ONE MORE CUP OF COFFEE [489]

"freeze-dried"

A good coffee will not need milk or sugar, as far as I am concerned – at least, that is my conclusion from only just starting to drink coffee for the first time in my life.

Watching other people contend with and compromise in drinking coffee kept me safely with soft drinks up to now, my sweet tooth being happily satisfied, mostly by The Coca-Cola Company.

But tastes change with age, as does your body – I felt mine becoming less impressed by fizzy drinks, and so a solution had to be found.

I rarely tried accustoming myself to hot drinks. Soft drinks have uniformity of taste, but they both cost and weigh more to carry home from a shop, because they need to be pre-prepared and ready to drink. Hot drinks take time to prepare and perfect.

That may be obvious, but I avoided hot drinks for this reason. I prefer just to add hot water and be done with it. Instant drinking chocolate, usually by Cadbury, was the hot drink I had the most before now, but even then, only occasionally, getting bored of forcing Dairy Milk into me. Tea has always been the opposite, too weak for my tastes no matter how long I steep the bag, although a peppermint infusion is much preferable for me to standard black or white tea.

Modifying the taste of your tea or coffee by adding milk, sugar or whatever else led me to think that changing the tea or coffee itself would be more appropriate – like I have done with soft drinks up to now, having a satisfying taste that can stand on its own was what I wanted.

So why coffee, and why coffee now? My family started watching “Twin Peaks” just before Christmas 2024, a very welcome, and endlessly fascinating, alternative to what TV schedules had planned in the festive period. In the character of Special Agent Dale Cooper, the show’s creators David Lynch and Mark Frost, with actor Kyle MacLachlan, created a character who, among all his fastidiousness and intuitive methods, had a love of coffee so great it sold the concept to me. A stronger, more full-bodied taste was what I was looking for, and on the one occasion someone at work asked me how I liked it, I said without hesitation, “black as midnight on a moonless night”.

I first decided to sample the coffee at work one day, not having realised tea and coffee, and milk and sugar, were being supplied in the break rooms, having never needed to look before. However, the three types of instant coffee on offer – “smooth”, “decaf” and “rich”, all apparently from Kenco – were terrible to me. The “smooth” and “decaf” granules smelled burnt, and the “rich” coffee I made was too bitter for more than an initial sip.

The coffee I have arrived at was what we had at home, recommended by my sister: Percol smooth Colombian coffee – “roast 3”, apparently. One teaspoon produces a perfectly nice cup of coffee to me, a sense of warmth and taste without the bitterness, and without all the fuss. No Americano, flat white, long black or other type of complication, and no snobbishness or crema spoons – just a Platonic ideal of a cup of coffee.

The only addition I need is an insulated mug to keep it warm.

I HAD HOPED YOU’D SEE MY FACE [488]

Before Wallace & Gromit, “Chicken Run” and Shaun the Sheep, stop-motion specialists Aardman Animations was known to the young me for both the Chaplinesque adventures of Morph on the BBC, and for five-minute pieces for Channel 4 based on recordings made with members of the public. Our family had a VHS cassette that collected these latter works: alongside Aardman’s celebrated video for Peter Gabriel’s song “Sledgehammer” were vignettes about a social security office, a newspaper editorial meeting, memories of living during the Second World War and, in Nick Park’s Academy Award-winning “Creature Comforts”, living on housing estates or in old people’s homes recontextualised as animals living in a zoo.

The one that has stayed with me the longest, outside of the further series of “Creature Comforts”, was “Ident” (1989), directed by Richard Starzak (credited as Richard Goleszowski), a film that adapted improvised noises from the comedians Arthur Smith and Phil Nice that suggested conversation while rarely using words, creating a story of someone being made to wear masks in various situations. It is very mature, spiky, comic and surreal, the sort of film that makes you develop a taste for something similar.

I became used early on to strange-looking animation, as Channel 4 often followed lunchtime broadcasts of “Sesame Street” at the time with animations from Eastern European countries like the former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, rich in traditions of abstract and suggestive animations that rarely used words, so I never found “Ident” scary, like commenters have claimed. The flattened 2D-like style and rough texture of the characters, including a dog that became the star of Starzak’s later series “Rex the Runt”, were already par for the course.

“Ident” was part of “Lip Synch”, a five-part series of “vox pop”-based films made by Aardman and shown by Channel 4 in 1990. David Lord, a co-founder of Aardman and director of two of the films, “War Story” and “Going Equipped”, has said there was no overarching theme for the series, but his contributions, and “Creature Comforts”, are most straightforward in their construction. Barry Purves’ “Next”, an almost-entirely wordless film featuring William Shakespeare auditioning, either for a stage role or for a place in Heaven, by acting scenes from his own plays, is as much of a standout as “Ident” is, but the “vox pop” theme is not found.

Meanwhile, Starzak has either turned Smith and Nice’s improvised sounds into a story or applied them to one – I just wish I knew. The film is set in a maze, arrows featuring throughout. Our unnamed lead character gets ready for his day by pulling his face into shape. After yelling at his dog, he passes a window, pulling down a blind with a better view printed on it. A figure I first took as being like a Roman statue, but also could be their wife, says letters of the alphabet while putting a mask on them, for a more acceptable face. When the mask is rejected, the statue’s words create makeup that spats onto the character’s face, creating a mask regardless, the angry reaction crumbles the statue into a smaller version of itself. 

Arriving at work, a clock on the wall moving as slowly or quickly as they perceive time, the man and their manager wear masks to converse, but when the man takes his off to talk more informally, he is shouted down to a smaller size himself, a mask is placed on him that changes the shape of his nose to fit. The workplace appears to be making the masks themselves, popping into shape on a conveyor belt in the background, a uniform product everyone must wear, but they become misshapen when the man is shouted down, indicating their defective nature.

After hitting the head of an obnoxious canvasser, he is whisked by a crowd into a pub, meeting a friend with a similarly changed face, blowing of steam with the impression of a chat identifiable just out of earshot in any British pub. Returning home drunk, he is confronted by everyone he has met, either metaphorically or literally, and tries putting on another face and juggling balls to impress everyone, which fails. A hard zoom in to real, scared-looking human eyes through a plasticine mask, an image I find suffocating, looks at the warped existence around him, leading him to walk dejectedly away. 

He sees himself in a mirror and, in a moment of realisation, takes off his mask – he looks almost reborn, better than he looked at the film’s start. The dog jumps through the mirror, now a window to the world outside the maze, looking like the picture printed on the blind – the man follows. Marvelling at his new surroundings, he comes across a doppelganger, which mirrors him until they both eye each other suspiciously, leading them to tear at the other’s faces, making them into the masks we saw before. Time to concrete over paradise to build another maze.

To make the point again, “Ident” is only five minutes long. I have watched it many times, and it is a visual poem, one that gains greater significance the older you become. I’m not about to put on a mask now, having been given an early lesson in the effects of such a mindset.

POUR A LITTLE SUGAR ON IT [487]

Can a conceptual artwork remain open to interpretation following its conception?

Controversy recently surrounded the installation in 2024 of “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), a 1991 work by Félix González-Torres, at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., run by the Smithsonian Institute, because information considered, since the work was created, to be required to form a full understanding of the work had not been included.

It is one of a series of works consisting of a pile of candy sweets, this one wrapped in different colours and with a consistent total weight of 175 lbs (79 kg), to be arranged by the owner or curator as desired, but with the requirement that viewers can take candies from the artwork, with The Félix González-Torres Foundation assisting in replenishing the work. 

The prescribed weight has been interpreted both as being the weight of the average adult human male, but also of the titular “Ross”: Ross Laycock, González-Torres’s partner, would die of complications from AIDS in 1991, as would González-Torres five years later. 

The controversy arose from this information not being supplied alongside the work, as had been when previously on display at other galleries. The Art Institute of Chicago, which owns and shares the work, also removed this information from the written display by 2022, keeping it on its audio guide, before reinstating it after the discrepancy was discovered, then decried. 

Ignaciao Darnadue, writing in “Out” magazine, talked of this being a “queer erasure”, having “witnessed people blissfully taking pictures of pretty candy — empty calories on the floor robbed of their stirring spirit.” The Félix González-Torres Foundation later replied to what they said was “misinformation”, having “made a point of incorporating significant queer content throughout this exhibition”.

I have seen this artwork on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2011, accompanied by an explanation of who “Ross” was, effectively making it into an AIDS memorial, charging further symbolism into the act of “participating” in the work by taking weight from the representation of a “body”. The “portrait” made by González-Torres is more visceral than a painting or photograph, removing the boundaries usually placed on an artwork in a gallery setting by requiring you to pick up and eat it, alongside imagery of Catholic communion. This is before you then consider the notions of production and commerce inherent in manufacturing, procuring and delivering the sweets, followed by the human digestion of them.

However, I needed to be given that context – a “conventional” portrait may give you more of a sense of a person’s biography than name and weight. The nature of a gallery space also means you cannot assume that works are intended to be as approachable, and ever since Marcel Duchamp put a urinal on its side and signed it, anything can be appropriated as, or reappraised as, art. Does it mean that González-Torres’s “portrait” is less successful if the context is not signposted? No, it just means that the cultural significance the work has accrued since its unveiling may be something to be looked up beforehand, or later.

Meanwhile, in 2011, I was apparently happy to take six sweets from another González-Torres work, “Untitled” (USA Today) (1990) – weighing 300 lbs., it symbolises the more digestible and reduced porting the newspaper of that name symbolised, along with the country itself - and put the red, white and blue-wrapped sweets into a bag along with a printed explainer, ready for me to rediscover it fourteen years later, taking a picture of it before throwing it and the melted sweets away. This was intended as a souvenir of my visit to an art gallery, but the sweets have moved on from their original form, like if I had eaten them at the time.

YOU SAY THAT THIS WASN’T IN YOUR PLAN [486]

"You are fined one credit for a violation of the Verbal Morality Statute."

Just because the 1993 film “Demolition Man” was intended as more of a crowd-pleasing blockbuster release than other dystopian science fiction films like “Blade Runner”, “Alien” and others not directed by Sir Ridley Scott aspired to be, it didn’t make it any less prescient. 

I had mistaken police sergeant John Spartan’s (Sylvester Stallone) not knowing about the “three seashells”, the mysterious bathroom tools that are never explained, as being no more than a running joke, even making for the final laugh as the credits roll. But if the effect is to make a dinosaur out of Spartan, thawed out of a cryogenic prison sentence to stop similarly old-school terrorist Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes), then viewing it over thirty years later makes dinosaurs of us all.

The film is always set in “the future”, beginning in a 1996 that depicts the Hollywood sign on fire amid rampant lawlessness, a suitably extreme situation whereby cryogenic, mind-rectifying sentences are a logical answer, leading to the repressed, peaceful future of 2032 - as confirmed by prison warden William Smithers, “Things don’t happen anymore. We’ve taken care of that.”

In this future, the hellscape of Los Angeles was supposedly levelled by a 2010 earthquake known as “The Big One”. The new city of “San Angeles” – linked with San Diego and Santa Barbara, and factoring no further into the plot – is layered over the remains, forcing people who don’t assimilate to the new regime underground. The soft and stilted nature of speech, with mentions of “joy-joy”, “be well” and the elimination of the nature of death – “I thought your life force had been prematurely terminated!” – could theoretically be in response to a great trauma that remade society. However, speech is also controlled automatically: even at home, but oddly not in your car, swearing incurs a one credit fine for violating the “Verbal Morality Statute”, although doing it under your breath is half the price.

Everyone is tracked, organic microchips in everyone’s hand, while facilitating a cashless society, also means the police “can zero in on anyone at any time”, although the ineffectual nature of the police, from having so little crime to deal with, means bad decisions are made – attempting to apprehend Phoenix, who has no microchip, relies on a video tutorial consulted at the scene, while using artificial intelligence to work out where he could have gone – find a drug laboratory, then start a crime syndicate – is repudiated by reasoning, like heading to an museum exhibit of firearms. Waiting for Phoenix to kill again wouldn’t be an option now, but human reasoning in 2032 makes it a good place to start.

Police officer Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock), someone fascinated by, and authoritative of, 20th century culture, is upbraided by her chief, George Earle (Bob Gunton): “I monitored your disheartening and distressing comments to the warden this morning. Do you really long for chaos and disharmony? Your fascination with the vulgar 20th century seems to be affecting your better judgement. You realize you're setting a bad example for other officers and sworn personnel.” Huxley’s response is rote: “Thank you for the attitude adjustment, Chief Earle. Info assimilated.” And yet, Earle sees no problem in calling Spartan an “animal”, “caveman” and “primate”, just as the city’s leader Raymond Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne) calls the underground dwellers “scraps”. These slurs are acceptable, as it is only the presence of certain words that earn punishment – Spartan uses the word “dirtbag” in one scene, apparently free of charge.

Huxley is knocked out towards the end in order to have the final showdown between the two hard-bodied men, Spartan and Phoenix, which wouldn’t have happened if Huxley was being played in 1993 by Geena Davis – Bullock’s full action movie career did not start until “Speed” the following year. A separate film exists within this about Huxley rebelling against her dystopian present through her nostalgia for the old times, like an academic version of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” but with more butchered idioms – “He's finally matched his meet. You really licked his ass.” – and more analysis of how people used to behave before making physical contact became taboo: “If you'd read my study, you'd know this is how insecure heterosexual males used to bond.”

You can see where the present day would facilitate some of these elements. The ever-present wall units dispensing paper fines for swearing would be covered by text messages to your phone, acting as the microchip in your hand, its microphone having picked up the word while you reacted to a video tutorial. I am guessing social media, never mentioned, is banned, missing the opportunity to let the people police themselves. I am not sure about the enjoyment of “mini-tunes”, formerly advertising jingles, unless either advertising or capitalism is banned in San Angeles, leaving unironic nostalgic enjoyment – the clipped and abbreviated nature of social media videos, particularly those of TikTok, fit that niche now.

It is insinuated that Cocteau had the right plan at the right time, rebuilding the city, while making the “scraps”, particularly one Edgar Friendly (Denis Leary, playing Denis Leary), the enemy. “See, according to Cocteau's plan, I'm the enemy. Cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice... You wanna live on top, you gotta live Cocteau's way. What he wants, when he wants, how he wants. Your other choice: come down here, maybe starve to death.” He is not a Cocteau-like leader – “I'm no leader. I do what I have to do. Sometimes, people come with me” – but he is portrayed to us as the de facto anti-fascist leader. I expect elections followed later.

I was more impressed with “Demolition Man” in hindsight than I expected, but I still don’t buy Taco Bell winning the restaurant franchise wars. Did McDonald’s lose by changing the Filet-O-Fish again?