4 Jan 2023

Post 2000: From Journal to Mémoire

 Torpedo Girl: Valkyrie Crusade 
 
 
I.
 
The first written entry on Torpedo the Ark was not a post as such, but a statement for the About page which began with an admission of failure:
 
"Having spent many years among the ruins writing nothing but fragments in praise of fragmented writing, there was finally nowhere else to go and nothing else to do but enter the blogosphere and embrace the postmodern recreation of that most charmingly sentimental of forms, the journal."
 
In other words, Torpedo the Ark marked a retreat. But still, no shame in that. If it becomes strategically necessary to withdraw so as to better engage the enemy at a future time from a more advantageous position, then retreat is precisely what you should do: He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day ... [1]


II.

Of course, whether Torpedo the Ark can legitimately be described as a journal, is debatable. But I like this word. It seems to have a more literary resonance than diary and it's certainly preferable to the ugly little word blog, which Peter Merholz coined in 1999 (as a shortened form of weblog).
 
Journal, of course, also has an intellectual resonance which suits my purposes, as many of the posts are philosophicalish in nature. At any rate, I've never thought of Torpedo the Ark as a blog; nor of myself as a blogger. But then neither am I simply a journalist (even if some posts are based upon news items and press reports). 
 
I suppose, if pushed, the term I would use to describe myself would be scripteur, i.e., a non-authorial writer. Or, as the posts often combine fiction with theory, maybe I might even refer to myself as un romanciér. As the Torpedo the Ark tagline (borrowed from Barthes) indicates, I consider the posts as spoken by a character in a novel [2].
 
Lately, however, as my period of Essex exile grows ever longer and my isolation more acute, my mood and thinking has begun to change [3]
 
Not doing anything, not going anywhere, not seeing anyone in the present - and unable to even imagine a future life - obliges one to make a further retreat: first into the virtual realm of online publishing; and now into the past, exploiting one's own memories. 

Thus, Torpedo the Ark might best be described today as a mémoire, rather than a journal of events and ideas (although I have long sought to question such genre distinctions and wouldn't insist on any essential or absolute difference) [4].
 
By this I mean a text that is haunted by loss, though hopefully one that is still composed with a certain gaiety. For whilst I know one cannot recapture one's youth or recreate old joys via writing, I'm hoping that I may at least preserve something of the promise of these things (and remember where happiness once lay).        

 
Notes
 
[1] The origin of this saying can probably be traced back to the ancient Greek orator and statesman Demosthenes, who reputedly came up with it to justify his fleeing of the battlefield at Chaeronea, in 388 BC. 
 
[2] I say more on this idea in the post entitled 'Disclaimer' (8 Jan 2016): click here.        

[3] See the post 'On Self-Isolation' (6 Dec 2022): click here

[4] One consequence of the death of God and the subsequent collapse of values, is that genre distinctions and the dualistic hierarchies that support them become unprotected and thus vulnerable to challenge. So it is that, despite the best efforts of those still keen to preserve such distinctions - see, for example, Rasma Haidri's post of March 10, 2021, on Brevity's nonfiction blog which asks 'Are Journals Memoir?' - we witness today an increased level of intertextual promiscuity. 


2 Jan 2023

Why You Should Never Wish Happy New Year to a Nietzschean

 
 
I. 
 
I don't know the origin of the zen fascist insistence on wishing everyone a happy new year, but I suspect it's rooted in the 18th-century, which is why in 1794 the Archange de la Terreur - Louis de Saint-Just - was able to proclaim: Le bonheur est une idée neuve en Europe ... [1]
 
Such a new idea of happiness - one concerned with individual fulfilment in the here and now and realised in material form, rather than a deferred condition of soul which awaits the blessed in heaven - had already become an inalienable right of citizens in the United States.
 
Whether Jefferson was inspired by the English empiricist John Locke - or by the French philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau - is debatable. But, either way, the pursuit of happiness was declared a self-evidently good thing that all Americans should uphold and practice [2].        
 
It might also be noted that 1776 was the year that Jeremy Bentham famously wrote that ensuring the greatest happiness of the greatest number was the mark of a truly moral and just society [3].   
 
 
II. 
 
So what's the problem?
 
Well, the problem for those who take Nietzsche seriously, is that this positing of happiness in its modern form as the ultimate aim of human existence makes one contemptible
 
That is to say, one becomes the kind of person who only seeks their own pleasure and safety, avoiding all danger, difficulty, or struggle; one becomes one of those letzter Menschen that Zarathustra speaks of [4].    
 
Nietzsche wants his readers to see that suffering and, yes, even unhappiness, play an important role in life and culture; that greatness is, in fact, more often than not born of pain and sorrow. This is why his philosophy is a form of tragic pessimism.
 
And this is why it's kind of insulting to wish a Nietzschean happy new year ... [5] [6] 
 
 
Notes
 
[1] Louis de Saint-Just made this remark in a speech to the National Convention entitled Sur le mode d'exécution du décret contre les ennemis de la Révolution (3 March 3, 1794) - only four months before he went to the guillotine, aged 26, along with his friend and fellow revolutionary Robespierre.  

[2] The famous line written by Thomas Jefferson in the 1776 Declaration of Independence reads: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
 
[3] This phrase - often wrongly attributed to J. S. Mill - can be found in the Preface to Bentham's A Fragment on Government (1776). 

[4] See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 'Zarathustra's Prologue', 5.
 
[5] Similarly, one should refrain from wishing happy new year to a devotee of Larry David; or, at any rate, be aware that there's a cut off after which it's no longer appropriate to do so. See episode 1 of season 10 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, entitled 'Happy New Year' (dir. Jeff Schaffer): click here.
 
[6] Having said that, see the post published on 1 Jan 2016 entitled 'Sanctus Januarius' for a Nietzschean new year's message: click here


1 Jan 2023

Fond Memories of The Wicked Lady

Fig. 1: Portrait of Katherine Ferrers (c. 1848)
Fig. 2: Margaret Lockwood in The Wicked Lady (1945)
Fig. 3: Faye Dunaway in The Wicked Lady (1983)
 
 
I. 
 
According to popular legend, Lady Katherine Ferrers was a bored young gentlewoman and heiress by day, but a notorious highwaywoman by night; one who committed crimes for the sake of the danger, not the money. 
 
Known as the wicked lady, she terrorised the good people of Hertfordshire as they went about their business; apart from robbing travellers at gunpoint, an entire catalogue of wrongdoing was attributed to her, including arson, slaughtering livestock, and even the murder of a local constable.  
 
Sadly, Katherine was to succumb to a gunshot wound sustained on Nomansland Common during an attempted hold-up in 1660, aged 26. 
 
Her body - still disguised in male clothing - was  discovered by her loyal servants, who carried their mistress home to be buried. It is said, however, that Katherine's ghost continues to haunt the Common - just as she continues to feature in the cultural imagination ...
 
 
II. 
 
In 1944, Magdalen King-Hall published a novel - The Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton - whose story was looslely based on the (contentious) events surrounding Katherine's life. 
 
The following year, a big-screen adaptation entitled The Wicked Lady - directed by Leslie Arliss and starring Margaret Lockwood in the lead role (here named Barbara Worth) and James Mason as her lover and partner in crime (Capt. Jackson) - smashed British box office records, pulling in an audience of over 18 million.
 
The British, it seems, have always loved a costume drama - even in wartime. 
 
Unfortunately, the American censors were none too pleased with the movie and several scenes had to be re-shot before it was given a US release; it seems the low-cut bodices worn by some of the more buxom actresses were a bit too much for our puritan cousins across the Atlantic.  

Ideas for a sequel were discussed, but came to nothing and the viewing public had to wait nearly forty years for a remake ...

 
III.
 
This infamous 1983 remake of The Wicked Lady, starring Faye Dunaway (as Lady Barbara Skelton) and Alan Bates (as Capt. Jackson), has all that one might hope for from a film written, produced and directed by Michael Winner - including, controversially, a whip fight between Dunaway's character and a topless Marina Sirtis as Jackson's (unnamed) girlfriend (or doxy) [1].     
 
Winner described his vision of the film as a period romp that combined elements from the story of Bonnie and Clyde with those of Tom Jones (I'm assuming he refers here to the 1963 film, rather than Fielding's classic novel of 1749).
 
Writing in a retrospective review, David Hayles pretty much nails the appeal of the movie:
 
"Winner updated the film the only way he knew how - with sex and violence: by the time the opening credits have rolled, the film has already earned its 18 rating. We see a crow pecking the brains out of a corpse in a gibbet, a man with a rope around his neck dragged across a field by a horse, and a naked couple copulating in a barn."
 
He continues:
      
"The tone is somewhere between the rustic horror of Witchfinder General and the softcore romp Young Lady Chatterley 2, with lavish costumes and beautiful shots of horses thundering across the countryside. The likes of John Gielgud and Denholm Elliot play it very straight, yet veer into overwrought camp melodrama filled with appalling stunt work and, as was Winner’s penchant, nude women at every opportunity. Somehow, it all comes together to make for a delightful feature." [2]
 
The movie premiered at the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square, on the 21st of April, 1983. Although we were not invited to either the screening or the party afterwards, my friend Kirk Field and I were hanging about Soho that day and happened to pass through the Square as some of the guests were arriving and someone - I don't know who - took this snap ... 
 
 
 
 
Notes
 
[1] The British censor insisted this scene - which is in the original film, although not the novel - be cut before The Wicked Lady could be given an X-certificate. An outraged Michael Winner encouraged friends and colleagues to write letters of protest to the censor; these figures included Lindsay Anderson, Kingsley Amis, Derek Malcolm, and Fay Weldon.
      Although at the time Marina Sirtis said that filming the scene didn't bother her in the slightest - and despite the fact that she appeared nude two years later in Winner's Death Wish 3 (1985) during a brutal rape scene - she later complained about her treatment by the director, accusing him of sexual exploitation and expressing the hope he would rot in hell for all eternity
      In contrast, Faye Dunaway would insist that The Wicked Lady was the only movie she ever truly enjoyed making.           
 
[2] David Hayles, 'The scandalous folly of Michael Winner's The Wicked Lady', published on the Little White Lies website (1 July 2016): click here.
 
 
To watch the trailer for The Wicked Lady (1945): click here
 
To watch the trailer for The Wicked Lady (1983): click here