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Tuesday, 15 January 2002 |
The Farflung and Dispossessed.
I am in the process of researching a possible magazine article based around a movie due for release sometime this year.
24 Hour Party People is the latest by English director Michael Winterbottom. His previous movies include The Claim, Wonderland, Welcome to Sarajevoand Jude. The Claim was released in 2000 but has only just now finally made its way to the local cinemas. Actually, one local cinema, so I am off to see it tomorrow before it vanishes.
There are plenty of threads and layers in a story about the movie, as 24 Hour Party People is a fictionalized account of people and events in Manchester from the beginning of Post-Punk to the death of Acid House. Perth has an intimate connection to Manchester that goes beyond the fact that much of this city’s population are immigrants from provincial England.
Both cities are perceived as culturally and physically remote from the capitals of their respective countries. Each feels intensely ignored, even alienated. Both of them have developed their own peculiar interpretations of popular culture.
During the years in the 1970s and 1980s when I lived in Perth before leaving the first time, there was a continuous cultural interchange between Manchester and Perth. Musical recordings travelled to and fro, mainly to Perth, as people in the English provinces kept their Australian relatives up to date and well supplied with tapes of the latest John Peel Sessions on BBC Radio.
In its isolation two important musical movements sprang up in Manchester, as well as a number of incredibly influential bands. They pretty much had to do it all themselves though, as the London record companies continued to ignore the Manchester scene until a local TV personality set up his own record label and released the first Joy Division album, Unknown Pleasures, to global critical acclaim.
That is the biggest point of resonance this article has for me personally—the fact that they had to do it all themselves.
Michael Winterbottom: Wonderland and The Claim. 24 Hour Party People coming soon, I hope.
1:49:39 PM 
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Apple Finally Admits the Truth.
It was the Nazis’ propagandists who formulated the theory of the Big Lie: The bigger the lie and the more you repeat it, the faster the people will come to completely believe it.
I hear and read one particular Big Lie on an almost daily basis: Nobody uses Macs, there is no software for them, and they are incompatible with Windows computers.
Millions of solid citizens around the world believe this Big Lie and will earnestly repeat it at the drop of a hat.
Now Apple Computer has finally come clean and has admitted the truth about Macs, at A Special Message to Windows Users. Doesn’t it feel so much better now that you’ve let it all out, Apple?
7:23:33 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Karl-Peter Gottschalk.
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