Military matters on Culture Clash

With military matters dominating the news, tonight we’re going to be discussing the media coverage surrounding the release last week of the fifteen Royal Navy hostages, from their capture right through to Faye Turney’s television interview last night with Trevor MacDonald. And we’re also going to be asking whether Channel 4 should postpone indefinitely it’s already once delayed, controversial drama about British troops in Iraq, The Mark of Cain.

With me to tonight are Damian Thompson, editor in chief of the Catholic Herald and leader writer for the Daily Telegraph, Petroc Trelawny, journalist and Radio 3 presenter, Marc Sidwell of the New Culture Forum, and Andrew Haydon, critic for Culturewars.

But first, we’re going to look at a new film which recalls a past military controversy. Days of Glory, which looks at the role played by the Arab and African colonies in the French Army during World War II, centres around four soldiers who, in fighting for a country they have never even seen, encounter prejudice and unfair treatment from the French military hierarchy. The film, which won the four actors a shared Best Actor award at Cannes last year, prompted President Chirac to make a change in the law, under which, previously, pensions to such soldiers had been stopped once their countries were granted independence.

Watch it on18 Doughty Street Talk TV at anytime

Something rotten...

According to some reports, 'fears are growing' that the behaviour of the MOD and the fifteen released navel personnel in selling their stories to the media might result in a lessening in public sympathy for them.

Whether there was much there to begin with is highly questionable. This past week, it's not been necessary to be a hard-beaked hawk to have been made utterly despondent first by the remarkable level of public indifference to the crisis, and then by the utter lack of decorum and supine self-justification which characterised the actions and pronouncements of the fifteen, and the soft-ball indulgence with which they have been treated by the broadcast media. A few streets away from me, a house is festooned in banners and balloons in a welcome home to one of the seamen. But so far, neighbourly interest seems to have been rather scant. Indeed I would in other circumstances have been moved to add my congratulations, but on this occasion, when our failings have been so cruelly exposed, I have found it impossible.

Why has television been so craven? This must be because this story fitted perfectly the dumbed-down Diana-fication of the news reporting agenda. It wanted a blubfest, and it's been doing its best to get it. Doubtless this will continue tonight when Faye Turney is interviewed by Trevor McDonald on ITV. Television would have liked this to have been The People's Hostages.

But from Friday's press conference on, only the most hysterically sentimental (who unfortunately, in our society today, make up a large number) would not have had serious doubts and reservations niggling away at the backs of their minds. Most people may not be able to readily articulate it, but they sense that this whole episode says something disturbing about what has happened to us.

The print media, thank goodness, have in its various colours been more restrained, and have either conspicuously kept their council or have been describing the qualms and unease many have felt as the whole episode has unfolded. Interestingly it was a piece in the Guardian by Marina Hyde which summed up, albeit flippantly, what many of us have been thinking.

The West is facing a decades-long struggle. Many people don't get this, which is of course a help to those in the West itself who want so desperately to see it fail. It's up to us to continue to make the case, to do everything we can to get Europe to wake up. In the meantime, it would be helpful if we didn't have to listen to tales of our military sobbing themselves to sleep at night.

Wishful Thoughts for 2007

The New Culture Forum brings you the cultural news and events you can (not) expect to hear about in 2007, as brought to you by our contributors on the ground.

Let’s kick off with Christmas…

DEBENHAM ADMITS: WE DID NOT DESIGN CHRISTMAS”.

The retail giant Debenhams has retracted its “Christmas: Designed by Debenhams” television advert, after it decided it might be offensive to Christians. In the advert, a slim, sexy, modern-styled ‘DJ Santa’ glides and break-dances his way through rooms in his hi-tech grotto lined with robotic toys, perfumes, handbags, and other fashion accessories, before attractive women in stockings help send him out to deliver presents in a flying, high-powered snow ski. A company spokesman told reporters: “As soon as our executives viewed the ad, they realized that we had become so caught up in all the commercial opportunities of the festive season that we had lost sight of the true Christian message of charity and compassion. … We also recognized that some Christians might find our transformation of their beloved Saint Nicholas into a sex-crazed fashion victim, and our claim to have been the true originators of their historic religious festival, offensive.” The spokesman confirmed, however, that an equivalent advert,
“Eid: Designed by Debenhams”, with a similarly sexy, break-dancing ‘MC Muhammad’, would still go ahead in their stores in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia: “The Islamic world is famed for its sense of gentle good-humour, and we foresee no problems there.”

[View ad here: http://www.visit4info.com/details.cfm?adid=39607]

(from David Brescia)

JANUARY

BBC News press release

Head of BBC News Peter Horrocks today banned the use of three key terms on BBC global news output - ‘suicide bombers’ ‘martyrs’ and ‘freedom fighters’. Horrocks made this unusual statement at the inaugural BBC Friends of Israel fundraising dinner. As well as raising thousands of shekels for Israel to spend on reinforcing the controversial security fence, Horrocks said in his after dinner speech ‘it is time the BBC recognises that homicide bombers in the middle east have the same motives as homicide bombers in the west’ and ‘are nothing but barbaric murderous scumbags acting under a veil of pseudo religious nonsense’. Horrocks then sang the Israeli national anthem as a solo before inviting Baroness Jenny Tongue onto the dance floor for the first Chassidic dancing number ‘We want moshiach now!’.

(from Jonathan Levi)


To celebrate the West's abolition of slavery 200 years earlier, Islam decides to join in, apologising for enslaving more people than the West ever managed and for perpetuating slavery into the present day in countries such as Mauritania. 'This one's been on the books a bit too long,' laugh Ayatollah Khamenei and Yusuf Al-Qaradawi at a joint press conference.

(from Mark Sidwell)

FEBRUARY

BBC, CHANNEL 4 ANNOUNCE FACTUAL PROGRAMMING HIGHLIGHTS

BBC Panorama, tonight, 'teaching sex to kids': how a half-century of UK sex-education has pushed us to the top of Europe's teen pregnancy tables. We ask the Department of Education why it thinks more of the same will now produce different results?

- C4 'Unreported world', 'Castro's Gulag': We get unique access to Cuban dissident groups inside Cuba who show us the true extent of the dictator's repression of writers, thinkers and journalists.

Also 'A Bolivarian blunder', Is Chavez driving Venezuela to ruin and isolation?

- Dispatches: 'A Comprehensive failure': with childhood illiteracy increasing - and entry of poorer students to top universities at a post-War low - we ask whether it's now time to 'permanently exclude' Britain's greatest educational mistake - the comprehensive school.

- C4 News special, 'The Bush tax miracle': how American economic growth has been powered by tax cuts.

- BBC File on four, 'The end of the road for the Human Rights Act?': In order to cope with the terrorist threat, is it time to admit the damage caused by the Human Rights Act, scrap it and re-introduce effective national treason laws?

(from Alan Smithee)

MARCH

THOUSANDS CONVERGE ON WEMBLEY AS ROCK STARS RAIL AGAINST CHINA

Madonna last night led a glittering array of stars from the world of rock and pop in a massive protest concert at the continuing of human rights violations in China. She told the crowd: ‘Chairman Mao caused the deaths of 70 million of his own people. Well Communism is dead but the torture goes on! Make torture history! Rock against China!

(from PW)

APRIL

In an astonishing new play at the National about multiculturalism which looks set to draw angry protests from Muslim groups, a white couple in a largely Asian town see their gay son sacked from his job as a teacher because Islamic fundamentalist parents do not want him teaching their children. Terrified of causing offence, the local council fails to intervene, leaving the angry and frustrated family to deal with a media firestorm. The play, which opened this week, has already sold out, and the theatre has also been encouraged by the proportion of so-called ‘first-time’ ticket buyers. ‘This play is bringing in a whole new audience to the National’, said a spokesman. ‘We’ve been trying to widen our audience over the years with the £10 ticket scheme, and that’s been a real success especially with students, but for some reason the subject of this production has really struck a chord with people who would not otherwise go to the theatre.’

(from PW)

MAY

Leading figures from the arts and media address huge London rally
A massive crowd of moderate Muslims, estimated at nearly half a million, yesterday heard stars of stage, screen and the literary world call for an end to the subjugation of woman and gay men under fundamentalist Islam. Carrying banners declaring ‘Not in Our Name!’, thousands of protesters listened peacefully in the capital’s Hyde Park as figures including feminist Germaine Greer, National Theatre director Nicholas Hytner and Oscar-winning actor Sir Ian McKellen made impassioned speeches condemning the wearing of the burkha, the execution of thousands of gay men in Iran and the increasing tolerance in Britain of what Sir Ian dubbed in his speech ‘vicious attacks on our liberty’.
Interviewed after the event, Germaine Greer underlined how important it was that women in the West stood up to such reactionary forces. ‘It’s the duty of feminists everywhere to speak out in support of women who live lives of total subservience – women whose voices will never otherwise be heard.’

(from PW)

JUNE

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown admits that juvenile relocation to Mayfair, and its attendant reduced knowledge of traditional Malawian songs, dances and agricultural techniques, may be preferable to dying alone, disease-riddled and abandoned in an African orphanage.

(from Emma French)

JULY

Carbon neutral is a load of hippie bollocks," announced Chris Martin, last night, to a stunned audience of Coldplay fans.
"Sorry guys, but the fact is I got it all wrong. This save the planet stuff I've been preaching at you for the last five years - it was just hot air. Al Gore is a mendacious loser twat. Michael Moore is a fat, lying, treacherous c***. An Inconvenient Truth is the worst film ever, worse even than Love Actually or that other terrible Richard Curtis one about the Scottish girl at the G8 summit who converts everyone to eco-fascism. The Rainbow Warrior had it coming. Greenpeace are tossers. Global warming is due primarily to solar activity, perfectly normal and nothing to worry about. Wind turbines are crap. Nuclear is our only hope."
After a climactic performance of Yellow, Martin further shocked fans by urinating on a copy of Kyoto agreement, before driving off in a 4 x 4 with wife Gwyneth Paltrow chic in pure sable fur) and chums Thom Yorke and Michael Stipe (both engrossed in Douglas Murray's Neo-Conservatism: Why We Need It?)

(from James Delingpole)

AUGUST

Gwyneth Paltrow abandons her ‘macrobiotic diet’ in favour of a new diet dependant exclusively on conventionally grown Genetically Modified Organisms.

(from Dawn Steeves)

SEPTEMBER

Ekow Eshun says something cogent and to the point on Newsnight Review

Male character on advert/in sitcom shown not to be a bumbling fool; female character revealed to be something other than a long-suffering omnicompetent.

(from James Delingpole)

OCTOBER

Spooks finally broadcasts an episode in which it really is the Islamists who are baddies and not Christians/Big Business/Jews masquerading as Islamists so as to give these peace-loving people a warlike reputation they SO do not deserve.

Bono admits: "What do I know? I'm just a rock star."

(from James Delingpole)

NOVEMBER

‘We are a waste of taxpayer’s money’, declares Disability Rights Commission

‘There’s a lot to be said for the occasional slap’, NSPCC counsels parents

Muslim Council of Britain condemns suicide bombers

Arts Council launches new fund for middle class whites

(from Nick Seddon).

DECEMBER

Channel 4 announces that it’s Alternative Christmas Message this year will be given by Dr John Sentamu, the Ugandan-born Archbishop of York known for his outspoken support of Christianity and the celebration of British Culture. When questioned about this unusual choice, a Channel 4 spokesman said candidly: ‘We always aim to be provocative, and so we thought it would be really daring to use the Archbishop. Frankly, all the old counter-culture ‘alternatives’ are pretty much mainstream culture now, and rather than just be known as one of Oriana Fallaci’s ‘phoney revolutionaries’, we thought we’d really try to stir things up.’

Tonight on Culture Clash

Hello and welcome to Culture Clash.

The only shock delivered by the Turner Prize this year was that it was won by a painter. Tooma Abts, a 34-year-old German artist of contemporary abstract paintings won against competition from sculptural installations consisting of displays of found objects, a ‘live’ exhibit of a TV production office complete with live workers, a computer designed billboard and a film installation of former participants in reality TV.
When the winner was announced last week, art critics commented that the competition had inspired only indifference, and had failed to get people talking. Well we’re going to fill that gap today and ask whether this annual artistic bunfest means anything to anybody outside the art world.

It was 1993 when Channel 4 launched its so-called Alternative Christmas message, and since then Sharon Osbourne, Jesse Jackson and Ali G are among those you’ve gone head to head with Her Majesty. Often its been played simply for laughs, but this year the channel has chosen Khadija Ravat, a Muslim woman in a niqab, that’s a full veil, to deliver her perspective on the events of the past year. Ravat, a part time primary school teacher in Leicester, was born in Zimbabwe, is a convert to Islam and says that her 6 minute broadcast would celebrate British values and the multi-cultural society. We’ll be asking whether this is a timely celebration of our vibrant diversity, or whether it’s a simply a stunt too far.

My guest today are Michael Attwell, producer and former chairman of BAFTA, Dawn Steeves of The New Criterion Magazine, James Delingpole, TV critic of the Spectator, and journalist Franck Guillory.

They are talking about us

In this week’s Spectator, James Delingpole has written a piece about Culture Clash, 18 Doughty Street’s weekly cultural review show, hosted by NCF’S Peter Whittle.

Funny Girls by James Delingpole
Watch againCulture Clash - Tuesday 28 November on 18 Doughty Street

Eyes Wide Shut

Comments on Minghella's Breaking and Entering

The reason Hollywood will always ultimately triumph over European film is simple: it understands our need to aspire, to dream and to see human life reflected on a larger, more fantastical scale than humdrum reality. Europe on the other hand puts its trust in what it sees as real life. That can be great of course, even if, more often than not, what European movies are actually portraying is a contemporary brand of nihilism which passes for depth.

But European and British films are certainly not averse to the odd fantasy. It’s just that we tend to dress them up in the guise of gritty, searing dramas with something to say about the state-of-the-nation. One such is Breaking and Entering, director Anthony Minghella’s just-released tale about an affluent North London architect (Jude Law) whose security and Sunday supplement life with his cool Swedish wife (Robin Wright Penn) are threatened when he begins an affair with a Bosnian refugee (Juliet Binoche), who’s eking out a living as a seamstress with her delinquent son in sleazy Kings Cross.

The multicultural setting is reminiscent of last year’s Oscar-winner Crash. It all looks very good, in the way that Crash looked good. It’s beautifully shot (but then so are most films these days), and the characters are aesthetically pleasing, even if Law’s vanity, which seems to be increasingly hindering his performances lately, proves to be a real encumbrance here. It’s sort of pleasurable to watch these people glide from scene to scene. But behind the posturing and interior-designed settings, there is actually nothing there at all.

Crash was sold on its supposed fearlessness in telling it like it is on the race issue. It did nothing of the sort of course, basically coming down on the dippy side of Love is all You Need and I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing. Breaking and Entering seems likewise to be claiming to have something to say, but gets around the fact that it hasn’t a clue quite what by indulging in wish-fulfilment and obfuscation. Law’s character gets angry when his firm is repeatedly broken into, but not that angry. He and his wife never exchange so much as a word about the political or social landscape changing around them. Binoche is a beautiful and grateful refugee simply striving to make an honest buck. The cleaner at the firm, also an immigrant, who’s originally suspected of the break-in, quotes Kafka. The grizzled Cockney cop (Ray Winstone) quotes Einstein. Everybody seems to be acting with the best interests of others at heart. And there isn’t a single believable emotion or reaction in the whole two hours.

There’s certainly a market for pictures about people self-absorbed by their lack of fulfilment. But Minghella has set his film firmly in a multicultural milieu which, given the current climate, could only be wilfully ignored, so he must be trying to convey something with it. But he is either too polite or too removed from reality to ask any real questions. What we have instead is a kind of liberal massaging of the situation, with introspection and nuance taking the place of anything which might generate any genuine heat.

Worst of all however, is the avoidance of the real issues which result from sudden mass immigration. Law and his family are rich and privileged, the burglar poor and deprived. It’s a case of have and have-nots, you see. Except in the real world, it isn’t. The affluent can continue to insulate themselves; the real struggles, dislocation and social breakdown happen down there, on the ground. It would be good if somebody made a film about that. But I wouldn’t hold your breath.

PW

How long will the blast of reality last?

Some of the commentary pieces in today’s broadsheets certainly confirm the gathering sense of the past week that, after the foiled terrorist attacks, the kid gloves have finally come off. Falling to Confront the Enemy Within, the leading article in The Business, is mirrored with only slightly less force by that of the Sunday Times (The Enemy Within), but both are superb in their clear-headed analysis of the situation. Indeed there is an air of exasperation in both, a sense that the time has come to speak a truth that most of us in our heart of hearts know to be true, that we should stop making pathetic excuses and face hard reality.

We can only hope that this is a real sea-change. For increasing numbers of us, a terrorist atrocity brings with it a double horror - first, of the appalling act itself, and second, of the supine, self-hating appeasement with which it is inevitably dealt with by our media and cultural elites.

It’s instructive to read in conjunction with these pieces the cover article by Sarah Baxter in the Sunday Times News Review – Wimmin at War. In looking back at the Greenham Common protests in which she took part, she bemoans the current failure of the Feminist movement to speak out on Islamist fundamentalism, and condemns the way in which much of the left have found it so easy to walk side-by-side with Islamofacists, Hezbollah and other assorted virulent anti-Semites. But in there too is a retrospective admission that much of the ‘Peace’ movement during the Cold War was unbelievably credulous, indeed soft, on the then Soviet Union, and all too ready to see the fault as being with the West.

This is something which of course seemed obvious to so many of us at the time, and it’s gratifying to hear the truth told by one who was involved in the movement. But there are exact parallels with our current situation. The response of our elites to the threat of Islamic fundamentalism shows all too clearly the part that Lenin’s ‘useful idiots’ continue to play in the attack on the West. Now if anything there is even more at stake.

PW


Sunday Times's Leading article http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2310296,00.html
Sarah Baxter's article http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2309812,00.html
The Business http://www.thebusinessonline.com/Stories.aspx?Failing%20to%20confront%20the%20enemy%20within&StoryID=7F974379-D91B-4780-A410-775F06D95B04&SectionID=803597D7-4BD5-45D5-BF88-E1AC85BF7FDF