BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN
One must, in this digital age, develop a hide as thick as a Hereford bullock’s to withstand the daily onslaught of technological ‘marvels’. The latest abomination to clatter regularly into my inbox, courtesy of some Silicon Valley simpleton who doubtless thinks a wellington is a type of pastry, is the ‘animation’ of old family photographs.
Using some devilish algorithm, these grinning ghouls can now make Great-Aunt Esme’s sepia scowl twitch, blink, and – God help us all – offer up a saccharine, simpering smile. It is, in a word, revolting.
The promoters of this digital phantasmagoria coo about ‘bringing history to life’. Rubbish. What they are bringing to life is a confection of lies. Those frozen, stiff-necked portraits in the hallway were never real. They were a ceasefire, a momentary armistice in the endless guerrilla war of family life, brokered by a harassed photographer and the threat of forfeiting the sitting fee. The smiles were gritted teeth; the serene gazes, a profound boredom or a simmering fury directed at the spouse pinching one’s arm just out of shot.
If this silicon sorcery must be employed, then for pity’s sake let us have some intellectual honesty. Let us harness it not to perpetuate the myth of Edwardian bliss or Victorian virtue, but to finally hear the glorious, unvarnished animadversions of our forebears. That is a technological advancement I could raise a glass to.
Take the classic wedding photograph, circa 1898. The groom, a frightful bore called Algernon, stands ramrod straight; the bride, Constance, looks demurely at her bouquet. The AI animates it: Algernon gives a vacant blink, Constance’s mouth curls into a beatific smile. Bilge! Apply the proper algorithm, and the scene should spring into far more truthful life. Algernon’s lips would thin as he mutters, “This cost me a bloody fortune. Use a Johnnie. Her father offered me her hand in marriage or a drowning at sea.” Constance’s sweet smile would warp into a grimace as she whispers back, “I was told he had prospects, not that his only prospect was gout and inheriting a thimble collection.” Now that is family history. That has the pungent whiff of truth about it.
Consider the stiff family grouping before the manor, 1911. Father, a colonel of the imperial variety, glares; Mama looks vaguely nauseated; the children appear to be suffering from a collective digestive complaint. The standard animation might make a child’s head tilt winsomely. How insipid! I want the full, brutal commentary. The colonel’s moustache should bristle as he thunders, internally, “That idiot son will bankrupt the estate with his motorcar nonsense. And the girl is reading poetry again. Poetry! Leads to nothing but socialism and damp stockings.” Mama’s gaze should flicker towards the rhododendrons as she thinks, “Ten more years of his snoring and I shall throw myself into the carp pond. Thank God for the gin in the wardrobe.”
Even the rustic scenes of yore, those bucolic fantasies of milkmaids and haywains, are ripe for corrective treatment. That smiling yokel leaning on his scythe? Animate his real thoughts: “This ‘fresh air’ is giving me ague. The squire’s a miser. The beer’s weak. And if that photographer doesn’t stop patronising me as a ‘son of the soil’, I’ll introduce him to the soil with this here scythe.”
This, you see, is the genius of the concept. It would finally shatter the debilitating nostalgia that paints the past in hues of honey and rose. It would reveal our ancestors not as saintly mannequins, but as gloriously, rampantly human: petty, irritated, lustful, disappointed, and endlessly opinionated. It would be the ultimate antidote to the weeping over ‘simpler times’. They were not simple. They were fraught with the same petty vendettas, financial anxieties, and marital disappointments that plague us today; they just had starchier collars and worse dentistry.
So, to the tech wizards, I issue this challenge: cease this production of animated treacle. Redirect your mainframes. Develop an algorithm for verisimilitude, not vanity. Let the pictures on our walls finally speak their bitter, hilarious, brutal truths. I, for one, would pay a king’s ransom to see my great-grandfather’s portrait finally articulate what his icy stare has always conveyed: “This line is going to end with a blasted fool who writes editorials. I can feel it in my bones.”
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go and draw the curtains. The portrait of my own great-uncle Conrad is looking at me with an unnervingly animated fury. I fear he has spotted the dent in his old army bugle.
Dominic Wightman is the Editor of Country Squire Magazine, works in finance, and is the author of five and a half books including Conservatism (2024).