Author: sapteuq

Review: Jerusalem by Alan Moore

Alan Moore’s 2016 novel Jerusalem is a heartfelt, sprawling tribute to the Boroughs, a Northampton neighbourhood with a seedy present but an illustrious past. For the author, Northampton is nothing less than Jerusalem, the Jerusalem of William Blake. Or it might have been, but it’s too late now.

The story centres around Alma and Mick Warren, a sister and brother who grow up in the Boroughs. Alma becomes a brilliant but utterly demented artist, Mick a manual worker. In 2005 Mick has a workplace accident that triggers a flashback to his childhood, to a near-death experience that sent his spirit on an adventure in the afterlife. This plane of existence, neither heaven nor hell, is a version of the Boroughs that exists beyond space and time. By combing through these memories, Mick and Alma come to understand the forces both supernatural and mundane working to grind the neighbourhood into oblivion.

 In a long flashback, toddler Michael wanders into the afterlife and falls in with a gang of ghostly kids, the Dead Dead Gang, who resemble something out of Enid Blyton. Of course, these innocent pranksters are all dead – some of them died as children, others lived full lives but choose to live as kids in the afterlife. After these adventures come to a triumphant conclusion, we return to the present. It’s time for Alma to attempt to save the Boroughs.

The Destructor

But in Jerusalem, time is simply another dimension (thus trees are four-dimensional structures), free will is an illusion, and all the moments of our lives happen simultaneously in a coruscating eternity (as Doctor Manhattan once explained). After death we ascend to an eternal plane from which we view our lives from above and outside, as it were. It seems to be a kind of superstructure based on and growing out of the real world; as below, so above. But what takes shape in the superstructure can rebound upon the base, as we see with the Destructor, a sinister vortex at the rotting heart of the Boroughs. This huge waste incinerator dominated the neighbourhood for years, an example of the contempt of the authorities for the health and wellbeing of the folks living nearby. This act of state cruelty continues to exert a dire cosmic influence long after the Destructor itself is demolished.

It’s a good thing there’s an eternal afterlife where our deeds and creations are inscribed forever, since the story is all about the slow and painful death of a neighbourhood. The story is told through a wide range of characters, dead and alive, who criss-cross the Boroughs in many dimensions, striking one another and rebounding unpredictably like the billiard (trilliard) balls of the male proletarian ‘vaguely Soviet’ angels who run the show.

‘Lacking restraint?’

If you don’t like a book that can be described as ‘challenging and at times lacking restraint’, then Jerusalem is not for you. But ‘lacking restraint’ is a quality essential to this type of story.

Like his creation Alma Warren, Alan Moore can be exasperating. I lost my patience with him a few years ago when I bought a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel only to open it and find that it was half in German. For feck’s sake! I wasn’t going to read a comic with Google translate open on my phone, just so I could read speech bubbles full of references that would probably go over my head anyway.

But since making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I’ve re-read the brilliant League saga titled Century. Like Jerusalem, it portrays the 2000s as an irredeemable sadistic miserable dystopia, with social conditions that remind Mina Murray of the Victorian era, but weighed down with even more hopelessness and cynicism. That portrait will stand the test of time.

‘Obese children in need’ is a bit mean – obese children obviously do need help – but it goes along with the general portrayal of the dystopian 2000s that the closest thing we see to political activism is harmless NGO fundraising

No part of Jerusalem alienated, annoyed or baffled me – with one exception. There was a sequence of chapters narrated by Lucia Joyce in (what I assume is) Finnegan’s Wake-style gibberish. Maybe it was just the effect of listening on audiobook, but it drove me mad. I almost never skip parts of books, but after enduring the babble for a while I skipped it.  

Jerusalem takes place almost entirely in Northampton (including Lambeth; Moore claims that Lambeth is an annex or honorary part of the Boroughs). But the scope is far from narrow, taking in Sierra Leone and the United States, the world economy, climate change, the ‘war on terror’, epidemics, slavery, woolly mammoths and a trek into the furthest reaches of the future.

Taken from this blog, with thanks

Along the way the reader learns about everything from Northampton’s religious conflicts to the illustrious inhabitants of its mental institutions, including the aforementioned Lucia Joyce. Even if it ‘lacks self-restraint,’ Jerusalem is not self-indulgent; Moore is conscientious and reverent concerning details of local and social history, from death-mongers to the origin of the name ‘Scarletwell Street.’ If anything it is Boroughs-indulgent.

Putting Northampton on the Map?

There’s an episode of Alan Partridge in which Alan tries to pitch a show idea to TV executives: ‘this TV show will put Norwich on the map!’

To which the TV guys respond, ‘Why would we want to put Norwich on the map?’

Why would readers want to immerse themselves in the past, present and future of Northampton? Why did I, in essence, go on a hungover sixty-hour walking tour of the Boroughs with Alan Moore as my tour guide? Why did I enjoy it so much, and get so much out of it?

One answer lies in the architecture of Moore’s heaven. Between life and afterlife lies the ‘ghost seam,’ a monochrome world in which those who are unable or unwilling to move on from the sins and traumas of their lives are doomed to wander. In a memorable scene, Moore notes that ghosts are rare in the Boroughs but common in the leafy suburbs – snobs from the professional classes lingering in their back gardens, unable to leave behind their property, making bitter remarks about the South Asians who have moved into their houses. Castles and mansions are, as everyone knows, teeming with ghosts and madness. But the humble folk of the Boroughs ascend without difficulty to a radiant and glorious eternity. The working class in general gets the express service to heaven. Jerusalem is more broadly a celebration of working-class life. Again and again, the language and imagery link the working class with the divine, the angelic, cathedrals and paradise.

Demons feature in the story, but they are relatively harmless. The real evil is the faceless, destructive horror of capitalism. The acts of violence in the book – from sexual assault to socio-economic violence (I’m aware that the implied metaphor is problematic) – are all inspired by a world-view that sees human beings as selfish units with no obligations or connections to one another. The despicable Labour politician Jim Cockie sees the misery in the Boroughs as a phenomenon rooted in ‘individual responsibility’ rather than oppression. For more on this, take a look at this very insightful write-up by David M Higgins.

The antidote to this is a bizarre art exhibition hosted by Alma Warren which serves as a kind of inquest, pointing the finger of blame while also celebrating the neighbourhood. Reminding us of the place we occupy in eternity makes the world a more interesting and colourful place, gives layer and texture to our surroundings, renders them comprehensible and legible. But more than that: it empowers us to make a political challenge.

Moore tells a story about his home town, and similar stories could be told about the towns I know. But it doesn’t matter what town it is. What matters is having human connections to a place and to those who live there (even if like ‘Black Charlie’ you originally came there from the other side of the world), being immersed in the art that was created there, appreciating the destruction that has been wrought there, seeing the past and the future embodied in the present. Jerusalem spoke to me because while it’s all about the uniqueness and specificity of Northampton, the same could apply to the run-down neighbourhoods and ghost-town streets near my house or yours.

From Pearl Harbor to Eternity

Comparing a terrible film, a good film and a great book

Pearl Harbor is a terrible movie. But you can’t really appreciate how terrible it is until you compare it with From Here to Eternity, a far superior film about the same event, the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941. The comparison is even starker when you look at the novel on which From Here to Eternity is based, a book so hard-hitting it faced boycotts and was called ‘the most controversial novel of our time.’

Superficially the two films are similar: we follow a cast of characters through military life in Hawaii before the war, then at the end the infamous bombing takes place.

But Pearl Harbour is about air force officers and nurses while From Here to Eternity is about rank-and-file army grunts and sex workers. Pearl Harbor bows with utmost reverence before the altar of the US military. From Here to Eternity portrays a toxic and oppressive institution.

From Here to Eternity is about two privates, Prewitt and Maggio, who revolt against military life. Officers are ‘jackasses’: Captain Holmes tries to force Prewitt to box, against his will, just to enhance the prestige of the company. Prewitt refuses, and Holmes begins a brutal campaign of reprisal and coercion against him. Meanwhile Holmes’ wife Karen starts an affair with Sergeant Warden, the tough NCO who really runs the company while Holmes is busy sucking up to the top brass.

As an aside, Maggio was played by Frank Sinatra – rumour has it that this casting decision was influenced by the sudden appearance of the severed head of a horse in a film producer’s bed. Which inspired, yes, that scene from The Godfather.

Frank Sinatra as Maggio in From Here to Eternity

As for Pearl Harbor, the scenes depicting the actual bombing will stick in your mind – they’re made with a huge budget and modern special effects. Superficially it appears more attractive – it’s in colour while From Here to Eternity is black-and-white.

From Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor. While I hate this film, I have to give it its due. The bombing scene is a genuine cinematic spectacle.

But Pearl Harbor is overall forgettable. We don’t care much about the characters, so the battle is just an empty spectacle. The world the characters live in is so bland. There are no bad officers – no, sir, absolutely not, sir. In From Here to Eternity Prew and Maggio sneak out of barracks, loiter in Honolulu and skirmish with the Military Police. They get locked up in the stockade where prisoners are tortured, sometimes to death. But all of the rough grain of military life has been sanded smooth in Pearl Harbor’s shiny version of the US military. You could eat your dinner off Pearl Harbor.

The cast of Pearl Harbor and that of From Here to Eternity supposedly live in the same place at the same time. But it’s honestly difficult to imagine, say, Prew and Alma running into the nurses and pilots of Pearl Harbor on the streets of Honolulu. What would they make of each other? How would they interact? It would be uncanny, like an encounter between humans and robots, or between alien species. Their brains would short-circuit.

A lot of people complain about the historical inaccuracies in Pearl Harbor. But I don’t really care if they used the wrong sub-type of aircraft carrier in that one scene. My complaints run a lot deeper. For example, I hate the scenes where real historical figures appear – the scenes depicting American leaders like Roosevelt are pious and reverent and utterly lifeless, while those depicting the Japanese are unnecessary and portentous.

But the very worst part of the film is the last half-hour. After the bombing of Pearl Harbour, our heroes fly off to carry out a revenge bombing on Japan. This part feels crudely bolted-on, a real drag on the movie. You’re sitting there like, ‘The credits should have rolled twenty minutes ago.’ It’s also cruel and petty. We’re supposed to root for these bomber pilots, when they’re flying off to blow up some innocent Japanese factory workers. The filmmakers couldn’t let it be; they felt that after showing us the Pearl Harbour attacks, they had to end the film on a note of righteous US violence, and they even tacked on a narrator to explain it to us.

From the trailer for From Here to Eternity

But I have not yet mentioned the brilliant 1951 novel that From Here to Eternity is based on. There is a wide gap between James Jones’ novel and its film adaptation. (Spoiler Alert) In the film the tyrannical Captain Holmes gets demoted as a punishment for his misdeeds and replaced with a fine upstanding officer. In the original novel, however, Captain Holmes is promoted – rewarded by the top brass, not punished – and his replacement is a coward and an idiot.

From Here to Eternity – novel and film

This is emblematic of the differences between book and movie. In the book, the company and the regiment come alive with memorable characters. Jack Malloy is a semi-legendary soldier who used to be in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). A self-educated philosopher, he is always in and out of the stockade for his mutinous behaviour. Prewitt admires him, and Maggio becomes his disciple.

The film also leaves out the book’s foray into Hawaii’s gay scene, and the strange friendship that develops between Prew and Maggio on the one hand and two gay men on the other. Unfortunately the author ultimately seems to endorse some homophobic and victim-blaming points of view at one point. These are blunders made in the context of a sincere attempt to engage with a theme that was at that time shrouded in deathly silence. Maggio is an eccentric, stubborn, tough character, ultimately a kind of tragic hero. He also has sex with men for money – a fact that challenges conventional expectations.

The epic sweep of the novel deals with dark stuff like suicide, STIs and sexual assault. It also depicts love, friendship, courage and creativity; a minor character introduces Prew to the songs of Django Reinhardt and to folk music, so Prew and his friends write a song called ‘Re-enlistment Blues.’ Prew applies himself with intensity to this project; it’s about communicating his experience as a working-class army private, and exploring the social and economic forces that drive him back time and time again into the military life he hates but can’t escape.

The great Django Reinhardt. From Here to Eternity is quoted in Charles Delaunay’s biography of the jazz musician.

Censorship

Jones was forced to cut some passages from the novel – for example, the ones that make it explicit what Maggio’s practise of ‘rolling queers’ actually involves. He protested to his editor that ‘the things we change in this book for propriety’s sake will in five years, or 10 years, come in someone else’s book anyway… and we will wonder why we thought we couldn’t do it.’ He was right.

But even in the censored form in which it was published, and again even in the de-fanged form in which it was adapted by Hollywood, From Here to Eternity is so much more bold and interesting than Pearl Harbor.

And here’s the thing – the US military was involved with the production of From Here to Eternity and did have a say in its script. You can see the grubby military fingerprints in some of the above changes. To this day, the studios make big savings by securing equipment and locations from the US military. In return, the Pentagon has final say on the script. In this way the Pentagon exercises essential censorship over any war movie made in the United States. From Here to Eternity made this deal with the devil, and so (obviously) did Pearl Harbor.

The poster for Pearl Harbor. I would guess that the cross there is not accidental. This expensive cinematic spectacle was purchased at the cost of giving the US military full censorship rights over the script. Bay would do the same thing with Transformers.

But the military censors seem to have been less aggressive seventy years ago! It’s striking that even in 1953, in an atmosphere still reeking of McCarthyism, Hollywood was able to make a movie that was critical of the US military. In the year 2001 the best the US film industry could cough up was Pearl Harbor, a story that not only portrays the US military as spotless, but celebrates the bombing of civilians. And even at that, they still didn’t get the right aircraft carrier.

Image

Abyssinian victory

The Battle of Amba Alagi (1895), during the First Italo-Ethiopian War, depicted in the French paper Le Petit Journal. The Ethiopian (Abyssinian) forces won this battle and would ultimately win the war against Italy. At a time when imperialism was dominant throughout the world, this was a rare victory over a European power. The awesome-looking leader on the white horse is Ras Mekonnen.

Readers who are better-informed than me can, I hope, comment below: is this picture accurate, or is it drawn mostly from the imagination of some French artist working to a Sunday paper deadline?

Coming Soon… Revolution Under Siege: Civil War in & Beyond Russia, 1918-1920

I’m preparing a series on a subject that has fascinated me for a long time: a revolutionary struggle that shook the world and that we call, for want of a better name, the Russian Civil War.

At issue was the destiny of an empire covering one-sixth of the land surface of the earth. The world’s first socialist revolution had triumphed in the October Revolution of 1917 when workers’ councils, known as Soviets, seized power under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party.

The Reds were not fighting for a totalitarian one-party state, but for a participatory democracy of workers and peasants. Rising from their factories and slums, they saw themselves as the spearhead of an international working-class revolution that would build a new and better world based on reason, equality and humanity. The Whites were fighting to smother the ‘barbarism and anarchy’ of the Soviet democracy; they wanted to restore tradition and hierarchy, the empire, law and order.

What makes this struggle so fascinating also makes it daunting. The human suffering was terrible. Famine and disease killed a far greater number than bullets and shells. At times, great cities lay semi-deserted. Both sides used the grisly weapon of terror. The scope of the war was epic: in the north, the armies were supplied by sleds across the ice, in the south by camel caravans. It was fought with weapons that don’t seem to belong in the twentieth century: cavalry with swords and lances, armoured trains, horse-drawn carts with machine-guns bolted onto them. But less conventional weapons were even more decisive: a political appeal could make an army melt away overnight, or win a battle without a shot being fired. It was sincere political commitment that welded a ragged and untrained workers’ militia into an army unlike anything ever seen before.

I’m currently preparing this series and I expect to air the first few parts weekly over August-September 2021. So get on the subscriber list and keep an eye on those emails.