Month: May 2024

I am the Law?

As I’ve said more than once, I grew up on British comics more than American ones, most notably 2000AD, whose most iconic character, of course, is a certain officer of the law. Obviously, being only about eight years old when I started reading The Galaxy’s Greatest Comic, I had no real conception that Dredd and the Judges were essentially operating a fascist, hyper-authoritarian system, not until the strip itself started addressing the whole issue of the absence of democracy in Mega City One… by which time I had aged into double figures and impending teenagehood, and frankly still didn’t understand the political issues or really care about them that much, really.

But Dredd was the hero, wasn’t he? Dredd was the living embodiment of THE LAW in Mega City One (and indeed outside it). The figure we were supposed to look up to. THE LAW was sacred to him, and, let’s face it, he was there to administer it to a bunch of unquestionably Bad People. He was opposed to Bad People. He was the Good Guy.

Wasn’t he?

Dredd co-creator John Wagner said of his creation in 1977:

This was back in the days of Dirty Harry, and with [Margaret] Thatcher on the rise there was a right-wing current in British politics which helped inspire Judge Dredd. He seemed to capture the mood of the age – he was a hero and a villain.
That villainous aspect to Dredd’s character – and the Draconian laws of Mega-City One [the post-apocalyptic metropolis Dredd polices] – really caught the readers’ imagination.
Occasionally we’d get letters from children who seemed to be agreeing with his hard-right stance, so we made the strip more political to bring out the fact that we didn’t agree with Dredd. We introduced a democratic movement in Mega-City One as a counterpoint. So in a way the readers helped the character develop.

So, basically, kids not getting the point of the strip was what caused Wagner to be more overt, cos he was a bit alarmed by what he had wrought. But it took me rather longer to appreciate that point myself, and indeed I’d argue that I only finally did so tonight, when someone posted the meme at the top of this post on the PIAT FB group. Cos on more recent reading about 2000AD and its history, I’ve been kind of struck by the often-expressed notion that TGGC was related to the punk movement of the same period, which I could see in a lot of instances, yes, but not with Dredd, who was the flagship character of the comic, he was specifically mentioned in the cover logo for years. He was… not punk particularly.

But yeah, thinking about it now from the perspective offered at the top of the post, the idea that the Judges were just another gang in Mega City One… that makes a certain sense. The gang with the best resources, evidently, and the power to declare themselves THE LAW. The gang that, to some extent, took over the territory of the erstwhile United States from someone even worse than them, the gang that just destroyed democracy rather than most of the rest of the world like Bad Bob Booth… the gang that, per that particular Dredd story, was supposed to restore democracy eventually but just became dictators, the gang keeping on top of and wiping out its competitors for decades… some of whom are still even worse than them. The devil you know, indeed. I don’t know who made that meme, but after 40 years I think I understand Dredd much better now…

Thoughts and prayers

Talking of obnoxious phrases, Steven Moffat recently skewered it in this interview when the interviewer mentions it in the context of his new Who episode, “Boom”:

I always think, how about, “I’m sending thoughts and prayers”… how about cash? You could send cash! Or, help! What the hell is that? I’m against it. It’s like saying, “I’m very, very saddened about these needless deaths.” I’m glad you gave me that useful piece of information! I thought I might have cheered you up.
I think it is vacuity. How can people come out with this crap in the face of genuine tragedy? You come out with thoughts and prayers? Say something useful or do something useful. Be respectful. Don’t reach up for a line off a shelf and throw it in the grieving faces of the massively traumatized.
Yes. My hope was, if we can get “thoughts and prayers” going as a villainous catchphrase, like “Exterminate!”, people might stop saying it.

Which is kind of how he deploys it in the episode, and in a particularly vicious way, too… Indeed, in its way, despite ending happily, “Boom” is one of the harshest episodes of the show (and the “caskets” may be the most quease-making story detail since the “soup” from “Time Heist”):

And that’s not even the nastiest thing the Doctor has to say on that subject. The story itself has the Doctor stuck on a landmine, which is not the first time he’s been in that position:

But this mine is a rather more complicated proposition than that one on Skaro; there’s no easy way for the Doctor to get off it and if he doesn’t it’ll eventually explode anyway and wipe out a substantial chunk of the planet they’re on. Ncuti Gatwa is, accordingly, stuck in one place for almost the entire episode, meaning all he really has to work with is his face and his voice, and godDAMN he puts those things to amazing use. The people whining about the first two episodes being too heavy on the fantasy and absurdism shouldn’t have much to complain about in this one. Though not everyone’s agreeing on its merits, obviously:

Ungood

Spotted this on Tumblr recently:

I have developed a sort of love/hate relationship with it, or perhaps not so much the picture itself as what it represents… cos on the face of it, it really is piss funny and fills me with delight, but good Christ I hate the word “unalive”. I see it used quite often on Youtube and on Tumblr, and I know there are reasons—particularly related to The Algorithm—why people use it, but I still hate it. I know there’s a school of thought that the modern west is a lot less comfortable with the concept of death than it used to be, and that might well be the case, though I think society at large can only go so goth before it just gets silly; I mean, I tend to think about death (particularly mine) fairly often but that’s because, you know, disability, health, a life-changing illness that will probably shorten my existence in this vale of tears. all that gives me a certain perspective. Most people don’t need to think about death; it might come for us all but not all of us really need to worry about that.

But the very word “unalive” certainly serves as evidence for that theory about how uncomfortable we are with the idea of death; so much so that some of us can’t even bear the idea of the mere word and we have to make do with this bullshit that Orwell would’ve shake his head at sadly. It’s not even “political correctness gone mad”, it’s just… silly. And so, however hilarious the meme is (and it is, obviously), I still find myself kind of galled a bit by it… cos that’s me and what I’m like, I suppose.

Cumberland blue

Nice to be able to report that Cumberland City Council undid a bit of stupidity it enacted last week:

A controversial ban on same-sex parenting books at libraries in part of western Sydney has been overturned at a marathon late-night meeting after large crowds of protesters clashed outside the council chambers.
Cumberland city councillors voted 13-2 in front of a crowded public gallery on Wednesday night to revoke the ban, two weeks after it was introduced.
The council’s u-turn followed a widespread backlash and a warning from the NSW government that Cumberland risked losing its library funding.
Councillors narrowly voted on 1 May to “take immediate action to rid same-sex parents books/materials in council’s library service”. During the meeting, the councillor who put forward the motion, former mayor Steve Christou, brandished a book he alleged had received “really disturbing” constituent complaints, saying parents were “distraught” to see the book, A Focus On: Same-Sex Parents by Holly Duhig, displayed on a shelf in the children’s section of the library.
At a fiery meeting on Wednesday, Christou attempted to have same-sex parenting books restricted to the adults’ section of the library.
When that failed, his Our Local Community party colleague Paul Garrard tried to have the same restriction placed just on Duhig’s book.
Ultimately, all but two councillors supported a motion put forward by Labor’s Kun Huang to reverse the ban and ensure all books were catalogued according to national library guidelines, including having Duhig’s book in the junior non-fiction section.
Eddy Sarkis was the only councillor who supported Christou.
Labor councillor Mohamad Hussein, who had voted for the ban originally, changed his vote at the last minute. Hussein declined to comment when asked by journalists why he had changed his mind.

Notably, the 15 council members who voted tonight were more numerous than those who voted for the ban, cos there were only 11 councillors there that time. Almost like Christou, a far-right shit of several years’ standing, was exploiting the other four’s absence to make it easier to push his ban through or something. Anyway, the grand plan came undone and a bit of sense prevailed for once; Christou succeeded in getting drag queen story time events banned at Cumberland libraries despite the fact that none were planned and none had indeed ever happened in the first place, so I quite like seeing him be told to go fuck himself in this fashion.

Shannon Molloy at News, on the other hand, had an interesting take on the affair; after describing a couple of books full of horrors, he makes this “shocking” revelation:

I’m talking about the Bible and the Quran, of course.
If we’re applying Cumberland City councillor Steve Christou’s same logic about what’s appropriate in a library, then surely those holy books have to go too.
Mr Christou’s opposition to a book about kids with two mums or two dads was to prevent the “sexualisation” of children.
The book in question isn’t remotely sexual. It’s about families.
If Mr Christou is really, truly concerned about the welfare of children and saving them from content that’s inappropriate, he mustn’t waste any time.
He should immediately call a vote of the council and push for the removal of the Bible and Quran from Cumberland’s libraries.
To not do so would expose shocking double standards, which I’m sure he doesn’t hold.
Of course, I’m being facetious.
I’m gay, but I’m also a Christian with a deep fondness for the teachings of Christ. I’m in favour of the freedom of religious practice, no matter the brand of one’s faith.
But the metaphor I’ve used here shows how absurd and hypocritical Mr Christou and the council’s book ban is.
It also demonstrates that censorship – which flies in the face of an open and free society and the democratic values we hold dear – is a very slippery slope.

I don’t know why, but I feel like brother Shannon wouldn’t actually be that bothered if the Qur’an did get pulled from libraries…

Anyway, according to Leo Puglisi on Twitter (yes, I KNOW what I said in the last post; I saw this bit earlier before it went to shit), the book in question has apparently been borrowed ONCE in the five or so years that it’s been in the Cumberland library system. It’s so dangerous that hardly anyone’s read it… and, funnily enough, Steve Christou himself had to admit to being among its millions of non-readers. Because OBVIOUSLY. The only thing I worry about in all this is that the silly cunt might look at all this bullshit and decide he needs to up his homophobia game. Or maybe he’ll just go back to racism. I don’t want to say anything more in case I give him ideas.

X marks the spot

In other news, Oolong has FINALLY got what he always wanted and officially changed the URL for Twitter to x.com.

People will still call it Twitter, of course. It will always be “X, the site formerly known as Twitter” at best.

The most irritating thing about the changeover for me was that, when I went to the site not knowing it had happened, was that it opened up on the “for you” feed (which I normally try to avoid) and every second or third post on my proper feed was a fucking ad. Adblock is kind of dealing with it but the fucking page freaks out whenever I run the mouse over it so that makes actually using the thing practically impossible… I can scroll down and look at everything but can’t interact with any of it. So I think my long-standing threat to leave Twitter is finally coming about. I mostly just use it to follow some friends who are holding out, anyway, and to occasionally insult other people being unusually stupid, so not much of a loss… and yet sad for all that.

Worth a thousand words?

Gina Rinehart demands National Gallery of Australia remove her portrait

The mining billionaire Gina Rinehart has demanded the National Gallery of Australia remove her portrait from an exhibition by the award-winning artist Vincent Namatjira.
The image, arguably an unflattering picture of Australia’s richest woman, is one of many portraits unveiled at the Canberra gallery as part of the Archibald prize-winning artist’s first major survey exhibition.
The National Gallery has rebuffed efforts to have the picture taken down and said in a statement that it welcomed public dialogue on its collection and displays.

I can’t say that I don’t entirely see Gina’s point, cos it’s really not flattering to her… but by the same token she’s also one of the worst people in Australia, so we may ask if she deserved a flattering portrait in the first place.

Talking of portraits…

 

…Chuckles has unveiled his, and… it’s… red?

Jonathon Yeo was chosen to do the portrait – he’s done paintings of lots of other famous figures, including Sir David Attenborough and Malala Yousafzai.
The artist said he wanted to make a break with the past. This means he wanted to paint something slightly different to other, more traditional paintings of monarchs.
This is why he used a bright red colour throughout the painting.

The portrait seems to have drawn mixed reviews (though his kingship seems satisfied with it). I… kind of like it? I suspect my mum would’ve hated it, but I do think it’s interesting at least. However, Nigel Farage says he likes it too, so I don’t know how to feel about that…

I saw the shite

By way of contrast with that Wipers album, I also listened to this last night:

I’ve left the album art at full size cos I do think it is pretty cool, and is much the best thing about the record. Todd Rundgren’s Initiation from 1975, infamous at the time for being one of the longest single LPs ever, running some 68 minutes in total; the record was so delicate as a result that the album actually came with the advice to, more or less immediately, change your turntable needle and record the thing onto tape and listen to it that way rather than risk damaging the record.

I’d read about this album many years ago, noting the extreme length and how the whole of side two was occupied by one 35-minute instrumental track. And I’d read about Rundgren in various books, and he always seemed like the sort of person whose work I should find interesting… but I never actually knowingly heard anything by him apart from “Can We Still Be Friends” until I listened to Something/Anything a few years ago. I… kind of hated it. I can’t remember if I even played the whole thing before quitting it.

I definitely didn’t finish Initiation, finally having had more than enough about six minutes into the instrumental side. FUCK this record. I REALLY hate this. Generally overplayed and overdone, and there’s an accent Rundgren sings in for some parts of the song “Eastern Intrigue” that, frankly, came over as kind of racist. It may be one of those records that needs multiple listens to properly absorb, but I rather doubt I’d actually gain anything from doing that. Like I said, I always felt like Rundgren sounded like someone I should be interested in… but I think this might be the last time I try anything by him.