Thursday 26 April 2018

The Letter 'X'






I recently gave a paper at the Researching Past Cinema Audiences conference at Aberystwyth. This gave me an opportunity to use some material on The Yellow Teddybears which I had originally included in my thesis but had to cut out when I realized it was no longer relevant. I have uploaded my paper to Academia.edu if you would like to take a look.

I was also interviewed for the American public radio podcast The World in Words, which comes out of Boston. The presenter, Patrick Cox, is a reporter for the BBC World Service, but I don't think this podcast is BBC-affiliated. Either way, it's rather good. They were looking at the use of the letter X in popular culture, so naturally I was there to talk about the history of the 'X' certificate. I did my best not to disgrace myself, but I'll be happy to take feedback if I got anything wrong. It was fun to be interviewed as a film historian again, and I hope to get the opportunity again!

Recently I have managed to bag myself two more blu ray booklet-writing jobs. One is for an Italian film, the other a British film, so I'm enjoying the distraction of thinking about what I'm going to write for either of them when I am supposed to be marking a pile of essays. My favourite essay so far told me that the presenters of Queer Eye are "geologists" who have "supernatural powers." Somebody needs to pitch that show to Netflix.