Feeble Fantasies

OMFG that sneezing panda is hilarious!

Let's start this one with a disclaimer: I have an embarrassing weakness for 'liberal' political TV programming coming out of the States. What's worse, now that the Democrats really do control the White House, watching re-runs of West Wing just doesn't provide the kick that it used to. Solution? HBO's The Newsroom. Written by Aaron Sorkin of West Wing fame, it is a fantastical ode to the kind of front line, adrenaline journalism that all journalists dream of: deadlines, emergencies, eating crappy food while working late for low pay, outdoing each other with stories of how that improvised live broadcast from >>insert warzone name<< went, shouting jargon at confused interns and ritually referring to the Fourth Estate's historic mission. 

Not that I should be all that cynical. Having worked in a newsroom, I understand well how one gets caught up in the excitement of shouting out that fresh bit of news across the office, of watching wires buzzing with an endless stream of News, or even running seemingly pointless errands between the MCR and the boss's desk. It is in fact quite unusual that compared to lawyers, who have over the years accrued an enviable compilation of televised renditions, journalism has been more the domain of films rather than TV. The time of course, is ripe and this is what brings me to the title. For a while now, mainstream media has been evidently drowning in commercialisation driven by ratings, a cancerous concern over 'balanced' news coverage, the victory of facts over interpretation and gossip over opinion. Moreover, threatened by upstarts a la Wikileaks, it has shown its ugly elitist face (overhearing journos talking about Julian Assange at the extradition hearings in London was a particularly sobering episode), while reporting on the financial crisis has descended into a hell of uncritical acceptance of the economic 'facts'. Just like the political sphere before it, the media in late capitalism is often a byword for our fall into a world devoid of meaning, but saturated with words, banners, flashing advisories and tickers displaying a bewildering amount of information. Whither news? Oh how I sometimes wish it did. 

The Newsroom has a different scenario in mind, no less than a redemption. Not only any redemption, but one that's driven from this inside, eschewing any outside interference and drawing on the resources of the profession itself. Not to dwell on the plot of the series, the producers of the news programme around which the show centres are on a mission, a mission to civilize, to defend America (ie, the world) against the onslaught of second rate news, second rate politics and second rate consumption. In this particular instance, the fearless team (led by a moderate Republican no less, hint, hint) take on the Tea Party machine of lies and stupidity, supported somewhat begrudgingly by the capitalist owner of the media group, who in the end turns out to be 'one of us' - the liberal, moderate, educated America. It is here that we see the ultimate feeble fantasy; squeezed out of actual news programming, the arch-journalist is now a fictional character, a Don Quixote - ironic considering the frequent references to the  ingenious gentleman in the script. Let me be clear - I do not doubt that such talent and conviction exist in reality as well, and perhaps a living out of fantasies is a precursor to them becoming a reality. And yet, like so many other feeble fantasies (a return to a welfare state, the promise of liberal democracy and so on), to think that independent, bold and truly civilizing news can exist within the constraints of our socio-economic reality sadly seems very unlikely. At least there's lots of office romance to compensate. 

The Dark Knight Rises, and the Revolution flops

Market fears of a masked madman have depressed stock prices in NY

On a sunny day in London, I went to the cinema with Silas. Saying no to the sun in England felt like a special luxury, though by the time we finished the bottle of wine outside Hackney Picturehouse, I for one was ready for the dark.

And in that dark, one finds a story whose analysis of modern society is remarkably poignant and, this surprised me most, frank in its condemnation of the plutarchy of Gotham - a city which Chris Nolan clearly identifies with New York, leaving no doubt that this is not even an allegorical tale of greed and human stupidity, but rather quite clear cut social commentary. As cat woman puts it: "You think this can last? There's a storm coming Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you're all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us."

The rich, having gotten away with passing all sorts of restrictive legislation, have locked up the other kind of criminal mob, leaving them in charge. The bat man is simply not needed as long as the champagne flows and charity galas are well attended, but signs of moral decay abound. Orphans in the streets, bodies washing up from the sewers, all dancing to the beat of the stock exchange, all hurtling towards some point in the future where the capitalist dream becomes impossible to maintain. Worse still, the seeds of its destruction are contained within it. When John Daggett employes Bane to aid in his hostile takeover bid for Wayne's company, he is letting his greed cloud his judgement and in a Marxian twist, the infrastructure and productive capabilities of the capitalist Daggett become, quite literally, the tools with which the underground masses of the poor, the unwanted, the invisible and the forgotten will rise up.

What comes next however, is where the plot of Batman starts to twist back to a more conservative view. Bane's revolution is bloody. Any revolution is messy, right? Old, helpless rich people are wandering the streets in fur coats, harassed by mobs of the poor high off looting and pillaging. The court, presided over by a mad academic, dishes out death sentences in what seems to be a hybrid of the French and Russian revolutions. Bane, the young Stalin, is a perverted revolutionary, his hope is false and his goal is the destruction of Gotham, not its redemption (unless you consider immolation as a form of redemption). The message here is clear: while the current plutarchy is unfair, unstable, fuelled by greed and will slowly eat the planet alive, the alternative is a masked madman, looting, death and chaos. And the solution? For the good rich, i.e. Bruce Wayne, to bring back the ancien régime. Balzac would have approved.