Yes, the Highest-Grossing Animation of All Time is a Film About Women

Because Hollywood runs like blind evolution, resisting change until a random mutation re-writes the rules.

Please feel free to copy and share this meme. Let's see more stories about women made into films and TV series. 

Images from DC (New 52) and Disney (Frozen). 

Why This is a Big Year for Brody Dalle

How does a good album get bad reviews?

Movies sometimes get slated for stupid reasons unrelated to their quality (like John Carter). I’ve never worked in the music industry, but I’m betting it’s the same deal.

Spinnerette 2009

Spinnerette’s self-titled album came out in 2009 and wasn’t well received. After The Distillers broke up, music journalists and fans wanted More Of The Same from frontwoman Brody Dalle, but her new project was a different thing. Perhaps people weren’t listening to Spinnerette with the right kind of ears. If you eat biscuits after using mouthwash they taste disgusting. Remember that, kids.

NME said things about the track ‘Cupid’ that were not accurate. I'm not reproducing it here because it was just nasty. It wasn't even a critique, it was a reaction to disappointment, the words sneered out between gritted teeth. You can’t type objectively with clenched fists.

I only recently discovered Brody Dalle’s music. I’d heard a little before, but not paid attention. That’s no reflection on her talent.

Spinnerette at Virgin Fest, Deer Lake Park in 2009
(image via Wikipedia)

I grew up listening to both punk rock and heavy metal in 1970s England, the decade and country of their birth. My teenage step brother introduced me to Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath and the older boys I hung around with played a lot of punk and new wave. All on vinyl, of course, or cassette tapes. The soundtrack to my childhood was equal parts The Sex Pistols and The Muppets. I was making pocket money choices between Topps Star Wars trading cards and Buzzcocks singles. The Stranglers, The Boomtown Rats, Lene Lovich, Blondie, The Clash, Ian Dury were in Top 40, as well as Kate Bush, Abba, the soundtrack to Grease and a lot of disco. Electro-pop was still obscure, Tubeway Army were the exception, meanwhile prog-rock kept mostly to the album charts out of sight of the masses’. Punk appealed to me more at that age than the other music it was bumping shoulders with and gobbing at. I used to pogo at school discos. Jeremy Maidment wrote ‘fuck’ on the back of my jacket in felt-tip pen, but I was terrified my mum would see. I wasn’t a proper punk. I was eight years old. In my teens and twenties in the 1980s and 1990s I mostly listened to heavy metal and rock, then eventually what at the time we called ‘dark trance’, although now trance is something different. I just arrived in my mid-forties and I’ve dropped most of the metal, but intelligent, well made rock is still my favourite kind of music among a pretty eclectic mix.

The Distillers. Quite a long time ago.
(image via MTV.com)

I’ve caught the odd scraps of Distillers songs, that’s all. The recognisably American take on punk gave it more of a rock feel, but it didn’t draw me in. I didn’t know the difference between The Distillers and Spinnerette because I wasn’t paying attention. I knew Dalle had her own career and just happened to be Josh Homme’s missus. I only heard of her in the first place because of who she’s married to and it’s a damn shame because she’s worked hard not to be mistaken as someone coasting along on her husband’s shirt-tails. She plans to get where she’s going on her own merit.

If I had to choose a favourite band it would probably be Queens of the Stone Age, so at some point I was bound to hear Dalle’s music. I don’t like mentioning QotSA in this post because that’s what everyone does. This is just for context and to say that Like Clockwork, one of my all time favourite albums, grew on me little by little during a masterful publicity campaign until I finally realised just how much I loved it. Kind of like the way I fell for my wife.

It was my wife who first played Rated R to me in 2001, and she played Dalle’s single ‘Meet The Foetus’ to me a couple of weeks ago. I was a fan of Garbage years ago and I like Shirley Manson so I listened with interest, but I wasn’t blown away. I wouldn’t expect to be either, and maybe that’s what makes me different from music journalists. It was OK for a first listen and I hung around looking to see if Dalle was playing guitar or bass, so, obviously, I knew nothing about her at that point. That was actually a good thing, that’s what this post is mainly about.

I don’t instantly like most things. When I do I usually haven’t noticed the flaws yet. Flaws and imperfections aren’t the same. Flaws get in the way, imperfections make a thing unique and may take a little learning to appreciate. When I grow to love something it’s because of it’s imperfections, not despite them.

(image via Gigwise)

TV shows that I’ve grown to love have taken me three episodes before I got them. By five or six episodes I’m hooked. I have to nurture my empathy for the characters. When I care about them I’ll see the nuances that make that show stand out from all the others.

Food or alcohol that I love is rarely a first-try deal. I like gin, but the first time I drank it I only suffered its botanical peculiarity to get me through a surreal three-day convention of erotica. I was working on a friend’s stall selling old film posters left over from the 1970s British fad of sex comedies. The dissonance of hardcore imagery and near-naked glamour models in an atmosphere empty of intimacy and honesty made my head spin. All the women workers I spoke to found their customers annoying or even repugnant. Everything was just for show and the smiles were plastered on. So much sex, yet nothing sexy at all. Gin helped, but it wasn’t until twenty years later I found myself choosing it over beer.

Lovely Hendrick's, they even make a tea set to go with it.
(image via Wikipedia)

Many of my favourite songs did nothing for me the first time I heard them. Why does this happen? Why do we take time to like things? Because have expectations to overcome, pre-conceptions to discard; we have to lose the pre-packaged context we bring to the party before we hear, see or taste anything other than what we expected. Maybe we just put a new frame around the picture that feels more comfortable. We can’t completely lose the filters we’ve spent our lives setting up so maybe by spending time on something we cycle through a few filters until we find one that fits.

Spinnerette, in the end, caught my attention with a hat, bleached-out lighting, meticulous make up and a lopsided downwards-sneer to the left.

Screen cap from Ghetto Love

After watching the video I found myself humming the tune a lot. 

Catchy much?

I went back and played it again a few more times. I listened to the album frequently. I bought it. I listened to Coral Fang and took an interest in Brody Dalle as a musician and songwriter, reading and watching interviews and checking for tour dates. I liked what she said and how she said it. Dalle and her husband seem like very smart, wise people and I can’t help but like them.

Then I started hearing that Spinnerette had been badly received. I won’t quote any more here, the reviews I read don’t deserve it. They were petulant diatribes that delighted in hurling thinly-veiled insults at Dalle. They painted a ludicrous picture of a woman who had lost her talent because she grew up.  They described her life between albums as empty space, her time in the studio spent decorating, her music backward-facing by fifteen years. Even if the sexism hadn’t tipped me off, it’s plain to see the poor reviews came from punk fanboys lashing out like jilted lovers at their fantasy woman who dared to move on. They wanted the iconic sweaty black hair, smeared make up and fire-breathing vocals and didn’t care that it came with a self-destruct sequence that was already well under way. People who don’t change are dead. Pitchfork called the album a “perplexing project” and that sums up their problem. Perplexing to a Distillers fan maybe, but for me coming to it from the angle I did it’s a very good album.

Distillers days

I read Dalle’s responses, her own take on the album, reasons for not continuing as Spinnerette and choosing to record under her own name, and her descriptions of her circumstances when she wrote the songs. I read about how The Distillers broke up and their aborted attempt to get back together, and why Dalle now feels she’s moved on. The tracks on Spinnerette were written while Dalle was depressed and into some heavy drug use. The lyrics of one of my favourites shows that plainly enough.

Driving Song:

Caught lust, tie a noose around my neck
It's the unexplained that gets you when you obsess
I believed saying the truth would change the way that I felt
Lying to God ain't easy, when you're already in debt

So long my friend
We'll never meet again
I tried so hard to stay
It's too late for me

If all the love in this world isn't enough
Where do you go? Who do you trust?
I find myself wrapped in the arms of emptiness
I can't stop running away, can't find a place to exist

So long my friend
We'll never meet again
I tried so hard to stay
It's too late for me

I understand where these songs came from, I can glimpse the person who wrote them. People who come back from life-destroying addictions have scars that tell us stories about the human condition.

So what’s my point here? Just this: an artist moves on.

Because people change.
(image via Last FM)

Reviewers and fans expected the old Dalle from The Distillers and they found something else. They heard sounds that reminded them of 90s pop-rock like Garbage, maybe because Manson and Dalle both have deep, powerful voices. They were reminded of something from the past so to them the sound was out of date. I disagree. Dalle’s punk rage had given way to a production-heavy ride through a range of styles. Her versatility surprised me, her complexity as a performer and songwriter surprised me. She says the album contains a bit of everything, including the kitchen sink and I wonder if she says it like it’s a bad thing, because what I hear is a solid collection of songs. Sex Bomb might not seem to share much DNA with The Walking Dead, I don’t care. There are themes and riffs that pull the album together. There’s no need for a tight and tidy package showing us what we already knew she could do. This is the album of a woman pushing herself past the boundaries she’d set for herself years before; it’s a butterfly’s first flight out of the chrysalis. Or maybe a big scary blood-red moth.

Columbia silk moth
(image from Edupic.net)

Brody Dalle the solo-artist is a different thing again to Spinnerette. With uncanny timing, I got into Spinnerette just as Dalle started releasing singles for Diploid Love. I went looking for an explanation of why she went solo. Dalle says Spinnerette, a complex studio album, doesn’t work live and that may be all there is too it. Elsewhere she said she wants to be happy and live a happy life. I doubt that would happen if she was touring with songs about suicide and drug addiction. She’s moved on from that time, that sound and that album. I’m dealing with it.

 

Diploid Love (released April 2014)

The Cover to Diploid Love shows Dalle grown up. Messy yet clean hair, head thrown back in a classic belligerent punk pose dressed in consciously non-punk1950s clothes. Her mouth open but not sneering. She might be inviting you in or telling you to fuck off. Maybe both. She’s doing things how she wants to, combining and transcending her roots and influences.

She’s come a long way since The Distillers. What do you expect? Brody Dalle is not preserved in aspic. She’s not a marble statue carved in 2004. She isn’t the torchbearer of 21^st Century punk. Her career isn’t a museum exhibit. A 24 year old punk became a 35 year old mother of two and hasn’t lost one ounce of talent in the process. It’s not her responsibility to keep a genre alive. Artists who give fans what they want are betraying themselves and walking a path to nowhere. Culture on demand is no culture at all, it’s pastiche, it’s lip-service. Soulless and stale. Artists create, they don’t obey orders.

Now.

I’m excited about Diploid Love, even though from what I’ve heard so far it’s a big departure from Spinnerette. I have a feeling this is going to be a good year for Dalle and that her music will get a lot of attention. This isn’t her first flight out of the cocoon, this is solo Dalle with her wings flexed and tested. My advice, and this goes for experiencing anything new, is to lose your expectations and open your mind as wide as that fucker goes, then settle back and enjoy the ride.

Ignoring Friends on the Internet, a users guide

The internet is a strange new world full of bustle and noise. Friends are easily lost amongst the constant bombardment of like-baiting and deceptive exaggeration. We’re the country bumpkins who stumbled onto the streets of a crowded city, ignorant of the many pitfalls, the mercurial meme-fashions and the truncated, awkward etiquette of this environment.

www.aveleyman.com
Like Dennis Cooper 

Jabberwocky. NSFW, at all. Via YouTube

31:00 to 33:40 is what it's like social networking for the first time.

The trick to navigating the internet is the same as on any street in the world – be sceptical, don’t broadcast your vulnerabilities, remember who your friends are.

In the noisy online world it’s easy to forget your friends, to think we’ve already replied to an email or comment, or to put a low priority on getting round to it. The fallout is one of the recurring problems with social networking: groups disband because no one replied to a post that everyone read; friendships are tested because people feel like they’ve been ignored; a flippant comment or a hasty response can define us to a huge number of people and make friends doubt us. If we acted in person like many of even the most internet-savvy of us do online we’d often be accused of rudeness and arrogance. Even emoticons can’t convey the nuances of human interactions.

It’s a complex new world and we have to navigate it at the same time as the old world, a place many of us still struggle with. Little red flags tell us how many comments are waiting for us to read; little red flags tell us people want to be our friend; little red flags tell us we have emails waiting to be read, and the emails are often Nigerian businessmen needing our help, lonely robots in our area looking for a good time, special offers, sales, deals of the month, notification of statements ready for reading, reminders and newsletters, and endless streams of spam spam spam spam spammity spam.

BBC/Monty Python, via YouTube

Where it all began

It’s easy to lose track of what’s important. The right choice is usually not the easy one. The two things of most value on the internet are truth and friendship. The two most common things on the internet are fabrications and acquaintances.*

The digital age needs better etiquette, but don’t expect everyone to take it up. Being polite has never been common in any society. It sounds snobbish to modern ears, but ‘common’ was once the antonym of all things refined or well-mannered. Acting, as they used to say, like a lady or gentleman has always been the exception rather than the rule, but mostly due to reasons of culture, class, money, education and geography. I see little excuse for it now. Manners and politeness are accessible to all, they're what we expect from others. Only the most self-obsessed and self-entitled assume the rule doesn’t apply to them. How we behave around others, especially the least powerful in the room, defines us. How we treat our friends shapes the world we live in. Acquaintances exist in a bottomless shifting reservoir of mass populations, but friendships require maintenance or they cease to be.

*And cats, obviously.

UK Road Tax and Potholes

I’d like to introduce this cat to those pigeons over there…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ruurdz/2718033122/in/set-72157606221570835/

Ten minutes on Google searching for ‘road tax’ and ‘repairing potholes’ plus five minutes on my local council’s website gave me all the information in this post.

In the UK, a lot of people talk about ‘road tax’. They talk about how cars have priority over bicycles because they pay it and that the money should go towards road maintenance to reduce the number of potholes.

But there are several things wrong with the above paragraph. Most importantly, road tax was abolished in 1937.

www.oldclassiccar.co.uk
 Along with a few other changes since olden times.

Vehicle owners pay ‘vehicle excise duty’, also known as ‘car tax’ or ‘vehicle tax’, and that tax is treated like any other. It’s not a special tax for generating road maintenance funding, as the old road tax was, nor is it a way to buy status in the traffic hierarchy.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/456433/VIDEO-Passenger-gets-out-of-vehicle-and-punches-cyclist-in-London-road-rage

Traffic hierarchy comes from who has the greatest killing potential and only arseholes use it.

In 1926, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill opposed the abolition of road tax: "Entertainments may be taxed; public houses may be taxed… and the yield devoted to the general revenue. But motorists are to be privileged for all time to have the tax on motors devoted to roads? This is an outrage upon… common sense." 

http://bio.bwbs.de

It's possible he didn't much care for transport that restricted his choice of hat

Pothole repairs in the UK are paid for from the same taxes as everything else, by central government and local councils combined. In 2012 the government put £200 million into national road maintenance and my local council added over £400,000 to their share of it.

www.carwriteups.co.uk
A pothole, yesterday.

Currently, local councils combined pay out an estimated £2.5 million a year in compensation to drivers whose cars have been damaged by potholes. The cost of the national backlog of road repairs has been estimated at £10 billion, so it’s 4000 times cheaper to pay out the compensation than fix the roads, which are constantly falling into further disrepair anyway.

www.dailymail.co.uk
At some point you have to admit you have a problem

The government says they’ve recently invested £10 billion “in roads”, but as only 2% of that went to road maintenance in 2012 I’m assuming the other £9.8 billion is either paying for unnecessary new roads that will inevitably increase congestion, is in coffers waiting for the stars to align, or already been spent on Highways Agency champagne lunches.

Vehicle tax generates £38 billion a year, which goes straight into the treasury along with the other taxes to pay for everything from Trident missiles to corgi food.

BBC.co.uk
This is just an excuse to show Her Maj with James Bond again

The cause of potholes is winter and traffic. If people drove less there’d be less potholes because it’s the drivers driving about everywhere that creates the problem. If the weather is bad (in England that’s a given) then as fast as holes are repaired new ones will appear. Moaning that the council hasn’t fixed the roads doesn’t even engage with the problem.

So, to recap:

• Drivers cause potholes by driving over roads weakened by bad weather.

www.thetimes.co.uk

Seriously, go home and call in. Say you tried.

• In bad weather more people drive, which makes things even worse.
• Local councils receive no money from vehicle tax.
• Drivers expect councils to pay for damage caused by drivers.
• The amount the government spends on road repairs is a fraction of the amount vehicle tax generates.
• Vehicle tax does not pay for road maintenance because drivers are not special people who get to choose what their taxes are spent on. 

www.corvettefever.com

Nope.

• All vehicle tax goes to central government and has done since 1937.
• Local council funds spent on road maintenance come from council tax paid by driving and non-driving residents alike.
• The more money spent on roads the less there is to spend on parks, general maintenance, children’s centres, schools, youth services, public safety, refuse collection, recycling, major projects, democratic services, coastal defences, pest control, environmental protection, pollution control, noise control, licensing, sustainability, cleaning poo and chewing gum off the pavements, city-wide planning, planning application services, disability services, older residents care and services, legal services, complaints processing, registrar services, public records, local sports schemes, housing, outreach projects, social work, safeguarding children, libraries, museums, galleries, conference centres to attract investment and generate income, heritage sites, public transport, cycle lanes, free school meals, cutting grass verges, road safety, parking facilities and enforcement, traveller issues, adult education, alcohol and drug advice/support/fallout, leisure centres, fostering and adoption services, economic development, road gritting, and park and ride schemes to reduce the traffic causing all the potholes in the first place.

Parks and Recreation, NBC.com

Knope.

• Most people think councils only collect the rubbish and repair the roads. 
• Drivers are not special (worth saying again) and don’t have priority on the roads, just the means to go fast and kill people. 
• This makes drivers feel safe and gives them a sense of entitlement. 

www.stockfreeimages.com

Not safe. Not entitled. Not even you. 

• If more money was spent on road repairs drivers would complain there wasn’t enough left to pay for refuse collection. 
• They’d then wonder why all the parks, libraries and sports projects were shut down. 
• They’d also complain they pay too much council tax. 

If you can track it down online, this is an interesting documentary about local services and what council tax is spent on.

James Bond & the martini

The ‘Vesper' vodka martini made famous by James Bond was only mentioned once. It was his pick-me-up of choice when “concentrating” at the casino before dinner. 3 measures of gin, 1 of vodka and half a measure of Kina Lillet at tea-time.

'A dry martini,' he said. 'One. In a deep champagne goblet.'

'Oui, monsieur.'
'Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?'
'Certainly monsieur.' The barman seemed pleased with the idea.
'Gosh, that's certainly a drink,' said Leiter.
Bond laughed. 'When I'm...er...concentrating,' he explained, 'I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold, and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink's my own invention. I'm going to patent it when I think of a good name.'

— Casino Royale, Chapter 7: Rouge et Noir

It's a look that screams concentration

A martini of any kind is all in how you make it. From the temperature of the drinks to what glass you serve it in. Bond’s usual martini isn’t the Vesper, but a plain “medium dry” martini, usually with vodka, but almost as often without. The standard drink, since 1933 and the end of prohibition in America, is mostly gin with a little vermouth and a couple of olives as garnish. There’s a lot of variation in what the terms mean, but ‘medium dry’ is usually not much vermouth, ‘dry’ is none or almost none and ‘very dry’ is absolutely none at all, essentially just cold gin. 

When Ace wrote the song he was being awfully civilised.

Early versions before and during prohibition were half and half, probably because the gin needed flavouring.

The vermouth used is the dry kind, so it’s confusing that more dry the drink is said to be the less vermouth is in it.

A vodka martini either has a shot of vodka added, usually about a third as much as the gin, or can replace the gin entirely, and is a relatively recent invention dating back to the 1940s and 50s. Martinis of just gin and vermouth date back to the 1890s. Some folk entirely eschew the vermouth, as did Noel Coward who described the ideal martini as "filling a glass with gin then waving it in the general direction of Italy".

How terribly witty

If someone offers you an ‘old-fashioned’ martini they might not be talking about the 19th Century version and might mean gin on the rocks served in an ‘old-fashioned’ glass, or ‘lowball’ glass tumbler. Not to be confused with the cocktail called an 'old-fashioned', of course.

A ‘dirty’ martini includes a splash of brine from the olive jar.

 

No jokes about enjoying a 'dirty vesper', please.

The Vesper was a rule-breaker but only appeared in Casino Royale, published in 1953, when adding vodka would still have been a new thing. Martinis are generally stirred (a shaken martini is called a Bradford) as the tiny bits of ice that break off in the shaker cloud the drink, and the extra strength of Gordon’s gin in the 1950s (47%/94-proof, as opposed to today’s 40%/80-proof) would have been slightly diluted by the melting ice particles. It’s possible Bond wanted it diluted as he was “concentrating”, but he did order 4 shots of spirits in one glass, so then again, maybe not. Today lemon peel is fairly common, but traditionally the garnish would have been olives.

Sinatra says use only 2 olives:
"one for you, and one for the beautiful gal that’s about to walk in the door"

Shaking gets the drink colder than stirring will, essential for a vodka martini to taste right. Also the vermouth is dissolved more completely and, if the vodka is made from potatoes rather than grain, it will disperse the oily residue that forms. Stirring the drink takes longer and Fleming believed it diminished the flavour, although it’s widely thought the smooth delicate flavours of gin are spoilt by shaking.

And if the flavour is a bit off just add more product placement Smirnoff.

Shaking breaks down more of the hydrogen peroxide, increasing anti-oxidants and aerating the gin, ‘bruising’ it and giving it a slightly sharp or bitter taste, which Bond seems to have wanted because he "watched as the deep glass became frosted with the pale golden drink, slightly aerated by the bruising of the shaker". 

Bond chills his fingers in ice all day so he can hold his glass in a manly way.

The pale gold colour mentioned above comes from the Kina Lillet, a fortified white wine no longer available but possible to approximate in the mix with Lillet Blanc and Angostura Bitters. Gin and vodka are both clear and vermouth is either pale or red. The red is usually sweet not dry and isn’t used in martinis.

In the books, Bond drinks a total of 19 vodka martinis and 16 ordinary martinis. As we all know, he prefers them shaken, not stirred and first says the immortal catchphrase himself in 1964’s Goldfinger. The first person to say it on film was Dr No in 1962. In 1967’s You Only Live Twice, Henderson mistakenly stirs the drink and Bond, too polite to correct his host, says the drink is perfect.

Two famous gin connoiseurs heading to the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, and the moment I became a staunch Royalist. God bless her.

Martinis of any kind aren’t his usual drink though. In print, Bond drinks a total of over a hundred whiskeys, usually bourbon like creator Ian Fleming who used to finish off a bottle of gin a day until his doctor advised him to switch to bourbon for his health. 

Jimmy Page has always been very health conscious

In the films Bond favours vodka or champagne – Bollinger or Dom Perignon. When ordering wine he often chooses Chateau Mouton Rothschild and has a good enough palate to drink a glass of sherry and tell the vintage of the wine used to make it, as he does in Diamonds Are Forever.

A palate that can still appreciate a £350 bottle of Krug while smoking 70 custom-made extra nicotine cigarettes a day.

The name ‘martini’ is itself confusing, possibly originating from the name of Martini vermouth that appeared on the market in 1863, the vermouth being named after Alessandro Martini, one of the co-founders of the distilleria that produced it. Or it may be a contraction of the name of a town in California, Martinez, where some claim the drink was invented. It’s also possible it was first mixed or popularised by someone called Martini.

Some points to you if this was your answer.

These days anything in conical stemware is likely to be called a martini or at least have –ini tagged on the end of its name. None of these things are martinis, and the confusion probably comes from the glass used. A proper martini glass has a large wide bowl that is fully conical all the way down, while the more common ‘cocktail glass’ is smaller with a narrower bowl rounded at the bottom. 

Bond was clearly too polite, or distracted, to complain about this glass.

As with all stemware, the glass can be held without the drinker’s body temperature affecting the drink. The width of the bowl is important as it allows the subtle aromatics to reach the nose more easily. For this reason martinis are also served in champagne coupes, while champagne is now rarely served in anything other than a flute as modern tastes prefer dryness and bubbles over the sweetness popular in the 1930s when the coupe was in fashion and the end of prohibition meant champagne flowed freely in the clubs and in towers.

And legally you could pour alcohol all over the floor for yourself again. 

In case you were wondering, Bond, one of the most famous fictional Englishmen of all time, never drinks tea.

On the first night the girl had brought him tea. Bond had looked at her severely.

‘I don’t drink tea. I hate it. It’s mud. Moreover, it’s one of the main reasons for the downfall of the British Empire. Be a good girl and make me some coffee.’  

The girl had giggled and scurried off to spread Bond’s dictum in the canteen. From then on he had got his coffee. The expression ‘a cup of mud’ was seeping through the building.

— Goldfinger, Chapter 5: Night Duty

Ah, Roger. You never lost it.

So what's the fuss about martinis? Isn't is just gin when it comes down to it? I'm not a drinks expert, never worked in a bar, don't even drink much these days, but I do appreciate elegance and style, and the martini has those things when done right. As someone once said:

"I'm not talking a cup of cheap gin splashed over an ice cube. I'm talking satin, fire and ice; Fred Astaire in a glass; surgical cleanliness, insight.. comfort; redemption and absolution. I'm talking MARTINI!"
Anonymous

WW1 - Myths or Not? A response to Dan Snow

[*EDIT* - I highly recommend Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast series Blueprint For Armageddon for more information on the causes, ambitions, suffering and circumstances of WW1. Several edits have been added below since I listened to the series so far.]


Recently, British politician, ex-journalist and English Graduate Michael Gove caused controversy by claiming the history of World War 1 had been unpatriotically “white-washed” by “left-wing academics”. Worryingly, Gove is still the Conservative Secretary of State for Education.

Responses to his outburst have been fairly damning.

This one by the historian Gove singled out in his attack is quite interesting.

On January 20th 2014 this article by history graduate and television presenter Dan Snow appeared on the BBC website claiming to debunk “10 common myths” about World War 1. The timing is interesting and although the facts quoted are for all I know entirely true (and an historian friend tells me they are) I was unhappy with the way the article was presented, the 'myths' lined up to knock down, and the methods used to do so.

I'm not an historian, but I felt the need to address myth 1 as soon as I began reading it. Myth 1 isn’t a matter of history, it’s a position reached by cherry-picking statistics.

As a psychology graduate who’s studied statistics as applied to populations, and as an art graduate aware of how easily and effectively perspectives and feelings can be manipulated, I’m qualified enough to challenge the article. Then after myth 1 I thought I should complete the set.


Myth 1. It was the bloodiest war in history to that point

Debunked? Snow says no because 20-30 million were killed in the Taiping Rebellion in China 50 years earlier and, expressed as a percentage of the population, the British death toll of WW1 was half that of the English Civil War in the mid-17th Century.

Not mentioned: In the 13th Century Genghis Khan’s forces killed perhaps 40 million people, while the transition from the Yuan Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty in 14th Century China caused 30 million deaths. China has a history of extremely bloody conflicts, yet these have mostly not affected Europe in any direct way (luckily for us Genghis Khan died before he could ransack the entire old world). While not detracting from the suffering and horror of those conflicts, ‘The Great War’ was so shocking to Europeans because we hadn’t seen it’s like before.

“In history” is a phrase uttered by English speaking nations generally to refer in a rather arrogant way exclusively to the history of Europe and its colonies. Despite the size and duration of the dynastic empires and technology centuries in advance of ours we habitually omit China from historical accounts. Introducing Chinese history to this argument is somewhat beside the point because the issue here is the European concept of history and its effect on our culture.

During the English Civil war the population of Britain was approx. 5 million and 4% of that equals about 200,000 deaths (causes not mentioned). In 1914 the population was over 46 million and 2% of that is about 920,000. Mr Snow is telling us here to view the number of British deaths as a percentage of the number of people alive in Britain at the time so that we can see the impact of WW1 wasn’t as bad as the impact of the Civil War. Remember this for later when we get to myth 6.

17 million in total were killed in WW1 and 20 million were wounded. There’s no discussion about the wounded or the causes of such a high number. This is something that requires further information if the comparisons are to be of any use. And numbers of wounded from the Taiping rebellion and the English Civil War ought to be included as measuring the ‘bloodiness’ of a war shouldn’t be limited to number of deaths.

Of the 6.5 million civilians who died in WW1, the causes include malnutrition and disease. The Taiping death toll mentioned includes those who died from plague and starvation. If we add those who died in the 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic to the WW1 casualties the number rises to at least 65 million deaths. The much deadlier second wave of the flu in 1918 has been attributed to the circumstances of WW1, making the secondary effects of that war global. It’s believed Spanish Flu killed in total 50 to 100 million people worldwide.

WW1 lasted just 4 years, not 15 years like the Taiping Rebellion or 9 years like the English Civil War. If WW1 had continued for more than twice its duration who can estimate what levels of starvation and sickness would have occurred, what advances in technology or how many would have been killed in action? To express the number of dead as a percentage of the population without then comparing duration is misleading and counter-productive if one’s goal is to inform and provide context.

Result: Not really a myth. The attempt at debunking is clumsy and inappropriate. Put this information in a proper, complete context and then see if any other European conflict up to that point had effects as far reaching with as many casualties over such a short period of time, and include the lives ruined and the suffering of the wounded in any attempt to quantify how ‘bloody’ a war was.


Myth 2. Most soldiers died

Debunked? Not a myth I was aware of. Having seen many examples of footage showing the wounded, including blind soldiers walking in line with hands on each others’ shoulders, and judging from the 20 million wounded mentioned above, I’m unsure where this myth comes from.

Not mentioned: Surviving a war does not mean the effects of it have ended, nor the suffering. The blind, shell-shocked and mutilated survivors returning to Britain after the war were a continuation of it’s horrors, not a peaceful end to them.

Result: Not a myth I had heard of.


Myth 3. Men lived in the trenches for years on end

Debunked? Frontline troops were rotated and few spent more than 3 days at the front.

Result: I lack the knowledge to engage with this point, but I was surprised to hear it. If Mr Snow is telling the unclouded truth here then I would agree that the myth is in contrast to the facts – if they are facts and not out of context statistics that neglect pertinent data.

[EDIT - from Blueprint For Armageddon, it sounds like the three days at the front claim is incorrect. Troops were rotated once it was realised 'shell shock' was a real condition, but contemporary accounts and military strategies discussed in the podcast suggest weeks rather than days were the norm. Even so, and even if the rotations were speeded up later in the war, the conditions these men were under would have been Hellish for just half an hour. Shells fell in what became known as 'drum-roll fire', exploding so frequently the blasts were like the barely indistinguishable beats of a drum-roll. An account by a Russian soldier described how when his unit was issued with their rifles they had to pick off the pieces of bloody flesh of the previous owner. 

If the 3 day rotations Mr Snow is referring to are from the last part of the war or from specific battlefields, then he has neglected pertinent information, cherry-picked statistics to fit his claim, and the claim is wrong. I doubt anyone lived in the trenches for years on end, nor have I heard that said. It is more likely people would believe the soldiers were killed at the front. 

Challenging a 'myth' about trenches with a claim about the front line also neglects the fact that trenches ran back several miles from the front lines, connected by perpendicular trenches. Troops at the front might be rotated and replaced, but that doesn't mean they were sent off to pleasant locations to relax. Many were merely moved to the trenches further back, risking life and limb to get there as artillery often shot deep into enemy territory and the communication trenches could be reduced to mere tracks. Craters along the routes in some battlefields could be so polluted by toxic chemicals they were bright green and so deep soldiers who fell in usually drowned, weighed down by their kit. Anyone trying to help them out risked slipping in the mud and drowning with them so they could expect to be left to die horribly in their own territory miles from the front on their way to relieve the troops there. The troops heading back from the front line ran the exact same risks and would then be ordered back again when it was once more their turn. If they refused they were shot and their widows were denied a war pension.]


4. The upper class got off lightly

Debunked? Anyone familiar with Blackadder Goes Forth (a programme Michael Gove quoted as being a source of left-wing myths about WW1) would be under the impression the upper class were just as badly off as everyone else unless they were a senior officer or stationed safely back in HQ.

Expressed as percentages, the statistics are that 12% of ordinary soldiers died compared to 17% of officers. 20% of Etonians who served died.

Not mentioned: Yes, the sons of Prime Ministers were among those killed, but it’s important to remember the culture around warfare at the time. Combat was thought to be the making of men of the upper classes, while for the working class it was all about sending in large numbers.

British junior officers were deployed in high numbers, roughly 1 to every 30 men. In terms of casualties, officers accounted for roughly 1 in 20 men. So although many officers died, far more working class soldiers died.

The Western Front, July to December of 1917 saw 22,316 British officer casualties and 426,298 other ranks.

Result: This myth fell out of fashion a long time ago, but assuring us lots of toffs were killed too doesn’t lessen how shocking the war was. In fact it demonstrates it. That shock became part of our culture and is still being felt today.

Comparing the percentage of upper class casualties to the number in the population then contrasting it with the number of lower class casualties compared to the total lower class population would give a very different statistic to simply comparing the percentage of war dead who were upper class.


Myth 5. 'Lions led by donkeys'

Debunked? More than 200 generals killed, wounded or captured and were considerably closer to the action today.

Not mentioned: Even the worst generals need to be in contact with the front. WW1’s cables, carrier pigeons and man with a note communications technology meant officers had to be nearby compared to modern warfare with satellites and drones that allow generals to be in another country to the conflict they oversee. Had the article compared the number of generals at the front in WW1 to those in, say, ancient times where they needed to see the action for themselves so would be at the top of a nearby hill then WW1 commanders would come off badly.

The quote was quite possibly invented by Alan Clark long after the war, but has complex origins. Like any generalisation of this kind, it should be seen as a subjective viewpoint expressing an opinion. It’s an insult, for goodness’ sake, so of course it’s going to divide opinion. The question isn’t whether it’s true but whether there is any truth in it.

When the French and British stopped the German advance at Marne they could no longer outflank the German army, so for several years they launched charge after charge across shell-cratered mud into barbed wire, trenches, machine gun posts and artillery fire in an attempt to gain ground. This tactic didn’t work, but eventually Germany was defeated. Could or should this have been done differently?

Result: Too subjective to call. Human failings, a terrible wake-up call for the military and what might seem to some a very slow response to the requirements of modern warfare. “Yes, but we won,” is not a credible argument as the point here is that millions died while we went about it. If a business model had performed as badly for a company over several years and then eventually the CEO tried something new and turned everything around we might still say that CEO was a fool for taking so long. The question is whether the necessary adaptations could have happened sooner and if deaths could have been avoided. Answers on a postcard.

[EDIT - One problem with the technological advances and the change of strategies was that no one had tried them before. Generals were reluctant to commit to a new strategy without knowing its effectiveness. Tests were needed in less vital positions first, but if they proved effective the enemy were pre-warned before they could be used for greater impact in more vital positions. 

Meanwhile, some units were steeped in historical glory and many senior officers were former cavalry; asking them to accept obsolescence was something many were reluctant to do and it was in conflict with the prevailing view of how wars should be faught. Lifetimes of experience were being swept aside and that meant the commanders of the armies had no way of being prepared for what was asked of them. 

This is Napolean's French cavalry in 1812...
Image via www.twcenter.net

This, I'm told, is a coloured image (via Reddit) of French cavalry in 1914. 

Notice anything different about the cuirassiers in the second picture from a century later? Their breeches are red.  

French cuirassiers in Paris, August 1914.
Image from Wikipedia.

Arguments have been made that by later in the war the commanders should have adapted to the situations they faced. These are arguments you would need to do a great deal of reading to join in with and I have not done nearly enough to do so.]

Myth 6. Gallipoli was fought by Australians and New Zealanders

Debunked? Fewer antipodeans fought at Gallipoli than British, and 4 or 5 times more British were killed than Anzacs. The smaller sizes of those countries’ forces and home populations have somewhat skewed the perception of their level of their involvement and their tragic losses have overshadowed the British and French who fought there.

Not mentioned: This may be true, but to argue the point Mr Snow uses the exact opposite stance to the one he used in myth 1 to demonstrate how comparatively less bloody WW1 was than the English Civil War.

Result: Myth. Mel Gibson’s early starring role in the film Gallipoli has probably added considerably to this myth. Perhaps the tragedy of the Australian and Kiwi losses has given cause to focus on them in this instance.

Gaba Tepe, Gallipoli Peninsula 

It’s worth saying that if an historian chooses to illustrate a point one way, then uses the exact opposite perspective to demonstrate a point later on, it makes it hard to agree with him. Percentages of the total national population killed or wounded are merely statistics with no weight out of context. Neither points are incorrect, but WW1 can’t be said to be less bloody than the Civil War by percentage of population if later on you switch tactics and compare total numbers of nationalities killed. It’s inconsistent.

Gallipoli has probably been remembered as an Anzac battle because so many of the total number of troops committed died there; meanwhile WW1 has been remembered on the whole as a slaughterhouse for ordinary soldiers because, despite the 1 in 20 (mostly junior) officer casualties, so very many ordinary soldiers died. A large percentage of officers were killed, but if you compare with the 20 times larger number of ordinary soldiers killed the 12% vs. 17% statistics mentioned in myth 4 above become meaningless.

What this tells us is that we view the information emotionally, not in a detached, book-keeping manner where we enter the numbers of the dead into columns and total them up at the end. And if we have decided to put the numbers in columns we had better make sure we work consistently if we want our arguments to be convincing.


Myth 7. Tactics on the Western Front remained unchanged despite repeated failure

Debunked? In the four years of WW1 tactics and technology radically changed.

Not mentioned: When they changed. How long did the old-fashioned attrition and slaughter keep going before they tried something new?

German cavalry patrol, 1918
Image source: museumsyndicate.com

Result: Subjective and requiring further information. Only automatons would fail to perceive the need to alter tactics while so many men were being gunned down. The question is the same as for myth 5: Could the changes have come quicker? Back then the British military wasn’t known for adapting quickly. What made them change when they did? Did something stop the necessary changes happening immediately after the first disastrous encounter and if so was it a failing on the part of the commanders? 

[EDIT - see above edit to Myth 5. Tactics for many began like any other war up until that point. They quickly changed, but some things, some attitudes were less quick to change. Cavalry charges were obsolete, but horses were still the fastest transport available. Artillery became so devastating entire fortresses were abandoned as they were shown to be useless, torn open like fresh bread and from miles away. Some tactics did change, some did not, some were changed cautiously.]


Myth 8. No-one won

Debunked? Mr Snow says “in a narrow military sense, the UK and her allies convincingly won”. 

Not mentioned: What the war was being fought over in the first place.

[EDIT - Germany had no plan for what they would do if they won the war. My limited understanding is that, to oversimplify, Germany was a new, large and very powerful country. During escalating hostilities they marched an army through Belgium to fight France before France and Russia could mobilise and surround them. The Belgians did not stand aside and let the Germans through unmolested, they defended their territory and the British stepped up to assist. Germany was not building an empire, they were most likely acting out of the fear of being invaded and becoming part of someone else's empire. The fear of superior military might led to aggression on all sides. Various treaties sealed the deal.]  

Result: It was a military victory in the “narrow sense” (translation: there wasn’t much to celebrate about it, all things considered, except that it was over) that it was a miserable, technical and perhaps pyrrhic victory, but the families, loved ones and whole villages that were never to see the return of their men must surely have felt no kind of victory at all. That's why WW1 is remembered by many as a tragedy and a failure.

Michael Gove would have us believe WW1 was a triumph over an empire-building aggressor who challenged our way of life, but he seems to have forgotten that at that time Britain had an empire of its own and was not yet a full democracy, whereas Germany had given the vote to all German men (at least) by that time. I know too little of the complex politics of the day to make a judgement, but saying we defeated an evil foreign power is over-simplifying matters considerably and seems to conflate WW1 with WW2. Comparing those wars, I don’t believe anyone is confused over what our purpose was between 1939 and 1945 nor what we averted by winning. Retroactively casting the Kaiser as a proto-Hitler is misdirection. History is complex, but becomes remarkably simple if you remove the details until few facts remain. This is how we end up with myths and Gove is trying to supplant one set with another, while the truth is harder to fit into a political speech.

Ask most British people what WW2 was about and they’ll probably say it was to stop Hitler.

Ask Google Images and you get a straightforward graph. 

Ask even the educated what WW1 was about and I’d be surprised if most of them can give you much of an answer at all beyond muttering about treaties and the Arch-Duke Ferdinand.

And the graph is a bit harder to understand. 

If you’re talking about who won a war you have to consider what the aims of each side were. Strange as it sounds, beating the enemy into submission may not be your objective and in some cases can cause big problems. Claiming a victory when the objectives are far from clear is the school playground version of war. Only a complete understanding of the circumstances prior to, during and after the war will tell you who won. If anyone.

Myth 9. The Versailles Treaty was extremely harsh

Debunked? I leave this one to the experts as it’s rather technical. It’s likely things were distorted by some in the following years in order to promote the Nazi cause and rally the German people. There will be those who felt they had a genuine grievance, just as (hopefully not to insult the memory of such colossal suffering with such an inane analogy) many smokers today will talk at length about their freedom and rights to smoke where they want. My point is that whether something is fair or harsh is entirely subjective and even relatively small things can become the cause of great dissatisfaction. 

Result: Unknown.


Myth 10. Everyone hated it

Debunked? Not everyone had a bad war.

Not mentioned: As seen in most post-1970s war films, there’s a persistent idea that opportunists took advantage of war for their own personal gain and had a good time going about it. Whether rich investors, governments acquiring land and resources, quartermasters over-charging for supplies or Clint Eastwood stealing Nazi gold, this trope has become a familiar aspect of fictional war stories.

Result: Not a common myth. The common myth is more likely that the officers thoroughly enjoyed themselves while the other ranks under their command died.

For centuries a foundation of war was that combat made boys into men, both psychologically and, more commonly for the elite, financially; that it made nations greater, both in size and resources. WW1 began while that view was still widespread, but by the end of the war attitudes had changed.

***

Whether WW1 in its 4 years was less bloody than an earlier 15 year war in China, whether the wounded outnumbered the fatalities, whether an unusual proportion of the upper classes was killed in action, whether the generals were decent men facing difficult decisions and adapting to new circumstances or entrenched old fools resisting change at the cost of people’s lives; none of that, 100 years on, is what really matters.

Celebrating Armistice 

In the last few decades there has been a trend among some historians to re-think the circumstances of WW1 and re-frame it as a fight for British values against an aggressive enemy. This is no more accurate than the view it was an accidental and mismanaged disaster from beginning to end. Any historian, politician or television presenter casting WW1 in a simple light either has an agenda they wish you to comply to or hasn’t done enough homework. It was complicated, it was horrible, it was the cause of much suffering and has entered popular culture as a preventable tragic mistake. Any argument popularising a view that a war, any war, was a good idea needs to be examined very closely.

Vaux, France 1918 

Dan Snow’s article contains factual information wrapped in meaningless statistics in a poorly executed attempt to contextualise WW1, at times relying on contradictory arguments and inconsistent perspectives. I question the sense and the purpose of writing an article on the subject so soon after Michael Gove made his controversial speech and attempting to reduce so much of the information to hard quantifiable ‘facts’. Statistics aren’t facts, they’re tools and like any tool they can be used badly.