suzysuhcriticalpractice-blog

[suzysuhcriticalpractice-blog]

Studio Work

Project: Album Cover in the style of Swiss Punk Typogaphy Class: Communication Design 1 Instructor: Sean Adams

Project: Unified Divesity Class: Design 2 Instructor: Jon Nguyen

Project: Album Cover using our own photography Class: Narrative Imaging Instructor: Tracey Shiffman

[suzysuhcriticalpractice-blog]

Identity Week 9 Part 3

Shinji Ikari’s existence begs the question of how intertwined our identities can become. Shinji Ikari is the main character of Neon Genesis Evangelion who pilots the Evangelions aside Asuka and Rei because his father Gendo Ikari forces him to. Similar to Asuka, he also watched his mother die in an experiment.

Most of the pain Shinji endures is from being rejected and unable to understand what others want from him.

When he tries to get close to Rei, she gets killed and then replaced with a clone that doesn't even recognize who Shinji is. Shinji then watches as the rest of the empty Rei clones disintegrate in their tank.

When he tries to get close to Asuka, begging for her help, she is only disgusted and cruelly berates him, shoving and pushing him aside until Shinji chokes her.

When he tries to get close to his guardian figure, Misato Katsuragi, she cannot express love in any other way besides sex so he feels hurt when she tries to make an advance on him although that’s the only way she knows how to show affection. Shinji constantly doesn't understand how to communicate with other people just as broken as he is. Every opportunity to get close to another human being is another opportunity to allow others to hurt him, and for him to hurt others.

Shinji has one single healthy relationship in the series with another boy named Kaworu Nagisa. Kaworu talks to him like he’s a real person, holds his hand, and lays next to him in bed. They establish a very real, healthy friendship and even potential romantic relationship between the two.

However it turns out that Kaworu is also an Angel, sent to destroy humanity. Shinji has to kill Kaworu, and Kaworu asks him to do so, saying that “the only freedom there is is to choose how one dies”. Shinji then grants him his wish, and kills him with his own hands as Kaworu smiles.

Would humans honestly be better off without individual identities? Without our individual personalities and beliefs, humans wouldn’t fight with one another, wage war with other nations, kill over differing beliefs. Is individuality worth it if we cannot ever hope to understand one another? If all we can do is hurt one another and push each other away to keep ourselves safe?

Shinji actually does present an answer to this question, as he choses to save humanity as it is and believes that it may be worth getting hurt if we can maintain our own free will and individuality. Despite every failed relationship and miscommunication between him and the other characters in the show, Shinji remains optimistic that humans can understand and love one another and eventually that he can love himself as well. However, after he makes this decision, to check if humanity remains as it was before, he begins to choke Asuka to check if by hurting another person that we still retain our identities.

[suzysuhcriticalpractice-blog]

Identity Week 9 Part 2

Rei Ayanami represents another facet of identity within Neon Genesis Evangelion, specifically the dichotomy between the uniqueness and the expendability of identity. From a young age we’re always told that we are special, however, if everyone is special doesn’t that mean that nobody is special?

In Evangelion Rei is another evangelion pilot similar to Asuka, however Rei was something that was manufactured to pilot the evangelion. Rei isn't even a real person to begin with; she's a clone of another character within the soul with an almost exact character design. In fact, Rei has been killed off and replaced three times within the show. Furthermore there is an entire chamber of Rei clones that Shinji, our main character, discovers. This chamber of clones is meant to replace Rei in the event that she ever dies piloting the Evangelion, there will be another just like her ready to pilot the Evangelion once more.

Rei I

Rei II

Her own creator, Hideaki Anno has said multiple times that “Rei is someone who is aware of the fact that even if she dies, there'll be another to replace her, so she doesn't value her life very highly. Her presence, her existence, ‘ostensible existence,’ is ephemeral. She's a very sad girl. She only has the barest minimum of what she needs to have. She's damaged in some way; she hurts herself. She doesn't need friends.” Similar to Asuka, Rei finds her worth in her usefulness in piloting the evangelion as well. However if she isn't worth anything, she'll simply die because she wasn't able to fulfill her mission and then another will come to take her place.

Is our identity worth anything if we are expendable?

Even marriage, supposedly the strongest of all human bonds on paper is easily broken and replaced. Half of all marriages end in divorce in the United States even with the existence of children in the marriage. Furthermore even after divorce, most people find another lover in time. Sometimes it doesn’t even take divorce for someone in a marriage to find another person to satisfy them, romantically, emotionally, or sexually.

Life may stop for a moment for our death. There may be a moment of silence or a funeral, or even a longer period of mourning. However everyone’s lives eventually go on, generally unaffected that a flea disappeared off the face of the earth. With the existence of nearly eight billion humans currently inhabiting this planet, there isn’t much worth to one human living or dying. Even the President of the United States, one of the most crucial figures in this entire planet, has a system in place after their four reign ends or if they die in office there are lines of people ready to take their place. This shows just how truly expendable people and their “unique” identities last.

[suzysuhcriticalpractice-blog]

Identity Week 9 Part 1

In the 1995 anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion, creator Hideaki Anno explores identity through the character of Asuka Langley Soryu. Asuka is a fourteen year old middle schooler who has been chosen to pilot a mecha called an Evangelion in order to save the world from invasive aliens called Angels. Furthermore asuka puts her identity and self worth in piloting the evangelion for the sake of her pride and attention that she receives from it. She's someone who lives for the sake of the attention that she receives from others. And although she’s a fourteen year old child, she seeks sexual recognition from an older male character in the series named Kaji and from the main character in the series, Shinji Ikari.

Her identity is entirely dependent upon the recognition of other, whether it be how effective she is at piloting the evangelion or if a man will hold her and see her as a woman. Once she cannot pilot the evangelion after being emotionally and mentally damaged beyond repair by one of the angels, she loses all sense of self worth and identity as she degrades into an apathetic husk of a person.

However Asuka doesn’t like her identity, her identity only matters if she is useful and if she can pilot the evangelion. Once she cannot pilot the evangelion she loses all sense of self worth and identity.

If we don’t like our identity and we don’t like who we are is that still who we have to be?

If people reject our identity and don’t like us for who we show them, does that mean that our identity doesn’t exist?

Our inner identity can be completely different from what people see us to be. 

The reason why Asuka came to be this way is due to how she saw her mother psychotically breakdown as a young child. Her mother's soul was used as a test subject for the evangelion that ultimately failed, leaving her with a severe psychological illness. She became unable to see her real daughter in front of her and played with a battered rag doll, pretending that it was her real daughter. The rag dolls became surrogate daughters that she would call "Asuka" in front of her real daughter. 

However Asuka truly broke when she saw the double suicide of her mother hanging from the ceiling of the mental ward along with a dangling rag doll that hanging next to her. 

In the case of Asuka, her identity and psyche has been scarred from the rejection and suicide of her mother. And since then she’s been constantly rejected by others when she seeks an emotional or sexual connection which makes her further hate the inner Asuka that so desperately needs validation from others and the Asuka that she puts up as a front towards others in order to gain attention. 

She hates everyone although she needs them, causing her to hate herself the most. She hates everyone although she needs them, causing her to hate herself the most. 

[suzysuhcriticalpractice-blog]

Identity Part One

“There’s so little she’ll ever reveal to me or I to her. I bet her father knows even less. I’m sure she’s speaking half an octave higher. Same voice she had when she was 16. Telling him all about her new job, how much she misses him, and sorry she didn’t send a card. Telling him everything but the truth. Just like she wouldn’t tell me about that young man downstairs. There’s a value in having secrets. Creatures like myself, like Claire, Like Zoe — we wouldn’t be ourselves without them. But Peter Russo on the other hand — he’s trapped by his secrets. What I’m trying to do is give him the opportunity to set himself free. After all, we are nothing more or less than what we choose to reveal. What I am to Claire is not what I am to Zoe, just as Zoe is not to me what she is to her father.”

Frank Underwood, Season 1, Episode 7

In season 1, episode 7 of House of Cards, Frank Underwood is a politician who has a illicit relationship with aspiring young reporter, Zoe Barnes as he feeds her information while having an intimate relationship with her. In the middle of an intimate moment, Zoe receives a phone call from her father right before Frank performs oral sex on her. Frank then contemplates about how fickle the multifaceted nature of identity can be from what we reveal from person to person. 

The sweet, innocent budding reporter Zoey Barnes at home alone in her apartment wishing her father a Happy Father’s day is a different person from the Zoey Barnes that’s unbuckling Frank Underwood’s belt. 

This begs the question what identity truly is. If there is a true nature to identity that can be searched deep underneath the different sides of ourselves that we show from person to person. Or if we betray our identity when we change ourselves from person to person in order to best fit into the situation. Frank Underwood believes that “we are nothing more or less than what we choose to reveal”.

 However we reveal different things to different people, in fact what we reveal can contradict our different selves. Does that necessarily mean that our identities are a lie from person to person? Zoe Barnes’ father would certainly reject the sexually promiscuous Zoe who would have sex with the congressman for information in order to further her career. In fact Frank agrees that “creatures like myself, like Claire, like Zoe - we wouldn’t be ourselves without them”.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/authentic-engagement/201309/authenticity-and-identity

Psychologist Bob Edelstein in his article “Authenticity and Identity” says that “We may also begin to re-envision who we want to be in the future in a more congruent way as we shift this part of our identity into what is authentic in the present…. Our authentic identity changes throughout our life in response to the impact of our life experiences”.

Edelstein believes that identity is a fluid concept that becomes authentic in our responses to different experiences. We cannot respond in the same way to every situation, personality is meant to be fluid unless you have a personality disorder in which one is unable to maintain that ebb and flow of personality’s changing tides. Then perhaps questioning the authenticity of identity itself is fickle. Changing our identity may not be as malicious as Frank Underwood believes it to be as Edelstein believes that it’s a part of being human in a number of different situations. 

[suzysuhcriticalpractice-blog]

Simulacra + Simulations Notes

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth''it is the truth which conceals that there is none"

-Simulacrum has no basis nor truth to uphold it.

What can the army do with simulators? Traditionally! following a direct principle of identification! it unmasks and punishes them"

-Jean Baudrillard clearly has a disdain for simulators.

For it is the difference which forms the poetry of the map and the charm of the territory! the magic of the concept and the charm of the real" This representational imaginary! which both culminates in and is engulfed by the cartographer's mad project of an ideal coextensivity between the map and the territory! disappears with simulation

Never again will the real have to be produced: this is the vital function of the model in a system of death! or rather of anticipated resurrection which no longer leaves any chance even in the event of death

-Baudrillaid’s disdain comes from how the real and how truth is obscured by the symbolic representation. Thus, this brings about death and the destruction of civilization.

Ahyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary! and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary! leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models and the simulatedgeneration of difference

-there becomes no distinction of real and imaginary. Nobody can tell what is true and what is false. Things get repeated to obscurity and difference between real and imaginary is only simulated.

namely that truth! reference and objective caues have ceased to exist" What can medicine do with something which floats on either side of illness! on either side of health! or with the reduplication of illness in adiscourse that is no longer true or false?

-he believes that simulation cannot be treated because it is not false nor true. In fact truth has ceased to exist in our world of images and symbols.

These would be the successive phases of the image:

It is the reflection of a basic reality

It masks and perverts a basic reality

It masks the absence of a basic reality

[suzysuhcriticalpractice-blog]

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s Monster Culture (Seven Theses)

I argue that in our culture, Rihanna is considered a monster by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s standards in his Monster Culture (Seven Theses). He argues that a monster is “an embodiment of difference-of any quality, whether it’s ideological, cultural, sexual, or racial, that inspires fear and uncertainty in its creators… its hybridity rebels against nature.” Although pop culture may sell the idea of a monster as a fearful creature or fictitious serial killer, a monster is something the masses cannot understand. Someone who is different. Different and incomprehensible leads to anxiety amongst those who are unwilling to understand. Thus in our culture today, Rihanna stands out as a monster. 

In the first of his theses, Cohen asserts that “the monster’s body quite literally incorporates fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy (ataractic or incendiary), giving them life and an uncanny independence. The monstrous body is pure culture.” In our patriarchal society today, women are seen as objects and are therefore objectified to be gazed upon for the pleasure of man, or the male gaze. Thus it strikes anxiety into society when an independent woman takes control of her sexuality, flaunting her body and owning her sexuality. Rihanna most certainly does this in her concerts, music videos, and day to day life as pop idol. She’s one of the few artists who will wear a see through top without a bra, and owning her sexuality and her body as something that she controls. Someone who can wear a dress made of nothing but 216,000 swarovski crystals as she accepted her CFDA Style Icon Award while being the most talked about topic on twitter. Who can be topless in a music video surrounded by strippers as she shoots a male pimp in her video “Needed Me”. Ultimately, the simplest truth is that Rihanna is having fun. However, that’s something that has been denied to women to be able to take pleasure in flaunting their own bodies and their sexuality for their own selves. No one can shame Rihanna for being promiscuous or sexual because that is something that she is choosing to do for herself.

 Humans naturally want to categorize everything into neat, tidy little boxes. Everything intangible from gender to sexuality to personality wants to be tidied up and labeled. Cohen also argues this “refusal to participate in the classificatory ‘order of things’ is true of monsters generally: they are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration. And so the monster is dangerous, a form suspended between forms that threatens to smash distinctions.” It’s the natural way our human mind works. However, Cohen argues that a monster is a disturbing hybrid that defies this natural desire for categorization and goes against the cultural norm for our values and tendencies. Rihanna again fits this theory. Her culture as a Barbados native pop princess brought the caribbean dancehall sound and patois into the mainstream with her hit single of 2016, “Work”. Many people debated as to why Rihanna was singing gibberish out of ignorance when in actuality she was embracing her accent as a Barbados native. She is by definition, a foreigner in America, yet she is one of the biggest pop icons and musicians in America. It’s no surprise that the American masses are abrasive when Rihanna embraces her heritage and culture instead of fitting in the standards set for American pop music. It creates anxiety for those who always expected Rihanna to make cookie cutter American pop music with a slight, but acceptable accent in her singing. Rolling Stone, one of the largest music magazines, even tried to categorize her song “Work” as Tropical House. Tropical House has been a genre that’s been popularized by the work of American artists such as Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, Skrillex, Diplo, or Kygo. However, Rihanna’s hit single is indisputably caribbean dancehall with a beat sampled from a 70’s dancehall track. To try to categorize her culture’s music as Tropical House, a 2010 invention by American DJs and producers is incredibly ignorant of such a highly published magazine. However using a dancehall track in a musical era when Tropical House is so widely popularized shows how Rihanna refuses to participate in the order of things set by other pop artists.

[suzysuhcriticalpractice-blog]

The Matrix

"What is "real"? How do you define "real"?" Neo’s understanding of his reality crashes around him as Morpheus reveals to him the truth about his world, the Matrix.

Neo, living as a simple computer programmer and another cog in the corporate machine, always felt as if there was something that was wrong with the world. He always doubted his realiy. Neo chooses to take the red pill and wake up from his dream world, to swallow the truth, as Morpheus has offered him. As he chooses to act upon his doubt and take the red pill, he wakes up in a vat of red liquid, hairless and naked, hooked up endlessly to wires and machines. It's then revealed to him that this world that he was living in was a constructed reality the entire time and instead humans are batteries. Neo in shock then asks helplessly if his world that he was living in was real or fake.

The matrix that Neo lived in was a constructed reality. However, despite the fact that it was completely fabricated it was the only reality that Neo had. Yet although Morpheus pulled him out of this fabricated world, he didn't discredit that it was fake. In fact Morpheus goes on to say that "How do you define real? If you're talking about what you feel, taste, smell, or see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain."

The problem wasn't that Morpheus wanted to disprove to Neo that his world was fake. Instead, he pondered upon the definition of reality. Is our perception of reality, real or fake, is what defines what our realities are to each person. Objectively, our reality is simply the signals between our neurons firing away in our brain. If what we feel and perceive is what is reality, then reality in the end is simply electrical signals that our brain interprets for us. However, our perceived reality is a fragile and delicate concept.

Although the Matrix was constructed, it was the most real existence that Neo lived through. If anything the "real world" that Neo was exposed to was more fake than real because it contradicted everything that Neo believed and trusted about the world that he lived in. However, if Neo simply took the blue pill as everyone else does then his reality would've remained stagnant without anything to contradict it. In which case, he would've remained blind to the fact that he was really living in a computer simulation and his body was naked, hairless, and submerged in a strange liquid. That was Neo's and the rest of the world's true reality.

Even in the world that we live in, between 7 billion people we all perceive a different reality. Even in a community as small and tightly knit as Art Center, our perception of our college will change from person to person. There's a world of difference of what I perceived Art Center as when I was timidly sending in my portfolio for application versus the first week of school at Art Center once I was accepted, to who I am now as a second term graphics student. And the definition of Art Center will change from a second term graphics student to a graduating graphic design student to a 4th term fine art student. None of them are wrong, because it is our combined perception of reality from our experiences at this school. One does not necessarily discredit the other. However, that doesn't mean that they are all the same. One could even say the same about the matrix. Even though it was a constructed reality, it doesnt mean that for Neo that it was fake to begin with. It only became fake once the truth was revealed.

[suzysuhcriticalpractice-blog]

Fight Club Analysis

David Fincher’s Fight Club is headed by an unnamed narrator played by Edward Norton who is a cog in the corporate machine selling automobiles as a traveling salesman. Furthermore he also struggles with insomnia, a condition which warps his reality. In every way he is ordinary and a copy of a copy. However, this all changes when he meets a mysterious figure named Tyler Durden who fights him. The two then create an underground fighting ring where members of lower social standing can take out their frustration of being a mere copy in the corporate machine and fight like men do, specifically men like Tyler Durden.

The movie begins with a tense hook, as the nameless narrator is held at gunpoint with the barrel in his mouth and the safety off by Tyler Durden.

The movie then cuts to a flashback of how this scene came to be, explaining the events of fight club that led to this scene. However the ending events of the movie then begins with this scene. The audience realizes that the hyper masculine, Jesus like father figure of Tyler Durden is actually a split personality of the timid narrator who orchestrates the events of fight club and project mayhem while the narrator is asleep. Everything that Tyler Durden has done has actually been done by our nameless protagonist. In fact, the narrator is the one actually holding a gun inside his own mouth because Tyler and the narrator are both one and the same. So the narrator shoots his own cheek without killing himself, but instead knowingly kills Tyler Durden and is no longer haunted by his projection any longer.

This film channels postmodernism by not following a linear plot structure. However by not doing so, the audience actually receives more from the film versus if it simply started from the beginning. As an audience we perceive two separate realities. In the beginning we believe that there were two main characters with one in power that was threatening the other by shoving a gun into his mouth. However, once it is revealed that Tyler Durden is separate from the nameless narrator, we look at the scene again with fresh eyes. Furthermore we come to the same conclusion that the narrator comes to that he has actually been in power this entire time.

The direction of the movie shows both reality and the narrator’s perceived reality through the two perspectives the audience witnesses the fight in. From the narrator’s point of view, we see that he’s in grave danger as Tyler chases after him with the intent to kill. However, from the security camera footage we see what is truly going on. It’s almost comical the extent of the danger the narrator perceives himself to be in versus the actual danger he is in as he is dragging himself along the parking lot and throwing himself into the glass kiosk.

Postmodernism also deals with this representation of reality that is fragmented and shaped by the way that we perceive it versus what reality actually is. Every single person’s reality differs from one another although we may walk the same path in the same earth. This film deals with the uncertainty of how fragile reality truly is as it fools both us the audience and the narrator into believing that there are two main characters.

However bombastic fight club’s dichotomy between Edward Norton’s character and Tyler Durden is, Tyler actually argues that people everyday have a split in their reality. That there is a self that we actually are, and a self that we want to become. The only difference is that our narrator had the courage to “run with it” and create the self that he wants to be from the way that Tyler looks, the way that Tyler talks, fucks, and the way that Tyler is free. Otherwise all of humanity is split into a self that is timid and meek like the nameless narrator and the projected self that isn’t free to roam and change our lives the way Tyler Durden does.

Furthermore, it’s interesting that our narrator doesn’t receive a name the entire movie. He stands over a copy machine and dissonantly crones that “everything is a copy of a copy of a copy”. However, he tries to change his life and instead has his own projected self tell him that Tyler Durden is everything that he wants to be. His identity is that of someone who is simply trying to become Tyler Durden and achieves this through a split personality.

Just in the way that Edward Norton’s character is an unreliable narrator who struggles with insomnia and a split personlity, we too are unreliable narrators in our own lives through how we perceive reality. Postmodernism states that there is not one objective reality. Fight club proves this point by showing how fluid reality is. Although we are meant to believe that the security camera was showing an objective view of reality that the narrator was truly alone this entire time and is fighting himself in the parking lot. It’s still not what the narrator is living through, thus it is a false reality.

[suzysuhcriticalpractice-blog]

Everything is a Remix Powerpoint

https://drive.google.com/a/inside.artcenter.edu/file/d/0B8wq9eUjQDtWZ01iekNZZGt1QzQ/view?usp=sharing

[suzysuhcriticalpractice-blog]

Critical Practice: Remix Assignment

I can identify with both subjects that are depicted in this piece of artwork by an unknown artist that I found on instagram. To me the figure with the scribbled lines all over their head most reminds me of myself although the female figure physically looks very similar to my own.

I find it hard to talk about myself at times because I don’t know much about myself. I find it hard to judge my character if I am a morally good person although I hope I have good intentions. I can’t judge my physical appearance especially. That may come off as vain or attention seeking but I genuinely can’t gauge a clear picture of what I look like to myself and to others. I’m not aware if I’m particularly attractive or ugly or if I have a face of no consequence. I’m not sure if I’m really a good or innocent person either. I can hope and try as hard as I can however my actions never quite align with who I want to be. Every time I try to form a clouded and hazed opinion about myself it dissipates with one inconsistency. So instead I depend upon my judge of character. If I truly trust someone and believe that they have no reason to lie to me or gain anything by telling me lies then I’ll ask what they think of me and formulate an opinion on what the most popular responses are. I’ve been most often told that I’m mature for my age, that I overthink to a fault, that I care too much, that I’m overly nervous and sensitive, overly self conscious, naively optimistic, unable to lie. Of course, people always try to be nice and won’t

touch upon my flaws as much as they do my strengths so even that’s unreliable. However, since coming to Art Center I think I’ve developed a more stable opinion of who I am as a person.

As a producer if I could edit one thing about this photo is how apathetic and nonchalant the female figure appears, as she overlooks the male figure that is clearly most interested than she is by his body language. As someone who was originally intended to be a psychology major and ultimately a therapist or a psychologist if it wasn’t for the intervention of graphic design into my life, I’ve always been interested to some extent in everybody I come across. People are a jumbled mess that hide behind a face that are waiting to be picked apart. Everyone has a reason why they tick. Something that drives them as a person. Even if someone is entirely boring and uninteresting there must be a reason why they are currently that way. Maybe it’s that they were born so beautiful that it doesn’t matter what comes out of their mouths since people are interested in who they are either ways. Or maybe it’s that they were severely bullied when they were young and simply lost their individuality. People are interesting, they might just not be necessarily interesting to talk to.

Although I believe I’m not a complete gullible and naive person, I never listen to my intuition about people although it tends to be right. I’m unsure if I do it consciously or subconsciously, but I tend to reserve my initial judgments about people in order to find out who they are as a person. I take people for who they are at face value and ignore my intuition although it seems to always be right in the end. And in that end, I’m usually the one who gets hurt or suffers because I didn’t trust my judgment to begin with by misjudging and wrongfully trusting someone.

The first time I noticed that I did this was when I read chapter one of “The Great Gatsby” in my high school IB English III class. The narrator and main point of view character, Nick Carraway, whom Fitzgerald speaks through said that “In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.” Nick reserved passing and acting on his judgments of those who approached him and has both entertained and bored him.

And like Nick, I agree that “Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.” However, Nick Carraway had to be written this way by Fitzgerald as an unbiased and unobtrusive observer to his story that could be depended upon as a narrator. And still Fitzgerald had to write that Nick was ultimately tired of his “gift” to reserve judgments. A real person who lives throughout their own life cannot take upon the burden of everyone else’s secrets and anxieties. Eventually those anxieties become your own, creeping unknowingly upon your back as the road you walk becomes heavier and heavier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NuKb9mk0ac&t=1205s

Michael Bierut’s talk on “How to use Graphic Design” was the first time that I heard of this new phenomenon titled Graphic Design as I stumbled upon the video in my recommended searches on Youtube so many years ago.

I narrowed down my selection to Michael Bierut’s talk based on my past experiences of how this has shaped my future by giving a name to something that called to me. Ever since I’ve watched this talk I’ve been obsessed with Michael Bierut as a personal hero who I strive to become in the future.I’m only a student learning how to become as great as him one day, this does not necessarily reflect upon my personality.

As a producer I wouldn’t want to change this video to suit my personality, rather I’m actively trying to change my personality and career into someone as accomplished and humble as Bierut. I’m nowhere near the level of accomplishment as Bierut in all that he has learned in his years at Vignelli Associates and then as a partner at Pentagram. In reality, I’m only a straight out of high school kid and half baked graphic designer. I know the most microscopic sliver of the world of design from typography to branding. However, what I find hope in is that I may be at the level that a nineteen year old Michael Bierut might have been so many years ago in his studies at the University of Ohio.

[suzysuhcriticalpractice-blog]

Week Two: Comparing Mr. Robot to Sam Esmail’s influences

Sam Esmail has unapologetically and boldly claimed that “I'll say this right now. I rip off of every movie and TV show I've ever seen in my life. I'm a film nerd… I make no apologies.” 

His award winning show on FX, Mr. Robot is a remix of Esmail’s film inspirations to the point where some critics argue that it’s blatant plagiarism. However, Esmail’s silver screen masterpiece isn’t just a shoddy rip off of cult classic films such as Fight Club, American Psycho, V for Vendetta, or The Matrix. It’s a collage of all of Esmail’s influences remixed into a classic for the modern age that we can all relate to. The show features Elliot Alderson, a savant hacker and deeply disturbed and lonely individual who pushes away human contact and relies upon drugs instead. He is ultimately disillusioned with the capitalistic America that we are forced to live in. It’s a world that considers Steve Jobs a genius that created the iphone at the expense of Chinese workers, often children, committing suicide off of buildings. He relies upon substances in order to not feel his loneliness that still creeps upon him in the depths of his one bedroom apartment. And ultimately he is a character that is unhappy with the state of the world.

Many argue that Mr. Robot is Fight Club for the new generation as hacker Elliot Alderson creates cyber terrorist group F Society to clear all the debt in the world by the all encompassing global conglomerate, Evil Corp, while Tyler Durden’s Project Mayhem wants to physically destroy the buildings of such corporations to clear away all debt with fire and explosives.

The end of Fight Club is a truly iconic scene of modern cinema as Edward Norton’s character accomplishes his goal of wiping away the debt of the American people by blowing up buildings that hold all the credit card records in the world. The Pixies’ song “Where is My Mind” strums in the background to the detonating buildings igniting red fire as Tyler and his romantic interest in the movie, Marla hold hands watching it all burn before they turn to look at each other. In Mr. Robot, a somber and calm piano version of The Pixies’ “Where is My Mind” plays as Elliot reveals to his rival in the show, Tyrell Wellick, the master plan of F society as all financial records of Evil Corps will be encrypted and then deleted. After Elliot reveals everything to Tyrell, as a subtle homage to Esmail’s inspiration, popcorn then begins to crackle and burst like the explosives taking down city skyscrapers in Fight Club. Fight Club’s finale is a meteoric triumph to an alternative rock banger that encapsulates the pride of Tyler Durden freeing the people from their debt. However Mr. Robot’s triumph is quiet and soft as reflected by the dreamlike flickers of the arcade lights in the setting and the delicate notes of the piano keys. Elliot confesses quietly to Tyrell Wellick that he did this because he wanted to save the world.

Fight Club’s finale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJgIt0KlECw

Mr Robot’s season 1 finale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PamLPnXk2ic

Mr Robot also takes influence from the Wachowski’s science-fiction film, The Matrix. Both follow a cog in the corporate machine with cyber hacker Elliot Alderson and computer programmer Thomas Anderson or Neo who are unsatisfied and unhappy with their realities. However both Elliot and Thomas Anderson are pulled away from their constructed corporate realities by  a wise and knowledgeable figure, Mr. Robot in Elliot’s case and Morpheus in Thomas’. The infamous ferris wheel scene in Mr. Robot is almost an exact copy of the pill scene in The Matrix. Mr. Robot offers Elliot the chance to break free of this constructed and utterly cruel reality that we live in by joining F society. And likewise Morpheus offers Thomas Anderson to break free of the Matrix by choosing to take the red or blue pill. Both figures recognize that the protagonist is unhappy with living in commercial, capitalist America and then gives them the power to change reality. Both films follow themes that the ignorance of living in a fabricated, controlled reality be it our real lives or the Matrix is blissful and thus the common people stay blind and live our lives controlled by consumerism and social media. However, what angers many critics is that the ferris wheel scene copies nearly the exact script of the Matrix word for word which takes it from humble homage to blatant and gross copy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw3uN1JZfYY

6:00

Although Mr. Robot is ultimately an amalgamation of all of creator Sam Esmail’s film influences for the millennial age and although it can be argued that Esmail made the mistake of copying the script from the matrix nearly word for word, it doesn’t discredit that he remixed his influences from the 20th century for the 21st century. It takes pieces from films such as Fight Club and The Matrix like magazine clippings that ultimately create a newer, fresher, and most importantly different work of art than the sum of its parts.

[suzysuhcriticalpractice-blog]

Critical Practice Week one

Kurt Anderson’s article, “You Say You Want a Devolution” argues that the modern aesthetic has stagnated and that style is no longer advancing as it did in the past. Although I’ve grown out of them my blouse and blue jeans I wore today to class are no different from the blouse and blue jeans I wore in elementary school a decade ago. Whileas the bell bottom, boot cut jeans from the 70s would’ve been laughed at by an 80s socialite wearing high waisted, acid wash denim shorts. However, Anderson’s perspective is coming from a narrow, western view of the world.  He only speaks for the “...young and young-at-heart Apple cultists-cum-customers” who live for “all the neo-19th-century signifiers of state-of-the-art Brooklyn-esque and Portlandish American hipsterism.” It’s a reductionist, Eurocentric statement to make. Even his decade by decade breakdown of the aesthetic trends from the glitzy glamour of the Roaring twenties or the gritty black and white movies of the fifties only pertained to America’s growth.

Anderson’s one optimistic hope throughout this essay has been the rapid acceleration of technology from the invention of the clunky, bouldering walkman in the 90s to the sleek and slim Iphone just a decade later. Furthermore, the information technology that Anderson argues has only progressed has propagated the aesthetic norm of today with the invention of social media. Both celebrities and the newly coined “social media influencers”  are able to control what the masses think with only 140 characters on twitter or a single photo post on instagram. Anderson even argues this point asserting that “...anyone anywhere with any arcane cultural taste can now indulge it easily and fully online, clicking themselves deep into whatever curious little niche… they wish”. The entire point of social media sites such as Instagram and Facebook is to show off the spectacular staged life you live to your audience made up of your family, friends, and strangers who glimpse into these snapshots of your life.There is an innate pressure that comes with signing up for these sites to perform. Anderson realizes this point admitting that “the things we own are more than ever like props, the clothes we wear like costumes, the places where we live, dine, shop, and vacation like stage sets.” In this day and age, everyone tries to be like everyone else living the happiest versions of their life in this utopian, Truman show esque vision.

However, the fact that culture and style has stagnated shouldn’t be viewed in a negative light in the way that Anderson has illustrated. Style has often changed with the advent of war over the course of history as shown by the counterculture movement in the 60’s rejecting the establishment of the 50’s. The youth of that time refused the traditional values that their baby boomer, nuclear families raised them with and instead turned to protest and psychedelics. The 60s has a drastic shift in style from the prim and proper Grace Kelly style in the 50s to the bouncy and colorful hippie fashion flaunted at Woodstock. Students would riot and protest for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and specifically the Anti-Vietnam war movement at institutions like Berkeley and Kent State where 4 unarmed college students were shot to death by the National Guard. Culture has always shifted dramatically following a traumatic change in our world such as war or depression. Now that we are currently living in a time of peace, our society has stabilized and thus our culture has stagnated.

One can argue that we have reached the height of aesthetic beauty because we have been in a time of peace since the end of the Cold War. Technology, poverty, and war has always limited what fashion, culture, and aesthetic could truly evolve into. Now we are able to pick and choose elements of style like the high waisted denim Levis from the 70s with the elegant chiffon blouses of the 50s and pair them with the blucky block heels of the 90s and create an amalgamation of our perfect style. Furthermore post war times have always dramatically changed fashion as seen in the counterculture movement of the 60’s following World War 2. Perhaps the reason why society has been recycling through a devolution of aesthetics from the decades prior is because there is no reason for a revolution. However, in our current political climate we are facing a realistic possibility of another world war breaking out with heightening tensions between the United States and Russia. If Anderson is hoping for style and culture to once again shift in a completely new direction we may once again see that in the not too distant future.