as a collection, these scripts present jarman at his most radical, camp, noncommercial, and fucking furious. during the period of inactivity and financial issues in the british film industry, jarman's lack of funding and building disdain and anger with state, church and virus as the 80s broke and progressed are the keystone of the six as a whole. these plays are visually small, and politically potent and blunt.

"Akenaten" is an Egyptian royal drama fit to the Greek tragedy form, and for the first time, the correlation of fatherhood with state, religious power, and fascism, is made. this is a thread throughout the collection. Oedipal complexes abound, and, since it's Jarman, there's a very sinister and overt power the parents hold over their sons. good triumphs over evil, but every parent and every god exploits youth. "Bob-Up-A-Down" is, like "Akenaten," an outlier in setting. Jarman draws heavily on Shakespearean structure and standards for what is ultimately this weird, haunting, medieval nightmare of a fairytale staged in a cliffside village. i found the imagined visuals of this one really gripping in a way i can't fully describe; the character of Bob and the description of his clearing are so clear in my mind. i love a cyclical story, and this was a really traditional one. it had a strong folklore feel to it, and again this theme of older generations betraying and exploiting the youth is brutally visible.

"Jubilee" is the only script in the collection that was ever filmed and released. the film and how much it just clicked directly into my brain was the reason i searched out this collection. reading it emphasized the tongue in cheek brilliance of those nihilist rants and quick exchanges, the sharpness of each character. it stands in absolute reality against the no true Scotsman fallacy and pokes fun at the fascist draw and violence of the punk movement in the late 70s in this way that's a sort of vindicating joy to read after so much denial bullshit re: the history of punk and fascism. Jarman also has fun with gender roles in this one, putting his women (the majority) into the morally dubious action lead roles, and painting his boys as somewhat helpless sex objects. of course, he kills innocence on screen, targets youth in a bet to shove the brutality of the state to the forefront. the felicitously dubbed Kid is murdered by police, and after a shattering drop of the witty ideological banter and raving that has been, so far, shielding the characters from engaging with the reality of the violence around them and perpetrated by them, the film ends. Jubilee 1978 til i die it is the film of all time and the script is brilliant to read.

And "B Movie: Little England/A Time of Hope" is its strange delight of a somewhat sequel. set X decades into the future once the events of "Jubilee" are over, Borgia Ginz has become the grand ruler of the country & kingdom and subsequently died. "Little England" is what follows: a genuine departure in tone and philosophy if not in content from the rest of the collection entirely. it isn't a nihilistic story. an angry story, yes. a furious one. but still a beamingly hopeful one as well. young Adam and his mum and dad are targeted by the maniacal last king of England and his daughter after randomly acquiring a bit of land in a lucky auction. they find allies in jailed socialists and sex workers, and stand alone against authoritarian England with only their love for one another to see each other through. it's idealistic, it's on the nose, it really surprised me in being so fun and at its core it resonates deeply. we want to dream that we can triumph over military fascism. we dreamed when Jarman wrote it, we dreamed four decades before he wrote it, we dream of it now four decades after. "Little England" also represented something that comes back around in a more finished and crushing way in "Sod 'Em," the final script in the collection: that in Jarman's descent into rightful fury, bleak nihilism, rage for every opposing party, every bystanding party, every party, there was also and always a withstanding last hope cry for love as a savior.

"Neutron" is snuck in before "Sod 'Em," though. An outlier in terms of feel, more an action film than any of the others while retaining the abstract visuals and heaping biblical symbolism of the average Jarman film, i guess i connected with this one the least. it was a good old double power dynamics inverse set against Jarman's familiar ubermilitary fascist postapocalypse. however, "Sod 'Em" approaches that setting, and concept in general, in a completely new way. gone is the classical banter and here is a new bluntness in horror and anger. it's the most bluntly irate script in the collection, directly channelling Jarman's fucking fury at the Tories, at Thatcher, at HIV, at the police, at the military, and all of it is one and the same, going hand in hand in hand in hand in hand. nothing is hidden behind much allegory. through the multi-temporal love story of Johnny and Edward, we get Jarman's dream of, and examination of, gay militant resistance, which, ultimately, ends in bloody failure. it's the most vicious and justly hateful script from Jarman that i've seen or read. but throughout it is threaded the most honest and heartbreaking yearning for a world in which love could transcend time, death, fascist assault, persecution, disease. when god intervenes on the part of Edward and Johnny, the will, wish, and hope in that is palpable and heartrending. in the midst of the fast-moving last few minutes of "Sod 'Em", there is this moment, maybe the best line in the script, spoken almost undirected and isolated in a seconds-long scene:

"TOGETHER: Who will hear these words?
I love you with all my heart."