Some astute readers of my blog may remember that Weekend was the film we tried to see in Paris, but the Pompidou centre ballsed the screening up. It kept repeating, although I was very amused by the fact that most people in the audience did not seem to realise that something was wrong. Anyway, in preparation for the forthcoming academic year, I decided to buy four or five Godard films, and this morning I sat down to watch Weekend.

I suppose I owe my ludditry to modern, cynical, culture. I could barely make head nor tale of that film, and it struck me as a very bizarre piece of work. I was also in stitches of laughter several times, especially when one man, bearing a bush and a pistol, claimed to be the offspring of a homosexual relationship between Alexander Dumas and God. I know this film is meant to mean something, and you’re meant to think about it, but it struck me as just plain silly.

I feel like such an infidel in writing this. to be sure, there is a lot of philosophy in this film. At one point, two bin men recount the history of race relations and civilisation. Reading the subtitles, I could gleam most, but not all, of what was said, and it did seem interesting. But is this film the right place for such a discourse? That, surely, is a good question. Certainly it is post-modern in it’s mixing of media; the juxtaposition of the words and the social status of those saying them made a very astute point about class, a topic which the discourse itself touched upon. Yet by including this segment in his film, Godard breaks away with all traditional ideas of narrative structure: in what other media, be it film, book, or whatever, I the narrative broken in such a way.

Thus it is clear that Godard was playing with such concepts. Why shouldn’t a film include discourses on philosophy? Indeed, where it is written that the very concept of the shot cannot be played with as Godard does with this film, for example breaking up the flow of the music. The characters seem to acknowledge that they’re in a film even, and a silly one at that. Godard’s genius was that he played with the idea of film itself, making it quite clear that the ‘rules’ of film, unlike that of language, are extremely weak. Thus, despite at first appearing to be rather silly (would someone tell me why there were crashed cars everywhere), Weekend, like most other films by Godard, are actually rather exciting, in that they open the field of possibilities up, away from the shooting styles of Hollywood.

I was reading through comments yesterday, and the last few sentences of my aunt Dinah’s comment (or my uncles translation thereof – btw thanks uncle Aki)  in response to this entry caught my eye ” But in any case, every work (book, painting, ballet, play or film) is only half completed until it has been “consumed”. It is the reader, the spectator, or the user of a media that truly completes the artistic production. The way a work is received is very important and changes at each playing or performance. Even identical copies of a film are seen differently at each playing. The same goes for reading books and plays.” While in no way do I mean to imply that I do not agree with the rest of what my aunt wrote, this point in particular interests me, for it cuts to the core of all art.

What, exactly, is art without eyes to witness it? After all, a painting is just pigment on canvas, and a novel is just lines on a page until someone sees it. Art needs human cognition to make it real, more than the sum of it’s parts. Similarly, all things need eyes to gaze upon them, as well as words to speak of them, to be made real. If I write the word tree, an image of a tree pops into your mind, which was not there before; thus, for all intents and purposes, the word called that tree into being. However, as de Sasseur notes, the relationship between sign and signified is arbitrary, so the tree in my mind may be different to the one in yours; moreover, if you say ‘tree’ to the same person at different times, different trees come to mind.

Similar things happen in art. It is most obvious, I suppose, with writing. My image of the places and characters in a book will be different to someone else’s. give two children the same piece of prose, and then ask them to draw a picture of a character, and their pictures will be different. While this may not be so obvious in other art forms, where the relationship between sign and signified may be closer, the same broad principals apply. Thus, texts themselves can be said to be constantly changing, even though the words on the page remain the same, since any text needs human cognition to exist.

If I can now go back to my short essay on whether film is a text or a performance, we now see the line between the two is blurred, since both are in an equal state of flux. This, as Chris says, is postmodern, as postmodernism seems to question the very existence of truth. Thus, if all texts are in flux, why cannot it be valid to remake films. (putting aside the fact that nearly all such films are dire, that is.)

Just as, in my opinion at least, one should read the novels of Ernest Hemingway in the context of his life, one should watch the films of Goddard with one eye on the context of the new wave. This was a very interesting period in the short history of film making: it was an effort to break away from Hollywood’s firm grip on the industry. Both financially and aesthetically, mainstream Hollywood film-makers ruled the roost, so in the early sixties European film-makers like Godard and Trufaut set about making a new type of film, just as Llars von Trier did much later with Dogme.

One need only to go to the local cinema to see that both thesse projects failed – the Hollywood high-concept movie, with it’s emphasis on visual spectacle, is virtually the only thing on our screens. No doubt this was in large part due to finance, but I am also beginning to suspect that aesthetics played a part in the downfall of the new wave too.

This morning I watched pierrot le fou by Godard. It was the first new-wave film which I managed to watch properly, and it seemed very alien and disjointed. Having said that, it went some way to confirming the ideas of Christian Metz in that, dispite its disjointedness, it remained readable, suggesting that film cannot be a language. However, the ‘grammar’ Godard employs (and I use the term loosely, as filmic grammar is a highly complex subject; it is a very ethereal entity) is rather odd. He seems to play with ideas of character and time, so that the viewer never quite knows what is going on, or which part of the story he is watching. Indeed, the film is about two people fleeing through France, but I personally was never quite sure what they had supposedly done. It was clear that they had done this deed at a party at the beginning of the film, but this party was being filmed in such aa way – with the film suddenly being shot through red or blue lenses at random intervals, that it was virtually impossible to tell what was happening.

Moreover, Godard seems to like cutting to seemingly random events, like men telling stories of how they woo their girlfriends. He also played with the soundtrack, so music would cut off suddenly. For one raised on the seemless editing of the Hollywood mainstream, this was all very disconcerting.

The effect of all this, I think it fair to say, is comic. It put me in mind of the Monty Python films, and there is no doubt that Godard intended to be funny. While I see no problem with this, it begs the question of why Gilliam is not ranked along side Godard. The answer, of course, is one of legacy: through being comic, Godard experimented with editing. To him, we owe much of the grammar of film – for example, the jump cut is largely attributed to him. Things that Godard created and experimented with were later taken up by the mainstream. Things as trivial today as location shooting were then unheard of in Hollywood.

To our eyes, French New Wave films seem alien; they aren’t part of our regular viewing diets. Yet, without them – without the techniques their directors pioneered the modern cinema would barely exist as we know it.

We just got back from London. As I have said before, it’s always nice to see my grandmother: she’s pushing eighty, but she can still whoop everyone at cards. Christina was there too, and it was good to see her again.

However, on Saturday we – that is, Luke myself and our parents – went too visit my aunt Jill and her family in Hastings. We do not manage to get down there, so ii was quite to see my cousin’s son, Jake, tottering about on two legs. I remember him being a baby, but he is now aged 18 months ld and very mobile. He also talks a lot, although he has no coherent words yet, so what he says is a babble which sounds like language but is incomprehensible. No doubt words will soon follow, and then Jake’s parents and grandparents probably won’t be able to get a word on edgeways. I was also surprised by Jake’s dexterity – it’s already better than mine.

With a bit of luck, aunt Jill et al. will be coming up to see us in a few months. I wonder what Jake will be doing by then.

Recently I have been pondering the status of film. Can a film be seen as equivalent to a novel, or is it more akin to a performance of a play? On artistic and academic circles, the word ‘text’ is awarded not just to writing, but anything artistic and creative; here – and this is a personal preference – I take text to mean anything original, new, and created. There can only be one ‘text’ on anything.

This is, to my mind, different from performances. To be sure, performances are (more often than not) based on text. For example, a performance of Hamlet is based upon the text as written by Shakespeare. However, performances change: no to productions are alike; indeed, plays are often different from night to night – actors are prone to varying their style. Of course, this is as it should be, and the more performances of the same play one sees, the more one cam gleam from a text. In contrasting how one actor plays a character in contrast to another actor playing the same character, we learn more about that character. By no means does one invalidate the other.

But which category does film fall under? Film is a text in that, like novels, they are original yet unchanging. They are recorded artefacts: that is, like books or paintings you can put them on the shelf and they do not change. Thus, that which one sees – the shot – is rather like the words on a page. Yet, like performances, films can be re-made. At first, I had a problem with this: you wouldn’t re-write a novel with the same characters, plot etc but use different words. That would be silly, not to say plagiarism. Then I realised that, in this sense, film more closely resembled a performance. Thus the modern version of the ‘Italian job’ is as valid as, and could even be seen in relation to, the classic version.

Yet something about this makes me slightly uncomfortable. Where does it leave directors? They cannot be seen as true auteurs if they are not making something truly original. This is not to say that such people have no creativity, or that what they produce is any less valid. Plays have to be perpetually re-made due to their very nature, but films live on. Is it necessary to re-make old films? Is it artistically valid? I cannot decide completely; re-makes can be useful when read in relation to the original, but most of the time it seems they’re just ”wannabe’ films trying to steal past glories.

my internal debate nevertheless rages

It seems to me that we are becoming a nation of xenophobes. Community cohesion is breaking down along ethnic lines. We all heard, I am sure, about the two men booted off a plane on Tuesday, and I strongly suspect it was simply because of their skin tone and age – they looked like stereotypical terrorists. This is, to be sure, a rather scary time, but the moment we start questioning multiculturalism is the moment we lose our own cultural identity.

I blame David Cameron. His attempt to make xenophobia seem reasonable acted to increase interethnic tension in this country, for by calling for a debate on immigration would have made members of ethnic minorities feel unwelcome. It was like saying ‘we do not want any more of you lot coming here.” This would have made such people feel isolated, acting against community cohesion. In other words, by framing a debate along arbitrary divisions, he acted to increase those divisions. I think this is partly responsible for the incident on the plane.

When did we become a nation of xenophobes?

If anyone ever doubted that literature could cut to the very quick of the human soul, they should read Conrad’s Heart of darkness. It exposes the depravity of human thought in it’s portrait of Kurtz, the racist white supremacist whose eloquence makes him great. What is interesting is that this book was written in 1902, before the horrors of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and all the other Kurtzes came to the fore. Thus it may once have been a warning, but now it seems a lament.

Of course, some academics, such as Chinua Achebe point out that Conrad himself is racist. I can certainly see their point: black people are depicted in this book as not human; at many times I was revolted by Conrad’s descriptions. Yet Marlowe is even more appalled by Kurtz, which, for me, blurs things slightly. I do not think Conrad was being racist – when you put it in the context of the era in which it was written – and, in his condemnation of Kurtz, may have been exactly the opposite, in a way. A single reading is hardly a good basis for such things though.

The full text is online here.

The first episode of little miss Jocelyn is available to watch online here. At first I started to analyse it (it’s getting to be habit of mine). I couldn’t decide whether the programme was racist or not: this programme made use of large amounts of racial stereotypes, so the question is: is this programme making use of those stereotypes to make us laugh, or using them to point out the absurdity of such things. After all these characters are obviously caricatures.

Anyway, then I saw the sketch with the baby (near the end), fell about laughing, and analysis went out the window.

From my recent browsing around the internet – specifically the site I linked to yesterday – it is becoming apparent to me that many conservative Americans do not like academia. They accuse it of being too liberal, as if liberal were an insult rather than a position. They dislike, it seems, post-Copernican science, and the break down of the believe that one can be absolutely certain of something.

Academia, I seems to me, is an ever-lasting debate. One researcher proposes a theory, which is countered by another, and another. The truth is entirely down to perspective; thus, we can never know absolute truth despite the fact we are forever moving closer towards it. His, to me is logical, and as it should be. But to a conservative brought up, perhaps, with the absolute certainties of religion, this is probably very scary. This is why, I think, they are attacking academia; it is why, as Mark rightly pointed out in the comments section of my previous post, they are so insecure.

Moreover, mark is also right when he says ”[American conservatives] have to try to stamp their crooked ideology onto every cultural outlet, and can’t bear the fact that the intelligentsia is overwhelmingly liberal-minded even though the conservatives are (by default) the ones who hold the reigns of power.” Yet I see an irony in this: in positing a contrasting view, are they not, by definition, entering into the same never-ending academic debate which they seem to dislike? The truth can never be absolute because it is perpetually argued over. Thus, their position is paradoxical: they want a certainty of truth which can only (theoretically) be imposed by entering into a framework which negates any such possibility.

A similar paradox is at the centre of creationism: the proponents of this belief want it to replace science, but to get this achieved they have to enter into the scientific debate structure. Hence, in both cases they inadvertently become part of the debate they actually want to do away with, which is why both are doomed to failure. They say academic debate is unnecessary, and want to replace it with an absolutism, but in doing so they enter into the debate. They cannot help but re-enforce the thing they want to do away with.

It is this absolutism, I think, which gives rise to American patriotism, although you could have a good chicken-and-egg debate here. Nevertheless, the logic that ”there is no truth save ours” will duly give rise to an over-confidence in one’s belief system, government system. To concede that there are opinions other than one’s own, which are equally valid, is to concede that one may be wrong. This is why I think the essay I linked to yesterday was written by a conservative American: he could not conceive of a future not ruled by his beliefs; it is why he was attacking star trek, misguidedly accusing it of Fascism – it dared to posit a world where his belief system was not in command, thereby proposing that the American system may be flawed, and we can’t have that, can we? With it’s view of inter-planetary harmony, Star Trek was anything but fascist, as star fleet was devoted to science rather than conquest, but the writer off this text could not allow any idyllic vision of the future to exist without it’s being under rightist American terms.

If there’s one thing that winds me up about such people, it is their belief that their way is best, and will always be so. It seems very arrogant. In writing this, I know I am only presenting my opinion, which others may disagree with. It’s why I have the ‘comments’ screen. Opinion is the closest thing we have to the truth; depending on the evidence supporting them, some opinions carry more weight than others. Hence absolute truth can never be attained, but this should not stop us trying.

This was written, clearly, by an American conservative. It is sneering and arrogant in it’s belief that capitalism is always better. The point of star trek was that it was scientific and objective – something seemingly foreign to a conservative. I must agree that there are too few minority peoples represented in Star trek, as with all media, but I do not think this makes the programme fascist. I think, rather, that, writing from a conservative American perspective, the author of this text cannot abide the idea of a future which does not reflect his beliefs. He cannot accept a future devoid of capitalism and religion, and thus attacks anything where all-American values do not reign supreme. Thus, while it does contain some good food for thought – and criticism of this kind should always be encouraged – I find this text highly ill-conceived and flawed.

There is nothing that illuminates humanity more than her fiction; and, perhaps, none that illuminates it in such a way than science fiction. In it, as through a glass, we see ourselves. Not just ourselves, but our ambitions, our hopes, and our fears. Fiction is thus more real than any asinine reality TV show

I was just watching star trek tng on bbc2. it is imbedded with an optimism peculiar to the late eighties: the hope that humanity can become more than what it is today; the hope that we can unite. The hope, the most profound hope that humankind will one day work together as one.

Nothing sheds more light on ourselves than the tales we tell. TNG seemed to know it. This is why,, I think, it referenced so many other fictions, especially classical literature. We see Picard quoting Shakespeare regularly, for it is in Shakespeare that we see ourselves most clearly. Thus, TNG seems to relish, not just in the tale but in it’s telling. And it is in that telling that we find the human spirit itself.

It may or may not be a coincidence that Patrick Stewart is currently playing Prospero – to whom Picard alluded many times – in Stratford-Upon-Avon. I should go watch.

I’ve been reading Metz again. This morning, I was amazed, and rather chuffed, to find that I had already mused over many of the ideas included in his books. Yesterday, I decided that one of the major differences between film and writing is that writing always requires a human who follows a set of fairly rigid rules. In writing this, I am pressing buttons on my keyboard according t the principles of spelling and grammar.. I would have to do this whatever I wrote. I could only break away from these rules if I were to stop using letters or words: that would be to scribble on a piece of paper, which would produce no meaning.

On the other hand, you could point a camera at anything, press record, and it would still make sense. A ninety minute tape of the CCTV recordings in Tesco would sill be a film, albeit quite a dull one. Dad, over morning coffee, suggested an equivalent might be to write cabbage many times on a piece of paper, but this analogy is flawed in that A) the word cabbage makes meaning according to rules of spelling, requiring a human presence, and B) unlike the CCTV film, such a page would make no sense. Thus, in film, you cannot ‘scribble’: you cannot help but make sense. Thus film is below the level of a language. Moreover, as Metz points out, this also means that filmic grammar is entirely superfluous: the CCCTV film still makes sense without cutting or editing of any kind. On the other hand, written language needs structure, as we all know.

As I approach the end of this book, I’m realising that Metz is answering questions I had intended to pose in my PhD. The linguistic approach to film is moot thanks to his work. This is kind of cool, because I can work using Metz as a starting point. He ma have thoroughly charted the linguistic paradigm, proving it a dead end, but structuralism is far from dead. Metz does not deal with the shot itself, rather he concentrates on the grammar of editing. But it is how shots are composed themselves, as well as their relationship to editing, which interests me. It is here, I believe, that work is yet to be done.

Prescot called bushbaby ‘crap’. even if it’s untrue, Prescot [i]should[/i]have said it. mind you, dubya is worse than crap. He, like most republicans, seems to have absolutely no understanding of the world whatsoever. many of them seem to think islam is an amalagous whole and the religion is ‘evil’.

idiots.

link

I admit this is hardly blogworthy news, but I think it’s cool. My dad and I were in Macclesfield today, getting Defiant fixed, and we passed a pub by the name of the Old Ship. To dads surprise I shrieked with the coolness: there, on the picture-board, was not a sailing vessel, but a Starship. Constitution class. NCC-1701. The Enterprise. star trek has now become so ingrained in popular culture that we are now naming pubs after them. Lmao!

Last night E4 aired the film ‘promises’ (Bolado and Goldberg, 2001). This is a documentary in which the filmmakers followed a number of Israeli and Palestinian children for three years. By turns it is both dismaying and heart warming. Some of these kids felt only hatred for their counterparts, no doubt having been fed such bile from teachers and religious leaders. Yet others were more accepting. Perhaps the greatest part of the film was when the two groups met and realised that most of their preconceptions were wrong.

There is no getting around the fact that the middle east situation is very complex. If you ask me, it all boils down to religion and the arbitrary divisions it makes between us. Yet if the situation is ever going to be solved, it is schemes like this, which focus on young minds not so engrained with the petty hatreds of their elders, which will do it.

Generally speaking, there are a few things which make me truly happy. The first is books – I love settling down to a good book of an afternoon and relaxing into another world. The next is film – nothing makes me squeal more than watching my favourite filmic heroes kick arse on screen. The next is travel – it’s as if the very acct of movement calms my soul.

There are others, of course – a beer of an evening; writing in the mornings, just after breakfast – but of these things none pleases me more than cricket. Watching that most noble and beautiful game is like nothing else on earth. Nothing can be more English as watching a game unfold over an afternoon.

Nor can there be anything better than watching such a game with my father. Now, I grant you my dad can be a cantankerous old pest at times, but he is my father and I know I can always depend on him. We went to a cricket match yesterday: a friend of his had told him about a cricket match being played in Chester between a welsh disabled cricket team and one from Cheshire, and had invited us along. So, we loaded the defiant into my van and, listening to radio 4 as we went, set off for Chester.

I had a great time! They were playing n a very well-kept pitch, by an old lane surrounded by fields. There was a pavilion, and the lack of a bar did not matter since, after the excesses of Friday night I gave up alcohol for a week as of Saturday morning. Most of the players were ambulant, being possessed of what I’d call ‘mild impediments, by and large. The standard was very good, and the 40-over match was shaping up to be a close game when we had to leave and return in time for tea. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun, talking to people, making friends and working out average. It was, as the parlance goes, ‘all good’. I certainly hope to go to more such games with dad in the future.

Luke just sent me this brilliant, if slightly scary, video on atheists. It shows the sheer lunacy of growwing religiocity in America; to link religion to patriotism is something very dangerous indeed, and something we should all be worried about.

I must admit I’m only half way through Metz. It’s a fairly difficult book, full of technical language, and I keep having to re-read parts so I understand it. Nevertheless, it’s fascinating although he tends to repeat himself.

However, it is quite apparent to me now that film is not language. For one, it has no equivalent of ‘words’ – the shot being to complex and infinite in variety. Metz points out that shots are more like sentences, but for me this allusion is lacking too. Lone shots must be combined with others to make meaning; a shot alone caries very little meaning.

This, and other reasons have convinced me that I need to abandon the idea of film as a language. However, the question of filmic grammar continues to nag. Watch any two films coming out of Hollywood and you will see the director using similar camera techniques. The question now is how entrenched is this grammar? At what point do films cease to make sense?

This is a cool question, as it raises the prospect of doing some neat experiments.

I was watching Newsnight last night and…

Hold on; that date rings a bell…what is it? International goldfish day? The beginning of the Chinese year of the carrot? Oh, I remember! It’s the ginger one’s birthday!

Seriously though, my brother mark is the cleverest guy I know. He’s also one of the kindest. As children, we had many happy times together, although, as the oldest sibling, it seemed to be his prerogative to cheat in our games (don’t think I didn’t notice bro!) Nevertheless, I hereby wish him the best of birthdays!

Perhaps one of the largest problems with being a voca user, in my opinion, is getting people to understand you. That is to say, getting people to realise that what you are typing into your machine is a coherent message which you want a person to respond to. Many a time I have, say, rolled into a shop, tapped a request onto my lightwriter, only to be stared at blankly, or, worse, seen the assistant turn to another customer and say ‘what does he want?’

This really does get me annoyed. By and large, most people ‘get it’: they realise that my hands are pressing buttons on my lightwriter to produce a message, and respond accordingly. Everyone at university realised it intuitively, but some people – mostly but not wholly old women – seem to refuse to accept I can make coherent sentences. Vocas are wonderful thing, but they can only work if people realise their function, so to speak. No matter how many times I repeat or retype my message in different ways, some people seem to be unable to accept my intelligence, and so ignore my lightwriter.

Joking aside, this could be a major problem, and one that needs to be taken up elsewhere. I believe people in the public sector should be introduced to the concept of vocas; what if I had to talk to a police man and was equally banked? As I say, most people seem to cope with my lightwriter without a problem, but questions remain over what if they don’t. I believe this problem should be raised elsewhere, but I’m posting about it here first before taking it further.

I hope you all understand.

watched with great interest an article last night on Newsnight which outlined how the Reuters agency inadvertently published a photo which had been doctored. The photo was of the Beirut skyline, and had been amended with darker clouds to add drama. In itself, this is indeed interesting, as it is an explicit example of how we, the public can be and are being manipulated. However, what interested me even more is how Reuters found out about this.

Apparently, the news agency was alerted to the fact that one of it’s images had been manipulated by bloggers. That is to say, a person keeping a blog had spotted the telltale signs of Photoshop manipulation and posted about it. Unfortunately, Newsnight did not say which blog posted this first, but what interests me is how internet weblogs are fast becoming a political force.

Many people noted the role bloggers played in the most recent American elections; it seems that blogging will soon hold as much political clout as televisions or newspaper, if it does not already do so. Moreover, it seems a very democratic media: absolutely anyone can keep a blog. Yes, you need a computer, a domain et ceterah, but these costs are minute when compared to the cost and effort involved in publishing, or broadcasting n television, where one is liable to be vetted by an editor.

Indeed, one can say anything on a blog. Never before has one had as much freedom to speak his views; nor has it ever been so likely that those views will be seen by others. If one does not like what a blogger says, either he registers his grievances in the comments section, where the anonymity of a pseudonym ensures he does not have to hold back, or he can stop reading. Thus the so-called blogverse is a perfect place for debate.

Even more interestingly, politicians and the people in the traditional media are taking notice of what bloggers say; indeed they participate themselves, with many members of parliament and journalists keeping blogs themselves. What, then, are we seeing here? Is political power dispersing itself via the internet? Power seems to be shifting to the proletariat, or at least those of the proletariat who have computers. Before the advent of blogging, the average Joe had little outlet for his views, save perhaps the occasional letter to the local paper; now, however, if something enrages him, he can easily air his views by ‘blogging it’.

One could argue that blogging is a placatory solution – something given to the masses to give him the illusion of more political power while being essentially harmless. Thus blogs may be seen as outlets for political frustrations but essentially amount to nothing: a blog entry can never replace a riot.

Yet last night’s Newsnight article shows this not to be the case; politicians and journalists are indeed taking notice of bloggers. Now, I seriously doubt any such people will read my blog; I think my readership consists of mostly friends and family. Nevertheless, TIIROAC aside, it seems the blogverse is becoming a force to be reckoned with, the proletariat did not seize the printing presses after all, but just built their own.

I watched ‘prehistoric park’ on Saturday. I seldom watch ITV, and to begin with I dismissed it as crass, but in retrospect I concede it does have some virtues. It’s sort of Walking with Dinosaurs meets Zoo quest, where the presenter goes back in time to capture dinosaurs for a park. Thus it’s a mix of fiction and documentary, with the camera swapping between the notional hand held ‘first person’ and the omni positional third. Thus it’s ambiguous.

Nevertheless, I must say this was quite a fun way to approach the subject, allowing the presenter to handle and examine the dinosaurs. There are quite a few documentaries which purport to re-create history these days. There was one on the Antarctic expedition on bbc2 last night. These programmes may have little to add academically – a re-creation is not an exact replication of the real thing – but they are very good for illustrating it and fleshing out the textbooks. Recreations can never substitute proper academic research, but it complements it very well indeed.

It’s quite glorious how these days I have more time to read. For a time, a few months ago, I was hardly reading anything, and was getting quite worried; I’ve always loved reading, and have been known to spend entire afternoons reading solidly. After finishing next years theoretical reading, I picked up fiesta, by Hemingway: I have had this odd liking for the old sonofabitch for a while, and – as it’s been ages since I read any of him – I thought I’d give his first proper novel a whirl.

This does, of course, stem from my current preoccupation with filmic linguistics and narrative structure. Currently I am of the opinion that writing stands alone among narrative arts because it relies least on visuals: all one can ‘see’ (in the literal sense) while reading is the text on the page, whereas all other narrative art, from film to opera, relies to a greater or lesser extent. Moreover, the text is arbitrary to the image: read the same book in two different languages, and one reads the same story with roughly the same allusions etc.

Anyway, I’m sure all this is only interesting to me. Amid all this reflection on film books ect, is a concerned thought about many of my peers, fermenting away in the back of my mind. I read recently about a predominance of illiteracy among folk with cp. I am increasingly aware how much the ability to read can effect one’s life, for it is the key to real cultural capital. I was taught to read at a young age, and my first love will always be literature; yet without that ability, I would have no access to the things I most enjoy. Indeed, my enjoyment of film is enhanced by my reading, and it also allows me to approach film from a linguistic perspective. Thus illiteracy among those with special needs, stemming largely from the failures of special schools, is a growing concern of mine, and needs drawing attention to.

Dad and Luke are cleaning out the loft. It needed to be done – there’s stuff up there from even before I was born, including, apparently, a very early computer dad used when he was 14. it has digital input and optical output, and looks like a ruler with bits on it. It is probably related to the computer in the garage – the so called washing machine.

It’s funny. While they were going through all the clutter in the loft yesterday, in about the middle of the afternoon I was struck a dreadful fear. I try to be a rational person, and rationality tells me they’re only stuffed toys, but I was suddenly overcome by the mortal fear that they were going to throw out Ted and Cuddles. I’m sure they wouldn’t throw them out on purpose; it was the thought they were in some unchecked box that worried me.

I have not seen my childhood bedfellows in ages, and don’t often think of them. I suspect they’re in the loft. However, the idea that they would end up in some landfill was alarmingly horrible: these two things – nothing more than fur and stuffing – brought me a great deal of comfort as a child. Why should I still be so attached to those things?

I think I’ll ask Luke or dad to look for them.

According to the latest ouch podcast, there exist such things as wanbabe disabled people – folk who want to be disabled but aren’t. I’m not sure why they do this, but some even go so far as to damage themselves.

And I thought I was crazy.

why?

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