Some random rants with a pretence at a linking theme.

 

There is a sign at Leeds train station that says “Stay off the tracks”. It is painted, black letters in a white box, on the front of each platform, so as to be easily visible from the far side.

 

The mind boggles. What is the target audience for this gem of wisdom? It involves actual loss of sanity (1) to consider that the station management are devout believes in a class of person who, left unchecked, are sufficiently careless of their health to romp around on the rail-line with the electric cables, but at the same time would be dissuaded from this by the presence of a sign: kind of anarchic sociopaths who are deeply respectful of written authority.

 

Or it’s one of those “caution contains nuts” liability-evasion pieces of legal sleight of hand, in which case, let us hope it’s never needed. If someone’s going to vault over the edge of the platform and try and, say, stop the train with the force of their faith (2), then pointing at the nice sign is not going to sway the law one way or the other. If the law is having a good day then the duty to save people from their own stupidity will not extend to physically walling off such an obvious health hazard, and if the law got out of bed on the wrong side then the sign is unlikely to sway the matter. (3)

 

We live in an age of information, where a catchy idea can be across the globe before you know it, where an unknown geek can become a superstar via Youtube, whilst professional admen throw their hands up in the air and complain that it’s so difficult to reach people these days. Of course, the poor admen, for whom we’re no doubt very sorry, have the added disadvantage that nobody actually wants to hear their intrusive message, which is inevitably just on the borderline between damn lies and statistics (4). Everyone’s talking about trust, these days. Nobody trusts politicians and nobody trusts adverts, and the sad repercussion is that both politicians and advertising men are now incorporating increasingly desperate protestations of faith in their messaging: “We know you can’t trust them, hell, you couldn’t trust us the last hundred times, but this time…” That, and increasingly bizarre assertions of environmental friendliness. Even petroleum companies are trying to sell themselves these days on how very, very good they are for the environment. (5). Perhaps it even works for a few products, but it is using up the antibiotics: soon we will be resistant to the “trust us, this is good” as well as the plain “this is good”, and where will they go then? After all, the only people who feel the need to insert “you can trust me” in everyday speech, and to protest their bona fides, are those who are trying something on, surely.

 

I used to write for a little theatre group that performed original plays. In amongst the kitchen sink dramas and the cheap pseudo-Stoppard, there was one very committed writer who had a world-spanning free trade, anti-capitalism, save-the-world message, and he had a play, and the play and the message were really the same thing. It was a remarkable piece of work, hammering its point home with every device the chap could think of, up to and including a ballet symbolising the evils of capitalism. He had it performed at the local fair trade place, and it went down very well. On a broader view of things, it was unperformable. The medium was, very literally, the message. There was nothing but message, laid on with a trowel. Preaching to the converted, the play was a wildfire success. Everyone left nodding sagely, reassured in their preconceptions. To anyone who was even within arm’s reach of sitting on the fence, the only thing that play was likely to do was turn you off environmentalism for life. After half an hour of ponderous intellectual dogmatism you wanted to go home and leave every appliance on overnight, but shares in Shell and oppress a third world country, just to redress the balance.

 

There was probably a connection that I was going to make, with all this, concerning trying too hard to say things that don’t, necessarily, need saying. Having got that far, I shall leave the moral unspoken.

 

(1)   1d4/1

(2)   Or perhaps tie a struggling maiden to the tracks. Perhaps the entire business is to crack down on the burgeoning trend in silent-movie villains.

(3)   Perhaps the human race should come with the warning, “Caution: contains nuts.” Any visiting extraterrestrials should know what they’re getting. Hell, they might sue, otherwise.

(4)   Obviously advertising for fantasy novels is the exception, and every word is guaranteed true, so long as it’s complimentary.

(5)   Fantasy novels are, however, good from the environment. You can trust me on that.