Evil Will Be Televised

I pay for the BBC - everyone with a TV set in the UK does. Last night's BBC 9 pm show, Episode 2 of Series 2 of Luther, was more than a waste of money. It was a criminal waste. The first series of Luther was shocking and thrilling. Last night plumbed the depths of evil enacted for entertainment - what is sometimes called "torture porn" - a genre more or less invented by the makers of the films Hostel and Saw; it is a cynical genre, that knew that eros and thanatos thicken and congeal in the human imagination, and that people will pay to see bad things happen to good-looking people. Fine for cinema - but public TV need not follow such bottom-feeder trends.

The Luther episode featured a bound police officer being branded; a man's hand crucified with hammer and nail; and fourteen children kidnapped on a schoolbus, gassed liked during Nazi Germany, and graphic discussion of how their bodies could be destroyed by acid. Each of these acts is repeatable, and no doubt some nutter will want to try and mimic the show. It certainly puts ideas into sick and healthy heads alike. Great drama has cathartic confrontations with evil, but it is also well-written and has deeper consequences. This was just rubbish. I want my money back.

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IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se. What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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