such as horror or pornography. Instead they are brought into the
centre of mundane existence. Significantly, these 'postmodern' films usually
strongly privilege white male middle class perspectives and choices--and
the film literature generally mirrors this tendency, especially ignoring
what non-middle class viewers might make of them. However, the frightening,
exotic or disgusting contexts that middle class protagonists struggle in
and out of are usually represented by poor and dangerous Black and/or working
class communities and characters.
So the 'slumming' in Something Wild,
After Hours, Blue Velvet, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid etc., contrasts with
earlier generations where magic and horror are located in the wealth and
decadence of upper class life (of course, many films continue this tradition).
Respectable lifestyles are portrayed as not only boring and sterile, but
totally insecure--hardly the morale-boosting stuff of aspiration and meritocracy
peddled elsewhere by education and the media. Slumming in the yuppie nightmare
is a cautionary tale--titillation, then reassurance for middle class viewers.
Waking from the bad dream, having sampled the terrifying but sublime environment
of the gutter (a commodity on offer in the supermarket of life), audiences
feel refreshed for the rigours of their professional lives. But how will
the inhabitants of the gutter (that is, poor, Black, and/or working class
viewers) respond to their portrayals? The film literature seems to find
it very difficult to pay attention to such questions.
But just as interpreting films need
not focus on questions of artistic, intellectual or political merit, neither
is there any inevitable identification with middle class characters and
dilemmas. Ordinary viewers will select some elements of the films, and
will enlarge on these in the imagination and in discussion. They can experiment,
identifying with different characters, positions and possibilities within
the narrative--and can switch among them during viewing and afterwards.
With their open-ended plots and bizarre characters, the new films in particular
are likely to stimulate very varied and complex feelings and thoughts,
in wider audiences, as they achieve higher box office returns and wider
cinema, video and TV distribution.
The yuppie nightmare soon retreated
into the more smug subgenre of 'x from hell', where 'x' may be a neighbour,
flatmate, employee, etc.--showing the further social alienation and paranoia
of recent generations of successful middle class consumers. Meanwhile the
mixed genre characteristics of the yuppie dilemma are used in films which
purport to apply more to waking life than to nightmares or romantic dreams,
such as in Cape Fear, Candyman, Deep Cover, Kalifornia, White Palace and
Pretty Woman. Alternatively, the slumming may be performed by the audience
carried along by the narrative in sampling unhappier lives or by parachuting
obviously middle class characters into lower class narratives (such as
in City of Hope, Short Cuts, Shopping and Lone Star).
The 1990s mixed genre films continue
to go further in blending fantasy and narrative layering. Quentin Tarantino's
Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction use the crudest of genre stories and characters,
stitched together with inventive camera direction, editing and plot devices.
The films twist and turn according to the minutiae of real human personality,
random accidents, banality and psychopathology of daily life, recalcitrant
complexity of the world and over-determination of events. A remarkable
kind of emotional and situational realism ensues, in the midst of elaborate
homages to just about the most unrealistic cinema styles imaginable. Tarantino's
scripts are compelling enough for their power to persist even through Tony
Scott's sentimentalism (True Romance), or Oliver Stone's moralising individualism
(Natural Born Killers)3. In general, even
though big budget mainstream films now routinely use the virtuoso camerawork,
editing techniques and narrative complexity learned from independent film
makers, their stories and characters are often even weaker and narrower
than before. As in the cases of cult and exploitation genres, new film
methods are mainly enlisted by Hollywood merely as a gloss on the superficiality
of conventional genres, and in the process the most interesting and powerful
aspects of the source material are lost4.
Except, perhaps, when the success of independent directors propels them
into the big budget arena--as in Tarantino's meteoric rise, or more modestly
in the case of David Lynch.
A body of films
David Lynch has been exemplary in
experimenting with style and genre. He is uncompromising in locating extremes
of sexuality, violence, fear and pleasure within ordinary life; transgresses
boundaries of taste and moral and political acceptability; and keeps to
his own trajectory despite fluctuations in popularity with both audiences
and the industry. He depicts Middle America as full of emotional excess,
signposted by his characters' weirdness, where scratching the surface reveals
rich and hysterical depths. The films can be read as critiques of bourgeois
social arrangements and morals, which suppress, fear and may be undone
by the effects of passion and fantasy on bodies and behaviour, relationships
and institutions.
Lynch's early films are notable
for bizarre, lurid, nightmare visions of grotesque bodily excrescence,
infantile emotion, dreams and a powerful sense of nostalgia for past eras
and lost innocence. These subjects are not treated by romanticising them:
typical moods are depression, rage and ambivalent desire. In the short
film The Grandmother (1970), and in Eraserhead (1976), these effects are
achieved against backdrops of industrial, urban and domestic blight, but
without relying on traditional surrealist or horror genre conventions.
Critics were thus left with no easy way of dismissing the films, except
for their weirdness--and this mute response no doubt helped Eraserhead become
a cult classic for horror audiences. Something similar might have happened
with Elephant Man (1980), if it hadn't been for the prop of a 'true' story
funded by the mainstream industry with corresponding budget and hype.
Dune (1984) failed even as cult,
partly because the source material (Frank Herbert's sci-fi epic) was too
vast. But Lynch continued to harness the body's vulnerability, power and
monstrosity--bypassing thought and language--to illuminate and complicate
personal dilemmas and their social contexts. From Dune onwards Lynch's
films deal explicitly with recognisable coming-of-age and family dramas.
Such developments possibly say as much about what was needed to consolidate
his move into the mainstream, as opposed to the director's 'artistic' ambition--for
example when market imperatives insist on appealing to younger audiences.5
Blue Velvet (1986) was a turning
point, set in an identifiable postwar America, and not the timeless, fantastic
worlds of its forerunners. In all Lynch films the implacable, menacing
presence of the flesh, raw nature, and their excesses of degradation and
ecstasy, are central motifs. In Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks (1989-1990) Wild
At Heart (1990), and Twin Peaks, Fire Walk With Me (1992), the fascination
of these images and experiences is thoroughly woven into depictions of
'real life'. It becomes difficult to distinguish fantasy from reality;
to identify boundaries between them; or even to know whether or not any
such boundaries exist at all--as in Lost Highway (1997).
Blue ambivalence
The avalanche of criticism and analysis
following Blue Velvet's release was as contradictory as the film itself6.
Mainstream critics pigeonholed the narrative as small town or rites of
passage drama, film noir, psychological thriller, soft porn cult, nostalgia
film, gothic comedy or surrealism, or even as a religious parable of sin
and redemption. Cultural analysts tended to feel that blending styles and
images from several periods was superficial--everything being made equally
bizarre, as well as appearing normal, without sufficient context to make
it socially or politically meaningful. The 'unspeakably' fascinating images
and behaviour--dirt, nature, flesh, violence and perversion--were interpreted
as distractions, depicting evil in a way that evokes distaste rather than
horror. Worse still, in linking sexual desire with violence and voyeurism,
the psychological logic was said to leave the characters no better options.
But the use of songs, names, nicknames, media and advertising fragments,
plus images of the cruelty of nature, resonate strongly with all sorts
of unexpected significance. Bypassing rationality, such sounds and images
have more power to focus the hidden desires of the protagonists. They explode
into the viewer's awareness, in extremes of colour and lingering close
up, with an impact that can't easily be grasped by analysing the narrative.
For both characters and viewers, events in the film resemble dreams--where
apparently random elements condense, combine and multiply, uneasily reconstructed
in memory or description.
Critics and academics were frustrated
in their need to impose authoritative readings, in the absence of a congenial
'message'. So, every single review and analysis assumed that the final
scene represented Jeffrey's return to normal real life. But it could just
as easily be another twist in the nightmare. By crudely embedding Jeffrey's
dream or fantasy in a small town mystery, Lynch fulfils his ambition to
reveal strange desires lying beneath a respectable veneer. Yes, the film
does threaten safe middle class life. It depicts perverse inadequacy, the
fear, hatred, idealisation and stereotyping of women and the dangerous
potential of the criminal lower classes to invade and ruin the pleasant
security of the American Dream. These feelings aren't conveniently attributed
to an 'other'. They are hidden under the nice, clean-cut exterior of a
young man ready to take his place of power in the middle class scheme of
things, grounded in the trivia of romantic consumerism. Viewers who aren't
middle class may not make Lynch's and the critics' mistake, seeing Jeffrey
as representative of 'Everyman'. Instead we might glimpse and understand
a little more clearly the attitudes of those with power over us--attitudes
which may be multi-layered and complex, but which are also very concrete
in shaping the conduct of those in the professions, commerce, education
and the media.
The American nightmare
Wild At Heart is a family drama,
road movie and love story. Lynch transforms Barry Gifford's novel, focusing
again on the body's ecstasy, agony and violation, and the visual impact
of fire, sex and death. Sailor (Nicholas Cage) and Lula (Laura Dern) avoid
awareness of their excesses by weaving all experience into fairytale yearning
via images and narratives from rock and roll. Sex is their drug and their
anaesthetic, and as they lurch between catastrophes the past always catches
up with them. The past and the present are more complicated than in Blue
Velvet, however. The lovers seek freedom from Lula's well-off mother (Dianne
Ladd) whose status derives from gangsterism--in many ways more representative
of American economic history than shop owners.
The underclass hell looms, and the
concerns and illusions of Sailor, Lula, their family and community, collide
with and mirror the cruel animal passions of its denizens--personified by
Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe). They are distinguishable from the main protagonists
by the latters' race, suburban accoutrements and aspirations for themselves
and their children. So, the fate of a rich teenager affects the lovers
far more deeply than their own predicament, as she frets about her handbag
and her parents' anger while bleeding to death after a car crash. The film
can be read as reflecting the fantasies and fears of the new middle classes.
They escaped from the ghetto, but expressing dangerous passion could return
them there. To be safe, romance must stay within the class and race limits
staked out in geography and psychology, by conventional American social
structures.7
Twin Peaks is a bizarre murder mystery
and comic soap opera, attracting huge TV audiences. Lynch parodies the
soaps, giving the characters absurd idiosyncrasies and relationships, although
sticking to emotional realism in the family and neighbourhood dramas depicted.
But everything hin |