The Flashman Series

Huzzah, pish-posh and tally ho. If I hesitate to label the late George Macdonald Frasier an empire apologist, that’s only because ‘apologist’ is too soft a word to describe a man who reckoned the British Empire was the best thing ever to have happened to an ungrateful world. It’s not an attitude that fits in very well with today’s world of globalisation and political correctness. But damn could the man write.

To whit- Britain today is not a bad place to live, overall. A bit grey perhaps, a bit twee. Not so much better or worse than here, really (Ireland, that is). It’s certainly not the stuff fantasies are made of. And yet, not more than a century ago, Britain was the beating-heart of a globe-spanning Empire, the setting-off point for thousands of well-meaning stiff-upper-lipped adventurers who departed for exotic climes in order to civilize the world. In the face of malaria, cannibals, hostile tribes and common sense, these brave souls sought to paint the map red (quite often literally) in order to spread the virtues of christianity and afternoon tea to all the most exciting, alien parts of the earth. The contradictions and mores of this time are fascinating, and are particularly relevant to the Irish, having been (in many cases) on both sides of the great colonial ‘adventure’. No wonder the British are getting a kind of ‘Empire nostalgia’.

In 1969 George MacDonald Fraser had a capitol idea- what if there was one man who had been through all this? One unsung hero, present at every major offensive of the nineteenth century, somehow absent from the history books, to act as our guide to this turbulent time? His name is Harry Flashman. He’s fought Afghans, Sikhs, African slave traders and Indian Mutineers. He was at the charge of the light brigade, and fought alongside Michael Caine against those dastardly Zulus at Rorke’s Drift. So far, so Young Indiana Jones.

But this man is no hero. He poxes around the empire with no thought in his head beyond where his next wench is coming from. He skewers the hypocrisy of the age through his own lack of artifice- he’ll cheerfully tell you that he’s only looking out for number one, and he’s got nothing but scorn for the pious Empire-builders that surround him, all trying to mask their greed, ambition or racism. Flashman feels no need to mask his greed, ambition or racism. He may admire the bravery of others in battle, but through a film of wonder that anyone could be so careless about their own well-being. He’s cheerfully racist against anyone who’s not English, and makes no excuses for it. Anything less would have been unconvincing during this period, especially from such a cad.

And yet, Fraser’s own politics do come to the fore. Flashman claims that his brutal honesty and acceptance of his own shallowness make him a reliable narrator (he has no real biases, and calls it as he sees it). He is likely to respect a brave Afghan chieftain, or to deplore a fellow British officer, and accepts that other peoples are not all savages, but he at no point questions Britain’s right to colonise or control other countries. This viewpoint is to be expected from Harry Flashman circa 1857, but it occurs so frequently that it must be close to what Fraser himself believed over one hundred years later. Thus, as well as being stirring reading, the Flashman books provide plenty of opportunity for discuss about the morality of Empire (if you’re into such things).

The books read fantastically, the attention to historical detail combined with Flashman’s more earthy thoughts remind you that the past was a real place, peopled with persons just as mortal and flawed as yourself. Battle scenes are vivid and memorable, characters are hilarious, and the dialogue is incredible. Flashman uses a catchy but period-appropriate vocabulary of salty terms, including more than a few you won’t have heard before but will use after. And the best news of all is that there are twelve books in the series. Many of the same elements re-occur throughout the series, and if they become a bit Iain-Flemming-crank-em-out, well, they’re the best damn crank-em-out books ever written.

George MacDonald Fraser died in 2006, so we’ll now never know if Flashman was sent across the pond to sort out those beastly Fenians. Perhaps it's for the best.

Classic Review- Copperhead Road

Despite its reviled status, country music has often been an influence on other, more respectable genres. Creedence, the Band, Tom Petty and others were nor afraid to get their twang on as part of the melting pot that made up their sound. All the time, however, disguised as folk or rock n roll.

Not so for Steve Earle, the refugee from Nashville who was too tough for the country music scene there. Even before he got addicted to heroin and became incredibly fat in the 1990s, he was a country artist who was too rock n roll. It’s a tough line to straddle. But in 1988, Earle got the balance right with his classic third album Copperhead Road. The fantastic cover with the sewn-on skull-and-crossbones logo first lets you know that you’re in for a treat.

It’s a brief album with few mis-steps. Earle has crafted a bunch of songs here that have the authenticity of age-old folksongs, each telling a tale, and each casting us into a world of weary gunslingers, hard-drinkin travellers and outlaw bootleggers. His distinctive drawl says he’s seen it all but never lost the urgency or belief in what he has to sing. Mixed in with these classic cowboy motifs are more-recent, then-contemporary issues- pot-smoking, oil-wars, and busted-down Vietnam vets (remember, this album was made a scant three years after John Rambo returned to the jungle to get those hostages). Earle blends these elements into the mix perfectly, making them seem epic, creating a kind of mythology out of the times he lived in as well as harking back to the past. He creates a time and place that you will want to learn more about (go rent Sling Blade, maybe).

Take the incredible title track Copperhead Road- even the name ‘copperhead’ is a kind of viper, because everything is badass in Steve Earle’s world. This song tells the tale of a family of self-described white trash bootleggers who ply their trade in rural Texas, and of their multiple scrapes with the authorities. In the climactic final verse, the youngest character returns from ‘Nam (the first of many references to this conflict) determined to grow pot, and is unworried about the authorities scouting out the area with helicopters. It turns out that he ‘learned a thing or two from Charlie’ during his years away, and so they’d ‘better stay away from Copperhead Road’. I’m not sure if he’s actually insinuating that he’s gonna take down the choppers with a bazooka or something, but it’s a great end to the song.

Earle does some unexpected things on this album- the bizarre use of bagpipes, or a collaboration with the Pogues (of all people!) but he never forgets to rock out, except of course when he’s opening his heart to us on a tender ballad, which he’s not afraid to do (because, as we know, every cowboy sings a sad, sad song). After you’ve listened to the album a bit, you’ll notice a strange thing- both the ballads and the country-rockers are, in a weird way, only a few steps away from 1980s cheese rock. Be it the arena-sized guitars or the song-writing itself, were it not for Earle’s southern drawl and the addition of some acoustic instruments, this could almost be a Poison album. If, that is, Poison ever dreamt of writing a song as masterful and foot-stomping as 'Devil’s Right Hand'.

Copperhead Road takes everything that is good about country music- the attitude, the big hats- and melds it to other styles that you probably have more respect for. Check it out.

The Wrestler Review

It’s the sort of thing one picks up through osmosis, pro wrestling. You may turn a blind eye to every bout of pretend pub-fighting that occurs on Smackdown come Friday night; you may turn a blind ear to every comment around the water-cooler come Monday morning. But if your friends are into it, you will succumb. At night it crawls into your ear, camps out in the Eustachian canal, and refuses all eviction notices. Pretty soon you will know what a ‘heel’ is, what a ‘face’ is, why nobody does a piledriver on Hulk Hogan anymore, and why Chris Benoit is now referred to only as ‘a certain Canadian’ (may he rest in peace, the murdering bastard). The trivia is as fascinating as it is- well- trivial.

It’s the kind of thing that could only have been born in the good old US of A, where even genuine sportsmen step up to bat to their own theme tune. It’s a world where the sport has taken a back seat to the spectacle. And it’s this which makes for such thrilling viewing, and such harrowing drama when it all goes wrong. A glittering façade of high-flying moves, memorable catchphrases and predetermined endings- but what does it hide?

The Wrestler opens with scenes of an aging Randy the Ram (Mickey Rourke) recovering from a small show in a school gym in the backwoods of Nowheresville, USA. He pants. He pukes. His glory days are fifteen years in the past, and he’s got no insurance scheme. The promoter appears to give him his fifty bucks. He’s been screwed again.

My God, breathed the wrestling fans in the audience. It’s too real. At last, here was a vision of the seamy side of ‘the business’ that they recognised. Rourke is a likeable screw-up who loves what he does even though it’s literally killing him. His life is so tough that at times it’s hard to watch, but he makes the best of it with admirable good humour and attitude. He befriends a stripper-with-a-heart-of-gold (Marisa Tomei) and tries to get in touch with his long estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood). If all this sounds a little like Oscar fodder…well, it really is. If the schmaltz is a little heavy and frequent to be overlooked, then at least its well-handled schmaltz, with just the right amount of humour to boot. This is truly the only film featuring the ‘Necro Butcher’ that you can take your girlfriend to see. Rourke is amiable, and we want him to have some measure of success, though we know it won’t be anything unrealistic. It’s like a Rocky you can take seriously.

Wrestling fans know what they don’t want, and they’re pretty vocal about it. They know what happens to washed-up wrestlers in real life (they’ve seen them ‘perform’ at Neptune stadium), and you can’t sell them a Hollywood ending in this kind of story. The film doesn’t even try. It keeps its cred, even among the diehards, by getting all the details right. These guys know how wrestling works at the highest levels, and more importantly, at the lowest levels. The fights are convincing and accurate (more than you can say about this weeks’ Smackdown, probably). The crowd chants are cruel and thrilling as they are at a real event, and oddly infectious. You will laugh, cheer, stamp your feet and wince in pain. There is great enjoyment for fan and neophyte alike to be had from this peek into the bizarre demi-monde of pro wrestling.