Planet of the Apes (1968)

On a recent night flight from Salt Lake City to London, I was unable to watch many of the movies  because  the sound quality of the complimentary set of ear buds was so poor (must  acquire proper earphones). As I can't sleep on airplanes, and not wanting to disturb everyone around me by keeping the light on for the sake of the latest Sue Grafton, movies were the only time-passing option I had besides grabbing any wine on offer. Peering at other screens yielded only films I had no interest in, like "Ali" or "Mother's Day" (the two popular choices with men, strangely enough), so subtitles it had to be, except that precious few of the movies had English subtitles. One that did was "The Intern", which I duly watched by reading the dialogue instead of using the audio. It was an extended advert for Apple and Audi, with said intern - an improbably perfect 70 year-old - thrown in as padding (Robert DeNiro in his comedy, face-pulling mode). After that, it was back to slim pickings until I spotted the original 1968 "Planet of the Apes". This was manageable, as the dialogue was well articulated (and surprisingly intelligent), and the famously atonal soundtrack lent itself to the uncomfortable environment. I'd seen it before, decades ago, so it was a pleasant re-visiting of something familiar. Charlton Heston's performance is committed: he's mostly half-naked, under stress, mistreated, but he really goes for it and is totally convincing. I still have a soft spot for Heston because of "The Ten Commandments", first seen at age 10, although now it's a bit disconcerting to realise how similar his facial features are to Andy Murray's. Nevertheless there he was doing his Taylor thing, and there were the 'apes' doing their highly evolved thing with brilliant prosthetics, and it was all very well made and entertaining.  Philosophical notions of religion, scripture, animal rights, non-violence, even vegetarianism are in the mix too, testiftying to the cold war fears and hippy developments of the time. I've ordered the novel it was based on (Pierre Boulle, La planète des singes) and will be interested to see how the orignal story and the Hollywood version differ. "Never trust anyone over 30", Taylor facetiously advises young chimpanzee Lucius towards the end - though without noting the irony that he's way over 30 himself. Apparently the film was selected for preservation by the US National Film Registry in 2001 for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". Quite right. Whether one agrees with its politics or not, it is a memorable film. And it translates remarkably well to an airline seatback screen and bad quality ear buds.

Rio's inescapable soundtrack

Do Olympic events in Rio need a soundtrack of deafening pop music and old rock tunes? The swimming, the rowing, the gymnastics - there's no escaping the intrusion of blasted-out music, and presumably it will be the same with the athletics. Typically starting as soon as a particular race, performance or game has finished, and only stopping while the next ones get underway, it's as though the noise becomes not the background but the purpose of the proceedings. The rehashed tracks are the point, the sport is merely an expensive punctuation. The playlist is all. This noise also invades the commentary space. To press the mute button in frustration at this aural assault means to sacrifice the experts who could (unlike the music) enhance the experience of top-level competition. Life can no longer happen without a soundtrack of overused hits, apparently: neither daily life (shops, restaurants, public spaces), personal life as lived through various tech devices, or the public spectacle of Olympic Games, where the only music that should matter is the national anthems of the victors. Maybe the pop/rock juggernaut of contemporary life as expressed in Rio is a way of trying to drown out the reality of nations, or indeed of victors. Maybe the point is to make stately music like anthems seem old and creaky, pointless and undesirable. Because diversity is strength, all you need is love and, of course, 'imagine there are no countries'.

What about Bill's health?

There's been a lot of speculation on the state of Hillary Clinton's health recently. It is entirely justified, and I mean that sympathetically. The job Hillary is campaigning for - and the campaign itself - requires a superior physical constitution. Tip-top stamina is a gift few people possess, especially as they are entering old age. She has managed to be in public life for decades already, so even if she has had high levels of stamina in the past, by now, at age 69, those levels could be running perilously low. Also, many video clips doing the rounds do show strange reactions on her part in various situations, reactions which could be consistent with neural damage of some sort. Her 'short-circuit' explanation may be very close to the truth. And of course Mrs Clinton's demeanour suggests she is by nature an introvert. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being an introvert, except that it's painful to watch her overcompensate for this by trying to look at socially at ease when she clearly isn't. Again I say this with sympathy. But what about Bill? He looks like he's about to drop dead at any minute, or at the very least be taken very ill, perhaps long-term. This raises the possibility that should Hillary become President, she could soon become a carer or a widow. A President without spousal support does not seem like a good idea in general. A President who has the care of a very ill spouse would be compromised in their ability to deal with the relentless pressure of the job.Worse, should Bill die, the thought of Hillary let loose on the world without her problematic but also stabilising husband should make every voter pause and wonder what the consequences could be. Not least of those consequences would be the further deterioration of her own health due to the grieving process. And yes, his illness or death would affect her. Bill and Hillary's lives, careers and ambitions, have been tightly interwoven for over 40 years. Any major change to their marriage would have profound consequences on her as the relatively healthier or the surviving partner.

Giving mothers a bad name

Oh dear, what a lot of mother talk at the Democratic National Convention! Only last month in the UK Andrea Leadsom was vilified for suggesting in an interview that being a mother gives a woman more of an interest in the future of a society. This was understood as a dig against her fellow contender (now Prime Minister) Theresa May, and widely condemned. Mrs May has no children because she and her husband couldn't have any so of course, in context, Leadsom's comment was tactless. But her point has validity. Just think of childless Angela Merkel who unilaterally decided to trash Europe by welcoming all comers from the rest of the world (citing 'Syrian refugees'), and was then called Mama Merkel by some of those who took uo her offer. Or think of the hideous speech by Stefanie von Berg (November 2015), where von Berg delights in predicting a German minority in German cities. And by the way, in the video clip of that speech, the three politicians looking on behind von Berg, with apparent approval, are also women.This is not to say they're all childless, I have no idea if they are. But if they do have children, how do they square nurturing the next generation with the gleeful destruction of their cultural and social inheritance? On the other hand, Leadsom's comment was inaccurate in so far as someone like Mrs Thatcher was concerned. Did Mrs Thatcher make any fuss about being a mother? I don't remember that she did, although that was a while ago and I wasn't living in the UK at the time. One could argue she made no fuss because she wasn't interested in being a mother, compared to being a career woman and politician. Or that as a career woman and politician, Mrs Thatcher had no business making a fuss about being a mother. Male politicians don't make a fuss about being fathers, and that's how it should be. They're meant to get on with the work at hand. But now, hey presto! It is perfectly ok, at least in America, to make no end of fuss about being a mother on the biggest political stage in a Presidential election cycle. Michelle Obama went on and on about being a mother during her DNC speech, to press and social media adulation. She was referring to her own role as a mother as well as to Hillary Clinton's, the person she was speaking for and endorsing. According to Mrs Obama, a key point that voters should consider is how Hillary 'raised' her daughter Chelsea 'to perfection', as if she'd been a prize heifer, or perhaps a sponge cake (except that we know Hillary DOES NOT BAKE, as she shared with the world in 1992: "I suppose could have stayed at home and baked cookies and had teas" - which is not at all an ignorant comment about 'stay at home' wives, and not sexist either). But really, Michelle? So Chelsea didn't also have an adoring father? She didn't have circumstances and advantanges that were uniquely privileged, just like the Obama girls have had? Mrs Obama also spoke about America being 'great' because her daughters could now look to a future where they too could become President one day, i.e. if people elect Hillary, a woman, now that her black (mixed race) husband, has also broken through to the highest office in the land. Well, I don't know. For some of us it's enough to want our children to grow up in a society that doesn't seek to invade their privacy and destroy their innocence at every turn, at ever younger ages, for example with state propaganda about fluidity of gender and anything-goes sexual practices. Or to hope that they won't be stabbed in their beds (Israel), or attacked with a machete (Germany), or chased down by a truck (France), or beheaded in the street (England), or targeted and killed for being gay, or a soldier, or a police officer (USA). At the DNC, Alicia Keys also garbled something about Hillary, motherhood, sacredness or some such, etc.etc. And then, of course, there was the group of women called the 'Mothers of the Movement'  - the 'movement' in question being Black Lives Matter, which at street level is basically a racist terrorist organisation, but never mind. These mothers were there to make the emotional point that death is very sad - sorry, that their apparently fatherless sons had died in confrontations with the police or, in the case of a daughter, by suicide while in police custody. The call of 'black lives matter' was chanted during their speeches and there was not a dry eye in the house, because these were mothers, sainted mothers all, of sainted children (who bore different surnames to them) and, most of all, they were black mothers. So adored were they for being mothers and black, that the audienced cheered every time they mentioned God and God's goodness. None of that jeering at God that had happened on the previous day. No, no. Black mamas are sacred, which is not at all race-biased, and they can be as religious as they want, not just in private but in the most public of spheres. Seriously, what would have been the reaction in the press and elsewhere if a group of fathers had been invited on stage at the Republican National Convention to show solidarity with and eulogise the police officers murdered because of Black Lives Matter agitation? And what if those fathers had made a point of praising God's goodness and calling out 'Hallelujah'? We know from the media treatment of Pat Smith, who accurately laid the blame for her son's Benghazi death at Hillary's (bedroom) door, that not all mothers are given a free pass. And that's fine, to the extent that mothers are not ipso facto saints. Mothers are people too, full of faults, doubts, failings, mistakes, not to mention, in some cases, stupidity, incoherence, incompetence or downright evil. What's not fine is to condemn some mothers for legitimately caring about their own children's fate or that of future generations in general, while sanctifying other mothers for no other reason than that they have children. It's even less fine to assume that being a mother makes Hillary Clinton potentially a better person and a better politician than anybody else. It's not Leadsom's mention of a mother's concerns that gives mothers a bad name, it's using the mere fact of motherhood as an unquestioned form of praise.

Brexit and "Hamilton"

"Hamilton" is the musical about the fight for American Independence. It swept the Tony awards and continues to pack in adoring audiences with no sign of letting up. It is loved for dramatising a country's fight against faceless rule from afar. It's about 'freedom', even though the fighters were mostly descendants of the original British settlers. The battle was fought and won by white men with guns but it's ok to worship this fight because the cast of the play is multi-racial and mixed gender, and the music and choreography are based on rap and street dance. So it's cool, and even more importantly, it makes audiences feel good about a reality which, transposed today, they would find unacceptably non-PC. Brexit is a fair, ballot-won, democratic vote by universal suffrage, to end faceless rule from afar - not that far geographically, but very far in terms of philosophy and cultural affinity. So, naturally, there are currently thousands of people marching in London and York to protest against this travesty, this farce of a referendum voted for by the great unwashed, the troglodytes of our times. What's the bet that most of the marchers would be, or are, avid fans of "Hamilton" or at least would heartily approve of it?

Cameron's legacy on marriage

The Prime Minister, resigning because of a narrow defeat on the EU referendum, wishes to be remembered for gay marriage. In other words he wants to be remembered for the most flagrantly un-conservative measure ever foisted on an unsuspecting electorate by a so-called Conservative. As noted in a piece by the Christian Institute, if Mr Cameron had given voters a referendum on gay marriage it would almost certainly not have gone through (http://www.christian.org.uk/news/remember-me-for-gay-marriage-says-pm/). Instead, he disguised his push for the destruction of marriage as it had been understood for millenia as a mere redefinition, a consequence-free expansion of marriage to any gender pairing, and moreover as something that is sweetly and innocently legitimised by 'love' alone. It's ironic or perverse that Mr Cameron should choose to resign over a genuinely democratic vote that didn't happen to go his way, yet request to be lauded for the high-handed imposition of a policy he denied even having before his re-election. Either way, it's doesn't say much for his views on the value of democracy.

Referendum day is also Widows' Day

Today, June 23rd, is Referendum day here in the UK. Every year and everywhere it is also apparently International Widows' Day: http://theloombafoundation.org/international-widows-day/. This recognition of the plight of widows worldwide was launched in 2005 and recognised by the UN in 2010. We've all heard of International Women's Day, but widows don't get much of a look in, which is probably why I'm assuming hardly anyone has heard of this particular day, as indeed I hadn't until earlier this week. Widowhood is by definition unsexy and nobody really wants to know. Whereas widowers are the most likely men to remarry (according to a study a few years ago), the re-marriage prospects of a widow, especially one with children, are among the lowest. In developing countries the very social status of widows is basically next to nothing. In advanced Western countries we still benefit from the enlightened, Bible-based view that widows and their children (i.e. orphans) are worthy of special care and protection. I for one, widowed in 2000 at the relatively young age of 37, with two very young children, am extremely grateful  for the state assistance I have received. I fear, however, that its continued existence is merely the last gasp of a formal regard for the family. It could all too easily be swept away by continued devaluation of traditional marriage and motherhood and especially by the new sanctification of  non-gender-specific notions of marriage and parenting. Is the surviving partner in a lesbian marriage a widow? Is she a widower? Is the surviving partner in gay marriage a widower, or perhaps a widow? Much easier to eliminate the category altogether than deal with this logistical tangle, in the same way that the words 'husband' and 'wife' are being eliminated from official documents. How the hard-won, Judaeo-Christian attitude to the care of widows and orphans will fare in such a society we will have to wait and see. But the current climate doesn't bode well for Western widows and orphans or for those of developing nations, for whom the repercussions of our ideological upheavals are likely to be even more severe.