Showing posts with label 1984. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1984. Show all posts

7 Jan 2024

My Brush with Scientology

Results of the Standard Oxford Capacity Analysis [1]
which I completed on 9 November 1984
 
 
Watching an episode of Peep Show in which Jez and Super Hans join a religious cult [2], reminded me that I was once persuaded to take a free personality test administered by the Church of Scientology ...


Friday 9 November 1984 [3]
 
Assured that it wouldn't take more than twenty minutes to complete and that I'd have the results within the hour - and as it's always amusing to discover how others see one - I agreed. Of the 200 multiple choice questions, I answered 198 and left two blank; one that was too stupid to even consider and one concerning my voting habits (as an anarchist, that's not a political process I participate in).  
      Afterwards, I went to Dillons to look for a book on fairy tales by Jack Zipes, recommended to me by Malcolm. On the way back, I stopped to pick up my test and was given a brief explanation of the results (all conveniently plotted on a graph) by a friendly (though somewhat earnest) young woman who said, amongst other things, I was depressed, nervous, overly critical, and irresponsible
      All of these things may very well be true, but I begged to differ with her conclusion that I was in need of urgent attention - although everyone at Charisma seemed to think that was probably the case, particularly Jon, who found it all very amusing.     
 
      
Notes
 
[1] The Standard Oxford Capacity Analysis is a long list of questions (each of which can be answered yes, no, or maybe) purporting to be personality test and administered for free by the Church of Scientology as an important part of its global recruitment process. 
      However, it is not a scientifically recognised test and has been criticised by numerous professional bodies. The results of the test are invariably negative, as might be expected.
 
[2] Peep Show, episode six of series five; 'Mark's Women' (dir. Becky Martin, 2008).
      Jez and Hans are busking opposite The New Wellness Centre operated by a mysterious new religious movement (don't call it a cult). Deciding that it will be warmer in the Centre and that it might also be fun to laugh at the freaks, they go inside, only to then sign up as fervent new members. Click here and here for a couple of clips on Youtube.  
 
[3] This is (a slightly revised) entry from The Von Hell Diaries (1980-89). 
      Just to clarify: Dillons was a famous Bloomsbury bookshop (founded by Una Dillon in 1936); Jack Zipes is an American professor of German literature and cultural studies (the book I wanted was Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales (1979); the Malcolm that I mention is Malcolm McLaren; Charisma was a famous independent record label based in Soho; Jon is Jon Crawley, director of Charisma Music Publishing.  
 

19 Sept 2014

The Handmaid's Tale

Cover to first hardback edition
(McCelland and Stewart, 1985)


I read The Handmaid's Tale full of high hopes and great expectations, aware of the critical status of this novel and sympathetic to any literary attempt to warn against authoritarian states - particularly ones underpinned by religious fundamentalism. But, I have to say, I found it disappointing.

Atwood rather cleverly combines some of the queer gothic elements of The Scarlet Letter with those twentieth century classics of dystopian fiction Brave New World and 1984. But whereas the latter, for example, challenges us to imagine a future in which a boot stamps on a human face forever, The Handmaid's Tale asks us to believe in a time when power nakedly manifests itself over an illicit game of Scrabble.

This might be making a point about the often banal and domestic character of evil, but, I must confess, I found it ludicrous. And, unfortunately, there were other things which served only to undermine the seriousness and the horror of the story. One should wince at the publicly displayed bodies of executed prisoners, but not at the clunkiness of dialogue exchanged between characters - even when spoken in the Latin that both Luke and the Commander for some peculiar reason had a penchant for.

I also think we could have done without the puns and without Nick, the chauffeur-lover, playing an almost Lawrentian role in the book. As for the 'Historical Notes' which Atwood attaches as an afterword, these too only serve to weaken the power of the novel which ends with an otherwise very memorable and moving last line: "And so I step, into the darkness within; or else the light."

Again, Atwood might be trying to make a (feminist) point about the manner in which an authentic female voice speaking its own experiences and memories is eventually transcribed, edited, and absorbed into an academic world (i.e. a system of power and privilege) still controlled by pricks such as Professor Pieixoto. But I agree entirely with Joyce Carol Oates who comments on the deflating effect of this heavily ironic coda:

"The appendix makes of the novel an astute, provocative social commentary, where its absence would have made the novel an abiding work of art ending with Offred's hopeful voice ..."     

Sometimes, as a writer, you just gotta know when to shut-up. And, ultimately, literature's not about scoring easy points or making lame jokes.  


Note: Joyce Carol Oates was writing in a piece entitled 'Margaret Atwood's Tale', in The New York Review of Books (Nov 2, 2006). Those interested in reading her article in full should click here.