Radio Gaga

[nineveh_uk]

I spent an hour on Saturday sewing, and listening to the Afternoon Play on Radio 4.It was the sort of thing that Radio 4 does so well and so badly. It wasn’t about the Bevin boys, or mining, or cultural change in north-east England. It was a very thing tale of a young upper-middle class chap who briefly found himself in an unexpected situation, got used to it, and then went on with the rest of his life. The whole setting was merely detail to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. Confirmation of this came towards the end in one of the modern sections in which the noble savage – sorry, miner’s – great-grandchild was called Kylie. Because whilst a bit of dignity might be afforded to workers in wartime, clearly their descendents are culture-less chavs. I must be fair, though – it had a pretty unpleasant attitude to our upper-middle class insurance broker, too, when you dug into it, and I won’t even start on its portrayal of women. So on the whole, I am glad I listened to it as a fascinating example of a particular brand of snobbery.

That said, for sheer “Was this written by someone on this planet”, nothing will ever beat “Working-class Harrogate girl goes to Trinity (Cantab) to read Classics, her tutor is a lesbian who tries to seduce her with Sappho, is rebuffed and then threatens that student isn’t really very good and will be lucky to scrape a Third, but heroine is saved by the nice Eton boy who helped carry her luggage on the first day.”

I am now 1/20 of the way through the Bible by page-count, not counting the Apocrypha (because they are in a separate volume, though I shall be reading them). Joseph and his coat turns out to have a few details that weren’t mentioned at school (though we were bang on about him being the sort of little brother anyone would want out of the way. The Chalet girls would have had something to say on the subject of tale-bearing for a start). First the not-evil nature of Reuben, second the brain-dead nature of Jacob and family (Joseph: Say that you are cattle herders. The Egyptians hate shepherds. Pharaoh: What do you lot do, then? Jacob and co: We’re shepherds.), and third that Joseph took advantage of a famine to pinch one-fifth of the nation’s land for Pharaoh (so presumably the people can now produce less food), then when everyone is starving, gives them corn first for money, then for their cattle, then for enslaving themselves. Whilst giving lots of land to his family. This is not the only instance at which I am murmuring to myself that I can really see why certain groups of right-wingers love Genesis. Meanwhile the Lord at the beginning of Exodus is behaving a lot like Terry Pratchett’s Om, and the KJV is continuing to have the slash problem of lots of unidentified hims and hes.

And now to be really controversial, Susan Boyle is a more than passable singer, but by no means a great one.

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

You ought to read the Apocrypha too, though. Or at least bits of it, because Judith is absolutely brilliant, and Bel and the Dragon is pretty funny (and then there's Susannah and the Elders, which is arguably one of the earliest examples of detective fiction).

Joseph was a bit of a beast, really. Of course, one of the fascinating things about the OT is the wide variety of attitudes to politics you get within it - most notably the attitude to kings, because you've got all the Davidic cheer-leading, combined with strands that are very much against the institution of the monarchy. And then there's all the stuff about slavery and years of jubilee, and God's judgement on those who exploit the poor and powerless, which tends to be read more enthusiastically on the left than on the right....

Yesterday a Jehovah's Witness gave me a tract which, as well as informing me that 'Christendom' had betrayed God*, enthused about how we knew the Bible was true because of it's beautiful coherence and total lack of self-contradiction. I couldn't help wondering if they hadn't got confused and been reading the Koran (which is not, admittedly, totally internally coherent, but is a lot nearer being such than the Bible, for what ought to be fairly obvious reasons).


* Arguably true, but not, I think, because of EVOL TRINITARIANISM.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Clearly I should have included the second half of the sentence that I was reading the Apocrypha, but they're in a separate volume so it doesn't count for the word calculations. I picked it up a coupleof years ago at a second-hand stall after a DLS mention of the detective elements! Though I think I found Judith disappointing compared to the Old English version. I suspect that this will not be the case with David, who I know mostly through random lines and the Richard Gere film.

Verse x. The Lord said: No-one shall live to be more than 120.
Verse y. And K was 877 when he died.

Does not seem to me totalling lacking in self-contradiction.

[tree_and_leaf]

Well, no. And that's not even one of the more embarrassing questions (such as, what day of the week did the crucifixion actually take place on)

Though I think I found Judith disappointing compared to the Old English version

Everything is better in Old English!

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

The Old English version of Judith is staggeringly awesome.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It is indeed.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Joseph was a boyhood role model. This possibly suggests why I had difficulties keeping friends.

ETA: Which is a real whinge. To mitigate the circumstances, he is someone held up as a role model in the Old Testament, and the childhood version, which emphasises hard work and, to an extent, the taming of authority and the forgiveness of your enemies, appealed to a serious small boy wary of the forces of chaos.

[tree_and_leaf]

I can see how that would work. I think I was perhaps overly influenced by being in a primary school production of "Joseph", where the scene where Joseph tells his brothers his dreams made me unsurprised that they wanted to push him down a well... But most of the families in the OT are hideously dysfunctional!

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

The Rice and Lloyd Webber Joseph is thoroughly unlikeable - as the creation of two 1960s Conservative public schoolboys, he's essentially a proto-Thatcherite.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I rather enjoyed the Lloyd Webber version. We sang through it all in middle school singing and I have tended to hum it whilst reading the relevant bits...

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the music, but am less keen on the character...

[tree_and_leaf]

*g* yes, that's absolutely right. (No surprise that they didn't do an Exodus!, really).

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Susan Boyle is a more than passable singer, but by no means a great one

I don't understand all the fuss over SB. Didn't EXACTLY the same thing happen last year with Paul Potts? Unattractive loser type comes on, expresses ambitions that make everyone snigger, and then opens his mouth and wows everyone? And that went down so well that they naturally decided to do it again, as soon as they could find an unattractive loser type with an unexpectedly good voice.

I've got nothing against SB winning, I just hate being so obviously manipulated (shots of judges looking dismissive, shots of audience sniggering, followed by SB singing and judges looking weepy and astonished, so we understand that she is a Really Good Singer and Talent Has Triumphed).

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

And that went down so well that they naturally decided to do it again, as soon as they could find an unattractive loser type with an unexpectedly good voice.

This does indeed appear to be Paul Potts again, except that with her being female they can really play up the appearance element. I hate these sorts of reality shows (actually, most reality shows). I can't cope with the comedy of embarrassment, and like Trinny and Susannah they aren't really about finding the best person at all, but filling a very well-defined niche.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Susan Boyle is a more than passable singer, but by no means a great one.

"The least plain girl is always the family beauty"--George Bernard Shaw's mum.

PS--Chavre: tartan goat cheese?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

George Bernard Shaw's mum has a lot to answer for.

[grondfic.livejournal.com]

I believe I'm right in saying that Joseph also *gasp* had sex, which wasn't mentioned by my Sunday School either. Course you have to read between the lines a little, but thanks to a quick look at the Lolcat Bible (http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Main_Page) all became clear.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I hadn't realised the Lolcat Bible had got so far. I fear that a certain amount of poetry has been lost in translation. On the other hand:

15 An when i sed DO NOT WANT!!1!!!1! he got skeerd An ran awai An left his cloths here. Naked jospeh is..naked.

16 An she kept his cloths til potiphar cam bak 2 his base.

[grondfic.livejournal.com]

I know - there's poetry, and there's ... well, Lolcat! Which is so hilarious ("Ceiling Cat"! you have to love it!) that you succumb instantly.

I kinda feel I'm grateful to be old enough (*granny-talk*) to have received both!

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

I have to say I'm impressed at your reading the Bible in full -- I must admit I tried it once but all the 'begats' lost me. I have read random sections, and it's scary how much singing at Merton has taught me about obscure bits of Scripture...

I did enjoy Susan Boyle singing, and she does have a lovely voice, even if there was a part of me saying 'it sounds beautiful, but where's Fantine?'. But you're right about the manufactured nature of it all; as a friend of mine pointed out, surely, as a human being, she deserved the right not to be ridiculed in public, even if she ended up completely muffing the song.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I've read random sections before for the usual Eng. Lit. purposes, and picked up other bits at times, but I felt it was time that I had a look at the rest. And because I always prefer to criticise from a position of knowledge. LJ posting puts me in a position of _having_ to keep going through the dull bits or admit defeat in public...

surely, as a human being, she deserved the right not to be ridiculed in public, even if she ended up completely muffing the song
Alas, I fear that such an approach would go completely against the raison d'etre of the show...

[white_hart]

nothing will ever beat “Working-class Harrogate girl goes to Trinity (Cantab) to read Classics, her tutor is a lesbian who tries to seduce her with Sappho, is rebuffed and then threatens that student isn’t really very good and will be lucky to scrape a Third, but heroine is saved by the nice Eton boy who helped carry her luggage on the first day.”

Oh goodness, I remember hearing that one!

[tree_and_leaf]

Me too. Utter piffle.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Um, 'girl called Kylie' = 'cultureless chav'?

Sorry, suffering a certain amount of wishing I'd been less polite when listening to two rather upper-middle-class teachers talking about their hearts sinking when their class register includes particular names - including names I went to school with (so to speak) and the names of children of friends of mine.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Um, 'girl called Kylie' = 'cultureless chav'?

Sorry - should have made that this is conscious the use of the name in the play. She's the only child (at a school event) mentioned by name, and it's clearly, in its unmistakeable modernity, chosen as a sign for the audience to compare the past, with its solid community, manly work, very-long-way-north distinctiveness, with a superficial present, where the pit head stands by a golf course and is-the-parade-any-more-than-a-tourist-attraction. The use of the child only works if the name is intended to evoke a negative reaction in the audience, and to act as a crude shorthand for "that world is gone". It is a deliberate cheap shot on the part of the playwright that relies on a consensus on the part of his audience.

two rather upper-middle-class teachers
Which is one of the reasons why, tho' I have some issues with SATs, I don't think that classroom-based, teacher-assessment is in fact a panacea.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

My sisters did Joseph at school so I ended up knowing all the words too and couldn't get it out of my head while reading The Red Tent. They also did The Daniel Jazz, as quoted in Gaudy Night, and "Gideon", which was written by a school teacher in Basildon and included the line "Everybody laughs at me, I am only five foor three".

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

People really did The Daniel Jazz. My mind is boggling. We did a musical Easter story at middle school (I was Pontius Pilate and very angsty), which was rather fun, and something I remember a lot less well which must also have been Genesis, because every so often as I am reading a bit pops into my head.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

According to Chester Novello, the Daniel Jazz was turned into a cantata for schools in 1963 and is presumably where Rice and Lloyd Weber got the idea for Joseph from. My sisters did The Jonah Man Jazz too but it wasn't as good, i.e. I can't remember any of it.

I didn't get to do any such excitements because the previous primary school headmaster didn't hold with such things (or with us learning to swim) and he didn't retire until the year I left.

[bronze-ribbons.livejournal.com]

Susan Boyle is a more than passable singer, but by no means a great one.

Agreed.

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

I attempted a Bible read through a few years ago and gave up in horror during one of the more violent bits of Joshua. I think my babbling of 'Bu-bu-but that's horrible and really, really mean' may have been missing the point slightly.

I always thought that Joseph deserved everything he got...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

The Bible seems to do gore quite well. I think it is Judges in which the bloke chucks his concubine to the angry populace, and then next morning kills her and divides her body into 12 parts.

[lyras.livejournal.com]

I think Susan Boyle could be a great singer, but she clearly needs lessons in technique. I hope they allow her that before launching her on the adoring British public (although given the precedent of Paul Potts, I doubt it).

[dbassassin.livejournal.com]

Susan Boyle is a more than passable singer, but by no means a great one

Hardly a controversial opinion. I'm still convinced she was lip-synching. That was my first thought as soon as the audio came on.

And is she wasn't? She can carry a tune, but I can't count the number of student and church choir singers I've heard in my life that I'd rate much, much higher.

As always with "reality" TV, this is about the "story". And I'm convinced this one is another one of Simon's plants. Another "feel good" story he'll be making millions off of while she has the public's sympathies on her side, then drop her like a rock, just like he did Paul Potts, another mediocre talent sold as a "brilliant find" by the Cowell spin machine.