Grim Britannia
- Thread starter k-punk
- Start date
vimothy
yurp
idk, it's interesting how from one perspective, we live in an ultra-hedonistic society, as long as it doesnt harm anyone else you have total freedom to satisfy your desires. it's like a kind of democratised romantic individualism. but that coexists with mass surveillance capitalism, everything has to be incredibly safe, we're obsessed with being healthy. it's not the constant orgies and binges you might expect
luka
Well-known member
i think you need to push on with this. keep chasing it. we're all listening
craner
Beast of Burden
...asked Guy Debord.
craner
Beast of Burden
A key development, one that Made in Chelsea constantly navigates, is about life totally mediated by, structured around and presented as images. This is where social media platforms have taken the aesthetic and political tools developed in the 80s and 90s to a new stage that has altered our sense of self.
craner
Beast of Burden
Key text:
"... events occur in specially selected and advertised eateries, boutiques and bars around town, a hi-gloss/glazy backdrop to engineered encounters, couplings and traumas that spill onto the gossip pages and Daily Mail online and actually overlap with lives conducted in a liminal fashion that are not at all radical or even postmodern as they might have seemed, or even been, in 1982, when this was a future, theoretical fantasy."
rolling tv thread
Oof. I really want to watch it but I'm waiting to finish a few other things first. I have that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that you get when you have massively high hopes for something and are beginning to think it may not live up to them.
www.dissensus.com
"... events occur in specially selected and advertised eateries, boutiques and bars around town, a hi-gloss/glazy backdrop to engineered encounters, couplings and traumas that spill onto the gossip pages and Daily Mail online and actually overlap with lives conducted in a liminal fashion that are not at all radical or even postmodern as they might have seemed, or even been, in 1982, when this was a future, theoretical fantasy."
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john eden
male pale and stale
The grimness of London in the 1970s needs to be counterposed with the suburbs around it though and the shiny promise of Milton Keynes.
Obviously the gap between these two things is part of the reason why I loved the grimness so much at the time and was drawn to it. But that is quite a white male pivileged take on it all. It was fun wandering around London with mates in the middle of the night in the mid 80s but I'm not sure you'd be doing that as a woman at the time, certainly not a lone one. That scene in Babylon with the cop car chasing Blue is very grim but hard to romanticise.
I have an elderly neighbour who has no truck with nostalgia if you get her talking about Hackney in the old days "It was SO BORING. There was nowhere to GO and there was nothing to DO. It's much much better now".
I have another slightly less old neighbour who moved to London in the early 80s because she felt safer as a gay woman here though.
Obviously the gap between these two things is part of the reason why I loved the grimness so much at the time and was drawn to it. But that is quite a white male pivileged take on it all. It was fun wandering around London with mates in the middle of the night in the mid 80s but I'm not sure you'd be doing that as a woman at the time, certainly not a lone one. That scene in Babylon with the cop car chasing Blue is very grim but hard to romanticise.
I have an elderly neighbour who has no truck with nostalgia if you get her talking about Hackney in the old days "It was SO BORING. There was nowhere to GO and there was nothing to DO. It's much much better now".
I have another slightly less old neighbour who moved to London in the early 80s because she felt safer as a gay woman here though.
craner
Beast of Burden
In other words, enough now Craner.
luka
Well-known member
don;'t intimidate the poor boy into silence just as he was opening up!