How do we define a world? Do we define it in its spectacles? Its wonders? Its
- rest of entry truncated: we define the world in terms of the characters that inhabit it. And MMOs are devoid of characters that feel legitimately like they inhabit the spaces around them -
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
'Wanted' and 'Wall-E'
How does one begin?
You begin with two movies that could not possibly be any more different, and you compare the difference between the two. That being said let's proceded procedurally and take this movies apart to their roots.
Wall-E: a film for the ages. Pixar's age-old time again and again mantra is that they are not creating anything new, they are simply reinventing the wheel. It's said that in the creation of Toy Story the Pixar animators had no real film training, no idea that they were not supposed to do it, no idea of the obstacles that faced them. And for that measure they simply did as they wanted, and were rewarded handsomely.
Since then they've mostly told simple stories, returning time again and again to the old movie tropes, never innovating, but breaking boundaries at every interval in terms of what an animated could be. Walt Disney once championed this standard, before his company caved into maintaining a conservative-friendly legacy and began opting for pablum over content. With that introduction, we have Wall-E, with Pixar once again drawing on the old cinematic standards, updating them and repurposing them for a modern audience.
You begin with two movies that could not possibly be any more different, and you compare the difference between the two. That being said let's proceded procedurally and take this movies apart to their roots.
Wall-E: a film for the ages. Pixar's age-old time again and again mantra is that they are not creating anything new, they are simply reinventing the wheel. It's said that in the creation of Toy Story the Pixar animators had no real film training, no idea that they were not supposed to do it, no idea of the obstacles that faced them. And for that measure they simply did as they wanted, and were rewarded handsomely.
Since then they've mostly told simple stories, returning time again and again to the old movie tropes, never innovating, but breaking boundaries at every interval in terms of what an animated could be. Walt Disney once championed this standard, before his company caved into maintaining a conservative-friendly legacy and began opting for pablum over content. With that introduction, we have Wall-E, with Pixar once again drawing on the old cinematic standards, updating them and repurposing them for a modern audience.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Marvel: Ultimate Power and the Uncanny Valley. OR. Cognitive Dissonance (Part 1)
The Ultimates, and the Ultimate continuum as it exists in the modern Marvel continuity grew out of the immense and overwhelming success of the Ultimate Spider-man continuity. A stylized, teen-centric and visually slimmer version of Spider-man, Marvel soon attempted to replicate its success in its other properties, expanded the universe to encompass both the X-men, and a short-lived teenaged Iron Man. Out of this property came Marvel's Ultimate version of The Avengers: The Ultimates.
Featuring reinterpreted avengers characters, new nervous tics and character flaws, and a neo-realistic art style, The Ultimates was (at least in my view) an unqualified success. Modern, dark, and ripe with potential, I looked forward to a continuation of the series and waited anxiously for the next of the books.
Which brings us to Ultimate Power. Ultimate Power, a mash-up of sorts within the new Ultimate continuum, brings together all the superheroes of the world into a largely incoherent plot centered around Dr. Doom as an arch-villain again. While artwork is largely phenomenal, there is a problem that comes to light due in no small part to the realistic quality of the art and that is this: the women.
Perhaps due to the innate scarcity of women to be found in comic books to begin with, perhaps the first problem with this book is that there are just too many of them: they fill up the frame. Now before anyone starts launching the slings and arrows of misogyny my way, let me clarify: all female stories are fine, but not when they're all supermodels who appear to revel in ridiculously scanty clothing. It's not even that I object to it it's just that in these pseudo-realistic portrayals, with fairly anatomically correct male and female models, to depict exclusively slender, supermodel figures on ALL WOMEN seems immensely unreal.
Stylization allows you a great deal of freedom. In a stylized media sexualized portrayals of women gel easier: it's stylized, real women clearly aren't this sexy and real men clearly don't have several hundred tumors running all over their muscles. But in realistic portrayals like the Ultimates, this doesn't quite gel anymore. Most especially when the poses and the clothing these women strike hit closer to T&A portrayals than actually realistic poses. These aren't women, they're softcore models; but they exist alongside realistic portrayals of men so we are supposed to accept this standard of femininity as normative and in concert with the realistic portrayals of the male characters.
And this creates the cognitive dissonance
Featuring reinterpreted avengers characters, new nervous tics and character flaws, and a neo-realistic art style, The Ultimates was (at least in my view) an unqualified success. Modern, dark, and ripe with potential, I looked forward to a continuation of the series and waited anxiously for the next of the books.
Which brings us to Ultimate Power. Ultimate Power, a mash-up of sorts within the new Ultimate continuum, brings together all the superheroes of the world into a largely incoherent plot centered around Dr. Doom as an arch-villain again. While artwork is largely phenomenal, there is a problem that comes to light due in no small part to the realistic quality of the art and that is this: the women.
Perhaps due to the innate scarcity of women to be found in comic books to begin with, perhaps the first problem with this book is that there are just too many of them: they fill up the frame. Now before anyone starts launching the slings and arrows of misogyny my way, let me clarify: all female stories are fine, but not when they're all supermodels who appear to revel in ridiculously scanty clothing. It's not even that I object to it it's just that in these pseudo-realistic portrayals, with fairly anatomically correct male and female models, to depict exclusively slender, supermodel figures on ALL WOMEN seems immensely unreal.
Stylization allows you a great deal of freedom. In a stylized media sexualized portrayals of women gel easier: it's stylized, real women clearly aren't this sexy and real men clearly don't have several hundred tumors running all over their muscles. But in realistic portrayals like the Ultimates, this doesn't quite gel anymore. Most especially when the poses and the clothing these women strike hit closer to T&A portrayals than actually realistic poses. These aren't women, they're softcore models; but they exist alongside realistic portrayals of men so we are supposed to accept this standard of femininity as normative and in concert with the realistic portrayals of the male characters.
And this creates the cognitive dissonance
Saturday, June 21, 2008
A Rejection of Centrism
What is centrism? The ideological standpoint that dictates that the common neutral ground between two ideological extremes ought be the best of all possible outcomes. Centrism in the political United States has often been the greatest route to the greatest possible political recourse.
But let us give pause momentarily.
The recent FISA case as a model, centrism as it exists in the current United States has failed. After all, when the Democrats continue to appeal to the center and the Republicans appeal excluively to the insane fringe right, where does that leave us? It leaves us with a slow and steady trickle towards the mad imbecillic and utterly miserable proto-fascist regime that we've been living under for the past eight years. This was once a good place to live. FDR gave 3,000 dollars to every american citizen who went to college. In today's money I believe that's around 10,000 dollars. Once we valued education, standards, labor. Now what? What do we have in this enforced oligarchy consisting of corrupt businessmen and soulless merchants?
We have zero benefits. We have piddlings of social welfare systems, we have comparably immense disparities between rich and poor, and we have a governmental system that furthers and furthers this neo colonial global governing order called "globalization" a phenomena which no one is willing to concede, is completely artificial. Fareed Zakaria says globalization is inevitable, that it will be a boon to human society and raise the threshold of human existence globally and be condusive to a newer, better, more beautiful world. Yet what he fails to mention, conede, or note is that in the exportation fo capitalism and in the development of supposed interelated trade agreements, the disparity in power. We'll get back to that later but suffice to say: he is wrong. And were Barack Obama truly progressive he would be decrying this perverted international business entity that enforces the starvation of the masses for the benefit of the few.
But this is where we are. When the supposed "most liberal senator in Congress" toes the middle ground in between the true middle and the fascist wing of the American political system. We need a third party. Now more than ever. Even Israel which has appropriated the GOP for its own Likud has a tri party system spanning Labour, Centrist, and Likud. We need a third party, it's time for the liberals to get a say again.
But let us give pause momentarily.
The recent FISA case as a model, centrism as it exists in the current United States has failed. After all, when the Democrats continue to appeal to the center and the Republicans appeal excluively to the insane fringe right, where does that leave us? It leaves us with a slow and steady trickle towards the mad imbecillic and utterly miserable proto-fascist regime that we've been living under for the past eight years. This was once a good place to live. FDR gave 3,000 dollars to every american citizen who went to college. In today's money I believe that's around 10,000 dollars. Once we valued education, standards, labor. Now what? What do we have in this enforced oligarchy consisting of corrupt businessmen and soulless merchants?
We have zero benefits. We have piddlings of social welfare systems, we have comparably immense disparities between rich and poor, and we have a governmental system that furthers and furthers this neo colonial global governing order called "globalization" a phenomena which no one is willing to concede, is completely artificial. Fareed Zakaria says globalization is inevitable, that it will be a boon to human society and raise the threshold of human existence globally and be condusive to a newer, better, more beautiful world. Yet what he fails to mention, conede, or note is that in the exportation fo capitalism and in the development of supposed interelated trade agreements, the disparity in power. We'll get back to that later but suffice to say: he is wrong. And were Barack Obama truly progressive he would be decrying this perverted international business entity that enforces the starvation of the masses for the benefit of the few.
But this is where we are. When the supposed "most liberal senator in Congress" toes the middle ground in between the true middle and the fascist wing of the American political system. We need a third party. Now more than ever. Even Israel which has appropriated the GOP for its own Likud has a tri party system spanning Labour, Centrist, and Likud. We need a third party, it's time for the liberals to get a say again.
John Irvine's Heaven
They made this town in one man’s vision of heaven: John Irvine’s. John Irvine set foot on this earth ‘bout sixty years ago with nothing more than a horse and a rifle. He killed forty Indian men, women, and children before he planted his feet down on the ground and claimed this land belonged to him. From there he set about creating his heaven: he built forty acres of farm stretched out across the California countryside; ruled it tightly with a hoe in his left hand and a rifle in his right. So when the Mexicans came he gunned them down and he kept his paradise amongst the fields of tomato plants he seeded into the ground.
Forty years later those forty acres had turned to forty two thousand and in those forty two thousand John Irvine had his ashes scattered to the winds all across the land he’d made in his image. His family moved on, his son went north, his wife went south, and his daughter went east to Minnesota where she and her husband raised a family ‘till she died in ’92. But Irvine stayed put, his ashes kept their roots in the ground and the company he founded kept their hands on the reigns and moved John Irvine’s heaven closer and closer to his final vision.
They started building. Girders, concrete, and bolts spurted out from the ground where just forty years past John Irvine had spilled Indian blood making the land his own. Those houses were rough: islands in a sea of ripening tomatoes and the Mexicans that manned their rows. They weren’t through: those islands sprouted brothers. Like weeds the girders sprouted from the ground, cold, earthen, and industrial, pointing their dead, unfeeling fingers towards the sky where they grasped in fruitless agony at the heaven that John Irvine foresaw. The weeds they spread more widely, adapting and changing, eating away at the water’s edge where the tomatoes lapped against the shore. Where the first few weeds were weak, their borders tenuous, their construction outdated, their colors too varied, the newer weeds were stronger: uniform, defined, matching in design, construction, in color, and in their boundaries. Most important were their new boundaries for as the weeds grow their fences became their very definition: life in Irvine came to be the distance between fences that you occupied. And it was with that defining ideological characteristic that Irvine grew into what it is today, 60 years after John Irvine’s forty acres paid for in forty souls spilled on the soil he called his.
Forty years later those forty acres had turned to forty two thousand and in those forty two thousand John Irvine had his ashes scattered to the winds all across the land he’d made in his image. His family moved on, his son went north, his wife went south, and his daughter went east to Minnesota where she and her husband raised a family ‘till she died in ’92. But Irvine stayed put, his ashes kept their roots in the ground and the company he founded kept their hands on the reigns and moved John Irvine’s heaven closer and closer to his final vision.
They started building. Girders, concrete, and bolts spurted out from the ground where just forty years past John Irvine had spilled Indian blood making the land his own. Those houses were rough: islands in a sea of ripening tomatoes and the Mexicans that manned their rows. They weren’t through: those islands sprouted brothers. Like weeds the girders sprouted from the ground, cold, earthen, and industrial, pointing their dead, unfeeling fingers towards the sky where they grasped in fruitless agony at the heaven that John Irvine foresaw. The weeds they spread more widely, adapting and changing, eating away at the water’s edge where the tomatoes lapped against the shore. Where the first few weeds were weak, their borders tenuous, their construction outdated, their colors too varied, the newer weeds were stronger: uniform, defined, matching in design, construction, in color, and in their boundaries. Most important were their new boundaries for as the weeds grow their fences became their very definition: life in Irvine came to be the distance between fences that you occupied. And it was with that defining ideological characteristic that Irvine grew into what it is today, 60 years after John Irvine’s forty acres paid for in forty souls spilled on the soil he called his.
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