Scenes from Syria

June 8, 2012

Smoke, shouts and gunfire. Hauling a body – dead, wounded? – into the back of a van. The sound of man a crying. In a different film, you would take it he was singing, but this is ‘amateur video’ of the attack on Houla, Syria. Another film shows dead bodies from the village of Mazraat al-Qabeer, now dressed in their best clothes and composed – arranged like flowers – for the camera’s worldly eye. The lens lingers over them, and the accompanying voice calls for action against the forces of President Assad. But because there are children among the dead, twenty-first century decorum dictates that we must look at a white blob where their faces would otherwise be. It turns the whole scene into an outtake from the X-Files. So much story-telling, too much narrative, means we can’t see, we can’t see.

On the rainy river, Jubilee pageant, London Sunday 3rd June

June 4, 2012

Union jack bowler hats, top hats, sailor hats, cowboy – cowboy? – hats. Umbrellas everywhere. Union jack leggings, jeggings, faces and hair. Among the crowds a thousand Wills and Kates (face masks a fiver each); cardboard cut outs of the Queen. Is it all too silly to be true? Wind-swept, rain-streaked, the choir cuts through. Never mind the words (‘Land of Hope’ – that’s dope), or the cold, old lady they are singing to (nine degrees and falling: you can read the temperature by the way she folds her hands together). Only listen to the sound of a thousand years of choral singing, harnessed and let loose again in the mouths of young men and women.

Setting the scene, Leveson Inquiry, London

May 31, 2012

When the court rises at 5pm, a fourth camera shows the whole room: rows of desks, cupboards and computer monitors; all comfortably integrated into a bland interior. But during the proceedings, we have been receiving pictures from three, other cameras, each of which is trained like a spotlight on a different section of the room. Each section of the chamber has its own protagonist – a judge, a barrister, a series of witnesses; but their respective ‘spots’ are so varied that these actors could be playing entirely different scenes, instead of complementary aspects of the same courtroom drama. Scene 1 The Control Centre: Lord Leveson is tightly shot, framed by blue curtains, wooden desk, and a high-backed, matt-black chair. Domed head and no legs visible, he resembles the crippled comic strip character, the Mekon, at the controls of a levitating stairlift. But Leveson’s voice is just Northern enough to make his received pronunciation sound like suburban social climbing: more Didsbury than Dan Dare. Scene 2 The Forest: Green, yellow and brown (suit, tie, hair); olive tints, and is that a dash of paprika in his beard? Colourful Robert Jay QC appears before a lush background made up of other people; functionaries of the court, but people nonetheless. Nestling in all this warmth and greenery, the answers he draws out from witnesses are like long filaments of chlorophyll. Scene 3 Forensics: He’s sitting down but the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport still looks splayed out against the plain white wall behind him. Plain white light bounces off the wall, reddening his cheeks and forehead, making him appear feverish, alarmed. Now that the third camera is depicting Jeremy Hunt, are we looking at the infamous mugshot of the defendant – the one the police always take when the suspect is first brought into the station? Or are we already in the mortuary, with the body of the late cabinet minister laid out on a slab? read more

President of Self-Consciousness, Washington

May 30, 2012

In the White House, the new French president faces the press alongside Barack Obama. Monsieur Francois Hollande is dumpy and speccy compared to the iced-coffee elegance of his host. Although Obama stumbles over his visitor’s name (hesitates, then over-frenchifies it), it is Hollande who is somehow in the wrong. Instead of simply being the President of France on his first visit to Washington, he is also thinking that he is the President of France on his first visit to Washington; that kind of thinking which is one step removed from being there, doing it. Hollande only has to sit still while Obama introduces him to the Washington press corps. Naturally, Obama followed the ‘remarkable’ election in which Hollande ousted Sarkozy. Of course, having read his biography, Obama knows that as a young man Hollande spent time in America studying fast food. Meanwhile we can see the President of France wriggling in and out of his own skin: one moment inside himself; next second, beside himself. At the end, he chips in with a line about French fries and you only wish he hadn’t.

Queuing in the sun, Cairo

May 30, 2012

The citizens of Cairo are queuing in the hot sun. A pool of people fills the full width of the street, narrowing to a thin channel – only one person wide – between two barriers. Two soldiers are standing by the barriers, weighed down by the guns strung around their necks. Underneath the butt and the barrel, the tips of their fingers are pressing upwards, lifting a little of the weapon’s weight from their shoulders. The day stretches ahead. One of the soldiers waves the next man through and he duly steps forward to cast his vote.

Chalk and Cheesy, Basildon, Essex

May 30, 2012

Two former pupils who got in to Oxford and Cambridge, invited back to school to present prizes at Speech Day. That’s what it looked like. It was a kind of Speech Day; but not back to school. Instead the whole country, represented by the workforce of CNH Tractors in Basildon, Essex, was being schooled by Nick (Clegg, Liberal Democrat, deputy prime minister) and Dave (Cameron, Conservative, prime minister) on the Merits of the Coalition. After their political parties polled poorly in last week’s local elections, the Coalition leaders travelled to Essex to lecture us all on why they’re right and we’re wrong not to see it that way. Mouth composed into a perfect ‘O’, Cameron made his choirboy face, then shifted to his other persona: he-man of the jutting jaw. Either way, Clegg looked on incredulously. Later, when it was Clegg’s turn to do the talking, Cameron looked up at him, head drawn back at a slight angle: ‘Y’what?’ Of course the whole thing was a photo/podcast/rolling news opportunity. So well designed, right down to the colour scheme. Cameron wearing a blue tie, Clegg yellow. Some of the tractor factory workers were dressed in blue polo shirts; others yellow. You couldn’t ask for a closer match. However well-designed, though, there’s no hiding how the two boys are coming apart. Nothing in the orchestration of the event could drown out the discord between them. And here are some more entries which I prepared earlier.

(1) Royal Preserve Dateline: 2nd March 2012
Halfway between a wave and the brush-off, Prince Harry gestures to Caribbean photographers at the start of his first solo tour. He is ginger and slightly gauche. Back in London his grandmother, the elderly Queen Elizabeth, looks quizzically at the food hamper produced by Fortnum and Mason to mark her Diamond Jubilee (1952-2012). Nestling among the preserves, 60 years of judgment reserved. read more

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Author Archives: Andrew Calcutt

Scenes from Syria

On the rainy river, Jubilee pageant, London Sunday 3rd June

Setting the scene, Leveson Inquiry, London

President of Self-Consciousness, Washington

Queuing in the sun, Cairo

Chalk and Cheesy, Basildon, Essex