Necromancy considered as a subsidised performance art

See http://www.iomtoday.co.im/what-s-on/manx-entertainment-news/manx-passion-play-to-be-performed-around-isle-of-man-over-easter-1-6552955 for the latest episode in “Year of The C Word”.

Sorry to go on about it, but however cretinous this whole exercise is panning out to be there is a serious point. Culture is now a bit of a buzz word, especially amongst conservatives and bigots, but it still gets used as ignorantly as the time when some chinless Cambridge inbreed or other misused the word in front of an uppity grammar school boy called Raymond Williams back in.. oh, maybe the 1940's. This led Williams to look into the matter rather more seriously and he went on to found what later became Cultural Studies (along with some similarly uppity blacks, gays and girlies who kept redefining the term on finding it didn't seem to include them either). And that was all good, intelligent and positive stuff.

So different to today, when anyone who tries to take politics seriously is told that “nobody talks about class”, though the “nobody” who isn't talking about it is also a tiny subculture - but sadly one which just happens to run everything. More precisely, that “nobody” does not want to acknowledge that class divisions are getting worse and the local nobody cannot acknowledge that Manx society has an underclass that is trapped from the cradle to the grave as surely as the Welfare State project (now abandoned) was supposed to be a safety net against such problems.

And as for race..............

In the Isle of Man nobody in government (either the politicians or civil service mandarins) wants to talk about race, for fear of having to consider how racist the island still is. So maybe “culture” is little more than an excuse to continue racist prejudice now that a more open system of apartheid is no longer possible.

And eventually, who decides what “Manx culture” is anyway? Certainly not ordinary Manx residents, to whom this crap is about as relevant or recognisable as Moon rocks.

“Ours”? No, just “theirs” - and “they” are neither many nor approachable.

Which brings us to this shining example of Culture as something that is a bit icky-poo and badly needs spoon-feeding. This event has been subsidised to hell and back, so on that basis we can safely identify it as the art bore equivalent of a Nil By Mouth hospital patient.

Though, of course, in the worlds of art and culture attitudes are so Catholic. Everything that might otherwise get quietly knocked on the head seems to be a cause celebre for some vociferous Right To Lifer. Considering how dominated proceedings will be by acolytes of the Zombie Carpenter, turning up to watch this show will be like being trapped in an advocate's waiting room after a hospice death.

It sounds like the kind of gig most would pay to get out of, not into. Be grateful, then, that most if it takes place in the kind of god-forsaken bat sanctuaries most of us in these enlightened days will never even be seen dead in.