The Price of Talent

The X Factor winner and her hardships after fame started taking toll on her life , the Daily Mail article.

Sun turns its back on Labour

With a general election in Britain approaching fast and the autumn of party conferences in full swing, there's been some major shifts in the country's politics. It may not be until next May when the British go to the polls, but the Sun, the best-selling newspaper in the UK, has already changed sides and after three runs (1997, 2001 and 2005) when it lent its support to the rejuvenated Tony Blair's New labour it has again backed the Conservaties, yelling on the front page that "Labour has lost it". It's subject to debate whether one redtop newspaper can actually swing the results with its endorsement of one party or another, but after it sided with Labour in recent elections and against it in 1992, when it ran a scolding piece to undermine Neil Kinnock, there's little doubt it vastly helps to have it in your camp. Anyhow, the declaration from the Sun political editiors that the Labour government has run its course is capable of reverberating across the public opinion and sending shockwaves through the corridors of power on Whitehall and in Brighton, where the annual Labour conference is taking place.

Antonioni commented on

With considerable reluctance I sat down to refresh my memory of Antonioni's Blow-up after a moment of forgetfulness at the local British Council led me to rent it for a week. I'm not sure, but this might have been the third time I've been through it, driven by the cult aura around it and my being unsatisfied with the understanding of it.

And again, even though I found myself appreciating the story, its documentary value in terms of showing the Swinging Sixties in London or the detective mystery, I was nowhere near getting carried away with Antonioni's mastery. More importantly still, the deep philosophical and aesthetic strands in the film, so extensively commented on by critics and mentioned until today, constantly eluded my attention. It was David Hemmings character who was sending a signal I was able to decode with his jaded, amoral attitude towards life and women, but there is more to this film, admittedly, than just critique of the 60s loose ethic.

I'd probably have given up on Blow-up, which I actually did halfway through the film, if it hadn't been for one extra feature on the DVD. By accident, I hit the audio commentary in the DVD extras and soon learned that it was the entire film with subtle voiceover from Peter Brunette, a professor of film studies at Wake Forest University and the Antonioni expert. Step by step, without much noticing the scholarly intervention, yet enjoying it enormously for its depth and many-sidedness, I started recognising how nicely layered and superemely crafted Blow-up is. Some of Brunette's interpretations did no more than confirm my early intuitions, especially concerning the questions of morality and some scenes which escape easy explanation.

I like the way Brunette shed light on the epistemological drive of the main character in Blow-up, his desire to know, to discover the truth, to verify his interpretation of reality. Indeed, viewers are faced with the same challenges, trying to find answers to the most aching questions laid open by the photo shoot in the park and never actually managing to do so. And its in how Antonioni combined this whodunnit kind of story with the more philosophical and aesthetic dilemmas about the nature of visual art and its value as evidence where the Italian director's picture truely reveals its masterly thrust. Brunette offers compelling remarks which could easily pass for academic quotes. For example, he argues that in Blow-up Antonioni wants to point out that all meaning is socially constructed and achieved only in group understanding, rather than individual understanding (made clear by the scene in the park when Hemmings sees the dead body but seeks another person's verification to establish firmly what he thinks is true or by the closing scene when Hemmins lets himself be drawn into a mime game of tennis and sees a ball where no ball is to be seen objectively). He also says that Antononi draws the audience attention to the fact that a visual image doesn't give us meaning directly, unproblematically, but that it's contextual (the stunning Yardbirds scene when a broken neck of the guitar becomes the subject of a fierce battle between the fans, but instantaneously loses its significance outside this context).

Lots of good language there:
1_ This is a propeller,
2_ When you blow up a frame, you enlarge it,
3_ This is Veruschka, a famous German model, popular in the 1960s,
4_ Paparazzi sneak up on celebrities to take their photos,
5_ Some films are made with a hand-held camera,
6_ Hemmings to Redgrave: Don't let spoil everything. We've only just met.
7_ A devil-may-care attitude is a reckless attitude,
8_ You can be stoned out of you mind,
9_ When you get as good as you give, you receive no more than you've put in,
10_ Hemmings likes being a step ahead in the film.

Welcome to the Jungle

After the World War II Britain has been experiencing a steady, robust influx of immigrants and the question of who to admit and who to turn down at the borders has continued to be a vexing public issue. After a wave of non-white New Commonwealth migrants following the process of decolonisation, which started for good in 1945, and the first signs of racial tensions and social discontent in the UK cities, the 1960s saw restrictive legislation in the form of two Commonwealth Immigration Acts (1962, 1968), and the Immigration Act of 1971. The post-colonial immigration went on, using both legal and illegal channels, and was coupled with immigration from Eastern European countries, Africa and Asia, leading to the developement of sizeable immigrant communities all over Britain. Contrary to popular belief, tough, the UK may like to see itself as a multi-ethnic society, but in fact only less than 10% of its population is non-white and, on top of that, most of it is concentrated in London (50%) and other major urban centres (Birmingham, Glasgow), leaving wide swathes of the country racially homogenous.

I remember the 1990s in Poland, when the prospect of the EU membership was nowhere in sight and such comforts as passportless travel in Europe belonged to political fiction, with most Poles having a hard time to get into the UK, requiring a visa, a difficult-to-obtain work permit or an expensive language course. Still, Britain, next to Germany and the USA, remained a destination of choice for hundreds of Polish fortune-seekers, unfazed by the hardships along the way. In a way, they paved the way for the massive migration from Poland after May 2004, when Poland's inclusion in the EU made it possible not only to enter the UK but also legally seek employment there. Even though extremely well-received by most standards, the numbers of the newcomers from the Eastern European nations fuelled suspicion and alarm among more hysterical parties in the public debate, like the Sun, as well as from those who keep claiming that Britain is overcrowded.

Spotlight has turned away from European incomers and local communities seem to have accommodated them remarkably well, despite repeated reports of ethnically-inspired crime and other distressing stories. However, immigration remains Britain's high priority as candidates from other troubled countries continue to knock on its door due to its reputation for ample social support for asylum-seekers and others. Along the northern coast of France alone, there are reputed to be located ten detention centres for those who were caught by the French and British police while being smuggled northwards. For such human trafficking, which has grown into a full scale business with aspiring asylum-seekers from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq or Eritrea paying up to 15.000 pounds to reach the shores of the promised land, Britain has been a supreme final destination, unrivalled by any other European country.

Mancunian Factory

After Anton Corbijn's brilliant "Control", which squeezed tears out of the toughest girlfriend of mine, "24 Hour Party People" is another feature dealing with the wild pop music scene in the 70s and 80s in Manchester. Revolving around the figure of Tony Wilson, the man behind the Madchester revolution who created a home for such bands as Joy Division or The Happy Mondays in his loosely managed Factory Records, known for their policy of avoiding contracts.

The film traces Wilson's engagement in pop music from his days as a host in the cult TV show "So it goes" in 1976, and than as he veers towards staging events and promoting bands it shows the early gigs at the Factory club. During one such performance, we witness a famous fit of epilepsy Ian Curtis of Joy Division had before his decline into depression and finally suicide. The story takes us as far as the bankrupcy of both Factory Records and The Haçienda when years of mismanagement and living on the edge start taking its toll on Tony and his partners.

Steve Coogan starring Wilson is much more convincing here than funny as Alan Partridge, but overall "24 Hour" lacks the music pieces which are so nicely scattered all over "Control", giving it a feeling of variety and much speedier pace.

Language to remember:
1. If you live in Manchester, you're a Manc or a Mancunian,
2. When something gets the better of you, it wins over you,
3. You don't want to be called a wanker,
4. The Factory club was a live music venue,
5. Wilson to his wife: Don't beat about the bush. I give you a straight question, I need a straight answer. Are you leaving me?,
6. For fuck's sake is just stronger for god's sake,
7. Wilson to the club audience a minute before the club was repossessed: I'd like you to leave in a disorderly fashion. Take the chairs, music equipment, anything. Just use it wisely,
8. A friend breaks the news of Curtis's suicide to Wilson: Ian's dead. He's hung himself.
9. Wilson to his wife on seeing him getting a blow-job by a hooker: It's not what it seems,
10. A bona fide offer is a genuine offer.

Just get on with it

Septembers are productive when it comes to my book-reading and it was no different this September, even more so because it had two long foreign trips to complete and they tend to sharpen my bookworm acumen.

Anne Enright's "The Gathering", the 2007 Booker, was among my Septemeber choices, a bleak, unforgiving account of a troubled childhood in a large Irish family by Veronica, one of the surviving daughters. She brings her uneasy memories forward as she goes about organising her brother's funeral and the wake after Liam commits suicide by throwing himself into the sea. With twelve children, the Hegartys never managed to create an ideal growing-up environment, with their mother clearly giving privilege to the boys, their father exerting cold and strict authority, in particular in religious and sexual matters, and all the siblings trying to find their own way quickly, however erroneously, rather than supporting each other.

Bruised and scarred for life, Veronica goes on to start a family of her own, with two lovely daughters, a prosperous husband and a neat house, but she continues to be plagued by insecurities and phobias, all rooted in her early life. At the deepest and most traumatic, she harbours the scene she witnessed as a little girl in her granny's house when a family friend, a regular guest there, sexually molested her brother Liam, a young boy then. Barely established in her mind's eye, this distressing picture provides evidence and explanation for his disorientation and instability in later life. Except for Victoria, no one is aware of what happened then in the grandma's house and, to make matters worse, no one seems interested in digging out these old wrongs. In Victoria's judgement, that eventful day triggered what later came to become a failed fate of her beloved brother, including his suicide.

It's dark literature, full of hurt and unhealed grievances, some of which may strike a reader as possibly over the top, but what this book portrays is a troubled psychology of an adult woman in search of her unsettled childhood. Almost by definition, it has to carry a load of distrust and paranoia. I found this focus on individual experience, however aching and troubling, a true advantage and a nice change from other, overgeneralised books I've recently read. It reads like a cathartic confession, a well-hidden diary of a person who is looking for a vent for too much she's been through.

In fairness, it's not just memories of injustice and neglect, but a handful of happier moments or simply daily chores as well, which makes it easier to follow and identify with.

Lots of language worth remembering, but unluckily I missed my notebook most of the time. Parts of what I noted down:
+ I can't for the life of me remember,
+ a flu jab,
+ to hump may mean to fuck,
+ Are you on roaming?,
+ a peaked cap,
+ You get your bloods done = You have your blood test done,
+ You smoke roll-ups,
+ You pass people on the streets,
+ You leave your baby with a child-minder,
+ This is a button fly and this is a finger-stall.

Mild disappointment

To criticise Quentin Tarantino, a walking legend of the cinema, is probably beyond most of his aficionados' comprehension and power, but his latest film fantasy, which takes us back to the times of the World War II into Nazi-occupied France, deserves a degree of reservation.

Inglorious Basterds is far from original in its storyline, with alternative scenarios for the Nazi domination of Europe in abundance in literature and film. True, there is this imaginative Jewish revenge commando, taking justice in their violent hands and symbolically making up for the passivity of the Holocaust victims. That's a fairly new concept, if you take out Defiance with Daniel Craig, in particular at the hands of Tarantino's wild imagination.

I also get the feeling Tarantino got stuck in the revenge rut, most of his other films, e.g. Kill Bill or Death Proof, driven by vendetta and vindicating the rights of the oppressed, turning the victimhood upside down. On top of that, violence, for which Quentin is notorious, keeps annoying here, although the times admittedly justify it, but it would be great to see Tarantino make his film around other techniques once.

What I liked, on the other hand, was acting, especially Christoph Waltz in the hysterical role of a cruel and cunning Col. Hans Linda, brilliantly switching between languages and using his extraordinary intelligence to track down his Jewish victims. Playing a wide array of moods, from a concerned, apparently slow-minded interviewer in the opening scene, which ends in the slaughter of the hiding Dreyfus family, to a fanatical, dominating Goebells security chief, to a foreseeing end-of-war surrender-seeker. Brad Pitt, speaking rough heavily-accented Italian and acting on a simple redneck logic of cruel revenge, is another marvel to watch.

Other than that it's languages in the film that made it a real pleasure for me to watch, with French, English and German in practically equal proportions, sprinkled with a tad of Italian, not a usual feature of a Hollywood production.

Some favourable and unfavourable reviews here, here and here and here.

Upswing

After a tighter year, there has been sure signals that the coming teaching season might see the return to prosperity I experienced in 2007/2008. It's marvellous news, especially that a rise in income will be coupled with the new challenges I've been long looking forward to. One is that quite a fair share of my load is going to concern technical English, a welcome change from general low-level courses. Another is that I was finally given a life and institutions course at the English department to teach, which means time-consuming preparation, but also greater satisfaction for me. Finally, it seems that's bound to be a critical year for my PhD programme, with three promising conferences to wait for and new creative momentum I haven't felt before.

Summer's gone

Going back to work after delicious holidays is like trying to start a rarely-used car after a harsh winter, but one way or another I'll have to summon most of my life energies to close the lazy summer and reopen the teaching season. Well, on top of other discomforts, October marks the beginning of increased traffic and human crowds in the streets, slower and more congested public transport, queues in the shops, all of which contribute to urban frustration. Ok, the dust should finally settle down, the old winter rhythms should return and the daily toil of the academic year should become much more bearable. I've been through it before, so I won't let it take its full toll on me again, working wisely to tone down the October hysteria.

The good part is that the winter is just around the corner, with colder temperatures, harsher conditions, less sunlight and people's tendency to indulge in leisurely introspection, which I adore and take pleasure in. Other than that, the bank balance will surely improve as language schools give out their groups, mamas call for desperate private lessons and businesses fill their employees' schedules with English trainings. Busy times ahead. It's just that the lovely laziness of the summer months hasn't yet faded away.

Long time, no post

It was a busy fortnight and basically without access to a computer. First, equipped in a newly-made presentation, I flew to Stockholm, looking and feeling heavenly in the mild late summer sun, for the Metaphor Festival. As most language conferences, it was an inspiring blend of good and band, exciting and boring, new and old, but it did give me a spur and some food for thought. I enjoyed meeting professor Andrew Goatly in person, a modest man plagued with doubts about the direction of his efforts as any other researcher, even of vastly lower standing.

I loved the social side of the conference too.

And then, having barely touched down from Sweden, I was off to Turkey for a weekly holiday in the sun with my girlfriend. I don't remember unwinding so thoroughly in quite some time, just taking a swim, sunning oneself to madness, gobbling up tons of exquisite food, learning Turkish from the locals and charting the neighbourhood of the hotel. A hell of an end for my long, eventful summer holidays.

Once a year

I got my iPod stolen in a hostel I was staying at in Stockholm. To make matters worse, it was my fault and my only, having left my bag completely unattended over the evening. I was lucky the thief was considerate enough to leave alone my travel documents, especially the Ryanair boarding pass and the railway ticket.

I have a feeling every once in a while there is a payment day for all the good that you experience most of the time and there's no way to insure yourself against it. This time round it was my iPod that had to go in a casual hostel theft, and before I was punished by means of the early morning fine for crossing the street on red, the perverse fine for drinking in a public place or the costly ticket inspection on a tram the day my pass expired and just as I was trying to get to the driver's centre to pass my exams.

I hope I've paid my dues to misfortune this year and can now roam the world freely, waiting for the next year to take me by surprise.

The Office weekend

David Brent? Finchey? Mackenzie Crook playing Gareth? It's embarrassing, but I wasn't familiar with these names until yesterday when I renewed my British Council card and went for The Office, a TV series I read about but never really even considered watching. This state of affairs is now over, I've seen the complete series 1 and 2, which is pretty much everything they've made in the UK version.

The idea behind the series is just brilliant, simple but spot on. It's a fake documantary following the daily toil of a paper merchant office in the uninspiring British city of Slough. The job is mindless and no effort is made in the film to change that, all the staff mucking around or doing the usual office chores, getting bored at their workstations, passing the time, playing tricks on each other. And it's the odd collection of employees in the office that makes the difference, in particular the hyperactive, egomaniacal boss who never loses an opportunity make a fool of himself. He's reinforced in his obsessions, especially his insatiable urge to make others laugh, and self-love by his personal assistant, an awkward, socially retarded Gareth, who keeps dreaming of taking the office over and bringing in the rule of iron fist. There's also Tim, a timid, funny guy, just turning 30, who still lives with his parents, and Dawn, a receptionist, who he quietly fancies, but who's in a relationship with a coarse warehouse worker.

I like the setting of the series, away from glamour and perfection, and this everyday eccentricity that nicely mirrors what most people go through day after day, either working in offices or elsewhere. Seeking to imitate real life, it's peppered with ordinary language, imperfect, lacking the soundbite quality of American series, but highly educational in terms of slang or UK pecularities,. Here's a quick round-up of some phrases and names I learned while watching:

1) When you're poor or disabled in the UK, you might claim money off DSS, these's a nasty scene in one episode when David and Gareth speak over each other to the camera how they would test the eligibility of the disabled to receive benefits, with one wheelchaired employee listening with growing disbelief,
2) I'd been wondering for long what you call a bum-bag,
3) since "The Office" plays on the racial and homophobic obsessions in the UK, the stock of terms to describe a homosexual is long there: a poofter, a bender, a bummer,
4) I've never eaten a proper flan and I'm not sure how to translate it into Polish,
5) I didn't know a (leather) basque had a different meaning to an adjective descibing somebody from the Basque Country,
6) There is a vital difference between a midget and a dwarf, the latter having disproportionate limbs in addition to being markedly small,
7) When you're on waccy-baccy, you're on marijuana,
8) Slough is near London and a crushing bore,
9) Morecambe and Wise, a British comedy double act, has ranked 14th on the list of Britain's 100 greatest TV programmes,
10) Rory Bremner is another comedy legend in the UK.

In rude health

I suppose there is no country in the world where people are fully, or even in a large part, satisfied with the quality of its health service. Poland has seen a gradual but steady split between the public and private health care systems, with more lucrative professions, like dentists or opticians, now in practice uncovered by the obligatory medical insurance. Even though it took a huge step forward, the Polish health care system is notorious for long waiting lines to specialists and poor pay for the staff and there seems to be no viable solution to any of these, or other, hardships.

I'm young enough not be a regular at the doctor's and whenever I go I don't really feel shortchanged or mistreated, but I'm well aware of other patients' problems.

Created 60 years ago, Britain's National Health Service has a way better reputation among its Polish patients, recruited from the recent wave of immigration, but it attracts a lot of criticism from Britions, despite gigantic spending on health care, which accounts for 16% of all government spending (article here). Its undeniable advantage, especially against its American equivalent, is that it's universal and free, so that no one needing medical help is left with a horrendous bill to pay at the end of their treatment. Of course, you may argue, this invites health tourists and serves illegal immigrants all too well, but then it's more a question of fixing the leaks in the system than overhauling it.

With the staff of allegedly 1,6m employees, the NHS operates an impressive network of GP services, health centres, hospitals and recently polyclinics, as well as such institutions as nursing homes.

As for the US, endless reform discussions and bills, followed by controversy and opposition, seem to plague the health system, still leaving a vast group of the Americans uninsured and facing the exorbitant costs of treatment. President Obama's determined to change it for good, but his plans are exposed to uncompromising resistance and the heath issues might turn out to be his harshest test in domestic politics. A short overview of the American health system and debates around it here.

Too rich to perform

Conclusions for the UK from the latest comparative OECD study of the youth are dire, with the harshest one being that relatively to resources and funding available British teenagers are doing very badly practically across the board. It has alarming rates of teenage drunkenness and underage pregnancy. One in ten 15-19 year-olds in Britain is a so-called neet - not in employmemt, education or training. While their school satisfaction tends to be higher than average, probably due to high quality schooling and ample resources, British teenagers' performace in both reading and maths is disappointing, halfway down the tables.

The War Started

70 years ago today the World War II started with a German surprise attack on Wielun (by air) and Westerplatte (from the sea). Uncomfortably sandwiched between Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union, Poland was for the fourth time in its history, partitioned by its occupying forces and, effectively, wiped out of the world maps. On September 17th, the Soviet Union, acting on its secret attachment to Ribbentrov-Molotov pact, attacked Poland from the east, taking its officers hostage and dashing all the hopes for resistance against now two aggressors. What followed were six years of hostile occupation, persecution, annihilation of Polish cities and its most valuable people in German concentration camps (where Europe's Jews were being methodically exterminated) and Russian mass murders, especially in Katyń. On top of that, what followed in 1945, when the war ended, was an imposed period of communism and Poland's stealth inclusion in the Soviet sphere of interest until 1989.

I was sorry to see in the last days how Russia's media and Russia's authorities reacted in the build-up to the celebrations of the Westerplatte attack, with their publications of dubious documents on Poland's war-time politicians and defamatory documentaries. And I was disappointed by Wladimir Putin's letter to Gazeta Wyborcza, where - among careful and wise words - he belittled the Soviet wrongs and likened them to Poland's incomparably smaller faults. Well, it just doesn't bode well for the future to muddle the waters of history and casts a shadow not just over Russia's intentions, but over its ability to confess sins, atone and reach out to its smaller, anxious neighbours.

A great imaginary speech by Putin from The Economist here.