In all fairness, the audience are more literate and eloquent than the usual audience (and even the usual panels), but there is one aspect, which grates more than anything:
Andy Burnham (or is it James Purnell? They are so hard to tell apart...) and no-name Jeremy Hunt from the Conservatives have dressed down for the occasion. No-name Jeremy Hunt has jettisoned the tie, whilst Burnham has gone one step further by not only ridding himself of the tie but also by leaving the jacket in the BBC cloakroom! Woo-hoo, pwnd!
What is noticeable is how incredibly right-wing the young audience is without - I think - them realising what ideology they are espousing. I suppose this is the outcome of neoliberalism and 30 years of Thatcherism. The topic of university places results in the predictable outcome: Yes, too many are going to university, but it's of course 'other people' who shouldn't be going. Sarah Tether - who usually impresses me - gives succour to this attitude with her contribution...and while I slag off the audience for being right-wing, a member of the audience of proves me wrong.
Shami Chakrabarti makes the point (enthusiastically as ever) that education is essential and that it would be hypocritcal for the panel - all of whom went to university - to discourage 'other people' from going or claim that too many 'other people' go to university.
Then, in a hammer blow, a female member of the audience raises the question of foreign students (saying they should be given second choice to British students). Naturally, I reject the slightly xenophobic overtones to the question, but there is an ethical question (which the audience member did not intend to address) of furthering elite structures in non-EU countries like China, India, or Nigeria by outpricing ordinary students from those countries and instead encouraging the (unethical) elite from said countries to study here, usually with a preferred choice to study neoliberal economics or law. The outcome of this can be (partly) seen in the power dynamics in the vexed area of Xinjiang and indeed the economic underclass througout China.
We then move on to Afganistan. I don't have the strength to regurgitate the stupidity of panelists' and audience's answers. No-name Jeremy Hunt talks about helicopters, thus delving into the 'deep' issues of the situation in Afghanistan. Here, I do detect a change in mood. the audience seem to be largely (not wholly) against involvement in Afghanistan. Whilst the argument seems to be based on egoistic, pecunary reasons, it is at least a form of resistance. But the mood shifts back as a bespectled hoody links 7/7 to Afghanistan and gets a round of applause. The bullshit propaganda of the War on Terror seems to have seeped into the unconscious of the younger generation. Depressing.
A couple of back and forths - for and against - and then the topic peters out just as my cider is topped up.
Then in a shock revelation, Lisa Stansfield look-alike Suzanne Burlton - the student panelist - admits to being teetotal following a question about teenage drinking. On that note, cheers.
8 comments:
'What is noticeable is how incredibly right-wing the young audience is without - I think - them realising what ideology they are espousing. I suppose this is the outcome of neoliberalism and 30 years of Thatcherism.'
There is an excellent Adam Curtis documentary, 'Century of the Self' (available on youtube and googlevideo) which explains how the move to the economic right is in some ways subconscious. Everyone wants low taxes, everyone wants good public services. It is the politicians who can maintain the best illusion of offering these that will be most successful.
It is comforting to assume that the majority of teenagers and young adults are idealistic left-wingers.
Unfortunately, that tends not to be the case. I remember teaching a group of Italian teenagers. On the surface they were completely normal, educated, nice. However, they did have an alarming tendency to daub SS symbols on their folders and give the old Mussolini salute when watching the football.
Italy has enough problems now with crypto-facsists, God knows what it'll be like in 20 year's time...
Gregor,
Thanks for your comment. I'll have to check out that documentary, but yes you describe the post-ideological trick quite well (and I think the importance of tapping into the subconscious is a crucial point, too).
Czarny,
I agree. Often people buy into the myth that everyone is a socialist when young, then conservative, and finally more tolerant again. I reject that view because it assumes that each 'era' produces thesame milieu, which is nonsense of course.
I think the only claim that can be made is that the younger one is, the less differentiated one's views are; but this is not a reflection of the politics or ideology that underlies this.
hi olching - this post is nothing to do with your current blog - I don't get Uk TV coverage, so no Question Time to dissect, but ...
I promised you trinkets. I'm not sure that they sparkle.
This is a ficto-diary entry written to ask if monuments and rituals tell the real story of everyday folk. I gather that you're a historian (political, cultural, economic) interested in the squabbles around post-(pre?) Weimar? Away if I've misjudged, no matter, this is a story about individual worth and and crap memorials to the idea of Folk and Family.
My recent journey was curtailed at the out-set by death. My father's as it happens. By the time I was there the organisation of the 'celebration' of death was well under way. I have an older brother who (all credit to him) organised the ritual. My sister said, "There will be hymns." I said, "Who can sing? Should we arrange for a church choir?" "No, we shall sing thinly together." As indeed, on the day, we did.
"I have a poem to offer," I said. "No, your brother has asked the priest (who had never met my father) to speak, there will be no eulogising."
On the day I stood, knelt, sat in the front pew, next to my favourite relative - a twenty-year-old-beanie-wearer chewing gum. The priest (and I kid you not) struggled with his speech impediment, forgoing the microphone (for we are a small congregation), abandoning the pulpit, and instead holding on to the front pew rails encouraging prolonged eye contact with any of us game enough to take him on.
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to tell my companion to stop chewing gum. I wanted to shout "Fuck I'm in an Alan Bennett play." I wanted to die from sadness.
It was shocking to watch a brother direct this celebration. I had always imagined it would have been - well - better. It was cardboard at best - why wasn't this dead man heralded in a theatrical way? He was great in the circles he moved in. Why weren't they here - unless, of course, they had not been informed or invited.
And then I thought, "Hey, do we actually celebrate *our* need to perform, to display passion/grief? Or is this wake/celebration (as it appears here) another speed- bump in the ritual organiser's life?"
My brother has probably got the balance of things. Why should we beat our chests in such a theatrical way? The eldest son is probably weighed down with everything that's his life: his career, his debts, his wife, his children - maybe our father's death is yet another problem to deal with - so let's get it over with, get it done, move on.
And this made me think about why do we eulogise? Why do we build monuments to the dead? What are we celebrating?
Perhaps my brother's right - why dwell on the past when you're still trapped in the maze called: "the problems of living"?
So - from this individual perspective, to the mass culture of eulogising - why do we build monuments to the great war commanders, to the unknown soldiers, to dead celebrities? Why do we think they are worth it?
Ok, that's your burnished trinket olching :)
Hi Parallax,
Great to hear from you.
A very though-provoking post. Let me see...
I think there are several levels to 'celebrating' or 'commemorating' the dead.
The first is, as you say, part of cultural rituals; a way of organising and ordering life.
I do think that part of it is genuine celebration or admiration, but this works only on a personal level (which is why I see commemorative events as disingenuous).
But of course there is also another factor (and I think this works not only on a political level, but also on a personal level): It is a way of legitimising the present. The reason we do x,y,z is - according to the story told through commemoration - because of our respect, our valuing, and our understanding of our past and the people who shaped.
The dead are therefore a great tool to explain and legitimise political, personal, social circumstances in the present.
Whenever I see commemorative events, I am always struck by the emphasis on the present. The past is often couched in abstract, inaccessible language - often sanitised in poetic and other means.
There is of course a danger in understanding all of this in this manner: Cynicism. And this is why made the point above that personal admiration, gratitude etc exits (i.e. a person has profoundly shaped my life - in whatever way - and I therefore genuinely pay my respects - in whatever way).
But the importance of the present in commemoration, in remembering, is - I think - tantamount.
Hope all is well...
Olching, a considered and compassionate response - thank you.
I did feel like the returned traveller bearing gifts of a cringe-inducing nature: "Hey I've been to Turin and here's a shroud tea towel."
Yes, the levels of commemoration work to comfort, appease, memorialise, honour, and rally people to a (sometimes misjudged) cause.
But I guess what I was thinking about was the impact of death on the immediate family; often so irrelevant in the wider scheme of how individuals make their impact, and yet no less astringent. Unless it's public domain it's immensely personal and so mundanely everyday. A reason to treat every stranger as a vessel of un/contained emotion perhaps. How can we judge those families in constant uncontrollable conflict if they chose to take to the streets?
Cynicism, of course - in the way that some are lauded and applauded under a popular banner. Headline deaths and illnesses: Jade, Diana, Michael Jackson, Ned Kelly, Steve Irwin, Petra the Blue Peter Dog. Fuck, the west commemorates its shallowness, the un/rest commemorate martyrs.
Aside, I wanted to thank you for allowing me to post something here that, for me, was immediate, uncrafted, and previously unspoken - I instinctively knew that, despite the ugliness of the souvenir, you'd polish it and consider its value:)
cheers, parallax
Hi Olching
I just gave a recommendation to the only sane comment that I could see in John Harris's comment piece, then noticed who wrote it.
However, I think you are slightly wrong in your analysis of 'Guardian readers'. I doubt very much if someone called Aynrandlives regularly purchases the Grauniad, but frankly anyone who's such a selfish tosser as to think that Ayn Rand is a fountain of wisdom will probably have a fairly blank social calender.
I think another sane comment was also off the mark in saying that these people were too ashamed to post on the Daily Mail. I'm sure they posted on the Daily Mail, then spent the rest of their valuable afternoon posting on the Guardian.
My one question is this: if these people love the free-market so much, wouldn't that imply that they have benefited greatly and have fascinating jobs and meet lots of interesting people? Why is it that they have nothing better to do than post semi-literate cliches on leftist chat rooms?
Though that bloke who said that a private company have promised to remove a wasp nest tomorrow really did shake my leftist world view.
Hi Gregor,
I suppose you are right to an extent, but I do think that even the amongst regular Guardian readers, there is a high level of unrealised Thatcherism.
I think actually PatDavers articulated it best when saying that many who consider themselves on the left demand individualism and individual 'rights' above all else. That certainly also chimes with many Guardian readers...
By the way, sorry for the tardy response and the lack of posts, I am currently quite busy....
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