The SpiralGrooveMusic, Film, TV, Comics | Volume 1www.thespiralgroove.com

Contents4 - Janelle Monáe: An audio world of pure imagination Delving into one of the best albums of 2013 to uncover why it’s so extraordinary

7 - Review: O’Messy Life - ChallengerThe latest EP from one of the North East’s most brilliant bands is a heartbreaking set of doom-laden ballads

8 - Truth, Justice and the American WayWhat makes Superman such anaspirational figure in American culture?

10 - Nostalgic cinema:Money-making andmemoriesThe success of The Conjuring thissummer proves there’s money to be made in reviving cinema’s “good old days”

12 - Meth, morality and the modern Faustus: What’s Breaking Bad really about?With Walt and Jesse’s meth-cooking exploits reaching a conclusion, what are the real meanings behind this modern American classic?

“The Electric Lady is sweet and clever and daring and mad and somewhere you

want to spend hours of your life at a time”

The Spiral Groove is written, edited and designed by Ben Travis. He is a culturewriter with an English Degree from Newcastle University. He is the former Editor ofNewcastle University’s newspaper The Courier, shortlisted for Publication of the Year at the Guardian Student Media Awards 2013. He occasionally writes in the third person.

Contact: BenSTravis@gmail.com | twitter.com/BenSTravis

The Spiral Groove originated online at www.thespiralgroove.com. It is dedicated tointeresting words about music, film, TV and comics.

Back in 2011, Janelle Monáe’s released her de-but album The ArchAndroid. A 19-track sci-fi concept album, it took a full year of listening to truly appreciate the full extent of the inspira-tion that lay within - namely, some of the most inventive, genre-defining yet also genre-defy-ing pop / R’n’B / soul / jazz / whatever, mu-sic ever written. As a multitude of sounds and musical themes and interludes and refrains flowed from the speakers, there’s one compar-ison in both sound and tone that really stands out - it sounds like an album partially inspired by ‘Pure Imagination’ from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

For anyone who grew up watching that film (and who didn’t at least once in their child-hood?) it’s a remarkable song - not only beau-tiful, drenched in luscious strings with a soar-ing melody, but a musical accompaniment to the moment in which you see Wonka’s Choco-late Room for the first time - an array of sweet treats, every single one of them edible. Giant gummy bears, candy canes growing on trees, flowering tea cups... And there, right in the middle, a gushing waterfall of warm, velvety chocolate. Janelle’s new LP The Electric Lady, like The ArchAndroid before it, is an album which not only occasionally sounds like ‘Pure Imagination’, but truly feels like it. It’s a veri-table candyland, a grand, vibrant, epic, expan-

sive body of work overflowing with a range of flavours and sweet, inventive delights. On first listen, all I could think was: this is audio magic, it’s a Wonka invention, it’s chocolate you can listen to; rich and smooth and moreish. Like the Chocolate Room, The Electric Lady is sweet and clever and daring and mad and somewhere you want to spend hours of your life at a time. It’s an album to live and breathe in, one that makes you want to taste, try, see and do.

Monáe’s music works on a series of levels. Much is made of her sci-fi concepts, her alter-egos, the tuxedos she wears on stage every night, her choices of collaborators and her lack of media sexualisation. And rightly so - her long-running concept both references and places itself amongst classic and contemporary science fiction (Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Blade Runner, The Matrix), encompassing notions of time travel, robotic organisms and dystopian

societies. There’s a story in there somewhere regarding an android named Cindi Mayweather who has fallen in love with a human and is being hunted by the powers that be, but really these are a cipher for tackling a whole range of contemporary issues and classic science fiction themes. In Monáe’s fantasy, Cindi is pop star, artist, lover and agent of freedom, a loose cannon in the system inspiring change in a futuristic society. She may also be The ArchAndroid, a fabled entity destined to free the people from shadowy string-pulling secret society the Great Divide. Monáe is the same thing to popular culture, a rogue entity taking in regimented genres, mediums and notions, chewing them up and spitting them back out as her own beautiful, modern works of art. Her music preaches notions of love, acceptance and equality with themes that have contemporary relevance (the question of what makes android love so different from ‘normal’ human love, isn’t the trickiest metaphor to untangle) but also traditional ties - struggles of race, social stratification and forbidden romance.

These notions don’t just emerge in the lyrical content but the music itself, and the genres that Monáe deftly weaves. Soul and R’n’B originat-ed in the slave tradition, an outlet to help deal with the trauma of societal injustice, and were later re-imagined in ‘60s and ‘70s Motown re-cords. Monáe recalls The Supremes and Ste-vie Wonder, singing soulful tales of Cyndi’s heartbreak and struggles against a restrictive, destructive system. There are orchestral strings and jazzy horns which bring to mind Got-tfried Huppertz’s score for Fritz Lang’s Me-tropolis, a major influence on the concept of a literal stratified futuristic dystopian society and a mythical redemptive female android. Synthy funk brings to mind ‘80s Prince and all the sass and snaking hips that conjures. There are hints of doo-wop and rock’n’roll, conjur-ing the deification of Elvis in the depiction of Cindi Mayweather as a controversial pop icon.

Janelle Monáe: An audio world of pure imagination

4

The Electric Lady is an album to live and breathe in, one that makes you want to taste and try and see and do

She may have released the album of the year in The Electric Lady, but Kansas City’s Janelle Monáe is way more than just a singer. She’s music’s answer to Willy Wonka

It’s all here, combined with ‘00s sub-bass and contemporary R’n’B production. The album’s opening ‘Suite IV Electric Overture’ even re-calls the spaghetti western twangs immortal-ised by Ennio Morricone.

The Electric Lady is Suites IV and V of Monae’s sci-fi opus, which began in her Me-tropolis EP and continued in 2010’s master-piece The ArchAndroid. The story itself is dif-ficult to follow, continuing the star-crossed romance of Cyndi Mayweather and Anthony Greendown, but also charting Mayweather’s rise to prominence as a revolutionary figure. It’s decidedly more explicit in certain songs, however much more consistent is the ongo-ing narrative of female self-empowerment. Monae’s music celebrates strong, groundbreak-ing women such as humanitarian Harriet Tub-man, celebrated actress Dorothy Dandridge, and Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. On ‘Ghetto Woman’, Monáe’s mother is given her own ode, a woman who “even when she thought she couldn’t, she carried on”. Lead single ‘Q.U.E.E.N.’ is a mission statement for Monáe’s female listeners: “Will you be elec-tric sheep? Electric ladies, will you sleep? Or will you preach?” And she practices what she preaches - she’s never scantily clad (“there’s danger when you take off your clothes, all your dreams go down the drain girl”, she once sang on ‘Sincerely, Jane’), is supportive of fellow fe-male artists and intent on continuing to spread messages of strong female figures and gender equality. There are even frequent references to same-sex relationships, the album featuring more mentions of a mysterious ‘Mary’ than your average Bruce Springsteen song. With the same-sex marriage bill making progress across America, it doesn’t seem like a stretch too far to see allusions in ‘Sally Ride’s refrain: “Wake up, Mary / Have you heard the news? / You’ve got to wake up, Mary / You’ve got the right to choose”.

All of the above makes Janelle Monáe an

exciting, diverse, skilful, clever, well-versed, forward-thinking, visionary artist. But what makes her truly great is that none of that is essential. They’re extended footnotes, an expo-sitionary appendix to what’s simply an incred-ible sounding record. Her sci-fi leanings and themes of female empowerment add a huge amount of depth to her music, but strip that all away and you’ve still got a bunch of the best recorded songs of recent years. The Prince-fea-turing ‘Givin’ ‘Em What They Love’ is the best album opener of 2013 with a killer first line: “I am sharper than a razor, eyes made of la-sers, bolder than the truth”. It’s a supremely confident, smoky strut of a song, primed with mystique, blasting horns and squealing guitars hiding in the wings ready to pounce. Then it’s on to ‘Q.U.E.E.N.’, odd and funky as hell with squawking, shimmering synths, booming bass and a drop-dead amazing rap finale. And just when you think the level of quali-ty can’t be sustained, in strides the euphoric ‘Electric Lady’ with a humongous chorus, gigantic pop hooks (“ooh, shock it, break it, baby, electric lady, electric lady!”), clanging percussion and parping horns that dare you not to throw your arms in the air. And on it continues to Pixies-sampling ballad ‘Primetime’, then to soul banger ‘We Were Rock & Roll’, then... It just keeps coming, hit after hit after hit. Even slightly underwhelm-ing second single ‘Dance Apocalyptic’ shines in context.

Suite V is more mid-tempo, but no less im-mediately brilliant. In fact, it contains some of the least drippy ballads you’ll hear all year, ones which will have you reaching for the repeat button rather than fast-forward. ‘It’s Code’ slinks in as this album’s equivalent to The Arch-Android’s ‘Neon Valley Street’, all wah-wah guitars and dreamy backing vocals. ‘Victory’ and ‘Sally Ride’ eschew straight-for-ward melodies

for much more interesting ones that surprise anew with every listen, both proving that as well as amazing moves (her legs appear to have a life of their own in live performances), Monáe has a huge set of pipes. And there in the middle of the mid-tempo soul swooners and blistering ballads is ‘Ghetto Woman’, a footloose freakout that’s a modern re-imagin-

ing of ‘9 to 5’ with dazzling, dizzying synths and a bassline that’s less walking, more on the constant verge of a kicking all the doors down. When Monáe’s rap bursts out of the speak-ers at the three minute mark, a pure streak of burning fire, it’s a standout moment on an album that never lets up - and that is saying something.

The only thing that can even be vaguely considered a shame with The Electric Lady is the lack of a ‘BaBopByeYa’-esque closer. The ArchAndroid’s epic 10-minute last track saw Monáe break out into full-on cinematic or-chestral scores and silky smooth diva jazz, yet another sign that she’s destined to do an in-credible Bond theme one day. It was a tough nut to crack into, being at the end of a 70-min-ute double album, but once it clicked it proved

an astonishing musical feat that stands as the album’s crowning glory. That there isn’t a comparative track on The Electric Lady is less a failing of the album than another reminder of just how special The ArchAn-droid really is.

Has The Electric Lady taken the crown of Album of the Year? The truth is, it feels like an album that exists outside of

2013, like it’s always been there. It’s that brilliant. Unlike Lady Gaga, Janelle Monáe

doesn’t have to spell it out in capital letters that she’s written an artistic pop album. She’s the antidote to the meaningless word-vomit void of Nicki Minaj, both a throwback and utterly of the here and now, an inspirational, aspirational pop star with something true and creative to say. It feels so rare that an album this visionary, this well-formed, this full of ideas and thoughts and feelings, something so special, comes along. As I reach to give it yet another play, I highly recommend you do

the same. Come with me, and you’ll see in a world of pure imagination.

6

On first listen, O’Messy Life’s latest EP, Chal-lenger, was slightly underwhelming. It’s a disappointing thing to have to admit, consid-ering: a) they’re one of the very best bands in the North East, and b) I’d usually tell anyone to listen to them if they stood next to me for more than five minutes.

After repeatedly listening to their EPs and singles on Bandcamp, it becomes clear that there are many facets of O’Messy Life. Take 2011’s single ‘Escape Velocity’ – a fuzzy, Weezer-esque dark power-pop nugget with a ripping guitar solo at the 2-minute mark – and compare it with the twisting, earthy Pix-ies-esque alt-rock of ‘The House That Howls Built’ from second EP Green Posies Growin’,

Gangrene Below ‘Em. Then there’s the double A-side single ‘Space Holiday’, a roaring Titus Andronicus-esque epic with a muscular phy-sique and punch-drunk attitude. What makes O’Messy Life remarkable is that they can take these relatively disparate elements and keep it cohesive, always managing to retain a cer-tain… O’Messy Life-ness.

Challenger finds the band in a slightly differ-ent place, more along the Titus Andronicus end of the O’ML spectrum but in darker ter-ritory. Three of the five tracks could be loosely described as doom-laden power ballads, songs with a teary tissue in one hand and a sodding great bloodied brick in the other, featuring characters that sound like they’ve been coating their morning Weetabix in whiskey. Opener ‘Heat Shield’ first flexes its muscles at the two minute mark with a walloping great wall of noise that’s destined to give you a heart attack on the bus when you’ve turned your head-phones up too loud. Title track ‘Challenger’ is a similar affair, a swooning waltz which soon

gives way to an absolutely earth-quaking riff that grabs you by the scruff of the neck and re-peatedly throws your face into the ground be-fore looking down in horror at what it’s done in the final twenty seconds – in short, brilliant. ‘Invincible History’ throws The Lake Poets’ Martin Longstaff into the mix on guest backing vocals, providing a softer counterpoint to Da-vid Littlefair’s trademark tortured howl. Once again, it begins placidly enough – this time a little like Radiohead’s ‘Fake Plastic Trees’, actu-ally – before, you guessed it, unleashing a tidal wave of sludgy goodness on your ears.

And this is where Challenger was initially disappointing. Although closing tracks ‘On The Cancellation Of The Constellation Pro-gramme’ and ‘The Rebel In Love’ – the former a haunting ballad of stilted love, the latter a swooning Twin Peaks theme-esque creepy crooner – mix things up a bit, much of the EP sticks to one sound where previous O’Messy Life releases have wandered around like a friendly, emotional drunk Geordie who oc-cassionally takes a swing. The opening trio on Challenger are all stunners, but put them next to each other and each lessens the impact of the others. Only on repeated listens does each song stake a claim for itself, and when it clicks you realise that you were wrong at first – the band are on top form as ever.

With rumblings of another EP of livelier songs already recorded, it remains to be seen whether a contrasting companion piece would have helped distinguish the tracks on Chal-lenger a little more.

If you’re already an O’Messy Life fan, Chal-lenger is the quietLOUDquiet autumnal soundtrack you’ve been waiting for, and one that will likely see you through to a blustery, frost-bitten winter. If not, there are better plac-es to start (Escape Velocity or The Quarter Life Crisis Of Conan, perhaps), but it’s a sweet and sometimes brutal treasure you’ll definitely re-turn to someday.

Review:O’Messy Life Challenger EP

“Well, he can fly, he’s got laser-eyes, he’s fast-er than a speeding bullet, he’s invulnerable (green rocks aside), he’s super-strong, he can see through walls, he’s got a mega-memory and

um… super-breath?”Yes, these are all answers I’d give as to why

Superman is an infinitely less interesting su-perhero than, say, Batman. But a multitude of

superpowers is also a key reason why Super-man is such an important and crucially ideo-logical figure in American pop culture.

Like most comic book heroes, Superman’s origins have been fleshed out, rebooted, and expanded since his debut in Action Comics #1 in 1938, but the basics remain the same: he is an alien, Kal-El, from the planet Krypton. Just a baby at the planet’s destruction, he’s sent to Earth by his father Jor-El and lands in Kansas, America. He’s taken in by Jonathan and Mar-tha Kent, and grows up in their small-town farmhouse as Clark Kent, growing to learn of his solar-powered abilities. He then does what any adult with an almost infinite range of superpowers would do: he sticks on a pair of glasses, rearranges his hair and goes to be a… journalist. How restrained.

Superman’s origin encapsulates the tradition-al ideology of America. Kal-El is the ultimate immigrant, a space refugee who leaves his home for a new homeland offering prosperity and opportunity – Amurrca! Growing up in Kansas, he comes to realise that he can do an-ything, his powers offered constant renewal by the sun. Though various comic book ‘canons’ provide slight differences in how Superman’s powers work, in one incarnation they are only ‘activated’ upon reaching earth – it’s the planet he moves to which gives him his power. Grow-ing up in Smallville brings a safe, homely envi-ronment offering strong moral values amongst good, honest all-American townsfolk. In his adult years, Clark’s growth mirrors a shift in the American economic landscape from agri-culture to urban environments - he grows from the small-town kid in a traditional farming family to a professional, modern man in the metropolitan city of, erm, Metropolis. And on top of this, he can catch a bullet – he’s not only an allegorical figure but an aspirational one, the American man who strives to be more than human and works hard to be heroic. Oh, and he pretty much always gets the girl.

8

Truth,Justiceand the

AmericanWay

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Nope, it’s the most significantideological character in American popular culture. But what is it that makes Superman such an aspirational figure?

Superman’s relation to politics throughout history isn’t exactly subtle – he’s DC’s equiva-lent to Marvel’s Captain America in the jingo-istic ‘USA! USA!’ stakes. It’s no revelation that Superman is a majorly pro-American super-hero, but what’s interesting to consider is the way he’s made aspirational, and where his real power and message as a character lies.

Take Batman – as DC Comics bedfellows, the two are often compared and are wonderfully contrasting characters, Superman the bold, dynamic, public-facing, handsome boy scout; Batman the gruff, brooding, tortured aveng-er who dresses up in black and only goes out at night. Though Kal-El grew up separated from his parents, he did so in a loving fami-ly in an idyllic small town under the watchful eye of caring foster parents. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne’s upbringing was shrouded in tragedy. As a boy he was just old enough to know his parents properly when they died at the hand of one greedy criminal in a dingy back alley in an American city, and their death almost entirely

shaped his mission and, indeed, the rest of his life. Through his adolescence, he had no liv-ing familial role models, Alfred aside, instead looking to his deceased family to find philan-thropic values.

With no special abilities, Batman is less of an aspirational figure and more an inspirational one; he is an example of what lengths a man will go to when he’s been pushed to the edge by personal tragedy and sees fundamental prob-lems in a rotting city. In this sense, where Su-perman represents the ‘American Dream’, Bat-man is the American Reality – the optimism and promise of opportunity gives way to dark, difficult reality: there are no superpowers, bad things do happen, and all you can do is play your part in fighting it.

Although only one has powers, the deeds committed by both Superman and Batman are generally perceived as heroic – the ideological difference between the characters is all in the origin story. It’s Clark’s safe adolescence com-pared to Bruce’s tragic one – in Superman, America is a place where dreams are realised. In Batman, it’s where nightmares take place. Bruce Wayne makes it his mission to fight against them despite lacking special abilities.

Is Superman therefore ‘super’ because of his abilities and is he an American hero because of the power he possesses? Mark Millar’s Su-perman: Red Son takes the character and pos-es a ‘what if ’ scenario, with Kal-El landing on Earth twelve hours later and crashing in Soviet Russia. He becomes the leader of the USSR, and as the book paints him, is “the Champi-on of the common worker who fights a nev-er-ending battle for Stalin, socialism, and the international expansion of the Warsaw Pact”.

Like most parallel-universe stories, it’s a fun (if inconsequential) read, but most important-ly it raises some interesting points about Su-perman himself. For the most part, his Russian counterpart is almost entirely the same as his American doppelganger. It’s a somewhat dis-

appointing realisation at first if you’re expect-ing to see the usually star-spangled Superman in an entirely different way. A change in polit-ical background doesn’t fundamentally change the type of man that Clark is. He grows up with a different set of political values and fights for Communist ideals, but he’s still an honest per-son doing what he believes is right by his fellow countrymen and who strives to protect the na-tion which holds the values he was brought up with. His rise to power seems one of a desire to help implement what he sees as a fair political system – with his brainpower, he devises an apparently flawless Communist system – rath-er than for greed and supremacy.

In short, Superman’s powers and personality remain the same when transplanted to a new setting - they’re simply working in aid of a dif-ferent side. It repeats a notion raised in Alan Moore’s Watchmen through the character of Dr Manhattan, used as a weapon in Vietnam and causing America to win the war. What is heroic and what is villainous? Who wields power, and what direction is it being aimed in? And does terrible power directed against worse evils therefore become heroic?

Superpowers aren’t the be-all-and-end-all when it comes down to Superman’s status as an ideological American figure. Rather, it’s everything else which makes him aspiration-al; the immigrant who finds solace in a small town with an American family, who thrives as a man in the big city and gets the girl. He has strong moral values and strives to work for and protect his country. Superman is a figure of national prosperity, and if Red Son shows us anything, it’s that his physical ability is only supplementary to his cultural and political values when it comes to being a symbol of Americanness. What makes Superman a true American hero? It’s not the ability to fly around the Earth, nor his invulnerability and not even his super-breath. It’s the values he learned as a child growing up in Smallville.

Blockbusters were better in my day. The char-acterisation was better, the explosions seemed bigger, and I swear that the CGI was more re-alistic than in most recent summer tentpoles. The ‘90s gave us Terminator 2, Independence Day, Men In Black, and best of all, Jurassic Park. Whether they starred Will Smith or not, there seemed to be less of a risk of stumbling across an absolute stinker than there is now-adays. Or is that just the way I remember it? Lest we forget Wild Wild West (worth it for the theme tune and teaching me that boobs feel more like bags of water than bags of sand, but little else) or Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla. But there’s something in tapping into an audience’s nagging sense that “they don’t make them like they used to” – and if you can show them that they do still make movies like the classics, you can make a shedload of cash while you’re at it.

Enter James Wan’s latest release The Conjur-ing, a ‘70s-set haunted house horror that’s seen audiences redecorating their seats for a few weeks now, and racking up dollar signs in the process. It focuses on husband and wife par-anormal researchers The Warrens (them what did Amityville, as every piece of publicity for the film will tell you) and their “most shocking case ever” concerning a demonic force intent on tearing apart a wholesome middle-Ameri-can family. So far, so Insidious, but there’s more

going on here than in Wan’s previous shock-er. Whilst that entertainingly camp horror brought a variety of effective scares, The Con-juring harks back to something older, darker, and scarier. Not only is it set in that era, but Wan superbly conjures the mood, pacing and frights of classic ‘70s horror films in a way not seen for a long time. There’s a distinct lack of cheap gore and an emphasis on atmospheric chills, though with a few jump-scares thrown in for good measure.

In this respect, it’s comparable to JJ Abrams’ 2011 nostalg-‘em-up Super 8, a loving invoca-tion of ‘70s/’80s Spielberg with all the emo-tional beats and wowing spectacle that entails, alongside a few more modern blockbuster practices. Just as Abrams perfectly evoked the small-town Spiel-burban simplicity of the pre-digital age with loving reverence, Wan’s

film feels like a warm welcome from a spooky old relative, with a confidence and quality of scares that helps it sit comfortably alongside the films it homages. Just like Super 8, which dealt with Spielberg’s favourite themes of iso-lated kids, daddy issues and alien invasions, The Conjuring revisits the prominent cinemat-ic themes of the time it recalls: the protection of the nuclear family, the beginnings of sec-ularity. Whilst horror is often a genre which remixes a series of conventions, The Conjuring does so more than usual. A child playing alone by a lake? Don’t Look Now, tick. Intense brown ‘70s-patterned interiors? The Shining, tick. Women confronting evil, familial, supernatu-ral forces? Rosemary’s Baby, tick. A climactic exorcism? The Exorcist (surprise, surprise). Even the tree featured frequently in the mar-keting campaign looks like the gnarled Tree of the Dead in Sleepy Hollow.

And it’s not just the events that take place in the film that take the viewer into a bygone age of horror. Remember when films had logos? Not just a particular font, but a real logo? The Exorcist and Halloween immediately spring to mind, and it’s a trope well parodied by the ‘The Exorcism of Jonah Hill’ segment of This Is The End. There’s a definite familiarity and confidence to The Conjuring’s classically-styled yellow typeface – it’s the film standing up and carving an identity for itself, and placing itself amongst tradition and prestige.

There’s a nostalgia to the great sense of chore-ography in the film – both in the camerawork and the very assured direction. Sweeping movements, dolly-led tracking shots and ex-tended takes reflect the time and effort that have gone in to making a film which aims to nod at the greats – if they did it using practical effects and cameras back in the day, you can do the same thing now, even if it takes far longer than throwing in CGI willy-nilly. Although the work of GC animators today is hugely impressive, there’s an extra layer of artistry

10

The Conjuring isn’t cynical - more well-intentionedhomage thancalculatedmoney-spinner

The success of James Wan’s latest shocker The Conjuring was another example of Hollywood plundering its own past for box office success. How did it manage to become horror’s Super 8?

Nostalgic cinema: Making money from memories

in finding a way of making something work without throwing a computerised quick-fix solution in there. There are some wonderfully arranged extended takes in which the camera floats around the entirety of the house –all practical sets – with almost balletic interplay between the actors and the lens. The camera is the filmmaker’s tool for choosing what to show the audience and how, and Wan has an impressive eye for creating the impression of malicious forces through a tilted angle here, or a particular zoom there, or a dolly shot. Not only does The Conjuring evoke ‘70s horror through a lack of OTT gore, but using props and physical effects makes everything feel just so much more… real. It’s a film which harks back to an era of practical filmmaking and physical scares, providing the audience with a form of shocks that they haven’t experienced in years, or perhaps even never.

And that’s where the buckets of cash come in – for younger viewers, The Conjuring brought them something new - a horror film that weirdly didn’t rely on loud noises or CGI in-

nards to make them feel scared, and a haunt-ed house movie that wasn’t presented as some form of ‘found-footage’. And yet it was still scary, with stand-out moments to talk over in the playground leading to “have you see The Conjuring yet?” dares. The amount of word-of-mouth buzz that the film created was huge, and it wasn’t limited to the newer generation - for older viewers, it was an excellent example of a sort of film they didn’t know was still be-ing made, and full of nods and allusions that made them feel like an insider. The filmmak-ers knew the audience that it would appeal to, and from months before release there were fan murmurings that Wan’s follow-up to Insidious was an old-school shocker, with tonnes of ac-tual proper scary bits. There were even stunts like signs in certain cinemas warning view-ers of the film’s demonic powers, with priests on hand should anyone feel “psychologically or emotionally disturbed”. It was a gauntlet thrown down for younger viewers, and a re-minder for older generations of the controver-sy courted by The Exorcist. When you have a

genre with as many hardcore fans as horror, if you can get them on-side as well as a mix of fresh-faced or more wisened general punters, you’ve got a financial success on your hands.

From a creative standpoint, as far as an in-troduction to a more mature, artistic form of sleep-depriving terror, you couldn’t get much better than The Conjuring – a gateway horror to a series of genre classics, but a film which still stands in its own right. Although it raked in a healthy amount of cash, it’s a film which doesn’t feel half as cynical as you’d expect, more well-intentioned homage than calculated money-spinner.

And you never know - in 20 years’ time when horror films will be a series of Paranormal Ac-tivity remakes with breaks every 10 minutes for social media interactions, someone who was once scared out of their wits by The Conjuring may find themselves looking back, forgetting the endless dire horror sequels and soulless GCI creatures from the ‘00s, and thinking to themselves: “You know what? Horror films were better in my day”.

What’s Breaking Bad really about?

Meth,morality,

and themodern

Faustus:

12

Warning: contains spoilers

And on Sunday 29th September, thus ended Breaking Bad. The last vestiges of blue meth all baggied up, most loose ends burnt and fused together, playing out to an audience of blood-shot eyes. Auf wiedersehen, Heisenberg.

Many viewers have declared it the best TV show they’ve ever seen, ranking up there with The Sopranos and The Wire. Undoubtedly, it’s a modern classic, another sign that we’re living through a Golden Age of televisual entertain-ment, and further proof that an outstanding TV drama can proudly stand alongside the greatest novels as exemplary works of narra-tive storytelling.

But what makes Breaking Bad so special? Like other premium dramas, it features a host of loveable, complex characters, gripping plots, and a vast iceberg of subtext. On surface level, it’s a show about a cancer-ridden chem-istry teacher cooking crystal meth. But what is Breaking Bad really about?

TransformationBreaking Bad is a difficult show to catego-rise because it transforms and evolves as it progresses. At first it’s a Dexter-esque story of a supposedly normal man hiding a secret criminal life, but by Season 3, changing cir-cumstances reveal it more as the curious ori-gin story of a formidable drug lord. The final seasons become more intensely involved in the despicable lengths that protagonist Walter White will go to to keep everything from going full-on tits-up – often at the risk of destroying everything he set out to protect.

The most obvious transformation through

the series is Walt’s journey from mild-man-nered Ned Flanders-lookalike chemistry teacher to devious, bald-headed hardened criminal and supreme egotist. That first time you see the freshly-scalped Walt in the livewire opening to Season 1’s ‘Crazy Handful Of Noth-in’’, it’s a jaw-dropping, shit-just-got-real mo-ment. By the time the show has plumbed the depths of his desperation to retain his power in later seasons, it’s shocking to think back to the character we were first introduced to, and a reminder of how brilliantly and smoothly the show portrays such a ferocious mutation. In fact, it’s a change wonderfully foreshad-owed in the show’s very first episode – like The Wire’s chess discussion towards the start of its first season, Breaking Bad does a fantastic job of summarising the entire show in one piece of dialogue right from the off:

“Chemistry,” says Walter White, “is the study of change… It is growth, then decay, then transformation…”

Morality andConsequencesAbove all else, Breaking Bad serves as a 21st Century morality tale. Things start tricki-ly enough when the viewer still believes that Walt’s decision to break the law comes from a fundamentally good place – his desire to protect his family – and by the third episode, there’s already a pile of meth and bodies. So far, so dodgy.

But that grey area is further muddied when Walt’s ego comes into play – he thrives on the

“Explosions are the result of chemical reactions, happening almost instantaneously… the faster they undergo change,

the more violent the explosion” – Walter White‘Crazy Handful Of Nothin”

fear and respect that he gains as the mythical Heisenberg, and his ascension through the hierarchy of the criminal drug trade takes a deeper and deeper toll on him, as well as all those he comes into contact with. It’s brilliantly portrayed in the never-saw-that-coming finale of Season 2, where the consequences of Walt’s actions literally rain fire down on him – the wrath of, who exactly?

Breaking Bad is a show with nerves of steel, never shying away from major confrontations, and every character’s actions create a ripple of consequences that they must face head-on. Unlike other dramas with a tendency to bottle it at crucial moments (Dexter and Sons Of An-archy spring to mind), Breaking Bad is uncom-promising in its intention to let the car crashes unfold in slow motion before your very eyes, never allowing the viewer to look away.

Allusions can be made to the classic morality tale of Dr Faustus, a German legend adapted by playwright Christopher Marlowe in 1604. Faustus is an intelligent man who sells his soul to the devil for infinite knowledge, intent on using it for good. However, he succumbs to pride, misuses his power, ignores his opportu-nities for redemption and is damned to Hell. Like Faustus, Walter White makes a terrible decision for all the right reasons, but his de-cision ultimately costs him his humanity. A major turning point arrives in Episode 3, when Walt’s former business partner Elliot Schwartz offers to pay for all of his cancer treatment. Pride, perhaps Walt’s deadliest sin, causes him

to turn down the offer and places him irrevo-cably on a destructive, transformative path.Final episode spoilers follow:

The debate of how right or wrong Walt’s ac-tions are is one that will continue for years to come – but some seem to think that the final episode lets him off a bit lightly. However, might this be Heisenberg’s last trick? He may have freed Jesse and killed those damn Nazis, but Walt has still destroyed everything he cared about. He has secured his childrens’ financial futures, but eroded his relationship with them, and he leaves behind a trail of corpses that he is responsible for either directly or indirectly. Over the series, it’s clear that Walt is a master manipulator. Is this ‘happy’ ending not the best example of that?

The Evils of CapitalismAmerican TV shows have a great way of ex-ploring their subject matters as microcosmic examples of wider societal notions. The Sopra-nos may be a gangster drama, but it’s also an exploration into the psyche of the 21st Centu-ry American male, while The Wire deals with Baltimore as a synecdoche for the rest of the United States. Breaking Bad tracks the growth of Walt’s drug empire as it evolves from its mom-and-pop two-man origins in the RV into something more corporate, with more man-power, mass production, increased income and power. Heisenberg becomes an industry, and while Walt and Jesse might find them-

selves in hot water from the beginning, it’s only once the scale of their operation increases that the shit really starts to hit the fan in a big, bad way. As an independent set-up, Walt and Jes-se have much more control of their situation. As a Capitalist, money-churning empire, they lose that control, seeing the collateral damage increase with the amount of meth they cook. Boo, Capitalist America.

American FamiliesOK, so it’s hardly Modern Family, but it’s im-possible to talk about Breaking Bad without bringing up familial bonds. After all, it’s the reason why Walt initially sets up his meth op-eration, and the one thing other than his own life that he is set to lose. The show’s depiction of family hardly shatters the mould – it’s a fair-ly traditional nuclear scenario, with Walt as the breadwinner and Skylar as the care-giver. But Skylar is tough and unafraid to stand up for herself. Misogynistic internet morons-may have turned her into a hate figure for not supporting Walt’s actions when she discovers them – but ask yourself, realistically, would you support your partner if they became a megalomaniacal, manipulative, dangerous drug dealer? Thought not.Season 5 spoilers follow:

Breaking Bad seems to say that family is the one thing in life that’s truly worth fighting for. Flynn’s belief that his dad is a saint is some-thing sacred, and it’s completely heartbreaking when it’s eventually destroyed. When Hank is finally put out of his misery, it’s Walt’s greatest folly – as much as he tries to prevent it, being responsible for a family member’s death is the ultimate betrayal of Skylar, Marie and Flynn.

His meth-cooking antics may see Walt suc-ceed in gaining notoriety as Heisenberg and making money for his loved ones, but he loses them all along the way. In the end, that’s not much of a victory at all.

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As an independent set-up, Walt and Jesse have much more control of their situation. As a Capitalist, money-churning empire, they lose that control, seeing the collateral damage increase with the amount of meth they cook

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