It’s too cold to do anything outside, so I’m picking up the blogging again. I’ve changed the colour scheme and the tagline, but don’t be fooled: I’m committed to maintaining the same slovenly publishing schedule as before. No earnest New Year resolutions here.
Author: Tom Slee
A Critical Reader’s Guide to The Long Tail
Way back in March I did a long series of posts about Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail. I did say that I’d collect them together in one post. So here it is, as one long (150 page) PDF.
No More Poppies
I’m not wearing a Poppy this year.
There are two ways of thinking about the Poppy. One is the Wilfred Owen way and one is the John McRae way. They are both familiar.
Here is Owen:
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori
And here is McRae
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
McRae says that war is tragic and heroic; Owen says it is tragic and futile. McRae demands that the death of soldiers
be given meaning by continuing the war that caused their death. Owen
demands that we admit the meaninglessness and criminality of those deaths and prevent further ones.
In Canada at least, the Poppy is now inextricably tangled with the McRae vision of soldiers and warfare. Here is the Canadian Legion’s site:
His poem speaks of Flanders fields, but the subject is universal – the
fear of the dead that they will be forgotten, that their death will
have been in vain. Remembrance, as symbolized by the Poppy, is our eternal answer which belies that fear.
Now Canadian soldiers are fighting in Afghanistan while British soldiers fight in Iraq. The Poppy asks that we give meaning to the death of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan by "Tak[ing] up our quarrel with the foe"; by pursuing the war. The Poppy has been taken over, in recent years, by those who are using it to perpetuate "The old Lie". Jingoistic patriotism has got its grubby hands on what was once a fine symbol.
Not everyone who wears a poppy means these things by it, of course. Many do as a recognition of the sacrifice of relatives in the second world war. I have no problem with that. It would be much simpler to reject the Poppy if it weren’t for the Second
World War. It was, obviously, the essential war that needed to be
fought, and which did have undeniable meaning. But the Second World War
was not the template for wars since then; it was the exception not the
rule.
For me, I can’t see how I can wear a Poppy without helping to promote the idea that Canadian soldiers are fighting for just and noble causes. And I can’t do that.
We do have an old Alliance for Non-Violent Action button with a poppy and the words "To Remember is to End All War". I’ll wear that instead.
Infrequently Asked Questions
I did say I have a few pieces I wanted to post still, so here (now the Ontario election is over) is one of them. A few questions a few people have asked me about No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart…
Where did you get the title?
The title evolved along with the content of the book. I think the first version of it came from Paul Krugman’s essay Enemies of the WTO which was published in Slate on November 24, 1999. I’d admired Krugman’s writings for some time, and yet had anti-globalization leanings. The end of his essay (which I quote and misattribute on p. 190) encapsulates the challenge I wanted to address:
Although they [anti-globalization protesters] talk of freedom and democracy, their key demand is that individuals be prevented from getting what they want–that governments be free, nay encouraged, to deny individuals the right to drive cars, work in offices, eat cheeseburgers, and watch satellite TV. Why? Presumably because people will really be happier if they retain their traditional "language, dress, and values." Thus, Spaniards would be happier if they still dressed in black and let narrow-minded priests run their lives, and residents of the American South would be happier if planters still sipped mint juleps, wore white suits, and accepted traditional deference from sharecroppers … instead of living in this "dreary" modern world in which Madrid is just like Paris and Atlanta is just like New York.
Well, somehow I suspect that the residents of Madrid and Atlanta, while they may regret some loss of tradition, prefer modernity. And you know what? I think the rest of the world has the right to make the same choice.
Just before that paragraph he uses the sentence "And nobody forces you to eat at McDonald’s", which I latched onto. When I first sent the book to the publisher I took a couple of syllables out, shortening it to "No One Makes You Eat at McDonald’s".
The change to Wal-Mart came about for two reasons. First, the McDonald’s example turns out to be a difficult one that I only address 90% of the way through the book, and so the title didn’t match the structure of the manuscript. My Wal-Mart story had moved into Chapter 1 by that time, as the very first story in the book, and so "No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart" just made a lot more sense. Also, of course, in the years between 1999 and 2005 Wal-Mart had supplanted McDonald’s as the pre-eminent symbol of rampaging capitalism. So that decided it.
In retrospect: I’m pretty pleased with how the title worked out. It’s misleading because everyone thinks it’s a book about Wal-Mart and assumes it’s kind of a popular journalistic polemic, but at least it catches the attention and that’s all you can hope for.
Why do you call the town Whimsley?
To me the name is a mixture of something whimsical and something down to earth, both of which the stories are meant to be. I think the whimsical-whimsley part of that is obvious enough. The "ley" ending is a reference to the many millstone grit towns of Yorkshire that end in that syllable – Burley, Ilkley, Batley, Bramley, Barnsley and probably hundreds of others, but particularly Otley, the nearest town of any size where I grew up. There cannot be many more pragmatic, realistic places around.
In retrospect: I still like the name.
Why are the two characters called Jack and Jill?
These names are a reference to the R.D.Laing book Knots, which I was introduced to by either Nigel Perry or Clive Norris in 1978. It’s a quirky book that sets out patterns of tangled behaviour in short structured vignettes like this:
Jack is afraid Jill is like his mother
Jill is afraid Jack is like her mother
Jack is afraid
Jill thinks he is like her mother
and that Jill is afraid
Jack thinks she is like his mother
Jill is afraid
Jack thinks she is like his mother
and that Jack is afraid
Jill thinks he is like her mother
To tell the truth, I never really got very far with the book, slim though it is, but the recursive form of these vignettes has stayed with me. I had hoped I could make my stories condensed and elegant in the same fashion, but they ended up being more pedestrian. Ah well. (In earlier drafts the two characters were called Winston and Julia, but that is melodramatic and obvious, so it went.)
Why did you coin the word MarketThink?
Was it needed? I’m not sure now. At the time it seemed important. It is close to the idea of market populism that Thomas Frank writes about so well in One Market Under God, and close to the idea of market fundamentalism, a phrase used by many people. But both of these terms convey the idea that their supporters are promoting markets as solutions to all problems. The reason I didn’t want to use those is that those who promote this loose, populist ideology do not always promote free markets – certainly not ideal competitive markets. Intellectual property is an obvious area where promoters of private industry are keen to prevent the competition they claim to believe in elsewhere. Nevertheless, the rhetoric of MarketThink portrays the world (governments aside) as if it works like an ideal competitive market, even when proposing actions that contradict that portrayal. Boeing is quite happy to argue for the necessity of government subsidy in the name of markets, and companies that grew large under protectionist regimes are happy to promote free trade as long as they are beneficiaries. So I thought a different word was needed, and MarketThink seemed to be it.
In retrospect: I’d probably avoid coining a new word and simply use "market populism". I was splitting hairs.
INLAND EMPIRE
Some films you watch for plot, some for action, some for characterization, some for laughs. David Lynch films you watch for the atmosphere and for the occasional shocking scene. Complaining about the plot of a Lynch movie is like complaining about olives not being sweet: it’s just not the point.
I don’t know what I think of INLAND EMPIRE "overall". I don’t even know what such an "overall" would mean – should I add up the minutes I like, subtract the minutes I didn’t like, and assess the film on the resulting number?
To judge a Lynch film I ask whether it stays with me; whether scenes play themselves over in my mind during the days after I watch it. And INLAND EMPIRE has enough of those scenes to make me glad I watched it. It’s not Mulholland Drive, one of my favourite films of all time, but then what is?
One scene in particular is stunning – not one I’ve seen talked about elsewhere. It’s about fifteen minutes in. Fading star Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) has won a part in a new film being directed by an unctuous Kingsley Stewart (Jeremy Irons), and she turns up on the empty, hangar-like set to do a read-through with her co-star, the sleazy Devon Berk (Justin Theroux). From what we’ve seen so far all these characters seem shallow; caricatures of actors and directors.
Dern, Irons, and Theroux sit at a trestle table and then Irons suggests they read through a scene where Devon’s character (Billy Side) arrives home to find Nikki’s character (Susan Blue) upset. After a few awkward moments, Devon/Theroux starts reading.
And everything changes.
The camera closes in on Dern as the two characters say their lines, quietly and intently, staring at each other, the plain dialogue punctuated by long pauses. You start to wonder, is this acting or is it real? Who is meaning these lines? Susan or Nikki or Laura Dern? Billy or Devon or Justin Theroux?
"Are you crying?" whispers Billy/Devon/Theroux.
A long pause.
"Yes" mouths Susan/Nikki/Dern. And a tear tracks down her cheek.
Then they are interrupted and the tension is broken.
When the interruption came I realized I’d been holding my breath during the whole reading. It’s actually shocking, how fine good acting can be. The film is worth it for that scene alone.
Winding Down Whimsley
Blogging has been non-existent for the last few weeks. I also have several emails from blog contacts that I have failed to reply to — sorry Henry, Aaron and others. I’ve been diverted by non-digital politics (Ontario Elections), home life, and trying to do my day job.
I started the blog, as the top of the page says, mainly in an attempt to promote No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart. Well that came out 16 months ago, so anything I could do along those lines is done.
I have a few more pieces I want to post here, and then I’ll take an indefinite blogbreak and try to do some longer-form writing.
After all, in the words of the Talking Heads; "Say something once, why say it again?"
Preconceptions
If you read this paragraph about Kanye West from today’s Observer and don’t do a double take, you have fewer preconceptions than I.
An only child (‘Kanye’ is an Ethiopian name which means ‘the only
one’), whose parents split before he was a year old and who divorced
when he was four, Kanye was mainly raised by his doting mother, Donda.
They are still extremely close; he wrote a song for her on his last
album, ‘Hey Mama’, which, sweetly, she now has as the ringtone on her
cellphone. When Kanye was still a young child, they moved from Atlanta,
Georgia, to Chicago, where she became the chair of the English
department at Chicago State University before latterly taking over as
his manager.
