"Gone with the Wind" (1939)

On my other blog, I continue with a look at some of my favourite movies - and how could I leave out Gone with the Wind?

"Manipulative, brazen, deceitful and often spiteful, Scarlett O'Hara is also flirtatious, ruthless and monumentally self-absorbed. Yet, somehow, she is undoubtedly the heroine everyone is cheering for throughout Gone with the Wind's four hour extravaganza. As romance after romance fails and the lavish lifestyle of the Southern upper-classes is swept away when the South loses the Civil War in 1865, Scarlett proves that whilst she is a woman likely to hurl herself onto her bed weeping for days when she doesn't get her own way about what dress to wear to a party, when it comes to the major catastrophes of life, she is definitely the ultimate survivor. Surveying the ruin of her homeland in the aftermath of the Civil War, Scarlett vows that if she has "to lie, steal, cheat or kill" she will overcome the poverty and chaos which has swallowed up the life of wealth and privilege she once enjoyed."

You can read the full reflection, here.

"Marie Antoinette" (1938)

Over on my other blog, promoting my forthcoming novel Popular, I've started a series of short articles on some of my favourite movies. In chronological order, of course. I started with the brilliant MGM epic Marie Antoinette, staring Norma Shearer (above) in the title role.

"... with its leading lady, Marie Antoinette gives by far the most accurate and honest dramatisation of Marie-Antoinette yet seen on screen. As a young woman, she is certainly frivolous, extravagant and "terrified of boredom," but she is also warm-hearted, friendly, honest and kind. Most importantly, Marie Antoinette captures what more modern versions of her life have failed to show - that as she grew up, she possessed a dignity and regal self-assurance that even her enemies commented upon. Given that Norma Shearer manages to convincing play Marie-Antoinette from a naive but well-intentioned teenager to an heroic but heartbroken widow, it's easy to see why so many people praised the performance."

To read the full article, click here.

In Memoriam: Police Constable Ronan Kerr

“We have lost one of our brave and courageous police recruits, someone who joined this fine service simply to do good, joined to serve the community impartially and to be someone I describe as a modern-day hero.” - Chief Constable Matt Baggott, Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland

A car bomb planted by the Continuity I.R.A. has claimed the life of a 25 year-old police constable in the town of Omagh, in western Northern Ireland. Constable Ronan Kerr was on his way to work on Saturday morning when a bomb planted beneath his car detonated, taking away a young life of a man devoted to serving his community and wakening the town of Omagh to sounds they are all too familiar with. It was by car bombs, the I.R.A's most deadly, feared and frequent style of attack, that the town had become the victim of the last major atrocity of the Northern Irish Troubles, in which the I.R.A. had murdered twenty-nine people by detonating it at three o'clock on the afternoon in a busy shopping area on a weekend. For those not killed, as the bomb tore through the streets, limbs were taken off, windows and doors hurled out into the street and a woman pregnant with twins, two Spanish tourists, visitors from the Irish Republic, Protestants, Catholics, a Morman and five teenagers lay dead on the ground. In the name of Irish freedom. I wonder if any of the Catholics and nationalists lying dead on the ground or screaming with their Protestant neighbours amidst broken shards of glass and blood seeping across the streets of Omagh had been asked if they wanted this "sacrifice" inflicted upon them? Probably not. They had never been asked by the I.R.A. before. Just as Protestants had never asked if they were prepared to endure the treatment of the L.V.F. or U..F.F.

Then, yesterday, Omagh was hit again and this morning at Christ the King Church where Constable Kerr, a practising Catholic had been a practitioner, the parish priest, Father Kevin McElhennon spoke to a stunned congregation. He spoke of the Church's "absolute and clear condemnation of yesterday's murder" and of "the misguided, blind, morally wrong and sinful ideology of those who planned, executed and supported the brutal murder of young Ronan."

Father McElhennon is right; this is not the 1970s anymore. The world has changed; the country certainly has. For many, if not most, in Northern Ireland, stories like this belong to another world. A world they thought had vanished and belonged to their parents' generation or even their grandparents'. I hope, in the most part, we are right. I think we are. The condemnation from everyone, even from the republican Left, Sinn Fein, has been encouraging. The failure of this policy, historically, is also evident to anyone with a knowledge of Ireland's past. Thirty years of bombs and violence did not bring about a united Ireland. Indeed, if anything, they seemed only to galvanise both moderate and extreme Unionist sentiment against any form of compromise. Now, today, mercifully, we do have a compromise of sorts. There is a full and equal electorate and an impartial police system, which Constable Kerr had become a member of, only a few months ago. There has not been one bit of support for what the Real or Continuity I.R.A did yesterday. Indeed, it has been the Catholic community in this country which has spoken out most vocally against the killing. For the killers, Constable Kerr was not a human being; he was a target who had "collaborated" with the occupying British imperialist forces. Few think that way anymore. Many would still like to see Ireland be unified under one republican government in Dublin. They are more than entitled to do so. But the way to convince people of the benefits of remaining in the Union with Britain or of going into a union with Ireland is not this way. It is not through bombs, or fear, or violence. If you have to resort to that in 2011, there is something very wrong with the message. If people cannot be persuaded of the justice and truth of your cause without being frightened by car bombs and stealthily murders, then it is the cause which is defective, not the people. The Chief Constable was right; the man who died was a hero serving his community. And the people of Northern Ireland are a lot stronger than the car bombers give them credit for. 

The Belfast Telegraph's article on the killing can be read here. 

The Facebook group honouring Constable Kerr can be viewed or joined here.

Mater Dolorosa

In honour of Mother's Day, which occurs today in the United Kingdom, I thought I would write very briefly on one of the most vibrant cultural developments in medieval Christianity - the emergence of the cult of the Mother of Sorrows. Also known as Our Lady of Sorrows or Our Lady of the Seven Dolours, the veneration of the Virgin Mary in her guise as a sorrowing mother was first given its own feast day by a church council at Cologne in 1413, when it was decreed by the Church that the third Sunday after Easter should be set aside to honour Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows. The decision to inaugurate another Marianist festival was primarily a response to the recent emergence in Bohemia of Hussitism, which denied the importance or utility of venerating the Virgin, particularly in relation to remembering the Passion.

However, prior to the fifteenth century, the Mater Dolorosa had already been de facto venerated by many European Christians, particularly in the north of the continent, where outbreaks of the plague were both more frequent and more virulent. The earliest recorded ceremonies to honour Mary as Queen of Sorrow however took place in the early 1240s in Italy, within a small monastic community called the Order of the Servants of Mary, who adopted as the symbol of their order the image of a weeping Virgin Mary standing beneath the blood-stained Cross. In time, the Seven Sorrows of Mary were defined as the day when God spoke through the Prophet Simeon to her in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, her flight into Egypt in the wake of the slaughter of the Innocents in Bethlehem, the panic she felt at losing the Child Jesus during the Holy Family's pilgrimage to Jerusalem and then the final four were lifted from episodes in the Passion - seeing her Son carrying His Cross to Calvary, the Death of Jesus, Mary receiving the Body of Jesus into her arms and the burial of Jesus in the tomb provided for him by Saint Joseph of Arimathea. 

Fatal Delusions: A review of the new biography of Anne Boleyn

"Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions" (Yale University Press, 2010)
By Professor G.W. Bernard (University of Southampton)
Reviewed by Gareth Russell

According to most of her contemporaries, Anne Boleyn was a young woman of many talents. As well as being articulate, well-read and trilingual, she was also, at least according to William Thomas, clerk of the privy council, ‘a woman endued with as many outward good qualities in playing on instruments, singing and such other courtly graces as few women of her time’. Yet Anne’s most enduring and most important talent was also her most indefinable. Anne Boleyn had a unique and, frustratingly for the historian, unquantifiable talent for provoking obsession. In life, it generated an attraction which first propelled her onto the throne and then, as the subtitle of this biography makes clear, onto the scaffold. In death, it has helped her become an icon of sustained popular fascination. And it is this talent of Anne’s, if no other, which George Bernard is prepared to acknowledge in his new book Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions. Contrary to most studies of her life, it is Bernard’s contention that although Anne Boleyn was undeniably highly attractive in terms of her appearance, there was nothing about her personality, intellect, interests or accomplishments which marked her out as being particularly exceptional, except for the fact that Henry VIII happened, inexplicably, to fall so violently and obsessively in love with her.

This, Bernard’s first foray into the biographical genre (Bernard is a professor of English History at the University of Southampton and his best-known previous work was The King's Reformation) will, of course, always be best known for the fact that it is thus far the only biography of Anne Boleyn to seriously suggest that she might have been guilty of at least some of the charges for which she and five men were executed in May 1536. Yet although five of Fatal Attractions’ twelve chapters are devoted to expounding this controversial hypothesis, there are other aspects of Boleyn’s life and career which Bernard studies and in three other key areas, he offers a potentially valid revisionist interpretation of a woman who was described by one of her other recent academic biographers as ‘the most important and influential queen consort this country has ever had.’

Has Christopher Hitchens mellowed in his attitude towards Christianity?

An article in The Catholic Herald notes the unlikely friendship between Vanity Fair journalist and well-known critic of religion, Christopher Hitchens, and the devout Christian scientist, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, whose pioneering techniques on treating cancer are currently being used by Mr Hitchens in his battle against throat cancer. Dr. Collins (above), who is an evangelical Protestant, also won praise for his scientific research's influence upon his faith in Pope Benedict XVI's book Jesus of Nazareth, where he commended the doctor's work in "the magnificent mathematics of creation, which today we can read in the human genetic code, we recognise the language of God”. Collins actually converted to Christianity, which he was not born into, thanks to his scientific research. 

It's a moving and well written article. However, I think the story (but not the article) might over-state two things. The first is that Christopher Hitchens has always been much more fair in debates with theists than his more militant colleagues and the second is that unlike Richard Dawkins, Hitchens has never claimed that a lively intellect and, more importantly, scientific brilliance are incompatible with a religious faith. He just happens to believe that a religious faith is a waste of time which, contrary to the hysteria which greets the mention of his name amongst some devout Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants, does not make him a bad person. The idea that all those who profess a religious or spiritual faith are either insane or woefully stupid is perhaps the one I have always found most bizarre. The claim that no atheist regime has ever persecuted believers because of their religious faith, however, remains the most offensive.

I hope Christopher's battle against throat cancer, which he has fought doggedly, is successful. Not simply because of how well he is thought of by so many people but, although I disagree with almost everything he thinks both politically and religiously (his critique of The King's Speech was particularly misleading), he is a brilliant writer with a real way with words and the intellectual world would be poorer for his loss.

Marie-Antoinette's morals

American novelist Elena Maria Vidal, author of the novel Trianon based on Marie-Antoinette's life, discusses the Queen's moral standards and how seriously she took the responsibilities of being a chaperon to her young ladies-in-waiting. It's always struck me that perhaps part of the reason why the 19th century was so fascinated by the story of Marie-Antoinette (she was an icon of popular interest in both the Old South and Victorian England) is because her manners and morals had reflected so much of what those societies prized as true, lady-like behaviour. The quote below from the memoirs of one of her ladies-in-waiting, Madame Campan, recalls Marie-Antoinette's interest in ensuring that both her servants and her guests always enjoyed themselves in her company. Personally, I think you can always tell a lot about someone's character by the way they treat their "inferiors." I hate seeing anyone who thinks birth or money entitles them to be insufferable to those who work for, or around, them. To quote a friend's mother, again, true class is making other people feel comfortable: -

"All who were acquainted with the Queen’s private qualities knew that she equally deserved attachment and esteem. Kind and patient to excess ... she indulgently considered all around her, and interested herself in their fortunes and in their pleasures. She had, among her women, young girls from the Maison de St. Cyr [a prestigious boarding school established by the Louis XIV's wife], all well born; the Queen forbade them the play when the performances were not suitable; sometimes, when old plays were to be represented, if she found she could not with certainty trust to her memory, she would take the trouble to read them in the morning, to enable her to decide whether the girls should or should not go to see them,–rightly considering herself bound to watch over their morals and conduct."