Getting into Pictures

It’s a shock when you go to the pictures to see ‘The Reader’ because there, on the screen, albeit heavily disguised, is Kate Winslet doing her day job. So ubiquitous is she in the prints and matrices that it is easy to equate her with those whose day job is simply being seen, at night, entering and leaving clubs, unbaggaged by any previous history of achievement. In a banal inversion her work as an actress in movies becomes a way of getting her photographs in newspapers. If, therefore, you want to get into newspapers, all you have to do is become a successful actress. How hard can that be?

Kate, as I like to think of her, is an actress of substance yet, as a denizen of the least important pages of any print publication currently in existence, becomes readily interchangeable with Peaches and Kelly and is thereby strongly associated with the fascination (I use the word guardedly) of pure presence. This isn’t something clever: it involves being without doing (i.e. breathing) and is the product of a process of deracination launched in the Thatcherist 80s when ideas about the nature of individualism, borrowed in part from 60s notions of ‘the beautiful person’ (i.e. one whose (imagined) essence is more apparent than their personality) were hystericised to the point that distinctiveness was valued more than value.

This baldness of being was the cynical complement to the process of asset stripping the employment future that young people had previously assumed was theirs to negotiate. In the absence of conventional markers for identity it became important to provide an economy version that licensed the user to ‘be somebody’ merely by stating that they were somebody. In one sense, of course, we are all somebody. In the hypnotised version that isn’t enough: we must feel that we are special despite the fact that we might just be disposable. It isn’t just that you become somebody by telling people that you are somebody – you must believe that they believe you. A deal can be struck: I will believe that you are somebody if you will believe that I am somebody.

25.02.2009

What Was Said

Driving west along the M4 in the early 70s with Ian. He says “You’re very close to that car in front.” I say “Yeah.” He says “What if his brake lights weren’t working?” I had never had a thought like that. I had had anxious thoughts but none with the special intricacy of Ian’s thought. A whole new way of looking at the world – a dull way – opened up. You could be in a situation which contained the potential for risk – take any situation, for example – and you could analyse its components with a view to identifying weaknesses that could precipitate disaster.

This is, of course, not without its merits. However, as I have observed, it is dull. That the snippet often comes to mind is, however, mildly unsettling. It suggests that one is cruising off the coast of a very worrying place. On the plus side, I suppose, is the fact that sometimes when I’m driving along the motorway the thought comes up and I brake slightly in order to recede from a car in front. This has to be a good thing.

05.02.2009

This Will Teach You

At a nearby table in the pub two women, one early twenties one early thirties, are dining on burgers and chips. Beside the younger woman, in a high chair, is her pretty child of perhaps ten months. The mother, as I took it, turns to her friend and says “Look at this.” She holds up a chip near her baby girl’s mouth then withdraws it. She pushes it forward again then withdraws it. The child bursts into tears. The mother smiles and continues with her meal. Some minutes later she gives the girl a chip.

Educational. From the Latin educare, to bring up or rear and the Latin educere, to lead out. The latter is a compound of ex, out and ducere, to lead.

05.02.2009

The Mind

The manager of Strength Weekly would like to apologise for the lack of posts over the last calendar month. This was due to the editor’s mind becoming empty. The process of everyday thinking was not suspended so much as diluted. His thoughts were unexceptional. He considered presenting unexceptional thoughts in a way that would somehow excuse or disguise their lack of exceptionality. It was found that even thoughts of this especially ordinary nature were not forthcoming. This is not to say that things were not happening. Many things were happening. Interesting things.

05.02.2009