3-6 The Hyper-Real World of: Cruelty Squad 7-8 Picnic at Hanging Rock, a short book review 9-10 IV DRIP 11-12 NOPE, The fear of nothing 13 - 16 Surrealism in music17 - 20 Lynch’s Lost Worlds
Mabel illustration
The Risk of Overconsumption
THE BRUTALIST : An experiment in surrealist storytelling
STUDENT SPOTLIGHT 02
The Trial, a short book review 33 - 38 Surreal, Short Story 39-40 Credits
Cruelty Squad (2021) is best known for its disgusting visuals and brutal gameplay. It was released to the world in January of 2021 in early access with 1.0 coming in June, the game is (Cruelty squad on steam, n.d., sec. ‘Set in the hardcore gig economy of corporate liquidations.’). You essentially act like an Uber Driver going from location to location killing targets specified by your handler who is an approximation of the human form in the shape of a fleshy blob with a hat with “Godhead Heavy Industries” written on it. Each level spans a specified area and begins with a small text scrawl told to you by the handler, typically you’re killing – or rather liquidating- business execs who spent company money on a wall of “Chunkopops” and the occasional politician wanting to implement a 1% corporation Tax.
In the world of Cruelty Squad nobody dies, they are simply brought back to life by a genetic recombinator at the cost of $500. This is reflected in the game where when you first die you are greeted with: “DIVINE LIGHT SEVERED YOU ARE A FLESH AUTOMATON ANIMATED BY NEUROTRANSMITTERS”. This harrowing text alongside a body reconstruction fee paints a bleak world devoid of death and overflowing with corporate greed, if you die four more times in the same level you are see “POWER IN MISERY TRAVERSING THE GRID OF DEATH” along with being signed up to an “Experimental biological enhancement program”. In game this makes the enemies weaker giving the player a greater advantage, surprisingly you also gain the ability to eat corpses to regain health. This paints a picture of a world twisted by greed that has forgotten all consequences, with death being nothing more than $500 it lost all meaning and murder being basically legal. This is where the titular Cruelty Squad comes in, they are an organisation of killers for hire which the player becomes a part of at the start of the game. Death to the targets is simply a discouragement as they will be constantly revived and killed again each time you
Take a look at the visuals of Cruelty Squad, here is the lovely suburban gated community
Like many indie games Cruelty Squad has low-poly 3D models, unlike AAA games where
characters have upwards of 100,000 polygons Cruelty Squad uses as little polygons as it can Cruelty Squad uses a mix of hand painted textures and photography, both compressed to a resolution befitting the PlayStation adding to the retro look. This ties in with many people’s nostalgia of the pre-HD era where graphics were rough and had a limited colour palate, nostalgia is usually looked on with rose tinted glasses making you recall the beloved memories and low fidelity aesthetic. Cruelty Squad uses this and twists it into an overstimulating, anticapitalist, deluge of low-poly murder. This is compounded with the vile border reminiscent of older First Person Shooters like DOOM (1993) and Wolfenstein 3D (1992) but unlike these boomer shooters they played a role of housing the information like health, ammo, and what keys you had but in Cruelty Squad it is a visual element displaying the games difficulty. This is similar to the pulsating health blob, which pulses faster and becomes red when the player is at lower health.
There are three endings to Cruelty Squad. To summarise them: the first ending is a cutscene of the player walking across a chequered endless of plane pink and green towards a wall with text appearing suggesting that this is some sort of heaven; the second ending is much more disturbing featuring a massive face with LIFE written across with a text scrawl describing you as a husk and telling you to invest and a CEO Mindset; the third is much more cryptic displaying flashing imagery and even more cryptic text describing how biology and humanity is doomed and stuck in a loop. These endings are increasingly difficult to achieve in game and leave the player with a very strange feeling of, for me at least, loss. It doesn’t start out as a happy story or one even with hope, but as you play the endings you feel as if the player character has immersed themselves into a hell fuelled by murder. When looking deeper at Cruelty Squad I struggle to quantify what makes it a good game, I think to accurately review this we have to look at all of the elements together. Most people look at this game as a shitpost hastily thrown together but behind the discomforting visuals is an incredibly detailed and interactive game, there are so many ways to approach every target this makes the player feel truly immersed in this strange and twisted world making the world building even more compelling.
Gameplay:
Cruelty Squad takes heavy influences from tactical shooters, this means its gun play is more so grounded in reality. Each weapons requires reloading manually by dragging your mouse across the screen, this drastically changes gameplay as rather than reloading at the press of a button and waiting for an animation to complete you are restricted by your physical speed for your reload time, this greatly increases the tension between the player and the enemies requiring you to have a much more tactical approach to each combat encounter.
Visuals:
The visuals are simply disgusting; they are meant to disturb and make you feel uneasy. The game is a reflection of the worst aspects of our world, the bright neon colours and inhuman characters paint a warped reality that has disassociated from any larger vision of what humanity is or could be – simply being satisfied with the status quo of brutal corporate dominance.
Storytelling:
Storytelling in Cruelty Squad is primarily told through your handler, Cruelty Squad blends this with every NPC being an interactable character able to tell you more about the strange world you are in. Each response is unique and rather than being a generic response that you would find in other games, the responses feel like they come directly from the characters point of view.
Fishing and Stocks:
It would be amiss to not discuss the fully simulated stock and fish markets, wherein the money you earn from contracts can be spent buying stocks and investing in various companies. This can help you buy upgrades and new weapons changing how you play the game including a grappling hook made from an intestine-like organ. Along with this is the fishing mini game which is by far the most effective means to earn money, with over 70 types of fish each with their own name,
model, description, and simulated market value it is by far one of the more interesting aspects of this game.
From this we can synthesise some overview, Cruelty Squad requires you to look past its twisted face of retro aesthetic and explore its surprisingly deep gameplay and overly complicated market simulators and delve into a setting of greed and malice. You don’t play as a hero, you don’t play as anyone of great importance in fact – the player character is one of the most mysterious parts of the game having little to no backstory they are a total blank slate leaving the player to try and fill in the blanks of why they are killing everything that moves.
Overall it is a difficult game to recommend someone to play, its story is vague and its visuals are difficult to get used to and the endings provide little comfort in the traditional sense but here aren’t really any other games like Cruelty Squad, it provides and incredibly unique experience unlike any other modern first person shooters that haven’t been explored in the genre before.
misinformation and people’s opinions gets mixed up, as well as people wanting more of the story then there is to tell, the idea of this spectacle rather than seeing people’s lives as a real tragedy.
A short review of the 1967 historical fiction book ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ written by Joan Lindsay.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is a book that people seem to love or hate... and I loved it.
I think people’s opinions on the book really depend on what genre of mystery you like, what scares you and what interests you, because for people who like crime/mystery/ thriller books with linear narratives, that end with a wrapped up conclusion, this is not going to be for you. Picnic at Hanging Rock has a supernatural, Lovecraftian dread throughout - that make the events occurring feel so much larger than humanity, and that imbedded dread woven within the story, its characters and events are what make up the entirety of the book – therefore, if that’s not something you are interested in, I would give this novel a miss.
The reason I’ve given this book 4.5 stars rather than 5 is because of its slight misogyny throughout, which is disappointing considering it was written by a woman, I know it could be argued to be a reflection of the time rather than Lindsay’s own views, but in multiple parts it’s obvious that the ideology represented is definitely the authors own, this is clear as she also speaks directly to the reader at points throughout the book with the same view.
A complaint I heard about this book from someone who gave it 2 stars out of 5, was that the girls go missing early on in the book and that nothing happens after that. Which I think is a total dismissal of the middle and end of the book, because in these chapters after the girl’s disappearance we see the aftermath of the mystery, which I think is arguably the most compelling area. We see the grief and frustration of people who were close to the event, but also the experiences of people simply in the nearby community who are trying to live and move on after a terrifying and (seemingly) unsolvable case.
This focus on the local community within the novel gets to a point where it almost becomes a story about obsession and grieving - rather than a mystery - whilst following specific characters’ lives during the aftermath, it could also be seen as a discussion on how paranoia spreads and affects communities when
The first half of the book does an amazing job of making you feel the intensity and disillusionment that the young ladies from the all-girls school feel whilst traipsing up the rock, the process of them wandering further into the dense Australian bush and result the afterwards of the other school girls finding out what happened. I also think this section of the book does a great job at expressing how people feel when there’s no definite answer for what they are looking for, the only people involved in the mystery can’t remember what happened and no matter how frustrating that is, they are unable to take it out on anyone when there is no clear protagonist. These young girls and teachers are left wondering and letting their imagination run wild thinking about the terrible things that could’ve happened to their friends and students, the authorities involved can’t even say much about it because those things could have happened.
Something I really enjoyed about Picnic
At Hanging Rock was how it blurred the line between what was happening in reality and what is simply being imagined by those who are impacted by the mystery, there are moments of such an insanity that the reader truly believes that they themselves have been impacted by the mysterious goings-on at ‘Hanging Rock’, and the thought that if it is happening in real life within the book it’s a horrifying example of a break in sanity by the people who are linked directly with the disappearance and the reader is also left questioning; what just happened? (In a good way).
One of Joan Lindsay’s strong points is her amazing descriptive language which assists throughout the novel by creating a bond with the characters, because you know so much about them they become clear in your mind (looks and personality) and so when something shocking happens it becomes much more personal, and hooked me into the story much more than other novels I’ve read.
After finishing the book, I have no urge to read the last deleted chapters - removed when they were originally published - which are said to reveal more about what actually happened to the girls and how they disappeared. I think the way that this book ends is an excellent ending to the story and for it to reveal what happened to the girls would ruin the book for me, taking away from the mystery and intensity which made the book scary, the form of unknowing which created the sense of dread removed. And with those chapters the book would lack its impact on the reader when finishing it, I am not going to seek out those chapters for it would ruin what I personally loved about it.
Text
Fig 01: Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1975, Dir. Peter Weir, D.o.P Russell Boyd
Fig 02: Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1975, Dir. Peter Weir, D.o.P Russell Boyd
Faithby Williams
The job of a horror director is to clench to a realistic fear of the audience and expand it to create the desired and heightened effect of horror. In Jordan Peele’s 2020 film Nope, Peele decides to focus on space, and the fear open spaces can have, by framing it around aliens and murderous animals. This analysis will focus on how Peele creates fear by using a common feature of everyday life.
Open spaces are a common feature throughout Nope, as close to all the sets feature the same feature of emptiness and scale. One way this is emphasised is via the cinematography and camera placement. This is present through the focus on the sky we see throughout the film. For example, on the ranch the camera consistently keeps the sky dominant in frame, whether it is a level establishing shot or low angled shots of OJ. This dominance of the sky exists to communicate the presence of the aliens, however, even before this reveal, the sky still communicates fear to the audience. This is because of the sky being completely clear or covered in clouds, as Peele communicates the fear of clarity with the cloudless sky, and unknowing with the clouded sky. This choice in set means Peele layers fear throughout the film, as despite the fear of the aliens, there is also general fear of space and the unknown, leading the audience not to trust the clarity they are presented with.
Similarly, the opening scene in the movie studio also has this feature, as the framing emphasises the depth of the studio space and the lack of people in it. In this scene, the characters are concentrated in one place. This scene develops a linking between open spaces and awkwardness, as this scene is acted strangely as the film crew make the audience feel claustrophobic by surrounding OJ and Emerald by the crew in this huge space. Open spaces are common in normal life for audiences, so for Peele to use that against the audience is impressive. This can even be seen in the monkey attack scene, where the framing of a young Ricky hiding under the table keeps the empty seats for the studio audience visible. This choice enhances the fear Ricky feels in this scene, as he can see everyone has either left or is hiding, with the abandoned cameras and trails of blood allowing the audience to get a sense of the aftermath of this attack, and further their association of fear to emptiness.
No space is more open and emptier than the ranch, and the choice to have this film take place in a vast, empty, California ranch instead of an equally big forest or field is clearly done with the intent to emphasise the emptiness and isolation of the environment. Considering parts of this film take place in Los Angeles, having the ranch close creates this strange feeling of jarring isolationism, but also already establishing the feeling of not being alone due to the closeness of the large city, before the alien even shows up. One scene which depicts why this should be feared is the TMZ press, when the man in the chrome (arguably emulating a traditional look for aliens) enters the ranch during the invasion. This, again, is an example of Peele layering fear, as during the absurd alien chase, Peele also plays on the fear of not being alone by the motorcyclist coming into the ranch.
The ranch is empty, and with the border created by the mountains that surrounds it, OJ and the viewer can see everything on the ranch during the film, with its only inhabitants being a few horses. However, it is what we cannot see is the biggest fear of all. This could be seen as reverse psychology, as by choosing this set, Peele is telling the audience that there is nothing to fear because you can see everything, and the effect of this is that the audience’s fear is heightened.
In conclusion, Peele’s use of space and openness in Nope directly compliments the film as a horror, as Peele layers more interpretative and naturalistic fears of open spaces and (not) being alone alongside the main horrors of murderous animals and aliens, making Nope a compellingly frightening experience.
Music is a powerful tool for surrealist art. Placing you in a world of imagination through just sound, whether that’s a song or a soundscape. But how has this changed and possibly become mainstream in modern times?
Music is a powerful tool for surrealist art. Placing you in a world of imagination through just sound, whether that’s a song or a soundscape. But how has this changed and possibly become mainstream in modern times?
Music is a powerful tool for surrealist art. Placing you in a world of imagination through just sound, whether that’s a song or a soundscape. But how has this changed and possibly become mainstream in modern times?
Surreal artists use unconventional techniques and juxtaposing sounds in order to provoke ‘psychological responses’ in the listener like altered vocals, electronic distortion and synths, and unusual instruments.
When reading this you probably have an artist in mind like Charli XCX and her auto tuned classics that ran a movement, SOPHIE’s genre bending addition to hyper pop, Caroline Polacheck’s vocal gymnastics and Imogen Heap with her groundbreaking live loop gloves.
Surreal artists use unconventionaltechniquesandjuxtaposingsounds in order to provoke‘psychologicalresponses’ in the listener like altered vocals, electronicdistortionand synths, and unusualinstruments.When reading this you probably have an artist in mind like Charli XCX and her auto tuned classicsthat ran a movement, SOPHIE’s genre bending addition to hyper pop, Caroline Polacheck’s vocalgymnastics and Imogen Heap with her groundbreakinglive loop gl When reading this you probably have an artist in mind like Charli XCX and her auto tuned classicsthat ran a movement, SOPHIE’s genre bending addition to hyper pop, Caroline Polacheck’s vocal
Surreal artists use unconventionaltechniques and juxtaposing sounds in order to provoke‘psychologicalresponses’ in the listener like altered vocals, electronicdistortion and synths, and unusualinstruments. When reading this you probably have an artist in mind like Charli XCX and her auto tuned classics that ran a movement, SOPHIE’s genre bending
Text by JACK FROGGATT-COOPER
Illustrations by OLIVIA JEFFERD
David Lynch was a painter. It was 1966, and he was sat in one of the art studios for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He was staring at his new creation: A black landscape, a green garden, and a twisted figure in the centre. Through the stillness of his workspace, Lynch heard wind, and whether an illusion or complete imagination, saw movement in his canvas. He had a vision. Now what he wanted was to make his painting move. Now David Lynch was a filmmaker.
In January 2025, a total of 1,083 wildfires spread across California. The first hit the greater Los Angeles area, where a 78-year-old David Lynch resided. He now had an iconic and decades spanning body of work, ranging from movies to television to paintings to music, making his work, and himself, instantly recognisable: Slacks, shirt, grey elevated hair and a cigarette either in his hand or hanging out of his mouth, often curled into a wry smile. David Lynch had his first cigarette aged 8, and in 2020, after a life of smoke in his lungs, was diagnosed with Emphysema. Although admitting he would never retire, Lynch was homebound and couldn’t walk 5 minutes without running out of oxygen. When the fires spread to his house, David Lynch had to be evacuated from the safety of his home. On the 16th of January 2025, David Lynch died. But what survived was the work. Tons of it. He became one of the most prominent surrealist artists to ever exist. Although, fortunately, many of his ideas managed to be realised - from a slimy, deformed child in an industrial landscape to an eighteen-hour abstract series, some of his ideas and projects have slipped through the cracks of the often-tumultuous filmmaking industry. These span from the making of his first feature, Eraserhead (1977), all the way to the days before his passing. Lynch’s lost worlds range from the infamous to the mysterious, and fit into the rest of Lynch’s filmography in distinct and recognisable ways.
RONNIE ROCKET
“Imagine an old conveyor belt full of liquid metal. The conveyor belt with the liquid metal then travels into these gigantic, antiquated, rusty machines where this liquid metal
experiences some sort of loud, transmogrifying process inside the machines that turns the liquid metal into beautiful sparks of wild electricity. And please make it sound like Muddy Waters but also don’t make it sound like Muddy Waters.” This was the direction David Lynch gave to Dave Alvin, who was brought in to create the soundtrack for Ronnie Rocket, or The Absurd Mystery of the Strange Forces of Existence. The opening scene is a raging wall of fire shooting two hundred feet high on a theatre stage, and it’s set in a world where “black clouds race over a dark, soot-covered city”, in an “oil slick, smokestack, steel-steam-soot, fire-sparks and electrical arcs realm”, as Greg Olson describes in his book David Lynch: Beautiful Dark. There is a script available online, and it follows the story of a detective seeking to enter a mysterious second dimension, aided by his ability to stand on one leg. However, he is being obstructed by a strange landscape of odd rooms and a mysterious train, while being stalked by the “Donut Men”, who wield electricity as a weapon. Besides the detective’s story, the film was to show the tale of Ronald d’Arte, a teenage dwarf, who suffers a surgical mishap, which leaves him dependent on being plugged into a mains electricity supply at regular intervals; this dependence grants him an affinity with and control of electricity which he can use to produce music or cause destruction. The boy names himself Ronnie Rocket and becomes a rock star, befriending a tap dancer named Electra-Cute. Lynch would say the story has a lot to do with the birth of Rock n’ Roll, as well as coal, oil and electricity. Lynch would return to Ronnie Rocket after each of his films, intending it, at different stages, as the follow-up not only to Eraserhead or The Elephant Man (1980) but also Dune (1984), Blue Velvet (1986) and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992). Although Lynch shot his first two feature-length films in black-and-white, he intended to film Ronnie Rocket in colour, inspired by the works of French filmmaker Jacques Tati. He visited northern England to scout filming locations, but found that the industrial cities he had hoped to use had become too modernized, due to “This thing called graffiti. Graffiti to me is one of the worst things that has happened to the world. It completely ruined the mood of places. Graffiti kills the possibility to go back in time and have the buildings be as they
were. Cheap storm windows and graffiti have ruined the world for Ronnie Rocket” he said. Brad Dourif, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nance, Isabella Rossellini, Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell, and Crispin Glover were considered for roles in the film at various times. For the role of Ronnie Rocket, Lynch discovered Micheal J. Anderson, and although the film was never made, Anderson would go on to become one of Lynch’s most iconic characters: The Man from Another Place in Twin Peaks (1990-91). The project suffered numerous setbacks because of the bankruptcy of several potential backers; Both Dino De Laurentiis’ De Laurentiis Entertainment Group and Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope were attached to the project at different times, but went bankrupt before work could begin. However, he had never abandoned it officially before his death in 2025, frequently referring to it in interviews as “hibernating”.
But Ronnie Rocket had all the hallmarks of Lynch’s work: Electricity, idealized 1950s culture, industrial design, midgets, physical deformity, peculiar sexual encounters, a dysfunctional family, and extravagant flourishes of violence. The script also contains large amounts of spirituality, something that became increasingly important to Lynch throughout his career. The detective in the
story is counselled by a wise man on the importance of consciousness. To lose this is to die, and love and pain are the energies that allow people to remain conscious. There’s a common motif of a circle (the wheel of karma and rebirth), and the film closes on an image of a figure with four arms dancing on a lily pad and reaching for a golden egg. The sacred Hindu texts tell us that the material universe is a golden egg that floats like a dream in the waters of divine consciousness. All in all, it appeared to be a twisted tale of enlightenment, and in a very Lynchian way, it showed the light in the dark and the dark in the light.
And ideas from Ronnie Rocket did bleed into other Lynch works. The dark art direction is seen in the depiction of Victorian England in The Elephant Man and the planet Giedi Prime in Dune, and the intro to Wild at Heart (1990) with the title sequence against a blazing fire is remarkably similar to the fiery opening seen in the Rocket script. The lyrics to Sycamore Trees from Twin Peaks were directly lifted from a draft of the Ronnie Rocket script, and even the subtitle of the film (The Absurd Mystery of the Strange Forces of Existence) is a line said in The Return (2017). The impact of Ronnie Rocket on Lynch and his work is profound, and it remains as the most infamous of Lynch’s unmade projects.
Perhaps Lynch’s most popular work is his TV series, Twin Peaks, with co-creator and writer Mark Frost. They first met through an agent, who brought the two together to write a film called Goddess, based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. When that fell through, Lynch and Frost stayed in contact. One day, a year before they would write the pilot for Twin Peaks, they were sat in one of Lynch’s frequent spots: a coffee shop. David turned to Mark and said ‘I’ve got this idea about a secure research facility in the fictional city of Newtonville, Kansas, and two cretinous guys who work there. One of them laughs and a bubble floats out of his mouth and goes down a hallway, around a corner, and into a room where it lodges in the housing of a sensitive piece of equipment and shorts it out. Then you cut to outer space and see a satellite deploy a kind of Ray-Gun weapon that fires, and then a countdown starts’. 24 hours later, this satellite shoots a laser beam down to Newtonville, which bounces around, hitting almost everyone in town. This causes people to switch bodies, resulting in an exchange of identities. This script was the comic phantasmagoria known as One Saliva Bubble. The film was to star comedy legends Steve Martin and Martin Short and has been described by Lynch as “about misunderstanding and stupidity” and “a kind of normal feel-good movie”. Like Ronnie Rocket, there is a script available to read. The opening line features the phrases ‘pee-pee’ and ‘poo-poo’, if you wanted any indication of the type of humour present in the film. Frost and Lynch were supposedly ‘laughing their asses off’ whilst writing the script. There are people dressed in Heinz bottles, a roller-skating rink where everyone skates in rhythmic unison, and an obsessive thread where everyone keeps complaining that there’s “no cheese” in town. Despite appearing as out of the ordinary in an already out of the ordinary filmography, there’s still many throughlines present in One Saliva Bubble. The switching of identities is a common theme in many of Lynch’s work, such as Lost Highway (1997), Twin Peaks: The Return (the Dougie Jones plotline could have been something taken from this script) and Mullholland Drive (1999). Another motif is crime, and a crime ring is present in One Saliva Bubble. And even through a straight up comedy is unusual for Lynch, a twisted sense of humour is present in most of Lynch’s works in one way or another. Perhaps this idea was too
farfetched, as the film never fully entered preproduction, and wasn’t revived after.
Snoots are tiny creatures who have a ritual transition at aged eight. They get tinier and they’re sent away for a year so they are protected. However, the world goes into chaos when the Snoot hero disappears into the carpet, and he enters a crazy, magnificent world. This is the basic premise of Snootworld, a CG animated fairy tale project, and a collaboration with Lynch and Caroline Thompson, writer of Edward Scissorhands (1990), Corpse Bride (2005) and The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). Thompson herself described the storyline as “wackadoo”, and she wrote acts one and three of the Snootworld screenplay, whilst Lynch wrote the second act in 2003. “I don’t know when I started thinking about Snoots, but I’d do these drawings of Snoots and then a story started to emerge”, said Lynch about the project. The idea was pitched to Netflix – and rejected. “Old-fashioned fairy tales are considered groaners”, Lynch said. “Apparently people don’t want to see them. It’s a different world now and it’s easier to say no than to say yes”. Over the years he remained undecided as to whether he would direct (as well as produce and co-write) Snootworld, but was enthusiastic about his daughter Jennifer taking it on instead. So even after death, there is still hope that Snootworld could see the light of day.
The last film that Lynch made was INLAND EMPIRE in 2006, but that didn’t stop him thinking. In 2010, Lynch wrote a script called Antelope Don’t Run No More, described as a “narrative fantasia that incorporates space aliens, talking animals, and a beleaguered musician named Pinky”. Set mostly in Los Angeles and supposedly a mixture between Mulholland Drive and INLAND EMPIRE, anyone who has read the script has called it one of the best scripts that Lynch has ever written. This makes its incompleteness, and its mysteriousness, all the more frustrating.
arthouse cinema, and seemed to have caught the bug, as in 2020, rumours started to circulate that Lynch was in the process of casting an upcoming limited series based at Netflix. Unrecorded Night, or its codename Wisteria, was a non-Twin Peaks series, where Lynch was set to write and direct 13 episodes with a $85 million budget. In March, a casting note resurfaced that said the new project’s lead would be an “actress with dark hair in their mid to late 20s” and that the role would require “tasteful nudity”. Frequent collaborators Laura Dern, Naomi Watts and possibly Kyle MacLachlan were set to star, with Dern stating in an interview that “fans should expect more and more radical, boundaryless art from David Lynch”.
The screenplay, like many of Lynch’s unmade work, has fallen through the cracks of production companies. The mid budget movie has been increasingly hard to greenlight, seen as an unofficial no-fly zone for studios. The mid-budget picture is where most of Lynch’s work culminates. Talks broke down further when Lynch announced that he could no longer direct projects in person due to emphysema. Even then, he still expressed hope that the screenplay for Antelope Don’t Run No More would be picked up. Like Snootworld, Lynch could live on in the future, even if it’s hard to imagine someone translating Lynch’s thoughts as well as he did.
Although Lynch did not make another film after 2006, he did make his biggest project in 2017, writing and directing all 18 episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return, the third season of the TV show, set 25 years later after the events of the original series. Lynch called TV the new
Unrecorded Night is a translation for the old English word “nihtscada”, or nightshade. Wisteria is a scientific name for the variety of flowering plants in the legume family, like nightshade plants, they contain a toxic called wisterin. Can cause confusion, dizziness, collapse, and speech problems. These are the only things we can derive for what the story for Unrecorded Night might have been about. Things seemed to be going well. The show was firmly in pre-production with a big company, and seemingly weeks from shooting. However, this time the problem was not getting the financing, but the year 2020. When the pandemic hit, the show was put on hold. There was a possibility of it being picked up again after COVID had died down, but after Lynch’s emphysema, things would be difficult. Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos claimed that “we made it clear that as soon as he was able, we were all in.” When Lynch died, the project was scrapped.
After his death, Naomi Watts gave an interview about the promise of working with Lynch again. “We had a beautiful lunch at his house. I knew he’d been unwell, but he was in great spirits. He wanted to go back to work — Laura and I were like, ‘You can do it! You could work from the trailer.’ He was not, in any way, done. I could see the creative spirit alive in him. [...] There’s a lot I could share but I want to be private about it because of his family. But it was a really powerful meeting that filled me with just so much love and hope.” ⁕
Like the spirituality present in all his work and his life, he will live forever, infinitely reborn.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
After Hours (Martin Scorsese, 1985)
Asteroid City (Wes Anderson, 2023)
Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1979)
Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
Kinds of Kindness (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2022)
The Brutalist (Brady Corbet, 2024)
When one thinks of surrealist releases within recent years, at least within film, one would probably think of Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness (2024) or Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City (2023), but I would like to posit another film for consideration – Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (2024). Amidst a Hollywood and Indie film landscape looking increasingly samey, with the exception of A24 and their commitment to generally new and interesting work, Corbet’s long and expository tale of a troubled immigrant architect struck me as refreshing. So much so that I left the cinema thinking that Adrien Brody’s performance would surely win him the Best Actor Oscar, a prediction which was ultimately correct. The film’s relationship to surrealism is an interesting one. For one, Cobert takes some extraordinary risks in his filmmaking to ensure that the film isn’t conventional. He takes a relatively simple story, an aspirational immigrant who moves to America with the hope of rebuilding his life, and layers it into this extraordinarily complex and gripping affair. It’s as if Corbet baked a cake with a solid base but then layered it with a bunch of complimentary icing and cherries. What’s interesting about the film is that it isn’t necessarily classically surrealist, in the sense of the late David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977), but is instead reminiscent of Scorsese’s After Hours (1985) and even Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). When watching The Brutalist, I got the sense that I was really watching a character bumble through a world full of possible threats. Much like how in After Hours, Paul wonders around Manhattan encountering one strange situation after another, the world of The Brutalist possesses this surreal and uncanny quality throughout, where everything looks normal on the surface but only briefly, before the ugly reality emerges.
Technically, the film is grand and powerful. Brooding cinematography and the emphasis of the various beautiful landscapes and locations of the film are underpinned by this constant sense of threat and tension. I can’t help but mention how thematically consistent this dynamic is. As Brody’s character László Tóth is a brutalist and trained in creating these grand and transgressive buildings, it’s fitting that the film itself is transgressive and decidedly unconventional. The off-beat musical choices and intense performances also help to enforce the film’s grandiosity and seriousness, as a work of art. From the very beginning, the film is extremely stylised. There’s even a wide landscape shot
of New York apartment buildings in the opening act which took my breath away. Setting, in relation to the story, is an important part of the film but contains little surrealism. Where this can be instead be found is within the characters and story. László, for example, appears ambitious and humble at the beginning of the film, but as he is continually disregarded by others his darker side begins to show. The same can be said for both Harrison and his son Harry, whose politeness slowly morphs into snide passive aggression. Threats
sneak up on László slowly and mysteriously, and people reveal their true natures. The mysteriousness of the film adds to its surrealism. It’s an atmosphere, less easily characterised than an overtly surrealist character à la Eraserhead style. One wonders why Corbet decided to hide his surrealist proclivities so sneakily. I would guess that such a studio film, whilst not having an excessive budget, wouldn’t lend itself so well to an injection of surrealism. Lynch had the benefit of assuming the role of the exciting avant-garde director in his early career and thus enjoyed a lot more breathing room to experiment and transgress. Perhaps such story-based surrealism is more palatable to audiences and works better than a more visual-based surrealism would with such source material. Part of what makes The Brutalist so effective is its character building. Because it’s a character-based film, and essentially a character study, it was essential for Corbet to use his surrealist plot devices and developments sparingly, so as to not
damage the audience’s relationship with the characters. Having said this, he is remarkably willing to change the direction of the story when it makes sense. The best example of this quality would be the complicated relationship
László has with Harrison. When László renovates Harrison’s library without his knowledge, their relationship is clearly fraught with anger and hostility, as Harrison is excessively angry at László for changing his room. Later, however, Harrison apologizes and offers László a remarkable opportunity. For a while, their relationship seems healthy at times, but eventually their relationship is rendered untenable again. Such liberality regarding plot twists is admirable, even though for such a long film they also seem necessary. It’s hard to keep an audience’s attention without a bit of drama in the story, and The Brutalist decidedly has more than just a bit of drama.
In a society increasingly dominated by the spectacle, where short and punchy films dominate in the cinema, it’s safe to say that The Brutalist has accomplished something quite impressive. Even though it runs for
more than three and a half hours, it remains compelling, so much so that it’s debatable whether its intermission was even necessary. In no way am I saying that the film is purely a character study, or that it’s exempt from the same spectatorial demands every other film today (or even ever) seems to be subject to. However, The Brutalist is full of drama, but the interesting thing about this is that the drama often arises from intimate details within the film. Significant character development is underpinned by mere lines of dialogue, if not the usual action. I’m reminded of Harry’s (Joe Alwyn) line to László – “we tolerate you”. In one line, Harry reveals he and his father’s true opinion of László. Any significant action is withheld until after this line. This one simple piece of dialogue pushes the story forward and is arguably the catalyst for László’s increasing anger. The constant twists and turns of the film are also interesting, as they are often initiated by dialogue. Corbet constructs his film to be a slow building one, and the dialogue driven conflicts are reminiscent of a
more artsy vehicle that what can be seen in big cinemas as of recent. The film’s success, mainly critically, marks a shift in the industry. Long films have been popular for a while, but few have been cloaked in such depth as The
Brutalist. This is a positive development, and I am definitely excited to see what the true effect of the film is, as well as what Corbet makes next.
FAITH: Hi Moya, welcome to your interview for the second issue of GLUE, the theme of this issue is surreal, do you have a clear idea of what that means to you?
MOYA: I think surreal is like, when things are normal, but something feels slightly off, like there’s something weird, but you can’t always tell what it is.
FAITH: I would probably describe it the same way, when researching for the issue I found the dictionary definition, which was ‘Strange; not seeming real; like a dream’. Based on this description, would you say that any of the work that you create falls into that category?
MOYA: Hmmm, not necessarily work that I’ve done at uni (university), but I’ve done pieces at college that are quite surreal, I did one that was an etching of my face, but then two of my faces were facing outwards and then they were collaged within everything. But I think I know other people within my course now who do work that is a bit more creepy and surreal.
FAITH: I haven’t mentioned it within the interview yet, but you are studying illustration at UCA Farnham currently aren’t you? What about the course where you drawn to?
MOYA: I think this course at UCA is very different from other illustration courses.... Like, it’s not just drawing, we do print making, even photography, you know? like it’s very, very, very broad – the briefs that we are given – I mean one of them we were literally making toys, you know? That’s pretty crazy.
FAITH: That one looked really cool, wasn’t that the elective unit? That the graphics students could choose as well?
MOYA: Yeah it was, I think the fact that we are able to do so many things as an illustration course, because although I know I want to do illustration, I’m not sure what path I want to go with it. So it really helps me narrow it down a bit.
FAITH: I think it’s similar with graphic design, it’s a very broad course we are able to be super experimental – whereas I know other university art courses are more narrowly directed and they want you to focus on the traditional view of the degree.
I also wanted to mention that you recently sold some of your work at the UCA Spring Market, how did it go?
MOYA: It went good!! Um, I think I made a bit of a mistake with the stuff that I was doing, because I didn’t realise a lot of people in the uni would appreciate more fun, comedic things. I guess also pop culture references, things like that – um so my stuff was quite serious in comparison, but I did see other people who had stuff similar to mine also struggling with the same issue. So, I think in the future if I do another Market I will make some stuff that I would find funny, or that other people would find funny. Instead of just mainly Lino printing designs.
FAITH: I think that’s also the issue I had when I did the market, I was trying to introduce people to new things through my zines, but people wanted to buy things they already knew about or liked, like fanart from characters or TV shows.
Going back to you taking illustration, what’s the key inspiration for the works that you create?
MOYA: I’m not too sure really, I like to make stuff that I am drawn to, like if I see stuff online and I think oh that looks really cool then I want to create something that makes me feel the same way. I’m currently trying to get better at my colour schemes, because I love really bright colours but also colours that really work together , and I don’t tend to use that much within my work, but yeah I think I get really inspired by other artists and how they use – for example – Lino, because there are so many different ways to use it, so I love taking inspiration from them to get better within my own practice and progress projects.
FAITH: Thats something I love about Lino too, is how each print will look different, unless you are a machine you can’t make two Lino prints the exact same.
Whilst we are recording this interview, you haven’t done the photoshoot yet, how are you feeling about it?
MOYA: Um, I’m excited, I’ve done photoshoots before in college, one of my old friends was a fashion photography student, so she made me do all sorts of things, like
“... I dressed up like a nun, at one point I was an 80s goth and then I accidently got high on hairspray (which was not fun).”
Um, yeah, so I’m very excited, but recently my friend used me for one of his photoshoots for his work that he did – it was a crown –because he is a jewelry student, and he decided to take a picture of me from below, and I was like oh my god you’ve made me look like an egg. So, I’ve realised that the photographer is as important as the subject, which I never thought about before because my old friend was really, really good.
FAITH: Definitely, the angles are so important, you need people to be a bit harsh in there head, where they can be like oh this angle isn’t good for you and this angle is better, etc., rather than someone who just says you look nice in everything – like the thought is sweet but you need someone to be more critical and on the same page as you.
We will wrap up the interview here, was there anything else you wanted to add or promote? Any projects you have coming up?
MOYA: Hmmm, I might be selling stuff again at the UCA Winter Market, I was thinking of doing some digital art next term instead, also I am going to sell some fanart I have, like of Castle Vania and stuff like that I might add, so I’m excited about that.
I’m very excited about being in the magazine!
FAITH: Aaaah, thank you so much and thank you for your time!
A short review of the 1925 novel ‘The Trial’ written by Franz Kafka.
There was so much about this book that I really loved, the way Kafka is able to really set the scene and describe every different location so clearly - without droning on for pagesis great, especially when the buildings and spaces are so key to K’s (the main character’s) emotions and experiences.
I especially love how he creates such surreal claustrophobic environments, that you can really feel how uncomfortable and unsettling it is for the characters in those spaces, we feel on the same level as them in the way they can acknowledge these spaces shouldn’t exist and they make them ill or disorientated, but they have to accept them in order to make progress - similarly to the way the reader is engaging with the book.
I know this was published after Kafka died and is therefore technically “unfinished” but it’s not quite as you would think, everything is in order and there is an official final chapter and ending that was created by Kafka. But it was only a manuscript when he died and therefore, he was planning to make the book longer and add in some extra chapters et cetera - his friend had to read the existing work and put it in order and together to be published into the work it is today. These elements I don’t feel take away from the novel at all, and similarly to Amerika (1927); it didn’t feel like I was reading something that is technically unfinished.
I love books where the main antagonist is almost like an intangible force rather than a physical being that is able to be beaten or tricked - it adds such an interesting element of hopelessness, especially reading in a perspective in which we the readers find out information at the same pace as K. “The right perception of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.” Anyways go read The Trial, it rocks.
text by FAITH WILLIAMS
“There lay a town just north of here,” the journeyman said as his oar dipped beneath the silky waves, “where they speak of a figure that appears on the last full moon of the century. She stops there for one night and one night only, shifting the town from darkness to the light, until she is reunited with the waves. It is then that she is cast up to the sky to wait for her lovers return.”
Moonlight tickled the tops of the journeyman’s wonky ears and sprinkled glimpses of light across his face, rejuvenating his tired wrinkles to the face of a young fisherman. In this light, he was lifted of earthly pains, and he was baptised on the water as he spoke of the twisted folktales of their crooked isle. The ancient tales of ghosts in the temples, selkies in the marshes and fae hidden in the forests haunted me as I watched the land become closer, so different from my home of harsh concrete and steel railroads. The boat buckled as the journeyman leant over the side to pull us towards the rocks, his reach precise and practiced. With a nod, the journeyman left me to the whims of the isle and its inhabitants, human or otherwise.
The sun was creeping above the trees by the time I reached the town, the only life set before me was a speckled cat that slunk across the rooftops alongside me. It jumped from the slate roofs to the thatched roofs with an elegance only the wicked have. I wondered to myself what quest it could be on, perhaps a hunt or merely an exploration similar to my own, as its amber eyes sparkled from the chimneys above me. The church bells called out across the sleeping streets, a hint of civilisation disturbing the heavy fog. They clanged on as the candles in windows were lit and the roosters shrieked.
The church was an ancient thing, hardly a church in any sense. It lacked the usual structure of bricks and mortar arranged in an orderly fashion, instead it ebbed and flowed, the curved walls snaking upwards towards the crooked spire. The walls were the colour of seafoam, with murals following the gentle curves of the building depicting fishermen braving storms, the waves puppeteered by wrinkled hands above. A woman stood restless on the seashore, waiting at the docks. She wore white, hands holding a bouquet.
Silence filled the church. The bells had stopped, yet no one ventured inside. If these walls could talk. My feet lead me out towards the cliffside, entrenched in the guilt of disturbing the sacred stories embedded in the walls. The only sound to be heard was the waves crashing against the cliffs, abusing their warm embrace. Seagulls squawked and berated the puffins. Wind rustled the long grass nestled on the edge of the cliff.
The voice called from beneath the cliffs, its feet planted on the beach below me, it had charcoal hair stung up in plaits and wore a birthday dress drenched in saltwater.
She yelled up at me, “What’s this?”
“Driftwood.”
A confused look crossed her face, “Don’t be silly, no it’s not. Look closer, it’s from the forest to the sea. An offering from me to you. You clearly don’t know much.”
I made my way to the beach, stumbling on and through the long-forgotten pathways. The girl couldn’t have been more than 4 foot tall, yet she seemed to terrify me more than any thundering fisherman at their local pub. Her yellow wellies teetered across the pebbles stopping at a barnacle bandaged rock pool as she scavenged for starfish. I watched as she pinched one into the air and examined its pinkish skin before she plopped it into a pouch nestled on her hip. Her sun-speckled eyes locked onto mine, “We’re making starfish soup for dinner tonight.” She pocketed another wriggling creature as it squealed, eyeing me cautiously, “You’re in town for the moonlight woman, aren’t you?”
She seemed almost cocky with how she spoke, like she knew my answer before I proclaimed it. “Most strangers who visit come to see it; there’s no shame in being curious.”
“You’re right.” I step closer. Her features were almost feline, her nose pointed and her frame agile and sharp. “Her legend stretched to even my side of the world. I heard she can light up even the lowest of souls. And that her journey is to find her lover, trapped deep beneath where the brine buckles and boils. She must be a god with that much power.”
The girl's eyes spun towards me with frightening speed, “Beware the moonlight woman, her path is well trodden and does not swerve in your direction.” Gone was the nimble girl and in her place was a being, halfway to human. Her eyes cold and amber, her clothes dripping wet and her wellies full of water. Her basket of starfish began to glow and wriggle in despair, away from their habitat. They squealed and squirmed, shining brighter and brighter until my eyes flashed away. “They’re fallen stars, stars with no soul.” Her head titled to the side, “They’re delicious pickled.”
With a blink and a smirk, the waves thundered behind and she melted into seafoam, disappearing with the tide.
I meandered along the cliffside, following my nose and the festival songs that called out from the village from afar. They were peculiarly loud for such a small population, maybe they had just evolved to have echoing vocal cords that strummed as if waves clanging against cave walls. My people back home spoke of these side of the world with caution and curiosity, all jumbled together to form a haphazard puzzle of myths and legend. They seemed to possess so much more magic that us, perhaps it was the ancient minerals that were embedded in the jagged
rocks of the isles that seeped into everything that pondered this place home. I wondered if they had circuses that visited them, if they had people who dared trade with them, if they were hunted. I was particularly quizzical of the girl on the beach, whether she was a girl at all I
“Beware the moonlight woman.” She had said, a hint of kindness splatted in her deep-sea eyes. She did not know my intentions of coming here so how could she warn me. She did not even know my name, yet it seemed like she could see right through me, all the way down deep
I came to a crossroad. A path branching east and another west, lay in between was a lawn chair, tartan in pattern. Sat firmly on top was a shrivelled man, a bushy beard nestled on top of his face with a crooked nose and small black eyes that glinted like charcoal in the sun. His fingered plucked the strings of his battered guitar.
“Lay your fortune beneath my instrument, and I shall grant you your greatest desire.” He nudged his foot towards his flat cap sat on the floor.
“Would you point me towards the village? I seem to be unsure of which way to go.”
“That depends on what you’re going to the village for. A woman? A debt? A funeral? A birth? Lots of villages, lots of journeys, lots of travellers. Lots and lots and lots.” He cocked his head whenever he spoke, almost imitating a squawking raven and as he spoke with odd rhythm his fingers plucked and pecked at the strings in time. “For the journey you take, sure as the journey you make, must be precise and true to you.”
My eyes wandered over his sun-crackled face, resting on his chipped tooth and jaunty smile,
their watery grave as she wishes someone had done for her own true love. The festival acts as a memorial for those who have been lost and a stage in-between place for those who have heard the seas crashing amongst their shallow heartbeats. A place where those who live and those who die collide, as the sea does with the shore.
Suddenly, the crowd around be slid to a stop. People stopped trading, dancing and jabbering as their eyes lifted to the sky with their mouths agape. A silhouette hung against the moon. The figure glided downwards, nothing by her moonlit glow to be seen. Her dress seemed to drip around her and float as if puppeteered by the stars. Only when her feet felt the courtyard bricks beneath her did her eyes raise to meet ours, they were sat in the deep shadows of her
brows as we took her in. Her skin was the colour of seafoam, and her fragile frame resembled that of the subtle glimpse of moonlight in a forest clearing. I trembled in my boots: had I really come this far to give up? To not say anything? I scanned the crowd around me; behind their joyful and festive masks they were here for a reason. They wanted something.
Like parted waves, the crowd drew apart, “Moonlight woman!”, her head span around, her eyes fixed on the sailor, “Blessed you are, I barter 100 years of servitude for safe passage across the seas.” He had removed his hat and held it tightly around the rim. She stalked towards him, a trail of light shone across the pavestones as her dress swooped with each step, “I have no need for servants. What else can you offer me?”
A woman shouted out, “I can offer you gold and silver, silks from the East and jewellery to rival even the wealthiest princess.” She stepped out from the crowd decked in fine jewels, declaring herself as a merchant and a wealthy one. “All I ask is for my daughter's safety as she travels upon the waves.”
“I have no need for gems and jewels, for I am dressed in the moon’s glow.” Her gaze fell, “Does no one have an offer?”
The crowd began to squawk and jabber and beg. Each with their own pleas, they reached out to tug on her clothes, to get as close as possible to their saviour. They heaved forward, crushing one another in their desperate wanting. The crowd became a whirlwind around her, spinning her in every direction. Like a ship clambering over waves, she toppled from one person to another, each begging and pleading for their chance of salvation. The ship reached the peak of the storm as people clawed at her dress, ripping the moonlight seams to shreds, stealing its magic for themselves. As though lightning, she cried out as light streamed down from the heavens, creating a pillar of light that barrelled down around her.
“Enough!”, our necks craned upwards as she ascended, no longer the elegant moonlight woman but a fierce imitation, “I grant your wishes century after century, and this is how you repay me?” She spat out the words as though laden with salt. I thought of my offer: to be reunited with my love claimed by the sea, I would offer my devotion to the stars. What offer was that? The crowd hung their heads. “Does no one offer their recompense?” her voice trembled as she spoke, “Does no one care to barter?”
The being we once revered brought me back to the girl at the beach, perhaps the young girl would grow up without the stories of the moonlight woman or perhaps the moonlight woman was once like her. The crowd stayed silent and disgraced. I felt my feet begun to wander, to leave this place behind and go back to my life. My eyes met the road in front of me, and with a breath I walked. The crowd became a spot of light and the moonlight woman, nothing but shimmers scattered across their shores.
Design MADALYN WARDLE
Text SAM LODGE @LodgedDesigns
Illustration ALANA BAILEY @alanabea.art13
Design ELLA STEVENSON
Text MILES FARROW @milesssfarrow2
Illustration ALANA BAILEY
Design FAITH WILLIAMS
Text FAITH WILLIAMS
Photography Picnic at Hanging Rock (1965) Dir. Peter Weir
Illustration PAU ORLIKOWSKA @kovvskii
Design MARIAM AHOUESSOU
Text RIAN PAUL
Photography NOPE (2022) Dir. Jordan Peele
Design FAITH WILLIAMS
Photography ELAMAI MIAH-REK & FIN DARROLL-DAVIES
Text ELAMAI MIAH-REK @elamaiscamera & FIN DARROLL-DAVIES @sh4rk_fin
Design HARVEY FRANKLIN
Text JACK FROGGATT-COOPER
Illustration OLIVIA JEFFERD @LivJeffMedia
Illustration MADELEINE HUCKER-BROWN @cannappleism
Design FAITH WILLIAMS
Text FAITH WILLIAMS
Photography FAITH WILLIAMS
Design FAITH WILLIAMS
Text FAITH WILLIAMS
Photography The Trial (1962) Dir. Orson Welles
Text BEL MELLOR
Illustrations OLIVIA JEFFERD
Design MADALYN WARDLE
