Commercializing Art

Corrina Lee Leave a comment

Last Monday evening, with the Oscars already fading from memory, one of the best films of the year was released. Spike Jonze’s four-minute movie is beautifully smooth and full of captivating color. Featuring FKA Twigs dancing to the new single “Till It’s Over” by Anderson .Paak, the video’s kinetic energy is endless. It is impossible to ignore, impossible to watch only once. Every image speaks to a careful attention to detail, down to the impression of an umbrella handle that stretches into eternity. Too bad it’s an ad. Too bad it’s just another commercial urging us to buy and buy. All this artistry, wasted, by devoting it to selling the newest Apple HomePod. At least that is what some believe. But I’m not sure that this is entirely true.

Art has always had a commercial aspect and it is impossible to separate art from the practical necessities that motivates artists to make it. Mozart and Beethoven were commissioned to compose, paid to produce beauty. Yet, their concertos and sonatas are still regarded as classics. Money doesn’t invalidate the works being created. Instead, by making the creating of art valuable, money contributes to the continuous creation of new and imaginative work. Without the massive coffers of Apple, Jonze might not have been able to invest in a massive practical set or attract the talents of two brilliant artists.  Does it matter, then, that its entire premise is convincing you to buy one plastic, cylindrical speaker over another? Perhaps the video’s aesthetic beauty is enough to cover for the shallowness of its purpose. It is enough that Jonze creates imaginative visuals of an apartment stretching and lighting up in perfect tandem with the flowing music. It is enough that I have discovered the charming abilities of FKA Twigs and Anderson .Paak. It is enough that one of my favorite filmmakers, the director of Her and Being John Malkovich, has created another masterpiece that I will watch again and again until his next movie appears in theaters. Perhaps this capitalist society of ours, it is necessary to accept art however it comes.

In the end, the commercial has done its job. I have shown it to all my friends. I have found my eyes drawn to it whenever it appears: before my YouTube videos, after my favorite television shows, at the Buffalo Wild Wings.  Now, I have devoted a blog post to it, joining the numerous others singing its praises. In fact, I am complicit in spreading its touch, like a careless, flu-addled cougher. I can’t help myself. Perhaps I will never buy a HomePod. But I certainly have the product’s name ringing in my ears. Even worse I will forever associate “Till it’s Over”, Anderson .Paak, and FKA Twigs with the product. These are problems that simply arise when art is so closely associated with a clear monetary purpose. Although, I have enjoyed the video, I will always be reminded by Apple’s classic sleek white lettering that this masterpiece is for the HomePod. Mozart and Beethoven, nowadays, would have been commissioned to write the new jingle for Amazon’s Alexa. It is a dilemma that does not invalidate art, but certainly complicates our understanding of it.

When Art and Culture Clash

vle Leave a comment

Art in culture usually go hand in hand. Yet sometimes there are times when elements don’t line up, and conflict ensues. For instance: artist Barbara Kruger and the appropriation of her artwork, namely the Supreme brand.

Barbara Kruger is known for her anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian collages, full of witty platitudes and irony. During the 60’s-80’s, she developed her personal style, working with Conde Nast and other publications. Most significant is her iconic text treatment, the Futura Bold Italic font on a red box–the “inspiration” for the streetwear brand Supreme. The interesting thing is that Supreme, a cultish symbol of wealth and consumerism fraught with mostly young skaters, contradicts directly with Kruger’s feminist, subversive messages which question oppression and institutions. And yet, the brand has grown from a skate shop in NYC to a globally-recognized powerhouse, stemming from the use of the infamous “box logo” appropriated from Kruger’s artwork.

In 2013, Supreme founder James Jebbia launched a $10 million lawsuit against the brand Married to the Mob for its “Supreme Bitch” t-shirt which also appropriated the box logo style. Kruger commented in an email, “What a ridiculous clusterf*ck of totally uncool jokers. I make my work about this kind of sadly foolish farce. I’m waiting for all of them to sue me for copyright infringement.”

After years of controversy, Kruger decided to respond to Supreme, by introducing her own line of merchandise in collaboration with Volcom, featuring MTA cards, hoodies, and skateboards at Performa17 in November. Evidently, appropriation and who copies whom will remain a pertinent issue in our changing age of art and design. It is important to remain critical and conscious.

English Elitism

Fareah Fysudeen Leave a comment

We live in a culture and a world in which English is seen as the tentpole to the entire universe. It dominates spheres of social media, film, and internet interactions– if you don’t know at least a little bit of English, a whole world of knowledge and privilege are completely inaccessible to you. This Western leverage has manifested itself not in more diverse education, but the ugly opposite: A kind of linguistic elitism and exclusionism.

I recently watched an Indian film called English Vinglish where this idea plays out. The main character Shashi is a homemaker in India and runs a small sweet-making home business. She is constantly backhandedly belittled for not understanding English by her white-collar husband and academically accomplished high school daughter. She cycles between emotions of inferiority and inadequacy. Shashi gets the chance to visit New York City when her niece, who grew up in the US, is getting married here; and, in a fit of exasperation and impulse, Shashi secretly enrolls in an English class in the city before the wedding. She gains confidence and pride in herself, not just by learning English, but by defining herself apart from as well as with her family. This is a woman’s self-discovery of her worth, independence, and intelligence– but it is also a profound social commentary on the toxic way linguistic elitism has negatively affected non-Western countries.

There is a heartbreaking scene in which Shashi is trying to order some food when she first arrives at New York City. She is tripping over her words, unable to understand the pace of the words, and made to feel worthless and stupid. The impatience and maltreatment of the store clerk is explosively unjust– and why, because she cannot speak a language that is not her own? A language that she truly has no need to know? It would be an outrage to any American to even think of being disrespected in that way if we were in a foreign country.

(You can watch the clip of the scene below from YouTube)

Imagine a white man visiting a rural village in India, trying to order a coffee without speaking the local language. I’d assure you that it is highly unlikely that the store clerk would even think to treat him the way Shashi had been treated for being an influent foreigner in the movie.

It is important to realize the privilege with which we stand in this country, and to strip it down when we see ourselves misconstruing our undeserved advantages. Knowing English is not a mark of intelligence. Speaking English fluently is not a mark of education. Living in an English-speaking country does not make us better. And if we want to make all people feel welcome and included in our nation– people like Shashi, who have so much wisdom, culture, and art to offer us– then we must eradicate any notion of linguistic elitism.

If anything, I’m sure we can spare a few seconds while punching in someone’s order for coffee.

Museums

Jordan Brown Leave a comment

The University of Michigan is a large campus composed of many buildings with diverse purposes.  While the majority of the buildings on campus are used for lectures and discussions, some are there for everyone-even non university students- to use.  A good example of these is the many museums that the University has on campus.

This most popular museum on campus is the University of Michigan Museum of Art, or better known as UMMA.  Art museums are common throughout the world.  Some art museums are specific to a type or subsection of art, for example photography or sculptures. Major cities often have multiple art museums of different sizes.  Chicago has dozens of art museums, the two most popular being the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Apart from that, most of the Universities have their own art museums as well.  College art museums tend to be smaller than the others that are found in big cities.

Another popular museum at the University of Michigan is the Museum of Natural History.  The museum has exhibits that show dinosaur bones and the process of evolution. Just like art museums, there are natural history museums in most of the big cities throughout the world.  Unlike art museums, there is generally one big natural history museum per city, this could be because natural history is not up to interpretation like art is. Most of the natural history museums have the same general information with different bones and animal exhibits to show the history of that area or others in the world.  These different bones and exhibits are what make each natural history museum unique.

The University of Michigan has an archeology museum that showcases artifacts from places in history like bowls and other artifacts that people of the past used to use.  Archeology museums are more uncommon than art and natural history museums. Some very large natural history museums have an archeology section in the museum that will give guests a small taste of how people of the past used to live.  Full archaeology museums are just larger versions of the small sections in natural history museums.

The University of Michigan has a Museum of Dentistry.  This is somewhat unique, most cities do not have a dentistry museum.  Museums of trades and specific events and places are common all over the world.  These types of museums have a niche audience for people who are very interested in the topic that the museum spotlights.  For example: the Museum of Dentistry at the University of Michigan is at the School of Dentistry at the University. So this museum has its audience of people that would enjoy the museum right on campus.

Museums are wonderful places to find to new interests and to learn about a variety of topics.  There are so many different categories of museums to learn about, and small museums are great to harvest that curiosity.  College museums are great to investigate topics on a small level and form curiosities that one can apply and go to larger museums to continue looking at and discovering their interests.  The museums at the University of Michigan are no different. People should utilize them and further their interest in a variety of things from dinosaurs to paintings.

90th Academy Awards

Maggie Abell Leave a comment

While the Academy Awards are full of showy moments and cringeworthy jokes, I do love seeing great filmmaking rightfully recognized.  Last night was the 90th Oscars, and there were a lot of historic moments that made it feel like a milestone in the award.

There were a lot of firsts in the nominees and winners at yesterdays ceremony. Timothee Chalamet, the amazing 22 year old actor from the break out independent film Call Me by Your Name, had the opportunity to be the youngest Best Actor winner ever by quite a bit, with the current youngest being Adrien Brody, who won for The Pianist at 29.  Another potential record breaker was Greta Gerwig, writer and director of Lady Bird.  Her nomination alone was a first, being the only woman ever to be nominated for her directorial debut, and if she won she would’ve been the second woman to win this honor (the only one is Kathryn Bigelow who won in 2010).  Unfortunately, neither of these talents ended up winning, but it is hard to be too disappointed, because there were still a lot of amazing, historical wins.  Jordan Peele triumphed over the Best original screenplay category, being the first African American writer to ever win.  For best Adapted Screenplay, James Ivory became the oldest person ever to win an Oscar, at an astounding 89 years of age for Call Me by Your Name!  Roger Deakins has been “cursed” in a sense and has gotten a grand total of 13 nominations for Best Cinematography but has never won.  Luckily, this year he broke his streak, taking home the Oscar for Blade Runner 2049, his 14th nomination.

While there were a lot of great moments when handing out the oscars, with the plethora of first time occurrences, there were some meaningful moments in the speeches.  With an obvious highlight on the “Time’s Up” movement, many people had things to say about women in the film industry.  The fiery and delightfully weird Francis McDormand gave an empowering speech and ended it by saying “I have two words to leave with you tonight, ladies and gentlemen: inclusion rider”.  An inclusion rider is something that actors and actresses can put into their contracts that guarantees racial and gender equality on the set of movies. Adding this to her speech definitely added awareness among people not in the movie industry.  I personally didn’t know what it meant, so I googled it right when she said it, as I’m sure many people all over the world did.  Another powerful speech was Guillermo del Toro.  While giving the Best Picture speech  Del Toro stated the following: “I am an immigrant the greatest thing our art does and our industry does is to erase the lines in the sand. We should continue doing that when the world tells us to make them deeper”.  Del Torro, who was born in Mexico, won both Best Director and Best Picture.  With his wins, along with Coco winning best animated and Chile’s A Fantastic Woman winning Best Foreign Film, it was an all around beautifully triumphant night for Latin America.

Overall, I enjoy watching the Oscars.  I love seeing the little videos they make of clips from legendary movies throughout the years, I love seeing the emotions of the winners, and I love seeing the celebration of beautiful films.  While it is often cheesy and about an hour too long, for a film buff, its just something you can’t miss.    

When the Movie Is Better Than the Book

Monica Sloan Leave a comment

Let’s be honest: the book is always better than the movie. Directors never get it quite how we pictured it in our heads, or they go completely off-book altogether and we walk out of the theatre thinking, “How was that based on the book I read?” In twenty years of reading books and seeing the movie adaptations of as many of them as come to theatres, I’ve recently found only the second movie I prefer to the book: the third part of The Maze Runner trilogy, The Death Cure.

Needless to say, spoilers below!

I expected the movie to at least keep some semblance of the book, which revolved around a counter-revolution, asking readers: in a dystopian world facing a ruthless force that hoards all the resources, how much resistance is too much resistance?

There was none of that in the movie.

The counter-resistance was brushed over. A contrived cliffhanger from the previous installment drove most of the plot. A lot of logic (and lack thereof) in the zombie-infested, plague-stricken, uncivilized world was taken for granted. It was a mash of all the things that make us think books are better than their movie adaptations. But amidst the action for the sake of action, there was a shining light: Teresa.

Where the movie almost completely pushed aside the “how much resistance is too much resistance” theme, it replaced it with making Teresa a real person. Movie Teresa is a much deeper, more interesting character than Book Teresa. Movie Teresa is intelligent, clever, and wants to do what’s right, and she recognizes that sometimes, she doesn’t know how. Movie Teresa knows her limits, what she will and won’t do, what she will and won’t tolerate. Movie Teresa is motivated by logic, and it was refreshing to watch after Book Teresa (and the previous two Movie Teresas) seemed to be motivated by taking it on herself to screw up the plot for any reason, even if there seemed to be no reason for her, as a “fully-developed character,” to do so.

It wasn’t until seeing Wonder Woman last July that I realized how flat and one-dimensional our movie heroines are, and now, it’s all I can notice. The Maze Runner as a franchize didn’t have a lot going for it in terms of being likely to give a decent amount of characterization to its female characters. It’s made up of action movies, a genre that by its nature relies on plot over character, and is typically regarded as a “manly” genre. A huge majority of its characters were men, so the odds that if only one–or even half–of the characters was/were fleshed out, it wouldn’t be the two women, three if you include the main antagonist. So for what it did, especially in an area of art where strong female characters of any kind are desperately needed, I give it major points.

Normally, I’m a purist about sticking to the book. But when the book drops the ball on writing badass female characters who make themselves the subject of the story instead of an object of the plot, the movie can throw the plot off an exploding skyscraper for all I care if it can pick up the slack. So sure, Teresa was only one character out of a dozen in a wholly plot-driven narrative, but to me, the sacrifice was worth it.