Our new reviews editor begins a regular column In defence of trash ur brave and rest- lessly energetic “Seafarer” invites us on page 21), to disagree with Bryan Appleyard’s hopelessly arrogant proposition that masterpieces are “absolute”. Funnily enough, at about the same time that “Seafarer” was tapping out this invite, three other men were pondering the nature of “high culture” and whether or not it can be given any kind of objective content.
On Radio 4, Melvyn Bragg, Will Self and Roger Scruton took their cue from Scruton’s new book, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Culture, to explore “the ragged fault line between high and popular culture” (as Self put it). Scruton, as one might imagine, argued the case for a clear, clean and objectively-defineable boundary - staked out by the work of certain DWEMS (Dead White European Males) who collectively constitute “modern culture”. The rest is (apparently) so much trash that has nothing of import to say to anybody. Even before the end of the programme, however, Self and Bragg had got Scruton to admit that he knows virtually nothing about film or TV, even less about contemporary music - and thinks that “science” has got nothing to do with culture which is why he didn’t mention it much in his book.
Nothing partial there then.
Funnily enough again, as I write thousands are flocking to the Royal Academy to the Monet exhibition. This may well, they say, be the most popular art exhibition ever. If art is that popular, does it become “popular culture” rather than “high culture”? I don’t suppose Monet was ever really “high culture” anyway, given that he’s already made it into Travelodges and Little Chefs - but if he was, does this new popularity bring him low? Let’s put our hands on our classless, meritocratic hearts and say these judgments have everything to do with quality, and nothing to do with politics and snobbery. As if @ Ginge: she will return Old Spice So - let’s hear it for “relativisitic nonsense”; “local products of specific cultures” (see “Seafarer”) and - above all.- TRASH. I'm all for all of them. Like Eilidh Whiteford (see page 12), I get exasperated with certain “silly old men...who have pondered profound questions, who have known so much, yet understood so little”, which is why I turn instead, in my philosophical reflections, to...
Parky. Or rather his recent guests Geri Haliwell (aka, until recently, Ginger Spice.
But “Ginger will return”, we are promised), Carol Vorderman and Dawn French. Their hilarious, and at times poignant, discussions centred on various aspects of identity and its negotiation: “poor” (2 out of 3); “fat” (guess who?), “brainy” (guess who?) and “famously famous” (guess who, again).
They (with a bit of help from Parky himself) performed fabulously to grant us insights into the “meaning making” of three very different women @ ‘Religion-as-performance’ | be drawn, very much against my will you understand, to another item of late night TV recently - a Beeb 2 play called The Tribe. The chief attraction was, it has to be said, aesthetic, for the star was Anna Friel | ‘ (formerly Beth on Brookside), often with Tribester Friel no clothes on. But the plot was a treat too.
The storyline? A dozen or so beautiful young people living communally (and, to the outside world, like a religious cult) come face-to-face with an ambitious property developer who’s seeking to buy their home so he can gentrify the run-down part of South London where they live.
He is by turns repulsed, intrigued and, finally, passionately attracted to the group, to his perception of their values, and to their lifestyle. This is a fascinating study of “religion-as-performance” - for the Tribe is held together not by “content of belief’ but by personal relationships (with lots of sex) and a common attraction to its charismatic leader, Emily. Anna Friel’s is the character who says a passionate “yes” to all of this (especially to Emily): a passionate “yes” which becomes an equally passionate “no” for a series of all-too-human reasons. This is a play about falling deliciously in love, then tragically and agonisingly out of love, with big ideas and the people who inescapably embody them @ Performance as reality inally, irr this round-up, there’s Truman.
SoFties who've seen the film The Truman Show will have been delighted by this unlikely vehicle for philosophical reflection on the nature of “what is real”.
For those who don’t know, Truman is (in this rather geeky Forrest Gump-esque “piece of America” movie) the star of a 24-hour soap. He lives Jim Carrey as Truman his whole life within the bounded world of a huge “millennium dome”. This is the largest TV set ever created. Everyone in his life is really an actor. Everyone. Truman knows nothing of this, of course. He thinks his life is “normal”. Nice wife, nice car, boring job. And he’s been in love only once with'a woman who is now lost to him (she was threatening to tell all to Truman, so had to be disposed of by the producers, and now campaigns in the “real world” for Truman’s release from this captivity).
The TV show’s producer is a Foucaultesque “philosopher king”. He and Truman are caught in a Hegelian master-slave narrative of epic proportions. Truman, inevitably, eventually discovers his plight and makes a bid for freedom in a sailing boat. The producer tries to drown him (in a storm at sea - getting the picture?), but pulls back at the last moment, for to do so would be to terminate his own life’s meaning and purpose.
The best dialogue comes at the end: “Truman!” booms the:disembodied producer. “Who are you?”, asks Truman. “I am the creator....of a TV show that provides pleasure and hope to millions”, comes the reply. “Then who am I?” “You...” (producer again), “...are the star.” Trying to persuade Truman not to step through the boundaries of his hitherto known universe, the producer says, “There is nothing more real out there than there is in here”. But of course, there is, there is, there is. And what is it? LOVE. Truman is looking for his true love. He carries with him an image of her face. He has created it himself from fragments of images of other women, cut and torn from magazines: a composite image of his memory of her face.
So the climax of the film is a scene both of fall and liberation. One final speech from his producer/creator is wonderfully redolent of Psalm 139: “But Truman, I know you better than you know yourself. I was with you before you were born. I saw you take your first step. You're safe here.” But all is in vain, for Truman doesn’t want this smother-love. He wants to grow up.
He steps victoriously through a white door and into the “real world”.
And all our TV sets go blank. At least on that channel @ Your letters POSTBAG Send your letters (hard-copy or floppy-disk) to: