HIGH FIVE
DEARBHLA MURPHY, press and marketing manager of
the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, V. chooses the " novels that mean most to her.
1 Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen What a great opening line and a book to read over and over again.
2 The ‘Time Passes’ section of To The Lighthouse: Virginia Woolf In my opinion, one of the greatest pieces of prose ever written and the reason I studied English.
3 Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban: J.K. Rowling For anyone who really loves to read. this fantastic series of books is a complete pleasure and this one is the best of the bunch. She has also created a whole new generation of readers.
4 A Prayer For Owen Meaney/The Cider House Rules: John Irving For all true Irving fans. the debate is ongoing.
5 Immortality: Milan Kundera This book reminds me of a very special time and place. When I meet someone new it's always the first thing I make them read.
RICHARD WILKINSON, head of music at Forth One and organiser of the Forth One Chart Show Live, picks his top pop acts.
1 Robert Williams Esq Undoubtably the peOple's choice: you can't help but love the Robster.
2 Britney Spears She exudes sexiness, sassiness and w0uld be a fine addition to any bill.
3 Madonna Again, last year's Drowned World Tour proved that Mrs Ritchie still knows how to entertain the masses.
4 Westlite Not everyone's cup of tea, but Boyzone Version 2.0 still appeal to a wide range of people.
5 Kylie Minogue Mmmmm, that dress!
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The loss of Edinburgh’s Lumiere cinema is a symptom of an ever more insular culture. Words: Tony McKibbin
dinburgh may see itself as a city of culture
but. to justify the label. it requires more
than rhetoric and an international festival
each August. The news that the Lumiere cinema is soon to close suggests the rhetoric will have to become more bombastic as the reality hints at an ever more insular. multiplex. mono-cultural driven world where the customer is always right and the artist a slave to the dictates ofentertainrnent values. A city that prides itself on being a cultural centre has a duty. surely. to keep its cultural institutions alive. Especially when. as a recent front page Scotsman article suggested. attendrmce at the Lumiere has doubled over
It’s a culture . built on cars the last year and it would take over on
Edinburgh‘s city centre and see how many shops are for let to witness the logic of suburbanisation in the urban. and the purpose-built impersonality of the out-of-town leisure allotment to witness the horrible deadness of the periphery.
The first multiplex cinema opened in Britain in 1985. Now Edinburgh alone has three. with a fourth in the process of being built. What a cinema like the Lumiere counters is this suburbanisation on two counts. First. the geographical suburbanisation already mentioned. Yes. there are multiplexes nearer the city centre. but even here. as Hanson points out. the emphasis is on being next to the motorway and offering all- encompassing under—one-roof
only a {70.000 subsidy to keep . entertainment. thecinemagoing. convenlence The second form of
What is the alternative‘.’ over self- defined choice
The multiplex culture or. as sociologist George Ritzer more broadly calls it. .V’IcDonaldisation: a culture built on consumption and assumption. on cars over people. on convenience over self-defined choice. As Stuart Hanson says in an essay called ‘Multiplexes in the 90s. multiplexes offer a ‘total leisure package set around the notion of a whole night out or even a whole day out.‘
And so the city centre becomes a sort of non- place lost to a ‘sub-urbia‘ on the outskirts. This is the opposite of what writer Hannah Arendt admired when. defending Paris against the general direction of 20th century cities. she said man ‘can feel at home because he can inhabit the city the way he lives in his own four walls'. In this context suburban culture offers a kind of dual homelessness. We need only look around
TH I N Carling NME Awards Tour QMU. Glasgow
suburbanisation is the psychic equivalent: ‘suburban' as defined in the Oxford English dictionary as ‘contemptibly dull and ordinary. And is this not what multiplex culture generally offers. whether it be in the form of processed sequel cinema or packaged cuisine? As Hanson believes. one of the ways in which McDonaldisation is able to maximise efficiency is through predictability".
We shouldn‘t see the Lumiere and its closure as just a half-attended cinema adjunct to the Museum of Scotland. whose demise was inevitable because it wasn't making enough money. Rather. we should see its closure as symptomatic of the way a city can lose its status as a cultural centre as it becomes increasingly an entertainment and leisure sprawl.
Disagree? react@list.co.uk
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