Pinter: Infantile Insanity - 1 comment

Almost nobody could be expected to stay up to watch the execrable Carry On England (rated 3.5/10 by IMDb) on a Wednesday night. But, being nearly Christmas, it being well past 11, and my given feelings of nostalgia for the 'saucy' Carry-Ons, I thought I should return ever so briefly to 1976 - the Golden Age of my birth, when cinemas inflicted British films upon the British people, when the ineffable Judy Geeson was Britain's answer to Goldie Hawn, and when it wasn't about getting it up, but keeping it up.

So imagine my surprise to find, instead, a gravel-voiced Harold Pinter, lip aquiver, as he delivered his Nobel acceptance speech from the comfort of a bath chair in a London TV studio.

Would be fascinating to see a transcript, as it was pretty ripe, albeit entirely predictable: the evils of the United States, with its mass poverty, sanctimonious leadership, and network of gulag-style prisons; their holding of the world to nuclear and conventional-military blackmail (the "infantile insanity"); the pathetic citizens of the world whose only role is to be blown-up by the great powers; the supine, grovelling Britain (sheep, lamb, poodle, etc.); the conspiracies of silence; the religious zealotry of Bush and Blair ("God is great; Bin Lay-den's god is evil").

It was vicious, morbid stuff, but to which I could perhaps give credence if it didn't come from (no, not from such an effective communicator, and, yes, of course it's 'life-or-death') someone within whom anti-Americanism hasn't so clearly festered, and who seems incapable of offering a word against genocidal dictators lest it soften his case against George W. Bush by even an iota, and who has lost the ability to campaign for anything positively.