His Dark Motives

I am by rule not a reader of much fiction, due to the amount of time I have spent in the past reading books which have neither offered me anaesthesia from my everyday existence nor have they enriched my knowledge or broadened my world view - time I could have spent playing video games. So if I ever read fiction, it is only on recommendation from trusted sources. The "His Dark Materials" trilogy was one of them.

Originally suspicious of the fact that it was part of the "kids books which grown ups can enjoy too" genre, and suspicious of the people who fuelled this genre, a genre which lacked any depth or any true narrative or thematic innovation, the easily accessible middle ground, which those who are too impatient or simple to read the high brow or too self conscious to allow themselves to enjoy the lowbrow, could embrace with differing degrees of public irony. O.K I admit it, I am only really talking about Harry P***er and maybe I am being unfair given its irritating ubquity, after all I found Mark Haddon's "Curious Incident ..." a worthwhile undertaking, as I also found "His Dark Materials" to be.





This dealt with the themes of Heaven, Hell, the plurality of worlds and the soul drawing on influences such as Milton, Dante and Dickens, in an original epic narrative which I found gripping and thought provoking to the extent ... that it turned me into an evangelist. I even signed up to the HisDarkMaterials.org fan site - not sure why, after all, like Groucho Marx, I had no intention of enriching this community of other extremist geeks that had signed to it - I guess I just wanted to show my appreciation for such a work of genius, something akin to being in a facebook group [but without having it on a profile no one hears you scream]. It offered a point of view on the notion of Christianity, the Christian Establishment and original sin, which for anyone reading, I won't spoil, but not necessarily favourable [Maybe this is why I liked it, that it would make the Daily Mail curtain twitchers splutter into their tea] So I was extremely excited by the fact that it was going to be turned into a Hollywood Blockbuster.






Boasting an A-List cast, it is being released this winter and the trailer also looked fairly impressive, seemingly remaining faithful to the first book of the trilogy. However after rooting around for more information, I found out to my dismay that this polished Hollywood version would not be taking on the potentially heretical issues central to the trilogy.

I can only assume that this was to appease the paymasters of New Line cinema and in a bid not to offend that mass of Red electoral states between the Blue eastern and western seaboards of the USA known collectively as "Jesus Land".

Maybe to a degree I am one of those those geeks, who not a fully blown "not as good as the book" Nazi, would still at least register inconsistencies, but this is not the case here - this is a full scale removal of the soul of this novel - the removal of edge and commentary which adds meaning to the action. This would just became an action movie with special effects. Imagine "A life of Brian" without the Christian dimension to it.

However I am also not a person that believes in intentionally inciting or provoking for sport, those people with deep seated views, but I believe that to produce this film in this castrated form, misses the entire point of the trilogy and this film becomes the fodder of the easily accessible middle brow I was talking about before.

Sure, the Passion of the Christ and the last temptation of Christ, incited discussion and debate, but this was good as we assess the role of religion in the post scientific state. Is this technically speaking, censorship? No fundamentally this is a social lobotomy, where the parts of our brain whose function is to challenge and therefore improve, are removed. This is the sacrifice of he key purpose of art, which is to provoke an emotional response- from Scorcese, to Tracey Emin to Jeff Koons. If it does not elicit a response it is just chewing gum - Karl Marx would be intrigued by how in todays age, the opium of the masses is manufactured through the removal of religion. My thoughts on The Satanic Verses and Theo Van Gogh are for another post. So I will not be watching The Golden Compass when it comes out this Christmas. Lets see how long my resistance lasts, but I swore once that I would never watch any sequal of the film "Highlander" as I knew that it would destroy the cherished memories I have of the original. To this day I have honoured that vow.

Fasc-Book

It was interesting to read about brands such as Vodafone withdrawing their investments in Facebook because they happened to be placed on the group pages of the British National Party. Apart from banners being a pretty pedestrian way for brands to try and mobilise social networking (shame on you lazy media planners taking advantage of your clients knee jerk stupidity but that is a subject for a later post ...) this revelation for me was like the sobering adrenalised moment when you are enjoying your drunken stupor but then suddenly are confronted by an outside of the kebab shop, fight or flight situation. The awful ASBO family have moved into my leafy suburb and is it only a moment of time before they start shoving dog shit through my letterbox and shatter my rosy tinted idyll that is Facebook.



Just as there is no such thing as bad PR, my first facebook driven voyeuristic response was to seek out the group pages of the BNP and see how popular it was and who was in their membership. The first thing to note was that the membership was not that high [in the 30's at the time of writing the post] putting on a par with the "i'm so zany, I wear odd socks" minor interest groups. the second thing to notice was that the membership was 2 types of people - those that for all intents and purposes could be described as normal, and those that were your classic American History X type thickbrowed neanderthal, still to be found on the terraces of Millwall or minor towns of Ing-ger-land. I guess it was only a matter of time before the democratisation of media allowed them to emerge and express their distinctly monosyllabic thoughts on this medium - they were individuals functioning on a fairly rudimentary level - with life conducted on a day to basis revolving around birds, football, beer and their higher aspirations directed by the concept of the mythical purity of England. you know the type.



Dont get me wrong - as long as the internet has been around there have always been sites where hate of all persuasion has been allowed to be peddled. it was inevitable that it would only be a matter of time that they would find their way on to facebook. They wear their membership to the facebook BNP group with pride on their profile along with the cross of St George in the "Flag" application. Their friend lists were as white as a Combat 18 christmas card list.



The more curious segment for me were the former group I referred those that look like "ordinairy" people. it seemed from their profiles that they had diverse interests and hopes, and their membership of the BNP was casually adorning the groups section, alongside their love of Father Ted and their affiliations to universities and schools. What was more curious still, was when you peruse their friend lists - there were blacks and asians listed.



For me, this was the most eye opening issue and raised 2 issues for me: firstly how can membership to the BNP co-exist against this polychromatic friend list. the second issue was what do we do about this? like someone who has been brought with an understanding of right and worng and is seeing an act of violence being pepetrated in front of their eyes - do we intervene and say "steady on old chap" ? while the arena of engagement with the neanderthals is not the most rewarding option, should we post on this latter groups walls and ask them about their beliefs on the hope that we can convince them with reason?



Well i am not sure i a have the time or the inclination - apart from trying to understand the roots of where their beliefs come from. The more alarming inference for me is that in this climate where our main political parties are fighting to occupy the centre ground - the vacuums are being formed on the fringes which when is combined by the use of trojan horse policies by Nick Griffin and the like talking about stopping future immigration - not the current communities - this new facebook generation are finding a acceptable cause that they can buy into which has an acceptable veneer - disguising the hateful beliefs which brought them into existence in the first place. I had a friend like this when i was growing up - I used to drink with him in my local in washington, tyne and wear. I knew that he was in the BNP, but we had a laugh down the pub. Not exactlty as exreme as "my beautiful laundrette". A few months later he decided he was into Metallica instead.



The key issue surely is to be aware of the way the BNP are presenting their policies in a more consumer friendly way very similar to how the late Pim Fortuyn in Rotterdam did, before being assassinated. Just as I condemn the assassination of Pim Fortuyn - In the interests of democracy i would also oppose the closing down or reporting of the BNP site on facebook. It is however, our job if we believe strongly to make sure that we expose the flaws in the logic of the BNP and the unveil to a young directionless facebook audience, by harnessing the community of facebook to present a counter argument and have our faith in human nature re-affirmed by the concensus of those who do not believe in what they stand for. I notice that Searchlight do not have a group on facebook.



Oh yes - I guess our politicians should do more as well.



But as a social networker - my life goes on unchanged - but maybe without the disney cartoon bluebirds and butterflies flying around as i make my keystrokes. Social networks are migrations of real worlds online - and the real world is not full of nice people - but we can try and avoid them.