Saving Mr Banks

I'd better start this by saying that I love 'Mary Poppins'. It's not a controversial opinion, by any means; the film seems to be carved into the consciousness of the entire nation, and with good reason. It's an absolutely magical 2 hours which ticks every box on a checklist of 'great family films'. The songs are brilliant, the dance set-pieces are wonderful, the mix of animation and live action is fantasy at its best, and every actor does their bit, headed up by the brilliant Dick Van Dyke, his accent notwithstanding, and the incomparably wonderful Julie Andrews, the worthy recipient of an Oscar for her portrayal of PL Travers' magical nanny. As a massive fan of the original film, when I saw the trailer for 'Saving Mr Banks', I couldn't wait. The scene in the trailer where the Sherman brothers nervously hide the sheet music to 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' was so beautifully timed, I dared to dream that the film would capture some of the magic of Poppins. The problem with putting that kind of expectation on something, though, is obviously that it really has no option but to let one down. Surely there was no earthly chance that 'Saving Mr Banks' could live up to expectations?

It didn't. It exceeded them.

Switching between the tale of PL Travers' childhood in Australia and 1960s Los Angeles, the film tells the story of where Mary Poppins came from, and the battle her creator fought to keep her. The cinematography is stunning, the different worlds of Australia and LA are beautifully rendered, creating atmospheres you can almost breathe in. The Australian chapter of the story is genuinely emotional, as a young Pamela Travers sees her family disintegrate before her eyes, and her imaginary worlds take on a critical importance. Crucially, though, the LA story is no less heartwrenching, as Travers plays David as she fights the only way she knows how against the Goliath of Disney, the world's biggest film studio. To make a story like this work, you have to have great performances, and there is no shortage of those here.

Just like 'Mary Poppins', the supporting cast is absolutely superb - Colin Farrell is at his best as Travers' father, the original model for George Banks, and Annie Rose Buckley is the perfect doe-eyed innocent child who has to grow up too quickly. In LA, the Sherman Brothers are brilliantly portrayed and Bradley Whitford is unsurprisingly excellent as Don DeGradi, the belittled co-writer of the film. Like the original 1965 classic though, the key to the film lies in the performances at its head. Just as Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke make Poppins what it is, so Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks hold the key to 'Saving Mr Banks' - and both are absolutely superb.

Disney is played as a charming, kind-hearted but shrewd and determined man, (not without his own demons) who believes in his vision almost as much as he believes in the magic he creates. Who could be better to play a character like that than Tom Hanks? Hanks is a remarkable actor, and while this role is nothing like as demanding or draining as his recent turn in 'Captain Phillips', it's no less assured or convincing, and carries with it the kind of effortless charm that made Disney such a canny operator. In preparing for the release of the film, the producers were keen to stress that the Disney corporation had made no effort to interfere with how its illustrious and sometimes controversial leader was portrayed, but then having seen the film, it's hardly surprising. Disney is warm, kind, charming and friendly, and even when his back is against the wall, he plays the cuddliest form of hardball I've ever seen. While there's plenty to suggest that the real Walt Disney was an extremely benevolent dictator, (so maybe Hanks' portrayal is not as inaccurate as some have suggested) it certainly feels like the film has taken the character and the story of which he is a part and sliced off every hint of a rough edge with a velvet chainsaw. As brilliant as Hanks is, his unstoppable force needs an immovable object - and it is here that the film truly finds its heart. Emma Thompson's portrayal of PL Travers is towering, imperious, and utterly mesmerising. 

I'm an unashamed adorer of Emma Thompson. In my eyes, she can do no wrong. She is brilliant both in, and seemingly at, everything. This film is no exception. Her interplay with Hanks is timed beautifully, and delivered expertly. This is not an easy thing to do, as Travers was, by all accounts, a hugely complex character. In Thompson's preparation for the role, she admitted to being overwhelmed by the intricacies of Travers' various personas - and the challenge of how best to convey that. Travers' part in the production of 'Mary Poppins' seemed to be picking fault in Don DeGradi's script and Walt Disney's vision. Pedantry has a pretty short shelf life in terms of charm or comedy, and the risk with a role like this is that it could easily fall into parody or pastiche of the uptight, strict, "English" stereotype who comes up against an American wall of whimsy and sentiment and makes everyone laugh at her ridiculous Britishness. In order to convince while still remaining sympathetic (critical for the success of the film) Thompson has to seamlessly convey several different layers in one glance. She does it to perfection - of course she does. Meryl Streep was apparently first choice for the role, but I can't imagine that even she could have done it better. The importance of Mary Poppins to her creator is revealed slowly, and as we realise that it's not just a picky and obstreperous nature, her struggle to reconcile the deep connection she feels to her story with the practicality and pragmatism that her situation demands pulls more steadily on the heart-strings and is shaped to perfection. It's a bit "emotional impact by numbers" but when it works, it works, and it is done superbly here. The scene where Travers first hears 'Let's go fly a kite' reduced me to tears of pure elation. By the final scenes of the film, as Travers sits through the premiere of Disney's masterpiece, the tears were back (both on screen and off) to the point where the little girl in front of me asked her Dad, "Daddy, is the man behind us ok? He's crying and laughing at the same time." It's just a shame that the film had to blur the lines of reality so much to make this happen.

In real life, as so often is the case, there was no Hollywood ending. Travers hated the film, and was eventually over-ruled in all sorts of ways by Disney, who eventually snubbed her at the premiere as she complained yet further about the vandalism of which she felt such a victim. As previously mentioned, this film has had its rough edges sanded down and as such, as a biopic or documentary about the making of 'Mary Poppins', the film would have too many flaws to mention. But, to its credit, the film never tries to sell itself as a hard-hitting, warts and all documentary. It stays true to itself as a beautifully user-friendly tale about how a beloved classic childhood memory was born. It captures and retains the same gorgeous, other-worldly charm and beauty that 'Mary Poppins' created for its audience. Cinema is a golden art, and this film is everything that's good about it. 

Now, if you don't love 'Mary Poppins', you might not feel about 'Saving Mr Banks' as I did, but as I'm pretty sure most people do, I can't recommend it highly enough. I've refrained from employing simple Poppins cliche as much as I can in this review, but if you'll allow me this one, it really was practically perfect in every way.

PS

Firing the Canon

Recently I’ve been engaged in a discussion with David Didau regarding the blog he wrote about redesigning the English curriculum for KS3 and beyond, and utilising the ‘Literary Canon’. David is someone for whom I have a huge amount of respect (his blog on Slow Writing for example was an absolute game-changer for my year 8 creative writing lessons recently) and I consider him an important and relevant voice in the endless debates about how best to do this most wonderful of jobs.

I read his blog with interest, because I think the KS3 curriculum could do with looking at, and in the schools I’ve worked in it has been a constant source of debate and discussion. That’s not to say that I think our current KS3 curriculum is fundamentally flawed, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be improved.

One thing on which David and I seem to agree and disagree at the same time (somehow) is the idea of increasing the students’ cultural capital – exposing them to a cultural understanding of the world that they would otherwise be denied if only taught simple modern literature. If we’re going to teach English, shouldn’t we give the students access to the best of English Literature? It’s hard to argue with that, and as David says on his blog, “Knowledge is power. This isn’t really a debate: the more you know, the better equipped you are to think, and no one is seriously arguing against the idea that pupils should be taught to think.”

While I think this curriculum is inspired, and the ideals behind it are both realistic and commendable, I think we disagree fundamentally on the merits of the canon itself. I am all for cultural capital, and think it's vital if we're going to be considered 'proper' English teachers, but my worry with the canon is that works of great merit would not be considered 'worthy' for a number of reasons.

I'd like to preface this rather long-winded diatribe with the assertion that I think students should be exposed to the ‘classics’. For some people, the books they read at school will be the only books they ever read, so they may as well be good ones, and ones that give them some insight into the wonderful history of our subject. As for 'Literary Canon', it's a term that screams elitism to me, although I don't think for a second David is applying it with a pejorative nature. I don't deny the need for students to be immersed in the great texts; my issue comes with what those texts are. After all, ‘great’ is a relative term. Wasn’t Dickens the soap-opera of his day, serialised in the newspapers telling grim stories about life in London as if he somehow predicted Eastenders’ arrival? I don’t worry about which texts are in the canon, but which are left out, and how to balance a need for retrospection with a need to move forward, as Literature does.

David’s curriculum finishes in the 1940s with ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’. On a personal note, if I never teach that particular book again then it'll be too soon, but that's by the by. If you're teaching Dystopia though, what's wrong with ‘The Hunger Games'? Yes, it’s of its time, and yes it’s arguably a children’s book, but then we are teaching children, and it’s not simple sentences and immature concepts by any stretch. Come to think of it, what’s wrong with ‘Fahrenheit 451’ or several other texts published in more recent decades that speak to similar themes? If you're teaching the Gothic tradition, why not an exploration of how it has continued in modern times through 'The Woman in Black'? On that same Gothic note, if you want to teach about the dark forces at work when man plays God, is ‘Frankenstein’ really better than ‘Jurassic Park’?  The instinctive 'literary' answer to this is "Yes, of course it is" - but on what grounds? I've read both books several times, and while I don't deny that 'Frankenstein' is a brilliant piece of work, it didn't change my life. ‘Jurassic Park’ opened my eyes to a whole new way of cognitive reflection, chaos theory, hubris and the perils of man's arrogance in the face of nature. Admittedly, one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much the first time was because there were dinosaurs and gory deaths in it, but is that so bad? I was 12 years old and I would never have dreamed of going near a text like Frankenstein at that age. However, once I'd read ‘Jurassic Park’, I began to explore Shelley off my own back, and found it an enjoyable read, albeit not one that particularly made me feel like I had more culturally relevant references at my fingertips.

Similarly at A-Level, I was amazed by the cultural impact that 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' had on me - and found Thomas Hardy's 'Return of the Native' one of the most genuinely painful experiences of my education. I never went near Hardy for a good 5 years after that. Now, that's not entirely Hardy's fault, nor is it necessarily a good point to apply to the majority of people who study English Lit, and perhaps with better teaching, I would have enjoyed it more (though I doubt it) but in terms of which text I'm more culturally rewarded by having read, Corelli wins every time. There are many other times when a ‘classic’ has left me cold (not least my battle with Middlemarch at University) but I won't list them now!

At my last school getting students to read was a monumental challenge. Year 7,8 and 9 students should be shown that Literature is not just a relic from the past - that great stories that can enrich their lives still exist and are being written right now. David and I had this debate briefly on Twitter before regarding 'kids' books vs 'proper' literature, and I still don't think the gap is as wide as some would suggest. What is culturally irrelevant about the Harry Potter novels? Are they really a weaker allegory for the Jesus story than ‘The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe’? If we judge the canon on what we as a society have judged worthwhile, then surely sales of 450 million over 8 years must go some way towards suggesting that Rowling’s stories were no flash in the pan? Mind you, the Sweet Valley High books have sold nearly 300 million, so maybe that’s not the best criteria on which to judge. It’s all very subjective, I suppose. Or is it?

David’s blog says not:

“Personal preference doesn’t come into these decisions. Just because you might not happen to like a particular text and would like instead to propose one of your favourite novels for inclusion misses the point.”

Even with the caveat that there ought to be enough in the canon to make substituting one text for another, and the fact that there are ways in which a prescribed list of texts could be extremely helpful, there's no getting around the fact that by its nature the canon is exclusive. I don't think the students we teach ‘should be given a diet of transient but appealing modern texts because that is what is most relevant to their foreshortened little lives’ but surely there's a middle ground?

At the end of all this - fundamentally, I agree with damn near every word of David’s blog - but I'm always concerned about a tendency to black-and-white situations in education, which is an impossibility. We all need to understand the nuances of the students we teach and the contexts in which we teach them, and they should be challenged by great works of Literature, but I don't think we should be too prescriptive about what those works are.

Paul McCartney – New

Paul McCartney has done a lot with his 71 years. For 50 of them, he’s been recording music, and for 42 of those 50, he’s been doing it as an ex-Beatle. This has led to some issues. The first of these is that The Beatles were quite a decent band, who made quite a splash. This is not going to be yet another blog where I bang on about them, but I do want to touch on the seemingly crippling legacy that was left to their members after 1970. McCartney has only spent 16% of his recording career as a Beatle, and yet those 10 hours of music that the band left us have loomed large ever since. The main reason for this, in my opinion, is that his best work in The Beatles represents his best work. Reined and harnessed by John Lennon and George Martin, aided by a relentless drive, fierce work ethic and the unchained creativity of youth, McCartney either wrote or co-wrote some of the greatest pop music ever committed to tape. Add that to the zeitgeist-defining social and cultural impact of the band and you have a period of his career that couldn’t really be topped. 1970 arrived and The Beatles separated, leaving four musicians of incredible talent with the steepest possible mountain to climb.

Then McCartney climbed it.  Or at least seemed to. The list of accomplishments under his belt since his most famous chapter closed is quite mind boggling. While I could list it here, it would be simpler to look it up and so I will skip to the point: it’s unusually difficult to try and work out what there is left to achieve for Sir Thumbs-aloft.

One thing that is left, in my opinion, is to record a ‘great’ album without the other Beatles. McCartney’s musical decision making has often been questioned and has frequently been the subject of criticism from those both inside and outside his immediate circle. When he gets it right, there are few who can do it better, but too often his natural gift for melody is spoiled by what seems to be a propensity for lazy lyricism. After the Beatles split in 1970, there are plenty of examples of just why McCartney is so revered among songwriters, with genuinely inspired moments shining through on every album – but they are diluted by a complete lack of restraint and the kind of indulgence that seems to invade the mind of a genius if left unchecked. Michael Jackson, Prince, Brian Wilson, David Bowie, Noel Gallagher, Johnny Cash, Elvis, and indeed John Lennon, all suffered from it, and while most were able to eventually re-focus their compass, they all suffered badly from it. McCartney’s output in the 1970s and 80s is perhaps more polluted than others in this manner. For every ‘Jet’ there is a ‘Country Dreamer’, for every ‘Tug of War’ there’s a ‘Frog Chorus’ and for every decent album (Band on the Run, Ram, or Venus and Mars) there’s a ‘Press to Play’. McCartney has never lost his incredible ability to write a good melody (for all the criticism the Frog Chorus has rightly attracted, the melody is actually lovely) but his post-Beatles output has never scaled the heights of greatness because he hasn’t put the effort in to make sure his lyrics match his melodies. I say ‘hasn’t put the effort in’ because it smacks of laziness. There’s no doubt he can write great lyrics; the evidence is plentiful, but just because he can, doesn’t mean he does. Even John Lennon knew that McCartney could be a great lyricist:

“Paul is quite a capable lyricist who doesn't think he is. So he doesn't go for it. Rather than face the problem, he would avoid it. 'Hey Jude' is a damn good set of lyrics. I made no contribution to the lyrics there. And a couple of lines he has come up with show indications of a good lyricist. But he just hasn't taken it anywhere.”

-          John Lennon, Playboy Magazine, 1980.

With 1997’s ‘Flaming Pie’, McCartney began a period of releasing critically acclaimed albums that seemed to represent an entirely new chapter in his career, but in fact the albums are very much in the mould of his earlier work. Great tunes, hit-and-miss lyrics. The closest he has ever come to a ‘great’ album is still 2005’s ‘Chaos and Creation in the Backyard’. Faced with a producer who refused to defer to his artist’s legendary status, McCartney was forced into a corner and came out swinging, writing songs of genuinely artistic relevance, and painting a sonic landscape that reminded us all that he has earned his place at the top of music’s pantheon. Still, the old failings were there at moments, but overall the album remains a testament to what he can do when he’s pushed. After that though came more of the same. ‘Memory Almost Full’ is perfectly pleasant, as was last year’s covers album, ‘Kisses on the Bottom’ – but there is an unshakeable feeling that McCartney has made things just a bit too easy for himself. So, is ‘New’ actually anything new?

Sadly, not really. When the album is good, it’s very very good, and two or three of the tracks prove that he’s still an artist in transition, constantly pushing to create something unusual and to tread previously untrodden ground. The opening track ‘Save Us’ is a tightly packed high-octane number that doesn’t necessarily re-invent the wheel but is massively effective, and the title track is classic McCartney – catchy beyond belief, without ever challenging its listener. The rest of the album is much of a muchness. It’s not bad, by any stretch – there are no songs that I’d describe as actually being unpleasant to listen to, but there aren’t any others that make me sit up and take notice.

And so we return to The Beatles. ‘New’ suffers most from being the latest output from someone who has been here before. How does Paul McCartney write something that’s actually new? Apparently, “Everybody Out There” was written as a song “to get the crowd singing along”. Ok, that’s fine, but we’re talking about someone who wrote ‘Hey Jude’. Does he really need a new song to get people singing along? There are some decent pop moments on there, but he already wrote ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and ‘All my Loving’ – he’s done pop. New wife Nancy gets a few mentions on some touching ballads, but he already wrote ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ – there is no musical direction in which he can travel without his work being compared (probably unfavourably) to what’s gone before. This is why the songs that are good are SO good. ‘Appreciate’ and ‘Looking at Her’ particularly impress, the former sounding less like a Paul McCartney song than arguably anything before it that has been released under his name, and the latter combining a Beatles-esque subject with beautifully ethereal guitars and sonic ambition that surprises and delights in equal measure.

A friend of mine once pointed out that every single McCartney release has always contained something worth listening to. I think that’s true; even on the most dirge-like releases of his colourful solo career, McCartney has never failed to turn up at least one gem. This album certainly continues that pattern, but is unlikely to win over any new fans. But then, there’s the benefit of having been a Beatle – he doesn’t really need to. In a solo career spanning over 40 years, we fans should be grateful that he still has any drive or creativity still left – and both seem in ample supply here, so it’s nice to see him enjoying his music, and it’s nice to still be enjoying it.

Becoming Charlotte: AS Recreative Writing tips

As part of the English Literature AS Coursework, students will have to produce a piece of recreative writing in the voice of a character from their set text. Our students will be choosing a character from Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Jane Eyre’. This is an ostensibly ‘simple’ task, in that it sounds a lot easier than a more traditional analytical task with a novel of this complexity. However, it is of course in the apparent simplicity of this task that students find themselves caught making the same mistakes over and over again. Creative Writing is deceptively difficult already, and it’s made no easier by having to accurately capture Charlotte Brontë’s writing style, but this blog will hopefully provide some handy tips to help you avoid falling into the traditional traps.

Loquacious Verbosity and Garrulous Mellifluence.
Writing like someone else can be a challenge at the best of times, and the first problem is the belief that the biggest difference between ‘the past’ (and this goes right back to Shakespeare) and the present is that writers (in the words of a former student of mine) ‘used a lot of long words back then’. Actually, they didn’t. The obstacles to understanding Shakespeare or Brontë’s writing come not in their lexical grandiose but rather in their syntax and sentence complexity. Consider the following extract from ‘Jane Eyre’:

His guest had been outraged, his own life on a former occasion had been hideously plotted against; and both attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in oblivion! Lastly, I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester; that the impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness of the former: the few words which had passed between them assured me of this. It was evident that in their former intercourse, the passive disposition of the one had been habitually influenced by the active energy of the other: whence then had arisen Mr. Rochester’s dismay when he heard of Mr. Mason’s arrival?

Even a quick scan of this paragraph from Chapter 20 of the novel will reveal little in the way of complex or incomprehensible vocabulary. Perhaps people are less familiar with words like ‘impetuous’ and certainly ‘intercourse’ has taken on a considerably different meaning in today’s society, while ‘whence’ has fallen out of use almost entirely. That’s three words in 105 that could count as stumbling blocks; even then, we can only really point to one that has become obsolete. So why is it difficult to read? Don’t get me wrong – it is difficult to read to a modern audience, but not because of its difficult lexis. I’ll go into more detail about what does make it difficult in short order, but first of all, let’s make this point clear. In order to capture the voice of Charlotte Brontë, you do not need to devour a thesaurus in an attempt to sound as clever as possible...unless you want to end up sounding like this.

So what’s the trick?
Well, first of all, there is no one trick (more on that later) but the most prevalent technical way into the voice of Charlotte Brontë is the syntax of the Victorian era. The inherent problem with this is that you are not looking at monumental shifts in word order as you might be with earlier works, but rather subtle differences in the way the sentences are constructed. Take the earlier example from ‘Jane Eyre’:

His guest had been outraged, his own life on a former occasion had been hideously plotted against; and both attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in oblivion!

The only real difference in syntax between Charlotte Brontë in 1847 and modern standard English is in clausal positioning on two occasions: ‘his own life on a former occasion had been’ (which we would write today as ‘his own life had been, on a former occasion’) and ‘both attempts he smothered’ (which today would read ‘he smothered both attempts’). These aren’t indecipherable but can cause a 21st century reader to pause for thought. So when you’re completing your work, this is a subtle but sophisticated way to make your writing sound more authentically Victorian. It will require you to stop and think carefully about how you construct your work, but then that’s the point of this task!

No need to rush
We live in an age of distraction, where information is disseminated at high speed and high intensity, and Charlotte Brontë simply didn’t have to fit into these restrictions. Like so many of the great Victorian writers, she has the time to develop her ideas in genuine detail, safe in the knowledge that her audience had the time to languidly digest them. This is what has given rise to the utterly inaccurate belief that writers like Dickens, Austen and Brontë are ‘boring’. They’re not boring, but they are, by any modern standard, slow.  

Lastly, I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester; that the impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness of the former: the few words which had passed between them assured me of this. It was evident that in their former intercourse, the passive disposition of the one had been habitually influenced by the active energy of the other.

Here Brontë effectively tells us the same thing three times. Rochester is in charge. This is a long way from being the only time in the novel that she does this – but it’s important to realise that she isn’t simply repeating herself, she is layering levels of meaning on top of one another to give us more information about these characters. The descriptive ingenuity of contrasting Rochester’s “impetuous will”, and “active energy” with Mason’s “inertness” and “passive disposition” is an important structural trick that highlights Rochester’s confidence and self-assurance and helps to (along with many other such moments) formally position him as the hero of the piece. In your writing, you will be taking on the voice of a character, not the author herself, and so will have to transpose this skill somewhat, but it is worth noting the steady pace at which Brontë builds her points, and the effectiveness of employing such a trick.  

Lengthy Sentences

“The consequence was, that when the moon, which was full and bright (for the night was fine), came in her course to that space in the sky opposite my casement, and looked in at me through the unveiled panes, her glorious gaze roused me.”

This isn’t a difficult sentence, it’s just a long one. It’s multi-clausal, and almost tangential but fundamentally, it’s simple enough to understand. It’s not, however, simple to write. Again, as a character from the novel and not its omniscient narrator, you may find yourself without the need to write like this, but remember that Charlotte’s characters inevitably take on some aspect of her voice, and this is a particularly commonplace one. See Mrs Reed in Chapter Four of the novel:  

“Mr. Brocklehurst, I believe I intimated in the letter which I wrote to you three weeks ago, that this little girl has not quite the character and disposition I could wish: should you admit her into Lowood school, I should be glad if the superintendent and teachers were requested to keep a strict eye on her, and, above all, to guard against her worst fault, a tendency to deceit.”

Mrs Reed’s 69 word sentence here follows a similar pattern to Charlotte’s narrative voice – and there are countless other examples throughout the text. This is perhaps the most difficult skill of all to perfect, so completely contrary does it feel to a modern reader; however it is not, with practice and revision, beyond even the most basic of writers to construct a sentence which, while verbose and possibly even consciously overlong, makes grammatical sense while never resorting to deliberately bemusing its reader through the application of those irritating tactics so common in the writing of children, or even adults, who wish to sound more intelligent than they are, and whose desire to over exaggerate their own perceived intelligence outweighs their clarity of expression.

One’s Formal Diction
Charlotte Brontë writes in a formal manner, but people’s grasp on what is and isn’t formal has been warped in recent times. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve asked a class what ‘informal’ means, and they have simply answered with “slang”. It’s not that slang isn’t informal, but written formality is a long and complicated spectrum. Slang is one far end of that spectrum, and this occasionally forces people who have been asked to write a ‘formal’ piece to go to the other end, and overdo it horribly. The area I want to focus on here is the use of supposedly ‘casual’ pronoun use. With one class, a number of early attempts at ‘Brontë-esque’ writing featured the use of ‘one’ instead of ‘I’. In some cases, it featured the use of ‘one’ instead of ‘my’, which is even less accurate. Charlotte understood something of which many people seem ignorant these days. The word ‘myself’ isn’t always a ‘better’ way to say ‘me’, or ‘my’. Charlotte uses ‘my’ over two thousand times in Jane Eyre, and ‘me’ over six thousand times, so these can’t have been all that sloppy a way to express oneself. Not a single student in the class used contractions either. Every time a character couldn’t express their feelings, they ‘could not’ express them. Every time they didn’t say something, they ‘did not’ say it, and every time they weren’t in control of their emotions, they ‘were not’ in control of them. Charlotte Brontë has no such qualms about using contractions. For example, the word ‘don’t’ appears 155 times in ‘Jane Eyre’. However, it is worth noting that while Brontë employs contractions at will, she doesn’t do it as often as we might expect today. In your writing, don’t feel as though you cannot mix the two together in order to reflect her style. Predictably the pattern runs that the more formal the character, the more formal the language – which should be reflected in your eventual piece. Put simply, don’t overcomplicate things as you write. Saying ‘I’ doesn’t make you sound informal. Admittedly, if you find yourself writing, “OMG, Rochester is totes fit” then you may have gone too far. The distance between those two poles, however, is considerable!

Charlotte Brontë – Gourmet Chef
Although personally I can’t see anything wrong with this as the definitive way to be a chef, in actual fact the art of gastric wizardry is a delicate balancing act. Anyone can cook chicken, for example, but in order to really elevate that basic dish to something approaching art, you need to add the right extras at the right time. As you are probably aware, English teachers are not above the occasional strained analogy and this is a particular favourite of mine. Imagine your writing as a culinary delight just waiting to be taken from the oven. The basics are just that: basic. Anyone writing at this level should be able to find their way around a few lengthy sentences, spellings and occasional semi-colons. What you need to do in order to really capture the subtleties of Charlotte Brontë’s writing is to find the key ingredients that she sprinkles across her writing without ever overdoing any of them. If you put too much of one spice into a dish, you will ruin it. Likewise, if you (correctly) identify that Charlotte occasionally uses alliteration but proceed to pepper your prose with pointless prolixity, the effect will be lost. So what are some of Brontë’s most effective ingredients? The first is personification to aid description. All the Brontës, especially the sisters, were particularly keen on extended metaphor and personification in their poetry. Charlotte continued this into her prose, and it is extremely common in ‘Jane Eyre’. In the extract we looked at earlier, the moon is personified. It isn’t over done, it isn’t particularly unusual even (the femininity of the moon is hardly an unusual literary trope) but it is effectively deployed. There is also the use of exotic references to foreign climes. This one is unusual, in that Charlotte rarely travelled outside Haworth, and when she did she never once saw the ‘ruby red’ of an ‘Italian sky, where clouds of sunset lingering lie’, nor did she ever (as far as we know) see the ‘widest-winged condor on the Andes’. Yet still, she refers to these far-off (and remember that to someone in her position in the 1840s, she may as well have been talking about visiting Mars) locations to add yet more depth to her point. Finally (although this is far from the end of the list) we have the occasional ‘giveaway’ obsolete word that will contextualise your writing and set it firmly in the right century. These final two ideas are demonstrated well in this extract, again from chapter 20 of ‘Jane Eyre’:

My pulse stopped: my heart stood still; my stretched arm was paralysed. The cry died, and was not renewed. Indeed, whatever being uttered that fearful shriek could not soon repeat it: not the widest-winged condor on the Andes could, twice in succession, send out such a yell from the cloud shrouding his eyrie. The thing delivering such utterance must rest ere it could repeat the effort.

We have here the mix of the exotic (the reference to the Condor) and occasional (sprinkled, remember, carefully into the dish) archaic words (‘ere’) and Charlotte’s usual complexity of sentence construction in practice. The effect? We are left with a wonderfully descriptive, artfully constructed mental image which creates tension and suspense while giving a clear and precise picture to the audience in less than 70 words.

Hopefully this little guide has helped as you seek the voice of Howarth’s finest...now go forth and write!

Mr Staveley

The Good Gatsby

When it comes to trying to find a film director who can harness a sense of mad abandon in one of the most hedonistic periods of American history, you’d be hard pressed to think of someone better suited for the job than Baz Luhrmann, surely? After all, he’s got form. Moulin Rouge and Strictly Ballroom were so unique,  creatively stimulating, and off-the-wall bonkers that the idea of someone else being chosen to create a sense of devil-may-care party antics seems almost absurd. Added to this, he can do tragedy too. Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is, in my opinion, the best Shakespeare adaptation ever made. I’m not just saying that because I’m an English teacher either, although I’m professionally grateful to Luhrmann for giving a young generation a new way into a classic. That being said, I’m equally professionally annoyed at him for giving me (admittedly not personally) an awful lot of essays that discuss Shakespeare’s use of language in ‘the petrol station scene’. Still, it trumps any other Shakespeare adaptation I’ve ever seen.

So, instead of Shakespeare’s classic, which (thanks to the fact it’s a play) gives an awful lot of narrative scope to a director to one of America’s most beloved novels, which doesn’t. How does he do? It’s not an easy question to answer.

Like all Luhrmann’s films, the real star is Baz Luhrmann. There’s nothing wrong with a director being the real star, (see Reservoir Dogs, Duel, Jaws, The Godfather, etc) but when you’re up against stylised repetition, the shine is lost somewhat (see Django Unchained, Face/Off, Transformers etc) and it begins to impede one’s enjoyment of the story. And in Gatsby, the story and the characters who make it breathe, are everything. So it’s not a good idea to take the focus from them.

That being said, there are chances for Luhrmann to shine, and at least he doesn’t disappoint for the most part. The film looks beautiful. Even if you see it in 3D, which adds nothing but a sense of detatchment from characters you’re supposed to get close to, there’s no denying the HD uber-gloss that dominates the entire pallet of the film. It’s basically everything turned up to 12 (from Baz Luhrmann? Who would have guessed) with the colours primary and vivid, the sounds bold and swirling, the costumes absolutely gorgeous, and the thematic imagery about as subtle as a brick to the face. Considering this is a tale of woe, there is certainly no sense of impending doom for the first third of the film. There isn’t time or room for any, because they’re too busy cutting a nifty rug at 1920s parties, and here is where the first of the problems kick in. Now, we know that Luhrmann knows how to film a party, because we’ve seen it before. And therein lies the rub. We’ve seen it before. Deja Vu is one thing, but there’s a certain sense of having deja-vued every single moment of every single party before, which becomes problematic a lot quicker than I was expecting. In an era where the clichéd soirees involved an almost gluttonous degree of bacchanalian debauchery, surface sheen with no moral scaffolding, the film seems to be determined to follow suit. And like those parties, ultimately there’s no satisfaction come closing time.

With so much surface glitz and glamour, it’s a wonder that there’s any character depth at all, and this is where we have the actors to thank for occasionally solid, mostly quietly spectacular performances. Although all the main cast underplay their roles, in so far as you never feel like you’re watching the kind of genre-defining performance that John Leguizamo and Harold Perrineau gave in ‘Romeo and Juliet’, it’s a nice balance to the feel and look of the film to have some class and depth added by the human element. Leonardo DiCaprio, although not given the kind of emotional journey he had in his last outing with the director is excellent as always, and is ably supported by everyone with whom he finds himself sharing West Egg. There isn’t a single let-down in terms of performance here, even Isla Fisher (not known for her dramatic chops) does a fine job as Myrtle. It’s these performances that keep the film on something of an even keel and avoid it becoming less style-over-substance and just pure style.

So, what’s not to like? Well, like so many cinematic adaptations of novels, if you’re a hardcore fan of the novel the chances are you’re going to hate this. That’s not to say it isn’t good, but when was the last time you saw an adaptation of a book you loved and liked it? One of the great touches in Gatsby lies in Fitzgerald’s prose, describing some aspects of life in West Egg as well as anyone has ever described anything, and of course that’s lost in the film, despite Luhrmann’s best efforts to use the original text where he can. The 3D is a waste of time, which adds more to your ticket price while adding nothing to your experience, and there are several moments where the sheer force of the film feels somewhat oppressive. It is literally such a sensory blitzkrieg that it occasionally feels like it’s taken you to a speakeasy, forced your throat open and poured itself down you. That might be thematically relevant, given the subject matter, but it doesn’t help you really experience the more emotionally fraught moments of the film, which are what give it such a timeless quality. Some people have complained about Carey Mulligan’s accent, although I thought she was great, and there will be those who feel the film is simply too polished to look at, and there’s certainly an argument that at time you feel like you’re watching a cartoon. Finally, there is a sense that at times you’re watching a rehash of some old films, namely Moulin Rouge, Romeo and Juliet, The Aviator, and Citizen Kane, with an occasional scene from Bugsy Malone thrown in.

So, does the good outweigh the bad? Well, yes it does, but the problems with it are numerous enough that whether you love Luhrmann’s other work (I do) or the beauty of the original story (I do) you will find enough wrong here to stop you feeling as though you have truly been immersed in The great American cautionary tale.

Is it The Great Gatsby? No, but it’s certainly a decent effort, and for you English teachers out there, at least the scenes at the petrol station actually take place in a petrol station this time.

Between Me and You: How The Beatles aged.

 The qualities of truly great pop music are as constant as the laws of physics, and just as complex. It seems that some songs, artists, albums or even moments in musical history are destined to be elevated to the realm of legend, when some are not – but in fact music that was great in the 1700s is still great today, as is the best music from every generation since up to about 1999 when music became rubbish and then Justin Bieber and collapse of civilisation and all that.

So, why does some music age well, and some not so well? It’s hard to say but there doesn’t fundamentally need to be an anecdotal reason for a song to become legendary, and there doesn’t need to be a direct tap into the listener’s deepest psychological corridors. It helps, but it’s not a necessity. But it’s there, somehow. Legend seeps into the sounds, and flows back out in droves. The ominous foreshadowing of Mozart’s Requiem, or the emotional passion of Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony are there for all to see, and their legend is cemented. This also applies to rock and roll and pop. Who can listen to Otis Redding’s ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay’ without adding to it a tragedy that Redding could never have felt as he sang it? Or in a more subtle way, is it possible to listen to the grinding sneer of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ without hearing the roots of the social uproar of the 1960s leave its calling card? Songs like Elvis’ Sun Records albums, or Buddy Holly’s best moments survive with a kind of archaic charm that conjures up nostalgia even in the minds of those who were born long after, and far from the “golden age” of late 1950s America. They are basic, primitive even, but what they lack in technical gloss, they more than make up for with crackling energy and raw power. And therein lies the secret. For art that transcends the moment in which it was created must truly capture the essence of that moment, without relying on it for its fundamental merit. Bohemian Rhapsody has elevated itself to legendary, game-changing status, but it’s not the only 5-minute-plus, heavily guitarred operatic genre-mixing smorgasbord that Queen released. It’s not even the only one on that album. But, it’s the one that doesn’t sound like it’s still stuck in 1975 when you listen in 2013. Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ may be the biggest selling album of all time, but it’s hard to hear it as a piece of work that would stand up in today’s charts, so saturated is it in the musical, lyrical and studio production tropes of the early 1980s. Except, of course, for the songs that have truly stood the test of time. Billie Jean, Thriller and Beat It don’t sound out of date. Yes, there are touches of the decade that bore them, but the songs sound as alive and fresh today as they did then. Can anyone really say that about PYT? I recently bought some “Hits of the 90s” in a mad nostalgia rush, but was left disappointed in the end. The songs hadn’t aged at all well, and I struggled to really marry my memories of the songs with the tired old generic cliché that seemed to be squirming out of my iPod. That doesn’t happen when I revisit ‘Definitely Maybe’, parts of ‘Nevermind’ (not least the incredible opening of ‘Teen Spirit’) and the better moments of U2’s late 80s/early 90s output.

The list goes on; Billy Joel’s greatest hits are those that don’t depend on the lyrical minefields of the singer-songwriter genre, Carole King’s Tapestry album is at its finest when dealing with themes that go beyond the San Franciscan haze of the late 60s, and the Rolling Stones stopped making great records the day that they decided to adapt their style to the times, not the other way around. Prince’s finest achievements sound now like homages to their genre, not slaves to it, and as a final piece of proof, look at how many bands who seemed to represent the times in which they operated still get airplay in today’s market. Anything that piggybacks on a zeitgeist is going to be dropped in the sandbox when the generation who “loved” it move on.

So, what’s the point of this? Well, it’s the song “From Me To You” by those Beatles that I like. One of the reasons I appreciate their contribution to music so much is that when you listen back to so many of those songs, you don’t feel as though you have to make allowances for the era in which they were produced. Abbey Road is a particularly strong piece of evidence for this. ‘Come Together’ doesn’t sound like a record stuck in the 60s. The intricacies of the interplay between the guitars and the other-worldly stream of consciousness lyrics don’t sound hackneyed after 40 years, nor do the harmonies of ‘Because’ become any less spine-tingling with the passing of time. Even Sgt Pepper, the album that (to many people) defined the entire decade, doesn’t sound (for the most part) like it’s trapped there, the occasional acid-drenched moment notwithstanding.

The Beatles, though, do represent to many the definitive sound of the 1960s in British music. This, of course, is a remarkably myopic view of a decade that had as much variety and high quality output as it did badly dressed tree-hugging flower children. But, somehow, in our collective consciousness, the sound of 60s Britain came from Liverpool. Some of their earlier output does manage to get away from the clichés they helped to create, (‘In My Life’, ‘Yesterday’, ‘Norwegian Wood’) but it takes until 1965 and ‘Rubber Soul’ before you can start to say the band created truly great music. Many songs before that album have got touches of genius in their fabric, but it’s hard to think of a Beatles song released before 1965 that doesn’t sound heavily entrenched in the generic stylings of ‘60s music’. Maybe there’s a case to be made for ‘Not a Second Time’ from ‘With The Beatles’, perhaps ‘Baby’s in Black’ but it’s tenuous at best. So how come their early 60s songs have reached the highest echelons of people’s consciousness? No matter what your personal feelings about The Beatles, it’s still hard to reach the age of 10 without having been made aware, somehow, of who they were and the songs they sang. So why are they still so present, and do they deserve it? Well, for me (as detailed in an earlier couple of blogs about ‘Long Tall Sally’ and ‘Twist and Shout’) the key is in the power and energy of those early songs.

The best early Beatles songs are the ones that have that frenetic pace and energy that drives them along so wonderfully. These are the songs that rise above the pitfalls of recording in 1960s Britain. For example, shoddy quality of the recording (particularly evident on b-side songs like ‘Thank You Girl’ or ‘I’ll Get You’) or the poor technical musicianship (hear the guitar tunings on ‘I’m Down’ or ‘Don’t Bother Me, not to mention McCartney’s questionable handling of some of the low vocals on ‘Hold Me Tight’) or just the lack of quality in the songwriting (‘PS I Love You’ and ‘Love Me Do’ amongst others). Many songs from those early albums fall into at least one, and in some cases more, of these traps, but their best work escapes them because of its consistent energy, enthusiasm and power. See ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, ‘All My Loving’, ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, and many others for examples of how good songs are elevated to greatness by the conviction of their delivery. And, of course, The Beatles were a great singles band. Look at the list of singles they put out in their first 5 years alone – it’s almost the Bhagavad Gita of genius pop songwriting. Except, for me, their 1963 mis-step, ‘From Me To You’.

Only their second number 1 hit, it’s hard to escape a feeling that the song was ensnared by some of their other failings, while simultaneously benefitting from their burgeoning popularity, therefore entering the folklore of great Beatles songs somewhat unconvincingly, almost shuffling to the back, knowing full well it doesn’t quite merit its place on that particular pedestal. The harmonica (never John Lennon’s forte) is unimpressive, the melody, while not unpalatable, isn’t much to write home about, the lyrics are functional and the chords are unimaginative for the most part. There’s a nice change to Gm7 in the middle 8, which is enjoyable, although not prominent enough on the record, and it’s a good natured sort of romp, but when you stand it up against their other ‘great’ work from that era, it doesn’t come anywhere near the musical sophistication of ‘This Boy’ or ‘Ask Me Why’, the lyrical intrigue of ‘If I Fell’ or ‘Not a Second Time’, the harmonic triumph of ‘Tell me Why’ or ‘She Loves You’, or the sheer steam-train excitement of ‘Boys’ or ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, or countless others. It just sits there in the Beatles canon as the runt of the litter. It’s charming, but its greatest strength is simultaneously its biggest weakness, which is that it harks back to a time of innocent charm, collarless suits, moptop haircuts and holding hands with a girl, and it singularly fails to thrill, sneer, seduce or threaten in the way that the Beatles could do so comprehensively. It’s not that there aren’t other songs from this time that suffer from the same problems, but this is the most high-profile, and in a career that was based on innovation and invention, it stands out as something of a blot on an otherwise seemingly immaculate canvas.