Diary of a Suburban Squeen

Actually, one of the things I found interesting about Richard II relates to an earlier post I made, about how weird I always find it when the overthrow of a monarch is treated as such an unprecedented event, when frankly it is one of the most precedented things in English history.

Watching the play, seeing Richard’s reaction to being deposed by his cousin, I did genuinely sympathise with his outraged disbelief that this could happen, in the indignity of it; the shame, almost. How could it happen? How could it be allowed to happen?

And yet, it’s funny, because the play references at various points Richard’s and his cousins’ and uncles’ descent from the great Edward III with no recognition that Edward himself became king when his own father was deposed. It’s a very weird selective blindness.

(No. No, they didn't.)

So, I'm not going to have a giant thing over Nick Griffin's appearance on PMQT (except to say I think the debate over whether BBC should have invited him is a bit stupid, as I posted before. It's not the BBC giving him validity, it's the British electorate - if you want a democratic country, you've got to accept that you're not always going to like what people decide), but I'd just like to say:

WTF is with the concept of "indigenous" as relating to Britain? That word displays such a breathtaking ignorance of this island's history that it's almost flabbergasting.

Firstly, of course, current research tends to favour the idea of human life having originated in Africa and then emigrating outwards to populate the rest of the world. Which means that Britain and, in fact, the rest of the world, doesn't have an indigenous population.

Secondly, get a fucking clue. Almost every country in northern Europe has invaded Britain, settled there, and influenced its genetic stock. The fucking Romans invaded Britain. And after the military invasions finished, there has still been wave after wave of immigration into this country, and I'm not just talking about the West Indies in the 50s, for example, but, say, Huguenots in the C17th.

Talking about "indigenous" Britons is bullshit. And Nick Griffin is an educated man, so I suspect he knows it's bullshit, which makes him a fucking demagogue, and a racist one to boot. But it's not like any of this is news.


ETA: Yes, in the course of this post I have used a fairly narrow definition of "indigenous".

Seriously. Oh yes. With my tiny, tiny shiny laptop teetering on top of the laundry basket. Laptops and wireless: they make the world a glorious place.

Anyway, I had some thinking to share, about history and how we understand it and stuff. This was, naturally, prompted by an SGA fic I just read: Written by the Victors, a superlative piece of fiction about Atlantis seceding from Earth, and historical interpretions of the same. It featured straightforward fictional prose about the events in question, combined with "secondary sources" from both sides of the schism. It was a brilliant read, and is actually one of my very most favourite fandom tropes, namely how events and characters will be viewed by history when anyone actually alive at the time is nothing but crumbled dust. I've seen Buffy fic that looked at this (and the Fray comic sort of touches on the idea), and Harry Potter as well, I seem to recall. Babylon 5 actually did it themselves, with the wonderful ep Deconstruction of Falling Stars. I've even written something similar myself in the Hornblower fandom.

And I love it. I love it so much I can't even express it, because they never KNOW. They never can, it's impossible. Seeing how characters in the future construe and interpret the past that we know is just so real, and I can't put this into words, though I've been thinking about it for a couple of days. Because this is how our understanding of the past works: we take the evidence, what we have it. We look at paper and buildings and art and laws made and unmade, and we cobble together what we think happened. And we can be right and we can be wrong, and we can't really know, because we weren't there. And people lie and are unreliable and it's so easy to misinterpret something.

And I love it when characters in the future come face to face with the figures of their history (everyone should read liz_marcs' Living History [BtVS], because it's awesome), because their figures are creations of the collective imaginations of generations, and the present characters are real. I just... meh. I really don't have the words to say what I'm trying to say. Boo.



In other news, this whole 13-year-old boy fathering child / not fathering child / someone else / what-the-fuck-ever: NONE OF MY FUCKING BUSINESS. I DO NOT FUCKING CARE. WHY IS IT ALL OVER THE FUCKING NEWSPAPERS? HOW IS THIS IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST? LEAVE THE KIDS AND THEIR FAMILIES TO SORT IT ALL OUT BECAUSE IT IS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF US AND FOR FUCK'S SAKE STOP USING IT TO HERALD THE END (ONCE AGAIN) OF CIVILISED SOCIETY AS WE KNOW IT.