A Tremor of Contact

In The Metropolis and Modern Life, Georg Simmel compares the small towns which were based on “feelings and emotional relationships” and the “rational manner” of the metropolis.

Theorists like Simmel were obsessed with identifying the differences between rural and city life. These realms were divided by issues of subjectivity and objectivity, capital and money-economy. But the most striking and relevant trope in these writings relates to personal relationships. A conception of these relationships based in city life came to my mind recently during my commute.

I accidentally placed my hand upon the hand of another traveller while exiting a bus. This slight incident left a pronounced mark on my thoughts for the entire day. A prevailing tremor ran through my body and mind after this glancing contact. But why should such an event seem so important to me? We may be surrounded by thousands of people in the urban landscape but we truly are separated from them. We have replaced the need for physical space based in the rural with a mental division based in the urban.

My shock was based on the apparent contradiction between the densely populated city and our isolated position within it. Initially, this disconnection seems like an undesirable change in human interaction. But in actuality, the reserve we now keep for physical action makes contact more important. The use of action and even words has become more concentrated and a concise and this heightens the illustriousness of communication. We should not begrudge the change of human contact with the movement from the rural to the urban.

Instead, we should be grateful for the opportunity to create greater meaning with every word, look and touch.

-The English Student

Psycho: Almost 50 Years Later

With this years Oscars on the horizon we should take this opportunity to look back on past greats.

Christmas seems to come earlier each year, games and albums are pirated at a higher pace and the college year flies by at increasingly high speeds. With this in mind, I have no problem jumping the gun on everyone and offering a fifty year retrospective of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho forty-nine years after it was released. Many people have made wide reaching statements about the film but I believe that it is summed up by its own subtitle: "A new and altogether different screen excitement."

A modern audience may find Psycho to be quite dated in places. The special effects are hardly special anymore and the relatively censored murder scenes bring a smile to the viewer who is used to the 'ultra-violence' of contemporary horror. But if you are turned off by these aspects then you have missed the point. The ability of Hitchcock to use simple imagery to create iconic and memorable scenes is sublime. With its simple black and white cinematography, exquisite music and believable character development Psycho achieves what films with ten times it budget consistently fail at: genuine tension.

More than this, Hitchcock has created a psycho-analytical thriller before the genre even existed. We are drawn into the minds of every character in the film and become both a victim on the murderer and an accomplice. The many levels of the psyche that this film deals with is quite staggering and the sociological issues of equality and isolation are still very relevant today. Hitchcock really did set the groundwork for the psychological thriller and as such shares some of the credit for the truly great films we have seen from that genre. He does not, however, share some of the guilt for the truly awful ones we have endured from that genre. 

If your thriller is underwhelming then you need to re-watch the forty-nine year old Psycho, for it is a masterclass on the art of cinema.

-The English Student

In Search of an Opposition

People are very dissatisfied with our government recently, but I am far more dissatisfied with our opposition.

This week the national newspapers rang out an alarm across the political corridors of the city. The government has apparently become deeply unpopular and lost many percentage points through informal polling. This is especially worrying for the government now as they face numerous votes and electoral challenges in the coming months. In fact, many people believe this government to be practically finished.

But what alternative is there? The main opposition party has comparatively low numbers in similar polls and many would reject a government lead by the party's figurehead. It really would seem that the people of this country do not know what they want in a government. People could easily link this to a growing level of political apathy, but not all parties lost so badly in these polls.

The most quiet, inoffensive and downright cowardly party has gained a marked boost in popularity. I do not wish to engage in a tirade against this party but it is deeply worrying that the electorate deems them a good alternative without seeing any real definition of policy. The current government have set the agenda, this party simply opposes it without any self-declaration of intent. People are entitled to deride the government for their shortcomings but this certainly should not result in success for an untested and vague political party.

We need strong leaders and representation in this country but without a strong and well-defined opposition we will not get them.

-The English Student

A Fragile Infrastructure

With even the slightest change in weather, this country shuts down.

After unusual weather conditions, public transport and many other amenities were dramatically cut down. My commute time was trebled and many people simply stayed away from work to avoid this inconvenience. What is striking about this whole situation is the relative mildness of the conditions. There was no hurricane or heatwave to cause this, but instead a momentary change that most countries would hardly notice.

The fragile infrastructure of this country has never been more apparent. Why were we so un-prepared to deal with this mild change? The answer lies in the foundations of this infrastructure. Like many countries, we have felt the shame of being 'backward' and thus strove to adopt some of the most modern city and country based technology. But without a natural progression towards these advances they are foolishly sought and foolishly implemented.

Further than this, such a fragile infrastructure is indicative of a fragile national mindset. The innate conservatism of this country is latent in our inability to deal with the slightest change. Our rigid systems whether physical, mental or social should be more pliant in a fluctuating world.

But we are a rigid people and so we run the risk breaking at every challenging turn.

-The English Student

Only in Dreams

Recently, issues relating to the two main varieties of dreams have become pertinent to me.

The first types are terrible ones. Your subconcsious takes hold and pours out truly unctious bile. The most base and hideous horrors infiltrate your mind. There is nothing to control these evils and nowhere to hide from them. These dreams are a vivid and sharp reminder of the innate but often hidden terrors of reality.

But there are of course more desirable dreams. The subconcsious can easily become the stage for some of our most coveted hopes and dreams. No goal is unattainable, no person unlovable and no pleasure too sweet. The joy of life is not filtered through any social or physical boundaries and as such, is in its purest form.

Usually, dreams will be somewhere within the spectrum between these two polar opposites. Dreams can be firmly rooted to one end of the scale or can drift between the nice and nasty. However, there seems to be one commonality to these dreams: upon waking, we feel terrible. We are either disgusted by the depravity just witnessed, or bitterly disappointed by the transience of the pleasure felt. In this way, these experiences of blurred time shift, mixed emotions and apparently random imagery can often be more real than the waking world. Wicked or wonderful, anything is possible.

"And so it seems, Only in dreams."

-The English Student.