#snips talks

I'm just out of the cinema and I cannooooot believe that I've heard and seen people complain about the "Americans clapping" scene as not sensitive, and that it should have shown the bombs dropped and the damage done. I've read takes that came down to 'the film is PRAISING the bomb by refusing to show its damage' and holy shit I was bracing myself.

But not only is the clapping scene shot like the genre just switched to horror, plunging us into very interesting exploration of the mental dissonance Oppenheimer is going through at that moment... I was left wondering...

Have those critics not seen Grave of the Fireflies? Barefoot Gen? In This Corner of the World? Watched documentaries on the bombs, on hibakushas? Have they not read the Hiroshima book by John Hersey that collects horrifying first hand accounts of Hiroshima survivors?

Have they stepped into the theatre with no background understanding of the atomic bomb and the horrors it carried?

Because this entire scene, actually much of Oppenheimer's mindset post bomb drop, DEPENDS on the public's understanding of WHAT THE PEOPLE ARE CLAPPING FOR. They're clapping for their project completion, for their victory, and for unknown amount of dead people. And WE KNOW that they are clapping for some of the most horrifying shit ever. We know they're clapping the cold war and nuclear proliferation's birth.

The film relies on you understanding this! The film depends on you activating your neurons and putting 2 and 2 together.

The film treats the audience as adults who don't need to see dead civilians to EMPATHISE for those civilians. You're also meant to be alienated from these cheering scientists, just as you can't help understanding why they're cheering.

It makes sense yet it's awful. Dissonance.

If you need your hand held so bad to understand why the bomb is a great evil, no matter how necessary it might have felt, when watching a biopic, then maybe you should have stuck to Barbie only, as that film was fun but significantly less challenging.

It's all too real. In the film it's a bitch slap.

Beyond it, for us, it's the inexorable conclusion that the bomb would have been created no matter what. The moment that first paper was published, every scientist understood the A bomb as a concept was a possibility. And once that concept was out in the open, it was only a matter of time before an aggressive enough country put the effort in to create it.

As the iconic Ambessa Medarda says it in Arcane, "Weapons cannot be unmade and they are always used". Truer words, etc.

If not Oppenheimer then the Soviets first (Nazis never stood a chance, since they were making life for their jewish scientists, well... You can guess how hard), or the Brits, who knows. And with no reason to drop it on Japan if it came after the end of WWII, god knows in what setting in might have been used. We can always speculate, but the depressing ending of this film was that someone had to do the work, and the people at Los Alamos did.

Someone had to be handed the baby, and Oppenheimer was.

And yet we don't blame him for that. We understand the inexorability of progress in science. Hey, we've all seen or read Jurassic Park, right? We blame the politicians who used it, because with the finished product it was their call.

That Truman scene almost had the feeling of a little mercy. Oppie saying he's afraid he has blood on his hands, and Truman shaming him in the same breath he whipes his hands of that metaphorical blood and reassures him it's all his--all while waving a handkerchief like he took him literally.

God Gary Oldman making me write essays with his 2min appearance.

You'd run into two humans and they'd quickly clarify that no, A is human, but B is Ignish (made up the word on the spot).

Ah, so, from Igni-something?

No, Ignish and human just aren't the same thing. Clearly, an Ignish can't be mistaken for a human!

And no matter how hard you try, you can never make a single difference. They look the exact same, they have the exact same stats. MAYBE the Ignish are a little taller overall.

And you can never guess correctly and start being on pins and needles when around humanoids because fuck knows if it ain't an Ignish, and they don't like being mistaken, and you're the only person who can't seem to tell them apart!

They landed down the avenues, and though I couldn't see their ships, I could hear their music... People were panicking and running, but when they heard the music... Some kept going, but most stopped before slowly turning towards the nearest ship, docilely walking into them.

The only people who weren't affected were people with soulmates.

I could see mine across the enormous intersection, screaming, reaching for me... A poor boy with wheat blond hair whose name I called back and forgot as I woke up. Never even had a blond bf in my entire life! But there I knew him and loved him, and we were soulmates being separated by the crowds...

Then the dream cut to years later, as I was riding an open cart on railway tracks. We were going to work (manual labor). The aliens had never left, but they didn't interfere much. The only humans left were those with soulmates... But my workmates and I were all the "separated type", who don't know who or where they were. If they were even still alive. That world had no way to check for soulmates. I just inately knew this was the criteria.

We also never learned what happened to the others.

I'm not the jealous type, and in general I'm more confident in my writing than my art, even if I've had art classes since I was a kid and studied it at school, vs. writing being an 8yo hobby.

When I read someone who is clearly a superior storyteller, I get very excited. I pay more attention to the way they construct sentences, develop characters, etc. I can get so pumped that I'll drop the story and go work on my own, like it gave me a boost.

Art is the opposite. Seeing pieces that are significantly superior, it's a toss of the coin whether I'll just adore it, gawk, save it, move on... Or start feeling down on myself.

Again it's not jealousy, and this post is not an appeal for compliments. I've been practicing loads recently and I'm seeing the improvement in my art even just over the last couple of months.

I just have this tendency to *see* in vivid detail all the ways the Gorgeous Art does things I guess I think I should be able to do/wish I were already able to do/wonder if I'll ever be able to do...

And it's a downer. It's almost never motivational. I'll analyse one such piece, try to learn from it. Draw a flat, shitty pancake of a face doodle, tell myself I'm wasting my fucking time and I should stick to fic, and not draw for a day (I come back eventually).

I refuse to let that sort of feeling affect my attitude outside that though, and always make a point of sharing/saving/commenting/etc. on such pieces anyway. They're often the ones I respect the most.

Art that's gorgeous but not my style or taste never gives me that feelings.

So I guess it's envy and self pity in the end, even if dilluted.

But why do I not get it in writing or 3D?

Maybe it's got something to do with how much keener my eye is for art? Trained, educated to see, but not trained enough to do? Maybe it's because I was raised amid toxic ideas of innate ability and failed next to 'truly dedicated' students who were completely consumed by their art? Is it some personal unresolved hangups?

Maybe it's because I feel I've mastered the basics of writing, or at least there is no mystery to the craft. Reading, practicing, exercises of style, ad vitam aeternam. While art can remain baffling. How is this piece so good? Even if the artist explained I wouldn't know HOW to make it. My hand would fail my eye. Too many moving parts in my mind's eye (I need the perspective, the anatomy, the dynamic lines, the colour theory, the painting experience, the satisfactory brushes, the confidence to pull a decent piece from a rough sketch...)

Whilst writing now is only a matter of growing from sound foundations.

Art feels like the foundations are never done being set.

When I said I get it because the chocolate tastes pretty good, she hit me with "well I fucking hope so because they're destroying the entire Amazon"