Political Debate Actually

Watching last night’s Question Time was fascinating for many reasons but, for me, ultimately showed the bankruptcy of our current political discourse. Almost the entire programme was, quite rightly, taken up by the News of the World phone hacking scandal with Rupert Murdoch shutting down the title, laying off over two hundred staff, but failing to sack its editor at the time, and current CEO of News Corp, Rebekah Brooks. The political aspect of the story revolves around the arrest, again, of Andy Coulson, who resigned from the News of the World in 2007, and then went on to become the Conservative party’s press secretary. David Cameron is facing tough questions concerning his judgement in appointing Coulson, not to mention the closeness of his relationship with Brooks and Murdoch himself. Having failed to call for Brooks’ resignation when pressed by Ed Miliband at PMQs, the ambiguity and awkwardness of Cameron’s position was obvious. All of this is framed by News Corps’ attempt to fully take over BskyB and the leaking of information to News of the World journalists by the Metropolitan Police.

Discussing all of these issues on Question Time were three representatives of the main political parties: Chris Grayling (Conservative), Douglas Alexander (Labour) and Shirley Williams (Liberal Democrat). Joining them, and this provided the most intriguing part of the discussion, were right-wing shock-jock and former Sun columnist Jon Gaunt, and (not so) floppy-haired charmer (and former “Prime Minister” ) Hugh Grant. Grant’s inclusion on the panel derives from his public antipathy toward tabloid culture, he is an ardent supporter of injunctions against the press having had his own phone hacked. The first time I heard him speak on the issue however was on Radio 5 live when he came across as articulate, knowledgeable and, above all, direct. When I saw he was a guest on Question Time I wondered how he would fair against well-briefed and seasoned political debaters.

Whatever one thinks of Hugh Grant, or his films (and I can take or leave either) the clarity of his points from the outset cut to the heart of the matter and the audience seemed largely in agreement with what he was saying. Undoubtedly his demeanour and delivery demonstrated a person used to public speech and I think his arguments were aided by an extra dollop of charm and star performance. His persona contrasted greatly with that of Jon Gaunt whose blustering, shouty soap-boxing and cringe-worthy winks to David Dimbleby were, frankly, pretty annoying. However, Gaunt was also clear, decisive and reasoned with his opinions and the two of them agreed at times and clashed others but, in essence, provided a clear debate (apart from when Gaunt couldn’t resist a cheap shot at Grant for his arrest with Hollywood prostitute Devine Brown).

What struck me however was the ineptitude of the politicians at being able to articulate directly their points without mitigating clauses or deliberate obfuscation. When Chris Grayling was asked whether a judicial enquiry should be called he gave the classic political evasion. Hugh Grant then turned to the audience and summarised definitively (and with a hint of sarcasm) why Graying could not answer the question: his boss David Cameron doesn’t want to fully cut Murdoch loose. Grant’s statement: “it’s scary you can’t answer that” deconstructed the compromised link between the political elite and the corporate media. Douglas Alexander was not allowed to escape to the position of oppositional safety as both Grant and Gaunt repeatedly pointed to Labour’s wooing of the Murdoch press in the era of Alistair Campbell and Tony Blair. Indeed, the revelation that politicians of all stripes were quaffing champagne at a recent Murdoch party, and the fact that ministers have continually backed away from investigations into News Corp shows the how the government relates to Murdoch with an equal measure fear and awe.

There are huge issues concerning media influence and ownership, privacy laws and what constitutes public interest and the regulation of the press, and the police, that were touched on by the programme. However, it was the fact that Hugh Grant and Jon Gaunt provided the lion’s share of the discursive analysis and political debate that stood out for me. Maybe politicians feel that they cannot be straight, the machinery of government doesn’t allow them to be straight or the media sensationalises everything to the point where a clear and direct argument cannot be had. Maybe Grayling and Alexander were simply star struck. However, last night’s Question Time led me to wonder what has our democratic system become when it is a Hollywood actor and a radio DJ that articulate the ins and outs of an important political issue leaving the politicians stuck in ambivalent semantics. Following on twitter there were numerous lines suggesting “Hugh Grant for PM”. Sadly, I think the irony of this reflects the state of our current political debate and exemplifies the low regard in which our democratic representatives are held.

The Philosophy of Hypocrisy

Across the Middle East historic uprisings show the power that ordinary people can still wield. But what these tumultuous events have also brought into sharp focus is the sheer hypocrisy of Western governments, in both their policies concerning specific dictatorships, and the doublespeak used to mitigate those relationships. For years the West propped up Egypt’s President Mubarak, a despot who oppressed his own people. The recent revolution, however, was roundly applauded and, in the end, diplomatically supported by the international community. This immediately reveals the morally questionable discourse of the West which supposes that a dictator is palatable as long as he (it’s always a man) is ‘our’ dictator. Such a policy remains intact until that situation becomes politically untenable (a point made by Noam Chomsky in his interview with Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight 08/03/2011). The old chestnut of regional stability is usually the reason given for the West’s support of an autocratic ruler; such an argument can be critiqued in itself as evidence of a Eurocentric, racist mindset. But any altruistic notions of promoting stability through diplomacy are, in reality, about trade, and usually a specific type of trade: arms and oil. A dictator’s human rights record can suddenly seem quite hazy when these two commodities are on the bargaining table. The question of how a dictator wants to use said arms, and the backhanders on offer for a reasonable crude price, is a question the West rarely asks. If the price is right, morality disappears.

Yet, when the citizens of Egypt unceremoniously ejected Mubarak from his position it was billed as a triumph of democracy. Barak Obama said, “the people of Egypt have spoken. Their voices have been heard, and Egypt will never be the same”. Obviously Egyptian voices were much quieter when the United States was helping to maintain the Mubarak regime. David Cameron also jumped on the freedom and democracy bandwagon: “Egypt now has a really precious moment of opportunity to have a government that can bring the country together. As a friend of Egypt, and the Egyptian people, we stand ready to help in any way we can”. Cameron, eager to show ‘solidarity’ with the newly ‘free’ Egyptians, was the first to arrive in the region to bask in the reflected glory of this ‘liberated’ state, or as he put it, offer Britain’s help in creating the “building blocks of democracy”. That fact that he was accompanied by a delegation of arms and aerospace contractors was, on the one hand, a public relations disaster, but on the other, laid bare the unadulterated hypocrisy of protestations of support for the Egyptian people’s democracy. How many of Mubarak’s tear gas canisters had ‘Made in England’ written on them?

Hypocrisy reaches epic proportions in the context of Libya. Gadaffi goes from evil dictator to internationally rehabilitated moderate, back to brutish despot, depending how Western governments determine his political usefulness. Since the start of the revolt in Libya there has been almost total condemnation of Gadaffi, which may be totally justified in and of itself, but coming from Western leaders it is fundamentally duplicitous and shows a convenient loss of collective memory. Gadaffi’s promise to stop supporting terrorism and suspend nuclear weapons programs led to a phalanx of Western leaders (a grinning Tony Blair included) parading themselves with the redeemed Libyan leader in front of his tented village. This was defined as victory against terrorism and a triumph of diplomacy yet in the background, again, was a range of arms deals and oil contracts. The complexity of Britain’s ties to Libya also incorporates the decision to release Lockerbie bomber Mohmed Ali al-Megrahi, and continues to be revealed through details about a nepotistic relationship with the London School of Economics.

All this without even mentioning the West’s association with Saudi Arabia.

Back home, in the midst of the financial crisis, hypocrisy has Premier League credentials, perhaps summed up by the mantra “we’re all in this together”. This phrase has been preprogrammed as the default response of every coalition MP and, by and large, it seems to have been swallowed. It seems that not only every politician but every media commentator, economist, corporate CEO, indeed anyone with a public voice accepts this dictum as fact. The tokenistic attempts at financial regulation set out by George Osbourne are wrapped around the rhetoric of fairness. However, at the same time the boss of RBS takes home a £6 million bonus for presiding over a £1 billion pound loss in an institution that the taxpayer had to bail out and now owns. Juxtaposed next to the massive cuts in front line services across the board, clearly, we are not all in this together. The possibility of simply taxing corporations and the rich more is never even mooted. “Common sense” economic maxims are masking real ideological manipulation here. “We’re all in this together” is classic Orwellian doublespeak.

Yes there are uprisings of dissent over the cuts but it seems that the level of anger over what the public is told it now has to deal with is, in actuality, quite paltry. The philosophy of hypocrisy, it seems, is working well. Egyptians and Libyans (along with other North African and Middle Eastern peoples) are fighting and dying for the possibility of a democratic voice. We supposedly have that voice, but maybe we need some advice from them in how to use it.

The American Astronaut

After a long teaching day I went to a Leeds Film Festival preview screening of The American Astronaut last night. The film, directed and starring Cory McAbee, is incredibly strange collision of prototypical Western genres including Sci-fi, Western, Film Noir, Comedy and Musical but rather than trying to amalgamate these elements seamlessly it revels in their incongruities. McAbee stars as space cowboy Sam Curtis travelling through a parallel universe that resembles our own but it not quite the same. The surreal narrative and tone of the film is reminiscent of David Lynch. The opening scenes show Curtis delivery a cat to an old Western style saloon station on a remote asteroid. Meeting his old dance partner, an interstellar fruit trader named the Blueberry Pirate, Curtis receives a machine that can grow a ‘real live girl’ as payment. This instigates journey first to Jupiter to trade the machine for ‘the Boy Who Actually Saw a Woman’s Breast’ and then to Venus to deliver the boy to a planet populated exclusively by women. All the while the protagonist is being chased by the sinister Professor Hess.

This, unfortunately, is a totally inadequate synopsis but in many ways the plot is incidental to complexities of meaning that permeate the film. Visually the film is superb. Shot in kind of glossy, metallic black and white it perfectly captures a kind of retro-milieu which fuses the Western frontier with the final frontier. The film never falls into nostalgic sentimentality however. There is a creative imaginary here exemplified by several elements of visual virtuosity. Sam’s spaceship is an old steam engine (which comically docks with an interstellar barn at one point) produced using decidedly lo-fi special effects but which marry perfectly with the surreal aesthetic. Other standout elements are Professor Hess’ ray-gun which turns his victims into sand (a nod to the sand men of Logan’s Run perhaps) and a kind of photo-montage sequence in the middle of the film encapsulates the friendship that develops between Sam and the boy.

Indeed, for me the most interesting aspect of the film was the representation of gender. I was interested in seeing the film because of its relationship to my PhD. I have not seen as esoteric a representation of familiar iconographies of masculinity in any other film. It takes the recognisable tropes and behaviours that we might recognise from cinema concerning he cowboy/astronaut but subtly skews the viewers expectations while not undermining their familiarity. The universe of The American Astronaut is definitely a male domain but the lack of the female presence ‘queers’ the homosocial relationships within the film. But this is represented in a very quirky, off-beat way. In stead of fighting, the men sing and dance. Indeed the friendship between the Curtis and the Blueberry pirate is affirmed by their winning of a dance contest which seems to replace the standard Western gun fight. There is an empathy and emotionality in the male bonding that undercuts the usual masculine bravado and competitiveness found in American genre films. But despite the comedic singing and dancing numbers masculinity is never overtly camp or explicitly homosexual. It is as though a universe without women would produce a different context for masculine interpersonal relationships.

The enigmatic Professor Hess is obsessed with the main character (they could be father and son but that is never resolved) and his underlying feature is that he kills without reason. Yet his motivation stems avails itself through a kind of overly emotional jealously – he doesn’t like Curtis dancing with someone else and is particularly irate that the protagonist won’t sing happy birthday to him! Very surreal traits for a film villain. When all these male characters finally reach the female inhabited Venus, the performance of femininity is equally satirical and ironic. Dressed in what looks like renaissance ball gowns the women flutter fans in front of the eyes in a kind of coquettish display. It is as thought lack of men serves to hyper-feminise them. The narrative and intentionality of The American Astronaut is impossible to categorise in any simple way. Its pleasure for me was accepting it strangeness and going with it. Once I did that as a viewer I felt the film questioned my assumptions about representation, identity, gender and construction of reality that we mostly take for granted. I know I haven’t really done the film justice here but it is well worth seeing particularly if you are tired of Hollywood’s one-dimensionality and formulaic characterisations.

For more on the film visit this link.

University Cuts

I have been building up to a particularly vociferous rant on the issue of university spending cuts. This is a thorny issue and has myriad complexities and contradictions and I am starting from a perspective of working in the academe which does, of course, colour my opinion. First of all cuts are going to happen across of British society, that is unavoidable. This in itself is largely unfair when it was rich casino-style bankers who go us into the mess and are ones who seem to be suffering the least. I am amazed that there is more outrage in the public domain about this. But in many ways the problem is systemic when you have capitalism on the upturn and socialist welfare state (for bankers) on the downturn.

I digress, back to universities. Universities are, in many ways, the easiest, and therefore the first port of call for cuts. I think this is partly cultural linking to general attitudes towards students and student life. Throughout my university life I’ve been called ‘tax-dodger’ by various working, and unemployed, but not particularly witty or well informed, acquaintances. Yet the fact that producing highly trained people is good for the country, both economically and cultural, is rarely mentioned and then only in passing. However the cuts that propose 80% percent be wiped of University budgets with the students themselves paying for the bulk of their tuition costs themselves is going to cause a major shift in the culture of higher education and thus British life.

First of removing the cap from universities can charge creates and open market. Access to knowledge will become explicitly what one can afford, the upshot being it will be the preserve of the rich. The proposals say there will be concessions for the less well off but this seems as though it will simply be a token gesture. The majority of lower-middle class students will end up leaving university with debts closer to £100,000 rather than the £30,000 they are averaging now. This simple fact is going to put off a huge percentage.

Another outcome will be the entrenchment of a two-tier system. In many ways that is what we have already. If you have Oxford or Cambridge written on your degree certificate, this in itself, provides a huge advantage over those with degrees from less prestigious institutions. Lifting the cap on what universities can charge however will make such hierarchies an acceptable part of HE organisation that will filter into graduate’s work opportunities. Courses will be rated almost exclusively on how much they cost rather than the academic knowledge they provide. The universities that can attract the big money will welcome these proposals (like Michael Arthur did on Channel 4 news when asked about the implications for the University of Leeds). New universities, which cater ostensibly for working-class students, and often provide courses that are considered light or inconsequential, are going to suffer disproportionately. Many of them will have to close departments and even may close altogether.

Another outcome is that the diversity and depth of knowledge provision will suffer enormously. Even before the credit crunch the idea of knowledge and learning for it own sake was becoming an antiquated concept. With these measures every course will have to be justified for purely economic reasons shifting the onus even more onto specific subjects which are deemed as fundamentally important or directly related to a specific profession. This will render subject such as the arts, humanities, social sciences and alike as the most susceptible to cuts. There is definitely a case for students to contribute to there education in today’s climate. However, saddling young people with huge debt before they enter the world of work alongside creating and American style tiered university system that will further fuel a separation between rich and poor and create a knowledge market where certain types of knowledge will always be privileged, is not the recipe for a progressive an equal society.

And finally…it is very telling that defence cuts in terms of percentage are going to be much less than most other spheres of society. This reveals the very ideological nature of the Tories plans in this regard.