Smashing Time
RCA
Writing
2017
Writing about London: Smashing Time [1967]
Protasis
The nucleus, 'A kernel; hence, a central mass or point about which matter is gathered, or to which accretion is made'. It is the middle, the centre, the gist, the point on which action rests, the denser brighter core, magnetic and prompting, appealing the mass to collect and gather in its location. But a nucleus requires a host and so occasionally, energetic alliances between place, space and time bestow upon a a geographic location a sovereign-like cultural power, labelling it the centre. A focal point in which phenomenons 'happen' and 'scenes' are to be part of. The centre; where broadcasts of promise ripple out, attracting the populace to its concrete location.
The street that's a part of the beat at the heart of the scene
You know my Auntie Green
Would find it quite obscene
To me it's just a Teenager's Heaven
Carnaby Street
Song from 'Smashing Time' (1967)
The satirical comedy film, Smashing Time [1967], is a classic 'voyage and return' plot of friends Yvonne and Brenda, teenagers from the North of England who have sited London, in particular Carnaby Street, as the place in which Yvonne's naïve aspirations of being a model are to be realised. For Yvonne, who to-date had only experienced London through Mini-trend magazine spreads (aping fashions with religious devotion) contact with the city is to be an excitable virgin endeavour. Brenda is an unwilling accomplice who's scepticism of the London scene is proudly worn.
(intoxicated with anticipation a young woman skips down a street)
Carnaby Street, where 'the in-sector' reside, is the beating heart of Yvonne's teen dreams. A narrow strip of street snuck between Mayfair and Soho and identified as the kernel of 1960s Swinging London style. Propelled by the appearance of male boutiques at the start of the decade, its status ballooned, attracting sartorially savvy subcultures. These modern peacocks were hooked on the streets offer of costume-like-threads, and so were to be the first to experience the alchemic coalition of purchase and identity, 'they were true dandies, interested in creating works of art — themselves. There had of course been dandies before but they'd always been upper-class dandies. Now Macmillan's affluence had helped create working-class [iterations] — dedicated followers of fashion.'
However, the conscious act of self-creation through style has little value unless it is witnessed. A promenade is needed, a place to be seen, to parade, to exhibit, and so began the evolution of Carnaby Street into an proscenium arch, dividing the dapper modern actors from the staged-street in which spectators came to view. By 1967, after an accumulation of spectacles, Smashing Time portraits the street as a caricature, where distinctions between pretenders and observers are unclear and where Pop-dollies, Dandies and an unknowing Yvonne are out of step with the 'pacey' scene.
Epitasis
London is presented with piercing volume as a slapstick, pop-plastic, fairground-like theatre, complete with a pop-stage of characters, props and sets — a playhouse of pretension. George Melly, the films writer, inserts characters like: Tom Wabe, cardboard cockney photographer; Charlotte Brillig, sauntering nonchalant socialite; Mrs Gimble, aged bemused second-hand clothes seller; Bobby Mome-Rath, oily old-boy with lewd intentions and an Etonite turned pop Svengali record producer — all for the two friends to encounter within this performance of the city — a perverse pantomime acted out by an absurd culture of pop.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Jabberwocky, 1876
Mirroring character names with words from the first and last stanzas of Lewis Carroll's poem Jabberwocky, are not the only references to the writer. Nonsensical locations and general mishap feature throughout. Also, the films hottest pop-group, 'The Snarks', connect to Carrrol's 1876 poem The Hunting of the Snark. The Snark; an imaginary creature, anchored to ideas of impossible or elusive labours. A caution. For attempts to locate the beguiling centre can result in the exhaustive chasing of a moving bullseye — ever only to be on the periphery of the ecstatic experience.
Catastrophe
The nucleus issues laws of behaviour. One of which dictates that over-enthusiasm acts as a repellant, and so the indifference to the city inhabited by Brenda (the other friend), awards her the top prize. She moves centre-stage to become a model of the nonsensical moment.
(montage of young woman modelling a number of products including the perfume 'Direct Action')
The aphrodisiac of 60s social mobility likes to tell its story as one of revolution, but unlike other world cities, this major youth revolt occurred solely through style. Through acquisition. Fashion's transfigurative function within a society previously constricted by class was employed by the young to exercise liberties and freedoms, mostly of an economic kind. Bending aspiration into consumption, the 'gear grottos of London's garbville'3 sold throwaway aesthetics. The popular was the transient was the expendable was the disposable. 'Direct Action', could only ever be exercised as a superficial performance.
(illuminated to the nonsense, the two friends sabotage the ultimate 'switched-on' party at the British Telecom tower, their actions send London into a meltdown and 'switches-off' the power of the city)
Feeding from the wish to be real, the phantasmal play of Swinging London transposes itself onto the concrete, but lives nowhere. This construct of circulated images can only be experienced as a mirage. The reflected image is seen, in an inverted position, while the tangible space may or may not be real. Carnaby Street's currency is not in its physical space but in its cultural image. A mythology exported as a reflection.
However, the pull of the dense core remains. The constant production of radial light transmits promises of renewal, of recasting as another character within the city's auditorium of re-invention and so the desire to gain distance from the repetitive domiciliary gestures of everyday life nourishes a synthesis. A want to be entertained in search of the unfamiliar and unordinary through the spectacle of the looking glass.
(Yvonne and Brenda walk into the horizon, away from the nucleus and into the sunrise)