Increasing Ralph Ellison's visibility

Last November Fanny McConnell Ellison passed away (1).

Maybe now Library of Congress will lift its restrictions on the Ralph Ellison papers. Open access could shed further light on the author and his millieu. For instance, James Smethurst writes of Sonora [sic] Babb, 'with whom Ellison had an important romance' (2), but few scholars can cut to the heart of this literary relationship without the epistolary evidence. Completely opening the archive would shed more light on these matters.

--------------------
1) John F Callahan, 'Fanny McConnell Ellison, Editor who married the author of Invisible Man and played a key role in the genesis of that American masterpiece', Guardian, Saturday February 4, 2006 (Obituary here).

2) '"Something Warmly, Infuriatingly Feminine": Gender, Sexuality and the Work of Ralph Ellison', in Steven C. Tracy (ed.), A Historical Guide to Ralph Ellison (Oxford University Press, 2004; p.127. Buy it here (UK) and here (US). For more on Ellison's early years, click here.

Le happy slapping, un triste phénomène

La Presse
Actuel, samedi 11 février 2006, p. ACTUEL8
Le happy slapping, un triste phénomène
Yves Schaëffner, Collaboration spéciale

Londres - Le nom est drôle, la pratique ne l'est pas: le happy slapping consiste généralement à gifler-voire battre- quelqu'un tout en filmant sa réaction à l'aide d'un téléphone cellulaire. Né à Londres, le phénomène ne cesse de prendre de l'ampleur.

Le 30 octobre 2004 au soir, David Morley se baladait tranquillement sur le bord de la Tamise dans le joli coin de Waterloo, non loin du parlement, lorsqu'il a été assailli par trois gars et une fille. Le plus vieux avait 20 ans, la plus jeune, 14 ans. Sans aucune raison, Reece Sargeant, Darren Case et David Blenman se sont mis à le rouer de coups sous le regard complice de Chelsea O'Mahoney qui filmait l'horrible scène à l'aide de son téléphone cellulaire. Ce soir-là, David Morley était la cinquième victime du petit groupe. Mais contrairement aux quatre autres, le gérant de bar de 38 ans ne s'en est pas remis. Il est mort des suites de ses blessures à la tête.

L'histoire a évidemment bouleversé l'Angleterre. Le 23 janvier dernier, les trois adolescents et la jeune fille ont finalement été reconnus coupables d'homicide involontaire et condamnés à 12 et huit ans de prison respectivement. Dans son jugement, le juge Barker a souligné que ce n'était pas la première " expédition " de certains membres du groupe. Il semble " que vous soyez devenu obsédé par l'idée de surprendre des gens, de les agresser et de les filmer pour votre propre gratification ", a dit le juge.

Hypermédiatisé, ce cas- extrême- a révélé au grand public l'existence de ce nouveau phénomène. Répandu dans les cours d'école, le happy slapping serait en fait né dans les rues du sud de Londres, en 2004. Soit quatre ans après l'apparition des premiers portables munis d'une caméra.

Le Dr Graham Barnfield, conférencier à l'Université d'East London et spécialiste du phénomène, pense comme plusieurs que celui-ci est d'abord apparu dans l'univers du Garage (style musical qui associe musique électronique et rap) du sud de la capitale.
" C'est un milieu où les jeunes sont friands de gadgets, de sonneries de téléphone et de cellulaires
flashy. On compare parfois le milieu Garage au gangsta rap américain. Il y a ce même côté clinquant, ce même goût pour les gros bijoux. Et les téléphones munis de caméra font partie de ce côté show-off ", explique le conférencier.
" Il y a également beaucoup de délinquance reliée aux cellulaires. Les petits criminels ont aujourd'hui davantage tendance à voler ce genre de téléphones que des portefeuilles ", ajoute-t-il.
Quant à l'idée de se " divertir " en filmant des attaques gratuites contre des passants, des camarades de cour d'école ou des passagers dans les transports en commun, le professeur pense qu'elle n'est pas étrangère à la popularité des émissions de téléréalité, telles que Jackass ou Dirty Sanchez.
" On ne peut pas dire que l'un est la cause et l'autre la conséquence, nuance Graham Barnfield, mais en même temps, la téléréalité a un impact sur notre regard, sur nos attitudes. Aujourd'hui, l'humiliation d'une personne est devenue une source de divertissement dans le cadre de ces émissions. Ce n'est pas étonnant que des adolescents tentent de recréer leur propre version. "

Si les petites vidéos que l'on retrouve de temps en temps sur Internet sont parfois mises en scène, les histoires qui ont fait les manchettes ces derniers mois ne le sont pas. Que l'on pense au cas de Becky Smith, 16 ans, qui a été temporairement paralysée à la suite d'une attaque par des camarades de classe ou à Matthew Kitchen, de Manchester, que deux jeunes ont tenté d'incendier alors qu'il était assoupi à un arrêt d'autobus.

Impossible à mesurer- ni la police ni le ministère de l'Intérieur, responsable des questions de sécurité, ne possèdent de statistiques puisqu'il ne s'agit pas d'une infraction en soi-, le phénomène du happy slapping est toutefois connu de tous les jeunes. Certaines écoles, comme Saint-Martin-in-the-Fields du sud de Londres, ont même désormais interdit les téléphones cellulaires dans leurs locaux. Jamie, élève de 13 ans, de l'est de la capitale, explique ainsi que depuis 2004, il entend parler de cas d'happy slapping de manière régulière.
" Cela n'arrive pas tous les jours, mais on entend au moins une histoire chaque mois. La direction de l'école, il y a six mois, nous a même fait un discours sur la question pour nous mettre en garde. "
Jamais victime ou agresseur, le jeune aux cheveux blonds admet toutefois qu'un ami lui a déjà envoyé, une fois, une vidéo sur son cellulaire. Celle-ci mettait un scène un jeune giflant un autre, avant de s'enfuir.
" Mais je ne l'ai pas gardée, assure l'adolescent. Je l'ai rapidement effacée. "
Conscient du phénomène- qui se répand aujourd'hui un peu partout en Europe et en Amérique du Nord-, le ministère de l'Intérieur ne prévoit toutefois pas légiférer sur la question.
Interrogée par La Presse, une porte-parole du Ministère précise: " Nous pensons que les lois
existantes sont suffisantes. Les personnes qui filment un crime sont vues comme complices, elles encourent les mêmes pénalités que celles qui commettent le crime. Et cela nous paraît suffisant", dit-elle.

Catégorie : Société et tendances
Sujet(s) uniforme(s) : Télécommunications; Musique;
Téléphonie
© 2006 La Presse. Tous droits réservés.

Hate-TML

On BBC News 24 earlier tonight, in response to a case where a Southampton schoolboy was bullied into changing schools because fellow pupils created a 'hate site' dedicated to slagging him off (full story here). (No I don't have the link for you to check out the actual site.)

I don't want to appear unsympathetic, but whatever happened to 'sticks and stones may break my bones....'?

Modest technical innovation for US readers

From this post on - drumroll - there's a new facility letting US readers buy from Amazon some of the books and movies discussed on this weblog . I'm not anticipating that this will generate huge amounts of revenue for me, but it should make life a little easier for my neighbours in Miami Beach. They could start by purchasing digital articles by yours truly at this link.

Army Tattoo rules: fiddling while Iraq burns

The US Army is relaxing its policy on tattoos, in a bid to increase recruitment. In addition, permanent make-up "should be conservative and complement the uniform and complexion in both style and colour and will not be trendy," the regulations read. It's not the ink but the inclination that's keeping them out - relaxing the policy on Iraq might make recruitment more likely.

Panoramic views

Last week's Radio FiveLive film review had Mark Kermode praising the Belgian horror film as a sub-genre in its own right. By coincidence, last week saw the first happy slapping attack in Belgium (apparently). This led to some questions from the Belgian magazine Panorama; my replies are reproduced below, although the finished article could be very different (and in Flemish):

Q: The main question I have is this: are we really talking about a phenomena or is it something else?
GB: It is a phenomena, insofar as the trend exists and has become a point of debate, primarily in the UK but picked up by sections of the international press. It is not statistically significant. For instance, if we take a mobile telephony supplier such as O2, a customer primary service apart from phone calls is messaging. Of these the vast majority are text-based, with video counting as a far smaller percentage. If we then consider that a large proportion of video clips are music related, it leaves little room for any significant number of happy slaps to feature in the remaining volume of footage being transmitted. So happy slapping is too rare to count as a phenomenon in its own right, but it is significant in that a few incidents have caught the national mood.
Q. If it is, what is it about? Is there really a difference between the old battle on the schoolyard where everybody was standing around and watched the fight between some boys, and showing your deeds on the internet?
GB: You are quite right to compare schoolyard fights, which in the past might have been dismissed as part of growing up, to the current trend. The widespread presence of video cameraphones in everyday life and the user-friendly technology means that some of this material will get recorded in ways it was not done in the past. The more difficult issue is whether this willingness to use images of misery and suffering as a form of entertainment constitutes a new development.
Q. Is it, like some people like to think, a typical phenomena of this society: individualistic, cold and full of violence?
GB: Yes and no. The cruelty and gratuitous voyeurism involved is consistent with developments elsewhere in society - reality TV, internet exhibitionism and the compilation and circulation of violent images from Iraq, for example. In Britain at the moment two public health/safety campaigns use video of a mother dying of cancer and (staged) footage of a teenager being killed by a car (the latter was apparently texted to school children as a warning). It's hardly surprising when such intrusive images become normal and legitimate that kids would generate their own equivalent-looking materials. It would take a very misanthropic view to see people as necessarily "individualistic, cold and full of violence", but society at the moment does little to discourage this traits. Happy slapping is not typical, but the fact that it's seen as typical is typical.
Q. Do you think this will blow over in some years or will it increase?
GB: The amount of happy slapping taking place will probably stay the same, while losing its 'street credibility' and becoming uncool over time. The debate so far has shown that you don't really need the behaviour to have the widespread concern and unease about it. It seems immune to a reasoned analysis at times (e.g. there are already plenty of categories in criminal law under which the state could prosecute offenders, but all the emphasis is on new laws.
Q. And is the media to blame or is that just an easy excuse?
GB: At one level it makes sense to blame the individuals for their actions - in a court of law one wouldn't want 'the media made me do it' to be used as an alibi. But the mainstream media, and the erosion of the differences between public and private life, coupled with the breakdown of some basic solidarities between people: all these things form the wider backdrop to this trend. Indeed, the media has gone some way to creating the problem, by linking up what could be a collection of isolated local assault cases and packaging them as an (inter)national epidemic of random violence.

Normal service almost resumed

Tomorrow sees me return to work, which may or may not increase/decrease the volume of blogging. So I'm back teaching again, instead of sitting around my underpants drinking tea and watching back-to-back episodes of the Shield . (What a season finale, by the way.)

Whatever happens as I roll into the university, it will not be as hard as construction work used be for me. Come to think of it, the construction work I used to do - on two fry-ups a day - is nowhere near as hard as the work going into remaking Dubai at the moment. National bird - the crane, as they joke on Fort Lauderdale riverboat tours. The developers are not getting it all their own way, however, as workers in Dubai are getting organised too. (Source is HASSAN M. FATTAH 'In Dubai, an Outcry From Asians for Workplace Rights', New York Times, 26 March 2006.)
---------
What I'm watching? Dead End (buy it here) and The Long Goodbye (buy it here, and look out for my 18 year-old self in the audience; no, I couldn't see me either).

Frank Remarks

Goth capital Leeds University is the focus for a campaign to sack a lecturer with politically incorrect views (details here). Some of the campaigning arguments directed at Dr Frank Ellis, lecturer in Russian and Slavonic studies, illustrate nicely the problems of a selective approach to free speech:
"If Ellis was a Muslim making comments suggesting women are less intelligent than men and that homosexuality should be weeded out of society, there is little doubt that he would have been attacked mercilessly by the right wing press. He would probably already be out of a job.

... Lizzie Bowden, a third year Leeds student, commented, “As a gay student I feel very unhappy about the university’s decision to refuse to sack Ellis. What he said about homosexuality belongs in the dark ages.
“He is attacking all students with his misinformed views and he should be removed from his position immediately.”

So by that logic, if Ellis was a Muslim making these remarks, would the University be wrong to sack him? (Or would this be taken as a sign of "Islamophobia"?) Is it desirable that we can be fired/sacked on the basis of our opinions? Can this now be aggravated by us having the 'wrong' motives for holding those opinions? Thus it's okay be prejudiced from a faith-based perspective, but not out of dubious intellectual conviction.
Leeds University has a equally pick-and-mix approach to the issue:
"Academic freedom is another of our values; this means our staff have the freedom within the law to question and test received wisdom and put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs. We would expect such academic freedom to respect the University’s values, and to be exercised within their context."
Academic freedom, but only within context, please.

Once again, a lone eccentric has got the campus left tied in knots because of its selective support for free expression.


Where's Leeds University's Free Speech society when you need it?

Black Sabbatical

So I finally move from sickbed to desktop, if only to clear the backlog of email. (Current bedside reading includes the BFI Modern Classics book on The Crying Game: click here to buy). Amid all the usual guff is an academic call for papers worth quoting from:
"Heavy Metal tried from the beginning to locate itself in a liminal space between pedestrian mass culture and a rather elitist adherence to complexity and musical craftsmanship, speaking from a subaltern position against the hegemonic discourse."
I'm not convinced that Dr. Gerd Bayer's proposed anthology will convince the likes of Ozzy Osbourne that this is what they have been up to for the last 40 years.

Sick notes (2)

Current bedside reading includes Jeremy Rosenblatt, How to Do your Own Divorce: A Step-By-Step Guide (buy it here). Oddly, the author claims that the 'British are reluctant to look too closely at themselves as individuals because this is regarded as unhealthy self-obsession' (p.15). If only! Admittedly it's the 2001 edition, but where's the author been hiding for the last 15 years?

About bloody time!

From the BBC news website: "A advert [sic] aimed at luring tourists to Australia is to be aired in full on British TV after regulators lifted a ban on the use of the word 'bloody'."

Well fancy that. Adults treated as adults for once. This weblog fully supports the decision, and respectfully requests a free holiday from the fucking Australian Department of Tourism in return.

Rewriting History

A while back there was some correspondence over an article on a Natfhe colleague's Anti-Nazi League fanclub website. Since then he made certain corrections, introducing a more reliable timeline and consistency with his articles published elsewhere. These changes seem to correspond to my earlier, mainly factual observations of his selective memory. Unfortunately the author still has difficulty introducing any evidence for his main argument, or even accepting that people change their minds occasionally...

Webkamm show

Today's "Thunderer" section of the Times features blogging banker Oliver Kamm calling weblogs vehicles for "perpetuating myths as much as correcting them" and "the preserve of those with time on their hands". Quite.
But surely he's a bit young to be writing an autobiography already?
-----------------------

Meanwhile my entertainment while convalescing has taken in Elmore Leonard's The Hot Kid (buy it here) and Season 5 of The Shield (new viewers start here); can't wait for the season finale next week.

New internationalists

Writing in yesterday's Times newspaper, David Aaronovitch claims that "Slobodan Milosevic, more than anyone else, caused a division within the Left and Centre Left, dividing the pacifists, anti-imperialists and anti-Americans from the anti-fascists and the internationalists." This hinges on a new concept of internationalism, or at least one honed by growing up in the Communist Party. For internationalists in Britain, the only legitimate place for anti-Americanism was inside the United States itself: the main enemy is at home.

Sick notes (1)

Laid up today, so not much to say. Was disheartened to see that Essex students (p.5) had more sensible things to say about happy slapping than EME Update: Mobile Health & Safety News. And was reading Jill Curtis, Find Your Way Through Divorce (buy it here). Apart from the self-help homespun wisdom, I was interested to see that kids could catch Parental Aliention Syndrome (PAS) and that Families Need Fathers - before the split with Fathers4Justice - were the experts to consult (p.95), should symptoms persist.

Hospital Bedside Reading

I'll spare you the gory details, but while laid up I read:
The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru (click link to buy) and In Black and Whitey, by Ed Lacy. On the TV, sorry, on the 'Patientline Freedom console', was Doctor Who - The Claws Of Axos (1971) and Double Indemnity (1944) for me to watch. The rest is a blur, but many thanks to the medical team and visitors who teamed up to bail me out.

Me-me-medialens

Over at Medialens, the site's managers are upset that no broadsheet newspaper is reviewing their book, Guardians of Power: the Myth of the Liberal Media (buy it here). It turns out two emails were sent to prospective reviewers by Boyd Tonkin, the Independent's literary editor. The first said "Not this time, thanks" (Forwarded to Media Lens, February 24, 2006). Another offer of a review was sent to the Independent by Paul Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Communications Theory at theUniversity of Leeds. Taylor received the same message from Tonkin: "Not this time, thanks." That phrase warrants a front page complaint from Medialens, and the usual call for a campaign of emails by site users against the offending newspapers. Generally the site gets animated by its political disagreements with media coverage, which it treats as the 'distorting lens' of the mainstream media (see Brendan O'Neill's review of Guardians of Power here - log-in required; the link on Medialens takes readers to a different article altogether). This latest campaign seems remarkably thin-skinned even in comparison.

Well strike me!

Later on today I'll be taking part in a one day strike for improved pay in the Higher Education sector. I'm not entirely convinced about the tactic of one day strikes. But then, given the rates of pay in the sector and the expectation of unpaid overtime, there are times when I'm not entirely convinced I should still be working in it either. That's the 'individual solutions' discussion anyway; later today is at least an attempt at a collective solution. Solidarity forever, and all that.

The Da Vinci Cole

Does seeing parallels make me a conspiracy theorist? A while back I blogged on the Da Vinci Code plagiarism case, doubting whether it was possible or desirable to sue someone for stealing the 'architecture' of an idea. Now the Arsenal and England footballer Ashley Cole is suing two newspapers, claiming "libel, harassment and breach of privacy". The Sun and News of the World both alleged that two premiership footballers - un-named - and a music promoter engaged in gay sex and used a mobile phone as a sex toy. Certain characters with too much time on their hands have convinced themselves Cole was involved, so he has gone to court. Not against the chatrooms, you understand, but against the Murdoch press.

What's interesting is that neither paper actually named the footballers, but allegedly gave enough detail for speculators in internet chatrooms to insert Cole's name into their view of the story. In the light of the Da Vinci Code case, one of the parties involved could claim that the tabloids merely provided the 'architecture' of the story, leaving everyone else to fill in the details (and names). You can't libel the dead, but can you libel those you leave anonymous? Watch this space...

Selection and Committee

It's clear that the people at Amazon are getting more confident with the software that allows them to pinpoint customers with specific tastes. For instance, a while back I bought Penny Von Eschen's excellent book Race Against Empire online. From this, it seems as if someone guessed I would like a copy of Affective Communities: Anticolonial Thought, Fin De Siecle Radicalism and the Politics of Friendship by Leela Gandhi. Maybe, we'll see. But the main point is that the same approach and technology could be used to fine-tune the delivery of information, one individual at a time. There are benefits to this, but also a danger of turning the news into what my colleague Andrew Calcutt calls the 'daily me', where none of the news presented threatens to unsettle your cosy worldview.

-----
Elsewhere in cyberspace there's a new trailer for the movie Plato's Breaking Point, on which I did a night's work a few years ago. It looks sweary with gunplay, which is what the British film industry was into back then. It also looks very good, which is the point of trailers I suppose. (You can buy the DVD here from Amazon and have similar purchases suggested to you for the rest of your life.)

Policeman in the Hammersmith Palais

Opponents of more liberal licensing laws said they would lead to public disorder, if not full-blown social collapse. In fact the opposite is the case. The London Evening Standard reports that under the new rules 46 cases of violence, affray and drugs in 2005 is sufficient to close down the famous venue immortalised by the Clash. (See Ross Lydall, 'Fights and drugs may spell end for Palais', 2 March 2006: p.22). When I was working doors in Sheffield, it sometimes seemed as if we got that many incidents every night. I exaggerate only slightly; Steve Cowens' book Blades Business Crew gives an account of just how much mayhem there was back then. Under the new 'continental' laws on drinking, the police get to influence local authorities by pushing for the closure of the venues they dislike. New Labour promised us a European-style Licensing Act: they forgot to say authoritarian Belarus was the part of Europe they had in mind.

Still with the anti-social behaviour debate, the Barking and Dagenham Recorder quotes me as saying the debate itself can make the problem worse ('Beware happpy slap copycats' [sic], 02 March 2006). Fair comment.