The Bluestocking, vol 131: Have I Got Zoom For You
Happy Friday!
Hope you're safe and well. I've had an oddly busy week: my Radio 4 interview series, The Spark, has been recommissioned - airing sometime in May - so I've spent some of the week under a blanket in my living room. (It muffles the echo of an uncarpeted room.)
That reminds me: in all the flurry of hate mail last week, I forgot to mention that my Analysis documentary, The Roots of 'Woke' Culture, is available on BBC Sounds. It features, in no particular order: Michel Foucault, gay dog humping, Toby Young, no platforming, the problem with peer review, and an argument about what a penis is. Truly something for everybody. The basic premise is this: why are so many Question Time screaming matches and Twitter beefs fuelled by ostensibly arcane academic concepts?
Finally, a peek at my hi-tech home studio, ready to film this week's Have I Got News For You. Fascinated/terrified to see how this turns out in the edit, because in real time it felt more like Have I Got Politely Aborted Interruptions Over Skype For You. (Next up, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue becomes I'm Sorry, No You Finish, No, Go On, You.) The producers and engineers did an incredible job of syncing five people's audio and video feeds and turning the whole programme virtual, so I just hope it comes off.
(No, I didn't have quite this many copies of Difficult Women in shot for the recording.)
See you next time!
Helen
What Is The Point of Critics?
Nor do I think it matters if the critics and the public disagree – as happened with Taika Waititi’s Oscar-winning second world war story, Jojo Rabbit (the critics mainly loathed it; the public absolutely loved it). Consensus is a growing problem in our culture. It is inescapably the case that some artists, like some kinds of art, are deemed to be beyond criticism – something that, in my view, stifles debate every bit as much as cancel culture (it also makes life very bland and boring). Lone voices, if their disagreement is based on knowledge and insight, are crucial, and when you hear such a cry in the dark, it’s often with a sense of relief. I felt this recently when I read the only review of the late Deborah Orr’s memoir Motherwell – by the journalist Janice Turner – that expressed any reservation at all about it (Turner pointed out that Orr’s obsession in the book with narcissism is completely bewildering unless you know – and how could you know? – that she is really writing about her ex-husband, Will Self).
Very enjoyable piece by Rachel Cooke on criticism. I've always thought the best critic would be a hermit sociopath.
I met my boyfriend 12 years after giving birth to his child
I quickly wrote a message to him on the DNA testing site. It read:
Hi Aaron, I actually have two daughters who'd match you (my ex has my youngest daughter; she's not on the DNA testing site). If you're interested in trading family photos, etc., we're available.
I used the "curiosity hook," thinking he'd have to write back to see pictures of my youngest daughter. Aaron wrote back immediately, sharing details I already knew from my sleuthing. He asked if I had any questions for him, and I asked if he was the shortest person in his family. I already knew the answer. He was.
The best possible answer to, "So, and how did you guys meet?" "Oh, he was my sperm donor".
Me at the start of the 2.5 hour HIGNFY recording, excited to be doing telly from my own home
That Discomfort You're Feeling is Grief
Anticipatory grief is that feeling we get about what the future holds when we’re uncertain. Usually it centers on death. We feel it when someone gets a dire diagnosis or when we have the normal thought that we’ll lose a parent someday. Anticipatory grief is also more broadly imagined futures. There is a storm coming. There’s something bad out there. With a virus, this kind of grief is so confusing for people. Our primitive mind knows something bad is happening, but you can’t see it. This breaks our sense of safety. We’re feeling that loss of safety. I don’t think we’ve collectively lost our sense of general safety like this. Individually or as smaller groups, people have felt this. But all together, this is new. We are grieving on a micro and a macro level.
For anyone suffering corona blues.
Scotland After The Trial Of Alex Salmond (Tortoise)
He had already made it clear he believed Sturgeon’s softly, softly strategy was misguided and he blamed her “underwhelming” campaign for the loss of seat. Now, bereft of an official role, he turned into an embarrassment. In the summer of 2017, he staged a show at the Edinburgh Fringe, opening with the words: “I promised you we’d either have Theresa May or Nicola Sturgeon, but I couldn’t make these wonderful women come….”; an off-colour comment Sturgeon generously described as a throwback to “the Benny Hill era”.
Properly reported piece on the trial of Alex Salmond for sexual offences. He received acquittals for all except one charge, which was given the Scottish verdict of "unproven". But as ever with these stories about sex, it's also a story about power, and about who gets to set the rules.
Quick links:
More Movies Need an Oscar-Winning Actress Reacting Emotionally to Opera (NYT).
"Males are more likely to die than females while in the womb. Bouts of severely cold weather, earthquakes, natural disasters, even the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York City exacerbate this difference, as months later the ratio of boys to girls born can decline to well below the typical ratio of 105-to-100." (Science Mag)
This "8D pentatonix" way of mixing sound (in headphones) is very cool. Reminds me strongly of Simon McBurney's The Encounter, which uses binaural recording - and a frankly astonishing number of bottles of water for him to swig from on stage - to tell the story of a visit to a rainforest.
Every so often I see an out-of-context quote from a review of this feminist book by a woman with the same surname as me and think, "bloody hell, I didn't write that, did I?"
This video is mostly incredible for the fact that the Backstreet Boys appear to have aged at wildly disparate rates. Has AJ been working down an open cast mine?
Funny interview with Rihanna, who has now made wayyyy more money from beauty and pants than she did from music.
Me at the end of the 2.5 hour HIGNFY recording, sitting on the world's most uncomfortable dining room chair