past winner

I believe this young lady was a winner / is a presenter.


...
I say.

Miss Tiffany number 5

my very own Miss Tiffany number 3 - touch of the Carole Bouquet methinks... regal!

Miss Tiffany number 2

Miss Tiffany number 4

Miss Tiffany Universe 2017 - my own choice

number one:

Needless to say, the judges came up with a different winner! But... seriously... come on...

"How (insert N.E. name here) Changed TV Forever" or Baaad Journalism

Baaad journalism: pitfalls in our click-bait age. Here are a couple of handy points for sub-editors to keep in mind should they wish to stem the current dumbing-down slide.


-The use of "we".
How dare journalists state that "Why We All (love this or do that)"! Speak for yourself, mate... The use of this inclusive pronoun is never warranted. It is a sign of arrogance and bias. When they smack readers with this pronoun, journalists are only trying to impose their agenda upon the rest of the world. I doubt very much that the rest of the world has given them permission.
I probably took note of this detestable imposition a dozen years back when a columnist discussing the state of rock proudly crowned off her self-proclaimed rantings with "anyway, we'll all listen to nothing but Girls Aloud next year". Like fcuk I will.

-Superlatives.
I have no moral objection to anyone writing "one the most (this or that)". On the other hand, my rational self is instantly rubbed the wrong way when I see "the best this / the greatest that".

-PC neologisms.
Please call a spade a spade and don't encourage snobbish self-virtuous would-be intellectuals. One of the reasons for standing up to the idiocy of jargon is that it effectively endorses / condones the self-definition or euphemism / misnomer created to distort a horrible truth. Cases in point include "h*n*ur killing", "ethnic cl*ansing", "collateral damages, or "alt-right". (I already wrote on this subject elsewhere.)

-Crowbarring in ideological obsessions, or pushing an agenda (where it does not belong).
Recent example: the recap of "Twin Peaks 2017" episodes by The Guardian. First episode and the journalist can't help himself: mentions Donald Trump.
The underlying idea here is a plea for relevance. We desperately need deontological rationality: journalists should strive to stick to their subject as closely as possible.
Yes yes, I know that the validity of truth has been discussed for millennia (ie is there such thing as objectivity at all?) but, really, asking someone not to go off on an unrelated rant should not be too much to ask.
We need cold hard facts restraint more than ever in the age of Trump so please, dear journalists, stick to facts. If you're supposed to describe a football match, report on what happened during these 90 minutes, and don't make conjectures about possible transfers.

-References to supposedly related, similar occurences.
(Cf. above: stick to the subject!) Whenever a proper event happens, papers will unfailingly try to relate it to past occurrences. The problem is that every happening is by definition unique. I understand the wish to come up with a narrative or offer grounding / reasons for what happened but, unless there is a clear case for linking the present event to others ...comparisons are worthless. Let me repeat: comparisons are worthless per se.
I understand wanting to give a sense of perspective but listing other events in the hope that they will be comparable hence relevant hence instructive is just wishful thinking. It is page-filling.
What am I talking about, some may wonder.
Well, here are a few examples: murders, epidemics, cataclysmic events... What does it matter if another earthquake happened in another part of the world some other time? What does matter is how the response to another earthquake may facilitate the response to the one currently described. Or, returning to our football theme, how exactly do past matches (ie with two different line-ups) matter? You often hear "Team A hasn't beaten Team B in 5 years" -so what? What counts is the present match, "you can only beat what you have in front of you". Unlike you mean to invoke supernatural factors such as fate, auto-suggestion or curses, the mention of past results seems to me devoid of any import.



To be contined, no doubt.

Beloved

Is everything we do imbued with significance I would certainly not presume to claim, but when you get down to write a book, you certainly set about expressing something. Whether it's a message, an aesthetic impression, or simply proclaim your own existence to the face of the indifferent world. 

Here are some topics / sub-texts of Toni Morrison's "Beloved" : 
acts of charity, including the most terrible one - of the difficulty of turning a new page; new chances in life and the end of slavery - return of the past - do the characters submit to their condition or will they take charge?

destiny in Harry Potter

Inevitability in "Harry Potter"

Preliminary clarification: I am choosing to study "Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone" on its own. I will not take into consideration the fact that there are instalments to follow ...which obviously indicates that the heroes will survive this book's adventures.

What struck me early on during the reading of this book was the strange sense of chronology (for want of a better word). Harry is talked about before he actually makes his appearance. Not only that, but he is already held in (very high) esteem by the Hogwarths establishment and, a few pages later, every member of the magician world.

Infant Harry has a past, and this past is that he was the only survivor of Voldemort's crimes. He is the son of the highly popular and gifted Potter couple, and he is already considered to be special, endowed with unique skills.

In other words, he has a destiny to fulfil. He is primed to accomplish amazing things, and he is already admired for victories / miracles to come. The magician world see this self-unaware little boy for what hero he is expected to become.

This theme of assured victory runs throughout the book.

For example, we are told that first years are not supposed to own flying brooms -guess what? Harry receives one and instantly exceeds at flying. Quidditch is described as a complex sport requiring practice and dexterity - guess what? Harry becomes a star in his very first attempt. The villainous house of Whatever-It's-Called wins every year - guess what? The House of Harry knocks it off its perch.

I talked elsewhere of a distinct lack of genuine danger -that confirms this point. You never expect Harry and his little friends to fail. Faced with a challenge, they can rely on a wide panel of assets: knowledge (from Hermione), solidarity (from Wesley), strength (Hagrid), benevolence (Dumblebore) -and resourcefulness (that will be Harry).

This is all highly reassuring, and very comforting for the young readers. 

In terms of structure and dynamics, I like to see plans set in motion. Judging from the brief appearances and cryptic messages of Dumblebore, you get the feeling that the authority on all things magic has seen the future and / or, at the very least, is convinced of Harry's legendary destiny to come: the boy is special, he is not going to disappoint.
The author clearly had her ending in mind when she got to commit the story down to paper. It's ever so slightly easier to set a scene when you know how it will conclude.

Which brings us back to our opening remark: no wonder then that "the Philosopher's Stone" is but a first episode in a series of adventures to come.

Harry Potter : the appeal and the central enigma

Finished "Harry Potter 1". Yep, exactly as I felt after a dozen pages: it's about being loved and popular ...You can understand the appeal.

I thought that the characters were realistic, clearly based on kids we have all met when we woz at skewl. All highly likeable save for the mandatory nasty one.  I imagine that readers will tend to recognise themselves in the different types (nice guy dependable Weasley, show-off top student Hermione, the prankster twins, etc.).

As for Harry himself, what is clever is that he is mainly defined in relation to others. He is a cypher, a catalyst, a projection of other people's admiration / jealousy. The author spends more time presenting / introducing / describing other characters than him. Think about it: apart from his Bowiesque thunderbolt on the forehead and rebellious hair, what exactly do we get told about him? Huh?

He comes across as a nice kid; he is revealed to be resourceful and nimble; he is not bitter -and that's about it.  Harry Potter naturally takes centre-stage without being properly defined. He is like our personal identity: it's there, it's what the rest of the world gravitates around  ...and we can't see it.

Harry is the repose of the story, the heart of the action, and the object of other characters' attention ...and yet, he does not impose himself upon others; he is not described at lengths; and he pretty much always reacts to situations rather than take the initiative. Case in point: Harry Potter, as Dumblebore (spell?) explains at the end, is the one person in the world with whom the Philosopher Stone is safe: he has no particular use for it.


That's paradoxical, that's intriguing -and that makes you want to read more about him.

---------------------

"Harry Potter" and innocence.

Another thing that struck me was how sweet the book is. Although tragic deaths are mentioned (Harry's parents), monsters appear and evil lurks around (you-know-who whose name argllllll), violence or pain is never really conveyed; this is very much fairy tale territory. Should a kid break his arm, he gets it instantly fixed.

You never get the feeling that Harry and his friends are in danger: the trials he undertakes are games or challenges for whom solutions exist. He is also provided for, financially (his parents) and materially (who oh who sent him the invisibility cloak?).

Mainly, Harry is pure at heart. He is not fuelled by vengeance, he is just being nice to his friends. There is also a lot of benevolence going his way: well-wishers and supporters like Hagrid and Dumblebore.

The characters are at a safe age, with no intimation of sexuality ever rearing its head. As I understand, the characters will age as the series progresses and the question of boyfriend / girlfriend will occur but as for now... nothing.
(etc., will now move on to Morrison's "Beloved". Somehow I don't expect it to operate along the same principles.)

musing on "Pride and Prejudice": the big narrative choice

There are two levels / layers for the production (production, not reception) of a work of art such a book:
the story told (or content, if you will),
and the author's delivery (or medium, if you want).

In "Pride and Prejudice" -"Emma" is another good example- Austen sets out to expose her main character's misguided propensity to pass judgement on others: Elisabeth will be found to have been wrong after being explained the reasons behind Mr. Darcy's behaviour. Now how Austen tells this story is the point: there is parallel deception at work here.

Elisabeth can only react to what she gets told by the other characters; we can only react to what we get told by the author. ...We are both taken in as the author plays the same trick on both of us.

Austen achieves her end by feeding her heroine and her readers incomplete information. By hiding crucial information that exonerates Darcy and reveals Elisabeth's error, the author mischievously / dishonestly (you decide) omnipotently leads both her protagonist and audience onto the wrong path. She misleads her and us on both levels (plot and narration).

Harsh, some might say ...but isn't it what life is like? Do we ever have complete, impartial knowledge of what is going on? Do we ever actually know anybody else in the world (let alone ourselves)? Are we ever in possession of all the facts?
And yet -yet- we continually decide on a course of action; we continually pass judgement on others. Because we have to.

So what Austen does here is illustrate this existential struggle. Elisabeth (or Emma) means well ...but ultimately she's wrong. She will be found to have been deluded by the narrative tricks of deus ex machina, dramatic twists, confessions, conflicting points of view and so on.
All that the well meaning deluded protagonist did was strive for the best (given the information she was fed and impressions she was consequently able to form).


Concept of suspense and dramatic irony.

Hitchcock talked about the two differing approaches to story-telling (and their attendant effects): you could have a birthday cake suddenly exploding in the middle of a restaurant (shock effect: 1 second) or you could show a terrorist planting a bomb in a birthday cake, wheeling it into the room, watching as the revellers tuck into their mean unaware of the tragedy about to happy (tension length: as long as you want to make it last).

Austen could choose to show us from the start how misguided Elisabeth is, and this would make for a totally different novel. It's a tactical choice alright.
There are dozens of filums out there that deliberately choose to privilege the second option and / or play around with the consequences of narrative revelations: the Japanese "Chaos", the South Korean "Two Sisters", the French "he loves me, he loves me not", and "Irreversible", "Memento"...

zann des' ga...

saying "goodbye" to Weeravit

from the Jardin de Juliette bleuuug

Peter Pan

It's five o'clock, it's time for a review of... "Peter Pan", this time.

"Peter Pan" feels like an experiment in creating a possible series of stories: at some point the author simply lists a handful of adventures which he could choose to relate before settling on one. That's pretty novel! I also couldn't help noting how less than definite the fate of the baddie (Captain Cook) was ...Pray, any chance of a sequel should this book be a success?

Anyway, the whole thing is engaging, endearing, whimsical... Great crack* like! It kicks off straight-up / nonsense on and carries on in the same quirky vein till it can no longer ignore the other side of the coin (namely, ahem... how exactly must the parents robbed of their children feel?).
Comparisons could be made with "Alice", "Tristam Shandy" or "Tom Jones": at some stage, Barrie casually breaks the fourth wall and addresses the reader to comment on his own story, cheeky as you like.

And now for the unavoidable seckshual politics: one can't help but raise a (finely manicured, thank you very much) eyebrow about the author's portrayal of women, esp. Wendy who jumps at the chance of cooking / doing the laundry / doing the washing-up / serving as nurse / and generally looking after all the boys -How lucky lucky lucky eh...

There are so many original details in "Peter Pan" that (see opening remark) they could do with being developed at a later stage: what of these "lost boys"? how fast does time pass in NeverLand? what do the children actually live on? Tinkerbell's romantic back-story? possible tragic dimensions? etc. 

Verdict: a treacle coated 3 and a quarter out of five.

The The -"Jealous of Youth" (1991)

*yes, I know

Wuthering Heights take-down

Finally got round to tackle “Wuthering Heights” and I'm pleasantly surprised so far. Nothing precious about it but frankly Gothic and even funny: just about every character is a study in grotesque!

Themes uncovered so far:
isolation (stated wish of narrator / house) – family relationships (the fractured Earshaws past and present, the undefined and problematic nature of Heathcliff, and the ideal (?) nuclear model of the Lintons) – reported narrations (it's boxes within boxes here: the narrator – the old maid – Catherine's diary) – inside/outside (the wilderness of the moors, the refuge of the house, the cot-like bed, children messing about on their own) – repressed violence (physical threats, dogs not really attacking, curses a plenty, warnings of doom) - illness - dirt and cleanliness - predicted perdition, fate, and assorted maledictions (the mad religious servant)...

An initial 101 Pop Psychology analysis would probably suggest that the author was a passionate young woman of delicate health suffering from loneliness away from society, hungering for love freed of the yoke of religion, with mixed-up notions of close relationships.

The author sets up a series of problems that preclude any happy ending: if the heroine wishes to progress in society as she asserts, she cannot possibly continue to roam the wilderness with the proudly dirty gypsy boy; if Cathy "is" Heathcliff, how can she leave him?; if the predominent feelings are all-round hatred and anger, how can the story not end in tragedy?

Finally, what about the (not so) “blank page” outsider narrator who gets to grips with the tormented protagonists...”The Great Gatsby” anyone?

More notes about "Wuthering Heights".
What a shamble this book is! If you haven't actually read it, you may only be aware of the first main plot (Cathy n Heathcliff) as this is the one usually favoured by filum adaptations ...but this story only takes less than half of the book!

Jumping a generation ahead, the book then moves on to the sons and daughters of the protagonists and this is where it goes rather confusing: most of them share the same traits (ie always at death's door) and same names (whose son is it again?).

(By the way, I had a weird back-to-front feeling as it reminded me of a recent movie: "The Place Beyond The Pines", which explores the relationship between the sons of two past adversaries.)

The novel also gets unintentionally funny: both sides of the family spend their time traveling to and fro between the two houses, only to get forbidden to do so by the two fathers -and then they carry on nonetheless so that they can get married and damn each other to hell. It's sheer panto time!

As noted above, the new protagonists spend the bulk of the second part pretty much all dying, marrying each other, and exchanging curses in rotation. All of them except the formidable devilish figure of Heathcliff who is NOT a nice guy / tormented romantic hero.

Then -to cut a long story short- Bronte suddenly springs a ghost motive upon us in the last ten pages (yes yes, I know: there had been -very fleeting- mentions at the start) and kills off the main character in about three pages straight. The narrator then goes for a stroll to look at the graves and that's that. The end. Unexplored deus ex machina device + no logical arc + no proper conclusion.

Phew. This sure is an overwrought, weird piece of work and no mistake... My main feeling throughout was that it deserves a proper Gothic adaptation far away from the usual lovey-dovey simplification. I mean, even Cathy is no angel; there is a whole subtext of ambiguities worth developing here... (To name but two: Didn't she try to have her cake and eat it after all? And at the end of the day, why does Heathcliff feel so hard done-by?)

#greatcraicyeah

Sub-texts / true subjects

Filigram. 

-Wells's "Time Traveller" is not about time travelling but about socialism (as in: organising work between the various classes). 
-Stevenson's "Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde" is about alcoholism (giving in to drink or not). 
-"Fight Club" is about testicular cancer.
-I always thought that "Baywatch" was about ... broken families. 
-"Dexter" is about loneliness. 
-"Friends" is a shampoo commercial, etc.
-"I Know What You Did Last Summer" is a celebration of Jennifer Love Hewitt's breasts. Not that they are ever revealed though.

Jane Eyre review ...loig7san style

"Jane Eyre" by one of the Bronte sisters (they were sisters, and their name was Bronte -this explains that) mainly deals with 1) self-denial and 2) wishing one were pretty. This ought to give you an idea of how fun the life of the eponymous Jane is. 

Throughout the novel, the author will keep remarking how less-than-pretty her two protagonists are, especially when compared with lesser admirable characters. ...Is she trying to tell us something here, I wonder.

The other constant theme characters bang on about every five pages is Christian suffering: homilies about self-restraint, humility and blah blah blah.

Other fun topics include: retribution / comeuppance - forgiveness - consequences - social standing - passages from a stage to another one. Poor wee Jane is regularly compared to a lamb, presumably in contrast to a big bad wolf (that's how subtle your woman is when she tries a simile).
Bronte is also fond of (pretty modern) sudden switches to the present tense.

What is startling about the story is how fundamentally wrong the main -male, note: male- character arguably is. Bronte is at pains to present him as a wronged victim but... er... Rochester is pretty much an Adidas buying Bernard Tapie of his time: sorry mate but you entered into a contract, you respect it! "For better or for worse", remember? And this, from a female writer: ?!?
Super culchured people will know that Jean Rhys wrote a stunning spin-off / reply novel presenting Rochester's "situation" from another angle (brilliant stuff altogether).

Finally, "Jane Eyre" suffers from the same sudden / rushed conclusion as "Wuthering Heights": so we had dozens of page fillers about them wee little birds and clouds and flowers and trees and stormy skies and carpets and furniture and what-have-you and then, in the space of 3 / 5 pages, bang! The author springs on us a massive twist regarding the formidable main male character and brings the story to an end faster than you could say "Hermione! Why on earth won't you go out with me???" ... Right-so.


Oh, and Jane is not pretty (in case you didn't know).

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Twin Peaks -a recap

Absalom! Absalom!

In "Absalom! Absalom!", Faulkner sets out to destroy the idea that a good book / filum is, first and foremost, a good story: the entire plot itself is pretty much told in two chapters at the start!
What matters is the style: how the story is conveyed, over hundreds of pages. What makes up the book is how different narrators recount Sutclen's fate. Well, guess what? they recount it... differently. The multiplicity of points of view and agendas weaves a rich tapestry closer to real life, where everyone has a stake and a bias.
Just as importantly, Faulkner is not so much interested in events as in reasons. Why. Why did this character act this way or that way is the mystery. As the book progresses, the author drops disparate fragments of information that lead you to revise your opinion of the characters, mainly the protagonist: was he really a monster ...or was he a tragic figure after all?
The thing is... we'll never really know. By offering various interpretations of the characters' actions, Faulkner alludes to the ultimate fallacy of presuming to be able to understand and judge a person's action.

Rhetorical skills matter.

Here are a few diversionary tactics used by the mad man when summoned by the media to account for his (lack of) reaction to the Charlottesville attack, in no particular order:

resorting to the vocabulary of a 12 year old in order to simplify the issue - adopting the nazis' pretext as a genuine, valuable excuse - building up a strawman - interpreting the media's natural concern as an attack against him and his presidency - pretending access to classified information (that would validate his position against the rest of the world) - trying to turn the table - obfuscation and general diversion via stress on mere details - "(I won't answer this) but what about that..." - most egregiously, making up false equivalence between nazis and the Left - calling on not checkable "facts" and personal knowledge - oh, and plain lying.

Seriouslytho, there are times when he's straight out of a Chris Morris sketch, like when he claimed that the threat of a missile attack by North Korea would be good for tourism in Guam. ... I shit you not.