Been thinking a lot about art.
In particular, art that presents a challenge.
Well, no, wait, let me start earlier.
So all of this stems from, not surprisingly, conversations on my podcasts (which I am disappointed that you aren't listening to. Unless you do. But if you don't, I'm disappointed. Also, please?) lately about foundational texts, marketing trends, and important voices in visual media.
In the mid-90s, we saw the rise of names like Joss Whedon, Kevin Williamson, Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee, Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, and more, all of whom not only changed the way media looked and sounded, but created certain metafictional trends (re: characters who are familiar with media) in narrative, but also developed a certain "cult of personality" trend with their own personal characters (it's not an accident that their personas became pop culture just as much, if not more so, as the fiction they created. It is also not an accident that those very personas led to their decline in the very same pop culture spheres).
All of this ran throughout film and television throughout the remainder of the 20th century and into the early years of the 21st century (and, notably, still are significant forces in media, even if their styles and ideas are largely relegated to certain nostalgia-based trends...even if one can argue the "Whedon" style is still utilized by Disney properties (most specifically Marvel, which is not surprising considering The Avengers was the film that stabilized that franchise), but that is another trend that is slowly(?) sliding into decline(??)), their influences felt across mediums and genres. It is worth noting, in fact it's fairly crucial, that the success of these trends is almost always preceded by other attempts that didn't land, there were more than a few meta-textual offerings in the horror world before Scream, they just didn't quite make it work, whether due to not being very good or-maybe more likely-simply being in the wrong place and/or the wrong time. (Personally, I'd take Popcorn over Scream, but most of you don't know what the former even is. And that's okay. In fact, that's so okay it is kinda the point I'm leading to eventually making.)
Self-aware Meta was undeniably in. Buffy discusses tropes and the blending of genres, just as Scream invokes the unspoken tropes of horror, Tarantino and Smith both are popularizing a certain "realistic" psycho-babble that speaks to a shared "common" experience, all of it bleeding into each other, the formulas and seasonings find their way through not only the artistic experience, but inevitably into the corporate world.
However, eventually everything looks the same. Executives bury great ideas in popularized mechanics, the machine homogenizes creativity into easily digestible bits for the consumer. Also, attitudes towards these formulas change, audiences change, creative voices grow stale. There are a huge amount of reasons for change to inevitably become necessary.
In the horror world, at least, this brings us to what is commonly referred to by the short hand of "A24 horror," or the more accurate and yet somehow even more condescending "elevated horror" or "art house horror," which is often attributed to almost any movie that is based more on performances, mood, and cinematography than the tropes, dialogue, and plot construction that generally popularized their predecessors (and provided the opportunity for subversion that allowed Whedon and the others to flourish). Again, there were attempts at this style prior to it's pop-culture success (maybe The VVitch is most likely to be considered the foundational text of that trend? Perhaps along with films like It Follows, Hereditary, The Babadook and a handful of others?), but didn't quite connect with an audience increasingly hungry for something else. But now that trend is starting to wind down, too, it seems even though many of those films are still selling well, but many of them are self-referential versions of the style.
Consider films like Skinamarink or In A Violent Nature, two esoteric extremes of the style that either connected very hard with audiences or left them befuddled and/or angry. Some people got it, others didn't, and both are valid responses to a stylistic trend that is attempting to remain in vogue, which isn't easy (especially as the style of film was already mildly polarizing from the start: the "art house" style was not as easy a sell to the majority as the "common man" subversion that dominated the mid-to-late-90s and 00s). I would argue Weapons was also a subversion that also left some cold.
I can accept that people don't necessarily "get" these films. And, please understand, it is not a "failure" to not get these films. It is 100% okay for a film to be challenging and for an audience to not be up to that challenge. It doesn't make anyone stupid or bad. My only problem is when those same audiences claim the material is "bad" because they didn't (and I have witnessed this first hand), or claim that anyone who does get it is lying (also witnessed first hand).
Today I was catching up on DC Comics' Absolute line, which is also a foundational text and is changing the face of comics, and realized that I don't get some of it. Absolute Martian Manhunter is a confounding book and, while I understand the broad story (and the art is incredible, a truly astonishing book to look at), I'm not sure I'm actually following it. Same for Absolute Green Lantern, which I'm understanding the basics, but I'm lost for half of it. I am not ashamed of this, they're surprisingly challenging books filled with esoteric ideas, spiritualism and philosophy references, and all kinds of wild shit, and they are amazing, but I have little idea what's going on. I'm not sure why I don't get it, feels like I should, and it frustrates me. But I'm not giving up on any of them (by the way, the other books-Absolute Batman, Absolute Wonder Woman, and Absolute Superman- are extraordinary titles that take on very modern social problems and they're fucking AWESOME), nor am I about to dismiss them as "garbage" because I don't understand them. But they are clearly the new trend of comics (Marvel is attempting it's own horror-based version, which I should be excited about, but it includes ideas such as "X-Men but they're Vampires," so I'm...eh?) and are connecting with audiences in a way comics haven't for a very long time (unlike film and television, which are more mainstream and constant, comics doesn't quite have the same trend-based staying power, usually resulting in periods of down time where status quo is inevitably reverted to), which is interesting because it looks more in-line with the late-stage subversive trends than a new foundation, but that may be a direct result of their esoteric idealism.
I found myself wondering if The Backrooms was possibly the next "foundational text" for horror cinema. Like other texts of it's genre, there were attempts to create adaptations of creepypastas that didn't quite land, voices emerged from the world of the "common" (now standing largely for web original creators instead of the disaffected low income geeks that created the Meta stage, or the bohemian lifestyle weirdos of the 80s, or the revolutionary thinkers of the 60s and 70s, etc) that are already started to push that envelope. I think there's a very good change Backrooms could be the beginning of the next big thing if it is A)successful and B) y'know, actually good. Maybe it needs to be both, I dunno. But at least one of those qualifiers could cause a chain reaction in which more young voices from Youtube are crafting strange new visions from online original material, hopefully without resorting to AI imagery and other shortcuts. It may not have the guerrilla filmmaking appeal that previous generations have had, considering the proliferation of technology and an increasingly tech-savvy population makes DIY filmmaking a bit easier (but not easy), but also possibly a more personal experience. I'm not saying this trend may be one we old-folks may necessarily enjoy, mind you. I'm not rooting for either direction personally, just wondering if this is the change that moves horror into the next direction. But I feel like change is coming (and not just because sociopolitical conditions are undoubtedly a breeding ground for creative change, such as with the aforementioned Absolute comics line, which features Superman setting fire to a greedy CEOs factory in an effort to strongly suggest said CEO change his business practices to ones that don't exploit the poor, and a Batman who kicks the shit out of white nationalists. Seriously, read those books) regardless, and I'm curious to see what it looks like.
Anyway, this has been on my mind for a couple weeks and I needed to something to do while I do laundry. Because I hate turning something on only to have to go outside midway through to change laundry over and shit.
Maybe tomorrow I'll get back to writing more about myself. It has been awhile since I have used this blog for its intended purpose, and it's time I try harder to get this exercise working again. But I'm doing better.
