Hospital, June
An air conditioning grate
hums in the hanging ceiling,
the very same as the
sky above the arid space of a
desolate cube farm, vast
and squared, while the walls moan
anaemic green and sterile white.
High in the corner, a metallic black
bracket suspends a window to
Short Strand and Damascus,
bricks and bottles and bullets
to the tune of scratching white noise,
until those static screams swell
to the choral strophe of
a new Athenian tragedy.
Bolted solidly into the lime linoleum,
three rows of plastic blue seats
host two other than I.
An autumnal lady figure sits
in blossoming flowered blouse and
red cardigan, thick and woollen
despite the season’s graces,
sourly pursing her lips in an
affront to the young nurse working
the x-ray department desk.
Untied tennis shoes kick back and
forth rhythmically, not far
beneath a neck tilted up
towards scattered bricks and
shattered eyes in Surman and Tripoli.
As my name is called
the little girl’s gaze
does not waver, her
fair curls do not bob at all,
as she is trapped in the
moving image, an orphan
to an orphan.
June 23, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Death, Nations, News Story, Poetry, Poetry Month, Political, Social, Waiting, War | Tags: poems about hospitals, Poetry Month | 1 Comment »
Sorry about the hiatus. I really didn’t enjoy October. The night drew in, the rain made me wet, my fingers began to feel a bit numb when I was out too long. There was a monochrome sky last Friday that made me freak out a little; it was like the world, or the part that I occupied, was within a giant grey warehouse and when I looked up all I could see was ceiling.
Anyway, this is the first of a three-part series, a chunk of children’s literature called Green Forest Blues. Enjoy.
Green Forest Blues
1
In a beautiful green forest far away, the soft fresh music of a stream was made even more perfect by the heavenly light of the radiant sun. A gentle breeze carried the sound of the stream through the branches and boughs of tress that had stood tall for a hundred years. There was a wonderful sense of life all through the forest and many of the animals who lived there could not remember ever being unhappy.
On a low branch of a great old oak tree sat a great old owl. He was a very big owl who rarely flew very far. He preferred to rest in the cool shade of the branches of the trees. When he was young, his feathers had been a dark brown colour, like the soil below, but by now they had faded to grey and white with age. Indeed, he was the oldest of all of the animals that now lived in the forest and they all respected his wisdom and knowledge. They called him Owl. Sometimes the young animals would listen to him speak for hours and hours as he told them stories about when he was young, stories about the forest that only he was old enough to remember.
On this fine day, Owl looked out at the animals that had gathered below him to listen to one of his wonderful stories. There were young rabbits and squirrels laughing with weasels and moles and among them sat badgers and mice who chatted with hedgehogs, deer and frogs while birds sang above them. There was a great sense of friendship between the different animals and in this beautiful weather nothing could have upset the feelings of happiness and unity within the group. Owl loved this feeling among the animals of the forest. However, it made him think of when he was just a young owl, when times were not so perfect.
“It is such a lovely day,” said Owl to the young animals, “and it fills me with joy to see so you all living together so peacefully. I am an old owl now, and I have seen many things. This wonderful moment reminds me of a time when things were not as they are now. When I was much younger there was a time when animals did not live together so happily. Perhaps if I tell you all about it, you will be thankful for what you have now.”
The young animals of the forest looked around at each other in disbelief. All that they had ever known was joy and peace. The thought of times when everything was not right made them very curious indeed. Owl’s stories were always interesting, but today’s story sounded like it could be one of his most interesting stories yet.
“Now, let me tell you of when I was very young,” continued Owl. “Everything was normal and there was peace between the animals. However, that peace slowly began to disappear and the forest became a terribly unhappy place…”
2
For many years, life in the forest had been good. The animals lived quite happily alongside each other. There was always enough food to go around, and the stream gave the animals all of the water that they needed. In fact, life was based around the stream. The stream not only provided the water that the animals needed, but it also supported the trees, the grass, the flowers and the shrubs. Everything in the forest depended upon the stream that wandered slowly between the trunks of the mighty old trees and the music of the forest was the sound of the cool clear water gently swishing along.
The badgers were seen as the leaders of the community. They had grown to become the most responsible of the animals in the forest. The other animals trusted them to look after the whole forest because they always knew what was going on. Their duties included looking after the stream and making sure that everybody benefited from the water that the stream brought. This was never a problem because the flow of the water was steady and everybody had enough. Obviously the bigger animals had to drink a little bit more, but the smaller animals didn’t need very much at all. There was a natural balance within the community of the forest.
This natural balance meant that Barney, the leader of the badgers, had quite an easy job to do. Barney had taken over from his father, Barty, when Barty became too old to look after the forest.
The only animals that had a problem with how the badgers looked after the forest were the weasels. The leader of the weasels was Ed. He said that the badgers were not the right group to lead the forest. He thought that he would be much better at looking after the forest than Barney would. Most of the other animals could see that Ed was just jealous of how respected Barney was but that didn’t stop him from telling everyone of just how terrible he thought Barney was. Fortunately for Barney, nobody paid much attention to Ed because the forest had always been a nice place to live while the badgers had been the leaders.
As a young bird, Owl thought it was very funny when Ed tried to tell the others that Barney and the badgers were not the right animals to look after the forest. He could see that Ed was clearly wrong. Everybody had enough food and water and, even though the weather was bad sometimes, the animals were generally at peace.
However, from his perch beside the stream Owl could see that some animals were a little bit more equal than others in the forest. The deer drank ten times more water than the rabbits and the hedgehogs, and in winter time the squirrels had more food than anybody else because they had been taking a little bit extra every day during the spring and summer and had kept it hidden away. Nobody paid very much attention to that kind of thing though, because all of the animals had at least enough food and water to live comfortably. Even at his young age though, Owl knew that eventually there would be hard times. He had an awful feeling that the water and the food would not last if some animals continued to take a little bit more than they needed.
3
One winter, the weather was worse than it had been for many years. It was bitterly cold and the wind tore through the trees making a terrible noise that sounded like the roar of a fearsome lion. The young animals were so scared that they had to stay in their shelters for nearly the whole winter. Sometimes the wind would calm down and the animals could cautiously go outside to drink from the stream or to see if their friends were okay. They would see branches from the trees that had fallen to the ground and the shrubs that had been ripped from the soil by the ferocious gales.
“This is a terrible sight,” said Barney the badger after looking upon the damage the weather was doing to the forest. “This situation is bad for us, but it must be awful for Owl and the other birds.”
He was right. It was even worse for Owl. His home was in the trees and many times he had to quickly fly from tree to tree to avoid falling branches. In fact, he was terrified of being completely blown away. During the times when the wind was calm he forgot about being scared and tried to sleep, but the cold meant that he constantly shivered and could never sleep for more than a few minutes at a time.
Despite the terrible wind and cold, the animals noticed that it didn’t rain very much. Of course, when they came out of their shelters they were delighted that they didn’t have to worry about rain. In their minds, they had enough problems with the tremendous winds and the awful cold. From the biggest deer to the smallest mice, all of the animals were thankful that they could deal with the winter weather without the fear of getting terribly wet.
They also had plenty of food left over from a beautiful summer and autumn. The deer and the rabbits munched on the grass that had grown thick and green before the winter, the badgers and moles managed to find enough insects to eat, and the squirrels had kept plenty of nuts and seeds hidden away for tough times. All of the animals ate well despite the harsh winter weather.
However, there was a problem that most of the animals did not think of. Owl could see that as the animals drank from the stream and ate the food that was left from spring, summer and autumn, they didn’t seem to know how important the winter rain was for them. They didn’t realise that all of their forest was dependent on water and that the more they ate and drank over the winter, the more trouble they would all be in sooner or later…
November 1, 2010 | Categories: Art, Cultural, Economic, Fiction, Nations, Observation, Political, Social, The Human Condition | Tags: Awful Allegory, Children's Story, Forest | 2 Comments »
- I’ve spent the last two weeks travelling through a few different countries. Berlin was one city I visited. For better or worse, it struck me that to best display my feelings about my time in the city, I would have to revisit Martha and Steve.
“Oh my God, did you see what is on this menu?” Steve looks down at the unintelligible syllables in sheer disbelief. On the page in front of him there are combinations of letters that he has never seen before, gibberish that he could never have previously imagined. There are even letters with pairs of dots above them. The English translation of each dish is underneath.
“I know, I know! It’s crazy.” Martha hasn’t yet looked at the menu. Her rubber neck is surveying the environment that surrounds her. Her face is wretchedly contorted in jubilant disbelief. She smiles like a little boy who has found himself in a giant warehouse full of ketchup, crayons and valuable paintings. To all intents and purposes, it is a restaurant. Martha’s roving gaze is disrupted as a waitress places a large beer in front of Steve and a small one in front of her.
“Thank you! No, I mean, danke!” The waitress, Emily according to the golden script of her nametag, is blessed with a shower of Steve’s finest saliva as the entire restaurant is blessed with Steve’s voice. His boisterous laugh, coming from deep in his chest, signals that he finds world languages incredibly amusing, and the idea that he should endeavour to use one all the more hilarious. Emily The Waitress does not seem to be able to grasp that Steve’s struggle to use a simple German word is highly entertaining. To Emily The Waitress, the incident is unfortunate at worst. At best, it is unremarkable. She just doesn’t get it.
“Bitte,” she says politely before engaging with those at the next table.
“Well, the German’s aren’t famous for their sense of humour, and now I know why!” Steve is hilarious. He has drawn upon a broad generalisation of a culture, consumed it, and then congratulated himself for that process by making an hilarious joke about it. He fails to see the sad irony that lies in his being the embodiment of a stereotypical world consumer, consuming a stereotype that he himself has decided to apply to a person.
Martha beckons Emily The Waitress once again.
“Okay, Steve.” Martha’s speech dribbles out of her maw. She glances between her husband, the menu and Emily The Waitress. “Steve, I will… Steeeeeeve. I, am, going, to, haaaaave. Em, your The Berlin Wall please. Yes, I think I’ll have some The Berlin Wall, with french fries. And some, no, yeah, that’s good for me. Dankey.” Martha closes her menu on the table and looks at Steve, imploring him to order. He responds with almost German efficiency, swinging his head between his wife and Emily The Waitress as if looking for approval of his decision.
“Yeah, you know what, I’ll have some Sachsenhausen, the large portion. And I’ll have some fries too… Wait, you know what, could I get a side of Holocaust Memorial maybe? Instead of the fries?” Emily The Waitress nods and smiles, signaling in the affirmative. “Thanks.” Martha nods and smiles like their host did previously, only with some kind of pride in achievement across her face, as if she made some sort of fantastic cultural leap by ordering a meal in English in Berlin, albeit from a waitress who speaks English. The girls in the book club will be delighted to hear how she ordered the entire meal in German, in the process saving Steve from his cultural ignorance.
“So,” starts Emily The Waitress in near perfect English, “one The Berlin Wall, with fries for you? One large Sachsenhausen with some Holocaust Memorial for you?” Steve smiles benignly.
“Sounds good. Your English is great. How did you pick that up?”
“Oh, thank you.” She smiles humbly. “I studied it in school and just kept using it. Most people here speak at least a little bit of English, maybe some other languages too.”
“Really. That is just, wow. Well, you’re very good for learning it.” Steve belittles her unintentionally, with a massive grin on his massive face. He pushes his glasses up his nose. Emily The Waitress exits stage left.
The players stop mid-chew and mid-chat. The lights all go out. That is, except for one. A single spotlight impales Emily The Waitress to one side of the action. She closes her eyes for a second. She contemplates her pending soliloquy, brushing back her beautiful blonde hair, tucking some strays behind the fashionably thick black glasses that let her big blue eyes see the world. Her voice is so small.
“This place is so sad. Please don’t do it. Why do you do it? Why do we do it? Do we have some duty to talk, as if it’s okay? If I acknowledge it and sell it, is that really dealing with some kind of identity crisis? Is that dealing with a mass of history?”
Emily The Waitress lifts her glasses and wipes tears from her eyes. She bows her little blonde head towards the floor. Light returns to the restaurant. A second waitress places plates in front of Martha and Steve who chuckle and chat quietly, a manner completely alien to them. All of the lights go out and there is silence.
Two spotlights now penetrate the black. One is trained upon Emily The Waitress, who stands knock-kneed with her head bowed, in the same position that the light had previously speared her. The second circular shaft of light illuminates Martha and Steve at their table.
“Please don’t,” Emily The Waitress pleads towards her guests. “I don’t want this. I feel ill. It hurts.” Emily drops to her knees. Her voice does not seem to reach Martha and Steve through the darkness. In her throat, her whimpering struggles against her desperate wailing, choking her voice.
“Enjoy your meal.”
Martha breaks off little chunks of wall with her fingers and stuffs them into her mouth. She moans in satisfaction, communicating the pleasure of her meal. She savours every morsel, tasting the cultural, social and political weight of what she is consuming. Similarly, Steve sucks on an old shoelace, nodding his head like a dashboard dog. He understands Sachsenhausen as Martha understands The Berlin Wall. Contemporary consumption seems to square it all historically for everyone involved in the transaction. Meanwhile, Emily The Waitress has crumpled to a horizontal position.
“We hope everything is okay for you,” she screams through tears. Her body flaps about on the ground like a helpless fish on cement, with arms writhing and legs kicking out. She wails in agony, as if her fingernails are slowly being torn from her extremities by a crazed torturer. Her hair is wild and covers some of her face.
“Can I get you anything else? Is it good? I am happy that the German people, all people in fact, can now move on from the history of these things and just eat them.”
Steve pours ketchup all over a stripped shirtsleeve.
Emily The Waitress curls into a fetal position. She ceases to move. The tears of the world are a constant quantity. Her heavy breathing and sobbing soaks the room.
Martha belches and laughs. Steve laughs too, having also finished his meal. He then belches even louder than his wife had done. Steve wins the belching contest. They both laugh. They both enjoyed their German cuisine. Their wonderful waitress stands up and takes a deep breath. Everything is illuminated once again.
“My friends, was everything good?”
“It was wonderful, Emily, dankey.” Martha grins.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it. Can I get you anything else? Or just the bill?”
“The bill would be great, please.” Steve hands his American Express card to Emily The Waitress. She smiles and limps away.
August 16, 2010 | Categories: Cultural, Fiction, Nations, Political, Social, Travel | Tags: Berlin, Berlin Tourism, History of Germany, Martha and Steve, The Berlin Wall, The Holocaust, The Holocaust Memorial, Waitressing | 1 Comment »
- The following appeared, printed, in a savagely circumcised form. I was never happy with it. The state of Irish cinema is disheartening. Having recently watched The Commitments, I felt the need to revisit the idea of an Irish cinema.
Addressing National Cinemas
To discuss any national cinema, one must first acknowledge that there is no such thing as national cinema. It is an elephant in the room that is film criticism. Indeed, enlightening exploration of ideas of national cinema demands a knowledge of the notion’s falsity. It is absolutely impossible to define. Nations themselves are purely based upon war provoking lines on a map, lines that divide the world into manageable sections for purposes that are mostly tax related. To take a film and put it firmly within those lines is an act of little to no merit. The practice of naming cinema as of a nation is obviously necessary in both common parlance and rigorous academic analysis though, as a descriptive tool and a means of identification. However, to grasp the picture, to settle the identification of a film as of a specific nation, or of the land or of the people is a teleological phenomenon to observe. This would be a matter of interpretation, thus leading to a consensus that Film A is of Country B and Film C is of Country D, seeing the films settle themselves as national cinema.
Looking at basic ontological criteria, if one is to look at what is a national cinema in that manner, there exist further hurdles in discussing a proposition of national cinema. On the most exasperating of levels, there are two kinds of cinema, neither of which are based on anything to do with a nation. Hollywood cinema is the first. By Hollywood cinema, I do not strictly mean that which comes from Hollywood. For all intents and purposes, Hollywood cinema includes all films that adhere to a reasonable degree to our usual expectations of what we are seeing within the temporal space; aspirational production values, psychological realism, specific character empathy and narrative fulfillment among other things.
These factors also define the other kind of cinema. That is, the other does not conform in one way or another to these conventions. There is alienation or questioning of some kind between the film and the audience. Over decades of film criticism, various names have been attributed to different types of films and different film movements but, to put them all in one basket, those films that have opposed Hollywood cinema are all part of the significant other. Across various countries and continents, even from within Hollywood, terms as loosely fitting as ART cinema, SECOND cinema, THIRD cinema, COUNTER-cinema and PORNOGRAPHY, to more specific descriptions of movements and styles such as the Nouvelle Vague, Neorealism, Film Noir and cinematic Expressionism are all terms of the other.
Even more practical issues complicate ideas of national cinema, especially outside of Hollywood. If one tries to narrow down national cinema to anything more specific than a seeming association with a particular country, factors such as financing, language, personnel, setting and subject matter often serve to muddy the water. Cinema, by nature (specifically as an interpreted, sensory medium) and construction, is always transnational. But the elephant remains.
Addressing Irish Cinema
For an example concerning ideas of Irish cinema, one only has to look back at the phenomenal achievement that is Steve McQueen’s Hunger (2008). Look at the foundations. Hunger was funded and distributed by different groups from different European countries, the film is Irish and British in subject matter, it was directed by an Englishman (McQueen) and features mostly Irish talent (including the astonishing performance of Michael Fassbender as the enigmatic Bobby Sands) acting out a script penned by McQueen and Irish playwright Enda Walsh.
Despite the project’s transnational base, we claimed Hunger as our own, a masterpiece of Irish cinema. While we did not tag it as a nation, it is a collective interpretation. Crying out for something to hold on to and be proud of, green isle cinema enthusiasts took McQueen’s film to be Irish. There is nothing wrong with that of course. It is a testament to a fantastic picture. Crucially however, our need for Hunger was also a sign of just how poor Irish cinema, or cinema associated with Ireland, has been over the past number of years.
Our desire to see a succesful Irish cinema has seen many truly terrible productions in recent years. These pictures have, more often than not, tried to be distinctly Irish with a Hollywood shine at the same time. They are FIRST cinema. To say the least, the results have ranged from average to abominable. Fortunately, Irish cinema has flickered into life at different times with moments of the other kind of film. A frustratingly tiny minority of films have marked the rare highs of Irish cinema. There may be more but, to my admittedly fallible mind, I don’t think there are.
In 1967, Rocky Road to Dublin received a hostile reception at its press screening in Dublin and was quickly made inaccessible to the Irish public by their government. In 1968 it was acclaimed at Cannes and was notoriously well received by striking students and workers in Paris. Irish journalist Peter Lennon and French cinematographer Raoul Coutard’s collaboration could really have been something for Irish cinema were it seen.
Lennon’s intelligent and biting documentary depiction of a nation retarded by decades of Church and State oppression coupled with Coutard’s introduction of Alexandre Astruc’s camera stylo ideas to a new audience was something so stark for Irish audiences of the time. Or, at least, it would have been had the established hierarchy not stubbed it out like a cigarette that nobody had a chance to smoke. One can only wonder how Rocky Road to Dublin could have influenced Irish films over the following decades, or even 1970s Ireland itself. It certainly wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.
In more recent years, it took two Dublin heroin addicts mugging a boy with Down’s Syndrome to light up Irish cinema. Lenny Abrahamson and Mark O’Halloran’s Adam and Paul (2004) is a bleak and tragic story bringing the plight of those who were forgotten by Celtic Tiger Ireland to the screen, those who still desperately cling to the bottom rung of the social ladder. The film follows Adam and Paul’s attempts to get by and survive a single day including the painful aforementioned mugging. Inspired by Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Adam and Paul are writer O’Halloran’s Vladimir and Estragon, aimlessly surviving the plight of their own existences.
Figure 5.1: Gogo and Didi, Adam and Paul
Incomprehensibly lost, Adam and Paul brought the forgotten back to the minds of the growing ranks of the middle classes. The absence of those more comfortable from the picture implicates them in the demise of the unfortunate minority and their disappearance from the social radar in a manner that is often as amusing as it is brutal and unsentimental.
While lacking the same quality as Adam and Paul, Abrahamson and O’Halloran’s 2007 acclaimed collaboration Garage (2007) is also a progressive picture of the other, shunning the broad culture of Hollywood-ism or, the fetishisation of cash for want of a better phrase. The film goes someway to picking at the frailties of the community structures of rural Ireland while proving that Pat Short can, much to my own amazement, act in a genuine role. The problem is though, that if you look at Adam and Paul, Garage and Hunger in relation to Irish cinema as a whole, these three films are some of the only serious contributions Ireland has made to world cinema over the past decade. And I’m probably being generous with Garage.
Some will remember Colin Farrell. John Crowley’s Intermission (2003) and Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges (2008) have hardly lit up the world, or have they? More commercial enterprises, movies (Hollywood cinema), than noble, commercially viable cinema (the other), the two films are mildly amusing and full of Irish charm but further than that it is difficult to argue that the films hold much substance with regards to a progressive, dynamic Irish cinema.
Intermission, a star vehicle for Colin Farrell and Cillian Murphy, does little to dispel internationally recognised Irish stereotypes, in fact it merely updates old ones; likely lads and likely ladies, a few tough charmers, a nation of people who are brought together by a drink or two. It would be difficult to argue that In Bruges would have done as well at the box office if Farrell had not played his usual plucky but flawed rogue character. It isn’t Farrell’s fault that he plays to that loveable stereotype so well but it doesn’t make it right. In Bruges is perhaps the most internationally successful (profitable) Irish film of recent years not due to artistic merit but the exploitation of an international audience that indulges in cute stereotypes and wants to love the antics of an Irish misfit rogue (Farrell), a Brendan Behan character (Brendan Gleeson) and a mysterious European beauty (Clémence Poésy) in a picturesque European city (Bruges). Postcard cinema.
Some may focus on English man Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006). As far as beginning criticism, it is difficult to know where to start. It is an abomination of historical revisionism, apologetic and shameless, insulting and misguided, simultaneously. The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes which – to take a positive from the award – proves itself a reminder not to assume that festival awards and awful films are mutually exclusive. Romantic idealist Irish men and women fighting for their freedom in the face of the sadistic British soldiers, an altogether despicable and regressive interpretation of Irish history that has somehow become a flagship “Irish” film. The only positive, to really stretch, is the film’s inclusion of the socialist program of many of the Irish revolutionaries, but even that is overshadowed by the dehumanisation of the British, the glorification of murder for what is rather explicitly championed as a noble cause and the portrayal of anybody with money as an inherently evil person.
A multitude of poor comedies have also coloured what is known as Irish cinema. About Adam (2000), The Snapper (1993), The Van (1996), When Brendan Met Trudy (2001), Man About Dog (2004), and Goldfish Memory (2003) are all among the attempts at filmmaking that have ignored artistic merit in favour of a Hollywood narrative and feel with varying faux-working class interests, pandering Irish stereotypes that, one must admit, we as an Irish collective indulge in. The results are all too forgettable.
When you get past the music, Once (2007) is perhaps the only internationally renowned Irish film of recent years that we could and should be even remotely proud of. Capturing a changing city and the budding personal and musical relationship between a European immigrant and a downtrodden native, the film is undoubtedly cheesy in places but it doesn’t baulk at tougher questions such as the relative poverty of the characters, the challenges of living in a city and a world where you are essentially forgotten and things don’t work out as they do in Hollywood.
The success of Once could be a sign. With a meager budget of not much more than €100,000, Once succeeded beyond all expectations. Irish filmmakers can make feature films for that kind of budget as long as the creativity is there. They may not be able to make the glossy Hollywood films that some may want to but is that a bad thing?
An Irish film costing €10million must please every possible audience in Ireland and make a break through in mainstream international markets. Moderate success in Irish and European cinemas will see an Irish film costing €1million easily making healthy profits. A film costing €200,000 to make can break a profit in Irish cinemas alone and go on to relatively enormous profits if seen outside of Ireland.
The film that costs €200,000 will have an artist at the helm. It will be an act of love for the medium, love for what they are making, perhaps even being an act borne out of genius. The hope is that it would fund itself if managed properly. The film that costs €10million will not have an artist at the helm. €10million for a film in Ireland is an unbelievable amount of money and the project will merely be a product, a commercial enterprise headed by a team of accountants and made by an army of trained technicians rather than passionate cineastes. The history is there; it is called In Bruges.
If Irish cinema is to have a life it will not be as a cinema of commercial enterprises. Cinema, as a breathing art form, can never exist as a commercial enterprise. It can be a commercially viable art of course, but to think of it merely as an enterprise is the folly of those who do not care for the art. Success for Irish cinema should not be measured by profits but by substance. For some In Bruges is a success. For me, Adam and Paul is a success.
For those who do care about profits, think about this. We could double the amount of films we produce as a nation for half the cost. That is the bare truth. For every director or writer that is funded for a large project, four or five are rejected in their quest for a small budget for their work. Reverse that trend and the profits would come for those who care about profits. Crucially though, the cinema would come for those who care about cinema.
July 16, 2010 | Categories: Art, Cinema, Cultural, Manifesto, Nations, Observation, Polemic, Social | Tags: A Certain Tendency of the Irish Cinema, Hollywood, Irish Cinema | Leave A Comment »
- Cultural consumption, the commodification of the world, of experience, Spectacle.
Martha and Steve are a single entity. They met through mutual friends, or at work, or during college, or something. They are in their mid-fifties. Martha formerly worked in administration for the New Jersey school board but has been happily unemployed since Noah, the youngest of their three children, started high school back in Hoboken, New Jersey. Steve, a New Yorker by birth, is now semi-retired. Back in 2006 he took a very lucrative pension from the accounting firm he was a partner in as the company downsized. He is now a respected freelance accounting consultant, working at his own leisure, not really needing the money. With their children embarking on their own adult lives, Martha and Steve now spend a lot of their time travelling, using their free time to experience the world, taking in what the world can offer them.
“How about we share the crab claws to start, Martha?”
“Sure.” Martha scans the first page of the menu slowly and deliberately with her finger. “Crab claws sound good… And will we get some garlic bread? Or the mussels? Some garlic bread?”
“Well yeah, but is that too much? I’m thinking of…”
The waiter smiles politely. Several minutes ago these people had hailed him. They were ready to order or, at least, that was what they intimated to him through their animated signals in his direction. Apparently they were merely looking for his presence while they came to a decision. A drop of sweat trickles down his forehead, scaling his cheek and rushing down to the chaffing collar of his shirt. While his still musing charges are clad in khaki shorts, light t-shirts and sandals (the heaviest items of clothing they sport are matching fanny packs), he is standing before them, clad in black shirt, tie, trousers and shoes, wishing he were somewhere else entirely. Martha engages his absent gaze.
“Yeah, okay. So we’re going to share the crab claws and an order of garlic bread to start. And then –“
“Then I’m going to have the lamb shank,” interjects Steve, “with french fries I think, yeah french fries. And Martha, what do you…”
“I will have,” she slows again. “I think I’ll go with the traditional Italian homemade baked lasagne. And can I get a side salad with that?”
The waiter knows that this is not a question.
“Thank you, my friends. That’s great. That’ll be down shortly.” The waiter goes for a cigarette.
Slurping her glass of Guinness, Martha stops. While his wife chokes on her tipple, Steve immediately realises what has caught her attention and exerts his voice upon the quiet seaside town.
“Hey! Gerry! Sarah! Get over here guys, how are ya?”
Earlier in the day, Martha and Steve met Gerry and Sarah in one of the quaint little souvenir shops along the beach. Having disturbed the entire patio area of the restaurant, Martha and Steve beckon their friends over. Gerry and Sarah oblige with smiles, taking a passing waitress with them to service their needs. The waitress departs to retrieve a bottle of Prosecco, a pint of Guinness and eight packets of bacon fries.
Gerry and Sarah are in their early sixties. Gerry is a former building contractor from Newcastle, Northern England. He met Sarah, a former nurse, also from Newcastle, when he was hospitalised after an on-site accident involving his testicles and a cement mixer. They have been married for almost thirty years. Nearly ten years ago they retired to Godalming, a beautiful town in Surrey, in the South East of England. Gerry’s contracting business is now run by his only son, Dave, who qualified as a civil engineer before taking on the family enterprise. Like Martha and Steve, Gerry and Sarah now love to travel, enjoying their very comfortable financial situation.
These two couples have a lot in common. However, ahead of family, friends, business, music, sports and politics, their shared lust for worldly experience and their similar indulgence in cultural exploration are their primary focus. We rejoin the scene with Steve chewing a mix of his own words and lamb. As he gurgitates, he nods his giant spectacled face up and down, using his fork as a gavel, indicating that he is about to speak of something extraordinary, perhaps about to emphasise just how great it is to have visited numerous locations. It is grotesque.
“You really haven’t lived…” he pauses to swallow, thankfully. “You really haven’t lived until you’ve been to Sirmione and seen the sights; you absolutely have to go at some point. Martha took wonderful pictures of Lake Garda in the late evening, during the magical hours.”
“Gosh, yes!” Martha almost explodes with delight. “I’ll email them to you!” Steve had created an opportunity for them to show off just how culturally enlightened they are. Wonderful. Sarah glances towards Gerry and then forms a friendly, vampiric grin as she turns back towards Martha and Steve who are sitting across from them. Fondling the stem of her empty flute – that friendly waiter hasn’t returned with her second bottle of Prosecco yet – she takes up the challenge. Because it is a challenge. It is always a challenge with these people.
“Well, when we cycled around Lake Garda –“
“You cycled?” Steve sneaks a quick glance at Gerry’s venerable girth.
“A good few years ago, yeah, we did, when Gerry was a little fitter. Didn’t we, Gerry?” Gerry makes some kind of vague gesture corroborating Sarah’s words, and then goes back to munching bacon fries feverishly. “You really get a feel for the area,” Sarah goes on, “I mean, the culture, the people, the food, the wine, everything. I took one fantastic picture, I’ll have to email you this one. It’s of Gerry crushing grapes with his bare feet at a local vineyard with some children. We were immersed in the culture, really.”
Sarah throws her head back and has a little chuckle. The waiter pours a fresh glass of fizzy wine juice for her and leaves the bottle in the cooler on the table before laying a pint of creamy Guinness in front of her husband. Sarah watches the young man walk back towards the bar, her cheeks still taught in victory, her whispy blonde hair bobbing in the warm breeze.
Mopping up the last of his gravy with the last of his french fries, Steve decides that round two will begin straight away. He feels that his consumption of the world and its treasures needs more of a voice.
“Speaking of cultural immersion,” he starts, stepping up the action, “remember South Eastern Australia, honey?”
“Yes, yes, that was such an experience! Remember the two native boys?”
“Lord, the native boys! Now that was something so many people never get to do.”
Martha looks at Steve lovingly and then turns back to their well-traveled friends to tell of what will obviously be a brilliant memory of something brilliant.
“We’ve seen a lot in our time,” she begins with a humble sigh, “but our three months in Australia really opened our eyes to just how enchanting different parts of the world can be.”
Steve adjusts his shorts, ruffles his neat accountant hair with his fingers, and then takes on the story. Martha simply smiles like a stuffed animal. Gerry and Sarah both sit up to listen.
“Obviously we did all the cliché tourist stuff; Sydney and its Opera house, Uluru, or Ayers Rock as the Indians call it. We did it all, like real amateurs. But one day we really stepped out of the comfort zone of tourism. As we hiked through some of the outback, we came across these two little native boys playing with some kind of little rabbit or something. It doesn’t really matter what it was. Anyway, we knew straight away that this was so real, no travel agent could have brought us this moment.
“So without really hesitating, I took Martha’s hand in mine and, with my free hand, took out my pocket knife. I then kicked the nearest boy onto the ground, who could only have been ten or eleven, and jumped on him. That kick really must have knocked the wind out of him, boy oh boy, because he barely even struggled when I got down on top of him. With the blade at his throat, I shouted at the second kid and told him to take off his clothes. He clearly understood, although it never occurred to me what language Australian Indians really speak. It was probably because I would have killed his little buddy, you know, that’s probably why he was so compliant.”
Both Martha and Sarah shake their heads. Martha does so with delight, as if vividly recasting the memories in her mind, while Sarah is simply in sheer disbelief, trying to hide her jealousy. Their new friends had experienced something they hadn’t. They would have to make sure to go to Australia. Steve continues.
“But yeah, whimpering, with tears streaming down his face, the boy took off the rags that he was wearing. He was filthy really, hands and feet covered in dust –“
“And that’s when I grabbed him,” Martha jumps in vigorously, smiling from ear to ear, making the actions of grabbing a small child like a twig.
“You sure did, honey! So, from there it was just so fulfilling. I really fucked that first kid, real good, with the knife up to his throat, while his friend watched. He didn’t move or scream or nothing, the whole time. He was tight as a lock at first but, well, he loosened up. The second kid put up more of a struggle, and I kinda had to hit him a bit to calm him down. Martha really enjoyed it, didn’t you, honey? I mean, you really haven’t lived until you’ve raped native Australian youths.”
Gerry looks calmly out towards the evening sun with an incredulous smile on his face, silently communicating his kudos to the man opposite him. He hastily racks his brains, trying to think of what their travels had given them, something that could compete with raping two small aboriginal boys. All he could think of was when he and his wife fed a poor Thai man to his goat on their honeymoon. Martha chuckles, rubbing it in politely.
“Unfortunately it was all a bit spur of the moment, you know when culture just slaps you in the face like that. We only got a couple of pictures in the end, the first kid never got up so we took some of him. Pity the second boy ran away, he was such a sweet boy. And we brought home a real life didgeridoo too!”
“And,” laughs Gerry, “and people say that Australia is a cultural black hole? Well, not, ah, you know what I mean!”
Keeping up her happy façade, necking Prosecco like milk of magnesia, Sarah sighs with delight for their luck. She concedes.
“Oh my goodness, that is crazy! You have to email me those pictures! I would love to see them.”
Raising his pint of stout, Gerry salutes his friends.
“Steve, you truly are the king of kings! What do you say to a cheers for that? Everyone have a glass?”
The waiter passes by and jokingly congratulates his customers on whatever the occasion is. Sarah pinches his gooch lovingly, as only someone else’s mother can, while the rest raise their glasses.
“Sláinte,” says the waiter, complicit in their consumption, struggling with his own mauvais fois, hoping they tip well, wondering if his mates would think it was funny if he had the English woman. She looks really well for her age.
“Sláinte,” they chorus. They all rummage around for change for their host’s tip. The waiter accepts and walks over to another customer.
* * *
Back at Notre Dame, Carly sucks off a freshman business student, some guy two years her junior, a cousin of somebody on the football team. Noah, Carly’s youngest brother, rolls a fat one and lights up his first day at college with some friends. He looks at his phone. Jason, his older brother, the middle child, has sent him a text message to say his friend is getting his dick wet with some drunk senior at a frat party they’re at. He doesn’t know who she is yet he says, but that he can hear her slurping in the next room. Lol.
* * *
Dave drops his two kids, six and eight, back home. They’ve just finished after school football training. He kisses his wife and tells her that he’s off to the gym. He’ll be back at about 8pm. Ten minutes later he is on the phone to a Polish employee telling him that he doesn’t care how sick his wife is; if he doesn’t come to work tomorrow he shouldn’t bother coming in any other day either.
Five minutes after that he pulls into a neat suburban driveway like his own. The door opens before he gets there. He smiles at the girl and goes inside. She closes the door.
July 12, 2010 | Categories: Cultural, Fiction, Nations, Observation, Political, Social, Travel | Tags: Cultural Consumption, Holidays, Rape, Tourism, Travel | Leave A Comment »
