Author Archives: Steven Kenny

Kids – A Review

Written as part of an assignment in my first year at Edge Hill University

 

In 1995, Larry Clark arrived on the film scene with his directorial debut, the controversial film Kids.  Written by Harmony Korine, the film, styled as a documentary, explores the lives of a group of teenagers in New York City.  Hard hitting and challenging to watch, showing an unflinching view of teenage life in the mid 90’s, Kids has the feel of a dogme film about it.  

The film opens with a long and graphic kissing scene involving Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick), the unforgivable and irredeemable fulcrum on which the whole movie turns, and a young girl in her bedroom.  The stuffed animals and juvenile quality of her room isn’t lost on the camera, despite the tight angle it’s constrained to.  Telly is trying to get the girl to sleep with him, having set himself the task of deflowering as many virgins as he can.  He says all of the right lines to make her feel special and convinces her to sleep with him.  We next see him on the street, boasting about his conquest and allowing his idiotic, sycophantic friend Casper (Justin Pierce) smell his fingers as proof of the deed.

This type of vulgarity is rife throughout the film, as the boys and their friends talk about drugs and sex almost constantly.  The roughness and frankness of the script is what gives the film its biggest impact.  Much of the script, though written by Korine, seems improvised which adds to the documentary feel of the film.  Leo Fitzpatrick says of Korine’s writing “Harmony was such a good writer and it was so natural…A lot of what we talked about in the movies we talked about in real life.”

Across town, Jennie (Chloë Sevigny) and her friend, Ruby (Rosario Dawson) are getting tested for STD’s at a clinic.  It’s here that Jennie is told that she’s HIV Positive and since Telly is the only boy she’s ever slept with, it could have only been contracted from him.

So begins the basic plot line on which everything else in Kids hangs.  It’s not an overly complicated plot; Jennie spends the whole film trying to track down Telly to tell him the bad news, but the film doesn’t require a complicated plot.  Instead it serves as a skeleton on which Clark and Korine hang their uncomfortably realistic cautionary tale.  Sevigny, in her debut role is just as powerful an actress as she always is.  Her portrayal of the naive and scared Jennie is brilliant, compelling the audience to feel both sympathetic and protective for her as she travels New York City in an ever desperate hunt for Telly.  

Ultimately though, despite her central part in the plot, even Jennie is just another tool that Clark and Korine use to show the disregard the boys have for everything around them.  Despite Sevigny’s acting prowess, Jennie is never more than a victim.  She is given drugs by a boy at one party and when she finally tracks down Telly, only to find him in bed with another young virgin, she falls into desolated unconsciousness in an armchair, where she is raped by a drunk and high Casper.

It is a testament to Korine’s writing and Clark’s refusal to pull punches that Kids still manages to shock nearly twenty years after its release.  It is never an easy watch at any stage and it feels purposely hard to feel any sympathy for the characters.  While the film will surely be in very bad taste for some viewers, there is no doubt that the hand held camera work and the punchy, hyper-realistic script provide a bleak and horribly reflective view of youth in 90’s New York.  

The God In My Head

We live in temporary spaces,
Our lives are turned corners of a page.
We breathe at the whim of a body
Over which we have only rudimentary control.
Love is fleeting,
Ephemeral.
Like a joke told a thousand years ago
That still echoes faintly in the room.
And here, now, when sex and intimacy
Are as legitimate and real
As Heaven and Hell to an atheist,
Is where I exist.
I exist at the whim of a mad god
Who lives inside my brain,
Who commands my body
And distributes my pain.
Like all atheists, I believed in him once,
And that was my mistake

Where does the time go?

Wow.  What a journey that first year at university was!  I’m so sorry you didn’t really get to experience it with me, I think I misjudged the volume of work when I said I’d keep this blog updated.  Still, I’m here now with plenty of time on my hands over the summer, so I’m going to try to keep it updated a little better.

Edge-Hill-University-Campus-Images-John-Johnson-34

Our amazing library.  This place saved my life more than once!

First things first, let me tell you how I felt my first year went; it went great.  It surpassed all of my expectations and managed to blow a few of my fears out of the water.  I’ve done well in the majority of the assessments that have already been marked, including an absolutely mind blowing 80% in one of them.  I still can’t believe that 80% mark is actually right!  The classes were all interesting and while sometimes it felt like we were feeling around in the dark without much guidance, I guess that’s just how universities operate.  A lot of the stuff you have to work out or decide on for yourself; it’s not like the less advanced kinds of further education, where you’re spoon fed the information you need.  The tutors seem to give you just enough to get you thinking and then the rest is really up to you.  It takes some getting used to, but I think I worked it out fine in the end.

The other thing I want to mention in this blog post is that I will be putting my assessment submissions up here on the website in the future, but in order to avoid the university’s plagiarism filter, I have to leave them off until they’ve been marked.  Look for them at the beginning of June, if you’re interested in how they turned out.

Other than that, thanks for sticking with me, those of you who still read these things!  I PROMISE I will try to keep this thing updated and will hopefully be adding new work and stuff as I keep my skills up over summer.  Unless I become world famous in the meantime, of course!

Be Excellent To Each Other!

Steven

 

Downtime/The Nexus

The two short exercises below were created as part of a homework assignment to create a ritual and describe it from the point of view of a native familiar with the ritual and then the point of view of an unseen observer who was unfamiliar with the same ritual.

 

Downtime

It’s funny how it’s always the same people who go into Downtime at the same time as me.  There’s the ‘office guy’, the grungy ‘alternative’ girl, the bookish student who always seems unsure of what she’s doing and of course, the ‘big dumb jock’.  I guess in our private little Breakfast Club, I’d be the loner, the guy who never quite fits in.  ‘Fitting in’ is a thing of the past now though, of course.

We all arrive at the booth at more or less the same time.  Dumb Jock is always last, dragging his feet in reluctantly.  He always has some smart mouthed comment for one of us, we always ignore him.  I like the booths, the beds are comfy, the sheer white of the walls makes me feel kind of pure, like after every Downtime I’m born again.  There’s still no better way of connecting to the Link.  This way has worked for years, with only a few neural overloads to speak of.  Acceptable losses.

It happens, as it always does, when we lie down on the beds.  The ‘trodes snake their way out of the underside of the bed and slide gracefully into the ports on our collarbones.  I love the tingly feeling you get as the connection is made and the reassuring click of the ‘trode into the port.  Office Guy doesn’t seem to like it much.  I guess he was an Original, he’s old enough to be one.

I can feel a woozy grin on my face as I slip down into the Dream, like I’m the happiest drunk in the world.  Everything goes dark for a moment as I close my eyes and feel the data begin to stream out of me.  Nothing else matters except the Stream now.  I feel the grin widen as I remember the TV ads; ‘Stream into the Dream, because caring is sharing!’

I’m dimly aware that something is wrong in the room, Bookish Student is convulsing.  There’s something wrong with her Stream.  Her gurgling and choking is the last thing I hear before the Dream hits.  Acceptable losses.

 

The Nexus

As I watch the feed on the camera, four people enter the small pod, followed a little later by a fifth.  They all seem like ordinary people; there’s an office worker, three students and another guy who thinks he’s a student or some kind of non-conformist anyway.  They don’t have much interaction with each other, aside from the male student saying something off colour to the girl in the ripped cardigan.  She flips him the finger before settling down on her cot.

That’s when it gets strange.  All five of them lie down, each one like the limb of a five pointed star, their heads close together in the centre of the structure.  I watch in confusion as wires seem to move from under the cots, as if they were alive and aware somehow.  These wires then move with purpose until they are pressed into the collarbone of each person.  At first I thought they had stabbed their way into the body, in the manner of a needle, but I was wrong.  In fact the wires entered the body through what appeared to be an access port on the bone.  I had no idea what to make of this.  Were these people actually machines?  Some kind of cyborg?

I continue to watch, fascinated and horrified at the same time by this spectacle in front of me.  This connection to the wires doesn’t seem to be harming the five of them, in fact they all look happy, peaceful almost, as the wires settled against their bodies, like a snake resting on a branch.  Then something begins to happen to one of the girls.  She tenses up, her whole body held tight for a few seconds before she begins to flail around, her hands unconsciously pulling at the wire.  She begins to foam at the mouth, and the foam begins to turn bloody as she bites into her tongue.  None of the others move or show any awareness.  No alarms sound.  While I’m still trying to take in what I’m seeing, the feed goes dark.

After the Crowd Have Gone/After the Crowd Have Gone – Unreliable Narrator

Written as part of an exercise in my Building the World class, the work below experiments with building a single room based on the stereotype of a faded sports star.  The work below the line is the same room, described by an unreliable narrator (Someone who is biased in some way and cannot be trusted to give a truthful description).

The room was a shrine to nostalgia.  Through afternoon light, dust motes danced in the shafts of sunlight breaching the hallowed place, reaching in like adoring fans used to do; begging for an autograph, a chance to touch the champ.  The floor, wooden and once polished to a spectacular sheen, was now rough and coarse in places, years of varnish peeled away in others like ancient skin on decaying bones.

The air was musty, smelling faintly of Mentholatum.  It lingered, recalling days gone by, when aching muscles were a consequence of action and competition, instead of a cold wind or sleeping uncomfortably in a chair.  Accompanying that bitter smell was the hushed smell of dust.  It whirled through the sunlight, infecting every corner of the room with forlorn memories.

Along the wall hung posters, each heralding a triumphant clash of wills.  All faded by time and neglect, their colours muted, the bombastic boasts silenced by the weight of years.  They were joined by a punching bag.  Heavy, leather and old, worn down through use.  It now hung limply from its bracket, useless to the arthritic hands of the one who owned it.

A shelf graced the other wall, gathering dust like everything else in the room and displaying trophies and statuettes, all covered in an ever present blanket of neglect.  They resonated with a melancholy that reached back from a better time.  Even the newspaper clippings, tacked so lovingly underneath the shelf, were yellowed and curled but spoke of fitness and youth and vitality.

In the middle of it all, he dozed; a relic in a reliquary of his own making.  A small, faded man.  His face worn and wrinkled by time and a thousand punches.  His hands, once strong and powerful, now nothing more than claws, warped by arthritis.  He sat and he slept, dreaming of a boxing ring long ago and a young man who was somebody.

This room smelled old.  As soon as I walked through the door, all I could smell was stale old, muscle gel.  The light was very dim, as if this whole place was from an old movie or one of those vintage photographs.  Everything was covered in dust, it coated all of the trophies and shelves like an old jacket.  Posters lined the wall, ranging in age from really old to just plain old.  They advertised fights and fighters I’ve never even heard of, much less care about.  The old guys trophies sat on a shelf, I think they might have been golden once, but now they were the colour of weak piss and not very impressive.

He even had a punching bag in here, a huge one that looked black, but I think might have been brown.  It looked like heavy leather.  It hadn’t been touched for decades, I was tempted to go over and give it a smack, but I was pretty sure it would fall off if I did.  Under the trophies, the old guy had newspaper clippings from his glory days.  Catchy headlines that told of his wins and the power of his punches.  Didn’t have any relevance to me, this guy couldn’t teach me anything anymore.

Speaking of which, there was the old guy himself.  He was sat in the middle of all this crap, like a crusty king on a throne of dust.  His hands were all twisted and looked like claws and his breath wheezed out of him as he dozed.  He was tiny, not the guy I’d seen in those old film clips.  It was as if someone had dropped him in a washing machine and shrunk him.  The champ?  Once, maybe.  Now though, he was just a lonely old has been.

Review of Chronicle of a Death Foretold

This novella by Gabriel Garcia Márquez, one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, who won the Nobel prize in Literature in 1982, paints a picture of life and death on the coast of Colombia in the mid-twentieth century. In doing so, he gives us a glimpse at the culture and attitudes of his home country at the time. If you can get past the impassive way it is told, then there is much to be discovered between the pages of this book.

First published in 1981, Chronicle of a Death Foretold tells the tale of the murder of a wealthy Colombian man by the vexed brothers of a woman he has allegedly deflowered. This man, Santiago Nasar, goes about his day unaware of the danger that the deflowered bride, Angela Vicario, has placed him in. Through interviews and conversations with the residents of the village, we are guided through the final hours of Nasar’s life and shown the multitude of ways the murder could have been prevented.

Nasar is somewhat of a lothario; Good at running his ranch, interested in firearms, drinking and has more than an eye for the ladies. Because of that, it is easy to see why no questions were asked when he is accused of deflowering Angela Vicario. The way information is relayed to the reader about Nasar is unreliable and contradictory. For instance, Victoria Guzman, the cook says, “He was just like his father … A shit.” The narrator’s sister, on the other hand, speaks favourably about him: “I suddenly realised that there couldn’t have been a better catch than him” and “Just imagine: handsome, a man of his word, and with a fortune of his own at the age of twenty-one.” This makes it hard to get a definitive idea of the character and feels like a barrier to having empathy for him. Nevertheless, by the end of the book I did feel sorry for Nasar due to the brutal nature of his murder and the number of times the death could have been prevented.

Angela Vicario, by comparison, is initially presented as quiet and beautiful, a little socially awkward and a little immature. It is her fear of her mother and brothers’ rage that causes her to utter Nasar’s name and by doing so, set the tragic events in motion. As potential antagonists go, Angela is subtle and not entirely irredeemable but because it is never revealed whether her accusation is true or not, she serves well in her role.

Thematically, the piece explores the nature of honour, as it existed in that society in the mid-twentieth century. It does so by showing how the villagers could have prevented the murder and stopped the brothers, but chose not to, preferring to believe that the brothers were justified in seeking retribution. While the novella has a historical setting, honour killings are still very prevalent in modern society, whether in Colombia, the United Kingdom, India, or anywhere else in the world and so the theme of the novella is still as important today as it was both when it was set and when it was written.

Márquez’s use of repetition, constantly bringing the awareness of the reader back to the murder with lines such as, ‘On the day they were going to kill him’ and ‘until he was carved up like a pig an hour later’ helps to heighten the shock and brutality of Nasar’s murder. His presentation of everything as cold, hard facts serves the narrative well and keeps the plot rolling along, despite its nonlinear nature. Personally, the shock of the murder was removed for me by a detailed autopsy scene halfway through which seemed out of place and took away a lot of the impact from the later scene.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is powerful, darkly humorous and descriptive, though the dispassionate nature of the narrative sometimes jarred with the colourful and poetic descriptions of the village and its people. It also seems as if the villagers react in an unrealistic way when confronted with evidence that the murder will take place, such as when the butchers in the meat market are told by Pablo Vicario, “We’re going to kill Santiago Nasar” and even though they can see the brothers are sharpening knives, nobody seems even slightly concerned.

Yet, today in the media, we see inaction by witnesses and bystanders, content to record and capture on their smartphones, rather than step in and stop a tragedy from occurring, as seen in 2009 when a fifteen year old girl was assaulted and raped outside of a homecoming dance in front of more than fifteen witnesses. With this in mind, the themes and questions explored in this novella seem more relevant today than they did in 1981. Put down your smartphone, read this book and ask yourself, what would you do?

Just keep swimming!!

So, the second week of university is over and our third week is about to begin!  Last week brought with it new challenges as well as some surprising revelations!

I guess you could say that last week was the first time ‘shit got real’ at university, as our tutors gleefully threw tons of information at us and chuckled as our heads

Someone catch my brain!!

Someone catch my brain!!

revolved (I might be embellishing that a little).  We did suddenly find ourselves with lots to think about and lots to study; it’s hard to know where to start, but start I must!

Even though there’s work to do, the reading part of it doesn’t really feel like work and as I read books written by authors I’d never heard of, in styles I’d never consider reading, I find myself enjoying it.  It really is amazing how much you can learn by getting out of your comfort zone and reading things you wouldn’t usually.  I found myself initially confused and disliking Dan Rhodes’ writing style in Anthropology, but by the time I’d finished it, I’d come to love those little surrealist vignettes of his and I will be seeking out more of his work.

Another surprising thing I discovered was how much I’m actually scared of

Scriptwriting in a nutshell...

Scriptwriting in a nutshell…

scriptwriting!  Before I started the course, I thought it was easy, but after our first four hour (yes, four hours of scriptwriting each week!) class, I was petrified by the

technical complexity of scripts.  Hopefully as the weeks go on, I’ll be able to get it straight in my head and I think that ultimately, I will enjoy scriptwriting.  Still, it was scary, eye opening stuff!

For me, the lesson of the week has to go to Building The World.  We were spoiled by having it as our very first class and it was so much fun!  Everything else was struggling to match up to it.  We started easily enough by discussing what secondary worlds were and why we create them.  We then had to imagine what our world would be like without a single invention.  It was fascinating to imagine the possibilities that could exist when just one essential invention was removed from the world.  Although I have to say to some of my classmates, who imagined a world

It's early days in World Building...

It’s early days in World Building…

without the internet, that I remember that world very clearly already!  Jokes about my age aside, the whole lesson was fun and thought provoking.

So we start week three with a good idea of how our lessons are going to go and a very real idea of the amount of work we have to do.  Even with all of the work, I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else right now and I’m so happy I have a great bunch of people to go on this journey with!

#EHUFreshers

So, here we are, my time at Edge Hill University has finally started!  That means that from now on, this blog will be getting regularly updated as I keep a journal/blog/personal rant of the things that I’m learning here at university.  I would have posted on Monday, but the only thing that happened was a tour of the campus and while that was fascinating for me, I doubt those of you who read this would have been enthralled to learn the opening times of the library!

The face of someone who listened to my library tour tale...

“Oh my god, he’s talking about the library again!!”

As enlightening for me as Monday was, Tuesday was the real deal.  I finally got to meet my department tutors and the other Creative Writing students.  We had our Creative Writing Programme Induction in the morning.  This was, as our Programme Leader said, just to get the nuts and bolts of both our course and university life out of the way before the real learning starts next week.  It was really interesting overall, from both a student point of view and from a personal one, I felt that the personalities of our tutors shone through and they seem to be a likeable, relaxed group as they talked us through some crucial (but, admittedly, a little boring) pointers about how our time here will run.

We were told the times of our seminars/workshops as well as a little from each tutor about what these would include.  Those of you who know me well will know that my particular interests lie in Speculative Fiction and Writing for Games.  It bodes well, I think, that the tutor for those particular workshops came across as very friendly and approachable (ultimately though, they were all very nice!).  Best of all, the whole course kicks off with ‘Building The World’ next Wednesday.

Tuesday afternoon saw us in a lecture hall, getting a talk from the English Department head and from Student Services.  It wasn’t interesting enough to warrant a breakdown on this blog and so I’ll spare you the details.  Suffice to say that it served to make me feel glad that we won’t be spending too much time in big lecture halls.  Those places make me so sleepy it’s untrue!

"Must...take...notes...zzzzz"

“Must…take…notes…zzzzz”

The rest of the afternoon was spent getting to know some of the other mature students who are studying in the English Department, as well as a chance to have a chat with the tutors.  I also had a couple of really interesting chats; one with Peter, who will be running our Building The World class, about RPG’s and tabletop games and other with one of the history lecturers, whose name I’ve unfortunately forgotten, about how a good knowledge of historical research can be useful when creative worlds for your fiction to exist in.

Finally, the rest of the English/History/Creative Writing students joined us for a few drinks, some snacks and a fun little quiz which saw us put into groups of six, fighting it out for a grand prize of Book Tokens!! (Remember: writers are readers who write!)  Unfortunately, we missed out on third place by one point, but were satisfied with being the highest of the also rans!  It’s the taking part that counts, right?

So that’s more or less my first week at university.  Apologies to those of you who thought it was going to be a rambunctious tale of wild drinking and partying,

Not pictured; me tucked up in bed...

Not pictured; me tucked up in bed…

which you probably remember from your own Freshers Week, but you have to remember, I’m 38 and the last thing those 18 year old kids want is some creepy guy twenty years older than they are hanging out with them.  I’m happy just to be doing this course in the first place!

I look forward to next week and getting my teeth stuck into the course properly.  Watch this space for further exciting tales from academia!

Feelings

I feel like I want to write shit poetry
That no-one wants to read.
I feel that the alcohol in my system,
Is the wisdom that I need.

I feel like I could fuck
For a thousand years.
When the reality
Is probably just one thrust.

I feel like love is a fairytale
Told when I was young.
That happy ever after
Is a lie; a song unsung.

I know that obvious rhymes
Are all I have to give.
That at times my feelings
Are just too strong to live.

I feel like when I’m gone,
The world will move on.
Barely remember my light
And how dimly it shone.

The Watchmen.

Living in the worst of times,
We’re piling up the dead.
We see it on the TV screens,
in black and white and read.

Facing our extinction
With an apathetic gaze,
Revelling in the chaos
As we face our end of days.

Now the future is the past
And it never stood a chance.
Distorted and aborted,
Without a second glance.

Those who would be kings
Are nailed to their thrones.
Committed to the violence;
Spied upon with drones.

Corporations profit,
From the madness of the show.
Lining oily pockets
With the suffering below.

And politicians sleaze
Through the alleys late at night.
power in their fingers
Gripped around a throat too tight.

And we watch it all unfold
Like a story never told.
And we let it all explode,
wrap up warm against the cold.

And we watch it all unfold,
blame the young or the old.
And we feel it all implode,
A black hole in our soul.

And we watch it all unfold,
We watch it all unfold.
We watch.
But we refuse to break the mould.