My Defeat is Complete

When I first watched Nathan Barley, I enjoyed the humour, but considered it a bit surreal and a bit of an in-joke about media types in London.

Then I became a critic, and begun to identify with Dan Ashcroft - an older, bearded writer who felt frustrated by the society that surrounded him.

Now it feels like scripture: a warning to me that I ought to be more reflective or I am going to end up like Ashcroft (in a hospital bed, on an attempted murder charge and unable to intervene in a catastrophic social collapse into idiocy), and a commentary on the society I find myself inhabiting.

Ashcroft's fear was the rise of the idiots - culture dominated by dolts who have plenty of formal education (and the cash to enable them) but no intelligence, a preoccupation with the 'cool' and immediate, where irony hides a plethora of moronic assumptions. 

The article that reminded me of Nathan Barley... no, I was reminded of Nathan by posts on my Facebook feed, so I looked up this article... 

The article says that Nathan is prophetic. But it does not actually name who the idiots are (they are hipsters, or their social media representations), and it doesn't do much more than say 'wow, that was clever.' Fact is (facts, honestly...), Nathan Barley is a satire of a world in which the shallow has destroyed the rigorous, in which the protagonist (and it is Dan, not Nathan) gradually experiences and recognises his own shallowness. 

It's a tragedy. Dan is Oedipus, receiving wisdom of self and being destroyed by his discovery. 

It brings me back to Facebook. Most of my friends are sharp cookies, but my Facebook feed is a parade of idiocy. Political partisan posts (mostly saying that Tories are scum), links to other people's ideas, a complete lack of reflection... and that is just me. 

I am going to get out the coat and do The Preacher Man. I lost a long long time ago...

For Tiernan Douieb: I am not an idiot

Thanks to the wonderful @churlishmeg, I have discovered a great blog post on Nathan Barley. When it came out, I was still a Latin teacher and enjoyed it mostly for the dystopian cynicism.

I thought the 'idiots' in it were a bit exaggerated. Now I work in media. I don't know anyone like the idiots, but I have seen them from afar. 

I do know Dan Ashcroft, though. There's this one freelance writer, getting on a bit, probably talented but hardly setting the world on fire. He comes up with wild, exciting ideas, but people look at him like - WTF. And he has a beard, and his every haircut is a disaster. He has even got a priest's coat that he wears to parties.

The thing is with Dan, is that he is smart but he spends so long looking down on other people, and nursing his failures, that he ignores the good in the world and underestimates his potential. 

As Nathan Barley goes on, Dan became less of a hero and more of a wraith.., lacking the strength to walk away from the idiots, he unwillingly pandered to them. Real life Dan is beginning to get like that - recent blog posts vacillate between mocking idiots and trying to get the attention of people who might save him.

Dan is the tragic hero of Nathan Barley: he is complicit in his own failure. The only hope is to reclaim him as he is in episode one (when he writes a scathing piece) and save him from his later arrogance (when he churns out shit to order).