Friday, June 30, 2017

Vertical Video Violation

We’ve all shot vertical video. We hold the phone vertically, use most of its functions vertically, take still photos vertically and often don’t even think twice about pressing the record button on the video vertically. Perhaps it’s only when we upload the video on YouTube or when the BBC have some amateur footage of a disaster or terrorist attack, and the video is played a third smaller with fuzzy grey bands on the left and right, that we realise the error of our ways. And thousands of people watching the video is thinking to themselves, ‘Why didn’t the idiot just hold the phone horizontally?’ (Presumably they didn't really have time to think about correct phone orientation in the middle of a terrorist attack.)

Films and videos have been shot and displayed in the landscape ratio for the last hundred years or so in cinemas and then on TV (though in early silent cinema and older TVs the ratio was 4:3, almost square – all through the 80s and 90s I was crying out for TVs, and then computers, to be widescreen; technology usually, eventually, catches up with me (see here and here, for example)). Then along come smart phones with video recorders and there’s the (unfortunate) option to shoot video vertically. I guess this is pretty logical – there's a fine tradition of portrait painting in, erm, portrait orientation dating back at least five hundred years, and photography has always been acceptable in portrait and landscape modes. Painting, drawing or photographing a person – the predominant subject of all art – seems correct in the portrait format as the human figure is long rather then wide.

But horizontal seems to be the dominant format in the digital age of widescreen TVs and computers; and the internet, from splash pages to web banners, all look best horizontal. And our eyes are side by side, not on top of each other, so horizontal feels more natural. There's almost a whole online movement to get people to shoot video horizontal: websites, YouTube tutorials and apps all to prevent Vertical Video Syndrome (yes, it's a meme).

Nevertheless, I feel there's a place for vertical video, alongside traditional portrait painting and photography. The technology just needs to catch up, as usual.

Elsewhere on the web:
It's time to take vertical video seriously

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Missed photo #743

On the train to Paddington somewhere in the countryside just past Pewsey. A sunset – and yes, I generally think photographs of sunsets as over-rated and clichéd – but this one was so sudden and unexpected, and possibly better than the ones in Bagan, Burma (and that's saying something).

It had been a boiling hot day. The hills were shrouded in mist receding into the distance, and the sun obscured by wild swirls of red clouds. It was perfect and beautiful. There was nothing I could do – I fleetingly thought of pressing the emergency cord to stop the train so I could get a decent photo of it. It would be gone in a matter of minutes; it was getting dark outside and brights lights were on in the carriage so a picture was impossible. Sometimes you've just got to be in the moment, sit back and appreciate the fleeting beauty of the world. That's what I did; I had a beer and a packet of crisps. Things could be worse.

I'm still working on that book of missed photos...

Previously on Barnflakes:
Book of untaken photos

Friday, June 16, 2017

Generation 'X'

As reported in the Guardian, Oregon has become the first state in the U.S.A. to allow the third gender option for driving licences and IDs. So, instead of the usual 'M' for Male or 'F' for Female, gender fluid persons can now mark themselves with the letter 'X'. X seems a curious letter to use – wouldn't an S, U or W designate fluidity better? (When presented with a form that asked Sex? as an adolescent, and come to think of it still today, the immature desire to answer 'Yes please!' was almost overwhelming.)

The letter X has many connotations and meaning, depending on context, many of which are negative, from Nazi symbolism and poison, to pornography and death. Films used to be rated X, implying violence or sexual content, and the letter is still used to designate extreme forms of pornography (XXX); there's the X-Files, associated with mystery, the unknown and the forbidden; it is the sign of Satan; the crossbones of the skull and crossbones symbol is an X.

On the other hand, it has less nefarious meanings too: in maths, it is the unknown factor and the axis on a chart; to Romans it was the number ten; there's Christ on his cross; the X-factor (though to me it's the epitome of evil); XX and XY designate the male and female chromosomes; it's a size of clothing; X marks the spot on maps... the list goes on: in short, its broad array of meanings means it's a confused symbol (here's a blog from Psychology Today exploring the many meanings behind the letter X).

Anyway, the letter X is the least of the confusion. There's a whole plethora of jargon for third gender people. Not only is it confusing – for them and us – but many of the terms sound like the stuff of sci-fi (a mix of Burroughs, Dick, Ballard and The Matrix springs to mind; a line from a gender fluid person who "expresses multiple genders at the same time" sounds like it came from Philip K Dick's A Scanner Darkly): third gender, non-binary, intergender, agender, bigender, gender fluid, amalgender and xenogender are just a few of the terms...

And I have a strange feeling that technology is to blame; the loneliness, anonymity and avatars of the online world and social media, where we can be who we like, has spilled into 'real life'; politics and schools and traditional media have no choice but to follow suit.

(Bear with me – imagine a sci-fi film, called Battle of the benders genders, set 1,000 years in the future. Countries and borders have vanished, race is a thing of the past, the real battle is between the genders. There's a world war, men and women lose, the third gender is victorious. We all have to wear matching white outfits, we all look odd, bitter and unhappy. The Miss World contest is banned, as is Woman's Hour on Radio 4 and International Woman's Day; in fact books and art are banned and burned as the world embarks on its bland genderless future where we live in blissful unhappiness being told what to think.)

At the risk of sounding transphobic, all this third gender stuff is absolute nonsense (for the first time in my life I find myself siding with Piers Morgan, whose recent TV debate with Fox and Owl, two gender fluid young people who say "I never felt truly comfortable in my body. I struggled in my teenage years with puberty and was confused with myself and didn't know if I fit into this world", neatly summing up every teenager in the world, caused a storm on social media). Worse than that, it's dangerous.

In my day there were two genders, male and female. This is still a biological fact. I don't care if you wear blue (boy) or pink (girl) clothes, or are a truck driver (man) or work in marketing (woman), if you have a penis you are male, if you have a vagina you are female. Fact. (There are a small percentage (0.5) of people born intersex – though to me it's a congenital disorder, an anomaly akin to being born with three fingers, two hearts or one eye; blimey, even the term hermaphrodite is now outdated – presumably one day Jeffrey Eugenides' fine book Middlesex will be banned). What you choose to do with your genitals is your business (sex is another jargon minefield – are you androsexual or gynosexual)? If you have a strange feeling that you don't belong or never felt comfortable being a man or woman, that is an emotional feeling, not a biological state.

What if I've always felt uncomfortable as a middle class, British, white, male human (which, naturally, I have)? What if something inside me says to me I should have been born in the Galapagos Islands as a turtle in the year 1784? Can I get rights to live like a turtle, laze around on the islands all day, go swimming and become an Ecuadorian citizen? Nope. Tough luck. To a certain extent, we are what we are born and have to make do with that.

48% of trans people under the age of 26 have attempted suicide in the UK (compared with 6% of non trans people). No wonder – I'd be suicidal working out which category I belonged in. Probably just the one called 'depressed'. I don't think the statistic is even to do with them being trans or suffering from transphobia – it's do with them being mixed up, confused and weird. You know, being a millennial. But instead of simply being a frustrated and confused teenager full of angst for no apparent reason – aside from hormones, now they have an explanation – of course, it's the dissatisfaction with the gender I was born with.

It's a playground fad that has got out of hand – even my daughter (just turned 11) speaks of gender fluidity whereas twenty years ago she would have just said tomboy. Indeed, long before that, actresses such as Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn donned male suits and ties and would now be described as gender fluid – but back then they were being individualistic trailblazers. Today they'd just be part of the new in-crowd, getting categorised and pigeon-holed and likes on Instagram.

Political correctness is a form of censorship and fascism which rewrites the past and stigmatises those who don't adopt the latest correct jargon (almost impossible to keep ahead of with the latest race terms let alone gender). It's Orwell's Ministry of Truth where the past is rewritten or forgotten, and Newspeak which redefines language (though now it's in a more complicated form, rather than simpler). As Orwell writes, "language merely reflects existing social conditions". It's impossible for us to see out of our own epoch, to see the past for what it was, and the future for what it will be. We've been through this before, right? Rights for women, blacks, gays... wrong. This is completely imaginary and ludicrous, like teenagers wanting Jedi to be classified as an official religion.

I'm exaggerating? Hardly. Words get banned before our eyes; if you don't keep up to date you're blasted on social media. Germaine Greer gets banned from speaking at a university for her transphobic comments. This is the opposite of freedom of speech or expression. This is think what we think or else. This is the thought police, totalitarianism. And this is just the start. Be afraid. 

Previously on Barnflakes:
Satorial sexism
Gender bender
Portland & Austin: tales of two cities
Notes on afflictions

Elsewhere on the web:
It’s dangerous and wrong to tell all children they’re ‘gender fluid’
– The Spectator

Friday, June 09, 2017

Barnflakes is on Etsy

 
Barnflakes is now on Etsy. Yes, you can now buy merchandise from all my anti-social media outlets – films, photography, design and writing. Go on, put your money where your mouse is. Only a couple of items on at the moment but check back weekly for that beautiful barnacled barngain you've always desired.

Coming soon: posters, postcards, photos, books, greetings cards, wrapping paper and more... 

Thursday, June 08, 2017

Notes on the UK's recent terrorist attacks

Yes, this is filed under Controversial (Perhaps).

The three terrible terrorist attacks and their aftermath in the UK this year (so far) follow a similar pattern. First is the attack itself (more likely than not, a white van and guys with knives); chaos, confusion and terror ensue. Then the 'swift response' of the emergency services and the 'everyday heroes'. Next are Tweets by May, Corbyn, Khan et al, expressing various obvious and meaningless outrage: 'shocking', 'terrible', 'horrific' etc. Then comes the media (traditional and social) frenzy, followed by a vigil (with football players and pop stars if you're lucky) and perhaps a benefit concert.

(I get pushed and ignored on a daily basis in London; then there's a terrorist attack and we all love each other, we're all as one. It only happens in times like this. I don't see it any other time. Remember the Blitz? Oh, those were the days. I don't see it. On the day of the Westminster attack, there was a blind woman struggling along a tube platform; no one helped her, people pushed past her. Women on their own struggled up stairs with huge suitcases; no one helped.)

Despite the apparent random nature of the attacks, their aftermath is fairly predictable and follow a set script. It's become a bit like an episode of 24 or a soap opera. There are 'what we know so far' reports and 'live updates' for days; the reporting gets so bogged down in details. Someone three miles away from the London Bridge attack heard something and is interviewed; the editor of the Spectator informs us he got a cut-price taxi ride home after the attacks – yes, this was reported on Radio 4. The make and model of the van used by the terrorists is reported. Video footage and photos are examined in minute detail.

In other words it's all about the 'how' and very little about the 'why'. What drives a 22-year-old to kill himself and others (isn't it tragic that for a young person to get noticed, it is far easier to do something negative than something positive)? There's little debate on the wider issues of why it's actually happening – surely it's as tragic for the terrorist to die like this as for the victims, their families, the witnesses and the emergency services dealing with it. Like with paedophiles, daring to even think about a terrorist's motivation is tantamount to siding with them or being sympathetic. We do not want to understand the terrorist – they are pure evil and beyond comprehension.

Jermy Corbyn has recently made unspeakable (yet rather sensible) comments: he's blamed the UK's foreign policy in the middle east as the cause for the attacks (which I thought was obvious); he's said the war on terror isn't working; he's said he'd rather sit down with a terrorist and talk instead of shoot him. All this seems logical to me. Western intervention in the middle east has always been a disaster; the eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth mentality has never worked; understanding and getting into the mind of a terrorist is more productive and useful than a dead terrorist (as my ex-girlfriend said, if you turn around the mindset of a terrorist, and get them to act as an advocate and ambassador for peace and understanding, that's far more useful than murder. For example, most councillors working in addiction are former addicts). But of course, for all Corbyn's rational comments, he received a storm of abuse – in the Mail and the Sun ('Apologist for terror' and 'Jihadi comrades', respectively), you'd expect it, but even in The Guardian comments.

Also, around the time of the attacks at London Bridge, there was a truck bomb in Kabul which killed 150, many of whom were women and children. Hardly made the news here (I know, I know, when it happens here it's an affront to democracy and the western way of life). More important (most read on the BBC website, as of today) is Phil Collins postponing a show after a fall, grim reviews for The Mummy and a hairdryer gran being a 'national hero'.

Anyway, General Election here today. Almost touching, really, that at the polling station it's still an old guy with a computer print out, a pencil and a ruler to check the voters. This election has been about Brexit, terrorism, immigration, personalities, back-stabbing. Hopefully one day someone with give a shit about the environment before it's too late.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Notes on murders and sex crimes
The Paedo files

Sunday, June 04, 2017

Lookalikes #39: Henry Darger and Marcel Dzama

I've written about Henry Darger previously; Marcel Dzama is a contemporary artist who also works in scultpure, film and collage. His paintings have adorned album covers, he's had books published. Henry Darger, outsider artist, was a caretaker and hermit, creating his deeply personal art in his apartment at night. I love both Darger and Dzama, but almost can't imagine Dzama's art existing if it wasn't for Darger.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Lookalikes #12: Feels and Henry Darger

Thursday, June 01, 2017

Top ten influences in my life

1. e e cummings (poet)
2. Sandra Bernhardt (woman)
3. Buddhism (religion)
4. Bacon (meat)
5. Luis Bunuel (Spaniard)
6. The 07:52 to Waterloo (transport)
7. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (film)
8. Noam Chomsky (American)
9. Akzidenz-Grotesque (typeface)
10. Jeremy Corbyn (man)