Year / 2007
How Bad Are You With European Geography?
Russell T. Davies
I have seen the last episode of the third season of Doctor Who and I am close to vomiting. I didn’t know how much I cared about the series until now and I sincerely hope that the rumors are true — that Davies has decided to leave Doctor Who and will never return again. I’ve had enough. For all that any long-time Who fan complained about John Nathan-Turner, the cheesy crap under Nathan-Turner was fucking Masterpiece Theatre compared to this flamboyant tripe. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see this clip, in which Doctor Who has been cheapened beyond any rudimentary level of dramatic redemption. It’s a pity, because John Simm is a promising Master. Russell T. Davies appears to have sabotaged a science fiction staple. This is, in many ways, worse than the Six Feet Under episode, “That’s My Dog,” in which another great series was hijacked. To dwell on the subject further is to unleash a mad torrent of violence upon an inanimate object that I will only call “Russell,” only to injure my hand and pay an expensive hospital bill.
Russell T. Davies, you fucking wanker. How could you do this? How could you destroy a sizable chunk of the human population in the present day? How could you write scenes in which characters effortlessly infiltrate major executive scenarios? How could you write something so adverse to the show’s quirkiness, wit, intelligence, and charm?
Christ, it’s only a television show, I know. I have only late-night Dirty Harry impulses to go on. But this two-part finale is the work of a talentless megalomaniac and I wish that justice of some sort could be effected. But it can’t.
Guess it’s time to read James Joyce instead.
Is the Value Now in the Performance?
Prospect Magazine: “Groups used to tour, often at a loss, to stimulate sales of their latest album. Now it’s the other way around. Hence the widely reported decision earlier this year by the Crimea, a band previously signed to Warner Bros, to release their new album as a free download. The band explained this not as an anarcho-hippie gesture in support of the principle that music ought to be free, but as a sensible promotional tactic. Their hope is that by disseminating their music online, they will expand their fan base and increase their returns from touring. Having seen the small size of the cheques they got from Warner, they know where not to look for their future income.”
Sam Tanenhaus: The Architect of Decay
This week’s New York Times Book Review includes a potentially promising meditation on ideology by Stephen Metcalf, who writes about a recent essay anthology, Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journey. Ensconced within this essay is Metcalf attempting to come to terms with his personal ideology, with a surprisingly uncharacteristic use of the first-person — surprisingly uncharacteristic, at least, for the Tanenhaus crew, who have continually operated as if writing in first-person was akin to shaking hands with a leper or eating an entree with a salad fork. But I must agree with Levi that Metcalf misses a significant opportunity with this revelation:
In short, I am white, privileged, middle-aged and boring. But one thing I am not, and never will be, is a conservative.
Never will be? Countless individuals have written statements like this over human history, only to live against the promise. While I commend Metcalf for copping to his alleged “privileged” and “boring” status (would Rachel Donadio ever confess anything like this?), it is a great misstep to remain so convinced that one will not change over the course of time — particularly in unexpected ways — while also closely examining a collection with contributors likely to adopt a similar position from the other side (“I own a home. I make good money. I never will be a liberal.”). This could have been a more compelling essay if Metcalf had stopped to examine the plausibilities of conservatism influencing him and others, the rhetorical similarities behind any ideology left or right, or if he had kept up his daring personal perspective throughout the piece’s entirety. Instead, we get this overly tidy generalization:
Because these conservatives were, by and large, low-status males (or the feminism-disdaining women who loved them) in high school and college, they know instinctively how to connect with the culturally dispossessed.
Whether this specific sentence came during the writing or the editing process is difficult to say, but it does fit in with the NYTBR‘s current m.o. Never let the audience contemplate a position outside of a rigid dichotomy. Ironically, this is the very position that Metcalf objects to in the anthology.
I have enjoyed some of Metcalf’s work for Slate, which often has him adopting the contrarian position, only to gradually work against this initial summation over the course of a piece. (See, for example, this essay on Bruce Springsteen.) It’s a nice approach that allows Metcalf to drift eventually to the more interesting gray areas. But I’m wondering if the NYTBR‘s rigid orthodoxy allows Metcalf to take the same intellectual liberties.