Tag: entertainment

Tell The Truth Partisan

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I was thinking about Donald Trump today. I don’t like talking too much about American politics because I’m not American, it’s not my country and the world focuses on it enough already. The problem is that American politics plays such a large role in influencing what happens in other countries that to not take an interest in it risks potentially not understanding politics on a global scale. In that case then it’s also important to understand the situation in China, Russia, Iran and Australia. I threw in Australia there because it’s good to focus on a country that isn’t in some kind of battle with the Americans and also because their politics is so unbelievably corrupt and owned by corporate interests that it’s a warning not to be missed. That doesn’t mean we’re not corrupt and owned in Britain but at least the politicians keep up some kind of pretence.

American politics is just so unbelievably entertaining at the moment that it’s hard to keep your eyes off it. I appreciate of course that my enjoyment of politics and power as entertainment completely ignores the suffering of those who it affects. But the truth is it affects us all. And we have Boris Johnson, he’s not known as “Britain Trump” for no reason. But it’s always more than one man even though they may be desperately trying to convince you otherwise.

The thing with Trump though is that he is used to working in the entertainment industry. He understands ratings but not from a politics perspective, hence why politics has devolved into reality television. I was thinking today though that I’m starting to get bored of the constant criticism of him. That seems like a strange statement to make but it’s more that I’m just tired of hearing such completely biased and partisan news stories. It’s not that I necessarily disagree with them but I want real news, I want to know what’s really going on, not some version of events that fits a narrative and a political position. People are not idiots, they are capable of making up their minds for themselves but the left wing and the right wing seem to write such blindly ideological stories that nobody gains anything. If what you believe is right and really the best way to approach life and power then you should have nothing to fear. If the other side are full of shit and wrong then surely their argument will unravel eventually. Maybe there is something naive in this thinking, to control the narrative is to control the story but why are we so scared of being scrutinised if what we believe is genuinely the best approach.

I broke habit and voted in the last elections, and despite being bitterly disappointed Jeremy Corbyn didn’t win I will not say everything is good about him, what he thinks and how he acts. It is the same for Trump or Boris, not every single thing they suggest is bad. I may disagree with large amounts but they will have some good ideas, maybe not many but they will. How are we supposed to evolve in a mature developed society if we are unable to see moments and ideas for what they really are. Nothing is perfect, but I just want to know the truth. I want to see the world for what it is not how people want me to see it. I know I’m not alone in this and that’s only going to continue.

Something & Nothing

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I very nearly sat down to answer a question from one of my philosophy magazines which I subscribe to but don’t quite read as much as I once did. It happens like that sometimes but I still enjoy subscribing because they’re not expensive, there are still decent articles I do read and it’s an area of ‘entertainment‘ that is severely under supported. It’s strange calling philosophy entertainment, even though it can be used to improve entertainment as the television series The Good Place demonstrated and I don’t doubt there are countless plays using philosophical ideas as their basis. Is that philosophy as entertainment though, well not purely but then has it ever been since the days of Socrates arguing with people in market places. There is a good chance he must have put on quite the show if he was getting the crowds. Seeing as he was accused of corrupting the youth and forced to die by suicide he must have been doing something right; getting their attention, entertaining them and forcing them to think. However it still appears the philosophy itself, the philosophical words spoken were not entertainment but merely used as the wood for the fire. You can tell I’m trying to talk philosophy because all I’m doing is going in circles. It’s such a wonderful art form when done badly.

The question then I was going to attempt to answer was “Why is there something rather than nothing?” and I guess this could just define my attempt at talking philosophy in general. It wouldn’t be philosophical if you were to provide nothing for an answer, even if it were a ramble reminiscent of a Boris Johnson speech on the ethics of clarity, it would still be something. Saying that it is also impossible for nothing not to be an answer to something, even in the most irritating of way, someone will manage to find a way of using that as an answer. At which case nothing becomes something and we realise we’ve managed to both prove and disprove ourself in the space of two sentences. This is why I enjoy philosophy, you can really get away with anything if you want. Is there nothing you can’t say? Says the man who just used a double negative which is something you shouldn’t ever do but then I just did which means that doesn’t count either. You see this is why I had no intention of answering the question because I knew I would just get myself confused and ramble in circles. Again that does seem to be a popular approach at the moment so perhaps it’s the done thing. “Just don’t do something, unless you can’t do nothing. But be careful of doing nothing incase it somehow becomes something. Although that won’t happen because it is nothing and nothing is not something, until it is, and then it is something, but still nothing”. Stay safe people.

The Big D Show

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Donald Trump is great. Well he’s not, he’s awful, but his press conferences certainly are. I skimmed through last nights reality television take on politics and regretted the fact it was so late and I couldn’t just sit there and watch the full film length episode in it’s entirety. In fact I think there may be another one on tonight but in about ten minutes as I write these exact words which means by the time I write the last words I’ll have probably missed the first half hour. To describe it as a car crash does a disservice to similes. It is more of a motorway pileup and one that despite being on an incredibly serious, life and death topic, is gleefully compelling viewing. My favourite bit is when he does the slightly camp pointing gesture with his podgy little hands while describing the recipient as a disgrace and describing their question as disgraceful in turn. I wonder what adjective he’ll use tonight. Shameless would be great and not just because he would undoubtedly miss the irony in the accusation. He spends over an hour blindly arguing with reporters. Even as I write this now, I’m unsure if I imagined it. Even Boris Johnson’s buffoonery cannot compete.

I think to all discerning people it is pretty clear Trump is a charlatan. He is a renowned conman who made his name in what has gone down as the tackiest decade for businessmen, think of the yuppie if you’re in any doubt. He runs the country as if he’s head of a mafia family demanding people recognise his absolute authority. Again missing the point that those with absolute authorities very rarely have to tell people of it, especially while arguing with reporters. What is clear from watching these reality shows he’s currently staring in is that he’s not used to people challenging him and he can’t deal with it when they do, especially when god forbid a woman does it. The man manages to both maintain his composure and have a breakdown all in the same moment, repeatedly. A well known Pseudoephedrine dependency, yes that would be a large component of amphetamines, perhaps makes it more explicable but never forgivable, although certainly more entertaining.

But that’s it isn’t it. The man is such unadulterated entertainment and you know I can admit I’ll miss him a little when he’s gone. I don’t get caught up on hating him and ranting about him like many do but let’s be honest he’s not a cause of the worlds ills he’s merely a symptom. The same system that brought us Barack Obama also brought Donald Trump. By getting caught up in this obsession with identity all we do is fail to realise he is there to distract us, he’s the ultimate magician. Don’t look at the hand he’s waving around, it’s the other one down his side you need to keep an eye on. Puff, a cloud of smoke, and out steps his challenger but it’s pretty clear Joe Biden is never going to defeat him in an election. When they go head to head in a debate The Donald is going to annihilate him and no matter how badly he handles this virus nothing will change that. The Democrats seem to be more interested in having one of their own run than anyone who could actual defeat him and enact change. They seem intent on mirroring the British Labour party who prefer to sabotage their own elections than allow an actual left winger to get into power and change things. Get rid of Big D and you’ll change the face, certainly the soundbite but not the politics. Don’t be naive. Without him what are we going to feel self-righteous about then. And who else can hold a room in the most abhorrent and compelling way that keeps us coming back for more and more and more. Speaking of which, I can probably catch the second half if I hurry.

Prioritise Dreams

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

There was an article on the BBC today which I found very interesting in how it allowed for different perspectives of how we view society. The article discussed how the hopes and dreams of youths are at odds with the type of jobs that will be available to them. Apparently “five times as many seventeen and eighteen year olds in the UK want to work in art, culture, entertainment and sport as there are jobs available” and that equated to over half of those surveyed only wanting to work in this sector. Seemingly the industry that requires people the most is accommodation and catering, unfortunately for them they require seven times the number of students who expressed an interest, wholesale and retail appears to suffering from similar disinterest. According to this article, the report believes “young people’s career aspirations need to be constructively challenged”. The article then moves on to how certain young people potentially feel they cannot achieve career goals because of their gender, ethnicity or social-economic background.

Now this article can be viewed two ways I would suggest. On the one hand it can be seen that the youth of today need to embrace a little reality, that they won’t always be able to do the jobs they want, must stop being fixated with being either Instagram models or footballers – terrible gender stereotyping I know but humour me – but also not allow the barriers of their own existence to hold them back from a more serious career. On the other hand it appears that the majority of young people want an interesting, creative career in the arts and entertainment world, and not to be working as waiters or hotel cleaners. To completely dismiss the first idea would most likely expose a glaring ignorance about the realities of life for many people, “destined for disappointment” as the article put it, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some truth in it. However what the article seems to not take into consideration, and this is understandable given the angle it is written from, is that if the young peoples desires “do not meet the demands of the economy” then perhaps the economy should not be the factor that dictates what work people do, perhaps society has it’s priorities wrong.

I would love to see the numbers of people wanting to be artists and musicians, over Instagram models and footballers, because that could change my perspective slightly. That is though my take on value in the creative arts world and I would be an ignorant man to not see the folly in that. There are many reasons young people will not get the jobs they want in life, but they don’t mention that perhaps these jobs just don’t satisfy people, maybe if people could choose they would not endure jobs that exist for no other reason than for the sake of existing, bring no real benefit to society or the earth, and are nothing more than ways to pay tax and kill time as we wait to die. Surely it needn’t be this way. Money, economics and business are not fundamentally bad things in their own right but misused and corrupted they lead to the real needs of people being either ignored or dismissed as childish dreams. We all dreamt of something when we were young though, why is we can never seem to remember our dreams?