Future Homer and The Substance (spoilers)

One of my favourite Simpsons lines has been on my mind this week. “That’s a problem for future Homer,” he says as he makes himself a cocktail of vodka and mayonnaise. “Man, I don’t envy that guy.”

I recently watched the film The Substance, which has one of the most disturbing and thought-provoking stories I have seen in a long time. Horror is not a genre I like much, but as with Get Out, there was so much buzz about the writing that I made an exception. What does it say about our society that we see the most spot-on social commentary in horror films nowadays?

In The Substance, Demi Moore is the Hollywood star Elizabeth Sparkle, reduced in her 40s to doing a fitness workout show and then canned on the day she turns 50. She is persuaded to inject herself with the Substance, which promises a new young beautiful her. And such a one does then indeed crawl out of her spine and assume an independent existence as ‘Sue’, who sutures the unconscious Elizabeth’s back and hooks her up to a drip. She also withdraws a week’s worth of fluid from Elizabeth, doses of which get injected daily to keep Sue going. At the end of each week, she has to hand back to Elizabeth who revives and lives as her 50-year-old self for another 7 days.

The flawlessly beautiful Sue effortlessly gets Elizabeth’s old job and becomes a huge hit. This makes Elizabeth envious and heightens her sense of worthlessness and depression. Then Sue gets carried away. She doesn’t want to stop after 7 days so she overdrains Elizabeth to eke out more time. The result is that Elizabeth wakes up with a withered hand one week, an arthritic knee the next, and more and more extreme signs of accelerated aging.

Elizabeth complains to the manager of The Substance about this abuse and is reminded that Sue is her. They are one person. If she wants it to stop happening, then she needs to stop doing it. Or she can end the experience at any time and continue to live full time in her body as it now is.

She resists that for far too long, but eventually she injects Sue with the Termination fluid. But as Sue’s heart stops, Elizabeth can’t stand the guilt of taking her away from her adoring fans and revives her with a small transfusion of the Switch fluid. Now they are both conscious and Sue turns angry and violent and it all gets very bloody. Carrie-level bloody.

It’s very cleverly put together, with minimal dialogue but such clear relatable emotion. It says so much about inter-generational tension and beauty standards and fear of aging. But the strongest message for me was about how all of us are merely borrowing our bodies from our future selves. I turn 59 in a few days, and I daily feel the results of younger decades of eating and drinking too much and exercising too little. And yet my habits still aren’t great, and what I do now will be felt in my 60s and 70s by Future Mary.

Man, I don’t envy that chick.

I am Inaugurated

The University of Cambridge recently revised its career structure for researchers, with the result that I now get to call myself a Research Professor. This meant that I got to give an inaugural lecture, which you can see here. I also had a lovely celebration dinner with colleagues and friends (above), at the private dining room at The Orator, where the Cambridge Union Society host dinners for their celebrity debaters.

I’m not used to so much limelight, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I’ve always been a nervous speaker, and in fact I inhaled some water halfway through my speech and kept coughing throughout, but I still got through it OK by my standards.

What I enjoyed the most was the opportunity to look back at my life and shape it into a narrative. It let me really think about what has driven me and how my motivations and external events and other people have influenced my life and career. At 14, I wanted to be either a comedian or a musician. Asthma, performance anxiety, and an inability to carry a tune vocally would have ruled out a career in music and probably comedy performance also. But comedy writing is something that I clearly always loved and have pursued on and off throughout my life. And the inaugural lecture was to some extent an inauguration in comedy performance: getting laughs was quite a rush.

Buoyed by that experience and by other recent writing successes (two wins in The Spectator’s weekly humour competitions and first place in a humour short story competition with the Cambridge Writers), I have done something rather rash. I have signed up for a gig at the Cambridge Junction doing science standup. On Feb 2^nd, I and about 5 other Cambridge scientists will each do 7-minute routines as part of Hypothetically Speaking. I can’t guarantee to give a good performance of my set, but I promise that I will write the stuffing out of it.

Liaisons Dangereuses (Spoilers)

I was excited to see this play again last Saturday, having been bowled over by it in 1987. The cast is splendid too, led by Lesley Manville and Aiden Turner, but it nonetheless left me colder this time, for reasons I’ve been mulling over since then.

The central problem as I see it is the character of Valmont. In the original stage production, he was a sexy charming scoundrel. The audience was never supposed to approve of his actions, but I think we were still supposed to be seduced a bit by his wit and verve, and to sympathise with him in his downfall. He is an antihero much like Richard III in that respect, and he excites many of the same problems with modern sensibilities.

Murder and manipulation were never socially acceptable, but somehow audiences in the past were allowed to laugh and exult along with Richard III over his successes. But then came productions like the Ian McKellan version, where Richard was a nasty Nazi from the start with very little charm or humour, inspiring very little sympathy. McKellan was brilliant in the role, but ultimately I think his downfall was less affecting than when Richard gets us on side in the early scenes. More than that, he no longer implicated the audience in the immoral behaviour. We could more easily tell ourselves that we would never behave like McKellan’s Richard, and neither would our friends and neighbours. Contrast that to the reaction in Cabaret when Bradshaw’s friend Ernst takes off his overcoat to reveal the swastika armband underneath. We realize that not only is the charming generous friend a Nazi, but he has seduced Bradshaw into fundraising for the Nazi party. Characters are not always what they seem, not 100% good or evil, and social existence is complicated.

Valmont’s manipulation is not murderous, but in this post-Epstein age his sexual grooming and coercion are seen as even worse than murder. Therefore we can’t be allowed to be charmed by him, even at the start: he has to appear as a disagreeable pervert from the beginning. They somehow managed the seemingly impossible task of making Aiden Turner unsexy. This not only saps enjoyment from the play, it also undermines the believability of Valmont falling in love, thus diminishing the tragedy as well as the comedy of the piece. Madame de Merteuil is in many respects just as immoral if not more so than Valmont, but she can be allowed to retain some of our sympathy because she declares herself to be a wronged woman taking revenge on mankind.

A more minor gripe is that I wanted to see the men as well as women in 18^th century clothing. Not only for the visual appeal of brocade and lace, but because Valmont’s fatal flaw is his vanity. This fundamental aspect of his nature gets lost when he is dressed identically to every other man on stage rather than as a stunning peacock. This came across better in the film from the 80s, though I thought Malkovich’s Valmont also lacked charm in comparison to the earlier stage versions.

Finally, using so many interpretive dance scenes to convey emotional turmoil felt a bit cliché, slowed the pace of the show and got old fast. The exception was during the duel scene, where I liked the parallels with the battle scene in Richard III, where past sins come back to haunt and madden the antihero and hasten his destruction. But I thought this would have been more effective without all the earlier instances in the play.

Do go see the show, especially if it is broadcast in a cinema near you. My final gripe is that the National Theatre has brought in surge pricing, so we paid an awful lot for our tickets. But the script is still scintillating, Lesley Manville is fabulous, and there is a lot to enjoy and to think about.

Hamilton

A few days ago I went to see Hamilton for the fourth time (plus a few viewings of the film on Disney+). It’s my latest favourite London show, and it has an odd thing in common with my first favourite London show, in 1982 (Amadeus): they were based on the only two people whose biographies I ever remember reading as a child. I was never very interested in biography, but for some reason I checked both of these books out of the elementary school library and enjoyed them. There must be something about a life story that can appeal to a pre-teen that makes good material for a stage show.

Both the heroes were geniuses, undervalued in their own day. Maybe we all want to think that is us. And both shows are narrated by jealous rivals who destroyed them (though the play’s Salieri is more of an invention). Despite their charisma they end up as the villains. Maybe we all want to think that our enemies will be exposed and reviled one day.

Maybe at least it is a common feeling among playwrights. Peter Shaffer made me feel he identified more with Salieri, but perhaps that was British faux humility. Lin Manuel Miranda might show sympathy for Burr, but he actually plays Hamilton, so we know with whom he really identifies.

A Tribute to My Mother

My mother died last month, at the age of 97. She was an extraordinary woman, working in a factory during WWII, getting a degree in Chemistry, and working for the Bureau of Standards in DC. Then she had her first child, and in line with the practice of the time, she gave up work to raise a total of five of us with a lot of care and attention. She was a private person and didn’t want a funeral, so we had a picnic in the park to celebrate her life.

In lieu of a formal tribute, here is a partial list of things I learned from my mother.

She taught me to try hard at school and be proud of my successes, which is not always easy for a girl.

She taught me to always speak my mind and stand up for what I believe. A friend once told me that she envied the way people listened when I spoke, and I got that partly from Mom and the emphatic way she expressed herself.

She taught me to play bridge, which was her passion, but also lots of simpler games and would happily play them with me for hours.

She set an example as a confident driver and taught me that a yellow light means ‘Step on it’. She had a perfect mental road map of DC in her head and could drive you anywhere.

She taught me to enjoy a good bargain and to manage my money.

She taught me not to be too worried about housekeeping. A bit of a mess wouldn’t kill me, and I would probably have better things to do with my time.

She taught me to enjoy my down time in my own way. I got from her my love of books, plays and movies. My parents met when they were cast in a play together at a church in Washington, and Mom always enjoyed being carried away by a story.

She used to sit at the piano and beautifully play Moonlight Sonata, Claire de Lune, and other pieces. She taught me how to play the piano, though I never progressed far. I would stumble through workbooks while she cooked, occasionally shouting No! from the kitchen when I played the wrong note.

Impressionist paintings were a favourite of hers, and she would often take me to the National Gallery to wander around.

She taught me to crochet and sew and she was always making quirky things with the Homemakers Association.

She grew beautiful roses, dogwoods, azaleas, candytuft, and she made lovely flower arrangements. She also loved visiting gardens and seemed to know the name of everything she saw.

She taught me to love October, the month when we both were born. The summer’s humidity and insects have mostly gone, and although the colorful flowers are fading, the leaves can be vibrant and the sky such a beautiful blue.

She taught me how to bake and that everyone enjoys homemade baked goods.

She gave the best hugs.

Sunset Boulevard

…has been the soundtrack in my head lately. It was my nickname for my old department at Imperial College, where I was working in the mid-90s when the musical came out. The Centre for Biological and Medical Systems was populated by a disproportionate number of emeritus professors, including my own boss, Colin G. Caro, who as I just discovered died a few months ago at the age of 96.

While I’m sure that CGC made more important contributions to science than I ever will, when I joined him he was already well into his 70s and seemed to me to have lost the plot. I was one of several underpaid lackies supporting him in a range of eccentric unpublishable experiments. He once sent me to Harrods to see if I could find a vacuum cleaner that would simultaneously suck and blow, which he planned to use to reroute vented helium gas. It got me out of the office at least, but the look of blank incomprehension from the posh sales assistant was a tad embarrassing. The job paid the bills during a recession when research jobs were scarce, but I felt my scientific talents could be put to better use. I identified strongly with poor Joe Gillis, put to work editing the hopeless script of a washed-up film star of yesteryear.

Now I’m older than Norma Desmond, supervising PhD students in their 20s, and talking to them about the old days when MRI was young. Backups on reel-to-reel tapes, the ‘cutting and weighing’ method of spectroscopic quantification — all about as antediluvian as silent movies. I guess the only difference is that unlike Norma Desmond I was never big.

Not long ago I read Jonathan Coe’s novel, Mr Wilder and Me, which describes Billy Wilder’s fascination with and sympathy for aging women. We all know how cruel the world is to women who used to be beautiful and now are not. Feminism gave me that one thing: I never sought to be valued for my appearance, which is lucky since there is now less to mourn.

Another recent watch was Misbehaviour, about the 1970 protests against the Miss World competition. It was a stunning glimpse of what used to be seen as normal behaviour. Good riddance to the old days.

Ethyl Mae

Last Friday an email circular reminded me that I have access through the university library to lots of international newspapers, including it turns out the Washington Post, my hometown rag. Sadly not to current issues, only the historical archive up to 1991. But this allowed me to dredge up a 4-page spread on my high school and similar magnet programs for science and technology, published a couple months before we became its first graduating class.

I remembered the article quoted me a couple times, but I’d forgotten the lovely quotes from my inspirational chemistry teacher, Ethyl Mae DuBois. I’d also forgotten it included a grainy photo of us together with Kevin and Ty (Elbert), who remain good friends of mine. In senior year, we would eat our lunch every day in the chemistry lab with Ms DuBois and our other geek chic pals. Once a week we would also meet up with Ms DuBois for breakfast at Ranch House, the local cop hangout diner. The waitresses there called you Sugar while they refilled your coffee cup and brought you the 222 special — 2 eggs, 2 pancakes and 2 sausages or bacon rashers for $2.22.

I wish I could remember exactly how she earned our undying devotion — maybe it would make me a better teacher if I had studied her more closely. I know she was tough. She gave us the tools we needed to be good scientists, teaching us not just chemistry but fundamentals like how to take notes and keep good lab books, but we had to work hard using those tools in order to do well in her classes. And I know she was funny and enjoyed wit and mischief in her students. Every year she would get her class to graffiti a lab coat for her to wear. The Washington Post article reminded me that across the back that year it said “CAUTION: BREAKDANCER”.

My Accidental Publication

Between Christmas and New Year I was tremendously bored. We were shipwrecked by the second wave of Coronavirus, forbidden to travel or see friends, and the university had shut down so I could hardly even work. So I decided to enter a short story competition with a deadline the following week, even though I hadn’t written a short story in over 30 years.

I wrote it as therapy more than anything. Instead of sulking about how much I wanted to travel and to get a dog, I wrote a story about those things turning into snowballing disasters. It was pretty rough – I only finished a first draft the day before the deadline, and I didn’t feel I could send it to anyone for a critique on such short notice. But I thought it had a few laughs and a good structure, so I sent it in.

If this were fiction, it would have won a prize, but of course it didn’t really. But then I found out that the Cambridge Writers’ Group publish a book of all the entries, not just the winners. I was torn – would my family really tell me if it was too embarrassingly bad to publish? Would any acquaintance who read it assume that the main character’s disgraceful behaviour was autobiographical? In the end, the lure of vanity publishing I didn’t have to pay for was too strong. You can purchase your copy here:

Belinda

There was a question yesterday on the Washington Post Style Invitational site on Facebook about which poems people knew from memory. The most common answers seem to be Philip Larkin’s This Be the Verse  and Longfellow’s Paul Revere’s Ride which they were forced to learn in school. I myself learned a different Longfellow poem as an assignment in American Lit in high school, The Day is Done. But for fun as a teenager I also memorized a smattering of other poems I liked: Lord Byron’s She Walks in Beauty and his Headpiece to Don Juan, Robert Herrick’s Upon Julia’s Clothes, and (embarrassingly) Tolkein’s One Ring.  At least I didn’t memorize the Elvish.

The only poem (apart from my own) I memorized as an adult was one I’ve never seen written down. My grandmother learned it in primary school from a McGuffy reader or similar and used to recite it to us. She recited many such poems, but most were about topics like the importance of doing chores without grumbling, so my siblings and I never bothered to learn them. But this was our favourite, so when she was in her 90s I committed it to memory.

Belinda

Belinda was a cautious little maid

whose motto was the single word, “Beware!”

She never lost a chance to be afraid

and spent a lot of time in taking care.

Obliged one day on a railway train

to sit beside a grave, sedate young man,

a sudden terror seized Belinda’s brain:

“He’ll surely pick my pocket if he can!”

They reached a tunnel in another minute

and Belinda with her customary care

to guard her pocket, placed her hand within it.

And lo! Another hand was already there.

To show her fortitude and hide her fright,

Belinda seized the hand and held it tight.

And as the train into daylight rushed,

no wonder the modest maiden blushed.

No wonder the villain smiled a smile:

her hand was in his pocket all the while.

It’s no coincidence that nearly every poem people remembered used rhyme and meter. It’s possible to memorize poems that don’t use either, but it’s very difficult. And of course, this is presumably how poetry began, as an oral tradition. People would sit together and someone would recite a bit of Homer or Beowulf as entertainment. Neither poems rhyme, but both have very strong meters that drive the telling and prompt the memory, and I think this must have been crucial for such long epics to survive in the era before writing.

Certainly I think that after The Event, when we are all huddled around a campfire sucking the marrow out of rat bones, we won’t be reciting The Wasteland to each other, no matter how apt. Most likely Mother Goose will triumph.

Is Humour Alienating?

An editor from Nature once came to speak at my Institute, giving us tips on how to publish in high-impact journals. The tip I remember most clearly was this: don’t try to be funny. Lots of people won’t get the joke and will be put off, particularly if they are reading the paper in translation.

I found this disheartening, because trying to be funny is a fundamental part of how I write and who I am. But it’s true that every attempt at levity has been expunged from my scientific writing through the years, by editors or by senior colleagues.

And then I became an editor myself. I was invited to join the Committee of the British & Irish Chapter of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, and then at one of my first meetings the Chair pleaded for someone to take on the job of starting up a newsletter for the organization. I knew it would be a lot of effort, but I saw an opportunity finally to use the unique qualities of my voice to foster a sense of community. After all, what is special about the British if not their sense of humour? So, I started Positive Spin https://www.ismrm.org/chapters/british-chapter/, where alongside serious pieces about upcoming conferences and changes to regulations in medical imaging, I would insert the occasional joke piece.

For example, in a profile about the history of MRI in Cardiff, I wrote a paragraph about their ground-breaking work in diagnostic imaging of those aliens who fell sick on the set while filming the documentary series Doctor Who. The illustration was this MRI of tentacular torsion in the Ood. It took a lot of time to Photoshop, but this was lockdown in April 2020, so I had a lot of time on my hands plus a desire to lighten people’s mood.

Over the past few years my newsletter has attracted occasional praise, at least in part due to the fun tone and humour. But I didn’t get a peep of reaction about this particular article or issue. And speaking to one colleague I realized he didn’t even know it was a joke.

Even when humour isn’t aimed at a particular butt, it often creates divisions between people who like it, people who don’t get it, and people who get it but don’t like it. So, while I still believe in the power of humour to bring people together, I’m starting to think the Nature editor was right about keeping it out of formal scientific publications. As for the newsletter, I’ve now handed it on to students to carry on with, and I’m hoping they can keep a bit of fun alive.