Category: History

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The Candy Man Can’t: "Junk Food" Advertising Outlawed on British Television

Well, it’s been a bad day for Willy Wonka. The snack manufacturers in the UK are in a state of sugar shock. Sure, the chocolate factories will remain open; but the popsicle peddlers and potato chip pushers have been dealt with a restraining order, forced to keep a low profile when it comes to accosting their most valued customers. The golden ticket—or any such gimmick designed to promote so-called “junk food” on television—is a thing of the past. Count Chocula will have to go underground in search of fresh blood, and millions of hyperactive and hypoglycemic kiddies might have to learn about candy from strangers, now that cable channels are closed to the trans-fat movers and saltshakers that thus far defined and financed much of children’s television.

The ban on “junk food” advertising is to go into effect in January 2007, the BBC reports. The measures are surprisingly far-reaching, considering that such commercials will no longer be permitted on any “pre-school children’s programs,” “programs on mainstream channels aimed at children” or “cable and satellite children’s channels,” “programs aimed at young people,” including those featuring music videos, and “general entertainment programs” that “appeal to” a “higher than average” number of viewers under the age of sixteen.

The decision, presumably on behalf of an obesity-prone or malnourished public, was made by Ofcom (Office of Communications), a new regulatory body established in 2002 and authorized by Britain’s Office of Communications Act in 2003. Will this catch on elsewhere? Are ice cream, soda pop, and French fries going the way of the cigarette, now that health fascism is on the rise in the west?

What might have happened to American action heroes like Buzz Corry, commander in chief of the Space Patrol, had the FCC clamped down on US radio advertising in the 1930s and ’40s (whose jingles you may hear and see discussed here)? Would Buzz have had to load his tank with corn flakes or oatmeal, like most of the competition? Space Patrol, after all, “was brought to you by Nestle’s Eveready, the instant cocoa, and famous Nestle chocolate bars. Remember N-E-S-T-L-E’-S.” And, as the announcer promised, those listening in could get their own “rocket cockpit” and fly “into space” with Buzz Corry if only they sent in those Nestle labels.

Are we, in this happy meal age of movie tie-ins and product placement, really Buzz Lightyears removed from such sponsorship models? No doubt, there’s lots of dough in cookies, and those protective of commercial television foresee great losses in revenue; losses, they argue, that might very well lower the quality of programming in Britain, as advertisers lose interest in a large group of potential viewers previously seen as a target audience, thus decreasing the purchasing power of advertising-dependent cable channels.

So, who is to gain as kiddies trim down (if indeed such a widespread downsizing of pint-sizers will follow)? The outlawing of “junk food” advertising might prove a boon to those with poor parenting skills, those who rely on legal strictures and thrive on lawsuits to raise a new generation of leaner, healthier consumers, sturdier taxpayers with fewer cavities and lower blood sugar, calm little low-sodium dieters deprived of the catchy tunes that used to cheer our everyday.

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Live and Let Die: Is It Time to Give Bond the Boot?

Well, I know, it is an old argument. One that is being dusted off every time a new man slips into the suit. Always a man, mind you. And the man in question is Bond, James Bond. With Casino Royale now in theaters, and the less-than-favored Daniel Craig assuming the role of 007, the question arises anew: does Bond still matter, over fifty years after he was introduced to the world in Ian Fleming’s spy stories? Should he die another day, right this minute, or some time tomorrow (which presumably never dies)? What does his resilience tell us about the crumbled British Empire, about the state of international diplomacy, about the ways of the warring world?

A new Bond picture is still a media event, some forty-five years after the release of the first entry in what turned out to be a highly lucrative franchise. For me, it all began with The Spy Who Loved Me, the second movie I ever got to see in a theater; as such, it made quite an impression on me. Okay, he did not love me (little did I know how much he loathed me and my kind). The villain was played by a fellow German (Curt Jurgens); but dubbing, as it is still being practiced in my native country, all but obscured the lingering animosity toward Germany as expressed in such castings. It is easy to watch James Bond thrillers without noticing their cultural and political agenda. It is convenient to do so; but it also renders those films irrelevant.

Bond did much to keep the Cold War alive—or any crisis beneficial to the West. He has always been On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (rather than the people’s)—and a grateful Queen Elizabeth II once again attended the Royal Premiere of the latest 007 mission she thus endorsed. Bond is the anti-diplomat—ultra-conservative, xenophobic, and unapologetically sexist. Dame Judy Dench was brought in as a response to decades of Pussy Galore and the casting cat calls it provoked; but “Octo” never did denote octogenarian and female sidekicks still get the kittenish outfits, the headlines and centerfolds, along with those less than subtle names suggestive of slippery bodies just waiting for a firm . . . well, you know.

Bond is an institution—perhaps one that is ripe for abolishment. Austin Powers may have mocked the machismo, as others have done before him, but left the Bond franchise unshaken if slightly stirred.

The producers of the latest installment could have responded to such claims of obsolescence by turning Casino Royale into a period piece, setting it in the political climate in which it was conceived. It would have been a bold move for Bond, at once an acknowledgment of the datedness of the character and its historical significance, a topical significance long obscured in favor of gadgetry and reduced to pop-cultural nods to celebrities of the day (such as Goldie or Grace Jones, last seen at a Guinness Book-making gathering of the Joneses). Diamonds Are Forever—but traditions? Upon reflection, the Bond image might be as timeless as a rhinestone on an extravagant designer suit: dernier crie one day, but “for crying out loud” thereafter.

That said, I am looking forward to the latest James Bond, if only to take him on. If Freddy Kruger can be confronted with Jason, how about a match-up of Bond versus Shaft, to kick the imperial highness right out of 007’s pants? How about Bond having the living daylights scared out of him by Lara Croft? I’d put my Moneypenny on such a fight. How about, Goldfingers crossed, Shaft and Lara Croft as James Bond? You might get to witness just that . . . if you only live twice.

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Note: There’s a War Still On


Well, there were four that fell
On Remembrance Day
As all across Britain
An old armistice was recalled with paper poppies.

And there were more who died
On Remembrance Day
With marching bands passing
And newly wrought wreaths displaying old grief on cold stones.

Note: there’s a war still on
As Remembrance Day
Becomes an occasion
To ready the words of Wilfred Owen for broadcast.

Hear! There are gunshots now
That Remembrance Day
Is gone until next year
While coffins will keep telling time like grandfather clocks.

Mind that the dead come back
On Remembrance Day,
Effects and bones sent home
To force us face that what has come to pass is not past.

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Election Day Special: Could This Hollywood Heavy Push You to the Polls?

Well, I don’t know how many voters turned out to re-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt on this day, 7 November, in 1944 because they had been listening to the radio the night before. Those tuning in to affiliate stations of the four major networks were informed that regular programming was being suspended for a “special political broadcast.” Stepping up to the microphone were Hollywood leading ladies Claudette Colbert, Joan Bennett, Virginia Bruce, Linda Darnell, and Lana Turner, composer Irving Berlin, radio personalities Milton Berle and “Molly Goldberg,” as well as the gangster elite of Tinseltown—Paul Muni, Edward G. Robinson, John Garfield, and James Cagney (pictured). Along with fellow Americans “from a great many walks of life,” Humphrey Bogart explained, they all had a “deep and common interest” in the outcome of the election.

Heading the parade of A-listers was Judy Garland, who burst into song with this “suggestion for tomorrow:”

Here’s the way to win the war, win the war, win the war
Here’s the way to win the war, you gotta get out and vote.
To get the things we’re fighting for, fighting for, fighting for,
To get the things we’re fighting for, you gotta get out and vote.
To clinch that happy ending,
On the Tokyo, the Berlin, and the Rome front,
The fellow with the bullet is depending
On the fella with the ballot on the home front.
Oh, we wanna have a better world, better world, better world,
Wanna have a better world? You gotta get out and vote.

There was no doubt just what kind of “suggestion” Garland and company had in mind. What radio listeners were treated to was an hour-long campaign ad for the Democratic party. Sing it, Judy:

Now we’re on the right track, right track, right track,
Now we’re on the right track, we’re gonna win the war.
Right behind the President, President, President,
Right behind the President for 1944.
The track ahead is clear now,
Let’s keep the engines humming.
Don’t change the engineer now,
‘Cause the ‘New World Special’ is a-coming.

Throughout the program, those fighting overseas or laboring at home for victory voiced their fears of a “Third World War,” presumably less likely under the current administration, expressed themselves grateful for Democrat bureaucracy (which, they held, kept the groceries affordable to everyone), or openly attacked a dangerous “amateur” of a Republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, by whom they claimed to have been “torpedoed.” Dewey was argued to have rigged the voting laws of New York State, making it “impossible” for “thousands” to go to the polls and cast their ballots for FDR. Even registered Republicans came out in support of the President, expressing themselves dismayed at or ashamed of the candidate representing their party.

It’s a rousing hour of radio electioneering, concluding with an address by the President—and his prayer. With all the microphones on the Democrats that night, the opposition (even if aided by Dewey’s decimating system) simply had none.

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So Proudly We Hail(ed); or, Movies They Dare Not Make Today

Well, they sure don’t make them as they used to. I don’t know how many times you have uttered that line, indifferent to the rules of grammar, whether as a lament or a sigh of relief. Take So Proudly We Hail, for instance, the 1943 war drama I watched last night. Until I decided that doing so would be rather too self-indulgent (considering my love for a certain leading lady), I thought of discussing it yesterday, corresponding with the anniversary of the radio version in which stars Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, and Veronica Lake reprised their original roles (along with the long forgotten Sonny Tufts) on the Lux Radio Theatre.

So Proudly We Hail is a well-crafted, surprisingly unsentimental, and highly engaging melodrama about US army nurses serving their country in the battlefield that was the Philippines during the Second World War; as such, it is also unabashed wartime propaganda. I do not think that any producer in Hollywood today would dare to remake it, say, with Julia Roberts, Winona Rider, and Scarlett Johansson (to pick three contemporary actresses approximately of the respective ages of the three original leads). Why not? Allow me to speculate.

There’s a war on, lest we forget; but it doesn’t seem to reunite the West (or any Western nation) against a clearly defined enemy. Instead, we find ourselves in a war on terror—and the terror appears to be as much the cause as it is the effect, violence and violations being brought on by so-called anti-terrorist measures that continue to provoke it.

This is not a time in which to express pride in one’s country or its elected representatives; and those making decisions in Hollywood today seem least inclined foster a sense of loyalty and regard. I don’t think, though, that widespread dissatisfaction and skepticism—a critical attitude only the thoughtless or unthinking ever entirely suppress—account for the current rejection of propaganda drama.

As the reception of Clint Eastwood’s latest film suggests, people are not lining up to see movies with a political message. They might accept a controversial documentary inviting us to take sides; but they no longer appreciate being manipulated or swayed by dramatic fare. Propaganda is a dirty word these days, dirtier by far than advertising, which is still being tolerated.

However much we might groan, we tend to allow the promotion of a product, but get squeamish when it comes to the advancement of an idea. Corporations have taken a prominent place in—or even taken the place of—the government; and when peddling products, advertisers appeal to the individual, whereas propaganda seeks to motivate the community. It simply pays to stimulate division and selfishness, a targeting strategy generally marketed as choice. There no longer is a public, it seems; there are only people; and for advertising purposes, several million of these supposed individuals will do.

Unlike today’s conflicts, the Second World War was not endorsed by big business; companies were not eager to surrender sales or give up the production of consumer goods for a nation that needed to consolidate precious resources. So, I don’t think we’ll get to see Scarlett Johansson grabbing a hand grenade and blowing herself up for the sake of her country (as Veronica Lake’s character does) or picking up an empty can of soda for the benefit of the planet. Instead, she’ll grab that soft drink or lipstick or pair of designer shoes and fight for what she believes in . . . or what those placing the products in her hands want us to believe.

I did not grow up in a country or an age in which it was easy or felt right to be proud of one’s people; and, watching a film like So Proudly We Hail I sense that to be a profound loss. We so proudly hail individuality these days because corporations hand out the flags and buttons to match, knowing that we are at our most receptive and vulnerable when we are at our greediest.

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Carl Sandburg Makes a Confession

Well, I didn’t get a pumpkin to carve and, the weather excepting, there is no sign of Halloween around the house. As a German, I did not grow up with the custom; before they realized how to make a killing by marketing this un-holy day, something that did not happen until the 1990s, my country(wo)men skipped the dressing up, parading, and trick-or-treating and went straight to the cemetery to remember the dead, November 1 being a national holiday.

Halloween struck me as an odd mixture of carnival (when Germans do put on costumes to make a spectacle of themselves) and the feast of St. Martins (when, on November 11, their children light lanterns and go caroling from door to door begging for candy); except that, rather than symbolically splitting St. Martin’s mantle in the spirit of charity, some folks in Hollywood decided it was high time to slice open a few random souls in the spirit of Friday, the 13th.

At any rate, donning fanciful guises, stepping into the crowd to be gawked at or approaching the public in hopes of a swift, sweet and easy pay-off is not just a Halloween tradition. It pretty much sums up the advertising racket. On this day, 31 October, in 1939, American poet Carl Sandburg went so far as to assume the role of a quiz show panelist to spread the word about his latest work.

Mind you, that show was Information, Please!, the most longhair or highbrow of all the popular quiz programs on the air. As I argued in a previous entry in the broadcastellan journal, Information, Please! had an ingenious formula that attracted both to the erudite and the illiterate, since questions were sent in by the audience for the express purpose of stumping the so-called experts.

The regular (and rather generously remunerated) panelists—Franklin P. Adams, John Kieran, and Oscar Levant (all pictured above)—were joined by a special guest expert, a noted author, film director, explorer, politician or actor. Would the public succeed in cutting those luminaries down to size? Would these articulate, gifted celebrities falter behind the microphone? That, along with the ensuing banter, accounted for the appeal and success of the program.

The people? No, Mr. Sandburg did not seem to mind them. Indeed, he was so eager to present himself as one of the commoners that the first question posed to him by master of ceremonies Clifton Fadiman, the literary critic of the New Yorker, extracted somewhat of a confession: “What notorious living American author was thrown out on account of his ignorance of arithmetic when he tried to break into the West Point Military Academy?” “Should I answer ‘me’ or give my name?” the poet inquired and, when encouraged to recount the incident, affirmed that he was indeed the “notorious” one, his attempt to enter West Point having been foiled some forty years earlier, back in 1899.

A little while later in the program, Sandburg is again given a question relating to his own life when asked whether he knew of a poem (a word used loosely, since even advertising slogans were deemed acceptable as answers) featuring a description or mere mention of fog. “Little ridiculous,” Sandburg chuckled with a note of embarrassment in his voice. After all, he was being prompted to recall one of his own works describing just such a weather condition (“Fog”):

The fog comes
on little cat feet. 

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Again, the author let listeners in on a secret: it had taken him just “about five minutes” to compose those lines—yet, to his professed astonishment, they were not only the best known in all his works, but practically the only ones the general public could recall.

While managing to mention John Wilkes Booth in one of their answers, another nod to Sandburg’s Lincoln biography, panelists did rather poorly that night, failing to recall how the regretful Miss Otis met her death or from which ports Gulliver embarked on his travels, and struggling to come up with five flowers with “masculine names,” Mr. Sandburg advancing “frankincense.” I gather this bit of silliness might have been a relief to its author, considering that there weren’t as many occasions to plant a pun in a serious (and eventually Pulitzer Prize-winning) history than there are opportunities to plant a plug for such a tome in a quiz program.

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As Nazis Hang in Nuremberg, a Playwright Points at an "Empty Noose"

Imagine tuning in to one of your favorite mystery programs and being greeted instead by the following message:

“Columbia and its affiliated stations present a special broadcast for Wednesday, October 16, 1946, a day that will long be remembered at Nuremberg and throughout the world.”

It was a reminder that criminals greater than those generally found in detective fiction had been brought to justice; yet the broadcast that followed was far from celebratory.

The play was “The Empty Noose,” heard on the evening of that memorable day on which eleven masterminds of Nazi Germany’s crimes against humanity were being executed. The verdict had been announced two weeks prior to the date set for the hanging, giving writer Arnold Perl time to construct with care this provocative memorial, a document in sound that opens with the naming of the sentenced: “Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Sauckel, Jodl, Streicher and Seyss-Inquart.” Of course, only ten were actually hanged that day, leaving the eleventh noose empty.

“You should have seen them die,” the play’s “Eyewitness” addresses the listener,

seen all but one who arranged it by his own schedule [that is, Goering, who committed suicide] walk in the early morning of a gray cold day while most of Europe slept; seen them hanged one by one in the gymnasium under the electric lights. The ghastly ten who were left behind to where the hangman waited. Like those who watched, he knew, there was no payment large enough for what they had done.

Does the violent end of such violent men constitute the end of an era of violence? Or is this hanging little more than a gesture? Is it a time chiefly to rejoice and hope, or to reflect and doubt? These are the questions raised by Perl’s commemorative docudrama whose action unfolds in the eyewitness reports of those who had experienced life under fascist rule and were now attending the trial and executions.

“The Empty Noose,” like Norman Corwin’s “On a Note of Triumph,” refuses to cheer at the apparent victory for democracy, resists uttering or encouraging as much as a sigh of relief. After all, it was not Goering’s noose to which the title of Perl’s piece refers. His “Noose” was reserved for all those fascists who survived, living beyond remorse or reform, those denying the holocaust while harbouring thoughts of genocide, including those active in present-day Germany’s re-emerging Nationalist movement and those, elsewhere, tearing down liberties under cover of democracy.

“What didn’t we do at Nuremberg?” Perl’s play dares to ask, confronting listeners weary of conflict and eager to move on:

Well, that empty noose is still swinging, and it’s still empty. Until it’s used, until it’s choked the life out of Fascism—so far as I’m concerned this is no time, no place—there is no reason—to sit back relieved and calm. Tonight at Nuremberg—and tomorrow—there will still be one round coil of rope ready to be used. It’s going to take a lot of self-examining, a lot of faith in what we believe in, a lot of willingness to fight for it, a lot of speaking out, for all of us, here and everywhere, before that empty noose is filled, and we can stand up and say we have won, we have conquered.

In short—a message the play suggests rather than states plainly lest it promote fatalistic passivity—never.

Non-visual theater is the theater of ideas. While it has rarely been permitted to do so, it can dispense with traditional storytelling, with the Aristotelean dictum that there must be a beginning, middle, and end to any drama. It can raise questions, doubts, and awareness by raising voices and leaving interstices of ambiguous silence. It can resist dramatized exemplars and deal instead with ideological concepts simply by giving them utterance. And it can dangle an empty noose in the mind of its audience, a looming question mark in one’s own head more forceful and than the image of a rope around the neck of another. That image, after all, is a reminder of a time supposedly bygone, a reminder that, once again, someone else was made to stick his neck out to pay for our complacency and complicity.

The living breath of the voices on the air create no such conclusive image; instead, they caution us to be mindful, mindful of a present in which, around and within us, freedom and fascism run neck and neck for our future.

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"The Last Survivor" Reflects on Nuclear Holocaust

Well, just how will North Korea react to the threat of “serious repercussions” uttered by the US? What is the nature and extent of the threat? And what is its validity? The current crisis may very well usher in the New Cold War, now that North Korea is said to have tested its first nuclear bomb, a privilege that the US apparently feels compelled and entitled to reserve for itself. Why should any nation intimidating the US with atomic competition feel obliged to heed such a warning? And why should any one second or third or fourth world power (thus labeled and locked in some position of dependency according to a Western system of classification) abandon its scientific efforts, hostile or otherwise, considering how well stocked American arsenals remain these days?

I had hoped atomic grandstanding went out with the Reagan administration—and partly as a result of that period of negotiation. Now the heirs of the “Fat Man” are reclaiming the throne in the reign of terror, a reign that, however imaginary or overstated, began some sixty years ago. On this day, 11 October, in 1949, nearly two months after Communist Russia managed to copy the “Fat Man”—stolen from the US by one of my compatriots, German physicist Klaus Fuchs—to become the world’s second nuclear power, American listeners were treated to an apocalyptic vision of life after the final fallout.

“The Last Survivor,” written, produced, and directed by the Mysterious Traveler team of Robert A. Arthur and David Kogan (who, at any rate, got the credit for it), is not one of those science fiction fantasies set in the near or distant future. Instead, the play creates a dystopia set in the here and now—the here and now of the less than peace-assured post Second World War era.

Back in 1947, the chief of an experimental rocket section stationed at an army air base in St. Augustine, New Mexico, is being offered the opportunity to build and man a spaceship running on the kind of power that brought down Japan. Working with one of the scientists who helped to develop the atomic bomb, the narrator and eponymous “Last Survivor” agrees to assist in demonstrating the “peaceful use of atomic energy.”

The rocket reaches Mars and the mission proceeds according to schedule. Upon their return, however, the space travelers are greeted by a horrific site, watched and commented on from above. The world to which they had hoped to return is going up in flames. During their two-year absence, atomic energy had once again been weaponized, this time to wage a war to end not only all wars, but all peaceful co-existence on the planet.

The nuclear blasts very nearly destroy the rocket; only a single scientist remains to tell the tale. His last words, addressed at anyone listening—at no one in particular or no one at all—are more haunting and provocative than any CGI trickery achieved in Hollywood movies:

I am alone now, sitting here staring at the scanning screen; and as I look at that burning, unrecognizable planet once called Earth, the same question keeps running through my mind. What happened? And why? Why did the earth explode in fire? Was there anything that I [. . .] might have done to prevent that all-consuming Holocaust? And I know that as long as I, the last survivor, live, I’ll keep asking myself, why did it happen? Why?

Unlike so many radio thrillers of the late 1940s and early ’50s, “The Last Survivor” does not exploit its premise to advance an anti-Communist agenda. It does not ask, let alone state, how this atomic war started or who started it. Instead, its concluding monologue—the monologue of an isolated speaker in a world beyond dialogue—suggests collective guilt and individual responsibility when it comes to our reliance on or complacency about decisions that affect the future of our planet.

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Digitally Overmastered: Death of a President

Well, what is your weapon of choice when it comes to making a point? Last night’s television premiere of Death of a President went so far as to fake the assassination of George W. Bush to comment on the civil liberties debate in the current climate of so-called anti-terrorism. Gabriel Range’s controversial film is a shock-u-drama worthy of an Orson Welles or an Arch Oboler, who, with “The War of the Worlds” and “Chicago, Germany” (mentioned here) did on the radio in the late 1930s and early 1940s what Death of a President renders concrete with digital precision: a dark vision of the corruption and collapse of what we have come to think of as civilization.

It took more than a bullet and some digital trickery to get this point across; indeed, the minutes leading to the killing of the president and the deadly assault itself struck me as a pointless exercise in elaborate and laboriously executed fakery.

While the assassination plot unfolded in flashbacks, accompanied by commentaries from various sources involved or caught up in its investigation, I kept asking myself why the death of President Bush (rather than any generic substitute) was desirable to the makers of this film; and, unable to arrive at an immediate answer, whether there was any point to this literal approach of shooting down an iconic figure that is being shot down so often—and not without wit or reason—by pundits and pollsters alike.

Was Range’s effort the cinematic equivalent of a carnival shooting range where Bush could be brought down by simulated armament rather than salient arguments, all with the spectator’s understanding that it amounts to mere show, not an actual showdown? Wouldn’t it be more meaningful to protest or debate instead of indulging in such imaginary exploits?

It would hardly be justifiable to mow down a standing president for the sake of sheer sensationalism. Yet unlike “Abrogate,” Larry Gelbart’s futuristic radio satire on the Bush years broadcast on BBC radio earlier this year (and discussed here), Death of a President is not a crass attempt at revenge fantasy; nor does it stir the emotions with lurid melodrama.

Indeed, I was disconcertingly detached from the spectacle itself. Less than captivated by the scenes leading up to the crime, my scrutinizing eyes registered that the trees looked quite bare to suggest Chicago in mid-October, 19 October 2007 having been chosen as the reappointed one’s appointed hour of departure. Was it proper for me to be counting gaffes as the film counted down the final moments in the life of a world leader?

The assassination itself, as it turns out, is merely a premise, the hook for a compelling debate about the state of post-9/11 political reasoning and makeshift moral righteousness, as well as the consequent risking of individual freedoms in the dealing with global terrorism. If some unidentified assassin were to shoot the president of the United States, the film invited me to think, what assumptions would I have about the perpetrator?

Do the media—or does the government—create or at least favor politically advantageous suspects? Are we not complicit in this hunt for the politically correct culprit? We know that both the press and the president are capable not only of inciting wars but of inventing them. Now, if the killer could be made out to be Syrian, would this provide the US with an opportunity to stage further wars in the Middle East while curtailing the liberties of its diverse citizenry that it claims to be so determined to defend?

Death of a President is a twisted whodunit; but as it fakes such momentous news, it raises questions about the act of fakery, its uses and consequences as we find ourselves rushing to injustice and leaping to deadly conclusions. The character it assassinates is decidedly our own.

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Loaded Trifles: Killing Time, Wasting Life, and Assassinating George W. Bush

Well, “It doesn’t matter, does it?” That is a pivotal and oft-repeated line in Pulitzer Prize winning novelist J. P. Marquand’s Thank You, Mr. Moto (1936), the aforementioned thriller I finally put down tonight. Does it matter? The novel, I mean. Was it just a way of passing some dull hours before, in a few minutes from now, the Death of a President—the assassination of George W. Bush, no less—is being televised here in Britain, a media event you may look at as just another opportunity to “kill time”? I have always been revolted by the phrase “killing time.” Sure, I take in plenty of popular culture; but I do not consider my engagement with such alleged trifles to be quite so destructive. Instead of getting away with murder, I try to come away with something rather more meaningful and life affirming.

Last night, after watching another instalment of the four-part adaptation of Jane Eyre, one more glossy take on the classic novel (previously reviewed here) to which I am warming against my better judgment of the original, I had a glance at Reader, I Married Him. It is a documentary that borrows its title from the most famous line of Jane Eyre—the very line denied me by this latest adaptation, since those at work on visualizing the novel decided to drop the first-person narration that served actresses like Ingrid Bergman, Madeleine Carroll, or Deborah Kerr so well in radio versions of this bold if bogus autobiography.

Now, the common argument for (or against) pageturners like Jane Eyre—and the lesser works inspired by or ransacking it—is that they provide vicarious relief. They allow those reading (or viewing or listening) to leave their restricting bodies and circumstances and become fictional characters who are daring and courageous despite the recognizable shortcomings that enable us to identify with them in the first place.

Escapism is often thought of as beneficial or at any rate innocuous. It gives hope to those who deem themselves beyond escaping, those swallowed up by the mundane and too feeble or frightened to realize that the everyday is all we’ve got. Others contend that this losing oneself in make-believe mainly serves the interests of those who would rather preserve the status quo and encourage alternate realities where everyday life ought to be.

What use is any novel, any film or play, if it only leads away from the present like a cul-de-sac littered with dreams deferred? What can we take away from novels before we put them away to grab another? Is a novel or film or radio play worth our while if it does nothing but help us to while away the hours?

Luckily, I am not the kind of person who is ever bored, even though I might spend an entire day doing what many would think of as nothing at all. Early in adulthood I decided that killing time is a deadly pursuit. I left behind my former self, my miserable nine-to-five job, and turned my back on my native country because such a lethal rejection of life began to disturb and depress me. It roused me to move to the United States, where I learned in time to live for the day rather than wait for a presumably better tomorrow, a period consumed by watching diverting films and reading distracting books.

No, I did not gain this courage from reading any piece of fiction; but since escaping home I have stopped perceiving any work of fiction as being escapist. Unless I put it aside as something not worth my while, I generally manage to find something in cultural pop, however devoid of fizz, that reflects or refreshes me. Making time for such works is no longer a fast getaway but a gradual getting at something. Weaving myself in and out of fictions, I no longer find myself sneaking out of what I think of as my own life.

Now, before I witness the assassination of George W. Bush—which I will not accept as wishful thinking—I am going to share a few lines that I took away from Thank You, Mr. Moto, words be thought of long after the plot and characters have become a blur in the vapor of experience pulverized by time. The first lines are uttered by the American narrator, the second by the one who makes him change his “it doesn’t really matter” attitude toward life:

I could see myself as others may have seen me [. . .] a stranger in a strange country, living in a fool’s Paradise; and I could see myself as something uglier than that.  I could see myself as one of those misfits who cumber the earth, like spoiled children, incapable of adjustment to the life where they were placed and indulging instead in illusory futilities of existence which certainly were no part of life.  I could see myself as one of those unfortunates, unable to face incontrovertible fact, constantly escaping from reality, and at the same time endeavouring to gain applause.  That vision of myself made me lonely, empty.  More than that, it filled me with distaste. 

You can be as much of a fatalist as you like, but don’t forget there are times when you can do something.  There are times when anyone can make fate change a little [. . .].  People may be altered by circumstances but they can alter circumstances too. At any rate I’ve taught you that.

The novel hasn’t exactly taught me anything; but the relevance of these lines, so obviously designed to validate the novel as something other than a time-waster, has not escaped me. They have returned me to my own story, my inescapable past, my retreat abroad, and my current remoteness from much that I once believed to be giving life meaning. You’ve got to be prepared to sustain a few injuries when handling such loaded trifles.