On Board the Ship of Fools

 Fig. 1 Woodcut illustration by Albrecht Dürer for Sebastian Brandt's  

Das Narrenschiff (1494)  

 Fig. 2 Photo by Fabrizio Villa of Greta Thunberg with some of her crewmates 

 preparing to depart Italy for Gaza on a boat - the Madleen - organised by 

the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (June 2025)

 

 

Seeing "professional tantrum-thrower" [1] Greta Thunberg and her dysfunctional crew of activists aboard a sixty-foot sailboat heading across the rather lovely waters of the Mediterranean to Gaza in an attempt to break the Israeli blockade of this Palestinian enclave [2], I was reminded of Plato's ship of fools [3] ...  

  

For aboard the Madleen we encounter a group of entitled young people who, despite believing themselves to be politically clear-sighted and possessing an acute sense of hearing attuned to the cries of the oppressed, are actually cloth-eared and blind to reality; people whose knowledge and experience is limited, but who are certain that they are always in the right and therefore justified in shouting down anyone who disagrees with what they say.   

Now, to entrust moral leadership to those who shout the loudest and make the most extreme claims is, I would suggest, profoundly mistaken. 

 

And whilst Greta and her chums may not be wearing traditional jester's costume - having swapped multicoloured motley for the distinctly patterned black and white keffiyeh [4] - they are fools all the same - or useful idiots, as some might say - and theirs is less a humanitaran mission and more a game of larping for Palestine [5] (i.e., a game of role play, virtue signalling, and self-promotion that shamelessly exploits the very real suffering of the people of Gaza). 

 

Having said that, however, the voyage of fools carries great symbolic weight in the Western imagination and perhaps Foucault is right to suggest that the figure of the madman, or joker, or even an autistic and bipolar activist is not merely a ridiculous and marginal one, but one who "stands centre stage as the guardian of truth" [6].      

 

Perhaps, therefore, we should at times write in praise of folly ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] A description provided by Julie Burchill in 'Greta Thunberg's pathetic Gaza voyage', The Spectator (4 June, 2025): click here. For those who would like to see Miss Thunberg speaking to the press prior to setting off on her voyage, click here.  

 

[2] The Madleen departed Catania, Sicily, on 1 June, 2025. The 1,250 mile journey is expected to take seven days. As well as the Swedish doom goblin, there are eleven other über-privileged activists on board and 64-year-old Irish actor Liam Cunningham. 

 

[3] See Book VI of Plato's Republic (c. 375 BC). 

      Without actually using the phrase 'ship of fools', Socrates speaks (allegorically) of a ship with a mutinous and foolhardy crew and readers are meant to take away the idea that sound governance always requires expert knowledge and strong leadership; that statecraft is essentially the same as seafaring. 

      The ship of fools analogy has been influential throughout history, appearing in various works of art and literature, often as a criticism of societal chaos and a lack of authority in difficult times. Sebastian Brandt's satirical work, Das Narrenschiff (1494), inspired by Plato's text, further extended the concept.

 

[4] Use of the keffiyeh as a symbol of Palestinian nationalism and resistance dates back to the 1936-39 Arab revolt in Palestine. Outside of the Middle East and North Africa, the keffiyeh has gained increasing popularity among activists and is widely considered to be a sign of solidarity with the Palestinians in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.  

 

[5] See the post of this title published on 8 may 2024: click here. 

 

[6] Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization, trans. Richard Howard (Tavistock Publications, 1967), p. 14. 

 

 

Can Anyone be a Sex Pistol?

 Anson Boon / Johnny Rotten

 

 

I. 

 

For whatever reason, I'm still thinking about Danny Boyle's new six-part series based on the story of the Sex Pistols. And the question that keeps returning is this: Can Anson Boon convincingly play the part of Johnny Rotten? 

 

Or is it the case that, in order to truly inhabit a role, an actor needs the same lived experience [1] as the person they are portraying? Ultimately, what is the relationship between acting and authenticity?

II. 

 

Firstly, let me say this: I know why some people think it important that, for example, black actors play black characters on stage and film and that such roles aren't given to white actors wearing theatrical makeup. I understand the issues surrounding blackface and how it has lent itself to racial stereotyping and, indeed, racist caricature and can see why such a practice is now considered offensive (even when there is no wilful malice or disrespect intended by the actor playing the part). 

 

Similarly, I sympathise with disabled actors who time and again see roles for which they would seem to be ideally suited go to able-bodied performers. It seems discriminatory - and probably is discriminatory. For although the performing arts take place in an aesthetic space that is uniquely different to what most people think of as the real world, that space is not entirely separate from the latter and still unfolds within a wider cultural history and a network of power and politics, privilege and prejudice. 

 

As Howard Sherman writes:

 

"If we lived in a society, a country, where everyone was indeed equal in opportunity, then the arguments for paying heed to the realities of race, ethnicity, gender and disability might be concerns that could be set aside. But that's far from the case, and if the arts are to be anything more than a palliative, they must think not just of artifice, but also about the authenticity and context of what they offer to audiences." [2] 

 

Unfortunately, whenever someone points this out they are immediately told that the very essence of acting is people pretending to be what they're not; about performance, persona, and pretence; that it's not about the lived reality of an actor, who is paid to wear a mask not bear their soul or expose their true selves. 

 

However, as Sherman goes on to argue, the it's called acting defence is one that often serves to uphold a state of affars in which too many people have been marginalised and unfairly treated for too long; where the lived experience of those who don't determine the rules of the game - including the rules and conventions of the supposedly liberal world of the arts - has been denigrated or dismissed.      

 

 

III. 

 

Having said that - and this brings us back to Danny Boyle's project and the question I asked at the beginning of this post - one of the key lessons of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle was that anyone can be a Sex Pistol, regardless of their background.

 

Why? Because it's all about attitude, rather than authenticity; style and swagger, rather than an identity rooted in one's so-called lived experience. As much as Boyle's castration of the Sex Pistols irritates me - click here - the idea that actors can only play people who are the same as them is clearly absurd. 

 

It can be vexing - I wouldn't say offensive - when posh people attempt to portray working class life, or straight actors play gay characters. But, as Julie Burchill says, "if an actor doesn’t look like he’s making fun of someone, we should trust him to give a part his all - and more credit to him if the part is outside of his experience" [3]. 

 

So, good luck to Anson Boon in his attempt to play Rotten! 

 

And good luck also to Louis Partridge as Sid Vicious and Maisie Williams as Jordan. These bright young thespians may never quite understand what was so phenomenal about the Sex Pistols, but that needn't detract from their performance and, as Burchill also points out, there's a danger in getting too uptight about all this: for such anxiety about casting "is merely the equity branch of the cultural-appropriation asshattery" [4]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This moral-ideological notion - increasingly used to negate objective reality - is one I have italicised throughout this post in order to indicate my own scepticism regarding its legitimacy. For those who are interested, it is discussed at length by Brendan O'Neill in a recent essay entitled 'The tyranny of "lived experience"', Spiked, (19 March, 2021): click here.    

 

[2] Howard Sherman, 'The Frightened Arrogance Behind "It’s Called Acting"', (2 August, 2016): click here. Sherman - an arts administrator, advocate and author - was Interim Director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts (New York), from 2013 - 2017. Although I'm sympathetic to his concerns, I worry that his arguments can be extended in a way that ultimately renders acting - and, indeed, even the imaginative creation of characters by writers - almost impossible. In other words, that a call for political correctness ends in a form of woke puritanism.         

 

[3] and [4] Julie Burchill, 'It’s called acting for a reason', Spiked, (21 August, 2018): click here.

 

On Modest Fashion (Or OMG! I Agree with Julie Burchill - Again!)

The Dolce and Gabbana Abaya and Hijab Collection (2016)

I suspect many of those currently promoting modest fashion know full well that this is essentially a euphemism for clothing that is compliant with Islamic rules governing what a woman should and should not wear in public; or, more accurately, what parts of her body she should or should not be allowed to expose.

Clothing, in other words, that collaborates or knowingly flirts with an oppressive and misogynistic form of theocratic stupidity. Designers, fashion editors, and celebrities desperate to be on trend are all implicated in this shameful and cynical game that combines cultural cringe with cultural appropriation in the name of cultural diversity and the new femininity.  

As Julie Burchill writes, women who have previously "plunged it down to there, slashed it up to here and left no part of their bodies unscrutinised for years" are dressing in a way that suggests they have suddenly discovered not only modesty, but religious piety too!

Now, just to be clear: as a Nietzschean, I love stylish, elegant women who understand that Truth does not, in fact, love to go naked and so carefully avoid exposing too much flesh. Having said that, I don't want to see women and even very young girls covered from head to toe and very much doubt that a burka can be chic, no matter who designs it.

What's more, like Burchill, I have a problem when the concept of modesty is used aggressively to shame women into modifying their behaviour and, clearly, when used within the context of clothing, "the word implies, by default, that any other form of dressing is immodest, that is, tarty, exhibitionist and 'wrong'".

It's at this point that the craze to cover up "goes beyond the whimsy of fashion" and becomes rather sinister; an insidious attempt to persuade women that there's something courageous and liberating about surrendering their freedom. But there isn't. And those Western women who decide to conform to this trend - including those Muslims who talk about rediscovering their cultural heritage or identity - are unwittingly lending their support to those men who would cover their flesh in order to strip them of their autonomy and their dignity.

As Burchill wrote in an earlier piece: "Modesty be damned. If you've got it, you've got every right to flaunt it." And, arguably, in this new age of puritanism and Islamism, one has a feminist duty to do so. Zarathustra says: don't be demure - live dangerously and be brazen!

Notes

To read Julie Burchill's Daily Mail article on modest fashion (28 June 2017), click here. 

To read her piece in The Guardian on modesty written five years earlier (23 Sept 2012), click here.

To read the post in which I agreed with Ms Burchill for the first time, please click here.  

OMG! I Finally Agree With Julie Burchill

Julie Burchill by Phil Disley (2013)

I know that times of conflict and violent upheaval can lead to strange alliances and the sharing of space with some rather dubious bedfellows, but who would have guessed I'd finally want to cuddle up to Julie Burchill?

At the very least, I'm sympathetic to her recent piece in The Spectator in which she argues that, for some men, the misogyny of the Islamic State is a crucial part of their appeal; i.e. far from being problematic, the abominable manner in which they treat women and young girls is the perverse factor that makes otherwise impotent losers hard with sexual excitement. 

And this, shamefully, includes those far-left apologists in the West who defend the actions of the jihadis and fail to condemn their gynocidal gender politics. Self-hatred goes some way - perhaps a long way - towards explaining this. But so too does a suppressed feeling of resentment towards women and their emancipation in what was doubtless the most significant and successful of all modern revolutions. 

I think Burchill is right to touch on this and entirely justified to think about holy war within a wider context of desire. She's right also to link the violent abuse of women and the negation of their rights by Islamists to nice, middle-class white youths masturbating to misogynistic rap music and sharing rape jokes online. 

For feminists, there is therefore a far wider and far more disturbing problem to address here than one to do with beards and veils; one that is as much about pornographic models of masculinity within contemporary popular culture as it is religious fundamentalism.

    

Note: the Julie Burchill article to which I refer first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 22 November 2014. It can be found in the online edition by clicking here.