Culture - April

Books Read:

Martin Amis - 'The Rachel Papers'
Jean Baudrillard - 'America' (non-fiction)
Edith Wharton - 'The Age of Innocence'
James Joyce - 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'
J.G. Ballard - 'Running Wild'

This month I enjoyed, rather more than anticipated, Edith Wharton's charming tale of 1920's high society New York 'The Age of Innocence'. I found its depiction of flatulent opulence and snobbery, juxtaposed with the touching themes of romantic longing and unrequited affection very well observed.

Joyce's 'Portrait' was, on the other hand, much harder work, due to the myriad historial, political and cultural references of the period strewn throughout, but nevertheless I was left awe-struck at times by the sublimity of the prose. The novel is a series of vignettes that are moved between following the bildungsroman literary form of Stephen Dedalus' coming of age. Frequently these were inspired in their delivery; notably the ruction caused in Stephen's house at Christmas dinner due to the irreconcilable political and religious differences between the parties present, and the priest's sermon describing the awful infinity of Hell, which was so powerful that it made me want to rush to confessional and repent my sins immediately.

Films Watched:

'Brief Encounter' (David Lean)
'Trance' (Danny Boyle) (at Ritzy Picturehouse, Brixton)
'Kill List' (Ben Wheatley)
'Ted' (Seth MacFarlane)
'The Evil Dead' (Fede Alvarez) (at Ritzy Picturehouse, Brixton)
'Local Hero' (Bill Forsyth)
'Momento' (Christopher Nolan)

The prospect of going to the cinema to see a remake of ‘The Evil Dead’, a cult classic that was one of the defining films of my formative teenage years, didn’t exactly inflate me with joy. Having bought the trilogy box set aged about 14 or 15, I then spent much time at school regaling others with the grotesque gore and splatter-ific excess that the films expurgated. Many sleepovers were subsequently attended by me and my DVD box set.

Fondness for the original aside, I actually found myself really enjoying the Sam Raimi-endorsed remake. Whilst none of the comedic or slapstick tropes of the original were in evidence, the source material was hacked back to the very bone of brutality, providing more wince-inducing moments than I’ve seen in any recent horror offering. Overall though, I couldn’t help feeling frustrated with the lack of contemporary horror films to rival 80s classics like ‘The Evil Dead’. I’m sure I’m not alone in pining for that low-key, word-of-mouth film to come along and send electric shockwaves through the nostalgic corpse of modern horror cinema.

Albums Played:

Bonobo - 'The Northern Borders'
The Fall - 'Grotesque (after the Gramme)'
The Fall - 'Perverted by Language'
The Fall - 'The Frenz Experiment'
The Fall - 'Extricate'
The Fall - 'Shift Work'
The Rolling Stones - 'Their Satanic Majesties Request'
The Rolling Stones - 'Beggar's Banquet'
The Rolling Stones - 'Let it Bleed'
The Rolling Stones - 'Sticky Fingers'
The Rolling Stones - 'Exile on Main Street'
The Rolling Stones - 'Goat's Head Soup'
The Rolling Stones - 'It's Only Rock & Roll'
The Rolling Stones - 'Black and Blue'
The Rolling Stones - 'Some Girls'
The Rolling Stones - 'Emotional Rescue'
Junip - 'Junip'
Junip - 'Fields'
The Knife - 'Shaking the Habitual'
Iggy & the Stooges - 'Ready to Die'
Deerhunter - 'Monomania'

Having successfully managed to secure tickets for The Rolling Stones’ 50th anniversary gig in Hyde Park later in the summer, I decided to explore the depths of their intimidatingly gargantuan back catalogue. The period of late 60s to early 70s is, of course, the golden age of their career with one classic album following another, providing some of the most iconic music of the 20th century. Personally, I found myself tiring of the over-wrought American blues inflections of ‘Exile on Main Street’, but enjoyed the often overlooked transitional album ‘Goat’s Head Soup’. By the time the mid-to-late 70s arrived though, the truly terrible ‘Black and Blue’ and the stale ‘Emotional Rescue’ serve as evidence of how irrelevant they had come to sound in the wake of bands like The Clash, Joy Division and the wider punk rock scene.

Exhibitions:

Ansel Adams - 'Photography from the Mountains to the Sea' (at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich)
Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2013 (at the Photographer's Gallery, London)

I went into the National Maritime Museum exhibition on Ansel Adams firmly expecting to be stunned by the sheer epic-ness of the display, much like someone going to the dentist anticipates leaving with a spring-cleaned, and perhaps numbed, mouth.

Its quite hard to objectively critique any of the images to any meaningful level, since demonstrably they were all both technically and visually monumental. And yet it’s equally hard to pinpoint much of the photographer’s tangible influence, his creative fingerprints if you like, being that the wondrous landscapes and scenery he captures are so self-evident. How could anyone, I found myself wondering, possibly take a bad photograph of the Mirror Lake in Yosemite, for instance?

This was reflected, much like the hills in the lake surface, by a woman I overheard when viewing a series of geyser shots; “I mean, I know they are terrific images, but I can’t feel any emotional attachment to it”. Initially, I privately concurred with her confusion, convinced that all the attendees could hope to expect was to be lulled into an inertia of the epic. But later I found myself subverting this by asking – so what if we can’t feel any emotional attachment with it?! Why must we seek such a plateau of heightened engagement in every single thing we find ourselves exposed to?

I deduce that this inclination is due to ourselves being constantly and unremittingly deluged with demands on our emotional engagements, through the mass media, internet, digital technologies, and just generally existing in what Jean Baudrillard termed ‘the simulation and simulacra of the hyper-real society’. Our minds, in order to cope and remain sane in such an environment, learn to shut off and deny emotional responses to the vast majority of stimuli that vies for our attention; to the majority we remain necessarily ambivalent.

So, when we do decide to delineate a quotient of our time and money on visiting an art exhibition (unarguably an arcane pursuit in the rising prevalence of digital museums, Google Images, etc.), we enter into a pact, whereby we have a pre-assigned expectation of sensory engagement. We have become consumers of the experience in much the same way as we have of everything else; we pay our money and we expect a fungible level of emotional connectivity as a return on our investment, or else we are liable to feel short-changed.

Which brings me back to the point – so what?! A series of beautifully shot photographs providing you with an often necessary reminder of the magnificent spectacles the world offers should be just that, without also striving to deliver some kind of emotional epiphany as well.