Episode 1246: The Ides Of March

I'm forcing myself to start and finish the 'abstract' for my dissertation that's part of the progress review. In the process of banging out those 1000 words, I've come to realise that maybe the field of semiotics needs to be explicitly engaged with in my dissertation. In the middle chapter, to be precise. Ideas from semiotics like the Merlion as a floating signifier already seem to underpin the things I've been trying to articulate to myself so far in relation to my dissertation research, so perhaps the way forward is to stop avoiding the heavyweight theory and just go for it. Let's see what my supervisor has to say about that when I meet him on Wednesday. Didn't think I'd actually get any work done tonight, having realised at around 6.30 pm that the WSC was screening The Ides Of March this evening, and obviously I had to go and see it, being a new convert to the awesomeness of Ryan Gosling. I had my reservations at first, since I'm not usually into films about politics, but I ended up enjoying the slow burn of this one, as Gosling's character went from wide-eyed idealism to hard-nosed cynicism. I think the balance might have been skewed too much in favour of the former state, since once things start going downhill for the character, the film seems to arrive at its ending rather quickly. Of course, it wouldn't be a WSC screening without being plagued by some technical error. Maybe I'm just really unlucky, but I'm pretty sure something's gone wrong every time I've been to see a film at the WSC this term.