journeys through time
Feb. 13th, 2024 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
operasteersI've been deep diving through both fanfics from the early 2000s and comedy films from the 1920s ~ 1930s (next week we get to watch some of Howard Hawk's films, including His Girl Friday (1940) for the context of romance in screwball comedy, and god I love His Girl Friday, so I'm excited to hear more about its historical context and/or significance, alongside Bringing Up Baby (1938) which I've been meaning to watch for a while!) and it's honestly really interesting thinking about the way social, political, and even pop cultural trends affected the styles of a lot of these! Like, during my research presentation for Sherlock Jr (Buster Keaton, 1924). and The Gold Rush (Charlie Chaplin, 1925), there was a lot of super horrifying things (the trial of Arbuckle for Sherlock Jr. and the Donner Party Disaster for The Gold Rush) that really shaped how and why these films were made. It also got me thinking if the super gorey/snuff adjacent fics that I happened across a lot during the early 2000s were inspired anything by the release of the Saw franchise?
Like, there's always been gorey fics and works, don't get me wrong, even now when I go through the Devil May Cry fanfics, I'm blessed with so many artistic and beautiful fics, and there was the Hannibal series in the early 2010s, not to mention Happy Tree Friends and the whole era of slasher and exploitation films (Italy with the cannibalism exploitation films era which I need to look into! I'm super curious why that happened! Maybe Catholicism just makes you super hungry!) But the fics in particular that I'm thinking of had this very specific type of gore and feeling to them that they honestly do remind me of the style of Saw?
It could also just be a coincidence and/or a number of other things (so many things really did happen in the 2000s haha, like I remember when I was reading a bit on the background of Coyote Ugly (David McNally, 2000), it mentioned that the film has this sort of optimism that could only really be found at the turn of the century, an optimism that quickly soured when a lot of issues and events started cropping up, but the film works as an interesting time capsule for that specific bubble of time) but yes, it's been pretty interesting and nostalgic (more so in regards to the fics) exploring these.
Speaking of films, a few weeks ago I came across this movie called Freddy's Fridays (Ben J. Williams, 2023) and I thought, "oh haha how Original," but I gave it a shot because I recognized the studio and even some of the actors in it from a few other lower budget films that I've seen in passing, plus the production quality looked like it had improved from the studio's prior films, and honestly? I actually really enjoyed and maybe even fell in love with the movie (the monsters are still so incredibly unsexy, god they are just so unsexy I wish they were sexier but we can't win them all).
I think what I loved about the film (and it's by no means perfect), is how 1) it actually wasn't parodying Five Nights At Freddy's, in fact, according to the LetterBoxd reviews, it was more so parodying The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1981)? Which I haven't seen yet, but still cool, but more than anything 2) how honestly sympathetic and nuanced the film was towards its' sex worker characters? Like usually, especially with low budget horror, the sex workers get the short end of the stick, being the first to die for "breaking the rules" and all that oh so wonderful jazz. But this film treated them with dignity and even humanized them which was pleasantly shocking (an incredibly low bar to pass, honestly, but it is amazing how many films now just fail that bar so hard. Like Stagecoach's (John Ford, 1939) treatment of Dallas (Claire Trevor) still tends to be more progressive then a lot of films today) Cause, yes, spoiler, they still get killed, but it doesn't paint it as "oh well that's what they get for working their occupation" and even some of the characters parrot that, but the film gives names and identities to the sex workers that many films never really do. A lot of films just kinda go "here's extra sex worker no. 25, add her body to the pile," so seeing these sex workers have their names and histories, even if just briefly, really made an impression on me.
By no means is it the best movie, it could be improved in, god, so many ways, but I was charmed. Really and truly, I was. But I do sincerely hope for sexier monster designs, please use the budget to hire concept artists who will work with you to make sexier monster designs it will make everything so much more hotter the story might not even matter (it will but I can sometimes forgive bad stories for hot monsters).
Anyhow! In other news, I finished felting Setsunyan, who came out really cute, and maybe I'll make a crafting post regarding his progress. Also excited for my next felting projects, really want to try and incorporate armatures with them, yes. The semester hasn't been too bad homework wise, and I'll probably try to resume full time come next term, but it's been really neat writing poetry for one class, and seeing the way other students are slowly gaining confidence and insight through writing (it's like watching baby birds fly, and it's really nice!) With that, hope everyone has a safe and wonderful week, yes :v!
Like, there's always been gorey fics and works, don't get me wrong, even now when I go through the Devil May Cry fanfics, I'm blessed with so many artistic and beautiful fics, and there was the Hannibal series in the early 2010s, not to mention Happy Tree Friends and the whole era of slasher and exploitation films (Italy with the cannibalism exploitation films era which I need to look into! I'm super curious why that happened! Maybe Catholicism just makes you super hungry!) But the fics in particular that I'm thinking of had this very specific type of gore and feeling to them that they honestly do remind me of the style of Saw?
It could also just be a coincidence and/or a number of other things (so many things really did happen in the 2000s haha, like I remember when I was reading a bit on the background of Coyote Ugly (David McNally, 2000), it mentioned that the film has this sort of optimism that could only really be found at the turn of the century, an optimism that quickly soured when a lot of issues and events started cropping up, but the film works as an interesting time capsule for that specific bubble of time) but yes, it's been pretty interesting and nostalgic (more so in regards to the fics) exploring these.
Speaking of films, a few weeks ago I came across this movie called Freddy's Fridays (Ben J. Williams, 2023) and I thought, "oh haha how Original," but I gave it a shot because I recognized the studio and even some of the actors in it from a few other lower budget films that I've seen in passing, plus the production quality looked like it had improved from the studio's prior films, and honestly? I actually really enjoyed and maybe even fell in love with the movie (the monsters are still so incredibly unsexy, god they are just so unsexy I wish they were sexier but we can't win them all).
I think what I loved about the film (and it's by no means perfect), is how 1) it actually wasn't parodying Five Nights At Freddy's, in fact, according to the LetterBoxd reviews, it was more so parodying The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1981)? Which I haven't seen yet, but still cool, but more than anything 2) how honestly sympathetic and nuanced the film was towards its' sex worker characters? Like usually, especially with low budget horror, the sex workers get the short end of the stick, being the first to die for "breaking the rules" and all that oh so wonderful jazz. But this film treated them with dignity and even humanized them which was pleasantly shocking (an incredibly low bar to pass, honestly, but it is amazing how many films now just fail that bar so hard. Like Stagecoach's (John Ford, 1939) treatment of Dallas (Claire Trevor) still tends to be more progressive then a lot of films today) Cause, yes, spoiler, they still get killed, but it doesn't paint it as "oh well that's what they get for working their occupation" and even some of the characters parrot that, but the film gives names and identities to the sex workers that many films never really do. A lot of films just kinda go "here's extra sex worker no. 25, add her body to the pile," so seeing these sex workers have their names and histories, even if just briefly, really made an impression on me.
By no means is it the best movie, it could be improved in, god, so many ways, but I was charmed. Really and truly, I was. But I do sincerely hope for sexier monster designs, please use the budget to hire concept artists who will work with you to make sexier monster designs it will make everything so much more hotter the story might not even matter (it will but I can sometimes forgive bad stories for hot monsters).
Anyhow! In other news, I finished felting Setsunyan, who came out really cute, and maybe I'll make a crafting post regarding his progress. Also excited for my next felting projects, really want to try and incorporate armatures with them, yes. The semester hasn't been too bad homework wise, and I'll probably try to resume full time come next term, but it's been really neat writing poetry for one class, and seeing the way other students are slowly gaining confidence and insight through writing (it's like watching baby birds fly, and it's really nice!) With that, hope everyone has a safe and wonderful week, yes :v!
no subject
Date: 2024-02-17 11:47 pm (UTC)I laughed out loud at that last line! Then I remembered that Catholicism has symbolic cannibalism built right into it, so you might be onto something there...
Anyway, it's really interesting to consider films in their original temporal contexts, and it's not something I've really done much of, aside from the standard "that's just how it was back then." I think it would be worth doing this in the future, especially with movies that really resonate with me. Who knows what fun (and possibly disturbing) facts I might unearth!
It sounds like you're really enjoying your studies, and that's awesome! And I like your analogy of new writers and baby birds; creative expression is a wide-open sky, and it's thrilling to see others discover that in real-time. :D
the fish was jesus all along....
Date: 2024-02-28 01:14 am (UTC)and yeah! there's been a lot of films assigned in class that honestly, I probably wouldn't have even given them a second thought of before (or i probably would have just stopped at "i guess i can see why this was popular at the time" which honestly, in a lot of cases the classics usually weren't that popular at their releases, so there's that interesting stuff to look into as well) so it's really interesting reading about how they reflected a lot of the culture of their times (or tried to go against it in protest) i highly recommend giving it a try, especially for films you've resonated with (production histories are honestly Full of things, especially for the older films before certain regulations were put into place huhu)
and yes i'm really glad i have the opportunity to take these classes, they've really been eye-opening in a lot of ways ^^ YEAH IT REALLY IS like may the currents carry you so you can gain confidence little birds, soon you will be vultures and eagles with unparalleled words!!