Kevan Manwaring's Blog: The Bardic Academic, page 20
May 23, 2019
Racing the Dark
Riding home on New Year’s Day
in the remaining light
– chasing the dusk –
after a fiery sunset,
an orange band
sandwiched against bars of deepening blue.
Trees, ink blots
stark against the winter sky.
Frozen spectres of shadow
straight out of Rackham,
a Northern European folk tale.
Absolute concentration
on the road, the line of a bend –
scanning for ice, for gravel,
the fata morgana of a diesel slick.
The grit spreaders are out,
leaving a chancy seasoning
on the macadam.
The cold hits you like an icy fist,
encroaching through the layers.
The outriders of frostbite
creeping up the fingertips,
inveigling themselves into toes.
Use of controls –
difficult; reactions –
sluggish. Can survive only
so long – before the
numbness wins.
Mean
while
witnessing the austere beauty
of it all.
Life, stripped to its essence,
its core truth.
Day One of a new decade,
perhaps.
The road unribbons before me,
full of possibility.
To be riding into the future
on New Year’s Day –
steering my destiny.
Turning the wheel
into tomorrow.
The darker it gets,
the brighter we become –
shining in the night.
We race against the dark –
Death always at our heels,
but he won’t win the race
this day.
Kevan Manwaring
From The Immanent Moment, Awen 2012
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Posted to raise funds to help replace my Triumph Legend motorbike, stolen on 14th May.
Please support if you can:
https://www.gofundme.com/manage/stolen-bike-replacement-fund
May 22, 2019
Stone Temple Pilot
By Stoney Littleton Long Barrow 3400-2400 BCE/Easter Monday 2007 CE
The deep silence after a long ride is intoxicating. As opposed to alienating you, riding a motorbike actually sensitizes you to nature. To take off your helmet, feel the wind on your face, the sun on your back after being cooped up and cooking in leathers, to take off your boots and stretch your legs. It’s a wonderful feeling. One experiences the mild euphoria of the pilgrim. It’s a great way to travel and an even better way to arrive. After a tiring return from my trip (wrong turnings, draining energy) I parked up and, crossing the little foot-bridge over the brook, climbed the hill to the long barrow – and just lay back in the grass by the entrance swirling with ammonites, savouring the ecstatic song of the skylark, the deep peace, the ancient landscape, with I, like an astronaut marooned in the Stone Age, sprawled next to it. My time as a bard on a bike had begun.
(written after visiting Stoney Littleton Long Barrow on way back from Mells Daffodil Fayre)
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Posted to raise funds to help replace my Triumph Legend motorbike, stolen on 14th May.
Please support if you can:
https://www.gofundme.com/manage/stolen-bike-replacement-fund
May 20, 2019
Ignition
Summon lightning
and the thunder comes.
Kundalini rpm.
The dragon wakes,
flexes chrome muscles,
snorts hot breath.
A sneer on its lips,
a glint in its eyes.
A flick of its tail
and it’s off.
Trace pattern on retina.
The past a ghost of dust.
A roaring blur –
nothing but wind, vibration, a visor view.
The road unravels,
is devoured.
Finding peace in motion,
fully present –
now, now, now.
Never more alive
than on the cusp of death.
A knife’s edge –
riding the blade.
Into the unseen.
The road unmade
until you ride it into
existence.
From The Immanent Moment, by Kevan Manwaring, Awen 2011
Posted to raise funds to help replace my Triumph Legend motorbike, stolen on 14th May.
Please support if you can:
https://www.gofundme.com/manage/stolen-bike-replacement-fund
May 17, 2019
Extinction Cabaret
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Extinction Cabaret
And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved,
to feel myself beloved on the earth.
Raymond Carver
Come to the Extinction Cabaret and sing the songs of the Earth! Share your praise-poems for our precious planet! Recite your monologues of love and sorrow! Weep and laugh at the madness of it all, and inspire yourself and others to take positive action!
The Extinction Cabaret is a moveable feast – an open hearted open mike which aims to raise awareness, to entertain, and to motivate. Wherever you are you can create your own. Find a venue, invite everyone, and shout it to the world! Be creative! Be bold! Be beautiful! Ask for help to decorate the space. To ensure everyone gets a fair turn keep floor spots tight (e.g. ‘3 minutes for Mother Earth’). Get contributors to sign up on arrival, and maybe have a few ‘special guests’ lined up as well.
Raise donations for Extinction Rebellion, and encourage networking and discussion.
Hold a three minutes silence in the middle of it all, and then ask folk to speak from the heart in a free-form sharing circle (lasting twenty to thirty minutes) – a word, a phrase, prayers, wishes, feelings, concerns … anything that arises.
End with songs of hope and a vow of action – ask everyone to commit to one practical action within 24 hours.
Feel free to customise the format – but do so with love and respect for XR and each other.
Kevan Manwaring, May 2019
Find out more about Extinction Rebellion:
Find out about creative responses to the Climate Crisis:
Culture Declares Emergency
May 16, 2019
The Fairy Gathering – a review
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Soundpost Singing Weekend, Dungworth 10-12 May, 2019
The fantasy of the fairy world offers escape to a place of light and beauty, of endless food and drink, of laughter and happiness, where we can find those we thought we lost forever… Apart from the endless food and drink bit this pretty much sum up The Fairy Gathering, which was held over a sunny May weekend in the charming South Yorkshire village of Dungworth, situated dramatically in a fiddler’s elbow of hills on the edge of Sheffield. This was the 9th Soundpost Singing Weekend, which began in 2011 as a folk music community outreach initiative. Each year there has been a different focus, and this year the theme was: Fairies! The weekend provided a showcase for the inspiring ‘Modern Fairies’ AHRC-funded research project instigated by feisty folksinger (Dr) Fay Hield based at the University of Sheffield – a year-long multi-modal investigation into the Fairy Tradition with a remit to find new ways to engage modern audiences. In Nick Fury mode, Dr Fay recruited a dozen top creative-critical practitioners – writers, singers, musicians, artists, academics, animators, and animateurs (a kind of ‘Folk Superheroes Assemble!’) – and there followed a series of research meetings, sharings, and fecund, exploratory, practice-based research ‘happenings’, in Oxford, Gateshead, Sheffield, and now Dungworth – a free-rolling bardic Brigadoon, or Temporary Autonomous Zone. Unusually, the process was not driven by the expectation of some final ‘product’, although the resulting ‘works-in-progress’ have been of an unsurprisingly high standard, culminating in a multi-media residency at The Sage in Gateshead, where the Modern Fairies extravaganza was unveiled in all its glory.
Participants of the Fairy Gathering got to enjoy a flavour of that in the Saturday concert, when half of the Modern Fairies team performed a selection of work in the village school (aptly, the ‘Green Hall’). And throughout the weekend those attending the rich programme of talks, workshops, and singalongs, got to hear about the evolution of the project, and hear tantalising samples. It was like walking through ‘Goblin Market’, and being enticed by calls of ‘Come buy! Come buy!’ It was impossible to resist, to not be the wayward sibling covered in berry juice. The hub of the Gathering was the village hall. Registration was by a cloutie tree; and many a good connection and conversation took place over a cuppa, and a slice of pizza or cake. The team were helpful and everyone was friendly and approachable. There seemed to be no hierarchy, no elitism. The famous folkies and authors rubbed shoulders with riff-raff like me. The pervading atmosphere was good-natured, good-humoured, and even slightly irreverent. Clearly there were a few naughty fairies around to stop things getting too serious. Yet there were some lively discussions about the existence and nature of fairies, about ‘fairy loss and the environment’, and about project management, research, and audience engagement. Song, of course, framed it all – the weekend kicked off with a ‘tunes and songs’ session in the Royal (home of the famous ‘Royal Traditions’ monthly singalongs), and continued throughout the next couple of days in different venues and configurations. It was hard not to succumb – to pitch in and have a go. Emboldened by a small ‘over to you’ song session in Padley Farm I did just that – belting out a ballad or two in the pub that evening. Amid such talented company it was a scary thing to do, especially as the pub was rather rowdy (filled with Saturday night boozers) but everyone was so supportive, and it felt good to have a go (whatever it sounded like!). As an experienced storyteller and poet I am used to performing in front of all kinds of audiences, but singing in public was a step outside my comfort zone: a challenge I set myself. But that was the heart of the weekend, and the Modern Fairies project – creative encounters at the edge of one’s practice. Like protagonists in a fairy ballad or tale, the magic happens in the chancy zone of borders and thresholds, when we take a step beyond the fields we know – taking a risk, enticed by the maddening lure of the Fae. We may return utterly changed, or not at all – but we shall be haunted all of our lives if we do not heed the call. The Fairy Rade is abroad, and will we sit and watch them pass by into the goldening twilight?
I for one am glad I followed the wild music into the hills.
It reminded me of an important deeper level to reality (and a lightness of heart, and yesness to life) that is easily lost in the imperative to ‘earn a living’ – a soul connection to the land, to the ancestors, and to subtle dimensions of existence, which may seem ethereal but are an intrinsic part of the Great Re-enchantment which is needed more than ever if we are to avoid becoming future fairies, retreating to the ‘Hollow Hills’ of mass extinction and leaving behind an unpeopled and denuded Earth stripped of its bright ecophony of biodiversity.
Now more than ever, we need to keep singing, sharing, and creating community.
Kevan Manwaring 15 May 2019
May 9, 2019
Creative Communities
Hawkwood College – heart of the Stroud eco-system
Over the weekend I revisited my home of 8 years, Stroud – a small town in Gloucestershire that has attracted lots of media attention recently for being associated with two of the founders of Extinction Rebellion, and with Polly Higgins – the lawyer who campaigned for ‘Ecocide’ to be ratified as international law. I only left in January to start full-time employment in the East Midlands, but hadn’t really had a chance to go back properly during the hectic Spring term. Only with that out of the way, and an Easter break under my belt, did I feel able to ‘come up for air’. Returning to Stroud after four months felt like a chance to take stock, and also to appreciate what I have had to leave behind. I am enjoying life in my new home city (Leicester), but I do miss the hills of the Cotswolds, and the special friends I have in Stroud. It will take some time to establish anything close to resembling the kind of network I have there. There is something in the water, it seems, for Stroud boasts a remarkably creative community – brimming with artists, writers, musicians, print-makers, publishers, sculptors, and crafts-people; as well as a lively mix of eco-campaigners and radicals as the recent news has highlighted. The weekend offered a powerful, visceral testimony to this incredible coalescence, with the memorial celebrations of two major figures in the town back-to-back: Polly Higgins on Friday; and poet and therapist, Jay Ramsay, on Saturday. Both events packed out St Laurence’s Church in the centre of town, and both events centred around beautiful, moving ceremonies of remembrance and multi-modal tributes. Many folk attended both, but in the one I attended and contributed to – for my friend Jay – I was blown away by the calibre of contribution (superb poetry, song, music, speech, and anecdote), and by the excellent co-ordination. What could have been a sprawling, indulgent ordeal was a tightly co-ordinated showcase, with very little over-running, and no egos. Everyone did it for Jay – and a gestalt quality was created: something bigger than all of us. It was profoundly moving and beautiful, and a tribute as much to Stroud as to the life that was honoured. I heard similar things about Polly’s event – including an incredible thousand-strong procession from St Laurence’s to Slad, which blocked the road as though it was a mini-Extinction Rebellion action. Life and art stops traffic in Stroud. While in town I caught up with very dear old friends in their lovely homes – enjoying their hospitality, companionship, and conversation; then on Bank Holiday Monday I dropped in on the annual Hawkwood College open day. This lovely, colourful, creative gathering offers a showcase of the Adult Education centre’s eclectic programme, which I contributed to, as resident in the town (running my Wild Writing workshops, and organising the Bard of Hawkwood contest, which took place at the Open Day, four years running). The grounds of the college are a verdant oasis, charged with the energies and care of the biodynamic agriculture practised, and it is especially lovely in the late Spring – a perfect backdrop to the May Pole dancing, stalls, music, talks, and workshops. It was poignant to revisit my old haunts – including favourite walks such as around Haresfield Beacon – and to think how it had all been part of my life. I have moved on, and I don’t regret moving, but I feel I can appreciate this remarkable community even more, with a little bit of critical distance. I had a productive time in Stroud – clearly some of that ‘woke’ fecundity rubbed off on me – and made some special connections: ones that will outlast geographical division, for true friendship knows no distance. No doubt there are other radical, creative ‘nodes’ around the country (Frome, Totnes, and Hebden Bridge to name some I know of) but there is always the potential for anywhere to become an emergent hub. All it takes is a cluster of kindred spirits to kickstart something. Sometimes it takes just one bold pioneer to take the initiative: sticking that flyer up, posting that social media notice, to draw folk out of the woodwork. Life is never ‘elsewhere’ – it is always right under your feet.
May 1, 2019
The Monkey Wrench Gang – a retro review
The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey – a retro review
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This iconic, influential novel originally published in 1975 inspired a whole generation of environmental campaigners – in particular Earth First!,, but also the ‘Pixie’ road-protesters of the 90s – and in the light of the recent wave of protests by Extinction Rebellion, Culture Declares Emergency, and Climate Strikes/ #FridaysforFuture (started by the inspiring 16 year schoolgirl from Sweden, Greta Thunberg), and the whole schlew of forthcoming protests (e.g. Earth Strike on 27th September), it seems timely to revisit it. Although this recent activity is impressive and impactful, it is good to remember environmental campaigning has been going on for a long time. Yes, it may be argued that it hasn’t been effective enough/gone far enough; that it is imperative to declare a Climate Emergency and take immediate action – absolutely. But the awareness we have now is largely due to careful, time-consuming science, and the tireless campaigning of numerous NGOs, grassroots initiatives, and individuals – often unsung, under the radar, but all adding the long-term effort. This latest spike in activity and media coverage hasn’t come from nowhere, and current eco-protesters stand on the shoulders of giants: Henry David Thoreau, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, Annie Dillard, John Muir, Peter Scott, Roger Deakin, and many, many more. One of these, it could be argued, is Edward Abbey, whose book – a mere novel – has cast a long shadow. A rip-roaring anti-establishment satire and edgy eco-thriller, it seems wantonly disreputable in comparison to such esteemed company. It relates the triumphs, tribulations, and misadventures of a group of four self-elected eco-protesters (the wayward Dr Sarvis; his sometime companion, the Jewish New Yorker, Ms Azzbug; explosive Vietnam veteran George Hayduke; and wilderness guide and Jack Mormon, Seldom Seen Smith), who, over the course of a boat trip, hatch a (rough) plan to cause as much havoc as possible to disrupt the decimation of the epic canyon country of the American West. What begins as a series of relatively minor symbolic protests (the torching of billboards, the damaging of engines) quickly escalate into some spectacular destruction (the mass wrecking of whole road building operations; factories; and bridges). We may not condone any of the miscreant behaviour – it goes way beyond non-violent direct action when guns and bombs are deployed – but we can thrill to read of the colourful escapades of this modern day outlaw gang. Abbey clearly draws upon the Western genre, as well as the chase thriller (e.g. John Buchan; Geoffrey Houseshold), but his punchy, over-packed prose has more in common with Hunter S. Thompson and Chuck Palahniuk. Purists would no doubt dismiss the gang outright for, among other eco-crimes, littering – calling them hypocrites. But they are not meant to be E.C. (ecologically correct), but fully-rounded, deeply flawed characters. Abbey was not trying to write a manual for budding eco-warriors, signalling his virtue to the world – but write an entertaining novel which makes a point. It certainly crackles with an angry fire at the destruction of the remaining American wilderness, but it seems intent to be more provocative than coercive or corrective. It does not seek to offer a blueprint for a better way of living – but its wild energy and excoriating critique of the ‘System’, still can inspire to this day*. But don’t follow it literally. As Abbey, the sardonic trickster, himself warns: ‘Anyone who takes this book seriously will be shot. Anyone who does not take it seriously will be buried alive by a Mitsubishi bulldozer.’
Kevan Manwaring
*Abbey’s novel is a brilliant example of how the arts can engage with the environmental movement. FFI see Culture Declares Emergency:
April 28, 2019
Getting There First
Does getting there first matter?
Any writer at some point in their career would have experienced the awkward, irritating and sometimes exasperating phenomenon of ‘Darwin-Wallace Syndrome’ (that’s what I’m calling it, anyway – unless someone has got there first!). There you are, slogging away on your magnum opus for years, when you hear of a book/film/TV show, etc, that is coming out which shares your title, or even worse, your concept. The higher profile author with the mainstream publisher has ‘got there first’ – at least in the public perception. When or if (it is never certain – which people who blithely ask ‘So when is it coming out then?’ don’t realize…) your work sees the light of day it’ll be probably perceived as either: 1. Jumping on the bandwagon; 2. Unoriginal; or 3. Blatant plagiarism. Protest too much and folk will just think ‘sour grapes’. Galling to say the least. But don’t worry – you’re in good company! Alfred Wallace arrived independently at his theory of evolution, but because Darwin was the first to publish (The Origin of the Species) popular history remembers him as the ‘man who got there first’. In truth, with a lot of these iconic landmarks of history – the conquering of Mount Everest; the first lunar landing – it was indubitably a team effort. Sir Edmund Hillary could not have made it without his guide, Nepalese Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay; Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first to land on the moon – Neil may have made the ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’, but he couldn’t have got there without Buzz next to him in the Eagle lander, or their fellow astronaut, Michael Collins, in the orbiter – their ticket to ride back to terra firma. The obsession with ‘getting there first’ is very much a byproduct of Neoliberalism – competition may encourage innovation and excellence, but it also drives rapacious expansionism: the Colonialist mindset (which we are living in the bloodstained, carbon hangover of). And the truth is nothing worthy is achieved in isolation – even the ‘daring’ solo explorers often leave behind a supportive partner looking after the kids, pets, household, business affairs, etc, or rely upon numerous people along the way. Getting there first is a sports ethic (in some sports anyway), not an arts ethic (although competition can no doubt exist in the arts too). It is a race mentality, rather than what could be called a grace mentality. Yet it can be hard to be graceful when you see ‘your’ title appear in the media (but one must still try). Philosophical issues aside (are such instances evidence of something in the zeitgeist, even in a platonic realm, which different artistes have tapped into independently – a case of simultaneous invention?), and discounting the many examples of deliberate ‘copycat’ products (e.g. the frequent Hollywood movie doubles), it is more often than not just a pain in the arse (especially to the ‘little guy’ without the marketing budget).
Recently I reviewed a fabulous book by Robert Macfarlane called Underland: a Deep Time Journey – painfully aware a very good friend of mine had worked years on his novel Deep Time (which at least was published four years ago). And only yesterday I saw that a film has been released called Thunder Road – which is the name of my Viking/Biker mash-up novel, completed last year but actually conceived and started back in 2011. Of course, it’s the name of a classic song by The Boss, from way back in 1975, which I was indirectly homaging (biking and rock’n’roll go fist in glove). There is no copyright on titles, but use anything too recent and it looks derivative. I had reckoned 45 years was a safe enough ‘distance’. I still do, and I don’t intend to change the title. I know I had finished the novel before I heard of this (unrelated) movie. The same with other times this has happened, e.g. when I heard that Philip Pullman had titled the second volume of ‘The Book of Dust’, The Secret Commonwealth, as I approached the completion of my Creative Writing Ph.D., which dramatised the writing of the Rev. Robert Kirk’s monograph, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies (1691) in novel format (The Knowing – a Fantasy), a project I had been working on since 2012, culminating in the website: www.thesecretcommonwealth.com which shares the bulk of my research and creative output (except the full text of the novel, which awaits to be published). Because I am not a major author with a good agent the journey to publication is often a long uncertain one. Still, one must persist. And bear in mind that unless the ‘rival title’ is in the same genre, about the same subject, the similarity will be cosmetic. Often there can be numerous artefacts sharing the same title. All one can do is make one’s own effort as good as possible, and hope posterity will be kind. As with the runners slogging around the London marathon route today (and in other marathons around the world) it is not getting there first that counts, but taking part, and finishing.
Underland – a review
UNDERLAND: a Deep Time Journey – by Robert MacFarlane
a review by Kevan Manwaring
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This remarkable book, which MacFarlane has been working on for about a decade has now irrupted, like an underground river, into broad daylight – astonishing us with its force and volume of news from the underworld. Underland: a deep time journey is a speleological journey into some of the world’s most astonishing underground spaces and systems. It charts a katabasis through its triadic structure (First Chamber; Second Chamber; Third Chamber) – a mythically resonant dramatic arc of descent, testing, and return. A guide of impressive interdisciplinary erudition, insight, and humanity, MacFarlane undertakes a kind of hero’s journey – in Britain, Europe and the North – while clearly emphasising the knowledge, skill, daring, and down-to-earthness of his guides. Most of the chapters recount meetings with remarkable people in remarkable places, and thus deconstructs the notion of the sole, male explorer striking Caspar David Friedrich type hero poses on lonely crags, or above fathomless abysses. This is a book about relationships, complex systems, interdependence, and consequences. Nothing is isolation. Everything is interconnected – mycorrhizzal networks of mutuality. The human is always present in nature and vice versa. MacFarlane parses the anthropocentric engagement with the underworld into three categories of usage – to shelter, yield, dispose:
The same three tasks recur across cultures and epochs: to shelter what is precious, to yield what is valuable, and to dispose of what is harmful.
The author explores iterations of these in some familiar and obscure places – from the Mendip Hills in Somerset, to the catacombs of Paris, the war-torn karst landscape of the Adriatic coastline, to the glacial fields of Greenland and the nuclear storage facilities of Finland. These extraordinary vertiginous deep-dives are framed by a fictionalised opening which serves as our own access point – a kind of fictive portal – into the subterranean. The literary and mythical haunt the scientific, geographical, and historical layers throughout – although MacFarlane does not make heavy weather of the intertextuality, being a sharp-eyed and cool observer. Not that his prose is cold, technical, or sterile. He brings alive each experience in a gripping, visceral way. Some sections are overwhelmingly intense and claustrophobic. This travel/nature-writing/memoir/cultural history is as riveting as any well-written thriller. At times it evokes the Sublime of the Romantic, John Martin’s apocalyptic vistas, and Tolkien’s Mines of Moria; at other times it conveys a chilling science-fictional aesthetic. The book is uncompromising in its clear-eyed assessment of the Anthropocene, of humankind’s unquestionable impact upon the planetary ecosystem and geological record. This is a book every Climate Change denialist should read. Yet it goes beyond a kind of literary activism to appeal to the most humanistic instincts – of caring for one’s children, grandchildren and future generations, about being deeply aware of the legacies we leave behind. It is a sobering time-capsule, a message in a bottle from the future – like the teleological warning on the Waste Isolation Pilot Project in New Mexico, designed to communicate the extreme biohazard of the nuclear waste stored there in a 100,000 years time:
We are going to tell you what lies underground, why you should not disturb this place, and what may happen if you do.
This could be the premise of the book, although it is more than just a series of cautionary tales. It is imbued with profound wonder, appreciation, and praise-singing for the natural world, for human courage, and ingenuity. MacFarlane returns into the light with tales to set your hairs on end, but also with a sense of hope – a hand held out in friendship, in aid, in love across generations, across time.
Published by Hamish Hamilton, 2 May 2019
NB this is an extract. The full version of this review is to be published in TEXT: the journal of writing and writing courses in the Autumn. http://www.textjournal.com.au/
April 17, 2019
Stuporheroes
Superheroes should come with an Age Warning: For 5 to 15 year olds only.
or The Infantilisation of the Adult Cinema-goer
Recently I was sorting through some old comics to sell (part of a protracted campaign against my ‘pile of denial’, which I have been lugging from house to house for years now…) and smiled fondly as I leafed through the fragile, garish titles. It was like looking down a well – one that was forty years deep. Back when I was a child, growing up in the Rad-Lands of the East Midlands, part of the ‘boring dystopia’ (to nick Mark Fisher’s phrase) of Thatcherite Britain, comic books seemed to be the most exciting thing in the world (which tells you how exciting my world was…). I wanted to be a comic artist &/or writer (knowing local hero Alan Moore was an inspiration) and enthusiastically worked my way to art college. Foundation was fab, but Fine Art unfortunately acted as aversion therapy, disillusioning me about the art world (obsessed back then with wankily solipsistic concept art and the cult of the ‘Brit art’ personality). However, it did turn me into a writer (non, je ne regrette rien). Over the last few years I have observed with amused bafflement at the advent of the Superhero Movie (back when I was a feckless youth it was always a hit-and-miss affair – more often than not, a miss, though Donner’s Superman and Burton’s Batman were thrilling to see the first time around). From being strictly a Geek niche, the Superhero ‘genre’ (if you can dignify it as such) has come to dominant Hollywood. Nobody was expecting the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU, aka ‘some films about spandex’) to become the billion dollar juggernaut that it has mutated into – like some oversized green angry infant… As an adolescent I would have been excited to see big screen movie versions of Stan Lee’s (and Jack Kirby’s; and Steve Ditko’s; and the rest) four colour pantheon. But … then I grew up. Got interested in other stuff – novels with decent writing, deep characterisation, complexity of plot; movies that explore the human condition in a nuanced, non-essentialist way – shit like that. I realised the world was infinitely more complex than the Manichean mummery of the comic books. Some of the better, more ambitious ‘graphic novels’ did start to tackle this (Maus; Watchmen; The Dark Knight Returns; Love and Rockets…), and nowadays there is a whole thriving industry in ‘graphic memoir’. Boundary-pushing books like Bryan Talbot’s Alice in Sunderland or Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics (and many others) show what can be done with the medium. The comic strip is an infinitely adaptable form. It doesn’t have to be dumbed down, obsessed with body types, super-tight outfits, and salacious poses. Yet that ‘Charles Atlas’ aesthetic and ideology of comic book is dominating cinema (when so many other great works of sequential art could be adapted), and along with it the questionable power discourses and politics (it is interesting to note America obsesses about superheroes just at a time when its status as a ‘Superpower’ faces an existential threat: it doesn’t like being the weedy kid getting sand kicked in its face by the musclehead Putins of this world). Superhero Movies often assimilate the cosmetics of rebellion, of celebrating ‘difference’, and the self-determining individual, while actually all they are doing is: selling popcorn and increasing share-holder profit. Like the ‘V for Vendetta’ mask now owned by Warner Brothers, the aesthetics of protest have been co-opted by the multinationals to accumulate wealth. The MCU – now owned by that ultimate iteration of the Neoliberalist ‘Borg’, Disney – is the ‘perfect’ example of that cynical commercial imperative: marketplace dominance through transmedia storytelling. The ‘Avengers’ superhero team merely originated as a way to sell more comics. Some of the individual titles weren’t performing so well, others were – so, team up the respective characters and benefit from respective fan bases buying other connected titles: Excelsior! Earth’s mightiest heroes real ‘origin myth’ was simply arithmetic. And this model has been expanded vastly by the MCU marketing ‘vision’ – with each ‘feeder’ movie adding ‘value’ to the subsequent iterations, like individual franchises within a mall. The Avengers movie series is the artistic equivalent of the ‘Mall of America’ – Late Capitalism’s end-game. It is borne out of the (American) fantasy that ‘bigger is better’ – which in itself is Crispy Creme version of the NeoLiberalist project of infinite progress: the rapacious development that is instrumental in Global Warming and ensuing Climate Crisis.
Woah, better dial back then before you think I’m some kind of conspiracy theory nut – not allowed to talk about anything too serious, are we? That’s a breach of etiquette. And that’s part of the problem…
Whatever we think about the hidden discourses and agendas behind such behemoths as the MCU, what does seem evident to me is how the cultural hegemony of the Superhero Movie infantilises us – arresting the development of conscious individuals into ‘Fan-boy adult-lescents’ (and we’ve seen the worse iterations of that horrible entitlement in recent years, e.g. reactions to diversity in Star Wars). It amazes me how many ‘adults’ seem caught up in the whole phenomenon of the MCU franchise – how many spend serious cash on the whole bullshit ‘universe’. Of course, with the collapsing of ‘high’ and ‘low’ brow in cultural studies, us academics are expected to treat any cultural artefact with the same seriousness – presenting sober-faced conference papers on cynically commercial juvenilia, writing peer-reviewed articles on our anoraks, and Ph.D. theses on our OCDs (or Obsessive Narrative Disorders, in my case…). And thus, with our scholarly attention, we legitimise the Machine which sucks up our dreams and makes us pay-to-view. The ‘academic streams’ take place in smaller meeting rooms while the main venues are taken over by the real business – the buying and selling, glutting upon, and ogling of, the commercialised dream-stuff which serves as a surrogate for the real nutrients of Fantasy that can derived freely from the source: the Imagination. There will always be traders in the temple place until we stop being happy shoppers – so many Pac-men and -women. The first challenge is to wean ourselves off the titmilk. As ‘consumers’ we, are told, have power. Let’s all stop watching infantilised fodder (I know it won’t happen) and maybe they’ll start making movies for adults again. But that won’t wash with the infant tyrant entitled teenagers who now run the show. They will demand a rewrite if they don’t get the ending they can jerk off too.
But we can choose to walk out, or, better still, go and see an original film at an independent cinema. Hell, even read a book.
Copyright © Kevan Manwaring 2019
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