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Exquisite corpses

I came across Channel 4’s The Random Spoken Word Competition today. It started me thinking about exquisite corpses. For those who don’t know, an exquisite corpse was Surrealist André Breton’s attempt to introduce chance into his artistic practice.

Exquisite Corpse

Breton described it as a “game of folded paper played by several people, who compose a sentence or drawing without anyone seeing the preceding collaboration or collaborations.” The now classic example, which gave the game its name, was drawn from the first sentence obtained this way. “the-exquisite-corpse-will-drink-new-wine.”

The judges of Channel 4’s competition “are looking for one piece of writing that imaginatively explores the theme “random” by using language in a rhythmically original and instantly engaging way.”

I wonder if it’s possible to write something that resonates using the exquisite corpse technique? I’ve experimented with the technique on a number of occasions, with varying degrees of success. As a writing technique, problems arise because the form is by definition a collaborative endeavour, you need several people to make it work. It then becomes about the collaborative process, and not what is written.

I once wrote an outline entitled “Exquisite Corpses Of Soloman Bishop”. In it Solomon Bishop speaks entirely in exquisite corpses. To circumvent the need for several people while writing this, I produced Solomon’s dialogue using Tzara’s technique for writing Dada poetry. I cut words from newspapers and magazines, put them in a bag, drew them out at random, and created sentences from the results.

Squad more robots forced adoption.

Lock-in sleeper defend green letters.

Trial bombers nylon contamination.

Interesting statements, full of jarring juxtapositions, that are random enough to be called an exquisite corpse. It’s very easy for this random selection of words to be ignored as meaningless. The question then arises, how do you give the randomness meaning, or more precisely, how do you control the randomness’s meaning?

One way is to give the words context. How do you give them context, by giving them a title that starts a story. “Once upon a time” gets the ball rolling, propelling the resulting exquisite corpse forward sequentially. Another way is more abstract, but grounds the exquisite corpse to something, an idea. Open with a title like. “The exquisite corpse of twenty first century sin” and all that follows refers to something tangible.

More work is needed on this, but that’s a start.

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Delaying gratification

I’ve been reading Robert McKee’s Story. McKee demonstrates a clarity of thought, and a level of certitude about what makes a good screenplay, that focuses your understanding. It took me a long time to commit, and read this cornerstone of screenwriting theory. I do that a lot, wilfully resist the imperative to do something just because people tell me I should.

I do it with films all the time. There are films I avoid just because people tell me I should see them. I did it with The Lives Of Others. I knew it was good, because everyone I spoke to told me it was good, but delaying its viewing made it all the better. Perhaps because all the hype that surrounded its release has died away, and let me see it with a certain freshness.

It could be that I just wasn’t ready. I have never really seen an Ingmar Bergman film. I know I should, but I have never been able to make that commitment. McKee talks about Bergman a lot. He makes the point that a neophyte audience find Bergman’s films difficult. You need a certain amount of life experience to be able to appreciate them.

The reason I haven’t seen one of his films could be something altogether different. In this world of now, where we get everything in an instant, delaying gratification has become something of an art. It’s the only antidote to the constant demand for our attention. I think it’s good it’s necessary to have something you know will pay dividends when you finally get to it, something that you hold in reserve until it is absolutely the right moment.

So next time you are told about a film you must see, perhaps hold off a while. See how much sweeter it is when you finally get to it.

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Why they won’t stop the war on drugs

I read a headline in the Metro last week. “The war on drugs ‘just isn’t working’.” Apparently the Global Commission on Drug Policy has called for the legalisation of drugs. Noted elders argue that “the war on drugs has failed to cut drug usage”. Adding that it has filled jails, cost millions, fuelled organised crime, and caused thousands of deaths.

Despite evidence from Portugal, that problematic drug use and drug related deaths fall when drugs are decriminalise, they decriminalised drugs in 2001, a Home Office spokesman said they were going to ignore the report. “We have no intention of liberalising our drugs laws. Drugs are illegal because they are harmful. They destroy lives.”

I am not surprised by the Home Office’s attitude, it’s the patronising parental attitude always displayed, the blinkered vision that completely ignores the reality of drug use in the country.

DrugScope, the UK’s leading independent centre of expertise on drugs, “estimated that over 11 million people aged 16 to 59 in England and Wales have used illicit drugs in their lifetime”. That’s about 6% of the population. They estimate there 6408 drug related deaths between 2000 and 2004. In that same period there were anywhere between 25,000 and 200,000 alcohol related deaths.

The “drugs are harmful” mantra is repeated ad infinitum, as if repeating it makes it more true. It doesn’t, and not because drugs can’t cause harm, they plainly can, it’s because the “drugs are harmful” mantra masks the real reason drugs are illegal.

Drug prohibition isn’t about public health it’s about public control. I’ll say it again, it’s not about public health, it’s about public control. Think back to World War One, the government imposed closing times on the public houses, so munitions workers would go back to work in the afternoon. The government imposed limited prohibition to control its workers. Not because of fears for their health, but to get them back to work.

What’s the difference between that, and the laws that stop people dropping an “E” at the weekend? Ecstasy is a Class A drug because dropping an “E” at the weekend might interfere with your work on Monday.

If prohibition was about public health, they’d ban tobacco. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known to man. Its use causes no end of health problems, from heart disease, to strokes, lung cancer, to tumours. Ash, the anti-smoking charity, estimate there are 12 million smokers in the UK. That’s about 7% of the population. DrugScope estimate “that each year in the UK around 114,000 people die from tobacco-related diseases”. Yet you can walk into any corner shop, buy a packet, light up, and get high.

Cigarettes are proof, if proof were needed, that prohibition is not about public health, it’s about public control. Prohibition is a panacea of public control for governments around the world. It’s a device nations use to endo-colonize their population. Endo-colonization is a term coined by French cultural theorist Paul Virilio. In his text of Pure War he describes the general militarisation of society, in which economies, unable to expand by colonising other countries, start to colonise their own population. The state, in the form of a civilian military, that’s the police, have “come to settle among and establish political control over (the indigenous people of an area)”.

Drugs is not a public health issue, drugs is a civil liberties issue, and we should demand our freedom to take drugs if we so wish. I say legalise the lot. Regulate them the way we regulate cigarettes. From cocaine to tobacco, you should be able to walk into a chemist, order your desired brand, at your preferred strength, and go enjoy yourself for a few hours, without fear of retribution from the state.

The war on drugs is a war on freedom, and should be condemned as antithetical to an individual’s human rights.

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Reluctant to reply

I see a lot of adverts on websites like mandy.com requesting screenplays. I read them with optimism. Go back to them looking for a glimmer of possibility, ultimately rejecting them as more trouble than they’re worth.

Am I cutting my nose off to spite my face?

I don’t know. I do know the promised credit, festival submission, and copy of the film, is not enough. If you want my work, I want to be paid, even for a short. Getting paid means ou mean business.

I’m also suspicious of would-be directors who have no writing skill at all, because it seems to me, if they have no writing skill, they have no understanding of how hard it is to actually write something.

How do I know this?

Because every time I have given a director a project screenplay, they’ve requested changes, massive changes, the kind that change the story. If you don’t like the story pass. As if I hadn’t thought about every aspect of the story, every word on the page, and made a conscious decision to write it that way. It seems to me the directors job is to tell the story, as written, not the other way round.

Perhaps I will regret writing this, because it’ll probably alienate potential collaborators, but that’s what I am looking for, collaborators, people who respect what I have done, enough to tell that story, as written.

The posters of these adverts could write the screenplays themselves. That’s why I started writing, I had stories I wanted to direct. Failing that, if they have stories they want to tell, and are unable to put it on paper, they could hire me to write it for them, not take what I’ve written and turn it inside out.

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It’s ‘cause you’re psychopaths!

I see the MiddleClass as psychopaths. When you say the word psychopath, images of axe wielding homicidal maniacs come to mind, but the truth is considerably less histrionic, and comes in the form of the compulsive liar who always gets what they want, the social butterfly who leaves a whirlwind of destruction in their wake, or the “interspecies predator” who controls others to satisfy their own selfish needs.

I have always been suspicious of the MiddleClass, never really able to understand their demeanour, but when I came across Dr. Robert Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist, it all fell into place.

The checklist is the psycho-diagnostic tool most commonly used to assess psychopaths. It is a clinical rating scale of twenty items.

  • Glibness/superficial charm
  • Grandiose sense of self-worth
  • Pathological lying
  • Cunning/manipulative
  • Lack of remorse or guilt
  • Shallow affect
  • Callous/lack of empathy
  • Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
  • Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
  • Parasitic lifestyle
  • Poor behavioural control
  • Promiscuous sexual behaviour
  • Lack of realistic long-term goals
  • Impulsivity
  • Irresponsibility
  • Juvenile delinquency
  • Early behaviour problems
  • Revocation of conditional release
  • Many short-term marital relationships
  • Criminal versatility

When completed, the test subject is scored anywhere between “0” and “40”. The prototypical psychopath scores the maximum “40”. A score above “30” diagnoses the subject as psychopathic. I see scores above “30” manifest all the time in the attitudes and behavior of the MiddleClass. Individual members may not be psychopathic, but as a class it’s a different story. Take that core member of the MiddleClass, bankers, I’d score their behaviour as follows.

  • Glibness/superficial charm (2)
  • Grandiose sense of self-worth (2)
  • Pathological lying (2)
  • Cunning/manipulative (2)
  • Lack of remorse or guilt (2)
  • Shallow affect (2)
  • Callous/lack of empathy (2)
  • Failure to accept responsibility for own actions (2)
  • Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom (2)
  • Parasitic lifestyle (2)
  • Poor behavioural control (2)
  • Promiscuous sexual behaviour (2)
  • Lack of realistic long-term goals (2)
  • Impulsivity (2)
  • Irresponsibility (2)
  • Juvenile delinquency (1)
  • Early behaviour problems (1)
  • Revocation of conditional release (2)
  • Many short-term marital relationships (0)
  • Criminal versatility (2)

That’s a Checklist score of “36”. They should be banged up, but they’re not, they’re allowed go about their business, in the name of the free market, and a profit.

I see scores above “30” in the well dressed politician who demonstrates a complete lack of empathy by admonishing the long term unemployed. There in the grandiose sense of self-worth innate in parents who set up a school for their children, and the bankers who fail to accept responsibility for the whirlwind of destruction they left in their wake.

I have no idea what to do with this insight, but there is some small satisfaction in being able to j’accuse. “It’s ‘cause you’re psychopaths!”

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Embarrassed by The Apprentice

If capitalism were a brand, what kind of brand message is THE APPRENTICE sending? I didn’t sit down and watch last nights episode. It was already on when I got in, and stayed on in the background while I busied myself with other things. In that half aware, peripheral vision, wallpaper kind of state, I was struck by how juvenile it all is.

I realise these people are there as much for entertainment as anything else, but if these are the brightest and the best, Lord Sugar’s business is in trouble. They go about their task like a blind man in a patch of brambles, staggering here, tripping there. As far as I can tell, they’re so busy trying to elbow their way to the front of the line, they don’t see the others in their team as anything but competition.

The worst of it comes when they get to the boardroom. The team with slightly better result is rewarded with a trip to a peep show circus, and the others, the ones who did that bit worse, get to play the greasy spoon blame game.

The post task autopsy is like watching a child caught pinching a sibling. They shift the blame, and obfuscate, while holding their knees together, hoping Sugar will believe them. If they are, it’s off to slime another day. If not, they’re on their bike, doomed to poverty, and the arbitrary nature of the labour market.

If I were the brand manager of capitalism, I’d be embarrassed by The Apprentice, and what it says about my product.

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Infantilising the political system

I can’t help thinking the royal wedding, no to the alternative voting system, and today’s release of “THE KING’S SPEECH“, are linked in some way.

The royal wedding was marketed as a national event we could all unite behind. A resounding “no” to the alternative vote was affirmation of “business as usual” for the political class. And today’s film release is the icing on the cake of the heroic triumph over adversity myth that surrounds the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

I think the cycle of recent events provides a bloody nose to those of us who would like to see this country as a republic, because it does what the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha always does, distract us from the real and lasting political change needed in this country.

When I tell people I think we should elect our head of state, they look at me like I’m demented. “You want a president (insert the name of the politician you hate the most)?” I would actually like to elect every person who represents me, because if I elect them, I can un-elect them, make them accountable for what they do in my name.

That doesn’t seem to be enough reason for most monarchists. As if wielding my franchise is somehow a silly idea, and I should know better. When I ask them what exactly the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha does for us, all they seem able to come up with is tourism. As if having big houses for commoners to visit is justification for infantilizing the political system in this country.

Ultimately that is what the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha does, it treats the people of this country as a “child or in a way that denies their maturity in age or experience”. I wish we could grow out of it, the way I grew out of crazy hair cuts, but as long as the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha remains in place, we are doomed to suckle on their breast, treated as children unable to emancipate.

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Natured or nurtured?

I have been working through some ideas for a character who is for want of a better word a psychopath. Not the axe wielding homicidal maniac type, more the person who leaves a trail of destruction in his wake.

This got me thinking about whether or not the psychopaths behaviour is something constructed by environment or naturally occurring, is it some genetic deficiency or part of some contemporary malaise?

Is their behaviour natured or nurtured?

I’m not a great believer in nature as the organising force of society. It seems to me we left nature behind when we moved into cities, and allowed every aspect of our lives to be controlled in some way. From birth to death, there is an organising principle in place, a body to categorise, normalise, institution to reward and punish.

I think nurture is the dominant force in our lives, and holds much greater sway than nature. I can see there are some elements of what we do that are natural, that come from some deep genetic imperatives, but from where I stand, the vast majority of our behaviours, the rituals we adhere to, how we interact, are all nurtured into us.

Therefore, if we’re all taught to behave in certain ways by the world around us, the psychopath must be a personality type constructed by society. If that is the case, what lay the foundations for their behaviour? Is it some twisted version of competitiveness, amplified by early setbacks, or a personality trait brought on by repeated rejection by a parent?

I’m guessing it was both, on top of some as yet to undiscovered traumas.

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Beyond three acts

Read this very interesting piece by John Truby at Raindance WHY 3 ACT WILL KILL YOUR WRITING. It made me think about the way my writing has developed.

The first draft of my first feature screenplay was a monster. I think mainly because I tried to stick to the a very rigid three act structure. But as Truby points out “the 3-act structure doesn’t work because it is arbitrary” and “places no emphasis on character”. I think it actually gets in the way of character, it certainly did for me. Subsequent drafts, and subsequent screenplays, have all developed beyond the three act structure.

My most recent screenplay “THE SINGULARITY” has nine very clearly defined sections, one about every ten minutes, and it is every ten minutes, because I structured it that way from the outset.

It felt strange when I started, as if I was a Christian discovering evolution, but once I put the three act structure behind me, I was able to plot a story more in tune with my character.

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Hypnotised by television

The argument about the harm television does to children is back on the agenda.

When people start on about this, I get very uncomfortable, it’s often the precursor to a demand for censorship. Censorship won’t solve the problems they harp on about, because none of the research that tells them content caused this or that behaviour, ever takes into account the act of watching as part of the causal relationship.

I think the act of watching television causes more damage than its content. I am not denying there is some relationship between behaviour and content. We wouldn’t have adverts if television didn’t affect behaviour, but for me it’s the act of watching that has the most significant effect.

If children stare at the screen to the detriment of all other social interactions, it’s no wonder certain damaging behaviours start to manifest themselves. It could be argued that the rampant self-interest of the last thirty years is caused by watching ever more television.

Generations of us have been brought up on an increasingly mailable television services. Multi-platform, interactive, streaming, on demand, have allowed us to bend television to our individual wants. As a result, we relate to the world, the way we relate to television, in very self-centred terms.

We pick and choose what we care about, the way we pick and choose what we watch. If our primary relationship is with the screen, it’s inevitable that we treat our lives thusly. If we don’t like what we’re watching, we change the channel.

The real danger of television is not the content, but the way we interact with it, the way it hypnotises us, keeps us watching.

Think of it in these terms. It is less the sex and violence on television, and more the sex and violence of television that causes harm.