Et In Arcadia Ego

Who would be a woman?

There are lots of reasons why my chance genetic arrangement is unfortunate. One of the most superficial (and therefore, most pressing) is that I can't successfully adopt the dress of male style icons, whether in cosplaying or borrowing touches I like for everyday life. Absurdly, this bothers me worst not when pinching things from hero-guys, but straight after camp movies. I adore the style, grace and OTT femininity of transvestites and effeminate chaps - but of course, you have to be male in the first place to pull it off...

...and of course, there are ceilings of glass and the rest. Important stuff. But today, we are going to talk about shoes.

WHY DOES NO ONE MAKE REAL SHOES FOR WOMEN?

I am aware of the school of thought that turns pain into pleasure, and I even sympathise with the mindset that "you are suffering for beauty" hence "more beautiful". But that's on a case by case basis, not as part of a virulent disease.

Is the cliche that women get through shoes like toilet paper, while men locate a single pair and expect them to last believed by shoe companies? Does this then explain why the majority of womyn-shoes are painful and cheap-feeling? I'd certainly never again buy from New Look: they don't make shoes, they make foot accessories.
My one concession to serious, feminine cobblery was a lovely pair of eggshell blue heels. Which I have never worn, because a pair of shoes I can't run away in is, to my mind, not a real pair of shoes. They have no grip! And yes, you need grip even when standing around in ballrooms.

You almost got this rant last week when I was just back from shoe shopping. For the third or fourth year now, I endured my sister's disapproval and bought myself a pair of boy's shoes. To her mind, this is weird; and it's true, I always like to take time to warp the gender binary. But the plain fact is:

• They are flat. I can climb trees, walls, flee muggers and booby traps.
• They have grip. When attempting to climb trees e.t.c., I'm not going to slip.
• They are hard wearing. I'm not going to escape the muggers only to discover my socks are soaking.
• They are comfortable. We'll come to that one in a minute....
  

And that is why I always wear men's shoes. For years now, I've yet to find women's shoes which fit these categories. Admittedly, this is on the Island.

Is this just preconceptions about women getting out of control? Do such shoes exist? Even the fact they're hard to find suggests we are being offered a vastly inferior product, and also that they get away with it.

I've just had to join the Idiot Female Fashion Victim Club, and don heel-plasters. It's between that and consigning the red slippers I've always wanted to an Oxfam bag. I've known various people across the years who have done this, and I always thought it was ridiculous. Because what's more bloody stupid than wearing shoes which are uncomfortable? What has never occured to me - because this too seems bloody stupid - is that they were comfortable in the shop, and they only cease to be comfortable after subjected to extreme circumstances. You know - walking in them, or something. I can only have walked in my new shoes for 15 minutes max, and the backs of my heels are totally bruised, raw and unpleasantly sticky.

Change, please, and soon. The problem is, ideas about female foot-habits - including the "oh! I suffer for beauty!" one and the "I spend more on my shoes than my children!" one - seem to directly impact how the product is created. And in general, female shoes seem to bear the same resemblance to real shoes as Asda own-brand bread does to bakery produce. If a shoe does not provide comfort and grip, it is basically a bad shoe. In an ideal world, it should also be durable, though of course I make exceptions for daft party shoes. Exceptions which do not make walking the next day a painful enterprise. I feel like I've been forcibly pressganged into the ranks of miserable womanhood as a punishment for defection. It's horrible...

I've had it.

I just don't like the internet. It's too much science fiction, but still...

Tyler Durden would be appalled. The internet is a tool: you use it, not the other way around, but it's somehow transformed itself into a Lestat-like sucker entity that hangs on your back like a Time Beetle and drains everything. Blake, Winston, Number 6 and the rest would scarecly be less impressed at a network which controls so much information.

And while none of them are sane individuals by any reasonable definition, the internet backlash is going to happen eventually and soon, and I want to be a part of it. Maybe it'll be when all the teens of our generation mature into adults and discover that fifteen years of their Farmville scores, IMDb reviews, Livejournal porn, music tastes, illicit youtube-video-watching, forum trolling rising from the grave to meet them. The internet keeps better account of my teenage years than even my diaries. For example, do you know what I had for lunch on the 4th March 2005? Search Ninquelosse here. It's also got an entry for the 2nd July 2004.

One of the big things today is "connectivity": the ability to link and syncronise your Spotify profile, Twitter account and baked bean collection via your iPhone or whatever and have everything in one place, but no one is stopping to thing that connectivity is an evil evil thing. I got halfway through making a beautiful, elegant website which linked to all my internet accounts and activities before thinking no, why the hell is connectivity a desired attribute? It's creating dangerous monopolies. There is now a function on Youtube which will automatically update Twitter, Facebook and Google everytime you sneeze on their site. And most sites have something similar.

The internet's benefits are so many, that no one is paying any attention to any number of dangers. I am getting out while I still can.

Take a look at the following

Net Neutrality
We have an intrinsic belief that the internet is a communal creation, equally supported by all: the ultimate Socialist project, if you like, where fools can rise, all are equal and information is not controlled. This assumes that the services we use are all as committed to neutrality as us.

"Net Neutrality means that Internet service providers may not discriminate between different kinds of content and applications online. It guarantees a level playing field for all Web sites and Internet technologies."

In other words, relies on Big Business playing fair. And Jack the Ripper was the Loch Ness Monster:

The nation's largest telephone and cable companies -- including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner Cable -- want to be Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow and which won't load at all. They want to tax content providers to guarantee speedy delivery of their data. And they want to discriminate in favor of their own search engines, Internet phone services and streaming video -- while slowing down or blocking services offered by their competitors[...]The big phone and cable companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to gut Net Neutrality, putting the future of the Internet at risk.

Read more: http://www.savetheinternet.com/

Some things we didn't tell you upfront...

Most websites we use rely on our belief that they are intrinsically good - see Big Business above. For example, when you sign up to a Facebook application you must also agree to let them view your personal information - they always cite profile picture and friend data - so the app works. But when you click yes, it can see all of it - even though it doesn't necessarily need it. But you know how popular Facebook applications spread like influenza, and increasingly, "fun" applications are being designed exactly to syphon off your information to ad companies and the like. It's a rather fine sacrifice to make merely to bat some pixels around the screen - it'd be like giving the Disney Corp. all your personal details before being allowed to visit their parks.

My evidence is here

Illusions of innocence
There's increasing evidence that Facebook staff - who can look at anyone's profile and browsing habits - have been doing so. Now, while none of this can be conclusively proved, ask yourself this: if you were a Facebook employee, and you had this power at your disposal and knew you wouldn't get caught and prosecuted because it would damage the company's reputation, what would you do? Right then...

My evidence is here

Memory: part I
The internet seems safe. It isn't, and I'm not just talking about the Paedogeddon. Few people realise quite how fragile it is, so solid the presence of Hotmail in the morning. Here are a few examples.

From 1995 - basically the dawn of the internet - until 2007, Outpost Gallifrey was the home of Doctor Who on the web, and thus the combined geek opinion since that year, including the run up to the reboot, was all documented there. The owner decided to stop running it in 2007, and everything transferred to Gallifrey Base - basically the same website and forum. No loss - except he also pulled the plug on the server. It's no longer accessable, basically winked out of existance - and the Internet Wayback machine can't really help, it being a forum and all.

This could be libellous - so correct me if I'm wrong - but this was how things stood last time I investigated it. And I don't want to investigate too far, even if there is a way of finding it again, because the destruction of information really upsets me.

The decision did not lie in all 20,000 members, but with a single man. Well, that's very Doctor Who, but you can see why I am skittish?

Item two: Geocities. Another website there since the dawn of the web, and a repository for crap and bad graphics. It wasn't good, but it was a historical document of sorts - and for billions of readers and creators, it was their space after all. In 2009, Yahoo decided to get rid of it and that was that. I discovered this through a rather personal blow - the loss of the Genesis Tab Archive, which I had always visited via the site and never made my own copies of. Luckily, much of it was restored by Reocities - a project which has rescued as much as it can. It also has a blow-by-blow account of the week Geocities went down, which starts off as dull techhy stuff as the author configures his sub-etheric-ming-mongs to copy off as much as he can, but ends with real heart-in-mouth sorrow. The appointed hour comes when everything gets switched off, but GeoCities takes time to die and the crawlers keep going for a few hours finding less and less until it just shuts off and there's nothing any more. Reminds me a bit of HAL, and a bit of Miss Evangelista ghosting in Silence in the Library, and I actually get choked up re-reading it. Although the death of information is a touchy spot for me.

This isn't going to stop. More and more things we take for granted will evaporate, and we will never have the power to save them.

Memory part 2
Till now, this has been reasonable substantiated worries. The following is rather more hypothetical, but I still think it has validity.

Because ignoring Geocities, the internet has come to replace the "collective memory" of societies gone past. Now like never before, we can find half-forgotten childhood shows, photos of events we didn't record, transcriptions and records and bootlegs and the rest. This also relies on our belief that it is faithful.

Who decides what is recorded into the collective memory? Wikipedia itself acnowledges that there is likely to be more information on tiny American cities than important figures from abroad. The importance of information is incorrectly weighted on the internet, giving some a higher apparent value. This alone distorts it. A very good example would be any fandom wiki, say the Harry Potter ones, which are huge and meticulous.

It's also not necessarily correct, which is a problem when it is your memory. Much like you find memories of weddings resembling the wedding photos, and remembering being at events you weren't at - we know the memory is fallible and easily moulded. Why rely on a resource so easily moulded? We're talking of the collective memories of an entire generation. For example, I looked up Incredible Games - and it lists all the rounds I know so well, apart from the final round in the penthouse. I don't remember hunting for keys at all - but now I think about it, maybe I do? I can visualise it. But perhaps I think I should? I'd love to find out, but it'd be a bad idea to google "incredible games penthouse"...

My argument is, the internet doesn't just store memory - it also creates it.

Part 3
In a world where internet presence defines identity, what if someone had you deleted? So far, so sci-fi - but think about it.

If someone had the power to, say, remove Lady Gaga from the internet - and one day, someone will - it would effectively be like deleting her. You could certainly destroy a career or too, maybe of smaller people. I am particularly concerned that, in the future, the past could be controlled in this way. They do it in 1984, and the idea of them editing old papers and stuff sounded exessive; but the internet gives the means to very easily. After all, the truth doesn't matter - as long as the mass of people believe it to be the truth.

Advertising
Is there anything wrong with targeted advertising? On principle, if nothing else! Google accounts have a separate opt-out cookie you can download, to stop them using the information you get from their records of your searches; you can also see what other companies have tabs on you.

Everyone is fallible
I actually believe that Google's heart is in the right place. I shouldn't. The internet, a human system, is human imperfect. I do not believe that Google would ever maliciously release my information, but it could if it wanted to. Considering some of the things in my Google accounts, that is a pretty scary if...(PS - how many days do emails count as a "protected communication" under US law? 180. After that, Google has to hand it over to men with warrants. And how long can Google keep information on your searches? Until 2038.)

The "Tracy's face" test
The film Manhattan ends with the comment "sometimes, you've just got to have a little faith in people". And you do have to have faith, or go blind, to use the internet at all. Have faith that Google isn't recording what you search for, for example. Have faith that the security companies don't also create viruses to make their products necessary. Have faith that Facebook's new policy of making everything public by default isn't an attempt to attract traffic. Incidentally, go to account settings, go to privacy settings and then go to "search" - to prevent Facebook making all your personal information searchable via search engines. Shameless. Did you know that your Facebook photo albums are now able to view by everyone by default unless you go change it?

It's a bit like the raunch culture debate. Broadly speaking, is it Feminist or anti-Feminist to be slutty? Now, it is Feminist because it's taking advantage of free choice - but it is anti-Feminist because it encourages objectification, no matter why you're doing it. The answer is tougher than a simple yes or no. Women have the choice to be as tarty as they like, but they only have that choice because of women in the past - and their behaviour today influences the women of the future. It's selfishness verses selfishness, individual vs. crowd. Same with the coming out argument - we are only in a world where revealing or not revealing our sexual identities, whatever they may be, is a choice because people in the past have been open and confront-y about them.

Similarly, on a man-by-man basis it doesn't matter if you vote Charlie the Unicorn five stars on youtube, before commenting on your friend's music poll and updating your online film list. It'll probably never make a difference to you personally. But it's adding to the mass of information (as the two examples add to the mass of prejudice) which is already raked over by major companies. For example, you can sync now your GPS and Googlemaps - and this chap excitedly claims he used it to find an excellent BBQ place he had forgotten -which is a small, selfish decision for self-serving purposes. But it's part of an application which, if I've got this right, tracks your exact movements and then records them.

I am overreacting. There are a billion brilliant things about the web - like politics or religion it can be beneficial or baneful, and prone to the fallibilites of humans who put it to use. But I have to overreact, to make up for the sheer volume of people who are not thinking this through properly. And none of the points I have made are unreasonable, especially Facebook sharing your information.

You are perfectly safe so long as no one, in Google's words, decides to "be evil". In the very unlikely case that someone does want to be evil, though...

I want out.

I'm systematically deleting everything. Things I can't live without, I am creating with myriads of new identities which cannot be linked to one another. If you want to keep reading my blog: email me, and I'll give you the access code before I lock it to outsiders. You know who you are, you beautiful people. Goodbye, internet!

Just so you know we've been trying has hard as we can on the house front...we started with people we knew well - a good friend, and Calypso's cousin. As these are people I know and like, I'll skimp on details :) But after a few weeks of hope, neither turned out to be able to live with us, which was a shame. We then moved on to people who moved in the same circles:

Alzarius
Remember Alzarius from the quiz? Right. Turned him down on the basis that, as a geek, he Absolutely Positively requires the internet hard-wired into his brain, and we love having an internet free house.

Fake!Friend1
Met her at a club on one of the LGBT nights out. TERRIFYING. Charming, witty, very friendly, but looks JUST LIKE FRIEND 1. Same short hair. Same sort of face. Same dress sense, and slouch, and jewellry picks. Drinks the same drinks. As far as I could glean, same interests too. Oh, and is also called "Friend 1". On the one hand, this is a pretty excellent reason for her to live with us: while on the whole my Friend 1 wouldn't exactly fit the quiet, party-free house we are running in Acton, she is an intelligent female activist, and at least I know she's a good pal and great person. But on the other, OHMYGOODNESSCREEPY. Unfortunately, she couldn't get out of her contract.

Miss Polypluck
Also couldn't get out of her contract, and I'm still not sure whether I'm glad or not. Another one of Calypso's activist buddies, pretty perfect. She wanted to get out of Kings halls because they wouldn't let her play her drums, sax and keyboard there. Obviously, this would almost have been excellent: we've a garage for her drumkit, and I wouldn't say no to having a keyboard in the house. But I don't know. Everyone turns into a bitch when it comes to music. Bar none. I include myself in this, and can envisage the atmosphere turning instantly unpleasant when it comes to sharing and arranging rotas or, worse, if I were better than her (or she better than me...)

Mr Novello
The first of a very long line of very gay men. Spirita pounced on him at SOAS, having overheard him talking about his flathunt, and invited him straight home. Calypso showed him around while I did a whirlwind tidy ahead of her. He was soft spoken, very poised and careful, and didn't seem to mind the mess. His favourite film is Brief Encounter ("us too!" the three of us squealed. It is basically our joint-fave movie), but he was something of a cineaste. I couldn't help but ask him if he'd seen The Lodger - 1920s silent film, about a mysterious lodger who might secretly be Jack the Ripper. He had, and took the question in good faith. In many ways, he was ideal - he would hardly ever be there, and because of the age gap, wouldn't want to be our pal in a dynamic-disrupting manner. But Calypso had a bad feeling about him, in the way one reasonably might of a stranger Spirita had known for 30 minutes, and fortunately, he only wanted four months out of the six month contract, giving a substantial reason to turn him down.

At this point, we started advertising, bringing us an unwelcome influx of foreign students. Which sounds mean, but not wanting the internet remains my chief aim in finding a roommate. Impossible? Probably, but foreign students are naturally going to require the internet to keep in contact with those abroad. It was at this point I agreed to cave on the internet front, and am still rather gloomy about it. It's not that I don't want to get in contact with you all; but having the ability to do so (in the form of the net) is a constant reminder of your absence. When no one has emailed/messaged me, it's not because you forgot to, didn't want to, it's because you physically couldn't. Which sounds pretty clingy and pathetic, and perhaps it is, but it turns the Acton House into a very calm, relaxing space where I can go to unwind from absolutely everything. Calypso keeps referring to it as a "safe space", which is a technical concept that, in this context means no fellas, no conservatives, no hateful people. For me, a safe space also entails the internet's absence. Incidentally, this isn't an excuse for you to stop calling, texting and sending me health packages with cigarettes, pin ups, warm knitted socks and Queen Alexandra tobbaco tins...

La Dolce Vita
Visited, and was adored by my fellow housemates. I didn't meet her, but she was The One for about a week until she couldn't get out of her contract.

Tempus Fugit
Mr Fugit was actually one of my favourite people we interviewed, a small and rather timid fella with a lovely smile. He was very keen to make sure we were OK with lodging with a guy, and made sure we knew he was gay and therefore non-threatening, in a manner which I thought rather sweet. Too expensive for him, though.

Senor Espania
Oh God, this one is almost too recent for me to want to go into. Lovely. Lovely, lovely Spanish guy studying fashion design - hobbies, cooking and cleaning. Which is a combination that makes more sense if you understand that we put some adverts up in the queer-friendly sections of the internet. Again, much like being smacked over the head by the nightmare transpeople must have navigating public facilities, I've suddenly realised how much it must suck to be a homo in search of a home. On top of all the other problems associated with finding a room, you'd have to find roommates OK with your other half.

He came to visit with a friendly interpreter - he is learning English at present, but is very timid at speaking it. The four of us got on famously. Argh, curses be upon everything! It turns out he couldn't afford it, but then suggested maybe he could share the room with someone. Which we were actually cool with - especially when we discovered the friend would be Miss Interpreter.

Senor Espania and Miss Interpreter
Which was fine and peachy, and legal, and everything was set up to sign the contract until fifteen minutes before the landlord was due to arrive. Still can't afford it. A flurry of obscene texts followed this news. Which is probably good on some level, because a five person house wouldn't be ideal, but then again it is now three days away from our deadline...

Mr Poland
Replied to the ad in frustratingly chirpy broken prose, peppered with ellipses, but had problems coping with "you are not a student and would therefore need to pay Council Tax".

Caviar
Referred to us via her brother's cousin, or something, but only wants to live here for three months. Might actually be an option, at this rate...

Mr Belgium
Our Landlord has informed us that we have to find an English student, so we didn't bother getting in touch with him.

Miss M.
Found somewhere else out of the blue.

Alzarius II
We asked again, now with the offer of internet, but he couldn't be parted from his busy social schedule before Monday morning. This being the only excuse, under the circumstances, I think I might like to kill him.

Candida
Visiting this weekend. Fingers crossed.

???????????
Well, I'll tell you about what happened last night in another more narrative post, but as you can see - we've been busy. We've exausted everyone we've ever met, scoured Facebook, shrapnelled the internet and plastered not only our campuses, but every London university with posters. At this stage, I am not sure what else we reasonably can do. As you can see, however, it is not for lack of effort - and our Landlord has offered to dock the cost of the spare room by 50% if on Monday we have no one and need to cover it ourselves.

This obviously would not be ideal. If only because the stress of finding someone has been dangling heavy for about two months now, and I can't take much more of it. It's like a constant weariness, like there's always a task to accomplish. But it could be worse. A friend has informed us about his last lodger, who was a really sweet old lady who gave him cookies, and then turned out to be an international confidence trickster who stole £800 from him over a few months!!!

As a result of working hard on my film coursework, I am getting increasingly sickened with academia.

It's been exacerbated by a volume in the Maughan library with which I am feeding my obsession, while picking through on spoilerific eggeshells. An academic volume dedicated to that great and ground breaking author of challenging post-numismatic discourse of the neo-Prydonian School: Terry Nation. He created the Daleks, invented Blake's 7 and wrote a lot of ace stuff for both series. What fun! Paragraph two, for example, begins a discussion on how far you can identify a single author in a television series. A very valid point - but it scuppers it by starting in this manner:

"authorship has been associated wiht power since the beginning of history in the Judeo-crhistian worldview, since God was seen as the author of the world and of humankind"

We now have academic substantiation to deify both him and Holmes. The second section of the introduction is even funnier - entitled "popular television and 'quality' :

"We believe that the work credited to Nation as creator and/or writer fails to fit some of the traditional criteria of 'quality'. It is largely in familiar generic forms, was made on a comparativelyt low budgets, and is addressed to a mass audience. As Bernadette Casey et al (2002:209)"

Oh, do you think? I can't believe they need to footnote statements like "Doctor Who often had crappy special effects".

I'm still waiting for them to do a serious discussion of his characters and themes. Normally, I bow to the Obviously Superior Wisdom of academics. After all, they might just know more than me underneath the scrambled prose. Doctor Who is something I do know the odd thing about, and so the illusion is broken - especially, while analysing form, they insist on referring to "cliffhangers" as "suspended enigmas". It's a childish and simplistic exercise in stating the obvious - inferences anyone could make from watching a single half hour of Genesis of the Daleks. Identifying things like "the Doctor and the companion separate and get into trouble", or "Doctor Who has a mystery which is solved at the end", and then crossreferencing it via Surviors and Blake's 7 which - amazingly! - does the same things. Damn you, that's what drama does!

So I have lashed out with violence, and this is the unpleasant result.

It's become an Accepted Film Studies Fact, much like the oedipal reading of Hamlet, that Alien is
"about" the male fear of pregnancy. Personally, I always thought it was a monster movie with a killer xenomorph first, and Freudian discourse second. Caylpso argued that it is a strong underlying theme - after all, what I choose to see as "people's innate phobia of having something growing inside them" is effecively pregancy. But I still think the focus on it is ludicrous.

To counter this, Calypso and I have decided to make our own unique contribution to the wonderful world of Film Studies wank.

Because Reservoir Dogs is undeniably all about the male fear of menstruation. Spoilers in the next paragraph.

Think about it: when Mr Orange is shot by a woman, it is a form of symbolic castration as she transfers "the female problem" straight at his poor, male abdomen. It is signified by the extreme fetishation of blood, and represents the terror Man has for the bleeding Female. The introduction of a feminised element into the hypermasculine atmosphere is the pivot around which the plot turns. As the blood seeps out, so does the femininity - through which Mr White is transformed into protective mother figure, creating the mother/daughter dynamic: helping a child through a first period. While the characters are confident to anatomise women at a distance - Madonna's big dick, the story of the super-glued-prick e.t.c. - they are unable to cope with a female influence brought into their all-masculine sphere. It provokes violence, suspicion and disgust, and causes the men to become even more masculine archetypes. Particularly in the patriarchal figure of Mr Blonde (straight razor = masculine attribute = Great White Phallus*), who lashes out with penetrating stabs to protest against reproductive expression. Ultimately, the menstruating feminine must be neutralised for the safety of the group.

I hope we call all agree that was the largest pile of bollocks this blog will ever produce.

But what is literary theory but a method to read film through? A Marxist will see every novel as about revolutionary politics - a revisionist will say anything as long as it hasn't been said before. If you've just been dumped, then everything you read is about your ex. Opinions represent your pre-occupations more than anything true and immutable about the text.

And you can't deny that most of what I said in the analysis above was correct. Mr Orange's injury does raise the tension, his presence drives the plot and he is mostly responsible for the eventual outcome. Mr White does behave in a motherly manner, that razor is long and straight. Men are unnaturally skeeved by periods. And Reservoir Dogs is the man's movie which women seem to love - perhaps because they see their own biological dilemma reflected in it. Subconsciously, obviously.

The facts are all correct - it's just been peverted through the prism of a crazy point of view. And yet the more we argue it, the more genuine it seems - which to me exposes the big lie at the heart of academia. You can convince yourself of anything.

And this is why I hate the footnoting obsession. Surely the first priority should be the film, the second one's own opinions - and third, third should be the weight of academic deforestation? Unless you are writing a response, the film is your primary evidence and your reaction the only prism through which you can appreciate it. "Who's Afraid of Literary Theory?" claims that Literary Theory exists so you can understand books. If you didn't know what a hero or a three act structure was, you wouldn't understand the significance, much like the way Indian music sounds awful to people not used to rasas and such. In other words, you cannot judge a work except in the context of your own opinions. The film is the primary source; all opinions are secondary, but yours takes priority because it is only from your opinions that you can interpret and then form any stance on a work.

It's not that other people's opinions aren't interesting. But they are not important compared to the film itself, and equally irrelevant to your own opinions, and the opinion of Bob the bus driver. A applied to B creates theory C - then C applied to D creates theory E and so on, further and further away from the topic under discussion. The ultimate aim of any writing on a book or film should, surely, be to enhance the enjoyment of that book or film by looking at it through different perspectives, on different levels and through different themes. If an essay doesn't make me rethink the film on a second watch, then it has failed. The film-snobs equivalent of pointing out movie trivia.

In a way, I'm reminded of my views on the Doctor and Master. I've never pinned down the exact nature of their relationship and wouldn't want to. Instead, I toy with different theories. Are they just friends? Lovers? Brothers? Father/son, both ways around? Is the Master the Doctor's dark side? Each of those perspectives gives you a slighly different reading, different things to notice or interpret or to think about. Much like sifting through various essays. But I would never pick just one, because at the end of the day, I come back to the text - the text which is totally ambiguous. An academic would pick one, argue it, argue how that related with Cuban Nationalism, argue how Cuban Nationalism could be explained by the Time War, and would be discussing the Marxist dialetic inherent in the nominisation of "Doctor" by tea-time.

This afternoon I found the Maughan's violence-in-cinema section, and because I've an urge to rewatch Reservoir Dogs, hunted down some academia. It genuinely distressed me. I was upset me to read how Holdaway has the ability to distinguish between the reality and artifice of postmodernity; and how the naming scene ("Mr Pink is too close to Mr Pussy") exemplifies the notion of catachresis and mimics the naming of Adam by God - but the idea that the name Mr Black causes quarrels signifies that blackness = violence and signposts the crisis in white cultural identity.

"The characterisation of Joe Cabot as "The Thing" from the 1950s D.C. comic The Silver Surfer foregrounds Joe as a fantastical genre character - also bringing to mind the Lacanian "Thing of the Real", the material embodiment of the chaotic and lethal violence of the Real - which is what Joe fails to control through the imposition of the conventional codes of reality of the gangster."

See, the difference between that and the menstruation theory is that I know I'm being ridiculous. And I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

Let's talk Tarantino's representations of "blackness". QT is an offensive individual who likes shocking people, writing about offensive individuals. He scatters his works with the "n-word" because he can get away with it and he thinks it's streetwise, cool and also funny. But many of his characters behave in a way which that author identifies as codified "black bodies". That's because Tarantino is interested in, and has pilfered from, what white academics call "black culture". END OF DEBATE. I don't see anyone proposing to write a paper about the high levels of violence in my writings - and I think that's because it is perfectly obvious that it is only there because I enjoy violent literature and films. It's not a protest against the patriarchal system, or a representation of buried race anxieties - it's because I like shooting people up.

Applying that sort of deep-level analysis is especially upsetting to me when referred via Reservoir Dogs - a film which is deliberately surface deep, deliberately nihilistic. It means nothing: life is cheap and mundane. All we know of their world is given to us in 90 minutes of real time - the message, such as there is one, is quick and meaningless. By the end of the movies, nothing has changed and it's not meant to. That's what the final juxtaposition of horrible tragedy and comedy music signifies - it's reminding the audience not to worry, because it signifies nothing.

There is interesting academia to be written on the film, but on the story and characters. The way they are set up, and placed in opposition, the information we are given. The intensely clever way Tarantino uses and witholds information from the viewer: that's what academia should be studying.

So, any comments to make on my Reservoir Dogs theory? I'm horribly tempted to write and footnote it properly, and try and get it accepted.

*Yes, this is a real academic term.

Ah, autumn! It’s like good movies go into hibernation over summer - but as the night curls back in, the warmth of those sitting in dark rooms lets them know it is time to return. Here's the cream of the coming crop, so take it as a warning: expect to be invited to any or all of these in a month near you.

Sherlock Holmes

You already know how excited I am about this. I adore my Victoriana, and this could only be more so if Dracula, Jack the Ripper and Alan Quartermain fought with sword-canes in corsets on the set of Ghost Light while each smoking a pipe. I'll pause to let you digest that mental image. Lovely, lovely Victoriana. A buddy movie set in sepia is always going to float my boat - add in cravats, London and the promise of violence, and it really has to be very shoddy for me not to have fun:



I am less hopeful since seeing the trailer. It looks more blockbustery and less classy than I had hoped. It's honestly not just distaste at them getting a woman involved, and fogging up my invisible slash goggles. Honestly. It's the black magic and world ending which makes me rather more sceptical. To my mind, this can go two ways. It could be awesome, and if it isn’t, it’s bound to be awesome in that other way. I like the Sherlock Holmes books a lot, but am not a fangirl. Therefore, while I’ll have sympathy if cinema shits all over it, it won’t touch me personally (but see below…). One thing to be sure: it is not going to be dull.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Terry Gilliam makes films by turns. For every Tideland, there is a Brother's Grimm (or if you are a fan of mainstream movies, or my mum, for every Brother's Grimm there is a Tideland) - in other words, he alternates between good ones and bad ones. He is due a bad one. Despite that, he is still my favourite director, and I can't help but be excited about anything he produces. Particularly when it features the word "doctor" in the title:




Disreputable fact of the day. Mr Gilliam also has a reputation for films going belly up on him. His Watchmen went nowhere, and illness and flooding conspired to kill The Man Who Killed Don Quxiote. I am ashamed to confess that my first reaction to hearing about Heath Ledger's death was "Oh no! What about The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus!", not something more humane, like "what about his family and his daughter?". Obviously I did think that next, but I hope as a professional, he would understand my priorities. As you doubtless know, his character has been recast with Johnny Depp, Colin Farrel and Jude Law, and it can't help but give one a shiver up the spine to hear Depp say "nothing is permenant, not even death".

As I've already commented, it's time for Terry Gilliam to make another bad movie. My feelings on it are much like that of Sherlock Holmes. It might not be good, indeed probably won't be, but it will be very entertaining. All the visual flair, the cartwheeling imagination, the scenes of inappropriate violence towards cats will be there - even if it doesn't hang together into a satisfying whole.

Alice in Wonderland

One of the most hotly anticipated upcoming films, and I couldn't be less excited if I tried. Watch the trailer here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeWsZ2b_pK4&feature=fvw

I have seen Tim Burton movies, I've seen Alice in Wonderland, and I already feel like I've seen this. Yes, it will be beautiful and creative - I like the design of the White Queen in particular - but I am having difficulty caring.

The Last Airbender

M. Night Shyamalan is my other favourite director, and I am excited for this like you wouldn't believe. Not in a good way either. I have come to understand that a great director must work across genres, not just remake the same movie for his entire career. Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott - yes, I confess Steven Spielburg too. The same level of quality and style, but telling different stories. To an extent, you do want to see what you saw in the film that made you love them repeated - one of my frustrations with Tarantino is that he never made anything else with the rawness, the tension or emotion that I appreciated in Reservoir Dogs. So I have been lucky with Shyamalan - but even I must draw the line at having seen the one about the unhappy man living in Pennsylvania who rediscovers his faith through the supernatural four times. I enjoyed Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Lady in the Water and Signs, but I didn't bother seeing The Happening because I knew exactly what it'd be like. Even if he set it somewhere else, it'd seem different.

So I have high hopes for The Last Airbender, because it is so drastically different to what came before. If he cinches this, he'll be freed up to work on anything, and back on the road to acclaim as a great director. And even if it isn't good, James Newton Howard is doing the music. In terms of plotting, characters, all I' ve heard about this film is casting controversy. In brief: the actors are too white. In theory I have no problem with this. In theory. I passionately believe in colourblind casting (and, incidentally, genderblind casting...), and I believe in having the best actor for a role even if the look isn't right. But that's for the future, when true equality has been achieved - and it's clear this isn't about integrity but paranoid companies dabbling in a bit of casual racism on the assumption no one will notice. It's a shame to have that overhanging the movie, and it's a shame that Hollywood is insistant on casting causican actors even when doing so is really stupid. It's not excusable, but perhaps understandable, that they want a white-straight-American man to head up their movies and TV shows. After all, most of the world is white, straight, American and male, right? I don't like it, but for now that is just how the world works. It's sad that, given an easy chance to make things better, they still aren't brave enough to do so.

If you're interested in all that, a nice easy primer is here:
http://www.racebending.com/v2/about/
http://www.racebending.com/v2/why-does-racebending-com-exist/

If you don't care two hoots and just want to watch the moive (and believe me, I would be happier if I didn't care...), here is the trailer. It sent a shiver up my spine.


The Vampire's Assistant

I have blogged at length about the Cirque du Freak series of books: their sensitive treatment of adult concepts, their suprisingly mature attitude towards character, their engagement with darkness and refusal to patronise their young audience. And also about the way I would do it. I don't want this to be a normal kids movie, because these weren't normal kids books, and I cared about them so very much. Of course, as a fan of cinema I do understand that changes must be made, and I am open to the idea so long as the tone remains the same.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPC-5VoCkNE

Possibly the most positive reaction to a trailer I've seen all afternoon. The look is perfect, perfect, perfect. Not exactly as I imagined, but close enough. You can't really judge a film by it's trailer but this looks good. A tad concerned by the implication Darren is enthusiastic to become a vampire. Boy that's going to screw things up when they get to movie number 4. I'm actually...looking forward to it?

Dorian Gray

I have left this one till last.

I am fairly sure you know why.



In case you had any false impressions, I am not unbiased on this film and I am not trying to be. Au contraire, I fully intend to nitpick. Little things like the fact Ben Barnes' voice is all wrong and, while his face is good, still fundamentally wrong. I have faith he can act the role, but he looks too evil. The whole point is that he's angelic. Like the design, with all those cold blues, is just strange, or the choral trailer music. Like the fact I've always been concerned about Colin Firth's casting, and always will be unless they go 100% for the homosexual undertones and feature a big shagging scene. (Digression: Although Henry is clearly interested in Dorian, to my reading it's a mutually obsessive relationship, but never a sexual one. Partly because of Henry's ultimate belief in Dorian's innocence and good behavior, and partly because Dorian is a cruel fiend and denying him would be such deliberately tormenting thing to do. Still, I need a reason to dislike this film, and that trailer (with its bevys of hot young women, and absence of hot young men)
makes it look uncomfortably mainstream...in other words, if the two tumble into bed, to my mind it'll be more out of character than in. But it'll demonstrate that the film has a committment to being properly dark and is engaging with the source material.)

Like the fact that at moments in that trailer, it looked like a good film - every now and then, I started getting excited, and then remembered it couldn't possibly live up to my understandably ludicrous expectations. Even the fact that Basil wasn't featured in the trailer. What's that about?
Some of what I said about Sherlock Holmes stands: Victorian London + cravats + debauched gentlemen = a certain amount of enjoyment. But I am resigned to the fact there is no sane way I will enjoy this film.

I don't even know if I will watch it. I'll enjoy complaining about it more than seeing it, and yet my complaints will be basically meaningless. Because I am sure it will be acceptable and enjoyable to 98% of the population, and I won't be arguing for the majority - merely myself. I've never seen an adaptation before because I've never wanted to risk my imaginings of the book. It'd be too high a price. My main quandry is this: do I buy a copy of the tie in novel for my collection of 43+ Dorians?





And that ends the anticipointment. Anticipointment is when something turns out to be exactly as bad as you expect it to be. I am looking forward to these films, but it doesn't necessarily mean I have high hopes for them. The most any of these films can hope for is a good soundtrack. At the point a film becomes beautiful, both visually and aurally, I forgive just about anything. Peversely, post-trailer, it is Vampire's Assistant which I think will be the best, which is odd considering I'd basically written it off. What do I do about Dorian Gray? Anyone feel like going to see it first, to see whether it's safe? I worry if I go to the cinema I might walk out.

Torchwood is back from Monday. Hahahahahahahahahaha. Well if I can't say it on the blog, where can I say it? I'm preparing to bite my tongue about it for a whole week, as some of my friends, 50% of my family, and a large cross section of the Great British public actually like it. I go onto auto-sneer just thinking about it - I can't help but be spiteful and critical about it, even the episodes I actually like. It makes me mean in a way nothing else can. Which isn't especially nice (even for me), but something about that show angered me fairly early on and nowadays has to do a lot to gain my respect or attention. I'm fond of it - I'd miss it were it cancelled. It's still poorly written television.

Maybe I'm angry it for exposing the shallowness of my Doctor Who obsession, and that of many others - because we get so desperate in the absence of the MotherShip that Torchwood is a semi-acceptable substitute. Maybe it's misdirected aggression.

All this week, they've been doing radio plays. They're still on iPlayer. If you only hear one I recommend Golden Age - all about 1920s Torchwood India. Asylum might be your bag if you like wannabe-meaningful drama about social issues - nicely done but nothing special. I'm going to listen to The Dead Line tomorrow, but I can already tell my patience for it will be limited. The one line synopsis emphasised it would "result in a very emotional moment for Ianto", which sums up a lot about what I hate on that show - prioritising emotion over plot. In an ideal show, the two should be perfectly blended 80% of the time. Character decisions influence the plot - the organically changing plot impacts the characters. It's not acceptable to create a whole scenario merely to manouver the characters into a challenging moral impasse, and make them shout and cry a bit. Yes, every show needs character pieces, and inevitably those fantastic character moments will be the most brilliant and memorable bits of any series. Yet because they are so much easier (and more fun) writers have lost the faculty of twinning them with a challenging plot. Discoveries, twists, shocks - not just guests taking the regulars on a leisurely tour towards the "moving" climax. Our heros have to do things, not just observe the plot.

And this isn't just irrational Torchwood dislike either - I'm still angry at Journey's End and The Doctor's Daughter for pulling exactly the same stunt. Particularly the former, when Davros' entire plan seemed to be getting the Doctor into his power then making him feel bad. Oooh, scary. I could buy it of some villains - it's the Master's chief M.O. - but not Davros. And while many acceptable Doctor Who episodes aren't quite as shameless as Torchwood in hurt/comfort stakes, they still resort to lazy resolutions. 30 minutes of being chased by stuff, then the Doctor pulls a lever and the "stuff" goes away. The conclusion has to evolve out of everything we've seen before. If the Doctor had seen the lever in the very first scene and spent the whole episode trying to get to it; if the Doctor knows that pulling it will have a terrible cost, so is trying every other option first - but all too often, it's just lazy writing which doesn't give the Doctor anything to actually contribute to the set-up. The new episodes actually have a disadvantage compared to the Classics. The old stories were stretched over 4 four or more 25 minute episodes. Four episodes to a story = four cliffhangers, which in turn translates to four important revelations or developments to hang the plot on.

But obviously, Doctor Who is my favourite show - so even when being a tad lousy, I have far more mercy for it. And even if the plot sucks - ah, it's the TARDIS! Ah, great bit of Doctor-y dialogue! Oh look, a Planet of Fire reference! Torchwood irritated me early on, so now it has to be not only OK, not merely good, but really really special to get a good word from me. I'm preparing for a week of being rotten, and feeling rotten.

After a tipoff from Friend 4, I'm happily wasting the evening on one of my favouite hobbies - the British Board of Film Classifcation. They've just changed their guidelines, and as a geek, this makes me very happy. Little upset that I missed their polls, but then again they probably want unbiased votes from random suckers on the street, not opinionated geeks.


> Uc has been got rid of as a catagory
I don't think anyone will miss it aside from me - I'm fairly sure most people didn't know it existed. I rather liked having it about, but its absence won't make any impact.

> "The introduction of ‘discrimination’ as a key classification issue in each of the categories covering race, gender, religion, disability or sexuality."
"spaz", for example, is going to be treated like a proper swear word. I don't think anyone can argue with this, at least in principle.

>"74 per cent or respondents understood that the ‘12A’ category means that the film is not generally suitable for under 12s."
I'm getting increasingly weary with 12A as a catagory. If 12A probably means that the film is not suitable for under 12s, then why not get rid of it entirely? I've advocated before that 15A would be a more helpful catagory. There's less change in your teenage years (15-18) than in the transition from childhood to teenager-ness (10-14). I remember being 15 when I was itching to watch Reservoir Dogs and The Good the Bad and the Ugly.

>"Clearer and more detailed information about what the Board takes into account when classifying works and when interventions (such as cuts) will be made and on what grounds"
This makes me very happy, but mostly from a geeky perspective. I've often been frustrated when looking up their database of classifications at the lack of detail given. Purely because I want to nerd over the BBFC decision-making process, but it's still a development I'm really looking forward to. Pity they probably won't retro-update it. I'm dying to know who thought Attack of the Cybermen was a U rated episode...

(IMO there was a single moment I felt it was pushing 12, so was very shocked to discover it wasn't even a PG. Now, you could accuse me of just being very sensitive - it was mostly surprise at its level of violence being NOT AT ALL being what I expected from 80s Who. But then, isn't that what this system is about? Classifying things so they are in line with expectation.)

>"Clearer and more detailed information about how the tone and impact of a film is taken into account, as opposed to simply considering what is actually shown on screen"
Brilliant, fascinating development! This fine tunes the blunt instrument which is the classification system. One of the examples given is The Others, rated 12, which they claim would have been considered for a higher rating. Very scary film, but completely lacking in naughty bits.I've no idea how they'll police this, as it depends so much on instinct, but this is definitely a great step forward. And indeed...

>"At the ‘12A’/’12’ category a tightening of the horror criteria. This is in line with the introduction of tone and impact."
Oh, I'm so happy about the new guidelines! I was losing my faith in the system, until now. Job with the BBFC is basically my number one dream, if you discount unlikely things.

>"At ‘U’, the relaxation of the Guideline on references to drugs to allow for references which are both infrequent and innocuous. Under the old Guidelines a documentary which mentioned the Opium Wars between Britain and China had to be passed at ‘PG’ for this single reference alone"
A.K.A. Don't follow the rules just beacause there are rules. It's nice to have to have "don't be stupid" enshrined in the Guidelines.

>"At ‘12A’/’12’ there will be a presumption against the passing of frequent crude sexual references. This is in response to concerns expressed by the public about films such as Date Movie, Meet the Spartans and Norbit"
I express concern about the existance of Meet the Spartans full stop.

>"At ‘15’, solvent abuse is now specifically mentioned as a classification issue and depictions are unlikely to be passed. This is in response, not only to public concern, but expert opinion"
Interesting. I'm not sure I've ever seen a movie with solvent abuse in it, so it's not something I've ever considered. Nice to see the experts getting a look in. The BBFC blames its haphazard governing of video games to a lack of expert opinion on how harmful they are. I'm looking forward to a proper study on that too.

>"Trailers and advertisements which are on the borderline between two categories be given the more restrictive rating because of the fact that the public has not chosen which trailers and advertisements to watch and because the BBFC has no control over which trailers or advertisements are shown before a particular film (eg a horror trailer before a ‘rom-com’). The exception will be public information films and charity advertisements where stronger material is acceptable to the public when there is a ‘public good’ justification."
Again, it's marvellous they're thinking about this. It's an area I only ever considered "in the moment".

>" At ‘18’ the Board will continue to maintain the right of adults to choose their own entertainment unless material is in breach of the criminal law; or the treatment appears to the BBFC to risk harm to individuals or through their behaviour, to society; or where there are more explicit images of sexual activity which cannot be justified by context. As part of the research, respondents were specifically asked about explicit images of real sex in main stream films like 9 Songs and the clear message was that these images were acceptable at ‘18’ because of the context in which they appeared.

This is the chief reason why I love the BBFC. They have a heroic commitment to this principle, and are unwilling to ban things without a very good reason - when they do, it's for a very good reason. Usually, the big censorship hammer comes smacking down on nasty hardcore torture-porn, or weird stuff like real execution videos, or instructions for growing your own drugs. Now when art is involved, I am always on the side of the artist. To an extent that sometimes disturbs even me - my normal concepts of morality, justice and compassion tend to shoot straight out of the window. I'll be the first to admit I get it wrong when it comes to getting that balance right - have I told you the story about the dog? I'm not typing it up in a public place if not.

The BBFC do get it right, however, balancing concerns for safety with a determined respect for the artist's right to depict whatever he likes. Additionally, they follow up any apparent instances of child exploitation or animal cruelty, and insist on cuts if they don't like what they find. Unlike the American equivalent, the BBFC has its priorities correct. Or to put it a little more kindly, the BBFC is in sync with what the British believe to be acceptable, as the MPAA reflects the concerns of America. That doesn't mean they can't be wrong, of course - in general, American ratings are far stricter on nudity and sex than on violence. Incorrect in principle if nothing else - one of those activities is natural and positive, the other is, well, tragically just as natural. But it's obvious which of sex or violence is the lesser crime, because one of them isn't actually a crime at all. Several works rated 15 here for violence got away with PG-13s across the pond, which worries me. But then, it's all about judging films for this country, so my criticism isn't really fair. America is far stronger in religious faith, and far more open to ideas like gun posession. Nevertheless, the MPAA is far more of a blunt instrument than the BBFC - for example, nudity is allowed at U over here so long as it is in a non-sexual context, yet is almost instantly hammered over there. Similarly, the BBFC is committed to not noticing the difference between heterosexual and homosexual behavior - a kiss is just a kiss, no matter who is doing the kissing. Unsurprisingly, the MPAA tend to rate one higher than the other. Again, this does reflect the social beliefs in the country which it protects so I have a certain degree of sympathy. But in the long run, these things have to change. Read the wikipedia page for more controversy.

All in all, these guidelines enshrine the future of a great, great institution which, unfortunately, won't hold CVs. Additionally:

"Unfortunately, we are unable to offer any work experience or work placement schemes, despite popular demand. This is because of the amount of highly sensitive, unclassified and age restricted material found lurking in the building at any one time! Staff at the BBFC undergo extensive training to deal with such material, and are all over 18."

This is accompanied by an image of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" on the typewriter. Emphasise that everyone who works there is crazy, or something. How DO you get a job there, then? It's only a life aim of mine, and yet it seems to be virtually impossible. Ugh. Maybe my constant bleetings on the topic will attract someone's attention? I sometimes wonder whether I'm maybe too sensitive for it, and yet sitting in a room all day and getting knotty about the correct ratings is - well, I already do that.

Finally, I'm happy to see they're getting some heat for Dark Knight. This local report reveals a fact I did not know: they were close to giving it a 15. When they submitted it to their internal review panel, their board was healthily split. They get quite defensive in their 2008 report:

"As with recent years, there was one stand-out decision which generated the most number of complaints. Our decision to rate The Dark Knight ‘12A’ caused considerable media and public interest. Indeed, the two appeared to be very much entwined. We received 364 complaints about the rating for The Dark Knight, representing 42 per cent of all complaints received. The Dark Knight continued the trend for darker and grittier superhero movies, and dealt with themes such as vigilantism, summary justice and the compromise of civil liberties within its ‘comic book’ conventions. A number of viewers found this darker tone in sharp contrast to their previous experiences of the Batman franchise. However, the critical issue for many was that the weapon of choice for The Joker was the knife. Teenage knife crime was very much headline news throughout the year, and remains a strong public concern. The worry expressed by many of the complaints was that the ‘12A’ allowed very young children to watch this film, as long as they were accompanied by an adult. A few believed the film should have been an ‘18’; one or two wanted the film banned. The BBFC is always sensitive to concerns surrounding knife crime and youth violence, but it was clear that The Dark Knight did not condone or was likely to encourage violence or knife crime. In addition, many seem to have forgotten that ‘12A’ indicates that a film is suitable for those aged 12 and over. Parents or supervising adults minded to take under 12s to see The Dark Knight were directed to our robust Consumer Advice and Extended Classification Information for the film before doing so. The coverage of this decision gave considerable publicity for our content advice services. A later analysis of the public response to The Dark Knight revealed that less than 10 per cent of those who complained about the film's unsuitability for children actually accompanied children to screenings of the film. It was also clear from a number of letters and emails that the complainants were responding to press coverage of the decision and had not seen the film themselves. It may not be coincidental that most of the complaints were received in the same week that The Daily Mail ran their three day ‘campaign’ against the decision. Once media interest ceased, the complaints significantly declined although the film continued to be screened nationwide."

Oh, so the complaints weren't the BBFC's fault at all. It was the fault of people not understanding the BBFC catagories. And the rest - well, they were all reactionary Mail readers. I'd also challenge the piece I highlighted, that the film doesn't condone the Joker's behavior. It's the Mr Blonde factor - the Joker may be a baddie, but he's still cool. See those wearing T-Shirts with his face all over the place.

I'm gonna attempt to shut up about The Dark Knight now, because I sound like a record on repeat and because forgiveness is a gift and a virtue. They've got one wrong, time for me to move on. And plus, I do still adore the BBFC as an institution.

Reading the annual report is one of the little highlights of my year. It's always informative, witty, and has a tendency to belittle those who complain:

"An angry historian requested that we penalise films which were historically inaccurate by awarding a higher category. An amateur pornographer sought legal, practical and casting advice."

This also made me laugh:

"Almost every time Dame Judi swears in a film, regardless of its category, we can expect a number of complaints."

Aside from the fact any criticism is swiftly followed up by an excuse that the criticiser didn't actually see the film, is recieving medication, or simply didn't count, it's a good read, and I recommend you look it up on the SBBFC website if you have any interest in my pet subject. It contains details and justifications for their contested decisions and cuts. Where else could you learn that the Little Mermaid game once contained the line "I look like a spastic piece of kelp"? It offers an insight into the humanity of the reviewers too, when they point out that "bloody" harrumphed by an innocent old man in U-rated Dean Spanley is OK.

But oh, how do I get my dream job?

Interesting things to say about Strange Days. Remind me to say them. It's getting late, and the Flame is beginning to eat my brain again.

Its been a funny ole day. Started translating The Silmarillion into Latin. It took me about four hours to wrestle a paragraph into shape. Tomorrow, I'm gonna convert it to oratio obliqua. Only 700 pages left to go.


>> Someone on the Empire website was talking about the A-Team movie casting, and made a comment I had to pass on: "They've done it before, why not get Katee Sackhoff to be Face? She rocked as Starbuck."

Bwahahahahahaha. For those of you who don't get the joke, Face was played by Dirk Benedict, who also played Starbuck in the original Galactica. He's still sulking about the fact they brought his character back female.

I have mixed feelings about his response - on the one hand, I think it's adorable how much he still cares about his show. It's a not very well regarded bit of space-fluff he was in when he was a kid - he doesn't have a duty to it, and yet its legacy is still really important to him. This means an awful lot to me, especially if you compare it to certain ex-Doctors who mercilessly take the rack out of their episodes in the commentaries, and are on record saying they quit because their first two seasons were shit. Oh, thanks. So I'm an idiot, then? And excuse me, you actually left before the real grot set in.

In addition, his ranty article about how he loathes the new series is well written and funny to read, lambasting his replacement as "Stardoe", and raises several complaints that I have touched on. I have particular sympathy for this:

"Witness the "re-imagined" Battlestar Galactica. It's bleak,
miserable, despairing, angry and confused. Which is to say, it reflects, in
microcosm, the complete change in the politics and mores of today's world as
opposed to the world of yesterday..."Re-imagining", they call it.
"un-imagining" is more accurate. To take what once was and twist it into
what never was intended. So that a television show based on hope, spiritual
faith, and family is unimagined and regurgitated as a show of despair,
sexual violence and family dysfunction. To better reflect the times of
ambiguous morality in which we live, one would assume."

New Galactica is its own creature, and I don't disapprove of bleakness and ambiguity full stop - but the way the show does it tends to wind me up. Nevertheless, if that were it, then it'd be OK. The problem is, it's written from a perspective which is (to my mind) mysoginistic and painfully, unforgiveably heteronormal. Complaining that "the war against masculinity has been won", and being criticised for "treating women like "sex objects". I thought it was flirting. Never mind." Read it, and you can tell he's an American. I'm going to assume, on good evidence, that he's homophobic - which is a shame, because he's really rather yummy, and I now feel morally dirty having a crush on him. His very quick assertion that the Face is "blatantly heterosexual", despite being a character in the world's most homoerotic genre, actually makes me want to go and find A-Team slash*. That impulse, taking into account my dislike of slash interrupting platonic buddy movies, should give you an insight into how much this essay angers me. He continues:

"I'm not sure if a cigar in the mouth of Stardoe resonates in the same way
it did in the mouth of Starbuck. Perhaps. Perhaps it "resonates" more. Perhaps
that's the point. I'm not sure. What I am sure of is this… Women are from Venus.
Men are from Mars. Hamlet does not scan as Hamletta. Nor does Han Solo as Han
Sally. Faceman is not the same as Facewoman. Nor does a Stardoe a Starbuck make.
Men hand out cigars. Women `hand out' babies. And thus the world, for thousands
of years, has gone round."

If your eyebrows aren't a little raised at that statement, then get the hell off my blog. I can almost see where he is coming from - Stardoe is an interesting creation compared to Starbuck, and Calypso and I have discussed before how Princess Hamlet would differ from Prince Hamlet. Almost. He manages to frame a potentially interesting line of argument in the most offensive way possible. In comparison, at least Classic Doctor Who wasn't always brilliant.

He might even have a point if Stardoe turned out to be pointless token casting - but she wasn't. She has rightfully claimed her place as one of the greatest and most iconic sci-fi heroes ever. She is easily the most brilliant female ever created in the genre - rounded, macho but never at the expense of what we'll call her femininity - in short, realistically, brilliantly human. Think Amanda Palmer in space. And just like her character, she'd have no problems putting the male contestants into their place - easily one of the greatest sci-fi heroes full stop.

From pleasant (if picky) indifference to the A-Team movie casting choices, I now have a no. 1 vote: Katee Sackoff can play Facewoman any day of the week!


Finally, you know those students I've been following in Iran? OK, well I mentioned a few days ago that their university dorm had been attacked by the Basij - ain't it convenient for us confused westerners that they've practically called their secret police "the Baddies". They even posted some photos of the aftermath, which have provided an uncanny mental image of Vapitreem and I crouched under a table in that foul kitchen, both wearing discarded pans as makeshift helmets, along with Jeremy still attempting to revise during the shelling, and with half of the lightside dead or dying in the quad. Kinda brings it home. Although we'd be fine - the Dude would protect us. Just so you know I ain't kidding, the BBC have just posted a video of the attack.

The internet is incredible. Every time there's a "next big thing" on the web, the media always grumbles about how rubbish it is. Youtube, Facebook, Twitter. It's people writing on auto-reactionary "hmmm, look MILLIONS of people are using these web services. I'll write an article about how they are all wrong!". Whatever goes down in Iran - and I'm hoping for c) fizzles out before it b) turns nasty - no one can touch them now! Sure, they waste time, and sure, maybe you just don't get it, but it is actually saving lives and making a difference in some weird way. I' feeling a little less optimistic today, though - the people I'm following haven't tweeted for days. I hope this means their battery has died.

*For honour's sake, for dignity, I did go on one of my annual Livejournal binges, and it does exist as I knew it must - according to Fanhistory, A-Team slash has been around since 1986 exactly. I actually think the evidence for even semi-canoical based slash is very unconvincing, and yet I'm a little surprised by the total absence in fandom of what appears to me the most obvious ship - Murdoch/B.A.. The internet tells me they've been too busy fighting out Hannibal/Face against Murdoch/Face. I don't buy either, not even remotely. Especially as Face is, snigger, "blatantly heterosexual". Having gotten my personal vengeance, however, I now feel a little unwell...

You're all probably aware that I'm a sucker for film classification system.

The BBFC have actually published an article about The Dark Knight's 12A rating. This is fascinating to me, because practically the first thing I said after coming out of the cinema was that "if this is a 12 then Ed Wood deserves an Oscar", dodging a 15 but for the grace of editing. I love and trust the BBFC, so I was suprised to see them do what I regard as a mis-step.

The BBFC are governed by rules, they have to be. But it's wrong to do that at the expense of the human hunch. They say:

Though these and other scenes in which characters were held hostage or
beaten had considerable psychological impact, they contained little in terms
of strong detail – thus presenting a dilemma, should the BBFC be classifying
what is actually seen, or what is imagined by the viewer?

I understand imagination is hard to police fairly, but it has to be taken into account. Ignoring content, The Dark Knight is, well, dark in terms of tone. What the Joker does is twisted and savage, and the film does not back off from it. In my first review, I noted it's been a long time since exploding buildings, bombs on public transport, terror campaigns or hostage taking was entertainment: long gone are the days of Die Hard (15). I'd even argue that it was one of the first mainstream movies to start doing this again, yet not with gleeful abandon, but a knowing nod to the audience "he's dressed up as a bat, but don't pretend you don't knows what this feels like". They don't say anything, but it's there in the room as it's written, performed, directed, viewed. We've all seen the hostage-tapes on the news, so while the fat-batman sequence is unpleasant and scary on its own merits, it has the added horror of personal experience for every member of the audience.

I'm not criticising it, as it was tastefully, brilliantly done. Yet, see the BBFC's response:

In the case of The Dark Knight several factors were noted which supported a
‘12A’ certificate. These included the film’s comic book style, the appeal of
the work to 12 –15 year olds, the clear fantasy context and the lack of
strong detail, blood or gore.

I strongly disagree with this. What comic book style? What fantasy context? The film knowingly draws on the personal experience of the audience, and is far closer to Heat (15) than it is to Batman Forever (12). And praised as such, for its realism. Even Watchmen(18) is more clearly comic-booky, both in tone and content. Yes it was based on a comic book*, but it was as far from four-colour fantasy as it could get. Admittedly, there was very little gore at all - but that's pure artifice on behalf of the editors, and behind them the production company keen to sell lunchboxes. It's a wolf in sheep's clothing. Disguising the claws and shielding the teeth can't hide the dark core of a 15 rated film.

*Imdb tells me the specific comic books included "The Killing Joke". It's clear there are no Batman fans at the BBFC, because that is one sick graphic novel....

My point is, this film did not disguise it's darkness for an instant. A comparison would be Last of the Timelords, in which the Master rules Earth for a whole year. The show, quite correctly, brushes straight over it: "oh, well he was a bad guy, so he was doing bad stuff". If you pay attention to the dialogue, give it five moment's thought, and suddenly your brain goes to some unbearably dark places about what he was actually up to for that whole time. And if you think my imagination is sick, that's nothing compared to the Master's genius for inventive destruction. One word: Brigadier.

That's how you do darkness for children. Don't ignore it, but don't dwell either. Dark Knight dwells. Even if you assume that contemporary parallels will be missed by the kiddies, there's something very unrelenting and cruel at the heart of the film.

OK, that's enough on themes. What, about what we actually see. Let's talk about the knife. Here's a quote from Malcassairo, discussing one of my candidates for most shocking Doctor Who moment of all time:

The BBFC don't like it because its a household object - that much closer and
copyable. But they're also scarier to watch - because imagining a gunshot is
abstract, most of us don't have a comparable experience; but we all know what it
is to catch our finger on a knife, the flesh, the blood, the moment before the
pain hits. Now imagine that, but bigger, and you have some very graphic detail
running through the minds of the kiddies at home. Watching him prowl around Peri
and Jamie with a massive shiny blade was terribly unsettling. Stabbing Oscar may
just be the most violent piece of violence in the show ever.

You'll note, at the time, I had faith in the BBFC's avowed knife policy. Let's talk about the guy who the Joker cuts a smile for. You get to see the blade go into the mouth as he's speaking. Unlike being threatened with a gun, which mercifully few of us will ever have to go through, we know the feel of a knife blade. Couple that with scary music and that performance - well, I know that I, gleeful Tarantino fan, swore under my breath and prepared to hide behind my fingers.

The fact the film cuts away to a falling body means nothing, because the audience know, see, feel exactly what happened. The BBFC, ironically, compare it to the Reservoir Dogs (18) ear slicing, at which I say EXACTLY. It's been noted before that not-seeing is often worse than seeing, and a majority of people remember the ear coming off - when in actual fact, the camera coldly averts it's gaze to a different part of the room. Any horror fan can tell you that the quantity of gore means nothing when it comes to the disturbing quality of a film. Things get in you brain and they stay there. What shocked me about the Doctor Who episode above is the moment Shockeye whacks the Doctor in the leg with a huge meat cleaver. It didn't matter that the BBC restrained themselves from soaking the set with an anatomically correct anime-spurt. Because I knew it was there.

They then drop the ball again for claiming "There are many examples of films at ‘12A’ which contain scenes which imply violence far stronger than seen onscreen (such as the torture scene in Casino Royale)". Casino Royale is the only other film on which I've ever strongly disagreed with the BBFC rating. Just because there is a precedent, it doesn't mean the precedent can't be fundimentally flawed.

So to recap, The Dark Knight is a film based on 9/11, in the style of Heat, with elements of Reservoir Dogs. Any other influences a concerned parent should be aware of? Yes. Saw (18). The Joker's nasty little traps, the Boat Scene, or giving Batman the choice between saving Harvey or Rachel. Or the mobile phone being sewn inside someone's stomach.

I went to a great talk by one of their film reviewers, and she said she could usually just feel what a rating is, even before noting down reasons. There's a reason I haven't compared The Dark Knight to a low rated movie yet. The first 12A movie was Spiderman, and it was introduced more or less because the company would have been in trouble if it didn't appeal to the kid audience. Even if you compare cute Peter Parker with his Mary Jane, to psychologically screwed up Bruce Wayne, everything from imagery to tone screams that these are two different animals.

It's about brand awareness. I knew, as did all the movie-buffs, that this was going to be dark. Can yout trust the average parent to not think "comic book movie!". This is why I got so cross about Casino Royale, because for many parents Bond means Roger Moore dashing about. Even the Pierce Brosnan Bond was basically light hearted. Casino Royale was a major departure for the series, just as Batman Begins was a departure for the super hero genre. They say:

The BBFC was also careful to ensure that additional advice was available to
parents and other moviegoers through the websites pbbfc and bbfc.co.uk. Both
sites included extended information about the film detailing how and why it was
classified ‘12A’ and urging parents to think carefully before taking youngsters
to see it.

This trusts your average parent to understand the system, to know 12A involves a choice, and do their own research. I saw no such urging, and as a censorship nut I would have noticed instantly. Your average parent thought "golly gazooks Batman", saw the number "12" and shrugged. 12A is a loophole, which allows kids of any age to get in, and is a betrayal of the BBFC's role. Their job is to make the decision. They freely acnowledge that the catagory is misunderstood by parents, so why is it still there?

Furthermore, this leaves the film languishing as a 12 for DVD release.

If anything, the rating to change is 18. When I was 12, I did not constantly gripe about not being able to watch high rated movies. But from 15 onwards, my life was a constant torment of 18-ratings I was mature enough to appreciate. Teens do have that right, that tension where some age quicker than others. There should be a leap between 12 and 15 rated films. One is for old kids, the other young adults. Between that there is the border between "child" and "adult", and thus suggesting it is by far the wrong floodgate to open. One final quote from the BBFC:

But it is important to set the complaints in the context of the number of people
who saw the film. In the case of The Dark Knight the 200 plus complaints
are a tiny proportion of the five million people plus who saw it in the
first two weeks after it opened.

Incorrect. 200 people actually wrote in. What of the others, who couldn't be bothered, who
forgot, who just aren't the writing in type? I almost wrote in. Batman Begins I will admit deserves its 12A rating. But The Dark Knight? That was not a film for 10 year olds. Any 10 year olds. I'm suprised it wasn't pushing 18.

Also, it's bloody brilliant and I need to see it again. Soon.

Just adding my voice to the vocal internet outcry about the Pirate Bay trial.

It's not just that I feel strong sympathy for the people involved, there's something not quite right about it. It reminds me of Al Capone. Everyone knew Al Capone was breaking the law - but no one could prove it. Ultimately, they arrested him for tax evasion, which they could make stick.

The Pirate Bay is legal...ish. All it does is provide a linking service to where other people have uploaded music. So while it's blatantly facilitating illegal behavior, it's not illegal itself. I'm not a lawyer, not even close - but my understanding of the situation is to have convicted them would require some enormous smudging and squeaking on behalf of the prosecution.

It is not the fault of those four men, personally, that $3.6 million has been ripped off from companies - had they not been there, someone else would have. There's a lie at the heart of the trial, because they are being prosecuted on behalf of every single user of the Pirate Bay. Is this fair, I ask? Yes, they are at fault, and yes perhaps a large example needs to be made. But are the Companies going to hunt down Demonoid, Isohunt, and all those ones not famous enough for me to know the name of after this?

I'm not saying they weren't doing something wrong - but I don't think they should have to pay $3.6 million of damages either. It's like arresting a knife manufacturer, because people have used his products in a murder. Forgetting that it is not his fault how customers use his service, and that knives do have an important and useful part in our society.

And there are ways of using it legally. I've never downloaded anything I would have been willing to buy. I have a pirate copy of Warriors at the Edge of Time, so I can put an album already posessed on LP onto my MP3 player. It is legal to change the format of things you own, and I consider the royalties already passed on. Is it fair for the company to make me buy a product twice, because formats have changed? The same goes for my DVD of King's Demons. I own a video, but can't play it on my laptop at university. When that appears legally, does the BBC want me to pay for it a second time? With format changes, the companies have a real trick: the potential to sell us the same album on record, tape, CD, i-Tunes download, and whatever comes next. Within fifty years, my video collection will be useless and I'll be forced to upgrade.

At it's purest level, I see the potential of web download as redressing this balance. Another way I have used it is for collecting outdated Doctor Who memrobilia - books, magazines, novels. Strictly illegal, but if you choose to think of purchasing a product as a method of paying it's creator, then it is morally fine. There is no way I could aquire, say, So Vile a Sin and get any of the proceeds to Orman and Aaronovitch. Instead, the winner would be the unscrupulous former owner, charging anything upwards of £100 for the damn thing. It's like an unofficial public domain. I can get it for free, or get it off eBay - the original company and creator will still not see a penny of it.

Of course, this presupposes that everyone will consider the morality of downloading, and the majority of people probably do not. This is a shame, because the internet is a fantastic tool, and we need the companies to see how great a way it is of distributing media. Piracy will not be stamped out - instead, it should be integrated. Spotify, iPlayer and 4OD are three examples of the pirate ideology - being able to find and consume media online - being adapted to a legal framework. And they're brilliant!

The way I percieve the legal-piracy of the future - let's call it privateering! - is the internet as
a repository for the lost. If the privateer wants to buy the latest James Bond movie, then he should stop being a cheap bastard and buy it. If he's interested in an avant-garde movie he saw twenty years ago, that's never been released on DVD - that he should be able to find on the web. TV shows which were never released. Books long out of print. With an effective indexing system, copyright authors could even withdraw such materials from the program if they ever wanted to rerelease them.

I'm a romantic - art and knowledge should be free. As Freeware Genius puts it, and seeing the motto gives me an inner boost every time I open the site, "SOME DAY ALL SOFTWARE WILL BE FREE". But I recognise the piper must be paid, and so he should be. The internet is an oppertunity to free up media. Perhaps the companies are just running scared because it also gives individuals chance to liase directly with the artists and cut them out altogether. Take Bandstocks - fans invest £10 or more in an album, to enable it's release, not the companies. I'm so tempted to get involved, because the idea of it is just so beautiful: rum and grog for everyone!
So I'll leave you with the uplifting words of Patrick Wolf, and I'll see you in this future:

"My roots in the music industry have always been firmly placed in
independent music. As a teenager I was inspired by visionary labels such as
Digital Hardcore, Fierce Panda, Planet Mu, and Tigerbeat 6. As an 18 year old, I
was given full creative space by the small label Faith and Industry to grow and
to make the records and sounds I had to. After two independent releases I
decided to experiment to see what would happen when a major label and my third
album collided. It was very beneficial and a great learning curve for me, but I
am very happy to be back in the creative, free world of independent music; on my
own label, Bloody Chamber Music (A bloody chamber being a heart, a tribute to
the book "The Bloody Chamber" by Angela Carter), started earlier this year.

So, here I am. Album four with my own record label. With the old world
recording industry a rapidly sinking ship; recording studios closing weekly,
free downloads daily, more musicians hitting the long road than ever before to
feed themselves, I am happy to have come across a new intimate system of
audience and artist participation called Bandstocks. This will be funding Bloody
Chamber Music, and the international physical and digital release of my fourth
album, Battle, and its collective singles. It’s an exciting game we can play
together; you get to be an investor and stakeholder in the album. You will get
special editions, first copies of the album, private privileges and mixes... and
we get to conquer the world together and show that independence and self
sufficiency are the two ways forward and out of the mess the industry is in.

When I pressed my first EP we made one thousand vinyl copies. We sold these
at friends’ shops across the UK, and with the money made we funded the mix of
Lycanthropy. The music industry needn’t be so complicated or Wizard of Oz. It’s
time to drop the curtain and stop relying on a stale patriarchy. I'm excited, I
hope you are too. Welcome to the future!

Patrick Wolf. 9th.December 2008