politics

“Gripping and thoughtful”, new UK movie, ‘Sink’ set for DVD release

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4 Sink MJ car

Sink “gives a vibrant voice to protagonists who have otherwise lost their language and their power” (read our review of Sink here on Nothing in the Rulebook). 

Sink, the debut feature-length film from writer, director and actor Mark Gillis will be released on May 27th, following a cinema run that drew critical acclaim from The Guardian, The Independent, Empire and (of course) Nothing in the Rulebook, among others.

The movie tells the story of Micky Mason, a working class man living in East London who must contend with a multitude of different crises of our modern world.

Battling the disruption and instability of working Zero Hours contracts, Micky is ultimately driven to do something completely out of character to try and keep his family together. What thereafter follows, thanks in no small part to the incredible performances of the cast, particularly Martin Herdman in the lead role, is a gripping and thoughtful story that stays with you long after the credits roll – providing a stirring critique of the world we live in.

Having been compared by reviewers with the Oscar-winning film I, Daniel Blake, it is perhaps unsurprising that there is a political aspect to this film. Indeed, in a a recent original, in-depth interview with Nothing in the Rulebook, director Gillis said:

“There is a political angle and that kicked off my wanting to tell the story. I live in the area where the film is set and there are pockets of people leading very challenged lives. There are also the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, looming up seemingly at the end of the road.  So you have people whose lives have been changed beyond recognition living in the shadow of the institutions directly responsible. They committed crimes on an industrial scale, yet nobody has been prosecuted. It made me question where we are with that; if people who benefitted so hugely from the system can do that with impunity, can we condemn somebody for doing whatever’s necessary to stay afloat?”

Having shown at film festivals across the UK, as well as in New York, the DVD release of Sink has been hotly anticipated.

To whet your appetites even further, check out the trailer below:

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Creatives in profile: interview with Mark Gillis

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Mark Gillis has been combining writing, performing and directing since his university days (where he studied Biochemistry). As an actor, he has worked extensively in the theatre, most recently playing Agrippa in Antony & Cleopatra with Kim Cattrall and Michael Pennington (Chichester). As a member of the RSC he performed in As You Like It, Macbeth and Troilus and Cressida during seasons at Stratford and The Barbican. He played Mark in the Irish premiere of Mark Ravenhill’s play Shopping and F***ing. He co-founded and was artistic director of the touring production company LPC, with whom he produced and directed several European tours of modern classic plays such as Waiting for Godot, The Caretaker, The Importance of Being Ernest and GB Shaw’s The White Lady. And he has appeared in several television and film roles including: Silent Witness, The Bill, Emmerdale, Grange Hill, Eastenders, Holby, The Brittas Empire, Absolute Hell, Prick, Jean Moulin, Either/Or, Going Home and An Ideal Husband. Most recently he plays Mr. Hogg Diggins in the Channel 4 comedy Lee & Dean.

There’s a lot of creative stuff to talk about here, but we’re here today to talk primarily about his debut movie, Sink, which tells the story of Micky Mason, a working class man living in East London who must contend with a multitude of different crises of our modern world.

Produced by Oscar-winner Mark Rylance (who says you will find yourselves “immersed” in it), Sink has received glowing reviews (including one from us, of course), following its screenings at cinemas across the UK.

But what does it take to produce a movie independently, particularly in a current climate that so clearly favours the established corporate behemoths over individual creatives? It was a pleasure to catch up with Gillis to find out.

INTERVIEWER

Tell me about yourself, where you live and your background/lifestyle

GILLIS

I live in Brockley, South East London (the film was shot here and in nearby New Cross/Deptford). I’m an actor who has been writing seriously for about 10 years. I have also directed in the theatre and have made short films. Sink is my first feature as writer/director.

INTERVIEWER

Is film making your first love, or do you have another passion?

GILLIS

I suppose most of my work has been as an actor in the theatre so that would be an equal passion.

INTERVIEWER

Who inspires you?

GILLIS

Donald Glover

INTERVIEWER

Can you talk us through how the process of taking your debut movie, Sink, from spec-script to fully-fledged film reality?

GILLIS

It was never really a spec-script in that sense. I’d had the typical experience of scripts being developed (unpaid) and getting very close to being made, then failing because the money didn’t match the cast (in both directions). When I was writing Sink, I realised we could make it very cheaply; I knew exactly who I wanted to cast (I’ve worked as an actor with all of them), I knew who’s flat we could borrow, etc., etc.. So I decided we’d just go ahead and make it ourselves. We did a crowd-funder and various small investors came in. We made it for £35K, which is nothing for a feature; BUT that was only possible with EVERYONE working for deferred fees and profit share. Everybody on the film from investor to runner was party to the same financial framework.

Of course, it’s all very well making your film, but at the end of the process you’re back at the brick wall; the first thing distributors ask is “who’s your lead actor.” Without a star name the vast majority won’t watch the film. So it’s very tough. We got lucky – a well known producer saw the film and badgered her distributor to watch it. They picked us up for a limited theatrical release which meant we could get Press reviews (virtually impossible if you haven’t got a distributor who is part of the Film Distributors Association who run the week of release screenings). So although all films are a collaborative process, this one REALLY was, in effect everyone working on the film was an investor in it, literally; they will only get paid once the film shows a profit. That’s a very humbling fact for me.

INTERVIEWER

In Sink, we follow the lives of those who have been dispossessed by the processes of modern capitalism. There’s a clear political angle to the film; yet for all that, it’s also intensely human, and character-driven. As a screenwriter and director, how do you tread the line between potentially competing focuses; the political and the human?

GILLIS

There is a political angle and that kicked off my wanting to tell the story. I live in the area where the film is set and there are pockets of people leading very challenged lives. There are also the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, looming up seemingly at the end of the road.  So you have people whose lives have been changed beyond recognition living in the shadow of the institutions directly responsible. They committed crimes on an industrial scale, yet nobody has been prosecuted. It made me question where we are with that; if people who benefitted so hugely from the system can do that with impunity, can we condemn somebody for doing whatever’s necessary to stay afloat? It also made me angry enough to want to write something! But if that’s all there is, there’s no point writing a screenplay. Write an essay or an article. There has to be a story and for that there must be characters.

At the start I was intrigued by these three generations of men; Micky, his father and his son.  Principally it was the way the relationship to work had changed over those three generations; Micky was once a skilled worker who can now find only menial, zero hours jobs; his father has only ever known skilled manual work and his son has never really had a relationship to work. That’s a massive change in working class men’s lives and a theme I was eager to explore. Then it’s a question of whittling away until you find the core story and that was Micky’s.

If scenes are trying to force in a particular political idea, they will immediately stick out (and ultimately be cut out during the edit). Every scene must move the story forward in some way, while planting enough of the politics that the guiding themes are catered for.

Sink MJS

Three generations of men: Micky (left, played by Martin Herdman, leads his father and son through their local neighbourhood)

INTERVIEWER

What is your personal take on the current political climate, and how does it affect the stories we tell?

GILLIS

I really hope we are not in as bad a state as I think we might be in. I think the current ease with which the fundamental structures of democracy are being dismantled is terrifying. I am trying to have some sense of hope but the precedents for these early warning signs are so clear, I feel we’re sleepwalking into autocracy. It seems all the requirements are in place. If we don’t want that to happen, I guess it’s down to us to speak up.

INTERVIEWER

How do you feel the characters in Sink would react to the unfurling narrative around the Brexit process?

GILLIS

It’s so weird for me, because Sink was written and shot before the referendum was even tabled. SO much has changed. I’m a remainer.  I’m slightly glad I didn’t have to decide whether to make Micky a leaver or not. I’m still not sure how he would have voted. It would have been up to me to decide whether I make the character I created reach the decision I want him to, or whether I would be entirely true to what HE would have done. And I’m still not sure which way round that would have been. I do know that an awful lot of people who have felt entirely left behind after 30 odd years of neo-liberalism voted Brexit. Perhaps Micky was one of them. But that makes me a bit upset.

Fr M Kitchn

A Brexit voter? Sink was written and shot before the EU referendum in the UK, so we’ll perhaps never know which way Micky would have voted.

INTERVIEWER

Looking around at current trends in film making, what are your thoughts and feelings on the movie industry. And how would you advise aspiring film makers to break out onto the scene?

GILLIS

Obviously we live in the age of the huge franchise. There’s nothing wrong with that, some of them are great movies. What we might be losing is the middle ground; it’s either massive budgets that only the studios can bring together, or the tiny (in film terms) budgets that are somehow drawn together by financial jiggery pokery based around tax credits. Or people making films themselves on no budgets. It seems to me this isn’t a sustainable business model.

Outside the public funding bodies (and even with their involvement) each film has to start afresh to raise its finance. Add to that the current surge in high end TV which has lead to crew shortages and therefore higher rates, it’s difficult to see where the film industry can be heading. And yet, films still get made. I don’t know an answer. I’m still trying to figure it out myself.

As to what advice to give, I think the most important thing is spending time getting the script right. However you get the film together, it will be the script that brings people on board or makes them pass. It’s getting the right people in to the project that will get the film made. It all starts and ends with the script.

INTERVIEWER

Do you feel any ethical responsibility as a film maker?

GILLIS

I think there is an ethical responsibility not to create work that simply reinforces a negative. By the same token (in an equal and opposite way) there is an ethical responsibility to create work that examines the negative – that pulls it apart and provides a new viewpoint on it.

But it’s not for the film maker to dictate how that work must be received. There has to be room for the “wrong” view to be taken – otherwise you haven’t created something truthful.

INTERVIEWER

In terms of screenwriting, what do you think is most important to keep in mind when writing your initial drafts?

GILLIS

What happens next.

INTERVIEWER

Do you have a specific audience in mind when you write and direct?

GILLIS

I really try not to.

INTERVIEWER

How would you define creativity?

GILLIS

The focussing and entrapment of energy

INTERVIEWER

What does the term ‘director’ mean to you?

GILLIS

Depends which director you’re talking about.

INTERVIEWER

James Joyce argued poetry was “always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.” In the modern world, ‘actuality’ is increasingly hard to define – we live in a culture of ‘fake news’. What role do you think movies have to play in a world of ‘alternative facts’?

GILLIS

It’s strange isn’t it, that we head more and more towards finding truth in stories; in made up events. And yet, that is where truth is found. I’m very interested in the effect that Reality TV has had on our psychology. Even the title is a lie. It isn’t reality, everybody knows what they’re doing because there’s a camera there and they know they can watch it later. So we’ve spent 20 odd years saying that a fabricated reality is the truth. It’s kind of delicious (if it wasn’t so disgusting) that a “star” of the genre becomes the most powerful man in the world. Trump has spent his life lying – his whole ego is based on a lie that he was responsible for creating the financial success he’s had (multi-million dollar bankruptcies notwithstanding), instead of being gifted it on birth.

Can movies be a bulwark against lies? Absolutely. They can tell the truth because they are set free from the constraints of the market place (hang on, weren’t we just saying that the film industry can’t work because it’s not a sustainable business model?). They can show what humanity can be at a time when real life is coughing up its dregs. There’s an enormous role for movies (for ALL storytelling), I think now more than at any point in my lifetime.  Stories could pull us back from the brink. Will anyone listen though?

INTERVIEWER

Could you tell us a little about some of the future projects you’re working on?

GILLIS

I have two other screenplays, one about a man discovering how his own acceptance of being gay has been affected by events from a previous generation and a story about a charity that goes rogue to be able to carry out its real work. I’m also working on a couple of TV ideas because that’s all anyone wants to hear about.

INTERVIEWER

Could you write us a story in 6 words?

GILLIS

He made his own way back.

INTERVIEWER

Could you give your top 5 – 10 tips for screenwriters?

GILLIS

I know it’s a hoary old cliché but just keep writing. And then keep re-writing. Find readers you trust, listen to them and be willing to really start again if necessary. There are all sorts of gut wrenching machinations that come from giving up what you’ve sweated blood over. But sometimes it can be an amazing release.

  • Watch the trailer for Sink here below: 

Creatives in profile: interview with Joana Ramiro

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Joana Ramiro

Joana Ramiro is a journalist, writer and political commentator.

Born in Lisbon, in 2006 she moved to London, and in 2010 she became one of the founders of the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, as well as its Chief Press Officer. Since then, she has covered the occupation of Tahir Square in Cairo during the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’, as well as the 2015 Greek elections and the Calais refugee camp, among numerous other pieces of foreign correspondence.

Domestically, she was the first reporter to cover the fight of Focus E15, a group of London single mothers campaigning to be rehoused, after being evicted from a hostel by Newham Council in 2014. She has reported from a series of mass demonstrations, occupations, deportations and strikes, focusing on the effects of austerity policies in British society.

As a political commentator, Ramiro has been featured on Channel 4 News, BBC and LBC radio, as well as debates against fellow pundits Peter Oborne, Michael White and Peter Hitchens.

At a time when the truth is under attack – when journalists are attacked and maligned by those in power and those online, while Silicon Valley siphons off advertising revenue and amplifies untruths for profit – supporting, and hearing from, independent journalists is increasingly important. So Nothing in the Rulebook were incredibly pleased to catch up with Ramiro to bring you this following interview.

INTERVIEWER

Tell us about yourself, where you live and your background/lifestyle
RAMIRO
 

Hi, my name is Joana Ramiro and I’m a freelance journalist and writer based in London. I carry a Portuguese passport and was educated in a German school. My dad’s Angolan. It was all a big melting pot back at home and I try to keep it so in my adult life too (not hard, given that I live in the capital of melting pots).

INTERVIEWER

Is journalism your first love, or do you have another passion?
RAMIRO
 

It wasn’t my first love but it should have been. As a child I wanted to be an actor but when I hit puberty my ambitions got thwarted by the usual patriarchally-instilled insecurities about my looks, weight, and general lack of self-worth. I then went and studied advertising but it wasn’t very satisfying as I needed something a little more academic at that point. So, to compensate the lack of enthusiasm for my degree, I started doing a political blog and getting involved with campaigns I always felt an affinity for. Things like justice for Palestinians and an anti-cuts campaign at my university. That then grew into the student movement of 2010/11 where I was the founder and press officer for one of the main campaigns (National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts). I went back to uni in 2010, did a postgrad programme in politics and then a masters in Middle East politics, went to Palestine and Egypt (during the occupation of Tahrir Square) and a few years later got a full time job as a journalist at a small daily called the Morning Star. A week in I thought: “Goddamn! Why haven’t I been doing this all along?!”

INTERVIEWER
Who inspires you, and why? 
RAMIRO

Great journalism inspires me and I think of the greats of old and sometimes wonder if it’s still possible to do that kind of work. Journalists of past and present like Martha Gelhorn, Ryszard Kapuściński, Svetlana Alexievitch, Clare Hollingworth and Paul Mason inspire me every day to speak truth to power.

INTERVIEWER

What is the role of journalists today, in an era of ‘fake news’ and accusations of media bias? 

RAMIRO
 

The role of a journalist at any time is to speak truth to power. To me that means looking at the balance of forces and asking yourself “Who is being exploited, oppressed, or used in this situation?” and then write about it. Much is said about media bias vs unbiased journalism and in the end, you’ll find, the judgement is always in favour of whoever is in control of the narrative. There’s always a bias in journalism because there’s always a bias in our societies. A good journalist asks herself in who’s favour is that bias and writes about what the effects of such bias might be. Who benefits and who suffers under X state policies? Who benefits and who suffers under Y ideology? From there, a journalist’s role is to shine a light on what is in the dark. 

INTERVIEWER

When covering complex political issues and discourse, how do you navigate the challenge between communicating an issue or subject clearly and effectively, while also bringing the necessary balance and nuance and critical thought required to ensure the piece has real genuine value? 

RAMIRO

Good prose is written simply but at length. Unfortunately, it seems that while writing simply is still cherished in our media landscape, length is going increasingly out of style. A dangerous precedent if you ask me. You can’t explain the complexities of war in a 250 word article or in a 2.30min piece. You can’t explore the nuances of the Venezuelan political conundrum in a series of Tweets. We need to start investing in long-form journalism, not only in the case of what is usually called “long reads” but as a matter of journalistic norm. If people will deadscroll through 5min inspirational videos they will watch a 5min piece about Cape Town’s Day Zero. 

INTERVIEWER

Do you feel any personal responsibility as a journalist? 
RAMIRO
 

Of course. That’s why I refuse to work for xenophobic and migrant-bashing publications (we all know who they are). I wouldn’t go as far as condemning all that do – many colleagues work wherever work is available because they’ve got bills to pay – but given the choice I’d rather not write than enable or legitimise far-right opinions and rhetoric.

INTERVIEWER

To what extent has current political discourse and debate sidelined other important issues facing the world; such as catastrophic climate breakdown?

RAMIRO

I don’t think it has. Not least because the current political discourse might include disgusting people like Viktor Orban and Tommy Robinson, but also includes inspiring voices like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who does speak aplenty about climate and a Green New Deal).

INTERVIEWER

In an age of increasingly low incomes for journalists, and with funding models of traditional media corporations often favouring the large, Murdoch-owned papers over other independent news outlets, how can aspiring journalists break onto the scene while maintaining their journalistic integrity and any moral standards they may need? 

RAMIRO

Alas, it often seems nearly impossible and all the more so for young journalists who aren’t white middle class men  living in London. It’s good that places like the Guardian have programmes targeting this but more needs to be done. I suspect media reform is the way to go in order to tackle all these problems. Not to be too on the nose, but the Labour Party’s proposals on media reform announced last year would be a pretty decent start. 

INTERVIEWER

What’s your analysis of the state of both politics and journalism today? Where are we heading?

RAMIRO
 

God, I’d be a millionaire if I had the answer to that question. Can you imagine what the City would pay me for that sort of consultancy?! 

INTERVIEWER

What’s next for you personally? Any exciting projects we should know about? 
RAMIRO
 

I’m doing a lot of exciting things this year, but one of those I’m having a lot of fun at is my show Red Hacks. It’s a series of conversations with renowned journalists about being a leftwing journalist in a neoliberal world and it’s hosted by the Politics Theory Other podcast. The latest episode is with New Statesman deputy editor George Eaton. Do give it a listen 🙂

Quick fire round! 

INTERVIEWER
Vehicle of choice: Brexit battle bus or Corbyn bicycle? 
RAMIRO
 
Bicycle always! I have my own and it’s called Belinda.
INTERVIEWER
Curl up with a book or head to the movies? 
RAMIRO
 

Going to the movies in London is extortionate (unless you go to Peckhamplex in Peckham – £4.99 any ticket any day), so I’m gonna say curl up with a book. That would probably be my default choice anyway.

INTERVIEWER

Critically acclaimed or cult classic? 
RAMIRO
 

Always the classics. Casablanca is a masterpiece in far more ways than it’s known for. Same could be said about To Have and Have Not (I’m not just stanning for Humphrey Bogart, I promise).

INTERVIEWER

Who is someone you think people should know more about? 
RAMIRO
 

Erika Lust. She’s a feminist porn film maker and a champion of talking about women’s desire openly and outside of the liberal-cisgendered axis. Plus her stuff is simply beautiful to look at. I’ll be interviewing her soon. 

INTERVIEWER

Do you have any hidden talents?
RAMIRO

I can sleep anywhere under any circumstances, which is very handy for a journalist. Also, in a better world I would have spent more time singing in a more professional way. My brother (who’s an actual musician) and I have a few amateurish projects but I never seem to have enough time to invest in it properly or as much as I’d like to.

INTERVIEWER

Could you write us a story in 6 words?
RAMIRO
 
Fuckbois. That’s why she was single.
INTERVIEWER
Could you give your top 10 tips for aspiring journalists?
RAMIRO
 
  1. Go to the place, talk to the people. Don’t just write a story from whatever you saw on Twitter or whatever an expert commented on.
  2. Always carry a recorder (most phones will have one nowadays) and don’t forget the batteries (or keeping your phone charged).
  3. When taking pictures in a controversial or dangerous situation always carry two memory cards for your camera. Fill one of them with faff/tourist pictures of the place. Carry the one with the journalistic pictures in your sock or bra. Don’t cross checkpoints or police lines with a camera full of “incriminating” material. 
  4. Always carry cigarettes. Even if you don’t smoke. They’re incredibly handy appeasers, bargaining chips, conversation starters, bonding props. Odd, I know. But it works. 
  5. Learn the art of conversation. Everyone will get the same quotes if they ask the obvious questions. Make it your business to be more than a question machine. Offer something back, even if just a shown interest in what your subject has to say. 
  6. Advice I was given (part I): Start writing your piece as if following the sentence: “Guys, guess what?…”
  7. Advice I was given (part II): Read what you wrote out loud at least once. It really helps you catch otherwise unnoticed typos, grammar errors, generally weird sentences and such.
  8. Invest in a transcription programme (I hate hate hate transcribing). 
  9. Read! Read fiction. Read old books. Read theory. Read as widely as you can. Follow it up by listening to music or watching movies on the same theme (in my family we call this “a festival”). Learn the joys of immersing yourself in something other than what is labelled journalism. Good journalism is done with knowledge wider than that. 
  10. Journalism is team work. George Orwell relied on many many people he never mentioned in his books (true story – not just using this as a metaphor for the case in point). Acknowledge that and use it. Help others and ask for help. Reject the idea that journalism is a rat race. Reject the idea that work is a rat race for that matter. Revel in cooperation. It will make you a better journalist, if not even a better person. 

The duty of writers

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The-pen-is-mightier-than-the-sword.jpg

Our world faces catastrophic climate breakdown. True facts are now described as ‘fake news’, and biased media reported hailed by pseudo-Nazis as gospel truth. Political turmoil is growing as inequalities deepen across so many dividing lines in society. In such times, a challenge facing us all as artists, creatives and writers – but also simply as human beings – is to examine what role we ourselves have to play.

We have previously written about the need for writers to tackle the subject of climate change in their poetry and novels and non-fiction accounts – while we have also paid tribute to Ursula Le Guin’s rallying cry for all writers to imagine new alternatives to our capitalist system.

But what exactly is our duty, in these times, as writers and creatives? What stories do we need to tell?

What is the story of the world?

Fortunately for us, guidance on this question can be found from the minds of great writers – living and dead – who have pondered this precise topic. In East of Eden, for instance, Steinbeck opens the book’s 34th chapter with a mediation on the most fundamental foundation that sits beneath this essential question: if we have a duty to describe the stories of the world that matter, what exactly is the story of the world? Steinbeck writes:

“A child may ask, “What is the world’s story about?” And a grown man or woman may wonder, “What way will the world go? How does it end and, while we’re at it, what’s the story about?”

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught — in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too — in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well — or ill?”

Understanding human beings

In an earlier journal entry, Steinbeck even suggests that tackling the injustices in the world is not even possible if the writer first doesn’t understand the human beings who exist within it. He opines:

“In every bit of honest writing in the world… there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.”

In a similar vein, the novelist Zadie Smith argues that to believe anything can bring about fundamental change is in fact naïve – and to honestly understand what drives the world forward (and how to subtly shift perceptions) you have to first appreciate the motivations of humankind. In a speech given in Germany in 2016 after receiving a literary award, she says:

“People who believe in fundamental and irreversible changes in human nature are themselves ahistorical and naive. If novelists know anything it’s that individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities. They are like complex musical scores from which certain melodies can be teased out and others ignored or suppressed, depending, at least in part, on who is doing the conducting. At this moment, all over the world — and most recently in America — the conductors standing in front of this human orchestra have only the meanest and most banal melodies in mind. Here in Germany you will remember these martial songs; they are not a very distant memory. But there is no place on earth where they have not been played at one time or another. Those of us who remember, too, a finer music must try now to play it, and encourage others, if we can, to sing along.”

Yet within this, Smith sees no reason not to use art – and writing in particular – to reshape narratives, to influence others, and ultimately keep striving for that which we are all searching for, especially in these sometimes dark times: human progress, and illuminating the path ahead on which we can strive to make a better world. She says:

“History is not erased by change, and the examples of the past still hold out new possibilities for all of us, opportunities to remake, for a new generation, the conditions from which we ourselves have benefited… Progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive.”

On the protection of democracy

Smith’s line of argument calls upon all of us to continually work to reimagine and challenge existing political and social structures. This calls to mind the thoroughly excellent arguments of that legendary titan of literature, Walt Whitman, who, in his collection Specimen Days, calls on all free-thinking people to continually challenge and probe the status quo. Whitman writes:

“I can conceive of no better service in the United States, henceforth, by democrats of thorough and heart-felt faith, than boldly exposing the weakness, liabilities and infinite corruptions of democracy.”

What it interesting here is how Whitman lived through times that do not sound dissimilar to our own. He saved lives through the Civil War, witnessed the “miserably-waged populations”, the corrosion of idealism and collapse of democratic values into corruption and complacency. Yet the great American poet faces this dispiriting landscape with a defiant optimism, arguing that this is in a way the most countercultural act of courage available to us:

“Though I think I fully comprehend the absence of moral tone in our current politics and business, and the almost entire futility of absolute and simple honor as a counterpoise against the enormous greed for worldly wealth, with the trickeries of gaining it, all through society in our day, I still do not share the depression and despair on the subject which I find possessing many good people.”

Ultimately, Whitman notes that the only way to preserve democracy in America is also to preserve nature (to hark back to our call to tackle the catastrophic breakdown of our climate for a moment here). And, as current US President Trump and his collection of lunatic criminals in the Republican party continue to show flagrant disregard for the planet and its natural environments, this is a thought that is well worth revisiting. Whitman writes:

“American Democracy, in its myriad personalities, in factories, work-shops, stores, offices — through the dense streets and houses of cities, and all their manifold sophisticated life — must either be fibred, vitalized, by regular contact with out-door light and air and growths, farm-scenes, animals, fields, trees, birds, sun-warmth and free skies, or it will morbidly dwindle and pale. We cannot have grand races of mechanics, work people, and commonalty, (the only specific purpose of America,) on any less terms. I conceive of no flourishing and heroic elements of Democracy in the United States, or of Democracy maintaining itself at all, without the Nature-element forming a main part — to be its health-element and beauty-element — to really underlie the whole politics, sanity, religion and art of the New World.”

Truth above all

Of course, it is easy to present arguments in favour of protecting the world and become downhearted when these are dismissed by the despots around the world – from Trump in the US through May in the UK, Putin in Russia to the incompetent National Liberal coalition in Australia – and ignored as being part of some fabrication or over-exaggeration of ‘progressives’ (as though we would feel foolish if we were to accidentally be fooled into creating a better world for nothing). ‘Fake News’ is everywhere, as we are all told. Here, it feels fitting to draw upon inspiration from legendary journalist Rebecca Solnit, who presses upon us our need to continue to stick to accuracy and truth when writing stories. In her collection of essays, Call them by their names, she writes:

“Precision, accuracy, and clarity matter, as gestures of respect toward those to whom you speak; toward the subject, whether it’s an individual or the earth itself; and toward the historical record.”

In an era of ‘alternative facts’, where language is increasingly used for malicious purposes, Solnit strives to persuade us of the importance of calling things as they are:

“To name something truly is to lay bare what may be brutal or corrupt — or important or possible — and key to the work of changing the world is changing the story.”

More than a century after Nietzsche contemplated truth, lies, and the power of language to both conceal and reveal reality, Solnit writes:

“There are so many ways to tell a lie. You can lie by ignoring whole regions of impact, omitting crucial information, or unhitching cause and effect; by falsifying information by distortion and disproportion, or by using names that are euphemisms for violence or slander for legitimate activities, so that the white kids are “hanging out” but the Black kids are “loitering” or “lurking.” Language can erase, distort, point in the wrong direction, throw out decoys and distractions. It can bury the bodies or uncover them.”

Breaking the narrative

Ultimately, Solnit calls on writers to continue to strive towards that goal of truth – for exposing the truth, using language that is accurate, that lays bare the reality of situations. Through truth, she argues, we can break and reshape narratives and stories that have been spun by the powerful against the powerless – and hopefully move toward a world where the only thing that is fake is Trump’s hair. She writes:

“The writer’s job is not to look through the window someone else built, but to step outside, to question the framework, or to dismantle the house and free what’s inside, all in service of making visible what was locked out of the view. News journalism focuses on what changed yesterday rather than asking what are the underlying forces and who are the unseen beneficiaries of this moment’s status quo… This is why you need to know your history, even if you’re a journalist rather than a historian. You need to know the patterns to see how people are fitting the jumble of facts into what they already have: selecting, misreading, distorting, excluding, embroidering, distributing empathy here but not there, remembering this echo or forgetting that precedent.

Some of the stories we need to break are not exceptional events, they’re the ugly wallpaper of our everyday lives. For example, there’s a widespread belief that women lie about being raped, not a few women, not an anomalous woman, but women in general. This framework comes from the assumption that reliability and credibility are as natural to men as mendacity and vindictiveness are to women. In other words, feminists just made it all up, because otherwise we’d have to question a really big story whose nickname is patriarchy. But the data confirms that people who come forward about being raped are, overall, telling the truth (and that rapists tend to lie, a lot). Many people have gotten on board with the data, many have not, and so behind every report on a sexual assault is a battle over the terms in which we tell, in what we believe about gender and violence.

[…]

Future generations are going to curse most of us for distracting ourselves with trivialities as the planet burned. Journalists are in a pivotal place when it comes to the possibilities and the responsibilities in this crisis. We, the makers and breakers of stories, are tremendously powerful.

So please, break the story.”

You heard it here first, comrades. So, what are you waiting for? Get breaking!

If you’d like to contribute to our site – and show off how good you are at breaking narratives – please contact us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is BoJack Horseman so popular? Simple: it’s real

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If you’re reading this article, the likely reason is that you’ve seen the name BoJack Horseman and clicked on a link somewhere out in the wilds of the internet or social media. You’ve recognised the name and it’s peaked your interest. Why have you heard that name? Simple – because since BoJack Horseman was released in 2014, it has gained critical and popular acclaim – showered in praise for the way it skilfully probes existential anxiety, interweaving zany, offbeat comedy with sometimes sly humour, as well as intensely sad or ‘dark’ moments. It’s popular, in other words; and for good reason: it’s real.

That a cartoon show about a substance-abusing middle-aged horse feels like the most real thing many people have seen for so many years says more about our current cultural malaise than we might like to admit. But it doesn’t make it any less true.

One of the factors that makes BoJack feel so real – so relatable – is the fact that the characters in the show must face the consequences of their actions. No character is “too big to fail” (in the way the banks that crashed the global economy were allowed to carry on Scott-free while the average person has had to shoulder the burdens and crises they created). As Arielle Bernstein writes in an article for The Guardian:

“Throughout the series, we see child BoJack, eager and wide-eyed in his little sailor suit, being verbally abused by his mother and father. But while the series encourages us to see BoJack’s own self-absorption as a response to a traumatic childhood, it also insists that BoJack not be given a free pass. In his heart of hearts, BoJack is never a “bad guy” per se, but his thoughtless choices often have very real impacts on everyone around him.”

Yet, while this is an admirable aspect of the show – that it has created extremely well-rounded characters who we can relate to – the true ‘realness’ of the show comes from the way it counters other aspects of our current society.

The power of the image

Firstly, we must consider the use of images in both the show and in our culture – and the way in which BoJack Horseman subverts what Lacan would term ‘natural’ images with referent – or ‘signified’ images. At its very basic, this is ultimately a joke about the fact that we are all animals – the playful humour of seeing a golden Labrador wearing a v-neck t-shirt, rocking aviator sunglasses and being obsessed with the skunk from next door is funny and surreal. There is also a clear use of Lacanian mirror imagery between BoJack and his ‘inverted mirror’, Mr. Peanutbutter. Mirrors can also be found between the ‘real’ BoJack and his TV personality on 90s sitcom Horsin’ around, as well as his TV detective character, Philbert – and during this portrayal the mirror line blurs completely in Episode 11, “The showstopper”, in which we all witness a very real “crossover episode”, to coin a favourite line from the show. Once again, visual and symbolic mirrors abound in series five episode 7, when we meet not BoJack, but ‘Bobo the Zebra’.

Yet for all BoJack’s surrealism and superficial escapism, the heart of the show carries messages that, simply, resonate with audiences. The escapism that BoJack and his cohorts pursue is the same that we ourselves seek. That it feels ‘honest’, and ‘true’ is often conflated as being ‘dark’ – as though the idea of a person who doesn’t quite feel that everything is okay within themselves, despite being rich and famous, and takes actions that are nearly always morally ambiguous or questionable, is in someway only explainable if we describe it as “dark”. Doing this, however, otherises such concepts and thus fails to recognise that the real reason the show has such an avid following and has picked up such critical acclaim is because the ‘dark’ aspects of the show aren’t dark at all – they are in fact extremely relatable, particularly for anyone who has ever found that their entire construct of societal expectations has been built around lies meant to satisfy shareholders; not to satisfy our egos or our real natures or purposes. Indeed, when faced with this realisation and reality, the actions that BoJack pursues, the depression, the anger, anxiety, denial, etc. – these become not only normal or relatable, but actually natural reactions to an extremely unnatural world and society.

In an excellent documentary series, The Century of the Self, Adam Curtis explains how, since the 1960s, there have been attempts by both psychiatrists and those in power to make us feel as though certain natural human responses to life are the symptoms of serious psychological or mental disorders. This is partly because the financial, marketing and operational models on which capitalism – and particularly consumerism – relies, have been built on the ideal of human beings as rational, self-serving, individuals. This, of course, flies in the face of evidence that suggests human beings are quite often irrational, altruistic members of communities, tribes and societies as a whole.

Living in a world in which we are told that to feel sad is a sign of a serious mental disorder; in which we are told we can only ever aspire to satiate our own desires by buying more and more things, despite the fact that we are ultimately just searching for real, meaningful connections with other people, places us all in an existential crisis that is vividly and expertly portrayed in BoJack Horseman.

Again, images are important here. In both societies (that of BoJack’s Hollywoo and our own world), materialism – and the images that go with it – run rampant. Consumerism is the order of the day; and both TV show and our reality are subject to the fact that consumerism as a socioeconomic is fundamentally built upon the engineering of desire through psychological manipulation, which is achieved by using images – including advertising and peer pressure – to make us inclined to purchase more and more stuff.

Why does this matter? Being bombarded and overwhelmed by images that are not real – that lack any substance beyond activating something in us that makes us feel empty and fuels our desire to consume, ultimately creates a genuine emptiness and aching for reality. As David Shields notes in Reality Hunger: 

“Living as we perforce do in a manufactured and artificial world, we year for the ‘real,’ semblances of the real. We want to pose something real against all the fabrication.”

The problem with materialism

BoJack lays bare the problem with materialism and consumerism in a way precious few TV shows have dared to do.

An impressive body of academic research suggests that materialism, a trait that can afflict both rich and poor, and which the researchers define as “a value system that is preoccupied with possessions and the social image they project“, is both socially destructive and self-destructive. It smashes the happiness and peace of mind of those who succumb to it. It’s associated with anxiety, depression and broken relationships.

Depression, anxiety, broken relationships; socially destructive and self-destructive. Remind you of anything?

There has long been a correlation observed between materialism, a lack of empathy and engagement with others, and unhappiness. But research conducted over the past few years seems to show causation. For example, a series of studies published in the journal Motivation and Emotion in July showed that as people become more materialistic, their wellbeing (good relationships, autonomy, sense of purpose and the rest) diminishes. What’s more, as we are repeatedly bombarded with such images through advertisements, and constantly described by the media as consumers, we become more selfish, and more likely to act and behave in the ways large corporations need in order to make continual disgustingly large profits.

The irrationality of society

For years, then mainstream cultural programmes have adopted the use of imagery and story narratives to support and reinforce the myths that keep them in power and maintain the status quo – to help the consumerist models function; and to keep us spending money, buying more things – all in the ultimate pursuit of our supposed individual happiness.

There are obviously numerous problems with this – not least from a moral perspective. Yet events in recent years have markedly laid out some of the flaws in this approach.

In the first instance, the collapse of the world financial system (triggered in part by massive acquisition of unsustainable personal, individual debts) and subsequent global recession has forced millions of people in Western Society to live in times of extreme austerity. Among many other (perhaps more pressing) issues with this – such as child poverty, rising crime, inequality, – the era of low wages and job scarcity or insecurity that has been created by the austerity model has made it impossible for people to actually exist and function within the previous consumer system as they had been told to. In other words, they had been denied the means with which to participate in the consumerist culture. How can you buy the latest deluxe car when you can’t afford to heat your own home or pay your rent?

Without the means to participate in consumerism, people have started to recognise that the society in which they live, and the dreams they have been told to pursue, are in fact not recogniseable, achievable, or real. The reality of their situation is that the entire system has been broken – and so a world which continues to expect them to accrue personal debt in order to buy the latest fashion trend is not a world in which they can be rationally expected to live.

Beyond the fiction of reality

This all, ultimately, leads us back to BoJack – a world in which to be self-aware is often to become self-destructive. To recognise the faults in the world can lead to despair (because you can’t hope to change things); but also in which ignoring reality and going along with societal pressures is to sacrifice any true sense of identity. Indeed, those characters which lack depth or sense of realness are those who lack any self-awareness – a ‘Ryan Seacrest type’, for instance; a character with so little identity he is only a trace (again to use a Lacanian term) of somebody else. In this world, the most natural response is one that does not seem ‘natural’ – as the system would like you to believe – but rather, to respond to a system that is entirely broken by becoming broken yourself; or reacting to the impossibility of the ask placed upon us as individuals by coming to impossible conclusions (see any of Mr Peanutbutter’s whacky ideas for starters here). The show feels real because the characters are negotiating a broken society that mirrors our own. As Slavoj Zizek has noted: “beyond the fiction of reality lies the reality of the fiction.” We are drawn to the reality of the fiction (in this case, a television show about a celebrity horse) because it is what Lacan would describe as the signifier of something we inherently lack in our own world: reality and realness. We experience so few ‘real’ images, that ones that signify truth – the reality of our situation – become precious and to be treasured.

Ultimately, this helps us more effectively bond with the characters and empathise with them. This is important – particularly in a world in which reports of loneliness are skyrocketing – because it illustrates how BoJack Horseman becomes nourishing, even redemptive; we become less alone inside because we recognise that our reaction to the impossibilities of the world is not confined to our own skulls. BoJack Horseman, then, helps us become less alone inside.

And that’s why we need it.

Book review: The study circle, by Haroun Khan

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Nothing in the Rulebook’s resident book reviewer Tom Andrews digs into ‘The study circle’, by Haroun Khan, published by Dead Ink Books.

The Study Circle

This debut novel by Haroun Khan follows two friends from a South London council estate. Ishaq is devout and well educated, a regular at the titular Islamic study circle. His education at a university may give him a way out of the brutal poverty of the estate. His friend Shams is less fortunate and is obliged to make ends meet anyway he can, even if the means are not entirely legal or safe. The pair are caught between the gentle and wise Ayoub, the leader of the study circle, and Mujahid, who justifies his own criminal activities with radical politics and mangled religion.

Khan, writing from some personal experience, gives an unrelentingly grim portrait of the estate. It’s a hopeless and forgotten place, where violence is never far away, and the police are more of a threat than a source of protection. Choices and opportunities are impossibly limited; the characters wonder if it is possible for them to ever truly leave the place behind. Again and again, it is emphasised that outsiders simply do not understand the everyday challenges faced by young people in such an environment, abandoned and alienated while at the same time demonised and discriminated against by the society they live in.

This is a very timely, of the moment book that deals with issues of Islamophobia, racism and poverty in modern Britain. Unfortunately, it doesn’t deal with them in the context of an always engaging novel, but sometimes heavy-handedly in the form of extended essay passages between minimal slices of here and now events.

The last third of the novel is the first time that I had any sense of interest in what would happen next, any sense of drama. This welcome change of pace redeems at least some of what has come before, but how many would persevere to this point? It is not a long novel, but it would benefit from some editing.

The writer himself admits to feeling uneasy while writing this and says, ‘There is a lot I have said here that people can take issue with.’ That’s unavoidable when dealing with such heavyweight issues of race, religion and class. It certainly gave this reviewer uncomfortable things to ponder.

About the reviewer

tandrews

Tom Andrews is a Genetics graduate and book lover based in Somerset. He has previously attempted music and game reviews. He tweets at @jerevendrai 

Familiar history: fascists attack bookstore in London

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With news that a small group of fascists have attacked an independent bookstore in London, it is easy to feel this may be a case of history repeating itself.

Bookmarks announced on 5 August that the store and its staff were attacked by “far right protestors wearing masks” the previous evening.

The owners of the store remained defiant, writing: “We will not let this happen! Never Again!”

Although physical damage to the store and its staff was minimal, the escalation in tactics deployed by right-wing protestors to specifically target a bookstore will appear to many to be a worrying turn of events.

burning books

Nazis burning books in Germany

Watching the video of the attack – described as “an ambush” by one individual recording the video who appears to have the intellectual ability and wit of a rotting dog turd – certainly makes for troubling viewing.

Nothing in the Rulebook‘s very own Professor Wu said:

“Nothing in the Rulebook has previously cautioned against comparing the rise of extreme right wing groups in the US, the UK, and western Europe to the rise of fascism in the early 20th century. Yet, as a creative collective (indeed, one which even has the word ‘book’ in our name), attacking a book store is where we draw a line.

There are too many similarities between events taking place today and those witnessed by those generations before us who were forced to live through the horrors of fascism; of persecution, censorship, suppression, restriction of individual liberties, and, ultimately, genocide.

Independent bookstores like Bookmarks play a crucial role in investing in new ideas and voices to counter the prevailing cultural winds. Attacking places that allow truly free expressions of thought that seek to illuminate new ways of thinking speak to the fear those on the right have of genuine intellectualism. It is a clear sign that they fear the power of the written word; that they wish to disengage with what it represents (creativity; enlightenment; knowledge) so vehemently that they are willing to turn to violent, extreme methods of breaking free from its potential to influence and persuade those who are not so ignorant as them. Such violence is a sure sign for concern.

We now find ourselves in an age where the largest bookseller in the world pays virtually no taxes. Although Amazon allows micro-genres of fiction, such as Dinosaur Erotica, to flourish, it is no friend of the free-thinking liberal, or indeed anyone who would like to see the power of language used to fight the ignorance that threatens to bloom across the world.

At its heart, this attack was an attack on freedom of thought; not simply freedom of speech. The far-right often accuse the left of using political correctness to censor them; yet they are the ones attacking independent bookstores.

We therefore wish our comrades in Bookmarks and in independent bookstores across the world solidarity, success, and friendship. And we urge all readers to sign up to the Bookmarks solidarity event planned to take place in London. More than that – we urge you all to go out and buy books; to read books; and to go out and write them. Fascists wish to silence us, but we will not be silenced.”

The Poetry of The Communist Manifesto: a combination of past and present

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What would have happened if Karl Marx had become a poet? In this article, Peter Raynard takes The Communist Manifesto to new, poetic levels. 

The Foundation

“Capitalism has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities. Capitalism has agglomerated population, centralised means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.”

As many readers will know, Karl Marx wrote these words, but used the term ‘bourgeoisie’ instead of capitalism. The words were swapped in a 2012 lecture by John Lanchester (he of Whoops, and Capital) marking Marx’s 193rd birthday, to show how prescient he was in describing the structure of capitalism and the way in which it changes the landscape.

But as well as Marx’s prescience, he has also been lauded for his literary style of writing. In Robert Paul Wolff’s book, ‘Moneybags Must Be So Lucky: on the literary structure of Capital’, he references Edmund Wilson who likens Marx to the great ironist, Swift.

“Compare the logic of Swift’s ‘modest proposal’ for curing the misery of Ireland by inducing the starving people to eat their surplus babies with the argument in defence of crime which Marx urges on the bourgeois philosophers…: crime he suggests, is produced by the criminal just as ‘the philosophers produce ideas, the poet verses, the professor manuals,’ and practising it is useful to society because it takes care of the superfluous population at the same time that putting it down gives employment to many worthy citizens.”

Where Marx may have used satire in Capital, The Communist Manifesto is more of a Promethean tragedy; or as has been argued, Marx is more of a dialectical Promethean;

“the idea or practical conviction that what is made can be unmade, what is bound can be unbound by purposeful action. It is the sober acceptance that stealing fire from the gods will have serious consequences that will ultimately lead either to the emancipation, or the annihilation, of humanity.”

The Combination

Karl Marx had two great loves in his late teens, which he put into practice by joining two social clubs when at the University in Bonn; the first was the Tavern Club, which his father disapproved of because of the prevalence of drunken duels (it’s said that Marx did in fact engage in a duel); the second, was the Poets’ Club, of which his father did approve. Writing to his father however, his love of poetry was superseded by the events around him, ‘I had to study law and above all felt the urge to wrestle with philosophy.’ I wonder what impact he would have had, if he became a poet.

But as we all know, he didn’t and some twelve years later, he wrote The Communist Manifesto. However, the mix of prescience, satire, and tragedy in theses writings seemed to me to be the perfect ingredients for a poetic response.

In January this year, I was introduced to the poetic form of coupling by Karen McCarthy Woolf. The form is a poetic response to a piece of text, where the poet divides up lines of prose and responds with lines that include rhyme, repetition and assonance. I took a paragraph of the Communist Manifesto. I decided to explore the form further; writing the Preface, then Part One, and so on, until three months later I had matched 12,000 words of Marx’s masterpiece with roughly the same amount of my poetic own.

Drawing on a wide range of references, I have tried to situate the Manifesto in a variety of contemporary cultural places, in particular to emphasise the dialectic nature of the text, in the form I am presenting. This is complemented by a series of images, again matching the bound with the unbound. As far as I am aware, this is only the second poetic response (after Brecht) to the Communist Manifesto.

Below is a sample of the book, where Marx is describing the rise of the bourgeoisie:

Extract from The Combination

(rise of the bourgeoisie)

The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production
a set of pipes excavated from the intestines of serfs

was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed
because the human body parts were too emaciated

for the growing wants of the new markets
who were still yet to discover the delights of the flesh

The manufacturing system took its place.
robots of various stomach sizes, blustered and bulged their way ahead

The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class
something the middle class did very passively aggressive like

division of labour between the different corporate guilds
confraternity contracts between belligerents, some say

vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop
atomising systems turning the metal of men into powder

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising.
man-sized tissues no longer required, as it was nothing to be sneezed at

Even manufacture no longer sufficed
hands took to the machine not the article of craft

Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production
playthings of the mind, exponential change in fortunes, spin the wheel

The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry
all hail the shibboleths of mammon and their bloody tongues

the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires
poor souls in the middle playing catch and missing

the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois
come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough

Modern industry has established the world market
connecting cracked palms that never shake hands

for which the discovery of America paved the way
with their independent isolationist do-what-I-say

This market has given an immense development to commerce
so fly high my sweet nightingales of the east, you bulbul song birds

to navigation, to communication by land
enabling the troops of civilisation and Sodom to rape for progress

This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry;
a cleaning up if you will of virulent middle-aged faces

and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended
like a pop-up book with a mind of its own

in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed
maturing like cancerous cheese on a wood-rot board

increased its capital, and pushed into the background
its nodules of self-aggrandisement, displacing

every class handed down from the Middle Ages
and so say some of us, and so say some of us, for

We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie
the one percent to you and me

is itself the product of a long course of development
yes, yes, yes, we know what you meant

of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange
round and round we go, where will we stop – hold on, I know!

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied
by the ‘gertcha’ of Chas and Dave eulogising the end of days and

by a corresponding political advance of that class
who still dance on this parliamentary isle to Milton’s ‘light fantastick’

An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility
as it was, as it is, as it was always meant to be

an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune
oh for those lazy, crazy anarchistic days, sat around a smoky haze

here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany)
where townsmen gave purchase to their rights with moneyed fists

there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France)
the 98% of us scrapping over a share of bronze medal

afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper
the threads of stratification began to untwine

serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy
the Naxalites of India can tell you a thing or two here

as a counterpoise against the nobility,
it always comes down to standing, back straight!

and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general
whose spines were now curving to the submittal

the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry
with all its rising fallacies and clocking on palaces

and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State
the porous borders of innovative disorder

exclusive political sway.
you turn if you want to, but the old lady of England, is not for turning

The executive of the modern state is but a committee
with their bingo numbers to hand & Saturday night covers band

for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie
so not the main party to make us all free

About the author of this post

Peter Raynard Photo (6)

Peter Raynard is the editor of Proletarian Poetry: Poems of Working-class Lives (www.proletarianpoetry.com). He has written two books of poetry, his debut collection Precarious (Smokestack Books, 2018) and The Combination, a poetic coupling of the Communist Manifesto (Culture Matters, 2018), available here.

 

References:

Barker, Jason (2016) EPIC OR TRAGEDY? KARL MARX AND POETIC FORM IN THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, (sourced here)

Lanchester, John (2012) Marx at 193 (LRB podcast)

Nicolaievsky, Boris & Maenchen-Helfen, Otto (1933) Karl Marx: man and fighter (Pelican Books)

Wolff, Robert Paul (1988) ‘Moneybags Must Be So Lucky: on the literary structure of Capital’ (University of Massachusetts Press)

Brexit books: 10 titles to look out for in post-Brexit Britain

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As the unstable and chaotic conservative government of the UK stumbles ineptly toward a ‘no-deal’ Brexit, UK citizens have recently been given assurances that there will be “adequate food to eat” in the event that the UK leaves the European Union in the style of so many drunken British louts after a Thursday night at the bookies: vomiting a half-eaten kebab onto the floor while simultaneously shitting themselves, then trying to stand up straight in order to flirt with an attractive passer-by, who on closer inspection appears to be a big pile of rubbish.

The fact that Britons will not be starving in the event of a no-deal Brexit may sound reassuring. Yet given the fact that the electorate was promised a land of cake and honey, rather than tinned liver and spam, as well as perhaps as much as £350 million a week extra to spend on their National Healthcare Service, these latest mutterings from Whitehall represent a bit of a climb down.

The whole charade got the team here at Nothing in the Rulebook thinking about how a no-deal Brexit may affect other parts of British life. As we prepare to live off a diet of potatoes and humble pie, we have put together a short list of book titles you can expect to see in post-Brexit Britain.

Publishers, take note!

  1. “Where is mummy now?” – A light hearted children’s book explaining the intricacies of citizen deportation to under fives.
  2. “1000 amazing recipes for powdered eggs” – Who needs Jamie Oliver when you can make all the types of powdered eggs you like with this fabulous cook book (which is also, incidentally, made out of powdered eggs).
  3. “Mogg and friends” – Children’s book for early readers following the adventures of Mogg the cat and her friends as they fend for themselves in the desolate city streets, feeding on litter and the dregs left behind by the former United Kingdom, including the decaying remains of Jacob Rees Mogg’s nanny.
  4. “Low expectations” – Welcome to the Dickensian streets of London, 2019, where orphans live in abject poverty surrounded by the sick and dying masses who no longer have a healthcare or welfare system to support them.
  5. “War and more war” – An epic tale of the Russian oligarchs who run and control Britain. Featuring duals between old racists bigots.
  6. “Our dignity is missing” – post-modern book that would have won the man-booker prize, if it weren’t just a paper front cover stuck to a mirror.
  7. “A brief history of 7 lies” – 2000 page thriller charting the ways a small cabal of old white men were able to convince the British population that facts and logic no longer mattered.
  8. “The liar and the unicorn” – Hilarious romp featuring Boris Johnson as a unicorn who learns not to trust every world despot when he is eaten bottom first by a large orange slug with an uncanny resemblance to Donald Trump.
  9. “No pride. More prejudice” – It is a truth universally acknowledged, that only rich billionaires who store their money in off-shore tax havens can be in possession of a good fortune.”
  10. “What do you mean, we can’t print any more books because we need the paper for kindling? No, don’t write that stop writing that there’s no paper anyway stop typing also you’re fired, everyone here is fired, we’re all fired, there aren’t any more jobs just save yourselves” – release date TBC.

 

Any titles we’re missing? Add your own in the comments below!

Writers and artists have a collective duty to mock Trump, the thin-skinned charlatan

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Sometimes, the only thing you can do is laugh.

Around the world, brutes have risen – and continue to rise – to power. Far from challenging these despotic tyrants, our supposedly liberal western democracies have cow-towed to them, flattering them, and inflating their egos. In the UK, the weak and decrepit conservative party hangs on to power with long vicious fingernails and asks the taxpayer to foot the bill of hosting one of these new brutish demagogues so that they can shower him in pageantry and golf. 100 years ago, America and Europe were united in trying to create and preserve a new world peace where liberty and human rights would flourish, and the horrors of imperial wargames would cease. Now these same powers squabble like school children, trading insults and threats, seemingly unaware that theirs in an order that requires radical change – not more of the same.

This is all such madness it would be funny, if it weren’t so easy to feel terrified by it all.

Donald Trump is clearly the most obvious fault-line in the current alignment of our stars. The charge list against him is impossible to tolerate: there is the racism of his immigration policies that bans people from Muslim countries entering the USA, and which separates young children forcibly from their parents; then there is the threats posed to the rights of women, people of colour, and LGBT people. He ignores the catastrophic effects of man-made climate change or the fact that our rampant over consumption is threatening our planet’s survival. He sucks up to tyrants, launches trade wars, insults allies, praises fools and dictators, and campaigns against the free press. He is also a coward and a fraud who has tiny hands and evidence suggests he regularly pays prostitutes to urinate on him.

Our response to Trump, as writers, artists, creatives and – ultimately – human beings, is crucial. It must be appropriate, balanced, and precisely reactionary. If only to support Newton’s third law, our reaction to Trump’s hatred, fear and bigotry, must be equal in its opposition to these traits. In other words, it must be one of love, bravery, and inclusivity.

To our minds, there is nothing that brings people together more so than laughter. There is nothing braver than laughing at those who would beat you (or worse) for doing so. And there is nothing that can invoke feelings of love more than the euphoria of hysterical humour.

It is for this reason that we call for all creatives to unite in mocking Trump as the thin-skinned charlatan he really is.

Join the resistance

To an extent, the mockery of Trump through satirical art has already begun in earnest. There has been a huge influx of resistance-themed art, whether it’s commentary on world leaders with the graffiti styling’s of Mr. Dheo or Bambi (pictured below), or more simply the crowd-funded Trump baby balloon, which has been flying above London during the President’s visit to the UK.

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Bambi

The proliferation of this kind of art perhaps recognises the fact that to continue making art as before is an insufficient response to the state of the world. The dark reality is that intensity, beauty, and devotion to making beautiful creative things are insufficient to halt violence. Indeed, one need only to look to history – to see and hear the march of Nazism accompanied by the tunes of Wagner – in order to realise how these aspects of art can become the accompanying soundtrack to evil.

We do not use terms such as evil lightly. To label everyone and everything one disagrees with as fascism is surely to dissolve the meaning of a term that threatens the fabric of democracy and liberal decency. And it is for this reason that aggressive art – art that seeks to create representations of darkness, evil, violence and hatred – are equally ill-equipped as positive, beautiful art, for confronting the realities of our times and challenging them. Holding a mirror to violence and anger reflects, but does not shatter, the illusion of power that they hold. Only by making fun of and satirising those who trumpet hate and division can we truly expose the intrinsic lack of power that they have.

Exposing Trump

Trump is in many ways the epitome of the weakness of hate and anger. His inflated ego and thin skin make the giant Trump baby currently floating in the skies above London a perfect symbol of a man who is nothing more than hot air: a thin-skinned charlatan who uses racism, homophobia and misogyny to stoke fear among people struggling to get by in a country riven by divisions caused by incessant neoliberal capitalism – that has left the vast majority poorer whilst an extreme minority of billionaires collect ever more wealth. The fragility of Trump’s ego is easily exposed; one need only witness how he rushes to defend the size of his hands, the size of his penis, or that he doesn’t need to use Viagra, to see how afraid the man is of being exposed.

Indeed, in every encounter with Trump he appears like all those bullies at school who tried to pull the chairs from beneath girls they liked, or boys they were not as smart as, or kids who were more athletic and better looking than them. He exhibits all the behaviours of someone trying desperately hard to scare people into not mentioning his countless failures; his ugliness; his stupidity. If he were your grumpy, rude co-worker who made uncomfortable comments in team meetings, you might think him a sad case of a person who has never known love.

But Trump is not your grumpy, rude co-worker. He is the President of the United States; a great country that has irrefutably shaped the world (not always for good; but certainly not always for ill); and he is a representative of how the USA is in a moment of deep political crisis – as is all Western Democracy.

Challenging him and his ethos would usually fall to journalism or traditional media. Yet his clever use of ‘fake news’ and the inability of his opponents to mount an effective alternative to his reign has proven that traditional approaches will not suffice in this instance. Into the breach in its stead must step art – specifically, satirical art, and writing, which can put political pressure on misinformation, folly, and the abuse of power.

The power of satire

Satire is so subversive – and often politically fatal for those who rule – because it exposes the absurdities of power. Authority attempts to assert itself partly through a veneer of respectability and seriousness. When that is stripped away, its legitimacy can be lost, along with our subservience.

Historically, one can trace the power of Satire through such notable pieces as Jonathan Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’, which brought public attention to the plight of the Irish people and attacked those British politicians who had ignored the famines ravaging the country. You can also look to the satirical art that accompanied the French Revolutions which, as Will Self notes “were each accompanied by a satiric outburst”. Prior to and during the American revolutionary war of independence, satirical cartoons mocking King George “the buffoon” flourished in towns across America. In all these instances, it was the power of artistic satire that united people together to challenge the status quo and demand change; more so than the anger or shock of individuals could ever hope to achieve.

This point is crucial: our own individual convictions are worthless if all we do with them is try to shout more loudly or aggressively than ever other angry voice.

Anger at our political elite seldom fuels action to do anything about it, engendering instead an enraged passivity: people WRITE POLITICAL RANTS ALL IN CAPS on Twitter and Facebook, but this serves no purpose. No one reading these ravings who does not already agree with them will find anything of value to them. At best, it will confirm their belief that the world around them is full of anger and best avoided if possible. They will not engage with anger and hate unless it is an anger and hatred they already feel.

Burst the balloon

Here is where quality satirical art plays such a crucial role; because it helps engage those who otherwise find politics tedious. Laughter, it is famously said, is the best medicine. It’s true. You only need to have ever told a joke and made others laugh to see how they immediately warm to you. If you make people laugh with you, you can more easily direct their attention to the failures that exist in society. You can help them, gently and warmly, recognise the faults of those in power. And from there, they are far more likely to choose to fight against people like Trump who seek to sow fear and anger rather than laughter and love. And even if they don’t fight, their laughter at the cowardly bully trying to look tough may just be enough to burst his ballooning ego.

A call to arts

There is of course an argument that we need art that lifts up other, dispossessed voices. That keeps their ideas and creativity alive at a time when their existence is threatened by the policies of Trump and his right-wing cronies.

This too, we need. Of course this too. There is too much hate and anger in the world and we need diversity of thought more than ever. We need to support emerging artists and voices; but we also need to fight back. But it is not the pen that is mightier than the sword; but rather the laughter of millions that is more powerful than the fearful rage and angry Twitter ramblings of an infantile, cowardly egoist.

So, join in the good fight, comrades – before we can defeat Trump, we must deflate him. All power to your satirical typewriters and easels!

 

Get involved and submit your satirical pieces of art or writing to us directly through our contact us page. To get the ball rolling, read our collection of ‘Donald Trump poetry‘ – lines and verses taken straight from the rambling mouth of the fat dotard himself.