The oldest kind of branding the nation knows, to paraphrase.
Britannia reaching towards reclaiming a genre that was ditched a hundred years ago, only that Military Wives tune despite marking a sea-change (when else could it have reached Christmas No 1?) is a bit of an outlier. In the British experience at least after the First World War, war songs came pre-packaged with melancholy and a different sort of sentimentality: that British society of boundless optimism and great-game playing was to a degree 'destroyed' as Paul Fussell has it here.
Of course since the Second World War there hasn't been a war of enough magnitude to require uplifting songs, and this seems to have stuck for a time: unlike in the US everyone from country singers to rappers didn't immediately make their contributions. Post-2008 this gradual re-branding of the nation with it's base components has accelerated faster than it would have done otherwise: it is two of the oldest British (English) institutions that have found themselves doing the most well, Army and Church. One has found itself become a beloved public institution able to dodge most of the criticism in-coming by appropriating emotion and anti-war critique along with the usual dogma; the other has found itself in it's 19th century role as most-often heard critic of the ills of the poor, a role that Robert Tressell and Joe Hill skewered around the same time.
The audio of the patriotic hymn comes accompanied with a pre-packaged "sort of
controlled despair" that is as much a selling point as John Bull-ism. A youtube subgenre however exists consisting of jocular squaddies larking to pop tunes in the desert, gritty in-action footage, and video montages set to either ethereal melancholia or blood-thirsty dirge depending on temperament.
What happened this week is unremarkable in the history of the British army. The audio recording however is, something feeling very odd about both the awareness and performativity of what's being done, and the indifference to which it was treated by those who years before would have had at least something to say.
"It might seem odd to begin a book on
nationalism with the Gulf War. The term 'nationalism' invites us to
look elsewhere for exemplars. In both popular and academic writing,
nationalism is associated with those who struggle to create new
states or with extreme right-wing politics. According to customary
usage, George Bush is not a nationalist; but separatists in Quebec or
Brittany are; so are the leaders of extreme right-wing parties such
as the Front National in France; and so, too, are the Serbian
guerrillas, killing in the cause of extending the homeland's borders.
A book about nationalism is expected to deal with such figures. It
should be discussing dangerous and powerful passions, outlining a
psychology of extraordinary emotions.
Yet, there is something
misleading about this accepted use of the word 'nationalism'. It
always seems to locate nationalism on the periphery. Separatists are
often to be found in the outer regions of states; the extremists lurk
on the margins of political life in established democracies, usually
shunned by the sensible politicians of the centre. The guerrilla
figures, seeking to establish their new homelands, operate in
conditions where existing structures of state have collapsed,
typically at a distance from the established centres of the West.
From the perspective of Paris, London or Washington, places such as
Moldova, Bosnia and Ukraine are peripherally placed on the edge of
Europe. All these factors combine to make nationalism not merely an
exotic force, but a peripheral one. In consequence, those in
established nations - at the centre of things - are led to see
nationalism as the property of others, not of 'us'. This is where the
accepted view becomes misleading: it overlooks the nationalism of the
West's nation-states. In a world of nation-states, nationalism cannot
be confined to the peripheries. That might be con-ceded, but still it
might be objected that nationalism only strikes the established
nation-states on special occasions. Crises, such as the
Falklands or Gulf Wars, infect a sore spot, causing bodily fevers:
the symptoms are an inflamed rhetoric and an outbreak of ensigns. But
the irruption soon dies down; the temperature passes; the flags are
rolled up; and, then, it is business as usual.
If that were the extent of nationalism
in established nations, then nationalism, when it moves in from the
periphery, only comes as a temporary mood. But, there is more. The
intermittent crises depend upon existing ideological foundations.
Bush, in his eve of battle speech, did not invent his dismal
rhetoric: he was drawing upon familiar images and cliches. The flags
displayed by the Western public during the Gulf War were familiar:
Americans did not have to remind themselves what this arrangement of
stars and stripes was. The national anthem, which topped the US music
chart, was recorded at a football final. Each year, whether in peace
or war, it is sung before the game.
In short, the crises do not create
nation-states as nation-states. In between times, the United States
of America, France, the United Kingdom and so on continue to exist.
Daily, they are reproduced as nations and their citizenry as
nationals. And these nations are reproduced within a wider world of
nations. For such daily reproduction to occur, one might hypothesize
that a whole complex of beliefs, assumptions, habits, representations
and practices must also be reproduced. Moreover, this complex must be
reproduced in a banally mundane way, for the world of nations is the
everyday world, the familiar terrain of contemporary times"
Operator: Here we are, I have this connected for you now, it should run fine at least for the next few days.
[undoes cap and wipes finger around run and re-covers, smiling to no one in particular, a little C shaped gesture of the head]
Recovery is usually straight forward, there might be a few odd sensations here and there but don't worry. The medication you're on now will dull any pain, but more importantly it will subdue that feeling your getting.
[gestures]
Yes, the pins and needles. I spoke to a lad the other day described it as being like his nerves trying to make a fist or a shadow-puppet or something. Obviously that's not what is really happening, and the sensation is all wrong because the signals can't be coming from where you think they are. Obviously.
[Wipes upper lip and sits down carefully, as if this action, of all the others that will be performed today is the one that will be observed, marked]
[Takes a small breath and allows features in face to wind up in a familiar way that comes before beginning the routine, speaking the words that have worn their way through time and observance. Familiarity is not comforting, not in this case, but it drives time and responsibililty as if on a belt and that does make things easier, one it's started it's as predictable as the morning news.]
[Does not say anything]
[There is a restaurant nearby, it is nearly full, only a few tables in awkward places between walls and fixtures, next to the toilets and beneath a speaker are empty, or at least occupied only by inanimate objects, possessions, shopping.]
Narrator: so where is it, where are they coming from?
Operator: Somewhere else, that's all the matters, some Other place. That's what is most important, they come from outside. It's a binary thing.
Narrator: But surely there is a gradient?
Operator: Not in this situation, not in most in my experience, the cut makes it pretty clear.
[A young couple are standing in the doorway of the restaurant, not yet committing to entering as if they can hang onto the moment before that decision is made, before the social armature swinging like a boom comes round. They stand in that dead space at the top of the arc, assessing whether it will work to enter this place to eat, whether it will be awkward, perhaps sharing a table, at least having to excuse themselves as they step past people already in mid flow of conversation, and food, protecting themselves further with protective laughter, fork gestures, protecting against an elbow in the back or a scarf knocked from the back of a chair. To enter into all of this is so much. The wind tips, the boom swings over and they enter, uncertain as to whether this decision is their own but by then it hardly matters, reflexes kick in and they are enveloped]
Operator: You're going to have to learn to let it go.
Narrator: let it go?
Operator: Yes.
[wipes lip again]
There's something that was there, but now it's elsewhere, it's in the Other space.
Narrator: That's ridiculous, it's in a space here, it's in a bin at the back probably, in a yellow bag and on a trolley,waiting to be moved again.
[Begining to obviously sweat, looking damp]
It's more active than me, and that's the problem, it's still part of me, the gap means nothing. I'm full of gaps, you're full of gaps! The thing that's me is monster.
Operator: ...
[shifts weight as if to get up, then repeats action in reverse, brings it back. Like a man in a bar racking the pool balls, that little flourish, getting more pronounced as the evening moves on, the more pitchers, the more won games, the more hopefully threatening stacks of 50p's on the edge of the table]
Now, look self image is a delicate thing, but you can't dwell on it, you need to understand...
Narrator: I do understand, you don't understand at all. I have gaps all through me same as you, that object out back, making its way in the world, that's still part of me, just like my primary school education is part of me, the way I learnt to form letters on those exercise books with the extra horizontal lines.
[Tries to stand but can't, sits down, sits up. rubs hands together, looks down at the beads of sweat on the backs of each hand. Watches one droplet of water run off one way, and then another a different way. Blinks.]
There's just a blur that gets thicker in places, has some dense points, collision points, tight enough that I can sit on a chair with them but it's still all a blur, there's no line that says this is one thing and that's another.
Operator: But there is a line...
Narrator: No, no there isn't! We put the line done afterwards, and then forget that we did so, or at least try and forget. This is why we have courts for example, they spend day after day doing this activity that ends with a line being dropped on the ground and everyone trying hard to forget they just put it there. Day after day telling some poor soul that he transgressed while he looks at his feet and lies through his teeth that he knowingly did it as if there was a sign there.
Nothing categorically ends, well it does, but that category is what we put down. You know what though? that categories have been getting blurrier and blurrier themselves, mixing in with all those things they were meant to keep apart, like you've microwaved your ready made korma too hard and for too long and it just got up off that ceramic rotating plate and ate your face!
Operator: But division is what makes things work, you can't have a machine made out of jelly, the gears have to be distinct from one another, otherwise the energy wouldn't get anywhere.
Narrator: Rubbish! I love jelly, and the energy runs more efficienty through that than it does though the drive on a lathe, all that energy lost in a slipped belt, in the wearing of bushes, and the whole thing is making it self redundant all the time anyway, bringing on it's own obsolescence while continually looking the other way, pretending it can last for ever and it will harness all these kinetic and cultural forces in it's steel for all time. The jelly is far more efficient and it embraces it's own demise with no pretence, with dignity.
Operator: This is a very stressful time, you can't expect to adjust straight away, that's what we're here for, to put these systems in place to ease the transition to your new life. It's not even you new life, it's just your life.
[Wipes hands on down sides of trousers from hips to just above ankles, bending forward with head still looking straight ahead at all times, settling back. Leans forward to fall back on the old phrase]
Everything's going to be fine!
Narrator: I know it will be fine, I know it will be seamless, it's the seams which are false! It's the myth of the seams that are making this so stressful, they make you think you should know where you are but you don't. I mean, one doesn't, not "you" personally. The map isn't bloody there when you look down! I'm going to learn to accept it if it's the last thing I do! I'm going to learn to be overjoyed when people put their fingers in my food and leave them there, I'm going to spread myself out all over the place and just ooze and throb, it's going to be wonderful, I'm Whitney, I'm Chaka Khan, I'm every woman! I'm ready for the dream time, melt me!
