Not proud of my prejudices

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s refreshing to have your prejudices challenged.

British Society has two great pillars, Church and State, and I’m not particularly fond of either. They’re still heavily intertwined over here where the Queen remains head of the Church of England. Other more enlightened countries have gone to some lengths to keep the State apart from the Church, as in France (where secularism is practically a state religion) or the US (which seems on occasion to regret the fact).

It’s not that I have anything especially against the Church of England. I’m just not convinced by two great arguments advanced for faith in general: that they bring consolation to individuals and communities together. The problem with the first assertion is that ‘because it makes me feel better’ has never struck me as the most persuasive argument for the truth of any proposition. As for the second, it seems to me that as soon as religion has built a community, it defines anyone outside it as ‘other’, and ‘other’ quickly degenerates into ‘wrong’ and ‘wrong’ in turn into ‘heretic’ or ‘unbeliever.’ That strikes me as far too close to persecution, hardly an activity for which humankind special motivation.

But then along comes someone like Giles Fraser. He was Canon Chancellor at St Paul’s, but resigned when it looked as though the cathedral authorities were going to evict the ‘Occupy’ protestors from outside their front door. He reckoned that he could imagine Christ being born in that camp. After a brief period out of work, he’s about to start a new appointment, not as a Dean or Bishop (although he was apparently on the right sort of shortlists), but as a vicar of an Inner London parish with some of the toughest social difficulties in the country.

I feel almost obliged to go and hear him preach. Fortunately, he’s going to be writing a regular column in The Guardian so I can be entertained and edified without having to do anything that drastic.

So much for the Church. What about the State and its great symbol, the Royal Family? Surely I can indulge my comfortable view that they're without redeeming features? But no sooner do I reassure myself on that point, than along they come and redeem themselves a bit. On a royal trip to Copenhagen, the Prince of Wales and Camilla had themselves introduced to Sofie Gråbøl, star of the extraordinary Danish series The Killing. And then they paid a visit to the set.

Sofie, in one her trademark jumpers, giving another to Camilla

It’s appalling, isn’t it? The two series of The Killing have provided some of the best TV I’ve seen in years. And some of the Royals like it too? Ghastly. I may have to concede that they have some taste.

At least it was Camilla who persuaded Charles to watch with her. She’s not a real royal at all but just married into the family (which in passing suggests that her good taste is perhaps not that reliable when we get out of the realm of TV series). She had to fight to get into the family, against the vehement opposition of the Queen. It was that paragon of parenting skills who initially managed not only to push Camilla out of the way but to move Diana in instead, and didn’t that work out well?

So at least I can console myself with the thought that my agreement with Camilla over a TV series isn’t really a concession to an authentic royal. Which is a relief. Because though it’s refreshing to challenge one’s prejudices, it’s also tiring. Nice to be able relax back into some simplistic preconceptions.

Kindling my enthusiasm

Years ago, my son David told me that a day would come when people would read books on electronic screens and rather than on paper.

‘Oh, no,’ I assured him, ‘that’s not going to happen. The books is such an attractive object. Look what you can do with it,’ I said riffling through one until I found my page, ‘that’s never going to be possible with some kind of electronic reader.’

Well, I’ve said before that it’s salutary to have your prejudices overthrown, especially when you overthrow them yourself.

My other sons, Michael and Nicky, gave Danielle and me a joint Christmas present this year, of a Kindle. I dug in my heels and resisted the temptation to succumb to this device. Several seconds went by before I gave in to its seduction. 

Of course, I’ve taken it over. Poor Danielle doesn’t get a look in. I’ve even had to buy her one of her own. I’m not going to be separated from mine.

Glory of a bygone age?

It’s brilliant! Why, I even have a subscription to The Guardian on it. I get up in the morning, and there’s the new edition. I don't have to wait for a paper boy or struggle through the cold to the newsagent’s. Why, even when I was getting up in California, there was the new edition without the difficulty of trying to track down the only good newspaper there is, in a nation benighted by its unavailability. 

In fact, because of the bizarre phenomenon I’ve commented on before, whereby it isn’t the same time, at the same time, everywhere in the world, I even got the next day’s edition in California at 4:00 the previous afternoon. 

I still haven’t worked out how they managed to get it to me so early.

What’s more, I couldn't believe how light my suitcase was. I'm never quite sure which books I’m going to want to read when I set off on a trip, or how many I can get through, so I always take too many and exceed my baggage allowance or have to leave my boots behind. 

But this time I travelled with 25 books and I could carry them in the inside pocket of my jacket. And then I added two weeks worth of a heavyweight daily newspaper but the Kindle stayed as light as ever.

It even makes me feel virtuous. I mean, in the only comprehensible book I’ve read on economics — The Undercover Economist — Tim Harford argues that as societies become richer, their luxuries tend to get bigger and more resource consuming, until a tipping point is reached, when suddenly people realise that there is kudos in having commodities that actually damage the environment less. It’s happened with cars, except among Americans or Jeremy Clarkson: most people now pursue fuel efficiency at least as much as size and speed.

That’s how it is with the Kindle. I can read my paper without using up any paper. That means fewer trees chopped down, less fuel consumed in highly expensive shipping. Apart from the initial outlay, the Kindle is green. A luxury that makes me full good about myself. What more could I want?

Well, actually, I could want one thing. I wish I could ring the Kindle, like I ring my phone, when I don’t know where I’ve left it. Apart from that, the Kindle leaves nothing to be desired.

So, David: you were perfectly right. I’ve had to overthrow yet another of my prejudices. And the process has given me a lot of enjoyment.

Roman Polanski and overturned prejudice

It can be a terribly painful process to have your prejudices overthrown. You know, for years you believe that the US Republican Party is incapable of putting anyone into the White House who isn’t either a crook or a fool, and then suddenly you find a Republican President who’s decent, tolerant, honest and reasonable. You’d have to go through a fundamental realignment in your views and a probably quite painful reassessment of all your most deeply held opinions – or rather prejudices, as you would have to redefine them.

I’m not saying that anything like that is going to happen any time soon, of course - the Republicans don’t seem to have finished plumbing the depths of inadequacy that they seem to have made peculiarly their own. I’m just trying to illustrate the depth of readjustment that I’d have to go through if they ever did find a wholly human candidate with more than half a brain.

Just recently, I’ve had to review some pretty fundamental prejudices in a different area. Specifilly, I’ve had to reconsider my views of Roman Polanski. For a long time I thought that he was simply experiencing the legal troubles of a convicted paedophile trying to escape the consequences of his acts, and there was no reason to expect him to be treated more leniently just because he’d made some indifferent films.

Now I discover that his judicial issues aren’t quite as clear-cut as they seemed. I hadn’t realised that he’d had a deal with the prosecutors in his case, and only fled the States when it became clear that the judge was unlikely to abide by its terms. In other words, he went on the run when he realised that the judge was about to impose a far harsher sentence than had been agreed.

More fundamental still, I’ve had to revise my view of his films. They weren’t all Oliver Twist. First of all, I saw The Ghost some months ago and had to admit it was a good piece of work, close to the book, well acted, well adapted and well directed. I had to start rethinking my assessment.

Now I’ve finally got around to seeing The Pianist. It always takes me a long time to see films about the Holocaust: I just find them hard to take any more. A little girl in a red coat trailing along behind long lines of people heading for the gas chambers: I can’t bear that kind of image any more.

So it took me the best part of five years to see the film. And it has completed the overthrow of all my earlier prejudices. There are many brilliant details, not least the point at which a guard allowing the protagonist to flee shouts ‘don’t run’. In the book the instruction, on the contrary, is ‘run’. Polanski changed it because he had the experience himself and had been told not to run, not to attract attention – and it’s much more forceful to have that sharp reminder that survival can sometimes mean behaving counter-intuitively.

But much more powerful still than the detail is the overall structure. You have to wade through all the pain of the Holocaust material, the usual casual murders, the cruel humiliations, the transports leaving for the death camps. But it’s all made worthwhile by the climax, a moment of calm poignancy, of beauty and pathos, that not only justifies the pain of the build up to it, but actually needs it to generate its full force.

So now I have to say – congratulations, Roman, on your escape. And thanks for a great film.