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How To Write A Trainspotting Movie Essay

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“Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a f##ing big television... But why would I want to do a thing like that?” (Boyle, “Trainspotting”) With the rocking beat of Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust for Life’, the film’s opening scene shows two men running down a boulevard giving an account of the society’s instructions to youth and adults alike to live life in a certain manner. The movie ‘Trainspotting’ begins with an act of youth rebellion, something that was a widespread phenomenon during the 1990s in Britain. The characters in the movie are running away from jobs, careers and the conventional lives that people live, to find their own paths (Reynolds, 46). The movie depicts the audacity of youth who are fighting to break the norms …show more content…

The Mid-90s were just not about Britpop as people started dancing to drum ‘n’ bass and techno in the underground hubs of rave culture. “It’s in these clubs that I experienced raving in its purest and most deranged form; blissfully ignorant of the DJ’s identities or the tracks’ names, lost in music, out-of-time”, said Reynolds on experiencing one of the raves (Reynolds, xxv). Drugs were becoming popular in the clubbing scene more than ever. “As football fans turned on to E and house music, soccer hooliganism in Britain dropped to its lowers level in five years by 1991-92” (Reynolds, 404). The community of drug consumers and addicts was taking over the eccentric ambience of the raves and this became a defining moment in the history of electronic music. “Where rock relates an experience, rave constructs an experience. Bypassing interpretation, the listener is hurled into a vortex of heightened sensations, abstract emotions, and artificial energies” (Reynolds, xxv). Simon clearly suggests that the raves were an experience like no other. When Renton attends a rave in the movie Trainspotting, he sits against a wall in the corner of the room, slow alienating himself from his surroundings. While he is trying to soak in the ambience of the rave from a distance, his friends mingle with the other people at the night-club. “The situation was becoming serious. Young Renton …show more content…

“Rave spread from the original metropolitan cliques in London and Manchester to become a nationwide suburban/provincial leisure culture”. (Reynolds, 96) The music choices were being influenced as the era of Iggy Pop was being overtaken by techno-dance music from Bedrock and ICE MC. “The world is changing, music is changing, drugs are changing, even men and women are changing”, said Diane as she explained to Renton that he had to find something new (Boyle, “Trainspotting”). She added by saying, “You can’t stay in here all day dreaming about heroin and Ziggy Pop. He’s dead, anyway” (Boyle, “Trainspotting”). Iggy Pop’s music had died as the new Britain turned their faces now towards the popular dance electronic music. Even at the end of the movie when Renton deceives his ‘friends’, the scintillating music in the background - Underworld’s “Born Slippy (NUXX)” with pounding fast beats is an indication of shifting musical culture. Reynolds also talked about this Second wave of Rave in 1991-92s when he experienced an ‘entirely different and un-rock way of using music’. He experienced “a liberating joy in surrendering to the radical anonymity of the music, the meaning of which pertained to a macro level of the entire culture” (Reynolds, xxi). The British music was undergoing a drastic change in the 90s when the old pop from

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