Anthony McIntyre bemoans his choice of lockdown viewing.

The challenge many of us face is what to do during the lockdown when choice is so limited. Often we are reminded by the Medical Directorate that now rules over us about what not to do but normally we look for things to do rather than not to do. There is a common sense assumption that doing rather than not doing is a better way of neutralising the boredom. 

I thought I would get heaps of books read but not a single one have I completed since the start of it, despite having four or five on the go. Finding the motivation hard to come by, I reverted to the fall back position of falling back on the settee and watching TV. What a disaster that turned out to be.

I am usefully careful about what I choose to watch. I am a lazy non-engaging viewer, preferring to lounge and not be confronted with a plot too intricate or the characters too multifaceted. I like to be able to follow it whether I have a large glass of neat whiskey in my hand or a cup of coffee. My wife complains that we get nothing finished as I fall asleep half way through, if not on occasion minutes in. The point is, I like it simple.

Watching Westworld was the biggest mistake I made during the lockdown. It is mind numbingly boring and should be renamed Worstworld. It started out reasonably in Season 1 but seriously nosedived in Season 2 and despite some potential has made no improvement in Season 3. I watched it out of consideration for my daughter – and the end is not yet nigh - who asked me to hang out with her. I didn’t learn my lesson from an earlier occasion when she asked me to watch the stultifying Twin Peaks. It too started out with promise before collapsing into a David Lynch vanity project, where the quality got smaller as the Lynch ego got bigger while my urge to throw a whiskey glass at the TV screen grew exponentially.

These things become endurance tests with no reward at the end for the trial undergone, just a punishment via a deep sense of angst that so much time was invested in a useless project. Something like a cleric discovering that there is no god, only writ small.

Westworld is science fiction where only the genre symmetry works: bad science and equally bad fiction. I have watched more than a few zombie films plus the box set Walking Dead, but this time I was the zombie watching the robots on television. Hopeless and horrible, I lost interest in the plot - not that I had the slightest curiosity in keeping up with it – and the characters one by one began to flat line. Were I to resume the blanket protest tomorrow I would refuse to watch it if it was offered to combat the ennui. There is more mental stimulation to be derived from looking at a shitty wall.

Set in a Wild West American theme park, the guests can work out their killing fantasies to their hearts’ content. The hosts on whom the guests draw their pistols are programmed not to be able to harm their tormentors. Then it slowly starts to unravel as Artificial Intelligence acquires a life of its own. The robotic creations begin to become sentient beings and before long the lunatics are taking over the asylum.

Locked in Syndrome is a condition no one could relish being afflicted with, obviously, or even wish on those we might detest. The helium bag is the answer to that.  I once read a novel, Lunch with the Generals, part of which was a story told about a surgeon in Argentina whose daughter had been raped, murdered and disappeared during the country’s dirty war.  The vengeful father physically induced Locked In Syndrome in the cop responsible, a sadistic red neck from the sticks. He left the thug with only awareness of his predicament as payback. He was relieved of his arms, legs, eyes, ear drums, tongue, anything from which he might extract sensuous pleasure. As much as I had nothing but contempt for the death squad leader, it was hard not to shudder at the situation he found himself in, wishing that he had instead been administered a lethal injection. If there is a hell, unremitting boredom is its daily regime.

No point in exaggerating the symptoms and coming over as the embodiment of a cross between hypochondria and Munchausen's Syndrome given that nothing as horrendous as Locked In Syndrome has gripped me. Still, Locked Down Syndrome is a dispiriting malaise which is certain to be exacerbated by a bad choice of watching the wrong show as a means to combat the stress of cabin fever.  Multiplying the ennui chips is not a wise investment.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

Locked Down Syndrome

Anthony McIntyre bemoans his choice of lockdown viewing.

The challenge many of us face is what to do during the lockdown when choice is so limited. Often we are reminded by the Medical Directorate that now rules over us about what not to do but normally we look for things to do rather than not to do. There is a common sense assumption that doing rather than not doing is a better way of neutralising the boredom. 

I thought I would get heaps of books read but not a single one have I completed since the start of it, despite having four or five on the go. Finding the motivation hard to come by, I reverted to the fall back position of falling back on the settee and watching TV. What a disaster that turned out to be.

I am usefully careful about what I choose to watch. I am a lazy non-engaging viewer, preferring to lounge and not be confronted with a plot too intricate or the characters too multifaceted. I like to be able to follow it whether I have a large glass of neat whiskey in my hand or a cup of coffee. My wife complains that we get nothing finished as I fall asleep half way through, if not on occasion minutes in. The point is, I like it simple.

Watching Westworld was the biggest mistake I made during the lockdown. It is mind numbingly boring and should be renamed Worstworld. It started out reasonably in Season 1 but seriously nosedived in Season 2 and despite some potential has made no improvement in Season 3. I watched it out of consideration for my daughter – and the end is not yet nigh - who asked me to hang out with her. I didn’t learn my lesson from an earlier occasion when she asked me to watch the stultifying Twin Peaks. It too started out with promise before collapsing into a David Lynch vanity project, where the quality got smaller as the Lynch ego got bigger while my urge to throw a whiskey glass at the TV screen grew exponentially.

These things become endurance tests with no reward at the end for the trial undergone, just a punishment via a deep sense of angst that so much time was invested in a useless project. Something like a cleric discovering that there is no god, only writ small.

Westworld is science fiction where only the genre symmetry works: bad science and equally bad fiction. I have watched more than a few zombie films plus the box set Walking Dead, but this time I was the zombie watching the robots on television. Hopeless and horrible, I lost interest in the plot - not that I had the slightest curiosity in keeping up with it – and the characters one by one began to flat line. Were I to resume the blanket protest tomorrow I would refuse to watch it if it was offered to combat the ennui. There is more mental stimulation to be derived from looking at a shitty wall.

Set in a Wild West American theme park, the guests can work out their killing fantasies to their hearts’ content. The hosts on whom the guests draw their pistols are programmed not to be able to harm their tormentors. Then it slowly starts to unravel as Artificial Intelligence acquires a life of its own. The robotic creations begin to become sentient beings and before long the lunatics are taking over the asylum.

Locked in Syndrome is a condition no one could relish being afflicted with, obviously, or even wish on those we might detest. The helium bag is the answer to that.  I once read a novel, Lunch with the Generals, part of which was a story told about a surgeon in Argentina whose daughter had been raped, murdered and disappeared during the country’s dirty war.  The vengeful father physically induced Locked In Syndrome in the cop responsible, a sadistic red neck from the sticks. He left the thug with only awareness of his predicament as payback. He was relieved of his arms, legs, eyes, ear drums, tongue, anything from which he might extract sensuous pleasure. As much as I had nothing but contempt for the death squad leader, it was hard not to shudder at the situation he found himself in, wishing that he had instead been administered a lethal injection. If there is a hell, unremitting boredom is its daily regime.

No point in exaggerating the symptoms and coming over as the embodiment of a cross between hypochondria and Munchausen's Syndrome given that nothing as horrendous as Locked In Syndrome has gripped me. Still, Locked Down Syndrome is a dispiriting malaise which is certain to be exacerbated by a bad choice of watching the wrong show as a means to combat the stress of cabin fever.  Multiplying the ennui chips is not a wise investment.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

15 comments:

  1. Here's one for you AM ... politics, situational power, religion and a bit of football to boot!

    The Two Popes

    Visually stunning with superb performances from Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce.

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  2. HJ - your last recommendation turned out to be superb: Mindhunter. So we will give this a go. You restore my faith (dirty word!!) in TV

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  3. Get yourself out into the garden the sun is shining and just start doing something anything and you will be amazed at how time flies by , as my grandfather once told me the only time you will be bored is when your 6ft under

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    Replies
    1. Time goes in very quick - but it tends to at my age when there is so little left!

      There is plenty to do - but made the wrong call on that

      Delete
  4. Lockdown is giving us all the opportunity to do the things we all ant ot need to do - writing, drawqing and painting, baking, trying loug and catching up Amazon Prine and Curzon 12 free film feeds. BUT without clear structures in the form of dairies and deadoines (too resonant of EP Thompson's Time Discipline and Industrial Captialism, I know!) demotivation soon kicks in. Obsessfiully checkling Twitter updates and notifications soon gets in the way of finishing that article!.

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  5. A cautionary tale which most can relate to. I have read a few books during lockdown but often find motivation hard to muster.

    I have heard very good things about The Two Popes but haven't been watching much tv.

    I am going to start a book next week on procrastination.

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    Replies
    1. next week on procrastination - I like that!

      Delete
  6. Another movie that might grab you AM, but its not one for the faint-hearthed if isolation is a challenge.

    The Endless Trench (LA TRINCHERA INFINITA)

    I found it difficult to get into at first. Although only released last year the cinematic style is reminiscent of an old movie. Some of the early action scenes are shot with a hand held camera and that coupled with out of sync dubbing in American accents is rather off-putting at first. So much so that I gave up on it the first evening after about 35 mins (I was also exhausted after a hard day topping trees).

    However I returned to it the following evening and boy am I glad I did. At 147 mins it is a long movie but justifiably so. The setting is Andalusia during the Spanish Civil War and deals with the long out-workings of that internecine conflict; themes of isolation on former activists due to fear of reprisal and the vicarious impacts on their families are explored as well those of sexual oppression and sexual repression in a closed society.

    Its a worthwhile and moving film which I got on Netflix but given a choice I might have preferred to have watched it in the original Spanish with English subtitles.

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    Replies
    1. HJ - now that you have warned me I will labour on after the first 35 minutes. I think it is probably one I'll have to watch alone as I doubt Carrie will go for it. WE are watching a Mexican one at the minute - 60 odd episodes but watchable even if they must have auditioned for actors at Stormont.

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  7. Everybody has got Stockholm Syndrome apart from the Swedish themselves!

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  8. All I can say is..the lockdown hasn't had any great affect on my life, I still see my friends.. Outside of not being able to go out for a pint..My life style hasn't changed or my travel arrangements......

    I refuse to buy into the bullshit I am being told. I want to believe in bat flu, much like I want to believe that a bastard child died on a cross for my sins while Mo who couldn't read or write penned a book that is up there with Dickens in story telling...

    Some of Bojo's clowns are caught flouting the rules they want me to live by..be it going to see their married lover or visiting a holiday home...Remember with hair dressers closed and barbers shut,....none look as if they need a hair cut. Duncan Ballentine from Dragons Den fame can fcuk off back to Portugal on his private jet..(the list is endless...)..

    My life, my rules...

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    Replies
    1. I don't have that problem Frankie - I have no friends to see!!!

      Delete
  9. May i suggest please,when i am board i think of burning churches to the ground it helps me,give it a go AM you never know by the way....#ClericalAbuse brilliant read my friend.Excellent.😅🙌

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  10. Anthony...I'd a friend who phoned me last night just after 8pm and asked me over to his..I told him, way to late (he lives in the back arse of East Belfast)..So we have arranged to link up on Friday...

    I just can't buy into MSM...I would like on day to conform to society rules (once or twice in my life I have tried...I have tried)..but I know I am being sold a pup...If my friends want to see me or I want to see them...No one is going to stop me. The conflict didn't control me, French state tried and failed...Bat flu and Bill Gates....better people have tried and failed.

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  11. Go to the god channel a chara , turn of the volume insert your own words ,

    ReplyDelete