The night before last BBC 4 gave Jonathan Miller's dramatization of MR James's ghost story Whistle and I'll Come to You a rare screening. (It is available on a BFI DVD, but is very expensive).
It's an exceptionally powerful portrayal of the scientific-materialist world-view under attack. As in my account of Freud, the professor who unwittingly summons up a malignant spirit is a man who wants to promote the scientific-materialist world-view. But he's stretching things too far in his attempts to make them fit, and they snap back at him in a terrifying way.
I've never met Jonathan Miller, but I did get to know Peter Cook. He was not, in so far as I know, interested in esoteric philosophy, but he did change the consciousness of a generation. Before PC British humour was men in suits telling formulaic jokes. After PC it became much more sophisticated and subversive, making the audience complicit in multiplying, self-reflecting ironies.
The first time i lunched him, I'd been pressing him by letter to write his auto. He arrived late, already a little drunk, I suspect, and he shoved an old fashioned school exercise book at me across the table. 'Look, Mark, I've already started'.
I eagerly opened it up. There were just four lines. 'Is that it?' I said.
He said 'I thought we could flesh it out with pictures.'
Many professional comedians I've known are on a big loop tape, forever circulating the same material offstage as much as on it. Peter Cook minted new material all the time, and the spirit of his humour is to be found everywhere in England from TV sketch shows to the templates of Private Eye.
This man had palpable 'soul force'. Everywhere he went he was planting seeds that changed thought, making it less rigid, more free-flowing, subtle and inventive. Remarkable people have soul force in different ways, not all of them good. A colleague of mine worked with Robert Maxwell, and told me that if Maxwell walked into a room behind you, even if you couldn't see or hear his booming voice, his mere presence would hit you on the back of the head like a clout.
Esoteric philosophy offers different theories on how people come to have these different types of soul force. it's part of the process of becoming more aware of the way that the supernatural works in our lives, of working with it, rather than against it - like the professor pursued by a malignant spirit.
Comments