Superhero movies are Not My Thing. And it is probably fair to say that the superhero I have the least patience with is Batman. Nor am I a particular fan of the work of Tim Burton. Why is it, then, that not only can I say I have a favourite superhero movie, but that it’s the second Tim Burton Bat-Feature, Batman Returns (1992)? That? The one that is so very Tim Burton, and a Superhero Christmas Movie to boot?
I guess recent news in the UK reminded me of this.
In John Christopher’s Tripods trilogy, beginning in 1967 with The White Mountains and serialised incompletely by the BBC in 1984 and 1985, the earth has been enslaved by an alien race who pilot three-legged war machines; it’s similar if not exactly the same as “what if War of the Worlds, only the Martians won?”
Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame.
– Stevenson, “Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case”
Living with duality is something that I think most people do to some extent; we compartmentalise our selves, we communicate in different ways in different contexts. And it’s a survival technique, a thing we do naturally to maintain social discourse and our place in it.
But what if you’re autistic and you don’t know you’re autistic, and these changes of tone and etiquette don’t come naturally to you? This isn’t theoretical. In the house where I spent my childhood, sex and gender weren’t just taboo subjects, they were active subjects of revulsion and shame. I learned about bodily differences embarrassingly late. No positive depictions or discussions of sexuality were tolerated at home; and my mother particularly responded to scenes of people enjoying the act of kissing or canoodling with disgust and revulsion.
(Footnote: I clearly remember the moment of the first same-sex kiss on British TV, between Colin and Guido on the episode of Eastenders broadcast 24th January 1989. I remember my parents’ seething outrage at it, having known in advance from the newspaper that this would be the episode where that happened, and having made absolutely sure that they tuned in and did not miss it.)
The result of it was that very early on I developed a private imaginary space where I could escape the constant surveillance under which I was kept. And actually, my imaginary scenes weren’t really anything to be ashamed of – they certainly weren’t the twisted evil I was scared that everyone would think they were, and in later life I’ve actually become proud of the unique and odd fantasy world I made, and I have even used it in my work. But it didn’t matter. An internal Demiurge in my brain had brought into existence a fantastical world where my sexuality and imagination lived, separate from the world I presented to those about me, and the result was that I fractured.
Warning for #metoo stuff (you know what I am talking about). And many spoilers.
If it seems sacreligious not only to segue directly from the arguable masterpiece of one of the greatest (and reportedly nicest) American directors to a low budget indie horror but also to write quite a bit more about that low-budget indie horror, well, there are loads of words about the masterpiece movie, and better ones than mine. This one? Not so many.
Mulholland Drive’s most interesting (for me) contributions to identity horror as an idea are predicated on how dreams of fame sour a person, destroy them. Betty in Lynch’s film is perfect starry-eyed ingenue, until she isn’t, and she is in fact interchangeable with the lost, bitter, missed-her-shot Diane. Betty is a dream of a dreamer; Diane is one for whom those dreams have soured into a nightmare of regret.
“Culture keeps us alive.” I keep saying that. It's one of my saws, a truism that I live by. But as all truisms, it exists in an indeterminate state between universal truth and comforting lie, because while culture does, I think, keep us alive, it can also destroy us. Art is dangerous, precisely because it has such an elemental power to illuminate and transform who we are. And when we make art, when we practise art, it can liberate us, but we can also become lost in it. Art could be described just as easily as a parasite. It keeps us alive in order to feed from us. Art is an infestation.
(Spoilers, discussion of content that may distress.)
Ren
I was on the phone not so very long before writing this with an old friend who, like me, struggles with mental health problems, and my friend said something – and I cannot remember his exact words, or how it came up – to the effect that I should seek that feeling of affirmation that comes when somebody speaks your name. I had a weird sort of epiphany then. I have never considered myself to have a name as such, and hearing the placeholder designation on my birth certificate uttered produces, normally, only a sense that something is wrong. My friend’s statement, then, inspired the realisation that not only do people exist whose names mean something to them, but that these people are somehow in the majority.
The setup for Anthony Scott Burns’ Canadian hauntological piece Come True is pretty dense, and it's a credit to its director that it doesn’t feel like it is, that the opening act feels measured and leisurely, and that the strangeness of the protagonist’s situation is anchored by a sense of normality, a sense that her experiences and behaviours are logical extensions of where she is, and because of that, her odd situation does not feel so odd.
The second time I watched The Woman, I had to take a break twenty minutes from the end. I knew what was coming. It was too much. To say this is a hard film to watch is one of the most basic and obvious things to say about it. But it has that genuinely unusual distinction of being harder to watch on subsequent viewings, because it is one of those films where knowing what is to come makes things that much harder to bear.
Vivarium, then. I suppose I should start with the plot, which is simple enough. A young couple, primary school teacher Gemma (Imogen Poots) and landscaper Tom (Jesse Eisenberg), are thinking of moving in together. There is pressure upon them to get on the property ladder. They go to an estate agent. The man working there, Martin (Jonathan Aris) is stilted and a bit creepy, but they nonetheless agree to see a house. He takes them to Yonder, a labyrinthine suburban estate full of identical detached houses. While they're looking around number 9, unimpressed, Martin vanishes. And they find that no matter where they drive to, they are still at the door of number 9.
I am going to give away all the plot developments in the Russian torturefest that is Sleepless Beauty (the original title, Я не сплю, translates as “I am not sleeping”). This is because everything that's interesting in the movie – and there’s quite a lot that’s interesting – is rear-loaded, and depends upon you having seen it. Also, there isn’t a whole lot of plot to give away. But in giving away what there is of the film’s plot, I rob you of having any reason to see it. Do you want to see it? That’s a question that inspires an inhalation through gritted teeth, really. My gut says “probably not”. The same goes to a slightly lesser extent for its 2015 predecessor III. You’ve been warned.
The funny thing about characters coded as neurodiverse and called “weird” is that often the films in which they appear try to give us reasons why they are like this.
(By the way. SPOILERS. ALL OF THEM)
But when all life gives you is a starchy tuber ripened beyond the point of being edible, you might as well cut it into a potato print and make something, I suppose.
I hope at least that some of this excruciating and perhaps negligibly relevant personal disclosure does put into perspective why I am writing about identity horror. And also, why writing about it has proven so elemental for me.
One of the subthemes of identity horror as a potentially mapped out genre, I think, is the attraction of monstrousness. Or perhaps, not so much the attraction of it, a sympathy with it, a feeling of mutuality with it, an experience. Of being a monster. Horror often plays upon things we are afraid of, and the best sort plays upon our sadness, too; its catharsis comes from experiencing terror, shock and grief in a controlled, finite form. The specific frustration of being unable to connect is, as I hope you might expect, one of my most profound and consistent sources of fear and grief.
So I wrote another book. That's CULT CINEMA: A Personal Exploration of Sects, Brainwashing and Bad Religion in Film and TV. It's notionally supposed to be available on 26th but Amazon pulled the trigger a little early. You can find it on Amazon on most marketplaces, including:
I'm going to be doing two launch events. On 26th February, I'll be launching the event with a watch party for The Invitation (2015) followed by talk and a live QnA on Zoom, because that's how we do events like this now. And on 25th of March, I'll be promoting it with the Cultural Institute at Swansea University, of which more details to come.
The historical events surrounding the incident of the Loudun Devils have been analysed and fictionalised several times, and while Ken Russell’s version is probably the most notorious for English-speaking film fans, it isn’t all there is. Possibly the most nuanced and interesting version is Polish director Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s classic Mother Joan of the Angels (AKA Matka Joanna od Aniołów, 1961) which might predate The Devils by a good decade but concerns itself with what happens next. Like Russell, Kawalerowicz used a fictionalised account as a portal through which he accessed the story; while Russell worked with Huxley, Kawalerowicz adapted Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz’s novel, also titled Matka Joanna od Aniołów, which, like Huxley, used the historical events of seventeenth century Loudun as an allegory for the present.
They have defined the idea of what being in a cult is, have become pop culture artefacts in their own right. And they have inevitably influenced film and TV, both in the sense of film adaptations of the stories, and in films inspired by them.
But of course, the mythology of these stories isn't the whole deal. We talk about “drinking the Kool-Aid”, we talk about Manson and Waco and what happened in those places, but the stories we know aren't necessarily the truth. To what extent then can fiction really give us an in-road to understanding these real-world tragedies? Should we even attempt to approach them?
In this part of the Cult Cinema lecture series, I’m going to look at how these events have become part of the cultural lexicon and how their transformation from fact into legend has been portrayed on the screen, and what this can tell us about the conditions that make these abuses become part of oour mythology.
The event is going to be conducted via Zoom, as ever, and it is going to be held on Monday 14th September, twice, at 8pm UK time, and 8pm Eastern Time (US/Canada). Although tickets are £10, subscribers to my Patreon, which also gives you access to videos of previous talks and other patron-exclusive content, get in free.
Tickets can also be booked here:
In The Children Act, Emma Thompson plays Mrs Justice Fiona Maye, a judge with a reputation for making decisions on divisive and high profile family cases. At the start of the film she makes the call to allow a hospital to separate a pair of conjoined twins, knowing that one will die rather than both, against the parents' wishes. She is called upon to make a judgement about Adam Henry (Fionn Whitehead), a boy of 17, only a few weeks from adulthood, who is sick in hospital and needs a blood transfusion to live. The boy is a Jehovah’s Witness, and neither he nor his parents wish the procedure. The hospital seeks an injunction to enable them to save the young man’s life. Fiona's marriage is however faltering – her husband (Stanley Tucci) announces he's planning on an affair – and in a lapse of judgement she goes to see Adam in hospital. He turns out to be bright and they connect over a song (her passion, it turns out, is music, and so is his). Of course she makes the judgement to save his life. He survives, turns 18, and begins to pursue her, because he has a crush on her. She rejects him eventually, but because of her own emotional state, does not know how to respond appropriately, and the ending is inevitable, tragic and wholly predictable.
If you've ever walked past the Jehovah's Witness stand, or closed the door on them, ot had a strangely intense conversation with a pair of clean-cut young men with “elder” written on their badges, you know that the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Church of the Latter-Day Saints exist. And they're not alone. What about the Seventh Day Adventists, the Christadelphians and the Exclusive Brethren?
How do you feel about them? And what does cinema tell us about these sometimes secretive, isolated offshoots of Protestant Christianity? Can we gain insight through film?
This week's Zoom seminar is about just that, as I provide an introduction to Christian Sects and look at how they're portrayed in everything from serious dramas to quirky comedies. Find out what The Children Act has in common with Napoleon Dynamite and Son of Rambow.
The talk is as ever going to be held twice, on Monday 17th August, at 8pm UK time and 8pm Eastern Time (US/Canada). Ticket cost is £10, but Backing my Patreon for as little as $1US a month not only gets you a season ticket to all the talks, including this one, but access to videos after the fact, along with all the other benefits.
Sects Education: The Dark-Eyed Stepchildren of Mainstream Religion
