Yes, I'm drunk. Think how I'd sound if I was sober. Anyway...
Just watching Michael McIntyre's comedy roadshow and it occurs to me that much of his comedy seems to revolve around, basically, how the working-class (or at least, people with accents) are essentially scum for not sounding like he does. Not in so many words of course - and he gives the modern "oh yes, I'm being ironic" wink to the audience - but there's certainly a class-based contempt when he ridicules Blackpool regarding its plebishness.
Later we have have Miles Jupp, who has an even more extreme variant - his entire act seems to revolve around the one gag of how he speaks..."properly", apparently. I get it, it's a joke - and sure, I found it pretty funny, but, like I said, I'm drunk - but it is emblematic of a larger problem - this notion of a "correct" way of speaking.
How is it, after centuries of suffrage and the seeming breakdown of class distinctions, Britain is still obsessed with ideals and, particularly, ideals of language?
Let's examine one big freaking signifier, kids - the UK still has a monarchy. Now, if you needed more proof regarding this idealism of class that we have in this glorious nation of ours, there it is...we are one of the few first world countries on the planet where we have an official government-sanctioned symbol of our acceptance that certain people - due to blood, wealth and breeding - are inherintly superior to others. And it is called the Queen's English, isn't it? That perfect mode of speaking we all aspire to...if only we could throw off the shackles of words like "shite" or "bairn" or "knees up mother brown" that keep us such simple country folk and prevent us aspiring to the heights of investment bankers or missionaries...
The point is...regional accents are not the "wrong" way of speaking - the ruling classes have always been a minority and language is the ultimate folk art. English has only had this standard set by the likes of upper-class linguiusts like Samuel Johnson who have set an ideal of language according to royal precedent. When Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales, notions of a "correct" English were unheard of and, as such, we have an amalgamtion of English according to his own interpretation -
"When that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour,
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne"
Isn't that freaking awesome?! It's like Jazz - and I get it, I compare far too much stuff to Jazz - you take what is the basis, the basic melody perhaps whether it be "Basin Street Blues" or "When The Saints Go Marching In" and you improvise...English has a certain amount of set characteristics and similarities which have been forced into one set template over centuries of homogenisation, but it can still be used as a tool for development, offshoots and idionsyncrasies.
English has always been fluid and "dialect" should not be considered a pejorative term - the unique nature and individuality of accents is far superior to the bland recieved pronunciation forced upon us by the upper classes and the media. But, of course, as more and more people identify themselves as "middle-class", more and more people frown upon accents and dialects. And this is a real tragedy. The likes of Mark Twain, Brendan Behan, James Joyce, Eugene O'Neill and, like, whoever, have been praised for using the vernacular in their writing and have been called the greatest writers of all time and yet people still ridicule and lambast those who use of regional accents, all around the world. It's horrible, hypocritical and classist (is this a word? If not, then it proves my point even more adroitly)...
So to, like, conclude - you should be proud of your accent. It's not bad language - there is such a thing as bad grammar which is completely apart from this - it's better than the bland shite that is "recieved pronunciation", which should henceforth be referred to rather as "generic pronunciation".
Saturday 25 June 2011
Wednesday 8 June 2011
Sex and Children...Why Can't They Just Get Along?
There's been a lot of hoo-ha in the press about the sexualisation of children - yep, it's that time of year again - with the usual moralists and scaremongers venting their iration over the death of childhood and all that...
This time it's sexually provocative clothing and lad's mags. Apparently, the likes of Loaded and pre-teen lingerie are sexualising our children - as such, and as usual, the government's out to ban lots of stuff!
So...what's wrong with the sexing up of children?
Well, the main arguement always tends to be that it makes them targets for paedophiles. Well, this is a rather contradictory arguement - why would dressing children in clothes designed for supposedly more mature adults make them more likely targets for people who supposedly disdain maturity? That's a bit like gay men dressing effeminately to attract other gay men (oh, wait a second...)
We live in a society that is, for some reason, determined to keep the throes of adulthood at bay for as long as possible. "Childhood innocence" is perhaps the most sacred image in our society for some reason and anything which stands to threaten that may as well be thrown to the dogs. It's not even a particularly conservative element, either - even liberal, progressive groups seem to promote the "protection" of childhood as among the most important tasks in modern society, primarily taking it as part of the rape-prevention scene; in other words, childhood must be protected to protect children from paedophiles.
What "childhood" has become, in fact, is a form of learned stupidity and helplessness. Childhood is marked by naivety and ignorance, traits which are inarguably negative qualities in adults, but which are apparently positive qualities in the young. A child who expresses interest in anything above his supposed age-group is inevitably penalised in our society - sex is most obvious example, of course. As such, there are laws and "accepted norms" which basically label every child up to the age 12 as an interchangable, innocent, sweet, angelic cherub and every child between the ages of 13 and 18 as an ignorant, violent, sex-obsessed thug, who clearly didn't have the right kind of childhood up to the age of 12. On top of all this, personality is suppressed - more than at any other age, children are forced both by parents, peers, the government and companies into set templates that penalise any form of free thinking before the age of 18 - in spite of the fact that, arguably, prior the age of 18 is when you form most of your perception of the world.
This is my issue: the attraction of children to lad's mags and provocative and demeaning clothes can only stem from ignorance, a lack of self-confidance, peer pressure and sexual confusion - just like with adults. Except that an adult can be freed from ignorance, have their confidence and independence boosted and determine their own sexuality and attitudes towards sexuality. The absolute opposite approach is taken with children - sex education, both at home and at school is a joke (I still remember my "sex ed" in school which consisted of showing two people kind of writhing about in a very dark room where only their heads and legs were visible. When I asked why we weren't actually be shown any sex, my teacher just laughed.) You have parents which "protect" (i.e. confuse) their children from sex and then are shocked and suprised that, when encountering any sexualised image, their children react in a less than pleasant manner. And, apparently, the solution to this is to just keep banning as much sex-related stuff as possible until children everywhere are nicely insulated from reality - rather than hitting of the root of the problem, namely:
Why the hell are you so freaking scared of your children knowing about sex?
Now, I am not trying to say that lads mags lingerie and t-shirts saying the likes of "MONGOLOID PORN INFERNO" on them are necessarily a good thing. But the issue here is not related to children - these are all degrading to both women and men, but the question is, why do people buy these? And it sure as hell isn't due to having a healthy attitude towards sex. If children actually knew a damn thing about sex then they might actually understand why it is that they shouldn't want to aspiring to be a WAG or page 3 girl.
More than anything, we should sure as hell not be taking the advice of the Tories - many of whom still come from a generation when husbands and wives shared separate beds - on what is considered "normal" or "healthy" sexuality. Their attitude to sexuality is naturally "conservative" and harks back to a Victorian age when sex was less publicised, but prostitution, rape and child abuse were FAR more prevelant. Oh, and yeah, Daily Mail, you're part of that, too...
Perhaps the reason why parents fear paedophiles so much is that represent the most forceful example of childhood being threatened by the imposition of sexual interaction. In a way, this is a rather horrendous thought - that the paedophile is a scapegoat for the modern sexualisation of children, representing its absolute pinnacle and being used as the excuse for basically every sex-scare in the last 30 years or longer. Would paedophiles be a such a problem if we weren't all so shit-scared of sex?
And of course, the main problem, as far as I'm concerned, is that if you do teach your children to be ignorant, uninformed and "innocent", then they will grow up to be exactly the same way. And then they'll have children and pass it on themselves and the cycle of abuse will continue. Geez, wouldn't the Tories hate that...
But it all usually falls back to, "they're so damn cute when they're stupid"...
This time it's sexually provocative clothing and lad's mags. Apparently, the likes of Loaded and pre-teen lingerie are sexualising our children - as such, and as usual, the government's out to ban lots of stuff!
So...what's wrong with the sexing up of children?
Well, the main arguement always tends to be that it makes them targets for paedophiles. Well, this is a rather contradictory arguement - why would dressing children in clothes designed for supposedly more mature adults make them more likely targets for people who supposedly disdain maturity? That's a bit like gay men dressing effeminately to attract other gay men (oh, wait a second...)
We live in a society that is, for some reason, determined to keep the throes of adulthood at bay for as long as possible. "Childhood innocence" is perhaps the most sacred image in our society for some reason and anything which stands to threaten that may as well be thrown to the dogs. It's not even a particularly conservative element, either - even liberal, progressive groups seem to promote the "protection" of childhood as among the most important tasks in modern society, primarily taking it as part of the rape-prevention scene; in other words, childhood must be protected to protect children from paedophiles.
What "childhood" has become, in fact, is a form of learned stupidity and helplessness. Childhood is marked by naivety and ignorance, traits which are inarguably negative qualities in adults, but which are apparently positive qualities in the young. A child who expresses interest in anything above his supposed age-group is inevitably penalised in our society - sex is most obvious example, of course. As such, there are laws and "accepted norms" which basically label every child up to the age 12 as an interchangable, innocent, sweet, angelic cherub and every child between the ages of 13 and 18 as an ignorant, violent, sex-obsessed thug, who clearly didn't have the right kind of childhood up to the age of 12. On top of all this, personality is suppressed - more than at any other age, children are forced both by parents, peers, the government and companies into set templates that penalise any form of free thinking before the age of 18 - in spite of the fact that, arguably, prior the age of 18 is when you form most of your perception of the world.
This is my issue: the attraction of children to lad's mags and provocative and demeaning clothes can only stem from ignorance, a lack of self-confidance, peer pressure and sexual confusion - just like with adults. Except that an adult can be freed from ignorance, have their confidence and independence boosted and determine their own sexuality and attitudes towards sexuality. The absolute opposite approach is taken with children - sex education, both at home and at school is a joke (I still remember my "sex ed" in school which consisted of showing two people kind of writhing about in a very dark room where only their heads and legs were visible. When I asked why we weren't actually be shown any sex, my teacher just laughed.) You have parents which "protect" (i.e. confuse) their children from sex and then are shocked and suprised that, when encountering any sexualised image, their children react in a less than pleasant manner. And, apparently, the solution to this is to just keep banning as much sex-related stuff as possible until children everywhere are nicely insulated from reality - rather than hitting of the root of the problem, namely:
Why the hell are you so freaking scared of your children knowing about sex?
Now, I am not trying to say that lads mags lingerie and t-shirts saying the likes of "MONGOLOID PORN INFERNO" on them are necessarily a good thing. But the issue here is not related to children - these are all degrading to both women and men, but the question is, why do people buy these? And it sure as hell isn't due to having a healthy attitude towards sex. If children actually knew a damn thing about sex then they might actually understand why it is that they shouldn't want to aspiring to be a WAG or page 3 girl.
More than anything, we should sure as hell not be taking the advice of the Tories - many of whom still come from a generation when husbands and wives shared separate beds - on what is considered "normal" or "healthy" sexuality. Their attitude to sexuality is naturally "conservative" and harks back to a Victorian age when sex was less publicised, but prostitution, rape and child abuse were FAR more prevelant. Oh, and yeah, Daily Mail, you're part of that, too...
Perhaps the reason why parents fear paedophiles so much is that represent the most forceful example of childhood being threatened by the imposition of sexual interaction. In a way, this is a rather horrendous thought - that the paedophile is a scapegoat for the modern sexualisation of children, representing its absolute pinnacle and being used as the excuse for basically every sex-scare in the last 30 years or longer. Would paedophiles be a such a problem if we weren't all so shit-scared of sex?
And of course, the main problem, as far as I'm concerned, is that if you do teach your children to be ignorant, uninformed and "innocent", then they will grow up to be exactly the same way. And then they'll have children and pass it on themselves and the cycle of abuse will continue. Geez, wouldn't the Tories hate that...
But it all usually falls back to, "they're so damn cute when they're stupid"...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)