Ladies and Gentlemen,
I’ve tried.
Believe me, I’ve tried.
I just can’t do it.
Can’t do woke. It slips from my
fingers.
I took P.G. Wodehouse as a model
for my Toby
books, the “mentally negligible” Bertie, as Jeeves calls him, telling
the story of his brilliant valet. Wodehouse took the formula from Conan Doyle,
Watson describing the exploits of a genius, and Conan Doyle took it from Poe,
who invented so much, not least the detective story, his narrator awed by the
ruthless logic of Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin.
(Indeed, so attached was Conan
Doyle to his model that, in the first stories, he shop-lifted some of Poe’s phrases.
Most embarrassing.)
Note that these heroes are
aristocrats. Poor Toby sleeps with aristocrats, but his own aristocracy consists
in his being above work, above money, and above effort.
So it’s an American formula, and
as a North American I, in my modest way, claim it. Toby is a kept man of, shall
we say average mentality, dominated by the superior intellect of a
nine-year-old girl.
All right, so I’ve got myself a
nice little set of books. In a good month they pay the rent. But then look what
happens with the
movies! Total unwokeness!
To whom do we sell these? In theory,
we sell them to those giant markets that are fed up with the politically
correct kaka we’ve been sending them—Latin Am, Mediterranean Europe, Mediterranean
Arabia, Russia (Russia!), China (China!), Japan, Korea, Indonesia, India…the
world! And when our own Nordic Puritans see all that money coming in…
But I theorize. None of my
business. I too am above money.
As for wokeness, here is the Doctor
on
feminism.
And on Amazon
Prime is a lesbian-pickpocket-chase comedy I made here in Athens. I hate
to tell you why.
Please give us five stars so I can
signal the waiter, who is watching topless women emerge from the sea, for more
wine.
Completely yours,
Robert
Robert MacLean is an
independent filmmaker. His recent The Light Touch is on Amazon Prime, Tubi and Scanbox, and his 7-minute comedy is an out-loud laugh. He is also a novelist, a playwright, a blogger, a YouTuber,
a film reviewer, a literary critic, and a stand-up comic poet. Born Toronto, PhD McGill, taught at Canadian
universities, too cold, live Greece, Irish citizen. No brains, but an
intellectual snob.
