Hi,
People seem to like or hate Nathan Barley (personally I think it is
very good), but the point of this message is not to try and dissect it
any further.
When watching it the other night, I was struck between various
coincidences and parallels to Wyndham Lewis's 1930 novel 'The Apes Of
God'.
In the 'Apes of God', a character (a young poet) called Dan is led
through the world of 1920's Bloomsbury, meeting various idiotic and
untalented writers and artists, refered to as the 'Apes' by his
mentor, Horace Zagreus. The joke is that Dan is just as idiotic as the
rest of them - but is proclaimed a 'genius' after being discovered by
Zagreus (who is an ageing homo***ual with a liking very much younger
men - whom he frequently replaces with the next young 'genius').
Lewis's complaint was that the real artists and writers were forced
out of the decent studios to make way for these monied 'Apes' who
could pay higher rents and play at 'art'....
Substitute 'Bloomsbury' for 'Hoxton / Shoreditch', then Nathan Barley
would surely be an 'Ape' in Lewis's world....
There are so many parallels, that I wonder if any of the
script-writers have read this before.....
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