"Nostalgia and Spectatorship"

Over the past month or so, we have been discussing the idea of creating a themed blog project. The first of these that we considered are the films of our childhood. The idea is that we would revisit films from our formative years, watch them with fresh, pseudo-adult eyes, and review them for The Wrath of Blog. This got me thinking about the films that I grew up with. This consequently led me to my change in attitude to the films from that time, and how the same cycle of genre films are dominating the cinemas of today - just now they are in the form of CGI "spectaculars". Because of this I decided that I should write an introduction to this themed, review based season (if you will).

'The Dark Crystal'

I became aware of film at a very early age. I was young, but remember vividly the early 1980's boom of video. We had a Betamax video cassette recorder. It was the size of a house. I remember that you could not only rent videos from very dubious shops, but you could easily also rent from videos lined up in some random houses porch. What this meant to me was simple. I had access to so many films. I could record films off the TV late at night, watching them in the early hours, before the parents woke. I even used to sneak to the newsagents to buy pre-certificate video trade magazines such as 'Video World'. This interest also informed me of the video nasty (a subject we will be returning to in a proposed project in the near future).

Whilst I had been exposed to the world of horror before in the form of (very early by my granddad who was also an avid film viewer and video cassette recording hoarder, as I later became) Universals 1930/40's horror cycle, modern horror had not been accessible for me. Then, when one day in 1982, my Granddad bounds into the house with a rented copy of John Landis's An American Werewolf in London (1982), and I was aloud to watch the transformation scene (you could see the delight on my granddads face as he was so amazed by the sequence). This made me hungry to see horror as much as possible. I was unable as a person of 7-9 years of age to find any of the video nasties until some time after this, so was happy to fit into the ones that I had access to, such as Wes Cravens A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Friday the 13th (1980) and their many sequels. I was however able to watch The Exorcist (1973) and The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre (1974), on incredible over-copied pirate video - I still believe this adds a certain grimy, more perverse viewing experience, making it an even greater thrill from the illicitness of the whole affair. After all these two particular films, whilst not of the official DPP 'nasties' list, were banned for distribution on home video by the BBFC. However this was not the dominant movie genre that I immersed myself in in my formative movie watching years.

'Dimensions Of Dialogue'

I was born in 1976. A year later George Lucas's Star Wars was released. I obviously wasn't aware of it at the time, but this became the dominant obsession for myself and my generation, and all that (at the time) followed in Hollywood cinema for the summer blockbuster as we pretty much know it now. So, the Fantasy film ran supreme in my video viewing and cinema going habits. After all, it was the age of kids cinema. My first cinema experiences are with films such as E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982), The Dark Crystal (1982), the obligatory Disney animated movies (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Dumbo (1940) and Pinocchio (1941)), Return of the Jedi (1983), Superman III (1983), and Ghostbusters (1984). Action-Adventure movies were a regular on the screens. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Romancing the Stone (1984), cast Han Solo and that prick with the stupid hair, Michael Douglas as swashbuckling forest twitchers. I'm not going list all the films I watched as a child - that would be ridiculous, not to mention tiresome.

The story of how Jaws (1975) and Star Wars completely changed, and in many ways destroyed, the Hollywood system, has been exhaustively re-told by many, so I'm not going to re-tell it here, and only state that I agree with it, as is reiterated by Peter Biskind in his popular book 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls'. Extending this to 2011, and we see that the blockbuster, weekend money-maker is still the prevalent occupier of cinema screens around the world. Now, I'm not going to continue with a diatribe about how films aren't made like they used to be; that would be crass. But obviously my viewing habits have changed since my childhood. The films however have not changed. It's the same stories told over. With computer generated monsters etc. We have been in a massive sea of fantasy films since Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001 - 2003). Also super heroes are dominant. Their presence quite welcoming in some cases (Spider-Man 2 (2004), The Dark Knight (2008)), but usually not. In my childhood there was of course Superman (1978 - 1987) and later Batman (1989). On TV, the cheesy-yet-watchable American shows The Incredible Hulk (1978 - 1982) and The Amazing Spider-Man (1977 - 1979). So, the films of today are seeming to be repeating the trends set after Star Wars. As in the '80's, we now have endless sequels. Hollywood is a perpetual motion machine. '80's film is now being regurgitated in remakes.

'Q: The Winged Serpent' 

That's enough about the cyclical trends of Hollywood cinema since the age of the F/X "event" movie: back to the nostalgia. Because of video I was not only exposed to endless fantasy/sci-fi Hollywood blockbusters. But I'm not one to watch just one type of film. I was, even at a very early age, interested in new cinematic experiences (something I still do to this day). The most challenging, and artistically daring films I was exposed to, were the many dark and interesting animation from around the world. This was due to the newly begun UK television "network", 'Channel 4'. This had late-at-night animated shorts. This, I later discovered, is where I was first introduced to the films of Jan Svankmejer (Alice (1988), Dimensions of Dialogue (1982), Virile Games (1988)), and The Quay Brothers (Street of Crocodiles (1986), The Unnameable Little Broom (1985)). Through my Granddad, I was shown the epic 'classics'. Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Ben-Hur (1959), The Wizard of Oz (1939). The mini-epics starring Ray Harryhausen (Jason and the Argonauts (1966), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1977) et al). My childhood also includes many other types: Exploitation cinema, mainly through Kung-Fu movies, and of course horror and action z-grade movies. The works of Larry Cohen produced two of my favourite films in the 1980's; Q: The Winged Serpent (1982) and The Stuff (1985).

Whilst my film spectatorship has changed since my youth, I seem to have illustrated here that much of what I encountered has influenced what I watch today. My exploration for new cinema has obviously expanded since those early days. Access to film has certainly become easier since then. I do have many gripes with the Hollywood film industry and is continuation of the same cyclical path it has been tread milling since the 1970's. But because of this access to almost limitless films, I can do what we all should do when we view something that's personally offensive. Ignore it, leave the cinema, turn the video/DVD/Blu-Ray off, switch the TV channel over. Problem solved.

Marc Ivamy

Stay tuned!