Corpenghast

Many of us are wondering what lessons have been learned from the CBC lockout, and the year that has passed since it began. The following is a piece I wrote a few months after the lockout ended. It’s a little bombastic , but I’m dredging it up anyway. It has been edited and updated for the anniversary.

A little while back, I finished reading Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, a slightly absurd neo-gothic novel that I started during the CBC lockout. It occurs to me now, on the anniversary of that ordeal, that the book was a pretty good allegory.

Here’s the precis: Titus Groan is 77th lord of crumbling and isolated Gormenghast Castle. His world is so steeped in ancient tradition and arcane custom that there is no room for original thought. There are age-old ceremonies with no apparent purpose, and a Master of Ritual to make sure they continue. Titus’ gaze is forever fixed beyond the castle’s mossy walls, but his path seems hopelessly bound by them.

During the lockout, Gormenghast Castle seemed like an apt metaphor for the Canadian Broadcasting Centre (at least as seen from the sidewalk): an abandoned and echoing fortress, barred to the outside world, manned by a skeleton crew of aged principals trying to stay the course even as the soul of the place leaks away.

The picket line, like the forest beyond Gormenghast Castle, was pretty vibrant by comparison. It was unfamiliar territory, and none of us wanted to be there, but the weather was great, strike pay was adequate and morale was high. In some ways it was like a great weight had been lifted; the inmates finally had time to talk to each other.

That doesn’t happen very often, and it proved to be the lockout’s silver lining. Conversations between locked-out journalists became an explosion of innovation, something that could never have happened on the inside. There were podcasts and blogs, concerts and parodies, cross-country caravans and competitive news and information programming.

There’s an analog to such free-form creativity in Gormenghast: a wild, feral woman called simply The Thing. Cast out from the castle due to her bastard birth, The Thing becomes an audacious and utterly free denizen of the forest beyond. She scoffs and the castle dwellers and their sacred rituals. When Titus glimpses her, he longs for her and the freedom she represents – though the longing is utterly unrequited. (Unfortunately, despite all it represents, The Thing proves ultimately inconsequential. Bigger movements are at play, and when they reach their crescendo, The Thing is swept aside.)

Toward the end of Gormenghast, a devastating flood threatens the castle and puts its continuum in mortal jeopardy. But as the waters recede, the roles and rituals return. Titus is faced with the choice that was always his, though now it is finally obvious: accept his fate, or flee.

I won’t give away his decision, but I can tell you ours: in a lot of ways, we went back to sleep. When the doors reopened, the rituals recommenced. Management spoke softly of “reintegration”, and the union got quiet. Podcasts stopped and blogs went dark.

In short, both sides did the worst thing possible: they picked up where they left off. For the Corp, that meant the same tired means of reaching the same waning audience. For the union, the same arcane methods of resolving the same conflicts.

Same shit, different year.

But I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom. If you look carefully, you’ll notice some decidedly bright spots that have emerged in the past few months, some bastard Things scaling the ramparts.

The CBC has finally bought into podcasting in a big way. CBC.ca continues to grow. There’s an official CBC blog, and a community of CBC bloggers. There’s a sincere interest in putting new voices and new formats on air, with mixed results so far. Former picketers recognize each other, and the conversations continue.

Maybe someone learned something from the lockout after all. I hope so, because forgetting is easier.

When you go to work tomorrow, take notice when you spot an arcane ritual or a tired tradition. They aren’t hard to find, especially when you’ve seen them from the outside. And we have.

C.S. Lewis had a similar reaction when he read Gormenghast. “You have seen nothing like it before,” he wrote in a letter to Mervyn Peak. “But after… you see things like it everywhere.”

Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 08-15-2006 | 05:08 PM
Posted in: CBC | Rants