The Butterfly Effect

A coincidence occurred this week. I’ve been preparing my class for their GCSE Mocks by reading Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder. The story is set in the future and revolves around Eckles, a big game hunter that wants to step into the past and shoot the biggest quarry of all: a dinosaur. The year is 2055, a time when the technology exists to make time travel possible. There is however one condition to Eckles journeying back in time: he must follow a circumscribed route. If he deviates from the path, he risks altering the very fabric of the universe. This is known as the butterfly effect: the theory that one small change can lead to huge consequences.

Sound of Thunder

The reason why I say a coincidence occurred is because I’d just started listening to Jon Ronson’s Butterfly Effect, a new seven-part podcast produced by Audible. Ronson has been writing for twenty years now, but I only began taking notice when I heard him interviewed on Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (RHLSTP!). On there, he talked about his oeuvre, along with his most recent work So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Plugging this, he spoke about how his own issues with the Internet made him want to investigate the effect it had on others. I’ve long thought social networking sites appeal to the worst side of our character, making us judge people not by the content of their character, but by the content of their characters. Before the Internet, we could make verbal mistakes and apologise to people sincerely, using our eyes and tone to show we really meant it. Now you can slip up and be set upon by a pack of keyboards that cry ‘justice,’ despite wearing a uniform that resembles mob rule. Difference is healthy; it gives rise to debate; on the Internet though, it often leads to shame-calling, something that really shouldn't happen in our ‘advanced’ age.

So last year I bought my first Jon Ronson book and absolutely loved it. It confirmed that people really are using their laptops as judge, jury and executioner. Ronson's books take the picaresque form, which mean we’re propelled from one story to the next. One particularly interesting tale revolved around Justine Sacco, a PR consultant, who in 2013 ironically tweeted: ‘Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding, I’m white.” Yes, this isn’t a great joke. She doesn’t have the comic chops to satirise white privilege; even if she did Twitter doesn’t have the nuance to prove someone is ‘just kidding.’ As a result, the tweet was re-tweeted to the firm she worked for. The firm made it known that this behaviour was unacceptable. Whilst Justine flew through the air, Twitter users rubbed their genitals with glee, taking pleasure in the enveloping storm. Justine was going to be fired. Before long Twitter was amok with flight paths and lookouts, all seeking her arrival. When she set off to South Africa she was a bright, educated woman; by the time she landed, she was an unemployable racist. If you look at how former Conservative cabinet minister Priti Patel was treated this week, you will see that online behaviour hasn’t improved. In writing So You’ve... Ronson caught the zeitgeist. I’ve read every one of his books since.

I've heard open mic comedians make worse jokes.

Ronson’s latest work is The Butterfly Effect, a podcast that’s been available to buy on Audible for a while, but has just been made free to all. I’d heard an excerpt on the brilliant This American Life and was really intrigued to hear more. Throughout the years Ronson’s dispatches have come from the hinterland of existence, taking in UFO’s with Robbie Williams, investigating the murky Bilderberg Group and befriending real life superheroes. This time round he’s turned his attention to porn – in particular, the porn industry. This then isn’t a Louis Theroux Weird Weekend episode where the focus is limited to the performers; this is an all-encompassing study of the economic framework that underpins the porn millions consume everyday. It is The Wire of podcasts, exploring the hierarchical structure from the top down.

In the first episode we’re introduced to the kingpin Fabian Thyimann, a German businessman raised in Belgium. As a teenager Fabian’s hormones led him to pornography. Being underage, however, meant he sometimes found it hard to come by. Before long he was on chat-rooms exchanging passwords with other users, ensuring access to restricted content. By harnessing the power of online users to satiate his needs, Fabian- unwittingly- founded a business.

Thyimann: the porn magnate.

Fast-forward a few years on and Fabian, along with a huge loan, buys up a Montreal company that specialises in user-uploaded porn. Just as Napster destroyed the music industry, many believe Fabian has torched the sex industry. With his bandit of tech whiz kids, Fabian purloined the money away from recognised artists and producers, putting it into his invisible corporation instead. To all extents and purposes, it is the heist of the century, one that’s netted him a reported $200 million dollars.

Each episode in the series follows the effect of Fabian buying that initial company - the butterfly effect, if you will. A theory that states a single flap of a butterfly’s wing in New Mexico can cause a hurricane in Japan. (This is because of something called Chaos Theory- a theory I have neither the intelligence nor the patience to understand.) Over the course of the pod, we hear how Fabian’s butterfly has created a hurricane that shows no signs of abating.

The first big casualty of the cyclone is San Fernando Valley, affectionately known as ‘Silicone Valley’: the Hollywood of porn. With users now putting pornography online, the producers can no longer make money through DVD sales. If they’re not making money, the porn stars don’t make any either. All of this has meant the producers, directors and artists have to work twice as hard for twice as less. As soon as their movies are recorded they find themselves online. Their only option is to be subsumed by Fabian’s business or walk away. For people who have worked in porn all their life, it’s difficult to leave (filming gang-bangs isn’t exactly something you put on your curriculum vitae). 

This establishing shot makes for a wholesome postcard. Don't send your grandma the zoomed in version though.

Some enterprising spirits have found a third way, however. Just as Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen responded to the changing face of the music industry, pornographers have too. Episode two looks at bespoke porn that has been tailored to meet a client’s exact specification. These Saville Row producers have hired out their service to fulfil the quite bizarre fancies of their customers. So if someone wants a video of a porn star swatting a fly, they can have it. If someone wants their stamp collection destroyed by a group of DD’s then that option is available too. Nothing is off-limits. The people get what the people want. Bizarrely, the customer as auteur approach leads to much sweeter and gentler material than the ‘conventional’ kind beloved by so many.

Although my analogy puts Fabian as butterfly, many in San Fernando see him as the antichrist, hellbent on destroying their world. I see him as Oliver Twist’s Fagin. He has online users pick the pockets of Valley workers, consequently profiting big from it. In Dickens' novel, an innocent Oliver is unwittingly brought into Fagin’s lair: he never wanted to be there; but there is where he finds himself. Episode 4 shines a tragic light on children that have been affected by visiting a world they’re not meant for. With pornography accessible on every handheld device, teenagers are learning about intimacy through Sex Ed. teachers called Seamore Butt and Belladonna. Unfortunately in our society sex remains a closed lipped topic; until we talk about it these problems will only grow.

The Butterfly Effect culminates with Ronson presenting his findings to Fabian. With the evidence presented before him, will Fabian concede he’s more than an innocent butterfly? The confrontation is delicious, exhibiting Ronson’s skill as a journalist in friend’s clothing. 

Jon Ronson holding an umbrella.

I understand the subject matter might put some of you off, but this really isn’t a prurient look at porn, rather an intelligent dissection of it. As a fan of Ronson's work, hopefully this blog creates its own ripple, resulting in more listeners. I'll push the publish button now and find out ...

The Butterfly Effect is available to download now.

Ladhood

A few years ago I wrote about university, describing it as the best of times; the worst of times. Well, I’ve been thinking about it again while listening to Liam Williams’ Radio 4 series Ladhood.

I’ve been a fan of Williams for a while. I first became aware of him when I saw an excerpt from his debut Edinburgh show on BBC3. He was my kind of comedian: sharp, smart, self-flagellating. The following year I, along with the rest of the Guardian readership, queued up outside Edinburgh’s The Cellar Monkey to watch his follow-up, Capitalism.

Tinned like sardines in a venue that could double as a dictator’s final hideout, we laughed sadistically as Williams tore himself asunder, decrying his own inertia and privilege. Referencing Fight Club, Williams’ alter ego castigated him for feebly attempting to write a free, political show that would never get beyond the liberal bubble. By the end, having taken a microphone to the head, he lay supine on the floor, basted in blood, cooked by fatalism. Merging storytelling, theatre and stand-up, it was his tour-de-force calling card, bemoaning an apathetic generation that had bought the protest t-shirt, but hadn’t been there and done it.

When Williams was interviewed on The Comedians Comedian Podcast, he referred to this time as an unhappy one, explaining how stand-up left him anxious. The fact that he was critically lauded wasn’t enough to sate his loneliness. Perhaps this is why he’s spent the past few years working on other projects. Writing plays, panto and parodies, he's skewered an 'advanced' society that's vain, shallow and selfish.

For me, the most recent series of Ladhood ranks alongside his best work. The first series can best be described as The Inbetweeners meets a library card. It recounts an age where sex feels theoretical- not practical. The thought of it becomes an Everest of the mind: a pinnacle impossible to reach; a man-made mountain of neurosis and shyness: each setback a fall; each rejection an avalanche. Until... what’s this? A house party invite. Well, call me Edmind Hilary. Everest, I’m coming for you! The first series does a great job in showing those intense highs and lows all teenagers experience. 

Williams at school.

As much as I liked the first series, it’s the second that’s really struck a chord. Here, the focus shifts away from school onto university, with Williams leaving his hometown for Oxbridge. Now, I didn’t go to Oxbridge. I had the GCSEs to go. I had the predicted grades. I also had the ethnicity. After all, Oxbridge is more of a white house than an American political building, sketch comedian and 70’s censor combined. What I didn’t have was the confidence. My Head of 6^th Form said, “Ryan, are you going to apply to Oxbridge?” I said, “No.’ She said, “Ok.” And that was that. 

Given that I would go on to struggle at another Russell Group university meant, that in hindsight, I’m pleased my state school -unlike others- didn’t throw a bag over my head, kick me into the caretaker's cupboard, bolt the door, and only permit release when I agreed to the school newsletter headline: ‘Our Pupil Applies To Oxbridge.’ However, in going from a state school, where no one was privately educated, to a university, where it felt everyone was, I can empathise with Williams’ second series of Ladhood.

Williams at uni.

In the first episode of the new series, Williams is the idiomatic fish out of water. Displaced from his familiar home into unfamiliar surroundings, he is self-conscious and adrift. He can’t even speak the language of Oxbridge: words like bop, buttery and squash are alien to him. Everyone’s gone on a Gap Year but him (“I got fingered up Machu Picchu”), and people are genuinely called Portia. With three years ahead of him, he has two choices: adapt or die. In the Darwinist struggle, he chooses the former, feeling all the worse for it.

It wasn’t just what they were saying I couldn’t relate to, it was the way they were saying it. There weren’t many people with northern accents or many regional accents at all. As I nervously conversed, I felt my own accent changing like the protagonist at the mid-point in the Pygmalion story. (Liam Williams, Ladhood)

Feeling alienated, Williams trundles back home, seeking solace in his friends Cranny and Ralph. They aren’t so pleased to see him, thinking he’s become all uppity surrounded by posh twats that just want to ‘suck each others dicks.’ Like Rita in Educating the aforesaid, he’s trapped between worlds, existing in a social purgatory that seems a long way from home.

Education changes you.

By the next episode he has a friend, Aftab, and a Facebook account. Surely things are looking up. Trawling through Facebook, he notices how people seem to be having more fun than him. Before, when he was unconnected, he could at least imagine that others were as isolated as him; but here, now, was pixilated proof to the contrary. The evidence is overwhelming. He can only find himself guilty of the crime of having a shit time at uni. Not only that, but the sexual promise of uni seems as illusory as sourcing talent on a talent show. All the rugby boys, built on ‘chat’ and cliché, seem to be getting the girls.

Always striking specimens these lads, tall or well built, good-looking some of them, girls pecking the guy on the cheek faux-demurely, while he grins lasciviously. One or two girls even kissing the tie. What kind of sorcery was this? What sort of man was I while I was festering in my own lassitude while others were really living.
(Liam Williams, Ladhood)

After the debacle of hearing a pick-up artist address the Union, Williams’ life takes a better turn when he meets Molly at a comedy night. The two go together like Ross and Rachel, like Lois and Clark, like Jack and Vera Duckworth: they have accents in Cambridge. Soon they are kissing against a backdrop of dreamy spires, ancient bridges ... and an Ask Italian. Episode 4 looks at their relationship following university and how the pyjama days of box-sets and toast mightn’t seem so cute when you’ve got a crust to earn.

It's all throw your mortar boards into the sky now, but someone will have to pick them up in the morning. And that person will be you on a zero hour contract.

Ultimately, Ladhood does a fantastic job at documenting a life in transition: from innocence to experience; from selfhood to responsibility. Indeed, when The National’s ‘England’ scores the final scenes you’ll feel moved by Williams’ growth over the show. The song selection isn’t arbitrary: it was released in 2010, just like the year in narration. In this radio show, Williams has painstakingly crafted a modern period piece that could easily make the transition to TV. Possibly, a British Master of None. If not, this series at the very least requires another. A trilogy would be a fine thing.

Ladhood is available on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b098sdt6 and the BBC iPlayer Radio  

Gilmore Girls

A few weeks ago The Girl and I had a choice to make. A choice that required careful consideration. When you’ve been together for over four years, you want to make sure that in taking the plunge you’re going to come up smiling, not gasping for air. It’s easy to look at your peers for guidance and think, well, they’re the same age as us and they chose this, so that must be the right thing to do. No, in life you have to accept that you are you and they are they. People choose different courses, and just because you choose a different path doesn’t make you any more right, any more wrong.

So when in July we finished 154 episodes of legal drama The Good Wife, we adjourned for a much-needed recess. It was necessary. Our brains had become desks teeming with legal jargon - counter claim, litigation, deposition, affidavit, recusal- we knew the court system inside and out, so much so that if a stonewall murder charge was brought against my beloved, I’m confident I could get her off on a technicality. After having our heads consumed with the justice system, we knew we had to have a declutter: put the papers into storage and leave our work behind. Have a vacation. Take in some air, gather our breath, walk around in concise sitcoms like This Country, which although brilliant doesn’t make you wake up in the middle of the night, shouting ‘Objection, your honour!’

TV show dismissed.

With the school term starting, however, and the nights closing in, we realised it was time to put on our crampons and begin a new mountain climb. What to watch though? This year, we made a thirty-year commitment in signing up for a mortgage. On December 31^st 2016, we spent ten minutes looking round a house, and then on December 31^st 2016 we put an offer in on the house. On October 2^nd 2017 we began discussing what our next box-set would be, and then on October 5^th 2017 we decided what we would watch. It’s a big decision.

Our two choices were The West Wing and Gilmore Girls. Our friends have been raving about The West Wing for years, and in Martin Sheen’s President we thought it might be the perfect antidote to the current Tweeter In Chief, Donald J. Trump. On the other hand, I had read glowing online reviews of Gilmore Girls so was quite fascinated to find out what it was all about. We decided to watch the first episode of each, and make a decision after that. A very grown up way, I think you’ll agree. We really loved both. The Girl was veering towards The Wing; I was inching towards Gilmore. In the end, we reached a verdict: we only have one series of West Wing on DVD, so let’s wait until some benevolent deity (friend) drops them from the sky (gives the other seasons to us), where we can then watch them without charge or interruption.

The President can wait.

Let me start by saying that Gilmore Girls is an exceptional piece of television. Appearing on The WB network in America before concluding on The CW, it never got the numbers it deserved. However, to say it never got the audience it deserved depends upon your interpretation of that phrase. It’s true that in terms of viewing figures it wasn’t a monolith like Friends or Cheers; however, the fans it did get are a complete credit to the show. If you go online and type in Gilmore Girls, you will see fan sites dedicated to quotes, cultural references, trivia, along with a plethora of unofficial blogs and books. It does what all good TV shows do: create a parallel universe that people feel a part of.

What is Gilmore Girls, though? Gilmore Girls is a comedy-drama that follows the mother-daughter pairing of Lorelai and Rory Gilmore through the obstacles of adulthood and teendom respectively. Lorelai, born to an upper middle-class family, had Rory aged sixteen. As you can imagine, exchanging a silver spoon for a baby one sent shockwaves through the WASP set. Teenage pregnancy was something that happened to other people from the other side of town- it didn’t happen behind the gilded gates of Hartford. Consequently, Rory was estranged from her own family and raised instead by mother and strangers in the community of Stars Hollow.

Rory and Lorelai

Without an ocean of age to divide them, Lorelai and her daughter are landlocked in a relationship that is more about friendship than hierarchy. As a young mother, Lorelei still needs to grow up, often using humour as a defence mechanism – think early season Chandler Bing. Whereas Rory is old before her times, preoccupied by money and romantic worries. It would too easy, however, to say they fall into the television cliché of immature parent and wise child; since the writing is more perceptive than this. Despite Rory reading books by Plath and Joyce, she is very much her age: exhibiting bashfulness over her first kiss and concern over fitting it. And even though Lorelai sees life as a punch-line, when it comes to her daughter’s future she is deadly serious. Indeed, her desire for her daughter to achieve her academic potential is why she reconnects with her own parents, praying they’ll grant the loan that will secure Rory’s passage into the Ivy League. This then is a story of what happens when a mother-daughter’s tiny snow globe world is shaken by bigger hands. Is Lorelai agreeing to a pact with the devil or a covenant that'll bring the family closer together?

In writing in praise of Gilmore Girls, it would be entirely remiss of me if I didn’t eulogise over the writing. Amy Sherman-Palladino created Gilmore Girls and her work over six seasons (she wasn't part of the seventh) should be a template for television screenwriting. For me, her writing is redolent of Spaced. In the lauded Channel 4 sitcom, Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson created a whip-smart world of movie allusion; Gilmore Girls is similar, only this time the references are literary and music based. Being an English teacher and a fan of Indie music, I’ve really enjoyed picking up on these. There’s an episode called ‘Cinnamon’s Wake’ – a nod to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, along with another one titled ‘Star-Crossed Lovers’, which features Rory’s first heartache. More than the titles though is the dialogue that references Tennessee Williams, William Shakespeare and Dorothy Parker.

A truly gifted writer.

Like Spaced, you don’t have to get all the cultural commentary to enjoy the episodes. There’s fun to be had in almost all of the dialogue. Take this scene where Lorelai takes her daughter stationery shopping for her new school. Rory is aware that in making the transition from state to private her equipment will have to undergo some changes too.

[Rory and Lorelai are shopping for school supplies.]

Rory: I’m going to a serious school now, I need serious paper.

Lorelai: Paper’s paper.

Rory: Not at Chilton.

Lorelai: Alright, fine. Here is your serious paper.

Rory: Thank you.

Lorelai: Ooh and here are your somber highlighters, your maudlin pencils, your manic-depressive pens.

Rory: Mom.

Lorelai: Now these erasers are on lithium so they may seem cheerful but we actually caught them trying to shove themselves in the pencil sharpener earlier.

Rory: I’m going home now.

Lorelai: No, wait! We’re going to stage an intervention with the neon post-its and make them give up their wacky crazy ways.

This whole routine wouldn’t seem out of place on a Seinfeld episode. From ‘serious paper,’ Palladino seizes the moment, turning in jokes on suicidal rubbers and bipolar post-it notes. The ability to stretch an off-hand comment into a whole routine is what stand-ups do. In Gilmore Girls Palladino has the free-wheeling wit of a comic along with the ambitious scope of an author: she’s a dazzling talent and really should have garnered more praise.

On top of this, it’s apt that The Girl and I chose between Gilmore Girls and The West Wing. Aaron Sorkin, creator of the later, is known for his breakneck dialogue; Palladino is the same.  Normally, one page of a screenplay accounts for one minute of screen time. But for Gilmore Girls scripts, a page was about 20 to 25 seconds. This owes to the fact the characters talk like caffeinated jitterbugs, channeling the repartee of 1930's screwball comedies.

You could look at the picture of Gilmore Girls on Netflix and mistake it for another Dawson’s Creek: this, however, is not the case. Gilmore Girls isn’t an abstract noun that mopes and pontificates; it’s a verb that swings and smiles. It is a lock-in at a library with one's wit being the condition of an extended stay – it really is as good as that.

Don’t get me started on that theme tune though. The Girl knows I find it insufferable and has taken to singing it in the shower, over dinner and during sex- just to annoy me. I can’t escape it. And nor will I. Because for all its faults, it soundtracks a fantastic TV show.

Gilmore Girls is available on Netflix.