That being said, there are some repeat offenders – either in interviews, leaked footage, or accounts from co-workers – that make me feel a little less guilty about making a generalization. I still like these performers/creators (with the exception of Frank Miller, Kevin Smith and Gene Simmons because their work is crap from the get-go). I learned my lesson from the 2000 election: never go with the guy you think you can have a beer with over the one that’s obviously an asshole but more qualified.

James Woods: Very conservative and very outspoken about it. His reasoning and argumentation style made him a tea partier before there was even such a thing.

Frank Miller: Ditto. Worse, he presents the misogyny and racism in his work as fact as opposed to, well, anything defensible or interesting.

Peter Sellers: Destroyed film projects, careers, a couple of marriages and his children’s childhoods with his ego.

Dennis Hopper: Very smug and took credit for a lot of things he didn’t do, but specifically the idea that he wrote and directed Easy Rider. (Terry Southern wrote the screenplay, editors at AIP pieced it together.) He also did very, very unkind impersonations of David Lynch and pretty clearly made an opportunistic move from left to right politically.

Steven Seagal: Mostly because he uses excessive force as a police officer.

Russell Crowe: Has been very demanding and difficult to work with. Besides, I’ve never seen him in a really amazing or nuanced role. Great, you can shout, now get in the corner with latter-day Al Pacino.

Christian Bale:

Vincent Gallo: Probably one of the more ridiculous people on this list. He has sold his sperm exclusively to Aryan women (and offered to “personally deliver it” to ones that were attractive), repeatedly made homophobic and vaguely fascistic remarks, all the while knowing he can get away with it because he’s so good looking.

Kevin Smith: A writer-director who does not write or direct very memorably. Some of his scenes are quotable, but I don’t think that the ability to rework some line from Star Wars so an army of dudes in shortpants will repeat it until the end of time is really a talent. Also, he’s made unnecessarily vicious remarks about Ben Affleck and Tim Burton, blaming them for projects that didn’t work out. Yes, I’m sorry your terrible screenplay for Superman didn’t work out. It’s probably because the sound of your dick rubbing against your hand was too loud.

Gene Simmons: Proud misogynist and marketer who happened to do rock music on the side. Unapologetically in love with himself.

Honorary mentions: Klaus Kinski, Robert Crumb, Norman Mailer

This is in part nostalgia. The internet/digital culture I grew up with as a teenager was a garden of gifs;  video was limited to (mostly educational) CD Roms. Usually they were horribly pixelated apologies, a variant on “this page under construction”. Even though it was terrible netiquette back then (yes, that’s right, not “best practices”), personal homepages could seem very static or just took a long-ass time for a layperson to code, and gifs underscored that fact.

Where would Geocities have been without that shit? They were like Christmas decorations: sort of serious, but also tacky and easily overdone; generic and repetitive yet a mode of self-expression. However, as the internet became more about preformatted, minimal design instead of decorative DIY (which could be summed up as the switch from Myspace to Facebook), the glitzier variety of gif went away or at least outside the mainstream of internet creators/manufacturers. This also coincided with the rise of high-speed internet. Larger-sized media were now accessible without massive/indefinite wait-times, effectively killing the CD Rom and bringing high-resolution photograph, music, video and flash to the forefront of what made a page/filesharing site worth visiting. Porn gifs (which I would argue were equally ubiquitous/shared as those “under construction” ones) were no longer necessary; you could just download the porn itself.

But, as the internet has repeatedly shown, just because something “isn’t necessary” doesn’t mean it won’t continue existing. This latter genre which preserved a cinematic moment – be it silly, sexy, or strange – are undoubtedly the most popular now. High speed allowed them to become “legible” (porn gifs were very, very tiny in order to preserve looping gyrations; otherwise they were incredibly pixelated). Gif Party, three frames, Aloha Friday, and Graphics Interchange Format (to name a few) are incredibly popular tumblrs that deal almost exclusively in movie/TV gifs. Since the age and background of most Tumblr users is pretty homogeneous (people in their teens/twenties who grew up with the same nerdy shit I did), there’s this strangely uniform sensibility about what is/is not worthy of being looped. The live stream of gifs posted to De.li.cious are a little bit more scattershot for that reason, but their popularity (and what they’re about) speaks to a “collective memory” at the very least. The tumblr gif gang, if I may annoyingly label it that, caters to an audience that is knowledgeable about a variety of types of media, familiar with Monsieur Hulot, Star Trek, Classical Hollywood, Bollywood, and crappy direct-to-video releases. In short, they reflect a wider range of media literacy.

So, with the announcement of Showgirls 2 – whose prequel was probably the first really, really dirty movie a lot of people of my generation accidentally/purposely saw – it should come as no surprise that a series of animated gifs of the original were released to celebrate it. Though the first Showgirls has been re-appropriated either as unabashed, laughable crap or a new type of eroticism(!?), the sequel looks true to the original in that most people will consider it utterly unwatchable.

I still haven’t watched the first one. Maybe I never will. (I love Kyle McLaughlin too much to watch him outside of a Lynch movie.) And since I’ve seen the best part of the movie distilled into  gif-form, I’m not sure how anything 2 hours long could measure up:

]]> http://unbuttonmyeyes.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/showgifs/feed/ 0 vlucca under construction under construction koala big under construction showgifs showgifs poolgifs showgifss gifssss pushgifs slapgifs giffss http://unbuttonmyeyes.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/the-young-victoria/ http://unbuttonmyeyes.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/the-young-victoria/#comments Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:40:53 +0000 vlucca http://unbuttonmyeyes.wordpress.com/?p=30 ]]> Spurred on by the success of those Jane Austen movies and Marie Antoinette, teenybopper milquetoast is taken to the acceptable, expected level in The Young Victoria. Although I usually don’t go in for this type of overblown Masterpiece Theater stuff, I still gave it the opportunity to fail in making me feel anything. I’m not going to beat up too much on this movie; it doesn’t really deserve it – both in the sense it’s not unique in its blandness, and that it’s simply not worth the effort.

Like Marie Antoinette or Elizabeth, The Young Victoria wants to take a queen that American audiences can recognize (by name, at least) and make her seem controversial or somehow exploding with mental strife. But mostly wear big, pretty dresses. In this sense The Young Victoria already shot itself in the foot because the “controversy” is pretty lackluster. Okay, so her mom’s lover had her very tightly controlled before she became queen, but that’s mostly expressed in the fact lil’ Vicky has to hold someone’s hand while walking up or down stairs. There’s also some hubbub because she’s young, and because of her (mother’s?) ladies in waiting. Of course, the latter wasn’t really clear because there are only like six scenes in the whole movie without Emily Blunt in them.

But then again, because Victoria suffers from Queen Amadala syndrome, there isn’t much to her aside from the big, pretty dresses. Her courtship and marriage to Prince Albert is, of course, entirely phoned in: she wants him to write her letters, they kiss in the rain, he pushes the hair off her shoulder. It’s all very romantic in a safe, predictable way without any real eroticism. Sex is hinted at but never shown (they get ready for bed, then it fades to black), clearing up any doubt who this movie is for. (There are also several text inserts that dole out Wikipedia definitions and historical facts to help clear up just what a regent is.) Pure PG-13, it’s all for moms and teenage girls looking for a decent Saturday matinee. A post-film burger at Culvers may or may not follow, but who cares because that movie had such pretty dresses! Could you imagine wearing one every day?

Or at least, it’s what a movie ostensibly for those audiences are supposed to contain. It’s certainly not Ghost World – any sort of connection to actual teenage emotion derived from a stifling environment is nonexistent. The film’s extremely linear structure, adagio tempo editing, and competently-framed/well-lit shots don’t complicate things either. It’s a very clean, white world where substance or minorities have no place. So yeah, it is pretty fucking offensive that we’re expected to feel sad or happy for her, let alone act like this is a story that needs to be told. At least “My Super Sweet Sixteen”, though treading similar territory, actively encourages you to hate the rich people you’re spying on. I guess The Young Victoria may have it’s place among some present-day princesses whose parents shower them with money and impose an updated suburban version of the Kensington System, but most likely it’ll be quickly forgotten. Except for the pretty dresses, of course.

And now, here’s some motherfucking punk rock:

People use status updates for completely different purposes: humor, links, self-promotion, calls for assistance, etc. The idea that you would define happiness/negativity entirely through keywords in status updates such as “yay” or “tragic” is fallacious because emotion is far more nuanced. Or, it is for people who aren’t at one extreme of the spectrum or the other. Out of the population of my Facebook “friends”, it seems as though those who love drama generally use it more and to express more quotidian things like what they’re making for dinner or (in the case of FB mobile users) what they’re doing at work. Those who has a “professional” profile or don’t think everyone they’re connected to should be aware of how shitty their has been acting will not be reflected in these results.

On this point, this study sort of points to the way in which social norms and new media intersect. People who do use status updates for how they are told by FB to use it are also going to be more likely to project normative attitudes. For example, someone who set and achieved the goals of marriage and children at the socially acceptable ages (ie: married in early twenties, one or two children by mid-twenties) is more likely to want to make it seem like this was the best thing ever than someone who question those values. Someone who is an evangelical christian – and whose connections/community are also traditional – won’t necessarily feel comfortable talking about how their life as a dutiful wife or strong provider is unfulfilling. Though I’m not saying that these groups can’t “think outside the box”, their lives embrace structure and towing the line for things that are expected of them. Even though Sarah Palin may be “rogue”, her use of FB or twitter isn’t particularly creative – she uses it like any other politician.

I would also argue – based on personal experience, as well as discussions of FB’s transition away from exclusive/college-only elites and the “white flight” of Myspace – the above crowd would also be in a lower socio-economic class. Like Myspace, these users want FB to be an extension of themselves as well as a site of recreation. The advent of FB games, “sticker”/image, music, and other niche apps rose at a time when the major shift from Myspace was peaking. These maximize the amount of time a user spends on FB, and therefore the amount of time they are exposed to (equally normative) advertising. In addition to making it more like Myspace, these blur personal with public – everyone can see just how much you’re playing Farmville, and when you’re playing it. To me, this information probably says more about how happy someone is or isn’t than what they write; it’s unfiltered knowledge of how they’re spending their time. Status updates – regardless of how stupid or impulsive – remain more akin to how you act at a party, with attendant dressing up or down of how/who you are that day. While the statistics are changing, rates of depression have traditionally been smaller amongst lower-income groups. Thus, it seems to follow that if a group enjoys using FB for its proscribed used and is less likely to voice dissatisfaction about their lives, their updates would be less negative (but not necessarily more positive)?

Aside from issues of class, openness, and language/slang, the study just seems myopic in its approach. Instead of trying to do some quantitative study, why not do a random sampling of status updates across regions? It wouldn’t necessarily be “correct” but at least it would reflect more accurately what people in relationships are feeling.

Also, the wording of that article is overly heteronormative…a breakdown of data that was respective of the fact that would be more meaningful than this hot mess. Until a better study is released, I’ll stick to Failbook.

Most people – myself included – became familiar with Henry Darger’s work through the 2004 documentary, In the Realms of the Unreal. While the visual effects Jessica Yu used distinguished it from the standard (artist) documentary, the narrative it spun about Darger’s life was predictable: a crazy loner who talked to himself, suffered greatly, and channeled that suffering into his work. While undoubtedly a psycho-biographical reading of many artists work is valuable, it’s incredibly limiting and somewhat an easy answer to work with taboo subject matter. Further, as Mann points out, the figure of the “crazy artist” only increases market value. The idea of the “outsider artist” is especially prone to this stereotype; aside from technical skill, how else would they be different from somebody who went to art school?

Mann’s presentation instead argued for an understanding of Darger’s work – which included rarely seen collages, “tests”, and source material in addition to The Realms of the Unreal–through the visual and political culture of the time. Specifically, she drew comparisons to the little girl-centric universe of the Oz books. Chicago was home to both L. Frank Baum and his publisher, and by extension, the center of Oz-mania and advertising. Not surprisingly, Darger was a huge fan of the fifteen book series, and kept them  in pristine condition. Baum’s storylines included a great deal of willful and unwillful sex-changing in the case of Princess Ozma, who goes from little girl to ten-year-old boy to a beautiful adult princess. While the prevailing view of Darger’s intersex characters is that he simply didn’t know the biological differences between men and women, Mann pointed out the impossibility of this due to a) growing up in a boy’s home where dirty jokes must’ve abounded and b) an anatomy book in the Darger Archives. The absence of sexuality in a work does not equal ignorance in other instances; otherwise, one could probably make a pretty convincing argument about George Lucas, Spike Jonze, and Hayao Miyazaki. (More on this point later.) Thus, it is possible to see these cute, naked, intersexed kids as a way outside of the rigidity of gender roles of the time. (Sadly, Darger’s unfulfilled wish that he and friend William Shloder adopt and raise a child seems just as controversial and “suspect” today.) The manner in which boys, girls, and men interact in The Realms of the Unreal reflects how new public spaces, such as amusement parks, exploded Victorian notions of gendered space.

Slavery, the other elephant in the room, is also present in Oz. An ever-looming threat, the idea of being enslaved by a wicked witch or the nefarious Mombi, was vague yet horrifying. My notes and memory are slightly hazy on this point, it was during this time that slavery and emancipation’s connotations were beginning to expand beyond the plantation and into “white slavery”. Narratives of capture and redemption began to be applied to prostitution, and were just as paternalistic and condescending as one could imagine. This was also a time when a a number of age of consent laws were passed in various states, as well as the Mann Act (originating in Chicago, no less), which was purported to stop white slavery but instead prohibited miscegenation. Despite emulating the popular panic about “slavery”, there is no racism or racist jokes that were standard at the time in Darger’s work. In fact, the Klan appears as a threat at a certain point in the Vivian Girl’s fight.

Mann’s work deals with the changing notion of cuteness, and how in the 1960s and 70s in the US this came to encompass non-white ethnicities due to adoption discourses of rescue. His later collages, which include Asian and African children in seemingly impovershed circumstances as well as Asian women, also bolster the notion that his work was a strange mirror of popular culture instead of private perversion. The extent to which this can be explored, however, is difficult – despite the portrait of the Lerners as benevolent champions of Darger’s work, many of his possessions were destroyed or poorly preserved. Further, collectors – Kyoko Lerner included – hold onto his work, not allowing their collections to be displayed or reproduced. The crazy artist is worth a lot of money, but not worth enough to have his work be seen.

During the Q and A I brought up the fact that little girls, nudity, violence and sex-changing characters are not just limited to the age of Baum and Darger – popular the anime and manga series Sailor Moon, Ranma 1/2, and Futaba-kun Change (among many others) openly deal in these themes. Nobody claims that Naoko Takeuchi was sexually abused, yet look at the similarities:

Sailor Moon's transformation in the TV series

Takeuchi's cover art; a passion for wings, ribbons, bows, flowers, and airbrushes

Porco Rosso rescuing the girls swim team

Even drawing characters “chibi” style – a winking practice across a variety of anime genres – seems even more Darger-y:

It’s so easy to fall into a “case closed” mentality when dealing with psycho-biographical readings of work, especially when it’s literally the only perspective given about an artist. Thankfully, Mann’s research manages to poke a hole in this pervasive groupthink. I can’t wait to read her book on cute.