Estate Agents of Doom, or, Scooby Doo vs. the 1%
The cultural artefact known as Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? represents a sustained and surprisingly rigorous interrogation of the late twentieth century landscape. To the casual observer, the first two … Continue reading
X-Men: Ghosts of Genomes Past – Part Three
Why the X-Men Never End — memory, seriality and myth. The mutant past is perpetually reimagined, transforming history into a shifting landscape of retroactive continuity. This instability of memory provides … Continue reading
X-Men: Ghosts of Genomes Past – Part Two
Haunting the Present — politics, surveillance and control. The paradoxes of mutant time are embodied in the recurring figure of the future mutant who returns to warn of a catastrophe … Continue reading
The Psychology of Slow Time (Part One)
Slow time is not the absence of activity. This is usually where people start, and it’s where things immediately go wrong. Slow time is not what happens when nothing is … Continue reading
Phantom Limbs, Withheld Worlds, and the Quatermass Experience (Part Three)
In Quatermass and the Pit, Kneale’s ‘Hobbs End’ is London’s wound reopening. Agoraphobia is the private version of that reopening; the moment the body realises its access to the world … Continue reading
Phantom Limbs, Withheld Worlds, and the Quatermass Experience (Part One)
Amputation gets described as removal, which is technically accurate in the way a spreadsheet can be accurate. Yes, the limb is not there. Well done, everyone. The problem is that … Continue reading
The Ghosts of Ash and the Nuclear Spectre (Part Two)
If Hiroshima haunts through absence, the Titanic haunts through overexposure. The Titanic has been replayed, retold, reconstructed, and reanimated so many times that it barely qualifies as an event anymore. It … Continue reading
The Ghosts of Ash and the Nuclear Spectre (Part One)
Disasters have a habit of lingering long after everyone has agreed that they are finished. The rubble gets cleared. The plaques get installed. The anniversary documentaries get commissioned. The calendar … Continue reading
Namaste, or: What Keeps Coming Back (in a Slightly Worse Mood) (Part Three)
On the way down, the sound followed for a while, then thinned, then vanished. It didn’t echo. That was the strangest part. For all its droning insistence, it left … Continue reading
Namaste, or: What Keeps Coming Back (in a Slightly Worse Mood) (Part 1)
We were almost at the top when we heard it. Not music exactly, more a pressure system. A low drone with delusions of grandeur, stretching itself between notes like a … Continue reading
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