Life through a distorting lens
I find myself faced with something of quandary. I can’t decide quite who it is I dislike more; bureaucrats or ideologues.
I’ve spent more or less the last ten years working in either of the public or the voluntary sectors, which I suppose should tip the balance in favour of loathing bureaucrats simply because I tend to run across them far more often, particularly that curious sub-species of official functionary; the ‘meeting dweller’, that appears to exist nowhere outside the confines of formal meetings, conferences and ‘networking’ events. It’s long been my suspicion that meeting dwellers are not even real people with real lives and real homes to go to at the end of the day; that somewhere in the bowels of every Council House, NHS hospital and Civil Service office there is a secret storage room where the meeting dwellers are put away at night and recharged ready for the next day’s round of meetings.
Still, unless you’re unfortunate enough to caught up in the red tape personally, bureaucrats tend to offer no more than a persistent, low-level, form of nuisance, a subliminal hum of irritation akin to mild toothache that’s barely noticeable so long as you can find something else to keep you occupied.
Ideologues, on the other hand, tend to provoke an immediate and often violent reaction that leaves you reaching for the nearest blunt instrument and calculating just the right trajectory needed to apply it to the side of their head.
I had the misfortune to encounter just such an ideologue while at university – in a regular politics seminar, which is always the worst possible situation to encounter them. She was a feminist, a lesbian (allegedly – most the bona fide lesbians on the course had her down as ‘straight, but trying to make a political statement’ and steered well clear) and from a mixed ethnic background. All in all a rather unfortunate combination as it afforded her too few shoulders on which to mount all the chips she routinely carried around with her.
Conversation with her, when it became unavoidable, was an experience I’m in no particularly hurry to repeat. She was the kind of person who didn’t talk to you but at you. Everything she said was littered with ‘isms’ and ‘ists’ and all possible conversational roads led inexorably to the subject of ‘oppression’, which she professed to having experienced like no one else on Earth. In reality the only real oppression anyone experienced came in the form of the inability of the seminar group to hold a rational discussion about anything while she capered around the room riding whatever hobby horse she’d decided to get on at the time.
As I recall, we took a vote at the start of the third or fourth seminar of the course and decided that she could find herself another group to bother.
The problem with ideologues is that they invariably possess a monocular view of the world. Whatever pet theory they espouse seems to be the sole means through which they are capable of trying to make sense of the world. There are two sides to any argument; theirs (right) and everybody else’s (wrong), which wouldn’t be quite so problematic were it not reinforced by an obsessive need to make absolutely sure that everyone knows that their side of the argument is the only right way of thinking – anything else, well that’s just more oppression.
We all have beliefs, of one sort or another, which help us at least make an effort to understand the world around us. However, for most reasonable people, beliefs are things tinged with an element of scepticism. We may believe certain things to be either true or untrue but we are also open to evidence and experience, life teaches us that there are times when beliefs must, of necessity, be re-evaluated, modified and sometimes even discarded in the face of evidence which offers us a new and somewhat different understanding of the world.
Think of some of the minor fictions we tell our children in order to stimulate their imagination; the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus et al. As a matter of routine, we encourage our children to believe in the ‘truth’ of these fictional characters, we use them to enrich their perception of the world while young and open their minds to the realm of possibilities offered by the imagination. And, as parents - if, like me, you have children – we all must, eventually, face the day when reality must intrude in our children’s lives and it becomes time to tell them there is no Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny or Santa Claus, there’s just mom and dad (or mom, or dad, or mom and mom, dad and dad, or any one of the other variations on the basic theme of family) who care enough to want bring a little ‘magic’, a little bit of fun into their children’s lives.
In the act of telling a child that there is, in reality, no Santa Claus (et al) there are important psychological processes at work. We introduce the child to an important lesson about the nature of belief and the fine distinction between that and truth. Beliefs should, and are if dealt with rationally, be considered to be mutable things, a form of hypothesis that assists us to make sense of the world but which may be subject to change as evidence and experience teach us that what we believe may often be rather different from what is actually real.
It’s this process which fails to function in ideologues.
Faced with a situation in which belief and reality fail to mesh, there beliefs act as a distorting lens and cause them to attempt to change reality to fit their beliefs rather than adjust their beliefs in light of their experience of reality. When the world doesn’t measure up to expectations their instincts are to try to change the world, or at least disregard that part of the world which fails to match their beliefs, rather than change themselves.
But that’s enough musings on psychology for the moment.
What triggered this particular train of thought is this article by Kwame McKenzie (The Times, 13th December 2005) in which he attempts to put forward the view that Peter Jackson’s recent, and critically successful, remake of King Kong “feeds into all the colonial hysteria about black hyper-sexuality� – which seems to news to the majority of those commenting on his piece who thought it was about an over-sized gorilla.
McKenzie, interestingly enough is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist and lecturer in ‘Transcultural Psychiatry’, all of which suggests that he has something a Freudian background – which certainly fits in the reference to ‘black hyper-sexuality’- although the only description of his approach to psychiatry I’ve been able to track down to date refers to him as a ‘mind field’ psychiatrist. This, itself, appears to be a fairly loose term, one which turns up not only in mainstream psychiatric journals but on a quite a few ‘new age’ websites in relation to meditation and yoga, which suggests a metaphysical element to his approach derived from Jung in addition to his obvious Freudian influences.
Above all, however, McKenzie appears in his article as being an ideologue, particularly in his insistence on interpreting almost everything in terms of his views on race ethnicity and culture to the point of absurdity.
Here we find many of the classic traits of the ideologue.
To begin with, he sets out his hypothesis, which amounts to nothing more than the classic urban myth that all black men have a large penis, which might be excusable were he writing a review of King Dong rather than King Kong, and right from the outset its apparent that whatever else he does, his intention is to fit reality to his personal hypothesis rather than the other way around.
So we read on to find that “Shakespeare could write Othello knowing that his audience would understand the Moor stereotype�, citing in evidence an article by Kristin Johnsen-Neshati, Associate Professor of Theatre at George Mason University, and offer up this quote from that article in support of his views:
“Moors were commonly stereotyped as sexually overactive, prone to jealousy and generally wicked. The public associated ‘blackness’ with moral corruption, citing examples from Christian theology to support the view that whiteness was the sign of purity, just as blackness indicated sin.”
Now that may well have been the prevailing view of those of Moorish extraction during the 17th Century but that’s not the conclusion that Johnsen-Neshati arrives at in relation to Shakespeare in analysing the text of Othello. Rather she observes that:
“In his adaptation, Shakespeare incorporates these racial stereotypes into the dialogue, assigning them to characters like Iago, Roderigo and Brabantio at the top of the play. Their slurs and accusations provide the backdrop against which viewers must formulate impressions of a man they do not know. Once Othello enters, however, the audience must judge him—his calculated actions and eloquent speech—not in the abstract, but in person. Through the theatrical medium, Shakespeare helps the public see his protagonist in three dimensions: the Moor from Cinthio’s story transformed from an exotic and passionate stereotype into a tragic figure in flesh and blood. The play’s action reveals the depth of affection shared by Othello and Desdemona, the enchanting power of the general’s poetry and, finally, Iago’s easy manipulations of collegial and marital trust. Through the treachery of a surprising white devil, Shakespeare challenges his audiences to spot the true colour of villainy.â€?
Her thesis certainly does note that Shakespeare understood his audience and their prejudices very well when writing Othello, but goes on to note that he used that understanding to subvert those prejudices, much as nearly four centuries later a Jew, Warren Mitchell, would play out the role of a white, working class, racist (Alf Garnett) in an equally subversive manner.
McKenzie goes on from there to mount what is an entirely unjustified slur on Charles Darwin, claiming that the story of King Kong “touches the raw nerve of the Darwin-based association between black men and apes�.
Such an association my be ‘Darwin-based’ inasmuch as his ideas in the Origin of Species were taken up by others and used to formulate a pseudo-scientific view of ethnicity which falsely placed White Europeans on a higher level of the human evolutionary scale by comparison to those of African descent, but those who put forward this perversion of Darwin’s theory did merely what McKenzie himself does in his article, taking the facts and fitting them to their own hypothesis.
From there were back to Jackson, only this time it’s the Lord of the Rings trilogy which, in McKenzie’s opinion, makes use of ‘hackneyed stereotypes. When we come to his actual objection to Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkien’s classic fantasy what we find is that he dislikes the fact of orcs in the films having, for the most part, black skin (although this merely reflects Tolkien’s own physical description of Orcs and goes against the later convention in fantasy novels of them being green) and being ‘a bit too maori looking’, which rather ignores the fact that the trilogy was filmed in New Zealand and made extensive use of local people (Maoris) as extras.
I think we can be fairly sure that had Jackson filmed LOTR in Golders Green then quite a few of the extras playing orcs would have been Jewish, although I doubt we’d then find McKenzie complaining over much, were that the case, that their tight costumes made their religion too obvious.
Finally we get to King Kong itself, which McKenzie first criticises for the fact of Jackson’s cinematic version of New York having too few black people on show – forgetting, naturally, that Jackson’s remake is set in 1930’s and that Kong hides out in Central Park before climbing the Empire State Building; not the Apollo Theatre, Harlem.
Perhaps there should have been a few more black people evident in crowd scenes, but certainly not the 15% McKenzie suggests – that may have been the overall black population of New York at the time but one would still, in the 1930’s have not found too many visible ethnic minorities out and about in the wealthy areas of Manhattan. What you might well have seen at the time would have been black people in a variety of fairly menial service jobs; maids, bellhops, shoeshine boys, etc. – and somehow I suspect McKenzie would be no more happy about that than he is about their absence from the film.
I could go on to deconstruct his article a little more but really there are only a couple of points I want to make which won’t involve repeating myself.
First, McKenzie asks what I’m sure he believes is a pointed question about Jackson’s motives:
“…one has to ask why Jackson so wanted to make King Kong as opposed to anything else[?]�
In fact, Jackson has been quite clear as to his motives throughout. As a child, he saw the 1933 original and found himself captivated by it. King Kong is the film that fired Jackson’s imagination and inspired him to become a filmmaker. It is a film that fired his imagination as a child and one which, as an adult, he found a rational means of turning his imagination into a tangible form – a film. In an entirely healthy way, Jackson has found a means of merging belief and reality.
And finally, as McKenzie notes in his article, he went to see this film with his son (age not specified), who he describes at one point as being ‘transfixed’ by what he saw on screen only for him then to comment:
“As it is it leaves a bitter sweet taste in my mouth and a complex discussion on negative stereotypes that I have had to have with my son.�
All of which leaves me feeling rather sorry for his son, who seems otherwise to have enjoyed the film, and hoping that one day, when he’s a little a older, the poor lad might pluck up the courage to turn around to his father as say to him:
‘But, Dad. It was only a fucking gorilla!�
How remiss of me
Thursday December 15th 2005, 11:48 am
Filed under:
PersonalOne of the things I’m terrible at is maintaining my blogroll at anything near the number of excellent blogs I now track by RSS (150+ and rising all the time) - which is why I’ve set myself the task of trying to bring things more up to date and make a real effort to correct my own sins of ommission.
So, to the blogroll - use the links there, BTW - I’ve added.
The excellent Tim Worstall, chief smiter of economic illiteracy in the media, editor of THE BOOK (go buy it) and originator of that essential piece of Sunday reading, the Britblog review.
A veritable cornucopia (by my standards) of professional blogs that I really can’t recommend highly enough. From the NHS we have Random Acts of Reality, the blogging EMT who’s out there ‘trying to kill as few people as possible’ and the marvellous Dr Crippen, while our proud upholders of law and order are represented by PC Coppperfield and the World Weary Detective. I really can’t recommend any of these blogs highly enough for their ‘from the coalface’ view of life in the public services.
Nor, indeed, can I omit Tony Hatfield and his retired ramblings from the list, even if, as an ex-solicitor he rarely rambles and is sharp as they come on all things legal.
If political correctness is your thing you might want to take in the group blog Pickled Politics (because they’re young, asian and progressive) or Philobiblion for a feminist slant on the issues of the day - me, I just visit because they’re just two of the sharpest and best written blogs around.
Last three for now - Stumbling and Mumbling (can’t think why I’ve not added Chris before), Devil’s Kitchen (another that I should have added long ago) and Rachel from North London, a survivor of the July bombings whose courage and humanity shine through in her writing and rarely fails to draw well-deserved admiration from the rest of us scuzzy bloggerati.
Remember, links in the blogroll, go visit and enjoy.
