I have noted here before the low regard for plastic in post-WW2 highbrow culture - which was transvaluated into a positive by Warhol and other Pop Artists, and in turn espoused by Bowie as an anti-authenticity riff (his Young Americans mode of "plastic soul"; he also described Ziggy as a “plastic rocker”) Sort of “synthetic and proud of it, me!” “Guaranteed not the real thing”.
In this eerie 1962 Monitor short film "The Lonely Shore"- which imagines a team of researchers in the far future visiting the ruined wasteland of Britain and trying to reconstruct the lost civilization using archeological fragments and ancient artifacts whose function and meaning can only be speculated about - the 1960s literati loathing for plastic is evident with comments about a curiously repulsive substance out of which many objects are fashioned.
The artificial colours of these man-made materials are connected to a general critique of artifice, pretence, fantasy, and superficiality that is seen as the malaise that rotted out the Lost Civilization, which had waned through its loss of connection to the virile and vitalizing energies of Nature.
Again, very par for the course for post-WW2 discontents against modernity, cutting across from highbrows like J.B. Priestley with his admass society critique, to the the counterculture of beats and hippies, with their Rousseau-esque "nostalgia of mud", earthen palette of brownish fabrics, additive-free macrobiotics etc
One of the slogans of King Mob - the UK cell of the Situationists - was “Smash the Plastic Death”
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Informational lowdown from Ian Holloway at Wyrd Britain:
"Written by Jacquetta Hawkes, filmed by Ken Russell and with commentary by Tony Church, this fabulous little film was one of 21 that Russell made for the fortnightly BBC arts programme 'Monitor' between 1959 and 1962.
"The entirely fascinating Hawkes - the first woman to read for the Archeology & Anthropology degree at the University of Cambridge, co-founder of CND, gay rights campaigner & wife of novelist J.B. Priestly - provides a text that is as cutting as it is blunt, that satirises both the language and assumptions of her own disciplines and the cosy absurdities and consumerist excesses of British life in the early 1960s. "
Ha, I mentioned J.B. Priestley and his "admass" idea, and here it's his missus, Jacquetta Hawkes, writing the text to "The Lonely Shore"
As Holloway observes, she looks to have been a fascinating polymath. Amongst other things, she was an archaeologist, which fits with the framing of "The Lonely Shore", she was renowned for her book A Land, about British geology and archaeology.
Amazing. Some snobbery there, but also that very British sense of style, and revulsion at ugliness. A bit of "imagine no possessions" a decade before Lennon. And some gentle fun at archeological speculation. Fits right into that post-War Brit Surrealist tradition of Ballard (as you say), Terry Gilliam and The Prisoner.
ReplyDeleteA fantastic Radiophonic Workshop soundtrack, too. A helpful commenter on YouTube explains: "This film includes special sounds by Desmond Briscoe of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, alongside experimental compositions by Henk Badings and Edgard Varèse."