It has been two weeks since the British referendum, and the dust still has not settled. Much like power abhors a vacuum, people abhor uncertainty, and as the wheel of fate spins apace, we now witness much speculation, opportunism, and anxiety. At such times, people long for deep insight and wisdom, for clear, useful information, which we can use to more accurately auger the future. And what greater source for such information could there be than that the lyrical expressions of the poet. Alas, to my knowledge, nobody has yet written a poem about Brexit; the balladeers of the soul have fallen as silent as a pause in a masterful composition. I considered filling in the void with words of my own, but I know well that I am not blessed with the mystic spirituality that my uncle Gordon had. Instead, the modest blog prose of a liberal arts graduate will have to suffice.
There have been a lot of attempts to depict those Britons who wish to leave the EU — they are old and inconsiderate of the youth of the country; they are racist, nationalistic, courageous, xenophobic, patriotic, ignorant, angry, reasonable, short-sighted, liberators, democratic, mostly in certain parts of the country, etc. With my philosophical reserve, I would only venture as far as saying that they are. They are. And with that, the issue is settled. However, I hear little coughs of expectation from my readers, so I shall speculate further. Let's look at what I believe stirs deep in the heart of British people, using the lens of literature as a guide.
It may come as a surprise to many of you, but the most illuminating text for understanding the decision of the British people last month is not some passage from a religious book nor one of Aesop's Fables, but F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Those in the leave camp most closely resemble James Gatz, with his lofty ambition to regain the romance of the past. The green light, which Gatsby sees across the bay, is blue, white, and red for the Brexiters. And it's all just within their grasp. When once confronted by a journalist about not being able to wind back time, Nigel Farage, bearing the unblinking eyes of a cult-follower, replied, "Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!", unaware that he was quoting the novel's protagonist verbatim. He also calls people 'old sport', but that's more of a 'little Britain' affectation than a transparent attempt to fake an affluent upbringing. Brexiters are as delusional as Gatzby in their attempt to bring back 1970s Britain. Even if we disregard the futility of trying to relive a time assimilated into the past, we still must, with cold, sober analysis, admit that the 1970s was a particularly miserable period in human history. Nostalgia has warped their perspective to see the exact opposite. The cringeworthy reality of the '70s has long since past, and it can no longer impose itself and save these poor unfortunates from delirious self-deception.
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| 1975's top 8 world's sexiest men |
They long for a time when you could just call a Pakistani man a 'Paki', an Irishman a 'Paddy', and a black man 'choco'. What they wouldn't give to spend another day in a period when sophisticated food was something that involved a lot of mayonnaise, and it was okay to call Chinese food 'chinkey'. They ache with nostalgia when distorted memories allow them once again to walk around the pantheon of the '70s. And what sweet memories:
- bell bottoms
- safari jackets
- uncompromisingly yellow shirts
- disco
- the last time women had to quit work for having a baby
- Carry On films (outlawed by the Maastricht Treaty)
- kind of weird attitudes towards fucking teenage girls
- the OAPEC crisis
- Richard Nixon
- violence in Northern Ireland
- prime ministers so bad that Britain would turn to Margaret Thatcher
- that tedious gondola chase involving a Louisiana sheriff in The Man with the Golden Gun
- Roger Moore's hair and leathery, aged skin
- orange and brown decor and clothing
- parka coats
- shag carpeting
- the word 'shag' being in common parlance
- three TV channels
- more pubic hair
- lax attitudes towards drink driving
- lower standards for health and safety
- Carly Simon
- holidays in Blackpool
- no internet
- films about plane disasters
- Jimmy Saville
- Gary Glitter
- Are You Being Served?
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| Sir Roger Moore in Lie and Let Die |
I haven't looked deep into this, but as far as I remember, some guy in the '70s hijacked a plane and, as ransom, asked the Pope to plead with God to bring the decade to a close sooner. That is the 1970s in a nutshell. It was balls. (We didn't even have this expression to air our misery.) Yet some wish to return there. They are not fools, who could not see what the economic consequences of Brexit were likely to be; they are dreamers, who cannot escape the ethereal, ever-fading past. Gatsby's love affair was ill-fated from the beginning and not what he believed it to be, and those in the leave camp are captivated by that same tragic romance. The muse of their dreams might be questionable, but the dream itself is beautiful. They long for the 1970s' glorious return, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before them. It has eluded them for decades as members of the EU, but that's no matter — tomorrow they will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . And one fine morning — So they beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
With the risk of taking sides, I feel duty-bound to add an important caveat about the referendum. As beautiful as the dream is, we must never allow it to manifest. I speak not of the economic fallout, nor of the problematic detangling of the UK from the many EU laws it has subscribed to, nor the issues of racism, nationalism, and national boundaries. I speak of how utterly disgusting the 1970s was. Some people use cheese graters or feces in their sexual practices, and that's okay, but we wouldn't want a whole society like that. My God, just the thought of the 1970s — it's so orange and brown and horrific.
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| Modern historians have yet to produce a consensus on how anyone survived such manky decor. |
