Art & Criticism – Wis[s]e Words

Seeing far beyond his time — John Berger’s Way of Seeing (1972)

Published on July 23, 2024Leave a comment

If you have two hours to spare, spend them watching Ways of Seeing, a four part documentary by John Berger from 1972, ostensibly on how photography has changed the way in which we see art, but moving beyond that to examining the European tradition of oil painting, what its purpose was and how it’s reflected in modern day publicity.

For something itself now fiftytwo years old, from a time when colour television was still a novelty and no such thing as personal computers let alone mobile phones and social media existed, it’s still incredibly relevant. Just that first episode alone, looking at how a painting was changed from a still, silent image rooted to one unique location to something that can be chopped up, moved about, re-contextualised through the ability to photograph and reproduce it, is a revelation. Then in the second episode he takes a punt at how nudes, female nudes, are represented in oil painting: how these are not naked, truthful images of the women they supposedly portray but passive pictures to be consumed by the male owner of the painting. The female figure as a possession to be displayed. And then, echoing what he said in the first episode, that he too uses these painting to send his own messages, he acknowledges the absurdity of his the sole voice on the subject and hands over to a round table of women to discuss this further.

Episode three than looks at the real purpose of the oil painting as a medium, not the lofty ideals ascribed to it, and argues that it is about showing off your possessions as the owner/displayer. That in turn leads to the fourth episode where it juxtapositions publicity and advertisements with the oil painting tradition as a sort of mirror image. If paintings shows the things you already own and you in control of them, ads feed the dream of owning them, the aspiration.

A very heady mix of ideas here and no wonder it had such an impact. It is an interesting rebuttal to the far more traditional view of Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation (1969), to which this was in response. Art as a mystical, uplifting activity versus art as a capitalist tool that needs democratisation as much as any other such tool. In this context, the most interesting idea of all may have come from the end of the first episode, after he has argued that images are like words, but:

The images may be like words but there is no dialogue yet. You cannot reply to me. FOR THAT TO BECOME POSSIBLE IN THE MODERN MEDIA OF COMMUNICATION ACCESS TO TELEVISION MUST BE EXTENDED BEYOND IT’S PRESENT NARROW LIMITS.

Fifty years on we got this through social media; now we know that this democratizing dialogue has broken our modern elites’ minds.

“Our collaboration wasn’t a matter of compromise so much as collision”

Published on October 11, 2023Leave a comment

Bill Watterson and John Kascht talk about their working process on The Mysteries, a genuine collaborative process in which nothing was planned and each decision was taken unanimously: “we didn’t know what we wanted but we knew what we didn’t want once we saw it“.

Nothing better than hearing two passionate people talking about how they worked together and managed to create something despite of or maybe because of the huge differences in their prefered way of working.

If only you had a friend like Andrew Ridgeley

Published on July 11, 2023Leave a comment

I watched the Netflix Wham! documentary on Sunday mainly because Mic Wright tweeted about it a few days ago:

The Wham! documentary on Netflix is one of the most beautiful things ever. And as we are having a discourse about men not talking about their feelings or being supportive: Andrew Ridgeley is a perfect example of someone who loved and supported their friend no matter what.

I was young enough in 1982-1986 to not be prejudiced against Wham!; they were just part of the pop landscape I grew up with. So I never had the disdain for their music that the eighties music press seemed to have. However, I did buy into the myths pushed by them: that George Michael was the one with all the talent in Wham and Andrew was just a hanger-on who got lucky. As the documentary makes crystal clear this was completely wrong. It was in fact Andrew who was the handsome one, the song writer, the stylist when Wham began. George lacked his confidence and wasn’t as skilled yet as he was. It was because Andrew was there as an example, as a friend, that George could grew into the superstar and artist he was when Wham ended.

Andrew was the booster rocket to George’s shuttle into star orbit. He lifted him up higher than he could’ve flown on his own, then dropped back to Earth once his job was done. It’s amazing how much he supported George, to the point of ending his own stardom for him. And not only that; he also shielded him from the gutter press. His fuckboi behaviour drew the attention of the tabloids which meant they never found out about George being gay. And being outed as gay in the eighties meant the end of your career. Not to mention continuous harassment from the press.

So cheers Andrew Ridgeley. If only we all had friends like you.

Slapstick is not abuse

Published on March 21, 2023Leave a comment

In a post on whether Bocchi the Rock is mean to Bocchi, Bless hits on something that I’ve been struggling with recently, when people, critics especially, conflate comedic violence with actual abuse:

In a way, it’s the same sort of thing as a tsundere girl punching out her dense love interest. I’ve always been a little baffled by people who claim this kind of cartoonishly exaggerated expression of character promotes abuse in romantic relationships. While I understand people being uncomfortable with it (just as I can understand someone being uncomfortable with Bocchi’s portrayal of social anxiety), I don’t think it makes interpretive sense to treat these kinds of abstractions as the show’s reality. When Chitoge winds up a ball of fire to punch Raku in Nisekoi, that’s obviously not meant to be taken as literally happening. The same effect happens, just to a lesser degree, with a less fantastical punch.

It’s not that you can’t feel uncomfortable watching this or that you cannot disagree with its presence in a show, it’s more that it sometimes feels as if critics believe it is actual abuse happening to the characters rather than a humourous device? Anime Feminist especially has a bad habit of doing this, treating slapstick as abuse like in the comment thread here to the point where it routinely down rates otherwise outstanding, feminist friendly shows in favour of bland nothing burgers. As if inoffensive is more important than being good. With anything even remotely queer being judged that much more harshly. Girls Love shows especially are a victim of this. I like the site, I like its purpose, but this drives me nuts. I wish they would be a bit more charitable.

Battletruck — Sci-Fi Sundaze

Published on January 22, 2023Leave a comment

In a post-apocalyptic world where oil is more valuable than gold, a lone renegade saves a peaceful community from a gang driving exotic, armoured vehicles. But this is not Mad Max, this is Mad Max‘s New Zealand, worse budget, worse actors cousin: Battletruck.

A head-on shot of the battletruck with armoured shutters over its windows all in black with menacing lights.

You have to love a movie with a title as straightforward as this. The main attraction is the Battletruck, so let’s name our movie Battletruck. Then the yanks came and renamed it Warlords of the 21st Century which sounds like it should’ve been one of those Italian redubbed in English sci-fi schlockers. If you’ve seen Mad Max II you know the plot of Battletruck. It all starts when the titular truck runs down a horse drawn wagon and discover diesel onboard. Killing one of the drivers, the other one tells the gang where to find a hidden storage depot full of the stuff. The gang’s leader, colonel Stracker decides this would make for a nifty new base. When he orders his daughter to kill the survivor, she refuses and sneaks out that night. Pursued by the gang, she’s saved when the motorcycle riding Hunter comes to her rescue. He brings her to Clearwater where she lives a peaceful life until Stracker and his battletruck attack. It’s up to Hunter to save them all…

Battletruck is supposed to be set in America, but with every supporting role done by New Zealand actors and with it being shot on location there, it makes much more sense to have the story take place there as well. Especially with a cast that looks as if they’d been cast for a socialist realist kitchen sink drama and got tricked into doing a post-apocalyptic actin thriller. It makes for a far more down to earth drama even if it’s the same plot as Mad Max II, when even the weapons are bolt action rifles rather than M-16s or Uzis. There’s a strange vibe to this movie because of those incongruities, which actually made it a bit more interesting than if this had been a schlick fully American production. A minus point is that the acting is often dreadful, though this is more the fault of the American mainliners than the New Zealand supporting cast. Hunter e.g. is played by Michael Beck, better know for his starring role in another futuristic motorcycle extravaganza, Megaforce. The actors playing Stracker and his wayward daugher are not much better. Not that you’re watching this for the action and the movie itself did kept my attention throughout.

Caption: After the Oil Wars...

The setting is interesting. A simple “After the Oil Wars…” followed by an expository news radio message talking about how the oil fields in the Middle East are now either radioactive or ‘still burning’, food riots have broken out, martial law declared in ‘greater Detroit’ and how the exodus from the cities is flooding the countryside where bandits roam but law enforcement is powerless as they’re dealing with the crisis in the cities. Unlike what you’d expect from the phrase “post-apocalyptic” this isn’t set after a full blown nuclear war, but society has still collapsed. It’s a setting Battletruck shares not only with Mad Max but also something like Escape from New York and other eighties sci-fi. A full nuclear apocalypse is too scary, too big for an action movie, but there’s also the feeling that it wouldn’t take that much to collapse (American) society anyway. That whole late seventies to mid eighties period there’s an underlying current of pessimism, the feeling that America is doomed even if the world itself isn’t. Gang violence, recession, losing the Vietnam war, inflation, it all seems as if America is crumbling from the inside and nobody cares. You see that feeling in a lot of near future American science fiction of the period. Not just movies, but also in comics like American Flagg! and Scout and novels like Neuromancer. It doesn’t really fit here because the feel of the movie itself is so very New Zealand, a country with its own problems but nothing quite like this.

A nice little entry into the post-apocalyptic action thriller genre. Not very original, not the best of acting but still worth watching nonetheless.