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Student Posters

The first day of university is an thrilling moment in your life. You leap into your new room full of excitement, with great plans to make this 8 by 6 foot cubby hole adequately portray your amazing personality. So everyone who comes in is totally...

Photo by Jack Christie

The first day of university is an thrilling moment in your life. You leap into your new room full of excitement, with great plans to make this 8 by 6 foot cubby hole adequately portray your amazing personality. So everyone who comes in is totally immersed in what you’re all about. Then all your dreams are shattered by the unflinchingly ugly, stark, utilitarian fittings and the grey-blue walls of your new home. And then you panic. And do you know what a panicking student does when it sees its new room? It fucks up and goes to the poster sale and buys a small forest’s worth of mind bendingly clichéd posters. Here is a quick guide of what not to buy.

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NIRVANA

We know that the point where everything swings about again and it becomes acceptable to listen to early Sub Pop bands at nights filled with mopey guys and eyeliner strewn girls is almost on the horizon. Christ, everyone is already wearing plaid shirts, ripped denim and Vans or DMs like it’s a rainy day in Seattle in 1990. None of this means that you have to pin one of these to your wall. You end up looking like an 11-year-old who has just discovered

Nevermind

in a “best of” poll in your first copy of

Kerrang.

PULP FICTION

With every new film Tarantino slowly pisses away everything that made this and

Reservoir Dogs

so special. Did you even go and see the last two? The only good bits were the fake trailers they cut out when they split the double bill up in the cinema. And those weren’t by him. Putting this one up is like cheering for a photo of Paul Gascoigne.

BRUCE LEE

Has anyone actually seen a Bruce Lee film? I know all the people with

Fist of Fury

posters on their wall sure as shit haven’t. Or maybe they have and are actually really into slow, boring, old kung fu films, but I really doubt it. The only people that like kung fu films are the ones who get way too into Wu Tang and feel they need to know exactly which film each and every skit comes from.

JOHNNY CASH

Just because you’ve seen

Walk The Line

doesn’t mean that you have any right to put Johnny up on your wall. This guy sold 90 million records, was in the game for over 50 years and took more uppers before going straight than a Wisteria Lane housewife could manage in a lifetime. He is too good for your wall. Take him down and just listen to the records.

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BOB MARLEY

Really? Do we even need to go into this? Maybe this would have elicited some sort of interesting conversation 20 years ago. But this guy’s “best of” CD is a staple fixture on every ASDA checkout sale rack in Britain. Can you even imagine how many copies of

Legend

there are in the UK? And you want people to know you like this?

BEATLES

People get to uni and assume that they are part of a secret sect that love the Beatles and are the initiated few. They think that people actually give a shit about which album they like the most. What no one will admit is that half of the Beatles back catalogue is simpering pop ditties churned out by the most successful two-man ego massage team of the last hundred years.

MARIJUANA

Yes, marijuana is your friend, your lovely, gentle friend who you can snuggle up to and “mong out” with in front of pirate DVDs every night. That is until the fear descends on you like a dark cloud and you have to take up cross country running to convince yourself you are not about to die every waking hour. Sorry, but your friend is a piece of shit.

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

You kooky thing you! That film is like so fucked up, yet so cerebral. I guess you are some sort of edgy, slightly insane yet suave killer? Oh no, wait, you aren’t, you are a chemical physics student who went to the HMV sale. Everyone has already seen

A Clockwork Orange

about seven times before they are 21, it’s practically Boxing Day family movie material, so you aren’t shocking anyone with this. Having this poster is almost as unique as owning a Beatles album.

SEX PISTOLS

Wow, the Sex Pistols. Aren’t you a tearaway. I bet you don’t even go to all of your seminars and sometimes you swear at the lecturer from behind your lever arch file. A big pink and yellow poster proclaiming your allegiance to a band that a fashion designer created as a clever concept to fill a self-made gap in the market isn’t really all that punk at all. You’re at university numb nuts, aka the place that you go to have the final hole on your ticket-to-just- being-another-citizen card punched. If you really want to be a punk: start listening to Crass, drop out, find a squat and start growing your own food and brewing your own hallucinogenic cider inside some goat hooves or something.