american trash by innerpartysystem

(it is true because he is dead.)

Part I of an ongoing conversation about comics, super-heroes, film, art, and post-modernism:

eric: My problem with the contemporary super-hero movie is largely this: with the exception of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, the unending slew of (buzzword alert!) post-9/11 super-hero movies is largely the inability of any of these directors or art designers to create a distinct, noticeable, distinguishable, or even coherent visual aesthetic. This argument may be accused of nostalgia, and perhaps rightfully so: I tend to prefer the super-hero films of the 80’s and 90’s to anything that has come out recently. This preference might be tainted by my fond childhood memories, but nonetheless I feel that the quality of these movies far surpass the films of today. While panned by critics and movie-goers alike, even the Joel Schumaker Batman films presented a recognizable visual style with roots in a classic camp or drag aesthetic – hypercolor, heavy makeup, urban gothic, queer coding, and intertextual references to literature and film history. The Tim Burton Batman movies also presented an idiosyncratic take on the Batman mythos tinged with Burton’s own social commentary: the nu-goth look paired with criticism of an inept police force, a sheepish and impotent populace, along with a corrupt government – all flavored with hints of magical realism – are now Burton cliches, but at the time they presented a vastly original remixing of the Batman mythology. Post-Spiderman super-hero movies have become un-original schlock fests devoid of political or social commentary (perhaps with the exception of the X-men series), fueled by testosterone driven heterosexual male fantasies of power, often with racist and misogynistic, and homophobic overtones or undertones. Social underpinnings of the movies aside, the movies don’t look good: the big studios hire a string of interchangeable and modular directors whose penchant for CG driven special effects suck any originality or life out of the films. While the special effects may be impressive, they are far from visually or stylistically interesting. The costuming on these movies, unlike the hyper-stylized films of yore, tend to remain “realistic” and faithful to the source material: see Michele Pfiefer’s cat-woman outfit vs. Halle Berry’s. Super-hero movies continually make money, and the ubiquity of cheap CG effects (instead of complex and elaborately designed tangible set pieces as in the Tim Burton or Schumaker films) will ensure an endless stream of these films on into the future. I make the admission that the campy and cartoony styles of Burton and Schumaker are simply not for everyone, and yet there is a modicum of styles that these directors fail to realize at all: noir, pulp, samurai, retro/vintage, horror, avant-garde; and the studio machine continues to pump out the same bland origins films, with no distinct mise-en-scene over and over. I understand that many of these directors are trying to keep the source material in tact so as to not upset fans: and yet this often comes at the cost of originality, improvisation, and re-interpretation.

Sam: While I agree with your point concerning a consistent aesthetic throughout Superhero film in the past few years (excluding the X-Men franchise and the Chris Nolan Batman films), I have to say that comparing the superhero films of today with the films of the 1990’s is not entirely a fair comparison, largely due to the impact that the Internet has had on the exposure of comic content to the larger mass. Technology has become such a large part of how we consume media. I, for one, used a number of comic new sources and the articles available on Wikipedia to fuel my passion for learning about comic content. The landscape of fandom has changed and with it, the supplementary content created out of comics has changed as well.

I also chalk this change up to the mass media not wanting hyper reality of the 90’s in their media anymore. We aren’t afraid of a technological meltdown or overtake, being consumed by a sentient super-computer or the Y2K virus anymore. We are afraid of air strikes, nuclear invasion and terrorist attacks. 9-11 changed things for America and for the world. People are more fixated on media set in real life situations, a reality that is so close to their own that deals with international enemies and the political and socioeconomic struggle between men. I think what has changed in people isn’t taste in our content but fear. Fear of what is happening in our homeland or what could come from overseas. How many of us know someone fighting in the war now? How long has that been a part of our lives? Over a decade and films like Iron Man, X-Men First Class and Captain America deal directly with those war time themes, allowing people to identify and live through this media, which is what it was originally intended to do. Take a look at the cover of Captain American #1 for example. (Insert Picture) Made during the war effort in March 1941, right in the middle of World War Two, we see the Cap socking Hitler right in the face. This content was made to inspire and lift the spirits of people in need.

Finally, drawing on your point of a cost of originality, improvisation, and re-interpretation, I wholeheartedly agree that it is one of the most depressing parts of the comics industry today. Many of these films (Fantastic Four, The Punisher, The Spirit) are hard to watch and gut wrenching for the long time comics fans, someone who really truly holds a special place in their heart for this content. As awful as these are though, I’ve always felt that these mass media films were never intended to directly please the long time comics fan. Marvel and DC know we are going to see the movies because we care about the content, characters and stories but what they really care about, what they really want to get out of these films, are new readers and lovers of the material. These movies are made to introduce properties to the unaware readers, create new long time fans, sell merchandise and bring money back to the publishing end of the company, to create new stories and to the keep the content we know and love going for a long time. As bad and as painful as they are, these films are helping to keep the industry alive and to keep amazing titles coming out.

All in all, with comics and really any type of media, you have to take the good with the bad.

eric: I very much see the point you are trying to make but I think your argument forgets a few things.

1. The media has changed the consumption of comic books and allows fans to more vehemently trace the development of certain fictional characters (thus demanding stricter adherence to the source material). Yes. But this new form of consumption does not preclude the possibility of re-interpretation of source material. Just because comics are being consumed differently does not mean that the films that they are based off of need to be bland.

2. The anxieties of post-911 culture are reflected in contemporary super-hero movies (Captain America would probably be the best example of this?). Again, fine. However, I seriously question the ability of these writers/directors/mainstream studios to intelligently and tastefully deal with the ramifications of new anxieties. I personally think that the contemporary super-hero film dumbs down the issues, (super-)flattens the issues. I am not saying that comic books cannot appropriately deal with cultural anxieties, fears, or desires: I think that comic books are often one of the better mediums to deal with these issues through complex and interesting metaphors. What I am saying is that in the re-writing of these stories and their translation into a filmic medium the complexity is completely lost in favor of marketability. In favor of toyetics. So that they are easy to sell to mass-audiences. The metaphor is simplified.

3. If we are saying that the goal of a super-hero movie is not to look flashy or pretty or interesting but instead to tell a metaphorical story about a particular cultural anxiety then we forget that aesthetics are a means of telling a story, if not the only way to tell a story. The medium is the message. When Tim Burton uses carnivalesque imagery in the 1990’s it is not simply to create a stylized story of Batman: he is doing so to criticize the media circuses of 90’s culture; as corrupt politicians became increasingly visible in the 90’s, Oswald Cobblepot’s deformed body became an apt metaphor for the corruption of government officials. We do not have to pick sides: we can have a story with original style and we can have original stories with style; the categories are not mutually exclusive. And yet, the contemporary film scene completely forgoes stylistics in favor of CG, “realism”, and modular kitsch.

4. Lastly: I totally understand that some of the worst super-hero movies are not intended to be faithful or even interesting but are simply marketing tools to get newer audiences interested in new franchises. I understand that: and, while seemingly deplorable, these new audiences fund bigger and more important works. That being said, I still find it offensive to create movies as marketing tools. Film is an art form, and now films are also advertisements, and I guess, if we want to live in a post-modern capitalist society we just have to accept that. I still find it somewhat appalling that a mega-studio can pump out endless amounts of horrible super-hero films, cannibalizing perfectly interesting material in favor of sales, corrupting and demolishing both the potential of film and comics as art-forms in favor of profit.

So: Whose side are you on?

In celebration of our success at anime boston here is The Superflat Manifesto:

The Super Flat Manifesto

The world of the future might be like Japan is today — super flat.

Society, customs, art, culture: all are extremely two-dimensional. It is particularly apparent in the arts that this sensibility has been flowing steadily beneath the surface of Japanese history. Today, the sensibility is most present in Japanese games and anime, which have become powerful parts of world culture. One way to imagine super flatness is to think of the moment when, in creating a desktop graphic for your computer, you merge a number of distinct layers into one. Though it is not a terribly clear example, the feeling I get is a sense of reality that is very nearly a physical sensation. The reason that I [Murakami] have lined up both the high and the low of Japanese art […] is to convey this feeling. I would like you, […] to experience the moment when the layers of Japanese culture, such as pop, erotic pop, otaku, and H.I.S.ism, fuse into one. [H.I.S. is a discount ticket agency in Japan. By lowering the price of travel abroad, the company is having a profound effect on the relationship between Japan and the West.]

Where is our reality?

[Takashi Murakami] hopes to reconsider ‘super flatness’, the sensibility that has contributed to and continues to contribute to the construction of Japanese culture as a worldview, and show that it is an original concept that links the past with the present and the future. During the modern period, as Japan has been Westernised, how has this ‘super flat’ sensibility metamorphosed? If that can be grasped clearly, then our stance today will come into focus.

In this quest, the current progressive of the real in Japan runs throughout. We might be able to find an answer to our search for a concept about our lives. ‘Super flatness’ is an original concept of Japanese who have been completely Westernized.

Within this concept seeds for the future have been sown. Let’s search the future to find them. ‘Super flatness’ is the stage to the future.

An expanded notion of Superflat: upcoming slide for our presentation on Superflat, Anime, and Postmodernism @ Anime Boston (April 23, 6pm)

are you excited? We are excited.

So I actually am a bit behind on my Kung Fu movies, although I have passingly studied Hero and am an avid Bruce Lee addict. I don’t really have a comprehensive thesis about Kung Fu movies so I’ll just make a few observations that I found interesting:

• Movies like Crouching Tiger, Hero, and House of Flying Daggers are usually utilized as propaganda pieces by the Chinese government. While I don’t quite remember the machinations of any of the movies, they usually end up vilifying small rebel factions who fight against a hegemonic, authoritarian, tyrannical ruler. As if the opposite of Star Wars, contemporary chinese martial arts films necessarily need to be praising the Empire or else they won’t get made: under the strict Communist regimes, stories that lionize resistance groups are not allowed. Hero specifically, a movie explicitly praising a monolithic empire led by a Machiavellian (willing to sacrifice entire cities for the sake of unifying China) does a good job of inciting nationalistic pride for the PRC. The hero of Hero is not any of the actual fighters, but the emperor himself, who so bravely invades neighboring regions for the sake of creating one great nation. Veiled by hyper-stylized mise-en-scene, it is easy to overlook the bizarre morals of the movie.

• In the Costume Drama (what the Chinese call Kung-Fu movies that take place in ancient times) we can see the bizarre post-modern logic of late capitalism, which has even invaded Chinese Communist logic. The Costume Drama, like any movies that take place in the past, recapitulate an idea of the past, and not an actual past. We take these aestheticized interpretations at face value, as a kind of fact, and yet they hardly resemble an actual past that ever happened: as if the word “actuality” had any weight in such a conversation. Like retro fashion, like period pieces, like biopics: these movies are copies of copies (of copies) which lack an original referent. I have been abusing this quote lately but it seems relevant here: in the costume drama we can see what Frederick Jameson calls “the insensible colonization of the present by the past”; we cannot think about the present without references to the past, but even these references are tainted with present-ness, with present ideology. Perhaps the aestheticizing of Kung-Fu movies is necessary for us to cope with this kind of dissonance: the characters can fly around and jump over buildings and move like the Flash because they are not real, because the past is a fairly tale, because the past is as fictional as a fairy tale, because we have no idea what it was ever actually like.

• A comparison of Kung-Fu movies to video games is already erroneous because the comparison is anachronistic. To say that Kung-Fu movies parallel video games is sort of wrong because Kung-Fu movies came first: video games parallel Kung-Fu movies. But both have such long-standing traditions and semantics and grammars that seeing the influence of one in the other, while seemingly apparent, is a bit illusory. Sure, both mediums influence each other, somewhat: but because both mediums exist in a web of referentially and intertextuality, to try and trace particular semiotics, symbolics, or grammatical structures from one into the other feels a bit futile. If we are looking for a contemporary correlate for the Kung-Fu movie we might look, not towards video games, but to a much more obscure sub-culture: the vogue / ball scene. In this scene, catwalks and vogue dances are performed in battle settings: performed with prescribed sets of rules (like the imagined rules of a “fight” scene in a Kung-Fu movie, which recapitulate a different kind of bizarre post-modern logic) there is a fight, performed through bodily movements to a beat, with a clear winner and loser. The carefully choreographed battles of new Kung-Fu movies resemble complex dances much more than simulated virtual reality combat.

• The Kung-Fu movie, or at least how the Kung-Fu movie is consumed in contemporary American culture, represents a strange kind of cultural fetishism in which the Asian (or, the body of the Asian) is fetishized. In an orientalist move, the Asian male and female are both transformed into a kind of super-hero, capable of lightning quick movements, magical flying abilities, and scrupulous logic. The fact that Kung-Fu movies have a certain cultish aura around them (fetishists worshiping their cultural fetish) seems to confirm this reading; Kung-Fu fans are their own kind of otaku who childishly desire their objects and thus reduce them to fetishes. And yet, the body of the Asian person is sort of replaceable to the American: the American thinks all Asians look the same. In a move of shockingly poor taste, the re-constructive gesture of the movie Game of Death (which was made of cobbled together left over Bruce Lee footage and a bizarre plot revolving around a Bruce Lee look alike; a movie which actually used footage of Lee’s actual funeral in a movie claiming to star the master) demonstrates the modular nature of the actual bodies on film.

Those are some thoughts I have been collecting on the subject. Hopefully they are interesting (probably not). I could probably do a more comprehensive essay on post-modern logic and kung-fu or on the myth of Bruce Lee’s body. If anyone is interested: let me know?

-eric

[as always: feel free to send essay requests, commissions, thoughts, ideas, response, debate topics, questions, comments, or love to our ask box or emails!]

UPDATE/REMINDER

The time of the panel has changed from 10pm to 6pm, but everything else remains the same (and there is a decent chance it will change again)!

What is Superflat?: Where Anime fits in Post-Modern Culture
A panel discussion with speakers Sam Kusek and Eric Shorey

Join us as we try and parse through the difficulties and nuances of the complex neologism coined by Takashi Murakami: “Superflat.”  Usually used to refer to a specific style or group of post-modern Japanese artists (Yoshitomo Nara, Chiho Aoshima, Satoshi Kon, among others), Superflat art self-reflexively critiques and celebrates anime and otaku culture. The tropes of superflatism include: one dimensionality, saturated color, hyper-sexuality and infantaliziation, blurred lines between fantasy and reality, fetishism (cultural and sexual), and the ambiguous engagement with a kind of national-character mythos (often with the atom bomb) and late capitalist economic structures.

Contradictorily: “Superflat” can also be used to describe certain phenomena within Asian (and sometimes American) culture, the same phenomena that Superflat art often criticizes.  So things like: Power Rangers, Street Fighter, Ultraman, and Godzilla can appropriately be called “Superflat” as well.  Can Superflat also be seen as a sensibility, a mode of engaging with anime and other cultural texts?  What anime can be criticized by a super-flat apparatus, and what anime could be called Superflat?

This panel will specifically discuss various movies, games, and cultural phenomenon like: FLCL, Paranoia Agent, Persona 3 and 4, the Street Fighter franchise of video games, and Hello Kitty.  Through this discussion, we will atempt to create a more concrete definition of Superflat and figure out where and how anime can and should be analyzed under a post-modern lens. 

Anime Boston, April 23, 6pm
(we are super excited.)