Horrendous outrages in the news now never happen without dozens of social media aftershocks, as the press are caught out in language choices that betray bias. The complex question of who is and who is not described as a “terrorist” is a case in point. But there’s a more problematic T-word, from classical antiquity: tragedy.
It is how the Grenfell Tower fire has been described. I have used it myself. But London MP David Lammy has said “tragedy” is insidiously wrong, a redundant gesture of fatalistic sorrow and a sleight-of-hand that spreads blame everywhere and nowhere, allowing the guilty to creep away. The correct word is “crime”, he says.
He’s probably right. Tragedy is used by politicians and journalists as a conceptual non-combatant zone, a way of paying tribute or lip-service to devastating loss while pointedly leaving the issue of culpability untouched.
When I was a student, we were told to wrestle with the definition of tragedy and the concept in Greek drama of the fatal flaw. We all did the same Bee Gees gag. And in those days pedantic, teachery types could still be relied on to quarrel with calling anything a “tragedy” because it did not conform to the concept of a drama of suffering that induced catharsis. But this is a problem. If “tragedy” is inadmissible, there seems to be no other word to reflect our horror and fear: doubleplusunhappy … tripleplusunhappy …? Tragedy, for all its cloudy imprecision, is here to stay.
Too hot to sandal
By the time you read this, the hot weather will probably have passed, and people will have stopped saying: “Hot enough for you?” or beginning emails with: “Hope you are enjoying the hot weather!” The answer to this last question being: I am not on holiday, I am working, the burden of which is fractionally increased by having to concoct a jovial answer to this – so no.
But now there is a new hot-weather tradition. Jokily posting gruesome pictures of your sunburn on social media. Oh, please. I just had my breakfast. Now I’ve got to look at an expanse of lobster-red flesh? The classic one seems to be sunburnt feet.
Even the doziest Briton knows that he or she has to slap a little suncream on faces, shoulders, backs and fronts. But they forget about sandalled feet. So now, all over the country, there are people with two white stripes across their brick-red feet. We know this. We don’t need to see it on Facebook.
No 10’s romcom role
What with everything that’s been going on, there hasn’t been much attention paid to the recent visit to Britain by Ireland’s taoiseach, the Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar.
He met Theresa May at No 10 Downing Street, and the first thing he said was that it reminded him of the scene from Love Actually where Hugh Grant dances down the stairs. It is not clear how May responded. I suspect she wore a diplomatic smile while making a mental note to ask a special adviser what on earth her visitor was talking about. Varadkar also said he fully realised this famous scene was not filmed in No 10 but on a specially constructed set.
Perhaps, as Love Actually continues its march to legendary status, the government will bow to the inevitable and put a photo of a dancing Hugh Grant up on the staircase along with Jim Callaghan and Alec Douglas-Home. After all, the YMCA organisation now embraces its gay iconic status. The British government will have to acknowledge that Downing Street is famous chiefly for its small role in the history of romcom.
