Nothing that is any good can be called 'content'

He recalls that "as recently as 15 years ago, the term 'content' was heard only when people were discussing the cinema on a serious level, and it was contrasted with and measured against 'form'.

"Then gradually it was used more and more by the people who took over media companies, most of whom knew nothing about the history of the art form or even cared enough to think that they should."

I'm with Scorsese on this, of course. Indeed, it is fair to say, some of us have been calling this one for a long time. A few years ago in these pages when I realised the gravity of the situation I nutshelled it thus: "Nothing That Is Any Good Can Be Called Content."

So, while I'm welcoming Marty to the party, we all need to realise how late it is, and how far behind we are in this conversation.

And Marty didn't mention it but I'm sure he knows it's not just the movies that have been systematically demeaned by our old friend, "content".

Everything in this paper and in every other paper would be regarded by some as "content" - certainly in its digital manifestation but then the corporate mind is so besotted with the word "content" it would gladly assign it to every form of human expression within its purview.

Many journalists - including some in this organisation during the last regime - have received the message in some shape or form that they are now to regard themselves as "content providers".

Then again, the conductors of the world's leading orchestras probably got that memo too, in their own house style.

It has been one of the most devastating triumphs of corporate culture, the way they have weaponised this one word to imply that there is essentially no difference between Martin Scorsese's beloved Fellini films and some pictures posted on Twitter of a dog watching a football match on TV - it's all just content, mate.

Probably the first time most of us encountered "content" in the marketplace it was in the plural. It was the word "contents" you'd see on a tin of peas to describe, well... the contents. And if there's one thing that the corporate superpowers truly love it's that dream of selling everything as if it were a tin of peas.

Because there's no such thing as a good tin of peas and a bad one - and in their ideal world they yearn to be free of that diabolically difficult idea that there is a difference between good and bad.

With that one dreary little word - "content" - they were indeed free.

This has been a deliberate, sustained, ideologically driven project aimed at putting creative people in their place. It has succeeded not only because its perpetrators have little else to do but also partly because its victims are too busy with actual work to respond with anything more meaningful than gallows humour.

Scorsese himself has only taken up arms against it when it seems that the game is gone. While the corporate class is united in determination to diminish the value of everything (and thus to pay half-nothing for it), there is no collective pushback - just a few disparate individuals making these anguished protests against some vaguely defined enemy.

The tech gods are devouring all the "content" of the universe while its makers are in awe of their own powerlessness. The songwriters who receive a fiver for a million plays, after all, are just content providers - the same as some balladeer with 20 pints in him who horses his version of Spancil Hill up on the aul' YouTube.

Nothing That Is Any Good Can Be Called Content.

I offer this up as a mission statement to Scorsese or to anyone else who fancies it because it is true and it is easily provable. Like this:

Would you ever describe the poems of WB Yeats as "content"?

Of course not.

Why?

Because, well... because they're too good, obviously.

But you stick them on the internet - and suddenly Sailing To Byzantium is content? Yeats, Joyce, Synge, Beckett, O'Casey - Ireland's great content providers.

It's demonstrably barbarous yet this normalisation of these abuses has happened. If you've seen the Netflix sensation Call My Agent!, you'll know it is driven by the polar opposite of that energy, with its deep respect for talent, despite all its difficulties.

Scorsese would love that energy, and the legends of French cinema who move through that series. But, like his own The Irishman, because it's on Netflix to some it is always "content".

Even though, as we know, nothing that is any good...

 

Oh Luke, don't axe endearing 'you see' on my account

What the hell happens to people when they get into positions of power?

I think of my old drinking buddy Michael Noonan - for a while in his career when he was out of ministerial power, we would occasionally find ourselves drinking in the same Baggot Street bar and we would talk of many things.

Yes, we were unlikely drinking buddies, but I think most people who drink will find themselves doing things from time to time that are... unlikely. And in this case I can remember thinking that it was a great pity that a man of such obvious good sense and humanitarian vision as Michael Noonan might never again rule our land.

Next thing I know, he actually finds himself back in ministerial office, at which point he proceeds to embroil himself in all the wrong ways in the Brigid McCole scandal. Go figure.

Then there was Shane Ross, smart as a whip, sharp as a whistle, until he found himself minister for sport, among other things - at which point he embarked on what seemed like a programme of sabotage of that former self. And that was just on Twitter.

What the hell happens?

Is that old line true, that they are "captured" by the mandarins? Or by some other alien force?

I mean, Shane Ross is grand again, and Michael Noonan eventually saw how wrong he had been, and some day Stephen Donnelly too may look back on this time and wonder, what was all that about?

Allowing for the usual risks of "capture" and alien intervention, the Stephen Donnelly we used to know would have sailed through all that - when we first encountered him, was there ever a man who seemed more capable? Who sounded like he had it all worked out?

What happens?

*******

Mind you, I felt the weight of responsibility bringing me down when I heard Professor Luke O'Neill on the radio last week, and I noted that he had almost stopped saying "you see" - that endearing habit of his which I highlighted here recently, never imagining that the celebrated immunologist would take it as an opportunity to adapt, even to fundamentally change, his speech patterns.

You can still hear the occasional "you see" as a kind of a verbal punctuation mark, but now he is tending to favour "you know" - and while his readiness to adapt is admirable, I'm not sure how I feel about it.

I was not complaining about his way of talking, you see, I was just noting that we've become so familiar with the boffins, we're in tune with all the nuances of their speech patterns.

And so it grieved me, that I might have cramped the style of Professor Luke O'Neill, or placed the dead hand on his delivery in any way.

I do not want that terrible power, you see.

I have seen what it does to people, you know.