Athenian Punk Rockers Meet 300!

Outside the city …

I am finally away from my Greek Island and the “five star” resort with no internet access, so I am able to resume blogging. Yesterday evening I arrived in Athens for a three day stay, and as is my wont in a new city, the first thing I did was go out for a wander. My hotel has a rooftop bar with a view direct to the acropolis, which is pretty amazing, and is on the temple slopes so it’s a short walk to the old town. Walking through the old town one can catch regular glimpses of the acropolis from the streets, and also experience the pleasures of a summer night in the city. The streets were heaving with people, all out to enjoy the evening air. All the restaurants in Greece seem to be open to the sky, and alfresco dining is the norm, so everywhere you look people are enjoying eating under the stars. I passed a Suleimanese punch-and-judy show, where the puppets are dressed in Persian-style pantaloons and curled hats (but still beating each other) and the horde of gathered children scream at the villain in Greek. I passed a concert being held in an old temple ruin, all lit up with red spotlights. Every square was full of people sitting chatting and drinking; the main square was absolutely heaving with young people in groups just enjoying the night air. The weather was dry and warm, the temperature perfect, the sky a million miles away and clear and the whole balmy evening cupped within the bowl of the distant mountains, with the Acropolis the gleaming jewel set in the middle of that frame, seen occasionally between buildings and lit up against the night sky.

I found a stylish open restaurant in the old town, that served excellent food and had a massively camp Swiss host. They serve a chicken cooked whole inside a loaf of bread and cut up on your plate for you, and an exquisite lemon-flavoured pumpkin soup garnished with little cthulhu-esque octopuslets. I didn’t have my camera with me so didn’t order the cockerel; I may return to experience this strangeness this evening. I have to say, the way Greek people use lemons in their cooking – and the predominance of citrus throughout their cuisine – is excellent and commendable.

After dinner I wandered a little more, enjoying the chaos and light-heartedness of the city. I found myself in the area just west of the Syntagma square, which is supposedy full of bars and night clubs, and in front of a rock bar called Six Dogs. They were hosting an American band called The Shrine, some sort of classic heavy rock outfit that I’ve never heard of, so in I went, for my first experience of Greek punk/metal fans.

What is on your playlist, Archilokos?

The band was average, I have to say, and somewhat hamstrung by the fact that their singer has exactly the same accent as the weird zoo-owner from the Mighty Boosh. They were a pacey, hard rocking classic metal outfit with a bit of skate-punk overtone, so pretty likeable overall. The crowd, however, were fascinating. First of all they were really lively and cheerful, bouncing around with way more energy than the band deserved, and managing to do spontaneous crowd-surfing efforts even though there were only about 50 of them. This meant that whenever one of their number wanted to go up, he had to get the others to lift him, and then a group of 10 or 15 fans would go charging around the room in a little chaotic loop, carrying the surfer aloft, and then drop him. It’s not quite lollapalooza, is it? But they were really into it. But the best thing about them was the way they looked so … classical.

I think every second rocker in the crowd was basically a classical Greek stereotype, come to life then covered in tattoos and stuffed into a pair of skate-punk shorts and a band t-shirt. They all had the broad shoulders and narrow waste of the classic Greek pottery or statues, and that particular style of Greek beard that you see in the classic pictures: the one that is cropped close to the skin along the jaw and near the ears, but extends to a block or point out from the chin, and merges in a perfect gradient with short-cropped hair. It works perfectly with the classical Greek profile of aquiline nose and strong jaw. The rockers also had the same classical hair style, that is neatly cropped at the back but then a little unruly or longer and forward-pointing near the front.

It was like moshing with the guys from 300, if they had bothered to put on t-shirts. It was one of those classic moments, like when a French waiter pulls a 110% expressive face, or a German man says very precisely about one of his most memorable experiences, “it was in general perfect” with German precision, or a Japanese person bows on the phone – one of those moments where the person you are talking to is subconsciously channelling a million years of cultural history and to the rest of the world they’re a stereotype of fantastic proportions, but to them it is so completely normal that they would never realize they were doing it, even if you could play them a video of the moment. So it was that these Greek rockers were moshing not to the tune of an ordinary Venice Beach band, but to a couple of thousand years of classical Greek history. The Pelopennese war through hardcore, or something. I think I will dub this style of Greek counter-culture “300-core.” I hope to see more of it as I wander this city of romance and history!

 

Top of the Lake: Crime and Secrets at the Edge of the World

Going feral at the ends of the earth

Top of the Lake is a seven part television series about misogyny and violence, set at the southern tip of New Zealand. It was directed by Jane Campion, director of the Piano, another movie about misogyny and violence in New Zealand that was very well received when it was released. In her return to New Zealand for this show, Campion has moved her setting from the lush fern forests of the North Island to the desolate peaks and wilderness of the far South Island, and has skipped in time from the colonial era to the modern – though looking at the behavior of the protagonists in this movie, it’s hard to find much of a civilizing influence of modernity.

The basic story of Top of the Lake is an apparently straightforward investigation of child abuse. A 12 year old girl called Tui (pictured) is pregnant and a cop from Sydney called Robin is brought in to investigate the case. The story is set in the fictitious town of Laketop, near Queenstown. Robin grew up in this town but moved to Australia to work, and has returned to Laketop temporarily because her mother has cancer, so she’s ideally placed to investigate the crime. Unfortunately, things don’t proceed simply: Tui is the daughter of a singularly malicious and nasty man, Matt Mitcham, who is a Scottish migrant and the dodgiest thug you’ve ever seen (well, at least until you meet some of his associates in episode 5). He is singularly unhelpful in the case, and Tui is also being very unhelpful – it’s not clear if she even understands what has happened to her, and soon after the show starts she disappears. Furthermore, Robin has her own dark history in Laketop, and pretty much every other person you meet is entangled in something dark and horrible: wherever you turn you see a suspect or their conspirator, and it’s really hard to believe that this town is not deeply enmired in misogyny, sexual violence and repression. Through all of this, Robin is trying to find and help Tui, and the rest of the town are taking a singularly colonial-era and feral approach to Tui’s problems, with almost no one seeming to be aware that it’s dangerous for a 12 year old girl to be pregnant, and dangerous for her rapist to be at large.

Campion’s exploration of the setting really helps to give this impression of a town that hasn’t worked out what modernity is, or updated its attitudes towards women accordingly. Queenstown is a famous tourist town and playground of the rich and famous, but we never see that side of the area: as far as we can tell, Laketop is a rundown and wild place in the middle of nowhere, a little cluster of huts hanging off of freezing, windy mountains and staring out at nothing. The children are wild, playing in canoes and on horses, keeping bones in their homes and wandering wild over the hills and forests, and Tui herself is feral to the point of being fey. The adults are also wild, but in a much nastier and ferocious way. Matt Mitcham, his family and associates cast a long shadow over the town, and he is a violent, sinister presence, completely unreformed and often more like a force of nature than a human. His direct children are ill-mannered, stupid thugs; another of his sons lives in a tent by the lake and spent eight years in a Thai prison; Tui is his daughter by a different woman, and there are children in his house who he doesn’t even really seem to know. The people of the town ride horses and hunt, and Mitcham’s associates use severed deer’s heads on poles as an emblem. The police in the town have a very vague understanding of what crime is or what their purpose is as police. The chief of the police, Al – played with incredible subtlety by David Wenham – alternates between being an urbane and intelligent modern policeman and a quietly dangerous, selfish and very sinister figure. The only apparently “normal” people in this show are a group of women from America and Australia who have formed a commune by the side of the lake, but these women are just as touched as the rest of the place: they live in shipping containers on the edge of the lake, they’re all deeply damaged in some way, and their guru GJ is a remote, harsh and judgmental woman who doesn’t appear to have any kind feelings for her charges at all – and these women also don’t seem to have any conception of the importance of protecting Tui or finding out who raped her. All these people are presented against the backdrop of a wild, silent and unforgiving landscape, cold and windy and desolate but stunningly beautiful, that acts as a perfect counterpoise for the wild, strange character of the people we meet.

Just as in The Piano, Campion uses the landscape to stunning effect as a backdrop to the story. It is beautifully filmed and presented, and in our various excursions to the top of the lake and the mountains beyond it we lose all sense that we are in the modern era. Watching the show makes you feel a kind of sympathetic chill as if you were experiencing the wind and rain and cold of the South Island yourself, but it’s impossible not to be amazed by the harsh beauty of the place. In The Piano, the wilderness offered a lush and sensual backdrop to the corrupted sexuality of the main protagonists; in Top of the Lake the chill, serene lake and cold, distant mountains reflect perfectly the sinister secrets of the town and the impenetrable wildness of the town’s main victim, Tui.

The acting in this television series is also exemplary. Robin is played with fine skill by Elisabeth Moss of Mad Men, who does a brilliant job of portraying her human vulnerability and professional strength, as well as her bravery in the face of a town that seems determined to destroy her. Her slow unraveling over the course of the story is brilliantly done. David Wenham gives a master class in his potrayal of the chief policeman, Al, whose motives and allegiances are extremely suspicious, and the other major characters – Johnno and Matt Mitcham and his daughter Tui – are all perfectly cast.

The story is fairly simple and well told, without a real twist but with just enough red herrings and dead ends in its development that you aren’t sure you are right about the key points until the very end, and even then a few things are not fully resolved. It’s essentially a story about corruption and the extent to which a few evil men’s influence can completely corrupt a small community, and although it comes to the resolution one would hope for once one knew the facts, it remains deeply disturbing. It’s even more disturbing if anywhere in New Zealand is actually like the place depicted. My main complaint about the plot is that the commune by the lake plays a big role in the show, but is largely irrelevant to the plot and seems like a kind of boutique side story that Campion put in just to please herself. I think this commune should have been given a different, more satisfying role in the plot or should have been dropped, and I can’t work out exactly why it was important. But aside from that, the story is well told and has that feeling of completeness where nothing stood out as wrong or confusing, and the only unresolved parts were unresolved because the characters couldn’t know the answers, not because there were no answers or because of some plot incoherency. Quite a lot happens for just seven episodes, and it’s an impressively tightly coiled story.

I was surprisingly deeply affected by this show. It’s beautiful, the acting is powerful, the story is disturbing and the characters are amazingly engaging. It also tells a story about a side of New Zealand that maybe doesn’t really get shown much internationally in amongst all the Hobbitons and Rivendells that have emanated from there recently. It’s not always easy going, though it’s not openly brutal, and at times it is breathlessly tense, but in an enjoyable rather than an overly terrifying way. This is a good show to watch for anyone who is interested in crime stories, thrillers and mysteries – especially if you’re interested in seeing those stories unfold in a very unique and almost magical setting.

 

Abraham Lincoln’s Secret Writings

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain

Historians often struggle to come to grips with the more pathological eras of human history. The holocaust, world war 1, Stalin’s terror and the history of slavery are terrifying periods that are difficult for ordinary people to grasp. Why did people do these things? How did whole populations get caught up in frantic social movements with such a destructive and chaotic bent? Usually, balanced and reasonable historians attempt to explain these movements through a mixture of social, economic and institutional phenomena, with varying amounts of great man theory and good or bad luck thrown into the mix. But ultimately, somewhere along the line, historical theory often loses grip on that most simple of facts: that all historical movements depend in the end on individuals to enact them, and these individuals sometimes have to do terrible things. Though it is a terrible work of scholarship, Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners at least attempts to grapple with this vexing problem when, describing the events at Babi Yar, Goldhagen personalizes the actions of the policemen, and asks the reader to imagine what these men must have been thinking when they marched children to their deaths. But in general, somewhere in historical scholarship there must be some gap of understanding, between the grand social and economic movements that produced a pathology, and the willingness of ordinary people to execute that pathology.

A vivid example of this situation is the problem of slavery in the USA, and the war that brought its end. Scholars may characterize the conflicting forces driving this movement – economic, cultural, historical, geographic – and they can describe with some certainty the opinions and goals of the people involved in the fateful decision to go to war, but they still in the end cannot explain the simple personal fact of slavery in a way we can comprehend. How is it that an ordinary human being – similar, one assumes, in fundamental disposition to my own gentle reader(s) – can go to bed happy, dream of happy things, then wake up, step outside, and reduce another perfectly ordinary human being to a state of complete and humiliating servitude? What was that man thinking when he purchased another human being as chattel, and beat them if they refused to cooperate in their own subjugation? And then, when the rest of the world had made it clear that the trade would have to end, what were these men thinking when they decided that it were better to go to war rather than give up this obvious immorality? And why did ordinary men agree to join such a fight, and kill other ordinary men, over something so simply and obviously wrong as the right to get up in the morning and use another human being as if they were an animal?

Many explanations have been given for slavery and its acceptance, but to me they are fundamentally implausible because they fail to connect the broad social and cultural forces claimed to underlie the slave state with those intimately personal moments of cruelty and brutality that link an ordinary human being and his slave. Any such explanation must necessarily be fanciful and involve a reasonable degree of magical thinking: how can the economic forces of the tobacco plantation change the mind of the plantation owner so that he cannot see the humanity of his victim? There is no explanation for this in modern historical thought, and as such all extant theories of the reasons for slavery seem to me fundamentally implausible.

Last night, however, I watched a documentary that finally presented a plausible explanation for this whole era of American history: Vampires. Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter offers the first, and I think we can all agree, the most reasonable explanation for slavery yet contrived: the slave holders were not human. They were vampires, and they built a massive slave empire so that they could feed. While other recent films have presented a shabby depiction of Abraham Lincoln as an ordinary man, compromised by the (unexplained) mores of his time and forced to barter over the freedom of millions, in this documentary we see a more nuanced view of our hero, as a great man of unbending will on a heroic mission to use his super-powers against the forces of darkness. I ask you, which is more believable? Could the man who wrote those speeches have been a shabby compromiser, or a secret demon-slayer?

This documentary helps us to understand many things about the civil war. It shows us that white Southerners were not racists of some fantastic creed, but themselves victims of inhuman monsters. It also helps us to understand how such an abominable slave empire could have been established: no humans, with their simple morality, were involved, but instead the whole edifice was constructed by undead. We also see some insight into why Americans take this civil war so seriously. Where previously I had thought it strange that Americans treated this period of their history with so much importance, given it is so terribly embarrassing to have had to go to war in order to simply abolish an institution that the rest of the world already knew was so thoroughly wrong. But in fact, this war really was a titanic battle between the forces of good and evil, and though not all Americans will tell you about the Vampire aspect, they obviously have some sense of it, and thus are justly proud of the efforts of Americans to win and then recover from that cataclysmic struggle. Finally, this movie also helps to answer a question that has long vexed me about British politics. We all know that Tony Blair is a vampire, but many doubt their own sense of his deep and unrelenting evil because they ask themselves, “how can a vampire be abroad in daylight?” This movie answers that question, simply: sunscreen. Vampires use a special sunscreen, which is why Tony Blair always looks so heavily made up. Other objections to his undead nature (“a vampire could not possibly succeed in the labor party because it has neither the fortitude nor the appropriate level of deviousness” or “why did he become PM of England instead of America”) are either easily answered from the record (“Tony Blair is a devious bastard”) or are also answered by this documentary (“he was kicked out of the USA by Abraham Lincoln and he is mighty pissed about it”). So this documentary doesn’t teach us about only America, but also shows us some important insights into why things went so wrong in the UK. I strongly recommend this documentary as a way of better understanding the true nature of the undead who live amongst us.

As an aside, the documentary is also very entertaining, tells the story clearly and simply without confusion, and has such good footage from the battles of the time that you could almost believe it was made in a film studio. It is an entertaining and enlightening look at a very important part of American history, and has given me a newfound respect for Abraham Lincoln. Others may complain that it excuses white racism of the era, or reduces history to the story of one great man, but I think those criticisms fail to adequately take into account one important fact: Vampires. So if you want to learn more about the evil that threatened America, or you want to reassess the evidence for Lincoln’s greatness, I strongly recommend this documentary.

 

Current Viewing: Ripper Street

Looking for the one who got away

I cannot recommend Ripper Street highly enough. The actors are excellent, the dialogue fine, and the English a joy to listen to. The setting is grim and nasty, the lead characters compromised and gritty, but it has none of the bitterness and cynicism that so often accompanies those traits in a TV show. It’s also, I think, the first TV show I have ever seen that might be described as sex-worker positive. It’s what Deadwood could have been, if it weren’t so deeply and overwhelmingly misogynist.

Ripper Street is a crime/mystery TV series set in the East End of London in the era of Jack the Ripper. The Ripper himself has been and gone, but the show focuses on the detective who failed to catch him, Detective Inspector Reid, his sergeant Bennett Drake (played by Bron from A Game of Thrones) and an American, Homer Jackson, who is their forensic doctor. Reid has lost a daughter, possibly to Jack the Ripper, and his personal life is on the rocks because of it; Jackson is an ex-Pinkerton on the run with his ex-girlfriend Susan, who runs a brothel (where Jackson lives); and Drake is tormented by his memories of soldiering in Egypt, where he may also have joined some satanic sect. The fifth person in the picture above (far right) is Miss Rose, one of Susan’s employees, who is in a relationship with Jackson but being wooed by Drake.

Reid is played by Matthew McFadyen, most famous for his stirring portrayal of D’Arcy in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and as one might expect from such impeccable credentials, he does an excellent job of portraying a detective trying to use modern, scientific methods to solve crime in a world still steeped in cruelty, superstition and bigotry. Bennett Drake is like a soft version of Bron, capable of being just as vicious but also much more vulnerable. He is Reid’s hard man: in 19th century London no one has to adhere to the human rights act, and when confessions need to be extracted it is Drake who extracts them. Jackson is probably more dangerous than either of them, and has a very dubious past, but provides the medical skills (and to a large extent the real brains of the operation). He is also a selfish, lazy and arrogant man.

So basically this TV series is like a grittier and slightly less fanciful version of From Hell if it somehow crashed into Pride and Prejudice, with Reid as a more down-to-earth version of Abberline, and a team of three putting together a modern approach to policing. In many ways the show seems to have really made a big effort to capture the reality of the times, portraying the East End of London as a far more diverse, contested, and hopeful place than perhaps we are used to seeing in Ripper-era television. I also think it deals particularly well with two classes of person: Americans and sex workers.

The Americans in Ripper Street dress differently, they talk differently, they really do seem to come from a different world. They’re usually either on the run or looking for something, and they aren’t native in London – they don’t know the town, they often hate it, and they’re usually there with a purpose, not usually a good one. They’re gaudier, more dangerous or more sinister, and they’re also more modern – they have ideas and skills and ways of looking at things that the Londoners aren’t used to. This is how I imagine they would have seemed at the time the show is set, and it might be part of the explanation for why British society has such a strange love/hate relationship with American culture. I really like this depiction of the gulf between two apparently closely-related societies, a gulf that I think a lot of people feel in their day-to-day dealings in the real world, and it’s nice to see Americans in Britain being depicted as more than just a different accent.

But where Ripper Street really excels for me is in its treatment of sex work. It’s the first TV show I think I’ve seen other than Deadwood where sex workers are major characters, but unlike Deadwood it doesn’t reduce them to weak and pathetic characters dependent upon men for approval and safety. Though they are constrained by the stupid mores of their time, the sex workers in Ripper Street aren’t weak, and they don’t wait for men to protect them or help them, nor do they seek men’s approval. They are proud, strong women trying to make their own way in a world where women have no formal power. They aren’t sluts or idiots, but ordinary women doing what needs to be done. The show also takes a narrative stance on sex work, not particularly openly, so that we can see the morality of the world in which the women work and trace its hypocrisies and cruelties; this isn’t done in a hamfisted way, generally, and it’s portrayed primarily through the efforts of Reid’s religious wife, Emily, who wishes to establish a shelter to protect homeless women without dictating morals or lifestyle. It’s really refreshing to see a TV show set in an oppressive era that doesn’t fetishize sexual violence and reduce its female characters to victims and objects. If only Deadwood had done the same …

Ripper Street only has eight episodes so far, and a new season won’t be along any time soon, but I strongly recommend viewing what there is. It’s an excellent and enjoyable show, and a welcome addition to that small genre of TV shows about the genesis of modern policing. Don’t hesitate to try it out if you get the chance.

 

FYI: I Will Not Watch You Die

Is it just me, or has the Guardian embarked on a project of excessive tastelessness[1]? In the last two days they have shown video footage of 17 people dying in a hot air balloon (apparently you can see people jumping to their deaths) and of a man being dragged to his death by a South African police van. WTF? I don’t want to watch people die. I was always of the understanding that snuff videos were an urban myth. Call me crazy, but I don’t think media outlets should be showing footage of real people dying. I don’t want my death to be on film, and I don’t want to watch you die. Maybe occasionally there is some social value to watching you die, but in general I think your death should be something kept between you, your family and your god or gods.

I remember years ago some stupid American politician shot himself in the face in front of the media, and pretty much every Australian TV station chose not to play it. I recall one station even had a statement about why they “censored” the sight of a man blowing his brains out. What has happened in the intervening years that grainy footage of some holiday-makers having an otherwise great day ruined by their horrible fiery deaths has become news? Why do I need to see some kid in South Africa being murdered?

I think I can chalk this up as another example of how journalists and the media generally are losing track of reality. But let me say this: to the best extent that I can, I will try to avoid watching you die. Obviously, some stupid media may trick me into watching their horrid snuff films, but if I have any say over the matter, I will not watch you die.

I’m sure that will make you feel better when you do.

—

fn1: Obviously for a lot of people this has been a rhetorical question for a very, very long time now.

 

Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Beginner’s Game

Doing the Kessel run in 12 parsecs …

Today I received my copy of Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, along with some necessary WFRP3 materials. Edge of the Empire is described as a “beginner’s game,” which means that it essentially doesn’t have any character creation rules, has a very stripped down combat system, and contains a well laid out but slightly railroad-y introductory adventure. There are 4 pre-designed PCs, but no way to make other PCs. The rulebook is just 48 pages, the adventure book is 30 pages long, and there are also some tokens to represent PCs/adversaries, and a set of special dice. It really is a beginner’s game, though those with experience of other Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) product can probably hack it (see below). This is a first impressions review.

First of all, the product is very slick. It’s well laid out, in a sparse and modern style that gives the whole thing an atmosphere supportive of a space opera setting. The graphics in the book are very nice, in a space opera style, and the pictures are very heavily focused on Tattooine, which draws the reader’s attention to the original three movies and ensures a certain fidelity to the production. The text is perhaps a little small, so that at times when it is interspersed with the coloured symbols for the dice it is kind of dizzying. The general flow of the rules is sensible, introducing the basic dice mechanic first and then describing skills, then combat and finally a little bit of GM material. The maps are nicely drawn and, as you can see from the picture, include a YT-1300 light freighter. What more can you want?

The system is very light and easy to learn, and it’s a testament to FFG’s game design and presentation skills that the entire system, as well as the GM section, can be laid out in a total of 48 pages (including acknowledgements and index) – even though it includes a section on starship combat. The system is essentially a rules-lite version of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 3 (WFRP3), with all the fiddly componentry stripped out. There are no action cards for combat, no talent cards or recharge tokens, but essentially the same system in place. Instead of action cards there is a talent tree, with individual parts of the tree purchased at varying xp costs and dependent on previous parts of the tree. The dice system is simplified but very similar to the WFRP3 system. In place of conservative/reckless dice and training dice we have “upgrades,” which are d12s that replace the basic d8 stat dice; challenge dice can also be upgraded. There are equivalents of fortune and misfortune dice, and so the whole thing works in a very similar way. There are also equivalents to banes and boons, and a thing called a triumph that works as a combined additional success/sigmar’s comet. So if you’re used to playing WFRP3 it’s pretty much just a straight conversion, but the dice pools are easier to put together than in WFRP3. Critical hits and wounds are also handled more simply: there are no wound cards, just a growing tier of effects, with every PC able to bear four critical wounds before they become incapacitated; each additional critical wound has an additional effect. For the beginner’s game there is no death, just incapacitation. The system includes no character creation rules but it does provide four PCs: a human smuggler, Twi’lek bounty hunter, droid colonist and wookie hired gun. These are laid out in very attractive “folios” that contain essential rules information. Each folio has three double page spreads: the first is the starting PC, the second gives the same PC with two character development options selected to show how development works, and the third is blank but for the character attributes, and includes a talent tree so that you can develop the PC any way you want. So essentially these folios contain (implicit) information on four character classes and four races, though you have to do a bit of hacking to work out the background.

The adventure is very well laid out and carefully designed for beginning players. It is partially a railroad: the first instructions to the GM are to make clear to the PCs that a) they have to escape the town they are in and b) they can’t go any way except by spaceship. It then lays out a set of six encounters designed to showcase the major aspects of the rules, up to and including starship combat. Each encounter includes boxed sections that contain reminders of the key rules from the rulebook, so a GM learning the system can quickly adapt without having to fiddle in rulebooks. I’m not sure how other “beginners” games lay out their introductory adventures but this seems like an excellent approach. Given the simplicity of the system, I suspect that after one run through this book most GMs will be ready to handle anything else. There is apparently a second adventure available free at the FFG website, but I haven’t checked it.

I think essentially in this game the people at FFG have learnt from their mistakes with the overly complex and fiddly WFRP3 system, as well as identifying better ways to introduce the system to new players and GMs, and intend to trial it with this stripped back version for Star Wars. This version is a little disappointing, in that it doesn’t offer any freedom for experienced players to just jump into the Star Wars universe, and for an experienced GM like me it seems like a rip-off. It also doesn’t provide much background material on the Star Wars milieu, which I really need (I don’t know anything beyond the stuff in the original three movies), and it is set in the early stages of the rebellion so is the perfect setting for exploring the world of the original movies with a fast-paced, simple and creative system. Given this, I’m disappointed that they didn’t include a second book of background material, perhaps with options for character development. I certainly hope that the next set they release in the series will flesh out the full system, including Jedi, so that we can have a complete gaming system for the Star Wars universe. I remain a big fan of the fundamental ideas underlying WFRP3, and it’s nice to see FFG committing to producing more material in a similar vein, while ironing out the creases in the original.

Finally, I think that the system presented here could be easily hacked to produce a rules-lite version of WFRP3. I might give this a go over the next few weeks, and see what I can come up with. In any case, I think it’s only a matter of time before the revised system presented here gets turned into a classic fantasy RPG. That will be fun, I think. Let’s hope that this Star Wars system is a success, and FFG are encouraged to apply its pared-back rules to other settings.

 

Peter Jackson’s Hobbit: Too Many Goals for One Movie?

In the last week I have watched the Hobbit twice, first with my partner and then as part of an end-of-year party with my players. In both cases, the people who attended the movie with me gave it the thumbs up – we all really enjoyed it – and I can definitely say that it maintains Peter Jackson’s tradition of getting Tolkien right. However, it got a much more mixed critical reception from my friends than The Lord of the Rings did, and although it was very good I think there was a lot wrong with it as well.

The first thing to say is that Jackson appears to have taken on the special – and in my opinion exemplary – project of properly binding the two stories together. He has taken crucial material from the appendices of The Lord of the Rings and incorporated it into the movie, so that there are actually a lot of scenes in the movie that aren’t in the book, but are taken from cross-references in other parts of Tolkien’s work. In my opinion this is an excellent idea, and it improves the story, since instead of being a stand-alone adventure with hints of background darkness, it meshes into what we already know about the war of the ring. When we first read The Hobbit we blundered through all that stuff, not even knowing it was there, but Jackson has made a wise decision in not pretending that the previous movies weren’t made, and explicitly linking the two stories. The extra material he puts in is related to the larger plot: it shows how the timeline of The Hobbit links in with events in the appendices and the other books (I think the Unfinished Tales) by inserting events like Radagast the Brown’s investigations of Mirkwood, and Gandalf’s councils with Elrond et al, into the narrative flow of the main story. He also gives lots of hints as to the nature of Gandalf’s schemes and plans, so that we now know that certain actions he took were not simply due to happenstance, but part of his bigger plan.

The downside to this project, though, is that the movie doesn’t stand alone, and the main story of The Hobbit sometimes takes second place to the bigger events of Middle Earth. Precisely one of the charming points of The Hobbit is its sense of stand-alone adventure, that nothing really grand is happening and it’s just a bunch of bumbling dwarves getting on with their lives. In this movie they’re a bunch of bumbling dwarves whose desire to get on with their lives is being manipulated to a bigger purpose by Gandalf. It’s not an innocent “adventure” anymore, but a grim and serious quest being played out by a group of innocents.

For those of us who enjoy the broader sweep of Tolkien’s history, this is just grand. But for The Hobbit‘s original audience – children – and all those people who see fantasy movies as a pleasant distraction, this bigger picture stuff may be a little tedious. It also runs against the other chief artistic goal of the movie: to make it accessible to children. Because the reality is that a movie with Gollum in it is not for children, but the book was written for kids, and Jackson obviously intended this movie for a youthful audience. It doesn’t have the grimness and sense of hopelessness of The Lord of the Rings, and there is no gore: the party mash their way through a thousand trillion goblins but you never see a drop of blood, and even the trollish grotesqueness tends towards the hilarious rather than the disturbing. It is carnivalesque rather than grotesque, which is fine – until you meet Sauron or Gollum or Smaug, and then suddenly it’s nasty as hell, and not for children. The scenes with Gollum, particularly, are very disturbing, and Gollum – done brilliantly as ever – is if anything scarier than he is in The Lord of the Rings. At times he is close to being as horrifying as the grey men in The Descent, killing in cold blood and openly contemplating cannibalism, balancing on the knife edge of his two personalities and always close to doing bloody murder with his bare hands. So the movie is swings and roundabouts, taking us from silly Sinbad-style adventure thrills to sudden bubbles of grim darkness, and no real way to balance the two. I guess if he had made the whole thing genuinely grim and perilous he would have been criticized, but in attempting to convey hints of the bigger and darker story to come, he creates occasional jarring shifts in tone and theme. Maybe this is a flaw of the book as much as the movie, but I found myself wishing for the whole thing to have been grim and perilous – not just the odd moments.

One thing that Jackson has done to rescue the book from its more foolish moments, however, is he has made the dwarves genuinely steely, adult figures rather than the laughable stereotypes that they have always previously been portrayed as. There was a lot of complaining on some websites about how terribly wrong the dwarves are, but the source material gives us precious little to go on, and it certainly seems like a lot of fanboys’ images of Tolkien’s dwarves are based on how they imagined dwarves when, as 12 year olds, they read the book. i.e., their image of Tolkien’s dwarves is heavily corrupted by Disney. But Jackson has escaped that trap, and gives us real, serious dwarves. Dwalin, particularly, is excellent: he looks, sounds and acts like he is from a race that was spawned from stone and spends its life working in iron. Thorin is genuinely a warrior, and those who are not warriors are genuinely not warriors. It’s a motley bunch, well aware of its own limitations, but united in a quest and doing its best in a hard world. The dwarves are not comedy figures like Gimli sometimes was, and they are designed to make us respect them as wandering heroes looking for their home.

The same probably couldn’t be said about Radagast the Brown…

A few other minor points about the big problems with this movie are below, with dissenting views from my friends where I remember them.

• 48 Frames Per Second is bad: I have seen the movie with and without this “innovation,” and all I can say is that in 48fps it looks like you’re watching a fantasy version of The Bold and the Beautiful. Many of the scenes look like they’re on a cheap set, and Jackson’s penchant for facial close-ups really works against him when the film medium has the effect of making everything look like a soap opera. Avoid 48fps if you can. One viewer disagreed with me on this and thought 48 fps was better, but he is a designer, so what would he know about art?
• Smaug is great: One of my pet hates about big budget movies is they always fuck up the dragon, but Jackson has avoided that. You don’t get a clear look at Smaug but it’s clear that he’s huge, hideous, and evil. This is a dragon that will terrify you to death, not a wagon-sized lizard with Sean Connery’s face.
• The troll scene is disappointing: there are two moments in the movie where Bilbo has a chance to prove himself and rescue the group, and on both occasions Jackson fluffs it. The troll scene has some great parts, and the trolls themselves are hilarious, but Bilbo’s role was disappointing. Others in my group said the trolls were not so great, either, and one viewer suggested Bilbo’s agency had been stolen from him in these scenes in order to enhance the sense that he didn’t fit in …
• Bilbo was controversial: I really like the actor who plays Bilbo, and I think he was great for the part, but others said he had overdone the depiction of Bilbo as reluctant adventure. The consensus appeared to be “Yes! Alright! I get it! You don’t like adventuring! We know that! Now can you start doing stuff???!!!”
• Galadriel and Gandalf’s relationship is great: Jackson really has an eye for the things that Tolkien hinted at but didn’t deliver on. His depiction of gollum as evil but pathetic is superlative, and he really explored Frodo and Samwise’s relationship beautifully. In this movie he gives us more hints of the long and special relationship between Gandalf and Galadriel, and also of her unique power and influence; this is one of those times when overdoing the facial close-ups works. Cate Blanchett is perfect as Galadriel and Ian McKellen has really got Gandalf down to a T. The two of them together are electric.
• The orcs haven’t lost it: Orcs in Middle Earth are not cannon fodder, and the orcs in this movie are really tough, scary bastards. The worgs aren’t as good as those in The Lord of the Rings, though.

So, overall I don’t think those who enjoyed The Lord of the Rings will be disappointed with The Hobbit, but I do think it tries to do too many things at once: it tries to be a rollicking kids’ adventure, an insight into the machinations and schemes of those who fought the growing shadow, and a grim and stern introduction to a great battle between mighty powers, all at once. These three things don’t fit together, and I would have much preferred it was the last two rather than the first one. A truly mature version of this movie would be as sinister as The Fellowship of the Ring, and just as desperate, but this movie flits between that world and the sunny children’s adventure too much. I shouldn’t really complain because I wouldn’t have liked it that much if it were just a Disney-esque romp (though it would still have been fun). Nonetheless, I don’t think it works entirely to mix the three themes.

Still, it’s a worthy addition to the canon and arguably rescues The Hobbit from itself (and Tolkien’s bad sense of content placement, as well) by moving the bigger story into the interstices of the plot. I recommend you don’t miss this movie!

 

Bruce Dickinson Reciting Blake at Canterbury Cathedral

Last night I stumbled on this video of Bruce Dickinson, from Iron Maiden, singing William Blake’s Jerusalem with Ian Anderson (from Jethro Tull) accompanying him on flute. It was performed at a Christmas concert at Canterbury cathedral last year. He performed GK Chesterton’s Revelations, the inspiration for Iron Maiden’s song of the same name, at the same venue, and this can be viewed on youTube as well. The performances are stirring stuff, though at times Dickinson over-eggs the pudding and you can tell he’s used to a slightly different venue, but if you like good British poetry and appreciate the New Wave of British Metal (NWOBM) then you’ll get a lot of enjoyment from these two short clips.

The songs also show very clearly the strong influence of British classical poetry on the direction the ‘Irons took under Bruce Dickinson. Listening to these songs is like listening to any of their more famous efforts, though obviously the lyrics are more skilfully crafted[1], and it’s clear that Iron Maiden drew heavily on their British heritage when they wrote their works. Their most famous songs are steeped in what could probably be broadly described as the cultural origins of modern Britain – the romantic poets, the modernists, and some of the key debates in colonial and Victorian Britain that shaped the growth of the post-industrial British world, all feature prominently as themes in Iron Maiden’s work. Sometimes these are direct translations to metal – as in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – and sometimes they are a pastiche of poetry and history, as in Revelations. In other cases they are merely inspirational material, as in The Trooper‘s interpretation of The Charge of the Light Brigade. But in all cases, these influences and thematic elements are obvious in the work.

British comedy, television and especially music is, I think, the strongest part of its modern culture, and even seemingly nihilistic and barbaric elements of it – like the NWOBM or modern genres such as britpop – can be seen as part of a cultural continuity stretching back 200 or more years. This continuity is often obscured by the blandishments of modern art – the gutter style of modern drama, the spandex and satanism of the NWOBM, or the very modern and superficial faux working class posturing of some of the reformed toffs of the britpop scene – and of course it is also unrecognizable in some of the less talented and more degenerate products of modern British culture. But at its finest, modern British art, comedy and drama shows a strong appreciation of, and indeed directly channels, that long cultural tradition. I think for those of us from newer countries like the USA or Australia, this long cultural continuity can be surprising and perhaps also something we can be envious of (hence Australia’s historic “cultural cringe”). It’s also something we don’t always notice or appreciate, being more focused on those things that are fresh or new. But I think Iron Maiden is a really exceptional example of this tradition, being on the one hand embedded in what is often seen as a nihilistic and cultural vacuum (heavy metal) while simultaneously enormously dependent on a long cultural legacy for its themes and artistic influences. It isn’t just a case of a diamond in the rough, but of the ability of a traditional and often conservative entertainment and cultural establishment to continually reinvent itself without losing its roots.

—

fn1: this may earn me a fatwa from the fan club.

 

Should Smokers Require a License?

Today’s issue of PLOS Medicine contains an interesting debate between Australia’s own anti-smoking paladin, Simon Chapman, and a professor Jeff Collin from Scotland, over whether governments should introduce a license for smokers. Chapman puts the case for a license, while Collin opposes it, and the debate is refreshingly free of jargon or paywalls, so quite accessible to non-public health types. I think the license is an interesting idea: basically, anyone who wants to smoke would be required to pay a fee to obtain a license, and no one without a license can purchase cigarettes. Licenses would be available for various quantities of cigarettes, and by registering the licenses with a fixed central database it would be possible to ensure that people could only consume within the licensed amount. Those who want to give up smoking could turn in their license and get a refund on all the years’ fees they’ve paid, plus interest. Meanwhile, the government would be able to accurately track smoking use statistics, which is very useful from a public health perspective. Chapman also suggests that, just like a driver’s license, one should be required to pass a test to get the license, thus in his words ensuring

that new smokers were making an informed choice, something the tobacco industry has long declared that it believes applies to smokers’ decisions

and guaranteeing that people who take up smoking have been required to inform themselves of its risks and of the difficulty in giving up. Chapman’s article also offers arguments to dismiss claims that a license would be intrusive, discriminate against the poor, or stigmatize smokers, and proposes a gradual lifting of the minimum age for acquiring the license in order to make numbers of new smokers less and less common. He compares the license with a license to drive or own a gun and, quite interestingly, with a prescription to take pharmaceuticals, which he represents as a kind of temporary license. On its own lights, it is quite a strong argument.

The opposing case by Collin takes a more structural, less drug-user-focused approach to the challenge of reducing smoking rates. He argues that we should continue to focus on regulating the pharmaceutical companies to combat what he calls an “industrial epidemic,” and says we should strengthen measures which

should centre on changing a system of manufacture and promotion of such harmful products centred on the corporation, an institution that is staggeringly ill-suited to such roles when viewed from a public health perspective

He suggests that further measures targeting users are both discriminatory and stigmatizing, and that increasing attempts to manipulate prices and cost barriers will punish existing poor smokers the most (and smoking, at least in developed nations, is a much bigger problem amongst the poor). This is a point that Chapman had disputed, but Chapman’s argument against it is at least partly based on dismissing these complaints as crocodile tears from the tobacco industry and its front organizations – of which I sincerely doubt Collin is a member. Collin argues, furthermore, that the idea of a tobacco smoker’s license is fundamentally illiberal, and grounds most extant bans of tobacco users‘ behavior in a liberal philosophical framework:

Smoke-free policies have been recognised and understood as unambiguously liberal measures rather than authoritarian intrusions on personal freedom. In advancing a case focused on the protection of non-smokers, workers, and children, such legislation conforms to JS Mill’s classic formulation of the harm principle in On Liberty: “(t)he only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”

His argument, then, is that we should avoid anti-tobacco legislation that targets the users themselves, except to prevent harm to others, and focus instead on the source of the harm (the corporations). He even suggests that the imposition of licenses would represent a propaganda “gift” to the industry, and further punish poor people who smoke relative to the wealthier.

Overall I think Collin’s arguments are less coherent and consistent, but I am inclined towards his position on the issue. I think the license would probably be a good idea from a public health perspective, but represents a curtailment of individual liberty that is unnecessary. It doesn’t actually have any serious civil liberties implications – registering smokers is not the beginning of the police state – but it does shift the focus of efforts away from the source of the harm to its most immediate victims, and it does play a stigmatizing role. Collin also observes that the major goals of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) are institutional, and in many countries have not been achieved, and it is better to work on systems for improving countries’ ability to meet those goals than to divert our efforts towards restricting users’ behavior. I agree with him on this point: many countries are a long way from a proper implementation of the basic goals of the FCTC – higher tobacco taxes, curbs on illicit tobacco, and indoor smoking restrictions, for example – and strengthening those countries’ ability to resist tobacco company money and marketing is a much better goal for anti-smoking activists. The reality is that smoking in the developed world is on the decline and will continue to do so, and as a result the tobacco companies are aggressively targeting developing nations. It is in those developing nations that activists should be fighting a battle for improved governance and institutional structures that will help those countries protect their health systems from this “industrial epidemic.”

The debate raises a related issue for me, which is: have some countries gone far enough in their anti-tobacco measures? Australia, for example, having now passed plain packaging laws, has pretty much made smoking as unattractive and difficult as it can do without actually banning it. Should we stop there? The reason this is an issue for me is that I play a violent sport, and I recognize that violent sports represent a deliberate choice by people to take risks with their health in pursuit of a certain pleasure. So does drinking to get drunk, and so does casual sex, both activities of which I approve. At some point we have to recognize that people have the right to trade health for fun, and although that doesn’t give people carte blanche to, for example, go surfing in a frankenstorm or dance naked in front of lions, it does mean that at some point we have to draw a line beyond which public health measures must stop. From a public health perspective, so long as anyone is smoking, “more needs to be done.” But from a civil liberties perspective, at some point the barriers to smoking and anti-smoking education are such that we can safely say people who take up the habit know the risks and are suitably reminded of them that there is no reason to further intrude on their personal decisions. Have some developed nations reached that point? For Australia at least I’m not sure there is much more that can be done except to introduce a license, or introduce the rolling bans mentioned in Chapman’s article. Do we need to go that far, or is the current status quo sufficient? Should the anti-tobacco lobby in Australia be relaxing their national attention simply to being vigilant against new tobacco industry efforts, and instead begin focusing more of their energy on the other countries in the West Pacific where smoking remains a serious and growing problem?

There comes a point where you have to accept that the activity harms no one else, the person engaged in it is willing and aware of the risks, and the activity is suitably challenged in everyday life that they must be committed and really want to do it. At that point, perhaps public health organizations need to step back, and instead of further restricting the behavior, defend the right of those engaged in it to do so, and to get healthcare for the problems it causes. This is what we do now for mountain-climbing and rugby, two very dangerous but well-respected activities. I think it is possible that in some developed nations, smoking has reached that point, and maybe in those countries enough has been done.

 

Rushdie vs. le Carre: the Battle from the Land Before Time

Today’s Guardian reports on an exchange of letters between Salman Rushdie and John le Carre, from 1997, in which they disagree vehemently about the limits of free speech. At this point in his career Rushdie was in hiding from Islamic fundamentalists, and le Carre was in trouble for criticizing Israel – which of course put him in line for claims of anti-semitism, about which he was most outraged. Unfortunately, 10 years earlier he had apparently claimed that “Nobody has a god-given right to insult a great religion,” and Rushdie was apparently incensed that le Carre should suddenly be demanding victim status after the religious “thought police” turned on him.

The subsequent exchange – which the Guardian now reports both sides have declared they regret – is a hilarious example of how debates on freedom of expression were conducted before the existence of blogs. Apparently, they are conducted viciously through the medium of newspapers. But the letters themselves read like something straight out of a modern blog flame war – further proof, if any were needed, that the medium has not really changed the message or its tone.

Some of these exchanges are quite pretty, though. le Carre goes in heavy with his concerns about the girl in the mail room getting her hands blown off, and demands a less colonialist approach to the topic of freedom of expression (though thankfully he doesn’t apply this to Rushdie himself, just his admirers). Less colonialist? Since when is it colonialist to criticize the Iranian regime for putting a price on a writer’s head? Rushdie may be a self-canoniser, but a threat to the Iranian regime he is not. Were he some lunatic militarist with actual political power, pushing for the reoccupation or isolation of Iran, le Carre might have a point – but a religious critic?

In reply, Rushdie thanks le Carre for “refreshing our memories as to what a pompous ass he is” and adds that “‘ignorant’ and ‘semi-literate’ are dunces’ caps he has skilfully fitted on his own head.” Isn’t it just like reading an exchange on one of the better major bloggers’ sites, when they have one of their blog wars? Only all of it in the Guardian letter’s page.

I haven’t read Rushdie’s work, but I find it hard not to take his side on the matter. I’ve no doubt that le Carre’s experience of drawing the ire of the Jewish “though police,” as Rushdie describes them, was much less frightening than Rushdie’s, but one would have hoped it would have given him a hint as to how hard it might be to be in the firing line, whether figuratively or literally. Whether you think his attack on Islam was warranted or not, and whether you think it deserves the ire of Muslims, the fatwa was an outrageous response and even if purely symbolic is still a Very Bad Thing. I would have thought one could have a nuanced debate about colonialism, revolutionary defensiveness, and the responsibilities of western authors, without ignoring the egregious nature of the response, or belittling Rushdie’s genuine difficulties after the fatwa was declared. And if I were Rushdie, I’d certainly be mighty wrathful with writers who failed to defend my rights.

All of which makes for some entertaining reading, 15 years after the fact, and reminds us that modern blogwars do not necessarily have a lower tone than public debate showed before the invention of this anonymous medium. I guess it just significantly increases the amount that gets said (and thus, but application of basic theorems, the number of debates that get Godwinned). In the case of your average blogger, this is probably not a net positive for the world – but had Rushdie and le Carre been blogging between 1985 and 2000, it would have been quite fascinating, I’m sure.

If only the internet had been invented sooner, we could have been given the pleasure of blogposts by such luminaries as Orwell, Rushdie, Abbie Hoffman … imagine the colour and light such blogs would bring to the medium. Imagine if Steinbeck had a blog during the Great Depression, or Dr. Seuss in the lead up to world war 2. I doubt it would have changed anything, but it would certainly have been great reading…