Shakespeare Service

Shakespeare in and on Love

Introit: excerpt from Shakespeare In Love theme by Stephen Warbeck (under fair/religious use)

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/shakespeare-in-and-on-love

Welcome to Between The Stools on 28^th April 2024. This week is the 460^th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth, and the 408^th of his death. He may have been born and died on the same day – 23^rd April, which is the festival of England’s patron saint. Although George was Persian and didn’t visit this country, Shakespeare’s being connected to the dragonslayer’s day is significant because Will has become a national secular saint and our key cultural export, wound into patriotism. But we don’t know Shakespeare’s birthday for certain: one of the few facts that is established is his christening on 26^th April, from whence his birth is deduced.

Last autumn was the 400^th anniversary of his first portfolio’s publication (after his death).

This year is the 25^th anniversary of the film Shakespeare In Love being released in Britain.

And it’ll be Queen Dench’s 90^th, who starred in the film (and many Shakespeare productions).

Shakespeare in Love is a fictional fun romp through late Elizabethan London. Broodingly handsome Shakespeare is established as a writer, but he’s lost his mojo. His employer badly needs a good finished play to placate his money lenders. Will finds a muse in a disguised thespian who is betrothed to a rich, unpleasant stranger. The film is the writing and performing of Romeo and Juliet, where life and art converge in the manner of another play – Twelfth Night.

I clearly recall seeing it – and my reaction. It may surprise you – or not. This will be a no holds Bard look at the esteemed poet through the lens of film, our focus for this Year of Wonders.

Prayer

I’ve not chosen Shakespeare today because I think that we cannot look at story without him. (Shakespeare was a poet and playwright, and this is a year for screen). I’m not choosing him because he is my favourite, or that the movie Shakespeare In Love is a favourite. I’ve felt guided towards some films and television for this year that I don’t like, and I have always struggled with Shakespeare. I even wrote a provocative blog post some years ago, decrying him. I entitled it “Shakespeare Is Stupid”. And my reaction to a friend, wallowing in the sad end of Shakespeare In Love, was my first use of the f word: “He shouldn’t have fucked her in the first place!” I snapped impatiently, causing her to step in a puddle in shock at my language.

Some might already be shocked and ill-inclined to continue listening, or toward me. The first thing I would like us to consider is why we feel that there is only one opinion allowed on Shakespeare – at least to be aired publicly, if you want to be considered intelligent or cultural or taken seriously. (I am an author with 3 literary degrees). Why has this one man who died over four centuries ago become a god, the god, of literature, and put on such a pedestal? His writing spanned only about 20 years – are we to say that English writing reached its zenith in a score?

When people – usually actors and academics – say that Shakespeare is the greatest writer ever, at least in English, can they really claim to know all the writers that have been, before or since?

I’d like us to consider that. If any listeners are from another culture, and you have a Shakespeare equivalent (or one you consider greater), I would love to hear about him or her.

Not all writers are given equal airing for us to be able to discover and compare, and few come with such a train of gravitas and glory as this one.

Shakespeare is hard not to know about. I’m wondering how his rise came about. (Some of it does seem connected to empire and export, and Victorian poets). Why is he better known than contemporaries Christopher Marlowe or Ben Johnson? Why is he better known to the general public than the classical authors, or sometimes even the biblical ones?

We’ll pause to note that the best known English language Bible was issued during his lifetime, in 1611. Both are called wonderful literature which has influenced our language. I am not a proponent of the King James Bible, which wasn’t ‘authorised’, especially by God. I wonder about the extent of royal support and sense of ‘authorisation’ of Shakespeare’s work and status.

Considering there are few established facts on William Shakespeare, like many we considered in our History Year, quite a tourist industry has been created about him on pseudo truths.

Stratford Upon Avon in the west midlands is a town given to Shakespeare. I wonder what it’s like to live there? I read my guidebook thoughtfully, noting that the town’s many fine buildings are all spoken of in regard to the Bard. It’s called essential England, but I can think of many Tudor or older towns here (to be essential something, it cannot be unique). There are five 16^th C houses to visit, all with Shakespearean connections – I still have my ticket. But the associations are not certain. Is his birthplace really such? They claim the guildhall as his grammar school, although we’ve no record of Shakespeare’s education, which has given rise to some theories I’ll come to. Stratford has a particularly fine late mediaeval parish church, but I had only seen his monument in it; I was shocked that its West country style roof and unusual carved stone arcades are left out of guides, yes even church books. It has become a mausoleum to him and stop on a secular ‘pilgrimage’. The town is dominated by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, and its live arts seem to be predominantly if not exclusively the 38* plays of He Who Died in 1616. [*There seems to be argument over authorship and thus number]

It is convenient that this pretty town has nothing and no-one else to vie with the Bard – not like nearby Warwick and Kenilworth who have significant castles and tales of long established throne-steering families; it isn’t the administrative or industrial centre like cathedral city Coventry (with the earlier Godiva legend); at around 30,000 inhabitants, Stratford is controllable, and thus ensurable that this market and river town remains an example of what we like to export as Middle England. Its chief product: William.

A place for Shakespeare has been carved out in central London, a huge old city with many alumni jostling for public attention. Shakespeare has regained a waterside and thus ringside seat in the area known for its world class-reaching arts institutions. Since 1997, the rebuilt Globe Theatre has joined the dozens of London’s theatreland, along the well-walked walkway that tourists and locals alike promenade. A second, year round, venue in late 17^th century style complements the Globe and its exhibition. The timber and thatch almost circle is easily the most recognisable and appealing building on South Bank. If it was for anyone else, would our safety conscious fire service and council allow such a structure again, when they were banned after the Fire of [do note the number] 1666?

Shakespeare benefits from constant repetition, a further ploy of his marketing campaign. I think I can assert that he’s an annual fixture for most theatres, not only in Britain but on other English speaking stages. He has long been compulsory on school curricula, from GCSE/O level (England’s 16 year old exams) for all students, and on A level (18 year old) and first degree English Literature courses. Thus one has to wait until masters or more to study literature without him.

Shakespeare in Love made a 40 minute featurette for schools. The key cast read their pre-set lines about how important Shakespeare is and how he is manageable to read. The film had twenty-odd year old leads – generally considered attractive; some characters were middle aged, yet there’s attempt to involve teens in a story that over here got a 15 rating for the sex and language. In short, it wasn’t school material but they tried to bring in school pupils anyway, and made the broad headed 50 year into a doe-eyed sensitive hunk of not yet 30. Think of how making it available to schools would enhance sales and lend to further marketing materials.

If you make a Shakespeare movie, you have definite possibilities.

—-Music from Stephen Warbeck’s original score – you may wish to ponder the below —-

I want us to pause and think about how we met Shakespeare – assuming we do have some kind of acquaintance. Were you, like me, made to study him in your teens? I wonder about our lessons, and wish we’d seen a performance before struggling to read him aloud to our bashful nascent peers. I was traumatised – as was family, we still recall it – by Roman Polanski’s 1971 Macbeth. Speaking of films unsuitable for young people and class viewing, this was too gory and upsetting to show us, and I dislike this notion that such content is cool and appealing. I note too that Roman has been the subject of abuse charges, and wonder if wonder if he’d still be shown in today’s Me Too cancel climate. Abuse comes up again in our considering Shakespeare in Love.

The first performance I saw of Shakespeare was Ray Fearon and Juliet Aubrey in The Tempest; this was the third Shakespeare play I studied but the first that I saw on stage. What I recall from night that is not something to put in an essay (I’m not sure it’s right here – I tell you in the audio).

Let me know your first Shakespeare encounter.

I tried to understand how other people like Shakespeare, if they genuinely do, and looked up stories of early and seminal encounter. I noted that noted Shakespeare actors Kenneth Branagh and Juliet Stevenson both had early powerful teen theatre experiences. In 2022, Juliet wrote for The Sunday Times that we should cancel two of his plays and update others. Her reasoning for the first was misogyny and anti-Semitism. I wasn’t able to read the whole article since the Times website makes you sign up and pay to read, which is their loss. But the next year, she was narrating a BBC mini series extolling Shakespeare!

Let’s think for a moment on that: that the British cultural export (other than the Royals) would be propounded by the official and original British Broadcasting Corporation.

Before considering this film and briefly some others, I want to consider how intimidating Shakespeare is: in dense verse, he is from another time that we (most of us) are not used to. There is a promise of greatness for you if you obtain this part (or the right to perform it), but you join the ghostly voices, like Hamlet’s father, of all those esteemed actors and directors whose very greatness is predicated on their superlative interpretations. Like quantum physics, there’s a sense that if you think it’s easy, you’re not understanding it. Like enlightenment, only a few attain mastery in this world. [Hear my snort]

–Excerpt from Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet: Introduction to Romeo by Craig Armstrong–

Researching this, I sampled as many Shakespeare adaptations as I could: Prospero’s Books by Peter Greenaway, the naked experimental meditation; Julie Tamar’s 2010 female Prospero (Helen Mirren); Toyah in punky arty Derek Jarman’s take on The Tempest. I’ve seen the 90s Branagh canon and those American high school updates as well as the animated Lion King. Shakespeare has been converted to an alternative Third Reich Britain, a modern police station, the 1960s jazz scene, outer space, and homoerotic road trip. Several of these I had seen already; some I knew quite well. I enjoyed best those versions that did something innovative; perhaps Looking For Richard stands out (which I described last year) as a three in one commentary, making of documentary, and the abridged actual play (Richard III).

What interested me most was the line used by Derek Jarman to bring Toyah Willcox into his very unusual 1979 Tempest. He said that he saw this late Shakespearean work as having secret knowledge which the masses weren’t meant to know. I have been trying to find out what! If you know, please tell me as the BFI (Globe neighbour and keeper of the film) isn’t revealing it. Jarman was interested in John Dee, the Elizabethan astrologer and alchemist and (like others) believed that the character of Prospero related to him.

I also asked for the opinion of those I spoke to during this period. A published writer and lover of classics openly stated she dislikes Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet especially. I liked one friend’s take: Romeo and Juliet is not a love story, but shows how feuds can kill what you love. These typically passionate young teens may have soon moved on with their love if is controversy hadn’t egged them into tragedy. Yet I repeatedly hear Romeo and Juliet called our greatest love story by He Who Understood Humans Best.

For me, the greatest love story involves a man 2000 years ago – we thought about him last time. (How inappropriate that this service has ended up being almost twice the length!)

Like The Tempest and other plays, the love in Romeo and Juliet is rather daft. You see someone you are drawn to, you spout sonnets at or about them, you lose some sleep…and perhaps you dance or the other kind of tango. And then, they are somehow unobtainable. You mop brows, whine and opine, and depending what sort of play it is, you either get back together or you die/part. The latter is seen as deliciously, movingly tragic and thus more romantic and worthy.

I think that whether or not Shakespeare himself believed in such love, his work has been used to perpetuate what I see as a travesty and fallacy of it. It was what I was warned against as a young teen: this heady stuff isn’t what lasting relationships are based on. David Hawkins wrote of the energetic frequencies of our emotions in his Map of Consciousness; the kind of romantic love that Shakespeare depicts is extremely low… [more in audio] It is aiming for higher states and ways of communicating that has made me especially critical of Shakespeare.

He also delineates our darkest emotions, such as hate, rage and the desire for revenge; you might argue that these are deliberately exaggerated for the stage, but statements about Shakespeare’s superlative understanding of the human condition suggest that consuming jealousy and plots to avenge are normative, even if more suppressed in real life. I see the work of Shakespeare that I know as demonstrating base and coarse human feeling and behaviour. Much of his work contains horror and violence – Macbeth and Titus Andronicus especially – which has been freely shown in film adaptations; he may be supposedly universal but is not a universal rating.

There is also abuse in his work: Prospero is controlling of his spirit-slave, his ‘monster’ slave, his daughter and her suitor; and in Branagh’s Hamlet, he grabs Kate Winslet’s face and slams her against mirrors. Their friendship has lasted thirty years, but I wonder why such misogynistic violence is seen as part of a great performance and why it is considered part of love or even a tolerable facet of melt down. (Was this added by Branagh to his adaptation?…)

Then there’s the whole concept of The Taming of The Shrew, which Juliet Stevenson objected to, the ‘shrew’ being a certain kind of woman, subjugated and manipulated for entertainment.

The stories present as normative unpleasant and negligent activities. The priest in Romeo and Juliet is incredibly irresponsible with his sleeping draft plan; the apothecary is immoral because his wish for a fuller purse allows him to be the instrument of the death of two young people. In Shakespeare in Love, the person playing the apothecary (how hilarious, he can’t say it when drunk, not) is the torturing money lender, Mr Fennyman. This act opens the film; torturing for debts is held up to be funny and by implication, acceptable. This same character is seemingly moved, and thus redeemed, by theatre. It also presents as amusing that a person is publicly physically exposed by the Master of the Revels to humiliate and inculpate him/her. Again, there is no critique or punishment in the film for a major offence and trauma… [More in audio]

Then there is the offence and trauma in the making of this film, regarding Gwyneth Paltrow and the Oscars (not for the several famous male actors; not Mr-Triple-Surname titular lead).

A YouTube video by Cody of “Be Kind Rewind” (and a 2017 Vanity Fair article) shows how the now disgraced Weinsteins marketed heavily to ensure awards for their film company Miramax; how the voters (members of academy) were flooded and feted to ensure nominations (invited to parties, sent lots of mailshots and films clips). Note how these brothers were always thanked in speeches. Then Harvey’s abuse was made public. I look at Gwyneth’s emotional Oscar speech differently now we know what she endured to get it; it is known that she was one of his many victims. Weinstein made her a swift to rise poster girl in the latter 90s. Shakespeare in Love was set against Elizabeth (and created a 2 horse race for best actress) and the gory war film (focussed on US troops) Saving Private Ryan. Now why would that be an Oscar favourite, and seen by some as more worthy? I’ve commented before on there being themes and ideas to promote via the glory of receiving a little statuette. It creates a tier of extra worthy films and film makers.

I wonder if Shakespeare’s legacy began in a similar way?

00 (Another snatch of Craig Armstrong, also under fair use) 00

Shakespeare has been the means of obscuring our history. It isn’t just Ricardians who are upset with his influential depiction. I also see Richard III as being very negative about ‘deformity’. Shakespeare really has not only demonised this king, but put into our heads that physical disfigurement is an outer sign of moral depravity and an evil heart; and early on, Richard says that he doesn’t expect romantic love due to his ailments. It’s implied that he’s ugly to behold (‘not courting an amorous looking glass’) and thus gives the idea that ‘hunchbacks’ and people with cricked spines don’t get or can’t expect passion – only arranged political marriages. [No!!]

—-0000—-

I really resented Shakespeare In Love because I was told it was full of clever in-jokes that most of us won’t get. Listening to the DVD extras, I actually think that the filmmakers wished to make an inclusive and accessible Shakespearean story.

One aspect of Shakespeare’s myth that I do approve of is that he seemingly didn’t go to university and perhaps even not grammar school. He was not from a titled family. Good. But this has led to speculation that the person we esteem as genius cannot be William of Stratford; some blue blooded suitably educated person must be the real author, and there was a cover or mix up. I hate the snobbery and prejudice behind that supposition…[More in audio]. If we know few facts about Shakespeare, and there are 7 mystery years of his life, doesn’t this weaken the argument that he cannot have known things or been places?

One critic, with blue blood, sees Shakespeare as secretly against the establishment. I had read him as being part of it, which is another reason to dislike and reject him, but the notion that his works are subversive is far more interesting, and are perhaps actually against the very monarch commissioning his plays. One sees Queen Dench in Shakespeare In Love quite differently if Claire Asquith’s work is right. She is not alone in positing such a theory.

(After I recorded this, I watched more about that queen and what her, and certain earls, role might have been in using the stage for propaganda. I’m still not convinced by the 17^th Earl of Oxford theory but something rings true about ‘Shakespeare’ being a secretive steering device).

Kenneth Branagh

Gwneth Spinneth

Queen Dench and cast

If you’re wondering why I say Queen Dench, it is because of Adam and Joe’s brilliant toy take off. At the turn of the millennium in their Channel 4 comedy series, Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish used cuddly toys to recreate mini versions of current films – their Toytanic is another favourite. Shakesbeare in Love casts a duck in Gwyneth’s role – “Gwyneth Spinneth” as she removes the bandages to hide her bosoms – and she stars in Romeo and Juliet Bravo. This 1980s police drama about women in the force brilliantly captures the women in a man’s world theme of the film. Adam and Joe laugh at the poetry and sex – basically, writing and the other verb are one and the same. They write lines about thy walkie talkie and ungloved hands, and leave Gwyneth getting her beak stuck in the Sliding Doors of a London tube train – another recent role. Queen Dench is what they call Dame Judi’s Elizabeth I. I’ve referred to her as such since, affectionately. I consider Judi a national treasure. (I intend to honour her on December 9^th).

https://www.youtube.com › watch?v=3lkvX7Um7ww

—-More music from Warbeck’s score—-

Concluding thoughts on Shakespeare in and on Love (read, fornication)

At the heart of this film, which some feel is of its time, is a wager: could a play show real love? Despite Queen Dench’s verdict, the answer resoundingly for me regarding this one is NO.

Gwyneth’s Viola is in love with poetry; she’s fetishizing it. The poetry she quotes is moon verse (ie, mooning) – not especially deep or romantic. She spouts about 4 lines before Shakespeare chases her as a boy all the way home. They have 3 weeks shagging time before mum and dad get back and the arranged Wessex wedding takes place. It’s a quite immature love, more suitable for teens…just what I was warned against as a pubescent. Shakespeare’s love (like in The Tempest) has a test, but there’s no real communication or living together. Unlike others, I do not see Romeo and Juliet as twin flames (although their death did stop a family feud) – there’s just not the spiritual calling and inner work or mission – not that all love has to be compared to this notion…which I am also wary of. Romeo and Juliet die after days: for me, love endures over time and possibly place, with many challenges, including forgiveness.

I think that Juliet’s nurse shows greater love than the star-crossed fornicators.

——0000——

I think that like the Beatles, a champion was raised early in the genre. Pop music really only began in the 1950s and 60s, and we’ve looked at Elvis and Lennon being chosen from those decades as already the best of all time. Although plays are centuries older than Shakespeare – the ancient Greeks wrote them and there were mediaeval mystery plays – professional play making and theatres were just being established in the late Elizabethan era. Again, an early champion was chosen from that first harvest.

Shakespeare is much like our popular movies and Shakespeare In Love is no exception. Cameron’s Titanic was pitched as ‘Romeo and Juliet on a boat’; and the sweeping attempt to include almost all emotions and facets of entertainment was very Shakespearean – just without the ponderous poetry. I was researching another sermon just before I switched gear for this one, and felt that teen spirit, rivalry, jealously, plotting and regular fights and jokes were present in a contemporary American story as much as the circa 1600 stage.

What is different about Shakespeare is that his language is opaque. There seems to be a line between the adepts who claim to understand him, and the plebs of the mosh pit who weren’t offered seats. This division also applies to those who read code into his pentameter.

Thinking about the Plague and its affect on theatre, having lived through the covid period [which I critique], I wonder about what the authorities really worried about regarding theatre, and why they wanted to close them down. We’re told that the puritans especially didn’t approve of these iniquitous places, but I wonder if that is spin. Theatre took workers from their stations; there was a reason for employers to want the theatres shut. Theatre allowed people to mingle and to hear new ideas, different from the pulpit.

I note how little God and Christian office(r)s are mentioned in Shakespeare. Was he in fact secular (All Is True depicts mature Shakespeare as being in danger of church non attendance fines) or trying to please the widening spiritual landscape of his audience? It’s assumed he, like the establishment, was Protestant, but I’ve also read that his work had code for Catholics. In his era, Nonconformists began rising – he mentions the followers of Robert Browne (rudely) but the first Baptists had met by the time he died. There were also some Arabs and Jews possibly.

Did Shakespeare feel it safer to largely keep religion out of his work?

Conclusion: Is Shakespeare still relevant to an ascending world?

I’m wondering if we will start to seek very different stories as we mature. Shakespeare’s tales seem to be so full of darker, lower emotions, but the language and honours given him presents them as higher. How often would we say that Shakespearean characters have congruent conversations, or achieve deep and profound personal growth? He has famously obsessive loves on world stages, in all senses – “the triple pillar transformed into a strumpet’s fool”, who ends with sword falling and his partner by my favourite stage direction: “Applies asp to bosom”. Antony and Cleopatra are another set of famous suicides.

I realise that many people do enjoy Shakespeare and tell me that playing him makes him enjoyable and fun. I realise that some people see great depth in his work – and I’ve not mentioned his sonnets – and have found engaging with him a transformative experience that deeply chimes with how they feel. But I’m aware that many of his plots are not original – he took from Plutarch, for example; that there is a story to his fame and that he is presented as unquestioningably a, the, genius. I think that playing him can be a vehicle for awards and acclaim and quite egotistical. I like the thought that he might be subversive. I realise that Shakespeare In Love is different to Shakespeare’s own works. But the exaggerated whispers and gestures rankle me; and I don’t see the human truths and understanding in the works that others so praise it for. (Do you think I’ve missed something?). As I’ll be saying throughout the year, I’m questioning the veracity and depth of high brow depictions of humanity, and see them as oft set against the quest for a spiritual journey.

Apart from Stephen Warbeck’s score, the aspect I do like of Shakespeare In Love is the ending.

It wasn’t the tragedy of their being parted, but that the parting brings newness and opportunity for both. I like best Viola’s walking at Holkham beach in Norfolk – near where I lived at the time – seeking a new life, informed by the brief affair she’d just experienced; how a disaster (how Titanic of the year before) saved her and gave her a fresh start. (In fact, Shakespeare In Love is Titanic in breeches). Here’s me impersonating Gwyneth, thinking on new starts, the wideness of an empty landscape, thrilling and daunting at once, finding liberation in writing and imagination. Maturity and true love comes from that beach and the unwritten next act…

Next month, we meet on Sunday 26^th May…and its theme is TBC…

There are two likely contenders at the moment (probably not the promised biblical epics)

and then it’s 23^rd June (see my last post above) for an anniversary

Thanks for joining me, blessings, and goodnight

Do reach out to me, Elspeth, on BetweenTheStools@hotmail.co.uk if you want to tell me who and how you are, and if you wish to share a different way to understand Shakespeare

Closing music: Stephen Warbeck’s “The End” from that scene of the film

(Yes, the swell makes it feel epic, romantic and worthy)

Sunday’s service on Shakespeare

This Sunday 28th April is our next Year of Wonders service, based on the screen

It’ll be at 8pm British Summer Time, but isn’t being offered live again for tech reasons

The main focus is Shakespeare In Love

I may make changes to upcoming services – can you bear with me?

Themes will be chosen from:

Good Omens/Place

Matilda

Karate Kid/Cobra Kai

The Truman Show

Good Witch Oct

Superman Dec

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

and I’d like to do something biblical with you… but the advertised “Biblical Blockbusters” is unlikely to be next month, on the last Sunday of May

Juliet Binoche and Marys Magdalene are likely this July

June‘s service may be the 23rd to match an anniversary

The film and TV theme is likely to inform next Lent (2025)

Lent 2024 6: An Excellent Adventure

Bill and Ted Face the Music

This is a time where I needed my spiritual specs on, for as a movie in itself, this 2020 2^nd follow up to a zany time travelling buddy movie might not have appealed, or been memorable. But the soon leaving Netflix date made me watch it that day, and I realised that it fitted into my Lenten theme.

Bill and Ted were great music stars, but 3 decades on, their hopeful beginning has waned. They play to smaller and smaller audiences, and their fan base is all but depleted. I immediately was interested as an artist, musician and author as yet without the audience I’d like. Worse, their father in law criticises the man-boys for not having real jobs, like his police one, and the years of non ‘success’ and searching are tolling on their marriage (it does seem to be a singular partnership of 4 people). Now middle-aged, the duo are painted as potentially pathetic and puerile, needing to grow out of their pairing and that their incredible adventures as adolescents are neither believed nor suitable. They were called a poor rolemodel to their daughters, who were also music loving but unemployed.

Yet I sensed that by the end of the film, an alternative would be presented.

I hoped and needed it to be.

It seemed to initially go away from that: meeting their future selves, Bill and Ted are told they will become estranged from their exasperated wives, sport pescod bellies, or be ridiculously muscled but in prison. Called by The Great Leader of all worlds via a time machine, Bill and Ted have to create a hit song within a very short time limit, or the world will explode.

It seemed that even in the amazing realm that I hoped would exonerate them, that the dudes were being pressured and judged out of inactivity into compliance. Would they end up giving up on their musical dreams and excellent adventures?

It became apparent that the Great Leader was not living up to her name, for she was cold and closed hearted. She secretly believed that the eradication of this pair was key to saving the implosion of all things. She set a robot terminator to chase them and destroy them. However, this robot develops human emotions and is turned from his mission against them to become an ally.

Death, an old enemy of the duo, is sought out in desperation, but ends by hugging them and playing wicked bass together. I noted how a crisis facilitates healing. I also viewed another 80s film, The Karate Kid, and its recent sequel series, Kai Cobra. I have read that our issues of one era can be revisited in a cycle 30 years later; hence these middle aged men are confronting people from their late teens and twenties. Rather than desperate money-motivated rehashes, I find the popularity of later years follow ups as apposite and veracious. We are with one of those also featuring Keanu Reeves over Easter.

I loved how the daughters supported their fathers: their articulate and insightful praise that showed that the are as deeply informed about music as the understood their fathers; the innovative scheme to save them and the world (time travelling and collecting famous musicians to join the band).

I didn’t like that the daughters took over, as if to say by 50, faith and focus is on the next generation. I love to see support for the amazing young people in our world, but we only hand over the rei(g)ns when we die; I’m concerned that others step back into too early retirement (and I’m not speaking about dayjobs and pensions) to assume that their role is simply advisory and adjunctive hereon.

If we’re alive, we still have a job from God. You have a role that is vital and just for you.

The Great Leader’s daughter conversely worked against her, for her plan was not from Love.

The predictions from Bill and Ted’s future selves did not come to pass; their wives bore with them rather than criticising and leaving them. The police father ended by affirming them and joined forces, realising that there is work not just on the earthly plain

The song itself was less important than everyone playing it; it was about collaboration rather than the heroism of the few.

Curiously, I came across another science fiction film with Keanu in that deals with that theme of saviours vs universal pariticipation. To what extent do we participate in or have agency in our salvation? And what is it that we need saving from?

Lent 2024 5: Water Beasts INCLUDES DOCUMENTARY REVIEWS

I have done a Nessie length piece on the not so wee Bèiste and her kind, and I’d like to update that with the lens of some new (to me) films.

Loch Ness, Nessie, and The Sea Beast augmented the familiar tropes in children’s films about water dwelling monsters. In contrast to the several horror films, family films feature a lonesome misunderstood child who bonds with the beastie, and their single parent. Those seeking glory, money and capture, and who don’t care for nature, are villainous. The skeptics morph into believers through interaction with the child, the beast, and an attuned but outsider adult. New love, family, and openness ensue; thus encounter with the Beiste is transformative. As Loch Ness (1996) makes explicit, it is about believing in order to see. In young children’s TV show Jessie and Nessie, the urban dwelling child needs glasses to be able to perceive Nessie’s presence, who is available just outside her flat. Like with The Family Ness (note the Elspeth!), the beasties give the child a special device that helps connect them and call them up. All this can easily be adapted to faith.

Previously, I twisted with Nessie’s neck about what (never if) she is, and if she is a good creature. I realised that by spending time with horror, including nonfiction documentaries and books, that the language as well as images used easily lend themselves to steer the audience into seeing a diabolic denizen of the deep. I realised that I could choose how I looked and place it against the above children’s films and what I’m about to relate. I believe that whatever Nessie et al are, that by seeing fun and joy in them creates a light around them that diminishes any darkness which exists.

Nessie is a great topic to demonstrate documentary on. The best new example is something less than Lent-worthy, so I’ll review that at the bottom. The 2013 TV series Bogeymen – Monsters Among Us repeated information as much as its funky theme tune. Despite its title, ‘horror’,16+ rating, and scary screengrabs, the episodes I saw were fear free. It included various cryptological creatures from different countries, but I watched some lake monsters of North America and Europe. Although it tried to show different points of view and leave some mystery open, I felt that the filmmakers were with the skeptics as they gave them more screen time and often first and last words. These skeptics were always those with some kind of conventional kudos – academic, scientific training and a position. But the people who touched me in this series – mainly talking heads interposed with water shots – were not those. I noted that the aboriginal, spiritual point of view was largely excluded, except in Canada’s Okanagan, where First Nations have kind of copyrighted Ogopogo (whom they call N’ha-a-itk.) In Scandinavia, there is openness to the ancient and unknown, as their public watching station showed; in Austria, the Tadzelwurm is part of Klagenfurt’s town’s arms with a central statue (and misogynistic warning message, even for today’s young women), but how Britain dealt with its beasties was notable.

In Scotland – Loch Morar – locals were reluctant to speak of Morag, and a known professional skeptic dominated this episode. In NW England, Bownessie, despite only a few reported sightings starting from 2006, has a large, juvenile industry around her and yet locals were filmed as saying that none of them believed in her. (Then two locals reported seeing her in the next frame).

I observe that despite a continued Pagan tradition, and many other spiritual people, that Britain doesn’t have a First Nation equivalent; our Druids were apparently slaughtered by the Romans, and then the Normans tried to finish off any ‘heathen’ practices that the early waive of Christianisation hadn’t caught. I feel that this connects to the prevalent (but by no means entirely representative) depiction. These episodes felt the most disbelieving and least respectful and open to otherness.

In Argentina, that openness was apparent, although attempts to squash came via fake news of captured a plesiosaur who became a carnival feature. But a senior resident who had seen her town set up by Lake Nahuel Huapi in Patagonia was the most attuned and the one who had three long full body sightings. There was no fear in Carolina, but a joyful privileged memory in a clearly gentle, spiritual woman. I could understand why Nahuelito had chosen to appear to her.

The Sea Beast seemed set to be an animated, toned down version of those creature features like The Loch Ness Terror and Loch Ness Horror: catch and kill the terrible murderous creature. I became engaged when I realised that the story was going away from the glory of the royally discharged monster hunters to say something else about the awesome beasts, and the royals themselves. Carefully set in a timeless historic setting, with amazing architecture like none in existence, I saw a clear parallel to war. The ‘expendable’ lower classes were sent out to fight under the impetus of honour carried through families, which meant many lost lives. But the hero, son of an illustrious captain, realises that the fearsome creature can be a friend and that the enmity is of human making. Worse, that the source of this enmity – a record of the monsters’ terrible deeds – was untrue. This myth was put about by the king and queen, who are publicly exposed by a child; the hero breaks his harpoon in front of Red Bluster the beast, his new honorary daughter, and the whole kingdom. In a scene redolent of Evan Almighty where the Ark crashes into central Washington DC, Red smashes into the forecourt of the palace and he and his kind are hitherto left in peace.

I felt that this summer of 2022 Netflix release hinted at the end of an era, end of war, end of hatred based on deliberately pedalled untruth (who do the beasts represent?), and questioning of long running leaderships.

I’m wondering why and how this creature and their many international cousins, fresh and seawater, keep being reinvented. Despite more loch-down supposed factual films that she’s disproven, and another documentary feature last year, the Bèistes* rise up again to unite families, welcome outsiders, protect nature, question power and truth sources, and most of all: believe.

The parallel between faith in God and the attempt to posit scientists as minigods is clear, and it’s something I’ll take up again, perhaps as a full creative project.

*I’m aware that bèiste is Scottish Gaelic and that its real plural is Bèistean

——-

Less than Lently: my thoughts on Loch Ness: They Created a Monster and The Man Who Captured Nessie

These two documentaries, like the synoptic gospels, clearly share sources since there were large overlaps of material. The message was – with a tiny semblance at balance – that long time monster hunter and photographer Frank Searle was bad – in fact, his epitaph was rather like that of Byron.

If ever one needed a lesson in how documentaries mislead, are biased, and potentially make things up and invite libel, this pair is recommended. I wondered who sponsored them.

Although there’s a little vintage footage of Frank, who lived by the loch from 1969-c1984, he doesn’t get to speak: the person who seems to be him is an actor, it’s revealed (much in the same tone as My Old School, another attacking Scots documentary). I’ve been interested in Loch Ness for some years but I don’t recall Frank’s name, yet these documentaries suggest he is infamous. I did recall someone part of the establishment who had been part of ‘exposing’ him after Frank’s own exposures seemed to garner him better luck and fame than they, and independently of them.

I make clear that I’ve no personal connection with either party, and nor am I necessarily championing Frank Searle; but I am saying that the very angled axe to grind was very obvious and that it made me more likely to take the opposite view.

My dislike and judgement was reserved for those who stood to camera and said, “I am happy to call this man a liar”, a charlatan…and that he was a “disturbed individual” who shouldn’t have come to Loch Ness,­ and other insults which could easily echo back. They publicly accused him of a serious crime, for which there was only a hunch of suspicion, not evidence. Might the graffiti, which would be hard for him to have done with his lost foot, actually contain a truthful message?

It occurs to me that the Molotov cocktail incident – if it really happened – could have been a staged attack by their own to remove and discredit this clear rival, especially if he was on the cusp of exposing them. (Frank claimed this). The documentary said that the police were called – very early in the morning – to his lone caravan, but not that he wasn’t charged, as clearly they were unable to. The accusations were poor: the kind of boat was wrong, the bomb was in a plastic bottle which wouldn’t work; and Frank with long military experience would be able to do far better. His accuser was not a firsthand witness; unlike his watchers, he wasn’t camping but sleeping indoors elsewhere. (Searle states that these workers were paying to camp, and were lured on false advertising.)

These detractors used legal force and their influence with Frank’s publishers to withdraw his books. One teacher (who weirdly just took his class to the loch on a road trip) claimed plagiarism (from a school newsletter!) but the book isn’t available for anyone to verify this. The third book was stopped by an opposing Nessie watch leader, without having seen it, assuming it was about him.

This prevalent preacher of skeptical science, who states Frank’s approach was not suitably scientific to be allowed to go on, began as an ‘amateur naturalist’ who has not achieved academic titles.

The hoaxes were asserted rather than proven: it is possible to have doctored his Nessie pictures to make them more like the objects they claimed; the campaign from 1975 seems systematic. Frank’s books were halted partly due to potential libel, but those that destroyed his reputation were not.

It may be that Frank was able to attain better photographs because he worked alone and without technology other than his camera; perhaps groups and flashes and sonar put Nessie off.

I read his newsletters and heard his hour long tape; I didn’t see in them that which he was accused, although he does clearly speak against the rival crew, what he knew of them and what he was going to let out…just before the petrol bomb, and then a death threat note in his donations box.

Most worrying – and a show of just how much documentaries can manipulate – is the more recent film’s claim that Frank had disappeared in the mid 80s, never heard of again, presumed dead… maybe even in the loch. There was an implication of suicide or that his precious monster got him.

They gleefully reported that Frank had said Loch Ness doesn’t give up its dead. They showed his posters and caravan resting at the bottom of it in invented footage (one can’t see in the peaty waters), saying that now a monster really does reside in the loch. Such a statement was repeated by the perky Scots tour guide to an apparently rapt coach.

Even if Frank had done all he was accused of, I didn’t see that he was a monster. (The petrol bomb is horrible but I question if he did it – and why; no-one and nothing was hurt).

I wondered if this wasn’t evidence that they had attacked him and sent him to those depths. I took the film as a j’accuse with fingers pointing at themselves. Was the title actually about them?

A confession is enough to convict.

But the earlier documentary claimed to have traced Frank, just after he died, in Lancashire. His life had been ‘quiet’ and although apparently alone (we never are really) he had not done anything that could be critiqued, as far as the filmmaker could show. Yet reports such as highly biased Wikipedia and disreputable newspapers had tried to make out that his aloneness made him odd, and several attempts at swiping at Frank’s mental state had been attempted, including on user forums. That is as suspicious as it is wrong.

What could have happened to an ebullient man who welcomed people to his caravan and enjoyed limelight, to make him live so quietly? That is also another potential charge to answer.

Also, why had They Created A Monster (clearly suggesting Frank in the ogral role) ended with him being mysteriously disappeared, when the earlier documentary claimed that it knew 18 years previously that he’d died in quite an ordinary way, far from the loch? And that the source of that – quite dubious and intrusive research – clearly informed much of their own material?

Why has that 2005 filmmaker got to write Frank’s public obituary and influence other articles (whilst self advertising for his Channel 4 work)?

Why has Paul Harrison’s interview with Frank which asserted that he was threatened, beaten and his caravan pushed in the loch never been published? Is it not suspicious that around the time that book was due out, author Paul was also ‘exposed’ and went quiet?

I found Frank’s own words, and the images – added on to the audio – ended with a different gravestone, death date and lifestory.

The assertion that Frank disappeared after the petrol bomb incident is untrue: it occured apparently on 21^st August 1983, but he sent out newletters in Sept and Dec that year, citing sightings at Loch Ness. He was able to be contacted by witnesses and to send these out – or I’d not have seen them.

He’d said in June that year that he may run his Loch Ness project down and in Dec says he is leaving, and not because of the events he describes, to take up landbased treasure hunting.

Along with the unwatchable grainy footage, this was an angering experience for me and one I’m glad I didn’t rent or go to the cinema for.

It has set off a deeper enquiry, but I couldn’t help but see a parallel with the end of the Sea Beast and this beastly tale.

It also reminded me of Wicked Little Letters

Lent 2024 4: Moral messages of a different kind

To presumably celebrate its 30th anniversary, the Japanese animated film Pom Poko has appeared on Netflix and is listed as a top pick.

I’d heard of this legendary anime and the rather surprising antics – for a children’s film – of raccoons. Yes, I refer to the frequent sight and mention of testicles, which become huge mats and weapons, and something to sing about like the Seven Dwarfs sing of work. They seem to be a resource and source of power for the initiated master, which would correspond to what I’ve frequently heard about women’s counterparts. And yet this is still rated here as PG for parental guidance, mentioning ‘crude humour’, but although I think the t-mats are meant to be humorous, I also think there’s a lack of sordidness and discomfort on the subject, which I commend.

I am not sure if I commend the other aspects of this beautifully drawn film. I gave it a thumbs up at the end, but I am wondering if I wish to reverse the direction of those thumbs.

Is this film really saying that most humans should die?

It’s a sentiment that’s being propounded in various forms, and I’m noting that this film was doing so long before the more current climate.

Pom Poko – which refers to an era – doesn’t speak of climate change (which was still known as global warming in 1994) but of taking the natural habitat of animals. Raccoons, along with foxes, seem to be a spokes-species for all creatures. Japan’s capital is expanding at an incredible rate, looking as contrasting to the woodland and meadow it replaces as is possible. My idea of a beautiful city is fairly low rise – save for the odd special steeple – and made from natural things: bricks come from mud and straw; timber and thatch from trees and reeds; and stone is hewn rock. Old fashioned paving is also direct from nature – stones and bricks, which although not good for our current tyres (why make such tyres then) make cars slow in these parts of the city.

The World Heritage centre in Bath tells me that when Georgian Bath was conceived, they left the countryside in. Greenery was part of the design, with squares and crescents and parks. Those cities which give joy to me include lungs within them – gardens and squares, marshes and woodlands – AND have easy access to the country.

Of course, some of us prefer the country – small towns, villages, and even being outside of a built up area at all.

I commended Pom Poko for drawing our attention to the ugliness of expansion and the thoughtlessness for other creatures. I liked that a different kind of conurbation is built in Tokyo, thanks to the raccoons’ effort, which is less abrasive, more aesthetic and includes spaces for green. The film also says that these attempts – not unlike John Wood the Elder’s Somerset city two centuries earlier – are not enough for their kind to thrive in.

What I wasn’t sure was what Pom Poko is saying about humans and population. Humans are a vile selfish nuisance, a pest to control and wish away. The raccoons use trickery and fear to thwart humans. The raccoons plot to kill us, and are considered heroes when they send lorry drivers into rivers and to their death.

I wondered if this wasn’t a kind of Japanese answer to Animal Farm, and if some of the leaders were also becoming as warped as the beings they overthrew.

There was an interesting comment: that if this situation had occurred in another Japanese city, the human residents’ response would have been more favourable. These humans would have understood that raccoons are behind the disruptions and that shrine offerings in temples dedicated to the bushy beasties would have increased. Instead, in Tokyo, as is oft the way in our largest cities, there is rationalisation and disbelief.

The key part of the film is Operation Spectre. Raccoons have the ability in this film to shapeshift. They are far more intelligent and human-like than we give them credit – they even look different when we’re not around. And they bring over wise master raccoons of Methuselah-type age [Biblical reference] to teach them how to be more adept at this art. They then put on an incredible show for the humans one night, changing into flying ghouls and boobies, which no human is able to film. (How very Loch Ness Monster). But a company takes credit – I’m sure they were asked to – for the stunts. The raccoons feel deflated: their huge show hasn’t had the effect of scaring the humans away, nor giving them a platform on which to share.

Perhaps the cartoon was saying: your most powerful voice is not your disruptions, your violence, your fear, however clever and spectacular; it’s when you came out of the woods and spoke to camera, making a heartfelt plea that your target audience listened.

Is this a message to activists?

In contrast I think of All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, a documentary last year about Nan Goldman and her fight against the dangerous drug pedalling Sackler family. She too knew how to organise a spectacle – ‘prescriptions’ and medicine bottles falling into atria and ponds at major museums who’d been sponsored by this dynasty. And she got results, although not the lives back of those who died through the prescriptions of oxycontin. This might be the best documentary I’ve seen – I wished to whoop in the cinema. (I bet filmmaker Laura Poitras didn’t expect to be likened to these raccoons!)

What I took from Pom Poko that was entertaining and positive – apart from the sheer balls! – was that it made us question our violent responses, our disbelief, our arrogance that we’re the most important creature…and just maybe, animals are cleverer and more powerful than we can imagine.

I was disappointed in lack of Great Spirit, and that the creatures assumed that they themselves should be worshipped. Like many demi-deities, they wanted adulation and presents. Again, I think of the Loch Ness family, and how the Canadian First Nations say that Ogopogo (whom they call N’ha-a-itk) needs offerings to cross Lake Okanagan safely, or else. Even if that is a past myth rather than present advice, it shows a god that’s not worthy of the name – self serving, capricious…much like some versions of the Christian god. And none of these are like the God I believe in, although we may think he needs placating, at Lent especially, by deeds of sacrifice and all leading up to his ultimate sacrifice. It’s a concept that I continue to question.

There are some aspects of Japanese culture which I would love to understand – so if anyone Japanese is reading this, please get in touch.

Are raccoons sacred to you? Are there shrines and temples to such creatures? Are there myths of raccoons’ and foxes’ ability to shape shift – and why these animals?

Next time, we’ll be thinking of a shapeshifting creature that is both sacred and denigrated.

Lent 2024 3: How movies make you feel

This equally could be: how music makes you feel as that is a major factor in mood inducing in film and television. And not only does that tell you how to feel, but what to think. Thus movies are potential mood inducers, with loud white noise or astringent strings, calming music, or exaggerated sounds that are part of the film (known as diagetic) – the clumping clock or foot steps of Foley artists. There can be repeated gunshots, screams, flashes and fast cuts; constant adrenaline or ennui, constant stress in shouting as well as chasing. It can be found in nature programmes as well as horror.

I realised that the mood making is deliberate and perhaps not just as part of story telling.

I have often resisted that mood – reducing sound, turning away or even off, certainly internally.

Last week, I resisted what is thought of as a modern classic love film, which I didn’t consider very romantic. When I first saw cinema, I thought that films were telling you how life is, or should be. Then, as I came to study and write films, I felt that was not so: writing advice says not to give yours in the film. However, I do see that media has messages alongside story arcs.

As I wrote in my first Lenten post this year, there’s: what the story’s about,

what the story’s really about,

and then the third layer of the underlying but perhaps more coded messages.

I will say that romantic comedies, like many mainstream films, have a good end. Whether we’ve cried, laughed, shrieked, tapped or thrilled, we leave the cinema in a good mood. That was a good experience; and it’s been a cathartic piece of escapism. We may have felt helped by the film, which brought us hope when some was lacking. We do still believe in love. We can be in a loving family; our dreams and ambitions can be realised. The last children’s film I saw – Slumberland, featuring Jason Momoa – ended with the message that we can be whatever we want. I sadly heard a parent try to deny that – although their own kids had already become high achievers. Why not believe and encourage that it’s possible? Or did they mean that there are barriers yet to remove for that to be true? We see many films about removing those barriers, and I applaud that.

I’ve long been a supporter of arthouse cinema, but sometimes, I get fed up with them as the denier of hope and joy in favour of ‘reality’, which is another word for dreamstealing.

Reality is a choice we can influence. Why choose the miserable path and call that highbrow?!

I recall seeing Garage when I was unemployed about an unemployed person. Instead of leaving with hope, I watched a slow film about a lonely man who ultimately took his life, and the only hint of freedom and resolution was the horse walking out of the field. No, films don’t directly tell you what to do, and I’m a little cautious of the nanny state around that subject in fiction, but it felt a harsh hit, when a Hollywood version would have seen that man find some meaningful work, or perhaps peace in his nonworking. (I’ll be mentioning this subject in our last Lenten piece).

Arthouse cinema can eschew dialogue and make the viewer guess what is happening – but one can guess wrongly. I question that as a mark of a more intelligent film. An example of ‘watch my face and work it out’ is The Golden Door: a very different take on immigration to America. Instead of Italians finding the Land of the Free that they were promised, they are subjected to physical humiliating intrusions, and one older woman chooses to go home and be truly free rather than enter this Canaan at that price.

I noted that despite my joy at the older woman’s rebellion, that I felt oppressed watching it, as I have so many arty films. I felt it in Remains of the Day, which is such a contrast to a romantic comedy. I got frustrated with the lack of communication and emotion, and wondered what a Japanese author was saying of English culture. I also noted the political background and that an American buys up a long held family home that he has assisted in, shall we say, making available, and in his speech about ‘real’ politicians – like himself – running someone else’s country. The fact it was repeated and called right made me think that this could be the filmmaker’s message or at least belief, rather than a character’s. I was annoyed at waiting for the end of this long film, when the only journey taken is by a bus – nothing emotional or personal is resolved.

In Slumberland, the protagonist faces her deepest nightmares and losses, and comes through. Using the interesting trope of another persona (which I’ve seen in Fightclub) she and her new family are able to live as they wish…. although it didn’t follow through the statement that schools are unhealthy stifling places, as is mainstream work.

I know which sort of story I prefer, and which I think is ultimately healthier to partake in.

We vicariously take on the feelings of the characters, and I urge some caution as we pick up on the energy and it’s not all good for us, all of the time. I like to wind down with something pleasant, especially if a film has been challenging.

As I say of my own, I’m OK with being taken to the depths, but I won’t leave you there, and I don’t want to be left by other writers. Rather than a waste of time, TV and film watching, along with all the arts, can be such balm and catharsis, even therapeutic.

Hence I spend my life engaging, creating, and see them as intrinsic – not something to cut funds of.

But as much as I never want our funders – especially governments – to tell us what kind of films we can make and how they should end, I can choose where I put my focus and in what I fund by buying a film (or to watch it). I don’t want a world where we’re told that it’s grown-up and literary to have films with negative ultimate messages and which make us take on negativity. Unless the message is: don’t let us live in this world, then I don’t want to live in the world of those films.

I love the heart swell of a life-buoying film that has lifted me and been a timely reminder, when I’ve literally felt divinely guided to view. And those are the ones I’ll seek out more often, including during this year.

Lent 2024 2: Love

Last week, we had a well known Western (much commercialised) holiday – that of St Valentine’s. I noted that at holidays, cinemas often show the same old films: A Wonderful Life at Christmas (not our Christmas film), perhaps with The Wizard of Oz; at Mother’s Day they curate something like Bridesmaids; and on February 14th, I’ve seen more than one cinema choose Breakfast At Tiffany’s more than once.

I’ve only seen this once, over 20 years ago, and wasn’t able to again, but I did something comparable. Before I move onto that – and just how similar they are – I will share the line that stuck with me, and how appalling it is.

The A-Team’s George Peppard tells Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly that “You belong to me”. Not belong with, as we might state of a predestined soul connection, or even that our love and compatibility logically determine that we should live together from now on, but a clear statement of possession. Hence I am troubled that this 1960s movie has become not only an enduring classic but one that is regularly rolled out on this day that we focus on love, in its romantic form especially. In the source novella by Truman Capote, Holly states it in reverse: “We did belong to each other. He was mine.” (When actually, he now isn’t and won’t be).

But ‘you’re mine’ is a dubious concept, pumped from too many pop songs: Screaming Jay Hawkins’ insidiously seductive “I Put A Spell On You” repeats that ownership is linked to dark arts and blatant threats. Other songs invite the prey in question to “be mine” like those heartshaped sweets…except that the concept has nothing sweet about it.

Along with the other cringingly dangerous line from Jerry Maguire “You complete me”, films and other popular media can discharge toxic tenets about love, and other relationships.

Pretty Woman has “be mine” right at its heart, although I didn’t catch that line actually being spoken.

In an era before prostitutes were called streetworkers, and when mainstream movies of this genre could be conservative, it’s a little surprising that our heroine, Vivian, is, as she is frequently called, a hooker. Julia Roberts’ iconic early role deals with the subject without stigma or judgement, although it does contain a brief advert for ‘safe sex’ (later rebranded as ‘safer’) – more subtle than that in A Different World which got a long live audience applause for a statement. (This of course was useful to the condom industry…) More surprising is that the hero is a service user, although he doesn’t quite pick Julia’s Vivian up in the usual sense. Her job is softened by her need – and we’re reminded of those streetworkers who die in that place; he asks for directions, and gets a ride, then a ride…

Of the two leads, I object far more to Richard Gere’s Edward’s job. It is he who preys on others and – as Vivian points out – offers no service or product (unlike her). Edward’s work is not something that you seek – he seeks out you as a target, enjoying the hunt and successful killing, as this movie admits. I’m not aware that the likes of Vivienne impose on or trick clients, but Edward, a buy them up and break’em up of financially vulnerable companies, doesn’t have clients – only victims. And with this immoral industry, he has amassed great wealth.

He assumes he can buy Vivian with it, just as he expects that by hiring a posh hotel’s best room and throwing money at swanky shops that he will receive sycophantic service. Is he questioning tipping? I did.

He actually under-pays her: isn’t her $100 an hour worth rather more than his $300 for a night, therefore; and isn’t around 168 hours of her time over a week closer to $16,000 than the 3,000 he actually pays her?

He expects Vivian to conform; he replaces ‘slutty’ outfits that mark her profession out (including a wig) with those that made her blend in to his world, which is about contacts, not friends or pleasure, and showing off the status that his ill-gotten gains afford. I wasn’t convinced by his opera loving, and even less by his piano playing. That scene – presented as sexy – is all about his quiet control, not only of his bought lover, but the acquiesence of the other guests in the bar. The were asked to leave to allow them to alternatively tinkle the ivories. Get a room, I wanted to retort for them – you’ve got the best in the house – use it! The bar isn’t your space.

The opera too shows a particular kind of love – exaggerated weeping and obsession.

Edward has no thought for Vivian’s comfort – that she doesn’t have the right clothes nor will the shops that sell them treat her well; that she doesn’t know how to eat in a posh restuarant, or what to do at the opera or the racecourse. She is as much on cheap display (although it may come with a pricey tag) as she was on Hollywood Boulevard – as she sometimes remarks.

Edward tries to control Vivian by buying a new life for her of his choosing, without consulting her.

Vivian rightly walks away twice in the film, but I’m not convinced that Edward had learned enough to deserve her to have him back. His idea of an apology is a one time single line: like a delete button, that should erase the issue and Vivian should need no more from him when he’s wronged her.

Like Jane Eyre, it’s the male love interest that goes on a journey here, but I’m not convinced by the transformation.

I see that Vivian and Edward were a catalyst for one another, with (in personal development terms) Vivian offering the greater service, and he gave her funds enough to do something else with her life if she and her roommate and business partner Kit wished. She has warmed his hard heart and humanised him and stood up to him, so that he assists not annihilates a struggling company.

But like in the book of Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Edward ought to have let Vivian go and stepped back, perhaps with the hint that they could meet again. The supposedly romantic end felt added on for audience appeasement, rather than belonging to the film, or actually a satisfying story arc.

Ooh – now I discover that there was an alternative end: as “3000“, Edward leaves Vivian sobbing in the gutter with money, saying “don’t let me regret picking you up” before she gets on a bus with Kit. The story seemed to be given literally a Disney treatment, distorting the original message (re the ugly behaviour of financiers) into something that feels to me as messy as it is mushy.

And finally – the movie’s name, taken from the vacuously lyriced song by Roy Orbison. Vivian is pretty, and something the male observer would like. She’s a desirable, intoxicating plaything to enhance his life like a nice accoutrement (and perhaps be soon tossed). Richard was quite alot older than young Julia (born a generation apart) at the time: this also says: mature men can (like Pepard did to Hepburn) help themselves to young adults that they fancy, if they are wealthy and deemed charming and attractive.

Although I hoped that this film might actually critique some long held values, it seemed to end by perpetuating unhelpful myths. This story – of abuse of power via money and commodification – is not a fairytale or a shining knight rescuing a caged princess, as I’ve seen this movie called, even recently.

I hope that we’re in a time of expanding expressions of love and celebrating all its forms, and this Valentine’s story is a poor party for just one (and a bit – of friendship).

I hope that as we head towards remembering Ultimate Love at Easter that we look critically at films and TV and other sources (yes opera) and the One who threw the tables of those who abused money.

If you have any thoughts on Pretty Woman or Breakfast At Tiffany’s, let me know

Interesting facts: Richard Gere’s middle name is Tiffany and he played a gigolo in 1980 (10 years before this) although it was a crime drama – so not quite reversing the roles.

Lent 2024 1: Overview

The Year of Wonders has begun!

2024 is a film and television themed year

I wanted to start Lent with my thoughts around these media

I hope that it is apparent that what we are told by the media is heavily curated: and not just news and advertising. It’s also in our internet search results – many engines use a bubble that shows us what they think we should see. Try criticising a pet topic and you will have to be creative to find results that allow us to explore the opposite opinion to the one set out for us.

Even puzzles and quizzes contain subtle ‘truths’ and opinions.

This is also true of dramatised media, and documentary. I’ll repeat what I said last year that documentary is not a greater source of truth; it is not less biased. Fiction has an underlying message as much as magazines. Some topics don’t get funded; some TV series disappear from channels and shelves whilst others are on regular re-runs; some issues will win playwriting awards and publishing deals. Also note who is award-winning, and for what. Cast your eye over an Oscar nomination list by year and see that some film subjects garner awards and how there are unspoken themes.

These films get shown often at all cinemas – possibly for a second run. They’re faced out in best selling displays in shops and libraries and top of streaming sites, along with any tie-in books. Whereas I’m not necessarily stating that these films and their makers are undeserving or without merit, I am saying that these films are curated to tell us what a particular body wants us to hear. You may feel that the message is very worthy and true and applaud it – and at times I would agree. I just want you to be aware that there’s a message.

Sometimes, it’s an overall theme – such as Netflix’s Don’t Look Up, a multi-cast Christmas-launched film on the authority of scientists and unstoppable natural disaster, both about climate crisis and the fading pandemic. Sometimes, it’s subtler digs – at those with privacy protecting email addresses (and not that of the invasive big tech giants who may sponsor such slip-ins); at certain politicians (Trump is a common target) or famous contemporary business people.

I wonder if the recent Napoleon by Ridley Scott isn’t a Trump attack cloaked in European historical drama. You may agree that canons ought be aimed at him: my view is an objectively curious one, aware of the passions and hopes of both sides; but I invite you to observe how a world conquering, belligerent megalomanic of circa 1800 might recall one of circa 2020, released just as the election campaigns begin. One of my circle asked if this epic “bang bang in both senses (me)” wasn’t the Arthur Wellesley cut of France’s famed emperor. Note that this was made by Americans. I hear that France felt differently about the movie. Whereas I grew up in Britain with statues to the men that led the battle which repelled him from here, and parks, streets and pubs named for them, Napoleon was known as a diminutive demagogue with a famous declination of his wife; but France put their first post-revolutionary ruler in the national mausoleum and left him there. We spent last year on depictions of history, but I’m conscious of films telling us who to admire and who to boo.

I’ve recently seen a comparable epic, this time from France, adapting one of their most loved novels. (The tell me it’s the most read fiction ever). The story of The Three Musketeers has been altered in some popular views as some films have added things which were copied by subsequent ones. I have also noted this in Jane Eyre: the haircutting scene that appears in so many screen offerings is not in Bronte.

I wish us to look for the timing of particular films. In Sept, I spoke of the Shekhar Kapur Elizabeth sequel made at the time of terrorism and Islamophobia, explicitly asking for tolerance (but then I wondered if The Golden Age didn’t have an opposite message). So why is Dumas’ story being filmed again now, by France and in such a similar palette and tone to that of the award-winning Hollywood stalwart? Who is our Cardinal Richelieu, and Milady? What does loyalty to the crown mean – and to a country who violently deposed its last monarchs? The first film came out close to the time that Britain received a new one.

During this year, I invite you to observe with me what may lay beneath the overt meanings of films. In the industry, a pitching writer is asked: what’s the film about?

And then: what’s the film [really] about?

The second question is usually meant to reveal the themes of the subject material.

I’m very interested in character development, in healing and resolution, in bringing up matters sometimes directly (eg films about racism and slavery or homophobia) but also how some kind of fantastic removed element allows us to critique our society and understand how we got here. It – especially arthouse – rarely tells you where to go next.

We’ll be thinking of not only the second but a third “what’s the film really about?”

I’ll be exploring that next week with films popular on a festival we’ve had in this one

Our next service is at Easter on 31st March at 8pm, British time (beware clock changes)

More mini-messages throughout Lent

and further announcements about this year’s Between The Stools Services

Do get in touch if you’re interested

Elspeth

betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk

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Parallel inspiration – or propaganda in Autumn 2023 films

Groundhog Day

Welcome to the Year of Wonders at Between The Stools alternative spiritual community. The wonders will never cease but are planned to be film based this year, starting on Imbolc/Candlemas (we remember both here).

It’s also Groundhog Day, whose origins are connected to the above Pagan/Christian festivals.

So I wish to bring a flavour of the coming year and our Lent season with a piece based on the 1993 film starring Bill Murray about a weathercaster covering an event who repeats the same day constantly.

I was appalled to learn that the Groundhog event is real!

My concern is not analysing that event nor the film, but seeking spiritual lessons.

Firstly, to pose a question: the groundhog’s winter prediction is predicated on whether he sees his shadow. (How can the top-hatted human keepers tell what this woodchuck can perceive?) But what does, in spiritual terms, seeing your shadow mean? What is it NOT to see that shadow? There are some spiritual and interpersonal development workers who focus on what they call shadow work. How might seeing this in ourselves affect our own winter? And is a longer winter necessarily bad?

Today I’m thinking of snowdrops – the first flowers of spring that flourish in the deepest coldest part of winter, reminding us that this too shall pass and the carpets of these flowers are a special joy (and possibly day out to view them).

I thought about the development of the film. I will say that it’s not the deepest or truest. It follows the trope of selfish nasty person changing. But Phil – the same name as the groundhog – has a point about the bizarre festivities he’s expected to visit and record. When accosted by an old acquaintance, we might sympathise. Ned Ryerson has personal space issues, he’s thrusting his immoral business onto a person who’s not seeking it, in public. His annoyance level is too high to feel believable, even in the tone of the film. We will come to the outcome with Ned later.

I wondered what we might make of the puddle that Phil starts by stepping into right after. How do we learn to see the puddles, or be prepared for them if they must come? (Eg, carry spare socks and a towel and a portable hot water bottle). What might puddles and preparations transcribe to in life?

Phil is prevented from leaving small Pennsylvanian town Punxsutawney due to a blizzard – which he as meteorologist had not foreseen. It’s as if forces greater than him are making him deal with something, giving him a life lesson that his soul wants but earthly self does not recognise.

Does anyone else wonder where this magical repeating day sequence comes from? Is it the blizzard, the cold shower, the groundhog…and how like Murray’s other role, Scrooged, this film is.

I wondered if Phil’s reaction to his groundhog predicament follows the stages of grief. There is disbelief and denial, feeling disequilibrium, some anger…and then Phil’s journey takes a different path. Phil decides that if he keeps waking up tomorrow with everything he did today erased, he can do what he likes without consequences. He takes others with him – that could have been a selfish risk, for no-one else seems to be affected by the groundhog day phenomenon.

Then he decides that the factor which must be eliminated is the semi-sacred titular rodent himself. He tries to destroy the squirrel-like star of the show – happily, due to the Groundhog magic, both live to see many more days. Realising that he will always emerge from his Thelma and Louise moment, Phil tries many ways to end his life. That also didn’t make sense: if he couldn’t ride into ravine and blow up with a car and stay dead, would anything else work? There was also a too-casual-a response to suicide, making it amusing, when it isn’t.

His eventual conclusion is that he’s a god. At least this delusion helps him turn from destruction.

Phil has also tried to manipulate, especially desirable women. He thinks that by asking things about them to magically know or share next time will make seduction easy.

He eventually takes the time to learn new skills, although these are also about impressing a woman – Andie MacDowell’s Rita.

This part of the story isn’t very worthy because it kind of works. All I can say that is positive is that his first night with her – when she wakes up with him in the morning – shows a shift to a different kind of relationship. He reads and chats and cuddles, rather than an immediate physical relationship with no thought for real connection or the other person that he had with other women. Is it Rita who therefore performs the reverse magic, ending the Groundhog curse (which needn’t be seen as such).

Phil’s answer to the saving spree in Superman The Movie shows a still quite shallow response to service. Like a TV show we’re likely to meet over Lent, I think that Phil is garnering points to escape his karmic prison rather than really doing good for its own sake.

His final reaction to Ned is to buy many insurance products. Ned doesn’t learn to behave better, nor is he asked to question his business. I didn’t feel there was anything meaningful in Ned and his interactions.

In fact, I felt the film (which I saw twice recently) to feel disjointed and shallow, ending in personal auctions and random acts of kindness which are literally that, and didn’t make me feel that Phil had really changed; it was about an ego trip as big as he ever had to begin with as ‘celebrity’ weatherman.

There were slow signs that as Phil accepted his repeating day that it not only improved, but that it was soon going to end. He chose kindness; he waxed lyrical, not cynical. He stopped ribbing the cameraman and was prepared to see him as a person.

However, I critique the notion that he became the person that the woman he liked was seeking. He was far from her definite list of qualities, and in many ways, faked them.

What drew me to the film was the notion of a spiritual epic embedded in mainstream romantic comedy. I didn’t really find that, but I did think: what can we learn and do when we seem to be stuck…in a place, with repeating situations. Can they actually be helping us grow, if we see them as a gift to embrace? Can we make challenging situations work for us?

When he was ready – by the filmmaker’s standards – Phil was released; Groundhog Day moved on, and it was at last February 3rd.

He also appeared not to age or lose out during this period, and I wonder if that can be a truth too – that if we feel held back that we will not have life pass us by; we will still get where we’re going.

I’ll be back soon with an introduction on how I see film

Our next service is at Easter but there’ll be posts in Lent (which starts on 14th Feb).

In Their End Is Our Beginning: the Henrys Tudor

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/the-henrys-tudor

Introit: Theme from The Tudors by Trevor Morris

Welcome to Between The Stools on 28^th January 2024.

This service is the culmination of a year of mostly British (I aptly wrote Brutish) mostly history, but I’ve had to hold this final sermon/vice in my head all along.

We have gone backwards in time, ending with the pair of first Tudor kings on the birthday of the first (Henry VII, 1457) and the death day of the second (Henry VIII, 1547). Note that the middle digits of those dates are reversed. Given the title of this service as well as chronology, usual logical sense would have begun here. But I’ve trusted that by beginning 2023 with the birthday of another king and choosing dates intuitively by month of events in historic people’s lives, especially anniversary years ending in zero, and dates that fell on a Sunday like today, that a progression would emerge.

The point was to always find a spiritual understanding in the stories of historic people, and their understanding of God (and how often flawed it was), trusting that as the year unfolded, we developed towards a better one.

2023 began with seemingly a non-fit, but I found a link between Job and Elvis that also was a kind of prologue to our theme. I concluded that Job’s understanding of God was an improvement on the prevailing ideology, but for me, still ill-(in) formed. From Patricia Cota Roble’s experience of him, I came to see Elvis – although human – as an embodiment of divine masculine, here for a special purpose which continues, not that the two recent movies would steer you to that conclusion. (Film is the theme of the rest of 2024’s services and so it features often today by way of segueway).

Job also set up the notion of finding favour with God…which we soon recognised in the 16^th C.

How do you please God and get him to help you? This implies that God isn’t minded to do so, and you must discern what he wants of you, making it an unequal game of guessing and transactions.

In February, we thought of one trying to live as and demonstrate the divine feminine – Mary Stuart.

I wished to begin the year with what we may wish to forge towards. Today’s title is a twist on Mary Queen of Scots’ saying: in my end is my beginning; or in Scots: En Ma Fin, Git Ma Commencement.

Then we had our Lent ladies. Katherine of Aragon and Mary I’s god was the old god, a god whom you suffered to placate and whom you made others suffer to turn back to. Some wives of Henry VIII (Jane, Anne of Cleves, perhaps Katherine Howard) seemed malleable and tactical in converting to or agreeing with what powerful others thought. Anne Boleyn and Catherine Parr’s God took courage to believe in and involved reforming more than just faith, making this God dangerous. We thought of that more for our July Magdalene service with Jane Grey and Anne Askew.

Henry VIII and all his children thought that you needed firm guidance: the law and, for his protestant progeniture, a single unified prayer book and service. Henry hated extremists – a word we often hear today. Elizabeth wouldn’t ‘make windows into men’s souls’ but expected that you conformed to the church which she controlled on pain of punishment.

Thus we see that for those above, favour is through obedience, giving up, self harm; a God of divisions, where only one side – yours – is the right one.

We went back in time for a trio of special anniversaries, thinking of Julian of Norwich’s radical book, and Etheldreda of Ely who seemed to be more of the conventional way. We looked at Julian’s contemporary Margery Kempe who commendably lampooned the church and beliefs of her day; whereas Martin Luther did too, ‘his’ reformation wasn’t so far fetching. Like Job, for him, rightness with God was based around law, and although different to the status quo, faith following Luther remained hierarchical and established.

At JFK’s anniversary in November, we saw a man who changed, and a man who many think died for the change he wished to implement. We also saw that the Kennedys – a dynasty like the Tudors with an ongoing legacy – may be more complex and less admirable than overt popular opinion.

At Christmas, we considered long range biblical prophecies fulfilled. The Tudors were expecting a boy child – they actually got a female prince – but no-one of that family was a messiah or Christlike. Yet their history can be seen as an expected anointed promised child to lead them; the events of their reign were a watershed for faith and politics. And those events culminate today.

Prayer as we move into our main service.

Henry VII

In August, we thought of Richard III, with a famous play, two museums, and a film last year and a passionate society. Now we consider the other side of the coin. I’m not aware of a dramatised screen or stage adaptation of Henry VII’s life. “I’m the original Tudor,” he sang to an electrified lute, kicking be-breeched legs in York’s medieval Bar museum, trying to draw attention to an oft overlooked monarch. The TV adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s White Queen ended with the boy Henry becoming a man to take the throne in battle, egged on by his mother. Thus Henry was a passive pawn in this adaptation for Margaret Beaufort, the Red Queen, who exemplified the old kind of piety. She’s shown as a religious obsessive, who demands to God that things go her way, and cries at him when they seem not to. She is sure that she has heard that God will put her Welsh-born son on the throne of England.

I pause – is that sentiment true for us or anyone in our time? Is it true for ourselves…both about what we hear God tell us, and how we speak to him?

Margaret’s favour-currying is also about being seen to be outwardly pious, and that meant endowing 2 Cambridge colleges – Christ’s and St John’s. Her symbols of mythical yales and portcullis crown both gatehouses to this day. But being a founder and patron does not make you more holy – it’s lucrative and name-making. She was perhaps also trying to ensure that her soul went quickly to heaven. (We’ll be thinking of the inbetween period via a TV show soon).

Thus The White Queen ends with Henry VII becoming king and the start of the Tudor dynasty – but there’s little of what Henry himself was like. In exile for much of his life, the boy is groomed towards the throne and to the hand of Elizabeth of York, thus ending the Wars of the Roses by uniting the belligerent houses. But this misses the point of marriage and shows another corruption – that a legal contract was the way to create partnerships and heal the wounds of a divided nation.

The 2003 miniseries Henry VIII with Ray Winstone begins with his father is on his deathbed; he has few lines. He tells younger Henry to fulfil one wish: bear a son, literally imprinting on the heir apparent. It drives the whole story, yet we do not see the elder Henry again.

The Tudors TV show with Jonathan Rhys Meyers didn’t show Henry senior at all; despite the title, a generation was skipped. I do not recall the first Tudor in the various other Henry VIII screen offerings. Henry VII, along with his son Arthur, have usually left the world before these stories start.

So what have we missed?

When Henry VII is discussed, in documentaries and history sites, the focus is on 3 questions:

1) Did he have a right to the throne?

2) Were his policies shrewd?

3) What were his battle techniques at Bosworth Field, where he killed Richard III?

These are not matters that I wish to take on in any detail here, for my focus is always spiritual. But, in passing:

It’s often pointed out that Margaret’s claim to the throne (let’s be honest, it was Lady Beaufort’s) was stupendous: several would have to die (they did) before Henry Tudor, son of Edmund son of Owen, could become king. The Tudor claim is tenuous, for there were living Plantagents. Taking the throne in battle is very old style – cf Macbeth of four centuries earlier. Now it was supposed to be passed by birth…except where there’s leeway and interpretation in the family tree.

Either way, the populace had no say in who their sovereign ruler was, except to deny popular support.

I am told by David Starkey and Thomas Penn that what Henry VII did when he failed to gain support created him a tyrant. The latter calls the reign and man ‘dark and chilling…England’s most sinister monarch’. Henry held fines over his subjects, huge unpayable fines that he didn’t even call in….he just liked the power that the threat hanging over them gave. He mostly convened parliament to up taxes for war. He made his second son a recluse who couldn’t be accessed, save by his father’s permission. He abused the law unlawfully, taking power and autonomy and dissent away.

Henry VII is named as paranoid, miserly, and the starter of the longrunning and effective Tudor propaganda machine, creating Richard III as hateful and hideous – and parading him dead and naked through Leicester, dumping his body in a church not fit for a king; he got rid of as many of who might claim his throne as he could (Henry VIII finished off the rest, such as Buckingham). It’s also thought that it’s he who dispatched the Princes In The Tower – they would have been equally inconvenient to Henry as to Richard – but blamed it on the outgoing king.

We could say that cruelty and tyranny ran in the family.

I also see that Henry’s style of controlling his subjects is much like the mediaeval church’s way on behalf of God. It’s a theology that’s continued in some circles; this time, the fine is eternal damnation, and the debt is of sin and gratitude for God’s mercy through Christ’s passion.

I am not aware of anything that commends Henry VII, even if his dynastic marriage was happy.

I can say that this was not how to lead; and it’s a style that, as we see a new world emerging, needs never to return.

Music – I shall reveal what in a minute

Henry VIII

I’ve had my head with Nessie and I thought: not such a switch – I’m still with monsters.

Henry VIII has become one of the people that I most hate in history, one of the most cruel and evil people I can think of.

I have long wondered why he wasn’t murdered. Surely he was more worthy of execution for treason against the people than Charles I? Surely someone would rise up and finish the man, in battle by assassination? He nearly died in jousting – why was he allowed to recover? He had chronic poor health – why did that not claim him earlier? But he reigned for nearly 40 years, crushing the attempts to overthrow him, turning on those once beloved and close.

I did find some satisfaction in the discovery of what happened to his huge smelling corpse. It was laid at Syon House. This country stately home was where 5^th wife Katherine Howard – the teen he could have fathered twice – was imprisoned before her execution. This former priory witnessed another gory death on Henry’s whim as a monk the abbot refused to capitulate at the dissolution, and his remains were hung over the door as a warning to other recalcitrants. Henry’s body rested overnight at his palace (another he snatched, making around 60 – more than any other monarch) on the way to being buried at Windsor castle. (Note that although he’d been laid at state in Westminster, that he didn’t join his father in his fancy mausoleum in the national abbey and lie where his children would, but next to his supposed favourite wife and lifelong friend in a private chapel). Fittingly like Queen Jezebel of the Old Testament, Henry burst open under his own puss-y, gassy weight and was licked by dogs!

Even if apocryphal – please God, let it be true! – it shows a popular wish that this wicked man, who executed 72,000 (often for exercising freedom of conscience) got some deserts on this earthly plain.

I saw Henry VIII as an easy candidate for the hell that I don’t usually now believe in. Surely this kind of tyrant deserves eternal punishment…or at least, being annihilated, or held in a phantom zone (like the villains in Superman we’ll meet in Dec) far from God, and the rest of us enjoying Heaven.

But as I considered Henry VIII, I felt God say: he’s with me. (Did I hear right, Lord?) Surely not, I said. This is not the kind of person I wish to spend eternity with. Neale Donald Walsch said in his Conversations With God that Hitler was in heaven. That was staggering. I see Bluff King Hal on a par. I will say that Neale’s extraordinary statement needs some unpacking and justifying, but it’s a single line after about 20 pages about what hell is not. God has no need or reason to continually harm us in the next world. I thought that he went on (in another book) to explain that Hitler fulfilled some kind of purpose and soul contract, which still doesn’t sit well with me and it certainly does not excuse nor absolve.

What purpose can Henry have served?

As an ecumenical nonconformist, I don’t even see that he brought in the true faith. It can’t be very true if he did so much harm to others who didn’t share it. He was, rather perversely, a lifelong Catholic, just preferring his own head at the top to the Pope’s. His act of 1539 made his stance clear. The reformation was about getting Henry what he wanted – power and a woman.

The 1972 Keith Michell film has Henry not reply to the priest’s final question: do you die in faith?

Did he truly have one?

Henry’s behaviour seems far from what we’d consider as Christian…abuse of every kind, every major sin…

So what could garner Henry an eternal reward other than the great lake of fire?

I realise that this view is common but not universal.

I also realise that my wish says something about me – a need for comeuppance and a belief in punishment.

The tagline for the 2000s TV series The Tudors by Michael Hirst said: ‘it’s great to be king’. Rather than seeing Henry VIII as a disgusting man – note no king has yet used that name again since – they wanted to explore what you’d do with all that power. I know that some people do admire and kind of like him, and yet, seeing him on the par that I do, I cannot understand it, and found it alarming.

However, I was reminded/informed of three facets about Henry. One, that he was a musician; you just heard his greatest hits, as selected and brought to you by Historic Royal Palaces, who care for his most famous home – Hampton Court. (I do rather like his building tastes, as much as I judge his elitist opulence). I listened to a longer collection of his songs and noted that they all seemed secular. (Can anyone find me a religious song?). Whether you personally are touched by and impressed by this music, I will note that he was a composer and musician, and that may suggest some taste and sensitivity; and that my opinion of it has been jaded by others (Joanna Denny, Anne of The 1000 Days).

Second was a surprise: Henry’s Herbalist Charter. In over 20 years of Tudor interest, and as many in alternative medicine, this has not come to my attention before. When seeking proof (I do like to back things up), I was struck by a further two things. One was that some sites ignored Henry’s support of herbalists and that he allegedly created the need for being licensed and the Royal College of Physicians, making medicine about science and not superstition. Secondly, that this Herbalists’ Charter is also known as the Quacks’ Charter and that serious sounding sites call it thus. But what the herbalists say is that Henry VIII protected them, to this day. The charter states that some are abusing the courts to stop other genuine healers from practising – still true. This is forbidden and the right to use medicinal herbs is preserved, without needing permission of others (like those physicians et al.) Henry had plenty of need of medicine and it seems that he was interested in herbs, and had done something for the plebs – motive unclear. I was told it was a sign that he cared about the people; another said that the peasants weren’t getting medical care and thus were unable to work and this affected the country’s food supply. But the charter was a different facet of this man.

The third was recalling Ray Winstone’s portrayal; my response and what Ray said on the DVD extras. Ray is my favourite Henry, and he alone has allowed me to feel pity, and at least once, to cry for him. I felt for his wrangling over biblical verses that seemed to condemn him; and sometimes that he was frustrated, unloved, betrayed, manipulated and lonely. (Ha! I want to say). Ray saw Henry as complex; like Michael Hirst’s earlier essay on the British Borgias Elizabeth (1998), they began with ‘the man’ [Cockney voice] and worked outwards. Ray said that his playing a historic king wasn’t out of character for one we’re used to seeing in gangster roles, for Ray’s Henry is a gangster (mine too). The difference, quoth Ray, is that the king makes the rules, whilst gangsters break them. But this miniseries penned by Peter Morgan recalls that Henry can be fascinating because he’s this multifaceted mix of a monarch. It seems that this is a draw for those who study him, who like to consider the question: how did a good king turn so rotten?

It’s not a question that I’m going to consider tonight, although I will just query the supposition that Henry started well.

I might want to posit, but not answer: is anyone bad to the core and beyond saving?

Is there any aspect of Henry’s life which we might show compassion for?

I also recall surprising myself that I considered the notion that Henry and Anne Boleyn may have been twin flames, and a parallel with a more modern royal with a similar name and look…

I would like to shift into the notion of soul contracts and growth.

Henry seemed to live out various marital permutations and soul contracts – in one lifetime!

What was he trying to achieve?

I want to sit with that…think of what I summarised from my Lent reflections about the relationship with each wife and the kind of God they believed in.

Henry VIII is for me the embodiment of the worst in men: something he shares with Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre. (You’ll be unsurprised to know that I subverted that novel as part of my own…might Henry be up next?). I wrote an essay for my MA: Jane Eyre as Spiritual Autobiography. I realised that the real person developing, especially spiritually in Bronte’s novel, is Rochester. What is Henry’s development – is it downhill? Was there a wrinkle upwards during Anne Boleyn? And the Herbalist’s Charter?

What was he the catalyst of?

I wondered what Henry’s reign shows about kingship, spiritual and temporal:

No other gods before me

A God to placate with terms of his making, sometimes arcane and also capricious

A God who will bestow favour if he’s minded, by serving him (in the bedroom or battle field)

A God who hangs fear of punishment and unpayable debt over you – like Henry VII

A God who values gifts and flattery

A God who values conformity

A God who will have no rivals – How like Herod those Henrys were (it’s Magi season)

A God with a massive ego that needs stoking constantly

A God who knows little about real love

A God who’s a distant parent, and who can change who his favourite is

A God who’s basically misogynistic

A God who has a clear hierarchy – only the select get access to his inner chamber

Like Job’s God, Henry’s God can take and give immediately, no appeal

Henry’s a man who assumes his divine right to rule and his extra closeness to God by birthright

This is all far from who I consider the real God; this feels like an undergod, falsely taking the role and hiding behind a curtain with a megaphone (we might be thinking about that film this year).

As we come close to the Chinese new year as well as the Between The Stools new year, I would like to think of the world as coming towards the end of its hitherto tyranny and inequality. The massive breakdown continues. I hope that we see both these Henrys as leaders we want no more of, on any level. I hope we’re moving – like JF Kennedy allegedly did – away from the hawkish warmongering and creation of superpowers to a different kind of power. Henry VIII attempted a peace treaty with a long term adversary. Let us see more of that as a solution, instead of violence and landgrabbing. Let us not admire ruthlessness or see it as a necessity to survive.

I’ve two brief points to make before rounding off with some music and closing remarks.

One, is that I see this time as the end of defining our relationship with God in legal terms. It was there in early Old Testament Job, in Paul’s New Testament writings, and it is still there at the Reformation. I am still working on a law piece, but I see that writ has hitherto had too much power and is about abusing power. God is not interested in the kind of legally guilt-free ‘righteousness’ that can be credited to us like components towards a certificate. God is not impressed by the size of your army, your palace, your treasury. He’s not interested in prowess and jewels. And he’s not interested in your attempts at immortality (as per Lord Mountjoy quote early in Henry VIII’s reign) and bartering for a better deal posthumously.

God does not lead a world rooted in fear, like the Tudors. He doesn’t want your allegiance on pain of punishment or being legally owned or beholden. His gift is not about birthright, nor something that can be snatched in battle nor the stroke of a sneaky lawyer’s pen.

So finally: what could Henry’s role – both of them – have been? Were they pawns of higher darker forces? What did they help shape? What might their soul contract have been? What was their destiny? What was their role in the overall human journey?

I wonder if they completed what their souls set out to. We can learn from them how not to be.

They may have begun the modern era, the English Renaissance, but what did they really birth?

On the cusp of another such time, what can we birth instead?

Whilst you ponder, I’m going to play some music, which are both special favourites of mine. It may surprise, for it’s clearly a pair of pieces that are anachronistic to these 15^th and 16^th century men, yet these close two films about the Tudors. They were first used at the end of Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth, and the Winstone Henry VIII followed suit. Bookending with his own deathbed, the TV show tried to show that Henry had learned something since his father’s death 38 years earlier. His last words to his son and heir were not what he had hotheadedly promised his own father; not about the battlefield glory of his namesake (Henry V), not about full coffers and firm rule… I don’t know that the real Henry VIII had learned any of this. but I like to think that a modern audience wants Henry to have made some kind of positive progress.

Nimrod by Elgar is about a briefly mentioned mighty hunter in Genesis – perhaps the Tudors would like to consider themselves as such. However, Nimrod is also connected to the Illuminati and the beginning of a corrupt world that needed salvation.

The last piece is the introit to Mozart’s Requiem. And this is a requiem to our History year – might we have another some time? – and to this British brutish family that ended in March 1603, to the religious persecution and ‘accept my rule and beliefs or die’ that sadly did not end with them. I hope too that it is a requiem to a world of fear, violence, inequality, misogyny and abuse, of territorial grabbing and acquisition, persons who don’t know how to feel or say sorry or that they are wrong.

I make no apology for the lack of historical sources in this – I also have a requiem for putting empiricism and academia before all else. The film mentions are meant to lead into our new year, and bookend what I said last February and beyond about modes of knowing and real truth.

Do let me know what you thought of the History Year and I may be open to suggestion about films for this year. I’m curating a list. You’ll be hearing from me in Lent, but we’ll definitely meet on Easter Sunday which is the 31^st March, and a special film anniversary. (It’s clock change time).

I send blessings to you all as we enter a new era. Do reach out to me, Elspeth, on betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk

Here are Elgar and Mozart. Thank you for joining me. Good night!

(Further dates and themes to be posted anon – I’m in a time of flux)