Every time I come home I have different feelings about the place. My first visits home from University were unsettling - as if a part of me wasn't quite sure that I had left, as if somehow University might be cancelled and I would have to come home and take a job in the bank and then spend all my saturdays in B and Q before slumping brain dead in front of strictly come dancing, waiting to die.
Now I am pretty sure I have moved, to a city and a different class. I will probably wait to die with too much wine in my liver and too much blue cheese in my arteries, in front of some dvd hoping that my children ignite the revolution that I never got around to.
So now coming home is something else. There is good family stuff, (my family are hilariously wonderful, will probably write more about that some other time). There are also trips to this place.
This is a promotional picture which doesn't show off quite how much it is a box of hell. There is a cinema, a bowling alley, a ski slope and chain resteraunts. Everything you need to ignore the world outside and receive some uniform does of funtertainment. I sometimes wonder if it is snobbish of me to detest the place; which after all, is easy enough when you live in easy walking distance from art-house cinema, cute shops and cafes. Still though, by removing entertainment from the centre it sounds a death knell for evening life in Cas town. Fair enough, it's not like pre-Xscape it was thriving, but I am told there was a sense of community. Obviously it is simplistic to say that Xscape has killed 'community' in Castleford, particularly if this 'community' was founded in poverty.
Who cares, it's still a box of hell.
Within 5 minutes from my house there are 3 billboards for Nuts TV, there was a man selling playboy towels in the market - just playboy towels. I went to buy some underwear and I overheard a girl of 10 ( ish) shout 'oooh playboy !!!' which made me feel like ripping off my ears and setting them on fire (sod bras, that's not enough of a statement). I bought underwear and the saleswoman had a playboy bracelet, the other woman had a shirt which read 'golddigga'.
Nuts TV, because apparently 9pm to 1am is 'man time' - and men own sport, cars, comedy and of course girls. This TV channel and its advertising makes me want to surgically remove my breasts and then stitch them (without aneasthetic) to the naked chest of the current editor, before bending him over, penetrating him anally and taking a few pictures.
I look at people and I think why are we standing for this? Things are shit in quite a fundamental way; coming to Castleford really heightens my awareness of this. I am so cocooned in Edinburgh, I fill my life with educated people. I watch films that challenge me and ponce around thinking about the nature of life. University provides me with personal and intellectual advancement in a great variety of ways. Reality is that things are shit, unfair, bland and boring.
It has been put to me that 'people might be happy with the banal, it wouldn't do for everyone to be like you now would it'.
If people peddle bullshit to you all day long and you are surrounded by hideous crap, and the choice is 'like it or shut up' then yeah I guess people will be happy with the banal. If banal is what surrounds you, and is what you can afford then yes. I can accept that some people are just boring, or just stupid but I refuse that this is the case for the majority.
Anyway it's after 2am and I should be in bed, my mind has lost track of my thoughts somewhat. I decided to post my above comment about Nuts on their forum for shits and giggles. Am sure it won't make it up there, or do any good, but what the hell some moron will read it - even if it's just a moderator.
Apologies for any incoherence, more Castleford related thoughts are sure to follow soon.
Posts
1 comment:
Some questions:
1. If Xscape contained cute shops cafes etc, would you still consider it a box of hell?
2. If the Xscape multiplex schedule was full of independent, alternative films, would you like these film as much as you do now, or would their presence in the mainstream cause you to reject them?
3. When you are Xscaping, and you look around you, how do you view the people that you see? some possibilities that spring to mind:
- They are hopeless losers. Hideous people who are doing nothing whatsoever to help make a better world.
- They are poor unfortunates, brainwashed into living a perpetually unfulfilling life and lacking the mental capacity to understand what is being done to them.
- They are a diverse group of individuals, each with a unique mix of experiences, hopes, dreams and desires, different to but no less valid than your own.
4. How does access for the disabled at Xscape compare to the art house cinema, cute shops, cafes etc?
Post a Comment