Matthew, a 30 year old with Downs Syndrome, and Moley, his intrepid P.A. whiz whiz whiz, go to the cinema every week together. Today, they discuss Jurassic World.
Moley: Well, this could have been way, way, worse. My main concern was that the film would completely ruin my enjoyable relationship with Likeable Chris Pratt, but fortunately his innate likeability more or less remained intact, so I can continue to watch re-runs of Parks and Rec unencumbered by the annoying slightly embarrassed feeling I now get when I see Kit Harrington in anything.* The basic conceit of the franchise - we probably shouldn't fuck with DNA, especially when such fuckery involves dinosaurs - remains unchanged - but in this iteration The Big Question it addresses itself to is the ethics of the human commodification of animal life. Bryce Dallas Howard plays Clare, the Park's operation manager (oh, oh, oh, for a Jurassic Park managed by Leslie Knope. You wouldn't have to worry about Corporate Interference in a Jurassic Park run by Leslie Knope.) a hardass corporate type, as we can all surmise from her immaculately dyed and untenably pointy Bob. We also know that she works too hard and probably has neglected ovaries because, unlike Likeable Pratt, she doesn't have a suntan and wears Impractical Items, such as shoes, when she's in the office. As Bob relaxes its iron grip on her scalp and also her soul, Clare learns important life lessons such as animals are people too and also don't fuck with Dino DNA. By the end, Bob has softened into a becoming feminine wispiness and Clare practically takes some of her clothes off so then in a completely unrelated turn of events Likeable Pratt thinks she's hot. The film closes with Clare realising that she has underestimated the Importance of Good Old Fashioned Family Values and that she better do some breeding with Likeable Pratt in double quick time, because even though she has been using the excuse of her 'career' or 'interest in Science' as an excuse to avoid UVB rays it's clear that the Biological Science Clock is a-ticking and if she doesn't have children soon she will probably TURN INTO a dinosaur.
Basically, there's a *lot* of annoying gender-essentialist nonsense in this thing, but dinosaurs are cool and Chris Pratt, the kids, and Clare are pretty watcheable. The plot isn't ludicrously involuted, and Colin Trevorro does a pretty good job of maintaining tension throughout, so despite my snottiness above, it's actually a pretty fun thing to see. I will admit that in some of the scenes where Big TechnoDino has interactions with Little TechnoDino I was reminded of the Bear-Pit scene between Baxter the Tiny Dog and The Big Bear with the Unpronounceable Name in Anchorman, which I'm fairly sure was not the intended effect, but this is not an entirely bad thing. In fact, the last 15 minutes of the thing felt as if they were moving towards the kind of kitschy overblown ridiculousness that it should have been trying for all along, so I retain hope for the next in the franchise too, especially if Likeable Pratt doesn't get so Likeable that he accidentally turns into Facebook and stops making films or something. The terrible politics were ignorable for about 70% of the time, and you did get to see an amazing three way fight between a TechnoDino, a T-Rex, and a Giant Shark. It was annoying that throughout the film makes a point of dwelling on the crassness and cruelty of using animals as a form of entertainment (in fact, this was probably the best made and most politically aware part of the film) but then didn't really seem to notice that it was doing exactly the same thing itself, but then how much self-awareness can you realistically expect in a Summer Blockbuster, eh? Sadly, not all movies can be Spy or Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, and seeing as I'm being paid to be there I suppose I shouldn't look a gift TechnoDino in the mouth. All in all: 6/10.
Matthew: A Masterpiece! Especially the scriptwriting and the growling! RAAAAAAAR!
*Spooks is probably the worst film I've seen this year. The only thing I remember hating more was Dumb and Dumber To which might actually be the worst film ever.
Tuesday 16 June 2015
Wednesday 1 April 2015
On Football, Feminism, and Not Giving a Fuck
This post was originally written in summer 2014, but I got self-conscious (cos patriarchy innit) and didn't publish it. Also, the whole Ched Evans shitstorm hadn't reached Peak Silage at that point, and when it did I was a bit reluctant to write about football - even to think about it, frankly. There's a lot more I could say here: about football operating as a self-enclosed masculine fantasy, about watching football with a man who has obvious disabilities, about the form of comradeliness you find playing team sports, about the notion of being 'sportsmanlike' - but they'll have to wait for another time.
I started playing football recently. With some friends, mainly boys, some girls, in a local park. This post is about doing that; about inhabiting what is undoubtedly, even in the world that I move in, the most man-dominated space I've been involved in. I thought that I might write a bit about this, because I've seen a lot recently about other male dominated-environments - hardcore punk, the music scene more generally, antifa groups, the left in general, cycling - but I've not seen anything about football.
So: the first thing I notice is that, with the possible exception of cycling, football is by far the most *visible* world of this kind that I've ever participated in. Unless you and your mates are pretty serious, prepared to spend money, and to commit to playing two or three times a week, you play in a park. In public. You walk down there in your jogging bottoms and your trainers or, if you've got a bit more serious, your football boots. You realise that even though you're a committed feminist, you don't shave your legs, you post about fat-activism on the internet - you can't remember the last time you went outside without thinking about what you looked like. You're thinking about it now. Intently. And you can't shake the feeling, even though you're trying with all your might - that everyone else is too, and not in a good way.
This feeling is quadrupled when you actually start playing. You're not very good. You know that, and so do all your team-mates. Even when you're playing with a group of dudes who largely identify as feminists, who are all delighted that you're playing, who are all rooting for you from start to finish, you know that you're not very good. You're not very good because you didn't spend every lunchtime, or a few afternoons a week, or even once in a while when everyone else was - kicking a ball about to pass the time. It never once, ever in all the years of childhood and adolescence, occurred to you that you could stand in the middle of a field with a football and say 'This is mine. I am playing here.' Not once. So you didn't play, ever, and you didn't learn.
And, miraculously, you learn not to care that much. You learn to stop apologising every time you fumble the ball, every time you make a dud pass, every time you let an open goal go to waste. You start to learn that other people make mistakes too. You learn that running into people doesn't hurt them as much as you worry it will. You learn that being run into doesn't hurt as much as it looks like it would either. You learn that it hurts for a few minutes, and then you stop caring. You learn that when you start to play football, your legs change shape - your thighs are thicker, the calves chunkier, more muscular. You trust that at some point you'll stop caring about that, too. You learn not to care if every fucker walking past the pitch can see how poor your ball skills are.
But you can't help but know that, because you're the only girl on the pitch, it shows. You might not even be the worst player on the pitch (in fact, one of the ways you keep yourself playing is by pushing yourself to not be the worst person on the pitch) but you still know that any mistakes you make show three times as much. Even amongst people who you know full well passionately wished that they didn't. Maybe especially amongst them, because you can feel them willing you to succeed, and maybe because people willing you to succeed makes you worse, not better. You don't know yet if that feeling ever goes away, if you ever do get to a point where you can truly play a game of football and really, genuinely, feel that being a woman doesn't matter. But you really really hope so. And you think more than anything else that the only way that can ever happen - if not for you then at least for your children, if you have any. At least for my cousin, who's nine now and already neurotic about her weight, already neurotic about how her body looks to other people - is to keep fucking doing it. To keep going out there and making yourself visible, and learning not to care, and learning that this stuff is actually really *fun* - and to take those spaces back.
I started playing football recently. With some friends, mainly boys, some girls, in a local park. This post is about doing that; about inhabiting what is undoubtedly, even in the world that I move in, the most man-dominated space I've been involved in. I thought that I might write a bit about this, because I've seen a lot recently about other male dominated-environments - hardcore punk, the music scene more generally, antifa groups, the left in general, cycling - but I've not seen anything about football.
So: the first thing I notice is that, with the possible exception of cycling, football is by far the most *visible* world of this kind that I've ever participated in. Unless you and your mates are pretty serious, prepared to spend money, and to commit to playing two or three times a week, you play in a park. In public. You walk down there in your jogging bottoms and your trainers or, if you've got a bit more serious, your football boots. You realise that even though you're a committed feminist, you don't shave your legs, you post about fat-activism on the internet - you can't remember the last time you went outside without thinking about what you looked like. You're thinking about it now. Intently. And you can't shake the feeling, even though you're trying with all your might - that everyone else is too, and not in a good way.
This feeling is quadrupled when you actually start playing. You're not very good. You know that, and so do all your team-mates. Even when you're playing with a group of dudes who largely identify as feminists, who are all delighted that you're playing, who are all rooting for you from start to finish, you know that you're not very good. You're not very good because you didn't spend every lunchtime, or a few afternoons a week, or even once in a while when everyone else was - kicking a ball about to pass the time. It never once, ever in all the years of childhood and adolescence, occurred to you that you could stand in the middle of a field with a football and say 'This is mine. I am playing here.' Not once. So you didn't play, ever, and you didn't learn.
And, miraculously, you learn not to care that much. You learn to stop apologising every time you fumble the ball, every time you make a dud pass, every time you let an open goal go to waste. You start to learn that other people make mistakes too. You learn that running into people doesn't hurt them as much as you worry it will. You learn that being run into doesn't hurt as much as it looks like it would either. You learn that it hurts for a few minutes, and then you stop caring. You learn that when you start to play football, your legs change shape - your thighs are thicker, the calves chunkier, more muscular. You trust that at some point you'll stop caring about that, too. You learn not to care if every fucker walking past the pitch can see how poor your ball skills are.
But you can't help but know that, because you're the only girl on the pitch, it shows. You might not even be the worst player on the pitch (in fact, one of the ways you keep yourself playing is by pushing yourself to not be the worst person on the pitch) but you still know that any mistakes you make show three times as much. Even amongst people who you know full well passionately wished that they didn't. Maybe especially amongst them, because you can feel them willing you to succeed, and maybe because people willing you to succeed makes you worse, not better. You don't know yet if that feeling ever goes away, if you ever do get to a point where you can truly play a game of football and really, genuinely, feel that being a woman doesn't matter. But you really really hope so. And you think more than anything else that the only way that can ever happen - if not for you then at least for your children, if you have any. At least for my cousin, who's nine now and already neurotic about her weight, already neurotic about how her body looks to other people - is to keep fucking doing it. To keep going out there and making yourself visible, and learning not to care, and learning that this stuff is actually really *fun* - and to take those spaces back.
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