horror

Vampiric Transvestites In Cambridge

What would the reaction be if I wrote a musical play about a pair of white guys who go driving at night. They get lost, and find an old gothic mansion. They are welcomed in by a group of black people who revel in black culture, singing, rapping and everything. At first everything seems fine, but then the black people turn out to be murderous vampires, and then aliens. Things get darker and darker, with distinct overtones of Mary Shelly and other horror films. But then, at the end of the piece, everyone but the white characters gets shot, leading the audience to erupt into rapturous applause. Would my play not be considered abhorrently racist? But instead my play becomes a classic and grows a cult following, with many people viewing it as a celebration of black culture. What would you say?

That is the issue I have this morning. For the most part yesterday was an awesome day: John and I went up to Cambridge, largely just to have a look around, and as part of my ongoing aim to get out of London a bit more. Cambridge is a stunningly beautiful city. To be honest we spent most of the afternoon walking through the botanic gardens, parks, and along the pretty little river. There was a photography exhibition which we both wanted to see, which included some absolutely incredible natural history images.

At about eight though, after a bit of dinner, we made our way to the theatre to watch a live performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Of course I had heard a lot about the musical, but surprisingly I’d never actually seen a performance – it had never really crossed my path before yesterday evening. I may have stopped dressing up a while ago, but I’m still very interested in gender bending and trans culture; and of course, Lyn’s memory still means a lot to me. I was thus very much looking forward to what we were about to watch.

I’m afraid to say, however, that within about five minutes of the show starting, the semiotician and cultural critic in me kicked in. It quickly became clear that something very, very odd was going on. Gender norms were being bent, but in a way which still distanced it from the audience: transpeople were dancing and singing merrily on the stage before me, but they turned out to be vampiric aliens from another galaxy. The show seemed to have a nasty subtext which I’m afraid I could not ignore. Slightly more concerning, though, was the fact that the audience around me, many themselves dressed in all kinds of weird costumes, seemed to be revelling in it, taking the performance to be some kind of kinky celebration of trans culture. I’m afraid to say that, given where we were and their apparent age, I couldn’t help wondering whether many of them had actually met a transperson or had many transgender friends. Could such performances just be about accommodating them, allowing them to feel inclusive while maintaining a ‘safe’ distance to the topics at hand?

Perhaps I’m overreading things once again; perhaps I’m just being grumpy. It was a great show and a fun night. But as we rode the train back from Cambridge last night, I just couldn’t silence the troubled voices in the back of my mind. To me, the show seemed to alienate the very culture it claimed on the surface to celebrate; it was a celebration of transvestism and gender nonconformity, but kept it at a safe rhetorical distance. The cross dressers turned out to be cannibals from another galaxy. I’m afraid this gave what I watched a disquieting contradiction which I couldn’t really shut my eyes to.

Of Morris Dancing, Cricket And Zombie Apocalypses

In a way, yesterday was one of those pleasant days which I just spent trundling around the Borough of Greenwich, but it resulted in three quite interesting things to record here this morning. I set out at about eleven, after a good breakfast and plenty of coffee. It was already quite warm, so I was keen to get some fresh air, heading through Kidbrooke, over Blackheath and then down into Greenwich. Greenwich Market is always bustling on Saturday mornings, but yesterday it was heaving, and I could barely move for all the people as I navigated my way through it towards the river.

Once by the Thames, though, I found something which struck me as very peculiar: a Morris Dancing festival! Morris Dancing is something I associate with rural England and small towns and villages, so to suddenly happen upon such an event there, in the shade of the masts of the Cutty Sark, was quite a surprise. There were several groups of performers dancing, so I stayed to watch a few of their rather impressive routines, reflecting to myself that it was probably worth blogging about, before continuing my walk.

From Greenwich I continued along the River up to the O2, and then decided to head up to Charlton to see if there was a cricket match being played in the park. I still have extremely warm, happy memories of watching cricket in Charlton Park: it is a fantastic spot for the sport, with it’s wide green fields and friendly little cafe, all overlooked by the majestic Charlton House. I was very pleased to find a match already in play yesterday afternoon, with none other than the Mighty Eights, a team I have grown to know and love over the years, batting. From there, it became clear that the afternoon would just be a matter of sitting there, chatting to my friends, watching the cricket, and sipping non-alcoholic beer. If you ask me you can’t get a better Saturday afternoon than that.

However, the day was far from over. Unfortunately I had to miss the end of the match as I was eager to get home ahead of what promised to be an interesting evening: John and I had plans to go to a zombie apocalypse! That is to say, we were going to go watch 28 Years Later, Danny Boyle’s new film. I’m not usually a fan of zombie horror films, but John seemed keen to go, and I still think Boyle is a demi-god for what he did in 2012, so I thought I’d give it a go.

What I found myself watching, though, was far from pleasant: the film was scary, unnerving and grotesque, set in a post-apocalyptic Britain where people have to stave off ‘the infected’ with bows and arrows. I’d like to review it properly, but to do that I’d need to give it at least a second viewing. It’s a frightening, disorienting film full of unnecessary gore. What I will say, though, is that it is chock-a-block with iconography and references: religious references, references to films like Kes, and even – although I’m not completely sure – a few references to Tolkien. For example, there is one shot if a group of people walking in file, silhouetted, over a brow of a hill, recalling the similar, famous shot in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Fellowship Of The Ring. Also, the main protagonist of the piece, a young boy called Jimmy, is always shot wearing a pendant on a necklace around his neck, recalling Frodo wearing the Ring.

Going deeper will, however, have to wait for another time. The day is starting, and the coffee is brewing. Yesterday was a great day at the end of an awesome week. It can only make me wonder what next week will bring.

Avatar, Then and Now

Dom suggested we watch Avatar last night. Believe it or not, I don’t think I had ever seen it before – I think it had crept under my radar somehow. Now that I have though, I think James Cameron’s 2009 film is certainly worth saying something about, especially in the light of all that has happened since it was released. At it’s heart, Avatar is a narrative of imperialism, especially American imperialism: it is a story about humans colonising another planet to exploit it for it’s resources, and in doing so decimating the homes of the indigenous people. Obviously, this could be taken as an allegory for the invasion of Iraq being invaded for oil, the colonisation of North America, or many other real-life situations. Yet what I was most struck by, watching the film last night, wasn’t so much the combination of live action or CGI the film was famous for; nor the weird intellectual issues rising from having humans control these avatars, seemingly entering into a completely different CGI space which was nonetheless supposed to be the same planet. What I was struck by was the sheer brashness with which the colonisers were acting: they seemed to think they had a god-given right to the planet’s resources, that the natives were inherently inferior to them and were just getting in their way.

Of course, as you would expect from a Hollywood blockbuster, the ending of the film has the native people’s all joining together and showing the invaders what for; but that is only a great deal of semi-covert imperial justification. Indeed, the central love story of the film has a disabled human in his able-bodied avatar fall in love with one of the native people, whose community he has infiltrated. Even leaving aside the fairly sickening anti-disabled, ‘able-bodied is better’ nonsense, at the end of the day humans had no right to be exploiting the planet in the first place, so having the two characters fall in love, like some saccharin romantic justification for the entire premise of the film was just nauseating. No amount of romance can make imperialism right; such love stories are simply attempts to distract us from the fact that one group of people is invading another in order to exploit their country’s resources. The fact that the guy is shown to switch sides in the end and ‘become a native’, does nothing to change that.

Obviously, Avatar has clear parallels with stories about Pocahontas and early American colonists falling in love with Native Americans. On this level, Avatar can be read as an allegory for the European colonisation of North America. Thus, no matter how much James Cameron may have attempted to depict the invading humans as brazen, arrogant and ignorant, the fact remains the film does not question their right to be there, even depicting a love story between members of the two communities. Although it is mentioned somewhere in the film that the invaders had to be there because Earth was dying, such justification seems half-hearted at best. It is very telling that the text does not end with the colonising forces all realising the error of their ways and going back to Earth or finding another planet to live on. While most are shown to return to Earth, some – the ‘good ones’ – were allowed to remain, the implication being that the creators of the film thought the invaders had an overarching right to be there, in spite of all the destruction and suffering they are shown to inflict.

Hence, at it’s heart and as much as it’s director might try to deny it, Avatar essentially justifies imperialism. In it we can clearly read the American ‘we come first’ mindset, which was an integral part of their culture in 2009 and is even more evident now. Obviously in it we can read a justification of the invasion of Iraq, but we can now also make out far more about what has happened since then, about the American mindset, it’s urge to dominate, and it’s unwavering, unquestionable attitude that it’s needs come first. If Avatar is a story about one group of people dominating, bullying and exploiting another, it is now more relevant than ever.

Das Idioten and Disability Rights

Just before breakfast this morning, I was talking about film with John: we were checking out some of Mark Kermode’s reviews, and his interview with Lars Von Trier cropped up. Von Trier is a director I first came across at university, but he hadn’t crossed my intellectual path since then. However, his name rung a bell as the guy who directed Das Idioten.

I vaguely remember trying to watch Das Idioten back in my room at university, but being so appalled by it that I gave up about twenty minutes in. This morning, though, I decided to give it another go: uni was over fifteen years ago, and I was kind of curious about it. Luckily, I found it on Amazon, and put it on while enjoying a delicious omelette.

Having just finished the film, it would seem that I have a lot of work to do and a lot to write. Watching as both a cinephile and disability rights activist/blogger, Das Idioten is a highly, highly problematic film, as provocative as it is troubling. It’s essentially about a commune of able-bodied people who see imitating people with learning difficulties as a form of social rebellion or even art. I mean, where do I even begin with that? The characters – and, by extension, the director – seem to think that what they are doing is socially right and justified, rather than a crass, repugnant form of mockery of one of the most oppressed sections of society. The film framed it as commentary or political expression rather than discrimination.

I have known people with conditions like severe autism or PMLD who behaved in the way the characters in the film were trying to imitate. Many live difficult, confused lives barely being able to comprehend the world around them. To see such people being mocked, imitated and caricatured as they were in the film was gut-wrenchingly vile. Yet, when they wanted to, the characters were shown to revert to their normal, able-bodied selves, as if ‘spazzing’ was just something they could step in and out of. They were then shown to use this behaviour to manipulate others into things like paying for meals. The problem is, there seemed to be very little criticism of this repugnant behaviour, but instead the film seemed to present it as somehow political or artistic.

Let’s put it this way: if this film was focussed on any other minority – if these people were shown to be mimicking black or gay people for example, and justifying it as political activism – there would rightly be public outrage. Why, then, should I as a disabled man allow it to go unchallenged? Das Idioten may be about thirty years old, but when viewed in the light of contemporary civil rights activism, there is a hell of a lot which can and should be said about it. The question is, where do I start?

First things first, I need to go for a walk.