Ken Loach made a good film in 1969. I gather he has made other films since. A Contemporary Case for Common Ownership, for instance, and something about a Glaswegian alcoholic.
My opinion of Loach as a human being was decided when I read this:
In Kes, probably Loach’s best-known film, which tells the tale of a boy who befriends a falcon, the actor playing the boy believed the bird used in the filming had been killed for the final scene in which he discovers its death. In fact, a dead kestrel had been substituted for the live bird.
Loach felt that the ordinary moral rules against causing someone (particularly a child) intense suffering through a cruel deception did not apply so long as his deception was carried out in the service of his art. The old Independent article I linked to above goes on:
Surprise and integrity are thus at the core of Loach’s purpose in life – as well as having a poke at authority whenever the opportunity arises.
His “pokes at authority” seem not to be incompatible with a not-very-surprising yearning to wiggle his way to a bit more power himself, the power, at least, to “do something” about all these people watching what they want instead of what is good for them. And him. And his friends. Here he is in yesterday’s Guardian:
We could start by treating cinemas like we treat theatres. They could be owned, as they are in many cases, by the municipalities, and programmed by people who care about films – the London Film Festival, for example, is full of people who care about films.
It is not quite clear from the article whether Loach is proposing that these municipal cinemas programmed by people who care should wholly replace the commercial cinemas and films that nobody cares about, except the millions who pay to watch them. Since he is a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party, which describes itself as a revolutionary anti-capitalist party, it is reasonable to assume that would be his ultimate goal. He continues,
Those of us who work in television and film have a role to be critical, to be challenging, to be rude, to be disturbing, not to be part of the establishment. We need to keep our independence.
Not that having you and your protegés decide what films the taxpayer will have available in the cinema he pays for would make you part of the establishment, or in any way compromise your independence, of course.
So presumably films that are not approved by the ‘caring’ programmers will not get shown. And face it, if the cinemas are tax funded who cares if no one actually goes to them to see the selection of ‘socially aware’ shite on offer… jobs for the boys 🙂
“…role to be critical, to be challenging, to be rude, to be disturbing…”
Soooo…when Ken Loach makes a movie about Islam?
Since Victorian times every leftist artist (in literature, painting or whatever) is called “brave” and “challenging” and so on.
How are they “brave”?
Even in the supposedly conservative Victorian age the collectivist political opinions of Ruskin, Morris and the rest did them no harm (their opinions cost them nothing).
And since then it has been a positive advantage to be a leftist. And before anyone screams “McCarthyism” (actually nothing much to do with the real Senator Joe McCarthy who was not wildly interested in the doings of Hollywood) a few leftists did indeed get “blaclisted” – but this was a tactic the leftists had themselves used (and far more extensively) against conservative script writers back in the 1930’s.
Indeed conservative script writers have been defacto banned (or at least greatly discriminated against) from Hollywood for the best part of a century.
As for Britain….
What if Mr Ken Loach had made films about how welfare claimers were scum, about how they not only robbed other people via taxes but also robbed (and abused and physically attacked) other people directly – often people as poor as themselves whose only “crime” was to work for a living (rather than claim welfare benefits).
Such films might have been unfair – but they would have been a lot closer to the truth than the films Mr Loach has made.
Had Mr Loach made such films would have got the praise of the critics?
And would have got all the establishment support and MONEY his leftist films have got him?
Some “rebel”.
Mr Loach would never make a film that “disturbed” the leftist establishment in any way.
A D.W. Griffiths of our time?
Cheers
Unfortunately we are likely to continue to be plagued by the likes of Loach until such time as we can successfully challenge the hegemonic value that there are two types of created work- “Art” which improves the viewer in some vaguely defined way, and “Entertainment” which merely titillates.
Since Entertainment is by definition enjoyable and popular, lack of popularity is proof that something is Art, but since Art is considered infinitely more virtuous than vulgar Entertainment, it naturally follows that Art must be subsidised for the general good.
John Carey (notably) has made a very good case that high literature was invented as a reaction against the rise of popular media; now that everybody could read cheap novels, the intelligentsia needed some kind of inaccessible literature to prove their superiority. By creating literature that any normal person would not like, they could prove their superior taste and discernment, while rubbishing the rest as populist, vulgar and low.
Most of the municipal theatres that Loach eulogises were once going commercial concerns. The subsidised rep at which I started my theatre career, Northampton Royal Theatre, was once a commercial theatre. Then subsidy came in, and suddenly none of the provincial reps could survive without it. Strange, that, isn’t it?
Nah, he’s a pre-op Leni Riefenstahl.
Art is what people of a bygone age thought was entertainment.
The boy thought the kestrel had been killed and was very upset?
Yes, well, besides the pet/meat eating hypocrisy, which is not my point.
If the boy had his real emotional distressed filmed for artistic considerations – it reminds me of the dog that was tied up and left without food and water so it could be watched to die, that was an exhibit in an art gallery not so long ago.
Re above. Memo to self: Do not attempt to comment first thing!
IanB, I assume you are referring to Carey’s book, “The Intellectuals and The Masses.” A superb book, which reveals some of the shockingly grotesque views of such folk as HG Wells and many others besides.
John B,
I recall reading that the dog being left to die didn’t really happen. Can’t find the link but it was in South America somewhere. I read a reasonably convincing account that said the dog spent only the gallery opening hours being a symbolic street dog (but was adequately treated), but ran away back to the street. The rumour started because of some melodramatic – but theoretical – rhetoric from the artist.
No political point being made here. Just thought you’d like to know.
Someone told Ken Loach that the ideology he cradles in his hands is alive, when in truth it is dead.
Thank you, Natalie, point taken. I should not believe everything I read, indeed!
Snopes gives it an undetermined:
http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/vargas.asp
Paul, Ian,
I wonder if you saw Jacobson on C4 last night doing a history of the female nude in British painting. He made some points you might find interesting. He ended with a hideous sculpture by contemporary art “star” Sarah Lucas. Now of course some of the Victorian painting were a bit chocolate boxy and not “challenging” but I’d rather have them in the dining room than say anything by Emin or Hurst. Jacobson’s point overall was that for all the derision heaped on the Victorians (table legs with trousers and such) they actually had a much more sensible approach to the nude in art than our modern artists who seem to have totally lost any conception of things like sensuality or beauty and not concentrate on nihilism, derision and uglification.
As to Carey’s point – agreed but I actually think it’s even worse than that. It is real Emperor’s New Clothes stuff. They don’t understand this stuff and hide that fact under post-modern jargon that makes a Linux manual seem like a light read. If I recall some scientists hooched up an essay with all the post-modern phraseology and got it published in a learn’d journal which admitted later when the scam came out that even they didn’t have the slightest idea what it meant.
One final thought. I have never met an English Lit grad who has actually read Lord of the Rings. James Joycs, naturally but not the most popular and loved book in the English language since God knows when.
You can watch it here if you missed it.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-genius-of-british-art/4od#3129836
I wish I had seen the programme you mentioned Nick – however it is a bit late for me to watch just now (I am feeling my age).
Perhaps tomorrow.
Re: NickM at October 18, 2010 10:12 AM
Hey! At least you’ll get some real-world, exchangeable usefulness out of reading a Linux manual… Some of them are very well written.
(curls up with copy of ‘Firearms, Liberty, and Kernel compilation options’ by Eric S. Raymond)
NickM: The hoax you are thinking of was perpetrated by Alan Sokal, who published “Transgressing the Boundaries – Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” in the journal Social Text in 1996.
“Transgressing the Boundaries” is too dense for me to wade through in its entirety, but it does make for an enjoyable skim. My (metaphoric) hat is off to Sokal; still, it seems an awful lot of work for a practical joke. Doesn’t the man have a day job?
OMG, Laird, this is too delicious to be legal!
Oy vey. I am now told that the Sokal hoax is old news, and that these papers are now generated by computers (with the help of humans hitting the ‘refresh’ button).
Yes, Alisa, it is old news, but it’s still fun! But I hadn’t know of the next generation of computer-generated spoof articles. They’re better still. That’s kind of a descendant of the mission statement and employee review generators which used to be on the Dilbert website (although, sadly, I think they’re both gone now).
Incidentally, when I clicked through to that spoof article you linked, I noticed that the citation in the first footnote was to a book allegedly published by Loompanics. That in itself was a clue: Loompanics was a wonderful company that sold all sorts of oddball books on survivalism, individualism, etc. The company is now (unfortunately) defunct (its catalog was taken over by Paladin Press, another fine company), but they keep the website up with some excellent articles on it. Worth a visit.
Heh:-)