Trainspotting - Death/Culture/Death
Thoughts On: Trainspotting (1996)
Renton and his hapless friends stumble between drugs, alcohol, violence, depression and depravity.
You're a complete waste of space. You want nothing from life. You look at everything everyone around you has with scorn. You couldn't give a shit. It's all shite. You're not going to change. The world's not going to change. Why waste any effort on the whole business. And you suppose checking out of existence completely isn't worth the stress. Let's just stay in limbo. Where the world wants us.
A pretty distinctly late 20th/21st century story.
It says a lot that one of the most iconic and celebrated British films of the last few decades follows a complete wasteoid who eventually betrays his useless friends. The moral of the story: share a little of your nicked booty with the weakest, most harmless runt of your pack. A stupendously pathetic story.
Trainspotting seems to be situated in cultural dead space. For Spud, Sick Boy, Begbie and Renton, there is no counter-culture, there is just a wall of normality - of life - which they refuse to choose and be a part of (or, at least, they sink so low that it seems they'll never be able to choose it). Seemingly lost rejects of the punk movement of the 70s, the Scotty quartet like Iggy Pop, and the soundtrack punctuating their frenetic lives is distinct, but they have nothing around them worth being apart of. They like football, they like to drink, they like women, but these are all dead ends. With nothing worthwhile to rebel against, and with nothing to say or stand for, Renton and co. aren't like characters we see in the New Wave European films, nor the New Hollywood films; they have no reason, no unity among them, and nothing that really binds them together - even if that something is nothing but disdain. Even the absurdist, nihilist, anarchist characters of Godard's cinema seem to have a place in the world and society. Not Boyle's. Maybe we can only say this about 60s counter-cultural films looking back in time, but it has been 22 years since Trainspotting came out, and this film seems to have captured a wave of apathy, little else.
What Boyle picks up on with Trainspotting is seemingly a move into a new world we're quite familiar with: a world of lost individuals. It seems, looking back beyond the 80s, that weirdos clumped together. In the modern day, the internet excuses us from such efforts. We connect online, and there is certainly a culture, or a set of cultures, that have emerged from the internet. But, there is a strange difference pertaining to the way individuals are collected nowadays. Nonetheless, Spud, Sick Boy, Begbie and Renton exist in the mid-90s - before the internet was popular, and whilst there was little fuelling youth culture in Britain apart from hard substances and apathy. The nihilism that they embody is pretty frightening because they are less concerned with disregarding the world, and more focused on destroying themselves. And this is with addictive substances. These hapless young adults are exporting their nihilism. The nihilism has very little to do with them. With punk rock - as cinema presents it, for example, through films like Sid and Nancy - there seems to be a self-centredness. And this is seemingly true with a lot of counter-cultural movements; they have individuals in the centre of them who all, at the least, and to some degree, are merely calling attention to themselves. Renton and co. do not want much from the world. What they want, they'll steal. And they're stealing, not for themselves, not to destroy the world, not anarchistically, but to destroy themselves slowly. They're not Batman's Joker, they're not Robin Hood, they're not your average bad guy wanting to get back at the world. They're just pathetic, and they've found a way to turn that into action.
The more you think about Trainspotting, the more depressing it becomes. So, I suppose it's main saving grace - which turns out to be slap in the face in disguise - is its comedy. Renton and co. know what they're doing. They know that they're consciously exporting their nihilism - Renton in particular. They find humour in this acceptance, they find fleeting moments of satisfaction too. And I suppose that's all that humanises and familiarises the group: they are given some pleasure by the drugs. It is so easy to overlook the fact that this is what motivates characters, however.
With the majority of Trainspotting being about the space in between hits and ecstasy, we are made to feel that characters yearn, not the orgasmic outflow of a heroin injection, but the routine of wrapping a belt around their arm, venturing into their shitholes, nicking and waiting for the next hit. This seems to be the addiction: serving the addiction. Such distinguishes Trainspotting from the likes of Requiem For A Dream, which emphasise addiction as a force, not something gravitated toward. There is a thin line between wanting to continue to take drugs, and wanting to be within the grip of addiction, and I believe that Renton in particular doesn't necessarily want the heroin, but the chaos and numbness that it brings him. And this is what the comedic nature of Trainspotting serves to project; what is funny, what is engaging, is not the act of taking drugs, but the moments leading up to it. The ability to laugh at this addiction to being addicted seems to be the manifestation of exporting nihilism. It is upon the smiles and chortles of routine patheticness that all reason and meaning evaporate from the bodies of the lost Scots and out into the ether where they are collected, fermented and pumped into their veins as to facilitate a dreadful positive feedback loop.
Ultimately, it then seems that Spud, Sick Boy, Begbie and Renton form an alliance under the destitute and dead counter-culture of death. A dead counter-culture of death? The contradiction says much. Maybe it's something to laugh at?
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End Of The Week Shorts #48
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Ghibli vs. Disney vs. Marvel vs. DC - Redefining Auteurship
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Renton and his hapless friends stumble between drugs, alcohol, violence, depression and depravity.
You're a complete waste of space. You want nothing from life. You look at everything everyone around you has with scorn. You couldn't give a shit. It's all shite. You're not going to change. The world's not going to change. Why waste any effort on the whole business. And you suppose checking out of existence completely isn't worth the stress. Let's just stay in limbo. Where the world wants us.
A pretty distinctly late 20th/21st century story.
It says a lot that one of the most iconic and celebrated British films of the last few decades follows a complete wasteoid who eventually betrays his useless friends. The moral of the story: share a little of your nicked booty with the weakest, most harmless runt of your pack. A stupendously pathetic story.
Trainspotting seems to be situated in cultural dead space. For Spud, Sick Boy, Begbie and Renton, there is no counter-culture, there is just a wall of normality - of life - which they refuse to choose and be a part of (or, at least, they sink so low that it seems they'll never be able to choose it). Seemingly lost rejects of the punk movement of the 70s, the Scotty quartet like Iggy Pop, and the soundtrack punctuating their frenetic lives is distinct, but they have nothing around them worth being apart of. They like football, they like to drink, they like women, but these are all dead ends. With nothing worthwhile to rebel against, and with nothing to say or stand for, Renton and co. aren't like characters we see in the New Wave European films, nor the New Hollywood films; they have no reason, no unity among them, and nothing that really binds them together - even if that something is nothing but disdain. Even the absurdist, nihilist, anarchist characters of Godard's cinema seem to have a place in the world and society. Not Boyle's. Maybe we can only say this about 60s counter-cultural films looking back in time, but it has been 22 years since Trainspotting came out, and this film seems to have captured a wave of apathy, little else.
What Boyle picks up on with Trainspotting is seemingly a move into a new world we're quite familiar with: a world of lost individuals. It seems, looking back beyond the 80s, that weirdos clumped together. In the modern day, the internet excuses us from such efforts. We connect online, and there is certainly a culture, or a set of cultures, that have emerged from the internet. But, there is a strange difference pertaining to the way individuals are collected nowadays. Nonetheless, Spud, Sick Boy, Begbie and Renton exist in the mid-90s - before the internet was popular, and whilst there was little fuelling youth culture in Britain apart from hard substances and apathy. The nihilism that they embody is pretty frightening because they are less concerned with disregarding the world, and more focused on destroying themselves. And this is with addictive substances. These hapless young adults are exporting their nihilism. The nihilism has very little to do with them. With punk rock - as cinema presents it, for example, through films like Sid and Nancy - there seems to be a self-centredness. And this is seemingly true with a lot of counter-cultural movements; they have individuals in the centre of them who all, at the least, and to some degree, are merely calling attention to themselves. Renton and co. do not want much from the world. What they want, they'll steal. And they're stealing, not for themselves, not to destroy the world, not anarchistically, but to destroy themselves slowly. They're not Batman's Joker, they're not Robin Hood, they're not your average bad guy wanting to get back at the world. They're just pathetic, and they've found a way to turn that into action.
The more you think about Trainspotting, the more depressing it becomes. So, I suppose it's main saving grace - which turns out to be slap in the face in disguise - is its comedy. Renton and co. know what they're doing. They know that they're consciously exporting their nihilism - Renton in particular. They find humour in this acceptance, they find fleeting moments of satisfaction too. And I suppose that's all that humanises and familiarises the group: they are given some pleasure by the drugs. It is so easy to overlook the fact that this is what motivates characters, however.
With the majority of Trainspotting being about the space in between hits and ecstasy, we are made to feel that characters yearn, not the orgasmic outflow of a heroin injection, but the routine of wrapping a belt around their arm, venturing into their shitholes, nicking and waiting for the next hit. This seems to be the addiction: serving the addiction. Such distinguishes Trainspotting from the likes of Requiem For A Dream, which emphasise addiction as a force, not something gravitated toward. There is a thin line between wanting to continue to take drugs, and wanting to be within the grip of addiction, and I believe that Renton in particular doesn't necessarily want the heroin, but the chaos and numbness that it brings him. And this is what the comedic nature of Trainspotting serves to project; what is funny, what is engaging, is not the act of taking drugs, but the moments leading up to it. The ability to laugh at this addiction to being addicted seems to be the manifestation of exporting nihilism. It is upon the smiles and chortles of routine patheticness that all reason and meaning evaporate from the bodies of the lost Scots and out into the ether where they are collected, fermented and pumped into their veins as to facilitate a dreadful positive feedback loop.
Ultimately, it then seems that Spud, Sick Boy, Begbie and Renton form an alliance under the destitute and dead counter-culture of death. A dead counter-culture of death? The contradiction says much. Maybe it's something to laugh at?
Previous post:
End Of The Week Shorts #48
Next post:
Ghibli vs. Disney vs. Marvel vs. DC - Redefining Auteurship
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
