Accidental bleakathon
In which I talk about the TV series 'The Long Shadow' and the film 'How To Have Sex'; plus, I reviewed Paul Auster's latest novel
I had intended to only write a quick newsletter, but I kept typing. Given this Substack is described as ‘unplanned intrusions into your inbox’ I’m going to go ahead and decide that’s okay. Excuse any typos or imperfect expression. Let’s begin.
Last month, I watched the docudrama The Long Shadow on ITV — about the serial killer Peter Sutcliffe and the terrible and prolonged police investigation which culminated, eventually, in his arrest. The case is extremely well known in the UK but the facts still shock. Sutcliffe’s first documented assault was in 1969, when he was interviewed by police after hitting a woman on the back of her head with a stone in a sock. At the beginning of January 1981, he was stopped and arrested by police — saving Olivia Reivers’ life, who was in the car alongside him and who he had planned to murder. In relation to the case, he was interviewed by police over the years nine times.
In between these two occasions, and across those 12 years, he was responsible for the murder of Jacqueline Hill, Emily Jackson, Wilma McCann, Irene Richardson, Tina Atkinson-Mitra, Jayne MacDonald, Jean Bernadette Jordan, Yvonne Ann Pearson, Helen Rytka, Vera Evelyn Millward, Josephine Anne Whitaker, Babs Leach and Marguerite Walls; there are 22 more murders he is alleged to be responsible for. Other women were attacked but survived, including Marcella Claxton, Olive Smelt, Anna Rogulskyj, Tracy Browne, Maureen Long, Marilyn Moore, Upadhya Bandara, Mo Lea and Theresa Sykes.
The case is well-trodden. I saw a couple of complaints online when it first came out — along the lines of: Really? Another series about ‘The Yorkshire Ripper’?
There’s a hell of a lot to say about the obsession with true crime . . . what stories we are happy to tell and which we avoid . . . why violence against women is so popular to watch . . . I could stack up tangent upon tangent, but I’m going to stick to The Long Shadow, because I thought it was a good series and these tangents aren’t relevant here — The Long Shadow justified returning to the story.
What I thought was particularly powerful and refreshing about the drama was the fact that none of the crimes are shown — we see the women’s lives before they are murdered or hurt, and those of some of their family and friends afterwards. Threat and shock are conjured without sensationalising or indulging for the dark-thrill onscreen. That’s not to say that there is something wrong with dramatising murder or rape, but here there was something powerful in not doing so. The misogyny, bias and disregard from the police, press and general society permeate the series in surprisingly subtle and accumulative ways too.
There was also a scene which harnessed the context of the case to convey something I think can be hard to properly explain, or at least make someone feel. We witness three characters walking home. None of them end up hurt, but we see the potential and we feel the fear, the what-if that can charge the simple task of making your way home alone. It was a clever way of showing how the case rippled beyond the attacks themselves — and it illustrated how that simple task can feel at any time.
There are ways in which many women instinctively act and feel that are quite hard to depict: I could explain what a walk home feels like, that I’d never listen to music when I’m out at night so I can hear my surroundings; that I walk quickly; that I scan for sounds, shadows, possibilities; that some nights, I’ll walk through the park because, for fuck’s sake, why should I add 10 minutes to my journey just because of the potential threat of someone attacking me when it’s far more likely I’ll walk through and be fine but other times there’s no chance I’ll duck through, all pointless evaluations anyway because yes a well-lit street is better than a dark park, but it is not the difference between safety and danger. I could explain all of this but I’m not sure always how much it conveys. That rather than it being basic and practical, it just makes me sound anxious.
There are many things that women do to protect themselves — do without really thinking about it. This fact, to women, is mundanely obvious. A bit of a cliché too: that image of holding keys between your fingers. They are just the everyday actions of the unharmed woman. You hope that that is all they will be. For men, this is something they don’t need to think about — (I know some men will consider these same things on a walk home in fear of, say, racist or homophobic attack) — and I write this because sometimes I want them to think about it. I want them to be able to imagine it, vividly. I thought The Long Shadow did that very well.
I’m jealous of the not-thinking, of putting some tunes on and heading home with the swell of a good night having ended — a casual stroll being a casual stroll. I could have that. I could stick my headphones in. I could treat it as casual. I could figure I’ll be okay and if not what’s the point because really, how much of this cautiousness will stop it from happening if it happens. But, yes, that’s not quite how it works. Awareness, vigilance . . . it is bulk, you can’t be weightless with that, and you can’t just toss it over your shoulder and affect freedom.
When horrendous cases happen you have a face, whether victim or assailant, to put to the fear. But the threat is no less or more than any other day. And even when you get home, safety for some is still fickle. You’ve survived the walk between two points on a map but what next? Women are more likely, statistically, to be raped or attacked by someone they know.
I am stating the obvious but sometimes it is an obvious that I want to state.
These weren’t meant to be linked sections, but it leads me all the same to How To Have Sex, the debut film by Molly Manning Walker. I saw a screening of it in September and found it vibrant and poignant. It really sat with me afterwards. The film — which portrays a teenage holiday to Crete — is a nuanced exploration of sex and assault, and how the ambiguous spaces around consent can be exploited. It’s a counter to the argument that consent is simply ‘yes means yes’ and ‘no means no’. It’s great too on the simultaneous vulnerability and audacity of being a teenage girl; on friendship dynamics at that age and the pressures on girls to be a certain type of woman, and on boys to be a certain type of man.
I saw the film just after the various Russell Brand allegations came out, the same week Lawrence Fox made disgusting comments about Ava Santina (revealing, unsurprisingly, that Fox thinks ultimately women are to be judged on their fuckability — and that’s not to even say he is expressing what he really thinks about Santina’s appearance, but that it is his way of expressing a woman’s worth: their hotness to be taken away if they disagree with him or, indeed, are merely assertive beings. ‘Who would want to fuck that?’ he said, that, the only legitimate means he considers for assessing women: that’s what they’re for, and right now, she’s no good. It’s not like there was a proposition for him to consider or that it had relevance to the conversation. But it wasn’t anything to do with what he thought of her appearance. It was simply: I don’t like what she’s saying, and the only thing I judge women good for I’m taking away from her in response. It reminds me of rejecting men who — in not hearing what they want to hear — go from categorising you as damn hot to an ugly bitch).
So, I watched How To Have Sex in a week where these things were already simmering closer to the surface. And I think for that reason one thing in particular stuck to me afterwards: the portrayal of opportunism, of how in a certain moment all that might matter is getting something from a woman, against her will, and being able to get away with it.
How To Have Sex is complicated and subtle and leaves you to your own interpretation, although there are clues and gestures in the dialogue and direction. Some viewers will stare blindly at those pointers — there are reviews out there that seem to wilfully misunderstand the film and its two central scenes — but I liked the conclusion of a recent interview with Manning Walker. It was hopeful.
The first time Molly Manning Walker screened her film How to Have Sex was in May in front of 500 people. Before the credits rolled, a man left the cinema and was seen by one of the film’s crew nervously pacing up and down. The crew member asked him if he was OK. “I’ve just realised,” the man said, “I’ve been Paddy.” Paddy is the film’s charismatic lothario who sexually assaults the protagonist, Tara. Twice. “All my nerves about showing the film to the world dropped at that point,” Walker, 30, says now. “I thought, ‘If I’ve had this effect on someone this early on, made them realise that they’ve acted in this way, then f***ing great.’”
Now for something else. I reviewed Paul Auster’s 18th novel, Baumgartner, for last weekend’s FT Weekend. Auster is an author who tends to divide people. He has been criticised for writing with cliché (James Wood) and mediocrity (Kevin Power). You could make the same claims with Baumgartner but I think it would be disingenuous. A person can seem inconsequential but no life is without intensity or consequence, and Auster gets closer to truth by not evading that fact. You can read my take here, if you want.
Bye!
While I’ve got you, I’m leaving this donation link here, https://www.map.org.uk. Yes, it is time for a humanitarian ceasefire.