I'm really not at all familiar with Thatcher's politics, but her's were the very last words uttered in the film, and though it all went over my head, I at least got that there were supposed to be some implied symbolism there....?
shareThe thing is, Thatcher didn't come to power until 5 years after the book was written.
The clip also talks about privatisation of utilities, which I suppose he thinks is a bad thing but in reality, as anyone alive in the 70s knows, things have immeasurably improved with privatisation. Power cuts were so frequent, businesses could only have power for 3 days a week in the hopes there would be enough for domestic use (although there were strict rules on using power at home too). You had to wait 6 months to a year for a phone line, same to get the line fixed if it went wrong. Everyone was on strike because the labour government (Margaret Thatcher's political opposition) were in power and were awful. Bin men went on strike so rubbish piled up in the streets, nurses, teachers, civil servants, coal miners, pretty much everyone under the domain of government or local councils went out on strike, even undertakers so the dead couldn't be buried.
I think you can see the allegory to the 70s in the building, with the rubbish piling up and power cuts etc but I think in this movie, Royal and his building are supposed to represent free enterprise and be the trouble maker, whereas in real life, it was the government *beep* *beep* up.
In the book, the tower is just supposed to be a microcosm of society, without blame being apportioned for engineering the failure. It's simply an examination of how people and the various classes might react when/if society breaks down.
Anyway, all that stuff is why when Margaret Thatcher got into power she said "*beep* that, I'm privatising these services". They're now better, faster and cheaper, so including that quote is pretty stupid on multiple levels because she was right about the beneficial effects of privitisation.
He's quite simply shoehorning his hatred for her into an unrelated movie, hoping that you'll hate her too without him needing to honestly explain why you should.
Great stuff. Thank you.
shareIgnore the Kate1976 ignorant comments above. The 3 day week was in 1974 under Ted Heath's *Conservative* government, not a Labour government. The commenter is conflating this with the Winter of Discontent (a period of heavy strike action by public sector workers) in the winter of 1978/1979. High-Rise was published more than 3 years earlier than that.
shareDo you remember the 70s Kate1976?
The three day week which you talk about was introduced by a Conservative government and was over years before Thatcher came to power. It was reaction to the failure of that same Conservative government's policies that sparked mass strike action in the early 70s. Both of these things would have been occurring about the time Burgess would have been writing High Rise. (It was also a Conservative government that nationalised Rolls-Royce.)
It's certainly true that the Labour government which came to power afterwards had an unhappy time of it, and strikes continued, but your 'memories' appear to be distinctly blinkered.
Kate1976, I'm afraid your summary of Thatcher's legacy is verging on blathering nonsense.
Are you for real? Thatcher's legacy has been a disaster. The UK has a huge trade deficit and is in debt up to its eyeballs. No one under the age of 40 can sensibly afford a place to live it (rent or buy) and inequality is at its worst in decades.
Pure drivel.
as anyone alive in the 70s knows, things have immeasurably improved with privatisation. Power cuts were so frequent
Kate1976 please shut the **** up. What a load of *beep*
shareThe power cuts were due to industrial disputes, not the ownership of the utilities. When they were expropriated prices rocketed and the profits went to speculators, instead of the public paying the bills. Thatchler only followed the logic of the policies enacted in 1976, which colonised Britain for the benefit of a fascist boss class. It wasn't difficult to predict the police state at home and the terrorist state (mostly) abroad at the time, millions did.
Marlon, Claudia & Dimby the cats 1989-2010. Clio the cat, July 1997 - 1 May 2016.
Kate1976 My god what a load of rubbish ?
shareWhat I meant to write was what a load of spiteful Tory rubbish.
shareSo Margaret Thatcher was in power when this book was written and the whole thing is an inditement of her?
So sorry, I almost forgot that thanks to his time machine, Ballard spent the entire book condemning the evils of free enterprise, capitalism, and the Tory party.
[deleted]
Try asking the few countries which have privatized water how well they're doing. It was attempted in Bolivia with disastrous results. There was water shortages, accounting errors and huge increases in pricing. The people rose up and there was a revolution because things were so bad.
The book and movie were both an indictment of Thatcher before Thatcher was even around. I guess it was obvious enough to JG Ballard when he wrote the book in 1975. At that time Thatcher was elected as leader of the Conservative Party. Maybe JG Ballard heard some speeches by Thatcher and realized how insane her plan of small government was.
It certainly didn't improve Britain. That country still has one of the *worst* rail systems in Europe and it's because of the Conservative privatization under Thatcher/Major.
Um, water was privatised here in 1989, under Margaret Thatcher, and 27 years later the world hasn't ended yet.
Were you actually around in the 70s and early 80s to realise how *beep* these services were before they were privatised? Can you imagine living in a country where your power goes out randomly? Where your telephone took a year to get and 6 months to get repaired?
Plus, as a proportion of income, all these services are FAR cheaper than they used to be.
Do you have any idea how many companies the state used to own before they were privatised? Everything from Rols Royce to British Sugar to British Aerospace, to Thomas Cook, to British Airways. And they pretty much all gave crap service.
I really wish people would stop believing propaganda and actually research the history for themselves.
Everything you're saying is actually wrong.
* Tariffs increased by 46% in real terms during the first nine years,
* Operating profits have more than doubled (+142%) in eight years,
investments were reduced and
public health was jeopardised through cut-offs for non-payment, however, this was made illegal in 1998 along with prepayment meters and 'trickle valves'.
It was alleged that the consequences of the 1988 Camelford water pollution incident were covered up partly because prosecution would "render the whole of the water industry unattractive to the City".
Yes, let's all trust profit-hungry capitalists with our water. What a brilliant idea. What could possibly go wrong?
Both Gethin and Kate are right, unfortunately the blame must lay fairly and squarely on our shoulders. Thatcherism was not to blame, neither were the Conservatives, or Labour. It's all down to us (The Great British people), myself included, it seems we will let no end of governments do exactly what they want, when they want and how they want.
Meanwhile we watch TV and moan about the weather.
^this^ is ballard's call to action.
donkeywranglertothestars.com
@sly_3
I really wouldn't get too hung up on when the book was written. Whilst it was published in 1975 (the year the Thatcher took over leadership of the Tory party so perhaps Ballard had her pegged from the get-go!), the film was made in 2015. This allows the director to overlay his own interpretations/reference points onto the basic structure of the original source. The source material is very much about societal breakdown and many see Thatcher as someone who presided over a negative change in society in the UK (remember her famous quote that "there is no such thing as society'". Royal says in the film that the building "is a crucible for change" and I think the building represents the UK moving from the immediate post-war era of community and collective working into the 70's and the start of the Thatcher philosophy of the individual as the only significant unit that matters.
In the end, it is not a documentary, it's an interpretation, an impression and it is not pure chance that a quote from Thatcher is used in the film.
As a debt per head proportion, we are in serious trouble, with no manufacturing base, very few national assets, and most utilities and services now owned by foreign countries:
http://www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk
So how is it "cheaper" Kate? Explain...
Rols Royce to British Sugar to British Aerospace, to Thomas Cook, to British Airways. And they pretty much all gave crap service.
I was and such failings as there were came with dirt cheap prices. After the expropriations, the quality fell and prices rose well above inflation. Much of the "investment" since then has been to catch up with the cuts imposed during the Heath regime and blamed on the oil price rises that began in 1973.
Your horror stories are a cross between fiction and the bleats of an elitist sent to the back of the queue. The services are far more expensive because the proportion of income going to the working class is much smaller and each utility charges a poll tax for the item, gas, water, electricity etc. Rolls was bailed out in the mid-70s and recapitalised with public money, British Sugar was vastly profitable and so was every other nationalised concern that the state wanted run properly.
Do your homework Tory-girl and look around you; Thatchler brought back beggars, homelessness, drugs, permanent mass unemployment, death squads and corrupt history teaching....
Marlon, Claudia & Dimby the cats 1989-2010. Clio the cat, July 1997 - 1 May 2016.
"Thatchler brought back beggars, homelessness, drugs, permanent mass unemployment, death squads and corrupt history teaching.... "
'Death squads'?!!!!
Do shut up you leftie twit. You probably weren't even around in the 80's
Was it a millionaire who said "Imagine no possessions"?
Actually I was found it more similar to Venezuela. Socialism there under Chavez and now Maduro has pretty well resulted in power outages, empty shelves, dysfunctional hospitals and anarchy.
shareSocialism without responsibility IS anarchy.
If people see it as an easy fix to get what they want without giving anything back; The whole thing collapses.
Why do you think the Nordic countries aren't particularly happy about 100s of thousands of immigrants roaming in to be on welfare for the rest of their lives. (They will be, no matter what some lying hippie study is telling you about cultural enrichment)
Why do you think they came here and not other closer countries?
"You'll be taking a soul train straight to a disco inferno where you never can say goodbye!"
> Socialism without responsibility IS anarchy.
Pretty much any economic system without good governance results in failure. Even the libertarian concept of just leaving it up to the individual actors encourages failure because power tends to accrue to the unaccountable (or maybe the powerful strive to become unaccountable).
No it isn't, socialism, communism, liberalism, fascism and nazism are all carbuncles on society's ar/se. Anarchism is the only political philosophy that's fundamentally different because anarchists want rid of the boss class and their state. We want a society of laws instead.
Marlon, Claudia & Dimby the cats 1989-2010. Clio the cat, July 1997 - 1 May 2016.
No, another myth, such troubles as there are come from the ex-boss-class, American Caesar and the fall in oil prices.
Marlon, Claudia & Dimby the cats 1989-2010. Clio the cat, July 1997 - 1 May 2016.
The book was a social satire of sort but written before Thatcherism and certainly not an indictment of the 1970s Labour government.
It's that man again!!
Kate would clearly be a model citizen in Orwell's 1984 and sleeps on her Margaret Thatcher pillow and has posters on her wall... Thatcher was a traitor and a puppet for her banker masters and wealthy elite families just like all the PMs who came before her and after and i dare say those to yet come.. there has never been a mainstream cabinet level politician who has been working for the good of the British people ever! they are all a mixture of narcissists, psychopaths, deviants, chancers and the criminally insane... total vermin each and every one... and i'm sure it's just the same in the US...
shareJust asking, on a similar subject - did anyone else pick up on that nod to Harold Wilson at the end? Toby's sitting there listening to Thatcher talk, and then puts a pipe in his mouth...
That's how I saw it anyway.
The epilogue from Margaret Thatcher is Wheatley's wry spin on Ballard's story where, what Ballard satirises, came to pass with Thatcher. I'm afraid Kate's comments represent her viewpoint and not the truth of state in the UK then or now.
Laing's prologue: Sometimes he found it hard to believe they were not living in a future that had already taken place
Ever tried, ever failed?
No matter.
Try again, fail again.
Fail better.