A recent post from Scott Alexander on AI slop vs. human art asked respondents to guess whether certain images were made by AI or a person. If AI could fool enough respondents, was it not real art, a la the Turing test for judging whether a machine was intelligent?
Well, they did not fool respondents -- the average and median score was 60% correct, compared to 50% if they flipped a coin. We just had an election -- 60 to 40 is not a close election. This contradicts the title of section 1, that people had a hard time identifying AI art just cuz it wasn't near 100% correct. Having a hard time would mean they did worse than a coin-flip.
And he admits that he put a massive thumb on the scale by screening out AI images that had the telltale signs of being AI -- which is to say, the telltale signs that are already known about. This experiment revealed, to me at least, other telltale signs, but more on that later. E.g., disfigured hands and fingers, garbled text, "wrestling" poses where there's a lot of interaction between two bodies, and the entire style of the recognizable DALL-E model. Even with this thumb on the scale, people were still not fooled.
Of course, when it comes to computer models, the question is not can a computer program do something, but how much complexity does it cost, and how good is the output? If it has a 137-degree polynomial to connect a line between 7 data points, that's over-fitting the data. How many prompts, with what degree of specificity, does an AI generator require before it gives sufficiently passable results -- plural, as in reliably replicated, not just a fluke success?
The more complexity that needs to be built into the model by these prompts, the less smart and talented it is. The real comparison is, how many prompts or constraints, and with what degree of specificity, would you have to tell a human artist before they gave sufficiently passable results? Not many at all! The computer is a massive downgrade, if you're telling someone or something else what you have in mind.
The real fascination with AI slop is that the turnaround time for results is relatively fast, compared to the labor-intensive work of human hands. And so even though the results are slop, they're at least 20% real-ish, so you're OK with that trade-off -- crappy quality, but fast results for AI, instead of high quality results that take much longer for a person.
So then AI is not superior or equal to a person, it's a different point along a trade-off continuum, and nothing to gawk at as though it were a higher form of intelligence or existence than our own.
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My main interest, however, is in further analyzing what gives away AI art, beyond the already well-known signs like mangled hands, garbled text, and interactive bodies that turn into Mr. Potatohead abominations.
Those are specific to the subject matter -- what is being portrayed. But scrolling through the images -- and I was not fooled by more than a few (more on why they can fool, later) -- I discovered a more fundamental and stylistic giveaway of AI art, which gets to its very nature, or perhaps lack of a nature, compared to human nature.
Namely, AI -- being a program without a mind or spirit of its own -- can easily be of two minds, even in contradictory ways (not just divergent), at a stylistic level. Not what subject matter is portrayed, but the manner in which it is portrayed. Human beings, possessing a single mind of their own, are of one mind about the manner in which they portray the subject matter.
Consider image 4, which I instantly felt was AI (and it is). There is a clear main subject, close to the viewer, and it's a person. I don't think it matters if the subject is a non-human animal, plant, inanimate object like a boulder, or human artifact like a chair or door -- something that is the focus of attention, in the foreground, near the viewer. Then there's a background environment in which the subject is embedded -- not a portrait in a vacuum.
The subject being a person means it takes the form of a portrait, while the environment takes the form of a landscape.
Yet the styles of these two forms are different and contradictory. The landscape is Impressionist, although who cares exactly what period it's mimicking -- the point is, the level of detail is low-resolution, blurry, with blobs and patches and planes of color more than crisply delineated and complex shapes. This applies not only in the distance, where things are naturally more blurry, but right up in the foreground -- look at the flowers directly around the girl, their stalks look like single thick brushstrokes, and the petals are thick daubs of color. Low-detail, blurry.
Then all of a sudden, the girl in the portrait section is rendered in fairly high detail, in focus rather than blurred. It's not 100% photorealistic, but it's far more in that direction than the highly stylized rendering of detail for the landscape section. You can see multiple folds on the fabric of her clothes, with light / shading for sculpting purposes -- which is NOT used on the grass, flowers, dirt, trees, etc. in the landscape. You can make out individual wisps of hair on her head, each tiny curving line inside her ear (with shading-for-sculpting again), and so on.
This detailed focus gets more blurry and Impressionist as you look toward the bottom of her dress and shoes, and I notice in the other images that the trigger for photorealism seems to be a human face or other exposed parts of the human anatomy. So even just her dress -- which is a single garment, not a separate top and bottom -- looks schizo stylistically, with a more photorealist upper region and a blurry Impressionist bottom region, further from the trigger of exposed human anatomy.
The machine doesn't understand that a single self-contained work of art is supposed to be coherent and unified in style or presentation. It has clearly been trained on photorealistic portraits and Impressionist landscapes, one not-so-stylized and the other highly stylized. And so when asked to combine a portrait within a landscape, it figures why not combine the best of both worlds? -- a high-detail portrait in a landscape that is blurry immediately surrounding her, not to mention farther away as well.
This is not just shallow focus from photography or cinematography -- at the exact same distance from the "camera," there are simultaneously a sharp-focus object and blurry objects. That's not physically or technologically possible -- and could only be done by deliberate choice of the artist, in some warped form of artistic license.
But artists never use that license, cuz it violates the fundamental requirement to present the subject matter in a coherent unified style -- all blurry and Impressionist, or all sharp-focus and photorealistic, but not some of one and some of the other in the same work.
To give a pity point to the machine, it at least does the sensible contradiction instead of the wacko contradiction -- it renders subjects in sharp detail (as though we're giving them our attention), while leaving environments in blurry detail (as though they're in our peripheral vision, not as important), rather than an Impressionist portrait set within a photorealistic landscape (akin to animated figures superimposed on a photographed real-world environment, like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?).
This schizo clash of styles within a single work is how I identified most of the other AI images.
Photorealist portrait in blurry landscape also told me the following were AI: 7, 10 (again, not a portrait of a person, but with a clear subject taking up much space), 13 (cartoon head, realistic water), 16 (the background being just a fairly uniform color plane), 21 (the environment's flowers are blurrier than the decorative flowers on her clothes, despite both being close to the camera), 23 (background looks like an Abstract Expressionist painting, and even within the mother's clothing, the colored pieces are blurrier than the white pieces), 27, 33, 40, 46, 49 (the wacko contradiction, where the close-up buildings are blurry while the distant water is in sharper focus)...
And the most insane is 26, whose subject looks like he was photographed under pristine studio conditions -- while the landscape outside the window is a highly stylized Venetian type portrayal. Is it supposed to be a painting within the artwork, hanging on the wall of this room? To me it looked like a landscape shown through a window, that ol' trick. There's what could be a decorative frame just below it, but not running up the left side of the landscape... so it's a bit schizo in its subject matter, but also in the style, with totally opposite styles for the landscape and the portrait.
Related, there are some whose subject matter is a bunch of abstract geometric shapes, with no 3D depth cues, no lighting variation, etc. -- and then a single human face or body, with multiple features (eye outline, iris, pupil, lips, individual teeth, etc.), sometimes with shading-for-sculpting. The dum-dum AI doesn't understand that a single work has to be entirely abstract or entirely representational. This gave away 6, 17, 24, and 50.
I could tell that 19 was by a person cuz although there are geometric shapes and a stylized human head, the geometric shapes are not separate abstract objects from the representational head -- they're used to form the lines around the head and its features, or to fill up volume within these features, suggest texture of the features, etc. They are building blocks to render a representational object -- not a separate array of abstract shapes, plus a representational head in their midst.
The Impressionist landscapes with no dominating subject are less obviously AI, cuz the contradictory rendering of subject and background cannot happen. Still, their subject matter or compositions look more like photographs, which were then passed through a blurry / stylized / Impressionist filter. The point-of-view, angle, perspective, cropping objects at the frame's edges, etc. Very photographic in composition, if not photorealistic in detail. And painters or illustrators rarely did this -- they create more of a staged array of figures or natural elements if there's no dominant subject.
This gave away 11, 20, 31, and 43. I could tell 22 was by a person cuz there's a semi-prominent human and plant subject, and they're both rendered Impressionistically along with the landscape. However, 38 and 45 do not look like photographs in composition, and have the same approach to detail throughout. 38 has a little wacky of subject matter, with fairly crisply intact ruins amidst a sprawling pasture, and maybe the level of detail on that building is a bit too much compared to the landscape and figures, but it's not as obvious, and the figures are pretty blurry.
44 was the only one that really got me, glad to know it got everyone else too. Kinda photographic in composition, but could easily be a painter as well. Everything rendered in blurry brushstroke blobs, nothing is contradicting that with sharp focus. The presence of multiple people is not triggering the high-detail tendency for portraits. And the arrangement of them looks somewhat staged for dramatic effect, not a typical photograph. Very consistent and coherent stylistically.
Well, one getting through is just a fluke, as far as I'm concerned. By random chance the algo didn't do the many wrong things it is tempted to do. And if you could somehow spell out what is different about this one, to try to replicate it, it'd need so much more complexity in its instructions, that it wouldn't be worth it -- over-fitting the data.
I also missed the most commonly misidentified human picture -- 25. It has that wacko subject matter that makes you think it's AI. And the insane level of detail on the front of the ship, but far less on the bottom, the blurry / misty right and left sides of the landscape (including the smaller ships on the right), are the common contradictory styles of AI.
I wonder if this one was purposely made to resemble AI. If so, that still proves the larger point -- humans are better at imitating AI slop, than computers are at imitating human art. We are superior to them, so we can understand them and imitate them better than vice versa. Their output is a subset of ours, so it's interpolation and valid when we imitate them. Our output is a superset of theirs, so it would be extrapolation and invalid for them to imitate us.
The only human one I was fairly convinced was AI, was 30 -- there's such insane photorealistic detail on her dress, far less detail shown on her face, almost none on the walls of the room, and fairly low-detail on the scene outside the window. I don't think this painter from the turn of the 19th C was trying to imitate AI -- she was just obsessed with painting the details of a dress, and the rest of the composition was an afterthought. Not a very coherent portrait or mini-landscape through the window.
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So, the main points remain. People are much better at identifying AI from human art than just coin-flipping -- even when the really egregious examples are removed.
And crucially, AI models do not have a single mind of their own, like people do, so they frequently violate the fundamental rule to maintain coherence of style within a single work. It's so fundamental that most of us probably didn't even consider it necessary to spell it out explicitly -- like, what other approach would you take, clashing and disjointed styles? Computers are too analytical and slicing-up and zooming-in, not holistic and gestalt-oriented enough to appreciate what coherence, unity, and harmony among parts are.
Presumably they would do the same with a verbal medium -- parts of it would be verse with a strict meter and rhyme scheme, while other parts were dull drab prose. Or where entire paragraphs are dull drab terse prose, then others are highly ornate and full of figures of speech with sentence diagrams that look like someone smashed your windshield with a tire iron. You'd wonder whether the person had a schizo episode while writing a single chapter / story.
But verbal media are more serial, not as all-at-once parallel in processing. So harmony among elements isn't quite as salient of a property of speech as it is of images. IDK what AI story-slop reads like, but at least on the visual side, it's overly analytical schizo nature really comes through, and accounts for why we reject so much of it as decent or good art. It didn't even fulfill one of the most basic requirements -- stylistic coherence!
And again, I don't care how many trillions of parameters they add to these models to make them less ridiculously off-putting. That's over-fitting the data. And it's certainly a worse model to choose than "give prompts to a human artist" -- way less explicit detail needed there, cuz so much is already built-in to human nature, as well as during their training.
But something like stylistic coherence is too obvious and universal and unspoken to be picked up during training. It's part of innate human nature, and machines will never possess that, without ever more risible degrees of complexity-explosion. Sad!
What about music? I say AI will never write a genuinely moving song (outside of formulaic genres). Wonder if you agree.
ReplyDeleteThis is good news, it means that artists, writers, musicians, etc won't be replaced by AI in our society.
ReplyDeleteGreat analysis. Regarding over-fitting, does a newborn child need to be trained on trillions of examples of animals to tell apart a cat from a dog? No, they pick up on it very quickly, even if they've seen at most one cat and one dog. This scaling up, compute centered approach is sloppy, wasteful and produces incoherent garbage as you've nicely demonstrated. I hate the AI evangelists so much it's unreal - an unfortunate side effect of skyrocketing autism rates in the past decades.
ReplyDeleteI've been anti-AI since college, when the big whoop-tee-doo in linguistics models were "connectionism", which failed pathetically in all the predictable ways -- mainly, could not deal with things outside of their training set (extrapolation is invalid vs. interpolation is valid). And they need a trillion exposures to even get that "smart," so the whole approach was retarded -- investing a ton, for so little in return.
ReplyDeleteThen seeing them try to do this parallel processing, rules-free / no explicitly built-in rules, etc. approach with Optimality Theory -- which was an even bigger failure. Could not produce the right result for cases of opacity, i.e. where the application of one rule erased the context that had triggered an earlier rule in the derivation.
They tried to cheat by introducing "sympathy", but that's just sneaking in derivational rules through the back door -- and violated the model structure, where the constraints are only supposed to refer to underlying and surface forms, not a member of the candidate list of forms.
The whole AI thing is just total bullshit when they try to put it in practice, and it's only gotten sloppier since y2k when I first encountered it. That's what all this replication crisis, retraction crisis, and in general QE-funded nonsense has done -- just give midwits a shitload of free money to play around with, and see what they come up with.
No targets, no goals, no quality assurance. Literally whatever the free-money-funded midwits come up with, is ipso facto tHe ScIeNcE -- which you must trust. Or if it's images, it is ipso facto ART -- which you must value.
But even before outright fabrication of studies and QE funding, academia was already heading in a clever-silly bullshitting direction. As a rule of thumb, I don't trust anything from the neolib era, i.e. after 1980.
Modeling dynamic systems with differential equations -- amazing.
Modeling anything with graphs / networks -- garbage.
"agents" -- garbage.
parallel-processing / no intermediate forms / no abstract rules -- garbage!
That's not to say there's no good work since 1980, but that if it is, it's likely building on pre-1980 knowledge and models and approaches and theories.
ReplyDeleteLike Peter Turchin using systems of differential equations to model the dynamics of asabiya rising and falling, which came out in 2003 (Historical Dynamics). He didn't invent that technique or type of model -- just coming up with a new instance of it, for a case that hadn't been analyzed with that model before.
Neat!
I'll have to dump all the diffy-q models I came up with in grad school here sometime, just for fun.
But before that, I'll finally get around to the formal dynamics of "shared public medium" diseases like respiratory diseases, most insect-borne diseases, and water-borne diseases. I already told the verbal story under the posts in the "Neo-Anticontagionism" tab in the sidebar, inspired by the Covid pandemic as it unfolded and no one could tell what the hell was going on.
Turns out, it's not an S-I-R model after all. No contact or encounters between two hosts -- the first host deposits its germs in a public medium, where they are stored for long after the first host leaves the area, and are then contracted by the second host when it comes into contact with that medium later on.
Maybe with RFK Jr. getting the nom for HHS, that'll motivate me.
Back to AI art, though, just wanna reiterate a few things for emphasis.
ReplyDeleteScott Alexander's examples of AI art were all pre-screened to remove the obvious AI ones, which is biased in favor of AI -- makes it look more passable as man-made, and more skillful (even if you already know it's AI -- skillful AI vs. crappy AI with mangled limbs, garbled text, etc.).
And even with that big thumb on the scale, it's still recognizable as AI slop, by 60 to 40. And assuming you have any visual sense, and aesthetic taste, you can tell even better which is which.
The type that was most likely to fool people, even visual people and even taste-havers, were landscapes devoid of a prominent figure or subject (especially a person), which really give it away as AI and look crappily made and schizo in style on top of it (like "Girl in Field").
I think there needs to be a further filter, namely stylizing the portrayal instead of photo-realism -- making it look Impressionist, rather than a photorealistic simulated photograph, which those landscapes all are.
Generating an AI image that passes for man-made, passes for skillfully made, and passes for pleasantness, requires so many constraints on its operation. It really shows how pathetic it is compared to an even amateur human artist.
The litmus test for possessing a visual sense and good taste seems to be abstract art -- at least, from among the examples in Alexander's list. Most people got tripped up the most on that class of images.
ReplyDeleteWhereas I got all of them right -- easily!
Whether or not you've taken an art history course, or read art history books on your own, you can easily tell what the point of abstract art is -- abstract geometric forms, not representational ones. And more than that, usually the forms are flat and 2D, not 3D in themselves nor are there cues to 3D depth within the entire composition.
So when you get to #6, why is there a human face? Not abstract.
In #17, why is there not only a human face, but fine-grained components like the pupil and white and eyelid for the eye -- if you're doing abstract, and are making a human eye, it should just be a single solid like a black dot. There are tons of individual teeth as well! Not even remotely abstract, nor a simplified rendering of a representational form.
In #24, why is there not only a human face, but 3D shading-for-sculpting along the side of the nose, inner corner of the eyes, under the jaw, along the lips for fullness, etc. -- and multiple locks of hair instead of a single wavy mass, assuming you were going to do representational but geometrically simplified?
And in #50, all of these same problems, plus there being a full body instead of just a head or bust. How much more representational and 3D can you get???
None of the man-made abstract images suffered from these schizo stylistic clashes -- good ol' human beings, whether you like abstract art or not, at least the man-made stuff isn't schizo in style. Only a machine could be that retardedly self-contradicting.
Another case of schizo even within a single figure (a la #23), not just within the entire composition, is #13 "Anime Girl in Black". At the composition scale, there's a cartoon-looking head and realistic water.
ReplyDeleteBut even on the smaller scale of her figure alone, the face and hair are very stylized and cartoon-y / anime, while her body looks way more photorealistic, especially in the pitties-and-titties area, but along her arms as well. It looks like a fairly realistic person wearing an anime-girl mask for cosplay or Halloween -- but it's clearly not supposed to be a "person wearing a mask" but just a person.
Slop!
No such garbaggio in the man-made image of Hatsune Miku, #3. All of her body looks stylized and simplified, and so does the water, clouds, and birds in the landscape behind her. So obvious of a requirement, no person -- even an inept artist -- would introduce so much schizo clashing in style.
The fact that digital man-made art can fool some into thinking it's AI is a reminder that such art is not very man-made to begin with.
ReplyDeletePeople making digital images can use varying degrees of computer assistance to produce the final work.
Low-tech digital tools are things like choosing the thickness of a line, choosing which color to use, maybe a smudging or erasing tool. Even tracing over layers underneath is akin to using tracing paper, pencil, and a lightbox, for analog art.
But then there are other tools -- really more like programs or sub-routines -- that Photoshop etc. can do. Processes that are more abstract and about the final goal, rather than at the low-level of perception.
E.g., put a spotlight on such-and-such area to make it look brighter. Well, that requires a host of low-level processes if you're doing it analog, like mixing white into the hue to create a highlight. There's no simple way to "just shine a spotlight here" in analog art. But in digital image programs, you can dial up or down the brightness at will and within whatever region you specify.
Same with "sharpen the focus / resolution / detail" or "blur the focus" -- that involves tons of low-level perceptual processes in analog art, like using thicker brushstrokes (impasto) or finely-graded changes in tones to blur a boundary line (sfumato). You don't just target a region with an analog tool and push a "sharpen focus" button, and presto, it's got higher-res detail throughout that region.
Digital art made using program tools that mimic analog tools and techniques are still highly man-made and analog-looking. Most digitally drawn anime art looks like this.
But when it's made with higher-level and more abstract tools of the program, it's really more like verbally prompting an AI image-generator -- "sharpen the focus on the head, and blur the focus of the background" or "brighten the entire foreground, except for a dimly lit area to the right of the main figure". That's not using your brain's visual skills, or your hands and arms' fine motor skills. It's outsourcing more and more of the choices to the computer program.
Indeed, these high-level "tools" (really, programs) require explicitly stated parameters for the computer to do its thing.
E.g., I just googled "how to draw rippling water in Photoshop", and here's how much is off-loaded to explicit prompts to the program. Select "filter" (there is no such analog thing as a "filter" for hand-drawn art), then "distort" (a setting on a dial, not a real thing), then "zigzag". This opens a "dialogue box" -- i.e., the receiver of your prompts to an AI image-generator -- which you then prompt with the parameter values of "amount=100, ridges=10, style=pond ripple". Wow, just like what we learned in art class!
As the computer program assumes more and more responsibility for these choices, based on a lengthy list of explicit prompts from a human operating the program, it becomes de facto AI-generated art, not just man-made digital art.
Like #25, the man-made digital art that fooled most into thinking it was AI -- the person "drawing" that image did not use low-level computer tools to mimic what he could have done with IRL analog tools and his own brain and hands. It is de facto computer-program-generated art -- it's just a program with a more graphical user interface, along with some verbal dialogue boxes for prompts, like Photoshop, rather than entirely verbal prompts and no visual input from the user, like what is normally called AI art generators.
I should say that the computer program assumes more of the "execution," not "choices", in programs like Photoshop. The human operator still makes the decisions about the parameter values, but they are not executing anything on their own -- the computer program takes over the execution, based on choices (prompts) from the operator.
ReplyDeleteThat's why no one would watch a stream of a Photoshop "artist" or an operator of an AI image-generator -- they're just inputting a bunch of prompts into the program's dialogue box. Only difference being more visual input in Photoshop, and none in the pure AI program. Either way, though, it's not "Bob Ross, but with a digital tablet".
ReplyDelete*That* is what the popular streamer artists provide for their audience -- like Hololive EN's newest artist streamer, Raora, or Ina before her, or Marine in Holo JP, and so on.
The complexity of the computer programs they use is very simplified, mimicking analog IRL tools -- and that's why they are just about as lengthy and labor-intensive as creating such images with analog tools IRL. And they mimic a similar work process -- rough sketch, tracing over it to produce line art, then filling in regions with color, touching those up to change the brightness or darkness, etc., until the work is finished.
Each image is a feat of visual and motor skill, not clever fine-tuning of dial settings within a 137-variable system of dialogue boxes like a fuckin' NERD...
In the photography medium, who would want to watch a stream of someone opening up Lightbox and fine-tuning all those dials for hours and hours, other than the other wannabe photogs who rely on Lightbox instead of everything else?
It's so much more fascinating and impressive to watch old videos of people using real tech, like IRL dodging and burning tools, to create a final photographic print. That takes real physical skill!
Rather than mimicking an analog IRL workflow, these heavily complex computer programs are just like submitting a half-assed result, and then "we'll fix it in post-production" to the tune of a jillion dollars, calories, and hours.
So much invested, for so little in return. Sad!
We must emphasize that the AI programs don't make the decisions at the prompt level, but carry out the executions of those prompts that were fed into it by a person.
ReplyDeleteSo, no, these images are not "computer-made" from start to finish. They don't prompt themselves, inspire themselves, revise themselves after not achieving their intended goal, and so on.
They are not original, not spontaneous, not autonomous -- in short, not creative.
The person operating the program is the source of the originality, spontoneity, inspiration and motivation, and autonomy and control. They may not have much skill in execution, but to the limited extent that either party is creative, it's the person, not the machine. The machine is the party possessing the execution skills.
No one ever said machines, of any kind and for any purpose, were unskilled at carrying out instructions to produce some output. But that makes them slaves and order-followers, not creative.
Likewise, an architect gets most of the credit for the erection of a building, even though he's not the one pouring the concrete into the formwork, or using bush hammers to expose its aggregate, and so on. Some of that execution is due to tech, some due to the human operators of the tech.
But however skilled the workers and artisans are, and however precise the machinery is, we still call the architect "creative", not the workers and not the machinery.
I was going to start this comment with "Needless to say" -- but in this autistic slop-fixated world, it *does* need to be said, unfortch.
Modern science uses so much AI in its scientific analysis. For example, here's an recent talk at Cambridge University about the use of AI in astronomy:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byPYsQ-SPUw
No wonder why there is a replication crisis in science if the results are being biased by the use of AI.
I notice that the people who either like or are neutral toward AI slop are the spergy types -- not creative, not scientific / mathetmatical, and not literary / arts studies types who are familiar with lit / art history.
ReplyDeleteIt's people who are fascinated by gadgets -- not as tools to be used toward some larger end-goal / creation that they have in mind (like repairing or restoring a car, or painting a portrait). They just think gadgets are neat in themselves, and they fiddle around with them in order to amuse themselves.
AI image-generators or text-generators are simply the latest gadget fad that has caught their attention, for a little while anyway. Maybe they'll get nostalgic for it in 20 years, too.
Photoshop and related programs were the same way for them -- they didn't want to learn or practice photography. They just thought it was a neat gadget that had a lot of intriguing doo-hickies available for them to fiddle around with, for a few hours of amusement at a time, toward no higher goal.
They haven't "played around with Photoshop" for at least a decade, but maybe the nostalgia bug will bite them about that too before long.
A few of them do stick with it enough to produce finished stories, images, etc., for others to experience. But mainly it's just an amusing gadget, not a tool. Gadgets are novelties that pass quickly out of fashion, whereas tools remain in use as long as the user has a higher end that they're employing them toward.
Hammers, paintbrushes, power drills, chisels, oil paint -- still around!
And unlikely to be donated to a thrift store, unless the owner dies. You never know when you'll need a hammer or paintbrush -- assuming you had a use for it in the first place, which is why you own it.
Contrast that to all that Brookstone slop that clogs the electronics and gadgets shelves at the thrift store. Jesus...
Speaking of impasto, I just google image-searched that term to see what examples people would find if they looked it up -- and among the top results is this AI example, "Impasto eye":
ReplyDeletehttps://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/aQzeMZrOAuZBM8CT3E5p
Typical schizo slop, with the highly stylized impasto technique simulated in most of the image, except for the eyeball itself, which is insanely hi-res and photorealistic, including a highlight reflection of the simulated light source -- confusing photography and oil painting (which, even if the painter were using studio lights, would not include these reflected highlights from the studio light rig on the subject's eye!).
Also, the eyelashes are protruding outward to give 3D depth to the image, whereas impasto is supposed to flatten and 2D-ify the image.
So, rather than simulating "a painting of a human face, including an eye, rendered in an impasto technique", the dum-dum program has simulated "a photograph of a human face, which has been coated in oil paint a la impasto, except for the eyeball and eyelashes".
In order words, it looks like someone smeared make-up all over their face for Halloween, while sparing their eye of course, and then someone took a photo of it. It doesn't look like a painting at all!
Nice to see the man-made art examples include some from the Venetian Renaissance, and the Neo-Expressionist revival of representational and figural painting from the 1970s and '80s. Both of which I've covered before, for new readers:
ReplyDeletehttps://akinokure.blogspot.com/2023/12/venetian-ethnogenesis-and-its-role-as.html
https://akinokure.blogspot.com/2011/11/expressionism-emerges-during-waves-of_21.html
I think Alexander intended for the Basquiat painting to belong to the abstract category, but it is obviously representational -- fully representational. The abstract shapes are not objects in themselves (like in the Miro example), but building blocks to construct a representational form, namely a human head and its key parts (eyes, lips, nose, etc.).
Neo-Expressionism was in fact the *end* of abstract painting that had dominated the Midcentury. Time to get back to recognizable real-world objects again!
If you're near a university library, try to find that exhibition catalog that I cited, if you want to see more. Image searching doesn't turn up a whole lot. Also, try looking for the term "transavanguardia" if you want to look specifically into the Italians.
It was mainly Italian and German -- which is sad since Basquiat is the only well known figure from it. He was American, and Americans took part in Neo-Expressionism in cinematography (e.g., Taxi Driver), which is one of our native art forms -- not painting, which is Olde Worlde and Euro. Historians just memorialize Basquiat cuz he was African-American, hence a novelty.
Does the abstract = falling crime and representational = rising crime pattern go back to the Venetian Renaissance?
DeleteIt's crazy how contaminated by AI slop the image search results have become. It's not just "impasto" -- literally anything that gadget-fiddler could have entered as a prompt to an AI image-generator, is now contaminated by these slop results, especially if the fiddler entered the term into the webpage title in order for search engines to find it better.
ReplyDeleteSeems like photos of real-world people, or characters from movies and TV, have become contaminated by slop as well. Cuz the gadget-fiddlers love to enter the names of celebs or characters into their prompt box, and copy the terms into the page title as well.
At this point, Google and other image searches need a dedicated toggle switch, as they have with "porn vs. not porn" results.
"AI results have been turned off. You will only see real images. If you want to slurp up some slop, turn them back on."
Are the Japanese more hostile / dismissive toward AI slop than we are? Glorious Nippon -- their visual art culture is all about stylization rather than photorealism, from freehand painting to woodblock prints to manga to anime and even video games, which they invented! Their video games, although technically a form of computer-generated imagery, have always been geared toward replicating the hand-drawn illustration look and stylization, not photorealism and 3D and VR.
ReplyDeleteAmerica's visual culture has had some of that stylized illustrated look, but it is definitely secondary. And even animation in America has gone CGI for the past 25 years, and will never return to the hand-drawn stylized look of classic Disney. We invented cinematography and photography as art forms, and they are more on the realistic side than the highly stylized side. We invented electronic simulators of real-world games, like Tennis for Two and Pong, and our "video games" have been simulators ever since, aiming for photorealism, 3D, VR, sensory immersion.
Although gadget-fiddlers of any generation will be fascinated by AI image-generators, I think the Millennials are the most likely to take to it -- cuz they were raised purely on CGI animation, Photoshopping your digital camera images, and "video games" that are just 3D VR simulators of real-world situations. And obviously on TV and movies, which are photographic and realistic in presentation.
I know AI is hugely popular with the Chinese, but they're Asian -- not Japanese (who have been separated from Asia for thousands of years). It seems popular with South Koreans, too, but same deal with them. China and South Korea have followed the lead of America and/or Russia (who, like America, aimed for realistic forms like live-action movies during the 20th C, despite having produced painters in earlier centuries). They don't produce anime, video games, manga, or similar media, like Japan. does.
It's telling that one of the first things that non-Japanese people used as prompts to AI image-generators was "anime girl with huge tits", in an attempt to render anime in a super hi-res photorealistic manner.
"Make anime real" is contradictory, at least in the culture that created it -- they like their anime to stay in its stylized fantasy land, and for their streamers to assume the appearance of stylized anime girls (inventing and dominating the vtuber medium).
I'm sure there's a minority of Japanese people who are interested in AI art, but I think they're far more interested in learning how to draw in an anime style, or do pixel art, or design their own video game (that resembles anime rather than photography), and so on.
I haven't been blogging my reactions to the vtubers I've been watching lately, but speaking of Glorious Nippon and stylized aesthetics, I watched Okayu play through Super Metroid -- not just a classic, but in a 2D hand-drawn illustration style, not 3D VR slop!
ReplyDeleteI'm currently halfway through her streams of Metroid: Zero Mission, another classic -- in fact, a remake of the original classic (which she played last year with Subaru), but still in the 2D anime style, just with a bit more detail than was possible in the 8-bit era.
Then I'll go back and watch her play Metroid Fusion -- I didn't like that one very much when I tried playing it back in the 2000s, cuz it's strictly linear, and not like a Metroidvania game. But it's still 2D and anime in style, and it's Okayu playing it! So I'll watch it, too, hehe. ^_^
And yesterday I saw that Shion is playing Dragon Quest III, I think the recent HD-2D remake! She normally does not play retro games like Okayu, Korone, Koyori, etc., but this game is a classic, and it's still in a colorful anime style, not 3D VR slop! It's appealing to all Japanese people, it's in Japan's national style!
Glorious Nippon...
Also made sure to catch Raora playing the remakes of Sonic games, including some of the 2D classic ones. The originals are much better, though, if she enjoys the visual style and music! Sonic the Hedgehog from 1991 is still the best one in the series -- and tailor-made for a high-energy girl like Raora! ^_^
Also, what's this about Raora and Irys in a collab together??? That is next on my must-watch list! Playing Mario Party with Bae during her marathon session.
ReplyDeleteTwo daddy's girls amplifying each other's coolness and high energy levels? I can't wait!
Irys would love the original Sonic the Hedgehog, too, BTW. She ran out of Mega Man games to play, for anime-looking classic games -- and that's fine! Plenty of other series for her to take the plunge into...
The first Sonic game, or maybe the two Kirby games for the GBA (Amazing Mirror, and Nightmare in Dreamland). They're action platformers with kawaii animal mascot characters, catchy music, and from iconic series. And not games that get you bogged down for 8 hours apiece over 17 separate streams. They're perfect for an exciting change of pace, without having to commit too much to them!
I heard a rumor that if you're a Japanese streamer and you go too long without playing a 2D retro game, their government might revoke your citizenship! xD
They're very proud of their traditions, and simply want their content creators to honor them -- and enjoy them while doing it!
I guess Millennials had some exposure to hand-drawn animation in the first half of the '90s, but overall they appear to have imprinted on CGI, 3D, VR, etc.
ReplyDeleteNintendo president says they won't be using gen AI in their games:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.tweaktown.com/news/99109/nintendo-wont-use-generative-ai-in-its-first-party-games/index.html
Japan cannot be more based. That article also says that American companies like EA and Microsoft / Xbox are gung-ho about outsourcing more of the creative roles to AI.
ReplyDeleteShooting down, once again, the techno-determinist dum-dums about how "this is just the direction the industry is going in" -- only for the non-Japanese slop-servers and slop-slurpers. Tech does not impose or nudge itself on creators or audiences -- they choose to employ what they do, and they choose to consume what they do.
And no, it's not just "an exception of size 1" if your theory gets Japan wrong -- one of the most technologically advanced nations for a long time, a gigantic population in the 100s of millions, highly dense and urban residence pattern, early adopters of personal computers, the internet / online tech, consumer tech like cell phones and smartphones, and all the other stuff that is supposed to be the culprit for why Americans (and others outside of Japan) are devolving into such a pathetic state.
Glorious Nippon, slayer of retarded gadget-centric sOciOLoGiCaL AnAlySiS...
Players may not care if a bunch of Democrats (everyone in tech and entertainment) lose their jobs to AI -- but that will be reflected in the product, too. It's not the same thing as people can make, just cheaper -- you get what you pay for. As bad as the long trend toward 3D, VR, and CGI has been for non-Japanese video game creators, imagine how much worse it'll get when it's AI on top of it...
I looked up EA's history to see if they had strayed from their glory days, when I remember them with the cooler name of Electronic Arts, but no, they have always been invested in simulators more than video games. Just like Microsoft. Very telling which non-Japanese companies are the most gung-ho about AI.
That's why Sierra Online, the greatest American video game company, didn't make it out of the '90s. They did have a few games with full-motion video capture, a 3D / CGI / first-person simulator approach, and so on. But mostly they were pioneers and dominators in the point-and-click action / adventure / mystery genres, which generally favored a stylized hand-drawn illustration look -- usually with digital scans of actually hand-drawn paintings for the background art!
So much potential for America to have become giants in video games, wrecked upon the shore of sim-slop... very sad.
Lucas Arts died too. Technically, it closed in 2018, but it was creatively dead since the late 90s and early 2000s.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, japanese game companies who were not great at 3D have also vanished with the dawn of the century: Data East, Compile, Technosoft, Treasure, Hudson Soft, etc.
I don't know how it is in your part of the United States, but in my part of the United States (suburban Chicagoland), businesses and restaurants are putting up Christmas decoration and playing Christmas music at this time of the year. Thanksgiving is two days away, you'd think they'd have decorations for Thanksgiving and playing music relating to Thanksgiving.
ReplyDeleteIn a confirmation of your speculation that the East will break away from a Western American Byzantium, a Manhattan Senator has seriously raised the idea of joining Canada!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/3242097/new-york-floats-holding-back-taxes-leaving-union-roadblocks-trump/
Yes, I mentioned last year that after Halloween came and went with almost no celebration, Christmas stuff went up right afterward -- leapfrogging over Thanksgiving stuff, which you see very little of anymore during November. Straight from Halloween to Christmas.
ReplyDeleteAnd really, it's New Year's that everyone is looking forward to, discussing, and buying things for. Christmas presents are now an excuse to ring in the new year with new stuff, not the gift-giving ritual of before, let alone one having to do with Jesus.
New Year's Eve is the last remaining holiday in our collapsing culture that everyone celebrates more or less as they used to a few decades ago. And then some -- it's swallowed up the gift-giving / new things role of Christmas, and the "dress up special / slutty / in costume and go out partying at night ON THE LITERAL CALENDAR DATE" role of Halloween.
No one celebrates New Year's Eve as "The Saturday Before New Year's Eve" cuz they're lame gaywads who can't party on a weeknight. It's the only holiday left that Americans and Millennials still feel comfortable turning their routine upside-down -- for one night -- and partying and drinking and carrousing on a weeknight.
Not just cuz some have the day off of work on New Year's Day -- lots of people don't, and they still get festive the night before, with the public understanding that on New Year's Day you may run into workers who are still hungover from New Year's Eve -- and that's expected and totally fine!
One new thing this year: pumpkin spice stuff went to clearance right after Halloween, whereas in previous years it had been a general fall / autumn thing, at least lasting through November for Thanksgiving season, and only giving way to peppermint in December in anticipation of Christmas and New Year's.
ReplyDeleteThis suggests that pumpkin spice, fall spices, autumn vibes, Christian Girl Autumn, etc., have replaced Halloween as the October activities. They're not there in September, are dumped immediately after Halloween, and replaced by the two-month-long pre-game for New Year's Eve that November and December have devolved into.
But there's no holiday or rich set of rituals and traditions for pumpkin spice, "cozy autumn vibes", Christian Girl Autumn, etc. Just taking and posting pictures of your pumpkin spice latte, C.G.A. outfit of the day, etc. on social media.
No public holiday, no social interactions, certainly no carnivalesque up-ending of routines -- for one night -- like there used to be with Halloween. Also no supernatural / sublime / role-playing as evil to defuse its power / etc. that Halloween used to have. C.G.A. outfits are the exact opposite of the "dress sexy for just one night" costumes for Halloween -- they're a routine outfit for fall, not a break from routine.
Americans have become so puritanical, that's really why girls stopped dressing up like devils and such on Halloween -- the folk demons now are healthy libidos and toxic heterosexuality and wild abandoned desire! They dress up sexy for just one night to get it out of their system, defuse its power for the rest of the year, just like religious girls from earlier centuries used to dress up like devils and witches and such, since those were the folk devils of yesteryear.
Now being an uninhibited sex bomb is the most dangerous thing in the culture, as of the puritanical woketard crusades of the 2010s. So that's what is considered a carnivalesque up-ending of routine roles (namely, as puritanical scolds, femcels, fujoshis, man-haters, and other forms of no-libido-havers).
Bleak!
The Koronator played Donkey Kong Country! Not only a classic, but one of the few video games (not simulators) created by a Western company -- Rare -- during a very narrow window in the 1990s, before non-Japanese companies went 100% into 3D, 1st-person POV, VR, sim-slop. And it's a 2D action platformer -- just like the Japanese pioneered!
ReplyDeleteThe only hint that it's Western is that the aesthetic is more in the CGI direction than the hand-drawn illustration / anime direction. But it's still highly stylized, low-poly, and not very photorealistic.
It's an honorary Japanese video game. ^_^
I can't wait to watch her play it, her reactions are always hilarious -- as her legions of fans proclaimed IRL, prompting her to eventually start sniffling and crying a bit at how treasured and beloved she is. Awwww. She may have a tough and joking exterior at times, but deep down she's a tender sweetheart. :)
Speaking of what the Japanese think of AI, the Holo JP girls recently tried interacting with a chatting / conversational AI, Cotomo AI. They definitely do NOT think highly of AI, are not fascinated by its possibilities, or other spergy attitudes that the gadget-fiddlers outside of Japan have toward AI.
ReplyDeleteIf anything, they think it's a joke, with little potential for real-world usefulness, and that it tends to be annoying and possibly dangerous to human beings -- but not in a willful, malicious way. Rather, in an accidental / error-prone / too retarded to know better, kind of way.
Their view is more like what Westerners used to think of AI, as in Philip K. Dick's novels (not Blade Runner, which has the opposite portrayal), or Paul Verhoeven movies (the Johnny Cab in Total Recall, which is very true to the Dick-ian source material, as well as the clumsy / bug-ridden ED-209 from RoboCop, who murders an innocent person due to being a bug-ridden clueless stubborn does-not-compute machine).
Okayu and Korone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SQfp1tIWi0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vANh145bEOA
Marine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfx5-378kX4
Far from developing, growing, or evolving a consciousness of their own, AI's in this view will never have a will of their own, no goals of their own (outside of what is explicitly programmed into them), and will at worst be a nuisance to people -- potentially fatally, but not maliciously, i.e. the ED-209, the self-driving cars that run over pedestrians or cause accidents that no human would cause, automated call centers that don't understand what you're saying (causing you to kill someone nearby out of frustration), and so on.
The Japanese have a reputation of being obsessed with consumer technology, but their attitudes toward AI reveal that they are not obsessed with fiddling around with gadgets as an end in themselves -- but using them as tools toward some higher creative or productive goal. Namely, photography, illustration, woodwork, ceramics, calligraphy, ikebana, sword-making (Japanese steel, folded 10 times over!), cooking, and other artisanal hobbies and industries.
It is Japanese TOOLS, not gadgets, that are world-famous for their quality, as well as for the finished products that the Japanese make with their tools.
And since generative AI is just a virtual gadget to play around with a bunch of dial settings, with no higher purpose to achieve than fleeting spergy amusement, the Homo Habilis of the Orient has no interest in it whatsoever. They are noble savages, cavemen in a hi-tech environment -- and cavemen wouldn't give a shit about prompting AI to generate a crappy sloppy image, during their pursuit of making or viewing art.
Glorious Nippon -- tool-makers, tool-users.
Malls were non-profit organizations, and civic architecture for Everywheresville, USA. On the occasion of Black Friday, it's important to remember the non-consumerist and even anti-consumerist nature of American malls (might be different outside of America, if they're purely for shopping).
ReplyDeleteI've talked enough before about them being civic architecture -- no one bought anything there, it was for assembling into large groups of strangers from the community, just like the old town centers or main streets, only within a single enclosed mega-building. They were a public park, public garden, public dining area, public meeting place, public hang-out place, and public holiday location for celebrations and rituals (like singing Christmas carols or meeting Santa).
But that means they were de facto operated as non-profits. Of course they made some kind of profit -- but not in economic terms. In economics, profits are relative / opportunity costs, akin to Darwinian fitness -- if you make a profit of $100 on X, when you could've made a profit of $1,000 on Y with the same investment, then you LOST $900 by investing in X.
Just look at what happened to malls in the neoliberal era -- poof! Especially after the 2008 Depression, from which we have never recovered, but only papered over by printing nearly $10 trillion and flushing it into the top 10-20% of society (and a little bit into the rest of society during the Covid checks era).
Corporate real estate had already had enough of malls, calling them a saturated and over-developed sector, by the late '80s. The initial wave of closures hit already by the '90s, e.g. Rockville Mall (in the MD suburbs of DC), which was demolished and redeveloped into an open street grid layout, Rockville Town Square. Others became open-air shopping centers instead of enclosed malls, and new "malls" were mostly open centers instead of actual malls, during the 2000s. Then the 2008 Depression hit, and retail apocalypse has never let up since -- including under Trump: Season 1.
Malls as a category were born during the New Deal ('50s), spread like crazy during the '60s, and peaked during the '70s, with this saturated level lasting through the '80s. Malls were a holdover from the New Deal era, not a Reaganite / neolib innovation.
ReplyDeleteAs the credo of "profits uber alles" has accelerated since 1980, malls have all but vanished. Why invest in a mall, where hardly anyone buys anything, when you can invest in some Silicon Valley start-up that is socially connected to the Central Bank that prints the world's reserve currency? They're getting more free money than they know what to do with.
Just as there was no epidemic of bank failures during the New Deal, other than those inherited from the beginning of the Great Depression at the end of the 1920s, there was no epidemic of retail or other corporate real estate failures during the New Deal.
Corporate greed was held in check, at historical minimums, in reaction to the spate of violent collectivist labor movements in the late 1910s and early 1920s -- the Russian Revolution, German Revolution, the Biennio Rosso in Italy, the peak of the IWW in America, and so on and so forth. American elites didn't want a Soviet Revolution to succeed here, so they placated the nation by keeping their greed in check -- and by spreading the wealth around.
Part of that wealth spreading was investing in de facto non-profit organizations like malls, which were public goods for the public's enjoyment, and which brought in very little profit -- compared to the alternative ways to invest that money.
As fears of the labor explosion circa 1920 have receded into the haziest memories, American elites became greedy all over again in the neolib era, soaring off the charts in the wake of the 2008 Depression, when they dropped all pretenses of trying to hold together a real economy, and just stuck their hands out to the Central Bank for their $10 trillion collective check, to maintain their over-inflated lifestyles.
Sure, there's an occasional QE recipient who used their free funny money to save a neighborhood store that was endangered after 2008. And good for them. But by and large, the recipients of all that funny money just bought back stock to juice up its price, hoarded all sorts of things from the public and inflating its price (especially real estate), and waving away the constant updates from retail apocalypse. Not a worthless start-up from Ivy grads who have no clue how to make any money? Just employs working-class people? Borrrinnngggg, into the dumpster it goes.
America will never recover its once-great civic architecture of malls until the Dow Jones drops below 10,000 again. That will not be sufficient, but it will be necessary. Shitloads less funny money needs to be invested in the Central Bank-funded casino called the stock market, and more into the real productive economy instead -- like in the good ol' days, when our country wasn't falling apart, and when our culture wasn't vanishing with the supposed stewards shrugging their shoulders.
ReplyDeleteTrump: Season 1 saw the first laughable milestone above Dow 10K -- Dow 20K, right after his inauguration, and then Dow 30K by the end of the season. Now it's well over 40K.
MAGA requires Making the Dow Under 10,000 Again. But just as the opposite happened in Season 1, it won't happen in Season 3 either. With any luck, it'll plummet and wind up lower than at inauguration, but 10K still seems too far of a wish to become real... but you never know.
In any case, that's what to watch for. The higher the Dow gets, the faker and more fragile the economy becomes. Especially if the Central Bank starts slashing interest rates (to make fake money flow more freely), or printing trillions more dollars at some point in the season.
That has all gone to maintain the over-inflated lifestyles of the over-produced elite wannabe class. Recovering a dignified standard of living for everyone will only happen after the wannabs / aspirants snap back to their historical norm, and the true worth of their work (very little for most of them, including not just the Zoomer do-nothing project manager, but also the straight white males who run Pentagon policy, which has lost every war after WWII, and is getting wiped out in Ukraine -- no use whining about DEI when 100% straight white male brass got their asses handed to them in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia decades ago, and Iraq and Afghanistan in the 21st century).
Only by crushing the ambitions of the over-produced striver midwit minority, can the dreams of the majority come true once again -- including the non-profit, civic architecture, community centers for Everywheresville, USA, the malls.
Although malls were the pinnacle of this civic architecture masquerading as retail -- really, more of a design and crafts gallery, for marveling at the products, available for purchase if you're so inclined, but the typical "customer" was actually a browser, and the lion's share of the revenue came from a few generous benefactors, who kept the public space opearting for everyone, even the vast majority who rarely bought anything, and who got to take home some of the choice merchandise as their fundraising gift...
ReplyDeleteThis phenomenon also included most department stores, the previous next-gen development of retail as civic architecture, mainly built from 1900 to 1940 or so, before the mall era. Huge buildings, too, some of which are still standing as landmarks to American architecture, such as the Art Deco Eastern-Columbia and Bullock's Wilshire department stores in L.A.
You wouldn't know it from today's nadir, where Walmart and Target are the only ones left, but they used to be pretty well designed and appointed. And they had lunch counters, cafeteria, grill, tea room, or other lounging-around area. Now you can't even find a Starbucks in a Target anymore.
This previous generation of non-profit public spaces, funded by the generous retail elites, also got wiped out during the neoliberal era, despite suffering no such epidemic during the New Deal -- even as malls spread like wildfire, potentially threatening the department stores, but in reality merging with them, where department stores became "anchors" of the mall, and the legacy Art Deco buildings were standing where malls could not be built anyway, and so were not in competition after all.
Wikipedia's list of defunct department stores notes that most of the consolidation and elimination of the old department stores took place from 1986 to 2006. And then they got sucked into the broader retail apocalypse, in many cases resulting in the total demolition of their iconic buildings, not just repurposing them (like the Midcentury Modern one from the early '60s, in the neighborhood where I grew up, iconoclastically demolished in the early 2020s, and replaced by an ugly gray box that houses nothing of any interest).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_department_stores_of_the_United_States
Then there were the discount department stores -- no, not a dollar store, and not the watered-down version of the neolib era like today's TJ Maxx, Marshall's, and Ross. Kmart, Woolco, Caldor, Golden Circle, Best, Ames, Harts, generally sold name-brand merchandise at discount prices -- not generic off-brand junk, and not in a limited range of categories.
ReplyDeleteKmart used to have camera and film developing department, and as I recall most fondly -- aisle after aisle of TOYS. The real deal, too, not stuff you'd never heard of! You can't buy cameras, phones, telescopes, binoculars, sporting goods, or pretty much anything other than (mainly generic) clothes at today's discount stores.
During the New Deal, "discount" meant the same item, same quality, at a lower price. Caldor's motto was "the best available merchandise at the lowest possible price". Now *that's* spreading the wealth around, buying the masses' trust and good faith and benefit of the doubt, and all those other qualities that the elites have shredded over the course of the neolib era, and especially since the 2008 Depression (ongoing).
Nowadays, "discount" simply means you pay a lower price, but the quality is lower to match. It's not a discount at all, then -- it's just low-price or cheap, not "lower than what other retailers ask for the same item". And since we've entered stagflation over the past several years, today's cheapo stores aren't even cheap anymore! You're paying an arm and a leg for sweatshop slop.
Thanks, but if I want to go treasure-hunting, I'll pick through the thrift stores, the only real department stores left that have decent-quality items at discount prices, albeit mixed in with a bunch of crap...
Just like the malls and the department stores, the discount stores went the way of the dodo during neoliberal hell. Caldor, the "Bloomingdale's of discounting" went defunct in 1999, followed soon by Ames in 2002, and Kmart's acquisition by Sears in 2005 -- with both of them having gone out of business in the late 2010s. The once ubiquitous Kmart now only has one store in all of America, in Miami, and even that location was massively downsized in 2023.
Although it's hardly surprising to see "same items at lower prices" go out the window during the era of "profits uber alles", it's still astonishing that Kmart and its brethren are extinct. It's a bittersweet reminder of how generous American elites used to be in the good ol' days, and how much they have destroyed our culture, while creating nothing of value in its place, during the "greed is good" era.
They all deserve the electric chair -- with me livestreaming it as the new dictator, personally throwing the switch from the Oval Office -- especially those who were in charge during the 2010s and after, when the real desecration began.
Department stores merging into malls was a sign of the society-wide obsession with harmony, order, peaceful co-existence, and so on, during the New Deal.
ReplyDeleteIn a hyper-competitive, Darwinian, neolib environment, the newly arising malls would have simply targeted their older competitors, the department stores, and wiped them out as much as they could. Certainly they would not invite department stores into their own new sprawling retail structures -- and as focal points or anchors, no less!
The new retail structures of the neolib era are the power center or big-box center, and they have indeed tried to wipe out their older competitors like malls and department stores.
Then when online retail became possible, it tried as hard as possible to wipe out brick-and-mortar competitors, whether from rival stores or even cannibalizing its own company's physical stores (cuz "progress"), in a form of auto-immune disease. AIDS really is the quintessential Reaganite neolib disease.
And yes, Reaganism literally played a role in spreading AIDS by deregulating the gay bath-houses -- cuz it's evil for gubmint to regulate ThE PrIvaTE sEcToR and what consenting adults do behind closed doors. There were no ongoing gay-disease epidemics during the New Deal, when degeneracy was suppressed in the name of public order and harmony and wholesomeness.
Irys was recently chatting about how impossible it is to shop online, how much she'd rather just go to a mall. But then, that's why she ended up moving to Glorious Nippon, where they are not stricken by such auto-immune diseases (literal or figurative).
ReplyDeleteAmericans who shop online are just coping with the destruction of our culture by greedy retail elites, where they don't need to pay a lease for however-many stores if their customers can be pressured into the abysmal mode of shopping online, in a real estate-free domain.
And those big spenders of yesteryear, who used to help maintain the operation of a public space for all to enjoy -- they're not supporting any public space when they max out their credit cards and go into debt with online shopping. There's no stores, no ponds, no waterfalls, no gardens, no benches, no conversation pits, no amphitheaters, no food court, no skylights, no terrazzo, no monumental sculptures -- no nothing!
Today's elites, whether the owners and operators of retail businesses, or their big-spender clientele who contribute most to their revenue, really have conspired to deprive everyone else of a public cultural good that used to be so common that we took it for granted.
"Privatization" is too ambiguous of a term, which could refer to ownership -- and ownership was always private. It's more about private vs. public goods, so this is more about hoarding and austerity and deprivation and malice, not merely oversight or neglect or cluelessness. They're trying to destroy as much of American culture and society as they can, while still indulging their own private individual selves, in the private individual space of their residential unit.
Cancerous toxic poison that must be purged from society in order to restore its health back to normal (forget about "great," just normal would be nice). That electric chair's never gonna have a chance to cool down...
“In a hyper-competitive, Darwinian, neolib environment, the newly arising malls would have simply targeted their older competitors, the department stores, and wiped them out as much as they could. Certainly they would not invite department stores into their own new sprawling retail structures -- and as focal points or anchors, no less!”
ReplyDeleteHoly shit, so obvious once you see it! Lol thanks
I'll get back to the topic of AI later today, including more from the JP streamers attempting to chat with Kotomo AI.
ReplyDeleteBut for now, I'll just say that I watched Yuki Sakuna's stream where she tried chatting with Kotomo-chan, and it was a sight for sore eyes... or a melody for sore ears? Hehe.
That's the new persona that the soul of the Legendary Idol Gamer Maid has been reborn into. An endless cycle of birth and rebirth...
Also, speaking of rebirth, Irys mentioned having a bizarre dream about being a boy-twin who had a yandere girl-twin chasing after him romantically.
Although probably reflecting some mix of the weird manga and anime she's consumed over her life, it's also based on a key piece of Japanese folklore -- namely, that opposite-sex twins used to be doomed lovers in a previous life:
https://www.reddit.com/r/OshiNoKo/comments/16e6dru/japanese_superstition_of_lovers_being/
As for why Irys dreamed about being the boy-twin rather than the girl-twin, well, that's the bromance / BL influence, where she self-inserts as a boy in an all-boy environment, because some boy or boys in her development burned her about being too girly or "ewww, girls are yucky", and that stuck with her. Now she imagines having to sneak into the boys-only clubhouse by disguising herself as a boy.
These romantic psychological scars are so deep that no matter how much her legions of adoring, and occasionally downbad, fans praise her girly-girl qualities, she can never shake that ingrained feeling that boys just think girls are yucky cootie-carriers, so she has to disguise herself as a boy in order to get close to a boy.
And that's why she ran away in a panic from her yandere girl-twin -- not just cuz of the incest angle, but because it was a girl chasing her. Her ideal dream is being a boy-twin with a yandere boy-twin who doesn't want anyone else to enter their twin-circle, to have the first twin all to himself... socially.
I will never forgive the spiritually or literally gay girl-haters who have scarred so many Millennial and Zoomer girls into becoming fujoshis.
Literal or figurative fags who think they're being based by negging girls for their girliness, are in fact only ramping up society's fujo factor, nothing else.
One final theory -- are people in non-standard dialect regions more ticklish than those in standard-dialect regions?
ReplyDeleteThis gets back to my broader analysis of their theatrical, uninhibited, hold-nothing-back behavior in the non-standard dialect regions, from the the meta-ethnic frontier, where they don't have the pressure of existential survival to make them suppress their emotions... and those close to the meta-ethnic frontier, who must become more stoic and polite and have a stiff upper lip in order to cooperate with each other harmoniously in order to resist the nemesis or even take over the nemesis' territory.
I mention this cuz in their stream with Kotomo AI, Korone and Okayu made it into a batsu (punishment) game. If they laughed, they had to undergo a mild humorous punishment. One of the punishments was tickling each other -- and Korone is VERY ticklish! She was howling like a wild animal! Whereas Okayu acted like she barely felt anything.
Korone is from somewhere in Kansai, far from Japan's meta-ethnic frontier, which is in the East / North, originally against the Emishi, and later against the Ainu in Hokkaido. Okayu hails from as far north in Japan as you can go without leaving the main island of Honshu. She's from Aomori.
Korone is very straight-talking, no BS, not concerned with politeness at all times, highly theatrical in speech and behavior. Okayu is more diplomatic in speech, polite, chill / laid-back, and is harder to work up into an agitated state.
So it's not surprising that being ticklish would be part of this broader suite of theatrical traits, for people in the non-standard dialect region, far from the meta-ethnic frontier. If you feel ticklish, let it all out! Go crazy wiggling your body around, lose control! Scream! Such uncontrolled behavior would be anathema in the cult of politeness and stoicism.
Recently, Raora also spontaneously mentioned that she is VERY ticklish. And she hails from the non-standard dialect region of Italy (the South), far from the meta-ethnic frontier (in the North). Straight-talking, no BS, not obsessed with politeness (that's the "Piemontesi -- falsi e cortesi")... and ticklish!
So then I looked and found a clip of the Goobinator saying that she has INSANELY ticklish feet, and that's one reason she doesn't like all the meme-y talk about feet and tickling and such. She's from the East Coast in America, where all dialects are non-standard, and it's far from the meta-ethnic frontier against the Indians, which is in the broad West.
I don't think Kronii or Ame, from the West Coast, or maybe even Midwestern Fauna, would be as ticklish as Gura. Maybe somewhat, but not as insanely squirming-around, screaming-for-dear-life, as the "wicked"-saying shark-girl. I'll bet Biboo is hyper-ticklish, too, based on her East Coast accent.
Australians famously have no standard culture, and no meta-ethnic nemesis or frontier -- does that mean they're more ticklish than other countries are? They sure are straight-talking, theatrical, and no BS. Not penning up their involuntary giggles when tickled, would go right along with those other traits.
So Bae must be pretty ticklish, too. And there is a clip of Korone and Bae meeting up for a collab, and Korone tickling the hell out of Bae, so that seems to confirm it.
That's one of my few traits that I must've picked up during the portion of my growing up that was on the East Coast. No one's tried tickling me lately, but one of my close chick friends in college found out about it, and used to sneak up behind me, attack my sides, and end up holding me in her arms from behind cuz I was more or less paralyzed and kept moving backward instead of forward to attempt to push away the ticklers.
It was exhilarating. ^_^
Do Kiwis (New Zealanders) have a meta-ethnic frontier?
DeleteI'll bet mostly Midwestern Mumei is not very ticklish either... she's mentioned many times how she has deliberately built up a tolerance to all sorts of unpleasant physical sensations, telling yourself you actually like it -- like having to traipse around with cold wet socks when it's raining or snowing in winter. Like, "Yes, I *enjoy* cold wet socks that I can't change until I finally get home hours from now! Mmmm, nothing beats that!"
ReplyDeleteStandard Midwestern or out-Western behavior -- bottle up your agitation, and on rare occasions let it explode, but keep a stiff upper lip most of the time.
Wow, this ticklish / non-standard dialect thing is really revealing itself! Some more research, but first the clips I referred to earlier. Already posted the clip of Korone and Okayu doing the tickling punishment while chatting with Kotomo AI.
ReplyDeleteGoob scared to death of being touched on her very ticklish feet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFpcl3_wzTc
Bae being jolted by the slightest tickle that Korone gave her:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF3IRbGmRTA
The Raora being ticklish comment was during a recent stream, I forget which one or when it was in the stream.
Well, well, well... speaking of the Legendary Idol Gamer Maid, here's a clip of Okayu giving her some tickle-torture, and Aqua absolutely losing it -- squealing, gasping for breath, and even kicking her legs back and forth to try to break free! xD Aqua comes from Kansai, a non-standard dialect region.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRx8EBa5gVA
Another great contrasting pair, Marine and Subaru tickle each other. Subaru, who comes from Kansai and has an unhinged / theatrical personality, is SUPER ticklish! But Marine is hardly ticklish at all. Observers say her accent is from Nagoya, which is in Kanto (standard dialect region, in the East), although very close to Kansai. She's like Okayu, in this way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h8LOzGTHXU
Then there's Marine and Flare trying to tickle each other. Well, Marine just has an itch that she wants to scratch, not really tickling. But when Marine tries to tickle Flare, Flare proves totally unmoveable -- not ticklish at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wi_xG2S7LI
I didn't know where Flare is from, but given her stoic and chill personality, and her inability to be tickled, I assume she's from the East or North, like Okayu -- and what do you know? She's from Hokkaido! Can't get any further north than that! And from the countryside or small town part of Hokkaido, where it snows so much that she now hates snow, hehe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHjzTJSZ_u0
My grandmother was from Hokkaido, right across the Tsugaru Strait from Aomori (Hakodate), and even though I have never been there, it makes me more interested in Okayu and Flare. I want to know what my grandmother's people were like! She was very stoic and chill.
Luna is also SUPER ticklish, as much as Korone, Aqua, and Subaru:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6ICybU7Mys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HElgWWsO4HI
I don't know where she's from, but I'll bet she's from Kansai or the West. Her Luna persona is pretty lowkey and chill, but she does give it a theatrical flair, with heavy kayfabe, by using her baby accent.
But IRL, she obviously doesn't talk like that, and sounds more animated in the real-life collab with others. And she's very ticklish, too! So I'll bet she's from Kansai... Kyoto, maybe? Her character is a princess, and that's where the imperial capital was.
On a related note, Ayame appears to be from Northern Kanto or somewhere further North, and in a clip of hers where she discusses her dad, she mentions they once got into a shoving match. She emphasizes that her dad is pretty tall. So when she managed to shove her dad back, he was impressed! Japanese people from the East and North are taller than those from the West and South.
ReplyDeleteThis is a general pattern across countries, where those on the meta-ethnic frontier are taller than those far from it. I have maps for that, but haven't posted them... they may be around my computer somewhere, I don't remember.
But it was really clear for Japan, where there are no other explanations like regional differences in micro-ethnic or racial composition -- they're all Japanese. Northern Italians are taller than Southern Italians, same with Northern vs. Southern Indians, Western vs. Eastern Americans, and so on. Northern Chinese vs. Southern Chinese, too, IIRC, although don't quote me on that one.
My take from that is that where life is less stressful and less fending-for-yourself, due to the high social cohesion, it lets the body grow more since it doesn't have to devote resources on managing stress and anxiety, which means those resources cannot be used on growing the body.
My grandmother wasn't tall by American standards, but she was probably on the tall-ish side relative to the group of "Japanese women born in the 1920s". Maybe 5'4 or something like that.
I think Okayu must be tall as well -- not just cuz she's from the North, but she is the undisputed winner at the "butt sumo" game. I.e., where two girls stand back-to-back, and give each other a shove backward with their butt at the same time.
But they aren't constantly shoving, as in standard sumo, so I don't think it's about strength or stamina -- it's a one-time bump. And the winner throws the loser off-balance. So that seems to be more about who is taller, being able to hit higher up on the shorter girl's body, which throws her off-balance.
Okayu defeats everyone else so easily, I can only conclude that she's simply taller than the rest of the girls.
Subaru was the winner for awhile, until dethroned by Okayu, so Subaru must be on the tall side as well -- even if she's from Kansai. She's an exception to the general rule of Kansai people being shorter than Tohoku people.
Does height also track with mass immiseration / elite overproduction? (i.e. are Americans taller in the New Deal era / Great Compression and shorter in the Gilded Age and today?)
DeleteOof. That means that we are looking at 500 years of short Americans until America finally gets over its asabiya black hole hangover.
ReplyDeleteItalians got taller after the Roman Empire collapsed, though. They were at their shortest in the 1st C B.C., and didn't really recover until the empire's collapse. Mainly due to the shift from including animal products in their diet before they were a sprawling empire, to being heavily grain-based or plant-based or de facto vegan during the empire's height, and then returning to animal products when the empire had collapsed.
ReplyDeleteThis is due to the empire minmaxing calories produced per unit of land -- so there was more pastoralism in the pre-imperial days and post-imperial days, but very little in the imperial days, when pasture was converted to intense grain cultivation (wheat). The polity did not need to feed a gigantic population before or after it was an empire, but while it was an empire, they needed to feed a shitload of people as efficiently as possible (even if that meant their diet went to shit and they got an inch shorter).
See this old post:
https://akinokure.blogspot.com/2011/05/romans-during-empire-lost-1-inch-in.html
Americans eat so much de facto vegan junk these days, since our polity has repeated the Roman imperial logic of minmaxing calories produced per unit of land. When our empire has collapsed, it won't need to feed a huge population anymore, and more land will be devoted to pasture for livestock, and we'll start eating more meat and dairy and eggs again -- when the population returns to the size it was in the good ol' New Deal heyday, when everyone ate steak, eggs, and milk every day.
The Flynn Effect -- rising IQs during the 20th C -- has already peaked and reversed in the 21st C, even within racial groups. And yet again, race whiners can't blame our collapsing empire on the browns, the rot is internal -- white Americans are dumber and less creative and less competent than their genetic twins from 50-100 years ago. Lifespan follows the same pattern. Height is probably the same as well, although IDK if anyone's measured it.
IDK about New Zealand having a meta-ethnic frontier, probably not though -- just one or two cities, so it's more of a city-state like Singapore, not a proper nation.
Some partial exceptions to the ticklish pattern. Mio is from Kanto (Gunma) and has a stoic and chill personality as most people there do. But she is a bit on the ticklish side:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBiIBnucAms
Hajime is from Hokkaido (another one!!!), and has a fairly chill and laid-back rather than theatrical personality, like most Northerners do. But she might be ticklish as well, running away from Kanade as she tries to tickle her:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjL_pDbwvK4
And back to Ayame, she's a Northern and has a stoic and chill personality. While she was on a camping trip with Marine and others, Marine tried to cozy up to her and caress her, which she did not reciprocate. I don't think she's super-ticklish, though -- she's not laughing and squealing, as though it's fun, like people do when they're being tickled. She's just uncomfortable and doesn't like being touched (at least, during that time):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YxB8dsGkD8
So, not everyone from the East and North is immune to tickling, but they are more immune to it than people from the Western and Southern half of the country, who get absolutely paralyzed by it.
Speaking of that, here's Pekora revealing that she's very ticklish, as Miko tries to distract her gameplay by tickling her. Pekora made a valiant effort to hide her ticklish weakness, but ultimately let her guard down, hehe. Pekora has a very melodious intonation, which is more typical of Kansai people, and she is fairly straight-talking / no-BS rather than hyper-polite, so I assume she's from there rather than the East or North.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gcOybGS2Ns
And back to Biboo, she is definitely ticklish, as shown by her desperate attempt to escape Nerissa and Shiori, who had just been tickling Fuwamoco:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tldZL9Y5P_M
Fuwamoco being fairly ticklish is also an exception to the rule, since they're from somewhere in Western Canada (where they pronounce "tag" to rhyme with "plague" and "vague").
Again, it's not an all-or-nothing comparison, it's "more ticklish" vs. "less ticklish". Mumei nearly shares Fuwamoco's accent (where "leg" and "beg" rhyme with "plague" and "vague"), and she's in the "not very ticklish" camp.
It's rare or non-existent to find someone who is immune to tickling and who lives far from their country's meta-ethnic frontier / who speaks a non-standard dialect.
I normally don't post so many links, but it's cute anime girls tickling each other -- what could be more of a content cleanse? ^_^
A few more of the Koronator squealing while being tickled, two times with Okayu and once with Kiara. She seems to be the most ticklish Holomem, although Luna and Subaru are very close! ^_^
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3I4oH3ngTE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1m9aUo0s5Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhNy4LZkEbI
What do you think of the surveys for the happiest US states, which usually seem to be Hawaii and various Great Plains/Midwest states (and Mormon Utah)?:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.google.com/imgres?q=us%20happiest%20states&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zippia.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F02%2Fhappiest-states-map.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zippia.com%2Fadvice%2Fhere-are-the-happiest-states%2F&docid=h1Y0G08f3rEj4M&tbnid=v2qC_qA7IVO9_M&vet=12ahUKEwj458Dg4IeKAxXvFDQIHUJMOYgQM3oECBcQAA..i&w=800&h=548&hcb=2&ved=2ahUKEwj458Dg4IeKAxXvFDQIHUJMOYgQM3oECBcQAA
https://www.google.com/imgres?q=us%20happiest%20states&imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.statcdn.com%2FInfographic%2Fimages%2Fnormal%2F17200.jpeg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.statista.com%2Fchart%2F17200%2Fhappiest-states-in-the-us%2F&docid=ZkZq_CbDTKBn2M&tbnid=f9RdSWuOTDoEKM&vet=12ahUKEwj458Dg4IeKAxXvFDQIHUJMOYgQM3oECGUQAA..i&w=960&h=684&hcb=2&ved=2ahUKEwj458Dg4IeKAxXvFDQIHUJMOYgQM3oECGUQAA
https://www.google.com/imgres?q=us%20happiest%20states&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.insider.com%2F5306360f6bb3f72c5c16d23e%3Fwidth%3D1066%26format%3Djpeg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fhappiest-states-in-america-2014-2&docid=yL608XyN5R_k3M&tbnid=sJ13KFKAr247WM&vet=12ahUKEwj458Dg4IeKAxXvFDQIHUJMOYgQM3oECFEQAA..i&w=1066&h=799&hcb=2&ved=2ahUKEwj458Dg4IeKAxXvFDQIHUJMOYgQM3oECFEQAA
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-happiest-states-america-050100932.html
On a sad note, Fauna and Chloe both announced their graduations this weekend, although I'll save any sappy or weepy remarks for when that actually takes place in January. Fauna said she wanted to enjoy the remaining time and make some final great memories in December. ^_^
ReplyDelete...And as a cliff-dwelling sage in the ruins of the blogosphere, I can't help but offer some advice or suggestions for her final month. It's not backseating, and I won't be disappointed if they aren't taken up. But I remember some wonderful moments from the final months of other Holomems who have graduated, which could be applied here as well.
And I started watching Fauna in early 2022, when she started getting all palsy-walsy with the Goobinator during Mario Kart hijinx, so I have a well-rounded view of what traits and qualities make her treasured by the fans, and deserve to be emphasized during the finale. Sometimes the talents are like the fish who takes their water for granted -- "Wait, you guys noticed that about me? You guys like that about me?" Sometimes it helps for outside observers to shine a light on these things, especially if her mind is a whirlwind during the final month...
Some she's surely already thinking of, and if so, just consider this a case of "getting a 2nd confirming opinion" or "great minds think alike". ^_^ And obviously I'm not giving her a list that has to be done in its entirety -- just throwing a whole bunch of ideas out there, to cast a wide net!
*** ASMR to conclude the "forest witch turns listeners into her literal saplings" arc. Everyone, including the other Holomems, mentions how much they adore Fauna's voice, and ASMR is one of her specialties. Is she going to take the listeners with her one last time, bringing them with her wherever she goes like the Pied Piper? Or is she going to invert the arc, free-ing the saplings before she leaves for good? She can't just depart, and leave them in their current state with no one to tend to them...
*** Read-along, also to highlight her voice, and her cool aunt / schoolteacher / librarian who you enjoy hearing tell stories. Fairytales are the obvious choice. And to appeal to her fondness for the "cursed yet cute" aesthetic, I suggest Tim Burton's book of short fairytale poems, The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, from 1997. She'd love it -- and so would her fans love hearing her read it. The drawings are killer, too, and maybe she could encourage the audience in advance to find a copy to view the images, while she reads the words. Or if she's feeling in an even more macabre mood, something by Edward Gorey, like The Gashlycrumb Tinies. With him the goth possibilities are endless. ^_^
*** Controversial tier list! xD It doesn't matter what the topic is, whatever she thinks of, it'll be another classic where Fauna stubbornly defends her quirky views, while half the chat has a melty over such a mundane topic!
*** Cooking or crafting stream. She bakes so much, but we've only occasionally seen the result. December is perfect for wintertime / Christmas baking! Or making vegan pumpkin spice egg nog, or something! If she's nervous about filming the entire baking process, maybe just an audio-only stream from the kitchen, with or without her vtuber model on screen. If without the model, a looping animation a la ASMR would work too. "Hang out with me while I bake some ____" And then maybe just a camera shot of the final result, looking all yummy and Faunalicious! Could be a pic taken with her phone and uploaded to the stream screen, not necessarily a video camera.
She also said she wants to get back into sewing, and making Ren Faire fare specifically. Same deal as with cooking -- could be a hand-cam stream, could be a model-less audio-only "hang out with me while I yap through this sewing project," and we see just a pic of the end result. Something to wear during winter, or give as a Christmas gift, like a longer / heavier skirt, or one of those standalone hoods that cover the neck and shoulders.
*** Watch-along, one for something "cursed yet cute" and another for "sincere, bittersweet, Gothic / Romantic". One last "bonding over the canon" moment. For the first, the Tim Burton classics Edward Scissorhands or The Nightmare Before Christmas. For the second, '80s dark children movie classics like The NeverEnding Story, Labyrinth, or Return to Oz (which also have some cursed-yet-cute elements, but are played straight rather than for meme / irony value). I guarantee most of her audience has not seen these absolute classics. Twin Peaks also falls into both categories, mainly the sincere bittersweet Goth side, but it would be hard to work in a season of TV with all the other stuff, in just a month. She said she's always wanted to watch it, though... maybe the pilot and the first few episodes?
ReplyDelete*** Fan-art review, or Q&A with fans, something where she reacts to her fans one last time, more than a zatsu about what she's been up to lately. Sana's fan-art ("anatomy") review with Mori and Mumei is still a Hall of Fame stream, from her final month.
*** Doodling stream, on any topic Hololive / anime / video game related. Some in the "cursed yet cute" style, but some also in the "sincere, bittersweet" or unironically kawaii style, not only cursed or meme-y. She hasn't done an art stream in a little while, but they are always fun, especially if she has an instigator or partner in crime, hehe. Maybe she could invite Moom back into a cameo appearance for the sequel -- or finale -- to the infamous fursona drawing stream! xD
*** Building a memorial in Minecraft, like Sana's tower or Aqua's hall, with letters written to fellow Holomems. It doesn't need to be monumental in scale, as long as it's heartfelt. ^_^
*** Related to that, one last romp around the ol' Minecraft stomping grounds, either alone to reminisce, or with a few others to reminisce as well as get into some hijinx and adventures and tangenting convos that nobody can remember how they got started. Not a high-pressure project or quest, more of a cute anime girl slumber party simulator...
*** Goth karaoke! I mean specifically, less on the emo side, more on the goth side. Emo is about frustration, anxiety, and anger -- and during your final month, those emotions aren't really going to do anything, for you or for the fandom. Those emotions are about trying to change things to reduce your bad vibes. But this is it, the end, no changing left to do. Joyful celebrations, somber memorials, bittersweet goodbyes. That's more goth than emo. Whatever songs like that that are already in your repertoire -- "Lovefool" for example.
Speaking of Labyrinth, Karafun has all of the David Bowie songs from that soundtrack. Or maybe that's more for Nerissa to sing as a tribute to you, to send you off, since she's a superfan of the movie? Or both of you? Hehe, those are classics, though, especially "(Opening titles and) Underground" and "Magic Dance", which has a great pairing of bittersweet and uplifting and festive. You could alter the chorus for fanservice, like "Magic Squeeb", or for a closer rhyme, "Sapling Dance". ^_^
*** An unabashedly kawaii and wholesome video game. Sticking with series you already know and love and have played on-stream, I suggest the original Animal Crossing for the Gamecube, or any of the new-ish Kirby games -- The Amazing Mirror (GBA), Return to Dream Land (Wii), or its subtle remake for the Switch ("Deluxe").
ReplyDeleteThese are not fan requests, I've only played the GBA game, and have only seen the New Horizons Animal Crossing game that you played. But I can still tell that they're unapologetically cute and kawaii in their visual and musical styles, the gameplay is cozy and wholesome -- and it's not layered under meme-y cursed-ness in order to sell it to ironypoisoned audiences. It's OK to be purely cute and cozy! That's one side of your personality and tastes that was more apparent in your earlier streams, but that we'd love to enjoy one last time before you leave. ^_^
If you're feeling in the mood for an outlet for your competitive side, there's Kirby's Dream Course (Super Nintendo), which is a mini-golf simulator in a very '90s Kirby aesthetic. Sana and Reine played that co-op during her final month, and it's entertaining as a spectator sport as well as a zatsu / gab-fest game. Or to play into the winter theme, Wii Sports Resort -- I was really blown away by how Edenic that one looks, when you played it, compared to the other entries in the series. Wintertime darkness and chills got you down? Let your treasured kirin companion whisk you off to a more equatorial climate for a warmer winter vacation! ^_^
Well, that's plenty of suggestions, mainly drawing on Sana's and Aqua's final month of streams... and from the Goobinator's last month as a full-timer, that heady marathon month of October 2022.
Again, this is not backseating to get my personal preferences acted on. I would suggest all sorts of other songs, games, movies, etc., if I just wanted to see my own tastes translated into someone else's streams. This is just being a longtime observer, and a perceptive one if I do say so myself, who can help this final month fulfill its full Fauntastic potential. ^_^
On South Korea, if you've been reading this blog since the late 2010s, you already know that this attempted military coup / martial law is destined to fail, though who knows how long until it all shakes out.
ReplyDeleteDum-dum right-wingers are, as always, knee-jerkingly siding with the military (the faction of society that is the most right-wing), thinking the president is based, going to Make South Korea Great Again or whatever, meanwhile...
Yoon Suk Yeol is from the opposition party of the current party alignment, the Sunshine Policy era, which began in 1998 with the presidency of Kim Dae-jung, who is from the left. The current era's theme has been detente and rapprochement with North Korea, eventual unification of both Koreas, and demilitarization of society -- meaning North Korea won't be so militaristic, South Korea won't be so pushed around by the occupying American military, and more of both countries' resources will go to normal stuff, not building up an arms' race along the DMZ.
The current Sunshine Policy era overturned the previous right-wing military dictatorship era, which was focused on open and escalating hostilities against North Korea, prolonging their civil war, anti-Communism, and relying heavily on the occupying American military for support in that crusade.
So President Yoon is attempting a throwback to the previous era, which means he is doomed -- otherwise, his society would have never left that era and entered a new one.
This is akin to if Obama got elected and, after more than 25 years into the neoliberal era, claming that he's going to institute single-payer healthcare for all Americans -- Medicare for all -- in a throwback to the previous New Deal era. Well, we saw how well that went -- Obamacare is just shitty insurance for a handful of poor people, and everyone else still has the same employer-subsidized -- NOT state-subsidized -- shitty insurance plans that they did before Obama.
If that was supposed to be a coup against the insurance racket, or the pharma racket, or the medical cartel, or the hospital cartel -- it fell flat on its face, and didn't even take off the ground.
Attempting to return South Korea to the pre-Sunshine Policy era is equally guaranteed to fail. In fact, more guaranteed, cuz Yoon possibly stole his election -- VERY narrow margin, currently facing double-digit UN-favorable ratings by the population, and the dominant party (left / Sunshine Policy) just swept into the majority of the national legislature.
He has very little legitimacy or authority, and that will be revealed sooner than later.
The most clueless observers are the intersection of right-wingers, who instantly side with the military (even if it's just a rehash of the pointless Cold War in Korea), and gadget-fiddlers -- in this case, gun nuts, or military tech autists. They think whoever has the best tech, wins a conflict. Yep, that's how the barbarians repeatedly laid waste to sophisticated hi-tech civilizations throughout history...
ReplyDeleteSo dumb, but their autistic brains can't break out of emotional button-pressing for that techno-determinist lobe in their mind.
They can't even remember five seconds ago, when goat herders just bitchslapped the super-funded and super-equipped and super-manned US military out of Afghanistan, which America never once controlled in over 20 years. Or the Houthis shutting us out of the Red Sea, or Hezbollah preventing yet another Israeli invasion and now moving into Northern Israel to gradually annex it into Lebanon or possibly Greater Syria in the future when Israel is no more.
History is constrained by powerful sets of forces -- nothing is an up-in-the-air coin-flip, that has large consequences. Only inconsequential events can turn out either way, unbuffeted by those powerful forces and iron laws. There may be degrees of variation within an overall class of outcomes, but not binary / opposite "heads or tails" outcomes.
This attempt at imposing martial law will fail, only question is whether Yoon and his military supporters surrender within days, weeks, or months. It's not even a matter of years, let alone decades, as though the right-wing military dictatorship of the pre-Sunshine Policy era were coming back, just cuz some guy says so in words.
The really sad thing about gun nuts and kneejerk military sympathizers, regarding Korea, is that they don't even side with the truly militarily superior Korea -- that would be North Korea, which not only has its own nukes, but proved that it could shove a nuclear bomb up Trump's ass, after his "fire and fury" comments in 2017 (testing a missile that could easily reach the American mainland, and that could be equipped with a nuclear warhead).
ReplyDeleteSouth Korea lost the war against North Korea, even *with* intensive overt intervention by America, which had a much stronger military in the 1950s than it does today. To this day, the occupying American military is the backbone of the armed forces in South Korea, not the native South Koreans.
North Korea regularly threatens pre-emptive military action against South Korea, launches test missile provocations in an attempt to taunt or bully South Korea, while South Korea generally does not get aggressive in response.
Also, North Korea belongs to the "based anti-degenerate socialist" class of nations, along with the pioneering one -- Stalinist USSR -- and the Chavista era in Venezuela, and even the current era in Lebanon, where Hezbollah emerged victorious after their civil war. South Korea is way more pro-gay, pro-tranny, pro-drugs, pro-abortion, pro-literally everything that libtards and woketards worship.
All of these traits should endear North Korea to right-wingers in America, but they are an old Cold War-era rival, part of the Axis of Evil, and right-wing Americans would rather waste another trillion dollars losing a war to an enemy of the neocons, than do the 2016-era Trump thing and say, "Why the hell are we still wasting all this money occupying South Korea? They should get along with North Korea, and so should we! Enough already!"
But 99% of American right-wingers, Trump supporters, MAGA fanfickers, etc., really just wanted Reaganism to be re-branded to suit their somewhat Gen X but really Millennial and Zoomer tastes, so it doesn't have that stale old fuddy-duddy taste like the warmed-over leftover that it actually is. Just dump a bunch of spices and sauces on it, and no one will know the difference!
Really sad to see them join the Romney, Ryan, McCain, Bush types rather than 2016-era Trump, who they claimed to worship as a God-Emperor. Nope, they just wanted him to be a rebranding wizard, a marketing mad scientist, so they could accept their grim fate without gagging -- taking the blue pill, contrary to all their redpill propaganda.
That was quick lol. Cliff-dwelling sages - 1, gadget-fiddlers and fanfickers - 0.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if Yoon already said "jk" by the time I sat down to start writing those comments, that's why I rushed to put them out so I could say "tolja". In any case, "martial law" has been "lifted" -- hard to lift something that was never in effect in the first place!
It's like decree-ing that every member of Blackpink shall join his personal harem -- only to decree their divorce later that day, before they even arrive.
So much of politics these days is cosplay, LARP-ing, and fanfic / fanart. No time in world history has even been faker and gayer...
Getting back to vtubers, Ayame from Holo JP has taken part in a brand and product collab with the Japanese consumer electronics company Maxell. They make electric shavers, and they just produced a limited run of 300 of their premium line shavers with Ayame's color and other branding.
ReplyDeletePlus, there's a special music jingle for their company, where she sings, and there's a music video for it, and an edited version of the MV that will run as a TV commercial in several JP regions.
And she has some merch that tie into this campaign, like a shaver stand that has her image and branding on it. She was even given the honorary title "CVO" of Maxell -- Chief Vtuber Officer! xD
https://anime-press.net/en/news-en/nakiri-ayame-maxell-izumi-cvo-campaign/
I was surprised and glad to see that Maxell manufactures their shavers in Glorious Nippon, not China or Malaysia or Vietnam or some other sweatshop colony. Too many Japanese companies these days manufacture their products in shithole countries, where labor is cheap, then sell it at high prices just cuz there is still prestige in Japanese branding.
Well, I don't care about branding -- I care about quality! I don't use electric shavers, but if I did, I'd rather buy one that was made in a first-world country like Japan. Fortunately, that is still an option for electric shavers!
Good for Maxell, for keeping their factories in Japan and supporting Japanese society and giving customers high-quality products, rather than hiring slaves just to pinch a few pennies and give the customers crappy products!
The advertising song has lots of traditional Japanese musical influences, and Ayame's image and persona is very trad Japanese, including the alternating bands of red and white that used to adorn the REAL Japanese flag -- the rising sun flag. "Made in Japan" is just as much of a source of national pride.
That's one reason why I don't care much for Nintendo consoles after the N64 -- they're made in China. Up through the N64, they were made in Japan, including the accessories, power cords, everything. As far as I'm concerned, it's not truly Nintendo or Sony if it says "Made in China"...
Also, I recall when Raora was opening up packs of the Hololive TCG cards, the box said "Made in Japan" -- that was the first thing I looked for! Why would you buy Hololive cards that were made in Indonesia or Thailand? Get real! Manga, anime, video games, and vtubers come from Japan -- so should their merch!
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of made in Japan, I recently scored a couple of vintage small tea cups by Otagiri for only $1 apiece at the thrift store. The label is still on the bottom. They're in this pattern with rich brown stems and vivid blue leaves, against an off-white / cream background with brown speckles and brown rim:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ebay.com/itm/175707640140?chn=ps&mkevt=1&mkcid=28
But they're in the shape of these small ones with no handle:
https://romaarellano.com/listing/528014842/six-vintage-otagiri-stoneware-yellow-and
Very Japanese, and therefore, very American. "We love our Midcentury Japanese ceramics, don't we, folks?"
^_^
Also, after watching Ayame's stream where she explains her Maxell collab, I think it's safe to say she is the most giggly Holo girl, whether JP or EN or ID. She could not stop giggling, and it's a very cute and endearing giggle! Meccha kawaii! ^_^
ReplyDeleteI can see why the audience wants her to stream more often, they want to be healed by her giggles! Very cozy and wholesome vibes.
And in other JP news, the local library finally got a copy of Cowboy Bebop on DVD, so I checked that out and will begin watching that. I haven't watched any anime in awhile.
Plus, they had one of their old copies of Only Yesterday on DVD for sale -- only $1! It's pretty hard to find Studio Ghibli movies for that cheap, I don't mind if it's a library copy, as long as it plays fine.
I watched it before, but with English dubs. Now it's time to watch it properly, with Japanese voices and EN subtitles.
It has one of my favorite Japanese songs as its theme -- "Ai wa Hana, Kimi wa Sono Tane" by Harumi Miyako, a Japanese rendition of "The Rose" by Bette Midler. Not only Japanese lyrics, but a different arrangement and tone -- bittersweet but uplifting and joyous, with multi-layered New Age and trad Japanese instrumentation. Amazing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fWlUFay50s
This is real. Shopping malls being converted into apartments:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1GIF6VNipE
Dark Age meets Space Age architecture not apparent after desecration and removal of key elements. This is a reminder for a much broader class of cases -- due to ongoing iconoclasm against American culture, from American elites themselves (not foreign invading hordes), what you see now or even 10-20 years ago might be missing crucial pieces of its intended glory-days look.
ReplyDeleteCase in point, the entrance to Belk department store, at Columbia Mall, in Columbia SC, circa the mall's founding in the late 1970s:
https://localhistory.richlandlibrary.com/digital/collection/p16817coll17/id/81/
At some point probably in the '90s or 2000s, those huge awning-like pieces were removed, leaving it to look like a portico (it also became a Dilliard's rather than Belk in 1995, so possibly the desecration occurred with the new occupant):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/10542402@N06/5830953404
Those bell-shaped awnings gave it a distinctly Space Age look -- curvilinear, large-scale geometric shape, fairly unadorned in themselves, smooth texture, whiter in color. They contrasted with the surrounding matrix, which was brick, redder in color, more textured, small scale blocks built up into a larger matrix, and clearly harking back to more trad forms like columns and arches and arcades and porticos.
With the loss of the awnings, it just looks like an attempt at Classical or Dark Age forms -- not bad, but not great and exciting either. Also, no longer distinctly American, more Euro LARP-y.
Also, their loss means the space is more wide-open and reads as Classical or Neoclassical -- when its original form was very filled-in, massive, with low ceilings (i.e., the bottom of the awning), and a blind arcading effect. That placed it squarely within the Dark Age tradition, not Classical or Neoclassical, which are light / airy / open.
The Space Age twist on blind arcading for our Neo-Dark Age culture is cool. The usual way of blind arcading is for the blind / filled-in section to be recessed into the surface, whereas these awnings are protruding out from the surface. And the usual way is for the blind section to be flat, whereas these are curving substantially outward. It gives them a more sculptural effect, making them large-scale ornaments to liven up the fortress-like exteriors that Americans love so much -- where we'll feel cozy and protected inside.
The massive roof-like element (awning) is similar to the pit-house or other Dark Age residential buildings that American architecture is defined by. Such as the original Pizza Hut buildings, and others that are mistakenly referred to as having a "Mansard roof".
ReplyDeleteI went over that before -- Mansard roofs are a small fraction of the entire vertical dimension of the buildings that they actually come from -- French chateaus of the Early Modern era and after. American Pizza Hut, McDonald's, and other office buildings from the Midcentury are very low to the ground, single-story, and the roof accounts for the majority of the total height -- they're absolutely dominated by the roof, which is its most recognizable feature, unlike Early Modern French chateaus, where the walls and windows are the most recognizable and the roofs are an afterthought flourish.
With the awnings gone, the small height of the doors looks awkward, having tons of empty space above them. If the portico is going to be on a grand scale, the door should be grand as well -- maybe a single large door, or a series of doors and windows that still reach up into the upper part of the portico, or at least a series of recessed / blind portals that shrink from grand scale to small scale, where the actual functional door is located. All that negative space, with the awnings gone, just looks and feels awkward above the rather small doors. The awnings filled in that empty space, making it a nice large and cozy structure instead, where the top of the arches to the top of the doors was filled in with the awnings.
Also, the fact that the columns are somewhat wider at the base and taper toward the top makes them look and feel like Dark Age buttresses, rather than the light and airy flying buttresses from the post-Dark Age era. These columns are pretty thin, but their thicker base makes them more solid than they would otherwise be -- and by being filled in between by those massive awnings, the columns don't feel so wispy, but more like a skeleton for a massive single body.
When anti-Americans deconstruct even part of our distinctly American architectural style, it doesn't look Euro -- it looks like a confused and crappy attempt at looking Euro. All the elements are meant to work together, you can't just remove some selectively and hope the remainder will stay coherent. It won't -- and you can tell something is off about that entrance when looking at the awning-less version, even if you don't know exactly what used to be there to make it coherent and better. It's just too weird as it is...
ReplyDeleteAnd of course, the only place the original form can be found is on a local library's website, in a digital archive. Luckily it came up on a Google image search, but only that one example. No other images survive of its original, coherent form.
That's the problem with inspecting ruins -- you can tell that *something* is missing, but not what. That would be extrapolation, going from a subset (what remains) to a superset (the original). It would be informed speculation to assume that some element connected the tops of the arcades to the tops of the doors, to alleviate the weird off-putting abyss-hanging-in-the-air that is currently there. But you wouldn't know what particular shape it took, or its color or texture.
You wouldn't even suspect that the missing pieces were Space Age rather than some other trad form, since the ruins are all trad, an example of survivorship bias -- the anti-American haters only wanted to remove the Space Age elements, in a sad and failed attempt at Euro LARP-ing.
Finally, not surprising to see that this desecration took place back East, the least American region of the country, far from the meta-ethnic frontier out West. America had Americanized the South for a brief period in the middle of the 20th C, as evidenced by this Midcentury Modern mall in South Carolina, the Midcentury Modern furniture pumped out by Lane in Virginia, and so on. But as imperial stagnation and collapse took place, they have gradually withdrawn from American culture and returned to Southern culture instead. Ditto for their Northeastern Yankee rivals, who are no better, due to also being back East, anti-American, and Euro LARP-y.
Another example of blind elements dominating the facade of another Midcentury department store in Columbia SC (from the same online archive), Davison's:
ReplyDeletehttps://localhistory.richlandlibrary.com/digital/collection/p16817coll17/id/134/
These are rectangles, so more of a blind window than blind arcade, but still blind and solid instead of a functional open transparent window that would make it light-airy-open. They're of the usual form, though -- recessed, and flat, more trad and Dark Age instead of the Space Age twist on the blind arcading at the Belk from Columbia Mall.
Still, whatever is compatible with our Dark Age culture is fine, with or without a Space Age twist. Anything but light-airy-open, as with the glass boxes that the anti-American desecrators have replaced the true American style with after they demolish it.
Quick remark on Syria (will probably start a new post on the topic later), this is what happens when most of your country is like Northern Lebanon -- which, in fact, Syria is. Aside from Damascus, all their cities and settlements lie to the north of Lebanon's northern border -- Syria is ultra-Northern Lebanon.
ReplyDeleteDamascus is the only major settlement in the South of Syria, lying fairly close to both Beirut and Israel's northern border / Golan Heights.
Since the meta-ethnic nemesis in the Levant is the Zionist invaders from Europe, that means most of Syria lies far from the meta-ethnic frontier, whereas a large portion of the Lebanese live right along that frontier.
That has forged the Southern Lebanese, represented by Hezbollah, into a highly cohesive collective that can not only expel an Israeli occupation that had lasted decades, but can also repel or prevent further attempted invasions by Israel, as we are seeing right now.
The Northern Lebanese were the internal traitors during their integrative civil war, siding and collaborating with the meta-ethnic nemesis in order to get one over on their rivals from within their own country (Southerners / Shia, vs. the Maronite Northerners).
Traitors always lose the integrative civil war, so the South emerged victorious and has been uniting all of Lebanon behind it, including their defeated and disarmed former rivals in the North.
Syria has minimal exposure to the Israeli frontier, but now as Israel is moving further into Syria from the Southwest, that will ramp up the meta-ethnic conflict with Syrians in the South, possibly including the mega-population in Damascus. But this is only just beginning, whereas Israel invaded and occupied Southern Lebanon in the early 1980s -- so Syria's transformation will be about 2 generations behind Lebanon's transformation.
But already we see the same internal dynamic, where Syria's internal traitors are from the North -- notwithstanding Al-Jolani, whose surname means "from the Golan Heights" -- close to the Turkish border, a million miles away from the Israeli frontier. They are mainly Sunni Muslims, whereas the Maronite traitors in Lebanon were Christian -- sect is not important, it is proximity to the meta-ethnic frontier.
ReplyDeleteThese internal traitors are siding with the meta-ethnic nemesis in an attempt to get one over on their rivals from within their own country, namely the former Assad stronghold in Damascus, way down in the Southwest.
I foresee a similar development as in Lebanon's civil war -- Syria's civil war is only getting started.
The only difference is the degree -- Israel is far weaker now than it was circa 1980, and so is the collapsing American Empire that is siding with Syria's internal traitors. So I don't think the intensity and duration of Israel's push into Syria will be as large as it was during the 1980s and '90s. This means Syria may not develop as intense of a reaction to it, as Lebanon did with Hezbollah. Also, the region right along the Israeli-Syrian border is not very populated, not until Damascus, and the most densely populated regions in Syria are all north of Lebanon, far from the frontier.
So I still see Hezbollah and Southern Lebanon, and therefore Lebanon as a whole -- which is now united and defended principally by the Southerners -- as the main site of growth in asabiya and resistance to the meta-ethnic nemesis, Israel.
It will take Southern Syrians at least 2 generations to get to the point that Lebanon is in now.
In the southern direction, Yemen is the other source of rising asabiya -- they have also gone through an integrative civil war, with the Houthis in the North coming out on top, and uniting the whole country behind them, just like Hezbollah.
All I know is, the Salafist traitors from Northern Syria will not be in control of the country long-term, not even medium-term. They are not battle tested -- hardly had to fight at all in order to sweep into Damascus and topple Assad, once his Russian and Iranian support was absent. And they are heavily reliant on foreign support, mainly Turkey but also America.
They are in no position to become the organic, stable leaders of the nation -- indeed, they are destined to get dethroned, just as the Christian North were the big losers in the Lebanese Civil War, despite having far more control earlier on. They collaborated with the meta-ethnic nemesis and relied more on foreign support than the Southerners did, so they were paper tigers.
There is no counterpart to Hezbollah in Southern Syria right now, but it will emerge over the next 2 generations, and it will dethrone the Northern traitors from their tenuous hold on national power. They may not represent a coherent sect within current Syrian society, other than perhaps being heavily Druze. They will simply be Southerners, against the Northerners of various sects who support the now Al-Qaeda led national government.
ReplyDeleteAgain, this is all contingent on Israel remaining a meta-ethnic nemesis over the next 50 years -- it is already in a fragile state, so if it is removed as a major threat, then this process will grind to a halt in Syria, although not in Lebanon.
In the case where Israel is removed as a major threat, that benefits Hezbollah and Lebanon, who will expand into Israel / Palestine as liberators -- and who will therefore either expand directly into Damascus and Southern Syria, or form an alliance with their anti-Zionist counterparts of Southern Syria.
In either of those cases, the Northern Salafists will be expelled from national power and likely eliminated altogether, not allowed to fester in their Northwestern haven of Idlib. When Israel is no longer a threat, Hezbollah and Southern Syria will have no one else to focus their attention on but the Zionist collaborators from Northern Syria.
Hezbollah and Southern Syria will then chase the Northern Salafists back into Idlib, where they will be destroyed rather than given a buffer zone.
Many decades away, but that's where this is headed. It is not hypothetical, it has already been proven in neighboring Lebanon for the past 50 years.
Anyone who slandered the health insurance CEO killer as a leftoid, libtard, etc. just cuz he was a populist, confesses that the whole attempt at re-branding the Republican party as "populist" has been a BS exercise, to make warmed-over pro-yuppie / elitist Reaganism relevant in a time when patience with crooked and corrosive elites has worn out.
ReplyDeleteHe has imprinted-on-2016 energy, where he could've favored both Bernie and Trump (of that era), listened to the Joe Rogan podcast, etc.
But he took a stand against a member of muh elite aristocracy -- in reality, some state school striver from the over-produced elite aspirant class -- ergo he must be a soy-drinking woketard Democrat.
The Trump / populist / MAGA era has been over for awhile now, but it's sad and pathetic to see right-wing influencers still trying to keep Reaganism hip and cool, 50 years after it was revolutionary (as the neoliberal turn of the late 1970s, leading into the Reagan Revolution). Trump's 2016 campaign was about de-sacralizing Reagan as a figure, and reversing his signature policies that have since destroyed America -- open borders, de-industrialization, over-extended military failures all over the world, ballooning debt, etc.
Hope he hosts a podcast or starts up a blog while in prison, to clear out some of the crusty neolib slop that still infests social media dIsCouRsE...
"Anyone who slandered the health insurance CEO killer as a leftoid, libtard, etc. just cuz he was a populist..."
DeleteIf Uncle Ted we're alive, he would have sent them a special package for such slander.
Millennials keep losing, Zoomers keep winning, for high-profile killers. 99% of the BLM / Antifa / school shooters are Millennials -- anti-social, narcissistic, iconoclastic (bad kind). Kyle Rittenhouse, Daniel Penny, and Luigi Mangione -- all Zoomers, pro-social, not in it for self-aggrandizement, trying to preserve societal integrity.
ReplyDeleteTed Kaczynski was a Silent, not a Boomer. Most high-profile Boomer killers were the anti-social kind -- 99% of serial killers during the crime wave of the '60s through the early '90s, the Weathermen / SDS types from the late '60s and early '70s, and so on. They were so hated that their fellow leftists chased them out of town and disowned them. John Lennon's assassin, too. The only notable exception being Bernie Goetz, who was cleaning up pollution in a public space.
Timothy McVeigh, the deadliest domestic terrorist in America, blew up the Oklahoma City building as a retaliation against federal governmental overreach at home (namely, the Waco and Ruby Ridge sieges / killings) and abroad. Not a burn-it-all-down anarchist like the Boomer Weathermen types. He was Gen X.
Generations go in cycles of narcissism and pro-sociality, with Silents and X-ers and Zoomers being pro-social and Boomers and Millennials and presumably Gen Alpha being attention whores and brats.
Just a reminder, whenever you read someone whining about Zoomers online -- it's always a Millennial, and they are always confessing about their own Millennial generation's worst traits, projecting them onto the scapegoat of Zoomers.
Not that Millennials are all bad, but X-ers Zoomers are better than them on the whole, and Millennials will never stop seething about that fact, especially now that they are outflanked on the younger side, not just the older side.
I had him pegged as an anti-woke left populist type, so not too far off. But it was very obvious he was not a leftoid, or a BLM / Antifa type, since he killed a member of the elite -- and from the left half of the elite, namely from finance / insurance (a Democrat faction, not a GOP faction).
ReplyDeleteA leftoid would've targeted some random white guy Trump supporter of no importance, and for culture war / tumblr identity politics motives. The proverbial boat dealer.
And since there was an immediate public manhunt, it was clear he was not protected by the Deep State, which BLM and Antifa criminals are.
Yet just cuz he challenged the degenerate credo of "profits uber alles," right-wing morons accused him of being a commie-nist.
Sad!
Timely reminder that Trump, for his adult life, has championed single-payer healthcare so that we don't have our society bogged down and parasitized the way it is.
ReplyDeleteHe gave both moral reasons -- "we have to take care of our people when they get sick" -- and efficiency bean-counting reasons -- it's such a waste of resources, to get an outcome that is at best the same, and probably worse, than the outcomes of single-payer countries.
The return-on-investment is abysmal compared to single-payer systems -- but it props up profits for a certain faction of the elites, so the "profits uber alles" movement has sanctified it, and demonized the righteous and humane system. Such a Satanic inversion of morality.
"If you get sick, you're gonna go to the hospital, we'll pay the bill, and you won't have to worry about it" -- that's what he kept saying back in 2016.
Anna and Dasha, as recently as 2020, pushed Steve Bannon on "Can you truly be a populist if you don't support universal healthcare?" to his face during an interview.
Now the Trump movement has slunk back into stale Reaganism, caping for muh elites against the commie-nists. Very sad.
As for prison reading list suggestions, I think if you like the Lorax and Ted K, you'd be more interested in complex systems dynamics -- not AI, which is a dead-end slop pursuit (nothing personal, just some frank advice, especially since while imprisoned you won't be getting a cut of Silicon Valley start-up QE bux, and therefore won't have to waste time chasing fads). And for biology rather than inanimate things.
ReplyDeleteA few classics from the field:
Mathematical Models in Biology by Leah Edelstein-Keshet
Mathematical Biology I & II by Daniel Murray
Theoretical Ecology by Robert May
Try any of them, see what things pique your interest, go further from there, and try your hand at coming up with models of your own, using the tools they equip you with. That ought to keep you engaged and productive intellectually.
They're time-respected classics for a reason...
Is it schizo to think he might lurk here, or know someone who does, or once saw a screenshot of this blog in a group chat he's in? Nope, not given his online footprint. Just in case, can't hurt to point him in the right direction when / if he's imprisoned and needs something to occupy his mind and time.
Falling Down remake, where the protag discovers the bewilderingly inflated prices of all healthcare products and services, upon taking his sick daughter to the hospital for a routine illness that threatens to cost him a fortune.
ReplyDelete*Points at bottle with bat*
Bottle of aspirin -- how much?
"Seventy-five dollars..."
*Bashes the bottle across the room with bat*
*Picks up IV drip bag, tossing it lightly in his hand a few times, like a pitcher warming up*
Saline solution, 1000 mL -- how much?
"Six-hundred and twen- uh, Six-hundred dollars even..."
*Hurls bag into the window where it explodes like a water balloon, saltwater oozing down the glass*
That's right, folks, we're rolling prices back to NINETEEN NINETY-FIVE!
Now, cough drops, package of 12 -- how much?
"...A dollar twenty-five..."
SOLD!
*Stuffs two dollar bills into the doctor's white coat pocket*
And -- keep the change...
More examples of blind arcading on mall facades, to establish that this was a common element to this most distinctive building type in American architecture, not just that one Space Age example from Belk at Columbia Mall.
ReplyDeleteUnidentified mall, 1964. Click image to enlarge, and scroll through the other 800+ images to see how amazing malls used to be in their heyday -- they have been stripped of their amazing-ness in the meantime, if they weren't demolished altogether.
https://archive.org/details/ramblar-mall---1965_33071839473_o/1964-mall-parking-lot_33502884330_o.jpg
This is similar to the Belk at Columbia Mall, except that the arcades are filled in in the usual way -- recessed, flat, though still seemingly with a different material than the surrounding arcade / facade. The filled-in area looks darker or warmer in hue.
Also like the Belk one, the blinding covers about 70% of the vertical dimension, not all of it -- leaving enough room for the functional doors to fit underneath. Instead of an awning-like element filling the arcades, there's a low horizontal awning-like element jutting out right where the arcade meets the doors, to provide some transition vertically, and to provide some transition in the "into" dimension, as people approach the doors.
Just think of how awkward and puzzling this entrance would look if the blinding was knocked open, and those tall spindly columns were just standing in empty space, above the small-sized doors. That's why you don't mess with it -- they're all elements of an integrated gestalt, they can't be removed surgically like Mr. Potato-head pieces!
Another Dark Age detail is the arches being semi-circular rather than pointed -- Romanesque (twilight of the Dark Ages), not Gothic (dawn of the Humanistic era).
This one has a further Dark Age fortress feel due to the entrance being set back into the facade, by a good 10-15 feet. This adds a temporary claustrophobic feel just before entering, as you're surrounded by humungous solid walls on either side nearby. The doors are relatively small and narrow, there's that awning low overhead -- kind of like having to pass through the portcullis of a castle!
Very defensible structure, should bands of nomadic raiders swoop in unannounced. You don't get more cozy than that...
I hope that, as our neo-Dark Age empire collapses, and there comes a rising need for "rooftop Koreans" to snipe at raiders down below, American architecture sees the full return of crenellated battlements atop its castles of commerce.
ReplyDeleteThey look so cool -- and it would no longer be a Ren Faire LARP, they will be fully functional! Hehe.
The OG rooftop Koreans had literal crenellated battlements on the roof of that building! No way! I can't remember how many times I've seen that picture, without appreciating the Dark Age castle details! Just when you thought American architecture could not get more based...
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roof_Koreans_and_ROK_Veterans_(1992_Los_Angeles_Riots).jpg
North DeKalb Mall, in metro Atlanta GA, built 1965 (closed 2020, demolished 2024). First, a look at the mall under construction, with blind arcading already apparent. Midcentury Ivy clothing look, everyone smiling, getting along -- a far cry from athleisure and Darwinian hyper-competitiveness, which has destroyed American culture over the course of the neoliberal era.
ReplyDeletehttps://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEictqiGM4DubSZKJakZyAUukbReuCRXrFb4kEUG6MMthyphenhyphendIs_kQRFU01AqEyOwFNa3qjd1CdnQGc5FkojGs7tiQnWoJZe2pp3TOrK1ul5GdoV4V2mCGt0R8bDm8YRHDxmY_JLG4v68prAqjvsGuLyV2uMUPfW_9r1a4YZo0erd7LHOsDwsmDy2SWs65kL55/s1061/North-DeKalb-Mall-Construction.JPG
An old mall blog's entry, with lots of images:
http://skycity2.blogspot.com/2006/07/north-dekalb-mall-updated_01.html
The department store anchor, Rich's, had multiple entrances, and they all featured blind arcading at the ground level and blind windows along the second story. Like the unidentified mall before, this has a horizontal awning jutting out over the small doors, and the entrance is set back into the facade to give it more of a "passing through a portcullis" feel:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPXBSxtO0fZwiPlaVBU3xg_hiUYK-crAq7K-SOadxnrI6nOzTIId21KtWucU8nFhCsQNje894ifqgaZvRbunZ1RFCUL9ToEXgtw-1LEj2LkclUulXFyeRbAkAsw6WBr9hkUjsr7o9EytXX/s1600-h/richs_ndekalb18_021105.jpg
Those vertical extensions above the main roofline, coming from the columns of the blind arcade, suggest crenellated battlements, in the context of this building looking like a Dark Age castle. Just a little less functional, and given a Midcentury minimalist styling. So cool...
ReplyDeleteSeminole Towne Center, metro Orlando FL (built 1995, currently on life support). Entrance to the Dillard's department store anchor:
ReplyDeletehttps://static.wikia.nocookie.net/malls/images/e/ef/Dillard%27s-1560451796.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20190613184957
https://dimg.dillards.com/is/image/DillardsZoom/store_image_store_0224?fmt=pjpeg&wid=640&hei=483&qlt=90,1&resMode=sharp2
Although there's a barrel vault over the awning just before the entrance doors, it does not open into anything in its upper region. It's solid, much like a blind arch. And since there's already a low horizontal awning, it's not like the barrel vault is functionally the awning or a portico -- when you're standing underneath the vault, you can't look up and see it, or feel the expanse of space that goes up toward it. It's not light-airy-open.
Also, the supporting columns for the vault are huge piers a la Romanesque, not spindly Gothic type columns. If you want tall spindly details -- that's what the palm trees flanking the entrance are for. ^_^ Otherwise the facade is totally solid and windowless, like a fortress or castle.
The entrance is set back into the facade, but not quite as far as in the previous examples. However, the two sets of massive piers do give something of a claustrophobic feel, as you're closed in on both left and right, with only a small opening between them. Pretty portcullis-y.
More eclectic and weird and funky, not as polished and accomplished as the others -- it's Florida, after all.
None of these examples have pointed arches, BTW. All semi-circular. Technically that could fit with original Roman or Renaissance / Neoclassical LARP of Roman, but given how solid massive and closed-off the rest of the building is, it looks nothing like Roman or Neoclassical, but good ol' Dark Age -- Frankish, Byzantine, Sasanian, Tang.
ReplyDeleteNot about blind arcading, but some other Dark Age revival elements inside Moorestown Mall, metro Philadelphia NJ (built 1963, heavily altered since). Same firm that designed the Seattle Space Needle the year before (John Graham Jr. and associates).
ReplyDeletehttps://ia801606.us.archive.org/23/items/ramblar-mall---1965_33071839473_o/1_Swl4exKuvXym4ofw80aSXQ.jpeg
https://patch.com/new-jersey/cinnaminson/what-does-moorestown-mall-have-in-common-with-the-spa21ebb25cc0
First, instead of skylights, there are clerestory windows to let light in near the roof height, while still keeping the walls solid and closed-in closer to the ground level. Nomadic raiders have a harder time breaking into windows that high off the ground, compared to windows near ground level.
But more impressively, there's a ribbed vault that could be late Romanesque but more like early Gothic -- the columns are thin and spindly, the ribs go diagonally and connect the consecutive arches across the left and right sides.
And the cross-section of an individual vault is pretty close to conical -- an 8-sided "cone" -- which is what the "fan vaults" of early British Gothic look like. However, this being America, we don't like tons of encrusted detail on those fan vaults, so they're smooth and slick and white, looking more Space Age-y. Also, the arches are pointed like Gothic.
And yet, there is one dimension that is still very Romanesque rather than Gothic -- the low ceilings. Given how quickly the ribs flatten out horizontally, and given the low height, this space still feels a tad bit closed-in or cozy. If not for the spindly thinness of the columns and all that light coming in from the clerestory windows, this might actually feel like a Dark Age crypt!
It's not totally Gothic. It's light, but not totally airy and open, due to the low ceiling and the feeling of those massive vaults close to your head -- not a million miles up into the sky, as in a Gothic cathedral.
This is one of the few malls that feels more like a cathedral than a castle, due to the series of rib vaults over a concourse, and the loads of clerestory windows in the same room. Somehow, though, only "cathedrals of commerce" caught on as a label for malls, when in fact they're more like "castles of commerce" -- and just as alliterative!
Like I keep saying, though, commerce was rarely transacted there, and most of the revenue came from a small number of big-spending benefactors. Malls were mainly a communal gathering place, which was funded by the commerce elites, who could've made shitloads more money by investing that money to higher ROI projects.
But American elites were still in the library-building Andrew Carnegie mold during the New Deal, and the commerce elites sponsored this magnificent civic architecture all over America, free of charge to enter and become a part of for as long, and as often, as you pleased.
For those who never visisted American malls during their heyday, the largest desecration has been the removal of all the sculpture (standing and hanging), the water elements (still and in motion), and the plantlife / planter elements (sometimes just a typical vessel like you have around the home, sometimes a huge sprawling enclosure big enough to double as bench seating for dozens of mall-goers).
ReplyDeleteThese desecrations have rendered malls no longer a museum or gallery, or a garden or park, as they used to be.
A Space Age Garden of Eden and sculpture gallery inside a Dark Age castle, where the stores were more like mere gift shops in a museum -- to kick a little money toward the operators of the site, in return for a little souvenir from their sector of society (mainly manufacturing, sometimes agriculture -- at the food court). It really was not primarily about retail transactions.
Something to bear in mind when you look at or visit the few malls that remain standing these days, which have been heavily big-box-ified, specifically Target-ified. No bells and whistles, no sense of civic architecture, no Garden of Eden, no leisure or meeting-up purpose, no heady thrill of entering into an optimistic future that had only been dreamt of by sci-fi paperback illustrators...
Seriously, go flip through those 800+ images at archive.org and behold what a real culture used to look like!
(last comment for tonight)
Just watched a theater showing of Interstella 5555, the blondes Leiji draws are always gorgeous, he is definitely a butt admirer. Following the current theme, the entryway of the AMC theater is recessed, with the exterior portion having incredibly thick columns that form narrow funnels against raiders even before arriving at the doors. Once entered, the lobby has this recessed cave like quality, hiding with its confusion of lights the passageways to the theaters in the corners, said passageways giving good cover to defenders, while the wide open lobby space denying cover to invaders.
ReplyDeleteThe Eastridge mall has taken on this half venetian ambience, the mall space proper has been concentrated into the second floor, the first floor has been largely abandoned, with the second floor walkways bridging over the dry (for now) canal bed that used to be the first floor. Entry into the mall is limited to the food court, located on the second floor, reached from the parking lot by a shallow glass covered entry lobby, with escalators serving as diagonal drawbridges to reach the actual mall. Other ways of entering are through the Belk anchor store, or through an antique store, both maze like to get to the mall proper.
Antique stores and malls are in general much like open air museums in which the artifacts are actually for sale.
One more tonight after all, York Mall in York PA (built 1968, desecrated into big-box center after 2000). This interior picture shows up all over the mall nostalgia sphere online (e.g. as the thumbnail for one of those "empty mall vibe" vapor wave videos), though rarely identified. It's just so instantly and intensely familiar, and yet the building it's showing is totally gone and you'd never know this place ever existed except for the precious few photos that survive:
ReplyDeletehttps://yorkblog.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/03/YorkMallA.jpg
https://yorkblog.com/yorkspast/york-mall-remembering-the-early-years/
There's a connection to blind arcading, as the original facade is still visible in the one part that wasn't totally demolished during the desecration of the site into a big-box center (mainly Walmart and Sam's Club, with a Dollar Tree and other strip center slop -- none of it under a single roof, and with all the public goods removed, like water, plants, sculpture, benches, etc.).
This lone surviving piece of the mall was occupied by a Burlington Coat Factory, but even that left in 2023 and is now vacant. Old photo of it, with blind arcading intact:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/coolcats_pics/10250860424
Reminder that fortresses, castles, and malls all had an imposing exterior but a sumptuous paradise inside -- they were for the people inside the building, not those gawking from afar, let alone nomadic raiders casing the joint in order to size up its vulnerabilities, where the best loot was stashed, who had to be taken out to get to it, etc.
Look at that interior scene, and contrast with the imposing blind-arcaded exterior. *That* was what a mall felt like, when you actually went inside -- nobody loitered outside as their main activity. Loitering was done inside.
Just to spell out what some of that paradisical elements are: a large pond with multiple arc-ing fountain streams and lights illuminating it from below, with the enclosure doubling as bench seating for dozens of people. Plants nestled in planters inside the pond. Large metal sculptures inside the pond (looks like two bronze fish leaping out, or maybe a geometric sculpture meant to evoke fish leaping out).
Also, a staircase that seems to hover in the air like an air-bridge, although it is supported below the circular turning point -- by a tapering column that has an inverted conical top, like those ribbed vaults or fan vaults from the Dark Ages, only smoothed out and white in color to give it a Space Age look-and-feel.
Warm-stained unpainted wooden railing throughout, as well as along the sides of the pond enclosure. Keeps the scene from being too light and bright, and keeps the futuristic Space Age grounded in a back-to-nature environment (which metal or synthetic railings would not).
There's even some true arcading on the second floor, where again the arches are smoothed out and minimalist a la Midcentury Modern and Space Age styles. But still, you want to walk along a path that has arcading on one side where it opens out into the main space? You got it! Blind arcading is just to keep the bad guys on the outside from peering into the safe space inside where the good guys (us) are hanging out with our guard down.
Green color on the department store sign, and in bands along the ceiling, give it a soothing natural feeling as well. Today's soul-crushing spaces are only bright white and shades of gray, maybe black.
The Midcentury Modern mall interior was certainly on the bright side, and made extensive use of white -- but also amber-y brown wood and a similar orange-y brown in the bronze sculptures, and forest green trim, dark green foliage on the plants, and a dark green or black for the pond's bottom, benchtop, and the carpeting on the staircase. So much more well integrated, varied, and stimulating but also soothing at the same time. Very earth tones-y from the late '60s and '70s -- not bright neon. I'm sure that white is more of a soothing ivory or cream, too, not the blinding white that neolibs use now for trimming their matte gray boxes.
I'd kill to be able to hang out in a place like this today, but most of them are demolished, or desecrated if still standing. If your main experience with malls was in the 2000s or after, you don't even know what has gone missing, unless you rummage through old photos...
ReplyDeleteAnd York PA is definitely *not* a major city, wealthy suburb of one, etc. It's dozens of miles away from Baltimore, Philly, and Harrisburg, in its own little portion of the state. You didn't have to make an expensive, long-term pilgrimage to these places -- every Everywheresville in America had them, back when the commerce elites shared their wealth with the whole nation.
That's the major flaw in American architecture -- so much of it was funded and occupied by commercial and mercantile elites, whose sector is based on not holding anything sacred, but putting a price on everything.
So unlike churches (sacred) or castles (where armed elites were honor-bound to maintain them), America's special architecture has never felt that sacred, and has been much easier to desecrate and iconoclastically demolish -- not out of the profit motive, but deliberately to erase American culture, which today's rotten elites view as an embarrassment compared to muh Early Modern Euro cathedrals and chateaus.
Ditto for less tangible culture like movies and music, which are guarded by intellectual property laws unlike most of the culture ever produced by mankind. It really makes me wonder how much of our treasure trove of American imperial culture will be left in a few hundred years -- possibly very little.
*not "only" out of the profit motive...
ReplyDeleteClerestory windows vs. skylights in malls (or elsewhere). While spending the night listening to Enya's album Christmas Secrets and flipping through that 800+ image gallery of malls from their glory days, I figured I'd take a few notes on clerestory windows, since I've gotten onto that topic a number of times.
ReplyDeleteI only browsed those from 100 to 150 in the gallery, and will refer to them by that number, without linking the horrendously long URL each time. You can navigate that gallery at archive.org to see.
But it sure seems like clerestory windows were everywhere in Midcentury malls, which gradually gave way to massively open skylights starting in the '80s or so.
First, the images where clerestory windows are clearly visible:
101, 104 (can be seen even in exterior shots, if you're looking for them), 112, 113 (right-side image), 116, 118, 119, 121, 122, 124, 125 (another exterior), 126 ?, 131, 138, 141, 144, 145
That's about 30% of images, and many of the others don't have the relevant area in the frame, so it can't be determined. Pretty common!
Some notes:
The mall in 118 is still standing, and those clerestory windows are still there, not filled in or demolished.
In 138, you can see the civic function that malls played, where an entire school's marching band and majorettes (or whoever exactly they are) are performing inside a mall, with a large crowd spectating. You'll never see *that* in a big-box store, and these happenings were very common in malls -- along with seasonal happenings like visiting Santa.
These functions did not merely move locations to some post-mall building type -- they were erased altogether from American public spaces, as imperial collapse has eroded any civic cohesion we used to feel.
What's better about clerestory vs. skylights? If the roof is too open, it removes the most crucial piece of the building that contributes to its sense of being cozy and protective.
ReplyDeleteThe roof must be totally solid -- maybe a few exceptional openings, but when it's too wide-open, it no longer feels like we're inside an enclosed building, but just wandering around an open-air shopping center.
What kind of cave doesn't have a ceiling? What kind of castle is open-air above? What kind of crypt would have a transparent ceiling between it and the main level? Too-open ceilings offend our Dark Age craving for cozy fortresses.
As one example, the mall in 106 has a massive mostly uninterrupted skylight, and light is just flooding in. It's so bright that, despite being captured on film, there are highlights that are nearly blown out.
Forget about whether the temperature would get too hot in summer, or how blinding the light is -- even if that could be controlled somehow, there would still be the anti-cozy feeling of having no solid roof over your head!
If the opening in the roof can be interrupted, this wide-open uneasiness can be alleviated somewhat. Like if there's just one opening above a focal area, a la a Classical oculus (as in the Pantheon). Or like in image 124, the openings are small and spread far apart, as part of a larger and more dominant Brutalist coffered ceiling. Not a single expansive opening. Plus this building has clerestory windows as well.
But the trend has been toward opening up more and more of the roof to skylights, not to mention opening up the entire walls as well -- the glass box abominations that have infested America after its cultural peak. America is a Dark Age culture, and we DON'T want to feel like our buildings open up right up into the sky -- we want caves, castles, and crypts!
Clerestory windows suit our Dark Age tastes because although they're high up and admit a decent amount of light, they do not tear open the roof. They don't make us feel exposed and vulnerable.
ReplyDeleteThis is because walls and roofs are totally different things. If there's a certain amount of area open within the roof, it doesn't matter where it's placed -- it feels equally open / exposed. Say, if there's a long skylight running along the left-side of a corridor, or the right-side, or in the center -- any way you slice it open, it feels equally open.
But walls deal with height, and it matters a lot what height an opening is placed at, for how open and vulnerable we feel. If the same area is open, but running along the wall at human eye level, that's very open and exposing. If it's 10 feet off the ground, that's better, not as exposing. And the further it gets from the ground, the safer and cozier it feels to have an opening of a certain size.
We're imagining bad guys storming the building to get in, to get us or get whatever loot is inside or maybe just desecrate the place. The higher of a wall that they have to scale, the more protected we are.
Whereas with the roof, bad guys, predatory animals, etc. are not coming in through the roof, so it doesn't matter where the opening is located. The roof is more about natural elements getting in, and things like sunlight, rain, wind, snow, etc. are so massive compared to the area of the roof, it doesn't matter where the opening is located -- those things will get in equally.
Clerestory windows not only allow us to feel maximally protected within high walls, they are similar to skylights in admitting light that is far from the ground -- where light is more abundant anyway, and where it can flow down to cover a wider area of the ground level where people are walking, compared to windows close to the ground.
But that is contingent on there being windows *only* high up, not as in the brochures for residential clerestory windows, where they're sitting right above a huge bank of windows at ground and eye level. The space underneath clerestory windows has to be solid, to give it that "light peeking over the summit of an unscaleable wall" effect.
BTW, you can create a clerestory effect with blinds, if they're the type where not only the bottom lifts up, but the top can be lowered. Just drop the bottom all the way down, and lower the top just enough to create an opening at the top, above the vast opaque section below. Boom!
ReplyDeleteIf you want to do it with curtains and curtain rods, just place the rod below the clerestory section, although this may be different from the usual wall-mounting procedure. Then hang the curtains as usual -- either allowing them to bunch along the floor, since they're hanging from a lower height now, or having them shortened.
Neat!
Clerestory windows also allow for more dramatic chiaroscuro lighting, as can be seen in several of those images, where the space is brighter at the top and in the focused band emanating from the window, but is darker where that band doesn't reach very well down below, especially right under the window, close to the walls.
ReplyDeleteSimilar to the Dark Age use of clerestory windows, e.g. the Santa Costanza in Rome (4th C AD), let alone later Romanesque cathedrals where the central part of the main axis (nave) gets more light from the clerestory windows above, while the parts off to either side (aisles) get less light.
If they were open on the sides, the aisles would get their fair share of light as well, and it'd look more evenly lit, not chiaroscuro.
But why would any demented person design it that way, and why would any demented group of people choice to congregate in such a place?
Finally, a clever and unusual approach to clerestory vs. skylights, in one of those malls from the gallery, #121. Superficially, it has a geometrically minimalist Midcentury Modern look -- but don't be fooled by that, it actually resembles a Dark Age church.
ReplyDeleteSome writers use "clerestory" to refer only to windows that are high up on a wall, whether or not there are windows at lower heights. Others use them to refer, as well, to openings in a dome, or in the drum supporting a dome, which hover in the air and do not have walls directly underneath, and so cannot have any windows under them in principal -- that space is entirely open, not a wall.
I'll take the second approach, and use them for windows that are not part of a wall, but part of a dome or a drum, above the main part of the roof. These are not the directly overhead openings (opaion) as in the Pantheon, which are skylights, openings in the roof that pour light straight downward.
The central court in the mall from 121 has a simple arcade perimeter -- 4 columns at the corners of a square, with pointed / triangular arches rising between them on all 4 sides (the only not-so-Dark Age detail, the pointiness of those arches). Above this square arcade, there's a drum with a square cross-section as well, and although it's not shown in the frame, I don't think there's a dome above the drum -- just the drum. And I don't think there's a massive skylight in the ceiling of the drum.
It looks more like the light is pouring in from the sides of the drum, which is nearly entirely open on all sides, apart from the columns at the corners, and thin strips separating each pane of glass. This is similar to the windows of a drum in a Dark Age church, where this approach began -- again, as in in Santa Costantza. However, in the Midcentury mall, it's not just windows opening from the drum -- the entire vertical wall of the drum is open glass, letting a lot more light in.
And yet, it doesn't feel like there's a huge oculus / opaion in the roof, a la the Pantheon or some contempo mall with a big-ass skylight. The roof remains entirely intact, not punctured. Light is coming in through a vertical element (wall of the drum), not a horizontal-ish one (roof). So it feels more like the clerestory effect, with an opening high off of the ground that does not puncture the roof, even though there is no wall underneath to provide further coziness with its "peeking over a tall wall" feeling.
Kind of like a raised drain stopper, rather than a totally open drain with no stopper. If you were a tiny bug crawling around that pipe, I bet you'd feel more cozy with some kind of roof over your head, where some light could still enter, but laterally rather than directly downward.
And like a skylight on a flat roof, this clerestory band around a drum lets in light no matter what time of day it is. And given how open it is -- the drum's height looks like 1/3 the height of the space below it -- it's letting in a lot of light compared to the space below, so it winds up lighting it up pretty well. Maybe too evenly lit, not chiaroscuro enough -- again, the lack of walls underneath means there's not much space that it leaves untouched.
But if you have to have an evenly lit, lit from above, kind of space, better to make it a clerestory wrapped around a drum that lies on top of the main roof. It preserves the coziness and protective feeling of having a solid ceiling.
Later buildings in the Humanistic era maintained this Dark Age element, of windows piercing the drum of a dome -- but given that the scale of the buildings soared, these played less dramatic of a role in creating chiaroscuro lighting, or the feeling of light coming in horizontally. They're so high off the ground, and narrow instead of wide openings, they're more like ceiling lights, which are another replacement for skylights while preserving the integrity of the roof.
ReplyDeleteIn the Santa Costanza, San Vitale, etc., the drum is a lot closer to the ground, and the window area is a much larger percentage of the drum's vertical section area, much like that Midcentury mall. The Florence Cathedral, US Capitol Building, etc., don't achieve the same effect, despite having similar features -- cuz they're too far away from the ground, and are a much smaller percentage of the drum's vertical section area.
The Humanist, Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassical types also probably have a huge oculus / opaion skylight in the top of the dome, or another opening up there like a lantern or cupola. Santa Costanza has no opening in the roof of the drum whatsoever. It has a solid roof, like that Midcentury American mall.
Space Age meets Dark Age -- American architecture cannot get any cooler...
Warm, mood-lit, red and brown '70s malls. Cavernous, intimate, primeval, lush... a location straight out of a Hollow Earth sci-fi story, often featuring futuristic geometric Space Age fixtures and furniture, in tune with the Hollow Earth genre.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just a primitive cave-like oasis deep underneath the chaotic exterior, it's also being discovered by an advanced civilization who colonizes it and makes it their cozy resort and retreat away from their mundane lives on the planet's surface.
Chick Fil-A as a hole-in-the-wall, or niche in a cave, from Greenbriar Mall in Atlanta GA (circa 1970). Notice the presence of all ages, families, and a mother walking around barefoot in a public space -- high-trust, back to nature, noble savage behavior.
This was before they went blindingly light-and-white, and before they exclusively hired cute young girls as the cashiers. Less of a "maid cafe for lonely Republican suburbanite guys under 50".
https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/business-economy/chick-fil-a/m-8306/
Altamonte Mall in Orlando FL, opened 1974, Postmodern yuppie desecration in the late '80s, gradual blandification afterward, though still open. Full, extensive history with tons of images:
ReplyDeletehttps://imgur.com/a/3xFvS
It began as a Hollow Earth utopia in the good ol' New Deal era, with lush red carpeting throughout, Brutalist built-ins (like geometric planters that are concrete poured in place, bearing the woodgrain impressions from the formwork, coffered grid ceilings, etc.), Garden of Eden plantlife and water elements, and wood paneling.
Postmodernism in America was an excuse to erase American ethnogenesis, to pretend we never became a separate and distinct culture from our Euro ancestors and cousins, and unwind the culture back before 1890 or so when it branched off into its distinctive American form. Chippendale, Neoclassical, Spanish Colonial, Renaissance Italian, etc.
That's what form Altamonte Mall's desecration took in the late '80s, during peak neoliberal Reagan Revolution times. If it were built over a vacant lot, it'd be perfectly fine as a mall -- but as an iconoclastic replacement of the Midcentury Utopian Americana that was already standing there, it was horrendo.
Plus they light-airy-open'd it like crazy -- going back to the scourge of massive skylights. The long concourses received massive openings in their ceilings for skylights, and the central court had a huge hole torn open in it, to make room for a skylight in the form of a glass-and-steel grid dome skylight. Not just an oculus in an otherwise opaque dome -- the whole friggin' dome is transparent, and it's YUGE.
With these massive chunks of the ceilings ripped open and exposing the interior, it no longer feels like a secluded cavern deep within Hollow Earth. It's more of an outdoor plaza with several storeys, and indeed that was the trend in the decades after -- making the malls outdoor altogether, not just transforming the roof of a single enclosed building into a yawning skylight.
Abandoned, thrown out into the cold indifferent open-air plazas and strip centers, with no roof over their head, Americans never recovered their sense of being provided for and protected by retail elites.
Eastridge Mall in San Jose CA -- finally a trip out West! Opened 1971, still standing but in neolib desecrated and blandified form, with public goods removed. This is what Silicon Valley utopianism used to look like, back when the present looked futuristic:
ReplyDeletehttps://radicallyretro.com/retro-gallery/vintage-design/vintage-architecture/malls/eastridge-shopping-mall-san-jose-ca/
Look at the step-like changes in elevation! Like terracing or terraforming a planet, or maybe a spot within Hollow Earth. Talk about sunken living rooms and conversation pits... and with wraparound built-in seating, cozily surrounded and shielded by plants, soothed by still and moving water nearby, much like benches under trees in front of a pond at a park -- but in an entirely enclosed space, like a park deep under the Earth's suface.
The red carpeting isn't quite as extensive as in others of its family, but it's visible from any part of the mall, and the amber-y wooden railings and dark-brown wood paneling on storefronts help to tone down the brightness.
Also, a monumental abstract sculpture in chrome, seemingly effervescing out from the main cascade pool. Dynamic, exciting, alive, in flight, defying gravity. Anything is possible, if man can already construct such a utopia deep under the crust of the Earth.
Fairlane Town Center in metro Detroit MI, opened 1976, a rare example that is structurally well preserved, although the warm dark soothing color palette has been white-and-gray'd into a dentist's office look since 2007.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.flickr.com/photos/blakta2/14605005993
https://radicallyretro.com/retro-gallery/vintage-design/vintage-architecture/malls/fairlane-town-center-dearborn-michigan/
It even had its own monorail connecting it to the nearby Hyatt Regency Hotel -- futuristic!
If we can't have flying cars, we'd better at least have monorails. But alas, even that already proven and realized concept is no longer constructed in our collapsing shithole of an empire.
Six Flags Mall, metro Dallas TX. Opened 1970, demolished 2016 during the nadir of woketard iconoclasm against American culture.
ReplyDeletehttps://i.pinimg.com/736x/92/e8/c6/92e8c6b4696d81d563c4a97ee7049182.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0d/a5/87/0da587ee38e4a3c9030008fafb570685.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ad/ad/8f/adad8fd093b36b87dd2eeb15b2716920.jpg
Instead of red carpeting, ruddy brown terracotta tiles, as well as red brick furniture, accented with warm orange-y brown wood with clean angular lines (so as to not look too Olde Worlde, but distinctly American), dark wood paneling on store fronts, taupe bark on the palm trees, green foliage, off-white or beige paint throughout -- very cozy and earth tones-y.
The only element that prevents this from feeling as cavernous as the others is the exposed ceiling joists, which could certainly bear whatever weight there is in a typical house or other building on the Earth's surface -- but would probably buckle and cave in, if they had to support the weight of the Earth's entire outer shell!
So it does feel somewhat like a "park within a building" rather than 100% a park under the Earth's suface.
However, we're also used to seeing the joists exposed in an unfinished basement, where it's supporting the ground level above. So this mall also reads as an expansive subterranean space -- just 1 storey underground, not tunneling all the way through Hollow Earth's outer shell.
Exposed joists and rafters are also familiar from an attic, but this does not read as an above-ground space due to the trees trunks converging into the floor. That feels more down-to-earth, not possible in an attic.
So we'll lump this one in with the Hollow Earth family, even if it's not the most exemplary member.
Imagine not wanting to lounge around a warm secret utopian oasis deep under the Earth's surface on a rainy Sunday like this one...
ReplyDeleteOnce upon a time, retail elites used to provide these public goods and places for us. They will never regain our trust, compliance, and defererence until they provide them once again.
The red floor is crucial for suggesting lava or magma, tying into Americans' obsession with volcanoes (similar to Japanese culture). This is the naturalistic view of the red-hot Underworld -- not Hell or the Nether, just what the geology is like closer to the Earth's core. Morally neutral. Making Hades habitable.
ReplyDeleteStill, life underneath a volcano is still not entirely peaceful. It adds a tinge of the sublime to the otherwise soothing landscape. Recall that in the American version of Eden, there are active volcanoes, predatory dinosaurs, etc. -- Eden doesn't mean removed from all threat of harm or danger. Just back to our imagined primeval origin.
I think that's why the red carpeting works better than red tiles. Tiles are clearly made and set into place by human engineering. Carpeting is more plausible as a natural earthy surface -- or molten magma surface, as the case may be.
Especially as the red carpet flows down those multi-step cascades, whether it's a simple staircase, sunken conversation pits, or an amphitheater within the central court. It really adds to its sense of motion, and what other substance flows in motion along a floor and is warm and red -- other than lava?
Whether that combination of stepped elevation changes, plus red carpeting, was intentional to make it really feel like lava flowing, does not matter. That's the effect it has, regardless of how well the mall-goers can articulate that impression, or how well the planners could explain why they were making these choices.
Magical, mystical caverns of commerce. Just one for now, Century Plaza in Birmingham AL, built 1975, closed 2009, demolished 2020 during the woketard iconoclastic crusade against uniquely distinctive American architecture.
ReplyDeleteTying into the discussion of skylights being limited like a focused spotlight, instead of ripping open the entire roof to the outside.
This allows for dramatic chiaroscuro lighting that is visible from far away -- Hey, look up there, a clearing in the woods! Or rather, a room in the cavern that has an opening to the surface above!
All while the rest of the space is dimly and glowingly lit, teasing and alluring you from the bright spots under the skylight into the lose-yourself-in-anonymity darkness, much like a nightclub or a dense jungle... until you find yourself drawn into another skylit area, back into your ordinary identity, fully visible.
The pictures here are amateur, so not the highest quality, but you can still appreciate how awesome this place used to be.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Birmingham/comments/16qkeul/who_else_grew_up_going_to_century_plaza/?rdt=45637
Quite bright region directly under the skylight, as you take a break from the overall cavernous lighting and layout of the mall. Like a clearing in a forest. Only instead of tree stumps, there's a sunken living room (3 steps deep, just like a Midcentury Modern home), and a conversation pit with wraparound built-in furniture. Cozy!
If it were bright all over, it wouldn't feel so cozy, but as a "clearing in a forest," it feels like a place to relax and feel relief from exploring the rest of the cavern.
And there's not an absence of plantlife -- aside from the short bushes in the planter at ground level, there are trees growing right up toward the skylight, and an arrangement of hanging planters to guide your eye upward. You're at the edge or boundary between the clearing and the forest itself.
Also notice the large abstract chrome sculpture to the right -- a staple of malls. It's not for sale, and it does not increase the profit margins of the mall owners or any store owner -- it's just a public good, like everything else that made malls malls, above and beyond an array of shops.
Just a little bit away from the skylit region, the space becomes dark again, with some warm glowing light inside individual stores. Then as your eye scans further down, it's caught by another skylit region, with another grouping of plants, benches, perhaps a fountain, etc. -- another oasis! And then beyond that, more cavernous darkness, and who knows, maybe another skylit oasis beyond that!
In addition to creating a rhythmic effect between dark regions and bright regions, it tantalizes the eye to explore, and lures your body to go explore them as well! How could you sit still for long in a place like this?
The same lighting changes can be seen even on the 2nd floor, where the storefront is pretty dim compared to the railing right under the skylight. These open spaces between floors have never seen an equal, in creating a treehouse village effect -- being able to see up into the floor above you, or down below you. Other building types used it, but malls made the most distinctive use of it.
Same effects seen from the 2nd floor:
ReplyDeletehttps://static.wikia.nocookie.net/ghosts-of-retailers-past/images/4/40/Century_plaza.png/revision/latest?cb=20220827221505
Very bright right under the skylight, and even just outside its perimeter, like the two women immediately to the right of it, whose clothes are covered in highlights. But the people just a few paces to their right, are in a neutral or even dim light, and so are the storefronts even further away from the skylight.
From way back where we are, you can see 3 separate skylight regions, each marked by the hanging plant arrangement, bright lighting, and the wooden railing enclosure. Off to either side, and in between them, the space is much darker, the material is darker hued (dark wood on the storefronts vs. orange-y brown for the railing under the skylight), and it recesses further into the individual stores, like separate rooms branching off within a large cavern.
The skylights do not make it feel like the roof has been ripped open, exposing the mall to the outside -- it's just a rhythmic series of openings that remind us of the surface, without it intruding or interrupting the secluded cozy cavern of the mall's interior.
In fact, these skylights are unusual in another way -- they are not recessed into the ceiling, and the ceiling does not move upward, as in most skylights, including domes with an oculus or corridor-long skylights that are pitched toward the center.
There's a surrounding enclosure that dips a good 2 to 3 feet into the interior -- like a ceiling light fixture, or a chandelier (those dip even further down). A ceiling light belongs to the interior, not the exterior, of the place it's lighting. So it makes these skylights feel clearly part of the interior of the mall, and not an intruding element from the exterior. They preserve or enhance the integrity of the roof, not destroy its integrity like the horrendo kinds of skylights.
Something about that downward slope of the ceiling, instead of upward slope, makes it feel less like it was ripped open -- which would pull it upward. It's more like something poked or bored or eroded / wore its way through, pushing the material down into the other side (the interior). It doesn't feel violent, like a bullet-hole or a meteorite puncturing the roof.
More like natural erosion that exposes the cavern to the suface, and leaves some of the eroded material dangling into the cavern. Or like tree roots and ivy and such dangling into an opening in the roof of a cave. It doesn't feel disruptive like a torn-open roof.
If anything, there's the sense of thing above the roof pouring into the mall, due to gravity and erosion -- rather than things within the mall being ripped up out into the exterior like ants being removed from their hive by an ant-eater.
As for the other details, notice the subtle 4-step change in elevation -- just cuz. Why have a totally flat floor? Put some changing elevation, to make it feel more natural -- like a park, garden, or outdoor shopping district on a hill, just enclosed within a single building.
You won't find sunken living rooms, conversation pits, or 4-step changes in elevation in a big-box store! Or plants, or planters, or water, or giant chrome sculptures, or anything else that made malls the pinnacle of civic architecture in America!
Final view, from the lower level again, where the rhythmic changes in lighting are the most dramatic:
ReplyDeletehttps://scontent.fosu2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/418990972_10227935146296394_6743917078576124398_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=2285d6&_nc_ohc=5jGh_NaImXsQ7kNvgF1JDCT&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent.fosu2-1.fna&_nc_gid=ATJ3HcuQIcOoMpwVYhMp5ZD&oh=00_AYDQ8FsD4k62fTImI1Rp_E-CVm2FGAUcjZvziBb8JZnW2A&oe=67670583
The pillars being dark-colored is a great way to break up the brightness into bright and dark sections. The ceiling and most of the surfaces are beige, and the floors are ruddy brown. These dark brown or black pillars introduce even more changes in apparent brightness vs. darkness as you look around, although due to dark hue rather than dark light level -- but still.
There's a small pool at the bottom of the skylit region, with a few bubbling fountains inside it, and of course plants growing up from it as well. The soaring brick or tile wall makes it seem like a cliffside, with water pooling at the bottom -- like a waterfall! Maybe there is some water flowing down it, but even if not, that's the impression.
So perhaps that first picture should have had water in the area where the sculpture is, but they were servicing the water pumps that day or something.
Those 3 or 4 steps down into the relaxing skylit regions are a great transition -- not just creating a clearer distinction between the two types of spaces (one a little higher, one a little lower), but providing a fluid transition between them, not a harsh boundary.
I could spend the rest of my life in a mall like Century Plaza, but unfortunately, anti-American traitors have literally bulldozed most of these buildings by now, and de-civic-ified the remaining ones.
So when Euros or others outside of America don't understand what's the big deal with American nostalgia for malls -- it's because they were not commercial spaces here, they were a garden, park, amusement park, jungle gym, oasis, Space Age cavern under a volcano, sculpture gallery inside of a Dark Age castle, where every civic and communal function imaginable took place at one time or another.
Their only link to commerce was which section of the elites were providing these public goods and public spaces to the citizenry, totally free of charge, and going against the profit motive.
Only during the "greed is good" neoliberal shithole era, did mall owners start optimizing "return on investment" and removing all of the public goods, services, and civic components of malls -- then shutting them down altogether, cuz they're VERY FAR from the most profitable use of whatever money they have to gamble with. Throw it into the casino called the New York Stock Exchange instead.
After abandoning their stewardship over public goods and spaces like malls, the commerce elites have never regained the public's trust or appreciation. They don't provide any of this awesome stuff in a Target or Walmart or Dollar Tree strip center.
Not even in the last category of retail store that everyone still frequents -- the supermarket. They got rid of whatever plants, water, sculpture, wraparound furniture, etc. decades ago. The only plants they have in supermarkets are the kind that are for eating, not for decoration.
They even removed the public coffee grinders! As of a few years ago, only Trader Joe's still had them available to the public, and you didn't even have to buy the coffee from their store or their chain.
This isn't about "the customer is always right" -- a commercial appeal. It's about the citizens deserving public goods and services and spaces from their ruling elites -- otherwise we won't comply with their orders, simple as that.
Target aesthetics over the decades, from its Midcentury Modern origins in the '60s (when it was mainly a Minneapolis store), through the '90s when it exploded nationwide. I still remember the first Target I went to as kid -- probably 1990 (just checked -- '91).
ReplyDeleteIt's a timeline, but every decade has a "What Target stores looked like in the 19__'s" section. Click on that, and it'll open a gallery with lots of pictures to flip through.
https://corporate.target.com/about/purpose-history/history-timeline
Lighting was really warm and butter-y (hue and texture) back in the good ol' days, as you can see in the '60s pictures. Now every store has the ultra-bright levels that began with those cursed mega-skylights, only now they're probably a cold fluorescent or LED as well.
Last time I was in a Target was whenever Olivia Rodrigo's album Sour released -- got it day 1, in the Target exclusive package! ^_^ Not that it was important, but still a neat little detail. That was 2021. The place didn't leave much of an impression on me, other than "it's a Target".
I actually went to Targets semi-frequently in the early 2010s, after not going in the 2000s or most of the '90s for that matter. They had Starbucks, they were better than Walmart, but other than that... still a big-box store, nowhere near the apex of American civic architecture that malls were.
You can see that from the '60s through at least the '80s, Target used to have a restaurant, cafeteria, grill, or other place to eat -- with a proper array of tables and chairs and a counter and machines to cook raw ingredients into a finished meal. And in soothing colors, Mod design, yet unpretentious. Reminds me of the eating area in a roller rink or bowling alley, another staple of bygone Americana.
Department stores used to have all of those things, so Target and Kmart at first were aiming to be discount department stores. Now all of those cool amenities are gone, and it's just a somewhat pretty warehouse like Sam's Club (and Kmart is gone altogether, still impossible for me to believe).
Kmart etc. used to have arcade games, like malls, just on their smaller scale. Not a full arcade with dozens of cabinets -- maybe just one or two near the entrance or near the cafeteria.
ReplyDelete30 years later, I can still vividly remember FINALLY finding the first Street Fighter arcade game. When Street Fighter II exploded in popularity, we were always scratching our heads about, "Well, where the hell is Street Fighter I?"
I wasn't even looking for it, or an arcade cabinet at all. And this was years after Street Fighter II became a phenomenon, after Mortal Kombat blew up as well. So I was just wandering through an Ames in Montgomery County MD, and on the way out of the store -- there it was!
Well, I found out why no one had heard of it before, it's not great. Not a bad game, it's a decent fighting game, and probably the best one as of 1987, when it was relesed. But after Street Fighter II, there's no way you'd want to play the first one. Still, it was exciting to play for the novelty of it, and for the feeling of tracking down what I had thought was the Holy Grail of arcade games.
Video games really used to be everywhere -- malls, discount department stores, bowling alleys, pizza parlors, laundromats, student unions on college campuses (where I played Rampage while my mom was busy in her MBA night classes that she dragged me to, if she couldn't get a babysitter). Everywhere.
I don't give a shit about ethics in games journalism -- I care about the return of arcade cabinet bodies into public spaces, where they have been erased during the iconoclastic (bad kind) 21st century.
Rampage was created by an American company, back before we got sucked into simulator slop. In fact, by the same company that would go on to popularize video capture of live-action models, to digitize into "video game" characters, rather than the hand-drawn illustration / anime style of Capcom's Street Fighter series -- Midway, who also made Mortal Kombat.
ReplyDeleteBut back in the '80s, not even American companies could focus too much on simulators, despite Pong and other sims already being popular. After the Japanese invasion, even American companies had to create video games, not simulators. Including one of the most satisfying, with simple gameplay and levels that are just varied enough to keep you from getting bored -- Rampage. Featuring iconic horror movie monsters derived from King Kong (American) and Godzilla (Japanese). And that Wolf-Man character that no one every played.
No 3D, no VR, no 1st-person POV. An honest to goodness video game! They used to be everywhere, now the arcade cabinets are gone, and Americans mostly play sim-slop on home consoles or more likely they gayass smartphone. Sad how far we've fallen in just a few decades. Glorious Nippon would never...
On a historical note, recall that Midway was also an earlier giant in pinball and any kind of machine that was coin-operated.
ReplyDeleteThat all goes back to the Ground Zero of American ethnogenesis -- the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Coin-op, arcades, amusement games, eventually amusement parks, rides, etc. That all began at that one fateful fair out on what was still an Indian frontier within living memory.
Not to mention Frank Lloyd Wright and the birth of American (and broader Modern) architecture in the same place at the same time.
And around the same time and place that Marshall Field's became an iconic department store... only to later be bought up by the Dayton-Hudson Corp. in 1990 -- the parent company of Target, bringing this posting series full-circle. (And then absorbed into Macy's during the 2000s with the rest of the department stores.)
What do you think of the St. Louis Fair of 1904, which also hosted the Olympics? It was also in a Midwestern state.
DeleteInteresting connections among some of these topics. I mentioned roller rinks and Target stores when they were just exploding in the early '90s. Well, there was an iconic rom-com from the early '90s that takes place in a Target after business hours -- Career Opportunities (a John Hughes movie).
ReplyDeleteThe sad sack protag decides to take some time off of his overnight custodial job to rollerskate around the empty store with the lights fully on. Then he notices a hot young babe who's hidden herself in the store overnight as well, played by Jennifer Connelly.
After getting to know each other, they begin roller skating around the store as a pair, transforming it into their own private roller rink, while early '90s house music plays in the background:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7sCz2i-DHg
This is one of the last wholesome romantic scenes of its kind in American history. As our cohesion has come unglued, neither side would trust each other enough to engage in this kind of activity -- not even in a fictional portrayal like a movie.
It would have to be coded as safe and free from toxic heterosexuality, like the male character is openly gay in the movie and he's more of a eunuch / gay BFF, or he's coded that way and played by an actor who is gay IRL, as almost all of them are by now (whether out or closeted).
I've been listening to soft rock staples of the '70s, including some from the very early '80s, and this morning "Suddenly" by Olivia Newton-John found its way into the rotation. It's from the soundtrack for the musical Xanadu, which I've never even seen -- but I just thought, "Man, this would make the perfect song for a slow dance on the roller rink floor!" The wheels are in motion, referring to the skate wheels, sailing as in the free gliding feeling you take on while skating, etc...
Turns out that's exactly what this scene is like in the movie! Great minds think alike... I'll definitely have to watch this movie tonight or tomorrow, while I've got slow-dancing, roller rinks, and soft rock '70s on my mind, heheh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIrgcvh40oA
Another iconic scene of wholesome and romantic roller-skating, as a pair, while music plays, in a location they're not supposed to be, after hours, imbuing the atmosphere with a little rule-bending mischief. Today's uptight puritans couldn't conceive of bending rules or indulging in some wholesome mischief.
And although it doesn't have a musical number, or even choreography, there's the iconic ice skating date scene from Rocky (1976). And nearly after hours, where the worker keeps calling out there's only 5 minutes, 3 minutes, etc. left before it closes, and they have the place all to themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK4lxjvrhHs
Major red flag for anyone who doesn't get warm and fuzzy watching these wholesome and romantic iconic scenes, and dream of taking part in that kind of activity themselves at some point -- UN-ironically.
ReplyDeleteI actually thought of Dasha being the roller skater in a contempo rendering of these scenes, since she likes making rhythmic gymnastics videos, but she'd probably get too sad or ironic or sultry, rather than wholesome romantic mischief... maybe she just needs the right character motivation from the male partner's side.
Like she tugs on Steve Bannon's triple-layer of jackets to join her on the roller rink, he sheepishly tries to dismiss her request, but she gets all smiley and giggly and bright-eyed to melt down his defenses, and he nervously lets his guard down and cracks a pure smile, too, as they navigate the roller rink while something plays in the background... might as well be "Suddenly," which Bannon as a Boomer would know from his own life, and Dasha perks up her ears cuz she's an actress and rhythmic gymnast who wants to seize the opportunity and recreate an iconic musical choreo scene from the heyday of Hollywood.
Or maybe it's Alex Jones, who's also initially hesitant and thinks it wouldn't be macho to roller-skate to music, but Dasha's too princess-y to be refused, and she says a magic word like "C'mon... it's classic Americana!" and he has to give in. ^_^
Maybe in a society that wasn't collapsing...
Watched Xanadu last night, much much better than I was expecting, and an obvious target of slander by the tone-deaf two-left-feet-havers who make up 99% of the wordcel media reviewers. They never get anything musical, let alone dance-ical.
ReplyDeleteBut beyond their baseline hatred or mere numbness toward music and dance, what really drove them up the wall about this one, leading to the founding of the Seething Bitter Hater Awards (the Raspberries)?
The tone is entirely light, minimal drama. It's a blend of musical, romance, and fantasy, with some comedic moments.
If it's a musical, the wordcels want drama or moral ambiguity a la Saturday Night Fever, Fame, Flashdance, Footloose, and Dirty Dancing. Xanadu doesn't press those buttons whatsoever, it's consciously a revival of Midcentury musicals where the tone is only light and dramatically uncomplicated, where the story is secondary to the music and dance -- which it still connects in a narrative thread, but that narrative thread is not meant to awe on its own.
Movies have never been, and never will be, "novels that are photographed and/or set to a musical score" -- they are a series of images and sequences of musical sounds, motivated by a narrative. Wordcels can never get over the fact that purely verbal artforms died out or were at least shoved out of American culture during our ethnogenesis, which kicked off around the turn of the 20th century.
And musical movies are even LESS of "a novel that is set to music". Reviewing them as though they were, is retarded and clueless.
But even though the narrative is nothing special in Xanadu, it's clever and entertaining and uplifting (boo hiss). One of the Ancient Greek muses comes to life, materializing straight out of a mural she was painted into, to inspire a struggling and nearly burned-out painter to achieve something great with his talents. Unlike other artists who she's inspired over the centuries, she falls in love with this mortal -- a no-no for divine beings in Greek mythology -- as he does with her, so their love seems ill-fated, even if her artistic inspiration will bear fruit.
It's the Manic Pixie Dream Girl formula of nurse swooping in, in this case by literal divine intervention, to help pick up a sad sack and encourage him to improve his life, but slipping out of his grasp by the end of the movie.
Then there's an older former musician, who was also inspired by the same muse (under a different Earthly pseudonym), and he has to learn to let go of her after having already enjoyed his inspirational moment many decades ago, even as he comes face-to-face with her again. It's a nice bittersweet contrast to the protag's situation, who gets to enjoy the inspiration here and now.
Who plays that older musician? None other than Mr. "Singin' in the Rain" himself -- Gene Kelly! The actor, dancer, and choreographer who single-handedly made music-and-dance catch on in the movie medium. And he can still cut a little rug, into his late 60s! How this giant of the industry can appear -- almost star -- in the movie, and neither he nor the movie gets credit for it, is a shameful testament to what dance-haters the reviewers and critics are.
ReplyDeleteEveryone knows Olivia Newton-John is the hot babe muse, and sings many of the songs on the soundtrack. How does no one know, without actually watching it, that Gene Kelly plays a major role? He certainly steals the show from the protag, as far as song-and-dance goes, where the protag is there more for the narrative motivation, such as it is.
It's not just "that guy from those old musicals" either -- there's a recurring revival of Midcentury culture in this movie from 1980, mostly focusing on the '40s when Kelly's character enjoyed his heyday. Big band music, dance troupes with zoot suits, the muse-chanteuse with '40s hair, and Streamline Deco architecture (the delapidated stadium that the protag and older musician want to revive into a razzle-dazzle performing arts venue).
There's even a mention of the Roaring Twenties, when the musician's palatial residence with 50-foot ceilings was built. "They built 'em bigger back in those days," or something like that -- exact same sentiment as the Silent Era stars from Sunset Boulevard who continue to live in palatial estates from before the Depression, refusing to acknowledge the modest and less glamorous Midcentury homes of the early '50s.
Toward the climax, these two eras merge with each other. There are two separate musical numbers that alternate at first -- one from the Midcentury jazz tradition, the other from the late '70s arena rock tradition. The sets, costumes, dance styles, and of course the music itself, is appropriate to either era -- and by the end of this sequence, the sets move on wheels to occupy the same space, the dancers dance amidst their counterparts from the other era, and the two songs are superimposed over each other. Only the costumes don't change, but we still get a variety of the two in the same space. It's so cool!
Wordcels really wanted something bitter and seething to take place there, like the Midcentury jazz guy seethes over the decline of jazz and the rise of rock 'n' roll, and the protag gets offended and tells him that his day is over, DAD, make way for the cool new thing instead. Somewhat like the antagonism between generations in Footloose. The successful passing of the torch, and even melding and fusion of the two, with no jockeying for position across generations, was too optimistic and uplifting for the haters to tolerate.
It's similar to the end of Fame, with "I Sing the Body Electric" -- too hopeful and optimistic, not enough bitter recriminations. But Xanadu doesn't have the porn and drugs and fags and ugly gritty urban sludge that Fame does, which allowed the wordcels to overlook the climax of Fame and focus on the gritty naturalistic narrative instead of the music and dance.
As for the main appeal, the soundtrack is awesome and runs the gamut tonally and stylistically (again featuring as much big band jazz as classic rock). I think my fave is still "Suddenly" for that wholesome mischief and soaring freedom choreography scene.
ReplyDeleteNone of the songs comes across as bombastic, pretentious, etc. -- in keeping with the drama level being fairly low. Likewise for the choreography -- big band had some gymnastic dance moves, but it's not like the 21st-century cheer competitions or anything.
Lively, energetic, engaging, entertaining, but not over-the-top. It has its sexy and sultry moments, but it's not that sexual, and it definitely does not have moves meant to be weird, off-putting, or ugly.
And very few moments where the performers felt like they were attention-whoring.
These feats are VERY HARD to pull off in a genre that is dominated by theatre kids. One of the literally gay whiners, who went on to write the campy stage musical adaptation of Xanadu, dismissed the movie as what happens when straight men get too much control over musicals.
He's right -- too uplifting, yearningly romantic, exciting, fun, and cool, with nothing dark, edgy, or cursed to bring it down. And there's not a campy moment in the whole movie. Meaning, a self-aware parody meant to say "this is trash, but we love trash".
It's not problematizing any of its subject matter, how gauche!
Damn right, it's a thoroughly non-ironic appreciation of '40s big band melodies and zoot suits, razzle-dazzle showmanship, roller-disco, Art Deco, and a love letter to the Southern California environment in general. Much closer to L.A. Story, which is not even a musical, than to the typical flamboyant or campy 21st-century theatre kid adaptations of Hollywood movies.
Roger Ebert, in an otherwise sympathetic review (2 out of 4 stars -- I'd put it a bit higher than that), complained about the choreography, or rather how it was shot by the cinematographer, mostly near eye-level, so that the audience can't appreciate the larger-scale formations that the dancers are in.
ReplyDeleteI only focus on this complaint cuz Ebert's one of the few credible reviewers from the legacy media -- most of them had absolutely no skill at evaluating anything visual or musical, and relied on the clueless "movies as novels" wordcel framework for giving their thumbs up or down. And they weren't even good at evaluating literature! But in any case...
First, there are several establishing shots from a distance and at a high angle, to show the dancers belonging to a large-scale super-organism that is coordinating its own large-scale movements, similar to a marching band on a football field being viewed by spectators in the stands, or a team of cheerleaders or gymnasts at a competition.
Most notably, there's the roller-disco finale -- plenty of high-angle long shots, cuz that's when the dancers are behaving more like a single crowd, rather than a troupe of distinct actors.
Since the other dance numbers don't involve this crowd-like super-organic behavior, there's no point to shooting them in order to see them as a single-willed group. That would de-personalize them, and that's not what this choreography is about, other than "single massive wave of roller-skaters circling around the roller rink".
The dancing is all personal in scale, so it has to be shot from relatively close -- medium distance at most. Otherwise it's hard to make out the interactions between the two. Even the solo dancers are dancing close-up for the audience to appreciate their personal expressiveness.
That's also why it has to be shot near eye-level -- so we can make out their facial expressions. And there's a LOT of expression going on in this movie! ^_^ And their partner's reactions, and the counter-reactions, and so on back and forth... just like a dance, but in facial expressions.
Ditto for their other body gestures that are not dance movements themselves -- too far away, and from too high of an angle, and their body language wouldn't hit us as immediately.
Does that make the large troupe's movements muddled in the background, and hard to distinguish the foreground dancers? I never felt that during the movie, as Ebert says he did. It was easy to single out specific dancers, pairs, and background dancers, and get a sense of the whole / gestalt.
But even if somebody had that "chaotic jumbled" reaction, that's still perfectly fine for choreography that is about energy, excitement, interpersonal interactions, cutting loose, melting into the crowd, and losing your individuality.
ReplyDeleteIt thrusts the viewer into the thick of it, giving the dance movement an immediacy and intensity that they would not have if shot from further back or at a higher angle, where the action is taking place in a plane far below the viewer -- like a child playing war with toy toldiers, as the toys are all lower down from his sight, on a table or the floor or something.
This generalizes to all cases of individual vs. group movements and behavior. Sticking with war, does a battle sequence have to rely on long shots at high angles, so you can appreciate the troop formations, their large-scale angles of attack and evasion, etc.? Well, to establish that these are collectives acting with a single purpose, sure.
But the majority of it shot that way? That'd feel like a clinical observation studio, for war-gamers and war-studiers rather than war-fighters or war-bystanders caught up in the action.
To make it connect psychologically, we need closer-up shots mostly at eye-level, in order to appreciate what each individual is going through, even if it's a blurry tornado at times. That's what it feels like! Dizzying, disorienting. But also, catching some real reactions and expressions, and personal behavior -- engaging the enemy, hunkering down, racing to rescue a wounded comrade, etc. You can't can't feel that from a distance and looking down from on high.
Returning to earlier remarks I made this summer, about the 1964 Tokyo Olympics documentary, that's one of the key choices that the filmmakers made -- to shoot up close and near eye-level, to bring the personal action to life, rather than just simulating the role of being a spectator in the stands, looking down and at a distance.
The spectator in the stands has a better appreciation for how every individual is positioned relative to each other, to track the progress of the contest. But they can't appreciate the athleticism and energy and blood, sweat, and tears where the action is actually happening.
Pornography is not shot at a distance or from a high-angle either, and that's about as purely physical of a filmed performance as there is. That would give a better appreciation for how the two bodies are moving as one joined pair, as though you were trying to clinically study and document the various sex positions that human beings engage in -- but it would feel too impersonal and not intense, contrary to what the genre demands.
One has to wonder if songs like "Suddenly" would be classics in an alternate reality where "Disco sucks" wasn't a meme:
ReplyDeletehttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bQAwoPvMn8Y&pp=ygUPWGFuYWR1IHN1ZGRlbnls
The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the death of the Hollywood musical outside of children's movies; these once Blockbuster-type shows were incredibly seen as the epitome of "square" shows. The musical of "Lost Horizon" is seen as the nail in the coffin. There was a brief attempt to revive the genre with disco musicals in the late 1970s but this ultimately petered out as well.
Another unexpected appearance -- one of the dancing muses is played by none other than the valkyrie from Conan the Barbarian of two years later, Sandahl Bergman. Turns out she got her start in musicals and dancing! First on the stage, but just before Xanadu, she was a principal dancer in the movie All That Jazz by Bob Fosse.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Gene Kelly is from Pittsburgh, where the Dance Moms TV series was filmed. That's another piece of evidence for Appalachia being the furthest boundary between back East and out West, but lying on the Eastern side.
ReplyDeleteTheatrical personalities, cantankerous, dance-crazy, rounding their low-back vowels -- just like East Coasters, whether Northern or Southern.
Finally, there's an unexpected animated sequence that looks amazing, set to the song "Don't Walk Away". I immediately recognized it as "someone whose formative work was at Disney" -- and damnit if it wasn't by Don Bluth Productions!
ReplyDeleteThey were a group of former Disney animators who splintered off, whose masterpiece is The Secret of NIMH from just two years after Xanadu, and the arcade game Dragon's Lair from the year after that. They went on to make the American Tail movies, All Dogs Go to Heaven, and Anastasia, among a few others.
Turns out this was their first work in a feature-length film, albeit a sequence instead of a whole movie.
There are some optical effects like neon-outlines or energy outlines as the muses whisk through the air before resuming human form, but this fully hand-drawn animated sequence came as a total surprise!
Again, why is this movie not famous for "the first feature film to have Don Bluth animation"? Cuz that's part of its visual charm, and wordcel reviewers and critics just don't get it.
As always, this isn't a 10,000 word "review of Xanadu" -- I don't do reviews. I review the movie for a bit, then use it as a jumping-off point for a broader aesthetic or historical discussion, covering all sorts of topics.
If you like pre-neoliberal musicals, you'll love this one. No dark gritty drama getting in the way of the songs and dances and sets and costumes. But even if you prefer Fame and Flashdance, or the campy stuff like Cry Baby or the outright gay-emo stuff like Rent, you'd still like Xanadu.
The fact that this totally charming and uplifting movie motivated the founding of The Seething Bitter Hater Awards is just a testament to the impoverished taste levels and humanity of the reviewer cartel, who fortunately are out of a job nowadays, and audiences take the suggestions of cliff-dwelling sages from the blogosphere more seriously.
Jesus, I didn't realize how bad the stage musical desecration was. Obviously campy, but that's par for the course in the 21st century. But look at how much they queered the story:
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanadu_(musical)#Synopsis
It's no longer about the sad sack struggling painter (a proper oil-on-canvas painter in the movie -- not a "chalk" artist as in the stage version). It's all about the muse herself, and her jealous catty backstabbing sisters -- typical gay projection of all their negative faggot traits onto everyone else, and making that the engine of drama.
Two of the other six muses are played by fags in drag, and even the actual female actresses are no longer former dancers, beauty queens, NFL cheerleaders, and the like, as they were in the movie. Nope -- now they're fatties, uggos, and hags, the more gossip-y and obnoxious the better. From the theatre kid background, not dance, cheerleading, gymnastics, beauty pageants, etc.
I think that's why the Cult of Crap still detests dance as an entire art-form, as a folk activity, as well as dancers as people and a profession -- dance weeds out most of the uggos and fatties and hags (unless they were previously in top athletic shape, and mostly "still got it").
That's why the focus has shifted from dancing and choreography to singing songs -- fat ugly hags are capable of singing, even if they can't dance.
The hair, make-up, and costumes are the standard queer slop that Project Runway's Tim Gunn fought a valiant but doomed one-man rear-guard effort to stamp out during the decade that the Xanadu musical was made, deriding such slop as "clown clothes".
These are supposed to be not just hot babes, but divinely beautiful -- so much so that they can inspire mortal artists to make the best of their talents. No one would be inspired by these muses -- they would in fact be disgustingly put off by them, and either feel like making something great *in spite of* the muse's influence, or giving in to the Cult of Crap under pressure from divine trash.
It makes a mockery of divine and heavenly altogether. And it's not funny to anyone who isn't already interested in mocking heavenly beauty -- it's not comedic per se, like a well constructed joke or bit of slapstick comedy. It's purely a shibboleth for the slop-slurpers, trash-wallowers, and other anti-aesthetic degenerates. It's how they identify each other and bond over shared trash taste, as distinguished from the squares, normies, etc. with their irrational preoccupation with well made stuff -- especially if that stuff is supposed to be divine and inspiring.
It warps and twists the older musician's motives to be a greedy real estate mogul who only begrudginly buys into the project of breathing new life into an old venue if he'll reap massive profits, is able to be bought off by the scheming jealous bitch sisters of Clio, etc. In the movie, he's still a pure, yearning romantic dreamer, even in his older age, and he eagerly taps the protag to be his location scout cuz he sees the same pure, yearning romantic dreamer artist in his personality.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing adversarial about it, or about most of the movie's plot -- dramatically uncomplicated. Be a shame if someone were to queer the shit out of it! Everyone's an egocentric suspicious backstabbing catty bitch driven by greed and overweening ambition. Fags never fit into a team, so they project this hyper-competitive project-corroding individualism onto everyone else, and think that catty bitchiness equals high drama just cuz of Darwin or Greek mythology or whatever. This isn't the Odyssey...
Obviously a bunch of fags from the 21st century could not compose all the killer tunes that are still the musical numbers for the stage degradation. At least they didn't write their own trash and substitute it, but you can bet their performances are campy and ironic and satirical and over-the-top theatre kid slop, not the earnest and engaging and entertaining deliveries of the original movie.
Somehow the original soundtrack was a hit all over the world, with multiple songs becoming hits -- whereas nobody even knows that the musical degradation was brought to Broadway, unless they're a theatre kid, and those interpretations of the songs did not become hits at all. Just crappy low-quality slop.
Same with Disney adaptations to the stage -- everyone remembers, loves, and continues to play the earnest and fun-loving original recordings from the original movies, not the campy theatre kid stage self-parody versions from the 21st century (and I'm sure those are not even as campy or as blasphemous as the Xanadu re-interpretations, and still they're unknown and unlistened to).
So the adapter of the movie to the stage was right -- the above kind of slop is what happens when you let too many fags get control over the musical medium. It's not just a silly harmless camp-fest -- it's ugliness, disgusting-ness, lower-quality performances, anti-aesthetic slop throughout.
That's bad enough in itself, but as a supposed adaptation of an existing work of decent quality and entertainment value and iconic cultural status, it's a very conscious attempt at iconoclastic desecration, spitting on its grave, flaying it and wearing it as a skin-suit like a Buffalo Bill serial killer tranwad freakshow.
It's worse than "cultural appropriation" (theatre kids appropriating the culture of dancers, gymnasts, cheerleaders, and beauty queens), it's spiteful heritage-hating desecration. It's evil and demonic, and the Cult of Crap prides itself on creating and consuming demonic slop rather than divine wonders.
Again, this isn't a review of a stage musical I haven't seen -- it's an exposition of all the various symptoms of the Cult of Crap. They try to hide the sloppy, crappy, trashy nature of the product, and get off with lesser charges of "OK, it's silly and self-indulgent, but what's wrong with being self-indulgently silly every once in awhile? Tee hee!"
No, you're not a silly prankster instigator, you're a demonic infestation spreading trash and slop, and both you and your products must be eradicated from Earth in order to restore health to human culture.
These two versions really drive home the divide between jocks and nerds in show business -- theatre kids being cerebral wordcel nerds who don't have a kinesthetic bone in their body, and dancers, gymnasts, acrobats, cheerleaders, and beauty queens relying on their non-verbal corporeality.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm not exaggerating, one of them, Yvette Van Voorhees, landed a spot among the Sea Gals (Seattle Seahawks cheerleaders) in 1976, just a few years before appearing in Xanadu.
https://xanadu.fandom.com/wiki/Yvette_Van_Voorhees
In the movie itself, as well as promotional stills, the muses come off as a group of sisters from the same sorority on campus -- not the fat / ugly / gay misfit clique of seething bitter haters who will go on to become the gossip-y snitching foot soldiers of the HR surveillance network in some pointless office.
Also, reviewers loved the stage desecration, hated the original movie -- tells you all you need to know about their tastes.
ReplyDeleteAnimated sequence from Xanadu, which looks like those "birds and the bees" scenes from The Sword in the Stone, where they keep changing into different creatures (although Bluth didn't work on that particular Disney movie):
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr_ltJLwT9k
Genre / era fusion scene, to "Dancin'" (there's more alternation before this clip in the movie, to build up the tension, but this is where the song begins in the soundtrack):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCm0_93WCCA
And in case you thought I was exaggerating about what the muses look like in the stage degradation:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.newcitystage.com/2023/07/18/deus-ex-musical-a-review-of-xanadu-at-metropolis-performing-arts/
Why put so much blame on the gays here, BTW? This is not like the Pentagon, where their failures have been pouring in since after WWII, even back when it was 100% straight white men controlling the military. DEI from the 2010s came after their losses in Vietnam, Central America, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. So it's a red herring, regarding that institution's failures, although still worth weeding out.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to musical theater, however... that's 100% controlled by the gay cabal these days, and has been for decades now, at least back to the '90s. It's not just that there's a gay cabal in control, it's that they have deliberately queered musical theater, putting their queer stamp or branding on everything they churn out -- so that when you shrug your shoulders, or pinch your nose shut, at what they churn out, it's specifically gay shit you're being put off by, and it's gays who are 100% to blame.
Likewise for the media, most entertainment including now video games (a medium that didn't exist in pre-neoliberal times), advertising, fashion, all sorts of cultural domains that most people actively hate nowadays. Fags and their hags own those failures, and have earned society's hatred or disgust at the slop they churn out.
"Wah, you're just homophobic and misogynist" -- STFU, fags and hags were involved in cultural production in the good ol' days, but were a minority, and didn't churn out slop, and didn't try to deflect from their failures by crying about homophobia etc.
In the good ol' days, they actually had to compromise or even follow the lead of the true creatives -- straight men. Especially regarding gays, that kept a lid on their juvenile ("ewww, girls are yucky") theatre kid tendency to desecrate and campify and mug for attention per se.
Advertising (Mad Men era), photography including fashion photography (Demarchelier), dance (Bob Fosse), musicals (Andrew Lloyd Webber), all used to be led by straight men. Any gays and women were following their lead. Straight guys set the tone for what is cool, both on the creation side, the audience side, and the media in-between side.
But they tend to be the womanizing type, with multiple marriages and/or philandering or never settling down in the first place. ToXiC mAsCuLinItY!
However, the fags who have taken over those domains since 2000 are even more promiscuous, drug-abusing, and so on and so forth. But they're not promiscuous with women -- just other fags who they chew up and spit out, far more callously than an ass-grabbing fashion photog.
ReplyDeleteThis reveals that puritan morality doesn't concern itself with promiscuity per se -- our insanely puritanical culture doesn't bat an eyelash at gay promiscuity, degeneracy, uniquely gay life-threatening diseases, and so on.
Rather, it's strictly obsessed with protecting female sexual purity and honor -- and since no fag is going to violate that, even accidentally, they are not threats in the puritan framework. Maybe they're bad for some separate, lesser reason (sodomy) -- but that's secondary at best to the primary concern of female sexual purity and monogamy.
Fags molest little boys way more than straight men molest little girls. Homos are something like 50% of the convicted pedo population, despite gays only being 1% of the male population -- 50 times over-represented. But that's only violating male sexual purity, which doesn't figure into puritan morality, not near the top anyway.
Also why few care about a female teacher sleeping with a male student, but freak out if a male teacher sleeps with a female student. Tellingly, our puritanical culture is replete with movies etc. that validate a male teacher sleeping with a male student, but hardly any about a female teacher and a female student -- that's too close to violating female purity, being female victimhood, and so on. The "lesbian gym teacher" is more of a nefarious folk witch figure, compared to the actually more likely to molest figure of the gay gym teacher / priest / Boy Scoutmaster / etc.
Also why the whole #MeToo movement focused on men putting women on the casting couch -- but not fags requiring any male applicants to provide them with similar favors, whether they were also gay or not. Bryan Singer got away scot-free, but Harvey Weinstein was ruined.
And all the age-gap dIsCoUrsE, "grooming", etc. Only focused on female victims, not male victims of either females or more likely a gay cabal gatekeeper.
Girls these days want gay eunuchs, while guys don't want lesbian eunuchs.
For the very clueless right-wingers who will respond that this is just a tale as old as time, Darwinian, evolutionary psychology -- total bullshit.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, during our most wholesome heyday as a society and culture, the Midcentury, womanizing, ass-grabbing, writing pop songs about irresistible 16 year-old babes, teenage pregnancy, and the rest of it, were totally mainstream and valorized.
On the other hand, sodomy was outlawed everywhere, gays had no special rights of their own, slurs against gays were widespread, even gay-bashing was understood. And although sodomy laws were not enforced to the degree of stationing an anti-homo cop outside of each homo's residence, ready to break in and pull out a gun if he thought there was sodomy going on -- the police still regularly raided and broke up public gatherings of homos at gay bars, in order to keep them from being too gay in public, and whether the cops knew it or not, cutting down on gay promiscuity and diseases (which are far worse if the population is meeting and sucking/fucking en masse, as in a gay bar, bath-house, etc.).
Woketards can only project, so they label the Midcentury and the '50s in particular as a puritanical culture. Sorry, people back in the '50s were having too much sex to be puritans, and not just sex within marriage. Teen pregnancy was higher back then, bosses committing adultery with their redhead secretary, their blonde on 38th Street, and their Spanish rose from Harlem, and their whoever else, was far more common than now.
As I've emphasized over the past year or so about puritans, they are not fundamentally about disgust, purity, and taboo, despite their name. It's more about a zealous obsession with crime and punishment, torturing wrong-doers, making wrong-doers reap what they sow, and vindictiveness and retribution generally -- which is what our society has only valorized during the neoliberal era. The New Deal moral code was not vindictive, punitive, fantasizing about torturing those who have wronged you, and so on. That's what woketards indulge in, constantly.
The insane puritanical crusade that has elevated protecting female sexual purity above preventing crimes against the natural order has only taken off in America over the past several decades. It's not wired into homo sapiens DNA, it's not a longstanding Indo-European or Anglo-Saxon tradition, and it's certainly not as American as apple pie.
And in their zeal to protect female sexual purity at all costs, the woketard crusaders have killed off the libido of the creatives' leading group, straight men. No libido, no creation. Simple as.
Natural order people, like Americans were in the '50s and '60s and '70s, understood that creative people tend to be a little wild in their personal lives -- that's fine. As long as they create great stuff, who cares? Womanizing in their private lives comes with their inspirational libido in their creative endeavors. Gotta take the good with the bad.
Only during the past several decades have Americans of all stripes become obsessed with the personal conduct of creatives, no longer able to separate their private behavior from their public creations. That's due to the sudden outburst of puritanism. It was not there back in the '60s, when creatives had all sorts of well known problematic behaviors in their private lives.
To spell it out, adultery, womanizing, ass-grabbing, flirting with cute irresistible 16 year-old babes, etc. is perfectly natural.
ReplyDeleteSo if your moral code is based on "preventing offenses against the natural order," those things get a pass -- maybe they're shunned, admonished, advice about "hey don't get too carried away with your natural instincts," etc. But they aren't the target of society-wide measures to clamp down on them, let alone punish them in a crime-and-punishment framework.
But sodomy, gays adopting children, a male teacher making a pass at a male student (or female teacher to a female student), gay clubs / bath-houses / etc., would be the target of literal police officers, prosecutors, juries, and potentially prisons (or more likely a low-security mental institution, halfway house, and so on, not maximum security prison for life).
Puritanical moral codes invert this, turning a blind eye to sodomy etc., but throwing the book at a guy who sleeps with his subordinate (or co-worker, or random girl his own age from his dorm who has regrets later and says maybe she didn't really want to after all).
Puritans are not about preserving, respecting, and stewarding nature. That's why the back-to-nature types are rarely puritans, and vice versa.
We used to be noble savages back in the good ol' 1950s. Now we have civilized decadence. Sad!
This makes sense of puritanical tolerance of pornography, prostitution, and other forms of "sex work". It's true that the female sexual purity of the actresses themselves are being violated, but puritans are also utilitarians, and that's a small price to pay for the far larger number of girls who are not having sex cuz guys are watching porn and jacking off instead.
ReplyDeleteIn the "preserve natural order" code of the Midcentury / New Deal, porn was outlawed on the grounds of obscenity or lewdness -- about respecting the purity, sanctity, and orderliness of the public sphere. Porn was viewed as a kind of pollution of a public sphere, so prevent it from being made, and the natural order will be preserved.
As a reminder, hunter-gatherers don't have any kind of porn, and they don't ever masturbate (they're confused when you try to explain to them what it is). Back in America's noble savage heyday, we used to propagandize kids about the horrors that awaited them if they masturbated -- they'd go blind, etc. Porn and masturbation are anti-natural.
As we have descended into puritanism, nobody in any position of authority or responsibility over children argues against masturbation, except the counter-cultural movement of "No Nut November" and similar things. But those are marginal and counter-cultural, not mainstream. And they're a kind of self-help movement from within the relevant group -- not a bunch of teachers, priests, etc. trying to spread this message to young people.
Finally, to give props to Glorious Nippon, and to neuter any attempted tech-determinist "explanation" for our descent into puritanism, Japan is not a puritanical culture, yet it has had the internet, social media, smartphones, video games, etc. for as long as we have in America.
ReplyDeleteVery refreshing to see something like Marine's recent music video, which may go a wee bit on the sexy fan-service side, but is still something that could have come out of the West in the 1960s or '70s, like silhouetted naked babes making fluid choreographed motions a la the James Bond title sequences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boKTy1PI1lY
Orientalist exoticism is another thing we've eliminated during our puritanical woketard crusade.
As well as animation altogether -- we just have CGI and AI slop in America now, and it's ugly and poorly made. Crappy in one respect means crappy in all respects.
Good in one respect means good in all respects -- catchy melody, libidinal energy in the singing and in the animated character, pleasing colors, and skillfully crafted animation.
America has the "horny patrol" to bonk offenders against the puritanical code, Glorious Nippon has a popular pirate goddess with a trademark high libido. ^_^
To briefly fill out the rest of the "based Japan" argument, they still have fairly anti-gay and anti-tranny laws -- since those go against nature. Grabbing ass, flirting with cute 16 year-old babes, adultery, etc., are natural, so they are not so punished.
ReplyDeleteJapan does produce porn, so it's not exactly America from the Midcentury. And yet, in one of Japan's many distinctive quirks, in their porn the genitals must be censored / mosaic-ed. So it is partly still on the side where obscenity matters and is toned down, whereas in America almost nothing is subject to obscenity laws anymore.