Tuesday 17 January 2012

Rant-wank for 2012.

Boy oh boy. My brain is frazzled. Scarcely two weeks into January and already 2012 is uncommon busy. Too much has prevailed upon my attention so far to devote much time to writing. Some of these distractions have been welcome, fun and stimulating but several — the majority, it dejects me to say — have been tiring, fraught with worry, sad and extremely sobering. You may imagine I don’t do ‘sobering’ in the main, so this is something new to consider. Interesting times indeed — but nothing I need trouble you with right now, I’m afraid. Still, while I’m here, placed in a not entirely agreeable frame of mind, and having moulded your expectations (somewhat unfairly) by telling you so, I think now is a good a time as any to have a rant and a rail and generally be annoyed. So here, for your edification and estimation, are a couple of things I can’t stand.

Before I begin, I’m not going to talk about the major, self-evident execrations of human life — I’m confident that none of you reading this are big fans of racism, homophobia, sexism, ageism and disability discrimination — let’s take all that as given. No one digs terminal illness or unrequited love — and only the dullest of politicians or economists would posit the notion that the world is better off with a smattering of war than none at all. Nothing so heroic, so nauseatingly worthy. No, let’s be a little more mundane, more personal. It’s more fun that way, oddly enough. Furthermore, I should add that I was going to list more than two things, but I have found, rereading this article prior to posting, that I don’t half like going off on one and needs must bowdlerise. So:

1. SOFAS IN PUBS: the ongoing and drawn-out death of the decent boozer goes hand-in-hand with the rise of stupid interior design creeping into your local. Let me be plain about this: sofas with matching armchairs to sit in are fine fittings in the privacy and quiet of one’s own living room, but there’s a reason why the Public House is so named: it’s full of the general public. Conversation conducted across the gulf between living room furniture in a noisy pub would be rendered inaudible without a measurable increase in volume — and I don’t know about you, but I have interesting, meaningful and often deeply personal discussions in pubs. All of this requires the protagonists have a degree of intimacy.

The standard wooden table is a sorely underrated piece of equipment in the arsenal of the intensely sociable: not only does it provide a level surface to place one’s beverage, but crucially, one’s arms and elbows as well (etiquette be damned; it’s not Sunday lunch with your parents now), enabling those sat round it to conspire in as confidential fashion as they may wish to without being alone. You simply can’t do this in a pub with sofas and armchairs. Their inclusion in an increasing number of establishments indicates a desire to encourage a certain type of trendy-yet-transient trade who want difference for its own sake. I find it inherently contradictory that anyone wishing to be ‘seen out’ somewhere would find their cool in a place that replicates the familiarity of home. Well, I haven’t come here to laze about — anyone who tells you that this is what a pub is for doesn’t know how to drink. Ah, there they are: the ones sitting in the sofas, mouthing barely heard inanities. Go home.

2. MULTIPLEX CINEMA: Mono sound, smoked-out auditoria, seats of the tattiest velour, cheerfully naff adverts purveying the dubious wares of local businesses — and all bookended by the funky slitscan-style graphics of Pearl & Dean, soundtracked to the super-slick sting of Pete Moore’s ‘Asteroid.’ The Seventies cinema-going experience was no mere cliché, I can assure you. How I loved going once upon a time. My childhood in Sidcup was punctuated by frequent trips to the ABC on the High Street, a fleapit boasting no less than two screens. The staff were astonishingly ugly and joyless. Within this horribly decorated picture house I saw my first ever film in 1975 (Disney’s The Jungle Book; I fell asleep before the end) and many films for the first time there that I have come to love repeatedly ever since: Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (both the 1977 original and the unnecessary 1981 Special Edition), 2001: A Space Odyssey (the tenth anniversary rerelease in 1978), Back To The Future (all three films), Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park, to name a handful of the big ones. At times when they didn’t show adverts or trailers before the main feature, a strip of scratched film would have colour gels passed and projected through it onto the screen to musical accompaniment: Pink Floyd never lost sleep over these boys.

By the mid-Nineties, the multiplex model had arrived from the USA and as town centres became pedestrianised — killed by the final solution of shopping madness — so the ‘cinema villages’ sprang up like fungal spores in dead places. They sold hotdogs, vast crates of popcorn, mega-buckets of Pepsi Max and micro-tubs of Haagen-Dazs, all in vast quantity and even greater expense.  The screens were many of number, of unprecedented size and the auditoria larger to match, accommodating hundreds of people, some of whom could almost see the screen square on. The sound was surrounding, resounding and abounding. The ABC in Sidcup couldn’t compete with that — nor, laudably, did they try. Instead, they introduced daytime screenings of £2.50 at a time when a typical multiplex ticket cost the price of a round of drinks. I was delighted as an adult to take my dear retired father to see Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan at such a daytime screening in the late nineties, and again in 2000 to see Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. By then, the writing was on the flock wall. The ABC closed later that year, finally overwhelmed, forced to capitulate to the big hitters of silver screen presentation.

And yet…nothing that modern cinema presentation has to offer has suggested to me that today’s moviegoing experience is any better. You used to get what you paid for — that is to say, a film and nothing more. Screen size, comfy seats and stereo sound are all improvements on the ABC model — I can’t lie — but these should be basic requirements, taken as given. No, it’s the unnecessary that irritates me, and the blatancy with which today’s multiplexes vie for ever more irrelevant ways to fleece you for your cash is stunningly insulting. The huge bucket of ice slurry and cola, the tasteless, textureless frankfurter facsimile: are these items strictly necessary to make your evening better? Well, really. You won’t starve for the duration of the film. Bring some sweeties along if you must flavour your drool, but why not try taking your partner out to somewhere nice to eat before or after the show, like grown-ups — not to Frankie & Fucking Benny’s Microwaved Frozen Food Toytown.

What people consistently fail to realise about a trip to the cinema is that it is a fundamentally antisocial activity. Sure, you go with people to see the film, and you may go somewhere afterwards to discuss what you saw, but at its core is a two-hour-average demanding your silence and attention. Now, it appears less and less to require the audience sit and watch the film, but to invite running commentary and the feverish consumption of the aforementioned overpriced poor-quality food items. Well, it’s not dinner time, boys and girls. Go elsewhere for that. The cinema used to be one of several things a fun-loving person would do over the course of a varied, entertaining evening. Now, by having isolated movie villages with surrounding mediocre food outlets to lure the undemanding and keep them within the labyrinth, a trip to the flicks has become the entire evening in itself for so many people and the venue a prime place for the feckless to hang out in, aimlessly, simply to make it more of an event. In this respect, it’s akin to the disproportionate time spent sitting about waiting for a flight at an airport. Do you really wish to spend a second longer in these drab, generic places, outside of their primary function? If we didn’t give the cinema complexes a good excuse to have people hanging around them, then we wouldn’t have the kind of tedious people who hang around them hanging around them. Got it?

I have a distinct suspicion that you may not agree with me on either of these points. Well, that’s the bit that turns me on. I’m getting old and my sense of humour is becoming — let’s be charitable — somewhat rarified as I perceive each little piece of my world getting still further away from me for no adequate reason. The fact remains that none of these bones of contention are negotiable with me. I maintain that there’s no nice sofa in a pub waiting to be discovered and short of getting pregnant, effecting a personality overhaul or undergoing unnecessary aversion therapy I will never, ever develop a craving for cinema popcorn. I’m an embittered bastard, but at least I know what I don’t like and I know why I don’t like it — and that’s a good start. Almost positive, you might say.

Happy January.



PM

Currently watching:
The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes (Granada, 1984) The palate clearer for every New Year: Jeremy Brett’s supreme interpretation of the consulting detective.
Doctor Who: The Android Invasion (BBC, 1975)
Doctor Who: Invasion Of The Dinosaurs (BBC, 1973)

Currently listening:
Any/all albums by Cardiacs.
Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Te Deum/Messe de minuit (Choeur et Musiciens de Louvre/Marc Minkowski, 1997)


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