Stoppard’s generation-gap crisis: Opal Fruits are Opal Fruits – not Starburst
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Version 0 of 1. We usually obsess about grade inflation and dumbing-down in the summer; theatregoers are agonising over it this winter. Tom Stoppard has been talking about his new play, The Hard Problem, and how it’s had to become The Tricky Problem or even The Quite Easy Problem. He has had to cut or rephrase some difficult literary references because thicko younger audiences apparently don’t understand highbrow material. Their heads are filled up with pop culture fluff. (Interestingly, my colleague Mark Lawson defended Anne Washburn’s recent play Mr Burns against stuffy oldster critics who didn’t properly appreciate its references to the TV show The Simpsons.) But one pop culture reference Stoppard has reportedly included has caused some bemusement. It is perhaps the great indication of Sir Tom’s generation-gap crisis: there’s a reference to Opal Fruits. The young people call them Starburst now, and have since 1998, but I personally have never got behind that. I hope Stoppard sticks to Opal Fruits. Shades of sinister Related: Berlin 2015 review – To Love With Demands: the torrid life and work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder I have just returned from the Berlin film festival – which is held in February’s wintry temperatures. The bitter cold certainly keeps you indoors watching moviesand discourages any truant strollers – or Spaziergänger –wandering around the streets. Berlin is a worried place right now, unsure of bringing the Greeks to heel, unsure of exerting pressure on the Russians over Ukraine. The bitter chill also makes you see the city in its starkest, bleakest form, like the setting for a particularly grim le Carré novel. The festival takes place in Potsdamer Platz, a glitzy, Westfield-type development, which when I first came to Berlin was virtually a huge, blank vacant lot. There is a memorial nearby marking the location of Hitler’s bunker – whose whereabouts the city authorities were until recently (and understandably) reluctant to reveal. The other night I tweeted a view of Alexanderplatz, the picture taken from the top of Torstrasse 1, a handsome building that is a goldmine for any psychogeographer. In the 1920s it was a department store, Jonass and Sons: the Jewish owners were forced out. In the 1930s and it became the HQ of the Nazi Reich youth leadership. In 1945, it was taken over by the East German Communist party, and became the fantastically sinister central party archive of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. And then in 2010, it became the Berlin branch of the Soho House members’ club, with restaurants, bars and a rooftop pool. In that building – as in the rest of the city – ghosts are everywhere. The deity dozens There are moments when you realise a public figure is having his or her obituary opening-paragraph moment, some career-shaping thing they’ve said or done that will define them forever. The pontiff now has his. This week, at a demonstration organised by the Muslim Action Forum, a small child held up the placard saying: “Insult my mum and I will punch you (Pope Francis).” His Holiness’s off-the-cuff comment has quickly become his Yellow Submarine anthem, an irresistibly catchy refrain saying that violence is pretty much justified in response to “insults”. Francis may just have made the most influential papal pronouncement since Urban II’s speech in Clermont in 1095 calling for a crusade to the Holy Land. The pro-punching statements are very unfortunate, and the mother-insult detail is inflammatory. Perhaps both Catholic and Muslim belligerents would be better off regarding our traditions of satire and free speech as like a game of The Dozens in African-American culture - where you take turns to insult your opponent’s mother but it never comes to violence. Instead of “your mamma’s so fat when she lies around the house, she lies around the house!”, it could be “your religious beliefs are so obese with self-satisfaction it’s totally gross!” Not ideal, I admit. But better than Vatican-approved punching. |