John Mortell’s blog

Like everybody else it seems, I have seen the clip of Susan Boyle singing, and while I do not deny that she has a tremendously impressive voice, frankly I have found it hard to buy into the general ‘ugly duckling / swan story that has been built around her. Even if the story is a good one. But Clive James, over at the BBC, in my opinion hits the nail on the head about the story here. Follow the jump for the full article, but the important part I have attached in block quotes:

The facts, alas, say that in every opera house in the world the chorus contains at least half a dozen people with voices as good as Susan’s, and most of them won’t become stars, so all the hoo-hah about Susan’s sudden stardom was at least partly illusory, based on the dangerous notion that overnight prominence on television will always change reality permanently.

In the opera house, music ought to matter more than anything but it remains true that one of the reasons people flock to hear Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca singing together is that they look the part almost as well as they sing it.

Things shouldn’t be that way, but strangely enough they have become more and more that way in the last forty years, during the very period when feminism as a train of thought has done so much to educate us about the restrictive nature of expectations based on pulchritude.

When I first started attending Covent Garden in the early 1960s it was still quite common for the soprano to be an unlikely stimulus for the tenor’s cries of passion. Today, most of the sopranos look like film stars. It could be said that the more our primitive male prejudices are broken down, the more we all become free. But one of the consequences of freedom is that ticket buyers are free to choose, and it is likely to remain a fact that ticket buyers of both sexes will choose to see the imported dreamboat.

Susan might very well, after this, get a job in the chorus and even sell a lot of records, but if the press expects more than that it could be adding yet another chapter to a long story in which discoveries have been shoved onto the boards to fulfil a role in a fairy story which is fated not to turn out well.

As I said to my supervisor last week when having a quick meeting about my dissertation, the most unexpected problem I have encountered is not a strictly ‘academic’ one but rather, that the topic itself, namely the Lebanon war of 2006 is quite depressing.

I don’t mean ‘depressing’ in a sort of existentialist way of ‘war is hell’ or ‘why can’t people just get along’ sense, but rather that I’m finding it very hard to read about many of the (mostly Israeli) actions that have tremendous human impact and the general human suffering involved, and either maintain some feeling of objectivity and, more importantly (at least for my personal sanity) do not leave me with an unhelpful feeling of anger or disgust directed at the Israeli state..

In many ways this feeling come from several different areas.. Which for my own health and sanity I want to break down to see if I can make sense of the constituent parts:

For starters, I am not exactly what you would call pro-Israel. I generally believe that the Israeli state is sectarian, racist and generally quite unpleasant in its dealings with many of its neighbours and ‘Arab’ citizens (also with ‘Jews’ that don’t make the cut for whatever reason, like the Russian immigrants or the ‘African’ Jews). The main problem I have here is that I can accept that some of my prejudices are just that, and that the alternative states in the region are not exactly ‘good’.. But that still doesn’t excuse or block the fact that for me, the persistent, consistent and obvious abuses committed by Israel.. at the very least make it hard for me to maintain my objectivity.

As an example, one of the things that have gotten to me most in reading about the war is that Israel, in the last 48 hours of the conflict, while negotiating a cease-fire dropped cluster bombs on Lebanon. Apparently, just to kick the Lebanese population ‘while it was down’. Given that I’ve seen articles on the BBC talking about the civilian deaths from this war, there use seems to just be a means of terrorising the population.

So, solution to problem one – find (reasonable) sources, that can explain to me, without using the mindset that they’re ‘just filthy Arabs’ why Israel’s actions are correct or moral.

Problem two – the fact that I’m being bothered by the morality. I’m having a hard time distancing myself from the current situation. While writing this would probably be easier if I could just ‘turn off’ any political senses I have, the general current historical proximity of the events makes this pretty hard, if not impossible.

The other major problem I have is that I’m having a hard time finding a focus in this topic. Partially it is because there seem to be no books on anything to do with the Middle East in which you do not at the very least find gross distortions or lies. But mostly it is just the problem of finding something that I can sink my teeth into enough without getting .. dragged down perhaps? As an example, anything pro-Hezbollah, skirts dangerously close at times to ‘evil hooked-nosed Jews came and ate my baby’… While things like Robert Fisk often spend quite a length of time discussing how ‘this old woman lost her entire family to a disproportionate Israeli attack’… But as I’ve sad in my ‘problem one’, finding anything that isn’t basically the ‘Faux news’ version of the world that supports Israel is nearly impossible.. In terms of my focus, this is making it very difficult to find a focus that I can feel comfortable with.

On the other hand, speaking of my prejudices, I’m not certain that they are a problem. Mainly because I am willing to acknowledge that I have them? But on this factor, I’m not certain.

Anyway, apologies for the rambling, and (probably) incoherent nature of this post, but I had it suggested to me that doing something like this may at least get other people to give me helpful suggestions, or would at least help me sort it out in my own head..

One of the more interesting TED talks for me in recent times.. I’ve been hearing a lot lately about how this ‘war robotics’ is going to cause a lot of changes and this is a pretty good intro into it:

You hear a lot about ‘intelligent design’ and how the Earth is ‘perfect for humans’ and so on, but here is a fascinating video presenting a nice argument against that idea:

It’s obviously done with a slight amount of tongue in cheek and certain things are probably more beneficial than he makes them out in the video but it’s an interesting watch nevertheless…