Wednesday, November 20, 2019

His Dark Materials: It's All About the Children Season One review

His Dark Materials: It's All About the Children

HDM poster
 I write novels, screenplays, and music, and have taught literature for 30 years but I must straight out confess that I never got around to reading Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.
   I knew about the books of course, I had to. But still, I came cold to this new TV show, able to assess it as a TV series without comparing it to the novels.
   And I found the first episode interesting enough to come back for more.
  These are YA novels, and they're all about the children really even though the adults dominate the posters for the show.
   As usual for this kind of show, the adults inhabit a dark and often violent world that the children--because they're children--only gradually come to understand; the story is about the children's awakening into this adult world. This perspective yields great results in a novel (for example, Shane; Roll of Thunder,  my own Temangwane) but is difficult to translate to a screen because you have to  mostly eschew thoughts (voice-overs can be cumbersome and break the flow of the narrative) and reveal emotion through action. Also, finer details of relationships can be difficult to portray in the different medium. As far as this show is concerned, the notion of characters having their own attendant daemons (animals who shape-shift, counsel and talk) is poorly explained and could have been integrated better.
   The main character is Lyra, a young girl who is obviously special but we don't know why. Learning who her father is was a surprise, but her mother not so: I twigged that early on. Lyra and her friends get kidnapped by adults but they don't know why. The gossip doing the rounds is that the children are being taken by the Gobblers (a wonderful name as it sounds on the one hand like monsters from a nursery rhyme or fairy-tale, and on the other has similarities to the old English word for demon, goblin).
   Well the children are being kidnapped and it seems as if Lyra can save them but that's only because the shape of the story suggests that outcome: in the first 3 episodes we learn she has some power but she doesn't know how to use it (this reminded me of Stephen R Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant). We also don't know what her power is either, only that she has something. The families whose children are being taken know they should protect and even hide Lyra from the authorities; the authorities, obviously, are going all out to capture her. All the ingredients for a good show!
Lyra and her daemon

   The title, His Dark Materials, is a quote from the poet Milton about the creation of worlds, and this trilogy includes parallel worlds that a few people are able to navigate between. This is useful story-stuff too, but again has been under-developed so far.
   The trilogy has already been attempted as a (rather disappointing) film, but this TV series so far has been entertaining and absorbing. It remains to be seen though how much of the rich seam of material from the novels can be utilised in this different form--there are simply some things that only work in books and others that only do well on a screen. I suspect many fans of the books already have misgivings about the TV series. If you haven't read the books then there might be some questions that go unanswered. It's the old problem of adaptability.

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

The Mandalorian: Star Wars Goes Spaghetti

The Mandalorian: Star Wars Goes Spaghetti


Star Wars Mandalorian
The Mandalorian
Disney's made-for-tv venture into the world of Star Wars is a quick-fire, sure-fire, winner because it at once hooks into a myriad of cult classics. The plot centres on a bounty hunter operating at the fringes of the known universe.
   Firstly, there's his identity to be intrigued by. He's presented by his race--The Mandalorian--not by a personal name; ie this is tribal. He's an outsider, recognised by his armour, not by his face; and that armour! I don't know about you, but the helmet reminds me at once of both the ancient Spartans and the very modern Robocop.
   Character-wise, he's a high-plains drifter, cool, calm and collected with a smoking gun and very few words. He's good at what he does, which so far is mostly smoking bad guys and big monsters; but this is a series, not a film, and it's set in the Star Wars universe, where anything can be encountered and surprises are expected.
   Perhaps the biggest surprise so far is the appearance of a baby Yoda (we don't know yet if this is a baby from Yoda's species or even Yoda reborn). This is a possible masterstroke, since not only is the Yoda character much-loved, but everyone gurgles over adorable babies like this one--remember how adorable baby Groot was in Guardians of the Universe?
baby Groot

But there's more: baby Yoda has already saved the Mandalorian's butt, apparently through mind-control, but the baby overtaxed its strength and had to sleep for a while afterwards, thus revealing its weakness despite its strength.
   Of course it's a shoot-'em-up series and there have been a few pretty impressive shoot-'em-up scenes already. The very spaghetti-western showdown between nasty kidnappers on the one hand and the Mandalorian teamed up with a bounty-droid, is fun.

a bounty droid
The fact that the Mandalorian wastes the droid is interesting as well because he agreed on a 50-50 deal with the droid and then reneged on the agreement.

a baby Yoda
Is that because he has no morals or because by not killing the mark he's going to get a bigger reward? Or does he perhaps have feelings for this baby or curiosity about its nature? We don't know yet but it will be fun to see how it plays out.
   We can only hope that the series builds on this strong beginning. There is every reason why it should.

Sunday, November 17, 2019

Eswatini: 3rd Term report 2019

Eswatini: 3rd Term report 2019

students in class [file pic]
An Admission of Failure

The recent announcement by the Prime Minister of Eswatini that English Language will no longer be a required passing subject in schools is a huge admission of failure, a throwing-up of hands, reflecting a huge decline in standards both in the national school system and in our wider society. It appears to solve a problem but in reality it's a way of saying 'Problem? There's no problem!' which is our government's favourite way of dealing with issues.

I can imagine that a lot of students awaiting the results of the recent round of examinations are smiling, saying, "Hey, it's easier to pass school now." Quite so. But will it help to get a job? No. Because there are no jobs. And lowering requirements won't help to create jobs. What is currently needed in our brave new world are school graduates with multiple language skills: I've long argued that students should be studying at least 3 languages in school if they are to be competitive in the workplace [my suggestion for eSwatini is siSwati, English and Portuguese].

The buzz words these days are entrepreneur, start-up, portfolio and e-commerce: there's a general consensus that if you really want a job you will most likely need to create one.

And how do you become an entrepreneur? What is a start-up? How do you build a portfolio?

Studies have demonstrated that a prerequisite for entrepreneurial thinking is a population that reads.  And our population mostly doesn't. (Do you remember those block-like things that have pictures on the cover, a blurb on the back, and no navigation buttons or batteries? We used to call them books.) So how will lowering language requirements and standards help us? Obviously, it won't; rather, it will exacerbate the problem--we're digging a big hole here. Of course, the rot was previously encouraged by the decision to dumb down the teaching of English by making English a 'second-language' in schools: ie, it's taught as a foreign language, which is a much easier syllabus. 

In short, the teaching of English has become a political issue when it's actually a practical one. There's a suggestion that we start learning Mandarin; it's a valid idea; but did you know that there's more English spoken in China and India than in America? And considering how important China and India are becoming in our world, that is something to seriously ponder.

It's not about English, or siSwati, or Mandarin, or French or any of our babel-tongues: it's about communicating. If you plug a printer directly into a computer, will it just work? It will work only if the printer and computer understand each other. Technically, you might say the computer needs the right driver. If the printer software and the computer software understand each other, then it will work. 

Here's another way to look at it. Recently an African e-commerce platform was launched. So you sit down, come up with a business plan, and register a website domain. You want to sell your product to as many people and in as many markets as possible, so what language will you use for your website? A sensible approach would be to choose a widely-spoken language. Currently that list doesn't include siSwati; I wish it did but it doesn't. So announcing that English is no longer a required passing subject is a political statement, not a practical one. Politicians have a habit of clouding or dodging issues. Language has always been seen as a political issue but it really isn't; it's an emotional issue, and I expect this recent announcement to be popular. But if we are to turn around our moribund economy we need to start working on it now. We don't need to make everything easier, we need to roll up our sleeves and start learning skills. We should be upping our standards, not dumbing them down.


HAROLD BUDD: go in peace

Harold Budd Back in the 70s I had a friend called Howard, who lived in Wimbledon village, and we met regularly to listen to and discuss ou...