Actors can act lots of different things. They can act happy, sad, horny, drunk, even Irish. On queue, they will laugh, cry, dance, shout, smoke cigarettes (can they sue if they later get cancer?) and even take their clothes off (if you pay them enough). They pretend to play pianos by moving their hands up and down in time to the music. Actors can adopt limps, and stammers, and will even change their weight if the part demands it. They act at being great doctors and lovers and sharpshooters and even politicians (the last of which is essentially the same as acting). Many actors claim to do their own stunts. But no matter how talented an actor is, there is one commonplace activity that they often have to perform on screen that cannot be acted. They just have to do it as best as they can, the same way they always do it. And if they are no good at it, they cannot disguise the fact. In the heat of the action, many an actor needs to stop pulling faces and get on with some basic plot-driven footwork - by doing some old-fashioned running.
There must be many a thespian who, tired of taunts and jeers at their limp-wristed flouncing during Physical Education class, turned to the sanctuary of Drama for love and respect. Imagine their horror, as, years later, they land that big movie part, only to find it involves lots of running about. Instead of just humiliating themselves in front of their classmates, actors allow the whole world to see their awkward attempts at athleticism. With some artful use of editing and camera angles, even the flattest of foot might appear gazelle-like. But not all editing is artful enough. And in the competitive world of big screen acting, an actor that can really run is going to justify one or two extra exciting action shots - and maybe some more money in the process. So here, in no particular order, is my personal roll call of some of the great, the good, the mediocre and the downright ludicrous running performances of actors over the years.
Sylvester Stallone in Rocky: 8 out of 10. The big guy never had the right frame to be a good runner, but he still impresses because of how truly fit he was, with a decent sprint and those famous bounds up the steps in Philadelphia. This Italian Stallion can really gallop.
Harrison Ford in Star Wars: 8 out of 10. Ford shows himself a decent runner, despite adopting a silly head-down style which would only improve speed if you were running into a gale-force headwind. But as this video makes abundantly clear, anyone looks fast compared to a guy stuck in a stormtrooper outfit.
Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man: 6 out of 10. Apocryphal stories abound over how Laurence Olivier would tell the method actor Hoffman to ditch his attempts at being authentic, and just to act instead. Hoffman may have worked hard on his running method, but the end product is as ragged as it is energetic. It is exhausting just watching Hoffman run ten yards, never mind a marathon.
Matthew Broderick in Wargames: 7 out of 10. A fine effort by Broderick, but we never see his full running potential. Had this early film about a computer nerd involved more running, Broderick may have saved many a code jockey from teasing about their lack of physical prowess. In the pivotal running scene, Broderick effortlessly keeps pace with his colleagues as they run before the nuclear bunker door snaps shut. Hmmm… possible nuclear war… big door to the shelter is closing… only seconds left… got to run for your life… Would you hold back and be polite, keeping company with the goofy-running girl and the old guy with the strange staccato stride pattern? Not me! They would be eating my dust!
Tom Cruise in… everything he has been in: 10 out of 10. Cruise control? Tom is supersonic. Cruise has done a lot of top (gun) running during his career, and he showed he still has the fastest pair of sneakers in the West of Hollywood with some excellent long sprinting shots in MI:3. Here is a montage that shows no matter what the film, Cruise is a proven running talent who has consistently delivered over the decades.
Michael York in Logan’s Run: 2 out of 10. In this 70’s science fiction classic, York plays Logan, a ’sandman’ who chases ‘runners’. What a terrible piece of casting. I doubt York’s toes-pointed-outward style would enable him to catch a bus, even if it waited at the stop for him. Maybe he should shake the sand out of his shoes before he starts. If I was running after Jenny Agutter in her prime, I think I would move a darn sight faster.
John Cusack in Con Air: 1 out of 10. He is a talented actor, but Cusack runs like a total dork in this movie. If this is how fast Cusack moves in a life-or-death situation, I would hate to be stuck behind him in the queue at the Post Office.
Simon Pegg in Run Fatboy Run: 4 out of 10. It may be a comedy, but I doubt Pegg had to make an effort to look funny whilst running. As far as this movie was concerned, it is just a shame there were not more laughs in the script.
Robert Patrick in Terminator 2: 7 out of 10. Patrick has an upright running style, but it works well for the part and made for a memorably disconcerting image of a determined robot assassin from the future. If this guy was running in my direction, I would not be waiting to find out what he wants…
Orson Welles in The Third Man: 3 out of 10. Even before Orson got fat, he was obviously no speedster. This is one of the all-time great movies and the chase scene through Vienna’s sewers is a classic, but artful editing cannot hide just how slow Orson was. Running across rubble, over cobbles and through water is far from ideal, but all those quick edits are designed to mask how slow Welles is. As Welles points out in the film, it took 500 years for the Swiss to invent the cuckoo clock. Given that he is being chased by the police, Orson’s character must have been wishing they had spent that time devising faster running shoes…
Leslie Neilsen in And Millions Die!: 8 out of 10. A truly awful TV movie, I recommend you watch it if you ever get the chance. Sadly, I have no video to show here. Imagine Leslie Neilsen when he was still playing straight roles in B-movies, before he made Police Squad. Then imagine a 20-minute chase scene, all on foot, through the streets, the slums and even over the junks of Hong Kong. It has to be seen to be believed. Includes such classic ‘Wacky Races’ clichés as stopping to knock over obstacles in the way of the people chasing you, and, when it looks like you finally give them the slip, leaping out from your hiding place and whacking them over the head before doing yet more running and chasing. A great example of unintentional so-bad-it-is-good, and arguably a template for Neilsen’s later spoof-oriented career. But to be fair to Neilsen, he did a lot of running, and all of it was fast and convincing. In fact, it was the only believable thing in the film.
Kirsten Dunst in Wimbledon: 0 out of 10. Whatever Dunst’s talents, running is not one of them. Instead of running, she does that bouncy up-and-down thing that may look cute but basically gets you no further then jogging on the spot. Dunst’s character is supposed to be a top tennis player - it is no wonder you hardly see any scenes of her playing tennis and in the few there are the ball is hit straight to her. Pity her co-star Paul Bettany, who was very convincing in his extended tennis scenes, and looks like he might have a decent top speed with those long legs of his, but who clearly had to hold back when running with Dunst.
Sigourney Weaver in the Alien films: 5 out of 10. Weaver by name, weaver by nature, as Sigourney runs up and down the twisty turny corridors you always find in deep outer space (it is called ’space’ - so why is everything so narrow?). She kicks alien butt and handles both action and acting with equal ease. But if you watch closely, Weaver has an awkward elbows-out running style. My guess is she would be banging them each time she turned a corner…
Lee Majors in The Six Million Dollar Man: 3 out of 10. Majors is a beefy guy and hence not an elegant runner, and does not adequately compensate through a Stallone-like commitment to physical fitness. Speed up the film, slow down the film, but you cannot hide the fact that the only thing less convincing than Major’s wobbly running is his acting. Remember this was the man who tried to keep Farrah Fawcett at home to do his cooking… no wonder this leaden-footed and leaden-acting star ended up losing the girl and playing The Fall Guy. Fact followed fiction when several years ago, the bionic man had his knee replaced in real life.
Michelle Ryan in The Bionic Woman: 7 out of 10. As a tall woman, ex-Eastender Ryan looks slow off the mark, but when she gets going, she can really shift. In this reprisal of the 70’s show, she puts the star of the original series, Lindsay Wagner, to shame. Three cheers for an unexpected British acting and running success…
Keanu Reeves in… everything he has been in: 5 out of 10. Reeves looks like he should be a jock, and he has done plenty of running in plenty of action movies. But has there ever been anyone who runs so much with his shoulders? And his arms flail all over the place. If you see him running through a crowd, give him a wide berth, as he needs it. Take a look at what I mean with this montage:
Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump: 6 out of 10. Upright, and using a high action for both hands and knees, this style looks slow and tiring. But in a movie about a man who spends most of his life running, Hanks wins us over with persistence and stamina - much like his character.
Honourable mentions:
Hugh Grant running for Wedding #1 in Four Weddings and a Funeral. The hair is floppy but the gait is straight.
Christian Bale zipping up steps and racing down corridors like a bat out of hell in Equilibrium. Bale is my tip to take over Cruise’s crown as running action hero heartthrob.
Will Smith did some lanky but highly impressive alien chasing during the opening scenes of Men In Black.
Daniel Craig deserves a mention for his running in Casino Royale. Bulky Craig does not look fast, but his running is direct and purposeful - and hence it is totally believable when he runs through a plasterboard wall.
Harrison Ford (again) for several decades of running from boulders and natives as Indiana Jones. The last Indie flick may have been dire, but Ford is still fleet of foot in his mid-60’s.
I could go on. Like actors in action movies, this topic will run and run, with more outings as new actors show their strides on screen. It would also be great to hear your reviews of how actors move in motion pictures. When it comes to measuring the quality of acting legwork, there is only one rule. To paraphrase Yoda: run or run not, there is no act.
This post is about Shami Chakrabarti. If you are interested in current affairs, and live in the UK, and are not just pretending to be interested in current affairs to impress people at parties, and have not been in a coma for the last few years, and know what the words current affairs mean (hint: it has nothing to do with who got evicted from Big Brother) then you know who Shami Chakrabarti is already. For everybody else, you only need to know two things. First, she is the head of a British pressure group, called Liberty, that, according to its constitution,
shall advance measures and take such steps as it shall deem necessary for the defence and extension of civil liberties and human rights in the United Kingdom and the rights and freedoms recognised by international law.
Second, you do not want to know any more. So stop reading immediately!
Okay, so you either already knew who Shami Chakrabarti was, or could not stop yourself from reading on anyhow. Well, if you are going to read on, let me make one thing clear right now. I am not going to personally attack Shami Chakrabarti as a way of attacking her stance on defending habeas corpus, opposing extraordinary rendition, fighting against ID cards or any of that. I agree with her point of view on all of that. I really like civil liberties. They allow me to say what I think and do what I like (up to a point). So, just to repeat, I am not going to personally attack Shami Chakrabarti because I disagree the points of view she regularly expresses. No, I am going to personally attack Shami Chakrabarti because she really gets on my nerves. She annoys me. I want less Shami on the telly, less Chakrabarti on the radio, and fewer stories about her home and children in the press. I want to be liberated from the oppressively omnipresent Shami Chakrabarti.
How unfair of me, especially as I am now allowing Shami Chakrabarti to invade my own tiny plot of the blogosphere. Perhaps I am being unfair. I have never met Shami Chakrabarti in person, so maybe she is a lovely human being. Maybe one day I will meet her and be won over by her charm. If that day comes, I will probably regret what I am about to write. But feeling your life is overrun by people you have never met, and never chosen to have enter your life, is rather the problem with our modern cult of celebrity. Nothing has any substance greater than personality. For some reason, talk about our freedoms, liberties, and rights has escaped the common man, who did so much to establish them. It now belongs to the specialists, with Shami Chakrabarti serving as media personality specialist #1. To soften the blow, and popularize the idea of liberty amongst the dullards, we also get to hear about how Shami plays with her kid and what she thinks about some book. She is there to defend us, in a language we can understand, and whether we like it or not. She is there to protect us, because we are dolts who cannot protect our freedoms without her inspiring leadership. She is the face of freedom. Heaven forbid we ever live in a world without Shami Chakrabarti. This was how she put it when she was appointed a Commander of the British Empire:
I hope it will send a timely signal that democratic dissent is not disloyalty, it is a positive civic duty.
There you have it. Democratic dissent = what Shami Chakrabarti does. Forgive me for thinking democracy should have something to do with the people and not an elite that speak on behalf of themselves and their supporters, however noble their cause may be.
Cult of personality. That is why I dislike Shami Chakrabarti. She sits on panels for book awards. She has just been appointed chancellor of a university. She attempts to joke around on Have I Got News For You. She gives poor answers to questions about taxation when she is on Question Time. She is everywhere, and always with the same flimsy justification - that she defends our rights. From what exactly? From the British lawmakers that were elected by… the British people. I have literally no idea how she does it. It seems to involve her not being very witty on comedy shows, not being very incisive on panel shows and during interviews, and having her photo taken an awful lot whilst wearing too much eye make-up. Other than that, I have no idea what she does. Maybe it will influence us to vote better at the next general election… if only we thought voting would make a difference and if only we were less preoccupied with petrol prices going up and house prices going down. Somehow the rationale must be that we need Shami Chakrabarti to personify the issues we otherwise would not care about or try to understand. Just check out her flippant and unfunny answer to a perfectly reasonable question asked by a reader of The Independent:
Paddy Fletcher, Vauxhall: Do you ever worry that you’ve become overexposed?
Shami Chakrabarti: Whoops. Many thanks. Zips can be so unreliable.
The problem with the cult of personality is that it has nothing to do with democracy. The good thing about democracy is that we can chuck out rubbish rulers. We may well replace them with even more rubbish rulers, but we can chuck them out too. But nobody can chuck out Shami Chakrabarti. She exists in the gulf between nobodies like you and me (the people) and the lawmakers we vote for (who are hence accountable to voters and can be chucked out). Her vote counts no more than yours or mine. She is not in any kind of office. Yet somehow, by some mysterious process, she is supposedly important, at least to journalists desperate for someone to fill all those precious column inches, television pixels, and radio frequencies.
Once upon a time, Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt were important in the same way Shami Chakrabarti now is. Harman and Hewitt were also the kind of people who defended our liberties, working for the National Council of Civil Liberties (NCCL). H&H were crusading in the NCCL long before Shami Chakrabarti became a lawyer (apparently we had some liberties back then) and before the NCCL decided to rebrand itself with the media-friendly moniker of Liberty. So, in short, H&H used to do the same kind of thing as Shami Chakrabarti does now. Since then, Hewitt and Harman started entering and winning elections. H&H ended up being the kind of people who get into power and use it to introduce ID cards and threaten habeas corpus. Hewitt has returned to the back benches, and become a little more outspoken on our liberties as a result, but Harman is still right there at the middle, serving as Lord Privy Seal, Leader of the House of Commons, Minister for Women and Equality, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and Party Chair. So you could say she is right in the middle of the current government. The current government that Shami Chakrabarti is endlessly campaiging against. Ironic, huh? Not really. We should not be surprised that self-important people use single-issue groups like Liberty as vehicles to promote themselves. By doing so, they get more power, and become more pragmatic (by which I mean they are compromise on some things to get their way on other things) and end up being exactly the kind of people they were supposed to be vehemently opposed to. And even then they refuse to see the truth of it. Power corrupts. Even the meagre, listless prominence that comes with fronting a pressure group can offer a taste of power that would seduce the weak amongst us. Now, of course, I may be horribly unfair to Shami Chakrabarti, but if the previous representatives of her pressure group are anything to go by, there is good reason to be sceptical about whether Chakrabarti really is motivated by a deep-seated concern for our liberties and not by the wonderful opportunity to put herself in the spotlight. Looking at Liberty’s website, you get the impression that a Stalinist airbrush has already been applied to eliminate the inconvenient truths about its recent history. You can find no trace of the close personal connections between the pressure group and the government which it is so critical of.
Now, irritating though I find Shami Chakrabarti, my being irritated is not enough reason to blog about her. If I blogged about everybody who irritated me, my hands would be crippled from RSI. However, like Chakrabarti, I feel recent events compel me to take a stand. Despite her appearances on comedy shows, it seems Chakrabarti has a poorer sense of humour than an Abu Ghraib prison guard. She combines this with a skin so thin that, in comparison, an extra sensitive condom would feel like a coconut husk. And/or (take your pick) she is even more desperate for public attention than… I thought she was already. Which is a lot. Bystanders are at risk of being caught in the political cross-fire between the Labour government and David Davies, former front-bencher for the Tories, as Davies tries to generate publicity through fighting a by-election. In an interview with the Blairite Progress Magazine, a journal primarily written by Labour party members for other Labour party members, Andy Burnham, Labour cabinet member, said the following:
To people who get seduced by Tory talk of how liberal they are, I find something very curious in the man who was, and still is I believe, an exponent of capital punishment having late-night, hand-wringing, heart-melting phone calls with Shami Chakrabarti
And that was it - the only mention of Shami Chakrabarti in an article that hardly anyone would ever have read. If it was meant as an insult, it is a pretty tame one. It is also hard to work out whether the insult is intended more for Davies or Chakrabarti, though I assume it is aimed at Davies, as Chakrabarti has not stated an ambition for high office (yet). Heart-melting is a pretty strange choice of words, but this is hardly the most vicious verbal assault one could imagine. I have no affection for the talentless New Labour drone Burnham, but the way I read this, he was trying to conjure up the idea that Chakrabarti and Davies make strange bedfellows, without meaning to imply they are literal bedfellows. The language is crass and ham-fisted. If he had just said they were strange bedfellows he would have achieved the same allusion without anyone questioning the metaphorical nature of what was said. Given this is the knock-about world of politics, you might expect Davies would be the one who might react to slap down Burnham. Yet Chakrabarti was the one who flew into rage, and penned this missive:
Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Department for Culture Media & Sport
2-4 Cockspur Street
London
SW1Y 5DH
19th June 2008
Secretary of State
I am writing in relation to your recent article in the ironically titled “Progress” magazine. In that article you set out to smear my dealings with the former Shadow Home Secretary. I must say that I find this behaviour curious, coming as it does from a Cabinet Minister; let alone someone with a partner and family of his own.
By your comments you debase not only a great office of State but the vital debate about fundamental rights and freedoms in this country. Indeed you seem reluctant to engage in that debate except in this tawdry fashion.
I look forward to your written apology as I’m sure does Mrs Davis. If on the other hand you choose to continue down the path of innuendo and attempted character assassination, you will find that the privileged legal protection of the parliament chamber does not extend to slurs made in the wider public domain. The fruits of any legal action will of course go to Liberty (the National Council for Civil Liberties).
Sincerely,
Shami Chakrabarti
Director
Liberty
21 Tabard Street
London SE1 4LA
cc:
The Prime Minister
The Attorney General
[Before I pull the letter apart, an interesting sidenote for all those people who still refuse to believe that cynical political careerists use nice middle-class pressure groups as CV-building exercises: The Chair of Progress is Stephen Twigg, the man who slayed Michael Portillo in 1997, and who suffered his own surprise election defeat in 2005 due to the backlash over Iraq. Before he entered Parliament, Twigg was employed as a lobbyist for another human rights organization - Amnesty International.]
Hmmm. Where to begin with analyzing Chakrabarti’s letter? Well, for a start, it is poorly written. I know my writing here is hardly perfect, but this is a blog, and I hope you never catch me making a mistake about where to use a semicolon; let alone using a contraction that treats the written word like it’s spoken. Next, to accuse Burnham of a smear is an exaggeration. Calling John Prescott a fat stupid Northerner with two Jags is a smear, but that never stopped anyone. Then we get the strange idea that this kind of behaviour might be considered curious. Who still thinks that a personal attack by one politician on another politician, especially one using humour, sarcasm or innuendo, might be curious? I mean, what did Shami Chakrabarti think was happening when she appeared on Have I Got News For You? The perceived wrong - that Burnham might be hinting there really is a romantic connection between Davies and Chakrabarti - is simultaneously so oblique and absurd that to read the comment that way borders on paranoia. Nobody would have noticed if she had not drawn attention to it. Perhaps Chakrabarti really should steer clear of real politics in her later life. Imagine how she would react if she faced some real mudslinging! If you think about the nonsense that early pioneers like Barbara Castle or Margaret Thatcher probably had to put up with in order to reach high office, this trifling slight would barely register. Or perhaps Chakrabarti is the perfect modern politician, able to turn any piffle into positive publicity.
In the second paragraph we find out Burnham has debased a great office of State. Come again? He is Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Since when was that a great office of State? Then we get a bit of not-too-subtle innuendo from Chakrabarti herself, implying that Burnham is afraid of debate. She might as well have written that Burnham is a great big scaredy cat with a yellow streak down his back… and started making buk-buk noises and flapping her arms like chicken wings. Is she talking about the same Andy Burnham that appeared alongside her on Question Time on February 7? How much debating does the poor man need to do with Chakrabarti? It must be hard to compete with Chakrabarti, who is employed to debate full-time, and hence is spared the responsibility to do anything else in life. In the end, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport does not need to debate human rights with some self-appointed champion. We have a Parliament to sort that out. It is imperfect, but nobody said otherwise.
Final paragraph: apologize… or else! Perhaps Burnham hit a raw nerve, because Chakrabarti writes like a jilted lover. And then comes the big threat if Burnham continues “down the path” (he never reached the front door, never mind the garden gate.) Chakrabarti will use the law to… shut him up. So what should I be more angry/bemused about? Is it:
This is not so much making a mountain out of a molehill, but rather making Everest out of an atom;
The likeliest reason for all this hyperbolic posturing seems to be to create yet more press coverage for Chakrabarti - this story has been repeated everywhere from the Daily Mail to the BBC - and not to promote any meaningful debate about our liberties or anything else; or
The flippant attitude it shows towards our freedom of speech?
I think I am going to settle on that last answer.
Note that Chakrabarti has not sued yet. She has threatened to sue, if Burnham continues to do what he has done so far. So far he has spouted 45 words that might be construed as a mild rebuke of Chakrabarti. If he even dares to write a nasty postcard about her, his allowance will be all used up and Chakrabarti will be compelled to unleash the dogs of law. Threats serve only one purpose in life. They serve to intimidate. Intimidation is not the natural tool of the libertarian. This episode shows an unpleasant flexibility and asymmetry in Chakrabarti’s attitude to our fundamental liberties. She will happily discourage people from speaking freely by using the threat of legal punishment, if they dare to copy her tactics of personalizing an abstract argument. Meanwhile, Chakrabarti revels in the freedom to criticize and chide from her unelected platform through one media outlet after another. And remember, it is not just the government she is qualified to criticize. Chakrabarti is equally quick to find fault with the writings of J.K. Rowling or the commonsense suggestions of “well-meaning liberals”. Here is a quick mental note for any would-be Salman Rushdies and Danish cartoonists out there - better not turn to Chakrabarti for help in a fight about your right for free expression. Chakrabarti obviously does not subscribe to the libertarian principles of Voltaire:
The problem with the Director of Liberty is that she has lost her sense of perspective. She fails to properly distinguish the difference between principles and personalities, which is understandable, as she is a product of the syndrome that blurs the two. Chakrabarti may espouse freedom, but she does not embody it. Public criticism of Chakrabarti is not an attack on our liberty, it is the enjoyment of our liberty. In a democracy, people in the public eye must be subject to criticism. There is a happy union between criticism and comedy, which has a rich history within Britain. Chakrabarti is in many ways the ideal spokesperson for our era. In a world obsessed with delivering equality through quotas, a young, female poster child of Asian parentage must be an ideal complement to all those horrid old white men. Never mind that she is a lawyer nevertheless, and still part of an elite and privileged class in our society. And never mind that J.S. Mill was no less right because he was a white man who wrote On Liberty when he was in his 50’s. But if Chakrabarti turns into a po-faced and litigious harridan every time somebody rebukes her, we are better off without such an advocate of our liberties. Let us have a quick look again at the constitution of Liberty, the pressure group that Chakrabarti represents and is the source of her fame:
2.1 …In particular Liberty shall strive to ensure and safeguard the right to…
(f) freedom of thought, conscience and belief;
(g) freedom of speech and publication…
So that would include the freedom to think that Shami Chakrabarti may be behaving in a contradictory or confused manner, and to say so out aloud. But then I am not a lawyer or CBE like Shami Chakrabarti, and hence lack the brilliant legal mind which would doubtless explain why she is not really vain and selfish, but only seems to be. I only have the naïve instincts for liberty shared by democratic masses, which doubtless explains why Chakrabarti must work so tirelessly - interview after interview, panel show after panel show - to protect us from ourselves.
Humour is a necessary and vital weapon in democratic society. It punctures the egos of the pompous and cuts down the would-be leaders that seek to rise too high above the rest of us. It is essential to the execution of the British sense of fair play. They say the pen is mightier than the sword. If that is so, then the pen used in humour is a rapier, that dazzles as it slices through opponents with finesse and ease. We must use humour to remorselessly prick at anyone who, like Chakrabarti, would don a lawyerly suit of armour to evade the barbs of democratic wit and ridicule. We must use sarcasm and satire to expose the faults of anyone and everyone in public life. Comedy, even the clowning of Andy Burnham, is an essential tool for bringing the would-be elite back down to the level of the common man. We must all learn to tolerate jokes and japes without regular recourse to legal threats. In that spirit, I present my own modest contribution to the British legacy for lampooning our would-be betters, a variation on this traditional theme…
Oh dear, what can the matter be,
Dear Sha-mi Chak-ra-ba-r-ti?
You’re too used to the flattery
Don’t go into such a sulk.
They promised to let you on Have I Got News For You?
Interviews on Today; slots on Question Time too,
But no-one said that they’d ever poke fun at you,
Better learn to take a joke.
[repeat until liberties and spirits are restored...]
I was at the Reading Festival (a music festival in Reading, Berkshire, England - not a festival about reading books) a few years ago, and, like you do, I struck up a conversation with a complete stranger. Conversations in such circumstances usually relate to musical tastes, and my interlocutor announced:
“I can’t stand emo”
I replied by paraphrasing something Guy Picciotto once said (do not worry if you have no idea who he is, you will soon enough). What Guy Picciotto actually said was:
“I’ve never recognized ‘emo’ as a genre of music. I always thought it was the most retarded term ever. I know there is this generic commonplace that every band that gets labeled with that term hates it. They feel scandalized by it. But honestly, I just thought that all the bands I played in were punk rock bands. The reason I think it’s so stupid is that - what, like the Bad Brains weren’t emotional? What - they were robots or something? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.”
The conversation meandered on for a bit longer and then we both stopped and started listening to whatever band was playing on the main stage at that time. I am pretty sure they were not an emo band… if there is such a thing. And then, my friend Christian, who had been stood beside me and listening to this whole conversation with this stranger, asked me
“what’s emo?”
which made me feel moderately cool and with it. Knowing about emo somehow validated that I was still in touch with the kids, which is rather satisfying when you are a 30-something that is well on the way to being a 40-something. So I explained to Christian what emo is, or is not, depending on whether you believe it exists in the first place. The explanation went something like the following….
There was a band called Hüsker Dü that formed in 1979. Although they were never very successful, they were ahead of their time. They did something new and unique but which started a trend that has influenced a lot of other bands since. In the beginning they were a typical hardcore punk band, but after a while they learned how to play melodies too. They did both AT THE SAME TIME. The Hüsker Dü equation is hence: hardcore punk + melody = three-minute injections of melodic energy. Here is an example:
About the time that Hüsker Dü split up, the Washington D.C. hardcore scene was blossoming. In 1987, a new band, Fugazi came together. It was made up of members of earlier bands that had been important in that scene. They wanted to deviate from the standard hardcore formula, and introduce ideas and sounds drawn from other genres like funk, raggae and even hip-hop. Here is a live version of one their earliest and best known songs:
Neither Hüsker Dü nor Fugazi were emo, or “emotive hardcore” to give emo its full title. At least, there were not emo at the time, because nobody was emo at that time. In fact, it is debatable if emo really is a musical genre even now, because the bands have so little in common musically. However, language is determined by what people actually say, and these days some people certainly talk like there is a musical genre called emo. If you think like Guy Picciotto, of Fugazi, then there is no such thing as emo, because the term makes no sense. On the other hand, lots of people think Hüsker Dü and Fugazi, amongst others, established the basis for emo music. Of course, they were not trying to create the mould for a new genre of music, they were trying to break - or at least bend - the mould of an existing genre. Emo is what you get when you start out with hardcore punk, then learn to play a bit of melody, then experiment and combine it with some other musical influences, then slow it down a bit because you are getting old, then retire, then some kids listen to your old records and start copying them. That is emo. Emo is teenage punk anger and vitality morphed by broadening tastes and old age then morphed again when rediscovered by a new era of angsty teenagers. Which is why people brand Guy Piccotto’s old band, Fugazi, as emo, whether he likes it not (for proof, browse through the comments on this site.)
So emo had a bad start in life. Emo is unloved by its musical parentage, who refuse to understand it or condone it. But being willful youngsters, emo fans persist in their love of the music anyhow. As befits their mixed up parentage, emos wear lots of black, but they end up looking more like goths than punks. If you wanted a perfect stereotype for the modern, sensitive, thoughtful teenager that is the antithesis of the chav and desires music suitable for both listening to in darkened bedrooms and for jumping around to in the open air, you would probably settle on the emo. Despite being disowned by their musical forebears, the emos persist in their devotions regardless. But now a worse fate has befallen them. Sensitive thoughtful young people who want to listen to different music, to dress differently and to be different run the risk of attracting unwanted attention. They make an appealing target for bullies. And now the emos have been targeted by perhaps the biggest bully of all: the 15th most popular newspaper in the world, and the self-appointed mouthpiece of the British middle classes, the Daily Mail.
If you had never heard of Hüsker Dü or Fugazi or Guy Picciotto or any of that, I can assure you that nobody writing for the Daily Mail has heard of them either. In fact, they know rather less about emo than my friend Christian now does. Or perhaps they know a lot more. A LOT more. Because, it seems, the explanation I gave Christian may have been totally wrong. I, like the stranger I was talking to at Reading Festival, naïvely thought emo had something to do with music. How wrong we were. Thankfully, we have the well-informed research performed by the journalists at the Daily Mail to clear up our ignorance. It turns out, according to the Daily Mail, that emo is in fact a ritual death cult.
Perhaps I should do a little research about emo through the internet. You know, the kind of research even the laziest and stupidest journalist might want to consider doing. Here is a summary of the results I obtained when trying to find an answer to the rather silly question as to what emo is…
There you have it. A true case of pioneering, trail-blazing investigative journalism. Everybody interested in emo thinks it is a kind of music, or a sort of music, or not really a sort of music but something to do with music. In contrast, the Daily Mail’s research has shown emo to be a death cult. Let us have a closer look at the foundations of the Daily Mail’s death cult claims, to see how solid they are. Back in 2006, the Daily Mail was warning middle class parents (presumably their middle class kids have moved on to read better quality newspapers and so cannot be influenced by the Daily Mail) about the cult of emo. In a depressingly random article, which cited Byron, Lily Allen and everything in between, we found out that bad taste references to death in the fringes of music, art and cartoons (cartoons??) provided enough justification for the author to worry about the irresponsible way that music and fashion ‘cultures’ (suitably vague to ensure the Daily Mail could not be sued by anyone in particular) were encouraging a cult of suicide. You can read it here. What a lot of obnoxious rot. No actual evidence was cited to justify the preposterous claim that emo was a death cult, but it seems guilt by association was enough for this lazy journalist. What exactly do we learn from this masterpiece of insight?
Byron had gothic tastes.
An unnamed governor of an unnamed school said self-harm is as serious a problem as binge drinking.
Apparently emos share tips on self-harm via the internet [but we are not told where on the internet, presumably out of a self-righteous desire not to encourage that kind of thing].
Nigella Lawson is alluring and has a touch of goth about her.
Horror films are now more popular than romances amongst young women.
Emo is a death cult.
Hmmm. Forgive me if I fail to see the logical sequitur in the argument. Perhaps it has something to do with Byron dying from a bad cold or this journalist living next door to a school governor. Strangely, the journalist lists every possible source to justify the concern that a death cult is on the rise, but can find only one cause - emo music. For some inexplicable reason, the poetry of Byron, the content of horror films and the recipes of Nigella Lawson are not held accountable for the actions of today’s black-wearing youth, but emo music is.
On the same basis, I too have done some research, and found out some shocking facts about a music and fashion culture popular not just with today’s youth, but with people of all ages and walks of life. It transpires that there is this music called rock and roll (sometimes abbreviated to rock ‘n’ roll) which is responsible for all of the following:
Obesity. A guy called Elvis Presley reportedly ate too many hamburgers.
Drugs. Keith Moon of the The Who and Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones both lost their lives because of their rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.
Paedophilia. Someone called Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year old cousin. That story is tame compared to what Gary Glitter did.
Plane Crashes. Victims include Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, and several members of Lynyrd Skynyrd.
AIDS. However, some argue that Freddie Mercury died because of a crazy little thing called love.
Death Cults. Bradford band The Cult have previously been responsible for the Southern Death Cult and then Death Cult. Clearly these are more than just silly and pompous names. Although nobody has been known to have committed suicide as a result of their music, severe irritation can be caused to any unwilling listeners.
The Daily Mail’s claim in 2006 that emo musical acts had encouraged fans to commit suicide was based on the flimsiest of associations. Encouraging your fans to die is hardly a good way to secure long-term popularity, and it is not as if the Daily Mail was able to pinpoint anyone specifically. However, the Daily Mail’s dreams of forging a link between a minor musical fashion and teenage suicide were to be realized two years later. In 2008, a depressed 13 year old from Kent called Hannah Bond killed herself. How did the Daily Mail respond? In a calm and balanced way, pointing out that of the lamentable teenage suicides that had taken place, this was the first one they could link to emo music? No. Instead, their headline read: “Why no child is safe from the sinister cult of emo”. You would think a single death hardly justifies the conclusion that there is a dangerous trend - one which no child is apparently safe from. Other teenagers will sadly have taken their lives since the Daily Mail started its witless campaign; presumably none fit the skewed viewpoint espoused by the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail, undaunted by the absence of facts, resorted to lies, damned lies and statistics. Its article stated the following:
“New figures show that the number of children admitted to hospital due to injuries inflicted on themselves has risen by a third in five years.
In 2002/03 there were 11,891 such admissions; in 2006/07 this had risen to 15,955.
In both periods, there were more than three times as many admissions of girls as of boys.
Crucially, those who self-harm are more likely to go on to attempt suicide. While there is a multitude of reasons for this epidemic (exam-related stress and bullying to name but two), it is hardly surprising that the emergence of a sub-culture that appears to glamorise self-harm and even suicide is being regarded with alarm.”
Did you notice the ham-fisted logical plunge into the abyss? The Daily Mail threw some meaningless stats in the reader’s face, admitted there a multitude of reasons for the epidemic of suicides, then slipped in an irrelevant non-fact: that alarm has been caused (by journalists) seeking to make a tenuous link between fashion trends in youths and suicide. In other words, the only substantiation for this link is the suicide of a single unfortunate young girl. Any reader might have the impression that “because those who self-harm are more likely to go on to attempt suicide” that there are rising numbers of suicides in the UK, and that girls are particularly vulnerable. However, the official statistics tell us the opposite story. Suicide rates in the UK are falling according to national statistics. Looking at the detailed numbers on UK suicides shows that, for more than a decade, and across all age groups, males are three times more likely to commit suicide than females. The official data on suicides, rather than showing a link between the musical tastes of teenage girls and suicide, shows the people most likely to commit suicide are least likely to correspond to the description of 13 year old Hannah Bond. It rather tells us we should consider poor Hannah a one-off, or that we should look for the explanations for her suicide elsewhere.
The reason to be so dismissive of the Daily Mail is that, if they wanted, they could have trawled through emo lyrics to find examples of the glamorization of self-harm and suicide. But they do not. Is this out of a heart-felt concern not to further draw attention to them? I doubt it. More likely, the Daily Mail looked hard, but could not find a single example to back their claims. No serious examination of the content of emo music justifies such an outrageous slur. The Daily Mail had to shamelessly focus on the title of an album by one of the best-known emo bands, My Chemical Romance. That album is The Black Parade. It is a concept album, and it tells the story of a life, from beginning to end. The black parade is a metaphor for the end of life. Does that mean it glamorizes death? Hardly. Take a look at some of the lyrics from one song on the album, called Welcome To The Black Parade:
We’ll carry on
We’ll carry on
And though you’re dead and gone believe me
Your memory will carry on
We’ll carry on
And though you’re broken and defeated
Your weary widow marches on
Do or die, you’ll never make me
Because the world will never take my heart
Go and try, you’ll never break me
We want it all, we wanna play this part (We’ll carry on)
Sounds like pretty life-affirming stuff to me - carrying on and not being defeated in the face of death. I would love to see a lazy Daily Mail journalist try to twist the interpretation of those lines into a message encouraging suicide. Suicide is about giving up, not carrying on. Now if you want a song about giving up, you should try this one:
So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye-
So you think you can love me and leave me to die-
Oh baby- cant do this to me baby-
Just gotta get out- just gotta get right outta here-
Nothing really matters,
Anyone can see,
Nothing really matters-, nothing really matters to me,
Any way the wind blows….
Those of course are lines from Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Did that song start a death cult too? Or how about There Is A Light by The Smiths:
And if a double-decker bus
Crashes into us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
And if a ten-ton truck
Kills the both of us
To die by your side
Well, the pleasure - the privilege is mine
Did teenage road deaths go up as a result?
Fortunately, the educated middle-class kids showed the Daily Mail that they too intend to carry on, in the best way imaginable for educated middle-class kids… by holding a march and demo outside of the Daily Mail offices. Of course, it was all orchestrated by My Chemical Romance as a neat bit of publicity for them. But then, if I were in My Chemical Romance, and the Daily Mail was having a go at me, I too would make sure I made the most of the opportunity to build my fan base by fighting back against one of the most reviled institutions in Britain. I half hope that the Daily Mail will attack this blog, just for the inevitably tide of sympathy that would flow my way afterwards. Of course, it must have been very annoying for the Daily Mail to have its silly stories about suicide-obsessed youth unwilling to leave their bedrooms undermined by gangs of black-clad teenagers gleefully singing protest songs in the bright light of day whilst sat outside their offices. There is even talk of releasing a documentary about the demo. As might be expected, some internet pranksters gave a clue as to where most of the scare stories linking suicide to emo really come from. They changed a single letter in the URL for the demo’s website, and put up a near-identical copy, except that it included several spoof videos asking the demonstrators to show their contempt for the Daily Mail by committing mass suicide. Hmmm - not very funny. But even that showed more humour than the self-righteous press release issued by the Daily Mail following the emo protest:
“Mrs Bond told the court: In Emo it is a very glamorous death to hang yourself. The band she was into, the music she was into-the whole thing is based on the black parade which is all about dying. She called Emo a fashion and I thought it was normal. I didn’t know about the cuts.
Her father said he had seen cuts on her wrists and his daughter had told him they were an Emo initiation…
…We note it has been pointed out by others that all this provides wonderful publicity for Warners and their impending release of My Chemical Romance’s latest album.
The Daily Mail is a broad church and is always ready to listen to the views of readers. We do, however, suggest those who want to protest or comment read everything we have published and act on fact not rumour.”
Talk about the pot calling the emo black! In a few short paragraphs, we are lead to believe that Hannah’s Bond mother is some kind of expert on emo lyrics (which she obviously is not), that My Chemical Romance are cynical for using the suicide of a young girl for publicity purposes (and presumably are supposed to believe the Daily Mail is only motivated by the public interest) and that people should act on fact, not rumour, when the Daily Mail printed a lot of words, but very few facts! Perhaps the Daily Mail would have done a better job if they asked some hard questions of Hannah Bond’s parents instead of exploiting their grief. Their opinions were printed as if they were facts. These opinions were then backed by a biased trawl for any information that might back the Daily Mail’s existing claim that emo is a threat to all kids. A simple glance at the stats on suicides shows the Daily Mail turned a convenient blind eye to any information that did not suit their story. Given that the Daily Mail had to wait two years for an emo kid to commit suicide, and so give credibility to their silly claims about death cults, it should not be surprising they were less than objective when it eventually happened. A tiny bit of objectivity would have helped tell the story of this suicide. The astute reader may have noticed some very disturbing revelations about Hannah’s parents in those few paragraphs of justification released by the Daily Mail. Whilst Mrs. Bond professes to know about the content of the music her daughter listened to, she said she was unaware of the cuts on her daughter’s wrists. Her father, on the other hand, had seen those cuts. What does this tell us about the state of communication in that family? Did the parents spend so much time worrying about lyrics, that they never thought to talk to each other about the scars on their daughter’s body?
We live in a world that can be intolerant of anyone who wants to be different. Depressed people will find various ways to express themselves; limiting freedom of expression deals with the symptoms, not the cause of depression. I am not worried about young people dressing up and feeling a little sorry for themselves. I am worried about them being punished and persecuted for doing so. In recent times, we have had stories from all over the world about cruelty to young people who express a different taste in music or fashion. In Mexico and Chile, emo kids have been physically attacked. In the UK, a young Goth couple were attacked without provocation by a drunken gang of teenagers. As a consequence, 20 year old Sophie Lancaster lost her life. The hectoring, bullying style of the Daily Mail, designed to deliberately whip up misunderstanding, fear and suspicion, should be seen in light of that intolerance. Thankfully, a good number of people have had the courage to speak out against the Daily Mail and name it for what it is: bigotry. Bigotry fuels the fear on our streets. If the parents of emo kids want what is best for them, they should not punish them for being different. They should punish the Daily Mail for spreading irrational fear about anything and anyone different to the norm.
In recent days, another 13 year old emo fan, Sam Leeson, has sadly chosen to take his own life. However, the press, including the Mail, has so far taken a more reasoned tone in presenting the story. Instead of blaming the emo music and culture, the explanation cited in this case is bullying. Bebo, the social networking site, is blamed for being the conduit of this bullying. That too seems an absurd inversion of logic. The blame squarely rests with the bullies, and not the mode of communication they use. We do not blame BT if a bully makes a phone call to abuse a victim, and the same should be true of Bebo or any internet site. The Mail’s reporting of the story interestingly makes no mention of Hannah Bonds or the hysterical way that emo was blamed as the cause of her death, despite the earlier claim that to do so was in the public interest. They do not even refer to My Chemical Romance or The Black Parade although other papers report that Sam was a fan of My Chemical Romance and had adorned his Bebo page was their pictures and lyrics. Perhaps there are a couple of factors at play here. For a start, it sounds like Sam Leeson, though an emo fan, did not fit the absurd but carefully crafted rationalization constructed by the Daily Mail to explain the Hannah Bonds suicide. The Daily Mail had emphasized self harm amongst girls, and Sam was a boy, with no mention being made of him ever harming himself. Sam is described as also liking other bands that sit outside of the emo scene. Most importantly, there is no quote from a parent citing emo as the cause. The other factor here is that even the Daily Mail must be wary of pushing their luck too far. Prissy claptrap may help sell newspapers, but not if it leads to a backlash. This can happen if it becomes too obvious when human misfortunes are both milked and twisted to suit sales targets and editorial stances. Linking emo with death cults is a rather unsubtle form of bullying, designed to encourage people to think of emo fans as miserable suicidal loners. That kind of bullying leads to a self-fulfilling prophesy. Depression can follow from bullying, and bullying is a likely result of ill-considered attempts to marginalize the tastes and fashions of minorities amongst young people. It is a terrible shame that another young person has to lose their life for some self-regarding journalists to show they can act with a modicum of responsibility. However, we should not expect better until readers start responding to these reckless scribblers in the only way that will make a difference - by not buying their papers, and so punishing their wallets.
Truth be told, like the stranger I met at Reading Festival, I do not like emo music. I loved some bands that are cited as the originators of emo, but I have no love for most of the bands branded emo today. To my ears, their hardcore origins have been watered-down too far. But my not liking emo is not a reason to stop other people from liking it. One of the Daily Mail journalists argued that kids should listen to Ian Dury instead of emo. That is what happens when you give the average moron an opportunity to write what they think in a newspaper. They write that the world would be a better place if everyone was more like them, and less like you. I hate the music of Ian Dury, not that he ever did any harm to me, or to anyone else, as far as I know. If I was marooned alone on a desert island with only an album of Ian Dury’s greatest hits for company, I would gleefully hit it with my rhythm stick until it was unplayable. Then hit it a little more to make sure. Then burn the remnants. Then tie it to a rock and throw it into the sea. If I was bored I might go diving for it and if I found it I would hit it a bit more. So you might say I am more of a fan of emo than I am of Ian Dury. Listing what people should like, and should not like, what they should do, and should not do, is what the Daily Mail does best. The only thing is, they never risk having an opinion that might seriously jar with a large number of its readers. Which is why it is the 15th most popular in the newspaper in the world. Middle class parents did a poor job of dealing with depression in the family? Better not print that. Blaming some minor trend in music is far easier and far less challenging. The Daily Mail only attacks people if they sit outside of its readership, belying its authority to be a moral guardian. Of course, the easiest people to pick on are the ones on the margins, such as kids who like to dress up in black. The Daily Mail is the exemplar of the modern, democratic, self-appointed thought police. Think the way we do, or there is something wrong with you. Dress like us, talk like us, mouth the same opinions as us, listen to the same music as us, or there is something wrong with you. The journalists at the Daily Mail are little more than rabble rousers for bullies. Like any bully, the only way to beat them is to stand up to them. If you want to live in a happy world, then I have two suggestions. Save the emo; give succour to emos and anyone else who takes a healthy pleasure from being different (which includes Ian Dury too, I have to admit). Starve the Daily Mail; render it, and any other trumped-up bullies impotent, by turning your back to them. To feed our freedoms, we need facts, not fear-mongering.
A few thousand years ago, God and the Devil were winding down after a day of hard negotiation on the Heaven and Hell Entrance Criteria Steering and Coordination Committee….
Devil: You really need to tell St. Peter to loosen up. He keeps turning away people and sending them to me for the pettiest little wrongs they have committed. I mean, coveting your neighbour’s ox? Or your neighbour’s wife, or your neighbour’s slave? Who has not coveted one of those three at some point in time? Everybody is going to do a little coveting here and there. You should be a bit more forgiving of the coveting. I do well enough with murder and avarice and fornication - another record year for fornication, by the way - so I have no need for all these borderline sinners Peter keeps sending my way. Hey, don’t get me wrong, business is booming and I love the way my annual figures keep coming in way ahead of forecast, but finding an apartment in downtown Hell is really getting beyond a joke. Things are getting so bad one that my zoning commission has decided to thaw all the ice in zone 4 to make room for new people. We are going to move all the traitors we froze there into a new out-of-town cryogenic storage plant. Projections are that it will cost half as much to administer, and allow us to inflict 30% more pain and suffering on its incumbents. But we got some tough deadlines to meet if we are going to make room for all the newcomers. I told those demons I got managing the project that if they don’t deliver on time I will bring them back to Earth and make them work on a really miserable job, like digging the Suez Canal or opening Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport.
God: Don’t tell anyone I said this, but you are right. The heavenly property market is stagnant, and it does trouble me that everybody who gets my name wrong is sent down to you automatically. That hardly gives me a fighting chance, does it? Last time I looked you were a clear billion ahead of me in the soul count and the gap keeps widening. But don’t worry, I have some radical plans to turn things around. Coveting slaves is going to be fixed for sure, because I got this guy called Lincoln and he is going to free them all in a little while, so there’ll be no more coveting of them. Coveting wives will be a bit trickier, but we are thinking that maybe we can cook up a women’s lib movement and encourage the wives to covet other husbands, thus realizing some kind of equality before the law and reducing the need for our intervention. Finally, we got a real great plan for what to do with the coveting of the oxen…
Devil: Tell me, tell me…
God: You’re gonna love this. Instead of having people pulling carts and ploughs and what not with the oxen, I have just last week put some real energy-intensive black stuff in the ground. In a while they will dig it up, and starting burning it as a fuel source for all sorts of uses like power generation and motor vehicles.
Devil: But doesn’t that just mean that people will stop coveting cattle, and will instead covet their neighbour’s new Mercedes instead?
God: Sure! But it doesn’t say anything about coveting automobiles in the Bible, does it? And everyone knows the Bible is meant to be read literally, so we’ll be off the hook.
Devil: Heh, heh… and they call me a cheater who cannot be trusted! heh, heh.
God: And the best part is that they are going to call it fossil fuel because some damn idiot scientists are going to make out that it was made from decomposing organic matter. Only the true believers will suspect it was really a last-minute change of plans by me!
Devil: But, hey, if you do that, what is gonna happen when this black stuff…
God: …we’re gonna call it oil…
Devil: …. when this oil runs out? Won’t they all get really dependent on it and then start coveting it and fighting for it, and complaining when it gets more expensive as it reaches the end? Sounds like more business for me in the long run!
God: Sure, I got that covered. I am all-knowing, after all.
Devil: I forgot.
God: That’s because you’re not all knowing [chuckles at his own joke]. But seriously, take a look at this story about rising oil prices from the year 2008 A.D.
Devil: A.D.? What’s that?
God: …erm… don’t worry about that now… it’s basically gonna be like a big birthday for some carpenter guy… erm…
Devil: Okay, that sounds dull. Get back to the story about the misery caused by these rising oil prices…
God: Well, like the horns on your head, here’s the point. A lot of people are going to burn a lot of oil, and then it will start running out and when it does, more and more people will be wanting more and more of it. So the price is going to go up and up. So a lot of fat and lazy people in one part of the world are going to have to change their ways sooner or later, plus they will be messing up the atmosphere and the climate, so they had better change their ways before it is too late.
Devil: Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. Wars, greed, environmental disaster… all the stuff I like, heh, heh.
God: Yup, they’ll be some of that. But on the other hand, rising oil prices are going to do some things that nobody - no politician, no environmentalist, no celebrity - in short none of all those happy-clappy self-righteous back-patting self-congratulating would-be self-appointed so-called leaders have the balls to do.
Devil: What’s that, oh omnipotent one?
God: Rationing. The price will go up, and some people will not afford the oil, and then they will have to put some time and money and effort into solving their problems another way. Like walking from one place to another. Or making the kids walk to school. Or staying at home because their journey is pointless anyway. Or staying at home instead of spending the day in a traffic jam. Or working from home. Or having a holiday in their own country instead of going half way round the world in order to destroy the local culture and step all over some ancient ruins until they have been turned into dust. Or switch off the lights after themselves. Or eating seasonal food grown locally instead of flying it from the other side of the world.
Devil: Heck, that sounds like a risky plan. Are you sure you know everything? Won’t they just fight and squabble and complain and ask for tax breaks and ignore the inevitability of it all and leave it too late and change the world’s climate anyhow and fight wars to get oil from other countries when the oil in their country is all used and find even more dangerous and deadly ways to ruin the earth like creating power stations that make radioactive waste and would kill thousands of people if ever there was an accident and there will be an accident ‘cos they are arrogant about these kinds of things thus making it inevitable?
God: Maybe so. But at least it will not matter any more if politicians do silly things like reducing road-building and reducing parking spaces but not curbing population growth, and not reducing the need for people to travel, and not really doing very much to ensure houses are near where people work or that public transport is adequate to really meet the needs of the growing economy because they are all too scared to do anything that will make them less popular. Even when they do something, they do the wrong thing, like arguing that road-building is pointless because as soon as you build a new road it gets filled up with cars. That is the same as arguing that roads are the cause of why people drive cars. They might as well argue that building a reservoir causes rain or building a prison causes crime. In the end, the politicians will make such a mess of things that you’ll have a lot of people stuck on too few roads, burning oil and going nowhere - what a waste! But the simple - and unpopular - answer is that much more expensive oil will make it too costly for people to sit in traffic jams, which means the fewer people left on the roads will actually be able to use them, meaning less waste all round. The truth is that this bounty of oil will first help a lot of rich people have a good life, and then later on the rich people will not want to give up that good life as a lot of poorer people start getting rich and want the good life also. As these poorer people get richer, the price of oil will have to go up because demand will grow whilst supply will reach a limit and then start to fall. How unchristian of the rich people to want all the oil for themselves! Too many cars and too few roads just means that people want to drive their cars no matter what, and they like to drive their cars and can afford to drive their cars and will even sit in traffic jams for hours rather than give up driving their cars. So the only way to stop them will be to make it so blasted expensive to buy the oil that some of them will have to change the way they live. And then the people will only use the oil if they can afford it and have a really good reason to drive their cars (I’m thinking here about people who need to drive for work or need to get to the hospital and not people who drive their kids to tennis lessons or people going to buy fancy shoes from an outlet store on the outside of town). And they will have much less traffic in the way. Which also means they will use less oil and cause less pollution as they do so.
Devil: Are you trying to say that the free market is a good thing, and rising prices caused by demand outstripping supply just means that people will stop doing bad things, start doing good things, stop taking the oil for granted and starting being more careful about the impact they have on the world you made for them? That sounds like rather a laissez-faire, non-interventionist attitude to being the Supreme Being.
God: Exactly. It’s all part of the big plan. Market economics will achieve something that none of those loud-mouthed big-shots worried about their popularity ratings will be able to do - make a tough decision about who gets to use a valuable and irreplaceable resource.
Devil: But that will only fix the mess you made by putting the oil there in the first place. So why not just stick with the oxen pulling the carts and leave it at that?
God: Erm…. I can’t tell you all the answers, now can I???
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