Way Overdue Essay

      In both our world and the fictional one, one constant is the human struggle to escape. Escape from problems, from people, and escape from life in general. Many people in our world find this at the bottom of a bottle, or the end of a blunt. But in the brave new world, the people find this in Soma and sex. From the outside it seems raunchy, but at the heart of it, how different is the brave new world from ours?
      Any time our world is juxtaposed with a fictional world, a lot of discussion will arise about similarities and differences. This is just about the entire basis of the zombie phenomenon with TV these days. Escapism has been an important creative output since the beginning of stories. Whether it's ancient stories of Gods saving humans and judging them, or films of generic heroes saving the girl from an evil monster, people always find enjoyment in them. Dreaming and hoping is an important part of the human experience. Brave New World explored this by creating a world where that's all anyone did - escape. Escape from feelings, from love, compassion, and empathy. It's like giving up, and taking the easy way out. You don't have to experience pain or sadness anymore, but at the same time, you don't get to experience true happiness. That's what is seen in the novel, and the odd man out is Bernard. 

       Human defects are beautiful because they create individuality. We treat individuality great because it makes us more interesting. In a coke white, test tube world this isn't beautiful. It's a mistake. It's a mathematic, cold, sharp world and there can be no round edges. Bernard makes this story so human because he's a person out of place. He tries to fit in but keep his individuality, and this struggle is what ruins him in the end.

Education, Ego, and Misconceptions

When someone mentioned how smart Lukas was today, and he replied with "No I'm not", and we got into the conversation about taking compliments and how it's seen as arrogant to be sure of yourself, one person popped into my head. And that one person's name is Kanye West. When many people hear the name, they instantly think about the bad things he's known for by the media, but not many people think of who he is as a whole and what he's created. Just listening to a few interviews of his view on the world and of course, his music, you can really get a picture of who he is and why so many people love him. He was in an interview recently where he talked about a lot of things we are currently talking about in this class, and that have to do with my masterpiece, and I just wanted to share it in the hopes that some people get their minds changed a little. A lot of the things he had to say were very interesting and thought provoking. I really do think he's one of the most important and influential creatives of this generation, just portrayed badly by the big entertainment media outlets like E! and TMZ. (blech)

Imagery, surrealism, and symbolism in film - Enemy

"Chaos is order yet undeciphered."

After hearing about Ridley Scott's fantastic Blade Runner getting a sequel not directed by him, of course my first reaction was to find out who this new director was and if he was worthy to carry on the legacy. I learned it was a man named Denis Villeneuve, a director I'm not familiar with from Canada. While searching, I found a movie that many people were ranting and raving about directed by him called Enemy. I decided to give it a try, and I was NOT dissapointed. Quite the opposite actually. It also has a lot of design elements that relate to my masterpiece, so I thought I'd give a short review of it. 

Enemy came out in 2013. I have never heard of it until now. But after watching it, I was blown away by all of the subtle themes it used both in it's writing and design that tell the story of inner turmoil between a man. (Also warning, there may be a few spoilers in here. Watch the movie first!) The basic plot of the film revolves around a history professer who finds out he had a doppelganger, and he sets out to meet this man. One major thing I noticed that flowed through the entire film was one thing.

Yellow.

In history teacher Jake's apartment, it's dark yellow and black. Outdoors and in actor Jake's apartment, it's light yellow. The lighter feels more safe, and healthy, while the dark feels dingy, and bad. The color and design used throughout the entire film helped bring the story to the forefront. This is something I am interested in working with for my masterpiece, and while it may not be film, telling stories through indirect design is a really interesting concept to me. There are many other things that help indirectly tell the story as well. History teacher Jake's hair is constantly a mess, his clothes are ill-fitting and mismatched, and look cheap. Actor Jake's clothes look expensive, he wears a watch, and his hair is always combed and styled. It's these small details that really drive this film. One other main point that really gives the film the psychological edge is spiders. (see pictures 3 and 4.) I don't want to spoil anything if you watch it and figure it out for yourself, but these spiders seen throughout the film are the main plot to the protagonist's battle with himself. He is his own enemy. The themes of lust, commitment, and mind battles are made into a fantastic thinking game with the design and symbolism in this film, and after watching it, I still wasn't totally sure if I had it all right. It really is a film that you need to pay close attention to every detail to really understand, which is something you don't get a lot in today's film industry. I highly recommend if you like a puzzling, intricate, well-made story you should watch this movie. At the end, if you still don't fully understand the bits and pieces placed in it (and that terrifying ending) to get the message across, watch this video. It helped me realize a lot of things I missed about it. Needless to say, I think the Blade Runner sequel is in good hands. 

Telling Stories Through Clothes

There are a fair amount of people who see fashion as an expensive waste of time. While you might see that $1000 coat as being insane and that anyone who buys it would be out of their mind, you or others might have no problem buying a $1000 dirtbike or gaming system. Everyone's got hobbies that mean a lot to them, and sometimes the price we have to pay for these things is just part of the game. One designer who recently had a runway show at New York Fashion Week really struck me in particular though. John Elliot + Co, a small, minimalist clothing company from L.A got their own runway show and the product was great. It really had a lot more elements to it than just the clothes it was presenting. It was an experience. The article I read about it was from right here, but I just wanted to share this because I feel like it really involved some of the things I would like to work on in the future, or in my masterpiece. (or both)

Also, his clothing can be found here!

Isaac Asimov's take on learning

I thought the interview of Isaac Asimov was eerily true to our society, with how we currently live and how we want to live. I agreed with everything he said! There's a terrible problem with technophobia in our society, and this is harming us. Of course, economically speaking, machines are taking jobs and somewhat dehumanizing the process of work, but I think that's how things will have to continue in our society and have been since the industrial revolution. Technology helps and hurts us, but the benefits far outweigh the cost. In a utopian society, everyone is happy and crime is low. A lot of crime happens because people need money to do things they love. If they could all work in fields they loved, and school was specialized for each student to learn more about the things they love, I believe we'd have so much less crime and so much less angry people in the world. No more spit in your burger at McDonalds, no more uninterested and unhelpful Best Buy employees, etc. If we had less people doing these kind of jobs and more people using their brains to continue learning even after school, we could solve the world's problems much quicker and much easier. We'd have real thinkers, creatives, scientists, etc that can follow careers they WANT to do, earn their money there, and use that for their relaxation and personal enrichment. Technology is your friend, not your enemy, and with that on our side, we could do so much more for ourselves and our species.

Designing Stories With Music

Everything has a story. The only difference between a movie and a piece of clothing or a cover of an album is that one has its story laid out for you to see, while the others are completely up for interpretation. Both are fantastic. But in this particular case, I put my design skills to use to help out some friends. A few years ago, 2 of my friends created a band and began making music. I don't play an instrument, but I was happy to help in any way I could. It wasn't until around July I was approached to make a physical copy for them. In the worldwide scene of independent music, cassettes are something of a novelty. For bands who are too small to warrant the money it takes to create a vinyl pressing, and for a world where everyone's pretty much sick of CDs, it seems that there's only one viable option left for collectors of physical music: 8̶ ̶T̶r̶a̶c̶k̶  Cassettes. Luckily, after a few days of research and a trip to the Santa Maria Electronic Parts Supermart (Rest in peace... and screw you Best Buy) I had everything I needed. They already had the basic square shaped album art done by a friend, but the rest of the J-Card was up to me. I went into photoshop and got to work on something that I thought fit the overall aesthetic and theme of the album, and worked from there. There was only a small run of 10 tapes, but they sold out and even after I had a lot of people asking for more.

Fast forward to early February, and there's a new EP on the way. This time, with more Photoshop experience under my belt, I was tasked with creating the entire album art and J-Card. It was a bit more work coming up with an idea and theme but the entire band was there to throw out ideas this time, so the aesthetic was captured. You are welcome to make your own conclusions of it. As I type this I'm sitting next to 14 blank cassette tapes, ready to be made. Despite design being only one of the many things I'm interested in pursuing, I really enjoy doing stuff like this and it's a contender up there for career choice for sure. 

also, if you want to check their album out, listen here!

Lit Analysis: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Since my topic is still pretty broad, there were a lot of choices here. One genre of storytelling that has, and always will be interesting to me is Sci-Fi. It is infinite. There are infinite ways to tell the future, while the past is done and completed. BUT, to guess the future, you have to know a little about the past. Because our society's past can help us figure out what worked and what didn't, and what kind of choices those people made with their resources. If you put this into a theoretical futuristic setting, the possibilities are endless. That said, 2 of my favorite films came into mind. 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner. Both based off books, both adapted fantastically to the big screen, both with fantastic creative visions. But at the time I was a little more interested in the themes presented in the book Blade Runner was based off of, and that is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?


1. The plot of the book begins by setting up the massive world around it, and the conditions the characters live in. It is very vague, but Earth-like at first, until you find out about World War Terminus, which destroyed almost the entire Earth, while the rich moved to Mars and the animals of earth died off. Owning animals is a luxury, that in Deckard, the main character and bounty hunter, believes keeps you in touch with your empathy of creatures. Heavy elements of sci-fi are also brought in early, with their electronic sheep that live on their roof, and the "mood alarms" that set their mood for the day, whatever they want it to be. Everything in the first few pages creates a fantastic imagery of this dystopian Earth. After a short introduction with Deckard and his obsession with making Earth more livable by having a real animal to take care of, you are introduced to the next character, John Isidore. He has been effected by the radioactive dust on earth, to the point where is is considered a "chickenhead", or someone who is not smart enough to move to Mars. These stories both continue as Deckard begins hunting down androids for money, while dealing with the dilemma of human empathy vs android empathy, and what it means to be a "human", while John befriends androids and learns that himself. Towards the end, Deckard finds a toad in the street that he later finds out to be mechanical/fake, which was the reason he set out to kill androids in the first place, to get a real animal. I believe this is the climax, because this is really where Deckards mind changes. He decides to get supplies to care for it anyway, because deep down, he understands that androids can be "human" too, sometimes even more human than the ones made of flesh and blood.

2. There were many great themes in this book, many revolving around humanism, classism, and war/violence. The extreme class difference seen by people living on Mars, as opposed to those still on earth, is apparent all around them. These people, despite being the same humans as those on earth, are seen as better, and productive members of society, while those who aren't are called "specials" and they are constantly mocked on TV. The world is in constant decay around them after the World War Terminus (I had to look this up, I was unaware of what Terminus actually meant, to which I learned it's a general end of a route, or end of something. This means that war was so extreme and nuclear, it wasn't just another WWI, WWII or WWIII, but the end-all world war.) Anyways, another large issue, arguably the main theme of the story, is what it really means to be "human." Empathy, sometimes called "human empathy", is something everyone has. That is a main point of the book. There are tests that can test your empathy to find out if you are an android or a human. The idea of a robot being unable to feel emotions, or empathy, only drones, is what many believe. They have an idea that all humans are empathetic to each other, until Deckard sees a human kill another with no remorse, while people like John entertain and befriend androids, breaking the stereotype that these androids have no feeling whatsoever. The idea of real vs. fake animals plays into this as well, because at the beginning of the story, Deckard is worried about being looked down on by his neighbors because his sheep died, and he replaced it with a very clever fake one.

3. The author's tone is that of someone who has lost hope, and is living in a desolate world. It is sad, and at the same time, a little scary. It reminisces on the past heavily with nostalgia.
a) In a giant, empty, decaying building which had once housed thousands, a single TV set
hawked its wares to an uninhabited room.
b)  the entire peninsula had chattered like a bird tree with life and opinions and complaints, and now the watchful owners had either died or migrated to a colony world.
c) Medieval plagues had manifested themselves in a similar way, in the form
of many dead rats. This plague, however, had descended from above.

4. A main allusion many made was to World War Terminus, and the times that have passed. This was used to show how much things have decayed since this war, and how these people feel living in a desolate apocalyptic wasteland. There is also a lot of imagery used in the story to convey the fact that everything is abandoned, old, and destroyed, but somehow also very technologically advanced as well. This imagery creates the perfect dystopian earth. A good example of euphemisms are when the bounty hunters are told to "retire the androids", this creates the idea that theyre simply turning off a machine, not killing a living being with rational thought. Throughout the story there is also a heavy juxtaposition between those living on earth, and those on Mars. They're treated better, given servants, and do not have to live in fear, which is almost the opposite of what's left of Earth. The animals can be seen as a metaphor for social status, as well as devotion to religion, because that is why people sought out real animals in the first place.  In a way, personification plays a role in this story as well, because many people see androids and robotic animals as "inanimate objects", while they, as well as some others, see them as people. Lastly, there is a heavy motif on humanism throughout the entire story, and the difference between them and androids.

CHARACTERIZATION
1. Direct: a) "Fine," Iran said. "I want it to work perfectly. My husband is devoted to it." She gave her
address and hung up.
b) He wished to god he had a horse, in fact
any animal. Owning and maintaining a fraud had a way of gradually demoralizing one. And
yet from a social standpoint it had to be done, given the absence of the real article. He had
therefore no choice except to continue. Even were he not to care himself, there remained his wife, and Iran did care. Very much.

Indirect: a)  "Andys can't will anything. They can't possess anything to will."
b) "I'll be okay." He shook his head, as if trying to clear it, still bewildered. "The spider Mercer
gave the chickenhead, Isidore; it probably was artificial, too. But it doesn't matter. The
electric things have their lives, too. Paltry as those lives are."

This author uses both approaches because the way you see Deckard's world, and the way he sees his world, are very different. When you hear Deckard say he's ok with the frog being artificial at the end, the reader is a bit confused. All this time Deckard has been lead to believe androids were the enemy, but in his own head, he finally began to understand why they were escaping to earth in the first place. They didn't want to be servants. Neither do humans. The direct characterization shows how others react to this, as well as their understanding of human empathy and how it affects those still on earth.

2. The syntax/diction didn't really change much throughout the story, for the most part it was always bleak and tiresome, besides a few main parts. One being when John finds android friends and finally learns how he can make friends and not be alone, and when Deckard decides androids are living things too. Both of these moments feel very upbeat and happy, especially considering the crumbling, toxic earth around them.

3. The protagonist, Deckard, is very dynamic. He begins as someone who has a strict thought on what being an empathetic human is, and he learns throughout the story why he was not really right on the subject, even to the point where he decides to retire from being an android bounty hunter.

4. I felt more like I met an entire universe than a character. Sci Fi worlds like these are so massive and filled with lore that not only do I feel like i've met a character from another universe, I felt like I could explore that universe and find more similar stories.