A cultural review: Panto commies, Voodoo Island and inscrutable Orientals. posted by Richard Seymour

Don't ask me why and shit, but I was watching Poirot the other night. I said don't ask me why. The episode was centred on the 'Chinatown' of the East End, on opium dens and aristocratic murder. A community of about 300 Chinese people in Limehouse is turned into a massive phalanx of criminality and upper bourgeois addiciton. At one point, in a moment of delicious socialist realism, the cynical Chief Inspector Japp starts to bang on about the "evil Orientals" while the blue-eyed noble Captain Hastings says something like, "I say, Poirot, these Orientals are dashed inscrutable". And Poirot is all "Yes, mon ami", his eyes suffused with anthropological curiosity, liberalism, humanity, and yes - understanding. He himself, an examplar of European individualism, eccentric in the extreme, supremely rational, stood against a background of indistinguishable 'yellow' folks, a blur of seductive decadence exuding sweet and pretty music to lure and entice sweet, fragile white women like Billie Carleton to their deaths. This mysterious substance from the East sucked the vitality out of one, reduced the morally upright Lord to the status of a wraith, an ambiguous flaneur. It was decadence, the stuff of high camp fiction in Wilde and Conan Doyle. It would have been impolite to refer to the Opium Wars or the Treaty of Nanking.


Initially, it occurred to me how 'subversive' it would be today if episodes of the Bill routinely featured coppers who spoke in airy racist terms and condescended to the working class. In fact, the last time there was such a show was a short-lived BBC2 series called The Cops, in which the police were routinely abusive of working class people ("you lot don't do yourselves any favours do you"), mired in corruption, in near constant conflict with kids from poor areas and so on. Today they might also be featured feeling up anyone who looked possibly Muslim, battering down doors and nabbing people in the middle of the night, aiming their sniper rifles across Waterloo Station. Then it occurred to me what teevee would be more likely to do with such material and how it would end up not exposing and problematising but actually affirming and naturalising this new situation. Indeed, police oppression would be interpreted as heavy-handedness, a morally ambiguous over-reaction, a somewhat over-enthusiastic adaptation, yet ultimately legitimate and necessary. It would come with a heavy-heart. The policeman would feel sullied and dirty. The civilian and especially the civil libertarian would be resented because they had not been exposed to the 'reality' that had so violated the copper's innocence.

Take last night's noos for London and the South East. A 'gang' of six robbers who filmed themselves listening to rap while waving cash (oh yes, I blame rap too) were put in jail for a total of 24 years. Long time no see, and I'm sure you feel this is entirely appropriate and just. Petrol station attendants need no longer tremble behind three inches of perspex. A bit of jail will do them good, you imagine. Mark the sequel - the story immediately following was a reference to the fact that the murderers of Harry Stanley, two policemen foolishly given guns and told they were part of something called the SO19 Armed Response Unit, were to get off without prosecution. The Crown Prosecution Service considers that the bullet through Mr Stanley's temple was a perfectly reasonable response to a perceived threat (because Stanley was carrying a table leg). The former would be cited as justification for the latter in a way - how dare the family of Harry Stanley presume to try and press charges and see these poor boys up in court when they have seen such tragedy while protecting the public? Don't you know the police have a difficult job? Imagine if he'd been a terrorist on his way to hold up a petrol station before filming a rap video and detonating himself on the tube. Imagine if they'd let him away - that wouldn't be much fun, would it?

Anyway, much like Poirot's adventures in Chinatown, traditional Zombie films dramatise the binary opposition of White Science versus Black Magic - the former liberal, humane, rational, democratic; the latter cultic, status-oriented, irrational, packed with the threat of deadly imprecations. The former had to civilise the latter, if not outright exterminate it. What better sequel than the present situation in Haiti. Violent gangs, chaos, stampedes, MAYHEM. And all the while, impartial observers try to figure out why all the aid and repeated invasions have not sufficed to placate these savages. What to do with these walking undead?

Meanwhile, further South, in the US's former plantation, an excellent new interpretation of Woody Allen's Bananas is being played out, with Hugo Chavez as the whacky leader instructing the vassalage to speak Swedish and change their underwear four times a day. The zaniness continues as Chavez refers to Blair as a "pawn of imperialism" and describes Bush's "imperialist, genocidal, fascist attitude". These ramblings issue as a result of the Prime Minister's perfectly coherent and non-babbling reply to a back-bench MP who wondered if Britain was supporting Bush's agenda with regard to Venezuela: "It is rather important that the government of Venezuela realise that if they want to be respected members of the international community they should abide by the rules of the international community." By which he means, don't pal around with Castro, give us our oil and shut the fuck up. Will the CIA intervene, and will they take no chances and back both sides this time? Stay tuned!