(Deeper Underground) But I Got To Go Much Deeper

»Spoilers From The Outset«

B0000609, ghackettny, 2001

Looking for something to watch on Sunday night, I put on Cloverfield again. Last year I wrote a short review after first seeing it, in which I thought it was underrated. As I was munching through a packet of crisps the Brooklyn Bridge collapses killing Jason and many unknown others. People are screaming names and fleeing in abject terror, and I suddenly felt uncomfortable. Indeed, some reviews criticised it as September 11th pornography - making entertainment out of tragedy as the horror genre does with fear. In my mini review I saw it as a contemporary framing of the monster/disaster movie genre but lacking depth or social commentary. That unease prompted me to question whether it really was without merit, leading me to watch it yet again on Thursday.

Prior to 2001, the most destructive act of terrorism in the US was the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 - as referenced in the opening scenes of The X-Files Movie (1998). That incident is well known but largely restricted to that city in terms of impact. September 11th, on the other hand, was a game-changer, broadcast live as it unfolded - its effects on American culture are profound and long-lasting. Before it, the American public was only familiar with terrorism on the evening news. It had never struck home on such a large scale. With the thousands of people who died on that day, how could Hollywood ever make a disaster movie again? To make a popcorn disaster movie with a massive body count would be grossly insensitive.

Persuading You That Monochrome is Dayglo

NOPE, Tom Edwards, 2010

There is now a new government in Westminster, not that I can tell. I still find myself thinking Blair is Prime Minister and Bush is President. The climactic shift that these brief windows of participatory indirect democracy (elections) are supposed to produce never arise. Round we go, like a zoetrope: Labour in power, Conservatives in power; Democrats in power, Republicans in power. The illusion of movement. It's hypnotic.

I hate to be the cynic, but I guarantee the 'new politics' will come to remind you of the old politics. How many months was it before fresh-faced Tony was caught accepting money from F1 autocrat Bernie Ecclestone? I was ten at the time and I can remember hearing how the Labour landslide was the rebuke of Tory sleaze. Remember the icons of the mid nineties meeting Blair at No. 10? How many of them were in sight of Downing Street ten years later? Politicians have been heralding change more times than the boy who cried wolf, and yet even I was swept along by Obamamania.

Somebody Up There Likes You

Frakk em all!, Don Solo, 2009

As someone raised on Star Trek I've been reluctant to leave the comfort of the Roddenberry universe. Perhaps because Trek is the oldest standard for serious (by 60s standards) sci-fi television, all other shows come across as re-costumed copies. I was too young to see The Next Generation during its original run, but BBC2's tea-time repeats in the 90s made me a fan. When Deep Space Nine was imported I was probably too young to appreciate its breaking of the Trek mould - war, questionable ethics, the Federation losing for once. I preferred Voyager at this point but as it went on I became convinced Star Trek was losing steam. Voyager in particular was either repeating itself or TNG or pulling a deus ex machina every time they walked into the Borg. Despite that, the Doctor was and still is a great character, but his story arcs with Seven of Nine (and her own character development) would have been so much better if Seven wasn't visually the epitome of fan service.

In The Waiting Line

Still Life with a Skull (Vanitas), Philippe de Champaigne, 16xx

I have a very good long term memory. If I say I don't remember it, it's probably because I want to forget it. Despite this, I always feel highly disconnected from the past. My room is littered with little mementos of various places and times because I tend never to return after leaving: I have a safety box-cutter from my ten days working at Amazon, a phonetic alphabet chart for pinning to a monitor from the telephony course I was on in 2007, and I have the old frame labels of my old delivery. Each of those is a concrete object that proves the past happened. I have a much harder time with the future.

I'll Bet You Five You're Not Alive If You Don't Know His Name (GA-Slag -1)

Seven and a half years ago I had written a satire of the school's Remembrance Day service and constructed a website for it on my NTL webspace. In the retrospective I quoted the original creators (Martin and Stephen) who were originally going to write The GA-Slag about individuals they wanted to have a go at. They abandoned the idea out of fear before I picked it up in November 2002. I can't remember how I got hold of the concept, but I do remember talking to Stephen about covering the service as a piece for his site. We were pissed off about having to attend, so why not entertain ourselves? The original idea was obviously a legal minefield best avoided, or navigated with pseudonyms at least. As I said in the retrospective, slagging people off would have just segregated things even more in fifth and sixth year. By that point most of the really irritating types (the neds) had already left during fourth year.

It occurred to me that there was one character ripe and deserving of abuse I had neglected to write about. One person we could all agree on...