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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Anime For Beginners: Best Genres and Series to Watch

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The past decade has seen anime’s popularity increase in dramatic ways, whether through a much broader spectrum of series receiving dubs, the growing success of anime feature films in theaters, or the sudden prominence of streaming services. There’s never been a better time to be an anime fan and the medium has become more accessible than ever. There’s a lot of anime out there, but the wealth of new series can often blend together or not be given a fair chance. Additionally, there are definitely certain types of anime that are more prominently showcased outside of Japan.

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For the uninitiated it’s easy to assume that anime consists of giant robots, monsters that battle, and strong fighters and magical girls that transform, but that’s really just a fraction of what the medium has to offer. Words like shonen, shojo, isekai, and even reverse harem are used in reference to anime, which can sometimes feel overwhelming when someone just wants to watch a silly romantic comedy or superhero clone. Here’s a helpful breakdown of all of the major anime genres and where to get started with them all.

Shonen

The shonen genre is by far the most popular brand of anime and the majority of breakout hits and major successes like Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, and One Piece all fit into the shonen brand. What’s interesting about anime genres is that they’re treated more like demographics and shonen is content that caters to boys with a young male protagonist. Shonen is so accessible because beyond this basic disclaimer, it’s able to cover a wide berth of content and a show like My Hero Academia can be completely different from Yu Yu Hakusho, yet they can still fall back on the same values.

Shonen anime has largely been generalized to be series that feature lots of fighting and battles, which isn’t always the case, but has become quite representative of the genre. Shonen series are ideal for people that want lots of action and are hungry for a show that has hundreds of episodes to consume.

Notable Series To Watch: Yu Yu Hakusho, Hunter x Hunter, My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Attack On Titan

Shojo

Shojo is the female counterpart to the shonen genre that caters towards an audience of girls rather than boys. The shojo genre isn’t entirely bereft of battles, but it’s a style of anime where relationships and emotional drama is the priority or the source of power. There are many eclectic kinds of shojo series that are content to explore awkward relationship drama where there’s typically some kind of atypical supernatural element afoot.

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However, the most popular style of shojo that’s largely become emblematic of the genre are “magical girl” series where regular girls transform into powerful warriors. There’s also typically a bright and pastoral aesthetic to shojo series and characters, both female and male, are beautified. Shojo anime is absolutely the place where the power of love will triumph over evil.

Notable Series To Watch: Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Fruits Basket, Vampire Knight, My Love Story!!

Seinen

Seinen is the R-rated evolution of the shonen genre that’s geared towards a more adult male audience that can handle mature storytelling. That’s not to say that shonen series can’t be violent or deal with adult situations, but seinen series often center around antiheroes and adult characters who are disenfranchised as opposed to optimistic youth that want to save the future.

Some of the most sophisticated and challenging anime series come out of the seinen genre and it’s a great place for people to jump in that are looking for a story that’s not overly drawn out and achieves the same dramatic peaks as prestige television. Seinen once more comes down to the viewers’ preferences and there are science fiction, horror, and fantasy seinen shows that all deconstruct their material in different ways. As a point of comparison, major anime movies like Akira or Ghost in the Shell both fit into the seinen genre.

Notable Series To Watch: Kill La Kill, Berserk, Ping Pong The Animation, Vinland Saga, Dorohedoro

Josei

Josei is the more mature version of shojo content and it’s full of series that are designed for women as opposed to girls. Romance is a big component of josei series, but it’s more concerned about the harsh realities behind relationships than the flirtatious courtship that kicks things off. Josei love stories are messy and full of heartbreak and they’re less romanticized than shojo’s interpretation of love.

A trashy way of putting it would be to say that Twilight is shojo, but Fifty Shades of Grey is seinen. Matters of the heart don’t always have to fuel josei series and there are also plenty of shows that center around adult women as they negotiate through professional and creative endeavors. It’s a place to find less flowery female-driven stories.

Notable Series To Watch: Chihayafuru, The Gokusen, Honey And Clover, Nana, Princess Jellyfish

Isekai

The isekai genre is perfect for fans of fantasy and this style of anime has become wildly popular over the course of the past decade. Isekai anime is any show where a character gets transported away to a fantastical new world. It’s a classic storytelling idea, but anime has been able to run with it in some creative new ways. There’s an abundance of isekai series that incorporate video game aesthetics and there are now just as many series where characters are trapped in a video game world than some alternate fantasy dimension.

Isekai can focus on the protagonist’s mission to return home, act as a savior in their new world, or simply kill time and enjoy the vacation. There are even reverse isekai anime where a supernatural character gets stuck on Earth and must acclimate. Arguably the biggest most mainstream example of isekai content is Spirited Away, but even something as foundational as Alice in Wonderland would qualify.

Notable Series To Watch: Overlord, Re: Zero – Starting Life In Another World, That Time I Got Reincarnated Into A Slime, KonoSuba, No Game No Life

Ecchi

Ecchi is that brand of anime that’s generalized to be the oversexed content that’s likely to make someone blush if they were watching it in public. Ecchi is any sort of anime series that prioritizes a certain sexiness and isn’t afraid to showcase its assets and indulge in “fan service.” Ecchi anime usually has a lot of skin on display, but it’s far from empty content and there’s an important distinction between something like this and actual pornography.

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Ecchi series titillate, but they still are concerned about their story and characters. There’s inevitably going to be some overlap between ecchi and seinen content (Kill La Kill is a series that really tows the line between both), but there’s often more of a gratuitous playfulness that drives ecchi content. Sexualized characters may bring in the audience, but the series are still deep enough to maintain their interests.

Notable Series To Watch: High School DxD, High School Of The Dead, Rosario To Vampire, Strike The Blood, Prison School

Mecha

Mecha anime are widely prominent and the visual of gigantic robots locked in combat as they fly through outer space feels like a tentpole of the anime industry. There’s a large awareness towards mecha series and it’s even entered mainstream live-action content through works like Pacific Rim. However, this visibility also makes mecha content easy to generalize and some may write it off without understanding the versatility of the genre. Mecha anime can be broken down further into real robot and super robot series, each of which apply a different level of realism to these unrealistic creations.

Real robot series might focus more on the humans that pilot the machines and the politics that surround mecha, whereas super robot content can feature robots that destroy planets with giant lasers. There can be a lot of gratuitous action in mecha series, but the human element in shows like Appleseed and Neon Genesis Evangelion, or how various Mobile Suit Gundam properties are dedicated to the casualties of war, is proof that mecha anime can be a lot more than just giant robot battles.

Notable Series To Watch: Mobile Suit Gundam, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Appleseed, Mobile Police Patlabor, Neon Genesis Evangelion

Harem

Romance is popular in any medium and there’s often exceptional tension that’s created from out of a love triangle. One genre of anime takes that idea and seriously exaggerates it in a way that can sometimes be problematic, but has spawned a popular style of anime all the same. Harem series center around a hapless male protagonist who stumbles into some incredible situation where a large group of girls–all of contrasting personalities–fall head-over-heels in love with him.

Harem anime can come across as baseless wish fulfillment fantasy, but the broad structure allows many other genres to mix together with it in a productive way. A lot of the time these series will center on the actual characters and the complex relationship dynamics involved and try to say something that may not be explored in a josei or ecchi series. There are also reverse harem series, which take the same idea, but flip the genders where multiple men fawn over a woman.

Notable Series To Watch: Tenchi Muyo!, The World Only God Knows, Nisekoi, To LOVE-Ru, Ouran High School Host Club

Gag

Anime series are able to achieve a lot of things that just can’t be accomplished in other forms of animation or programming. Comedy is something that’s able to connect extremely hard in anime and operate at an absurdist level that uses visuals, timing, and premises that are rare to find elsewhere. Many anime series have a sense of humor or are even specifically designed as comedies, but gag anime are a different breed that operate at an overwhelmingly relentless pace.

Reality and the fourth wall are just things to break in gag series, which often engage in wild parodies and lampshade anime as a whole. Some gag anime have extended storylines, but they often operate in shorter vignette style sequences that allow the comedy to really pop. Gag anime thrive in pop culture references and some of the hardest times I’ve laughed in my entire life have been at gag series like Mr. Osomatsu and Gintama where comedy is king.

Notable Series To Watch: Gintama, The Disastrous Life Of Saiki K, Pop Team Epic!, Mr. Osomatsu, Excel Saga

Slice Of Life

Slice of life anime are those endlessly soothing series that don’t try to create major spectacles where the planet is at risk, but instead celebrate the mundanity of life. Slice of life series may center around the staff at a job, a group of friends in a high school club, or just a loner that’s moved to a new community. These are series that elegantly display the tiny moments that make life important and the bonds that create eternal friendships.

The stakes are often more muted in slice of life anime, but that doesn’t mean that they’re without tension or can’t dabble in fantastical material. There are still slice of life anime series that involve magical creatures or are set in unbelievable worlds. It’s sometimes even more humbling to learn that some planet in a far away solar system has a struggling chess club or that a dinosaur can be obsessed with different brands of candy.

Notable Series To Watch: The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya, Toradora!, K-On!, Dagashi Kashi, Clannad

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mothphobos · 6 years

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finally decided to put together a main hc post for the boys

sung

a cyclops! his eye is iridescent, so it’s a different color depending on the angle, but it looks blue from most angles

pointy ears

otherwise visually indistinguishable from a human

his species starts as a fourth dimensional being without physical form but as they get older they can decide to take physical form if they want

the decision to take physical form is permanent, they can’t shift back or shift into something else

some Shit happened to make it so that he needs to be in the vicinity of the prismatic core to stay alive

i think i’m leaning towards him having embedded it in his chest but i haven’t fully decided

mostly bc the image of him just keeping it in a fuckin pocket when not in armor is hilarious

in terms of neat powers and whatnot

his species can travel short distances in time, but he can’t anymore bc of the same Shit from before (with the exception of outside forces like time crystals)

can sense other life forms within the nearby area

can get sick but works through it quickly and most stuff can’t actually kill him

recovers insanely fast from injuries, and only serious wounds leave scars

a good dude! really fuckin old and has seen some shit but still an optimist and has a lot of faith in the good in the universe

to be frank, adhd like a motherfucker

more clued in to earth culture than it looks like, he just forgets/ignores a lot of it if it's not vital (i.e. won’t endanger anyone)

meouch

just a straight up dude with a lion head and tail

real tough nails that tend to grow a bit pointy but no actual claws by cat standards

really fast at recovering, both from wounds and illnesses

is an only child and was raised by his mom

of the rest of his family, only knew his maternal grandmother

side note: his grandma is cool as fuck. absolutely cooler than him

got into smuggling funk in his late teens/early twenties

funk in that context is definitely smth more substantial than the music, and is produced by the music under certain conditions with the right instruments

funk is harmless to most species, but, yknow.

worked his way up to being a commander in a space funk smuggling guild of sorts

phobos’ planet was the meeting place with a client and there was an issue with containment upon production, and that’s p much how that happened

has to be careful when space traveling bc occasionally he will be recognized and at that point there’s a fifty fifty chance of things going badly

the best pilot of the bunch! also just generally good with vehicles, picks up how to operate things pretty quickly

not really a mechanic, but is good at finding quick fixes on ships until they can get to someone with more professional skill

still an asshole, but a decent dude where it matters

gets himself into shit occasionally but is decent about patching things back up

Loves Ladies

the most clued in about earth culture, but only because it has a lot of similarities to his home planet and he spends the most time out doing stuff

phobos

MOTH MAN

a luna moth, basically

species stuff

bipedal with one pair of arms and a pair of functional wings

weird mouth setup! they’ve got proboscises which are what they use the most, but they’ve also got a pair of actual jaws more suited to solid food that are just hidden by Fluff most of the time

pitch based language made up of hums and buzzing noises

technically diurnal, but their planet has much lower light than earth’s and similar planets

his mother was the elected ruler of his people, his father was a botanist, and he also had an older brother

he got the title of lord through relation and working to earn it

was working on a satellite above the planet with a couple astronauts when the funkpocalypse occured

in rushing to get back to the planet, his suit/equipment got caught on something and kept him there long enough that he only got back for the aftermath, so he wasn’t affected by the funk at all

wings were damaged badly enough in the fallout that he can no longer fly

was trying to go after meouch when sung found them

he’d successfully found meouch but his injuries from debris and such were slowing him down immensely

he’s still working through the tail end of mourning, but has forgiven meouch and has gotten to be good friends with him

started learning sign language a few weeks after joining up with the rest of the band

just as much of a dweeb as sung, he just has a better filter and doesn’t immediately voice most of his dumbass thoughts

an all around pleasant dude!

has a definite mischievous asshole streak though

low tolerance for bullshit

the quietest, even disregarding the vow of silence

i wish i had a better way to describe it but enjoys a very tumblr brand of nonsensical and/or vaguely ominous humor

the least knowledgeable about earth culture but manages to squeak by in a lot of situations through sheer luck and politeness

havve

was human before becoming a cyborg

most of his internal workings have been replaced, but aside from that, everything above his waist (torso, arms, head) is more or less intact

still has a functional digestive system! doesn’t need to use it to stay alive though

in terms of energy, does have a battery but it’s an outrageously long-lived one, he can go about a week without needing to charge

his charging ports are in the soles of his feet and charge through contact with a docking panel sung made him

he’s also got a plug in one that he can hook up an extension cable to should he need to, though

after sung (by a lot), he’s the oldest

prefers to wear his armor most of the time, but can remove it if he chooses

from the future but fucky time travel landed the crew he was previously a part of in the mesozoic era where they turned on him, nearly killed him, and promptly left him for dead

has a loyalty towards sung from being saved by him but that’s about it

or, it at least started as just loyalty, nothing more, but has grown to sort of actually value sung + meouch + phobos’ company

still doesn’t dwell on it much, though

not one for feelings, at all

does have them, but they’ve been fucked with enough that they’re not exactly all there anymore

has a general disdain for most life forms, but has a soft spot for animals

will not intentionally harm children or animals most of the time

Likes Knives but isn’t allowed around them on planets

has a very ominous sense of humor that actually meshes p well with phobos’

is actually decently clued in about earth culture, just could not give less of a fuck

#twrp #PLEASE ask me about shit #this was so much fun to come up with #moth noises #also i am SO sorry the formatting is fucky

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cafezimmermann · 5 years

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(in which I become angry...)

On Thursday evening, I attended a vernissage at the Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig for The German Dream, an "ethnographic study of the dreams, rituals, and visions of a society in which many of its members are looking for an alternative for Germany." The exhibition, as seen through the eyes of its two curators – a cultural anthropologist and an art historian – attempted to identify “typically German” things that seemed doomed to disappear in the future.

"At the beginning of the 20th century, ethnologists were driven into the world by the fear of the loss of "foreign" societies, which is why they set off to collect objects, languages, and stories from all over the world before the respective communities disappeared under the pressure of colonialism. Before this presumably happens to the Germans as well, we have collected important every day and cult objects of this community and offer here a small insight into the current state of what is often speculative research."

On the whole, I found the exhibition interesting (having translated parts of it into English, I was curious what it looked like). There were elements of it that I particularly liked – for example, a 1972 video of Germany in the year 2000 that portrayed the typical working day of a specific "Herr B, 45 years old, politically independent, and single. For the past five years, he has had a steady girlfriend, and for the past two years an artificial heart that works satisfactorily for him." In the adjacent room, there was a mockup of the "Weisses Ross" (White Horse), a Leipzig bar that, after 143 years, was forced to close its doors to make way for a modern microbrewery (at the Stammtisch, the regulars of the bar had been invited to drink beer and play a final round of cards for the visitors). And in yet in another room, there was an installation titled "Digging for Dreams and Nightmares" – a presentation of how a German archeological team has been deliberately planting time capsules at random locations for future generations to discover.

These were the exhibition's highlights. For the most part, however, The German Dream seemed to focus on the dreariness of conservative middle-brow mentality and consumerism – a life of plastic water bottles, barbecue grills, supermarket checkout counter dividers at Aldi, Märklin model train sets, plastic garden dwarfs, Playmobil figures, and Jack Wolfskin rain parkas (strange, the exhibition failed to display those little waste receptacles found at breakfast tables in German hotels). These odds and ends that we take for granted in everyday life, accompanied by pictures of faceless communities (where, when you step off of the bus, you stare heavenwards and wonder to yourself "Just what the hell am I doing here?") attempted to portray modern German society, on the whole, as ‘castrated’:

“While megalopolises such as Shanghai and Dubai are realizing the belief in progress in concrete and steel, the Germans are forced to put up with the question: What happened to the great projects? While around 1900 the overall fascination for visions of the future was still great, it seems, only 19 years after Expo 2000 in Hanover, that the German mentality of the 21st century remains stuck in provincialism, skepticism, and retro kitsch.”

That said, the ‘epicenter’ of The German Dream was a room that had been cordoned off by heavy velvet curtains – the "heart of darkness," a space apart from the drab grey of consumerism where "good citizens" dare not go. It was here where the fascinating and yet controversial aspects of German culture could be found. It was here where Lucas Cranach's Eve was offset by, among other things, Schinkel's stage design for the “Queen of the Night” aria in Mozart’s Magic Flute, stills from Reni Riefenstahl's film Olympia, a portrait of Karl Marx's daughter Laura, and a drawing of a wolf in the woods made by the art historian's five-year-old daughter. It was here where Caspar David Friedrich's Cloister Cemetery in the Snow was juxtaposed with portrayals of Albert Speer's Germania (as an "idealized" future) and black and white photographs of drab concrete prefabricated East German housing blocks (as the reality of Socialist utopia). And it was here where, unfortunately, in the middle of it all, Deutschland, Rammstein's latest video, was being played in an endless loop on a video monitor.

In a time where political views seem to be a polarization of extreme political correctness and blatant right-wing populism, Deutschland is a disturbing attempt by Rammstein to address key points of German history: the Crusades, the Reformation, colonialism, National Socialism, and the Cold War – in effect, all of the things that The German Dream didn’t address. And, although I can understand why some regard Rammstein's "message" in the video as a criticism of German history and thus a dissociation of right-wing ideas ("Deutschland, meine Liebe kann ich dir nicht geben" – "Germany, I cannot give you my love"), Rammstein doesn't hesitate to portray the very violence it seems to criticize.

This, in turn, effectively makes Deutschland nothing more than a rape of German history. In an online article about the video, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (Central German Broadcasting, MDR) didn't hesitate to conceal the outrage of many who see Deutschland as an affront to humanity and German culture. According to Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee, the band’s members "rage with their violent fantasies through German history as if inspired, driven by the greed for the most bloodthirsty images and scenes possible, including those of the German concentration camps […] The value of this video as an artistic examination of German history and Germany as a fatherland is far below zero." MDR adds Josef Schuster's opinion to Heubner's thoughts: "Anyone who misuses the Holocaust for marketing purposes acts reprehensibly and immorally."

(Even the title of the video stoops to the lowest common denominator by using the 1934 “Deutschland” typeface, which typesetters, who were brought up with more elegant, humanistic examples of Fraktur from 16th and 17th centuries, ironically referred to as Schaftstiefelgrotesk ("jackboot grotesques"). Oddly enough, Hitler later banned the blackletter typeface in 1941, decreeing that "the so-called Gothic letters were based on Jewish Schwabacher letterforms.")

The message of the video aside, I felt that the overbearing maelstrom of Rammstein's music – its sheer aggressive, overbearing force – pulled the visitor away from being able to focus on the rest of the images in the dimly lit room. It angered me, in part because the visual associations offered were absolutely brilliant – there was so much to discover in the room, and yet, after unsuccessfully trying to draw my attention away from the video, I simply gave up and left, frustrated by the experience.

On my way back home, I started wondering about what this part of the exhibition might have been like if there had been different music. It then hit upon me that in his essay Concert Design. Form Follows Function, Folkert Uhde, the director of Radialsystem V in Berlin, writes about the importance of context in a concert program, citing an experiment he often holds in workshops about concert design:

"I often conduct a small experiment by showing ten very different photographs and playing the same piece of music for each photograph. The reactions are always surprising: depending on the image, which is seen as 'suitable', the music achieves in part an entirely different effect. Sometimes it is even doubted that it was the same recording of the same piece."

With that in mind, I began to ask myself, “What would it have been like the other way around?” How might have the public reacted had this room been presented with a different pieces of music in the background? How might such parallel worlds, which, musically, equally reflect the complex diversity and beauty of Germany's cultural past, affect and alter the visitor’s perception of the images on the wall? Which music would have been best suited? Would the relationship and meaning of the images change according to the musical context - perhaps intensifying the one over the other?

As Folkert Uhde explains: “If the impression is strong enough, it will make an impact. Contextualization can introduce a particular atmosphere, make associations and, above all, create individual personal points of reference for the listener.”

What if, for example, if classical music ranging from Bach's chorale "Ach wie nichtig, ach wie flüchtig" or Salomone Rossi's Al naharot Bavel to Richard Wagner's “Im Treibhaus” (from his Wesendonk Lieder) or Anton Webern's Passacaglia for Orchestra, op. 1, had been playing? Or, if popular music were desired, something like Wolf Bierman's Ermutigung, Jupp Schmitz's Wer soll das bezahlen?, or a video of MarieMarie's A Beautiful Life? What associations might have been made through these pieces of music?

Or, if they really wanted to be confrontational, why not a video of the Ernst Thälmann Lied, the unofficial hymn of the German Democratic Republic?

youtube

“The most precious thing man possesses is life. It is given only once. And he shall use it so that he may say when he dies, ‘My whole life, my whole power, I have dedicated the most glorious thing in the world, in the struggle for the liberation of mankind.’”

(my translation of the text at the end of the video)

Unfortunately, the opportunity to explore such relationships within the context of The German Dream was simply missed. Actually, that’s putting it lightly – the use of the Rammstein video was, in in my opinion, a display of ignorance.

Admittedly, it showed the point where we have arrived in society (which, from what I understand, was the justification for using the video), but failing to take the rest of Germany’s rich musical culture into consideration is criminal. Indeed we have come a long way from Martin Luther’s proclamation “Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.” But do we really need to reach for the bottom of the barrel and scrape out ‘music’ that is so vile and does nothing more than glorify the history of violence for commercial purposes? And just because we are too blind to look beyond the horizon?

I hope not, and yet, when I see Deutschland being used in a serious discourse about German society, I have my doubts.

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micaramel · 4 years

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Artist: Aidan Koch

Venue: Park View/Paul Soto, Los Angeles

Exhibition Title: Always put the rock back

Date: February 1 – March 28, 2020

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Park View/Paul Soto, Los Angeles

Press Release:

Park View/Paul Soto is proud to announce Always put the rock back, a solo exhibition by the Landers, California-based artist Aidan Koch, her second with the gallery. A public reception will be held on Saturday, February 1 from 4 to 6pm, and the exhibition will run through the winter until March 28. Aidan Koch is well- known for her comics that emphasize mood and tone over narrative. Utilizing storyboard formats, she combines painterly techniques and text into rhythmic sequences that generate affinities between objects, gesture, and words. Together they effect a visual synecdoche about the environment that embraces a humanist perspective that moves towards compassion for the non-human world.

The title of Koch’s exhibition, Always put the rock back, comes from a note pinned on a board at the Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve written by a child that said, “for animals that live on the beach and live under rocks always put the rock back on them.” As an alternative to a supremacist, domineering view towards nature, Koch’s works explore gestures of recognition filled with care towards the creatures and nature around us. Her works consider that non-human lives have motivations and desires all their own, which are nevertheless shaped by our human footprints and curiosity.

The exhibition comprises a new series of gouache and pastel works, sculptural beds, and animations. Her pastel works depict the interfacing of humans and their built forms with nature in dreamlike states, containing a spirited sense of joy, humor, and wonder. A pair of horses blend into the stream where they drink in one dense landscape. In another, trees charred in a fire, reminiscent of flora after the Woolsey fire in the Santa Monica mountains, show regrowth in the foreground in a hilly vista at dusk. Done from memory, her use of perspective and gesture in her landscapes moves beyond any observational or empirical bounds. They are instead oriented around personal history tinged with emotional affiliation, reinforced by poetic text wrapping around their edges.

Alternating with these works are spare, glyph-like gouache and graphite drawings that put animals, creatures, and human forms in schematic relationship. In one, a snake curls under a table; in another, two snakes relax above and below a woman who is investigating on the ground, down at their perspective. A suite of three works titled Vessel with Urine I-III picture Painted Lady butterflies alighting on blue vases filled with urine. Her illustration reverses their traditional status as emblems of beauty, here congregating around human waste, which in reality is an attractive force to them. Related to this is Koch’s animation In Which All Are One that is projected onto the wall. Koch has delicately rendered the metamorphosis of a butterfly from chrysalis and set it on a loop. It appears to transform back into a cocoon, upending the idea of a life “naturally” sequenced towards a transcendent or fully formed state. Instead it projects a more fluid relationship between these two lively forms, with no beginning or ending.

Koch’s themes relate to nature in trying to unwind an anthropocentric view of the world, and to treat nature and other animal species as one. Within that process, Koch’s works acknowledges the potential of productive misunderstandings. Her series of sculptural beds provides this, which sit in museological display on an L- shaped platform. Each of the beds symbolizes an animal companion of Koch’s from the recent past and present, scaled to their size, shape, and characteristics. They are accompanied by a hallucinatory animation projected within a lantern made by Lightsong Exchange. The animation serves as a speculation on what animal dreams could look like.

Koch was inspired by an anecdote relayed by Temple Grandin in her book Animals in Translation. In it, Grandin relates an anecdote of animal behaviorist Ron Kilgour, writing, “One of his early papers told a story about a person who had a pet lion he was shipping on an airplane. Someone thought the lion might like to have a pillow for the trip, the same way people do, so they gave him one, and the lion ate it and died. The point was: don’t be anthropomorphic. It’s dangerous to the animal. But when I read this story, I said to myself, ‘Well, no, he doesn’t want a pillow, he wants something soft to lie on, like leaves and grass.’”

In Koch’s words, “Of course, a large part of reality for humans is that we can never fully disengage from our perspective and societal beliefs and values. Allowing space to be conscientious, curious, or engaged even when its anthropomorphic isn’t always bad. Perhaps a pillow may kill a lion should it chose to eat it when offered, but a dog may very much enjoy sleeping on it, a pig might like playing with it and ripping it into pieces, a mouse might like living inside it. It’s not in our power or knowledge always to know how our offers and gestures might be accepted, but important to do them when care and thought is taken. Should you pick up a rock and find a small crab underneath, it is an appropriate and polite gesture to put the rock back.”

Aidan Koch (born in 1988 in Seattle, Washington) lives and works in Landers, California, and New York, New York. She received her BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon, in 2009. Her work was recently exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art in the exhibition “Dreamlands,” curated by Chrissie Iles about the history of experimental cinema. Her works have also been exhibited at Naughton Gallery at Queens University, Belfast; South Bend Museum of Art, Indiana; 31st Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, curated by Nicola Lees, Stella Bottai, and Laura McLean-Ferris; Galerie Patrick Seguin curated by Karma Gallery, Paris; and Signal Gallery, Picture Room, and Company Gallery, all in New York.

Link: Aidan Koch at Park View/Paul Soto

from Contemporary Art Daily https://bit.ly/2JEDCcB

#micaramel

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porkchopgrinds · 7 years

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Tumblr Favorites Blog

By: Mae Mou

#1 Dominant Culture & Stereotyping (Sofia Gutierrez)

Dominant culture is a culture that is the most powerful, widespread, or influential within a social or political entity in which multiple cultures are present. In a society refers to the established language, religion, values, rituals, and social customs. I chose this particular post about dominant culture because it shamelessly depicts the dominant power men have over women in this German advertisement. The boldness of the male lifting up her dress with his finger is what caught my eye and I just had to choose this picture as an example to discuss the topic. In the advertisement, it is obvious that the woman in the ad is willingly opening up her legs for this man suited up in formal attire, almost indicating the message that he had a right, the power to objectify her. The way he is dressed is also a symbol of power and the way he looks at her too displays a dominant culture that women are expected to do whatever a man desires and just because he is demanding it, she has to give it to him. In my oppositional reading as a consumer to this ad, even though I understand the intended meaning and dominant code, it does not mean I will accept the ad’s code due to my own background knowledge and believes.

#2 Graphic Design (Dalal Alrashed)

Graphic Design is the art or skill of combining text and pictures in advertisements, magazines, or books to convey specific visual messages to a targeted audience. I chose Dalal Alrashed’s “Black Swan” book cover as an example to discuss the subject because the design elements from his example really stood out to me. From the book covers elements of design to its principle of design and composition. You could tell the graphic designer was able to connect the relationship between the three perfectly. The use of space and color really catches the reader’s eye. The design itself is shaped like a swan with very bold black and red colors including subtle gray fading off as swan feathers. The swans eye looks intense and the only other parts of the swan that's red is its mouth and its sharp neck. I felt a dark vibe as I personally looked at this design and it made me wonder what this book could possibly be about. I believe that is essentially every graphic designer’s goal, is to make their design as effective as possible in terms of how well their product can communicate with their consumers and make them pay attention to the visual messages.

#3 Cartoons (Jamontae Hickman)

A cartoon is a simple drawing showing the features of its subjects in a humorously exaggerated way. Cartoons can also be satirical, especially the ones involving politics. Cartoonists also use caricature, humorous allusions and visual puns to make social, cultural and political statements. I picked this editorial cartoon of Donald Trump because I love the exaggerated caricature illustrated in this cartoon done in a way where its intension is meant to be insulting yet humorous at the same time. It shows the irony of Trump being a walking contradiction how he comes off as if he is so knowledgable and always knows what he's talking about on the surface yet most of his facts have a reputation to be false and ignorant. The term “Wikileaks” on the computer screen he is looking at probably serves as a symbol to represent that ignorance and the secretary supposedly backing him up saying “he's getting his intelligence briefing” is just to illustrate the front Trump likes to put up in front of the American people.

#4 Visual Persuasion (LUIS ZUNIGA)

Most Visual Persuasion can be found in advertising, TV and movies, propaganda, and documentaries. Visual persuasion is the use of visuals to send effective persuasive messages usually most popular in the forms of propaganda and advertisements. I picked this ad because it contained strong ethos and made me feel some type of way about society. The ability for this photograph to bring out a type of emotion out of me is why this is my favorite example for visual persuasion. It has the ability to effectively get you to think about issues outside of your world and become more aware of your surroundings. Such as famine in many poor areas of the third world. This black and white photograph portrays the brutal truth of youth famine. The quote, “die yearly as a result of hunger” brings out the desired behavior for donors and activists to want to take action to help just by actively receiving the message this photograph is sending out to its audiences.

#5 Information Graphics (Sarah Mason)

Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly. They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system's ability to see patterns and trends. I picked this infographic as an example to discuss because its cool octopus like shape caught my eye and drew my attention. This info graphic shows how a human baby is formed in 9 months using calm and cool colors. Not only that, the graph is showing each trimester of the formation process by using lines and circles to make out the shape of a human baby with the intention to condense narrative information into concise, easily comprehensible visual compositions. This is the alternative way to processing detailed information. Because of info graphics we can now take in lots more information in a very short span of time. It is easily comprehensible compared to reading a bunch of words that can often lead to misinterpretation.

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mott-media-thoughts-blog · 7 years

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Little Shop of Horrors: Gender, Race, Genre Formatted from the original script I utilized for a video essay

At times, the Musical genre and necessity of its component parts do damage to the narrative through long musical interludes that appear to literally lose the plot for minutes at a time. So easily then, is the act of changing characters into caricatures, little avatars aspiring to be part of a larger and more cohesive film. Thus, one can discern the disregard the Film Industry as a whole appears to possess towards the Musical genre; an interesting escapade with little dots of worth sprinkled amongst childish attempts at narrative. While this stance appears fairly consistent in critical circles, it is an underhanded and weak avenue for which works such as Little Shop of Horrors (1986) and La La Land (2016) to name a few, scoff amidst their bounty of thematic value. Musicals utilize their tools to embolden the emotion and persona onscreen as director Edgar Wright stated in a 2010 interview with /SlashFilm regarding his then in development film, Scott Pilgrim VS. The World, “We thought it should play out like a musical in a way in terms of the fights are not dissimilar to the songs. I always thought there were a lot of martial arts films that were like musicals, so we wanted to take that further. Ya know, in a Gene Kelly film when he performs an amazing routine, at the end of the scene no one goes, ‘Oh my god, that was fucking amazing!’ The song is about something, and then there might be some dialogue at the end that is also about that theme. And that’s kind of how this works where people have these huge fights – and it’s kind of like how it is in the books – where everything goes back to normal, and there’s a little reaction to what just happened…” Wright’s summation of the genres dependency upon bursts of emotion contained to exclusive events, or more aptly put, songs, highlights the reason well-directed musicals possess just as much artistic merit as their counterparts outside the genre. However, emotion is not always the key ingredient in the boiling point that sets off a musical number as is evident in Frank Oz’s Little Shop of Horrors (1986) Rather, any number of thematic undertones can possess the narrative and induce the inner machinations of directorial intent to spur musical pieces with messages pertaining to, in this case, politics. Utilizing themes relevant to the era of release, and that of its Roger Corman original, Little Shop is a musical that portrays Racial tensions, Class, Heteronormativity,, the War on Drugs, Nixionisim, and the American Dream, through a musical lens which tells the tale of outlandish killer space plants subtly invading earth. Through catchy tracks and visual stimuli, Little Shop of Horrors tendrils pried its way into the public consciousness under the pretense of a genre flick, only to, much like Audrey II, unfurl into something much larger than originally anticipated, “And this terrifying enemy surfaced- as such enemies often do- in the seemingly most innocent and unlikely of places”(LSH)

The lineage of the work is a well storied revisiting and altering of the source material. The most arguably “famous” version of the work being 1986s aforementioned Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Frank OZ, a screen adaptation of the Off Broadway 1982 play of the same name. The play itself, however, was adapted from the original 1960 Roger Corman low-budget classic, The Little Shop of Horrors which itself is thought to conceptually based upon the 1932 short story, Green Thoughts, written by Jon Collier. The narrative of Little Shop of Horrors takes place at the same time as its 1960 predecessor and is set in the same decade. JFK is president and as the opening crawl tells the viewer, “On the twenty-third day of the month of September, in a year not too long before our own” (LSH) which would evidently mean it takes places somewhere between 1961 to 1963 as JFK’s assassination was not until November of 63. The reasoning for which this is important falls upon the thematic underlying of the film, namely that of issues between Black integration into White society. The 1960s were a hotbed for social upheaval, between the Vietnam War, Civil Rights Protests, assassinations of Martin Luther King and John F Kennedy, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and landing on the Moon; the world was rapidly undergoing massive change at an unprecedented rate. A hotbed setting regarding aliens subtly invading earth further played host to national distrust of authority which was further stoked by the fallout from Richard Nixon’s presidential term in office, resulting in a more cynical America than previously encountered. The original stage production’s creators, Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, understanding the political landscape of the two eras’s manipulated the original plot of The Little Shop of Horrors to service the needs of the American people, criticizing core values like the American Dream and the moral cost of pursuing it.

Utilizing the tools inherent within the genre, through the use of pastiche, the film conveys it’s characters personalities, setting immediate expectations for the unfolding narrative. The threesome interacting directly with the audience are an evident parody/reference the Moirai, or as they are known today, the Fates. White-robed fragments of Destiny, they were denoted by their actions, the Spinner, the Allotter, and the Unturnable. In Little Shop, they exist outside of the narrative, observers of a pivotal event in the course of the universe, as the weavers of Destiny, controlling the “metaphorical thread of life of every mortal from birth to death” (WIKI) While they themselves never appear to have this kind of agency in the narrative, their musical interludes, which themselves resemble a gospel choir, only appear at important points in the story. They are present so as to continue weaving the image of their whole. Audrey, high pitched and stereotypically feminine, literally wishing for nothing more than to be a housewife as seen in the playfully nihilistic “somewhere Green”, is represented by pretty woodwind instruments and chimes, gentle and optimistic music which conveys her nature and fragility. Seymour himself begins as a character represented by clumsy and mournfully sorrow representation with songs like “Grow for Me” which has playful charm and wit but is clearly about Seymour’s failure to convince his newfound plant life to grow. When, finally, it responds to him, he bemoans the circumstance as the only sustenance the plant, who is to become known as Audrey II, desires are human blood. When, finally, Seymour surrenders to the plant begins to feed it, his musical numbers warp and shift, becoming more flavourful and R&B inspired. With his musical voice shifting to a more ‘Urban’ style, to better suit Audrey II’s own voice, he becomes characterized as the other the further his own style shifts. Further reinforcing stereotypical views of urban lifestyles, this shift occurs as Seymour begins to act outside of the rules of society in order to continue his pursuit of fame. Audrey II itself is classified as the other through its visual style but also the stylistic choices that carry Seymour along with it, R&B. Audrey II, voiced by Levi Stubbs, lead singer of R&B group Four Tops, is clearly ethnicized as black. Vocal language, as well as evident musical style, denotes this and with this in mind, it is the “monster” that corrupts the genuine and wholesome Seymour. As Audrey II is racialized to fit into a specific ethnography, it appears that traditionally black music is a threat to the white standard of living and is to be feared.

Seymour’s journey to stardom through the public’s sudden obsession with Audrey II stems from the same healthy disdain the creators of the stage production held in regards to the path towards the American Dream which parallels the Nixon presidency, relevant at the time of the film's release as his time in office was completed barely a decade prior and the American people were still reeling from his term as president. The journey to greatness for both Seymour and Nixon were, as the quote goes, “paved with good intentions” however ultimately both led to corruption and ethical degradation of character. As Seymour pinned for the love of Audrey, Nixon attempted much the same with his country, attempting to rig his way to success. Both wanted more than was given to them and through the struggle to attain it, lost themselves in the process. This is what the two creators of the original stage production meant when they alluded to the American Dream being a worthy venture, as it is, however, as they themselves noted, it’s the journey that damns the soul, not the prize at the end of the road. The temptation to continue down the path to the desired goal is strongly presented in the narrative by the musical interludes which lend story-progression and thematic scoring to the academic context of the film. “Grow for Me” represents the beginning of this journey, a difficult first step onto a larger path which takes some time and accustomization to adapt to. Yet, before long, it begins to feel as though turning back no longer feels like an option as displayed by the song “Feed me (git it)”. However, when it actually is too late, “Meek Shall Inherit”, “Mean Green Mother”, and “Don’t Feed the Plants” there is nothing to be done but look back mournfully in hindsight, just as the U.S did post-Cambodian bombing and Watergate Scandal.

The musical piece “Skid Row” speaks at great length to both the realities and stereotypical depictions of living “downtown”. Everyone involved in the number is looking for a way out as is evident with quotes like “I’d move Heaven and Hell to get out of here” and “ I don’t know what I’d do to get out of here” downtown is painted as a horrific place to live but it’s also a place of great diversity. There are far more people of colour present in this number than whites and still, they don’t have the platform to speak to the further woes of living on skid row as the two white leads are the focus of attention. It’s not until Audrey II is nearly full grown that the shift begins to move from the white protagonists and over to the “other” That said, the three Do-op girls have a number to themselves prior to this, at the beginning of the film in the prologue “Little Shop of Horrors” yet as they function as an in-universe representation of the Fates as previously mentioned, no attention is paid to them as they are effectively invisible, just like minority representation in these communities. Unheard from until their voices become a loud roar, no longer able to be silenced.

Little Shop of Horrors is a momentous work which further validates the artistic legitimacy of the musical genre. With a nearly endless amount of respect for its viewing audience, the film is genuinely intelligent and navigates its own themes with grace. Immensely rewatchable and catchy, it easily crawls its way into the brain and stirs one’s mind. Subtly at first, until, all at once, the connections to larger themes become startlingly relevant to the viewer. At first glance, perhaps, a film about a giant singing plant appears like a fun shlock filled adventure. Meaningless in its content but properly constructed to kill a few hours of time. Which is why this iteration works so well, it leads to such a promise but, much like Seymour in the original cut of the film, it pulls one along until, suddenly, you are consumed.

#little shop of horrors #shop #musical #film #queen's university #video essay #script #essay #thought #process #music #space #alien #70s #nixon #race #gender

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