Station Magazine
Station Magazine releases its third issue and committed to print some
of my foolish Rumblings, stationmag.co.uk
As the hide of an animal could not escape the grasps of fashion
(unable to mount even the most pitiful sprint from fashion’s jaws), film was well and truly enveloped from its birth. As Louis Lumière released what is to
be believed the first fictional film, L’Arroseur Arrosé, Marcellin Auzolle
illustrated the first film poster to promote it and subsequently film
became a fashionable thing.
Whilst fashion designers were salvaging road kill to adorn ladies shoulders, slapstick idiocies lit up audience’s faces and the world wanted to laugh. Film had instantly become the fashionable media, an engine to influence, persuade and brainwash, not a product of fashion but excitingly a promoter of fashion. Ten foot spectacles were projected and, whilst chubby fingers searched orifices beneath a blanket of popcorn, souls were inspired. What a wonderful and amazing thing! Arm in arm, film and fashion had achieved the ability to dictate what people wore, thought and fantasised over. All because a man squirted another in the face with a hosepipe and people laughed
(the crux of L’Arroseur Arrosé)!
Unfortunately now we seem to laugh less and have grown sceptical of film. Film now bears the scars of fashion rather than showcasing it. As an
audience we have become reluctant to dress like Marilyn Monroe or to take John Wayne’s moral advice. As a result film has become unfashionable. Steve McQueen still is undoubtedly cool but Tom Cruise is deemed a scary short Scientologist; it has become a trend to criticise films and their performers. Audiences no longer fondle one another under popped corn whilst their minds are titillated: instead they sit cross-legged, nibbling dried apricots, wanting more. If this be the fashion, the new manner in which films are to be
viewed, then film has died, and for all the 3D in the world it is the
audience that needs the resurgence.
It needs again to become fashionable to allow oneself to delve into
a fantasy, a story and not sit back blunt to the flickering screen awaiting
a post screening latte and critique. It needs to become fashionable to be engrossed and utterly moved by a film, to cry as an alien with a glowing finger returns home and acceptable to draw pictures on the pavement and hope to fall into them. If 3D can enlighten this excitement then good luck to it, but pop up books never rallied a novelist into new found pastures, so to expect 3D to suddenly change the bearing of a film on today’s cynical audience is bewildering. Guaranteed the spectacle will be more impressive in 3D, but for enjoyment, for a pure experience, we must put down our felafel fajitas and make it again fashionable to be engrossed. Make a Friday night of dressing like Marilyn Monroe, shoot at Indians and if it pleases you, paint yourself blue, put some thick rimmed glasses on and hang around on a floating rock.
