Welcome to the Apolitical Art Fallacy

The phrase "keep politics out of (blank)" has been thrown around a lot since the advent of social media. Scratch that, it's always been thrown around. Social media has just made the phrase all the more prevalent in my day to day life.

But here's the thing, art has always been political.

Hear me out.

Before the 20th century and the push for high literacy rates, art was one of the only ways people could make grand statements for everyone to witness. It was a means of showing off wealth and power. Whoever had the wealth and power, got to decide what kind of art was made. Why do you think there are so many pictures of the Holy Mother with Baby Jesus in art museums?

Art was commissioned through paintings, sculptures, architecture, fashion, poetry, and plays and could be used to entertain, educate, and celebrate.

What about even further back in time? I'm talking about early recorded history and prerecorded history. Cave paintings often depicted hunts, what animals to eat and which to avoid at all costs. Other early works often held religious significance or denoted who held power in a society.  It was about making a statement to another person or group.

Art records history, or at least what the winners define as history. Art sets beauty standards, especially for women. Art reflects the idealization of a time period, often to the point of gross exaggeration. Art makes a statement.

Art is political.

One example I am most familiar with is Diego Rivera. He was an amazing artist, but his work always caused a stir in the United States. He was an outspoken supporter of Communism, but was commissioned to create several murals within the United States. I've seen his murals in the Detroit Institute of Art and can verify that they are beautiful works that celebrate the American worker. However, his talent couldn't save all of his masterpieces and one was destroyed soon after he started working on it because of it's political message (click here for information on Man at the Crossroads and why it was destroyed).

Diego Rivera mural at the Detroit Institute of Art 

Anti-war art in particular has been known to cause a stir. Pablo Picasso famously painted Guernica in 1937 for the Spanish Republican Government. It depicted the bombing of Guernica, a city in northern Spain, and the horror it brought to the city. It brought the Spanish Civil War to the world's attention at the Paris International Exposition of 1937.

Guernica

I could go on about different artists and their political messages, but that would probably take years. Plus I'm not an art historian, nor do I have much more than a passing interest in art history in general.

But I do have an interest in film history. And, yes, film is an art form.

One of my favorite film periods is 1920s German Expressionist films. These are movies like "M", "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari", "Nosferatu", and "Metropolis". Most people probably wouldn't think of them as political art pieces. They were the equivalent of our modern day blockbusters. These movies were meant as an escape from the horrible economic situation the Germans found themselves in after World War 1, not political statements.

Yet, some film critics disagreed. In 1947, after having escaped from Nazi Germany, Siegfried Kracauer published a book called "From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film". In it, Kracauer analyzes the films and social attitudes in Germany that helped to lead to the rise of Hitler. Though I haven't read the book, I did watch the German documentary while it was still on Netflix a few years ago and Kyle from "Brows Held High" has a great summary video on the subject if you click here. It's a fascinating case study.

Actually no, totally watch Kyle's 16 minute video. It's a great explanation as to why art can't be apolitical.

And modern film is still very political. Hence why we have terms like "Oscar bait" that are constantly thrown around during award season. Or why the military will help out with the film industry (hint: it's a recruitment strategy).

Which is why I get really annoyed when people tell artists, athletes, actors, writers, etc. to "stay out of politics". Just because they entertain the masses, doesn't mean that they get to leave their personal opinions at the social media door. Often their work is very political in nature and can reflect or shape attitudes within a culture.

Where would we be socially without movies like "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", "In The Heat of the Night", "Dr. Strangelove", or "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" ? How many English classes read "1984"?

Then again, I get annoyed with anyone who tries to silence a group of people. I'm not the biggest fan of authority in general, but that's a personal issue best left for offline.

So yeah, whether we like it or not, art is political. It always has been and it always will be. The work that gets the most notice will likely be the work that stirs up the most controversy and shocks the public.

That just seems to be our human love affair with art.

If you enjoyed this post (or it pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y'all like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to Unexpected Horror with Cute Faces

First off, I want to point out that I am not the target audience for this type of game. I probably will never be someone who goes out of their way to play this type of game. That being said, this game is amazing, but not for the reasons you may think.

Allow me to direct you guys to Doki Doki Literature Club. For the uninitiated, at first glance Doki Doki Literature Club looks like a traditional dating sim visual novel. It's a genre that's popular in Japan and has a distinct subculture among American gamers (usually self identifying as fans of Japanese culture) and not something that I would ever touch with a ten foot pole.

Generally speaking, the target audience for the type of game Doki Doki Literature Club appears be are guys and a few girls looking to fulfill a dating fantasy with the perfect girlfriend. I'm not against dating sims, nor do I care if you're someone who plays them. Romance themed games just aren't my thing.

One of the main characters Monika welcoming you to the game.

Yet, I somehow found myself watching several Let's Plays of Doki Doki Literature Club on YouTube (the name is so much fun to say out loud). Followed by several analysis videos to figure out what the hell was going on with the game. Leading to this blog post.

Now, if you aren't familiar with the game and don't want me to spoil it for you, please go download and play it or watch a Let's Play. The game is free to download on Steam and the creator's website.

SPOILERS AHEAD PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!

To be honest, if I hadn't been asked to become familiar with it, this incredibly interesting game would have likely remained off my radar. I am not the target audience for it.

Doki Doki Literature Club starts out by giving the player a warning that the player will be confronted with several disturbing scenarios and actively discourage players from continuing if they suffer from depression and/or anxiety. This message feels extremely out of place given that the game presented as a cute dating sim fulfilling a male fantasy.

For the first two hours or so of game play, the player is presented with multiple scenarios and mini-games designed as means of getting closer to three of the four beautiful high school girls vying to be your love interest. As I stated earlier, I AM NOT THE TARGET AUDIENCE FOR THIS TYPE OF GAME. Thus I was a bit bored watching all the teeth rotting cuteness, while also trying to figure out when the "disturbing content" would show up.

There were also a couple of things that seriously irked me throughout this part of the game. Number one being why the hell would all these girls fall in love with the bland protagonist (insert my eye twitching). I understood that it was a self-insert (young) male fantasy, but come on! Number two being that the character I would have chosen to flirt with, wasn't an option. As I wasn't the one playing the game (remember I was watching a Let's Play), I wasn't as annoyed by this. All it did was make me wonder what this was going to lead to.

Two hours pass and finally, finally, something interesting (at least to me) happens. One of the characters admits to having depression. Well, okay, that's new. Mental illness is something that is rarely address in gaming in general and it fits with the warnings given. It was also hinted at from the beginning of the game. I started wondering if each of the characters had some kind of mental illness and the eventual objective was to help them find the resources they need.

That would have been an interesting change up of genre. Instead of straight romance, the game could easily shift to a dramatic hurt/comfort and friendship narrative.

Nope, I was wrong. This game is straight up psychological horror.

The first part of the game ends with a shocking scene (which I refuse to spoil) and you are back at the start screen. However this time, all of the save files were gone and one of the girls has completely vanished. To get back her file, you have to uninstall the game and then reinstall it. The person I was watching just hit "start new game", wondering if the game was still playable with the obvious glitch.

Oh, yes the game is still playable. It's also where the rapid switch in genre happens.

This game goes from cute romance, which is still NOT MY THING, to psychological horror, which is TOTALLY MY THING!

Now I'm completely invested in the bland self-insert protagonist, what's going on with the three remaining girls, and what bat-[censored]-crazy thing will happen next. Is it just a game glitch? It doesn't seem like it is. It feels like the game is supposed to continue this way.

I finally came to understand why my friend was into this game and why it was blowing up on the Internet (or at least the parts of the Internet I frequent). It was the same "ah ha" moment I had when trying to understand why My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic had become insanely popular, especially for young men.

I finished watching the Let's Play, glad I hadn't actually played the game for myself because my poor future in-law would have had a lot of freaked out texts from me (they work with computers). I probably would have thought my laptop had gotten a virus from the game, especially since it's free. That's how much of a mind-[censored] I feel this game is.

Doki Doki Literature Club stands out because of it's unique ability to present itself as one thing and turn out completely different. I don't think this game would have worked if the creators hadn't tapped into several genre and gamer stereotypes when creating it.

Not only the use of genre, but how the horror is so unexpected for the player. These types of games tend to present the potential love interests as being the perfect "waifu" or a character who is "the perfect wife" for a guy. Waifus don't exist in real life. They are a fantasy. Dating sims are fantasies to obtain the perfect girl out of a bunch of other potentially perfect girls clamoring for the player's attention.

But what if the fantasy becomes a little too real?

The closest similarity of this game game is the Gravity Falls episode "Soos and the Real Girl". A character buys a dating sim to learn how to ask out a real woman and ends up getting stalked by the dating sim's main character, .GIFfany, through other electronic devises.

Behind all that cuteness is an evil AI.

It's also pretty much every woman's worst nightmare in real life. It's a common enough trope in dramatic TV shows and movies, not to mention YA novels and the plot to 50 Shades of Grey (if 50 Shades of Grey actually addressed the abusive nature of the two characters relationship, but I digress).

The difference in Doki Doki Literature Club and the Gravity Falls episode is that the main character experiencing these events are men (or at least supposed to be men by Doki Doki game logic), not a woman who is usually stereotyped into these story lines. It's a brilliant play on genre, expectations, and psychological horror.

So, do I like Doki Doki Literature Club? Yes, I think it's a pretty cool game and deserves the buzz that's been building around it.

Would I go out of my way to play it for myself? No, those first two hours a pain for someone who isn't into romance and can't stand bland self-insert characters that don't have the option to make the choices I would make in their situation. The following three hours of mind[censored]ery would probably freak me out to the point that I would have an anxiety attack over whether or not my computer has been infected with a virus.

Play at your own risk.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really freaked pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y'all like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to My Voice

I occasionally wonder how or even if you, my reader, can hear the words you are reading in your mind. Some people don't hear a voice when they read. I think that's unfortunate.

My mind always creates a voice for what I'm reading. Characters in a novel have distinct voices, while the narrators typically sound like that voice over guy in commercials. More often than not, I hear Morgan Freeman dictate instructions from a manual I'm reading.

Do you hear a voice in your head when you read?

If you do, what does my blog post sound like in your mind? Is it your own voice? Is it mine? Or is the voice someone else entirely?

Do you hear me?

I often worry that something is lost when my hands type out these words. I'm not speaking them to you in a visual or audio format. You can't hear my sarcasm or the long pauses I might make if I were speaking instead of typing. I can only give you context clues and funny punctuation.

Do you ever imagine me speaking these words to you? Especially if you know me in real life. If I am the one narrating these words, what do I sound like? Are you hearing the me of now or a much younger version of my voice?

Honestly, I'm not too fond of the sound of my voice. I've heard its not uncommon for people to dislike hearing ourselves recorded. The way sound reaches our ears when we are speaking is different from when others speak. This YouTube video  can help explain this phenomena. So, please, don't try to force yourself to "hear me" as you read this. I'd rather have my words narrated by someone with a much more interesting voice - like Morgan Freeman or Emma Thompson.

Have you ever imagined hearing music when you read? I often write to music and I think it can influence what ends up on the screen. It influences my mood, which in turn, influences my author's tone.

What sort of music would you put this post to? Or would that be too distracting?

In my wildest fantasies, I imagine a voice, strong and confident, speaking my words exactly as I intend them to be spoken. There is music, epic music, playing in the background. It's starts low, but grows louder and louder to punctuate every point I want to make. A climactic scene in a movie, meant to inspire.

As soon as I click that "publish" button these words are no longer mine. They belong to everyone. Anyone can read this post and create their own meaning from it, regardless of my original intent. I set the tone, but you feel the mood.

My word choice indicates my feelings, my sarcasm or sadness or bubbly delight. But do you read them that way?

What do I sound like to you?

Am I the whiny, obnoxious stereotypical voice of the Y-generation? Or do I sound older? Younger? Am I logical and cold or emotional and volatile? Possibly both, depending on the post.

Or does my voice "die" and get replaced with an entirely different voice?

These words are only mine, if I keep them hidden. Once I share them, I've lost all control to their interpretation.

One day, I hope you can hear what my written words sound like to me. The emotion will be just right with epic music playing in the background, maybe something by Hans Zimmer or Two Steps from Hell. The voice is comforting and powerful, smooth and forceful. It's a voice people want to listen to.

Is that the voice you expected from these words?

I don't mind if it isn't.

Maybe someday I'll write something worthy of that imaginary voice. I'd like to think I can. To write something inspiring and powerful, something the great orators quote and practice would be amazing.

And even when my voice fades, I like to think that my words will remain.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off), please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to Folklore and Mythology Part 9: The End of All Things

Armageddon. Ragnarök. Revelations.

It seems that humans aren't immune to speculating about their own demise. After all if we have myths and legends about how life began, we have to have stories about how everything will end.  Many religions have an end of the world myth, including all five of the current major regions that dominate the world.

Life and death are a part of our existence. To quote The Lion King: "It's the circle of life." For there to be life, there must be death and vice versa.

I think our fascination with the end of humanity has to do with the many cataclysmic disasters humans have already survived. At those times it may have felt like the end of the world. For example, imagine if you had been in Pompeii or Herculaneum when Mount Vesuvius erupted, killing everyone and everything in it's surroundings. Or what about the subsequent floods that would have occurred at the end of the last major Ice Age. Entire villages were swept away only to be discovered millennia later under the ocean.

We have myths about cities like Atlantis, Sodom and Gomorrah that angered a celestial being and were destroyed because of their arrogance. These myths indicate that the citizens of these cities deserved their horrible destruction. They are meant as cautionary tales about having a "good" and "moral" society (at least according to their respective philosophies) lest your society meet a similar fate.

It isn't hard to see how these myths might have evolved from accounts from survivors from actual disasters. In modern times, we've seen the devastating destruction Mother Nature can reap upon us. Tsunamis in Japan and in the Indian Ocean caused a lot of damage and killed a lot of people. The horrible aftermath of the 2017 hurricane season left thousands homeless and with little resources. And people still talk about The Great 1906 Earthquake in San Francisco in morbid fascination.

Then there are the more modern examples of people literally stumbling upon ancient civilizations on accident. These discoveries often leave us with more questions than answers. Who were these people? Do we have any references to them in recorded history? If not, where do they fit in our timeline?

We've found the ancient ruins of magnificent cities in the forests of Cambodia and at the bottom of the Mediterranean Ocean...and possibly off the coast of Japan (click here to read the wiki page). What might our ancestors have thought if they had stumbled upon even older ruins? There are a lot of lost cities and civilizations that we are only now rediscovering (here's an interesting video for you on that subject). Is it possible that these mysteries influenced our human need to explain these ruins with apocalyptic myths?

I think so. I mean we thought that dinosaur bones were evidence that dragons existed.

Humans have a curious need to explain the world around them. Before scientific advancements, we only had religion, mythology, and legends to give us explanations. We were able to pick up certain patterns in our existence such as for every beginning, there must be an ending. Hence creation myths and end times myths.

Of course the nuance of these stories isn't as black and white as I'm making it seem. Stories begin and end where they need to, creating a narrative.

What I am trying to make clear is that we are well aware of how fragile our existence is. Our societies have survived devastating wars, plagues, and destructive climate change (yes, humans were around before the Ice Age, it was a very different world than the one we currently live in). Our ancestors knew about civilizations that were destroyed because of these factors and attributed their destruction to angry gods or cautionary tales on their view on morality.

Believe it or not, end of the world myths have also been used to convert followers. Some early Christian missionaries to Norse territories used to preach that Ragnarök had already happened and that those two survivors, Líf and Lífþrasir, were really Adam and Eve (sorry I can't find a link to send you guys too, the latest Marvel movie keeps popping up, but I got this info from a couple of documentaries on Norse mythology). Others, especially in modern times, have used these tactics with much more devastating results, such as the Heaven's Gate cult.

End of the World predictions are as old as creation myths with more coming every couple of years. I usually take these predictions and myths with a grain of salt. I mean 2012 ended a little over five years ago and somehow we're still here.

Our fascination with our own destruction goes hand in hand with our fascination with why we as a species are here. It's very likely that we are the product of random chance and that's exactly what will kill us off. Or we might be the creations of a great intelligent being that is hoping we don't mess up our one chance as a species.

All I know is, is that humanity should at least survive the next 100 or so years. If only because I said so.

Thank you all for following me on this 9 part series on folklore and mythology. I doubt this will be the last time I touch on this topic as I love these types of stories, but for now I want to switch gears and write about some other topics. If there was a topic I missed or you want me to read a particular myth, let me know and I'll get around to tracking it down.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week...