Bitch | Mixtape | Mixtape XVII, Lassie Jams, by BITCHES

Music As Reading: Mixtape XVII, Lassie Jams, by BITCHES

And to that day we expire and turn to vapours
Me and my capers – I’ll be somewhere stackin plenty papers
Keepin it real, packin steel, gettin high
Cause life’s a bitch and then you die

It being ‘bitch’ week at Silkworms, we decided to ask clattery drum, bass and screaming band BITCHES for a mixtape. Bassist slash screamer Blake’s response was to explore and interrogate his meandering literary relationship with curse words – a relationship responsible for his band’s rude name, amongst other things – via a combination of commercial hip-hop and turn of the millennium chart hits. Another YouTube mixtape this week – apparently you have to be 18 or over to watch the Christina video, hilariously. I hope that doesn’t rule too many of you out. Oh, and open your exercise books here for more BITCHES songs and words and pictures and songs and so on.

At my primary school, each of us kids would have to take some time out from our busy schedules and ‘read to teach’, an uncomfortably intimate moment with my gold chain wearing, over-perfumed educator, Mr Lewis. I was steaming through the books at the time, taking on some weighty tomes. One of these fierce works of art was The Firm, by John Grisham, a book sodden with swears and dirty-talk. Mr Lewis summoned me over, and I prayed for a couple of pages of lawyer intrigue, with no rude words. I scanned ahead. Midway down the first page the word ‘Bitch’ danced around, sending a sick feeling into my eleven year old stomach. I couldn’t read it out. This was a church school! A school of Jesus etc.! I got on with the task in hand. I’ll deal with the curse when I get there. I got to the curse. I looked at Mr Lewis. ‘I’d rather not read the rude words. I’m a Christian...’ He nodded, he looked a bit odd and then Mr Lewis applauded my maturity. I had triumphed over bad talk. Mr Lewis even gave a little talk to the class later on, saying that we didn’t need to repeat swear words if they were against our religion or whatever. It was a lie though. Back home, much to my mother’s displeasure (she hates swearing, especially ‘bitch’), I danced my way around the house singing all the swear words I could, especially ‘fuck’ and ‘bitch’ and ‘willy’. I loved them then and still do, and am not a Christian, which is why I called my band BITCHES, a hark back to the Grisham days – and also the result of an attempt to pick a band name that isn’t a cool, one-word name packed with posi vibes, but one that was gross and rude and would annoy my mum. One of the problems that comes with the swear word bandname is that the ‘bitch’ word often gets a lot of attention when interviewers ask us questions. They don’t look impressed when I grunt and say ‘I picked it because it was rude and cool,’ rather than give them some kind of irono-feminist-no penis-the girl in the band came up with it excuse, and so trying to come up with a bunch of songs about the word ‘bitch’ has taught me a lot about the different ways people use this swear. Here are these songs, along with seductive explanations for each, that are crammed with painstakingly researched info and light humour.

Kanye West: Runaway

I SENT PICTURES OF MY DICK TO A GIRL AND I WROTE A SONG CRYING ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!! SO WHAT THAT MAKES ME A LITTLE BITCH!!!!!!!

Baha Men: Who Let The Dogs Out?

Don’t freak out! The Baha Men are smart guys. This song is about how MEN are dogs, slobbering all over the beautiful girls of Jamaica. They flipped the ‘bitch’ insult on its head for the pre-school market.

Dr Dre: Bitches Ain’t Shit

The Baha Men were forced into action because of records like this. A gang of loveless rap lads convened to fill the air with nothing but bad vibes towards girls. I think all the guys are married now, so they’re probably not allowed to casual rap this round the house/in the shower.

Foreigner: Cold as Ice

When Paul Daniels falls out with Debbie, he finds a record to blast out. He clutches The Chronic, but he knows he can’t get away with it, not in this house, so he plops this on the turntable. TAKE THAT MCGEE, you old bitch.

Notorious BIG: Me and My Bitch

Here, ‘bitch’ refers to ‘girl that I love loads and loads, so much that I would give her father a blow-job.’

Frankee: FU Right Back

Frankee here being a big old bitch about her ex-boyfriend. To be fair to her, the ex-boyfriend, Eamon, released a song where he calls her a ho and stuff, so he definitely deserved it.

BITCHES: Winner

This is the band I was talking about earlier, the band that I’m in. We have a swear word name. The song itself is about fertiliser and the act of going out to ‘pull birds.’ Some men that ‘pull birds’ call women ‘bitches’, because they hear it in rap songs and read Jackie Collins books. Horrible.

Pet Shop Boys: Suburbia

Of course, a bitch is also a lady dog, so I thought really hard about my favourite dog song. It’s not really about, you know, woof woof dogs living it up and how they face the day, but still my favourite song that sings about dogs, even in a ‘suburbs are horrible’ way, that isn’t the littlest hobo theme.

Die Antwoord: Rich Bitch

A celebration of being a wealthy lady, I think. Just a bloody mean rich person that loves Nutella sandwiches.

Christina Aguilera: Can’t Hold Us Down

This is girl power, like the Baha Men, saying all stuff like ‘call me a bitch cause I saw what’s on my mind.’ Really makes me want to turn woman and take it to the limit, explode all the men.

Nas: Life’s a Bitch

It’s not just rudeness though, and horrible men slinging out insults. Nas reminds us about the bigger picture. Thanks Nas.

Bitch | Chapbook | Vol XXXVIII, Truth is Black Rubber

CLICK HERE TO READ

Vol XXXVIII, Truth is Black Rubber

by Teresa Chuc Dowell

Bitch | Music | I got 99 problems and the verb, to bitch, most certainly is one

If you’re having girl problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems but the bitch ain’t one.

Presumably not. Jay-Z, or Number 6 On Obama’s Speed-dial as he’s increasingly being defined, is one half of a marriage that, because the media know precisely nothing about it and therefore can’t conceive even half-stories (BEYONCE’S PREGGERS, they cried. No, no she’s not, Mr Z explained quietly) is regarded by the trying-to-watch world as happily, heart-warmingly harmonious. A couple other bits of evidence: the man’s married to, very possibly, the most beautiful woman in the world who has also released at least two of the best singles of the last decade. Not to mention one of the richest. And as proved by the way Destiny’s Child’s ‘Bills Bills Bills’, with its implicit, extraordinarily disempowering suggestion that the only point to ‘having’ a ‘man’ is the way he alleviates the need for a job…

But now you’re getting comfortable
Ain’t doing those things that you did no more
You’re slowly makin’ me pay for things
You’re money should be handling

Can you pay my bills
Can you pay my telephone bills
Can you pay my automo’bills
Then maybe we can chill
I don’t think you do
So you and me are through

…was kinda corrected a year later via ‘Independent Woman Part One’…

The shoes on my feet
I’ve bought it
The clothes I’m wearing
I’ve bought it
The rock I’m rockin’
I’ve bought it
‘Cause I depend on me

…it’s obvious that she not gonna encroach upon your own BUSINESS EMPIRE, Jay. She got all she needs herself. No, truly, Mr Shawn Carter Jman, your bitch is not a problem. (It’s worth pointing out at this point that, even though it seems like Beyoncé has sorted out her initial problems with masculinity, 2008’s uncharacteristically dreadful ‘If I Were A Boy’ revealed a whole bunch more: ‘If I were a boy, even just for a day, I’d roll out of bed in the morning and throw on what I wanted and go drink beer with the guys.’ Beyoncé, sweetheart, I don’t know what you think is normal but waking up and almost immediately going to drink beer with the guys is not that normal. If the men in your life – your EVIL, ADULTEROUS SNAKE OF A FATHER, perhaps – are doing that, look into getting them some help, yeah?)

No, when Beyoncé wants to make problems, let’s see who she makes them with/for. First, there’s the ex-bandmates, Destiny’s Child mark one (the excellently-named LaTavia Roberson and LeToya Luckett) and Destiny’s Child mark two (the less excellently-named Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams) all of whom she’s broken off most-if-not-all contact with over songwriting credit issues, that kinda thing – it seems her EVIL, ADULTEROUS SNAKE OF A FATHER snuck ‘Beyoncé Giselle Knowles’ onto songs his little girl had got shit all to do with, in order to secure future royalties. The fucking bastard. And yet she defends him. And so the feuds stand.

Indeed, she defended him via the following statement in a recent interview:

I grew up upper class. Private school. My dad had a Jaguar. We’re African-American and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons, but I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.

Which duly pissed Janet Jackson off no end. Hip Hop Crunch reports, by way of the mandatory unnamed source:

She feels Beyoncé went out of her way to tell the world she’s from the upper class and the Jacksons were like a bunch of dirty gutter rats. Janet is proud of her family and how they came from nothing and became superstars. Not only is Janet telling everyone who will listen that Beyoncé has a lot of growing up to do and that she needs to stop trying to impress everyone, she’s planning to confront Beyoncé herself and read her the riot act.

And read her the riot act? Is that a euphemism for punch her in the mouth, or does Janet Jackson literally speak in legal jargon at all times now in order to protect her myriad assets. Anyway, JJ joins the ranks of the various enormously successful African-American women Beyoncé is supposedly feuding with – I say supposedly because this is, surely, as much a product of the almost entirely white American media assuming something along the lines of, them black bitches, all they do is fight, as it is an issue of Beyoncé’s actual temperament. But yeah, Jennifer Hudson. Aretha Franklin, apparently. Rihanna. And a 71-year-old Etta James, who reportedly barked the following back in 2009, when Beyoncé sang one of her songs at a presidential ball:

You guys know your president, right? You know the one with the big ears? Wait a minute, he ain’t my president, he might be yours, he ain’t my president. You know that woman he had singing for him, singing my song – she’s going to get her ass whipped. The great Beyoncé. I can’t stand Beyoncé. She has no business up there, singing up there on a big ol’ president day, singing my song that I’ve been singing forever.

Brilliant. Etta James fucking rules. Anyway, the moral of the story here is the following: the bitch isn’t a problem for Jay-Z because his bitch is only a problem for other bitches. Bitches will always blame other bitches. Just as, say, Italy hasn’t had a viable leftwing alternative to the ridiculous Berlusconi for a decade or two because of factional infighting that we in a country what’s somehow produced a ConDem coalition can’t possibly imagine (‘Excuse me, are you the Judean People’s Front?’ ‘Fuck off, we’re the People’s Front of Judea.’ ‘Splitters!’ etc. etc.) the feminist cause has been held back, nay, crippled by this simple truism. To cite Silkworms’ current favourite cultural reference-point, The Only Way Is Essex, episode one: when Mark, Lauren’s ex long-term bf (and a proper twat to boot) walked into her birthday party with glamour girl Sam on his arm, Lauren was way more mad at Sam than she was at Mark. Bitches will always blame other bitches rather than the obviously more culpable non-bitch.

At least, á la the racist media issue I hinted at above, that’s what the still mind-bogglingly sexist Western media wants us to think. I’m not saying male journalists, publicists and so on have a covert, divisive agenda which aims to rubbish the very concept of female solidarity existing in successful, high pressure contexts. Actually, possibly I am. We need to put aside the (admittedly dreadful) standard clichés dealt out arbitrarily to high-profile women of business – Deborah Meaden the ‘ball-buster’, Karen ‘sacker’ Brady – for one moment, because this issue permeates popular culture much more seditiously than what is a rather transparent practice of depicting female success as gender-redefiningly grotesque (which I hope most people mostly are capable of seeing through these days).

Consider the example of Keira Knightly and Carey Mulligan, playing Ruth and Kathy – two characters who represent among many, many other things, rather bitchy rivals in a public school kinda way – in the soon-to-be-released movie adaptation of Never Let Me Go. Ishiguro, author of the original novel, has heralded the film as a showcase for a ‘new generation’ of British acting talent – spearheaded, of course, by Knightly and Mulligan (only one of whom can act, admittedly – I’ll leave you to work out which). And how did the British media react to such a charming and optimistic sentiment? LIFE MIRRORS ART, the journos screeched. Apparently, at the premiere afterparty, Knightly and Mulligan sat at DIFFERENT TABLES and DIDN’T SAY A WORD to one another, despite claiming to be ‘great mates’. And thus, how they REALLY FEEL ABOUT ONE ANOTHER was revealed. They hate each other. Of course they do. They’re girls. That’s what (rich/talented/successful/black) girls do.

(Oh yeah, the only other thing what attracted the attention of the tabloid press was the fact that apparently, they kiss each other in the film. But that’s an issue for another day methinks.)

It is, of course, an assumption written into the very word ‘bitch’. When anybody, male of female, uses ‘bitch’ as a verb, they are implying that an unpleasant and, more importantly, disempowering mode of behaviour is a female one, that ‘bitching’ is something women do – for, rare in English, bitch is an unambiguously female (if not feminine) word. It is this that makes me more suspicious of the implicit sexism in a song like the Stranglers ‘Bitching’ – ‘Bitching ’bout the things we’ve seen / Bitching ’bout the things we’ve been / Bitching ’bout the loves we’ve had / My oh my it wasn’t so bad’ – than the explicit stuff in something like Lil Jon’s ‘Move Bitch’: ‘Move bitch, get out the way ho, fuck that shit get out the way ho.’ At least you know where you are with Lil Jon.

Perhaps, indeed, he should be applauded. Good for you Lil Jon, for espousing a sexism that’s easy to despise, rather than veiling it with ‘acceptable’ trappings, a much more dangerous thing. You, sir, are a better feminist than people give you credit for.

Sam Kinchin-Smith

Music Editor

Bitch | Fiction | Jay-Z Needs To Do His Adding-Up Again.

When I was in primary school, I invented the worst word ever.


I’d run up to other kids and say,

“You know what you are? You’re a garbbblelecyuhdar.”

“A what?” they’d reply.

I’d say,

“It’s a Swahili word. It’s actually the worst swear-word you can ever say. Far worse than shit or fuck or any of those other ones.”

And I’d insinuate, with hand gestures, what it actually meant – a suitably vague description of complex sexual acts that I’d half-picked up from Limp Bizkit lyrics.

And, if I was successful, the victim would say,

“How do you pronounce that?”

“Garbbblelecyuhdar.”

“Garbbblelecyuhdar.”

And they’d run on to someone else, and spread the word.

“You’re a garbbblelecyuhdar.”


Surprisingly enough, the actual word may not have been garbbblelecyuhdar. But that wasn’t the point. Swearwords are awesome, particularly if you’re a child only just coming to terms with the transgressive power of moving your tongue, lips and teeth to make a certain set of syllables, and break the world around you. Every child should remember the first

Bitch is ancient. And it still has bite, astonishingly – in part, presumably, to its misogynistic connotations, and in part due to that resonant ‘tch’ sound. Its brothers and sisters have fallen to the wayside in their thousands, like bugger, which now sounds so quaint you could easily imagine American tourists coming to visit a Little Teashop of Buggery in Stratford. Hell, that gives me a great idea for my next business venture.

A bit like this, only with more buggery.

The verb ‘bitch’ is even more misogynistic, because it’s so much more insidious. To complain behind someone’s back, it implies, is an essentially feminine trait. And it is interesting that “son of a bitch” or “biche sone” has been around for just as long as the word itself – you could even stretch the argument to suggest that women were partly only designated as bitches so that men could insult other men.


Now, I know Jay-Z doesn’t have 99 problems. I know this, because he lists them. Critics, radio shows, and rap magazines. Racist policemen who jump to the conclusion that he’s up to something illegal (according to the video, they’re on the money), which takes up a whole verse so that Jay-Z can make repeated James Bond-esque quips at their expense. The unsubstantiated case of a pussy who “tried to push me”, resulting in increased paparazzi attention and the D.A. asking for a half-a-million bail fee. So we’re talking seven problems at most. Really, not very many problems in the larger scheme of things.

He actually has a new book out, in which I very much hope he discusses this obvious error of mathematics. It’s called ‘Decoded’ and it purports to be about the poetry of rap. It won’t be. Because Jay-Z’s not a poet. Nas is a poet. Jay-Z’s a businessman (and I don’t think he’d mind that description too much.)


Jay-Z, for example, has never coined the word Schweppervesence, as Nas does in Life’s a Bitch. But more importantly, Nas can still pull off that peculiar combination-persona of street poet/ultra-violent criminal/materialistic businessman/drug-user/reflective parent and benefactor to the young that’s so popular amongst a certain breed of rapper. But come on, Jay-Z; you’re best mates with the President of the United States. Do you expect us to believe that you personally drive around with drugs in the back of your car? Much as I’d love to think that Obama just turns up at one of your parties and sits quietly in the corner, wincing at the constant gunshots and politely refusing the cocaine (his wife would kill him), I don’t believe in it.



Take, for example, the “bitch” of 99 Problems. Apparently this is a woman who Jay-Z is seeing, and who he believes he has under his thumb. Now, we all know who Jay-Z’s seeing. It’s Beyonce. Beyonce who in the single Single Ladies sings about being a single lady taunting her ex-boyfriend in a nightclub by being promiscuous, who clearly has a one night stand in One Night Only, and who picks up an unnamed man in Naughty Girl and inviting all of her female friends over for a mass orgy with him. Beyonce, look out! Jay-Z is a psychopathic criminal. Didn’t you listen to any of his songs?

A woman clearly physically and emotionally cowed by a short man who looks a bit like a potato.

Which, I wonder, is the reality? How does Beyonce feel when she sees Jay-Z singing 99 Problems? Proud? Sad? Resentful?


In fact, the only rapper who is actually qualified and morally justified to sing about bitches is Snoop Doggy Dogg, as he is, self-affirmedly, a dog himself. So let’s end with the Dogg’s poetic wisdom, mobbing with the dog pound, just feeling the breeze, smoking indo, sipping on gin and juice.

Biiiiiatch.


Jon Ware
Fiction Editor

Bitch | Introduction | After the library and HORSE

The tragic kidnapping of Silkworms Ink by the petulant and pestilent virus Finkpoint has finally come to an end. We, the Silkworms Ink editors, upon realising what had happened immediately rushed to our medical library for guidance – we scoured – manically hunting for a cure. Our research took us to the depths of dark arts, some books called for May-born sheep’s blood to be poured into the computer monitor’s fan, others promised a sacrifice of a hamster upon the keyboard would draw out the viral beast from within. The ‘put-leeches-in-the-CD-tray’, an idea of our own – inspired by their success with blood  - was equally as unsuccessful. A week we searched for the answer, then like buses two came along. The first solution, ‘The Trojan Horse’ – involved us challenging Finkpoint to a high stakes game of HORSE – if we won, we got the blog back, if Finkpoint won – well, who could know what it would demand. The second solution, was turn the blog on an off again. Subsequently, we lost the game of HORSE and Finkpoint declared that from that day forward each of us would have to, when asked about our opinion of Simon Cowell’s ‘The X Factor’, argue that it was an inspiring feat of television, that took viewers on a journey full of surprising twists and turns and each season ending with us having learned something. We turned the blog on and off again – and it worked like a charm.

So, dear readers, we are back and what better a way to begin than with a good bitch…

Or, actually, not – why bother? Life is too short to moan about it. Our blog gets taken over by a super-villainous virus – so what, shit happens. Let’s look on the bright side and have an anti-bitch instead – a good old rant about the things we love; from simple pleasures, through favorite things, to compliments to the world.

Please comment and tell the collective ‘us’ what you think are the best things.


This week's theme is dedicated to ‘Fyodor MD’ 
– although Jon, I still think that was a terrible name for a hamster.

James Harringman
(Once again) Editor-in-Chief

Wider Reading | Let's Watch Twin Peaks: Pilot

Good evening, Diane. Find a comfy chair, fetch yourself a present for the day (I recommend a slice of cherry pie or a damn good cup of coffee), and settle in for the pilot episode of the seminal TV series created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. We’re going to be commenting on the characters, the themes, and – most importantly of all – those essential recurring elemental symbols, fire, water and glass.



Spoilers are to be expected. Commentary is in order.



1) And here we go. I have the Gold Edition, so every episode comes with a slightly tedious introduction featuring the Log Lady, clearly filmed later on a cheaper budget. This time around, she’s telling us that there are many different kinds of stories. Some are funny, and some are sad. Damn it, Lynch, will you stop tinkering with your opus after the event? Next you’ll release a special edition where Andy doesn’t shoot Jacques first.


2) The titles roll. I could expand upon these almost frame-by-frame, but, for now, here’s a shorter list of the key devices; nature and industry, shot side-by-side to the same gentle, mellifluous soundtrack, as if the two are in total harmony. The theme music belies the darker edge – the logging mill which destroys nature, the bird which is both an innocent witness to murder and a fiend that attacks Laura Palmer’s corpse. And note that opening fiery spark from the mill machinery at the start of the sequence, and the importance of water towards the end, flowing and reflective – pure. If fire is the devil, then what is water?

3) The first shot we see beyond the title credits is a reflection – the reflection of Josie Packard. At first it may seem an odd character to focus on for the very opening of the series, but consider her extremely androgynous beauty, and she’s not a bad poster girl for the duality of Twin Peaks. And, veterans of the show, recall that the last time we’ll ever see Josie will be in a reflection.


The body of Laura Palmer is found. “She’s dead. Wrapped in plastic.”

4) Worth noting are the psychic, intuitive reactions of Laura’s mother Sarah and her classmates, as the news spreads that she’s been washed-up, murdered. Audrey appears to have no such reaction – or is it simply a lack of empathy?

Audrey reacting to the news of the murder and probable rape of her classmate.

5) FIRE! THERE IT IS! FIRE! And it’s shown for the first time in the Great Northern Hotel as Benjamin Horne, the hotel owner, elects to manipulate his Norwegian guests.


6) The emotional breakdowns of Laura’s parents Leland and Sarah Palmer are intriguing not simply because they are tragic, but because they will repeat themselves over the first series, becoming less tragic to us and closer to soap melodramatics with every time – Sarah’s sob-shrieks and Leland’s screwing up his face and caving in on himself.


7) Another FIRE reference as Shelley, the beaten-down diner waitress, flirts with her illicit boyfriend, Bobby, telling him she’ll “light his fire”. Interestingly, as Bobby, panicking at the realisation that Shelley’s brutal boyfriend Leo has returned home early, turns his car around and speeds away, the noise of the engine is cut with the noise of a saw grinding into wood.


8) Sarah Palmer, being questioned by the police, has a sudden attack of unexplainable horror brought on by *something* upstairs – or, perhaps, just the sight of a ceiling fan.

“Who’s upstairs?”

“Your husband, and one of my men.”


9) Josie and Catherine Martell are arguing; apparently Josie wants to shut down the woodmill because one of the workers has a daughter, Ronette Pulaski, who’s suspected to have gone missing along with Laura. Catherine disagrees – and while Josie’s motives seem odd to us, Catherine’s presented as being so unpleasant that we don’t mind a great deal. The tension between these two characters will be important.


10) And we finally see Ronette Pulaski, staggering in a daze across a bridge, having clearly suffered abuse of some kind. Ronette is key to the entire puzzle – or, at least, she would be key in another show. Here, the characters and creators forget about her to such a great extent in comparison to Laura (she’s even plainer, with a name that’s hard to pronounce and not all-American in the same way as the murdered girl) that a distressed bird will be seen as a more vital witness than her later on.

She looks normal, is what I mean to say. Normal, in a town filled with unrealistically attractive women.

11) And we meet Special Agent Dale Cooper, our de facto hero and iconic character, who, in typical fashion, is dictaphoning obsessively his trivia of the day for the benefit of someone called ‘Diane’. He also gets across an almost hilarious amount of direct plot exposition by the same method.


Cooper, as the show goes on, will become the series’ symbol of goodness – a less worldly Marge Gunderson. Both characters are eccentric and positive in their outlooks when faced with a great evil, to the point that they could be considered naive, even immature, but whose positive energy is hinted to be their most useful quality. (Compare this to Andy, a good man hindered by sorrow at the horrors he has to face, who cries at the sight of Laura’s body and who is later revealed to be very literally impotent – and to that other Coenian cop, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, equally good, equally melancholy and equally powerless.) A great deal of this is suggested by his appearance, boyish, clean-shaven, and often wearing a coat that looks a size or two too for him. He looks like a cool version of one of the Milibands.

Don't tell me you can't see it.

12) And, as he encounters his local liaison, Sheriff Harry Truman, we get a bit of playfulness; Cooper starts out giving a generic ball-busting speech about how the FBI is in charge now...but his own charm and enthusiasm burst through in the form of an excited query about the wonderful pines he saw on the road.


13) Ronette Pulaski, from her comatose state, whispers a warning to Cooper – “Don’t go there.”


14) More complicated soap-ish shenanigans with a sly twist; teenage douchebag Mike yells at his girlfriend Donna, but he’s warned off by the apparently benevolent gas station owner Ed Hurley...who is then yelled at by his own eye-patch wearing wife Nadine.


15) After some FBI interrogations, we return to Audrey, who is causing precisely calculated trouble in the hotel, poking a hole in a coffee cup and spilling the liquid across a secretary’s work, bursting into the Norwegians’ meeting and announcing that her best friend had been found murdered...it’s a little annoying, especially with the sit-com-ish music, but it performs a valuable task. While all of the other lying citizens of Twin Peaks only get found out gradually, Audrey’s malicious streak is on full display from the start.


16) A double-theme whammy; the reflection of a motorbike in the reflection of Laura Palmer’s eye in a home video is an important clue. And then Cooper discovers that important, sinister message; a heart broken exactly in two, and four scrawled words - Fire Walk With Me.


17) We get to meet Shelley’s beau Leo, who is appropriately, near-absurdly loathsome, threatening her with death for having more than one cigarette brand in her ash-tray. Sure, he’s completely on the money that she’s having an affair, but he’s still a suspicious dickhead.

18) Cooper’s town meeting provides some more exposition and gives us the first real sighting of the Log Lady. It’s often been said that she’s one of the series’ worst/best examples of weirdness for weirdness’ sake, but I don’t know. Logs burn. Burn in FIRE.


19) In between shots of the youngsters drinking and getting angry, we see an oddly-shaped red light in the pitch black. Is it James’ motorcycle, or something else? We also seem to hear owls hooting. It will appear again.


20) As Donna sneaks out to meet James, her younger sister Harriet asks for her advice on a poetic question – “blossom of the evening”, or “full flower of the evening”? Only one of them’s a correct metaphor – but, all the same, adolescent or adult?


21) A barfight breaks out at the Roadhouse; James and Donna escape. James gives a long monologue about Laura’s sexual desires – he mentions almost thinking that she was possessed.


22) Interestingly, all four of the ‘young’ male characters – Mike, Leo, James and Bobby – seem to be playing variations on two stereotypes defined by their womenfolk. Mike and Leo are abusive and controlling; Bobby and James are freedom-embracing ‘rebels’.


23) As James is arrested, Donna’s adorable old father picks her up from the Sheriff’s office. He instantly forgives her for breaking Cooper’s curfew and makes a detour to pick up her sister’s bicycle. Unlike most of the characters, his decency is apparently not a cover for dark secrets. Meanwhile, Mike and Bobby, also incarcerated for their part in the barfight, taunt James by barking like dogs.


24) Okay, so it’s been a perfectly ordinary, if very slightly odd mystery-soap-drama so far. And then, just like that, the tone changes completely. Sarah Palmer is sitting alone in her living room when – oh, shit, she’s just caught sight of that evil ceiling fan, and – AAAGH!

I remain torn about BOB. For those of you who don’t know the story, that frightening, straggly-haired man was a set-dresser who was caught on camera accidentally. Lynch decided to incorporate the figure into the series – and thus, BOB (and presumably all of the overtly supernatural details of the series) were born. Is this brilliant creativity or just the hackery of a show that was – like many soaps – altered and twisted on the fly?


And so we end the first episode, appropriately, a little freaked-out and very little wiser.

Wider Reading | We Are What We Are

“We Are What We Are does for cannibals what Let The Right One In did for vampires,” the posters proclaim. As I sneered to one of my co-editors,


“What, it’s an antidote to their status as a sex symbol amongst teenage girls?”


The wording of that review (from The Times, which should know better, Murdoched or not) is, at least, fumbling towards the parallel that both films, ostensibly horror pics, are slow-burning and artfully directed; more concerned with shots than shocks, and featuring introspective youngsters who like to finger windows while brooding. There’s also a bit where a girl in a hospital nightgown jumps off a roof and escapes.


What We Are What We Are actually did for me was to remind me, first of all, just how much Let The Right One In cheated to ensure that its protagonists retained our sympathies – Eli only murders the comic-relief drunkards and the bullies who are attempting to kill Oscar, while Oscar himself, for all his violent soliloquising, only ever thwacked a thoroughly deserving classmate athwart the earhole with a rod. Most of the actual killing is done by Eli’s thrall, and even he plays with our sense of ethics because his murder-scenes both so cleverly place their emphasis on the danger of him being caught.

They fight, and bite, bite and fight and bite...

We Are What We Are doesn’t have that much artful ambiguity (though it has vagueness to spare). It lacks a sympathetic, even familiar entry-point like Oscar. That was the second fact that We Are What We Are reminded me of; the prime importance of cheating in a narrative like this. It’s certainly very brave of the director to include a scene in which the film’s heroes attempt – and fail, bumbling pathetically – to attempt to abduct a homeless child, for the purposes of eating him. But whereas the auteurs of South Korean black-comedy cinema could have pulled that element off as horrific, funny and sad all at once, Jorge Michel Grau just can’t manage to earn his cannibal family our understanding, let alone our sympathy.


It doesn’t help that very little actually happens in the movie. I’m not saying I particularly wanted to see more eating of people, but...you know...perhaps, as an audience member, I needed it to happen. I do think it says something when a film that takes place over a twelve-hour period can still seem baggy (and, a worse sin; how can a film about double-lives that begins in the afternoon and ends in the middle of the night do so little expressively with that timeframe? Haven’t they seen The Ladykillers?) So the cast spend much of their time glowering at one another and not saying a great deal.


The plot? Oh, right, the plot. The patriarch, and, presumably, chief hunter of a family of cannibals dies. His widow and children have a brief wobble about who’s going to go out and catch their next prey – the implication is that, wendigo-like, they fear they’ll get sick and die if they haven’t eaten by the end of the day. Meanwhile, they’re pursued by a couple of thinly-sketched cops, which does allow for a few not-bad cracks at the state of Mexico City; apparently a cannibal attack is a ‘number 14’ on the police radios there. The two sons go and hunt down a prostitute, and then a young man from a gay club, both of them experiencing in their own ways a frisson of sexual confusion that presumably arises from the similarities between eating someone and...eating someone. They do so with such incompetence that we suspect this can’t end well for them.


I’m going to go a couple of steps further into spoiler territory here, because I want to discuss something. The final shootout with the police, which is played semi-heroically, reminded me not at all of Let The Right One In, but of Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects. What that movie failed to realise – and what a number of film critics failed to analyse more closely – was that it isn’t enough to dress your murderous psychopaths in Ned Kelly armour for a gunfight, or place their car, Thelma and Louise style, in front of an impregnable police roadblock, and think that you’re brilliantly and subversively making them heroic. No; you’re making a blatant visual association that may confuse some audience members into thinking they’re actually watching Thelma and Louise or Ned Kelly.

Brought to you by the man who ruined Hallowe'en.

Both The Devil’s Rejects and We Are What We Are (and incidentally, I don’t believe the film does anything whatsoever with that confrontational title) left me cold and a little alienated. It was as if their creators had both set out to solve the puzzle of how to film complete monsters for one-and-a-half hours and end up with the audience rooting for them, without figuring out the answer that a child could have told them; it’s all about character, and the tricks of character. Why does Hannibal Lecter flirt with heroism in The Silence of the Lambs, completely subverting our sense of ethics? I’d give four reasons;


1) He’s set up in the true role of the detective, providing exposition, flattering us with his insights – while Clarice, as Watson, runs about doing the legwork, Lecter occupies the mental realm; Holmes in his study.

2) From the very moment of Miggs’ death, we understand that Lecter is no threat towards Clarice, with whom our sympathies truly lie; in fact, we see him as her dark protector. Compare to Manhunter/Red Dragon, where the switch-bitch is Lecter betraying the detective seeking his help. There’s a reason Brian Cox never became heroic.

3) He’s placed in direct opposition to Dr Frederick Chilton, who is played essentially as the ‘douchebag boyfriend’ character; we are made to find him so personally disagreeable – and, again, against Clarice rather than for her – that we cannot help but root for his enemy.

4) He’s funny. Those who complain that Anthony Hopkins’ Lecter is a pantomime performance both directly hit and completely miss the point here. Being funny is nine-tenths of being a charismatic yet truly evil villain in cinema. Captain Hook is less likely to work as a tragically compelling baddie than as a funnyman. See also Hans Gruber, Anton Chigurh, The Joker, Freddy Kreuger...



We Are What We Are cannot provide us with any of these cheats, but neither can it find another route through its problem. So all we’re left with is unpleasant ciphers doing horrible things to thinly-sketched innocents and then getting their come-uppance. And honestly, I don’t think I can come up with a horror premise I want to run out of town on a rail any more than that one.