Teenage Riot is a magic eye.
It’s a two-tone tie.
It’s a line-drawn bunny that seems like a duck.
It’s a rotating advertisement perfectly stuck.

Teenage Riot is two shows in one. What you see depends entirely on your angle of approach. It’s no surprise, then, that it has split opinion and been both vigorously championed and violently condemned. Look at it one way and you have a crass, confused, aggressive and illogical piece of fierce teenage rhetoric and anti-adult agitprop. Look at it another and you have a poignant expression of the failure and impossibility entailed by the teenage existence and experience. The first sees a tantrum thrown; the second sees a tantrum shown.

What we see is a white box in the middle of an empty stage, into which eight teenagers retreat and shut themselves away. As they enter one by one, each throws us a look that’s half accusatory and half apologetic. It’s a look that seems to say, ‘It’s come to this. Shame’.

The cube functions as a literal den: the sort of teenage bedroom that has ‘Adults F**k Off’ scratched on the door. But it also recalls the absolute insolubility between generations in terms of culture and communication. All that we see of the interior, its contents and inhabitants, is delivered to us in a mediatised form: filmed and project onto the front of the box. The film cleverly welded together such that the divide between live action and pre-recorded events is almost inconspicuous. Sometimes you know, sometimes you can’t be sure, sometimes you’re duped with clever stageplay.

Now, it strikes me that Teenage Riot was (in part, at least) born out of a particular discussion that surrounded Ontroerend Goed’s previous show performed by teenagers, Once and For All We’re Going to Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up And Listen, namely that the teenage performers were not speaking for themselves. In other words, the version of adolescence that they were acting out and referring to was actually imposed upon them by the older creative team. To a certain degree, it’s a fair cop: Once and For All… thrives on a certain nostalgia, but, personally, I never felt it a problem. It was a play. It had a process, like many plays. The teenagers were performing it. I recognised my teenage experience within it, as did others, as did – I believe – the cast themselves. I believed in it. They believed in it.

Here, the cast have control of what we see. Quite literally, they control they way in which they project themselves. The staging also serves as a neat device that throws up the mediatisation of the 2.0 world and user-generated content. Early on, one says: ‘We’re going to do whatever we want to’. No one, they insist repeatedly and vociferously, is putting words into their mouths or shaping their actions.  How one responds to Teenage Riot largely depends on whether one accepts that statement or not. The first time I watched Teenage Riot – in a room hot with anticipation and performances that probably rose to meet it – I didn’t buy it.

Mainly, I think, this was because the piece seemed to have forgotten the ambiguity and multiplicity of onstage reality. It seemed to have forgotten our predisposition to doubt. By setting out so consciously and deliberately to be authentic, it only raised the question of its own authenticity. Onstage, ‘This is real’ cannot but become ‘Is this real?’ So, the more Teenage Riot insisted on its veracity, the more I doubted it. Little wonder that when the piece says ‘We’re going to do whatever we want to’ (or, to put it more poetically, ‘I don’t got to do shit’), we become aware of the artificiality of the situation. After all, we know that their actions are preset and rehearsed, that this – live though it is – has been constructed, that it is not solely a product of this moment. We know that the camera has a set path. They can do whatever they want only within the context of a set text. They can show us what they want only insofar as they stick to what they have previously decided to show. We see the presence of an undisclosed process, about which we know nothing. We do not know how this material originated. We have no way of verifying their claim to total authorship. In fact, we start to suspect otherwise. We doubt.

Therefore, when the cast stand onstage and accuse the audience of all manner of sins – incidentally tarring us with a single brush in precisely the way that they reject our singular projection of the archetypal teenager onto each of them – I reacted against it. ‘You are not an example,’ they say, having pelted the images of certain audience members with tomatoes, ‘You are a warning’. ‘It’s not your problem,’ one of them says. ‘How dare they?’ I thought, ‘How dare they assume, not only that I don’t share some of these problems as a 25-year-old, but that I’m actually responsible for them?’ In fact, given my cynicism about the authorship of the piece, it felt to me as if the adults behind the piece were delivering a smug and sanctimonious set of accusations that implied their own superiority. (Rather hotheadly, I tweeted as much immediately afterwards.) ‘We work with teenagers. We make theatre,’ it seemed to say, ‘What do you do?’ I left seething.

After my tweet, I was asked to see the show again by Ontroerend Goed’s director Alexander Devriendt, and to take the teens at their word by accepting that they had control over the piece’s content. Watching in this way second time around, in a calmer auditorium that drew more level-headed performances, Teenage Riot became less about its riot and more about its teenagers. What the teenagers said, shouted and did sat behind the way in which they spoke, shouted and behaved. Rather than heeding their polemic and reacting against it on the basis of its flaws, I began to see its shortcomings as the focal point. In other words, rather than watching the show from or by the teenagers, I was watching the show about them: the tantrum shown, rather than the tantrum thrown.

After all, what hope of constructing a piercing social critique when, as one of the song lyrics runs, ‘I want almost everything’. Besides, as one of the boys says to camera with his back towards us, ‘What comes out of my mouth never seems to be what I think’.

What emerges is a picture of adolescent frustration that rings true. It is not so much what they try to provoke as that they try to provoke; not such much about understanding their inarticulate formation, as appreciating its inarticulacy. Their Teenage Riot is always pitched at the highest volume, it is all taken to excess. They rail against so much – the way in which teenagers are seen; the identities thrust upon them; the world in which they exist with its various pressures of appearance, sex and behaviour; the world that was created before they arrived, over which they had no say; their own state of ‘not a girl, not yet a women’ inadequacy – that their piece of theatre is inevitably toppled by its own scattergun density. It fails to communicate as a result of (to quote soundtrack’s the final song) ‘the fury in your head’. This is not a provocation, but a testimony to the teenage need to provoke and the impossibility of doing so.

Essentially, Belgian collective Ontroerend Goed have done a Duchamp. They have framed a piece of theatre and presented it as a living artefact. Unlike Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’, however, the thing presented remains in the same context. There is no signification about its status. Presenting a piece of theatre – warts and all – in a theatre is like showing us a urinal on the wall of the Gents. How are we supposed to know to look differently?

Teenage Riot’s failure comes in not revealing the quotation marks that sit around the whole. There are two frames here. The first exists around the piece made by the teenagers, which, by existing on a stage, can be watched like any other piece of theatre, by seeking meaning in the same way. The second exists around this first frame, and it means that every action on stage carries a second layer of meaning: it matters more as an example of a statement, than as a statement in its own right. However, the outer frame does not enforce its presence and so it’s quite possible to watch Teenage Riot in accordance with the usual rules, the single-frame format, of conventional theatre. To do so, however, is to see Teenage Riot as I did first time around.

This begs a slightly different question of Ontroerend Goed. While it avoids accusations of manipulation, it perhaps raises the question of exploitation. After all, the company is using the actions and words of its teenage cast in a different way than the teenagers intend them. For those words and actions to function, the teenagers must believe that they are genuinely accusing the audience, when in fact they are testifying to themselves and their peers. Everything the cast are driving at seems undermined by its existence in inverted commas.

The picture is not quite as clean cut as all that, however. The boundaries are blurred. After all, the adult members of the company must be quite happy with (some of, if not all) the accusations being made, just as the teenagers must be quite happy to stand as examples of their own frustration. The cast let us know, quite frequently throughout the piece, how hard being a teenager today can be. That difficulty reflects rather badly on the world created by their elders. In those terms, the piece as much an accusation against the adults of Ontroerend Goed as it is the audience. We are all pilloried and vilified, but it is an easy argument to escape and counter. Teenage Riot is as much in the mind as it is outside of their control. The combination is combustible.

Perhaps that’s where the poignancy of their final split exists. After blaming and humiliating us, presenting some of our number onscreen and pelting their images with tomatoes, the teenagers split. Half return to the box, half enter the auditorium. They are each caught for a moment, some more indecisive than others: not wanting to lose the righteousness that senses the problems with the world, but wanting to escape the fury in their heads. As one girl suggests, even as an adult, ‘I’ll stay I’m as angry as a 14-year-old’. The tragedy is that we can’t have a happy medium. Either we exist in the box, struggling with our own frustrations, or we come to accept the wrongs for the sake of a quiet life.

Either we throw a tantrum or else we throw a towel.

Run over

Be careful what you wish for. For a while now, the cry has gone up for interactive theatre that allows true freedom. We have asked for more than a toy world, one with unlimited options where volition doesn’t bash up against perimeter fences. How can theatre that allows us agency avoid mollycoddling us? Can it treat us like unfettered adults?

101, a set of four interactive experiences created by recent graduate company Oneohone, commits to this boundlessness with immense integrity. Outside the performance space, in a room that functions more as briefing room than decompression chamber, we are each given a white sash that signifies our active involvement. Removing it removes one from the experience. Crucially, the performers have the same sashes and the same options. It is, we are told, as much ours to control as theirs and, therefore, the same safety procedures apply to both parties. This is, in no small way, a game between consenting adults.

Push against it and 101 moulds to fit. If you’re game, it says, so are we. Only, before long, it doesn’t feel like a game anymore.

The room into which we file for the encounter nicknamed My Own is a furnace of whooping cheers. It feels hot from the start and the temperature only rises. Stood in an awkward line, almost awaiting instructions, we are hauled out in turn to join two groups. It’s recognisably playground. Each of us co-opted into a team is greeted with ecstatic yells and backslapping cheer. ‘My brother,’ they say, looking earnestly into your eyes. Teams picked, the fire-stoking begins. Mantras are chanted, rituals are undergone. Something rises in your chest: an aggression noticeable when your teeth grit and your chest puffs. It’s far from nuanced – the situation is quickly recognisable and left more or less uninterrogated, serving almost as experiential literary criticism – but it carries you away.

Unless you check it. At a certain stage, the realisation fell that these statements I was shouting – ‘There is no revenge unless you surpass them’ or something to that effect – were ugly and empty. This rivalry, whipped up into a frenzy, was an empty one spun for rivalry’s sake and detached from original offences. We were footsoldiers recruited. Or rather conscripted. And so, sash still around my wrist, I stepped back. A conscientious objector, looking on but refusing to represent. Participating by refusing to participate.

At this point, two problems become clear. First, that moral retreat looks much like discomfort and – safety being very much on the company’s mind – an actor broke ranks to explain the rules of the sash.  Second – and far more problematic – the inauthenticity of the event. For all that I felt moved to intervene, to follow through my objection with a disruptive action, I did not. You are aware that this is not just your experience, but our experience. Who am I to intervene in the experience of other paying participants? They’ve come to see the company, not the heckler.

That means that interactive theatre is caught between two poles. If we play in the real – and 101 very much creeps that way, despite a surface level of fiction – we must be bounded by the status of constructed event. Unless, perhaps, we are lone audience members. If we play along with the fiction, the danger seems greater. Actors and performers come prepared. They have processes to aid commitment and immersion. For us, lacking the rehearsal period, commitment is more slippery and the fiction more fragile. Where it sweeps us away, we are not in control in the same way. We lack the techniques and triggers of the performers, who have built to this point and constructed a method of entry without abandon over time. Thus unprepared, we are either carried away with the fiction or ejected from it. To act is to exist in and embrace a state of liminality. It is to exist on the threshold of two worlds and that is a fine tightrope to tread. To do so requires training. This feels dangerous. Safe as a game constantly monitored, but dangerous beneath the surface, where it exists unchecked.

Run over

Blinded by Juno for his insistence that women fare better in the sexual pleasure stakes, Tiresias is bestowed with foresight by Jupiter. His pronouncement is of a future governed by war. Given Peter Bramley entrenches Ovid’s tales of transformation in the 1940s, Tiresias’s prediction seems somewhat workaday. All around him saunter trimly uniformed servicemen and, overhead, bombs whistle and sirens wail. Like, tell us something we don’t know, Tiresias…

Actually, the concept proves a rather neat fit, drawing attention to the seismic shift the world suffered in the wake of World War Two. The move towards postmodernism becomes a transformation bestowed both as punishment and a new enlightenment. Mainly though, it works because Bramley and his company of recent drama school graduates have fine-combed Ovid’s tales for parallels, the witty application of which frequently elucidates both myth and modern counterpart.

So, Cupid becomes a catapult-wielding evacuee and Narcissus a silver-screen star lost to the caress of the camera. Semele’s bovine transformation is marked with a gasmask, conjuring ideas of cattle packed together and heading towards slaughter. Aviation pioneers Daedalus and Icarus resemble both Biggles and the Wright brothers, all flight goggles and chocks away. This is a spritely and charming revue show, imbued with a ticklish soundtrack that borrows from Coward, Vera Lynn and the Boswell Sisters. Even the musical accompaniment is staged with witty smoothness. Drums are played by disembodied hands and cymbals crashed by casual passers-by.

While it flows efficiently, thanks to diligently executed transitions as four screens slide into positions to create all manner of landscapes, it can still stutter. You’re always aware of the process of application that must, at one point, have asked, ‘OK, how can we stage this?’ A greater sense of the overall and it might slip down smoother. As it is that overall boils down to a style, with which some of the cast seem more confident than others. The clipped voices and stilted etiquette lend a daintiness that occasionally risks it floating away like an untethered Zeppelin. Attempting to anchor, the company shoehorn a final environmental health warning, which fits Ovid’s themes better than it does their style.

Nonetheless, it’s a pleasurable, playful hour that works best when considered from all angles. Their retelling of Theseus and Ariadne, in which he becomes a comatose soldier, hits the spot in that regard, as a chorus of well-choreographed nurses tend to his injuries and dreamily swoon over what lies beneath the bandages. A bright concept is followed right through to satisfying staging with no trace of the token. More of that and Metamorphoses would emerge victorious.

Run over

The Big Society is being promoted as the flagship government policy even though no-one seems to have the first idea what it means. Commentator, Simon Jenkins, writing in the Guardian has described it as ‘incomprehensibly vague’. Government minister, Francis Maude is quoted as saying that it is ‘an idea, not a plan’ (1); while Eamonn Butler, director of the Adam Smith Institute says he isn’t sure if it’ll be a ‘Big Disappointment or a Big Bully’ (2). Whatever it is, it is now the central plank of government policy.

‘The Big Society’ is a bit like the phrase ‘sustainable development’ - nobody can really define it, but we kind of know what it means. The official website says: ‘The Big Society is a society in which we as individuals don’t feel small’ (3). Such weasel descriptions are deemed to be its strength. Co-founder, Nathaniel Wei says ‘For many of us the idea of Big Society can be confusing. This is not necessarily a bad thing’ (4). In essence, the premise (stated as a matter of incontrovertible fact) is that society has fallen apart and therefore we have to rebuild it? Iain Duncan Smith suggests that: ‘Instead of arguing about whether British society is broken, we as politicians should commit to a programme to fix it.’ (5) Back in 2007, David Cameron vowed to ‘fix Britain’s broken society’. It all sounds so reasonable. Social capital has fallen apart and we need a mechanism to mend it. Philip Blond, the self-styled architect of the Big Society, subtitled his book ‘How Left and Right Have Broken Britain and How We Can Fix It’.

But it is worth reflecting on Colonel Tim Collins’ maxim about Western responsibilities in Iraq: ‘If you break it, you fix it.’ When it comes to Britain’s role in the Middle East, many people can easily recognise that it is a little ironic - if not illegitimate - to argue that one can be instrumental in ‘breaking’ a country and then claim the moral authority to rectify it. Why is it then that so many more people are willing to accept the government’s Big Society agenda? Answer: because the government is purporting to step aside and let us sort it out for ourselves.

As we shall see, the state and its functionaries are still very nervous about it and may not be able to let go of the controls. Whichever way that the Big Society unfolds, it is worth remembering that the devil is not only in the detail, but also in the lack of detail.

The trick has been to suggest that Cameron, in order to maintain credibility in his manifesto commitment to fix Broken Britain is not going to fix it through government mandate, but will roll back the government’s involvement and hand power to the people. Apparently this shows that it is not ‘big government’, but ‘big society’. He wants ordinary people to be ‘your own boss, sack your MP, run your own school, own your own home, veto council tax rises, vote for your police, save your local pub or post office, and see how the government spends your money’. The rhetoric of people-power, local empowerment, double-devolution, etc genuinely sounds more radical when Cameron says it than when the previous Labour government said it. As a result, some left-wing critics have been baffled by it [just as they were confused when Boris Johnson described his bicycle share scheme as ‘a partially Communist experiment.’ (6)]

Motives

Prime Minister Cameron says that the country should be ‘inspired by the Big Society, not crushed by the effects of big government’ (7). He wants us all to ‘join the government of Britain’ (8) [as a point of information, surely that would be a very Big Government]. And he claims to recognise that ‘we need to turn government completely on its head.’ (9)

It is slightly ironic then, that Nat Wei, the founder of the Big Society was almost immediately enobled for his efforts, becoming Baron Wei and taking his seat in the Lords; and that the Minister for Civil Society charged with bringing these policies into effect is Nick Hurd MP, son of Douglas Hurd - also a Baron. Turning top down government on its head isn’t going to begin from the top down, it seems.

Some of the biggest criticism has come from commentators, especially those of the left, who have pointed out that the Big Society is a con. This is because, they say, it is merely an excuse for austerity cuts. This is hardly an earth-shattering criticism, especially since the fact that the Big Society agenda will result in public services on the cheap, hasn’t really been denied, even by the proponents of the policy.

As it happens, much of the Big Society agenda originated in New Labour’s policies on Sustainable Communities in 2002, or Robert Putnam’s much-praised essay on the decline of social capital first drafted in 1995 (10). In fact, Tessa Jowell, shadow Cabinet Office minister said of Cameron’s Big Society speech that it was ‘simply a brass-necked rebranding of programmes already put in place by a Labour government.’ (11) As we can see, the essence of the Big Society predates the recession, and so the driver for the Big Society seems not to have been - predominantly - a cost-cutting measure (although, such penny-pinching will undoubtedly benefit the government’s coffers while making the unemployed suffer). Instead, it seems that this is a mechanism to judge social order. And herein lies the problem.

The rhetorical drive of the Big Society agenda: to engage people, to build a sense of solidarity, to give them a sense of purpose is powerfully appealing and is something that many - on the left and right - have signally failed to do. So the charge of hypocrisy, or con-artistry, is either ‘sour grapes’ or ‘mea culpa’. However, while Cameron, Gove et al are happily rolling back the state from running schools and services, they seem intent on enlarging the state’s self-proclaimed new role ‘as an agitator for social renewal’ (12). To assess the agenda behind the Big Society, it’s worth scratching the surface of what is being presented: differentiating between Form and Content.

Take, for example, typical ‘criticism’ by the Economist that marries its moral contempt for ordinary people, with faux outrage: ‘The vomitous binge-drinking mainly by the young, the drug abuse and teenage pregnancy that are still higher than in most west European countries and the large proportion of single-parent families all tell a tale…(but t)he broken-Britain myth is worse than scaremongering. (13)

So let’s take a look at a couple of the big ideas on offer. Firstly, volunteerism. Cameron’s desire for ‘platoons’ of volunteers - a National Citizen Service for all 16-year-olds to ‘make a difference in their local community’ - harks back to New Labour’s Community Service Volunteers [as well as Edmund Burke’s ‘little platoon we belong to in society’] (14). In 2005, Gordon Brown said: ‘There is such a thing as society… a Britain energised by a million centres of neighbourliness and compassion that together embody that very British idea - civic society.’ (15)

In fact, Britain’s neighbourliness and civic engagement seems to be in rude health with around 500,000 to 900,000 community groups in operation around the UK in 2008 (16). The government prefers to use figures for the numbers employed in the voluntary sector - up from about 730,000 in March 2009 to 778,000 in March 2010 at the same time that employment in the public and private sectors fell by 0.5 per cent and 2.3 per cent respectively over the same period.

This dynamic rise in the volunteering sector, which goes against the grain of the recessionary decline in the public and private sectors was used by Cameron’s government to show how robust and economically beneficial the voluntary sector is, and could, be. But to be ‘employed’ in the voluntary sector makes a bit of a mockery of volunteering. Moreover, it has become easier for the government to blur the distinction between volunteering that is rewarded, and that which is encouraged, coaxed or even compelled.

The official definition of volunteering is of ‘an activity that involves spending time, unpaid, doing something that aims to benefit the environment or individuals or groups other than (or in addition to) close relatives’ (17). This definition noticeably skims over the unpaid army of home carers (that selfless group of people who tend to ill, frail or disabled family members, who have propped up the healthcare service for years), providing an embarrassing snapshot of what the Big Society might look like. ‘The Compact Code of Good Practice on Volunteering’ continues: ‘The key element (of volunteering) that it is freely undertaken’ (my italics). Maybe the government thinks that this simply means ‘done for free’ but in fact it describes an activity ‘willingly, uncoercedly or generously’ given. As such, it is about the rights of the person who gives up his/her time. After all, the act is not done for personal or commercial gain but is done from personal choice and individual free will. By making voluntary engagement into a duty - or a responsibility - rather than an act of free deliberation, they are making volunteering - something that, by definition, has no legal obligation or consideration - into a contract.

Localism: ‘the voice of the citizen’ (18)

Localism tends to atomise the national, collective experience and encourage more isolated, pragmatic, responses to problems. Whatever Prescott thought, here we have the reality of Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 dictum: ‘There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families’. While this might appear to be empowering, it silos off our social networks and pigeonholes our experiences. As such, there is something profoundly undemocratic about the Big Society agenda.

The Big Society promotes localism; whereby ‘neighbourhoods who are in charge of their destiny who feel as if they club together and get involved they can shape the world around them.’ (19) This could only be true if we perceive the ‘world’ to be our immediate locality. We might influence others to be equally concerned about cleaning up our locality, but this is not the same thing as shaping the world. We are creating a nation of mop-keepers; because ‘acting locally’ tells you nothing about the world. If we want to be politically-informed, critical, opinionated, truly engaged, and genuinely active - in the sense that we become subjects rather than objects of history - then we have to move beyond local concerns.

Before I go on, I just want to make clear that my criticism of communities is on a political level. Communities are important building blocks of society. The idea of trust networks - of people working and supporting others is a very valuable thing. Informal relations between people mediated by themselves is the essence of what makes us a humane, civilised civil society. After all, for all the criticisms about the fragmentation of society and the decline in community - there are still around 22 million people doing voluntary and community work. Communities are important things - like families - but in the same way, you might not want to stay in one all of your life. Effectively, people who want to ‘shape the world’ actually want to move out.

So let’s assume that civil society has fragmented to the extent that the government believes: that is a real political problem. But pretending that it can be rebuilt by local action plans and narrow community engagement will exacerbate the very problem that it seeks to resolve. The problem, you see, is the lack of subjectivity within society as a whole and that needs to be addressed on the political level. A comparable example would be the issue of ‘risk aversion’, which is commonly recognised to be an all-pervasive influence within society. As such, official attempts to challenge society’s overcautious approach to risk - by taking away safety nets - actually makes people more nervous. Unless you can convince people that risks are worth taking then everyone will retreat into their shells.

So, in terms of the Big Society, identifying society’s fractiousness is a good starting point but trying to solve it by encouraging localism - a retrenchment into locality - is going to further increase our sense of alienation. Unfortunately, the government is steaming ahead. Eric Pickles MP states: ‘Be in no doubt about our commitment to localism. I know I look like an unlikely revolutionary, but the revolution starts here.’ (20)

But this is not local activism as we know it. This is sanitised localism. The Big Society Network provides us with the model: apparently, we should ‘be there fighting a campaign like saving a park, or a post office’(21). Presumably, this might be one of the parks or post offices closed down by the government’s budget cuts. The community, in this example, is presumably not fighting to save the post office, but rather it is simply meant to revel in its closure as thanks for providing them with an opportunity to bond. Cutbacks and limits thus become transformed from causes of anger or despond, to a source of happiness and activism. The targets of public sector cuts are thus transformed into totems, around which the community can dance.

Vetted to within an inch of its life with all the spontaneity taken out of it, Cameron’s idea of localism, empowers ‘officials’ to identify local residents ‘with a particular aptitude for taking part in Big Society projects’ so that they can ‘receive training to become community organisers, motivating their neighbours to take part in action schemes’ (22). One can only imagine a new breed of state-sanctioned do-gooders and busy-bodies given authority to nag anyone who dares miss a tenants’ meeting or refuses to join Neighbourhood Watch. In the same way that Gordon Brown had planned a ’ national youth community service’ (23), Cameron’s ‘neighbourhood army’ (24) or his ‘communities with oomph’ (25) are euphemisms for ways of ensuring that people’s behaviour is compatible with the community norm. It’s worth remembering JS Mill’s conception of what Liberal values should be: ‘Mankind,’ he said, ‘are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.’ (‘On Liberty’) Unfortunately, non-participation in a Big Lunch - something that could be seen as an actual expression of one’s autonomy and discernment - may result in ostracism.

The government’s belief that we can build trust by simply encouraging people to ‘get involved’ in non-specific activities is not the same thing as genuine engagement in political life. Matthew Taylor enthuses about the possibility of a Big Society portal ‘through which people can join groups, identify local needs and offer help.’ Their suggestion that civil society will flourish as long as you are involved/ engaged/ socially participatory is palpable nonsense. Real communities are much more than people thrown together to run a street party or organise a charity fete.

But as we have seen, there are already many hundreds and thousands of pre-existing community and active citizen groups but these may not meet the strictures of Big Society oomphness. As such, these people - who are regularly involved in organising local events - may be superseded by an officially sanctioned ‘expert organiser and dedicated civil servants to ensure ‘people power’ initiatives get off the ground’ (26). The government wants to (feels it needs to) interfere, because it doesn’t believe that we could possibly be doing the right thing on our own. By such condescending interference Cameron could easily fragment existing well-established trust networks and organisational loyalties that are the very bedrock of the civil society he seeks to create.

REFERENCES:
1) Cited in Polly Toynbee, ‘The ‘big society’ is a big fat lie - just follow the money’, The Guardian, 6 August 2010
2) Eamonn Butler, ‘Dr Eamonn Butler: Big Society sounds better than Big Government - but the Government must not try to direct social activism’, July 22, 2010,
3) ‘We must be the change we want to see in the world’, The Big Society website
4) Nathaniel Wei, ‘Why Big Society can be confusing - and why this is alright’, The Big Society blog, June 18th, 2010
5) Iain Duncan Smith, ‘We will all pay the price for broken Britain’, (also cited in The Daily Telegraph), 6 December 2008
6) Ross Lydall, ‘Boris Johnson’s London bike hire hits the streets’, Evening Standard, 30 July 10
7) Cited in Martyn Brown ‘Brooke Kinsella backs David Cameron as he vows to fix Broken Britain’. Daily Express, Wednesday April 28, 2010 
8) General election 2010: David Cameron says ‘join me and play a part in Britain’s future’, Daily Telegraph, 13 Apr 2010
9) David Cameron, Big Society Speech’, 19 July 2010.
10) Robert Puttnam, ‘Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital.’ Journal of Democracy 6:1, pp.65-78
11) Tessa Jowell quoted in Nicholas Watt, ‘Cameron promises power for the ‘man and woman on the street’, Guardian, 19 July 2010
12) David Cameron, ‘This is a radical revolt against the statist approach of Big Government’, Guardian, 18 April 2010
13) ‘How broken is Britain?’ Economist, February 2010
14) Edmund Burke, ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’, Revived Apollo Press (London), 1814
15) Gordon Brown, Brown encourages young volunteers, BBC News, 31 January, 2005
16) The UK Voluntary Sector Almanac, NCVO 2006
17) Volunteering England, ‘The Compact Code of Good Practice on Volunteering’, 2005
18) Paul Twivy, chief executive, Big Society network, Big Society Network launch celebrated at Number 10, 13 July 2010. Number10.gov.uk
19) David Cameron, Big Society Speech, Number 10.gov.uk, 19 July 2010
20) Eric Pickles, MP, The Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Queens Speech Forum, 11 June 2010
21) Nat Wei executive chair of The Big Society Network at the launch on March 31 2010. YouTube video
22) David Cameron, quoted in Rosa Prince, David Cameron launches his Big Society, Daily Telegraph, 18 Jul 2010
23) PM plans to compel community work, BBC News, 12 April 2009
24)Andrew Grice, Cameron reveals how he will fix broken Britain (well, you will…), Independent, 1 April 2010
25) Emma Thelwell, David Cameron launches Big Society scheme, Channel 4, 19 July 2010.
26) Cameron launches Tories’ ‘big society’ plan, BBC News, 19 July 2010

To read the morning newspaper in Britain today is to trudge through reams of dissent and disapproval with a worldly air of cynicism and self-importance. It is almost as if we rebel against the notion that things may be running smoothly, no - we must mark our target, cock our razor sharp tongues and take aim. Our voices ring with pilfered authority, echoing judgmental and mistrustful opinions that may not have a basis. Any motion to improve a situation is always met with harsh criticism from the masses, and voices to the contrary are drowned out. Nothing can be accomplished correctly.

Ungratefulness in society is perhaps human nature. Schopenhauerʼs pessimistic ideology, ‘the world is essentially bad and ought not to be’, has its traces in society, but these are obscured by short-lived appreciativeness for what we have. Should everything in our lives give us cause for complaint? We are languishing in the epitome of a lose-lose situation - there will always exist opposition to any idea. Larger moves for change may be justified in eliciting this reaction, since change is unpredictable and frequently risky. As the recipients of change and those who will bear its consequences, we are vindicated in brandishing our own (or borrowed) opinions.

What irks the most is when the pungent smell of negativity crops up in a system that is working. Some may insist that there is no wrong in this, that challenging a method is what forces it to adapt and remold itself as other parameters shift. Criticism, though, should be constructive for it to be justified. Rants about the myriad problems in society only serve to fuel the fire of cynics who pick apart the threads of progress.

For instance, in a country where healthcare is free, there appear to be maddening numbers of individuals who imagine they can moan and whine their way to better health and an illness-free existence. In 2007, more than 61% of homes in the UK had access to the internet, with 84% of these connections being broadband-enabled. Yet we still complain about how long it takes for a page to download (anything longer than tens seconds is met with outrage) - when there are whole nations with little concept of internet technology and free healthcare.

Granted, any system can be improved - no paragons of perfection exist for the taking. But while we strive to reach exemplary models, does it put that much strain on our shoulders to be appreciative of the existing ones? Especially those that have no immediate cause for complaint? Collective approval from the masses every so often might go a way to toppling a pessimistic outlook of the world. However, as mentioned before, any sustained assent seems almost unnatural to the human psyche - and itʼs never very long before thankless voices make themselves heard once again.

Jason Bell’s An Englishman in New York exhibition opens at the National Portrait Gallery this month alongside his fourth book, a small collection inspired by the 120,000 English men and women living in New York. Bell, a native Londoner, moved to New York in 2003 dividing his time between the two cities.

Following an American Vogue assignment about ‘angophilia’ Bell began his investigation into the flourishing English expat community and has since photographed a cross section of the New York English community, including Kate Winslet, Sting, Zoe Heller and Sir Paul Nurse. Thankfully Bell doesn’t just focus on his eminent sitters, embracing the wider expat community from commercial divers Phil and Dennis Roach to NYPD detective Martin Speechley. Bell’s expats are as diverse as the city itself.

The real highlights of the exhibition are the small cultural insights of the sitters New York stories displayed beside the stunning photographs. Their concerns and motivations highlight what it means to be English, to be an immigrant and where the two intersect. Most of the sitters warmly celebrate England, rose-tinted and frozen since their departure, they certify their identity as British and draw upon the sense of humour; something ‘you can’t replicate and you can’t teach it to Americans, they really don’t get it’, whereas others find themselves merged into the melting pot and feeling more American than English.

Bell’s sitters seem to share a sense of ‘profound European scepticism’, which keeps them from being taken in by the overtly optimistic American dream while also accepting the idea that things really are possible. New York bridges this divide healthily.Bell succeeds in avoiding clichéd shots of the world’s most iconic city but still captures that very unique sense of New York. New York is a city where anything is possible, where the English, full of reserve and scepticism, are encouraged and cherished.

Till 17 April 2011

An Englishman in New York is published by Dei Lewis Publishing (RRP £35.00) with text and interviews by Guy Harrington.

When it comes to tales of sporting endeavour, we all know the formula. Set up an opposition of sorts, usually either between the best of friends or the bitterest of rivals, and gradually bring it to fruition in a contest on which everything rides. Prior to this, show both parties developing, taking knocks and growing increasingly determined. Along the way, you’re advised to throw in a near-miss, whereby the protagonist almost misses out on said final showdown, only for fate to throw chuck them a lifeline.

In the main, Bryony Lavery sticks to the rules in her treatment of five aspiring Scottish boxers, subverting proceedings with a final sucker punch that, though well concealed, isn’t quite the knockout blow that’s needed. Cynicism aside, she pads the skeleton with some muscular subplots, notably by throwing some femininity into the ring. Bobby Burgess – or God to those he’s training – tends to his stable of teenage pugilists, of whom Ajay Chopra (Taqi Nazeer) is the most talented. He knows it as well: showboating as he dances around the others, winding them up and humiliating them with his class. In the other corner, Cameron Burns (Ryan Fletcher) is a new recruit, a born boxer immediately hooked on the sport’s cocktail of adrenaline and self-discipline. In a perfectly-pruned metaphor, Lavery has them both seeing stars as each dreams of newfound possibilities and a life worth living.

It’s the softer edges in Lavery’s script that are most interesting. There’s Ainslie Binnie (Henry Pettigrew), the academic of the group, who’s more interested in astrology than his own star’s rise, but still smarts at Bobby’s rejection. There’s Dina Massie (Vicki Manderson), the sort of smash’n’grab girl found in the Beano, eager to prove herself with the big boys. Gutsiest of all though is Carlotta Burns (Lorraine M McIntosh), a mother who just wants the best for her son, pleading a case both for and against his involvement in the sport. She never takes a punch, but it’s her hurt that surfaces like a shiner.

But Beautiful Burnout’s narratives are less exciting than its staging. Frantic Assembly have achieved high-definition theatre to the techno-thump of Underworld’s soundtrack. You feel every punch that connects, as if your own senses are knocked sideways. Lights flash, sound muffles, time slows. Directors Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett have replicated the televisual experience brillantly, such that the ring rotates 360˚ and the action slows to a freeze-frame. What emerges is a love-hate relationship with the sport. They allow you the satisfaction of a palpable hit and the shockwaves of the violence. The boxer’s aims are distilled down to the attempt to ‘administer a shock to the nervous system and overloading the brain so it crashes’.

In that it does more than show those in the ring, even the support network of trainers, referees and mothers behind it. It envelopes us; the spectator. ‘Why,’ it asks accusingly, ‘have you come here to watch this? What did you hope to see? What did you think would happen?’

Till 29 August 2010. Beautiful Burnout plays at York Hall, London

Edinburgh, for me, is covered in numbers. Those of us who migrate here annually know the city as it appears on the map at the back of the Fringe Programme. We collect in certain spots and plot our dashes between venues, sticking to well-trodden paths, barely looking beyond the familiar markers of the festival. We know the city only by the circulation system that connects the festival.

Much of the joy of En Route, a playful, pensive audiotour through Edinburgh’s public spaces, comes from going off-piste and discovering the innards of the city. We’re led through piss-stained alleys into residential estates, winding through shopping centres, train stations and multi-storey car parks. We see the city from unfamiliar angles. We see it as a city, rather than a framework. What about local audiences; those already familiar with these spaces? Presumably it offers the opportunity to see their city afresh, as if for the first time. We know the form can transform even the habitual of environments, by placing a frame around them, by changing the way we look. En Route, with its soundtrack of atmospheric accompaniments, achieves that filmic experience, whereby you feel yourself as both protagonist and cameraman. But we know the form can do that. So, frequently, do iPods that shuffle as you scuttle.

What En Route adds to the form is freedom. This, it reinforces, is your time. It may have plotted a course, but it lets you find your own within it. Frequently we get destinations rather than handholding guidance every step of the way. Here and there, we follow arrows chalked in the gutter, invisible outside of this particular frequency. There’s no prodding as to where to look and what to see, just an invitation to see. And also to be seen. With text messages landing with split-second precision and gentle abductions along the way, you’re always aware of the benign overseeing presence behind your walk. It’s a safe experience, buffered at the edges and, therefore, seemingly limitless. This is no mere monorail tour.

There are some stunning vantage points and some intriguing moments within En Route. The sense you get of Edinburgh as a particular and a universal, the deeper exploration of what cities are for and how they function, is strong. But, pleasant though the experience is, solidly constructed and well-conceived, it offers very little that this kind of work hasn’t already achieved. In lacking a novel twist, En Route seems content with the form as it is. Increasingly, however, we need more than just another audiotour of just another city.

Till 29 August 2010

When it’s done well, improvisation can be a joy to watch. Everything just seems to click into place. Stories know exactly where they need to go. Gags get hit and problems unravel. Yet there’s always struggle present in the face of an emerging narrative, which makes it all the more enjoyable. Even its failures can delight.

Done badly, however, it’s excruciating, and it’s at this that Big Wow, a chipper double act reminiscent of The Right Size, aim their potshots with a spoof improv show about friendship, in which our suggestions never seem to satisfy the errant performers. They begin with a generic unexpected phone call. One talks of that thing that happened ‘way back when’. The other nods in agreement, but only wants to know why the other’s called. Their characters’ defining features turn backflips: civil partners spring into life, accents meander around the globe, IQs pogo up and down. Each commitment made sends the plot beyond the other’s control. It’s a hilariously acute assault on the pretentious indulgences of theatre, delivered exquisitely by Matt Rutter and Tim Lynskey, infuriated and puppyish respectively. Having settled on a solid Scouser and a mishap-prone Mancunian, they embark on an On The Road style adventure to Blackpool for a tumultuous stag do.

There’s a relentlessness to Big Wow’s style, however, that just tips the scales. For all that their exasperated straight man and downtrodden goof formula is perfectly honed, we’re never given a chance to breath under a barrage of chaotic gags. Paradoxically, with a bit of down time, the laughter would feel ceaseless. As it is, they get stuck, reverting to a Pirandello-esque revelation, in which Matt discovers the script. In attempting clever-clever critique the pair only wind up in a tailspin, from which, eventually, they have to eject themselves for the sake of a conclusion. But that shouldn’t take away from the pleasures of watching Big Wow. With more refinement, they should prove something special.

Till 29 August 2010

In glancing a decade or so backwards, Operation Greenfield – the latest from the scorchingly promising Little Bulb Theatre Company – feels very Class of 2010. There’s a modishness about its embrace of retro kitsch and its folksy sound, as if it longs for a simpler time when phones made calls and teenagers made noise. Glazed with nostalgia and powered by spirit rather than polish, it contains – I suspect – an underlying rejection of all things 2.0. Yet, at the same time, there’s a near-permanent irony, patronising the past for its low-fi, low-def simplicity. That seems symptomatic of a generation content with its lot, but not the means behind its achievement. It couldn’t live without its gadgets, but loathes all they signify. It can’t help cynicism, but longs for genuine connection. It champions the uncool and values innocence enormously.

Operation Greenfield, arguably like Crocosmia before it, examines the loss of innocence during one’s formative years. This time, we’re in small-town Stokley, where a group of gawky teenagers are coagulating into a band, both as friends and musicians. What starts as a funk duo grows to a folk foursome with eyes on the local talent competition, for which they are penning a musical interpretation of the Annuciation.

There’s much to warm to within and yet, as a whole, it doesn’t fully satisfy. For all that Little Bulb make for delightful company – their gentle, homespun anarchy remains thoroughly infectious – Operation Greenfield suffers from a lack of rigour. Too many scenes function solely as gags that, though risible more often than not, seem like tangential asides. At times it comes perilously close to indulgence, averted only by their geniality. While there’s a newfound sense of layering, particularly in the way it compares Christian theology and rock ideology with the adolescent experience, Operation Greenfield never quite penetrates the surface or achieves an emotional velocity. It’s crying out for cuts.

Largely that’s to do with its performance mode, which keeps the corner of an eye on the audience at all times. For 45 minutes the half-cocked presentational delivery amuses, lending an acutely observed absurdity to the teenagers. Their words, scattergun non-sequiturs, are all doubting caution; their bodies are squirming contortions. Rather wonderfully, the rhythm of their movements recalls the stuttering animation of early arcade games, lending a dated quality to proceedings. However, as tenderly as Little Bulb handle the soft-cynicism, never straying into scorn, the two-dimensionality eventually grates. There’s a craving for sincerity, for the company to take these teenage-boppers seriously and invest emotionally. It’s all so throwaway that it starts to feel disposable.

But there’s also real diligence in their handling of the teenage experience, which never simplifies the difficulties and dichotomies of growing into and shaping one’s own identity. Little Bulb have found theirs and, with added intensity and scruples, it could prove rather exceptional.

Till 28 August 2010

How serious is Bryony Kimmings? Sex Idiot – a collection of cabaret turns on and around her recent diagnosis of Chlamydia – hits the clichés of performance art so often, I can only assume she intends it as a self-parody. She is, after all, proclaiming herself an idiot, so the earnest but mediocre artist seems an appropriately buffoonish persona.

So we get a version of Dylan’s ‘Subterrean Homesick Blues’ composed of vaginal euphemisms, a clumsy pelvis-thrusting dance entitled ‘Sex? Yes!’ and tears induced by tiger balm while Richie Valens’s sob-song ‘Crying’ plays. Kimmings even goes so far as to fashion a moustache out of pubic hair donated by the audience. Her material is cheap and brash and nasty, but it is deliberately so.

The thing is, most idiots don’t know that they’re idiots, and those that do don’t step onto a stage to play the idiot. They are ashamed of their idiocy. That there’s a knowingness to Kimmings’s performance makes Sex Idiot an exercise in self-flagellation. She is playing the fool in public, humiliating herself for one reason or another.

In that case, there needs to come a moment of sincerity. At some point, she needs to mean it. However, just as you think she might be serious, she undermines herself with a comic clunk. What looks like a heartfelt love song, tinged with sadness, to a man with whom she fell in love, is sabotaged by its inept, monotone chorus: ‘Me, me, me, me. You, you, you, you’. When she finally delivers a series of apologies into a microphone, she cannot resist the descent into the comic.

The clue, funnily enough, is in her underwear. While Kimmings parades in a series of ridiculously extravagant costumes, from lederhosen to feathered headdresses, the bra and knickers to which she strips are comparatively demure and classy. Underneath it all, there’s a vanity that belies her clowning and public disgrace.

To give Kimmings her dues, though, she is a sparky, funny and likeable performer. There are shades – albeit quite consciously – of Ursula Martinez with added chaos. If you’re in the right mood and mindset, Sex Idiot will probably entertain and engage. Personally, it lost me or, perhaps, I lost it. I suspect that’s possibly a product of my being male. To be honest, my inner-cynic can’t stop questioning Kimmings initial motivation. At what point, on receiving notification of an STI, does one think: ‘There’s a show in this’?

Till 30 August 2010

Are we twentysomethings really as schizophrenic as Ella Hickson diagnoses in this cute, but astute, contemporary folk tale? Presenting two twins, the one the inverse of the other, Hickson paints a picture of a generation struggling with its oxymoronic nature, caught between savage cynicism and wispy romanticism. The choice seems one of armour-plated self-preservation or an exposed underbelly ripe for the sticking. Either path – let alone a confused combination of the two – leaves us ill-equipped for life.

Polo and Twitch, brother and sister, were born with one heart between them. That wound up in Twitch’s chest, leaving Polo with a cavity at his core. Where she falls too readily, at, say, the merest meeting of eyes across a crowded dance floor, he is incapable of love, perhaps even of empathy. They’re both realised with composed verve by the marshmallow soft Gwendolen Chatfield and Michael Whitham, who grounds Polo’s acidity in his own scars. As the twins approach their 25th birthday, Twitch finds herself in a tender but doomed relationship with Billy (Solomon Mousley), while Polo and his neon-horror of a fag-hag Jax (Kerri Hall) can offer only snide sneers at the world rotating around them.

Even if Hickson sometimes overplays her hand – the neatness can become a touch sickly and the constant oppositions stick in your throat – she handles her narrative exceptionally, keeping us engrossed. There’s real smoothness to her dialogue as well. It’s entirely apt, for example, that the quixotic Twitch is quick to translate life into metaphors and similes, where Polo snaps forth blunt realities best left unspoken. Just occasionally, when the four characters deliver interlocking monologues into empty space, Hot Mess drifts towards Royal Court cliché, Crimp-Kane sort of territory. That is, however, as much the fault of the design (the play is performed in the modish but shallow nighclub that inspired it) as it is of Hickson’s text.

However, Hot Mess is a cracking watch, wonderfully light without losing its density. Further proof, if it were needed, of Hickson’s knack for taking the temperature of the times and catching the mood of her contemporaries.

Till 30 August 2010

‘I know what I’m doing,’ Katie keeps telling us. But beneath her veil of sexuality and bluster, the eighteen year-old is nothing but a rabbit caught in the headlights.

Jack Thorne’s monologue starts with a splat. Walking through grey old Luton, Katie’s older boyfriend Abe drops his ice-cream when a boy on a bicycle careers into him. That sparks a chain of escalating retaliation, in which the thrill of the chase quickly supersedes the disrespects felt. Before long an impromptu pack is trailing the perpetrator all the way to his bedroom door.

Caught in the middle, out of her depth but refusing to let slip, is Rosie Wyatt’s bittersweet Katie: a girl incapable of folding her cards. Even when forced to remove her knickers in the passenger seat of a Vauxhall Astra, one breast hanging out of her school shirt, she remains front-footed, calling the bluff of those affronting her. It’s not difficult to see how the cycle spirals out of proportion. Two wrongs, she says, have managed to make a right.

Wyatt relates events, amongst a cyclone of tangential offshoots, in relentless jabber of information. Her tone swings between warped pride, defensiveness and borderline self-loathing. For all that she’s a likeable presence, you register that Wyatt is roughing it. Katie’s harshness doesn’t come naturally and she’s missing the volatility to set you on edge.

Nonetheless, she’s brilliant at coaxing out the more sympathetic side of Thorne’s text, which steers clear of easy condemnation. Bunny never peers down its nose at its characters, though it reserves a special scorn for Luton as a place. However, the spite of Thorne’s descriptions isn’t carried by the cutesy design, in which Jenny Turner’s cartoonish outlines are projected behind Katie. Smart, pressing and credible, but there’s more bite to Bunny than Joe Murphy’s production allows.

Till 29 August 2010

One often hears it remarked it’s ironic that Islamists employ the tools of modernity in their mission to destroy it. Those who rage against the modern world today do so with the assistance of cable television, DVDs, laptops, mobile phones and, in the extreme, a knowledge of ballistics, chemistry and aviation. The 9/11 attackers (and their ilk) who, it is routinely claimed, sought to ‘send us back to the Middle Ages’, were mainly university-educated individuals with backgrounds in engineering, communications and computers. And there remains something incongruent about the image, one intermittently conjured up by tabloid newspapers, of Osama Bin Laden hiding in a cave somewhere, tapping away on his laptop.

Islam in its entirety is periodically dismissed by Westerners as a ‘backward religion’ (a term some might argue is a tautology), which is why its adherents’ intimacy with the internet appears not only discordant, but positively alarming. The public will be familiar with television bulletins relating to Islamist threats posted on YouTube, tales of impressionable youngsters having been radicalised through extremist websites, or the pleas of kidnapped Westerners posted on the internet. The grisly murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 came to epitomise Islamism’s perceived grim association with cyberspace.

So is a cybercaliphate providing a gateway for a real life equivalent? The answer is a vehement yes and no. As Gary R Bunt intimates, taken at large, the internet revolution should be hailed neither as an emancipatory nor apocalyptic one; like most revolutions, its fruits are ambivalent. It has achieved on a more extensive scale what the Gutenberg revolution did similarly 600 years ago: spreading both enlightenment and ignorance. This is what happens when information is democratised.

Cyberspace can indeed be a medium through which more orthodox strains of Islam is disseminated, and serve as a recruiting ground for violent jihadists. Yet it is also an avenue through which this religion’s tenets are interrogated, for instance, in regards to the incompatibility or not of figurative art and homosexuality with Islam. To be sure, websites that discuss such subjects are often shut down by Islamic states, but they often resurface under different server addresses. More vitally, there would be lesser opportunity for such subject matter to find an airing in physical print.

Many governments in the Arabic world are keen to censor websites because of insubordinate content that is profane as well as sacred. Under the title ‘Rantings of a Sandmonkey’, one Egyptian blogger describes himself as ‘an extremely cynical, snarky, pro-US, secular, libertarian, disgruntled sandmonkey. If this is your cup of tea, please enjoy your stay here. If not please sod off.’ Elsewhere, the author of ‘One Arab World’, in an article headlined ‘No more self gratifying lies’, takes issue with the anti-Western rhetoric employed by many Arab states, which is often used to quell domestic dissent. ‘Believe me, as a Muslim, I would love nothing more than to take comfort in an idea that it is all about the western media’s portrayal of us. That kind of self denial is the first thing we need to administer’. As the troubles in Iran last year showed, ostensible social networking sites such as Twitter can have a political liberating potential. What is more, Bunt relates, cyberspace can serve equally to turn people away from extremism as much towards it.

Bunt’s intriguing book reminds the non-Muslim reader that Islam, like any other religion, or category of people, is internally fractured and multilayered. Likewise, iMuslims indicates that the internet has provided a healthy means for those within the Islamic world to further appreciate and debate the complex nature of their faith. In one Bangladeshi blog called ‘Close Your Eyes and Try to See’, the author comments on technology, gender issues, religion, premarital sex and Bangladeshi heavy metal music. In a Saudi Arabian blog ‘The Everyday Natterings of an Exhausted, Repressed, and Bored “Saudi” Arabian Chick’ the author notes the irony of wearing Dior sunglasses over her full-faced veil. A website called ‘Ninjas on the Loose’ follows the lives of five British Muslim women, ‘ninjas’ being an ironic reference to Islamic dress. Light-hearted humour to can veer into risky satire, as in the case of ‘Iranian Girl’, authored by ‘Fatemah’, in which the blogger presents a cartoon entitled ‘How to Build a Mullah’, in which a man is shown having his brain gradually replaced by an imam’s turban.  Bunt concludes that it is more accurate to speak not of a ‘Muslim community’ in cyberspace, but of ‘Muslim communities’.

But what of the ostensible contradiction between Islam and modernity? Far from being in antithesis to Islam, the internet is entirely germane to a religion that has always been ‘wiki’ in its nature. As the author writes:

‘The development of scholarship centered on the collection of the sayings and traditions associated with the Prophet Muhammad, known as hadith, required scholars to network between centers of knowledge production in order to collect and transmit the versions of the hadith that they acquired. This activity took place in the centuries following Muhammad’s death in 632 CE’.

Knowledge and doctrine in Islam is determined horizontally and through negotiation - unlike, say in Roman Catholicism, where knowledge/power ultimately flows down from a single authority. The internet is appropriate for a religion which may have a geographical centre, but no theological nucleus – just as the printing press in the 16th century enabled and suited a comparably ‘horizontal’ Protestant creed.

iMuslims is a fascinating study about Islam’s continual internal dialogue, a dialogue that the internet has heightened. It should make atheists and Christians rethink caricatures about Islam as a timeless monolith intent on world conquest, a stereotype that habitually resurfaces. It deserves to be read by many Muslims for the same reason.

Showtime

This week on CW, a first batch of reviews from Matt Trueman at the Edinburgh festivals, reflecting the diverse character of that annual bonanza of the sublime and the ridiculous. And in London theatre, Miriam Gillinson is impressed by the White Bear’s Cyrano de Bergerac. Meanwhile, Mark Napier reflects on the legacy of Brutalist architecture in Manchester and Sheffield, and Rob Clowes reviews Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus.

16 August 2010