Subjective, My Arse…

Fresh from watching the normally sublime Dame Edna give Rod Stewart’s daughter far too easy a time, I found myself fuming and stalking around the flat last night, looking for something to damage. I ended up hurling a bag of garden peas out of the Velux window. It was a full bag, bought from Sainbury’s, so it wasn’t cheap...

It wasn’t The Chipster at his best and if you’d been in the Bangor region, you might have heard him scream: ‘This, Kimberly Stewart… this is what you’ve reduced me to!’

Tossing petit pois out into the night is a kind of impotence, I know it is. The peas paid the price for my inability to function as a man. And I make that confession with a frankness that comes as something of a surprise. I’m not familiar with the sensation of being unable to go on the offensive in some meaningful way. I wanted to hit the West End with a shovel. Glitz had become anathema to me. I want to throw on my Herculean thong and cleanse the stables with my powerful hose.

The Chipster was feeling oddly mean. Now it’s morning, I’m still a monster in the making.

My twitchyness began with my last post. Rilly Super is right: intellectual content on this blog should (and now does) come with a warning. I should also avoid writing about art. Things just weren’t going right when I started to feel contrite after reading the comments you’d left. One, by Ms. Baroque, caught my attention, in which she admitted that ‘I think I'd be shy of making categorical pronouncements about whether someone "has talent" or whatever’. To which Jan Tregeagle replied and said that ‘I was probably rather too harsh on the wee Banksy, particularly when artistic talent is so subjective.’

How could I stay angry when there are such good people in the world? Guilt fell on my like Jove’s wrath. I felt bad that I’d been muttering horrible unnatural things about Rod Stewart’s daughter. I’d thought unflattering things about the poor girl, about her thighs, about her nose, and I’d destroyed a week’s supply of greens in the process. Poor Kimberly Stewart has as much right as anybody to be a model. If that’s what she wants to do, then it’s no concern of mine and I’m not going to make any rash judgments based on the irrelevant fact that she’s been blessed with her father’s good looks…

I should stop.

Just typing that last line felt like drumming my fingers on a cheese grater. There are flecks of skin dropping between the keys. My caps lock is stuck with congealed flesh and fingernail. I can't be as nice as that. I can't bite my lip. I feel a rant rising. It’s not something I can hold back. Later, I’ll regret every word I’m about to set down. The processed peas have good reason to fear me. They’re not safe, even at the bottom of the freezer, hidden under the oven chips. But I promise I won’t swear. Containing the rage is what gives a rant focus. Take the anger. Transform it into something good. Get ready. I can feel it rising.

It’s here… My thong of self-control has slipped.

We are unfortunate to have been born at a time when the world is owned by maggots. They burrow under our skin, they lay their eggs. The eggs hatch and immediately begin to consume the flesh that surrounds them. We have other names for this flesh. We call it fame, privilege, opportunity. It is like the Jedi’s force. It surrounds us, exists within us. Exists within all living things. It also exists within the Osbournes though we shouldn’t call that living. Maggots infest dead flesh too, remember. Dead heavy metal tattoo bearing flesh that goes by the name of Ozzy.

This is all relevant. Kimberley is a friend of Ozzy’s son, Jack; a man whose talents have yet to transcend the ordinary. She is an ‘it’ girl. He is an ‘it’ boy. They are part of the ‘it’ crowd which distinguishes itself from the rest of humanity by lacking that one critical component that hold many people back: self-awareness.

Self-awareness is a terrible thing to suffer. I can only imagine the life I would have led if I hadn’t been so aware of my limitations. I can’t hold a note so I never pursued that singing career. For the similar reasons, I’m not currently researching high energy nuclear fusion at CERN. Nor am I a Welsh International Prop Forward, play up front as a striker for Liverpool, nor do I hold the world for the longest ear hair.

This just sound sarcastic. But this is what comes of putting off the inevitable moment when I’m forced to say that Kimberley Stewart is as vacuous as she is talentless. And now you hate me. I know you do. You think that The Chipster’s a man who holds grudges, takes things too seriously. You want to hear takes of thongs but I subject you to one of my rants.

But why is this so wrong? I know Kimberly Stewart is insignificant, but doesn’t she represents every judgement we’re ever discouraged from making? Why do I receive hate emails whenever I suggest that the MacDonald Brothers make The Proclaimers look like Scotland’s most precious national treasure? Why should I feel hesitant to say that I consider Joseph Conrad to be a great novelist but I don’t feel the same way towards Zadie Smith? Is there anything wrong about saying you believe some has talent or decrying those you think have none? Have we reached a point where we must wrap our opinions up in crepe, wary of offending somebody?

To borrow the terms chosen by Ms. Baroque and Jan Tregeagle: being 'categorical' about our 'subjectivity' is what makes us function as human beings. I categorically believe in X and Y. I probably believe in Z. But I certainly don’t believe in a whole lot of other things I pass by each day. Of course, my judgements are subjective but this is no reason for me to believe in them or from expressing them with some conviction. I believe there are good artists and bad artists. There are good blogs and bad blogs. There are good poems and bad poems. If there’s not, then allow me to present you with my newest poem.

Hedge whistle starlings, buttonhole and pews,
Clairvoyant whisky glass tumblers screws,
Beer barrels and smokey bars, the smell of yeast,
And Red Leicester is the cheese I like the least.

And how would you know that I came up with that little gem in as many seconds as it took you to read it? Well, I did. Straight off the top of my head. And if you don’t like it, then you’re clearly…What?

Ignorant?
Opinionated?
Knowledgeable?
A rational functioning human being willing to take a stand as say that it’s jibberish?

Talent, skill, craftsmanship. Whatever you like to call it: people prove themselves by the things they do. These things take time. They take effort. Artists shape reality in a way that others find amusing, beautiful, accommodating. Yet it seems like we have forgotten what it means to like and dislike. Talent and celebrity have become confused under the pressure of PR companies busy lacing our cultural waters with cheap wine. Stars get contracts before they’ve proven their worth. It has become the case that, as Ms. Baroque says:

‘"talent" is a small part of what gets a person's work out there. The other factors are numerous and include being in the right place, hitting the Zeitgeist, being canny, knowing the right people - energy, application, doggedness, self-confidence, vision, a thick skin, etc etc.’

The depreciation of talent worries me. But what worries me more are the ways that criticism has waned in importance. ‘What do critics know?’ is a trite question, which usually implies that something they champion isn’t worth a look. Critics perhaps deserve our scorn. At some point, it became less a matter of celebrating accomplishment in favour of something that’s obtuse, archaic, ‘intellectually challenging’. And that really worries me. It makes me worry as much as the peas worry about meeting the starry skies of North Wales. It worries me because we’re losing our critical faculties. Children in school aren’t taught to make educated judgements because ‘everybody should be allowed their opinion’. Teachers are encouraged to mark positively, rarely ‘correcting’ a child’s problems because this might given them a complex. Conversely, people are encouraged to express themselves without fear of criticism since 'every voice is just as important as the next'.

Well, my thong quivers with anger when I hear these arguments. I’m a professional. I believe in my art. I know what it is to create something wonderful. I know what it means to create something beautiful. And I know what it is to fail.

There should be achievement. There should be failure. There should be the right of a thong wearing man – let us all him ‘Aggravated from Bangor’ – to throw bags of peas to the night and say that Kimberley Stewart is a talentless, yet-to-be has been, without a single quality that raises her above the multitudes, and who squanders the real opportunities that life has afforded her to make a complete fool of herself in the public eye.

And if you don’t like that subjective judgement, then tough bloody luck.

The Chipster is off to dig another packet of peas from out of the freezer.

Good Riddance To Bansky Rubbish

I’ve had it on good authority that the Romanians have a hard time understanding our art and culture. You can hardly blame them. I seem to be the only person who thinks that Banksy is overrated. I had to stop Gabby running off this morning with a pot of white paint. She had the misguided intention of painting a large mural of my loins on the end of the Post Office. I hardly had the nerve to tell her that the wall was simply too small for a task of that size.

It did, however, get me thinking about my project for my English class. I’ve been asked to ‘write an opinion piece about two or more current events’. This is where my afternoon has gone me…

As a self-publicist, an agent provocateur, or even as somebody specialising in art parody, Banksy has no current equal, though you could perhaps make a case for Gilbert and George or any number of wittier examples found on the web. Banksy’s elevation to one of the UK's most high profile artists has just a bit of the noble savage about it. It's not far distant from the enlightenment practice of taking some poor tribesman from one newly conquered dominion and presenting him at court dressed as a gentleman. Even the cheery mateyness of the ‘Banksy’ name epitomizes so much. It’s that same game as ‘The Wife in the North’ plays with class and the north. It’s the Patty Hearst story retold to a new audience, where the rich kid hangs around the poor in order to look and feel cool. The whole thing has a patronising air about it, even before we get to the problem of people preferring a shallow fabrication to the real thing.

Quite evidently, the British media care little about understanding art. Today they report with some shock, though tinged with an oddly paradoxical delight, that a famous mural by Bansky has now been whitewashed over by council workers.

There is a thong splittingly funny moment in the piece in the form of the council’s response: ‘We recognise that there are those who view Banksy's work as legitimate art, but sadly our graffiti removal teams are staffed by professional cleaners not professional art critics.’ What makes it additionally funny is the notion that professional critics of any worth have promoted his work as genuine art. I thought Banksy’s celebrated doodles are the result of their being spotted by Angelina Jolie, that eminent critic of anything and everything.

Of course, it hardly matters if the newspapers get these things wrong. Nothing matters but readership. Certainly not facts. It doesn’t matter that Bryan Ferry studied art at University of Newcastle. It’s one of the little details ignored by the media so busy castigating him in broad strokes for having admitted to admiring the Nazi's sense of spectacle.

Ferry undoubtedly made a stupid remark. He stupidly assumed that the British tabloids would play fair. He made the remarks to a German newspaper, perhaps assuming that a more knowledgeable continental audience would understand his point. Perhaps they did as it only appear to be here in the UK that he’s held up as a Nazi sympathiser and there are calls for him to lose his M&S card. There’s no attempt to contextualise his comments, nor explain the extent to which Hitler’s regime was intimately concerned with art.

Over at The Baullieu Blog, Danvers argues that the Nazi regime oppressed the art in favour of 'sterile neo-classical works of muscular figures doing heroic things' and that Ferry's mistaken championing of Nazi projects is enough to warrant the criticism. Yet this seems to me to be an argument based on taste, a preference for (jazz, Brecht, 'modern art') and not morality. There is something about that sterile neo-classicism which Ferry apparently admires. It is to take one side in an age old debate about form and the formless. As contemptible as the regime and its methods, the Nazi master plan was wrapped up with questions of aesthetics. Nazi art and architecture is alienating in its scale, chilling in its assumptions. It rises from the absolute belief in form and reflects the Nazi certainty that Germanic archetypes are to be found in nature and history.

'Triumph of the Will', the 1934 propaganda film made by Leni Riefenstahl, currently has a rank of 7.9 on the Internet Movie Database. It is seen as one of the most important documentaries ever made. It redefined propaganda and Riefenstahl broke new ground in developing an aesthetic for cinema. Are those that followed her Nazis sympathisers too? What about George Lucas, whose Star Wars films are full of the kind of imagery pioneered by Riefenstahl?

Art reflects human passions, habits, doubts, ambitions. It is often bound up with moral judgements, but sometimes moral judgements that are wrong. Sometimes they are staggeringly wrong. Sometimes they are so wrong that no right minded person would argue otherwise. Yet their rightness or wrongness does not change their power of real art to affect its viewer. In this limited way, art transcends morality. We cannot divest ourselves from our immediate response to it. Art literally takes the breath away before we’ve had chance to intellectualise our response to it. I’d be surprised if anybody responds in that way to Banksy’s work. How many hearts have missed a beat on first seeing one of his pieces on a wall? Yet I’m sure thousands of people are still moved, often unknowingly, by art whose genesis lay in vilest era of the last century. Of course, this does not condone, in any way, the regime that allowed and in some cases encouraged this art to exist, but it does highlight that art is different to politics.

We face the same problem now that the media have linked the Virginia Tech campus murders to 'Oldboy', the Korean film that won the Grand Prize of the Jury at Cannes a couple of years ago.

Before the events of the last few days, I had considered 'Oldboy' one of the finest films of the last decade. It’s Shakespearean in that it is one of the few modern stories I could imagine written by a sixteenth century revenge tragedian. The last half hour is as disturbingly brilliant as storytelling gets these days. Yet it’s less bloody that 'Titus Andronicus'; much less bloody than many American films whose whole premise is gore. Where most action and horror films laud the grotesque, 'Oldboy' lauds the tragedy of forbidden love. The few moments of violence play out more in the mind than they do the screen, such as the one brief scene in which the lead character eats a live squid. It’s not pleasant to watch but it’s part of the film’s culture and significant to its themes.

The media will never care to discuss this sort of thing. Art is reduced to the simple morality of good versus evil when described by the tabloids. Simple judgements overrun the complexity of the issues that still surround Cho Seung-Hui's actions. Two still images from a Korean film seem to match photographs taken by a Korean killer. One easy association that makes for big headlines.