And now we have Edward:
"You're all jealous. Edward's better than all of you"
"You're right, Duck. Edward's old but he'll surprise us all!"
(from Edward’s Exploits; 23rd episode of the ‘Second Season’)
Old? Well, yes, old is forty-something from the standpoint of a younger generation, and perhaps it is true that in time Edward will surprise us all, now that he has joined the ranks of Pinky and Perky (David and Nick) with their hands so firmly grasping the levers of power.
So the story goes, and, although we are still only at an early episode of the ‘First Season’, they all tell us that they know exactly where they are taking us for the rest of the series. The next episode is due to be broadcast in less than two weeks on 20th October. According to John Lanchester, it is about the ‘Comprehensive Spending Review’, and it is called The Cuts.
The plot, as we have heard so many times before so that it seems like it is the same story every episode, is that it is going to hurt you a LOT MORE than it is going to hurt me, but it is only FAIR.
Angry? Yes, everybody is going to be VERY angry, but it is no good stamping your feet everyone, they tell us again, it is only FAIR. And protest and resistance is futile, they go on, because the story has already been written, and in the end getting so angry will do us no good at all.
And that is probably true about the anger, that getting angrier and angrier does us no good, clouding our minds so that we lose the plot.
Lose the plot? Horrors! What could be worse than that (…whether for creative and other kinds of writers, the older old, young children in tantrums, politicians, or other delinquents)? History tells us and we should know that going Against the System has always been problematic… and it still is. Even if we don’t resort to violence, from the perspective of the seelische (‘spiritual’ – for more, see post for 14th September) our political actions are often jealously conditioned either by existential despair or a ‘short circuit’ vehemence and will to power, where – either way, despair or vehemence – plotting, like in Philip Roth’s Indignation (2008)… or Nemesis (2010), becomes blind.
And few of us, losing the plot quite frequently as we all do, know how to wait… Edward, for the record by the way, is a ‘mixed-traffic engine’.