#disenchantment theories | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

historyhermann · 2 years

Text

Quirky Mature Comedy "Inside Job" Lampoons Conspiracy Theories

Reagan and her team

On October 22, the first ten episodes of Inside Job aired on Netflix. The show is not only irreverent, witty, and quirky, but its well-developed characters, voice acting, animation, and plot make the show captivating enough to watch, from episode to episode. Its interlinking stories lead to a devastating "resolution" that will shake you to the core.

Reprinted from The Geekiary, my History Hermann WordPress blog, and Wayback Machine. This was the ninth article I wrote for The Geekiary. This post was originally published on October 23, 2021.

Inside Job, a mix of workplace comedy and paranoid fiction, is the first animated series by Shion Takeuchi, a former writer for Gravity Falls, writer for Disenchantment, and former storyboarder for Regular Show. The creator of Gravity Falls, Alex Hirsch, is an executive producer, as is Takeuchi. It is the first series created by her as part of a deal with Netflix to produce animated content. Hirsch said that he was inspired by the X-Files while he and Takeuchi were inspired by pages of the Weekly World News, an outlandish tabloid.

Inside Job has six main characters: tech genius Reagan Ridley (voiced by Lizzy Caplan), yes-man/fratboy Brett Hand (voiced by Clark Duke), biochemist Dr. Andre (voiced by Bobby Lee), humanoid dolphin/supersoldier Glenn Dolphman (voiced by John DiMaggio), PR officer Gigi Thompson (Tisha Campbell), and psychic mushroom organism Magic Myc (voiced by Brett Gelman). Supporting characters include current CEO J.R. Scheimpough (voiced by Andrew Daley) and Reagan's father Rand Ridley (voiced by Christian Slater). Reagan, J.R., Andrew, Glenn, Gigi, and Magic work at Cognito, Inc., with Reagan managing her co-workers and wanting to make the world "a better place," while dealing with her paranoid father, the former company CEO. Reagan herself is multiracial as her mother, Tomiko (voiced by Suzy Nakamura), is Japanese. In this world, every conspiracy theory is real, with Cognito as a shadow government entity that makes this all happen, working for those in the shadows.

The ten-episode first season of Inside Job introduces viewers to Cognito, Inc., where all manner of conspiracies are afoot. In the first episode, Reagan tries to replace the president with a robot after the previous one was "too dumb" to manipulate, while her goal to become the head of the team is squashed by her boss, J.R., who brings in a man named Brett Hand to co-lead the team. In the second episode, Brett and Reagan are confronted with the difficult task of figuring out who to fire as Cognito makes cutbacks, while her team tries to kiss up to her, thinking they will be fired, and having to fight off a powerful monster.

Later episodes feature a reptilian/lizard people gala, Reagan attempting to get a boyfriend, selling outdated and dangerous products to a town stuck in the 1980s, Reagan attempting to stop her dad from learning about her mom's wedding, ghosting a flirty secret agent, a free love commune on the Moon, a mole inside of Cognito, and trying to stop a robot by delving deep into her mind, while learning the truth about her father.

Weirdness and mature subject matters are at the center of Inside Job, with nothing held back. The show has characters cursing and blood being spilled, even in the first episode. Curse words fly right and left, mostly out of Reagan's mouth, and for good reason! Clearly, due to this, some people may not like the show or find it "too mature," or even sexual at times, in par with other mature animations that have been released recently, whether by Netflix or on other platforms.

While reviewers rightly described this series as mocking "our brain-fried reality," having a "lot of energy," being "emotionally wise and sincere," there is more to this show than that. It uses, in Takeuchi's words, comedy to "process difficult emotions, and... a way to explore these kinds of topics [conspiracy theories] and the ridiculousness of them." This is made clear from the fact that at first Reagan feels threatened by Brett. He comes to her for help, as he is under too much pressure. And both work together to control the rogue president and help each other. Although it reminds me a little of Mr. Robot, which focused on a group of hackers trying to bring down the "elites," Inside Job is the opposite of this, as the protagonists of this series are the same elites that those characters were attempting to take out by any means necessary.

youtube

One of my favorite parts of Inside Job is the weirdness and quirkiness, whether it's the human-hybrids, the lizard people, assassins (like one who shot JFK, who is voiced by Alex Hirsch), or something else entirely. The animation, music score, and background art are superb as well, with all sorts of easter eggs linking to other shows and topics, for those who wish to delve deeper. Like the highly-enjoyable Disenchantment, drinking, alcoholism, and drug use are some of the show's themes. On the other hand, it is more comedic than Disenchantment, although its comedy isn't constructed in the same way as it is in shows like Star Trek: Lower Decks.

One of the funnier episodes is when they show all the people said to be reptilian, like Al Gore, Taylor Swift, Mark Zuckerberg, Guillermo El Toro, Ellen DeGeneres, Judge Judy, Anderson Cooper and so on. I chuckled a little when they made fun of the Jason Bourne series and how ridiculous it is, or the joke about the Bechdel test. The show references series like Stranger Things (set in the 1980s), Ghostbusters, Star Wars, The Terminator, The Goonies, Harry Potter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and E.T., along with Blockbuster, Jeff Bezos, and the James Bond films, to name a few references.

Inside Job has a better spy episode than anything that Q-Force could come up with and reminds me a little of a Phineas and Ferb episode, "Live and Let Dive," where the evil doctor has a lair, although Inside Job ups the ante to something that is even more hilarious than either one of those shows.

Similar to other shows, broken families and having friends are also themes featured in Inside Job. This is noted in the show's third episode, when the audience learns that Reagan's parents are divorced, with her mother writing erotic stories. Reagan tries to make sure she has a group of friends among her co-workers, so they all support her, no matter the mission they have to undertake, although Brett is the most loyal and supportive of them all. This happens when her social anxiety comes to the fore in the show's third episode, when she is told to hug people at a reptoid gala, while she remains socially inept, learning it is because of a robot her father invented. It also happens when she has relationship problems and attempts to get someone with toxic masculinity, and has issues with codependency.

Some fans have even speculated that Reagan might be autistic. Having someone who is socially awkward and anxious is not unique to Inside Job, though. Cleopatra, the protagonist of Cleopatra in Space, has ADHD, Luz Noceda, the bisexual Afro-Latina protagonist of The Owl House, is neurodivergent, and Entrapta, the socially awkward (and morally grey) sciencey princess, in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is autistic. In addition, Peridot, a non-binary Gem woman in Steven Universe has been described by some fans as autistic, since Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar said that none of the Gems in the series can be considered neurotypical.

Apart from Hirsch and Takeuchi, the others working on Inside Job are a talented bunch. They include animator Mike Hollingsworth, one of the show's executive producers, who was the supervising director of BoJack Horseman, Pete Mitchels, an animator who directed the first two seasons of Rick and Morty and episodes of Family Guy, and Chantal Hennessey, who was a supervising director for 24 episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

Additionally, the series art director, Jeffrey M. Thompson, was an art director for Rick and Morty, and an animator and artist on Gravity Falls. Two of the show's animators, Andrew Bomo, the technical director, and Justin Schultz, worked on shows such as Harley Quinn, Invincible, Big Mouth, Onyx Equinox, Milo Murphy's Law, and DuckTales, to name a few. The opening theme is performed by Bronze, featuring BBRC, and is titled "Pa$$ the Time (Part 2)" while Ryan Elder and Steve Reidell are composers of the show's electronic music.

Inside Job seems to have been accepted relatively positively, including on the show's subreddit, which currently has over 800 subscribers, and has an official account with over 6,000 followers on Twitter, coupled with a fake website for Cognito, Inc. for interested fans. I expect there will be fanfiction as well, but currently, there is a good amount of fan art of Reagan, noting the show's references to other popular media. It is nothing like the documentary of the same name which focuses on the causes of the 2007-2008 global economic crisis. All in all, I am hopeful and optimistic that this show will be popular, although some people will undoubtedly sneer at it for one reason or another, probably the same people who dislike shows like Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss, and the like. Currently, it has high marks on sites like Rotten Tomatoes.

The inside of Cognito, Inc. shown in the first episode

The second half of Inside Job's first season will presumably be ten episodes long since 20 episodes of the series were ordered in April 2019 by Netflix. This show is unique in its own way and despite its strange nature at times, the characters, especially the protagonist Reagan, are relatable. It is unlike any other show I've ever seen. It doesn't fall into the usual animated sitcom model that mature animations sometimes tend to end up in, which began with the premiere of The Simpsons in 1989, and bolstered by shows like South Park, Family Guy, and American Dad!, to name a few that fit into the sitcom format.

Inside Job has the themes of togetherness and chosen family, with Reagan telling Brett that she and the rest of their team are his "business family forever" while she temporarily reconnects with her dad after feeling, rightly, that he is a poor father, before learning his terrible secret, all while he gaslights her repeatedly. Her relationship with her father is toxic and seeped in deep-seated trauma, which affects her daily life, personality, and everything else, while serving at the center of the show itself. The series shares some similarities, on a very limited basis, in terms of locations, to Futurama, as the characters traveled to the Moon in that particular series, and some visual jokes, but that's about it, as Inside Job goes to darker places and confronts issues that Futurama didn't.

The story, which Hirsch described as Takeuchi's "hilarious bizarre fever dream of a show that could only come from her unique vision of the world" will undoubtedly continue with support from Netflix. Hirsch also said that since Inside Job is for adults "keep all them Disney-babies far away."

Caplan described the show rightly, saying it serves as a public service, "reminding us of a time where they [conspiracy theories] were niche and maybe reserved for a guy who lives in a cabin in the woods alone and not half the population" and joked she could get behind the lizard people conspiracy, while saying that the theories the show tackles are vintage but fun at the same time. She additionally praised her character as not falling into existing tropes or archetypes while lamenting that "it’s depressing where the modern conspiracy theories are going." I think all of us can agree with that, as some theories are downright dangerous, leading to death, violence, or whatnot.

In the second part of season 1, it would be wonderful to have openly queer characters in the main cast of Inside Job. The current episodes have some queer vibes, like the orgy of reptilians or how all of the team (including two who are male) have crushes/like Brett Hand. Additionally, Andre identifies as "always sexual" with men and women around him as shown in the show's fourth episode, the same episode which shows a polyamorous couple in the background. There are also the vibes between the British secret agent, Rafe Masters, and the nemesis in one episode, vibes that are clearly homoerotic and are over the top, parodying the James Bond spy films. The astronauts are drawn in by space sex. Glenn has sex dreams about everyone on the team.

As for Reagan, based on the interpersonal conflicts she has been a part of in the first part of Season 1, it seems that in future episodes she will have to face her dad, who has become an obstacle to her progress and moving up the ranks of Cognito, instead of any LGBTQ+ focus on her part. Even so, the series could have an episode where she meets someone, just as Bean did in Disenchantment or Ash in Final Space, who she connects with on a deeper level without taking away from her main arc, although I find that to be unlikely.

In any case, I would highly recommend Inside Job for its hilarity, quirkiness, uniqueness, strong animation, character development, and wild plots.

#inside job netflix #mr. robot #netflix #conspiracy theories #x-files #gravity falls #disenchantment #alex hirsch #shion takeuchi #inside job #Youtube #subreddits

7 notes · View notes

ravenkings · 1 year

Text

Critical theory broadly addresses the following problem: What went wrong with modernity such that it produced the horrors of totalitarianism, mass destruction, and not the utopia of a classless society? As expressed in [Adorno’s] Dialectic of Enlightenment, the question becomes one of “why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism.”

[...]

The primal form of critical theory’s master narrative is that autonomous reason (or freedom or science or enlightenment), once yoked to the domination of nature, turns into its opposite – namely, the domination of humanity. In other words, the intellectual energies that were supposed to liberate us are now used to keep us in chains. To my taste, the version of this formulation that is most perspicacious is the pithy phrase in the Dialectic of Enlightenment: “Enlightenment reverts to mythology.”

– Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences

#critical theory #jason a. josephson-storm #the myth of disenchantment #quote

6 notes · View notes

nicholasandriani · 1 year

Text

Persona 5 and Cognitive Estrangement - a Detached Enchantment

Persona 5 and Cognitive Estrangement – a Detached Enchantment

Persona 5 is a role-playing video game developed by Atlus that was released in 2016. The game follows a group of high school students who are struggling with modern issues such as social oppression and the pressure to conform to societal norms. They discover that they have the ability to enter a mysterious realm known as the “Metaverse,” where they can confront their personal struggles and fight…

View On WordPress

3 notes · View notes

transmutationisms · 11 months

Note

can you talk a bit more about weber (im refering to a post you made earlier today i think)? i know a bit about the protestant ethic theory but not really the historical context in which it was written nor how it's used today. thanks!

so, weber's argument is essentially that protestant (specifically calvinist and puritan) theology played a major causal role in the development of capitalism in northern europe following the reformation. his position was that protestant ethics, in contrast to catholicism, placed a high moral value on secular, everyday labour, but also discouraged the spending of one's wages on luxury goods, tithing to the church, or giving overmuch to charity. thus, protestants invested their money in business and commercial ventures instead, turning the generation of capital into a moral endeavour and venerating hard work and economic productivity as ways to ensure one's soul was saved (as the buying of indulgences was not an option for protestants).

this is a bad argument. at core it is idealist, subordinating an economic development to religious ideology. weber never explains how the actual, material economic changes he wants to talk about were effected by a set of ideas; he doesn't consider the possibility that the ideas themselves reflected in some way the material and economic context in which they were developed; he doesn't differentiate between protestantism as a causal factor in the development of capitalism, versus the possibility that capitalism and protestant conversion both resulted from some other factor or set of factors. <- these types of problems are endemic to 'history of ideas' aka 'intellectual history' because merely writing a history of the (learned, published) ideas circulating at a given time doesn't tell you jack about how and whether those ideas were actually implemented, how common people reacted to them or resisted them, what sorts of material circumstances the ideas themselves were formulated amidst, and so forth.

in the case of weber, it's very easy to poke holes in this supposed relationship between protestantism and capitalism. even in western europe alone, we could look at a country like france, which was quite catholic, never became predominantly or even significantly protestant, and yet also industrialised not long after, eg, the netherlands and england. we could also look at what historian michael kwass calls "court capitalism" in 18th-century france, which was a largely non-industrial form of capitalism that depended on the catholic king's central authority in order to ensure a return on investment. france at this time had a burgeoning luxury culture and a centralised, absolutist government that was closely entwined with the powerful catholic church—yet it also had economic development that is recognised as early capitalist, along with growing social and economic tensions between the nascent bourgeois and petit-bourgeois classes and the aristocracy. this is not even close to being the earliest example of capitalist or proto-capitalist economic development (some predates the reformation!), and again, this is within western europe alone—we could and should also point out that capitalism is not solely a european phenomenon and can and does coexist with other, radically different, religious ideology (i have problems with jack goody's work but this is something i think it can help elucidate).

weber argued that the 'spirit of capitalism' was no longer dependent on the protestant theology that had initially spawned it—but again, here we see issues with idealist methodologies in history. at what point, and how, does this 'spirit' become autonomous? what is it that has taken hold, if weber is not talking about the 'protestant ethic' itself and is also not interested in analysing the material changes that comprise capitalism except as effects of some underlying ideology? well, it's what he sees as a general shift toward 'rationalisation' and 'disenchantment' of the world, leading to an understanding of late 19th- and early 20th-century capitalism as a kind of spiritually unmoored servitude to mechanism and industry. this in turn relates back to weber's overall understanding of the legacy of the 'scientific revolution', which is another can of (bad) worms. there is a lot to say about these elements of weber's thought, but for starters the idea that europe was the progenitor of all 'scientific advancement', that it then simply disseminated such knowledge to the rest of the world (the apotheosis of the centre-periphery model, lmao), and that europe has become 'disenchanted', ie irreligious, as a result of such scientific advancement... is just patently bad analysis. it's eurocentric, chauvinistic, and simply demonstrably untrue in like twelve different ways.

anyway, when i see conservatives and reactionaries cite weber, i'm not surprised. his arguments are conservative (his entire intellectual paradigm in this text was part of his critique of marx and the premises of materialist / contextualist history). but when i see ostensible leftists doing it, often as some kind of dunk on protestantism (or christianity more generally, which is not even a good reading of weber's own understanding of catholicism), it's more irritating to me. i am not interested in 'leftisms' that are not materialist. weber's analysis is a bad explanation of how and why capitalism took hold; it doesn't even work for the limited northern european case studies he starts with because, again, idealist history fundamentally fails to explain how ideology itself creates material change. like, "some guy writes something down -> ??? -> everyone just agrees with him -> ??? -> stuff happens somehow" is not a good explanation of any phenomenon, lmao. if we are stuck on the idea that capitalism, a set of economic phenomena and real relations of production, is the result of ideology, then we will also be stuck trying to 'combat' capitalism on the ideological level. it's unserious and counterproductive. weber's analysis has retained an outsize position in the sociological historiography because it's an attractively simplistic, top-down, idealist explanation of both capitalism and protestantism that makes centuries worth of material changes to production forms into a kind of ideological coup ushering in an age of 'rationalism'. this is just not a text that tells us, leftists, anything politically useful. at best it is an explication of the internal psychological logics of (some) forms of protestantism in (some) places and contexts.

#sry idk if i actually answered yr question lol #weber

265 notes · View notes

ezrathesilly · 8 months

Text

Introduction!

Basic info:

Name: Ezra

Age: Minor

Intj / Capricorn

Birthday: December29

Pronouns: He/they

Autistic!!!

Interests:

Current hyper fixation: Ninjago

Favourite characters: Ezra lamb, Noel grubber, Mischa bachinski, Twyla boogeyman, Deuce gorgon, Young neil

Musicals: Ride the cyclone/ Legoland, Be more chill, The prom, Heathers, Mean girls, Beetlejuice, Dear evan hansen, The lightning thief, Hamilton

Music: The smashing pumpkins, Nirvana, Foo fighters, Kittie, The smiths, The cure, Alex G, Babymetal, Hole,Linkin park, Weezer, Veruca salt

Tv: Monster high (2022), Total drama, MLP (2010 & 2021), The big bang theory, Community, Disenchantment, The umbrella academy, Ninjago

Movies: Bottoms, Perks of being a wallflower, 500 days of summer, We need to talk about kevin, Spider-man, Red white and royal blue, Scott pilgrim, Juno, Superbad

Books: Anything alice oseman, We need to talk about kevin, manga, DC comics, Scott pilgrim

#ride the cyclone #nischa rtc #legoland play #be more chill #ezra lamb #monster high #penny lamb

9 notes · View notes

bluebipples · 9 months

Note

I wanna know the science behind the Simpsons lol

as in why their skin is all yellow? i think a really common in-universe theory (bc matt just wanted his cartoon to be a lil eye catching, can't blame him) is that it's because of the nuclear waste. if you wanna get real deep into the mgcu (matt groening cinematic universe, because i am deep in the lore of his 3 shows) it makes the most sense, because canonically the simpsons, futurama, and disenchantment all take place in the same universe (in that order timeline wise, or possibly disenchantment is between futurama and the simpsons, but it's not confirmed which order other than the simpsons is the starting point). in the simpsons, nuclear waste is confirmed to have some intense mutative effects, and by futurama & disenchantment weird mutations have kind of become the norm. anyway ill stop being a dork now

#the lore is long and full of confusion #especially w the introduction of disenchantment and reintroduction of futurama #the man is a mad genius im afraid

7 notes · View notes

redwineconversation · 10 months

Text

Olympique Lyonnais Le Progrès Article (August 21, 2023)

Blah blah standard disclaimers apply; @OL Comms pls be a pal and toss me some cash for Starbucks and/or a glass of wine; y'all know the speech by now.

Translating this mainly because I don't want to hear any fake whining / conspiracy theories about what the stacked returns mean.

Olympique Lyonnais Féminin: managing the international players' frustration

The return of the 13 international players, none of whom brought back a medal from the World Cup in Australia, will last through September 4. With a schedule focused on athletics and the mental objective to quickly switch to the high as ever expectations of the club.

Last May 24, the international players who took part in the Media Day organized by Lyon all had the hope that at least one of them would come back with a medal to Lyon. The last hope ended with the third place playoff where Ellie Carpenter, playing for Australia, was beaten by Sweden.

The Lyon international players went through different emotions. There was disenchantment for Vanessa Gilles and Sara Dabritz, who were knocked out in the group stage with Canada and Germany. There was enormous disappointment for Lindsey Horan, who was knocked out to everyone's surprise in the Round of 16 with the United States. And frustration for the French and Dutch players, who lost by a very fine margin in the quarterfinals.

Bompastor: "They're still feeling disillusioned"

Sonia Bompastor has had discussions with all of the players and confirms that the majority of them are in the process of "digesting what happened ... mentally, there's a lot of disappointment from each of them, as a whole because they didn't achieve the objectives they wanted, and individually to different degrees depending on their performance. For us, the focus will be on getting them back as soon as possible and switching their mindset to the fact there is a long club season ahead waiting for them. They are still in a period of disappointment and frustration, but they are competitors and I have no doubt on their ability to compartmentalize because the club's ambitions are as high as ever."

The returns are stacked depending on the dates of elimination from the World Cup. Haitian player Melchie Dumornay, eager to "discover her new club and teammates" was the first one to return last week, a little earlier than others. This Monday, it was Vanessa Gilles and Sara Dabritz' turn to integrate the group who will be at La Plagne [mountain resort] until Wednesday. "They will have different training sessions, but it's good that they are there in terms of [group] cohesion," Sonia Bompastor explained.

Damaris Egurrola, Daniëlle Van de Donk, Lindsey Horan, and Ada Hegerberg will follow, and the six French international players (Wendie Renard, Amel Majri, Vicki Becho, Eugenie Le Sommer, Kadidiatou Diani and Selma Bacha) will follow on August 28. Ellie Carpenter will be the last to return on September 4. "The context is a bit particular because we have to continue working with those who reported back on July 17 and reintegrate in an optimal fashion those who are returning with a schedule adapted to each individual."

Lyon will play their next preseason game next Saturday in Lyon against Ajax, with a very young group [lovely...], and will grow in strength leading up to the first big clashes: the Trophee des Championnes, which they have won the first two editions, on September 10 at Troyes against Paris Saint-Germain, and then the first day of the league on September 15 against Le Havre.

#all good love stories start in the rain

4 notes · View notes

chicago-geniza · 2 years

Text

Avoiding my family and my feelings so hard I came up with the premise for a paper while pacing around my room and a dissertation chapter in the shower. Autists stay winning. The exotics vet is going to cremate Rugal and put his ashes in a terra cotta pot. I am proposing that secularization of the individual citizen as metonym for the modern imagined-community nation is the process by which 19th-century nostalgia in the "late imperial soldiers ~quixotically longing for home [the idea[l] of a home that never existed, a corollary to Romanticism] / concept of untranslatable words like hiraeth & toska" sense--ok that's too long. It is the process by which the national Geist was refigured as the "collective [national] consciousness," & this can be traced to psychoanalytic models re: "totalitarian grief," individuals not being given time to "mourn" and "work through" the loss of belief / the stages of grief re: "disenchantment" after the Secret Speech & the fall of the 3rd Reich because a new world order was imposed and it was impolitic to grieve the old. I hate this model because it substitutes the individual psyche for political and structural process, and speaks of the nation as a sentient being. However! Later theories about, e.g., Soviet nostalgia and recidivist fascism make recourse to these explanations too. You're just doing modernity as disenchantment plus national Geist and adding psychoanalysis. It is also very much related to "fins de siecle" (pluralizing like culs de sac because I don't know how French works), late imperial conditions, and burgeoning nationalisms / burgeoning national self-determination movements.

#fake thesis tag #nostalgia is when you mourn for the habsburg empire but also yearn for the Romantic ideal of the nation. now is the time of monsters

18 notes · View notes

simpsons-confessions · 11 months

Text

Welcome to Simpsons Confessions!

📺☢️👨‍👩‍👧‍👦🛹🛋️🤡⚛️🍩

This is a Simpsons themed blog where you can confess, shitpost memes, show fanart rant, discuss theories, headcanons or share your thoughts about the TV show ‘The Simpsons’ or the fandom.

You also can ask or submit confessions about Matt Groening’s other works too such as Futurama or Disenchantment.

Rules and DNI BELOW 👇:

⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️

THE GUIDELINES:

1. Please be nice and respect the owner and each other and remain civil. This is mostly meant to be a nontoxic safe space for our fellow users.

2. NO SLURS!!

3. Stay on topic within the blog

4. Don’t send death threats

5. You don’t have to agree with other people’s ships, having a favorite character, headcanons or theories but don’t just be rude about it.

6. No talking about political parties

7. Don’t be creepy or gross

DNI if you are A:

TERF/Radfem

Proship/comship

(NO)MAP

Bigot or an exclusionist of any shape or form

NFT supporter

If someone who breaks any of the blog’s guidelines

#the Simpsons #confession blog #Homer Simpson #matt groening #Simpsons #television #Bart Simpson #fandom blog #TV #Simpsons confession blog #disenchantment #Futurama #fox animation #fox animation domination #Simpsons fandom

2 notes · View notes

bedlessbug · 24 days

Text

Ilya Kabakov

at the Tate Modern there are angels, giants in a two-tiered art gallery, physical theories about the Universe’s invisible energies, and tiny inter-dimensional men. These elements of fantasy and science fiction, of a renunciation of strictly realist art

Fantastical figures are juxtaposed with desolate, realist narratives of Soviet life in the 20th century, especially in the bleakly auto-biographical Labyrinth (My Mother’s Album) (1990) that tells, through a long-winded letter in the first person, the story of Ilya’s mother. This contrast raises a question about the role of non-realist representational art (visual, literary, or both) in an allegedly rationalized world where the enchantments of supernatural phenomena such as religion no longer hold sway or generate social cohesion. What are the prospects of fantasy in the ‘disenchanted’ worlds of Soviet historical materialism or contemporary capitalist consumerism?

In The Man Who Flew Into Space from His Apartment (1985, pictured below), Ilya Kabakov explores the desire to escape from a circumscribed existence within a supposedly utopian blueprint. This installation piece immerses the visitor in the story of a man who builds a sort of trampoline in his cramped flat in a shared Soviet-era flat in order to enter an invisible flow of energy that permeates the Universe. We see his room as it was left after this escape, and can read eye-witness reports from his neighbors that narrate this man’s life and plans. For instance, ‘Nikolaev’, one of his neighbors, provides the following account of the man’s ‘grand theory’:

He imagined the entire Universe to be permeated by huge sheets of energy which ‘lead upward somewhere’. These gigantic upward streams he called ‘petals’. The plane of movement of the fallacies, stars and planets does not correspond to the direction of the energy of these petals, but intersects them, periodically passing through them.

This extract could come from a science fiction or fantasy narrative rather than from a piece of installation art. In this work, fantasy could be considered a means of escape from reality,

In the contemporary world of capitalism, theistic religion is no longer what binds communities together, even if it can be an important source of individual meaning. As sociologists of religion from Weber onward have argued, the modern world is characterized by the devaluation of anything beyond material, rational criteria [1]. What is the point of re-accessing enchantment when the world brought about by capitalism is supposedly characterized by disenchantment? Furthermore, are there ways to re-access enchantment beyond theistic religion? Both these questions are explored through the Kabakovs’ use of fantasy, and specifically through their portrayals of two types of non-human beings: the little white men, and the angels. Unlike religious thought, the Kabakovs’ work does not (necessarily?) claim that angels and little white men exist in ‘reality’. Nonetheless, these beings still have significance as symbolic vessels for understanding this reality.

There is a parallel between the seeing-beyond of the artist and of the madman,

in the Kabakovs’ fantasy universe, the super-natural and the magical is not externally given but inhabits inside of us, and is dependent on our state of mind. Such a shift in perspective is, perhaps, a tool for maintaining hope and motivation in a world that often appears characterized by external coercion and spiritual poverty.

the Kabakovs’ work explores the role of perspective in apprehending both the real and the fantastical. Interpretation of both art and reality are in the eye of the beholder

Emilia Kabakov has said that ‘reality can never be seen straight on but is always obscured either on purpose or by necessity’ [3]. If, as Zizek has argued, a certain twentieth-century thirst for reality is in fact a way to avoid confronting it [4], then perhaps a better way to approach the real is through the fantastical. In their work, the Kabakovs sometimes practice the deliberate concealment of reality, for instance through fabricated back-stories that contextualize their works as that of past artists or the work of fictional characters. They are also aware of the need to interrogate our notions of reality regarding the observation of both present and future. In Two Observers Nr. 2 (Right Part Of Diptych) (1989, pictured below), the two observers from the title are tiny figures, gazing at an alien-like white oval suspended in the sky over the coast. This surreal image could represent a visitor from far-away, but in the wider context of the exhibit it could also be read as an allegory for the future – either as a void, or as an over-illuminated reality too bright to be directly observed. The future cannot be directly observed; the Kabakovs instead deploy fantasy and metaphor to explore notions of future, utopia, and social reality.

Through their narrative-infused work, the Kabakovs push the boundaries between visual art and literature, as well as exploring the links between art, ideology, and social life. Their work exemplifies the role of fantasy in critiquing the bleak materialism that both socialism and capitalism tend to provoke and shows how daily realities can be transformed when observed through a different lens.

in any case, Kabakov didn’t seek to change the existing order. Rather, he saw that no order makes any sense for the reason that we didn’t choose it. We fell into it by accident of birth, like a fly into a spider’s web. If there is a new order, a new system, a new hierarchy, it will not be a conscious choice for the next generation either.

This combination of the impossibility of choosing, on the one hand, and the need to operate within this system, on the other, is the subject of many authors, starting with Kafka. And it was Kabakov’s subject too. You didn’t choose this, and you don’t like it. But you’re alive.

You can’t identify yourself with the role you are forced to play, with the mask you must wear, or even, if you like, with your own face on the screen or in the mirror. Is that political or not? It is not political per se. But the source of politics lies precisely in this fundamental discontent, in the lack of identification between people and their social roles. This gap is the place where discontent, doubt, skepticism, and protest—that is, political reactions—emerge

0 notes

antonio-velardo · 6 months

Text

Antonio Velardo shares: Vibes, the Economy and the Election by Nate Cohn

By Nate Cohn Recent positive news may put two theories on economic disenchantment to the test. Published: December 14, 2023 at 01:02PM from NYT The Upshot https://ift.tt/sNOrghK via IFTTT

View On WordPress

#antonio velardo #IFTTT #NYT

0 notes

m58 · 8 months

Text

six by Peter Dent

ESTABLISHING ROOTS

I thought I’d done for the day – obviously a mistake – because I was called for and quizzed till I was near faint. There was a void now in our previous happy home – impostors being an example of syndromes too difficult to eradicate and which can be passed from hand to hand like a baton. If I knew any of the answers it was by accident. Was I known to the au- thorities; was I fundamental to any of a range of proscribed parties; had I attempted on occasions to deliberately misread the accepted ciphers? I wanted to sleep – that I did know. My name must have come up on their ‘Attend to Next’ list – I had fallen into a trap of their making. The world wasn’t as I was. The unadopted road and those who travel it create a problem. Quite why this should be I have no idea. I may come to investigate it on completion of my correction to the theory that germs are totally responsible for a given disease. Isn’t there always something hairy waiting around the corner?

HANG ONTO YOUR IDEAS

Insiders were keen to experiment in areas forbidden to them. There were quite enough allusions and crooked miles to be travelled before then I thought. Getting a provenance for devices these days gets progressively more painful – some participants in the race to get somewhere are thought to be using underhand practices. I want to get off the train soon as I can and get the kind of air I breathed as a young man. The arts have made huge strides since then and the ground has been so worn down you need to walk outside the white lines if you want to be accepted. We used to drive the har- vester when nobody was looking. We cut a terrific swathe.

PREMATURE DISCLOSURE

Coming in to land in a cross-wind no-one can say grace with any conviction. I procured copies of Aviation Hazards and dished them out to passengers and crew alike. As you can imagine they were no more than a dozen pages in when we touched down! An irresponsible thing to do some might argue but I really hope it took their minds off it. Next time I’ll try some other ploy! Remember: for any airport getting fog-bound there’ll be extra motivation for opticians and the rest will have more time to flush out their varifocals. It all comes down to two questions: what is your gut feeling and how on earth will the obituary read in society columns? I hear sighs of disenchantment. I hear the slap of high fives

SEASONAL CHARGE

Sooty shearwaters sing as if they’re thinking about something but can’t quite explain what – they fumble about like an old person searching his pockets fruitlessly. Amongst much else my day is not much clearer. Unreality calls says John – which is as revealing as it simultaneously denies it. At certain times and in certain conditions something inside lights up with a mind of its own. Autumn and Winter are done with; we’re a week or two over the official worst. I’m not as yet inspired to sing about good times ahead but something in what I say seems to implicate love and a healthy dose of sand and sun I can start working on. Some birds rehash melodies from the past and trust they’ll get an audience – do my pocket bulge?

SNUG

I’ll invigorate the present if you do the past – two ends for anything you find on the shelves. Breweries exist to play a part but only a part. I exist at a point midway between things known and things unknown. The ferry flew colours not so easy to make out. Conditions better described as ‘wanting’. ‘Half-light’ could be a friendlier way to put it? If only one could state – in the very moment of living it – quite how it came to be and which in a string of theories sufficed to contain it. As it is one’s likelier to explode in the process than serve anyone well. Scales tilt according to one or more ‘extra’ factors. These may have played a part in my shifting from EPA to Skippers Fine and Dandy. Both satisfy equations I’m used to but they refuse to mix.

THE HOLIEST OF HANGOUTS

Being a force for good is a hard act to put into practice – by 4 a.m. you begin to flag. There is only so much emphasis you can distribute across 16 lines of text. When she thinks of me it’s only to check on my whereabouts and what I’m up to. If I tell myself or the man at the bus stop that running up unpay- able bills can be a thing of the past he’ll only ask what’s the catch. Being sensitive and more often than not insufferable I go the extra yard not to exaggerate my good points. These days awards are so few in number and mean so little to the av- erage punter I keep the planchette tarot cards and tumblers well away from the table we usually sit around and slip effort- lessly from good English into ‘pure gutter’ and doom-telling. It’s taken years but I feel she’s now better at topping people up? Past dawn the subject turns to ‘exploratory touch’ inart- iculate thrashings of Determinism and bellowing for the key! Making it (come what may) leads only to breaking your bank.

0 notes