Marriage – Religious or Political

It appears that this old chestnut of a dispute just goes on and on. After having recently finished watching the first three series of the Tudor’s – which for anyone who hasn’t seen it is all about Henry VIII (yes- the King that had six wives), I can’t help but notice that we don’t seem to have come very far. Especially when you consider that this question of the ownership of marriage between the Church and State seems certain to have been rekindled by the comments made by the Equalities Minister – Lynne Featherstone, that have been reported today.

Her take, according to her comments is that; “marriage is owned by neither the state nor the church.” This seems in my humble opinion, a perfectly valid if not slightly confusing thing to say. Valid because if I want to get married I don’t feel I need the permission of my local MP, the Prime Minister, or the Archbishop of Canterbury. That said I know that in typing this I’m both missing the point and trivialising the issue – it was intentionally done!

Slightly confusing though, because if marriage is owned by no one. Then what’s the point of it, and what would be the validity of it? Surely if no one owned marriage then it would lose all of its meaning, definition, and sanctity?

Personally I am not a proponent of marriage one way or another. It’s not my cup of tea, and I don’t really see the point. I understand that legally you are better protected financially if you are married, and I hear you’re privy to certain tax advantages! You also as a woman get to wear a posh dress for the day and show off your happiness, and ability to pull off a superb shindig, to all of your friends, frenemies, family and extended family (if you have the cash) in the process.

Or you can go on the BBC Thee program “Don’t Tell the Bride”! Then you can have a documentary made of the “happiest day of your life” and get £10,000 to pay for the day. Yet regardless of the reason you choose to get married, and aside from if it’s your heart’s desire to ever get married or not, it must be nice to know that you can, which leads me in a roundabout way back to the point that the comments made make reference to the fact that currently not everyone in this country is entitled to marry.

Featherstone’s comments will probably cause much debate, which one can only assume was her intention given that she is the Equalities Minister and the issue of being able to legally wed regardless of your sexual orientation is one that surely must fall firmly within her remit. Yet I doubt a one line caption will solve the issue. After all the Church and State have only been squabbling over marriage since the sixteenth century, well in England at least.

Marriage and the arguments about who should and shouldn’t be able to get married is an issue that will always antagonise many people depending on their personal beliefs, and it will cause many polarised views, and lead to heated debates and arguments. Marriage is seen in many different lights, and traditionalist will of course (being traditionalists and not modernists, or reformists) never want to see anything changed.

Regardless of your views or beliefs, should we not all bear in mind that one in three marriages end in divorce? This might not have been such a worry for Henry VIII’s wives though, as for them there was a fate more terrifying than the cost of a good divorce lawyer. Let us not forget, Henry VIII had six wives; divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

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The difficulty of the compliment

It seems that whilst we (a sweeping generalisation as by “we” I am referring to “us Brits”) are good at all manner of things, we are not very good at receiving compliments. Yet I wonder why? The compliment is in its definition a praise of excellence, and so we should therefore receive them in the manner in which they are intended. Yet, like most other people I know, I find that when I am afforded a compliment it often leaves me more embarrassed than anything else.

It seems that accepting a compliment is far harder than giving one. How many people do you know that you have offered a compliment to that have either had difficulty in accepting it, or have gone out of their way to nay say it?

I wonder how or why this has happened. At what point did we lose (if we ever had it) the ability to accept a compliment without being abashed by it. It seems that whilst we are known for a great many things; wit, sarcasm, entertainment at the use of euphemisms, politeness, love of queuing (I imagine we will set a great example at the Olympics), and an ability to talk about the weather excessively and needlessly – are we the only country that says the phrase; “it’s very close today?” We are not good, generally, at accepting compliments.

Amusingly though we seem very good at accepting cutting criticisms, and mostly from those closest to us. When we are often surrounded by friends, colleagues, or people close to use, we are far more comfortable mocking each other in a familiar way than we are at accepting the most trivial of compliments.

We are more likely to make fun of a friend or embroil ourselves in “banter” than we are to say something nice. Are we too polite to accept compliments, or are we ingrained with a kind of British sense of humour that makes us far more inclined to accept a slight against us in jest?   

When surrounded by our closest friends, we often speak to each other in ways in which we would never speak to people that we genuinely disliked. It seems that we are polite to strangers, to people we hardly know, and usually to people we don’t like. Yet to our friends, we speak to them in derogatory ways and often to show endearment and affection!

We are more likely to – in cockney rhyming slang, take the mickey bliss, than we are to give those closest to us a compliment. Yet I can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t just be simpler for us to learn how to accept compliments. Although, granted, it would be far less entertaining.

Yet at what point do we need to get past this aversion to compliments. Should we have criteria perhaps? I.e. is it okay to accept compliments from people senior to you at work, it is okay to accept compliments from a boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse? It is okay – if not slightly strange, to accept a compliment from a stranger. However, if it also comes with the offer of sweets you should do as your parents have most likely told you and run away. If it comes with the offer of a drink, you can probably assume that there is a motive behind it.

So whilst the conundrum of the compliment continues to elude me, perhaps I have overstated the issue. After all, surely there is no harm in a little humility or modesty when accepting a compliment? 

Vampires – dangerous, deadly, but we can’t get enough

The obsession with the vampire has since the 19^th century dominated our imaginations. Yet no more so than in the past two decades where the vampire has become a mainstay in literature, television, and film.

The Vampyre novel written by John Polidori is often credited with having formed the archetype. Yet it is not until the end of the 19^th century that the rise of the Vampire through fiction really found its footing. I am of course referring to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Since then it seems that the Vampire, like the little black dress, is always in fashion. So whilst the fascination with Vampires; the blood sucking, soul lacking, immortal, fiends, seems to have been around for centuries. The credit for their massive rise in popularity has – surely, to be attributed to the rise in the number of television shows and films about them?

Before the 1990s TV shows about vampires were a rarity. The vampire whilst okay to be used as guest on a series, like in Doctor Who, it was certainly not considered to be a series regular. Yet like the rise of the dot.com, the vampire and its stereotype began to boom in the 1990s. In terms of films, you had Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Interview with the Vampire, and Blade to name just three of the heavy hitters. On television though, the credit for bringing vampires into the hearts and minds of most teenage girls has to go to none other than Joss Whedon. He is of course, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Yes, you would be correct in saying “hold on wasn’t there was a film first?” There was, but let’s face it, that whilst Swanson made a valiant attempt to win over our interest as Buffy, Perry our hearts as the man candy in the film, and Sutherland as the slayer’s Watcher, none of them held a candle to Gellar, Boreanaz, and Head who would later fill those roles and make Buffy the triumph that it was.

The Buffy phenomenon made vampires popular, and it made David Boreanaz every women’s fantasy as the brooding vampire with a soul. Vampires had finally become mainstream, acceptable lead characters, and they dominated the imaginations of a generation on a weekly basis for eight years (if you count that Angel ran for a year after Buffy!)

Since then there seems to have been very little respite, and as we moved from the nineties to the noughties the Vampire has continued to hold its ground in the mainstream. Shows like True Blood and the Vampire Diaries, and let’s not forget the cult of Twilight, have all in their own way captured the latest generation of teenage girl’s hearts (and behind closed doors when boyfriends or husbands are out, the hearts of non teenage women too.)

Vampires, about whom it has been reinforced time and time again, are cold, unfeeling, and not only can but will hurt you, rip your throat out, drain your blood, and bottom line kill you, are still very popular. They are the villains that we can’t quite bring ourselves to hate, and this should bother us more than it does. We should also probably question our ingrained ability to ensure self preservation, and possibly our mental health. It seems that perhaps we are all looking for the bad boy turned good?? Or we all still believe that we can find that one man / vampire that will change for us?

I also note that despite the fact that the Cullen female vampires seem friendly (Rosalie comes round eventually) the story is never a female vampire falling for a young human male. The Mrs Robinson fantasy does not seem to carry quite the same weight with the targeted audience.

It is a strange obsession that we (as women) have though, and again it is slightly troubling that we seem compelled to want men that are  old enough to be our fathers, fathers, fathers, father etc (in Eric’s case in True Blood it would take me a few more lines to get back far enough). In reality could we handle the fact that we, or our daughters, friends, cousins, whoever, are dating men that are centuries old and let’s face it murderers? There would be an awful lot of ex-girlfriends in his cupboard!

Also, we all know what happens when the relationship doesn’t work, and you don’t get the Bella and Edward happily ever after. Buffy showed us in series two! Your once amazing vampire boyfriend that protected you, now stalks you, tries to kill everyone in your life, and drive you insane! Easy for me to be dismissive and judgmental, but I too would have taken him back (you know, once his soul was restored!)

So let’s face it the vampire as the leading man is here to stay. The concept clearly ignites something in us (by us I mean women again). So whilst the vampire is not good and in fact is mostly bad, we don’t care and still wish that we had one of our own for a boyfriend!

Two final thoughts though, if were a vampire you must be a) really annoyed that everyone knows how to kill and identify you, and as a male vampire b) that you have a lot to live up to if you want to date a human, thanks to the fictional characters of Angel, Edward Cullen, and the Salvatore brothers you’ve set the bar pretty high!


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Forget X-factor, watch Homeland instead. It’s the US TV series with the spy-factor!

I’ve just finished watching the first series of Homeland and I couldn’t help but blog about it. It is fantastic television and my advice would be for everyone to watch it. It is as riveting as the first few, and in my opinion superior, series of 24. It has the pace and style that you had with the first couple of seasons of the West Wing, and it keeps you as on edge as Lost did – you know when it was good and hadn’t become far too bizarre to follow!

To continue to rave about Homeland is going to be difficult to do, simply because much like 24 this series has a number of twists and turns, and false starts and raised expectations, and misconceptions that will keep you as a viewer perpetually guessing as to who the good guys are and whose side you should be on.

Starting out it seems like the CIA has completely lost the ability to tell enemy from citizen, but then it seems that perhaps there is method in their madness after all. Yet is there?? The final episode left me reeling, and absolutely gasping and grabbing at my laptop to look at IMDB and Google to see if there was going to be a second series. There is – phew!

Now in short, what is it all about? Well, as I said above I really don’t want to reveal any spoilers. I appreciate that I did this in my Sherlock blog and for that I apologise. So here is my brief summary to try and entice you into giving Homeland a chance.

In Homeland the plot centres on Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody – played by the amazing (and English – not that this is relevant) actor Damian Lewis, who after being held prisoner for eight years in Iraq and presumed dead by the military and therefore also his wife and two children is found by the CIA and returned home. In the opening minutes of the first episode Claire Danes who plays Carrie Mathison – a driven but possibly unstable CIA officer, is told by an informant in Iraq that an American soldier has been turned. So the plot begins. Is Brody who he says he is?

The next few episodes keep you absolutely enthralled. Brody struggles to readjust to a civilian life in a world that he has not lived in for eight years, and his wife and children who had all accepted his death and moved on must also find a way to re-connect with him. The writing is excellent and you really feel for the Brody family, not least because of the antics of Danes’ character. Convinced that her informant was referring to Brody, she – without permission or authority, puts surveillance in the Brody household and observes them twenty four hours a day.

The surprises in this series just keep coming, and they come thick and fast in most episodes. It definitely felt a lot like watching 24, as even in the early hours of the morning there was always time for one more episode. Just one more, despite the fact that it is 3am on a Monday morning!

I was also incredibly impressed with the balls that the writing and the program showed. There seemed to be no retreat from looking at contentious issues, such as racial profiling, religious stereotyping, emotional drivers behind terrorism, and added to all of this it also looks at the stigma of mental health –  bi-polar, and the extremely controversial electroshock treatment.

Trust me when I tell you that at the end of the final episode you will be inclined, as I was, to be shouting at the television. Is it just possible that the one person that is considered to be the most of all the characters to be unreliable, unstable, and by then end of the series mentally deficient, is the only one that can actually see the writing on the wall?

I don’t know. Its back to IMDB and Google to see when Season 2 starts!!

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