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It was no-one what done it
Jul. 12th, 2009 02:27 pmOne of the most dangerous sentence forms is the passive voice. Not for nothing is one of the (many) rules of journalism, "use the active voice unless it absolutely can't be avoided".
Unfortunately, in the real world, I'm encountering the passive voice more and more often. A couple of weeks ago a sales guy said to me, referring to an extremely dodgy contract that another sales guy had sold a couple of years previously, "They were sold a dodgy contract". Not "X sold them a dodgy contract", or "we sold a dodgy contract", because that would have shown where the blame lay. By putting something into the passive voice, the blame is "dissipated".
Then, yesterday, in what looks likely to become one of the great tragic cases of modern teaching (the arrest for attempted murder of a much-liked teacher at a school in Mansfield), headteacher Maureen Corbett wrote a letter to parents of the school. This letter should be taken up by Nigel Planer in his "master class" series on BBC (a new one this week on BBC 4, don't miss it);
Ms Corbett wrote:
Any apologist for this kind of sentence construction has spent too long either politicking or working in a spin department. I'm almost surprised that the letter didn't open with the sentence "This letter is being written to you...." which would have made the passive constructions four for four.
But the whole article isn't that much better. It begins with "A science teacher has been charged...", and in para 2 starts "The pupil, who was seriously injured..." and, with one active construction at the start of para 3, returns to the passive at the start of paragraphs 4, 5 and 6. And the quote from the police officer in the case actually does achieve the gold medal of four for four. On the other hand, I can understand it in the police officer's case, because policespeak is universally in the passive and, as far as I recall, has been for as long as I have been able to read.
+++++++++++
Mark Lawson wrote a piece in yesterday's Guardian on "sexism in TV". The general thrust of his argument, with which I do not disagree, is that for women there is an "age apartheid" that very few can defeat. This applies to acting and to presenting. The trigger for the Lawson article was the replacement of Arlene Phillips.
Where I disagree with Lawson is his conclusion that it's a "Strictly Come Sexism" matter. It's an ageism matter. Basically, if you are a young woman you have a better chance than a young man of moving ahead quickly. However, there is a downside. Your career, like that of a sportsman, is shorter. You fly higher, earlier, and then crash and burn. There's an easy way to test whether the "presenter/actor" syndrome is sexist or ageist. Count the number of people on TV and then compare the number of women vs men. Then compare the number of people over 40 and under 40. If there are far more men than women, and an equal number of men over 40 as are under 40, but far fewer women over 40 than under 40, then it's clearly a sexist matter. However, if there are an equal number of men and women, but the age distribution is different, then it's an ageist matter. Women, basically, get their fair dibs on TV, but the allocation is skewed according to age.
While Arlene Phillips has been replaced by, yes, two younger women, the male presenter carries on, meaning that the younger men waiting in the wings will just have to wait a little bit longer...
++++++++++
Martin Amis, Al Alvarez and melvyn Bragg were gathered in Manchester to discuss suicide. Amis advised "don't be an immigrant, don't be Romanian, don't live where the sun doesn't shine". He said that suicide was "a bad marriage with life" and "the ultimate crisis of the self". (Note that an Amis character in Money is called John Self). Much though I admire Amis, particularly his courage in taking some dry history and turning it into much-needed polemic (Koba) I think that Alvarez nailed it rather better, calling depression "rage turning in on the self" and that "once in depression, everything is seen in terms of self".
Alvarez, as you may know, wrote the best book I have read on suicide, The Savage God. In curious synchronicity, I came across it (as part of my post-grad thesis on Vicky, who killed himself) at just about the same time as I first sat with Al at a poker table. Not only was my thesis subject a suicide case, but his father killed himself, and his fourth wife killed herself. In that sense, I think that, like Al, suicide is an area in which I know at least a little bit about the matter in hand.
I was thinking of that when I read of the suicide last Sunday of 24-year-old Anjool Malde, who chose to go to Coq d'Argent at No 1 Poultry, order a ten quid glass of champagne and then jump from the roof. I doubt that I was the only bloke who mused "well, at that price, I hope that he drank the champagne first".
The one thing that really stands out about this is that the time from decision to act was probably less than a couple of hours. This was a clever kid, and, as the son of a psychologist, one would assume that he had at least a grounding of knowledge in the nature of suicide. And yet he still did it. His parents put out a statement and the killing sentennce to me was "Style meant everything to him and that's how he chose to mark his exit".
An "expert on suicide" (the ST's term) said "with a lot of suicides what we talk about is this ideal of social perfection".
I was talking to a friend of mine this week and she said that marketing research estimated that about 60% of purchases came about through insecurity rather than a "this will make me better" feeling. In other words, the majority of our advertising and marketing is pitched more along the lines of "if you don't buy this, you are worthless" rather than "if you do buy this, you will be better". We are bombarded with messages that are designed to make us more insecure rather than more secure. The majority of advertising seeks to make us worried rather than aspirational. It is the nature of the modern world for the sellers of goods and services to make us feel bad about ourselves.
Is it therefore any wonder that anyone who fails to live up to this ideal of perfection who, and this is the key point, had actually thought that it was within their grasp, should feel that they have failed in a far greater way than the likes of you or I? Let's face it, if an advert says to me (subliminally, of course) "if you don't buy this you are a piece of shit", then I can happily say back "D'uh, tell me something I don't know, Mr Advertising Man".
But for the bright young things, it's a harder concept to accept, and if something appears that will not only prevent that bright young thing from obtaining the things to which he aspires, but which also threatens to take away the things that he already has, then, well, perhaps the feeling of having let everyone else down and, in the words of the teacher to the balloon, let yourself down, could well become too much to bear.
______________
Unfortunately, in the real world, I'm encountering the passive voice more and more often. A couple of weeks ago a sales guy said to me, referring to an extremely dodgy contract that another sales guy had sold a couple of years previously, "They were sold a dodgy contract". Not "X sold them a dodgy contract", or "we sold a dodgy contract", because that would have shown where the blame lay. By putting something into the passive voice, the blame is "dissipated".
Then, yesterday, in what looks likely to become one of the great tragic cases of modern teaching (the arrest for attempted murder of a much-liked teacher at a school in Mansfield), headteacher Maureen Corbett wrote a letter to parents of the school. This letter should be taken up by Nigel Planer in his "master class" series on BBC (a new one this week on BBC 4, don't miss it);
Ms Corbett wrote:
I'm writing to let you know that there has been an incident involving a pupil. The student was injured and has been taken to hospital, where he is receiving treatment. The parents of the pupil have been informed".
Any apologist for this kind of sentence construction has spent too long either politicking or working in a spin department. I'm almost surprised that the letter didn't open with the sentence "This letter is being written to you...." which would have made the passive constructions four for four.
But the whole article isn't that much better. It begins with "A science teacher has been charged...", and in para 2 starts "The pupil, who was seriously injured..." and, with one active construction at the start of para 3, returns to the passive at the start of paragraphs 4, 5 and 6. And the quote from the police officer in the case actually does achieve the gold medal of four for four. On the other hand, I can understand it in the police officer's case, because policespeak is universally in the passive and, as far as I recall, has been for as long as I have been able to read.
+++++++++++
Mark Lawson wrote a piece in yesterday's Guardian on "sexism in TV". The general thrust of his argument, with which I do not disagree, is that for women there is an "age apartheid" that very few can defeat. This applies to acting and to presenting. The trigger for the Lawson article was the replacement of Arlene Phillips.
Where I disagree with Lawson is his conclusion that it's a "Strictly Come Sexism" matter. It's an ageism matter. Basically, if you are a young woman you have a better chance than a young man of moving ahead quickly. However, there is a downside. Your career, like that of a sportsman, is shorter. You fly higher, earlier, and then crash and burn. There's an easy way to test whether the "presenter/actor" syndrome is sexist or ageist. Count the number of people on TV and then compare the number of women vs men. Then compare the number of people over 40 and under 40. If there are far more men than women, and an equal number of men over 40 as are under 40, but far fewer women over 40 than under 40, then it's clearly a sexist matter. However, if there are an equal number of men and women, but the age distribution is different, then it's an ageist matter. Women, basically, get their fair dibs on TV, but the allocation is skewed according to age.
While Arlene Phillips has been replaced by, yes, two younger women, the male presenter carries on, meaning that the younger men waiting in the wings will just have to wait a little bit longer...
++++++++++
Martin Amis, Al Alvarez and melvyn Bragg were gathered in Manchester to discuss suicide. Amis advised "don't be an immigrant, don't be Romanian, don't live where the sun doesn't shine". He said that suicide was "a bad marriage with life" and "the ultimate crisis of the self". (Note that an Amis character in Money is called John Self). Much though I admire Amis, particularly his courage in taking some dry history and turning it into much-needed polemic (Koba) I think that Alvarez nailed it rather better, calling depression "rage turning in on the self" and that "once in depression, everything is seen in terms of self".
Alvarez, as you may know, wrote the best book I have read on suicide, The Savage God. In curious synchronicity, I came across it (as part of my post-grad thesis on Vicky, who killed himself) at just about the same time as I first sat with Al at a poker table. Not only was my thesis subject a suicide case, but his father killed himself, and his fourth wife killed herself. In that sense, I think that, like Al, suicide is an area in which I know at least a little bit about the matter in hand.
I was thinking of that when I read of the suicide last Sunday of 24-year-old Anjool Malde, who chose to go to Coq d'Argent at No 1 Poultry, order a ten quid glass of champagne and then jump from the roof. I doubt that I was the only bloke who mused "well, at that price, I hope that he drank the champagne first".
The one thing that really stands out about this is that the time from decision to act was probably less than a couple of hours. This was a clever kid, and, as the son of a psychologist, one would assume that he had at least a grounding of knowledge in the nature of suicide. And yet he still did it. His parents put out a statement and the killing sentennce to me was "Style meant everything to him and that's how he chose to mark his exit".
An "expert on suicide" (the ST's term) said "with a lot of suicides what we talk about is this ideal of social perfection".
I was talking to a friend of mine this week and she said that marketing research estimated that about 60% of purchases came about through insecurity rather than a "this will make me better" feeling. In other words, the majority of our advertising and marketing is pitched more along the lines of "if you don't buy this, you are worthless" rather than "if you do buy this, you will be better". We are bombarded with messages that are designed to make us more insecure rather than more secure. The majority of advertising seeks to make us worried rather than aspirational. It is the nature of the modern world for the sellers of goods and services to make us feel bad about ourselves.
Is it therefore any wonder that anyone who fails to live up to this ideal of perfection who, and this is the key point, had actually thought that it was within their grasp, should feel that they have failed in a far greater way than the likes of you or I? Let's face it, if an advert says to me (subliminally, of course) "if you don't buy this you are a piece of shit", then I can happily say back "D'uh, tell me something I don't know, Mr Advertising Man".
But for the bright young things, it's a harder concept to accept, and if something appears that will not only prevent that bright young thing from obtaining the things to which he aspires, but which also threatens to take away the things that he already has, then, well, perhaps the feeling of having let everyone else down and, in the words of the teacher to the balloon, let yourself down, could well become too much to bear.
______________
