Time seems to be slipping in a bank holiday lock-in at an East End pub, where I nurse my beer and watch people in another pub in another decade, drinking their sorrows away, fighting and sharing the latest gossip from Albert Square. You notice the heavy boozing, as well as the smoking, in 1980s EastEnders. Characters regularly drink themselves unconscious.
The Lock-In tells the story of EastEnders from its start in 1985 to the present – from the drunken vantage point of its pub, the Queen Vic. Put together by artist Stanley Schtinter, this 100-hour long compilation of scenes set in the Vic raises hugely enjoyable questions about what the hell anyone watches anything for. I actually felt I could stick the full 100 hours, but was fairly certain I shouldn’t. The nicely Warholian effect is to expose the amount of time we regularly spend gazing at screens, either barely caring what’s on, or locked into a drama we know doesn’t really matter, but that entertains for a few hours. The only thing that makes this epic soap marathon different from binge-watching at home is that Schtinter frames it as art and as an event – by stitching EastEnders clips together in a way that melts narrative logic, and screening it in a variety of east London pubs.
