-
Last edited by Guest; 06-02-12, 18:49. -
......I found this play reasonably easy to follow. It was nicely structured and quite well paced. I thought it could have been slightly less sweary but then I'm generally out of step with the consensus on that matter. It was also a bit like a soap opera. This was clearly intended and for that reason, among others, some might think that it should not have been on Radio 3.
The first story - I was struck by how effectively the play identified links between personal background and politicized culture. In the first story, the feminists' opposition to men became more vehement because of recent obsessions. There was a greater expectation that men should do more around the house and more anger when this didn't happen. There was some understandable paranoia about the Yorkshire Ripper. Somewhere between the perceived domestic laziness of him indoors and the wild and frankly bizarre aggression of one individual, all men became depicted as threatening and constraining. This in turn could only be addressed by distancing and violence apparently. And yet what we heard was that the principal character had been physically constrained by illness from childhood. It seemed to me that what were unfortunate circumstances in respect of health had simply been translated up into a bigger picture of gender-based politics. Politics is undoubtedly culpable for many ills but it is not necessarily responsible for all interpretation. The youthful, being closest to their own pasts, often need to displace them into representation. For what it is worth, my own view is that a certain kind of person rises to abusive power. It is alive and well in each gender and every race, religion and sexual orientation. The evidence for this is overwhelming and it is the only meaningful dividing line for difference.
Playwright - Alice Nutter
The second story - In the second story, the male partner of the first character becomes embroiled in the miners' strike. Just as the first is conflicted - she has returned from living at the women's centre for the sake of the young son and learnt to live with her partner, albeit with stresses - so is he. He never had much time for mining as a job and what were often its devastating health impacts. He supports the miners though because at least mining is a job where otherwise there would be unemployment. It has also been central to community. Still, one gets the impression that much of community has already been lost because of economic hardships and difficulties in absorbing cultural change. It is all very well for academic leaning decision makers and programme makers to advance new freedoms. From decade to decade, they have shown very little inclination to comprehend how those are to be managed by people on average incomes or on benefits. As it turns out, this character in the play also has a background that provides a specific personal reason why he hates a certain kind of power. It is about rather more than the proposed closure of the mines. Nevertheless, having been in the North in the early 1980s, this part of the play had the biggest impact on me. In fact, another of its characters was at the university I attended and when I did so. The strike was influential on those with feeling.
The third story - The third story is of their son in the late 1980s. Earlier he had helped to bring home to his father what the full role of the police had been in the strike, not that he had doubted it politically. One of the most shivering aspects of that period had been the way in which those who stood to gain from others' losses gloated. I remember it well - that sarcasm among parts of the police force which encouraged escalation - and in many respects it symbolizes how this country is where it is now. While fairly bright, the son ends up in a drugs fuelled rave culture hoping as he says to be young forever. There is the sense that he has seen enough of adult reality to last a lifetime. Good old society has, of course, popped up just in time to encourage further downfall. If politics ever seems to become more benign, you can always guarantee that culture will fill the hiatus. He is essentially with the travellers but in that hedonistic neverland the boundaries between the money makers and the rest are hazy. There are plenty of smart suits driving in sports cars to the fields. They want to have their cake and eat it. In this respect, again, the play rang true. The ones who seek effectively to establish rights via showy disregard are those who are seven eighths of the way there already.
Chumbawamba - Tubthumping
The fourth story - The third and the fourth stories went on a bit too long for me. Both sometimes seemed confusing but perhaps the grimness was making me weary. As I understood it, the latter was the story of the daughter who had bought in to the modern lifestyle, shopping at John Lewis as if there were no tomorrow, a nice unaffordable house in a good neighbourhood, an apparently reliable but boring husband. This predictably also goes pear shaped and in a highly dramatic way. There are glimpses of the former character once the party in the fields has ended. He has celebrated his fortieth birthday by taking a "recreation" drug with the wider family all doing the same. Meanwhile another is in London protesting against the money merchants. The need for protest seems perennial. It is never effective in whichever way it is done and it is a double whammy in which families are bludgeoned back and forth. Peoples' lives are blighted by the systems in which we live and frequently because of problems in their own backgrounds, some but not all systemic. The key is perhaps to be knowingly naive. The system might not be at all helpful now but in an ideal world it would be. In other words, keep hoping to the grave but never bank on it unless you want the former to come early.
......I can't say that I enjoyed it much. There was little in the content to be enjoyed. Perhaps like anyone, I can see my own susceptibilities in some of the situations. I am aware how certain things, good and bad, happened to me. At the same time, there is a natural impulse in me to become orderly, however much life becomes horribly haphazard. That is in my background and a way of trying to manage anxiety. I am always staggered by how some people live their domestic lives. The play reinforced this feeling. However independent many think they want to be - and when in hardship they tend to express it in no uncertain terms - they are often reliant on people who can't support them. That is the problem with reliance rather than reliance per se. Hence I believe they make themselves even more vulnerable to the inherent violence in the systems inflicted on us all, be they political or cultural. While a more solitary state has its own suitcase of problems, personally I couldn't cope with British conflict if it were also in the home.Last edited by Guest; 08-02-12, 02:08. -
Swearing
I am on your side when it comes to swearing.
I turn the radio off at the first swearword.
I worked in a factory with all men so I know how to swear, believe me.
But I do not want it at home.
Personally, I think it is bourgeois socialists wanting "a-bit-of-rough".
They have loads of money, went to public school etc and assuage their guilt by affecting a sympathing with the working class.
Listening to swearing on R3 makes them feel that they are "doing-something" and it has the advantage that it doesn't cost them anything!
Also, gives them something to talk about at dinner parties.
EricComment
-
Eric - Thank you for these comments. I don't wholly disagree. Swearing is prevalent in so-called alternative comedy but having been sworn at by a Conservative MP I think it unites types rather than categories. Working class Conservatives in my own family didn't swear until the generations that rented videos from America. By contrast, some of the Royals are well known for it. For me, much depends on context. Grit seemed right to an extent for this play which reminded me a little of the writing of Kelman. He really goes to town with it in novels and does so very effectively. I just doubt that it was all needed, or apt, for a Sunday programme on R3. By the way, welcome to this site. I hope you find it interesting and will want to comment regularly. Best regards - Lat.Last edited by Guest; 08-02-12, 02:31.Comment
-
Lat - thanks for your comprehensive description. I'm a bit stumped on what I really felt about this collation of generations of protest portrayed through a family and lives portrayed through snippets of social history. It was interesting in the sense that I found myself thinking "what was I doing and thinking at that time?", and this distracted me from the (largely unsympathetic) characters being portrayed: I couldn't identify myself with any of them, they seem to be too obviously agitprop voicepieces for the comprehensive ticklist of prevailing issues the playwright was keen to cover.
RussComment
Comment