New Zealand comics! I met Toby in Wellington over ten years ago, when I was drawing E Motel and attending Victoria Uni. Of course, that was then.
The way that Attack the Block hasn’t permeated the Internet/”fandoms” in the way that a tight, cool, fun cult SF film should reveals a lot about the thinking of many consumers of that genre.
The main thing is a big fat vein of social conservatism, which is more of a feature…
While a short piece, it also speaks to how people can become ‘normalised’ to prefer a particular type of protagonist (e.g. white, upper or upper-middle class, square-jawed, morally unambiguous) which is the staple ingredient of Hollywood flicks…
The Capitol are the enemy: its citizens are vapid, selfish, exploitative, narcissistic and worst of all apathetic; they don’t care about where their new dress comes from or who is making their dinner or how many children died making their new emerald necklace; they live in such excess that they purge between meals at parties while the people who sourced that food are starving in the fields; they literally place bets on the deaths of children! We really feel like we can’t drive that one home enough. Like, they just make kids kill each other on live TV and then the kids who survive grow up to be sold into sex slavery or to abuse alcohol as a coping mechanism or to be so PTSD-stricken that they can’t even talk anymore. We know what you’re thinking right now: “damn, that sounds sweet, I want to be just like the people in the Captiol.” Right? No? Yeah, us either. But that’s what CoverGirl and Lionsgate seem to think.
At its core, The Hunger Games is a book about the trauma of hyper-consumption–but when it comes to traumatizer vs. traumatized, CoverGirl’s Capitol Collection falls squarely on the side of “traumatizer.” The makeup line comes with a lookbook that will help you “get the looks of the Districts” and is so unaware and self-absorbed that it kind of feels like it has to be a joke. The only time anyone from the Districts looks anything like something in that lookbook is when children are brought to the Capitol and dolled up to be paraded around on live TV as though they were props instead of humans (because of course, to the Capitol, they are props). Then two days later they take the makeup off and kill each other and probably die themselves while their families look on, horrified and defeated. FASHION!!!
But of course, the reason that this line even exists is because we, as a culture, are actually pretty close (metaphorically anyway) to the Capitol. Consumption at any expense is pretty par for the course here, and the people who grow our food and make our clothes aren’t really in much better shape than the people of the Districts. Our culture really, really values outward appearance and it insists that girls about Katniss’s age should be less into leading a revolution and more into getting the right look. The Capitol Collection encourages girls to identify not with rebellion and justice, but with superficiality and self-interest. We think that is not only ridiculous, but scary and super dangerous.
You’ll Have to Kill a Child, but at Least You’ll Look Good Doing It
our new project, Capitol Cuties, is a response to CoverGirl’s Capitol Collection line and we are really, really excited about it. (via sparkamovement)
Seconded. Of the many whackadoo merchandising tie-ins associated with Catching Fire (Subway comes to mind), the CoverGirl campaign may be the worst. There were plenty of ways to create cosmetic tie-ins that didn’t fetishize poverty or so thoroughly embrace and sanitize the barbarity of the Capitol. (via lbardugo)
I mean, naturally, you have a book series that indicts American culture (specifically the military industrial complex, see also: the author was watching footage of US soldiers’ bodies coming home from Iraq to be buried when she thought of the idea) and excess at the expense of underlings, so OF COURSE when they make it into a movie, there’s going to be a painfully un-self-aware merch tie-in. I actually find the Subway ad campaign a bit more sinister: “Where the victors eat.” It’s a book about people who are going hungry needlessly and a fast-food sandwich chain is making money off of it, because obviously.
We - our culture - we are the Capitol. (You too, Canada and most of Europe and every other industrialized nation who emulates Westernness.) To me, the books weren’t about the trauma of hyperconsumption so much as they were a mirror in which we can look at ourselves and go, wow, we have poor kids fighting our wars as their only means of economic advancement for the amusement and financial gain of the upper upper class, and we have enough homes and food to feed and house everyone but we still have hunger and homelessness, and we have enough money in the government to fix that, but it has to go toward those wars we’re still fighting, OH SHIT, THE CAPITOL IS US.
Most of the people in the Capitol weren’t evil. They’re just complacent. Their lives are great and they don’t have to fight anyone for food, and they purposefully look away when confronted with the ugly reality of where their wealth comes from. The system of government works well enough for them so they go with it. Sound familiar? A makeup tie-in to a movie franchise is the least of our concerns.
(via milenadaniels)
Remember when “I’m OK, you’re OK” was the gold standard in self-improvement mantras? What a concept. These days, in a culture in which anything less than perfection is pathology (Feeling a little depressed? Can’t get it up? I have just the thing for you!), aiming for just OK seems, frankly, kind of lame.
…
“The self-esteem industry places the emphasis on you [alone], your desires, needs, expectations, sacrifices, willingness to work hard,” Niedzviecki argues. “This not only encourages us to consider ourselves [the only ones] capable of changing and taking control of our lives, but discourages any examination of the overall system [or lack of same] in which we live our lives…
Read more: http://www.utne.com/Mind-Body/Shiny-Happy-People-Tyranny-Of-Self-Improvement.aspx?page=2#ixzz2UwBeoaCI
A magnificent read which basically identifies the US-style ‘self-improvement’ system as being another atomising force that isolates one from society - assuming, of course, that one still feels a connection to a society, or a community, or even other people.
How To Suck At Your Religion by The Oatmeal
This is long but excellent
Most people don’t have faith in their god/s. Just brand loyalty. And artificially inflamed brand loyalty at that.
I never really got into Rosenberg’s previous opus Goats, but this comic is simultaneously topical, surreal and consistently funny.
Every Friday there’s another episode of an ongoing story, the first famously being Sciencemaster Adler and his mysterious fan. Or fans. Or maybe they’re not fans but are sentient vegetable people. (Mind you, this is a multiverse, so maybe there’s sentient clothing accessory people as well, but that could be heading into the Douglas Adams Territories.)
As seen on Rosscott Inc., then Boing Boing. And now here.
Very true. (via UNICORN JELLY by Jennifer Diane Reitz)
ghxstglasses asked:
dresdencodak answered:
I’d start here and then just go chronologically http://dresdencodak.com/2009/04/19/onald-creely/
When you’ve caught up to the latest page of Dark Science, then I’d recommend going and starting at the beginning of the archives. I’ve found this is currently pretty much the best way to introduce new readers to the comic!
Dresden Codak is one of those must-read comics.
I can’t even imagine how awful political comics are going to be the next few days.
