Et In Arcadia Ego

I look forward to Halloween all year, but never ever do a costume in time. This year, the pressure is on: I am attending the Antichrist Halloween party, and there are some fabulously dressed people there, so I really have to compete!

Costume has more than a small element of shamanism to it - the idea that, by wearing the pelt of a bear you become a bear. You don't get hundreds of chaps old enough to know better dressing up as Colin Baker to show off their tailoring skillz. So I've some ideas - since learning pincurls, I considered doing Undead/Robotic Jane Austen. I've a wedding dress; or a 60s dress. But really, I'd like to take advantage of the liberal atmosphere to dress how I feel. I presume that's why the clothing gets so wacky at fetish clubs - the idea is you dress how you imagine yourself, and then become them. Queen of the vampires? Fine. Pin up? Definitely. Post-apocalyptic warrior? Why not.

Previously, I dressed up as Leda - which felt like safety in a way - and Deadeye Monaghan, Dandy of the High Seas - my Skypirate alter-ego. I put the Deadeye costume together in about ten minutes, complete with a broken spoon for an eyepatch, and it was excellent - and I felt excellent. The only way to top that feeling? TBCINM. As there were some elements of Blake-the-spaceship-captain in my Deadeye-the-skycaptain costume anyway. I have wanted to do this costume so very very much. I could do Jenna or Soolin. But - meh. And I've a sneaking suspicion it will look terrible, so what better place to testrun it than an environment where people will be wearing duct-tape?

I originally planned to make the huge iconic sleeves, but as that was made of green leather, I decided to tone it down the brown version - as it was still huge and swooshy, but in a more manageable fabric. Plus, this costume was featured in some of my very favourite scenes, so it made sense. About this time, got paranoid about sizes and shapes, so did some sketches. Which confirmed and crystalised what I had already, on some level, worked out. These costumes had been designed to flatter a rectangular person, and a rather stocky one at that. They would just look like sacks on me: back to the drawing board.

Shook the urge to wear something in poor taste. My third or fourth favourite costume is known as "the Robin Hood", and it could charitably be called a tunic, and less so, a mini-dress-over-leggins. Definitely achieveable, quite easy, and girl shaped.

So at 11 today, I dashed off in hunt of a simple green tunic to build the costume on top of. Bumped into the shooting for X-Men First Class, but they wouldn't let me have a look at filming. Still, I can inform you there is a scene on a balcony with a greenscreen background, featuring a lot of world war 2 soldiers. Walked up to the nearest Oxfam, on Drury Lane, which I had discovered when the washing machine broke and I was badly out of clothes. Consider buying a coat of the appropriate colour for conversion, but decided my sewing wasn't that good. I hate modern brand charity shops. Fair enough, they want to make money for their causes - but if I'm shopping at a charity, I don't want to spend more than a fiver on anything. Hence today, I wanted a cheap dress for a costume but kept encountering things in the £8-£20 range. Across the road to a vintage store - goddamn those places are even more depressing - all overpriced, but all uniform in what they sell. Did have some nice Fifth Doctor pullovers, though. I gave up on getting one of those about a year ago, as it's so totally unflattering. It didn't do Peter Davison any favours either: it coalesces with my blonde hair and sweet expression to make me look like a total wimp. Discover a third charity shop, which was properly cheap - but nothing suitable.

But I got my second recommendation of the day for Goodge Street, so off I toddled and took the Tube. Got lost in Tottenham Court a bit. But en route, I discovered Jackson's Toy Shop and Museum - which was an excellent emporium of stuff you'd never know how to find if you needed, like bouncy balls and Victorian scraps. And a massive Paperchase, which I shall definitely return to. Goodge Street had three rather upmarket charity shops and a vintage store. In Oxfam no. 2, I found a lime green silk dress which had the perfect shape to it - but was so obviously the incorrect colour that I couldn't justify it. Still, found some rather cool slides (overpriced!) of the planets and moon landings.

Was getting pretty peckish at this point, so I bussed down Oxford Street - resorting to mainstream stores. After all, charity shops had proved equally expensive. The problem with mainstream? If something isn't in, it isn't in - and I couldn't find any shop which would even attest to the existence of the colour I had in mind! Popped gloomily into John Lewis, as the only haberdashery I know of in London. Looked at patterns for a bit, but that was obviously beyond my talents - or at least, under the present circumstances. Considered Primark. Had a pizza slice.

The only other charity nub I knew of in London was West Hampsted, with it's road of ten in a row, so I took a train up to my old grounds and had a mosey around there. I shot through all ten in as many minutes - it was 4 by this point, and I was aware that closing was going to happen soon. No luck. I bewailed my sad situation to the final checkout assistant, who recommended I go to Kilburn. Bus! Kilburn! Nasty area, and it took me some time to find the charity shops she had meant. Traid - charity shop number 17 - was unhelpful. By this point, I abandoned the idea of adding black panels to a green dress - I would add green panels to the ubiquitous (?) black dress, and to this end went into the cheap-and-nasty shop next door. Perfect! Found it in minutes - my size, the fit I wanted, everything. I think it's a bit short, but who's counting. And next door, a cheap Cancer Research provided a lovely, lovely skirt in the perfect shade of green.

Then I staggered home and slept. Five hours, five hours of shopping - but at least I didn't need to resort to my last case ideas: dressmaking from scratch, or visiting fetish shops (from which Blake's 7 notoriously bought their original costumes). Still, there is quite a to-do list, which I type for my own benefit in order of priority:

Tuesday: vital stuff

• Record mp3 of Greek verbs, so they can be played ad nauseam.
• Go to Tescos - buy a tin of water chestnuts and a cereal multi-pack. Eat cereal, fold out boxes and work out size. Plus milk.
• Make pattern of the front and back panels on dress
• Decide how closely to adhere to the triangular design of the original
  
• Make pattern for shoulder pads. Work out how much felt and ribbon you need, not forgetting the trim.
  
• Go to Greenford Hobbycraft for:

Black felt + ribbons + stiffening something or other (shoulder pads)
black ribbons (costume trim)
brown and gold paint/tape/something (teleport bracelet)
embellishments (teleport bracelet)
serious duty glue (ray gun)
white felt x 2 (power packs)
felt for other projects
polystyrine ball? for the base of the ray gun.

• Get home without getting into trouble. Get over supersticious dislike of Greenford based on previous visit. Coo while passing Perivale.
  
• Cut skirt into desired shape, carefully because it's an inconvenient material.
• Attach skirt to dress. Somehow.
• Prance around happily in front of a mirror.
• Make and add shoulder pads (probably felt squares + ribbon, or maybe some of Bevenita's black tape?)
• Remember ribbon around the neckline Have stir fry for tea.
• Start work on whatever you can from tomorrow, today.
  
• start thinking NOW about Halloween next year...

Wednesday

• Cereal for breakfast - if necessary, cereal with water chestnuts. Style 1920s hair.
  
• Early morning Greek. Lose the will to live.
  
• Go to Soho for sleeve material if there was nothing suitable in Greenford, but don't waste too much time - it's too vital a part of the costume to screw up.
• Return to campus and style hair of companions for Bloomsbury High Tea
• Go to Bloomsbury Tea (3-5). Relax.
  
• Assemble ray gun
• build teleport bracelet
  
• Look lovingly at the original undershirt, and reflect that it is probably too warm to wear to a club even if you did have time to make it. Which you don't.
  
• Badger friends about lending you something with a huge collar anyway, to compensate...
• Consider, ruefully, that there is no way to incorporate fake blood into the costume. Consider doing it anyway.
  
• Email mum about making said undershirt for the future...
  

Thursday

• Meet Friend 2. Go to Manics concert. Do some work.
• SWAPBOT.
• Library books. Make decision about Poggius script.
  
• Have shower and curl hair overnight

Friday

• pincurl hair
  
• use any skirt scraps as ribbons in hair
  
• combine with eyepatch and add a Federation logo with facepaint, just because I look good in an eyepatch and facepaint.
• Die
• Enjoy party.
  

Sure - 2010 isn't over yet. But I have so, so many awesome corkers already that I thought I'd start this term afresh.

So come one! Come all! Marvel at tautologous dialectic debate! Gasp at speculative heuristic modalities! Speculate as to exactly what academics are compensating for! You've seen it on your television screens, you've heard it on the news - now live for one night only, the one, the only:


Junior Division: prizes for individual words.

Academic Puns
Calypso notes that the use of puns are "pretty much the only fun academics have". This year's most popular word:

"DissemiNation" - about diaspora from Nation and Narration

"Nation, Space and Politics" from last year's champion, Terry Nation. See what they did there? The sub headings are even better: "Nation-wide influence"; "The blurring of Nations"; "the birth and death of a Nation"; "a Nation divided: geographical and social space"; "Microcosmic, allegorical Nations"; "Binary Nations"; "dystopian Nations" e.t.c...

On this model, here are some suggested titles for future Doctor Who essays:

"Little Miss Moffat: Fairytale Stylings and the Dream Landscape In Season Five"
"What's On and Holmes: Reimagining the Gaslight Detection Narrative Under Hinchcliffe*"
"Masterplan or CartMelodrama? Developing the character of Ace."

*I know jokes aren't funny once explained, but this is funnier if you know the Hinchcliffe era was script-edited by Robert Holmes, packed with gothic horror and and once featured the Doctor in a deerstalker...

Made Up Words
"The Gothicity of Slime" - I presume gothicity means "gothic-ness"

A repeated word in a poem was described as an example of "geminisation"

"Hauntology" - investigation suggests this (broadly) means "nostalgia"; Calypso simplifies things by explaining "it's the study of queer spectrality"

"Fraudomy" - I suspect the pronounciation ought to be something like "fraud-oh-mee" - but who knows? Or cares? Let's call it "Frodd-om-mee"! Logic suggests it means: "I thought I was a sodomist - but it's OK, just kidding!". But having googled the book in question, the author himself can explain:

I propose to read sodomy in a way that has less to do with revealing a particular "truth" (or "truths") than with thinking about sodomy as a mode of knowledge, a way of reading the articulations between these various forms.

So now you know.

"Phallologists" - people who examine queer philology. Ignoring it's Just-A-Minute ring, I don't even like this as a concept. Why would queer philology have to be all about phalluses anyway? Can't we have Rainbologists or something?

Junior Division 2: Phrases

The "Water is Wet Except When It Isn't" award: Saturday Morning Censorship

"Censorship both prohibits and produces meanings"

The Stephen Fry Goblet For Using Twelve Words When Two Would Do - forgot to cite the source for this, but I think it's "Terry Nation" again.

"Very frequently, linear narratives and parallel montage are combined, creating dramatic structures emphasising repeating patterns of character separation and reunification"

Translation:

"The Doctor and companions are split up. All the time."

The Doctor Seuss prize for Prose: Just Gaming (JF Lyotard); pg 41

"As narrator she is narrated as well. And in a way she is already told, and what she herself is telling will not undo that somewhere else she is told."

Ah, but who is telling you, Baloo? Have you told about them too? Ah! Let's talk as we walk to the zoo!

Runners up:
"Patriotic, atavistic temporality of Traditionalism" -Nation and Narration (pg 300)

Senior Division One: Titles

Lovecraft Memorial Goblet: Syllables Will Eat Your Soul
"The Darwinian law of competitive Devolution versus the Kropotkinian law of symbiotic Evolution & its Metaphysical Manichaeian Division"

In some alternate world, surely this is Saturday Morning TV show - "Oh no! Kropotkinian is destroying the city with his tenticles! When trouble strikes: call up the Manichaeian Division!"

Most Arresting Title:
"The Masturbating Venuses of Raphael, Giorgione, Titian, Ovid, Martial, and Poliziano"

Some academics will do anything for a grant. This chap seems to have hit jackpot by getting all serious about the world's favourite topic. Incidentally, the paintings under discussion are this one and this one

Runner up; and winner of the Words Prize for Using Words

"Pure Resistance: Queer Virginity in Early Modern English Drama"

...so, Queer Virginity, eh? What does that mean, when not being eyecatching?

The "Surely This Is A Parody" Fiji Mermaid Statue

"Stripping the Public Bare: Theorising the Politics of In/Equality from Nudist Encounters"

This has it all, ladies and gents: it scores four shots on the academic title bingo. The focus of the paper is on, broadly speaking, Nudist Equality as compared to race, gender and sexuality struggles. You'd think this was fairly easy to answer, as three of these four activities is a quirk of birth, and the other a one-way track to hypothermia. But nothing can ever be that simple, as the abstract explains:

"Equality here gets read away from its calculative, distributive modality, to focus instead on textured, touch-based equality fantasies."

So now you know.

Runners up:

'Commodities and Culture in the Colonial World 1851-1914' is hosting a roundtable discussion on 'Global Theory; 'Theory' in/of Motion'

Senior Division 2: Special Interest Awards

The Cold Fish Trophy for Academic Missing The Point

"...the refusal to accept norms of behaviour or social constraints is an advantage that allows Blake to pursue his visions of a better world, but it also makes him somewhat ruthless and uncompromising."

The key here is "somewhat". Blake's transformation from Generic Hero Guy to very flawed and surprisingly nasty is a brilliant and uncomfortable turn of events. Dismissing it as "somewhat", to my mind, suggests they just weren't watching properly.

For those operating at the other end of the spectrum, we have the Taking It Too Seriously Memorial Garland: http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7/Essays/neil-A-B.html

"That the Blake/Avon relationship is not only the most developed and most significant relationship in the series, but also one between *two men*, means there is no attractive female role offered to the female viewer. She must therefore insinuate one into the inter-male relationship by ascribing traditionally female role qualities to one of the male characters..."

"I propose, therefore, that Avon is asked to fill, simultaneously, the roles of Man, Woman and Child, and things naturally get confusing. Hence Avon's relationship with Blake, operating in all three spheres, is likewise confused."

Ripperologist of the Year
This new award is dedicated to "experts" in a specific field. This was an especially competitive field, with casual, amateur lunatics fighting to distinguish themselves from professional fruitcakes. Some of my faves:

"Connecting the Dots: Were the Ripper Crime Scenes Chosen to Form a Pattern?"

What do you think?

Most Respectful Ripper Memorial:
http://www.amazon.com/Young-Witches-Vol-Babylon-Graphic/dp/1560972416/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t

Oh yes. Well, there would be porn. Words...defy me...

The Award for Academic Thoroughness: Jack the Ripper: A New Theory (William Stewart)

"Could a Jack the Ripper today evade the police as easily as 1888? If Jack the Ripper was the sort of person I imagine there can only be one answer: yes"

This statement's vagueness is rivalled only by it's pointlessness. "If Oliver Cromwell's pancake making skills were as formidable as I suspect, he would undoubtedly singlehandedly bring peace to the Congo."

Senior Division 3: Personalities

Department of the Year
"Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence" Sussex

You just know they all lounge around wearing nothing but Venetian masks and expensive slippers, and write all their essays using the backs of recently-debauched maidens in place of desks, while pages dressed as Cupid bring them strange fruit, and wine in curious jade goblets fashioned in crude forms. I'd love to listen in on their dissertation proposal day...

Runner up:

Could the London Intercollegiate Network for Comparative Studies get any more vague?

Study of the Year
It is vital to correctly reference all academic works. Luckily, there's the "Study on Empathy for pain in Couples":

This project investigates empathy for pain (that is, how an ‘observer’ understands the pain of a ‘sufferer') in people who are in a romantic relationship. Please note that this study DOES NOT involve fMRI.

Oh really?

Male participants will experience mild to moderate heat pain during the study (e.g., like that of touching a hot cup or plate) in regular brief intervals, and will be asked to rate their pain experience. Their partners will be either in the same room or in a separate room, and will be asked to rate their level of empathy for their partner. Both participants will also have to complete some questionnaires on personality traits where they are asked to indicate their level of agreement with a series of statements concerning: anxiety (e.g., "I feel calm/tense"); mood (e.g., "I feel content/unhappy"); romantic attachment (e.g., "I feel comfortable/uncomfortable depending on romantic partners"); and pain attitudes and beliefs (e.g. "I find it easy/difficult to ignore the pain"). The device used to create pain (i.e., a small stimulator attached to the arm), is safe and it will not cause damage to the skin. Also, participants will get to sample the experience of pain at the beginning of the study and the amount of pain will not exceed the levels agreed by them at anytime during the study.

Gee, thank goodness! I'd been worrying how I'd substantiate the outlandish claim that "my other half gets upset when I am in pain"...on a more pedantic note, I'm interested by their use of "couples" and then the assumption that one member of this couple will be male...but I suppose that would necessitate a special study to establish that queer couples empathise just like regular sized ones do. Darned academic rigour!

Scholar of the year
A translation of Petrarch's sonnets in Senate House Library bears the following frontispiece quote:

"In the resurrection of science, Italy was the first that cast away her shroud and the eloquent Petrarch, by his lessons and his example, may justly be applauded as the first harbinger of day" - GIBBON

Beneath, a later reader has added in pencil:

"Likewise Ms. Wollaston's translation might justly be derided as the harbinger of new Barbarianism"

As much as the destruction of books chills me, I am always cheered by the appearance of satiric pencil notes. In my perfect world, readers would be encouraged to write margin-commentaries in library books for the next reader to discover. The world of academia would be much improved. In other places, he points out a "non sequitur", adds a Latin quote "parva sed apta mihi", and underlines paragraphs which - at first - I thought were those most relevant to his reading, but am now convinced highlight its worst excesses. He has also counted and made note that Ms W's whinging introduction runs to 68 words:

"It is not without a feeling of anxiety and diffidence, that I submit my poetical translation of "One hundred sonnets of Francesco Petrarca" to the world of critics, when I reflect how vast is the ordeal to which I have voluntarily exposed myself, in having undertaken a task none have thought fit to accomplish before me, whilst my sovereigns in intellect have not hesitated to acknowledge its difficulty"

Because there's nothing like modesty. And having flicked through the book, her introduction is indeed pants. My favourite passage is this piece of incisive and rigorous scholarship:

"The cord of life which had bound Petraca in union with so many friends had so unexpectedly snapped, that he looked fearfully round upon those still in existence, and fancied he heard the fatal shears contracting still more his narrowing circle, whilst one torturing vision clung night and day to his mind - it was a presentiment of his Laura's death. It was not long before his fatal foreboding was verified; intelligence reached him at Verona that she too had sunk a victim to the plague. We will not pause to describe the poet's feelings on this severest of bereavements...

But she does:

"...Who that has enshrined every hope and happiness in the existence of one loved object will not feel how complete must have been the wreck of both to Petraca in this his loss. Death had robbed him of his sweetest and tenderest tie, his only golden link to life - now his heart was widowed, his hope elsewhere. But did religion permit his noble mind to remain a darkening void, busy only with distorted images of despondency and gloom? No! once more he roused himself and found consolation in projecting schemes for his suffering country."

e.t.c. e.t.c., and this is before you even get to the poetry.

A runner up in this category commented on the introduction of Barsby's Ovid. He describes a poet whose women are no more than beautiful, silent stautes as having fantastic insight into the female mind. Our later pencil-bearing reader added:

"Really, Mr Barsby?"

Book of the Year:

Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of CS Lewis

Is to academia what aura reading is to a CAT scan, and is apparently the results of a professor's bet that anything can get published: "what about theorising that each book of the Narnia series was deliberatly based on the Copernican model of the universe?"

I recommend visiting his website - the Independant calls his theory "sensible", the Heythrop Journal "extremely convincing", and the Slime O' The Grot Express "Oh God Just Return The Children, I'll Say Anything." It also slyly quotes endorsement from the author of "The Da Vinci Hoax". Convinced? It's certainly true that, however marvellous, the Narnia books are a slightly mad inconsistent mess. So have a go now, and see which planets you would relate to which. I now quote Wikipedia, quoting Ward:

"In The Lion [the Pevensie children] become monarchs under sovereign Jove; in The Dawn Treader they drink light under searching Sol; in Prince Caspian they harden under strong Mars; in The Silver Chair they learn obedience under subordinate Luna; in The Horse and His Boy they come to love poetry under eloquent Mercury; in The Magician's Nephew they gain life-giving fruit under fertile Venus; and in The Last Battle they suffer and die under chilling Saturn."

How did you do? For my next trick, I shall relate each of the Care Bears to a Tarot trump...

Linguist of the Year: our very own Calypso!

We stumbled across this arcane passage in a book which we were increasingly sure was the lost tome Diacritics, by that elusive alchaemist Judith Butler. For fourty days and fourty nights, we poured over the occult text, trying to make the smallest sense of the strange characters and inhumanly contorted syntax.

“The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony, in which power relations are subject to repetition convergence, and rearticulation, brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.”

It was in no small part my rigourous study of the Ancients contributed to our success, and together we mapped out the structure of a vital fragment by identifying subject, object, verb, and linking antecedants with subclauses e.t.c:

“The move from a structuralist account
(in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways)

to a view of hegemony
(in which power relations are subject to repetition convergence, and rearticulation)

brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure //

and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory
(that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects)

to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony
as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.”

Yet Calypso provided the final, elegant translation: "Structure is being rethought because power isn't as simple as we thought"

I dropped into the Mediatheque for a laugh last night, and recieved some food for thought. The Mediatheque is a sort of youtube for film buffs, on site at the BFI. You pop into a booth, and a odd selection of cinema is your oyster - from TV and shorts, to PSAs and full movies. Frustratingly, it is almost always the final episode of any series, but whatever.

There was a perhaps unsurprising lack of comedy, with the most interesting item a series of short, 1900s movies about hilarious Jews. Which you would think would really interest me, considering the wealth of offensive material hidden at the back of my wardrobe, but I think something about filmed oppression freaks me out. I found the Black and White Minstrel show deeply disturbing, and had to turn it off, but can't apply the same visceral horror to the various homophobic/racist pamphlets I collect.

So I watched a bit of Carry on Camping, and then the underwhelming Five Go Mad in Dorset (merely stating the facts of what you are parodying in a context when you're meant to laugh isn't any funnier than just presenting what you are parodying). And then found Are You Being Served?, which was just the type of thing I'd hoped for.

Very daft, quite marvellous, I've a crush on Mr Lucas that's some four decades out of date. But I was interesting to read the notes. The BFI uploads new content in "collections" - this was part of their Queer Lives collection, and had been chosen because the Mr Humphries character was controvertial and had been protested.

Is it offensive? I don't find it so, but were I a gay man I may feel differently. Perhaps in the context when that's the only gay representation on screen, but then I feel it is in a way better than nothing. Fun is poked at Mr Humphries effeminacy, but it's never at the expense of him also being a well loved character. The humour is not cruel, and a similar sort of humour is used of Miss Brahm's sexuality. It's a comedy, after all.

Furthermore, I don't think the stereotype is unreasonable: look at Quentin Crisp. Effeminate, bitchy chaps do exist - but then the rules about stereotypes are always a bit tricky to people outside said group. Wikipedia tells me his orientation was never specified, and that gags about Mrs Slocumbe's pussy (cat) also recieved complaints.

Much controversy at the time came from the portrayal of Mr Humphries, the screamingly camp menswear assistant. Certainly at a time when there were so few representations of gay men it was a stereotypical one. However, now it seems much less offensive, partly because Mr Humphries emerges as the only character with any dignity and self-respect. Compared to the self-loathing of his downtrodden colleagues, his cry of 'I'm free' seems apt.
- BFI screenonline.

Was this controversy from homos or homophobos? Similarly, there was pressure from the BBC to drop the character - but what sort of pressure was this? Sympathetic allies, or Green Ink From Slime On The Grot? And wikipedia adds:

Inman reported that four or five members of the group Campaign for Homosexual Equality picketed one of his shows in protest as they believed his persona did not help their cause. Inman said that "they thought I was over exaggerating the gay character. But I don't think I do. In fact there are people far more camp than Mr. Humphries walking around this country. Anyway, I know for a fact that an enormous number of viewers like Mr. Humphries and don't really care whether he's camp or not. So far from doing harm to the homosexual image, I feel I might be doing some good."

I'm with him on this - but people have the right to be offended at what they wish. As the US proved, by viewing him as a gay icon.


If you'd rather get angry at female rights than gay rights today, toddle over to this fabulous Female Characters Flowchart.

Dear all. Today I saw a real child birth. And an autopsy. A whole bunch of autopsy.

They call that "in media res". The Greeks invented it. I do Classics.

The Avant Garde cinema course is proving to be terribly, terribly pretentious, but unlike Noir, it's supposed to be. I had to fight with claws to get onto it, and even though I feel a little worried about my essays - what am I to write? - every time a film starts, I'm overwhelmed by the sheer rightness of the experience. I am meant to be here, because I love the experience of watching those films. Which is quite the opposite to the palpable sense of "what am I doing here?" caused by noir.

The makeup of the class is also interesting. Over my three years at uni, I've felt a bit isolated in both my courses by other people. I suppose that's no one's fault, as I'm a ghost in both my departments. I feel a sense of hostility off them, and I in turn feel hostile, normally directed towards specific people who just piss me off merely by existing. Friend 2 is right: I have rage issues. In any case, there is a noticeable subset of the film department who are proto-academics. They always engage with the most roundabout and bonkers parts of the texts. They evidently adore Ginsburg, Niezche and Kerouac. hey have moleskines, or recycled notepads with a checker pattern instead of lines. Many have leather satchels. Several are Marxists. They wear unflattering huge glasses, and grandad-sweaters - and that's just the guys.

Something else links them - they're all in this class, and I suppose it's because if you are a pretentious hipster, the course with the highest dropoff rate in the university which requires you to watch frequently offensive/dull/inconsequential/guano shorts is the place you gotta be. To prove your hardcoreness if nothing else. The type of people who, when your lecturer offers a one-off screening of a 7-hour long avant garde movie, actually take the offer up. I know I did, and all this is making me worry that I fit their company too well. I mean, who am I to criticise the way anybody dresses at all? This morning, I was inspired by William Holden in The Wild Bunch, which isn't even a film I liked: quite cowboyish, but very red.

They call that context.

Anyway, I started getting worried today when the lecturer suggested the high number of absences were caused by those who had read the articles about the movies in advance. I had not done the reading. I'd like to nobly say it was because I hated to spoil the surprise, and this is indeed true. I'm also lazy. We were informed that the first time she showed it, half her class walked out and one hurled, and that we were not allowed to leave. Although I'm sure we could have, if necessary. Not that it was necesssary: we're the American Underground class! The Hardcore Pretentious Hipster club! Why would we?

Of course, they'd all done the reading, so I missed out on what everyone was talking around until just before the DVD began. It came with a handy warning that the following movie contained "actual autopsy footage" - which in itself was interesting. As if the fact it was real changed something. I mean, it obviously does - but if you're going to be chilly about it, it's all just image, and you could have replicated that all with effects. Would it have been as uncomfortable to watch had it been identical, but with the comfort it wasn't "actual"? At the end of the day, all we saw in the cinema was a mechanical reproduction - only the word "actual" made the difference to us. You could have convinced us it was fake.

Not that I thought that at the time - that occured to me some four minutes through. And it wasn't even "Jesu, pass me a bucket", because there are some contexts where I know I have nerves of steel, and this was one of them. It was something like this:

I have some very strong, very ancient views about art, and I've never had a chance to properly test them. Let me explain:

Oscar Wilde fried my brain very early, with the concept that "art is useless". From that, and associated ideas of the aesthetic movement, I formed my own opinions which I today discovered are actually a form of modernist thought. Art is something not put to use (hence my hatred of realism/"message" movies), so anything can be art when divorced from its context. Everyone complains about the screaming groans on the Bakerloo line. It sounds like music to me, because I decide "this is music", and then suddenly there are cadences and rhythm. And it's here that I find my love of terrible, atonal music. And in my mind, this is associated with children. You know, how a three year old will get hold of a fork, and it's suddenly the best thing ever. I suppose if you've never seen a fork before (or a hat, or a ball...), it must be pretty damn exciting, and that's the joy kids find in life: they can see this beauty everywhere. And so can we all, if you start appreciating a fork as art divorced from context - it's lines, shapes, colours, forms, light bouncing off metal and shining. There's nothing intrinsically separating the sparkle of a fork from the sparkle of a diamond. To get back to the Bakerloo line, the adult commuter hears the noise and itches for the WD-40, dismissing it as painful and annoying. That's only because they haven't abstracted it out of it's context.

That's my position on art, in a nutshell, and I hope you followed it near enough. When I go around spouting things like "everything is beautiful", or "everyone is beautiful", it's not because I'm a big damn hippy. It's because 9 times out of 10, every time I see something my mind asks "is it art?", and then rearranges my thought until it is so.

I'd take this position to a pretty extreme extent. For my Sixth Form art project, I argued something similar and wanted to use images of 9/11 to prove my point. Not the black and white arty photos, just any photos. Clouds and fire are beautiful - its just the idea of what those photos are which is horrific. Understandibly, teacher didn't think that was such a good idea, and in the end, I did the same concept but on decaying buildings. A noncontrovertial version.

But you can't take an idea like that without pushing it far. And that brings me to the dog story, in which an artist chains up a dog in an art gallery and leaves it to starve to death "as art", the internet protests, and invites Unmutual to join a group expressing how much she protests. When viewing the inbox request, my gut reaction, my microresponse before anything logical kicked in, was "but...wow!" And then a sense of total horror, aimed mostly at myself and not the original artist. Felt dirty for days after that, but still did not join the Facebook group. This isn't a story I'm particularly proud of - it shows me in a very ugly light indeed. I only mention it to point out these beliefs are apparently innate. Or in any case, more innate than my hatred of animal cruelty.

So the question was: I'm about to watch some autopsies. How extreme can this position go? And if you're at all sensitive about hearing about said film, or me using my typical blase exaggerated cynical tone to discuss it, now is the time to click the little X in the top right and come back next time I write about kittens.

Answer: I need to watch some mondo. Because it turns out that yes, in the hands of a fantastic director, you can abstract the human body just like you can anything else. I feel strongly that, in his use of colour and close ups, he was trying to express just my position. So many of the shots you could not tell what they were at first - they were indeed just colour and shape. You couldn't even necessarily distinguish the live flesh of surgeon from the dead flesh. Turns out that yes, even here there is beauty. There was absolutely no context - no names, virtually no faces, certainly no politics or underlying ideas.

I also thought a lot about how else you could have shot the film - in order, from further away, with sound (what music could you possibly use?) or in detail like Channel Five's Celebrity Hysterectomy: Our Hands In Your Guts. I feel it was very carefully constructed so as not to be gross. As far as that's possible when you're watching a head reduced to a Gallifreyan skullcap made of actual skull. I noted that the first fewindividuals were old men. I would probably have naturally gone man, woman - the fact he didn't stood out. I think I would have felt differently about a woman - whether because I is one, or because female nudity is a bigger taboo (I've a feeling it would have suggested sexual violence automatically), or a white knight streak. And children go without saying. It also started with a body examination, which took me by surprise - I figured autopsies were gross-out scalpel affairs.

Turns out this was an act of genius, which eased you into the movie. Ultimately, there was all of the above, but I feel it got successively worse (according to my notes, men -> knives - > a child, but shot tastefully, from quite a distance - > women - > really unpleasant stuff you do not want to see, combined with faster editing). But even as it got worse, I felt you were better prepared to handle it - not desensitised, just calm about the process. I mean, is it really any worse to cut up a woman than a man, or a child? Not really. Does it really matter what it is they do? Again - not really.

Although there were some shots at the end which I do feel were too much - but was that the cumulation? And indeed, I felt the whole film was too long - it bothered me a bit to begin with, then not at all, but towards the end bothered me rather more. I felt more viscerally grossed out by the serial killer lecture - which I almost had to walk out of - even though there wasn't any remotely objectionable content. Perhaps because that asked you to consider death from an intellectual standpoint, and I feel here it was an impersonal artistic exercise. Interestingly, I'm having more of a reaction to it now as I write as I did while watching - my throat dries out, and then feels like it's coated with babybel - which suggests this is true.

I also felt vegitarianism changed things. Several people mentioned the aspect of meat during the seminar, which I had also considered while watching. Part of becoming a veggie is breaking down that wall between "animal meat" and "living animal". Once you break that wall, it's hard to replace, and it's not much further to connect "animal meat" to "living human" - I'd say it was impossible to turn your back on that. Very much in my mind as I viewed, and I was in part amused by everyone else's responses. Yes. Yes, exactly. Chew on that.

Was I affected? Was I not affected? I think my emotions tend come out in strange ways, not always attached to their causes (Is this repression, psychopathy, depression, or passive aggression? Or overanalysis?) I think a bit of both - I feel the film was too long, because there was a level at which I could watch it as dispassionate art but not for very long, certainly not the whole running time. And I did need fresh air and a chocolate milk afterwards. I'm feeling less well now, than I did a few hours previous. And I'm interested to see how it affects me in the next few days - whether the imagery fades, whether it matters more or less.

In any case, he's an inspiration - or rather, he does things I've already thought of doing, but proves they can be done. I'd rather beat rush hour than write about Window Water Baby Moving - the childbirth one - right now, but it achieves something I've dreamed of doing. Catching the emotions of an event on screen, without narrative or anything else. And I feel I've absorbed aspects of his style - i.e, lots of close ups force colour harmony.

Because I'm not a pretentious hipster at all.

Also. I just saw a brain scooped out of a skull.