Camille O'Sullivan was performing at The Queen's Hall on Tuesday. She sang Hurt:-
She was sitting on a chair in a red dress and very pale fish net stockings banging her feet and legs up and down to the music. As she moved this song along on its steps of menace and doom, she made the shivers go up my spine.
What a voice - she growls, she rasps, she belts and then she can go sweet. She inhabits the songs - she delivers them with high theatricality.
She covered Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Jacques Brel, Kurt Weill, Nick Cave:-
She did a big teasing routine before she did In These Shoes - picking up the red sparkly shoes, putting them on, letting the intro go on for ever, and then performed it magnificently:-
When Margaret Thatcher saw the film The Iron Lady she wept for the painful memories of her time in office, and not for her dead husband, and her own confused old age, which are what the film deals with to the nth degree. Thatcher's being was that of an ideological politician and we saw her instead as a wife to the funny, supportive Dennis (especially endearing when young and played by Harry Lloyd with his charming smile). It was as if they had done a film about, say, Muhammad Ali and after a quick run through his rise to fame and a lot on his marriage and Parkinson's disease had touched briefly on his boxing matches. There was another twentieth century British prime minister who had a vision of how Britain should be reformed, and whose policies changed Britain considerably. He was also happily married - but if anyone was inspired (unlikely I know) to make a film about Clement Attlee, there would be ten minutes or so of his relationship with his devoted wife.
The film became a love story - an Everyman's love story, for those of the population who grow old together, until one dies and the other is left to decay alone. As a love story and a picture of the body and mind fading and falling, it was mildly touching. Olivia Coleman was brilliant as Carol Thatcher. With one slight expression she can look concerned and hurt - the look of the dutiful daughter always passed over for the negligent brother in her mother's affections.
Everyone agrees that Meryl Streep was stupendous in the role of the former PM and she will be buckling under the weight of the awards she will receive for her performance. She did do a great feat of physical acting as Thatcher the shuffling aged lady and of mimicry as the politician in her prime ministership but I didn't feel I was getting a sense of what Thatcher was like. What drove Thatcher was really portrayed by Alexandra Roach as the young Thatcher, the gawky grocer's daughter, earnest and single-minded, with notions that the economy is a chain of self-reliant families and small businesses. (The shop-keeping self-employed class loathe the striking wage earning class). How she enacted these ideas in policies was hardly touched on.
That may be something that this kind of biopic drama can't deal with unless it is done totally differently i.e. leave out a half hour or so of Thatcher meandering round her flat sorting through Dennis's things and have some scenes with people who weren't Thatcher, or Dennis, or cabinet ministers - people who were in fact affected by her policies, not the angry rioters and bombers who appeared as a back drop. That though would have been making quite a different kind of film, without the chance of a great central performance. Biopics do this - everything becomes a set of planets orbiting the sun of the subject.
The portrayal of the woman in a man's world part was pedestrian. It was much better fun in The Long Walk to Finchley. For a tighter and more dramatic film on Thatcher I would go for the BBC's Margaret. Lindsay Duncan played Thatcher, not doing a tour de force of acting dazzle but perfectly fine as the regal lady whose arrogance brought her down. Margaret, dealing only with Thatcher's ousting, had a dramatic tension and shape. The effect was of a killer whale barrelling through the sea unexpectedly being mauled by Tory sharks and stung by Tory jellyfish until she sank. The Iron Lady is a shapeless film although it's not dull or unwatchable. Anyone interested in recent British history, or who lived through the eighties, can be curious about how certain events and people are portrayed.
Meryl Streep said she was a little awed at performing with a gang of Britain's character actors, who appeared as the politicians of Thatcher's day. It was enjoyable seeing who would play which cabinet minister or leader of the opposition. When Richard E Grant appeared as Michael Heseltine I, and no doubt 90% of the audience, immediately thought Withnail and I. Heseltine always seemed a little louche and Richard E Grant was a pleasure as a long-legged high foreheaded take of him.
In this modern world film actors are far more highly regarded than politicians. The reaction of the British media is to be overwhelmed at the honour that one of Hollywood's queens plays our former Prime Minister.
Unthanks were playing at The Queen’s Hall last week, supported by Trembling Bells. Trembling Bells looked and sounded like folkie rockers from the late sixties/early seventies. Their lead singer, Lavinia Blackwall was wearing a long floral dress with long sleeves and had long hair parted in the middle - the kind of cut-down Victorian style of the time. She had a wonderful voice - very pure in the upper notes, very rich in the lower ones, reminiscent of Sandy Denny‘s. They did some folky numbers and then moved to something more discordant, reminiscent of Emerson Lake and Palmer. Lavinia Blackwall’s voice catches your breath - this recording doesn't do it justice.
Their set was short, and then Unthanks came on. Rachel and Rebecca Unthanks did most of the singing, other women played cellos, fiddles, trumpets, and a bloke played the piano. The women were wearing knee-length print dresses, Rachel Unthanks had 8 months of baby in her belly, they bantered with each other and the whole feeling was of a family having a sing-song in the parlour. The Unthanks women’s voices are quite unlike the grand soaring of Lavinia Blackwall. Rebecca’s is breathy, Rachel’s rather childish in diction and their range isn’t wide. Harmonising together they are extraordinary - poignant, heart-breaking. For a couple of songs Rebecca did a clog dance, and they managed to be both amateur in the proper sense - conveying a love what they do - and polished. They did a mixture of traditional and modern folk songs, with a lot of piano and trumpet and stringes, and were brilliant. They didn’t sing the songs I already thought my favourites like The Testament of Patience Kershaw and Here’s the Tender Coming - the songs were all unfamiliar - but I enjoyed every song. They sound so fresh.
I’m listening to Gan to the Kye and both the song and the way they sing it give me the shivers:-
(The pictures on this video are totally wrong - I couldn‘t find another good recording.)
Gan to the kye wi' me; Over the moor and thro' the grove, I'll sing ditties to thee: Cushie, thy pet, is lowing Around her poor firstling's shed, Tears in her eyes are flowing, Because little Colly lies dead. Gan to the kye, etc
All the fine herd of cattle Thy vigilant sire possest, After his fall in battle By rebel chieftains were prest: Kine now is all our property, Left by thy father's will; Yet if we nurse it watchfully, We may win geer enow still. Gan to the kye, etc
A song about loss after a battle like The Flowers of the Forest - but the cattle remain and are to be cherished and increased - life going on - an astonishing song. It was new to me.
Women singing beautifully - solo or in harmony - is one of the finest sounds in the world.
Amnesty International condemns the detention of several people, including two women wearing the full-face veil, who were protesting against the law banning the wearing of any form of clothing concealing one's face in public.
The law came into force today. Police said the people were detained for joining an unauthorised protest in central Paris.
Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia Programme Director John Dalhuisen said:
“Women in France have the right to freedom of religion and expression. They must also be free to protest when this right is violated.
Amnesty is quite right of course. This ban is ludicrous, not to mention sinister. The ludicrousness is what strikes me most.
We're public guardians bold yet wary And of ourselves we take good care To risk our precious lives we're chary When danger looms we're never there But when we meet a helpless woman Or little boys who do no harm We run them in, we run them in We run them in, we run them in We show them we're the beaux gendarmes.
Actually the women haven't been that helpless and have been flagrantly breaking the law. Penalty:- a fine and citizenship classes. If any law was pointlessly bossy, this one is.
Frenchwomen used to wear veils, e.g. Madame Bovary:-
Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through her veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her hips, her face appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating under azure waves.
I remember going to a photographic exhibition and among many beautiful faces of Hollywood stars, her face made me stop and gasp. She was extraordinarily beautiful.
This clip is my favourite piece of Black Swan, the melodrama that‘s doing the rounds at the moment. When I saw it one part of my mind or perhaps my gut was gripped with suspense, the other part, the feminist critic part, was saying, is this for real? Frightening things approach you in basements, subways and behind doors in a claustrophobic apartment, which works very well on the suspense level, the acting is good and so in spite of the crude stereotypes of character and story which date from an earlier Bette Davis age than from films like Carrie, Hallowe‘en and the slasher stable it keeps you thrilled in your seat. But those few minutes, of a woman dancing and turning into a swan are real film magic. (My favourite bit of Billy Elliot, which is a run of the mill film about the outsider finding his true role is the final scene when the grown up Billy Elliot jumps across the stage in Swan Lake. It‘s such a great effect, the mechanics and cogs backstage then the dazzle of performance, and Tchaikovsky’s crescendos and climaxes can‘t help but exalt you).*
A tyro feminist critic could watch Black Swan and observe:-
1. The oppositions, on the Madonna vs. Whore, Classic vs. Romantic lines. So here we have the pale, frigid perfectionist versus the dark sexy let-it-all-hang-outer. Nathalie Portman plays, with believable intensity, Nina, an ambitious young ballerina who is a natural for the White Swan in a production of Swan Lake but is too cold, too repressed to play the Black Swan. She has to learn to “feel” the part by finding her own sexuality. This all-powerful magic token she unearths by biting the director, masturbating and having Lesbian wet dreams about her rival, Lily (Mila Kunis, managing to look voluptuous with her heavy black eye-liner, even though voluptousness is not what you expect in classical ballerinas). Lily of course is not so technically proficient as Nina but dances effortlessly and gropes her partner’s crotch, representing wild abandoned sexiness. Nina, the perfect White Swan, must learn to become the dangerous and erotic black swan, Carmen in a tutu.
This pale virgin versus the dark sexy piece is an old theme. It appears in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819) with the figures of Rebecca and Rowena. Maggie Tulliver in The Mill of the Floss (1860) chucks aside a novel when the insipid blonde heroine appears who she knows will defeat the dark interesting woman. I would have thought feminism had come into the mainstream to the degree that someone in the production must have recognised this, but evidently not. The film is done straight.
For thematic purpose Lily and Nina have to appear together in many scenes but it makes Lily’s motivation puzzling. Is she after Nina’s role, or is this in Nina’s mind? Otherwise why does a likable young woman pursue the friendship of a frigid unpopular priss like Nina after several rebuffs? Is her warmth assumed, covering malice? It’s not made clear.
2. The controlling stifling mother (Barbara Hershey). She isn’t as batty as the mother in Carrie, but getting there. Nina’s bedroom is sugar pink and full of stuffed toys, which an eleven year old would find too much. Three felt markers on a placard:- “Infantilised young woman dominated by disappointed mother.”
3. The idea the dedication to an art and ambition are basically bad for a young woman's womanhood and lead to neurosis.
4. The Svengali figure - the man who can make and break the dependent female. He’s the director of the ballet, an excitingly attractive Frenchman (Vincent Cassel) with a crooked nose. Like the hero of a Georgette Heyer novel he can read Nina’s mind and know exactly what’s wrong with her.
5. The dangers that the city holds for solitary young women. There are apprehensive shots of subways and of the practice rooms in the basement of the ballet studio. Nina, sitting in the carriage of the subway, is confronted by a pervert who jiggles his tongue at her while touching his crotch.
6. The ageing woman (Winona Ryder) who after being thrown out of her primadonna role goes mad and stabs her own face.
The film taps into particular female fears - the menace of the streets and public transport, the fear of their own bodies, the fear of being unattractive, the fear of ageing and being discarded, the fear of sex and men Nina’s body attacks her, by getting odd rashes and marks on her skin. Finally she accepts her body and her own power but in her moment of consummated perfection she throws herself from a great height and dies. Pure romantic, pure Gothic.
Of course a classical ballet dancer does horrible things to her body to make it do things that a human body is not designed for. Classical ballerinas get eating disorders and break their toes. I went to Black Swan with a friend whose daughter had done classical ballet but when the daughter got older she didn’t encourage it, having by then met crazed dancing teachers who were crippled with arthritis. She says she now finds the shapes and angles that classical dancers get into ugly. Mind you, the daughter, who is beautiful, walks like a princess.
*I was once on holiday in Estonia, staying in a town on the Baltic called Haapsalu, which had been a resort for Russians and where Tchaikovsky had often stayed. In the evening we were walking in a park beside the Baltic and sat down on a park bench, then leaped up with shrieks as the bench struck up Swan Lake. Behind the bench was some kind of music player with a sensory device. In a holiday mood by the tideless Baltic which was covered with wild fowl the Tchaikovsky played as if by ghosts was the icing on the cake, being both beautiful and absurd.
It has been Battle of Britain every evening on BBC4. When will they sound the All Clear? However, it has been pretty good coverage of an inspiring period in our nation’s chequered history and I’m properly respectful in my attitude towards the ancient men with their rows of medals who tell their stories.
What came as news to me was Spitfire Women, which gave an account of the Air Transport Auxiliary (the ATA). Some splendid old ladies were interviewed. Ladies they were - upper class women with the kind of accent that in another thirty years will not be heard from living mouths. In the 1930s these debby types had been rich enough to learn to fly, some of them owning their own aeroplanes or taking passengers on joy rides for a living. So they had hours of flying time under their belts and as one of the aviatrixes was the daughter of an MP, she managed to get them taken on to transport aeroplanes from factory to airfield or anywhere else they needed to be taken.
It was a marvellous tale. These young women knew how to fly and ride horses, but were mostly virginal and had led sheltered lives. So the atmosphere in their headquarters was something like St Winifred’s of head girls and hockey captains with names like “Lettice“, with a sprinkling of It girls who would work hard and then put on lipstick and play hard. One out of ten of them was killed and when they did marry a young man, there was a chance he would be killed as well. They met some male opposition of course but won through so eventually they were flying Spitfires, which one of them said were so beautiful to fly, a real woman’s aeroplane, that would respond to the slightest touch. In the cockpit you would feel you were flying without a machine. A wonder that they were not allowed to fight with as well as transport these aeroplanes they could handle so well.
For some of them it was the best time of their lives. One said this, though she lost a cluster of male cousins and a beloved brother. They were doing exciting work they loved, for a purpose which they supported whole-heartedly and among their comrades. What a way to spend your youth.
Amy Johnson, the most famous aviatrix. If only cycling helmets looked as glamorous as that.
I’d like to see a day when I don’t have to worry about having obscenities yelled at me or disgusting gestures made out of car windows when all I’m doing is walking to work or going about my business. I am sick and tired of being told this is all ‘harmless fun’ – it is not: it sends a worrying message that aggression towards women is acceptable and even desirable.
. . .
Street harassment is so normal and pervasive (it’s everywhere) that we don’t even register it many times when it happens – but it’s there and it’s eroding our sense of safety, self and what we believe is possible. How many women feel safe walking home after a night out? We should.
That’s from a thread over at the London Anti-Street Harassment campaign (here). The women express those familiar feelings of fear, intimidation, and the impotent, boiling rage of those harassed and bullied by men who think it’s amusing to shout out “nice tits” or whatever to some woman who is out in public. What makes you furious is that you have no effective come-back. Swearing or fuck off gestures usually attract laughter or escalated abuse or an amazed huffiness. When seeing a cluster of blokes hanging around outside a pub (the smoking ban has made this worse) or a gang of guys walking along the pavement, women will cross the street or make detours to avoid passing them, for fear, at the very least, of being embarrassed and humiliated.
Recently I wrote a post which among other things dealt with men who think they are entitled to intimidate random strangers - if the random strangers are female. The example I gave was of a Muslim woman who was spat at by co-religious males because they didn’t approve of her cycling and the clothes she wore. This looked to me like yet another way of keeping women down and I thought at the time that a Reclaim the Streets! like the Reclaim the Night! movement was needed, and then I read this in the Guardian:-
Vicky Simister, a financial analyst, . . has found street harassment particularly problematic since moving from Ireland to London for work. "I was walking down a busy road in the middle of winter," she says, "wearing a huge jacket, when these two guys slowed their car down to pay me 'compliments' about my appearance. This escalated into sexual comments. I eventually lashed out in frustration, and they got out of their car and ran after me, physically assaulting me. The police were called, but I wasn't happy with their response. One said: 'They said they were following you, but only to say nice things.'"
After this, Vicky set up the London Anti-Street Harassment campaign (Lash), to lobby MPs and journalists, and begin a serious debate. "I want women to put their hands up and say: 'We don't want to be treated like this,'" she says, "and I want men to realise the impact their words and actions have."
It's often suggested that street harassment is inevitable. But, as May says, while it might not be considered "as serious as domestic violence or sexual assault, street harassment is on the same spectrum of violence against women." The fact that it is so often just accepted by people suggests women's bodies are still considered public property – an attitude the anti-street harassment movement aims to change.
(Actually from what the women on the thread are saying, street harassment is particularly bad in London, so no, it‘s not inevitable if it varies from city to city. Some think it has been getting worse in recent years.)
Right on, sisters! I wish you all the best for this campaign.
