the first A in Shazam.

Its not your fault.

Global warming, people trafficking, terrorism, facism,  the housing market crash, the credit crunch, diabetes, obseity, cloning, porn downloading paedophiles or race hating xenophobes. Its not your fault.  Not yet.

I came across an article the other day, an interview with my favourite comic book writer Grant Morrison. Right now your concerns should be double. One, that I’m about to go into some comic book rant, and two, that anything said by Grant Morrison is to be taken with a mountain of salt. For once thats not the case. When asked about the recent themes of death in the comic books he is writing, Morrison responded:

“It either means that I am going to die next year or else, the way I see it, I’ve just been tapping into something, especially since 9/11, this sense that the whole culture feels quite dark and threatening. It kind of feels like the end of western civilization and like we’re somehow all to blame for it. I had Superman saving the little Goth suicide girl in All Star Superman #10 as a representative of that feeling. A lot of sensitive young kids out there are carrying the weight of our culture’s dark side of guilt, self-hatred and barbarism. When those kids cut or harm themselves they’re expressing and contextualizing an entire civilization’s unconscious death wish. They’re acting out the pain and shame of a whole society and acknowledging all our darkest impulses because ultimately someone has to. When Superman hugs Regan, he’s hugging us all.”

I think he’s on to something. In fact, I think he’s hit the nail on the head with the largest hammer he could find. Morrison puts it back specifically to 9/11, but just two years before I think we saw it start, millenium fever.  Be it modern millenarianism or a deep seated, hard wired curiosity about the end of the world, we’ve been waiting for the apocalypse for a while now. Ask the more cynical members of society and you’d probably hear that civilisation at least has ended. Not a day goes by where a new, grizzly murder or crime isnt reported. We load up on the details and discuss them at work, or university or at home, we speculate and sigh and feel bad, while waiting on the next detail to be released.  Some of us make jokes, some of us pretend it isnt happening. It is happening though, and while we push so much back and out of our minds, it has to come back on us. Everything has an effect.

The town of Bridgend in Wales has recently seen a massive rise in the number of suicides, particularly amongst teens. The increase in suicides in young people is very worrying, with statistics showing suicide to be the third biggest killer of peopled aged 15-30, although the Samaritans estimate that it is the second biggest killer of young men after general accidents. Sadly, I think you’d be hard pushed to find someone who hasnt been touched  by suicide. If not a friend, then a friend of a friend.

I fall on the side of Morrison’s argument, that many people, especially the young people of today, are picking up the sheer guilt and oppresiveness and sense of impending doom and they dont know what to do with it. Its easy to mock the sensitive, the self professed or unwelcomly branded “emo”. Its easy to think that there’s nothing wrong, to forget about it. But when too many people turn a blind eye, to too many people who need something noticed, something terrible happens. You dont need to be Superman to hug someone, or be in tears to need one.

Now, I’m not saying that people today are sensitive and all crying inside, quite the opposite. People are strong and their survival instinct goes farther than just physical danger. We’ll push on, and try to get by any way we can. We’ll look for the light in every situation that seems that bit too dark. We just dont do it together. Its funny, and kind of not, that in a massively interconnected world, its easier than ever to feel alone. You’re just lost in a bigger crowd. We can look at the ills of the world and think there’s nothing we can do to stop it, we’re only one person. But what happens when one person meets another, and another, and another, and they decide to make a change? Well, you can get terrorists. These people who have had such a profound impact on our society. Thing is, there are more of us than there are of them. So why are they grabbing all the headlines? The ills of the world are not our fault. We didnt get the world to where it is. However, we are who decides where its going. There are no problems in this world that cant be solved. From an upset friend to a war torn country, when people work together, they can change things. For all history is riddled with examples of war and death and mankind’s great mistakes, its also full of our triumphs. I’m not just talking about the walls that have been torn down, the wars won against, frankly, evil, the prisoners released from crimes they didnt commit or the civil rights finally won. I’m talking about the friends who have been consoled, the hands that have been held and the shoulders that have been cried on. The little things. When all’s said and done, people arent that bad. We’re not bad at all.

I used to think that feeling guilt for something thats not your fault made you a good person. Then I thought it was weakness. Now I just think it makes you sad, and thats much, much worse. Save all that guilt you have for something you didnt do or have had no control over, because you’ll need it. You’ll need it for when you do mess up, and you’ll need it for making amends.

The weight of the world is too much for one set of shoulders, so dont even think about carrying it, or letting someone else do the heavy lifting. Whether the end of the world is nigh, or its just beginning, we’re in it together.  And we can make it.

TV reviews – Ashes to Ashes

                             

Ashes to Ashes is a Kudos Film and Television production in association with Monastic Productions for the BBC.

 Overview

Its 2008, and police psychologist DI Alex Drake has just been shot. Her life flashing before her eyes, she finds herself in 1981, weeks before the defining moment of her life – the death of her parents in a car bomb. As if that wasnt strange enough, she has full police ID and is expected by DCI Gene Hunt – a character she encountered in the case notes of a Sam Tyler. Believing herself to be a prisoner of her own mind, and using the characters described in Tyler’s notes to keep her brain active, Alex fights to gain control of her life and surroundings in this retroworld, hoping that if she can change things, control things, she can get home.

Analysis

A long time fan of the wonderful Life on Mars, I was expecting great things from its sequel. Unfortunately, while it clawed it back towards the series’ end, Ashes to Ashes came up short This can all be put down to one thing –  the lead characters.

Alex

Having Alex be the psychologist who worked on Sam’s case was a good move, and provides a plausable reason for her to be imagining Gene and the gang. However, that very plausability may actually be what worked against her most. The charm of Sam Tyler in Life on Mars was in that he honestly didnt know what was going on “am I mad, in a coma, or back in time?” Alex on the other hand has entirely figured out her circumstances – she has been shot, is dying, and is using the characters described in Sam Tyler’s notes to create a world for herself. Her certainty that everyone is a figment of her imagination makes her come off as cold and uncaring. There was just something not right about her calling everyone “contructs” or  “figments”. Also, we dont empathise with Alex like we did Sam. With Life on Mars we were as confused as the lead character, and saw everything through his eyes. With Ashes to Ashes we have no such empathy. Alex has it figured out, and we’re along for the ride. I know its unfair to keep comparing her to Sam Tyler, but it was going to happen. This isnt to say Alex doesnt have her moments – her saving of Shaz and teaching the team a thing or two about detection was brilliant (but yet again, from the Sam Tyler book of temporal frustration). Alex was at her best when she honestly didnt know what was going to happen to her - the vault scene with Gene for example, and that just proves  my point. Too much certainty takes away our empathy for what should have been a much better character.

Gene Hunt

Now, even when he’s not being done right, Gene Hunt is still, well, Gene Hunt. And thats good. The Gene we find in Ashes to Ashes has had some of the wind knocked out of him – his wife has left him, and his best friend has died. Now he’s quieter, more cynical (if thats possible). Now he’s….the hero? Hang on, hang on, the gene hunt who beat confessions out of innocent people and planted drugs, the Gene who has on more than one occasion threatened to kill a police officer and others, is now the last-minte-save cowboy hero? I could believe it, I honestly could. But the writers didnt try to make me. One explanation could just be that Gene has moved with the times, flashes of his former self seen here and there, but becoming more and more the civilised policeman of the 1980s. No, thank you. However, that is all we are offered, and not even in as many words. Gene is different, time has passed. All it would have taken was perhaps one conversation….”sam tyler never described you like this”…”I wasnt like this till  he was gone”. two sentences could have given us  genuine reasons for the differences in Gene, but instead the audience is either being left to its own conclusions, or just expected to accept that this is how he is now. The writers could have turned their loss – no Sam/gene double act, no Sam as concience etc – to their gain to give Gene some REAL character stuff, but instead it seems like they’ve bought into the character’s own hype and made Gene a victim of his own success, like Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Still, being Gene Hunt, he’s still the best character in the show. Good thing….?

Chris and Ray

Much the same story as with Gene, the changes in the two characters arent really explained, when a simple reference here or there to Sam, and the influence he had in them in Life on mars, could have left many viewers quite happy. I know the writers wanted to steer away from constant links to Life on Mars, but that shouldnt extent to changing characters, or stunting character development for the sole reason of not referencing the source material. Summary? Ray is nicer, Chris is still stupid. One evolved (a tiny bit), one didnt.

Shaz

She’s no Annie, but I loved her anyway. Shaz was exactly the kind of character the show needed – exemplary of the changes going on in the 80s, both socially and within the police force. She may have ran after a criminal for no good reason near the end of the series, but I put that down to pilot error and not the character being innately stupid. Shaz was smart, sweet, and tried her best, especially when confronted by Gene and the boys. I really hope they give her more to do, like they did with Annie in Life on Mars. I actually think our 70s policewoman had more duties than the 80s equivalent! Her relationship with Chris was played very well, and I can only hope she serves to smarten him up a bit in future series of the show.

the 1980s

80s london is a very different place compared to 70s Manchester! This aspect of the show, I think worked really well. The music, fashion and even the decor were all pitch perfect (says the 90s child), and the Miami Vice feel given to the show was just fantastic (Gene Hunt on a speedboat, anyone?)

Theories

Let the wild speculation begin. Its pretty evident from the exposition and the title that Alex’s life is flashing before her eyes, but does the retroworld have deeper meanings beyond that? Firstly we have Gene Hunt, the Mancs Lion. Present in the “delusions” of both Sam and Alex, he is the logical start point. Why him? In Sam’s series, Gene was the dark spectre of 70s policing, and of Sam’s entire world. Everything went through Gene. He wasnt all  bad of course, but he challanged Sam and all he knew. Sam worked on evidence, Gene on gut feeling. Sam on proceedure, Gene on…well, gut feeling. However in Ashes to Ashes, Gene isnt so much the centre of Alex’s world, but rather its saviour. Its safe to say that Alex’s world revolves around her parents and godfather, but when all of it is put in danger it is, more often than not, Gene Hunt who steps in to save her. This leads me to think that Gene is more than just a figment of Sam and Alex’s imagination, but more of a defence mechanism. In his coma, Sam needed to keep his mind active, and as such was met with the challanging Gene Hunt. He was also given the nudge he needed to move slightly away from cold hard evidence, and listen to his instincts more. For Alex in Ashes to Ashes, Gene is saving her, possibly literally. He challanges her, yes, but he supports her, and may just be what stops the bullet killing her. What Alex needs, even more than Sam, is quite simply not to die, and Gene Hunt is her real life support.

Other fun thories include – The (mancs) Lion, the Witch (alex) and the “wardrobe”, Peter Pan – Alex’s dad is played by the guy who plays Pierrot the clown, just like Wendy’s father/Caption Hook in theatre productions of Peter Pan. Alex is the girl taken away to neverland by the “lost boys”…

Verdict

Overall….not great. B-. The first episode was a good start, but the follwing four were disappointing. Episode 5 however, was fantastic. With story elements similar to - you guessed it – Life on Mars, I really felt like it was a sequel. Also, Gene saving Alex to Ultravox’s Vienna, after a slow motion shot of his bullet shattering glass was just fantastic, as good as any Life on Mars moment. The final two episodes were very well done, and the twist ending of the finale makes me think that Ashes to Ashes may not be ready for a funeral just yet…

S