The Bubble Film: The Death of the American Horror Film, or, Why the World Needs Scream

Originally published in a very edited form in The Bubble Film, May 6th 2011, available here.

I’m watching a teenage girl stand in an average American high school. Alone in a lengthy corridor, she looks down to see a broad trail of red streaking the floor. Her eyes follow it to its source, a large, leaking load being dragged by something unseen. I’m trying to tell her she shouldn’t, but she follows it anyway, and finally realises what it is – her best friend, sealed in a bleeding body bag.

I’m 14, and I’m watching A Nightmare on Elm Street. This is the moment when I vow that I too will never sleep again.

To this day, Elm Street remains the scariest film I’ve ever seen – Wes Craven delivered a suspenseful masterpiece which unapologetically swims in the blood of its victims (ask Johnny Depp), but which terrifies because of the psychological depths it plumbs. Freddy Krueger, like an unconscious desire or repressed memory, will never stop invading your dreams, violating your own mind to bring about your slaughter. That’s why it’s so unique and inspired: a truly original cinematic milestone.

Of course, it spawned a ridiculous number of sequels, as did many of the other seminal slasher flicks – Hallowe’en, Friday 13^th and the like – none of which came close to the standard of the originals, but then few films managed to attain those heights at all. Prom Night, My Bloody Valentine, House of Wax… by the early 1990s endless, repetitive, clichéd mass murders of articulate, hopelessly pretty white teenagers were so much the norm that the genre was old, bloated and ripe for parody. And then Craven gave us Scream.

If you haven’t yet seen the seminal horror film of the 1990s, go and do it now. It’s genuinely frightening, with plenty of blood and guts to go around, but more importantly playing on the idea that your own home isn’t safe – the violation of the safe place which makes Elm Street and Hallowe’en so effective. What really makes it interesting, though, is the metafictional element. It’s a parody of all the films that came before it. Ghostface, the guy with the white mask your mate probably wore last Hallowe’en, is a horror fan obeying the rules of the genre, but his victims all know them too: girls with big breasts realise that they shouldn’t run upstairs to hide (Jamie Lee Curtis in Hallowe’en, why?), sex, drugs and alcohol always make you a target, and you should never, ever, say “I’ll be right back”. Combine this with a healthy dose of social commentary – if caught, the killer insists that they can blame everything on the corrosive influence of the movies – and you have a vital, brutal and wickedly funny shot in the arm for Hollywood’s horror industry.

But I don’t think it worked. If Scream and its two sequels were intended to revive American horror, it’s hard to see how they succeeded. Eleven years have passed since (the admittedly inferior) Scream 3, and in that time the genre has become dominated by ‘torture porn’ such as Saw and Hostel, finding new and even more twisted ways to make victims suffer. Once the idea is established, there’s always enough profit to justify a sequel – and another, and another, and another until the law of diminishing returns kills a series – and running out of ideas is never a problem, because every film recycles the one before it. That’s how we ended up with seven Saw films, each almost identical to the others but with different (usually more horrific) traps. Then, of course, once a franchise is dead and buried or a film is almost forgotten, you can resurrect it with the remake, or ‘reboot’ if you’re planning on changing things around. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, The Amityville Horror, Hallowe’en, Friday 13^th, Dawn of the Dead, Black Christmas… the list is endless, and none of them were either warranted or worth the effort required to drag the dead from their graves. Worse, most are just not scary.

Nearly six years after I discovered Elm Street, I found myself in a cinema watching it again with an even prettier and more suicidally stupid cast. By the time I’d realised that the true massacre was the one visited upon the plot, script and entire final act of the original, I understood why this was happening. There are no scripts in circulation which can match their antecedents, so executives are just using the same plots again. If there are similar genre films that will also make money and fill release dates, then they’re fair game as well, especially if like House of Wax they provide an excuse to kill off Paris Hilton. Although world and even British cinema still offers some innovative and intelligent output, Hollywood, movie capital of the Western world, has run out of ideas. In short, it sounds like we need another Scream.

As it happens, it’s just arrived in cinemas. Scream 4 may not be the most original of concepts itself, but that happens to be the first point it acknowledges. It targets all of the conventions and formats of recent horror – remakes, unnecessary sequels and even the influence of its predecessors. Characters discuss films within the film (the Stab series, based on the events of the original Scream) to a point where someone actually says “it’s so meta”, and this time Ghostface is filming every death. Torture porn comes under fire, too; as one articulate, pretty white teen points out, Jigsaw may kill “creatively” but there’s “something real about a guy with a knife who just… snaps.” The film bears this out: the comedy-horror balance may lean towards the former, but there are still real scares to be had and it hasn’t toned down the gore in the slightest, even though it’s the first in the series to bear a 15 certificate. After years of Saw and Hostel we must be desensitised to a good old fashioned stabbing.

It won’t have the same impact as the original, but for an unnecessary sequel it’s still a breath of fresh air to a disheartened horror fan like me. There’ll never be another Nightmare on Elm Street, but I don’t see any replacements either. While I’d like to think I’m wrong, unless something fresh and exciting appears soon, I suspect the future is bleak for the American horror industry. Meanwhile, we’ll have to look back to answer Ghostface’s infamous question. So, what’s your favourite scary movie?

The Bubble Columns: Superman - The Model Global Citizen

Originally published in The Bubble Columns, available here.

You may have noticed a rare burst of British sunshine of late. It may not be all that warm yet – you can’t have it all – but summer is just about on its way, and slowly but surely the thoughts of the nation are turning to ice creams and seaside road trips or, if you’re a shameless film geek like me, the summer blockbuster season. Those of us yet to discover a life and who like to spend sunny days in a darkened room with popcorn-chomping noisy teenagers await a season of action, explosions and, inevitably, superheroes. We’ve long been in the era of the comic-book adaptation, and if (again like me) you like to plan your cinematic experiences way, way in advance you may already know that Anne Hathaway will play Catwoman in the next Batman film, and Henry Cavill of The Tudors fame has been chosen to play Superman in the Man of Steel’s outing next year (funnily enough called Man of Steel).

Superman in particular has played a central role in the modern obsession with superheroes. In 1978, a vast budget, cutting-edge special effects and a brief cameo from Marlon Brando (which somehow earned him an Oscar) made the late Christopher Reeve the first bona fide big screen superhero, and every genre film yet is in its debt. By that point, though, the character was already forty years old and had long been established as one of DC Comics’ most popular characters. Ever since, resplendent in his primary-coloured spandex, flowing cape and inability to wear underwear correctly, the classic foreigner-emigrates-and-makes-good-in-America trope has made him synonymous with American culture, so much so that Captain America was designed to compete with him and never achieved the same heights.

But now he doesn’t like it. In the new edition of Action Comics, after standing silently in support of protesters at a Tehran demonstration, Superman is accused by Iran of causing an international incident. “Tired of having his actions construed as instruments of US policy”, he decides to renounce his US citizenship.

He may not get past talking about it in David Goyer’s nine-page story, but that alone is definitely a Big Thing. The staunch, incorruptible saviour who was raised on a farm in the ‘Bible Belt’ doesn’t want to be American anymore, and for many fans that is inconceivable. The move has been broadly criticised around the world.


It’s been seen as a deliberate attempt to distance the figure from US policy, which does have a precedent – none other than Captain America denationalised himself in changing his name to Nomad in the aftermath of Watergate – but that falls down because in this case, America hasn’t actually done anything wrong (now there’s a phrase I never thought I’d write). Superman can’t act freely internationally when all of his actions reflect on a single country; he’s doing them a favour by preventing them from taking the flak for his actions. In fact, I see this as an interesting development which could prove to be a positive move. He’s the quintessential superhero, and although according to the publishers he “remains, as always, committed to his adopted home and his roots as a Kansas farm boy” he wants to shift the focus of his fight against evil to a global level: in effect, he wants to be a citizen of Earth. When we’re quite happy to refer to him as the Last Son of Krypton, an epithet which also acknowledges a planet but no nation, why is that so terrible?

Earth (apparently unlike Krypton) is a planet comprised of nation-states, and nationalism persists as the strongest level of group identity. I may spend a lot of my time defending Yorkshire (the Motherland) to other Brits as Official Greatest Place on Earth, but when asked by a foreigner I would always identify myself as British. We all have different levels on which we identify and differentiate ourselves from others – if you’re away and you meet someone else from your region, don’t you ask them whereabouts? – and the nation remains the highest: I’m always British, but rarely European. The truth is we are scared of the idea of universal global citizenship, because it identifies us on a level where nobody can be different to anybody else, and we don’t like that very much. My question is, are we justified in that?

“’Truth, justice and the American way’ – it’s not enough anymore,” Superman says, “The world is too small, too connected.” Given the role he has to play, I think he might have a point – after all, America can’t have him dragging them into more international intrigue. Were Superman real, I’d probably shake his hand. Now, if anyone wants to introduce me to Henry Cavill for this purpose, I strongly encourage you to do so.

The Bubble Columns: Mother Nature's Human Rights

Originally published in The Bubble Columns, available here.

I’ve heard plenty of suggested ways to protect the environment. We’ve all been told to ‘reduce, re-use and recycle’, the search for sustainable fuel sources goes on and nanas have taken a break from making cereal to knit a cover for the hole in the ozone layer. We should be using our cars less (which is why cuts to public transport subsidies and constant fare rises are so ridiculous – another article there) and turning the heating down a few degrees, while judgment will certainly fall upon those who fail to hug trees at appropriate moments. 

There’s been plenty of ‘green’ legislation and government target-setting, too, and while industrialised nations pretend they want to cut carbon emissions and Al Gore (ironically) goes nuclear over climate change, one voice which has always been critical of the half-hearted or insufficient measures taken by the developed world has been that of Bolivia. Frequently derided by the UK and USA for demanding much steeper cuts in emissions, the nation has long suffered environmental damage incurred while mining for tin, silver and other major resources, and studies have presented a worst case scenario in which much of the terrain is rendered desert by rising temperatures.

In recent years, however, the resurgence of powerful indigenous groups has been accompanied by a revival of an indigenous spiritual worldview in which the earth deity, Pachamama, and the environment as a whole are at the centre of all things. All living things, humans included, are of equal importance. The state’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, sits in power with a comfortable majority, and is about to take the concept of eco-friendly legislation to a new level. The Law of Mother Earth, now awaiting passage through Bolivian legislature, will grant nature equal rights to humans.

The law states that Pachamama, a living being in her own right according to indigenous thought, “is sacred, fertile and the source of life that feeds and cares for all living beings in her womb. She is in permanent balance, harmony and communication with the cosmos. She is comprised of all ecosystems and living beings, and their self-organisation.” According to one website, eleven rights will be codified: they will include the right to life and existence; to continue vital cycles and processes without human alteration; to pure water and clean air; to balance; to be free from pollution; to not have cell structure modified or genetically altered; and most controversially, “to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities”. The government is even expected to establish a ‘ministry of mother earth’, appoint an ombudsman and empower local communities to scrutinise industrial activity.

There’s a balancing act here for Morales. On the one hand, there is clearly a powerful social movement which has a firm foothold in Bolivian politics, and there’s a lot to be said for giving the people what they want (British politicians take note): on the other, the overregulation of industry could prove an economic minefield; over a third of the country’s foreign currency comes from mining companies, for example, and it could well prove an obstacle on the country’s road to development. It probably won’t bring industry to a halt (it hasn’t in Ecuador, where nature has some legal rights but where industrial processes have still damaged substantial regions of the Amazon basin), but it will make it harder to exploit the country’s rich and valuable natural resources.

But maybe, just maybe, that’s not a bad thing. Every global climate change conference seems to involve developed countries like the US and UK, safe in their own positions, hypocritically telling developing countries such as India or even China to stop trying to become developed countries in the same way that they did – by pillaging their resources and developing along a trajectory that is as unsustainable as it is destructive. The fact that we are so protective of the remaining countryside that we have, especially in the UK, belies our underlying guilt. Ideas which could form part of a programme of sustainable development may be the subjects of one of our rather good columns on this site, but are proving difficult to sell to many economies and are still far from becoming the norm. Perhaps it’s quite refreshing that there is at least one willingly underdeveloped country in the world, which will not jeopardise its environment for the sake of capitalism.

Then again, it’s fair to wonder exactly how this law will be interpreted and enforced; the law is by its own nature abstract and complex, but add in an earth spirit who can’t speak for herself and the chances are there will be more problems to come. With poverty rife, lack of healthcare and wide regional disparities in both wealth and literacy, the argument for economic development is also powerful and should not be ignored. I’d like to think that equality means that Pachamama’s rights won’t come at the expense of those of humans; even better, that they will encourage a process of sustainable development to which the rest of the world can look for an example.

I’m inspired. I may set my grandmother back to work on that ozone-hole cover.

Palatinate Comment: Speaker's Corner - Absurd JCR Decisions

Originally published in Palatinate Comment, 8/3/11 and available online here.

It can often almost feel childish to comment on college politics. Especially in Durham, it’s easy to be as involved or uninvolved in a college or society as you want to be, and our interest can dwindle at the same rate as our remaining time as students. Still, it’s also worth remembering that our JCRs do more than just offer free STI tests and a room with sofas, as recent events during the Josephine Butler executive elections show.

I still have to wonder, though, how slow a day it must have been when the executive summoned a student to a hearing with the threat of suspension over a Facebook status.

The finalist had posted a status which read “Hmm, dull, dull, and, oh look, dull. Must be Butler’s JCR election season again!” The following day, he received an email from the JCR Secretary asking him to remove the status. Refusing, he posted an excerpt from the email as a comment on the original status, prompting some comments about freedom of speech.

Later, he was contacted by the JCR Chair who insisted that the constitution had been breached and that the student had shown “alarming contempt for the conciliatory manner” in which they had originally tried to resolve the matter, while threatening a request for his suspension from the JCR unless he acquiesced. Still refusing to remove the status, the student attended a hearing the following day at an Executive Committee meeting – to which he was not informed he could take a witness – at which he was given an ultimatum: remove the status, or be suspended. The situation was resolved when he resigned his membership of the JCR. The section of the constitution thought to have been breached is article 7.2.14, which reads:
“Candidates are not allowed to ask others to campaign on their behalf. If candidates become aware of any individuals campaigning for them, it is the candidate’s responsibility to notify steering immediately. If someone does canvas on behalf of a candidate even without having been asked to, it may reflect negatively on the candidate”.

The claim of the steering committee, headed by the JCR chair, is that the status campaigned on behalf of RON – Re-Open Nominations, the option which voters select if they are unhappy with all of the available candidates.

The most glaring problem with this argument is that RON is never afforded the status of a candidate. RON is a course of action taken when none of the candidates are felt to be suitable; it is not a candidate, and as such cannot be subject to any rules governing an electoral campaign. More ridiculous, perhaps, is the visible misinterpretation of the remark. I find it bizarre that a   statement which says nothing except that JCR elections are boring can be interpreted as a suggestion that none of the candidates are suitable for the roles for which they are standing.

It’s obvious that such a statement is an endorsement for no-one, including RON. Instead, it makes the perfectly reasonable and valid point that college politics – and, I would argue, student politics as a whole – fails to engage much of the student body. That fact has been long accepted in Durham. While there is ample scope for debate over why this is so, it is part of a separate discussion. Freed from its unfairly attributed associations, the student’s comment becomes a valid and legitimate statement which cannot rightfully be censored by anyone.

In fact, it is that censorship which has proved to be self-defeating for the JCR executive. Had they not felt the need to take such action, the status would have been ignored by most of those who could see it, and forgotten quickly by the rest. A Facebook status is hardly inscribed on a stone tablet and displayed in a museum. It was quite clearly a throwaway remark without any serious intention behind it, but the controversy created by the executive has ensured it will have an effect, by casting the executive in an extremely bad light. I have the utmost respect for the JCR and the executive, who do work extremely hard, but at the same time I find it difficult to accept that seventeen people could not collectively come to a less absurd decision – and it is as a collective that the constitution insists they must be responsible. Even in the localised sphere of Durham college politics, it holds true that some rules, even when misapplied and misinterpreted, should sometimes be quietly ignored.

The Bubble Columns: Baby Gaga and The Yummy Mummy

Originally published in The Bubble Columns, available here.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten? There must be as many answers to that question as there are people. When it comes to food, The Bubble has some pretty cracking articles on the subject, but for all the impressive variety you’ll find here, I guarantee that there’s at least one thing that at some point all of us will have lived on. And no, I’m not referring to the classic student (read: my) dependence on pasta as a staple diet. I mean milk. Breast, bottle or both, it’s the universal source of nutrition for every infant around the world.

But the thing is, it’s also the one thing we tend to leave in infancy. Once we move on to solid food and eventually discover the variety of tea and biscuits available to us, we don’t ever imagine going back. Like Yorkies aren’t for girls and knitting is for your grandmother, breast milk is just for babies, right?

Well, not everyone seems to think so. In fact, until yesterday (March 1^st) when it was confiscated by the local council, a London restaurant was charging £14 for a serving of Baby Gaga ice cream – and yes, it’s made from breast milk.

Baby Gaga, which came with a rusk and an optional shot of Calpol or Bonjela (and I’d hope so for £14), was available for about a week from Icecreamists in Covent Garden until complaints from two customers and concerns raised by the Food Standards Agency and Health Protection Agency led Westminster Council to remove it until it can be confirmed as fit for human consumption. Icecreamist founder Matt O’Connor insists that the donor is medically screened and the mixture pasteurised prior to being churned with Madagascan vanilla pods and lemon zest, and described the response as “amazing”: several women have come forward and offered to donate milk, in addition to the sole original donor. London mother Victoria Hiley, who was paid £15 for every 10 ounces of milk donated, has undergone all the same screening procedures as are used on blood donations, and has no qualms about her new sideline; as she told the BBC, "What's the harm in using my assets for a bit of extra cash? I teach women how to get started on breastfeeding their babies. There's very little support for women and every little helps."

Let’s be honest. We all remember pretending to be ill so we could have that spoonful of Calpol. If, like myself, your mother never believed you because you were such a terrible actress, it was one of those things that made being ill occasionally that little bit better. If, however, you have no idea what I’m talking about, you should try some so that you don’t think I’m stuck on some form of Freudian fixation. What’s more, most mothers will freely admit to buying rusks for their own consumption as well as their child’s. But breast milk?

O’Connor insists that ”if it’s good enough for our children then it’s good enough for us… it’s pure organic, free range and totally natural”. It’s also ridiculously nutritious – after all, it keeps babies going through the most rapid and crucial stages of their development – and there’s no arguing with the fact that almost everyone will have already tried it. Hiley even suggests that, if more people were alerted to how good the milk tastes, more women will be encouraged to attempt breastfeeding. All of the above is well and good, but for many of us, I think it’s fair to say it would be difficult to get past that immediate reaction of “urgh!” “yuk!” or whatever sound of revulsion takes your fancy. Humans move on to alternative food sources as they grow for a reason; and isn’t it instinct that we should find imbibing liquid taken from a random woman’s body just a bit disquieting? When I think about it, there are no logical grounds for objection, but my gut reaction is to cringe.

Still, with the ice cream doing the rounds of food safety screening at the time of writing, perhaps upon its return many people will be less squeamish than I. In the meantime, I’ll go for the single shot of Calpol.

The Bubble Columns: Cameraman

Originally published in The Bubble Columns, available here.

‘Art’. It’s a nebulous term at the best of times. Nobody can agree on what it actually means, never mind what it does – or, for that matter, if it does (or should do) anything at all. Sticking with visual art (in itself quite a slippery concept) and leaving literature, music, film and the rest aside, there’s no better example than that thing we call ‘contemporary art’ – the realm of unmade beds, formaldehyde-treated sharks and everything on the Turner Prize shortlist which makes older members of my family repeatedly shout “What is that!?!” In a sphere where a blank canvas can be considered a finished article rather than a resource, it’s harder than ever to agree exactly what constitutes ‘art’.

Well, consider this: Wafaa Bilal, a professor of photography at New York University’s Tisch School of Arts, is taking one photo a minute for the space of a year to be relayed back to an exhibition in Doha, Qatar, with his position tracked by GPS. This week, however, the project has encountered problems – because his body rejected one of the metal posts keeping the camera bolted into the back of his skull.

Bolted. Into the back of his skull.

When interviewed about the thinking behind 3rdi at the end of last year, Iraqi-born Bilal recounts his escape from the war-torn country in 1991 (how times change). Fleeing his home in Najaf as bombs fell around, he had no way of recording what he was leaving and no connection to his former life: at least this is one year of which he has a full and permanent record. However, he also intends to make a quite serious comment on the “surveillance society” in which we live, forever followed and recorded by CCTV to the point where our lives can barely be considered private any longer.

After doctors refused to perform the procedure on the grounds of excessive risk, Bilal had the camera attached at a body-piercing studio in Los Angeles. Despite treatment with steroids and anti-biotics, he was still experiencing pain and, as the risk of infection grew, it became necessary to remove the device. Hoping that the wound heals quickly so that the camera can be restored, he is maintaining the flow of images by leaving the camera attached by a strap around his neck.

I don’t think I really need to state that I think this man is insane, but I just did. We’ve all heard of people who have done extreme things in the name of art, but this goes a long way beyond Method acting or, for that matter, everything else I can think of.

One of the many, many embarrassing anecdotes that my friends pull out on occasion was directly instigated by contemporary art. During my second year, my housemates and I visited Yoko Ono’s exhibition at the Baltic in Newcastle, and amongst the exhibits was a large, transparent plastic maze. Like many other visitors, I filed in through the narrow gap in the wall – but promptly got lost. This was not helped by the fact that, the maze being transparent, it had not occurred to me that there may actually be a wall in the place where I was about to walk. Needless to say, when the whole gallery resounded with a crash, I shouted “OW!” and the couple of hundred serious art fans in the building all turned to stare at me in outrage as I desperately tried to escape, I learned my lesson. Cringe as I might, and laugh as I know you will (it’s fine – my housemates are still giggling over a year later), this basically sums up my relationship with art: getting drawn in is easy, but I can’t negotiate it with any dignity whatsoever.

Bilal’s current work must be problematic even to people far more artistically aware than I. On the one hand, he does raise some serious questions about the world in which we live; the importance of memory as well as the ways in which Big Brother watches us every second of the day. The dominance of CCTV everywhere we go is a form of socially mandated stalking, to be used to our cost as well as our benefit, endemic to the point where we may as well carry our own camera around with us. Still, the extent to which Bilal has gone is quite disturbing – the extent of the danger and the pain he has put himself through may liken him to many great artists, but they were all somehow mad too. Moreover, it’s difficult to reconcile his ideas about privacy and observation with the fact that, though his girlfriend hasn’t yet imposed any limits, his institution has. To protect the rights of students at the Tisch School of Arts, while Bilal is at work he has agreed to keep the lens cap on. It may be art, but it would seem that it isn’t above compromise.

The Bubble Columns: Blue-rovision?

Originally published in The Bubble Columns, available here.

I should start with a confession. I’m sure you have mental images of me as the highly refined, serious intellectual who slaves to entertain the masses with her astute and serious observations. Alas, these are illusions of which I must rob you. Ladies and gentlemen, I love the Eurovision Song Contest.

It might be the cheesiest, tackiest, and generally most pathetic arena in which our great nation has ever allowed, and in fact paid for, its own humiliation. It may be the site of some of the most disturbing and confusing scenes you’ll ever witness. It is certainly the most ludicrous way the people of Europe have devised to tell Britain that it has no friends (except for Ireland, and sometimes Cyprus or Portugal if we’re lucky) and reinforce trade links between neighbouring countries. But for all that, it’s obscenely entertaining, and those who watch every year admit it with a mixture of pride and shame.

As a nation, though, we approach the Eurovision with the most cynical of attitudes, chiefly because we always know that we will lose. Britain being isolated from Europe in both geographic and figurative terms, we have nobody to give us those all-important points out of a sense of regional camaraderie (which is why so many obscure Baltic and Balkan countries have done well in recent years).  Less important, but more easily changed, is the fact that we keep entering diabolical songs. Last year’s entry was written by Pete Waterman – a man who hasn’t been cool since the late 1980s when he worked with Kylie Minogue – though before that, Andrew Lloyd Webber had written a ballad that came fifth. The woman who sang said ballad is now a Sugababe. Everyone lost.

Luckily, however, it seems our Eurovision despair may well be coming to an end. We have an entry for this year. The news that made my week: the United Kingdom’s Eurovision 2011 entry is entitled ‘I Can’, and it’s by a little boy band called Blue. Yes, Blue. Just in case you haven’t had your fill of reformed boy bands in the past few years, the early 2000s group consisting of Duncan James, Lee Ryan, Antony Costa and Simon Webbe, who reunited in 2009, intend to stage a comeback with the performance of the song, penned by Duncan and Lee (the blonde ones), in Dusseldorf in May.
 
BBC One will be airing an hour-long documentary in April following the band recording and promoting the single, as well as getting advice from fellow musicians (who I desperately hope will include these former Eurovision winners), as part of the run-up to the contest. Head of entertainment and events Katie Taylor said of the announcement “We’re enormously pleased to have found an act that not only meets but exceeds all the criteria for a great entry… Blue are the perfect choice”. Duncan claims that this will be “a great way to mark the occasion” of their tenth year together, while Simon has said that he has “always wanted to represent my country, so this is a truly exciting experience for Blue”.


They do have a better resume than most entrants – 13 million album sales, three number one singles, and insanely catchy tunes like All Rise, Fly By, and One Love, all of which could stand us in very good stead come May 14^th. That said, they are also responsible for some pretty terrible covers; they even managed to enlist both Elton John and Stevie Wonder to help them mutilate Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word and Signed, Sealed, Delivered respectively. Either way, though, Britain at least is in the grip of a mania for returning old-school boy bands; if Europe shares this nostalgic sentiment then we could be on to a – well, not a winner, but maybe a little less of a loser.

Still, it does beg the question of how successful this comeback will be. Entry into the Eurovision is widely acknowledged as career suicide- the vast majority of UK entrants are neither seen nor heard from again. Former Blue manager Daniel Glatman has described the decision as “reckless insanity”, insisting that “they will have to win. Anything less and their reputation would be in tatters”. I disagree- Blue are a cheesy boy band whose fan base now regard them with nostalgia rather than genuine adulation, and since nobody ever expects a UK entrant to win, they have little to lose if they don’t win. If anything, the damage will come from the stigma of being a Eurovision contestant, which basically means that they will never be taken seriously again. Still, they’re Blue. Who would take them seriously anyway?

Maybe it will just add to the cheesy kitsch we associate with reformed boy bands like them. Take That may have managed to break out of that category, but they did so by producing some genuinely brilliant new music- and coming from someone who would rather listen to Led Zeppelin or Nirvana, that’s saying something. Maybe Blue can do the same. Either way, we’ll find out along with the rest of Europe on May 14^th.