Category: General

Where is the line? AKA “Cuddlefication of Brutality”

Where is the line…
… when the joke stops being funny?
… between cosplay and copaganda?
… between parody and promotion?
… between representation and reinforcement?
… where the successive waves of Disneyization of the Star Wars universe have blurred the lines so much that we forgot what the original represents.
That those are indeed “the baddies”.
Because if we look at the subtext here, or perhaps even the literal text, it isn’t that subtle.

Then what we have here is objectively terrible:

A foot soldier of an authoritarian and fascist empire uses a war trophy taken as spoils following the extermination of a minority population and celebrates with the unboxing of a new weapon of war.

Did the above capture the essence of it?

Ah, it’s funny, it’s goofy, it’s relatable.
And through this cuddlefication of brutality*, the line continues to blur.

When we look back, can we tell when the line has been crossed? Or is that only something we can tell in retrospect, with the benefit of hindsight?
(Do we know we’ve reached the Rubicon, or are we informed after the fact?)

Where we can say this, this is the point where we became accommodating, where we become comfortable with fascism, with the fun-loving stormtroopers and their goofy antics, where the clear delineations of the original films become blurred and muddied, cuddly and coddled.

So if this is the line, when do we step back? Can we back away? Are we already too late?

(*Perhaps I’m being dramatic? Maybe, but I don’t think so.)

The genesis for this was a cutesy stormtrooper “unboxing” video that circulated on social media, most notably the ‘Tube and the ‘Gram, with the cover that I embedded above. (There’s other similar videos up there as well.)

If you need to see the originals, you can find them on the following YouTube channel:

I had thought about directly embedding them, but decided not to based on the subject matter.

It’s possible to recognize that a lot of skill, talent, and resources went in to the production of the videos on that channel. We’re trying to address the broader impact of the spread of this content, and the underlying ideology that it supports.

This also was (one of) the reasons underlying the Not Feeling the Fourth post from a few weeks back. More on the other reason will be coming soon.

A flood is coming

A stream of consciousness flows into a river of blood
Stem this tide of violence as it rises like a flood

“What Doesn’t Die”, Anthrax, 2003

The strikethrough is because I always get the lyrics wrong in my head. 🙂 That which remains is how it sounds between my ears.

Working on the flood this morning. Realizing there is a lot of stuff sitting in drafts in various locations, and they need to be reviewed, and pushed out. This may (no, likely will) come asynchronously, and might not be related to the time of writing or publication, but we’ll try.

First up. Podcast transcripts.

More to come.

Invent your own life’s meaning

Bill Waterston is the GOAT, of course, a cartoonist whose impact reached out through the newsprint and embedded itself into the zeitgeist, across all levels of society. He achieved fantastic levels of success for his syndicated Calvin and Hobbes strip.

…and then he walked away.

But this was not without precedent. Prior to starting his strip, he had been fired as an editorial cartoonist, and had to re-invent himself as an artist practicing his craft. He took a graphic design job, worked through it while developing his strip and left it once he found where purchase with his new career.

Years later, giving a commencement speech at a college, he imparted some words of wisdom, and they’ve stuck with me over the last 10 years since I first encountered them:

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed… and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.

Bill Watterson

I tacked this up on the wall behind the monitor at the tiny cubicle the university provided the grad students when I started my PhD research. I kept it as the desktop on the same computer too, just to remind me of the goal, that the reason I was there was to do something different, to engender a change in the processes of life that had left me aimless prior to embarking on that journey.

(It had happened at least twice before, but more on those stories at some future date. Bientot!)

I had encountered this quote in the panels draw by the artist Gav at their zenpencils blog in 2013. I probably found it via a link on Slate or Twitter or some such, as the post gained some traction. The panels in question are here:

All credit to the artist. You can follow the link back to the full comic and the story behind it.

It’s remains one of the best pieces of advice that I’ve encountered in the last decade or so, and it’s stuck with me. And so, in case you haven’t heard it, or needed the reminder, I’m passing it on to you.

You can invent your own life’s meaning. It is allowed.

The perfect and the good

and as the old adage goes, well, this isn’t going to be perfect anytime soon.

I realize that certain posts may benefit (greatly!) from the inclusion of a lot of media, where possible. And that the current layout and material here is coming in at a “mid-90s” level of content creation.

That’s by design.

Or if “design” is too presumptuous, then perhaps “intention” will suffice.

Basically, the path to development comes from a lot of steps, most of which will be stumbling and faltering early on. And there are a thousand steps that go into making that path a perfectly engineered thing. Each and every one of those steps can lead to a stumble, a twisted ankle, a broken leg, or a distraction and following something shiny off into the woods. If one waits for the perfect route before stepping out, then it might not ever get released.

Even rocket companies will conduct a lot of test launches on their road to a successful liftoff. By their nature, those are highly visible, so even the misfires get widely seen.

…and this blog isn’t rocket science.

So if it’s a little rough right now, that’s fine. At the moment, the implausi.blog is an MVP. Minimal Viable Product. It has the bare minimum functionality (draft, post, edit, and email*). The rest will come, organically, evolving over time.

Hope you stick around.

[*] I think? Not entirely sure if that’s functioning correctly either.

Balenciaga AI

Since March of 2023, a virus has been loose in the mediasphere, drive by an AI art generator, and reaching across all media franchises.

Like other AIs, it is relentless, remorseless, and it will not stop until all franchises have been co-opted,

by Balenciaga.

(Of course it didn’t start with 40K, as that is a niche of a niche, but it’s meme-ification speaks to the reach and pervasiveness of the Balenciaga AI).

Know your meme has the deets. What started as a Harry Potter themed AI video on YouTube went viral, fast, and imitators doing the same for other media franchises soon followed. The full history is here. The W40K ones came a few weeks after, but seeing as they don’t normally get mainstream inclusion, their presence stood out as a marker of the pervasiveness of the spread.

What I’m not sure is why.

Is it simply the internet being the internet, or is it a PR stunt or image reclamation project after the recent cancellation controversy. Or controversies. 2022 had a rough landing for the French fashion house. But 4 months into 2023, and the image has improved, driven by a pervasive AI-driven meme.

I’m inclined to think that the first post was just the internet doing what the internet does, but is it beyond the realm of possibility to imagine a savvy team pouring some gas on the meme and helping it spread like wildfire? The inclusion of 40K is a little too nerdy for the savviest image consultant, but that could simply be fans hopping on the trend of the raging inferno.

If it was planned, then kudos. Well done.

The challenge is, as with the conspicuous non-consumption posts, is in discussing Balenciaga without promoting or spreading Balenciaga.

There are still a few more threads to tie together, and with fashion on the mind at the Met Gala, there’s more to review there as well.