Well, a well slightly delayed happy new year year to you all... And the world is still here! However, one of the main characters in a favourite television drama is not. Spoiler alert for those Australians who still haven't seen Downton Abbey! The death of Matthew Crawley thanks to Dan Stevens' desire to leave for pastures new in the US was agonising. And it got me to thinking about the characters a show can lose before we begin to worry about shark-jumping. Game of Thrones recently provided us with a brilliant exemplum for killing a show's much-loved hero while the ratings simply keep climbing; however, some of you might remember the nose-dive Primeval took a long while ago when its hero Nick Cutter left the series. Or again contrast how happy we were when in season two of Babylon Five--yes, I am nerdy enough to remember that far--Sinclair was replaced by Sheridan with the way none of the Doctor's companions since Rose Tyler has quite been the same...
Though of course the case Matthew's death most reminded me of was the final season of Deep Space Nine which was conducted without Jadzia Dax because her portrayer, Terry Farrel wanted to pursue other opportunities. It still annoys me whenever I think about it that Worf and Jadzia were denied their happy ending because of a miniseries I have never seen...
Then again we thought Seachange couldn't go on without Diver Dan... So we'll see.
Portia
Friday, 18 January 2013
Sunday, 23 December 2012
Whose birthday is it anyway?
Well, Christmas is on us again, if we believe it! Every year it seems to start earlier, seem scarier (we just never got when were younger what a mad scramble it is to get all the gifts nor did we know that a fifth of English men buy their presents on Christmas eve in service stations) and to involve less religion. Think about it, could you find a religious advent calendar? Cards with a message mentioning God? A nativity set on sale beside the innumerable Santas?
I do understand that a lot of people celebrate Christmas despite being atheists or Buddhists, or whatever, but it seems to me that the difference between our modern celebration of Christmas and the ancient Roman Saturnalia is becoming increasingly obscured. And do you want my verdict on why this is happening? Yeah, sure you do, it's Christmas, you're rushed off your feet and worrying that the Joneses are going to arrive over from next door any moment now and find that your house (unlike theirs, which has a giant blow-up reindeer on the lawn and a 'jingle-bells' door alarm) looks as though a bomb has hit it--and what you want to think about is spirituality in modern society.
I think that religion is being leached out of Christmas because of the vanilla problem. People are crying out for a spiritual compass in today's hard times but Christianity in particular (though other religious traditions such as Judaism or Buddhism in Japan have the same problem) is just too beige these days. Where once they used to erect large cathedrals filled with some of the best art and music ever composed by mankind, today's Christians worship in white-washed suburban boxes in which they mutter dirge-like hymns. Where's the emotion, excitement and beauty? Well, there's certainly some temporary excitement to be gained in evangelical mega-churches, but we all know that that isn't the same.
Maybe next year we should try to make Jesus as exciting as Santa Claus, if only to make it easier to explain to children whose birthday it is.
Merry Christmas,
Portia
I do understand that a lot of people celebrate Christmas despite being atheists or Buddhists, or whatever, but it seems to me that the difference between our modern celebration of Christmas and the ancient Roman Saturnalia is becoming increasingly obscured. And do you want my verdict on why this is happening? Yeah, sure you do, it's Christmas, you're rushed off your feet and worrying that the Joneses are going to arrive over from next door any moment now and find that your house (unlike theirs, which has a giant blow-up reindeer on the lawn and a 'jingle-bells' door alarm) looks as though a bomb has hit it--and what you want to think about is spirituality in modern society.
I think that religion is being leached out of Christmas because of the vanilla problem. People are crying out for a spiritual compass in today's hard times but Christianity in particular (though other religious traditions such as Judaism or Buddhism in Japan have the same problem) is just too beige these days. Where once they used to erect large cathedrals filled with some of the best art and music ever composed by mankind, today's Christians worship in white-washed suburban boxes in which they mutter dirge-like hymns. Where's the emotion, excitement and beauty? Well, there's certainly some temporary excitement to be gained in evangelical mega-churches, but we all know that that isn't the same.
Maybe next year we should try to make Jesus as exciting as Santa Claus, if only to make it easier to explain to children whose birthday it is.
Merry Christmas,
Portia
Monday, 10 December 2012
Liberalism and Democracy
Today on the news, I saw a guy from the Egyptian National Salvation Front talking about how Morsi should not use his majority to act against "universal human rights" and "democracy". This seemed to me to sum up how little most of us in the twenty-first century understand what democracy is really about. Mostly we confuse "democracy"--decision-making via majority vote--and "liberalism"--a doctrine of respect for the life choices of individuals. In fact, these two concepts, while historically entangled in nineteenth century Europe, are analytically entirely distinct.
So often today we see believers in liberalism--usually urban and educated--agitating for a political system which in actuality allows the mass of the populace who have very different values to choose leaders whose views are totally incompatible with liberalism. There can be a positive relationship between democracy and liberalism--as there was in the nineteenth century in Europe--but there can also be a quite negative relationship--as for example, in many European countries in the twentieth century.
We really do require greater clarity of thought when considering political philosophy, so it's just a great shame that we don't ever seem to teach political philosophy in universities any more...
Portia
So often today we see believers in liberalism--usually urban and educated--agitating for a political system which in actuality allows the mass of the populace who have very different values to choose leaders whose views are totally incompatible with liberalism. There can be a positive relationship between democracy and liberalism--as there was in the nineteenth century in Europe--but there can also be a quite negative relationship--as for example, in many European countries in the twentieth century.
We really do require greater clarity of thought when considering political philosophy, so it's just a great shame that we don't ever seem to teach political philosophy in universities any more...
Portia
Monday, 3 December 2012
TV in a Time of Poverty
In television as in anything else, there are fashions. For example, there seems to be a wave of fantasy shows recently, as there was a wave of soapy medical shows not so long ago. What I think is interesting is American audiences' love in this time of economic scarcity of stories of people living the high life, as in Revenge with its snappily-dressed billionaires or Downton Abbey with its early twentieth century aristocrats. This more than anything else brings home to me that we live in a depression period--remember all those shiny movies from the thirties in which there is lots of singing, dancing and lingering shots of food! It also strikes me that reality shows today are not like reality shows from a little while ago--today people are obsessed with the Cinderella story of talent shows, it's almost like a Jimmy Stewart movie...
Portia
Portia
Sunday, 25 November 2012
The Kevin & Malcolm Show: Q&A Ozland
So, today is the last Q&A of the year for Ozland.
It will probably be a letdown after last week, which gave a convincing demonstration of why one would want to watch shows such as Q&A, and what is missing all too often in dispatches from the commentariat. Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull, Helen Ridout and Judith Sloan are four highly intelligent, well-informed and engaged citizens of planet good sense. The conversation was respectful, insightful and even entertaining. Contrast this with the turgid, ideology-driven, bumper sticker type drivel which all too often passes for social comment.
And isn't it an indictment of the current Australian parliament that two of the smartest people in it are largely on the fringes of their parties. In the case of Malcolm T, he is (as he says) in the shadow cabinet...but it must surely be one of the great stupidities of the ALP that they have relegated Kevin Rudd to the backbench. The nastiness, pettiness and pure childishness of the campaign against Kevin Rudd by his own party is sure to go down as a perfect example of a party engineering its own downfall. And they wonder why the electorate has lost faith in them!
What utter nongs!
Ciao
CatO
It will probably be a letdown after last week, which gave a convincing demonstration of why one would want to watch shows such as Q&A, and what is missing all too often in dispatches from the commentariat. Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull, Helen Ridout and Judith Sloan are four highly intelligent, well-informed and engaged citizens of planet good sense. The conversation was respectful, insightful and even entertaining. Contrast this with the turgid, ideology-driven, bumper sticker type drivel which all too often passes for social comment.
And isn't it an indictment of the current Australian parliament that two of the smartest people in it are largely on the fringes of their parties. In the case of Malcolm T, he is (as he says) in the shadow cabinet...but it must surely be one of the great stupidities of the ALP that they have relegated Kevin Rudd to the backbench. The nastiness, pettiness and pure childishness of the campaign against Kevin Rudd by his own party is sure to go down as a perfect example of a party engineering its own downfall. And they wonder why the electorate has lost faith in them!
What utter nongs!
Ciao
CatO
Sunday, 18 November 2012
Not-so-private lives: The digital living room.
Stories about celebrities finding themselves in the doggy-do because they have tweeted, blogged or put out into the digital space offensive or inappropriate comments are a dime a dozen these days. The current brouhaha in the UK about Lord McAlpine and the libellous comments made by public figures is a case in point.
Meanwhile, individuals who have made deeply offensive comments on the internet have even landed themselves in jail.
It's an interesting conundrum. How do we balance the freedom of the internet with the need to protect the rights of others? What do we do about it? Well, first of all, we have to understand it.
One could see it as a form of narcissism whereby the speaker is so wrapped up in their own agenda that, like a toddler, they feel that their wishes and perceptions actually do constitute the world itself (and yes, the internet can seem abuzz with precisely that!).
However, one major aspect of the problem is probably purely neurological i.e. that our brains have not caught up with the fact that a seemingly private action (sitting at one's computer or using a mobile phone) is actually a public one.
Our brains still respond to a conception of the public/private divide which more matches that of an 18th century English village than the global village in which we now find ourselves.
Therefore many people fail to recognize that the public space (whether the physical or the digital world) is not their living room, and that actually their living room may be in plain view to the often disapproving gaze of that world. Most of us have had the excruciating experience of being forced to listen to a stranger's mobile phone conversations - often about deeply personal topics, that quite frankly we don't want to share! It's as if these folk feel they are warm and comfy, feet up, on their lounges not in the railway carriages, buses, restaurants or cafes that they share with us.
The disease of our times is an almost wilful reduction in the notion of privacy, yet that sense of privacy, of the need for personal space, our right to it, and the limits of it, is key to political theory, to creativity and self-expression, to solitude and philosophical introspection, to maintaining healthy personal relationships and to just staying sane!
While TV shows like the Kardashians take people into the private lives of strangers, our own are (ironically) in danger of being eaten up by the ongoing push for "transparency".
We need to find a way to share the public space of the digital world, while not giving away the precious private space of our own souls.
CatO
Meanwhile, individuals who have made deeply offensive comments on the internet have even landed themselves in jail.
It's an interesting conundrum. How do we balance the freedom of the internet with the need to protect the rights of others? What do we do about it? Well, first of all, we have to understand it.
One could see it as a form of narcissism whereby the speaker is so wrapped up in their own agenda that, like a toddler, they feel that their wishes and perceptions actually do constitute the world itself (and yes, the internet can seem abuzz with precisely that!).
However, one major aspect of the problem is probably purely neurological i.e. that our brains have not caught up with the fact that a seemingly private action (sitting at one's computer or using a mobile phone) is actually a public one.
Our brains still respond to a conception of the public/private divide which more matches that of an 18th century English village than the global village in which we now find ourselves.
Therefore many people fail to recognize that the public space (whether the physical or the digital world) is not their living room, and that actually their living room may be in plain view to the often disapproving gaze of that world. Most of us have had the excruciating experience of being forced to listen to a stranger's mobile phone conversations - often about deeply personal topics, that quite frankly we don't want to share! It's as if these folk feel they are warm and comfy, feet up, on their lounges not in the railway carriages, buses, restaurants or cafes that they share with us.
The disease of our times is an almost wilful reduction in the notion of privacy, yet that sense of privacy, of the need for personal space, our right to it, and the limits of it, is key to political theory, to creativity and self-expression, to solitude and philosophical introspection, to maintaining healthy personal relationships and to just staying sane!
While TV shows like the Kardashians take people into the private lives of strangers, our own are (ironically) in danger of being eaten up by the ongoing push for "transparency".
We need to find a way to share the public space of the digital world, while not giving away the precious private space of our own souls.
CatO
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
Wanted, Spiritual Leader...
Is anyone else surprised that the latest Archbishop of Canterbury is an ex-oil executive? It made me think of the qualifications a person needs to be a religious leader. I mean if you are choosing a Dalai Lama you are free to educate the four year old into an appropriately learned man but most religious leaders have lived before discovering their vocation and what is one looking for as a selector?
Sometimes people's pre-vocation lives can be a great embarrassment to their reconstructed selves--think of Saint Augustine's bastard children or Pope Benedict's unwilling stint with the Nazis--on the other hand it's hard to imagine a former hermit making it at the top in any field.
Maybe a man who has been successful in the corporate world really is just the person to lead the Anglican Church. Presumably he has skills in negotiating and focusing on important goals at the expense of other intentions.
Good luck, Archbishop...
Portia
Sometimes people's pre-vocation lives can be a great embarrassment to their reconstructed selves--think of Saint Augustine's bastard children or Pope Benedict's unwilling stint with the Nazis--on the other hand it's hard to imagine a former hermit making it at the top in any field.
Maybe a man who has been successful in the corporate world really is just the person to lead the Anglican Church. Presumably he has skills in negotiating and focusing on important goals at the expense of other intentions.
Good luck, Archbishop...
Portia
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)