The Space Show is dazzlingly different – an intergalactic round trip that begins with a real “let there be light” gasp and ends with a helter-skelter back to earth through a black hole It is sometimes cheesy and sometimes fairground. But it is often genuinely sublime in its intimations of universal scope.A 19th-century exponent of the American sublime – the landscape artist William Saunders, who designed the cemetery at Gettysburg – once defined that quality in terms that fit the Space Show perfectly. “The sublime in scenery,” he wrote, “may be defined as continuity of extent, the repetition of objects in themselves simple and commonplace.” Take just one dot of light, in other words, and you’ve got nothing; take several thousand and arrange them in a disappearing vista and the effect will be altogether different. And that Americans could long find “continuity of extent” on home ground is perhaps another clue to their easy enjoyment of sublimity. This is a country, after all, which is well schooled in the art of looking at distant horizons and speculating about what lies beyond them.You can see the effect at work in the American Natural History Museum’s more long-standing attraction – the dioramas which combine stuffed animals with biological bric-a-brac and a background painting to create the illusion of habitat Most of these are pretty pleasing But some of them are better than a novelty. The Michelangelo of the diorama painters is James Perry Wilson, who worked at the museum between 1931 and 1957, but expressed a more venerable spirit in his wonderful backdrops to the native mammals.
The taxidermy is faintly embarrassing these days, but Wilson’s paintings preserve something almost equally perishable – a 19th-century veneration for the emptiness of the American landscape.The dioramas have obviously been rather overshadowed by the hi-tech light show next door, but in truth they have a great deal in common with it. They are both quite unabashed about the expression of wonder and between them are capable of getting even the most reserved British tourist to murmur “Awesome!” with a distinctly American accent.When I served time in Parliament as a sketch writer I would occasionally console myself during the more boring debates by performing a kind of moral assay on the benches below The test was a simple one – crude, even. Which of those eager, ambitious politicians could one imagine in SS uniform? Or rather, which of them would look at ease in it once you’d completed the mental fitting – happy to surrender an unchafed conscience in return for some off-the-peg authority?This wasn’t a question about ideology, more about the willingness of people to subordinate private conscience to public advancement. Nor does it have anything to do with severity or cruelty of manner – try as I might I could never get Glenda Jackson into jackboots while other, ostensibly more amenable politicians slipped into them.The latest edition of the American political glossy George offers an alternative version of this sheep and goats game, provoked by a recent poll which revealed that only one in three men would now give up their seat in a lifeboat to a woman they didn’t know. Readers were invited to take part in an informal poll – The Titanic Test – in which various politicians and celebrities were to be imagined on a steeply sloping deck. You can tick one of four boxes: Gone Down With Ship; Cried, Then Gone Down With Ship; Tried Arguing Way Onto Lifeboat or Disguised Himself As Woman.This is easy enough in some cases – somehow one knows that Woody Allen wouldn’t be standing silently to attention as the icy water rose above his waist and that Bill Clinton wouldn’t be standing next to him either. Disguise and Argument respectively, I think (“Ah’d like you to let me share your pain,” Bill might say, a glitter of empathy in his eye).But in other cases the options seem far too limited.
Donald Trump, for instance, would surely Buy Lifeboat Outright, while Jerry Springer would Provoke Fight on Lifeboat Then Sneak on Board.It’s difficult to resist applying this litmus test for moral fibre a little closer to home. Alastair Campbell, I think, would Go Down With Ship While Insisting It Was Just a Bit of Mid-Term Settling. William Hague would Go Down With Ship Convinced It Was A Lifeboat And Tony Blair? Easy. He would Lecture The Lifeboat About The Captain’s Excellent Record And Claim Its Occupants Had Invited Him To Join Them All Along.The ghost of McGonagall probably haunts poets who contemplate writing poems about bridges – but if ever a span deserved some scansion it is the Millennium Bridge, which was inaugurated this week with a burst of fireworks worthy of the GLC. Norman Foster’s elegant crossing has been described as a horizontal suspension bridge – which means that its sustaining cables bow out sideways, rather than up and down. In truth they do a bit of both, which gives the Millennium Bridge a wonderful sense of tension.
