arseniccupcakes:
my current cosplay goals
(I’m not making this to procrastinate, nooooo)
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arseniccupcakes:
fixed it i think
reblogging this here to put it back on the main blog, because it’s cute dammit
arseniccupcakes:
fixed it i think
arseniccupcakes:
the first 15 spots in my perfume giveaway are filled, but theres still plenty of room left, watch the video for details!
In the mid-1980s, the world children inhabited was changing. Regulations of marketing to minors were relaxed, making half-hour toy commercials such as “Transformers” and “My Little Pony” all the rage, and the general Reagan-era consumerism of the time was being foisted upon them. It was an era of focus groups, target ages, Cabbage Patch Kids, and “consumer trainees.” A young screenwriter named Don Mancini saw this world, and decided the best way to combat it was to rip is apart with satire-bloody, bloody satire. Thus, the “Child’s Play” franchise was born. Four sequels later, Chucky the killer doll is in the slasher-baddie hall of fame alongside the likes of Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. Chucky dolls are on sale in Malls. You can buy comic books and action figures and face-shaped pillows of Chucky and the rest of his rapidly expanding evil doll family. A reboot and a video game are in the works. Come Halloween, you can even have your pick of Halloween costumes- standard or mini-skirted “sexy” version. For a series that villanized merchandising so much, Chucky sure has a lot of…stuff. This is simply the way things work now; all of the former Hollywood boogeymen have been co-opted into servers of a new, Hot-Topic style corporate altar. But while the branding and commodification of horror villains is nothing new, in no other franchise is it more palpable than with the “Child’s Play” films, which began as a sharp, pointed satire of consumer culture, and have devolved into the same commercialized sludge they once decried.
The first film, simply titled “Child’s Play” was released in 1988. It tells the story of newly widowed mother Karen Barclay and her six-year-old son Andy. Andy is a devoted fan of the mega-popular children’s franchise “Good Guys,” a kind of Cabbage Patch Kid/My Buddy/Care Bears analogue. When a shiny, 100 dollar talking doll is released around Andy’s birthday, Karen is so desperate to get him one that she buys one from a homeless peddler, unknowingly bringing home the new vessel for the soul of serial killer Charles lee Ray. Early on the Good Guy franchise is shown to be a multimedia blitzkrieg. There are toys, a cartoon, cereal, pajama sets, and of course, the Good Guy dolls themselves. Andy is so in love with the show that Karen feels incredibly guilty when she is unable to get it for him, and is willing to go to extreme measures to attain one, risking her job and buying a toy that she knows deep down is probably stolen. This may sound rather extreme, but anyone who survived the tickle me Elmo hysteria knows otherwise. The ubiquity and aggression of marketing pushed upon Andy makes him identify more with Chucky, his new toy, than he does with his own mother. He spends the first half of the film wearing pajamas that are identical to Chucky’s clothes and whispering to him instead of interacting with other people. After Andy’s babysitter, a close friend of Karen’s, has been pushed out of a window to her death by Chucky, Karen asks her son if he’s all right and if he would like to sleep in her bed for the night, clearly just wanting to be near him herself. Andy callously replies “No, I’m okay, I’ve got Chucky” and heads off to his own bed. The consumerist energy of this universe is so palpable that even before Chucky begins to terrorize the city, uneasiness permeates the film.
Once Chucky does get going, however, he is probably the greatest physicalization of the anti-consumerist message of the film. While his initial appearance is quite benign, and he seems pretty harmless, he is a vulgar, spiteful, unrepentant murderer with one clear goal- to take over the life of his young target by transferring his soul into his body. It would not be that much of a stretch to say that Chucky is meant to represent the corporate goal, but whether or not that’s the case, Chucky was still an engaging character with a lot of personality who hooked audiences in. Unlike most of the faceless baddies of the slasher genre, he had dialogue, a character arc, and a clear purpose. He didn’t just kill anyone who happened to be sauntering by, his victims were people who were clearly in the way of his goal or who had done them wrong in the past. Horror audiences fell in love with the pint-sized psychopath and clamored for more. Naturally, Hollywood was glad to give it to them. “Child’s Play 2” debuted in 1990, 2 years after the original, and followed the story organically. Andy has been taken away from his mother, who has been put under psychiatric care, and is sent to live with a pair of well-meaning foster parents, all while having to deal with his own post-traumatic stress. In the sequel, the anti-corporate message is hammered away even further by an opening in which the company that manufactures Chucky literally rebuilds him in an effort to sooth stockholders. They are portrayed as cold and uncaring; glad that Karen Barclay has been separated from her son and apathetic when one of their employees is electrocuted by Chucky’s pure concentrated evil. Andy also has to deal with the ubiquity of the Good Guy marketing more, encountering billboards and large printed trucks as he tries to push Chucky’s face out of his mind. The Good Guy image is so ubiquitous in this film that the final chase happens in the Good Guy factory, boxes and dolls surrounding our heroes. The sequel was well received, and Don Mancini resolved to give audiences even more.
“Child’s play 3” was released only a year after “Child’s Play 2,” and the feeling of a rushed cash-in is palpable from the script level on. While 2 had followed the steady flow of time and starred Alex Vincent, the same child actor who played Andy in the original, “Child’s Play 3” speeds up time and makes Andy a whiny, spineless teenager on his way to military school. Right off the bat this seems like Mancini is giving the audience what he thinks they want. Most horror films at the time revolved around teenagers, so why shouldn’t this one? This completely ignores the fact that the film’s non-conventional protagonists were one of the things that made the franchise unique, and that audiences were very attached to Andy as a character and were interested in how he would progress. His characterization in this installment ignores most of his early development as well. For a small child, Andy was always proactive, intelligent, and willing to defend himself. When he thinks Chucky is on the loose in the other films, he arms himself. When a Good Guy doll appears in this film, he curls up in a corner. Shouldn’t going through the foster care system make him more hardened and self-reliant? Mancini doesn’t seem to think so. Mancini also seems to think that he no longer needs to be subtle with his anti-corporate message. In an opening that is almost a carbon copy of “Child’s play 2,” the company that makes Good Guy dolls decides to yet again go back into production on the toy line, controversy be damned. While the corporate heads of “Child’s Play 2” were not exactly nuanced, they seem fair and balanced compared to the Saturday morning cartoon villains of “Child’s Play 3.” They seem so uncaring ad cold one wonders why they even got into the toy business, until their boss callously quips “The bottom line is the bottom line. What are children but consumer trainees?” After this scene however, consumerist discussion is never brought up again, quickly abandoned in favor of getting Andy a girlfriend and a stereotypical nerdy Jewish sidekick, whose only purpose seems to be to make Andy look more badass by comparison. These changes strip away much of the charm of the first two films and leave a soulless, uninteresting husk of a film that was clearly rushed into production to cash in on the success of the first sequel.
The other major problem with “Child’s Play 3” is the characterization of Chucky. Gone is the goal-oriented, efficient killer of the first two films. His replacement is a grating, meandering clown who speaks in one-liners and has no clear goals. While there was always a slight humorous element to Chucky’s character, in the previous films it simply came from the juxtaposition of his personality with his doll form. In Child’s Play 3 every sentence that comes from his moth seems to be written explicitly to be quotable or look nice in the trailers, most painfully “ Don’t fuck with the Chuck.” Similarly, while his victims in the first two films were Chucky’s targets for specific reasons and goals (in 1, because they were in his way or responsible for his mortal death, in 2, to further complicate and stigmatize Andy’s life) in 3 he kills willy-nilly with no logic or purpose. He kills a garbage man who fishes him out of the truck and the military school barber for no discernable reason, and replaces the ammunition of the paintball guns for war games with live ammunition, which he gains nothing from. It also makes no sense because the soul-transfer-voodoo plot device has been specifically stated to be a time-sensitive process in the other two films. Why would he waste several hours of precious time changing the ammunition in hundreds of guns when it doesn’t benefit him at all? Through a loophole in the soul-transfer-voodoo plot device, Chucky even loses the motivation to go after Andy, instead befriending a young African American student with the intentions of taking over his body instead. He seems particularly enthused about becoming black, for reasons that don’t make any sense, and reek of racist undertones. The film as a whole is a jumbled mess, so it’s not all Chucky’s fault, but “Child’s play 3” signaled the beginning of the end. It was panned by both critics and fans of the franchise, and the box office results were the lowest in the history of the series.
The “Child’s Play” series stagnated for seven whole years until the next installment, “Bride of Chucky,” wherein Chucky is brought back to life by his never-previously-mentioned former live-in girlfriend, Tiffany, who is quickly magicked into doll form for the pair to go on a romantic killing spree. Andy is no longer involved in the story at all, and now they need to find some never before mentioned voodoo-macGuffin-amulet to become human again. Riding on the wave of comedic horror films set off by “Scream,” “Bride of Chucky” was full of self-referential humor and call-backs to the earlier films. The plot was… well, pretty stupid, but the film seemed so willing to poke fun at itself that it was almost endearing. Interestingly, this is the first film where Chucky is the main character. He gets more screen time than the teenaged leads and the major plotline of the film is simply the development of his relationship with Tiffany. This is the film that deliberately sets Chucky up as the character to identify with. This is also the first “Child’s Play” film with absolutely no anti-consumerist undertones. No evil corporations, no commercials, no children at all. Chucky even loses his more marketing-friendly façade in favor of a more “extreme” look involving stitches and staples. Someone involved in the film must have been doing their best to avoid hypocrisy, because “Bride of Chucky” is where the real merchandising blitzkrieg began. Shopping mall staple Spencer Gifts began selling dolls and figures of the deadly doll couple, Halloween costumes were available at Party City, a soundtrack full of hard rock was on the shelves at Tower Records, and publicity stickers and buttons were everywhere. While there had been a small amount of merchandise for the previous films- usually Chucky dolls in one or two sizes, there was never anything like this. Fans of the film series ate it up. “Bride of Chucky” is still the highest grossing film in the series to date, even ignoring auxiliary markets such as video sales and other merchandise. Enjoyable or not, this is the film where the filmmakers seemed to have sold out on any social commentary and fallen into the idea of film-as-product, luring the audience in with a combination of humor and gore. Little did the fans know that the more commodity-like “Bride” would give birth to something much, much more unholy.
In 2004, Don Mancini decided it would be a good idea to take on the role of director for the next sequel, “Seed of Chucky,” a decision that proves that the originators of an idea are not always the reasons for its success. “Seed of Chucky” follows the events of “Bride of Chucky,” which ended with a dying Tiffany giving birth to a tiny, demon like doll in a sequel nudge so ridiculous it had seemed like part of the joke in “Bride”. In “Seed,” that baby doll has somehow grown up into Glenn, played by Billy Boyd, who gives the character as much sweetness as he can muster. Glenn is a gentile, nonviolent doll who yearns to know more about himself. One day, he sees Chucky and Tiffany on a promo for the film within the film, “Chucky Goes Psycho,” which has decided to use the actual dolls from the crime scene of the last film as props. Seeing that Chucky has the same “made in Japan” birthmark on his wrist ( ignoring the fact that the Good Guy factories were always shown as being in the U.S) he mails himself to the set, accidentally bringing his parents back to life with the voodoo-macguffin-amulet from the previous film. The three try their best to become a stable family, all while planning to take over the bodies of actress Jennifer Tilly (who also voices Tiffany and played her human form in “Bride”) and rapper Redman. Meanwhile, Jennifer Tilly is trying to find the balance between being taken seriously as an actress and doing what she needs to do to be cast, Tiffany is trying to quit killing to be a responsible parent, a paparazzo played by beloved cult director John Waters is trying to find dirt on Jennifer, and Glenn is trying to come to terms with his own gender identity. If that description makes the film sound like a jumbled mess, that’s because it is. There is no real narrative thru line, it’s basically “Chucky and family do stuff for 90 minutes with some cameos.” There is no anti-consumerist message, in fact, very little message at all, unless you count a tepid attempt to spoof Hollywood. This film feeds into the idea of film-as-product even more than its predecessor. The film but was clearly made for a DVD market, where the unrated version was touted out with more gore, more nudity, and a several minute long scene of Chucky masturbating to Fangoria magazine. The film is trying so hard to get butts into seats it’s a little embarrassing, with the celebrity appearances and references to other movies (there is a shot-for-shot “Shining” reference that was shown in all the trailers) and a scene where Chucky runs Brittany Spears off the road with a hummer. The addition of Glenn to the cast seems like a transparent ploy to sell more dolls, since he adds nothing to the story except an awkward metaphor for a young person struggling with gender identity. Tiffany may have come out of nowhere in “Bride of Chucky,” but she helped add to Chucky’s past and gave a new dimension to his personality- even though he is sociopathic and bloodthirsty he does seem to truly love her. Glenn just seems to be there as a reluctant foil to his parents’ murderous ways- and to give us a reason to put out brand new sets of figurines, life size dolls, plush toys, etc.
Like “Bride of Chucky” before it, this film had a bunch of tie-in merchandise, including new dolls of Chucky and Tiffany to match the design tweaks they were given for the film, dolls of Glenn, a family box set, and the aforementioned “sexy” Chucky costume. However, unlike with “Bride of Chucky,” “Seed of Chucky” was an utterly dismal failure in every sense of the word. It was panned critically, made less than half of what “Bride of Chucky” had done at the box office, and left fans of the franchise feeling so insulted that most of them refuse to even acknowledge the film as part of the “Child’s Play” Canon. At this point, the film series that had been created to skewer consumer culture and marketing to children was long gone, and it seemed like Chucky was finally dead for good until a 2013 remake was announced. While starting from scratch is definitely a noble effort, and probably the only logical thing to do after “Seed,” the fact that it seemed to be jumping on the “gritty reboot” train started by “Batman Begins” does not say much for the artistic integrity of the project, which will, as always, be written by Don Mancini and star Brad Douriff as the voice of Chucky. Only time will tell whether the next installment will go back to the series roots or give us more of the same.
Chucky isn’t the first horror villain to become a sort of ghoulish mascot like this. Freddy Krueger’s trajectory from demonic boogie man to video-game-playing, pizza-making, plush-doll-selling gremlin follows a very similar trajectory, right down to the gritty reboot released a few years ago. The villains of most long-running horror franchises have a certain charm and are well loved by fans, and if something is popular, people will figure out a way to brand and sell it. This is simply how things work in a place like Hollywood, but when the major sub textual thrust of a film series is an indictment of such callous marketing practices, it only makes the inevitable commercialization more transparent, and being able to go to buy a Chucky doll in the nearby mall makes the message of the earlier films feel a bit…hollow. But If there is anything the “Child’s Play” franchise has taught us, it’s that even a piece of product on a shelf can come to life, kill a bunch of people, and make an imprint on the pop-cultural landscape around it, so maybe there is hope for Chucky after all
In the mid-1980s, the world children inhabited was changing. Regulations of marketing to minors were relaxed, making half-hour toy commercials like “Transformers” and “My Little Pony” all the rage, and the general Reagan-era consumerism of the time was being foisted upon them. It was an era of focus groups, target ages, Cabbage Patch Kids, and “consumer trainees”. A young screenwriter named Don Mancini saw this world, and decided the best way to combat it was to rip is apart with satire-bloody, bloody satire. Thus, the “Child’s Play” franchise was born. Four sequels later, their villan, Chucky is in the slasher-baddie hall of fame alongside the likes of Freddy Kreuger and Jason Voorhees. Chucky dolls are on sale in Malls. You can buy comic books and action figures and face-shaped pillows of Chucky and the rest of his rapidly expanding evil doll family. A reboot and a video game are in the works. Come Halloween, you can even have your pick of Halloween costumes- standard or mini-skirted “sexy” version. For a series that villanized merchandising so much, chucky sure has a lot of…stuff. This is simply the way things work now; all of the former Hollywood boogeymen have been co-opted into servers of a new, hot-topic style corporate altar. But while the branding and commodification of horror villains is nothing new, in no other franchise is it more palpable than with the “Child’s Play” films, which began as a sharp, pointed satire of consumer culture, and have devolved into the same commercialized they once decried.
The first film, simply titled “Child’s Play” was released in 1988. It tells the story of newly widowed mother Karen Barclay and her six-year-old son Andy. Andy is a devoted fan of the mega-popular children’s franchise Good Guys, a kind of Cabbage Patch Kid/My Buddy/Care Bears analogue. When a shiny, 100 dollar talking doll is released around Andy’s birthday, Karen is so desperate to get him one that she buys one from a homeless peddler, unknowingly bringing home the new vessel for the soul of serial killer Charles lee Ray. Early on the Good Guy franchise is shown to be a multimedia blitzkrieg. There are toys, a cartoon, cereal, pajama sets, and of course, the Good Guy dolls themselves. Andy is so in love with the show that Karen feels incredibly guilty when she is unable to get it for him, and is willing to go to extreme measures to attain one, risking her job and buying a toy that she knows deep down is probably stolen. This may sound rather extreme, but anyone who has lived through the tickle me Elmo hysteria knows otherwise. The ubiquity and aggression of marketing pushed upon Andy makes him identify more with Chucky, his new toy, than he does with his own mother. He spends the first half of the film wearing pajamas that are identical to Chucky’s clothes and whispering to him instead of interacting with other people. After Andy’s babysitter, a close friend of Karen’s, has been pushed out of a window to her death by Chucky, Karen asks her son if he’s all right and if he would like to sleep in her bed for the night, clearly just wanting to be near him herself. Andy coldly replies “no, I’m okay, I’ve got Chucky” and heads off to his own bed. The consumerist energy of this universe is so palpable that even before chucky begins to terrorize the city, uneasiness permeates the film.
Once Chucky does get going, however, he is probably the greatest physicalization of the anti-consumerist message of the film. While his initial appearance is quite benign, and he seems pretty harmless (he is only 2 feet tall after all, what could he do?) he is a vulgar, spiteful, unrepentant murderer with one clear goal- to take over the life of his young target by transferring his soul into his body. It would not be that much of a stretch to say that Chucky is meant to represent the corporate goal, but whether or not that’s the case, Chucky was still an engaging character with a lot of personality who hooked audiences in. Unlike most of the faceless baddies of the slasher genre, he had dialogue, a character arc, and a clear purpose. He didn’t just kill anyone who happened to be sauntering by, his victims were people who were clearly in the way of his goal or who had done them wrong in the past. Horror audiences fell in love with the pint-sized psychopath and clamored for more. Naturally, Hollywood was glad to give it to them. Child’s Play 2 debuted in 1990, 2 years after the original, and followed the story naturally. Andy has been taken away from his mother, who has been put under psychiatric care, and is sent to live with a pair of well-meaning foster parents, all while having to deal with his own post-traumatic stress. In the sequel, the anti-corporate message is hammered away even further by an opening in which the company that manufactures Chucky literally rebuilds him in an effort to sooth stockholders. They are portrayed as cold and uncaring; glad that Karen Barclay has been separated from her son and apathetic when one of their employees is electrocuted by Chucky’s pure concentrated evil. Andy also has to deal with the ubiquity of the Good Guy marketing more, encountering billboards and large printed trucks as he tries to push Chucky’s face out of his mind. The good guy image is so ubiquitous in this film that the final chase happens in the Good Guy factory, boxes and dolls surrounding our heroes. The sequel was well received, and Hollywood resolved to give audiences even more.
Child’s play 3 was released only a year after child’s play 2, and the feeling of a rushed cash-in is palpable from the script level on. While 2 had followed the steady flow of time and starred Alex Vincent, the same child actor who played Andy in the original, child’s play 3 speeds up time ad makes Andy a whiny, spineless teenager on his way to military school. Right off the bat this seems like Mancini is giving the audience what he thinks they want. Most horror films at the time revolved around teenagers, so why shouldn’t ours? This completely ignores the fact that the film’s different protagonists were one of the things that made the franchise unique, and that audiences were very attached to Andy as a character and were interested in how he would progress. His characterization in this installment ignores most of his early characterization as well. For a small child, Andy was always proactive, intelligent, and willing to defend himself. When he thinks chucky is on the loose in the other films, he arms himself. When a good guy doll appears in this film, he curls up in a corner. Shouldn’t going through the foster care system make him more hardened and self-reliant? Mancini doesn’t seem to think so. Mancini aslo seems to think that he no longer needs to be subtle with his anti-consumerist message. In an opening that is strikingly similar to Child’s play 2, the company that makes good guy dolls decides to yet again go back into production on the toy line, controversy be damned. While the corporate heads of child’s play 2 were not exactly nuanced, they seem fair and balanced compared to the Saturday morning cartoon villains of child’s play 3. They seem so uncaring ad cold one wonders why they even got into the toy business, until their boss callously quips “the bottom line is the bottom line. What are children but consumer trainees?” After this scene however, consumerist discussion are never alluded to again, abandoned in favor of getting Andy a girlfriend and a stereotypical nerdy Jewish bff, whose only purpose seems to be to make Andy look more badass by comparison. These changes strip away much of the charm of the first two films and leave a soulless, uninteresting husk of a film that was clearly rushed into production to cash in on the success of the first sequel.
an image from the upcoming video game just seemed appropriate
Child’s play essay outline
Brief explanation of the genesis for the childs play series
- Common fears of dolls
- 1980s consumerism
- Relaxation of regulations regarding marketing to children
- Transformers, my little pony, cabbage patch kids etc
- Don Mancini’s script written as a dark, satirical look at the world of children’s marketing
The ubiquity of chucky today
- Dolls, action figures, pillows, comic books, costumes, a video game etc
-Thesis: While the branding and commodification of horror villains is nothing new, in no other franchise is it more palpable than with the Child’s Play films, which began as a sharp, pointed satire of consumer culture, and have devolved into the same commercialized they once decried.
Child’s play 1
Brief plot explanation
- Ubiquity of the good guy dolls as a brand
- Cereal, pajamas, toys, dolls, a cartoon, etc
- The sense of guilt and letdown Karen feels at not being able to give her child the toy he desperately wants
- Willingness to buy a stolen one from a peddler
- Andy’s extreme identification with Chucky
- The juxtaposition of the good guy image with chucky’s true nature
- Foul mouthed, selfish, petty, with a clear goal and motivation of taking over Andy’s body and life
- Chucky is the corporation
Child’s play 2
The corporation that makes good guy dolls remakes chucky in an attempt to stave off controversy and appease stockholders
- Portrayed as uncaring and merciless, willing to cover up the death of an employee and viewing the mental incarceration of Karen Barclay as a positive
- A corporate figurehead is the first person to be offed by chucky
- Marketing ubiquity of the good guy brand continues
- Trucks with the name and billboards are seen regularly
- Chucky continues to be logical and efficient in his murders
- Andy’s development is logical from the first film
Final showdown is in the factory’s assembly line, surrounded by good guy packaging and artwork to hit the point home
Child’s play 3
- Only a year between this anc child’s play 2
- Feels extremely rushed and lackluster
Chucky brought back to life by the corporation
Even less subtlety
“the bottom line is the bottom line”
“what are children but consumer trainees?”
- Virtually the same opening as child’s play 2
- After that, however, the anti-consumer plot is never picked up again in the franchise
Plot focuses on a now teenaged Andy in military school
- Andy no longer competent or proactive, a complete derailment of his character
Devolution of chucky
- No longer after Andy
- Kills willy-nilly with no goal or purpose
- Spouts one liners, something he never did before
- “don’t fuck with the chuck”
- Kills people in needlessly prolonged, ineffectual ways
Peters out into a lackluster ending
Bride of Chucky
- Riding the wave of Scream influenced, self referential horror-comdey
- Andy no longer involved at all
- No references to consumerism, marketing, or children at all
- Upped the violence and sexual content
- Chucky and his bride tiffany are very clearly the protagonists
- The film focuses on their relationship
- Chucky sports more “extreme” look which negates half of his former hiding-in-plain-sight appeal
- Ends with obvious sequel bait
- Silly, but overall campy and fun
- Highest grossing film in the franchise
- Beginning of the merchandising blitzkrieg
- Costumes, dolls, trinkets at spencer gifts
Seed of chucky
- No mention of consumer culture at all
-Marketed with an unrated DVD that played up its salaciousness
- Nudity, sexual content, extra violence etc
- Guest parts played by celebrities like Redman and John Waters
- Added yet another doll character- Glenn, chucky’s son
- A large portion of the film revolves around Glenn questioning his gender identity, which has very little payoff
- At least partly motivated by a desire to sell more dolls
- Chucky and Tiffany also given slightly revamped looks
- Many references to other, better horror movies
- Self-referential to the point of being intolerable
- Screenwriter Don Mancini’s directorial debut, evidence that he was not the only reason the films were successful
- Dismally received by both critics and fans alike, yet toys and figures of this permutation were still made and sold
- Following the trend of the 2000s, the producers and screenwriters have promised a “dark, gritty reboot” a la “Batman Begins”
Conclusion
- Brief note on the commodification of other villains like Freddy Kreuger and Leatherface
- The child’s play franchise gives this an even more transparent edge, since it shed its anti-consumerist themes and good storytelling in the interest of sales and, ironically, selling dolls.
Warning: Spoliers
“Mahou Shoujo” is a genre that has existed in anime (Japanese animation) since the early 90s. Literally translating to Magical Girl, it has been around since sailor moon. Now, 25 years later, the genre has stagnated into pink-covered, toy-selling drivel. Enter “Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica”( roughly translated, “Magical Girl Madoka of the Magus”), an anime that looks like every other magical girl show, but dives deep into the philosophical and ethical questions of essentially becoming a super-powered child soldier. The best example of this is episode 3, “I’m Not Afraid Anymore”, in which the show transitions from light and fluffy to horrifyingly dark in seconds.
Madoka is your average middle school student. One day, she and her best friend Sayaka meet a magical stuffed-animal-like creature named Kyubey. They also meet Mami, a magical girl under contract with Kyubey. Kyubey offers to grant each girl one wish if they become magical girls who fight interdimensional beings called witches. The girls are keen to help, but Mami urges them to think long and hard before deciding.
Episode 3 begins with the girls contemplating what to wish for. Sayaka wants to heal the hospitalized boy she loves, but Mami cautions her, asking “do you really want to see him well, or do you just want to see him grateful to you?” Madoka is completely at a loss for a wish, but Mami emphasizes the importance of the decision, explaining that she wasn’t given the choice. Kyubey saved her from dying in an accident, and she now lives a life of constant danger and fear because of it. When Sayaka and Madoka encounter the opening to a witch’s dimension, they are quick to go with Mami, hoping to help. In the dimension, Madoka tells Mami that she only wants to fight alongside Mami. Feeling a sense of comfort because she’ll no longer be alone, Mami fights the witch enthusiastically. Her joy is cut short when she is beheaded by their opponent.
This is not a flimsy, she’ll-come-back-later kind of death, this is real and brutal (although not graphic). Thankfully, the anime treats this event with the gravity it deserves. The impact of this moment is intense since up until this point the show has been light and fluffy, complete with a poppy opening theme and pastel color-palette. Before, being a magical girl has seemed noble, almost glamorous, but the reality is that the characters in this show are taking on something incredibly dangerous, and there is really only one option for how it will end. Mami’s death was inevitable, and she is doomed to go unrecognized for all the people she helped to save. Only Sayaka and Madoka will mourn her. This is a bleak future to face, and the anime confronts its audience with it rather abruptly. The suddenness of it is very effective, making the audience think about the questions the show brings up.
Musings on the nature of heroism, wishes, fate, and right and wrong are weaved into the conversations without being obtrusive, and darkness simmers under the surface throughout. There is a short scene in which Kyubey offers Madoka power if she makes a contract with him. It is only in this moment that Kyubey’s smiling, unblinking, unmoving face goes from cute to unsettling. One gets the feeling that there is far more going on than what Sayaka or Madoka understand at this point.
“Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica” is a dark, gritty deconstruction of a genre that is generally all candy and sunshine. It is a surprisingly thought-provoking, masterfully written show that proves that Anime isn’t all tentacle porn and giant robots, that animation can be incredibly adult, and that television can be art. It can be hard to watch at some points, and some of the concepts may be hard to grasp, but it is a show well worth watching, and episode 3 is a wonderful example of why.
Tama, Under the Rose Artbook
A blonde, doll like girl with large blue eyes sits alone, holding a stuffed bear in the center of a small room. In any other artists hands, this would be a subject for a sweet, idyllic painting, in the hands of Japanese watercolor artist Tama, the paint peels off of crumbling walls, mice and bugs roam the walls and floor, weeds push up through the floorboards, and our subject has odd, mouth like growths on her right leg and a straight razor in her mouth to widen her smile. This is the world that Tama creates in the painting “Traumatic Event”, an evocative, almost fairy tale like image that attempts to intersect old fashioned ideas of feminine sweetness with darker imagery.
Tama’s art explores these themes very often; people are quick to compare her to more popular Japanese artist Junko Mizuno, the creator of popular art manga like Pure Trance. She also often explores the concepts of femininity with darker undertones, but while Mizuno’s art is more pop-art based, and almost psychedelic in tone, Tama’s art is much more subdued, with mottled watercolors in more restrained palettes. Another big difference between the two artists comes in the way they explore these themes. Mizuno’s female characters are primarily active, but Tama’s are almost always the victims of violence towards them, often at their own hands. The subject of “Traumatic Event” is no exception. What is this fascination with causing harm to the sweet little girl concept? Is this violence misogynistic? Not exactly, and traumatic event is a great example of why not.
In essence, Tama’s females are less real people, and more of a reflection on the concepts of femininity. They are always voiceless, doll like, with large eyes, shiny curls, and perfectly coordinated outfits. Tama seems to be deconstructing this ideal by deconstructing her subjects…literally. This is what Tama does with “Traumatic event”. The composition of the painting is similar to many portraits of mewling young girls fit for hallmark cards; it is only when one comes closer and sees the smaller details that the painting becomes dark. Tama’s use of colors that are more mottled and understated is similar to the works of fairytale artists like Arthur Rackham, and evocative of the darker undertones in children’s stories- a witch pushed into a furnace, Little Red Riding Hood gobbled up by the wolf. The little girl in the painting is blonde haired, blue eyed, clad in white, she should represent things like innocence, purity, but she is wrong, deformed. She is only able to give the viewer a smile by cutting her own face open, and the asymmetry of the mouth-like growths on her left leg continues to cause a sense of uneasiness. The painting is in fact balanced quite well, so this asymmetry is clearly very intentional.
“Traumatic Event” may not be the most dynamic painting, but there is still quite a bit going on under the surface, and it may take more than a passing glance to full absorb Tama’s intersection of sweetness and savagery.
Almost Famous (Directed by Cameron Crowe, 2000)
Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical “Almost Famous”, is indicative of the culture of rock criticism at the time not necessarily because is it a film about criticism, but because it very carefully embodies the world of a rock critic, that is to say a very small, insular world where rock music eclipses all, women are marginalized, and the rest of the world is merely a distraction.
The way that the music of this time period is treated in this film imbues rock and roll with an almost godlike importance. This is not just in the music choices for the soundtrack, but in the way they are used. A move from childhood to adolescence is prompted by The Who’s “Sparks”. William’s sister uses Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” to explain why she’s becoming a stewardess. William’s love interest Penny Lane takes her name from a Beatles song. An entire sequence revolves around the cast singing along to Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”. Music is used to tell this story just as much as dialogue or visuals. There is a sense of importance given to the music of this movie that lends itself to the idea that rock criticism is both grandiose and vital, which was at least the view of most rock critics at the time.
Virtually every character in “Almost Famous” has an enthusiasm about the music that is overwhelming, but the way that enthusiasm is displayed between genders is indicative of the differences in visibility in the field of criticism. All of the male characters in the film are musicians, critics, managers, etc. The female characters consist of William’s mother and sister, the fact checker at rolling stone (who speaks about 3 lines), and the Band Aids. Penny Lane and the other Band Aids clearly have a great deal of love for this music, why have none of them been moved to be critics? Penny clearly has very passionate feelings about rock music, and interesting philosophy behind her groupie-ism, but instead she is relegated to a manic-pixie-dream-girl love interest for William to direct his spineless, nice guy affections toward. Her own mental breakdown and suicide attempt is shone through the prism of Williams’s feelings, not hers. Williams’s sister is the one who passes down her records and love of music to William, but her opinions and ruminations on the topic are barely heard either. None of the bands they encounter have any women in them.Indeed for a film with such a relatively large female portion of the cast, the film just barely might pass the Bedchel test (a sort of feminist litmus test for films which requires that a film have at least 2 women, who talk to each other, about something other than a man), depending on how you feel about William’s mother and sister discussing Simon and Garfunkel for 2 seconds. At the time, rock criticism was mostly a boy’s club, and the films representations of women do seem to reflect that in a certain way. In this world, all of the important people are men, naturally.
The film also manages to float within a certain privileged white bubble that is indicative of the way many music critics had a certain high view of themselves, and lived in a kind of insular world. While the characters are on tour, they continue to run into the same people wherever they go, and there is a certain ignorance of the outside world. America was still reeling from the Vietnam War, feminism was gaining power as a movement, and the Black Arts Movement was in full swing as African Americans were attempting to find their identities after the civil rights movement. None of this is even referenced in the film, indeed, there is only 1 character of color in the film, Terry Chen as ben Fong-Torres, and not even a single African American extra. There were in fact, African American rock fans, but this is not their world. This world belongs to the small privileged group that is embodied by its main character- white males with no other urgent social problems to face.
This is not to say that “Almost Famous” isn’t a good film. The art department is staggeringly accurate to period, and the performances are wonderful virtually across the board. It works wonderfully as a coming of age story, but it is limited by the time and space in which it takes place from telling a story that is progressive in any really affecting ways.
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