Month: November 2018
Silence is not an option
Silence is not always Golden.
It is the result of repression are rightly resisted by feminism. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Philomela, who is part of the ruling family of Athens, is raped by her brother in law, Tereus. He tells her to be quiet, and when she refuses, he cuts out her tongue.
But her story lives on.
Silence is often about the brutality of authority. That is why, when we witness abuse of any kind, we should speak up. The victims have suffered enough already. Glossectomy or rather Elinguation is rarely practiced today, but our rulers have other ways to enforce silence.
New Laws in Scotland in 2014 make it now illegal to march a brass band past a church. A military band can certainly go past (if there are no more than 6 people abreast) but it must do so silently. It is quite literally the beginning of a gagging order and very disturbing: it might well interfere with our right to free expression. It makes scenes, for instance, like the brass bands of Corfu and like the big number just before the Interval in Hello Dolly quite impossible to stage on the Royal Mile. It makes a nonsense of The Music Man! Then again, there is little information about Nicola Sturgeon’s reverence for Hollywood or for the Greek Church!
Here is another story of ELINGUATION:
Years ago, I was required to read texts like this, over breakfast to the assembled monks:
“15th April is the Anniversary of the Saints Vasilissa and Anastasia. These were natives of Rome, the capital; they were ladies distinguished by birth and wealth, and disciples of the Holy Apostles. When the Apostles were crowned with martyrdom, Basilissa and Anastasia had their holy relics collected and moved by night. For this the two women were denounced to the Emperor Nero, and were accordingly thrown into prison, and, when they remained steadfast in their profession of Christ, were brought forth again, hung up until their breasts, hands, feet, and tongues had been cut away; after which, they were both beheaded.” (de SS Martyrum Cruciatibus)
We may never quite know who killed Jamal Khashoggi. What we do know, however, because he reported it at the time, was that he was ordered in December 2016 by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia to be silent. “He said, ‘You’re not allowed to tweet or write your column or give comments to foreign journalists,’” The following September, he went to Washington. Up to this point, Khashoggi had been, oddly, not unsupportive of the Prince. “He truly wants to make Saudi Arabia great again. But he is doing it the wrong way,” he told other journalists. But this was before MBS arrested and imprisoned Saudi journalists. Of course, the Prince is not alone in this part of the world in using an anti-corruption ticket to clean out his political rivals. But imprisoning or detaining people without trial, effectively silencing all opposition, is not a positive trait in any National leader.
We now know that MBS thought Khashoggi was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, by all accounts a dangerous group, and something his family firmly deny. Whether it is true or not remains to be seen, but surely that allegation alone suggests a motive? All very worrying.
One final point- the death of Khashoggi and the pressure this now puts on the Saudi administration may well mean there is finally room to call for a credible ceasefire in Yemen. So far, our silence on this issue, particularly in the UN, is shameful. Once again, silence is not golden.
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa is claimed by a number of countries. This is a statue from Skopje in Macedonia where she was born to Albanian parents, though if one goes to Tirana Airport, she is waiting at the entrance, and, of course, she is feted in Calcutta.
I have drawn her before in my film HOW TO BE BOSS. This won an award for Best Animation in 2012 and I sat up for 6 nights doing it. This summer, I managed 16 all-nighters to complete animation and sequences for the latest Lucy Worsley, which promises to be a treat… the “BOSS” film seems a long time ago now…
At the base of my picture of Mother Teresa in Tirana is a bust from elsewhere of the great Albanian hero who gives his name to the main square in Tirana. I will write something about Skanderbeg/ Skanderbek (variously spelt) whose 550th anniversary is this year.
Hanim the cat again
When she was small, Hanim had a fairly major illness and took refuge in my dressing gown pocket. Now she is much older and a bit unstable, she has taken to snuggling into my cardigan. It is not always convenient. This evening, I was drawing some stuff for the FOLLOWING LEAR project, and, instead, ended up drawing Hanim. She has such intelligent eyes.
Trial by Jury
Why Mary Beard is right
Recently, Mary Beard gave a lecture which some of my friends attended. The report I received from them was rapturous – she was controversial and authoritative. Actually, she was more than that. She was right.
Recently, Professor Beard was attacked by AA Gill. It is part of the same story- that people can be judged today more for whether they conform than whether they have something important to say.
The two issues Professor Beard specifically raised in the Listener talk were the abuse she suffered when her presentation in “CIVILIZATIONS” was cut when it was broadcast in the US, and the second was to make a firm stand against re-enactments or recreations in History documentaries. These are all over the internet, and particularly noticeable on PBS.
It would, however, be wrong to suppose that America is only to blame.
I was once engaged by a UK company to play the part of Socrates for one such history documentary, so I know from the other side how silly and absurd such recreations can be. More than that, we were filming not in a genuinely Attic setting but in the 19th Century Zappeion, a bit of the modern Greek parliament complex built specifically to celebrate the first modern Olympic games in 1869. It looked pretty and it might have been appropriate in a hollywood “swords and sandals” epic, but it is not “history” and nor does it actually tell the viewer anything useful. The reason is simple- because it dodges the issue of interpretation. All art is interpretative but because live-action film feels like ‘reality”, that is exactly how the viewer accepts it. The viewer is plunged into a magic realm and is the passive recipient of the director’s agendum. The viewer is a willing party to deceit.
Fine in a film like “Gladiator”, but not fine in a serious documentary about history. We need to know what is real and what is recreated.
This is frankly where my own work slots in: 2d animation can never masquerade as reality, but it can offer something more than “live-action recreation” to the documentary medium. If supported by the proper research, it can provide an insight into the way history has already interpreted events, much as quoting a specific writer as an authority can do. This is most beautifully illustrated by Richard Williams’ animated sequences in the CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE.
Here, Williams shows us exactly how British newspapers peddled propaganda and half-truths to a gullible public, showing the glory of the empire in contrast to the gore and disaster that unfolded on the battlefield itself. The greatest moment is the Victory sequence which is brought to a sudden close by a canon firing. There was no victory- just a squalid collapse of authority and a chain of misunderstanding.
Williams’ animation tells us something valuable in its own right. And because we can never pretend what we are watching is anything other than a drawing, we cannot be bewitched into thinking that this is “reality”. But it might very well be a way to access Truth.
Because we often associate animation with Disney, we can get confused, but because 2d animation remains ostentatiously artificial, we can be sure we never forget that we are watching an interpretation. The Disney technique means we can do almost anything with animation that we could do with live-action. More maybe! Though it takes time.
Of course, I nurse a desire to bring the stories of Greek mythology to life through the red/ black figure images on greek vases- who would not immediately see the potential in this! But even more interesting would be to animate Flaxman’s illustrations for the Iliad and Odyssey which informed the way we have understood classical texts since the early 19th Century. His work led to the development of the blue and white jasperware that even today is in most of our houses. This is not about recreating or re-enacting events but about making a conscious decision to give us an insight into the way we now view these stories.
I am terribly proud of the work we did in the two Lucy Worsley programmes, the second of which is due to air in January- we used the device of turning the pages of a book, and of capturing images from framed pictures to comment, introduce and develop the ideas that were being presented.
When we forget that we are examining what people have said and recorded in the past, we simply enter a world of make-believe. It might be entertaining but it is not history.
ttps://rts.org.uk/article/mary-beard-cut-us-version-civilisation
animate-tim.com 