A portal to another world has suddenly appeared in Dublin. And while that other world may just be New York City, any self-respecting film fanatic knows that when a portal suddenly appears, it’s time to take notice. There may be great danger, or a flimsy excuse for a listicle, on the edge of emerging.
Since opening last week, the two-way livestream portal between Dublin and New York has given locals on either side the opportunity to share all aspects of human connection, by reconnecting with distant friends and family, proposing marriage from across the Atlantic, or by defecating in public.
This week, Dublin City Council has announced that the art installation will see a number of “technical changes”, after New York media reported inappropriate behaviour from some onlookers in Dublin. North Earl Street natives have caused upset and alarm by flashing the other side, waving curse words written on their phones and even suddenly showing 9/11, which, as anyone who has ever seen Robert Pattinson movie Remember Me can tell you, is indeed a bewildering and alienating experience.
The entire effort has had to undergo a reboot already to better guard against antisocial behaviour. This, as we are told by 2014 Tumblr’s favourite phrase, is why we can’t have nice things. Unless of course you are a newspaper columnist looking for this week’s excuse to scold the public via paywalled content, in which case it is a very nice thing you do, as always, get to have.
“We encourage people to be respectful and from our position as observers, we see that the absolute majority of experiences is on the bright side.”
So said creator of the portal Benediktas Gylys, which, we’re sorry, is absolutely the kind of name a movie villain would have. Ambiguously European, head of an overly ambitious ‘foundation’, and wearer of black turtlenecks, Gylys may very well be a nice artist who just wants to bring people together, but he also absolutely definitely is evil.
Either he goes mad from all the arse-showing and turns the portal into a laser to kill us all, or he reveals that the portal actually leads to the hell dimension where he has become king, where he sucks through all our Guinness and New York’s pizza. The Mikkelsons and the Skarsgårds are in a battle royale as we speak to play this man. He looks like Nico the Evil Cigarette Guy. Respectfully.
Throwing ourselves at the whims of a hubristic tech nerd might well spell doom for Dublin, and not just for the usual reasons. Any movie fan knows that portals are untrustworthy, and it isn’t because someone from the North Inner City might enjoy them too much. They always lead to hell, or a monster planet, or worse still the third act of a Marvel movie. To prepare and protect you, our beloved readers, we’ve picked out some of the possible outcomes that movies show us can happen if you’re not careful when you’re thinking with portals.
Dublin has A Nightmare Before Christmas
A town full of lovable monsters causes chaos by misunderstanding the true meaning of the gift they discover on the other side of a portal to another world? It’s possible A Nightmare Before Christmas is already happening here, only Jack Skellington is far too bony to get much joy out of baring his bottom. We want to avoid this scenario for two reasons; A) everyone would start singing and B) we would definitely have an international incident to deal with once the Mayor of New York gets captured and tortured by the Oogie Boogie Big Bag of Cans.
Dublin Jumanjies
The portal even looks like the centrepiece of everyone’s favourite malevolent board game. If spooky rhymes start appearing on the screen, it’s all over for us. Not because Dublin would be overrun by the creatures and critters that would emerge from the Jumanji jungle, but because of the tiresome discourse that would inevitably follow them. DCC trying to turn the swamp that emerged George’s Dock into a tourist destination, car park owners getting disproportionate airtime to complain about zones pedestrianised for wildebeests. Remember the week Liveline found out about Puck Fair and ask yourself if we really want to go through how Joe and co would deal with Jumanji‘s mischievous monkeys and their antics. The stampede of zebras, giant wasps, elephants and lions would be inevitably defeated and devoured by our native seagulls, with conversations about culling now even further complicated by birds that are bigger than our cars. Either Van Pelt would run for office or Mannix Flynn would start hunting us all for sport. Either way it would be exhausting.
Dublin solves the Lament Configuration
Once our city’s citizens grow tired of the thrills of public indecency and naughty words, they’re only going to pursue deeper and darker desires. Enter the Lament Configuration, the sinister puzzle box from the Hellraiser series, whose solving opens forth the gates to a hedonistic hell. The fun and games of the portal could all be a ruse to unleashing a gash of Cenobites on us, a group that are viciously self-serving and overly indulgent even by polycule standards. Once Pinhead discovers that pizza place on the South Circular Road with his name on it, who knows what sadistic violence we’ll all be subjected to while he re-asserts control over his image rights.
No, we don’t want a load of weirdos running amuck through Dublin for their own sick pleasure. Not outside of Bloomsday anyway.
Dublin crosses the Event Horizon
Getting flashed is unpleasant. Getting shown 9/11 is unpleasant. Seeing what the crew of the Event Horizon get up to in their down time is a bit like getting flashed during 9/11, a level of unpleasantness so severe it may cost your very sanity.
In Paul W.S. Anderson’s underseen sci-fi horror, the crew of a spaceship that can pass through wormholes emerges in a hell dimension. The other side haunts their ship and destroys their minds, as they descend into a disturbing mutilative orgy. The rescue crew that follow are ultimately hunted by the designer of the Event Horizon after he too loses his mind, which again, we’re not saying Benediktas Gylys would do, just that he kind of looks like the type of lad who might do that. Best to avoid the potential mishap altogether, and blow the portal up, just to be safe.
Heed the warning of the Event Horizon captain, Libera te tutemet ex inferis, which is Latin for “ah here leave it out”.
Dublin gets Being John Malkoviched
Oh sure it all seems like a novel thrill at first. We get to see through the eyes of another person, see what they do, where they go, whether or not they find 9/11 funny. But then things get weird.
In Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman’s surreal comedy collab, we get to see what the general public would do with the wonder and whimsy that a portal that goes into the body of actor John Malkovich provides – they would be stupid and exploitative and psychosexual with it is what they would do, which recent events have more or less confirmed as entirely accurate, even without the presence of the Red 2 star. Dublin’s portal doesn’t take us into John Malkovich, as far as we know. But where else might it take us?Who is Dublin’s equivalent, an oddly accented actor, frequently found between Dublin and New York, a long list of credits on stage and screen and a sometimes-standoffish disposition? Aiden Gillen. Do you want to be Being Aiden Gillen? No you don’t. He’s a busy man and you can’t handle that pressure. And we certainly don’t want Aiden Gillen himself going near it, finding himself in a world where everyone looks like Aiden Gillen and can only say Aiden Gillen. That would be horrible. That would be even worse than that Charlie Haughey miniseries.
No it all just seems like a hassle, at best. If movies have taught us anything, it’s that the only level-headed response to this whole portal business is to destroy it immediately.