11 June 2012

The two Thomas Crown Affair movies

There are two Thomas Crown Affair movies: the original released in 1968 with Steve McQueen in the title role; and a re-make released in 1999, with Pierce Brosnan in the title role. Faye Dunnaway plays Catherine Banning in the 1968 release, and plays a psychotherapist in the 1999 relaease.Rene Russo plays Catherine Banning in the re-make.

Together the two releases make an excellent pair, to be watched back to back. Both have a strong, similar though slightly different, storyline: the premise of the 1968 movie is a bank robbery, whereas that of the 1999 movie is an art heist. The effect of this difference is to make the 1968 robbery more believable, but the 1999 heist less morally challenging. If, as is proposed, Thomas Crown has everything, has done everything, and is bored, then the 1999 remake allows us to accept this, whereas in the 1968 movie, the line "What would someone who already has $4 million want with $2 million more" misfocuses our attention on a motive of greed. Both movies pose at least two ethical questions: a) considering what he does for a living, how great is Thomas Crown's sin in organising the heist? b) should Catherine Banning be true to her feelings or true to her job?

In both movies Thomas Crown becomes besotted with Catherine Banning, the insurance investigator, although the apparent chemistry between Brosnan and Rene Russo is mesmeric.The chess scene in the original is bursting with sexual tension, echoed by the tango dance scene in the re-maike.

Style figures in both movies, for example in Catherine Banning's costumes, in the locations (such as expensive houses), in the activities (such as gliding, and playing chess). The 1968 moviie was consciously stylish in its impressionistic use of multiple images, whereas the 1999 movie feels a little more formulaic.

In the original, music is used to occupy space where there is no dialogue, whereas in the re-make music is used to set mood, to great effect. The song, Windmills of Your Mind, was made famous by the original movie, during the gliding scene. In the re-make, the gliding scene is given music that is more upbeat, and the song Windmills of Your Mind is covered during the credits. The stand-out song in the 1999 re-make is Sinnerman.

The 1968 movie has a bittersweet ending, whereas the 1999 movie has a feel-good ending.

04 June 2012

On merit

I was born into the socially-hopeful 1950s. Post-war austerity was giving way to the New Look; rock'n'roll was arriving with new sounds, and bringing with it new ways of relating, new attitudes to authority, and new expectations about how life should be. Technological development was heating up.with the invention of the transistor, the basic building block of all electronics. The first programmable computers were being built and put to work. Rocket programmes in the Soviet Union, the United States and in the United Kingdom promised satellites, space travel and the possibility of exploring other worlds. Jet engines began to be used for commercial, not just military, travel. Watson, Crick and Franklin had discovered the double-helix structure of DNA. Nuclear power stations were being built to replace the use of dirty fossil fuels.

In the UK the first motorways were being planned; public broadcast television had just expanded to a second channel; the National Health Service, still in its infancy, required doctors and nurses; aerospace required engineers; pharmaceutical companies required biochemists. These and many other industries required cognitively-able personnel. In response, the Conservative government set up the Robbins Committee that first met in 1961 which recommended in 1963 that the university system be expanded considerably. The report also concluded that university places "should be available to all who were qualified for them by ability and attainment".

Further, the pace of technological change left the UK Civil Service significantly under-resourced for the requirements of the time. Harold Wilson's new Britain was being forged in what would become 'the white heat of a technological revolution' that required more technocrats and fewer mandarins to adminster goverment, and he asked John Fulton to chair a committee to consider the needs of the civil service. The so-called mandarins were classically-educated generalists: between 1948 and 1963 only 3% of the recruits to the administrative class came from the working classes, and in 1966 more than half of the administrators at under-secretary level and above had been privately educated. Wilson and Fulton wanted the old Britain that had run along class lines to give way to a new Britain in which ability was ascendant.

In 1943 the Norwood Committee reported on ideas for a major revision of the system of secondary eduation in the UK. They proposed a new tripartite system of state-funded secondary education: grammar, technical and 'modern' schools. The report proposed the use of several factors to determine which kind of secondary school a pupil should attend, foremost of which was the recommendation of the primary school teacher, and taking into account the wishes of the child's parents. The use of testing was also mooted. There are many interesting features of the Norwood Report, the overall effect of which was to throw a free secondary education open to giirls and to the working class, funded by local authorities. However, it was not proposed that independent (much of it fee-paying) secondary education should be abolished. Instead, independent grammar schools were permitted to receive direct payments from the government for the price of offering a number of free places to pupils whose parents were unable to afford the fees. These were the Direct Grant Grammar Schools. The subsequent 1944 Education Act enacted the recommendations of the Norwood Committee, with a number of changes, the most notable of which was the method by which pupils were allocated to the appropriate school: the use of an examination called the Eleven Plus. Had another feature of the Norwood Report been put into practice the use of what became the dreaded Eleven Plus would have been less divisive: Norwood made it clear that during the lower years of secondary education, there should be a flow of pupils between the different types of school, so that by the time the pupil reached the upper years, it would be clear that they were in the most appropriate type of school. However, in practice, this flow of pupils barely ever happened. Instead, the Eleven Plus examination became the crossroads at which pupils were almost irrevocably sorted into the 'modern' (secondary modern), grammar and independent (public - fee-paying) schools. Norwood proposed, and the 1944 Education Act permitted the formation of secondary technical schools, but in reality very few were ever built, partly because they were considered inferior to grammar schools, and partly because the kind of technical vocational education they were supposed to offer was seen by many as the domain of apprenticeships. (My first secondary teaching practice was at a former secondary technical school in Ferryhill, County Durham, UK.)

Despite the socially progressive issue of the extension of secondary education to all, and not simply the preserve of those whose parents could afford to pay, the system that was created also entrenched class divisions. Wealthy parents, who could easily afford to send their child to a fee-paying school continued to do so. Not so wealthy parents whose son or daughter was academically less-able could still pay for a private education; but now the more academically-able offspring were able to attend the state-funded grammar school. Parents with little money could not afford to pay school fees, and so their offspring went either to the grammar school (if they could pass the Eleven Plus) or to the secondary modern school. However, access to the grammar school, whilst theoretically class-blind, was far from equal, and the resulting socio-economic demographic of the school was at some considerable variance from that of the communities in which the schools were based: grammar schools had a significant middle-class component, or were even substantially middle-class, whereas secondary modern schools were overwhelmingly working class. It is not hard to see why. Middle-class families were able to provide their children with books and magazines, a wealth of cultural experiences and opportunities (visits to art galleries, the theatre, the ballet, and holidays), and perhaps most importantly an expectation of academic success. In contrast, working class families typically had little if any reading material at home; economic poverty delivered few cultural opportunities; and again perhaps most importantly, poverty of aspiration meant that blue-collar, shop-floor work was inevitable - eloquently explored in Barry Hines' novel  A Kestrel for a Knave, and brought to public attenntion by the movie Kes, directed by Ken Loach.

Notes to self:
1. The 1943 Norwood Report is seriously interesting to read.

2. The 1944 Education Act raised the minimum school leaving age from 14 to 15. Norwood specifically considered that the school leaving age should be raised from 15 to 16. This process was not started until 1964, suffered four years to of delay, and was finally put into practice on 1 September 1972. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_school_leaving_age_in_England_and_Wales

3. " Differentiation of pupils for the kind of secondary education appropriate to them should be made upon the basis of (a) the judgement of the teachers of the primary school, supplemented if desired by (b) 'intelligence' and 'performance' and other tests. Due consideration should be given to the choice of the parent and the pupil"

4. Norwood allowed for the creation of comprehensive schools.

5. With the proposed raising of the school leaving age from 16 to 18 in 2013, and the relatively high proportion of 18 year old moving on to university, it seems clear that the dismantling of the tripartitte system has simply delayed segregation from 11 to 18.


... to be continued

03 June 2012

Bread and circuses

Much is being made, even as I write, of the 60th anniversary of Elizabeth Windsor having acceded to the role of Head of State. The BBC appears to find this anniversary so fascinating that it seems incapable of not mentioning the so-called Diamond Jubilee every five minutes, and reports stories of celebratory street parties being held beneath umbrellas in the pouring June rain. My neighbours next door, and those across the street, have nationalistic bunting and union flags festooning publicly visible parts of their houses and gardens. Cars are being driven with union flags secured like football team pennants to their passenger door windows. The newspapers have developed a royalist enthusiasm and fervour indistinguishable from an obsessional fixation.

In stark contrast, I am devoid of any desire to celebrate birth into privilege, and I have no more interest in the celebrity of royalty than I have in the celebrity of modern pop or television soap stars. Ordinarily I take no intentional interest in people accorded celebrity status - this is for at least two reasons: their lives rarely materially affect mine; and their celebrity status concerns aspects of the world that I consider to be 'part of the problem not part of the solution'. However, I do have an interest in national and international politics, including constitutional matters, and cannot ignore the circumstances of the head of state.
Why intelligent adults should wallow in adulation for a monarch and all that monarchy has meant, especially for the United Kingdom, is beyond my comprehension. Whilst not of a psychodynamic orientation, I cannot help but imagine that there must be some deep-seated desire amongst a vast swathe of the UK population, for the security of a powerful but benign parental figure. Would that the history of monarchical power in the UK anything like that image.
It is not that I am especially unhappy about the person who is Elizabeth Windsor. According to most, albeit sycophantic, accounts, she is an intelligent, pleasant, well-mannered person who takes an interest in affairs of state. However, on their own, these attributes do not qualify the person for the role, they simply suggest how comfortable the person may feel in performing the role. I do admit to bemusement that a person of intelligence should devote any attention to racing horses. My unhappiness lies in three directions. First, the manner in which the head of state is chosen; second, the fact of inherited privilege; third, that considerable power is given to one person for as long as they choose.
I was brought up in a recently-post-war Britain that for a while accepted the principle of meritocracy, or at least peddled a myth of meritocratic privilege. I suspect that this principle also has in fact a long political pedigree stretching back through the Liberal Party to the Whigs in attempts to curb aristocratic power. Even before that, the controversial figure of Oliver Cromwell (formerly a mere yeoman farmer) showed that once inherited privilege is swept away, those who can demonstrate relevant competence are able to handle the reins of state - Cromwell refused not only the crown and title of monarch, but specifically the right for his heirs to inherit the role. The people of many other countries, including Ireland and France, Russia and the United States, choose their head of state. I should prefer it were the people of the UK able to do likewise.
I do not have the space here to develop the three themes of meritocracy, inherited privilege and autocracy, so I shall give each a weblog posting of its own.
According to figures on the Channel 4 News website the 'celebrations' will cost the UK economy well in excess of a billion pounds in bunting and flags, policing and security, and lost productivity. Whilst some might applaud the opportunity for 'a couple of days off work', I find it hard to accept this national expenditure against the pressing needs of tackling unemployment and poverty afflicting northern England as a result of the economic recession. The public (private) school educated prime minister Cameron said that we "needed cheering up", and accordingly many thousands of people, watched by countless thousands more, paraded in a cavalcade of little boats on the River Thames in London, simultaneously re-enacting past Hanoverian processions and evoking folk memories of the rescue of British military personnel from Dunkirk, France, in 1940.
Maybe the Roman political principle of 'bread and circuses' remains alive even after two thousand years, countless social, political, industrial and technological revolutions, and more private opportunities for entertainment than it would be possible to shake a bundle of sticks at. Not that I agree with John Lydon: if Britain really were a fascist state then there are no circumstances under which I would be permitted to publish this weblog posting.