On Classics & a cinema excursion
As most of my friends are already aware (due to my extensive yammering on any night out, plus my undue service as a sober chauffeur to and from local night haunts), I’m still unable to drink alcohol on my course of roaccutane until August.
Sadly not the chirpiest of sober clubbers, I tend to tour my trusted little mini home after dropping the collectives off to enjoy a hazy alcohol induced night.
Weekends have become all a little droll and bemusing, sat scouring The Tab as opposed to wreaking havoc out on the town. It was on one such article, concerning a fellow sober clubber - albeit by choice - that I decided to roll back the clocks to preteen weekend cinema excursions. This girl claimed university life hardly needed a shot of tequila and a slim picking of lime, when instead she prided herself on having attended all recent movie releases, like a true saint.
Although I can’t quite afford to budget out a tenner for Vue teen tickets all that regularly, I have decided to educate myself a little more in terms of the visual arts.Zoolander 2 was the obvious choice here, for heightening the senses, stimulating the intellect, reaching undiscovered levels of erudite satiationI’m sure you can all hear ‘kids who can’t read good’ echoing somewhere in the background. Anyhow I don’t wish to spoil the thrilling journey alongside Ben Stiller and his infamous pout, in his sassy quest to regain the love of his son. Something did however strike me while watching the showing – what would someone watching this say maybe ten, fifteen years down the line think?
I say this while deeply engrossed in Aristophanes The Clouds, as one of my Classical Civilisation texts on Ancient Greek Comedy. The play follows a greed stricken Athenian man, so desperate to outwit debt collectors haranguing his measly fortunes after his son floundered what little they held on racing ponies. He turns to the widely criticised philosophist, Socrates, hoping he too can learn the art of deceiving the world with complex ideologies and spoken intellect. I’ll attempt not to run into spoilers in this field, as I’m sure you’re teetering on the edge of your seat, eager to nosedive into ancient Greek drama.
One catchesim that has arisen in class is whether or not a modern audience would find thee same humour in the play as a group of slightly inebriated men in togas once did. The play satirises many known politicians of the period, and surely these jokes go amiss on us nowadays.
While we might all be in fits of giggles at an onstage representation of Boris Johnson, all albino, his drooping and furrowed white brows pedalling around on one of his infamous bikes, we might just struggle to find ‘Cleisthenes’ and his trademark shaven chin - the source of great ridicule for feminine attributes - quite as entertaining, in a production of ‘The Clouds’.
As much of the plot in Zoolander 2 is peppered with the faces of famed fashion designers, and of course with Justin Bieber’s sunkissed cheeks thrown into the mix, I do question what an audience perhaps a decade down the line would think. The brutal execution of a teen heart-throb might not be equally amusing when the name doesn’t make you think of pet monkeys, beautifully photoshopped Calvin Klein abdominals, and the verification that he does truly not stuff socks down his pants.
Much in the same way that the satirical humour of the Old Comedies floats over our heads, it is intriguing to see how these timeless plays influence what you pay out to see on a quiet Friday, alongside that extra large popcorn which-you-probably-shouldn’t-have but will still munch through by the time the adverts come to a neat end.Just as we need a little footnote to help us laugh along to Cleisthenes and his chin, smooth as a baby’s bottom, we might one day need a little helping hand to laugh along to Justin Bieber’s fated demise in Zoolander 2.