Not likeable

The new film Tár, about the (fictitious) downfall of Lydia Tár, a feted female conductor, has attracted some very odd criticism. In particular that such a predatory and abusive character should have been portrayed as a man and not a woman, and that the character "isn't likeable".

Good grief. When did characters in movies (or TV dramas or books) have to be likeable? If that was the case, hundreds of movies and books would have to be pulped immediately. Mean and nasty characters are commonplace, from Hannibal Lecter to Lord Voldemort to Humbert Humbert.

Fictional characters aren't meant to be likeable. Crazy or mysterious or plain horrible but not necessarily likeable. In children's books perhaps but not in adult reading.

The other gripe some people have about fictional characters is that they're not "realistic". Heaven help us. If you want realistic, you should be heading for the mass media, not books or movies. In any case, one person's realistic is another's totally incredible, so you can't win on that one.

One criticism I would share is the objection to gratuitous violence. People recoiled from Bonnie and Clyde because of its graphic savagery. The New York Times complained that the movie's brutal killings were "pointless and lacking in taste". The suggestion of violence, or simply a powerful sense of menace, can be just as effective as explicit violence.

But I guess daft criticism, like poverty, is always with us.

Pic: Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár

Not a patriot

I'm not a patriot. By that I mean I'm not going to defend my country to the last and make out that everything it is or does is wonderful. That's just idiotic. Britain does some things well and does other things very badly.

To gloss over the failures and pretend they don't exist, and to magnify the successes even if they're simply the basics of a properly-run country, seems to me a cock-eyed way of looking at things.

But don't misunderstand me. When I say I'm not a patriot, that doesn't mean I slag off Britain and how it's run at every opportunity. It just means I take a realistic view of my country, with all its faults, and I don't mindlessly defend it like some blinkered fanatic.

When I say I'm not patriotic, what that means is:

• I couldn't care less about the union jack
• I couldn't care less about the national anthem
• I'm not distraught if Britain doesn't win some big sports event
• I don't wildly exaggerate Britain's achievements
• I'm not at all proud of my country
• I don't dismiss all other countries as inferior
• I don't think the British are all fine, upstanding, law-abiding citizens
• I don't believe the British have some unique cultural or spiritual quality
• I don't believe Britain is the "cradle of democracy"
• I don't see what's so special about the "village pub"

There's nothing wonderful about this very average country.  Alongside those with dazzling talents and abilities, there are many more with modest skills who're simply going through the motions till retirement - that is, if they can even afford to retire, when the state pension is so scandalously low*.

Not so much a wonderful country as a country staggering on chaotically from day to day.

* The basic state pension is £179.60 ($243.91) a week.

Worldly wise

One big thing that's changed as I get older is that my passionate youthful idealism has given way to a more realistic view of the world and the realisation that things are a lot more complicated and a lot harder to change than the teenage me naively assumed.

How difficult could it be, I thought, to end poverty or homelessness or sexism or warmongering? Surely if enough people wanted to banish these things, it could be done? Surely if enough people were sufficiently horrified and sickened by what other people were forced to endure, then things would change?

I was forever going to rallies, going to sit-ins, signing petitions, lobbying politicians, and being the stereotype frenzied activist, espousing every worthy cause and predicting a better tomorrow.

I gradually realised as I grew older and more worldly-wise that these problems were much too deeply rooted to be eradicated overnight. They were so embedded in our collective way of life, so taken-for-granted as "just one of those things" ("the poor are always with us") that it would take the most colossal effort to make even the smallest inroads into these long-standing horrors.

I could agitate to the point of exhaustion with little to show for it because so many people were content to live with these problems rather than solving them. Or even worse, they stood to gain from them. The weapons manufacturers. The loan sharks. The privileged males. The landlords charging exorbitant, unaffordable rents.

So now I desist from most political activity and let others summon up their enthusiasm and optimism on my behalf. I still sign petitions and email my MP but that's about it. I anticipate that by the time I've shuffled off my mortal coil the poor will unhappily still be with us.