Things one finds on Youtube

[nineveh_uk]

I suppose it is a good thing - a very good thing - that a teenager of [background I cannot determine but is definitely not British*] is sufficiently inspired** by Robert Swindells' 80s children's apocalypse novel Brother in the Land to film some of it, but it is still deeply weird, and I don't mean the random crisp-eating scene. The houses are pink! The sky is blue! There is a distinct absence of moorland and of the protagonist looking down on to the glassy radioactive remains of the classroom in which I read the damn book. The one thing that isn't weird is the protagonist's not being white. In 1984, Danny Lodge is the son of a lower-middle class white family that owns a corner shop: given the location of Shipley/Bradford***, it makes perfect sense that in 2012 everything is the same except his race. I can only hope that the BBC doesn't realise this is an excellent opportunity to make a non-London kids' series with an ethnically Asian protagonist, and thus scar another generation for life. Fortunately nuclear war is less trendy these days.

*I assumed he was American until I saw the car numberplates. Middle Eastern ex-pat compound? The man responsible apparently lives in Canada at the moment, but I can't imagine they let one drive around with Arabic numberplates there any more than in the US.

**No it isn't! It will never be good! Burn the book and destroy all record of its existence save as a secret file warning publishers never to do it again. And that goes even more for the plague ones. Though I suppose that having found it interesting I ought to log in and comment.

***This being 1984, Bradford is yet to have been reduced to a hole in the ground**** through the non-atomic, but certainly devastating, efforts of Eric Pickles on behalf of Thatcher's govt.

****No hyperbole. Central Bradford is a giant hole in the ground thanks to the Westfield Group. I can't stand George Galloway, but there's a reason he picked the place.

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

Gosh. That appears to be the one post-nuclear apocalypse my school didn't make us read. Having wikipediaed it, I am grateful.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

And there I was thinking everyone's reaction to Brother in the Land/nuclear holocaust literature in general was to to one's best to forget all about it.

(I decided to flip though When the Wind Blows during a volunteering shift at Oxfam once and was reduced to a whimpering heap. Never again.)

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Brother in the Land but I found holocaust literature encouraging in a "succeeding against the odds" sort of way and because I felt it was best to Be Prepared. But after talking about it with other (younger) people, this is possibly because I read it myself from the library before it had made it onto school syllabuses.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

The worst thing about it on school syllabuses was the usual problem of having finished the entire thing by the second lesson and getting bored. I am still annoyed that my efforts in writing an essay on Tyke Tyler without using a single gender pronoun (because I had read it years ago) were not recognised. I am sure I would have come across it anyway as that sort of thing was all over the libraries. How I managed never to read Z for Zachariah I don't know, but I intend to keep things that way.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

I bought Z for Zachariah in the charity shop last week to see what I make of it now. I promise not to lend you it.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

I had one Year 8 teacher who, to my everlasting gratitude, let me read whatever I liked in English lessons rather than listening to the class plod through The Switch for weeks. We had read it in school in about Year 5, and I had read it on my own as well, which meant I had read every page about ten times over and couldn't bear the boredom. All teachers should be like that.

Z for Zachariah has a hopefulish ending, which is nice, although it's still not exactly cheery.

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

I found holocaust literature encouraging in a "succeeding against the odds" sort of way and because I felt it was best to Be Prepared.

Plague literature, yes, but holocaust literature always seems to end with people dying slowly and miserably (or becoming furry telepathic mutants)... I had far too many nightmares about nuclear war as a child/teenager!

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

But they get to build new societies and learn how to do things and make new rules and decide how the future is going to be. I think I just egotistically assumed that the death bit wasn't going to happen to me. And telepathy would be useful! So would the fur, come to that. I have just gone to get a hot water bottle for my feet.

It is a pity really that all the library had in the way of SF apart from John Wyndham was men in spaceships with guns that put me off the whole genre.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure we had any holocaust literature on my school syllabuses. Probably something to be grateful for (I remember one incident in Year 7 where the teacher read out Roald Dahl's description of having adenoids removed in Boy, and one girl fainted. Nuclear holocausts would presumably have had a similar effect).

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

I picked up When the Wind Blows when browsing my mother's bookshelves. It was a cartoon, it was by Raymond Briggs. I got to the explosion and had to hide it - too traumatic. I went back a few weeks later and read another page, and then had to hide it again. This went on until I finially finished it aged about eleven. Brother in the Land was similar - I read it over a couple of years of fear and terror... Plague books I could cope with. Nuclear war less so...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I found the plague books the worst, and of course re-read the nastiest bits. Oddly I don't think I reacted much to WtWB.

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

I think it was the hope that the sweet old couple had, and the belief that everything would be fine in the end when it was more and more obvious that nothing was ever going to improve and they were doomed... The plague books seemed to offer at least some hope that life could be rebuilt - nuclear war poisoned the world for ever after.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I certainly try to forget, but sometimes it rises from the deep. And maybe running around having fun with it is sufficiently transformative that it stops the nightmares.

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

I've just watched the first two or three minutes - definitely not set in the UK! I thought the first bit (with the ISS) was very cleverly done. Think I'll skip the rest though...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say it is great art and you're missing out - it's the incongruity of the thing that is most striking!