I am the kind of person who watches DVD extras. Given digital technology allows you to load practically unlimited amounts of information onto a disc it's surprising more artists don't make creative use of this. The BBC DVD of the recent Sherlock series has an interesting 'making of...' section.
Sherlock, the series, is not as literary and refined as first it may seem. It is what the original books were, a very good genre production. It is at least a cut above other pretentious, prime-time pantomimes like Merlin and Robin Hood. It emphasises the Other London aspect of some of the original stories. Well-to-do Victorians had a turbulent attractive/repulsive relationship with the cities they'd built. It is, of course, the attractive/repulsive relationship between capital and labour; as classes, as ideas embodied they can't live with our without each other.
One of the series producers commented in the documentary that Sherlock showed a side of London she never knew existed; exotic locations you pass every single day, blazing signs you never notice, babble and slang you can never hope to understand.
The first point to emphasises is this is a normal aspect of urban life. The city is a medium for living. Each new medium is a powerful shock to our (individual and collective) system. If you walked down the street and paid attention to each and every bright, shiny thing thrust in front of you, you would be left paralysed. Numbness is essential day-to-day survival (though it is a threat to active citizenry).
An aside: our political/ideological struggle has to overcome this numbness, numbness of course suits the status quo. There are two ways to overcome numbness. First is sensationalism. In culture there is an arms race, akin to an addiction (with all the accompanying debilitation); sensationalism leads to numbness, which leads to greater sensationalism and greater numbness. Sensationalism is roughly parallel to movementism. There is no political change without a political impulse, a collective urge to right a wrong. But movementism has to lead to organisation, counter-hegemony.
The second way to overcome numbness is ambience. Ambient music is music built into an environment. Counter-hegemony is roughly equivalent to ambience, a network of organic intellectuals incorporated into the wider working class movement. Ambient music does not demand attention in the same way as, say, a pop song, but it insinuates itself so much more into the mind and mood of the listener. Revolutionary politics is not top down or one way, transmitter and receiver, but collective criticism, bringing practice up to the best levels of theory and theory up to the levels of best practice.
Back to the point: the other thing to say about the notion of Other London is, of course, why should there not be several Londons? Cities are peak communities. Human life proliferates in so many forms there. The fact that this can be new and novel shows how much the working class (as opposed to 'chavs', the 'white working class' or other ruling class inventions) has been excluded from public life for so long. No wonder the working class presence goes unnoticed, until, of course, it starts striking and demonstrating; then it gets less exotic, more fearsome.
