The state of Veracruz: I’m following in the footsteps of two of America’s greatest pre-war archaeologists: husband and wife team Matthew & Marion Stirling … The Olmec: they built the very first pyramids, palaces and planned cities. ibid.
At the same time as ancient Egypt the Olmecs flourished here. ibid.
Wonderful symbol of the jaguar … repeating throughout Olmec art. ibid.
We see the barbaric up against the civilised. ibid.
The oldest tomb ever found in Meso-America. ibid.
Masterpieces in jade … The complexity of Olmec society … sourced from elsewhere … Jade was the most precious commodity in the Olmec era. ibid.
[Olmec] Accomplished wood carvers. ibid.
‘The seeds for what we take for granted – this multicultural society that we live in now – they were really formed on the dancefloor back in the day in the late ’60s and early 70s.’ Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records, Sky Arts 2019
Chapter 1: The Trojan: Let’s go to Jamaica: one of the bigger islands …’Kingston was, was fun, ya know, much lovin’ in Jamaica. Then till them start migrating to England, here.’ ibid.
Between 1955 and 1963 over 100,000 people emigrated from Jamaica to Great Britain. ibid. caption
David Betteridge: Island & Trojan Records: ‘We were a Jamaican music company.’ ibid.
Millie: My Boy Lollipop … Dandy: Rudy, A Message to You … The Maytals: 54-46 Was My Number … Derek Morgan: Seven Letters … Desmond Decker and the Aces: 007 … The Harry J All Stars: Liquidator … Untouchables: Tighten Up … Lee Perry … ibid.
In 1968 the same year Trojan Records is founded, MP Enoch Powell reacts to rising levels of Immigration and addresses the nation. ibid.
A new Vibration is emerging in Jamaica and Trojan begins importing records to sell to a growing market in the UK. ibid.
While mainstream radio will not play Trojan records, pirate radio beings broadcasting Jamaican music. ibid.
Trojan skinhead culture is sweeping through the UK and a new market for Jamaican music is emerging. ibid.
Between March and June 1969 Desmond Decker’s The Israelites sells over a million records. ibid.
The night before Vivienne Westwood’s London Fashion Week show: I don’t know if I want to show any of this shit. And I don’t know what the fuck this is. Westwood: Punk - Icon - Activist, BBC 2019
At the age of 11, 12, I was making my own clothes. ibid.
We invented punk. ibid.
We wanted to undermine the establishment. ibid.
It affected fashion such a lot … It was being marketed all the time. ibid.
We weren’t attacking the establishment. We were just part of the distraction. ibid.
Barthes stepped into the road … He was struck down … Roland Barthes is one of the 21st century’s greatest thinkers. He questioned the assumptions of how we underpin our world. In 1957 he published a book; he called it Mythologies that looked seriously, rigorously and in detail at popular culture. A series of essays, mythologies, broke down the barrier between high art and consumerism. 21st Century Mythologies with Richard Clay, BBC 2020
… the unsexiness of striptease … for Bathes these things are myths: so commonplace we take them for granted. Yet they are packed with deeper meaning. ibid.
Barthes questioned how myths are used to shore up the prevailing power of money. ibid.
What might Roland Barthes have made of the 21st century? Roland Barthes grew up looking for meaning. ibid.
Today, the myth of plastic has taken a full U-turn from the wonder material of the 1950s to poisonous waste of the 20th century. ibid.
The Myth of Money: It’s a myth, something so insistent, as Barthes put it, that we accept it without question. Once, money was worth its weight in metal; today, it’s flimsy paper at best. An abstract idea with value only because we’re so used to it being something valuable. To buttress money’s authority, banknotes are adorned with symbols of the nation state and the face of prestigious historical figures conveying a legitimacy and stability. ibid.
What happens if you subvert the myth and protest, maybe by using art? ibid.
The Myth of signs … humans have this amazing ability to create and follow conventions … ‘the sign is a visual signal of authority.’ ibid.
To Barthes, it’s the sheer scale of the repetition of things. ibid.
The Myth of Wi-Fi: To Accept. Obey. Move on. Here’s a signifier Barthes would never have seen but he might have recognised its mythic power to enchant the masses: Wi-Fi, a myth symbolised everywhere by a fan of black bars. The internet has come to signify our empowerment, how quickly we can reach information - the latest slug of news, create a meme or social media rumour. Yet there’s a deeper meaning: this connectivity runs two ways … Your emails and apps are tracking you … The myth of the internet is meshed with the myth of money. ibid.
Michelangel’s beautiful sculpture of David … [exits shop with statuette] David: this quintessential figure of Florentine masculinity is everywhere now … David is an industry in his own right. ibid.
Images of everything from margarine to marriage were carefully confected myths, persuading women to be perfect beings. ibid.
The Virgin Mary was never depicted in her own lifetime yet her image is recognised pretty much everywhere … An image of perfection, symbol of virginity, innocence and immortality, gold-flecked and unobtainable. ibid.
The Myth of Guns in Movies: Is it true there are no bad guns, only bad people? I mean, take the Tommy Gun. Wielded by gangsters, a symbol of criminal violence; by Winston Churchill, a symbol of the bulldog defiance. ibid.
The Myth of Race: The biggest, most pernicious, dangerous of modern myths – race … Racial difference and hierarchies of race have been used to justify exploitation. We now know that less than 1% of 1% of the human genome differs between people who are categorized as belonging to different races. Race is a myth – but one that has appalling, real-world consequences. ibid.
‘I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age.’ The Importance of Being Oscar, BBC 2020
‘I treated art as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction.’ ibid.
He was always aware he was an outsider as an Irishman so there was always an edge. ibid. Jerusha McCormack, author
Oscar’s first foray into playwriting is a play called Vera or the Nihilists, a play about Russian revolutionaries … It’s not terribly good. ibid. historian
The Picture of Dorian Gray: It caused a storm of protest in the press. People picked up on the homosexual subtext, the relationship between Basil the painter and Dorian. ibid.
Lady Windermere’s Fan is the first of the society comedies … A bad rumour has come to her ears that her husband is embarking an affair with a mysterious woman called Mrs Erlynne. (Literature & Plays & Culture & Celebrity) ibid.
I was born here in Dudley in the West Midlands. And I grew up here in Douglas Road. I’ve got so many brilliant memories of growing up in a very very Caribbean household. Everything we did was Jamaican – the way we talked, the way we ate, the music we played. Lenny Henry’s Caribbean Culture I, BBC 2022
We Hintigrated and we Escalated. These little islands suddenly to create this immense cultural output – all this music, all this culture, all this art, all this creativity, it’s an extraordinary achievement. ibid.
Shameful Episode in Notting Hill. ibid. Pathé news 1958
Predictably, the mainstream turned its nose up at Caribbean art. ibid.
Afros were out, dreadlocks were in. Reggae was now the dominant force in Jamaican music.
Britain got to see West Indians party at the cricket. ibid.
Three of a Kind came just at the right time for me … Being part of a sketch show meant I had to learn fast.
The success of reggae and punk meant that we had bands like Madness, The Specials, The Beat, Selector, all mixed tracks. ibid. Dr Mykaell Riley
At one point UB40 was the best-selling reggae artist around the world. ibid. dude