Nice try
Petronella Wyatt
There is some debate going on at the moment as to whether 'niceness' is back in vogue. Consider this French film called Amelie — apparently the most heart-warming thing since the Good Samaritan — which concerns some bobbed ingenue who goes about doing good deeds. My fashionconscious friends tell me that clothes, this season, are unthreatening. This presumably means they can be worn without inducing kamikaze in any Muslims who happen to be around.
It is interesting how a period of international instability or the fear of a recession create a sudden rush to thump the bonhomous note. The great caustic remarks of the world have generally been gestated during periods of boom. Think of Oscar Wilde's plays and Dorothy Parker's heyday as a critic during that part of the 1920s which actually roared. Then there was Margot Asquith's remark, reeking of full-throttled prosperity: 'If you don't have anything nice to say about anyone — come and sit by me.'
So does this mean we are in for a period of cloying sentiment and two-for-tweeness? Films are already changing. It cannot be long before their characters are all relentlessly happy, as in a Shirley Temple depression movie. Public figures, meanwhile, are asked to be mawkishly charitable, like those ageing beknighted rock stars. Incidentally why is Mick still Mister when the others are Sir Elton and Sir Paul? Is it because he is too honestly hedonistic and unprolix? Is it because he hasn't pestered us with too many songs about international freedom?
The other night I went to dinner with friends who usually serve up ripostes as amuse gueules. This time the amuse just didn't gueule. 'Let's have a nice conversation and count our blessings,' said our hostess. 'Niceness is the new black."Eh, what?' I asked. 'Surely niceness is the new pink?' 'No, new fashions are always the new black.' 'Oh, OK, but how can goodness be black?' Don't be irritating. Have you seen Amelie? Go and be like Arnelie, Petronella. It will change your life.'
I went to Amelie and, to be honest, decided my life didn't need changing. Amelie is one of the most boring flicks I have yet not to see. This cow-eyed girl sneaks around helping people in ways they don't understand — enough to jerk the tears out of Nero's eyes — without, of course, being able to help herself. Well, I ask you. It is thankless enough helping people, but what on earth is the point if they don't even understand it. Speaking for myself, whenever people have tried to help me I have generally become irritable, depressed and demoralised.
In any case, what passes for niceness these days are a few insincere remarks and a hypocritical show of goodness. Man at his best is a sort of one-limbed animal, never completely rounded. If he shows one worthwhile quality he seldom has any other. If he is clever he is often heartless. If he is overflowing with goodwill he is quite often stupid. A man who is physically brave is either intellectually on a level with a cockroach or a moral coward. A genius has weak intestines and is unable to work a microwave.
The point is that I have never met a conspicuously 'nice' person who was also honourable. Niceness is often an excuse for weakness. Those people who tell you that they are too nice to seize a problem by the throat merely mean they wish to save themselves embarrassment or unpleasantness. Politicians who use vague and comforting words substitute them for constructive action. Deliberate niceness is also a form of puritanism, and if you pump envy out of puritanism you empty it of its life-blood. It is immovably grounded on one person's hatred of another person who might be having a jollier time. There is only one honest desire at the bottom of it and that is to punish the person who has a superior talent for finding happiness and to bring him down to the miserable level of 'good' people, i.e. stupid, cowardly and unhappy ones.
What the Niceies should admire instead is someone without moral indignation but in possession of an all-embracing tolerance. Unlike those who put on niceness like a new frock, such people seldom duck the hard knocks of life or insist on believing in their non-existence. In any case, though this may seem a paradox, it is this approach that is genuinely nice in the end.
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