I don’t normally do your so-called relevant or contemporary blog pieces [writing about something already out of date – surely that makes it timeless?], but today I was asked to make an exception to that rule. There was something that everyone was talking about and people were asking me my thoughts. So don’t blame me when the blog ages badly. It was never supposed to be like this. Blame STV because it is obviously so broke that it can’t run Quincy M.E. re-runs in early afternoons anymore that I could be spending my time blogging about.
Yes – The Scheme. It is a television documentary. But it feels like a video the civil service has produced for the Government. About what type of society they expect to encounter when they come out their bunker after the bomb.
The narrator starts by explaining the premise: It follows a set of 6 unique and different families who all live in a small scheme in Kilmarnock, reflecting the greater society in Scotland. It is implied that this will be an uplifting if hard edged documentary, of salt of the earth type people living within megre limits.
Except, it is clear from the outset that far from different families, they all share broad commonalities.
Each family has a current problem with a family member who is addicted to either drugs or drink or is trying to overcome and addiction to drink or drugs. Each family has had prison time experience in some form. Each family blames external factors for their situation. Each family talks about having to be hard to survive on the estate. Listen to me calling it an estate! I obviously meant Scheme. Once they start talking, the families are entirely incomprehensible in what they are trying to say – with high pitched whining west coast accents that seem decidedly lacking in the famed “Banter” but full of spat out misdirected profanity. And everybody chain smokes. Even the 6 month old baby is shown trying to light up (albeit by trying to gumly eat the cigarette lighter – but the learned intent is clear in its eyes).
With the inference that it reflects society at large, apparently by the documentary makers’ desire to take this logic to the nth degree with this film, this means I buy dog food from the Ice Cream van, only I suspect that the dog food cans I am purchasing are in fact filled with heroin.
One man is on Methadone and meets up with his ex who is just out of prison, but “on the tag”. She arrives drunk on his doorstep and carrying nothing but a heroin addiction. Within a week he is back on heroin with her, she is having some sort of breakdown because the tag is preventing her from meeting out some old scheme justice to the people who she doesn’t like and the two are engaged and “never been happier” as the man gurns with rolling eyes through the screen at me with a sallow, grey, pox, corpse complexion, loose teeth, and baseball cap, with his mutt dog defecating on the floor of the living room behind him. He doesn’t have a ring to give her but in this life, a kiss from his dried out, left in the sun worm lips is as good as a binding contract.
Only it isn’t. Within moments, he is being charged for sticking a knee forcibly into the ribs of his bride-to-be. Bizarrely, this prompts the complaint from her that her husband-to-be can “only hit women” in a tone that suggests she also wants to him to start hitting men as well as women.
That is he let off with a warning makes no odds as by the next cut in the documentary he ends up in the jail anyway for dealing small time drugs. While he is there she, struggling to make ends meet, drinking, smoking and presumably still drug taking, eventually abandons his injured dog, being unable to pay the vet bill, and leaves, barely able to tell the viewer any more, such is her numbed, vacant face, than “It’s no ma fault”.
That this dog, Bullet, is edited to cast the all important emotional hook to catch the viewer and illicit something for the viewer to route for is very telling. All the residents and family members struggle to make a case to care about them. But the dog, left to run off and be hit by a car is followed through from being involved with a dysfunctional, violent family, put in a life and death crisis and shown being saved by a kindly vet before eventually reaching the redemption of a stable caring owner is the only positive narrative arc in all this footage. It is not quite up with the Littlest Hobbo, but the dog is the major humane part of the documentary.
There is an attempt to show some positives in the lives of these people, besides the dog. But each time, the end is a punch line in a joke from the stagnant waters of hell.
One family has an eldest son in prison for assault, a delinquent middle son but their youngest is a daughter preparing for a dance competition. What transpires is a community hall full of yelling and screaming people and blaring club dance music as all the competing girls, dressed as Las Vegas Round Counters from a 1980’s boxing ring, whirl round the hall leaping and flailing making sure to slow down in front of the judge to shimmy some more. The girls jostle each other for position often hitting and pushing one another. Even the judge is hit, with a dance move, for all I know, simply called, “Forearm smash”. It is loud, chaotic, confusing and made me think that this is exactly how I would imagine Mad Max 3: The Ballet would turn out.
The parents of the girl plan to have a week long holiday. The father needs to get away. Both he and the mother are winning their fight against their alcoholism, but finding employment is proving difficult. Recently, the father was unsuccessful in an interview for work in a pub. He blames the recession. His wife, perhaps more astutely, considers if there is not more to do with that it was their one time local, where they would smash bottles and he should have tried to get work somewhere else.
Anyway, they decide a holiday from trying to find a job would be good. They are taking their daughter, but can’t afford to take their 20 year old son. But they also can’t trust him to be left behind in the house on his own. So they all leave the morning of the flight after the ex-alcoholic mother has glugged down a few mugs of vodka for courage to get on the plane. The parents and daughter head to the taxi and the son sees his set of house keys being popped back through the letter box and is sent through the morning fog into the scheme, homeless for the week, to fend for himself. He immediately goes to his 16 year old girlfriend, just down the street, who we soon learn has got pregnant by him. She wants to keep the child but her mum says that if she does she will be kicked out the house. The girl has a big decision to make: “Ah dinnae believe in abortions eh?” and takes a long draw from her 2nd cigarette of the morning.
On their return from holiday, the parents discover the son is now on heroin and has been spending most of the week coping without them by, I would gather, shooting up. He denies it to the camera: “F**** sake, man. Am no f***in’ doin’ f*** all, man”. This is a problem for his pregnant girlfriend. She had forgiven him with a ruffle of his greasy hair for sleeping with the fiancé of the drug dealer next door during the week: “He wis drunk – that’s ayeways thair excuse in’it? Taken advantage of!” but if this is true, this is something else entirely. She might need to forgive him with some even grander gesture when he says it was because of the drink.
And this is where it leaves the viewer.
Disastrously this 4 part documentary has been shelved after only 2 episodes for legal reasons. I need closure! Will the junkie lovers get it back together?
As with Jeremy Kyle, Come Dine With Me and now this, I wonder what the people think of themselves if they watch it back. I rather suspect here, that they will be signing autographs in their scheme streets. I am sure that the people involved will say, “Ah, we are just like the characters out of Train Spotting”. Or at least they will try and say that with words that don’t make sense through jaws which have long since became slack because their bones have literally dissolved through drug abuse. It would be ok if they were just characters. But they are not. Characters are exaggerated in their personalities and not designed to have actual lives that require to function out with the confines of their own made up universe construct. But these are real people who the viewer is invited to watch making bad decisions in ever decreasing circles and as they do so, becoming ever more defiant of their life choices.
Many viewers find it blackly comic [and bits are unintentionally hilarious], real life soap, and socially informative piece all at once. But make no mistake, this is hugely depressing, relentless, brutalised television.
In summary, compulsive viewing. It's the place to be. Not really the actual place to be. I mean me watching them on the TV. They can't come through the screen can they?!?!
Saturday 29 May 2010
Friday 21 May 2010
“Oh, oh, no, no!”
To defend the life and works of William Shatner would be to empty the sea with a wooden stool. However, here I find myself having to at least offer a reconcilement of his musical career. William Shatner has been periodically ridiculed and parodied and castigated when he has put his talents to music. Just like Joseph was with his coat.
This is understandable. But let me put it another way. This is baffling.
William Shatner is clearly a musical icon of any era. He is a risk taker and an avant-garde performer with which no one quite rests on a parallel ethereal plane. Some may criticize that he mainly has recorded cover versions – but, fair play, it is not as if he has cowered from some of the biggest tunesmiths in the business: Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Elton John and, more recently, collaborating with Ben Folds.
Combining his overwrought with conviction, randomly inflected voice with his overwrought with conviction, randomly inflected physical acting to a tune he has no intention of following and lyrics he has no clue as to the subtle counter-culture meaning of, results in some very potent alchemy going on indeed, my friend.
Watch this:
It is fair to say that even at the time in the 1970’s, when 76% of the American public were tripping out their eye sockets on acid, no one had seen what Shatner was laying down.
So, maybe you are thinking, sure, but it is the Star-Trek connection that makes the song listenable, the performance watchable. Why, if Mr. Spock were ever to sing something then there is every chance it would be just as good.
Nope.
Ok, we can continue to debate the merits of William Shatner’s musical ideology until Esperanto becomes the language of the Universe but essentially it comes down to this – look, who would you rather have transferring their shoddy, hammy acting over to a collection of classic song covers: Tom Selleck?
Imagine Tom Selleck attempting Rocket Man re-interpreted as an astral big band, lounge song where he films himself 3 times performing the song – once tentative, once cynical and once… er… tired and emotional to then be run concurrently before setting a course to a building crescendo clashing blunt, literal and surreal analysis, just for a science fiction awards show in 1978? It would be grim. But in the safe, warm, guiding hands of Shatner, it is borderline mind blowing.
You just need to listen to anything by John Barrowman, surely the closest comparable contemporary in existence to Shatner, to instantly start praying to William Shatner to descend down amongst us and wreak a furious vengeance upon Barrowman while singing Tambourine Man.
Just picture Shatner phaser-whipping John Barrowman to within an inch of his life, all the while performing this at him in the rain doused alleyway behind the theatre, phaser butt glinting in the light of the churning full moon on the upswing of each syncopated swipe beaten out:
It’s about time your granddaddy showed you how it’s done, boy.
So called cultural commentators talk of the success of The Beatles as partly attributed to being ahead of their time. William Shatner is possibly so ahead of his time we, as a human species, may never in fact catch up.
If William Shatner was to record a version of Cher’s Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves then we may as well all go home. Music would have reached its zenith.
This is understandable. But let me put it another way. This is baffling.
William Shatner is clearly a musical icon of any era. He is a risk taker and an avant-garde performer with which no one quite rests on a parallel ethereal plane. Some may criticize that he mainly has recorded cover versions – but, fair play, it is not as if he has cowered from some of the biggest tunesmiths in the business: Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Elton John and, more recently, collaborating with Ben Folds.
Tear your insides out
Combining his overwrought with conviction, randomly inflected voice with his overwrought with conviction, randomly inflected physical acting to a tune he has no intention of following and lyrics he has no clue as to the subtle counter-culture meaning of, results in some very potent alchemy going on indeed, my friend.
Watch this:
It's cold as hell
It is fair to say that even at the time in the 1970’s, when 76% of the American public were tripping out their eye sockets on acid, no one had seen what Shatner was laying down.
So, maybe you are thinking, sure, but it is the Star-Trek connection that makes the song listenable, the performance watchable. Why, if Mr. Spock were ever to sing something then there is every chance it would be just as good.
Nope.
Ok, we can continue to debate the merits of William Shatner’s musical ideology until Esperanto becomes the language of the Universe but essentially it comes down to this – look, who would you rather have transferring their shoddy, hammy acting over to a collection of classic song covers: Tom Selleck?
Imagine Tom Selleck attempting Rocket Man re-interpreted as an astral big band, lounge song where he films himself 3 times performing the song – once tentative, once cynical and once… er… tired and emotional to then be run concurrently before setting a course to a building crescendo clashing blunt, literal and surreal analysis, just for a science fiction awards show in 1978? It would be grim. But in the safe, warm, guiding hands of Shatner, it is borderline mind blowing.
Mr Tambourine man!
You just need to listen to anything by John Barrowman, surely the closest comparable contemporary in existence to Shatner, to instantly start praying to William Shatner to descend down amongst us and wreak a furious vengeance upon Barrowman while singing Tambourine Man.
Just picture Shatner phaser-whipping John Barrowman to within an inch of his life, all the while performing this at him in the rain doused alleyway behind the theatre, phaser butt glinting in the light of the churning full moon on the upswing of each syncopated swipe beaten out:
It’s about time your granddaddy showed you how it’s done, boy.
So called cultural commentators talk of the success of The Beatles as partly attributed to being ahead of their time. William Shatner is possibly so ahead of his time we, as a human species, may never in fact catch up.
If William Shatner was to record a version of Cher’s Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves then we may as well all go home. Music would have reached its zenith.
Sunday 16 May 2010
If it was a hobby horse - it'd be shot.
As I watched my batch of homemade lemonade [as part of a controlled come down from a previous Lemsip… lets' call it... habit] simmer, I came to the conclusion that I haven’t ever had much of a talent for choosing hobbies.
When I was younger I had a subscription to the Weekly World News and I would video record late night old sci-fi movies to watch the next day and take notes on how I would have improved the screenplay. Neither, I felt, was essentially great in the hobby stakes. So, back then, I concluded that if I could not successfully come up with a hobby I would do someone else’s hobby. It transpired that I didn’t have much of a talent for choosing the hobbies of other people either.
“You can come and do my hobby after school on Fridays, if you want?” a friend said, after I explained my situation. Excellent, I thought, count me in. Wow: it could be model boat sailing, computer game playing, sports – there are a lot of choices for a Friday styled hobby when you think about it.
Right. So the hobby is to replicate actual geology.
Using spool containers.
Right.
There we found ourselves, at the top of the staircase of my friend’s home on Friday, on our knees with plastic containers for storing camera spools, in our hands.
In these containers, my friend told me, was placed a few shards of glass, a pinch of rough sand and filled with sea-water. We had to shake up the containers in order to smooth the glass.
As such, as far as a hobby went, I was not particularly sold. You see, the thing about the geological process of smoothing glass shards and making sand is that, I believe, it doesn’t especially need any hobbyist intervention. In fact – speaking in geological time – spending 40 minutes on most Fridays (sometimes, if my paper had been delivered with a particularly worrying headline of Elvis being sighted working in a downtown hardware store, I couldn’t make it) shaking spool containers with a couple of bits of a lager bottle and some sea in isn’t quite going to [pardon the pun] cut it.
It turned out, as I got older, it wasn’t ever going to be the best when trying to woo a girl either: “What about after work? What are you into?” I am really quite sorry you asked me that… I kneel down and shake small containers with glass in on most Fridays. Sometimes though, when I do it, I daydream of being cooler.
Prologue:
The glass shards never did get as smooth or as interesting as those which could have been simply found at the beach [well you win again, Nature!], which incidentally, might have qualified as half a proper hobby? The friend went on to become a war hero. Greville Tombs ended up writing about this sorry passage of Friday afternoon spool container shaking in life in a blog.
When I was younger I had a subscription to the Weekly World News and I would video record late night old sci-fi movies to watch the next day and take notes on how I would have improved the screenplay. Neither, I felt, was essentially great in the hobby stakes. So, back then, I concluded that if I could not successfully come up with a hobby I would do someone else’s hobby. It transpired that I didn’t have much of a talent for choosing the hobbies of other people either.
“You can come and do my hobby after school on Fridays, if you want?” a friend said, after I explained my situation. Excellent, I thought, count me in. Wow: it could be model boat sailing, computer game playing, sports – there are a lot of choices for a Friday styled hobby when you think about it.
Right. So the hobby is to replicate actual geology.
Using spool containers.
Right.
There we found ourselves, at the top of the staircase of my friend’s home on Friday, on our knees with plastic containers for storing camera spools, in our hands.
In these containers, my friend told me, was placed a few shards of glass, a pinch of rough sand and filled with sea-water. We had to shake up the containers in order to smooth the glass.
As such, as far as a hobby went, I was not particularly sold. You see, the thing about the geological process of smoothing glass shards and making sand is that, I believe, it doesn’t especially need any hobbyist intervention. In fact – speaking in geological time – spending 40 minutes on most Fridays (sometimes, if my paper had been delivered with a particularly worrying headline of Elvis being sighted working in a downtown hardware store, I couldn’t make it) shaking spool containers with a couple of bits of a lager bottle and some sea in isn’t quite going to [pardon the pun] cut it.
It turned out, as I got older, it wasn’t ever going to be the best when trying to woo a girl either: “What about after work? What are you into?” I am really quite sorry you asked me that… I kneel down and shake small containers with glass in on most Fridays. Sometimes though, when I do it, I daydream of being cooler.
Prologue:
The glass shards never did get as smooth or as interesting as those which could have been simply found at the beach [well you win again, Nature!], which incidentally, might have qualified as half a proper hobby? The friend went on to become a war hero. Greville Tombs ended up writing about this sorry passage of Friday afternoon spool container shaking in life in a blog.
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