Zoo in the head

Mistakes were made

One of the first things they tell you about when you start in journalism is the importance of avoiding passive constructions: never "This was said by X" but "X said this."

Rupert Murdoch has never been one for the conventional pieties, though: you could deduce that from his apology, published in British newspapers this morning, for the appalling newsgathering methods employed by journalists at the News of the World. "We are sorry for the serious wrongdoing that occurred," he says, and "We are deeply sorry for the hurt suffered by the individuals affected": whereas what he means is "We are sorry we did wrong" and "We are deeply sorry that we hurt people." Otherwise, it might look as though he thought someone else was doing the wrong, someone else was causing the pain. And he couldn't possibly think that, could he?

Oh.

A loss for words

In the Observer the art critic Tom Lubbock writes about the effects of a brain tumour that is slowly killing him, and destroying language along the way:

First of all it was scary; now it's all right; it is still, even now, interesting;
My true exit may be accompanied by no words at all, all gone.
The final thing. The illiterate. The dumb.
Speech?
Quiet but still something?
Noises?
Nothing?

My body. My tree.



After that it becomes simply the world.

 

I succeeded Tom as radio critic of the Independent some time around 1990, and a little later took over a humorous column he had begun at Punch (not long before its inglorious end); a few years after that, when I was renting an office above a coffee shop in Islington, Tom took the studio on the floor above. So one way or another I've spent a lot of time living in his shadow. He is inordinately clever, but then so are a lot of people. What Tom has that others lack is a mind cleared of cant. The hardest thing for most critics is separating what you think from what others think and what you think you ought to think, but Tom barely registers this as a problem. (See this blog-post by Nigel Warburton, then refer to the article by Tom he's complaining about: where Warburton sees affectation, I can see only freedom.) I have always been a little bit in awe of him, but I've had the consolation of his willingness to treat me as an equal; and once he repeated a witticism of mine back to me as his own. Phew, I thought.

Reactions to his Observer piece have largely mentioned on its power to move. Well, yeah: a dying man with a three-year-old son is going to jerk a tear; and after so many repetitions of that dreary line about people "battling" cancer, at last a real battle, visible on the page (though Tom doesn't hope to "beat" his cancer, only to preserve his mind and voice while it goes about its business). But considered as prose, and as an achievement of intellect in the face of destruction, the piece is astonishing. I think/hope astonishment would suit Tom better. I visited him in hospital this week, belatedly: even with words half gone, the sheer force of mind - astonishing.

An incidental matter: that final line ("After that it becomes simply the world") could mean several things - that the end of language is also the dissolution of a barrier between the mind and the world (Graves's "cool web")? That death is a way into the world? I'm not confident of either version.

The second idea has an interesting pedigree. Cf. Rupert Brooke, "The Soldier" ("A pulse in the eternal mind, no less" - but swipe me, how does a mind get a pulse? And doesn't that "no less" feel tacked on and sloppy?). Better, cf. W. N. P. Barbellion, dying of multiple sclerosis, in The Journal of a Disappointed Man:

To me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe — such a great universe, and so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible—and eternal, so that come what may to my "Soul," my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part — I shall still have some sort of a finger in the pie.

(Little Toller books has published a new edition with an introduction by Tim Dee.)

And for film buffs, cf. the monologue that closes The Incredible Shrinking Man.

 

 

 

 

New creatures rape your face

A friend who knows of my interest in zoos sent me a link to this disturbing video:

The comments on youtube are variously horrified and gloating. One viewer says "The monkey takes the phrase 'I'M GONNA RAPE YOUR FACE' to a WHOLE new level." That's a phrase? Apparently it is: type it into Google and be amazed by the wealth of face-raping references that come up (including, prominently, the lyrics of the song "Hybrid Moment" by the horror-punk group The Misfits, which is where I found the headline for this post). More sensibly, another commenter says "This is how you get genital warts."

It's not a monkey, of course: a chimpanzee is an ape (and it does seem to be a chimp, not its - our - cousin, the bonobo); I haven't been able to identify the species of frog. The video was shot, according to the caption, at Honololulu Zoo on 11 November 2004, but has only recently gone viral. It raises a number of issues. One is a point that I've made before: zoos are not hermetically sealed; animals get out, other animals get in, scavengers, predators and - presumably the frog's case - passers by; a zoo is a small eco-system. The second issue is our notion that zoos are suitable entertainment for children. Yes, they love to see the giraffes and the elephants and the funny monkeys, but if you hang around a zoo for any length of time you're bound to see a fair amount of shitting and fucking, and even some dying (though that's one bit of business zoos mostly manage to keep offstage). I'm not worried about children watching animals mate - if they're going to know about the birds and the bees, they may as well get the lions and the baboons along the way. But there are other behaviours that aren't so obviously necessary to their education; face-raping frogs sits firmly in this category, and I'm mildly perturbed by the sound of children giggling at the spectacle.

A bigger question is, what do we make of the chimpanzee's behaviour? That's really two questions. First, is this normal behaviour for chimps or a zoo-bred pathology? Some animals, such as lions, tend to fuck neurotically in captivity, and it has been suggested that this may be part of what's going on with the  bonobos, who are famous for supposedly resolving conflict through sensuality rather than, as is the case with chimps, through violence (for an overview of the whole sexy bonobo/vicious chimp myth, see Ian Parker's 2007 New Yorker article "Swingers"). Then again, lots of animals masturbate; my guess is that a young male chimp will try anything with a hole in it. I'll try to find some literature on this some time. Second, why do we humans react the way we do? Many of the youtube commenters see the chimp as perverted or cruel, a rapist, which suggests that they are anthropomorphising too much. I don't say that you should never anthropomorphise. For instance, it's clear that the great apes, at least, are capable of a degree of empathy with suffering, which is the main prerequisite to cruelty; all the same, I doubt that this chimpanzee has any real sense that the frog is suffering. But "perverted", "rapist" - these are human terms, implying some buried assumption that animals should stick to human sexual norms.

You could concentrate on a slightly less worrying aspect of all this: the apparent indifference of young mammals to the usual barriers between species - in particular, their willingness to play with other species. Here's something to take the froggy taste away:

Penguin to the rescue

Sitting on the racks at my local Oxfam when I was donating a bootload of junk yesterday:

First printing, 1961. The illustration is by Hans Unger (1915-75 - not to be confused with the Jugendstil artist of the same name, who died in 1936). He did a few Penguin covers, some of which are to be found in 700 Penguins, and a lot of work for London Transport, including mosaics for Oxford Circus and Green Park, recently restored. A few Penguin handbooks of the period feature a penguin engaged in some task related to the book's theme - The Penguin Car Handbook (1960) had a penguin with its head buried in a car engine; this penguin is particularly nice, with its urgent stance and anxious expression.

More anxiety on the back cover:

Over 15,000 people were killed in accidents in Britain last year; 343,000 were seriously injured; and well over a million were slightly injured. Over 8,000 people died in home accidents, and others died in factories, in traffic accidents, on farms, and on the railway.

The best First Aid is prevention. This new book points out the way risks can be avoided by taking elementary precautions.

But when an accident does happen everyone should know how to deal with it. It may be some time before a doctor or ambulance can reach the injured person. Everyone should know how to make him comfortable. A slight burn or cut can, if mistreated, lead to infection and even amputation. Everyone should be able to cope with such an accident, however unimportant it may seem.

This is a book of its time, poised between the Second and Third World Wars. Accident prevention comes first:

Falls may happen to anyone and they may be caused either by an outside agency or by the physical state of the people themselves. Highly polished floors are beautiful, but they can be dangerous and care should be taken that carpets are always well nailed down... Be sure that the stair carpet is properly fixed and, above all, train everybody not to leave anything on the stairs... Be sure that footwear is in good repair and watch that belts and dressing-gown cords are properly tied or fixed... Have a net over the pram to prevent cats or other animals lying on the baby's face...

The meticulousness and slightly paranoid tone, which you might think of as typical of modern health and safety culture, hark back to the accident prevention campaigns of the Second World War, when industrial accidents could hamper the war effort (on this topic, Paul Rennie is the oracle). The book ends with a chapter on "Civil Defence" - essentially, what to do when the bomb drops. Perhaps not surprisingly, it has little practical advice to offer for the aftermath of a nuclear attack, though it does say twice that the main symptoms of radiation sickness are vomiting, restlessness and shock (I imagine anybody who isn't vomiting, restless or shocked after a nuclear attack gets to be prime minister).

In between, you can't complain that they skimp on detail. From Chapter 2, "Structure and Functions of the Body":

The body is most simply divided into the head, the trunk, and the limbs. The bone of the head forms the skull, which provides the bony cavity containing the brain and also the organization of the bones forming the face. The head is connected with the trunk by means of the neck with seven cervical vertebrae at the back. From the head the gullet leads to the stomach and in front of it is the trachea or windpipe which leads into the lungs. The bones of the neck are the commencement of the spinal column, which extends down the back of the body and is attached to the pelvis or lower part, to which in their turn are attached the two lower limbs. The upper limbs are joined to the upper part of the body at the juncture of the shoulder blade and collar bone.

Them dry bones, eh?

There are chapters on first aid in the home, on the road, at the seaside (especially enjoyable; at any rate, it put me in a holiday mood) and on the farm. And all for 99p.

UPDATE: RoSPA (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) has a beautiful selection of Second World War safety posters by Tom Eckersley online: "Replace Covers - Prevent Falls" adorns our staircase. Paul Rennie puts it all in context in Eye magazine.

"This is the saddest story I have ever heard."

Much comment has been aroused by this entry at the Internet Movie Database:

On the now overflowing Anne Sellors messageboards, a poignant comment has been left by toothpastelaser under the heading "anne sellors is my aunt STOP THE LIES!!":

Usually I dont post on IMDB with the many trolls perverts and indy film makers but this is getting out of hand. Anne Sellors AKA woman who urinates herself (just a CHARACTOR!!!) is my aunt and I cant bear to see some of the posts from here and 4 chans that school freinds have forwarded me on AIM. please STOP the following ridiculous rumors about auntie anne:

1, anne sellors is STILL ALIVE

2 - the role was to be titled differently or she would have chosen another I AM SURE

2a she does not urinate herself and never has, those pointing to the fact the title is 'urinates' and not 'urinated' need to GROW UP!! stop laying semantics

3/ NO she was not in anything else and esepcially NONE of the others I have seen mentioned eg emaneulle 2000, death race remake, LOTR deleted scene or vo for monkey island, those pictures are PHOTO SHOPS

Needles to say I havent mentioned any of this to her yet. I HOPE I wont have to. Find someone else to talk about please. BTW Thanks guys this has really lowered my opinnion of humanity nice job. The internet needs to be regulated asap

Does the equation of trolls and perverts with indy film-makers suggest this is a deadpan gag, or is that just what people think about indy film-makers?

Albert Camus: "Every achievement is a servitude. It drives us to a higher achievement." (Notebooks, iv: 1942)

Peaking early

Ronald Bergan's obituary of James Aubrey in the Guardian seems to harp unfairly on the notion that his career didn't live up to the promise of his Ralph in Peter Brook's Lord of the Flies, made when he was 13. But then you look at his cv on IMDb, descending into supporting roles in Doctors and The Bill, and realise Bergan was only speaking the grim truth. Still, peaking early is better than not peaking at all (and hey, I know which I'm more in danger of doing); and Aubrey has at least left us something to remember him by. You can pick up the DVD of LotF for a very reasonable six quid on Amazon; or watch the whole thing for free, but in bits and with variable quality, starting here:

Demented

(from Media Matters via The Huffington Post)

In case you don't have time to watch the video, or can't believe your ears, a transcript:

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, OK, it's a deal. And they kicked the French out, you know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free.

"But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other, desperately poor. That island of Hispaniola is one island, it's cut down the middle; on the one side is Haiti, on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, et cetera, Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island. They need to have, and we need to pray for them, a great turning to God, and out of this tragedy I'm optimistic something good may come. But right now we are helping the suffering people, and the suffering is unimaginable." 

The final sentence almost redeems him. The rest takes us back to Blake:

"Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;
Mock on, Mock on, 'tis all in vain.
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again."

Straight in your face.

'A bunch of dead muscles, thinking'

Following on from last week's post, I've only just noticed that Saturday's Guardian has a profile by Ed Pilkington of Tony Judt: well worth reading - but is his night-time memory palace Swedish or Swiss?

Calvary

The historian Tony Judt writes in the New York Review of Books about his experience of ALS - amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known in the US as Lou Gehrig's disease: "Having no use of my arms, I cannot scratch an itch, adjust my spectacles, remove food particles from my teeth, or anything else that - as a moment's reflection will confirm - we all do dozens of times a day. To say the least, I am utterly and completely dependent upon the kindness of strangers (and anyone else)."

My mother died of another variant of motor neurone disease in 2001; her Calvary was that, unlike Professor Judt, she lost the power of speech early on, so that she couldn't easily ask for help. 

I've always admired Judt's writing, above all for its clarity; this piece gave me an insight into this variety of suffering that I haven't managed to achieve by myself (whether it's the imagination or the nerve I'm lacking, I can't say). It's customary to praise writers who write about their own illness for their freedom from self-pity. One thing I liked about this piece was that Judt frankly pities himself; but no more than you or I would, and no more, I think, than he would pity someone else in the same condition.