#collington

“The scenery here in Collington is not bad at all”

- Generally recognised as the state of suffering, oppression, conflict, loneliness, longing, loss, hope, and disappointment; might relate to hopes and fears for the future, based on past experiences or memories, and/or as a result of imposed physical or social factors and limitations; may also be an internal moral conflict that indefinitely continues the person's suffering, or the whole experience of the limits of being mortal.

- Toulouse-Lautrec has some good examples of Human Condition artwork, shown below. He spent a great deal of time in Parisian Brothels, immersing himself in this world and recording the lives of many of the women who he encountered in art form. However, what makes his art different is that he portrays the women not as prostitutes, but as ordinary people, recording moments of normality such as a casual conversation, rather than them at work.

'The Medical Inspection' (Lautrec, 1894)

- Kathe Kollwitz is another good example of work that shows Human Condition. She took an Expressionist approach though, her work being literally very dark and depressing, and a lot more social-politically aimed too, showing people suffering in the face of poverty, war, and hunger.

'Poverty' (Kollwitz, 1893-4)

- Sympathy and Empathy

- Sympathy: Emphasises sharing distressing feelings with the viewer, involves agreeing with some aspects of the artist's feelings and usually only tunes in to the aspects the viewer agrees with. Subjective.

- Empathy: Does not emphasise any particular types of feelings, instead emphasises understanding all of the types of feelings (grief, love, etc) with no interest in either agreeing or disagreeing, viewer usually tuning in to entire inner world of the other person, therefore usually responding more comprehensively. Objective.

- Film and Theatre

- In the early 1900's the Nickelodeon cinemas allowed large audiences to view this new form of entertainment- Films. The Nickelodeons in the USA attracted the increasing working class immigrant population from places such as southern and eastern Europe, who could afford and understand the short dramas and comedies. Through these, they could also develop an understanding of American culture, and develop a better basic knowledge of the English language by relating the caption cards to the action.

- Chaplin was a big star of the early cinema, and he managed to use his experience of being in the working class to make the film 'The Immigrant' (1917). This film is about the poor, huddled masses trying to enter the USA by boat in search of work and hopefully lots of money. Chaplin had done this himself for real in 1910, and therefore understood the motivations of his character in the film and relate to the audience who were watching the film, who had done the same as well.

- Disney's 'Steamboat Willie' (1928) animation is similar to Chaplin's film, in the way that the character that Mickey Mouse represented a character similar to Chaplin's Tramp in 'The Immigrant': getting by with what he's got until he gets the big break, and taking any work to earn some money to get by for the meantime. Mickey is also very mischievous and isn't afraid to defend himself when he needs to, even when ordered about into jobs he doesn't want, which helped distract people from the troubles of their life to laugh at the troubles of Mickey's.

- Disney and the rise of the corporate animation company

- After their success with other shorts after 'Steamboat Willie', Disney created the first animated feature-length film: 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' (1937). Over 750 artists worked on the production, and it started a new era in technical animation, as well as a commercial aspect that saw merchandise for the film on the shop shelves before the release of the film. As the Disney brand grew, and the production formula perfected, large-scale animation started to become consumer-focused, and the power of the product became very dangerous.

- Eisenstein, known for the film 'Battleship Potemkin' and auteurist approach to filmmaking, said that Disney's superficial ideology can be excused as being neutral, basically saying that animation can be excused from dealing with historical and cultural influences which could limit the purity of childish fantasies - In other words, he's saying Animation is about making a tasty cake of a world to make a simply aesthetically pleasing entertainment piece.

- This is a weird view seeing as Disney's 'Childish Fantasy' was produced out of the prejudices that ran right through the production processes of a traditionally conservative, sexist, male-driven workforce.

- Racial and Sexual stereotypes have been implemented into people's minds by the western patriarchal studio system, and have only really been challenged by the rise of independent animation works in recent decades.

- Disney still continues with this stereotyping today with the Large Eye fetish and sexual stereotypes, namely with their 'Disney Princesses' line of products (but also in other works too), which brainwash children with their need for merchandise, to look just like a beautiful princess or amazing superhero, yet these stereotypes were supposed to be in a bygone era.

- Nowadays, with characters like Bart Simpson as easily recognisable as Mickey Mouse, animation is a much more corporate form of entertainment, where the animation has to look beautiful and the concept too easy to understand, and the stereotypes and 'awesome heroics' run wild but subtly so that no real emotion, empathy or knowledge can be understood, and yet children will want it and love it with open arms.

- Auteur: A filmmaker whose films are characterised by a filmmaker's creative influence. Chaplin can be seen as one because he is instantly recognisable and can resonate with the audience. Disney doesn't really qualify as an auteur because his films, whilst having a recognisable style, relied too heavily on the fantasy formula and fairy tales, and the film's success' were also driven by merchandise and sales.

- When Disney's Fairy Tale format tired out in the 1980's, the company hit a low point. When Disney himself died, the storyboarding was inconsistently managed, until the female scriptwriter Linda Wolverton entered the scene. Her involvement in the production of 'Beauty and the Beast' (1991), the inclusion of new CG effects, but above all the change in character lead (the female character being strong and needing to rescue the male) brought the company back from the brink, and can be seen as making Wolverton an Auteur, at least for this film, for her involvement saw so many of these creative new ideas for Disney, challenging their long-implemented patriarchal structure to create something that the times could see as new, even if the Fairy Tale story and the common 'Good versus Evil' themes were still there.

References used in this post:

'The Medical Inspection' by Tolouse-Lautrec on Wikipedia, Published onto Wikipedia by 'Petrusbarbygere' on 14th April 2005, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lautrec_rue_des_moulins,_the_medical_inspection_1894.jpg , accessed 29th December 2012.

'Poverty' by Kathe Kollwitz on Slow Travel Berlin, Published onto Slow Travel Berlin by Paul Sullivan on 24th January 2010, http://www.slowtravelberlin.com/de/2010/01/24/kathe-kollwitz-museum/ , accessed 29th December 2012.

i keep on fighting, i keep on fighting.

no, i'm not turning around.

i'm standing my ground.

and i march, and i march, and i march, march march.

This is something y'all might want to listen to. Amazing song.