How European Philosophers Had a Dust-Up over the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755

A study of the tsunami and earthquake at Lisbon 1755

The study of history makes one more immediately  aware of how natural catastrophes have always been with us. A case in point is the earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal in the year of our Lord 1755. Contemporaries who were witness to the devastation of the city claimed there had never been anything like it, such was the massive damage to buildings, and loss of human life.Estimates of the death toll reached as high as 100,000, making it one of the most deadliest earthquake in human history. The event  occurred on 1st November at 9.40am and was followed by a number of fires and a tsunami that swallowed Lisbon up in a black period  of destruction lasting at least two weeks. The movement of the earth was sufficiently powerful to cause a ten foot tsunami off the shore of Cornwall, England, and was felt as far away as Finland, the Caribbean and North Africa, which was also hit by a sixty-six foot tsunami.


Apart from the shocking loss of life, and devastation, the earthquake also had a number of unforeseen consequences. These included such diverse developments as  the virtual birth of seismology as the science of predicting earthquakes,  as well as a stay of Portugal's efforts  to be seen as as a great colonial and naval power. Perhaps the most provocative consequence of such an obviously world-shattering event was that it initiated a dialogue between the great philosophers of the period, who attempted to hijack any explanation of the earthquake  away from the teachings of the Roman Catholic church and toward a discussion of the new Enlightenment way of thinking. In the later twentieth century, the Lisbon earthquake has been compared to the Jewish Holocaust, in its power to transform the  culture and philosophy of Europe  because of the destruction it caused, and the terrible human suffering that was its consequence.  After all, this was still a period in European history that condoned such things as  the burning of witches, bleeding people with leeches when they were sick, as well as the refutation of anything that disagreed with the Aristotelian view that the sun revolved around the earth, two hundred years after Galileo had made his discoveries to the contrary.

What followed was a remarkable discourse between members of the European intelligensia which openly mocked the teachings of the church in order to educate the common people on the powers of the new concept of reason as a method for them to improve their lot, removing the shackles of superstition from an ignorant landed peasantry, and enabling them to question the subservience they were expected to observe to a higher deity. The earthquake had ironically struck on the Catholic holiday of All Saints Day. Virtually every important church in the city had been destroyed and theologians rushed to explain the catastrophe away as the divine judgment of God, much to the chagrin of the survivors who had lost their loved ones,  whilst the King of Portugal and his family had been spared after taking their leave of the city for a holiday the night before the quake occurred.


 The great enlightenment French philosopher Voltaire took the opportunity to attack the prevailing philosophical thought of the epoch which was described by Leibniz as 'all's for the best in the best of all possible worlds' by writing the poem 'The Disaster of Lisbon' : "Come ye philosophers, who cry, all's well/ and contemplate this ruin of a world." In Candide the Optimist, Voltaire has Candide, the eternal optimist exclaim: "if this is the best of all possible worlds, what are then the  others". In 1757 Samuel Johnson gathered to the fray and defended Voltaire's more realistic response by disparaging fellow Englishman Alexander Pope's insistence that things would somehow be put to right by stating "Pope thus never saw the miseries which he imagines thus easy to be borne." Optimism, Voltaire declares, "is merely an insult to the miseries of our existence" and only the churchmen whose churches were destroyed are foolish enough to believe that evil does not, at least sometimes, prevail over good. In 1756 Rousseau scolded Voltaire in a letter that complained that taking away religion reduces the human race to a despair far worse that it would suffer without it, but it seems that Voltaire had the ear of the people and perhaps offered them more solace than any of the churchmen ever managed.

A tent city was built. Looters were hung as an example by  King Joseph I

The city of Lisbon, once the most beautiful in all of Europe, was eventually rebuilt, but the earthquake which destroyed it, also destroyed the confidence and equilibrium of a Europe which pictured itself as the most important power in the world. Lands in America were being conquered, trading routes were opening up and the future looked bright for the bourgeoisie, the merchants and the conquistadors. Rumours spread about how the disaster was an omen from God, or  a way of punishing the King of Portugal for his wickedness in mistreating  the indigenous south American Indians. This is of course only superstition, for as   Werner Hamacher has stated, it was  the foundational certainty of Descartian  philosophy that  began to shake after the Lisbon earthquake.


Works consulted: the full text of the Disaster of Lisbon here; relevant Wikipedia article here; Lisbon earthquake here; Historical depictions of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake here; Lisbon pre-1755 Lisbon earthquake here; and link to popular history work best known at the moment here.

The Secret of a Reasonably Priced DVD collection: Don’t buy new releases

I bought my first DVD player in 2002 and have been hooked ever since on the virtues of digitised entertainment. I trashed my old VCR and my tapes and indulged myself in a buying frenzy of titles from every era and every possible genre that had never been released before on video. I revelled in the special features, the audio commentaries, and other ephemera that were used to sell this new-fangled product to the gullible consumer

Still waiting for my Amazon order

I’m straying off-topic to make the observation I know, but as far as music is concerned, it’s well known that CDs have been suffering a slump in sales lately because of the extent to which the web has revolutionised the way we listen to music. I hope that that this is not an indication of the DVD’s death knell, since I feel as though I am the format’s number 1 fan. I am not interested in the technology per se, as much as what the it can do to make my love of movies and old TV shows more affordable and practical for me in my daily life. I can be very stubborn and stick with something until I think I’ve got it figured out which is what I’ve been doing with DVDs for the past nine or so years. So the recent developments in home entertainment of streaming and other innumerable ways of accessing almost anything online have not left much of an impression on me. I don’t see the point in shelling out more money for data for streaming for instance, when I’ve already purchased the titles that are my favourites and are sitting right here on my living room bookshelf.

I do have a reasonable collection of discs, and think I know the secret to buying movies that you can keep for the rest of your life and watch whenever you want. It’s to become more knowledgeable about all of the films that weren’t say, only released on DVD last week thereby minimising your purchase of new releases, that is if you have to buy them at all. This of course points to my obvious bias toward my own tastes and my opinion that what gets released these days is frankly, of inferior quality. I am a nostalgist at heart, and leave it to the Roger Ebert’s of the world to convert the philistine masses to watching movies by virtue of the fact that they have been recently released and have no bearing on what has come before them. To me, films earn their stature within a context of a wider canon which places them in their proper place with the great movies of the past.

Very few of the DVDs that I own have I ever bought as new releases, if any. Always, if I want to see a movie that’s been recently released to the cinemas, I wait for the price of the DVD to go down and then I buy it at the reduced price. I refuse to pay $30 or more for a title when in six to twelve months it may be available for $15 or even less. What I refer to as ‘classic titles’ are those older films that have come and gone, whether its been only relatively recently, or ‘a long time ago.’ Classic titles on first release are in my experience never as expensive in the retail stores as recent films that have just been released on DVD after recently being withdrawn from release in the cinemas.

Joe Kane's superior movie guide for those in the know

I’m sure that there are many more informed consumers than ever before, by virtue of the fact that there is such a wide range of information available about the great movies of the past and other more recent films that are rapidly gaining stature as the new classics. There’s no excuse for not knowing what you may enjoy watching from the voluminous archives of movies gone by. But if like me, you like to have your favourites at your fingertips, there is nothing that compares to buying the DVD and bypassing the alternatives that either may prove to be more expensive in the long run, or not as convenient as you might like them to be for your purposes.

There are also plenty of film guides available and the one I like the best is the Virgin Film Guide. It’s reviews are detailed and well-written and updated every couple of years to include new films. The bible for hard core critics is the Time Out Guide which is a bit too trendy for me but I believe contains good reviews of cult films not endorsed by Leonard Maltin and other mainstream critics. My personal favourite is The Phantom of the Movies Videoscope by Joe Kane, which I found in a second hand bookstore, so it may sadly be hard to find.

What other unsolved crime is gaining newly discovered suspects over 100 years AFTER it was committed? Look no further than Jack the Ripper

Jack the Ripper, aka the Whitechapel murderer, aka Leather Apron. These monikers still strike fear into the hearts of not only crime buffs but those of us with more than a passing interest in popular history. These particular crimes which occurred in the epoch known as Late Victorian England, are still regarded so vicious and brutal they could compare to anything that we find shocking today. Hannibal Lecter, Henry the Serial Killer, Ed Gein, (the guy who dressed up as a clown – what was his name again?), the list goes on and on. Our consciousness is nudged by media images of ‘The Elephant Man’ 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’, ‘Mary Reilly’ and the novels of Charles Dickens as reminders of the poverty, degradation and misery of England in the throes of its Industrial Revolution. With our media savvy attitudes intact, we gratefully heave a sigh of relief that we were not around to relive the ghastliness of what we can only hope to imagine.


Ripperologists, as they are known today, are people who specialise in research concerning the crimes of Jack the Ripper. Ripperologists are thought to be a bit strange. With all that’s going on in the world, why are they obsessed by something that happened 100 years ago, something so heinous, it seems to fever our imaginations from one generation to the next? If you’d asked me only recently, if I’d be commenting online about the state of on-going Ripper studies, I would have either laughed at you, or taken an Alka-Seltzer for my upset stomach. But here I am, in my foolish efforts to prove myself, having read a book (tellingly looked down upon by most Ripperologists) called ‘The Fox and Flies: The Criminal Empire of the Whitechapel Murderer’. It makes a case for a suspect in the Jack the Ripper serial killings that no one has ever heard of outside the musty reference rooms of old universities and police files considered lost to posterity by pilferage or just plain disinterest. The suspect’s name is Joseph Silver, (pictured above) he was a Polish Jew, and probably something far more serious than a ‘petty ’criminal: he sounds in fact, like a criminal mastermind. The author of the book, South African historian Charles van Onselen specialises in criminal history, and for the first time dips his toe into the cold water of ‘Ripperology’. He makes a good fist of it, but unfortunately any substantial proof of Silver being in Whitechapel at the time of the murders is a tad on the flimsy side. He did father an illegitimate child to an unknown woman in April 1888, whilst living in London but as far as being Jack the Ripper is concerned, there just doesn’t seem to be the necessary evidence. Whilst erring on the side of social history and being self-effacing enough to admit that psychiatric observations are not up his alley, van Onselen’s style is an endearing mixture of erudition, solid research and a confidential just-you-me-and-the-gatepost-know-about-this familiarity with his readers. (And I would contend that his psychiatric observations are actually quite acute and very useful.)

As a beginner in Ripperology I have learned that there are what is known as a ‘canonical five’ victims of Jack the Ripper, that is five women who were most likely than not, murdered by the same man by the same method. The canonical women are in order of their demise: Mary Nicholls, Anna Chapman, Elizabeth Stride Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly. Where Onselen’s book is concerned, one of the most pertinent issues was for me, the case of the last victim, Mary Jane Kelly. Using information gleaned from secondary sources, van Oselen puts together a narrative which alerts the reader to the fact that Mary Jane Kelly may have been acquainted with her assailant. If this is so, this raises the question of the identity of a man who was believed to be Mary Jane’s secret lover whose name was Joe, as in Joseph Barnett, her live-in companion, and Joseph Flemming her ex-partner, both temporary suspects in the murder but eventually cleared by police investigation. If Mary Jane had known her attacker, she was in fact, following the story of the murders in the newspapers and penny dreadfuls and was fearful of her life for good reason.

As far as the suspects are concerned, there also appear to be a ‘canonical’ number as set down by the Macnaghten Memoranda of 1894 which has influenced research into the case for the past forty years. The canonical suspects are MJ Druitt, George Chapman, Aaron Kosminski, and Michael Ostrog. To be frank, they are not terribly impressive. Druitt committed suicide, Chapman was a wife poisoner, and Kosminski and Ostrog were institutionalised and do not appear to have the violent pathological backgrounds for someone as brutal as the Ripper. A book on the primacy of Kosminski as a suspect has recently been published, Jack the Ripper and the Case for Scotland Yard's Prime Suspect by Robert House. It seems like an interesting contribution to the discussion as it increases the credibility of a suspect previously dismissed as having a profile incapable of committing the Ripper’s atrocities. As well there are a number of suspects who could rightfully be described as outlandish, including Lewis Carroll, the Duke of Clarence and William Gladstone a former Prime Minister of Britain who showed a concern for the plight of prostitutes to the extent that he was considered in a dubious light and perhaps was not to be trusted.


To give an example of what I have noticed is the peripatetic nature of Ripperology, I could make the assertion that the identity of Jack the Ripper may never be known. This would not be such an unsubstantiated claim, if it weren’t for a story posted on the web only a few months ago in May of this year. It tells of a so-called conspiracy by Scotland Yard to keep documents created contemporaneously, still the secret they have always been since the first police investigation into the incident in London in 1888; these documents may reveal that Scotland Yard always knew the identity of the perpetrator but never had enough evidence to prove it in court. Trevor Marriott, a Ripper investigator and former detective, has spent three years attempting to obtain uncensored versions of the documents which have been kept from the public and could reveal Jack the Ripper’s true identity. A separate discussion is also emerging into the case concerning the extent of anti-Semitism in the East End at the time that the murders were committed insofar as Scotland Yard was constrained in revealing the identity of the killer. They were afraid it would set off reprisals against the Jewish population who had settled in East London to escape from the pogroms of Russia and Poland but were completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Jack the Ripper it seems is alive and well in our imaginations, as we attempt to make sense of many strands of seemingly inconsequential information, weaving them into a whole as we blunder along assuming that we can solve a mystery that probably will never have a solution

Removed from the personalities of the piece, members of the constabulary who had their careers on the line, and celebrity suspects who could never possibly have done it, what we have left are the anonymous mass of people, in the words of Edmund Burke, the ‘swinish multitudes’. They were born in squalor, lived with poverty and disease and were left to die lonely deaths, their lives cut short by indifference and neglect. These are the people that for better or worse are preyed upon In this world, and the predators who prey upon them, will have to answer to their own God. As for the rest of us, we have our imagination, but it plays tricks on us. It makes us believe that we are somehow different, and protected from the predations of existence. But what is waiting for us around the corner is no different for us, than the people of the East end of London whose faces in old photographs look out at us and in doing so, remind us of ourselves.

The strange journey of Jay Lovestone - from American communist to mole for the C.I.A.

A post-war propaganda poster 

Jay Lovestone speaking at a union rally in 1938

Jay Lovestone is not a name familiar to everyone. He was in fact an extremely influential figure in American public life during the period from  the 1920's, right up to the Cold War -- when the Cold War  was raging at its hottest. To say that he ran the ideological gamut from A to B would be an understatement of glaringly bizarre fact. Starting out in his youth with a commitment to international socialism, by the time he'd reached his  dotage Lovestone was  loved as much as he was feared, his mission in life being the protection of his beloved adopted country America from the menace of Russian communism.

 Lovestone grew up on the streets of New York's Lower East Side after migrating with his parents and siblings from modern day Belarus (at the time Lithuania), and was born in 1897. Originally known as Jacob Liebstein, he was first attracted to the socialist theories of Daniel de Leon and on de Leon's  death in 1914, attended the funeral with 3000 other mourners. One can only wonder what kind of dynamic place New York's Lower East Side, must have been at the time. It was a  haven for Jews, Poles, Irish and Italians  escaping either the pogroms of eastern Europe, poverty, or any other kind of political upheaval imaginable during the war years and their bitter aftermath. America must surely been a haven for them as they were allowed to pursue their basic freedoms of speech and assembly that they had previously been denied. From our own historical vantage point  we can only contemplate what the Lower East Side must have been like for a bright boy like Lovestone.

 He entered  college, dabbled in student politics and dropped out of law school in order to be a career member full time of the Communist Party. He helped to form the Communist Party of America in 1919 along with the legendary John Reed as a representation of a left slanting Leninist group that believed in the on-going revolution of the masses. With the death of Lenin in 1924 the Bolsheviks were reduced to factional in-fighting and the Americans, it could be argued, were no match for the ruthlessness, and bitterness of ideological conflict that the Europeans were so expert at since the French Revolution. Lovestone, as one of the prime factional leaders of his party, followed the doctrine of Bukharin, whilst other more conservative communists preferred to follow Stalin. This was, in hindsight, a disastrous judgment on Lovestone's part, for when Stalin purged Bukharin from the Soviet Politburo in 1929, Lovestone suffered the consequences. Lovestone made the journey to Moscow from New York to state his case, but Stalin brushed him off as a lightweight, pointing to a cemetery outside the window where they were talking, and exclaiming that this was where Lovestone would end up if he peristed in adhering to the doctrine of the disgraced Bukharin. Lovestone was eventually expelled from the party, but this only made a difference in 1938 when Bukharin was shot. This put the Bukharinites in the graveyard which Stalin had planned for them, if not literally, then certainly metaphorically, and as a symbol that the American's one-sided  battle for ideological supremacy with the Russians was at an end once and for all.

 Lovestone developed a virtual network of spies, and informers in his efforts to keep the American trade union movement, through his contacts with the AFL-CIO, free of what were then known as communist infiltrators, or agitators. Amongst a host of other activities abroad that were never monitored or commented upon at home in America, it is clear from a document freely available on the web and linked here, that Lovestone was responsible for the Free Trade Union Movement in South America. The group was nothing more than a front for American business interests. It has been subsequently  blamed for its inflammatory influence on the rise of a number of fascist dictators in the region  whose powers were only challenged after decades spent  repressing the political rights of  their own populations.

When the CIA was created in 1947, Lovestone's connection to it through his association with the head of counter-intelligence James Angleton was never discovered till the CIA was put to heel by a number of government investigations into its activities in the period 1974-76. There was an internal war going on within the CIA itself as new head William Colby was attempting to get rid of Angleton, maintaining that his paranoia from years of counter-intelligence work was making him unproductive and a millstone around the agency's neck. Long-time associate George Meany, the President of the AFL-CIO, a shadowy figure despite (or because of) his pre-eminence in the history of American labor, took it upon himself to get rid of Lovestone as it was too embarrassing for the union to have to admit its connection with James Angleton.


I have always found it difficult to explain the nature and somewhat alarming  extent of American patriotism. It seems almost a necessary evil for some Americans, in order that they may re-assure their fellow Americans that they are not traitors, or outsiders The sea change that came over Lovestone after he was expelled from the party seems difficult to explain, except for the fact that he had met Stalin in person, and felt threatened by him. Well...let's fact it. He was threatened by him. It seems like a superficial motivation, but being threatened by someone as powerful as Stalin could not have been a pleasant experience  It appears to be something that stayed with Lovestone for the rest of his life. Unfortunately within the context of the cold war and McCarthyist  manouevres to expose enemies of the state, Lovestone's sea change exhibits a small minded jingoism, comparing himself as a sophisticated American in contrast to the peasant Stalin.   I would interpret Lovestone's sea change as an example of  an unwritten  propaganda subtext that   ruling elites at the time used  in their battle for supremacy,  by converting  the hearts and minds of the general population to a more global way of looking at the world. I believe that Lovestone was probably used in some form or other and merely went along with it because he felt ashamed  to have other Americans think that he didn't love his country.

 In a book review of Lovestone's biography  published in the New York Times, I was surprised to find him described as a 'fanatic'. Maybe this is correct, but I would also suggest that he was just less of a fanatic than the rest of the fanatics who existed at this particular historical point in time. He was also unlucky enough to have been caught, thanks to the emergence  of a new honesty and openness that was emerging in American society in the '70s. By the time of his death in 1990 Lovestone was not known to the public and must have felt a man out of his time, as rapproachment with the Soviet Union became a reality and a new world order emerged which had no time for the kind of native American idealism that I would argue Lovestone's life exemplified, for better or worse. It is a strange journey indeed and one that hopefully will receive more attention from academics and other writers in the future.

Articles referred to in this article include: Jay Lovestone on Wikipedia here; Edward Jay Epstein on the wars of the CIA article here; Thomas Braden article  on Spartacus here; Questions and Answers to American Trade Unionists from Joseph Stalin available at marxist.org  here; New York Times book review Under the Beds of the Reds here.

When the film is better than my review - Naked (1993)

This is a film like no other in its examination of people’s lives under the hard, steely and unforgiving shadow of post-Thatcherite Great Britain. Originally made for television, director Mike Leigh is unrelenting in his savage portrayal of lives undone by a combination of poverty and indifference. The characters attempt unsuccessfully to make sense of their pitiless environment in a depressed and emotionally bankrupt London landscape, bereft of any kind of refuge or redemption. Our hero, Johnny, is seen in the first minutes of the film, having what does not appear to be consensual relations, in a depressed area of Manchester. He flees to London and back into the life of his former girlfriend (Lesley Sharp). What follows are a series of funny, horrifying and depressing encounters which end as abruptly as they have started. People appear to be at the end of their tether, lacking any connection with their fellows and falling by the wayside into an unbelievable hole of poverty and squalor which Charles Dickens would be ashamed to reiterate. The film takes place mostly during a very long, dark night as Johnny is forced by circumstance to face the disappointments of his life and somehow use his exceptional intelligence to deal with them. 

The look of the film, a hellish foreground in which the characters swarm around like lackadaisical insects in their vain attempt to stay alive, is what haunts the memory. The cinematography is as stark as anything in ‘Taxi Driver’ as we are reminded of a terrible inferno in which the characters play a minor part, made insignificant by the hellish surroundings that appear to engulf them. This journey of darkness into the character’s souls and the literal darkness of the film is an obvious metaphor that need not be laboured. 

As played by David Thewlis, Johnny is a foul mouthed Mancusian, angry beyond measure, but doomed by neglect from his betters. A not-so-common man in the throes of a bitter hatred toward the status quo, which he expresses in a number of brilliantly written and acted monologues, Johnny appears to have either lost, or abandoned his ambitions. David Thewlis gives a tour de force performance in what I believe in future will become a classic of English drama (if it isn't already). The film would not be the same without its impeccable soundtrack of cello and harp, part of a haunting theme that resonates from start to finish, composed by Andrew Dickson. 

“Naked’ is an unforgettable snapshot of England at its foulest and most soul destroying. It’s a portrait unfortunately destined for posterity, along with a narrative and characterisations that tattoo themselves into your brain so that you will never forget them – for at least as long as you live. 

Kept under the thumb by another second son?

Bashar al-Assad. How long can he last?

Events in the Middle East have carried on at a breakneck pace. It’s difficult to keep abreast of every single country that finds itself undergoing the upheaval of change from autocratic rule to hopefully something akin to democracy.  I’m not writing this to offer an analysis of events. There are enough knowledgeable people on the net able to provide that  for those of us who agree with their viewpoint and trust their judgment. I knew I wanted to write a post about what’s going on in Syria, and I discovered amongst other things, the country’s official web page here, and also consulted Bashar al-Assad’s profile on Wikipedia here. I’d just like to share some thoughts about what I like to call the ‘second son syndrome’, which I believe al-Assad is the product of, and note a few other second sons in history who have, for better or worse,  overcompensated for what they feel is a lack of approval from their father. This is particularly relevant  when second sons consider themselves inferior to either siblings who have died, or were born before they were, or simply received more attention  than they felt they did themselves.

I discovered upon reading the Wiki article that President Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and son of Hafez al-Assad, the previous President who ruled the country for 29 years, had in early life nursed no political aspirations. He  had an older brother named Basil, whom the family was grooming to take over from the father. The family’s hopes for Basil’s ascendancy to his father’s position were shattered when Basil was killed in a car accident in 1994.¹ Bashar al-Assad was therefore forced by circumstance to take his brother’s place as their father’s heir apparent.  Recalled from London where he was studying ophthalmology, al-Assad joined the military academy at Homs and emerged as a colonel in 1999. He was thus baptised as next in line to the Presidency.  Assad the elder died in 2000 and his second son was voted unopposed as the next Syrian President.² In 2007 his leadership was approved for another seven year term by a referendum in which there was no other candidate.³

 After reading this, I was immediately  reminded of the psychological profile of President George W Bush. This may not  seem so obvious and I realise that the reader deserves an  explanation. However the following is on the public record and is no secret. As a young man, George W  Bush struggled to prove himself to his father by appearing to be  a serious political player,  despite  what he viewed as discouragement from his parents, and unfavourable comparisons with his  brother Jeb. In researching this article I was surprised to discover that George is actually Jeb’s older brother. George suffered from the ‘second son’ syndrome to the extent that he acted as if he was younger than Jeb or in any case, inferior to him.⁴   I’m going to propose in this article that second sons, or boys who perceive themselves to be in the shadow of another sibling, appear  to be insecure.  Their authoritarianism and their quest to be thought of as great achievers, at least in the political sphere, can be a dangerous reflection of that insecurity. In nations without a tradition of democratic decision-making, this is pertinent  for those who are meant to live under their rule, take their orders or merely acknowledge them as their leader. 

I then got to thinking of the famous second sons I was aware of in history, and could come up with  a number of them. But because I am not aware of the lineage of every politician in the history of western civilisation, I’m sure there are many more that fit the description. Being an Australian of the old school, I was taught about Engish royalty and am most familiar with second sons because of the care lavished upon the lineage of the British Royal family. These came immediately to mind. Firstly, the current Queen Elizabeth’s II’s father George VI, was a second son. (Incidentally, his father George V was also a second son but for reasons of space he is beyond the scope of my discussion at the moment).

Duke of York in his WWI regalia. The future King George VI.

 It goes like this:  Edward VIII,  George VI’s older brother was the eldest son and originally  groomed to take the position of King as the official heir of his father (King George V). Unfortunately he fell in love with Wallis Simpson, and abdicated because she was an American as well as a divorcee and the public in Britain it was said,  would never accept her as  queen. The abdication of Edward VIII in December 1936 was in fact one of the most pivotal events of the twentieth century.⁵ 

George VI, the second son,  previously the Duke of York, or Bertie as he was known,  was totally unprepared for the responsibility of being handed the position of King because of  his brother’s abdication. He had a stutter, a weak voice, and felt overwhelmed by a role he was never trained for and was  reluctant to perform. Although liked and admired by the public, older  brother Edward had a number of personal problems including his deteriorating relationship with father  George V who had not wished to see him ascend to the throne.⁶  When Edward  took over from his father who died in January 1936, it was clear he refused to be a mere figure-head and his independence spelled trouble.⁷ With powerful enemies arrayed against him after only eleven months on the throne, Edward formally abdicated on 10^th December 1936. The throne was passed to the Duke of York, who was thought to be weak-willed and easily influenced.⁸ Whilst rumours of previous king Edward VIII’s Nazi sympathies abounded, the new King and his queen (the current Queen’s parents) were also desperate to avoid war with Germany in order that the monarchy survive events that were out of its control in Europe, even if it meant existing under Nazi occupation.⁹ The new king ie second son George VI, was receiving  a baptism of fire in the world of realpolitic, where it was necessary to maintain the authority of the monarchy at  a time of uncertainty at home as well as abroad. The approach of the Second Word War transformed Bertie Duke of York from a weak and ill-advised also-ran who paled in comparison to his dashing brother, into at least, a passable leader.¹⁰  But after the War it was clear that the British Empire was crumbling. The first Labour government was voted into office, and the creation of the welfare state did not bode well for the survival of British royalty.¹¹ 

George VI, despite his weak personality, was still a member of a powerful family that had no intention of getting sidelined by history. They have in fact continued to this day, propelled by a careful mixture of public relations and careful strategies to ensure their money, wealth and influence  remain intact.. I don’t know of a volume ever published which could tell  us the real story of these particular pair of siblings who had such an influence on the history of the 20th century because of the obvious rivalry and perhaps bitterness that may have existed between them. I do think however, that King George VI, despite his unsuitability for the position, suffered in the shadow of his older brother and was thus prepared for a life of defending British royalty, as well as the possibility of England being invaded by the Nazis.

Of course this is all just supposition on my part. But the patterns exist and should be discerned if they throw light on the motivations of individuals who exercise power over the rest of us, by virtue of us giving  our power away to them. The tenous political situation in Syria cannot be easily explained away I know and I’m not attempting to do that. I’m only attempting to understand what drives a leader to such lengths that he will turn on his own people  in such an inexcusable way. Perhaps it is fear that the implementation of democracy  would strip him of his authority as well as the identity he has forged for himself as President, in the shadow of a powerful and mourned figure in the shape of his late brother.

NOTES:
1. Wikipedia article; 2. ibid; 3. ibid; 4. The last sentence is my own. 5. 'War of the Windsors: A Century of Unconstitutional Monarchy; by Lyn Picknett, Clive Prince, Stephen Prior and Robert Brydon, South Yarra, Hardie Grant, 2002. 6. ibid. p. 106; 7. ibid. p. 132; 8. ibid. p. 174; 9. ibid. pp. 192-93; 10. ibid. pp. 195-198; 11. ibid. p. 250.

MOVIE REVIEW: Ash Wednesday (1973) with Fonda and Taylor

The beautiful Elizabeth Taylor. As we would like to remember her.

- First seen on video with Elizabeth Taylor (who sadly passed away recently), and Henry Fonda about a woman who has plastic surgery in order to hold onto her husband and in my considered opinion it wasn’t a very smart move.

Beware, for there are a number of scenes that show – how shall I put it?- positively revolting surgical procedures. I’m referring to the knife being inserted into the skin, so please beware! Considering the age of both the stars at the time this was made, they both look pretty good which doesn’t add to the believability of the piece. Taylor was going through one of her ‘difficulties with weight’ phases. I think she was married to politician John Warner at the time and gossip columnists would constantly denigrate her for supposedly not looking her best; she commented after their divorce that she did not like being stuck at home watching TV and being ‘Mrs Senator’. Her weight may have – ahem, fluctuated, but she never lost that marvellous face. The story of ‘Ash Wednesday’ takes place in the U.S. and Europe but is choppily edited and  isn’t easy to understand - as I recall it seemed to have a number of continuity errors for such a respectable production. The project is one of those that doesn’t seem to have much purpose for being made. Are we are meant to be salivating with envy over the affluent lifestyle of these rich and beautiful people and wishing it was our own?


However, apart from  the participation of such a pair of iconic movie stars, this movie is kind of  silly and only recommended if you’ve got nothing better to do with your life.

MOVIE REVIEW: Harold and Maude think life is grand

 

Directed by Hal Ashby, Harold and Maude is a delightful concoction of high comedy, low drama and touching romance. Ashby is an underrated auteur of ‘70s cinema, with a number of films to his credit that entitle him to as much notice as any canonised auteur of the period. A true iconoclast, he started out as an editor and graduated to directing a number of quirky films and ‘Harold and Maude’ is the second of his efforts which led to ‘Shampoo’ (1975) and ‘Being There’(1980) .

 'Harold and Maude’ did score big with the youth market of the 70s who saw their struggles reflected in the plight of the young and innocent Harold, twenty year old son of the upper middle class, to find a place in the corrupt world that frankly doesn’t seem to be interested in him at all, and the feeling is mutual. The only thing that seems to hold Harold’s interest in the slightest is death; he meets an eighty year old woman named Maude who, contrarily has a very firm grip on life. They endear themselves to each other and begin a relationship, two misfits at either end of the mortal compass so to speak.

Released in 1971, when youth unrest over Vietnam had turned America into a virtual battlefield bordering on civil war, ‘Harold and Maude’ is a seemingly laid back treatise on the hippie culture. But in fact it is actually an allegory of individuals’ rights to live their lives the way they see fit with little or no interference from authority. This conceit in itself makes the film an extremely liberating and enjoyable experience and I think that Ashby displays a sincere interest in people’s inner lives and their struggle to realise their aspirations within the context of an authoritarian social structure. But this sounds too dour and does not reflect the verve and spirit of a film which unlike Harold, but more like Maude is filled with a rebellious joie de vivre that is wonderfully contagious and given the social context, entirely believable.

Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort star in the title roles and they make a great team . The comedy is at times hilarious, as Ashby pokes fun at all kinds of social conventions that exist mainly to keep people separated from each other. But beneath the joyfulness lies a sadness that as humans we should feel the weight on our shoulders of prisons made by our own doing. These prisons can be so harsh, that they drain us of our humanity. The songs of Cat Stevens are used to excellent effect on the soundtrack, which take the place of conventional movie music. This wasn’t’ done often and presages the extensive use of music that has already been recorded in later (but dissimilar films) such as ‘Reservoir Dogs’ and ‘Natural Born Killers’ which started a trend. ‘Harold and Maude’ is a wonderful piece of celluloid, a fine example of the diversity of ‘70s cinema, as well as an exceptional and thought provoking piece of entertainment in its own right and is highly recommended.

MOVIE REVIEW: Have we seen The Last of Sheila? I bet we haven't!

WARNING THIS FILM IS IMPOSSIBLE TO REVIEW WITHOUT GIVING AWAY A FEW  PLOT POINTS SO PLEASE BEWARE!!

I found ‘The Last of Sheila’ on ex-rental and was surprised by its high entertainment value. It’s one of those films that people seem to know about, but somehow if you ask them, they may not have seen it. ‘The Last of Sheila’ deserved more of an audience on its first release but it may now be getting a second chance with the new technology which to me is poetic justice. It is clever, entertaining and succeeds in doing things a little differently. The film was co-written by Anthony Perkins (with Stephen Sondheim); as an actor Perkins is so self-effacing it seems only with the passing of time that we remember how quirky and interesting he actually was. Unfortunately for the audience he doesn’t have a role in front of the camera, but there are a number of once famous, (infamous?) names who make their presence felt, in roles, some would say that are a little close to the bone. The cast includes James Coburn, Raquel Welch, Dyan Cannon, Joan Hackett, Richard Benjamin and James Mason.



The film is set on a luxury yacht and its environs, mainly the Greek islands which look spectacular. The narrative is revealed as a series of pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. A famous movie producer (Coburn) brings a party of his friends together for a sea cruise on his million dollar yacht in order to  find out which one has done the dirty on him in a very unpleasant manner.But  curious questions keep popping up: which member of the party may have been responsible for the death of his wife Sheila? And how much does Sheila’s husband know and is willing to reveal, about the members of the party? The method in which the plot is revealed to the audience is a lot of fun as we find out one by one, what it is the characters have to hide and how prime they may be as suspects in the murder of Sheila. (As an afterthought since she is not a character in the film, this setup reminds me of ‘Rebecca’, a character much talked about but never actually seen in the film of the same name.)

 It’s all very post-modern and self-referential, with a lot of Hollywood in-jokes that the audience can participate in and laugh about. The characters include a struggling screenwriter who is broke and will do anything for a hit (Benjamin); a powerful female agent (based on legendary agent of the ‘70s Sue Mengers) who knows the dope on everyone but isn’t telling (Cannon); an over-the-hill actor with strange sexual penchants (Mason); and a sex symbol angling for a part that she may never live to play (Welch). The dialogue is what used to be referred to as ‘sparkling’ (‘my mouth is so dry honey, they could shoot ‘Lawrence of Arabia in it’), and there are a lot of plot twists and turns that are fun but shouldn’t be revealed in order not to spoil the surprises.

 If you believe what this film is saying, being part of the in-crowd is definitely not what it’s cracked up to be, and also may be injurious to one’s health. A good cast seem to be enjoying themselves, and it’s a mystery to me why this film , once upon a time, so rare to find on video, is also today, (at least as far as I know), not available on DVD.

Cutting down on the wind

I’m new to this social networking stuff and at first  felt a little inferior when I realised I didn’t understand a lot of the lingo, particularly the abbreviations of other Twitter  users in order they fit their tweets into the standard 140 characters. Looking back, I was being unfair not only to them but to me—such are the demands I make upon myself, If I don’t figure something out in 10 seconds flat, it means I must be a moron.  Anyway, since I enjoy airing my opinions with the world, (whether the world wants to hear them or not), I persevered and  began to get a handle on  the  methods of cutting down on characters,  that are a necessary tool if you want to get   messages heard by your social network.  (It is possible now to extend the 140 characters but I for one, got  sold on the original concept and strive  to make my messages as lucid as they can be.)

 I should take this opportunity to apologise for my elitism when I began to use Twitter. I did have a hold-nosing reaction to the cut-down words at first: it was like ‘My God, it’s George Orwell’s Newspeak!’ or ‘Oh doubleplusgood hey Winston!’  Snide of me, I know.  After 3000 odd tweets, all I can do is  plead ignorance and state  I had no idea what I was thinking. It was  unfair of me to be so judgmental.  The fact is I’m a personality who hates being on the outside looking in and I  finally managed to understand Twitter’s unique language in order that I can understand my followers and have them understand me.

But I’m also very stubborn. This has less to do with Twitter language, and more to do with the wavy lines I get under the text I enter , when using  MS Word to create a document.  You know those wavy lines of different colours to denote if you’re making a spelling mistake? Or your grammar isn’t correct? Or  in my case ‘your sentences are going on far too long and you need to either shut up or consider revising’? I have been coping with these automatic wavy lines since I got a hold of my first laptop two years ago,  but  not really succeeding at it.

Okay. You’re writing something – you get some wavy lines – you right-click on the text with the wavy lines. A menu comes onto the screen with options.  The question is, do you take the computer’s advice and change your work? Or do you ignore it and carry on?

 I have to admit I may need to check my spelling, so when I’m insecure with  a word (like supercalifragistic) I am grateful for the advice. I know I’m  not perfect and this is when the wavy lines are useful. ( I would like a siren to go off, but that’s another story. )

 Let’s say my spelling is OK.  What I do, then, when my sentences are too long is logical: I add the missing punctuation because I do know how…wordy I can be. Or I click on Ignore Once and the wavy line goes away.  Aside from being too windy, the rest of my grammar must be correct because the only message I get is that ‘your sentences are far too windy.’

  After two years,  I admit I still resent being told that. I think the computer’s  got a nerve telling me that. If I’m not allowed to be windy in public and can’t do it in private, where AM I allowed to be windy??? I didn’t think there will be a solution to this problem in the near future.  But there was.

I have started my own blog and can be windy if I want to. But as a compromise and  because I enjoy using Twitter, I want to utilise the things it has taught me. And try to go easy on the wind.

One more point: I am going to see what  happens when I spell clout with a ‘k’. Let’s see: k-l-o-u-t: klout.There is no such word. Click to bring up the Thesaurus: Spelling alternatives:  Search for any of the following:

 clout;

 lout;

 knout;

 flout;

 clouts;

 klutz.

  This proves I am correct in spelling ‘clout’ with a ‘c’ instead of a ‘k’. Word is on my side!

 People on Twitter are welcome to use the ‘k’ as I believe  they are talking about an application that measures  how influential their accounts may be.  And good luck to them.

Me? I’ll stick to the ‘c’.

How The Emperor of Ice Cream reflects my feelings on the debt ceiling debacle

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

It became official last week that a solution on the debt ceiling had been reached. We all heaved a sigh of relief but the worst was yet to come. Standard & Poors have reduced the credit rating of the United States from triple A to double A. What this means to ordinary folk like myself is that there never really was a recovery  from the last recession, or at least not one of note and we remain in the same hole that we were in before.

 Without giving away too much personal information, I have to say that I am old enough to remember previous recessions - don’t let my avatar kid you.  Without deliberately poking fun at the statisticians that come out of the woodwork with their pie charts explaining  how bad things are presently, and how much worse  they’re going to get, I believe from experience in times like these, there are two avenues left for the hardy of soul to venture. Either you let yourself be  chastised by the economic experts who just know that we aren’t working  hard enough and have obviously done something wrong which is undoable and as a result we don’t deserve to live. Or, you can find meaning for such catastrophic world events   through imaginative dissonances, allegorical conceits, or perhaps even, metaphoric meanderings. These attack you in the middle of the night, or when you are otherwise not occupied;  when your guard is down. Personally,  I find the latter a far better idea   and a good of use of the literature I was taught in English class at school and University. I ’ll give you an example. I never did understand what The Second Coming by W.B Yeats  was about when I first read it as a bright- eyed- and –bushy- tailed Arts student. With some years of living under my belt (as well as watching the movie version of Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’,) I can understand that poem now,  in ways  not known to me as a student with her entirely dinky, but wholesome  life ahead of her.

Which brings me to the point of this post. ‘The Emperor of Ice Cream’ is a pivotal work of poetry in the 20^th century. Written by an insurance executive who could be accused of dabbling with poetry in his spare time, Wallace Stevens has been widely anthologised and stands in the august company of Auden, Eliot and Pound. I was taught this poem as an Arts student, but didn’t understand it much. Or maybe I had a crush on someone who didn’t even know I was alive and I  wasn’t taking any notice. But the title is catchy and I remembered it. Stephen King uses some lines of the poem on the title pages of a number of chapters in Salem’s Lot, his second novel about a small American town taken over by a coven of vampires.(I can’t remember which ones they are and would have to look it up.) And for film buffs, in Sweet Smell of Success Tony Curtis is referred to by another character as being the ‘boy with the ice cream face’ ( whether it’s by Hunsecker’s secretary or the fat policeman, I’m not sure and would have to watch the movie again.)

The poem is most conveniently interpreted as the description of the wake of an old lady and the mourners who attend her  funeral . Let me put it this way. Shouldn’t we be lined up as  mourners just waiting to be invited to the wake of civilisation as we know it today? Even before the Bush debacle, America has been an easy country to dislike, but never has the most powerful country in the world’s credit rating been tampered with and reduced in such a humiliating fashion . Even rabid anti-capitalists and anti-war sympathisers such as I are wondering what the world is coming to. If this is an overly literal interpretation of the poem then I apologise. I am hardly an expert on Stevens.  I do find it interesting  though,  how something like the title of a poem,   can come into my mind at the provocation of something as ephemeral and fanciful, as the end of the world.  After me not thinking about it for years and  I then proceed to  attach to it some meaning I would never have had the werewithal  to originally contemplate.

 I’m going to post the poem as well as these ruminations,  and just hope you get something out of it the same way I have, after years of not taking notice.

MOVIE REVIEW: From my misspent youth: The Music Lovers (1971)

 I remember this for a number of personal reasons. My older sister took me to see this at the pictures when I was eleven years old, and it was one of the first films I ever bought on video through overseas sell-thru. It is a biography of the Russian composer Peter Tchaikovsky and was directed by Ken Russell the enfant terrible of the British film industry; he would be best described today as an English sixties version of Oliver Stone (if such a thing is possible). Russell made his career making both cinematic and television films of the great classical composers, the made for TV product only being shown on English television as far as I’m aware. As a director, Russell has a totally distinctive style which unfortunately can alienate him from an audience who may not get it. He enjoys creating outstanding visuals at the expense of plot that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, but his films are welcome for their originality and are often beautiful to look at for this very reason. Glenda Jackson, who plays Tchaikovsky’s wife has an extraordinary nude scene on a train that was considered daring for its time, and the film is good to look at but it got terrible reviews and didn’t do very well. There are a number of outstanding but little known English actors in important supporting parts. I suppose it’s not the greatest movie ever made but I have sentimental reasons for liking it and I would like to see it come out on DVD sometime in the near future.

Why I blog OR do I know why I blog?

I should introduce myself. My name is Cherie. Yes, I know it's French, but I am an Australian. My grandfather on my mother's side came from a very old Norman family who lived in Somerset, England, so I think that's how I got the name. I never have liked it much but other people tell me its pretty.

Anyway I'm new to this and am also quite new to being online generally. I gave myself a thrill and started a Twitter account. I enjoy posting a lot and the 140 characters helped me to curb my verbosity (somewhat, but not completely!) Now the next step is for me to have my own blog, and at the risk of sounding like an egomaniac, I think it's going to be fun to branch out a bit and add some depth to what I may be thinking at any given moment, about current affairs, movies or music or literature.

Just a few more details about myself: I am Sydney born and bred, university educated and lurching toward middle age. I hope what I have to say is of assistance to somebody out there and its' not just a wank. I really love movies and may start out by posting a few reviews and just carry on from there.

Wish me luck and any feedback available is most welcome!