The Power of the Musical Montage

This might appear like a departure from my usual subject matter, but if you’ve paid close attention to my earlier posts, you may have noticed that TV is a subject close to my heart.  It just so happens that music is also a subject close to my heart, so when the two come together, I get pretty excited.  Musical montages may seem like an easy way to tug on the heartstrings, but when they’re done well, they can cause an emotional response so strong that it inveigles itself into your subconscious, until you unexpectedly find yourself weeping whilst washing up, or struck by sudden searing chest pains on your daily commute or - on the flip side - feeling absurdly elated about renewing your car insurance, simply because that very same song happened to be playing on the radio or came up on a playlist.  In the spirit of these emotional earworms, I present to you here six of my favourite small screen musical montages.

Warning: may contain spoilers!

 

1.  'Brothers in Arms' by Dire Straits used in The West Wing (Season 2, Ep 22, “Two Cathedrals”)

 

Aaron Sorkin tells a tale of driving around LA when ‘Brothers in Arms’ came on the radio, inspiring him to write the climactic storm of Season 2 of The West Wing, simply so that the dialogue could move seamlessly into the opening of this song.  It worked.  Just the opening rumble of thunder gets the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.  “Two Cathedrals” is 45 minutes of the most sublime television ever written, during which Martin Sheen’s President Bartlet rants in Latin at God in Washington’s National Cathedral after the untimely death of his long-time secretary Mrs Landingham.  Amongst this comes the revelation that he has concealed his MS from the American public, leading to the cliffhanger of whether or not he will run for re-election.  A storm – metaphorical, literal and musical – is brewing over the White House.  The President, rain-soaked and coatless, makes his way to a press conference to face the question everyone wants answered, and, as he does so, his own brothers in arms fall in behind him, accompanied by the swelling chords and bluesy riffs of Mark Knopfler’s guitar.  If you’re not moved by this scene then, God Jed, I don’t even wanna know you.

2.   'Wonderful! Wonderful!' by Johnny Mathis used in The X Files (Season 4, Ep 2, “Home”)

 

Ok, so this one isn’t so much moving as it is chilling.  I still feel my heart speeding up accompanied by a creeping sense of dread every time I hear it.  In fact, this episode was so graphic that Johnny Mathis refused permission for his version to be used and the song on the soundtrack is actually sung by a Mathis impersonator.  Perhaps Mathis had a point – this is one of the most disturbing X Files episodes (and that’s saying a lot).  I won’t go into too much detail here (it’s too terrifying to type), but suffice to say, the episode features an incestuous family who try to murder anyone who gets too close to discovering their terrible secret.  ‘Wonderful! Wonderful!’ plays on the car radio as they drive to one of their victim’s houses, and continues to play as they bludgeon him and his wife to death.  Completely incongruous and totally effective – the music makes the scene 100% more nauseating.  10/10 for the chill factor.

3.  'I Can’t Decide' by The Scissor Sisters used in Doctor Who (Series 3, Ep 13, “The Last of the Time Lords”)

 

Although there have been other villains in Doctor Who who have danced to pop tunes (including the Master themself), it was John Simm’s Master who set the trend, back in 2007, when he burst onto the deck of the Valiant, lip-syncing to this banger whilst pushing a wizened David Tennant around in a wheelchair.  The first actor to play the Master in the new series (yes, with the exception of Derek Jacobi – I’ll get in there before the pedants do – since Jacobi only really consciously played the Master for a few minutes), Simm really brought the Master’s insanity into the twenty-first century, and somehow makes bopping along to the Scissor Sisters whilst toying with the Doctor’s life seem entirely fitting behaviour for the Time Lord’s camp arch nemesis.

4.   'It’s Raining Men' by The Weather Girls used in Queer as Folk (Series 1, Ep 8, “Punchline”)

 

Because that’s the thing about unrequited love – it’s fantastic!  It never has to change, it never has to grow up and it never has to die!  So says Vince Tyler as he sprints through the streets of Manchester, away from boring boyfriend Cameron to persuade his best mate and love of his life Stuart Alan Jones to join him up on the podium in a club, thus saving him from the lurking menace of the drug pusher who killed their friend earlier in the series.  This disco classic builds in flawless synchronicity with the scene, bursting into the jubilant chorus at the very instant the two friends leap up onto the podium, dancing wildly in a perfect moment of absolute freedom and euphoria.

5.  'The Chain' by Fleetwood Mac used in Our Flag Means Death (Series 1, Ep 8, “We Gull Way Back”)

 

If I’m honest, there are several musical moments I could pick out from this show.  In fact, I could probably write a whole blog post just about the music in Our Flag Means Death.  The romantic comedy about 18^th century pirates was full of anachronisms, not least in its use of twentieth century pop and rock music, and, despite being a comedy, was one of the most profoundly moving shows I’ve ever watched.  In the end, I plumped for this scene, which should have won some kind of award for its painstaking editing, which managed to synch grappling hooks, drumming sailors and Frenchie's lute playing with the pulsing tempo of one of Fleetwood Mac’s greatest songs.  Forget the heartbreak that followed, all it took was an improvised foot touch and an intense held gaze, to the soundtrack of that iconic bassline, and we were all sold on the Stede Bonnet/Blackbeard romance.  You came back?  Never left.  Epic.

6.   'Dreams' by The Cranberries used in Derry Girls (Series 3, Ep 7, “The Agreement”)

 

Derry Girls was one of those rare television shows that both educated its audience (in this case about the Northern Irish Troubles) whilst still managing to be laugh-out-loud funny throughout.  A rare thing, but such is the genius of Lisa McGee.  Irish rock band The Cranberries featured heavily on the soundtrack, but the award-winning sequence that ends the final episode is undoubtedly the most exceptional use of their music.  The episode is set around the Good Friday Agreement and, as our characters all turn eighteen and begin to head off into the world, ‘Dreams’ plays over a montage of them in voting booths, interspersed with archive footage of the Troubles.  The final shot of them all leaving the polling station, lingering on Grandpa Joe and his little granddaughter jumping joyously out of the door, whilst Delores O’Riordan’s distinctive vocalisations fade out and a newsreader voiceover informs us that the agreement has been voted for, encapsulates an enduring hope for peace that never fails to move me to tears.

Thoughts?  To be honest, I could have included numerous other scenes from most of the television shows above, without even starting on different shows.  Feel free to comment below and let me know what TV musical montages you consider the most moving!

When does a protest become a revolution?

On 15 April, around 80 Serbian students arrived by bicycle in Strasbourg.  They had spent the previous 12 days cycling from Novi Sad in Serbia, a journey of more than 1300km, across 6 different countries, without a break.  Their message?  That corruption in Serbia needs to end - now.

These ongoing protests began back in November 2024, when a station roof in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second city, collapsed, killing 16.  The response to this tragedy was to question the transparency of investment in Serbia’s infrastructure, since it was not clear exactly who was to blame.  Students have now been organising protests in Serbia for several months, with perhaps as many as 325,000 gathering in Belgrade on 15 March, the largest anti-government protest in Serbia for decades.  Universities across the country have been shut down now for five months.

 

Crowds gather in Belgrade on 15 March 2025

Serbia has a complex relationship with protests.  It was popular protest that finally topped Slobodan Milošević in 2000, but Zoran Đinđić, who played a major role in that movement and subsequently became Prime Minister, was assassinated in 2003.  After a period of unrest, in 2012 Aleksandr Vučić began his rise to power, first as Prime Minister and then, since 2017, as President. His regime has become increasingly autocratic, with close ties to Russia (including support for the invasion of Ukraine) and China, despite also being a candidate join the EU since 2012.

Hence the students’ journey to Strasbourg, the second seat of the European Union.  They want to ensure that Serbia is not permitted to become a member of the EU until it sorts its corruption out.  “The country needs to deliver on EU reforms, in particular to take decisive steps towards media freedom, the fight against corruption and the electoral reform,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X on 25 March.

 

Prime Minister Miloš Vučević resigned in January, possibly a sacrificial lamb for the ruling party, and on 6 April Vučić appointed Đuro Macut, a little-known medical professor, as Prime Minister. Critics fear that the politically-inexperienced Macut will be little more than a puppet for Vučić. Thus far, the appointment of a new government has made no perceptible difference.

 

Vučić appears defiant in the face of the protests, declaring at one point that, “You will have to kill me if you want to replace me.”  He is cracking down on protests – allegedly using a sound canon to break up the protest in March – and on press freedoms.  The NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has said that the pressure exerted on independent outlets from ministers and state-backed media has reached levels not seen since the 1990s.  If it seems like you haven’t heard much about what is going on in Serbia, this may be why.

 

A counter rally in support of the government, its ranks swelled by Serb nationalists from neighbouring Kosovo and Bosnia, took place on 13 April and was attended by 55,000 people, which, though smaller than the anti-government protest, is no inconsiderable number.  Vučić addressed the crowd in typically bullish manner, claiming the student protesters had "inflicted huge evil on Serbia in the past five months."  He also stated that, "Certain foreign powers cannot bear to see a free, independent and sovereign Serbia”, without clarifying which "powers" he was referring to.

 

For their part, the students themselves are keen to keep nationalism out of their protests and focus only on domestic corruption. When nationalist symbols, including the controversial map of Kosovo with ‘No Surrender’ plastered across it (a reference to the Serb nationalist claim that Kosovo will always remain part of Serbia), student leaders were quick to stress that geopolitics had no part to play in their protests.

 

Serbia is clearly a troubled nation.  Its status as a pariah state in Europe has driven it towards Russia and away from the EU.  Despite being vilified for its part in the Yugoslav wars, Serbia has never apologised for its role.  Many Serbs remain angry at the west and NATO for its bombing during the Kosovo War, with bombed out buildings left untouched as reminders of what was done to the country.  If there is hope of banishing the ghosts of the past, it may lie with the younger generation, as has been the case throughout history when it comes to movements affecting radical change.

 

The protests remain ongoing.  This week, the protesters have called for a snap election, and though Vučić has vehemently opposed the idea, there are small signs that the tide may be turning.  Even Trump seems to think Vučić is toxic – it is rumoured that he denied the Serbian president a meeting on his visit to the USA last week.  And if POTUS thinks you’re doing something wrong, you really must be.

 

On 25 April, a group of students from Belgrade began a relay ultramarathon to Brussels that will cover almost 2000km.  They plan to arrive in Brussels on 12 May, when the European Parliament should be in session, in order to deliver letters about the political situation in Serbia.  One of the students taking part said the hope is that the letters will be read in Brussels so that “more attention will be given to the deep political and social crisis in Serbia.”  One can only hope that these young people will succeed in bringing the world’s notice to their country and help to bring about the end of the era of the rabid nationalist politician in the Balkans.

 

References and Further Reading

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/30/we-are-done-with-corruption-how-the-students-of-serbia-rose-up-against-the-system

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/15/tensions-mount-in-serbia-as-protesters-converge-on-belgrade

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/21/calls-serbia-investigation-claims-sound-cannon-targeted-protesters

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/23/press-freedom-in-serbia-is-facing-a-dangerous-turning-point-warn-editors

 

https://www.rferl.org/a/serbia-cyclists-students-strasbourg-Vučić-canopy/33386850.html

 

https://www.rferl.org/a/serbia-Vučić-railway-canopy-protest-belgrade-students/33349372.html

 

https://balkaninsight.com/2025/04/16/serbian-students-bring-protest-cause-to-strasbourg-after-bicycle-marathon/

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly18qd7x7do

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0qdyg8yn5yo

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/thousands-gather-pro-government-rally-serbia-2025-04-12/

 

https://intellinews.com/serbs-from-kosovo-march-to-belgrade-for-pro-government-rally-375863/?source=kosovo

https://a2news.com/english/rajoni-bota/ballkani/fare-fshihet-pas-pankartes-per-kosoven-ne-protestat-e-stude-i1137934

 

https://prishtinainsight.com/serbias-student-protests-and-kosovo-between-hope-and-concerns-mag/

 

https://balkaninsight.com/2025/04/30/exemplary-punishment-the-people-paying-the-price-for-supporting-serbias-protests/

 

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/serbias-protesting-students-demand-snap-090746622.html

 

https://balkaninsight.com/2025/04/25/message-to-europe-serbian-student-protesters-begin-ultramarathon-to-brussels/

The Balkans: Europe's Forgotten Frontier (Review)

In this two-part BBC series (first shown in February 2025), reporter Katya Adler, who covered the conflicts of the 1990s, returns to the Balkans to see how the region has changed, nearly thirty years on from the end of the Bosnian War.  It’s a whistlestop two-hour tour - part travelogue, part social commentary - with archive footage dotted here and there, and a brief history of the region’s 20^th century.  Adler takes us on a fascinating, insightful journey through the former Yugoslav states of Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo, as well as neighbouring Romania and Albania.

The main message that the series brings home is the way outside powers are currently competing for interest in the Balkans, from Chinese investment in infrastructure, to Islamic countries funding the building of new mosques, to Russian political and religious ties (in one disturbing segment, a Bosnian Serb motorcycle group fly Russian flags with Putin’s face on it). It appears that the rest of Europe is losing the battle for influence in the Balkans, hence the tagline of the ‘forgotten frontier’.

 

The theme of wounds not healed is also prominent throughout the two episodes.  Shots of pockmarked buildings, a visit to the Srebrenica memorial and interviews with Kosovar police about the Serb incursion into Kosovo in September 2023 all serve to show how raw the region still is.  There has been no real closure for many of the victims of the wars, which is undoubtedly linked to the fact that many Serbs still see themselves as the victims.  Interviews with Kosovar Serbs were eye-opening - especially the vitriol directed towards the British for their role in the Kosovo War - but most surprising was the implication that it remains a mainstream view amongst Serbs that Kosovo belongs to Serbia.

 

The thread running through all the segments on the former Yugoslav countries is the unspoken question: how many generations removed must we get before people can move on?  Adler interviews some 14-year-olds Bosnians (speaking excellent English, of course) who argue passionately against the segregated Muslim/Croat school they attend.  Does this signify hope for the future?  This documentary would seem to suggest not.  There is now whole generation of adults who were born after the wars ended and yet underlying concerns about tension in both Bosnia and Kosovo pervade.

 

Adler also visits Romania, where the appeal of the super-rich is drawing many of its people back again, despite corruption and criminality in some areas, and Albania, with its newly flourishing tourist industry, but large numbers of migrants leaving.  Slovenia, North Macedonia and Montenegro don’t get a visit.  Slovenia, perhaps, is understandable, since with its virtually ethnically homogenous population and close ties to western Europe, it avoided the conflicts of its Yugoslav neighbours, seceding in 1991 with relatively little bloodshed.  However, I would certainly be interested in a further series, possibly examining the issues between North Macedonia and Greece, as well as Montenegro’s nationalist ties to Serbia.

 

This was a varied and comprehensive watch, as much as it is possible to truly examine such a complex region in just two hours. Like many documentaries of its type, it seeks to present a certain point of view, and interviews the right people to accomplish this.  Personally, I’ve not met that many vehement nationalists in any Balkan country, so it’s hard to know whether the voices heard here are those of the majority or the minority.  However, if you’re interested in the Balkans, this is a must-watch addition to the discourse on the region.  If you know nothing about these countries, it’s a great introduction to their history, culture and politics.  As Adler entreats us – let’s not forget about the Balkans.

 

The Balkan: Europe’s Forgotten Frontier is available on BBC iPlayer.

Book Review: ‘Where You Come From’ by Saša Stanišić

As I hunted through the symbols in Microsoft Word to find the correct diacritics for Saša Stanišić’s name, I wondered what he would make of that.  Every time I write about the Balkans, I am frustrated and more than a little outraged by how difficult it is to locate them.  In Where We Come From (2021), Stanišić refers to them as “little check marks on our names” and notes that they’ve been a hindrance to him over the years.  To me – an outsider – they have always seemed a powerful sign of regional identity.  Perhaps that’s his point.

Where You Come From is a book that’s hard to describe.  It doesn’t fit neatly into a one-line elevator pitch.  Broadly speaking, it’s a memoir of Stanišić’s childhood in Bosnia, his escape during the war of the 1990s and his life as a refugee in Germany.  It’s also a biography of his grandmother, capturing her descent into dementia, and - as the title might suggest – a discourse on whether or not where you come from really matters, at the end of the day.  But, as the author himself concedes, it is not entirely autobiographical, because he is, and always has been, a storyteller.

 

A review from the Irish Examiner on the dustcover of my copy calls Stanišić ‘offensively gifted’, which seems to me to sum up his writing style perfectly.  There are writers who experiment with convention and fail.  There are writers whose words roll smoothly through your mind because they follow an established consensus on how a sentence should be constructed.  And then there are those rare talents like Stanišić, who create flawless imagery by playing with language in ways you would never consider possible.

 

The passage where he riffs on the name Oskoruška – the small village where his grandfather grew up – and “hard Slavic endings” held me spellbound with its brilliant manipulation of the written word.  It was the distinctive sentence construction that drew me in from the first pages of this book – Stanišić is obscenely talented with words.  (Of course, my half-remembered AS level German isn’t good enough for me to have read it in the language Stanišić wrote it in (his second language), so much credit must go to the translator, Damion Searls.)

 

Stanišić spent the first fourteen years of his life in Višegrad, and his descriptions of the town and its surroundings are wonderfully evocative.  By coincidence, I was also in Višegrad in the summer of 2018, when the final passages of the book take place, and the descriptions of the trips to Oskoruška put me in mind of the cabin we rented on the banks of the Drina; the walk we took in blazing heat, up winding tracks into the hillside, past impossibly remote gardens laden with tomato vines and fruit trees.  (And I couldn’t help but laugh at his judgement of Andrićgrad.)

 

As a true Yugoslav, with a Bosnian Serb father and Bosniak mother, Stanišić does touch upon the senselessness and destruction of the Bosnian War of 1992-95, but it’s not the main theme of the book.  The narrative instead focuses on the experience of leaving a place and trying to fit in somewhere new.  Stanišić’s recounting of the refugee experience in Germany makes painful reading, perhaps because it still seems so relevant now.  We condemn the wars, we feel sorry for the people affected, but do we really want the reality of them living on our street?  Rarely has this sense of disconnection been written about so eloquently.

 

The ending of Where You Come From takes the form of a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’, which is where the book lost me a bit.  I’m the sort of person who gets anxious in museums if the layout doesn’t take me in an obvious direction, in case I experience time in a non-linear fashion, or – worse still – miss any vital information.  Flipping back and forth through the pages, I worried that I would choose the wrong option and miss something fundamental.  Stanišić expresses his love of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure Books’ as a child, which explains the structure, but I couldn’t help wondering if it was this was merely a gimmick.  Or was it an inspired artistic choice?  Are we supposed to re-read the book and each time choose a different path?

 

These fictional aspects of the book certainly pose questions about the unreliability of memory, especially when childhood recollections are so easily clouded by nostalgia.  Themes are interwoven throughout the book so subtly that you don’t notice them at first.  A disappearing village mirrors a disappearing memory.  The fragmented nature of dementia is reflected in the disjointed, dreamlike quality of the final chapters.  The narrative is not linear, and neither is life.

 

Seldom has a book left me with so many questions to ponder.  Does where you come from matter?  Does it define you?  Do we try to foster a sense of attachment and identity in order to anchor ourselves to something?  Is all this more important for those who leave?  And these questions will undoubtedly hold more weight for a Yugoslav – for someone who was born, as Stanišić was, in a country that no longer exists.

 

It's hard to sum up Where You Come From in any succinct way.  The only thing I will say is: read it.  I can promise you that this is one of those books that will stay with you for many years to come.

A Pirate's Life for Me! (Or why I would have made a terrible pirate)

Is there anyone amongst us who hasn’t, at one time or another, dressed as a pirate?  At some point in your life, you get the urge.  Popular culture is awash with pirates: from Treasure Island, to Peter Pan, to kids’ birthday parties, sexy Halloween costumes, sitcoms, dramas and even ‘Talk Like a Pirate Day’ (19^th September, if you’re interested).  We love these swashbuckling rogues, with their cutlasses and buried treasure.  So, why the Hollywood glow-up?  Why are we all so hell-bent on romanticising these violent criminals? 

Firstly - where do our ideas about peg-legs and parrots and walking the plank actually come from?  Well, you can probably blame Peter Pan for that last one, and potentially the first and second too.  But many other images, of wild beards, wooden sailing ships, and black flags bearing terrifying death heads, all hail from a very specific period of history.  The Golden Age of Piracy, as it has become known, lasted from around 1705 to 1725, and was at its height during 1717-1719.  This was the period when such infamous pirates as Blackbeard, Ned Lowe and Charles Vane menaced European shipping in the Caribbean.

 

Historians have written at length about the reasons why such a Golden Age came into being, but it really boils down to a perfect storm of social conditions: the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714, resulting in the discharging from the Navy of thousands of destitute and disillusioned sailors; the vagaries of shipping routes and transatlantic trade requiring many ships to pass through the warren of Caribbean archipelagos; and the wrecking in a storm of a Spanish treasure fleet off the Florida coast in 1715.  Though some historians broaden the period to include the buccaneering age of the late 1600s, and the Indian Ocean piracy of the 1690s, most agree that the Golden Age was over by 1730: by this point, all the most famous pirates were either dead (many executed), pardoned or vanished from the records.

 

Ever since human beings first got into boats, there have been pirates, so it’s strange that this short period has had such a huge impact on our collective imaginations.  Stranger still that such a period of intense criminal activity is referred to as a ‘Golden Age’.  It certainly wasn’t a golden time for the merchant ships that were terrorised by the pirate crews!  It appears that we have one Robert Louis Stevenson to blame for much of this. His 1883 novel Treasure Island endures in popularity, mixing fact and fiction to the point where, in the popular imagination, it is sometimes difficult to unwind them. (Israel Hands, for example, is both a character in the book and a genuine historical pirate.  The TV show Black Sails further muddied the waters by having Stevenson’s fictional Captain Flint and Long John Silver rub shoulders with Benjamin Hornigold, Calico Jack and Woodes Rogers, amongst others.)

 

Stevenson, in turn, was influenced by the pirate-historian’s invaluable tome, A General History of the Pyrates, first published in 1724 by Captain Charles Johnson, whose true identity is still a matter of debate.  Johnson tells the tales of many of the pirates of the Golden Age, including dubious biographical details and accounts of their trials and deaths, which lend them an almost legendary status.  Fiction certainly has a lot to answer for, but, then again, perhaps it is merely the fascinating uniqueness of this period which has spawned its weighty legacy.  Never again would the world see an explosion of this kind of criminality, led by such notorious, brazen individuals, whose exploits barely required embellishment to transform them into page-turning thrillers.

 

Yet life as a pirate was hardly one long romantic adventure.  For a subject that fascinates so many, there is a frustrating lack of historical sources around piracy.  Trust me – I’ve read virtually every academic book going, and they all get a little samey after a while, since they’re mostly rehashing quotes from A General History of the Pyrates.  However, one thing that all the books can agree on is that life on board a pirate ship was, for the most part, nasty, brutish and short.  Life at sea was hard and dangerous: in a time before universal healthcare, injury from wood splintered by a cannonball would likely result in death, or - best-case scenario - a lost limb.  Punishments were brutal and crews were unsentimental.  For pirates, it really was all about the loot, and they didn’t much care how they got their hands on it.

 

Much is made of the fact that pirate crews were egalitarian in their approach: they voted for their captains; their quartermasters shared the loot, if not equally, then by agreed proportions; they drew up rules that all aboard had to abide by; they had their own rudimentary health insurance policy, in that they received compensation for lost limbs and other significant body parts.  It has been argued that many sailors were drawn to a life of piracy because it was easier than life in the Navy or as a merchant sailor.  This was true – you could make more money as a pirate, and pirate crews tended to be much larger than those on a merchant ship, making the day-to-day running of the ship a little less gruelling.  But it can be too easy to assume that life on pirate ship was one of freedom from the oppression of the state.

 

Pirate crews were exclusively male (search for female pirates during this age and you’ll likely only turn up Anne Bonny and Mary Read, two amongst thousands of men) and many were riddled with STDs thanks to their usage of brothels when in port. Although some crews were multiracial, pirates regarded slaves as fair game for raids just as much as any other commodity.  It has been suggested that pirate ships were places where homosexuality was able to flourish free from societal judgment, but there is no evidence that these ships were any more tolerant than the rest of society.

Aside from the fact that I have no earthly idea how to sail, my general timidity and non-confrontational approach to life probably means I won’t be selling my house and buying a boat anytime soon.  Still, it’s nice to dream sometimes, and I doubt I’m alone.  We’ll all be fascinated by these colourful characters from history for many years to come, and the harsh realities of pirate life, and the terror unleashed on their (mostly undeserving) victims, will be conveniently overlooked.  Because the truth is that the appeal of piracy lies not in the violent crime or the brutality, but in the idea of freedom: of blowing off societal constraints and living by our own rules, sailing the seven seas with a trusted gang of shipmates.  Or maybe we just think we look good in the outfits...

Further reading on the Golden Age of Piracy:

Under the Black Flag - David Cordingly

Black Flags, Blue Waters - Eric Jay Dolin

The Republic of Pirates - Colin Woodard

The General History of the Pyrates - Captain Charles Johnson

A Pirate’s Life for She - Laura Sook Duncombe

A Time for American Heroes? Reflecting on the Legacy of the West Wing

Inauguration. White House.  Supreme Court.  Executive Orders.  Despite having studied the politics and modern history of the US, I can’t hear any of these terms without thinking of The West Wing, a show which has become far more divorced from reality in the past few months than it seemed two decades ago when I first encountered it.

September 2024 marked the 25^th anniversary of The West Wing first airing on US television.  It had been a couple of years since my last rewatch, so I decided to mark the occasion with another.  I was also lucky enough to have been given the book ‘What’s Next’ (written by West Wing actors Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack) for Christmas, which in turn led me to the West Wing Weekly Podcast, which has been the soundtrack to my commute for the past few weeks, and so I’m currently pretty thoroughly immersed in the world of President Bartlet’s White House and his improbably committed staffers.

It's interesting to look back now, a quarter of a century later, and wonder if the world really was a more hopeful place in 1999.  The series began in the final year of the Clinton Administration and it’s no secret that Aaron Sorkin modelled his dedicated band of staffers on those who worked in the Clinton White House, with some of them even serving as consultants on the show.  Unfortunately, at least on this side of the pond, Clinton’s legacy is somewhat dominated by his scandalous romp in the Oval Office, something it would be unimaginable for President Bartlet to have done.

It was partway through the second season that George W. Bush took office, and many have commented that the show served as wish-fulfilment during the Bush presidency.  However, it could be argued that this was just as much the case during the waning Clinton years.  Elected after 12 years of Republican rule, Clinton espoused a ‘Third Way’ of politics, pacifying the right wing of his own party and winning back the working classes who had been charmed by Reagan’s old-fashioned conservatism.  Clinton courted business, signed up to spending cuts and abandoned unions.  His record on LGBT rights might well have been called “legislative gay-bashing” by President Bartlet.  His foreign policy was more a doctrine of indecision than Bartlet’s “doctrine of intervention when only humanitarian interests [are] at stake.”  Clinton was a centrist – Bartlet was a liberal, and one who (mostly) put principles before politics to boot.  Is it any wonder that the show became so popular in its first season?

 

The West Wing ended in 2006 on a hopeful note, with the election of Democrat Matt Santos as the first Hispanic POTUS, which would be eerily prescient in predicting the election two years later of Barack Obama.  In many respects, The West Wing appeared more forward-thinking than much of US politics of today.  In Season 3, Bartlet easily defeats plain-speaking candidate Governor Ritchie (clearly a stand-in for Bush), and the idea that someone like Ritchie could be elected was laughable.  Fast-forward to November 2024, and the American public were busy electing someone far worse.

But America’s shift to the right is not in isolation – the far right is growing in influence all over the world.  The AfD in Germany and Reform here in the UK are making disturbing gains in elections.  This move towards the right stems, of course, from dissatisfaction.  GCSE history students across the country have written countless times how the Great Depression contributed to rise of Nazism in the 1930s.  For this generation, it is COVID-19 and its fallout that is the source of our discontent.  In any case, watching The West Wing now seems more of a fantasy than ever: a world where even Republican politicians are decent, principled people.

The West Wing is undoubtedly clever TV: in how many other shows would a main character deliver an un-subtitled diatribe in Latin?  (I will always argue that ‘Two Cathedrals’ is one of the best 45 minutes of TV ever produced.)  It sparked my own desire to become politically active; a desire which, I’m ashamed to say, has become increasingly jaded over the past decade.  It makes the potentially dull business of government incredibly compelling and honours public servants, painting them as heroes on a tireless crusade to make the world a better place.

 

Whilst it’s tempting to view The West Wing as a perfect liberal fantasy, it’s not without its flaws.  Season 3, airing post-9/11, was rife with anti-Arab sentiment that is hard to stomach now.  The level of reverence shown to the office of the President and the unironic declarations of the USA’s greatness – the idea that it can and should serve as saviour to the rest of the world – come across as somewhat hypocritical.  Coming from such a self-deprecating, buttoned-up little island, it’s a little nauseating to watch these extreme bursts of patriotism and arrogance.

 

It’s also becoming more apparent to me on each rewatch just how much representation is lacking.  Though The West Wing boasts two of the strongest female characters I’ve ever seen on screen in Press Secretary CJ Cregg and Dr Abbey Bartlet (with an honourable mention to the criminally-underused Joey Lucas), the treatment of other women leaves a lot to be desired.  Feminism is often derided, and often by the women themselves.  With the exception of Dulé Hill as Charlie Young, personal aide to the president, the main cast is exclusively white (and mostly male).  And notwithstanding a passing Republican Congressman, no LGBTQ+ character shows up until the final season (and even then, it’s a minor character and not made explicit until very near the end).  There are jokes that land awkwardly and lines (“these women”?) that just don’t sit right throughout.  Part of this doubtless comes from the fact that Aaron Sorkin wrote virtually every episode of the first four seasons.  Reading ‘What’s Next’ has given me insight into just how involved – and how protective – he was with the scripts.  However gifted the writer, scripts written from the sole perspective of a straight white man must inevitably be lacking in representation.

 

Was The West Wing simply a product of its time?  In July 1999, the NAACP President Kweisi Mfume threatened to organise a viewer boycott of major networks when it became apparent that none of the new comedies or dramas being launched in the autumn schedules would feature any actors of colour.  Whilst Sorkin does try to address this in a meta way, with the hiring of Charlie as personal aide to the president, it’s not simply an issue of cosmetics, as Admiral Fitzwallace says.  Progress has been made, but even now, it’s as much about the voices behind the camera as it is about those in front of it.

 

It’s been said that we are in a slingshot era, much like the USA was in during the 1960s' Civil Rights Movement – that to make great progress, we sometimes need to pull back, in order to shoot forward.  Yet I can’t be alone in worrying that we are pulling so far back on the slingshot that the elastic may snap.  It seems more unlikely now than ever that we could see a president like President Bartlet in the White House.  Even Sorkin himself has admitted that writing such an idealistic and aspirational show would be challenging in the current political climate.  And yet, should we not also have hope?  If we could aspire to greatness then, can we not aspire again?  Hope is what’s going to get us through this.  Hope – and action.  It's certainly not perfect, but if the legacy of The West Wing is simply to inspire us to do better, then maybe that is enough.