New Year Reflection
This post was originally going to have a different title, but then the year ended and I still hadn’t actually written it, so something a little bit strange was replaced something bland and generic. Which works as accidental commentary on recent developments in Western consumer capitalism, does it not?
Actually, I’m lying. This post is actually the remains of multiple potential posts strung hastily together and given an irritating and vaguely pretentious gloss. It won’t even really function as anything coherent. I am too arch for my own good, am I not?
Given that a majority of the big news stories of 2011 were some combination or other of tragic, depressing and frightening, the self-indulgent tat that tends to dominate media ‘reviews of the year’ seems even less appropriate than normal. And, yet, pumped out they were, as though there’s nothing wrong in reducing financial meltdown or mass death to sugary nostalgia-fests (and, in the case of BBC News 24, an actual advert. Stay classy guys!) mere months after the events in question happened. You have to wonder why they bother as it’s not as though anyone actually watches (or reads) those things. Doesn’t seem worth tarnishing your soul for, but then I’m not a journalist.
Moving on, somewhat, Václav Havel’s death added a rather mournful tinge to the end of the year, and I’m mentioning it here now because I always liked him. Amidst the the usual platitudes (and, alas, a degree of witless idiocy from fools determined to act as unfunny caricatures) there was a nicely done piece by Michael Billington that is well worth a read. Christopher Hitchens and Kim Jong-il died around the same time, but I did not care for either and will end this paragraph now.
It occurred to be recently that one of the most important developments in British Politics since the formation of the current (worthless) government has been a degree of polarisation not seen for a long time, and not just in terms of party support, but also (and much more importantly) in terms of policies advocated and values voiced. Moreover, the bases of the two mass parties are now genuinely convinced (i.e. not just as a ritualistic hangover) that the other mass party wants to attack their standard of living. There is no consensus amongst the political parties, nor is their any consensus within the wider electorate. Not only is there no consensus, but there is nothing that even looks like a consensus. Now, is this reflected in mainstream political coverage, whether on the telly or in the papers? Well… er… no. Watching or reading it, you get no sense of the extent to which politics in Britain has become deadly serious of late. It all seems to operate on the basis that there is a broad consensus about the direction that the country ought to be moving in, and that this is shared by policymakers, opposition critics and the ordinary voter. This, in practice, leads to coverage that is far more pro-government than most of the hacks responsible are probably aware of.
I recently made the error of watching the trailer for Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit. The experience was not unlike watching my childhood get repeatedly mugged in an endless network of grim alleys and unlit courts. It will, of course, be a massive commercial success. And thus I end as I began it, by mentioning how something a little bit strange has been replaced by something bland and generic.
