BBC Four: Documentaries
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/time.shtml |
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This extraordinary fourth part of a documentary on Time by Dr Micio Kaku called Cosmic Time was broadcast on BBC Four Sunday night kicking off in my mind an exploration of society, man and science which was reflected in the social issues raised in the following programme Lady Chatterley which was Ken Russell’s film adaptation of D H Lawrence’s novel. This broadcast featured all four episodes totaling three and one-half hours at one sitting. It was outstanding.
I was thinking about these issues today against the background provided by a book I had read back in 1960/1 by Herbert J Muller The Uses of the Past. This was originally published by Oxford University Press in 1952 and a year later in the US as a Mentor paperback, The New American Library, New York and had enjoyed six printings by 1960 when I read it in a history class at that time. It deserved such a widespread readership and academic interest.
Then tonight BBC Four broadcast Andrew Davies’ take on the trial of the book Lady Chatterly’s Lover which took place in early November 1960. This brilliant 90 minute dramatisation called The Chatterley Affair of trial fact mixed with a fictional account of two jurors who relive during the trial the relationship in the book bringing into focus the social issues which the novel raised.
As noted above Dr Michio Kaku’s documentary on Cosmic Time will be broadcast several times this week including tomorrow and Thursday in the wee hours (actually Friday morning). Andrew Davies’ The Chatterley Affair will be broadcast again on BBC Four on Friday at 2200 and again in the wee hours at 0220 (actually early Saturday morning). This will give everyone ample opportunity to see at least two of these three extraordinary programmes. There is always the book itself which can be read, and perhaps BBC Four will rebroadcast Ken Russell’s Lady Chatterley at some poinrt.
I want to provide my comments on these three extraordinary programmes broadcast in the past 24 hours as it impacted my thought process about my experience of being subjected to 24/7 by totally invasive surveillance technology with its complete invasion of my privacy. I and those engaged in using the surveillance technology against me all watched these programmes together with comments made throughout.
The obscenity trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover as depicted in Andrew Davies’ writing focused on whether or not this book “depraved and corrupted” those who read it. That was the decision which the jurors were charged to determine. Each of these three programmes provided a perspective. Dr. Micho Kaku addressed the perspective of time as science has revealed with respect to the formation and development of the universe, the earth and man against the background of man’s spiritual beliefs. Ken Russell’s Lady Chatterley provided the perspective of social and psychological existence in England after World War I.
Then, Andrew Davies dealt with the perspective of the impact of D H Lawrence’s novel on society over time including the trial of this book regarding its obscenity as defined in law at that time. While the issues and their contrasts are prevalent in these works making them extraordinary in their relevance today especially in my personal situation, I went back to Herbert Muller’s book to read his extraordinary historically analytical comments in a section called The Ambiguities of Spiritual Achievement (pps 60 - 4 in the Mentor paperback edition).
Power, Reality and Truth
I was most struck by power in society as depicted in Ken Russell’s visualisation of D H Lawrence’s novel in film. The contrast of the aristocracy’s power, wealth, social attitudes and exploitation against the life and labour of the workers highlighted by the impact of war gives much food for thought. The freedom of the aristocracy and the slavery of the workers is extraordinarily at extremes which determines the attitudes and actions of each well defined and maintained class in England in the early part of the 20th century.
The attitude and actions taken on by the workers reflect the assimilation repression that the aristocratic owners of the land and coal mine wanted to maintain in order to preserve their source of wealth. This included sexual as well as social repression sustained by ignorance. The same repression did not exist in the aristocracy, but any mixture of the classes was met be extremely destructive behaviour from each class. Ken Russell depicts this in numerous action and word examples throughout his film drawn from the novel.
Naturally, in the novel and Ken Russell’s film war itself becomes the catalyst for the upheaval when the aristocrat’s war incapacity destroys his mobility and sexual function. War which was the result of aristocratic decisions became the source of destruction of the aristocracy. This was especially true in Britain after World War I. Britain lost almost one million dead and 200,000 missing along with over two million wounded. (William Manchester The Last Lion: William Spencer Churchill Visions of Glory 1847 to 1932, Little Brown and Company, Boston - Toronto, 1983, p 650).
”The war had left 160,000 young English widows and 300,000 fatherless children. The flower of England’s youth, its university students and recent graduates, had joined Kitchener’s armies and crossed to France, most of them as infantry lieutenants. The number of those who fell is incalculable, but some figures are suggestive. In his mindless Passchendaele offensive, Haig lost 22,316 junior officers, compared to only 6,913 Germans of similar rank. We shall never know how many potential prime ministers, cabinet ministers, poets, scientists, physicians, lawyers, professors, and distinguished civil servants perished in the mud of France and Belgium, but the conclusion is inescapable: an entire generation had lost most of its ablest men.” (ibid., p 663)
Against the background of the decimation from World War I, the destructive and repressive class structure was maintained and supported by each class with devastating consequences for any who might transgress the social barrier especially in sexual congress. The working class turns against the Gamekeeper Oliver Mellors with violence and ostracises him. The lower class takes on the repression of its own which is required by those in power to maintain control.
The war’s impact, however, reached into the society further with more destruction which this fictional account depicts as the usurpation of the aristocrat’s social position by the Gamekeeper though a sensual and sexual relationship provoked from an incapacitating war wound. The Lady of the manor discovers that the Gamekeeper is human and more desirable than her husband who is driving her away by both direct behaviour and indirectly in his efforts to turn her into a brood mare for an heir to sustain this aristocratic family’s land and coal mine ownership. She is valued for this reproductive ability and not herself. She discovers herself through the Gamekeeper and demands more for her life. She learns, grows and eventually departs for independence and a fulfilling life with the Gamekeeper in Ken Russell’s film.
Andrew Davies The Chatterley Affair
Andrew Davies takes us forward by two forty year segments first to 1960 with the obscentity trial itself (fact) and then another forty years to the present with a flashback by two jurors from that trial (fiction) in his The Chatterley Affair. By marvelously intertwining these two threads he re-explores the issues raised by D H Lawrence in our own time context and from our own perspective. Are we “depraved and corrupted” by D H Lawrence’s novel in its realism with respect to depicting language and explicitly describing a sensual and sexual relationship between two human beings?
This book was not allowed to be published in the form that was originally created by D H Lawrence until Penguin successfully challenged this repression. How much does this repression of explicit and commonly used language and the depiction of human sensual and sexual relationships continue the efforts to maintain power and control? This is the question which arises today in my direct experience and makes Andrew Davies work extraordinarily relevant and important. I’ve been subjected to intense abuse by the use of totally invasive surveillance technology focusing on sexual activity in a most abusive and destructive manner.
Surveillance Technology Abuse of Power
The point in this violent and abusive behaviour against me is to take advantage of this still prevalent overall attitude of repressed sexuality to put me in a double bind situation. The abuse itself is carried out with the intention to destroy. If I do not speak up about it, I am allowing this abuse to go unchallenged and unchecked. Those carrying it out get away with it by intimidation. If Ido speak up about it, I am condemned for having raised the issue of sexual abuse. Since they are hiding behind the use of the surveillance technology to manufacture false allegations about sexual activity, they have been able to continue this extreme abuse for seven years and seven months 24/7 since August 1998.
This reflects the same power maintenance of a class structure in favour of those in power with those who are being controlled for the benefit of the few exploited by maintaining a standard of sexual repression as a means for control. The very people at that bottom of the social class structure are the ones who are carrying out the sexual abuse with the use of the surveillance technology fully supported and assisted daily by those who want to maintain their position of power. The reason is due to the fact that I challenge those in positions of power because I complain about antisocial and criminal behaviour which these people want to hide while maintaining an illusion that everything is problem free. The same kind of power management which existed 80 years ago still persists today only updated with the use of current technology and shifted to a degree from landed aristocracy to elected politicians and governmental management
Dr Michio Kaku's Cosmic Time
That’s where Dr Michio Kaku’s Cosmic Time documentary comes in although he started this marvelous sequence of programmes with Sunday night’s broadcast on BBC Four. He provides the overview perspective in which the conscious activity of man exists. The marvel of the knowledge provided by the science of physics is astonishing and rocks superstition's foundation which has played a key role in the power structures of organisations throughout history intended to maintain power and control over large segments of the human race. When we begin to understand the reality of the universe and man’s conscious existence within that framework, we can better understand ourselves and society while most importantly establishing and maintaining standards and values which apply equally and fairly to all without being misled by “depraved and corrupt” efforts to misrepresent and mislead. This brings us to what we really mean by obscenity.
There was a very interesting discourse on the word “puritan” during the trial as reported by Andrew Davies in The Chatterley Affair. The witness maintained that D H Lawrence was a “puritan” in the original sense of the word which has come to be debased in more current usage. Originally, a “puritan” was one who as in the case of D H Lawrence in his novel was getting at the pure essence of sensuality and sexuality. More recently this has come to mean a strictness with respect to religious or moral beliefs and is often used in a disparaging way (Funk and Wagnalls dictionary). This causes a rethink by being confronted with a different way of using the word puritan.
The same might apply in the case of the word obscene especially as its usage evolves as reflected in law and in practise. There may be a shift in what is considered offensive or “obscene” with regard to sensual and sexual activity and its expression to more abhorrent examples of human behaviour which are destructive. Thus, we might want to call violence and destructive behaviour obscene because these are “depraved and corrupting.”
Funk and Wagnalls' dictionary considers obscene in one of its definitions as "offensive to the senses; disgusting; loathsome; foul," and notes that the word was originally from the Latin meaning "ill-omened, filth." Violence has been accepted and sexuality repressed. Perhaps the two are to be reversed with consideration given to the fact that the really obscene is the violent.
Sexual repression has been used throughout history as a means to control and maintain power except that it does not pertain to those in power. Acceptance of human sensual and sexual activity becomes threatening to those in power who use it in this manner for their own corrupt self interest sustaining that power. Those in power wished to deny the publication of explicit everyday language about sexual anatomy and activity along with graphic descriptions about sensual pleasure because there was a sense that a loss of control would occur. This is what actually happens. This false manipulative means of controlling humans is lost when sexuality and sensual expression is allowed to exist in art and reality. This is seen by what happens in D H Lawrence’s novel and in Andrew Davies’ The Chatterley Affair.
However, this problem still persists throughout society as I have been experiencing for well over seven years as a means of revenge and retaliation by those who are violent and want to maintain that violence while hiding their criminal activity. Attacks against sexuality by fabricating sexual activity which does not exists under the pretense of validating such behaviour by the use of surveilance technology represent the same attempt at domination and control which the workers used in D H Lawrence's novel and Ken Russell's film.
The reason that I say it persists throughout society is because there are scores if not hundreds of people who participate and allow this highly destructive activity against me to continue. It's wide across Government departments and high within Government to its very top.