NEW LOCKDOWN, Day 11, Monday.
Lockdown has put me in mind of Wendell Urth – a fictional ‘extra-terrologist’ created by Isaac Asimov in a few of his detective sci-fi stories. Urth is regarded as the world’s foremost expert on distant worlds, but he has a morbid fear of leaving his own rooms, so while his mind is universe wide, his living space is enclosed.
It doesn’t take a very dramatic shift to think about our own limiting conditions under lockdown with its radical lessening of our personal spaces, while at the same time encouraging our compulsive fascination with an election half a world away!
Perhaps the American Election is the modern day equivalent of ‘Bread and Circuses’ for the Enclosed Folk of Lockdown: it keeps us off the streets; gives us something to concentrate our minds; allows us to be safely (domestically) judgemental about all those Republican idiots without masks; deflects attention from the situation at home; is a soap opera that never seems to end; it has a moral (of sorts); it has clearly defined Goodies and Baddies, and so on.
I am almost tempted to say that if there had not been something like the American Election to fill our newspapers and TV screens then something would have had to have been invented. And I don’t mean a new series of Celebrity Big Brother. Which I wouldn’t have watched.
What Biden needs to do is make American politics competent and boring. A time when each day does not need to start with a convulsive clutching of the mobile phone to find out what new horror The Orange Outcast has leashed upon the world. Biden is decent, politically savvy, a born compromiser – if he is allowed to do his job then things will settle down and be predictively tedious. Please.
This morning I clicked on a link which took me to Biden’s Transition Blog or webpage or whatever and there was a section to be filled out which invited the reader to join and be the recipient of regular updates. I filled it out, but the thing needed a further registration or forgotten password, or something. And I just let it go. And that is surely right. We have now come to a stage where we need to be weaned away from an easy reliance of the Orange Antics of Small Handed Narcissists and we should not seek to place the onus of entertainment on plodding dependable Biden.
Let’s face it, although the thrill got less with each unparalleled outburst, Trump was entertaining. As long as you forgot that he was the most powerful man in the world and leader of the Free World etc. He was pure, totally sullied, entertainment. He just wasn’t a politician. Or decent human. But, like the witches in Salem, he provided not only spectacle, but also a Manichean boost for leftie liberals, where Trump’s mere existence showed that they had to be right because they were opposite. I’m not sure that the comparison works, as I seem to be equating witch-burning bigots with the left, which is not my intention at all. A more responsible writer would cut the whole of this paragraph and either re-work the idea or scrap it; but that ain’t me!
Liber scriptus es, as they say, though thinking about it again, that quote can get me into more trouble and be even more confusing and confused.
Well, on to the next topic.
Which is, the algorithm that Netflix uses to keep its patrons (!) secure is getting more blatant in its ensnaring of me. Today, as I popped in for a little light comedic fare from my usual pushers at The Big Bang Theory, I was presented with a childish, garish advertisement for what was obviously a juvenile animation called Wonder Park, the figures were cartoonish rather than draftsman drawn and the appearance was rigidly commercial. Something to pass by, to ignore, to find something a little more amusing and a little more intellectually stimulating.
It reduced me to tears. OK, I fully admit that, rather like my mother, some Andrex adverts have been enough to make me emotionally wobbly, but they used unfair tactics like Yellow Labrador puppies, and who can then resist?
I double-clicked and I was hooked. And once involved in something like fantasy/Sci-Fi/animation, I can always find an intellectual, literary, cultural reference to justify my continued attention.
In most of the big company animations today where money has been spent on a decent script and the process, there is usually a sequence or some witty (adult referenced, to keep them interested) dialogue to make a moment and to give pleasure. And there were more than a few such moments in this feel-good movie. Yes, you could tell and list the animation films that they were shamelessly ripping off, but they did it with some style and so I am prepare to allow them to count as ‘influences’ or homage!
I’m not entirely sure that I would recommend it as something for everyone, but a competent piece of animation, it is a delight.
And now, to complete the evening, some reading. Or rather, some reading which is not about the American election in the Guardian. A real book, well, a freebie downloaded to my Kindle, but it all counts!
