Humanity Hallows Editor-in-Chief, Neil Harrison, has travelled to Vancouver, Canada, as part of an exciting film project based at MMU. Over the next few days, he’ll be bringing us regular blog updates on his time there…
One of the perks of living in the privileged Western world is that we get to decide what we think is natural or unnatural.
For multimillion pound fashion designers, Dolce & Gabbana, for instance – themselves the twin embod
iment of spoiled fakery – it is the ‘synthetic’ nature of children born as a result of IVF treatment that particularly offends. Dolce & Gabbana’s biggest critics? Those paragons of authenticity, Elton John and Madonna.
Meanwhile, most of us blithely accept that a waxy, cyborg autocrat controls a significant portion of the earth’s landmass. Yet, he goes on holiday for a few days and it almost breaks the internet.
For me, it’s the rather mundane act of being hurled halfway across the globe in a tin tube that does it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not afraid of flying. Outside of the inevitable discomfort that ten hours in economy class entails, I actually quite enjoy it. Decent food and hours of reading time and rubbish films (I’m looking at you Fury), there’s nothing particular to dislike.
It just isn’t natural though!
It is, however, thanks to this technological voodoo that last night we arrived into a rainy, but beautiful, Vancouver. Here with Manchester Metropolitan University’s Professor Melanie Tebbutt and Helen Malarky, over the next few days I’ll be blogging about our visits to the University of British Columbia as we show the MMU commissioned, original documentary film Forever Young and try to bring a little bit of MMU to UBC.
So keep an eye out for news from Canada and many, many photos of maple syrup pancakes, no doubt. Until I step back onto that weird flying bus, I’ll try to keep it real.
Neil Harrison is Editor in Chief at Humanity Hallows. He is in his final year studying History at Manchester Metropolitan University, follow Neil on Twitter @looseriver
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