Graveyard of the Fireflies

My Neighbour Totoro

Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli have been making amazing animated films since the 1970s but really hit good form a couple of decades later with Princess Mononoke, My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away.  These have in recent years become three of my favourite films, enjoyed by both Kate and I in equal measures, so it was with great anticipation that I sat down with her last Sunday evening to watch Graveyard of the Fireflies.  We wanted somthing gentle to ease us into bed ready for Monday morning.  However, I was treated to what was possibly the saddest experience of my my entire life.

The film is set in Japan during the air raids of WWII and follows the young boy Seita and his little sister Setsuko as they struggle to survive together in an environment dominated by firebombs, rationing and tragedy.  The film starts with Seita’s death in a subway station – dirty, ragged and alone – so you know roughly what is coming, but it doesn’t make the last half hour of th film any easier to watch.  Their father is at sea with the navy and is never more than a photograph in the film, while their mother dies after a bomb attack quite early on, leaving Seita to care fo Setsuko on a full-time basis.  They move in with an unlikeable aunt, but leave after her nagging and accusations of laziness grow too much and move into an abandoned bomb shelter that they share with the fireflies.

Setsuko

From here on, the story is all about their life together, Seita’s constant search for food to keep them alive and the all too brief moments of laughter and fun that they share.  By the time that they started showing signs of malnutrition, Kate could watch no more and I was left to watch their inevitable demise.  What made it worse, was that knowing Totoro, I didn’t think that the studio which produced that film with it’s boundless optimism and positive ending, could then produce something so heart-achingly sad.  So I cried, more than I ever have over a film or TV programme, and just uploading the picture of Setsuko makes me genuinely well up again.

A couple of days later I was thinking about my reaction to this film and why a piece of animation should provoke such an effect in me, while seeing real-life tragedy on TV does not.  I remembered reading Art Spiegelman’s Maus: I had read and heard about the holocaust many times before I read this graphic novel recounting the life of Spiegelman’s father during WWII and his incarceration at Auschwitz, but it was only after reading this biography that I really felt I had an understanding of the events and became emotionally involved with someone who had lived through this time.  I wondered whether it was the nature of the medium that evoked such a response or whether it was simply the quality of the storytelling and it’s emphasis through words and pictures.

I decided two things…firstly, that despite some people’s dismissiveness of the media, both graphic novels and animated film (and I don’t mean Disney/Pixar and Marvel/DC here) can produce works of startling beauty and insight comparable to their more traditional siblings.  I have never subscribed to the bland acceptance by the ignorant that these are a lower class of art or that they are “comics” at it’s basest level.  Secondly, I decided that real-life, with it’s shiny Sky News patina, has become something less real, over-produced, sexed-up with shock and awe.  It focuses nowadays almost entirely on either celebrity or tragedy with little of the middle ground that makes our lives real and with so much news and so much pain and suffering thrown in our faces, we have become immune to it’s effects.  Another bomb blast in Gaza, another child dies of disease and starvation in Africa, another potentially deadly virus set to reach pandemic levels?  It comes as little surprise therefore that I see more emotion and feel more connection with a book or film that is presented in an ‘unreal’ style.

Slow-mo

Morning!  It looks like I’m averaging a post a month here…it’s slow going on the word front.

Museum of Bad Art

Just found this site from a friend – if you’re ever in Boston, it has to be worth a visit!

The Museum of Bad Art

There are several pictures that I particularly like – and one which made me laugh out loud.  The title of this piece is “Think Again”, oil on canvas by Unknown and the notes as follows:

“This disturbing work ‘makes an offer you can’t refuse’. The chilling, matter-of-fact manner in which the subject presents the severed head to us is a poignant reminder of just how numb we have become. The understated violence implicit in the scene speaks volumes on our own desensitization, our society’s reflexive use of force, and the artist’s inability to deal with the hindquarters of the animal.”

The Bedtime Hour

As a six month veteran of the CBeebies “Bedtime Hour” it has been strange to me that this previously unknown segment of the television world has attracted so much media attention of late.  It is a daily ritual for many young children between the hours of 6 and 7pm and I have been watching some or all of it with Harry almost every evening for the past six months.  This time of day is a special one for me: not only is it when I get home from work to the comfort of my flat, but it is when I get to have some time with my son before his bedtime.  Although I see him almost every morning before I leave the house, I don’t get a chance to sit and play with him until the evening.  This odd hour can be very restful or quite fraut, depending on Harry’s mood and state of exhaustion and it marks the transition between the end of my day and the start of my evening.  In essence, it is a bubble of family life that seems to exist independently of the rest of the world and the programmes, characters and presenters are all linked inextricably to this bubble so that it seems incongruous when they crop up in the spin of the “real world”.

The first and most well-known crossover from this world to yours was In the Night Garden which has found itself receiving critiques in newspapers and most recently on Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe.

However, the most recent case of intrusion by the media into our world was about one of the new duo presenting this feast of bedtime entertainment, Cerrie Burnell.  When I look back on TV from my childhood, it is the programmes that I remember most fondly, but the links between them are also important as it is these people who are taking you on this trip, leading you through hours and hours of your formative years.  I fondly remember people like Johnny Ball and Brian Cant as being wonderful presenters of their own shows, but it wasn’t until the era of Philip Schofield that there dedicated presenters to fill in the gaps on these journeys.  I think what you appreciate most as a child watching and learning from adults is being talked to on a level and not as if you are an idiot and all of these presenters achieved that.

Cerrie Burnell

And so we come to Cerrie Burnell.  Irritatingly, she has become a newsworthy subject because of her obvious disability, namely the absence of her right arm, and the supposed shock this has caused amongst parents whose children watch The Bedtime Hour.  One, quoted widely, has said that “I know it would have played on my eldest daughter’s mind and possibly caused sleep problems” and has since stopped the delicate thing from being exposed to such horror every night.  There must, I hope, be only a minority of people with this attitude, but it is not her disability that I have an issue with (although the way in which the stump wiggles can be a little disconcerting at times): it is her style of presentation which grates with me.  I appreciate that she is presenting to the under-six age group and concessions have to be made for their level of education, but it is like she is simple.  She is not helped by her co-star in our nightly escapades, Alex Winters, a man who possesses possibly the widest mouth I have ever seen.  Together, they are ruining the pleasant (if bizarre) interludes once presided over by Chris Jarvis, who had a genuine talent for this type of work, and Pui Fan Lee who, although carried by Chris for the most part, was particularly likeable.  It feels like Cerrie and Alex are trying to compensate for the fact that they are terrible presenters by either Cerrie overdrammatically gesticulating with is using her remaining arm or Alex just smiling inanely like a stoned cheshire cat.

My evenings with Muffin, Makka-Pakka and Lola will never be quite the same as long as this pair are puncturing my bubble.  Bring back Chris and Pui and the crazy toothbrush song!

Finding a father

Twenty-nine years ago my parents split up.  Irreconcilible differences led them to the point of no return and my mother, my two siblings and I moved to Croydon to live with my grandmother for the next twenty or so years until my mother remarried.  During that time none of us had any contact with our father (apart from my mother), but from my point of view (I was only two when they divorced) I was never missing anything.  I didn’t miss my father, because I never knew him.

When my sister had her son six years ago she, being emotionally more sensitive to such things, wrote to our father to tell him that he had his first grandchild.  He wrote back and they formed a tentative relationship.

Three months ago I received a letter from him trying to explain in some way his actions and, if I was amenable to the idea, making some attempt to start things afresh.  Thirty years and a grandson probably have that affect on a man.  He left the decision of whether I wanted to contact him in my lap and so two weeks ago, I wrote back.  It was a difficult letter, not least because I had never used the words “Dear Dad” before.  What do you say?  In the end it was simply a case of responding to points from his letter and telling him about my family.

Anyway, we have agreed to meet up and I think we are almost getting carried away by the whole idea, making future plans, booking hotels et cetera, but there is still that worry about the first meeting.  How does that work?  Hello…I’m your son.  How have you been these past few years?  He even sent me a picture of him and his wife so that we could recognise them, but there was really no need, he is unquestionably my father in looks – it’s strange to think that there is someone out there who looks so much like me but of whom I know very little about.

There’s a lot to think about, but if all else fails we can just get Harry to perform tricks for us.

I’m slowly arriving…

…and I’m new to this, so please bear with me while I get myself up and running…

In the coming weeks and months expect comment and burbling on current affairs, sport, music and raising my son.  I will be uploading photos from our various adventures and exploration, and, if I can, some of my favourite snippets of music for your delectation.

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I have spent many hours during my life watching little bars grow imperceptibly across computer screens, inching my way to the land of milk and critical updates.  I’m sure that you have better things do than sit here waiting in bloated anticipation for me to write up another post, so I will be as quick as I can.  In the meantime, please get on with your life as usual, make coffee, eat noodles, or, if you prefer, sit open-mouthed and immobile watching progress bars on your computer.