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June 13, 2008 6:48 AM
Avoiding the Very Appearance of Conviction
One of the great consumer treasure-values of our age is the boxed-DVD set--hours of entertainment, shrink-wrapped in high gloss, four-color splendour. It is late night cereal for the mind--and I must not be the only one to think so, because Barnes & Noble has dedicated whole sections of the store to the stuff. Thirty episodes of Andy Griffith for $29.95? That's like stocking the pantry for free.
I started in on Foyle's War, I suppose because the hook was interesting: the life of a crime-investigator in the midst of World War II Britain. Truth be told, with the exception of the winsome actress playing Samantha Stewart (Honeysuckle Weeks), and the lush art direction, it's not that great a show, but it confirmed a long-percolating impression I have been forming about contemporary British values: the Brits seem to worship moral and spiritual understatement. They really don't trust anyone who gets too excited--about anything.
For a nation that produced Monty Python and Robin Leach and the London Tabloid press, that may seem odd, but in the person of Detective Christopher Foyle (Michael Kitchen), we have a British archetype: the calm, well-mannered Englishman who could, in the aftermath of a homicide, sip tea and survey brain-tissue splattered all over the walls--with no more comment than "sad, that."
For this very understatement, Kitchen's performance is very watchable. It's something like following a calm Franciscan around on the battlefield, or even a bit like hearing Tony Blair's "measured-response-speak" in reaction to Jihad. In one episode Foyle's son refuses to take any heroic credit for fighting the airborn Nazis with his Spitfire. We are left to believe it's just a dirty, necessary business:
No heroes, please. We're British.
Let's review. The premise is that England is fighting the Nazis, but instead of giving the English nation a dose of credit for staving off totalitarianism, the show seems to revel in the petty venality of making small profits off the war, ignoring ration laws, and departmental infighting among the Allies. (Of course, if an American can be made to look like a philistine, that's fair game too.) The thematic production memo seems to have gone out saying, "look, people, we know we're fighting genocidal, racist killers, but let's not take any pride in that."
It has been widely reported that in both Canada and England, a politician has to be very careful about announcing his faith. Tony Blair, in converting to Catholicism, for example, was reported to have been aware that "going God" was perceived by many as "going nutter." It's an odd reality that a nation whose history features so many Christian martyrs and so many champions for the cause of English liberty, would also take such pride in avoiding the very appearance of flamboyance--even at the price of ignoring moral truth.
More of the Farm Journal -- June 12, 2008
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