We are working in the old St Helier Odeon. We’re downstairs. But this evening we went and had a look at the old screening room. It was cut in half in the eighties. But the first decade of my life it was a huge screen. I went to Fantasia there. I think that was my first cinema trip. All the early Disneys of my life were just above where I am humbugging. I saw Octopussy there on the huge screen too, just before they chopped it in half.
This evening as every evening we had a varied bunch in the audience. It was a really lovely show. After the show we went up and looked at the old screening room. It has been stripped back. It was full of asbestos. Now, I’m told, it has been signed off as safe.
Cinema was a big treat when I was growing up on this island. One time, Max dobbed me in to my mum that I had been reading books under my sheets after lights out with a torch. It felt like the most arbitrary thing… I was 7. I had asked him for a battery. He gave me a battery and then ratted me out, and my punishment was inexplicably harsh. Everyone but me went to see the new Disney. I had to stay at home with the babysitter. It took a little over a decade before I finally saw The Fox and the Hound and overcame part of the trauma at 18. All I had done back then was ask a trusted older brother for some fucking torch batteries.
He later insisted that he was “worried about my eyesight.” Rat. Maybe I damaged my eyesight reading under the covers. Maybe. But maybe that’s a conversation a brother can have with a brother. Looking at it I’m still angry with him, and I was 7!!?! Max ain’t good at that stuff though. So yeah, I stood there this evening in the very Odeon screening room where by all rights I should have sat with my family enjoying a mediocre Disney film if my brother hadn’t inexplicably dobbed me in for reading books with a torch. Mum overreacted. Max never should have ratted on me. I only asked him for the batteries because I wanted him to know I was doing it cos I thought I was being clever and cool so actually I bear as much blame as weird brother and arbirary parent. Mum probably thought the film was too grown up for me and was looking for an excuse.
I literally couldn’t believe it though when mum went good on her punishment and they all fucked off to the cinema without me. It was a long night at home. I remember it. I was so angry and sad. To be taken out of a cinema trip because you asked your brother for a battery? In retrospect it was one of the very early moments where I learnt that we are basically all alone in this nonsense. Trusting other people can be messy.
Mum was mostly excellent at mumming. That whole situation was rare bullshit. Max couldn’t have known what would happen and he had been conditioned to believe that we could damage our eyesight reading under the covers by our dad who valued eyesight hugely for his speedsports, and had to wear glasses and blamed similar behaviour. Mum probably worried I was too young for the film and caused me more trauma trying to protect me from Bambi’s mum than if she’d just taken the risk and let me go. In retrospect I think she was looking for an opportunity to protect me from the film, and found one without thinking about what connections I might make about it.
I didn’t stay long in the screening room tonight. It’s all stripped back now. All these ghosts started shouting at me. Dead. dead. dead. Grandpa and I used to go see films there. Dad and I. Ghosts.
I’ll stay working downstairs processing old trauma and throwing out charisma. There’s plenty of dad in Ebenezer… But I’m very curious to realise that walking into that space woke up weird ancient unfairness from when I was literally 7 years old. And I remember it with such forensic clarity.
To his credit, Max spent ages trying to tell me the movie, to reconstruct it, to build it with toys. Seven… I am amazed to encounter such odd feelings carried over from such an early age.
Nice to be in a place where I used to consume culture, but to be generating culture. I’ve moved on from that Disney kid. But I’m happy to look at those feelings and consider them now. Even though I didn’t do well at staying in that screening room.
AlBarclay 