Taxidermy

"Martha's really into taxidermy."

So said the man showing the successful Apprentice contestants around one of Martha Stewart's weirder country houses on TV2 last night. This was their reward for selling more garden hoses than the other team had sold portable air pumps.

"Martha's the biggest animal-lover you can imagine," he continued to gush as he ushered them past a succession of immense stuffed fishes plastered all over every available wall. She loves 'em, all right -- especially stuffed.

The colours of the whole house were based on this fish motif, apparently, because Martha's "really into monochrome design" -- she likes painted ceilings; she got the colour for the wall from an old faded print (it looked a bit like it, too) ... and so on and so on and so on.

The progressive deification of celebrities has reached frightening levels on this spin-off of Donald Trump's presumably deliberately absurdist The Apprentice. One begins, finally, to get some inkling of what the Romans felt inside while worshipping their emperor as a living god.

Marcela gushed on and on for minutes about what it meant to her when Martha deigned to lean over and sample a bit of her sugar bun at another reward ceremony (breakfast at another of Martha's ghastly vulgar over-designed pads). "It was so intimate," she explained, "sharing a moment like that." Martha Stewart taking a piece from one of the very pastries she herself had (allegedly) baked ...

The funny thing, of course, is that the programme completely tanked in the USA. Martha was seen as wimpy and insufficiently decisive, and Trump had to tick her off for damaging his franchise.

One can see why it failed -- all the mad antics of the various performers fail to explain why any of them would want to work for Martha. Her "business strategies," as outlined in a series of excruciatingly banal inserts, consist of revelations along the lines of "Buy low, sell high." Last night she solemnly informed us that doing a good sales pitch involved trying to make your words reach your audience in order to promote the product you wish to sell.

What's next? "Speaking is when you open your mouth and words come out of it ... if you choose the correct words, then people sometimes understand what you say. On the other hand ..." Perhaps that's a little too philosophical for Martha.

The whole jailbird thing is adroitly mixed into the combination trainwreck / history lesson that is Martha Stewart: The Apprentice. Roundly rebuking a "quitter," Chuck, on an early episode, she declared: "I've never quit anything in my life. I even went to jail, for God's sake ..."

Funny, she almost sounded like Gandhi there for a minute. He went to jail to fight for the independence of his country; Martin Luther King went there to agitate for civil rights -- but Martha went to jail for a far higher cause, her own sacred right to party. Why shouldn't she play the market, do a little insider trading? They were her stocks, after all ...

The bitching and moaning in the loft has reached the usual poisonous levels familiar from earlier incarnations of this programme (in its various Trump avatars), but once notices that Martha's wisdom and mana remain beyond criticism. To question that would be indeed to sin against the holy ghost.

Martha's poor long-suffering daughter, who sits there week after week biting her tongue and looking as if she might have a thing or two to report about her mother if only she were given free access to a camera (and had a fully-fuelled jet ready to whisk her off somewhere beyond the reach of the Martha Stewart goon-squad immediately afterwards), is the final bizarre ingredient in the mix.

It's a stuffed program. We all knew that going in. What's refreshing and wholesome about the Martha Stewart "reality" show is that it actually failed. Apparently there's a moment when people have had enough of toadying and grovelling to this repulsive saccharine-scented bully. Maybe quite a few of us actually do notice the difference between Paris Hilton and a singer (or a celebrity, for that matter).

I agree it's not a lot of hope to hold out, but it's something, at least.

Myth of the 21st Century

I remember reading somewhere about the "Derridean biblioblitz" of 1967 -- the three books Of Grammatology; Writing and Difference; and Speech and Phenomena.

Far be it from me to suggest any resemblance between us, but this has been, nevertheless, an unusually busy year for me in terms of publishing. It began with:
1/ my novel The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis;
2/ went on to the Classic New Zealand Poets in Performance anthology;
3/ and now concludes with this collection of new fiction, edited by Tina Shaw and myself, entitled Myth of the 21st Century.

The stories were all commissioned specially for the book, so it was rather difficult to predict in advance just what the finished artefact would look like. Everyone has risen magnificently to the occasion, though -- we've ended up with 14 very quirky and individual stories, all grouped around the concept of myth, and specifically designed to focus on what the dominant myths of the next century might turn out to be.

The authors are (in order):
Patricia Grace, who rewrites the Maori legend of the tides;
Martin Edmond, who creates an urban myth for the Jenolan caves;
Tina Shaw, whose feral children catch and kill an albatross;
Mike Johnson, who spins a lush version of Psyche’s story;
Poet Karlo Mila, who offers a stunning Tongan nightmare;
Anthony McCarten, who tells a growing-up story in reverse;
Tracey Slaughter, who gives a disconcerting take on the Fates;
Vivienne Plumb, who makes some old fables disconcertingly new;
Charlotte Grimshaw, who pairs a warrior with his modern twin;
Jack Ross, who brings to life a selkie legend;
Maxine Alterio, who unfolds a contemporary Aztec myth;
Aaron Taouma, who tells the story of Uncle Sione, an urban holy fool;
Judith White, who spins a mythic yarn about a doomed love affair;
& Tim Corballis, who explores the very idea of myth itself.

(That's how the blurb describes us, anyway).

I think there's some pretty damned good stuff in there (though possibly I'm prejudiced). It was certainly an intensely educational experience putting it together. I enjoyed most of all the chance of observing a group of fiction-writers at work. Since I'm trying to horn in on their game, I'd better get an idea of some of the ground rules. Tina was very helpful there, and a tower of strength throughout the editing process.

The official publication date is today, so I guess I'll be raising a glass in celebration later on (we're not having an official launch this time). Check it out in a shop near you. It'd make an ideal Christmas present for some mythologically-minded friend or relative!

Tina and I will be interviewed by Lynn Freeman on Radio New Zealand's Arts on Sunday programme on Sunday afternoon (22/10) at 2pm, so that should be worth a listen, too. There's a link to the recording here, which should be up for the next four weeks (it's also available for download).

An Inconvenient Truth

[Kevin Costner and Jeanne Tripplehorn in Waterworld (1995)]

Well, we're really in for it this time, it would appear. I went to see Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth at the cinema yesterday, and - yes - it scared me senseless. Well, temporarily, at any rate. By the time I'd got home my senses of inertia and fatalism had begun to reassert themselves.

Some points about it interested me particularly. First, the statistic that a survey of nearly 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers on all aspects of Global Warming published over the last decade or so revealed 0% doubt on the basic processes at work. Second, that a survey of journalistic articles published on the same topic over the same period revealed 53% expressing doubt and reservations. In other words, the less you know about the subject, the easier it is to dismiss it.

It's interesting to notice the same trends at work here. The NZ Herald, that bastion of journalistic truth and objectivity, summarises Gore's film as follows (in the appropriately named TimeOut for 28/9/06):

A documentary about climate change which occasionally lets its focus drift but is a compact precis of urgently important material.

Pretty compelling write-up, huh? It's true that there's a lot of stuff about Gore's childhood, career ups-and-downs etc. in the film which might have been dispensed with on a strictly utilitarian basis. But cinema-goers are not strictly utilitarian people, by and large. What's more, one can see precisely why all the folksy just-plain-folks stuff is in there, too. "I am not a crank," Gore is trying to say. "I am one of you" (by which he means an ordinary God-fearing American, albeit a Democrat).

He really really wants people to listen, and uses every conceivable device of propaganda to achieve that end. I'm prepared to forgive that, personally. Like the Herald reviewer, I too would have preferred more content and less barnstorming, but there really is plenty of content there already, and it's desperately disturbing. Basically, we're all going to drown or fry if we don't listen up soon. Both Greenland and Antarctica are melting ... massive rises in ocean levels are no longer just possible but almost inevitable. Combined with out-of-control population increase, that paints a pretty grim picture. Where the hell are we all going to live? What are we going to eat?

Go and see it yourself. There were two other people in the cinema while I was there (admittedly it was the middle of the afternoon, when most decent folk are working). They were teenagers. They sat at the back and sniggered from time to time at Gore's wardrobe. It's hard to know what other reaction they could have to the discovery that their elders and betters have so comprehensively fucked up the world they're going to inherit.

Check out the website for what you yourself can do about it.

The real point Gore wants to make is that this process is not irreversible. It's not too late. Like CFCs and the hole in the ozone layer, we can actually slow down and even reverse the buildup of greenhouse gases. Even if we can't, we can stop it actually accelerating.

*

I watched another interesting film last week (on DVD, somewhat belatedly). You've probably heard of it. It's called What the [Bleep] Do We Know?

I guess I thought it might be interesting to contrast it with the Al Gore film because they might both loosely be grouped under the title of "science documentaries" - both have had a lot of success at Festivals and even in the mainstream cinema; both use a lot of heavy-duty authorities to back up their conclusions.

Don't get me wrong, I found the [Bleep] film fun. It was beguiling to watch, and even instructive in some cases, but for the most part I thought it the worst hash of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo and garbled mysticism I've come across for a long time.

It began with a lot of very tendentious summaries of the "implications" of quantum theory, delivered by a lot of people in suits made up to look like Stephen Hawking-style physicists, but who turned out later (in the credits) to be teachers of psychic medicine, PhDs in other subjects, freelance lifestyle writers etc. (one of them actually turned out to be "channelling" a great healer from another dimension). This was then extended to the "discovery" that we're addicted to bad emotions, and that if we can just learn to love ourselves, then truth and justice will spread in all directions. The film claimed, in fact, that the crime-rate in Washington DC was lowered 25% one summer by a concentrated act of meditation performed by a bunch of the enlightened.

Now some of this stuff I sort of agree with, really. No-one could seriously contend that the mind doesn't affect the body. The psychosomatic effects of placebos are almost as well documented as the somatic effects of actual medicine. Quantum physics is weird and wonderful.

What I didn't like was this idea of making it all sound scientific by using authoritative-looking talking heads, dressed up in all the panoply of ideological respectablity, and then the gradual revelation that the film's real message was a kind of smug New Age quietism. "Don't worry about anything," it basically turned out to be saying, "because it's all in your mind."

War, cancer, injustice, Global Warming - we don't really have to do anything about any of those things except sit at home and direct good thoughts at them (maybe have a gin-and-tonic and admire the view while we're at it).

Fuck that, is all I can say. William Blake might have attributed much of the trouble in the world to "mind-forged manacles,"but that didn't make him any less prone to intervene himself. In one case the tiny poet accosted a man beating his wife in the street with such fervent indignation that the hulking brute ran away in terror. Acts of injustice (we're told) made him feel almost physically sick.

Al Gore's film uses the arts of persuasion to back up a message which is only too compellingly cogent. If you want to belittle his efforts, provide some similarly solid data.

The [Bleep] film uses half-truths and a vague fudge of science and mysticism to preach the 21st-century equivalent of Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science (like her female American disciple during the siege of Peking in 1900 who denied that any of it was actually taking place, claiming instead that all the shells and bombs were simply figments of their diseased imaginations ...)

The superficial similarlity of their methods is, I suppose, why I'm devoting so much energy to criticising [Bleep]. It would be just too tempting for all of us to shunt the warnings of Gore's film into the too-hard basket, and continue to console ourselves with the notion that scientists always disagree with one another, anyway.

If the UN stage smelt of sulphur after George Bush had been there, the Rialto cinema (for me) smelt of hope after Gore had had his say. At one fell swoop, Al Gore joins my select group of culture heroes.