Transcript
Speaker: Welcome, welcome, welcome to Death is a Photograph, Culture at the End of History. I'm Chase here with my co-host, Sam, who did some, I think, rather wonderful, on-the-ground sociological research for today's movie, 24-Hour Party People.
Speaker: Sam, what did you what did you do to make sure you understood what this movie was about? It was ah a very prescient piece of research, Chase, I have to say, in that in that I undertook the anthropological field study almost 10 years ago, which is, you know, is i'm I'm a pre-planner, you know, I pre-planned for these things.
Speaker: So I danced topless on a stage in front of about... i't I don't know, want to say 5,000 people ah during an Acid set acid House set ah played by the one and only Bez from Happy Mondays. But yeah, I was lucky enough as ah as a kind of Gen Z millennial cusper to fully go Gen X in 2018 at, I think it was Bestival in Dorset, which is a sort of big... festival and Bez was absolutely off his nut playing an acid house set on top of like a model World War dreadnought that was like dropped in the field.
Speaker: And somehow, like it was like two in the morning, somehow like me and like five friends managed clamber on board the ship and like kind of go, Bez, Bez, we love you. And he was like, you can only stay if you become the entertainment. are Okay, what do we have to do? it And he was like, I don't know, like fucking take your tops off and fucking give them a show.
Speaker: Which happens in the movie. I mean, with him specifically, yeah. I mean, that that does sound a bit creepy, like him, like a 48-year-old man telling a bunch of 20-year-olds take the tops off. But he's straight, we're straight. We were brought in now, it was fine. ah um It wasn't sort of untoward or creepy in any way. There there is no accusation being made. No, I'm not making any accusations about Bez, who was a perfect gentleman. um And yeah. Which is not how he comes off in the movie. And I think it's kind of it's a good segue because what we're talking about today is the sort of Steve Coogan-led, Michael Winterbottom-directed 2002 movie, 24-Hour Party People, which is, you know, it's it's a very, very, very ah British movie because it
Speaker: It's about Manchester in the late 70s through basically the early 90s, the period where Joy Division, Happy Mondays, obviously New Order, all of these bands come you know onto the stage.
Speaker: And I couldn't help in watching it to be sort of entranced by the assumed importance of this. like Don't get me wrong. like I love Joy Division. i love New Order. but um I imagine sort of showing this to my students or to someone who's currently like 15 years old and they would be like, what is this movie about? Why is it? Who is Ian Curtis? Why are you talking about this? And that's part of what makes it feel so overwhelmingly Gen X. This sort of just like, no, this is important. It's like showing a person in a hundred years, a movie about the Korean war or something. mean, like, no, it's important, you know?
Speaker: Well, I think it's important to note that the film was made in, was it 2002, right? Yeah, 2002, yeah. So it's not that far from the events it's chronicling. Like, it's what it's... Yeah. If the kind of Tony will say, we should say the main character in this film is a sort of local journalist.
Speaker: Yeah. Which i I do feel greatly sympathetic towards because I too have been a local journalist made to do inane, stupid fucking feature writing on like provincial England.
Speaker: And you also have a degree from Cambridge, like like Tony Wilson in this movie. Yeah, we're the same person. Yeah. I hope not. And he he has this kind of awful... I mean, Steve Kukin, who plays him, has an Estuary accent, and he's trying to do like a soft Manchester accent, and just blurs into this kind of awful like nasal adenoidal drone that the the sort of actor playing Tony Wilson has.
Speaker: Right, so yeah, 2002, it's not that long after the Tony Wilson era. like If you think the Tony Wilson era is kind of the late 70s to the early 90s, right? like We're only...
Speaker: seven, eight years on from this. So it's still, I think, very fresh in the memory for viewers, either those who lived for it or those who just missed it. So I think that is perhaps why it has his head up his ass to use sort of vulgar language. Like this is still important at this period in time. um I think it's an interesting, but it's the first film maybe that is nostalgic about an era that's Like we've had a lot of nostalgia films made in the late 90s, early but this is the first film that's kind of like a nostalgia film for the 80s and 90s made in the early 2000s, which it's it's like almost nostalgic before its time, right? Like it's almost too early and now re-watching it, it's far too late in a weird way.
Speaker: I was just going to say that I think the people that viewers, at least American viewers, would have heard of in this movie would be people like Ian Curtis from Joy Division, right? Who are not by any means the center point point of the movie. In fact, Ian Curtis basically shows up, has a seizure, and then watches Werner Herzog's Trojansk and kills himself. like It's a movie grounded in Tony Wilson as a character. And so there's something very...
Speaker: you know self-indulgent. not I don't even mean that in a mean way. I just want to think about it in terms of the cultural viewpoint of Gen X about deciding that this label owner, and I'm doing scare quotes because we'll come to why that needs to be put in scare quotes in a little while, who acts as the narrator, yes, but also as the only character anchor point, as the person who is in all of the scenes, as the person around whom the narrative coheres, meaning that like the bands that most people aware of this scene in some dim way would care about are relegated to the background.
Speaker: And I think that that in itself is very interesting because the movie wants to be about what it would mean to run like an anarchist record label. And therefore you have to tell the story in terms of the guy who decides to make it that kind of record label to build. What does he keep saying that Manchester is going to be in my mind? It's Renaissance Florence. it's the point right thank you well It's not that he's just building it, but it also, it already is Renaissance Florence and he just has to prove that it is.
Speaker: Yes, this is true because he recognizes the energy that no one else will. like There's that great early scene where he's... It's actually one of the few points where his news career and the music career overlap, where he is going to this early Sex Pistols concert 1976 in this... like Yeah, the so the lesser free trade hall in Manchester, right? And it's it's interesting because the American mythology around Velvet Underground, right? like There's that famous quote, which I don't know if it's apocryphal or not, which is like, the Velvet Underground were incredibly like uninfluential in the 1960s, but anyone who ever heard them a gig formed their own band.
Speaker: Yes. yeah And we've got a sort of a ground zero in much the same sense for the 80s, I suppose, in 1976, which is the Sex Pistols concert, which only 42 people attend. Yeah, it's 42 people, and he they do this amazing sort of like proto-Marvel thing of him. look And I won't attempt to do his sort of like rounded U-based accent. you I love when an actor, like, they cut into one part of an accent as a way of covering for the fact that they can't actually do the whole thing.
Speaker: so he's just doing like, God. I like Steve Coogan. actually from Lancashire, but he doesn't sound like he is, which is odd, but hey. Well, to be fair, he you know, another thing that's interesting about this movie is he is kind of just playing Alan Partridge, like a different version of Alan Partridge, but essentially, yes, like he's still a reporter. Yeah, it's like, it's like it's an elevated Alan Partridge. Yeah, and Alan Partridge who talks about Boethius with homeless people, um but yeah nonetheless, Alan Partridge, but, you know, and we should just get the way that it is ah is a very funny movie, um but,
Speaker: to the point about this scene where they're in the lesser free trade hall, which, great name, because it would have to be in the lesser of the free trade halls for this movie to make sense. like It has to be the place where the max capacity is like 100 people and only 42 are there. But it you know it it goes around the room it's sort of like, oh, there's the guy who's going to be in Joy Division. There's the guy who's going to be in Happy Mondays, blah, blah, blah, in this very kind of like...
Speaker: Oh, you're probably wondering how we ended up here. Well, let me show you. know It does have a little bit of a touch of that sort of later millennial ah rewind quality to it. Yeah. And we should say that like a topic we've discussed on this podcast like a dozen times is that a lot of Gen X, defining Gen X culture is actually made by boomers. So Ian Curtis was a boomer. Tony Wilson is very much boomer, born in 1950. Yeah.
Speaker: And that initial scene in the lesser free trade war with the Sex Pistols playing is an interesting... It's not ah like explicit about this transference, but you get this idea of a vanguard, right? So like Tony Wilson, at the of the film is very much a boobah, right? He's in an Afghan coat. He's got like a silly little Austin Powers-style cravat tied at the side. He's very flamboyant.
Speaker: And he's he's in this like grungy gig space. And it's like yeah it is like a vanguard moment, right? Where he... Even though he is if he hadn't been there, he'd probably carry on being an archetypical boomer.
Speaker: But um yeah, he he goes back home after the gig and tears down his that David Bowie and um Prince post. Maybe it wasn't Prince. It's somebody else, yeah. Pink Floyd, yeah. I love the protest.
Speaker: The girlfriend is like, no, not David. He's like, he has to go. Not David, we love David. Which also made my wife, she also screamed because she's a very big ah Bowie fan. So she was like, No, don't do that. Not David. The Vanguard is here. We got Lennon.
Speaker: Trotsky's here. Barry is over there. like It's just a very funny. They're creating a new world in a way, right? Like there is this rupture of the the Sex Pistols that is going to lead to a kind of reevaluation of a transvaluation of all values in the next decade.
Speaker: It's worth saying here also that the movie in this moment and throughout loves to actually quite successfully edit period footage into the footage of the moment. The movie is actually filmed with this anti-sheen, this kind of like dimming of the colors that allows it to very easily blend with the sort of like sweaty, under-saturated 70s and early 80s footage that it likes to use.
Speaker: So at that moment, you'll get shots of the Sex Pistols on the stage, presumably at the actual gig, cut into then you know Alan Partridge essentially dancing, doing this like stupid thing with his arms, basically showing in that moment that he's like, oh, I get it. I'm into this. I feel the energy that is coming here, and that's why this is Renaissance Florence. So I see that actually as ah as a kind of It's assuming of authenticity, right? Like Gen X loves authenticity and we will get to authenticity later in this movie um with the blood contract that that he writes and signs later on.
Speaker: But I think that the at ah at a sort of formal level, it wants to blend the actual footage into the sort of damped down version of modern footage to create this... feeling of authenticity where the movie actually slots itself into the gaps. It's almost like you're watching what it would have looked like to film between the shows that we actually have footage of. Yeah. It has a documentary quality in that sense, even though it also has a lot of fourth wall breaking and crazy sort of, you know, postmodern stuff going on at the same time.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, for it, it's both outstandingly ambitious intellectually for a mainstream commercial comedy, unlike sort of subcultural exploration, you know, sort of big box office piece, and at the same time, incredibly sort of sophomoric.
Speaker: in its intellectual pretensions. Like someone said, watching it from my ah like the vantage point of 2026, the fact that it is willing to quote Boeufius and Hegel and Marx andetzsche and Nietzsche and the three player signifiers. I love that moment.
Speaker: Yeah. Do you understand nothing of the three player signifiers? Yeah. Well, yeah, the guy is asking him, he's like, there's this sort of annoying reporter who shows up throughout the Joy Division period. And he's like, you've named this band after ah you know an Aryan sex abuse group. And he's like, do you know nothing of the free play of Signifier and Signified? sort of area Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: ah Which is exactly something like a Sixth Format. We were saying prior to recording that Tony Wilson, as imagined by Steve Coogan, is this kind of perpetual Sixth Format into his 40s, where he is they're extremely intellectually flamboyant, but it's all kind of surface and performance.
Speaker: And I don't know, yeah, i'm I'm of two minds about it. like it's on In one part, I'm kind of like, it's incredibly cringe as someone who probably was quite like that at 18, 19. And there's a sort of impulse to distance myself from it. And at the same time, I feel so much of contemporary programming and like contemporary mainstream comedy and drama is so afraid to make references that the audience might not be familiar with that at this point, I'm kind of willing to tolerate some pretension.
Speaker: if it opens up people's worlds slightly. um so yeah, it's, it's, it's, uh, Teddy Wilson's sort cod intellectualism is kind of, I think kind of welcome. He loves saying throughout that, I have a degree from Cambridge. I'm an actual journalist. And then there he gets sent to this an amazing scene where he's sent to the the zoo in like a Chester, I think it is. yes And he's he goes he goes there and it's a it's a dwarf washing an elephant.
Speaker: And that's the story. Every one of his interviews is like a soft focus human interest like Fluffy. So it's like, paragliding on the Peak District. Yeah, like watching a watch an elephant, town crier.
Speaker: that The guy with the the canals guy. I love the... It's about the Manchester canals, I think. And he says, like, he says, this man has been working here since last century. and you're like, that doesn't... Because it's like the 80s at this point. So this man would have to like 100 years old for this to be possible, or at least like 90.
Speaker: And then he goes, when did you start working on the canals? And the guy goes, huh, right about nineteen hundred And he goes, okay, well, almost last century. And then he says, he says and how much do you remember from those you know heady days?
Speaker: he goes, well, not much. Yeah. you just realize that the it's just a total waste. It's like old man whose mind is totally atrophied. like it is you You forgive some of the pretentiousness, I think.
Speaker: because I mean, and first of all, we should say Tony Wilson as a consultant, like very involved with the movie. So he's also kind of choosing how to present himself. And so whatever pretentiousness exists there is, I think, obviated to some extent by The fact that he is genuinely, like, if, yes, only a sixth former with sort of, you know, he's taking Kierkegaard home and, like, reading Fear and Trembling on the couch and being like, this is amazing, right?
Speaker: But he does exist in a world where he's constantly made to just do stories about dwarves watching washing elephants. And so you do sort of sympathize. Pretty much every like genius lead singer of a Manchester band where they first meet him calls him a cunt as well. yeah he Like Ian Curtis, Sean Ryder. Yeah, like it almost up without any provocation. It's just like, you're a fucking cunt. He's like, all right, all right. I sort of know that.
Speaker: There's that moment where his, um I don't remember his name, but the guy with the sort of reddish glasses who's his sort of right-hand man throughout the Factory Records period. ah Paddy Constantine's character, yeah.
Speaker: He's like, you don't know what you are, but I know what you are. And of course, it's that word that I can't use because of cultural differences between its usage. But the point is that like everyone around him is well aware of this fact. And I i will say that does bleed into the movie. like There's a moment early on where he gets caught receiving, I'll put it very politely, oral sex in the back of a shagged out van, um very seventy s coded. With the like very dodgy mob-affiliated owner of the venue where he's putting on this club night. Yes, this is before he's like he's just started to get the kind of factory records idea cooking.
Speaker: And he has he has like a whole moment where he doesn't they're both called Tony, him and the mob-affiliated Yes, he's very upset about this. And he insists on calling him Don instead. yeah And then there's like that brilliant aside where he goes, well, I'm sort of Don, I'm not like, and he goes, what do you mean? He's like, well, I went to Cambridge.
Speaker: LAUGHTER Just, Yeah, and he says, no, but they're like, no, no, no his last name is Tony, so he's Mr. Tony, and you're Tony's like, that's not going to do. Mr. Tony, that's that's respect, you know? you You owe him something, but then just Tony, what is it? So he's very concerned about status, and I do like that about the movie, that it builds in a kind of critique of Gen X authenticity, that like, we all do know at some level this was founded by a bunch of guys whose heads were way up their own asses. Like, it might have been important. and Yeah. yeah
Speaker: The other thing is that Tony Wilson is like the least off. Well, one, he's not really Gen X, but also like if if if he's kind of proto Gen X along with Ian Curtis or whatever, he is in some ways the least authentic of any of the characters in the film.
Speaker: So he's he's supposed to be the kind of vanguard of this Gen X movement. But at the same time, right like the other characters are very much themselves. Ian Curtis is almost unbearably himself. like Sean Ryder is unbearably himself. But Tony Wilson is constantly code-switching, right? like There's a bit where he goes to interview Sir Keith Joseph, who is Margaret Thatcher's Chancellor. So by the time he's interviewing Sir Keith Joseph, he's probably recently retired from Cabinet.
Speaker: And he's so yeah he changes his name from Tony to Anthony. He's like, my name's Anthony, my name's Anthony. And he's in like this 1980s power So he's like, he's that he has two feet. So he has a foot. It's very interesting. He has a foot in the world of like journalism and professional life. And, you know, he's actually never really living in Manchester. He's always living in like in the suburbs or out in the countryside, like in this kind of faux attempt at sort of a gentry lifestyle.
Speaker: so he And yet at the same time, he's like has his foot in like urban, artistic, vanguard, Manchester, artistic life. And I find it very interesting that he's a figure who is it what i simultaneously very concerned with authenticity and yet also kind of is very happy to live in different worlds and kind of accept the artifice of that.
Speaker: Well, he sort of turns into a kind of like a certain species of 70s Western Maoist, essentially. right like The Weather Underground guys, after they come out, they get it set up with like swanky jobs at the University of Chicago or whatever. Or I'm thinking of recently, and God love him, like I love this man Wallace Shawn from...
Speaker: Princess Diary earlier in our or ah or season, who in a recent interview with Chapo, no, no, with Truanon, excuse me, was like talking about learning about Nicaragua in the 80s and like coming to this like political consciousness. But of course, Wallace Shawn is the son of the editor-in-chief of The New Yorker, who like is a professed coward, who was like, oh, but they're doing some interesting stuff over there. I do kind of want to find out. like It does have a little bit of that. And i I appreciate that because it does cut against some of what I think is the now more contemporary like Gen X sort of doing hagiography of itself.
Speaker: like Wilson seems to have enough of a sense of humor to be able to build in, i mean, he didn't write it, right? But he did consult on it to be able to build in this sort of like, yes, this did have to come from a certain kind of like double dealer of a certain kind. And he's also the most concerned with his own authenticity, which brings us to the blood, the sort of um packed with Satan, Homer Simpson for a donut style, where at the beginning, he's like, you know, no, this is going to be a different kind of record company. This is going to be artist owned. We're going to do a great job. I've given him like a Philly accent for some reason, but,
Speaker: we're going to do this. Artists are going to own everything. And he writes and signs a contract in his own blood that ends up framed in their office, which side note has this hilarious table, by the way, that that they won't stop talking about where he clearly is trying to like show that he's 30 grand for a table. like All of his, that's the other thing. Wilson is constantly like spending way too much money on stupid stuff.
Speaker: Like, his sort of vision for the bands, which is considered economically stupid, like when they print a bunch of new order records, that they lose five cents on every record because it's shaped like a floppy disk, essentially. And so it's too expensive to produce at the price they're selling it. Everyone's like, you're an idiot, but he keeps succeeding.
Speaker: But the obverse of that is the fact that he can't stop buying sort of like luxury goods that are dumb to put into his artist-owned office building. I mean, he owns the office, but where all the music is owned by the artist, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, and that's the other irony, is that he's kind of constantly dancing between this kind of provincialism that Manchester, civic pride and provincialism that Manchester is known for, right? Like, it's the kind of the English city that is far enough away from London to form its own kind of cultural centre of gravity.
Speaker: And he's very proud of that. And this is a film ultimately about Manchester and about, like, not being London, doing it outside of London. And at the same time, he's constantly like, well, this is what they've got in London. Like, this is, yeah like, the London record companies have this stuff, so we've got to have it. And there's a great scene where he buys a table, which is a big sort of, like, Mondrian-style abstract, you know, like an Eames-style huge modernist table with these, like, weird, like, string beams that attach to the ceiling, which I like vividly. It's actually slightly out of time because...
Speaker: That's the kind of office decal I remember from the early 2000s. If like my dad was going to a client meeting in the early 2000s and night my mum couldn't take tariffs, so I was dragged to London and to send my office. That's what the offices looked like in 2001. So that's interesting. But...
Speaker: There's the bit where they have the huge spread of food on the table and the Happy Mondays come in. They're like, what's all this fucking green shape? Why don't you guys? Yeah, it's like fucking rabbit food. And then Tony Wilson's sort like, no, it's fine. are these in London. This is the food they in London. um Which again, yeah, like on the kind of geographical level, right? Like,
Speaker: he's never quite resolved about how much he's really like committed to Manchester in that sense. Um, well, I do, I do think it is important to point out that of course, Manchester is where angles goes to write his book about English working class life, you know, uh,
Speaker: you know whatever it is, about 100 years earlier, little more than 100 years earlier. So I am i think in in the movie, does it doesn't foreground that reality, but there is that sequence where it talks about how the nurses are on strike, um the gravediggers are refusing to bury the bodies. right like it does... yeah it does let you know that this is a period of decline. And so the kind of excess that these bands are engaged in is a response to that decline. And it doesn't come out and say it that explicitly, but it does sort of juxtapose these things to invite the reader to the viewer to think about it that way.
Speaker: Yeah, well, it's odd, isn't it? Because it is like a... I've used this term so much in the podcast, so someone shoot me if I use it again. But like it is like ah an interregnum or pivot point, right? like So 76 is the Sex Pistols. A few years later, you get to 78, 79, which is the Winter of Discontent.
Speaker: You're in ah the Callaghan administration. James Callaghan has just taken over from Howard Wilson. You've had a previous kind of iteration of this in 1973 with the Three-Day Week under um Edward Heath.
Speaker: and the OPEC oil crisis, right? And then it kind of all comes spiraling back in the late 70s. It's even worse than the film makes out, right? The um IMF is intervening at this point. The International Monetary Fund is, like, bailing the UK out. Like, we're, like, a prior economic state.
Speaker: And it's this moment of, like, everything coming to a halt. Like, the unions completely, like, shutting the country down. Inflation through the roof. Like, the IMF bailing the country out. ah James Callaghan...
Speaker: I mean, there's an argument to be made that neoliberalisation and deindustrialisation the UK actually starts James Callaghan, not with Margaret Thatcher, because he accepts the IMF terms, which lead to a lot of deindustrialisation.
Speaker: Well, that's that's just like that's just like Jimmy Carter in the United States, right? Where the Volcker shock in the the very late 70s basically presages the whole Reagan thing. Like it starts before. yeah Yeah, there there's a center-left complicity there. um But yeah, obviously, like 79, that's when you get the election of Margaret Thatcher. um And, you know, everything starts spiraling out.
Speaker: But it's interesting, yeah, like, it's, Wilson is, ah again, like a figure with it's an effort in two camps. He's both sort of seemingly loves the industrial history and innovation of Manchester, right? There's another montage where he kind of goes, know, it's the railways, it's the textile trade, it's the TV, it's the the bouncing bomb, like, Manchester's on the forefront.
Speaker: And in a lot of ways it is, right? Like it's a city that, again, like is where Engels, well, Engels' family had ah capital and factories there anyway. They didn't like just choose to go there. But it's a city that is like at the forefront of industrial capitalism at point. It's not London. Like London is administrative, it's clerical, it's the seat of power, but like the seat of like innovation,
Speaker: Sorry, Birmingham. is I can say this now. It's Manchester, right? And like Manchester is the city that is pioneering communism, but is also pioneerers it pioneering liberalism, right? Like Manchester liberalism, utilitarianism, individualism, ah non-conformism. All of this is coming out of Manchester. The Guardian, right?
Speaker: That paper of the sort of like individualist, liberal, and middle class in England is from Manchester. How much has not changed? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they are effectively still Manchester liberals in that sense. Like, I don't know Bentham or J.S. Mill were from Manchester, but like definitely very involved in the, you know, sort of politics of Manchester. and So yeah, and it was once that city. And like, I think Tony Wilson's imagining is kind of it's going to be that city again. But because we're in the era of neoliberalisation, de-industrialisation, it can't be that city in a kind of industrial sense or all you know manufacturing sense. It has to be that city in a cultural sense. they can't like It's lost that material base to really do those things. And yeah, I think like I was sort of thinking about why Manchester and not Birmingham, not Liverpool, not Glasgow at this point. right like Why is Manchester so dominant from like the late 70s to the late 90s? So running from...
Speaker: ah The Buzzcocks and like that Sex Pistols gig all the way to Oasis, right? of Sort terminating in the early 2000s. Manchester is the place to be for music. And yeah, why why wasn't it Birmingham? Why wasn't it Liverpool? Why wasn't it Glasgow?
Speaker: um I mean, Birmingham had... UB40 I don't know but yeah not really um and yeah I think it is a combination of factors right that all those cities are undergoing de-industrialisation but Manchester is unique in the sense that it doesn't have that kind of like cultural hangover from 60s that Liverpool has like Liverpool is still obsessed with the Beatles like it it can't get out of the shadow of the Beatles Birmingham is just too close to London, and effectively. like if If you're talented interested in art, you're just going to go to London because it's like an hour away on the train, and then Gars goes is too far away. Manchester is that is really that kind of golden meanme mean, even. like It's the Goldilocks zone in the sense that it's de-industrialising, so you've got cheap rent, you've got big warehouses, you've got artistic room to experiment, um but it's far enough away from London that there's not this automatic like suction of talent ah to that city. um So it is like the perfect place, perfect time.
Speaker: Well, and you're what's interesting is you are sort of making the argument for being Renaissance Florence because Renaissance Florence is made possible by the early growth of banking, right, in this in this particular city, that by the period we're talking about in terms of Sort of the the output of of art that then eventually goes to Rome too.
Speaker: Like it's it's not on its way out exactly, but it's not at its apex either necessarily. right like The art is always always kind of generated in part after the, you know it sort of almost predicts that the apex has happened in a way. I'm never thinking of it as a parabola. So he may be more right than he even realizes that you know the sort of soft power generated by art often does follow this moment of of kind of hard currency power.
Speaker: um you know No one is really thinking about Florence in the 18th century, right? But the art lasts. That is still there. That still gives it a a claim to fame.
Speaker: It's interesting that Manchester is almost at the other end now. So that Goldilocks zone of still having the infrastructure to produce culture, but not really having enough work that people would be distracted by other things.
Speaker: Manchester now is you know it's led by a Gen Xer, I'm pretty sure, Andy Burnham. ah Gen X extraordinaire, I'd like to say. He gives off Gen X ones. I'm just going to check.
Speaker: He's giving Gen X, yeah. 1970. Yeah, and also went to the University of Cambridge. So there you he's Tony Wilson. um Come again. Is he the Labour left guy? Kind of. I mean he's a bit of shapeshifter. Also like Tony Wilson. like He's been a Blairite, he's been a Corbynite, he's been soft left. And he is also, most importantly, probably the prince across the water for Labour, in the sense that if Keir Starmer got taken out, Burnham would be probably the the top man to take the job.
Speaker: I would commit seppuku. I just, i don't think it really makes, I just, it would, it would be like assassinating, like Lenin obviously dies ah from, from, you know, quote unquote natural causes, but it would be like taking Lenin out, you know, at sort of the apex of the revolution of the Bolshevik. I just, yeah I don't think you want to play with fire like that, but. but i were were We're still in process. We're still in process. Like the revolution is only half complete. Comrade Starman needs to, needs to complete it. But yeah, like Manchester is waiting in the wings, right? Even now, Manchester is is over the hill. ah So it is that. It is the UK's second city. Sorry, Birmingham. And but yeah, Gen X, I think, were the ones who made it that that that important.
Speaker: Well, we should take it to the movie in those terms, right? Because there, so we've we've discussed, obviously, he decides to found the label. He signs it in his own blood. Joy Division takes off. Ian Curtis has a seizure and then um watches, admittedly, one of the most depressing. Yeah, one of, a movie, I'm just going to say, you know, this is not ah personal advice, but if you are feeling any kind of ideation that might be damaging to yourself, do not watch that movie. That would be my advice.
Speaker: That is a bad idea. But Ian Curtis, i wasn't I was not alive to give him that advice. So unfortunately, he did. um And so they then become, and this is, I think, ah an interesting kind of pivotal moment for the movie and for the scene, which is they're like, what do we do now? right his his His beautiful baritone right before going to the United States for the first tour, it's taken from the world.
Speaker: What do we do without these vocals? And then boom, new order, another Nazi name for some reason. it always makes me think of Ordina Nuovo, the Italian neo-fascist movement. And which, you know, I guess props to them for consistency, though you just start to be like, all right, two in a row is a bit much, guys. Maybe maybe maybe something more like the Happy Mondays. But there is there is something deeper Gen X about that, right? Like the...
Speaker: They're obviously not Nazis, but and they play with Nazi aesthetics. Yes. but Like, even like... i'm Very punk. Yeah, Ian Kirstie throughout the film kind of looks like Edward Lamonoff. Like, he has, like, a Lamonoff-style dress sense. But, like, even thinking about the YBAs, right, and, like, um gosh, who is it? who Damien Hirst, who... I think it's Damien Hirst, who, like, what...
Speaker: four years, no, during the film, but in the mid-90s, has, like, a bunch of SS zombies in wheelchairs that, like, are programmed to, like, bash into walls in a gallery space. Like, there's just something, like, all like, diis Dinos Chapman, Dinos, they do, like, um huge model sets of, like, SS zombies, like, killing each other. Like, there' there's some kind of impulse in the British genetics to, like, fuck with Nazi id ideology and sort of visuals, even though most of these people are on the left.
Speaker: I think it kind of comes from, the like, the legacy of the war, right? Like, they're... The boomers, I think, are obviously born just after the war, but they they're close enough to it that they kind of there's more of a valorisation of the Second World War among British boomers. By the time you get to Gen X, or late boomers, I guess Ian Curtis is late boomer.
Speaker: Yeah, I think there's enough distance that they're able to ironise the legacy of the Second World War. It's less sort of sacred than it was 10, 20 years earlier. it's It's a way to piss off your parents. I mean, we have a decline of Western civilization, the the punk movie that I keep referencing from the US as well. like It is just a way to upset people, more or less, which is a very Gen X move. But to the point where it becomes dance music. And this was yes very interesting to me, right? New Order introduces synths, basically introduces the possibility of turning what is now Wilson's new club, the Hacienda, ah which is itself kind of a crazy thing to name a club in the first place, um to to becoming basically a disco, more or less.
Speaker: And what i find kind of fascinating about the movie that i I assume is just based on the reality of the situation is that no one comes at first. Like, you know, it really is him, again, is this kind of Herculean, Nietzschean will to power sort of figure who's like, no, the future is dance music. And there's that amazing moment where he says, you know, finally, even white people wanted to dance, I think is what he says. Yeah, that comes at the end of a monologue, which I have got written down, which I thought was absolutely amazing and like really revealing, which is like that.
Speaker: And suddenly they were like applauding the DJ, right? Like um that this kind of ah the intermediation was certainly fine. Here we go. Manchester, birthplace to the railways, the computer, the bouncing bomb. And tonight something equally as epop making is taking place. They're applauding the DJ, not the music, not the musician, not the creator, but the medium. That is the birth of rave culture. And like, yeah, there is something like quite postmodern about that, isn't there? In the sense of like the acceptance of intermediation, the acceptance of, um, it's actually quite anti-Gen X or it gives a lie to the, the Gen X is totally obsessed with authenticity, right?
Speaker: That actually at the same time as, uh, the Smiths, uh, if the Smiths and Joy Division are all about authenticity, rave culture is all about brick-a-large and intermediation and, you know, stealing things from different areas.
Speaker: the player The play of sign and signified. Yeah. Oh, oh yeah. Oh, baby. no it's No, it really is. But it's an interesting moment for me as a foreign viewer to a certain extent because i i would say the – and I really only speak for myself, but I do think I'm probably relatively typical of someone in my age group here.
Speaker: I know about Joy Division. I know about New Order. I know about the Manchester scene to that extent. But the Happy Mondays, to my knowledge, never became very big in the United States. And so I didn't realize the extent to which New Order represented a move toward a different kind of music in the scene. like Obviously, I recognize that it does not sound like Joy Division, right? you know We're not doing... Love, love will tear us up apart again. Yes, there's a pretty Kroonis scene, isn't there? There the two Kroonis in the background. yeah do it Yeah, exactly. And it becomes instead
Speaker: this this this change that I think is important precisely because it shows ah Wilson's ability to be that shapeshifter, right? He recognizes that it's okay for the future to be in dance music.
Speaker: And what he doesn't foresee that comes up later in the movie, of course, is he says, you know, clubs make their money on selling alcohol, but if everyone's on ecstasy, the clubs do not vend the ecstasy, right? So then they have to get the drug dealers to be the bouncers and it becomes this whole problem, right?
Speaker: But it does become, and I do think this is kind of important, a meditation on the way in which the change in culture produces crime. And I appreciated that because often there's a blindness about this in the way that Gen X reflects upon itself. That like, it's freedom that it identifies with its own moment of coming to be.
Speaker: is rooted very strongly in the culture of excess that grew up in the 80s and late 70s that is inextricable from the drug culture that arose at the same time, right? I do not think you can separate those two things meaningfully.
Speaker: But very often there's this idea of, oh, well, we were doing it the right way. And then they're just, in America, it's racialized, right? Oh, and then there was the crack epidemic and blah, blah, blah. And that was all very bad. But, you know, we did it the right way. Wilson in the movie narrates like, oh by the way, the rave culture then led to gangland shootings in Manchester because that's the easiest way to take out your competition when you're an illegal seller of something, right? Like there's no, you're not going to drive them out of the marketplace. You're just going to murder them. And there's some quite actually,
Speaker: ah almost scary, for lack of a better term, scenes where it'll be like a kid on a bike just gunning down another kid on a bike while also laughing. you know It does have this sort of haunting, you know incorrect emotional reaction ah quality that is a little bit disturbing. So i um there is something about the movie that kind of rises above the typical Gen X meditation that I think is informed in large part by maybe its in incorporation of the postmodern elements to the narration. i think that gives it a more, don't want to elevated perspective, but something resembling an elevated perspective.
Speaker: Yeah. And I think that the sort of benefit of hindsight, right? um By 2002, there's enough time to sort of like, I suppose, digest the the the sort of contours of cultural history at this point. Things are starting to take shape in terms of what it actually was, what it meant.
Speaker: I would say that there are bits missing, right? So it's because it follows the linearity of Tony Wilson's career, a lot of the Manchester scene in the broader British subcultural explosion of the time is like missed out. So obviously, I think at the end, he kind of acknowledges that he's talking to God who looks like him.
Speaker: Oh, well, yeah, we do have to get to that. That's its own. Yeah, right, yeah. God tells him he should have signed the Smiths. So the Smiths are missing, obviously, um who are kind of sort of simultaneous to Joy Division um and their other their own thing.
Speaker: And then also the Stone Roses. I think ah the lead singer of the Stone Roses does cameo in. And obviously the Fool as well are missing. um And then, e obviously, it doesn't really reflect on how all of this led Britpop. It kind of does run over on Britpop and doesn't really go there. um It also doesn't reflect on the second Summer of Love, right? So, Madchester, which is...
Speaker: is actually just a smaller part of the second Summer of Love, which is like 1988 to 1990, which is the rise of Acid House, rave culture, ecstasy across the UK. So this is like part of a bigger thing, which I do think the film kind of misses out on.
Speaker: And, you know, would have been interesting to think about because obviously it is a Gen X recuperation of the first Summer of Love. in the 60s, which is the boomer thing, and it you know instead of marijuana, it's ecstasy.
Speaker: And you know instead of the so big bad, I don't know, LBJ or whatever, you've got Thatcher and then John Major, of cracking down on raving, sort of field raves. They would sort do illegal raves where they'd get caravans kick them out sand systems and they'd park them in fields and that's Somerset. And then you'd get like 5,000 people off their phones on ecstasy. Yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, like it has two twin retellings. You have the Gen X account, which is this is like the best thing that ever happened to the UK. Ecstasy is like a revolutionary drug in the sense that unlike cocaine or heroin, which are kind of also simultaneously exploding in other bits of the UK, ecstasy is really good fun. You know, it generally makes people quite chilled out and happy. It's called ecstasy.
Speaker: Yeah, it's cool. Actually, most people aren't killing each other. But also, ja as the film explores, led to a lot of crime and downstream negative effects, negative externalities.
Speaker: But yeah, it's interesting that Gen X kind of used to boom the boom of framing but to their own devices, a bit like um the Woodstock in the late 90s, right? Which is also kind of like a Well, but without the you know concomitant attempt at political organization, which I think is also key to the yes kind of what the movie leaves out, right? Yeah. Like, it's it's a movie in which, yes, you do get this front-loading of the fact that things are very bad in the late 70s, but as the movie kind of speeds up through the eighty s and mid-90s,
Speaker: it becomes clear, even if the movie doesn't say it, that everyone is just escaping from how bad things are. And at no point, like there's that great scene where they're recording with the Happy Mondays and the producer, the engineer basically says, can you give me an E, you know, talking about the record. And he says, oh, I'll give you an E. You know, like, it or when they send them off to Barbados to record and the Happy Mondays singer refuses to, yes, No, I find that scene fascinating, right? Because to to go back to the idea of like Anton Yeager's conception of periods, political periods in the late 20th century, 21st century, right? Like if we are in the post-political moment now, Sean Ryder, you know, working class kid from Manchester, probably from like a long line of trade unionists and like Labour voters, and yet he goes to Barbados. There's no sense of like political agency for the happy mandate. It's like...
Speaker: He gets Barbados and is I think it's quite on the nose. He basically turns into Robinson Crusoe. Like he's a naked, butt naked Robinson Crusoe stuck on Barbados, like fucked on crack cocaine. Obviously, rob Robinson Crusoe, for any English lit heads, is obviously a kind of symbolic of kind of individualistic Protestant capitalist, you know, self-sufficiency.
Speaker: And yeah, like, it is interesting that Sean Ryder is kind of displayed as this kind of Robinson Crusoe-like character, that all of this cultural flourishing, it doesn't actually lead to any political outcomes, right? It leads to you being fucked on crack cocaine butt naked on like a little rock island.
Speaker: Like, that's the outcome. also And then they they bring the album back after like he literally holds it hostage. he has to give him his pocket money to get it back, and he comes in with a gun into the bar and its whole thing. But they get it back, and it's just like bongos with no vocals. It just sounds like they decided to make like island music with with no... And there the whole like future of Factory Records is basically riding on this record because they've put so much money into it, they're waiting for it for a number of years.
Speaker: And what they get back is, oh, we've invested in a bunch of, ah maybe they're geniuses, that's the selling line, but people who cannot take care of themselves. like We are back in sort of like, in other words, he's gotten the classic baby boomer rock star, but without the label authority to actually rein him in.
Speaker: right To like force him into the studio and to be like, you signed a contract, you need to do this. But instead, it's like, ah you know whatever. And then Without that struck, I mean, I'm sorry, I'm reminded to some extent, and I'm not you know i'm not here to be to be partisan in kind of intra-left political affairs, but I'm reminded a little bit about like the classic sort of criticism of Occupy Wall Street, where it's sort of like you build something, but because you don't actually vest anyone or anything with authority, ah it it ends up being dominated sort of by the most insane people involved.
Speaker: Yeah, and Sean Ryder is the most insane artist in the film, right? Like, Ian Curtis is incredibly intense and scary, but he he is at least willing to, like... I'm more sympathetic to Ian Curtis because while he's not overtly political in the sense that, you know, I don't know what Billy Bragg would be, um he's not, like, urging anyone to join a trade union or anything.
Speaker: He is at least willing to kind of, like, reflect the alienation of post-industrial society back on itself. you know, and explore. Yeah. He's, he's, he's very economically rooted. Like the music sounds industrial. so It's the sound of motorways and derelict factories. Right. Like it at least is willing to say something about the moment in a, in a sort of concrete manner. Whereas I love the happy Mondays. I mean, I went and saw them when I was like 20 in Dundee and had a great time, but there is a nihilism there. Like there's a hedonic nihilism that does make me feel deeply uncomfortable that by the time you get to the late eighties, early nineties, it's a kind of fuck it.
Speaker: Like I just want drink. just get fucked up. I don't like, Well, yeah, I mean, Joy Division's joy divisions music, I mean, not only does it sound that way, but you've got songs that are, you know, isolation, will tear us apart, atrocity exhibition.
Speaker: Curtis is reading, right? Like, he's reading J.G. Ballard. like he's he's he's right Like, he's within a canon that he's reflecting back on and, like, deconstructing. Whereas, yeah, like, there's a bit more, like, Sean Ryder's a genius. It's like, give us some of your lyrics. It's like, good, good, double good, good, good, double good. It is pure id. Like, the Happy Mondays, and that's why they're so fun, is that they are just pure id.
Speaker: But there is a loss there, I think, right? I need to insert a personal story here that is relevant, I promise. Recently, I went to a concert for the opener, which was the Chats, an Australian punk rock band.
Speaker: And I was there for the Chats. We were there with an Italian friend of ours who had listened to some of the music of the headliner, the main act, who ended up staying for. And that was Swedish band, The Hives.
Speaker: Okay. And I don't know if anyone here is, well, I say here, you Sam, you're the only person here, but maybe some of the folks out there are familiar with The Hives. I don't know. But they are a this kind of Swedish band, very kind of millennial Gen Z, cuspy, I think big in the 90s. Turns out there's songs like hundreds of millions of listens. I had no idea.
Speaker: The show, and I had a lot of fun. Like this is not this is not intended as ah a damper. was one of the most like Gen X spectacles i have ever been ah pleased enough to be a part of.
Speaker: The name of the lead singer is Howlin' Pele Omqvist. So he puts the sort of like blues musician name in front. They came out in these suits that had lights built into the lapels that would flash all the time. And he would get out in front. He kept doing this. They would go, ladies. And then all the women would have to clap and go, gentlemen. And then everyone would have to clap. And then he'd go, Ladies and gentlemen and everybody else. And then you know everyone would clap at the same. And I was just like, it wasn't exactly the Happy Mondays, but there was this sort of like glee at the idea of rock and roll. There was a moment where he said, you know this is classical music, country Western music. These are these are spectator sports. This is a rock and roll. And then he starts like clapping. And it's this celebration of the idea of rock music or derivatives of rock music.
Speaker: as being liberatory, which is very 60s, yes, but by the time you get to Ian Curtis, like whatever is left of rock music, and this is also true in like the American version of the scene with Husker Du or television or bands like this, where it's like, no, actually, now we need it to express the fact that like society has been hollowed out and there's nothing left to believe in or do, and um you know we're going to be from Cleveland or Manchester or whatever the city might be.
Speaker: The resistance against that is something like the Happy Mondays, and Tony Wilson, of course, in his kind of mercenary quality, is able to ride that entire wave. But there is something um kind of beautifully... Like, we think of Nirvana as being the Gen X band, but I think that infectious... Something like an optimism actually does inflect the younger years of a certain Gen X substrate that does come out in rave culture in resistance to... um resistance to authority by means of essentially enjoyment. It's a kind of return to the merry pranksters, but without any kind of political tone.
Speaker: Like, the politics is, are we allowed to rave in the warehouse? Which, like, I guess is political in a way, but it's not really political in ah in a macro sense, you know? But I also think that that the the Happy Mondays and rave culture is a return of, like, merry England in a weird way to to get your medievalist hat on the chest. Like, it's... it's Actually, like the second summer of love is quite like rural.
Speaker: Like a lot of this is happening out in like fields and it's like the start of like white guys with dreadlocks. It's the start of like, simultaneously you're kind of like, there's a lack of like modernism and urbanism to the Manchester movement and the second summer of love. Like if Ian Curtis and Joy Division are very like literary and modernist and like minimalist and industrial, like the time you get to the early nineties, it's very like, you know, like furry bucket hats and like white guys with dreadlocks and like kind of like Celtic spirituality. So there's like stuff like that. going on underneath I think if you meet Gen Xers in the UK who came up on this they're often anti-vax, crusty maybe they're voting green, maybe they're voting reform they're going to talk you about niche Celtic gods, they live in Cornwall that's the kind of vibe I get
Speaker: No, I think that that's i it it reminds me of something that isn't really addressed by this movie, but that is certainly true in America. Like if you watch King of the Hill, right? If you watch, which is, you know, a sort of semi-conservative American TV show of the late 90s, early 2000s, the left figures involved in it, and they're left-coded, but they're not like, they're certainly not involved in unions, right? Or political parties, right?
Speaker: They're usually like hippies, sort of what my mom growing up would have called leftover hippies. That's what would have called the older version of these people, where like their concerns are you know animal rights, Morrissey, Paging Morrissey. That's the reform version of the thing you just discussed, ah I suppose. But um you know it's it's animal rights.
Speaker: It's ah open drug use. It's being able to go to raves. It's sort of the euphoria of... individuality that comes together in a kind of like freely associated cloud of of joy. right It's not politics and in the way that maybe ian Curtis's music would suggest. And you know I'm not here to condemn that or anything, but I do think the kernel of that is located in something like the Madchester movement you're describing. And the movie does admirably capture that that core, even if it doesn't actually you know explore where it goes. I do want to talk about the end of the movie,
Speaker: It is, as was sort of suggested by Sam earlier, well, a little background. They decide they need to try and sell the label. Who do they sell it to, of course, but London Records, which, you know, come on. I mean, it's its it's it's like an allegory built into exist and built into the the real world.
Speaker: A callback, the record executive of London Records is the heroin addict from Shallow Grave. Yes, same guy. And that guy who plays the heroin addicts in Shredder Grove and plays a labelled record executive in 24-hour party papers is none other than Lily Allen's dad, Keith Allen.
Speaker: you know it's it's all connected. It's all connected. And they, you know, they go to sell it. This is the same lunch for the Happy Mondays come and it's all rabbit food. And he's like, well, let's listen to the tape. And of course, Steve Coogan is like, ah maybe let's not, because this is the tape that has no vocals, right? That they're all really worried about, which is sort of a funny thing to be worried about, given that it's rave culture, but whatever.
Speaker: um And he says, I'll give you five mil for everything. Like the the grounds, the bands. And this is you know a ton of money to them. Like it would it would save all of these poor financial... it would It would make all of it worth it in a financial sense. It would make him... Yeah. And like and what inflation adjusted, what? 20 million now? Yeah. like this it's It's enough that he's going to be able to retire and sort of do what he wants to do, right?
Speaker: However... This is when he brings the blood contract off the wall, and it basically says, like, all of the artists are independent. I own nothing. you know i i am authentic. Please believe me. Right?
Speaker: And the executive, Keith Allen's character, basically just says, like, oh, so I don't need to pay you anything. Like, there's there's nothing here. Like, there's no—you're not actually incorporated. Like, you have not accepted the laws of capitalism and the sort of legal frameworks required by our society. And of course, everyone is very angry about this. It's Steve Coogan, who ends up going on the roof and meeting God, who is in the form of himself, which is... you know he tells them this, and they all say, like well, that's pretty up your own ass, isn't it? and he goes, well, God would appear to you as you. you know That's just how he' how he does it, which is, to me, the ah straight out of something like Kevin Smith's dogma, like one one tick mark before God is a black woman. Like, you know what I mean? Like, we're we're not quite there yet, but it is it is the the sort of Gen X authenticity. Because what else would it be? We're all just individuals.
Speaker: God is a Cambridge-educated Mancunian, yeah. Exactly. And I do think it's kind of a lovely ending in the sense that it it shows who Tony has been all along, right? Like, yes, this was significant. Yes, you know, that it's a literal, i mean, da it's a deus ex machina to the extent that a a ah deity intervenes, although it doesn't save him from his loss.
Speaker: And that God has to, of course, be him who says it was all worth it and it was okay. And we got to make this beautiful movie. Isn't that wonderful? Because one thing we haven't addressed too much is the consistent fourth wall breaks. Like Steve Coogan exists both in the time of the movie and in 2002 looking back.
Speaker: At the same time, like there's no, oh, here I am in my armchair, you know, narrating these events. It's somehow all together. And that kind of egomania rests finally in, yes, it turns out it was all worth it. Maybe I didn't make the money immediately that I wanted to. But you know what?
Speaker: We did something. Madchester was real. The culture was changed. And God told me so. you know, it's like the Norm MacDonald bit where he says, the Pope's new book is coming out. but He's on SNL for Weekend Update. And he says, the Pope's new book, OJ did it and God told me so. It's due to be released this weekend. It's very much that, you know. yeah Except Norm MacDonald doesn't put a picture of himself as God on the ah on the cover of the book, you know.
Speaker: Yeah, well, i mean, it's the kind of apogee of Manchester liberalism, right? like is that god is you like If you if you like you yeah you take like Unitarianism and like liberal sort of noncon non-conformism in Manchester to its ultimate end point, it's Steve Keegan on a roof being like, oh, God's me. actually i God actually quite looks like me and he told me to sign the Swifts. I it knows that. think it knows that, like...
Speaker: In a kind of sneaky way, I was Tony Wilson's probably an intelligent enough guy to know that like Manchester liberalism of like 1848 is like, you know, ends is like you know ends up I'm going to race to make you half.
Speaker: Well, and that is what makes it feel like a a movie. Because by 2002, right, we're only a few years off from Juno. We're half a decade off from Juno, which is, you know, for me, if you want to talk about millennial culture being a thing, that would be one of the main places I would locate.
Speaker: It's like a certain version of it anyway. And so when the movie is made, I think we have, we're ah ah we're beginning to be able to reflect on Gen X as a separate thing, right? Like even if everyone involved in this movie is a boomer or an Xer, we're beginning to get to the point where you can have this kind of consciousness of um what that authenticity meant. You know, we're no longer, we have um Dave Grohl's band, the Foo Fighters.
Speaker: We're already in that moment, right? So we've, you know, we've left Kurt behind, we've left Courtney Love behind, and now we're in this moment of of kind of new reflection. I do think that does give the movie some of its zest, its ability to look back and kind of condemn and praise at the same time, which is appreciated.
Speaker: I mean, it's an incredibly odd movie for me in the sense that, yeah, it's like there is like a sort of stockness to the 2010s when I was at university. It is very much exhibited in the fact that we were doing Ecstasy and dancing to the Happy Mondays and like putting on rave nights in barns and people were wearing like fluffy bucket hats and like Adidas streetwear.
Speaker: And like, yeah, there was this, I felt like there was this very concerted attempt to sort of re-engineer that Manchester moment when I was at university. um You know, people were getting into... It was very interesting, actually. that when my My first two years at university, people were listening to guitar bands, and then by the time i have graduated two years later, you know everyone was in the street where everyone wanted to be a DJ. Acid House, Bez, Happy Mondays, all of these things were like very much at the forefront again. And it's yeah it's kind of like saddening and slightly...
Speaker: cynicism making to sort of watch a film exploring that happening in real time for the first time and then just kind of realizing that your own formative moments are sort of a pale imitation a sort of copy of a copy and why why why was that i don't know but yeah Well, it it is that kind of dynamic of of nostalgia that we've talked about where, you know, a lot of Gen X nostalgia is for the 70s, and you do get that in this movie.
Speaker: And because later generations will then try to imitate the prior generation, which is itself imitating a prior generation, you do get these sort of like, you know... Flywheels, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, and also just the idea that ah You know, this this sort of theory concept that, you know, repetition is is never a full repetition. It's always slightly different in some way. And so by doing this act of repetition, you generate something slightly new, which I would not attribute to Gen X, but they are in the midst of of doing it. Any final thoughts, Sam, on the powers of 24-hour party people?
Speaker: Rip-hop, obviously, you know a few years later, is a sort of rehashing of 1960s Mersey beat, Mersey Sound. It's the Beatles, basically. um Oasis want to be the Beatles, but they do it. And it is different give in some ways. um But I do think that that is interesting to me in the sense that are Joy Division re rehashing anything? and I mean, they feel new to me. They feel like Sue's generous.
Speaker: The full Joy Division feel Sue's generous to me in a sense, in a way that perhaps like Oasis doesn't. And that's quite exciting. It would have been quite exciting had I been born 30 years earlier, but 40 years earlier. Yeah, well, that is the thing. is It's like you do... and again, I think about showing this to my students or something, and they would probably be like, who are these people? But there is a degree to... If you're familiar with those moments in music, you sort of do feel... um There is something true to the legend, um even if you know the movie does divest it of some of its power at the same time, ah that you know would have been cool.
Speaker: I would finish with saying that I want you to sort of play the entirety of Joy Division Zoom for your high schoolers. i I might be fired. um you know yeah Isolation. You know, like I just, don't I don't know ah how the higher-ups would feel about that. What I do think the higher-ups would love is if you would ah subscribe to the podcast. You can subscribe for free on Patreon.com. Patreon.com slash deathphotopod.
Speaker: All still free. Of course, we would love if you pay. With that, have a wonderful, wonderful day, everybody. Bye-bye.
