Directory of Lost Causes

I don't know why I've just happened on this clip, but I have. All I can do, when I see this sort of thing, is think about how much I hate my native land. And once again post a link to Momus's essay on Britain, 'Nasty, British and Short'. Since some people may not click on the link, or may be put off by the length of the essay, I shall quote the most essential part of it here:

I recently saw Julien Temple's new Sex Pistols documentary, 'The Filth And The Fury'. It's a good film, with a few spine-tingling moments, but seeing the whole vomity, gobby story again was like drowning, and seeing Britain pass before my eyes. The livid hatred, the violence, the fear of sex (a value McLaren, the film's villain, wrote into the band's blueprint but Rotten disowned, famously declaring it 'two and a half minutes of squelching noises'), the adolescent nihilism (still hailed as cutting edge when it reappears in the work of PRML SCRM, Unkle, and the massed ranks of punky yuppies in combat trousers)... The film just underlined my belief that punk paved the way for Margaret Thatcher, that punk hated sex, that punk played into the hands of the tabloids (still the world's most Brutish, just like the censorship laws and just like the football hooligans) and that punk is one of the things that makes modern Britain so boring, so reactionary and so brutish.

Something else struck me. Lydon's evil cackle at the beginning of 'Holidays In The Sun' reveals him as an innocent who has decided to incarnate a malevolent view of human nature in the classic manner of the Dickensian pantomime villain. In The Sex Pistols, Lydon incarnates the British contempt for human nature. He becomes a parody of the malady, and is an immediate success in Britain. When, later, he and his nemesis McLaren try to embody the remedy to the Brutish disease, making records like 'Metal Box' and 'Duck Rock', the Brutish stay away in droves, fail to buy, and use bargepoles when parlaying. Bow Wow Wow with their sexy Eiffel towers and their odes to Louis Quattorze and home taping stiff too. The Brutish do not want the remedy. They want the malady. The remedy is always foreign, it involves a loss of identity. The malady, however horrible, is forever Brutish.

'Don't know what I want but I know how to get it/I wanna destroy the passerby'. Have you ever wanted to destroy the passerby, dear reader? I have frequently wanted to fuck the passerby, but never to destroy him or her. But dilute that sentiment a bit, until you simply wish to be unkind, unencouraging and unpleasant to the passerby, and you have in a nutshell the feeling of British life.

Watching the clip of Tony Prince, to which I posted a link, I asked myself which part of the British dichotomy I was - the middle-aged presenter, or the young, abusive, passer-by. Of course, immediately, the desire is to say that I am the young man, because, in a sly way, he is the 'victim' here. I'm sure Julie Burchill would say so. He is the 'target' of all that is reactionary in Britain. It is a moral imperative to side with him against the old fart. But, after all, I know I'm not 'cool' enough to be the lad. I must, therefore, be Tony Prince. Oh well. I almost have to sigh about it. Until it occurs to me that I have much more sympathy with Tony Prince, anyway, and, although we can all be judgemental and say he should have risen above the abuse, I thought his comeback was as dignified as lowering oneself ever can be. It wasn't witty, exactly, but it was good enough. The lad will never know how reactionary he is. He is the 'punk', and punk is subversive by definition. And subversive is good by definition, whoever you shit on, and however badly you treat your fellow human beings.

So, yeah, maybe I'm just Tony Prince.

Then again, I don't even have that middle-class dignity and... I want to say 'repose', though don't know if that even means anything in this context, but I'll say it anyway... repose that comes from whatever it is that the lad undoubtedly sees (not that he sees anything) as uncoolness and self-satisfaction.

In fact, I am both lad and Tony Prince. And neither.

I was thinking earlier, because of my other posts today, about regionalism. I grew up in Devon, in England, but it was not until adult life that I actually became aware of the kind of nasty, petty regionalism and tribalism that defines English and British life. Catholic/Protestant, working-class/middle-class, Manchester City/Manchester United, North/South and so on - all these divisions meant nothing to me. I was oblivious.

I went to university in Durham. I was looking forward to seeing a new part of England. The idea of spending a period of my life in the land of Geordies was peculiarly exciting, I suppose just because it would mean experiencing and learning about a part of the world I had only known by rumour before. "Getting to know you/Getting to know all about you/Getting to like you/Getting to hope you like me/Getting to know you/Putting it my way, but nicely/You are precisely/My cup of tea."

I wasn't prepared for the amount of hatred that existed in Durham and the North East generally for Southerners. (I'd never even thought of myself as a Southerner; I didn't know I was one until then.) I felt - that is, I learned to feel - much of the time like saying to people, as per Withnail and Marlowe(?) from Withnail and I, "I'm not from London, you know." Except I wouldn't have been lying. It probably wouldn't have helped even if I had been believed. Before I left Durham, amongst other incidents, a French exchange student was beaten to death in the street by locals.

I don't suppose it would have helped him, either.

And now, I wish I still never knew about the divisions I've named above. I wish I had never been made an expert in them, and made to feel they were a part of me, made to realise they have always been a part of me, and I wish I didn't even know who Julie Burchill was.