Today’s issue: the Death of Cinema; An Unexpected About-turn; An Evenful Trip to Asda…

Part I: The Death of Cinema

It never looked like living, but at last it has succumbed to the terminal illness gnawing away at it. Cinema is dead. I base this decree on the trailers we saw while waiting for Sherlock Holmes (which I’ve now seen and loved a second time). For your entertainment:

“Robin Hood” – mostly OK, but hilariously there are fire arrows even in the trailer. I’m also rather disappointed to see the Merry Men fighting baddies in a battle on the beach instead of staying in the trees where their advantage is, exactly the same mistake that Sean Connery made in Robin and Marion. Will I see it? Maybe not: it looks a bit like Gladiator, the sequel, and I feel funny about Robin Hood at the moment.

“All About Steve” – I kid you not. It’s a kooky romantic comedy. This is the type of thing they snark about on imdb all the time, only it's real.

“Leap Year” – I Know Where I’m Going by Powell and Pressburger, but set in Ireland instead of Scotland.

“Edge of Darkness” – oh God, I’m not sure I can even define what’s so wrong about this if you haven’t seen the dour, understated 80s British miniseries on which this high-octane, Mel Gibson shooting-shit-up, kick-ass sub-A-team, trailer is based. If you have seen the original Edge of Darkness, then please do watch the trailer – it’ll be the best guffaw you’ve had all year. You can bet your pretty white tail Gibson won't turn into a tree either...

“Clash of the Titans”. The tagline is, wait for it:

TITANS. WILL. CLASH.”

Frankly, I’d be disappointed if they didn’t. You couldn’t bloody make it up…

Part II - an Unexpected About Turn

Today I started work on my British Cinema essay. I’m about 12 weeks early, but I do not want to be writing in a rush again. My lecturer thinks my topic is a great one – Jack the Ripper, “gaslight” Victoriana, London, cinema and where those four things meet – and put me in touch with the lecturers for Third Year module “European Crime Cinema: The Serial Killer” so I could borrow their reading list. They, kind in the extreme, then invited me to their lectures because they’re doing two weeks of Jack the Ripper and serial-ing in general. Which is why I found myself doing a voluntary extra four hours of lesson time this afternoon.

Bad move. Very bad move. I remember considering this course and being in two minds about whether I could take it. I’m glad I’m not on it, because the answer turns out to be no. It was fascinating stuff – not grotesque, you understand, just talking about the various ways the phenomenon has been interpreted. For example, it’s closely linked to development, although they’re not sure whether serial killings are facilitated by modern life (no one knows anyone, easy to be anonymous) or caused by them (depersonalisation et al). America is the most devloped nation, and it’s also the home of the serial killer – Jack, regarded as the “first”, started slaying during the Industrial Revolution – and apparently it doesn’t really happen in underdeveloped nations. Apparently, there is currently a rise in cases in China. When you cross-ref that with the fact they’re mostly white males between 20 and 30 – arguably the most successful strata of our society – well, it’s interesting. At another point, he discussed links with terrorism – very unlikely to happen, but posessing the public imagination because it could happen to anyone.

All well and good. But I’ve discovered – no, not discovered, become aware – that when engaging with, thinking about, listening to things related to serial killing I get an intense physical reaction, one I don’t get for any other form of human brutality. War, genocide, kiddymurder – there’s lots of nasty stuff out there, but I can take hearing about it the same way I can take watching Timelash. It’s not nice and these things upset me, but it’s an emotional reaction. I did know this, vaguely – it’s a reaction I’ve had several times before (most recently when researching my cards, but I recall it from news items, from books, from things I read when I was younger), but briefly and contained. It’s quite different being stuck for an entire hour in a situation which you cannot leave: it puts it into vivid definition. A bit like the choking sensation you get in a hot claustrophobic lift, combined with a light head, dry-but-stickiness at the back of my throat, and a hungry churning in my gut. I consumed about four feta wraps from this alone during the lecture and several cups of water, and none of it even touched the sides.

I don’t know what it means, if anything. Perhaps that I’m still human. I don’t know, it’s just strange. I’m certainly not ashamed – nausea is a pretty understandable reaction. But to crime scene photos, or details or statistics –surely not the topic on its own? And I feel like a bad wannabe Wildean dandy for making (basically) a moral judgement on an area of art. And there's a level at which I'm relieved - recently I've been worried about consuming violent entertainment, since writing about it over Christmas, and worried about the state of my mind and all sorts of things. It's nice to discover one has definite ethical boundaries, and to know where they are. Even though I'd like to be too cool for such things.

The second hour, which focused specifically on Mr Ripper esq. didn’t make me feel quite so queasy. He’s different after all, precicely because of the way he’s been appropriated by fantasy fiction - it's this which makes me want to explore the subject, and it's this which (presumably) has prevented me feeling uncomfortable before. But it’s a shame, because it’s put me in two minds about the essay I’ve been so excited about writing for a very long time. I’m not quite so sure – well, it’s not inappropriate because it’s talking about how something has been portrayed, exploring not condoning. But I don’t know if I’m comfortable writing about it.

I’m now considering writing about the way Jack and Sherlock Holmes overlap – earlier because I found some fascinating movies, paralells and arguments to explore – but now because I feel it might tone it down a bit. I don’t even know what would be “toned”, so to speak: any disrespect is on the people who made the movies, not on me seeing how they made the movies. On the other hand, it occurred to me that if I was going to write all about the way this topic has been fictionalised and “contained” in cinema, as a matter of respect almost, I should probably visit Whitechapel. A pilgrimage, if you like, but the only way I could think of engaging with the reality. And then I knew I couldn’t do it – which is stupid, it’s just a square mile like any other square mile of London – but I’d still feel realy uncomfortable going. And I don’t know what that means, if anything.

Am I going for the second week? Yes. Yes I am, I’m going to have to steel myself to walk into the classroom, but I am going to do it all the same.

Part III: An Eventful Trip to Asda

The mistake, I think, was smiling back at the Asda employee when he met my eye and smiled. We’ll call him Alec, because he bears no resemblence whatsoever to Lovely Doctor Alec who put poor Laura’s heart into a tailspin in Brief Encounter. At the time, however, this seemed like a good oppertunity to ask for help. After he pointed me in the direction of the tomato paste, he commented that I looked very fine and that he’d been watching me walk around for about half an hour. At the time, this seemed rather adorable – it was nowhere near as creepy as it comes across on paper. He asked “do you come here often?”, which was surreal considering we were standing over the Asda fish counter, then what I was doing tomorrow – oops, alas, I have friends over (thank you, Clash…), and then for my number (I felt rather guilty about this, but I genuinely don’t know what it is…). I pointed this out, but agreed to take his if he had a biro. He did. And that was that, with a bittersweet farewell and a friendly peck on the cheek (how do you stop people doing that, by the way? Or can’t you?), after which I was forced to go home without buying all those things I’d forgotten to get earlier which were in his general vicinity.

Obviously, my vanity is really quite flattered – a girl likes to feel special. And he did seem like a genuinely nice chap; and I don’t want to be one of those people who promise to call and don’t. At the same time, I’m not sure I want to date The Guy Behind The Asda Fish Counter, even if Spirita thinks he’s a Count in disguise. And that’s undeniably what it is, unfortunately. Besides, perhaps men deserve it at the point they don’t take the hint? I don’t even have time to spend time with people I like this term!

So, I give it over to you. It’s like reality TV, only the BBC don’t get sued when I fudge the results. Under the Recent Posts, and under the taglist I've added a poll - please vote, and then if you want to give me some food for thought, use the comments ;)