Reviving a Creepy Tradition

Simply titled "Ghost Stories: Volume Two", this audio book is distinctly different from other classical collections I have listened to or read in the past. The reason for this being that each of the four tales contained within are the works of M.R. James. Despite an undeniable legacy and influence over the genre in the 20th century, James's tales are still very different from what we expect in the horror or, more specifically, the ghost short story genre. They often have the superficial criteria of a contemporary pompous upper-middle class scholar uncovering an ancient object in a remote area and subsequently becoming haunted by a supernatural entity or curse. This has become known as Jamesian. They are also not particularly horrifying, not by today's standards, not by the standards of his day and not for the standards of Victorian ghost or horror stories that preceded them. These are stories that create atmosphere and imply an unknown menace, which are perfect for the function James originally intended them: as fireside tales to be told at night to a group of gathered friends.

Writing a review: my thoughts

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 In response to a fellow writer and friend's concerns regarding writing a review (a task he is more than capable of doing) I decided to re-publish the below review for the "Dooyoo" site back in February. I hope this is useful.

In gratitude for the very kind acknowledgement made by Dooyoo this week by making me a celebrated member of the week, I thought I would give back a bit to the community. Here is a little of my background.

Greatest Animated Fight Scenes

I’ll come straight out with it as much as I have a strong appreciation for well-plotted, well-acted, well-directed and well-produced dramas I have always enjoyed a good fight scene. What led me to like them were some of my earliest memories of TV, and these were watching cartoons like the animated series of “Godzilla”. The “Godzilla” TV series would often have at least one punch-up between the titular character of the show and some mythical or mutated beast. It wasn’t long after I became

Faust creates Satan - a review of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"

Plot:

Arctic adventurer Captain Robert Walton happens across a desperate man who he rescues and takes on board his ship. The man, a one Victor Frankenstein, befriends the explorer who he feels an almost immediate kinship with. Hearing of Walton’s ambitions to reach the North Pole he feels moved to tell the story of how he came to be in such a dire situation hoping it will serve as a cautionary tale for the driven captain.

Sins of the father, sins of Man; the price of the Immortals

Cover via Amazon

“Tess of the D’Urbervilles” is a classic Victorian tragedy about the life of an impoverished and virtuous Wessex country girl who becomes a victim of her society and the forces of fate. Her destiny will be both in the hands of the changeable morality of her fellow humans and the consistent forces of nature.

My 10 Favourite Movie Soundtracks

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The soundtrack can maketh the movie! Music and the absence of music in a film do more than set the tone, they shape how we feel about the picture. If we look at the controversial end of filmmaking "Scum" doesn't have a soundtrack and this helps bring the realism of the picture to life. However, a film like "Irreversible", which is arguably more shocking and certainly not low on realism uses tricks with their soundtrack that purposefully unnerves its audience. Below are several examples of soundtracks that either not only "made the movie", but even took on a life of their own.

The Woman Writer

I have recently been in contact with Sylvia Kent, a brilliant and enthusiastic journalist who sometimes writes on the Rosaire circus family, hence our connection. However, I was recently fascinated to read about her new book "The Woman Writer: The History of the Society Women Writers and Journalists". At the risk of sounding patronizing, I find the history of women's writing an interesting and inspirational focus of study. I was drawn to the life and works of Mary Wollstonecraft through her daughter, Mary Shelley, and honoured her in my 2009 anniversaries article. Wollstonecraft is often considered to be the prototypical feminist, although I think she was far more than that. She was a philosopher, writer and intellectual working in a field that was more than dominated by males, it was a domain made virtually impossible for women to access in Wollstonecraft's time and for almost a century after her death. We tend to forget that her daughter, the Brontes, Jane Austen, Beatrix Potter and so on were the exceptions to the rule of their time. They came from more or less privileged backgrounds and had to have exceptional talent and driving force, not to mention useful contacts, to get their heads above the parapet and their work out there. Widespread literacy is a relatively new thing anyway and it was even rarer with women up until the 20th century. Women authors in the 19th century nearly always adopted male pseudonyms. Whenever I bemoan how hard it is to get a work published or, harder still, to get paid, I am often reminded that my sex has had it relatively easy when it comes to selling the craft!

The Woman Writer

The History of The Society of Women

Writers & Journalists

Author Sylvia Kent

Published 1 December 2009 at £12.99, paperback original ISBN-10 9780752451596

An account of Britain’s oldest writing society dedicated to women’s writing through its 116-year existence

· The first in-depth history of the Society of Women Writers & Journalists.

· Published to commemorate the centenary in 2010 of former president Joyce Grenfell’s birth.

· Sylvia Kent explores the lives of some of the Society’s most famous members. Illustrated with over 100 photographs.

Over a century old and still thriving. The Society of Women Writers & Journalists has just published its history which reads like a “Who’s Who” of notable women from the twentieth Century. Although the SWWJ was created for women, the concept was the brainchild of a man – a clever, enterprising newspaperman – Mr Joseph Snell Wood. Given the small number of women in journalism at the time, almost every practising woman journalist must have applied for membership.

Since its creation on 1 May 1894, the Society has attracted the company of many of the world’s most famous women writers, journalists, poets, playwrights and associated creative people involved in the wider world of literature, film, music, theatre and entertainment. Author, Sylvia Kent, delved deeply into the Society’s archives and has produced fascinating cameos of its famous members: great names of Victorian media and later are included, such as Lady Sarah Wilson who reported from Mafeking on the Boer War, Alice Meynell, who almost became the first female Poet Laureate; American playwright, Pearl Craigie our first president; Agnes Elsie Thorpe, big game hunter; Marie Stopes who campaigned for birth control; Radclyffe Hall whose book on lesbianism was banned in the UK in the 1920s though it was exceedingly popular in the USA; Constance Smedley, founder of International Lyceum Clubs, Clemence Dane actor and playwright. Latterly, the Society welcomed Elizabeth Longford, well known biographer; Nina Bawden, famous for “Carrie’s War”; Jacqueline Wilson recent Children’s Laureate, and our current Life President, Baroness Williams of Crosby.

Information on the early days of many magazines and societies makes fascinating reading. Included are: The Gentlewoman, The Lady, The Stage, Good Housekeeping amongst the periodicals and the BBC, International Lyceum Clubs, the London Press Club, the New Cavendish Club, PEN, the RNA, the Society of Authors, Swanwick Summer School, the Women’s Press Club and the Stationers’ Livery Company all had connections.

Sylvia Kent is a columnist working for Newsquest and a freelance writer. She is Archivist/Press Officer for the SWWJ, vice-president of Brentwood Writers’ Circle and a Patron of the Essex Book Festival 2009/10. This is Sylvia’s seventh book, published whilst supporting other writers, particularly in the field of local history. She is a Trustee at the Cater Museum, Billericay.

Available from all good bookshops, Amazon and The History Press.

Direct sales – telephone 01235 465577 or www.thehistorypress.co.uk

For information about talks or interviews, please contact

Kerry Green at The History Press on 01453 732 512 or via www.sylviakent.blogspot.com

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Icon Series: Indelible Marx - Groucho Marx

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“Here’s to our wives and girlfriends – may they never meet!”

Julius Henry Marx, most famously known as Groucho Marx, is perhaps the wittiest comedy actor I have ever had the pleasure of hearing or watching. His fast-wit skill, along with his other talents, was perfected with his four brothers, Chico, Harpo, Gummo and Zeppo, through the hard graft of the Vaudeville stage and then brought to big screen with the advent of "talkies" and finally ending with a hugely successful game show.

“I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception”

I first got into the humour, caricature and icon of Groucho Marx when I was 17 years old. That was some four decades after Groucho’s golden age in films. In fact, I was only 13 months old when this wondrous comedy icon passed away. It was winter of 1993 and my father had won a couple of industry awards for his work with animals in films and one of the prizes was a coffee table book on the history of films. I was drawn to this light reading and enjoyed looking up the various icons I had become interested in over the years. When it came to comedy, Groucho Marx was the only one of famous siblings mentioned. The photo showed him wooing his regular straight foil in the movies, the great Margaret Dumont. I read the short bio with interest, particularly noticing the witty quotes that were all attributed to this comic legend. I mentioned him to my business studies tutor just off hand and she immediately confessed to being a fan of the Marx Brothers, telling me more about the rest of the gang. I was about to see them all for myself before the year was out.

My 10 Misunderstood Movies

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It is a little difficult to title this list. I thought about calling it "Ten Most Challenging Movies", but this is not really true. The Woodsman and Casualties of War are perhaps the only really challenging films listed here as far as I am concerned. I have settled for "Misunderstood" because of the way I have witnessed either the general public or the general consensus of critics go in their reception of a particular film. I am also quite prepared to take an objective and self-depreciating step back, and consider that I might have missed the pain point of the film gone the wrong way too. What I am saying is that I might be mistaken as well, which still goes to show how great these particular films are in that they make the viewer think.

1. Scum

A film set in the brutal borstal system still in operation in the 1970s. Often considered to be the breakout movie for director Alan Clarke, this signalled the beginning of unresolved rift between him and regular writer, Roy Minton. The problems occurred over changes made by Clarke without Minton's consultation when the BBC TV play was turned into a TV movie for Channel 4. Clarke would go on to prove himself in his later work, but Minton should be considered the unsung hero of the piece and his comments regarding the responses the film got are very interesting.

Minton was horrified when he heard a cheer go up in a cinema as Carlin (the main protagonist) dispatched his opposite number, "Baldy", in another wing of borstal cementing his position as the "daddy". This is the notorious "Where's ya tool?" scene. All of Carlin's fights are won using complete street savvy, with him armed and his opponents unarmed (for the purists, I count smashing Pongo, the previous Daddy's head into a wash basin when attacking him from behind as use of a weapon). The scenes are some the best dramatized versions of the strategies of the philosopher samurai, Myomoto Musashi. When Carlin takes out this particular inmate he does so by using the element of surprise and finishes him with a torrent of racial abuse calling him a "coon" and a telling him to "rub some coal dust over those bruises you black b*stard". Now, I am not saying that Carlin in a hate-filled bigot. Few people make that mistake. His language is just realistic for a 1970s inmate of a high security offenders' institution and is used like a weapon - nothing personal, just survival. However, this move that hardly represents the fall of a tyrannical regime by a philanthropist. Carlin is definitely a more sympathetic character than his predecessors and even shows signs of kindness to others - the intellectual rebel, Archer, in particular - but there are examples that he is no better than any of the other thugs and puts his own selfish survivalist agenda ahead of everyone else.




2. Doubt

Doubt is perhaps one of the most intentionally thought-provoking films I have ever seen. Set in a Roman Catholic school for boys it starts as a battle between tradition and change. Then it shifts our sympathies back and forth between one character that might represent coldness and discipline, but might also hold the actual moral truth, and another that although represents openness and kindness, might be responsible for sexually abusing a boy in the school. Sister Aloysius is the severe principle of the school and sees all agents of change from ballpoint pens to secular Christmas songs as signs of the decline of morals. As far as she is concerned the newly arrived Father Flynn is embodiment of change, wishing to move the school and the Catholic Church with the times. Between the two we have Sister James, a young novice nun and teacher, who seems to represent the audience.

Doubt is perfectly titled, using a very uncomfortable subject to throw us into a position directly between the state of belief and disbelief. The nature of scepticism is at its heart and, interestingly enough, this scepticism has nothing to do with the film's religious setting. Sister James works well as a conduit for all feelings related to this middle ground. She questions Sister Aloysius's obvious prejudices that might influence a confirmation bias regarding Flynn's guilt. Having said this, it is Sister James who is first suspicious of Flynn's relationship with the new boy and when she happily accepts his explanations, Aloysius is quick to point out that she is exhibiting wilful belief without sufficient evidence.

Doubt is one of those films that won't let you rest. Like Sister James, when you feel comfortable you are suddenly hit from a different angle. This is best illustrated in the scene where Aloysius confronts the mother of the child she suspects is being abused. I won't spoil the film for you, but the mother's argument adds a completely new dimension to the whole story.

John Patrick Shanley, who wrote the play the film was based on, said that his intention was to produce a story where audiences would be left creating the final act for themselves. This is what makes Doubt so effective.




3. Once Were Warriors

Jake "The Muss" is an even less likely heroic figure than Carlin. And yet, like Carlin, he is regularly quoted around beer tables by men who fanaticize about being tough as if Jake were another Dirty Harry or Rocky. Sure he is the alpha male through and through, a position many males instinctively aspire to, as he easily physically beats any man who challenges him, and he might be the life and soul of most parties, playing his guitar and cracking jokes. However, he is no success story. Jake can see no further than the self-imposed stigma of his racial caste. He is the descendent of slaves, married to a descendent of slave-owners. He is an alcoholic and one of the worst types of alcoholic. He has no time for any of his children. Because of his deficiency as a farther, one will end up in a juvenile detention centre, another joins an infamous street gang and his daughter will be raped by one of his drinking cronies, leading her to commit suicide. Meanwhile Jake beats and rapes his own wife. The one opportunity Jake gets to be a family man is short-lived as soon as he spots a bar and goes in for a drink. In the end his only use is as blunt instrument of violence primed and pointed by his long suffering wife to inflict retribution on his daughter's rapist.




4. The Woodsman

The most ignorant criticism this film received was that it, in some way, mitigated or created sympathy for paedophilia. What it does do is bring some realism, some maturity and some undeniable humanity to this darkest of issues. As a father and a self defence coach the film challenged me to face some very uncomfortable facts. Paedophiles are not faceless monsters that strike from the shadows. When they are discovered they may be loathed and feared by the masses, but they are also friends and relations to good people and good people befriend them after discovering their terrible crime.

The Woodsman offers no potential solutions and refuses to allow either soft-soaping liberal types or narrow-minded conservatives to have their way. There is the glimmer of redemption in the character of Walter, but equally the argument that paedophiles can never be truly be "cured" is also implied. Walter is a sympathetic character, but his past crimes are never played down in any way.




5. Swimming with Sharks

On the surface it's a black comedy about a young P.A., Guy, who suddenly snaps and starts torturing his sadistic boss, Buddy Ackerman (played by Kevin Spacey). Below the surface many have seen the film as a sharp critique of Capitalism at work in Hollywood. Given Kevin Spacey's political leanings this is a fair observation. However - and perhaps I am being perverse - I see it more as a hard lesson in life, particularly the showbusiness life. As the film progresses Buddy reveals the truth about success as opposed to the naïve idea presented in the movies that Guy has been inspired by. Buddy may be a tough, self-centred and cruel boss, but given the environment and the dream that Guy really wants he is the best teacher he could have.




6. Casualties of War

Set during the Vietnam War and based on true events, this is a hard-hitting story about peer pressure and courage. When an over-worked and vengeful squad of soldiers led by an out-of-control sergeant decide to kidnap and gang rape a Vietnamese girl, only one man is brave enough to oppose the decision. It is clear that the film is about a lone individual who defends what he believes is right no matter how much he fears for his own life. However, what grips me is the character of Diaz. Diaz is essentially a good person who does cave into the peer pressure and goes along with the whole terrible crime. He asks very uncomfortable questions of the everyman.




7. Made in Britain

Alan Clarke's other classic film. It frustrates many by being another example of a picture that doesn't present "a proper ending". There is no resolution, no conclusion and no twist. A brilliant early role for the great Tim Roth, it tells the story of a nihilistic skinhead and his life of antagonism and violence against authority figures. This is a classic case of "telling it how it is" without trying to push across a straight message or preach a moral. It is uncompromising, brutal and relentless.




8. Robocop

Merchandising didn't help matters, but the original Robocop was never intended to be a superhero movie. Director Paul Verhoevan did his very best to make sure it did not end up in this territory. Robocop is a product of fascist consumerism, where a person's life becomes a corporation's property. It is a dark tale of corruption and surviving within that corruption. Throughout it we get the reoccurring line "I'd buy that for a dollar", putting across the idea of a time where everything and everyone can be bought or traded. Sadly from Robocop 3 onwards the idea became pretty much all that the original opposed, finally ending up as a child-targeted cartoon.



9. American Psycho

Based on the cult novel, American Psycho is not a horror film. It just superficially resembles one. Patrick Bateman represents all that wrong about the 1980s. Everything is about image and "fitting in", with Bateman explaining all this along the way as if it were a precise science. He has everything down pat, saying what he feels is the right thing to say about charity, clothes, music and food. Sadly its sequel clearly ignored the main crux of the film and decided it was all about a snobby serial killer.




10. Starship Troopers

Paul Verhoeven again and yet again many people infuriatingly missed the point of this film. This time the director seems to have been even more subtle than he was with Robocop. By not making this a dark film but equally as violent and gory as Robocop, many movie viewers just assumed it was an over the top science fiction movie and even felt it was patriotic. It seems odd to say this, given the genre Verhoeven chose, but this is perhaps too subtle. The whole film is a blatant satire on American militarism. The humans in the film end up just as thoughtless and animalistic as the giant bug aliens they fight.




A Final Thought

I grew up watching videos as the exciting new medium. The appeal to my generation and subsequent young generations with DVD and Blu-Ray is that we can watch films again and again. As we grow up many of us find films we still enjoy re-watching. Often these are favourites from our youth or films that we associate with a certain time of year and have become part our traditions. However, we often like to re-watch a film with a new audience to show them something that moved us in some way or other. I can't think of a better reason to re-watch a film than when it really made me think. Great films, like the Usual Suspects, Pulp Fiction or The Omen, are worth re-watching because of their twists or different interpretations we may have missed on a first viewing. The films I have listed here are pictures that really prompted me, challenged me or dared not to follow a comfortable formula.

If you enjoyed this article please show your appreciation by voting for it on the following websites. It won't cost you a penny and you can make money too if you like to write and review. Thank you:

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Don't forget to check out Jamie Clubb's main blog www.jamieclubb.blogspot.com

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More than a sequel

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Ladies and gentlemen of the jury I present to you a fine example that not only puts forward the argument that sequels can be great, but also that there were good sequels before Godfather Part II. The Bride of Frankenstein actually surpasses the original film and is perhaps one of the greatest horror movies made.

I say all this in spite of its glaring flaws as a sequel. It commits all the cardinal sins that a sequel should never do. It changes the tone of the original by introducing comedy, it retcons the ending of the original (if you have read or seen "Misery" this is an absolute no-no with die-hard fans) and unforgivably it brings in a new actress to play a leading role. If that weren't bad enough the titular character barely makes a cameo appearance. So what makes it so good?

The truth is 1935's The Bride of Frankenstein is James Whale's masterpiece. Despite exhibiting some of the first flashback sequences in a feature film during its opening prologue and some direct links via minor characters early on, the film stands alone as a great movie. Whale recognized how humour can be a valuable tool when dealing with horror. The comedy from the amazingly campish villaint Dr "It's my only weakness" Pretorious (played by Ernest Thesiger and apparently personally directed with relish by the openly gay Whale) , the black humour of Dwight Fray (once more playing a wicked assistant) and the hilarious hyserical moments on offer from the newly introduced Minnie the Frankenstein housekeeper (played by another Whale favourite, Una O'Connor) would have provided the relief required for the movie's darker aspects. This would be used again and again across the horror genre.
There is still the air of menace with Karloff putting in another great performance as the monster, but this time we get see more of his pathos - "We belong dead!"

Despite straying wildly off Mary Shelly's original novel, the film references much of its source material. It even begins with the trio who conceived the novel - Mary Shelly (the actual writer) and her two sources of influence and inspiration, Percy Shelly (her husband) and Lord Byron. Having been excited by Byron's insistance on recounting the events of the previouos film and the storm bellowing outside, Mary decides to tell them both what happened after the monster's apparent demise. Other references include a blind hermit (actually the blind elder member of the De Lacey family in the novel) and, of course, the plan to build a mate for the monster.

The Bride of Frankenstein stands out from all the other Universal classics for its sheer audacity (as well as the coded homeosexual element in Pretorious there are also plenty of references to Christ in the monster, despite having plenty taken out by the strict censors of its time), executed in true style.

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Follow the Black Swan

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First of all let me apologize to the gentle reader who was misled by my title. This is not going to be an enlightening piece of literature, where the black swan is a metaphorical representation of some philosophical idea I am trying to convey to you. The black swan does have a symbolic meaning to me that I might divulge at a later time, but it has little to do with this post. This post is about one thing and one thing only: money!

Start any credible writing course or read any decent book about writing as a profession and you are more than likely to be reminded of the immortal words of Dr Samuel Johnson, author of the first English dictionary, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money". Most courses that are serious about getting you paid for your written work will encourage you to write letters for newspapers that pay, enter competitions for cash prizes - you will note that the vast majority of small writing competitions award cash prizes for a good reason - and indeed chase anything that means a monetary return. There is little place for pride in the early life of a writer trying to turn profeessional. In fact, the story of the struggling writer who prostitutes himself in anyway to make his talent pay is a virtual modern proverb these days. Check out the very funny Ed Reardon's Week for a great caricature of the overeducated writer desperate for work or, indeed, the Ricky Gervais's series, Extras for examples of an artist tortured by the continued loss of his credibility. And yet ask many non-writers their opinion on writing for a living and they will think it is a simple case of writing a book and sending it off the lucky publisher keen to get their hands on your gold. You then receive nice fat advance payments for every subsequent book, as you laze back in your expensive surroundings just waiting for the inspiration to grab you before writing your next bestseller. J.K. Rowling is cited as the supreme example of this and it is perhaps why many a struggling writer see daggers at this phenomenally successful writer. The truth for most, however, is a very different story.

When I was at school I remember a special room being set up where students, in their free time, could investigate career opportunities. You would enter your career of choice and then be given a list of the qualifications that best suited this job and the places in further and higher education that offered them. Then it would tell you what the general job prospects were. I remember going into the room with the same writing myth in my head I have previously described. The qualifications came up, English and History. I was overjoyed. My two favourite subjects! Then job prospects followed: very poor.

As the years have past I have got work in print. I even sold my first two not very good short stories quite easily, but this did far from open the floodgates of opportunity for me. I wrote for martial arts publications, using the vehicle of my twin passion to get some leverage up the professional ladder of opportunity. Unfortunately the ladder was sort of propped against the wrong wall, as the industry rarely pays hard cash for any work. It is a business based on the fact that a highly competitive world of clubs and retail businesses are falling over themselves to get publicized, meaning that some people virtually pay to get their work in print! I do know at least one person who got paid to write for a magazine, but from his account it was a severely unbalanced Faustian deal. Luckily I was published with Martial Arts Illustrated who although didn't pay me hard cash gave me free advertising space. So, I worked out a way to promote seminars off the back of articles I wrote on good martial artists.

Eventually I did succeed in getting a book into print and significantly it wasn't a martial arts book. However, no serious businessman would have been impressed with the niche market returns I received versus time and effort put into researching and writing this book. Mind you, this is the general nature of the writing business. The general path most professional writers take is qualify as a journalist and then to start writing their books in their spare time. This is not the route for all of us, much less those of us who weren't qualified to become journalists when we left school, however, the principle is a very sound one. Get paid for perfecting your craft in order to support the projects you love. Of course, journalism is an art unto itself and many journalists only write books as sideline and incidental projects. Their real love is their actual job. If you are a writer like me, however, you want to write books for a living. You want to write about your intererests and passions and receive a serious income for it. I am on my way and I have found some useful new tools at my and your disposal.

Writing has always been an accessible art to most people. That's why you get the J.K. taunts. Most people could write a book. Most people can also make money from it and some recognition. This blog is proof of the latter point. The internet has proven to be an incredible tool for today's generation of writers. It certainly has some big dangers varying from being dragged into listless or empty self indulgent writing, where your work is never going to generate any indirect let alone direct monetary returns, to the new problems with copyrighting http://web.me.com/penandspindle/heathervallance/The_Goblin_Market/Entries/2009/7 /31_Why_My_Copyright.html However, if you can steer your good ship, Discipline with strong awareness light on well across the internet then there is plenty that can be used to your advantage.

According to Don Tapscott's Grown Up Digital the era of the critic may be at an end. Few consumers trust the words of the distanced academic "expert" over someone they can relate to. The internet provides a collaborative community, a global one at that, which forms groups and trades information. Savvy internet companies realize this. They understand that Tapscott's Net Generation like to read reviews from people like themselves before they decide to buy a product. They also understand that this community will reward and recommend good reviews. Many sites, such as Amazon, have done this. I am actually a member of Amazon Vine, a special group that receives any early releases they list whenever I want free of charge in order to review them. This is hardly payment for my services, but it was quite nice to receive that recognition for a bunch of reviews I wrote years ago as an exercise to see how my work reviewing non-martial arts items might be received by the general public.

However, what prompted me to write what has become a rather lengthy ramble is a price comparison website called Dooyoo. This is where I appear as the BlackSwan featured in my title, writing reviews and actually getting paid to do it. How do I find the time? Those who know me will understand that time is not a plentiful commodity at hand. I try to restrict myself to writing stuff that is directly related to my own work - be it teaching martial arts/self defence or promoting my book. However, like most writers I am also constantly feeding off inspiration. This mainly comes in the form of books and entertainment. I love to discuss these things and there are plenty of people who enjoy reading my opinions and recommendations. Therefore, I thought why not use the time I would normally use to reply to an email to make some money?

Dooyoo was recommended to me through the famed "money saving expert" Martin Lewis. Here's the page I read: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/protect/make-money-surveys#review I am not interested in wasting my time on paid surveys. That's not what I like doing. The point is I like writing about works that either inspired me and also ones that didn't. If you are a reading this you are more than likely to be a person who enjoys writing and enjoys sharing their views on different media. This a great exercise to get your views out there and to see if they people find them useful. Better that than to write a big explanation on Facebook, Myspace, a forum or the like whether or not you thought the latest episode of Big Brother was any good.

When I first registered with the site I was expecting - rather pompously - to see a huge slew of badly written reviews and plagerized work. Although there is a lot of dross on the site, which is only to be expected, I was astounded to see a large number of good writers, many like me who have their own professional website and blogs. The community was very much the embodiment of what Tapscott described in his book with members policing and rewarding one another. If you do decide to join up, here are a few pointers I have learnt early on:

1. Obviously don't plagerize. Any new review is immediately registered and the community are onto it like white on rice. You will get a rating - Very Useful, Useful, Somewhat Useful or Not Useful - pretty quickly. There are a lot of serious users on this site, and a good number probably relying on it for a decent secondary income. However, there is nothing wrong with recycling an old review you may have written on your blog or another website that encourages customer feedback. My advice would be to preface the review with a small disclaimer that the review has been previously posted elsewhere - if it is on your blog then that's more advertising!

2. Make sure your reviews are for products only listed by Dooyoo. Remember it serves as a price comparison website, so many of the products are from other retailers. There is a function that allows you to only see products in the Dooyoo catalogue. You won't get points for reviews written for any other products. It might add to your profile, but the money is way too small and time is far too precious to bother with that sort of thing. Also, if I know many of you like I know myself you will get snared into producing more and more work without any instant rewards.

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Don't forget to check out Jamie Clubb's main blog www.jamieclubb.blogspot.com

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Icons Series Reflecting on Michael Jackson Part 1: “Who’s Bad?”

Michael Jackson via last.fm

I cannot see any obvious connection between the circus culture I grew up around and my childhood/young teenage stint as a Michael Jackson fan. However, “The King of Pop” – as he was dubbed by actress and friend, Elizabeth Taylor - was always going to be liked by most circus people. Michael Jackson ticks the “good performer” criteria boxes with circus folk. He could dance, he could legitimately sing, he could play musical instruments and, above all else, he could put on a show! Furthermore, Jackson was a regular visitor to circuses and, according to one source, even toyed with the idea of buying Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. Jackson was also born into showbusiness and worked in the industry in front of audiences in his childhood. Circus people could empathize with the hard work of continual practice he endured as a child.

They could also relate to the controversy and apparent persecution he suffered at the hands of the media. Nevertheless, my interest in Michael Jackson’s work happened completely outside my circus life. It occurred when I was at school when I had a bit of hiatus away from the culture I born into.

Michael Jackson versus Richard III

In 1988 I was given an unusual history homework assignment. We were studying Richard III, one of England’s most controversial monarchs, and the assignment required us to write two short essays giving opposing views on the Yorkist king. However, we had an especially cool history teacher at that time and being keen to rouse our young pre-pubescent minds he gave us an alternative option for our essay subject. Instead of writing two essays on Richard III we could write two opposing views on Michael Jackson. Unsurprisingly, as children are want to do, most of the class flew in the face of what our teacher thought was a popular option and wrote about the former Duke of Gloucester rather than the current King of Pop. I have always loved history and in years to come I would enjoy studying Richard III both as an actual historical figure and as the fictitious Machiavellian villain in Shakespeare’s tragedy. However, at the time I couldn’t resist writing about my then favourite pop star.

Looking back, the purpose of that assignment was not far from the task many journalists were given when Michael Jackson was confirmed dead on 25th June 2009. Michael Jackson now strikes a massive division between many people and sometimes in individuals. An unlikely controversial artist, Jackson’s work never came near the material of history’s best known music rebels. However, Michael Jackson’s controversy was not “rock star” controversy. It was outright weirdness that culminated in the type of media negativity that only a star with his type of following could really withstand.

But this was all to come for me. A year prior to the assignment Mr Jackson had officially become my first pop icon, my first living icon! I didn’t consciously dress like him, I have never been a dancer, singer and certainly was no musician, but I happily got swept up into his following with vigour.

Bad: The Movie

“I'd fuck Mike up. You know, Mike... Mike don't weigh but a buck-oh-five, you know. I bust that ass on Mike”, so said Eddie Murphy in his live 1987 show, Raw, when he compared upsetting the singer with annoying the then famous “hard-man” actor, Mr T. Michael Jackson may have been far more commercially successful than Mr T and even Eddie Murphy combined, but he was, as has been said on many occasion, “Music’s unlikeliest bad boy”. And yet “Bad” was an amazingly successful album, single, music video and world Pepsi sponsored tour. It was the album that snared me and my contemporaries at school, even when the parodies about Michael Jackson and his many eccentricities were making regular news. Relatively ignorant of Jackson’s lengthy time as the child lead singer of a clean-cut boy band, The Jackson 5, we were totally sold on the idea of a slightly built, boyish looking male dancer who sang in a high tenor declaring he was “Bad”.

The 18 minute music video for Bad, directed by Martin Scorsese, found its way into my school shortly before I bought the Bad album. Our private viewing of the film was cut short half way through by a teacher, but I was totally hooked. After buying the album I imagined the film was the beginning of a full-on feature, each of the tracks being in sequence as part of a musical that finished with “Smooth Criminal”. A year later this would be partially realised for me with the feature film, “Moonwalker”.

Time for a child, even in your early teens, seems to move very slowly. I remember somewhere between the Bad album and the theatrical release of Moonwalker being told by an older friend of mine that Michael Jackson was “old music” now. Although I was initially impressed by the popularity of the star, it had never been in my nature to really care much about what others thought and I never was particularly perturbed by the concept of something being unfashionable. By this stage I had saved up enough to buy the “Thriller” album and my birthday presents had included Jackson’s autobiography, “Moonwalk”, and the partisan documentary video, “Michael Jackson: The Legend Continues”. Mum and Dad also both bought me the Thriller video around the same time. The video contained the full 15 minute short film and its much lengthier “Making of” documentary.

‘Cause this is Horror!

There was always a type of forgiven naivety about the work of Michael Jackson just as many would forgive his apparent naivety in life. I wonder whether I was the only movie geek sad enough to point out that the Rod Temperton penned Thriller was, in fact, a song about horror films and not thriller films. Likewise, “Leave Me Alone” may have had a music video that focused on the media hype, rumours and speculation that surrounded the megastar, but according to Jackson’s autobiography it was really a song about a relationship between the singer and a girlfriend, and how they struggled against outside interference. The theme would be repeated in the provocatively titled “In the Closet” on his next album.

None of Jackson’s albums could really have been called concept works. The movie Moonwalker didn’t really resemble a movie and yet I recall many non-Michael Jackson fans agreeing that it was highly enjoyable. I, of course, loved it to bits. I got the calendar, the book of the film and when it came out on video I rushed to get my copy. The film is divided up into several loosely connected and sometimes unconnected acts, half of which are really just music videos. Their only consistent theme appears to be the celebration of Michael Jackson. It was well produced with brilliant special effects and Jackson’s performances were outstanding, particularly the film’s centrepiece, “Smooth Criminal”, but it would be difficult for the dispassionate viewer not to see the film as perhaps cinema’s greatest marriage of blatant product advertising and self-indulgent fantasy, surpassing even the movies of The Beetles, Cliff Richard, Cradle of Filth and even Elvis in this respect. If you ever want an example of how great style and ego can carry a product with virtually no substance then Moonwalker is your boy. Having said that, seeing the success of musicals that were based purely on and around the recordings of classic pop music, such as Moulin Rouge and Mama Mia, perhaps Moonwalker was ahead of its time!

Michael Jackson’s videos are rightfully considered to be some of the best, if not the best in the world. He pioneered, he invented, he pushed boundaries and he left a legacy of visual work that continues to entertain. There was some experimental work in the video “Don’t Stop ‘til You Get Enough”, which came off his coming-of-age album with Quincy Jones, “Off the Wall” and the collaboration with his brothers on “Can You Feel it?”, but it was with Thriller that he really changed the music television world... quite literally. Of course, Thriller is now famous for being the bestselling album of all time, but that wasn’t its only historical achievement. Those who had worked with Jackson on the video for the single, “Billie Jean”, released just prior to Thriller would have an idea of the ambitions the singer was striving for in his film-work, but few could have predicted just how extraordinary Thriller the music video would be. John Landis, the legendary comedy horror director who made American Werewolf in London, was hired to make Thriller and the bar for music’s future had just been raised to the stars. MTV has a lot to thank Michael Jackson for.

The video for Smooth Criminal is perhaps one of my two favourite moments for the star. It involves so many interesting features. There is the mass dance choreography that had become a trademark of Michael Jackson, the anti-gravity lean special effect that inspired the onstage device he invented and patented, and an incredible atmosphere throughout the video. Being a fan of the early gangster movies even then, I seem to see movements reminiscent of the mannerisms of actors like James Cagney, particularly the parts where Jackson and his fellow dancers hunch their shoulders and prowl across the screen. Perhaps it is my imagination, but this mannerism appears to be carried over into the way Jackson pronounced extra lyrics added to Smooth Criminal for Moonwalker; they seem to have a New York wise guy accent to them.

These new lyrics were supposedly included to make more sense of the story i.e. Jackson’s character is looking for more clues in Club 30s, the haunted venue where the music video takes place. They do nothing of the sort. The song’s general lyrics appear to be a discussion on the scene of a crime where a girl called Annie has been attacked in her own apartment. This has no connection with Moonwalker’s child-friendly mini-film sequence whatsoever of which Smooth Criminal is the centrepiece. There isn’t even a character called Annie in the film. I recall the book of the movie quoting the repetitive chorus that mentions Annie showing Jackson’s character dancing with one of the Club 30s’ gangster molls, as if to make its own sense of the song in the context of the story. It would appear that no one really knew what it was all about.

The Smooth Criminal costume is also Jackson at his most eccentric. He wears an armband, as if to mourn someone, and tapes his fingertips. I recall watching the making of the film, where a member of the crew queried Jackson about these peculiar additions. Who had died? Had he hurt his fingers? Apparently they were character enhancements – well of course they were! However, I am sure there are plenty who have since speculated and come up with all sorts of bizarre conclusions.

Comic-Book Hero?

At the beginning of the Michael Jackson autobiography, Moonwalk, the singer opens with his admiration of the great storytellers. This skill never was one of Michael Jackson’s strong points. Visually and emotionally he could come up with fantastic aesthetic treats. He knew how to work a crowd better than anyone in the music business and he could translate this excellently to film plus he could certainly write some interesting songs, but as far as creating an original piece of narrative is concerned, it is pretty clear that this was not his forte. Of course, this hasn’t stopped many from trying to make sense out of his work. This includes Jackson himself as demonstrated by the odd direction Smooth Criminal was sent in the Moonwalker film.

I recall buying a Michael Jackson magazine that featured a serialized comic strip based on Michael Jackson’s songs. Having just surfed the ‘net to verify these appearances I find that although Jackson was very much a keen comic-book fan, his general appearances in comics were surprisingly limited. “Mad Magazine” pops up with their obvious play on the song, Bad. This is something the British adult satirical puppet show, “Spitting Image”, did around the same time. However, before either of these the British satirical magazine for children, “Oink”, pipped them both to the post, but no one seems to have picked up on that yet.

The fact that Jackson almost bought Marvel Comics is mentioned on several comic fan websites and there are a few other vague mentions, including the disastrous 3-D comic book adaptation of Moonwalker, which helped bankrupt Blackthorne Publishing. Prior to this there was the comic strip adaptation of the Michael Jackson Disney theme park 3-D film, Captain EO. However, the Michael Jackson song influenced comic strips seem to be lost in the ether for now. It’s a shame. I recall, even then, to be impressed by the imagination of the writer(s). There was an adaptation of Billie Jean, where the concept of an obsessed and delusional female fan turns to darker places with Jackson’s character, perhaps prophetically, being accused rape. The story ended on a cliff-hanger with the police arresting the Michael character. I seem to recall there also being an adaptation of “Heartbreak Hotel” aka “This Place Hotel”, a song penned by Jackson when he was still officially working with his brothers.

Lapsed Fan

By the time the “Dangerous” album came out I had well and truly moved on from Michael Jackson. I watched the full length world premier of his video of Black or White and for a time I recall my sixth form year looking forward to their daily dosage of “Jam” shown routinely by the TV station that had made its name off the King of Pop’s music promos: MTV.

However, as I said before, time just seems so much slower when you are a kid. I had gone from Michael Jackson to Prince, something I never thought I would do when I was at the height of my Michael Jackson hero-worship. Incidentally Prince, a contender for Jackson’s crown in so many different ways, including outright weirdness, was also a comic-book fan. It seemed like an eternity had elapsed between the release of Bad in 1987 and Dangerous in 1991. Times had changed for me. My taste in music had experienced a massive transformation when I was 15.

First it was Alice Cooper, another one of music’s showman, who in the 1980s had dipped his toe into mainstream pop and commercialism in order to survive the onslaught of hair metal, bubble metal and other lite-rock trends that had made the medium “safe” in the same way that Cliff Richard had done with Elvis and The Monkees did with The Beetles. Alice Cooper has never been worried about “selling out”. In the early part of the 21st century the keen golfer and concerned parent is equally at home producing an aggressive hard rock album with dark themes and political sensibility as he is in appearing on an ad for the corporate world. The same cannot really be said for UK and US godfathers of punk Jonny Rotten who has advertised butter and Iggy Pop who advertised insurance.
I was first introduced to Alice Cooper on an episode I recorded of the Muppet Show. And despite his nonchalant and regular forays into the mainstream there is little doubt he deserves his well-earned place in the history of rock and roll. His influence was massive in the late ’60s through to the ‘70s with the horrific theatrics he brought to his stage shows and the teenage angst he brought to the lyrics of his music. I was reintroduced to Alice Cooper on the release of his early ‘90s album, Hey Stoopid. It was an album at the end of an era with squealing ‘80s guitars and machismo, but it struck a chord with me. His back catalogue introduced me to the true beauty of Alice Cooper’s work and I was a rock man from then on. Anything that provoked was now good in my books.

There is a stage most teenagers go through when the old becomes cool again. I guess it is a pretence to being intellectual that you honour music of yesteryear as if you were admiring classic literature. It is often paralleled with a type of “second childhood” chic or irony, where teenagers like showing that it is cool to like characters like Winnie the Pooh.

I was very aware of all this when I was teenager. The trouble was I didn’t despise old music at all. When I was into Michael Jackson I was soon listening to all his Motown stuff from the ‘70s. Alice Cooper led me right back to the grittier stuff that had made him famous. So when I re-discovered ‘70s punk rock it was like an epiphany for me and I really shifted away from the mainstream. The dance music I had taken to be the soundtrack muzak of the times was thoroughly rejected. I had never been overly keen on the whole manufactured bands of the 1980s and I recall having a particular disdain for Bros, now I loathed them with all with a passion. Punk was the ultimate flipside to popular music for me and I have loved it to this day. Having sought out many of the most influential bands of this brief period in rock history, I longed for a version to appear for my generation. Then my brand-trained eyes saw it in the barely encircled “A” being sported on the tops of American cheerleaders! That symbol meant one thing to me: anarchy. And anarchy was, of course, the philosophy of the punks. I had discovered Nirvana.

I wasn’t into the grunge scene on the whole. In fact, I have never really desired to be a part of any scene. The artists I had discovered post-Michael Jackson seemed to be fierce individualists and it was this quality that I admired in them. Before my drastic change in direction I recall proudly telling my music teacher, when asked, that Michael Jackson was my favourite musician. Then I heard the same name uttered by individually at least half the other students there. Suddenly it all didn’t seem so special. I am not one for change for change’s sake and I only buck a system that requires bucking, but there is something about homogeny that turns me off at a very deep level. These other artists I discovered dared to be different and although they might start whole new movements, they rarely liked this part of their legacy. Many seem to forget that although Nirvana had become very successful, they were being outsold by their vastly inferior rivals, Pearl Jam, before the death of Kurt Cobain. Afterwards was a different matter, but it is arguable that grunge had died by then anyway.

Put it quite simply Michael Jackson was very much part of the establishment in my mind. He was, by comparison to his contemporaries, very safe. Thriller was no dark provocative track like you would find among the works of Christian Death, Sisters of Mercy, Incubus Succubus or other music that specialized in Gothic themes. It was more a tribute to the fun of watching horror movies and scaring each other.

There are some surprisingly adult themes among his songs, but they often passed the approval of your average parent, even in the early 1980s. Outside the sex allegations that would plague him from 1993 onwards, Jackson’s controversy only stemmed from being eccentric. His work barely flirted with actual controversy. He wore a codpiece in a time long after Blackie Lawless’s overtly sexual and pseudo-violent use of this clothing accessory and Jackson grabbed his crotch three decades after the days of “Elvis the Pelvis”. The odd single use of a swearword were barely noticed in songs like Dirty Diana and Scream, and despite the odd attempt by the press to make something of it, the general public were not shocked. For example, “In the Closet” is typically Michael Jackson in that it was determinedly about a heterosexual relationship. “Earth Song” might have been about self and collective recrimination for crimes against the planet, but it smacked of a type of trendy hypocritical eco-peachiness that was already become quite stale at the time.

The closest Jackson would ever come to a protest song was with “They Don’t Care About Us”, which really did cause a lot of controversy. The issue about this song was the inclusion of the words “Jew me, sue me” and “Kick me, kyke me”, which aroused concern by the Jewish community. It wasn’t difficult for anyone with a modicum of intelligence to figure out that the song was about discrimination, opposing hate crimes, rather than an anthem promoting anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, this didn’t stop the criticism, which was enough to make Jackson issue numerous public apologies and to eventually alter the lyrics. It wasn’t the first time the singer felt he had to issue an explanation of sorts. After becoming a Jehovah’s Witness, Jackson felt he needed to give a disclaimer at the start of the music video for Thriller that explained the film was in no way intended to endorse the occult. No, Michael Jackson was never going to be a truly rock ‘n roll controversialist!

My mother certainly recalled my Michael Jackson years, when I played his albums in our car, with a great deal more fondness than any of my subsequently more alternative and subsequently louder tastes in music. I guess I considered Jackson as part of my childhood when I made the transition. His music did not speak to Generation X, the generation I had come in at the tail end of, the generation of sceptics and cynics. We had become accustomed to watching great stars and icons die before they reached middle age or torn down by a press that had worked so hard to build them up. However, the latter was about to happen to Jackson in a big way.

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Don't forget to check out Jamie Clubb's main blog www.jamieclubb.blogspot.com

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