All good things come to an end some day, even undergraduate study. Around this time of year, a certain anxiety begins to nag at the minds of many third years: what to do with life after university.
If you’re keen to continue into postgraduate education, or you’re not sure what you want to do but you’d like to explore all of the options available to you come along to the Postgraduate Study Fair 2017.
The informal, drop in event will take place on Wednesday 22nd February 4 – 7pm and its open to current students and the wider public. The venue for the event is Quad South Hall / Foyer and surrounding break out rooms.
Campus tours by student ambassadors will be available throughout the evening, as will members of admissions, support and finance teams for attendants who may have these types of questions.
Having previously written on Wall-E and sexuality for my assignment in the Contemporary Literature module last year, I had prepared myself for the barren wasteland of relevant research that would greet me in writing my Imaginary Worlds research proposal on AI and sex. After a quick Google, I discovered I had miscalculated the world’s interest in sex and robots massively. It turns out just about everyone is either terrified, or terrifyingly horny.
Science Fiction is populated with “sexy” robots we think little of. But why can we acceptably be sexually attracted to robots? Usually, because their metal scaffolding is hidden beneath the flesh of a pretty celebrity. See Michael Fassbender (Prometheus) or Kristanna Loken (Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines). In video games AIs are often presented in sexualised human forms, too. Need proof? Ask Cortana to show you other Cortana. You know, the pretty one from the Halo games. Trust me, she looks slightly more explicit than your laptop mic.
Cortana, from the Halo games franchise
I find the sexualisation of AIs a bit uncomfortable, despite their fictionality. This is mainly because it is difficult to tell whether the desire to have sex with an AI is repugnant, or is as meaningless as buying certain products from Anne Summers.
Realdoll AI Prototype (Source: The Telegraph)
Notably, Realdoll are working on incorporating AI in their hyper-realistic sex dolls. Their founder, Matt McMullen, has stated that ‘It’s far more than sexual entertainment. People really zero in on, “Oh, you’re making a sex robot.” I’d say we’re making a robot that can have sex.’ Given the prerequisites of programming required for a robot to perform intercourse, I’d argue that there is surely little difference.
The Realdoll AI Prototype without its ‘skin’ (Telegraph)
People seem to feel more comfortable with the idea of having sex with a machine if it isn’t sentient – but I still wouldn’t make out with a glorified toaster, even if it did have Scarlett Johansson’s face. I know for a fact that the toaster also doesn’t want to make out with me – it’s more into Hovis and Warburtons.
But let’s say we provide the toaster with sexual faucets and desires, as is bizarrely the case with the AIs in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina. Now does it want to make out with you? The short answer: No. It is likely that the toaster wants nothing at all. Although it may be wired to warm you up as well as bread, it still has no desire – only functionality.
What will this do to the human mind? When Realdolls come walking and talking their way into Argos, will we do away with the (already fairly disconnected) hookup apps like tinder and grindr? Perhaps we will avoid intimacy between humans altogether.
Mark 1 Scarlett Johansson lookalike robot
Whilst this may do wonders for overpopulation and the spread of STIs, it may encourage some strange mindset changes. If dangerous kinks, such as the likes of violent Chemsex (cn: abuse), can be performed on a robot without ethical implications, will they become a normalised pattern of human behavior? Since robots, as Bryson states, are first and foremost ‘slaves’, does this mean that non-consensual sex with them is acceptable? In the world as we know it, non-consensual sex with a person results in imprisonment for the culprit, and years of mental recovery and fear for the victim. In the world to come, non-consensual sex with a robot could result in nothing but a trip to the AI repair shop.
The future is always a daunting thought. But retrospectively, consider the amusing convenience of the USB ports written into Independence Day’s spaceships, and the Floppy Disks that upload Karate to Keanu Reeves’ strange mind in the Matrix. I wouldn’t be surprised if our current science fiction becomes somewhat laughable in the future. But it is hard to decipher whether we will laugh because of our preoccupation with sex, or look back and laugh at our outdated, clunky prototypes compared to our brand new ISex7s. As Rainbird chairman James Duez suggests, the ‘most progressive tech companies accept that if a bot is doing its job properly then there is no need to sell it as a blonde, smiling woman’.
Whilst researching I discovered a quotation from Angela Carter’s short story, ‘The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman’ (1986), The story intriguingly dissects gender in a brothel peopled by “female” automata:
‘They had been reduced by the rigorous discipline of their vocation to the undifferentiated essence of the idea of female. This ideational femaleness took amazingly different shapes though its nature was not that of Woman.’
Here, Carter suggests that it is the ‘vocation’ of these automata that enables them to be categorized in the female gender role. A vocation, in this case, concerned predominantly with sexualisation.
To model machinery designed for household chores and sex on women is hardly revolutionary. How far can we truly progress whilst it is the sex market that is at the forefront technological advancement? If, as The Young Turk’s Cenk Uygur suggests, the strive for sex-bots is ‘the most unstoppable force in human history’, what does this say about humanity?
I would like to end this post another of many questions. In the year 3000, will your great, great, great-granddaughter be pretty fine? Or non-existent, since no one wants the baggage of intercourse with something that has opinions and non-programmed thought?
If you want to read more about creepy robots, check out these articles:
Our business is representation. Whether we be literary scholars, films scholars or creative writers, our business is always representation. Events happen, ideals or anxieties emerge, they get represented, and then we study (or create) the representation. First comes reality, then comes representation. Of course, if you’re half-way through a degree in English, Media or Creative writing you already know that it is never really that easy.
Thinking like this assumes that there exists a dichotomy between reality and representation, between fiction and non-fiction, between the real and the hyper-real. We should always be sceptical of any apparent binary and of this one in particular. One cause for scepticism is that it presumes a chain of influence that only goes one way: something happens and people write about it. Real world stuff becomes fictional stuff. Science becomes science fiction. But what happens when fiction starts to inform reality? What happens when what we imagine informs our lived experience? What happens when science-fiction has an impact on science? Nowhere is there a better example of that, I don’t think, than in robotics.
This was the opening premise of a lecture that I gave earlier this week on ‘2EN440: Imaginary Worlds’, a second-year optional module about science fiction. The module is taken by students on the English, Media and Creative Writing programmes who this week were reading Villiers de L’isle-Adam’s The Future Eve (1886) and watching Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015).
Over the course of the lecture I referred to an awful lot of films and TV shows (even for me!). Subsequently a few students have asked me to recap everything I recommended, so I’ve written the list up at the bottom of this post.
Before starting your way down the list (make sure you have provisions to hand, it may take some time) let me just give you some context for these suggestions, just in case you didn’t see the lecture itself.
During the lecture, I sought to foreground the peculiar relationship between the fictional robots that saturate our popular culture and the actual robotics industry. After familiarising ourselves with the ‘pop culture’ robot in the form of the Forbidden Planet’s famous Robbie we considered the frustrated perspective of roboticist Joanna Bryson. In her controversial essay ‘Robots Should be Slaves’ Bryson argues that the robotics industry is inhibited by the misguided notion that robots are owed some sort of ethical obligation, a misconception that she blames on science fiction.
Robby the Robot
The representation of the robot as slave has been there from the very beginning. Karel Capek’s play R.U.R (1921), which stands for ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’, is often acknowledged as the first popular use of the word ‘robot’ in the sense that we recognise it today, and here it is the Czech word for ‘slave.’ The play essentially stages a slave uprising, with factory robots rebelling against their human masters. Elsewhere literary scholar Gregory Hampton has successfully foregrounded the similarities between American Slave narratives and common robot narratives, a point rendered startlingly overt when comparing a text like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) with Issac Assimov’s Positronic Man (1992), later adapted into the movie The Bicentennial Man (1999).
Hampton finds such treatments of the robot (both inside and outside of fiction) profoundly disturbing. When a relationship is recognisably one of master/slave, regardless of whether the slave is human or robot, born or formed, physical or fictional, there will be harmful psychological side-effects. Hampton stresses that it doesn’t really matter if robots have feelings or not, the question is: how will engaging with robots change us, and what we consider acceptable behavior?
Does it make sense to say Boston Dynamics ‘bullied’ their robot Atlas?
In both of the texts studied by Imaginary Worlds students this week, The Future Eve and Ex Machina, this question is explored through the treatment of robots who are clearly coded as female. In fact, it is central to a series of questions raised by a huge range of science fiction texts interested in what it means to have sex with ‘female’ robots. Can you truly have sex with a robot? Where do you draw the lines of consent? How must you think of robots to want to have sex with them? And, what are the psychological effects on the participating human?
We get a disturbing contemplation of this in Ex Machina, as Domhall Gleeson’s Caleb Smith slowly discovers what Nathan Bateman has been doing with all of the robots on his island, becoming increasingly sadistic in his behaviours as he goes from having sex with the robots to torturing them, only to eventually be killed by the robot Ava in an act that lends itself very openly to a reading in which she is taking cathartic revenge on her depraved abuser. And, just like that, we’re back to slavery again: the common narrative of the megalomaniac slave master who, drunk on the power he holds over other subservient humans, becomes increasingly cruel, killing and raping his own slaves in an overflow of nihilistic and hedonistic violence.
So, what can we take from this? Well, first the idea that when it comes to robotics, for better or worse, the representation can clearly be seen to dictate the reality. Perhaps the most important question is not about whether people should or shouldn’t treat robots badly but about why it is that people feel compelled to treat them badly.
And second, you can take from it the a hugely ambitious list of things to watch, detailed below.
Further Reading
Gregory Hampton, Imagining Slaves and Robots in Literature, Film and Popular Culture (2015)
Joanna Bryson, Robots should be slaves, IN: Close engagements with artificial companions (2010)
Watch list (in the order that they appeared in the lecture)
Film
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, dir. by Garth Jennings (2005)
Prometheus, dir. by Ridley Scott (2012)
Robocop, dir. by Paul Verhoeven (1987)
Short Circuit, dir. by John Badham (1986)
I, Robot, dir. by Alex Proyas (2004)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, dir. by J. J. Abrams (2015)
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, dir. by George Lucas (1977)
Wall-E, dir. by Andrew Stanton (2008)
Transformers, dir. by Michael Bay (2007)
Interstellar, dir. by Christopher Nolan (2014)
The Black Hole, dir. by Gary Nelson (1979)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence, dir. by Steven Spielberg (2001)
Lost in Space, dir. by Stephen Hopkins (1998)
Aliens, dir. by James Cameron (1986)
Alien, dir. by Ridley Scott (1979)
The Day the Earth Stood Still, dir. by Robert Wise (1951)
The Terminator, dir. by James Cameron (1984)
Terminator 2: Judgement Day, dir. by James Cameron (1991)
The Forbidden Planet, dir. by Fred Wilcox (1956)
The Bicentennial Man, dir. by Chris Columbus (1999)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Terminator: Salvation, dir. by McG (2009)
Metropolis, dir. by Fritz Lang (1927)
Austen Powers, dir. by Jay Roach (1997)
Blade Runner, dir. by Ridley Scott (1982)
Ex Machina, dir. by Alex Garland (2014)
Weird Science, dir. by John Hughes (1985)
The Matrix, dir. by Lana and Lily Wachowski (1999)
Ghost in the Shell, dir. by Mamoru Oshii (1995)
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, dir. by Kenji Kawai (2004)
Ghost in the Shell, dir. by Rupert Sanders (2017)
TV
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1981)
Futurama (1999-2013)
Red Dwarf (1988-)
Doctor Who (1952-)
Lost in Space (1965-68)
Humans (2015-)
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-1981)
Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009)
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994)
Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001)
Westworld (2016-)
Kraftwerk: representing the robot community since 1978. Fair use, Link
After managing to swipe the last tickets to see ‘Arrival’ with the Imaginary Worlds module, I was stoked to see some sci-fi that wasn’t a reboot (and for free, too!). Having only seen 30-second trailers for the film, I’d assumed it would follow your average ‘defeat the evil aliens!’ storyline. So I was pleasantly surprised to find out that ‘Arrival’ focused on communication and language, rather than big guns and all-out war.
The film opens with a voiceover by the protagonist, Dr Louise Bank’s (Amy Adams), in which she considers where her daughter’s story really begins. Usually I’m a bit adverse to voiceovers. But by the end of Arrival, it is clear that these are the glue that holds the cyclical narrative together. Louise’s stream of consciousness is the key to understanding a complex narrative, revolving around bootstrap paradoxes and communication barriers.
Louise’s character is certainly well developed. She is such a talented linguist that she is asked by the military to visit a spacecraft, or ‘shell’, within two days of its sudden appearance. Two days, it’s worth noting, in which she continues to attend university to give lectures to empty classrooms. Of course, she’d be damned if giant squids from space disrupted her teaching schedule.
It is a shame that Louise is the only female main character – in fact, one of the only female characters present. This causes the film to fail the Bechdel test, a flaw that is also shared by director Villeneuve’s 2015 film, Sicario. Indeed, one of the funniest moments in the film comes when Louise interrupts a trigger-happy soldier with the quip, ‘why do I have to talk to him?’
Ian Donnelly, on the other hand, proves that slapping some glasses on Jeremy Renner is enough to constitute a scientist. Whilst his friendship (and inevitable romantic arc) with Louise is great fun to watch, watching a physicist refuse to do any actual physics is rather concerning. Especially when his primary response to intense gravitational distortion is a mere stumble, without a sign of fascination.
The film shares many elements with the psychological horror ‘The Babadook’, increasingly dependent on dreams, sleep deprivation and hallucination to create a sense of unreliability. These elements are ultimately manifestations of Louise’s mindset adapting to the Heptapod language. A language which is complex, palindromic and resembles tea-rings so much it’s a shame the humans couldn’t introduce them to coasters.
The scenes of communication between the Heptapods, affectionately nicknamed Abbot and Costello, are arguably the best moments of the film. ‘Arrival’ spends majority of its run-time attempting to establish discussion with aliens behind misted glass, pushing back military action all the while. This feels particularly prevalent in our society, which is reluctant to embrace discussion with minorities and refugees, fogging up these issues with misleading media representations and fear of the unknown.
It is hard to deny that the film is gorgeous. Louise’s house is like the Cullen’s, all glass and view. The soundtrack, finely composed by Jóhann Jóhannsson, mixes dread and child-like wonder through acapella acoustics and daunting basslines. The twelve spaceships hovering above the Earth’s surface resemble Airwick’s attempts to make air fresheners in keeping with minimalist decor. Or, if you prefer, very large eggs. There is barely any Michael Bay style explosion flaunting. Yet, where scenes depict changes in gravitational force, and the Heptapods themselves, the film shows a subtle ability to create intriguing visuals with little displays of incongruity.
‘Arrival’ was an intriguing film. I’ve avoided spoiling the ending in this review, because I really believe it’s worth watching for yourself. Although the film did leave me with a lot more questions than answers (which you can see here [spoilers]), perhaps this is the point. After all, isn’t it better to leave the cinema with big, existential questions than none at all?
As part of their recent visit to York St John, RSC actors Alex Waldmann and Pippa Nixon led multiple workshops on Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Hamlet is a tale of madness, love, revenge, death, incestuousness and secrecy. When the king unexpectedly dies, his son the Prince of Denmark finds his destiny drastically altered and his rightful throne occupied by his uncle, Claudius. His father’s spirit returns and reveals his own murder, stoking a fire for revenge in his son that will thrust Hamlet down a twisted path of misery and deception.
After arranging us into a relaxed semi-circle, Nixon began the workshop by breaking down its structure: “We thought it might be useful with this session to maybe share a little bit about our experience of being in Hamlet for a long period of time with the RSC. I played Ophelia and Al played Horatio […] and then maybe we would just do half an hour of looking at the nunnery scene, in a very condensed way, and just go through how we might play with the text in a rehearsal room, which will be a little bit of audience participation. Don’t worry, we’ll get you all up on stage! Does that sound okay?” Heads shot down here with nervous chuckling by all, anxious fidgeting erupting across the room. Waldmann piled in on the gag, quipping: “Too late now, get up lock the door!” The jokes were soothing, and the room was now set to discuss the play with a comfortable determination.
As promised, the duo started by reflecting on their shared relationship with Hamlet. Nixon and Waldmann performed Hamlet with the RSC in 2013, under director David Farr. Nixon offered a detailed description of the setting, along with her own approach, explaining the play was “set in a fencing school. In a very posh house or a school? It was quite difficult to determine where this room was, but it was all set in this one room. I felt quite lucky playing Ophelia in this production, because a lot of actresses want to play her but she is such a difficult part because there are so many missing scenes. Like one minute you see her cut up about Hamlet, and the next minute she’s gone mad, and that’s a massive leap for an actress.” However, no matter where Nixon leaped, she always reached the other side. Ophelia has often been portrayed as something of a slippery snake, and the technicalities of grasping the character seem equally as challenging. It was after all the actor’s responsibility to give the audience something comprehensible to latch onto in the whirlwind madness. This was achieved, according to Nixon, by really interrogating the question, “what does madness mean to us? What does madness mean to us at the time?” Waldmann added firmly that “the most interesting thing in [Hamlet] was Pippa’s version of Ophelia. In real life, people that are mad don’t necessarily think they’re mad. That’s what makes them scary. They think they’re right, and that everyone else is wrong. It’s the certainty thing, Hamlet can never be sure that [his father] is a ghost, and that’s what makes him sane […] What made Pippa’s version of Ophelia really moving is because everyone else was mad because they didn’t understand ‘the owl was a bakers daughter’, but there was a certainty in that I’m going to get married.” This is an unsettling, complicated role reversal. Madness is treated as a power, as a tool that can evolve and conquer. It is a startling prospect, the gaps in Ophelia’s appearances and psychology partially filled in by infesting and tainting the thought processes of others.
Both Nixon and Waldmann were keen to get to the centre of the characters’ mentalities during the workshop. They provided a clear way of unpacking the character’s psychology, by analyzing the “nunnery” scene. In the play, this scene comes shortly after the famous ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy. After plucking up our courage to engage with two esteemed acting veterans, we slowly gained traction in creating a sizable list of potential character actions. Nixon elaborated that this process was called: “actioning […] and you would do this on each line or each thought, but we thought we would do it just for the overall peice right now. An action is like a verb, a doing word, of something that I would be doing to Al as Ophelia, as Ophelia what would I be doing to Hamlet. Maybe I would be imploring, or maybe I would be seducing, or humiliating. So we thought maybe we could bounce some ideas of each other.” There is a huge range of options and avenues to explore here, and it is easy to see how Shakespeare becomes so adaptable when this exercise is engaged with properly. Many of the actions we interpreted in the scene sometimes contradicted with another, but such contradictions can in turn spark further variations of Hamlet. Waldmann confirmed this, describing how “we’re using the same words, but depending on what action you play, it can completely change the way those words come alive. When you see boring Shakespeare, you just see a lot of people standing on stage trying to make it sound nice. And when you see good acting, or good Shakespeare – I’m talking to you now because we want to excite you and educate you and inspire you, I’m not just talking for the sake of it. I want my words to change you in some way. And the same way in any scene in any play, people and the characters are talking to each other because they’re saying ‘I need you to understand this about me. I was hungover too, I was drunk last night as well.'”
Following that poetic description of a dialogue, it was time to get stuck in! As a group, we brainstormed many variations of Hamlet and Ophelia’s actions during the infamous nunnery scene. Waldmann and Nixon patiently explored a few different variations, explaining that “what Ophelia is feeling is less important than what she is trying to do. Often in life we cover up what we’re really feeling to try and win the argument.” From that moment, our list of actions and reactions grew exponentially. For Hamlet to Ophelia: to humiliate, seduce, reject, punish, to implore. From Ophelia’s actions to Hamlet: to manipulate, provoke, irritate, degrade and to mock. Nixon then explained the interconnections of each action and how they feed into one another: “You guys will choose one now for both of us to play, and it might be like, mine might be to manipulate, but within manipulation I might have a moment of seducing or blocking. There are different actions within that main action.” In a special one-time treat for the group, or what Waldmann described as their catchy “world premiere of Hamlet provoking Ophelia humiliating”, Nixon and Waldmann began to act out our choices. Waldmann was to be Ophelia and Nixon to assume the role of Hamlet for the first round. However, what followed was near indescribable. They weaved their way through the crowd, poked and prodded each other, grappled on tables, banged on keyboards and erupted with hysterical laughter as they performed the scene, using their physicality to expand the meaning of the language. Their humour was natural and their acting compelling, giving a flavour of how Shakespeare’s text can evolve not only through history, but in the present, precise moment.
Thanks in no small part to Shakespeare: Perspectives tutors Julie Raby and Saffron Walking, Alex Waldmann and Pippa Nixon generously put in time and effort to bolster York St John’s understanding of Shakespeare. This was no ‘tick the box’, run of the mill drop in – they spent time with York St John because they care about the material and they care about how it is comprehended. That passion and level of commitment is wonderfully infectious, enriching York St John’s enjoyment of Shakespeare.
Shakespeare’s words have stayed with many throughout their lifetime. In the case of Alex Waldmann and Pippa Nixon, theirs will also stay with us long throughout our own.
Hot on the heels from multiple RSC visitors, two of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s most decorated actors Alex Waldmann and Pippa Nixon paid a valuable visit at York St John to unpack the evolution of Shakespeare’s King John and the true meaning of theatre.
Waldmann and Nixon met during the 2012 RSC production of King John at Stratford-upon-Avon’s Swan Theatre, directed by the magnificent Maria Aberg. The RSC’s plug for the play is that: “King John explores inheritance and illegitimacy and the subsequent political deals and struggle for power. It is one of Shakespeare’s least performed plays.” In retrieving the play from this obscurity, Waldmann starred as King John whilst Nixon performed as The Bastard, the two central characters.
Waldmann, Nixon and the rest of the company created their production from an enthusiastic foundation. Nixon found rehearsals compelling from the start, stating that the “rehearsal room was one of the most creative and brave spaces that I’ve certainly ever been involved in. That play [King John] was a big risk.” Risks and challenges are vital terms frequently found in an actor’s vocabulary, and it is the sense of risk that keeps a play feeling rejuvenated and fresh. After all, if Shakespeare himself was ‘creative’ and ‘brave’ in the writing of his work, then surely the best way to honour this is by following suit. Rather than striving to re-create past performances or simply adding another familiar iteration, the company rightly wanted to add another link in a four hundred year-old chain. As King John is rarely performed, the cast’s previous exposure to the text was limited. Waldmann himself readily confessed that, “I didn’t really get the play [King John], it’s one of his [Shakespeare’s] least familiar plays […] it didn’t really make any sense to me”, a shaky start for a lead actor. Nixon similarly added that, “I didn’t know anything about King John. I’d never seen it, never read it.” This is what fueled the creativity of the aforementioned creative rehearsals, putting a face on the unknown. The ingenuity of the company allowed the production to transform from a place of skepticism and mild dissatisfaction to a natural evolution of King John, a fresh creation. Nixon spoke of director Maria Aberg’s own perspective: “she found it quite impenetrable I think, and for her, making The Bastard a female character and having this particular relationship with King John, and conflating Hubert with The Bastard, sort of made sense for her.” This genius change in the character propelled the production into uncharted territory. Distancing their production from preconceived parameters, their King John began to breathe a life of its own. This is something that Waldmann reaffirmed in a moment of realisation: “All of a sudden the play came to life to me, and made sense, and it all felt that it centered around this intense, destructive complex relationship between King John and The Bastard. Whereas in the original play you get to see these two people at the beginning and at the end, and in the middle their relationship disappears. So suddenly the play made sense to me.” Not only did they unearth a sense of a more linear narrative, but the play was rooted deeper in a vividly intelligible exploration of relationships. Both Waldmann and Nixon still rank this piece and their efforts as ones they are extremely proud of, and with very good reason.
Not only were the gender paradigms shifted, but the duo’s approach to Shakespeare’s language was also insightful. Where does language end and the character begin? Do they intersect? Is language always reliable? These are questions which layer any production with depth and complexity. Waldmann explained his observation that: “people get obsessed by the words, but often we say the opposite of what we feel […] the language betrays what we’re really feeling […] you’ve got this template, and it’s about finding a way of bringing those words to life.” Though Shakespeare’s mastery of language is often heralded, it would be fair to say that his language has become an entity of its own. As Shakespeare continues to be adapted, Shakespeare’s words are difficult to comprehend to the uninitiated, and deeper meanings are difficult to discover. To combat this, language must not be a confinement to character, but a sandbox to play in. Pippa Nixon spoke about this in great length, stating, “to have the modern meet the classical is great, because I always found there was a slight veil between speaking ‘it’ and feeling ‘it’ and suddenly with The Bastard, because we did so much detailed work about who these people are, the character starts coming alive so much that the text is just a way to access that character […] And that got brought into As You Like It completely, then Ophelia in Hamlet and then it’s gone on to Ariel in The Tempest. It feels like that work had unlocked something, it unlocked this reverence to Shakespeare’s texts and it’s incredibly elastic, you can stretch it and pull it and throw it across the room.” Shakespeare is often thought to be on an untouchable pedestal; that the only way to understand him is through an enormous supply of ‘highbrow’ intellect. But this is not the case at all: you simply need to be in touch with your humanity.
“people miss the excitement and the danger of the stories”
Shakespeare’s plays are in large part studies on the human condition. Do academic dissections eclipse all the fun? Waldmann seemed to think so to an extent, stating that “people miss the excitement and the danger of the stories” when the mechanics of a text override the thematic essence. Expectations invade the sense of wonder, of spontaneity and creativity that the theatre strives to fuel. Waldmann notes that, when it comes to accessibility, companies are “trying, but part of it is to do with the performance style, where ‘I don’t really understand what you’re saying, and you’re not a human being, so I don’t really care – I’d rather go and watch something modern, a telly programme.'” It seems from here there is only one way to go, and that is to update the tactics of putting on a show. Shakespeare interrogated the sociopolitical climate of his own era, and it is now time to adapt his work to fit within our own understanding of our world. Nixon shared this sentiment, that some Shakespeare productions today are: “not feeling like it’s evolving and going to more exciting spaces and places”, and this presents a ceiling that can only be shattered by the creative industry. After all, as Waldmann concurred, the theatre is not a museum, but an arena of innovation.
Shakespeare is for all, not only to be studied rigorously by select few, but also to serve its most basic, original purpose: to entertain everybody. Waldmann and Nixon carry this torch high and proud, and it pays off in their audience feedback, according to Waldmann. After a Saturday Matinee performance, Waldmann was beckoned over by a heavily tattooed man from Salford. “I was like oh god, this is it, I am gonna get beaten up before tonight’s show. He said he was from Salford and got dragged down [to the play] by his in-laws and had never been to the theatre before. He said, ‘I didn’t really understand what you’re saying all the time, but I fucking loved that’. And it meant more than any peers saying that.”
Through the fundamental decency of Alex Waldmann and Pippa Nixon, the inherent creativity and humanity of the theatre will seldom be forgotten. Shakespeare would surely approve.
I have a task for you. Look back to a moment, or perhaps sit and look sad in the one you’re in, where you have felt stress over a deadline. Reflect on that feeling (or sit and feel sad with it) where you have more work to do than time to do it in. It’s a common predicament. A lot of us find ourselves in it most days. And yet, that irritating presence of worry still looms over us like the grizzly clouds of York in November.
Now, be sure not to get offended; don’t take it personally. But, you see, if you’re not a writer, this post really isn’t for you. Because these deadlines aren’t any old deadlines. They’re not the filing of the end of year paperwork; the re-stacking of Tesco’s shelves before 5pm; or the need to feed the cat, dog and hamster before a night out with friends. These are the kind of deadlines that demand creativity in a temporarily hollow mind that only sees one thing; a blank page. It’s a killer.
So, what’s the cure?
The first crucial step is to turn Netflix off. Completely off. Remove Facebook from your bookmarks bar and rid the room of people who only want to distract you and make sure you never ever (ever) succeed in life. Lock your phone in a bullet proof safe. Shut the door. Lock the windows. Glue your elbows to the table. With extra strong PVA.
There’s no doubt that you’ll have heard all of this before. So, let me tell you the secret ingredient. Motivation. You don’t need to want to do the work but you need to be motivated. This could be inspired by an anticipation of future greatness or simply the promise of a bowl of coco pops when the work is done.
Since we are all writers, unless some of you cheeky few stuck around, we are supposedly holding creative minds that function on inspiration. So, find out what inspires you. Take your creative flare and light it up in the city of York. You live in the city of history and architecture where minds were inspired to create beautiful pieces of art. Take a laptop or notepad and use the surroundings for inspiration. Climb out of bed and sit in one of York’s quirky independent coffee shops and read your set text for the week. Head off to Betty’s and sit amongst an array of tiny sandwiches and teapots classed as ‘cute’. Whatever works. Try it. Become motivated. And watch as that thick grey cloud looming over you is replaced by a carried sense of accomplishment and productivity.
Check the cinema listings and you’d be forgiven for thinking we’re back in the 80’s. Star Wars, Star Trek and Ghost-Busters are all on the big screen and Flash Gordon isn’t far behind. In this context, Netflix Original series Stranger Things looks right at home. In reality, the Duffer Brother’s mini-series is as alien as E.T. Far from the tepid waters of safe-bet remakes and cash-grab sequels, it’s a retreat into the warm bosom of rose-tinted past.
Stranger Things doesn’t jump on the table and rub its 80s credentials in your face. We don’t even see the predictable Rubik’s Cube cameo. It may as well not be the 80s at all, simply ‘a long, long time ago in a galaxy not far away’. What matters is that it’s not now: it’s pre-digital. Like the crackle of a record, there’s comfort to be found in the fuzzy black screen that precedes those synth opening titles. The fiber-optic streaming feels like VHS, and it feels great.
From then on, Stranger Things is laced with nods to its influences. Beginning in the stars, you’re left expecting an Imperial Cruiser to steam through the first shot, leaving a palpable feeling that you’ve seen it all before – and it’s probably because you have. Far from shying away from its predecessors, we spend our time shamelessly cycling away from the “bad men” in radioactive suits, hiding aliens in closets and walks along train tracks (a-la-Stand-By-Me.)
“There are no short cuts and no cheap shots. The roster of characters gradually reveal complexity and depth in dialogue”
Cynically, it seems like the recipe for success: cheap pop-culture shots and familiar plot lines. But that’s in a world where success is measured at the box office and Ice Age 3 comes out on top. Andthis is exactly the world from which Stranger Things seeks to escape: one where consumerism is omnipresent and mobile phones tether us to our stresses, like landlines to the wall. There are no short cuts and no cheap shots. The roster of characters gradually reveal complexity and depth in dialogue, rather than wandering around explaining the plot and shouting “I love Dr Pepper” (See Real Steel and 90210). Nothing is written with target audiences and marketing in mind.
Rubik's Cube: a predictable 80s pop cultural reference
The Duffer Brothers don’t take us to L.A landmarks, but idyllic Indiana suburbs – where garden gnomes go missing and the worst thing to happen was “an owl attacked Eleanor Gillespie because it thought her hair was a nest”. For the charming, carefree (if a little too familiar) gang, it’s home to Dungeons and Dragons, pillow forts and bike rides.
It’s here where the series flourishes, not in the well-rendered monsters, but the formation and interplay of unlikely, yet tender, relationships. For me, the greatest jump came at the fate of misfit Jonathan’scamera, not the faceless ‘Demigorgon’. It’s a world that feels so much simpler than today, but only because they’ve made it so. A time to which we owe so many of today’s horrors, of conflict and greed, the 80s deserves little fetishism. Much like Abraham’s Super 8, Stranger Things is a love letter to a nerdy childhood that just happened to be in the 80s.
The best art comes from love. If you loved the 80s, write that. But we don’t need nostalgia, just because it sells. If we write what sells, those reboots will keep coming. Roll on Ben Hur.
In a riveting discussion mediated by York St. John Senior Lecturer in Drama David Richmond, famed artist Melly Still discussed topics from her time at York St John, to her directorial efforts in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, currently playing at the Barbican Theatre, London.
Melly Still is a director, choreographer and designer. She has been nominated for four Olivier awards and six Tony awards, including best director for both. In a career going from strength to strength, Still has developed productions with The National Theatre, Blind Wall Festival Opera and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her work has been recognized on an international scale, influencing theatrical circles in Europe, America, and Asia. Needless to say, Still ranks among York St John’s top alumna.
Still’s rationale for choosing to study at York St John University in the 1980s was that, “at the time, it was the only place in the UK that I could find that did theatre, fine art and dance – all three.” Retrospectively, this education route seems like an exhausting shocker. After all, it is not uncommon to find single honours undergraduates in the library engaging in various activities; working, reading, sleeping, crying. It would certainly be remarkable if Still aced three subjects at once, but as is true for many undergraduates, it wasn’t always smooth sailing.
Still highlighted many obstacles that came her way during her time at University. She openly admitted that, “I think I displayed lack of confidence by just not giving a damn at the time”, which for the theatrical arts obviously will not fly. In a subject that relies so heavily upon inspiration and creativity, a stunted student will find it difficult to reap the rewards of study and practice. Coupled with a lack of confidence is untapped potential, and that is something Still evidently had much of. Eventually this potential was unleashed, and Still “started to click with some of the work we were doing […] I really loved it at after that, second, third and fourth years. I don’t think I missed anything. Plus I was making work and putting on shows at every opportunity that wasn’t part of the curricular [activities].” It is often said that University is a time to broaden ones prospects, to participate in as much as possible whilst also, creating our own opportunities. Between the endless hours of Netflix and noise, a sense of maturity is eventually unearthed in the first year, and propels each and every student into the productive years that follow. Or at least that’s what we tell ourselves at 3am whilst devouring another episode of Luke Cage.
Nevertheless, Still began harnessing her talent through the three headed beast of a course. She described it as “really fascinating work – I remember a lot of the tutors. There was this kind of, strangely enough at the time, everything was very, very compartmentalized. At the time, theatre practice was theatre practice, art was art, and there was never a between, they would never meet ever. There was a lack of cooperation between departments at the time. Which seemed nuts to a lot of the students.” Of course, this has been clearly rectified now, with York St John University breathing as a whole by sharing trips, societies and a great many lectures. However, where the artist is confined it could only ever lead to rebellion. Still reflects that it: “Seemed mad we weren’t being able to do mad things on rooftops, and things like that. It was quite conservative, but it helped, because it meant we could sort of push against it. It’s quite easy to shock people here, which some how I found quite incentivising at the time.” Creativity is at its most vibrant when demolishing boundaries and offering new perspectives on a great many things, changing thoughts and feelings for the better. Of course, clambering onto somebody’s roof is also a stellar method of inciting change: hopefully we can expect someone to be on the roof of The White House one day soon.
Still’s continuing hard work eventually led her to where she is today, directing rarely performed Shakespearean juggernaut Cymbeline. Whilst she contemplates that “the tutors encouraged us to be quite experimental at the time”, she later stated that her artistic nuance came: “very late in my career, finding my voice. But I certainly felt I really want to work in a narratively driven, choreographic work”. In the case of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Cymbeline, that voice is on a speaker phone. The play’s pitch is hauntingly that “Britain is in crisis. Alienated, insular and on the brink of disaster. Can it be saved?” Reflecting a vast array of contemporary catastrophes (looking at you brexit), the play has arrived at a time in Earth’s history that is more poignant than ever. This is the crux of what Still is trying to communicate, stating that Cymbeline is “completely about isolationism. England was still struggling with its identity, do we become part of a bigger statehood? Lets reach out to our neighbours. They’re not my words, they’re Shakespeare’s. You can’t help but reach out to those parallels.” It is disheartening to consider whether Britain has come a long enough way in 400 years. Now of course, it is not merely England struggling with a contested identity; America, Germany and a great many other places are facing this question too. It is on this that makes Cymbeline truly vital and Shakespeare a timeless writer.
Ultimately, whether shaking things up at York St John or on a global stage, it is unquestionable that Melly Still makes our world immeasurably bigger.
On Wednesday, seminars were quiet – and not just here: my colleagues across the UK shared stories of students in tears, students anxious in ways that permeated discussions; of colleagues unable to teach what had been planned and spending time with their students just listening and talking. The United States is a global superpower and this decision will have impacts beyond their borders – no less than the Brexit vote sent shockwaves in all directions. While we might feel sheltered by distance and difference from the US, we need to take seriously the psychological and emotional effects of the outpouring of vitriol, misogyny, homophobia, racism, xenophobia, and prejudice that marked the presidential campaign and was so carefully and thoroughly reported in UK media. We know, from our own experiences post-Brexit, that political campaigns have cultural effects; that rhetoric used to sway votes can also create an environment that legitimates real violence. University is not separate from the ‘real world’. We are a community brought together for a short time and our borders are permeable: we each bring to this campus our lives, our struggles, our loves; we read literature through all of our experiences. We study the world without ever leaving it.
We stand against that violence.
Dear students: you are beginning, or finishing, or continuing your education in an anxious time. This has always been true but you are new and I would take that anxiety from you, if I could. If you wonder why we demand your best work, why we challenge what is accepted, why we push you beyond your comfort-zone it is because so much of the world asks for only superficial understanding – a sound-bite-click-bait-jingle-commonplace acceptance. Critical thinking breaks the black mirror: literature finds us ‘unexpectedly…living, thinking, acting, and reflecting [in ways that] belong to times and spaces we have never known’. How else, asked Judith Butler in 2013, are we to ‘find ourselves linked with others we have never directly known…to understand that…we share a world?’
Many of us might feel that we no longer recognize the world. And that is without question an anxious state of being. And anxiety produces fear and when we are afraid we forget to be kind. We forget compassion and community. Our world shrinks and we stop looking around us and reaching out for understanding.
Dear students: do not be afraid.
Do not allow fear to silence you. Do not ‘keep calm’. Do not ‘be good’.
Be brave. Listen. Learn. Disagree with each other – with your tutors – with respect and with love. Question what you think you know. Change your mind and change the people around you. We are ethically obligated, continued Butler, to live among those who are different from ourselves, ‘to demand recognition for our histories and our struggles at the same time that we lend that to others’.
Dear students: be kind to each other.
We are here, now. You share a space and time to learn, to think, to take the time you need to look around you and decide what kind of world you will go on to shape. You are all welcome here. You are all precious. We need you all.
The world seems dark and anxious now. But there is a crack, wrote Leonard Cohen (‘Anthem’, 1992), in everything: that’s how the light gets in.
Theatre Mill’s production of Moby Dick is alive as soon as you walk into the Guildhall. My ticket was stamped on the door as I became part of the ‘crew’ and I followed the stewards who, dressed in thick jumpers and boots, asked for my ‘papers’. I was led to the quarterdeck to take my seat, and around me were ladders, ropes, and lanterns hanging from the rafters. Everything including the set was part of the performance, and as an adaptation of a book with such universal themes that spans the entire globe this sense of involvement between the audience and our surroundings was a wonderful addition.
The Guildhall isn’t a traditional theatre space, and despite Graham Kirk’s intricate set design this was able to provide a challenge for some of the actors. “You’ve no idea until an audience is in there, until the whole set’s in there, what’s going to happen,” says Zach Lee, who plays a multitude of roles including Rob, Starbuck, Peleg and Elijah, and was kind enough to chat to me before a performance. “It was only sort of twenty-four hours before we opened where we realised, hang on, there’s an acoustic issue in there.” Yet the setting is so important to the story of Moby Dick that without this design element the significance wouldn’t come across. “To me,” he continues, “that’s magical going in there – I think it’s amazing.”
“Never fail to impress” “Keep up the good work. @theatre_mill is amazing” “Another brilliant production. First but not last time” Thanks! pic.twitter.com/idhsura5uK
But it wasn’t just the set that brought this to life – the actors seamlessly weaved in and out of various voices under Gareth Tudor Price’s wonderful direction, and they each took on more than one role. It sits well next to Melville’s novel considering the complexity of the narrative; one of the things widely explored in the text is the issue of whether Ishmael is a character or narrator, and whether his voice is constant or weaved in between Melville’s himself. The actors were able to shift their identities without the need for extravagant costume changes or set switches, meaning there was always something new to see them do in every scene. Lee noted how this bought a sense of theatricality to the production: “To me it’s more interesting to do it with no props. At the beginning of a play you set a tone – how’s this going to play, going to look? What are we telling you within the first five minutes? We’re talking to you directly, so you’ve got to be involved or have some sort of investment in it or else it just doesn’t work.” This production is unique in its decision to move the story from its original setting in Massachusetts to the ports of Hull. The use of accents gave the whole production a traditional Yorkshire feeling, yet still retaining the American sense of boyish adventure captured in the novel. As a story which touches on themes of good and evil, madness and sanity, and right and wrong, there doesn’t seem to be much that the setting could change about its messages. But Lee draws attention to the importance of universality in the setting. “It only changed the story in reflection that we’re doing the counter pointing of having the Hull trawlers. It’s a story of working class guys trawling – it’s the same here, it’s the same in Iceland, it’s the same strand of society.”
The one thing that struck me the most about this production was their intense focus on the idea of fate and the question of who controls it. It’s a major theme in the novel and I was particularly struck with the way the line “Ahab beware of Ahab” hauntingly lingered on stage long after it was said. The white make-up on the faces of each actor made them look strangely like ghosts, and heightened the sense that each character was tied to their fate by foreshadowing what is to come. Yet despite the ghostly undertones, I was kept enticed by the lively shifts between actors as characters and the movement of their bodies to mirror the sea and the motion of the boat. The music that ran through the production was a lovely addition. “I love playing music,” Lee confessed. “If we’d have had a bit more time we’d have had a bit more music. Playing in a venue like this – this was unique.”
Condensing such a huge, complex was always going to be a challenge, but Nick Lane and John Godber have proved that in can indeed be possible. Whilst still maintaining the adventure and liveliness, it is a story of a man who becomes his own downfall. Seeing the production in such a unique place with such a talented cast is an opportunity you shouldn’t miss.
Moby Dick is on at the Guildhall until 3rd November. Tickets can be purchased through York Theatre Royal.
From Black Panther to Luke Cage, the Comics Reading Group – held at YSJ in the last week of Black History Month – discussed the history and ideas about black characters in Marvel Comics. The initial presentation was an account of the history of black characters in marvel comics as well as some interesting readings of memos and letters specifically about diversity within marvel. While the group talked the atmosphere was friendly and relaxed; the room was full of fans which kept it from seeming like too much of an academic event. Discussion flowed easily after the riveting ice breaker – what superpower would you have? – And led into everyone’s feelings, fears, and even some furies concerning the subject.
It was refreshing to see that everyone had an opinion, as opposed to the awkward silences usually found amongst a group of strangers put on the spot. No matter what experiences of comic books or what racial background people had everyone was talking freely, sharing thoughts and ideas with relative ease. Because of this easiness a great many interesting points came up about the history of comic books and diversity.
Though comic books may not always be considered the highest forms of literature amongst academics, the general populace finds them riveting and (possibly due to the Hollywood obsession with the Marvel Cinematic Universe) inescapable. And it is through the comics and films that Black Panther has come into the public eye and won his popularity. However, this wasn’t always the case.
The history of black characters in any form has been a long and complicated one and it was no different for Marvel Comics. Black Panther first appeared in The Fantastic Four, introduced not as a hero, but as an ambiguous character who could be made into a villain if he was not received well by the fans. Though Black Panther wasn’t the first black super hero to get his own series; Luke Cage of Jessica Jones fame was the lucky first, unfortunately this representation was no better. The jive-talking detective was often seen badgering people for his payment after saving them, and eventually lost popularity before returning with the promise of “no more jive talk.”
Diversity in these comics didn’t just fail black men however, it failed women of all races quite drastically too. And much like the representation of black characters, the way women are depicted is still very much a work in progress. Titles such as Night Nurse and My Love painted women in submissive, sexualised roles that haven’t changed all that drastically considering recent controversy over Black Widow toys being left out of Avengers sales, and Wonder Woman’s poor depiction in Batman vs Superman.
There have been massive strides made in both racial and gender equality in comics however, as the reading group did start to discuss towards the end of the session. Black Panther has swept back into the lime light with a new comic series (written by a black artist!!) and even his own film, with the weight of his entire culture on his shoulders as the King of Wakanda. Whilst Jessica Jones portrays women as strong, confident, in spite of abusive relationships, whilst showing an interracial relationship between her and Luke Cage (who thankfully no longer takes payment for his super hero services).
Overall the reading group was a wonderful success. Conversation flowed from comics, to film, to history, to the Black Lives Matter movement, and back to comics again. The event was an excellent example of how Black History Month is still relevant and how far we have come as a society, but also how much further we still have to go. The one small issue was the event was that everyone wanted to keep talking, and took to Twitter to continue talking! Hopefully these discussions can be revisited in future events just like this one.
It’s October! Cue the soundtrack to The Nightmare Before Christmas! Or maybe dressing up in uncomfortable outfits and singing along to animated musicals isn’t your thing, so instead let me recommend you seven books which I think capture the essence of Halloween perfectly. Whether through their use of gothic tropes, ghostly inclinations or murderous tendencies, all of these books are frightening in their own unique way.
The Shining, by Stephen King
You might think I could put any old Stephen King book on here, but I’m a firm believer in reading his novels strategically. His prose has developed significantly through the years as he experiments with voice and genre, and many of his classic horror works sit at the beginning of his career. This is why I recommend you begin with The Shining. Turned into a film by Stanley Kubrick in 1980, this novel follows Jack Torrance and his family as they move in to the Overlook Hotel for a season. If it’s not uncanny enough living inside an empty hotel in the middle of winter, there’s also a bunch of creepy ghosts, telekinetic powers and fire extinguishers that turn into snakes. It’s a staple for fans of the horror genre, but I believe it also plays on a fear of confinement that was prominent in Britain during the 18th century. Asylums, like hotels, were places where people were temporarily contained inside individual rooms, and had the same sense of belonging-but-not-belonging.
HollywoodCinema’s most famous axe?
Prop from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.
War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
Although usually listed under ‘science fiction’ rather than ‘horror’, this classic is just as terrifying as a ghost story. Set in Victorian England, the novel is told from the point of view of a man who hears that a mysterious ‘shell’ has landed near where he lives. After a few days, the shell starts to open. And it’s aliens. The entire country is thrown into a panic and our main character races to London in an attempt to reunite with his fiancée. I can hold my hands up and say this is the scariest book I’ve ever read in my life. Wells’ descriptions of the way the Martian’s heat-ray sweeps across the ground and their movement through the country on spindly, mechanical legs makes me cringe with fright. Again, this novel has been adapted into film various times – most recently by Steven Spielberg in 2005. The book has such a different atmosphere that all they appear to share is a title, but I guess that’s up to you to decide.
The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris
This novel is actually the sequel to Harris’ ‘Red Dragon’, but it seems to be better known than its predecessor. It appears in a tetralogy of books surrounding the serial-killer-slash-cannibal Hannibal Lecter, famously played by Anthony Hopkins in the 1991 film adaption. It is a horror novel which feels like it could belong comfortably with crime-thrillers, but it is the horrific descriptions of torture, murder and gore which makes it an extremely uncomfortable read for anybody even slightly squeamish. The head of the FBI Jack Crawford is psychologically manipulated by Lecter, meaning that this book frightens you in a more personal, realistic way than a science-fiction or a ghost story could. Maybe it’s because when you’re reading about something so intimate, it’s hard to distance yourself from the idea that this isn’t fantasy – it’s more about the horrors of real life.
Dracula, by Bram Stoker
Another staple of the horror genre, Bram Stoker’s vampire novel is thought to be the work that has sparked our obsession with vampires across the globe. From TV to literature, theatre to comic books, vampires are everywhere, but Dracula is always the name that keeps coming back to us time and again. The novel is told in an epistolary format to get you uneasy from the get-go, and follows Jonathan Harker as he goes to stay with Count Dracula for a real estate transaction. He starts to notice weird things about his host though, and Harker soon realises that he’s become the imprisoned by the Count. Although most people think they already know the story of Dracula, when reading this for the first time I was surprised by how little had been filtered into modern culture from the original text. In fact, all that we really have remaining now is the idea of Count Dracula has a guy with a cape who lives in a castle and sucks blood. I’d encourage you to read the novel, just because it’s a fascinating insight in to what a whole modern subculture has based its entire aesthetic on (looking at you Whitby).
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
This is one I haven’t read, but that’s not because I’m lazy. It’s because even the physical idea of this book kind of freaks me out. House of Leaves is something difficult to describe if I don’t have the novel with me, but is famous for being written so erratically and fragmented that sometimes you won’t actually be able to read the words on the page. They might be printed backwards, or they might be overlapping with other letters so all you see is a smudge. Other times there can be only one or two words on a page, whilst on the next there will be text so small you will have to squint to read. As far as I can gauge it is a novel about a haunted house, but readers keep the details of the plot well buried so that you can go into it knowing close to nothing about what’s going on. If this hasn’t intrigued you enough to want to know what the hell this literary creation is, go and find it in a bookshop and flick through it yourself.
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Most people already know the plot twist at the end of this novella. If you don’t, I won’t spoil it, but the key with this one is to go into it like you haven’t heard anything about it before. The use of science and technology reflected the ideas of rationalism becoming prominent during the Victorian Era, which could’ve made it uneasy for many readers in the way it was being used. In essence, Dr Jekyll has defied God (in a similar way to Dr Frankenstein) and this goes against many of the principles adopted by society. It’s less scary for modern audiences, but the plot-twist at the end still channels some important uncanny elements such as the idea of ‘the double’.
Locke & Key, by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodríguez
Locke & Key is one of the best graphic novels I’ve read to date. It follows the Locke family as they move into a new house after the murder of their father. Once inside, they start to find various keys lying around which give them specific supernatural powers depending on which key they use. Intertwined with this are flashbacks to their father’s youth where a ghostly mystery is brewing, and if that doesn’t sound cool enough then you should probably know that Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son. The series has a few nods here and there to some of his father’s classic horror works, but also has its own modern flair and really showcases Hill as a talented writer.
I hope you’ll decide to check some of these out before the month is over. If none of them take your fancy, there’s still a wealth of gothic and horror literature out there for you to get lost in. If you think you can handle the monsters, that is…
Excitement once again swept through York St John University, as famed author, artist, designer and illustrator Graham Rawle stopped by to deliver an enthralling lecture.
Rawle opened up the talk by confessing that his “background is as an illustrator and designer” and that he “doesn’t have a literary background.” This does not at all infringe on his capability as a writer, however. He has developed regular series for major broadsheets: The Observer, The Times and The Sunday Telegraph Magazine. For The Guardian he concocted the famed ‘Lost Consonants’, collections of panel artistry that depict comedic outcomes when a sentence loses a crucial consonant. Beyond this, Rawle has written several well received novels, such as The Card, Lying Doggo,The Wonder Book of Fun and the core text of his talk: Woman’s World. In addition to all of this, he is a tutor for the University of Brighton’s MA in Arts and Design by Independent Project, and seems to be admirably living several lives simultaneously.
Rawle’s talk focused first on story structure. He explained that a story can be found anywhere so long as it accords with specific sets of rules, giving varied examples such as, “comedians, how they construct a joke, how they can construct a whole act around a joke or series of jokes. I might be looking at exhibition design, and how you navigate a crowd through a space. How to make that feel like a journey, feel like a story. Or the beginning and middle and end of a magic act […]
For Rawle, behind every solid story is strong structure. His claim is that all of these examples, “have a strong three act structure to them […] This patterned three act structure is detectable in lots of areas”. The basic sequence of the Three Act Structure (exposition, climax, and resolution) determines “How people orchestrate things like a firework display […] It’s the sequence in the way you put these things that deliver the most effective show you can”.
“I write fiction, but the books I write have a visual element to them that hopes to carry an additional narrative layer”
Rawle suggested that he approached storytelling as someone with a design background, explaining that designers study the fundamentals of something, respecting existing approaches, and then afterward craft something new. This mindset can be seen in his 2005 novel Woman’s World, in which Rawle to put his own spin on the literary. Spelling out his aims in writing such novels he stated, “I write fiction, but the books I write have a visual element to them that hopes to carry an additional narrative layer”. In keeping with the theme of ‘stories to be found everywhere’, Rawle crafted the critically acclaimed Woman’s World (2005), as a bombastic collage novel. Constructed solely by reassembling text snippets from 1960’s women magazines, the novel has been appropriately described by The Times as, “a work of genius […] the most wildly original novel produced in this country in the past decade”.
The unconventional collage construction of Woman’s World complements the journey of its protagonist, cross-dressing man Norma Fontaine. The women’s magazines of the 1960’s translated the ‘woman’s world’ to him, informing Norma how he can best become a woman. Using the collage, Rawle aimed to convey a sense of desperation: “The desperation was about becoming this ‘ideal woman’ […] the idea of a cross-dressing man in 1962, trying to be a woman, to learn how to be a woman, with only his mother who he can’t ask and not being able to go out anywhere, you look back at the magazines through that viewpoint, and it tells you everything you need to do”. The magazines offered a unique window into gender performance, and Woman’s World achieves part of that effect not just through narrative, but through the collage. Powerful and moving, it is a text that transcends time.
The innovation doesn’t stop in his books either. Rawle is taking Woman’s World to film, and stated that “I’m going to collage the whole film, exactly as I collaged the book. So replacing the story with fan clips to try and retell the story of Norma Fontaine.” Of course, the danger with adapting a collage is the danger of not being able to recapture the magic the collage effect had. No matter how well the story itself is adapted, part of the magic comes through the specific mode of imagery. Nonetheless, at the prospect of a film, movie stars came sniffing, such as Tom Hardy and James Franco. Though the two are no longer involved, one thing is clear: that Woman’s World is as adaptable as any of Graham Rawle’s many talents.
The unconventional appearance of Woman’s World, whether on page or screen, is a step toward true originality. To piece together a story through another’s words, to read what the characters themselves could have read, or to even hold a book similar to what the character could have owned, is an enchanting feeling. Ultimately, Graham Rawle pondered that, “the design of a book has been around for such a long time […] It is really interesting that nobody said to Mary Shelley then ‘what do you think a books going to look like in 200 years?’ It’s unlikely she would have said, ‘I expect it will look exactly the same’. It’s really odd!”
In retrospect, we should have asked Mr. Rawle the very same thing.
Live jazz music fills the air and guests are chattering, armed with a glass of wine. York St. John University has transformed its Arts Foyer into a guided history of 1930s Harlem, New York.
Last year a group of second year English Literature students on the ‘Literature at Work’ module created resources based on the Harlem Renaissance and now their work is on display for staff, students, and members of the public to see. The exhibition includes film, models, photography, and slide shows. To promote Black History Month, the students have the opportunity to talk about their work and express their enthusiasm for the cultural movement.
Although the students created their works of art separately, together the pieces complement each other to display the rich culture of Harlem. One of the works on display is a York/New York trail, where famous Harlem Renaissance landmarks are matched up to locations in York. The brochure is displayed on one of the walls and is accompanied by a short film in which the creators follow the trail they made around York.
Below the York/New York trail is a 3D model of key landmarks from the Harlem Renaissance. Accompanying each building on the miniature version of Harlem is a plaque listing the pop cultural references relating to the locations used.
Visitors also cannot help but admire the beautiful collages occupying some of the boards at the exhibition. These wonderfully creative pieces combine vintage styling with a contemporary artistic edge to inform the audience about key areas of culture. One golden frame discusses music of the Harlem Renaissance while a few smaller frames look at the works of the great literary mind Langston Hughes.
At the exhibition launch, the crowded room was testament to how student work is valued. The launch night was a huge success, bringing members of the university and the public together. Attendees left feeling better educated about the Harlem Renaissance, and hopefully inspired to pick up some literature from the era.
The ‘York/New York’ Exhibition will be displayed in the Arts Foyer at York St. John University until the end of October.
sexualised roles that haven’t changed all that drastically considering recent controversy over Black Widow toys being left out of Avengers sales, and Wonder Woman’s poor depiction in Batman vs Superman.
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