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themetropolitan.bsky.social
The Metropolitan
@themetropolitan.bsky.social
35 followers 69 following 350 posts
Weekly Substack of Gen X cultural review. No dunking. No hot takes. No false nostalgia.

https://www.themetropolitan.uk/
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themetropolitan.bsky.social
Part of the magic of Christmas is how it enchants the everyday world and part of the magic of Raymond Briggs’ book is how he reversed that, making the ‘Father Christmas’ part of the ordinary world.
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By depicting a recognisable and familiar world, and making Father Christmas himself a recognisable and familiar grumpy old man, he is insisting on this most mysterious quotidian magic.
December 19, 2025 at 6:01 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
This week we’re snuggled up with Raymond Briggs’ ‘Father Christmas’. This isn’t the first seasonal comic book we’ve featured, but Posy Simmonds’ ‘Cassandra Darke’ is more a much older audience.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/x-libris-c...
December 18, 2025 at 12:02 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
The detailed realism of Raymond Briggs’ 1973 hard-working night-in-the-life of ‘Father Christmas’ shows how well he knew his audience.
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Small children live in a small world; small matters such as household brand logos — mysterious, impenetrable, laden with occult meanings — receive the full focus of their attention.
December 17, 2025 at 8:03 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
This week we’re revisiting Raymond Briggs’ very British ‘Father Christmas’ and for another appearance by the old man, can we recommend our sister Substack’s Christmas story ‘An All Too Magical Christmas’?
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An All Too Magical Christmas #1
Watch now | In which a magician (second class) is mocked in the street by teenagers before being mocked at home by a clockwork robot
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December 16, 2025 at 12:00 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
One of the chief delights of Raymond Briggs’ 1973 picture book ‘Father Christmas’ is that the lead character isn’t a jolly old elf or mystical, magical being but just another hard working stiff.
open.substack.com/pub/metropol...
Father Christmas, inspired by Briggs’s father’s own experiences as a milkman, is a fully recognisable British working man of the period, begrudging and swearing his way through the night shift.
December 15, 2025 at 7:01 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
The Coen Brothers are notorious for their refusal to explain or comment on the themes of their films, something that only makes them more appealing to those of us inclined to ‘reading too much into things’.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/the-hudsuc...
The Coens’ Gen X fans appreciate their penchant for splicing together wildly different approaches and sliding gleefully across genres, as if the canonical guidelines weren’t there. (Which, of course, they’re not.)
December 12, 2025 at 8:01 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
The Metropolitan’s sister substack Christmas Stories is now almost half way through this year’s story: ‘The Wish List’, the story of Alfie, who takes a seasonal job packing boxes, only to discover that the warehouse contains a good deal more than just presents.
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The Wish List - Item 11
Alfie wishes he could escape the warehouse.
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December 11, 2025 at 12:01 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
‘The Hudsucker Proxy’ was famously a financial disaster, but what producer Joel Silver may have lost in terms of investment, the audience certainly gained in terms of Coen Brothers films.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/the-hudsuc...
It is tempting to wonder what might have happened if the Coens had followed a similar trajectory to Sam Raimi. In a world where Hudsucker had been a vast success, might the Coens now be directing Doctor Strange movies for Marvel?
December 10, 2025 at 8:01 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
This week we’re suggesting the Coen Brothers’ ‘Hudsucker Proxy’ for seasonal viewing, but we have plenty of other suggestions in our Christmas season of movie musicals.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/christmas-...
Christmas Movie Season 2025
And a one, two, three, four...
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December 9, 2025 at 12:02 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
It’s time for the seasonal debate about what is or isn’t a Christmas movie. Well, the Coen Brothers’ ‘The Hudsucker Proxy’ definitely is, in style and in content.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/the-hudsuc...
The Hudsucker Proxy is a Christmas movie. More specifically, it’s a seasonal movie that parodies and celebrates other classic seasonal movies, from It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) to The Apartment (1960).
December 8, 2025 at 8:01 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
It's Mixtape week in The Metropolitan, which means it's time for our monthly playlist. And since it's the last one of the year, that must mean it's time for the Christmas music to start.
Metropolitan Mixtape: November 2025
Diplomats, gangsters, monsters and the Christmas playlist
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December 5, 2025 at 12:02 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
This month we finally got round to watching Scorsese’s Netflix epic ‘The Irishman’ and refuse to believe that the director didn’t realise how weird all his de-aged actors looked.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/metropolit...
If Scorsese is doing it deliberately — and I think you have to give him that much credit — the whole thing becomes a cinematic portrait of Dorian Gray, a revelation of moral and literal corruption.
December 4, 2025 at 7:02 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
Last month our season of on-screen Sherlocks finally reached the (other) one that everyone has been waiting for: Sphynx cat faced scarecrow Benedict Cumberbatch.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/a-study-in...
December 3, 2025 at 8:02 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
It’s Mixtape week in The Metropolitan and this month we’ve been catching up on our Halloween movies and binge watching Netflix’s ‘The Diplomat’.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/metropolit...
Almost uniquely, this is an American-made show that acknowledges there’s more to London than Westminster Bridge and the Brompton Road, and exterior shots are almost always geographically accurate.
December 2, 2025 at 12:01 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
It’s December 1st, which means it’s time for episode 1 of this year’s story from our sister Substack, Christmas Stories: 'The Wish List' is the story of Alfie, who takes a seasonal packing job, only to discover that the warehouse holds more than presents.
open.substack.com/pub/ruritani...
December 1, 2025 at 8:01 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
Contemporary corporate culture is increasingly unhappy with just having our presence and our labour. It demands our souls too.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/the-corpor...
I don’t like having to sell my existence by the yard, but I can cope with it. Employers have the right to require specified work to a specified standard; but I’ve never accepted that they have the right to direct my thought processes.
November 28, 2025 at 12:01 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
Going to work in the ‘90s was always going to be a challenge for Gen X, going to work in an economic depression where all the jobs were awful added injury to insult.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/the-metrop...
November 27, 2025 at 8:01 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
One of the most insulting things about ‘professional management bollocks’ (technical term) is the intellectual prostration that it requires of employees.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/the-corpor...
Not only does management bollocks consist of things that are meaningless or patently untrue, but it also requires staff to pretend to believe them, to give presentations in which they say things like ‘And here’s how this activity lines up with our values!’
November 26, 2025 at 1:02 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
This week we’re revisiting the corporate culture of the ‘90s, a culture perfectly captured in Mike Judge’s ‘Office Space’.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/office-spa...
November 25, 2025 at 8:01 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
This week The Metropolitan is considering the appearance of ‘Human Resources’ in ‘90s offices, a change in role from the functional ‘personnel’, to an exhortative corporate role.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/the-corpor...
Stuffy old ‘personnel’ did boring things, like paying your wages to the right bank account and clearing up problems with your tax code. HR ensures that you sing the company song, and reminds you to smile while you’re doing it.
November 24, 2025 at 2:00 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
The audience is a collaborator in the making of art. Whether the artist is trying to satisfy them or surprise them, their expectations and response are deeply influential.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/1991-fever...
Whether it is playing in a band, putting on a play or even writing a pop culture email newsletter, the tempering of one’s own creativity to the enjoyment of an audience is a crucial part of that creativity.
November 21, 2025 at 2:03 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
Of course, spectators in sport can have a huge impact on a result, but for art, the effect on the audience *is* the result.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/1991-fever...
Sport has spectators; music, like theatre, has an audience. Sport can happen, meaningfully, without spectators. But art without an audience is what we call ‘a rehearsal’.
November 20, 2025 at 1:02 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
Covering Elvis songs as a University band was not a particularly hip choice in the early ‘90s, which, of course, made it the hippest choice of all.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/uneasy-lis...
November 19, 2025 at 7:03 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
Sometimes one does not have ‘team spirit’ because the team does not have ‘you spirit’. Fortunately there are alternative pastimes to sport.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/1991-fever...
My experience of being part of a side was being the part everyone picked last (or, if I was lucky, never picked at all).
November 18, 2025 at 8:02 PM
themetropolitan.bsky.social
This week we’re considering the mainstream unpopularity and the resultant kitsch appeal of Elvis in the late ‘80s / early ‘90s.
www.themetropolitan.uk/p/1991-fever...
Vegas Elvis embodied a moribund and decadent dark reality, a feverish excess and fatal self-indulgence that ran counter to the neon ‘80s of Madonna and Hollywood teen comedies.
November 17, 2025 at 2:00 PM