LZ5by5's Nocturnal Nostalgia

Handsome Bob

Welcome to the realm of Nocturnal Nostalgia, where posters can post their thoughts on situations of the past. If I may draw on the Forum Charter, it states that just one of the roles of the forum is to cater for those who enjoy the dark side of culture be it music, film or even the nature of society. Thus, the purpose of this thread is to give your thoughts on how the dark side of culture has influenced your life. You can review an album or film close to your heart and assess how it has standed the test of time. You can give your thoughts on a tragic moment in history and how it reflects on the destructive nature of society. Or you can simply reflect on a dark moment in your life, and how it has shaped the person you are today.

I hope to update the thread once a week with my own entry's. However there is not constrictions on how many entries that you, the poster can make, so feel welcome to post your thoughts as much as you want.

How a Film about Racism shaped who I am today

For those of you who haven't seen American History X, the film tells the story of two brothers; Derek and Danny Vineyard. Derek Vineyard is a reformed racist just recently released from jail for the murder of two black men. He is a man released back into a world that he has made hell for not just himself, but for his family and in truth, an entire community. Derek is faced with the true devastation that his actions have caused upon his release from jail and realises that in order to be fully redeemed, he still has a long journey a head of himself. Danny is Derek's younger brother and is a young man on the brink of being fully engulfed by the hate that Derek left behind upon his incarceration in jail. While Derek is serving his time Danny is being groomed by the very men that opportunistically indulged Derek in his weak state and turned him into a hate filled neo-nazi. Now Derek must wrestle Danny away from the clutches of the very men who had preyed on him and his fears. American History X is simply a story about the destructiveness of racism and xenophobia in our society.

I apologise if what you were expecting was a review of this film. What I'm doing here is reflecting on a film that changed my life. I had initially seen American History X for the first time around 2000. At that time I was thirteen years of age and I wasn't really concerned about the mature themes in the film. Rather, all I was concerned with was watching a film rated 18 with my older brothers in defiance of my Dad ordering me not to watch it. I liked the film but I didn't really "get" it. I couldn't really understand the motivations behind Derek's initial embracing of the neo nazi culture and I was even more perplexed by Derek denouncing his white supremacist ideals. To me at that time there was simply good and evil, there was nothing complicated about it. I was taken a back by Derek's ability to become not just "good", but by his ability to become the rock of his family after he had been the poison for so long. The film simply went over my head. It wasn't until nearly six years later did I realise what the film was really all about.

Many of you know about the loss I have suffered over the past few years and I wish not to dwell on it. All I will say is that in January 2006, something happened that devastated me. I was having difficulties in dealing with my grief because no-one in my family really wanted to talk about it. I had no outlet to vent my feelings and I was becoming hate filled. I couldn't understand why what happened, happened. I blamed everyone. Doctors, family, "god" and even the state. I dropped out of University. My weight balooned badly. It was a vicious cycle and a downward spiral into hate and self loathing. I felt isolated and suffocated; I couldn't see any light at the end of the tunnel. However, one Friday night I was going through my usual cycle of eating junk food and drinking myself stupid when a film came on that I hadn't seen in years, American History X. Since it had been six years since I had last seen it I left it on. It was perhaps a decision that saved my life and believe me when I say that it isn't an understatement.

Derek Vineyard receives a visit in jail from his old English teacher, Bob Sweeney, after a severe assault. They have an exchange;

Bob Sweeney: There was a moment... when I used to blame everything and everyone... for all the pain and suffering and vile things that happened to me, that I saw happen to my people. Used to blame everybody. Blamed white people, blamed society, blamed God. I didn't get no answers 'cause I was asking the wrong questions. You have to ask the right questions.
Derek Vineyard: Like what?
Bob Sweeney: Has anything you've done made your life better?

I had a sudden realisation. An epiphany. All of a sudden I realised why I was so hate filled and why I blamed everyone around me for my own pain and hurt. I wasn't angry, eating too much and acting out because of other people's perceived incompetence. It was because I felt guilty. Guilty because in my naivety I didn't take the opportunity to say goodbye as I thought that I would see my loved one again. I didn't get to see her again because she died. American History X did more than anyone in my life could have done in helping me realise why I was angry. So I cried and once I had finished I felt this weight lift off of my shoulders. The anger was gone and replaced by a determination. A determination to pull myself together. Here I am three years later and I like to believe I have achieved what I set out to achieve. I let go of the hate and I got happier and healthier. And it was all because of one film. American History X.

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So there you go, there is my first reflection on situations of the past. I welcome you all to post your own entries!:D

Handsome Bob

My second entry will be on 04/05/09, and it will concern the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre.

Feel more than welcome in posting your own entries.:)

Doctor DooM

Oooooh.

The Downwards Spiral

Nine Inch Nails.

The Downward Spiral is a concept album masterminded by Trent Reznor. Often considered his Maesterwork, it deals with many emotions in its musical journey (and it is a journey, featuring varied highs and lows) eeked out in several variations upon two or three rather fragile sounding piano motifs.

Repeated themes in the songs include love, hate, sadomasochism, anger, and even a touch of spirituality.

My life has been both priviledged and lucky. I am well aware of this. I have had a few trials in life but who hasn't.

With the hindsight of a bit of age I realise quite a few things which seemed so important to me at certain periods weren't really. For those that are, well, you never really fail at them until you give up.

Around the year 2000 I flunked out of Maynooth college. One of the things I will always wonder about was if this aborted college attempt at Science (I was excellent at Biology and Computer Science, not so much Chemistry and Maths) would have gone much better if I had tried my hand at some form of art. I'm always being told- and I really don't mean to boast- that I have some measure of artistic and musical talent.

When I failed I felt like my world had collapsed in on me. Worse still, I felt I had made completely the wrong choice in what I had tried at all- especially as friends of mine were succeeding, including one who went on to become a comic book artist, which particularly made me feel like a failure.

I had a job in retail. It is the one thing I would say I am in fact quite the master of. I am actually disturbed at how good a snake oil merchant I am. I am very, very good at finding people's motivations and desires very quickly and pushing their buttons. It is not something I am proud of.

So I tried not to think about college and how bad it made me feel and tried to make a go of the shop.

I met a beautiful foreign girl. She was basically a ray of sunshine and the thing which made me smile. I basically made her the goal I was aiming for- sooner rather than later, I had decided, I was moving to the beautiful city of York to restart my life and make my mistakes right there.

I quickly got myself promoted, time after time. Not particularly difficult in Celtic tiger times.

My self confidence was taking serious knocks though. Inside I was pretty much dying- I was happy to see my friends doing well but also so jealous.

On top of this, I was starting to hate what I was becoming in work. I was neve genuine, but I don't think I was ever caught. It was becoming increasingly easier to smile and manipulate both colleagues and customers. I hated what I was becoming but bills needed to be paid.

Then there was one week I had when it all went wrong. I had to fire someone in work who I considered a friend. I will never forget her basically sobbing as I had to read from a script coldly about what was happening. My relationship ended. On her birthday, when I had travelled over to see her. I also ended up home again.

I can remember one night that week when I was out walking. Everything seemed bad and wrong. My head was swimming. I was alone, and had no goals to work towards. I felt I had or did nothing which made me special or worthwhile.

I can honestly say I never felt as... pointless as I did right then. Everything felt like a failure. All I had left that I hadn't messed up was my job, and it was turning me into a horrible person. I felt confused and full of rage and was deeply unhappy.

Then I heard this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPZakL2D34M

It was a song I had heard hundreds of times before, but was always just a song. This time it had a profound effect on me.

There's a moment in this song (@1:26, if you're interested) when the pressure thats been building eases. To me, it always sounds like a sunrise.... and thats how it felt to me. I had the closest I have ever had to a spiritual experience. The songs deep peace is even more touching as it is in the middle of songs which sound squalid, angry and are resonant with pain.

I was taken with a total complete calm, and suddenly I had resolve, and a desire to make things better. I knew exactly what I was going to do and how.

Six months later I had a new job and was knee deep in the first year of the computer degree I am now completing. My life has changed completely and at least in some small way, this song and this album have a part in it.

Handsome Bob

The Columbine High School Massacre and its' lasting Legacy

On the 20th of April, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold embarked on a massacre of Columbine High School. Both of these young men were students of this institution where they murdered twelve students and injured twenty-one others before they committed suicide. This tragic incident became aptly known as the Columbine High School Massacre and it is an incident that has had far reaching consequences beyond Colorado in the United States. In the aftermath of the massacre a number of issues came under the spotlight. For one America’s gun culture came under close scrutiny with the families directly impacted by the massacre instigating a campaign calling for stricter gun control. This campaign was met by opposition in the form of the National Rifles Association (NRA), an opposition that built its’ defence upon the iconic words of Hollywood actor Charlton Heston, “from my cold dead hands”. However, the issue of gun control will not be the focus of this piece. Indeed, the other dominating issue that came to the forefront of national and media scrutiny in the aftermath of the massacre is what I want to talk about; Goth culture’s perceived involvement in the motives of Harris and Klebold, and the legacy that this perceived notion left behind.

If one could choose one word to describe the intense debate in the aftermath of the massacre, I’m confident many would choose ‘panic’. If one could choose one word to describe the motives of certain media commentators and other vocal social players jostling for positions in order to get their opinions on the airwaves and thus to the American people, it would be ‘fear’. Panic and fear. The fear of the unknown, of the stranger, and the inevitable social panic one will cause through their xenophobic rhetoric. To emphasise this statement and its’ relevance to the massacre, one just has to look at a rumour that circulated in the aftermath of the shootings. Rachel Scott was one of the first victims of the massacre. She was hit four times from a shotgun and given in no uncertain terms ‘no mercy’. So, how does one make sense of such cold blooded actions? You give the killers reasoning and motive, and furthermore you do it in a way that will cause blunt force trauma to the beliefs of millions of Americans. Scott was allegedly asked by the kills if she believed in God and upon giving an affirmative answer, she was executed. Simply put, the rumour suggested that Christians were targeted by Harris and Klebold. It was a rumour that was later dispelled and discredited by the FBI however the motive of the rumour represents adequately one side of the debate over the massacre. A side that felt America and everything it stands for was under siege from an assault by ‘dangerous’ subcultures within society.

In a Los Angeles suburb, David Yarovesky, a Calabasas High School senior who wears black nail polish and has a pierced eyebrow, tongue, ears and nipples, said that his mother had been fairly understanding about his Gothic style. But since the two Columbine High School gunmen struck, Yarovesky's mother has worriedly asked, "What's the difference between you and them?" This is the overriding problem that faced millions of teenagers who were different to the norm in the aftermath of the Columbine massacre. The myths that rose from the ashes of the massacre have had a longstanding affect and have served to intensify that fear of the stranger and the unknown. Even in the case of your seemingly harmless ‘computer nerd’ hostility has festered. A group of friends were hauled if for investigation by school authorities in a South Florida High School. Why? A fellow student had told her parents that she was afraid of them. Jon Katz, media critic for Rolling Stone magazine, said of the incident “since the Littleton massacre, these kids perceive this national witch hunt for the abnormal, where kids are basically being singled out if they're wearing trench coats, if they're called Goths, if they're on the Internet, if they play Quake and Doom. These kids who already felt like outsiders are being made to feel like killers as well." This is the true damning consequence of this is that all of this hostility and xenophobia was founded on inaccurate factual analysis of the massacre.

Were Harris and Klebold even actually Goths? Or was it just a case of, and how psychologist Peter Langman put it, misunderstandings and wishful thinking with police contributing by talking to reporters before they knew facts? There is in reality no solid evidence to suggest that Harris and Klebold were part of the Goth subculture. Claims that they were members of an informal school club call the “Trenchcoat Mafia” were proven false. Rather, a leading investigator with the diary of both men as evidence stated that Harris and Klebold “did it because they were consumed with hate." They did not specifically target anyone. They had a hit list, but it was filled with names that had already graduated from the school. They did not target exclusively Christians or Jocks. Lead investigator Kate Battan said in the aftermath of the massacre "How many of the jocks hang out in the library at lunch time?" "They knew where the gym was," another investigator added. There was no method to their madness as they targeted people indiscriminately. The only question that is left is why did they decide to commit such a heinous act? Was there any reasoning? The record now shows Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold hadn't been bullied — in fact, they had bragged in diaries about picking on freshmen and "fags." They were not fuelled by Gothic ideals either. Dave Cullen, in his book entitled Columbine, described Eric Harris as a cold blooded predatory psychopath and someone who had "a preposterously grand superiority complex, a revulsion for authority and an excruciating need for control,” Dylan Klebold cut the more tragic figure. He was anxious and lovelorn, summing up his life at one point in his journal as "the most miserable existence in the history of time," Langman noted. Klebold was a paranoid individual who felt that he had “always been hated, by everyone and everything.”

These two young men were consumed by hatred and it was not fuelled by Goth culture or by bands such as Rammstein and Marilyn Manson. Such claims have been shown to be unfounded myths. However these unfounded myths have done untold damage. They have brought tension, hostility and xenophobia to a whole new level in not just High Schools in America, but in the lives of countless others who are perceived as “outcasts” around the Globe. It is naïve however to think that, in the words of Manson himself, that these young men could have been helped if somebody “would have listened, because no one else did." The complexity of these two men ran deep, with the principal of Columbine High School stating of Harris that he “was the type of kid who, when he was in front of adults, he'd tell you what you wanted to hear." This is the kid who would then go home and attempt to make bombs in his kitchen and write of his “God” complex in his diary. Such a complex mind that would be difficult to understand even for peer respected psychologists, never mind Middle America. Goth culture instead took the blame for twisting the minds of Harris and Klebold, because it was convenient and furthermore, because it was an opportunity to attack a perceived threat to American society. Now what do we have? "Going to blow up your school?", a question thrown at Tom De Rocco because of his appearance. Remember that this just doesn’t represent an American issue but the wider issue of xenophobia. I have seen it, and I am sure you have too.

Doctor DooM

How Repo taught me I am growing up




Now I know Repo: The Genetic opera is fairly recent but I think it fits in with what LZ is looking for here.

Repo is a musical with a bit of a difference. The songs found within it are heavily tinged with if not easily classifiable as metal or industrial music.

Repo gently parodies everything gothic and metal whilst also attacking that sub cultures most hated enemies, the culture of celebrity and appearance. The story of Shilo is your typical "I want to be free of my parents and rebel" teen goth fantasy, played with a rye smile. On the counter side, she is borne into a world where the obsession with physical perfection has evolved into a full on dystopia built around cosmetic surgery and organ implants to "improve" oneself. This dystopia is impressively detailed- my personal favourite being that fireplaces have LCD screens with flames instead of real wood in them.

Nearly everything in the film seems to be a reference to something else. For example, Pavi Largo is so close to being Vega from Street Fighter I can't see it being a coincidence. The story is a melding of the two "goth" musicals, Sweeney Todd and The Phantom of the Opera- man seeks revenge on community leader who is responsible for his wives death while also threatening to kill Sarah Brightman after she sings at an opera.

Speaking of Sarah Brightman, both she and Anthony Stuart Head in full on Giles/Ripper mode tear the songs a new one. They add real class to the proceedings (although the make the poor actress who plays Shilo- Alexa Vega- look quite weak in comparison- hardly her fault, and she is more than competent at the role. Her American accent is quite jarring when playing against the older pair ).

In fact, alot of the casting in Repo is inspired. Paris Hilton rips the almighty mickey out of herself playing a rich, but completely useless and talentless heiress.

The film is very violent and extremely sexualised, but seeing as it is playing on the horror genre as well as musical it only enhances the well imagined world. The grave humour is genuinely funny too- at one point the Repo man is singing a duet with himself, his hand using a gutted body as a glove puppet. Another song has the graverobber (a drug dealer) explain how his drug works in a child like, sing song way, to tempt Shilo.

The music is riff and hook based, very listenable even if you're not into the metal side of life. There's one particular song where the almost alien Brightman has a duet with the naive Vega which has an almighty groove.

So there's a nice, glowing review for Repo. But what has that got to do with me?

I know 5 people who would love Repo. I mean absolutely adore it. They won't watch it though. Refuse point blank.

Why?

Because Paris Hilton is in it.

In a fit of righteous rebellion which the film actually parodies, they refuse to involve themselves with anything that she touches (and believe me she is hardly a key player here).

No amount of me trying to explain that the film is actually slaughtering the cult of celebrity will get them to look.

I understand this because I used to be the same, but in my dotage I have calmed down. I realise the world is not black and white but in fact shades of grey. My life is the richer for it, and I am happy with it.

It is not a betrayal of my beliefs: I am still as opposed to this ridiculous obsession with "stars" weight or whatever which people seem to use to prop themselves up. I believe you have your own life, and looking to others to fulfill or validate it is wrong.

But restricting yourself from exploring the world for the same reason is just as wrong.