bermudianabroad - Tumblr blog

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While I typically share the progressive political views of my students, I’m troubled by their concern for righteousness over complexity. [...] We need more narratives that tell us the truth about how complex our world is. We need stories that help us name and accept paradoxes, not ones that erase or ignore them. ... the more we cultivate audiences who believe that the job of art is to instruct instead of investigate, to judge instead of question, to seek easy clarity instead of holding multiple uncertainties, the more we will find ourselves inside a culture defined by rigidity, knee-jerk judgments and incuriosity.

Jen Silverman, Art Isn't Supposed to Make You Comfortable April 28th, 2024 in The New York Times

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Goldfinch and Flowers Maria Sibylla Merian c. 1675

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MISS CONGENIALITY 2000 — dir. Donald Petrie

[bermudianabroad]

Speaking of movies, I’m trying to work out the parameters for what I’ve started calling ‘corporate mythology films’.

Stuff like:

Blackberry, Air, The Beanie Bubble, Tetris etc etc.

That build up a dramatic narrative around a commercial product. Half historical (contemporary historical) drama, half 90 minute product placement. Even if said product is now defunct.

Movies about a product is one part of it, then you’ve got the biopic slant (Joy (about the inventor of the miracle mop), The Founder (of McDonalds), Steve Jobs (pretty self explanatory lol— but not his life so much as his life through the prism of specific product launches).

Things like Barbie and the Lego Movie are in their own subcategory. That tongue in cheek, self aware joke, but also you know, an opportunity for branding and so on.

It definitely seems like we’ve had an absolute glut of them in the last… five years or so? Something something profound about the evolution of cinema as art during late stage capitalism?

Half baked idea maybe but one that’s been on my mind recently as I scroll the endless platforms looking (and finding) something (nothing) to watch.

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Late night with the Devil (2023)

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what’s in the pot

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Lucy in the (Sky) Field with Flowers Artist Unknown Rescued from Trash in Boston circa. 1993

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[bermudianabroad]

Masahisa Fukase: Sasuke!! Dear Cat (1979)

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Mouse and Grapes, by Watanabe Seitei (ca. 1900).

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@stvksn on ig

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A shit ton of shit

Shit incoming

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Shit incoming

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Took the bins up the road because they were being collected on the 12th, only to realise…. it’s the 12th.

So the trash got a lovely nighttime stroll before going back behind the garage. On the plus side, saw some bats and the moon was nice.

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Ten minute scribbles of some of the places I went yesterday.

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Overnight stay in Edinburgh. In the hotel, the tv opposite the bed turns on when you enter the room, and plays a looped visual of a fireplace.

Weird, but also weirdly cosy. Camera couldn’t quite capture the light.