Create a new version of paste:

Venue magazine #550: 28 February - 6 March 2003 - Rear View: The Last Picture Shows: Critical Mess, by Eugene Byrne
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eugene Byrne's Critical Mess was his first noticeable appearance in Venue's regular Rear View opinion page, recounting his past experiences as a film reviewer. As the above shows, the Massive Attack Operation Ore arrest had just taken place and was in the news, though I had barely noticed it or made any connection at this time. Meanwhile, the flaming and insane fake teen band website posted to the Inertia board had just been seen, online events had crept onto a couple of EZBoard poetry forums as I began to abandon already affected sites, and my internet connection would soon terminate altogether, leaving me accessing the net solely from other computers.
Like the rest of the Rear View articles, behind the facade, Byrne is as concerned with events online, on the Venue website and in its messages as are its other writers. His account recalls the early 1980s and the Arnolfini, the site of hated art films, particularly those by French director Godard. Film, and TV, are in fact a major feature of Venue's events, constantly referenced online, in the messages or the work of the writers. Despite Byrne's alleged hatred for movies and ads, for that matter, he alludes to  them constantly, and Venue would serve the intentions of commercial media prior to its own closure very intently. Closer inspection of film and television prior to the events of 2002, after which the links of international media to Venue's events are very stark,
Jenny and I had frequented the Arnolfini at that time, when I was around six or seven years old, and a vaguely recalled encounter outside the dockside arts center is among the earliest potential encounters of stalking otherwise now evident, though none of this had been realised at the time. The Arnolfini was also the first site of the Bristol Dance Center, before moving to a temporary home in the crypt of St Mary on the Quay, a city centre church where I remember buying a large monkey from its fund raising jumble sale, then to its permanent home at Jacobs Wells where my mother worked at the reception while I spent all Saturday sitting in the lobby reading Tintin books or exploring the old swimming baths under conversion. On the website, Tintin appears as the name attached to one questionable personals ad, and the French and ballet are the targets of messages, Byrne later referring to the 'evil Belgians'. Byrne's dislike for the middle-classes, which Jenny shared, rejecting her own family, and which I share in turn, raised entirely otherwise, can be seen in his repeat mentions of the Blairite media, the familial middle-class invasions of holiday destinations, or the views of Hampstead on show in jokes; and I have gone on to learn just how bad Jenny'sd family really, and just how awful bourgeois society really, being merely one cog in a wheel of class, state and capitalism, of which Byrne is undoubtedly a part. But the class war on show at Venue is all fake, Byrne's shocking socialist hints resolve in the Labour Party one locus of all that was seen, and Byrne's target is more me than anything, with suspect misdirection amid a scam running decades into the past, as he here shows, and into the media and a criminal operation around us for years. The family were associated with the Labour Party, and Glenda Jackson; John Sullivan, our next door neighbour dead in Spain in 2003, was on the far left of Labour; the Labour Left, and the socialists and Communist Party, were key opponents to the 60s radicals associated with my father's political life (the Italian Inquisition even notes the improvement in trials following the replacement of a CP-appointed judge).
The reference to heroine addiction ("pure grade movies straight into yer veins") is an oddity, otherwise only seen in one message referring to a 'grey looking scag head'. Online, the Laing forum was graced by the 'thorn firmly entrenched' screamers, while the Time Travellers or Aliens email spam was a key item in 2002. Here Byrne mentions Thornbury, weirdly, and ends with a phrase combining Star Wars and Star Trek, a famous motif of the time travel movie Back to the Future ("I am Darth Vader, extraterrestrial from the planet Vulcan"); and Back to the Future or its sequel are referenced in the messages again, and played out, credit card scam, horses porn and all ('oh la la'). Oliver, Ace, and rumours regarding Oliver's mother's ex-partner Tom, are a principle features of the messages too. Ace's brother died of a heroine overdose shortly before, and Ace's mum had appeared in a feature in The Evening Post following his death; her partner was a Spanish man called Damian. The name Thorne is also known from The Omen movies, and Damian Thorne; this is an article about movies, and Byrne referenced them, like the online scam and messages, frequently. Saint Godard's is also the name of the Catholic church in Prince of Darkness, looking very much like St Mary on the Quay.
Then there is Charlie, Byrne's 'pal'. The term is recognisable from John's obituary, a key item, where Linebaugh refers to John and himself as 'pals'. The name can be seen in the messages too, in the company of one of Goldschmied's sons Asa (see Crimes of the Art and University Challenge for more); Charlie was also the name of a friend of my grandmother's from Edinburgh, though I hadn't met him yet, one whose remarks I would later find appalling.
The obsession with Wales is inexplicable to me, but Wales would later reappear in the North Wales care home scandal, related to the Dolphin Square allegations, bizarrely familiar in light of Venue's messages (though 'Nick' is assumed to by Guy's dad, a teacher in Henbury; and then there is this cinematic and televisual obsession with drowning, and all these plunging children in the films of the millenium...).
Deputy editor and website editor Byrne, like the rest of Venue, their cohorts in Bristol, at The Guardian, at The Mirror, the BBC, etc., was looking at the affected sites, knew about private emails and data on my PC, and a great deal about people in Bristol. Simple. 

"My career as a film critic was short-lived and half-arsed. It was in the 1980s, the nadir of the cinematographer's art. [...] I started doubting my vocation when, one afternoon over drinkies, one of the hacks tried to persuade us all that film criticking was proper work, just like digging coal or being a dentist. This was from a bloke who would be going home to review Friday the 13th Part 57 for the Thornbury Gazette. He probably wasn't even being paid for it. Back then, some people were still making art movies. These were screened at the Arnolfini, where middle-aged, middle-class trendies went along to watch reverently. European art cinema by the '80s, though, was mostly emperor's new clothes stuff, and the one who churned out the most impenetrable, pretentious bollocks was Jean-Luc Godard. I couldn't bear the idea of sitting through his new one, so I took a pile of other reviews from the national papers, and hacked out an anodyne, generally approving piece using lots of big words. Sorted. Except my pal Charlie went to see it on the strength of this 'review', and afterwards demanded to know if I'd watched the same film he had. [...] The critic has a much more pleasant experience of a movie than the average punter. No ticket-queues, no cretins behind you talking into their mobile phones or loudly masticating through a bucket of expanded polystyrene... No distractions, just the very best pure-grade Movie straight into yer veins. [...] I was even quite nice to the girl who plonked herself and her jumbo Dustbin O' Pepsi next to me at 'The Two Towers'. The thing I actually find intolerable are the adverts. I've actually shouted "Oh fuck off!" at the most asinine ones, which is perhaps not the best thing to do among the audience for 'Toy Story 2'. Then there was the one last summer. It had this pounding dance music score about what a lovely time you'd have at (I think) the university of Glamorgan (formerly Pontypridd College of Hairdressing and Vehicle Theft)...I actually shouted "I think I'd rather go to prison" at the screen. I do not want to watch adverts. I could be chewing on a fingernail or contemplating a stain on the cieling or making interesting sculptures with sweet wrappers than pay any attention to planet-raping corporate scum trying to sell us shit we don't need. They only want your money but meantime they'll settle for thieving thirty seconds of your life. Why do people stand for this? Why do we tolerate paying their admission money and being forced to sit through commercials? They are trying to take away your soul and your paying money to let them do it. Let's rise up and man the barricades now. [...] Always in recovery. Never completely cured. The bitterness is strong in this one, Captain."

Keyphrases: film critic, 1980s, Friday the 13th Part 57, Thornbury, Arnolfini, European art cinema, Jean-Luc Godard, I took a pile of other reviews from the national newspapers, Charlie, straight into yer veins, The Two Towers, adverts, Toy Story 2, university of Glamorgan, Pontypridd College of Hairdressing and Vehicle Theft, prison, corporate scum, thieving, take away your soul, barricades, bitterness is strong in this one, Captain.