Daydream nation: Just like Catherine Bennett, I've up to here with bread
and circuses. Is that all folks? No, the curtain's just gone up on a summer
of fun, fun, fun:
'Although it is not in Blair's power, even as saviour of the world, to increase
the frequency of international football tournaments, golden jubilees, or deaths
of well-loved monarchs in their 102nd year, that is not to say he cannot find
other ways of endearing himself to the populace, as the Caesars once did to
the plebs with chariot races and gladiatorial combat, comedies and boxing matches.'
How else to distract us from the lunacies of the state? Bennett quotes from
Jérôme Carcopino's Daily Life in Ancient Rome: 'By the time of Claudius...
"the Roman calendar contained 159 days expressly marked as holidays, of
which 93 were devoted to games given at public expense". Romans enjoyed at
least one day of holiday for every working day. In return for these favours,
the Caesars obtained both the adulation and quiescence of the mob.'
She quotes Sebastian Haffner on Nazi Germany: 'one was permanently occupied
and distracted by an unending sequence of celebrations, ceremonies, and national
festivities... The colossal emptiness and lack of meaning of these never-ending
events was by no means unintentional. The population should become used to cheering
and jubilation, even when there was no visible reason for it... Was it not wonderful
to celebrate in the spring sunshine, in squares decked with flags'. [Guardian].
In Brave New World, Huxley projects this never-ending sunshine onto an England
of the future. And, blinded by the light, here we are: thank Ford, everybody's
happy nowadays. Bah humbug!
