Joy

When I wrote a throw-away post about the soccer world cup I didn't realise that there was a debate raging on English Socialist blogs about the political implications of supporting England. They seem to be arguing as if there was a correct dialectic materialist analysis of what team to support.

Some people think that the correct line is to support the English team:

The gist of our argument was that football is followed by millions of people, who follow the players in the premiership, and want to follow those same players at the highest international level. It should also be remembered that interest in the World Cup is also huge even when England don’t qualify.

The English national team (in 1990 as today) is multi-racial, with talented black players, and the team celebrates the multi-cultural nature of England today. In 1998 when France won the World Cup, the face of North African Arab, Zinadine Zidane was projected onto the Arc d’Triumphe, and the racist FN who had denounced the national team as mongrels had ash in their mouths.

Others disagree:

Personally, I think every English socialist who supports England when they play teams like Trinidad - former colonies of Britain - or say Iran - which we are gearing up to attack - deserves ridicule if not utter contempt. The position of 'Anyone But England' is only 'laughable' if one thinks that the English ruling class are somehow too 'backward' or 'ill-educated' to make a socialist revolution here. In fact it is the only principled position one can have - the colour of the socialist flag is red - or, for the next month or so, perhaps red and black

I have to say that I find this whole debate a little odd. I don't think there's anything wrong with supporting a team for political reasons - as I said I supported Senegal for beating France, and Ireland because one of the guys did back-flips, but I don't think it's mandatory. There are many reasons for people on the New Zealand left to hate the All Blacks, and that's certainly my view. But if someone I knew loved rugby and wanted the All Blacks to win whenever they're playing, then I don't think that's a problem with their politics.

Not supporting a particular sports team for political reasons seems a little like boycotting a particular petrol station, without even the possibility of economic effects of a boycott (in case you can't tell from my sarcastic voice, I think boycotting a particular brand of petrol is a spectacular waste of time). It's exactly the sorts of individualistic, ineffective, faux-political action that I ususally join with Marxists in mocking.

But that's not even my main problem. I've never been a sports fan, I've never followed a team. I've always done what middle class white-girls are supposed to do instead, and got those kicks from television (I think everything I say about the power of serial storytelling is true of sports teams - even though there's no actual story involved). But I can see the appeal, I can see it wouldn't take much for me to follow a sports team obsessively.

I can see why sports teams could give people joy. I can see how following England could give people joy, even English Marxists, and I think people should take that joy when it's available.

I have found joy in the strangest places, and I'm going to confess one of them tonight, to explain I think English Marxists should support whoever they damn well want to in the soccer world cup.

I imagine most left-wing activists can remember what they were doing in early 2003. For those of us who were against the war in Iraq it was a combination of meetings and protests and banner paintings, and more meetings, and more protests, and discussions on e-mail lists (I was also trying to finish my thesis).

We had our meetings on Monday nights and they were huge long affairs, when they were done I'd walk home up the hill, turn on the television, and watch the episode of American Idol that I'd missed because I was at the meeting. America was about to invade another country and I got great pleasure from watching one of the worst and most nationalistic American reality TV shows.

I'm glad I watched American Idol, I'm glad it gave me some joy (god knows I needed some back then). I'd accept every criticism people made of it, and I made a fair few myself, but I still enjoyed watching it.

Everything produced under capitalism is corrupted, sports, music, films, television, literature, art - it's all got a role to play in maintaining our economic system, and it's all created as part of our economic system.

But there has to be room for us to love these things, because loving media, loving stories, loving suspence, even caring for people we don't know, that's all part of humanity. When we have won in the past it's because we manage to harness the part of us that loves, with the part of us that thinks, and fight together. I think mocking people for getting joy from a sports team denies a part of us that we're going to need.

Soccer World Cup

My little brothers and sisters played soccer; I played a game of my own devising called sit-on-ball (yeah it's what it sounds like - if people were going to drag me into organised team-sport I'd take the passive resistance approach). My opinion on soccer was always pretty much at least it's not rugby (I'll reconsider my opinion on rugby when there's no-one involved in the NZRFU who supported the tour, and when this pinnacle of masculinity takes a stand against violence against women - rather than just seeking name suppression for All Blacks who get charged).

But then four years ago I turned on the Soccer world cup and Senegal was playing France, and Senegal won. Soccer is a fun sport to watch - it's easy to pick up and the top teams are really good at it (that sounds dumb - but the way somone would pass the ball to where his team-mate would be was really elegant and impressive). I developed a rather idiosyncratic set of teams to support, mostly under-dogs (I think I supported Ireland on the ground that I liked the backflips one of the team did whenever he scored a goal). I had lost interest by the final - I complained that I didn't watch Senegal to see a Germany vs Brazil final.

I'm not going to be able to watch the soccer world cup this year (it's going to be on at 3.30am or some ridiculous time in New Zealand) and I'm a little sad about this. But Senegal didn't qualify about the cup this time round, and it sounds like the fact that the World Cup is being held in Germany has already brought out the worst in the English fans, so it's probably all for the best.

Ode to television (or possibly my dorkitude - probably both)

I love television. Well I actually don't love any particular form of television at the moment because it's all crap, but I love the format. In particular I love scripted single-camera 22-episode season television (half-hour or hour doesn't really matter as long as it's not a sitcom). I think I prefer television to movies. At least if I was going to a desert island and told I could have 5 hours of moviing pictures then I think it'd be mostly TV (off the top of my head - Buffy, more Buffy, probably Freaks and Geeks and possibly Dick).

So I'm a philistine and no-one needs to take me at all seriously, but I have my reasons - I love serial storytelling. We don't do much serial storytelling in print anymore, well we do, but it's not very satisfying. We have novels series, but you either have to wait an inordinate time between installments, or the books really suck (although I do think the serial storytelling is a huge part of the appeal of Harry Potter). Unfortunately the only place where writing is serialised more often than yearly is in the women's magazines (oh and the babysitters club). I may not like Dickens or Thackery, but I'll concede they're probably better writers than most of the people who write for women's magazines.

All this means if you want real serialised story-telling, where the updates come regularly you have to go to television. And I do want serialised storytelling, because it has the most amazing potential for emotional resonance.

Once I get about half-way through I finish books all in one go (if it's a good book). I stayed up till 5am a couple of weeks ago finishing David Hilliard's autobiography (I do this thing where I refuse to look at the clock, on the grounds that if I don't know how late it's getting it won't count). Most forms of media are either designed to be absorbed in a single session (like a movie or an album) or the author really has no control over how they will be absorbed, but are generally designed to be absorbed as one piece (like a novel).

Television, and other forms of serial story-telling, isn't like that. You already know the characters and you already care about the characters. It gives everything that much more meaning, that much more power.

The last episode of Freaks and Geeks is an excellent example of that. Lindsay goes off to chase the dead, Nick dances disco and Daniel plays Dungeons and Dragons. The reason this gave me a feeling of such hope was that I knew these characters.

To use a smaller example at the end of the Prom on Buffy - where Jonathon gives her the umbrella, and Angel comes and dances with her. Those moments work because you know what she's been through the last three years - you know what this means, you know who Jonathon is (although not what he will be - but telvision shows turning to custard is not the current topic).

It's a hard medium to write, and sometimes the plot suffers, as the writers lose track of where they are or it just doesn't work. But for me, what it can do for resonance and characters means that I'm OK with some of the plot problems (although not the Initiative - that was never going to be good). The characters grow and change over time with you. I think that's probably most powerful when you're watching high-school shows, either in high-school or soon after. Because then the resonance with your own life is really immediate (and I may have been 22 when Freaks and Geeks came out - but Lindsay was way smarter than me when it came to her life). But I've loved characters who were 5 years younger than me or 25 years older.

When it works, when an episode of television is acutally saying something, and it also tells you new things about these characters you care about, and funny it's and exciting and well constructed it just feels so right, so satisfying. That's my favourite sort of story-telling.

The other thing I love about serial storytelling is that it is a very social art-form from the viewing end. Part of the whole episodic nature means that you share it with other people - you talk about it with other people, because you're waiting for what is going to happen next.

Which is all just a long way of saying I don't think anything ever put to film will ever mean as much to me as this:Makes me cry every single time, and I couldn't tell you why without talking for about fifteen minutes about my life, Buffy, my feelings about feminism and how those three subjects have over-lapped over the 6 or so years I watched that show.

But the problem is that just as I think episodic television has such great potential, I also know that there is no other medium where it's more unlikely that any show will fulfill that potential.

In some ways it's partly because episodic story-telling is hard, particularly because there are so many people involved in a television show, that's so many different places where things can go wrong. 22 episodes of TV a year is a lot of writing - too much for one person without burning out, so you need a staff of writers, and some of them aren't going to be that good. Then even the best showrunner gets caught in how much they like the sound of their own voice and get over-important(I'm looking at you miracle snow).

But mostly the problem with episodic television is money. There is no medium where money is more important, and more corruptive. Partly this is because TV is really expensive and so there are all sorts of restrictions, and heaps of people put their oars in. The production company and the network all have notes.

The major problem is that television isn't made for viewers, it's made for advertisers. Which makes it the most compromised medium, in terms of what people can say. It makes it a conservative, and reactionary medium.

Which is why it's the place where people have miscarriages rather than abortion, where you can build a whole show around jokes that go: "men are like this; women are like this", why Kaylee is their idea of a larger woman, why everyone, even the poor people, seems to have enough money, why cops are glorified and why David E Kelley, king of misogyny gets hundreds of thousands of shows to spurt his hatred.

It sucks, because when it's good, it's really good. I haven't watched a good show in a while. Not one that it was worth making an effort to make sure you don't miss it, and unless you're that involved it doesn't really matter. My friend's kind of fond of Grey's anatomy - and I'm warming to it (they had the most sympathetic character refuse to cross a picket line, which made me like it more), but there is a fundamental problem of it not being very good. It treats the audience like they're kind of stupid (there's this whole sequence with a bomb in a body, and the main character is told by the bomb squad guy to imagine he's someone she likes, and rather than just trusting that this woman can act and we'll know that she's think about Dr McDreamy*, they take us to a white lit scene with her talking to the guy she has a crush on - because otherwise we wouldn't have got it.).

So the actual point of this post, besides to give people something to mock me with, and articulate some thoughts I've had for a while (I don't think I've explained it very well - I think only people who know what I mean will understand what I'm saying, but oh well), is that I'm excited.

Aaron Sorkin has a new show called Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip, and I'm excited about it. It seems to have a really good cast, it has Bradley Whitford who was easily my favourite thing about the West Wing, and it has Sarah Paulson who was the holograph woman in Serenity and Vicki in Down With Love (or as I described her to my friend 'You know that woman we really like, and whenever we see her we're all - she's really cool')

Now it'll have some problems (starting with the fact that Aaron Sorkin can't write women - a fact that is slightly mitigated by the fact that can cast actresses who can play women - however they're written), but he knows how to write television. Is it dorky that I'm excited about that? (if it is I won't tell you that when my friend and I were imagining things we wanted to have happen in the future "another Joss show on telvision" was quite high up the list).

*I'd just like to point out that I didn't make up that nick-name. The show did. I don't think he's McDreamy - I think both Meredith and his wife should leave him because he's an ass.

The conservative potential of communist songs

Now I stayed away from the John Miller's list of top 50 conservative rock songs, because it was too dorky to comment on (plus Amanda did a fine job). But he's done a second list of songs and included not just one, but two songs by people who would be on any blacklist you'd care to make. I happen to be quite dorky in my affection for folk style protest music and thems fighting words.

Lets start with the M.T.A. song, this song is a particular favourite of mine, because we sang it at my hippie primary school. In the 1940s an exit fare was introduced in the Boston subway, this meant that you had to pay to get onto the train, but also to get off again afterwards. The song is a story about a man who got on the train without his exist fare, and therefore had to ride forever beneath the streets of Boston and couldn't get off that train.

Now John Miller's reason for couching it as a conservative rock song was that it's "Against “a burdensome tax on the population in the form of a subway fare increase." Which is ridiculous in any case - anyone with any sort of left-wing credentials will oppose consumer taxes because they're regressive, they affect the poor more than the rich. Generally the left-wing is defined by its Robin Hood desire to rob from the rich and give to the poor. So his political analysis is lacking.

But it's also clear he has no idea of the history of the song. It was written in 1948 to support the campaign of Walter O'Brien of the Progressive Party (who was too poor to actually campaign). In 1948 the Progressive Party was endorsed by that well known conservative institution, the American Communist Party.

If that's not bad enough this is what he has to say about Turn! Turn! Turn!:

Originally written by Pete Seeger and sometimes interpreted as anti-war, the words are taken from Ecclesiastes and announce that to everything there is a season, including “A time to cast away stones / A time to gather stones together” and “A time of war, a time of peace / A time of love, a time of hate / A time you may embrace / A time to refrain from embracing.”

Sometimes interpreted as anti-war? I guess that could be considered correct if by sometimes you mean "by the person who wrote, and everyone who has every performed."

OK I'm going to get even dorkier and admit that I'm a big Pete Seeger fan. I have all three volumes of the recent tribute albums, and only wish I had more of his live albums. He's written a protest song for every major political cause for the last 8 decades. He seems to have been really generous with other muscians, and pretty dedicated in the work that he does. If he's earned anything it's the right that no to have upstart right-wing twits claim his songs as their own (plus if they wanted to it'd probably be better to claim some of the actual pro-war songs he wrote after Germany invaded Russia - the Almanac Singers followed the party line).

Just for the record when the bible talks about rich people camels and the eyes of needles, that doesn't make the redistribution of wealth conservative, it makes Jesus a commie.

If John Miller's interested I have another 5 conservative left-wing protest songs:

Love Me I'm A Liberal: The song is criticising liberals therefore it's conservative.

This Land is Your Land: A patriotic classic

The Young Woman Who Swallowed a Lie This song is critical of both artificial birth control and permissive parenting promoter Dr Spock.

Soldiarity Forever: "They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn" - clearly criticising those who claim welfare.

The Internationale The last verse talks about the need of those who work to do their duty, which is clearly a conservative notion.

Kathryn Ryan

I've decided I like her.

I still find her lack of opinion slightly unnerving. It often results in her being overly focused on politics as a game, and not on the issues. When she interviewed the father's rights movement the other day I felt she spent rather a lot of time focusing on how the protest would be perceived.

But her interviews on Tasers were interesting and revealing. I thought she managed to have an opinion and provide information at the same time - she lets her guests talk. Plus it wasn't an issue that wouldn't have appealed to Linda Clark's middle-class liberalism,

Also she replaced Peter Harris with Laila Harre and Jon Gadsby with Michelle A'Court. Both of which are steps to the left, and steps away from 'unbelievably annoying'.

Sisterhood (of the travelling pants)

In the whirlwind of the last couple of weeks there are a lot of posts that have remained unwritten (for example the government's review of our immigration laws - not my favourite thing) and blogs unread. I've only just started reading some of the Carnivals that came out recently, and tonight I want to respond to (well sort of meander away from) something from the latest big fat carnival.

PegE from On The Whole was writing about Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (the first two books in that trilogy are great by the way, the third isn't really worth it, and the movie was well worth watching, particularly Tibby & Carmen's stories, the other two actresses weren't really up to the roles, which was a shame). At the beginning of the book the girls find a pair of pants that fit them all, and make them all look fantastic, and they set about making rules about when you can wear your pants, and what you can do with them. One of the rules is "You can't call yourself fat in the pants". PegE objected

These smart, funny, talented, beautiful girls are co-creating a set of rules intended to empower them individually as well as their connections to each other. It's clear to me that in saying "you can't say you're fat in the pants" they are trying to encourage themselves to think positively about their bodies. But they (or the author of the book) screwed up. Because what that line really says is FAT IS BAD. FAT BODIES ARE BAD. LOVING YOUR BODY MEANS NOT THINKING (OR SAYING) IT'S FAT.

And that is wrong, wrong, wrong.

What's wrong with saying you're fat? Why does saying you're fat have more emotional charge than, for instance, saying you have blue eyes or blonde hair

I agree with her argument, but disagree that either the girls, or the author was wrong in what they're saying.

I think PegE's point is a really important one, the constant refrain of 'you're not fat' doesn't do one bit to make fat seem any less bad.

But I still think there's a lot to be said for stopping describing our bodies as fat.

It made me think of a clothes swap I accidentally found myself at recently. Someone was leaving town, and a few other people had bought some clothes along as well. What really got to me, is how many women made disparaging comments about their bodies without even saying anything. There's this gesture you can do where you slap both your hands on the back of your thighs, and it's really clear that what you're trying to communicate is 'aren't my thighs enormous', you don't even need to use the word 'fat'. It seemed to me that if people the clothes were too small then women would blame their bodies, only if the clothes were too big would they blame the clothes. Most of the women there would describe themselves as feminists, but the comments don't stop, the hundreds of subtle ways women can put down their body every day won't stop unless a woman makes a conscious effort to stop them, and even then they'll still go on in her head.

But I do believe that the first step would stobe to stop making any comments that are seen to be disparaging about our bodies. I think that every time we vocalised a fucked up thought pattern about our bodies to another woman we are normalising that fucked up thought process to her. I think we feed the culture that hates our bodies, and I think we do it every day. I think not saying that we look fat in the pants, or any pants is actually the first step to making the word fat back into a normal adjective.

I feel the same way about the way we talk about food, and maybe it'll be a little easier to explain what I mean there. I've written before about my belief that using moral terms to describe what we eat reinforces eating disordered attitudes and behaviour. Food is classified as 'good' (and what that means varies from social group to social group, but among people I know it usually means no fat, no dairy, no processed grains, notice that what qualifies a food as good isn't what it has nutritionally, but what it doesn't have) and 'bad'. I think this classification is the necessary first step towards eating disorder behaviour. Eating disorders are about control, and this sort of classification, which doesn't focus on nutrition, your diet as a whole, or what your body needs at any one time, is necessary for that control. Whether a particular woman tends towards keeping or losing control when it comes to food, both sets of behaviours require food to be classified as good and bad. The fact that women get constant reinforcement, from other women, about their classifications and the moral value of following these classifications upsets and depresses me (and sometimes makes me angry, but often I don't have the energy).

Most of the time when I have conversations about food with other women I find myself either biting my tongue, or arguing about everything they say, and often both. It's not that I don't have these thought patterns myself, I totally do. I've made a conscious choice not to reproduce them, not to give them weight by repeating them (I talk about these thought patters, sometimes, but that's completely different). I feel I should fight more, I should do less tongue biting and more arguing. But it's exhausting and I'm always scared that people will dismiss what I say because of how I look. I also think people would stop listening to me (because they pay me so much attention at the moment), I'd become the woman with a rant.

But I do think it would make a difference if more women made a conscious decision not to talk about food on moral terms and to start with that'd probably mean stopping talking about food at all, until you got used to it.

The same goes for our bodies the first step to creating a new way of talking about our bodies is stopping with the old way.

My favourite rich person

I decided I liked J K Rowling when I heard she named her first daughter after Jessica Mitford. I decided she was my favourite rich person, on the grounds that she got her millions without really exploiting anyone.

Her politics are a bit iffy, I'm sure she means well, but conservative readings of Harry Potter are ususally easier to support than radical ones. In particularly the whole House Elf Liberation Front thing bugs me.

I think I'm going to forgive her for the House Elf Liberation Front (we're supposed to like Hermione, just think she's annoying, which isn't an unusual stance to take towards someone who has newly found a cause). She just posted this to her website, under miscellaneous

His bemusement at this everyday feature of female existence reminded me how strange and sick the 'fat' insult is. I mean, is 'fat' really the worst thing a human being can be? Is 'fat' worse than 'vindictive', 'jealous', 'shallow', 'vain', 'boring' or 'cruel'? Not to me; but then, you might retort, what do I know about the pressure to be skinny? I'm not in the business of being judged on my looks, what with being a writer and earning my living by using my brain...

I went to the British Book Awards that evening. After the award ceremony I bumped into a woman I hadn't seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? 'You've lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!'

'Well,' I said, slightly nonplussed, 'the last time you saw me I'd just had a baby.'

What I felt like saying was, 'I've produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren't either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?' But no – my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!

I'm just happy to think how many people who need to read that will find it on her website.

That's 3,999,999 thank you very much

All throughout the city I see signs telling me that our Commonwealth Games team is 4 million strong. So I wanted to register myself as a conscientious objector from nationalism.

Another advertising campaign asks "Where do Gold Medals Come From?" You're supposed to go to Sparc's website to get this answer:

They come from ordinary kiwi kids who are encouraged, supported and then developed to become extraordinary young athletes motivated to spend years in intense training to reach the world stage.

They're wrong the actual steps to getting a gold medal looks more like this:

1. Find an environment with some gold in it.
2. Build a mine, destroy the environment, and save money by leaving out as many safety features as possible.
3. Hire a whole bunch of people to work in the mine, pay as little as possible.
4. Bust unions, anyway you can, try violence.
5. Get a whole bunch of other toxic chemicals and mix them with the gold.
6. This is actually where my knowledge of gold-mining and smithing runs out, but you get the picture.