One wonders how the image of a
place is formed in the minds of the viewers of media: movies and
television. The thought arose after watching the latest of the TV
series, Shetland. These are mystery stories, crime writing
that takes the traditional format of the 'whodunit?' books
popularised by Agatha Christie. This strategy cleverly fragments
possibilities suggestively, creating distracting interludes that are
fabricated suspiciously. Eventually these are all shown to be
completely innocent affairs, but only at the very end when the real
culprit, usually the least suspected participant, is revealed.
Confusion lies at the core of this approach. The characters in
Shetland are based on those created by Anne Cleeves in her
series of crime stories based in the Shetland Islands. The lead role
of the troubled detective, Jimmy Perez, is played by Douglas
Henshall. The television series is shot, well, filmed, perhaps taken,
maybe photographed in Shetland. 'Shot' is too emotive in this
context; 'film' is no longer used in this digital age; and 'taken' sounds strange, as though something has been removed: even
‘photographed’ sounds too static.
Bressay Sound
The
mini-series offers a sequence of wonderful images and details of this
remarkable place; but to those who are familiar with the islands, the
show presents a shambles of a collage of attractive vistas and views
assembled from various locations across the Shetland Islands: the
starkest of remote landscapes, the quaintest of cottages, the most
dramatic forms of coastline, the quirkiest of details, and the
narrowest tracks and lanes are juxtaposed as if in a photograph
album, or stacked ad hoc on a rack of postcards. The selection seems
to have been made in parallel with the mix of 'interesting'
characters – purely for heightened intrigue. Just as everyone has
an accented presence to emphasise the dramatic ‘Shetland’ role,
every image is considered and iconic. How does this geographically
random selection of places, apparently made only to maximise
pictorial attractiveness, create an image of place in the mind of the
viewer who is not familiar with Shetland in any way? What
misunderstandings are perpetuated?
Menacing characters
Ann Cleeves on the Lerwick waterfront
Tangwick Haa Museum, Eshaness
Northern lights
Ninian's Isle
To
those who know, phrases like 'Up at Ninian's' grind with a silent
abrasive moan when the action is supposed to be in Lerwick. The
perception of the hoax is heightened, clarified. Locals know place
well, and place it geographically. Simple matters like north and
south are ingrained in everyone's understanding of locations in this
compact scattering of small islands. Everything is familiar.
Recollection of place comes complete with the detail of every
feature, its context and relationship – see:
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2015/12/remembering-landscape-spirit-of-place.html
Ninian's Isle is south of Lerwick on the west coast of Mainland. One
wonders: is it just the naming that is important, like Nibon, that
gets a mention in the dialogue once, without any illustration or
further role in the narrative? Is it too distant to be in the
production pictorially, or is the author merely name-dropping?
Nibon
Sandsound
The cliffs of Eshaness
Up Helly Aa
Mousa Broch
Images
of action at Eshaness, Vidlin, Weisdale and Voe are all intertwined
in the mish-mash of pretty choices made for the eye of the camera
rather than for any contextual reality. The jigsaw confuses those who
are familiar with the islands, and muddles, muddies, any attempt to
follow the plot. In the same way, the bus with its destination
labelled as Aith-Walls only begs the question from those who
know: why go to Aith or Walls and get off nowhere in particular, at a
place that has so little to do with the story other than, perhaps, as
providing a good site, a set for a shooting scene? It is all very
puzzling, especially when the drama, that sees one 'baddie' removed
as a possibility in the 'whodunit?' quiz, melds into that of the bold
cliffs of Eshness. Aith and Walls are west of Voe, with the road
passing through some of the most rugged country in Shetland: but this
rocky landscape is never revealed. Is it not pretty enough? The
preference is for idyllic, romantic, empty distance spreading across
treeless hills and shiny lochs under bright, clouded skies, much like
the image selected for the 2016 calendar without the poles: see -
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2015/12/on-selective-seeing.html
The rocky terrain only reminds one of the toil, the harsh, hard, old
Shetland life, before the oil dollars arrived. Eshaness is north of
Brae that is north of Voe. Vidlin is east of Voe; Weisdale is south
of Voe. Yet this disparity in place offers no impediment for the
story teller who chooses to illustrate the yarn with the most
attractive images possible, from anywhere. Oddly, Voe has no core
role in the story. It is as though the whole of Shetland has become a
fake stage set to be used willy-nilly to suit the eye and the story,
as an illusion for the camera to recreate a dream world in its own
cunning manner. This is Shetland, but it is not Shetland.
Voe
Vidlin
Aith
Weisdale
Brae
Shetland, the movie set
Douglas Henshall
What
does this editing of place do for those who only know Shetland
through the mini-series? One can only guess that, like the story
itself that stops and starts, darts around, and develops suggestive,
shady scenarios with a variety of implications just to keep the
reader/viewer guessing, that the camera is doing the same –
creating a visual story of place that it as fictional as the writing;
as blindly suggestive as the story line. It is a little like
pretending that a cricket match is the collection of highlights
selected for the evening news. In the same way that a cricket match
can be long, tedious and boring, sparked with occasional excitement,
Shetland can be seen as generally ordinary with a speckling of
special places. One says 'ordinary,' but it is 'ordinary' in a unique
way, in the same manner as a cricket match is - it is not a tennis
match. Like the 'who dun it?' story itself, this collage of specially
selected images creates its own 'Shetland' fantasy – a place of
continual wonder, distance and light; pure concentrated delight. One
soon knows that it is not this when one arrives. Yet we learn so much
about the world that we live in from movies and television! This is
the concern. The circumstance carries much the same hype as tourism
brochures that grab the memorable images and promote them as grand,
glossy collections that generate too much false hope from armchair
drooling. The problem with tourists is that they seek out these
dreams, force the fantasies to be; demand that they be there to be
experienced: see -
http://springbrooklocale.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/who-or-what-is-tourist.html
and
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/on-souvenirs-place-memories.html
Bird Observatory, Fair Isle
Mousa Broch
Sumburgh Airport
The runway crossing
After
flying to the most northerly part of the UK, one has to negotiate the
grandiose, sombre mass of Sumburgh airport that is as annoying as
most, but more modest in its operation other than with security.
Little places seem to heighten the necessity for over-strict control.
It is as if this is the only way that they can claim some authority
and importance: significance. Once through this 1960's-styled concrete monster, one
drives the narrow track that follows the broad arc of the airport
security fence, to exit this most-southern peninsular to start the
drive north. So narrow is this lower tip of Shetland that one has to
cross the runway that one has just arrived on. What might happen if
one chose to turn and speed down the welcoming length of this voided
strip? Why is the airport fenced when it stands so broadly open here?
Sandsound
Croft House Museum
The
road passes various locations and slips along some marvellous
coastline; but it is no singular delight. One drives though some
small settlements, each with their variety of cottages of all types,
sizes and styles in all states of repair and disrepair, presenting an
identity that does not conform to the classic tourist image, to
eventually reach the sprawling edge of Lerwick filled with the most
uncontrolled mess of housing with an even greater variety of styles
and identities, (see:
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2016/02/the-rational-shaping-of-surfaces-town.html
). Eventually one reaches the Georgian zone around the old
harbour-side heart that is stitched together with winding Commercial
Street at the base of a hill threaded with lanes that rise to the
west and fall to the east, the harbour. The town itself is marked at
its core by the Market Cross. This is coherent old Lerwick that the
cameras love. Shetland uses these old thoroughfares whenever
it can. One never sees the mess in movies or in postcards, unless it
is character-forming, stylish rubbish: artful. Here one recalls the developer of the RAF base on Unst who wanted to promote the island abroad, telling the locals, “But
don’t clean it up too much. It needs to keep some of its
character.”
Commercial Street, Lerwick
The 'shoot'
Yell Sound
Lerwick waterfront
Viking House and Longboat, Unst
Further
north, the journey takes the visitor through more of the same as seen
before, until the ferry to the northern isles is reached. Once
crossed, one is in another place with a slightly different feel. It
is a little like Darwin's finches: each island is similar but has its own
distinctive charm. This island connects north yet again, to another
ferry and another island. One can travel east and west likewise; but
Shetland has a budget. Most of the action is photographed
somewhere between Lerwick and Voe, a distance of about fourteen
miles, with an occasional trip north to Eshaness, and south to
Ninian's Isle. Even the story that Cleeves based on the island of
Whalsay lying east of Mainland, was filmed on the island of Bressay,
just opposite Lerwick. The camera can make anywhere, anyplace; any
place something else. It lies; it lies at the heart of our world
today. What is it doing to us? - c.f. BBC report of a four-foot rat
(12 March 2016): the explanation is 'forced perspective;' the rat is placed closer to the camera than the person holding it. What is being 'forced' in our world today? The
cheating is crystallized in Shetland with the 'Lighthouse
Hotel.' Sumburgh Lighthouse, recently renovated as a museum with much
caring and careful attention to detail, has its accommodation and
beautiful new conference space used selectively in shrewd framings
with limited scans to pretend that it is a classy hotel. For those
who know, the transformation is too thin, too shallow, inept; a
little like some of the acting: but we forgive it because we almost
seem to expect something naïf from such a remote place that lacks
the so-called 'sophistication' of big cities. The developer wanted to
keep this naive presence and use it as a marketing tool.
'Character' place
Characters
'Lighthouse Hotel'
Sumburgh Head
Refurbished lighthouse with new 'hotel' space on the right
Sumburgh Lighthouse
In
spite of, perhaps because of these charades, Shetland the show
becomes Shetland the show-piece. It is indeed just like the tourist
brochure that selects and promotes the 'highlights' to encourage
visitation, to build dreams that will never be. The illusion is such
that one can only be disappointed, or perhaps sustained only by the
intellectual understanding of discovered parallels rather than any
true enjoyment of place with the 'This is like this; box ticked: been
there; done that' approach. One wonders if Shetland, the show,
is doing anything more than promoting itself with a clustering of
interesting places and detailed 'aesthetic' images. One can see the
camera's eye choosing, for example, the axial vista from the Police
Headquarters as a preferred selection with its vista down the road to
the harbour. This can be and has been used metaphorically – to
emphasise entry and leaving: hope and loss. What other emotions are
being manipulated in this series? There is something strange
happening with the random collation of a great diversity of places,
from Voe, to Weisdale, to Vidlin, all within a few screen minutes
with no differentiation to tell of the geographical separation, or
any of the journey between. It makes the place almost meaningless.
Isn't the cliché that
the experience is the journey, never the destination? 'And when you
get there, ask not . . for she has given you the journey.' Was this
said of the oracle at Delphi? - (see Cavafy below).
Eshaness
Take 3
So
what is a blurred collection of destinations other than a misguided
shambles? We need to differentiate between place and fancy. The
danger is that we come to know places as fragmented fantasies when it
is the whole that is the everyday experience, created by all of the
parts, in their particular places. Is our technology recreating our
perception of the world as though through rose coloured glass? Do we
exist in a state of perpetual disappointment, discouraged and
depressed by a reality that we have learned to expect to be
otherwise? Is this why the gadgets are being constantly referred to
every second of the day – to confirm the fantasy that is not around
one, or between individuals in lived experience?*
Fair Isle
Eshaness, with lighthouse
Are
we designing too many destinations today? Are we ignoring the
journeys? What does this mean? What can be done? Architecture can do
only so much at its own scale. It is planning that is critical once
we understand things in this 'Shetland' manner. Yet our planners do
not even consider journeys or destinations - neither the between
spaces or the outcomes. They concentrate, head in ground, on rules,
only rules: how the regulations can be implemented or adjusted with
rationally argued negotiation: see -
http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2015/12/who-needs-planners.html
'Journeys' are left to become quaint phrases of learned discussion
– a core part of the enduring 'narrative' of clever, academic
one-up-man-ship that is itself a destination. C.P. Cavafy tells of
the place of the journey and personal responsibility most beautifully
in his poem, Ithaka. The contrast with Shetland could
not be more stark. The importance of the ordinary, its
extraordinariness, is revealed for our world that is becoming only
more and more selfishly 'heroic' – more Gehry-like than gentle and
good: Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. . . . And if
you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Shetland
does.
Ithaka
by
C.P. Cavafy
translated
by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard
As
you set out for Ithaka
hope
your road is a long one,
full
of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians,
Cyclops,
angry
Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll
never find things like that on your way
as
long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as
long as a rare excitement
stirs
your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians,
Cyclops,
wild
Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless
you bring them along inside your soul,
unless
your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope
your road is a long one.
May
there be many summer mornings when,
with
what pleasure, what joy,
you
enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may
you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to
buy fine things,
mother
of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual
perfume of every kind—
as
many sensual perfumes as you can;
and
may you visit many Egyptian cities
to
learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep
Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving
there is what you’re destined for.
But
don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better
if it lasts for years,
so
you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy
with all you’ve gained on the way,
not
expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka
gave you the marvelous journey.
Without
her you wouldn't have set out.
She
has nothing left to give you now.
And
if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise
as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll
have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
*
Here one is reminded of the tourist 'experience' that seeks out what
it knows and ignores discovery: the particular view of a cathedral,
e.g. Durham, high and proud; Salisbury, the icon as painted by
Constable; the dome of St. Paul's, prominent, as seen in the brochure;
etc. It is as if one has to confirm reality, to test it against the
vision held: but what does one do with this? Been there; seen that:
the view is them photographed, recorded yet again as if to
personalise it, to make it 'mine,' to 'capture' it, to allow one to
move on to seek out the next match, and to 'get' the next photograph
with me in it. There is always the 'next' to be desired after the disappointment of the reality of the dream. Everything will always be better 'next' time.
Scenically,
Shetland caters for this ambition in much the same way as other
places: by identifying preferred locations where one can pull over
and photograph the landscape. These sites are signed with a 'photo
opportunity' marker complete with its own graphic. Similar signs
litter Scotland too. If one stops, the first thing one does is to
look for the special, unique quality of place that has caused it to
be so selected; to discover what there is to be photographed. One
does not just look at the landscape; one looks with a defining intent
that changes what is seen, and how. One usually sees the tourist
brochure photograph: “Ah! Yes! Wow!” and the camera is raised. There are a few artworks in
the world that play with this idea by providing a frame through which
to view the distance, the chosen vista, as 'art.'
Fair Isle