Thursday 18 December 2008

Word of the Week...

Emblem

–noun
1. an object or its representation, symbolizing a quality, state, class of persons, etc.; symbol: The olive branch is an emblem of peace.
2. a sign, design, or figure that identifies or represents something: the emblem of a school.
3. an allegorical picture, often inscribed with a motto supplemental to the visual image with which it forms a single unit of meaning.
4. Obsolete. an inlaid or tessellated ornament.
–verb (used with object)
5. to represent with an emblem.


Monday 15 December 2008

When Should a Celebration not be a Celebration?


Three events this year have forced me to worry about the state of the world. You may be thinking things like the credit crunch, or the terrorist attack in India, but you would be wrong. We will always have terror and we will always have economic slumps. These aren't news and so they don't make me worry.

No, instead, these are the three events:
  • Mamma Mia makes more money at the box office than The Dark Knight in the UK, and is probably going to beat it in DVD sales too.
  • The Tales of Beedle the Bard, the latest book that is mildly related to Harry Potter, sells a ridiculous amount in the week it is released.
  • I finish watching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and am faced with the fact that another well-written, intelligent show has been cancelled WAY too soon.

Now let me state now that this isn't some hate rant on various media that I don't like. I didn't mind Mamma Mia and I have read and enjoyed the Harry Potter books. So, this isn't a rant on the quality, it is a rant on the celebrated status they have achieved.

Why, oh world, must we celebrate mediocrity?!

Mamma Mia will never go down in the history books as an amazing film. It isn't even the best musical made. It is made up of crowbarred Abba songs on a loose plot. And yet, when asked to pick the year's best actress, the British public voted Meryl Streep and nominated Piece Brosnan.

You might like the cheese, or the songs. But there is no way any logical person could honestly tell me with a straight face that the film contained even the remotest trace of a good performance.

And here we are, giving out rewards to something that isn't smart, or well-made, but just fun.

Harry Potter seems to have been given some kind of special treatment too. First, the series has somehow managed to find its way onto the regular fiction shelf, as opposed to the Fantasy section it belongs in. Then, people seem to have ignored the fact that the last few books are extremely overwritten; The Goblet of Fire's first act lasts for 450-odd pages. Also, nothing even happens in the sixth book!

The series is formulaic and written in a very workman-like way. I can give her credit and say that she picked up on childhood dreams and created a fairly convincing world, but this does not entitle the books to be treated like the gold that they are.

And I can forgive people for this. The series ended (rather anti-climatically) a while ago, so I could just forget it all.

So why am I now selling hundreds of copies of a new Harry Potter based book!? The thing is tiny, yet is going for the same price as a normal book. People are paying too, and to read what? A collection of short stories, which are just retellings of older myths and legends!

It is nothing amazing and nothing new and yet, with the tag of Harry Potter stamped onto it, people flock.

These are two recent examples, but there are many more. People are gravitating towards the mindless entertainment. This, in itself, is fine, as long as people can acknowledge what they are consuming for what it is: Mindless!

Madness ensues when people reward the mindless and the banal.

And then a show comes along that challenges. The scripts are razor-sharp, and the plot balances humour and drama perfectly. It requires you to think, and doesn't hand you everything on a shiny, silver exposition plate.

And no-one watches it.

Come on people! Stop being happy with mediocrity and challenge yourselves once in a little while. Read something which won prizes or watch a raved-about indie! As a society, we can't numb our brains on the average. And we certainly shouldn't celebrate it.

That way, Armageddon lies.

:D

Thursday 11 December 2008

Word of the Week...

Enteric

–adjective
1. of or pertaining to the enteron; intestinal.
–noun
2. enterics, Bacteriology.


Tuesday 9 December 2008

Overheard I

Customer (To her friend): How can John Lennon bring out a biography when he's dead?

:D

Monday 8 December 2008

Cense and Censorbility

I'm continually amazed by the sheer lunacy of the human race. We live in a fabulous planet; full of beauty and spectacle and life; and we spend so much of our time deciding what is allowed, what is normal and what age people should be to handle certain aspects.

The government is going to and/or has already started stickering books with age recommendations.

We have a long tradition of protecting children from the media, and I am all for it. You can argue where the lines are, but I believe it right that small children shouldn't be able to watch violence or sex on film, because it can seem like real life to them. They'd get scarred and we'd have one more slightly warped individual in the world.

But, and this is a capital-letter BUT, a book is a book is a book! Words are indistinguishable symbols to anyone who does know the semantics. We're talking science here. A child can read the word penis and would have no image to call to mind. And so, the world is blunt. Harmless. A word!

However, let us imagine for a moment that a book isn't a collection of harmless symbols. Let us say, for example, that a book called Book X contains lexical choices that may scar poor little ten-year old Jimmy.

We'd also have to imagine that this book has been placed in the children's section of a bookstore and that Jimmy had parents stupid enough to not look at the dust cover before making their purchase. Let us imagine all this to be true.

So, now, what age does Jimmy have to be? Let's say it contains a character dying; how old does Jimmy have to be to truly understand that people sometimes die and sometimes it isn't fair. I'm 21, and I still haven't come to terms with this.

At the moment it is age guidelines, but we are steps away from books being restricted by laws. So now, we're banning The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe because people die. We ban The Hobbit. People croak it in Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Goodnight Mister Tom is all about war. All classics, all found in the 8-11 section at Waterstones, and all under threat of having high age restrictions placed on them because children might be moved by them.

Since when has a book making someone sad been a bad thing? Since when have we tried to stop children learning more about the world?

A book provides a safe place for a child to explore the world. A fictional character dying, whilst sad, provides a nice starting place for discussion about the nature of death. I would rather that a child of mine was sad for a week than ignorant for a lifetime.

It is also quite intriguing to see that the chief things that any government tries to censor are the things most natural to human existence: sex and death. To hide any of this is to make it seem unnatural and wrong, and children grow up with a skewed perception.

And since when, as these guidelines seem to be suggesting, have all children been at the same stage of intelligence? It is false that there is a universal age in which to talk about some things and not others. One twelve-year-old might be able to grasp adult plots, whilst a second has trouble understanding the dilemmas of Billy Blue Hat.

To group them all pulls the bright children back and puts pressure on the ones with difficulties. The only children that become unaffected are the average ones, and why are we trying to build a society around being average?

But, you may cry, no-one cares about the restrictions on books. They're just guidelines. And with the latter point you are right.

But I work in a bookstore and I see that people DO care. They DO look at the age guidelines and make decisions based on them, as opposed to the more sensible option of asking any of the very knowledgeable staff members. Because, hey, we're just trying to sell them a book; what do we know?

We have had people who have complained that a book contains the word dead on the front cover in a children's section. This would be funny if it wasn't a daily occurrence.

These parents will choose not to buy a book two years above their child's reading age, and so that child suffers.

Reversely, an older child, or the parents of one, will decide that a book with a younger sticker is just too childish for them. This closes off more options to them, including some of the best books ever written. I am, of course, speaking of Winnie the Pooh. No-one grows out of that book.

I feel it is time to try and conclude this cluster of vaguely connected thoughts. Censorship is wrong. I guess that the point has been made, even if it isn't as eloquent as I would have liked. Children, nah, EVERYBODY should have the right to explore their world, and books are the easiest and safest way to do so.

The idea of cordoning off some words and some worlds until you reach a certain age is not only insane, it is regression. As a society, a country, and a human race, we should be providing access to the tools to learn, to explore and to grow and not hiding them in a cupboard marked "For 18 year olds only".

And it's good to know I'm not the only one who thinks so.


:D

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