Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Ballynafeigh Festival: Fossett's CircusAuthor(s): Mark StoreySource: Fortnight, No. 130 (Jul., 1976), pp. 17-18Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25545910 .

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JULY 1976/17

about the camera never lying barely holds true even for what the camera is pointed at. And the competition with ITV might encourage BBC News to claim more authority than it's entitled to. The recent reports on the strikes in Poland for example, sounded quite sensational on TV and radio, but The Observer suggested that the amount of rioting and violence was much less than the BBC or ITV implied.

Nei$er network pointed out that Pc#j?h workers had established the rfeht to strike in 1970.

As Melvyn Bragg and Richard Hoggart demonstrated in the excellent BBC2 Second House programme, the distortions and

weightings are insiduous and often unintentional. The saleable

image of a strike for instance, is one of angry picketers, while it's

easy to establish a manager's function by showing him in the calm surroundings of his office. It's much more difficult to show the working or living conditions

which lead the workers to strike in the first place.

Similarly the photogenic as

pects of Northern Ireland are bombs, speeding police cars, and

bleeding bodies. Both networks have made valiant attempts to

explain to their ignorant British public the history and reasons for the present, but these are limited both by the wish to fit images to words, and by a

concentration on the reasons for the actual conflict, rather than on the reasons for the present texture of Ulster life that makes conflict possible. Politicians and

paramilitary leaders are the ones

expected to "explain": we hear

very little about the worker in a

Belfast slum or the small farmer, except the occasional shot of his children clambering over derelict houses.

I find it interesting that the most impressive TV news

programme is Weekend World'. is it only coincidence that the

presenters are newspaper jour nalists, and that the ratio of

presenter-facing-camera to on

the-spot shots is higher than in Panorama or This Week! One also feels happier that people like

Mary Holland do not pretend to a completely unbiased view or resist the temptation to express their conclusions: it's easier to

disagree with someone who admits she has an opinion.

Another problem of the television medium is that the audience is not in control of time. When you read a magazine article, you can stop at difficult

bits, read it again, and so on. The makers of a TV report have to

pare down the amount of

information, perhaps even avoid

altogether the more complex

. aspects, in the knowledge that no-one is sitting glued to the screen with notepad and pencil in hand.

It's often said that TV is kinder to some politicians than others. I

doubt this. Most Ulster politi cians come across?I'm talking purely of the screen image now?as rather unremarkable men, Paisley, tike Enoch! flbwell, Hitler, or even Maire Drumm, appears on the screen as he does in practice?as a hypocritical

buffoon. Only those who share his brand of lunacy are likely to find his TV performances charis

matic.

I also doubt that the "global village" effect gives more power to politicians, at least in countries where they do not

directly control the medium. I can't think that Edward Carson

would have been more popular or have spread his net wider if he had been interviewed by Robin Day. Tejevisionis a Cold, fishy eye which, thoughJt brings faces into your Irving >o6m, does ribi, generally speaking, add to the intensity of those faces'

influence. This is because although it is happening in the present, it is also happening somewhere else.

Another quite unnecessary limitation on TV news broad casts is the style of the programme or its presenter. 1

guess that BBC interviewers are

told to be impartial, with the result that an interview with

Ruari O'Bradaigh, say, by an

English reporter, allows a

platform for all that man's cant and humbug, rather than

providing serious evaluation of what he says. I feel grateful to Barry Cowan when he forgets his professional ethics on Scene Around Six and actually gets angry with Maire Drumm or Ian

Paisley. UTV seem to be trying to be ordinary and unpreten tious, just like the rest of us are supposed to be, and as a result

carry with them a large, unstated

body of assumptions and, when

they're trying to avoid offence, moral cop-outs. The Style of BBC's Nationwide is based on the premise that the British are a

reasonable, tolerant, comprom

ise-loving people who share a

smirking respect for the Queen, Concorde, Parliament, domestic

pets, etc. etc. I can remember few more pathetic attempts at news coverage than the Nation

wide "round-table" with five or

six assorted Ulster politicians.

Ray Barratt, playing the role of Mr Average Briton, turned from one to the other, trying no doubt to establish common ground, and looking as if he had person

ally taken on the task of "finding a solution to the Northern

Ireland problem". The result was that Mr Average Briton looked bemused because his reason able, tolerant, compromise-lov ing tactics weren't working,

while the Ulster politicians looked like recalcitrant school

boys who wouldn't agree to share the* sweeties for nice Mr. Barrett, nice Aunty BBC and all the nice viewers.

It seems that TV has mixed up the two possibilities of the

medium. When news pro grammes assume a style (as

opposed to format) they become a sub-art form, reflecting what

they have decided is the character of the audience and

tending to reinforce prejudices and existing attitudes in a nauseating self-preening man ner. They forget that news should be about facts and the interpretation of facts. They also

forget the difficulty of presenting facts, and over-estimate the

dangers of interpreting them.

LFord

Ballynafeigh, Jw^ Festival ^^Hr^

FOSSETT'S CIRCUS It's a toss-up between the world

premiere of Christopher Colum- ' "

bus by Offenbach and Fossett's Circus; Much as 1 admire Opera Rara's entertjrise it is a hot 3nd sweaty night and the children prefer the idea of clowns to

music. So off we go, down to the embankment rat Sunnyside Street, One of the nice things about circuses?and certainly about Fofsett's?is that they don't have ideas above their station. On a hot night the River Lagan smells like" a healthy sewer, and Fossetts have

pitchecr their tent there with a fine sense of occasion. The big top has a shop soiled aspect, its blue and red rather faded, the ;S structure slight suspect inside* the scent is evocative^ and it lingers even now in the^nostrHs, -f

long after the last, camel w

droppings have died in the air. The sawdust is grimy, like the seats, like the ring, like every thing. We wait in expectation, until the Circus band strikes up. Much to our surprise it consists of two strapping females

dressed apparently in n<Mhing other tharl black underwear: they conjure tawdry, vulgar

bounds from organ and percus sion, launching irito an overture th* Brings iff the li^ wfth a flourish. The Hohs are supremely unconcerned b^tis all: the first thing we ate aware of in the ringside seats we've occupied zealously for harf an hour^is a great shower of urine from One of the lions under our noses. It is an impressive sight, and we have a good laugh at his effrontery. Mr Carl Fischer, from Germany we gather, ambles in with as

little concern as his lions. Like them he is huge and crumpled, as though he has just woken up and found himself with nothing better to do. He potters about with a walking stick which is; not going to be of much use to him if Caesar gets vicious. The mangy beasts, half a dozen of them, snarl and paw at him, indicating that they would like to eat him. He looks the sort of man who would take it quite well. He lets them jump over him, he lets them circle him threateningly, he smiles amiably the while. The lions eventually have enough and slope off back to their cages; little men run on and scoop up the shit into cardboard boxes. It has been a good.start. We suck our choc ices as a horse and

pony go through an uninspired routine. There is a great thrill

when the clowns come on, and wander round the ringside shaking everyone by the hand; I've never shaken hands with a

clown before; that in itself makes the entrance fee worth it, even if the seats are in a< state of

collapse. Charlie the Crazy Waiter corhes bounding in; he does a superbly timed Charlie Chaplin act which is largely wasted on the ^children. He is balletic and acrobatic and his

movements are beautiful and

poignant. He can do things with a bowler hat that bring tears to the eyes; he is expressive with a plate of spaghetti; he plays with , a bottle of wine in a lunatic fashion that takes the breath away; he ends up by emitting greet spurts of liquid from his puffed out mouth and then finally and majestically from his posterior. *

We roar and applaud in envy and incomprehension. The world fells into place and we are glad

we chose Fossetts rather than Offenbach; even though it is the '"j bicentenary of American what not. The other clowns don't have Charlie's grace, which is a

-

pity. But they keep everyone happy with their antics, especi ally when the lights go down, and they go to bed in the middle of the ring, deliberately poo

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18/FORTNIGHT

pooing any suggestion of

ghosts. Everyone shouts as the

ghost appears behind them, as

he follows them around the ring. We all share in the fun, and end

by believing that the ghost is more than just a man dressed up

in a sheet. But then we'll believe

anything to night, when

anything seems possible. The

acrobats and jugglers defy all the

laws we thought were infallible:

balls rotate on heads, people stand on rotating balls, clubs are

swung in the air in easy

parabolas. Luis and his partner from Spain play with tennis

rackets, with enormous chunks

of equipment that they manage to send high into the tent's

upper reaches as though they were matchsticks: Luis juggles with flaming brands as though he'd been doing it all his life. He can do it all to music, we clap

rhythmicalK delighting in the

artistry, accepting everything that is happening a couple of

yards from us. When we get home, we realise how hard it is

to do a cartwheel.

Some of the performers are

incredibly young. The little girl who sold us the programme

turns up as one of Los Chicos.

somersaulting all over the place; the Garcia Troupe consists of

countless youngsters who leap and prance and jump, who seing from a fearsome Russian

contraption that hurtles one of

them, an extremely beautiful

girk, into terrifying gyrations above the ring, where there is no

safety net; she ends up on a pile of mattresses, or on a chair held

about twenty feet aloft. It is all

very spectacular. One of the most polished acts comes from a

clown-like figure calling himself

Chiperianos. He sets a row of

plates spinning on slender stalks

about six feet high in the air, and

somehow keeps them going whilst he gets on with a juggling act involving glasses and

spoons; the children yell at him as the plates appear to be on the

point of falling off; he dashes

back to rescue them as they

begin to obey the laws of

gravity. His movements are

comic and elegant. He turns up later in the "Fastest Western Act

you will ever see", a group of

cowboys with whips and

lassoes. They coil the lassoes in

arcs above their heads, around

their bodies, beneath their feet;

they whip sticks from each

other's hands, the whips crack

like gunfire. It is a fantastic

noise. The whole act has a

precision of timing that brings gasps of admiration from the

crowd: we find it hard enough to

jump over a skipping rope. After two hours it's all over. It

has been marvellous value for

money, and we have been so

absorbed that we've survived

without having to make a dash

for the gents which is lucky since there doesn't seem to be

one. I ask the children what they liked best. The clowns, the lions, the acrobats, the tightrope

walkers ('she'd got pink knickers'). I am told to say that

what I liked best was the lions::

doing a piss. Mark Storey

TTERSLETTERSLE ?^f?^73 TTERSLETTERSLE 5 S*v^ S TTERSLETTERSLE Sit J 1? TTERSLETTERSLE ffe 15

n ersletterSle TTERSLETTERSLE

THE ILLITERATE SCHOLAR

Dear Sir, Mr Young would have done

well to write an introduction to his book, rather than leave

explanations of the Danta

Gradha to a letter in Issue 129 of Fortnight, correcting the bad

mistake in my review (where I said that these love poems were not composed in the Deibhidhe

measure). Truth to tell, I got mixed up when writing the

review, for I had to check my impressions with various books in default of an introduction to

Mr Young's translations. I am, in fact, aware that the

Danta Gradha are syllabic poems. My criticism was that their conversion to English

>

syllabic verse was not by the hand of a craftsman. I referred in

my review to the disapproval -

only of the higher clergy for the

many "deviations" of mediaeval times (particularly in SW France and Ireland, where so many

Sheila-na-gigs are found on or in

churches), and do know as well as Mr Young that the lesser

clergy behaved in a manner

I which would in these 'liberated' days be roundly condemned.

And, talking of liberation and

liberty, does Mr Johnstone really think that he is an anarchist? As

The-Only-Anarchist In Ireland (?) I anarchically disown him. How

can one have a job and be an anarchist in any real sense

much less talk of education? Such anarchism is make-believe and middle-class. For an anarchist (An Arche: No Rule) the Rights of Man include the

right to illiteracy, the right to nakedness and the right to have no name. These are the recog nised rights of animals; man is an

animal, and there should be no distinction. If humans were

granted the rights of animals, and animals were accorded the

rights of man, all heaven would not be in a rage. Millions of our

fellow-creatures are wantonly tortured and destroyed in the name of progress, science, art, and as a demonstration of man's

superiority (i.e. his inanimality). Not to mention the sordid and

screaming meat business, which .

not only does appalling things to animals but also contributes to starvation of men and animals.

Of course, it is all done behind

well-guarded Walls (hospitals and other abattoirs), so that we can in our ignorance condemn those in other parts of the world

who do much less revolting things in public.

Yours, etc.

Anthony Weir

(alas! I have a name)

Kilnatierney, Co. Down.

ULSTER CROSSWORD Prizes of ?1 each are offered for the first two correct solutions.

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ACROSS

(1) Syrup in pastry gives proof (7) (6) Fibrous result of most of the

removal from an emblem (5) (11) Material hindrance on charge for

surfeit (9) (12) Kind of board in a lake for a more

eatedsort (5) (13) A treat for trouble. (3) (14) I am booming in the pulpit. (4) (17) Old tax ? it's.too much! (6) (18) Nowadays in aspect there's a

showy front (6) (20) It's back with high class content

for reverend fowl. (3) (23) Take mine back, and take action

(3) (24) Party after a girl for a fish. (6) (25) Of foreign bearing to exile (6) (26) Have us keel-hauled in a river. (3) (27) Due, we hear, to be sung. (3) (29) Pod in pickle which is warmer

than it sounds. (6) (31) A gruel specially mixed for

religious rule. (6) (35) Nothing in a girl at another time

(4) (36) Leading change from 26 ac. for

the same result. (3) (37) Useful support might pop with

initial point (5) (38) Hairy result of church woman on

temptation. (9) (39) Judges said meat issued from

him. (5) (40) Kind of sea to which a sacred

river ran. (7)

DOWN

(1.) Quiet top ?

meaning 1 ac (5). (2) Tidied up . round track and

renewed the outline (8) (3) Squandered-in a dismal sounding

manner. (4) (4) Missile changes road rate (8) (5) Foul, we hear, from which to get

down. (9). (7) Some point in wine ? a mere

taste!(5) (8) Pamphlet which could keep you . ,

on the right lines at- the right moment (9)

(9) Non-quenching highballs. (4) (10) Denuding action of the elements.

(7) (15) Novel animal wrongly accused

(9) (16) Illnesses of guinea-pigs? No.

legal precedents-. (9, 2 words) (19) Smart beginning to erroneous

version of great-coat (8) (21) Their estates have no feudal

superiors (8) (22) Too dear, but could be scented.

(7) (28) Although slow he might be

capped. (5) (30) Sound of images but does little.

(5) (32) War-time shows weren't really

sane. (4) (33) Annealing container. (4) (34) Final cover could weaken. (4)

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