The Quarterly Review

Spielberg’s Hergé hommage

Stephen Spielberg’s recently released Tintin film has received generally favourable, if hardly effusive, reactions from critics. As a lifelong Hergé-ophile who does not generally enjoy Spielberg’s output, I expected to find it woefully inferior to the originals. But I saw it last night in 3D and was very pleasantly surprised.

Nothing could ever quite match up to the superlative original cartoons, with the combination of innovative technique, witty storylines and period charm, but Spielberg (who, let it be remembered, became Hergé’s ideal director after Hergé had seen the first Indiana Jones film) spared no expense or effort, and this is apparent right from the hypnotically beautiful opening animation sequence, with its shadowy fistfights, falls, leaps, crashes and explosions accompanied by a Sixties-reminiscent soundtrack.

Previous attempts to bring the Belgian boy-journalist to the big screen as a live action hero were not entirely successful – although Jean-Pierre Talbot is very watchable in 1961’s Golden Fleece and 1964’s Blue Oranges. Spielberg wanted to treat Tintin more respectfully, especially as he was using real Hergé stories (1943’s The Secret of the Unicorn and 1944’s Red Rackham’s Treasure) so he opted for movement capture animation using well known actors. Billy Elliott star Jamie Bell is the boy reporter, Lord of the Rings actor Andy Serkis plays Captain Haddock, Daniel Craig is the baddie Sakharine and the comic actor Simon Pegg is Thomson (or was it Thompson with a P?)

The result is generally very effective, and the backgrounds are startlingly detailed and so richly coloured that one could almost step into them – especially the Belgian street scenes, where you can distinguish individual cobbles and subtle changes in stucco tone from building to building, and the harbours where old-fashioned ships lie alongside lamplit quay walls below cranes running along rusty rails, and one can almost taste the tang of old fish, diesel and rust, and hear the cold slap and suck of the dirty dock water between the towering metal sides of the ships and the seaweed-slimy stone of the quay. The big set pieces are wholly spectacular, especially the frenetic chase after the parchments in the fictional Moroccan port of Bagghar which – although the incident does not happen in the two original books – is full of convincing Tintinesque colour and incident.

The characters are all more or less who and what they should be – Captain Haddock is rum-sodden and rumbustious, diminished descendant of a greater ancestor (Spielberg makes rather too much of Haddock’s feelings of inadequacy), Thomson and Thompson are as officious as they are incompetent, Snowy is loyal and as resourceful and attentive as one could reasonably expect from a fox-terrier. I would have liked more from the brilliant Bianca Castafiore (although strictly speaking she doesn’t belong in these stories at all) and was sorry not to see Cuthbert Calculus, who of course Tintin first encounters in Red Rackham’s Treasure. On the other hand, I would like to have seen less of Ivanovitch Sakharine, who in the film is turned from inoffensive antiquarian into a ruthless criminal and lineal descendant of the 17^th century pirate Red Rackham, spoiling to revenge his ancestor’s defeat at the hands of Haddock’s ancestor.

As for Tintin – well, he is Tintin, brave, loyal, chivalrous, intelligent but without any apparent personality, family background, more moral exemplar than a living, breathing person. Even his age is unclear, although he is clearly of tender years – which begs the question how he has found the time to learn how to use radio-telegraphy, fire weapons, steer ships, speak numerous languages, become a police confidant, own a luxurious apartment and innumerable other accomplishments. (Spielberg departs acceptably and humorously from the original by having our red-tufted hero frantically leafing through a ‘how to fly’ manual when he and Haddock end up in a small plane.) And where does his money come from?

But that is the way he has always been, and it would have been a solecism to have invented something about his persona in an attempt to make him more appealing to an audience not necessarily familiar with the books – just as it would have been a solecism to have given him, say, a love interest. In the film, as in the originals, he remains a cipher, a sort of guardian or abstract avenging angel, an unspotted soul with his trousers tucked into his impeccable socks as if distancing himself from all contamination or compromise. He is a righter more than he is a writer, and that is all that is needed. We do not read (or watch) Tintin to learn about the possibilities of human psychology, but simply to laugh, and revel in a lost time and texture. Spielberg’s Hergé hommage is a good introduction to everyone’s favourite Belgian for those who have not yet been privileged to know him, and a worthy tribute that will be enjoyed by those who have already lived with him a long time.

Derek Turner, 31 October 2011

The housing crisis – accommodating guilt

As Western countries struggle with the consequences of decades of political and economic irresponsibility, guilt has become a major emotive force in endeavouring to persuade citizens of those countries that what they need is even more of the same failed policies.

Governments of left and right alike have mortgaged their countries’ futures through the creation and encouragement of never-affordable welfare states, economic hollowing-out, mass migration and utopian internationalism. Now, rather than looking at these problems honestly or fully – which would entail some acknowledgement of their errors – these same politicians, aided by opinion-formers and NGOs, strive to browbeat their taxpaying populations into dipping even deeper into ever emptier pockets to shore up these failed projects.

These endless exhortations (which could almost be considered extortions) are made in the magical names of compassion, fairness, social justice and equality – concepts that ring resonantly in the hearts of kindly people whose civilization has been shaped by Christian principles of altruism and chiliasm. Westerners appear to be uniquely susceptible to the conceit that there can be a perfect globe with all sorrows and sins washed away, and some Westerners, especially those from non-conformist traditions, appear to actually enjoy feeling guilty, and respond almost gratefully to accusations of moral malfeasance.

Wild and unjust allegations of institutional injustices – sexism, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, disabilism, economic exploitation – are constantly made by a small minority of perpetually horrified activists, and as constantly accepted by millions of people who have neither the time nor the inclination to look behind the empty slogans at the complex reality. The results are permanent pathologies, ongoing implosion, ever-worsening quality of life, ever heavier taxation and ever higher levels of priggishness and hyperbole.

The latest means of eliciting angst in the British breast concerns the supposed selfishness of people who live in houses that are larger than they strictly need. In a report called Hoarding of Housing, a new group called the Intergenerational Foundation (IF) says that there are 25 million unused bedrooms in England that ought to be used to accommodate families. Many of these bedrooms are in houses owned by over-65s, and IF advocates financial incentives (such as exemption from stamp duty) to encourage these old-timers to move to smaller properties, so young families can move into the houses they vacate.

“It is perfectly understandable that retired people cling to their home long after it has outlived its usefulness as a place to bring up a family in”

said one of the report’s co-authors, before adding piously

“But there are profound social consequences of their actions.”

IF also advocates replacing council tax with

“…a proper land tax, to reflect the social cost of occupying housing, particularly housing that is larger than one’s needs.”

The first thing to acknowledge is that there is a real problem with shortage of housing, and this is one of the main pressures driving the government’s unpopular National Policy Planning Framework, which aims to facilitate housebuilding (although the government has already pledged 370,000 new houses). It has become virtually impossible in some areas for young people to buy their own homes, or even sometimes to rent properties – and something does need to be done. But IF’s conclusions are distinctly iffy, and their suggestions miss several vital points.

The first is that a home is not just bricks and mortar but also an emotional repository, reflecting the personalities and containing the memories of the people who live there – and who have usually worked very hard to live in a particular place in a particular way. The “empty bedrooms” so coveted by the rational redistributors are not empty at all to those who watched their children grow up in those rooms. The rooms may have “outlived their usefulness” in a physical sense, but they still have plenty of emotional usefulness – and emotional capital is as vital to a society as economic capital. Buying and selling houses are as much matters of the heart as of the head, and it is both unreasonable and unfair to try and pressurize people who are happy where they are into moving, to answer some nebulous ‘need’ or ‘duty’ (a ‘duty’, let us remember, to address a problem they didn’t cause). The Minister for Housing has said that he is opposed to people being “bullied” out of their houses – and so he should be, because property owning and lengthy occupancy are beneficial and intrinsically conservative social forces. This is especially true in England, where the word “home” has a talismanic force it does not quite possess elsewhere.

The next point overlooked by IF’s ideologues (and virtually everybody else) is that the housing shortage is largely caused by overpopulation – and that is largely caused by immigration. If the government were to slow immigration from other or via EU countries, as it has started to slow other kinds of immigration, this problem (and many other problems) would ease virtually overnight. Such a move would be in contravention of European treaties, but it could be done subtly and politely, and after all other EU countries often put their own interests first when it suits them. Besides, at present the Euro-obsessed EU is in no position to take a firm stand on anything, least of all from a major economic player like the UK.

Something has got to give so this genuine crisis can be solved – and why should it be the hardworking householder rather than the politicians who caused the problems in the first place? People should be permitted to enjoy the fruits of their lifetime’s labours without being penalized for government failures, or being corroded by the acid of angst because they own a couple of rooms more than they can occupy at any one time. IF ought to go back to the drafting stage – and try to keep their heads when all around are losing theirs.

Derek Turner, 19 October 2011

The Lost Samurai

The London School of Economics has published the findings of its internal review into Satoshi Kanazawa’s provocative Psychology Today blog posting “Why are black women less physically attractive than other women?” Accompanying the account of this review, prominently placed on the LSE website is Dr Kanazawa’s recantation cum letter of apology to the interim Director, Professor Judith Rees. But don’t blame Kanazawa for the cringe-making contents of this missive, reminiscent of a confession in a Soviet show trial. It was reportedly written for him!

The outcome of this affair is highly unsatisfactory, both for Dr Kanazawa himself and for all those concerned about academic freedom. He has kept his job but he has been publicly humiliated and his “methodology” found wanting by a star chamber of three senior “colleagues”. He cannot publish anything for a year in any non-peer reviewed outlets. Nor can he teach any compulsory classes during this current academic year. He now has an excellent career behind him and the school will doubtless dispense with his services at the earliest opportunity. The University of Ouagadougou awaits him, where at least he can field test his theory.

Academic freedom has taken yet another hit- indeed part of the underlying purpose of this internal “inquiry” (worthy of Andrei Zhdanov) was to “décourager les autres” from considering race differences. Worse still, a vociferous clique of self-righteous students has been able to dictate just what they are taught and by whom. An unfortunate precedent has thereby been set that being “offended” constitutes grounds for challenging controversial research or speculation. Radical Islamists and exponents of other flat earth ideologies will doubtless take note.

Just what is a university for? Those who run the LSE (my alma mater) evidently have no idea, judging from the shameful outcome of this episode. Dr Kanazawa, one of the most stimulating and inventive members of its academic staff, has been muzzled. But meanwhile the mediocrities that lionized Saif Gaddafi and endorsed his plagiarised doctoral thesis remain unpunished, despite the immense damage they have done to the LSE’s reputation.

Leslie Jones. 13 October 2011

“Thinking nice”

This little news item from the BBC may help to explain not just why people often ignore warnings about their health or the likelihood of their getting divorced, but also the persistence of other kinds of improvidence – like borrowing money they can’t afford to pay back. It might even go some way to explain the perennial appeal of demonstrably flawed – sometimes even disastrous – religious and political ideologies. Socialism, communism, egalitarianism and multiculturalism all emphasize positivism over practicality; perhaps those of us who argue the other way round are battling with something tangled deeply in the cerebral cortex.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15214080

Derek Turner, 10 October 2011

William (Brown) the conqueror

My latest article, this one on Richmal Crompton’s legendary Just William stories

http://www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine/william-brown-the-conqueror/

Derek Turner, 7 October 2011

Tony’s tangled affairs

In Dispatches, The Wonderful World of Tony Blair (Channel 4, 26 September) muckraking journalist Peter Oborne addressed the contentious issue of the former Prime Minister’s recent business dealings. Readers may recall that in an earlier programme, he (Oborne) described the influence of a powerful pro-Israeli lobby in this country. Some commentators, including Oborne, have suggested that Blair was in thrall to Zionist elements, emphasising in particular his close relationship with Michael Levy (“Lord Cashpoint”). Certain analysts even detect here the real origins of the Iraq War, which removed one of Israel’s enemies in the region. Blair’s subsequent rapprochement with Libya neutralised another and he recently emphasised the need to deal with a third, Iran, by all means necessary. Note also that if Blair had genuinely believed that Saddam Hussein possessed W.M.D., would he have risked invading Iraq? The logic of the theory of deterrence suggests that he would not.

The gravamen of Oborne’s indictment of Blair is of using his admittedly unpaid position as Envoy of the Quartet in the Middle East as a means to win lucrative contracts for his international consultancy, Tony Blair Associates. Several of these contracts are with autocratic regimes in the region. Oborne perceives here both hypocrisy and a blatant conflict of interests. He reminds us that as opposition leader and then Prime Minister, Blair endorsed and strengthened the Nolan Rules which are incumbent on all holders of public office but are not applicable to the Quartet’s Envoy.

According to Oborne, Blair has also signally failed to defend the interests of the Palestinians. Indeed, he suspects that his much vaunted diplomatic mission is a cynical sham. The Great Powers (notably America) can thereby claim to be doing something to resolve this contentious issue. Meanwhile, Israel continues to build illegal settlements with impunity, her colonists attack Palestinian farmers and the Palestinian business community is held back by a welter of vexatious restrictions. And indicatively, for all his rhetorical support for an equitable two state solution, Blair remains popular both in Israel and in the United States.

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (who some people consider an unrepentant war criminal) has finally become rich, thanks mainly to his contacts in the Middle East and services rendered during the Iraq War. The details of his financial dealings remain secret but he reportedly owns seven homes plus salubrious offices in Mayfair. When he visits Jerusalem he hires a whole floor in what is reputedly the best hotel. But just how did Blair become leader of the Labour Party in the first place? To whom was he beholden? Perhaps these intriguing questions should be the subject of a further enquiry by the intrepid Mr Oborne.

Leslie Jones, 29 September 2011

In defence of David Starkey

A round robin recently published in Times Higher Education demanded that the BBC and other broadcasters refrain from inviting David Starkey to comment on current affairs or at the very least stop introducing him as a historian (1).The signatories, mainly historians, included a significant proportion of post-graduate students, doubtless “encouraged” to participate by their tutors. The letter engendered a reassuringly robust response.

The plain fact is that Starkey is a historian so that the signatories, as Michael Bully contended –

“…are splitting hairs in making it their main point that Starkey was introduced as a ‘historian’”.

Nobody complains when historian Simon Schama pontificates about subjects outside his field. Once again, as in the Kanazawa Affair, it is the commentator’s (allegedly) reactionary views on race that the signatories really object to. Or as “Dropta Pollock” pithily put it,

“How dare the BBC allow a non-Frankfurt scholar to voice his views on Ministry of Truth t.v.”

“Anon” argued that the authors of the letter have “a very clear political agenda”, that they seek to “bully others into not addressing issues frankly and openly”, in particular the contentious issue of a possible racial component to the recent riots. Edward Christie also underlined the “deep political bias” of the aforementioned letter. He maintained that a left-wing economist making a “poorly-argued plea for social justice” would be unlikely to generate a similar missive signed by “a hundred right-wing academics from economics departments…”

What Starkey actually said was that elements of the white underclass, including those involved in the riots, have adopted some of the most negative aspects of black culture. Notwithstanding the attempts by his fellow panellists on Newsnight to distort his argument, he unequivocally rejected the idea that the riots were attributable to race per se. “Max”, for one, endorsed Starkey’s analysis here. He pointed out that

“This phenomena (sic.) of whites adopting black culture… appeared in the United States first”.

He challenged anyone to watch Jerry Springer and not admit that

“the low class trailer park types who are white [the equivalent of our “chavs”] have now adopted the speech and even body language of Americans of similar class”.

He endorsed Starkey’s supposedly inflammatory observations.

Many of the responses to the historian’s letter, as “Whiters” noted, were far more in touch with reality than the comments in the letter itself. Perhaps Professor Starkey’s persecutors need to visit the real world sometimes.

Leslie Jones, 6 September 2011

NOTES

1. See “Starkey’s ignorance is hardly work of history”, THE, 4th September 2011 and readers’ comments

The mendacious mania for mediocrity

Today appeared a story that was both very funny in its flouting of PC pieties and slightly sad, because it reminds us how much we live by what Solzenhitsyn famously called “The Lie”.

The Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospital website carried an ad for a trainee anaesthetist. Presumably because of an oversight, the ad text finished by saying

“Usual rubbish about equal opportunities employer etc”.

The ad was immediately amended after the usual panicky and slightly pathetic response from some nameless form-filler –

“The wording on this advert in no way reflects the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust’s position in relation to equal opportunities, to which it is fully committed. The trust is conscious of its duty to promote equality and is a Stonewall Diversity Champion employer. The trust will be conducting an investigation into this incident to ensure that this cannot happen again.”

The graphic designer who (presumably) forgot to overtype the filler text will no doubt be given a severe bullying, and it is not impossible that he might even lose his job.

His slip and the reflexive reaction reveal the cynicism and deceit that lie behind the rhetoric of equality that everyone pretends to believe in, but no-one puts into practice.

Equality before the law for all citizens of a country is desirable and possibly achievable, but beyond that strictly limited meaning of the term, equality is a term of limited usefulness.

The most cursory examination of world history shows up a truth that was once so obvious it never needed to be stated, but which has somehow become unspeakable – equality has never existed in any culture or at any time in history, and it never will. This is because people are intrinsically and irredeemably unequal by nature and by choice. And even if through some awful anti-magic people could be all equalized downwards, what person of sense would want to live in such a dull, drab and depressing world?

This mendacious mania for mediocrity is the foolish, frightened superstition which is replacing the old philosophy everywhere.

Derek Turner, 5 September 2011

The Museum of Bad Art

Worth a few momentf anyone’s time – a tour of some of the gems in the Massachussetts-based Museum of Bad Art:

http://www.museumofbadart.org/

Any antique shop can furnish similar examples. But how close some of the MOBA exhibits are to works that change hands for millions!

Derek Turner, 5 September 2011