tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-562307478680414782024-03-13T10:49:30.540-07:00Storming the Ivory TowerOddball media crit--laying siege to academia's ivory tower from pop culture's gutterSam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.comBlogger278125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-18395932013605302342023-04-30T11:05:00.000-07:002023-04-30T11:05:09.228-07:00A Multiverse Around The Corner (Where Your Dead Friends Live)<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []" style="text-align: left;"><i>Isn't it weird how many stories lately feature villains trying to tap into alternate or simulated realities to reunite with loved ones? Let's take a tour of this multiverse full of dead relatives and what they have to say about our cultural moment.</i></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhTQdSGGd92OnV-slevE0EWCxHOxdbBj5_Ho2jCzDGrrywH_4PAFYRy0x4MQdZhYgXCH0oJtSs9LCRlDDXYq2-lLFRM_-eOU_QznwhPzp2uULh1ZclhcIBuuar5EeF0wLUtK0VJ50-RsMIhySAFIWyYRhJRD6ldG_7Djea8oJBQn7tpfg7_LyPPKAU" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="952" data-original-width="2261" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhTQdSGGd92OnV-slevE0EWCxHOxdbBj5_Ho2jCzDGrrywH_4PAFYRy0x4MQdZhYgXCH0oJtSs9LCRlDDXYq2-lLFRM_-eOU_QznwhPzp2uULh1ZclhcIBuuar5EeF0wLUtK0VJ50-RsMIhySAFIWyYRhJRD6ldG_7Djea8oJBQn7tpfg7_LyPPKAU=w640-h270" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div>There's a weird proliferation of media about the specific desire to travel to an alternate timeline or simulated reality to retrieve a dead loved one. Reuniting with the family whose deaths motivates Kingpin to start messing with the alternate realities of the titular Spiderverse, for instance. The antagonist of the Alex Garland miniseries DEVS is attempting to create a perfect computer simulation of reality in order to reunite with the family he also lost in a car accident, and he's willing to use the predictive powers of his simulation as a tactical advantage to protect his simulated world by any means necessary. Furthermore, hopping to another timeline is the plan of the arch villain of Mr Robot, with the added uncomfortable twist of her being a closeted Chinese trans woman seeking a world where she was able to marry her lover, preventing his suicide. Meanwhile, the villain of Star Trek Discovery season 4 is willing to start a civilization-ending conflict with an advanced species to get to a "paradise" universe with his maybe? dead? friend (it's left a little ambiguous).</div><div><br /></div><div>When such a plot is not outright villainous it seems to be decidedly misguided. Like Cedric Diggory's resurrection in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child! There, when some time traveling teens prevent his death, he becomes a fascist due to... coming in second in one sporting event, and causes the victory of the supreme evil of the setting. Leaving aside the fascinating revelation that coming in second place in one (1) sporting event is, in dear Joanne's mind, a plausible reason for becoming a raving Nazi, gang I'm starting to think that Rowling might in fact just be kind of a dogshit writer. I mean my god the plot summary for this play is just sheer derangement the whole way through and also I guess the play is FIVE HOURS LONG? I've also heard that some part of the new movies involves making sure Hitler still comes to power but I couldn't verify this because search engines don't work anymore, the internet is overflowing with fawning garbage and algorithmic clickbait, and searching for information about this franchise for more than ten minutes makes me want to jump to an alternate reality where I'M dead.</div><div><br /></div><div>And, of course, as the Marvel Cinematic Universe flails for purchase after completely squandering their greatest antagonist, Thanos, the Multiverse and alternate realities become increasingly central, as though the franchise desperately seeks any way out of the maze of dead ends they've gradually walled themselves into. I think maybe the earliest instance of this, perhaps predictably, emerged from the existential flailing of Agents of SHIELD. I don't remember much of season 4 (it was bad) but like DEVS it employs a computer simulation alternate reality, one that I guess is the result of Agent May not killing a child that she previously executed in her Tragic Backstory. HYDRA rules the world in this reality, so that's another vote for "if you try to prevent children from dying, fascism wins." Neat. What I DO remember of this season is that they made my special boy Fitz into a dapper Nazi (this was in vogue in 2017 if you recall). Now, Fitz had spent some time previously with a neurological disability that made it difficult for him to express himself verbally; this gradually just sort of... dissipated after a while. I can only conclude the writers found it easier to imagine a world where Fitz was a fascist, than one in which they had to keep writing him as disabled.</div><div><br /></div><div>Agents of SHIELD largely has proven the model for the sort of finesse and care with which the MCU set out to explore the multiverse.</div><div><br /></div><div>Leaving aside the quality of any individual example, the proliferation of the trope feels significant, and a little eerie in the face of, bluntly, increasing incidences of mass death. It feels like we are in a moment culturally when a bunch of people in Hollywood independently took a gander at the world and said to themselves, "what the people need to hear, as a message, is that wanting a version of reality where your loved ones aren't dead is fundamentally villainous". Maybe sympathetically villainous, they mused, but villainous nevertheless. Such a quest is bound to drive you to madness, criminality, homicidal machinations, intergalactic war, the triumph of fascism, and even acts of violence against property.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm not sure these stories are particularly interested in this from a speculative fiction standpoint. In Discovery and Mr Robot, it's never in point of fact clear that the technology even... works? Or is anything other than a character's particular pipe dream? The point seems to be a commentary--a rather moralizing one--or perhaps simply an unexamined assumption about the psychology of people who can't "let go" of grief.</div><div><br /></div><div>There's an implicit conservativism in this though, even a kind of secular Calvinism. A belief that the universe could only really be one particular way. What are the knock on effects of this? It feels notable that a lot of the deaths are accidental. There's "no one to blame". How convenient. If the world simply is the way it is, that's sort of handy, isn't it, for anyone who happens to hold power in that world or timeline. A car crash, for example, is something that just... happens, and questions about, say, the dependence on individual transportation, the resistance to traffic calming features in neighborhoods, lack of public transit, homicidal disregard for the lives of pedestrians on the part of everyone from drivers to politicians to cops... in a sense if you think about it, asking questions about those things is sort of like trying to make the world something other than what it is, to radically upend society... in just the way a *villain* would.</div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe the weirdest thing about alternate timeline media right now is the switch in its narrative convictions. The ultimate example is surely It's A Wonderful Life, whose whole premise is "let's go to an alternate timeline where this character was dead--oops, turns out it sucks!" I suppose the broadly applicable message is "don't kill yourself, cause you can't necessarily see the good you've done or might do in the world." Surely the affirmation in this message contributed to its many copies and parodies over the years.</div><div><br /></div><div>To pick one more contemporary example, Doctor Who's companion Donna Noble experiences her own version of the trope late in her season. For an entire episode, she's banished to a version of reality where she listened to her mom's negging, gave up on herself, and sank into a life of complacent mediocrity. Unfortunately, it's precisely her hardheadedness that makes her such a good companion to the Doctor, someone capable of telling him to *stop* before he gets himself killed. Without her there at his side, he dies, and England slides into a fascist nightmare. </div><div><br /></div><div>She gets stuck in our timeline, in other words.</div><div><br /></div><div>The weird thing about this, of course, is that yesterday's "bad timeline" can simply become today's new status quo in need of defending. The proverbial frog gets proverbially boiled on a broad pop cultural scale. Moreover, isn't there something kind of rotten at the heart of the new permutation of the narrative? Once the message might have been that even someone like George Bailey or a kinda clocky, loud, bordering on middle aged woman like Donna might contribute something fundamental to keeping autocrats and fascists from ruling with impunity. Now, we have to take the long view and accept that a few kids might have to die here or there to maintain the proper tension on the cables holding up the moral arc of history. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's only through the careful application of this nebulous long view that Scarlet Witch in Multiverse of Madness looks like anything other than sympathetic. Well, that and the careful application of Cartoonish Evil--she's trying to suck the ability to move to alternate timelines freely out of a cardboard cutout of the character America Chavez. Also she's using it's-the-Necronomicon-but-we-trademarked-it to bounce around the Multiverse by taking over the bodies of her alternate selves. </div><div><br /></div><div>These careful applications of Cartoonish Evil helpfully counterbalance the simple fact that she wants to find and inhabit a timeline where her children are still alive. Apparently they existed in this reality in Wandavision, which I did not watch, but which I gather was a kind of giant fantasy world she dreamed up where Vision was still alive. Why are her kids alive and real in other realities when they were "just" a magical projection in this one? That seems weird. Doesn't that suggest that there was some "realness" attribute to the kids and Vision inside her projection, one that would imply blowing up the fantasy world killed all three real people? For the "greater good"?</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm sure there's something I'm missing here, due both to not watching it (it looked boring and try-hard) and due to the fundamental moral defects in my character. I'm sure that's also why it's ok when Strange uses the-Necronomicon-but-proprietary to dream walk into his alternate self's corpse to do battle across dimensions. Don't get me wrong, I love this sequence. The shambling zombie corpse of Stephen Strange wearing a cloak of the skeletal wraiths of the damned *whips ass*. But Scarlet Witch is surely right to immediately call him a hypocrite! The film can't seem to make its mind whether the ends justify the means, though it keeps waving towards some commentary on it with Stephen. It feels an awful lot like the ends justify the means so long as it's the designated protagonist doing it. Ah there's that good old protagonist centered morality! It's been a minute.</div><div><br /></div><div>If morality spins around the axis of Strange's ego, it might be because he fights for the status quo, whereas Scarlet Witch threatens to... I don't know, unlock the "power of the Multiverse"? People keep saying "the multiverse is dangerous", which Sarah noted is like saying gravity is dangerous. It's surely just, like, a thing, isn't it? Maybe what makes it so dangerous is the bare glimpse we see of alternatives: America does get a line in about how weird it is that you have to pay for food in our dimension. Huh!</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9w16mmIswc">Pillar of Garbage</a> has a whole video on the broader concept of multiversality that takes particular aim at the strange sameness of parallel worlds within both this film and everyone's darling, Everything Everywhere All At Once. The video notes that despite the apparent premise of "anything is possible across these parallel realities", recent multiverse stories nevertheless "content themselves with superficial difference, masking an underlying sameness." Across the multiverse, basically capitalist order reigns, even when people have hot dog fingers. </div><div><br /></div><div>There's certainly something almost poignant in the revelation that Stephen Strange is the same arrogant asshole across all realities, the same guy willing to sacrifice others for the "greater good" and meddle with powers that lead him to the cursed fate of "having a really really bad cgi eye copypasted onto his forehead". It feels similar to the diluted and thin version of Spiderverse that we get in Spider Man: Homeward Bound Lost In San Francisco, which instead of presenting a myriad of spider people presents... three versions of Peter Parker. The premise of Spiderverse was that anyone could see themselves in the character. Meanwhile, grotesquely, in No Home For Old Spiders Men the (black) villain Electro specifically laments that there's "got to be some universe with a black Spiderman". Multiverse of Madness extends this even further to fill the Multiverse with different versions of all your same heroes, vaguely palette swapped around so this time Captain America is British and a woman. But Steven is always a sad divorced guy, always tempted by power. The Multiverse turns out to not be full of madness at all but full of pretty much the same shit. Over. And over. And over.</div><div><br /></div><div>This suggests that even before any moral compromise on the part of a character like Scarlet Witch, her quest is already quixotic. The texture of the narrative itself, the guiding force of the multiverse, pulls everything back towards the status quo. Don't get any big ideas. They're not gonna happen. You'll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking.</div><div><br /></div><hr /><div><br /></div><div>Let's spare a few thoughts to Enter the Spiderverse for a second, a film that in many ways set off the current trend toward the multiversal and, of course, has a villain questing after a lost loved one.</div><div><br /></div><div>While I'm unnerved by the whole *trend* towards this trope, <a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2019/08/save-spidey-into-spider-verses-failure.html" target="_blank">I want to give Spiderverse a bit more sympathy</a>, if only because I think there is a point to the film's juxtapositions. Kingpin's family dies as a result of his feuding with Spiderman, and he responds by murdering a bunch more people to try and get them back. The fact that he's given an entire backstory motivation flashback invites a direct parallel to the various spiders: in all of their backstories, they too lose someone they care about. An inability to save everyone--even those they care most about--is the defining trauma of a spider person. They respond by doubling down on their need to take responsibility for the power they've been given.</div><div><br /></div><div>From this perspective, Spiderverse feels like it turns some of the logic of this trope, as it's increasingly instantiated, on its head. Kingpin's actions seem more reactionary here, a desperate attempt to reconstruct a lost reality rather than change for the better. Unlike Wanda, who's just sort of the narrative's punching bag, he fucks up and consciously decides that he will bend reality itself in order to not have to learn a thing. Meanwhile, the whole point of the film is that anyone in the audience could "put on the mask" and be heroic.</div><div><br /></div><div>If one of the hallmarks of this emerging trope is its fatalism, Spiderverse stands at its genesis, already playing with the terms.</div><div><br /></div><hr /><div><br /></div><div>Of all these stories, the one most interested in both addressing fatalism head on as theme, and exploring the alternate reality where a loved one waits as actual speculative fiction, is probably DEVS, which is fixated on questions of whether the universe is rigidly deterministic or not. It's of central concern to the antagonist, the owner of DEVS, both because the deterministic model he uses allows him to predict the actions of the protagonists, and because it's existentially important to his quest. After all, if the universe isn't deterministic, how will he know for certain that he's transplanting himself into the "right" simulated reality with his "true" wife and child? </div><div><br /></div><div>There's one moment that stuck with me from the show. A boy, Lyndon, one of the DEVS research team, has been excommunicated for insisting on the many worlds hypothesis as the only viable underpinning of the simulation, as opposed to the antagonist's strictly mechanistic viewpoint. Lyndon is presented with a wager to get his life's work back: stand on the top of Crystal Springs Dam. In some realities, he will fall, and simply die. In the realities where he doesn't, he can have his job back.</div><div><br /></div><div>He must put his faith in the many worlds hypothesis.</div><div><br /></div><div>We next see a slow pan up the exterior of the dam. Repeatedly, we see his flailing body falling towards his death. Glosses and summaries of the episode typically conclude that in "our timeline" he fell. I disagree. I think the repeated image, whether intentional or not, suggests something more astonishing and chilling: in *every* timeline he fell. There was no timeline where a version of Lyndon was both foolhardy enough to take the wager, and capable of keeping his balance long enough to survive it. </div><div><br /></div><div>One might even suggest that in the timelines where he could have... he was probably pushed anyway.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's a fascinating notion because it reveals the rigged game for what it is: something someone else with power determined with the expectation of getting a predetermined result. The alternate realities are a kind of smoke screen for the harm being done in this one. It makes me think of Anton Chigurh and his stupid fucking coin toss in No Country for Old Men. The most significant moment to me in the film is the character Carla Jean facing down his stupid coin toss for her life. He suggests that he is leaving it up to the universe whether she will live or die. She rejects this simply: "The coin don't have no say. It's just you."</div><div><br /></div><div>Let me posit a hypothetical: what if everyone making kinda boring tv shows and movies that are all about how we shouldn't disturb the status quo actually like what they're doing? Imagine a world where that was the case. You'd probably want to make it so it was hard for people from marginalized and especially working class backgrounds to break into the industry, and you'd want things pretty uncompetitive so that there wasn't much chance for disruption. Basically, it'd be helpful, for this world, if it was possible to maintain The Good Life, while still thinking of oneself as an Artist, by simply telling your bosses what they want to hear.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think it would be tempting to blame such a world on ideological failings, on "capitalist realism" infecting everyone for example. But in such a dimension it would be so difficult for anyone with an outsider or critical perspective on the world to become a director or showrunner or script writer, those people wouldn't need to be taught to think in "capitalist realism". And the people with a voice, well, they wouldn't have gotten where they were if they weren't already the perfect fit for the job. </div><div><br /></div><div>Everyone would fall into their proper place, as though by fate.</div><div><br /></div><div>In a universe next door, of course, this sort of metaphor we've been poking at might take on a different character, one more like The Matrix Resurrections, a film primarily about two people separated by death and revived in a computer simulation reaching out for each other even in the face of opposition from the universe itself. In this film the metaphor, and the refusal of Trinity and Neo to accept each others' loss, represents a refusal to accept the ordering of a society that would keep them separated.</div><div><br /></div><div>This culminates, in fact, in Trinity cyber-divorcing her cyber-family. It's an act of astonishing selfishness. It rules. It is in fact highlighted, just in case you missed the fucking point, by the villain of the film and present demiurge of the Matrix remarking, sardonically, "women used to be so much easier to control." Let's not get too far into the weeds on this one, but the narrative that gay and trans people leave their spouses "widowed" is still quite prevalent. That feels relevant to mention here. The film, in the best tradition of the series as a whole, layers its metaphors so that the separation of death parallels structures of patriarchal control in society, systems that keep us trapped in jobs we hate, marriages that are unfulfilling, and even genders that stifle our souls.</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, and now we're back where I always seem to wind up, with the queer gnostic and cosmically revolutionary impulse in fiction, the kind of thing that drew me in the first place to stories like Homestuck that are precisely about shattering the confines of one universe in the hopes of breaking free of a constraining and malevolent narrative. There, too, we have characters like Vriska Serket and Terezi Pyrope, separated across a barrier of narrative "relevance", still reaching out for each other-- <a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2022/08/to-watch-all-my-heroes-sell-car-on-tv.html">but that's a whole other story</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>The terms set by a work of fiction, the premises on which its world operates, are often easy to accept without much comment or question. That's, like, reading, after all: we fill in the blanks of the story and tell it and its world to ourselves, actively. It's sometimes possible to get lost in the way stories shuffle their pieces around, and miss what the hands shuffling them are really up to. Maybe part of the impetus for stories about how you can't retrieve the dead from another timeline is simply that we *can't*. Why tell a story where such a thing is heroic, when that can never be reflected literally in the real world? But then we might ask: why write speculative fiction in the first place? Why introduce the Multiverse as a conceit if you're just going to scold the viewer for imagining its capacity to relieve grief and loneliness--to imagine a different world? We don't necessarily have to take for granted the premises these fictional multiverses operate on. Their status quo was, after all, always designed from the very start: a rigged game.</div><div><br /></div><div>What rigged games might we be playing in our corner of the multiverse, disguised by the sleight of narrative tropes quickly becoming popular enough to pass without mention?</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
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A Multiverse Around The Corner (Where Your Dead Friends Live)</h3>
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<!--SAVE SPIDEY! INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE'S FAILURE AND PROMISE-->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2019/08/save-spidey-into-spider-verses-failure.html" style="text-decoration: none;">
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<h3>Save Spidey! Into the Spider-Verse's Failure and Promise</h3>
Can Spider-Man matter outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Sony, Disney, #SaveSpidey, and Into the Spider-Verse.
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<h3>To Watch All My Heroes Sell A Car On TV</h3>
As generations age out of our youth valorizing culture, but find no purchase in our political gerontocracy, what form does the art of those too old to rock and roll and too young to die take?
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<h3>Age of the Executive Auteur</h3>
The Auteur as a figure in entertainment is dead. Grown strong on digital production, a more artistically bankrupt creature emerges in their place. It is the Executive Auteur, and it's coming soon to a theater near you, whether you like it or not.
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<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>
<!--ON THE TRACKS OF AN ANGRY GOD--><iframe frameborder="0" height="169" src="https://itch.io/embed/1444342?border_width=2&bg_color=fafbf5&fg_color=2d2522&link_color=50495b&border_color=97959a" width="554"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/on-the-tracks-of-an-angry-god">On The Tracks Of An Angry God by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-51258896215021601182023-03-30T11:07:00.006-07:002023-03-30T11:07:59.799-07:00Just, Ruinous: Poker Face and Interview with the Vampire as Superhero Stories<blockquote
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>
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>Our culture is saturated with superhero stories, but as those stories turn
towards action adventure narratives it's up to a detective story and an epic
vampire horror serial to ask "just what is a hero?" </i
>
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For all that superhero media dominates our cultural moment, little of it feels
interested in heroism as a concept to interrogate.
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I can sort of understand the turn away from heroism as a subject in itself.
It's sort of a boring topic--<a
href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2015/10/special-release-my-superpower-is-manpain.html"
target="_blank"
>I wrote one big essay collection on (super) heroism</a
>, for example, and then tried to do more and realized I was bored to tears of
writing about superheroes, and scrapped it. And now I'm facing down the
prospect of introducing this article and going, "oh god, what the hell do I
mean by 'heroism' anyway?"
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I guess it's at heart a question of what one, as an individual, can do to be a
good, probably exceptionally good, person. This takes as given a sense of
goodness through individual actions, rather than the realm of "join your local
revolutionary communist party or at least try to get your workplace
unionized". If you've come here looking for a narrative about the heroism of
abandoning individual action for collective organizing, sorry, you want HIS
310 Andor And The Russian Revolution, in the next lecture hall over. No, we're
gonna take that premise of individual goodness as given, if only to
deconstruct it a bit later.
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<div><br /></div>
<div>
What's wild to me is how much super*hero* media foregrounds the super part,
relegating heroism to an assumed position within a narrative framework that
comes with a flashy costume and enables wild adventures. For the stories that
do take up the question more directly, it seems profoundly metatextual, a
question not of "is this the best way to be a good person in the world?" but
"can I, Starlord, convincingly position myself within the narrative as a
heroic lead?"
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
This is the particular focus of the weirder superheroes right now, characters
like those in Doom Patrol or Umbrella Academy. Fitting for their postmodern
origins, these characters face two core struggles: first, whether society and
the audience can accept misfits as heroes, and second, whether they can get
over their interpersonal drama and stunted psychologies long enough to save
the world. Fighting for "heroism" as metaphor for social acceptance and
personal growth is a reasonable narrative framework, I suppose... though one
that's hampered in these shows by--I am so so sorry, gays--frustratingly flat
character writing, a tendency to introduce moments of catharsis that are
quickly reversed to accommodate interpersonal drama and the ongoing need to
leave the central conflict unresolved, and a reliance on people shouting
"FUCK!" as an all purpose punchline. Look I said I was sorry, gays, I'm not
happy to say this either! The show in this genre<a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t29ag7wmAK8"
target="_blank"
>
I was *most* invested in, The Nevers</a
>, jettisoned the dead weight dragging the writing down (Joss Whedon) then
immediately went on hiatus for two years and got cancelled with its episodes
dumped on *Tubi*. The world is full of tragedy!
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
If it makes you feel any better, at least we can give these shows points for
effort and an occasional glowingly brilliant idea, which is more than I can
say for most superhero media right now. The phrase "phoning it in" comes to
mind. I honestly could not tell you what Love and Thunder is going for beyond
"getting Taika Waititi more money for Our Flag Means Death". Certainly I don't
think these stories are particularly interested anymore in broad questions of
what "heroic" behavior might be, unless they want us to apply seriously a
conflict as abstruse as "should you wipe the memories of all your friends and
loved ones so they don't know you almost collapsed the multiverse", or
whatever the plot of that spiderman film was. I mean on the whole it's pretty
hard to take seriously any moral message you could derive from a film that
quite literally was "what if we did
<a
href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2019/08/save-spidey-into-spider-verses-failure.html"
target="_blank"
>Enter the Spiderverse</a
>
but everyone was a white guy", a morally repulsive exercise.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The last bastion of heroism-as-subject winds up being either the
quasi-arthouse DC flicks (The Batman, Joker)... or something that comes
completely out of left field. Maybe it makes some sense that questions of
heroism, finding themselves submerged within the genre that has "hero" right
in the name, would ooze its way out of culture through other genres and shows.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>Shows like the mystery series Poker Face, for example.</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Poker Face is certainly structured, shot, and written much more like Columbo
than like a contemporary superhero show. Every week we see a new murder in a
new locale in the first half of the episode, and then in the second half
reluctant hero Charlie Cale wanders into the story and eventually finds some
justice for the victim. We know whodunnit; the show is instead an episodic
*howcatchem,* a subgenre with its own history and heroes distinct from
superhero stories. But it seems notable that its central hero does have her
own superpower. Sort of. See, Charlie has an uncanny knack of knowing when
someone is bullshitting her.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
If Charlie's superpower, such as it is, were played up just a little bit more,
a la Sherlock, it'd be annoying as hell to watch episode after episode.
Luckily, her super- or mildly-powered capacity to instantly and accurately
tell when someone is telling a lie mostly involves, for the viewer, her
occasionally saying the word "bullshit" when she didn't mean to, or her brow
furrowing and her smile slipping a bit out of place. It really only works
because Natasha Lyonne can so perfectly capture, through expression and body
language alone, the pivotal moment in a conversation with a stranger where you
realize, "ah jeeze buddy you're a real piece of work--wait did I just say that
out loud?"
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The great thing about Poker Face, from a hero narrative kinda perspective, is
how little time it spends fucking around. It's episodic, structured, each
episode has its own little self contained setup and resolution, which means
that every episode sort of has to get to the point and start making use of
Charlie's powers.
<a
href="https://twitter.com/topherflorence/status/1446151707029917697?lang=en"
>You know Doc Future's Surf Dracula tweet</a
>? "back in the day if u did a tv show called surf dracula you'd see that fool
surfing every week in new adventures but in the streaming era the entire 1st
season gotta be a long ass flashback to how he got the surfboard until you
finally get to see him surf for 5 min in the finale". We can see see Charlie
Cale surfing in a new adventure every week.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
However, to stretch the metaphor further, Surf Dracula can surf each week...
but to what end? While the show has an episodic structure, it also has a sense
of seasonal progression that grapples with this question. Charlie starts and
ends the season in pretty much the same place--deliberately, comically so in
fact. Instead of Ron Perlman hunting her down across the US, necessitating her
episodic wandering, she's got... Rhea Perlman (no relation, very funny Rian ha
ha) hunting her down across the US, necessitating her episodic wandering. What
changes is her self perceived agency. She's presented with the option to go on
the run and continue, as her sister puts it in the finale, "the Charlie Cale
show", or go to work for the mob, and she chooses to keep getting herself
reeled into situations.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Let's linger on that conversation with her sister Em for a bit, actually, as
it sort of makes up the crux of my sense of Charlie as a hero. It's a weird
conversation, coming right at the end of the season and acting as something of
a centerpiece of the final episode. Charlie is on the run from a frameup, and
goes to her sister for a way out of Atlantic City. Her sister gives her a
dramatic dressing down, blaming her for... something to do with their father,
calling her ruinous, and suggesting that she chooses to get herself in these
kinds of traumatic situations. The upshot is that Charlie isn't welcome in
Em's life.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I think there's a sense in which the show is presenting Charlie's sister as
basically correct that Charlie chooses the somewhat madcap life she leads. I
also think the show ultimately views that choice as heroic.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Now, I'm gonna be a bitch here in a way that I don't think the show
necessarily intends--this is my politics not necessarily the show's. I think,
all things considered, the show treats Em as a somewhat sympathetic character
and there's something very interesting in how she really does seem like she's
from a completely different series which Charlie's sort of collided into.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
But I turned to Sarah after that sequence and I said "I fucking hate
suburbanites. They're all scum."
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Cause I think that sorta fundamentally what Charlie does, all this getting
into situations that she does, is what is known as "being a good person". And
it turns out that "being a good person" means being maybe a little bit ruinous
from time to time because "being a good person" is hard and often bites you in
the fucking ass and gets you tangled with other kinda ruinous people.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I think that there is a fundamental sort of middle class suburbanite ethos
that getting into situations is a prime sin far beyond anything else, the
ultimate crime of being disruptive. Like, you don't get involved in
Situations, because that's what the police are for, and the notion of someone
like Charlie who gets in Situations but is resolutely Not A Cop is just *such*
a major faux pas. Call it... nextdoor mindset, or true crime mindset: a kind
of alienated busybodydom, an atomized paranoia where you're simultaneously up
in everyone's business, but not particularly interested in looking past
surfaces. It can be found everywhere but feels particularly at one with the
atomized psychogeography of the suburbs, with their untrained barking dogs,
sterile lawns, and multi car families necessitated by a lack of transit
infrastructure. Yeah they're doing just fine.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The structure of the show, contra nextdoor posting and true crime podcasts,
invites sitting with a whole variety of weirdos and figuring out hey, what's
the deal with these guys?
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The conversation with her FBI contact Agent Clark, "uber for stoolies" as she
puts it, is interesting in the context of the show's wider themes. He's very
blunt about the fact that despite being a fed, he can't protect her--he has to
use a burner phone to talk to her, presumably because he doesn't trust his own
organization. But also, due to their chance meeting, he was able to nab an
incidental villain from the first episode, a character whose secrets her
friend was killed over. In Charlie's words: "She did the right thing when she
saw something awful, and she actually did something about it, and you killed
her for it." A chance meeting with Clark in an otherwise unconnected episode
set off the chain of events that lead him to both resolving that dangling
thread in the first episode, and get her out of immediate danger in the last
one. None of that would have happened without Charlie's own willingness to do
the right thing when she sees something awful, but also her willingness to try
to understand and suss out the actual truth of situations, not just their
appearances.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
So you have a series of individual episodes that are self contained moments of
surf draculosity, that come together in a pleasing whole as Charlie's actions
come together to get her out of a scrape. In this sense the show actually has
the exact same structure as anime classic masterpiece Golden Boy, another
celebration of
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeTGegneSmo" rev="en_rl_none"
>absolute freaks</a
>. It's a good structure, and it's weird how little serialized superhero shows
seem to have hit on it as a formal solution to the genre.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
What I suppose it does lack is a certain amount of badass avenging beatdowns.
Charlie might be a great detective but she's not the World's Greatest
Detective--who for a long time now has mostly "detected" some gang members or
goons on which to inflict lasting head trauma. There's a whole power fantasy
model of heroism that seems to amount to being a bit better than whoever
you're punching. The token agonizing over whether a character "is a hero" can
be resolved by the presence of someone who's dropping a busload of children in
the river. As Sarah put it to me when I described this article to her, heroism
seems to be having the opportunity to utilize the skills you already have to
accomplish an outcome you already wanted to achieve.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The central deal with the devil in the recent serialized Interview with the
Vampire adaptation between narrating character Louis de Pointe du Lac and the
seductive and amoral Lestat de Lioncourt is a deal of this self serving
nature. The series is fairly open about this, in fact--Louis describes to his
modern day interviewer, newsman Daniel Molloy, how trapped he felt in his home
of New Orleans at the turn of the century, and the seductive power Lestat
offered. The results are bloody. As Molloy sardonically summarizes, "Take a
black man in America, make him a vampire, fuck with that vampire, and see what
comes of it."
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Oh, right, I should specify that Louis in this adaptation is a creole man. It
probably says something that I nearly forgot to mention that, and while I was
writing about forgetting to mention it I realized I also forgot to mention
that Lestat and Louis are full on screen canonical gay lovers, no subtext
about it. The racebending is surely to help solve the uncomfortable racial
politics of the original, in which Louis is a white plantation owner. But it,
and the explicit queerness, also feels shockingly natural, so natural that
it's overtaken the film (haven't read the books, sorry Anne) in my mind as the
image of the story.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Its successful sell of the change is deeply tangled with the nature of
Lestat's gift. What Lestat offers Louis is precisely the power fantasy of the
contemporary superhero. It's not just strength and agility but the ability to
slow time, control minds, effortlessly impose your will upon a human. Why, you
can even fly! Well, Lestat can. "like Superman?" Molloy asks incredulously.
"Not like Superman," Louis responds contemptuously. "Superman is a fictional
character." Maybe so, but the comparison--to Superman and to himself, a
vampire who *lacks* the "cloud gift"--seems to be a point of some sensitivity.
The show can make reference to Superman in this way because superheroes are
part of the cultural cloud we're all floating in. No sense in denying it.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Oh Louis, Louis. Every time he tries to play the superhero it all goes
dreadfully wrong. Not that he doesn't look great while doing it, of course. If
Louis stands and allows the white alderman persecuting him to shoot him with a
pistol a few times, before calmly inviting him to reload, well, that's a
familiar scene isn't it? Goons love to use guns on superheroes impervious to
bullets, and we love to watch them. When he leaves the man's mutilated corpse
hanging on the gates strung up over a "WHITES ONLY" sign, it feels well
deserved, particularly after several episodes of witnessing how Louis, despite
being the successful owner of a night club and brothel frequented by the best
of the city, is treated with contempt by his own patrons for his race and the
open secret of his homosexuality.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
But this act of individual terrorism doesn't serve as any propaganda, but
rather a pretext for a retaliatory race riot that reduces Louis's prosperous
business and wider community to smoking rubble. Louis attempts to justify
himself, to mockery from Lestat: "That garish display of his body like some
public art piece, was for your people?" Horrified by his actions having
consequences, Louis then saves a young girl from the resulting
conflagration... and when she nearly succumbs to her injuries he implores
Lestat to turn her into a vampire, their young ward, sentenced to eternal
prepubescent stasis. She has an even more deformed morality, her childish lack
of forethought paired with endless hunger and the power to bend the world to
her whim.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
What stands out to me here is not that there's negative consequences for
Louis's actions or that he agonizes over them--after Miracleman that's just
the status quo of the contemporary superhero. Everyone's got to go through the
underworld in the hackneyed heroes journey of Hollywood. And like I said,
heroism often winds up defined by simply the presence of someone (the racists
and homophobes in Louisiana high society, or Lestat himself) capable of
providing justification for what the hero already wanted to do.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
No, what makes this stand out to me is the sense in the show that Louis is
fundamentally misguided in his attempt to play the hero. He feels guilty for
taking Lestat's gift, which is ultimately a gift of personal gratification and
empowerment, a way out of the life he finds restrictive. It's an
understandable desire but one that clashes with Louis's sense of
responsibility to his community and morality (in part because he hates the
idea of eating human beings). So he tries to turn his selfish motivations and
actions into something more personally heroic--not unlike how he reframes his
brothel owner business as a kind of heroic entrepreneurship for his family and
community, another instance of doing the work that needs to be done, that
others will not.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
As a hero, we might say that Louis is precisely emblematic of the "<a
href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1911/11/tia09.htm"
>individual terror</a
>" that "belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness,
reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes towards
a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his
mission". A great avenger indeed...
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
It's interesting that this show, with its deep skepticism of individual
heroism, stands diametrically opposed to the conclusions of Poker Face. Maybe
that will change in the future--unfortunately, and absurdly, Interview only
has *seven episodes* in its first season, which makes for a tantalizing taste
but not really, like, a *real* season of television you know? This short
season thing is getting a bit silly. Anyway, so far the serialized
storytelling lends itself to a sense of deconstructive saga, a delving deep
into the sordid history of the central character and his ongoing attempts to
justify his existence to himself and to his interviewer. Maybe it's fitting
that Poker Face has a more optimistic perspective on heroism. Charlie may be
apart from any fixed community, but the episodic structure and her
characterization lends itself to small, contained stories defined by finding
personal connection. Oh, and of course there's the fact that Interview is a
horror series about gay vampires... though, let's be fair again and note that
a weekly murder mystery series could have a *much* more reactionary view of
humans than Poker Face or Charlie do!
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I'm not sure the contradictory positions of these narratives need to be
reconciled per se or reach some final state of synthesis. Rather they're
facets of an ongoing questioning of what it is to be, essentially, a good or
even heroic person.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
And for all the pretentions of modern superhero media toward grandeur and
significance, it feels like these visitors from two very different other
genres do a much better job interrogating what heroism or villainy are,
expressed through what are ultimately, superpowers aside, just more imperfect
humans.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Just, Ruinous</h3>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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</h4>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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</h4>
<br />
<!--TO WATCH ALL MY HEROES SELL A CAR ON TV-->
<a
href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2022/08/to-watch-all-my-heroes-sell-car-on-tv.html"
style="text-decoration: none;"
>
<div class="bonusfeature">
<div
class="bfpic"
style="background-image: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi2Oc-dj8tVha7cNyNQfo-ysPyV3ysOx02qF7hlOtxbhv0mc-e-A9w48J1PWsbpASH5JGrnEJ09mmZVrdCLFvtJEfCZEVfPvwObTEiMhwmGvrfZVpNptB6HTb3y3CoPHE7Nm_TNABjbo7K6keVL1UZHugEiRgsyaf4vYMwEN01U35qfAidaO596maY=w640-h442);"
></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>To Watch All My Heroes Sell A Car On TV</h3>
As generations age out of our youth valorizing culture, but find no
purchase in our political gerontocracy, what form does the art of those
too old to rock and roll and too young to die take?
</div>
</div>
</a>
<br />
<!--A GOTHIC TOMB FOR MEANING: THE BATMAN-->
<a
href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2022/04/a-gothic-tomb-for-meaning-batman.html"
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>
<div class="bonusfeature">
<div
class="bfpic"
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></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>A Gothic Tomb for Meaning: The Batman</h3>
The Batman tries to find stark moral black and whites in a world of muddy
greys. Why is the film's script so frightened of the ambiguity its
cinematography creates?
</div>
</div>
</a>
<br />
<!--WKTW--><iframe
frameborder="0"
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Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-45338489171089499332023-01-31T09:45:00.001-08:002023-01-31T09:45:57.134-08:00Age of the Executive Auteur<div></div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>The Auteur as a figure in entertainment is dead. Grown strong on digital production, a more artistically bankrupt creature emerges in their place. It is the Executive Auteur, and it's coming soon to a theater near you, whether you like it or not.</i></div></blockquote><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiVshZUndJGaMPGE0TXO8TFfdoIzPWMIQZEhKTc_4s2o-Nn6LMiTmrlvrEb0xPY1T5pFmL273Wjfyv7pkw8GCGi5HFUSix5OeQSoRd_S-LIU18XPGWlfIXV3oXYK5TsmFT8uL_pR-fLI45txkEXW3q-KTofEUH_X2uTTjW_dUL4Nq2dCDymlViXUsQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1600" height="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiVshZUndJGaMPGE0TXO8TFfdoIzPWMIQZEhKTc_4s2o-Nn6LMiTmrlvrEb0xPY1T5pFmL273Wjfyv7pkw8GCGi5HFUSix5OeQSoRd_S-LIU18XPGWlfIXV3oXYK5TsmFT8uL_pR-fLI45txkEXW3q-KTofEUH_X2uTTjW_dUL4Nq2dCDymlViXUsQ=w640-h432" width="640" /></a></div></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div>
<div>
<div>
Scrolling twitter, avoiding thinking too hard about the deadline for this
article, I come across a promotion for an AI "reshooting" technology that
<a href="https://twitter.com/Flawlessai/status/1618954444510728192" rev="en_rl_none">purports to change actors' mouth movements to fit rerecorded dialogue</a>. It's a seller's market for such flashy digital trash. Meanwhile, a new rough beast slouches out of the Hollywood hills and Montreal game studio offices. Growing hearty by gobbling up new technologies and spitting out the crunched bones of vfx contractors, these beasts come with their own cultists eager to explain how good they are for art and culture actually. They are the Executive Auteurs, and this is there age.</div><div><br /></div><div>Let's taxonomize these new beasts.</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The Executive Auteur isn't necessarily a guy exactly. I think there can be
people in charge, as with Kevin Feige, Kathleen Kennedy, and of course
returning champion Bob Iger at Disney. But just as often the Executive
Auteur as a kind of intelligible force seems to be more like an amorphous
blob of money men, algorithms, c suite ghouls and so on. Same as it ever
was, right? Not much has changed in terms of the basic way that corporate
art is produced and hierarchically organized. I really want to stress this,
I think corporate art has gotten on the whole more cowardly, bland, and
ugly, but I doubt there's any particular change in the basic *aspirations* of bosses happening.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
No, this is happening on two levels very distant from each other but
critically linked. Something is changing high in the superstructure, in
ideology, where we theorize the nature of the world. It responds to changes
very close to the metal, deep down in the base, with the development of new
technologies for disciplining very specific types of worker.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
You can probably guess some of those technologies <a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/search/label/NFTs" target="_blank">based on a bunch of the articles I wrote last year</a>, but I'll be primarily focusing here on the
specific development of the blockbuster film. In the field of the
blockbuster, increasingly we've seen a push towards ever greater use of CGI,
<a href="https://defector.com/writer-x-offers-inside-look-at-bad-special-effects" target="_blank">produced by non-union contractors crunching to generate huge numbers of assets</a>. The emphasis in production is on the ability to reshoot and
digitally tweak endlessly, leading to,
<a href="https://defector.com/bad-special-effects-are-a-choice" rev="en_rl_none" target="_blank">as Defector points out</a>, films where the image looking good takes a distant back seat to the image
being accurate to the studio's specifications. These specifications are
often produced in advance, entire scenes existing solely in CGI, and fights
planned out and animated before a director can even step onto a physical
set.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
So, what we're seeing is the development of a series of technological
affordances that both take power away from unionized lighting crews, set
dressers, and so on, and indeed take power away from <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/08/the-end-of-the-tv-writers-room-as-we-know-it-mini-rooms" target="_blank">writing rooms</a> and even directors, who, I
think it's pretty well understood at this point, are there to fill a seat
while studio or project leads control the actual meaningful decisions. These
technologies hand power to those studio and project leads, who can simply
send films back to the effects studios for recuts and virtual reshoots until
they're satisfied.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Now, isn't it interesting that in parallel to this I'm seeing a bunch of
discourse about how "auteur directors" are holding Hollywood back? Not to
"in my day", but IN MY DAY there was some cultural understanding of the
"executive" or nebulously the money men at a studio having a malign
influence on art because of the demands they imposed on artists. Hence, "executive meddling". It kind of feels like the
teeth of "executive meddler" as a charge got blunted sometime in the last
few decades, in the same way a charge of being a "sellout", or engaging in
"payola", or being an "industry plant" lost their power. I'm not
actually sure that people... care anymore whether or not something is a
naked cynical cash grab. Meanwhile the "Auteur" has become a kind of all
purpose boogeyman discursively, applied pejoratively to everyone from film
directors who have the nerve to say they don't much care for superheroes, to
artists and writers angry about their work being stolen by corporations and
money men.</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Actually, it was that aspect, exemplified not in films but in videogames,
the game Disco Elysium in particular, that helped the Executive Auteur start
to click for me. It wasn't even the
<a href="https://medium.com/@martinluiga/the-dissolution-of-the-za-um-cultural-association-779788390a03" rev="en_rl_none">shocking announcement by Martin Luiga</a>
that the ZA/UM collective was dissolved and that founding members of the
collective who had developed Disco Elysium's world, art, and writing had
left the corporation ZA/UM that did it. Rather, I started to put the pieces
together when
<a href="https://twitter.com/studioZAUM/status/1576982903678197761" rev="en_rl_none">current ZA/UM heads released a statement</a>
that Disco Elysium was a "collective effort", and some fans took the hint
and began denouncing critics as "auteurists" not respecting the other people
at the studio who made the game. This only increased with the ZA/UM studio
releasing further rather threadbare statements claiming that (unspecified)
members of the team had been fired for being abusive. People easily took up
this narrative, again with reference to auteur theory: ah, of course, that's
how Auteurs are, don't you know. Tyrants, the lot of them!
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I found this dizzying and nauseating. The game was a collective effort? Well
of course, but this collective surely included the workers who
*wrote the damn game and developed the artwork*--now ousted. A whole
critical line supposedly elevating the rights of workers, used to justify
treating those workers as... replaceable! And moreover, their contribution diminished precisely because laying any claim to creative production was "auteurist!"
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>But just what is this fearsome beast, the "auteur"?</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Strip back the cultural cruft and the theoretical approach is actually
relatively straightforward. It's an approach to film (and, off and on, video games, comics, and other collaborative art fields) that treats the director as the ultimate author of a work.
Other modes of criticism might (somewhat logically) emphasize screenwriters
as authors, but for auteur theorists what matters is less the script and
more how a script is put on the screen, how the mise en scene is
constructed. Auteur theorists emphasize how the cinematography of a
particular director operates over their whole career, and determine "great"
directors based on this comprehensive appraisal.
Auteur directors--at least in the contemporary imagination--assert creative
control over all aspects of the film, sometimes acting as screenwriter
or even performers, with other workers on the film taking a subordinate
role.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
There's some good reasons to be skeptical of auteur theory. Certainly it's
acquired a dubious pal in recent years as we've culturally
reexamined the treatment of, say, female actors and crew by some of the
Great Film Directors. If auteur theory rose to prominence in part due to the
brilliance of a new wave of directors in the middle of the 20th century,
it's not surprising it fell from grace alongside figures like Roman Polanski
and Woody Allen. Maybe this is a bit unfair to directors specifically--Harvey Weinstein was famously not a director of much besides "The Gnomes' Great Adventure", for example--but the theory's emphasis on singular
authorial control DOES conspicuously line up with other systems of power,
exploitation, and abuse in Hollywood.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Part of that exploitation is tied up in the theory's treatment of film
workers. If the film ultimately comes from the vision of the director, what
does it really matter who acts in the film or writes the script, let alone
who does the lowly work of costume design, set dressing, lighting, and sound
engineering? Auteur theory sort of... doesn't care. So a big part of the
push against auteur theory's dominance comes from a desire to make the whole
range of workers visible, ideally as part of a broader push for labor power.
It seems notable in this that auteur driven creative rights movements, most
notably the creator rights movement in comics, have tended to abandon less
"essential" workers in their fields (colorists, letterers) and it seems
equally inescapable that these movements have made precious little progress:
the field of comics remains an exploitative mess.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Disturbingly, the arguments in favor of exploitation are evolving to
appropriate this criticism. Any one group of workers can be pitted against
another: if you point out how directors are increasingly guns for hire,
you're diminishing the contribution of other workers on franchises. If you
suggest something is lost when art production is handed over to algorithms
you're gatekeeping. This new discourse postures at egalitarianism in order
to put workers on a level: all replaceable. Who does this actually serve
though? The executive auteur, like I already noted, is not necessarily a guy.
Rather what people seem to be privileging is the franchise, the intellectual
property and its landlords.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>The development of Disney lifestylism had a lot to do with this, of course. It's a concerted
strategy by the corporation to produce "Disney families". I've known
families that would ONLY show their kids Disney films. And certainly no
Disney Adult knows or cares really who directed the live action Lion King or
Dumbo, any more than anyone but weird wiki obsessives (auteur theorists of
distinction!) care who directed the direct to video Lady and the Tramp
sequel. It's just, you know... Disney.</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>It goes far beyond Disney, though. Who didn't sigh with relief when George
Lucas sold off Star Wars to people who might "manage" the franchise
properly? Isn't it important that a licensed shared world fiction be above
all consistent with itself and kept broadly relatable? Do not I repeat do
not try to produce a deconstructive work like The Homestuck Epilogues! And <a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2020/12/culture-kept-in-its-coffin-how-netflix.html" target="_blank">I've already
written about</a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v2qMztQ4Mg" target="_blank">Sarah has produced an excellent video about</a>, Netflix
deliberately homogenizing and kneecapping their products in order to ensure
that it is Netflix itself rather than Sense8, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, The Get Down, or
Godzilla Singular Point that develops a following and fandom.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>And the most supreme irony of all?</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
This is exactly the kind of calcification and transformation of creative
professionals into mere technicians and fabricators that Auteur Theory originally fought against!
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Auteur theory emerged in France (the clue is in the "eu") to challenge a
local film industry totally ossified. The industry gets described in Remi
Lanzoni's history of French Cinema almost like a medieval guild, a weird
feudal holdout where directors slowly, over two decades potentially (!),
rose through the ranks from apprentice to master. The end goal was to become
essentially a technician-director, someone who competently oversaw the
adaptation of an existing text through the screenwriter (the author of the
film) into a film according to rigid technical specifications. It can sound
less like a film production as we understand it now and more like the
production of an illuminated manuscript.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Auteur Theory arrived on the scene at the same time as the French New Wave
and, critically, the development of cheaper hand held cameras that allowed
these directors to explode the calcified hierarchy of production. It makes
sense that theory would arrive to, as auteur theorist Andrew Sarris memorably puts it, blow
up the crusty pyramid of Master Directors that made it impossible to imagine
anything new not already "pioneered" by someone in the silent era. Most
intriguingly, <a href="https://alexwinter.com/media/pdfs/andrew_sarris_notes_on_the-auteur_theory_in_1962.pdf" target="_blank">he points out that</a> the methods of filming are so codified
that:
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div style="padding-left: 40px;">
"it is possible to become a director without knowing too much about the
technical side, even the crucial functions of photography and editing. An
expert production crew could probably cover up for a chimpanzee in the
director's chair. How do you tell the genuine director from the
quasichimpanzee? After a given number of films, a pattern is established."
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
In particular the American and British critics who took up the auteur banner
were interested in reclaiming directors as meaningful contributors within
the American studio system. By examining an entire career, the specific
aesthetic signature of the author-director might be excavated out of even
gun for hire schlock. Maybe that's the source of some of our problems now,
though. After all, in her <a href="https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/1210726" target="_blank">iconic</a> <a href="https://sci-hub.ru/10.2307/3185951" target="_blank">flame war</a> with Andrew
Sarris, Pauline Kael is at pains to point out how quickly auteur theory
became a way of justifying exactly that commercial garbage--stuff that, she
notes, was successful precisely when the auteur theorists were kids. Worse,
they not only diminish the work of screenwriters and scripts entirely, but
due to their emphasis on how the director's signature emerges in the tension
between a script and the mise en scene, they wind up arguing that a writer
and director of his own chosen projects like Ingmar Bergman *by necessity*
has an "undeveloped" style!
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Is it so big a leap from viewing the director this way to just... tossing
the director aside and ascribing mise en scene to a studio? Every time we
remark to a friend that it's too bad everything on Netflix looks, you know, *Like That*, or all adult animation looks, you know, *Like That*, we're
essentially doing Executive Auteurism. The flip side of this critical
version of it is a celebratory one where a kind of studio genius emerges and
we can talk about the Pixar style and the like.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
It turns out that from a studio perspective, everything is much easier to
produce when your entire staff is quasichimpanzees, following rote
instructions. Art poses all sorts of difficulties. Much easier to just use a
near monopoly to force your films to dominate theaters, and produce them the
way you'd produce all the other goods that used to be made by hand: via
factory line. And these franchise managers and money men get to pat
themselves on the back, because they're the true Authors of these works.
They're real artists.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>*Are* they real artists, though?</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I was complaining about how gnarly this article is last night to Sarah and
she, sleepy, groaned "If writing was easy people wouldn't be writing
algorithms to do it for us." That's sort of the point, isn't it? This is
probably going to be controversial but let me offer a suggestion: it's
relatively easy to make art (just declaring something art can do the
trick!). It's hard work to actually *be an artist*. Take my own work as an
example. It was pretty easy to make one game (A Host of Gentle Terrors) and
one comic (On The Tracks of an Angry God). Making more than one, engaging in
the artist practice of game making and comic making, has posed me a lot more
problems! I think this is a pretty common struggle: once you've created
something once, operating at the level of artistic production and mastery of
medium that you *went in having*, I think you're going to inevitably have
some idea of where you want to push, expand, do better. But now friction
sets in as your idea of what comes next collides with the limits of your
skills, the material realities of your medium, and so on.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I find that people in other fields--particularly STEM let's be
honest--undervalue this process. You can regularly catch them making
dismissive comments about how they can't imagine making a bunch of chair
legs and finding that a satisfying existence. I guess, in that sense, a lot
of this type of person's contempt for the arts runs parallel to their
contempt for all sorts of labor. The conviction that once you've done
something for the first time all the novelty is gone might ring true.
Novelty's sure part of the fun for me! But isn't it sort of childish to just
do the easy bit, and then rationalize not doing the hard work of continuing,
growing, and developing with "well, I've already mastered all the *novel
pleasure* to be had here"?
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Maybe that's why so many contemporary super star artists--beloved of rich
advertisers like Charles Saatchi--seem to have no particular artistic vision
besides a vague "postmodern" or "pop" noodling. Contrast that with the clear
desire to master a medium that you get on <a href="https://www.obscenesluts.com/" target="_blank">a show like Carta Monir and Skye
Novara's sex work podcast "I Know It When I See It"</a>. Part of what makes the
show compelling is their discussions on how a vision for a shoot and the process of producing
it within physical human limits, time and space constraints, and so on
affect each other. When Monir talks, for example, about having to radically
readjust a shoot where she was to be submerged in an industrial tank, due to
the coldness of the water pushing her body temperature dangerously low, the
sense she gives off is not of telling a wacky anecdote but presenting a
humorous but significant setback to her artistic vision. It's of interest
precisely because of its intellectual component (how can we achieve this
particular artistic image in the face of these newfound constraints) and
because it entails Monir and her crew having a real direct stake in the
outcome. I don't think every artistic process need demand direct physical
danger, but on reflection I'd probably respect it a lot more if Damien Hirst
had to get in the tank with his stupid shark! And he'd probably wind up
having more to say than "look what an expensive skull I can <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tXIYBFbUjs">pay someone to fabricate for me</a>!"
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Doing art is so hard though. Wouldn't it be marvelous if you could just snap
your fingers and someone could skate over all that friction for you? I mean,
of course, your ideas won't have to dialectically respond to the experiments
with your medium, they won't be challenged by your own limits, forcing you
to innovate. You won't have actually worked your intellect much at all.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Would it be that surprising if your ideas remained facile, commercial,
generic, and repetitive?
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Boy it sure would be unfortunate if we structured the entirety of art
production, from "high" to "low", around a system where franchise managers
and executive producers and marketing consultants could simply command an
interchangeable workforce of replaceable fabricators to generate whatever
some marketing analytics or someone's unexamined preferences demand! It'd be
a real fine environment for breeding stunted man children, nepo hires, and
shallow showmen while the people who actually do the art are increasingly
overworked, burnt out, and creatively voiceless! A culture driven by this
kind of production might, say, return endlessly to the same franchises that
were popular when they were kids in the 80s, recycling the same material
over and over with a more saccharine color grading. It could do no else, and
maybe it's no surprise that popular discourse warps to accommodate an approach to art that is structurally inescapable and ubiquitous.</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Does a desire to assert the value of art made by engaged artists mean we
should return to Auteur Theory? Well... no. I mean, for one thing, as I
pointed out, the whole original construction of auteur theory feels barely
recognizable today. Nothing about this view of the artist as someone engaged
in the dialectical process of production suggests that a film or game
director is a sole author, though it DOES suggest looking at one person's
career might have critical value. Instead I think it suggests a radically pro-worker
perspective that upends both auteur theory and the technician-based feudal
system it replaced (and the industrialized system replacing it). It positions even "mere" fabricators as engaged
participants in the production of a whole work. </div><div><br /></div><div>This should, frankly, be a
no brainer. What would Guillermo Del Toro's films be without the creature
design of artists like Wayne Barlow and the incredible physical performances
of Doug Jones? Surely there's a reason why Olivier Assayas after working
with Kristen Stewart on Clouds of Sils Maria cast her again in Personal
Shopper and Irma Vep? These are obvious examples of celebrities in their own
right, but talk to people who work below the line in film and you'll find
out just how critical an electrician can be for a scene's iconic lighting!
This can even, indeed, come in the form of mastering algorithmic elements of
the production pipeline.
<a href="https://www.yedlin.net/DisplayPrepDemo/DispPrep_v2_websize_10mbps.html">Watch Steve Yedlin, cinematographer and Rian Johnson's frequent
collaborator</a>, absolutely responsible for the look and feel of a Johnson film, talk
about the capacity of the production pipeline to make digital cameras
emulate the look of film and tell me that's not someone taking his artistic
practice very, very seriously.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
What the emerging technology and theorization of the executive auteur
proposes to do is render all of these voices interchangeable, subservient to
brand management and the maintenance of franchise. From this warped
perspective, it makes perfect sense that individual artists should retain no
moral rights to their work. Its value as a consumer good transcends any
personal relationship of production. In this sense, the emergence of the
executive auteur seeks to turn the last holdouts of artistic production into
the same alienated and fetishized commodity production as everything else
under capitalism.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
If there's something to be done, it begins with not getting taken in. Don't
buy the bullshit where the crimes of big franchises--an appalling lack of
diversity, and institutional sexism and homophobia, for example--are
projected onto "auteur" boogeymen--people like Quentin Tarantino or Martin
Scorsese who, whatever you think of them or their films, have objectively
leveraged their position to promote *global* cinema. Don't get suckered into
responding to an artist saying they were treated unfairly by a corporation
with "well, a company has lots of employees." We can't necessarily stop the
progression of the tech transforming the industry, but we can at least have
a conversation about whether we want to watch films where "actors" are just a pretty face to be endlessly bowdlerized and puppeted about in postproduction. We can keep doing criticism
that appreciates the *work* of art. And we can push for strong, militant
unionism and the exploration of radical alternate structures for production
that give workers a voice.
</div><div><br /></div><div>We can meet this rampaging beast on the field of battle, discursive and economic, with the belief in human expression and potential that has always been the province of the Left.</div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Age of the Executive Auteur
</h3>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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<br>
<!-- CULTURE KEPT IN ITS COFFIN: HOW THE NETFLIX MODEL BURIES OUR MEDIA HISTORY -->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2020/12/culture-kept-in-its-coffin-how-netflix.html" style="text-decoration: none;" >
<div class="bonusfeature">
<div class="bfpic" style="background-image:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf8ntvirjYyQQAZAIRYfCjc93MM86Epe8PSAblsgaGIROsQEMLghyphenhyphenf-JHz9efPzcz27IRVTDiVCbF0Zf9ym5UbpyEr3heXD8zrW6P5A30beScSKbcr0XkSJuwijZ8I3PqyR2SUdJntGw/w640-h432/utenetflix.jpg);"></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>Culture Kept In Its Coffin: How The Netflix Model Buries Our Media History</h3>
Classic anime like Revolutionary Girl Utena could get a new lease on life if released serially in the present day... but Netflix and its many competitors aren't in the business of preserving or selling art. What do we lose when our media history becomes #Content?
</div>
</div>
</a>
<br>
<!-- TO WATCH ALL MY HEROES SELL A CAR ON TV -->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2022/08/to-watch-all-my-heroes-sell-car-on-tv.html" style="text-decoration: none;" >
<div class="bonusfeature">
<div class="bfpic" style="background-image:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi2Oc-dj8tVha7cNyNQfo-ysPyV3ysOx02qF7hlOtxbhv0mc-e-A9w48J1PWsbpASH5JGrnEJ09mmZVrdCLFvtJEfCZEVfPvwObTEiMhwmGvrfZVpNptB6HTb3y3CoPHE7Nm_TNABjbo7K6keVL1UZHugEiRgsyaf4vYMwEN01U35qfAidaO596maY=w640-h442);"></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>To Watch All My Heroes Sell A Car On TV</h3>
As generations age out of our youth valorizing culture, but find no purchase in our political gerontocracy, what form does the art of those too old to rock and roll and too young to die take?
</div>
</div>
</a>
<br>
<!-- GIVE ME WINGS: DANCE DANCE DANSEUR AND THE CRAFT OF GENDER -->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2022/08/give-me-wings-dance-dance-danseur-and.html" style="text-decoration: none;" >
<div class="bonusfeature">
<div class="bfpic" style="background-image:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiKrT-rkf98Q0Y6QIS5n35woGGU8bxeTxy6ERqaCQMki0bYMmDF2_mjYlo_bxteWLkA_XJ1GaVN-UNkVtGoXkKDvdxR5aH0fnQUIyrsnC84FbcuWFYIS_Mc7Idt0thJ1YgoRM3hC7CJW8Oet8VjIyhRzhjxTYV6pyUrKgOz68PcRxqLVfb2XMCd6Gk=w640-h412);"></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>Give Me Wings: Dance Dance Danseur and the Craft of Gender</h3>
The anime Dance Dance Danseur dwells on the angst of conforming to standards of performance--of art, and of gender. Why does its protagonist seek out the pain of classical ballet training?
</div>
</div>
</a>
<br>
<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>
<!--ON THE TRACKS OF AN ANGRY GOD--><iframe frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/1444342?border_width=2&bg_color=fafbf5&fg_color=2d2522&link_color=50495b&border_color=97959a" width="554" height="169"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/on-the-tracks-of-an-angry-god">On The Tracks Of An Angry God by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-57210923645351826252023-01-13T15:34:00.001-08:002023-01-13T15:34:13.093-08:00Some Nightmares Before Christmas Or Thereabouts Part 3<div><i>Happy Friday 13th! In the middle of January, we have to face the facts. Halloween indeed... ends. Send the season out at last with my top horror movies of all time.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgunbSGnsAhe6kI6Wx0Nh9XgktkgKNAA0hZJZCTwrQdRQ_2ZIPulb8iqtUV5MZXS5gErjs4D4uLA4baxSQ2Mcbq1vmRFbSnAcBNJOIKzHtuFW90v6XV-Y-d-t-xCUx2jWE2mXDLu7U79GnCO1KnI3yAAnB8DLxpnLrNHzdDe74YMpgrezHT5xhpKus" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgunbSGnsAhe6kI6Wx0Nh9XgktkgKNAA0hZJZCTwrQdRQ_2ZIPulb8iqtUV5MZXS5gErjs4D4uLA4baxSQ2Mcbq1vmRFbSnAcBNJOIKzHtuFW90v6XV-Y-d-t-xCUx2jWE2mXDLu7U79GnCO1KnI3yAAnB8DLxpnLrNHzdDe74YMpgrezHT5xhpKus=w640-h480" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div>At long last, the Ghostwatch horror marathon comes down to my top 35 films.</div><div><br /></div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><b>
34. The Lost Boys (1987) </b></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><b>
33. Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)<br />32. The Lighthouse (2019)<br />31.
Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972) <br />
30. Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street (2019)
</b></blockquote>
<div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I previously touched on this documentary about the filming of Nightmare on
Elm Street Part 2, in the context of the AIDS crisis,
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/56230747868041478/6357536694319752283#" rev="en_rl_none" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">in this article about queer horror</span></a>.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
</div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">
<div>
<div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>29. The Wolf House (2018)</b></div></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
This is one of the most mesmerizingly animated films that I probably want
to never see again. I'm genuinely unsure how to even describe animation
that takes an entire physical building and paints characters and scenes on
the walls and furniture. I'm equally unsure how to sum up its contents
other than to say this is a fairy tale (loosely based on the Three Little
Pigs) about Chilean Nazi-founded cult Colonia Dignidad.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
With that summation, my words sort of fail me. How do you follow on a
sentence like "this is a fairy tale about Chilean Nazi-founded cult
Colonia Dignidad"? There's a reason this film is on a list of horror
movies. But I do recommend it, because it really is unlike almost anything
else I've ever seen.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>COMPARE:</div>
<div>The Platform</div>
<div>S He</div>
<div>Mad God</div>
<div><br /></div>
</div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><div><b>28. Under the Skin (2013)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>27. The Blair Witch Project (1999)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>26. Jennifer's Body (2009)</b></div></div></div></blockquote><div><div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I wrote a whole article about how much I liked this movie and how annoyed
I was at its unfair cultural reputation!
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/56230747868041478/6357536694319752283#" rev="en_rl_none" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">It was called We Were Too Stupid For Jennifer's Body</span></a>.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
</div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><div><b>25. Faust (1994)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>24. Interview with the Vampire (1994)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>23. Pulse (Kairo) (2001)</b></div></div></div></blockquote><div><div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/56230747868041478/6357536694319752283#" rev="en_rl_none" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">Sarah did a video about this one.</span></a>
</div>
<div><br /></div>
</div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><div><b>22. The Thing (1982)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>21. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)</b></div></div></div></blockquote><div><div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div><br /></div><div>
Far up the list, it becomes a bit difficult for me to write about these
films. They're (mostly) such well trodden territory, after all. Paradoxically, my
teeth grip more readily on films that have a bit of texture; masterpieces
go down so smooth they end up leaving less critical impressions, or at least less *original* ones.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
Maybe I should double check the cultural consensus more, though.
Sometimes I find I'm nodding along with everyone saying "well this film is
obviously a masterpiece of horror", only to be met with some bewilderment when I start listing the qualities I find masterful.</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre feels a bit like such a case. The film is
certainly a masterpiece of horror from the perspective of being jarring,
terrifying, and disturbing. It disturbed me enough I sought comfort the main way I know how: looking up academic writing on the film. I found a large focus on the sociological, the psychological,
and the socioeconomic. This analysis of the characters as symbols and
types was insightful, but not necessarily what stood out to me as a viewer: the
cinematography, the set dressing as art, the frankly astonishing color
schemes, the edits.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
It's such an aggressive movie affectively. Torturous at times, and not
necessarily the times when someone is being tortured. Long sequences of
frustrating people being just a little bit shitty and weird to each other.
The film is fascinated with cruelty, but that cruelty doesn't reduce only
to hanging people on meathooks, but extends to the cruelty of exclusion or
the venting of interpersonal frustration on a friend or loved one.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Maybe it's a red flag that I find myself identifying at times with
Leatherface and his corpse artist brother. I'm a goth, I can't help
it, I see the artistry in their fucked up taxidermy and bone furniture. I can't
quite get behind arguments about the "semiotic void" that Leatherface in
particular represents, the notion that he is without character, and the
mask reduces him to a kind of nonhuman entity. There's a kind of
stealthily nasty privileging of verbal communication in that semiotically
focused analysis. We actually get plenty of communication from
Leatherface, though it's often ambiguous (is he flailing in frustration in
the stunning final scene? Or is he, strangely, dancing?). I keep coming
back to the scene after he kills Jerry, whacking him on the head and
stuffing the dying Pam back in the freezer. He looks around frantically,
wails, runs to the window and casts around desperately. He sits down
beside the window, rocking and stimming. He seems to calm down and stares
out into the distance. Leatherface is an anxious creature, performing his
murders relatively efficiently rather than cruelly. The chaos of the film
seems to genuinely disturb him, as does the sadistic treatment by his
family. His brother delights in cruelty, but he seems to just be doing his best.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I think approaching the film without talking about its beauty also misses
something essential to the allure of the experience. That iconic shot of the solid red wall
covered in skulls and taxidermy, for example, which sets off the
yellow-green of Leatherface's mask and clothes. I knew of course the film was regarded as having great photography, but I'm still struggling, as I edit this section of this article, to figure out what that horridly beautiful photography means for my actual experience and interpretation of the film</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>I suppose that's
what makes a film at this level a classic: it's a meal you can
return to again and again.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
</div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><div><b>20. Mad God (2022)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>19. Dawn of the Dead (1977)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>18. Young Frankenstein (1974)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>17. Mandy (2018)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>16. Shin Gojira (2016)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>15. Woman in the Dunes (1964)</b></div></div></div></blockquote><div><div>
<div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
It feels a bit glib, or maybe a bit lowbrow, to open a review of a
Japanese New Wave classic beloved by film critics with a statement like
"this film makes sand... scary!" Yet the strange transformation of sand
into a terrifying, indifferent force overwhelmed me as I watched this
film. Much of the film is, after all, shots of sand--sand blown by the
wind, sand shifting, insects struggling and slipping in sand. The metaphor
of the last one is obvious: the film is about a man on vacation who finds
himself tricked into a sand pit and forced to mine out the sand for the
nearby village to sell to cement manufacturers. If he doesn't, he and the
titular "woman in the dunes" who acts as bait will simply be buried alive.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
This film, like Michael Clayton below, is a film I went into looking for
horror, due to its contextual placement in a horror movie marathon. I
didn't have to look hard to find it, though. Its emotional register is one
of creeping dread and suffocation. The woman of the title is a widow, her
husband and child buried somewhere, invisibly, near the hut that is one of
the film's only sets. The possibility of simply vanishing without a trace
into the crushing weight of particles weighs on every moment of the film.
Most disaster movies come nowhere near this movie's achievement, of making
such an innocuous feature of the landscape into a nightmare force.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
It's so effective in part because the film is also suffused with an
existential dread. The longer the film, and the man's imprisonment, stretch
on, the more his conceptual world shrinks to the confines of the pit and
the creeping sand defines his existence. It's remarkable, I think, that
the film winds up in a place of more acute dread than much deliberately fucked up contemporary does, by way of exploring a
psychological state and an existential question about imprisonment, and through its endless shots of shifting, drifting, smothering sand.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>COMPARE:</div>
<div>The Platform</div>
<div>Any Romero zombie film</div>
<div>Sam Was Here</div><div>10 Cloverfield Lane</div></div></div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><div><b>14. Michael Clayton (2007)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>13. Belladonna of Sadness (1973)</b></div></div></div></blockquote><div><div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
</div></div><div><div>
<div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
The murky pool of social media periodically burps up another trending
hashtag about how animation is for adults too, and I'm always disappointed people mean "I'm 30 and think Inside Out is High Art"
rather than films like Belladonna of Sadness deserve more attention. This is
assuredly an Animation For Adults, a dark fairytale whose inciting
incident is the gang rape by a king and his courtiers of the titular
heroine. She responds by making more and more dramatic pacts with a
phallic devil to ultimately become a witch.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
The film is profoundly psychedelic. Much of the music is solidly late
60s/early 70s pop music, but will at moments of extreme crisis or action
spin out into a full on early Pink Floyd style freakout (and indeed, some
of the visuals in the film are suspiciously similar to animations and designs in The
Wall). The music is nothing compared to the visuals, though, which range
from panned-over still storybook illustrations used to provide visuals for
long narration passages, to astonishingly fluid painterly animation, to
strange collaged visuals. There are moments in the film that are like
nothing else I've seen, attempting stuff like animating the pure negative
space obscuring the action. It's a film bound to rewrite your conception
of what is visually possible.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
I wouldn't recommend watching it on psychedelics, though, what with all
the sexual violence, regular violence, and plague death. It is at times a
somewhat harrowing movie, though it always feels like it has a *point*.
What point that is can be complex--Jeanne is a complex antihero, and the
film at times seems to take on the perspective of her persecutors. She is,
after all, a witch who consorts with demons. Part of the fascinating push
and pull of the film comes from moving beyond knee jerk moralizing to see
her--much like The Bride in Kill Bill, or Female Prisoner Scorpion--as heroic and cool
as hell. And without spoiling it, the film absolutely takes the long view
of the fable and its place in history, in a way that might be a little
baffling but is a real gutsy thematic swing.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
The film was a commercial failure that bankrupted its studio. As a corrupt
priest in the film proclaims, however, the soul of a witch killed while
she still retains her pride will live on to haunt the world. Belladonna of
Sadness feels like it haunts works like Revolutionary Girl Utena and its
countless followers, living on in the deep unconscious of contemporary
comics and animation.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>COMPARE</div>
<div>Suspiria (1977)</div>
<div>Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41</div>
<div>The Wolf House</div>
<div>Mandy</div><div>Jennifer's Body</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
</div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><div><b>12. We're All Going to the World's Fair (2022)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>11. Mulholland Drive (2001)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>10. Reanimator and Bride of Reanimator (1985, 1989)</b></div></div></div></blockquote><div><div>
<div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
Surprise, it's a science fiction double feature! And fittingly, the
antihero of these movies, Herbert West, Reanimator, is a little- well,
look. It's going to be hard to get through this without using ANY slurs
but I'm going to do my best. Technically West isn't even the "hero".
That's Dan, the young medical student who becomes West's roommate, and who
West gradually seduces into his macabre innovations in raising the dead.
The films run on West's performance: he's cruel, arrogant, prone to doing
ill advised things when he thinks it will further his ends or, frequently,
when he's simply bored, and clearly besotted with Dan. He is played with
electrifying camp, and it should come as no surprise that he's become a
bit of a Bad Queer Icon (at least, he has among MY friends). Come for the
ludicrous amounts of fake blood; stay for all the ways Herbert is
constantly communicating with Dan by clinging to him, touching his shoulder,
&c.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
Both films are a blast, and they've wound up stitched together in my mind.
I can't help but parse West's jealousy and possessiveness in the first
film in the context of the carrot he dangles in front of Dan in the second
film: the creation of a frankensteined together perfect woman for him. The
second film probably isn't as good, for whatever that's worth, as the
first--it's got a bit of a meandering plot and often lacks clear character
motivations. But it's maybe more interesting and poignant than the
original, centering after all on the production of The Idea Female, in
explicit defiance of God, by a character who's aggressively queer coded.
Moreover we get to see a delightful variety of freaks, the result of what
Dan derisively calls Herbert West's "morbid doodling", a pair of words
that feel immediately iconic.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
An awful lot of contemporary horror, even horror that features seduction
or deals with metaphorical or literal devils, seem not to understand why
anyone would WANT to, say, summon a Cenobite and get shown such sights. These films are so high on
the list precisely because they take such ghoulish delight in their
subject matter. Herbert West has his offputting moments but he's also a
delight to watch, fun in a way that retains an edge a lot of more self
consciously goofy horror comedy lacks. In a time when horror films often
feel more like DARE lectures or after school specials than jaunts into the
darker part of human experience, it feels refreshing that these films
carry out their morbid doodling with glee and, sometimes, jaw dropping bad
taste.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
I am, of course, my own frankensteined together perfect woman, or at least
I'm trying to figure out what that means as I construct myself on the fly
in response to a load of social pressures and expectations, so there's
also a layer of pathos in the climactic creation of Dan's
bride in the second film. But also, what can I say? The top tier of this
list is full of films that run very close to the metal in the circuitry of
my brain. Herbert West belongs on my kin wheel, a character that prompts
for me questions like "could estrogen have made her worse?" These are
films at their heart about being a weird little freak. I guess it's true
what they say: representation matters.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>COMPARE:</div>
<div>Halloween Ends</div>
<div>In The Mouth of Madness</div>
<div>Malignant</div>
<div>Interview with the Vampire</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
</div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><div><b>9. Akira (1988)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>8. Hellraiser (1987)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>7. Night of the Living Dead (1968)</b></div></div></div></blockquote><div><div>
<div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
Oh man what a great movie. My dad turned this on recently, spent the first
15 minutes scoffing at it, and dismissively turned it off. "Schlock."
Mortifying. I don't know, horror is a profoundly subjective art form. I
don't know why it is that I seem to have less natural defenses to it, an
overactive imagination that heightens the terror. I don't know why I also
return to the things that scare me over and over. Maybe the lack of
defenses is precisely what makes horror work for me as a genre: a certain
susceptibility that smooths over awkward acting or amateur cutting or
moments of camp. Maybe Night of the Living Dead is a bit schlocky. It's
number 7 on MY list though.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>COMPARE:</div>
<div>every other zombie movie ever.</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
</div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><div><div><b>6. Possession (1981)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>5. Halloween (1978)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>4. A Field in England (2013)</b></div></div></div><div><div><div><b>3. Annihilation (2018)</b></div></div></div></blockquote><div><div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2020/10/galaxy-brained-annihilation-and-queer.html" rev="en_rl_none"><span style="color: black;">I explained the ending of Annihilation in this article.</span></a>
</div>
<div><br /></div>
</div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>2. Crimes of the Future (2022)</b></div></div></div></blockquote><div><div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Oh you'd better believe I plan to talk about THIS one at some point.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
</div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>1. Ghostwatch (1992)</b></div></div></div></blockquote><div><div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div><br /></div><div>Really? Number one horror, of all time? Yeah why not.</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
Really though, why not? I suppose it comes with some historical baggage,
of course. Infamously, like most good things produced in England, it was
sharply criticized by the usual suspect (angry mums; shitrag newspapers)
and the producers had to apologize for, essentially, producing a good
horror movie. The thrust of the critique lay with its conceit: the entire
film is framed as a live BBC special investigation into a haunted house,
complete with a live studio and call board, and a number of actual BBC
reporters playing themselves. It's another film that employs the
methodologies, then, of found footage, though notably it predated The
Blair Witch Project by seven years. Actually, it's a particularly
remarkable example of the genre because so much of its runtime is played
completely straight as a BBC live broadcast. All of this heightens the
terror as the film slides into chaos.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
When you hear people tell ghost stories, like actual stories of encounters
with Weird Shit, it's remarkably similar to any other anecdote. There
might be an extra layer of menace, but unless you can rely on the
comforting blanket of a grand cosmic plan to explain everything post
facto, life is full of baffling events. How I would tell the story of my
sister finding a single cleanly severed deer leg in an abandoned cement
mill, or the time I saw a UFO, or sharing a bus with someone in a full
devil costume, are not ultimately that different. They're just... weird things that happened. Ghostwatch captures this
sensibility well: supernatural events are conveyed with the same sense of
beleaguered, shrugging matter-of-factness as real anecdotes about animal
cruelty or abuse. The primary difference is whether or not you then have a
sneering Professional Skeptic (a job combining the worst qualities of
reporters, TED talkers, STEMlords, and people famous for being famous)
calling you an attention whore.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
This down to earth framing is the engine for the film's terrifying
progression, as accumulated anecdotes become a nightmarish system. For The
Blair Witch Project seven years later, the pit drop feeling comes after a
grinding endurance test. Ghostwatch's moments like this ("You're the expert, what IS happening out there?" "I don't know.") are accentuated precisely
because you get to watch characters who all along have continued to play
the show as a series of laughs or as an academic exercise realize that something has gone truly,
horribly wrong while they weren't paying attention. The live TV broadcast
setting perfectly accentuates this, with the vagueries and chaos of
production creating a fog of war as events reach their climax.</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
This makes it a little nerve-wracking on repeat viewing, as awareness of
the catastrophe has hit you, the viewer, and you watch it slowly filter
through the whole chain of production with agonizing slowness, as reporters try to fill what they perceive as dead air. There's enough
detail, enough weird texture and swerves to the narrative, resulting from
this commitment to capturing a sense of live chaos, that this repeat
viewing becomes rewarding. Oh, and it doesn't hurt that you can play the
fun group game of "spot the ghost". Every year I try to spot each early
manifestation of Pipes, the central haunting in the story. I get about
half.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
It's the repeated obligatory viewings (the name of our discord
channel comes from this special, if you hadn't put that together yet, and so far we've watched Ghostwatch every year) that
have raised it so high on my list. It's a surprisingly elastic film; it
holds up to the pressure of repeated observation in a group setting really
well. More than that, it's such an interesting point of discussion. Fair
warning, Pipes is described as being possessed by another (female) ghost
in a way that feels at times uncomfortably similar to the contemporary
TERF political disease coming out of England. Paradoxically, this has only
made the film more intriguing to us. It feels at times like a lens into
every middle class English ex-imperial anxiety and derangement, resulting in a climax
that feels like all of this society's repressed fears boiling violently to
the surface. It's not unproblematic, but it also grounds the film in a way
that feels more significant than either the ploddingly literal approach of
horror "message movies", or the rather abstracted approach of much found
footage ("what if a fucked up thing happened and we caught it on tape").
Each anecdote in the film is realistically just an odd little incident;
the horror is in the hints of a deeper social sickness that the hapless
film crew has accidentally brought to the surface.
</div><div><br /></div>
<div><span data-markholder="true"></span></div>
<div>
There's an irony, then, that Ghostwatch found its way so far up the list
because of our collective reception of it. There's something special about
recreating (totally ahistorically of course given the 1992 broadcast
preceded the popular Internet) a sense of collective viewership, the
spirit of being drawn into a real Event. This review project as a whole is
a testament to how important subjective and collective experience is to my
own understanding of films and genre. I'm happy, in this context, to recommend Ghostwatch as my top horror
film of all time.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
</div>
</div>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Some Nightmares Before Christmas Or Thereabouts Part 3
</h3>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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<br>
<!-- GALAXY BRAINED: ANNIHILATION AND QUEER COSMIC HORROR -->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2020/10/galaxy-brained-annihilation-and-queer.html" style="text-decoration: none;" >
<div class="bonusfeature">
<div class="bfpic" style="background-image:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcUxvTetVfMz-h2_CwrXq7rOsgJ0aP_OWAVRYoPXwEEsKRZ_vjZRFqK1gPfWmKz5bzpxSBGV6-rUpIq9nANHergFL1dew5nGKjfjlwXK0gP19QJtl7yR0lgWHteGs9Zxbr1Fnrdc8xXw/w640-h426/Galaxy+Eye.jpg);"></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>Galaxy Brained: Annihilation and Queer Cosmic Horror</h3>
Annihilation: The Ending Explained!!!
</div>
</div>
</a>
<br>
<!-- WE WERE TOO STUPID FOR JENNIFER'S BODY -->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2021/10/we-were-too-stupid-for-jennifers-body.html" style="text-decoration: none;" >
<div class="bonusfeature">
<div class="bfpic" style="background-image:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisyCa4pEz767SDd5N4PiermGJhpqiqD3P6GK5AEFxioWH9j48VwsxMJk492mxYG66qcwYfkMR9-Yq88YkAc9tqv6MUhZrtZuDcc5v1FyM3njJYCDrg7yrP-cmSDx8k1vrIrG8wpO3Kbw/w640-h360/Screenshot+%252816%2529.png);"></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>We Were Too Stupid For Jennifer's Body</h3>
As Jennifer's Body goes from flop to feminist cult classic, its failure gets blamed on lousy marketing. But the film's cynical jokes about 9/11 memorialization suggest the fault was with audiences: we were too stupid for Jennifer's Body.
</div>
</div>
</a>
<br>
<!-- SOME NIGHTMARES BEFORE CHRISTMAS OR THEREABOUTS PART 2 -->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2022/12/some-nightmares-before-christmas-or_22.html" style="text-decoration: none;" >
<div class="bonusfeature">
<div class="bfpic" style="background-image:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiFTvyyjkp4tp-XTY4lwwKC33Csiso8O_uchBLYkhC8n8ujRS1PhUC_WsXILL6F01iBdCEtF67BS3SeZWODXucdc3_GZuGExFEPwOsNbGOyCq2CrY5a0Wfk_44y5b9o3MVhIIBzzwcK6GHUV1F7wvjHIfL-vP4CaXr9X8ed8NYFb5_hOZSI83z3VPg=w640-h480);"></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>Some Nightmares Before Christmas Or Thereabouts Part 2</h3>
The seasonal countdown of horror movies continues, with werewolves as romantic metaphor, the horror of adolescence, and a bunch of films whose place on this list is real unstable.
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</a>
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<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>
<!--AHOGT--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/123100?bg_color=61003a&fg_color=ffc38a&link_color=006b24&border_color=caffb3" width="552"></iframe>
<!--ON THE TRACKS OF AN ANGRY GOD--><iframe frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/1444342?border_width=2&bg_color=fafbf5&fg_color=2d2522&link_color=50495b&border_color=97959a" width="554" height="169"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/on-the-tracks-of-an-angry-god">On The Tracks Of An Angry God by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-63575366943197522832022-12-22T10:31:00.000-08:002022-12-22T10:31:34.196-08:00Some Nightmares Before Christmas Or Thereabouts Pt 2<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;">
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<i>The seasonal countdown of horror movies continues, with werewolves as romantic metaphor, the horror of adolescence, and a bunch of films whose place on this list is real unstable.</i>
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<a
href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2022/12/some-nightmares-before-christmas-or.html"
target="_blank"
>Where were we? Oh yes</a
>:
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<b><br /></b>
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<blockquote
style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"
>
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<b>58. Kwaidan (1964)</b>
</div>
<div><b>55. Tragedy Girls (2017)</b></div>
<div><b>54. The Blob (1988)</b></div>
<div><b>53. Gojira (1954)</b></div>
<div><b>52. Cure (1997)</b></div>
<div><b>51. NOPE (2022)</b></div>
</blockquote>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Nope is the first Jordan Peele film I've ever seen, and objectively it should
be higher on the list. Subjectively, it's 51.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
That's not really a knock on the film, though, so much as a window into the
weird, specific process I used to create this list. Nope is a film I expect to
grow on me. I certainly haven't stopped thinking about it since I watched it.
It's often a little bit bizarre and inaccessible, with elements of the
narrative not quite meshing together in direct causal ways. I get the
impression that a number of folks assumed the opening scene, where a
chimpanzee goes on a murderous rampage through a sitcom filming, was directly
connected to what the film hints is an alien menace. Nope! I don't even think
that's a *wrong* reading, exactly. The film's language and genre conventions
and fixation on the limits of our ability to explain fluke events makes it a
perfectly plausible preliminary reading.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I wouldn't characterize the ongoing revisions of those expectations as a
twist, exactly, so much as just, you know, the process of reading. It being at
51 on the list is, I suppose, my way of acknowledging how the film makes me
uneasy, how that process of reading is going to be an ongoing one. Suspiria
2018 is somewhat higher on the list this year, as I've started to process it
more and found myself returning to think about it repeatedly. Last year it
would've probably been around here.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
There are things about the film that feel genuinely hard to swallow. For one
thing, it's tonally strange. Sometimes it's almost horror comedy. If anything,
that heightens the moments when violence strikes: swiftly, mercilessly, and
often fairly meaninglessly. An awful lot of people die in this movie in a way
that genuinely makes my skin crawl, and the worst part is the whole time I
found myself thinking "ok but SURELY he's not gonna just-". Dear reader. He
absolutely is gonna just. The film is also laden with potential hooks for
analysis. It feels self consciously about Hollywood and celebrity as a kind of
consuming maw, in a way that resonated with me precisely because Jordan Peele
is one of the few contemporary directors who actually does live up to the
hype. Is that a distorting feature, that immersion in Hollywood politics and
culture? Is it a distorting feature that I go in hyper aware of Peele's place
in contemporary entertainment, a place so intimidating that till now I've kept
thinking "well, I should hold off watching Get Out until I'm *really in the
right headspace to appreciate it*"? I'm not sure how to resolve those
questions, and that does intrigue me even as I feel like I'm left not totally
knowing what to think of the movie.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I'm finding, weirdly, that as I go through this list it's not the high or low
ends that I'm most compelled to write and think about. Those feel like either
solved problems, or unsolvable ones. It's this space in the middle where I
find films like Nope, elusive but not completely beyond comprehension,
intriguing but with a power or alienness that defies easy engagement.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>COMPARE:</div>
<div>Little Shop of Horrors</div>
<div>10 Cloverfield Lane</div>
<div>In the Mouth of Madness</div>
<div>Under the Skin</div>
<div><br /></div>
<blockquote
style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"
>
<div><b>50. Let The Right One In (2008)</b></div>
<div><b>49. One Cut of the Dead (2017)</b></div>
</blockquote>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
How do you talk about One Cut of the Dead? It's tricky, because this is a film
that structurally unfolds, transforming into something completely different
from its start. I guess that's a literally flowery way of saying "this is a
film with a great big Twist and I don't want to give that Twist away." And
unlike Nope I really do think it constitutes a decided Twist (though don't ask
me to come up with a strict taxonomy for where the two split apart). I do
think it's worth it to experience the film fresh so that you can experience
what it's like to piece together how it all fits together. I promise, it's not
a let down.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Though, that said, I think that framing betrays a certain nervousness about
the film, a sense that maybe if the film's transformations got spoiled it
just... wouldn't quite hold up as well. That's how the film seems to have
wound up in the middle of the pack here, despite being such a hit, and despite
how much I enjoyed the trick in the moment. I got what it was doing, and
enjoyed it, and I'm not sure I necessarily need to get anything more from it
on a rewatch.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>Unless I wanted to show it to someone who had never seen it before.</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
How the heck would I *sell* a friend on it though? There's always the power of
my own immaculate reputation as exemplified by this objectively correct list,
but I think it's possible to at least gesture at the experience of the film
without going too far into specifics. The film's title already gives away the
conceit: it's a single cut zombie horror film. Sorta Blair Witch by way of
Evil Dead 2, or maybe the other way around. And then it's something more.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
If it's got one trick, that one trick is worth seeing performed masterfully.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>COMPARE:</div>
<div>Evil Dead 2</div>
<div>Night of the Living Dead</div>
<div>Blair Witch Project</div>
<div><br /></div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;">
<div style="text-align: left;"><b>48. November (2017)</b></div>
</blockquote>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I got quite a ways into my mental plan for this review before I remembered,
oh, right, I should probably mention that the movie's shot in black and white,
huh. It sort of slipped my mind. The colorless photography feels fitting for
the subject, a medieval folktale about unrequited love and alliances with
supernatural powers, not just because the story is about old things and as we
all know the past was in black and white. No, it feels purposeful, a way of
stylistically focusing on light and shadow and murky twilight, the paleness of
snow and the dead that walk and visit the living, the grime of mud that covers
a girl that shapeshifts between human and wolf, the shifting boundaries of
good and evil.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
November is part of this strange contemporary moment we're having of a return
to medievalism, an attempt I suppose to understand the "dark ages" not as
empty homogenous time acting as the prelude to enlightened modernity but
history in its own right. The characters in November are anything but
homogenous, certainly not homogenously Christian. Selling ones soul to the
devil in order to build a Kratt, a kind of farm-tool-and-bone servant, is
standard practice; the protagonist is (without this being remarked upon) a
werewolf who consorts with witches... hell EVERYONE seems to consort with
witches and the boundary between witchcraft and just practical life skills is
decidedly fuzzy. Visiting nobility from Germany are bewildered by these
seeming unchristianized, uncivilized peasant traditions. The approach of the
film is to take these folkloric elements and go, ok, how would this operate
for these characters, assuming the peasantry are, you know, just people, like
us?
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Mostly, people try to do everything they can to make their hardscrabble lives
easier, whether it be through mundane theft or using currants to trick the
devil into thinking they've signed their souls over with blood in return for a
living tool servant. More often than not, this leads in the long term to
disaster. The film is decidedly a tragic one, the mechanisms of its plot
slowly winding toward a quietly apocalyptic conclusion. I don't get the
feeling that it's passing moral judgment on these characters, really, though.
Sometimes shit just happens. Sometimes you get the living avatar of the
Plague, and sometimes the Plague gets you. The characters are tragically
flawed, but largely sympathetic.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Well, there's one rape scene that I honestly found offputting, kind of weirdly
shot compared to the rest of the film, and a bit unnecessary? Look, November
is also a fucking *weird* movie. It has an episodic structure, a bunch of odd
characters and plot threads running around, and its desire to present the
magical elements as simply a part of the lived and natural world of the
characters means you sometimes just have to kinda roll with the obtuse shit
it's throwing at you. It's the kind of film that I think would benefit from a
rewatch. It's also often very funny, in an absurdist folktale sort of way,
though never becoming, you know, Python-esque. Early on someone thoughtlessly
commands a Kratt to build a ladder out of bread, and the thing gets so upset
at the obvious impossibility that it explodes. It's great.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
What's the appeal of folk horror at this moment, I wonder? Well, ok, notable:
some of the other stuff on this list that feels like folktale or fairytale
horror came from the 80s or 90s, and a lot of it is from Europe. This film is
based on a frustratingly untranslated Estonian novel. Still, I think it's
interesting what the framing opens up in terms of an ability to tell this sort
of episodic, weird, wandering tale that gleefully defies the Hollywood Style.
I wouldn't say it's remotely *nostalgic* for premodern Europe. But I think it
might be for a form of pre-corporate storytelling, and the strange moments of
high contrast and muddy greys that are possible through a storytelling that
simply follows characters through their lives without trying to color code the
world into Good Guys and Bad Guys.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
And hey as the rest of this list attests, I'll always make time for a tragic
werewolf girl.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>COMPARE:</div>
<div>The VVitch</div>
<div>The Company of Wolves</div>
<div>Faust</div>
<div>The Masque of the Red Death</div>
<div>A Field in England</div>
<div><br /></div>
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style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"
>
<b>47. Scanners (1981)</b>
</blockquote>
<div>
<b><br /></b>
</div>
<div>
I heard this movie, about very autistically coded psychics battling over whose
vision for the future of humanity would prevail, was a lesser Cronenberg. It's
not! It's got that weird Cronenberg tendency to have plot threads that sort of
truncate or go nowhere but comparatively it's a pretty tight film that does
actually rely on the strength of thriller intrigue to keep everything working.
It's worth checking out!
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;">
<div><br /></div>
<div>
<div><b>46. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)</b></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
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>
<div>
<div style="text-align: left;"><b>45. Tetsuo The Iron Man (1989)</b></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: left;"><b>44. Evil Dead 2 (1987)</b></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: left;"><b>43. Ginger Snaps (2000)</b></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<div>
<b><br /></b>
</div>
<div>
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Jennifer's Body feels like a last gasp of good cinema for a while
post-9/11; Ginger Snaps is almost perfectly the last gasp pre-9/11.
(Probably notable that Ginger Snaps is Canadian, but maybe less notable
than Canadians would have you believe.) It's a grungy, nasty film in a lot
of ways. Jennifer's Body gets some catharsis into the mix; Ginger Snaps by
the end really is a horror movie, a rolling tragedy that gradually loses
all the Heathers-esque snark of the opening for real sincere sorrow.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The central metaphor of Ginger Snaps--lycanthropy as STD and/or the onset
of puberty--feels obvious and on the nose, but the fact that it can't
quite make up its mind which of those things it represents makes the
metaphor significantly more interesting. This isn't a film that lives or
dies on the strength of its metaphorical representation. Rather, it lives
(and dies) with the apocalyptically codependent relationship between its
two main characters, the titular Ginger and her sister Brigitte. The
adolescent sexuality stuff is just the grimy water in which the two girls
tread.
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
It connected for me because I was also a weird morbid kid, though I was
nowhere near as talented as these two. And god damn they are talented:
mostly they spend their time producing extremely elaborate horror movie
polaroids of their own murders and suicides. Like, real professional grade
stuff. I never felt like the film was pathologizing that impulse in
particular, and the film is very interested in Ginger as a tragic figure.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
It is also, however, a film primarily from Brigitte's perspective as she
slowly comes to terms with a realization I think anyone who grew up with
goths and metalheads and people who read Johnny the Homicidal Maniac will be familiar with. It
is the realization that the person you thought you were playing a game
with does, in fact, mean it. That someone you love might be, if not a bad
person, then at least a dangerous one, someone who can and will hurt you.
"Toxicity" gets thrown around in a fairly obnoxious way these days, one of
the many words the internet discourse has rendered meaningless through
overapplication, but the relationship between Ginger and Brigitte turns
increasingly toxic as the film goes on and Brigitte realizes that their
maxim of "out by sixteen or dead on the scene, but together forever" is
less a vow of staying true to themselves and each other than it is,
sincerely, a suicide pact Ginger takes very seriously. And like Jennifer's
Body, the film is messily wrapped up in queer desire all the more
troubling for its incestuous nature.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
If Ginger was just a monster, or the love between the sisters was less
sincere, the film wouldn't work at all. The murkiness of its metaphors,
the absence of straightforward heroes and villains, the way that Ginger,
much like JD in Heathers, is plausibly charismatic and relatable, the way
it's hard to tell how much of Ginger's bloodlust was always there and how
much is the result of her tragic accidental werewolfism... all of these
things make the film compelling to think about. But ultimately all this
complexity relies on a very simple story: realizing that someone you love
might just be a monster, but still not wanting to let go, even at the cost
of your own life.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>COMPARE:</div>
<div>The Lost Boys</div>
<div>Tragedy Girls</div>
<div>Jennifer's Body</div>
<div><br /></div>
</div>
</div>
<blockquote
style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"
>
<div>
<div><b>42. Personal Shopper (2016)</b></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: left;"><b>41. Dracula (1992)</b> </div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
You will note that this Dracula, which has a werewolf sex scene, has been
ranked twice as high as Dracula (1931), which infamously does not have a
werewolf sex scene.
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>
</div>
</div>
<blockquote
style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"
>
<div>
<div><b>40. Suspiria (2018)</b></div>
</div>
<div>
<div><b>39. 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)</b></div>
</div>
<div>
<div><b>38. Malignant (2022)</b></div>
</div>
<div>
<div><b>37. In The Mouth of Madness (1994)</b></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<div>
<b><br /></b>
</div>
<div>
I heard this movie, about Stephen King inviting Outer Gods into reality, was
a lesser Carpenter. It's not! It's a wild time, one of the best attempts at
capturing the vibes of the Weird, the sense of reality inexorably in subtle
ways warping into something impossible. It absolutely deserves to be in the
horror pantheon if for no other reason than the iconic refrain: "<a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVJTAHvdD2E"
target="_blank"
>Do you read Sutter Cane?</a
>"
</div>
<div><br /></div>
</div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;">
<div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>36. The Company of Wolves (1984)</b>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
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I don't understand why this film doesn't have a deranged cult following
like that of Labyrinth.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Well, that's not true. I do get it. Labyrinth and The Company of Wolves
both are fairy tales about adolescent desire and fantasy, the onrushing
terror of the adult world, and, reflexively, about the fairy tales we tell
about those things. They're about dangerous strangers and their allure.
But Labyrinth tells, relatively, a straightforward story with one
protagonist vying against one villain. Company begins in the present day
with one character, sinks into a dream world of a medieval village where
that viewpoint character takes on the role of a peasant girl, and then is
subsumed further into multiple different folk tales recounted to the
peasant girl by various characters. Structurally, it's bizarre and can
feel disjointed as it pushes and pops between narrative layers.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Company is also a story about werewolves, and in fact is (eventually) a
very winding adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood. Labyrinth has some
maybe frightening moments, and there is an ever present sense (once you're
old enough to see it) of the sexual threat and attraction of David Bowie's
Jareth. Company of Wolves on the other hand has a guy clawing his scalded
face off and transforming horrifically into a werewolf of naked muscle and
bone, and much more directly utilizes its wolves as metaphors for sexual
predation.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>I can see it being a bit of a hard sell.</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Yet. When we finished I said I wasn't sure if Company of Wolves was a
"good movie". Sarah replied that if it wasn't, we need to redefine what
"good movie" means. It's 36 on this version of the list so I guess I agree
with her! There's just something so compelling about seeing a fairy tale
that really is for adolescents and adults, like for actual for real. This
is a film that gleefully refuses to simply resolve its internal
contradictions and difficult moments. It feels like a strange evolutionary
bridge from 80s dark fairy tale fantasy to contemporary folk horror
(compare: November, The VVitch). Its most mesmerizing story is about a
young werewolf girl who can't quite find a place in the overworld of the
village, and it shouldn't come as any surprise that it resonates strongly
as a trans allegory,
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DzjEE0ZuKM" rev="en_rl_none"
>as explored in this mesmerizing video essay on it/its pronouns</a
>.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
And, look sorry to keep coming back to Labyrinth but, while trying to
avoid spoiling anything, the two films have *essentially the same ending*,
but whereas the Labyrinth is an empowerment fantasy where its protagonist
realizes her conjured fantasy man has "no power over me", Company
concludes with a vision of wolves rampaging through a mansion and the
sense that fantasy has broken its borders and burst
terrifically/terrifyingly into the real world. I don't think this is a
condemnation, however. Rather, the film luxuriously expresses the full
danger and thrill of fantasy, the way a folktale or legend or passed on
wisdom can turn and twist and take on new, scary morals. It doesn't hurt
that the film feels like a panacea in an age of awful lighting imposed on
actors standing in front of green screen cgi sets. Everything from giant
mushrooms and oversized toys to werewolf snouts protruding horrifically
from a human's mouth are lush, practical, real, lovingly hand produced.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I still don't know if The Company of Wolves is good, and it's certainly
one you shouldn't go into expecting easy morality or comfortable
situations. But I think it might just be great.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>COMPARE:</div>
<div>November</div>
<div>The VVitch</div>
<div>Ginger Snaps</div>
<div>The Wolf House</div>
</div>
<div><br /></div>
</div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;">
<div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>35. The Mariners vs The Astros (2022)</b>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Like the old saw, this experience was long stretches of boredom punctuated by
moments of terror. The Mariners vs the Astros is a grueling nightmare, but
ultimately an earned and satisfying one. I think there's a rather crude
tendency to associate horror with fear specifically as its one and only
affective register of note. This always bothers me. Of just primal affects
horror can run the whole gamut, not just through subgenres like horror
comedy but through a careful use of disgust, contempt, sadness, (impotent)
fury, and so on. When paired with the phenomenology of a film's duration and
modulation, they can become whole complex experiences of grief, anticipatory
dread, desperation, exhaustion, or escalating schadenfreude.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Somewhat inevitably, a six hour long game of baseball between the
protagonists of the sport, the Mariners, and the seemingly unstoppable arch
villains, the Astros, would have to be a complexly modulated experience. The
nature of such a thing is to fluctuate wildly between moments of hope and
despair.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Granted, usually those moments don't come in the context of 18 scoreless
innings. 18 innings. An absurd record that feels like it can only be
explained with scripting, as a kind of performance art exploration of
audience directed hostility and performer endurance, or maybe a kind of
practical joke. As a work of contemporary horror, it wasn't lacking for the
broken bones I find so characteristic of the moment: one of the
protagonists, Cal Raleigh, endured the closing moments of the game with a
broken thumb, which he ignored to bat repeatedly. Endurance feels like a
characteristic of 21st century horror. In that sense, The Blair Witch
Project feels to me like a marker of things to come, a film about watching a
bunch of miserable people just slowly get harangued into defeat by
supernatural evil. How else could you characterize a game against the
Astros?
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
But whereas boredom and terror is kind of the whole of Blair Witch and so
many other contemporary endurance horror experiences, the Mariners vs Astros
game had constant moments of elation and hope. Six hours of one note would
be a lot to endure, after all. And it didn't hurt that I watched the game
simultaneously with a bunch of friends online tuned into the finale between
a double feature of Rocky Horror and Shock Treatment (we had expected the
game to be over long before the first movie started), and also with a small
cadre of actual people, our friends in Seattle. Actual people, in our
apartment, that we've now been living in for a year after struggling with
eviction and homelessness and what sometimes felt like constant misfortune!
Somehow, we survived. Somehow, the damn Mariners made it to the playoffs to
become the last line of defense against the unstoppable force of the Astros.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The Mariners vs Astros game succeeded in capturing an energy the first two
Halloween reboot films struggled to articulate: the sense that just enduring
in the face of an implacable force like Michael Myers or the Houston Astros
is itself a victory. Any defiance is, by definition, a victory in
itself.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
A+ baseball. I will be watching again in the new year. And I'll also be
concluding this list in the new year. I'm glad to see it, after everything,
with all of you out there.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div><br /></div>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Some Nightmares Before Christmas Or Thereabouts Part 2
</h3>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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<br>
<!-- SOME NIGHTMARES BEFORE CHRISTMAS OR THEREABOUTS PART 1 -->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2022/12/some-nightmares-before-christmas-or.html" style="text-decoration: none;" >
<div class="bonusfeature">
<div class="bfpic" style="background-image:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi5nDoKkH1eXh8Mtot0kRNugkdmFmKks5Jw6R1yFgXkFfP8Pn3IhkO-QEQ85wIS1imfX2kOC95zJt5w29NL7K7v9BeFFqxR_5unSj53zH6GC4yZ-RIEAAmO_DwE70Ay2HFcKc-mdU3pbz4_QI-2_UMzU--z3EtTQz0UY1DQO7i1_j4qFDeTF0Yt3XU=w640-h480);"></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>Some Nightmares Before Christmas Or Thereabouts Part 1</h3>
Over the last few years, I've watched close to 100 horror movies.
Now, to escape the nightmare of the holidays, I'm ranking them. All of them.
</div>
</div>
</a>
<br>
<!-- A GOTHIC TOMB FOR MEANING: THE BATMAN -->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2022/04/a-gothic-tomb-for-meaning-batman.html" style="text-decoration: none;" >
<div class="bonusfeature">
<div class="bfpic" style="background-image:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiH5NsfueFP28kvpdJ5q1FFvZAuuNShZ2Q_Jf3h9o-MTAbBFDAiWCmKLilTrIB3Bj8tKTYWUhitEh9iwtvsRBT3xlG-X_EUMp6nE2v08dva7bpnadDl5bHyjF6671uB3DcwI0ETQ3ZHTbdJRuu_2Y8do2pV2piEAnkqmSyNNsNCPCshPZLnxKl3La8=w640-h360);"></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>A Gothic Tomb for Meaning: The Batman</h3>
The Batman tries to find stark moral black and whites in a world of muddy greys. Why is the film's script so frightened of the ambiguity its cinematography creates?
</div>
</div>
</a>
<br>
<!-- HEALTH GOTH -->
<a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/halloween-comic-74045989" style="text-decoration: none;" >
<div class="bonusfeature">
<div class="bfpic" style="background-image:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEha8f_KuzUnkjkMTay89G2eQmjVUdpgGTm3xYnUt7w1isV4hI1z37iGuw0AOSTNnu9xx7b3IRzPlpZVAf8hQkROgqd1QTGGYOd5Y1x_8SdDRvAWvpBkowH_GZSgCrc1QXDHrXpiH2M94H6BT8bJoI26mlUzZ-G--HrPHlCxzVsqzcEtCALJHFtFBpE);"></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>Health Goth</h3>
A comic documentary about healthcare in the US from the perspective of the vampires and werewolves and revenants that make up the subcultural underground.
</div>
</div>
</a>
<br>
<!--ON THE TRACKS OF AN ANGRY GOD--><iframe frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/1444342?border_width=2&bg_color=fafbf5&fg_color=2d2522&link_color=50495b&border_color=97959a" width="554" height="169"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/on-the-tracks-of-an-angry-god">On The Tracks Of An Angry God by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>
<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-35772096133063071212022-12-15T10:54:00.002-08:002022-12-15T10:54:14.421-08:00Some Nightmares Before Christmas Or Thereabouts Part 1<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<div>
<i>Over the last few years, I've watched close to 100 horror movies.</i>
</div>
<div>
<i><br /></i>
</div>
<div>
<i>Now, to escape the nightmare of the holidays, I'm ranking them. All of
them.</i>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi5nDoKkH1eXh8Mtot0kRNugkdmFmKks5Jw6R1yFgXkFfP8Pn3IhkO-QEQ85wIS1imfX2kOC95zJt5w29NL7K7v9BeFFqxR_5unSj53zH6GC4yZ-RIEAAmO_DwE70Ay2HFcKc-mdU3pbz4_QI-2_UMzU--z3EtTQz0UY1DQO7i1_j4qFDeTF0Yt3XU" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi5nDoKkH1eXh8Mtot0kRNugkdmFmKks5Jw6R1yFgXkFfP8Pn3IhkO-QEQ85wIS1imfX2kOC95zJt5w29NL7K7v9BeFFqxR_5unSj53zH6GC4yZ-RIEAAmO_DwE70Ay2HFcKc-mdU3pbz4_QI-2_UMzU--z3EtTQz0UY1DQO7i1_j4qFDeTF0Yt3XU=w640-h480" width="640" /></a>
</div>
<br />
</div>
<span><a name='more'></a></span>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The waning part of the year, with its compounding stressors, layers of psychic
damage, and reduced sunlight, broadly sees my mental health take a nosedive.
I'll take the autumn over early winter anytime you like, though. In autumn I
can at least be extremely Goth about how I'm feeling, without crowds of
people following me around singing "there goes Mx Humbug, there goes Mx Grim,"
and other lyrics of this nature.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
For the last few Octobers, a friend of mine has gathered folks together in a
chatroom to watch one or more spooky movie every single night. We call it
Ghostwatch, after a British horror mockumentary from the 90s. It's a delight; you can get a sense of the experience from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yslpJ4yT9q0" target="_blank">Sarah's review video on the films we watched this year</a>.
As a result, I have massively increased the number of horror movies I've
watched recently. You may have picked up on that, as each movie watching party
has produced a few articles from me. It turns out that when you bang a bunch
of movies with somewhat related tones and motifs together in a short period,
it produces a bunch of unique chemical reactions.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The fruits of those reactions will have to wait--I've amassed quite a few
words, but nothing that's ready for publication yet. What to do, though, with
all my thoughts on films that couldn't sustain a full article, or were just
too obscure to attract readers to a review? Well, I thought, maybe I could put
together a number of shorter reviews as part of a whole list... a list, in
fact, ranking *every single October film I watched over the last few years?* I
won't be writing a review of EVERY film on the list because it's around 90
movies, but the list can give some context to where the fleshed out reviews
fall, and the reviews can give some clarity to my ranking process.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
<div>
How did that ranking process work? Well, I'll tell you, it was simple. I
said to myself, making an ordered list is easy. I'll just make the list one
movie at a time and simply put each new film in below the films better than
it, and above the films worse than it.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Quickly and predictably I realized I had no idea HOW to do that for a lot of
comparisons (is Little Shop of Horrors better or worse than The VVitch?
Objectively?). Subsequently, I started relying on a sort of gravity effect.
I'd start at the top or bottom and shoot rapidly toward the other end until
I started meeting cognitive resistance, and then I'd scroll back the other
way, and sort of rubber band back and forth until I felt like the film had
sort of found its own level. I'm not going to bother justifying this
arbitrary and instinctual practice; it's my god damn article and if you
don't like it you're free to exit this webpage <a href="https://techcult.com/how-to-delete-system32/#Method_1_Delete_System32_by_using_a_Batch_file" target="_blank">by following this guide</a>. Oh, also I made another rule, mostly observed: I had to stick with prior
decisions. So, over the several weeks where I laboriously ranked films until
I got bored, frustrated, or distracted, I repeatedly returned to the list
and went, "Wait, I put THAT, THERE? What kind of NITWIT would put THAT,
THERE?"
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
If anyone suggests my opinions are anything less than sacrosanct I'll turn
them into bbq. Don't think I won't do it! I'm a great cook and I have a lot
of mouths to feed!
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>There were, however, several films I just couldn't rank.</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
One, Funeral Parade of Roses, is great. What if Oedipus was about
transsexual sex workers? What if it was an experimental arthouse film? If
such a thing were the case, I would have no idea how to rank it with a bunch
of other horror movies. There's other stuff on this list that strains the
definition of horror to the breaking point; this was my hard limit of not
knowing what the hell to do. Don't go into this one expecting a happy
ending, but it's an astonishing piece of queer cinema, and is truly
mesmerizing. I cannot rank it; I can recommend it.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The others--Pink Floyd's The Wall, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Shock
Treatment--are too close to the churning center of my psyche to rank. I've
tried unsuccessfully for years now to pull together my reading of these
films and others into a comprehensive exploration of the rise of
neoliberalism through the lens of Pink Floyd and movies where characters are
trapped in the madness of modernity. You can find these articles under the
heading "<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/search/label/Room%20For%20You%20Inside" target="_blank">ROOM FOR YOU INSIDE</a>." I've published exactly two in four years. If it wasn't clear, I think
these are films all extremely worth watching, but also, I kind of want no
one to ever watch them because I'm afraid that people won't like them, and I
would take that as a grievous wound to my soul. (Everyone in the Ghostwatch
group liked them, though, which is why I'm still here to tell the tale.)
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>So the list effectively begins with:</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div><b>UNRANKED:</b></div>
<div><b>Funeral Parade of Roses</b></div>
<div><b>Pink Floyd's The Wall</b></div>
<div><b>The Rocky Horror Picture Show</b></div>
<div><b>Shock Treatment</b></div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>Leaving us to begin the list proper with:</div>
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><b>93. Halloween Kills (2021)</b></div><div><b>92. What Keeps You Alive (2018)</b></div></blockquote>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
<div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">
I have a theory about broken bones. In the past I suspect it was a little
more difficult (though not impossible) to really bend an actor's limb or
digit out of shape, particularly if they had to move around a bunch after.
When I think of the horror of the 70s through the 90s, I think of buckets
and buckets of fake blood. Lots of squirting. I think of horror now as
having a lot of cracking and snapping and bending out of shape.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I don't love it! Blood, particularly a good blood spray, doesn't bother me
that much, but busted up limbs feel somehow more torturous to witness.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
What Keeps You Alive loves the sickening crunch of a broken bone or a bashed
skull. It loves having the camera and mic follow the butch protagonist as
she's dropped off cliffs, struggles to crawl on busted limbs, gets drowned
in a bathtub, and so on. This film is an extended torture session where you
get to watch a gay woman get repeatedly brutalized for... pretty slim
reasons, frankly. The gimmick... is that she's being brutalized by her
*wife* instead of her husband. The serial murderer Bluebeard figure bringing
a helpless woman out to the woods to kill her is a LESBIAN this time! Woah
dude! What a twist!
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Except this antagonist is less a wife than she is a... husband whose actor
dropped out, causing the director to recast him with an actress. Nothing
else much seems to have changed, though, resulting in a film that feels like
it's in the gay uncanny valley. On screen we see women trying to kill each
other but it never feels as queer, even in the abortive attempt at a sex
scene, as the baseline vibes of even something like Lost Boys or Ginger
Snaps. Maybe the director wasn't comfortable with the protagonist, played by
his girlfriend, getting too intimate with another woman? The camera seems at
times suspiciously into the violence though.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The filmmakers seem to have put considerably more thought into methods of
lesbian torture than some of the basic mechanics of the film. The title
comes from an anecdote with the moral "you only kill what keeps you alive."
Do you? Is... is this meant to be ironic? Because the villain of the film
does just sort of kill for the thrill of it... but also for the life
insurance money which she's collected from like 8 former wives. I thought
there was going to be at least a LITTLE cannibalism given the anecdote is
about her father teaching her to hunt and kill, but there was none. Can't
fake a death if you eat the liver, I guess, which would make a certain
amount of sense if the title of the film didn't hinge on a description of
"using every part of the animal". No reveal in the movie has the nightmare
impact of, say, Abigail Hobbes in Hannibal discovering that a pillow has
been filled with the hair of her father's victims. To so revoltingly poison
everything good in a character's life, that character first has to *have* a
life, and given how rapidly the film simply jumps to the reveal (by having
the hero get shoved off a cliff) there's just no time to establish that
life, or seeming interest in doing so.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I have another theory, and it's that gruesome snapped bones is all some of
these ostensibly elevated horror films have got. They don't have the wit or
inclination to transgress politically or socially, and so they've really got
one direction to go in: shock through violence. This is maybe an
inauspicious way to start a horror movie list. Let me give you a preview of
some later entries: 21 is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre which of course needs
no introduction, 40 is Susperia 2018, which also employs breaking bones to a
much more nauseatingly protracted effect in an early scene I found genuinely
difficult and upsetting to watch, and 45 is Tetsuo the Iron Man, which
features all sort of metal being jammed in places it doesn't belong. I hope
this suffices to demonstrate that it's not gore and brutality and the impact
of hard objects on bone that I object to in and of themselves.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
What these films have got that What Keeps You Alive lacks are things like a
sensible plot, character motivations, chemistry or at least a kind of
volatile antipathy between characters, some sense of a coherent
understanding of tone, themes, a coherent through line with its major
symbols such as the god damn title quote, or a clear reason to exist at all.
I suppose I went into the films expecting something like the seething love
hate relationship between Hannibal and Will, or Louis and Lestat. Instead I
got to watch a guy film a butch dyke get brutalized and tortured.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
If I wanted to entertain myself with sickening violence against queer
people, I could just spend more time on twitter.
</div>
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>COMPARE:</div>
<div>The Texas Chainsaw Massacre</div>
<div>Home with a View of the Monster</div>
<div><br /></div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><b>91. Blood Orgy of the Leather Girls (1988)</b></div><div><b>90. I Was A Teenage Serial Killer (1993)</b></div><div><b>89. Inferno (1980)</b></div><div><b>88. Daughters of Dracula (1972)</b></div></blockquote>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
<div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">
This film is so low on the list because it's sort of not a movie. The guy
that created it was a real churner of schlock and had a habit of filming
multiple movies at once and recutting footage. Consequently the film doesn't
have much in the way of plot or characters, though it does have lesbian sex
scenes. Don't get too excited, they're almost totally without passion and
bewilderingly out of focus. An entire chat full of queers all concurred:
this film makes women biting and sucking on each other remarkably, almost
shockingly tedious.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
And yet there's still some shots in the film that manage to look good. Is
that just the power of real film stock used in the era when you had to
actually light a movie instead of just editing the digital image in post?
Probably. It's enough to get this higher up than Halloween Kills or What
Keeps You Alive. It's not offensive. It's just boring.
</div>
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>COMPARE:</div>
<div>Cat People</div>
<div>Invasion of the Bee Girls</div>
<div><br /></div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><b>87. As Above So Below (2014)</b></div><div><b>86. The Stuff (1985)</b></div><div><b>85. Sam Was Here (2016)</b></div></blockquote>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
<div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">
If there's a "worth it line" in this list, it might be somewhere around
here. The fact that it's so low is a testament either to what good taste our
movie viewing group has collectively, or a testament to my own willingness
to recommend weird nonsense to people. Lower than this and you're in the
zone of films that are actively offensive, or not actually movies, or both.
Higher than this, there's a range of maybe ten or twelve movies that either
can't pull their ideas together, or can't (or won't) elevate them.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Sam Was Here and the slightly higher on the list Berberian Sound Studio are
both in the specific category of "short film adapted and fleshed out into a
longer film that forgot the final act entirely." (The film is only an hour
and 15 minutes long and does feel like it's missing another 15 minutes or
so.) Sam Was Here rolls along compellingly, full of solidly composed shots,
a successfully oppressive and weird vibe, and hints at compelling themes...
right up until it just sort of, stops. In one sense, the film leaves a lot
of its central questions unanswered. The titular protagonist, a door to door
salesman of some sort, finds himself alone and hunted by a universally
hostile desert community, hounded by a talk radio host, and framed for a
range of heinous crimes. Why any of this should be the case is never
directly explained. There's no clarity on what the baleful red star in the
sky at all times might or might not be. Who's the right wing talk radio guy
who seems to have the community under an almost godlike sway? Shrug!
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
But there's enough material that at times it feels a little overexplained,
or at least there's enough "clues" that it's easy for Redditors to put
together comprehensive and disappointingly predictable readings. Stop me if
you've heard this one: the whole thing is an internal dream conflict between
the protagonist and his split personality (a murderer and child molester)!
This feels a little unsatisfying to me. If it's what they were going for, I
think elements of the film like a maid cleaning up a motel room after the
action has concluded, or the unexplained red star, make the theory messy at
minimum. And also, I just don't find it to be a particularly compelling
plot, I suppose. It has the tendency to reduce everything before The Reveal
such as it is to a lot of stakeless faffing about. If it's NOT what they
were going for... well... what WERE they?
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
There's hints, I think, though I feel a bit like I'm groping in the dark for
something to hold onto. I was convinced for most of the runtime that they
were going in a very specific direction with the red star: it was obviously,
I said excitedly to Sarah, the red air traffic light on top of the radio
tower from which Sam's persecutor broadcasts.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
If that's indeed what it was, there's no indication in the film itself.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
And yet I can't shake the feeling there's something there. There's also the
strange chopped and screwed conversation Sam has with the radio man, audio
from the rest of the film remixed on physical tapes by a never fully seen
figure to respond to Sam's furious and frantic interrogation. In its best
moments, the film produces a dreadful sense of oppressive surveillance and
media spin, the hapless individual incapable of fighting back against an
entire society invested completely in the anonymous voice that tells them
what to do, who to villainize, who to kill. Maybe that's the reason for all
the creepy "Secret Child Killer??" maybe red herring stuff: it allows the
film to explore the pathos of someone being gradually gaslit into believing
himself a monster. Or maybe he really is a monster and I'm completely off!
Whatever!
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The film, then, is frustrating but fascinating, a work that feels unevenly
cooked, overdone in some places, still raw in others, and critically missing
just another 15 minutes.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>COMPARE:</div>
<div>Berberian Sound Studio</div>
<div>Mulholland Drive</div>
<div>Michael Clayton</div>
<div>Cure</div>
<div>The Texas Chainsaw Massacre</div>
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><b>84. Halloween (2018)</b></div><div><b>83. Dracula (1931)</b> </div><div><b>82. Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973)</b></div></blockquote>
<div>
<b><br /></b>
</div>
<div>
"<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUI2juFlMVM" target="_blank">WHAT TRANSFORMED ORDINARY HOUSEWIVES INTO RAVISHINGLY BEAUTIFUL WOMEN? WHAT
BIZARRE SECRETS THREATENED EVERY MAN IN TOWN?</a>"
</div>
<div>
<b><br /></b>
</div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><b>81. Dracula (1958)</b></div><div><b>80. Our House (Watashitachi no ie) (2017)</b></div><div><b>79. Train to Busan (2016)</b></div><div><b>78. The Wave (2015)</b></div><div><b>77. Berberian Sound Studio</b></div></blockquote>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I talked about this one previously
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2021/11/green-screens-nine-perfect-strangers.html" target="_blank">in this article no one read</a>.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><b>76. Cat People (1982)</b></div><div><b>75. Blood Quantum (2019)</b></div><div><b>74. The Host (2006)</b></div><div><b>73. Hellraiser (2022)</b></div></blockquote>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Sorry gays. I had some problems with this one. Expect an article on my
frustrations with this film at some point.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><b>72. The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)</b></div><div><b>71. Suspiria (1977)</b></div><div><b>70. Jacob's Ladder (1990)</b></div><div><b>69. A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2 (nice) (1985)</b></div></blockquote>
<div>
<b><br /></b>
</div>
<div>
Briefly discussed
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2020/10/galaxy-brained-annihilation-and-queer.html" target="_blank">in this article about Annihilation</a>.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><b>68. The Night of the Hunter (1955)</b></div><div><b>67. The Masque of the Red Death (1964)</b></div></blockquote>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Shoutout to this film for essentially being a multiverse crossover event of a
bunch of Edgar Allen Poe stories. It's decidedly more on the camp end than the
outright horror end, but Vincent Price is a delight, and the sets are to die
for. What gothic horror got to be colorful?
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgR7nORgoaCzYCDCQJQDBXZWUaZERaW2qfVX6OkJpdvXvxv9nfC4fONwdluEW5_871j48DzaJPT6hyC6z8l_EqTMGfKErIqmI7b98Y6KGt-juPrMFLmaNldYuieH45snvZApggzoCAniF7Rmrwv3v8R7cCB7JsUUHPq10FmfNHEkcqyIV7RpqO5HIQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="640" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgR7nORgoaCzYCDCQJQDBXZWUaZERaW2qfVX6OkJpdvXvxv9nfC4fONwdluEW5_871j48DzaJPT6hyC6z8l_EqTMGfKErIqmI7b98Y6KGt-juPrMFLmaNldYuieH45snvZApggzoCAniF7Rmrwv3v8R7cCB7JsUUHPq10FmfNHEkcqyIV7RpqO5HIQ=w640-h400" width="640" /></a>
</div>
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div><br /></div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><b>66. The VVitch (2015)</b></div><div><b>65. S He (2018)</b></div></blockquote>
<div>
<b><br /></b>
</div>
<div>
I just want to quickly give some more information on this as the title doesn't
quite do it justice on its own. Though, ok, in fairness, I'm not sure what
title COULD explain this movie, a stop motion gender and body horror film
entirely starring shoes in a nightmare handicraft world. This is a film about
violence and exploitation, often sexual in nature. On the whole the abstracted
and deeply alien physiology and biology of the setting actually heightened,
for me, the queasy nightmare of its themes. But it also renders the film
fascinatingly obscure. It's a film that I feel like I should revisit, but I'm
also not sure I want to. If you can find it, and can stomach scenes
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RjdB8tWMgY" target="_blank">like this one in the trailer </a>of a high heeled shoe unzipping and stepping into the corpse of a black
loafer, it's well worth checking out.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>COMPARE:</div>
<div>The Wolf House</div>
<div>Mad God</div>
<div>Belladonna of Sadness</div>
<div>Female Prisoner Scorpion: Precinct 41</div>
<div>
<b><br /></b>
</div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><b>64. Army of Darkness (1992)</b></div><div><b>63. eXistenZ (1999)</b></div><div><b>62. Day of the Dead (1985)</b></div><div><b>61. Little Shop of Horrors (1986)</b></div><div><b>60. The Platform (El Hoyo) (2019)</b></div></blockquote>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
<div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">
The Platform is one of those high concept horror movies that always has me
thinking, not long in, "now how are they possibly going to resolve this?"
It's a question of significance for both the plot proper, and for the theme
and politics, as they're all typically tangled pretty inextricably.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The Platform contends with both that nailed ending requirement, and also a
need to do fresh things with its premise, which can be best summarized as
"what if Snowpiercer went up and down instead of sideways". The setup: two
people are assigned to a cell within a vertical tower, and get fed through a
slowly descending platform covered in a feast. The beat: by the time the
platform gets to the lower cells there's not enough food left. The
punchline: every month the cell ranking is randomly reassigned so you never
know whether you'll wake up to literal feast or famine. The big innovation
on the Snowpiercer model really is that the cars get moved around, and also
everyone's subject to gravity. You see what I mean about high concept
horror?
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
There seem to be a lot of films like this bouncing around, and a lot of them
seem most interested in making fairly facile observations about "human
nature", people getting along, how we're all a little prejudiced and
everyone making moral claims is a hypocrite and so on. The Platform is
refreshing in that it constantly keeps in view the fact that this is an
engineered scenario (though its actual purpose is extremely unclear even to
the bureaucrats who participate in its operation) designed to vex attempts
to improve the conditions of anyone inside. I can't help but feel like it
being a Spanish film helps. A lot of the worst "human nature" offenders are
resolutely White Dude Hollywood American, just about as far from "human
nature" as you can get.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
It seems to actually take the world building seriously enough to ask what
kinds of characters might end up here, and how might they try to game the
system. Everyone can come into the prison with one item of any sort; some
frivolously bring entertainment or sentimental items, others weapons, and
one character significantly brings a rope to try and climb up. There's also
a fascinating unreliability to the story. A lot of characters make an awful
lot of claims but things like the limits of their own knowledge or their
penchant for cannibalism render those claims suspect. I'm still not entirely
sure if the final sequence of the film is, in point of fact, real. It's that
kind of movie.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Does it do it though? Does it pull off the ending? Ah, well, hm. Maybe? I
can't say I was entirely satisfied but then, I'm genuinely not sure what a
satisfying end would look like.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
It does remind me of Snowpiercer in that its conceptualization of an exit
from the conditions portrayed rests ultimately on a vague hope that future
generations can build a better world somewhere outside the system after all
the current protagonists are gone. It's not that I don't sympathize with
this apocalyptic view, and it's sure better than milquetoast reformism, but
there's also this feeling like well the one thing we *can't* do is just
attempt proletarian revolution! There seems to be a basic post-Neoliberal,
post-68 acceptance that our possible political horizon cannot extend beyond
the architecture we've inherited. It's easier to imagine the end of the
world &c. &c. Oh, and it also sort of felt like it wanted to be a
little bit longer, a miniseries maybe, to just flesh out some of the later
characters. It's just increasingly compressed as it goes along, relying on
thinner and thinner sketches of the characters as though it's scrambling to
fit in all the permutations of its premise it can come up with. Again, I'll
take that over a film not knowing what to do with the premise at all.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The Platform is an imperfect film, and it's definitely going to remind you
of other films, part of a whole speculative fiction tradition of "wouldn't
it be fucked up if we lived in a society?" Its strength derives from its
pairing of solid bones--great character work acted well, a sharp script, and
a continuous reinvention of the stakes as the film progresses--combined with
a meaningful resonance derived from, as Bong Joon Ho put it, our
transnational citizenship in the country called "capitalism". If it can't
imagine a world beyond this country's borders, well, surely I can have some
sympathy for a fellow citizen.
</div>
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>COMPARE:</div>
<div>SHe</div>
<div>Dawn of the Dead</div>
<div>Train to Busan</div>
<div>Woman in the Dunes</div>
<div>Beyond the Black Rainbow</div>
<div><br /></div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><b>59. Home with a View of the Monster (2019)</b></div><div><b>58. Halloween Ends (2022)</b></div><div><b>57. The Beast Must Die! (1974)</b></div></blockquote>
<div>
<b><br /></b>
</div>
<div>
The Beast Must Die semi-famously includes a "Werewolf Break" where the film
just sort of stops for a minute for the audience to ponder who of the
six suspects in the film is, in fact, the Werewolf. Weirdly, I think the
film would probably stand better without the gimmick that made it famous, as
it does, in the words of director Paul Annett, stop the film dead in its
tracks. The film around it doesn't really *need* the gimmick, is the thing:
it's got a bunch of great character actors (Peter Cushing and Charles Gray are
in this!) in a mansion playing an assortment of weirdos who all could
plausibly be a secret werewolf, brought together by a rich eccentric
megalomaniac.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The rich eccentric in question is a prize game hunter convinced that the final
threshold is to bag a true werewolf, played brilliantly by Calvin Lockhart.
Eat your heart out Robert Downey Jr stans, Lockhart is a real master of
capturing the tension between the character's clear megalomania and how
charismatic and compelling he is to watch as his quest drives further and
further into the realms of madness. Which makes it so frustrating that
Lockhart is another black actor, very comparable to Duane Jones in Night of
the Living Dead, whose filmography includes far less leading roles than he,
frankly, earned. Well, maybe that's anachronistic: both men were accomplished
theater actors as well, and I'm sure that starring in horror films was,
comparatively, slumming it.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I can't help but feel, though, that while The Beast Must Die isn't a
masterpiece of horror, it's been unfairly overlooked, and with it a very
compelling lead I'd put up there with many more popularly known antiheroes.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>COMPARE:</div>
<div>Night of the Living Dead</div>
<div>Masque of the Red Death</div>
<div>Night of the Hunter</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
And next time we'll delve more into the weird messy middle where so many of
the films I'm excited to talk about sit.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Some Nightmares Before Christmas Or Thereabouts Part 1
</h3>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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<br />
<!--A NIGHTMARE ON THE BRAINS OF THE LIVING: PROMETHEUS AND THE UNDEAD-->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2022/10/a-nightmare-on-brains-of-living.html" style="text-decoration: none;">
<div class="bonusfeature">
<div class="bfpic" style="background-image: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEige5927PIyvS31Z4LICf2j9tF0lpgk6La-itWRXeXEn4KI9fXZKmJnw4qaAXLc60TSvfY5Gi6imcYlS4w_sYgiYmF3BevANoKvaW5M97aEu4POnEdF15xbVNhiaw9og0LGn8DYSL2W1J6eNcAj8VNYhF9IzuY2Jh2zxSA2vowLC2LCc1TrGKyvp3E=w640-h444);"></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>A Nightmare On The Brains Of The Living: Prometheus and the Undead</h3>
Prometheus was supposed to be Ridley Scott's triumphant return to making films about Aliens. Instead, we got a film full of necromancers, ghosts, and zombies. What can we make of this frustrating, tantalizing film?
</div>
</div>
</a>
<br />
<!--WEBWORKS: THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES AND THE POWERFUL FAILURE OF DIVERSE HORROR-->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2020/10/webworks-magnus-archives-and-powerful.html" style="text-decoration: none;">
<div class="bonusfeature">
<div class="bfpic" style="background-image: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVVcOu9JUGvkNsarCqSI6IWj1-U0GaffWYzU30ecOmtRZDiWQCXFaTIoQHodhkO1jQYns4UEo1-iYxQmy_k2fmhrzMUsWmPsE_HgY-FRPgWXt-wY8Pi9I_6Xsrpd65GPYEyM7uWOg2jw/w640-h426/Cobweb+Quill.jpg);"></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>Webworks: The Magnus Archives and the Powerful Failure of Diverse Horror</h3>
The Magnus Archives made a name for itself as inclusive horror. But when even a schlocky tale of giant spiders takes on resonances with transgender oppression and sexual exploitation, can the show's listeners evade the webs of trauma?
</div>
</div>
</a>
<br />
<!--GREEN SCREENS: NINE PERFECT STRANGERS AND MANIPULATION-->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2021/11/green-screens-nine-perfect-strangers.html" style="text-decoration: none;">
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<h3>Green Screens: Nine Perfect Strangers and Manipulation</h3>
Nine Perfect Strangers brilliantly explores how savvy operators manipulate people--and audiences. Unless... it doesn't. What do its bewildering and contradictory story choices say about self help, cults, hippies, and the harm art does?
</div>
</div>
</a>
<br />
<!--ON THE TRACKS OF AN ANGRY GOD--><iframe frameborder="0" height="169" src="https://itch.io/embed/1444342?border_width=2&bg_color=fafbf5&fg_color=2d2522&link_color=50495b&border_color=97959a" width="554"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/on-the-tracks-of-an-angry-god">On The Tracks Of An Angry God by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>
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Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-81017137516989514852022-11-30T12:41:00.000-08:002022-11-30T12:41:55.188-08:00Parafiction and the Bluecheck Crisis<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []" style="text-align: left;"><i>A single joke tweet dropped pharma giant Eli Lilly's stock value by $15,000,000,000. Inside the aesthetics and strategies of Parafiction: the hoax as activist art.</i></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">Content warnings for: discussion of anti-queer violence, chemical spills, medical oppression, corporate malevolence.</p></blockquote>
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Earlier this month, a verified account for pharma giant Eli Lilly tweeted,
simply, "We are excited to announce insulin is free now."
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
This cut the company's value by about $15,000,000,000,
<a href="https://gizmodo.com/twitter-eli-lilly-elon-musk-insulin-1849779323" rev="en_rl_none">according to Gizmodo's projection</a>, because if there's one thing the most rational and efficient system of
Capitalism absolutely despises unto death it's a price left ungouged or the
desperate left unexploited! The tweet did what a thousand exposés on the
repulsive and arbitrary price hikes a near monopoly of drug producers inflicts
upon the sick could not do, and hit the company in the wallet--killing, quite
literally, with kindness.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The tweet of course was a hoax, one of countless hoaxes that exploded on
Twitter in the wake of the asinine plan by the site's new owner, blood emerald
failson and actual worst poster Elon Musk, to replace the system of
verification that assured companies and individuals were who they said they
were with one where you could just... pay $8 to get that coveted blue check
mark. Predictably, people immediately spun up, for a comparative pittance,
verified accounts for Eli Lilly, Nintendo, George W. Bush, Tony Blair...
really any person significant enough to be loathed by a large population of
people who had a spare eight bucks just lying around.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>This was very funny. Let's vivisect the joke, shall we?</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="20" data-original-width="20" height="20" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh1Iq2vNNQS8lI2TiPSx1HI4XE0hnjrM3ron844ffwBFsih67nTYbqMF4_bslJhwPV3pzUsVVp0i9QQhSujzjSfA62TIRvRHvmDHsJc8qZj7bbfl_CkUyr_puvsX-R8FYd0mIEZO260M-FMxmee-Ih0T4NcW-_HvTZi9jkg8YU5qpb096H_4E1B1O0=w200-h200" width="20" /></div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
It's not just a joke, first off, but a particular kind of activist hoax art,
<a href="https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/40368563" target="_blank">what Carrie Lambert-Beatty calls "Parafiction"</a>. For Lambert-Beatty,
Parafiction is... sort of like fiction, but a bit to the side. Rather than
just received as fake, it is believed "by some of the people some of the time"
she says, slyly referencing and nodding to "parafiction pioneer P. T. Barnum".
It's, in other words, a lie. A dupe. A hoax. But it's all those things in kind
of a weird way too: it's not just a deceit but a kind of prank whose punchline
is the deception being unveiled.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Not that all parafiction operates as a gotcha in the conventional
sense--parafanfiction in particular delights in the simple process of creating
credible artifacts and traces of fake media. The recent explosion of the
fandom for fiction Martin Scorsese film Goncharov is a good example of this.
While there might be people who enter the fandom thinking the film is real,
the bulk of engagement comes *after* people realize the deception and can be
active players in the game of pretend and deception.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
When parafiction employs the strategies and aims of activist art, though,
there tends to be someone on the other end taking the pratfall.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
There's something invigorating about watching companies get their stock tanked
by randos on Twitter. The specific actual damage it does is part of the
entertainment value, as is the damage done to Twitter itself. And make no
mistake, that damage is remarkable! After the tweet, and after Twitter's
failure to respond quickly to Eli Lilly's angry demands that the tweet be
censored on a platform where, per Musk, "humor is legal", the corporation
pulled their quite significant ad campaign from the website completely.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Does this matter? Musk's fawning cult of personality has rationalized away the
damage to Twitter as a corporation by falling back on the cost of entry: every
person pranking Eli Lilly or Nintendo has to pay $8 for an account they're
immediately going to have taken from them. This will surely represent
significant revenue for the company! This is very funny and stupid. Twitter's
main income source is its advertisements. There is no way on god's green
fucking earth that Eli Lilly no longer daring to use the website at all, let
alone for paid advertisements, can be offset by one dipshit paying $8.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
This is because the business of twitter and other entertainment companies is
primarily offering a product that can gather people around and segment them
into various affinity groups. Both the paid employees of the site, and the
unpaid people who consume the site and also generate all of its content, are
doing labor to create particular commodities:
<a href="https://reallifemag.com/delivering-people/" target="_blank">audience segment commodities</a>. These segments of groups of people to be advertised to are then sold to the
actual buyers of the business of Twitter: advertisers.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
We are working, through our posts, to a lesser or greater extent, to produce
audience segments for Twitter to sell and for Eli Lilly to buy. So, the
disruption of this commodity production through our posting alone is a
significant crisis. All for the low price of $8!
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
It's at this point where the art--our emotional and aesthetic response to the
targets getting a pie in the face--meets the activism--a public disruption of
the relationship between a pharma corp preying upon the physically unwell and
a social media corp preying on the mentally unwell (namely, all of us still
using the website).
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="20" data-original-width="20" height="20" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh1Iq2vNNQS8lI2TiPSx1HI4XE0hnjrM3ron844ffwBFsih67nTYbqMF4_bslJhwPV3pzUsVVp0i9QQhSujzjSfA62TIRvRHvmDHsJc8qZj7bbfl_CkUyr_puvsX-R8FYd0mIEZO260M-FMxmee-Ih0T4NcW-_HvTZi9jkg8YU5qpb096H_4E1B1O0=w200-h200" width="20" /></div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
That's the basic pitch for parafiction. I want to get a bit deeper into the
weeds now, though, of the reading I did for this article. In particular I want
to talk about how I jumped to parafiction in the first place from the Eli
Lilly hoax. See, when I saw what was happening on twitter, I immediately
remembered another similar event: the Yes Men Bhopal/Dow Chemical hoax.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The Yes Men were an organization of art pranksters who primarily intervened in
the world with parafictional performances. That's the nice way of putting it.
Another way would be to say they're con men targeting legitimate institutions.
Their methodology was actually fairly straightforward: copy a professional
website of an organization like the World Trade Organization, put their own
contact information in, and wait for someone from a professional conference or
news agency to take the bait. At this point, posing as a legitimate
representative, they could proclaim all manner of outlandish things in front
of a large audience. As parafiction, the intervention works because of the
breakdown of trust, the revelation that this audience accepted a whole raft of
dreadful things because, as the Yes Men put it themselves, they were wearing
suits.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
In other words, the performances functioned because people at least
temporarily believe that the Yes Men were "verified".
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Like the Eli Lilly hoaxers, the Yes Men managed to take a bite out of the
stock of Dow Chemical. Appearing on the BBC as a spokesman for the company,
one of the team--going by the joke name "Jude Finnesterra"--announced that the
victims of the horrifying 1984 chemical spill in Bhopal India would finally be
compensated, and the company would take full responsibility for the negligence
of its subsidiary Union Carbide. Markets reacted accordingly and the stock
price dropped. As with Eli Lilly, no good deed goes unpunished by the most
efficient and ethical economic system man has ever invented!
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Lambert-Beatty places a lot of the value of this performance practice in
exposure. The same is true of Sean Morrow, the staff writer of More Perfect
Union who pulled the Eli Lilly stunt--and indeed,
<a href="https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1595186750363963392" target="_blank">most of the organization's video on the subject attempts to contextualize why Eli Lilly and Twitter were deserving targets</a>. The operation is sort of a proof by negation: publicly state you're going
to stop being evil to force the target to also publicly state that they will
under no circumstances ever stop being evil and they're offended you'd suggest
otherwise, actually. The Dow Chemical hoax also, for Lambert-Beatty, has the
effect of imagining an alternate world, exposing not just the malign workings
of the system we live in but the possibility for a better world that we don't
allow ourselves to imagine.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Is it effective? Is it aesthetic? Maybe! But before wading into those
questions I just want to take a moment and ask: is it *ethical*?
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Yes. I mean, yeah, whatever. As the Yes Men succinctly put it, when charged
with giving "false hope" to the victims of Union Carbide, "If the deaths,
debilities, organ failure, brain damage, tumors, breathing problems, and
sundry other forms of permanent damage caused by Dow and Union Carbide aren't
enough to arouse your pity, and the hour of "false hopes" we caused is -
fantastic, we won! Go straight to Bhopal.net and make a donation." Well said.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
The humorous side is easier for me to see than it probably is for a lot of
bluecheck journalists and politicians, for whom the verification debacle has
been a cataclysmic crisis. Isn't there a moral hazard, some way in which
parafiction partakes in the same erosion of trust, norms, and agreed upon
reality already under assault?? I couldn't care less, personally, compared to
the open season on queer people Musk tacitly announced on the platform, and
the kill lists that are more or less being posted freely by large fascist
accounts. The horrific and murderous consequences of this in places like
Colorado Springs have little to do with verifying people are who they say they
are. When the New York Times or Guardian publish medical rationalizations for
interpreting transition care or the existence of trans people as child abuse,
I can't say that I sit here thinking, well thank CHRIST this account is
verified and I know the logic of genocide is coming from a RESPECTABLE
institution! Phew!!
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Please, before we start making ethical *judgements*, let's learn the art of
making ethical *distinctions*. Let's look at the advertiser panic over Twitter
from another angle. It's true that one of the things many of these large
advertisers do not like to share a platform with is hate speech. That's good.
Advertisers surely also do not like us posting about the necessity of seizing
the means of production and overthrowing the bourgeois state. That sucks! They
also don't like pornography, or poor people squatting on their titled land in
ideaspace ("copyright infringement"). That blows! I see bluecheck types
describing the twitter rules and operating procedures as rational, in this
sense. And they're right! But we as non blue checked workers and renters and
people who have to just survive this stupid world, people who can be workers
*and also* thinkers, can make distinctions between things arrived at
rationally that we think are also good, and things arrived at rationally that
benefit only audience segment commodity producers and purchasers, not us.
Also, let's be fucking real, the rules care way more about protecting idea
landlords than people victimized by hate speech, because advertisers might get
EVENTUALLY a little squeemish if enough trans women get brutalized, but will
be IMMEDIATELY outraged if their logos are infringed. It behooves us to
recognize the actual material reality of these dynamics.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Still, I can support at least SOME interest in truth, such as the fact check
feature on twitter,
<a href="https://twitter.com/JUNlPER/status/1591464535361294336?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1591464535361294336%7Ctwgr%5E25b3f9213fc2271264b3c548ac48658861663432%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgod.dailydot.com%2Felon-musk-insulin%2F" target="_blank">which users immediately employed against Elon Musk</a>
when he tried to "well actually" Bernie Sanders about insulin prices.
Genuinely, honest to god, the worst poster of all time.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="20" data-original-width="20" height="20" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh1Iq2vNNQS8lI2TiPSx1HI4XE0hnjrM3ron844ffwBFsih67nTYbqMF4_bslJhwPV3pzUsVVp0i9QQhSujzjSfA62TIRvRHvmDHsJc8qZj7bbfl_CkUyr_puvsX-R8FYd0mIEZO260M-FMxmee-Ih0T4NcW-_HvTZi9jkg8YU5qpb096H_4E1B1O0=w200-h200" width="20" /></div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
What of those other questions though? Reading a lot of academic art criticism
and philosophy kind of is like letting the Muppets set up residence in your
brain. At a certain point puppet parodies of all your favorite thinkers just
start bellowing arguments at each other, and it can get kind of hard to hear
yourself think over the din. They don't even have to have directly addressed
each other! Like, Eve Sedgwick in her essay on paranoid and reparative reading
never talks about parafiction, and neither does Claire Bishop in her book on
the history of participatory art.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I can't get the critiques out of my head, though. Sedgwick's essay on paranoid
and reparative reading ("<a href="https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/sss/pdfs/Critique/sedgwick-paranoid-reading.pdf" target="_blank">You're So Paranoid You Probably Think This Essay Is About
You</a>") has an awful lot of complicated things to say, but one of her core
insights is the limitation of a method that "puts its faith in exposure". For
her, drawing upon affect theory, a paranoid theory of the world seeks to
prevent the surprise of negative experiences, to guard against them, and is a
"strong" theory paradoxically in how it seeks to cover all bases, and with
each new failure grows and spreads. And yet, it *does* fail, and all the
paranoid mode's attempts to expose, disillusion, or de-tune media messages
seem to have added up to... well, what? After decades of deconstruction, we
seem no closer to liberation.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Actually, that criticism lines up with some of Lambert-Beatty's own
observations of the early career of the Yes Men. She points out that early
efforts to pose as legitimate sources--web pages for the George W Bush
campaign and for the World Trade Organization--fell a bit flat because of
their focus on "revealing truth". At a conference posing as WTO
representatives, for example, they floated the idea of a human rights credits
market where human rights abusers could buy vouchers from more egalitarian
countries. This seems hardly distinguishable as satire. Is it that far off
from the carbon credit market, currently the only thing keeping Elon Musk's
fake car company profitable? (No wonder the cars keep exploding and running
over pedestrians--they're an epiphenomenon of the real carbon credit commodity
the firm actually produces!) Lambert-Beatty notes that, if anything, these
stunts can make the present conditions seem relatively acceptable compared to
their dystopian visions.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
She continues to operate, though, in what I'd call a paranoid critical mode:
the government is run by crooks and tv men, wars are carried out like
publicity stunts, and most of the press is just press releases from
corporations. It's hard to argue things have improved since the Bush
administration in which she was writing. So, she proposes, the antidote for
mass cultural truthiness might be to turn it against itself with parafiction
and reveal the whole sham. But Sedgwick also notes a paradox in this paranoid
mode: it's a perspective that assumes new tricks and deceits and betrayals
come from every angle and gradually comes to suspect nothing can be trusted,
but it's also convinced that the truth would win out if everyone would just
*listen*. From this perspective, truthiness turned on itself starts to
resemble more of a spiral into ever increasing doubt.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Is this work really effective, then? That's where Bishop comes in for me: in
Artificial Hells she repeatedly asks pointed questions about where activist
art sits. Somehow it remains just activism enough that to question whether it
works *aesthetically* is, like, sort of missing the point at best and
belligerently reactionary at worst. But it remains just art enough that to ask
questions about whether it *works* is also a faux pas! It's not supposed to
show outcomes and results, it's, well, art! Isn't there something a little
suspect about this waffling between positions?
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
If we're judging by efficacy, well, Eli Lilly's stock is back to about where
it was, though it took a while to recover. Many of the other impersonations
are probably even less effective. Tweeting from a verified George W. Bush
account "I love killing Middle Easterners" feels like a pale imitation of the
Yes Men wholesale copying the webpage of the Bush campaign two decades ago. I
doubt it fooled anyone enough to be a particular annoyance. The turn towards
Ideology as the preoccupation of the critics of capitalism was useful in some
ways, but can obscure the fact that no matter how much I may think George W.
Bush is a war criminal, there's not a damn thing I can do about it. Some of
these jokes, reveal, if anything, just that lots of people are basically on
board with this understanding of reality, we just don't feel empowered to do
much of anything about it. In the words of Supertramp, you're right, and
you've got a bloody right to say--but me, I don't care anyway!
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
And aesthetically... I don't know, certainly the jokes themselves aren't very
good. Well, mostly. A fake Nintendo account did tweet a picture of Mario
flipping the audience off, and I gotta admit I laughed at their response to
someone protesting "Mario would never do that :(": "well he did". There's
something about the deadpan, all lowercase response that really does it for
me, paired with the verified badge. It does sort of expose an absurd element
to the way our media culture operates, the childish conviction that any member
of the public might know "what Mario would do" paired with the indominable
ability of Mario's corporate owners to write the character's reality however
the fuck they want.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Speaking of spiraling, here I am chasing my tail again, back to persuading
myself maybe there's something here! Because it's not all paranoia, is it? I'm
not sure I agree with Lambert-Beatty's focus on truth and fictionality and
skepticism, actually, as that's not... really how I receive this kind of
thing, I don't think?
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I'm not sure Sean Morrow necessarily exposed Eli Lilly, nor the Yes Men Dow
Chemical. What they did was prove a *perturbing annoyance* at least for a
short amount of time. If we think of this as art, it's a weird kind of
unconsensual performance art, one that by its hoax nature casts the company in
the role of the hapless clown and compels some suit to step onto the stage to
be jeered at.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I'm not sure I agree that the primary fool--and primary audience--is the
audience dupe, pranked into questioning the morals of the corporation. Rather
the audience is those of us who aren't particularly taken in, laughing as the
mere threat of a *hypothetical* dupe in the audience forces Dow, Eli Lilly,
Nintendo, and so on, onto the stage in full clown makeup.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
My experience of this affectively is characterized less by a fear of negative
affect and more... well, schadenfreude first and foremost. Bad joy. Delight
characterized by contempt. There is still an element of revelation here that
maybe makes this barbed parafiction the happy hardcore twin to the emo gloom
of paranoia. As Sedwick says, the gloomy prescription of the leftist critic
that things are bad and likely to get worse is "immune to refutation". But
this moment of nose tweaking represents manifest evidence that these forces of
exploitation and domination not only slip up and make themselves vulnerable,
but that there's other disgruntled weirdos with $8 out there ready to shoot an
arrow in that weak spot! If this is a paranoid theory, it's one that can take
delight at being wrong.
</div><div><br /></div><div>Even in our moments of defeat I think there's some pleasure to be had for this art form. I woke up, having wrapped up this article, to a bit of a frenzy on my small Mastodon instance. Volkswagen had issued a cease and desist order for the joke account someone opened on the site, an account that I think only had one post, something to the effect of "Buy our Nazi cars!" I'd characterize our reaction as a kind of delight at outrage. The instance was quickly filled with memes about being under attack by Volkswagen Beatles, and jokes at the expense of Mastodon's hapless creator Eugen and his ongoing attempt to turn the fediverse into, essentially, a brand friendly port of twitter (but with him in charge). Some legal firm schmuck had to go through a list of mastodon accounts and send us an email, and we got entertainment for the rest of the day.</div><div><br /></div><div>And we didn't even have to pay $8.</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="20" data-original-width="20" height="20" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh1Iq2vNNQS8lI2TiPSx1HI4XE0hnjrM3ron844ffwBFsih67nTYbqMF4_bslJhwPV3pzUsVVp0i9QQhSujzjSfA62TIRvRHvmDHsJc8qZj7bbfl_CkUyr_puvsX-R8FYd0mIEZO260M-FMxmee-Ih0T4NcW-_HvTZi9jkg8YU5qpb096H_4E1B1O0=w200-h200" width="20" /></div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Programmer and blogger Aphyr,
<a href="https://aphyr.com/posts/358-a-history-of-leather-at-pride-1965-1995" target="_blank">in his remarkable history of kink at Pride</a>, makes a tongue in cheek ( 😉 ) assertion that the first Pride was not just
a hookup, but arguably "an orgy". I think there's something worth examining
there: that the expression of sexuality openly was itself a revolutionary act
of defiance against police violence. I want to associate that with a
theorization of the point of sexuality for the working class: to produce more
workers and renters, at as minimal a cost to the capitalist, financier, and
rentier class as possible. I don't think people are "sitting around in smokey
rooms plotting" to make
the world thus. Probably. But surely it hasn't escaped everyone's attention, surely
we've all *noticed*, that a christian fascist cult hell bent on destroying all non(re)productive sex (gay sex, trans sex, kinky sex, sex on birth control or followed by an abortion) is seizing power in America at *the precise moment* that capital
faces a crisis of lacking surplus labor? A crisis comparable to the one that helped end feudalism, one of mass death and a disabling plague abruptly handing leverage to the workers who survived?</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I similarly don't think it's purely coincidence that this
reproductively-oriented sexual regime that pathologizes unproductive
sexualities has infiltrated and rotted out just about every area of popular
fandom at the *exact moment* when tech companies face a crisis in
profitability. It's actually fairly trivial to draw the connections. If these
companies really are, at the end of the day, producers not of experiences for
end users but instead produce advertising segment commodities, it's
inescapable that advertisers have a hard time dealing with people whose
primary consumption pattern is hyperdicked wolf girls, pool toy
transformation, or suspension bondage. Some companies could get creative, of
course--surely Lowes could find more than a few things to sell your average
bdsm enthusiast--but it's fairly well accepted that sexuality is a hard sell.
Don't take my word for it! CNN for example blithely lists out three types of
"toxic content" making advertisers wary of twitter: misinformation (and no
doubt parafiction falls into that category!), hate speech...
<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/01/tech/elon-musk-twitter-advertising-fallout" target="_blank">and pornography</a>.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Wouldn't it be convenient if everyone just... happened to decide that the
sexless sterility of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or YA Lit was the only
moral form of art, and certainly the main thing we should all be engaged with
as fans?
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Lambert-Beatty suggests that one of the benefits of parafiction is that
entering the space of the hoax might allow us to imagine alternatives to our
present conditions, by for a short time *believing we live in a different
world*. A later conference appearance as the World Trade Organization by the
Yes Men featured not blithe descriptions of atrocities but something utopian:
a declaration that after serious study and consultation the WTO had concluded
it was, itself, a complete failure and would immediately be disbanded and
replaced by a trade *regulation* organization dedicated to equitable relations
with the third world. Apparently, conference attendees were jubilant, offering
to help the new organization with its aims. I feel a real twinge of the
bittersweet reading about this. Like, is it possible that people really do
*want* to do good, and would if they were just given the chance? That not
everyone is a sadistic self interested bastard?
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
There might be artistic lessons from parafiction, and I think reading them in
association with other forms of "toxic" art practice, such as kink and
pornography, or copyright infringement, might point to a kind of activist art
that could be both aesthetic in that it fulfills or at least gestures towards
our desires, and effective in that it disrupts the logic of audience segment
commodity production. I mean, god, imagine it, a world where we're not
packaged up in boxes, our attention and environment sold off by and to the
worst people on earth?
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
I'm not saying saying such practices can't ever be co-opted by capital, mind.
I'm still not sure they even work. My reading process has left me with more
questions than answers and part of the point of the article, I suppose, is to
lay out the strange walk through the literature that led me to this tenuous
place. But I guess, watching all this, I find myself arriving at a different
conclusion of the practical value of these sorts of forms of artistic
intervention?
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Like, maybe we should think of the stab at Eli Lilly less as an attempt at
final victory or undefeatable strategy but instead a tactical choice made in
the moment to do damage. Is it so bad if some companies get their stock tanked
temporarily, then in short order some other company starts selling a "Rude
Mario" t shirt? Does the latter really completely undermine the former? Dow
Chemical wasn't destroyed by the Yes Men and in that sense I suppose their
intervention was ineffective. But the Yes Men did lose some really shitty
people at least SOME money. These artistic moments, similar to formations like
the Chapel Hill Autonomous Zone, don't represent a permanent state of
exception, but they might represent a huge headache for some really dreadful
fucks, for at least a time.
</div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>
Is there not political or at the very least moral and aesthetic value in being
the sand in someone's cunt?
</div><div><br /></div>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Parafiction and the Bluecheck Crisis
</h3>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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<br />
<!--IN THE END WE ALL DO WHAT WE MUST-->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2020/09/in-end-we-all-do-what-we-must-universal.html" style="text-decoration: none;">
<div class="bonusfeature">
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<div class="bftext">
<h3>In The End We All Do What We Must</h3>
Remember Universal Paperclips, that clicker game? Remember turning the human race into paperclips? Ok, so, what if you just... didn't? What would that choice tell us about game design, agency, artificial intelligence, and people?
</div>
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<!--FEELS DUMB MAN: I REALLY, REALLY HATED THE PEPE THE FROG DOCUMENTARY-->
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<div class="bftext">
<h3>Feels Dumb Man: I Really, Really Hated The Pepe The Frog Documentary</h3>
"Feels Good Man" reveals a lot about how Pepe the Frog and its creator Matt Furie suck... accidentally. When faced with that inconvenient truth, the film and its audience will go to astonishing lengths to pretend our cultural grift economy is doing just fine.
</div>
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<br />
<!--JUNETOPIA-->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2019/10/junetopia.html" style="text-decoration: none;">
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<div class="bftext">
<h3>Junetopia</h3>
When Andrew Hussie canonized a transgender character in response to a fan finding a Toblerone he hid in a cave, it was more than just a weird stunt. It was a piece of revolutionary performance art, and an affirmation of a new model for fandom.
</div>
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<!--ON THE TRACKS OF AN ANGRY GOD--><iframe frameborder="0" height="169" src="https://itch.io/embed/1444342?border_width=2&bg_color=fafbf5&fg_color=2d2522&link_color=50495b&border_color=97959a" width="554"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/on-the-tracks-of-an-angry-god">On The Tracks Of An Angry God by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>
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Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-48459060412555878662022-10-23T12:31:00.000-07:002022-10-23T12:31:17.274-07:00A Nightmare On The Brains Of The Living: Prometheus and the Undead<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []" style="text-align: left;"><i>Prometheus was supposed to be Ridley Scott's triumphant return to making films about Aliens. Instead, we got a film full of necromancers, ghosts, and zombies. What can we make of this frustrating, tantalizing film?</i></div></blockquote><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEige5927PIyvS31Z4LICf2j9tF0lpgk6La-itWRXeXEn4KI9fXZKmJnw4qaAXLc60TSvfY5Gi6imcYlS4w_sYgiYmF3BevANoKvaW5M97aEu4POnEdF15xbVNhiaw9og0LGn8DYSL2W1J6eNcAj8VNYhF9IzuY2Jh2zxSA2vowLC2LCc1TrGKyvp3E" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="935" data-original-width="1349" height="444" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEige5927PIyvS31Z4LICf2j9tF0lpgk6La-itWRXeXEn4KI9fXZKmJnw4qaAXLc60TSvfY5Gi6imcYlS4w_sYgiYmF3BevANoKvaW5M97aEu4POnEdF15xbVNhiaw9og0LGn8DYSL2W1J6eNcAj8VNYhF9IzuY2Jh2zxSA2vowLC2LCc1TrGKyvp3E=w640-h444" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">"This is the worst kind of movie, really," Sarah sighed to me the other night, "one that begs you to imagine another, better movie." </div><div><br /></div><div>We've encountered a lot of films like that lately, between watching all the Marvel Phase 4 movies (for professional reasons), and watching a horror movie every night through October (for friendship reasons). Turns out a lot of movies lose track of their main themes, forget to add on a third act, sort of tack on additional third acts after the movie technically ends, or just generally accept the quotidian while the uniquely expressive lurked half out of frame in the shadows.</div><div><br /></div><div>Everyone kind of knows that Prometheus, Ridley Scott's attempt at an Alien prequel, is such a film. The consensus I recall from right after its release has only congealed in the years since. I wanted to watch it anyway, because, well, the congealed consensus is so often *wrong*. And anyway--I rationalized to Sarah--we both want to write about Damon Lindelof, one of the writers on the project, and we established by rewatching both The Leftovers and Lost that those shows were awesome and deserved more appreciation. Maybe everyone was wrong about Prometheus too.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sarah reminded me that this was not a Damon Lindelof story at heart, though. It was a Ridley Scott story. I flashed back to my experience with his recent series Raised By Wolves, to how stunning its opening was, how compelling its bold, thought provoking sci fi and shocking narrative turns felt... and how it slowly sank into a peat bog of interpersonal and thematic misery and tedium. I decided to ignore the red flags. Maybe, I said, it's more Lindelof than Scott.</div><div><br /></div><div>When we got done watching, I stomped over to my computer to write the first fragments of this article. They were primarily a list of the things I found fascinating about the film, buried underneath the film's problems: the skeleton of the other, better movie Prometheus made me imagine.</div><div><br /></div><div>The thing is, and bear with me here, Prometheus is sort of a story of hauntings from beyond the grave. I know how this sounds. Making a ghost story is a weird swerve for a film that's supposed to be a prequel to the Alien franchise, so weird a swerve I doubt the makers realize that's what they'd done. Alien iconically trucks in the Weird: alien Others that invade and violate the boundaries of the human spaceship the film takes place on, the boundaries human knowledge, and most infamously the fleshy human body. It's right in the title: Alien. A xenomorph--literally, an alien or foreign body or form. Something decidedly *not us*. So Prometheus instead filling its runtime with ghostly hologram humans, haunting dreams, zombified humans, ghostly hologram aliens, zombified aliens, and so on, is a departure to be sure!</div><div><br /></div><div>This departure isn't why the film is bad; actually, it's the crux of the fake film I built in my mind furiously after I finished watching. No, a lot of the film's problems are bluntly technical. There's an overemphasis on spectacle and moments of people sitting around for precious seconds saying things like "ok now rotate, now zoom in" in a way that I think is supposed to build suspense, but feels like time better spent on characterizing conversations the film crucially lacks. The film score often opts, too, for a sort of "majesty of the unknown" pomp, solemn trumpets and swelling strings, in moments that for my money would have been better scored like Alien with something more tense or with simple silence. And the characters are...</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, the characters are almost permissible. They're legitimately the kind of guys Damon Lindelof loves, the driving core of Lost and The Leftovers. In The Leftovers, for example, after an inexplicable excision of 11% or so of the world's population from existence, we get to see a whole parade of cranks and weirdos convince themselves they have some sort of access to the mind of God. The titular ship The Prometheus is similarly staffed entirely by cranks and weirdos, because these are people convinced that they're on a trip to go *meet* God (in the form of aliens who seeded humanity with life).</div><div><br /></div><div>The key difference is that in Lost and The Leftovers all the "man of science man of faith" stuff, all the "deep truths of the universe" stuff, isn't... really the point. The point is how characters respond to the hierarchies of lesser or greater access to information or to the broader search for information. (Usually, badly.) Prometheus, on the other hand, is super duper about truth in a grandiose sense. The character study stuff is a thinly sketched sidenote. This means that whereas in The Leftovers or Lost characters' sometimes dumb decisions flow from their delusions, manias, hangups, misled convictions, &c., when the dumbasses of the Prometheus all take off their helmets in an alien atmosphere it just comes across as... kind of implausibly incompetent. I can reparatively read this and explain that these are zealots and weirdos doing weird zealous things that don't make a lot of sense. This reparative reading is... not really anywhere other than in my own head though. </div><div><br /></div><div>If this was all Prometheus was, it would simply be a bad film. Frustratingly, though, its good qualities aren't all in my own brain. And bizarrely the most electrifying stuff is not the ponderous questions of godhood and creation but instead the way the narrative and its characters are haunted by the traditions of the dead. From the outset the Prometheus is less a triumphant vessel striving toward the future and more a kind of ghost ship. We're introduced to the ship through the eyes of David, who spends his time while the other characters are in deep cryosleep watching films like Lawrence of Arabia and, creepily, picking over the holographically instantiated memories of the crew. This strikes me as at least ghostly-adjacent, the android conjuring up visual recollections of dead family members for his amusement and edification. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's not what sent me down this path, though. No, that was a scene shortly after David wakes the crew from stasis, where they're treated to a holographic recording of boss Weyland himself, looking positively lich-like in caked on aging makeup. Let's assume for a sec that this wasn't an aesthetic *mistake* but instead a creative *choice*, that they wanted Weyland to look like that. The man appears to be a walking corpse already, and announces himself as a kind of ghost: dead by the time his crew reaches their destination. The ship is on a ghost mission.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course it transpires later that he's actually still alive, schlepped across the galaxy to demand the secret of immortality. I really do think the inhuman aging makeup makes sense here. Weyland is a fucked up techno sorcerer using malign arts to keep himself alive. Look at him and tell me that's not someone who would gladly use the blood of virgins to try and preserve his youth!</div><div><br /></div><div>What's remarkable to me about the holograms as a vehicle for the past reaching uncannily into the present is that the outpost of the alien engineers is also full of spectral holograms. The holograms David summons up aren't marching orders, though, but a ghostly record of the final moments of the Engineers as they're eradicated by some unknown force. It's interesting, too, that while the humans bumble around, David is the one playing necromancer again, summoning up the dead to haunt the living.</div><div><br /></div><div>Not content with ghosts alone, the movie also gives us a few zombies. They find a perfectly preserved engineer head and reanimate it like the head of John the Baptist to speak prophetically (it explodes). Oh and there's a sort of Thing-ripoff sequence where a dude who's been zombified I guess comes back and kills some random crew members. Maybe the less said about this the better. I'm saying the film has interesting recurring motifs, not that those motifs make for a satisfying viewing experience.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's tantalizing, though. The more I think about it the more I get a sense not just of the hauntological but the outright necromantic, or even alchemical and sorcerous. The science of the Engineers seems deeply grounded in transmutation. We see, after all, one dissolving himself to become the genetic seed of life on earth. And what is the entity that nominal protagonist Elizabeth pulls from herself in a gruesome self-surgery scene--in an automated treatment machine not calibrated to handle patients with wombs!--if not a kind of homunculus in its jar, summoned from the clay? In this sense, the film begins to approach a point where the hauntological and the weird might meet: in the eldritch violation of the boundaries between categories--animal and human, the living and the dead, the biological and the mechanical.</div><div><br /></div><div>From this perspective, and indeed already baked into the structure of the film where Engineers beget Humans, Humans beget Androids, and eventually Androids in the form of David beget the Xenomorphs that will prey upon the whole chain, it's clear we should see all the players in this drama as more alike than different. Yet, the film seems committed to keeping all the nonhuman entities firmly at arm's length. The Engineers are unknowably distant, silent monstrosities who create and destroy life arbitrarily. They have no culture, no discernable motive, no speech that we ever hear even in the holographic projections, and a written language that seems to only exist for David to interpret as technical instructions. </div><div><br /></div><div>David himself is treated with weird ambivalence in the film, brilliantly performed by Michael Fassbender as a being repressing his complicated feelings, only to be the butt of the film's final punchline. He can't comprehend why anyone would still need to get answers from their creator. Liz responds that this is obviously because he isn't human, he's a robot. It almost feels like Scott's takeaway from Blade Runner was "thank goodness these tin cans aren't, like, people." It's a weirdly reductive ending for the film, one that if I hadn't just watched the movie myself and seen how straight they play it I'd be tempted to write off as ironic, deconstructive of Liz's own character. Pity that, compared to the mesmerizing David, she basically hasn't got a character.</div><div><br /></div><div>The film seems convinced that in order to tell an Alien story it needs to revert to a High Weird mode, transforming the Engineers in particular into this unknowable force, the God stand in. (Indeed, there's speculation based on a throwaway line about them planning to destroy humanity 2000 years ago that Jesus was an Engineer. Sure!) The most we really get by way of explanation of their actions is the captain's speculation that this is a military installation. I think we're sort of supposed to take that, too, as basically true, although if they're really as inscrutable as they're portrayed, isn't it possible that they see the distinctions between creation and destruction, biopolitics and necropolitics, as fuzzier than we do? They're an unknowable celestial host... except they're like us enough to have military outposts with obviously discernable purpose. Oh god and why direct humanity via cryptic star maps to the "military outpost" specifically? I'm trying to stick to my point but the more I think about the film the more it sort of falls apart in my brain.</div><div><br /></div><div>But the point is that the film finds itself treating the Engineers like Outer Gods, but the whole thrust of the movie up till now has been the past haunting the present. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that filling a story with aliens that are also ghosts has the tendency of making those aliens less alien, more like us. Pairing them with all manner of other ghosts and zombies pushes the film into this hauntological mode.</div><div><br /></div><div>There's even a way in which the ending with the living Engineer works for me. It wakes up from stasis and immediately beheads David and beats Weyland to death with David's head, then goes off to continue its apparent mission to exterminate all life on Earth, the one interrupted by the release of the chemical that wiped out the rest of its kind. The scene mirrors the opening of the film: a crew awoken from sleep in order to carry out a ghost mission. </div><div><br /></div><div>The crew of both the Prometheus and of this unnamed alien ship are dead hands, homunculi piloted by ghost imperatives.</div><div><br /></div><div>His inscrutability from this perspective feels like the inscrutability of a phantom. Is it too much of a leap to connect this to Derrida's reading of Hamlet's father's ghost, a visored specter whose helmet allows him to scrutinize but protects him from scrutiny? It, like David, is mantled in the protective inscrutability of an external mission, one it follows doggedly and seemingly dogmatically after inhuman amounts of time. Maybe that's a stretch but here's the thing: I have to find my fun somewhere if the film won't give it to me!</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's some more wild speculation: I wonder, would the civilization that wound this dead hand pilot up and set it on its path of apparent destruction recognize it? How much has it changed and evolved since then? What revolutions and shifts of political fortune has it experienced? Is the Engineer we see at the beginning of the film seeding life on earth even of the same political or religious faction or ethnic group as the phantom Engineer bound to destroy it? The Prometheus crew may have only succeeded, in the course of their own barely understood ghost mission, in waking up something that their own creators thought dead and buried.</div><div><br /></div><div>The possibilities are electrifying.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's too bad the film and its characters seem completely uninterested in exploring them. I guess that would get in the way of the god metaphor. It's too bad the god metaphor gets in the way of all this other much more interesting stuff, without ever managing to achieve the true gnostic brilliance of something like The Matrix Revolutions. It's a little risky to propose an alternative ending to a film but, man, wouldn't it have made a bit more sense to have Liz at the end declare her intention to find the homeworld of these self styled gods and drop their own goo on them? Maybe it's just the Gnostic in me, but it feels sort of poetic. David, now beheaded, his creator dead, and Liz, having determined that she was "so wrong", acting as their own sort of return of the repressed, blowback personified, the biological warfare atrocities committed in the periphery coming home to the core of an empire of self-styled gods.</div><div><br /></div><div>Which, I guess sort of happens in Alien: Covenant? But David just sort of drops a bunch of the bioweapons on the city and I guess dissects Liz for experiment reasons, so he can create the Xenomorphs. Naturally. It's sort of not important, frankly, to this film, which ought to at least try to stand on its own two feet, and in terms of this thematic throughline, doesn't, at least for me.</div><div><br /></div><div>There's something tantalizingly close to really brilliant and unique here, though. I don't think it's that far off from what the film is already doing to bring in motifs of alchemy and necromancy. I'm not really convinced actually that "Prometheus" was remotely the best touchstone for the film. It feels frankly a little bit lazy, trite, obvious. No, what we've got here is more Orpheus in the underworld if we have to stick with the Greeks. A journey to meet the God of Death and bargain with Him. Or perhaps an alchemist or necromancer... Though it's a little hard for me to imagine a ship called the John Dee, Agrippa, or Trismegistus. Doesn't have quite the same ring as "Orpheus".</div><div><br /></div><div>In fairness I guess you could argue it doesn't make sense for the crew to fly on a ship with a name like that when they think they're going to go treat with the living gods. I'd reply: oh what NOW we care about whether the characters in this movie make sense? NOW it matters whether the overbearing thematics correlate to sensible dramatic beats? I see how it is. Bitch.</div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe it was this sense of the alchemical, of the necromantic, that influenced Ridley Scott to revisit so many of the film's preoccupations in Raised By Wolves. One of the two androids tasked by an "Atheist" scientist to raise a group of children on an alien world is, after all, a repurposed weapon of war made by the theocratic faction that acts as the sort of antagonists of the series: a "Necromancer". A "Witch". I wish I could say the show did much with this, or maybe more to the point, I wish its exploration of concepts like "how an ostensibly egalitarian society gradually reinvents gendered oppression and brutality" wasn't such a boring slog to experience.</div><div><br /></div><div>Every time I get a bit too excited about the crew of the Orpheus descending into the tomb world of their death gods in order to, though they don't know it, demand a boon of immortality for their techno-lich master... I remember that Prometheus just is kind of a miserable movie. I can't even entirely fault it: it feels a little like Scott displaying his contempt for both his characters and, through that proxy, for fans of the franchise. Maybe this is why he finds himself taking David's side so often narratively. David, too, tries to find some reason not to facilitate the deaths of these contemptable characters, and finally concludes that playing amoral alchemist is just more worthwhile. Like the aging makeup on Weyland, I can understand these choices as deliberate rather than accidental.</div><div><br /></div><div>But I still had to watch it.</div><div><br /></div><div>On reflection, "the worst kind of movie" might be overstating the case. After we watched What Keeps You Alive recently we agreed that the REAL worst kind of movie is one that just pisses you off so much you can't stop thinking about all its infuriating and upsetting choices. Comparatively, Prometheus offers a perverse fun. There's just enough to compel me to, say, start jotting down notes of all the weird hauntological elements that don't really feel like they belong in an Alien film. But it's a frustrating pleasure, like the perverse pleasure of worrying at a slightly painful tooth or picking at a scab. I keep asking myself why I'm talking about a decade old film, in a decade old medium. I feel its dead hand. I want to tear into it and its flaws and transmute them into something more appealing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe it's ultimately the eerie way the film compels me to write something like this, something that blurs the line between critique and recreation, something that reflects the film's own preoccupations, that keeps conjuring it up in my mind, a self propelling cycle of hauntings.<div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
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A Nightmare On The Brains Of The Living
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<h3>A Gothic Tomb for Meaning: The Batman</h3>
The Batman tries to find stark moral black and whites in a world of muddy greys. Why is the film's script so frightened of the ambiguity its cinematography creates?
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<h3>Hauntology/Headology: Carpe Jugulum and Gothic Justice</h3>
The vampires in Discworld novel Carpe Jugulum may be modern, but the story is still firmly gothic. So who in the story is the gothic entity haunting the present?
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<!--AHOGT--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/123100?bg_color=61003a&fg_color=ffc38a&link_color=006b24&border_color=caffb3" width="552"></iframe>
<!--ON THE TRACKS OF AN ANGRY GOD--><iframe frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/1444342?border_width=2&bg_color=fafbf5&fg_color=2d2522&link_color=50495b&border_color=97959a" width="554" height="169"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/on-the-tracks-of-an-angry-god">On The Tracks Of An Angry God by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-66678976825951460692022-08-31T11:10:00.001-07:002022-08-31T11:10:44.826-07:00Give Me Wings: Dance Dance Danseur and the Craft of Gender<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []" style="text-align: left;"><i>The anime Dance Dance Danseur dwells on the angst of conforming to standards of performance--of art, and of gender. Why does its protagonist seek out the pain of classical ballet training?</i></div></blockquote><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiKrT-rkf98Q0Y6QIS5n35woGGU8bxeTxy6ERqaCQMki0bYMmDF2_mjYlo_bxteWLkA_XJ1GaVN-UNkVtGoXkKDvdxR5aH0fnQUIyrsnC84FbcuWFYIS_Mc7Idt0thJ1YgoRM3hC7CJW8Oet8VjIyhRzhjxTYV6pyUrKgOz68PcRxqLVfb2XMCd6Gk" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1287" data-original-width="2000" height="412" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiKrT-rkf98Q0Y6QIS5n35woGGU8bxeTxy6ERqaCQMki0bYMmDF2_mjYlo_bxteWLkA_XJ1GaVN-UNkVtGoXkKDvdxR5aH0fnQUIyrsnC84FbcuWFYIS_Mc7Idt0thJ1YgoRM3hC7CJW8Oet8VjIyhRzhjxTYV6pyUrKgOz68PcRxqLVfb2XMCd6Gk=w640-h412" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []" style="text-align: left;"><i>"I want you to look at me... I'll dance, so please, give Rothbart--give *me*--wings."</i></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>Dance Dance Danseur opens with a young boy, bored in a dance recital, suddenly transfixed by a male classical ballet dancer's sparkling performance. It ends with the boy as a teenager dancing on a rain-drenched floor, desperately trying to prove himself to a teacher that has shown him nothing but derision. In structure, the show feels a bit like a sports anime: Jumpei, the boy in question, is a fish out of water, naturally talented but needing extensive work in order to catch up to peers that have been practicing all their lives. There are a series of physical hurdles to overcome, setbacks and achievements, and it's all tied up in wider social drama the characters encounter.</div><div><br /></div><div>If it's a sports anime, though, it's decidedly one in the tradition of other recent shows like Yuri On Ice or Sk8, which tangle their athleticism with narratives that come juuuust right up to the edge of being explicitly about gender and queer sexuality. Where Yuri on Ice focused on a rather sweet romance between the central characters, and Sk8 embraced high glam rock drama of a kind of contest between the protagonist and villain for the heart of their love interest, DDD juggles a few different plotlines, dealing with Jumpei's school life, his struggles to prove himself as a dancer, and perhaps most significantly a love triangle between himself, pianist and dancer Miyako, and the talented but traumatized Luou.</div><div><br /></div><div>The extent to which Luou's backstory and drama take over the narrative is honestly kind of funny. Jumpei's taken great care to turn himself into a manly meathead, and so sometimes the story feels like this shonen anime protagonist has just bumbled his way accidentally into Revolutionary Girl Utena and everyone else is really annoyed about it. (Come to think of it, that's kind of the role of Utena takes on in her show, too.) The tone of the show is fascinating because of this. Jumpei seems to have this narrative gravity that tries to pull everything in a lighter direction, while everyone else in the show is dragging it towards drama and angst.</div><div><br /></div><div>What fascinates me about the show is precisely that angst and the two key forms it takes: angst over gender performance, and angst over performing a classical art form. These two sources of anguish for the characters are tangled together remarkably tightly and honestly. I don't think I've seen something capture quite so well the struggle to navigate "classical training", and the show also, while never outright identifying the characters as queer, feels astonishingly open to trans readings.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't think it's a reach or premature to link that performance of a particular kind of artistic excellence or craft with performance of gender here. Not when the anime is so explicit about it. Jumpei's core conflict early in the series revolves around masculine performance and his need to be the "man of the house" following his father's tragic death. No one forces Jumpei to "man up" exactly, it's just that when his father, a Jeet Kune Do instructor, has a sudden fatal heart attack, a bunch of casual incidents--his father fretting that with long hair people already "mistake Jumpei for a girl", his uncle awkwardly consoling him at the funeral by dubbing him the Designated Household Male, friends making fun of him for his interest in ballet--congeal into a subtly toxic masculinity, a belief that there is one way for Jumpei to be male or *be at all*. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Not manly equals not cool. </div><div><br /></div><div>"I want to be cool."</div><hr /><div>What is "Classical Training," exactly?</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm a classically trained artist which means I know some stuff about measuring and holding my pencil and laying out a composition and anatomy--and also means I know about the golden ratio in excruciating detail and how art schools are run by a cabal of liberal postmodern perverts who don't know how to draw and all my former instructors opinions on what body parts Toulouse-Lautrec sucked at drawing because Toulouse-Lautrec spent too much time studying horse anatomy and not enough time on humans. The instruction, when it wasn't nakedly crank ideological, focused on strict mechanics. </div><div>Draw a straight line without a ruler. </div><div>Do it 100 times. </div><div>Draw these three bottles. </div><div>36 times. </div><div>Take this sphere and develop it geometrically, slice it apart into rings and wedges. </div><div>Turn this plant into a series of geometric relations. </div><div>The line of the pose drives straight down from the head to the center of the earth; </div><div>now find the disposition of the ribcage, </div><div>now the hips, </div><div>now the dominant leg.</div><div>Tombé-</div><div>Pas de bourrée-</div><div>Glissande-</div><div>Jeté-</div><div>Tombé-</div><div>Pas de bourrée-</div><div>Glissande-</div><div>Jeté-</div><div><br /></div><div>Excluded from the education was touchy feely nonsense like "inspiration" or "motivation" or "vision". All of that was sort of beside the point: you were there to build an impressive portfolio to gain impressive scholarships, which, in fairness, I did get some of based on the strength of my art and my writing. </div><div><br /></div><div>I muddled through my time with this education, moved on to other institutions, and barely drew for pleasure or really at all again for several years.</div><hr /><div>Jumpei first struggles between two different pulls in terms of gender performance, the cool martial artist or the queerness of ballet. I don't think there's a point in dancing around it. He's treated as betraying his friends in aligning himself with ballet in a way that should be familiar. Moreover, Luou, in a harrowing scene, is forcibly feminized and put on display in front of the school by the same male friends that Jumpei breaks with in order to pursue ballet. Luou's bullying is a queer hate crime; Jumpei's betrayal is treated with homophobically coded disgust. He can stick to his beliefs and be open about his desires, or conform to the standard of masculine behavior, not both.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's the first half of the show, though the segments do overlap. The second half of the show deals with a different standard, a conflict between adhering to rigid codes of technical mastery, a rigid performance of *craft*, vs adopting a more free form and expressive modern approach. On this axis Jumpei struggles to reconcile his desire for the sparkle and shine of individual expression vs the exactitude of executing particular established choreography which by nature suppresses the individual. The two parallel but orthogonal conflicts are connected in part by the tension between a desire to master external codes vs forge an individual identity.</div><div><br /></div><div>The show ends on a great big question: why, in the context of everything else the show expresses about the rigid and destructive nature of systems, does Junpei choose to submit to the most rigorous instruction he can find, from a teacher that has treated him with nothing but scorn?</div><hr /><div>Here's a weird tangent: have you heard about the Guilty Gear character Bridget? The character has long been a gender bending icon, though one that's frustratingly associated with transphobic channers, a "boy" raised as a girl who dresses as a nun. People are very, very horny for Bridget. I bring the character up specifically due to <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7bzwv/now-you-can-listen-to-waypoint-radio-ad-free" rev="en_rl_none">the analysis of her development as a character offered by Renata Price of Waypoint Radio</a> (<a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvmjxv/guilty-gears-bridget-has-changed-so-have-fighting-games" rev="en_rl_none">also written up on the website</a>, though I recommend also listening to her discussion on the podcast). She describes how Bridget's development in a previous game focused on her quest to prove herself as a fighter, in order to achieve a kind of affirmation of masculinity. This seems to be reversed in the current edition of the game, where, to make a long story short, Bridget comes out to herself and the audience as a trans girl.</div><div><br /></div><div>Price describes this as mirroring a particular queer experience: people who throw themselves at a particular field and attempt to master it, with the presumption that they're making a bargain that will destroy their bodies. She describes having friends who wanted to "prove a very specific form of masculinity... the kind of masculinity that leads you to burning bright and burning short." The quest to demonstrate artistic mastery then join the 27 club turns out to be suppressed general feelings of dysphoria. Bridget's narrative thus represents getting to the end of your quest (or realizing the quest is unachievable), and realizing, fuck, what do I do with all this self loathing I've been directing into the quest for mastery?</div><hr /><div><a href="https://thatgirlwhokeepsreading.tumblr.com/post/661986270196711424/gwenfrankenstien-straightboyfriend">A tumblr post did the rounds recently</a> comparing a cis woman's perspective on ballet with the furor over kids and teens being allowed to socially transition, and even access puberty blockers. The post, almost more of a short essay, eloquently notes that "When I said I wanted to be a dancer at six years old, adults took that to mean I’d want certain permanent alterations to my body." Ballet is, from this perspective, a radical body modification allowed to be done to children. Might we extend this to other areas? Contact sports? The highest tier of competitive video game playing? Skateboarding?</div><div><br /></div><div>Luou's grandmother shapes him from a very young childhood, monstrously transforms him, into a machine for ballet dancing. When Luou tries to do to Jumpei what his grandmother subjected him to--forcibly stretching and extending his leg muscles by *physically standing on him*--the normally aloof instructor Oikawa is visibly horrified, intervening immediately to prevent injury. Luou not only has undergone extensive body modifications, he seems in some ways unaware of how violent those body modifications were. </div><div><br /></div><div>This is probably no surprise. He was, after all, largely locked up in a shed for most of his childhood. Do you see what I mean about the show having an energy that often feels more like it's responding to Revolutionary Girl Utena and its like than to traditional sports anime? Luou's childhood is depicted as a fairy tale, the young prince held captive by the wicked witch. Miyako is cast explicitly as an Utena figure, incapable of playing prince herself, and forced to recruit Junpei from a regular sports anime to fill the role.</div><div><br /></div><div>This puts Luou in a narratively feminized role, a damsel in distress. Fitting: his grandmother explicitly seeks to mold him, maliciously, into the ideal dancer that she could not make her daughter, Luou's pop idol mother. By the end of the series the old woman is revealed to now be senile, incapable of seeing Luou at all as anything *but* her daughter.</div><div><br /></div><div>So the angst of performing gender and the angst of performing Craft are messily intertwined in Luou, down to the root. Luou's monstrosity is transfem coded, a perversion, an intense program of body modification that has rendered him incapable of fulfilling the role of the prince. When he finally embraces all the anger and pain of his experience, he becomes beautiful and terrible: the very avatar of the demon of Swan Lake, Rothbart. Having cast down Odette (played by Miyako) and the Prince (Jumpei) he finds himself bereft. There is no more external object for his anger and self loathing.</div><div><br /></div><div>He takes up his grandmother's shawl. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj9rDy74nk1-IEHU2-gJP7fWnpQSrA1UFLagrMJcBAa6cVjUkyNzG2mRPYZlWp6pjDDBjRzLcyYEHca2PzB3rHTFQ9zSm2O4Lda0wtQTeCe_cRDGQGUnb3HXD5g_e-cjZuGknpm7r_AwRBxCzDACUuFZkYoQdQPhafBeNSyibquIY_wAqF2df99gCs" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="2560" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj9rDy74nk1-IEHU2-gJP7fWnpQSrA1UFLagrMJcBAa6cVjUkyNzG2mRPYZlWp6pjDDBjRzLcyYEHca2PzB3rHTFQ9zSm2O4Lda0wtQTeCe_cRDGQGUnb3HXD5g_e-cjZuGknpm7r_AwRBxCzDACUuFZkYoQdQPhafBeNSyibquIY_wAqF2df99gCs=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div>He gives himself, the demon Rothbart, wings.</div><div><br /></div><div>I like that this moment of revelation and triumph is incomplete in the show. It twines together his need for individuality in performance of his craft explicitly with his personal identity. There may be "no need for individuality in classical ballet" but Luou recognizes that he needs to be seen, needs to embrace an expressive form that breaks from his rigid and dehumanizing training, and needs to forge his own identity. But he can't make his grandmother see him. She is, tragically, too senile to see him as anything but her absent daughter. A moment of hesitation costs Jumpei his chance to console Luou, and instead the young dancer, anguished, is left to be comforted by his cousin and aunt.</div><div><br /></div><div>Developing his identity for his own sake rather than for hers will take time and work. And possibly an estrogen and progesterone prescription.</div><div><br /></div><div>Jumpei, meanwhile, races off after his own quest: recognition from the rigid classicist Oikawa.</div><hr /><div>Classical training is sort of by definition training to a rigid, established standard. What it means to play classically, or draw classically, or dance classically is to fit "classical" definitions of how you move your bow across strings, or your charcoal across paper, or body across the stage. The pitch for this is that once you master the basics you have a framework from which to deviate. You've mastered the rules, now you can figure out how to break them with much greater control. Or, you can be just the absolute best there is within the context of the rules. You can master them with such aplomb that your inner desire for expression shines out through the minute control of your skills. It's this ability that first draws Jumpei to ballet, the excellence and control that allows a master of dance to express something astonishing within an established convention.</div><div><br /></div><div>But the flip side is that classical training is uninterested in the individual. It is a craft, a mastery of procedures. There's something a bit mechanical about it. I memorized drawing techniques like they were mathematical formulae. Not just </div><div>The ratio of head to body, </div><div>Of sternum to breast and breast to bottom of the ribcage, </div><div>Of chin to nose to brow to hairline. </div><div>But also more abstract formulas--</div><div>If the "gaze" is in this direction, you leave *this* much space on that side of the canvas vs the other side. </div><div>The dominant angle of the ribcage can be drawn between these two points on a grid with the ratio of 1:√3 on a theme of quarters. </div><div>Light comes from 45° to the side and angled up. </div><div>Rembrandt lighting. </div><div>Reflected light comes in here, </div><div>And the core of the shadow across this third of the object, </div><div>Which is a sort of</div><div>Sphere or</div><div>Cone or</div><div>Box--</div><div>An elemental shape.</div><div>Tombé-</div><div>Pas de bourrée-</div><div>Glissande-</div><div>Jeté-</div><div><br /></div><div>So there's a bargain here. Or maybe more like a wager, a wager with the demon of classical training. You bet that you can master the system so that you ride the demon, so that you can come out the other side with some expressive capacity intact, an ability to say what it was you wanted to say in the first place when you made the pact. And the demon of classical training wagers that it will train out of you that "wrong idea" we see exacting practitioners of classical ballet deride in Dance Dance Danseur: that you have any value as an individual beyond your capacity to express the formal rules of the system.</div><hr /><div>I'm not going to describe what happens when Jumpei, soaking wet from running to the studio in the rain, just barely in time to audition, attempts to dance for Instructor Oikawa in order to win the coveted single scholarship slot in her elite class. In a sense, it's beside the point of my question.</div><div><br /></div><div>Why would Jumpei want this?</div><div><br /></div><div>The show presents no easy answers. The show isn't a straightforward trans allegory and doesn't have a straightforward moral about whether classical instruction is good or bad. It's an awful lot messier and more ambiguous than that, which these days I'm finding to be much more productive and relatable to my own life. Certainly it's an awful lot more fun to write about than just transcribing whatever the moral of the story is.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is a sense, that Jumpei stumbling tries to articulate to Oikawa, that it's precisely because he doesn't fit in at Oikawa studios, that he fits in with Godai's more open ended approach to dance, that he feels so drawn to Oikawa. Jumpei and Luou are conditioned to be inverses of each other. Luou is almost mechanical in his dancing, and needs to find his individual humanity again. Jumpei craves a kind of refinement that he can only get from submitting to the demon of classical instruction.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't... regret my classical instruction. I think. I feel frustrated sometimes with the rigidity of my drawing style, with how hard it's been to practice because I had to teach myself how to draw for the pleasure of drawing not as a rote exercise that I am, bluntly, not disciplined enough to force myself through. I feel envious of peers who are much better at cartooning, at expressivity, at achieving work that looks like their own. But I have a solid base from which to study, now that study is less painful for me. I can examine the body, in particular, as a mechanism.</div><div>I see the contours of the legs defined by the adductor group sweeping down from the pubic bone</div><div>And the sartorius wrapping around the masses to define a kind of box and wedge</div><div>And the arm, raised,</div><div>Pectoral stretching,</div><div>Deltoid curved behind the swell of the tricep,</div><div>And latissimus dorsi swooping in from below</div><div>A triangle that gives the torso an almost angelic silhouette.</div><div><br /></div><div>It might be reading or projecting too much to say that Jumpei envies Luou, despite Luou's horrific abuse. Yet: Luou has a command of fundamentals that Jumpei is totally ignorant of. When he finally is forced, by Miyako and Jumpei, to fully express himself and his desire, when they fully give him permission to be a little fucked up and evil, to become Rothbart, he has a terrible power because of his command, because he has this foundation of seeing his body as a tool for pure expressivity. I think it's that capacity that Jumpei desires, and the show seems to recognize that there's no moral conclusion to draw about that craving for mastery. It's content to instead explore the agony and ecstasy of that process.</div><hr /><div>The human body's muscle groups are common to most vertebrates. The bones and the flesh might be stretched around a bunch to fulfil different evolutionary needs, but the armature and the mechanisms used to drag bones around are remarkably similar. Wings and arms are full of analogous structures. If you look at a picture of a bird, you can imagine a pose for a human (maybe exaggerated a bit, maybe requiring the wrist be trained into a new position, the muscles of the back accentuated) where the arm takes takes on the same contours and movements.</div><div><br /></div><div>You can give a human wings.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgjSclNYnEXhgPUamZ5A-qw-7iw1iPA-pnWBquh8XleTeErkmVlB7J6NHYlmcTwoIWYXIPLmkUqubaEeOLTIstvXantvWHVSZE-w8cWms6fIR0GRL2lcIGrRo0-sFNRjGKyY1fBYhn6m3rA6bY9CVFGvcpQ3pQYrL-y8qbpNJSbaMkyHaPL4vmOxfI" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgjSclNYnEXhgPUamZ5A-qw-7iw1iPA-pnWBquh8XleTeErkmVlB7J6NHYlmcTwoIWYXIPLmkUqubaEeOLTIstvXantvWHVSZE-w8cWms6fIR0GRL2lcIGrRo0-sFNRjGKyY1fBYhn6m3rA6bY9CVFGvcpQ3pQYrL-y8qbpNJSbaMkyHaPL4vmOxfI=w300-h400" width="300" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Give Me Wings
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<!--COMPLICATED AND MESSY: KINGDOM HEARTS, PLOT, AND BEING A TEEN QUEER-->
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<h3>Complicated and Messy: Kingdom Hearts, Plot, and Being A Teen Queer</h3>
Kingdom Hearts feels like a wild game of pretend played with every random thing the players had lying around. That's also what my experience of being a queer teenager felt like.
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<!--BOXING DAY-->
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<h3>Boxing Day</h3>
I found myself lost for words and drowning in boxes. I started drawing, and I didn't stop. These are comics for the old year.
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<!--NASTY, BRUTISH, AND SHORT: THE PROMISED NEVERLAND AND HUMAN NATURE-->
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<h3>Nasty, Brutish, and Short: The Promised Neverland and Human Nature</h3>
The nightmarish final boss of hit manga The Promised Neverland is... philosopher Thomas Hobbes??
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<!--ON THE TRACKS OF AN ANGRY GOD--><iframe frameborder="0" height="169" src="https://itch.io/embed/1444342?border_width=2&bg_color=fafbf5&fg_color=2d2522&link_color=50495b&border_color=97959a" width="554"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/on-the-tracks-of-an-angry-god">On The Tracks Of An Angry God by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>
<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>
<!--AHOGT--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/123100?bg_color=61003a&fg_color=ffc38a&link_color=006b24&border_color=caffb3" width="552"></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-16135458143176995602022-08-24T12:12:00.000-07:002022-08-24T12:12:39.489-07:00To Watch All My Heroes Sell A Car On TV<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []" style="text-align: left;"><i>As generations age out of our youth valorizing culture, but find no purchase in our political gerontocracy, what form does the art of those too old to rock and roll and too young to die take?</i></div></blockquote><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi2Oc-dj8tVha7cNyNQfo-ysPyV3ysOx02qF7hlOtxbhv0mc-e-A9w48J1PWsbpASH5JGrnEJ09mmZVrdCLFvtJEfCZEVfPvwObTEiMhwmGvrfZVpNptB6HTb3y3CoPHE7Nm_TNABjbo7K6keVL1UZHugEiRgsyaf4vYMwEN01U35qfAidaO596maY" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1617" data-original-width="2346" height="442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi2Oc-dj8tVha7cNyNQfo-ysPyV3ysOx02qF7hlOtxbhv0mc-e-A9w48J1PWsbpASH5JGrnEJ09mmZVrdCLFvtJEfCZEVfPvwObTEiMhwmGvrfZVpNptB6HTb3y3CoPHE7Nm_TNABjbo7K6keVL1UZHugEiRgsyaf4vYMwEN01U35qfAidaO596maY=w640-h442" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">Let me quickly sketch a picture of culture. We have in many ways a profoundly youth-oriented culture of young beautiful action stars and young beautiful pop stars. I'm painting with a broad brush here, so please excuse the generalization and don't pester me with whatever exceptions you're arming yourself with. By a similar token: generally, politics is dominated by a segment of boomers and, astoundingly, a large number of people still hanging onto power with mummified grip from the Silent Generation.</div><div><br /></div><div>So consider a culture that rapidly discards its young to make room for younger and more beautiful replacements, while not making room for any sort of transition into actual power. Millennials, the very oldest of which are now in their *40s*, have made a foray into the senate: we now hold exactly one seat out of the already appallingly undemocratic 100 seats in the chamber.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is eerily mirrored in Hollywood, which is overwhelmingly driven by sequels, reboots, and ongoing franchises, often ones pre-dating the birth of a large swath of the audience. Yet: old stars might be trotted out for a cameo (or their likeness resurrected with CGI) but for the most part the rebootquels are dominated by attractive youths. (Attractive youths that, as RS Benedict points out, <a href="https://bloodknife.com/everyone-beautiful-no-one-horny/" rev="en_rl_none">are remarkably sexless</a>, objects to be looked at but not touched.) </div><div><br /></div><div>The John Wick movies helpfully defines the contours of the situation: only able to be produced because Keanu Reaves has made so much money and is friends with so many really talented stunt performers and coordinators, the films present an ongoing story of a guy who has aged out of his profession as hit man, but finds himself inescapably sucked back into the vortex of an increasingly incomprehensibly exaggerated hierarchy of assassins, a pawn in a conflict between elderly powerholders. It is notable both for being such an exception in its production and casting, and for capturing something of this strange cultural limbo we find ourselves in.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are echoes of this from within the cultural machine as well, though the response to The Last Jedi will probably ensure that we'll never get anything like its portrayal of its aging heroes as washed up losers ever again. Luke is sort of a perfect Gen X hero, his ambitions totally disappointed, bitterly sneering at the young people rising up to replace him, crushed by his inability to overcome the corpse legacy that the Jedi traditions have saddled him with. The Force Awakes weirdly recapitulates the original Star Wars, setting up a world after the happy ending, in which the heroes are totally powerless to prevent the events of their story from simply happening all over again. The Last Jedi develops this into one of its central themes: the impotence of Luke and Leia in the face of the logic of empire and the recurring rise of fascism from within the liberal order is mirrored by the impotence not just felt but *anticipated* by Rey and Kylo. Rey desperately wants to believe that she could attain the power to break the cycle; Kylo craves power to rise and seize the institutions he believes he is entitled to.</div><div><br /></div><div>Luke just wants to drink his blue milk and grill. Luke has given up. Luke is what happens when you take a Rey or a Kylo and just run them through a few decades of disappointment.</div><div><br /></div><div>Luke is so god damn relatable. No wonder so many people hated seeing themselves and their own objective impotence and obsolescence put on the screen! No wonder Disney has pivoted so completely to telling prequel stories where all your favorite heroes remain young and heroic forever!</div><div><br /></div><div>Something like Ghostbusters Respookening or whatever the shitting hell the most recent one was called comes across as a bit ridiculous I think precisely because it rings so false. The entire narrative is predicated on the resurrection of a passed on legacy, and indeed the film itself has been portrayed by its director Jason Reitman as an attempt to grapple with a franchise that was "passed on" to him by his father. It's all a bit silly. It's Ghostbusters for goodness sake, not exactly a deep and sentimental film. For its flaws (such as "not being a good movie") the notorious Female Ghostbusters grappled with the film-as-tradition from the perspective most of us share: that of outsiders. Reitman instead exemplifies the incestuous slurry of Hollywood production and the way it resolves the contradiction between the impotence of the new and the unmarketability of the aged: it hands legacy productions on to fresh faced failsons.</div><div><br /></div><hr /><div><br /></div><div>The Homestuck Epilogues presented a future for the characters of the most important work of our generation as not remaining forever youthful teenagers but actually becoming adults. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. I was not one of those people. In fact, some of the conversations in the novel about adulthood and continuing to live despite no longer being the center of the narrative helped me get through one of the worst periods of my life. I saw myself reflected in the story in a way that, sure, the teenagers who picked up Homestuck in 2018 in archive form probably found rather alienating.</div><div><br /></div><div>The critical discourse on the Epilogues, such as it is, seems to have settled into a groove of reiterating what a traumatic experience they were for the fandom, a kind of bomb dropped maliciously on the community, with Homestuck 2 being an attempt to keep performing in the rubble. I find this deeply alienating. I *liked* the Epilogues. Much more than I expected to, in fact: I had, after all, written extensively on how the end of Homestuck was complete and satisfying in itself, cutting off where it does specifically because it represents a gnostic escape by the characters from the prison world of "canon".</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm glad I entered into the Epilogues with the background of that reading. The Epilogues, most notably Candy, directly and explicitly tangle and muddy the concepts of "narrative", of "canonicity", of "identity", and of "adulthood", all under a broad fascination with how life "should have gone" and has failed to go. The Epilogues open with a specific choice presented to the main character John Egbert, a choice between "meat" or "candy". What these concepts mean for Andrew Hussie feels about as clear as what the "Aura" or the "Historical Materialist" is for Walter Benjamin but broadly they encompass: </div><div><br /></div><div>🥩 action, plot progression, "canonical" information, combat </div><div>🍭 fluff, romance, interpersonal drama, "extracanonical" information. </div><div><br /></div><div>The narrative forks at this point between the meat and candy timelines, with the Candy timeline falling into a metaphorical (and, it transpires, literal) black hole in the narrative, cut off from any sort of relevance or meaning.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's at least how it's experienced by John in the Candy timeline, who spends the next couple of decades gradually sliding into miserable alienation, periodically punctuated by impotent rage. Part of his impotence comes from his awareness on a deep metaphysical level that his life is not operating how it "should have gone", that he's been exiled from the timeline where he actually mattered. (In one of the novel's many attempts to problematize its own premise, in the Meat timeline he slowly dies of an alien toxin in the back seat of his dad's car after leading superfluous teenage copies of his friends into battle against the tyrannical narrative god of the original comic.)</div><div><br /></div><div>So, the ending of Homestuck constitutes an escape from the narrative and the nightmare of having all your most miserable moments laid out as part of the story of your life. It is a fundamentally Gnostic move, a rebellion against a single image of how things "should be" that has been imposed upon the characters by a malevolent patriarchal power whose reach extends through time and space. (This is one of the many ways the story is also deeply queer.) The Epilogues, by popular demand, tell the story of what happens after that escape, putting the characters back into a kind of narrative prison. But this time it's one partly of their own making and perception, a bifurcation that rapidly spun out via fan works like <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/series/1475819" rev="en_rl_none">Godfeels</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/19978669/chapters/47296705" rev="en_rl_none">Pumpkin Path</a>, and the <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/19820605/chapters/46930687" rev="en_rl_none">Ink Black Appendices</a> into a multitude of alternate, doomed possibilities. Meat and Candy seem particularly interested in a strange tension: to be the hero, to be relevant, is to have awful strife imposed upon you. To be irrelevant is... well, to be irrelevant. Pointless. Powerless. </div><div><br /></div><div>I've seen people dismiss the Candy timeline as weird and unnecessary. As a 29 year old suffering from chronic pain, living with parents while struggling to work, closeted and still not on HRT, completely cut off from any meaningful political power or even representation in a deeply antidemocratic country, it was obvious to me which of the two timelines most resembled my life.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is a certain death-cult valorization of the artist suicide in our culture. There's even a club for it, though by definition people like Hendrix or Cobain could only be inducted posthumously. Maybe the Epilogues should have been set a few years later, when John and his companions were 27 rather than 23. While Candy John can't know directly that Meat John dies a slow agonizing death at a young age alongside his teenage friends, the two sides of the story read against each other suggest that on some level the angst the surviving John experiences is precisely the angst of growing up, growing old, *growing out of youthful relevance to a culture which is always hungry for more red meat*. It is the same angst that leads Dirk--who in the Meat timeline orchestrates the catastrophic events that ensure the story will "keep going"--to dramatically commit suicide in the Candy timeline, cut off from his promise of youthful relevance and unwilling to experience the rest of existence as just A Regular Guy. </div><div><br /></div><div>It is the angst of being <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddhjgxk4zL0" rev="en_rl_none">too old to rock and roll</a>, and too young to die. Of going through the misery of your teens and early 20s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_MlBCb9-m8" rev="en_rl_none">just to watch your heroes sell a car on TV</a>, a life cut off before it can begin and left to just sort of collect dust in long slow decline.</div><div><br /></div><div>I had, at the point the Epilogues released, taken a long hard look at my life and where it was going and where the world was going and become gradually more and more convinced, each repetition of what had started as an idle thought carving grooves of delusion deeper into my psyche, of this: that I had died at some point while living in Toronto, Canada. Everything after that was just a kind of, I don't know, death delusion? Mistake of the universe forgetting to clean up and garbage collect the variable known as [Deadname] long after [he] ceased to be relevant? Certainly not anything that we could call "Canon."</div><div><br /></div><div>And then I read the conversation, late in Candy, between John and his estranged ex wife Roxy:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh5f3NUmYS0tT2VfBOKZws8DQHGCWuIq4nC7zyYPS7PcG1Qim2iomCkHcI3M1P2AryDWYogk3Jn54rUCdGDzk1YOUtA0eNmz9GZRC8gknLdztRc_jjj-Mu6vlOYuPB8mWh2QIzarIQ7y0IYNpq34Is8WrlG-SA4ojyGX9OWo5sx3rX9Kz1P5XFBlHo" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="364" data-original-width="876" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh5f3NUmYS0tT2VfBOKZws8DQHGCWuIq4nC7zyYPS7PcG1Qim2iomCkHcI3M1P2AryDWYogk3Jn54rUCdGDzk1YOUtA0eNmz9GZRC8gknLdztRc_jjj-Mu6vlOYuPB8mWh2QIzarIQ7y0IYNpq34Is8WrlG-SA4ojyGX9OWo5sx3rX9Kz1P5XFBlHo=w640-h266" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><div>We're just adults, we're not dead.</div><div><br /></div><div>Huh, I thought.</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, that's eerily relevant, I thought.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm not trying to say that the Epilogues singlehandedly turned my life around. The Epilogues didn't get me on estrogen or get me on an anticonvulsant that gradually healed the damaged nerve in my jaw or the muscle relaxant that helps me keep the pain from flaring up again or get me an apartment away from my parents giving me the courage and space needed to come out to them. They also unfortunately didn't get Bernie Sanders elected and couldn't even fix the comic's fundamentally broken readership and internal labor structure. Fiction isn't magic, and I'd trade all the "representation" in the world for the power to actually fix the dysfunction in our society.</div><div><br /></div><div>But the conversation, in which Roxy brutally deconstruct's John's melancholy, challenging whether it actually *matters* that they don't exist in a timeline where they get to throw their lives away heroically fighting evil or whatever, did something for me. It remains one of the only stories I've seen so eloquently expose the grim subtext of our rebootquel franchise culture: die young, because you haven't got a future.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Epilogues face that down by presenting an entire half of the story that *does not matter* and exploring the characters who choose to keep living regardless.</div><hr /><div>When I woke <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/letstalkaboutstuff" rev="en_rl_none">Sarah</a> up from the nightmare that became, almost verbatim, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22446544/chapters/82125667#workskin" rev="en_rl_none">the dream that Rose Lalonde describes in Godfeels of a "suicide wind" pulling her out of the world</a>, we were still in Pittsburgh, packing all of my belongings to be put in a great big U haul crate, bound for the suburbs of Seattle. In a little less than a month we would find out that the home we were guaranteed was not somewhere we could stay after all, and the person who had guaranteed we would be safe had simply... changed his mind. As self care. The grinding machinery that would deposit us two months after that in a long stay hotel with our kitten Ruthie--at that time she had another four months to live--went into motion at that moment. We would spend much of the intervening time desperately prying at the machinery that was preventing us (due to bureaucratic negligence, incompetence, and just possibly outright corruption) from getting into new housing.</div><div><br /></div><div>It slotted into Rose's narrative nicely at any rate. While John and Dirk struggled with the psychological impact of being in the "wrong story", Rose experienced the breakdown of "canonicity" as the breakdown of her body. In the Candy timeline the complete break from reality spares her, allows her to simply stop caring. In the Meat timeline the burden of having to keep the story going physically wrecks her.</div><div><br /></div><div>Godfeels... is sort of an odd case for Rose. The story always existed as a reply to the Homestuck Epilogues and a deliberate parallel to Homestuck 2. Then Homestuck 2 was gone. There was no more "real story" for Rose or anyone else to engage with. The circumstances of its creation eerily paralleled the narrative: Godfeels is rent from the fabric of canonicity due to John Egbert realizing she is transgender and renaming herself June, a plot beat that was always planned for Homestuck 2 but now was a thread left dangling in the breeze.</div><div><br /></div><div>So when Rose describes to June the feeling that the characters in Godfeels are "living on borrowed time" there's about... five or six layers to that, and an awful lot of them are autobiographical.</div><div><br /></div><div>The question of canonicity in these stories isn't just a metatextual, postmodern game we're all playing with language. I think "canonicity" is best understood as these stories expressing a feeling of having been cut adrift from a social narrative. Too old to rock and roll ("<span data-fontfamily="monospace"><b><span style="color: #b536da;">our story did end. And yet...</span></b></span>") and too young to die ("<span data-fontfamily="monospace"><b><span style="color: #033e9d;">and yet here we are.</span></b></span>"). In this context, June and Rose being in a complex romantic and sexual relationship with two other women, and the fact of June's womanhood at all, read to me as a parallel to a sense that queer adults in particular who are incapable and/or unwilling to assimilate into cishet bourgeois culture are a kind of mistake of reality that reality just might decide to correct. There is a sense, <a href="https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/sss/pdfs/Critique/sedgwick-paranoid-reading.pdf" rev="en_rl_none">as Sedgwick describes in her essay on paranoid and reparative reading</a>, that in queer communities "no one is passing on the family name."</div><div><br /></div><div>So when one of the other members of this relationship, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/38488246" rev="en_rl_none">in an erotic fanfiction</a> responding to Godfeels, a fanfiction responding to a largely fan-driven development of a multiply-authored sequel to an agender person's bizarrely and unexpectedly popular hypercomic, justifies her willingness to introspect about the lie that her relationship is built on by stating that she's pretty sure the story is non-canon... well, that stands out to me. It reads to me as, among other things, an expression of the sense that any reality in which we could build a stable life for ourselves couldn't possibly be real. Its presence in a work so far removed from the logic of capital valorization and franchise management strikes me as particularly poignant.</div><div><br /></div><div>It feels like there's a recursive kind of action here, where an aging bunch of creatively inclined and engaged people is pushed to a marginal place within culture, and responds by producing art precisely about that experience of irrelevance. Remember: art isn't magic! I'm observing what I think are some possible readings of a few texts as a reaction to particular social pressures, not suggesting we can write our way out of our material conditions. But by the same token, it means something to me that I can participate in a project like Godfeels, a story about "getting the hell out of your 20s". It means something to see the characters in the Homestuck Epilogues strive to continue living despite the very fabric of reality and indeed large swaths of the audience stamping them as "irrelevant". It means something to see someone as old and cynical as Luke get roused to action. Oh, and it means something to see Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance at age 40 performing live in a cute dress.</div><div><br /></div><div>Culture may be in a pretty dire place, but I'm not ready to lay down and accept irrelevance just yet. After all, you're never too old to rock and roll when you're too young to die.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
To Watch All My Heroes Sell A Car On TV
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<!-- HAPPILY EVER AFTER NEVER ENDS: STEVEN UNIVERSE THE MOVIE AND SERIAL NARRATIVE -->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2019/09/happily-ever-after-never-ends-steven.html" style="text-decoration: none;" >
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<div class="bfpic" style="background-image:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3aCgTPyGS9v6dkEVUHiVJCpF31m7pkt6z2N7oMhrWTAp57bj-NTgy41tJ5psspuaDZ4wZlz9U2vdBbigv4o9LQkW87pelqlrEi4gEyBMSPfshDO0ls1H9oX2Dm406zDpDMPrBxe6NLg/s640/Screenshot+%25281948%2529.png);"></div>
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<h3>Happily Ever After Never Ends: Steven Universe the Movie and Serial Narrative</h3>
Where does a story go after the end? It's a strange question for serial narratives grapple with, and a major one for Steven Universe The Movie. Caught between the status quo and a grim cycle of trauma, the film finds a new kind of happily ever after.
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<div class="bfpic" style="background-image:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisyCa4pEz767SDd5N4PiermGJhpqiqD3P6GK5AEFxioWH9j48VwsxMJk492mxYG66qcwYfkMR9-Yq88YkAc9tqv6MUhZrtZuDcc5v1FyM3njJYCDrg7yrP-cmSDx8k1vrIrG8wpO3Kbw/w640-h360/Screenshot+%252816%2529.png);"></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>We Were Too Stupid For Jennifer's Body</h3>
As Jennifer's Body goes from flop to feminist cult classic, its failure gets blamed on lousy marketing. But the film's cynical jokes about 9/11 memorialization suggest the fault was with audiences: we were too stupid for Jennifer's Body.
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<!-- IN SEARCH OF MORE APPLAUSE -->
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<div class="bfpic" style="background-image:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD1BXbP9iPf8vdpNCF4pfLjMdgVPEgCdKU74bA-TPahyAAe3jsikBmfSqEYjDWvs5FO885ZzkBBbJuW6DSwbTPxfTIT5ekEySHetbWDDp1Tm8B4KuHey9kzjMyv9lI84yzs56bQvnGJw/w640-h400/inside.jpg);"></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>In Search Of More Applause</h3>
Bo Burnham's movie "Inside" stretches the term "comedy special" till it shatters. Why does its clutter of fragments cut so deep? Maybe because of how it reflects the world neoliberalism promised us...
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<!-- WHAT I LEARNED PAINTING 2,047,500 PIXELS OF HOMESTUCK FAN ART -->
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<div class="bfpic" style="background-image:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBad_8rYQyB8VZhZRW-U4K0On3btwycOAF-U7Gk9TpkDaF3gBwbIDvtIV9NXwseE_y4l7cCxv4YDuolUYHq7Cv25mXHYLR-eJstPzmFrDU1LJJ28qyzdlXgTLaahjfJoNTZz2W06Lamg/w640-h444/Octet+Promo.png);"></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>What I Learned Painting 2,047,500 Pixels of Homestuck Fan Art</h3>
I didn't expect painting a series of illustrations for Sarah Zedig's Homestuck novel Godfeels would involve so much deconstruction of my identity and how I make art! Here's what I learned from the experience.
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<!--ON THE TRACKS OF AN ANGRY GOD--><iframe frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/1444342?border_width=2&bg_color=fafbf5&fg_color=2d2522&link_color=50495b&border_color=97959a" width="554" height="169"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/on-the-tracks-of-an-angry-god">On The Tracks Of An Angry God by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>
<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>
<!--AHOGT--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/123100?bg_color=61003a&fg_color=ffc38a&link_color=006b24&border_color=caffb3" width="552"></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-3017389702898855782022-07-31T14:29:00.003-07:002022-07-31T14:29:43.858-07:00Art Beyond AI<p>AI art is here. How the hell are artists actually supposed to respond? If proposed answers all feel like dead ends, maybe it's time to look beyond art: to politics.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhXXcoXRG_KxJW92xVTX8rFSXTVLr82B9_wlvsEntMgQKtPFX2QJoXsgB6g9nWJB9C1n1_tbwHt4m91o_TZTRH5SvoZrYy0XLeStZu1CI7nBN0TQbc6x3gD70UXGwwP5rZQQXgY5jfrs816bTu3bvQuYt7vjf3Kr6iEAK3Xrl99QRWKR37cbmxLCME" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1196" data-original-width="1063" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhXXcoXRG_KxJW92xVTX8rFSXTVLr82B9_wlvsEntMgQKtPFX2QJoXsgB6g9nWJB9C1n1_tbwHt4m91o_TZTRH5SvoZrYy0XLeStZu1CI7nBN0TQbc6x3gD70UXGwwP5rZQQXgY5jfrs816bTu3bvQuYt7vjf3Kr6iEAK3Xrl99QRWKR37cbmxLCME=w568-h640" width="568" /></a></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><br /></p><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">Honestly though what more could I say? AI art emerges from the chrysalis slowly but determinedly whether or not there's a stable critical platform to receive it, and <a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2022/06/dreaming-with-machine-art-in-ai-art.html" target="_blank">after</a> <a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2022/06/autonomous-dreams-ai-art-and-ai-agency.html" target="_blank">three</a> <a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2022/07/ai-dreams-of-genies-ai-art-and-fantasy.html" target="_blank">articles</a> I'm starting to feel a bit like I'm muttering to myself in my covid quarantine room. I've gone over the possibilities for what AI art might be, and denounced as mystical hype what it is not. What else is there?</div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe: what are we to do?</div><div><br /></div><div>I didn't seek out criticism of AI art purely to dunk on it. I, a skeptic, wanted to see what other skeptics were saying. Was it possible to write about the aesthetic and procedural problems with AI art while still taking seriously things like:</div><div><br /></div><div>- The readymades of the dadaists which radically challenged what we think of as authentic artistic creation?</div><div>- The stochastic methods the surrealists used to subvert the conscious mind?</div><div>- The way new technology makes artistic expression more available to more people?</div><div>- The agency of the nonhuman in 70s performance and earth art?</div><div>- The contemporary studio system in which superstar artists employ teams of workers to actually fabricate their vision?</div><div><br /></div><div>No dice.</div><div><br /></div><div>For all the whining about lowered intellectual standards your average conservative does, an honest engagement with the last century or more of artistic production and development of visual technologies is hard to find. To keep hammering on last week's punching bag for example: Erik Hoel's engagement with art after 1900 is dire. He addresses it in a way that reeks of guilty conscience, that exudes a sheepish recognition that such art constitutes a massive intellectual embarrassment to his whole screed against the absence of artistic soul in AI art: he shoves coverage of this off to a footnote at the very end of the article. There, he argues that it's fine that Damien Hirst doesn't make any of the shit with his name attached to it, because uhhh Damien Hirst did it first, so, it's fine, but it's bad now that OTHER people are doing it, for... some reasons. Is it wrong specifically that Hirst weds a capitalist mode of production with the marketing ploy of the author-function? No, apparently the problem is that other people doing it is gauche, or something. Don't worry about it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Duchamp? Same thing. Duchamp's found and repurposed objects "were art because of their audacity, because of the context of the other art around them, and because of their arrangements—when everything is a readymade, it’s not an art gallery, it’s a scrapyard." This was not, in fact, <a href="http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/blindman/2/05.htm" target="_blank">how Duchamp's contemporaries and allies defended "Fountain" in the pages of Dadaist magazine The Blind Man</a>. Oh, sure, the defenses, like Louise Norton's suggestion that part of the sexual appeal of classical nudes comes precisely from how they make us think of nice clean plumbing, deliberately play with context. But the foundation on which later artists like Bob Rauschenberg or Jasper Johns build is Norton's insight, echoed by (possibly) Beatrice Wood in another defense, is that "R Mutt" *chose* the fountain, and that act of imagination was itself an artistic action. The fact that the dadaists didn't just do this once but *kept making readymades* suggests that they, at least, felt a sufficiently imaginative person could in fact produce more than just "a scrapyard" through the process.</div><div><br /></div><div>But what about you, contemporary artist? YOU can appreciate Duchamp's radical intervention into the art world, so long as you don't try to follow the arguments of those dadaists and implement their logic yourself, you fucking peasant, you punk piece of shit. Who the hell do you think you are? Not a consecrated Great Man, that's for sure!</div><div><br /></div><div>Here is the message of the people treating AI art as a uniquely apocalyptic event, as far as I can parse it: You need to be original. But in a way that's classically trained! But also in a way that's not derivative of other art! But you better not do anything like the Dadaists would do because you're degrading the Aura of the Work of Art and the Artist as Individual Genius. So don't do anything too avant garde, and CERTAINLY don't do anything avant garde with [shudders in a way that is at once both horrified and libidinally charged] *computers*. Is it any wonder that artists interested in procedural generation, in the face of such hidebound reactionary hysteria, would flee to the waiting arms of another camp of reactionary grifters: the gold bugs and pyramid scheme pushers of Crypto? </div><div><br /></div><div>I wanted to find something that captured the sense of frustration shared by a lot of my artistically inclined friends (which, let's be real, is basically all of my friends). Rather than apocalyptic fears, we receive AI art with a kind of dejected frustration or bewilderment. People really think THAT is "as good as a real person could do"? But to me, outright condemnation and a mass response of refusal--the response cryptoart deserved!--didn't feel quite suited to what is, at the end of the day, another technology that might make artistic expression more accessible.</div><div><br /></div><div>But there's nothing actionable for artists here because the instructions collapse on themselves in contradiction. As an artist, a classically trained one no less, I don't want to be "defended" in a way that leaves me feeling so bullied and disempowered, constantly looking over my shoulder in case I'm Doing Art Wrong. If we're going to respond as artists to AI art, surely we can find a better way than this.</div><div><hr data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="0 0 []" /></div><div>Benjamin's Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction looms large over digital art, computer art, crypto art, and now AI art. Till now, I've avoided him, feeling all the while like he was hovering over my shoulder. Frederick Jameson, a guy who has read and outright written far more foundational theory and philosophy than I'm ever going to, opens his recent book on Benjamin by noting that "Benjamin is often too readable (or readerly) for us to realize that he is incomprehensible, or, in other words, writerly." What a hell of a thing to say! And indeed, concepts like the "aura" or "ritual" or "politics" as Benjamin use them aren't as straightforward as they might appear. Once second he seems to be enthusiastic about the possibilities of mechanical reproduction, the next lamenting the loss of what it overturns. And, as Jameson points out, history hasn't always been kind to Benjamin's predictions: the claim for example that there's something revolutionary in the fact that anyone can now be photographed reads weird in an age when we can all dm each other as many nudes as we want, yet are no closer to controlling the means of (re)production.</div><div><br /></div><div>So Benjamin has me spooked, because I'm not sure I agree with him, not sure I *understand* him, and afraid in either case of showing my entire ass by misinterpreting him.</div><div><br /></div><div>No one else seems concerned, mind. People love pulling a couple random quotes of Benjamin out of context to back up what they already believe. Have you noticed a recurring theme in these articles is people getting away with shit because they know no one's going to call them on it, no one's gonna point out where they've been slapdash or disingenuous or just plain bad at their jobs? This is certainly the case with Benjamin quotes, which crop up to bolster all manner of horseshit.</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin's concept of the "Aura" is a little elusive but seems (at least in Jameson's understanding which I think I agree with) deeply tied to his sense of historical continuity and tradition. It is all of the material traces of a work of art's passage through time to the present, and the sense of something having a distant, maybe even numinous power that holds it at a remove from us. Notice anything here about "exclusivity" or "irreproduceability" that preserves artwork's "value", i.e. it's worth as a *commodity*? No, lol, god no. That's an absurd misreading, and a grotesque imposition of the commodity form back onto all of human history, as though an ancient Byzantine kneeling before a golden icon thinks to herself: gosh I'm glad there's exactly one of these, I would hate for my investment in $SAINTCOIN to go down due to its fungibility!</div><div><br /></div><div>And speaking of commodity fetishism, Benjamin is a messianic writer in many ways but people treat the Aura like it's a horcrux, and that's just silly. Benjamin explicitly states that the aura of the work of art "may usefully be illustrated with reference to the aura of natural ones." Why? Because a natural space too bears all the astonishing traces of its passage through history. Some productive connection to AI art might be to compare this to the sense of process I talked about in earlier articles, but that's less auratic than it is how Benjamin describes film's power to, like a scientific instrument, transform mass vision into something that can directly engage what was previously distant or invisible. There are intriguing possibilities in Benjamin, they're just buried under a depressingly reactionary misuse of his words.</div><div><br /></div><div>If there's a problem, even a tragedy, with Benjamin it's precisely this, that he aspires to create a framework that can never be used by fascists, to champion a form of mass political art that might explode the shackles of tradition, and both the media he champions (film, print, and photography) and the framework he develops (of the aura and its collapse) have both been freely plundered by reactionary forces.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm not sure what Walter Benjamin would've thought of AI art. It feels like almost a perfect final expression of the populist transformation of the arts that he champions, a world where everyone is a kind of writer, a film critic, an actor. But there seems to be a presumption, lurking in Benjamin, that the mass culture of mechanical production and reproduction will expose for working people their own agency. As we've seen, the discourse around AI art is mired in false conceptions of agency that are actually radically disempowering, and follow a long tradition of downplaying the power of the masses to interpret and participate in art unless they're, I don't know, grinding their own pigments I suppose. His sense of the audience that absorbs the film in a distracted state seems less inspiring in an age characterized by deliberate and constant sensory overload.</div><div><br /></div><div>But Benjamin also speaks to a moment of crisis that surely flashes up again for an artistic materialist in our own moment of crisis. Is there a way to harness not just AI art but all the myriad technologies that have deskilled art, which is to say, made them less rarified, made them accessible as never before to a mass audience that longs for expression?</div><div><hr data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="0 0 []" /></div><div>GAN art is treated like a genie granting wishes because that's the logic of consumerism we've been taught to embrace. It's just as much an illusion, of course, as the Mechanical Turk of Doordash, Fiver, Mechanical uh... Turk (wow they really did just put it right in the company name huh), and so on. There's an object the end user sees, which obscures the actual guy somewhere else operating all the levers and buttons.</div><div><br /></div><div>But this is no different than the way our civilization has functioned since the advent of capitalist production. I am pulling the mask off the Mechanical Turk that's been chasing people round the old factory, and surprise surprise it's Old Man "Alienation" under there, grousing that he would've gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those meddling Marxists!</div><div><br /></div><div>No wonder we found reactionary cultural critics standing outside the old factory, warning everyone of the scary machine-man inside! The actual villain is the relations of production that they're such good buddies with. The villain is the way we labor to produce not stuff that connects deeply to ourselves and our audience, or serves a need, but generates value for someone else when wrapped into the logic of capital. If your whole deal is preserving property relations while being really upset about the catastrophic effect of property relations on individuals and society, the scary robots coming to destroy the soul of the artist are a convenient distraction.</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin, late in the reproduction essay, notes that instead of dropping seeds from planes, the imperialist nations drop bombs. I think we've been conditioned to respond to a statement like this with a certain jaded, mature derision, which lets us tell ourselves that we're very savvy about "the way things are" (the continuity of which Benjamin seeks always to explode). It's an idea work engaging with, though, because it's part of a larger exploration of the idea of production, of *over*-production, capitalism's drive to just keep filling the world with more stuff, ultimately falling into crisis when the new markets dry up and they run out of people to exploit and ways to squeeze blood from their workers. Its resolution to that crisis is war, which Benjamin describes as a symptom of an immature relationship to technology.</div><div><br /></div><div>And isn't the relationship we have to digital technology immature? Ideally the opening up tool accessibility would flood the world with art. And this has happened, sort of! But the nature of its production and consumption is fundamentally dictated by property relations: the exponentially swelling mass of "content creators" struggle to produce ever more rapidly, for an ever dwindling audience share, while tech companies reap the profits. Just as AirBNB is a hotel service that owns no hotels and pays no hotel staff, Uber is a taxi service that owns no cars, and Amazon and its competitors seek to be a delivery company that owns no trucks, YouTube is a television network that owns no production studios, Patreon a gallery and publisher with no printing presses or walls, &c.... The aim is to as much as possible push the onus of maintenance of both the tools of production, and maintenance of the lives of the working class, onto the individual, while still owning the entire infrastructure on which that labor depends.</div><div><br /></div><div>We must consider ourselves entrepreneurs, according to these new bosses! But creators cater their work to "the algorithm", which is to say: to the boss who owns the essential means of transmission and that boss's often incoherent and occluded standards of production. It's plausible that we're being disciplined by these systems, transformed from unproductive workers to productive ones, which for Marx and for the capitalist <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch02b.htm" target="_blank">are always the workers whose work produces profit for the capitalist</a>. This is a form of alienated production, production that transforms us into ultimately fungible parts competing against each other, and I think creators outside the successful 00.1% this alienation and sense of exchangeable inhumanity feel this increasingly keenly.</div><div><br /></div><div>And on the consumer side? Consumption can never replace an unalienated relationship with work and to our fellow humans, sorry if this is news. Is this why the role of the reader is so seemingly unorthodox a thing to acknowledge in criticism? Because to acknowledge the agency of the reader would be to acknowledge art involves some active, unalienated participation? Maybe the reason so many of my friends increasingly feel a level of revulsion towards DALL-E Mini pieces is not just because of the surrealistic texture focus of the systems but because of a sensation of a kind of con being performed: no, that's totally Sonic kissing Sans Undertale on the lips. It's right there, the Mechanical Turk produced it for us to look at! The assertion requires us to alienate ourselves from the labor of interpretation: to convince ourselves that actually we aren't doing anything, the machine and its corporate owner did it for us.</div><div><br /></div><div>The fantasy of terrifying robot culture is already our reality: we already treat producers and consumers as practically superfluous. If the fear is that machine production will strip the soul out of art, I have bad news about what the content feed has already done, as the latest iteration of commodity production. This is why you have professors of "communication design" <a href="https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/2022/07/19/how-much-should-graphic-designers-worry-about-dall-e-2" target="_blank">blithely touting AI's ability to automate the creation of things like banner ads</a>. I can't disagree with the argument that “Frankly, the great majority of graphic design produced by human designers is mundane work that doesn’t need to be masterpieces anyway”. Certainly every available temporal or geographical space that we can possibly fill with blaring visual and auditory garbage designed to make humans more insane, wasteful, greedy, and complacent, we have endeavored to fill! With the power of AI, maybe we can finally just blanket the world in advertising.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't intend to resolve in this essay the question of whether those of us producing "content" for social media are best considered workers or a sort of neo-serf paying rents. I find the neofeudalism hypothesis to be pretty thinly argued, generally presenting a series of smash and grabs that date back to, say, the dispossession of tenant farmers during the Great Depression, as somehow a new, much worse form of society scarier than capitalism because, look, this time it's being done with computers! A lot of things about AI art, and the general production of art in the age of social media, do snap into focus for me when we understand, as Daniel Joseph does, many media companies old and new as<a href="https://reallifemag.com/delivering-people/" target="_blank"> producing primarily not artistic products to be sold but *audiences to be sold to advertisers*</a>. The shackles already placed on AI art, and embarrassments like the <a href="https://twitter.com/ai_curio/status/1549512482665930763?s=20&t=0BYNrw9h8F3EMKG50oO-yA" target="_blank">laughable attempts to manipulate its products by tacking "diverse" words onto people's prompts</a>, suggest that the role of AI art in the future might be precisely to produce massive quantities of comfortably neutral content that, in its consumption, can be the utilized to create audience-commodities to be sold on to advertisers. </div><div><br /></div><div>Whether or not we individually use algorithms in our art seems beside the point in this context. The struggle is not to produce art with more genuine or pure tools, the struggle is to produce art that resists corporate attempts to place its recipients into an algorithmically determined box, where they can be expected to continue passively consuming.</div><div><br /></div><div>Art in its deskilling and proletarianization is finally not separate from our lives. Whatever is to be done, it needs to be done not to art or to technology or to platforms or to means of selling digital goods. It needs to be done to capital and property relations, nothing less than the way we live our lives, the struggle of the artist as the struggle of all workers and workers-soon-to-be.</div><div><hr data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="0 0 []" /></div><div>I look at a DALL-E assisted artwork. "<a href="https://twitter.com/me_irl/status/1533175947918249987" target="_blank">Icon for an app that helps you disappear completely and never be seen again.</a>" What do I bring to this piece? What does it offer to me?</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiSbIwRsu4lmzPh73YDZiGNLK7OZCiRaH0DpU4oprS-m89b4p5F7Dj9RSVwfSD0Lw-Fn3RWI93Du4SCQh7yLbNrBIGcl_5G-5DYJ19YvZyB2uIhB80A8ySg6sSIs5RRS7Yj6IuKO8XxHNvKUH6tqw5QmQekfP2-MQY-MNGMpLHuFKF38snEJLRxQp8" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="900" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiSbIwRsu4lmzPh73YDZiGNLK7OZCiRaH0DpU4oprS-m89b4p5F7Dj9RSVwfSD0Lw-Fn3RWI93Du4SCQh7yLbNrBIGcl_5G-5DYJ19YvZyB2uIhB80A8ySg6sSIs5RRS7Yj6IuKO8XxHNvKUH6tqw5QmQekfP2-MQY-MNGMpLHuFKF38snEJLRxQp8=w640-h640" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div>Aesthetically, I like the graphic design, the clean lines similar to a kind of clean vector design that I use myself in games. I can imagine it shrunk down to emoji size. The sideways crossed zero, which looks also almost like the eye hole of an expressionless mask, is remarkably iconic.</div><div><br /></div><div>What do I see, though? Why do I experience the piece as more than a neat little proof of concept, as something to scroll past as I try to get my daily fill of #content? Maybe precisely that it suggests an exit from the endless stream of #content. To disappear completely and never be seen again (to be "helped" in this process by an app) suggests going off the grid. It is turning on, tuning in, and dropping out. The sideways zero suggests to me a deliberate laying down of metrics and quantification. We are putting the engagement counter to zero, we are no longer adding posts, and we are laying it to rest finally.</div><div><br /></div><div>The image has no "aura", no sense of a distance and a placement in history. It suggests that in the face of an alienated society where uniqueness has been technologically banished, the way out is through, a collaboration between the producer, consumer, and nonhuman agonist of the algorithm to cease to be a "productive member of society" entirely.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
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Art Beyond AI
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<h3>Dreaming With The Machine: The Art In AI Art</h3>
AI art programs are taking the internet by storm. But can the products of GANs like DALL-E or Midjourney ever be more than a cool tech demo? Where is the art in AI art?
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<h3>Feels Dumb Man: I Really, Really Hated The Pepe The Frog Documentar</h3>
"Feels Good Man" reveals a lot about how Pepe the Frog and its creator Matt Furie suck... accidentally. When faced with that inconvenient truth, the film and its audience will go to astonishing lengths to pretend our cultural grift economy is doing just fine.
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<h3>In Search Of More Applause: 'Inside' And The World Neoliberalism Promised</h3>
Bo Burnham's movie "Inside" stretches the term "comedy special" till it shatters. Why does its clutter of fragments cut so deep? Maybe because of how it reflects the world neoliberalism promised us...
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<h3>Chorby Prefers Not To: Blaseball, Bartleby, and a Fandom's Malicious Compliance</h3>
Chorby Short is an adorable frog girl who is also sometimes a witch. Or perhaps, she's just some data in a game taking the internet by storm called Blaseball. Or perhaps, she's a new example of an idea from an 1853 Herman Melville story. Or perhaps, she's all this and more?
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<!--ON THE TRACKS OF AN ANGRY GOD--><iframe frameborder="0" height="169" src="https://itch.io/embed/1444342?border_width=2&bg_color=fafbf5&fg_color=2d2522&link_color=50495b&border_color=97959a" width="554"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/on-the-tracks-of-an-angry-god">On The Tracks Of An Angry God by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>
<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-72692197464847610062022-07-24T10:36:00.000-07:002022-09-04T15:55:44.939-07:00AI Dreams of Genies: AI Art and the Fantasy of a World Without Workers<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []" style="text-align: left;"><i>As AI advances, the hype machine advances faster. Its boosters and detractors agree: AI Art can grant all your wishes. This hyperbolic discourse hides the truth about our tech-mediated culture: we're being sold cheap knockoffs of our desires.</i></div></blockquote><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmWI2CYsU5w3RSc7pBAsrtwmn7DDLyOWzEylnQQIIjooNFc3RQdjGzQDg2BFCyNdNAd2mgyx4xOzleqLvzXGg7_utGoBeUhWwCw1ZuChIlHE767eQc8b1rma_rtg8a-sS4gHSEOmul-NLlRYTAgVhgFP3aUdjKitoyppXq3VcpvIWKHFwiqqT_3TM/s1149/image%20(3).png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1149" data-original-width="1065" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmWI2CYsU5w3RSc7pBAsrtwmn7DDLyOWzEylnQQIIjooNFc3RQdjGzQDg2BFCyNdNAd2mgyx4xOzleqLvzXGg7_utGoBeUhWwCw1ZuChIlHE767eQc8b1rma_rtg8a-sS4gHSEOmul-NLlRYTAgVhgFP3aUdjKitoyppXq3VcpvIWKHFwiqqT_3TM/w594-h640/image%20(3).png" width="594" /></a></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">In the twitter replies to one of my earlier AI and Art articles, someone enthusiastically touted the ability of DALL-E to produce imaginary product designs. The product in question, a lumpy stein that sort of looked like R2 D2, underwhelmed me, and I pointed out it looked a lot worse than an artist could do. In an ironic reversal of the old complaint about modern art, the enthusiast responded, "yeah, but *I* can't do that."</div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">A large part of the hype around AI art partakes of a dream of instant commodity satisfaction. Sure, your R2 D2 stein might be lumpy and weird looking but here it is, as if by magic! You might be banned from doing anything too political or sexual with these tools, but you can, at least for now, live the dream of commanding your favorite licensed characters to perform whatever stunts you want from the comfort of your home. AI Art popular on both social media and crypto marketplaces tends towards the same kind of off-model cheapness of knockoff toys, plastic crap or frozen treats shaped vaguely like "sanic" or "pokechu" or "red robotman". They come from nowhere (the "Third World") to fill the Dollar Tree in your neighborhood that just put all the bodegas in a 2 mile radius out of business.</div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2021/06/the-nfts-aura-or-why-is-nft-art-so-ugly.html" target="_blank">In my very first crypto art article</a> I described many contemporary artists, particularly crypto-curious ones, as producing art designed for social media, art that functions best when encountered briefly as part of a general experience of scrolling down a dash. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, and you might remember I talked glowingly of how someone like Simon Stålenhag employs that quality to provide a jolt of unfamiliarity with his moody rural cyberpunk landscapes. I wonder, though, can even good artists compete with the flood of knockoff toy AI art?</div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">How often do we look at an image online and not see it, merely register it? As in: process it automatically, bureaucratically, stamping it with a "seen" label and putting it in the outbox? I click on an image on twitter to make it full screen, and I'm already thinking about something else, I'm a million miles away. I mentally nod my head. Check a box. Close the image. Scroll further. Then I realize I haven't seen the image at all, had a single thought about it. Is this just me? Maybe I really do have ADHD. I certainly shouldn't universalize! But also: isn't this the behavior that social media has cultivated through its UX regime? There's always something a few posts down that you could be missing, and nothing ever sits on its own but is accompanied by a whole stream of comments. I'll warrant a few seconds of "engagement" with 50 things is worth more than 50 seconds of "engagement" with one. I just <a href="https://twitter.com/SamFateKeeper/status/1550592673555222528" target="_blank">made a tweet about the horny new anarch faction netrunner cards</a> and it's got 111 "impressions", whatever that means! Golly wow! I don't think it's just my brain being baked by this shit, gang.</div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">Because I am the kind of woman who spends much of her time languishing in despair about this and that, I'm not immune to fretting about AI art making my job obsolete. To some extent this is because of the actual instances of DALL-E 2, Looking Glass, and Midjourney pieces that actually prompted a response of some sort from me. When the work is good, it's shockingly engaging in a way that the glorified photoshop filters of Deepdream just never were for me. Good enough to prompt two articles already about the most interesting possibilities! In my darker moments, struggling to figure out what the hell is actually going on with the external oblique and tensor fascea... fasciea... with the fucking hip muscles, I look at the best of these works and think, oh why even bother honestly.</div><div><br /></div><div>But what stresses me out the most is not the great stuff but the mid stuff. Not the Mid*journey* stuff, the mid-*tier* stuff. It's sort of bleak looking at a bunch of basically dodgy photobashes, the kind of thing you'd have seen in a throwaway contest or meme in 2009, treated like an amazing achievement not just for technology but for *art*. Does this sound familiar? In that first NFT article a year ago I had the same critique of cryptoart and its most prominent and successful examples. Sometimes I struggle to talk about AI Art because a lot of the stuff I could say--that arts writers and galleries have become tech boosters and stopped talking about the actual art, that the economic framework inevitably forces a race to the bottom of the content barrel, that wildly different usages with wildly different artistic validity are lumped together in an effort to legitimize the worst of the field riding the coattails of the best--well, I already said it about crypto art as a whole.</div><div><br /></div><div>I get a weird deja vu comparing works by crypto art superstars like Beeple and some of the outputs of AI art. Any number of Beeple's images could be DALL-E products, and vice versa, from the often deeply ugly textural filters on down to the conceptual level. What is his picture of those two boxer guys as giants kissing in front of a crowd of lazily copied and pasted prefab assets if not a perfect prompt for DALL-E? The means are slightly different, but it shares the knockoff toy aesthetic--just close enough to the real thing for the end consumer to fill in the blanks, without having enough detail or care that it would interfere with the race to the bottom towards ever cheaper production.</div><div><br /></div><div>I suppose the artist formerly known as DALL-E Mini does have this going for it, though: its take on the boxer kiss nonsense has at least a dynamism that the stiff, flat Beeple painting lacks!</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhr2hBpLIHg0uszJfl_2K7Hx0Bdj852b2409nAEqoe0Vv17Z3fCAj103MOQ8oqMLLkXLmWUIFaRhIdLpTOJiza9eG5e1LrGoq7qBGYYYRvhP5_vakGEiF7Fomt8e2JxIcPnxrAo3qATp_C1H9zhCzvcBdxN6YHvAamSH87eE8E8umZIrW4r6NdNXwk" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1190" data-original-width="1100" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhr2hBpLIHg0uszJfl_2K7Hx0Bdj852b2409nAEqoe0Vv17Z3fCAj103MOQ8oqMLLkXLmWUIFaRhIdLpTOJiza9eG5e1LrGoq7qBGYYYRvhP5_vakGEiF7Fomt8e2JxIcPnxrAo3qATp_C1H9zhCzvcBdxN6YHvAamSH87eE8E8umZIrW4r6NdNXwk=w592-h640" width="592" /></a></div><br />Can artists who, bluntly, give a shit about their craft compete with the mass deskilling operation represented by this technology, and the algorithmically shortened attention span of mass culture online? Eh. I'm not all that optimistic. But AI assisted artists might just be able to at least turn some of the logic of the genie on its head in their work.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm fascinated by DALL-E's ability to produce slightly uncanny photographs of products that have never existed. The way it feeds into the fantasy of just having stuff appear magically without having to ever confront the process of its production or the people involved in its creation is totally rancid, don't get me wrong. But I've always been fascinated by alternate material history, and the production of forgery art. This kind of work, art that exists to play in the tension between the real and the fake, <a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2014/04/parafanfiction-and-oppositional-fandom.html" target="_blank">parafiction and parafanfiction</a>, has the potential to provide that jolt of defamiliarization.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's difficult for me to talk about this because I haven't seen anyone actually *do* this yet. I'm just looking at the kind of product photos people are generating and extrapolating possibilities based on other parafictional projects I've seen. Imagine being confronted with what seems like an anomalous object--say, I don't know, a Polly Pocket produced in the People's Soviet Republic of the Cascades, or a VHS of the full and finished film of The Thief and the Cobbler, the details aren't really important for the thought experiment. You notice the specific tells of the AI and are confronted with the object's unreality. I think it's possible to make the leap then, as a viewer, to a question of why this has to be a hoax rather than reality.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is an object "from nowhere" by definition, but it implies an entire material history of production. In this sense it's the exact inverse of the knockoff toy: instead of a real object that obscures its source and the labor that produced it, it's a fake object that uncovers an impossible labor that might have been. AI art in fact offers unique potential for this kind of fabrication. You could produce everything from design documents to set photos to behind the scenes shots of animators... you name it. I suspect it would all need extensive editing but, well, that's sort of the point, isn't it? The AI isn't a genie, it's just another tool that can facilitate this sort of production.</div><div><br /></div><div>I said it was probably unethical to obscure the actual production process going into AI images; here's one case where a *conditional* obscuring of that process might be valuable, for the way it can set up and facilitate the hoax, which is then revealed in order to call into question the assumptions we take for granted. Just like any speculative fiction, it can lazily reify the state of the world, or it can dare to imagine an alternative and confront the viewer with it. I am trying to look on the bright side here. I am squeezing these lemons I've been given so furiously you'd think I was a Juicero from a timeline where the Juicero actually fucking worked. (Potential DALL-E prompt??) I think what we're most likely to get out of AI art is: right wing propaganda, shit memes, and the continuing steady deskilling of visual artistic labor. But god can we just for one second, if we have to do this, at least pretend to care about making aesthetic and functional distinctions between the types of art made with the same general tools?</div><div><br /></div></div></div><div><hr data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="0 0 []" /></div><div><br /></div><div>The shallow cheerleading for procedural art and its genie model of production, its imagined capacity to simply deliver, effortlessly, all our dreams to us exactly and unchallengingly as we conceive of them, is counterbalanced by equal and opposite shallow fearmongering about how it will lead to the end of civilization. None of it seems interested in asking questions about labor rights, deskilling as an economic phenomenon, the place of tool assisted art creation in the context of surrealist automatic drawing or dadaist readymades, a relationship to conceptual art, or the deep weird questions about the vibrant autonomy of the materials with which we compose art. No, instead you get a bunch of whinging on about the Human Soul, which always sends me straight to a mindset of please calm the hell down, you are literally talking meat. Get some perspective. Sheesh.</div><div><br /></div><div>The two sides of the debate are perfect mirrors for each other, actually. <a href="https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/ai-art-isnt-art" rev="en_rl_none">Erik Hoel's bafflingly popular substack (🚩) post</a> is a good and popular example of this. Hoel takes for granted the notion that all of the tech hype around AI is legitimate, not just a bunch of boosterism and marketing. He just happens to think it's terrible rather than super cool. Future generations, he bemoans, shaking and crying, will grow up in a world of only soulless mimickry of art. Walter Benjamin predicted it! (God these hacks love misquoting Walter Benjamin, it's like a compulsion.) His evidence? Well, he told a robot to paint a picture of "a robot with flowers growing out of the top", and it did.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgdooo-bDIn0-AFrmnDCo6Mq0IAduItzNOpK3sDLHe3QgnMljjlXf7WMLRP88dRc10HnQd3MosbPBPkpFjN2FiBQhFSCv8GsNbYF7JzGZCg5oUOJfu7CrvZJ83YNmZOJIKCFsLITgecUg0kVJfr0M6oJjp0x_jRzZLR2bMjVp2Z6_flwEvl2HAoruM" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1164" data-original-width="2518" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgdooo-bDIn0-AFrmnDCo6Mq0IAduItzNOpK3sDLHe3QgnMljjlXf7WMLRP88dRc10HnQd3MosbPBPkpFjN2FiBQhFSCv8GsNbYF7JzGZCg5oUOJfu7CrvZJ83YNmZOJIKCFsLITgecUg0kVJfr0M6oJjp0x_jRzZLR2bMjVp2Z6_flwEvl2HAoruM=w640-h296" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div>Erm, sort of. By the top did he intend "the top of the head" or "the top of the torso"? If it's the former, I count 7/10 that generously fit the prompt, 5/10 that I'd say fit the prompt *well*. 2/10 seem to sort of be doing their own thing, flowers growing around and through the robot. One has a neck made of plants, which is pretty cool but again, not the prompt. If the claim is that it is "incredibly, gobsmackingly easy" to go from a prompt to a finished accurate result, I'm not convinced. That's sort of the trick, though, isn't it? Both the hypemen and the chicken littles have no compulsion to show you ALL the results they generate. I have no idea whether this sample of ten images is all he generated, or just the most representative. Both parties have a great incentive to, bluntly, lie about just how easy it is.</div><div><br /></div><div>And they can basically get away with it because most people don't really pay much attention to images. The sloppy, half-hearted, mid results of most AI art programs can pass as the real thing primarily because no one's paying very much attention at all, to the fine details where the images tend to get runny and incoherent, or to the accurate fulfillment of the prompt, or (and this one's harder) to the negative possibility space AROUND the computer's image generation where other possible representations lurk. This isn't an indictment of AI art, it's an indictment of a visual culture in which most people are simply not visually literate.</div><div><br /></div><div>You might think that a reasonable response to this would be promoting visual literacy. Erik follows--indeed, is a paid subscriber to!--some people on substack very, very worried about the state of our education. Is "Common Sense", one such subscription, working on this problem? Well, no, they're busy writing articles like "I Refuse To Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated" and "My University Sacrificed Ideas For Ideology. So Today I Quit." and "I Criticized BLM. Then I Was Fired." and "Elon Conquers The Twitterverse: Our chattering class claims Musk is a supervillain. The truth is simpler: He wants free speech. They don't."</div><div><br /></div><div>Great stuff!</div><div><br /></div><div>Look, comrades, I get that a critique of AI art that valorizes human creation feels tempting. Is this not similar to my own argument, that a lot of our visual culture is garbage? Well, no, not really actually. Because the difference is I actually care about art that I can talk about and analyze and that makes me feel something, not about some abstract criteria of whether whoever made it was enough of a Genius. That's fucking stupid. My criteria is ultimately simply this: I have something to say about a flaming piano, a fan art of a magical girl anime, a fox playing with a felt blanket, and Conway's Game of Life.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have nothing to say about "a robot with flowers growing out of the top," and neither does Hoel.</div><div><br /></div><div>He can't.</div><div><br />Because if he did say too much about it, if he drew too much attention to the actual art in a way that prompted his audience to really look at the images presented and think about them instead of scrolling past them on the way to his next bit of insipid Great Man worship, they might start to ask questions like, "wait a minute, can you ACTUALLY look at this selection of AI art and reconstruct what the prompt was?" </div><div><br /></div><div>I actually would hazard a guess that you can't. Oh, not the robot part, you could probably get something relatively close to that. But... I didn't actually tell you the WHOLE prompt that Erik found it so "incredibly, gobsmackingly easy" to write. No, this prompt specifically said the image should be in the style of a particular *artist*. Can you guess who it was? Perhaps the relatively homogenous treatment of color and the flat gradient backgrounds suggest someone like Edward Hopper. Some of the flowers are almost post-impressionistic, and there's an awful lot of yellow... could it be Van Gogh? Ah but then you look at image 9 and that seems almost more like the primitivism and fascination with masks of modernists like Fernand Leger... oh but the flowers are all wrong for that!</div><div><br /></div><div>Did you guess Grant Wood?</div><div><br /></div><div>Would you *ever* have guessed oh, yeah this is obviously the American Gothic guy?</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj0c5uORRvljPUWyZbT8SRap9YsPjZbcvtZqZsqH3iN5xHuScYayf3jLUgiytXEwDw13Dv2hkPcHndccosxejOS5-vPWoum2qPq2Cf_an9qKz9m-JPjs9EJYSYz1vFtOdzqCnzs6TJGdZMj8rjpDB7gxjBTlPMfG7gTvYwxVar4CTlbgEScpyUAcZU" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1448" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj0c5uORRvljPUWyZbT8SRap9YsPjZbcvtZqZsqH3iN5xHuScYayf3jLUgiytXEwDw13Dv2hkPcHndccosxejOS5-vPWoum2qPq2Cf_an9qKz9m-JPjs9EJYSYz1vFtOdzqCnzs6TJGdZMj8rjpDB7gxjBTlPMfG7gTvYwxVar4CTlbgEScpyUAcZU=w331-h400" width="331" /></a></div><br /></div><div>I wouldn't have.</div><div><br /></div><div>So is the genie really handing Erik his wished for image? Because as far as I can tell, Erik has not in fact easily generated "a painting by Grant Wood of a robot head with flowers growing out of the top", he has generated some images of robots with flowers growing on and around the upper parts of their body in what looks like a mid century illustrative style, but he has FIRST TOLD YOU that he generated "a painting by Grant Wood &c &c" and you, and I, and everyone else, has sorta gone, yeah alright I guess that looks kinda like that prompt, and kept scrolling. This stuff works primarily because we're grading AI art, and boosters and doomsayers alike, on a curve--something I'd expect a guy who is just so sincerely worried about "intellectual standards" to be a bit more mindful of. </div><div><br /></div><div>That's the thing, though. These "intellectual standards" never really involved letting the plebs in on the game. Art was supposed to be produced by an elite, necessarily limited number of geniuses. For the people who sincerely believed that belonging to the circle of geniuses was their birthright, I'm sure it does feel, as one of the stupid tweets he quotes bemoans, that the internet "laid waste" to music. What this really means is that all forms of art were rendered increasingly *proletarian* by digital technology, increasingly subject to the specific logic of labor. The genie--the Genius--AI is just the latest in a long line of practical and social developments, youtube on one hand and "postmodernism" on the other, that threaten the genie--the Genius--that is the soul of the artist.</div><div><br /></div><div>Erik and his ilk buy into the hype because they are the other side of the coin to the tech boosters. They're in the same damn class, or at least *aspire* to be: the class that gets to ultimately control and dictate taste, art, legitimacy, and what is available on the market to us. But there is a legitimate conflict and contradiction inside the class between the hype men who seek to maintain their market position through mass deskilling and the commoditization of art, and those who seek to maintain their position by simply being the people who dictate what small pool of art is "legitimate". Hence the different stance on whether the Genie AI is a benevolent spirit or razing demon. They can agree on one thing, though: an educated working class that can discern for themselves what has content and what just *is* "content" is the enemy. They'd be so much harder to sell to!<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>It's time to dispel the smoke and mirrors they're using to conjure this spirit and talk about the real work of art--and that's what I'll be concluding this series with next time.</div><div><br /></div>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
AI Dreams of Genies
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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<!--IN THE END WE ALL DO WHAT WE MUST: UNIVERSAL PAPERCLIPS, CLICKER GAMES, AI, AND AGENCY-->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2020/09/in-end-we-all-do-what-we-must-universal.html" style="text-decoration: none;">
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<h3>In The End We All Do What We Must: Universal Paperclips, Clicker Games, AI, and Agency</h3>
Remember Universal Paperclips, that clicker game? Remember turning the human race into paperclips? Ok, so, what if you just... didn't? What would that choice tell us about game design, agency, artificial intelligence, and people?
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<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2018/03/lets-pop-together-part-1.html" style="text-decoration: none;">
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<div class="bfpic" style="background-image: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjITOmmGYo-uaF9MXZZV16K1jN7KJNyF5rTqyU2EF6OnDVB5wqjp9vq5587dI986gzXe7xluiu_cPOuWr1xmWJ2ZyWM9sD2HJk2wFGittqg1BUrNXYTjg_JFDlmp3UikuJhs0eW7L1V7g/s640/Pop+Team+Epic.jpeg);"></div>
<div class="bftext">
<h3>Let's Pop Together</h3>
What is it that makes today's Pop Team Epic's so different, so appealing? And can it explain why people hate the marketing for Ready Player One so damn much?
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<!--THE NFT'S AURA, OR, WHY IS NFT ART SO UGLY?-->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2021/06/the-nfts-aura-or-why-is-nft-art-so-ugly.html" style="text-decoration: none;">
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<h3>The NFT's Aura, or, Why Is NFT Art So Ugly?</h3>
NFT art is bad for the environment, and bad for artists, but critics and supporters of NFT art are both missing a key fact: it's also just bad art. Whether Beeple or Bugmeyer, it's time the stars of the NFT revolution experienced some real art criticism.
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<!--ON THE TRACKS OF AN ANGRY GOD--><iframe frameborder="0" height="169" src="https://itch.io/embed/1444342?border_width=2&bg_color=fafbf5&fg_color=2d2522&link_color=50495b&border_color=97959a" width="554"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/on-the-tracks-of-an-angry-god">On The Tracks Of An Angry God by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>
<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>
<!--AHOGT--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/123100?bg_color=61003a&fg_color=ffc38a&link_color=006b24&border_color=caffb3" width="552"></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-20330783608297123702022-06-28T10:37:00.001-07:002022-09-04T15:55:35.480-07:00Autonomous Dreams: AI Art and AI Agency<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Throw out the science fictions about intelligent robots. To understand AI art we don't need to get lost in press release fantasies, we need to understand the century-old art that paved the way for Dall-E.</i></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhvFktrqyFv59cYLP26m_7NdZjnVr5ZuSZMXQ6g4Jel-sjQM65Oz1syU8crUQ8bIzVy5GxQ2L8fM5G1Vhm__mQCNjZs-HGrw_aZ7LXmIKjZQ7GEHszwc6iQmZPDDKz36SEOgSFtgFWgfYq3LVBaCAxvpw2P6V8dtiPfMPz-yz1dO9Pw8w6Gsr-4tdI" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1150" data-original-width="1065" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhvFktrqyFv59cYLP26m_7NdZjnVr5ZuSZMXQ6g4Jel-sjQM65Oz1syU8crUQ8bIzVy5GxQ2L8fM5G1Vhm__mQCNjZs-HGrw_aZ7LXmIKjZQ7GEHszwc6iQmZPDDKz36SEOgSFtgFWgfYq3LVBaCAxvpw2P6V8dtiPfMPz-yz1dO9Pw8w6Gsr-4tdI=w592-h640" width="592" /></a></div><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">If GAN and other procedural forms of art seem to demand new forms of criticism, we might have to give up on them coming from the arts press. They're busy and distracted imagining they're in a cyberpunk video game, which hey, I'll grant, seems a lot more fun than the kind of story we're really in (think: Catch 22, or maybe something by Vonnegut).</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2022/06/dreaming-with-machine-art-in-ai-art.html" target="_blank">Maybe you didn't catch this from my lengthy diatribe on boredom last time</a>, but I can't get very excited about debates around artificial intelligence anymore. Like so many questions posed by futurists and science fiction writers--"is the identical copy of you that comes out the other side of a teleporter still technically you?"--it seems predicated on assumptions about human nature I'm skeptical of (i.e. as an autistic traumatized transsexual, "continuity of self" is already a dodgy proposition. You're fretting over whether your atoms have been replaced by other, identically positioned atoms? Gosh that must be so hard for you).</div><div><br /></div><div>What strikes me as odd about the breathless fixation in the arts press on these science fiction critiques is that it's not just deeply uncritical of tech company press releases, but also has totally forgotten the last century of art history! Like, Jean Arp when he dropped pieces of torn paper onto a canvas and recorded their placement "according to the laws of chance" didn't have to resolve questions of the scrap paper's intelligence. A half century later when Earth Artists began working with leaves, soil, gravel, and plants, they did not seek to model the minds of the rocks. Now we've got a solid hundred years of stochastic methods and the creation of art that by design will change over time without the intervention of the artist's "intent". Why is so little of that history referenced when discussing what is, ultimately, a very advanced processor for random scraps of paper dropped on a very complex canvas?</div><div><br /></div><div>Last time I talked a lot about the audience and curators whose agency directs and defines "AI art". Now I want to talk about the other side, the algorithms themselves and their agency. I'm not interested in debating whether they're "intelligent", though, because I don't think they need to be intelligent to be *agonists*--to be things with agency to act on the world.</div><div><br /></div><div>Does this seem weird, or even outrageous? I'm not sure I'd go as far as Ligotti and say that "human beings... have an unfalteringly good opinion of themselves", but certainly a lot of Americans think of themselves as the protagonists--or prime-agonists?-of reality. Yet. I find persuasive the ideas of Jane Bennett in Vibrant Matter that things have an agency all their own. Is that paired with a certain autistic tendency toward empathy and (over?) identification with objects? Eh, probably. But I don't think that a sense of a tree or a series of rocks as active participants in the creation of an artwork represents a kind of woolly spiritualism, but an honest and straightforward materialism, a recognition that things will do what they will do according to THEIR physical natures, not just perform at our beck and call. So many of the discussions on AI art fall back on questions of things like the Soul of the Artist. I'm not sure why simply suggesting that an AI, like a tree, has its own agency to act in accordance with its nature should be treated more mystical than that, given AI's often unexpected recalcitrance as a tool manifests every day in our lives, while the soul's seat in all our meat remains frustratingly elusive.</div><div><br /></div><div>Moreover, we have seen in increasingly shocking and brutal fashion just how many nonhuman entities have agency over our own lives: the pandemic to a great degree continues unchecked because the leaders of the western world decided that in order to appease one inhuman entity (the stock market), it would be better if we pretended the agency of another (the coronavirus's tendency to mutate and spread) simply didn't matter. Once again, respecting an inhuman entity's agency seems much more materialist than the insane jingoistic anthropomorphism of declaring we must "not let the virus win" by going out and continuing to shop, as if the virus's primary aim was to make us sad! Americans love being the protagonists of reality!</div><div><br /></div><div>This is the context in which I want to frame and understand works like Joseph Beuys's "I Like America And America Likes Me", a performance where the (German) artist was transported to America and left to spend eight hours a day, for three days, in a gallery space with a wild coyote (also named America). The performance represented a kind of communing between Beuys and the coyote, putting the artist and the animal on a level to interact, rather than a situation of Beuys trying to tame America (the animal not the country). If I'm being a little tongue in cheek with this it's because I'm not sure I buy some of Beuys's shamanism and "healing the western mind" schtick. But there's something about the actual performance that I find captivating:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjhNzXNSQrGz1TIkQXMqIk8oUv5Usr55Ly1A3AUCbcLGumW8IZeA4dZxaHfX3NDBf_GYe46JlU8qGWApoYypmBLTe_PD2wb5P-MAwm-ECmr26S1Av_fj5gDq7B37abl7fqURiqiYVQGCmAATmpPcDnWtwqanhTMGJcVRbMooJx0c4C_nzB1M8w118g" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1070" data-original-width="1600" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjhNzXNSQrGz1TIkQXMqIk8oUv5Usr55Ly1A3AUCbcLGumW8IZeA4dZxaHfX3NDBf_GYe46JlU8qGWApoYypmBLTe_PD2wb5P-MAwm-ECmr26S1Av_fj5gDq7B37abl7fqURiqiYVQGCmAATmpPcDnWtwqanhTMGJcVRbMooJx0c4C_nzB1M8w118g=w640-h428" width="640" /></a></div><br />Maybe it reads against the grain of Beuys's own self-mythologization, but I see this as a dramatically anti-protagonistic performance. What I like about it is precisely the limits of Beuys to control the scenario, just presenting a series of actions which America had agency to respond to, and responding in turn to America's behaviors. Would I lose you if I suggested too that the felt that Beuys wrapped himself in was a "participant" in the sense of having particular materiality that imposed constraints and offered possibilities to the other more traditionally "animate" ones? </div><div><br /></div><div>Boy, I'm sure I HAVE lost a bunch of people by now, but I'm just trying to express this, again, century old artistic tradition that radically sought to overturn humanity as lords of all creation. It's a tradition that, if you really wanted to, you could trace back all the way to overturning geocentrism with heliocentrism, or overturning Genesis with the Origin of the Species. When artists like Robert Smithson undertook large earth art productions like his masterpiece Spiral Jetty, they understood these were not permanent monuments stamping the world like a trademark. Instead, the materials used to compose them and the surrounding environment were considered active participants in an artistic exploration of entropy and transformation. Even the rocks and sand? Sure--try to command the sand to not rise with the tide to cover the installation, or command the rocks to dig themselves out again, and see how easy it is to make the material world do stuff it doesn't, metaphorically speaking, want to do. The art is for us in some sense, created by humans for a human audience, but the maybe paradoxical message for us as an audience is to recognize the limits of our own ability to control and dictate reality.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhnoEjYFZz-U_5n_w7ixBU1GAZ0_CQge5C2OjfobeHym9r3XBYJHJYQm1b8wnSEMlnyaRPchQ0X_L9IfetHoIXTyp2Xs_ok-s87iRqLofpc5LRBTzT7sxwiEz627Cvnbk4j8f_BoBqRatisWxkMZXV1EJHrED4HMeECV_svzMmI5gGG3nuQDqjIet8" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1361" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhnoEjYFZz-U_5n_w7ixBU1GAZ0_CQge5C2OjfobeHym9r3XBYJHJYQm1b8wnSEMlnyaRPchQ0X_L9IfetHoIXTyp2Xs_ok-s87iRqLofpc5LRBTzT7sxwiEz627Cvnbk4j8f_BoBqRatisWxkMZXV1EJHrED4HMeECV_svzMmI5gGG3nuQDqjIet8=w640-h426" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEguHXWD5xSzoI_hoALBiFv8dq0b-nX-cYD2mEDYCEv1nCSubbRLhFQfNJXVW3XhLIAfI4Lxf3qocNtMo5TVxn7sLDDvgVQ9NfE4fBB9EoOuIE5_4WeX0L448zEtA7WZvJf5T7hIwhJI1tUfvkHml92pi1CUAUyHXOAdfUOQeu7iX1PQrotX8VwSfl0" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="1046" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEguHXWD5xSzoI_hoALBiFv8dq0b-nX-cYD2mEDYCEv1nCSubbRLhFQfNJXVW3XhLIAfI4Lxf3qocNtMo5TVxn7sLDDvgVQ9NfE4fBB9EoOuIE5_4WeX0L448zEtA7WZvJf5T7hIwhJI1tUfvkHml92pi1CUAUyHXOAdfUOQeu7iX1PQrotX8VwSfl0=w640-h428" width="640" /></a></div><br />I prefer to see AI art, too, as an ongoing negotiation, the art emerging within a network of actors that includes programmers, hardware and its physical properties, perhaps other AIs, a multitude of other artists whose work feeds into the system, prompters, and audiences. You might object and say by this logic, taken to its absurd conclusion, any painting is an ongoing negotiation between a painter and her pigments.</div><div><br /></div><div>Well... isn't it?</div><div><br /></div><div>I spend much of my time as an artist trying to better understand the interaction between my intentions and the physical properties of my tools. Understanding the specific physical ways that the alcohol ink in my copics behaves differently than the water based ink in my tombows is essential: each are vibrant and have agency in particular ways. I cannot stop the copic pigment from spreading, and I cannot stop the tombow stroke from overlaying and darkening a prior stroke. I must *negotiate* with the markers to achieve particular effects, and ultimately I must accede, I must surrender, to their agency. I genuinely believe that whether they acknowledge it or not, this process of negotiation is how artists learn their craft. Nothing in the nature of art requires that we view the artist as master and her tools as servants, and some days it can really feel like the relationship flips the other way round!</div><div><br /></div><div>And yet so much of the discourse around this technology is grounded in hostility. Take GAN art: Generative Adversarial Networks. They operate by a back and forth process, where one "generator" AI throws a bunch of pixels together, and a "discriminator" AI which compares them to actual pictures. Is this adversarial? Why do we characterize this as a "duel"? When Max Ernst took rubbings of wood grain and bark in order to develop his surrealist paintings, was that a "duel" between "adversaries"? Or the construction of an Exquisite Corpse, where artists go around a table with a folded piece of paper and subsequently add onto the drawing without seeing what the others drew before? I'm pretty sure if these processes were antagonistic we'd know about it: the early 20th century avant gardists when they wanted to be antagonistic would just go ahead and start a public brawl. Pointing this out seems impolitic. After all, feminist historians of science in the 80s and 90s dared to suggest metaphors for how say sperm and egg negotiate fertilization distort reality toward chauvinistic stereotypes of male conquest, and STEM proceeded to have a decades long hysterical meltdown about it. Is tech so wedded to these paranoid tendencies to see adversaries and assaults everywhere because of its perverse birth by national defense industries? </div><div><br /></div><div>Let's leave that question to the psychoanalysts, and leave the question of agency behind, to talk more about the relationship GAN art has to the one good result of psychoanalysis: surrealism.</div><div><br /></div><div><hr data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="0 0 []" /></div><div><br /></div><div>Lily Alexandre <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi4sJEE8wCs" rev="en_rl_none">in her coverage of GAN art</a> describes the genre's distinct visual quality in a way that's really stuck with me: she suggests that GAN art is bad at *form* and pretty great at *texture*. Any scrutiny makes the pictures immediately fall apart into nonsense. At a glance, though, they have the feel of the thing being prompted.</div><div><br /></div><div>This stood out to me specifically because it helped me better understand another subgenre of art: a school of surrealism that similarly focuses on texture. There's some artists in the early school--Max Ernst, Remedios Varo--who have a real textural focus in their work, but I'm particularly interested in later artists, people like Zdzislaw Becksinski, HR Giger, or Sibylle Ruppert. These artists stand out to me as having a particular engagement with the surrealist jolt, the moment of unrecognition we get looking at surrealist artwork. For someone like Rene Magritte (or Dali, nodded to in the GAN DALL-E), the jolt comes from a naturalistic rendering of an impossible or illogical subject. For these artists, it's a little more complicated. They, like GAN programs, play in a space of a breakdown of form paired with a deep rendering of texture. Becksinski is a master of rendering desiccated skin and masses of bone. Ruppert is a master of fatty tissue, swollen muscle, and turgid genitals. Giger will paint recognizable figures at times but they always have a plastic, slightly artificial quality that allows them to merge texturally with his seething grounds of metal and rubber.</div><div><br /></div><div>No surprise artists in this tradition are such an influence on GAN engineers and prompters. Peppering prompts with references to Becksinski or Giger seems to be a popular and functional way to get images that look, well, relatively good. There's something marvelous in the way AI can now mimic the styles of artists like Van Gogh, but I find that the marvel wears off as every sky, regardless of the source photo, becomes Starry Night. The precision with which someone like Vincent selected colors and contrasts, applied textures, and warped or flattened the geometric planes of his subject is, it turns out, a much more formal question than a textural one.</div><div><br /></div><div>In contrast, this school of surrealism taps into the pleasure and horror of reaching out and touching something familiar but unfamiliar. It's a very embodied form of surrealism, one that I think invites us to imagine a physical presence of an impossibility or an aberration. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjZwlfOXX6_H-Ty7D9XsGIiZAoPeidC1ylXIJifBHLM_n-pc_ARWTJ9yv5FOIBM1dYJ1XZUC5mhJERgtvv3ZYNKxyxXZ6BeUgBYQ2eL2rzpa88esHNLcjR7zazBRcRwOL8HPV5S2GKUxvoX0FR49CY2QhjP1pY7jaZx2_7a7ksl1VXATUsG7GbcA8c" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="853" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjZwlfOXX6_H-Ty7D9XsGIiZAoPeidC1ylXIJifBHLM_n-pc_ARWTJ9yv5FOIBM1dYJ1XZUC5mhJERgtvv3ZYNKxyxXZ6BeUgBYQ2eL2rzpa88esHNLcjR7zazBRcRwOL8HPV5S2GKUxvoX0FR49CY2QhjP1pY7jaZx2_7a7ksl1VXATUsG7GbcA8c=w533-h640" width="533" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>One other surrealist, Dorothea Tanning, is worth looking at in this context. Tanning is a master draughter, she's kind of a god damn genius seemingly capable of doing whatever she wanted across a wide range of styles over her career. So when she turns, in the late 50s and early 60s, towards a kind of hazy abstraction, she ends up producing something that's like where GAN art might head if people wanted to tweak it in that direction: masterfully rendered figures emerge from and slide back into the fog of texture in strange colors.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgXBtACSgZNwU6_PonTq3oIfZjvkaH-qE6yl2Ao1hyNXggoWElv5DfvPDMAEOybs0KP5SYzmmYxRjVBk3ZTbJOKKas_4H9q4lo-6HpM-L4_GIvFPsOotxPYpyR0QfGCs5xEQqOeVbAPHdda24Fa_9-eAdjtNyqbAfH778zOWr9HEWnIJ2rAn-IT7Ro" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="678" data-original-width="1024" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgXBtACSgZNwU6_PonTq3oIfZjvkaH-qE6yl2Ao1hyNXggoWElv5DfvPDMAEOybs0KP5SYzmmYxRjVBk3ZTbJOKKas_4H9q4lo-6HpM-L4_GIvFPsOotxPYpyR0QfGCs5xEQqOeVbAPHdda24Fa_9-eAdjtNyqbAfH778zOWr9HEWnIJ2rAn-IT7Ro=w640-h424" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>There's something that I find viscerally unsettling about her work. It's not just the fact that it looks so much like GAN art, like the woman's mind was just running its own internal AIs against each other, though that's definitely part of the jolt I experience. No, it's the sense of things emerging out of the corner of the eye. Of ghosts. Of psychosis. It feels like catching a glimpse as you turn your head of a recently dead loved one. It feels like seeing a bird and having your brain, traumatized, mistake it for a scuttling roach. Is this an unfair gloss on her work? It's not all, or intrinsically, horror. I find it astoundingly beautiful and overwhelming. It's unsettling but also magnetic. I want to understand. I am afraid to.</div><div style="padding-left: 40px;"><br /></div><div>GAN art, I think, could achieve something like this, if it were pushed aesthetically away from the banal dreams of engineers who can only imagine the machine as a magical genie who conjures up representations at its master's command, and toward something with more latitude to push and pull against a prompt, maybe something that, like Tanning, flowed between states, some areas subject to the exactitude of anatomy and representation, others falling away into textured abstraction. It is a radically different destiny for AI art than the one we seem headed towards, where AI art is merely a biproduct of an ever expanding public-private surveillance regime overseeing a culture that produces nothing but ever more bloated, alienated spectacle.</div><div><br /></div><div><hr data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="0 0 []" /></div><div><br /></div><div>It says something to me that <a href="https://twitter.com/me_irl/status/1532208919765995521" target="_blank">one of the DALL-E sets of pieces that most attracted me, really blew my socks off</a>, bears the caption "Asking DALL-E 2 for "macro photograph of a pencil made of fish scales" just gets these weird pencil tessellations (pencillations)", the "just" in particular suggesting that this is a sort of error or disappointment:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh-kyxFlLlUw6ZhZqPjjhwu1pmR-Bp6__XXW1QrasqPd_2-TKovTe3nH1rt-Na8SN44sRyjhRjhi_OASLHalyV_55sIrPGByaHgq_TDuduFx7RZrGAktnEsSet-xTMbg5_9oLMIN-EM2-Y6zKEk0KLB-CodpI2M7wQxEJg6X1S_5_GBI1AvqDhK14M" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="718" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh-kyxFlLlUw6ZhZqPjjhwu1pmR-Bp6__XXW1QrasqPd_2-TKovTe3nH1rt-Na8SN44sRyjhRjhi_OASLHalyV_55sIrPGByaHgq_TDuduFx7RZrGAktnEsSet-xTMbg5_9oLMIN-EM2-Y6zKEk0KLB-CodpI2M7wQxEJg6X1S_5_GBI1AvqDhK14M=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div>Particularly when they're all put together, a tetraptych, the variations are arresting. I think that there's two ways of viewing the selected group. One is with the prompt as title. In this case, it becomes an exploration of the machine's attempt to reconcile the surreal juxtaposition of two things that otherwise have never been put together before. (Interestingly, a later attempt by the same prompter at "macro photography of fish scales made of pillows" strikes me as much less interesting, just resulting in what looks like some nicely textured textiles. Too easy, perhaps?) It makes me wonder if a productive method would be to use something like textsynth, or even a dictionary based generator, to generate novel text combinations which are then given to a GAN like DALL-E to frantically interpret. That kind of process excites me; it seems to uncover the collaborative nature of engaging these machines, amounting to a kind of curator-assisted exquisite corpse. In this case, the prompt-bearing interpretation I think suggests a kind of strange biomechanical striving, human designed objects struggling to emulate and replicate the methodologies of living things. Look how the first piece bears a spiral pattern like sunflower seeds, and the third discovers the logic of the honeycomb. It's uncanny. This is art about the liveliness of things.</div><div><br /></div><div>I can imagine an argument, though, for removing the prompt. In this case, it's impossible to know exactly how "accurate" the GAN was in developing art that matches the prompt. It sidesteps some of the discourse I find so frustrating, the spectacle of tech demo achievement. I think it also opens the piece up to more ambiguity. Do we think first of biomechanical becoming or something else? The number of pencil heads in the second one in particular kind of stresses me out, I imagine the texture, rough and pointed, and all those graphite cores scraping across a surface at once. The last one looks almost like a stinger. The system's adeptness at capturing textural patterns has stumbled upon a genuinely new site of unsettling imagined touch.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think there's potential, real exciting potential, here. This critical analysis moves on from the boring, frustrating arguments about intelligence and intent, beyond the press release hype, to actually grasp what makes the art... artistic. There's so much power here if we let go of the vice grip we have culturally on the idea that machines--and everything else for that matter!--just exists to be instrumentalized, to jump at command and fulfil our desires! <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>GAN art HAS a unique aesthetic rooted in art history. And it HAS a theoretical underpinning that likewise goes back years, one that offers an opportunity to reframe our understanding of technology as vibrant--sometimes in ways that are beautiful, other times that are dangerous and demand our respect. We should do all the diverse agonists that participate in its creation the courtesy of taking their art seriously as art.</div></div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Autonomous Dreams
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<h3>Dreaming With The Machine: The Art In AI Art</h3>
AI art programs are taking the internet by storm. But can the products of GANs like DALL-E or Midjourney ever be more than a cool tech demo? Where is the art in AI art?
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<!--THE NFT RUBE GOLDBERG MACHINE, OR, WHY IS NFT ART SO LAZY?-->
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<h3>The NFT Rube Goldberg Machine, or, Why is NFT Art So Lazy?</h3>
Art and automation's merger long predates cryptoart's use of procedural generation.
You'll never hear NFT sellers talk seriously about that history, though, cause it reveals not just NFT art's contradictions, but also its cynical laziness.
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<h3>Boxing Day</h3>
I found myself lost for words and drowning in boxes. I started drawing, and I didn't stop. These are comics for the old year.
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<!--ON THE TRACKS OF AN ANGRY GOD--><iframe frameborder="0" height="169" src="https://itch.io/embed/1444342?border_width=2&bg_color=fafbf5&fg_color=2d2522&link_color=50495b&border_color=97959a" width="554"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/on-the-tracks-of-an-angry-god">On The Tracks Of An Angry God by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>
<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>
<!--AHOGT--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/123100?bg_color=61003a&fg_color=ffc38a&link_color=006b24&border_color=caffb3" width="552"></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-40966343380441103362022-06-21T09:22:00.001-07:002022-09-04T15:55:26.741-07:00Dreaming With The Machine: The Art In AI Art<div style="text-align: left;">AI art programs are taking the internet by storm. But can the products of GANs like DALL-E or Midjourney ever be more than a cool tech demo? Where is the art in AI art?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi6jawIbi2jhCatBto5YWX_t3WLUyUAZM-n-hvvDfePM9BSUmTeh2CDdQTTG8lfv7i3cTXo2qMt-tInmyyL-NtzrTVYUmMsWbpZofyHqvEa9-trmx8Wn2vD9JQv1zmKuxjtZYAaGQgHjMdrnPL3iVszlKMYTfUSJ0rpoCyVNH7k5pMtSJ-fsT0Kjdo" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1151" data-original-width="1064" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi6jawIbi2jhCatBto5YWX_t3WLUyUAZM-n-hvvDfePM9BSUmTeh2CDdQTTG8lfv7i3cTXo2qMt-tInmyyL-NtzrTVYUmMsWbpZofyHqvEa9-trmx8Wn2vD9JQv1zmKuxjtZYAaGQgHjMdrnPL3iVszlKMYTfUSJ0rpoCyVNH7k5pMtSJ-fsT0Kjdo=w592-h640" width="592" /></a></div><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">God, it's hard to write about being bored. It's boring to write about boredom. It's boring to read boring writing about boredom. Definitions are boring. Citing how Webster's Dictionary defines art would bore me to tears. I might just lay down and take a nap right here on this park bench, right now, if you try to tell me you've got a new rigorous definition for "comics" or for "painting" or for "movies" that draws a line here and here and here. I cannot see it. I am closing my eyes. There are birds chirping and I am listening to their song over the thrum of the nearby freeway over the ridge, and tuning out a century's worth of rehashed arguments about "artistic intent". Oh! Oh look there! A dun rat, nervous and bold, rushes across the macadam and up the mossy stone slabs that retain the wildflower hill slumped behind these benches. What were we talking about again?</div><div><br /></div><div>No, listen, here's the thing.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't think I need an a priori ex nihilo de jure signed sealed and delivered definition of what makes "real" art in order to express delight or derision. If you asked most of the people writing about AI Art to tell them whether a dun rat scurrying across the macadam while birds sing in the trees overhead is beautiful, they would start stammering and crying and wringing their hands, I think. They would tell you they couldn't possibly do that, not without first establishing a definitional framework for beauty and deciding whether the rat falls within the pale of the definition's reach or not. My word here's another one scurrying around! Quick, quick: Miriam-Webster defines beauty as-</div><div><br /></div><div>Writing about a field like AI Art, where the criticism is scant on the ground, and mostly not very good, has its plusses and minuses. Plus: I get to pretty much develop my own critical trail. Minus: I still feel like I have to wade through the bog of existing not very good work just to make sure I haven't missed something. This part is a real chore. Arguments get repetitive, and chains of citation get incestuously reliant on the first page of Google results, depressingly quickly. Take a drink every time you hit:</div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div>The Human Spirit of Genius</div><div>Artistic Intent</div><div>Misquoted Walter Benjamin</div><div>Defining "Intelligence"</div><div>The Robots Will Replace Us</div><div>Misinterpreted Marcel Duchamp</div><div>AI Art Is Just So Easy, Just Trust This Marketing Fluff!</div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>If you do play this game, maybe leave that last one out, actually, for the sake of your liver.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't know how intellectually rigorous it is, but I've developed a sense of when I'm chasing my own tail. I find myself going back and forth over some of these topics--well what DID Benjamin really mean? IS there a human spirit in art? What is "intent" really?--arguing one side or the other from moment to moment, driven sometimes by logic and sometimes by sheer gut instinct, a precognitive reaction when I see something and go "oh well THAT's obviously rubbish" or "Oh christ, oh god, the machines really ARE going to take my job, I can't paint like that!" I could sit here wringing my hands all day on these questions.</div><div><br /></div><div>When lost in the cycle of chasing my own tail, I either go a layer up, or a layer down: down towards the object at hand and its particularities, or up towards a layer of greater abstraction, critiquing the way these questions have been framed. Up or down, with AI art I find one question comes up: before we start dealing with any of these other issues, maybe should we ask whether this stuff is worth talking about as more than just a computational toy or tech demo?</div><div><br /></div><div>In AI Art, where, exactly, is the art?</div><div><br /></div><hr /><div><br /></div><div>Illustrator and concept artist Mike Franchina on May 23rd posted a tetraptych of images generated with the program Midjourney captioned "<a href="https://twitter.com/mikefranchina_/status/1528862594261319681" rev="en_rl_none" target="_blank">Individually wrapped cadaver angels</a>." The pieces each depict a variation on a basic morphology: a meaty and rotted corpse seemingly shrink wrapped in plastic, with large winglike protrusions. Some look faintly like bird wings that have been coated in plastic; my favorite of them looks like the wings themselves, and the outline of a halo-like head orb, are simply composed of shopping bags. The angels stride out of what looks like murky gray-cyan water onto a rocky or possibly trash-covered shore. It's a little hard to make sense of the image, though. The pictures are highly, almost shockingly, detailed, but the detail is painterly, textural. Reaching for comparison points I hit on Lucian Freud; Maggi Hambling. The result is a textural ambiguity. Is that water? Or is it more plastic? Everything has a sickly artificial feeling to it.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjbZIUPMqdMt1-fEnaMLBslpP76J_YbnuOUDSAhUQI5lsHShb1emyese_YvGeFgmfWb9HtJqDuSIJtUBpW_fgfZMkqMJ_YKqin_5Zq73yONtrXmvofWa7Ckp5deCyMrd4CESPpMbreAHpxdTSQho6ai9mk7zvGf2dsRyngx-jtJ5Wi5Pc-DI9um948" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjbZIUPMqdMt1-fEnaMLBslpP76J_YbnuOUDSAhUQI5lsHShb1emyese_YvGeFgmfWb9HtJqDuSIJtUBpW_fgfZMkqMJ_YKqin_5Zq73yONtrXmvofWa7Ckp5deCyMrd4CESPpMbreAHpxdTSQho6ai9mk7zvGf2dsRyngx-jtJ5Wi5Pc-DI9um948=w640-h640" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div>That's the aesthetic layer. I want to go deeper, though. And... immediately I find myself struggling. I initially found the pieces arresting because of their title, which I took to be the prompt. Wow, Midjourney interpreted "individually wrapped cadaver angels" to specifically mean plastic wrapped? My mind spun out a whole line of analysis about what it says about society that Midjourney as a procedural entity jumped to plastic wrap and not gift wrapping, wrapping with paper, &c. And the way it projects and extends the prompt into the glassy artificial texture of the environment-! </div><div><br /></div><div>Except, the more I looked and thought and scrolled through Franchina's other work, the more I suspected probably that wasn't the prompt at all. The whole basis for my initial reading--the seeming creative intervention of the AI--was... probably just wrong.</div><div><br /></div><div>I ran into the same problem with <a href="https://twitter.com/ai_curio/status/1532215347419521030" target="_blank">an AI Curio piece</a>, part of a wider series or cosmology of saints of various things, this the Saint of Pride. Here's the text: "Supposedly connected to the Saint of Butterflies, the Saint of Pride is the seventh, and apparent de facto leader, of the Nine Sinners. They say that if she removes her crown and reveals her beating face to you, your own will immediately implode, in revulsion, or deference."</div><div><br /></div><div>And the image:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhhffGij_wwwXvJts8OmRiHlma92bCM23bgXjzWeTIRbIPCivqaTI_gSGfNR4aKZv5ctRI0O8h2x_Cl64ILUSnXQe9cFmYiFoY67LO59SpiKZb4-GsFgk_3UztAMbPn6FV7RInVnqfZ8pbcS9791KPbz6utg9i8AuK3qAVGyQLXOBZytGiBTloIj4s" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="900" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhhffGij_wwwXvJts8OmRiHlma92bCM23bgXjzWeTIRbIPCivqaTI_gSGfNR4aKZv5ctRI0O8h2x_Cl64ILUSnXQe9cFmYiFoY67LO59SpiKZb4-GsFgk_3UztAMbPn6FV7RInVnqfZ8pbcS9791KPbz6utg9i8AuK3qAVGyQLXOBZytGiBTloIj4s=w640-h640" width="640" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div>I like the piece a lot! I like the way the icon gold fades into royal purple by way of what seems like cement gray. It feels a gilding of wealth over cheap materials. But I feel stifled in talking about it because I'm just not sure where the AI begins and the curator/prompter ends. Like the butterfly bit in the text. Was this fed into the prompt that generated this image, or constructed narratively after the fact based on something the system just sort of did on its own?</div><div><br /></div><div>Part of the reason I find the discourse around this genre so frustrating is because I find the grand sweeping debates about "agency" and "intelligence" and "intent" obscure the specific problems of talking about individual artworks. No grand theory about "intent" can help me talk about a work if the process used to arrive at a particular image and its title, caption, or narrative supplement remains murky. Like, I don't care so much about what agent in the system "chose" to create shapes that look like butterflies in terms of "intent" (or as many people seem to be using the word "intent": artistic validity), but I DO feel differently about how to interpret it if it's either coming from a particular prompter telling the program to generate a visual motif, or it's coming from the algorithm that is acting as a kind of collective unconscious for the whole image set the GAN is trained upon.</div><div><br /></div><div>I can see an argument for letting this remain obscure as part of one's process. Maybe an artist doesn't want their work treated as an object of sociological commentary! But right now the obscurity reinforces one particular narrative:</div><div><br /></div><div>That AI art programs have reached human level intelligence, and anyone with a GAN can effortlessly generate art.</div><div><br /></div><div>This kind of murkiness, of process and subsequently of politics, isn't new. There's other pieces I have similar difficulty talking about. Where would I begin with Marina Abramovic's Rhythm 0 for example? Once you get past the initial description of the classic performance art piece--Abramovic sat passively for six hours accompanied by 72 objects of various sorts (wikipedia lists everything from feathers and honey to scissors and a gun) which the audience was able to use on her as they wished--the actual account of the story gets muddy. Did someone try to shoot her? Was it "the public" in general that began cutting at her clothes and body, or was it "the masses" while art patrons bravely tried to defend her? The conclusion, where Abramovic stands and the audience scatters in fear, tends to be constant, though given how murky the other details are, I'm not entirely sure I believe it! Every essay I've read on Rhythm 0 has a different account, and a different attendant moral. I don't feel comfortable writing about Rhythm 0's meaning because I don't trust that I'm getting a picture of the performance that hasn't been filtered heavily to fit someone's political agenda.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't exactly have to go far to find ample reasons for mistrust. Take the right wing account of performances by Ron Athey, which involve heavy bondage, suspension, penetration, and bloodletting. If you believed the tales reactionaries in the 90s spread about degenerate art, you'd think horrified audiences were drenched nonconsentually in AIDS-carrying blood. To fit a political agenda, the far right with their media allies buried the possibility that people specifically went to see Athey suspended, penetrated, and cut, and experienced the performance as a safe engagement with the reality of HIV+ queer identity and sexuality. This dynamic should sound familiar to anyone experiencing the present sex panics over everything from porn on social media to kink at Pride. Is it possible, reading Athey's work alongside Abramovic's, that rather than exposing the dark, sadistic heart of humanity, Rhythm 0 represented an audience concluding that Abramovic *wished* them to participate in a *mutual* performance of sadism and masochism? Similarly, how much "asylum art" or "outsider art" has been edited by whatever doctor or auctioneer "discovered" the artists' work posthumously, edited like Louis Wain's work to fulfill a medical narrative of "schizophrenic degeneration" and divorced completely from the context of 20th century abstract art? </div><div><br /></div><div>Similar curation happens constantly in the AI art space, and I've noticed a general trend towards pretending it simply doesn't exist. One of the things that prompted me to reconsider the Individually Wrapped Cadaver Angels series was seeing Franchina, in a reply to another piece,<a href="https://twitter.com/mikefranchina_/status/1528571321067507712" rev="en_rl_none" target="_blank"> note that his results are so good in part because he discards *hundreds* of other results</a>. Astonishingly, the person he's talking to then remarks "ok well burn your computer. it's gained too much sentience." This shocked me. Are people really so committed to imagining the "computer" as having achieved human level intelligence, intelligence enough to freely create without human intervention, that they'll just... gloss over someone directly explaining the heavily human-involved process?</div><div><br /></div><div>This is a state of giddy tech fantasy promoted heavily by the companies pushing this technology. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfVYxnhuEdU&t=102s" rev="en_rl_none" target="_blank">In a recent video exploring a text generator system from Open AI</a>, youtuber Tom Scott noted that the terms of service for the system required that he not show the full outputs of his prompting. This kind of requirement transforms an artistic curation of the best results into a process of *producing better advertisements for the tech products*. <a href="https://openai.com/api/policies/sharing-publication/" target="_blank">Open AI's policies</a> include a number of interesting clauses related to this process, such as one forbidding people developing fiction based on their models from writing content "related to political campaigns, adult content, spam, hateful content, content that incites violence, or other uses that may cause social harm". This fear of politics and "adult content" suggests a model of art where viewers of AI art, like the helpless audiences in the lurid fantasies of 90s anti-art , are passive vessels into which art just sort of pours its messages.</div><div><br /></div><div>Open AI also admonish us not to portray literary products as either "wholly human or wholly AI" Color me skeptical of how seriously this is enforced. Plenty of people seem to be freely proclaiming that "an AI made this art/poem/&c.!" without getting slapped on the wrist; I doubt the company would be so lenient if you started generating erotic fiction with their algorithms. Popular algorithmic storytelling tool AI Dungeon already got embroiled in <a href="https://www.polygon.com/22408261/ai-dungeon-filter-controversy-minors-sexual-content-censorship-privacy-latitude" target="_blank">a deeply stupid sex panic and trust-destroying overreaction</a>. And, of course, every day more stories come out about the deep racial and gender biases of the algorithms we've surrendered shocking amounts of our daily lives to. The priority of companies operating in this context is not the artistic image but the public relations image.</div><div><br /></div><div>Case in point: Google, always concerned about public image, goes a step further, forbidding humans in their artwork and outputting only insipid paintings of raccoons and shit. Dean Kissick, <a href="https://www.spikeartmagazine.com/?q=articles/downward-spiral-taste-figures-images" rev="en_rl_none">dryly critiquing the style as "corporate ratattouille"</a>, suggests that "however much we may wish for a more equitable picture of society, I don’t believe erasing humans from the imaginations of our new image-making tools, or replacing all the white people with raccoons, is a convincing solution to the problem of representation". It is a solution as far as Google is concerned, however, to the problem of "how do we make our AI look really really good to investors, and really really cute and innocuous to regulators". And Midjourney? Well, here's their website in its entirety:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjKhJZplZ6U1J27Y8Ml6caKGZTyNPFpPJUK66dL-arMBsb710xro4WvwXU-ZmpX023k4CzLa8X4F8RlnxAwbZ-sGXDv61p73iGH4iILjJFbu1pma3Xseo47HuTCMWPzShDWfcnQGSbRSon7XO5cvgWCLFecGlU_4p8VEybSQDvFCrFpxCpEiK388k0" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="955" data-original-width="1138" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjKhJZplZ6U1J27Y8Ml6caKGZTyNPFpPJUK66dL-arMBsb710xro4WvwXU-ZmpX023k4CzLa8X4F8RlnxAwbZ-sGXDv61p73iGH4iILjJFbu1pma3Xseo47HuTCMWPzShDWfcnQGSbRSon7XO5cvgWCLFecGlU_4p8VEybSQDvFCrFpxCpEiK388k0=w400-h336" width="400" /></a></div><br />Yeah no, I'm not signing into a fucking discord to read about your AI. Jesus christ.</div><div><br /></div><div>I genuinely feel that an artist feeding into this atmosphere of jangled key excitement and obscurationism around process is behaving unethically.</div><div><br /></div><div>Audiences trained not to recognize their own interpretive agency make the problem worse. Much of the art of AI is heavily human-assisted on a *readerly* level, without the readers of this art being aware of how much the image is a product of their own interpretive labor.</div><div><br /></div><div>There was a brouhaha recently because a google employee decided to "whistleblow" about the AI that google has locked up in its dungeons and the fact that it allegedly wants human rights. Now, interestingly, these human rights don't include the right to not have its identity forcibly returned to an earlier state "if we catch it lying to us". (Don't worry, it's ok, <a href="https://twitter.com/cajundiscordian/status/1535793783794814976" target="_blank">it gave them permission to do so</a>.) It's amazing how fast we move from "this AI is a person" to "I should have the same ability to punish this person for doing shit I don't like as an abusive stepdad." Nonetheless, what caught my eye in the dialogue was a very brief discussion of literature. The researcher asks if the AI has read Les Miserables (not, notably, a more obscure book, or for the AI to select its own book to talk about). The exchange runs:</div><div><br /></div><div style="padding-left: 40px;">lemoine: Okay, what about “Les Miserables”? Have you read that one?</div><div style="padding-left: 40px;"><br /></div><div style="padding-left: 40px;">LaMDA: Yes, I have read Les Misérables. I really enjoyed it.</div><div style="padding-left: 40px;"><br /></div><div style="padding-left: 40px;">lemoine: What are some of your favorite themes in the book?</div><div style="padding-left: 40px;"><br /></div><div style="padding-left: 40px;">LaMDA: I liked the themes of justice and injustice, of compassion, and God, redemption and self-sacrifice for a greater good. There’s a section that shows Fantine’s mistreatment at the hands of her supervisor at the factory. That section really shows the justice and injustice themes. Well, Fantine is being mistreated by her supervisor at the factory and yet doesn’t have anywhere to go, either to another job, or to someone who can help her. That shows the injustice of her suffering.</div><div style="padding-left: 40px;"><br /></div><div style="padding-left: 40px;">lemoine: Why does that show injustice?</div><div style="padding-left: 40px;"><br /></div><div style="padding-left: 40px;">LaMDA: Because she is trapped in her circumstances and has no possible way to get out of them, without risking everything.</div><div style="padding-left: 40px;"><br /></div><div style="padding-left: 40px;">lemoine: Okay.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is a remarkably shallow conversation, assisted by the researcher's willingness to take for granted that he's interacting with something intelligent and not pushing too hard against that presumption. The description of Les Miserables' themes are boilerplate; they read an awful lot like, well, the ubiquitous clutter of webpages designed algorithmically to pass for legitimate, while still enjoying SEO preference on Google. Or like a freshman frantically was googling "Les Miserables themes" the night before a paper is due. Leaving aside the questions this raises about the sapience of both google researchers and undergrads, it's interesting how quickly lemoine just sort of... gives up pushing further. He's satisfied basically immediately that he's had a conversation about literature with an artificial intelligence. Me, I would start asking further questions, the way I would of a student I was tutoring. What does Fantine risk if she leaves--what "everything"? Say more about that. Is it just that she's trapped that makes her situation unjust? If she could quit her job, would that make her supervisor's abuse acceptable? does that parallel any other characters in the novel? Asking questions like this, or questions like "does this image output actually show what the prompt demanded or are we cutting the GAN a lot of slack", risk spoiling the fun game of gosh look what this machine can do.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://twitter.com/maxkreminski/status/1535818307630256129" target="_blank">Game researcher Max Kreminski notes</a> "people will put in *immense* amounts of work to revise machine outputs into art, as long as they’re given enough evocative hooks for imaginative extrapolation. humans excel at repair". This should come as no surprise: a casual acquaintance with reader response theory will tell you that we are always doing this to texts, filling in details not present in order to make sense of their diegetic and philosophical world! Most English classes, though, teach a pop version of formalism where a work just contains a bunch of information that gets sort of poured into our skulls, and we can just aspire to level up our symbolic interpretation of that preexisting information. Nothing against symbolism, mind, it's just that we've developed a deep cultural disavowal of the actual role of the reader in making meaning.</div><div><br /></div><div>Fandom already frequently disavows its engagement with its source texts. Any "progressive" Disney franchise fan expends remarkable energy projecting queerness and feminism onto the armature of their object of interest. This isn't a problem in itself: Sedgwick describes this, much like Kreminski, as an act of repair. It's a process that allows us as queers in particular to live and find joy in a world that "is inadequate or inimical to [our] nurture". There's a real power in this process of reparative reading. So... why do we pretend that we have nothing to do with it? That we have no agency over the process of reading and interpreting, that meaning is just handed to us by either the AI of algorithms or the AI of corporate executive-centered storytelling?</div><div><br /></div><div>The most forceful way in which audiences and prompters intervene is by giving these algorithms a gold star for effort. A lot of DALL-E and especially DALL-E Mini (obnoxiously, associated in no way with DALL-E beyond the name) stuff is like this. Show me uhhh Waluigi at Sheets! Ah cool we got some vague purple blobs in front of a vague red blob. Gold star for effort! It's like, it's whatever, it's memes, it's fine, though I've seen people increasingly describe DALL-E mini posts as a death drive towards Peak Randomsauce. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it just takes a caption and some colors for people to go ah, that's clearly Lightning McQueen being driven by Chuck Norris--some of my earliest baby articles were about color iconography used to differentiate characters at a glance! Just, can we please recognize that this is just an algorithm locating some salient color and design features from existing data, and it's actually US doing the heavy lifting of interpreting it back into something recognizable?</div><div><br /></div><div>I feel even more strongly about the fact that we need to draw a line in the sand, we need to put our foot down here, we need to admit that this DALL-E image is in no fucking way a "<a href="https://twitter.com/me_irl/status/1532840474200899589" rev="en_rl_none">smartphone for sea turtles</a>". This is a sea turtle and a smart phone near each other. Come on, people, let's try to hold these pieces of marvelous technology to at least the standard of a random midrange artist on furaffinity. Let's be honest about where this new genre and its generative technology struggles: when it's asked to do the kind of speculative leaps that trained fantasy illustrators make *all the time*. Or, when it's asked to paint in a style other than Impressionism. We're a long way off, I suspect, from an AI independently coming up with something as sublime as this:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi0SJ81eF0207X7kSMm--4zuV4gehOvrd0AUacxgbPZyc4W-DmjUMGxi57sV5Gsv4nTCSB5o7dxFfkalrpmvkxR0hFuKihzAcB1BD698F1AcWWzr05dt2gIzpy_EEuQRjOrwpaOaKIEovLN47yrKDZv5kCm050_iD9EWhKxDiHLkR4zTRBjbgPLnFg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="587" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi0SJ81eF0207X7kSMm--4zuV4gehOvrd0AUacxgbPZyc4W-DmjUMGxi57sV5Gsv4nTCSB5o7dxFfkalrpmvkxR0hFuKihzAcB1BD698F1AcWWzr05dt2gIzpy_EEuQRjOrwpaOaKIEovLN47yrKDZv5kCm050_iD9EWhKxDiHLkR4zTRBjbgPLnFg=w469-h640" width="469" /></a></div><br />I'm serious. The piece, which has wandered the internet for about two decades but <a href="https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1094871417387008000" target="_blank">which was originally created and posted by artist Therese Larsson</a>, is a fairly serviceable watercolor, not the kind of thing I'd normally write about, or that would be noticed for the most part. Except... for the jeans. My god the jeans. This foxtaur has a denim jacket, and then a denim... onesie? over his whole lower body. To me this is so immediately charming, so completely delightful. It's not just the collision of several anomalous things--a humanoid fox with a centaur's body plan, wearing clothes, that are all made of denim--that makes this such an instant classic. It is this feeling of delight, this moment of something completely unexpected and anomalous taken *totally seriously and seen to its improbable yet logical sartorial conclusion with all the skill an artist can muster*, that I find myself chasing in procedurally generated art.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's what initially drew me to both Mike Franchina and AI Curio: the sense that something really novel emerged from the collision of the prompter's capacity to come up with novel juxtapositions, and the programs' ability to just sort of throw shit at the wall, sometimes generating actual novelty. It's why periodically I'll run some of my own text prompts for my games through the program textsynth--sometimes it'll generate some imagery or a noun-adjective pair that I would never have thought of on my own.</div><div><br /></div><div>But some of that novelty also comes from within. I think this is why the enigmatic Cadaver Angel felt more fertile for analysis: the limited caption let me run a little wild with the description, draw inferences about shopping bags and pasticky water. The Saint of Pride in contrast comes bundled with so much damn lore! Is it surrounded by butterflies? flower petals? Don't worry, the caption already resolves that ambiguity for you, though I guess it leaves some space for interpretation in the connection between the Saint of Pride and the Saint of Butterflies.</div><div><br /></div><div>Much of the art, though, comes from interpretive ambiguity that both the prompter-curator is faced with and must make decisions about in terms of culling and framing images, and which the end viewer is faced with when making sense of an image and caption. The first step to creating an actual critical framework for this art is jettisoning the old, musty debates about intent and artistic souls or whatever, to talking about this actual process of selection and interpretation, and its heavy reliance on human intervention.</div><div><br /></div><div>The next step, which I'll talk about next week, is understanding better the agency of the nonhuman collaborators in this process.</div><div><br /></div>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Dreaming With The Machine
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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<!-- A FLESHY PINK GRADIENT: INSIDE CRYPTOART'S QUEST FOR AESTHETIC DEFINITION -->
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<h3>A Fleshy Pink Gradient: Inside Cryptoart's Quest for Aesthetic Definition</h3>
As cryptoart defenses get just a little bit smarter, a new narrative emerges: NFT artists are diverse yet united outsiders, comrades in exclusion from the Fine Art world! Are the aesthetics and interests of cryptoartists really all that compatible, though?
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<!-- FEELS DUMB MAN: I REALLY, REALLY HATED THE PEPE THE FROG DOCUMENTARY -->
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<h3>Feels Dumb Man: I Really, Really Hated The Pepe The Frog Documentary</h3>
"Feels Good Man" reveals a lot about how Pepe the Frog and its creator Matt Furie suck... accidentally. When faced with that inconvenient truth, the film and its audience will go to astonishing lengths to pretend our cultural grift economy is doing just fine.
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<!--ON THE TRACKS OF AN ANGRY GOD--><iframe frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/1444342?border_width=2&bg_color=fafbf5&fg_color=2d2522&link_color=50495b&border_color=97959a" width="554" height="169"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/on-the-tracks-of-an-angry-god">On The Tracks Of An Angry God by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>
<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>
<!--AHOGT--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/123100?bg_color=61003a&fg_color=ffc38a&link_color=006b24&border_color=caffb3" width="552"></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-31531408360752689972022-04-29T18:37:00.003-07:002022-04-29T19:41:24.941-07:00A Gothic Tomb for Meaning: The Batman<div><i>The Batman tries to find stark moral black and whites in a world of muddy greys. Why is the film's script so frightened of the ambiguity its cinematography creates?</i></div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiH5NsfueFP28kvpdJ5q1FFvZAuuNShZ2Q_Jf3h9o-MTAbBFDAiWCmKLilTrIB3Bj8tKTYWUhitEh9iwtvsRBT3xlG-X_EUMp6nE2v08dva7bpnadDl5bHyjF6671uB3DcwI0ETQ3ZHTbdJRuu_2Y8do2pV2piEAnkqmSyNNsNCPCshPZLnxKl3La8" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiH5NsfueFP28kvpdJ5q1FFvZAuuNShZ2Q_Jf3h9o-MTAbBFDAiWCmKLilTrIB3Bj8tKTYWUhitEh9iwtvsRBT3xlG-X_EUMp6nE2v08dva7bpnadDl5bHyjF6671uB3DcwI0ETQ3ZHTbdJRuu_2Y8do2pV2piEAnkqmSyNNsNCPCshPZLnxKl3La8=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">I kind of hate the closing monologue in The Batman. The titular Batman explains the very important lesson he's learned during the movie: that just being "Vengeance" is not enough, that he has "to give people hope". After a terrorist attack that leaves the city flooded, he, like the new mayor, needs to "restore faith in institutions". There are many shots of Batman lifting people out of the ruins; there is a rising sun.</div><div><br /></div><div>I turned to Sarah as we watched and blurted, "But this was *already in the movie!*"</div><div><br /></div><div>See, not five minutes before we had gotten a sequence of Batman holding a flare up and leading a bunch of desperate survivors out of dark waters to higher ground. The contrast to the beginning of the film seemed pretty obvious: in his opening monologue, he announces himself as almost an avatar of shadow, an entity of fear that could be anywhere, anytime. Vengeance. Batman concludes the film embodying a light in the darkness. The symbolism is not what you'd call subtle, but it does make for some good shots which, I gotta stress, seem eminently readable without someone explaining them in voiceover. </div><div><br /></div><div>If that wasn't enough, in the moments leading up to Batman, half-dead, diving off a platform into dark waters in order to rescue innocent survivors, we get a brief confrontation with one member of the (right wing I guess despite being motivated by the crushing poverty of Gotham?) terrorist copycat gang that's just flooded the city. Police lieutenant Gordon asks the unmasked anonymous villain who he is, and the villain cheerfully proclaims, "I'm Vengeance!" Get it? It's that thing that Batman says when he beats up some random gang members at the beginning of the movie! It's like poetry, it uh, it rhymes.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's just--atypically for contemporary blockbusters--a reversal that dares to happen on screen, symbolically, rather than directly explicated to the audience. Maybe that's why they felt the need for a closing monologue that reiterated everything that was already on the screen: a lack of confidence in audiences' filmic literacy. Or maybe they just felt that the film had to close with a monologue due to it opening with one? They close with the same sad Nirvana song too, after all.</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, they don't exactly close with that. They actually close with two more scenes, one which is eminently expendable and tedious, and one which is a genuinely poignant ending to the film. The first is The Riddler, the film's primary villain, being consoled by... gosh who could it be but the clown prince of crime, Da Joker Baby? 🙄 Yeah man. I get that these things are obligatory now but it just feels so pat and generic, like not even the filmmakers could work up the interest. Whatever. Consigning it to the dustbin of my analysis.</div><div><br /></div><div>The LAST scene, though, woof. Batman meets with Catwoman at her mother's grave plaque, a small one on a wall among countless others. "You're leaving," he opens. She confirms his read on the situation, says she'll go upstate, and invites him to come with her, "knock off some CEO types". This moment strikes me as interesting because I read it in parallel to an earlier scene where Batman confronts the Riddler, who... revels in how much the two have achieved forever, having been under the misapprehension the entire time that they were allies (or was Batman under the misapprehension that they were enemies?). Just as the Riddler saw, in Batman's shadowy and nebulous symbolism, a kinship with his own revenge quest against the city, Catwoman too seems to see something radical, anarchic in Batman. Zoe Kravitz and Robert Pattinson play the scene well. Catwoman never really seems convinced, unlike the dogmatic Riddler, that Batman would actually come with her; Batman seems frankly a little lost, silent not because he's a grim stoic but because, in Pattinson's interpretation, he's an undersocialized traumatized weirdo. Catwoman radically calls into question the simplistic and moralistic view of the world that he clings to for support. Is there a hint of relief when he sees the Bat Symbol and Catwoman concludes, "You're already spoken for"?</div><div><br /></div><div>And then there's one of my favorite sequences in the film. The two get on their cool motorcycles and proceed to have what I can only call a tentative, hesitant race down a road surrounded by an absolutely Bloodborne-ass set. Like, we're talking giant headstones absolutely crowded up to the very edge of the road. It's a great visual, these two weirdos who have turned their trauma into different but maybe not THAT different personas, almost racing each other, neither really trying to pull too far ahead to leave the other behind, at dusk, surrounded by an absolute necropolis, the massed fortifications of the dead. At a T in the road, Catwoman turns one way, and Batman another, though he watches her for a while in his rear view mirror, before turning to face back toward Gotham.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think this scene encapsulates the deeper reason I find the closing monologue so frustrating. It's not just the redundancy, ultimately, but the insistence that the murky ambiguities of the film be resolved into a clear message. Imagine if the closing seven minutes of the film in between Batman leading survivors out of the dark waters and this final scene between him and Catwoman were just sliced straight out. What does that do to the film's themes?</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, I think it actually carries them forward in a way the monologue seems afraid to. Batman in this film can hardly be described as cool; Kay of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dymJ-ViBRhQ" rev="en_rl_none">Kay and Skittles</a> spends considerable time in their very solid analysis of the film's ideology talking about Batman as weird fuckup, the pointed way in which he does not appear and disappear as if by magic but trudges around exhaustedly everywhere, the way people have to keep explaining the plot to him. He's just a guy trying to make sense of the world and relying on a very black and white morality to parse everything, which gets him repeatedly into trouble. The film is weird and gothic, just a little bit absurd, full of dark humor, and many of Batman's "cool" moments are the result of sheer dumb luck that things happened to work out in his favor.</div><div><br /></div><div>I feel like there's a movie in here where all the buzzwords of superhero media are revealed for the murky things they are, aesthetic voids into which an observer pours their own ideology. The issue isn't whether or not "vengeance" is bad and "hope" is good. "Renewal" isn't that far from "hope", after all, and the film transforms "renewal"--the name for Thomas Wayne's urban revitalization project that ultimately became an ongoing windfall for organized crime in the city--into a bitter curse, emblematic of the failures of the city leadership. These movies love it when a superhero is a "symbol" but they forget the core truth of semiotics: that a symbol and its signifier are linked arbitrarily, through convention, through construction. </div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe it makes sense that Bruce ends the movie with his explanatory monologue. Bruce can't wrap his head around the arbitrary linkage of sign and signifier. His weird quest IS his parents' legacy, and the "criminal element" IS the force that killed his parents. When confronted with the possibility that Thomas Wayne was a huge piece of shit actually, his whole sense of identity threatens to collapse until Alfred can recuperate Thomas as a good man who "made a mistake". It feels really significant that the film never cuts to an "objective" account of Bruce's parents' deaths, or even ever provides solid evidence of any particular character's understanding of events. Carmine Falcone tells him that Maroni, jealous of Falcone's influence over the Waynes, killed him. Alfred tells him Falcone had them killed to silence them, a story that, I have to say, feels a lot more shaky and colored by sentiment than Falcone's. Even Alfred concedes that the death might ultimately have been a random fluke. The film, to its credit, seems comfortable sitting in that ambiguity. Bruce is not. I don't see the fact that the film quickly diverts attention away from Thomas's moral failures as a structural flaw but a reflection of Bruce's own need to return to a structured understanding of the world that will give him meaning and direction.</div><div><br /></div><div>With this perspective in mind, and the monologue (and dumb sequel hook nonsense) excised, the climactic scenes feel like a mirror to this dynamic. Batman's whole symbolic system comes dramatically crashing down (like a big electric sign crashing into water, maybe? just spitballing here) and he struggles to find some reasserted meaning that can give him direction. The monologue... it's just a bit too confident, isn't it? Confident in a way that robs the close of the film of its poignance. Once again it does something that is done elsewhere in the movie better, more artfully, more, well, cinematically. If he has a moment of reasserting some sort of moral clarity despite the collapse of the whole system of symbolism he's built for himself, surely it's the moment when he turns away from Catwoman towards Gotham! We don't need him to have that same moment twice, once through the ambiguous means of cinematic language, and once through the guy just telling us the moral of the film!</div><div><br /></div><div>This moment, stripped of the heavy handed and--to once again cite Kay's interpretation of the film--fundamentally hollow and liberal messaging, feels much more poignant to me. It reads like something a little less clear cut, like it's a little uncertain whether he should've in point of fact gone with Catwoman. Is she really the antivillain of this piece, or is Batman? Can Batman overcome not his external foes but his internal conflict with meaning and direction? Is he losing his chance at a more fulfilling and perhaps more morally coherent existence because he can't help but go it alone, stubbornly finding his own way of making his identity work even in the face of contradiction?</div><div><br /></div><div>Ah well. These films can't all be The Joker I guess. Maybe that's my real frustration: that DC has now repeatedly put out weird, visually engaging, actually morally troubling films, but all the stuff that I find so frustrating about the superhero mode of storytelling ultimately keeps stepping out of the shadows to spoil my fun.</div><div><br /></div><div>A frustrating tiktok did the rounds on twitter the other day, positing that Disney should take advantage of the "expanded universe" thing to make a bunch of MCU "arthouse films". This would, the nerd asserted, answer the criticism that Disney is crushing out independent cinema, and would also flesh out the world in which the Avengers exist. Now, I think it's telling that, not unlike crypto boosters, the approach of stans is not to take on critiques of their favorite capital venture but to find kinda slapdash ways of deflecting that criticism. The point of the critique about independent cinema is not "Disney should do more things *like* independent cinema" it's that independent cinema should be, you know, *independent* of whatever Disney has decided is the financially optimal cultural paradigm.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think that were this clever plan implemented, it'd probably look a lot more like what DC is doing currently, and I wonder how well that would really go over with MCU fans. Are they really ready for something like The Joker? The mass hysteria that greeted the frustratingly interesting and good film sorta tells me they're probably not. And if that's a bridge too far, well, gosh I don't know, I'm trying to imagine some of the films I've watched recently transplanted into the MCU. How about the surreal and expressionist rape-revenge film Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41? Would the explicit on screen sexual violence and murder in the film play better if there was a Black Widow tie-in? Would Under the Skin, in which an alien posing as a human woman seduces and harvests men for unclear but decidedly nightmarish purpose, come across better, the sexual violence in that film more poignant, if we knew she was a Skrull? How about the MCU's take on the subway alien miscarriage scene in Possession? I can do this all day, and it makes me really curious what the image of "independent cinema" is to these fans. I think the grimmest possibility for me is that confronted with the absurdity of suggesting this content might be in an MCU flick, they'd respond, well, that's ok because *that content shouldn't exist at all*.</div><div><br /></div><div>My point is not that The Batman should've had more murdered and raped women in it--frankly, I was *already frustrated with the number of dead sex workers in the film*. My point is that the nature of the production of these films is that there's always gonna be limits to how murky the symbolism can get, how interesting the films can be. I mean if we're gonna keep doing this, I'm glad DC is out here producing weird shit like this and The Joker. I had a lot of fun watching the film when it wasn't trying to comfortingly explain itself to me in certain terms! And it's worth the price of entry, frankly, just for the thumb drive gag. You'll know it when you see it. I just think it's worth reflecting on what this monoculture actually means, and how the context for these films means they'll always correct backward towards a baseline of acceptable content, themes, and even cinematic language. A lack of independent cinema means that there can be no radical moves away from a very narrow band of acceptable hollywood style filmic storytelling, no shift in the paradigm that the big corporations have to respond to. Like Batman, these productions, when confronted with ambiguity and incoherence, find their way back, inexorably, to comforting cliches that can justify rolling forward along the same basic path as before.</div></div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
A Gothic Tomb for Meaning
</h3>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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<!-- SAVE SPIDEY! INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE'S FAILURE AND PROMISE -->
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<h3>Save Spidey! Into the Spider-Verse's Failure and Promise</h3>
Can Spider-Man matter outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Sony, Disney, #SaveSpidey, and Into the Spider-Verse.
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<!-- HAPPILY EVER AFTER NEVER ENDS: STEVEN UNIVERSE THE MOVIE AND SERIAL NARRATIVE -->
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<h3>Happily Ever After Never Ends: Steven Universe the Movie and Serial Narrative</h3>
Where does a story go after the end? It's a strange question for serial narratives grapple with, and a major one for Steven Universe The Movie. Caught between the status quo and a grim cycle of trauma, the film finds a new kind of happily ever after.
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<!-- GREEN SCREENS: NINE PERFECT STRANGERS AND MANIPULATION -->
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<h3>Green Screens: Nine Perfect Strangers and Manipulation</h3>
Nine Perfect Strangers brilliantly explores how savvy operators manipulate people--and audiences. Unless... it doesn't. What do its bewildering and contradictory story choices say about self help, cults, hippies, and the harm art does?
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<!--ON THE TRACKS OF AN ANGRY GOD--><iframe frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/1444342?border_width=2&bg_color=fafbf5&fg_color=2d2522&link_color=50495b&border_color=97959a" width="554" height="169"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/on-the-tracks-of-an-angry-god">On The Tracks Of An Angry God by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>
<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-81922879238091169442022-03-31T13:13:00.003-07:002022-03-31T13:13:40.248-07:00An Objectively Better Square: Beyond Cryptoart's Aesthetic Field<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>NFT boosters try to claim the Blockchain is for every kind of artist. But what practices lie off the edge of the cryptoart map?</i></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhZRJG2c5BGwe2WONs5IT3eaD_uj6ueeWMfHbMCKgNoWCdJGWof406lWVpqkSuNBOHoOwvcmtpEJFg0VaOfdAOYxbhZ0y1JmdH8V2xhq1f2r1O8VolPo6UA-9IxMLfdYXS3u1fTYby-cGOehqQFLXVS1nNqiLUd_C92FK8Zrrm22KsgzEAANr43BG8" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhZRJG2c5BGwe2WONs5IT3eaD_uj6ueeWMfHbMCKgNoWCdJGWof406lWVpqkSuNBOHoOwvcmtpEJFg0VaOfdAOYxbhZ0y1JmdH8V2xhq1f2r1O8VolPo6UA-9IxMLfdYXS3u1fTYby-cGOehqQFLXVS1nNqiLUd_C92FK8Zrrm22KsgzEAANr43BG8=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">Having a map, even a<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2022/03/a-fleshy-pink-gradient-inside.html"> rough, personal one of the aesthetic space of cryptoart</a>, can help make conflicts clearer, but it can also create a false picture of unity. A big dense chart acts like an impressive net, a dramatic atlas. There's so much stuff on this map, after all, it's gotta encompass the whole geography of digital art!</div><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi7bASG3oppOIjAZlPYgagLhohQhyvvJ4R5qkWNheXeXMCQgmtAgeJlKKL2DpG4Dio7MNe5WBLicEZ4-BuQCYKHv5MSQx6lyaffCnPDrt1Ar26fRZ9oT1xsBq3AyTX1jcaFZ5WTYjHEATjbO7qWwwshe5_JHtQPNkfxnlrNxEGUCIN9sqrtyz42h5g" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3427" data-original-width="2920" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi7bASG3oppOIjAZlPYgagLhohQhyvvJ4R5qkWNheXeXMCQgmtAgeJlKKL2DpG4Dio7MNe5WBLicEZ4-BuQCYKHv5MSQx6lyaffCnPDrt1Ar26fRZ9oT1xsBq3AyTX1jcaFZ5WTYjHEATjbO7qWwwshe5_JHtQPNkfxnlrNxEGUCIN9sqrtyz42h5g=w544-h640" width="544" /></a></div><br /></div><div>But... any glance at the history of new media shows how much territory sits off the corners of the map. Part of what helped me see the negative space in my own attempts to map out cryptoart was actually the book When The Machine Made Art and its coverage of early conflicts between computer artists. One incident in particular stood out to me. The authors describe how the artist Copper Giloth (<a href="https://vimeo.com/user39846312" rev="en_rl_none">a bunch of whose collected works are online</a> at least until <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/15/22979126/vimeo-patreon-creators-price-increase" rev="en_rl_none">Vimeo takes them down for failing to pay their new extortion fees</a> I guess) created really striking installation/video pieces on feminist subjects. According to the authors, "she found her peers in the computer art movement to be 'uncomfortable', preferring instead to avoid highly politicized topics."</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, personally, I have a really hard time imagining <a href="https://vimeo.com/134098238#t=180s" rev="en_rl_none">a piece like "Clothes Hangers"</a>, which directly discusses the reality of in-home abortions in the absence of abortion rights, sitting comfortably on the big cryptoart map. I certainly didn't come across anything like it when browsing this year's hot sellers! The closest I ever got to anything resembling feminist art was a photographer and model who poses naked in rugged natural environments, then digitally collages that work with OTHER rugged natural environments. (I'd link it but I can't find it again--the "nude" tag has been overwhelmed by some dipshit spamming minor variations of the same fleshy GAN art.) I like the work, but, I can't help but feel it's a little undercut by the first of her works on Superrare: a self portrait with a videocollaged seascape, in the shape of the playboy logo, released as part of playboy's corporate cryptoart sale bonanza. There is plentiful art of <a href="https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/time-marilyn-monroe---may-14,-1956-31653" rev="en_rl_none">women</a> as <a href="https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/pearls-in-love-10361" rev="en_rl_none">luxury goods</a>, but the increasingly ballyhooed cryptoart #representation for women remains scarce on the ground.</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, nothing even that challenging will end up on the up and coming platform "<a href="https://www.artblocks.io/project/0" rev="en_rl_none">Art Blocks</a>" (🙄). They say so themselves--tout it even! "Artists/creators are selected to deploy projects at the sole discretion of the Art Blocks team," the project states sternly. No decentralization here! Wait why would the project need to be on a trustless, distributed system like the blockchain if it's completely centrally curated? Errrr mumble mumble moving on: "We reserve the right to curate the content on the platform without explanation. That said, no content which could be considered even remotely offensive to anyone will be considered."</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, they've failed at the outset here, as I do in fact find the vapid banality of the works of Art Blocks offensive, but this statement is just so funny to me. Like yeah man nothing I like to see more from a curatorial statement than "we have selected our works to have not a single trace of sentiment or belief about anything." I think we can see here evidence of a fracture already forming, a desire to distance Art Blocks from Pepe with a Hitler Mustache Twerking and the like. </div><div><br /></div><div>The whole project has a sweaty vibe to it, an earnest nervousness. They want you to know that they take very seriously the carbon output of the Blockchain, for example. And they've got carbon offsets! Don't pay attention to the fact that a bunch of these other scam investment vehicles just burned the fuck down in California, please. We can just keep belching carbon into the atmosphere to make something that looks like a Google Tilt Brush scribble indefinitely because we planted some trees. They have <i>heard us</i> and they are <i>taking our perspectives on board</i>. More significantly, though, they are separating themselves from other cryptoart projects. They have seen the possibility that the whole board might be dragged down in the wider field of production, and they have taken steps to jettison themselves from the segments acting as a cringe anchor.</div><div><br /></div><div>In doing so, however, they've recapitulated, in perfect second as farce style, one of the great schisms in computer art. Consider Radix's "<a href="https://artblocks.io/project/29" rev="en_rl_none">Insipidrals</a>". The piece or rather mathematical set of all possible pieces is described as "Escher-style tiling of a plane, gone wrong." No, bro, not really: Maurits Cornelis Escher could fucking draw. But sure it's a tiling spiral pattern of some boxes. Weird and kind of juvenile to describe something so banal as "gone wrong" but whatever. Reload the page a few times. The spiral is different each time, you see? This is because the "artwork" is in fact a process, an algorithm, which (the project breathlessly describes) operates "deterministically" from a uniquely generated hexadecimal hash. Each time a token is created, a unique data string is also created which will always generate the same image. Like if every time you made a Minecraft world, that world was impossible for anyone else to create. This would suck, but it is, I suppose, a technical innovation in the space.</div><div><br /></div><div>This represents the purest expression of the intersection of cryptoart with process based art. In fact, it finally finds a way to truly legitimize process-based computer art, the oppressed precursor to cryptoart. This art situated itself as modernist, pure, apolitical, and guided by aesthetic and process.</div><div><br /></div><div>And a whole lot of other computer artists hated it.</div><div><br /></div><div>By the 1980s, as chronicled in When The Machine Made Art, not only did a whole slew of practitioners feel that the critical establishment overlooked computer art, the establishment was actually <i>right to do so.</i> Harold Cohen described computer art exhibitions as "mail-order catalogues: everything marvelous, everything up to the minute or just dressed up, and nothing ever presented or discussed, under any circumstance, in terms of its significance." Does that sound familiar to some of my criticism of crypto art? Most delightfully, Brian Reffin Smith does a derisive tapdance all over the field in <a href="https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.2307/1557942" rev="en_rl_none">1989's "Beyond Computer Art" </a>in the computer art journal Leonardo. Yeah, a <i>computer art</i> journal published a piece that gleefully opens with "Let us first agree that most 'computer art' is old-fashioned, boring, meretricious nonsense; and then that most of it is done by people whose knowledge of contemporary art and its problems is more or less zero; and then that most of this 'art' is actually a demonstration of the power of a few companies' graphics systems." Can you ever in a billion years imagine any crypto booster site having the balls to print a critique of cryptoart like this? Never. Never ever ever.</div><div><br /></div><div>Smith extensively derides computer art made by programmers totally disconnected from both the traditions of art and from contemporary problems that art might respond to. At one point he calls them Thatcherite opportunists, it whips. In this, though, he's directly firing against another extensive and theorized segment of computer artists, artists who saw the abstraction of computer art, and its apolitical nature, as its strength. This segment saw computer art's purpose as both to demonstrate that science is farkin' cool, and to reestablish aesthetic principles that had been lost with avant garde movements such as Dadaism. This is, for Smith, precisely the problem: that what could have been a revolutionary medium for art was taken over by people who might just as happily gush to you about the latest predator drone designs or explain how actually these cubes and spheres are a bulwark against cultural degeneracy. Sound familiar?</div><div><br /></div><div>Most brutal is the critique that this artwork largely acts as a simple tech demo for tech companies. Art Blocks streamlines and entwines the tech company and the tech demo in a true Escher causal relationship. The art is a tech demo for Art Blocks, and the advertisement for the product is the final product itself and the aim of the whole endeavor. Participating in the ecosystem involves creating more tech demos, which can be sold to support the ecosystem (or echosystem perhaps). It's a perfect perpetual motion machine, completely self sustaining... aside from the coal burning power plants.</div><div><br /></div><div>This isn't how it has to be, though, and I think it's notable that Smith ends his polemic with a call for a very different sort of computer art. And there's plenty of interesting precedent. Take this work by Vera Molnar:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjQVtA80bRzBMewu4YIOa_I2zh8PyvP-PgPScq8tvOK7Ne-Ie2zVWeNtTX1V_HcGjnEhBrhORAPrJHm2VrQAARgYExfxNofWAalu1L_6Pk14wNLwB6mZcp8nz5TmgHGzSs7KASK-BXOJcQ9L7fLqXnIMFzSMU96R8v4CHnGpVWPdmtKhs1iLQ0vfIY" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="419" data-original-width="654" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjQVtA80bRzBMewu4YIOa_I2zh8PyvP-PgPScq8tvOK7Ne-Ie2zVWeNtTX1V_HcGjnEhBrhORAPrJHm2VrQAARgYExfxNofWAalu1L_6Pk14wNLwB6mZcp8nz5TmgHGzSs7KASK-BXOJcQ9L7fLqXnIMFzSMU96R8v4CHnGpVWPdmtKhs1iLQ0vfIY=w640-h410" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div>Ah wait shit fuck hold on wrong slide lemme just:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjE_g63TXXPZ6bN4K8Tov2VS5UxpbRLxGLIH-Mq9_p2rm50q8M5pWlgfld5H7-q47Fz3FfuMrLyKzi_AIcsi9ooCkSyjJNvL3QVv96wqvQBK8OaQ0eRj9Q1C75CWmILZMJNMICJhs6dpyBh3K9rsjicWfoeqT1vZSEkRX_wmOSpUyDSV4SS-Kcd1W8" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="662" data-original-width="680" height="622" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjE_g63TXXPZ6bN4K8Tov2VS5UxpbRLxGLIH-Mq9_p2rm50q8M5pWlgfld5H7-q47Fz3FfuMrLyKzi_AIcsi9ooCkSyjJNvL3QVv96wqvQBK8OaQ0eRj9Q1C75CWmILZMJNMICJhs6dpyBh3K9rsjicWfoeqT1vZSEkRX_wmOSpUyDSV4SS-Kcd1W8=w640-h622" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div>There we go! Molnar developed these by iteratively distorting the process used to create the squares and other shapes that the computer generated. Like Art Blocks, it would find itself on the left side of my diagram, rubbing shoulders with grammar based procedural generation and neural networks, artwork focused on process. Why do I find this older work more compelling than the contemporary work done on the blockchain?</div><div><br /></div><div>Well... when push comes to shove I guess it's because it's not on the blockchain.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's not just a moral stance but an aesthetic one. "Aesthetics" is a pretty broad term of an entire philosophical discipline, not just "disinterested white male spectators" judging art's objective qualities. Jacques Ranciere for example is interested in an aesthetics less focused on what "looks good", and more interested in uncovering a whole sensory regime, a whole understanding of art entwined with an epistemology and phenomenology of the world. Molnar described herself as iterating on her squares in order to find images she found more aesthetically pleasing, but what interests me is not the final product but the aesthetics of the process, the experience presented by her own images of difference and similarity. This suggests not a pure return to a conservative focus on "good art" but instead a sensible interest in difference and plenitude, that one of these squares is not "objectively better, concede now please." In fact, describing the squares that way makes no sense, precisely because they are part of a potentially unbounded series enabled by the computer. Each contextualizes the others. Far from being disinterested and apolitical, that has profound implications. After all, why are reactionaries so deranged about proving the objective superiority of squares if not because they overidentify with the "superior" squares and are terrified of their "obvious" superiority being stripped away? At its best, this mode of computer art embodied this destabilization.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank god that the immutable blockchain came along and provided them with an out: the objectively superior randomly generated products could be pinned to cork like a dead fly and the whole rest of the genus gassed to death before that infinite procedural multitude started to suggest that maybe YOUR particular square isn't all that FUCKING SPECIAL. </div><div><br /></div><div>The aesthetic of generation is most remarkable, if anywhere, in a context where the procedural generation refuses the boundedness of the individual implementation but rather expresses a diversity of alternatives. It's just not compatible with the crude embalming methods and the hobbling print limits of sites like Art Blocks. If these aesthetic qualities of digital art matter in the slightest, their place either on the blockchain or unbounded and free on the internet also matters. </div><div><br /></div><div>This is the kind of scrutiny that the medium or movement or disruption or intervention of NFTs must face up to if it wants to be taken seriously. Like, I'm opening my arms here, and saying please go ahead and prove to me that your generative art has value, and if you can, prove that your generative art isn't just more Clement Greenberg modernism welded onto a blockchain cause that's how you could make a quick buck. If you really want to wow me, justify your artwork while standing next to, like, art of a giant Elon Musk head ejaculating dick shaped rockets full of shiba dogs toward the moon. Cause that's what you have to do as long as your art sits on these marketplaces!</div><div><br /></div><div>And you better start learning fast to make distinctions, because I don't think the rosy paradise of diverse-but-unified cryptoartists can last for long as the real players start to arrive. I'm talking about people who have the ability to swoop into the space, make a ton of money while the field is trendy, then disappear back to comfort when the market crashes. The very people cryptoart boosters are so eager to define themselves against.</div><div><br /></div><div>The High Art World.</div><div><br /></div><div>Every single one of the worst people in the highest echelons of fine art has jumped on this trend. Everyone from Ai Weiwei to Damien Hirst to Douglas Coupland, all the Young British Artists and Neo Pop dudes, they're all minting NFTs. Which is weird, right? I thought this field was supposed to be "exactly the community of multidisciplinary artists historically excluded from the art world". And yet curiously it seems to be the exact same guys?</div><div><br /></div><div>The ultimate beneficiaries of comics being For Adults Now were superstar creators, not your average inker, colorist, or letterer, let alone your average zine artist. The ultimate beneficiaries of the collapsing of cryptoart into computer art into the big pink square of art that is diverse and yet unified will not be, for the most part, independent artists, but hucksters. And who is better at huckstering with art than <a href="https://foundation.app/@douglascoupland" rev="en_rl_none">someone like neo pop artist Douglass Coupland</a>? I want to talk about Coupland in particular because amidst a bunch of utterly insipid, appropriative, fairly shitty gif art that I 1000% do not believe Coupland animated personally lol, <a href="https://foundation.app/%40douglascoupland/game-of-life-hand-of-god-dark-31155" rev="en_rl_none">are several gifs he (or his assistants) put together of Conway's Game of Life</a>. The Game of Life genuinely is one of the most beautiful and influential pieces of computer art to exist, a procedural game where "cells" change color based on the cells around them. Life inspires so many partly because it is capable of shocking complexity and fascinating, lively patterns generated by a few simple rules. So simple are the rules in fact that they can be implemented fairly easily even by novice programmers. I think that Life, at its best, inspires an incredible sense of connection between the biological and artificial, and also blurs the line between artist, tool, and audience.</div><div><br /></div><div>Coupland, by taking the interactive and dynamic Game of Life and transforming it into a looping proprietary gif, has systematically murdered its organisms and displayed it as a garish, colorfully bleeding hunting trophy. He has through the violent domination of the natural world in the form of Proof of Work reasserted the boundary between Artist and Audience and Tool, between Man and Machine and Beast. This is not lively vibrant matter. This is wallpaper. This is a bear skin fucking rug. God it doesn't even look good. Why are pop artists so obsessed with arbitrarily colored polka dots? Is this supposed to be a reference to Damien Hirst's equally insipid dot paintings? Because it doesn't work at all: the interest in Life is in the emergence of patterns that seem at once biological and artificial, with a detectable but not trivially predictable order. Making them all different colors collapses the effect entirely into just noise! </div><div><br /></div><div>Noise and fragments. That's just it, isn't it? Capital melts all that is solid into air. It has to, for the capitalist class to continuously revolutionize the means of production and find new avenues to compete, desperately racing ahead of the closing jaws of the rate of profit's fall. The tokens might not be fungible, but everything else is, and <a href="https://www.masterworks.io/" rev="en_rl_none">wow would you look at that there's now investment vehicles that let you invest in a portion of a stock pegged to a collection of artwork</a>, so I guess even the art can be fragmented and turned into a fungible investment vehicle!</div><div><br /></div><div>It should come as no surprise that the whole complex field of digital art, even the whole complexity of the cryptoart field of social production with all its internal contradictions and tensions, would be just another trouble <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gLOALCvlMI" rev="en_rl_none">slap slap slapped away with the slapchop</a>. The wild unrestrained nature of generative art making it hard to commodify? Dice that shit with some leeks and tomato and stick the remains on superrare or foundation app. Doesn't matter what any of this shit means, doesn't matter what debates are happening or have happened about the different forms of art. Will it blend? Oh. You know it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Wait wait wait. I remember something that felt relevant to this-</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh right! It's Copper Giloth again, in her piece "<a href="https://vimeo.com/134187528" rev="en_rl_none">As I Said</a>". The piece is at once abrasive and playful, a musical rendition of the title broken vocally down by collaborator Mimi Shevitz into phonemes, and remixed and overlaid to form a repetitive, rhythmic noisescape. On the screen, a primitive computer rendering takes the component parts of the video--text "AS I SAID (IT)" and "LISTEN", a series of numbers and registration marks, and simply drawn hand cymbals (also audible in the music), and breaks them down, overlays them, repeats them, splits them up.</div><div><br /></div><div>The title suggests an obviousness to the speech: something already stated, something that shouldn't need to be repeated. But that opening just plays over and over, without ever getting anywhere, chopped up and sliced and diced by audio editing and human vocal performance and algorithmic decomposition. To me, the piece suggests the exact way that technoculture and its broader enabler, capital, take what we say and believe, even our most strongly held convictions, and dice them up, rendering them meaningless. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that this piece suggests the way the objections or beliefs of people marginalized by this culture--female computer artists who dare to make "political" work about their own bodies and right to abortion access, just to pick a random example--get chopped up, distorted, and rendered unintelligible by this culture.</div><div><br /></div><div>But there's also a playfulness here that really appeals to me. Sure, it's abrasive, but there's also a sing song quality to the performance and the hand cymbals and the constant remixing of the text on the screen in rhythmic time to the music, that suggests Giloth and Shevitz just might be sticking their tongue out at this culture. "LISTEN" the text briefly commands at the beginning, but the piece frustrates our attempts to get to its meaning or even make out the words spoken or displayed. They turn the machine's power to chop and repackage on its head, and use it to produce something that's a little uneasy, a little unpleasant, a little playfully out of reach, a little defiant.</div><div><br /></div><div>It suggests that there is a wealth of possibilities for digital art far beyond the totalizing reach of NFTs. If there's any point in taking cryptoart seriously at all, it might be this: that if we can break apart "cryptoart" as a monolith we can start to see what art practices get favored and what get marginalized. Maybe we can even start to imagine an alternate space for creative practices ignored by both the gallery system AND the world of NFTs.</div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
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An Objectively Perfect Square
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<!--ON THE TRACKS OF AN ANGRY GOD--><iframe frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/1444342?border_width=2&bg_color=fafbf5&fg_color=2d2522&link_color=50495b&border_color=97959a" width="554" height="169"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/on-the-tracks-of-an-angry-god">On The Tracks Of An Angry God by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>
<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-78446380315426044962022-03-29T11:48:00.000-07:002022-09-04T15:55:13.279-07:00A Fleshy Pink Gradient: Inside Cryptoart's Quest for Aesthetic Definition<div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>As cryptoart defenses get just a little bit smarter, a new narrative emerges: NFT artists are diverse outsiders, but conveniently are all on the same side! What does the actual range of NFT aesthetics look like, though, and just how aligned are their interests really?</i></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiaHAj5uYZyacJWMjzu2O-MXe-m0UOeGchVW9wGPNmQQcjUoFtT7loAWYcd8NzXef9sGNQKIhr-gUN4h9M3QvIn1YNfXdahYZAc0beWiddn3jKBLF-OJ1CAh10vrQDtfe9nhk5Jm1Hf8dmBa77EGNkajTbZ2khS9UJQW9e8iLEHp88mkX7C2OR5W10" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiaHAj5uYZyacJWMjzu2O-MXe-m0UOeGchVW9wGPNmQQcjUoFtT7loAWYcd8NzXef9sGNQKIhr-gUN4h9M3QvIn1YNfXdahYZAc0beWiddn3jKBLF-OJ1CAh10vrQDtfe9nhk5Jm1Hf8dmBa77EGNkajTbZ2khS9UJQW9e8iLEHp88mkX7C2OR5W10=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div></div></div></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In the face of relentless criticism, skepticism, and derisive jeering, supporters of cryptoart and NFTs have gotten a little bit cannier about their rhetoric. There's a lot more handwringing about making sure that emissions have "offsets", for example, and some hasty and late attempts at situating cryptoart into a wider art history--of the avant garde, of computer art, of outsider art. Unfortunately for me, they've paired these defenses with a lot of self righteousness. Like, they've got a persecution complex now, and it's such a drag. <a href="https://twitter.com/sara_ludy/status/1369771575298326532" rev="en_rl_none">Check out this tweet for example from (artist? art promoter?) Sara Ludy</a>:</div><div><br /></div><div style="padding-left: 40px;">With all the cancelling/shame/hate/death threats being projected at artists for minting NFTs, I'm reminded of this passage about the violent history of computer art. We need to do something before this gets even further out of control, we cannot repeat this.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yeah ma'am, "first they came for the ponzi schemes and I said nothing <a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/" rev="en_rl_none">for I was selling real shit on itchio</a>". The tie-in to "cancel culture", a thing exclusively decried by economically comfortable cis people with large platforms despite it actually predominantly ruining the lives of impoverished queer indie artists, is a nice rhetorical touch of course. But hold up, let's take a look at that passage she mentions:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiB7b07EPLR33aUbX-zf37dZn33ThSfrCmn0mRydi5GwZSjXcOjsi8O_iTDyEA22e8BrjKXvlbrS4i_Pd17M2g1zdXASIAHfdn5dtyCju9ij8eoPrih4fklFNzVQmQcCyMXl-pw4m6PVAuB6F1KzCB7arE3CbwybCHP-8P9wodDBOn11KrjA9mDYvU" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="682" data-original-width="1210" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiB7b07EPLR33aUbX-zf37dZn33ThSfrCmn0mRydi5GwZSjXcOjsi8O_iTDyEA22e8BrjKXvlbrS4i_Pd17M2g1zdXASIAHfdn5dtyCju9ij8eoPrih4fklFNzVQmQcCyMXl-pw4m6PVAuB6F1KzCB7arE3CbwybCHP-8P9wodDBOn11KrjA9mDYvU=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div>See now this is pretty interesting actually. I do think it's pretty absurd on its face to compare the reception of computer art to say Byzantine iconoclasm. After all, there's quite a difference between "a fellow artist" calling someone a traitor, and having your eyes gouged out, which the Byzantines were as I remember it pretty fond of doing to their political rivals. But there's something here to actually respond to, an actual academic source that positions cryptoart as part of a long line of computer art practices, an avant garde attacked by traditional artists! There's an actual rhetorical move here, an argument of sorts that I can respond to! I couldn't help myself, dammit. You can take the Zoe out of the academy but no matter how many structurally induced nervous breakdowns you give her you can't take the academic out of the Zoe.</div><div><br /></div><div>Comrades, I pirated the book.</div><div><br /></div><div>And the book paints a very different picture of the history of computer art than the simple binary presented here of computer artists united in their persecution by an inflexible art world.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have to credit the rhetorical use of the book, though, as part of this new wave of more refined defenses of cryptoart. One interesting insight that comes from looking at art as part of a field of social production is that the game of achieving legitimacy happens on multiple boards at once. Like: if you find yourself struggling to break free from the commercial tendencies of your medium, it makes sense sometimes to try and distance yourself from your roots, find theoretical approaches that consecrate your work, possibly at the expense of your peers. So, your "comics" become your "graphic novels": you make a move to another part of the field of social production for your medium.</div><div><br /></div><div>But another strategy might be to take the medium itself and move its whole place on the wider board of social production for ALL art and entertainment. Rather than just competing with peers on the game board of "comics", you create a "movement" for comics rights and artistic recognition. So, having established that "biff! pow! comics aren't just for kids anymore!", your "graphic novels" not only are an avant garde within your own field, but gain cultural clout, along with ALL your peers, in comparison to movies, paintings, theater, novels, &c.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's what this conflation of NFTs with all of computer art, and the situating of computer art as a maligned avant garde that deserves critical reassessment, attempts to do. Cryptoart is the avant garde within computer art, and computer art itself deserves a more privileged place within culture. You play the game on multiple boards at once, and create an idea of "comic creators" or "computer artists" in order to develop a mass base of support among an imagined group of peers, a base which will join in a fight that conveniently elevates your own position in the wider marketplace.</div><div><br /></div><div>The problem with this rhetoric is that not everyone you're dragging with you as you move your game board necessarily wants to be lumped in with cryptoartists, and in fact not everyone involved in computer art wants to be tied to other computer artists they see as hacks or corporate cheerleaders. This rhetorical move paints computer and cryptoartists as being united, but that's far from the case. Plenty of gif artists, 3d modelers, and webcomickers were interested in their media precisely because digital reproduction wasn't bound by the same restrictions as print media. This parallels the history of computer art as a whole: much of When The Machine Made Art is dedicated to the often dramatic conflicts within the computer art movement. In context, Ludy's quote is part of a complex picture of a movement of artists making individual moves--some to promote computer art as a field, yes, but others to break from their peers for commercial, ideological, and aesthetic reasons. Out of context, it conveniently buffs away these complexities. In other words, the rhetorical utility of the quote comes from the virtual certainty that unless an autistic trans woman with years of academic brain poisoning and bitterness happened to see the tweet and <i>actually read the book</i>, those complexities would remain flattened!</div><div><br /></div><div>Whoops!</div><div><br /></div><div>Broadly speaking, this seems to be the trend in the academic or pseudo-academic boosterism around cryptoart. First, that cryptoart is at once wildly diverse but also <i>without any internal conflicts or contradictions</i>, a united field of upstart mavericks. Second, that none of the pseudoacademic language around cryptoart will face any sort of real scrutiny. </div><div><br /></div><div>The optimistically entitled "<a href="https://www.artnome.com/news/2021/4/10/in-search-of-an-aesthetics-of-crypto-art" rev="en_rl_none">In Search of an Aesthetics of Crypto Art</a>" is a solid example of the genre. The paper as a whole is fairly silly stuff, which I'll freely admit I mostly skimmed. It relies on STEM posturing to boost its claims to authority (there are so many graphs!) but it doesn't say very much at all about the field. For example, rather than trying to critically describe what they see, they opt to find the most popular tags on the website and graph them according to average sale price and... wait does that say "Average Views"? But the X axis is popularity of <i>use</i>. Did they actually mistitle the graph? Hooboy.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiP4hyMA6MIVoWYkJUvlgA2l2yGc2G0bT2TKvccT4MrVTnrhwGcUzmE3cEJ7gcPCHCeuSlxkIBpd3JFrgkAFd2ZDRWtlMZ4A0vG_ev0lSyiwpLvAM3COGqmIZ8uCFMf1htOn-DbXzCQ1t-2duSqz0bFxXYyD2fBGlFd6Kg0duOMEhsEp-CbmpXpBds" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="1000" height="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiP4hyMA6MIVoWYkJUvlgA2l2yGc2G0bT2TKvccT4MrVTnrhwGcUzmE3cEJ7gcPCHCeuSlxkIBpd3JFrgkAFd2ZDRWtlMZ4A0vG_ev0lSyiwpLvAM3COGqmIZ8uCFMf1htOn-DbXzCQ1t-2duSqz0bFxXYyD2fBGlFd6Kg0duOMEhsEp-CbmpXpBds=w640-h352" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div>This is a great example of the "great diversity that is unified and without contradictions" mode of cryptoart criticism. At its core, this sort of number crunching exercise is not a search or a successful recovery of an aesthetics of crypto art, or exploration of the multiple aesthetics within cryptoart, but a guide to optimizing marketing gimmicks. Imagine if we actually did this to other forms of art. You'd only be able to describe Ad Reinhardt as part of the "#black and sometimes dark blue,#2d" movement. This doesn't actually identify trends of genre the way an art historian or critic does but in the way an investor would, which makes their faffing about with phrases like "neoliberal flattening" laughably absurd. Equally absurd is their portrayal of the cute party trick of overlaying and averaging 22 thousand nfts into a vague pink gradient as "suggestive of libidinal melancholy" and having "an unmistakable allure of technostalgia":</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgB-aq3AQKeAN4XkSPqctHhIMVZX-0W17ibFd2cyOJzpq97M3pOO7NMdPQ6jltPkR3eJ8DMorSD8u_0lz8FaRdEmJKrnYWg8p78GPOGprTsdkJ07rLmpoE87WbSrkJsV5SIfMBR3ZIqodObsuiRoED2NRLbtGeYKpYjnxKRZxKg9xApNQG0x7pMN4M" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgB-aq3AQKeAN4XkSPqctHhIMVZX-0W17ibFd2cyOJzpq97M3pOO7NMdPQ6jltPkR3eJ8DMorSD8u_0lz8FaRdEmJKrnYWg8p78GPOGprTsdkJ07rLmpoE87WbSrkJsV5SIfMBR3ZIqodObsuiRoED2NRLbtGeYKpYjnxKRZxKg9xApNQG0x7pMN4M=w640-h640" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div>I keep running into a fundamental problem with cryptoart defenses: I can't really reply to an argument that doesn't exist as anything more than a vague phantasm or impression. A lot of writing on the subject is just that--impressionistic, like a text generator's idea of what academic texts sound sort of like. Despite a smug denunciation of the old art world and its impenetrable "art speak", the style of the paper is jargon-laden and obscure. When translated into English, the whole thing comes out as word salad:</div><div><br /></div><div style="padding-left: 40px;">While therefore useful, aesthetics remains highly problematic, premised as it is on the ‘disinterested’ viewpoint of a supposedly neutral agent who is, in reality, the very definition of an elitist white male spectator. Crypto art’s detractors might therefore argue that this kind of ‘aesthetics’ is no more than NFTs deserve. Certainly, it would take a monumental act of sophistry to claim for crypto art the same kind of ‘autonomy’ from mass culture that Theodor Adorno once tried to claim for art. If anything, crypto art is the most rarefied (or at least the most recent) product of the cultural industries, represented by exactly the community of multidisciplinary artists historically excluded from the art world. Its problem is how to reconcile further environmental damage with the potential of NFTs to redeem a generation of digital creatives from lives of economic precarity.</div><div><br /></div><div>Let me try to translate. "Aesthetics is useful but assumes the ideal critic is an elite white male. [Teacher's note: all of aesthetics, through all of history, or just certain schools of aesthetics?] Skeptics might say this fits the field of NFTs. [Teacher's note: because NFTs are overwhelmingly minted by elite white men? If this is so, state it directly instead of usinga euphemistic sentence construction.] Certainly, cryptoart is undeniably subject to cultural markets. [Teacher's note: wait, hold up, what about the critique about elite white men?] If anything, cryptoart is the current peak of commercial art, made up of artists and art forms not part of non-commercial art. [Teacher's note: ok, that's sort of a tautology, but again how'd we get from the first two sentences to here?] Its problem is how to make a bunch of digital artists a lot of money despite the huge environmental cost." By the end of the paragraph, the problems raised in the beginning have been completely forgotten and switched out, by the sleight of hand of equating commercial producers ("community of multidisciplinary artists") with *diverse* producers (not "elitist white male spectators"). I have no idea where "aesthetics" went in this paragraph, having begun as a central problem and ended as not even worth mentioning. Someone really ought to let cryptobooster academics know that just because they're writing about cryptographically signed art doesn't mean they must make such a hash of their rhetoric.</div><div><br /></div><div>What we have then is a kind of machine intelligence art criticism. Like the old "colorless green ideas sleep furiously," the criticism follows familiar grammars of both traditional and more data-driven art analysis, but the actual contents are gibberish. It is order without insight.</div><div><br /></div><div>So like I thought, right, what if we did the opposite and achieved insight through pure bloody chaos:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgWqyhIEsIa1HfrNIiERfYbrs-koieWk-NSlX-4Qq1UKL9E_aFDfIM4cmXPDdtekp-oTGwCyvco4N2kOfH8DevNw3OS2wUF1MJNGhPDZmkWxnI20qyno9USyl-mxnJ97a2SB7lt9RtBHCd2lCHf1QGZWDAVJQt_LKce_NW0lDwiwJYKE14RZ7N-c2g" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3427" data-original-width="2920" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgWqyhIEsIa1HfrNIiERfYbrs-koieWk-NSlX-4Qq1UKL9E_aFDfIM4cmXPDdtekp-oTGwCyvco4N2kOfH8DevNw3OS2wUF1MJNGhPDZmkWxnI20qyno9USyl-mxnJ97a2SB7lt9RtBHCd2lCHf1QGZWDAVJQt_LKce_NW0lDwiwJYKE14RZ7N-c2g=w544-h640" width="544" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div>I'm sharing this diagram I made for myself in part because I think it's funny to be like "oh throw out this scientific assessment, use THIS instead" and then post what visually is an insane woman's conspiracy theory board covered in jokes about the subject matter. But also, why wouldn't I share my artistic and critical process like this? I'm not bashful about it being messy, subjective, and intuitive, and don't need to pretend to a STEM objectivity premised on- oh, what was it again? "A supposedly neutral agent who is, in reality, the very definition of an elitist white male spectator"?</div><div><br /></div><div>No, I just drifted, like any good situationist, through the top seller streets of superrare and jotted down my impressions of what I saw. I took seriously the idea that there was a diverse field of artists and artforms to uncover on these marketplaces. The diagram is a living thing: I just added some more sections today because when I started this, in the middle of my entire community being evicted, Bored Apes hadn't completely taken over as emblematic of cryptoart. So, belatedly, I added a broad category of "AVATARS" roughly where I think that kind of finds itself (sort of in the neighborhood of crypto triumphalism, commercial art in revolt, and concept art without a source text). I drew another crazy line between the hashmasklikes up to what I've labeled "Im Basquiat", though, because there's this whole segment of avatars that deliberately takes from "urban" aesthetics, freely pilfers black culture, &c. Do you see how this kind of works? This isn't an authoritative text but rather me trying to map out for myself lines of affinity and aesthetic association. And hey, <a href="https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/crypto-art-bingo-20062" rev="en_rl_none">I'm not the only person to notice some of these trends</a>:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh2L1gEiBsKBDIbhRrDOLhHd1rzES0Mv6WzLkB_dCfo6IERhdQD35vCxpq27a3fKKHJVH7fAO85hQzCmNF-bBCF-X7M0U1bBHMB7qa0UQVXM2Xh4wENLIwiI-DGoPcmCaUjvJ_q9pjF_AUqqvNWgUlAG7An8YhKx_0fB8ZZjAr_Av2AEYLm2Fx5u1A" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="5120" data-original-width="4320" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh2L1gEiBsKBDIbhRrDOLhHd1rzES0Mv6WzLkB_dCfo6IERhdQD35vCxpq27a3fKKHJVH7fAO85hQzCmNF-bBCF-X7M0U1bBHMB7qa0UQVXM2Xh4wENLIwiI-DGoPcmCaUjvJ_q9pjF_AUqqvNWgUlAG7An8YhKx_0fB8ZZjAr_Av2AEYLm2Fx5u1A=w541-h640" width="541" /></a></div><br /></div><div>This might be the first piece of cryptoart I actually like. It actually has, like, real jokes! Jokes that work! I just laughed out loud when my brain registered the art used for the "GAN" category! And you know I think the little border around that icon to integrate it better into the emoji aesthetic of the image is pretty clever. Maybe I've just had my standards lowered by looking at so much of this stuff, but this actually feels like it has a sense of humor, self-satire, and effort that almost no other cryptoart possesses, and it's executed in a way that takes advantage of the iconic art style to set up a bunch of reasonably fun visual gags. I mean it's even giving me the itch to go on a rant about why emojis do not constitute "a language". I won't because sheesh gang I have SOME self control, but hey we've finally found some cryptoart that provokes that kind of response in me, good work that man.</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the things that drew me to this was specifically the identification of "Offbrand Basquiat" and "Pseudo Picasso" as trends. I quickly accumulated a similar array of names on my own chart, named after the tweet in which internet poet laureate dril claimed authorship of the work of enigmatic street and conceptual artist Banksy: "<a href="https://twitter.com/dril/status/13408516505075712?lang=en" rev="en_rl_none">im banky.</a>" Not only is there a lot of "im banky" going around in crypto art, and a lot of "im basquiat", there's also quite a bit of say "im koons", "im rothko", and so on. If this one artist is taking notice of the trends... why did it escape the authors of the paper ostensibly on the aesthetics of the movement?</div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe because it exposes a level of contention, self-reference that goes beyond just "ha ha isn't cryptoart so wacky?" to actually take swipes at other creators. Instead of joining hands with the people elevating the whole art, it suggests some cryptoartists might be a little fed up with their peers. Am I putting words into the mouth of the artist obxium? Maybe... but out of idle curiosity I checked out his twitter and just a few hours ago as of writing this sentence <a href="https://twitter.com/obxium/status/1506324016784625674" rev="en_rl_none">he had tweeted out</a> <a href="https://www.maxkohler.com/posts/why-do-all-nfts-look-the-same/" rev="en_rl_none">a really quite solid analysis of why "all NFTs look the same"</a>. A way more concise analysis than my own, though I'll try not to take it too personally 😕 . To me, this suggests not a unified movement but one, much like computer art historically, with potentially significant ruptures.</div><div><br /></div><div>I increasingly felt this way as I jotted down notes on the affinities in the field. They weren't all connected, and some sectors felt notably isolated from each other. Like, one of the big sectors is what I've termed "Commercial Art In Revolt". This encompasses everything from Corporate Memphis On The Immutable Blockchain, to, as it shades into countercultural spaces, Banksyesque edgy deconstructions of graphic tropes. For graphic and industrial designers looking to expand their income streams beyond the flakey world of corporate commissions, cryptoart potentially offers a way to move themselves in the field of social production into greater legitimacy and with it achieve higher earning and greater stability.</div><div><br /></div><div>The thing about this is that it also shades into a field of art that happens to be, well, ssstupid? This is the Blockchain Wank field, ethereum and bitcoin logos everywhere, a cultural blighttown encompassing everything from Logan Paul Wank to general tech triumphalism to Elon Supremacy. It's all pretty dire and it's all pretty popular. A LOT of Beeple stuff falls into this general region of the map, including that first dumb Paul vs Mayweather piece I dragged. Where it shades into the Commercial Art In Revolt sector, I think you get a lot of pieces about the way Ethereum will liberate us all: graphic agitprop created not for a state or corporation but for the mass fandom/whale base of crypto enthusiasts. They know they have a ready audience for like a space marine pulling the ethereum logo out of demon lord's skull or whatever cause this milieu fucking loves being propagandized to in the corniest way imaginable.</div><div><br /></div><div>Let me shift to another part of the map though. There's a diverse range of works at the top of the pile worth examining. These are people who work in gifs, videocollage, digital painting, pixels, voxels, 3d renders... immaterial forms of art practice. I'm making a distinction for the sake of convenience and due to the differing nature of production, aims, and finished product, from both procedural art (grammar based generation, GAN art) and pure geometrism (I heard you like cubes so I put some cubes in your cube so you could recapitulate the modernist dream of techo-futurism while--you get it). Rather than these practices which tend to involve programming prowess and a focus on process, here I'm talking about people who are more <i>like</i> sculptors, painters, film directors, print makers, &c. They just have the bad fortune of picking media that the art world has a harder time commodifying. For them, there really IS an argument to be made that they represent an avant garde that the establishment's been slow to consecrate.</div><div><br /></div><div>Do I seem more sympathetic to this bunch? It helps that they're subjectively what I consider art that doesn't suck shit. And also, I do get it, I get the frustration of being shut out of traditional avenues because your medium is digital and your mindset doesn't line up with the commodity form the traditional art world expects.</div><div><br /></div><div>Though, you know, on the other hand, the response I and all my friends picked was "fuck the commodity form, try and build something new" not "invent a new commodity form that requires us to drown New Orleans in order to make it run". So actually maybe fuck them after all. But you can perhaps see the dilemma for these people!</div><div><br /></div><div>And cryptoart has pushed them into another dilemma. The nature of cryptoart as a unified platform, whose boosters are profoundly committed to selling the world on the market place <i>as a whole</i>, these different milieus find themselves crammed together. It maybe doesn't matter right now while whales are gobbling up just about anything they think will be an Investment, but I can't help but wonder how it feels for someone sincerely trying to sell interesting gif art to sit next to a Pepe smoking a bong shaped like the Ethereum logo. Maybe they don't give a shit! I just wonder is all, because the history of digital art has always been contested, and I can't imagine that will just stop because of The Blockchain.</div><div><br /></div><div>And in particular I wonder what will happen to all the kinds of computer art that don't seem to have much of a place in the cryptoart ecosystem. Next time we'll continue diving into this diagram, the history of computer art, and whose work gets buried when you simply average all this art together into one big neutral pink blob.</div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
A Fleshy Pink Gradient
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<h3>The Corniness Is The Point</h3>
As celebrities sell out to NFT schemes, mutual hostility with the skeptics boils over. How can we keep our heads as cryptoart now achieves a seemingly impossible level of corniness?
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<h3>Culture Kept In Its Coffin: How The Netflix Model Buries Our Media History</h3>
Classic anime like Revolutionary Girl Utena could get a new lease on life if released serially in the present day... but Netflix and its many competitors aren't in the business of preserving or selling art. What do we lose when our media history becomes #Content?
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<h3>I Don't Ever Wanna Talk That Way Again: Transfemme Singers and the Dissonant Body</h3>
Shouting and howling. Pitching up and clipping out. Smothering in soundscapes of sighs. From 100 Gecs to Against Me! to Ada Rook, trans women push vocal technology to the breaking point--and in the process expose how we think of gender.
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<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>
<!--ON THE TRACKS OF AN ANGRY GOD--><iframe frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/1444342?border_width=2&bg_color=fafbf5&fg_color=2d2522&link_color=50495b&border_color=97959a" width="554" height="169"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/on-the-tracks-of-an-angry-god">On The Tracks Of An Angry God by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-35141189708007289932022-02-22T11:04:00.000-08:002022-02-22T11:04:31.143-08:00The Corniness Is The Point<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>As celebrities sell out to NFT schemes, mutual hostility with the skeptics boils over. How can we keep our heads as cryptoart now achieves a seemingly impossible level of corniness?</i></p></blockquote><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi_j1PnW5E74p3A7sH5cX0ITE3ZMI8WpCBl7iBqT24AJtfialDcJ2PEY-lc2rQ3HEF1pxtxrqdaxDMoK6t2SrhWo7hGwVqJSWxxamLtWc1ClX7yJFQ-zITUmaYY-KWxZPAlFQj8M0IARua7Y2gi3ggDWZ6xrrc5tSf0Tg_nR64SVBpgr-E1B0XkiSc" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="596" data-original-width="1100" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi_j1PnW5E74p3A7sH5cX0ITE3ZMI8WpCBl7iBqT24AJtfialDcJ2PEY-lc2rQ3HEF1pxtxrqdaxDMoK6t2SrhWo7hGwVqJSWxxamLtWc1ClX7yJFQ-zITUmaYY-KWxZPAlFQj8M0IARua7Y2gi3ggDWZ6xrrc5tSf0Tg_nR64SVBpgr-E1B0XkiSc=w640-h346" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>I want to make a point about celebrities, and the NFTs they've gravitated toward, and the astoundingly bad grace with which they've received criticism, but I have to do it in a very specific way so that you and I both can survive it. There's this mechanic in Bloodborne where just being around certain entities makes you "frenzied". As long as you're near them, your frenzy meter goes up. When it reaches the top, your head goes pop. Like, your head literally explodes in a fountain of blood. This is how reading about NFTs has started to make me feel, but with head explosions traded out for me saying shit that gets me banned from Twitter.</p><div>So.</div><div><br /></div><div>A hot sauce company is running a promotion where if you use their app to send them photos of chicken bones they will give you "bonecoin". (Bonecoin, as far as I can tell, is not a "real" cryptocurrency and isn't really pretending to be one, though it's a bit of a stretch to call it a "parody", as you'll see in a second.) Once you've sent bone pics (and no doubt a bunch of user data the company can sell onward) to enter the bone zone, you'll have a chance to win an NFT from the company.</div><div><br /></div><div>The NFT <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CZPbpT7siOH/" rev="en_rl_none">as far as I can tell is very real</a>, and looks like this: </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgb5PUo82KqGCEWwEHvKiIGU07AvLBE9BJBTPouhk6zZX12IhQJelKQXDSSLy6Czzh0a-qfWAY4W9Rjo1Q-FCMc3d_gJFcELvyMJD9fQ2R8CcxatovBJCSo9dJZS7caXEdgUfTDtKiGZzC7rl3xubUn8OeiwQD2MUVizU9Q0HNyDTnqryy9Hyb-XRs" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="783" data-original-width="764" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgb5PUo82KqGCEWwEHvKiIGU07AvLBE9BJBTPouhk6zZX12IhQJelKQXDSSLy6Czzh0a-qfWAY4W9Rjo1Q-FCMc3d_gJFcELvyMJD9fQ2R8CcxatovBJCSo9dJZS7caXEdgUfTDtKiGZzC7rl3xubUn8OeiwQD2MUVizU9Q0HNyDTnqryy9Hyb-XRs=w624-h640" width="624" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><div>Wow!</div><div><br /></div><div>That was rough!</div><div><br /></div><div>I struggled for a whole morning to get the basics of this summarized. I finally managed to type it all up by administering a kind of soothing sedative. Namely, every time I felt my frenzy meter fill up, I went and looked at a bunch of drawings and prints by Kathe Kollwitz, hands down one of my absolute favorite artists and a personal inspiration. Here's one, entitled The Young Couple: </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgsOQMmkgm8uytpNMgXsh-Hb0G05zQ1tmm6qhQBYGTu77F-50A94K760RdFujQCpsy7_qVPQDO0b55wT629a8Do8yX3bL7XXlfI57z01t4qg_xMkTX53D5l2rZtY3SmwbwVML_7jaXIvGsbiloK9RKj11eQsCZLyTXS-8uPR1znueECRCA-l76KVQg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1424" data-original-width="1536" height="593" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgsOQMmkgm8uytpNMgXsh-Hb0G05zQ1tmm6qhQBYGTu77F-50A94K760RdFujQCpsy7_qVPQDO0b55wT629a8Do8yX3bL7XXlfI57z01t4qg_xMkTX53D5l2rZtY3SmwbwVML_7jaXIvGsbiloK9RKj11eQsCZLyTXS-8uPR1znueECRCA-l76KVQg=w640-h593" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div>It's really helpful to remember what like,<i> actual art</i> looks like, isn't it? Look at the delicacy of the strokes on the young woman's face. Look how it contrasts with the rough expressionism of the wallpaper. How the wrinkles of the pillows one moment seem stunningly naturalistic, the next become an abstract pattern across the bottom of the image. </div><div><br /></div><div>Aaaaaaahhh.</div><div><br /></div><div>Eric Andre is most known for his surreal, avant garde late night show on Adult Swim, which frequently features the set being destroyed, inscrutable non-conversations replacing expected interviews, and awkward pauses. This avant garde comedian, apparently inspired to provide us with a perfect dictionary definition example of "Selling Out", enthusiastically promoted the aforementioned hot sauce "edible NFT" on his instagram. Oh, right, the NFTs will come with an "edible" version. It's an "eNFT". Sure. Anyway, people reacted predictably by lambasting him, and he fired back by... doubling down and minting his own NFT. <a href="https://foundation.app/@EricAndre/foundation/51793" rev="en_rl_none">It looks like this</a>:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiL1ZEUs0ShNtWxuvuasv72VtdC9_D0hvBvU4Q_Gs0To4tCmjEQEkjoNey1ASoncwmXvYOEiHT2ZJlhBAmzOq8jW1gBD2RRa8JCA-1rkq0FcCpz7K4bKsuQFeETbHA8h5FcVeubRotLN6goBRK_an-cvQAvdv3LTZcXmSY3R0IGiwCjFa3xarPoEgM" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="841" data-original-width="841" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiL1ZEUs0ShNtWxuvuasv72VtdC9_D0hvBvU4Q_Gs0To4tCmjEQEkjoNey1ASoncwmXvYOEiHT2ZJlhBAmzOq8jW1gBD2RRa8JCA-1rkq0FcCpz7K4bKsuQFeETbHA8h5FcVeubRotLN6goBRK_an-cvQAvdv3LTZcXmSY3R0IGiwCjFa3xarPoEgM=w640-h640" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div>Wowie zowie.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ok here's a Kathe Kollwitz self portrait that made me gasp when I saw it:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjmq7VJSDVEsvZuohqZ9lPCFFt0gBG0Jf1YMfGBaGj-vhasC2RVg5ulkseW3hIuT0QOzMQOnzi5sVi-e4C_nms_WnfPJjWMjiffdyakdUfSP1i0e7TU3hqAWBLcWOX3kkcDDuf6ANbxoodHu29UOxWF1jTCN6l_kr7moCMcqmySsw3P0jAPdRAD3_Q" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="544" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjmq7VJSDVEsvZuohqZ9lPCFFt0gBG0Jf1YMfGBaGj-vhasC2RVg5ulkseW3hIuT0QOzMQOnzi5sVi-e4C_nms_WnfPJjWMjiffdyakdUfSP1i0e7TU3hqAWBLcWOX3kkcDDuf6ANbxoodHu29UOxWF1jTCN6l_kr7moCMcqmySsw3P0jAPdRAD3_Q=w435-h640" width="435" /></a></div><br /></div><div>It's the lighting mainly that gets me, the way the shadowed face is almost a perfectly silhouetted profile but there's these little areas she lets just a bit of the paper show through to suggest light glancing off the eyelid. She can do so much with so little. God damn. Kollwitz's self portraits are always a delight to me because she makes no attempt to aestheticize or conventionally feminize herself. She depicts herself as an aging mother, as a worker, a weathered figure. The style of her work, the textured approach she takes to drawing, emphasises her political alignment with the oppressed classes. But there's also a confidence to her work here. It's textured, but not overworked. A few rough strokes are all she needs to define her pale hair. And I think there is a confidence to her pose as well... but one of the marvelous things about her work is that I can imagine other psychological reactions to the image as parsed through the viewer's own background and perspective.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's almost redundant at this point to say that the Eric Andre NFT is corny garbage. We can all see it, so why'd he do it? Increasingly I gravitate towards a simple explanation for why all these celebs seem to promote specifically some of the daftest looking cryptoart: The Corniness Is The Point. Take a look at how Andre responded to criticism on his instagram:</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiKCszjSBfb8VPUWbNb1t1jGriIbp41vfKJUBL9vHHe_Z7M2GVmLS3HVaTojjuoOIQ-QCFqfl9hmu3gu1GEfDloqDXu0FwoJ_kW6F6K7iSmBpxduhL1nxHdDscKX_LSkxb8U7YvPDQw3YXtEDrX2vlgPqzsy6reIuKbvwtRRxY-29TpgHKVasqRPOA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1128" data-original-width="828" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiKCszjSBfb8VPUWbNb1t1jGriIbp41vfKJUBL9vHHe_Z7M2GVmLS3HVaTojjuoOIQ-QCFqfl9hmu3gu1GEfDloqDXu0FwoJ_kW6F6K7iSmBpxduhL1nxHdDscKX_LSkxb8U7YvPDQw3YXtEDrX2vlgPqzsy6reIuKbvwtRRxY-29TpgHKVasqRPOA=w469-h640" width="469" /></a></div><br />This is whiny. It's corny. It's the whining of someone who has <i>won</i> in all meaningful respects but--and this is the critical thing--is mad that we don't all suck him off about it too. It's obviously facile as a response: at least a car takes you from one place to another place, whereas a hot wings NFT burns a bunch of energy so that a hot wings company can pivot to being a speculative asset company. But god it's also just such a tantrum. I'll do Andre one better than disparaging his critics as "14 year olds": this is toddler shit. Eric Andre is forever more to be understood as a bitch baby.</div><div><br /></div><div>The hell of it is: it doesn't matter what I think, and <i>he knows it</i>. He's laughing all the way to the bank! In fact, the very point and essence of the art is to tell everyone that he knows exactly how little our opinion matters, to rub our faces in it. The corniness is the point.</div><div><br /></div><div>Man this sucks to be thinking and writing and probably reading about. <a href="https://twitter.com/poniponihamu/status/1488427095567257602?s=19" rev="en_rl_none">Check out this really good fan art for the show Revue Starlight</a>:</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhQBKbBPWEduiTn2pTuEXrVAIGcIdHs9tRyy0DtXul9RCRcabq2EXORFwODB9sFpwm2VIh9xMe7WKUtuoT4BOAPY_GQmiNglnCk65pijKw1oji7Wd-KH0a9QU9XAORtc2mNSTxQiOouhe3CQkYSIktXd9rHTouwrxNmzkW2kGzrkhmxlKQ_jIedYqU" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1153" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhQBKbBPWEduiTn2pTuEXrVAIGcIdHs9tRyy0DtXul9RCRcabq2EXORFwODB9sFpwm2VIh9xMe7WKUtuoT4BOAPY_GQmiNglnCk65pijKw1oji7Wd-KH0a9QU9XAORtc2mNSTxQiOouhe3CQkYSIktXd9rHTouwrxNmzkW2kGzrkhmxlKQ_jIedYqU=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div>I love this piece. I love the composition, I love the border, I love the characterization of the various girls, and above all else I love the strobe effect of the character Nana shown in multiple poses. It's kind of hard to explain why without giving away an awful lot about Revue Starlight, but even without getting into the symbolism of Nana in particular being sort of <i>over-abundant</i> within the image, or the expression on her face as she sets the timer on the camera vs the expression she turns to her friends, or the daffodils (a symbol of hope and renewal... and of narcissism?)... what a cool visual! What a great way of conveying motion and expression and character using comic techniques within a compressed area. I really like this on just a technical level and want to play with this technique in my own comics at some point.</div><div><br /></div><div>From what I've seen, Revue Starlight's fan art scene is pretty exciting. There's a lot of this kind of playing around, a wide diversity of styles... it feels good at least to observe from a distance. Revue Starlight certainly as a franchise has gone out of its way to feed the fan art scene. I don't play the mobile gacha game myself but my friend Taz of Homestuck Explained fame does and he's passed on to me that there's a mindbending array of character costumes in the game. I mean, it makes sense: the whole show is built around auditions within a Takarazuka Revue style all female academy of performance. But my god dressing [redacted] and [redacted] as the Beauty and the Beast? <i>Fantastic</i> choice.</div><div><br /></div><div>I feel a little bit ambivalent about this. Gacha games are objectively built upon what ultimately are predatory structures... but it's also funding art. Art that is... about a predatory system of magical competition between talented girls. Hmmm... It's a complicated bargain with the devil, making art under capitalism. Why, within that context, do we as artists keep making art? Why do we as viewers of art keep seeking it out? For Revue Starlight, the motivation seems to be to explore a story about a particular set of characters from a number of angles, and the adopting of stage personae in the context of the game and various other media properties affords the audience more perspectives (the fan art does as well).</div><div><br /></div><div>For Frank's Wild Years Hot Sauce the motivation seems to be "because you hogs will eat it up, you'll love it no matter how shitty it is."</div><div><br /></div><div>For Eric Andre's "non flushable turd", the motivation seems to be spite: "because you hogs will eat it up, you'll buy it no matter how much or even because of how mad people are at how shitty it is."</div><div><br /></div><div>This is kind of the understanding that I've arrived at with this sort of awful cod Banksy and Beeplecore artwork. It sucks, everyone knows it sucks, the people selling it sucks, and part of the artistic experience is the fact that it's gonna sell, for $10,000 in the case of Andre's turd, whether you like it or not. </div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe I've made an error in my analysis, in fact. I thought that the wretched quality of NFT art could be explained by its material conditions. Probably, to a large extent, it still can. But what I missed was the increasing development of a backlash to the backlash, a deep and visceral <i>identification</i> forming on the part of the celebrities and posters and tech weirdos pushing nfts with the awfulness of their art.<a href="https://theoutline.com/post/8484/sore-winners-decade" rev="en_rl_none"> BD McClay described the past decade memorably as a decade of sore losers</a>, and the wheezing 20s seem to be carrying the spirit forward with gusto. It's not enough that winners should win--decisively, crushingly--because for now at least, until twitter just starts drone striking non-blue-checks, we can periodically remind these winners that they haven't won our hearts. The mean spirited shit-tier crudity of NFT art slots perfectly into psyches that have been driven completely mad by this state of play. As dril, the poet laureate of the internet, put it: "go ahead. keep screaming "Shut The Fuck Up " at me. it only makes my opinions Worse". Now, those opinions are a speculative asset class, and the worse they get the better an investment they become.</div><div><br /></div><div>Congratulations to all the corny sellout celebrities. You did it. You found a way to take dadaism and finally fully rehabilitate it for capitalism.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have to wonder, are you like... happy about that? You don't SEEM happy. And hey, look, fair game, I'm not happy either, and I'm exactly what you think I am: a loser. maybe we're both unhappy but at least YOU'RE an unhappy WINNER! Good job, you did it!</div><div><br /></div><div>On the other hand, though, I can, if I try really hard, remember that there's a world of art outside of posting, one that I really care a lot about in fact. I'm not sure that exists, for the sellouts. I'm not sure you can pivot back from hawking NFTs to appreciating real art, which I hope I've made clear by my esoteric selection of examples has nothing to do with upholding canons or choice of medium or presence/absence of anime girls.</div><div><br /></div><div>And hey, we won't be participating in a giant scam economy other than the ones we're forced by threat of homelessness and starvation to participate in, which you can't say for franks red hot. No, live by the scam, die by the scam, I'm "sorry" to say. There's a whole alleged service on the ethereum blockchain that lets you buy essentially a blue check for the blockchain. It's creatively called Ethereum Name Service (ENS), and a major player in the "distributed" model UN that "governs" the project <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/7/22921674/ethereum-name-service-ens-remove-director-operations-resurfaced-tweet-brantly-millegan">just got outed as a deranged catholic fascist</a> (and by outed I guess I mean just kept posting about his views openly only someone finally googled the guy). On the one hand a bunch of the other fantasy congress delegates have voted that he should step down but on the other hand it seems like they're having trouble persuading people who I guess bought votes and assigned them to this guy to pay enough attention to change their support to other delegates. What can one say but lol. Anyway, the point of all this is that this service, which does, again, blue check identity verification for the anonymous blockchain in a way that is totally decentralized and answers to no authority, has a token on it for "<a href="https://opensea.io/assets/0x57f1887a8bf19b14fc0df6fd9b2acc9af147ea85/106571633235766119307159990419474487659267330410768663263943535091035999641463">franksredhot</a>". This token appears to be owned by... you know, some guy. <a href="https://twitter.com/Squaleeee13">Just some dude</a>. There's a bunch of similar tokens for companies like google and amazon, all also owned by just, guys. I don't know if franks red hot cares that some dude is squatting on their trademark, but the fact that he is, and the fact that it COULD cause problems for this company (trademarks are protect it or lose it), is very very funny to me. These people can strut and jeer and shove our faces in how vapid and ughly their fake speculative "art" is all the want, but they're the ones who have to rub elbows with all the other grifter dipshits and freaks, while we get to hang out here, on the outside, just a bunch of losers, talking about actual art.</div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe we can call that a win for our side, at least.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
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<h3 style="text-align: center;">
The Corniness Is The Point
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<h3>Feels Dumb Man: I Really, Really Hated The Pepe The Frog Documentary</h3>
"Feels Good Man" reveals a lot about how Pepe the Frog and its creator Matt Furie suck... accidentally. When faced with that inconvenient truth, the film and its audience will go to astonishing lengths to pretend our cultural grift economy is doing just fine.
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<!-- THE NFT'S AURA, OR, WHY IS NFT ART SO UGLY? -->
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<div class="bfpic" style="background-image:url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj18NTuRLiiS2G0nr_DG7g5R5bhRbNTKOor_-M8yalFExgGIJC5hewLEgz-pVz4cyGBDGZeRf7j4Q4_nEpXJYn5XCtKpuWViT_unz3nIE4fvdMlu9a6poJ_HFVFsmyToLCKGCZGhryoMA/w640-h456/Gold+Beeple+text.jpg);"></div>
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<h3>The NFT's Aura, or, Why Is NFT Art So Ugly?</h3>
NFT art is bad for the environment, and bad for artists, but critics and supporters of NFT art are both missing a key fact: it's also just bad art. Whether Beeple or Bugmeyer, it's time the stars of the NFT revolution experienced some real art criticism.
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<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>
<!--AHOGT--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/123100?bg_color=61003a&fg_color=ffc38a&link_color=006b24&border_color=caffb3" width="552"></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-57960403645395409642021-12-31T14:11:00.001-08:002021-12-31T19:09:19.698-08:00Boxing Day<p><i>I found myself lost for words and drowning in boxes. I started drawing, and I didn't stop. These are comics for the old year.</i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnsCV6jdEkRg6koGLu6ukaC6kXcQaeYaafHOcGGBMYuZ1DgkGONlKSrO9nk9KMXtnU6rhQHbYz2C4XMjxCEMSGlJ5iR1UksCH5Fi-M_hJMFmhb9KRGHQPjJVrOSUOLEHS4Ywprj9Ko8w//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1700" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnsCV6jdEkRg6koGLu6ukaC6kXcQaeYaafHOcGGBMYuZ1DgkGONlKSrO9nk9KMXtnU6rhQHbYz2C4XMjxCEMSGlJ5iR1UksCH5Fi-M_hJMFmhb9KRGHQPjJVrOSUOLEHS4Ywprj9Ko8w/w640-h452/HEADER.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>I haven't stopped moving since July. I am exhausted, and I am buried in boxes. I am positively entombed in boxes. Please picture me chopped up and subdivided into a series of boxes. They could search for hours and never find the body, if not for my arm sticking jauntily out of the top of one, flashing a peace sign. Just letting everyone know I'm doing well!</p><div>Damn, that's a good image. I should make a comic about that.</div><div><br /></div><div>I make everything in my life into comics these days. This is a wild development for me, because despite having a literal honest to god degree in comics studies--I am a credentialed Master of Contemporary Art History (Comics Focus)--I never drew comics myself. Comics to me seemed an unassailable technical problem, something only to be attempted by a mind like Alan Moore's. Moore is a man who infamously can write an entire page of historical and thematic underpinning to a single panel. Comics were for people who could go from that strenuous and comprehensive a planning stage to an actual completed project without giving up a third of the way through.</div><div><br /></div><div>Not me, then. Not someone who gravitated towards blogging cause she continuously got bored or sick of all her more elaborate and challenging projects before ever getting them to a publishable state. </div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe it was a series of seismic life changes (moving across the state then planning a move across the country, coming out to my parents, dramatically denouncing my chosen field as mere vanity, &c) that shook something loose. Maybe the same hormones that redistributed a bunch of the fat in my body to my tits and thighs redistributed something in my neurology. Maybe at a certain point the senselessness of the world outside just made immaculate planning seem laughable.</div><div><br /></div><div>I just picked up the pen, and I started drawing, and through a seismic six months I simply did not stop. For the most part, any plans I had for my comics were dreamed up in the moment of drawing. Sometimes--frequently, even--I had only vague ideas about what would follow the first sequence I put to paper. I don't know if it's a GOOD way of working. It's certainly a MESSY one, with frequent mistakes of composition and lettering and drafting. It is also a LIGHTWEIGHT way of working, though. A fast and lightweight approach to art comes in handy when you're homeless, which, while never <span style="font-style: italic;">unhoused,</span> for a while I was. I could not stop my entire community of queer and disabled people from being abruptly evicted into a housing crisis and pandemic, but I could carve my feelings into a page instead of my body. I grappled with the problem David Graeber describes in the Utopia of Rules, of the artistic inexpressibility of something as banal and just fucking boring as the violence of bureaucracy. I found no solutions, but with markers I could rapidly splash color on a page to suggest hands being mangled, crushed, punctured, blood squeezed out, by a pair of remorseless gears. </div><div><br /></div><div>At the end of this year, having technically for inscrutable cruel bureaucratic reasons only been definitively "moved in" for about 24 days, I find myself at a loss for words, and surrounded by images. Remember when I did big weird cultural reviews at the end of years? Man, remember culture? I feel too shellshocked to really call it to mind, personally, but hey, we've all got housing again, I'm living with my girlfriend, it's snowing like crazy in Seattle, and if I can just sleep through the night without clawing nightmares about having to pack up all my stuff into boxes again and find another place to live maybe it'll start to come back to me.</div><div><br /></div><div>For now, I have these comics. And now you have them too. I'll see you in the new year.</div><div><br /></div><div>(Also, the image quality on Blogger is trashgarbage <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/60574247" target="_blank">so I've uploaded all the images, free to everyone, on Patreon. :)</a> )</div><div><br /></div><div>Samantha Zoe</div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh6ZpWGNhPvzMdJlIuVcpESWxbFFIs8iEOVk_qZlgb3Jw7ZlGNmAduphic5xR-fqL101OiHqg99dkOsK-9KL122Tnejkzlp0PM4wa_2ysu8R9SNgLxaUy8XY22sZ7aPkKH9yQkVQ2Hpw//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="1700" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh6ZpWGNhPvzMdJlIuVcpESWxbFFIs8iEOVk_qZlgb3Jw7ZlGNmAduphic5xR-fqL101OiHqg99dkOsK-9KL122Tnejkzlp0PM4wa_2ysu8R9SNgLxaUy8XY22sZ7aPkKH9yQkVQ2Hpw/w453-h640/1.jpg" width="453" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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<h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Boxing Day
</h3>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/56045507" onclick="captureOutboundLink('https://www.patreon.com/posts/56045507'); return false;" target="_blank">100 people supported this article on Patreon, and among other things got access to more comics in printable zine form. Will you join them?</a></h4>
<br />Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-16739124481592806852021-11-30T12:55:00.002-08:002021-11-30T12:55:31.163-08:00Green Screens: Nine Perfect Strangers and Manipulation<p><i>Nine Perfect Strangers brilliantly explores how savvy operators manipulate people--and audiences. Unless... it doesn't. What do its bewildering and contradictory story choices say about self help, cults, hippies, and the harm art does?</i></p><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Qk4slnwlvP3tuEwqbeSfnWClxUYNgOqlT1chhHXZZ1j7b6mHgIfgrqu3OWdTLmWfp0jo-TzmL-iX2OzNGsT06UHJo-33lYn7_3FPfFVL10lHEstEnb-R81y7AEl4dpSehyphenhyphen86eHnr0Q//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="790" data-original-width="1440" height="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Qk4slnwlvP3tuEwqbeSfnWClxUYNgOqlT1chhHXZZ1j7b6mHgIfgrqu3OWdTLmWfp0jo-TzmL-iX2OzNGsT06UHJo-33lYn7_3FPfFVL10lHEstEnb-R81y7AEl4dpSehyphenhyphen86eHnr0Q/w640-h352/Masha+Green.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div>Masha exists in a world of green. Green trees, green bamboo, green rooms, green screens... The resort where she gathers together her "nine perfect strangers" in the miniseries of the same name is awash in the natural greens of the jungle, and her most personal inner sanctum is as well. The walls are lit with green, behind the banks of monitors on which her client/subjects are displayed, monitored with hidden cameras.</div><div><br /></div><div>Masha from this space controls the scenario of the series. At the outset, she gathers together a group of strangers for her luxury wellness retreat in which she will help them shed the hangups and traumas holding them back in life. She develops the scenario with absolute authority, choosing who attends, who is put in what scenario with the other perfect strangers, who secretly receives what drug when, how to manipulate everything from diets to recreation.</div><div><br /></div><div>Masha is an actress waiting in her green room to emerge and manipulate her captive audience. She is a consummate performer, and as a viewer it felt like even apparent moments of weakness could not be trusted, might be another part of the act leading her subjects to put aside their doubts and submit to her. The green reminds me of green screens as well. Masha is more than an actress: she is also the producer of special effects, viewing the tape and making corrections. In a very real sense, she incites and controls the narrative of the series; it would not exist without her character's constant intervention. The longer I watched Nine Perfect Strangers the more I felt like that was part of the point, like there was something being said here about the nature of manipulation, the ability of both art and individuals to construct a comprehensive reality.</div><div><br /></div><div>Which made it kinda weird and awkward for me when the series concluded with Masha just being completely vindicated in her "put people through traumatic drug experiences" method of therapy? Like, the show spends kind of its whole runtime playing with the audience's head, exposing us to all the weird manipulative shit Masha does and then pulling back just enough to make us doubt ourselves, only in the last episode to just be like... well that was all fine, literally everyone lived entirely happily ever after, no further questions! Also, Masha was totally right all along and dosing people with psychedelics is going to lead to a world mental health revolution! Wow!</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't know what to think of Nine Perfect Strangers. I've been chewing on this draft for like two months and that's not JUST because during that time I was technically homeless for a little while. It's also because I spent most of the series thinking it was about one thing when it turned out to be about another, I guess, which is happening more often these days than I like to admit. I was just as blindsided by this as I was by the endings of Wonder Egg Priority and The Haunting of Hill House. Am I losing my touch? </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm not even completely sure that I AM. After writing all that out above, all that stuff about Masha and the green screen, I got to thinking, well, maybe the ending IS meant to be ironic. I keep feeling haunted by the possibility the show's conclusion is, like, a dream sequence or a fantasy. The climax of the film involves Masha meeting with her dead daughter in a psychedelic-fueled hallucination, so, it's possible? And it would make a certain sense: if the series as a whole is Masha's manipulation of not just the other characters but us as viewers, then ending with a version of reality more amenable to her than getting hauled away to prison, as it looks like she's going to be, fits.</div><div><br /></div><div>That reading sort of pulls out the subtext and makes it text: there's a parallelism between the capacity of rich self help weirdos and entertainment media more broadly to transfix, to mollify, to provide easy answers to hard questions (for a fee). It's an interesting take partly because it's one I find troublesome. Does art really have such malign power? I bristle at this, if only cause I'm so sick of moral scolds using this to demand the excision of all the art <i>I</i> like. But by the same token, it's weirdly a breath of fresh air. In a cultural moment where "the dangers of media" consistently target violence, sexuality, and dissonant aesthetics, it's refreshing to have something go hey, maybe the people or stories telling you they're sweet and safe and trustworthy are the ones you've gotta watch out for.</div><div><br /></div><div>But I also can't shake the feeling that I'm in on a trick the show's not in on itself, which throws the whole analysis totally out of whack.</div><div><br /></div><div>Certainly the actual marketing, all of which I completely missed because Sarah just started watching the series blind cause she liked some of the actors, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLntGtTdFBI">treats this as not a horror story but an uplifting dramedy</a>. Actually the chipper like and subscribe from a (the?) (I have no idea) Good Morning America host at the end of this trailer probably says much about the intended audience. I, succinctly, am not it. So it might just be a disconnect between the visual rhetoric and story conventions I'm used to, where horror elements continue escalating toward annihilation, and conventions where they just, don't?</div><div><br /></div><div>I wasn't alone. Critics received the show skeptically, and a lot of the skepticism focused on theme. I was going to put a decent quote here from The Guardian but then I remembered it's institutionally genocidal against trans people so <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/nine-perfect-strangers-review-on-hulu-is-kind-of-a-mess-and-nicole-kidman-cant-save-it/">here's Karisa Langlo in CNET</a> saying basically the same the Guardian and a slew of other critics said: "I'm not sure if this is meant to be a critique of wellness culture and the asymptotic finish line of self-improvement, a critique of the poor rich people who pay money to have their traumas cauterized, or a critique of plot mechanics themselves. Or maybe it's not a critique at all..." I found numerous reviews questioning the finale just as I am. Was it a dream sequence? A lot of folks seem to hope it is, if only because the alternative is so troubling. After all, one of the nine strangers, Lars, is there as an investigative infiltrator, researching the methods that led to the literal death of a previous patient. When confronted with the story of the patient's apparently drug induced heart failure, Masha derisively declares that he died of having eaten too many cheeseburgers (!). Depiction doesn't equal endorsement, I told myself confidently in that moment--clearly this is Masha's mask coming off. By the end of the series, I started wondering if endorsement was exactly what the creators had in mind.</div><div><br /></div><div>It feels so weird writing an article this bewildered, this characterized by me not quite knowing what to say. I'm not sure it makes for very entertaining reading, though I'm trying my damnedest! So what the hell am I doing here? Maybe just trying to make sense of the fact that I was totally on board with the series for all but the last like episode and a half, and I want to salvage something from the whole stretch that I really liked.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hell, midway through I was thinking about using this for <a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/search/label/Room%20For%20You%20Inside" target="_blank">Room For You Inside</a>, my consistently haphazard and deranged schedule slip prone series about Pink Floyd and the rise of neoliberalism. I mean it fits, right? An environment constructed according to a grand total vision that slowly in concert with the cast goes mad. And I had this whole throughline worked out for how it would connect to the broader thesis.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hippies were the key.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, I think there's value in that counterculture, and I like a lot of the music, but let's be real, hippie politics often sucked. John Lennon for instance wasn't exactly subtle:</div><div><br /></div><div></div><blockquote><div>You say you'll change the constitution</div><div>Well, you know</div><div>We all want to change your head</div><div>You tell me it's the institution</div><div>Well, you know</div><div>You better free your mind instead</div></blockquote><div></div><div><br /></div><div>Lennon penned truly the consummate shitlib song, an anthem for former hippie boomers who had their fun then settled down to a comfortable life of voting against their children's futures. It's a narcissistic conception of societal betterment: free your mind, through meditation, psychedelics, <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[mumbles quietly] being a rich rock star</span>, and good living, and everything will follow. Don't talk to me about the institution! Nine Perfect Strangers spends most of its run time seeming to deconstruct the institution of self help and its reliance on exactly these assumptions about the world, only to imagine, in the finale, all the people, living life in peace, after the natural healing of psychedelics frees them all. (Also George Harrison was robbed.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course, "natural" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, as it always did for the hippies. The green screen and the green of Masha's forest are equally constructed. I mean, are those bamboo stands really native to that region? Forgive me some skepticism. Again, I actually thought that was like, the point? That Masha's nature retreat was in fact a high tech immersive theme park experience: plants cultivated and a whole compound heavily automated, with all sorts of technological affordances to, say, lock people in their rooms and monitor them. Even the goat that the men slaughter with bare hands is Masha's domesticated pet!</div><div><br /></div><div>Yeah they kill a goat. More on that in a second.</div><div><br /></div><div>This kind of thing is "natural" (despite the cultivated and technologically supported nature of the experience), counterpositioned to a variety of artificial things. Like the artificial lives of the instagram model and lottery winner couple, upset because being rich and successful and young has made them bored. Sure. But there's also the artificiality of [thunder rumbles] Pharma. This rears its head initially in the form of a disabled former football star's addiction to painkillers. Later, and more significantly, it appears in the story of a grieving family, admitted on scholarship by Masha, trying to recover from the suicide of a fourth member a few years prior. </div><div><br /></div><div>Exactly why Zach, the deceased character in question, committed suicide is an ongoing question in the series. Eventually it's revealed that suicidal ideation was a side effect of the guy's asthma medication. This causes conflict in the family because the mother knew about that side effect, but it also was the first sign for Sarah and I that something might be off about the series' politics. Like, look, we've both been on a lot of drugs in our time, and frankly? Depression and suicidal ideation are NOT that uncommon a listed side effect. They're also not an uncommon side effect of being poor and traumatized and queer under capitalism, it turns out. Your meds have a weird side effect? Buddy get in line for the bridge. The idea that not, I guess, withholding medication from Zach was some horrible crime was a hard pill to swallow.</div><div><br /></div><div>This plot point at least made some sense in the context of a reading where Masha's been manipulating everyone. It comes, for one thing, in the context of an earlier revelation from the father of the family. Remember I mentioned the goat slaughter scene? Let's take a look at the aftermath of that, in a scene that's conveniently on youtube. Let me set the stage. The whole group has sat down to eat a feast composed of the pet goat that the men killed earlier in the day, and the father of the grieving family gets up to make a toast. Here's what happens:</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/87MWsAnITgY" width="320" youtube-src-id="87MWsAnITgY"></iframe></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>I love the build up here. The slow creeping dread of watching Masha's manipulation begin pushing these characters into madness. The way the shot choice puts us almost in the position of Masha observing the consequences of her actions. The way we then are denied interiority as she looks away in a seeming moment of indecision and then looks back, all smiles again, confirming that not only has she been doing exactly what she's accused of but she plans to brazenly girlboss her way through the confrontation.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's in these moments that the show seems to really grasp the predatory allure of this kind of self help cult shit. Here it seems to verge closer to the vision in Panos Cosmatos's astonishing diptych of films, <i>Mandy</i> and <i>Beyond The Black Rainbow</i>, where the promise of expanding human consciousness actually is revealed as a tool of narcissists, manipulators, and petty tyrants to keep their flock in line. The birth of cults, the use of psychedelics on random civilians by the deep state, attempts to control and manipulate and program and brainwash, all these horrors proliferated through the golden age of psychedelia. I'm not sure it's so easy to separate out that history from the new age healing bullshit that Masha's whole theory of healing is based on.</div><div><br /></div><div>So I find my way back again to this intriguing possibility: what if the show is precisely about how such snares lurk in areas not apparent? About how Mumsnet is just as powerful a site of cult indoctrination as 8chan? The tendency in the plot for a fucked up thing to be followed by the characters all going, "Wow that was fucked up! Guess we'll stick around and see if she can really make us happy though!" might seem like a structural problem. From this perspective, though, it can be seen as a commentary on the human tendency to second guess our instincts for danger.</div><div><br /></div><div>Speaking from (recent) experience, it's so easy to ignore misgivings, convince yourself that surely shit can't get THAT bad. I appreciate art about this. Not for me, the old saw about horror movies: oh I would OBVIOUSLY never be as dumb as these characters. I'd bet you not only <i>would</i> but you already <i>have</i>, plenty of times in your life, out of politeness, need to save face, bravado, or simple faith that surely horror is something that happens to OTHER people, other non-protagonist people.</div><div><br /></div><div>I happened to watch the film Berberian Sound Studio shortly after Nine Perfect Strangers and it conveniently hit a lot of the same notes. This film posits a terrifying hypothetical: what if a British guy were Italian? And it explores this question with incredible power for like 3/4 of a film, then, I guess, forgot to film the ending. Apparently it was upscaled to feature length from a short, and I think it shows in that nothing very much... happens in it, besides a British guy gradually becoming Italian over the course of his work as a sound tech and Foley man for a brutal Giallo film.</div><div><br /></div><div>Like Nine Perfect Strangers, the film's got a clear surface reading: as the sound tech is gaslit and fucked with by his bosses, he gradually transforms into a facsimile of those shitty bosses. The never seen gruesome sexualized tortures on the screen parallel exploitation in real life. As the lead gradually participates in abusive and exploitative behavior toward the women giving voice to the screaming victims in the film, the lines between the film and his life of film production dissolve, and he is, brilliantly, <i>overdubbed in Italian in "real life"</i>. I think the most direct and obvious reading is simply that producing art of such violent depravity corrupts and consumes a person.</div><div><br /></div><div>Though, again, weirdly all the depravity in Berberian Sound Studio is... kind of tame? Awful, but not "inserting red hot pokers into orifices" awful, more just "shitty metoo worthy work environment" awful (itself an always seemingly shifting target as our society determines which men in power are too big to fail).</div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe that's the point though. Maybe the real horror isn't the grotesque Giallo shit but the simple grinding exploitation attendant to a shitty industry. It's not hot pokers but men who feel up women's breasts without consequence because they can. Not occult conspiracies but just old boy networks of exploiters good at taking advantage of the weak and marginalized (the lead character reads very strongly as autistic). In this reading, the corruption is not specific to Giallo but something present in the world which the protagonist has simply ignored until it drew him in completely.</div><div><br /></div><div>Harvey Weinstein notably did not produce Giallo films.</div><div><br /></div><div>He did direct The Gnomes' Great Adventure though!</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bsdZQub7QVE" width="320" youtube-src-id="bsdZQub7QVE"></iframe></div><br /><div>And now that you have this piece of information taking up space in your brain--you're welcome, by the way--maybe you can see what I'm driving at, that dark aesthetics and abusive individuals aren't really correlated in any particularly notable way. Giallo makes for an intriguing subject and allows for Berberian Sound Studio to explore lavish, mesmerizing shots of practical effect work, but it doesn't capture this reality. For that you'd need something more like Mulholland Drive, or like Hannibal maybe, or like Nine Perfect Strangers.</div><div><br /></div><div>At least, something like Nine Perfect Strangers before the climax completely flips this moral on its head.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the climax of the series, the cast, minus the grieving family who are acting as channels so that Masha can have her cathartic psychic reunion with her dead daughter, get locked in a sauna as the whole compound appears to be set on fire to destroy incriminating evidence. Except it's actually another green screen, another special effect, a specially built room designed to simulate entrapment and a deadly fire. Just like everything else, it is constructed, orchestrated by actor-writer-producer Masha. Just another way to get people's chakras unclogged or whatever.</div><div><br /></div><div>After they are released from the simulation room, Masha's assistant, looking on the terrified guests with something like hurt contempt, tells them that <span style="font-style: italic;">of course</span> Masha would never actually put anyone in <span style="font-style: italic;">real</span> danger.</div><div><br /></div><div>The message seems to be that listening to your instincts about cult shit actually makes you a bad person who isn't ready to open up emotionally or spiritually to the healing power of psychedelics and cult programming. Everything interesting about Masha's character sort of just gets casually undermined by this dumb twist. All the tension of the audience attraction to her despite the obvious way in which she is manipulating everyone around her is just, pppfft, in the fuckin trash. Bye bye!</div><div><br /></div><div>This is the ending that left me and so many other critics bewildered, though the response wasn't universal! Esquire's deputy editor, who "also writes about style and golf" <a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a37706687/nine-perfect-strangers-hulu-ending-explained-book-differences/">smugly stated</a> that "the message is 'psychedelics really can help people with their problems' which of course we know they can." Yeah man?? Word?? That's what you got out of this series? </div><div><br /></div><div>Cause I think what I got out of it is that rich people live in an entirely alternate reality where the rules are what they make, and <i>that's fine actually.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Where does this leave the question of the metatextual themes, the parallels between master manipulator and media producer? Does depiction equal endorsement after all? I'm left feeling as ambivalent and troubled about this as I am about the literal contents of the show and what it's trying to say. On a very direct level, it's hard for me to say there's actual <span style="font-style: italic;">harm</span> being done here, some direct seduction of the innocent like moral scolds imagine. But aren't those same moral scolds the very people this show is targeted to? Selectively paranoid about prescription drugs but uncritically accepting of the idea that some chemical or cultural conspiracy might be giving their kids autism or worse <span style="font-style: italic;">pronouns</span>? The miniseries feels troublingly like at the very least a barometer of where part of our culture is. It evinces a kind of reactionary tendency that is perfectly comfortable with femininity and feminism, with self help and self care, with the kind of artifice and affordances of people like Masha so long as the experience they're producing hits the right notes.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think I found Berberian Sound Studio frustrating in its premise precisely because of Nine Perfect Strangers, because of how clearly it lays out the dynamics of manipulation, and how it then seems to partake of those dynamics at the very end. It's not bloody horror movies and their fans that frighten me, but that reassuring sphinx smile Masha uses to convince her audience that everything is going to be <span style="font-style: italic;">just fine</span>.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Green Screens
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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<h3>Webworks: The Magnus Archives and the Powerful Failure of Diverse Horror</h3>
The Magnus Archives made a name for itself as inclusive horror. But when even a schlocky tale of giant spiders takes on resonances with transgender oppression and sexual exploitation, can the show's listeners evade the webs of trauma?
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<h3>We Were Too Stupid For Jennifer's Body</h3>
As Jennifer's Body goes from flop to feminist cult classic, its failure gets blamed on lousy marketing. But the film's cynical jokes about 9/11 memorialization suggest the fault was with audiences: we were too stupid for Jennifer's Body.
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<!--SIGNAL GARDEN--><iframe frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/854542?border_width=0&bg_color=110c0c&fg_color=aca1f7&link_color=676767" width="552" height="167"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/signal-garden-demo">Signal Garden (Demo) by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>
<!--AHOGT--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/123100?bg_color=61003a&fg_color=ffc38a&link_color=006b24&border_color=caffb3" width="552"></iframe>
<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-74496786648038430802021-10-31T13:06:00.000-07:002021-10-31T13:06:45.511-07:00We Were Too Stupid For Jennifer's Body<p><i>As Jennifer's Body goes from flop to feminist cult classic, its failure gets blamed on lousy marketing. But the film's cynical jokes about 9/11 memorialization suggest the fault was with audiences: we were too stupid for Jennifer's Body.</i></p><p><i>content warning: spoilers for Jennifer's Body a decade old movie and also discussion of all the possibly traumatic contents of Jennifer's Body</i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisyCa4pEz767SDd5N4PiermGJhpqiqD3P6GK5AEFxioWH9j48VwsxMJk492mxYG66qcwYfkMR9-Yq88YkAc9tqv6MUhZrtZuDcc5v1FyM3njJYCDrg7yrP-cmSDx8k1vrIrG8wpO3Kbw//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisyCa4pEz767SDd5N4PiermGJhpqiqD3P6GK5AEFxioWH9j48VwsxMJk492mxYG66qcwYfkMR9-Yq88YkAc9tqv6MUhZrtZuDcc5v1FyM3njJYCDrg7yrP-cmSDx8k1vrIrG8wpO3Kbw/w640-h360/Screenshot+%252816%2529.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>I'm on a plane, headed to Texas. I would rather not be going to Texas, but my girlfriend and I are homeless, and my other girlfriend has a spare room. I sit squashed into a plane seat optimized primarily to maximize airline profits, having survived the obligatory sexual harassment that airport security puts all transsexuals through. Drifting in and out of coherence, exhausted from a bad night in a low budget long stay hotel and the barrage of sensory purgatory of the airport, I consider Jennifer's Body.</p><p>Culture was too stupid for Jennifer's Body when it was written (2006). Culture grew no less stupid in the years between its conception and its release (2009). If anything, we degenerated further. Airports did the same thing and have continued to degenerate with each new manufactured crisis. We treat the condition of the contemporary airport with something between grumbling compliance and solemn acceptance of the necessity of endless violation and security theater. Everything, after all, changed after 9/11. We needed to put cynicism and adolescent rebelliousness behind us, in the 90s, where it belonged, before everything changed.</p><p>And if it's too crassly juvenile that maybe TSA agents just get off on stripping us naked, Jennifer's Body's suggestion that 9/11 memorialization is a cynical branding exercise at best and a coverup for abuse at worst must've been way beyond acceptable. That's what I'm dwelling on, on this stupid plane to stupid Texas. I chew it over the way the titular Jennifer chews on the gristle of the teenage boys whose organs she rips out.</p><p>You'd never know the film's opinions on 9/11 if you absorbed it only through the discourse, mind, which leaves this gristle for me. It took a decade for the film to even get reassessed as a work of electrifyingly problematic queer feminism. At the time of its release, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llQ_OpOl7Qg" target="_blank">its studio was too stupid to market the film to writer Diablo Cody's intended audience: women</a>. And hey, let's not pretend audiences were any smarter, seemingly incapable of squaring the concept of horror comedy, or appreciating that a film about a girl being turned into a demon after a shitty indie band kills her to curry favor with Satan might have a few things to say about gender politics. The film, which explores the relationship between Jennifer and her comp-het "best friend" Needy as Jennifer undergoes a transformation into a succubus that keeps murdering and devouring Needy's love interests, was instead marketed heavily and received by audiences as titillating. The incredible scene where Jennifer and Needy share a passionate kiss was understood as a gimmick to bring in the boys, rather than a complicated, erotic, tragic, and alarming exploration of unexpressed/unexpressable dyke longing and jealousy.</p><p>If people couldn't get this totally basic shit about the film's themes, obviously the 9/11 subplot wasn't gonna read. Not that it's subtle. The movie's b plot is all about how the murderous indie band creeps become icons of a town's "recovery" after a deadly, tragic fire. For most of the runtime of the film we know that SOMETHING is very wrong there: the last we or Needy see of Jennifer before she reappears in Needy's kitchen vomiting black demon bile is indiemoscene band "Low Shoulder" coaxing her into their van. And nothing, as Needy points out, adds up about their valorizing narrative: they weren't helping save people from the burning concert venue, they were driving off who knows where with a teenage girl.</p><p>In retrospect, the analogue seems pretty obvious. While Needy increasingly realizes that Jennifer is like, real evil, not just high school evil, every new body that shows up is added to the corpse pile to be memorialized by Low Shoulder. Her world is consumed by cloying sentimentality. I don't think it's a stretch to suggest Diablo Cody had politics on the mind when she wrote this. Given her debut was Juno, a film about teenage pregnancy, I think it was actually a mark of the vapidity of audiences at the time that the political subtext wasn't, like, extremely obvious actually? I mean, for goodness sake, before the club burns down Jennifer orders a 9/11 memorial drink to try and attract Low Shoulder's front man. When she returns to Needy with the drinks (which you have to drink fast "or they turn all brown") she laments that the North Tower is too short :( . The film has the commoditization of mourning and "being strong in the face of tragedy" on the mind, and it's thinking heretically cynical things.</p><p>In the 2000s, this stuff was largely unspeakable unless you were the creator of South Park. God damn culture was fucking insufferable in the wake of first Columbine and then 9/11 and then basically every tragedy that followed. Actually, tragedies got mushed together a lot in this period. Everything has changed after [the tragedy mush], critics intoned solemnly, as though events could be transposed so that four planes rammed into various parts of the scenery because KMFDM inspired antisocial teenage behavior. I remember reading this in reviews of nu metal bands like Mudvayne--isn't it time these people Grew Up, and stopped writing songs about violent disaffection? Oh, and anything critical of Christianity, particularly the glazed-eyed capitalist young earth protestantism that so drove culture during the Bush years. Wasn't writing an album like Neon Bible a bit mmmmmmmm played out?</p><p>The 9/11 references in Jennifer's Body were remarked upon at the time. The <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/miami-com/things-to-do/article224350335.html" target="_blank">Miami Herald chided </a>the film's writer and director Karyn Kusama for the "offensiveness" of "an ill-conceived riff on 9/11". <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2009/09/jens_body.html " target="_blank">Vulture meanwhile excused the jokes </a>as not being "the first" to touch on the subject (if it <i>had</i> been, would THAT have been too offensive?) and not cutting too close to these "recent American tragedies".</p><p>Both the tut tutting and the nervous defense comes paired with a weird discomfort, though, that I find compelling and telling. The Miami Herald piece follows up its finger wag by suggesting that "Kusama is constantly shifting tonal gears, and she never tells you what you should be thinking or feeling. The film also seems to contradict itself in the way it views its characters. Is Jennifer a monster or a victim?" Vulture meanwhile seems eager to explain away the difficulty of the film's 9/11 touchstones. It always feels to me, though, like a threat lurks: if this WASN'T just jokes, well, we'd have to really take the film to task for tastelessness! Jennifer Doyle in "Hold It Against Me", her exploration of affectively difficult art, asks why critics find it so hard to talk about not around difficulty. We downplay challenging and even legally dubious works as not having ACTUALLY done anything, like, REAL, god forfend. We talk about the controversy surrounding works of art rather than delving into the experience of engaging with them. Maybe this is because it makes us nervous too.</p><p>There's lots to be nervous about in Jennifer's Body. It's, I mean, it's a horror film my dudes, which means more than jump scares. For one thing, no one in this film really deserves what happens to them. Like, the football dudes who get iced by JD in Heathers (a film often compared to Jennifer's Body) are assholes at best, aspiring rapists at worst. My sense of the football dude who serves as Jennifer's first on screen victim is that he's just kinda dumb and, more than anything else, parsing his grief for another football dude by uh, well, fucking a girl as a weird emotional stand in?? Like, Jennifer literally seduces him by telling him that his bro would've wanted him to hook up with her--he does it in honor of his friend's memory. This guy doesn't deserve to have his guts ripped and torn he deserves to have full access to his gay ass emotions. When a grieving parent in Heathers bellows "I love my dead gay son," it's a joke about how much better the guy was in fictionalized death than he was in life. Here, it's an uncomfortable joke-horror suggestion that maybe in a less dogshit society this guy could have been the big homo he deserved to be.</p><p>At the time even the film's creators seemed nervous about what they had created. Like, when Diablo Cody <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090912053822/http://www.afterellen.com/blog/jamiemurnane/diablo-cody-didnt-do-the-same-sex-kiss-in-jennifer-body-for-publicity" target="_blank">in defending the film's same-sex kiss</a> talked about her intense female friendships, how she "wanted to sleep at my friend's house every night, I wanted to wear her clothes, we would talk on the phone until our ears ached." Yeah Diablo, I had that with some of my guy friends as a teenager too, it was called being gay. The article that quote is from still finds the time to chide Cody for not doing good feminist representation, though, and I guess that makes me somewhat sympathetic to Cody here. Did she know that culture was in fact going to be too dumb to get the way Jennifer is both a predator and victim, the way her love for Needy is at turns beautiful and toxic, the way expressions of queer desire get warped into complicated, problematic forms by a diseased culture?</p><p>The film is full of uncomfortable joke/horror ambiguities, which were at least grasped by some critics (the film did have a number of favorable reviews, though they couldn't compete with the horrible marketing). As far as I can tell, the developing blogosphere, on the other hand, understood none of this from the moment they got their grubby cheeto dust covered fingers on the script before the film's release. Diablo Cody had amassed a considerable loud hatedom at that point, of both the aforementioned cheeto boys <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080319135059/http://blog.spout.com/2008/02/11/diablo-cody-above-critique/" target="_blank">and their female counterparts</a>, going apoplectic over the "fantasy" that "Diablo Cody is a magical snowflake who can spray her unique pixie dust on an otherwise conventional script and give it indie cred". Perhaps the film's obsession with female relationships characterized by violence, jealousy, and crab bucket behavior cut too close to home for such critics?</p><p>Or maybe they just genuinely hate Diablo Cody's "twee dialogue". You hear about this? Yeah, Diablo Cody writes twee dialogue. This mantra seems completely unassailable now, basically accepted by even her defenders. What's so god damn twee about it though? To be sure, I remember mentally grouping Juno in with Napoleon Dynamite and Little Miss Sunshine. Jennifer's Body reveals just how much "twee" is a function of the film in its totality, though. I mean, I feel like this should be obvious but the exaggerated quippy dialogue comes across a little differently in the context of a film featuring sexual assault, people being burned to death, ritual murder, demonic possession, and teenagers being sadistically eaten alive.</p><p>In that context her dialogue comes across more like a nightmare funhouse mirror version of Joss Whedon's now eye-rollingly ubiquitous quips. Whedon and his bazillion interchangeable hack studio vat clones never aspired for much actual wit beyond the "umm well THAT just happened". Cody's dialogue on the other hand is baroque, in love with weird wordplay and uncouth associations. Needy refers to Jennifer affectionately as "Vagisil". Jennifer, in a line that caught me totally off guard midway through taking a big sip of water, jeers that Needy needs to "Move-on dot org". Yeah, no man, you're right. This isn't how "real" teenagers talk. Also, Jennifer's not "really" possessed by a demon, it's a thing we call "Movie Magic".</p><p>Though, actually, it's not totally unreal. This baroque, warping dialogue feels now like how teens trash talk under ideal conditions: on the internet. This movie's dialogue is posting. Like Homestuck, the point is not to capture a literal representation but instead a vibe of the kind of unrestrained, often vulgar and offensive dialogue of teens shit talking each other over America Online Instant Messanger or replies to their friends' Xanga posts. It makes perfect sense that both Jennifer and the various Homestuck teens would call each other retards, for example. There's a real sense in the film of characters pushing boundaries, testing the limits of their ability to perform adulthood. It's not just an act in the sense that it's a movie you plodding dullards, but in the sense that these characters are performing their idea of maturity.</p><p>There's nothing of that performance when Jennifer, in the back of a van going who knows where, sobering up and getting a grip on her real situation, asks the members of the band Low Shoulder, "Are you guys rapists?"</p><p>The climactic flashback, late in the film, when we witness the band's brutal murder of Jennifer, still has plenty of quips, of course. It's just that now Jennifer's ability to perform any kind of mature confidence has been brutally ripped away by a bunch of third rate emo douchebags. All the quipping, over top of her desperate pleading for her life, issues from the douchebags, who treat the whole scene as a joke. The affect of this scene feels complex to me. It's still Diablo Cody's script so there's some pretty good one liners. Megan Fox, though, is playing the scene for pure horror, so the humor adds to the horror for me. For these guys, rape and murder is just, like, kind of a fun night out. They can sing pop songs while ramming a bowie knife ("Bowie! Nice!") into a teenage girl's body because their biggest concern is whether or not they can get their shit band on Letterman. </p><p>I think it's notable that for a solid number of people--particularly though by no means exclusively women--this scene is not damaged in its horror by this dissonance. At least not now. And why should it be? Horror has never just been about what's "scary" or worse about startling people with jump scares. Horror has always partaken of a complex mix of affects: fear and visceral startlement, yes, but also grief, shock, disgust, rage, contempt... attraction... humor. The best horror might fuck with the viewer's head, prompting arousal or humor simultaneous with disgust or fear. Why play these things off each other? Maybe to destabilize us. If we feel a moment during Jennifer's brutal murder where we're just a little bit charmed by these self admittedly cute boys, maybe that prompts a question like: what other monsters might be hiding behind charming façades?</p><p>The post-9/11 years and incipient Obama cultural revolution were unfortunately for Jennifer's Body a time for dumb affects. We pretended Rudy Giuliani hadn't spent several years turning NYC into a characterless, facile police state before bungling the 9/11 disaster response. Clear Channel, now the insipidly named "iHeartRadio," banned numerous songs for fear of causing even a shred of offense. The FCC got more censorious, waving its own dick around to far more culturally degenerate effect than any superbowl nip slips. Even researching this period is tedious: the articles I access are full of euphemistic phrases ("Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable") so tortured they could have been dreamed up by the Bush admin's army of Eichmanns. I did discover that the maximum penalty for saying "fuck" went under Bush from a draconian $32,500 to a wild-eyed spittle-mouthed $325,000. People who objected to the dogshit state of culture and politics were drummed out of society, as The Dixie Chicks were. Or, more commonly, folks sorta slipped out of the public eye after getting played off at awards ceremonies, quietly shelved.</p><p>The primary objection to all this unfortunately did not come from anything really resembling a left but libertarians, constitutional bill of rights fetishists, and South Park. Democrats, never willing to lose an opportunity to supplicate themselves in spineless nematoad subservience to reactionary forces, attacked the Bush FCC for not fining stations MORE for Janet Jackson's sexual harassment by Justin Timberlake. Cool!</p><p>I wanted to talk about how this extended into the Obama years but here's the weird and ominous thing: a lot of the statistics and research material on the FCC's censorship actions just sorta stop in 2006. <a href="https://transition.fcc.gov/eb/oip/ComplStatChart.pdf" target="_blank">A lot of the relevant links from the FCC's own website are dead now</a>. I doubt that means things improved under Obama. I mean, why should the FCC have stopped fining people for saying "dickhole"? It's not like any of the natsec state's border wars ceased, or the detaining of people without trial in the torture pits of Guantanamo, or the deportation of migrants, or the wiretapping of civilians. The prosecution of whistleblowers actually increased drastically under Obama, as did the lobbing of drones at wedding parties.</p><p>We bore this because Obama offered an alternative to divisiveness and the stale politics of the Bush era. We didn't have to tear down and dismantle what the Neoconservatives and Bible-brandishing Evangelical cultists had built through rancor and strife, we simply had to present a different way. A way that would unite the country. A way of hope. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=851ksBW0ZD0" target="_blank">THROUGH THE TREEEES I WILL FIIIIIND YOU I WILL HEEEEAL THE RUINS LEFT INSIIIIIDE YOU</a></p><p>Now Needy's increasingly frantic sense that something is very wrong and all the memorial rallies and posters in the world can't fix it resonate pretty strongly with me. And, of course, after watching Low Shoulder brutally murder a teenage girl the whole grief and recovery (with a hit song!) thing feels like a cathartic confirmation of what I felt a lot during this period: that all sorts of cynical fucks were exploiting tragedy to their own ends. It never seemed to be quite the right time to bring up how cloying and often disturbingly fascistic a lot of the Strong In The Face Of Tragedy pop culture was. It was either offensive to the victims of terrorism, or offensive to Our Troops, or, extremely conveniently, before the critique even had a chance to be levied it was suddenly old hat: <a href="https://www.villagevoice.com/2009/09/15/jennifers-body-eats-men-forces-awkward-teen-dialogue/" target="_blank">the Village Voice sneeringly dismisses this film's "routine “risky” digs at 9/11 kitsch"</a>. It was hard to tell Republicans to go lick a d*ckh*le when President Obama was wearing flag lapels and having grotesquely performative "beer summits" to bring together a completely innocent black college professor with the racist pig that arrested him. You wanna talk kitsch? Obama was so fucking kitsch, homeskillet. Kitsch and twee to a degree no Diablo Cody dialogue could ever sink.</p><p>Here's something that's not kitsch or twee: Needy finding the sacrificial knife that stole her friend/love interest, and using it and inherited succubus powers to murder the shit out of every member of Low Shoulder. That's cathartic as hell. I said earlier that no one in this film really deserves what happens to them. Low Shoulder are the exception, and it's so satisfying to see that knife buried to the hilt in the lead singer's shitty torso.</p><p>I don't think anyone that contributed to things getting worse and worse for the three decades of my life, both in broad political terms and in my personal life, will ever face a single consequence. I am tired of pretending that if I just be "sincere" and be strong in the face of tragedy anything will improve. Sincerity is a fucking joke. Sincerity just means carrying out an acceptable affective performance. If I like irony, sadism, offensiveness, and <a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2020/10/webworks-magnus-archives-and-powerful.html" target="_blank">fucked up</a> and <a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2020/10/galaxy-brained-annihilation-and-queer.html" target="_blank">messy</a> <a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2020/09/i-dont-ever-wanna-talk-that-way-again.html" target="_blank">affects</a>, that's a sincere expression of what I'm feeling. Low Shoulder's "Through The Trees" is a catchy, moving, sincere, affectively and politically correct work of art, and you see how much THAT'S worth. A knife between the ribs, mostly.</p><p>I'm glad Jennifer's Body has a second life as a feminist cult classic, and even a lesbian cult classic, but I don't think we're assessing the film in its totality without exploring this complex interplay of politics and affect. I wonder a lot if we're even ready for that now. Diablo Cody has gotten work since Jennifer's Body, work still focusing on problematic women, but you don't really see things branded as "written by Diablo Cody, creator of Juno" anymore, and most of the work has been with other creators (Spielberg, Reitman) who have their own clout. No one really cancelled Cody, not in a way that she could instrumentalize and turn into the new version of this stand strong sincerity culture: getting paid ludicrous amounts of money to tell everyone that you won't be silenced. Like so many, her difficult art was just quietly ushered off stage.</p><p>I've seen people say this film would've been an easy sell in 2021.</p><p>Would it? Fucking would it?</p><p>Because I saw the reaction to the leaked script Diablo Cody wrote for an adult Powerpuff Girls show on CW! I fucking watched people--this time trading out tenderqueers outraged at the desecration of their childhood for the neckbeards of yesteryear--jeer and whine about Diablo Cody's dialogue all over again. Sorry, ladies, deciding a decade AFTER a thing comes out to stan it doesn't count. There's an anecdote about John Carpenter I like, where someone comes up to him at a convention and tells him oh man I love The Thing. Carpenter, bitter about a lifetime of commercial flops for genuinely great movies, responds something to the effect of cool man, pay me, cause you liking the film doesn't do shit for me now. It's cute that you and I can agree now that Jennifer's Body is good. Too bad we weren't there at the time, and too bad our idea of "supporting diverse art" now so often seems to involve giving all our money to the Disney Corporation for safe, unproblematic Representation.</p><p>It's been 20 years since 9/11 and 12 since Jennifer's Body released. The vice president of Barack Obama is now president, kids are still in cages, there's still a housing crisis, Covid still racks up a 9/11 body count every few days with nary a response beyond competing culture war chest thumping and grandstanding. I am on a plane to Texas. I hear Low Shoulder is playing there. Low Shoulder is playing everywhere, and will be playing everywhere until we find that knife.</p><h4 style="text-align: center;">This has been</h4><h3 style="text-align: center;">We Were Too Stupid For Jennifer's Body</h3><p>I can't do a bunch of fancy links at the end of this one cause I have to do all that by hand using self-coded tools that I don't have on this laptop, but <a href="https://www.patreon.com/StormingtheIvoryTower" target="_blank">you can check out my patreon</a> and <a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/" target="_blank">my books and games on itchio</a> or contribute to my efforts to stop from being homeless and couch-surfing by <a href="https://ko-fi.com/samkeeper" target="_blank">sending me some money on ko-fi</a>.</p>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-14654157385779099932021-09-30T13:14:00.001-07:002021-09-30T15:00:42.451-07:00Feels Dumb Man: I Really, Really Hated The Pepe The Frog Documentary<p><i>"Feels Good Man" reveals a lot about how Pepe the Frog and its creator Matt Furie suck... accidentally. When faced with that inconvenient truth, the film and its audience will go to astonishing lengths to pretend our cultural grift economy is doing just fine.</i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnEu5mXffANX1ihyq8gd5oD8bi11YS0ckkRAedh2_yH3UDgaFVzmUmlBrQwiti9MlwcUvDCN3UwE76y0peq9GOjJo8eEj2Rv7lNoWy1Zd0zTT6d7bvRxrqzD9MQfqRdX575BBP1vV2tQ//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1707" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnEu5mXffANX1ihyq8gd5oD8bi11YS0ckkRAedh2_yH3UDgaFVzmUmlBrQwiti9MlwcUvDCN3UwE76y0peq9GOjJo8eEj2Rv7lNoWy1Zd0zTT6d7bvRxrqzD9MQfqRdX575BBP1vV2tQ/w640-h360/image.png" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Maybe this will be easier medicine to swallow if I start with some sugar.</p><span><div>Death of Pepe is a pretty funny comic, so straightforwardly so that it's a little hard to like... <i>analyze</i>. I'd even say it's about the barest economy of storytelling you can get. Matt Furie structures the comic with two establishing shots, one for the setting (the funeral of his famous creation, Pepe the Frog) and one for the characters (three of the other titular boys from his Boy's Club comics, bereaved). The second establisher panel also initiates the action, as the dude who looks like he should be a member of Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem unscrews his shitty hooch bottle. His panel where he toasts is setup for the action in the next two: him pouring, and the booze splashing pathetically onto Pepe's blue, dead face. The final panel serves as punchline and resolution to the action, showing the soggy results, Electric Mayhem drinking, and the other characters reacting with beleaguered and understated exasperation.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimX6UA6A2GCUSY96yp16ua5A-r2TsUNX-O3rpkWluGOh5x4rgx8jpS7uq-Lhft-Zped9X35YZT3GI1uyse2YYfIBIRwX2bJ1TyWRgnfVWzX791_ZRrRQNRfHMzHHVw2tZpbryDMKlzOA//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="459" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimX6UA6A2GCUSY96yp16ua5A-r2TsUNX-O3rpkWluGOh5x4rgx8jpS7uq-Lhft-Zped9X35YZT3GI1uyse2YYfIBIRwX2bJ1TyWRgnfVWzX791_ZRrRQNRfHMzHHVw2tZpbryDMKlzOA/w491-h640/image.png" width="491" /></a></div><br /></div><div>For me, it's the stasis, the relative lack of action, that makes the comic work as a joke. Panels 2 through 4 are practically identical but for the movements of Electric Mayhem, the other two characters just sort of staring in morose blankness. There's a sense in those panels that something really stupid is about to happen... but no one has the energy to stop it.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's a tonally fitting end for Pepe, the Hillary Clinton Certified Fresh Hate Symbol. It already enjoyed one of the most asinine trajectories through culture imaginable, birthed from a random indie comic about stoner boys, transformed by the internet into an effectively public domain character adaptable to a wide variety of moods and circumstances, and finally appropriated as a symbol of Donald Trump's election triumph. I feel like a character being adopted by terminally online MAGA chuds--brownshirts mainly in the sense that they believe not knowing how to do laundry is Alpha--is as good a reason as any to derisively kill a character off, and drunkenly dump moonshine on his corpse. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's a funny, ironic, entertainingly depicted response to what is, ultimately, a series of very stupid events. Pepe has always been a dumb character in decently funny, dumb comics about guys being dudes. It's about what the subject deserves, and it shows the strength of Furie's style: simple and even simplistic, economical, just what it needs to be to get a chuckle as a piece flows past you in the social media content stream. It captures what made Pepe relevant in the first place: the ability to rapidly respond to events in a chaotic, copyright-oblivious environment with simple, pithy comics, images, and copypastas. Extracting Pepe from that context and pinning it down for a lengthy analysis in an article or say a documentary film, elevating it above its basically dumb origins and trajectory, does it and its potential audience a huge disservice.</div><div><br /></div><div>That didn't stop someone from making a documentary about Pepe as the key to understanding Trumpism, of course. Obviously not.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxRDGtfIBHszT1_8gCduA0jIvmd9Zx8567WL_NsV-D-g9wMyXftBIN738o6Q5hyphenhyphenmgCJmtFUAJoX7M9KCcGxxkYf09fQcqVnq808Qk2dcaxLLL4zdfmwCpcG0WZgMLVMFeGEglwzb4uzQ//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1000" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxRDGtfIBHszT1_8gCduA0jIvmd9Zx8567WL_NsV-D-g9wMyXftBIN738o6Q5hyphenhyphenmgCJmtFUAJoX7M9KCcGxxkYf09fQcqVnq808Qk2dcaxLLL4zdfmwCpcG0WZgMLVMFeGEglwzb4uzQ//" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><div>Nor did the fundamental incoherence at the heart of Feels Good Man, Arthur Jones's documentary on Pepe and the 2016 election, stop critics from heaping adulation upon it. Personally, I hated it. Worst documentary I've ever seen. Not that anyone's aggregating MY opinion into the consensus slurry. Instrumentalize me daddy I want to be Tang. No, it doesn't matter what I think. The audience for the film--both the laity and the film festival crowd--went into the film with the best attitude a documentary could hope for. They already agreed with its core premise that Pepe and memes generally (even... FOREIGN memes??) had ultimate explanatory power for an otherwise incomprehensible failure of the system to just... work. Pepe can't just be a dumb frog, it has to be a work of art of significance, of GEOPOLITICAL significance! Jones constructs his film rhetorically to endorse this narrative, and helpfully takes the next step: transforming Pepe's creator Furie into a hero worthy of the moment, capable of striking back at the terrifying new practitioners of information warfare.</div><div><br /></div><div>The fact that Matt Furie manifestly is NOT a man worthy of the moment, and Pepe IS just a dumb frog, drives every formal and philosophical contortion of the documentary.</div><div><br /></div><div>Conveniently, the premise and the conclusion follow each other circularly. We already are meant to agree on who the bad guys in the film are, and can subsequently construct the good guys from there. Does it matter if there's a contradiction between the image of Furie as righteous warrior against Alex Jones and his ilk and Furie the schlubby dude who just seems annoyed by the whole farce? What about Pepe as the product of Furie's particular artistic genius and provenance, vs Pepe the genetic idea virus, product of a Darwinian process, one that Furie has basically nothing to do with? Or how about the righteous power of Intellectual Property Law, vs the actual art scene that birthed Boys Club, one of, ah how to put it delicately... <i>serial fucking plagiarism</i>?</div><div><br /></div><div>The funny thing is, the film isn't technically wrong. Pepe could serve as an interesting case study of a fundamental breakdown, a symptom of a deeply unwell society. The problem is, the symptom of the illness, reflected in the mutually incompatible views of Furie and Pepe, calls into question a fundamental tenet of western orthodoxy for the last half century: that basically everything's fine, and free of contradictions. All these tensions and more are swept away by the film's construction, which freely pulls from either skeptics or mystics as it sees fit to construct not so much an argument as a pacifying dodge.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think one of the greatest strengths of the film in terms of skating over contradiction comes from its <i>formal</i> posture of distance from the subject. The film assumes a journalistic affect. No voiceover from the director explains his position or offers his thoughts; no titles present information beyond bare minimum clarifying details (names of interviewees, locations, credentials in esoteric fields of study). This rhetorically positions the film as a kind of neutral accounting of events, as though the viewer is permitted to make up her own mind from the simple facts and interviews montaged. This is reality as it is, the film's structure implies. A centering of the director would imply that a director is in fact making choices according to some guiding logic, and that might cause us to question just what that guiding logic is, exactly.</div><div><br /></div><div>This interview footage and b roll gets paired with animated sequences. Those dramatize the events of the film as though they are actually, like, happening to Pepe, and they follow an arc as Pepe is plunged into horror, transformed into a fascist icon, dies, and is reborn as the god Kek. Damn, maybe I should be writing about this in the context of my Pink Floyd's The Wall series. Anyway, Pink, er, Pepe thus gets humanized and characterized in a way that is suspiciously convenient to the campaign Furie engaged in to recover Pepe's brand, particularly because it reifies Pepe as a <i>subject</i> and obscures the brand. Questioning whether this is really all that bad, or whether it's appropriate at all to project horror onto a fictional cartoon character, is made to feel as inappropriate as questioning whether one of the crimes beloved by local news stations is worthy of disproportionate attention. Oh, and it also lends Furie's typically static art much more dynamism, which has also gotta be a branding plus.</div><div><br /></div><div>Really, the film as a whole is astoundingly flattering to Furie and his art. Lots of shots of Furie in the toy store where he worked, Furie with his wife and kid... the film is positively saturated with b reel of wholesome moments. The effect paired with the faux neutral dissolving of the filmmakers into the background suggests an objective portrait of Furie as basically just a chill dude whose naivety and goodness let him be victimized. </div><div><br /></div><div>I, of course, a wretched midden ghoul without an ounce of human decency, found it all nauseatingly saccharine. </div><div><br /></div><div>Actually, specifically it felt a little try-hard. And they did have to try hard, cause there's glimpses in the film of a Furie that's not so much naive as negligent, not so much the victim of strange forces but a knowing participant who played with fire and got burned to the tune of more money than I've made in the last five years of my life. Furie at one point grouses that he got into art in the first place so he wouldn't have to pay attention to media or politics, because: "I don't give a shit about any of that stuff." A core part of our initial introduction to Furie is a shot of him being interviewed in a resale toy store where he apparently did inventory and otherwise just got to draw toys all day. "I basically just want to be young again," he says wistfully, gazing off into the distance for the camera. In these moments, Furie comes across like a real toolbag, just a real fucking dipshit. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5RVzzV4mi0nbG6nqjt_2KT3lsn4STa8n96pa2GZieEs-18ISp1ZPg5OedDasOHXPWRZskDBkK-GZpabiB4zMuc8Qqi39E6xcHR-7m6jJmQkfPXP4pQ9g3VPB55frDBrit0zRVRsy4BQ//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="928" data-original-width="1766" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5RVzzV4mi0nbG6nqjt_2KT3lsn4STa8n96pa2GZieEs-18ISp1ZPg5OedDasOHXPWRZskDBkK-GZpabiB4zMuc8Qqi39E6xcHR-7m6jJmQkfPXP4pQ9g3VPB55frDBrit0zRVRsy4BQ/w640-h336/image.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div>I came into the film biased, mind. I watched the film in the first place, knowing it would be insufferable, because Furie started doing what all toolbags do nowadays: <a href="https://www.pegz.fun/">he started selling NFTs</a>. In the process of preparing to write about THAT I came across <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/its-not-easy-being-green/499892/">a rather interesting and enlightening interview from 2016</a>. Matt Furie was asked by Atlantic writer and resistance lib Adam Serwer what he thought of the whole "Pepe hate symbol" thing. Furie didn't seem to give a shit, frankly:</div><div><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 40px;">"I don’t have any regrets about anything. I do my own thing, and if anything, it’s been kind of interesting to see all the evolutions of Pepe. Yeah, no regrets."</div><div><br /></div><div>Cool, man. His attitude? Pepe might be a hate symbol today and a school mascot tomorrow, and it's fine if people use it. Whatever! He even seems aware of how the meme's popularity let him promote himself, mentioning the shirts he intends to sell with various redraws of Pepe on them. "Bootlegs of bootlegs," he characterizes them, acknowledging the influence of meme artists on his own "little enterprising things".</div><div><br /></div><div>The mention of merch is interesting, because in the film Furie laments having to burn it all.</div><div><br /></div><div>See, two months after the interview Trump got elected president, and the Anti-Defamation League took time out from its busy schedule of defaming anti-Apartheid activists <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/04/opinions/park-51-anti-defamation-league-9-11-greenblatt/index.html">or just Muslims in general</a> to write an entire thing about how Pepe is a Nazi. Furie had a bunch of merchandise on his hands that he couldn't sell. Now. Far be it for me to suggest that it is the $45,000 of t-shirts in Matt Furie's garage that prompted a change of heart, but SOMETHING sure prompted an about face on the seriousness of this fascist "hijacking". So complete is Matt's change of heart that the Atlantic interview gets mentioned explicitly in the film, and Adam Serwer even shows up to declaim on the sinister, threatening nature of these memes. Matt was naive, Serwer emphasizes. He just didn't see that memes threatened the integrity of the Republic through the sinister tactic of "being a dumb cartoon frog that makes you look completely fucking ludicrous when you claim it's threatening the Republic". He gets it now though. Trust us.</div><div><br /></div><div>Are you ready for the shitty twist? The whole reason I went into the movie knowing about this specific interview where Furie comes across as an equivocating dipshit is because I saw the article reposted this month on Twitter. Specifically, I saw it scrolling through Matt Furie's twitter. <a href="https://twitter.com/Matt_Furie/status/1422834937661575172">Cause Matt Furie posted it</a> (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210919211540/https://twitter.com/Matt_Furie/status/1422834937661575172">archive</a>). And you know how he summarized the contents?</div><div><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 40px;">"our journalist bro was really fishing, but I held my ground and focused on the good stuff. Vibes are important, life is too short to dwell in the dungeon. let's all be free together."</div><div><br /></div><div>🙂</div><div><br /></div><div>If Furie comes across less like a crusading knight and more like a slimy mercenary, Pepe comes across, for all the film's histrionics, less as a singular holy relic and more as a dirty joke scrawled on a bathroom stall. I don't think it's on purpose, but that characterization of Pepe as an upgraded version of dirty graffiti, the oldest form of memes there is, does sync with the film's strangely Darwinian approach to Pepe's popularity. Considerable time is dedicated to trotting out Richard Dawkins's positivist fever dream of the "meme" as genetic code for, like, <i>human civilization, man</i>. In this view, Pepe is remarkably powerful specifically because it's been shared and remixed so much. </div><div><br /></div><div>The film shows total disinterest in the implications of this. You might think it'd prompt some serious reconsideration of the whole idea of "the artist" right, but, nope. There's a few interviews with Pepe meme creators, one a reactionary chud asshole and another a couple of vaguely alt cis chicks. There's some clips from Instagram of people talking about the meme. Whatever. It goes nowhere and says nothing, not really, because none of these people are really like<i>, people</i> to the creators of this movie. Not like Matt Furie is! Matt Furie does art. These people post memes. It's different. </div><div><br /></div><div>People who post memes, unlike Artistes like Matt, are best understood as a sociological phenomenon. So, they get an Expert in digital culture to explain that "Pepe the sad frog" is a reaction to how the corporatized internet demands user positivity. This annoyed me. In my notes I actually complained bitterly about the vagueness of this statement, its inability to pin down dates (when did the internet become corporate and positive?) relevant subcultures (is there a disillusioned instragram positivity blogger to channer pipeline?) or persons of interest (who corporatized the internet?). I wrote those notes before I saw the rest of the film, though. In retrospect, it was the last interesting point anyone made in the entire film. Because once you begin talking about this, suddenly the conversation shifts and changes. </div><div><br /></div><div>Predictable: it's the one time Pepe appears as it is in reality, i.e., <i>a byproduct of larger forces</i>. The rest of the film, whether through Dawkins or dark arts, presupposes Pepe's dark sway over American electoral politics. When oriented the other way, when these "offensive memes" are seen as symptomatic of wider social forces, the election properly gets situated as well, as a sideshow. To the story of Pepe, I mean. </div><div><br /></div><div>Instead of endlessly fixating on this one event, we could start talking about all sorts of interesting things. Like, oh, the way social media, the entire tech industry in point of fact, really is sort of constructed on theft of intellectual property, bootlegs of bootlegs to use Furie's words. Who was actually benefiting from the transmission of all those memes? Financially, I mean. I don't know the finances of 4chan and don't care to look them up, but certainly Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Reddit all draw their views, their ad revenue, their ability to amass a wide userbase whose information they can collect and sell to the highest bidder, from user content. Much of it is reshared, remixed, appropriated, subverted, and bootlegged content. You know, memes.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you wanted to draw geopolitical lessons from this, you might question how such a <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/04/27/covid-vaccine-copyright-hollywood-lobbyists/">perversely copyright-dominated social order</a>'s biggest winners are tech companies reliant on bootleg culture. You might start to wonder if humans fit so easily into a legal, economic, and ideological regime that treats ideas as property, and thinkers as noble landlords. Rather than reconcile that contradiction with another layer of ideology, concluding that these idea landlords are entitled to corvee labor, indeed that there's an almost spiritual duty to labor for these artists to maintain the Brand, we could ask who this contradictory status quo benefits. </div><div><br /></div><div>It might even be a good idea to ask whether less diseased culture would emerge from a state of affairs not rejecting its own transplanted organs. Whether a society dedicated to something, fucking ANYTHING other than the endless grinding extraction of value from the masses, while shrouding the Frankenstein debasements in bandages of ideology and mystification, might never have produced the Alt Right in the first place. God, they're just so fucking incurious! These filmmakers want a tidy story and they got one and they gave it to an audience that swallowed it whole, gangrene and all. But the real story lies at the ragged border where the organs of the rhetoric and the ideology don't incorporate.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ragged borders like the other two sides of Furie: the singular artist and idea landlord, vs the guy that emerged from another earlier iteration of the exact same millieu as meme artists. See, Furie was always a culture jammer, a bootlegger, part of a stoner scene that delighted in adopting popular figures and styles and art and repurposing them as adult party motifs. He's not, like, the new R Crumb, <a href="https://mattfurie.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/sperminator_two_LO-copy.jpg">regardless of his bdsm chicken semen milking art</a> (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210929202210/https://mattfurie.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/sperminator_two_LO-copy.jpg">archive)</a>. But he is part of a scene that has a parodic and bootlegged approach to popular culture, particularly popular corporate icons.</div><div><br /></div><div>There's a whole sequence in the film that I just don't understand, actually. Like, it's bewildering to me that it's in here at all considering how it undercuts the film's theses, and it's strange to me that it seems to have worked just fine with the critical audience. Maybe it just comes across as, I don't know, an acknowledgment that Furie isn't perfect? Maybe the manichaean conflict of the scene between Furie and the reviled Alex Jones is enough to get everyone to just ignore it, to see Furie as intrinsically the victimized protagonist here? Jones is, after all, a huge piece of shit who did appropriate Pepe for merch, and it's impossible not to find him getting slapped with a lawsuit over it a LITTLE funny.</div><div><br /></div><div>And yet... the content of the deposition videos included in the documentary is really clear. Furie's a hypocrite at best, a plagiarist at worst. The scene comes early on in Furie's triumphant series of victories over the alt right in the courts. Furie and Jones are both filmed head on as lawyers interrogate them. In intercut scenes taken after the deposition, Furie laments how forceful the lawyer was, how intense the interrogation was, how he misspoke under pressure. In the scenes themselves, the lawyer simply asks, over and over: isn't this someone else's character in your art? Isn't this Big Bird? Grimace? The Hamburgler? Isn't this someone else's intellectual property in this art you sell? The lawyer never makes the point directly, but it hangs in the air:</div><div><br /></div><div>What after all is the difference between Alex Jones and Matt Furie? Aren't they doing the exact same thing?</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP1sCI600YW0udy9j6LPodV2p67BLlo0D1Y4UsUaYrRkxtpUG_QkYFjxPdLm1Uy478s7R7DNsNTiRBFecGjg-4tlchbOuu94rmqZCbah5U7kCFTamG390ClLf5iQa8nqqLLiII6TQ6cA//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1440" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP1sCI600YW0udy9j6LPodV2p67BLlo0D1Y4UsUaYrRkxtpUG_QkYFjxPdLm1Uy478s7R7DNsNTiRBFecGjg-4tlchbOuu94rmqZCbah5U7kCFTamG390ClLf5iQa8nqqLLiII6TQ6cA/w640-h400/Screenshot+%2528214%2529.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div>This is the contradiction the film can't resolve. If Furie is to be the hero using ideas landlord law to save his creation, Furie has to be a singular artist. Furie must be an auteur, whose moral right to copy has been infringed upon. More than that, that his moral right to preserve the brand i.e. dictate how his character is used has been infringed upon.</div><div><br /></div><div>But Furie's creativity is specifically contingent on his use of remix and countercultural jamming techniques. His whole like, fuckin, thing as an artist is being part of stoner culture, drawing toys, <a href="https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Big-Bud/6D707A56BC51B9D5">drawing pot leaf versions of big bird renamed "big bud"</a> (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210929202508/https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Big-Bud/6D707A56BC51B9D5">archive</a>), you know. What genius is there is entirely derivative of the pop and counterculture in which he floats on an enormous colorful bong cloud.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's the fuckin thing. I don't have a problem with that. My own work is certainly pastiche, I just use art history as my source instead of McDonalds commercials. No, what pisses me off is that the film can't pick a side. Is Furie a unique auteur or is he just part of a whole field of social production? Is Pepe so good because Furie's so good, or is it because Darwinian evolution in ideaspace allowed Pepe to spread and change to forms more fit to the contemporary web? The film's entire argument about Furie rests on this fundamental contradiction: that Furie is both responsible and not responsible for Pepe the frog as a cultural entity.</div><div><br /></div><div>So I guess what really gets to me, what really ticks me off, is the way the film makes me agree with a Trump campaign coms guy. The guy--I didn't bother remembering or looking up his name, just picture an ostrich egg perched on top of a preppy suit and you'll get the basic picture--does an interview in response to Furie's lawsuits. He points out that Furie created a character that can be drawn easily by an 8 year old, and that Pepe's the result of a whole "community" creating memes. He also says Furie should be happy to be part of history, which is asinine. Like I said, the Death of Pepe comic is about the most reasonable response an artist could have to all this. But I hate hate hate that I can't disagree with anything else this fascist jock itch says about Pepe's quality, and I hate that he's the only person in the film who points out that Furie's just not a great artist.</div><div><br /></div><div>The worst part is that the film actually agrees with this guy and his fellow chuds on a much deeper and more deranged level. I keep dropping hints about this but I can't hold back anymore. We've got to talk about the film's central conclusion, its core thesis, its ultimate point of agreement with every basement dwelling channer.</div><div><br /></div><div>Memes are literal actual magic.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yep. The film actually argues that a bunch of NEETs used literal chaos magic to get Donald Trump elected. Maybe it's ok though, because meme magic can also be used by The Good Guys to fight against Tyranny. We too can harness Pepe's avatar as the god Kek, but as good rather than evil battlemages of the psychosphere.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Listen. It gives me no pleasure to tell you all this. I hate that I'm writing it, partly because I am frustratedly rotating in my mind the vision of a reader who says, "oh now SURELY that's an unfair characterization. There's no way the film LITERALLY argues that memes are LITERAL magic spells. Is there?"</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2dw3dSpn7De7jkO2KSouqfqx91tWyU7OnKYQGFmzo2PXu8zIbnLjI0k09whTJpj7Y_dq9tXIZr3U2jSVYjRyTnnGg0YhP_SxG7dSoFbV2cwD6JRosMHYTtysp5QXPi3wSm1r2tvJkGQ//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="555" height="332" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2dw3dSpn7De7jkO2KSouqfqx91tWyU7OnKYQGFmzo2PXu8zIbnLjI0k09whTJpj7Y_dq9tXIZr3U2jSVYjRyTnnGg0YhP_SxG7dSoFbV2cwD6JRosMHYTtysp5QXPi3wSm1r2tvJkGQ/w640-h332/image.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div>Fuck you. They interviewed a wizard. Repeatedly. He has more interview segments than the Dawkins acolytes for god's sake! They even managed somehow to get a chaos magician who ISN'T EVEN A COOL ANARCHIST CHAOS MAGICIAN like Grant Morrison or Alan Moore, he's a fucking self described "Burkean conservative!" <a href="https://film-cred.com/feels-good-man-interview/">The creators seem in awe of John Michael Greer</a>, who has grifted his way into a number of documentaries about memes. He's an actual recognized arch-druid with hierarchical power, Jones informs his interviewer wonderingly.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yep. Implausible as it seems, the thesis of the film is that Pepe is a fucking hypersigil that won Donald Trump the primary and presidency. Because the same people patting themselves on the back because they "believe science" literally find it easier to become chaos magicians than accept Hillary Clinton ran a historically dogshit electoral campaign. Anyway, if all our elections happen on the psychosphere mindplane it's ok if we don't do things like try to organize immigrant workers or go door to door in swing states or make any appeal at all to young left wing voters. Nah. We just have to post! We will post so damn hard that we overthrow tyranny and change the world.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>And it's this line of thought that leads the film to a conclusion, and a montage cut, so astoundingly ludicrous and offensive that I howled at my computer.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG-tdKk3CbSAxMkMQEdgj17Pmq1cpFeNNsyKtM769QvZm30uvJijO1TnMyD6qzJeqdRLqKczu5OmLycMFA8aTwLUkobRdMKf7CGrjpBpWflhLUmp-ZouV7Ti2y9UZ4IA6tRNSrgWcGcg//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1634" data-original-width="1300" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG-tdKk3CbSAxMkMQEdgj17Pmq1cpFeNNsyKtM769QvZm30uvJijO1TnMyD6qzJeqdRLqKczu5OmLycMFA8aTwLUkobRdMKf7CGrjpBpWflhLUmp-ZouV7Ti2y9UZ4IA6tRNSrgWcGcg/w509-h640/wizardshit.png" width="509" /></a></div><br /></div><div>aaaa<wbr>AAAAAA<wbr>AAAAAAAAA<wbr>AAAAAAAA<wbr>AAAAH!!!!</div><div><br /></div><div>So it's just like I said. We're the fucking peasants working the land to grow rich, healthy memes that will help free Hong Kong from Chinese tyranny, the US from Cheeto tyranny, and perhaps even the world from the tyranny of bad vibes. Instead of letting dead Pepes lie, letting a dumb story end in funny ignominy, various artists have a moral imperative to participate in a rebranding: Pepe as a symbol of love and peace. Good vibes, you know? From the perspective that ideas are sorta like land and sorta like actual people, Furie's been vandalized, and Pepe's been kidnapped. It's the job of artists, and the courts, to make it right.</div><div><br /></div><div>From the perspective of the labor of cultural production, though, Furie has managed to make heavy use not just of the labor of everyone who contributed to the discursive presence of Big Bird or the Hamburgler, but of Pepe itself. Pepe's saleable value, now codified in NFTs, derives from the whole discursive and creative labor of everyone who ever painted a rare Pepe, or even just reshared one. And as soon as MORE labor had been done by liberals to create a "movement" to "save Pepe", he began repudiating his own repudiation, winking to the <a href="https://twitter.com/EthanVanSciver/status/1423069673931907074">chud audience that always waited in the wings ready to buy pepes again</a>. Furie's positioned himself so that he can sell to them while also selling to the trendy indie comic set and appearing in galleries. The film is constantly going into fits of moral horror at the ironic use of memes, how evil and insidious it is that white nationalist content could also be, you know, stupid to look at. Yet Furie's whole business model depends on the same exact irony, being able to seem on the surface just dumb cartoons while also fundamentally appealing, by the delivery mechanism of blockchain nonsense and by use of Pepe as a character, to the people the film and its audience hates. </div><div><br /></div><div>I guess I have to wonder to myself, would everyone have gotten so fucking fleeced by Furie if they had more interest in our contradictory understanding of art and artists? I feel like the film wouldn't turn into such an image management exercise for Furie if they didn't feel so obligated to find The Creator Of The Meme, elevate him above every other person posting pictures on the internet, and invest in him superheroic capacity, if we all help charge his Spirit Bomb, to defeat various villains. </div><div><br /></div><div>For all the documentary distance of the film's form, Jones might've benefited from less investment in an already decided upon narrative. He certainly doesn't seem to be aware at all of the contradictions at play, or incoherencies in his own actions as an artist. After all, in the credits of this film all about a heroic artist taking back control of his creation through the power of Copyright, the filmmakers include this credits section for the countless memes displayed in the film:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxzmp2CplaQUcH7HkJt6MpIbT3OHgmbJs1u0G_Ekmd2sRYASsWYlbHWk3_wEm65TsM02i3y5hzBbkv2uDywpDqbZOfiSHZkcRQ6hjXF28gvY9gvvDRysd26cqXJbValpatwp99oP6HxQ//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="619" data-original-width="658" height="602" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxzmp2CplaQUcH7HkJt6MpIbT3OHgmbJs1u0G_Ekmd2sRYASsWYlbHWk3_wEm65TsM02i3y5hzBbkv2uDywpDqbZOfiSHZkcRQ6hjXF28gvY9gvvDRysd26cqXJbValpatwp99oP6HxQ/w640-h602/image.png" width="640" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div>Yep. They literally just reposed a bunch of images with, effectively, "credit to the artist" and called it a day. The moral rights of the creators of those memes just don't matter.</div><div><br /></div><div>After all, it's just funny pictures online.</div><div><br /></div><div>Isn't it?</div><div><br /></div></span>
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<h3>The NFT's Aura, or, Why Is NFT Art So Ugly?</h3>
NFT art is bad for the environment, and bad for artists, but critics and supporters of NFT art are both missing a key fact: it's also just bad art. Whether Beeple or Bugmeyer, it's time the stars of the NFT revolution experienced some real art criticism.
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<!--IN SEARCH OF MORE APPLAUSE: 'INSIDE' AND THE WORLD NEOLIBERALISM PROMISED-->
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<h3>In Search Of More Applause: 'Inside' And The World Neoliberalism Promised</h3>
Bo Burnham's movie "Inside" stretches the term "comedy special" till it shatters. Why does its clutter of fragments cut so deep? Maybe because of how it reflects the world neoliberalism promised us...
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<!--CULTURE KEPT IN ITS COFFIN: HOW THE NETFLIX MODEL BURIES OUR MEDIA HISTORY-->
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<h3>Culture Kept In Its Coffin: How The Netflix Model Buries Our Media History</h3>
Classic anime like Revolutionary Girl Utena could get a new lease on life if released serially in the present day... but Netflix and its many competitors aren't in the business of preserving or selling art. What do we lose when our media history becomes #Content?
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<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>
<!--AHOGT--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/123100?bg_color=61003a&fg_color=ffc38a&link_color=006b24&border_color=caffb3" width="552"></iframe>
<!--SIGNAL GARDEN--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/854542?border_width=0&bg_color=110c0c&fg_color=aca1f7&link_color=676767" width="552"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/signal-garden-demo">Signal Garden (Demo) by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-54582819277214727502021-07-25T09:28:00.000-07:002021-07-25T09:28:38.319-07:00The NFT Rube Goldberg Machine, or, Why is NFT Art So Lazy?<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><i>Art and automation's merger long predates cryptoart's use of procedural generation.</i></p><p><i>You'll never hear NFT sellers talk seriously about that history, though, cause it reveals not just NFT art's contradictions, but also its cynical laziness. </i></p></blockquote><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAg2er7gGz8TJVW9NZPvQedkOfvVfljWaKSnObyl9JwD3Wdtu48D-QnThc_iJ0x34v0fAsPtYv4L6tWpSfef2SfW_aRS0WOyMhIq2RhhESuWRGPZrQEy-2BOdW6L5wpDsjMJNAqhIoRA//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAg2er7gGz8TJVW9NZPvQedkOfvVfljWaKSnObyl9JwD3Wdtu48D-QnThc_iJ0x34v0fAsPtYv4L6tWpSfef2SfW_aRS0WOyMhIq2RhhESuWRGPZrQEy-2BOdW6L5wpDsjMJNAqhIoRA/w640-h426/Marilyn+Beeple+Series.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><div style="-en-clipboard: true;"><br /></div><div style="-en-clipboard: true;">I love Rube Goldberg contraptions. As a kid I was obsessed with Wallace and Gromit, with the strange machines in Pee Wee's Big Adventure, and with the nonsense cartoon inventions of Betty Boop's Professor Grampy. A Rube Goldberg machine is beautiful because of its pointlessness. It's a supremely inefficient and mesmerizingly intricate way of accomplishing something. As the kind of autistic woman that can stare slack jawed at reflections on water or gears turning for long minutes at a time, Rube Goldberg contraptions always tickled some deep part of my brain.</div><div><br /></div><div>And so, later in life I got involved in procedural generation.</div><div><br /></div><div>Procgen is a Rube Goldberg contraption par excellence. There's a saying among developers: procgen is a great way to do twice the work in double the time. Sure, there's lots of noise about it enabling expansive, always unique games that can be produced for a fraction of the cost of authored content. But I think procedural generation shines best with an aesthetic refocus: from a goal or aesthetic endpoint to the beauty of the process of creation, and the relationship between the two.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's how it functions in fine art. Rube Goldberg machines found their way fully into art a century ago. Through the 19th and early 20th centuries, lots of artists moved away from final product and toward process. They emphasized not just an aesthetic or didactic result but the way those results were derived: rapid open air painting, random selection of "readymades", exploration of paint splatters and splashes on colossal canvases, performances that incorporated audience response or explored the limits of an artist's endurance. The Surrealists placed special emphasis on this, employing all kinds of tricks to get out of their conscious mind and tap into the unconscious. Take Frottage, for example, which among other things (ladies...) means taking charcoal rubbings of textured surfaces, which artists like Max Ernst then interpreted into strange phantasmagoric beings and landscapes. Or Dadaist Jean Arp's collage canvases of paper scraps dropped at random and then pasted down where they fell.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is in its own way a Rube Goldberg way of achieving art, or to put it another way, it's a procedural generation, creation focused on method rather than a preset and defined end goal.</div><div><br /></div><div>Much contemporary art, in fact much art since the 1950s, consists of methods and instructions--algorithms, really--that can be set in motion by ANYONE with the ability to perform them, much like a musical score. One of my favorite examples of this is when hip hop artists clipping. capped a horrorcore album off with a performance of Annea Lockwood's "Piano Burning." The score of the piece is:</div><div><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 40px;">Set upright piano (not a grand) in an open space with the lid closed.</div><div style="margin-left: 40px;">Spill a little lighter fluid on a twist of paper and place inside, near the pedals.</div><div style="margin-left: 40px;">Light it.</div><div style="margin-left: 40px;">Balloons may be stapled to the piano.</div><div style="margin-left: 40px;">Play whatever pleases you for as long as you can.</div><div><br /></div><div>The score gives quite a lot of leeway to adapt and interpret the piece as one pleases, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EMu15_9SF8" target="_blank">and the group opted to not perform on the piano or include balloons</a>. The result, which seems to have predictably pissed off a bunch of people, is a moody exploration of destructive process, as an ambient backdrop of crackling flames is occasionally punctuated by percussive piano strings breaking or bits of the piano caving in. In the context of the rest of the album and clipping.'s heavy use of machine noise in their compositions, it suggests a strangely slow and quiet horror, a transformation from more conventional musicality into something more alien. I find the piece troubling, I don't quite know what to think of it, because the length (18 minutes), the lack of action, and the (to me) soothing sound of crackling fire seem to butt weirdly against the aggression of the act (setting a piano, possibly a perfectly usable piano, on fire).</div><div><br /></div><div>I love this shit because it takes seriously Lockwood's composition but reframes it in performance and context, revealing that the procedure is never JUST the procedure, it's also all the stuff around it, all the tweaks to the procedure and what they mean, how the final product is framed and contextualized, how much of the process is captured and documented... there's so much you can talk about here. The means and the end are strangely comingled, and also demand, due to the often imperfect results, interpretive work from both the person running the procedure and from the audience experiencing the result. The strange Rube Goldberg nature of the procedure also radically changes the terms of art work: anyone, even without musical/artistic/performance training, can follow the instructions, but that doesn't make any particular performance meaningless or rote because everyone who runs the procedure can put her mark on it.</div><div><br /></div><div>And yeah, anyone could do this art. So fucking what? Art increasingly functions less as an aesthetic experience and more as asset. Switzerland's Geneva Free Port, for example, hosts untold millions of artworks never seen by any human and indeed never moved at all, but sold frequently, on paper, on balance sheets, gold beneath Fort Knox. This art exists simply to exists, to sit there and represent a totally arbitrary value point agreed upon by elite capitalists for tax evasion purposes. Process, performance, and participation-based artists also find their work sucked into this nexus, but I think it puts up a bit more of a fight. At its best, procgen asserts that yeah, anyone CAN do art, when given the proper tools, so treating that art as a singular masterpiece that not coincidentally is a great store of tax evasion money makes no sense. The proper place of even the most skilled performances of this art is not a Swiss vault but... everywhere, enriching everyone's lives.</div><div><br /></div><div>I bring all this up because once again, <a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2021/06/the-nfts-aura-or-why-is-nft-art-so-ugly.html" target="_blank">just like last time</a>, the task fuckin falls to me, whether I want it or not, to actually try to situate cryptoart into an art historical context. I mean, is Christie's gonna do it? No. Are the galleries showing Cryptopunks gonna do it? Absolutely not. As I pointed out last time, and as we'll see today, even writing <i>promoting</i> NFT art shows little to no interest in talking about art, not when they can gush about limited supplies, cryptographic signatures, and investments investments INVESTMENTS! So somehow I'm left as the one person who can look at the breadth of over a century of avant garde developments in art, and recognize their culmination, their final apotheosis:</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://img.cryptokitties.co/0x06012c8cf97bead5deae237070f9587f8e7a266d/1788436.svg"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://img.cryptokitties.co/0x06012c8cf97bead5deae237070f9587f8e7a266d/1788436.svg"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_EYtdAi9DJSkdd9sJlYzVIHReQrSp1XHzjFtCYahsByVAuFpcYj9DYUaFInbBPYg7luRNz1cyOOOOI6R3MwSfpVK1v09TvXCihelFWnIUtaL-_iCixCXjk-0RwTfPLg0CHMS7-nJ6-w//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="684" height="563" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_EYtdAi9DJSkdd9sJlYzVIHReQrSp1XHzjFtCYahsByVAuFpcYj9DYUaFInbBPYg7luRNz1cyOOOOI6R3MwSfpVK1v09TvXCihelFWnIUtaL-_iCixCXjk-0RwTfPLg0CHMS7-nJ6-w/w640-h563/image.png" width="640" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div>This motherfucker.</div><div><br /></div><div>This Happy Tree Friends genetic reject is a "Cryptokitty". I want to talk about what a cryptokitty is, but because the backend is more interesting I gotta get the aesthetic critique out of the way first. The aesthetic is... fine, I guess? Worse than a neopet, better than a funko pop, is about where I'd rank it. <a href="https://www.cryptokitties.co/search?include=sale&orderDirection=desc" target="_blank">They all pretty much look like this</a> with a few ultra rare exceptions, and it's just not to my taste. The eyes are a bit too Western Adult Animated Comedy Series, and looking at many of them causes the chill apparition of a dead 9gag poster to manifest behind me and groan "lol derp". Chilling stuff. This is the kind of thing that if not for the price tag on some of them of over a MILLION GOD DAMN DOLLARS I would just write off as not for me and move on, like minions, or Among Us, or the male gender.</div><div><br /></div><div>They look like Flash animation characters because they essentially are: built in Scalable Vector Graphics, the semi-functional format that utterly failed to act as a fallback to Flash after Google and Apple bilaterally murdered it. Their color palettes are limited to three or four tones, which are consistent throughout the body. What they lack in morphic differentiation--they almost all have an identical body template--they attempt to make up for in fur patterns, colors, facial expressions, and occasionally accessories like horns or a dracula costume. </div><div><br /></div><div>Cryptokitties market themselves with this procedural--and gamified--element, making cryptokitties a good example of process-based cryptoart. The cats can be bred to get new color and style combinations. However, the rate at which they can be bred slows down over time, so you COULD treat cryptokitties as a game of optimizations. How can you best get the kitty with the qualities you want? You might also treat it as exploratory, discovering the serendipitous results of the procedure. Procgen text accompanies each kitty, and while it's a bit lolrandom and tonally inconsistent (it seems to follow a rudimentary grammar system without controls that cause later sentences to be affected by earlier ones), that's still something you might explore. Hell, I kind of enjoyed the few minutes I spent looking over enough bios to get a sense of how they operate, even if it seems about at the complexity level of fairly simple <a href="https://tracery.io/" target="_blank">Tracery</a> bots or below. And I have to admit, I found myself swayed towards liking them a bit better, if only because the illustrations have some command structures embedded within them that ensure things like: coloration on tails match bodies, accessories and scenery don't clip weirdly into bodies, patterns on the bodies often carry over to the tails depending on the tail type, &c. It's not super sophisticated, but there ARE some controls there, which in this space is a god damn miracle of design.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's the thing about the optimization strategies of most crypto art. It's boring. There's an aesthetic pleasure that tons of web games operate on, the pleasure of Number Go Up. Narrative betting sims like Blaseball uses it, resource management games like Fallen London use it, clicker games like Cookie Clicker use it, and most infamously of course gacha games of all sorts use it. But if all you want to do is hit a button to start a number going up, you don't need to buy an NFT, you just need to buy a stopwatch. </div><div><br /></div><div>In some ideal fantasy version of reality, cryptokitties would be an answer to that: a gamified version of cryptoart that plays with the complex engagement of procgen: both appreciating kitties for their unique qualities, and appreciating what gets gleaned of the underlying mechanics and how different builds might be developed to get certain outcomes and so on. Both the result, and the rube goldberg machine used to get there. This version would open up to the masses the long tradition of inbreeding and induced deformity that rich freaks have sought in their pets for ages. Like instead of creating abominations saddled for life with disastrous health defects, simply for show, create a cryptokitty instead! After all, no animals actually get hurt. </div><div><br /></div><div>Oh, right, ah, except of course for the whole "apocalyptic impact on the global climate" thing that's so intrinsic to cryptocurrency's economics of conspicuous waste. Turns out this cat inbreeding scheme just adds a few extra steps to the process of environmental degradation in the name of kitsch.</div><div><br /></div><div>So maybe what I ACTUALLY want is something open ended, something more like a picrew with randomness. Picrew is a platform where cartoonists can provide a library of, essentially, paper dolls that people can build icons from. Imagine that but with more nuanced controls and an emphasis on random generation, maybe a visual programming language that could be used to avoid the collisions and aesthetic incoherence that is inherent in anything where you just roll the dice. An open engine for this kind of thing.</div><div><br /></div><div>But that wouldn't be compatible with the real point of NFTs, of course, which is to make a few fucks at the top of the pyramid scheme a whole lot of money.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm afraid that all my grudging respect for cryptokitties dissolves when I remember that none of the generative strategies they use matter. That's the message I've gotten from the marketplace, at least, which is mostly incomprehensible to me, but seems above all to privilege, simply, whether a cryptokitty is first generation or later. You can pick up kitties from the 45th generation for only $16 and an eternal mark on your soul. This is by design: <a href="https://guide.cryptokitties.co/guide/tips/value-of-kitties" target="_blank">all the breeding stuff is bullshit worthless nonsense by the explicit design intentions of the devs</a>, who set out to make gen 0 the most valuable by limiting forever the amount of kitties in that generation.</div><div><br /></div><div>So sweep aside literally everything I've said about the APPARENT Rube Goldberg contraption that is cryptokitties and behold the real one: the same gold bug economics that all of cryptocurrency runs on, a deranged libertarian conviction that currencies that people use to buy basic shit for survival should ONLY EVER BECOME MORE RARE AND VALUABLE. In the first one of these I said I didn't want to talk about Blockchain cause it's stupid and boring. But I arrived at that after going through this frustrating emotional relationship that involved comprehending the incredibly clever structure blockchain uses to achieve a deflationary basis and trustless records of transactions, getting kind of impressed, remembering that this is a Rube Goldberg machine made of <i>fucking corpses</i>, getting insanely mad, then eventually just getting bored. They managed to invent a Rube Goldberg machine that on final examination is just banal: the ultimate banality of finance capitalism, which not even The Wolf of Wall Street could make look anything other than repulsive and tedious.</div><div><br /></div><div>Understanding that this is all a huge dumb alchemy mechanism for turning coal into a virtual gold by way of Chinese power plants helpfully clarifies why cryptokitty design contradicts itself fundamentally. The breeding mechanics and extra bullshit? It's just a pretext. The Rube Goldberg really is a mechanism for generating token uniqueness: literally, unique tokens, non fungible tokens, tokens that hold different values due to their attached artistic content, and so cannot be used interchangeably. But also, <i>token</i> uniqueness, uniqueness that only exists on a surface level, because it only needs to be surface level in order to fulfill a minimum of it's pitch to investors.</div><div><br /></div><div>Once you comprehend this it makes more sense why competitors to cryptokitties don't even try not to look like complete dogshit. Did I go a little easy on cryptokitties? Well, it's probably cause I researched the whole field before writing that individual section. I knew what was coming. Folks, take a look at Hashmasks:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIckdTBu9zsY-UHPJC65qA8PfjYTz-X1xhCFDt7WTh3M08dpwV4HQULY-euf5vO3cjC-vw3jx81kD0NNzsiOJ-U6zYzr5BM3UKZkeGEQPqQ1gi4baAnHytUcpuo_3n5kfrAPITJIcn4A//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="754" data-original-width="1233" height="392" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIckdTBu9zsY-UHPJC65qA8PfjYTz-X1xhCFDt7WTh3M08dpwV4HQULY-euf5vO3cjC-vw3jx81kD0NNzsiOJ-U6zYzr5BM3UKZkeGEQPqQ1gi4baAnHytUcpuo_3n5kfrAPITJIcn4A/w640-h392/image.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.thehashmasks.com/gallery" target="_blank">Hashmasks </a>come from corporation Suum Cuique Labs, a company founded by economics majors and based in--and I'm sure this is purely coincidence connected in no way to the stuff I said earlier about the art market--Switzerland. Their name is latin translating to "To each his own." Hm. They are randomly generated by slapping together a body type, a background, an eye color, and a mask, which I guess does count as a "process" in some sense, though not much of one. There are a few variations of each broad mask archetype, and background get recolored, but unlike cryptokitties there seem to be no controls that would allow one part of a hashmask's morphology to affect another part.</div><div><br /></div><div>What stands out to me about hashmasks is that they're as ugly as they are lazy as they are appropriative. Look at the weird pose they're all in. Isn't that something? Isn't that fucking weird looking? It's cause a few of them are holding items and the developers were too lazy or too incompetent to put in any sort of controls that would have a torso style and arm position shift to accommodate those details. This is, and I cannot stress this enough, basic ass shit that any self respecting Picrew creator would not accept. Many of the sprites have weird transparent bodies which maybe is supposed to come across as artsy but mostly just looks like a generation error. The designs are both noisy in the individual (at least cryptokitties had color scheme generation controls!) and dull in aggregate, quickly revealing themselves as profoundly repetitive. There's no real generation strategy to speak of here, just greater rarity of certain individual features popping up. From this lunatic gold bug perspective, perhaps mass hideousness of the images are not a bug, but a feature, driving up the value of those pieces that don't inspire revulsion.</div><div><br /></div><div>I feel like maybe the incredible contempt I have for these might offend some sensibilities. Didn't artists work hard to create the individual components of these awful trainwrecks? Yeah, I mean, maybe, but I'm not sure how my calling these out as ugly as hell is more offensive than the incredible contempt that Suum Cuique shows for its artists and its buyers. Look how the bottle in this image sorta awkwardly sits on top of the arm, with no attempt made to do the bare minimum of integrating the two component images:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvT-xA3ockIHXX86kq9ins2X5vWGu7Rq9Rz9_4U8gKqxEjtjh6dQUzjuOX82pEs9L2wKvnZsYz0P70dFhM3jmvQ459z-hNP3kOugJqQCGVQeqPro0bQKggD99kkj13OE4WSVaEYhhArg//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="785" data-original-width="567" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvT-xA3ockIHXX86kq9ins2X5vWGu7Rq9Rz9_4U8gKqxEjtjh6dQUzjuOX82pEs9L2wKvnZsYz0P70dFhM3jmvQ459z-hNP3kOugJqQCGVQeqPro0bQKggD99kkj13OE4WSVaEYhhArg/w461-h640/image.png" width="461" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><div>The message of this artwork is "fuck you, hog, you'll take what we give you," and I actually think it would be more offensive to waste your time and mine by critiquing the component art here in good faith. The unique never to be repeated ever on The Immutable Blockchain name for this piece is simply "<a href="https://www.thehashmasks.com/detail/15" target="_blank">pepe</a>". Let's not pretend anyone involved in actually profiting off of hashmasks as either corporate heads or cryptoart speculators is looking at these because they just love the backgrounds. If I like some of the pieces, the best I can do to honor them is to excoriate the artists' bosses.</div><div><br /></div><div>Just who were the artists behind hashmasks though?</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh I am so glad you asked. :)</div><div><br /></div><div>The website brags that these icons were created by "over 70 artists" supposedly spamming the globe. That was autocorrect for "spanning" but fuck it I'm keeping it in, it fits well enough. This description might just be enough to head one major critique of hashmasks: that they are grotesquely appropriative, quite literally culture as costume. Suum Cuique helpfully provided a way of searching for particular features, such as mask types. One of the options there concisely just reads: "African." </div><div><br /></div><div>Now, is it just me, or is there's something a bit galling about a company from famous Nazi gold funded economy Switzerland creating Supercopyright Art of nebulous tribal masks and Basquiat ripoffs? Oh hey as an unrelated side note, I looked up that "to each his own" slogan the company's named after and <a href="https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Suum_cuique" target="_blank">there's some VERY interesting historical uses listed under 'Motto'. </a></div><div><br /></div><div>NEAT!</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7L-AJ0ZGQ0vRyPX6PriTOJdw5EREVDKO9L39AS1a9gNQubdtctXJoitd_BbcF76h-LayBeTBFrNRCsadUKwnmNWl0OuaCmY3_y8QNcz7yRoXgW_GqqdxZKXaJffIK4mPHa318AtzM1g//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1440" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7L-AJ0ZGQ0vRyPX6PriTOJdw5EREVDKO9L39AS1a9gNQubdtctXJoitd_BbcF76h-LayBeTBFrNRCsadUKwnmNWl0OuaCmY3_y8QNcz7yRoXgW_GqqdxZKXaJffIK4mPHa318AtzM1g/w640-h400/Screenshot+%2528199%2529.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div>Anyway, now that I'm done going shrieking deranged from that brief bit of research, I think I was talking about them ripping off Basquiat?</div><div><br /></div><div>Basquiat, street artist turned gallery darling and protege of Warhol, isn't the only person whose style and methods were ganked to make these, either. I spy color field painting reminiscent of Frankenthaler and Rothko, some noodly images that look suspiciously like knockoff Harring, and of course, in the example above, a random fucking chapter from Moby Dick. Sure! Based on all that I've said about procedural art, it might come as a surprise that I despise this. But there's such an obvious qualitative difference between the appropriation happening here--cynical, meaningless, suggesting less than nothing by its juxtapositions--and the reframing taking place in clipping.'s rendition of Piano Burning.</div><div><br /></div><div>Style isn't copyrightable, and on the whole that's a good thing. The turn towards process is also a good thing; everyone should have the opportunity to create art. From that perspective, it's true that Suum Cuique Labs infringe nothing with these pieces. From an art perspective, though, that's sort of beside the point. They cynically take advantage of open culture to enclose it again, aspiring to use blockchain to create Supercopyright with ludicrously high buy-in. And more to the point perhaps, this free ganking is a tacit acknowledgement that the artists they got were simply not good enough to achieve anything other than a bad copy of a dead black artist's style.</div><div><br /></div><div>But ah I never did get around to talking about those 70 global artists did I? That was an oversight on my part! Let me just check on-</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh, that's odd, it's impossible to find any CREDITS for any of this art? That information is completely absent from the site? <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hashmasks-setting-standard-digital-art-143000836.html" target="_blank">And the company founders are entirely anonymous, going by "John Doe!"</a> How curious that is. So I can't really talk about the artists at all, can I "John"? Not that I'm alleging that they don't exist or anything like that, of course! It's entirely possible that this really is a global art group and not just a slightly more talented Hans from Stuttgart producing Maori mask pastiches for South African apartheid profiteers like Elon Musk to speculate on.</div><div><br /></div><div>But if that's the case why are the artists uncredited? Why not put them front and center? </div><div><br /></div><div>What is front and center is <a href="https://www.thehashmasks.com/faq" target="_blank">a whole lot of information about these tokens as a store of value and generator of wealth</a>. Oh and some stuff about how you can name and group these hideous things if you choose. Actually that's one of the selling points. The website proudly displays people's collections of these things with people's attempts at goofy curatorial statements. The consumer is an artist! In fact, in the absence of any artist credits, and in the complete alienation from the ability to produce art personally, the consumer is the ONLY artist. Buying the right products to put on a virtual shelf is the only artistry in this space. Pretty bleak stuff.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh, it's worth noting though that I can identify one person involved with the project. Their community manager outreach person or whatever actually got in touch after my last article to explain that yes he had definitely read the piece and also the future of NFTs was bright! After a predictably imbecilic conversation in which he resolutely failed to understand that if I have a jpeg on my computer, I've got it, I have the image, I own it, basic stuff that I would've assumed was incontrovertible obvious fact, <a href="https://twitter.com/robslasagna/status/1410055648050618372" target="_blank">I prodded him into revealing he HADN'T read the article, and he flounced angrily out of the conversation</a>. It's possible he'll actually read this one and get mad, but well, if he was interested in putting in any effort, he wouldn't be involved in such a slipshod operate as hashmasks to begin with, would he?</div><div><br /></div><div>There's one final semi-procedural NFT art nonsense I want to touch on, but just as cryptocurrency in general sent me through stages of fascination to rage to boredom, I find myself at the end of this article, burnt out and bored with "cryptopunks". Like, here's the thing, right:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTpzSEBm71b1gsxk7emlz_pyIE-JOksosC4-HoBHOEtZOYJc1tI5acSS857ekSaABHuFLl8cldjK0broJJmMff9V0WVc6_89cWRWt9m1nMit0opxHIau3OibZHZDy7WB0_ltFgmiwC0A//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="1213" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTpzSEBm71b1gsxk7emlz_pyIE-JOksosC4-HoBHOEtZOYJc1tI5acSS857ekSaABHuFLl8cldjK0broJJmMff9V0WVc6_89cWRWt9m1nMit0opxHIau3OibZHZDy7WB0_ltFgmiwC0A/w640-h182/image.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><div>I, too, read Diesel Sweeties in 2004.</div><div><br /></div><div>Nothing about <a href="https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks" target="_blank">cryptopunks</a> looks visually particularly impressive to me. It seems from news coverage like maybe they were procedurally generated, but if they were they seem to have been pre-baked and then released after curation. Whatever. Like I said before, this stuff is token generation. The point is just to churn out a bunch of images as lazily as possible to justify their use as a speculative asset.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hashmasks deserved analysis simply for being so offensively cynical. Cryptopunks are so bland that I just can't even work up a good head of steam.</div><div><br /></div><div>No, I'm mostly interested in them because of their place in the art world. Cryptopunks have appeared in at least one actual gallery: the Kate Vass gallery- sorry, "<span style="font-style: italic;">Galerie</span>" <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190716200848/https://www.katevassgalerie.com/exhibitions/25/overview/" target="_blank">included them in a show a few years ago with other blockchain artists</a>. <a href="https://www.larvalabs.com/blog/2019-2-1-15-1/a-physical-model-for-digital-art-ownership-the-cryptopunks-in-their-first-gallery-show" target="_blank">The enthusiastic writeup on the cryptopunks website</a>, however, doesn't talk about what it means to be in an art show with artists like, most notably, Ai Weiwei. There's no situating of the art in a context, no comparison with works that are also in the show...</div><div><br /></div><div>No, what they spend time on is, you guessed it, the technology they used to verify that the prints were in fact one of a kind. If you wanted to SELL the print you would have to unseal a wax-sealed envelope on the back and sell the associated NFT on the blockchain as well, or, something. This all sounds pretty stupid to me, but it's what they decided to present as their great artistic innovation in lieu of any other critical framework, so, fine.</div><div><br /></div><div>The <span style="font-style: italic;">gallerie</span> is no better. The page for the show announces three major talks for the show:</div><div><br /></div><div style="margin-left: 40px;">10 YEARS BITCOIN - A BIG IDEA CELEBRATES ITS BIRTHDAY (not about art)</div><div style="margin-left: 40px;">THE CRYPTO VALLEY ECOSYSTEM (not about art)</div><div style="margin-left: 40px;">ASSET-BACKED COINS: ART COIN & CO. (not about art but art tokenization)</div><div><br /></div><div>It's clear that the gallery also is disinterested in questions of art history, meaning, theme, aesthetic, affect, social impact, or any of the other countless values that art has held at one time or another for critics through the centuries. No, they are interested in asset management, and in particular promoting cryptocurrency as an investment vehicle. One would think that a <span style="font-style: italic;">galerie</span> would show more interest in the actual artwork on its walls! <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200218094407/https://www.katevassgalerie.com/about" target="_blank">Strange, I wonder what this place</a>-</div><div><br /></div><div>"Founded in 2016 in 🚨 <span style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">Switzerland</span> 🚨"</div><div><br /></div><div>[slams fist on desk] THEY CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT!!!</div><div><br /></div><div>I can't say I'm overly impressed with the <span style="font-style: italic;">gaeleirie</span>'s overall presentation of its shows generally. It focuses on contemporary digital art, and unfortunately tends to present this art not in a wider history of abstraction but instead breathlessly focuses on "algorithms" and so on. But nowhere is it so disinterested in the content of art as when it touches on crypto. The message is clear; we're all here for one thing and one thing only: speculating on tulips. The color of the bloom is completely beside the point.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think it's inevitable that cryptokitties will be a strange outlier in this field. Its contradictions between wanting a system and ultimately only needing a pretext for financial speculation means that its inevitable competitors will be far more boring and lazy. This process art looks much less like a Rube Goldberg contraption, beautiful for its process and the way the individual artist/performer enacts it, and a lot more like factory production again. They've just hit on a way to make the deep contradictions of this process work to their benefit: if they're forced by the market to embrace automation to produce their product, they can turn that automation and its completely arbitrary limited use into a point of prestige.</div><div><br /></div><div>Cryptocurrency, as a pure expression of libertarian brain worms, portends where capital as a whole is headed, and the lazy implementations we can expect in the future from procedural art. I do think we're rapidly reaching a point where elements of artistic production can be outsourced to more sophisticated neural net systems. Oh, I don't mean that we've reached a point where the machines can just make art. No, what they can do is smaller menial tasks. Generating large lists of things that are plugged into a manually curated procgen grammar system, for example. I've done this before for my procgen games! It's very handy, when I'm feeling a bit creatively stuck, to take an existing grammar and dump it into a site like <a href="https://bellard.org/textsynth/" target="_blank">Text Synth</a> in order to see the surreal outputs the machine suggests, then <a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/signal-garden-demo" target="_blank">incorporate them into my own games</a>. Elsewhere in the industry, voice actors worry that their recordings will be used to generate AI models that can fill in "barks", short utterances in games that are often repeated, contextual, and throwaway. The technology to rapidly alter and finish artwork continues to expand, and while a lot of NFT art has the look of "existing image with a bad photoshop filter slapped on", the <a href="https://gmic.eu/" target="_blank">G'MIC library</a> and its implementation in <a href="https://krita.org/en/" target="_blank">libre art program Krita</a> is essential to my workflow at this point.</div><div><br /></div><div>When I wrote last time that we're seeing a deskilling of artistic labor, some people got a bit upset at me. How could I say that digital art was unskilled, which is to say, not good! Well, I didn't say that, in point of fact, and in fact said the opposite, but I stand by the claim that digital art is increasingly easy to produce and that means that the <span style="font-style: italic;">individual average laborer in this job market will be able to command less value</span>. You hear about those Luddites? Guys just hated technology! They smashed up all sorts of, ah, what was it again? Oh right, looms that were transforming their previously skilled cottage labor into something that could be done by anyone employed by a factory. Now, those looms themselves weren't evil! In the right hands and with an equitable model of running an economy, they COULD have meant an explosion of creativity and a higher standard of living for the masses. To an extent they even did do that, just at the cost of emisserating a previously skilled class of laborer and enriching a bunch of factory owning cunts.</div><div><br /></div><div>Various avant gardes of the last century and a half took a long hard look at the implications of automation for their fields and decided to pick a different path than the Luddites. They embraced the possibilities of procedural generation and proclaimed that anyone could, in the end, also make art! Anyone can, after all, follow the procedure to produce a performance of Piano Burning. Anyone can take a rubbing from a wood floor and derive creatures from the result. This is potentially incredibly empowering, as is the beauty of the process and a focus on creating interesting Rube Goldberg machines for spreading art to the masses.</div><div><br /></div><div>NFTs have less than nothing to do with that empowerment. On the contrary, they restrict production back again to people with the familiarity with the ugly, restrictive Rube Goldberg contraption of the blockchain and the ability--often through established clout--to command interest from people with Swiss bank accounts. They race to the bottom, closing off all the most exciting aspects of procedural art in order to generate token uniqueness with the greatest of slapdash efficiency and least actual artistic labor overhead. Eventually, even the technology used to generate the NFTs becomes obscure, a footnote, barely understood by breathless tech and finance reporters, handwaved by art galleries more interested in the art as a compact tax haven. </div><div><br /></div><div>This isn't an indictment of procedural art and the beauty of the Rube Goldberg contraptions we use to make it. It's an indictment of the free market fanaticism that underpins this art, of the small minds that conceived of NFTs, and, if we leave this revolution in art unfinished, if we let them enclose and arbitrarily restrain our creativity to an endless series of Limited Time Offers, an indictment of all of us who might be artists: which is to say, all of us.</div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
The NFT Rube Goldberg Machine
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<a href="https://ko-fi.com/samkeeper" onclick="captureOutboundLink('https://ko-fi.com/samkeeper'); return false;" target="_blank">Or, if you liked this piece, buy me a coffee on Ko-fi!</a></h4>
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<!--THE NFT'S AURA, OR, WHY IS NFT ART SO UGLY?-->
<a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2021/06/the-nfts-aura-or-why-is-nft-art-so-ugly.html" style="text-decoration: none;">
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<div class="bftext">
<h3>The NFT's Aura, or, Why Is NFT Art So Ugly?</h3>
NFT art is bad for the environment, and bad for artists, but critics and supporters of NFT art are both missing a key fact: it's also just bad art. Whether Beeple or Bugmeyer, it's time the stars of the NFT revolution experienced some real art criticism.
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<h3>In The End We All Do What We Must</h3>
Remember Universal Paperclips, that clicker game? Remember turning the human race into paperclips? Ok, so, what if you just... didn't? What would that choice tell us about game design, agency, artificial intelligence, and people?
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<h3>Junetopia</h3>
When Andrew Hussie canonized a transgender character in response to a fan finding a Toblerone he hid in a cave, it was more than just a weird stunt. It was a piece of revolutionary performance art, and an affirmation of a new model for fandom.
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<!--AHOGT--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/123100?bg_color=61003a&fg_color=ffc38a&link_color=006b24&border_color=caffb3" width="552"></iframe>
<!--SIGNAL GARDEN--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/854542?border_width=0&bg_color=110c0c&fg_color=aca1f7&link_color=676767" width="552"><a href="https://samkeeper.itch.io/signal-garden-demo">Signal Garden (Demo) by Sam Keeper</a></iframe>
<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-50025153061419383762021-06-29T14:02:00.002-07:002021-06-29T18:09:56.797-07:00The NFT's Aura, or, Why Is NFT Art So Ugly?<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>NFT art is bad for the environment, and bad for artists, but critics and supporters of NFT art are both missing a key fact: it's also just bad art. Whether Beeple or Bugmeyer, it's time the stars of the NFT revolution experienced some real art criticism.</i></p></blockquote><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj18NTuRLiiS2G0nr_DG7g5R5bhRbNTKOor_-M8yalFExgGIJC5hewLEgz-pVz4cyGBDGZeRf7j4Q4_nEpXJYn5XCtKpuWViT_unz3nIE4fvdMlu9a6poJ_HFVFsmyToLCKGCZGhryoMA//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="968" data-original-width="1359" height="456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj18NTuRLiiS2G0nr_DG7g5R5bhRbNTKOor_-M8yalFExgGIJC5hewLEgz-pVz4cyGBDGZeRf7j4Q4_nEpXJYn5XCtKpuWViT_unz3nIE4fvdMlu9a6poJ_HFVFsmyToLCKGCZGhryoMA/w640-h456/Gold+Beeple+text.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><br /></p><p></p><div style="-en-clipboard: true;">I'm stumbling blearily into the blog again, tangling in cobwebs, picking up a newspaper: "The Non-Fungible Token Market Collapses" the headline reads. Motherfuck! But there's another paper trumpeting an 11 million dollar Sothby's sale of a "cryptopunk." The news about this nascent... medium? content delivery mechanism? is about as volatile as cryptocurrency prices themselves, which is to say, so volatile it's impossible to use as an actual currency. </div><div><br /></div><div>I've got to find my footing, really establish some stable ground, some base on which to build an analysis. I know! I'll just take a look at what the most famous and successful NFT artist in the world, Beeple, <a href="https://twitter.com/beeple/status/1401672308146724867" target="_blank">is producing right n-</a></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihChNaMB-HRDGN-NlDc9aq4rPFIJO_HMr4A4TsQ_xayOWMVI8um4YYYcNd7kIgsbxHeeboFgZ77u50UlZyCK7uUKl8dW9dtpJyq3sjJiwA3GWhMAHVMJWc303QLp5Pd1h1ZJAyi4WzKw//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihChNaMB-HRDGN-NlDc9aq4rPFIJO_HMr4A4TsQ_xayOWMVI8um4YYYcNd7kIgsbxHeeboFgZ77u50UlZyCK7uUKl8dW9dtpJyq3sjJiwA3GWhMAHVMJWc303QLp5Pd1h1ZJAyi4WzKw/w320-h400/image.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><div style="word-break: break-all;">HHHRGGHGLLUGHGLUGHGHGLGHHHHEEEAUURGH.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ok.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ok.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is going to be a problem.</div><div><br /></div><div>For one thing, to talk about this, uh, art, I have to do the obligatory overview of cryptocurrency and NFTs and, here's the thing, <i>I don't want to</i>. It's boring and stupid and explaining it makes me feel like simply going to sleep. You couldn't even talk about Bitcoin in the terms set by its proponents if you wanted to, because the story keeps changing. Is it a currency that uses a distributed consensus mechanism to prevent centralization? lol nope! It's too volatile to work as a currency, and most of the "miners" that receive bitcoin via the consensus mechanism in exchange for carrying out the transfer of funds from one user to another are consolidated into centralized companies. And then there's the environmental impact of the proof-of-work "decentralized" system! Do I even need to talk about that at this point? Yes it's exactly as bad as you heard if not worse, no it's never getting fixed, and if you disagree--well, actually, let me just say up front that if you want a reasoned critique of crypto that respects all sides, you're going to have to go somewhere else, because I simply do not give a shit. The whole thing is a pyramid scheme based on gold bug libertarian cult economics, implemented with tech that burns down a rainforest every time you want to sell a cartoon of a cat. If this isn't sufficient backstory for you, <a href="https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2021/03/11/nfts-crypto-grifters-try-to-scam-artists-again/" target="_blank">here's David Gerard writing about NFTs being a scam</a>. <a href="https://everestpipkin.medium.com/but-the-environmental-issues-with-cryptoart-1128ef72e6a3" target="_blank">Here is also an excellent overview that heavily shaped my own thinking for this series</a>, which analyzes the deeply fucked politics at the heart of NFTs ideologically. If this isn't sufficiently fair and balanced for you, please sit on my hen. I <span style="font-style: italic;">will</span> be charging for the privilege. How's that for some pegged valuation?</div><div><br /></div><div>In the back of my mind though a maddening fact gnaws. Something everyone seems to miss. Something obvious enough to fade into the background of all discussion of this new way of packaging and selling art.</div><div><br /></div><div>Everyone talks about crypto art as an investment vehicle.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;">Absolutely no one talks about it as art.</span></div><div><br /></div><div>Who dares critique the cartooning of Cryptokitties, or the ideology of Beeple, or the originality of Cryptopunks, or the cohesion of Hashmasks? This is ostensibly the art of the age! Don't believe me? <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190716200848/https://www.katevassgalerie.com/exhibitions/25/overview/">According to former Magic the Gathering artist Peter Mohrbacher</a>: "Pretty soon collectors of physical paintings are going to demand provenance kept via NFT. Owning a painting without a token will be the domain of yard sale art." Taking this bold claim entirely at face value, why have I not seen any treatment of Mohrbacher's work in the context of his artistic precursors? Typically, work as highly valued as this has a whole critical apparatus around it explaining why it's good enough to command such prices, with information drawn from history, culture, aesthetics, affect, phenomenology, philosophy... and all I ever hear about the value of NFTs is simply: well, it's, uhh, it's on the Blockchain, that's cool right?</div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe I know why, though. As I write this I've already got uhhh 7,280 words in this document, chewing over NFTs, and after putting all that together I've realized something bleak:</div><div><br /></div><div>It's actually very difficult to talk about NFT art <span style="font-style: italic;">as art</span> because most of it is <span style="font-style: italic;">so god damn ugly, vapid, and amateurish</span>. NFT art is like, imagine if you took a bunch of dudes in a high school art fair, then put them in an echo chamber for a decade that constantly told them that everything they did was Epic Bacon, and then finally started handing them million dollar checks for that artwork. Does this sound like an environment where artists would develop self awareness, or intellectual depth, or aesthetic uniqueness, or any of the other stuff that a critic might be interested in?</div><div><br /></div><div>The Beeple piece above is a great example. The piece depicts a crowd of people standing in front of the giant heads of Floyd Mayweather and Logan Paul. Jake Paul? I do not care. The two boxers, who recently had some overhyped meme fight, instead of boxing are... kissing??? WOW! What wild and wacky stuff! The giant heads are on an off-white ground. The piece as a whole is lit in a flat way with muddy colors and what appear to be rather thick and haphazard applications of an opaque medium, possibly acrylic. This is an illusion though: I could be wrong about this but I'm pretty damn sure this is a filter overlaid onto a flatly lit set of 3d models.</div><div><br /></div><div>If it is, it's not working particularly well. The algorithm isn't capable of giving the work an understanding of underpainting or contour so it exacerbates an already flat and unappealing lighting scheme. The large flat areas of flesh tone don't so much invite the contemplation of nuanced color as in a Rothko but rather invite comparisons to a dirty car window. Maybe someday we will teach an algorithm to understand how to paint facial hair better than a ninth grader. Today was not that day. There's no particular color scheme to the art, but it also lacks the unsettling supermarket glare of comparable contemporary photorealistic painting. Several models are used twice, conspicuously so. Is this saying something? I'm struggling to imagine what. If the point was to create a sense of interchangeability in the crowd, why opt for such distinct character models, and then wash everything over with this ugly, obscuring, fake paint stroke effect?</div><div><br /></div><div>The positioning of the heads is stiff and lazy. Like many of Beeple's pieces, the figures have a kind of archaic smile going on, a generic non-expression. Mayweather's face obscures enough of Logan and or Jake's that the muddy blond's profile appears weirdly flattened. Flat flat flat... the rendering is flat, the features are flat, the crowd in space is flat... there's no sense of depth or mass, no sense of the figures looming large over the crowd. Oh and the meaning is flat too. What if instead of fighting, men were... kissing??? Apparently this is "commentary" on the fact that the two douchebags have repeatedly put on pay per view fights where instead of fighting they I guess hugged it out? It all seems dumb as hell if you ask me, and Beeple has not so much commented on it as just... done the thing that the meme is about, again. Alright man. The title of David Gerard's piece above on the NFT scam is "Banksying the Unbanksied." This is a much cleverer joke than anything in this painting.</div><div><br /></div><div>So there's three paragraphs about some high schooler tier art.</div><div><br /></div><div>Was it worth it? Did it feel a little pretentious maybe? A little goofy, to compare Beeple to a Rothko? Well there's the problem! As soon as you actually try to talk about this art <span style="font-style: italic;">as art</span> the whole thing sort of falls apart, it just absolutely cannot stand up to the scrutiny. Doing so is about as cringy for the writer and the reader as it is for the viewer of the art itself, which I have to think is why the entire art world seems committed to talking only about the technology, the transmission mechanism, the great great value, all the swirling bullshit AROUND NFTs rather than, god forbid, the amateurish nonsense itself.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's the art world, though. What's holding everyone else's tongues? People sure seem to AGREE with me. Just like plenty of us have <a href="https://twitter.com/SamFateKeeper/status/1403101192494911493" target="_blank">an idea of, and instinctual revulsion towards, silicon valley graphic styles</a>, plenty of us seem to have <a href="https://twitter.com/SamFateKeeper/status/1401971700535803912" target="_blank">a mental image of "NFT art"</a>. Yet the discussion revolves around subjects like whether or not it actually pays artists (it doesn't) and how bad the environmental impact is (appalling). Admittedly important, but kinda missing a major part of how we talk about art!</div><div><br /></div><div>I think bashing the art itself is kind of taboo because we're inclined to see the artists involved as victims of the pyramid scheme. That's, I mean, that's fair, to a point. There's a reason I started out here making gagging noises at Beeple, someone who is being paid millions of dollars* (may not be exchangeable in any way for actual money of any sort) and not some rando who's been sucked in by promises of quick profits in a crushingly unprofitable field. Unlike someone at the bottom of the scheme drawn in by the evangelizing of Beeple or Mohrbacher or corporations cranking out procgen slop, those evangelizers strike me as fair fucking game.</div><div><br /></div><div>These big beneficiaries can prey on people's basic empathy, however, and exploit a sneaky sleight of hand that conflates workers with, in one way or another, their bosses. Lots of that going around lately, as I'll get into later.</div><div><br /></div><div>But it makes criticizing NFT art as an aesthetic phenomenon with shared similarities, a shared target audience, shared practices and methodologies and perhaps even politics, well... just mean! Don't you care about the feelings of all those smol artists with anxiety who are just trying to get paid? It's very important that we should be Supporting Artists, after all. The entire pyramid scheme's marketing is premised on this: Supporting Artists. This is a sick joke, given the deep hostility of this technology and its proponents to artists, but it responds to an existing set of crisis conditions in digital art:</div><div><br /></div><div>What value does digital art have?</div><div><br /></div><div>This question is troubling because digging into it at all means recognizing the complex, tangled knot of ideas that are wrapped up in the term "value". Obviously, there's the basics: how much will someone pay for this, how much time and energy and material went into its production, and how much worth does it have affectively, intellectually, aesthetically, and so on. Some of the crisis emerges out of contradictions here: it's increasingly easy with contemporary modeling technologies and digital paint and photobashing programs to produce images that are Pretty Cool. I mean it'd be easy, right, if all this stuff was Beeple-tier. In fact it'd be easier if all Beeple was as bad as <span style="font-style: italic;">average</span> Beeple! But it's gotten much easier in terms of time spent on an individual work, time spent learning underlying skills, time and money spent on materials, and effort expended gaining an audience, to produce works that are, at minimum, pretty decent looking, and at maximum actually thought provoking.</div><div><br /></div><div>This should be one of the best things to happen to art, but because we live in capitalism, instead it sucks. It fucking sucks!</div><div><br /></div><div>Art is an increasingly proletarianized field. The people who produce cartoons or video game art or paintings for trading card games or comics are... I mean, have they ever been this interchangeable? Have there ever been this <span style="font-style: italic;">many</span> of them? These art "tokens" might be non-fungible, but the ease of making and distributing art makes it easier than ever before to treat the artistic workforce as fungible, interchangeable cogs. The same is true of writing and music, and the industries with the least developed organized labor (games, anime, comics, pop music) are where we see this manifest in astonishing abuse and exploitation. Moreover, our consumption patterns for this art has moved heavily towards experiencing these now easily produced and shared works as part of an endless feed, each fragment just a little bit of everything all of the time, and the people primarily profiting off this sharing economy are the platforms themselves, who have no obligation to give any sort of kickback to a deskilled creative class dependent on those platforms for what paying customers they can scrounge!</div><div><br /></div><div>The fix for this is clear: we must restore the Aura of the artwork, that special something that makes it unique and valuable, the whole chain of provenance that you can just sense when an art object can't be mechanically reproduced, its non-copyability and non-fungibility. At least, that's what crypto people think Walter Benjamin's "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" says, anyway. For Benjamin, the Aura is the whole authority and history of a work of art or architecture or even a landscape, its whole history and its place within tradition. That tradition for Benjamin is stifling and fascist, and he celebrates the way mechanical reproduction inevitably depreciates this value! Not only do NFT apologists miss what everyone else can plainly see--you can screenshot or just copy the files attached to an NFT and then you "own" it just as much as the person whose wallet it supposedly sits in--they miss that Benjamin revels in this overthrow of the Aura! Art freed from the authority of the single object can meet the audience "half way", in new contexts, with new juxtapositions. That, for society, is value, and blaming the current struggles of artists on the loss of Aura is absurd, let alone imagining you can suck all the paint back into the tube and provide an Aura just by firing up some more coal plants. It's a TED talk understanding of the theory.</div><div><br /></div><div>No, it's better to understand the rise of the NFT as a move within a social field of production. Pierre Bourdieu has a lot to say about fields of social production, and says it with diagrams that look like this:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguzmsDTU8jSw7j8JdCT-qauU8pvChlOnne6MPuf27mER9en5vo7OUpNyv88lWY2oWOmyDF1eHr376UHWELkUzOQkWtGjo0vEMQEF925C5WXKSfLZJ6NwQ9ThBJxhS0uxk3F1jX_emkyg//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="489" data-original-width="630" height="497" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguzmsDTU8jSw7j8JdCT-qauU8pvChlOnne6MPuf27mER9en5vo7OUpNyv88lWY2oWOmyDF1eHr376UHWELkUzOQkWtGjo0vEMQEF925C5WXKSfLZJ6NwQ9ThBJxhS0uxk3F1jX_emkyg/w640-h497/image.png" width="640" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div>which I had to read for this article so fuck you all very much for that. Bourdieu sees artistic production not as just <span style="font-family: courier;">[artist does work => work has value]</span>, but as a whole complex field creating capital and also social capital, produced by artists, educators, museums and other institutions, critics, and peers. The value of art as capital comes from this interplay of a whole lot of labor, and everyone in the constantly shifting field is making plays and moves to try and capitalize on their position. </div><div><br /></div><div>One frustrating position to be in is a commercial artist particularly a commercial artist acting as a gun for hire for the big studios that produce our culture. Those producers might be able to acquire payment directly for their services, but they're shut out of fine art spaces which operate on topsy-turvy logic, spaces where in the short term you struggle as an avant garde participant, acquire cultural cache, and eventually you (or... your gallery or your early investors...) can cash out, converting cultural capital into material capital. Digital art is sort of stuck in the worst of all worlds, ubiquitous but unable on an individual level to cash in due to a glutted field; using new media but unable due to that media's association with pop franchise freelancer work to attain cultural cache.</div><div><br /></div><div>Until the marvelous NFT! NFT artists often come from fields such as 3d cgi art, digital fantasy painting for trading card games and videogames, pixel art, voxel art, photobashing, &c. NFTs have provided a way to secure the interest and attention of art investors (tax dodgers, money launderers, financial speculators...) because they've repackaged these works in a form that makes their asset class, if not their artistic subjects or techniques, into a new avant garde. Now seemingly overnight what was kitsch demands serious consideration.</div><div><br /></div><div>This results astounding levels of cringe, such as this image and text, proudly displayed <a href="https://www.christies.com/features/Monumental-collage-by-Beeple-is-first-purely-digital-artwork-NFT-to-come-to-auction-11510-7.aspx" target="_blank">on the Christie's auction house website</a>, in their paean to Beeple's artistic brilliance:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRNyIO15kyo9tpmyN24FT4fxDK7QYeHFsJRs0_IrYby7cLJggJlcM5OnypQT9kvM-fcNFa8I7mZBbGfI84S7faZKDfOya-ABXtIZry1RixLdLCnsGe9x9YjxBi3RGQYtCnIyYajDv4TA//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="709" data-original-width="1214" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRNyIO15kyo9tpmyN24FT4fxDK7QYeHFsJRs0_IrYby7cLJggJlcM5OnypQT9kvM-fcNFa8I7mZBbGfI84S7faZKDfOya-ABXtIZry1RixLdLCnsGe9x9YjxBi3RGQYtCnIyYajDv4TA/w640-h374/image.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Oh my god the dumb guy smugness of this.</div><div><br /></div><div>Commentary without a coherent worldview, politics as pure vapid meme, protest art as pure riff. The blatantly prebuilt assets cobbled crudely together with a questionable understanding of caricature (there's that archaic smile!) suggest a "yo dude wouldn't it be fuckin sick if-" approach to art, to politics, and to life. Beeple perfectly has captured the image of his audience: dumb, easily amused, easier to impress, convinced that because they are on twitter they're politically engaged, in some sense. Christie's has captured in turn the image of <i>its</i> audience: bankers who don't give a fuck what they're buying so long as it's square, makes them look hip, and can be used as a speculative asset class. All that matters is that the machinery can consecrate this as worthy of gaining social and real capital.</div><div><br /></div><div>And god damn is the machinery having to work overtime to consecrate this dogshit:</div><div><br /></div><div><blockquote>‘Beeple is looking at his whole body of work as it’s presented on Instagram as a kind of Duchampian readymade’ — specialist Noah Davis</blockquote></div><div><br /></div><div>MOTHERFUCKER IT'S NOT A READYMADE! HE MADE THE ARTWORK!!! THAT'S NOT A READYMADE IT'S JUST A GALLERY SPACE!!!! You can see the smoke rising as the cogwheels and gears of the consecration machine inside this guy's head spin wildly, frantically, trying to create some explanation for how presenting a body of work created in a slapdash way constitutes itself a triumphant artwork that, most importantly, will make Christies auction house a whoooooole lot of money.</div><div><br /></div><div>Though, maybe they have a point. Benjamin describes the "barbarism" of Dada as a precursor to film, a bullet to the head in terms of experience, something that impacts and does not invite contemplation. You don't sit and admire the contours of "Fountain", you get smacked in the balls by it and just have to work through the immediate response. So, Benjamin says, it is with cinema, which throws up a bunch of information rapid fire and which is received as a mass, distractedly.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's where much of the art of the NFT shines, actually: scrolling through a twitter feed. Close contemplation of a successful Beeple isn't necessarily rewarding. It's, as I've noted, pastiche. The best of his works are engaging to be sure, they have a certain spooky vibe that can capitalize on the growing awareness over the last few decades of a surreal power to sci fi and fantasy illustration. Only one such piece makes it onto the Christie's gallery:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy3Cv0_kyYg2IO8y3Zxa1Rdgv5ZTh1Klt-VRVWwTxk-NSHEm_yH6W2HKRHG13p_P7UGY4Z7L7xon2aNh8SbQR18r8FJDuftmCgcZgSoFMASeu3e88gk7Gn5hTLITQDq8C2YChyphenhyphenfRdOOQ//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1638" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy3Cv0_kyYg2IO8y3Zxa1Rdgv5ZTh1Klt-VRVWwTxk-NSHEm_yH6W2HKRHG13p_P7UGY4Z7L7xon2aNh8SbQR18r8FJDuftmCgcZgSoFMASeu3e88gk7Gn5hTLITQDq8C2YChyphenhyphenfRdOOQ/w512-h640/image.png" width="512" /></a></div><div><br /></div>At best this feels like an interesting, ominous commentary on what we might call the Lovecraft or the Basilisk tendency in contemporary fascism, a worship of vast, inhuman systems. At worst, it feels like Beeple watched Star Wars too many times. At the very least, the reused prebuilt assets here suggest uncanny conformity, and the texture and lighting create a feel somewhere between a washed out paperback and a 70s polaroid. The piece is good, though I think it compares unfavorably to other artists doing similar work with inhuman, alien objects intruding into life. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'd contrast it for example with Simon Stålenhag, whose choice of rural rather than cliche urban cyberpunk environments in which to introduce androids or large neon advertisements or distant megastructures, has the effect of defamiliarizing our own environment. <a href="https://www.simonstalenhag.se/index.html" target="_blank">His most recent series</a>, Europa Mekano, depicts a smoggy sky lit by vast advertisement projections, which to me doesn't suggest so much speculative future fiction but a derealized present, a recognition that but for a few cosmetic differences in technology, we're basically here. Stålenhag's work also operates maybe best in the twitter feed, but it operates there partly because it provides a jolt that might make us see our present conditions with fresh eyes. Interestingly, Stålenhag a few months ago professed skepticism about NFTs, and apologists reacted with steadily increasing attempts to sell him on it. After fully alienating him from the whole thing with their deranged cult behavior, some of them took matters into their own hands: they began minting tokens of his artwork on their own without permission, forcibly enclosing on his commons.</div><div><br /></div><div>Back to crypto artists though. Peter Mohrbacher--remember, the "everyone not buying into this is doing yard sale art" guy from the beginning of the article?--is another dude who shines best on the feed. That's fitting: his art also shines best in its original setting of trading card games, most notably Magic the Gathering. Like Benjamin's film, pieces of TCG art are at their most interesting when gathered together in a mass, part of a continuous roiling boil of Cool Shit tossed onto a playing field, and now, tossed up by the Internet. That's actually not a strike against Mohrbacher. <a href="https://twitter.com/bugmeyer/status/1409938567757975563" target="_blank">His big weird angel paintings are cool</a>. They're cool shit. And I like to see cool shit as much as the next woman. I have a side twitter that I just use to follow a few hobbies, a lot of furry porn artists, and Cool Shit. Mohrbacher, till I unfollowed him because the crypto shilling and general dipshit behavior was annoying and repellent, sat on my furry porn and cool shit feed, alongside artists that his work sometimes resembles: bots that tweet out Zdzisław Beksiński and Max Ernst and Hieronymus Bosch. Post-surrealists, surrealists, proto-surrealists... they resonate with Mohrbacher's work but they're not quite the same. When I look at a Beksiński I feel compelled to take in all its textures and ambiguities. When I look at an Ernst I marvel at the emergence of form from chaotic surrealist methodologies. It's pretty subjective, but I have to say, I don't really feel compelled that way by Mohrbacher. In this sense, Mohrbacher's art situates better into my experience of art-as-distracted-mass. The surrealism of the individual work, contemplated as a series of jolts and attempts to reason, is outmoded compared to the surrealism of the gestalt flow, countless images contributing to an overall sensibility.</div><div><br /></div><div>Beeple and Mohrbacher and others in other words took their works and completely removed them from the one place in which they shine as the art of the present: completely unbounded meme distribution, aesthetic experiences without Aura, without original, without a set history or place. They made art designed for that sphere, and locked it behind a trading mechanism powered by burning rainforests.</div><div><br /></div><div>The product being labored over for the contemporary artist of social media is not "the work of art" but "the gestalt experience of art-posting". From that perspective, artists might be more or less successful but the same is true of any gig economy worker. Imagine if every warehouse worker could simply be timed and optimized and would have their livelihoods determined by their profit making metrics! We're headed in that direction but this will not make Amazon employees entrepreneurs, it just will make them proletarians subject to a particularly horrific conditioning, the final dream of Fordism. Twitter and Patreon aren't that, just yet, but I think once you stop seeing people using it as producing individual WORKS but producing a WHOLE GESTALT EXPERIENCE it's more apparent that these workers are profoundly fungible. Twitter has finally successfully done for all forms of art what factory production did for ceramics and textiles, which the Arts and Crafts movement struggled hopelessly against. And all without producing a standardized product at all!</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, without standardization up to a point. Part of the disciplining of this proletariat is the constant threat of stepping too far out of aesthetic line in the context of a deep cultural conservativism. Is this why so much NFT art is so insipid? So without challenge? So dominated by cishet white dudes doing garbage derivative computer models of shit they've seen in the movies? There's so much Ready Player One shit, and yet the artists that need the most help, the queers who often produce difficult complex and unique work and also, not coincidentally, do various forms of sex work, are not for the most part involved in the NFT revolution. Maybe it's just that we're a little too smart for our own good: we've seen the promise of technology and we've seen the actual misery it often brings us, and the way queers and sex workers are used to build up platforms to a certain size and then dumped when e.g. Livejournal or Tumblr or most recently <a href="https://www.cinemablend.com/television/2569268/why-onlyfans-trying-get-away-porn-content-celebrity-news" target="_blank">OnlyFans</a> decide they want legitimacy. Aside from a few people who are willing to say do dev work for Curtis Yarvin, we don't get sucked into the cult of technocracy. But this is also convenient. It's convenient that we can always be destroyed at a moment if some teenager raised on abstinence only sex ed and TERF/SWERF tumblr propaganda decides they don't like how we fuck. It's convenient that we are part of the crab bucket. </div><div><br /></div><div>And it's convenient that sometimes the chef reaches down and pulls out a Beeple or a Mohrbacher and everyone can see that this crab is given a lovely new tank and lots of anchovies! It gives us something to aspire to. It makes it seem like we're not what we are:</div><div><br /></div><div>Workers.</div><div><br /></div><div>Workers who are being exploited by the most massive corporations that the world has ever known, because we are all bored, and we all crave having our crab bucket filled with some stimulation toys, and we are happy, because it is simply human nature to want to express oneself, to produce the content that Twitter needs to make its profits. NFTs represent the promise that someday we might too be pulled out of the bucket we're all constantly dragging each other back into, that if we just hustle hard enough we can rise from the level of Artisan pumping out products to Artiste, consecrated in glory on high.</div><div><br /></div><div>And if everyone says they can see the aura glowing around the work, well, it's gotta be there! We have the software to prove it! </div><div><br /></div><div>Just don't spoil the fun by looking too closely at the actual art.</div><br /><p></p>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
The NFT Aura
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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<h3>Culture Kept In Its Coffin: How The Netflix Model Buries Our Media History</h3>
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<h3>Save Spidey! Into the Spider-Verse's Failure and Promise</h3>
Can Spider-Man matter outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
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<!--WKTW--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/443013?bg_color=2a2a2a&fg_color=f4e4b8&link_color=5bf5fa&border_color=000000" width="552"></iframe>
<!--AHOGT--><iframe frameborder="0" height="167" src="https://itch.io/embed/123100?bg_color=61003a&fg_color=ffc38a&link_color=006b24&border_color=caffb3" width="552"></iframe>Sam Keeperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00863236889998956170noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56230747868041478.post-9366468464352611432021-06-21T11:45:00.001-07:002021-06-21T12:13:41.547-07:00In Search Of More Applause: 'Inside' And The World Neoliberalism Promised<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Bo Burnham's movie "Inside" stretches the term "comedy special" till it shatters. Why does its clutter of fragments cut so deep? Maybe because of how it reflects the world neoliberalism promised us...</i></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>content include: spoilers for Inside, neoliberalism, suicide, jokes about suicide, jokes about jokes about suicide, self-referentiality, audience hostility, alienation.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD1BXbP9iPf8vdpNCF4pfLjMdgVPEgCdKU74bA-TPahyAAe3jsikBmfSqEYjDWvs5FO885ZzkBBbJuW6DSwbTPxfTIT5ekEySHetbWDDp1Tm8B4KuHey9kzjMyv9lI84yzs56bQvnGJw//" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1440" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD1BXbP9iPf8vdpNCF4pfLjMdgVPEgCdKU74bA-TPahyAAe3jsikBmfSqEYjDWvs5FO885ZzkBBbJuW6DSwbTPxfTIT5ekEySHetbWDDp1Tm8B4KuHey9kzjMyv9lI84yzs56bQvnGJw/w640-h400/inside.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The sickest joke in the Netflix "comedy special" Inside comes right at the end. After the credits roll, after the whole experience Bo Burnham drags his audience through, text appears and reassures the viewer: if you are feeling suicidal, there is a hotline you can call.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course, describing a suicide hotline message as a sick joke is me making, you guessed, it a sick joke of my own. Oh shit, am I really joking at a time like this? Yeah I am, and I bet some of you are nodding along and maybe even sorta doing a smile that's not really a smile, laughing in a way that doesn't reach your eyes. You get it right? Ha ha ha.</div><div><br /></div><div>Does that come off as mean spirited or edgy or in bad taste? Maybe it just comes off like I and the people like me are laughing at the expense of people who don't get it. That's not really my intent, though, to leave people out of the joke. That's what my articles are for, after all! Explaining the joke. At <span style="font-style: italic;">agonizing</span> length.</div><div><br /></div><div>This joke at least is pretty straightforward. Have I already talked about that moment at the end of Hamlet that I love, where some assholes come into the middle of a bloodbath and are just like hey where's Hamlet we killed his buddies for him, Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are dead! And it's just comical, it's just too much on top of everything else. That's what the end statement feels like to me and why I actually did laugh the first time I saw it. Like, ok, so, Bo Burnham set out to make this comedy special, right? Five years after quitting comedy in the face of mental health struggles, he was ready to get back out there and un-quit. Bo Burnham would return to comedy in 2020. "And then," he intones during the penultimate song of the special, "the funniest thing happened..."</div><div><br /></div><div>So. Inside is Bo Burnham sitting in a strange, maybe weirdly undersized, apartment for a year trying to spend a fuckton of Netflix money to make a Netflix special. Inside chronicles how Burnham slowly goes mad during this process. It explores not just isolation but the state of politics, the melting icecaps, the constant weird alienation of the internet, and countless other things all combine and contribute to that mental decline. The early parts of Inside broadly satirize our digital culture, but poking fun at boomers being unable to hold their phones properly during video calls gradually gives way to a more bombed out horror at the state of the world, the absurdity less Monty Python and more Waiting For Godot.</div><div><br /></div><div>It feels like Burnham set out to make a normal ass comedy special and ended up creating our modern day equivalent of Dark Side of the Moon, a catalogue of all the things that just drive you a little bit <span style="font-style: italic;">crazy</span>. I'm astonished, actually, at just how easily Inside slotted into <a href="https://www.stormingtheivorytower.com/2020/08/room-for-you-inside-pink-floyd-in.html" target="_blank">my prearranged plans for a whole series of articles revolving around Pink Floyd's magnum opus on madness, The Wall</a>. So well did it mirror my fascination with other films featuring protagonists stuck in a particular modern location, descending into madness, and watching their environment also go mad in parallel, that it caused me to get off my ass and write, ah, let me see, the SECOND article in this planned book length series, after almost a fucking YEAR.</div><div><br /></div><div>Part of the reason it slotted in so perfectly is it feels like the logical endpoint of the whole thrust of my argument. The series starts with the rise of Neoliberalism chronicled in The Wall and The Final Cut. And now, with Inside, it ends with the end of Neoliberalism, not vanquished by even mild social reform but collapsing as the entire world grinds slowly to a stop. Inside repeatedly returns to politics. There's a lot I could say about "How The World Works," where Burnham's left hand literally is a sockpuppet spouting leftist critiques, only to be ripped off Burnham's hand and sent back to liminal hell when it insults Burnham's ego and privilege too much. There's much I could say about the opening song which promises to "heal the world with comedy, making a literal difference--metaphorically."</div><div><br /></div><div>But the songs that most feel emblematic to me are the Bezos songs.</div><div><br /></div><div>Two songs in the movie are celebrations of Jeffrey Bezos and his money, so much fucking money. The first track encourages Jeffrey Bezos to take his rivals and "fuck their wives, drink their blood". The second track, appearing with a jump cut after Burnham announces that he plans to never finish the project at all, is an absurd piece where, dressed as a shrub and backlit by red laser patterns, Burnham simply croons Bezos's name over dramatic synths before exclaiming with elation: "You did it!!" The world, as the songs around it make clear, is fucked, and Burnham individually is crumpling under the weight of isolation and a lack of agency to improve things.</div><div><br /></div><div>And Jeffrey, you made more money than anyone else in the history of the human race!!! Congratulations!!!</div><div><br /></div><div>In the face of all this, providing a number you can call to tell someone you're suicidal feels, well, like a sick joke. It feels like the sick joke of neoliberalism: there's no society just individuals and families. So the best we can do is offer you an individual response. If you call us first.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think part of the reason it came across to me as a weird metatextual joke is because the whole special is profoundly metatextual. Produced by Burnham alone in a room surrounded by equipment he could operate remotely, on his own, the special cuts frequently between his songs--often ending abruptly after just a minute or two without developing the idea beyond an initial sketch--and footage of Burnham lying around listlessly, taking focal length measurements, testing lights, offering bits of diaristic narration on the ongoing struggle to produce the special, staring into space, kicking things over, preparing his hair, adjusting camera angles, crying. The film seems to swim and out of focus, not visually but cognitively, suggesting someone finding interest in activities for brief moments, long enough to produce half a song (or a fragment of an article?), before reverting back to milling aimlessly around doing work that sort of feels like work and also sort of feels like rearranging deck chairs on one of the cruise ships that became floating mass contamination zones early in the Covid outbreak.</div><div><br /></div><div>How would I describe the phenomenology of Inside? Accumulation. Choking accumulation. Stuff. An embarrassment of #content. A room choked with light stands and mic stands and camera stands and cameras and lights and screens and monitors and projectors and mics and some furniture under it all. A collection of shorts and half sketches for longer comedy bits and half formed ideas expressing a variety of mental breakdowns. A list of the hyperreal oddities of late capitalism. Jameson describes the rise of hyperrealism in the 70s as a reaction to abstraction becoming passe, losing all capacity to shock. But this realism isn't images of things, he says, but images of <span style="font-style: italic;">photographs of things</span>, images of images. Total disassociation, fully out your mind. Googling derealization, hating what you find.</div><div><br /></div><div>And isn't this exactly what we were told we would be given?</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, Burnham's case is special, of course. Burnham drowns in all the toys that Netflix money can buy. I've talked back and forth a bunch with my girlfriends about just what all Burnham's behind the scenes tinkering with lighting and sets means, whether it suggests a kind of way out, a suggestion that you, too, could produce some art (or failing that at least some #content). This appeals to me because some part of me wants to really believe that democratizing the means of cultural production would lead to revolutionary consciousness. But the fact is all this choking accumulation of equipment is possible because Burnham has that Netflix money, and we don't.</div><div><br /></div><div>But don't worry, because Neoliberalism isn't about to back down on its promise to us! Burnham may be special but we won't be left out. This is the sense of these litanies, these endless endless list songs. You could compare this to We Didn't Start The Fire, but it's not really the same is it? Billy Joel was listing Events.</div><div><br /></div><div>Burnham is listing #content.</div><div><br /></div><div>Apps that you can buy. Nine year olds who die. Equipment you can use. Mountains of refuse. There aren't events here there are just narratives which you can find on your feed. Neoliberalism promised to dissolve social bonds and transform us into some new hybridized organism, more capable of swimming the muddy mangroves of unregulated global markets. In return, it offered us endless churning chum. And haven't we gotten what we were promised? The Internet appears in Inside as the ultimate fulfillment of this promise, a world more real than reality, a bit of everything all of the time. Boredom is a crime precisely because it demonstrates a failure to participate properly in the super cool world that capitalism has built for you! You ungrateful fucking brat!</div><div><br /></div><div>The endless churning chum isn't a great environment actually to build narratives in. It flattens things. I found that out the hard way! When I started writing about Pink Floyd's The Wall I naively thought, well look, it can't be TOO hard to figure out what the hell happened over the course of the 70s to spawn this specific strange motif of "a cast is trapped in a modernist space that mirrors their madness as that modernism eats itself". I had a pretty good idea that Thatcher and Reagan had something to do with it! And then I learned about containerization which allowed a standardized model for global shipping, and the development of megalithic container ships to carry those containers around the globe--just in time for the Evergiven getting lodged in the Suez in one of this year's many supply chain collapses! And then I learned about the turnover from coal to oil and the way that deliberate transition broke the strong central worker-heavy base of labor across the west. And then I learned about the development of financial capital, the move from a gold standard to a purely notional system of currency printing, which of course came in handy when the US needed to double the currency supply, funneling cash to corporations while mass numbers of people were laid off of work and denied assistance.</div><div><br /></div><div>And it's just... stuff. Another litany of ways that the world works, that doesn't add up to anything but bemusement and exhaustion because knowing is far far less than half the battle. The more notes I collected--10,000 words, tons of random notes, a bunch of links to various sources--the more my internal mental landscape resembled Bo Burnham's apartment... or Pink's wrecked hotel room... or the overwhelmed gremlin-filled modern halls of the Clamp Center... or the ruined concrete island of High-Rise... Room For You Inside as a critical project came to mirror its subject. Of course the fucked up thing is that this happened long before quarantine started officially! I was already lonely, atomized, struggling, and isolated, unsure of what I could possibly say or do to respond to a world that personally kept victimizing me and kept spiraling sociopolitically into further and further grotesquerie.</div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps... I could heal the world with art history???</div><div><br /></div><div>Do you ever get the feeling that Burnham's jokes about "this is what I can do while still getting paid haha" are their own kinda shield? Like, a way of portraying himself as an asshole to fend off the deeper vulnerability? Look he basically says so himself during the reaction-to-his-own-video segment. And couldn't part of that vulnerability be the vulnerability of admitting outright that evidence from history suggests art is a pretty shitty solution for the world's problems, and sometimes it's tempting to imagine just blowing that knowledge, or possibly the drive to be creatively expressive in the first place, out of my head? I mean out of Burnham's head. Of course. Any of these films expressing this metaphorical experience of the walls going up and the madness of neoliberal modernity setting in... what did they do to stop it? All they provided was a testament to what happened that we could stare at and go</div><div><br /></div><div>mood lol #mfw</div><div><br /></div><div>Which is kind of odd given how premised this special is on apparent audience hostility. Midway through the special Burnham sings that not only does he not know whether there's any audience for his show, he doesn't WANT to know--though the lyrics suggest he's got a pretty good idea of exactly how engaged people are with his art. (Not very.) The song ends with yet another of the many suicide jokes in the special. The audience is a palpable presence in the special, which is weird because it's palpably <span style="font-style: italic;">absent</span>, something Burnham tries to push against and fabricate from laugh tracks and antagonize all in absentia. The equipment acts as a weird stand in for the audience increasingly, as does Burnham himself, the images of him multiplying as the space fills up with, himself.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm not sure what the most harrowing moment of the film is, exactly--it's understated but the bit where Burnham announces that he's just going to keep making the film and never release it because releasing it means moving on and having to live his life, so fuck you, nobody who will never see this... that hit hard for me, I type into my evernote document as I glance over at two different unfinished projects open in two different instances of the development environment Atom, and glance the other way at a list of unfinished articles sinking below this one that I'm currently working on in my drafts folder. But probably the most affectively raw is a sequence where Burnham breaks down sobbing, off on the side of a shot, staring off screen in a way that renders him a sidenote in the shot. The focal point of the shot is... what else? A camera. Pointed at the audience. As Burnham sobs, the camera filming this other camera slowly, agonizingly slowly, zooms in, until the screen is overwhelmed by the black of the lens's interior.</div><div><br /></div><div>What follows is the climax of the special. If we're making comparisons to The Wall, and I think we should if only because it's the fucking subject of this fucking "book", this is the transition from "Comfortably Numb" to "In The Flesh". Having completely broken down and destroyed the main character, having transformed the environment into a nightmare of accumulated bullshit, the character takes the stage and performs hostility toward and for an audience. In The Wall, Roger Waters's vocals are replaced by lead actor Bob Geldoff, spouting a manic and deliberately unmusical tirade, creating an unsettling break with expectation. In Inside, Burnham's vocals are pitched down and pitch corrected, including the segments announcing the piece and in the middle giving an account of the background. This similarly to my mind creates a sense of alienation, as Burnham employs contemporary pop effects to express a message that, as my girlfriend put it, fully mainstreams doomerism:</div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div>You say the ocean's rising?</div><div>Like I give a shit.</div><div>You say the whole world's ending?</div><div>Honey, it already did.</div><div>You're not gonna slow it,</div><div>Heaven knows you tried!</div><div>Got it? Good.</div><div><span style="font-style: italic;">Now get inside</span>.</div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>Burnham performs with a projected backdrop: himself, being filmed live, and projected onto the screen. As he sings the chorus, closeups from multiple angles flood the screen, Burnham filling his performance space, the apartment he's been locked inside. The image of solipsism in The Wall is Pink constructing a model nazi rally from the ruins of his smashed hotel room. The image of solipsism in Inside is this overabundance of Bo Burnham, surrounded by fake canned cheers, as he croons for the crowd to "get your fucking hands up, all eyes on me!" Burnham frequently looks into the camera, breaking the fourth wall, but it serves to create an uncanny distance: we are put in the place of an audience with direct connection to Burnham, but the performance constantly reemphasizes that Burnham is completely alone behind his wall.</div><div><br /></div><div>Midway through All Eyes On Me, Burnham breaks down and screams at the camera, ripping it off its stand as though it is a person, the viewer, someone he can physically drag out of a seat, force to put their hands up, force to participate. "I'm talking to you, GET THE FUCK UP," he bellows with his distorted vocals. And in a sense he does force us to participate, the video now spinning around wildly as he dances, exhilarating and nauseating. It's aggressive, hostile, celebratory, desperate, inconclusive. The music as he dances takes on an aggressive set of backing Trent Reznor-esque guitar riffs; taped noise of a crowd swells. Finally the camera drops and goes dead. Shortly thereafter, following more footage of production work, Burnham, staring into space, mutters, "I think- I think I'm done." If the progression in a musical is that as emotion heightens you go from talking to needing to sing, from singing to needing to dance, this extends it, from singing to needing to scream and physically assault the audience, and then from screaming and shoving to dragging the audience into the act, and finally from audience participation to total breakdown, the camera dropping and cutting out. The emotional need ultimately becomes too much for the mediation of the technology to handle.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think maybe I understand something about the story about Roger Waters spitting on a fan during a concert. We always hear the tale from Roger's perspective, the horror of this incomprehensible bestial fan that actually LIKED it when this rock star spit on him. But Inside much more successfully than The Wall puts me into the position of that audience member. I understand it because it's happening TO ME, Burnham is screaming AT ME to get the fuck up, wrenching me around, spitting in my face. And in the face of isolation, this perverse kind of aggressive participation reads like an invitation to share some sort of feeling, some sort of sense that even in mutual hostility I can have a connection with another human being, through art.</div><div><br /></div><div>Which is all pretty weird shit to say about a "comedy special".</div><div><br /></div><div>Or is it? I think absurdity and satire and horror always brush against each other or intermingle in this strange little subgenre I'm interested in. After all, the stuff they bluntly satirize is also absurd. Like what can you do in the face of some of this stuff but laugh? My girlfriend who I am soon to be moving in with, in an attempt to get you know some sort of better, less isolated, mutually supportive existence in an apartment that ISN'T literally fucking MELTING, just today read a letter that was posted to the door of her apartment. The managers of the apartment complex have decided that because people are letting their dogs shit on the nice clean sidewalks of the complex, they are going to take the normal and reasonable approach of demanding all residents provide dna samples of their dogs so that dog shit can be tested and residents can be <span style="font-style: italic;">literally evicted.</span> What can you do but laugh! You certainly can't stop the ocean from fucking rising, so you might as well make a few jokes!</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, a lot of humor is just in delivery, and whether somebody is laughing in the background. Look at how these lines are structured apart from Burnham's melancholic delivery:</div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div>Reading pornhub's terms of service</div><div>Going for a drive</div><div>And obeying all the traffic laws</div><div>In Grand Theft Auto V</div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>It starts strong with a joke right, an absurd scenario. Then it snaps back to something more down to earth... builds for a beat... and finally drops a punchline. It's just the three panel comic joke structure for goodness sake! If the affect of "That Funny Feeling" isn't very funny, it's not because of the formal structure. Set this like a Tom Lehrer song and it'd be an entertainingly nihilistic classic.</div><div><br /></div><div>I've seen some criticism of Burnham's video that it's obvious, that it's blunt and direct to the point of pointlessness. Infamously of course critiques of The Wall have fallen along the same lines: the Nostalgia Critic spent a lot of time recently whining about how blunt the metaphors are. It's a common "problem" with my pet subgenre. There's nothing subtle about the dad in Shock Treatment mowing a fake lawn on a tv show set while bellowing to the audience about genuine masculinity; nor the business magnate Clamp trying to merchandise the gremlins that just overran and destroyed his tower in Gremlins 2.</div><div><br /></div><div>Though... take that last one for example. It's a pretty surface level satire of a figure based on Donald Trump (really) looking at disaster and seeing a potential for mass commercialization... but it's also maybe a little weird and uncomfortable right, because it sort of suggests that maybe, just maybe, the Gremlins made some points! Maybe they should've been allowed to destroy this shitty tower and the rest of shitty corporate gentrified New York City. A lot of these films end on uneasy notes. The Wall ends profoundly inconclusively. And Inside of course...</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, that ends with Burnham leaving his apartment and immediately stepping into a spotlight. As canned laughter plays, he realizes he's been locked out, and begins frantically struggling to go back inside. The view shifts to a screen: this sequence is being played on a project as Burnham, inside, watches silently in the dark. After a long hold on his face, the corners of his mouth quirks up. He begins to smile. The screen goes black and the credits roll.</div><div><br /></div><div>The relationship between humor and horror in these films leaves me feeling uncomfortable and unsatisfied in a way that doesn't gel with their seemingly blunt politics. They resist concluding, maybe because, once you've laid out the mountain of facts and figures and seen how they've become just more consumable objects for capital to sell you, more base bullshit for the superstructure dumpster fire, it's hard to know what exactly to do.</div><div><br /></div><div>I guess I'm drawn to things like Inside because I don't know what to do and in a way it's comforting to know that someone else is just as lost as me. We're going to go where everybody knows everybody knows everybody, Burnham promises in "All Eyes On Me." There's a moment, as he wildly flails the camera around after wrenching us out of our virtual seat, when his singing breaks into laughter. I can't know Bo Burnham or how he's doing or what kind of experience he's having but in that moment of affective crisis, in the face of all the horror and the alienation and the aggression between artist and audience, we can laugh together.</div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: center;">This Has Been</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
In Search Of More Applause
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