Kishwar Desai | Storm Bert, Xmas ads engulf UK; Joy honours IVF nurse Jean Purdy
London may not be as bad as up North where snow and floods are expected, but it is cold enough, brrrrr. Of course, the impending storm (there always is one!) has a friendly name “Bert”. Whoever invents these names makes them seem harmless. But watch out when Bert comes knocking on your door.
These frosty days are also the signal that Christmas is approaching, and instinctively we are lured into boosting the British economy, tempted by the lip-smacking competing advertisements from the major stores: M&S, Sainsbury’s, Co-op et al. The theme is similar. Some little kid or a harried housewife suddenly encounter a magic lantern or a hovering angel who fills up their home with Christmas goodies — and soon they are entertaining a crowd in their living room. The food displayed is mainly sweets of a variety of descriptions, a roast chicken and various drinks. The ad then tells you which store is responsible for the generous spread… and then, mesmerised, you find you have clicked the button and ordered things you cannot even consume till next Christmas!
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These are traditional advertisements but nothing has launched the kind of furore that the new Jaguar ad “Copy Nothing” has created. It is meant to “rebrand’ the car. However, people are almost frothing at the mouth denouncing the very idea that you can have an advertisement about a such a stylish car (and a very British brand owned by Tata Motors, no less) without the car featuring in it. Not even a tiny glimpse of it.
I also thought that it is a fairly static advertisement with just a bunch of people dressed in very colourful clothes sitting on a rock …. hmmm. One wonders what Ratan Tata would have said. But knowing now (after dipping into his biography) that he had an impish sense of humour, he may just be chuckling at our reactions. However, at least it has got everyone talking Jaguar — which we all swoon over, but few can afford.
It seems there will be further exposition on this rebranding effort — which so far Elon Musk has not appreciated either. So let us wait for it.
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Decolonisation is the buzzword now — and all museums are doing their best to deal with the backlash from the rule of the Empire-walas. What can they do with the vast collections from the colonies that have been cosily housed in British museums and now need to be re-examined? That is the question. But rather than return it all to the erstwhile colonies, why not do a re-interpretation and bring in contemporary artists to rework on the display? That is the new thinking and to some extent it seems to work. At least it raises questions and makes the backstory more accessible to the Museum visitors. We are doing the same re-interpretation of narratives and objects in the Partition Museum in Delhi and Amritsar and are interested to see that this is happening in the UK too.
For instance, an artist working with a Welsh museum has taken an 18th-century plush sofa belonging to Robert Clive and which lay originally in his London home — and placed it in a recreated ordinary middle class drawing room along with the humble tea trolley and other bric-a-brac. She has found the experience empowering — that people can actually sit on the sofa which belonged to Robert Clive. This experiment is supported by the Welsh government and the Arts Council of Wales — but there is more in the offing.
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The new film, Joy — on the work of the British scientists, Patrick Steptoe, Jean Purdy and Robert (Bob) Edwards — who created IVF — reveals many of the prejudices and challenges the three scientists faced.
The husband-and-wife team of Jack Thorne and Rachel Mason developed the story of the film — and Thorne wrote the screenplay — after going through the process themselves to give birth to their son. The film particularly honours the work of Jean Purdy — a nurse who bravely battled questions and comments from the church and her own community — but has never before been part of the mainstream narrative on the science of IVF. Now IVF is used by millions — but the birth of Louise “Joy” Brown — the first test tube baby was fraught accusations against what was called “Frankenstein” science. This is an important film (playing on Netflix) coming out at a time when there is so much discussion on women’s rights to reproduction, and choices.
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But then, of course, if you don’t want to watch Netflix on a chilly winter evening there is also jazz as well as Western classical music — the Monteverdi Choir singing Bach for Christmas, opera (Donizetti’s Elixir of Love) at the Coliseum, and films on the big screen including Wicked which is the prequel to The Wizard of Oz. There is also a Palestinian documentary, Mediha, about the life of Mediha Ahmad who shot it with a little help by an American documentary maker Hasan Oswald.
