The blogs are going to be a bit thinner on the ground for the next while, as I have to set aside time for my forthcoming radio documentary on the Waterford Quakers. Forthcoming sounds a bit grand actually, Harry Potter sequels are “forthcoming”, mine is more a “documentary what I made”. The interviews were recorded between February and May and I’m now in the midst of the editing process, which is without doubt my favourite part. My least favourite part, for the record, is completing the red tape necessary to secure the funding. I’d like to describe it as a Kafkaesque experience but it’s no way near as pleasant as that. Anyway, the editing process seems to hold the key to meaning and narrative drive in prepared broadcasting, and even more so in film. It always makes me think of the position of the Director in film culture. It’s taken for granted that the director has authorial ownership of a movie, but where would a director be without his or her editor? Or cinematographer? Or composer, set designer, art director, scriptwriter or even actors? What does a director do anyway? Are they chancers? Editing is one of the most basic – and therefore important - tricks in the trade. While you might need a full orchestra for the score to work or expensive lighting and locations for your tasteful cinematography to cover up the fact the film is no good, every movie needs editing and it’s still the most effective tool in the box, as Georges Méliès understood at the inception of the art form. Most editing is of course tastefully done, but it lends itself quite easily to the brutal didacticism of low budgets and left-wing politics, hence the revolutionary montage techniques of Soviet cinema in the twenties: one shot of striking workers being attacked intercut with a bull being slaughtered – Workers!?, Bulls!? GET IT? I don’t want to be dismissive though; it was revolutionary at time, highly influential and remains powerful. Weird juxtapositions are huge fun in editing, so much fun in fact that you have to be careful not to wreck your story on the rocks of hyperbole while pursuing the siren-like cleverness of an arresting edit. You should be careful of metaphors too. Fun edits are one of the less celebrated elements that’s made Citizen Kane such a film nerd’s favourite, I’m not quite sure why Orson Welles wanted to cut to a scary Cockatoo, but I’m glad he did. Welles loved the solitary process of editing, his portable moviola a constant companion in his exile years. As if to prove the point, his last film F for Fake was largely made up of bought second-hand footage he edited into a masterpiece. I love Orson Welles. Of course F for Fake was a mock documentary which means it was a fiction film and he could do what he wanted. I make factual programmes which means there’s an ethical element to the editing process: I can’t interview someone in good faith and then edit that interview with the sound of a bull going to the toilet (although, note to self, that would be brilliant). The edits have to be a fair representation of what was said to you, but cut together in such a way as to tell a half interesting story. That's how you have to make documentary. Unless you don't. Unless you’re doing a Michael Moore style polemic where your own subjectivity and point of view is made obvious to the viewer. I don’t think I want to do a Michael Moore about the Quakers though. I leave you with a final irony; this blog isn’t very well edited.
During the course this blog being written, journalism as we know it has gone into a possibly terminal collapse. I did think I should write something about it but I can’t really think of anything original to say. There is just one question that’s been bothering me: which Australian became big in Britain first, Rupert Murdoch or Paul Hogan? And can the Northern Hemisphere hand back Rupert Murdoch in exchange for Paul Hogan and the fella with the crooked mouth?
There are few political creeds more enduring, powerful and ugly than nationalism. That an accident of birth should instill someone with such misplaced pride and inform the political decision making process is plainly irrational. Yet despite being thoroughly discredited in two world wars, nationalism retains a powerful hold on modern political debate, eschewing universal principles in favour of chauvinism and creating unities amongst groups who really ought not to have that much in common. In 2002, Gerhard Schroeder - Germany’s own “Tony Blair” - having failed to make much reformist headway in four years as Chancellor, fought the Federal Elections on anti-Iraq war, kind-of anti-American ticket and won himself another three years of ineffective rule. George Bush wore a stars and stripes collar pin while cutting taxes for a relatively small section of the wealthiest Americans and got himself re-elected with the support of most of the poorest states in the union. In Ireland we had nationalism real bad. So pleased were we with winning independence from the British that we spent most of the first forty years or so of self-rule ignoring the socio-economic progress that was being made elsewhere in western Europe, so pleased with being a republic our political leaders had no difficulty allowing a foreign monarchy vet social legislation as long as it wasn’t the British. Even when I was a kid, Charles Haughey was flogging nationalism every chance he could get to gain advantage over the liberal Garret Fitzgerald. Historians continue to debate the relative merits of his premiership, but there’s no doubt that one of his main political planks was that he kind-of didn’t like the British , a policy which did exactly nothing for the hundreds of thousands of unemployed in the country who lived an impoverished lifestyle that his corruption had insulated him against. He didn’t like the British and sometimes wore a fisherman’s hat; therefore he was a man of the people. Nationalism says we are all of one tribe, we are all the same and in its ugliest form insists we all should think and act the same with any breaking of the ranks suspect at best, treasonous at worst. It’s simply not rational to invest pride, honour and meaning in the place you happen to be born in. But then, if reason defines us humans, so too does our sometimes endearing, sometimes terrifying ability to abjure it. Georges Clemenceau said a patriot loves his country, while a nationalist hates everyone else’s (to be fair Clemenceau spent most of his career hating the Germans). I think political nationalism with its flags, marches, drums and demagogues is often predicated on hating another place, but love of locality is much more of a simple fondness for home, less heralded but ultimately more keenly felt. Loving your home town comes down to the mundane and banal everyday of life; the way people speak, the way people work, the way people insult. It doesn’t depend on being the biggest or most beautiful place, just that it should have something unique only you truly recognize. That uniqueness is usually formed by a combination of shared history and humour, and, from time to time, shared pain. So when this everyday place you live in pulls off something extraordinary, when it does a good job, the most satisfying aspect is the opportunity to feel proud of something you take for granted a little bit too much. To indulge in some of that more strident nationalistic pride in the place you love in a much quieter way every other day. Waterford put on a great party last weekend, the oldest city in Ireland looked youthful, happy and optimistic, and all our visitors agreed - to which I always think “and they haven’t even seen the county yet!” It’s not important for me believe that Waterford is the greatest place on earth: you know, I’ve heard New York is pretty cool. It just has to be the most Waterford place on earth but the weekend showed us just how great that can be. I leave with the words of the great Kirk Douglas in Spartacus. As the gladiators, resplendent in their homo-erotic shortened togas, and even more homo-erotic Brooklyn accents, debate where the best wine in the world comes from, Kirk interrupts and tells them that they’re all wrong: “the best wine in the world is from home, wherever home is!” The group then break into hearty laughing and back slapping, which is what Waterford should now do.
