An Antisocial Article: This Was Meant to Be a Film Review
Film: Bringing Up Baby
Context: Suggested in a lecture exploring early cinema
Viewing: Sadly the same as last week.
Last night society crumbled. I witnessed it, the writhing mass of adolescent lust pulsating like some organic, symbiotic machine. The string that puppeteers the monster, broken noises. And there has never, ever been something so broken as the noise I heard last night. It was the modern equivalent of a bomb siren. The signal to end the civil existence we once knew. The Ghostbusters Theme Tune. With Oppa Gangnam Style dubbed over it.
I think it symbolises what I once believed to be the beneficial evolution of man into robot, into media. Just pure being. Just being. Like a living internet. But no, it is horrendously boring ‘just being’. Imagine how Facebook feels. Fuck, just looking at it is terrifyingly numbing. Forcibly listening to the dull men on the street, duller than them because everyone is utterly equal. It’s like listening to the street itself.
I’ve always considered communism, when approached and handled correctly, in an ideal world, to be the ultimate solution. We never needed art, all it served was to make us not feel like the animals we are. Fiction is a lie yet the only truth. But now I think to myself, in an ideal world we’d all be one person. In an ideal world there would be no bad and thusly no good. An ideal world would be no good.
And yet in the long run, the unevolving human is heading towards a technological communism. Everything equal, everything same. Drawing attention to these fictitious 'issues’ make me sound like I’m pretending to be a modern prophet, which is why I have to consistently include this disclaimer; I’m obviously as much to blame as you, as anyone. I’m part of the problem, I’m a person. We cannot stop this, we cannot expect this. It will come like a faint whisper until it is upon us. It will come like a cough in an alleyway. It will come like Ghostbusters dubbed over with Oppa Gangnam Style.
Bringing Up Baby was good by the way.
Can we just pretend the words above their names are actually their names?
Caseless Undetectives: Based on Surreal Events
A lump of paper landed on my chest. I groggily excavated myself from my blanket-nest and took control of my goggling eyes.
“What?” I breezed, in a Satanically low growl.
“We’ve got something.” Said a voice from a corner of the musky room. A thought flitted through my weary brain: are the shadows sentient again? I looked down at the paper lump, sat proud on my chest as if I was some conquered mountain.
“I can see that.” Suddenly light striked from all around me, blaming this formerly darkened scene accompanied with the sound of curtain rails. I looked at the paper-throwing perpetrator; shin-high tan floral cowgirl boots (a pair from, let me assure you, an extensively vast collection), slightly dusty corduroys with a queer smell combination of paprika and sandalwood, and an authentic admirals jacket. I unraveled the paper surprise and found a donut next to a packaged sandwich. The paper was adorned with a kitten’s face. The kitten was called Mr. Migglewin.
“Mr. Migglewin?”
“Absolutely Mr. Migglewin, the Postman hooked us up. We’ve got something.”
“The Postman,” I tsk’d “I hate how they’ve started naming themselves. I came across a dustbin who was literally shouting ‘I’m Cornelius Microwave!’. He chased me down the street, it’s fucking ludicrous out there.” He sat down next to me, giving me little time to swish my legs from his seat.
“Dustbins are notoriously uncreative.” He lazily stated. I looked at his jacket.
“You not wearing your badge?” He looked at his jacket too. We silently pondered the fact.
“No. I was going undercover.” I reached over to the 'bedside’ table beyond a sea of half-drunk pint glasses of water, who seemed to be having quite a quiet merry time, one muttered 'I’m not that drunk’. I clutched a modest badge with 'DIAL’ scrawled onto it and he pinned it to his jacket.
“So are we going?” He said afterwards.
“Do we have to?”
“Yes. it’s our job.”
“We’re self-employed.”
“Nonetheless.”
“Will there be bins out there?”
“More than likely.” I was still hesitant. “You really have to get out, you’re lounge-filth. Get dressed, eat that donut and we’ll go.”
“Hang on,” I reasoned, sliding on the poncho of Mapuche cacique Lloncon, “I have to ask the washing machine for my clothes back. I reached past the pint glasses who were now orderly discussing whether 'Trevor’, filled with water perfectly to the middle, was half-empty or half-full, and clasped a badge. It said 'TUBBS’.