Saturday, December 23, 2006

No substitute for panto















The Optera, a species of apterous butterfly who find safety in underground caves. They talk like comedy samurai and at the end of every sentence they give a little jump.

Wouldn't the new Doctor Who be better on a hundredth of the budget? They have barely enough money and they waste it. At some point the designers seem to have stopped stealing from African and Meso-American art and started relying on their own imaginations. Are they incurious somehow? Shy of thoughtlessly plundering another's sacred images? Too proud to resort to them?

Doubtless marketing considerations have sawn the legs from their imaginations. It seems they can't allow themselves to think outside the design confines of the surrounding commercial medium. Everyone involved acts the fool, presumably to avoid appearing undignified in the eyes of the sales figures.

As ever the cheaper the effect, the more believable it is. In this respect, Dr Who is as believable as ever. I just feel antipathetic to the world it reflects, although surely by now everyone must be sick of the cross-promotion.

I like the way J. H. Prynne writes in his Tips on Reading for Students of English, "When you read and sing to your young children at bed-time, and buy them picture-books for their early birthdays, remember how susceptible are those of tender years and how much your example will mean to them. If you read aloud to them with humour and truth, and prefer reading matter (choose it yourself) which is not slick child-fodder even when simple and direct and pitched right for young minds; and do not allow them to be drawn into a fear or scorn of poetry, and take them all to Christmas pantos which offer sparks of witty imagination, and give good book-presents to niece and family because you shew that you care about them (both the recipients and the books); then part of the longer-term inwardness of your literary education, a far cry from writing essays and splitting critical hairs, approaches thus a fulfilment which will start to transmit deep values across the generations."

I like that, and I think it's equally true and important in terms of film or TV.