The Novel Reviewer: Cloud Atlas Review

My review of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell is now available here.

The Bubble Film: Will Justice League Ever Assemble?

Originally published on The Bubble Film, 21/12/12, available here.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a comic book character in possession of a solid fanbase must be in want of a screenplay. Frankly, it’s starting to grate a little: the only films being greenlit in Hollywood right now are either sequels or adaptations, and original screenplays are only approved if producers detect Oscar potential. It doesn’t mean there are no good films being made, of course, but they’re all starting to feel a bit similar.

The notable exception to this rule lies with Marvel. Avengers Assemble became the third highest grossing film of all time, and although its cast, characters and hype had just about guaranteed its success from the day it was announced, the chances are it wouldn’t have scored so many repeat viewings if it hadn’t been one of the funniest, most action-packed and sharply-written films of recent times. Despite the varying quality of the films which built up to it (consider Iron Man alongside Captain America, for example), director Joss Whedon managed to turn in the best comic book film never to star Christian Bale or Christopher Reeve. In building this universe of crossovers, Marvel redesigned the franchise business model.

It’s tempting to say that the bug is catching, but the fact is there has been a similar idea bouncing around Development Hell for several years. DC, or The Other Daddies of Comic Books, have been struggling with the concept of a Justice League film – think Avengers, but with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Aquaman, the Flash and whoever else is free at the time – and with Marvel proving that ensemble superhero films can be done, the green light is finally flashing.

It makes sense to think about doing Justice League now: we know the model works, and technological developments including performance capture, 3D, CGI and even the increased frame rates being used by Peter Jackson in the Hobbit trilogy mean there’s unprecedented scope for spectacle. But there are plenty of obstacles to a DC ensemble film, and some of them might be insurmountable.

To start with, look at the characters. Superman shouldn’t be an issue – Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel is due for release next year, and he openly acknowledges the relationship between his film and Justice League. It could perform the same function as Captain America: The First Avenger. Green Lantern, however, is more complex. The Ryan Reynolds film version didn’t completely bomb, but it was critically panned. As in, a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 26% kind of bad. It’s not the most well-known of properties anyway, so it’s unlikely the character would draw a huge audience; either way, the question remains of whether Reynolds would want to return, if the original is still canon or if a reboot is required for the new plot to work.


Then there’s Wonder Woman and The Flash, both major players in the DC universe with huge fanbases but no prior screen outings. Both have been mooted, and at one point (thankfully idle) speculation was rife that Megan Fox was in talks to play Wonder Woman, but neither has come to fruition thus far. Given the fact that neither has the simplest of origin stories, the writers would have to figure out a way to contextualise both characters without obstructing a self-contained action plot. Plus, as any comic fan will tell you, Aquaman is rubbish.

And, of course, Batman. You may have missed those three little films which slipped under the radar over the last few years, but Batman’s sort of been done. Sorted. Finito. How do you come back from that? Rumours suggest that Joseph Gordon-Levitt might be asked to reprise his role from The Dark Knight Rises as a kind of Batman Mark II, but the overlap still causes problems in itself. Christopher Nolan’s Gotham City doesn’t fit with the kind of tone Justice League would need: the “what if this was real?” approach couldn’t work. The only alternative is a reboot, and who is going to follow Bale and Nolan? One day, Batman will be redone – that’s sadly inevitable – but with people joking about the speed with which Spider-Man has been rebooted, a projected release date of 2015 is far, far too soon.

Yes, 2015. Therein lies another major issue, since that’s also the year set for Avengers 2. Avengers Assemble and The Dark Knight Rises were separated by a few months this year, and blockbusters generally like to stay out of each other’s way for the sake of the box office figures, but having both ensembles in the same year will make the comparisons even less avoidable.

Take the villains. As the mid-credits Easter egg in Avengers suggested, the sequel is likely to feature the titan Thanos. Interestingly, Thanos was based on one of DC’s New Gods characters, namely Darkseid – who just happens to be one of the most powerful figures in the DC universe and the rumoured villain of Justice League. They look almost exactly the same, and despite the chain of cause and effect in the development of the two, Marvel’s established cinematic presence will ensure that DC are seen to be copying their rival, at least in the eyes of the uninitiated. Even if that’s not the case, the writers will still struggle to emphasize the differences between two very similar figures.

Currently, the lack of confirmed director or cast makes 2015 a tight deadline for a film of this magnitude – it would probably be sensible to push it back to 2016 at least. 2015 won’t just see Avengers 2: there’s the small proposition of Star Wars: Episode VII.

Avengers Assemble worked so well because of the strength of its characters. With years of films focused on individual heroes, the audience already knew the array of personalities involved and went in waiting to see how they interacted. The result was strong, snappy dialogue matched with spectacular action – there was room for both because there was no need to waste time explaining the heroes’ credentials. The final climactic battle took place against a fairly nondescript, unexplored Chitauri army, because the enemy only existed so the team could be shown working together.

As a result, I can’t help but feel that DC have got it backwards. Presumably the individual hero films would follow as spin-offs from Justice League, but this leaves a situation in which Justice League may well be laid down with story and character exposition without which a Wonder Woman film, for example, might feel empty.

I’d love to be proven wrong, though. Who doesn’t want to see Batman and Superman fighting side by side?

The Bubble TV: SHIELD Takes Centre Stage

Originally published on The Bubble TV, 7/12/12, available here.

Five days after the release of Avengers Assemble, Marvel failed spectacularly to shock the world with the announcement of a sequel. Avengers 2 will arrive in 2015, marking the latest tentpole in a schedule which takes in Iron Man and Thor sequels in 2013, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the launch of Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014, and then a little Edgar Wright film called Ant-Man. It’s unsurprising, given that Avengers went on to take $1 billion worldwide, but Marvel is moving into Phase 2 of its plans for world domination.

Supposing you need a more regular fix than two films a year. Well, I suppose there are comics. But if you need your Marvel easily accessible for no more than an hour a week, help is at hand. There’s a live action television series on the way, and it’s going to follow SHIELD: Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division, or Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate, depending on who you ask. Or, The Humans Who Run Around Saving The World While The Superheroes Check Their Reflections.

Although we’ve only seen them in supporting roles in other heroes’ films, anticipation is already higher than Stark Tower, so here’s what we know so far:

• · The show will be developed by Marvel Television in partnership with ABC.

• · Joss Whedon will direct the pilot, co-writing and producing with his brother Jed and sister-in-law Maurissa Tancharoen, formerly his partners in crime on Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog.

• · It will be set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (yes, that’s actually what they’re calling it these days) but will stay largely autonomous from the films. As Whedon told Entertainment Weekly, “It’s gotta be a show that works for people who haven’t seen the Marvel movies”.

• · Some parts have already been cast – mostly relatively unknown actors with television backgrounds – and the lead role will be taken by Clark Gregg, reprising his role as Agent Coulson from earlier Marvel films.

That’s it. Of course, this being the Internet, that’s all anybody needs, and the predictions are already flying.

Marvel has been wrestling with the problem of developing live action series for years, and considering the range of potential candidates, SHIELD looks like a wise decision. For a start, the leads are all human: smaller, less green and less radioactive than some previously rumoured properties. In other words, they’re cheap, which makes this a perfect opportunity to test the waters with an episodic format. There’s no reason why this couldn’t be a new X-Files or Torchwood.


What’s interesting, though, is the way that the series could complement the films. Time and again, major Hollywood actors have explained moves into TV work citing the longer format as an opportunity to develop deeper understanding of characters. TV offers more time to get to know characters and more scope to develop complex plots – just ask the writers of Game of Thrones or Mad Men – and while SHIELD may not directly reference films that have gone before, there’s no reason why it couldn’t build new audiences to lead into future projects. That first twenty minutes spent setting up a film’s premise and characters could be done over several episodes, leaving extra screen time for blowing something up.

With this in mind, then, here are some hints at what to expect when SHIELD hopefully airs next year.

Coulson lives. The fact that Clark Gregg will be reprising a character who was killed onscreen in Avengers Assemble is a pretty big deal for the fans, but it also suggests that Marvel are really trying to emphasise the connection with existing films. So how did he survive? There have been suggestions the series may be set before Avengers, but it’s far more likely that he just wasn’t as dead as we thought he was. Comic book characters come back from the dead with alarming frequency, and there’s probably a Sherlock Holmes-style fake death to be written for him.

Don’t expect Avengers to appear. There might be a couple of cameos from some of the Avengers cast, but not even Marvel are likely to pump enough money into the first season of an untested show to pull in Robert Downey Jr or Chris Evans.

Finally, some women. Black Widow aside, the Avengers Initiative is a bit of a boys’ club. SHIELD would appear to be more diverse, with three of the first six characters to be announced being female – and if anyone can write a gutsy heroine, it’s the man who gave us Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Prepare for war. The nastier, more expensive villains will probably be left for the films, but there’s room for SHIELD to enjoy the odd nemesis. HYDRA, formerly the henchmen of Captain America’s foe the Red Skull, appear quite frequently in the SHIELD comics, as do The Hand, a ninja clan with ties to Elektra and Daredevil. Either of those avenues could lead to other fertile ground – and even if they don’t, who doesn’t want to see more ninjas on TV?

There will be superpowers. SHIELD comics have featured entire units of agents with telepathic powers, and notable employees have included the likes of Jessica Drew (Spider-Woman), Carol Danvers (Ms. Marvel) and a certain Jennifer Walters. That’s She-Hulk. Maybe the series finale…

Spooky Isles: Mary Shelley and the Birth of Frankenstein, Part 5

Originally published on Spooky Isles, June 29th 2012, as the final instalment of a five-part series; available here.

By the time of her death, Mary Shelley was the respected author of seven novels, at least twenty-three short stories, and even some children’s literature. She was also an accomplished biographer, poet and editor of the works of her husband Percy, whose status as one of the major poets of the Romantic period was largely assured by her efforts. Despite the significance of works such as The Last Man (1826), however, her full importance as a writer is only just beginning to be understood: it’s interesting that, when her later work was more critically acclaimed at the time, it has mostly been forgotten, while Frankenstein’s reputation continues to grow.

It’s one of the most accomplished Gothic novels of the period, borrowing heavily from the conventions pioneered by her father among others, but at the same time its voice is unique. Mary’s own chequered personal life provides themes and preoccupations which are not articulated as strongly by anybody else – her insight into the traumas of childbirth and parenthood, as well as her own struggle to live up to the reputations of her famous parents, shine through in Victor Frankenstein’s struggles to create a human being and then to make a man. The suggestion that the two are not the same is one of the keynotes of the novel.

Science fiction as a genre in English largely owes its existence to Frankenstein, which is probably the earliest and one of the most influential examples. Even modern writers acknowledge its influence; elements of Shelley’s work have been in detected in the shocking twist of Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory and Stephen King’s It. Perhaps most interesting is that fact that science itself has been influenced by Mary’s thinking: the technology she envisioned became an inspiration for real innovations.

There are as many reasons for the novel’s perpetual success as there are readers, but the truth is that everyone who comes to Mary’s masterpiece now brings with them certain expectations. The image of Frankenstein’s Monster is burned into our cultural memory thanks to nearly two hundred years of adaptation for stage and screen and even modern music: think of Metallica’s ‘Some Kind of Monster’ or Alice Cooper’s ‘Feed My Frankenstein’. The name has entered everyday use, and we all have our own idea of what it means.

In fact, it’s often surprising to encounter the novel for the first time and notice how it differs from the image we’ve inherited. The ‘monster’ isn’t green. There are no bolts through his neck. There are no hysterical screams of “It’s alive!” and, most importantly, Frankenstein is the name of the scientist and not his creation. Still, that the creature and his maker are identified with each other would have pleased Mary: it supports her argument that corrupt political systems make victims of the empowered and disempowered alike.

It’s the politics that are often overlooked by Shelley readers, mostly thanks to the Victorian habit of domesticating women’s writing and relegating Mary’s work to the status of ‘romance’. In many ways, though, the political element is what holds the rest together: questions of responsibility, control and the abuse of power remain at Frankenstein’s core. Over the intervening years, it has continued to strike a chord in the wake of scientific as well as political progress – whether it’s the governing class or the scientist in the laboratory, in the end, Frankenstein explores the consequences of men playing God with the lives of others, and that theme never dies.

Spooky Isles: Mary Shelley and the Birth of Frankenstein, Part 4

Originally published on Spooky Isles, June 22nd 2012, available here.

When Mary Shelley published her debut novel in 1818, nobody knew it was hers. The first edition was published anonymously, leaving reviewers free to speculate; though no attempts seem to have been made to name an author, some reviews came close.

“It is formed on the Godwinian manner, and has all the faults, but many likewise of the beauties of that model.” (The Edinburgh Magazine)

“It is piously dedicated to William Godwin, and written in the spirit of his school.” (The Quarterly Review)

Comparisons of Mary’s novel with those of her father William Godwin are clearly warranted, although another school of thought suggested that it could be Percy Shelley’s work.  The use of Godwin’s tropes and themes was less important, however, than the revolutionary politics he shared with his daughter, and the potential threat they posed was keenly felt by more conservative voices.

 This was an even greater concern given that the book became commercially successful very quickly: it was translated into French as early as 1821 and popularised through a range of melodramatic dramatic adaptations from the likes of Richard Brinsley Peake. Anxiety about the dangerous influence of the novel on the young and vulnerable, especially in light of its apparent moral ambivalence, is tangible in nearly every surviving review from this period.

Nonetheless, the reviews do generally tend to acknowledge the author’s considerable “original genius and happy power of expression” (Sir Walter Scott), suggesting grudging respect for an aesthetic talent coupled with disquietingly radical attitudes. In fact, the initial reception of Frankenstein was mixed, ranging from outrage and disgust to fascination and qualified praise.

Once the author’s name was released, however, the tone of her critics quickly shifted. Her colourful private life may have been enough of a deterrent to certain groups in society, but above all, readers were driven by the view of politics as a man’s subject. Though Mary was tellingly often credited with a “masculine mind”, commentators treated Frankenstein (as they would her later novels) as a ‘romance’ if, indeed, they heeded it at all:

“The writer of it is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which is the prevailing fault of the novel; but if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall therefore dismiss the novel without further comment." (The British Critic)

A great number of critics followed suit. Despite the success of the small print run of the 1823 edition, the bestseller was ignored by many intellectuals for years. Even the 1831 edition, which had undergone several revisions and finally gained a mass audience, did little to cure this, and the lack of new editions in the following five decades meant that Frankenstein was studied relatively little and valued less. Like so many groundbreaking artists, Mary saw her work met by critics unequipped to judge it.

Around the same time, Mary’s life was becoming even more difficult. Relations with her husband had always fluctuated wildly, but she was left devastated when she suffered another miscarriage in 1822 and, weeks later, Percy drowned off the coast of Italy just before his thirtieth birthday. After a year with friends in Genoa, she returned to England and devoted her life to her surviving son, Percy Florence, and a career as a professional author. Much of her life was spent in terse discussions with Percy’s father, Sir Timothy, over the allowance he granted her for his grandson’s upkeep; continuing to write novels and short stories; and in editing and promoting her husband’s poems, assuring the literary appreciation he had largely been denied in life. She never remarried. By the time she died of a suspected brain tumour in 1851 she was a respected author, but predominantly for her later work.

Frankenstein was, however, as alive as its central Creature. Stage adaptations continued, and the characters remained in the public consciousness though the novel was out of circulation. Perhaps this is why its resurgence was so strong: only in the 1880s, when it had come out of its original copyright conditions and the benefits of mass literacy were beginning to appear, that Frankenstein found a truly huge readership. The first reprint sold more than all the previous editions combined, and from that point it grew into the global phenomenon that has had such impact on the modern world.

Spooky Isles: Mary Shelley and the Birth of Frankenstein, Part 3

Originally published on Spooky Isles, June 15th 2012, available here.

Of the coterie that spent the summer of 1816 at Lake Geneva, Claire Clairmont must be by far the least renowned. Among the few who know her name, she is Mary Shelley’s step-sister, a friend of Percy Shelley and one of many lovers of George Gordon, Lord Byron. It was thanks to her, however, that the group came together at all. Her brief affair with Byron that spring had clearly exacerbated her infatuation – introducing her step-sister to the poet enabled her to arrange for Mary, Percy and herself to stay in a house near the grand villa the poet had leased.

For Mary, who was increasingly known as Mary Shelley although the couple were not yet married, this was one of many complications in her life. Travelling for the sake of Percy’s poor health with an infant child would have been stressful enough without the controversy that followed them at home and abroad. Although we don’t know exactly when that summer Claire learned she was pregnant with Byron’s child, nor indeed when Byron tired of her and the affair ended, it’s almost too tempting to suggest that this was another trauma of procreation on the list that inspired Mary’s unique representation of a monstrous birth.

The group found themselves together on the dark, stormy night of June 16^th, the atmosphere perfect for a ghost story, when a plot was hatched: instead of telling other people’s stories, they would write their own. Percy struggled to find inspiration and quickly gave up. Even Byron, who was incredibly prolific all summer, began a vampire novel and abandoned it. The successful writers were, ironically, the ones who were not yet known. Byron’s physician Dr. Polidori took up the poet’s ideas and developed them into The Vampyre, the short story that catalysed the subgenre eighty years before Bram Stoker put pen to paper for Dracula. Mary, meanwhile, struggled with her assignment, but refused to give up so lightly. According to her introduction to the 1831 edition of her novel, several days passed until, after a long night talking of contemporary experiments in galvanism (reanimating dead flesh using electrical currents), she had a peculiar waking dream:

“I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision, —I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handywork, horror-stricken.”

She thought she had the beginnings of a short story. Over the next year, with Percy’s encouragement and collaboration, including his frequent alterations and suggestions on the manuscript, it became a full length novel, drawing on the traumas that marked their early relationship. The first four chapters were written after Mary’s half-sister Fanny Imlay committed suicide, depressed after Mary and Claire’s departure and having learned of her illegitimacy. In November, Percy’s heavily pregnant wife Harriet also killed herself, breeding lasting guilt for both himself and Mary; when the lovers finally married just a few weeks later, it was in part to help Percy’s suit for custody of his two children by Harriet. By the time Frankenstein was finished in May 1817, it was built on over a year of painful childbirths and childrearing that shine through in the relationship between creator and creation.

When eventually published in January 1818, with a preface by Percy and dedication to her father William Godwin, Frankenstein didn’t even bear Mary’s name – it was anonymous until the second edition was released in 1822 – but her masterpiece was given to a world that had no idea just how important it would be.

Spooky Isles: Mary Shelley and the Birth of Frankenstein, Part 2

Originally published on Spooky Isles, June 8th 2012, available here.

11 November 1812 proved a milestone in Mary Godwin’s life. A brief return to her father and step-mother’s house from a stay with family friends in Dundee saw her introduction to the Shelleys. The lives of the couple had already been tempestuous. Percy, the son of a Whig MP who later inherited the title of Sir Timothy, had been educated at Eton and Oxford, until his authorship of the atheist tract The Necessity of Atheism resulted in his expulsion from University College in 1811. Relations with his father, already strained as a result, finally disintegrated later that year when Percy eloped with and married Harriet Westbrook, a sixteen-year-old school-friend of his sister who, as the daughter of a wealthy coffee-house owner, was his considerable social inferior. Sir Timothy cut off his son’s allowance, and financial problems plagued the couple as Percy continued to write and publish poetry as well as his politically revolutionary tracts. They moved around a lot, and even spent time in Ireland where Percy aided efforts repeal the Act of Union and ensure Catholic emancipation. After their return, the Shelleys finally met one of Percy’s idols with whom he had been corresponding for much of that year: William Godwin.

Godwin’s daughter was fifteen at the time, and it was to be two years before Mary’s acquaintance with the Shelleys was renewed. By that time, the couple’s first daughter, Eliza Ianthe, was nearly a year old, but a rift had grown between Percy and Harriet that was never to be healed, and a passionate relationship began to form between Shelley and the daughter of his mentor. In early summer 1814 the pair met frequently, often at the grave of Mary’s mother Mary Wollstonecraft, and in late July, accompanied by her half-sister Claire Clairmont, Mary and her twenty-two-year-old lover eloped.

This was to be the start of a hectic if brief life together, taking in extensive travel, literary creativity and, of course, financial instability. By the time they returned to England in September they were all but penniless and Mary was already pregnant – but Harriet was always a constant presence. She gave birth to Percy’s second child Charles in November 1814, and his letters to his wife demonstrate barely suppressed guilt for abandoning their family: when his grandfather died in 1815 and his immediate financial difficulties eased, he made arrangements to pay Harriet £200 a year for their maintenance. The relationship was viewed with universal disapproval, even from Godwin, despite his earlier philosophical arguments against the institution of marriage that probably influenced Percy. Mary’s sister Claire was also a source of tension, her close friendship with Percy causing considerable jealousy on Mary’s part even after Claire had an affair with Lord Byron. The couple’s first daughter died before her first birthday in early 1816, twelve days after the birth of their son, William. Though Mary does not seem to have begrudged Percy’s support of Harriet – after her eventual suicide Mary supported his efforts to gain custody of the children – their relationship was under constant strain, yet clearly kept intact by strong mutual affection.

By mid-1816, when ‘the Shelleys’ travelled to Lake Geneva to spend the summer with Byron, Mary found herself grieving for the death of one child while trying to raise another, in a relationship with another woman’s husband and facing public recrimination for her unconventional lifestyle – at the age of nineteen. Given her mother’s scandalous reputation, having cohabited and had a child with a man out of wedlock before meeting Godwin, Mary would have been even more keenly aware of the position in which she had put herself, and it is in this unique climate of loss, guilt and uncertainty that Frankenstein was born.

Spooky Isles: Mary Shelley and the Birth of Frankenstein, Part 1

Originally published as a five-part series in Spooky Isles, June 1st 2012, available here.

What comes to mind when you hear the name of Mary Shelley? There’s at least one obvious answer. The woman who gave the world Frankenstein and wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of few women whose marriage to another writer has not overshadowed her own literary achievement. That’s hardly surprising – the 1816 classic is a major contribution to the Gothic genre and arguably the first science fiction novel in English literature. It’s also gripping, original and genuinely frightening. Still, it wasn’t shaped in a vacuum, and neither was its creator. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, as she was born, was surrounded by literary and political influences that can be traced throughout her remarkable career, and nowhere more clearly than Frankenstein.

By far the most significant influences were her parents. Mary’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died of puerperal fever eleven days after giving birth, but remained an important presence throughout her daughter’s childhood. The author of an array of treatises including A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and the novels Mary and the unfinished Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman was renowned for her radical views and has since earned a place in the history of feminist thinkers. However, her unconventional lifestyle – including her illegitimate daughter from an earlier relationship – was placed in the spotlight when her husband, Mary’s father William Godwin, published a memoir of her which spoke candidly of her sexual history. The scandal which became attached to Wollstonecraft’s name persisted throughout Mary’s lifetime, but she was also keenly aware of her mother’s literary achievements: she was as much of a presence as her portrait staring down from the wall in Godwin’s study.

Godwin himself had achieved some success as a writer. The controversial treatise An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) was followed by six major novels, the first of which was Things as They Are, or The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794), but throughout Mary’s infancy and early childhood his fortunes declined. He had been known as one of the foremost thinkers of his circle of liberal reformists, and insisted on high intellectual standards for his children. As a result, Mary was multilingual, well read and steeped in mythological and religious traditions. Though his financial circumstances got worse and worse over the years and his fame faded somewhat, his circle remained large and as a result Mary came into contact with major figures including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles and Mary Lamb and, of course, Shelley. Mary grew up surrounded by philosophical and literary heavyweights whose views she took on board, not least the father she adored.

Looking at the work of Mary’s parents, common threads start to appear that are clear in her own work. Godwin’s Caleb Williams is a dramatic Gothic novel, discussing the abuse of power by tyrannical governments by focussing on a servant persecuted by his master when he discovers his dark secret. The Wrongs of Woman sees Wollstonecraft using Gothic tropes to represent the suppression of women in the tale of a wife locked in an asylum by her husband. It’s no surprise that both belonged to the radical intellectual movement which admired the French Revolution – freedom from the oppression of political institutions dominates their thought because that power is so often and so easily abused. One of the central themes of Frankenstein is the responsibility that comes with the acquisition of power; proof, as though it were needed, that Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was fully deserving of both her parents’ names.

The Bubble Film: The Rise of Motion Capture

Originally published in The Bubble Film, February 17th 2012, available here.

This article nearly began as a standard complaint about Oscar nominations. Michael Fassbender overlooked for Shame, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross ignored despite an exceptional score for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo... Then I realised that some of the snubs about which I felt most strongly shared a common thread. The Adventures of Tintin – a film I’ve mentioned before on The Bubble – received just one nomination, though admittedly for a well-deserving score by the legendary John Williams; Rise of the Planet of the Apes, last year’s ‘intelligent blockbuster it’s acceptable to like’, is nominated only in the Visual Effects category. Now, while it may be obvious that these are both special-effects heavy multiplex pieces, it’s perhaps less apparent that each of them uses a particular technique which the Academy – and the film industry in general – is proving reluctant to accept. Though it’s been in use for years, performance capture (or motion capture) is still struggling for the recognition it deserves.

Even those who haven’t heard the term before will probably be familiar with some of the products of the technique: they include Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong in the remake, The Polar Express, the young Jeff Bridges in Tron: Legacy and, of course, Avatar. They also include Tintin and Caesar, the principal ape in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to pretend Beowulf never happened). An actor wears specialised markers at key points on their body and face, allowing their movements to be sampled multiple times per second. This data is then mapped onto a 3D model, meaning that the actions of the performer are carried out by the digital figure. As a result, filmmakers can benefit from all of the subtleties of an actor’s contribution, inevitably lacking in a purely computer-generated character, without sacrificing that character’s visual appearance to the demands of costume and makeup.  

The big question is ultimately how to categorise performance capture. The film industry seems undecided as to whether it’s just a visual effect or a manner of representing a performance – and there really is a big difference. Just look at the difference in the two names given to the technique: ‘performance capture’ puts the emphasis on the whole contribution of an actor; ‘motion capture’ implies nothing more than a collection of actions converted into data. The latter is a huge underestimation of the performer’s significance – Andy Serkis, for example, researched primate behaviour extensively to play Kong, even further to prepare as Caesar, and every move those characters make belongs to him. He is directly responsible for the audience’s response to his character, just as he would be in a live action film. The same can be said of his work on Gollum, or Zoe Saldana’s performance in Avatar (easily the best thing in that film that wasn’t the visuals); they are characters who must be approached like any live action role. Given the added difficulty of acting in such a manner – without full costume or other accoutrements which help actors to get a sense of character, place and period, often without a complete set – considering performance capture simply as a form of animation seems insulting.

The other side of the coin is an entirely purist view of acting as a craft. Prejudice remains about the idea of a technical team mediating a performance, leaving an impure form of acting. Still, given the advances made in recent years, especially in facial performance capture, it’s becoming harder and harder to see where subtle gestures and movements could be lost, and when appearances have to be altered, it is to enhance the character without losing what the performer has given. Saldana would never have been able to play a 9’ tall, strangely shaped blue cat-person in a pure live action film owing to the fact that, while there are plenty of tricks to give the illusion of height, she isn’t blue and isn’t strangely-shaped. At the very least, she would have needed extensive makeup, and doesn’t that work on the same principle – altering an actor’s appearance to aid their performance? 

This brings me back to the Academy question. Tintin won the Animated Feature Golden Globe, but wasn’t even nominated for the Oscar, despite the fact that it beautifully blended performance capture and CGI to make a visually impressive and irresistibly fun adventure, which karate chops the inexplicably nominated Kung-Fu Panda 2 to pieces. Still, this can perhaps be put down to the timing of an autumn release and the success of Spielberg’s other piece of award-bait War Horse. More significant is the snubbing of Caesar – while there might be a case for saying that Serkis is let down by the film itself, the same has been said of Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady as well as many previous nominees, and it’s all too tempting to suspect that Hollywood’s uncertainty about performance capture explains why Rise was only deemed worthy of a Visual Effects nod.

I strongly suspect – indeed, genuinely hope – that Andy Serkis will win an Oscar one day for a performance capture role. He probably deserved one for Gollum. I fear, however, that like Alfred Hitchcock, he will be ignored by the Academy until the latest possible moment, when an honorary statue will be thrust into his hands. Here’s hoping that, as studios and filmmakers have increasingly embraced the storytelling possibilities offered by the technique, the opportunities it affords actors will be equally appreciated.

The Bubble Literature: The Heart and Stomach of a Poet

Originally published in The Bubble Literature, February 1st 2012, available here.

Who is the greatest writer in the English language? The standard answers, I suppose, will all be flying around: Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens, Austen, maybe even Wilde or Joyce. It’s a common argument among book-lovers (though I must say, Mansfield Park would be massively improved by the addition of a dragon or two), and one which often produces less obvious answers too. Take, for example, George Puttenham; in his 1589 work The arte of English poesie, he sings the praises of “the Queen our sovereign Lady, whose learned, delicate, noble Muse, easily surmounteth all  the rest that hath written before her time or since” (his spelling is worse, but you get my drift).

Now obviously, Puttenham needs to keep his queen sweet, so there is an element of flattery here, but it seems he has a point: in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Elizabeth I was a highly respected literary figure. There are plenty of debates to be had about whether speeches or letters can be counted as literature, but as well as her prolific output in those areas she produced a substantial amount of poetry in a variety of languages, many of which circulated in manuscript form around her court.

If anything, the real surprise is how her literary output has been forgotten in the intervening 400 years, though there are reasons for this. As most people know, the reign of Henry VIII’s middle child was eventful, to say the least; exploration of the New World, the Spanish Armada, the imprisonment and execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, the succession crisis when she failed to marry and produce an heir, religious intolerance in England matched by religious war on the Continent, and the small matter of what many still consider to be a ‘golden age’ of the Arts in England. Given her pivotal role in one of the most fascinating eras of English history, it was to some extent inevitable that she would be predominantly studied in light of her political, social and religious roles.

Even for specialists in literature of the period, it’s difficult to study writing of this type: writers at the Elizabethan court would frequently share their verse in manuscript form around select circles of friends. Unfortunately, this meant that they often didn’t bother putting their names on the manuscripts, and since they copied down each other’s work with varying levels of accuracy, there can be several different versions of any given poem floating around at once. This means that, even if you do happen to work out who wrote a poem, it’s hard to be certain which version is the original, let alone whether the author might have changed it themselves later on – there’s rarely a single stable ‘text’ for a reader to refer to. Still, this is a problem faced when reading any of the Elizabethan court writers, but people are still reading Philip Sidney and Walter Ralegh, and since a Complete Works of Elizabeth is now on the market, it’s time this poetess got the recognition she deserves.

I wouldn’t go as far as to agree with Puttenham – she may not be the greatest writer in history – but she is surprisingly good. It’s interesting to think about how her poetry plays into the propaganda which circulated about her during her lifetime. Woodstock, where she had been imprisoned during her Catholic sister Mary’s reign, had become something of a Protestant tourist attraction after she had taken the throne; on the wall was etched ‘O Fortune, thou wresting, wavering state’, a poem written during herincarceration in which she justifies herself as an innocent victim who will be vindicated and restored to her rightful place at the head of the English people while her enemies are punished. In her later years, when the famous image of the Virgin Queen was becoming more established, she replied to poems directed at her by her courtiers in exchanges which overlaid the language of loyalty with that of love, using the common tropes of romance to reinforce bonds of service. These were the poems which were allowed to circulate freely so as to cast her in the best possible light.

That wasn’t the case with many other poems, though. In fact, there are some which scholars are fairly certain were suppressed during the Queen’s lifetime. By the late 1580s and 1590s, when it was obvious that Elizabeth would never marry¸ she was writing poems such as ‘Now leave, and let me rest’ and ‘When I was fair and young’, in which she admits her regret at not marrying sooner and dramatises her own melancholy. They’re heartbreaking, demonstrating the vulnerability of a queen who needed to be strong and unflinching in her later years as murmurs of rebellion began to grow; her enemies would have loved them.

It might be surprising that a powerful ruler like Elizabeth I managed to produce a body of poetry, especially given how much has probably been lost over four centuries, but it really is worth a look. It ranges in tone from quiet menace to bold assertions of dominance via the sadness of a lonely old woman who found herself a victim of her own position; it certainly proves that Good Queen Bess was more than just Queenie in Blackadder. In any case, it will help you decide whether she really did have the heart and stomach of a concrete elephant.

The Bubble Album Reviews: Florence and the Machine, 'Ceremonials'

Originally published in The Bubble Music as part of Album Reviews #9, Nov. 7th 2011, available here.

There’s no denying that Lungs was big. Of course, Florence’s 2009 debut album achieved widespread critical and commercial success, but it also sounded huge – harps, relentless rhythm sections and choral harmonies locked in an interplay which was powerful, affective and rewarded multiple repeat spins. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to say, then, that the benchmark for that ‘difficult second album’ was pretty high, and fans have been awaiting a follow-up with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. We needn’t have worried. It may not be perfect, but this is a bold, accomplished and beautifully-layered album which takes the best things about Lungs and runs with them – and if its predecessor was big, Ceremonials is simply vast.

From the moment that ‘Only If for a Night’ sneaks in with its distant piano and builds into a moody choral refrain, it’s obvious that this is a much darker album, and the lyrics abound with demons, spirits and ghosts. A new adaptation of Macbeth could easily soundtrack its witches concocting toil and trouble on a misty heath with ‘Seven Devils’, but for every haunting moment there is one of anthemic joy, like lead single ‘Shake It Out’, or an undeniably catchy pop song like ‘Spectrum’. By far the stand-out track, though, is ‘What the Water Gave Me’: over five minutes long, named after a Frida Kahlo painting and inspired by Virginia Woolf’s suicide. It’s every bit as atmospheric and epic as it sounds (and a little insane), and in the last two minutes when all restraint is finally thrown off it moves from whispered vocals to an astounding tour de force which may actually make you want to dance.

It isn’t without its flaws: it would probably benefit from one less song to prevent the sense of a slight dip towards the end, but that’s a relatively minor issue in what just might be the album of the year so far. It’s worth saying, though, that the instrument which stands out most on Ceremonials is one of the most distinctive voices in modern music, moving across octaves and dynamics with an ease which beggars belief. For fans, this will be known as the album where Florence discovered her quiet voice, as well as one that’s even louder.

The Bubble Drama: Zombiepalooza

Originally published in The Bubble Drama, October 28th 2011, available here.

You may have noticed an increased level of zombie-related activity on The Bubble of late, and in Durham City itself. In fact, it’s highly likely you’ve been warned of an imminent zombie apocalypse for which you need to prepare. For those of us who move in geeky enough circles to have already established zombie survival plans, this was finally vindication; for everyone else, time to panic and choose a weapon.

Don’t worry. It’s only a drill.

Zombiepalooza – the inspired title for this citywide scare-fest – is the brainchild of Carlo Viglianisi and Nick Malyan at Empty Shop, the Durham-based arts organisation currently working from The Gates shopping centre. It will in effect be three events in one: Enemy at The Gates, a tour behind the scenes at the centre which is destined to take a sinister turn; a screening of Dawn of the Dead in another empty shop armed with popcorn and marshmallows; and a flashmob beginning at an unconfirmed location and ending up at The Gates. Afterwards there will be cheap drinks deals in Studio for the undead – and yes, you will be expected to dress as a zombie if you’re not being chased by them.

According to Carlo, the idea for Zombiepalooza was born about two and a half years ago, when Empty Shop was running from another unit in The Gates. Early in the morning or late at night, they’d have to wind their way through the service corridors to pick up the keys – “it was just so creepy! An empty shopping mall, there’d be this Muzak-type stuff playing, and then an old lady would shuffle along or something… so we already had this joke about how it was just like Dawn of the Dead and it would be great to do some sort of zombie event”.

Beginning with the simple concept of screening the 1978 George A. Romero classic (“that remake was horrible”), a couple of months of planning have seen the introduction of student theatre company Ooook! Productions, whose members by the time you read this may already be busy making vats of sticky red liquid and practising looking a bit poorly as they prepare to provide the zombie action. There’s a good chance that this will prove the most memorable night of the city’s year. Unless, of course, your hippocampus ends up in an undead stomach.

For those readers who may be concerned about the logistics of the zombification process, a word of reassurance: there will be prizes for the best zombie costumes on the night, but it’s entirely up to you how far you take the transformation. “We’re going to post some Youtube videos that we’ve found quite useful,” says Carlo. “Fake blood-wise, just make your own. It will be cheaper and better. The fake stuff you buy from joke shops often looks too red; we use red food colouring, maple syrup or golden syrup and then some chocolate sauce, or even use some coffee granules to make a thick brown paste and pour that into the red mixture. That gives it that kind of dark, opaque colour. It’s not red – it’s reddish, then it dries dark – and it smells really sweet, but it comes off.” We’re also reliably informed that biting people might just be a bit too far.

It sounds, though, like the real danger actually comes with looking too convincing. “When we first got the zombie make-up we went for a walk around, trying it out. We just went out and handed out some flyers and knocked on some doors, and this one guy came out with his lacrosse stick, beating us back looking genuinely freaked out! We had to keep in character as well, so we got a bit of a beating, but it was all good fun really.” We’re not sure our weapon of choice would be a lacrosse stick, but it’s almost reassuring to know that, when there’s no more room in Hell and the dead walk the earth, there’ll finally be a use for some Durham stereotypes.

Although the concept is definitely transferable to other cities, Empty Shop has even bigger and better plans for Durham: depending on the success of Zombiepalooza, there’s the potential for repeats in future years as well as more “really fun events-based cinema” ideas, but Carlo is keeping them to himself for now. In the meantime, we’re glad they’re providing a much-needed public service – when the zombie apocalypse finally happens, we’ll be glad to have had some practice.

Now, for those who want to enjoy a night as the living dead in Studio, the most important question: Will the DJ play ‘Thriller’? Carlo smiles. “I’m almost certain they will- it’s sort of an instinct to do that. If anybody knows the dance that will be perfect!”

Check www.zombiepalooza.co.uk for remaining tickets for Enemy at the Gates and Dawn of the Dead, to provide contact details for the flashmob and for tips on zombie make-up.

The Bubble Film: In Praise of Steven Spielberg

Originally published in The Bubble Film on October 28th 2011, available here.

On May 31^st 2002, a mature student graduated from California State University Long Beach. Dressed in cap and gown, he proceeded with his fellow graduates to receive a degree in film and electronic arts. As he walked onstage, the orchestra played the theme from an old-school adventure movie called Raiders of the Lost Ark. I’d like to think that the student allowed himself a little smile at that moment: after dropping out of this course the first time, he’d gone on to make that film.

Indiana Jones is just one of the icons Steven Spielberg has given the world. There are others you’ll recognise too: an alien in the basket of a flying bicycle, unable to phone home; lower strings playing two bass notes as a dorsal fin breaks the surface of the sea; ripples in a glass of water while an ominous thud approaches. Popular culture is flooded with images, characters, and classic lines that have spilled over from Spielberg’s massively successful productions. That success, however, has contributed to a fashion among some critics asserting that box office success and artistic integrity can’t coexist, as if films that make money are automatically ‘bad’. The problem is that this notion crumbles under scrutiny. It’s been thirty-six years since Spielberg single-handedly cleared a beach with Jaws, but his career has repeatedly disproven the myth that commercially successful films can’t be ‘good’.

It’s possible that you’ve forgotten the extent of Spielberg’s oeuvre. A brief survey would include: Jaws, the four films in the Indiana Jones franchise, E.T: The Extra Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Hook, Schindler’s List, The Colour Purple, Empire of the Sun, Saving Private Ryan, Catch me if you Can and Jurassic Park. Most directors would be proud to have two or three of these on their filmography – even accepting that they sit uncomfortably alongside the likes of 1941 and Amistad. It’s nevertheless a remarkably high hit rate across a huge range of genres.

Significantly, however, there’s an even broader range of tone. There’s no denying that the Indiana Jones films are straight-up, old fashioned B-movie style adventures, and there is nothing wrong with that. Cinema as an art form was born out of the need for escapism and entertainment, and when the execution is as flawless as Raiders of the Lost Ark then that’s difficult to argue against. Saving Private Ryan is a far less comfortable watch by comparison, as anyone traumatised by the first act can testify. Jaws alternatively works like a slasher film at sea: given how water becomes frightening in the absence of a visible shark, I wonder how much Ridley Scott drew on Spielberg for his slasher in space, Alien.

Even within individual films, the combination of light and dark notes in the most family-orientated of tales is admirable. See the wrath of God as the Ark is opened in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or the Frankenstein-esque undertones of genetic experimentation in Jurassic Park, and the terror of ageing and death which makes Neverland so appealing. Then think of “we’re gonna need a bigger boat” after the shark finally appears in Jaws, or of E.T., being drawn to a child dressed as an alien from the Star Wars trilogy. Those different elements are melded together seamlessly into powerfully affective cinema that stays with audiences of all ages long after they’ve left the multiplex.

I could write an entire article on the deeper aspects of Spielberg’s work – leave a comment below about the significance of childhood, light the blue touch paper and run – but any fan will say that what really make his films special are the details, the stand-out moments that everyone remembers. A crony targets Indiana with complicated sword gymnastics in Raiders of the Lost Ark: sighing, he pulls out a gun and shoots him. Empire of the Sun’s Jim, having lost everything he has ever loved, touches the Japanese Zero of which he has always dreamed and sparks fly in the background. Near the end of Jurassic Park, a real tyrannosaurus supplants a skeleton and roars: the banner that falls around it reads “When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth”. These are the grace notes, the dramatic moments which don’t need to be there but have the effect of lifting an entire film. In short, they’re the moments of cinematic magic for which this medium was designed, and Spielberg understands them better than most of his contemporaries. No wonder he’s still one of the most influential creative forces in Hollywood.

Spielberg’s impact is almost as great when it comes to the films that he didn’t direct: he was an uncredited supervising editor on Taxi Driver; executive producer on the Back to the Future series, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Poltergeist, and The Goonies. His producing credits are even more extensive, from Memoirs of a Geisha to Letters from Iwo Jima. He spent five months working on the script for Rain Man. He personally offered a debutant by the name of Sam Mendes a promising script called American Beauty. IMDB counts over two hundred technical credits on a vast array of film and television (who can forget Band of Brothers?), as well as eighty-eight thanks credits, and three hundred and eleven appearances as himself. Cast your eye around the entire entertainment industry: he’s everywhere. Our cultural landscape would look very different without his astonishing contribution.

When he finally finished his degree, Spielberg’s faculty accepted Schindler’s List in place of one of his assignments. That fact sums up his whole career – for nearly forty years, everything he has done has had to be bigger and better than anything else. The critical elite love to accuse him of allowing box office returns to take precedence over cinematic artistry; in truth, it’s too easy to assume that mainstream success nullifies talent. Sometimes it proves founded (I’m looking at you, Michael Bay), but it often amounts to nothing more than snobbery, and Spielberg’s popularity inevitably makes him a prime target.

Spielberg has been quoted as saying that “I believe in showmanship”, and that’s certainly borne out by his career. Asked in an interview if he was ever torn between making commercial and artistic films, he said “All the time, but when you have a story that is very commercial and simple, you have to find the art. You have to take the other elements of the film and make them as good as possible, and doing that will uplift the film.” Admittedly, his resume is not flawless, but his ability to do exactly that – find the art in a crowd-pleasing story, providing those magical moments for which audiences have been going to the movies since they began – is what I believe justifies his place among the world’s great directors.

The Bubble Television: The End of Torchwood?

Originally published in The Bubble Television, September 18th 2011, available here.

When Queen Victoria set up the Torchwood Institute following a nasty encounter with a werewolf and a Timelord, it’s highly unlikely that she foresaw what it, or the series which followed its agents, would become. To many, despite its mixed critical reception, Torchwood became the supposedly “grown-up” counterpart to Dr Who, with all the violence and swearing that the latter couldn’t show and darker, often shocking storylines. To me, it was that show that I always intended to watch, but was always on at the same time as something else. It was only with the excellent (but equally divisive) 2009 mini-series Children of Earth that I was finally converted: it’s rare that a writer has the balls to have their hero sacrifice his own young grandson, and Torchwood was a glowing example of what British sci-fi could be.

That said, I was slightly apprehensive when series four, Miracle Day, was announced, mostly because of the additional funding from American premium network Starz. After all, you should never trust a company that thinks a plural should end with a “z”. Worse, as with the current series of Dr Who, fans feared that the need to appeal to US audiences would detract from the inherent Britishness (or Welshness) which made previous series so unique. It has to be said, though, that the alternative was to have no Torchwood at all, and I for one am very glad of the decision that was made.

Miracle Day was a fascinating concept: death, the only certainty in the world, is removed, and the goalposts of life suddenly shift. Religions collapse, while new ones are formed; welfare systems and economies crumble as the population soars; the human race stoops to unprecedented depths. In exploring these avenues, it excelled. Where it failed, I would argue, was in forging a narrative which brought them together into a satisfying whole. As the final episode ended this week, I couldn’t help but feel that ten weeks of emotional investment and sacrificed Thursday nights had gone to waste.

Until about episode seven (‘Immortal Sins’), I sang the praises of this series. It portrays a race trying and failing to adjust to a new form of existence, where the justice system falls into chaos because murder cannot exist, and healthcare is stretched until people must be treated like cattle to be treated at all. Eventually, bureaucracy categorises people according to exactly how alive they are, until “overflow camps”, a conveniently sterile term for concentration camps, are established to incinerate those who should have died. It’s harrowing, and the Holocaust analogies are difficult to miss, but most disturbing is the logic with which horror follows horror until the world learns what goes on in the camps – and accepts it as a necessity. I actually understood how humanity had reached that point, and Torchwood forced its viewers to confront the dark side of human nature in ways that few other shows could get away with, much less at 9pm on BBC One.

Against the backdrop of the decline of civilisation it takes sharply drawn characters to hold any attention at all, but Miracle Day managed that too: Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) has turned into what can only be described as ‘a total bad-ass’ over the past couple of series, and alongside Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) she holds the entire series together. In keeping with the decay of humanity, however, the friends find themselves in positions they could never have predicted. In an impressive character piece, Gwen kidnaps Jack as a ransom for her family; out comes all of her bitterness, self-loathing and resentment, met by his cocktail of guilt, self-loathing and self-preservation. Ultimately, though, it’s Myles’ party: Gwen’s hard edges protect the core of a wife and mother, and the fact that her willingness to kill doesn’t make her a monster to us is remarkable.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, this would have been my summary of the whole series. Fantastic performances and quality writing, setting very personal drama in the context of apocalyptic chaos; friendships, love stories (including a touching homosexual relationship between Jack and his Depression-era lover Angelo), family tensions and politics in the foreground of a landscape of universal suffering. But things changed as the final few episodes brought the various plot threads together – or rather, didn’t.

We know that there is a huge chasm called The Blessing going through the core of the earth from Shanghai to Buenos Aires, which somehow calibrates the life spans of humans. We know that Jack’s immortal blood was fed to it by the mysterious Families who ‘bought’ him decades ago, making humans immortal. What we don’t know is how it works, why it’s there or what the Families are actually trying to achieve, which are all pretty major questions. What exactly are they planning to do when they’ve gained control of the planet?

And what about Oswald Danes? Bill Pullman has pulled out one of his finest performances as convicted murderer and all-round nasty piece of work Danes, who survives his lethal injection and becomes a bizarre poster-boy for the redemptive power of the Miracle. Jack becomes obsessed with tracking him down, is convinced that he is somehow at the centre of everything… and in the final episode, he turns him into a suicide bomber. His death is finally voluntary, but it comes at a point where it’s lost amongst the action and means very little. In fact, if his entire character was removed from the plot it would still hold together perfectly well, which leaves him as nothing but wasted potential.

Critics have thrown many complaints at this series, but most of them matter very little. I don’t care that there are no aliens involved: to say that sci-fi needs to be extra-terrestrial is just plain wrong. It makes no difference whatsoever that it doesn’t cohere with events in Dr Who. More serious are the loose ends which are never tied up. I don’t know what would constitute a worthy conclusion to a drama on such a massive scale, but it isn’t what we were given – and this was only exacerbated by the potential for a sequel suggested in the final scenes. Nevertheless, until its disappointing resolution, Torchwood was an absorbing study of a race in crisis, and by far the best thing I’ve seen all summer.

The Bubble Columns: Lego in Space

Originally published in The Bubble Columns on August 18 2011, available here.

Once again it’s been a while, readers. I’m hoping that over these summer months, when you really should be outside or doing as little as possible, your patience will extend to another odyssey through the more unusual side of world events. In fact, this article may be more summery than the weather wherever you are – after all, the Sun always shines in outer space.

Forty-two years ago, the sight of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon changed the world forever (right, conspiracy theorists?), and ever since, countless children have dreamed of following suit, myself included. Of course, for a brief period in between my time as the sixth member of the Spice Girls and digging up dinosaurs I was destined to travel at warp speed and talk to little green men, boldly going where no man had gone before. Gargarin, Armstrong, Kirk, Skywalker, Parkin. Alas, life hasn’t quite panned out the way I envisioned – I haven’t even found a pterodactyl under Palace Green yet – but it turns out that another relic from my childhood is finally living out my dream: NASA’s latest flight crew are made from Lego.

The spacecraft Juno launched on Thursday, beginning a five-year journey to discover the origins and development of Jupiter. It carries no human crew, but does contain Lego figurines of the Roman gods Juno and Jupiter as well as Galileo Galilei, the Italian Renaissance scientist who made several of the earliest discoveries about the planet. Carrying his telescope and rocking an impressive beard alongside his deified friends, Galileo is one of many Lego characters produced by the partnership between The Lego Group and NASA which began last November.

The two organisations are working together under a three-year Space Act Agreement to undertake educational and public outreach projects aimed at increasing participation in engineering, science, technology and mathematics under the title of “Building and Exploring Our Future”. As a result, this year’s Lego City line includes four NASA-inspired sets including educational materials, while the space shuttle Discovery carried a commemorative Lego shuttle on its November flight. NASA also sent special Lego sets to the International Space Station in February to be assembled by astronauts as well as earth-bound students and children. Sadly, the Pirates of the Caribbean play sets were out of stock.

It’s the kind of partnership which makes total sense. The Administration has had a rough time of late. The Space Shuttle Atlantis landed for the final time in July, marking the end of a thirty year era for the shuttle programme and making way for an age of commercial space flight. Controversial budget cuts have threatened the scope of its research. NASA has to demonstrate value for money in years to come, continuing to deliver the benefits to mankind for which it was established; consequently, the education and public outreach projects which go along with its missions are becoming more important than ever before. A generation of future voters and politicians fascinated by space exploration can’t harm its chances of survival either.

Meanwhile, Lego is the perfect choice. Space, the final frontier, is full of the unknown and a perfect canvas for the imagination, while Lego is designed to encourage creativity. However, the process of realising a design from the imagination teaches principles of engineering which NASA uses every day to build crafts like Juno and the upcoming two-craft lunar mission GRAIL. It may make little sense to lock plastic people into a scientific instrument in which they are unlikely to be seen again, but it’s encouraging to think that there may be children around in 2016 still following the mission in the hope that Galileo and the gods reach their destination. We can only hope that Toy Story 4 will feature their wild parties as they dance around the magnetometers.

As Douglas Adams once told us, “space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.” It’s staggering to think of how much is out there, waiting to be discovered. We’ve barely scratched the surface of this universe – and is it really the only one? – so here’s hoping Lego inspires a generation to finally build me that Starship Enterprise.

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.