Holy fuck, this explains EVERYTHING. This makes it all click. An absolute must watch and a super highway to getting good fast. I promise.
Portfolio Upgrade Time
So it’s come to my attention, that as I launch my career, i’m going to need a site with more clarity.
So I’ve divided the site neatly between Editorial and VisDev Illustration to make my professional pursuits more clear.
For now, site is under some construction but as far as things go, I’m digging the new clarity.
Cheers,
Your friendly neighborhood Garrett-man
Her Natural State
She’s a radiating star of energy,
Sometimes she burns pink,
Sometimes a crimson purple,
Sometimes she holds her flames in real close,
Real tight,
And burns hot,
Keeping her flames to herself,
Sometimes I can’t tell what’s more her natural state,
That fiery hot ball of flame,
Or that warm radiating star,
It scares me,
I take it personally,
But I remind myself,
That this star does not exist for me,
That it is what it is and does what it does,
And I’m lucky to witness such a beautiful thing,
With the few years that I may lay my eyes on any kind of beauty
Black on the Outside, White in the Middle
Dope (directed by Rick Famuyiwa) is one of the most informed and keenly contemporary pieces of art to hit cinemas in 2015. On the surface it’s easy to dismiss Dope as a hipster teen-goes-on-an-adventure flick, inserted into an L.A. Hood backdrop to give it a self-important sense of relevance. But to the practiced eye—to those who understand contemporary art it truly is one of the savviest and cleverest films to have come out in some time.
Because Famuyiwa has with acute knowledge of hybridity and the Post Modern condition redefined contemporary racism on the ground level as imposed identity.
Wait, that film was about racism? Yep.
Let’s break this down into two parts: Hybridity/Post Modernism and then Racism.
As I’ve written before in my analysis of Blade Runner, Post Modernism is amorphous, ambiguous and changing, and is largely a list of ingredients. Put simply, it is the rejection of universal truths. It is the rejection of binary ideas. This or that. Black or White.
Post Modernism hates grand narratives.
Truth is more so a mosaic of everybody’s personal truths.
Hybridity. Hybridity is simply the mixing of two things.
Now while Hybridity is a separate frame of reference entirely, it is largely born from Post Modernism. Its existence is entirely afforded by the idea of a fractal sense of truth.
In the context of art today, that is the mixing of two different cultures. The fancy word for that is transcultural.
Globalization, the internet, media and especially social media has resulted in mass dissemination of culture and information. As such, artists and creators alike have sampled from several different cultures to make new undefinable art.
This has effectively created two powerful forces. Cultural vs. Transcultural identity.
Cultural Identity seeks manifest itself.
Look at African-American culture. After slaves arrived in America they quickly established an identity strongly rooted in music and dance. Black culture evolved in America largely around music, moving from Rhythm and Blues like B.B. King and Ray Charles, James Brown and Marvin Gaye and moving into Hip-Hop and Rap. Culture brings some beautiful things like fashion, art, music, politics and so on. However, Culture can be a self fulfilling prophecy. Ultimately in it’s need to explain origin, and define and separate itself it can also impose an identity and labels upon people born within it. This is called imposed identity.
Transcultural identity is the post modern and hybrid mixing of cultures. These new sub-cultures become undefinable. This is the idea of Found Identity, that using the internet and media we can pick and choose music, clothes, slang etc. for ourselves. This creates endless permutations.
So now that we have all that, let’s begin.
Dope is a film about two paradigms: Imposed identity and Found Identity.
Inglewood and Malcolm.
More correctly, Inglewood VS. Malcolm.
The first shot of the film: an establishing shot of the landscape of Inglewood (more specifically the Bottoms, an even shittier neighborhood within Inglewood).
The second shot of the film: A montage of Malcolm’s room. A “YOU GOTS TO CHILL” LP. A cassette Walkman. Dr. Dre. Eazy-E. Super Nintendo and the infamous Malcolm Adakanbe flat-top. You would think it was the 1990’s until Famuyiwa snubs that notion right away with a conversation about Bitcoins between our protagonist and his mother.
Malcolm and Inglewood. And now we have our two main characters.
The following few shots coolly narrated by Forrest Whittaker profile who Malcolm is. He’s from the Bottoms, he has a single mom and an absentee father.
Whittaker also describes Malcolm as a geek obsessed with 90’s hip-hop culture.
His two best friends Jib and Diggy are introduced, and immediately following this Diggy is described as a lesbian and is shown at church with her family trying to ‘pray away the gay.’
Imposed Identity emerges as one of the main motifs here. Famuyiwa doesn’t include the anecdote about Diggy in church without reason.
Then we have some shots of the squad traversing Inglewood. “There should be an App to avoid these Hood traps,” says Diggy.
Whittaker chimes in that a bad day in the Bottoms could mean losing your life.
Enter our second motif: violence.
The narrator explains that Malcolm and his friends are bullied for being into white shit like skateboards, listening to TV on the Radio and getting good grades.
Following is my absolute favorite scene of the film where Malcolm, Diggy, and Jib form the punk band Awreeoh (Oreo) and perform ‘Go Head.’
These scenes back to back are meant to flesh out our two opposing paradigms. Inglewood represents the inescapable. The part of Malcolm’s life that he did not choose. It’s dangerous, and it seeks to punish the ‘geek,’ for not conforming to it’s traditional black culture.
Then we have Diggy, the unconventional lesbian in the trio, and the crew as a whole who, despite being from the bottoms, like skateboarding and punk and getting good grades. These are the things that Malcolm chooses for himself.
Let’s look at the character of Inglewood in the film.
The film pacing has a nice iambic structure to it. We’ll have a character development scene, then a violent scene.
Character Development: Awreeoh performs ‘Go Head.;
Violence: Marquis steals Malcolm’s shoe
Character Development: Principle conversation
Violence: Blood’s try to steal their bike
Character Development: Malcolm meets Dom (A$AP Rocky) and Dig & Jib convince him to go to the party
Violence: The Bouncer gets beaten
Character Development: The party
Violence: Shootout at the party
Inglewood is constantly painted as a PHYSICALLY threatening place. It is even more than imposing, it threatens the lives of those who don’t accept its definitions and limitations.
*Fun Fact: at Dom’s birthday party he is wearing a black shirt with the Eye of Horus. Not only is this a nice hybrid mixture of culture, but the Eye of Horus actually is a symbol of protection. The color black is also a symbol of protection. Dom subsequently helps Malcolm escape the shootout and later helps him avoid getting killed by not handing over the drugs to the Bloods. The more you know.
There are also several key conversations that help outline the sort of limitations and expectations the location of Inglewood imposes on its inhabitants.
The first being the conversation with the principle. The principle calls Malcolm “arrogant” for believing somebody from the Bottoms could get into Harvard. He encourages Malcolm to write an essay about the, “typical, I’m from a poor crime filled neighborhood, raised by a single mother, don’t know my Dad bla bla.” The principle encourages Malcolm to embrace the Inglewood stereotype.
Another key scene outline Inglewood’s characteristics is the scene where Nakia and him are together in the car after they leave the shootout at Dom’s Party. Malcolm tells her, “I guess I’m used to hearing, uh, niggas don’t listen to this, niggas don’t do that, niggas don’t go to college unless they play ball or whatever.” She asks him, “what are you then?” and he cleverly, but sadly replies, “I don’t know—I’m black as fuck right?” She laughs.
What we see here is Malcolm is keenly aware of what his environment WANTS him to be.
The idea of Inglewood is modernist, not post modern. Inglewood seeks to impose binaries. It wants Malcolm to stay in the Hood and be the typical drug dealing, trouble making, gang member who doesn’t go to college unless he plays ball. It is imposed identity.
In stark contrast we have the character of Malcolm Adakanbe. I don’t have to go into crazy detail since we just covered Malcolm’s proclivity for retro items and ideas such as hip-hop and his nice hipster flat-top.
But delving further into his band “Awreeoh” for a second, you can see the nice use of post modernism and hybridity. The idea of him being “white in the middle” is on the nose here so does not bear much discussion. The important thing to note is that he CHOOSES to be white. He may consequently be black, and from a black neighborhood, but the identity he assumes is largely culturally white. Punk isn’t very historically black.
Beyond just hobby’s and fashion style, another interesting mix of culture is the use of the Dark Web later in the film when he needs to dispense of all the drugs left to him by Dom.
The Dark Web is an area of the internet that is completely anonymous. It consists of about 20,000-30,000 websites and is only reachable using a browser called TOR. TOR was originally a US naval intelligent project that was made open source, and is now used by hackers and the technologically savvy to surf the internet like a ghost. The Dark Net is the type of place where you can find illegal pornography, sell and buy drugs, be a whistle blower or find commercial hacking services.
*Cool Digression: The Dark Net is the future of the internet. Many legitimate companies such as Facebook are creating sites on there. Given the concerns about privacy these days, this part of the internet is quickly becoming more and more appealing to mass audiences. Bonus points to Famuyiwa for not only being aware of contemporary culture, but also looking into the future Very cool. You can see a video below of Jamie Bartlett discussing the Dark Web on TED talks.
Malcolm also goes to band camp, where he meets William Ian Sherwood III, who ultimately comes to into play later as a means to sell the drugs. Band camp’s “mission” was to give “kids of different backgrounds a chance to exchange music and unique cultural backgrounds.” (repetitive, I know).
Later, Awreeoh plays at one of Williams parties in the white neighborhoods where they perform more rock oriented punk which hits the internet and pushes their Molly even faster.
The point being, that Malcolm is all about finding his own scene. More often than not, that scene consists of things that are characteristically white. This is found identity.
Racism. You almost forgot that’s what this is about, right?
Dope, with acute knowledge of Hybridity and Post Modernism, redefines racism on the ground level as imposed identity.
Racism is the second component of Famuyiwa’s accomplishment in the film Dope.
In order to understand how Famuyiwa has advanced the definition of racism in America, you’ll need a little bit of historical context.
What is racism?
By definition it is:
“The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.”
(Sorry for beating that word to death here).
These days, the term is used more colloquially to mean something pejorative, judgmental or profiling. I.E. Trump telling a room full of Jews, “I’m a negotiator, like you folks.”
Which by definition still isn’t racist, but would definitely be labeled, glibly, as such on Facebook comment sections.
These days, murders of black citizens by police officers have brought the dormant dialogue of racism raging to the surface. That is overt racism. And according to such people as actress Jurnee Smolette-Bell (star of the show “Underground” about the Underground Railroad), who was featured in an article and video by the Huffington Post on 3 March, 2016, the real problem is systemic racism. Systemic racism is the cause of problems like the “racial wealth gap,” and “mass incarceration.”
Racism today lives on in cultural identity. The perpetuation of identity sorts things into us or them. You and I. It’s ironic that the celebration of the identity, origin and uniqueness of a culture also puts boundaries and limitations on the identity of its members.
Racism today is quiet.
Let’s plug that into our two paradigm system. Inglewood is the racism. Malcolm is the victim.
Inglewood is ripe with violence. Bullies and gang members see him as a geek and will physically attack him for being different. Colleges like Harvard see a guy from this kind of place less desirable. Inglewood is racism.
It imposes an identity on Malcolm that he never asked for. Malcolm is not in control of his race. He is not in control of where he was born. He is not in control of whether his father left him with a single mother.
In many ways, Malcolm chooses to be white instead. For the millionth time, he likes white things. He is also very self aware in this fact, naming his own band Awreeoh. He knows he’s white on the inside. This is the identity he controls.
Conclusively, racism is the archaic and modernist agenda. It seeks binary definitions of identity and violently fights to keep Malcolm within those lines. Malcolm embraces the post modern agenda and finds his identity on his own terms.
But Famuyiwa takes it further.
BONUS THESIS:
Malcolm ultimately embodies hybridity itself.
Our flat topped protagonist struggles to reconcile these two forces. Which one is he? Is he the black kid from the hood or the white punk rocker? Ultimately, he transcends and becomes both. This level of transcendence to become the hybrid of inside and outside forces rides on the back of the genre that Famuyiwa so cleverly chose: the teen coming of age genre.
In the Novel “Save the Cat” by Blake Snyder (a how-to on screenwriting), he details that Hollywood has a finite amount of genres. Not the typical “Action-Adventure” or “Comedy” that we know of but more based on writing structure. One of these, the one that Dope falls into is called the “Rite of Passage Genre.” This is characterized by growing pains. It is often about teenagers. These are tales of pain and torment from an outside source, and it usually ends in the protagonist surrendering to those outside forces.
But that doesn’t sound right, Malcolm doesn’t surrender to the racism, to the imposed identity?
Oh, but he does.
As the film picks up, Malcolm ultimately embodies all those Hood tropes he so defies initially. He begins to sell drugs. That is the beginning of his transformation. As he gets deeper into the drug trade, he has to hide his drugs from security. He has to leave the SAT’s to remove the drugs from his locker upon inspection.
When Nakia approaches him for help on her GED she is looking for the Malcolm that is a geek and a stand up guy. Instead she finds a Malcolm that accuses her of being Dom’s spy. He’s changed.
Then when he trades Bitcoins for the cash from Fidel X, he faces a test. He must punch X in the face as hard as he can, or he won’t get the money. His friends remain the geeks, they run away. But Malcolm instead transforms. He hits X and is rebranded as the man “that doesn’t give a fuck.”
And finally, Malcolm pulls the gun on Marquis when he tries to take his bag.
Malcolm becomes the very thing he fought against, he becomes another boy from the hood.
But ultimately he transcends even that, and finds peace in the fact he is both these things. He is the things he did not choose. He is Inglewood. He is black. He did have to sell drugs to survive. He’s also the geek who gets good grades. He’s in a punk band and his favorite TV show is Game of Thrones.
He cuts off his flat-top, and when he appears with his new haircut before Nakia, he is wearing an American flag sweatshirt.
Malcolm becomes the hybrid itself.
This point is ultimately driven home by his final speech: his college essay.
“Am I a geek or a menace? For most of my life I’ve been caught in between who I really am and how I’m perceived. I don’t fit in. See, when you don’t fit in, you’re forced to see the world from many different angles and points of view. So why do I want to go to Harvard? If I was white would you even have to ask that question?”
DOPE-- A Thesis
Dope is a film about a young black high schooler from the impoverished neighborhood 'The Bottoms,' vying for a spot at Harvard. Dope's primary mission is to debunk generalities about race and identity in contemporary America. Dope does this through the use of postmodernism, music, and through the characters themselves.
Don't Think You Are. Know You Are. -The Matrix Presentation
Fight Club Presentation
It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Gets Hurt
Enter Mercedes Haefer. We see a shook up Mercedes recount the time that SWAT busted into her house, her parents house where she was living that is, and detained her.
This frames the tone and underlying idea of "We Are Legion." Over the course of the next hour and a half where the conception and rise of the Hacktivist entity called "Anonymous" is described, that beginning scene is never out of the viewers mind.
Two things can be surmised from this, first that Anonymous is a legitimate entity that is underestimated, and the second being that the government is overreacting and disproportionately punishing this group.
The thesis is ultimately expounded on in the last ten minutes of the film, when Anonymous members have been arrested, investigated and exposed. Many interviews double back to repeat those two initial ideas.
Nobody says it better than Richard Thieme, a tech expert and professional speaker that Anonymous is like Huck Finn when he refuses to turn in his friend Jim. Richard says that in order to 'be an expert at ethics' you have to 'transcend the legal and sanctioned religious appropriate truths of the day" to access a "meta truth of legality and righteousness." Look out, we got ourselves some Robin Hoods here.
That, my friends, is the real thesis and idea behind "We Are Legion." It is very pro Anonymous, and it will always return to the idea that Anonymous is a legitimate movement for the freedom of speech and human rights and that they are unfairly oppressed.
Now, in order to understand the rhetorical and persuasive strategies that are used therein, we've got to look at the relative strengths and weaknesses of Documentary style filming. Documentary inherently gives you the chance to let all parties speak. It's pretty great at allowing the opposition to speak, and thus you can more freely debunk the opposing argument by pointing out holes. This is pretty strongly used towards the end of the film where Aaron Baar tries to defend his views that Wikileaks is a crime. They catch him stuttering and struggling to find words to refute his blatant proposal to "attack" the journalist Glenn Greenwald. It's pretty crafty filmmaking. (Although, you got to give it to the guy for having the balls to appear in the film and defend his point of view.)
Within this example is also the really, really big set back to the Documentary style filmmaking and the structure of the film. It is sensationalism. And it is also the reason Documentary filmmaking pisses me off. Because behind the idea that this style is a much more balanced form of storytelling, it still has to be exciting, dramatic and adhere to the Act I, Act II, Act III structure of a film. Because nobody would watch a film without dramatic music and the fun 'everything is lost' moment at the end of Act II. Nobody would watch a film that is just a back and forth of a bunch of people on both sides of the argument stating facts about what happened with no music. That is boring. That is research... but that is real.
Documentary also relies heavily on editing. Since you have to rely on whatever footage you can get, it's often difficult to find the most visually crafty way to tell your story. So the sequence of interviews and footage has to be very precise. It needs to make sure that you have a very specific emotion and idea from one scene that you carry over to the next. It's why that choice of having Mercedes arrested in the beginning is so important.
So I say take the film with a grain of salt, because while it does effectively show that Anonymous is both a major movement with geopolitical power, and is being very severely persecuted, it is also very biased on behalf of the group.
Let's take a look at some of the rhetoric.
We see early on at MIT that Hackers were born out of doing pranks. They were about having fun. This I believe is the underlying feature of the hacker community.
At this point we see images of their pranks. Measuring a bridge in Brians or putting a car on the roof. This sense of comic relief is repeated throughout the film. It is shown later with memes, and Furries, and the prank phone calls to Hal Turner. The film itself echoes the idea of Anonymous that we always have to return to the luls.
Another rhetoric device, and the most important in the entire film I believe, is the music. It is very fast paced. Very reminiscent of a murder mystery. Something is afoot. Bad guys are around the corner. Serious shit is going down.
On the other end of the spectrum, triumphant and happy music is used when Anonymous has a victory. When the media footage is shown of the Anonymous members outside Scientology buildings worldwide, the music is decidedly victorious.
My point being, music is very sensationalist. We feel what Anonymous feels. We feel oppressed, then we feel revolutionary, then we feel triumphant. Rinse, Repeat.
Furthering this idea of creating a sense of empathy with the interviewees and the group in question, the Scientology protest is also used as an opportunity to humanize the Anons. The virgins are getting laid. The community is finally coming together.
It's like saying your name repeatedly to a rapist. I'm not an object, I'm a person! "We Are Legion" wants to get you empathizing with it's protagonists. They want you on the inside of this experience.
And this is my problem with the film, as opposed to other Documentaries. It is a lot more sensationalist than most. Their opponents are hardly interviewed. Representatives of the Church of Scientology are absent, although I bet they adamantly refused to be interviewed. The music and the editing and who they choose to interview, which is a majority on the side of Anonymous, all create a sense of drama. Slowly but surely you realize that we have protagonists, not interviewees.
Despite this, I earnestly believe the film is successful in fulfilling it's two claims within the thesis. The ideas that Anonymous is being disproportionately punished and that they are a very serious entity.
Over the course of the film, explaining how a dispute with Hal Turner eventually escalated to taking down governments in Egypt, and fighting legislature in Australia, as well as Wikileaks, we do see that freedom of speech can do great things.
We see that the internet is a powerful, even idyllic forum for the successful homeostasis of human rights on a global scale etc.
However, and it's pretty obvious at this point in my argument, I believe the movie is way too heavy on the dramatic side. It's more manipulative than persuasive.
Postamble (I'm making this word up but it works and I like it better than Post Script):
Maybe i'm more critical because the idea of Anonymous scares me. Hackers are far and away the most powerful people on earth in my opinion. The digitized economic system of our world is essentially an ecosystem that Anonymous could choose to dismantle any day of the week. As a group, their general momentum has been to do great things, but groups like LULZSEC show just how damaging they can be. I do give credit to the filmmakers here for taking a moment to show members and supporters of Anonymous who felt that LULZSEC didn't need to hurt the end user on their attacks on Playstation and Sony.
If Anonymous spans the column of Chaotic from Chaotic Good to Chaotic Evil, then when do we see real evil? Sending out gifs of strobes to epileptic forums is atrocious. I mean, what the fuck. When do we see more of that? When do Anons start to go rogue and choose to hurt us for the sake of hurting us.
Point blank: I don't trust anybody who has power that is not me.
Notwithstanding, I like to feel hopeful and exuberant when this group does beautiful things. Sending PDF's with tear gas treatments to Egypt. Helping a nation overthrow a murderous government. Standing up to entities like Scientology that will threaten the well being of its critics.
But it's all fun and games until....
A Vision of the Future, Based On A Vision of the Past, Based On A Vision of the Future
It does not to have be restated that Blade Runner is an orchestral masterpiece of the Post Modern condition. But I just did.
Although the exact nature of what 'Post Modernism' is is amorphous, ambiguous and changing, many of the ingredients seem to show up: disruption of the social order by the Replicants, conflicting and equal perspectives of the Replicants v. Humans, mixing of the inorganic and organic vis a vi the Replicants, and the genre hybridity of Film Noir and Science Fiction.
Regarding the last, and for the sake of this response, I'm going to leave that out. Why? Because this movie is blatantly Film Noir. If anything, this is the most base and obvious of interpretations. The film utilizes the femme fatale, the cynicism, the dark palette, the long shadows, the brooding protagonist unable to control his desire for the woman etc etc etc.
Any asshole who takes a first look at this movie can purport that this is a genre fusion. But that's not where the cleverness lies. This movie is steeped in layers and symbology for the viewer to discover and rediscover over multiple viewings. And if Ridley Scott intended anything of his audience, it's to look deeper. Because he doesn't even bother to nuance his use of these two genres.
And now for the fun. The three themes I would like to discuss in this are the influences on the film, the use of challenging perspective & the idea of personal truth, and the motif of sight.
The first and most obvious influence on Blade Runner is Metropolis. Itself a dystopian vision of the future, Metropolis is both visually similar AND uses the idea of a replicated human being. For those unfamiliar, although I suspect that either the T.A. or Rosetta reading this is keenly aware of this film and its cultural significance, the film is about:
The journey of one man to unite the lower and ruling classes of a 'utopian' future world where the lower class lives underground, unseen and unknown by those above. During this time, the woman he desires, Maria, is copied into the body of a lookalike robot.
Blade Runner, aesthetically and thematically is obviously uncanny. The truly interesting thing here is that the Maria robot is fundamentally evil. Without a doubt, the robot is used to cruel ends, a very one dimensional character. In a plot analysis sort-of-way, she is just furniture to be used as a prop to get from point A to B to C. Additionally, all the citizens of Metropolis don't know about the cruel abuse happening beneath their feet.
Blade Runner sharply contrasts both those features. The humans are aware that they use Replicants as off world slaves. Additionally, the Replicants aren't pure evil. They just want to live, love and be free from fear. More on that in the perspective portion of this response.
Here's where things get borderline conspiracy theory.
The Bradbury building in Los Angeles is used as the site of JF Sebastien's home, and the final battle between Deckard and Roy. That building was built in the 1890's by George Wyman who based the architecture on a novel by Edward Bellamy. The novel is about a Utopian future where all the problems of the 1880's are solved by socialism. What was this book called? "Looking Backward." I can't make this shit up.
So here we have Blade Runner, a dystopian Noir vision of the future which is based heavily off the film 'Metropolis' which itself is a vision of a dystopian future disguised as a utopian future. The building where the final confrontation of Blade Runner is filmed is based on a book about a vision of the future called "Looking Backward."
It seems as if Scott has just taken a sample platter of all the previous 'this is what the future will be like' works and mixed them together.
But Scott's interpretation is so much more titillating because of his post modern use of personal truth and perspective. Which brings us to theme number two.
(For the sake of clarity, I'm going to talk about the use of sight and perspective together although they are separate themes.)
My favorite aspect of this film is the idea that the Replicants are just as important as the humans. Scott presents the Replicants with a fully fleshed perspective of their own. They don't want to live in fear. They don't want to be slaves. You may be cheering for Deckard to slay these violent antagonists, but by the end, I'm sure you're also cheering for him and Rachael to be together.
Scott also uses the theme of sight throughout the film to weave the idea of perspective into the script. One of the earliest examples of this in the film is when Roy and Leon visit the eye maker. Roy tells the eye maker, "if only you could see the things that i've seen with your eyes." This is said all the while that Leon is putting these synthetic eyes all over the scared man.
The motif is built on later when Deckard pursues Zhora and tells her a lot of guys would make holes in the walls to get a look at a beautiful woman.
And the final and easily most piercing of these examples is Roy just before he dies tells Deckard, "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe."
Scott is careful to make subtle suggestions to look at life through the perspective of the replicants as early as possible, and is diligent in reweaving that concept throughout the movie so you don't forget.
That last line that Roy says to Deck is also shortly following his rescue of Deckard himself. It was easy to dismiss the Replicants the entire film up until then. It seems that Roy was the closest thing to a singularly evil enemy but his saving Deckard really drove the point home that Replicants were no more or less evil than humans. Nor more or less valuable.
In short, I believe this film's most valuable contributions to Post Modernism are the challenging of perspective. Your enemy's reality is just as potent as your own.
Edward Bellamy's 'Looking Backward' only provided a fantastical look at the future that solved all the present day problems. It was escapism. Metropolis depicted a future world that appeared utopian on the surface but was fundamentally dystopian. However, this was done with archetypal and benign characters.
Blade Runner has provided the next evolution in style and thought; all perspectives are true.
I Can Feel It-- An Analysis of Reptar's "Houseboat Babies" Music Video
Reptar's "Houseboat Babies/Cannibal Canyon" (Body Faucet, Make Records not Bombs) is an examination of the human need for relationships, sex, and intimacy, and the preoccupations and obsessions people can cultivate as they switch one type of relationship out for another.
Although it speaks to the greater human desire for intimacy, the video is told through the vector of an old man who looks to be about in his 60's. This old man occupies a 2 story house in Los Angeles to himself and his many dogs. He has developed an obsession which has progressed into a fetish with these dogs. Dog statues, pictures, trophies and other collectibles are stashed around his house. Unbeknownst to the dogs, he is feeding them the dead bodies of their companions. It is never shown whether or not these dogs were killed to that end or had died naturally. The dogs eyes take on an eery green glow when they eat their companions, harkening to a horror movie.
Despite this man's obsessions with his dogs, he appears aloof as he tends to his chores for them. Then, he finally meets a woman with a rabbit whose eyes glow as well, and they sleep together after a celebratory undressing as the dogs watch.
The video concludes shortly after the sex scene. The man rounds up all his beloved pets and puts them into a van, takes them to an unspecified public location and puts them up for sale for families that have no idea that these dogs have been cannibalizing. At this point, the man is ecstatic, enlivened by his new sexual relationship with this woman. The dog's eyes have gone back to normal, but when a picture is taken you can see in the picture that the eyes glow that eery horror movie green again.
The opening shot of the music video is the camera panning down from the bright blue of the California skies to a dog house. Within, only green glowing eyes can be seen. Then a series of quick-shots of dog paraphernalia: dog statues, dog bowls, a dog trophy from 1997, a dog painting.
And now we see a lone man in his kitchen. Slightly above 6 feet tall and skinny, old--- in his 60s. He is cutting meat from a dogs carcass. He picks up a dog with no eyes or skin, but with flesh still on it, from the refrigerator to communicate what is happening. The old man rings the bell and a myriad of dogs, around 8 mid sized dogs, come down to eat the meat of their own companions. Their eyes glow a bright green. This is no doubt an allusion to horror films. Reptar is making a very tongue and cheek allegory here about this man's obsession. He cares for them and loves them, but it is horrific. Despite this allusion, the ton remains cheeky, the man with a half pleasured look upon his face the entire time. A sense of pleasure that is lazy--- lacking in lust and desire and conviction.
We then see the man shaving one of his dogs. It is midday. He stares into the distance preoccupied mentally by something else while he diligently does this task. He then takes a red dog toy and stuffs it with the dog hair and the toys eyes also become green. Zombified by the recycling of dog material just like the dogs are.
And then we get a third dog allegory. The man sets up an entire photoshoot in his living room. He is dressed as though it is the 1930's. He has umbrellas set up and takes the photo with a flash-lamp camera, and the photo turns into a black and white one.
Then a woman comes to his door, and he looks incredibly excited. His face lights up and they begin to undress each other. He seems to be ecstatic to the point of incredulity as she takes off her panties and bra, all as the dogs stare on.
We next see the man in the shower, and he sings the words of the song we are listening to, "yes I can feel it!" It is unclear whether it is the same day or the next one, but he rounds up all his dogs in cages in his white van. The dogs eyes are now regular. His enthusiasm remains from when he had slept with the woman. He sells one of his dogs to a nice nuclear family who smile as he takes their picture. This time he takes it with a digital camera. The family smile but in the photo the dogs eyes are still green, alluding to a horrific past with this dog that they will never know about.
If we examine the "Houseboat Babies" music video from a 'postmodernist' lens where all things can coexist simultaneously and equally, we see a man and his relationships.
He has a relationship with his dogs. An obsessive one. He tends to them carefully, feeds them, sets up trophy and art. He worships them. Yet he feeds them themselves. He doesn't have anything from the outside to give them. He is essentially recycling their own love back to them. Within this dynamic, he is often aloof and uninterested. He has a very dull, lazy satisfied smile fixed on his face as though he had just cum. He is satisfied but lacking of passion, conviction, lust, or forward moving energy.
Then he has a relationship with this woman. She shows up, and has a cannibal bunny--- they connect. He is lit up with life all of a sudden. His smile as she takes off his bra and jumps on him seems almost impossible to contain. As if he is so happy that his mortal body cannot possibly express his happiness.
Finally, he chooses to sell the dogs after meeting this woman. It seems as if he is finally truly satisfied. He has essentially switched out one relationship from the other. He seems alive and vivacious and the dogs have recovered from their green-eye-glowing state.
However, these relationships coexist in that they are both part of one man. The man cultivated both types of relationships, but it seems that he can only have one at a time since he did switch out the dogs for the woman.
There is also the theme of age. The 1997 trophy. The old man living alone. The 1930's picture and old camera. Then later on he has a digital camera. There is also some commentary on this man holding on to old ways. When he meets this woman it seems his ways are updated.
In conclusion, Reptar's "Houseboat Babies" music video seems to be making a commentary on the human need for intimacy and the different outlets people can find. This one being that a man had a relationship that was a tongue in cheek horrific. He then meets a woman who invigorates him and revitalizes him and he is brought to the present day again. So the video would support the song lyrics in that it is about attraction and attachment and the ways people seek them out.
Behold! My first Critical Practice blog response! And some stuff about Kurt Andersen.
I hesitate to fully 'agree' or 'disagree' with anything so I will disagree with your agree/disagree paradigm and say:
I believe Andersen has recognized something that needs absolutely crucial self-reflection upon in our society, but that he doesn't seem to have quite wrestled with the core of why this phenomenon is occurring.
Now that i've established myself with that Dr. Suessian introduction and a really fuckin' wordy thesis, I'll say this. I have no idea what it is to have been born from one of those early eras. Through depictions in television and media it is clear to me the palpable flavor and spirit that seems to come steaming hot off the fashion styles of the past. It seems that in each of these individual decades 20's, 30's, and so on that the energy and character of the times was so intense that it had to pervade and permeate through every facet of culture: Cars, Clothes, Architecture, Music, Literature and the myriad of examples Andersen used, many many of which went straight over my head.
That being said, I don't think Andersen quite knows what it is to have been born within my era, either.
Because for most of my character developing years i have been inundated with culture and history. Every---EVERY country and all its history therein had been connected to each other inside of a decade. INSIDE OF ONE FUCKING DECADE.
The amazing amount of inspiration and tragedy and beauty and culture was suddenly at my doorstep and in school and available via google search. God bless google search.
My point being is that later on in that essay Andersen posits that we may be potentially maxed-out. And that is what I can agree with!
When you're a young man and/or woman and you are trying to express yourself, find words or clothes and poetry or music that can express yourself and you have the entire history of humanity at your fingertips you do tend to get a little derivative.
And finally, the crux of my response:
My generation has lost a sense of we. Each of these eras of the past was filled with a sense of us. Women felt sexually liberated all at once in the 20's. America felt down trodden by an unnecessary war in the 70's. There was generally a sense of movement of the people as one.
But now there are just 7 billion 'i's. The internet has given all of us access to new ways to express who we are.
I.E. At 25, I am not a veteran. I have scarce friends who are veterans. There is a war going on and a massive portion of America and it's families are closely tied to that. Despite being in the same country, the same state and city as many of these people, I related almost zero to their day to day plight. The same could be said for so many aspects of America today. We are all very shattered and our individual experiences have become very specific. We then look to the past for people with whom we can relate, and may style ourselves like them. Find ourselves kindred and akin to them.
While I could delve much further into this and the many contributing factors to this phenomenon there is sadly a word limitation on this response, so I say to Kurt Andersen:
Yes culture has stagnated. We ate too big a meal and however long it takes to digest is how long it takes. But innovation is far from over.
Amped About Wolven Threads →
My friend Kiran Jade has recently pioneered her line of Yoga clothing that I wish I had thought of first.
Kiran's patterns are the obvious future of Yoga that nobody seemed to think of but her. I am so confident in her product. I know it's great.
And in the end, great art succeeds. It doesn't matter the forecast, ups or downs, I know more than anything else that Wolven Threads is going to rise.
Site is live!
Finally got a Porfolio site up so I can share some of my work with the world.
...And the best stuff is yet to come.
After a lot of toying around, the logo is done and I'm pretty pleased with it.
Stay posted, friends.