Of monsters and animals

The Hooded Utilitarian is a comics blog that often discusses other media which have been traditionally considered "lowbrow", such as superhero movies, horror movies, space opera and TV serials. I don't like the smug tone that much of the articles and threads seem to have and I'm wary of the heavy political bias of many of the contributors, but I keep an eye on it anyway for the occasional piece about furries and other interesting insights which occasionally pop up. One of the latest articles is in fact insightful and close to the topics of my blog:
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2016/07/die-shark-die/

I've rambled before about humanity vs. nature being an outdated and misleading story archetype, and such contemporary iterations of the story just keep proving how dishonest it is as a premise. You simply can't have a story about murderous giant sharks or pythons or whatever without fake science to justify it, because in the real world very few animals actually attack humans and such attacks happen in circumstances that are either too unlucky and odd to turn into a compelling story or stuff that movies don't want to deal with. The note about the mosquito is spot on as that's actually the most deadly animal for humans by a huge margin. (I recommend the first thirty or so episodes of the podcast This Week in Parasitism for extensive coverage of that and other related issues.)

The article mostly analyzes the power dynamics displayed in that story archetype and how they relate to racism. Racism in movies is a valid concern of course, yet the parallel feels a bit contrived to me. That's the typical humanistic approach of boiling everything down to internal conflicts of the human species and considering such conflicts the only problems that matter. But the culturally enforced conflict between humans and "the rest of nature" is a huge philosophical problem with its own dignity and it is very distinct from racism, even thought some of the dynamics are similar. I long for the day media critics will realize that a racist movie and a movie portraying sharks as worthless monsters are both flat out wrong.

As an artist I see this as an ethical issue which is especially pressing for fantasy/imaginative artists of all flavors. Making monsters out of creatures which are known not to be so is unethical. When you have to make up lies in order to paint some creature or individual as the bad guy, chances are you are being an irresponsible storyteller communicating a factually wrong message about the world to your audience.

If you really have to, at least use eldritch horrors which actually evoke the shapeless inner demons we can't control. I have my issues with Lovecraft but that's the one thing he got right: sadness, despair and hardship are closer to the indescribable Great Old Ones than to a CG shark. I don't see how defeating the ridiculously fake version of animal could give anyone a real feeling of empowerment.

Matt Lindley, Azathoth, 2012

Only human characters are relatable (not)

I came about some interesting snippets from the blog of Mark Rosewater, head designer of the well know Magic: the Gathering card game. A common criticism among long time fans of the game is that as the game became more and more popular it moved away from the creative character designs and art styles found in the game's early artwork and settled on mainstream fantasy ideas which aren't really different from any other generic fantasy setting.

Adopting a mainstream style is understandable and was probably unavoidable for a game which didn't have a coherent lore from the start and grew to become one of the most popular games in the world, but other choices made by the designers don't make a lot of sense to me. For example in the game there is a kind of creatures known as "Slivers", which in their first few iterations were hive-minded insect-like creatures which granted special powers to each other where there were several of them in play.

In their most recent iteration though the art department abandoned that unique and very recognizable design, settling for a humanoid form which can't be told apart from a number of other generic humanoid monsters or even from the Eldrazi species developed in the latest expansions.

Comparing the game's current art with its early art there is an obvious attempt to represent a wider variety of human races, but the overall diversity of visuals in the game has decreased quite a lot. Now all the main storyline characters except for two are either humans or the Star Trek kind of aliens, that is humans with fancy makeup and some weird body feature. There are no more whimsical species introduced just for the sake of creativity or charmingly weird artwork such as that of Kaja and Phil Foglio, Ian Miller and a number of other early Magic artists.

Many of the creatures portrayed in early artwork didn't even feature in the game at all. Which kind of evil overlord would hire a giant bunny servant? Nowadays any marketing department would be mad about that and say it's stupid and alienates players, but actually when it happened it felt quite natural and was a big part of the aesthetic appeal of the game. It gave the impression that there was much more going on in the game's world than what was shown on the cards: they were just glimpses of a bigger picture. I feel this impression is vital in depicting a lively world as opposed to a simply coherent one, and it is something that the current practice of worldbuilding is extremely bad at with its almost exclusive focus on coherence and economy of ideas.

These are some of Rosewater's answers to questions about the change in Magic's design philosophy:

I would very much like to see some of these studies, but I guess he's talking about biased self-limiting studies such as those based on focus groups because those statements are clearly false in the general case (and the assumption that most creatures in the game must be "relatable" is frankly ridiculous, who would ever want to relate to a Sliver whatever its design?).

Characters don't need to be 99% human in order to be relatable, it all depends on the context. If we are talking about realistic psychological drama then yes, human characters are usually the most relatable. A book like Anna Karenina would be just confusing if the characters were aliens or anthropomorphic animals (even though I'm sure some fans of postmodernism would love it). But on the other hand books like Redwall or Incandescence can only work because the characters sport some degree of "otherness" from humans. The brand of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic managed to capture millions of grown ups on top of its target audience of small children simply because the characters are very endearing and relatable as simplified cartoon horses.

But even sticking to mainstream fantasy stuff: the Lord of the Rings tries to convey enough feeling of realism that it would only work well with humanlike characters. Yet The Hobbit doesn't take itself nearly as seriously and I'm quite sure it would work just as well if the hobbits were replaced by anthropomorphic rabbits or something like that. (Tolkien always denied that the concept of "hobbit" had anything to do with "rabbit", although there is plenty of evidence that he associated the two, as pointed out by Douglas A. Anderson in his annotated edition of the book.) The ever growing popularity of furry art is a clue that anthropomorphic animals may be even more relatable than humans in the right context, for example when portraying sexuality in an idealized way.

In other words we relate to believable human characters but we are also eager to relate to unbelievable non-human characters. It's character design as a whole that matters for relatability, the interplay between psychological complexity and physical design of characters.

Such interplay can't be easily translated to formulas though, so it's not surprising that it's left to individual creativity and that a corporation trying to sell a game would rather choose limiting but safe formulas. Plus there are other factors at work, like the decrepit cultural convention that grown ups must only like gritty "realistic" stuff (which usually isn't realistic at all, but feels so because it's gritty and pessimistic). Still it's always annoying for me to see "only human characters are relatable" repeated as a mantra.

On outdated myths and metaphors

An interesting reflection by artist Petar Meseldzija on the value of myths:
http://petarmeseldzija.blogspot.it/2016/04/symbols-archetypes-metaphors_16.html
I love Meseldzija's style and ideas, but I think he's a bit off the mark in this case.

The fact is the metaphors on which most classic myths were built are outdated. They were already outdated before the modern era and they are twice as outdated by now. They come from a time in which mankind considered itself at odds with the forces of nature and with its own animal nature, threatened by every insinuation he wasn't the center of everything and engaged in an eternal war against anything he didn't understand. The only desirable outcome, the only hopeful vision of the future, was the triumph of personal will which would put man in charge of everything in the universe. This kind of vision, empowering but out of touch with reality, survived well into the modern era and reached its climax in early science fiction and superhero comics, in which men or manlike entities were literally able to harness every force in the universe.

Not all mythology is like this, but most Western mythology from pre-modern times is. The tale of St.George killing the dragon, which Meseldzija chose to illustrate the article, most certainly is. It is said sometimes that the modern era has failed to replace the older Western myths with newer myths of similar stature, but I would argue that that's untrue. Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Edmond Dantès, Long John Silver, Dr. Gulliver, Don Quixote, Ikari Shinji, Harry Potter... there are plenty of modern/contemporary archetypical heroes and antiheroes whose antics are more relevant to the cultures of 2016 than any of the ancient heroes', even though modern characters don't lend themselves as easily to reinterpretation.

Now, I understand what metaphors are for, and I understand that there are some rules to the structure of compelling tales because we want tales to stimulate our mind in certain ways. It goes without saying that many myths have superb narrative value. Yet in the contemporary cultural context I fail to see the educational value of myths about courage at a spear point and monster hunting. Of course this could be a personal limitation of mine stemming from the fact I don't trust psychoanalytical theories of art. But it seems to me that most people don't find any educational value in such metaphors either, even though most people would praise them if questioned. We praise them but in practice we consider them good only for entertainment. And rightfully so, because such metaphors don't make for good mental tools to deal with the contemporary world. If you are a teenager going through troublesome times at school or in your family, or dealing with serious inner demons such as suicidal tendencies or dangerous urges, reframing your situation as that of a hero fighting the unknown will likely do more harm than good.

Needless to say my favorite interpretation of Don Quixote - a very modern myth - is that of a warning against outdated human values. Old myths are compelling, but taking their teachings seriously leads to disaster.

There is one kind of heroic figure which the messy contemporary world needs though, and it's also the least represented in Western legends: the smart, self-inquiring, nurturing culture hero. We need to develop an admiration for creative figures such as Chiron or Johnny Appleseed much more than we need to celebrate battlefield heroes such as Odysseus or St.George. We are done fearing the wilderness, demons and vengeful gods. Living in the world of 2016 is akin to stepping carefully in a desert trying to figure out first and foremost how to not run out of water and how to not get hallucinations from the stress.

Restaurant lounge exhibit

I've been invited to exhibit my paintings for a whole year in an Indian/exotic themed lounge of a restaurant in my city. The Fourier Age Avatar paintings fits perfectly with the style of the place, so I plan on leaving it there for the whole time (unless somebody buys it). I will be rotating some of the other paintings every few weeks. Right now I'm juggling the dates to make this fit with other planned exhibits and my work schedule for the Eurofurence Art Show, but I should be able to show there most of the non-commission paintings I do this year.

The place has no problem hosting nudes and slightly erotic works, which will probably come across as strange to USA furries but is not too unusual here in Europe. I just love the idea of anthro art being in public spaces like this! It makes for great conversation pieces as I've experienced multiple times by now.

The opening party went well and I even finished on the spot the last details of a painting.
 

If I had to give a reason to stubbornly prefer traditional art to digital art it would be that digital art usually lacks this kind of appeal. Even when it's meant for printing, a handmade artifact has a different feeling. One of the reasons Andrew "Android" Jones has gained a well deserved reputation as the foremost digital fine artist is that he understands very well the need for involving the public and adding an immersive, tactile feeling to the visual appeal of digital art, since image quality alone is no longer enough to impress people given the deluge of visual noise we are exposed to. Nowadays making technically impressive pictures and producing great visual ideas is relatively easy with some training, but reaching out to people and actually leaving an impression is still as hard as it has always been.