Oh, What a Lovely War!

Tomorrow, US troops will 'pullback' from towns and cities in Iraq. Good taste surely dictates that the celebrations will be muted - throwing a giant parade, given the million dead and 2 million displaced, would be quite grotesque (I foolishly searched for an image for this post, using the terms 'Iraq War' - not a clever move). The Iraq War (or 'Iraq 2 - This Time, It's Protracted') is seen, by all other than the most ostrich-like supporters of the invasion, as an unmitigated disaster - the deposition and execution of Saddam being scant consolation for the utter destruction of infrastructure, the creation of a sham 'democracy' and the unleashing of inter-communal violence. All of the main governmental supporters of the war: Bush, Blair and Aznar, are now out of office.

The election of an American President who was opposed to the war, and the 'pullback', are drawing a line under the invasion - continued criticism of the war will henceforth appear to be, if not sour grapes, then an increasingly irrelevant irritant. Of course, US troops remain in Iraq, as will the aircraft that rain fire indiscriminately and the branches of KFC. The message is that it's over - the massage of the message from the pro-war crowd will be "we came with good intentions, but got it wrong. Better luck next time!". They'd prefer not to learn the lessons, as they didn't after Kosovo, as they won't after Afghanistan. It's a shame, as I maintain a sedentary lifestyle, and really hate marching, even against war, but needs must.

One problem for the anti-war movement is film. The director and critic Francois Truffaut argued that it is impossible to make an anti-war film, as film can't fail but make look war look exciting. I've always taken this argument as fact - if we look at Apocalypse Now!, all 'the horror, the horror' is balanced with wide shots of helicopters, Flight of The Valkyries and that. Platoon, despite Oliver Stone's pinko-commie ways, leaves us with a slo-mo death scene that makes the chemical squalor of US conduct in Vietnam seem like the greatest heroism. But the Iraq War, for all the horror it's wrought, has left us with a genuinely anti-war film in the form of Paul Haggis' mesmeric 'In The Valley of Elah'.

'In The Valley of Elah' achieves its stance against the war by not setting its film in Iraq - the battered country is only seen in cameraphone footage, grimly reminiscent of leaked footage of so much atrocity. However, Iraq has come home - the film is set on a sunblasted army base, as disconnected from the US as the troops stationed thousands of miles away. Tommy Lee Jones plays the protagonist, the father of an Iraq veteran, and the narrative takes the form of a police procedural. The heavy lifting of the piece is undertaken by Tommy Lee's face, shown in nearly perpetual close-up, and his face's performance is magnificent. It's been said of the jazz pianist Cecil Taylor that he's capable of playing different tempo, tone and volume on each finger. In 'Elah', Tommy Lee Jones does the same thing with each facial muscle.

The film is remarkable for its portrayal of soldiers as human beings. Despite the millenia old existence of armies, this remains a difficulty (see the film '300' if you don't believe me). Perhaps it's because the things which armies do are beyond human - it's hard to believe that the people who razed Fallujah are of made of flesh like ours. But they are - they drink, they fight, they cry, they grieve and love. In a sane society, we wouldn't need an Armed Forces Day, or a Veterans' Day. We'd simply remove these individuals from the hideous situations in which they are placed, and carry about our business.

In dealing with the aftermath of war, 'In The Valley Of Elah' makes war as unsexy as it should be, and by implication, makes the decision to prosecute wars of choice seem as psychotic as it truly is. The film is problematic in its almost exclusive focus on the suffering of Americans. This is an imbalance that we can presume will exist until Iraq becomes the Las Vegas on the Gulf that we are promised. But in its unflinching portrait of what becomes even of the prosecutors of war, it deserves attention and acclaim.

Album of the 'Week': 'Off The Wall'

Amongst all the tearful tributes, Jackson radio marathons and sick jokes (my personal favourite being the most simple - "R, I, P - easy as 1, 2, 3"), a gradual chorus has emerged that regardless of his manifest personal problems, we should concentrate on 'the music'. This is easier said than done, because Jackson's musical decline was pretty much unsurpassed. The dull grandstanding of his later career was a product of one thing - the poor musical and lyrical instincts of the all-powerful Jackson. The greatest parts of his work were all the products of outside influences - the magnificent Jackson 5 records, with tiny Michael's breathtaking vocals backed by Motown session players fucking around on a slow day, and the first two albums with Quincy Jones, 'Off The Wall' and 'Thriller'.

For someone devoted to Top Of The Pops around the time of 'Earth Song' and 'You Are Not Alone', 'Off The Wall' was a genuine surprise - the largest surprise being the sheer aggression underpinning the best tracks. Not only is Jackson's singing not devoid of character, as it was to become, but he fucking goes for it. The insane falsetto of 'Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough' and the joyous shouting of the title track (with the lyric "living crazy/that's the only way" - a sentiment he took far too literally) are reminders that he was a truly great singer, although, in contradiction to what various cloth-eared pundits have been repeating over the last few days, nowhere near as talented a musician as Mozart and Beethoven. Despite the hyperbole, the soft cloud of harmonies on 'Rock With You' are the closest he, and probably pop music to that point, got to the ecstatic.

Musically, the album pre-dates Jackson's personal and musical flight from his race. The sheer funk of the album, is, again a surprise. The nervy, jumping bassline of the title track, and the iron grooves that pervade the album are a wonder, and mostly the product of Quincy Jones's invention. The subtle, sane use of electronics are probably attributable to this as well - the Quincy-less Jackson would end up sanctioning the terrible production of 'Man In The Mirror'. Strings are used as simply another element, and not the point of the song, as they are at worst.

Given the hundreds of thousands of words written about Jackson following his odd death (there are many more to come...), this post feels oddly truncated. But perhaps the greatest tragedy is that, from 'Thriller' in 1983, his story overwhelmed his music, and, in musical terms, he'd died a very long time ago.

Album of the 'Week': 'Journal For Plague Lovers'

The Manic Street Preachers are, as Simon Price argues in his brilliant and infuriating masterwork 'Everything', the band that mattered the most to their fans since The Smiths. Arguably this title was wrestled from them by The Libertines, partially because The Libertines are more interesting in terms of narrative, but largely because of the Manics' truly staggering backslide in terms of musical quality.

From 1994's 'The Holy Bible' to 1999's 'This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours' (an album with a title long enough to merit a comma) the Manics made scythingly beautiful pop music, allied to gauché and memorable lyrics - their grandiosity and naivité making them the perfect antidote to Britpop's music-hall/football crowd stylings. Then came one of the worst albums ever made by a great band, and my personal departure from the Manics, 'Know Your Enemy'. Mere words cannot describe how shit the album is, but they can go some way. It was clattering, pretentious, ugly and stupid - it contained songs defending the former Soviet Union and attacking Royal Correspondents (how controversial!). This album was trailed as a return to form - it arrived as a terrible disappointment. I'd like to deride the albums released since 'Know Your Enemy', but I've scarcely heard them - they have some good songs, but that does not make them worth weathering.

So, another album, another return to form. 'Journal For Plague Lovers' re-engaged the music press and lapsed fans through a wonderful piece of grave-robbing, using for its lyrics notebooks bequeathed to the band by missing lyricist and guitarist Richey Edwards. The look and sound of the album is clearly based on that of 'The Holy Bible', the last Edwards-era Manics album, and it delivers on the promise. If it's merely an exercise in nostalgia, it's an exercise which has led them back to the well of decent music, from the lake of shite where, for a decade, they have pitched camp.

The lyrics of 'Journal For Plague Lovers', compared to their contemporaries used on 'The Holy Bible', lack density and focus. Whereas 'The Holy Bible' offers lists of demagogues, 'Journal For Plague Lovers' gives us jokes - "me and Stephen Hawking...we missed the Sex Revolution when we failed the physical". Some of the lyrics would have benefited immensely from being left in the book - Doors Closing Slowly's opening couplet "Realise how lonely this is/Self-defeating? Oh fuck yeah" is one of the worst lyrics ever committed to tape. There are still flashes of brilliance - "the Levi jean will always/be stronger than the Uzi" being a particular favourite - but the lyrics feel like what they are - the unwisely opened notebooks of a sadly insane man.

What has kept me listening to this album is what keeps all fans of the Manics listening to the Manics - the world-beating songwriting and singing of James-Dean Bradfield. On 'Journal For Plague Lovers' the discrepency in quality between the two elements of the songs becomes absurd. On 'Me and Stephen Hawking', James-Dean's giddy verses, sung at the edge of his vocal range, are a joy - the lyrics, including the phrase "Transgenic milk containing human protein", are an irritant. The anthemic 'Jackie Collins Existential Question Time' has a lyric which at first is amusing and becomes, through repetition, an annoyance ("if a married man fucks a Catholic"). But, give or take a few skipables, the Manics have made an album that repays listening, a fact as wonderful as it is unnerving.

"You're Fired!"

The Apprentice, the most stylish and expensive of reality shows, is limping towards its yearly final, proud but bruised by what Sir Alan has referred to as 'harsh economic times'. It's already been noted by Private Eye that 'Britain's most beligerent boss' is one of the many victims of the credit crunch (an absurd title, which makes the economic crisis sound like an event, not a process, and a breakfast cereal, in one pithy stroke of the alliterator's pen). The Apprentice has been forced to reflect this, and as such the opening narration refers to Sir Alan as being worth millions, rather than putting a specific figure on his wealth, as this sum has been drastically decreased, due to Sir Alan's hasty investment in property, and property subsequently becoming worth less than a supermarket baguette. How he must cry himself to sleep...

It's a shame, because The Apprentice is the best reality show. To call it a guilty pleasure would be a lie - it's an outright pleasure. Perhaps it's an inverse pleasure, because what's truly thrilling about The Apprentice is that it demonstrates the injusticies, stupidities and vulgarities of capitalism, up close, in high definition, and in a way that no drama, written by even the most brilliant of left-wing writers, could ever manage.

The disgustingness of the process (one year, excluding a female candidate for her unwillingness to abandon her child) and the foul bullshit that Sir Alan spouts are all fun to mock and appalling demonstrations of the prejudices inbuilt in the system. But for the real proof of my theory, we have to look at the Apprentices (or Apprenti) themselves. Almost universally detestable - a quality which the business community mispercieves as honesty - they bluster through a sequence of relatively simple tasks, focused more on self-assertion than on the task in hand, leading them to fail so often that the impression you're left with is that they are simply failures. Maybe it's a symptom of these 'harsh economic times', but this year has been marked by how often the teams have made a loss under the rules of the programme - in fact, once or twice, both teams have ended up in this situation.

The level of personal and professional idiocy on display leads many people doubt the validity of selection process, but, going by the potted biographies of the Apprenti that we're offered, they are all successful in their respective fields. This demonstrates, I would like to think, that the premium placed on assertiveness and risk-taking under capitalism leads to a situation that used to be described, in less enlightened times, as 'lunatics taking over the asylum'. Given the offensiveness of this phrase, it's better just to call it what it is, which is people with borderline personality disorders, having positions that offer absurd power and wealth, despite their inability to succeed at the most simple tasks.

This leads us naturally to the ongoing implosion of the Labour Party. The massive decline in the membership has left the higher orders of the Labour Party resembling nothing more than a gaggle of Apprentices. Although the support Labour recieves from the poisoned dwarf that is Sir Alan should force each remaining Labour Party member to commit ritual suicide, the ultimate proof of this theory is the fact of Hazel Blears. With her robust regional accent and robotic delivery of utter nonsense, she's the perfect Apprentice, and that's not mentioning her propensity for tax-dodging. The elevation of figures like our Hazel, James Purnell, Andy Burnham and so many others was necessary, given the flight of left-wingers, or even soft-left wingers, from the Labour Party, but, as we've seen, the elevation of the Headboy Tendency has sown the seeds of its destruction.

The current Labour meltdown compares unfavourably to previous Labour meltdowns. The flurry of ministers now leaving, compared to the graceful, Titantic-like slow sink of the Callaghan government, resemble sodden rats fleeing a burning pedalo. The resignation of the benefit-cutting, blisteringly right-wing prick James Purnell, compared to the resignation of Aneurin Bevan over the issue of the introduction of perscription charges, looks like the pathetic, career-focused move it is. How ruthless, how assertive, how Sir Alan!


POSTSCRIPT: Ludicrous. Just fucking ludicrous