Day of the Locust review: this is us. Now!

The Day of the Locust is a superbly intelligent movie about the madness of crowds and the nightmarisation of the American Dream, which increasingly resembles a documentary about today's collective id. Director John Schlesinger's film adaptation manages to be faithful (if over-literal) to Nathanael West's coruscating book, set in early Hollywood's Sodom and Gomorrah.

Tod Hackett (William Atherton) is an artist employed by one of the major studios in 1930s Hollywood. While he's working on the lavish epic, Waterloo, he meets and hangs out with ("befriends" is too strong a word for such an alienated world) the local characters, mostly deluded and in the gutter but jealously looking up at the stars.

Donald Sutherland is the perfect Homer Simpson, a gangling, lugubrious square; a big lug who's a big fail with the ladies. My viewing companions considered Sutherland too young for the role, but I thought he was just right as a man entering premature middle age. (After all, Matt Groening's Homer Simpson is supposed to be a mere 38.) Like the other men in the movie, Sutherland's Homer falls in love with flighty 17-year old wannabe starlet no-hoper Faye Greener played by Karen Black who, despite a valiant effort, is too old for the role of a lost teenager. Black is beautiful and a terrific actress, but far too womanly to play this fey child-woman.

Burgess Meredith plays has-been vaudevillean Harry Greener, Faye's curmudgeonly father who, even at the end of his life, is still performing, but for nickels and dimes selling polish door-to-door. The film won Meredith both Oscar and BAFTA nominations for best supporting actor.

There's a bitterly funny surreal element running through the movie, such as the horse in the swimming pool and a vicious dwarf. You are made well aware that neither author nor filmmaker have much liking for Hollywood, a bubbling cauldron distilling the worst of America. The centre cannot hold and it goes spinning into deadly lunacy.

The set-piece scenes of the studio accident, with its resulting cover-up, and the cockfight are powerful and disturbing. The nightmare closing sequence outside the Grauman's Chinese Theatre movie premiere is brilliantly done and will stay with you for a long time.

Note who's playing the demonic poppet Adore, a Shirley Temple from Hell. It's a young Jackie Haley who went on (as Jackie Earle Haley) to play the psychotic Rorschach in Watchmen!

However, there's a danger that in drawing such grotesques, Schlesinger misses the underlying humanity that was present in the book.

I loved both but I'd recommend that anyone drawn into the nightmare vision of the movie reads the book as well. It's an easy fast read but fills in much that film can't depict, such as the sequence where Tod searches for Faye through the studio backlots. The madness of the system becomes apparent as he fights his way through the disparate sets and costumed freaks of a society that has no history or heart. It's all jumbled up and crushes everyone like a huge remorseless, relentless juggernaut. West's ability to write visually and fire his damning view of the world straight into your frontal lobe works especially well here.

Twin this movie with They Shoot Horses, Don't They? another wrist-slitting 1970s indictment of capitalism.

How the banks are going to own EVERYTHING: the Vampire Squid, Bill Clinton & Glass-Steagall

Who was it who repealed Roosevelt's Glass-Steagall act that separated savings banks from investments banks? Stand up, Biill Clinton: "I did not have sexual relations with Goldman Sachs." Now we can see how the banks will own EVERYTHING and anyone who doesn't think a revolution is necessary to reverse this is kidding themselves.

From Rolling Stone magazine: The Vampire Squid Strikes Again:

… the famed Glass-Steagall Act separating bankers and brokers, which had been passed in 1933 to prevent conflicts of interest within the finance sector that had led to the Great Depression. Now, commercial banks would be allowed to merge with investment banks and insurance companies, creating financial megafirms potentially far more powerful than had ever existed in America. … it would take half a generation – till now, basically – to understand the most explosive part of the bill, which additionally legalized new forms of monopoly, allowing banks to merge with heavy industry. A tiny provision in the bill also permitted commercial banks to delve into any activity that is "complementary to a financial activity and does not pose a substantial risk to the safety or soundness of depository institutions or the financial system generally."

Today, banks like Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs own oil tankers, run airports and control huge quantities of coal, natural gas, heating oil, electric power and precious metals. They likewise can now be found exerting direct control over the supply of a whole galaxy of raw materials crucial to world industry and to society in general, including everything from food products to metals like zinc, copper, tin, nickel and, most infamously thanks to a recent high-profile scandal, aluminum. ... In Denmark, thousands took to the streets in protest in recent weeks, vampire-squid banners in hand, when news came out that Goldman Sachs was about to buy a 19 percent stake in Dong Energy, a national electric provider. The furor inspired mass resignations of ministers from the government's ruling coalition, as the Danish public wondered how an American investment bank could possibly hold so much influence over the state energy grid. ...

In 2010, in the midst of the economic meltdown, Bill Clinton sort of admitted that he regretted listening to Rob Rubin and Larry Summers (who, like the monster in the final reel, refuses to die and keeps coming back for more) on derivatives, if not the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. But it's a bit late, now, Bill. You were the most powerful person in the world and you screwed us with more than a cigar.

From Businessweek magazine in 2008 where Bill is unrepentant and apparently jonesing after the Continental European system:

September 24, 2008 ...

MARIA BARTIROMO

Mr. President, in 1999 you signed a bill essentially rolling back Glass-Steagall and deregulating banking. In light of what has gone on, do you regret that decision?

FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON

No, because it wasn't a complete deregulation at all. We still have heavy regulations and insurance on bank deposits, requirements on banks for capital and for disclosure. I thought at the time that it might lead to more stable investments and a reduced pressure on Wall Street to produce quarterly profits that were always bigger than the previous quarter. But I have really thought about this a lot. I don't see that signing that bill had anything to do with the current crisis. Indeed, one of the things that has helped stabilize the current situation as much as it has is the purchase of Merrill Lynch (MER) by Bank of America (BAC), which was much smoother than it would have been if I hadn't signed that bill.

MB: Phil Gramm, who was then the head of the Senate Banking Committee and until recently a close economic adviser of Senator McCain, was a fierce proponent of banking deregulation. Did he sell you a bill of goods? 

BC: Not on this bill I don't think he did. You know, Phil Gramm and I disagreed on a lot of things, but he can't possibly be wrong about everything. On the Glass-Steagall thing, like I said, if you could demonstrate to me that it was a mistake, I'd be glad to look at the evidence. But I can't blame [the Republicans]. This wasn't something they forced me into. I really believed that given the level of oversight of banks and their ability to have more patient capital, if you made it possible for [commercial banks] to go into the investment banking business as Continental European investment banks could always do, that it might give us a more stable source of long-term investment. "

Thanks for releasing the Kraken Vampire Squid on us, Bill.

Chinese originally Black like everyone else who left Africa 100,000 years ago

Refuting claims that the Chinese are a separate race of Peking Man — an earlier branch off homo erectus prior to homo sapiens — Jin Li, a Chinese doctor, did mitochondrial tests on thousands of people in 2010 and concluded that they were wrong and we'd all walked out of Africa some 70-100,000 years ago.

Non-Africans have an estimated 3 per cent DNA from Neanderthals (with 20 per cent of Neanderthal genetic code existing in the global human population today): could that give Caucasians their brow ridge and deep eye sockets? However, we are all Homo Sapiens and all the same species.

How often have I looked at Black people and seen my nose, my cheekbones, my lips, the other faint traces of a distant cousin?

If a group is cut off and interbreeding, certain characteristics will gradually come to the fore such as paler skin to deal with less sunshine, narrower nostrils for colder climates, and so on. How come the epicanthic fold on east Asian eyelids? They are linked to a flatter nasal bridge and are also found in the San people of southern Africa, Arctic people such as the Inuit, and some European Slavs.

Zhoukoudian National Park has the relics of Peking Man who lived 500,000 - 200,000 years ago and had learnt to control and use fire. Thanks to Jin Li's DNA research, we now know that this was an earlier, separate branch of humans, and not the beginning of the Chinese race.

Research shows "Mitochondrial DNA Evidence for a Diversified Origin of Workers Building Mausoleum for First Emperor of China". That diversity means mostly Han plus workers from southern Asian, a few from the North and a scattering of the ancestors of the Japanese. However, stretch the imagination I can see the movie starring a scarred old ancient Brit played by Russell Crowe.

A couple of interesting articles for further reading: Rasta Livewire's Ancient Black Chinese from Eastern Africa by Professor Jin Li and thanks to Alan Mitchell for showing me Kulture Kritic's DNA Evidence Proves that the First People in China were Black.

Charles Shaar Murray on Resonance FM discussion on the state of music criticism

A most enjoyable evening was had on Monday night with the Resonance FM crew for a fundraiser in support of London's best arts radio station. The Slaughtered Lamb, which is much how freelance writers often think of themselves nowadays, was the Clerkenwell venue.

Neil Denny from Resonance FM's Little Atoms series chaired a panel discussion on music criticism with Jude Rogers, David Stubbs, Andrew Mueller and Charles Shaar Murray.

For anyone who'd like to know more about the nuts and bolts as well as the soaring imaginative heights of great journalism, CSM's next fabulous Hothouse Project writing course — Journalism as Craft and Art — begins 20th February in leafy West Hampstead.

Jude Rogers, David Stubbs, chair Neil Denny, Andrew Mueller and
Charles Shaar Murray at the Resonance FM discussion.

David Cameron's message from the cosmos: IDS to use unemployed as sandbags

VIDEO: David Cameron's cabinet contemplating a mighty wind.

David Cameron's karma runs over his dogma in biblical fashion. Rain, floods, blizzards, storms, and a mighty wind have ravaged these isles, and vast swathes of Britain have been under water for weeks. Cutbacks and cessation of dredging under all governments in recent years have only added to the misery.

Imagine being immersed in raw sewage, not being able to use the loo, and not being dry since new year.

All we need is a plague of frogs, water-borne pestilence and war and we'll have a full set.

Aprés Cameron, le deluge.

Now that the Tory heartland has been hit with Thames waters drowning the playing fields of Eton and lapping at Windsor Castle, His Smugness has had to show his thought-free visage on the scene.

Never have we felt so relieved to have been too skint to buy our idealised riverfront home with parking for boat at the end of the lawn. If it weren't for the innocent civilians losing their homes and living (it's not all bourgeoisie doing the suffering), some might class this as divine punishment for cruelty, callousness and greed on the part of those Tory voters in the Stockbroker Belt who thought they were immune from "austerity".

In his Hunter wellies and Barbour jacket, Cameron did his damnedest to ensure that immunity continues and promised his flooded bredren that money will be no object. Yet the widespread horrors of rising poverty and homelessness elicit no such generous response.

In the Tory hierarchy of need, what's highest? Evicted due to slashed benefits or flooded out? Cameron and the devil take the hindmost.

The Tories are under pressure from their even more right-wingnuts to take the money not just from Britons in poverty but to raid the aid budget for the world's poorest to keep his voters happy. Expect an intravenous treasury fix straight into DFS and Heals to replace all those soggy sofas but heaven forfend that food and medicine should be sent abroad.

He's probably hoping we'll all forget, not only the broken promises of a greener nation, but that the Tories and UKIP voted in the European Parliament against measures to protect against flooding.

The Guardian says:

The Royal Institute of British Architects estimates that 1.5% of the UK is at risk from direct flooding from the sea and about 7% of the country is likely to flood at least once a century from rivers. It says about 1.7m homes and 130,000 commercial properties are at risk from river or coastal flooding in England alone, and the effects of flooding and managing flood risk cost the country about £2.2bn a year, compared with the less than £1bn spent on flood protection and management.

These events are also a dire warning against privatisation. Can you imagine G4S handling this emergency? Yes, it could be worse.

Will Cameron succeed in stealing even more from the poor in order to throw money at his flooded voters? Will IDS use the unemployed as sandbags?

Does this spell the end for the greediest, most shortsighted "anything for a fast buck" government we've seen since WWII? And that includes Thatcher. We can only hope so.

The RSC Orphan of Zhao: one year on, East Asian British in the arts

BEAA founding members at Opening The Door, L to R: Michelle Lee, Lucy Sheen, Anna Chen, Jennifer Lim, Paul Hyu, Amanda Rogers, Kathryn Golding and Daniel York

February 11th marks the first anniversary of the groundbreaking Opening the Door event at the Young Vic. This was the first positive concrete step offered by a slice of the UK theatre establishment following the international protest led by East Asian British artists in response to the Royal Shakespeare Company's shocking yellowface casting for their first Chinese play, The Orphan of Zhao.

Despite the play being sold as the RSC's "Chinese Hamlet", and their marketing being directed at the Chinese — with promotion in Chinese and featuring an East Asian poster boy — the RSC cast only three minor parts out of 17 with east Asians even though this country has a fine pool of East Asian British (BEA) acting talent such as Benedict Wong, Gemma Chan, Lucy Sheen and Daniel York, among others.

You can also watch the British East Asian Artists (BEAA)— who came together at the outbreak of Zhaogate hostilities to fight this significant battle — discussing the state of play with the Asian Performing Arts Forum in these videos: Part 1 and Part 2.

BEAA founding members at Opening the Door, Young Vic, 11 Feb 2013, clockwise from bottom left: Hi Ching, Michelle Lee, Lucy Sheen, Chowee Leow, Amanda Rogers and Jennifer Lim.

For background information, read the chronology of The Orphan of Zhao controversy. 

BEAA open letter to Minister for Culture, Ed Vaizey.

Lucy Sheen on the RSC Orphan of Zhao campaign one year on.

Press pick up on the BEAA letter to Ed Vaizey.

BEAA Facebook and website.