Confession is good for the soul and the seizures? Some thoughts on cinematic obsessions and horror.

Let me start by making a confession; I’m not an academic. I always thought I’d be found out, but I might as well out myself. I don’t have that academic voice in my writing or in my head any more, my writing is too off the cuff, too informal, too journalistic, a few of my peers have said this to me and they’re right. These days I am, at best, an enthusiastic critic, and, a clumsy enthusiastic critic at that, but I’m comfortable with my enthusiasm. While there have been academics like the wonderful Robin Wood, who could write in an eloquently engaging way, while making the most perceptive insights about a film (never more so than in Personal Views – in my opinion). I find a lot of academic writing too stiff, too formal. It’s a slog to read and as I’ve gotten older, it makes me wonder why someone would want to write about a subject (they love) in that way. There I go again, too much 'me' and 'I' in this, not good academic writing at all. So it’s in the spirit of personal views and confused musing that I’ll continue,

Anyway, now I’ve confessed maybe that will ease the lingering weight of my epilepsy, which is rather erratic and terrifying. I like to console myself that the sudden unexpected onset of epilepsy has robbed me of that ‘academic’ voice in my head, but I know I’m deluding myself. It’s simply the result of a massive lack of confidence and, if I’m honest, this stretches to just about every area of my life. If there is a voice in my head, it’s not academic. It’s that voice that tells you you’re not good at anything and you’re no good for anything or anyone. One small note, don’t have a seizure while you’re crossing a busy road. It’s not good for your health, or indeed your confidence. Cars are harder than the human body and you’re liable to bounce – also not good. I owe a debt of thanks to Lisa Purse, head of my department, for her support in so many ways and for her gentle and diplomatic encouragement in getting me to write this blog. Lisa writes much better than I do, so I’m expecting she’ll be horrified by what she reads on here and she’ll never employ me again.

I think Lisa wanted me to write this because it might stimulate my writing and enable me to get some confidence back, she also thinks I do have something useful to contribute to discussions about cinema. As for myself, I’m not so sure, but she constantly reassures me I’m a genuine cinephile and for that reason alone I might have something useful to say about the innumerable films I’ve watched over the years. I’ve always taken this for granted; surely in Film Studies everyone watches thousands of films, from various countries, in all shapes and forms and with varying degrees of good taste? Lisa and Doug Pye (who is another academic hero of mine and a good friend) assure me this is not the case.

When I was younger I was transfixed by horror films. I think they were where my obsession with cinema started.

My mother always thought I was a rather morbid child, but she indulged me, I don’t think my dad much cared. She allowed me to stay up late on a Friday evening (if I’d been good) to watch a season of Hammer films, or Universal classics (under her close scrutiny of course). For my ninth birthday I got the present I’d craved for many, many months, it was Denis Gifford’s wonderful ‘A Pictorial History of Horror’. Gifford has many wonderful and insightful observations in the book, but that wasn’t what drew me to it. I was fascinated by the thousands of pictures. They stirred and fired my imagination about fantastical worlds, monsters and beasts. It was through Gifford that the joys and terrors of these worlds revealed themselves, they’d play in to my mind and haunt me, but they were only stills, not films. They left me with teasing possibilities of what the rest of the film may be like, and in my nine year old mind every one was a masterpiece. I was so gripped by these images that I’d often write or draw what I thought the rest of the story might be, just as I did after watching a late night Hammer or Universal film. This became something of a ritual; I’d watch the film on Friday evening, and then get up early on Saturday to draw it, or write it down, to preserve my memory of it. After all, who knew when I’d get the opportunity to see it again. In this age of instant accessibility and sharing my childhood would have been very different, but I wouldn’t change a second of this experience; it only made the films more precious. Thank you Denis Gifford.