Meet The New Gods, Same As The Old Gods

With news breaking of Iceland building a temple to old Nordic gods and Hollywoods current love of all things Superhero, the question is surely what is happening?
If God did / does not exist would it be necessary to invent one ?

People are embracing a semi - mythological pantheon of Gods and Goddesses in what appears to be a resurgence of pre - Christianity.
This is generally a sign of a spiritual longing.

Mjolnir: Thor's hammer

It's a good thing - especially in a world where everyone seeks rationalisation - after all, what kind of a world is it where nothing but science and cold functional mechanisms hold sway?
 No more magic, no more mists rolling through mysterious valleys and standing stone circles from time immemorial to puzzle and intrigue so many ?
What a sad world it would be... and what a dull race of intelligent but heartless beings we would be.

I don't want to re - ignite the debate on faith which has raged in the wake of the Religion driven massacres around the world.
But I do want to plead the case for mysticism
At least the sort of magic that works hand in hand with science - for instance - Toy Story, a great leap of imagination experienced and loved by many people of all ages -as well as the magical animation Spirited Away and similar fare from Studio Ghibli. These are recent examples of timeless stories, flights of imagination which are wed to incredible technical knowledge (the skills of CG animation).

Japanese poster for Spirited Away

These seemingly modern tales have their roots in the old spoken word tradition , and contain powerful, eternal moral subtexts.
It appears that these lessons remain to be learned, and are loved every time they are told.
Perhaps there is a great collective unconscious (getting into Carl Jung territory here) or a  primal species memory that is triggered when these tales come around.
Heck, even Captain America and the Avengers have a place in this pantheon - as does The Dark Knight himself.
I'm not a huge fan of this current resurgence, but I can see the attraction for many (even if it is just Scarlett Johansson in tight - fitting latex). Cue gratuitous image:

Any excuse...

Of course I'm guilty of preaching to the converted here.
It's all too easy to sit around feeling sophisticated and knowledgeable in the first world, where these films  - .along with pretty much anything you want to see or learn about , are at our finger tips (or at least a quick tap of the remote and there they are on Netflix / You Tube).
I don't know about anyone else reading this, but I find it incredibly easy to forget that not everyone is patched into the internet.
First World Perception Gap right there.

But that's another story...

A Very English Problem

So, war has been declared. 
Murmurings have become outright angry venting of spleens.
The battle lines are being drawn - Class War is news again;
albeit in a slightly different form - it seems that the world of music and media are being swamped by 'poor little rich kids' and their ilk. The current view is that they are the only ones who can ride out the stormy sea of unpaid internships which have arisen as a result of austerity.
I wouldn't be surprised - although film has a long tradition of actors (and crew) working for just a cut of  royalties based on a possible box office smash.
This theoretically allows bright new stars to shine and hopefully breakthrough into the unforgiving, endless hustle of media.

Kes

In a recent article in the New Statesman , Stuart Maconie bemoans the resultant lack of 'grit' in the music world - and it's true to a degree, but then was it not always thus ?
That Joe Strummer downplayed his middle class roots - as did many 'punk rockers' and going back in time  - the Rolling Stones ?

Those examples aside, the Class War in England is very much a media construct.
So why is it coming out of the woodwork now ?
Election time is drawing near - perhaps the old 'divide and rule' angle ?
A new scapegoat for national tensions, deflecting public view from the real issues ?

It could be an attempt to remind us that there is a system in which we all have a role to play, and we should know our place in the scheme of things - it's true that Downton Abbey etc hark back to a rose tinted view of an England that (certainly for most people) never was - but is it any moreso than say Brideshead Revisited , Upstairs Downstairs, or, cinematically, anything by Merchant Ivory ?

I have personal issues with the new Sherlock , mainly due to its pop video style flash, which to me does a great disservice to the original stories.
It's not that I'm a purist - I just think it shows a sense of superiority which is creeping into things - the sense that the original was somehow flawed, and now that we have superior technical toys in the 21st century, we can improve on it.
This dull, unoriginal mindset first became apparent in the endless parade of sequels and now remakes of films in Hollywood.
Far from celebrating the new, creativity has been stifled across the board, in favour of dumbing down and playing safe.
This may be a result of the Global Recession (hence the fear of taking risks), but there seems to be a lack of originality in media .

Does this stem from a fear of the unknown, or the new ? It is generally true that familiarity has a strong allure in times of recession.



Did we shoot our collective bolts in the Twentieth Century when all this stuff  came to the fore ?
Or are we just jaded by the glut of everything available online?
The debate is endless - and I didn't even mention reality t.v...

From The Safety Of The Sofa

Today I saw an ad on my blogosphere extolling the virtues of 'improving your personal  brand '.
So I'm a fcking brand apparently. I mean, we all are. How nice.
 I suppose that's the price we pay for maintaining an online presence courtesy of our paymasters Google & Co.
I think I ranted on Farcebook sometime back about the fact that by taking part, we become a part of the business model itself - we are the product, effectively.
Of course, this manifests in annoying little ways, whereby algorithms tell us what we might like to buy (and are thankfully, often wrong ).
On the subject of algorithms don't they realise that I may take a perverse pleasure in reading / listening to occasional nonsense, and it doesn't mean I live or die by that thing ?
Or I might buy a relative a crochet set, but I don't want to see endless ads for knitting patterns.

-Rant over -

Last night , following the collapse of a bookshelf and its contents being strewn around, I came across an article which I completely forgot I'd written back in 1993.
 It was a piece about the cartoonist Robert Crumb, and whilst not being an especially memorable piece, it really made me aware how much times have changed.
I mean really - 1993 wasn't that long ago - (for an old git like me), but in real terms there was no Google, Faceblog, Tweeter - infact the WWW as we know it was just making its first foray out of Cern and the mind of Tim Berners - Lee.
It was a different world.
I remember buying floppy disks (from the old computer fairs ) containing a wealth of strange and wonderful esoterica, and how I was overwhelmed and amazed by how much information was available on this new fangled media - floppy disks could hold an amazing 1 megabyte of stuff !


Anyway, back to the article on Robert Crumb* - I remember being flattered to provide a two page article on a cartoonist I considered important and vastly talented, only to feel embarassed with the final piece in print : the illustrations used had been chosen by someone else on the editorial team, possibly to create controversy and boost sales, but I was unhappy and it was too late , so for a long time, I sulked ( believing myself sabotaged by the Film people).  Still -

In the manner of today , I shall scan it and post here as a curio. It's still a bit 'edgy', I suppose.
I'm not defending Mr Crumb - he admits that he is sexist, and I suspect, was more than happy to invoke the ire of feminists of the time (all publicity is good publicity, and all that ).

I think that part of the problem is that everyone is so afraid to offend now - it's gone beyond the
' Politically Correct ' issue - anyone now offending the mass sensibility can become the target of sizable online crowds of angry pitchfork wielding lynch - mobs.
Twitter is notorious for its mob mentality , but in this always - on world, most forms of social media have the potential to become flash mobs championing a cause, whether right or wrong.

The peculiar thing is that these same voices often preach tolerance and equality.
It's just that if you say something they don't like, then woe betide you.

The recent Charlie Hebdo massacre / situation brought many of these types to the fore - whilst encouraging debate about the problems of 'secular' life, it transpired that many felt that religion generally was the crux of the problem , and has perverted our reality down through the ages : the logical answer was to ban religion in all its forms...

The irony I find is that those who rant most vehemently against it are as guilty of  proselytising as those they seek to condemn.

image from L'etre Lieu

Ipso Facto :
Richard Dawkins Is Not God.

And therein lies the rub, to coin a vaguely Shakespearan phrase.
After all, if everyone in the world thought the same way, then wouldn't we all be guilty of intolerance ?
Worse still - we'd be guilty of demanding conformity.
And down that road lies the master race...

Footnote:

I just re - read what I wrote : 'The recent Charlie Hebdo massacre / situation brought many of these types to the fore'

'these types'

You see - I'm guilty of generalising, too ! I'm as judgemental as the rest of 'em !
Get my pitchfork, Matilda - we're gonna hang us a noob.
But Honey, that's you!
Dayum ! Gotta lynch mah damn self!




* Robert Crumb left the U.S.A. for France in 1991 and his most recent cartoon was in sympathy with Charlie Hebdo.