Page 45 Review by Stephen
Meet Clementine Darling, up for a fourth consecutive victory as Best Female Singer and Political Spokesperson. It's a single award.
"Well done, Clementine!"
"Thank you, I'm literally beside myself!"
Hannah Berry is back with the work of her career, a blisteringly funny, fiercely inventive and scathing socio-political satire which doesn't content itself with blasting the blithe disingenuousness of politicians and pop stars - both increasingly vapid and transparent in their self-serving mendacity - but focuses its ire instead on their equally unprincipled co-conspirators: their spin-doctors who here have seen fit to combine their calculating machinations in a coordinated affront on the public's intelligence in order to benefit both parties and bury what little remains of the truth.
This is the core conceit and it works all too well: firstly, that the same PR agency could be as adept at manufacturing long-term, soap-opera strategies for celebutards as for political parties and their inept ministers; secondly that those self-same sleights of hand might be mutually beneficial.
"Do you know Devon Ayre?"
"From Das Booty?"
"No. Devon Ayre was with Daynjaryuz when they released Undress 2 Impress. He went out with Coral?"
"Right, right - that big break-up during the energy contract scandal!"
"Yes. Him. Please let Clementine know that she's going out with him now."
Clementine is sitting in the same limo, oblivious to her latest life choice, dutifully listening on headphones instead to a new song as instructed by PR guru Paul Rourke.
"I like it a lot!"
"What's that, Clem?"
"I like the song a lot!"
"Oh good! That's your next single, to be released next month. Ties in with the passing of the new Human Rights Act. Selina, Pen, if you could get this one to memorise the words ready to film the music video on Thursday thanks."
*click*
"Guess what, Clementine! Do you know Devon Ayre?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well, he's going to be your new boyfriend."
Clementine's blank, cheery face flickers not one jot. Instead she slurps on a cartoon of pineapple juice. She wanted apples but was persuaded that pineapple was like apple. Happily so.
That *slurp* is far from accidental, reminding us of Clementine's suggestibility, susceptibility, malleability, and Berry plays the each episode of this deviously entwined distract-athon with just such deftly edited precision.
For that's what this is: one huge, elaborately orchestrated distraction from any real news vital for an informed electorate, bumping it swiftly from the front-feed of 'What's Trending' with vacuous, superficial headline-grabbing click-bait.
The 'What's Trending' internet front page is reprised throughout, with all its corporate sponsorship, forming a constantly refreshed narrative of its own, charting the success of their meticulously scheduled shenanigans against the downward trend of any unfortunate, unforeseen hiccups which might blip briefly to the radar's surface.
Clementine's entire career as a pop-star - and "author" of best-selling autobiography - is but a means to that specific end so that she's in the right place at the right time, whether it's yet another vacuous Daytime TV husband-and-wife chat show masquerading as news and so satiating what little demand there is for it still, a spot on OMFGTV or an actual Newsnight interrogation where she can do the most damage possible.
Although let's not forget that Clem's trajectory is in itself highly lucrative, especially when it's sent on a crash-collision course with that of her arch-rival Coral whom we first see on 'What's Trending' with a new hairstyle / look in order to launch her new novel. Here's Coral basking in public applause at that book launch, with a live Twitter-feed behind her:
"It's always been my dream to write a book, and now after many days of harduous work I can finally cross it off my list!"
It's a shame then that after so many - or at least several - days' work, Coral should find her spotlight at risk of being stolen by Clem's unexpected materialisation next to her own display of autobiographical best-selling success. No matter, time for a bit of improv.
"Because the thing is, some people are just not talented enough to write a book - anyone can write an autobiography, because they can just remember what they did and write about all that - and if they can't remember things, they can pretend to be exciting by stealing other people's ex-boyfriends..."
That would be Devon Ayre, yes.
Do you realise the two ladies share the same publicist? Clem and Coral do: they're just too dim to comprehend they're being played against each other.
This is only Round One. The carefully choreographed bouts will become increasingly brutal.
The Twitter feed, by the way, is well worth scrutinising! It's that sort of graphic novel: craftily constructed with multiple, layered threads, each precisely dovetailed, and so dense in detail if you care to look closely enough. There are dozens of crowd scenes among which you might recognise more than a few comics-related reprobates. Hannah Berry is quite the accomplished portrait artist!
I love that however beautiful each antagonist might be (and they are all antagonists - there's more antagonism going down in here than at a similarly staged WWF tournament), they still all took toad-like, with big mouths and squat faces, like they've drained an entire of pond full of Botox.
The colours are sickly rather than bright and primary - that would have been far too obvious - for this whole sordid affair is designed to make you feel slightly queasy, and we haven't even approached the issue of the day which is the government's back-door endorsement of human cloning... to the private sector.
And what is the primary goal of the private sector? Is it quality control, due diligence or commitment to ethical standards? It is not. The primary goal of every private sector company is to make money.
Now, where do you think the title LIVESTOCK comes in?
If lack of scrutiny gets your goat then this will have you chewing your own leather leash off.
LIVESTOCK could not be better timed given ex-'reality'-TV star Donald Trump's Twitter tirades successfully drowning his destruction of healthcare, women's rights, civil rights and environmental sanity for the sake of big-business dollars as well as masking so many of his own private and public missteps. But let's remember that this graphic novel was written many moons ago, Berry astutely observing the fabrications for what they were then, why they were being deployed by a complicit media, why they were so swiftly gobbled up by a public more likely to vote on Britain's Been Brainwashed than during actual elections, and presciently predicting the path which would lead to this godawful excuse for a culpably cultivated future.
But if you think Trump's bad, wait for beleaguered MP Duncan Frears and his beloved Border Collie during a doorstep interview that threatens to unveil a particularly pertinent truth and so unravel his career.
You cannot actually imagine.
Why don't we play this review out with Clementine's latest pop video? I've seen them do that on Newsnight. In it Clementine articulates the current geopolitical climate with grave concern for its most vulnerable victims and - in case you can't quite discern the lyrics - the director has chosen to emphasise their eloquence by superimposing them artfully around the most prominent issues at hand.
Priorities are important.
