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Intelligent Commentary : Episode 9
Excerpt of interview with the composer of Intelligence sound track Schaun Tozer (Facing Ali, Hard Core Logo), August 25, 2009:
MB: What kind of mood, signature, or personality were you aiming for with your music in Intelligence?
ST: Very much one that would reflect a City under stress, with an ambiguous personality, and all washed down with great dollops of intrigue and paranoia. The music of South East Asia sprinkled liberally with doses of 1960’s British thriller soundtracks. Imagine walking down a noisy, busy city block, passing stores selling wares from around the world. Each store is playing music from home. This is where the music for intelligence needed to touch down.
Along with the driving, adrenaline-soaked percussion, the beginning of this episode features some howling sounds that brought to my mind the terrible anonymity of the cosmopolitan city of Vancouver, and the sterility, the fundamental emotional coldness and disconnection of the world that all the characters in this series inhabit. These unique sounds spring from a combination of “a large percussion orchestra, and a combination of live performances and sampled performances.”
Our own society grows colder, and we are becoming more alienated from each other. One contributing factor is the reliance on drugs to solve problems, which has been masterminded by the huge pharmaceutical companies. In Psychiatry, Group Therapy, Milieu Therapy, Therapeutic Community, Psychotherapy, and counseling have been mostly replaced by prescriptions. That B.C. has a marijuana industry worth billions of dollars annually tells us what a drugged up nation this is, not to mention that other very lucrative business in liquor. The pharmaceutical corporations have done the spade work of convincing people that drugs are the answer, and a great way to relax and escape everything, including committed, intimate relationships, and civic involvement. Just ask the wife or husband of a habitual marijuana smoker what their relationship is like. They are apt to feel quite alone and cut-off. To be the partner of a heavy drinker is no better. .
In the hard and cold world of Intelligence, love cannot bloom. The pathetic, dismal roof garden atop the Chick-a-Dee nightclub is about as close as any of these characters get to the beautiful things in life. For love to happen, somebody has to take a stand, make a move. These characters are too cool to do that, and too emotionally and imaginatively frozen. Ted Altman’s near encounter in a bar with a handsome young man reflects his moral wishy-washiness in his job. He waits to see which way the wind is blowing before he makes a move. Instead of saying, “I find you very attractive,” he says, “Were you looking at me?” The young man walks out of the bar. And actually he had been looking at Ted, with interest. G. K. Chesterton wrote, “Where love is failing, power fills the vacuum.”
That was like a microcosm of our society right now – a moral wishy-washiness, passivity, and apathy that is becoming increasingly dangerous to prolong. Canada is in imminent danger of being subsumed by the world domination plan of the U.S.A.
To take a stand, to bravely put your life into what is important to you, is what gives meaning to your time on earth, even if that time is short, as it was for Canadian long distance runner and Cancer research fund-raiser Terry Fox.
One way the passions and outrage of Canadians gets contained is the lack of open forums where people can express themselves, in front of each other. Even at political meetings, even at Union rallies, everything is tightly scripted now, and spontaneous debate in the group is studiously, scrupulously avoided. Our leaders are forever telling us that they have their ear to the ground to listen to Canadians, but we do not see the group in action, so leaders can cherry pick issues as they choose.
Writer Chris Haddock has said that this series contains issues of great importance and relevance to Canadians. I have been mulling over the hot potato that I learned in a recent episode about how double agents from the U.S. are groomed to infiltrate CSIS and are actually pushing the interests of the U.S., not Canada. Canadian scholarship students attending American Universities are targeted by American agents and primed to work as double agents when they return to work in Canada. This makes me feel even more nervous about the leader of the Canadian Liberal Party, Michael Ignatieff, who worked for many years in the U.S., and according to many of his quoted speeches swallowed whole and digested the American agenda, and also NDP leader Jack Layton, who asks us in a recent mail-out to “Get on board with Obama.” It was reported by Barry Weisleder that at the recent federal NDP convention in Halifax, Layton’s wife overturned the plan for one hour of open debate, and instead had a Democrat from the U.S. speak. I don’t believe for one second that this increasing merger with the U.S. springs from the hearts of grassroots Canadians. Not for one second.
It is impossible now to believe that B. C. Premier Gordon Campbell has the interests of British Columbians at heart. In an under the table deal, shrouded in secrecy, and a missing paper trail, he sold our B. C. Rail, which is now a matter for the Supreme Court. He is also flogging our gas and hydro to the Americans.
In Intelligence, we are shown a window into a world where nothing has any meaning except money and power. Millions of dollars, billions of dollars, are discussed like we are in a game of Monopoly. That window is really into our own world and it is perilously close to being utterly meaningless and ruthless, and without the values that guided our forefathers and the great leaders of the past. Dostoevsky said that man is a being that can adjust to absolutely anything. That numbness and lack of meaning in the lives of the drug pushers, the strippers, and the detectives in Intelligence is just one shade darker than where Canada is at this moment. Bangsters and powerful, ruthless, privateers have taken over the ship and gutted our democracy.
It’s time to look alive and take responsibility for the moral vacuum we have created by our apathy and foolish trust in sociopathic leaders. Our country, Canada, is in danger of being swallowed up by the world domination plan of the U. S. A.
I am not sure if I love or hate “Intelligence”. This counterpoint shows that at least it gets me thinking. There is irony and this is indicative of great depth.
These characters are cardboard cutouts mostly but vehicles to illustrate what is going on politically and economically and it is not easy to watch. Thank Goodness someone is trying to make sense of it.
Using the series to talk about deficits in our society shows that we can still debate and discuss consciously what is going on.
I am glad you brought up the music. Although I dont have the vocabulary or education to grasp how the composer does it, I love the music in this series. Hearing the composers comments is much appreciated. The guy sounds fascinating. Lets hear more.
We are getting screwed financially and manipulated to the point where people are buying into what is sold to us by major companies that only want to make money. Seeing the puppet meisters at work in this show and how they manipulate constantly and have lost any central values system is unsettling. So is the alarm clock. Time to wake up.
Thank you for your indepth criticism of the program, Madeline. Keep exploring.
Bev
#1. Posted by Bev Ropss in Port Alberni Bc on September 11th 2009 at 11:58am