Emperor Fuckshit

Hahaha... given your taste for sexual experimentation, SDM, I'd be wary about what you could potentially construe as "a cuddle"... Really I'm surprised that Salon can get away with that piece. I guess it comes down to the fact that Polanski is hardly in a position to sue for defamation right now, and that public opinion is generally against him. The idea that RP has to some extent made his own bed can go so far; but implying falsely that someone has been convicted of raping a minor is pretty serious business. That's especially so given the modern Western attitudes towards the sexualisation of children generally, and towards the sexual abuse of children specifically. I think it's pretty significant - for example - that convicts found guilty of murder, battery, and yer standard vanilla "rape of a normal-sized person" see themselves as possessing moral high ground above "nonces". It's an area in which the liberal counter-arguments relating to crime are expressed in the most constrained fashion -- apparently not even the boring old principle of presumptive innocence necessarily applies. It's a tawdry and twatty case, this, but there's a lot of more intriguing stuff packed into it about sexual attitudes, and also the relationship between Hollywood and laypersons.

He was neither tried for nor convicted of the bolded, though, was he? He most certainly did not "plead guilty" to an offence he wasn't tried for. He pleaded guilty to having sex with a minor, and the rape charges against him were dropped as part of a plea bargain. He was accused of rape by Geimer, and she testified in court that she had been given champagne and a 'lude by Polanski before anything happened. A verdict of "guilty" in that case does not require the jury to endorse every aspect of Geimer's testimony. He may well be guilty of rape, despite not having been convicted of it. But any Polanski apologism presumably starts with the assumption that he was not guilty of rape. Due to the absence of a conviction, that assumption is still defensible. Again, I have no idea what he is or isn't guilty of beyond engaging in sex with a minor. If forced, I'd guess that some coercion occurred; whether it was sufficient or not to constitute rape -- I have no idea. But I'm not trying to tender a judgement on the TRUFACKS of VERCASE. I'm just arguing that the characterisation of support for Polanski as somehow beyond the pale is unsound. And that the explosive mix of trite analysis and tautology as found in, "yes, he made some good films... but THE LAW'S THE LAW"-type commentary is irrelevant since it attacks a position that no-one holds.

No worries. And I think your question above is the important one to ask... and not one easy to answer for outsiders who don't even have access to transcripts of the trial. For the record, I'm not "supporting" Polanski in the sense that i) if someone put a gun to my head, I would guess that some form of coercion (however prosaic) was involved here, and ii) I think that, if so, obviously he should have served (some amount of) time thirty years ago. But at the same time, it's important to note that there's no proof that he was guilty of rape; that age-of-consent is a slippery fish at the best of times; and that therefore people can defend or sympathise with Polanski without being coke-snortingly arrogant Hollywood jerk-stores. Right, I'm off to watch the extra from the "Fearless Vampire Killers" DVD where Roman does Sharon Tate's corpse up the bum... On a sidenote, isn't it wonderful how guarded and deferential people get in their arguments when a matter of case law is involved? If people argued like that all the time, the world would be way more :3.

It would not have been relevant to the case, because he was on trial for the crime of "sex with a minor". Nothing to do with coercion. Whether evidence submitted could refer incidentally to alcohol consumption, I don't know. If you read my earlier post, I was not trying to put on my fedora and ESTABLISH THE FACTS; I was responding to someone's question about how anyone could support Polanski by offering a rationale for the support of Polanski -- without adopting (or dismissing) that rationale myself. Polanski has not been convicted of getting Geimer drunk, plastered, fucked, wankered, shitfaced, ratarsed, or exhilarated. Obviously that doesn't mean that he didn't do so. It's significant that she has (as far as I can tell) persistently accused him of doing so for thirty years now. It's also worth noting that the Judge tried to renege on a plea bargain deal that involved a dropping of the rape charge. Can anyone who knows more about American law comment upon the circumstances in which plea bargains of this type are offered? Can we infer from the dropping of the rape charges that the evidence for them was too slim for a chance at conviction? Anyway, rape is a notoriously difficult crime to prove, and absence of proof doesn't necessarily mean innocence. But because Polanski has never been convicted of applying coercion to Geimer, then people who are sympathetically disposed towards him can easily boil the matter down to age-of-consent-related issues. That's all I was saying, hence the "if... then..." that opened my post. I don't really get what you're saying at this point -- your argument seems to be "whether she appreciated her predicament or not... she didn't appreciate her predicament." You can't seriously believe that all people suddenly become capable of being "trusted with these decisions" at a particular age, can you? Age of consent laws are necessary as a baseline, but everyone develops at different rates and at different times. Each case needs to be judged on its appreciable merits. I would hope that there would be this sort of debate going on regardless of the circumstances. Can people point me in the direction of this "debate", incidentally? I haven't really seen a groundswell of pro-Polanski opinion. Personally, I don't know exactly what Polanski did -- I don't think anybody except Geimer and Polanski do -- much less whether he was "wrong". I'd say there's a good chance of wrongdoing. But I'm irked rather more by the "hurr -- peeedo!" lynch mob attitude emanating from certain sectors of opinion. (Not talking about this thread there, for the record). e: Removed unwarranted guessing about plea bargains under The Metalman Principle / because I don't really have a clue what I'm talking about and just wanted to use the phrase "double jeopardy". ee: And this all comes from someone who hated "A Pure Formality".

Wasn't that part of the charge dropped as a result of Polanski's plea bargain? He couldn't have been convicted of a serious amount of "coercion", since he wasn't on trial for rape in the first place. IANAL, obviously, but wouldn't any testimony relating to use of alcohol have been dismissed as irrelevant?

Depends on what you think about age of consent laws, I suppose. If you're willing to accept that the "rape" aspect of the charge was dropped as part of the plea bargain only because the evidence to support those aspects of the allegations were excessively thin, then Polanski's only "crime" was to have sex with a thirteen year-old girl. (The "fleeing justice" aspect presumably wouldn't interest someone who took such a view, since Polanski would be ethically "in the clear" anyway). Age of consent laws obviously exist to protect those incapable of making rational decisions about sexual practice from suffering abuse. But surely they have to be treated with some elasticity, since there's no sudden sexual "epiphany" at the age of eighteen (or sixteen or twenty-one... and perhaps higher for homosexuals) that causes a person immediately to appreciate the full scope of what "consent" means within a sexual context. Gaining appreciation about what sex involves is processional rather than "digital", and occurs at different ages for different people. With those considerations in mind, one could easily cast Polanski as the victim of a bad law. Allied to that is the idea that, hey, this was all a long time ago; water under the bridge; geez this "girl" is an old woman now heheheh. And also the fact that people within the movie industry are likely at least to respect Polanski and at most consider him a friend. I think most of us are likely to presume the best about people we have that kind of relationship with. I really don't think that it's as simple as people in the movie industry believing themselves to be "above the law"; nor do I think anyone (or anyone with serious influence) is saying, "hey, I really enjoyed 'Knife in the Water' -- no way should this guy do time!" So I think that's how one arrives at a position of sympathy with / support for Polanski. That said, I don't really buy (all of) the argument. Bracketing out the (important) considerations re: age of consent; I find the mysterious disappearance of the coercion-related charges slightly suspicious -- especially considering the Judge's attempt to renege on the plea bargain at a later date. There's an unpleasant element of "dumb bitch crying rape" to the idea that that aspect of the case can just be left alone. I see no reason why Geimer would need to lie -- at least not repeatedly over a course of thirty years. "Chinatown"; "The Tenant"; "Rosemary's Baby"; "Knife in the Water"... that's a hell of an oeuvre for a guy under forty-five -- and I'd take any over "The Pianist" any day. e: I mean, obviously he'd have a less robust reputation without "The Pianist" and "Pirates" and "Tess" -- though I've never seen the last two personally. But I think he'd be remembered as a director who had already produced a solid number of great works before being "cut down in his prime" (albeit by his own weakness/demons/whatever), rather than being shrugged over.

How can that be when the characterisation is so inconsistent and is dispensed with whenever it's convenient for plot / gag reasons? Unless you mean the "when Homer did that stupid thing it was so like him, because he is a stupid guy who does stupid stuff!" base level of "characterisation." I also like the idea that a lengthy thread containing many people making interesting points about stuff "fails", and the antidote is a one line post saying "I like it, whatever." Message boarding!!! As for the point about it being a well-animated show -- sure: it look nice, congratulations to the animators. Brilliant. But it's still marketed (and praised) as comedy, rather than as a series of twenty minute animation workshops. And I can't seriously believe that anyone tunes in to the show just to admire the animation quality every week.

^ I re-watched "Lisa on Ice" recently, and almost cried during the final scene. I will willingly admit to this for the purpose of uncovering what went wrong with "The Simpsons".

Well, the relationship between Gervais and America is a bit more complex than that, in that Gervais himself was influenced heavily by "The Larry Sanders Show" and perhaps "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (the pilot of which aired in 1999, so I'm not sure if Gervais could've seen it before writing "The Office", which was aired in 2001). Elements of "Seinfeld" (the "no hugging; no learning" ethos, the cutesy conversational asides) were also heavily in the mix. Gervais was later very emphatic about his American influences, which peaked with the "...Meets" interviews with David and Shandling. (I suppose one might say further that "This is Spinal Tap" must've been a big influence on all three.) The emphasis on American influences was probably in large part for Gervais a way of securing interest from a more lucrative market whilst also drawing attention away from the obvious debt he owed to less fashionable British shows ("The Royale Family"... shit, even stuff like "Operation Good Guys"). But, yeah, Gervais had the aggressive publicity behind him and the ability to interest a trans-atlantic audience. "Seinfeld" was never very popular when aired on BBC2; Shandling is basically an unknown; and the U.K. only "discovered" CYE after Gervais' success, for the most part. The tide is beginning to turn a little, in a sense. "Extras" (especially series two) was received in a rather more lukewarm way by the press. Armando Ianucci's lecture series and associated "Times" columns were critical of trends inspired by "The Office", and those have been influential. The broadsheet media has sold stuff like "The IT Crowd" and "Lab Rats" and whateverthefuckelse as "a return to big, loud comedy", etc.. The obsession with comedy "movements" and the associated exlusion of shows that don't fit in with what's currently fashionable remains a concern.

Heh, I'd hope so. He wrote "Marge vs. the Monorail", didn't he? I wonder how much Matt Groening cares about the artistic quality of the show so long as it's still making money and still regarded as good entertainment by the popular press and the plebier elements of the fan-base? (Or maybe he's just convinced himself that everything's fine -- or salvageable at least). The "it's just been going too long" theory seems glib; but there's an element of truth to it. The "writing staff" approach of "The Simpsons" (and most other American sitcoms) lends itself well to longevity, but not so much to consistency or to a continued and united artistic vision. The writers used by the show at this point are mostly people who weren't involved at its outset. This can easily lead to later episodes feeling like "cover versions" of predecessors, or to a process whereby the episodes just become a long ejection of undifferentiated, grey comedy slop (since there's no artistic vision uniting all of those responsible for the production of the show). Imagine if "Flying Circus" were still going now (this is more of a comparison with "Saturday Night Live" than with "The Simpsons", but the point holds). It would be a revue for people like Sean Pegg, Marcus Brigstocke, David Mitchell, Russell Howard, etc.. It would have nothing in common with the shows produced by the original five, but wouldn't be able to escape association with or expectations making reference to the Gilliam-Palin-Cleese-Jones-Idle years.

That's a good point, GA. No doubt the universal praise received by "The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show" encouraged the writers to persist with that style of comedy. In a more general way, the endless plaudits had probably convinced many of those tightly associated with the show that they could simply do no wrong. And -- as I've now described many times in various places -- that specific episode was also effective in convincing a great portion of the previously-critical fanbase to refrain from overt negativity (at least for a time). A similar phenomenon could be described in the UK. The media jumped on "The Office" and made it into a huge critical success, to the extent that it went virtually unchallenged. Ricky Gervais responded by ramping up the self-referential aspects of his show to an even greater degree via "Extras", and a whole hoard of imitators (in a very real sense, Gervais was an imitator himself, of course) simultaneously surfed the "naturalistic" wave.

This almost falls into the category that Weinman was talking about, though, doesn't it? It sort of seems like parody -- but what of? It could alternatively be seen as self-deprecation on the part of the writers -- admitting that they often need logical inconsistencies to further plots -- but couldn't that result in the line just seeming smugly self-referential and therefore annoying? For me, it's one of those things that I have to parse the intention of for so long that the moment passes in terms of mining any actual humour.

Very good article, I thought. Locating one of the major problems with the writing of "The Simpsons" in later series as its love for "intentionally" bad lines is spot on, I think. I'd never thought of that style as an exercise in self-referentiality before, but that angle makes a lot of sense. Self-absorption in a general sense was a big problem for the show in its later years, with its constant love of back-referencing and sly nods to the viewer -- writing that rests, almost literally, on past glories. But the problem can also be linked to a general "Postmodern Turn" in comedy, away from the "straight" and emotive narratives of the sit-com towards either the dispensation of narrative or its ironic employment in a way that references the concept in abstract rather than actually utilising it without irony as a tool for doing comedy. Straight "gags" have increasingly come to be seen as un-cool -- they have to be displaced by non-sequiturs or delivered with a nudge and inside a set of inverted commas. The apex of this is a show like "Family Guy." Weinman makes the point that "The Simpsons" was a better show when it mixed its elements of post-modernism with strong narratives, nuanced and believable characters, and "orthodox" styles of comedy. It sounds like a bland point ("it's the mix that makes it"), but I think he's basically correct. The phenomenon of the non-joke has become quite prominent in British comedy too, but for slightly different reasons. The obsession with "naturalism" that began with "The Royale Family" and became ascendant after "The Office" begat a style of comedy in which jokes actually became egregious. After all, the argument runs, most people in real life aren't very funny. So a "naturalistic" comedy must also cut down on jokes in favour of the comedy of embarrassment, "shocking" faux-pas, and non-sequiturs. There's a brilliant moment during the "I'm Alan Partridge" series one crew commentary in which director and writer Armando Iannucci says of one line written for Alan Partridge, "that's us writers transferring our inability to think of anything onto Alan, there." Neither of his colleagues (Steve Coogan and Peter Baynham) are amused by that little piece of self-deprecation -- they see the technique as a valid part of comedy craft, whilst Iannucci highlights the device for what it is. One slightly worrying thing: Um... that's not the point of that joke. Here, the viewer expects Tracy to say "foxy boxing combines my two favorite things, boxing and foxes!" -- a hackneyed and lame joke. Replacing "foxes" with "referees" isn't "saying anything", it's replacing one factually valid observation with another (un-expected) factually valid observation. I'll concede that it would be better if the second thing weren't a part of regular boxing as well. But I don't think the line is a good example of what Weinman is excoriating. He picks some good examples of the style from "The Simpsons", though. Looking at the more frequent deployment of one comedy technique won't do as the end (or even the beginning) of a critique of the show. But I think it's a pretty good "in", which is about as much as you can hope for in such a short piece.

*Haas (pronounced "haarse"). I'll throw in D'Brickashaw Ferguson. If Dickens had been writing about suburban New York...

There's a boss (yes, that's right... "boss") bit in that segment where Hancock explains why Don Revie encouraged his Leeds team to all take on Brazil-style mononyms -- he'd had a bet that "the Division One's top goalscorer would be a player whose named ended in a vowel." On the funnee names topic: Pramodya Wickramasinghe. Sounds like a comedy "funny foreigner" name. BUT HE'S A REAL MAN, INSTEAD!!!!!

YES!!!! That book is a fucking gem. If you can still find it, then you should read it again. "The Stylistics had a song called "Nana is the Saddest Word". Which is bollocks. "Nana" is only the saddest word if spoken by a grown man requesting a banana."

Best piece of writing ever, by Nick Hancock: (Sorry, nothing to do with names -- I just love that.)

Ah, I dunno, Kuntz and Pole went mainstream. Like Danny Shittu. I dread the day that Heiker Menses makes it to the bigs...

Urban Shocker (can we count nicknames that eventually displaced real names?), Wonderful Terrific Monds, Ossee Schreckengost, Yhency Brazoban, Youliesky Gourriel (sounds like you're reading a rollercoaster), Heiker Menses, Julio Olarticoechea (because it made Barry Davies sound like he was saying "oooh, I'll take a chair"), Angel Pagan, Stefan Kuntz (purely for ), Kenesaw Mountain Landis (marginal, but I'm counting it), God Shammgod, Javed Miandad (gave me and my dad endless "what... all three of you?" jokes when I was younger), I like sportspeople with names that exactly encompass their style, too: Joe Bugner (tough and ugly), Mario Boogers (mad as a lorry), Don Bradman (simple, eternal), Vinny Jones (uncultured hacker). e: I've always wondered if Kenesaw Mountain Landis' mates called him "Ken." One of those crazy, awesome names that is also conveniently easy to obscure at an everyday level.

Interpreting "recently" as broadly as I can, I was at the last game of the Sunday League season in 1997, as Warwickshire beat Gloucestershire at Edgbaston to clinch the title. Nick Knight scored a century, Alan Donald and Ashley Giles took four wickets each, and there was a pitch invasion. A fairly orderly, polite pitch invasion -- but a pitch invasion nevertheless. Probably my best sporting "I was there" story... although I have witnessed a Paul Peschisolido hat-trick in person too. Actually, that story has a little more to it. I was on holiday in Lancashire with my parents in 1998, and we decided to go and see a football game. We ended up at Gigg Lane, the Bury ground -- Bolton was sold out, I guess. Bury had won two straight promotions at that point, and were in the old Division One after having won the Second Division in 1997. The team was unbeaten in 29 games at the time, but was vaporised by Peschi's trio of boot-comets on that day.

"Nathan Barley" was shit. Those that like it are cunts. Come on, we can do a bit better than that, can't we? I haven't seen "Nathan Barley" since the original t/x, so I can only judge it on broad issues rather than episode-to-episode specifics. But there was so much wrong with the show at a conceptual level that I don't think that matters, really. And, to a certain degree, the fact that I have no desire to see it again says a lot about my opinion of the series. For me, the main problem -- and one that I really can't get past -- was the horror of seeing Morris (once the nation's premier comic performer and one of its best writers) playing catch-up to twatty mediocrities like Ricky Gervais. "... Barley" was incredibly ersatz and owed a clear "debt" to "The Office" in terms of its naturalistic dialogue, use of field removed video, tight reaction shots, etc.. Those devices had been deployed by Gervais to very little comic return already, and Morris showed no real ability to claim them for himself -- using, for example, the close-up reaction shots to hammer home simplistic character emotions. Deploying the device might have made some sense if Julian Barratt were a capable enough comic performer actually to give us something interesting or unexpected in those shots, but we instead got repeated shots of him doing the same twitchy-face expression over and over again -- even when the hijinks of "the idiots" were more punchable than confounding. It was kind of difficult to escape the conclusion that, with "The Office" proclaimed A National Treasure by all available rent-a-gob hacks, Morris was -- for maybe the first time in his career -- following rather than leading. The satire was also weak, as Morris diverted away from the big, thumping, significant targets he took aim at in "On the Hour", "The Day Today" and "Brasseye" so that he could instead take a swipe at a minor element of media subculture apparently confined to Hoxton. Sure, Morris had always had an interest in his own world -- that of the media. But his solo projects had showed a number of other conceptual interests -- animals and children, most specifically. "Nathan Barley", by contrast, basically took aim at a phenomenon to which I really don't think many of his viewers could honestly relate. I mean, what's the circulation of Dazed & Confused these days? Instead, media types lined up to impress upon us how much they could relate to it: (Above possibly paraphrased.) But even if one could relate to it, that doesn't necessarily mean that "the idiots" were a useful target. People of that sort are of basically no importance, aren't they? If you strip away the precise cultural context to which Morris is referring, you're basically left with a comment that "idiotic idiots are idiotic". Great. Considering Morris' ability accurately and trenchantly to turn his attentions to bigger and broad topics, wouldn't you have liked to see him have a real go at (say) "The War on Terror" instead? Instead, we got that music video extra from the "Peep Show" DVD extended from three minutes to one hundred and twenty. And, as a foray into the sit-com genre, it really lacked any of the dramatic elements required by the form: the plots were formulaic, the characters either boring or horribly unsubtle or both, a lot of the performers chosen were unspectacular. The only way I can see "Nathan Barley" as a salvageable project is if it's someday revealed as a supremely allegorical attack upon the comedy industry "idiots" who claim Morris as their geen-yuss inspiration without understanding his work. But, since he continues to work with Brooker and Ayoade -- and might even be planning a second series of "... Barley" -- that seems unlikely. Excuse the buffoonery.

I'm looking forward to this: Morris' stuff is always worth watching, even when he misses the mark. I don't think he's done anything of real merit since "Brasseye" (although I should point out that I haven't heard "Blue Jam" yet. I have it all ready to go and should really get around to it.) However, I think that "Jam" displays Morris' ability to be interesting and worth discussing even when his comedy is, you know, not much good... I have concerns that the essential conceit of the film won't move beyond the bathetic "do you see? wacky things in a place where you wouldn't EXPECT wacky things!!!!" I know that, if that is the case, then people will argue that the film's purpose is to re-assess the issue of terrorism in a way that is non-political (or at least extra-political), and that this in some way "humanises" extremists. But if the content of that humanisation is just the assertion that terrorist activity involves an ineluctably "absurd" element, then the statement isn't especially revealing. Are we dealing with terrorists as individuals so that we can better appreciate their motives? If so, are Morris, Armstrong and Bain qualified to provide such understanding? I hope this doesn't turn into "Peep Show" with Islamist politics in place of agonised centrism. (Or "Shaun of the Dead" in a new setting -- "I'll blow up Westminster... when I've finished this saaaaaaandwich"). Ultimately, I don't think the film will be able to avoid political interpretation, so it's useless to pretend that it can (not that I'm accusing Morris / Warp / whomever of doing so). Even a de-politicisation would be distinctly ideological.

Megalol at Andy Townsend describing Spain as "those little guys." Yeah, those tiny, squeaky-voiced, implausibly fast, sombrero-clad guys. Andelay, andelay! Oh, and Rio Ferdinand is shit and that.

Reading a list article gives me that sensation like the moment after you've just finished wanking and, as the glinting specks of semen slowly dry and form a flaky crust in your bush, you glimpse the essential condition of Man: an endless juxtaposition of desires which cannot be articulated, overlayed upon a barren canvas of grinding solitude. Slint are quite good, aren't they?

Any other suspects for that murder that occurred on the dancefloor? Ian McKaye has to be up there. He seems a bit too confident in his assertion that this is the "Last Chance for a Slow Dance." Obviously he knew something we didn't. And the sudden disappearance of two of the Pipettes following the band's first album has always seemed kind of dubious to me. I hear the original title for track five was "It Hurts to See You Dance so Well (But Not as Much as It'll Hurt You)". Hmmmmmmm... Ahhh, whimsy.