Widening the View - Children and Entertainment Today

I cast my mind back to 2010 and my then three year old daughter has woken me up. It’s too early and I need my sleep. In desperation to grab a bit more dozing time she is given a mobile phone with various educational games. This will keep her happy for a while. Her eyes dark around the small screen as her fingertips tap and swipe. She performs various tasks that will stimulate her mind and build neural pathways. I was as dubious then as I am now by the benefits of early education, but these games cannot hurt. My daughter is actively engaging in something. She is being proactive whereas I will soon turn on the radio or the television and passively receive whatever information happens to be available. 

I was a child that grew up at the dawn of the fourth terrestrial channel. It was also the era of the video cassette, personal home computer and arcade games. With the romance of hindsight and that intoxicating drug we call self-righteousness, it is very easy for me to say that we had the perfect balance over today’s hedonistic, spoilt, overweight and unhealthy wretched brood. We were the last and most representative of Douglas Coupland’s Generation X and just followed the tail end of Andrew Collins’ “Where did it all go Right” brigade. Our generation were the last to experience good rebellious music as teenagers and the ones responsible for allowing our children to be baptized in Don Tapscott’s digital ocean. We were also the first to embrace large scale toy merchandizing alongside our traditional fairy tales. Many of us cried when a giant robot was killed in a motion picture in order to make way for a Christmas toy line. When we got to our adolescence we were filled with a combination of righteous indignation whilst being simultaneously softened by political correctness, which seemed set to ruin the childhood we remembered, sanitizing it for those not yet into double figures. We were cynics and sceptics, and we were also superficially sentimental. The science fiction and fantasy of our youth now dominates the cinemas, which is barely enough to distract us from the fact that we have been lapped by the Millennial Generation.  

After Magna Carta "Sealed not Signed"

So, my busy schedule puts me at a loss once again to produce anything particularly meaningful on yet another very important historic day. 800 years ago this week, on 19th June, King John and 25 rebellious barons shared a charter drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury that was intended to restore peace between the crown and the aforementioned angered noblemen. John would give the charter his royal seal, but contrary to many dramatic depictions, including the one I describe later, he could not be forced into signing it. In essence, Magna Carta would protect the barons from being subject to limitless taxations by the king and also from unjustifiable imprisonment. The charter was radical document for its time and neither side stood by their commitments, leading to the First Barons' War. It would be called upon in response to the actions of another rebel, Simon DeMontford. DeMontford would covene a "parley" at Kenilworth Castle in 1264, consisting of demoncractically elected knights. This would be the first Parliament. He would eventually usurp the crown for a year, becoming a prototypical Oliver Cromwell before he was overthrown and killed by Henry III's forces. Henry would re-issue and re-edited version of the Magna Carta.

A Review of "Marvellous"

Plot:

“Marvellous” is based on the true story of Neil Baldwin. Baldwin was diagnosed with “learning difficulties” at school, but didn’t allow the label to discourage him from achieving as much in life as his heart desired. We meet Neil working as Nello the clown in the circus. He goes on to get a regular role at Keele University, advising and helping students, and is employed by his beloved football team, Stoke City. Along the way, his mother worries profusely whether he will be able to look after himself after she dies. 

Review:

Before I begin, I guess I better put in a mild caveat. A TV film like “Marvellous” is probably not going to get the most unbiased of reviews from me. It focuses on the life of someone who I never met, but nevertheless I know plenty of people who do know him. This includes the great Norman Barrett, a dear friend of my family, who features in a brief cameo at the film’s conclusion and is also mentioned a few times, including his MBE status. These are all anachronistic, but that takes nothing away from the nature of the film. Norman’s budgies are also a plot point. For the most part, the film shows circus in a good light, which is a refreshing change. Only the ringmaster of the first circus is presented as something of a villain. This is becoming a bit of a cliché now along with the assumption that the ringmaster is traditionally the owner of the show. Nevertheless, many of my circus friends and family were smiling when the film won the Best Single Drama category of the 2015 BAFTAs.

Many a Prophetic Word Spoken in Jest

Plot:
Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) is a dethatched man. Divorced but the father of a daughter he doesn't see enough of, he reflects upon his past. At 15 years old (David Kross) he was struck down by scarlet fever, but rescued by a 36 year old tram conductor called Hanna (Kate Winslet). After a lengthy recovery period he tracks down his rescuer and they begin a secret affair. Hanna is a very mysterious woman who, seeing that Michael is studying classic literature, asks that he read to her before they have sex. Despite Hanna's cold manner and Michael's childlike inexperience, the relationship begins to further develop. Then one day, upon hearing she is to be promoted, Hanna abruptly leaves her apartment without saying a word to Michael. Years later as an undergraduate and whilst attending a trial as part of a special seminar held by a concentration camp survivor, Michael attends a trial for Auschwitz guards who presided over several atrocities at the camp. One particular atrocity involved the deaths of 300 prisoners who were locked into a burning church by the guards. One guard is singled out as the ringleader of this particular crime. Michael is shocked to see that this guard is none other than his mysterious Hanna...

"Always the Sun" - For the Summer of 1993

A large open field that needed cutting, regular cups of sweet tea, a scythe, a pair of shears, an old radio cassette player and the best company in the world provided the backdrop for my favourite song. I was born in July during Britain’s hottest summer since records began and, for that reason, I was brought up feeling a sense of belonging to the days when the sun shone brightest. I find it easy to see why the sun has constantly evoked a sense of spiritual awe in our species. Hundreds of thousands of years on and science, if anything, has humbled humans even more to the sun. We discovered that, contrary to what we had thought for so long, our planet revolves around the sun, making it the centre of a solar system where we live on one of several planets. Furthermore, it is the most significant source of our world’s energy, making it an all-powerful life-giver contained in a single sphere of omnipotence. Within our own intuitive sense of being the sun seems to symbolize a reliable constant. There is sureness in the sun rise and the sun set, and this is part of the idea taken by one of my all-time favourite songs, “Always the Sun” by The Stranglers.

King Arthur II - Edward I Re-Examined

Edward I does not enjoy a good reputation in the minds of many historians and most of those who enjoyed the movie, “Braveheart”. It would appear that, unlike many other English kings, he doesn’t enjoy the benefit of a contextual view of his life and times. This might be encouraged by the patriotic and hugely selective view that has made William Wallace become a virtual saint in Scotland. Without putting too blunt an end on the matter, Edward was a winner in imperialistic times and those he beat were his next door neighbours, the Scots, the Welsh and the French. His victory meant oppression and subjection of his neighbours delivered in a way that befitted a conquering king of his time. That does not rest well with the sympathies of a modern English culture that champions temperance, freedom and peaceful negotiation. However, for his time, Edward was considered a great king by his English subjects and yet it was a reputation hard-earned.  

Vlad the Impregnable

A Review of "Dracula: Prince of Many Faces"

Vlad III, Prince of Walachia, competes with many other historical monarchs in his position as an icon. However, his fame has more to do with a late Victorian supernatural monster that was given his patronym some 421 years after his death than anything he did during his lifetime. That isn't to say the life of Vlad the Impaler had not achieved notoriety prior to Stoker selecting his title, "Dracula", meaning Son of the Dragon, but it is a fair statement to say interest in this figure has increases every time a high profile adaptation of the 1897 novel is released.

I doubt the writers of "Dracula: Prince of Many Faces", Radu R. Florescu and Raymond T. McNally, would have been surprised to see that interest in Vlad would only increase after the publication of their fourth book on the subject in 1989. Their previous works included two on the historical Dracula and one on the fictional Bram Stoker creation. This book, although mainly focused on the life and times of Vlad III, bookends the biography comparing the two Draculas. Therefore, one might assume that the justification for the book is to comprehensively unite their studies and to provide a broad overview of the historical figure of Dracula. In this sense, it delivers what is says in the title and a quarter of a century on from this publication there doesn't seem to be anything in popular historical studies to touch this in terms of content.