#maybe it’s the Karnak obsession in me

[frankenruth]

I think we should create our own Karnak designs the same way we do with Jane Doe

[natebstudent-blog]

Week 8 Blog

 The previous chapter about Egypt, was, to me, an evolution of the Ancient Near East chapter, The Aegean and Ancient Greek chapters feel like opposite sides of a coin. Aegean art was way more stylized and abstract, while ancient Greek art had style, but the style was way more focused on realism. I enjoy Greek art and it is pretty interesting, Greek art employs a lot of what we have seen in previous chapters. In the Greek vases on pages 88-89, you can see similarities to art like this and the steles from Egyptian and Near East art. Such as the 2-dimensional perspective the artworks preside in. But I really like the ‘Warrior by a Grave’ piece on page 89 due to how this piece really breaks the mold set by previous chapters. This one is a way more natural 3D perspective, and this is a breath of fresh air and is really impressive when looking back. I enjoy that piece and 'Battle of Issos' on page 90. Another impressive aspect of Greek art is the sculptures, these are an extremely iconic part of Greek art as well. I really am impressed by the amount of detail and realism that the pieces have. The sculptures of this time and place are truly beautiful, and that’s what the point of these works seem to be. As said in the Ancient Origins of Modern Beauty podcast, Greek civilization seemed to be obsessed with beauty and natural human form, in fact, these statues captured beauty standards so well, that many people were in love with the statues. This is somewhat believable as even in our modern day there are some people who fall in love with drawings and artwork. History always seems to repeat itself. But my favorite part of Greek art is definitely the statues, in my opinion, they’re more dynamic and lifelike. But some do reuse the same general pose, such as Polykleitos, Doryphoros, on page 96 and Warrior from Riace on page 95. I still really enjoy how accurate and well detailed they are, how they did the hair is really creative and stylish.

I’ve heard about the Golden Ratio, which is a ratio for a good composition and design, but I’ve never properly understood it or actually learned how to really implement it in my own works. I was hoping that maybe this chapter would have a section dedicated to talking about it, but unfortunately, it does not dive into it with a lot of depth or even really mention it. It’s a shame. The chapter is similar to others, as some of the art depicts religious figures. It isn’t as focused on them as other chapters seemed to be, but granted chances are the religious art was more heavily preserved due to religion’s importance to the civilizations. Religion would act as a unifier for people to work together which practically built all of the early civilizations in some way. A lot of the art from Greece has religious, intrinsic, and nationalistic value. I believe it has intrinsic value due to the distinct style Greek art has and its beautiful naturalism. The beginning Greek art started as more stylized and somewhat inspired from Egyptian art, this is visible when comparing the Statue of a Kouros on page 91, and Akhenaten from Karnak, Egypt on page 64. but moved to more naturalism, personally I prefer the naturalism. It feels so much more impressive and beautiful when looking at the context of it. Maybe it’s due to how I’m a beginner artist, but I just see more appeal in it.

   Greek architecture is also beautifully crafted and designed. My favorite structure that the Greeks have built was the Parthenon. It’s just so well balanced and so detailed. I just really love how simple yet complicated it truly is.

   Thinking about it now, Greek society is the root of our contemporary western society in culture as well. In our society, our own beauty standards can be seen as evolutions of the Greek standards of beauty. But I did mention how Greek art is somewhat like an evolution of the Egyptian chapter and then in turn the Ancient Near East chapter and so on, so I believe that this all ties us together. We all the same roots deep down.

 Bibliography 

Adams, L. S. (2010). A history of western art (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Konstan D. (Classist). (2015, February 5) The ancient origins of modern beauty [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://www.wnyc.org/story/ancient-origins-modern-beauty/

Mize, D. (2009, January 22). A Guide to the Golden Ratio (AKA Golden Section or Golden Mean) for Artists. Retrieved March 6, 2019, from https://emptyeasel.com/2009/01/20/a-guide-to-the-golden-ratio-aka-golden-section-or-golden-mean-for-artists/

[briangroth27]

Marvel’s Inhumans Season 1 Review

I didn’t find much to love in Marvel’s latest TV series: I’ve never been a huge Inhumans fan and this did little to change my mind. The show felt prohibitively small-scale, the character arcs were messy even in an eight-episode season, and they took the bizarre position of making the supposed heroes the heads of an oppressive caste system. It seems like budgetary restraints put a cap on power usage, but I feel like we see more action on episodes of Agents of SHIELD than we did on this show. There were many opportunities to go bigger, weirder, and much more interesting in all areas of the series, from design to superpowers to character arcs, but more often than not they chose to play it safe and conventional.

From costumes to sets, the production values for the Inhumans’ hidden moon base Attilan looked far too mundane and ordinary, like you could find them in any location on Earth. Their design choices and way of life didn’t reflect a people that had been separated from humanity for such a long time. Shouldn’t they have wholly disparate customs and outlooks; shouldn’t they essentially be aliens to us at this point? The terrigenesis ceremony, which gives the Inhumans their powers, was the one cultural touchstone that felt like it separated them from any other Earth culture. Attilan should’ve been home to as many strange and wondrous Marvel Easter Eggs as possible—this was their first chance to truly dig into the weirdness of the MCU on TV—but we got none. While Hawai’i was shot well, the rest of the Earth locations didn't really pop either. The set for what was supposed to be a high-tech space agency was an empty warehouse with a big-screen monitor and some desks arranged in front of it. 

The characters didn’t fare much better and for the most part, their sojourns in Hawai’i did little to endear them to me. While it was great to have a lead who couldn’t speak and instead used sign language (or a version of it, anyway; like I saw in reviews at the AV Club, there’s no reason for them to speak English but not use ASL), Black Bolt (Anson Mount) wasn’t given many opportunities to do more than glower. When he did get to briefly explore other emotions, like comedic reactions to humans or romance with Medusa (Serinda Swan), Mount was believable, but overall Blackagar Boltagon felt pretty grim the whole time. I didn’t buy the angst of his character: a scene where he accidentally vaporized his parents with his super-destructive voice was so nonchalant it appeared comedic, not tragic. Additionally, Black Bolt did not appear to be a ruler charismatic enough to uphold the oppression the royal family continued forcing on the people of Attilan. His leadership choices didn’t make much sense either: learning of the spread of Inhumans on Earth (as seen on Agents of SHIELD), he secretly sends Triton (Mike Moh) to recover them, complete with a secret rendezvous location in case things go bad. Why wouldn’t he tell Medusa and his master strategist Karnak (Ken Leung)? We’re never given a hint that he distrusts them and it’s clear neither would betray him. How did he send Triton, when the show makes no effort to give Black Bolt the means to communicate without Medusa interpreting for him (the Inhumans have wrist communicators, but the devices don’t have video screens or text readouts) and only Medusa and Maximus (Iwan Rheon) know how to understand his sign language? We’re also told he has a secret bunker that no one else knows about, fully stocked for several lifetimes. What if Black Bolt had been killed in a sneak attack from their “greatest enemy?” Medusa and the rest of his family would’ve never known where they could seek shelter. Keeping secrets like these made no sense and only served to manufacture cheap drama when the other characters found out and (rightly) called him on his bizarre choices. I did like that Black Bolt always maintained his self-control about using his powers, making him a clever foil to Maximus’ obsession with getting abilities, but that wasn’t played with as much as it could’ve been. Finally unleashing his voice to give Maximus the other thing he wanted—to be king of Attilan—was fitting, but I didn’t feel anything from their struggle since they spent so much screentime apart.

Karnak was introduced as an abusive and borderline psychotic womanizer—telling a servant (Jenna Bleu Forti, I believe) that within two days of dating he’d hate her so much he’d want to kill her because he could see her flaws—and his brief fling with a human (Jen, Jamie Grey Hyder) while his powers were on the fritz did nothing to convince me he’d changed. I’ve liked Leung in other roles, but making Karnak likable was a truly uphill battle. That he hit his head and messed up his powers of seeing the flaw in everything because he calmly stepped on a loose rock and fell off a cliff was absurd. Immediately abandoning his quest to find Black Bolt once his powers glitched—not to find out how to fix them, but because he felt useless—made me wonder why he was ever seen as reliable among the royal family. His truly random time on a pot farm was extraneous to the plot (especially once violence was involved), and his self-doubt momentarily changed into completely embracing a carefree lifestyle far too fast, but at least his fling attempted to provoke some character growth by getting him to not look for flaws so much. However, his inability to see them at that point deflates that growth a bit for me. Once he reunited with his family, their biggest reaction to the changes he’d supposedly gone through is that he acts without being absolutely sure now, not that he’s grown as a person or anything. He does defy royal decrees and tradition by putting Gorgon (Eme Ikwuakor) through terrigenesis a second time to resurrect him, but Black Bolt and Medusa scolding him felt half-hearted, so it didn’t seem like that big a breach in protocol. While his dedication to his friend was admirable, he was so abrasive in the beginning that I still didn’t find him likable at the end of his arc.

Questions of competency further arose around Gorgon, who seemed to be the worst head of a royal guard ever. This is a guy who, knowing they have to remain hidden, intentionally crushed exploratory rovers, stole the flag Neil Armstrong planted on the moon for fun, and told a bunch of Earth strangers about their secret moon city right after meeting them. I don’t know if it’s because he never had to actually police anything in Attilan, but he wasn’t written like someone who’d be in charge of security; he was written like a bumbling fool Karnak had to put up with. I get the buddy cop pairing they were going for—Gorgon was the fun impulsive contrast to Karnak’s obsessive planner—but too often Gorgon came off as dumb and Karnak as cruel for me to buy into their friendship very much. Don’t get me wrong; a fun-loving, jovial head of security would be a refreshing change from the standard gruff characterization—Ikwualkor seemed more than up to that task—and it would’ve been fine if Gorgon hadn’t seemed so irresponsible as well. His only response to Karnak telling the servant he’d want to kill her was “You’re your own worst enemy,” which either implies these kinds of comments are so common that he’s decided they can be laughed off or that Gorgon sees Karnak’s sex life as more important than the actual lives of the servants (“say nothing about wanting to kill them—even if you’re thinking it—and they’d sleep with you” was my interpretation of his reaction), or both. Resurrecting him as a somewhat confused “zombie” after a heroic sacrifice (possibly the only truly guard-like thing he did beyond training people to fight in flashbacks) in the later episodes didn’t help matters either. They had a chance to make him see that the royal family’s way of doing things was wrong when a group of Hawai’ian freedom fighters told him about Hawai’i’s history, wherein America forced Hawai’i to give up its monarchy—as if all monarchs are good regardless of who they are—but the writing didn’t let Gorgon realize that Maximus didn’t parallel the imperialistic Americans, Black Bolt and co. did. I found it odd that Gorgon would take these random humans’ advice about strategy for fighting Maximus (staying on Earth to make himself bait so Maximus would bring the fight to him) instead of coming up with one himself. He did have a good idea when he suggested Karnak bluff about still having his power, though, and he did show a little responsibility in eventually telling his freedom fighter pals to back off for their safety; I just wish he’d shown more of this kind of behavior. It seemed like they were afraid to extensively show his hooves, as he wore special boots that made his feet look normal in every action sequence. Triton (Mike Moh) was wasted—maybe the heavy makeup required to bring the character to life prevented them from using him much—and there was no reason for Black Bolt to keep his mission a secret except to create a later moment of internal drama. He did have pretty cool fight scenes at the end of the season, though.

Medusa fared the best by far on the show, and was the one character I was invested in. Even though they cut off her prehensile hair in the first episode—for budgetary/effects reasons, I suppose; for the record, I didn’t think the CGI hair looked bad—robbing her of her trademark powers, her arc was the best-written and acted. At first I thought she was a little too stoic, but Swan did great once Medusa was banished to Hawai’i; her reactions to the loss of her hair—effectively several limbs—were haunting and powerful. I wish we’d gotten more time to see just how intrinsic Medusa’s hair was to her everyday life so we could see how big an impact losing it had on everyday actions (how often does she use her hair when the rest of us would use our hands, for example?) or her fighting style (I did like what little we got to see of her using her hair offensively), but Swan absolutely sold her loss. I liked that her displacement revealed her as a tough fighter (and clever strategist, correctly guessing that Crystal (Isabelle Cornish) was being used to track the royals’ locations) rather than crushing her, though as I’ve seen pointed out elsewhere, a bigger reaction to seeing Maximus again in the end would’ve been appropriate. They could’ve even included the twist the comics did, where she could still control her hair to attack him even after having it cut off. I did like that she destroyed his last chance to get powers by smashing the terrigen crystal just like he stole hers, though. And she got to deliver perhaps the series’ coolest line to Maximus, “Black Bolt wants to have words with you.” Her drive to save her husband—her second call to Black Bolt on their communication devices after arriving on Earth was a great expression of their love—and reunite her family provided the urgency and stakes to the show. While Black Bolt got arrested or captured a lot early on (elaborating on Maximus’ connections on Earth) and everyone else was stuck in subplots that went nowhere and added very little to their character development (mostly they just gained an appreciation for humans, though Karnak and Gorgon once tried thinking like each other to solve problems), Medusa’s arc fit squarely into the narrative and drove most of the action. While she was abrasive when she got to Earth, her burgeoning friendship with Louise (Ellen Woglom) was well-constructed to spark her character development and it’s the one human relationship that felt real and natural. While I would've liked Medusa to spend a little more time dealing with how her rule affected her citizens, taking responsibility for the royal family’s misdeeds and acknowledging that Maximus had the right idea (just like her parents) was a good start, though we probably should’ve seen more of a reckoning for the royals in terms of public reaction to them. I also liked her getting fed up with just being Black Bolt’s interpreter and his lies in general, so I’d be very interested to see what she does with an equal share of the responsibility of ruling. Will she balance her parents’ teachings with the way Black Bolt has been leading, or will she do something entirely different? I would also watch a second season of Medusa and Lockjaw travelling the world to rescue scared and persecuted Inhumans. Medusa and Lockjaw recurring on a Ms. Marvel series, with Medusa teaching Kamala how to be an Inhuman and Kamala teaching her how to respect non-royals and humans, would be welcome too.

Medusa’s sister Crystal had the potential to go in an interesting direction, but they settled for a flimsy romance instead. Maximus seemed to nearly convince her that he was right about the horrible conditions of Inhuman society in Attilan—particularly since her parents had fought against the royalty—and it almost seemed like she might agree. Instead, she escaped Attilan the first chance she got and fell in love with the first human (Chad James Buchanan) she met, who also rammed Lockjaw with his four-wheeler. True it was an accident and he got her dog help, but he also convinced Crystal to go swimming instead of looking for her family in the middle of a coup. From what we saw of Crystal in Attilan, at no point did she need to relax more; even after the coup, Maximus let her hang out in her room. I’m not against romance in superhero stories at all—the soap opera aspect is a core component, dating all the way back to Superman and Lois’ triangle for two—but this wasn’t the time and it paled in comparison to the promise of Crystal more directly interacting with Maximus’ plot. I would have absolutely been on board with her siding with Maximus for the right reasons (minus the overtones of a forced marriage); that would’ve been far more complex and engaging than continuing to draw her as the sheltered princess they did. It also would’ve put her at odds with the rest of her family and built on the backstory of Black Bolt’s parents (Michael Buie, Tanya Clarke) putting hers to death for dissenting against the monarchy. Instead, she got a bland flirtation and her entire role in the final battle against Maximus was to ask a wall (Moses Goods) to teleport everyone to Earth, and she didn’t even have to convince Eldrac to help. Lockjaw was a delight, but he didn’t get to do anything but act as a transporter for everyone else. As I’ve seen pointed out elsewhere, I really wish we’d seen them build their relationship more.

Maximus had all the right motivations—he legitimately had a good argument about the Inhuman caste system throwing people with undesirable or no powers into literal mines (despite the fact that surely powers like Gorgon, Crystal, Karnak, Black Bolt and even Medusa had would make mining easier…no argument that limited resources necessitated the caste system holds up when all the powers useful for labor are wasted on an upper class that does nothing) while those with admirable or beautiful powers were prized—but he was trapped in Attilan without anyone to spar with beyond underlings (another reason Crystal agreeing with him but truly fighting for the greater good would’ve been the better arc). If he wanted an exodus to Earth to ease overpopulation on the moon so badly, why didn’t he just start moving people there as soon as he was in control? Using Eldrac would’ve allowed him to take his people anywhere and the royal family wouldn’t have known or been able to do anything about it. They should’ve been able to hold whatever territory they took or, more intelligently, couldn’t they replicate their camouflaging tech on Earth? Establishing a temporary, invisible home base on Earth where they could collect the newly emerging Inhumans would’ve been better than staying on the moon. Surely fulfilling his promises and leading his people into the future would’ve gone over much better than murdering anyone who opposed him, even with spinning the Genetic Council as the keepers of oppression. It would’ve been a great and complex twist if, in addition to wanting powers, he actually was a good king. When it came to his selfish impulses, he came off as another Loki scheming for power, and while I’ve seen the suggestion that an Inhumans show with multiple “houses” could’ve been the superhero Game of Thrones, that’s much harder to do when there’s only one house. The reveal that Maximus had been communicating with people on Earth and was in command of the soldiers who “killed” Triton was a genuine surprise to me, and I wish there had been more examples of his Machiavellian schemes. On the other hand, forging his parents’ signature on a decree to have Black Bolt lobotomized—inadvertently leading to Black Bolt killing them—had no effect on me; it just seemed so haphazard and random, like it was tacked on to give Black Bolt additional reason to hate Maximus. Having Maximus send out soldiers to attack the royal family got old (though at least they used super powers), and perhaps it wouldn’t have seemed so perfunctory if the royals hadn’t all had their powers undermined right off the bat. Maximus and his loyalists would’ve had to be that much more cunning and powerful if they were dealing with a royal family that had functioning superpowers instead of a scattered array of lost souls, which would’ve made for a more exciting series instead of watching drug dealers try to kill Karnak and random freedom fighters team up with Gorgon. I wish they could’ve given him his second terrigenesis to push him further into madness. I also wish we’d seen his friendship with Medusa—in flashbacks or in the present—since it was apparently so important to him; that would’ve added an understanding of how much he was either hurt by her cutting him off or how much he was willing to sacrifice to be someone important.

The series’ biggest problem was crafting the royal family as willing perpetrators of the caste system in Attilan. I’ll give the show credit for taking the hard path and making them knowingly complicit instead of just having Maximus convince the populace that truly benevolent and fair rulers were corrupt simply because it was a monarchy, but the writing didn’t do the best job of having any of the royals deal with what they were doing to their people. With Black Bolt and Co. willfully throwing Inhumans with powers that aren’t desirable or useful into slums and mines, how are they anything but the villains? Why should we root for them? Then you have Kitang (Marco Rodriguez) celebrating terrigenesis as a process which elevates the Inhumans above everyone else; however well the “Inhumans-as-mutants” parallel was going on Agents of SHIELD, comments like these destroy the idea that Inhumans can reliably stand in for mutants as metaphors for the disenfranchised and oppressed in society. Going even further, I didn’t need to see the royal family learn to appreciate humans at all. That was extraneous to their arc this season and not at all relevant to Maximus’ struggle. Though he vaguely wanted to conquer Earth to take back their “rightful home,” the royals didn’t need to know people to disagree with that impulse, as they already did before meeting anyone and Maximus’ immediate plans never involved attacking humans (except holding a few hostages once). They should’ve been learning to appreciate the lower classes of Attilan and the newly-powered Earth-born Inhumans instead; especially given that’s what brought Triton to Earth in the first place (perhaps the Earth-born Inhumans have created their own underground subculture that would contrast with Attilan’s). Accepting and protecting humans should’ve been saved for a potential Season 2, when they would’ve known they were stuck among us but still felt somewhat xenophobic, especially faced with a government that hates and fears Inhumans.

Despite a nice moment in the fourth episode of Black Bolt taking the time to move injured enemy Inhuman soldiers away from a fire, I didn’t buy that one dying soldier (Locus, Sumire Matsubara) was all it took to convince Black Bolt that their caste system was wrong from what we saw. Medusa maybe, because her parents fought it (and Black Bolt’s parents had hers executed), but I still think we needed to see more of her secretly suspecting her parents weren’t wrong all along to really sell that shift. The dots of her emotional arc were there, but they needed to be connected more clearly. Her comment to Black Bolt about killing Maximus, “Think about what kind of ruler you want to be,” was probably prompted by her dissident parents’ deaths, and mercy for Maximus also probably reflects both their childhood friendship and her friendship with Black Bolt, which started when she went to gloat about his parents’ deaths but took pity on him instead. They could’ve even introduced and justified her lack of success in effecting social change by showing her trying to push it once she became queen, but accidentally finding herself taken in by the comfort of royal life and the ease of cold practicalities (such as forcing Locus into her scout position instead of allowing her to be a healer like she wanted) without realizing it. A wrinkle like that would’ve sold the wakeup call Locus’ death was supposed to be while also bringing Medusa into conflict not only with Black Bolt, but the social awakening Crystal should’ve undertaken. These are the sources of internal dissention they should’ve gone for among the royals, not brief spats over Triton’s mission or Karnak being annoyed at Gorgon’s foolishness. Had something like this been included, I would’ve believed the pivot to a more democratic society more (if that’s even what’s happening; we aren’t really told how the royals are going to continue Maximus’ goal). 

The pacing on the whole could’ve been faster. After a quarter of the show had aired, it felt like it had gone nowhere. If this had been a super-powered Mad Max: Fury Road, with the royal family chased out, seen what it was like to be the nobodies in society—maybe in addition to Maximus’ forces hunting them, whatever is left of SHIELD should’ve been on-site to deal with the new Inhuman menaces—and then sieged Maximus’ new Earth-bound city (as the only ones equipped to do it in the wake of Civil War), it would’ve been much better and tighter. I suppose that’s essentially what it was, but the subplots on Earth didn’t really contribute to a greater understanding of the system the royals were perpetuating for the characters. I also don’t understand the intentional vagueness of the finale. Where on Earth is their new home? Who is “the Boss” that secured them this location? Who is their “greatest enemy?” There’s no reason not to answer those questions and they’re not interesting enough to be hooks for a second season. It’s also weird that, just like when Agents of SHIELD started, the people in Inhumans are right back to doubting paranormal things despite living in a world full of them. Callisto Aerospace Control Center scientist Louise gets suspended for suggesting aliens destroyed the moon rover? Aliens demolished New York! Why wouldn’t that be a priority-one, “Call SHIELD right now!” moment?

I don’t know if Inhumans will get a second season and I’m not sure I’d watch if it does. They introduced some interesting ideas, but never expanded on them as much as they could have and the budget was not there to accommodate this world or these characters, spoiling their potential and drastically decreasing the stakes. The show did make me a fan of Medusa and it was great to see another strong female character join the MCU, but I don’t know how much longer her character can carry Inhumans. However, everything can be improved, so the question is, will ABC give it the chance?