The Damned and the Damned Good

Today’s blog asks one simple question: should a work of entertainment or art be judged on its own merits or on the morality (or lack of it) of the work’s creator? Given that it seems as though someone is going through the people who provided me with many happy memories of the days when I still longed for a puppy and a bike for my birthday and is sullying them one by one, I think it’s a fair and timely question.

Bacofoil-suited rocker with high boots, high hair and even higher eyebrows? Blinged-up cigar-toting yodeller who made people’s dreams come true? And the latest, infectious laugh-monger who, alongside northern rugby commentator, presented a totally surreal game show? All once darlings of the masses, now damned forever and eradicated from our entertainment past.

Before we go any further it’s important to note that some of these people have never been found guilty of the crimes they’re accused of – very important. The fact that a man is innocent until proven guilty by a jury of his peers is one of the immovable foundations of all sane legal systems. Mob rule and trial by media should have no place in a civilised society.

But then again neither does abuse of any kind. People who carry out atrocities should be suitably punished, shouldn’t they. But how do you adjust the punishment to fit the crime? And how is it that we choose to ignore the misdemeanours of some of our heroes yet turn on and vilify others? Just how much are we willing to forgive artistic types for actions that would be unacceptable if they were done by one of our work colleagues?

Many male rock musicians will admit to having used their fame to ‘get chicks’. Whether these groupies are willing or of legal age sometimes seems to be inconsequential. Does that affect their ability to create music to please the masses? The excesses of the Beatles, Stones, Led Zeppelin and the like have become legendary but it didn’t adversely affect their sales figures.

Just because somebody is seen to be a genius in their particular artistic field doesn’t mean that they are automatically what we would call ‘good people’, however you choose to define that. Many singers or actors have a history of substance abuse and/or violence towards their partners. Leonardo da Vinci was arrested and charged with sodomy, as was Oscar Wilde. Jerry Lee Lewis married a thirteen year old family member. Pablo Picasso was a member of the French Communist Party. Chuck Berry did time for armed robbery. Filmmaker Roman Polanski cannot return to America due to an outstanding statutory rape charge for sex with a minor. Michael Jackson made tens of millions of dollars in out of court settlement payments due to allegations of child sex abuse. At the time of his death, Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols was on bail after being arrested on suspicion of murdering his girlfriend. Author William Burroughs was convicted of killing his wife, the artist Caravaggio battered a young man to death and record producer Phil Spector is currently in jail for murder.  Salvador Dali was… unusual. And Lord Byron was ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’.

Some of these events may shock us. Some won’t because they’re not illegal or even seen as wrong in the time and place that we live but change the century and location of the incident and it looks a whole lot worse. Or a lot of fuss about nothing.

So is the value of a man’s work lessened if he’s found to be the kind of person that we, as a society, don’t like? If that’s the case then have the millions raised by Jimmy Savile and Lance Armstrong suddenly somehow become less beneficial to the recipients of that money?

It’s difficult. I guess that some things aren’t quite as black and white as we’d like them to be.

But then again, some things most definitely are.

A Squirrel On My Patio

I went for a long weekend at Center Parcs, staying in a little lodge in the beautiful woodlands of central England. I woke up one morning and…  well the title tells you what I saw. I was so surprised by it looking at me looking at it looking at me that I wrote this children’s poem, for kids of all ages. You might like to read it aloud to your own? Whether you do or not, I think it should be read at the same pace that it was written – breakneck speed.

There’s a squirrel on my patio. Imagine my surprise
There’s a twitching to his nose and there’s a twinkling in his eyes

And a grinding of his jawbone as he chews with all his might
Yes he chews and chews until he’s eaten everything in sight

There’s a squirrel on my patio who’s getting rather plump
With a portliness of belly and a swelling of his rump.

I put peanuts out and birdseed to attract the little birds

But they wouldn’t come too close because – well, in so many words

There’s a squirrel on my patio. A squirrel, don’t you know,
With a big luxurious bushy tail and sharp claws on his toes

He’s eaten all that I’ve put out and then come back for more
And when I wasn’t quick enough he tapped upon the door.

There’s a squirrel on my patio requesting that I feed
Him with piles and piles of peanuts and a mountain of birdseed

Which I did but he just munched it all. It must be squirrel Heaven
He thought it was so wonderful, he called his mates – all seven

Now there’s squirrels on my patio, just over half a dozen
They'll be calling in their aunties next and uncles and their cousins

Saying “Come and join the party, there’s enough to go around”
As I fill up all the feeders that they’d previously found

So there’s squirrels on my patio demanding lots of food.
They’ve gobbled everything I’ve got. I’m not in a good mood!

But before I go to scare them off, I mustn’t be too hasty
I’ve got squirrels on my patio… I wonder if they’re tasty?

What Do You Do?

Imagine, if you will, that I’m at a party. It’s a posh party with people dressed up to the nines, a pianist playing some light jazz unobtrusively in the background and the great and the good of the land all mingling merrily. They, like me, each have a plate of canapés in one hand and a chilled chardonnay the other. I’ve no idea what these are but if they’re anything like a Double Chocolate Magnum I’ll be in hog heaven.

Those who know me well will have realised that picturing me at an event like this takes a huge stretch of the imagination but go with me on this, just for a short while.

I sidle – or maybe I sashay, you’re the one who’s imagining this scene – over to a stunning blonde and we begin small talk. I’m a master of it don’t you know and I may even get her phone number.  Everything’s going spiffily until there’s a slight lull in the conversation and she asks that question. The question that everyone always asks in situations like this. The one question that people feel safe asking because everyone has an answer, even if it’s “Actually I’m between acting roles at the moment”.

“So tell me Shaun”, she says. “What do you do?”

I’m OK with it, I’m proud of my work. It’s not like I’m Gary Glitter’s publicist or something.

“I’m a writer” I say absently, trying to work out how to suck a sausage roll from my plate without putting my drink down.

“A writer!” The blonde would clap her hands together with glee if they weren’t, like mine, full of drink and nibbles. She’s impressed though, I can tell. So am I, every time I say it. I’m a writer. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I’m chuffed to monkeys (as they say – whoever they might be). But then she asks the follow up question – “What kind of stuff do you write?” – and that’s when I crumple a little.

It applies to any kind of artist I guess. Painters, sculptors, actors as well as writers. We all have the same problem. Unless we’re ridiculously talented and/or even more ridiculously lucky then we have to make compromises. We want to produce our art for its own sake, to have it and by extension ourselves accepted and appreciated on artistic merit alone, yet we all have bills to pay.

They say that writers should write what they want to write, what they believe in, what they feel deep in their heart. If you write it, they will come, apparently. But what if what I feel in my heart is an urge to write long flowing descriptions of my perfect holiday destinations? Nothing about the human condition just incoherent pieces full of mixed metaphors and adverbs that are virtually unreadable in their ramblings but do at least calm my troubled brow? What if I want to lock myself away in research for days on end and have the freedom to include every single scrap of unearthed data in my work without having to care how badly these titbits will clog up the intricacies of plot? I’d much rather find out what someone in my story would authentically wear in his given timeframe than be bothered with consistencies in the complexity of his character. But who’d pay for work like that? Who’d commission a piece with very little storyline but a wonderful description of the settings and their history? Doing loads of research is useless if it never makes the final cut. It goes under the banner of ‘useful background material’ if I’m feeling generous: ‘a total waste of time’ if I’m not.

I need to earn a crust like everyone else and the only thing that I can do with any competence is string a sentence or two together so I don’t write my beautiful flowing poetic pieces and I don’t write bestselling doorstop novels with storylines so dense that you need a degree in advanced political espionage to wade through them. What I actually write are factual articles for magazines or webpages or trivia books. I can fill these with my research data and I still get to write each and every day but it’s a watered down version of my dream.

So when anyone asks “What kind of stuff do you write?”, whether they be imaginary blondes at an imaginary party or an unwanted new-best-friend who’s chosen to sit beside me on an otherwise empty bus, I usually give the same answer.

“I write whatever somebody will pay me to write.”

Vision On

There was a time, when I was young and dinosaurs walked the earth, that we all watched television together. I don’t mean as a family (though we did that), I mean as a nation. Now all of us weren’t in my Mum’s living room, obviously. We only had a small black and white set so there would have been some serious squinting going off at the back. No, I mean the entire country watched its favourite programmes at the same time. We had to, there was no other way. We had just two or three television channels available via one delivery channel. No repeats, no videos, no download. Grab it now before its gone.

Dixon of Dock Green, Morecambe and Wise, Twin Peaks – whatever genre, whatever era your favourite show was, it was only available right here, right now. And because nobody wanted to miss them then some shows that were watched by half the population at the same time. The Americans had a phrase for it. They called it ‘water cooler television’, meaning that people would be talking about them around the water cooler at work the following day.

We don’t do that now. We can’t. The world has changed.

A conversation at the proverbial drinks machine used to go something like this.

‘Wasn’t (insert name of programme here) great last night?’

‘I know. Who’d have thought that he’d turn out to be the killer?’

‘I knew it all along. He had that look about him.’

… etc, until someone wandered over to tell you that your break ended fifteen minutes ago and the Big Boss was on the warpath.

These days you’re more likely to hear the following.

‘Wasn’t (insert name of programme here) great last night?’

‘Ooh no, don’t tell me! I’ve recorded it, I’m watching it tonight.’

‘Ah ok. Well I’ll just tell you about this fantastic part where he’s abducted by space aliens…’

‘La! La! La! I’m not listening!’

We’ve killed the art of discussing our favourite shows by watching them at different times in different ways. Some still sit around the telly of an evening with the family waiting for the show to start while others record it for later viewing while they go about their lives, not tied down to any entertainment schedule. Some get their televisual delights delivered through their letterbox in box set form on subscription while others still – and this is fast becoming the favourite viewing pattern of many young people – download the show to their laptop’s hard drive. Just as text and social media have drastically altered the way that we communicate with each other generally, this increased choice of deliver channels has changed the way we discuss our entertainment. Now people are more likely to seek out online discussion groups about their favourite television shows. Or radio ones for that matter, as I do with other fans of ‘The Archers’. I know, but I’m old. And old fashioned.

So the conversation around the drinks machine (or the bar) about television is pretty much dead. There’s always someone who is three seasons behind you in their viewing of a show. But while technology has closed this particular door for entertainment consumers it’s opened other doors for creators. A generation ago a writer with an idea for a script would have to approach the television stations either directly or through an agent, then filter their concept through levels of producers and committees until, if they were very, very lucky, something might eventually be made that was a vague approximation of their original idea. They’d get the payment and the credit but not the artistic control. These days things are different.

Just as Lulu and other self-publishing services have made getting a book to market a relatively easy affair, so has You Tube and Vimeo opened up a world of new customers for filmmakers. Write a script, get together with other creative types, make your movie and put it on a site for the world to consume. It’s that easy.

Of course there’s a downside to this. Total creative control and ease of availability decreases the chances that the finished product will be any good…

Shaun Finnie is currently self-editing his first novel.