UPxPOOM brainrot

We're up to the halfway point of My Stand-In, and in honor of reaching the 6th episode I wanted to write a little about the painting hanging in Joe's room, all of its parallels, and why I think it's so interesting.

The painting in question is Gustav Klimt's 1907-8 artwork The Kiss. Klimt was a member of the Vienna Succession movement, which was interested in exploring more "edgy," non-traditional topics.

Artsper Magazine says, "The Vienna Secessionists painted 'what they shouldn’t have painted', refusing to remove sexual elements from their works. They explored the power of a delicate touch, an embrace, a kiss, a moment of violence or an erotic scene." (s/n: I think this is interesting in thinking about what the show is trying to accomplish)

Joe has a couple of other paintings/pieces of artwork in his apartment (one of a NYC street, two of deer, a couple different ones of flowers), so it's possible that this painting could have been chosen for other reasons (i.e. scale + material) as most of the other artwork is also pretty generic.

However, it might have also been chosen for a more specific reason, especially because it matches a reoccurring color scheme in the background (green & gold) that appears in other places such as Ming's condo. The production team behind this show has also been playing around with other little details in the background, such as the 2 that appears behind Joe in the most recent episode.

So if the team intended the artwork to have a more figurative meaning, I think this choice of a painting is super interesting.

Most art historians talk about how The Kiss is focused on intimacy and shows two people being passionately in love, which makes the decision to put it in the background of Joe's apartment feel cruel and almost ironic to me- I've been thinking about this a lot while watching the show.

I really like the following interpretation of the painting, though, which says "the young woman’s facial expression and closed eyes simultaneously evoke feelings of abandonment, ecstasy and delight...The lovers appear in an unbreakable embrace, yet despite the fact they are intertwined on a flowerbed they are also on the edge of an abyss, threatening to disappear forever."

I think there's something to be said about the way that Joe sometimes gives himself over to abandonment in pursuit of love and the way that he often ends up in precarious situations because of it. This painting simultaneously shows what he idealizes (passion and love), but is also a warning of what's to come (being on the precipice in terms of his relationship).

A really common through line in the show is also the way in which Joe's face is obscured- we're constantly shown him from the back or the side as a stand-in.

So another interesting thing is the way that the painting is also mimicking the show's visual language by hiding one of the figure's faces- only this time situating it as part of a more subtle detail in the background.

A final set of parallels:

Like with the painting, we get a few more examples of position match, this time with the movie poster that's hanging in Tong's office.

The first shot is great: I love the way that as Tong's business associate is walking away, the camera undergoes a change in focus where it shifts from being centered on the poster to the back of his head (the film term for this is rack focus). Then we get the line, "Be careful...There won't be a stand-in getting hurt for you like in the movies," which was such an awesome way to finish the scene.

I love that the mirroring here with the poster is so significant and intentional- there's a way throughout the series that the show's creators are using all of these cinematic techniques in order to reflect underlying conflicts, ongoing patterns in terms of things that cross over between the lives of both Joes, and different aspects of characterization. These strategies are also mirroring progressions in terms of Ming and Joe's ongoing relationship development (i.e. with painting and both actors' positioning).

This is something that's also happening on so many different levels throughout the show- in terms of the mise-en-scène (with the painting/poster and the script), costuming (color scheme), camera focus (rack), shot composition in general, and acting/blocking (shooting Joe intentionally so that we only see his back). There's some other QLs that have also played around with similar things to a noticeable degree (UWMA, We Best Love), but usually not to this level/extent, so seeing all these strategies in play here makes me really happy. I think in one way this is something that the director, Pepzi, has really mastered since her time working on Kinnporsche (especially with the way that Pete's face is intentionally obscured in early episodes).

Anyway, back to the second picture, which is from one of the conversations that Ming and Joe have with Tong while in the office. I love that the camera is positioned so that we get a partially-obscured shot of the movie poster in the adjoining room, which kind of looms in the background over the rest of their conversation (I think there's also something about the way that the top of Joe's head is cut off because of the divider, making his back the only thing that's really visible).

One last thing that I want to add here is a piece of art history terminology that I learned recently: the term mise en abyme. This is something that's possibly related (a little bit) to the way that both the painting and the poster have been used throughout the show.

Per Wikipedia:

In Western art history, mise en abyme is the technique of placing a copy of an image within itself, often in a way that suggests an infinitely recurring sequence. In film theory and literary theory, it refers to the story within a story technique.

'Mirroring' [in terms of mise en abyme] can mean repetition, similarity or even, to a certain extent, contrast. The elements thus ‘mirrored’ can refer to form (e.g. a painting within a painting) or content (e.g. a theme occurring on different levels).