Friday 29 January 2010

Filmic Inspiration, a Blog and a YouTube Link

Hi folks! I'm glad to be able to report that work on the new volume (that I am still yet to come up with a title for - any ideas folks?) is coming on in leaps and bounds. Some great, new and decidedly fresh ideas have popped into my head of late - all suitably cruel, as I'm sure you can imagine, but in a subtle way that I think somehow becomes even more twisted for being so. The only problem I have at the moment
is that, having successfully repaired my home computer, as am sure you know, I've yet to persuade it to co-operate with my printer / scanner. I'm not sure what the problem is but I am away from home at the moment anyway and I won't be back at my desk
until Monday or Tuesday of next week so the fix will have to wait until
that time - and then hopefully I can get on with scanning more of my magazine and book collection for your delectation and delight. I am also absolutely dying to get on with some artwork for the front cover of the new volume - it's one of my favourite bits when doing this stuff, although I'm not that great at it. One thing I have decided upon is that the imagery should incorporate some sort of parochial theme as between the pages we are afforded an insight into a church-run charity home for wayward young women. I will say no more than that for the time being, other than to say that we do also get another glimpse or two into a certain behavioural research unit, specifically that part set up a run in the style of an old-time secure reform school or boarding school but mostly the story deals with young Lavinia's life with her increasing tyrannical aunt and that woman's idiosyncratic views on domestic discipline. Basically it deals with the events leading up to her being persuaded to volunteer as a research subject in a project that she is told will involve her staying for a 'short while' in the experimental psychology unit of a private hospital. As you will know if you have read INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 and volume 2, it is all pretty much as described to her, give or take, other than that the researcher's view of what constitutes a 'short while' differs some what to her expectations. And it is not a place one just walks away from. We also see something more of the background of one of the other characters who emerged during the events of volume 2, young Meridith Hewson.
Talking of reform schools; am I the only person in the whole world who had never heard of the B&W 1929 film ' Diary of a Lost Girl' by G.W.Pabst and starring Louise Brooks (See above left?. In it an "unprepossessing young woman is seduced by an unscrupulous and mercenary character". She is then sent to a reform school for girls, that seems less "an institute of higher learning than a conduit for fulfilling the headmistress’s sadistic sexual fantasies" and that is headed by staff who expect and exact "unrealistic standards of obedience from the cowering, terrified pupil" one in particular apparently seems to derive "an orgiastic pleasure from the rigors of [the] discipline inflicted". Sounds bloody gorgeous!!

By the way; is punishment PT / enforced PE and physical drill discipline is your thing? It is? Great! then click on the film poster top left to see a clip from the above movie posted on YouTube. You can also find a link to the same film clip in the useful resources list in the right-hand sidebar. The pictures scattered around this posting came from various sources on the web and all from the film other than the last one which comes from an entirely different source (actually the French film, Alphavillel). This I included simply because I think it would make a good basis for a suitable reformatory uniform, certainly a good starting point to work around anyway, particularly for the inmates of the type of old-fashioned style church-run regime that I envisage in the new volume. In the behavioural research establishment of course the regime is more closely based around an old-fashioned private girls school, though the discipline imposed is no less rigorous, despite the inmates theoretically being 'volunteers' and there were talking all high, tight starched collars, cotton interlock knickers and tightly braided pigtails.

Oh! I almost forgot: I have just added a blog to the blog list in the sidebar called 'School Girl Discipline'. Click to visit or see the link in the sidebar. See you next time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, Garth, you speak of the new volume (and I can't wait to read it) but what about the in-betweener? Included in volume 3?

Toyntanen said...

Hi Orage. It seems that a bit of a misunderstanding has arisen here. At present I am pretty much only working on the 'in-between' / back-story volume, or at least pouring 95 percent of my writing effort into it.