DEREGULATION ~ DON”T GET ME STARTED

An Essay

Originally written and posted ~ 3rd, February, 2012 – Re-posted  7th January, 2020 as part of an Edenbray Retrospective

… … …

DEREGULATION ~ DON’T GET ME STARTED

An Essay

… … …

I dunno if I am whistling in the damn wind, getting too old, barking up the wrong tree or just taking life too seriously but I am seeing something insidious wherever I go.

I used that word ‘insidious’ of a workmate in jest, not long ago. I use words like that occasionally. Words you have to spellcheck. Well she didn’t know what it meant and hey ‘insidious’ – that is a hard word to describe, especially when you are trying to make a funny gibe at someone. I’m still not sure she got the humour intended even after I had explained. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea? Maybe I didn’t explain the word too well? Anyway, she doesn’t talk to me as much as before but well it was just a joke and yes it sure is a good word!

There are some things that say it for me and you can’t tell it another way. It’s like a joke you have to explain can never really be funny, a cartoon that leaves you confused, just didn’t do it for you or whoever really loved a picture they were told was good.

As the guy in the cinema queue in Annie Hall the movie says, ‘Its gotta hit you on a gut level’ and like Woody Allen’s character Alvy Singer, rejoins later ‘Boy what I could do with a sock full of manure right now.’ This is because the guy in the queue keeps speaking his dogma and personal opinions within Alvy’s hearing.

‘Some things are better felt than telt’ … is a saying.

I love sayings, colloquialisms (boy, only one letter out on my spellcheck on that one!) and I love learning new colloquial expressions too … because even though I can only barely speak English, Scottish and Irish, plus a little Glaswegian and maybe a few other rare and special British dialects (#note: yes, there is a joke or ‘three’ in there .. see, being told the joke doesn’t work does it?!) I really do love language … Language is communication! .. Language is dynamite!

Listen to this for example …

…

♪♫♬

Two weeks in a Virginia jail

For my lover, for my lover

Twenty thousand dollar bail

For my lover, for my lover

And everybody thinks

That I’m the fool

But they don’t get Any love from you

The things we won’t do for love

I’d climb a mountain if I had to

Risk my life so I could have you You, you, you…

Everyday I’m psychoanalysed

For my lover, for my lover

They dope me up and I tell them lies

For my lover, for my lover

And everybody thinks

That I’m the fool

But they don’t get Any love from you

The things we won’t do for love

I’d climb a mountain if I had to

Risk my life so I could have you You, you, you…

I follow my heart

And leave my head to ponder

Deep in this love No man can shake

I follow my heart And leave my mind to wonder

Is this love worth The sacrifices I make?

Two weeks in a Virginia jail

For my lover, for my lover

Twenty thousand dollar bail

For my lover, for my lover

Everyday I’m psychoanalysed

For my lover, for my lover

They dope me up and I tell them lies

For my lover, for my lover

And everybody thinks That I’m the fool

But they don’t get Any love from you

The things we won’t do for love

I’d climb a mountain if I had to

Risk my life so I could have you You, you, you..

… … …

Lyrics to the song ‘For My Lover’

by Tracy Chapman

♬♬♫♪

beautiful ! …

…

There are other things you shouldn’t touch but do not mess with language … or take words out … or re-write words come to that! … Are you listening America?… Yes, you can add words and maybe some words might be simplified but only if there is good and valid reason.

…

‘Just because you can, doesn’t mean you oughta …’

Well this insidious deregulation is affecting everything now. Even the sacred cow is suddenly fair game, even though she has always lived out on the street in open view. Who knew that eventually visitors to countries where there is a custom, might challenge her right to even be there, should that particular sacred cow be a country’s flag on a pole, a long-standing, local or ethnic practice, habitude or the chosen national religion. It doesn’t matter that some care less for their own customs than they should. Even true ‘sacred cows’ wander the streets of India uncared for, unloved, and feed on local refuse which you might say is not what a sacred cow should have to do.

I think maybe respect is what I am alluring to here, although even that particular word might need some redefinement from the deregulators curse. Respect does not mean a feigned honour, just because it is old, but an appropriation, an appreciation and a recognition of a things true merits, based not only on its current status but also its particular historical relevance and I may add ‘reverence’ at the risk of any implied alliteration. Now that is a whole bunch of look-up words for some people and I don’t mean to sound patronising one bit.

I see that hand at the back and yes I knew someone would make that comment. What happened to the ‘it’s got to hit me on a gut level’ remark?’ I hear you say and ‘I thought you were against people telling us what ‘is good’ and therefore worthy of our respect?’….

No, what I am saying is this – We do not have to enjoy something ourself to recognise its value or its place in history. This is, after all, why we have National Exhibitions, Art Galleries, Opera Houses and National Theatres, to preserve and honour our National identity, history and culture.

The deregulation I object to, that insidious thing this piece came in on, is the one that is affecting not only a few abbreviated words and Americanisms that may have crept in on the back of our Microsoft and Apple Software ~ Why does my spellchecker continue to give me a dotted line under words like ~ honour?!  

No, this insidious thing I am talking of is moving into the realm of our popular culture and can affect things that aren’t 50, 40, 30 or even 20 years old. These things have it seems, not even earned a mundane – ‘O well it is pretty old’ kind of respect. They are unfancied bull calves, game for slaughter, processing, recycling, even vivisection of the vulgarest order

If its not brok’ why fix it?…

Why do advertisers process ‘favourite tunes’ for their advertisements and re-record classic pop tunes with bland vocals and homogenized, even soulless soundtracks? Why do they even take just the melodies from memorable chart songs and make different versions, that are vaguely recognisable for background themes. Why do tv programme planners take classic or historic novels, even recent successful drama series  and fit them with modern sub-plots, current speech, terminology and up-dated story lines. Is nothing sacred? No, it seems it is not and this for me is the insidious heart of the problem, for history is being aborted at birth, like unwanted leverets or kittens were once bagged and drowned. The culture of today suffers no pretence of leaving a legacy for tomorrow. It is an existential nightmare which suggests a lack of value for the way we live and the art we produce and unless I am the only one dreaming, it speaks of a soulless mentality that  says that we who are alive today have nothing more to bring to the table of culture and artistic accomplishment, nothing of any real value that is

. ♨ .

Hey hey Woody Guthrie I wrote you a song

About a funny old world that’s coming along

Seems sick and it’s hungry, it’s tired and it’s torn

It looks like it’s dying and it’s hardly been born.

lyrics ~ Bob Dylan – 1962 .                                       

. ♨ .

‘Don’t re-write what I have written’

While writers, screenwriters, film directors and ghost-writers turn into revisionists and have fun ‘deregulating’ by rewriting the greatest of books and movies, not just changing a few words but whole characters, situations and basic story-lines to suit a new generation I sit back and wail, thinking that one day people will be denied a history of anything at all. It is hard and sad enough that the revisionists of today like a swarm of locusts or computer worms are set to eat out any politically sensitive material they can find, are conversely quite comfortable to introduce amoral, often hedonistic and if not atheistic then certainly religiously agnostic standpoints into stories which originally reflected morality as it was perceived at the time it was written and not as it is today.

In the generally underrated film ‘Reds’, directed by and starring Warren Beatty as John Reed the American and Communist sympathiser and activist, there is an awesome scene where Reid protests to the Bolshevik leaders who have been censoring his material and using selective editing, ‘Don’t re-write what I have written !’

Communist and Marxist politics have always supported the idea of changing a Countries ideological and cultural history by rewriting swathes of history and literature. Consider the Cultural Revolution which took place at the behest of Chairman Mau in China. Yet, we in the west are seeing only a similar Governmental initiative and trend perpetuated before our very eyes or perhaps a little beneath our very eyes, as if we cannot think for ourselves, censor what we read and use the good and evil of the past to formulate a proud history of our own.

The Watergate scandal of the 70’s spawned a million Conspiracy theories and helped develop a general mistrust of governments either east or west, while today we have inherited a pervading sense that things today do not need to be even so hush-hush as those cloke and dagger, dark days of cold-war spies and propaganda were.

Governments today seem to achieve similar results far more openly and all under the necessary ‘banner of freedom of information’. There seems no need to hide what the ‘spin doctors’ create and the ‘tail that wags the dog’ has become just another colloquialism that although born of deceit is now accepted as the very collateral of political machinations in this 21st century? Of course there will always be another million conspiracy stories circulating and a lot should be filed under ‘Hoax’ but if I’ve called this right ‘my gut feeling’ tells me that all that this current cultural malaise reveals is that Governmental weakness has spread far and wide to the common people, an epidemic with a ‘trojan horse’ that carries a certain lack of respect for our own national identity and popular culture itself.

Of course one would require greater evidence than a few low-grade telly ads and a couple of shallow tv series to support my thesis but the failings of the many lie in the details of the few and we may only read the symptoms as best as we can.

The fact remains that art and culture, rank as low as I have known them in my time and that is a worrying symptom enough.