So, I eventually go around sitting down and watching the first few episodes of The Pacific. The build up to this programme was nothing less than Hollywood in its execution. Thousands of mini advertisements whistling across television; epic statements of the programme’s scope, appeared on celluloid and digital screens in cinemas; its status as the sequel to Band of Brother’s was made evident. The Pacific is a veritable beast of the television medium. In the UK it was attached to Sky, for syndication on their movie network of channels. I don’t think any television series has previously garnered that level of anticipation. It says a lot about the power of television at present.

American television has been going through something of a golden age from, maybe, the start of the new century. Multiple candidates for the finest television programme ever made have appeared in those years, with some of the candidates significant assessments of society in general, the nature of life and death, history and politics. All themes frequently found in other artistic mediums. That reality seems to be at the centre of this revolution in television. Where productions houses previously focused their efforts on locating major genre staples like detective dramas and sitcoms etc, an element of the programming of the recent period contains higher aspirations. That is not to say that the vast majority of modern television is not exactly the same as before; with continued investment in many situational comedies and police procedure shows – not to mention the new fad of reality escapades. The thing is, today there seems to be an appetite for something more than the familiar genre entries. And, currently, this appetite is finding a home in quality production.

The US premium channel Home Box Office is, of course, the finest purveyor of this serious programming. Each television season they produce at least one addition to the quality cannon, be it their Original Series brand, their miniseries collection, or a new documentary or two. But other players have entered the market in recent years, challenging HBO’s runaway success at the Emmy awards (US TV’s Oscars), including Showtime and AMC. It is interesting to note that major film producers and directors have begun to view the medium as a significant rival to Hollywood. Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott and Michael Mann have recently begun development of shows; for many years top acting talent has entered the billing, winning various plaudits.  Top writers are understood to be aiming for the major TV production companies, to coincide with the standard endeavour to shop a movie script. Indeed, many of the well known Hollywood studies have television production departments: Universal, Paramount, etc.

Such is the climate in which The Pacific appears. Tom Hank’s production company Playtone (track record includes Band of Brother’s, of course, the outstanding John Adams and a number of films); teams up with HBO and DreamWorks, Steven Spielberg’s enormous Hollywood studio. Literally a meeting of the top studios in the business. I’m four episodes in and it is savage military theatre – sweeping, visceral, ferocious. Two scenes already rival the infamous opening salvo of Saving Private Ryan. Script is a bit stodgy, though, and the characters pale when compared to that band of brother’s who marched across Europe. Let’s see if it picks up.

I endeavoured to follow through my readings of the Vietnam conflict, from my last post, with a shopping excursion to right my centre of gravity and ensure that I tackle the history from every angle – well, more than one. Being a historian first and foremost this is part of the obligation that is owed to the seriousness of the subject, apparently. I, of course, am not a historian, but I can read and do and pretend at the writing part.  My esteemed colleague, of the Secular Sundays posts, lent me his encyclopaedic knowledge of sixties and seventies American writings with a collection of Michael Herr-equalling shots of literature to vacuum up my soul into the US Armed Forces. Two things happened to impel a slight discursion on my Nam – centric world view.

• Firstly, while perusing the four epic floors of Hodges Figges (certainly they must have every book in the world) I found (as is normal practice for me) I couldn’t find two of the books on my list. Being a total independent I refused to ask for help from the staff, so I started to flick through the recently published section. My United States historiafied mind saw David Halberstam’s The Coldest Winter sitting in a paperback edition, then sitting on the shop counter and then travelling to my home in a paper bag. I forgot to continue looking for the books I came in for; I plowed through the sharp chapters of Halberstam and fell into the Korean War.

• Secondly, I discovered the flawless work of stunning breadth that is Generation Kill, David Simon and Ed Burn’s (The Wire in television, The Corner in non-fiction gold-medal genius) play-like adaptation, of the book of the same name, following a first recon division in the Second Iraq conflict; as they weave through the desert mess of former-Mesopotamia and founder in the incompetence of the United States strategic armed forces.

Halberstam, very sadly, passed away not long after he finished work on this tome. I had for a long time meant to pick up just one of his many searing topical books, which tackle US history. The Coldest Winter is a lengthy walk through the miserable counter-Soviet, counter-Communist mess that was the three year Korean conflict. A prelude to Vietnam and the half a dozen later skirmishes with Soviet imperialist agenda, the Korean War was as much an aberration of modern war as it was a dynamic statement of US hegemony in East Asia. Akin to Nam, where the terrain was as much hostile as the opposition, Korea was simply staggeringly poor conditions. One of the major themes of the book (and which I intend to pursue in a later post on Korea) was the ineptitude of Douglas MacArthur. True the man was very old at this stage, but to say he was mildly sluggish when the North invaded in the South, would be an understatement. I found myself once again agog that MacArthur was so immune to any negativity: having recently read Max Hastings authoritative work on the final stages of the US pacific campaign of WWII, Nemesis, were Hastings depicted MacArthur as, definitively, a loose cannon, and, likely, insane. It was interesting (read: horrifying) to see this consistent interpretation of the Pacific Supreme Commander, and American warhero, continue into the opening pages of The Coldest Winter.

I could not fail to draw comparisons to Michael Herr’s withering portrayal of MACV which spent its time effectively trying to make it appear as though the Americans were winning when they were clearly not. MacArthur, following absurd decisions carried over from the pacific campaign, deliberately refused to use any intelligence that did not specifically agree with his own strategic opinion. This fantasy existed until it was fatal, and then frequently was ignored – though MacArthur was eventually found out in Korea. Most of this madness was rolling around my mind when I sat down and watched the first three episodes of Generation Kill. Not surprisingly the themes reappeared with the narrative following the grunts on the ground in Iraq, as they encounter the Ba’athists in a sea of despairing locals. Once again the strategic objective is poorly actioned, or hopelessly ignored. This, of course, does not lessen the impact of this finely crafted story. I mentioned above that it has a play-like feel to it – and this is no joke. Absolute rivers of dialogue materialise and hang around the scenes. In a similar way to how, say, Tarantino pours forth the open conversations, walling in the tale; Generation Kill is hilarious and serious in equal measure. I shall wander through the rest of the episodes, as I sit and wait out The Pacific which lands next month. I wonder how they will deal with MacArthur in that programme.

I am too full of turkey, and there are too many unopened bottles of Tyskie in the fridge, (not to mention the fact of a new baby demanding attention) for me to spend too much time typing this week. In fact, I just want to alert readers to some Christmas TV – the excellent Orson Welles season on BBC 4 continues this evening and ‘The Dead’, John Huston’s fabulous rendering of, arguably, the complete (perfect?) short story is on RTÉ tomorrow evening. As Fintan O’Toole wrote last week in the Irish Times, it is impossible now to read ‘The Dead’ and imagine Gabriel as anyone other than the magnificent Donal McCann.

Finally, some words from James Joyce to end 2009 – chosen, from ‘The Dead’, for absolutely no reason other than their simplicity and beauty:

The patting at once grew louder in encouragement and then ceased altogether. Gabriel leaned his ten trembling fingers on the tablecloth and smiled nervously at the company. Meeting a row of upturned faces he raised his eyes to the chandelier. The piano was playing a waltz tune and he could hear the skirts sweeping against the drawing-room door. People, perhaps, were standing in the snow on the quay outside, gazing up at the lighted windows and listening to the waltz music. The air was pure there. In the distance lay the park where the trees were weighted with snow. The Wellington Monument wore a gleaming cap of snow that flashed westward over the white field of Fifteen Acres. (Dubliners, Triad/Grafton p230)

The most interesting, and the best film of the night, and indeed the reason I was moved to write this, was the documentary on the poet Stevie Smith. This was a fascinating, bizarre, idiosyncratic look at the poet, of whom, I am ashamed to admit, I had never heard, but who seems to have been, herself, fascinating, bizarre and idiosyncratic. The film itself was an engrossing study of middle-class English suburbia, something that is, as it turns out, quite exotic. The interviews with her (all fairly eloquent) neighbours was a refreshing change from the usual parade of talking heads, and the brief glimpse into their stiff, formal, dreary (to my eye at least) front rooms, was a glimpse into a strange world. Here we learn about the kind of hat she wore upon being invited to meet the Queen. We are told about the afternoons that she came to “take tea” and the pinafore dresses and white socks she liked to wear. One interviewee is questioned by the local hairdresser, a Ms Ballard (fittingly enough in a study of art produced from suburbia), at the end of which she is interrupted by a Mrs Lambert – in to make an appointment “Oh good morning Mrs Lambert, would you like to make an appointment”. That’s the kind of film it is. The front rooms are what I woke this morning (or this afternoon, to be pedantic about it) thinking about – dull and staid rooms, the kind of rooms kids, you imagine, would not be allowed to enter, lest they break the ugly glass animals or the plates marking various royal occasions. One elderly couple sat in a front room on huge black sofa, that seemed to curve around a good part of the room, looking for all the world like some piece of S&M equipment and entirely, weirdly incongruous.
An excellent, quirky film that serves as a study of middle-class British suburbia as well as a compelling, compassionate view of someone whose books I will most certainly seek out and read. I particularly want, on my shelves, the poem that contained the fabulous, tragi-comic lines that were quoted so often throughout the film:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving, but drowning.

Finally, to return to the pinafore dresses, earlier today, when putting myself through the ritual self-punishment that is my Sunday 13 mile run I was, contrary to habit, thinking. I was thinking about the programmes and the poets and what, if anything links them. Or, rather, the thing that I think that links them – childhood. In the Smith documentary, much is made of her child-like dress sense and, indeed, the perceived child-like nature of her lifestyle and poetry. Someone in the film mentions how she brought the child into adulthood. This is, to my mind, what links the poets, Thomas, Hughes and Smith, and Owen, in that the destruction of youth was his subject and his fate. The first three, though, especially have all been described as childlike and it is this quality that seemed to add to the air of tragedy and sadness associated with them. Certainly Thomas is described as being like a child, and his poetry contains a child-like playfulness, exuberance, and sense of wonder - though he is also described as being cynical, a ‘sponger’ and a manipulator. Hughes too, is formed by and retains the habits he acquired as a child, however sophisticated his poetry and thought. The letters from his youth display a precocious talent and literacy and literariness, however, as he grows older they never quite lose a naïve quality, particularly the letters to his brother proposing plans and schemes that would enable this brother to return from Australia.

That person, in the Smith film, mentions that this retention of the child in adulthood is dangerous, as there is nothing as vulnerable in the adult world, as a child. To be a poet, however, perhaps it is necessary to regard life with the wonder of childhood, to look and listen with the opennness of the child, with as few of the protective, but obfuscating layers of the super-ego as possible.