Surveys, sprite and sex appeal

A can of Sprite (you probably 

 already knew this)

Recently I have become a colossal and embarrassing sellout. Due to a still worryingly negative bank balance, I have given up on my traditional scruples and begun prostituting myself to the advertising industry by answering surveys online for small change.

As ashamed as I am by this experience, it has also offered me the chance to learn all sorts of new and exciting things about the world. I'm not just talking about the different shades of Dulux paint on offer or the fact that there is apparently a fizzy drink called Pepsi (who knew!) but also about a disturbing and terrifying insight into the surreal dreamworld of advertising executives.

We have presumably all read about the vast amount of money paid to a publicity consulting firm to come up with the decision to change the University of Durham's official name to Durham University. When you think about it, though, there's some sense in this - although presumably any idiot could have thought it up for five pounds and a free set of colouring pencils, there are going to be a lot less results when searching for 'Durham' than for 'University', right? Most of them will presumably be university-related counselling groups for bitter bourgeois Oxbridge rejects (Doxbridge lololololol), but we can at least assume that the most popular will be the University's website, right?

Right. However, this is only the tip of the publicity iceberg. In the course of filling out various online surveys, I have been asked - in all seriousness - which of the sponsor companies of the Olympics made me feel most proud to be British, whether I would describe people who drink Sprite as 'sexy' and 'attractive' (or conversely 'boring' and 'square'), whether I realised that superheroes in a Kit-Kat advert were spoofs, and on one memorable occasion, to watch an advert and use a sliding scale to indicate which parts made me feel inadequate.

All of which indicates what? Firstly, obviously, that they assume that all people doing surveys are stupid. But secondly, and more worryingly, that they have a profound belief in their own effectiveness. Before now I had assumed that advertising companies were basically aware of their function: produce enough adverts with enough pretty colours and loud noises to keep audiences aware of a given product. It turns out, though, that these people - probably overfed, sleek-coated Oxbridge phillies without the first idea of what normal people are like, a bit like our current Prime Minister - genuinely think that people go around judging people's sex appeal on which of a small range of soft drinks they consume! They genuinely think that as a result of McDonald's sponsoring the Olympics, people are going to be filled with a profound British What-Ho Patriotism that will prevent them from using any other fast food chain!

All of this has led me to the inescapable conclusion that the advertising industry aren't just deceiving companies into believing that the rubbish they come out with to make 7UP the drink for people with enormous penises or whatever is actually worth their while, they are deceiving themselves, too. Or, even more chillingly - that people actually do go around judging people's sex appeal by what soft drink they regularly consume. A bleak, bleak prospect.

The view from Mount Olympus: class, race, and sport

A glossy-haired Lawrence Clarke shows off a winningly
aristocratic smile at his hunting lodge in the south of France

Earlier this week, the Independent published a grossly misrepresentative headline which asserted that Lawrence Clarke, an athlete competing for the UK in the current Olympics, wishes he hadn't been educated in Eton and had instead gone to a state school, which they were probably hoping would make it seem like Team GB were demonstrating their hatred for the private school system. In the attached article, it emerged that all Mr Clarke, Esq. (the heir to a baronetcy, incidentally, and possessor of rugged looks and shiny hair which attest to generations of good food and better breeding) was actually saying was that if he'd been to a state school, there would have been far less emphasis on the academic side of things and so he would have been able to start training earlier - if anything something of an indictment of the state school system, I would say, but there we go.

In light of earlier comments by Team GB in which they said that their current hoard of medals could be increased even further in future years by improving the apparently very lax provision of PE in state schooling, at first glance this seems like quite a silly thing to say - but then I suppose what is actually meant is that a state school education would have meant he could put the bare minimum of time into academic pursuits and instead spend all his time on training outside school. Which then leads us to the big question - how meritocratic actually is the world of sport? Is it actually possible to achieve those twee rags-to-riches storylines that sports films are so proud of in real life?

The sad fact is that the world of high-level professional sport, far from demonstrating 'good old-fashioned British working spirit' as my local paper (and no doubt the Daily Mail) keep insisting, is a world in which your chances at success are very, very much dominated by both socioeconomic background and race.

According to Lord Moynihan, head of the British Olympic Society, more than 50% of the medals at this year's Olympics were brought in by privately schooled athletes. This in itself is no surprise; private schools generally, despite Lawrence Clarke's comments, have significantly more money to spend on sports provision and can afford decent coaches (as opposed to PE teachers - we all know the old aphorism), as well as the shiny, expensive equipment required for bourgey sports like equestrianism and rowing (I don't think my school could have afforded to build a rowing lake on the playing fields). Furthermore, making the fair assumption that people who go to private schools are, on average, from richer backgrounds, their parents will also find it easier to provide these sorts of things outside of school - paying for coaching and use of facilities, for example. It is also far easier for parents to take their children out of private school for training purposes - private schools are not bound by the same sort of laws and oversight with regard to attendance as are state schools. To get coaches and equipment of the same level, and to be able to train, someone without this kind of private funding has to either be lucky in their local sports provision or find sponsorship. Whilst it may be comparatively easy to find this kind of provision locally for running and similarly common sports, for other sports it is far, far more difficult.

Other factors also contribute. It struck me recently, not for the first time, that high-level swimming seems to be exclusively the province of white and east asian people - there are very rarely, if ever, any black swimmers. I, and probably you, have often heard that physiological reasons - specifically bone density - militates against black people succeeding in the swimming pool. Apparently, though, this is largely nonsense: this article basically blows the idea apart (for those who can't be bothered: although buoyancy is a factor, most particularly when first learning to swim, it can be compensated for). A quick glance at this useful academic article will tell you that black people have, on average, higher muscle mass and longer limbs. It is possible that I am wrong in saying this, but both of these seem at first glance like they would be advantageous in swimming - perhaps even enough to offset bone density.

The fact that articles like the first one - dedicated to dispelling the idea that 'black men can't swim' - even exist in the first place probably points us towards the root cause here. There is a definite cultural belief that black people cannot swim, an idea influential enough that it produces plenty of TV programmes and online articles trying to dispel or justify it. This belief, as shown by the page I linked to, is not restricted to non-black people who do not know any better - it is a persistent part of the same collection of folk legend that tells you that being cold can cause colds, and thus has a significant effect on people's behaviour. If you believe your child will never learn to swim, why take them to lessons in the first place? If you believe you can't swim because of the colour of your skin, why even bother trying?

Of course, the situation is not restricted to black people. There is not a single non-white Team GB swimmer, and south asians in particular - who as far as I can tell from The Internet have no similar physiological explanation for this - seem to be very underrepresented at the Games given the demographics of the UK. This isn't helped by the fact that minorities in general tend to be from poorer backgrounds; it wouldn't surprise me if the swimming team were dominated by people from high-income families. Apparently it is best for swimming strength to learn when you're only four or five years old: this requires an introduction to swimming long before schools ever consider dipping you, and therefore requires a) a culture of early swimming lessons (which seems to me based entirely on anecdotal evidence to be predominantly a middle class thing) and b) the money to spend on what are actually quite expensive lessons.

These are just a few examples of how culture surrounding sport and the benefits of riches work to maintain the status quo in the Olympics - it is tempting to say that for the most part, many sports are effectively a rich person's private playground. It would be unfair not to mention the many programmes aimed at changing this - in particular, the rowing team puts a lot of effort into selecting children from state schools and providing them with training and materials - but these are the exception, rather than the rule. Sport, like everything else, has a long way to go before parental money stops being such a colossal advantage.

SOAS in picture form

Kofi Annan and the Evil League of Darkness

Another day, another headline about Syrians being butchered in horrible ways by their own government.

Well, not quite, since all of the current headlines seem to be about Danny Dyer's involvement in the militarisation of London, or something. Nevertheless, Syria continues to occupy a major position in the media, particularly BBC online, which has won some kind of award for its coverage of the Arab Spring and seems to want to milk that for ALL IT'S WORTH, BABY. Every day more articles pop up detailing the newest massacre of a villageful of innocent adults and children gunned down by DEFINITELY THE REBELS GUYS, WE PROMISE EVIDENCE WHAT EVIDENCE. Although it would be naive to pretend that there have been no atrocities on the rebel side - or sides - the Syrian government's resources mean that it has been able, and continues to be able to perpetrate considerable unpleasantnesses on those who defy their authority. This kind of situation, even for those who do not believe in foreign intervention, clearly requires careful and able handling by the international community. So what great figure of well-known competence, what titan of diplomacy, have the relevant political bodies chosen to be their representative and plenipotentiary in Syria?

Why, Kofi 'Rwandan Genocide What Rwandan Genocide' Annan, of course!

Mr Annan counts among his illustrious list of achievements two years working as Director of Tourism in Ghana and a considerable period as Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources at the United Nations. By 1994 he was Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations; this year saw the Rwandan Genocide and a UN response that was so embarrassingly poor that the organisation itself has deemed it a 'failure'. Annan himself has been accused by the head of the peacekeeping force in Rwanda of having held back resources and having been 'passive' in his response to the ongoing genocide. In spite of this he went on to be head of the UN from 1996 onwards, presumably to get him out of a position where he could do any real damage and into one where he could use his Dalai Lama-esque capacity for producing facile inspirationisms.

I am not suggesting that there is a genocide going on in Syria, or that there was any kind of deliberate Evil Master Plan to appoint such an ill-qualified incompetent to be mediator in Syria. Perhaps - a chilling thought - everyone in the UN is about as useful as an umbrella in monsoon season. I'm not entirely sure what Ban Ki-Moon does other than occasionally come out with a slightly more eloquent equivalent of 'oh dear bad things are happening again' (or on one occasion furiously demand a UN response to what as far as I can tell was purely a South Korean issue). In fact, it's probably unfair to expect the UN to do anything at all, given its general impotence. Nonetheless, you can't help but feel that this is happening JUST LIKE LAST TIME

There probably weren't enough references to sticky keyboards or err corporate evil in this post so here is a rare picture of some tennis player smiling:

Batman And Robin Save Corporate America

As much as I generally hate film reviews, I'm going to begin my painfully self-aware blog with something that is, sort of, a film review.

Yesterday, I watched the film BATMAN THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (perhaps there was a comma or a colon in it but this is probably not that much of an issue). This was not, in and of itself, a Bad Film - in fact, I would almost go as far as to say it was actually quite good. I can tolerate the strange mixture of Batman-canon campness and film noir - this is, to some extent, inescapable. I can tolerate the weird Orientalist thing going on with the prison (although I am reliably informed that rather than being canon, this was in fact a screenwriter's divergence from canon since the original prison was supposed to be in some stereotyped banana republic in Latin America) and the fact that everyone in this film who even hints at being foreign ends up being evil. I can even cope with the plot holes and the fact that one of the main villains is called Ghoul Head in English, as LAME-O as that clearly is. These things would have been niggling but not, in and of themselves, enough to motivate me to actually type up and share my Thoughts with the world. What got me riled up was the implicit political message.

I say 'implicit' - it was in fact painfully explicit. Much of the scripting - not the trite one-liners or the Awrite Mate Oi'm A Cockney Geezer speeches written so that the director could get Michael Caine offscreen for as much of the film as possible, mind you, but the actual main core of the script - reads like it was written one-handed by a Neo-Con Ayn Rand fanfic scribbler who now has a suspiciously sticky keyboard.

If you've read this far and are still stupid enough to get upset if you are spoiled, which seems pretty unlikely, then SPOILERS AHOY READ NO FURTHER SAILOR

Now obviously, Batman is on his own merits basically the darling of the Randian American Dream - admittedly, he indulges in that HORRIBLE RANDIAN SIN of CHARITY TOWARDS OTHERS rather than charging the city of Gotham for his unparalleled law-keeping skills, but he is nonetheless what many right-wingers would view as a perfect citizen - he is ridiculously rich, has glossy hair that speaks of generations of good breeding, and spends much of his money on masturbatory gadgets saving and protecting the Innocent (voluntarily, not having his hard-earned money STOLEN FROM HIM by gumm'int). At the same time we see the government-recruited POLICE FORCE, for all they get a bit part gruffly (and frankly, rather pointlessly) charging a wall of heavily-armed mercenaries, showing incompetence and glory-hunger at every turn. Even during their moment in the spotlight the police have most of their work done for them by a typically heavily armed Batman. Nobody ever stops to ask themselves, of course, if the police could perhaps be as successful - if not more so - as The Batman if Waynecorp PLC or whatever it's called would just hand over some of the less shiny of their phallic weaponry to law enforcement.

Anyway, that's not my main issue. My main issue is the somewhat... socialist main villain. Or nominally socialist, anyway.

As far as I could tell, the plot was basically this: Girl wants to destroy Gotham City. Aforementioned girl - who at this point we just think is a sexay exotic love interest - makes it impossible for Bruce Wayne to continue running Wayneron through an elaborate plan manipulating a major businessman (why this guy is needed for the plot is unclear, he doesn't take the blame in any meaningful sense - except I suppose for the audience, but we know almost as soon as we find out he was 'behind' the plan that it did not go as he wanted it to) into thinking he is paying mercenaries (who it turns out are the girls' stooges) led by a mysterious bulky man with a painkiller-pumping mask (BANE!!!!!) to break into the Stock Exchange and enact some mysterious economy-related fraud involving Stocks and Shares and ARPs and ISAs and banking-relating things that I assume this film's target audience will be getting aroused just at the thought of WHICH THEN MEANS that Bruce Wayne loses control of the company and, because aforementioned Girl has by various means convinced him he can trust her, hands it over to her (instead of the businessman who is promptly killed).

Why this elaborate scheme is needed is not ENTIRELY obvious to me, but whatever. What happens next is even weirder.

It turns out that the reason that aforementioned Girl needed control of Wayne and Sons is because they have been making a (remarkably easily weaponisable) nuclear fusion device which she wants to use to destroy Gotham (remember that until the very end we are led to believe that it is Bane who is behind all this, not Girl). Once they have control, Batman is beaten up by Bane, who is physically his superior, some pretty cool fight scenes here which I for one thought B. Wayne deffo had coming to him - wait, Bane and Bruce wAyne sound almost the same oh wait is this what passes for irony in the comic book world well never mind, and is packaged off to some Black Hole of Calcutta ripoff where he can learn the True Meaning of Hope from a Wise Old Foreign Man and also learns some things about Bane (which you would think would be accurate but which it transpires are not; no reason given why people who witnessed the events wouldn't know what is going on, but OH WELL). In the meantime, stuff gets a bit revolutionary - Bane traps all of the police in the storm drains and then makes a big speech where he a) tells people about the weaponised nuclear device he now has and b) tells them they are going to let The People Take Back This City (the bomb he uses to keep the army from moving into Gotham). A vaguely interesting note is that for once the national government seems to actually take an interest in Gotham - the President who is depicted is, interestingly, white (most American TV since Obama was elected seems to go with black presidents, but oh well, let's not read too much into this). They can't do squat, though, because of the nuclear bomb (and here again is a chance for the scriptwriter to depict TAX-THEFT FUNDED FORCES as generally inadequate and incompetent, although to be fair there are at least two True Blue American Hero Cops in the film, though one of them quits when he realises that there are Too Many Restrictions and becomes yet another self-funded vigilante).

What then happens is sort-of embarrassingly predictable - Bane sets up MOB COURTS which are actually just for sentencing hearings and condemn everyone who comes before them to death and claims that 'the people' are reclaiming the city à la Occupy whilst actually running the city by martial law and putting innocent rich people to death and looting all their stuff and OH MY GOD GUYS WHAT AN ADVANCED AND CLEVER ALLEGORY FOR THE EVILS OF SOCIALISM and I guess, maybe, you could say it's a lesson about Not Listening To Demagogues and Thinking For Yourself

... hahahaha no you couldn't don't be silly. In fact, The People themselves are never seen participating (presumably because a major part of the plot is emphasising that ACTUALLY, EVIL VILLAINS WHO WANT TO RESTORE ECOLOGICAL AND FINANCIAL BALANCE TO THE WORLD AND REDRESS EVERYONE'S WRONGS, THE PEOPLE OF GOTHAM ARE ACTUALLY REALLY INNOCENT). There is even a bit where Bane gives a great speech about oppression etc - clearly OUTSIDE Black Gate Prison or whatever it's called - but even though he is obviously making a speech to The People, we see no people! Rather, we see a bunch of established Bad Guys cheering from inside the prison (where they can apparently hear the speech somehow???) and Bane's mercenaries following his exhortation to 'storm the prison' and 'free the oppressed'. It seems established that only the EVIL want to e.g. loot the homes of the rich and powerful and overthrow the social order.

It's not just the actual depiction of the EVIL SOCIALIST that makes me think this film is going out to be ideological, though - it's the fact that they included this plot line when NO SUCH PLOT LINE WAS NEEDED. Seriously - Bane's aim is apparently to destroy the city: why not just destroy the city? There is a distinct element of torturing Bruce Wayne's weird messiah complex, and I guess seeing Socialist Commie Bastards trying to steal all his hard-earned inherited wealth probably stirs the sympathy required from the audience the film seems to be aimed at, but since it's established that the People of Gotham seem to want nothing to do with Bane, why not just set his mercenaries loose - which is what happens in the end anyway?

The reason, of course, is the severe case of Sticky Keyboard Syndrome that David Goyer seems to have developed over Wayne, Inc. and everything that The Batman represents to the economic right wing. Or perhaps some earlier comic-book writer. Either way, GUYYYYYS

Now here is a picture of some sheep to calm me down: