Flagposts in the sand

For some reason my blog seems to be receiving a fair amount of traffic at the moment which is very encouraging.  I thought, for those who may find themselves here and don't have much idea of what I've written about in the past, I would post a smattering of recent pieces for you to peruse at will.  Sort of like a 'Greatest Hits' collection, one of those clever marketing ploys to repeat-sell old material.  Only you've paid for none of this so it matters not a bit...


My 2013 novel 'Digital' is available to purchase on Kindle here.  (Alternatively if you would like a physical copy just send me an email and I can arrange that for you.)


Primarily I write fiction.  Here are a few of my recent short stories:

'The Room and the Code'
'The Silent Treatment'
'The Library of Bill'


Psychogeographic writings on different places:

'The story of John Rae reimagined as a charting of London's Northwest Passage'
'One Day in Kiev'
'Chernobyl - a Pompeii for the 20th century'
'Moscow to the end of the line (before giving up)'
'Manchester, so much to answer for...'


I also write about films:

'Irreversible'
'Inland Empire'
'CitizenFour'


And occasionally music:
'The year 1994 - The Twin Peaks of Nihilism'


Profiles and interviews:

'In Conversation with Will Self'
'John Pilger'


Current affairs:

'The profound 'brain fade' of the Green Party's Natalie Bennett'
'The Interview' story - American hypocrisy towards North Korea'
'Oil Exhibition - the ecstasy of black gold'


Random thought pieces:

'The strange yet persistent allure of Battersea Power Station'
'How to disappear completely'

‘Smart’ thinking? Future cities and the Internet of Energy

As anyone with the slightest interest in futurology will know, the predictive terrain is rigged with innumerable tripwires waiting to sabotage the deftest projection. Moon colonies and flying cars aside however, one fairly assured certainty is that an ever-increasing number of people are going to be living in ever-expanding cities; rippling out exponentially like the precession principle of a stone dropped in water.

A megacity is commonly defined as an urban area with over 10mn inhabitants. According to a 2014 UN report on urbanisation, the number of global megacities has nearly tripled in the last 24 years, soaring from 10 in 1990 to 28 in 2014. Rapid urbanisation has consigned over half the world’s population to cities, which ultimately consume 75% of the world’s energy and produce 80% of the emissions.

There is much currently being made of the development of ‘smart cities’. In December 2014, an Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) ‘Future Cities’ conference swept experts together to share ideas and discuss the potential for cities to interweave digital technologies and smart energy systems in a revolutionary new helix of urban living. A means by which the sprawling, polluted and congested cities of the 20th century can be alchemised into the clean, free-flowing, low carbon megacities of the 21st century.

The potential for achieving this is not only possible but increasingly paramount. Research conducted for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate in the lead-up to the recent Lima climate change summit, stated that the adoption of low carbon technologies across 30 megacities ‘could create more than 2mn jobs while avoiding 3bn tonnes of cumulative greenhouse gas emissions’.


Data and the Internet of Energy

One thing that is absolutely clear according to those at the IET conference and the wider community is that the march of cities towards an energy efficient future will be in firm lockstep with the expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) and ‘Big Data’.

Put simply, IoT is a network of interconnected devices – from your boiler to your fridge, even your toaster – all of which have the sensory capacity to intelligently collect and share data via a ‘cloud-based’ interface. One corporate driver of the IoT movement is Cisco Systems, which has estimated that 50bn machines/devices could be linked by as early as 2020, equating to a market worth $1tn. An equally keen champion is Siemens AG, working towards autonomous systems that will act ‘on perfect knowledge of residents’ habits, behaviours and energy consumption.’

This ‘better living through data’ is touted as a central component in cities being able to achieve energy efficiency goals, encapsulating what has been dubbed the ‘Internet of Energy’ (IoE). The expectation is that IoE devices will be integrated into a sophisticated dynamic ecosystem capable of communicating to ‘smart grids’ which will bind together power generation, supply and consumption. This is already being trialled with smart meters and time-of-use tariffs that, via financial incentives, try to ‘nudge’ consumers towards certain behavioural patterns.

IoT is also leading the way forwards for integrated low carbon transport systems through V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle) and V2I (vehicle-to-infrastructure) automation, allowing vehicles to respond and react to data provided by ‘smart’ street furniture (eg traffic lights, lampposts, dustbins), as well as surrounding vehicles, which could render congestion obsolete.

Hybrid and pure electric vehicles (EVs) are being developed at an accelerating rate, with consistent gains made on performance and affordability. Of course, EVs being only as clean as the electricity they use, vast sums are being invested into lithium-based research and nanotechnology to improve power output and charging times, all with an aim of driving gas-guzzling vehicles up the slip road to history.


Early examples

If these ‘intelligent future cities’ seem reminiscent of a fictive Wellsian hinterland, it’s worth considering that prototypes are already flourishing, most notably Songdo in South Korea. Songdo’s buildings have automated climate control whilst road, water, waste and electricity systems are all fertile with electronic sensors that track and respond to residents’ actions. Similarly, the uninspiringly named PlanIT Valley in Portugal is fitted with 100mn sensors to optimise energy efficiency through adjustable flows.

Surprisingly enough, these modern manifestations follow the legacy of the British ‘garden city’. Adopting the aesthetic centrifugal principle of ripples on water, Ebenezer Howard in 1902 published his seminal study, Garden Cities of Tomorrow, in which the optimal elements of city and country life were synergised and promoted as a new form of eco-urbanism; eventually to be implemented across both the UK and the US. Sure enough, in the government’s Autumn Statement, plans for a new garden city Bicester in the Home Counties were announced, and the way paved for more, given the dual political prongs they represent in terms of affordable low carbon housing and environmental targets.

But it is in China, a country that by 2012 estimates had 363 proposed coal-fired power projects waiting on the construction assembly line, that the holistic eco-friendly principle of the garden city has begun to be imported.

As Victorian England’s urban squalor demanded the respite of Howard’s proposals, so China’s rampant industrialisation has given rise to cities like Chengdu. Home to 14mn people, Chengdu is China’s fourth-biggest city and, on the outskirts, has begun applying the low-rise, low-density planning schemes together with zones of green open space, personal allotments and leisure areas that both meet the needs of the community and support the drive for low carbon development; concurrently helping to alleviate traffic congestion and improve air quality.

While the notorious smog of Beijing tends to cloud our impressions of Chinese urbanism, the government has begun investing billions in sustainable developments that aim to serve as global models for the future. One such example is the Tianjin Eco-City Project, a collaboration between China and Singapore that incorporates initiatives such as free electric bus networks, a 60% recycling rate and a minimum of 12 m2 of public green space per capita.

This is apparently far from the limit of China’s green ambitions. In terms of the spectacular, surpassing the proposed designs for ‘Cloud Citizen’ (winner of the Shenzhen Super City Competition) would be a considerable challenge for the imagination, reminiscent as it is of something from a Philip K Dick novel.

Touted as an ‘urban utopia’, the plans depict layers of almost organic cactus-like skyscrapers coagulating into one another, designed so as to ‘give back more to the environment than they cost’. Built-in mechanisms would harvest rain water, luscious gardens would serve as ‘green lungs’, whilst the city infrastructure would be powered with solar, wind and algae-based energy. The self-contained nature of the construction would enable localised food production to exert a much reduced demand on infrastructure; all helping to create what the designers anticipate will be a hyper-dense complex that the inhabitants have no need or desire to ever leave.

The potential of this technological utopia to manifest itself as a human dystopia scarcely demands a potent imagination. Of course, city planning has a rich history of architects from Charles Fourier to Robert Owen to Le Corbusier, designing ‘utopian urbanity’ in which humans will be free to live prosperously, harmoniously and free from strife. Yet for all their vaulting ambition, they remain chiefly that: utopian.


Is technology the solution?

A primary concern for the near future is that tech firms operating principally in accordance with corporate interests will succeed in harnessing the essential utilities on which we all rely to the extent that they cannot subsequently be wrested back; in the process becoming more opaque as the citizenry become more transparent. But it’s worth pondering just how vociferous the complaints may be if the principle agent causing privacy to dissipate is the reduction in the amount we are charged for energy?

What is strikingly clear from attending the Future Cities conference, and reading the vast expanse of available commentary, is that there is an unshakable, zealous faith in technology as a means of solving any conceivable problems that might afflict humankind. This is the prevailing consensus in human thinking, resembling almost a religious faith, that only an ever-increasing dependency on further technological development will ensure positive progress.

Readily available, low technology, green options are within our grasp currently; from retrofitting of buildings; to the digestion of organic materials as a method of biomass energy production; increased investment in urban public transport networks and encouraging incentives like bike schemes; and the recent resurgence in urban agriculture such as community gardens, agroforestry and even beekeeping.

It is interesting to note the profligacy with which developments such as IoE and ‘Big Data’ are labelled ‘smart’ and ‘intelligent’. Undoubtedly there is much – if it can be harnessed for societal good rather than corporate insouciance – which we can feasibly benefit from. Yet the fact remains that until we start applying the same demands for ‘smart’ and ‘intelligent’ thinking to impose upon the whole spectrum of energy policy, particularly in the run-up to the Paris climate change summit later this year, the possible ramifications of continued myopia and obfuscation on the part of global powers looks increasingly severe.

Ask yourself; is it ‘smart’ or ‘intelligent’ thinking to divert vital financial, time and intellectual resources away from renewable technologies and into the pursuit of yet more extractive fossil fuel processes in the face of climate change? Is it ‘smart’ for developed nations to fail to engage in negotiations with developing nations such as Ecuador as a means of preventing them from having to exploit their abundant oil resources? Is it ‘smart’ to allow oil companies to sit on vast ‘sunken asset’ reserves, fully intended to be extracted despite the combined total being many times over what the broad consensus of climate scientists have stated can be burned whilst remaining below ‘safe’ levels of warming?

If these are uncomfortable or contentious questions, then that is precisely the intention. Technological development of the kind currently shaping the energy infrastructure of future cities are necessary and welcome, if used positively, but should not be treated as a kind of elixir vitae that, if we bask in the slipstream of its accelerating momentum, will inevitably transform our and future generation’s lives ineluctably for the better. For the energy industry not to question, challenge and hold to account such developments as they continue to achieve prominence would be very far from smart thinking indeed.


Published in Energy World Magazine

The profound 'brain fade' of the Green Party's Natalie Bennett

Much has been made of the Green Party leader Natalie Bennett's 'excruciating' interview with LBC last week, where she was dragged underwater by illness and a woeful lack of policy understanding, and in struggling to regain the surface suffered the bends of a 'brain fade'.  It was dubbed by gleeful corners of the media and Twittersphere as 'the worst political interview ever', and yet in actual fact it can be seen as the complete opposite.  For somewhere within the canyon of breathy silence gaping between stutter and stammer was a very real statement concerning the true nature of modern politics.

We are living, I believe, in a 'post-political age', whereby the scales on which are placed issues of significance are becoming ever more mis-balanced by those in which politics can play little or no effectual part.

This has served to create a vast stageshow across which politicians attempt to 'tread the boards' in a performance of credibility, control and confident poise.  Whereas once they could feasibly be said to be mere marionettes, hoisted and dangled by the hidden hands of power - global finance, scientific think tanks, policy institutes or business leaders - now the curtain has fallen over the audience's eyes who have long since found their attention caught and held by alternative stimuli.

Because nothing much appears to make very much sense in this modern political age - stated facts are batted back and forth over the net like a dreary shuttlecock by players who seem diluted of all personality or credentials by the very act itself (rather like a non-sexual pornography) - conventional narratives have been abandoned to exposed as myths, and in their absence all we have is diffracted confusion, piled up steadily like layers of sediment.

Is the deficit rising or falling?  Is national debt being cut or added to?  Is climate change as severe as is purported and if so why aren't power figures more concerned to action?  If our foreign interventions really are successful then why are fundamentalist movements gaining terrible traction?  And why, if we have fostered a tolerant and inclusive society with our 'British values', does one such Jihadi turn out to have been a promising London-based student?

Not only this, but we are told that Quantitative Easing will ease austerity when actually, if examined a little closer, it turns out to be a scandalous wealth transfer to the unpunished perpetrators of the economic meltdown.  Is there another viable solution to the globalised free market system we are told we must cleave to like a sacred doctrine, or have all alternative structures of ideas been irredeemably punctured by the pin of ideological dogma or short-termist thinking?

Is immigration a credible concern, or just the price to pay for free movement of people through the EU (and anyway, reports show net gains for the UK economy as a result of foreign migrants, and British migrants claiming more from Europe...)?  Are Iran and Russia nations of aggressive volatility, led by tyrannical despots who threaten our long-term well-being, or are these mere illusory diversions created by powerful players in intelligence, military and defense institutions to justify their ongoing existence and status?

There is a very real psychological divide now between the governed and those elected to govern.  Through the mediarised spectacle of power we enable the artifice to be sustained.  As long as the lips are moving and words are spilling forth, however deaf we may now be to them, at least it reassures us that a regular equilibrium is being maintained.  Nothing is being said but we can at least hear them saying it.

A meaningless word-sludge of false promises, vague rhetoric and quasi-intellectual theorizing that has been diluted of any tangible ideology or influence on society-at-large.  All we can cling to are the slips of tongue, the lapses in nuance, the contradictions exposed; but we cling to them because they permit us to hate them, paint them with the same brush, gives succor to our political ambivalence.  It makes us feel better about the fact we do and believe in nothing because they fail to wrest us from our warm shallows of apathy to inspire a semblance of that one thing that could offer a compass through the turbulence of this irrational world - hope.

And so, with the mantle of ambiguity, disillusionment and disaffection continuing to seal itself around the country in this post-political 21st century age, we need to look again at an event like Natalie Bennett's on-air meltdown, where words dissolved in her mouth like candy-floss, and realise that this symbolises the parlous psychological health of our current political neurology, where the only rational, honest or believable response is her failure of articulation.

In a sense, it was perhaps the most profound statement by any political figure in modern times.  

Culture - February

Read:

Nicholas Carr - 'The Shallows: How the Internet is changing the way we think, read and remember' (non-fiction)
Victor Verge - 'The Coming Age of Singularity' (essay)
Evelyn Waugh - 'The Loved One'
Ray Kurzweil - 'The Age of Spiritual Machines' (non-fiction)
Alan Turing - 'Computing machinery and intelligence'  (essay)
Jean Baudrillard - 'Simulation and Simulacra' (non-fiction)


Watched:

'Lost Highway' (David Lynch)
'Bitter Lake' (Adam Curtis) (documentary)


Listened:

AFX - 'Chosen Lords'
The Beatles - 'The White Album'
Swans - 'Young God/Cop'
Trent Reznor - 'Lost Highway' (OST)
Buena Vista Social Club - 'Buena Vista Social Club'
Claude Debussy - 'Images'
Joy Division - 'Still'
Transglobal Underground - 'The Best Of'
Van Morrison - 'Astral Weeks'


Theatre:

'Closer' (at Donmar Warehouse, London)
'The Nether' (at Duke of York Theatre, London)

Views on Parliament

Each morning I get up and eat toast off of the white-and-gold embossed side plate that, after enough complimentary wine from a work event at the House of Commons terrace bar, I smuggled from the building.

Being reminded of this daft micro-rebellion always jolts my thoughts to the silliness of the Houses of Parliament as an institution and how my own childish act stands in some way symbolic, for me at least, of the way the prolonged existence of the place keeps us all ensorcelled by a state of retrogressive juvenilia.

By no means is this limited to its outward-facing influence, for it seems that Parliament acts as a fermenting crucible of immaturity and pomposity, a petri dish of rank egotism, an abattoir of political careers that, to paraphrase Enoch Powell, can only ever end with a bolt-gun to the head. Just consider the blustery rigmarole that defines the place, the archaic traditions that keep it mummified in a sarcophagus like the long-dead kings of Ancient Egypt.

Consider the ‘ceremonial’ role of the Remembrancer that dates back to 1571, who serves as a channel of communications between the City of London Corporation and Parliament. (In the words of journalist George Monbiot this is ‘an official lobbyist who sits behind the Speaker’s chair and ensures that, whatever our elected representatives might think, the City’s rights and privileges are protected.’)

One need only watch Michael Cockerell’s BBC documentary series ‘Inside the Commons’ to be inflated to bursting point with the outraged conviction that the place should be burnt to the ground, its inhabitants chased into the Thames like vermin and the whole thing built again to redefined plans. Whether it’s the cloakroom holders for swords, the whiskery Clerk of the Commons taking the odd pinch of snuff (taxpayer-funded snuff no doubt!), or reports of the Tory backbench ‘bully boys’ trying to sabotage the camera crew; the whole charade positively reeks of unedifying bullshit, ill-befitting a 21st century state trying to maintain a serious holding in the world.

Now I may be cynical, but not to the extent that I don’t believe a sizeable proportion of those who become elected to the Commons are compelled to do so out of a certain degree of altruism, with some principles that guide them, however broken the compass might be. However, it would seem that as soon as one enters the Palace as an elected MP it is all but impossible, regardless of ideology or conviction, to resist becoming enfugged by the heady smoke of ceremony and tradition; the asbestos dust of history slowly settling on your lungs to leave you hacking up the same conceited mooing we all recognise and despise.

One can imagine Osborne, Cameron et al treating the place like an extension of their billiard room; whilst the left (or what remains of it) is little better. Dennis ‘Beast of Bolsover’ Skinner, one of the few remaining in the Commons who might purport to be a socialist, is wheeled out like a museum piece to lob some safely predictable javelin of ire on Queen’s Speech Day.

The notion that cartoon characters like (above) Michael Fabricant (looking like a Boris Johnson clone-gone-horribly-wrong), or (below) Jacob Rees-Mogg (who in Cockerell’s documentary is seen trying to filibuster a private member’s bill on affordable housing by droning out poetry), or Baroness Anne Jenkin (who presides over the allocation of the House of Lord’s £260,000 champagne budget whilst deriding those relying on food banks) are deemed fit to represent the majority seems like a colossal condemnation both of them and, since it said that you get the politics you deserve, of us as well.

It would though be rather churlish to dwell on the personal since politicians of all stripe have affected a bland, indistinct, almost androgynous persona; characterized chiefly by their paddling around in the shallow waters of character, background and ideology. Any feasibly attempt at satire can only be absorbed into the black hole of self-parody that has been cleverly constructed around themselves. It seems to be almost the case that the public are kept emollient by a colossal confidence trick and a collective feeling of ‘how long can we get away with this?’, given that for all the populace might gripe and moan they never quite have the collective imagination or wherewithal to un-tether the guy-ropes and bring the whole canvas crashing down.

Indeed I believe that ever since the early-90s (the triumph of economic globalisation over political ideology), politics has been undergoing a discreet, largely unconscious yet to perhaps telepathic, neuterization process, whereby it seeks to become as drained of any interest or intrigue as possible. In short, politics has sought to become ever more boring.

The reason being that only by diverting attention away, by lulling us into a sense of sheer apathetic disengagement, can the whole charade be sustained, whilst they may decry the falling turnouts or the plunging membership numbers; really their undisturbed existence is prolonged by the solidifying fact that for more and more people, politics and the establishment process means less and less.

This has been a necessary illusion to manufacture given that over the last 2 or 3 decades, as the efficacy of the markets became the leading Western faith, and ever more tracts of power were surrendered to the financial institutions of the City, the EU and the private sector, Parliament became increasingly desiccated to the point at which now it is a mere prosthesis of democracy.

It is little more than a decomposing husk, a ruin in statis, symbolic of the parlous level of representation and hegemonic influence that presides there, like an echo chamber of transparent phantoms wearing rictus grins and coloured ties. It is now little different from Battersea Power Station just a little way downriver, once a bastion of hydraulic power, generating the executive energy that would symbolise the direction and compulsion of our lives, now hollowed out by finance capital, corrupted by foreign investment to become little more than a simulation of itself, a mausoleum of ideas.

Politicians have been calibrated to their new forms by the rampant ethos of the political economy and consumerism as has society-at-large. Accordingly, they are now economic units, subject to the endless replication of the same limited brand identities, the mundane monopolies, an assembly line production defined by its efficiency and homogenisation rather than individual worth or distinction. Politicians, like electronic gadgets, the seasons of fashion or new cars, are programmed with an almost planned obsolescence for ever-faster consumption - ever-decreasing tenures, diminishing influence, easily discarded once their use-value has been expended.

There is an increasing spectre of global concerns that can be said to be largely divorced from the political arena; whilst posturing efforts may be made to convince us of the contrary, deep down we all know that politics - in the traditional form that Parliament as an institution so symbolises - is ever more hollow and toothless.

The future viability of the NHS, climate change, the oil markets, the financial sector, technological development and cyber terrorism; these are all issues that define the 'post-political era'. (Even the sturdy legs of military influence have been irreparably hobbled post-Iraq.)

Instead, politics has to occupy itself and us with the staple concerns with which it is most comfortable; the same class-based domestic affairs, thriving off of the traditional prejudices and discontents through the steadily more oblique and meaningless parameters of left and right. Only in a post-political landscape, where parody is a stock-in-trade and predictable stigmas are stoked and enflamed, could a party like UKIP gain such traction.

Instead of Parliament, we need some kind of system whereby regional assemblies with genuine local power can be established by and for the community they deem to serve. The Palace of Westminster should be replaced by a gigantic translucent structure, a '2001'-esque monolith upon which day and night could be projected various economic models such as the Gini Coefficient or FTSE 100 Price Index, or perhaps even just scrolling Twitter feeds.

Affection for the building itself should be considered in view of what it is - a monument to political spin. For, belying its golden brown turrets, spires and vanes, it was designed in the 19th century by Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin as part of a conservative 'Gothic Revival' to instil in the minds of the masses a sense of heritage and gravitas that could thus justify and exude executive power, and that would be reenforced with the artificial anchor-weights of history into place.

And so we must do the only thing we can do to become a truly sophisticated and civilized nation led by those 'of the people, for the people', and that is to tear it down and start anew, if only one side plate at a time...

Masterworks of Cinema #8 - 'Irreversible'

On many occasions there have been films that have remained lodged in my consciousness for an inexplicably long period of time, but none with quite the same visceral grip or intensity as Gaspar Noe’s ‘Irreversible’ which, for several days after I saw it, dominated my thoughts to an obsessive degree before eventually retreating back to where it now lurks in a shadowy recess of my psyche.

‘Irreversible’ is a film that represents an immediate quandary for me – it is a film that is so staggeringly difficult to watch that I have real doubts about recommending it to others, and indeed anyone who (having read this essay) decides to watch it should do so advisedly. I first saw the film with my girlfriend (by no means a novice when it comes to extreme cinema), who was actually physically sick; the only time I’ve ever seen a film elicit such a reaction. It is not entertainment, it transcends that, as all masterpieces of an artistic medium should do.

On the other hand, I grapple with the strong conviction that this is a film everyone should watch if only ever once (and once, for most, will be enough). It is a film I consider to be of vital importance in terms of philosophy and temporality, and demonstrates a filmmaker pushing at the very outer edges of what cinema is capable of expressing. Perhaps more importantly, it is a commentary on sexual politics, on masculinity and femininity, and whilst I would very cautiously apply the label of a ‘feminist film’, it certainly observes the credo of J.G. Ballard when he said he aimed to “rub the human face in its own vomit and force it to look in the mirror.”

Ostensibly a film about rape and revenge, the narrative progression is reversed so that we see segments of time over the course of a night moving from the future to the past. We begin and end with the dictum that ‘time destroys all things’, which is the overriding mantra being explored (more on this later). 

 Explaining the night forwards, Alex (played by Monica Bellucci) and Marcus (Vincent Cassell) are an amorous new couple who attend a party with Alex’s ex-partner Pierre (Albert Dupontel). Tiring of Marcus’ intoxicated state Alex decides to head home, on the way passing through a subway tunnel in which she is subjected to a horrific and brutal sexual assault. Learning of this, Marcus and Pierre proceed to try and track down the perpetrator which leads them to The Rectum, a Dante-meets-Sade S&M gay club, in which they carry out their violent revenge.

Reversal of time:

The technique employed by Noe in reversing the chronological sequence of events is profoundly effective, changing as it does the entire perspective through which the audience respond to the later brutality towards Alex. From the start we are plunged into a claustrophobic and hellacious sex dungeon, disorientated to the point of nausea by Noe’s flailing camerawork and Thomas Bangalter’s mind-scraping low-frequency soundtrack. The sickening act of violence carried out by Pierre on a man (mistakenly) believed to be ‘la tenia’ (the tapeworm), is seen by the audience entirely out of context, such that we can only recoil utterly uncomprehending of how such savagery can have been remotely justified.

By separating the act of revenge and so forcing us to view it in isolation from the act that inspired it, we approach it with none of the moral difficulties that would otherwise be applied. What this means is that by the time we have endured the horror of Alex’s assault, we are transplanted straight into the reactionary psyche of Marcus and Pierre and are forced to view the earlier act of violence through the prism of our subsequent moral response.

By the time of the scene at the party, and we see Alex properly for the first time, she is the very epitome of sensuality and femininity. In complete opposition to the previous scene she is in complete control of herself, dancing with girlfriends gracefully and unselfconsciously, whilst Pierre and Marcus can only watch from the sidelines. As it is though, just as our perception of revenge is inverted by the chronology, so too is our perception of sexuality, as we now view Alex on the dancefloor very much separated through a transparent screen (another recurring image) by our awareness of her fate.


Masculine vs feminine:

It is this damning emphasis of scopophilia (deriving pleasure from watching) that magnifies the film's judgement on masculinity and femininity. In Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' she views the passive role of women in cinema as a means of arguing that the film provides visual pleasure through scopophilia and identification with the onscreen actor. The woman's inherent 'to-be-looked-at-ness', as Mulvey puts it, is a central issue in reducing her role to being the 'bearer of necessity' not the 'maker of meaning'.

In 'Irreversible', the fact that Alex is placed so prominently is integral to her centrality as the 'maker of meaning'; in contrast to what the philosopher Jacques Derrida would term 'phallocentric' representation - the privileging of the masculine in the construction of meaning.

Earlier I wavered on the idea of 'Irreversible' being a feminist film, but at the very least it is a profoundly anti-male one. Every male character is reprehensible and weak in their own way - they are lustful, brutal and desperate to exert power over others no matter how destructive the consequences. They are obsessed with pride and status (the rapist repeatedly refers to Alex being of a 'higher class' than he). They are, in the case of Marcus, obnoxious and loutish; or, in the case of Pierre, pseudo-intellectual and persistently lewd as he presses Alex for details of her and Marcus' sex life.



Indeed it is significant that Pierre is the character who carries out the dreadful violent assault that we see at the start of the film given that in the following scenes he is desperately trying to reason with the uncontrollable Marcus who is bent on immediate revenge. Pierre is the reluctant companion, high-minded and aware that violent retribution is futile yet unable to do anything to divert its inevitability. This can be seen as a damning analysis of man's inherent duality; the philosophic and intelligent may try to rationalise or ameliorate the aggressive anger of the more impassioned, but ultimately they perpetuate, and in many cases, end up enacting violence anyway. The means and route taken may be more convoluted but the bloody end is much the same, this is the lesson of man's history.

Even more damning perhaps in its symbolic resonance is the moment during the rape scene when our eye is drawn to the figure of a man enter the tunnel, see the act taking place and yet walk away; a devastatingly simple yet effective condemnation of masculine cowardice and instinct for self-preservation.

By contrast, Alex is sophisticated, graceful and refined; eager, not for there to be animosity or recrimination between her past and present lovers but for them to get along on good terms. Of course, being introduced to her via the horrific attack, her subsequent words take on additionally poignant texture. After play-fighting she tells Marcus, "I'm always the woman who decides", and on the train tries to explain the key to good sex to Pierre as not being dependent on focusing on the other person's pleasure - "you have to be selfish...if you focus on the other person's pleasure you freeze". 

What the film attempts to expose is the thin ice between selfishness and dominance, pleasure at the expense of another, and the body language of lovers - Marcus' hand covers Alex's mouth during play-fighting in the same way as the rapist's, and on the train his arm is locked across her body in a casual display of possession as she wistfully gazes elsewhere.


The rape scene: 

At the centre of the film is the scene which unsurprisingly generated a furore upon its release and led many to reactively condemn it as obscene. Alex enters the glowing red subway underpass, itself more than perhaps any other feature of the built environment is so evocative of insecurity and implied threat, where she is viciously assaulted in a scene lasting 9 unbearable minutes. 

From a stylistic point, the applied techniques are arresting in themselves, with Noe's frenetic and disorienting camerawork settling completely still and unflinching for the duration, forcing you to experience the entire event shorn of any filmic manipulation or tropes. As a piece of direction then it is handled masterfully, with absolutely none of the purposefully difficult ambiguity of something like 'Straw Dogs', you are left simply with the unfolding horror of aggressive domination. 

One of the primary reasons why I am convinced that everyone should watch 'Irreversible' and yet find it so hard to recommend is because of this scene. Firstly, because if we can contentedly stomach action-packed war or horror movies with all their glamorised death sluicing through our glazed minds, we should as part of a moral imperative be prepared to watch the representation of an act that is perpetrated in reality every single day.

Secondly, because it would render impotent the kind of adolescent 'rape porn' fantasies, and the 'rape culture' that is so worryingly prevalent among young males in today's society, where the idea of enacting sexual violence on women is seen as a 'soft crime' or subject matter for laddish 'banter'. Moreover, it might help in rendering inert the troublingly common instinctive response across society to lay implied blame at the feet of the victim, to believe that in some way 'they had it coming'.

Precognition: 

Essentially the rape-and-revenge narrative serves as a dramatic subtext for the real thematic exploration - that of the nature of time itself. The book that Alex refers to in the elevator, and that at the end we see her reading on the grass is J.W. Dunne's seminal 1927 text 'An Experiment with Time', which despite being involute is nonetheless something of a revelatory read. 

He thought that time was multidimensional and that in dreams our associational networks had the ability to explore our experiences in both the past and future time fields, giving rise in our waking life to sensations of déjà vu. He thought that the universe was 'stretched out in time and that the lopsided view we have of it - a view with the 'future' part unaccountably missing, cut off from the growing 'past' part by a travelling 'present moment' - was due to a purely mentally imposed barrier which exists only when we are awake. So that in reality the associational network stretches, not merely this way and that in Space, but also backwards and forwards in Time...' 

When Alex awakes with Marcus she sleepily recalls dreaming of a "long red tunnel" that breaks in two, but discards it as irrelevant as we have all involuntarily conditioned ourselves to do throughout our lives; limiting ourselves to one strictly linear progressive field of consciousness that can only be freed whilst in a dream-state.

Extrapolating on this then, one interpretation could be that all the events that take place are diffracted parts of a dream in the mind of the ‘higher’ observer, perhaps the version of Alex that we see at the end. It might even be the final thoughts of a comatose Alex before her death..?

The tautology that opens and closes the film – ‘time destroys all things’ – can then be seen as appropriate regardless of whichever way we view time, forwards or back. The forward progression of time destroys all matter, degrades beauty and fades consciousness moment by moment. But so does the reversal of time, in that we see the object after we’ve seen its destruction, we see how the love and happiness of Alex and Marcus has been destroyed by irrevocable future events, symbolised wonderfully by the shower curtain that hangs between them as they kiss. 

(Alternatively, if you wanted to pursue the condemnation of man theme, you could interpret the mantra as referencing the fact that time is a concept man invented to assign order to the world, ergo it is man that destroys everything; the world will continue regardless of time being conceptualised.)

Hope or futility?

To those thinking that this film, or my interpretation, is too depressing, can be reassured by the more hopeful way in which the film tries to reconcile itself to the future. At the beginning of the film, the two men whose identity is ambiguous speak of there being “no bad deeds, just deeds”, and “we have to go on fighting, go on living”; in itself almost an (im)moral code for man’s inherently destructive nature.

The men who approach Pierre and Marcus after Alex’s attack, tell them that “blood calls for revenge...vengeance is a human right”. And yet it could be said that the moral message of ‘Irreversible’ is that this cycle of violence and retribution is doomed to ‘destroy all things’, no matter how natural the instinct for revenge may be.

I recall reading several reports of rape victims who have described a tremendous feeling of catharsis and emotional release from their torment by facing their attacker and extending their forgiveness, thereby achieving a far higher plane of humanity. After all, physical pain through violent revenge, though overwhelming, lasts only a relatively short time and quickly dulls. Whereas, it is thought that an attacker being faced by their victim and forgiven by them may experience an exacerbation of their own internal guilt, condemning them to far longer-lasting trial by the jury of their own conscience.

It is this heightened response to such viciousness that I believe provides humanity, as of course is maintained through the teachings of Jesus Christ, with a chance to transcend its baser motivations and achieve profound spiritual well-being. This is also the significance of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ poster being on the wall of Alex and Marcus’ flat – the ‘starchild’ represents the concept of eternal hope that manifests itself into every newborn child but also into the collective weight of humankind trying to elevate itself to some notional ideal.

With ‘Irreversible’, Gaspar Noe created a film that is still deeply troubling, traumatic and yet uplifting all at once. It is a film that whilst featuring perhaps one of the most distressing scene between two people, also contains one of the most beautifully natural scenes of love between two people as well.

Whether it is, as I have speculated, a feminist film, or a film condemning masculinity for all its undeniable flaws, it is an example of a film that pushes at numerous boundaries in the conceivable limitations of an art form and challenges the audience to reassess their own moral judgements, and for that reason it is a film that should really be seen by everyone.

How to disappear completely

Over the last couple of weeks or so, while swilling like effluvium around the concrete trough that is Elephant and Castle, I have started noticing something slightly peculiar.  At first I was only vaguely aware, but gradually my attention has become skewered on the fork of perplexity to the point at which I now make a real effort to wrest my distracted musings towards its particular focus. 

The digi-boards hoisted like a central fort above the swirling moat of the roundabout scroll through advertisements for the upcoming ’50 Shades of Grey’ film (although anyone circulating Elephant & Castle has quite enough shades of grey to be going on with...), smart phones, new savings accounts with a bank, as well as a ‘Missing Persons’ profile of various disappeared individuals.

...Andrew Faria (36) who has been missing from Clapham since July 2006; Lana Purcell (26) missing from Kentish Town since 2011; Isha Dunduya (16) who went missing from Streatham on the 2^nd of February this year...

I find this a rather curious oddity, particularly when you consider the chronic anonymity that so characterises 21^st century urbanism.  In London, a city of 8 million people, the only natural state of being is one of constant disappearance, an endless migration of ghosts that materialise and dissolve through our waking consciousness.  Pondering on this, I was reminded of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel ‘Less Than Zero’, and its iconic image of the billboard on an LA freeway reading ‘Disappear here’; an ideal slogan for a place that long ago surrendered itself to the spectacle of transience and illusion.

Indeed, there is evidently a real dichotomy here, that although high density city life tends increasingly towards anonymity and loneliness, with pervasive modern technologies the practicalities of actually affecting a disappearing act is perhaps harder than ever.  

We have so indiscriminately invited surveillance upon ourselves with digital appendages that can track our precise coordinates and online movements, profligate CCTV and facial recognition systems that follow our physical actions, not to mention the trail of fiscal breadcrumbs left by our financial transactions.  All of which serves to illustrate that to go missing (and stay missing), one must immediately adopt a manner of living which is almost wholly antithetical to notional reality in the modern world.

But clearly exceptions abound, and when they come to light our shock is all the more palpable.  Take for instance, the case of Joyce Vincent who died in her Wood Green bedsit in 2003 but was only discovered three years later with the TV and heating still switched on.  The confusion as to how a woman, who lived an active life and was by no means hermetical, could have been stranded in undiscovered death for so long was compounded, I would suggest, by the often maddening proximity to the masses that we experience and tolerate in our increasingly congested lives.

For all the obvious heartache and anguish of the reality, there is something profoundly mysterious about the act of disappearance.  It has become a romanticised phenomena, resounding with the weight of occult mysticism, supernatural intrigue and tantalising enigma.  Throughout literature there are innumerable great disappearances, from Conrad’s Colonel Kurtz, to Nabakov’s Lolita, to Beckett’s Godot, and of course Agatha Christie, the grand dame of mystery, who herself went inexplicably missing for several days in 1926.

A particular favourite of mine is in Thomas de Quincey’s ‘The Confessions of an English Opium Eater’ when the narrator becomes enchanted by a character known simply as Anne of Oxford Street who, try as he desperately might, he cannot find again after their chance encounter; she is lost amongst the crowd of ghostly figures forever.

Then of course there are the infamous disappearances that have peppered history with black holes.  From the bodily remains of the warrior Spartacus, to the stories of Spanish conquistadors who vanished on their quests to South America, to the Nazis who disappeared to the same continent after the Second World War to escape justice.  Of course, there is a perfect lineage of disappearance throughout theology; particularly in Ancient Greek religion where it was thought to be a way the gods made some physically immortal.  Not to mention the resurrected Jesus who, according to the New Testament, ascended from the world into the heavenly ether.

Indeed as I trog past the ‘Missing Persons’ billboard now it never fails to exercise my imagination.  For these people did not dissipate into some void; in terms of physical matter these people are occupying a place in space-time and yet no one is able to discern where precisely that might be.  In a society that thrives on informational corpulence, controlled risk, predictability and ‘safe bets’, with limitless data at our fingertips (all the while being prised away and stored by the powers-that-be under the pretence of ‘security’), that sense of mystery, that undetectable truth, is captivating and powerful.

It explains why the world becomes subject to bouts of delusion and irrationality, as was witnessed in the aftermath of Madeleine McCann and Karen Matthews’ disappearances, or fixation as with the MH370 flight last year as we struggle to comprehend the sheer absurdity of a plane with 239 people onboard seemingly evaporating into nothing.

Given that the ordinary faces staring out of the digi-boards seem to be refreshed daily, a small part of me now cannot help but see the Elephant & Castle junction as being the Bermuda Triangle of South London, where one day the cosmic planes of dimensionality will shudder and I too will become one of the disappeared.

It is this superstitious concern that I believe truly animates and enforces our fascination with the idea of disappearance, because we know that sooner or later we will all be subsumed into history.  Time curls and withers us away like burning leaves, and yet far from being a cause for gloom, this pre-emptive awareness should serve as a kind of reassuring balm, as well as an invigorating reminder of our brief and valuable tenure of existence as together we move inexorably towards our vanishing point.