Girl in a Cafe my arse. This was Imperialism in a Hotel.
Stuart Hodkinson.
For those unfortunate enough to have just sat through Richard Curtis's (a.k.a. 'Bob with a brain') ridiculous BBC TV film, The Girl in the Cafe, about a pretend G8 summit in a Reykjavik hotel, I'm afraid I have some bad news. Yes, you really did just watch a jingoistic political broadcast on behalf of New Labour. Yes, she really did interrupt the PM's speech at the G8 dinner by clicking her fingers every 3 seconds to mark a child dying of extreme poverty in Africa. And no, you really didn't learn a single thing about the causes of that poverty, the culpability of the present UK government and the destructive role of the G8 in the world.
Stuart Hodkinson.
For those unfortunate enough to have just sat through Richard Curtis's (a.k.a. 'Bob with a brain') ridiculous BBC TV film, The Girl in the Cafe, about a pretend G8 summit in a Reykjavik hotel, I'm afraid I have some bad news. Yes, you really did just watch a jingoistic political broadcast on behalf of New Labour. Yes, she really did interrupt the PM's speech at the G8 dinner by clicking her fingers every 3 seconds to mark a child dying of extreme poverty in Africa. And no, you really didn't learn a single thing about the causes of that poverty, the culpability of the present UK government and the destructive role of the G8 in the world.
What a load of self-indulgent, hand-wringing, revisionist crap. Girl in a Cafe? This was 'Imperialism in a Hotel', jam-packed with appalling stereotypes, cliched script-writing and an unapologetic exposition of Africa as the 'dark continent', plagued by hunger, poverty, disease and corruption, but 'saveable' by 8 men in a room if they were to only dare to cleanse their consciences and 'make poverty history' (and in so doing secure their own place in history). At least we now know who writes Bono and Geldof's speeches. No doubt a knighthood will soon follow, although the only gong Curtis should be getting is the honorary Rudyard Kipling 'White Man's Burden' award.
You think I'm going a tad overboard, don't you? Well, I am prone to the odd hyperbolised rant, but not this time, no way. This film epitomised everything wrong with the star-fucking Celebdaq world of the Make Poverty History and Live 8 campaigns. On Planet Hollywood, it is the world's leaders who eliminate poverty and hunger - ordinary people mobilised in mass movements from below is not in the script. As for Africa, its sole problem - and the only thing we should be interested in - is lots of people just dying from poverty. The 'history of poverty' mustn't be discussed. Oh no, don't bore yourself with that one, implies Curtis. After all, as William, the Gordon Brown-style Chancellor in the film says, "these issues are very complex". Instead, just accept that poverty exists in Africa on a huge scale and that G8 leaders can fix it by changing trade rules, or giving more aid in return for better governance. Because in the Curtis world of development economics, it's as easy as 'A' 'D' 'T' - 'aid', 'trade' and debt'.
But shorn of their interrelationship with power and class relations under global capitalism, these three concepts are utterly meaningless. The reality, as even a star-gazing Oxfam campaigner will tell you, is that Bush and Blair will never simply re-write trade rules or drop debt or boost aid in a moment of guilt-wracked weakness. These structures exist to perpetuate and augment the wealth of global elites. And even if they thought about doing it, multinational corporations would veto such changes anyway. To change the world, you have to challenge the very ideological and material structures of the system itself, something that campaigns led by millionaire rock and film stars whose status and power comes from that system will never do.
Some people are going to look a little bit silly now, like the normally astute Madelaine Bunting. Writing in the Grauniad last week, Bunting implied Curtis was going to make "the cynics and sceptics" eat their words because The Girl in the Cafe would explain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to "a primetime audience in a way that decades of campaigning have failed to do". Madelaine, did you actually watch the film or just read the press release? We got about 20 seconds on the MDGs before the sickly and totally improbable love story took over. The only thing we learned was that the goals include "halving extreme world poverty by 2015". Wow - thanks Rich for that. And how are they going to achieve this goal? Why only half? Why by 2015? Predictably, there was no answer to these more probing questions, probably because they require explanations beyond the clicking of fingers.
Curtis could have weaved into the script the beginnings of colonialism and the slave trade, through to the decades following independence when the ex-colonial powers reasserted their control through creating the debt slavery system, and to the present day with G8 countries and their corporations queuing up to benefit from what Yao Graham has called in this month's Red Pepper, "the new scramble for Africa". But that would have involved knowing about this in the first place. However, I'm being too hard on Curtis. I mean, c'mon, the BBC was competing with Big Brother for primetime viewing and the truth about the West's looting and burning of Africa just doesn't make good saturday night telly, now does it.
http://redpepper.blogs.com/g8/2005/06/girl_in_a_cafe_.html#more
Comments
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yes, a too bit hard
27.06.2005 12:51
As a show i thought it was quite good actually - but you are absolutely 100% right that this was New Labour propaganda. Plucky Britain fighting against all these greedy foreigners who simply don't care if children have no clean water to drink.
But there are two sides to this. I don't believe this kind of programme would have been shown during the Thatcher years and it is a sign of how far the campaigners have brought on public consciousness of these issues that a significant section of the population DO now care about global issues.
Also, I believe, that this programme will help get people to Scotland for the G8 summit, particularly for the Edinburgh demonstration. There is not a single person who saw this show who was going to go and has now been put off - but i suspect it has pushed some people from thinking about going - to actually getting on transport and making the trip.
The thing that worries me about attacks on people like Curtis and Geldof, who fall way short of my political ideal (and this is a real understatement) is they feed into a council of despair... oh this won't change anything... it's just stars giving themselves easy publicity... it's letting governments off the hook.
The fact is that by protesting, by fighting for a better world people learn lessons. They can learn that the G8 is a bunch of imperialists who have not changed their spots, they can learn that more radical action is needed if we are going to make real changes in society - from the bottom to the top of society, but only if they take this first modest step. The girl in the cafe is part of this process - terribly flawed, politcally, in places, but never the less a call for people to come in their tens of thousands to tell the G8 that global poverty kills and that they, the world leaders, are responsible.
I'm with that message - whatever the problems with the detail.
jj
Harold loses the plot - liberal Bunting goes Doolalli!
28.06.2005 16:51
He couldn’t send though because he went out for a drive in his old rover car after writing it in order to calm down. he often went for a "motor in the country" when stress got the better of him.
Having just gone a mile down the road from Bloomfield, the village in which he lives, he was stopped by the police, his car searched, and then arrested under one of the many prevention of terrorism acts.
On the one hand I am glad the letter wasn't sent because it may have made this bunting laugh, and it is not a laughing matter.
I visited Harold at charring cross-station earlier today. That's were they took him. He was very angry about the whole scene. He seemed more worried about his car being taken to a safe place than he was about where they might take him. It was had been seized for forensic examination, and would be taken to a secret location.
Harolds angry subsided and he became first philosophical about the arrest - at least he wasn't starving to death in Africa, he had thought; he be getting fed. Then he regained his comosure and confidence and looked forward to the attention he might receive, and how he might turn it around to his own benefit. After his recent appearance on the Richard and Judy show perhaps he would make ripples aroud the nation and a gain some celebrety that could be used to his advantage.
Harold declared his complete innocence of any involvment in terrorism after the arrest. The said nothing more to the police.
Actually, he had the letter on his person, when he was arrested, and hid down his trousers for no apparent reason. Later when i visited hi his police cell, he passed it over to me and asked for it to be sent to the guardian newspaper letters page.
When i left he, he sat down to write a statment for the press, which his lawyer, the eminent criminal barrister, Michael Mansfield, who would later read it to a throng of press on then steps of charring Cross Police Station, claiming. So please watch this space.
Some news from the Author - that's me - of the novel. It has been agreed that he should continue the novel and include this unforseen little episode, and see where it goes after that. If it returns to the original planned plot, the publihers will be happy. Otherwise the story may be binned.
Getting back to Stuart's article allow my a short comment. This is not the text of a dribbly liberal but as Harold would say: " one of the revolting hard-core" in Harry-speak this was a compliment.
As for the film, I didn’t see it, myself, thankfully, neither did Harold because he would have been livid and looking to dealk a blow to this Curtis.
How is that that these 'liberals' do not recognise the system itself is fundamentally flawed, and under it Africa has little chance or no chance of improving itself.
What planet are these supposedly serious thinking people on when it comes to debt and the g8?
The phrase “ You have to challenge the very ideological structures and material structures of the system itself.” Is very powerful and I think very accurate. How we do this is … no I don’t have all the answer.
But the Anti-g8 protests are a part, and working locally in our own communities too is. And supporting the social struggles against new-liberalism – the default ideology of today that Bunting and co. probably think is a little harsh and perhaps it can be smoothed out a little. No. That is just not possible. Maybe these people really don’t think liberal capitalism is all that bad. Why would you if you do pretty well out of it?
You are right that some people are going to look a bit silly. I think that was what Harold Hamlet was trying to get across in the e-mail, she’s being silly. But your analysis refutes completely this tinkering with dropping a little debt, giving a little more aid (which, in fact, they are not doing in the long term. They’re actually giving zero extra over the long term), and make some minor concessions in crippling trade rules to which Africa must adhere to get the relief in ht first place.
I am going to Stuart's article to Harold - he'll like it. I may even temporarily raise his spirits.
Here is Harold’s email ; later we should get the statement through Mansfield, his lawyer.
Subject: email Madeleine Bunting
Status: Banged Up
Percent Complete: 100%
Total Work: 0 hours
Actual Work: 0 hours
Owner: Harold L. Hamlet
Dear Ms Bunting
Re: You article "landmark deal on Africa".
Quite frankly, It is completely out of it. Not just out off the cricket pitch or out of the village. Or it's not even inside the county boundary or even the country or continent. But off the chuffing earth! You must be using a truth system from another planet: planet bullshit with mad moons Blair, Bush and their nuttier neo-conservative mates orbiting around it.
Did you put you pants on wrong that day, in a hurry, when you got out of bed the wrong way that morning - that's on your head, darling. And then did you do a nonsensical loopy dance, singing ”I am as mad as a banana sunbathing wearing a pair of sunglasses on its arse and knickers on it’s head”, before sitting down to write your article.
It can be corrected quite easily though. Replace the word:landmark with the word: bollix and you will take it from the ridiculous to the sublime. Yes! “Bollix deal on Africa.” That’s a bit more accurate.
Bunting! Listen up. Get your head straight or be prepared to look silly. My advice is set your alarm an half-hour earlier on work days, get out of the bed on the correct side, and take time to put your pants on correctly. Putting them over your ahead - hoping to locate them correctly as you dash to the office to type up your copy and meet the deadline is fraught with problems. You may get asbowed. You will certainly be fingered as a mad lady.
Take time, my girl - the day is long and time will wait; it's half an hour longer if you follow the HH way.
I will accept a cheque of £25 for said advice, or a donation to the www.dissent.org.uk web-site will suffice. (Chuck a “pony” (a twenty sheets note) in a brown envelope addressed to yours truly and we’ll call it quits my dear. Ok).
I am now going to go for a drive in the country to calm down, because if straight thinking people are coming out with crapity like this, what hope is there.
Yours
Harold Hamlet.
Harold’s on form what!
Seriously, Stuart, I think the article is spot on and should make these people think again if they read it.
Harold will like it when I visit him later on. He’s going to go up to the G8 and throw a party if he gets out of custody.
As the author of Harold’s Adventures, now that he was surprisingly arrested the plot has gone off track for a while. But I hope to resume back to the original as soon as possible.
You cannot send messages to Harold at:
The Author of - The Adventures of Harrold L. Hamlet.
e-mail:
harold.hamlet@virgin.net
Missing the point.
29.06.2005 18:38
Does it matter, at this point, if celebrities are boosting their status by contributing to this campaign? Yes they may feel they are above it but they are helping. Does it matter if our government may use it as propaganda? Does it matter that the drama may have some faults? Anything and everything must be done to raise awareness of the diabolical situation in Africa. If this drama can contribute to the effort to end this even in the smallest sense, then I think that it should be acclaimed not abused.
Holly
Spare me lectures from luvvies as "art"
08.07.2005 13:52
Jody Tresidder
e-mail:
jodytres@juno.com