As a child I was scared of 'Dr Who'
when as a family we watched the show
when the Daleks appeared
in blurry black and white
their metallic voices froze me.
I would have had more courage
had somebody [surely my Mother]
held my hand during the scary bits,
as opposed to us all sat silent, apart.
In the press of the day,
the way the Daleks spoke
was always compared to the sound
of angry German propaganda.
But back then the popular press
could be relied upon to relive
what had been their finest hour,
repeating the half lies they told
in support of Winston Churchill and WW2 .
The press comparison was false,
which was why I missed the real point
that the Daleks voices had to teach me,
'If you do not want to not get shouted at
then don't join the army.'.
The shrillness put into the Daleks voices
was meant to make them sound
like every bully-boy sergeant major
in every empire in the world that promoted
it's own singular authority, combined,
synthesized to sound inhuman for extra sadism.
If pacifism means anything to me now,
as an adult, it meant two things, not shouting at others
and never letting myself be shouted at, if I could stop it.
Least of all, letting anyone say 'EX-TERM-IN-ATE'.
No comments:
Post a Comment