Apocalypse Cow and Other Revelations

Recently watched Apocalypse Now: Redux and found out how Kurtz really dies in the climax.

Let me explain: when I first saw the original, I was 18 and still fresh from Singapore, otherwise known as BradyBunchLand. I'd been brought up a good Catholic girl in Asia, which means I didn't know what sex was, I didn't recognise a joint when it was offered to me, and I had no idea movies (or music) like Pink Floyd's The Wall existed.

In Singapore, the Love Boat was considered such salacious television viewing the kissing scenes were cut. Movie violence... well, you can imagine. The hottest thing on the pirated video circuit was I Spit On Your Grave, which of course everybody had to watch since the government had banned it. And since black market video rentals offered door-to-door service, everybody did - grandma, the kiddies... All grouped around the VCR gawping at X-rated films. If the government didn't want you to watch it...

But that was just Hollywood cartoon violence. There was good and evil in the world and justice was always bloodily served. It didn't fuck with your moral precepts. It didn't ask questions.

So I come to Australia at 18, and movies mean Herbie Rides Again and The Sound of Music, and music means the Carpenters and BoneyM, because that's what my parents liked. I personally was into A-Ha, and I had to justify Sting with "But, Mum, he's a school-teacher".

I took Media Studies. I knew there was... stuff out there. Stuff I didn't have words for, because I simply didn't have any concept of them, just the utter conviction there was more out there then what I'd been allowed to know about. I learnt what sex was when I fucked for the first time, and incidentally learnt that's what the word "fuck" meant. Seriously. The first time someone passed me a joint I thought it was a cigarette and declined, and no one's offered me one since.

And I heard Pink Floyd. And Media Studies teacher Eloise Hicks made us watch films like Insignificance and Brazil, over and over. And taught us about how the mass media manipulates us all. And then we'd watch Brazil again.

I experienced films like Apocalypse Now and Life of Brian and Liquid Sky and the one where Divine eats dog shit, so many other weirdshit movies I can't name them all. Let's just say for the next few years I was wide-eyed and brain-fucked.

I didn't need drugs - just exposure to the other extremes of popular culture. Probably overdosed, unfortunately, because I don't recall a lot of it. I didn't understand much of what I was watching or hearing at the time, and when you don't comprehend what's going on, it's harder to recall it exactly. Strange sounds, and shadowy images, and a deep disquiet, that's what I was left with.

I shut my eyes at the climax to Apocalypse Now, because I was too horrified to watch, and I missed Kurtz's death. Well, I finally got to see how he dies, and it is still pretty horrible, but not as horrible as when I was 18 and a film virgin.

Okay, a confession. I still shut my eyes. Briefly. An old, underused reflex action kicked in during the Apocalypse cow sequence, and just for a moment I was 18 again and watching it for the first time, not knowing what comes next, wondering when this vision of hell would end and how could anyone make anything so horrible...

...and loving every single second of it.