Yet this self-criticism—Hamlet’s effort to exert some intellectual control over his world—serves only to highlight his lack of understanding and to exacerbate his lack of control over circumstances.
William Christie, ‘An act hath three branches’: Being and Acting in Hamlet.
i’m excited for the barbie movie as much as the next person but it is weird to see people hype up and praise the film’s marketing. like gagging over brand tie-ins and collabs. and also doing free marketing for Oppenheimer?! like am i missing smth?
some of you are misunderstanding me (my fault for not being clear enough) so let me expand on my point: it’s strange to me that so many people are all of a sudden uncritical of the barbie brand; That no one finds it weird that mattel is (very successfully) reinstating Barbie’s “you go girl!” neolib feminism for a nostalgia poisoned adult millennial and gen Z audience without any pushback? I get that it’s fun to see the barbie doll aesthetic reimagined for grownups and admittedly it’s cool to see the barbie movie pr team is pulling out all the stops BUT why are we so happily playing into pink consumerism? why am i seeing viral tweets praising a barbiecore malibu mansion listed on airbnb, why are people praising the branded packaging of shoe and makeup brands doing tie-ins with barbie?? why are so many people doing free marketing for a movie that is essentially a commercial for a doll brand? I loved playing with barbie dolls and watching the animated movies and playing the games like i am not a barbie hater. even my art is inspired by barbie, this isn’t me being a contrarian and hating on something popular. I believe you can enjoy something and still be critical of it. I think it’s fine to wear all pink and be excited for a fun summer movie. BUT It’s not fun and cute to praise a multibillion dollar brand for how well it’s doing capitalism; it’s not fun and cute to act like there’s no deep implications for this behaviour and what it means for a society obsessed with commodities. I find that disturbing.
This is absolutely fascinating. I’ve now been looking at Alex Colville’s paintings and trying to work out what it is about them that makes them look like CGI and how/why he did that in a world where CGI didn’t exist yet. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
- Total lack of atmospheric perspective (things don’t fade into the distance)
- Very realistic shading but no or only very faint shadows cast by ambient light.
- Limited interaction between objects and environment (shadows, ripples etc)
- Flat textures and consistent lighting used for backgrounds that would usually show a lot of variation in lighting, colour and texture
- Bodies apparently modelled piece by piece rather than drawn from life, and in a very stiff way so that the bodies show the pose but don’t communicate the body language that would usually go with it. They look like dolls.
- Odd composition that cuts off parts that would usually be considered important (like the person’s head in the snowy driving scene)
- Very precise drawing of structures and perspective combined with all the simplistic elements I’ve already listed. In other words, details in the “wrong” places.
What’s fascinating about this is that in early or bad CGI, these things come from the fact that the machine is modelling very precisely the shapes and perspectives and colours, but missing out on some parts that are difficult to render (shadows, atmospheric perspective) and being completely unable to pose bodies in such a way as to convey emotion or body language.
But Colville wasn’t a computer, so he did these same things *on purpose*. For some reason he was *aiming* for that precise-but-all-wrong look. I mean, mission accomplished! The question in my mind is, did he do this because he was trying to make the pictures unsettling and alienating, or because in some way, this was how he actually saw the world?
omf i never thought i’d find posts about alex colville on tumblr, but! he’s a local artist where i’m from & i work at a library/archives and have processed a lot of documents related to his art. just wanted to give my two cents!
my impression is that colville did see the world as an unsettling place and a lot of his work was fueled by this general ~malaise?? but in a lot of cases, he was trying to express particular fears or traumas. for instance, this painting (horse and train) was apparently inspired by a really tragic experience his wife had:
iirc she was in a horrible automobile crash, as the car she was in collided with a train. i find it genuinely horrifying to look at, knowing the context, but a lot of colville’s work is like that? idk he just seems to capture the feeling you get in nightmares where everything is treacle-ish and slow and inevitable.
Yesterday, I saw some recent graduates celebrating their new diplomas by parading down the main street in the trunk of a car honking at full volume and full duration. I wish I’d said something to them.
I think we’re witnessing the death of aesthetic discernment at the hands of sensory gluttony. Nothing is ever less. We want more. More salt, more sugar, more engagement, more stimulation, more volume, more consumption, more speed, more lights eclipsing the stars, more more more of something that eludes us and is naturally the addict’s Tantalus-like pursuit of satisfaction. We cannot even indulge in the simple act of waiting and allowing ourselves to get bored; five seconds and we’re already fiddling with our phones. There will always be a higher high. But if we put it in binary terms, variation comes from absence. Silence and different durations and a sequence of ones and zeros that isn’t just one one one one one one one one ad infinitum.
Anyway. Measure is dead. Long live the excesses of modernity. Can I have some extra salt with that?
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