This Charming Man

Oh Morrissey, if you are racist, you're the most charming one I know. It's hard to get a clear picture on what the truth is in this matter, helped in no small part by Morrissey's own delight in maintaining ambiguity. With no straight answers from him, I guess we are left to find out for ourselves, as the man put it - he probably feels that we either just believe that it can't be true, and go with that, or we think it is true, in which case he doesn't care anyway.

My personal opinion is that he isn't racist, but it is motivated by little more than gut feeling, and selective snippets of interviews I've read ("All lies and jest", etc.). Overlooking all this is of course that it's oh-so-hard to separate the artist from the person - "How can you write "How Soon Is Now?" but have such views? No way!"* It is truly hard to read "Bengali In Platforms" and say unequivocally that he is not projecting his views in the song - even as I write this, the "It's hard enough when you belong" line comes back and gnaws away at me. What does he mean? Is it, as some have put it, a unique attack on racism itself by trying to speak through the eyes of the enemy, so as to speak? If so, I don't think it's particularly successful, and at best it is a horribly misdirected effort. Is it just something that is meant to be indicative of a particular point of view, one that was growing in popularity in the '70s? Possibly, but it seems uncharacteristic for there not be something underneath it all. Or, is it (as I believe Morrissey said) about people who simply can't fit into society, no matter how hard they try (make the song more a consolation than anything)? I think this last one is probably closest to the intended meaning, but as for how far he takes the idea, I'm not sure. Comment on society though it may be, I think it was very dangerous to record something like that and hope that people would just "get it" (assuming of course there's something to get), and not to take the lines at face value.

It seems so very Morrissey-ian of him to not have gone and tried to flat out deny it - I remember reading somewhere that he thought it would have made no difference at all, and that it was all a smear campaign led by people who wanted to bring him down from the very beginning (an interesting set of posts by someone claiming to be a staff member in NME at the time of the incident can be found here, but of course, like all things, it's hard to discern its authenticity).

As pointed out here though, it was mighty dangerous to flirt with these things and hope that people would get the "true" message (I'd like to think his union jack incident really was him "reclaiming" the flag - but who knows apart from the man himself?). Some say it's possible that he purposely lets it go on because he thrives on things like this, but I can't (don't want to) believe that (if this is the case, then he doesn't have no "shyness that is criminally vulgar", I'll tell you that!). But considering how long the other debate about him has been going on (I'm not touching that one with a ten foot pole!), I don't think the man will ever be free of some sort of controversy. Oh, but put on "Back To The Old House" once more - we're not talking about the same person, are we?

On a side note, it's almost a year since I encountered the guy, what with that strange post quoting "I Know It's Over". I wonder how things would have turned out if Morrissey had filled the gap Morrison did at that point - hmm, for starters, I think my first words on staring at the moon and the night sky would have been "You're the one for me, fatty", say what?

* I had the same problem with Rudyard Kipling, incidentally. And, would you believe it, Eric Clapton. Sigh...