CoP3- Research Poster

CoP3- Abandoned Practical Pre-Production Work

One of the initial ideas for solution to the practical aspect of the project was to create a stream-of consciousness style, 2D chain animation exploring iconography associated with the concept of evolution whichI would then link to Anti-Fascism. Ultimately though, the workflow proved inconsistent and I wasn't all that satisfied with the final product. If I were to pursue this idea any further I wanted the use of iconography to be more considered and thought out in order to better communicate the intended message. 

Initial Storyboards for animation exploring this idea of viewing evolution in an Anti-Fascist light. The idea was for the creature's face to retain continuity while the world and circumstances around him changed. The art style was inspired by illustrator Jesse Jacobs who incorporates minimalist colour schemes along with densely detailed line-work. Ultimately, I jettisoned this idea the more research I did into the downsides of allegorical storytelling in communicating a political point, opting instead to create something that would directly address the issues discussed in the essay and which could be more easily understood and shared via social media. 

Character designs and basic ideas for the direction to take my animated response in a way which addressed the topics of my essay. (Fascism, co-option of tactics, contemporary politics...) The idea was to generate pages of doodles and ideas which could then be incorporated into an animation, however these proved too disparate from each other with little in terms of a coherent narrative through-line which could be effectively incorporated into a meaningful animation. 

My final attempt to create an animation which effectively communicated an Anti-Fascist message in a way which reclaimed the shocking aesthetics of transgression which have been adopted by the right in recent years was a short animation of children beating a piñata with a bloodied nazi inside who they would then descend upon and cannibalise like a hoarde of zombies. The idea was to emulate the shock comedy style of artist Joan Cornella with his comic series, I generated storyboards and even created a background for this animation (which I ended up using in one of my submission boards), however upon further reflection I struggled to synthesise this with the content of my essay, ultimately abandoning the idea also; not wanting to fall into the trap of generating art for the 'rebel consumer'. If I were to create a practical response to my essay, I had to think purely in terms of communicating a social message, not narcissistically seeking to fulfil my own artistic ego. 

CoP3- The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth

If 90s culture reflected, as Adam Curtis highlights, a ‘dark foreboding’

and uncertainty for the future, much of postmodern mainstream culture today

paints an even darker picture; evidenced by the popularity and romanticisation of the

post-apocalypse; pre-occupation with dystopian fiction and historical fantasy. Nostalgic appeal

is the currency of today’s popular culture, from film to music; the traditional cultural gatekeepers

(producers, record labels etc…) all seek to capitalise on the comforts of nostalgia in an increasingly

disillusioned world. Much of what is popular at the cinema in the 2010s has it’s roots in the

cultural memory of the last 30-40 years. From superhero movies to revivals of dormant genre

franchises such as Star Wars; much of contemporary popular culture is inarguably preoccupied

with a particular generational nostalgia, taking what audiences grew up watching/reading/listening

to and giving them more of the same; symptomatic perhaps of a cultural ideology modelled around

the same Bayesian Networks on which social media operates.

Facebook, Youtube, Netflix; an increasingly small pool of web-based media conglomerates
serve as the gatekeepers for media and culture in the modern day, operating under many of
the same fundamental principles as traditional mass communication media, as outlined in
Chomsky and Herman’s (1989) ‘Manufacturing Consent’, in order to propagate what Richard Barbrook
and Andy Cameron (1995) define as ‘The Californian Ideology’.

"This new faith has emerged from a bizarre fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco
with the hi-tech industries of Silicon Valley...the Californian Ideology promiscuously combines
the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies."

-Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, The Californian Ideology

The Californian Ideology emerged in the 1990s as a synthesis of ideas from the New Left and Right;
a reactionary modernism which embraced the individualism and libertarianism of the Reagan-Thatcher
era while also embracing and acknowledging the cultural and social victories brought about by
movements on the radical left since the 1960s. As their influence in the culture extends, so too does
the ideology they propagate.

American neo-liberalism seems to have successfully achieved the contradictory aims
of reactionary modernism: economic progress and social immobility. Because the long-term goal of
liberating everyone will never be reached, the short-term rule of the digerati can last forever."

https://vimeo.com/139094998

Filmmaker Adam Curtis has studied the impact of the technological utopians which make up Silicon Valley in his documentary films ‘All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (2011)’ and ‘HyperNormalisation (2016)’. Curtis asserts that the dominant ideology of Silicon

CoP3- Nostalgia/Everything is a remix

Look at much of the popular culture from the last ten years and you can see we’re a culture stuck in the past, looking backwards; nostalgic for a version of the past as we imagined as children, repackaged and served back to us in a neatly marketed package. The most popular Hollywood Blockbusters depict costumed men fighting faceless CGI armies against a green screen, a source of adolescent joy for sure but lacking any thematic depth, societal value or commentary on the world we live in today. What was once solely the terrain of cult movies, transgressive genre fiction, cheap children's entertainment at the fringes of the popular culture is now front and centre; any sentimental value these things may have once had for a generation growing up disillusioned with the culture that surrounded them, stripped away as these ‘properties’ are co-opted by market forces and milked of all their consumerist potential. Removed from their cultural context, through endless reproduction, remaking and reshaping to serve the capitalist cultural mode of production, the culture of the past which audiences look back on fondly, which coloured much of their cultural literacy growing up, reduced to a shallow husk at the service of the bland, creatively bankrupt entertainment industry.

There’ only so many times you can remake Star Wars, with the same iconography, the same
thematic elements, the same story beats before audiences grow cynical and begin to see through
the cynicism of the marketing and merchandising. This stagnation is symptomatic of the broader
societal problem with Postmodernism in that it’s an ideological dead-end. By its very nature, the
concept of postmodernity has a sense of finality to it, this unspoken assumption that as a society
our best days are behind us; that the best we can imagine for the future is an infantilised and idealised
version of the past. As a result we begin rewriting the past to suit our modern liberal sensibilities;
glossing over our past mistakes by recontextualising some of our more regrettable actions with
the benefit of hindsight.

CoP3- Absorption of Postmodernist Aestheticism into mainstream culture

What emerged in the 90s was a kind of cultural and political Double-think,
a sense of both growing optimism and pessimism; an assimilation of Postmodernist aesthetics
into the capitalist mode of production, best embodied by The Simpsons. Simultaneously a transgressive
satirical send up of contemporary American values and a damning example of late capitalist excess,
with its numerous cross-media tie ins, merchandising empire and prominence in the pop cultural
landscape. In one of the earlier seasons of the show, the writers even poke fun at this with a gag
featuring news anchor Kent Brockman visiting a sweatshop in South Korea, where ‘American cartoons
are made’. The show parodies this again in more gruesome detail in 2010 with a couch gag directed
by guest animator Banksy, the so-called ‘anti-establishment’ street artist whose vague and often
politically heavy handed artworks also seem to have been absorbed into the postmodernist aesthetics
of the capitalist mode of production.

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2027768,00.html

When time for the production for the Couch gag reached South Korean Animator Nelson Shin,

who had worked on the show since 1989, his team protested Banksy’s depiction of the labour practices,
arguing the satire was off point and gave the wrong impression to Western Audiences about how the
industry works in the contemporary period. This highlights a sort of disconnect between how those on
the supposed Left of the political spectrum in the west perceive inequality and exploitation from their
cosmopolitan standpoint. Banksy’s satire seems misdirected towards the South Korean animators who
live fairly comfortable cosmopolitan lives while actual labour exploitation in parts of South East Asia
goes unexplored; glossed over almost by a well-meaning, if misguided and misinformed joke at the
expense of the wrong people. It’s not like The Simpson’s brand doesn't rely heavily on cheap
exploitative labour; The Simpson’s merchandising empire almost certainly does, but this inconsistency
on the part of the director with this gag serves to highlight how those in the west who rely on the
current exploitative capitalist mode of production to make a living still cannot escape it themselves,
even when trying to critique. Our awareness of this leads to a sort of Double-think, where we in
the west see the exploitation of the third world, yet are powerless to do anything about it and
instead fall back on irony tropes and a cool detachment.

CoP3- Introduction

CoP3- Amended Proposal