The spectre of therapy

This week on CW, Kathryn Ecclestone and Dennis Hayes respond to Lee Jones’ review of their book, The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education, arguing that schools and universities are steeped in therapy culture in often subtle ways, and at the expense of education itself. Meanwhile, Jones goes on to consider the diminished subjectivity of James Bond, and confusion about the enemy, in Quantum of Solace.

Nicky Charlish reviews exhibitions of the work of Andy Warhol, Annie Leibowitz and Francis Bacon, while Matt Trueman reviews London theatre including Frantic Assembly’s Othello.

Videos of sessions at the Battle of Ideas in London on 1-2 November are now available on Fora.tv, and are indexed on the Battle of Ideas website. More will appear over the next month.

13 November, 2008

Symbolic Lyricism - Man Booker Shortlist 2008

The Secret Scripture, by Sebastian Barry (Faber & Faber)

As a beautiful young woman, Roseanne is surrounded and shaped by men. Not to labour the comparison, but as the country of Ireland, or Eíre, is often represented as a woman, it is not difficult to see parallels.

Schrödinger’s Villain

Quantum of Solace, directed by Marc Foster

None of this is in the slightest bit coherent. Perhaps constantly changing our understanding of what Greene does is meant to express the mysterious nature of his ‘Quantum’ network.

Therapy culture revisited

Kathryn Ecclestone and Dennis Hayes reply to Lee Jones’ critique of their critique

Our view is that education is now the key to our future. This is not to revert to an archaic form of change through education but to recognise that, at the present moment, it is only by asserting subjects that we can develop subjectivity.

Life through a lens

Annie Leibowitz; A Photographer's Life, 1990-2005, National Portrait Gallery, London

So the exhibition gives us the celebrity stuff we expect. Or does it? For the unexpected lurks here.

Gee, thanks Andy

Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms, Hayward Gallery, London

Glam rockers, punks, new romantics and today’s more extreme street fashion club kids can all be said to be Warhol’s children.

Raw meat

Francis Bacon, Tate Britain, London

It’s easy to dismiss Bacon as a gay schlock merchant and his work as a sort of story-board from a Hammer Horror film scripted by Oscar Wilde. An exhibition to mark the forthcoming centenary of his birth gives us the chance to re-evaluate this view

Reputation, reputation, reputation

Othello, Lyric Hammersmith, London

What the production loses is a sense of tragic downfall, as Jimmy Akingbola’s Othello is only great when viewed from within the culture under attack. He is a picture of hostile masculinity elevated from a pack of dopey shellsuited henchmen, too easily coaxed into irrational suspicion.

Blind luck and bluff

Rank, Tricycle Theatre, London

Though Massey’s script is full of deliciously bleak witticisms, waxing lyrical on phone sex lines and Aldi, it is ultimately contained by its own linearity. His delicate build of tension in the first half is entirely undermined by the predictability of the outcome.

CW editorial note - 7 November 2008

Excessive Success?!

The week after the Battle of Ideas sees the election of Obama, and CW looks at negativity in supercapitalism, the ploys of fame and the implications of a puppy in the White House.

Reluctant celebrity

Starstruck: Fame, Failure, My Family and Me, by Cosmo Landesman (Macmillan)

In Cosmo’s cosmos, modern life doesn’t bustle: it is staid, boring and amounts to being buried alive. On the other hand, the squalid cash interpretation that many put on ‘being a success’ is diseased too.

How Bollywood portrays ‘the other’

Partition, Pakistan and their portrayal in Indian cinema

Although Hindi films have been known to be merely melodramatic, the portrayal of Indian Sikhs and Hindus as protagonists and Pakistani Muslims as antagonists is a theme that is reinforced throughout most but not all of the films dealing with the subject.

Against an ‘Ethical Lifestyle’

A short essay looking at the idea of ever-progressing ethics, and how 'ethical living' relates to our ideas about right and wrong

Through ever-progressing ethics we ‘learned’ slavery was wrong a couple of centuries ago; racism and sexism turned out to be bad sometime during the 20th century; and homophobia became unethical a decade or so later. In another half century we’ll all become vegetarians. 

The accursed cultural theory, excess and the morbid imagination

Great Satan's Rage: American Negativity and Rap/metal in the Age of Supercapitalism by Scott Wilson (Manchester University Press, 2008)

Wilson sets the stage for a logical reconstruction of self loathing as it currently appears in the most advanced capitalist nation. But instead of stripping down this phenomenon and then rebuilding it to show how it is determined, Wilson takes us on a tour of its manifestations in the work of rappers.

Admirably and hopelessly idealistic

Red Fortress, Unicorn Theatre, London

Tony Graham’s lushly atmospheric production treats its young audience without patronising them, conjuring up a delicate exoticism through suspended rugs and the sway of Tunde Jegede’s music.

Clashing worldviews

To Be Straight With You, National Theatre, London

Where the message is left to the words and movements of a talented performer, DV8 create something special and, more importantly, human.