Like a clap of promotional thunder, a trailer has appeared for the forthcoming Netflix docuseries, Victoria Beckham. It follows 2023’s Emmy-winning Beckham, about Victoria’s husband, former England captain David.
Helmed by Nadia Hallgren, who made Becoming about Michelle Obama, the trailer air-kisses the keynotes of Victoria’s professional and personal trajectory: the Spice Girls! The marriage! The money-pit fashion label! Victoria is seen in a T-shirt emblazoned with the words: “Fashion stole my smile”. She says: “People thought that I was a miserable cow that never smiled. But I do. Don’t be shocked.” Too late, I am shocked: why is a woman not smiling such a big deal it features twice in a 90-second trailer?
I hope the new documentary has a scene to rival the bit in Beckham when David pushed his wife to admit her dad drove her to school in a Rolls-Royce. A moment, I thought, that crossed the line from marital teasing to Mean Boy. (Though, ever the entrepreneur, Victoria now flogs “My Dad Had A Rolls-Royce” T-shirts at £110 a pop).
As for not smiling, for us Forever Goths – VB is one of the pop division – a sullen pout is a smile. Besides, what is this if not the boorish “Cheer up, love!” or “Give us a smile!” in a different guise? As if women are only allowed certain settings in public – happy, sunny, perma-obliging – rather than a variety of moods? Any mood they like, even a full-on scowling stinker. Why should Victoria Beckham have to smile?
The cassette tape could be making a comeback. Artists such as Taylor Swift are embracing it as a formatting option. And now Chinese scientists are working on an ultra high-tech “DNA-based cassette tape” with enough “information density” for billions of songs.
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For certain cohorts, the C90 is beyond personal. It’s almost Proustian, tangled up in memory with young love in the form of the mixtape. Arduously selecting songs for the beloved; agonising over running orders over like the search for the Bletchley code. As a declaration of devotion, the mixtape was an aural bouquet combined with a terrible, pleading scream: “Love me, love my impeccable music taste!”
But … 90 minutes is quite enough love, right? Billions of songs is a lot of post-punk classics, even for Fall fans. With the rebirth of the cassette, let’s give the poor old mixtape a fighting chance.
Ooh, a riveting court case: a man denies trying to steal the £270k Banksy artwork from the artist’s Girl With Balloon series from the Grove Gallery in Fitzrovia, London last year. The trial is full of piquant details: the accused’s surname is Love; his partner is called Heart; the artwork in question depicts a child holding a heart-shaped balloon.
The case continues, though none of it would matter if it were Banksy’s fabled graffiti – isn’t street art supposed to belong to everyone?
With eerie synchronicity, there’s another story about a man in Brescia, Italy: a painter and decorator by trade who toils, unbidden, painting over what he considers the city’s worst graffiti. He calls himself “Ghost Painter” and his clean-ups are an “act of urban love”.
Ghost Painter has become a TikTok phenomenon. Videos show him working at night, disguised in dramatic black; a bit like Batman, but with a roller-brush and a can of breathable masonry paint in lieu of a cape. Local graffiti artists are responding with more street art – like a graffiti version of a rap battle. One wonders if Ghost Painter himself is a vigilante street artist? And is there any such thing as socially sacrosanct graffiti – or is it all just something to gloss over?
Photograph by Starzfly/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images