I do not have much to blog about tonight, other than quite an interesting observation. I have been watching quite a bit of the bbc news channel recently, and I noticed today that at least two of their correspondents have a disability. Not just underlings either: their foremost military consultant, who they call on to speak on subjects like Afghanistan and Iraq, is a wheelchair user, and one of their foremost commentators on politics is blind. These are not just minor correspondents, but seem very much foregrounded in the BBC news. This is surely just another example of the beeb leading the way.

[I just wrote this for one of my online right-wing correspondants. I got carried awayy, but I think it would be kinda wasteful of me not to reprint it here. I hope she doesn’t mind]

There is nothing rational in the type of rancid politics you promote. If you were a rationalist as you claim to be, you would have realised that there is no ‘normal’ state for man, no fixed set of values and behaviours everyone must adhere to. You would also have realised that there is nothing tangible fixing a specific people to a specific place, and that the free-flow of people helps spread the exchanging and generation of ideas. You would have realised that it is liberalism, the ideology of acceptance and tolerance, which is the only truly rational ideology given that there is no normal state for humanity. Things like morality, ethnicity, gender and even intelligence are subjective values – there are no absolutes. The only ideology liberalism cannot tolerate is intolerance; this is it’s central paradox, but part of tolerance is the constant questioning of one’s own ideas and beliefs. Thus liberals accept there can be no objective truth, and reality is itself is contradictory. That is why the notion of ‘liberal fascism’ is so laughable. Right-wing ideologies lack this dynamic function, choosing only to believe in absolutes – good and bad, black and white and cannot therefore be said to be truly rational. I realise that this can make some uncomfortable, because it states that nothing is fixed, but when you try to be as objective as one can be, this is the only conclusion one can come to. Even the notion of rationality is a subjective concept, so you may be right after all, but to accept such a notion as the subjectivity of rationality is in itself liberal.

It seems to me that, in a way, Anders Behring Breivik was right when he said he thought himself to be in a war, as there are indeed people in the world who seek to set up the Muslim state he fears. But, rather than all Muslims as he would have us believe, they are a very tiny minority, who, ironically, have views very similar to his. This is a war of intolerance against intolerance, right-wing nutter against right-wing nutter, with ‘normal’, moderate people caught in the middle. The problem is intolerance itself: extreme right-wing xenophobia which, almost ten years ago caused the 9/11 attacks and caused the attacks last week. They are two sides of the same coin, and unless something is done to stem this hatred more innocent people will die.

Of course, people have a right to speak as they will and believe what they whish, but if I started spouting things which are obviously untrue, and might actually harm people, I should be told to shut up. Parties like the BNP, EDL and UKIP, with their manifestos of xenophobia and ‘repatriation’ are part of this problem, helping perpetuate this insane war by preaching segregation and difference. They hide themselves hypocritically behind the freedom of speech, quite unable to back their views up with evidence, while all the time adding fuel to the fire of hatred. Meanwhile we liberals are stuck with Starbucks dilemma, unable to do or say anything while madmen steer us to our doom.

This must change. What Richard Dawkins has done to religion must now be done to extreme right-wing politics; they are, after all, pretty similar. Just as Dawkins, in The God Delusion and other books, laid bare the lack of logic behind religion, so must someone lay bare the lack of logic behind racism or ethnic prejudices. There may be absolutely no evidence for god, but there’s even less for racial differences. More to the point, whereas religion might be a force for good, racism is always destructive and so needs to be exploded once and for all. It’s time these far-right nut jobs were shown their mistakes and made to shut up, before the rest of us suffer even more for their intolerant lunacy.

I have finally got round to listening to Beat Science, music made my old university friend Chris Flackett and his friend Daniel Horton. To be honest, Chris has been asking to give it a listen for a while, but I’ve been putting it off, not knowing what to expect nor whether I’d be able to do it justice. However, I clicked the appropriate link this afternoon, and was instantly impressed. Chris is a very clever guy and a skilled wordsmith, and Daniel Horton has put his thought-provoking, angsty lyrics to some very cool tunes. Together, they form music which comments on the modern world; I like it very much, especially the cynicism directed at David CaMoron and his ‘big society’.

Tonight I feel compelled to write something about the atrocity in Norway, but I don’t think I can. Like most people, I suspect, I can not understand what could bring a man to decide to cause so much suffering and grief. Most of all, I am struck with revulsion at his far-right, extremist politics; I see myself as a liberal who values multiculturalism and equality, and the idea that this man attacked such noble aims so violently fills me with fear. Most of all, though, I am horrified by the idea that this man had links with the English defence League: the leader of that organisation just appeared on Newsnight trying to distance himself from these attacks, but I remain unconvinced. It seems to me that they, as well as the BNP, share a type of xenophobia, directed especially at Islam, which, when placed in the mind of someone far enough unhinged, will always lead to atrocities like we saw in Oslo. I am horrified that anyone among their ranks could remotely justify such actions, as I saw earlier today, by suggesting that ” The fire should be turned on the liberals who allowed uncontrolled immigration to cause so much anxiety and hatred, and who even now refuse to deal with it”, the inference being that it is the liberals, whose ideals of tolerance and freedom of movement regardless of identity who are to blame for this massacre for causing such ‘anxiety’ in this madman.

This morning I woke up and echoed a line once spoken by Frodo Baggins: ”Where am I, and what is the time?” for the first time in a year and a half, I could not roll over and hug Lyn, which made me rather sad. Yesterday was, however, a very cool day: my cousin Christina is marrying tom, whose stag do was yesterday. I’d seen he had posted an invitation on facebook to quite a few people, including myself and my brother Luke, and, thinking I’d only have a coupler of drinks with him then come home, I decided to go along.

A couple of drinks, however, turned into several very nice bottles of wine by the river, which then became my first visit to the dog racing, accompanied by several beers, which then became a visit to Tom’s friends place for a pizza. I rarely turn down a good party, and taking my leave of thee group halfway through would have been rude. By the time it was winding down, however, we were in Wimbledon, and a taxi fare across London at that time of night would have cost a bomb. That’s how, for the first time since I moved to London, I woke up without Lyn beside me, and it felt wrong.

I was also worried that Lyn didn’t know where I was. I vaguely remembered asking one of the guys with us to phone Paula to tell her to tell Lyn where I was, but I wasn’t sure. Thus, once I was awake, even though it was 7am and I’d only had hour hours’ sleep, I couldn’t drift back off. I also felt guilty for imposing myself on tom; I’d gone without a PA, expecting only a short trip, but that had turned into a full-blown overnight stay, so I vaguely remember tom trying to get my very drunk self into borrowed pyjamas at three this morning.

Apart from that, however, it had been an amazing night. I met a few of Tom’s friends, who, to a man, are a most excellent group. Having a flutter on the dogs was great fun, although we didn’t win much. Tom accompanied me home on the tube this lunchtime, and my parents were rather surprised to see him appear with me on Skype, much to our amusement. Right now, though, I’m knackered and probably in need of a bath. What a weekend!

I realise I have not written much on here concerning dsability politics recently, so tonight I think I’ll simply direct you here. This Guardian article spells out explicitly the impact the Government’s cuts will have for people not unlike me and lyn. To be honest, I’ve started to stop reading such articles as they terrify me too much, and make me too angry.

I watched Sherlock on Iplayer earlier. I started watching it on the telly last night, but decided to watch something else at nine. However, I was so taken by the half hour I did watch that I thought it well worth a proper reading. I was not disappointed: I thought it a masterful adaptation and modernisation of the original; I was extremely impressed with the writing, which has the subtlety and precision of a scalpel wielded by a master surgeon, yet wasn’t without humour. I was especially impressed with the characterisation of Holmes himself, which seemed both utterly modern yet retained something of the nineteenth century original. Making Watson into a blogger was a master stroke too. In all, it really was a damn fine bit of TV, and one I heartily recommend.

Today saw the last space shuttle land for the last time, bringing to an end the shuttle project. I can’t help feeling pretty glum about it: of course, those machines were getting pretty old, but given NASA doesn’t have anything to go in it’s place, and given the financial positions of both Europe and Russia, it seems like mankind’s exploration of space has been put on hold. Ever since I was a kid, I have loved programmes like Star trek, portraying a future where we all explored space as one people. perhaps rather sillily, in a way I hoped that one day this would come true – my brothers and I played at flying around in space ships, exploring strange, new worlds. Now, reality has hit, and it would seem that economics has brought that dream to an end, for the foreseeable future, at least.

Yet, maybe one day, perhaps in fifty one years, seven months and fourteen days*, that dream will be reborn. Then, maybe, humanity will achieve her first, best, destiny, and we’ll leave the confines of our planet behind. If we don’t, we are forever doomed to bicker over resources which will grow sparser and sparser, ultimately wiping ourselves out. That’s why I’m so concerned about this halt in progress. You could argue that the billions of dollars spent on space exploration could be better spent on, say, finding new renewable energy sources or better crops, and it would be a good argument, but, in the long run, in terms of the future of the species, I really believe we need to spread out into the galaxy.

*feel free to check my maths

Changing the subject slightly, those interested in cinema might be interested in this article on Godard. It’s only short, so it doesn’t go into too much depth, but it gives one a little insight into one of the last great auteurs; a person who saw film not just as a medium for telling stories and making money, but as the quintesential art form of the twentieth century.

I was going to do an analysis of what happened yesterday today, going into what I think the implications will be for the Murdochs, CaMoron and all the other parties involved. Butt I can’t – the truth is, we had guests round last night, certain quantities of alcohol were consumed, and I fell asleep on the sofa. I therefore missed Newsnight, so I cannot write the cutting edge analysis you usually get from this website. For this I apologise. Besides, it’s probably too early to judge what the political fall-out will be from this farce anyway. Instead, I’ll just send you here, to a clip of what is surely the most memorable moment of the day.

Do you ever get the feeling that you just watched a piece of dynamite explode? I just watched Panorama on bbc1, and it suddenly truck struck me how monumental the events of tomorrow may turn out to me. Tomorrow, the CEO of News international, one of the biggest news organisations in all the world, will be questioned in part of a scandal which also has a good chance of forcing the Prime minister to resign. Rarely has he word seen the like.

I would like to be able to say I’ve never liked Murdoch or Sky, but that would be untrue. As a kid I practically begged my dad to get Sky so I could watch American wrestling and therefore blend in more at school. I soon realised that wrestling was a soap opera in trunks, and not long after that Sky was only interested in taking my dad’s money. I now realise that the whole organisation is a sham; a con for swindling the gullible. I loathe the Murdoch press and media, and so I must admit to relishing the prospect of Murdoch being torn to shreds tomorrow.

Yet, at the same time, I know I must not relish it so much. My brother Luke once told me of a very wise motto: ‘I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it to my death’. We lefties might be bouncing up and down at the prospect of seeing the right wing media take a trouncing tomorrow, but at the same time they have a right to be there. Mind you, in the way that Murdoch himself shut down news of the world in an effort to save his own skin, we can see he doesn’t care about that sort of thing himself. I thought the News of the World utterly juvenile, but what Murdoch did was an act of a mann who had grown too powerful; a man too used to invincibility. The problem, then, is not with the right-wing papers; the problem is the fact that so much of the media is controlled by one man and his son. A man who, until now, has enjoyed far too much power. I think tomorrow he’ll fall. The question, as tonight’s Panorama made clear, is who he’ll take with him.

I hope James gets home okay. He came to visit us this weekend. even though we have only met twice, we have been talking online for quite a while, and in many respects we are pretty similar. I think this weekend, then, was long overdue. The thing with people you meet in the online world is that your friendships never feel concrete until you meet in person. Mind you, at this point I should state that, although it’s how I met the person I hope to one day marry, one should always be cautious about meeting people who you encounter online. In this case, however, I was pretty sure James was who he claimed to be.

What I was less prepared for, though, was his wit. Perhaps for the first time I was struck by how intelligent James is. He has CP, and is doing an MPhil in politics, so I knew he was intelligent, but I didn’t realise quite how bright he is. We were talking last night, and he was throwing out references to lots of writers, many of whom I’d never heard of, let alone read. Even though I didn’t agree with him all the time – for instance, he puts too much emphasis on elitism, which I see as a subjective construct – I found our conversations this weekend very interesting indeed. Speaking face to face with someone, rather than just online, adds an extra dimension to a conversation; I think it lets you understand more.

I think James Cullis went from being an online associate to being a friend this weekend. He is a great guy, and I must say that I love his rather plumy accent. As he said as I saw him off at the station earlier, we really must see each other more regularly than once a year from now on.

Given that I have been plugging Hugh Jones’ work on here quite a bit, I might as well plug that of his sister. I don’t think I’ve sent you here, to the harmonettes website, before. Charlotte, it seems, has been her usual absurdly busy self: she’s now part of a group called the harmonettes – she and two other girls, Georgie and Sarra, go round fairs and festivals singing in the style of the Anderson sisters or the Puppinis. I’m pleased to say that, by all reports, they seem to be doing rather well. It’s also good to hear that they came together as normal groups should, rather than being put together by some producer for money. Anyway, please go check them out.

It is to my great shame and embarrassment that I knew nothing of this. it is a short film by Michael Reed about the difficulties faced by some people who use AAC in accessing literacy and communication. I know Michael from Onevoice, but, now I’m living with Lyn and dealing with life as a south Londoner, I’ve fallen out of touch with that brilliant organisation. Thus this film slipped under my radar, and I’m kicking myself for it. Anyway, it’s a brilliant bit of animation, serving as an introduction to the complexities of educating kids with AAC, and the often inane prejudices they have to face.

There is a hell of a lot to think and write about tonight. It’s been quite an amazing day – the day on which Rupert Murdoch withdrew his bid for sky. I am, of course, no expert, but it seems to me that the implications and ramifications of what happened today are huge. The damage to Murdoch’s reputation this scandal has done is one thing, but now the Americans are talking about the possibility that Murdoch’s people hacked into the phones of 9/11 victims. Most worrying for us, though, is the possibly that the newspapers will have to be more tightly regulated. I can see why parliament could have no choice but to impose regulations, but this would directly conflict with the principal of the free press. Moreover, the question was raised in parliament earlier over whether things like blogs or Facebook would then come under regulation. I’d like to consider this in greater detail soon, but it seems to me that this debacle may have lead us into some very, very dangerous territory.

A rather interesting question keeps jumping into my head: what if it was the Beeb, and not news international, that got caught hacking into people’s phones? The bbc has, of course, had it’s share of controversy, most notably over the Iraq war, but the current scandal is of a different kind. Granted, the bbc accused the government of exaggerating claims about WMD, which is rather serious, but it did not hack into people’s phones or bribe police. Had it done so, I have no doubt that the bbc would be no more. It is a publicly funded institution, and had it been found to have engaged in the type of activity news int seems to condone, it would have had to be broken up at the very least. This begs the question, what should happen to news int? their bid for sky has already been blocked, but should it be broken up? Is it possible to do so?

One of the things which irritated me the most about the filmic adaptation of the Lord of the Rings was that, whenever the good guys were in a tight spot, it seemed that someone would come to their rescue in the nick of time. For instance, at the battle of Minas Tirith, all seemed lost until the elves came and saved the day (hence Legolas’ exclamation ”that is no orc horn”). This happened several times during the films, and it irritated the hell out of me. We all know that in real life there’s no guarantee of such things happening, so tonight, with pressure mounting on CaMoron and Murdoch, it’s hard to see how either of them could get out of their predicaments. There will be no cliches, no mighty cavalry charges, just two scumbags getting their comeuppances. Both their reputations are in ruins, especially Murdoch’s, who I think can now kiss Sky goodbye. Sometimes, just sometimes, reality turns out to be more interesting than fiction.

I have just finished watching the return of the King; it’s taken me about a week and a bit to get through the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy. As I said , I have the extended edition, so the whole thing is in six parts. I think that in itself adds to the experience, as it retains the episodic quality of the novel. The books take a while to get through; one reads them chapter by chapter, and you have to pause. This means that, unlike something you experience in one go from start to finish, these books become part of your life for some time. I think the films have retained that quality. Thus, Jackson has not simply made a film, but something different, something which requires extended attention – something between a film and a novel.

It is not, of course, without it’s faults. It certainly isn’t a shot for shot adaptation of Tolkien’s novel, and I disagree with some of the choices he’s made. For instance, I hate the way he’s turned the character of Gimli into little more than comic relief; there are also quite a few americanisms and modern transtextual, pop-culture references which irritate me and which I suspect Tolkien himself would have loathed. I could write at length the pros and cons of this adaptation, and part of me still resents their making, yet while I was watching these films I began to feel as I did reading the books. They made me yearn to go walking along the lanes of Cheshire again, between the fields pretending there were black riders again. Despite it’s faults, and I can see why Tolkien purists hate this film, I think peter Jackson has done a remarkable job in adapting a novel once said to be unfilmable. I’ll probably write more on this soon, but all in all, I think he deserve praise and gratitude.

Far be it for me to revel in the misfortune of others [pause for parental and fraternal sniggers] but it is rather gratifying two of the people I hate the most take such a kicking this week. I was amazed when Murdoch closed News of the Word on Thursday evening, and startled when Coulson was arrested yesterday. Serious doubt must now be cast on the reputations of both David CaMoron and Rupert Murdoch.

Yet shortly after the news broke on Thursday about NOTW, my amazement and mirth turned into concern. It is true that it was little more than a gossip-spewing rag, but it didn’t have to be shut down. As many more knowledgeable commentators have pointed out, this closure was entirely tactical, as it paves the way for both a seven day sun and the Newscorp Takeover of Sky. In effect, then, Murdoch as sacrificed a paper, many of whose reporters had nothing to do with phone hacking, in order to tighten his grip on the UK Media. Moreover, many of the execs who were indeed responsible for phone hacking have kept their jobs. Surely this seems very dodgy: Rupert Murdoch is playing games with the UK media. It just goes to show how powerful and manipulative this man is. It also raises several questions which I do not know the answer to, but which leave a nasty taste in my mouth.

And what about David CaMoron’s involvement in all this? This morning he seems to be off the hook, yet the fact remains he employed a man now charged with the most underhand of practices. He is also an associate of Rebekah Brooks, one of Murdoch’s chief lieutenants who, despite her involvement in the NOTW scandal, has kept her job. He also is good friends with Matthew Freud, who is married to Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth. They’re all part of the so called ”chipping Norton set”. In short, they’re all part of the same clique – a very powerful clique which seems able to play us all for fools and seems almost above the law.

CaMoron will, of course, keep his job. After thirteen years in opposition, the Tories won’t relinquish power that easily. More importantly, though, he will now allow Murdoch to take control of sky in return for his support. The combination of the Tories and the most powerful media company on the planet seems a very frightening prospect indeed. What all this will lead to I cannot say, but Mudoch is now in a position to utterly control the british media, and he will have the governments backing in doing so; in return, the tories will have Murdoch’s backing. Something is afoot and it doesn’t sound right.

I just want to direct you here to an excellent blog entry from simon Stevens about the real effects on the big society. While I have a slightly different take on it, I completely aagree that it’s essentially a 19th century policy wrapped in a 21st century package, and will hurt people like simon and myself.

I have always known that Rupert Murdoch is a scumbag, so it’s rather pleasing to watch one of his papers being exposed for being the seedy rag it is. Like almost everyone else, I think phone hacking is deplorable. I’ve been watching the coverage of this story on the beeb, but I’m considering flipping over to sky news for a bit, to see how they’re covering it; I might also check out the news of the world too. My bet is they both will have just ignored the story.

I’ve noticed, however, that there isn’t much being made of the links between the paper and our current government. CaMoron’s chief spin-doctor, Andy Coulson, was once the editor of NOTW, and probably commissioned some of this phone hacking himself. Does this not strike anyone else as dodgy? Even without the current scandal, the fact that CaMoron is prepared to employ the former editor of such a piece of filth is surely indicative of the type of guy he is: even more than Blair, he’s obsessed by his image, and will employ pornographers to help him present it. Even if CaMoron didn’t know about the phone hacking – which I frankly doubt – he knew of Coulson’s past, and the type of paper he produced. Everyone is rightly condemning the News of the World for it’s reprehensible actions, but some of the shit must also wash on to CaMoron. For all his nice-guy image, he’s as scummy and puerile as the people he employs.

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to send you all here, to a review of Crewdson’s debut album, Gravity. The review is glowing, but what makes it so incredible is that it’s by the BBC. It would seem my friend hugh is bound for great things; I just hope he remembers to invite me when he goes to those celebrity-packed parties.

I was thinking earlier about the political right; in recent weeks I’ve come into contact with people with some far right views, and I think I need to mull them over. Before I go on, though, I should point out that this is unconnected with my recent musings on Tolkien: although his work has been used by those on the far right to support their views, to claim that Tolkien was somehow writing about racial politics is to gravely and deliberately misinterpret his work.

Anyway, the question I ask myself is, what do I make of the far right? I’m not talking about the Tories, who, frankly, are bad enough, but people like members of the BNP and EDL; people who seem revolted by almost all I hold dear. People who still think black people are somehow different to and inferior to white people, that disabled babies should be killed at birth, and that transsexual people are somehow degenerate. People who rail against the progress society has made towards sexual and ethnic equality over the last fifty years, and then hypocritically claim that they are being discriminated against due to their views. For a long time, I thought it was best to think what they liked, and that if I was entitled to my views, they were entitled to theirs.

This is, I think, the view taken by most on the liberal left. But I’m beginning to think we must engage with such people. it is my conviction that this is an argument we can win, as we have logic on our side. I know this sounds arrogant, but I really believe that if you engage with the far right on any intellectual level, their views quickly fall apart. For example, the entire concept of race can easily be shown to be an artificial construction by pointing to genetics, history and sociology. I also refuse to let the idea that disabled people or transexuals go uncontested. The far right is diminishing as, time and time again, it’s arguments have been shown to be baseless, but I think there are a few far-right extremists left who continue to spread their moronic yet dangerous views. Rather than letting them get on with it, I think its time those with the inclination engaged with such views and demonstrated how intellectually baseless they are.

Almost exactly twenty-four hours ago I was sitting where I am now, at my computer, about to go out. Little did I know that I was in for quite a ride. Dominic had proposed we go up to the Tate, just for a look around and where he could meet a couple of his friends, so we went. Now, I usually try to record the most major happenings of my life on here in order to give people a taste of what life is like for a guy with CP, but today I’m not even going to attempt it. I’ll just say that, when I got up this morning, Dom and two girls were sleeping in a tent in the back garden. There is, of course, quite a good reason why they were there – or at least why Dom was there – but it is rather complicated, involving my need to get up early for a hospital appointment and a rather unexpected party. Make of that what you will, but I must just stress that, for once, it was not my idea!

Stuff like this never happened with my parents.

After prattling on about it for so long in my last entry, last night I decided to give the Lord of the Rings a watch. It had been ages since I had seen it; we have the special collectors extended version, so I only got through the first half of the first film before the DVD had to be changed, by which time Mitchel had already gone so the next sixth will have to wait. It occurred to me, however, that this is indeed a remarkable bit of film, and Peter Jackson tried his best to live up to the grandeur of Tolkien. Other directors would, no doubt, have condensed the film into one more marketable piece, leaving much of the rich detail. I dread to think what the Walt Disney company would have turned it into. While I disagree with some of Jackson’s choices and the way in which he changes things slightly, I am glad that it was he who made these films.

However, that was not the point I was trying to make last time. Whoever made them, the lord of the rings as a cultural entity has changed: it is no longer a book read by geeks and people with beards, but a mainstream film. I think in a way this changes the text philosophically, and part of me wishes it had remained the book I knew as a child. Part of me thinks that the magnificent work of JRR Tolkien should have stayed as it was, on the page, rather than being brought into the shallow world of mainstream cinema.

Yet I realised last night that this is not quite the case. Jackson did not simply make a movie; in a way, I think Lord of the rings is an experimental piece of cinema. It is far longer than any other mainstream film I can think of, and it is in three parts. It stands apart from other films, and is special in it’s own right. It has a rather low pace, which is a quality Jackson deliberately took from the book. It is clear that Jackson and his studio respected Tolkien’s work enough to make them into something special and unique, and not just another film. As I wrote here, an adaptation of a book is an interpretation of it, and it is natural that the two will differ. But Jackson clearly did his best to keep the grandeur of the books; Like Tolkiens prose, the films are slow and detailed, and I also think the fact that they take time and considerable effort to get through reflects the complexity of Tolkien’s writing. I am relieved that, if these books had too be adapted for the screen, the result is something as special as the original in it’s own right.

It has been quite some time since I wrote anything on here about film, and probably even longer since I wrote anything about Tolkien. (It grieves me to realise how intertwined those two subjects now seem, but it now appears that Middle Earth could be seen as much a creation of Peter Jackson as professor Tolkien.) A few days ago, for some reason or another, I began to think about the Lord of the Rings again: it’s definitely time Lyn saw the trilogy, and I have a hankering to watch it with her. These stories have been with me from my childhood, since my father started reading the books to me and my brothers at bedtime. As such they have a deeply personal value for me, which is why I want to share them with Lyn. Since I can’t read the books to her myself, watching the film adaptations with her seems a good alternative.

But it recently occurs o me that therein lies a problem. The Lord of The Rings no longer has the status it had when I first encountered it. It is not a book written by an obscure Oxford don, or a would conjured through my father’s deep, comforting voice; it is now a massive, multi Oscar winning film, with figures sold with every happy meal and a thousand asinine Playstation games associated with it. Don’t get me wrong: I think Jackson did an excellent job with these films, and I think, under the circumstances, he was as faithful as he could be. But these films are not the lord of the rings: the lord of the rings is a work of literature, in a fairly archaic, obscure style, with footnotes and endnotes and appendices. It is something I adore, and I don’t think any film could match it. Yet a film – or three films rather – have taken it’s place in culture. Culturally, the two are synonymous, so we now have kids calling themselves Lord of the Rings fans who do not know who Tom Bombadil is, or how many strings were on the tipsy cat’s fiddle, but can get to level twelve of ”The war in The North”.

All this occurred to me this morning, when I was looking for news of The Hobbit Adaptation. Until now, I had been really looking forward to this film, but then I began to consider how drastically Jackson seems to be diverging from the text. How, for example, is he going to get Frodo into these films? Indeed, as is stated in this article, Jackson seems to be making what is essentially a fairly gentle kids book into an epic saga akin to it’s sequel. When I first read that, I thought, for the first time, ”Oh god, it’s gonna suck”. It is clear that this is no longer the work of JRR Tolkien, but a work of the market, made for the fans of the Lord of the Rings films who know nothing of the books and expect the hobbit to be filled with massive battles and Legolas and Gimli making witty one line gags about dwarf-tossing. I must admit this makes me somewhat angry: I once revered these books above all others – they were a huge part of my childhood – but the way in which Tolkien’s massive work of creation has now become something else, yet another piece of harry potter/star wars mass-market drivel, strikes me as sad, and I feel The Hobbit films will send it even further down that road.

I have nothing against film. I love it, I study it, I see myself as a cinephile. Yet cinephilia in the correct sense, the discourse first exemplified in Cahiers du Cinema in the fifties and sixties, was always a questioning type of love. They too had very similar debates over the relationship between film and literature, especially in relation to authorship – the love of film is a love which can open film up to such questions. Jackson proved me wrong before; the lord of the rings films were an astonishing work which still seem influential. Yet in making those films, Jackson brought these texts into another realm, no longer a cherished childhood memory, no longer something personal, but something open to the pressures of the mass market. In doing so he has changed them irrevocably, destroyed them and replaced them with something different. I fear this will be especially applicable to the hobbit: with Lord of the rings, Jackson had less pressure from the market because it didn’t know what to expect, but with the Hobbit, the audience is expecting certain things which Jackson must produce. It expects big battles, cate blanchet and things it can make a video game from. Thus the hobbit must be changed to appease the game-players and the hoards raised on post Star Wars filmic dross, which means it can never be a truly faithful adaptation. This is, of course, symptomatic of what film has become – no longer an art form but a medium for showing people some spectacular images while depriving them of their money. George Lucas was responsible for this when he made star wars in 1977. Now the books I loved as a child have been introduced into this puerile world, so that now the lord of the rings is no longer the sprawling creation of an oxford professor, or the book which brought about my love for the English countryside, but just another film filled with big battles and special effects. Although the films could have been much worse, and are special in their own right, the very fact of their creation changes the status of the texts. They are now as much a creation of Jackson as of Tolkien, and I think they have lost something fundamental in the process. After all, Tolkien’s writing was all about the language he used, an aspect of the text which does not translate to film. Thus to me the lord of the rings, as a cultural artefact, can never be what it was; in making these films, Jackson changed the very status of the text forever, and it almost feels like something of my childhood has gone with it.

I did not have a problem with this until now, as I fear the changes Jackson will have to make to the text of the Hobbit will be so vast that it will deviate too much from the spirit of the original book and become something else, not just an adaptation but a completely different text, taking the place of the original in cultural terms. I do not mean this in an absolute sense, as Tolkien’s novels will always endure; but the films were so big that the books are now synonymous with the film, and I think that alters the status of the text, for me losing something personal and dear in the process.

What Professor Tolkien himself would say about this I dread to think, but I cannot help but wonder if Jackson has ever had a pint at the Eagle and Child.

You may recall me posting this entry back in may about Claire Khaw, the BNP member who advocates the killing of disabled babies. Those who are interested will be pleased to know that Khaw has now been suspended from the party for her comments. It seems even that bunch of moronic thugs draws the line somewhere. You know, I’ve been trying to monitor what Khaw has been saying over the last few weeks, and it strikes me that this is a seriously disturbed woman. She admires Gadaffi, and despises women’s liberation. She seems to want to take the UK back to some mythical past where everyone was white and women stayed at home and did the washing. I know this is another ad Hominem entry, but I find myself baffled that such people still exist, refusing to admit that they lost the argument long, long ago.