Six feet under, The Haka

2nd December | 2005

..........................Six feet under the haka
......................................
The British really have a cheek going on about the relevance of haka. Look at all of their stupid traditions and rituals. They have A Queen for gods sake. And a news item recently revealed they have a royal raven keeper at the tower of London and have done since the 16th century. Is that normal or relevant in 2005? No.

In terms of the British, and dances, the world should never forget the rampant and seemingly unending pain and harm caused by RIVERDANCE and it’s many tributaries. Skipping, dancing and stamping over hill and dale, this was a virtual global invasion. Lead by the indefatigible Michael Flatley, (I for one wish he was much more fatigible) a person who was more of an ego with legs than a man, him and his relentless band of stompers have enacted a cultural blitzkreig wherever they have gone. While some people say "look how fast his legs are moving?"
My thoughts are more along the lines of "Why aren't they carrying him away from here?"
Yes, with it's bloody awful irish music, The RIVERDANCE is something truly unforgivable and far more terrifying than any haka.

Also from Britain the news that one of the last great squats in London was finally being emptied of tenants. I must say squats seem to be from another era. I lived in them in Sydney and in London. The one we lived in in London was in Finsbury Park and we were constantly trying to twart the council and landlords. Various notices would be posted on our door and there was a need to always have someone home so that they couldn’t sneak in and kick us out. The squat was under the control of a musician called TJ. He was someone, I think, who could safely list his occupation as ‘dreamer’. I once found a sheet of paper in the lounge on which he listed his projected musical path for the future, it read something like;
Play Finsbury Arms
Record single
Play Islington west
record album
Do Top of the Pops
Play Hammersmith Pallais
Appear on Wogan
Play at Wembley.

He was a pretty good guitarist but, considering he only played live once in the time I knew him and didn’t seem to have a band, he had fairly unrealistic expectations about his music future.

Charles Dickens - imagines Bobby coming out of the shower and is disgusted.
"it's so small!" he said once.

SIX FEET UNDER is back on the screen. I have watched it from the beginning and when it is good, it is very good, but it is prone to an unhealthy dependence on ‘dream sequences’ and fantasy segues. I think TV shows and films need to retain a certain level of ‘reality check’ or else there is a logic free-for-all and they lose all credibility. Six feet Under sashayed into dream and afterlife segments so much that at one stage I thought lead character Nate was dead and the entire last series was a post-death fantasy.
So maybe I have an overactive imagination, I don’t know..

But surely if liberties with time, space and reality go too far it just renders the whole thing stupid. Like in the SUPERMAN movie when he went back time to alter the future and save Louis Lane. It just makes a mockery of the movie logic and pisses me off. What say Lex Luthor goes back further and changes time before him? Why doesn’t he just go back in time -ALL THE TIME and save his xray vision for perving at chicks. These thoughts occurred to me at time and if you were at a session of the film and heard someone yell “Fuck No!” and stomp up the aisle slamming the door on the way out. That would have been me.

The finest and most bizarre example of ‘storyline logic shitting’ was on TV program Dallas.
When TV executives decided that Patrick Duffy (Bobby), who had died earlier on in the series, needed to come back they simply had him step, deftly out of the shower and expected the audience to swallow the fact that two entire seasons of the show were in fact Bobby’s dreams. Brilliant, and the viewing public scarcely raised a protest. This in spite of the fact that many of the events that occurred in Bobby’s dreams were now part of the shows brave new reality. So maybe I’m alone in expecting a level of reality in drama, but there you have it. I do.
The other trick they use is to include a piece of a dream sequence in the shows promo. Shots of characters dying, committing unspeakable sex acts on relatives or making bizarre statements, which will have you tuning in but will turn out to be a red herring (or a rainbow trout) when you finally view the actual program. Fantasy teasing, editing sleight-of-hand and the unfair promise of scandal leading to unfeasibly Great Expectations.

Proto-realist Charles Dickens would be appalled.

Coronation Street afternote: - Go on Sally do it! Shag him on your marriage bed with your wedding picture looking on.
He’s a slimy opportunist, you’re a moaning ladder climbing cow, it’s a match made in TV h