Undercover Authorship

The above image by Tim Burton expresses the young animator's frustration at the Disney Studio's insistence on conformity and determination to force individual talent into pre-set expectations. If you wanted to work at Disney in the 1980s, then you had to obey the strict rules of what constituted the 'Disney Brand'. Burton's unique style did not suit the studio much at all (though, given that fact, he did do rather well out of them - being able to make the decidedly un-Disney shorts Vincent, Frankenweenie and Hansel And Gretel) and he eventually left to pursue his own artistic agenda. This panned out quite well for Burton himself, but also rather well for Disney in the long-run, who have made a fortune out of Nightmare Before Christmas and have repeatedly tried to entice Burton back to put his own stamp on their established properties (successfully with Alice In Wonderland, unsuccessfully with Maleficent). Another frustrated animator with artistic dreams that ran against the grain of 80's Disney was John Lasseter, who likewise left Disney to follow his own star, only to find that that star brought him right back to making money for Disney again.

In both cases, individuals with a clear artistic stamp were forced out of the studio for not conforming to the status quo and were only incorporated back into the fold once their idiosyncrasies had proven themselves out in the real world. But what about those that were left behind? The other Disney animation directors of the 1980s that managed to toe the line and produced material that the studio executives were happy with? Were they in some way less artistically-minded? Did they simply keep their heads down and get on with what they were told?

I shan't try and offer up an overview of the people at work in Disney during the decade, but what I will do is look at the films of John Musker and Ron Clements in the context of 'authorship'. When we look at their filmography, we're struck with how mainstream it appears to be - you can't find another pair of directors from this period with as successful a track record as these two. The Great Mouse Detective, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, Treasure Planet, and The Princess And The Frog - each would seem to be 'Disney movies' first and foremost, providing us with all of the things that we would expect from the studio rather than any individual person (or persons). But when we look closer we can see a pattern of elements in their films that link them into a unified whole. It's not that these elements are missing from other Disney films, but no-one else combines all of these particular elements together in the way that Musker & Clements do.

While the previous post on Burton explored the concept of authorship largely in relation to aesthetics - the look of the films - with Musker & Clements we need to focus on the narrative structure and themes to see an authorial pattern. First off, the cast of characters; Musker & Clements movies will nearly always feature a hero/heroine, a love-interest, two comical sidekicks and a villain. At first glance, this might appear to describe any Disney cast, but bear with me. The hero/heroine and love-interest are of least interest here, not only do we find them in the majority of Disney films, we also find them in 95% of all Hollywood films. The other two categories are slightly different, though. All Disney movies have comic relief characters, but Musker & Clements have a particular affinity for the 'removable double-act' - two characters whose role is mainly to communicate with one another, rather than to contribute much to the plot. We can easily take Sebastian and Flounder out of The Little Mermaid and it will have little bearing on the way the narrative pans out. The same goes for Abu and the Carpet in Aladdin, Pain and Panic in Hercules, or Louis and Ray in The Princess And The Frog. Now, of course, it's not that these characters contribute nothing to proceedings, but that their roles (if any) are largely functional and could be performed by any random character. The botched murder of baby Hercules could have been given to undifferentiated goons, Aladdin's escape from the Cave of Wonders requires a flying carpet - but there's no reason for that carpet to be a character.

Two obvious counter-examples here might be Timon and Pumbaa from The Lion King and Lumiere and Cogsworth from Beauty And The Beast, neither of which are directed by Musker & Clements. But although they are both comical double-acts, they differ from the above examples. In the first, Timon and Pumbaa are integral to the narrative; it is their philosophy to life that changes Simba in the second half of the film (it's not about their function in the story, but their personalities). In the other, the two belong to a wider cast of enchanted-object characters, Mrs. Potts most prominent among them. The dynamic is in fact a three-way one, with the more down-to-earth Potts acting as a buffer between the two in their constant bickering. Other examples of the character type - Mushu and Cri-Kee from Mulan and Meeko and Flit from Pocahontas - do serve the same function as in Musker & Clements films, but the films lack the other recurring elements (that I will discuss below).

The other character type is the villain. Now, Disney has a long tradition of famous villains - they've even become their own meta-franchise recently - but these villains are of a very particular type. Modeled mainly on James Bond bad guys, Musker & Clements villains are intelligent, sarcastic, have very specific multi-staged schemes, are obsessed with taking over whatever portion of the world they happen to inhabit (all of 'mousedom', the seas, Agrabah, the cosmos, New Orleans), and very often have some powered-up final form, like a video game boss (Ratigan and Ursula grow in size, Jafar becomes a giant snake, Hades calls upon the hired muscle of the Titans). While Gaston from Beauty And The Beast is clearly the antagonist of the film, he doesn't possess any of the above attributes. Neither does Ratcliffe from Pocahontas, Shan Yu in Mulan, Frollo in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, or Clayton from Tarzan. Once again, The Lion King seems to give us the exception - Scar fits the bill perfectly, and we have to reiterate the fact that it is not that each of these individual elements are unique to Musker & Clements, but that only they use this exact combination of elements.

But most striking device in the Musker & Clements tool-kit of animation filmmaking is not character types but a particular narrative approach; the two-goal structure. In most Hollywood films, the story is motored by the central character's desire to achieve their goal - to get the girl, to save the world, to find the treasure, to pilot the giant robot. This goal is established early in the film, and then circumstances and antagonistic characters thwart the hero/heroine's attempt to achieve this dream. But in Musker & Clements, the story is propelled by a character attempting to achieve a goal, which they do achieve at around the mid-point of the film, only to find that that goal has been transformed or replaced into a second goal, which now takes over as the focus of the story. Ariel is initially motivated to be a part of the surface world, and she achieves this goal only to have it be replaced by the more pressing goal of getting Eric to fall in love with her. Aladdin's goal in life is to become more than a thief and be a success - which the Genie makes a reality, only for the schemes of Jafar and the heart of Jasmine to take centre-stage. After finding out his true heritage, Hercules is motivated by one thing only: to become a hero. This he does by the film's second act, only for the sultry Meg to change the direction of his attentions. As is probably apparent from these descriptions, the second goal is always that of finding romance.

The Princess And The Frog is probably most overt in this respect, highlighting as its central theme the difference between what you want and what you need. The first goal is always what the character wants, a somewhat short-sighted or superficial desire. Once this has been obtained, its shortcomings become apparent (to the audience if not always the character) and so the second goal of settling down in a heterosexual relationship takes its place as the new, more worthy goal. You might want fame or money or legs, but what you need is the love of a good woman or man. As always, we could argue that The Lion King fits the Musker & Clements bill despite not being a Musker & Clements film. It has a comical double-act, a sarcastic and scheming villain and is very definitely a film of two distinct halves. But Simba has no immediate first goal. Although he certainly wants to be king (he just can't wait for it), he does not need to do anything to achieve this. It is not a goal but an eventuality. Only in the second half of the film does he develop a clear idea about what he needs to do and finds the resolve to do it.

The films of Musker & Clements allows us to see that an authorial stamp does not have to be as obvious as a particular aesthetic or overt thematic concerns, it can take the form of completely mainstream, commonly found elements (which at first appear to be no different to any other film) combined in a particular way to highlight a storytelling preference. John Musker and Ron Clements make their own films featuring comic relief characters that have little bearing on the narrative flow, witty and Machiavellian villains that tend to up the stakes at the finale, and heroes and heroines that pursue slightly selfish ends only to discover the joys of the opposite sex. But they also quite definitely make Disney films

                                                                                                                             - P. S.

Team Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas

To celebrate All Hallow's Eve, this month's post will look at the concept of authorship in relation to a Halloween favourite of many, the misleadingly titled Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas. I'm intending to start a series of posts exploring the complexities of film authorship next month, and so it seemed appropriate to use Tim Burton, the most dubious of film auteurs, as a prologue to this.

In some ways, Burton is a prime example of the initial iteration of the 'auteur', the term Francois Truffaut used to describe a film director whose personal stamp could be seen in the finished film thanks to a recurring set of stylistic and aesthetic motifs. And it's certainly true that one can often identify a Tim Burton film just by looking at it (or even just the poster, in fact). There are certain characteristics that we expect in a Burton film, an almost unconscious checklist that audiences carry in the backs of their brains when going to see one of his films.

Another reason I evoke Truffaut rather than just the general concept of 'authorship' is because, for him, one of the defining features of the Auteur is that they express their personal vision while working within the confines of the Hollywood system. Anyone can make a personal film if they're being funded by an arts council or creating a personal avant-garde piece in their home, but to achieve it while working with a team of hundreds, with studio executives and producers looking over your shoulder, insisting that you make the film as appealing to as wide an audience as possible in order to increase box office revenue - well, that takes a very clear and uncompromising vision, says Truffaut.

Because Burton is very much a Hollywood director with a clear and distinct visual stamp on his films, there would appear to be no reason to describe his authorship as 'dubious'. But this is where Nightmare Before Christmas comes in. Before writing this post, I did a quick search through some message boards and found that to this day - 21 years after the film was released - there are still people who believe that Tim Burton directed Nightmare. The mistake is easy to understand - his name's above the title, after all - but I'm always a little depressed by how little attention people pay to the credits. Do people's brains really just switch off the second the story ends? After Jack and Sally embrace and the camera pulls back, the screen goes black and there - in large white letters - is the phrase 'Directed by Henry Selick'. I'm genuinely baffled by how people can watch the film year after year, and claim to be huge fans of it, and yet not pick up on this.

But the purpose of this post is not to rant about Burton 'stealing credit' from Selick, or how the film is good only because it was directed by Selick instead of Burton (there are plenty of other people doing that on the internet), rather it is to demonstrate that the idea of authorship in film, of identifying a 'personal stamp' in a film, can be far more complicated that we might first think.

It's certainly true that Nightmare is Burton's baby; an idea for a 20 minute television special that he concocted while at Disney, alongside the original Frankenweenie, the utterly bizarre Hansel And Gretel and a host of unrealised projects (two of the most interesting of which would be Trick Or Treat and True Love). The original story and character designs were by Burton and it's here where we can most obviously identify his fingerprints - a tall willowy figure wanting to break away from the confines that society has placed on him, an inherent trait that prevents them from being able to achieve their immediate desire, a host of bizarrely proportioned creatures, architecture with funny angles and a recurring use of black and white stripes and checkerboard patterns.

But the finished film is just over 70 minutes, not 20, and Burton neither expanded the story, wrote the screenplay or directed the action himself. Although we can say that the central theme of the film and the overall aesthetic are his, the idea that any other aspect of the film belongs to Tim Burton the individual becomes a little stretched. First, the original story was adapted by Michael McDowell, whose main output has been writing episodes of horror anthology shows such as Tales From The Darkside, Monsters and Alfred Hitchcock Presents... as well as co-creating and co-writing the screenplay for Burton's Beetlejuice. The shifting of the story into a longer format was the result of McDowell, including the addition of the love story with Sally and the villain Oogie-Boogie. The screenplay itself was written by Caroline Thompson, best known for two other Burton scripts Edward Scissorhands and The Corpse Bride as well as several adaptations of children's literature.

Burton was still involved in the development of his story into full screenplay, but he had now become the 'producer leaning over the shoulder' who Truffaut considered an obstacle that had to be overcome. And we must also take into account Selick's claim that the film was largely improvised during the animation process, using Thompson's script only as a loose guideline. The story is already three-steps removed from Burton and yet, because of the core theme and aesthetics, we can still identify the piece as a Burton work.

But surely it's more accurate to just describe Burton as the 'original author' of the work - in much the same way that Dr. Seuss is the original author of The Lorax but had little to do with the expansion of the story into a feature film (for obvious reasons). Why do we credit Burton for the finished film and not just the initial source material? Part of the reason is because both McDowell and Thompson have worked with Burton before (and after). As writers they have a fairly good understanding of what boxes to tick in order to give something a 'Burton' feel. This, of course, is not authorship but rather a kind of work ethic, a shared idea originated by an individual but executed by many. What we think of as the work of Tim Burton is really the work of the Tim Burton Team, several talented people consciously evoking the expected style.

Another important point worth noting about the expansion of the story: 30 minutes of the film's runtime is taken up with songs (and that's not including reprises). Arguably the film's most important storyteller is Danny Elfman. While in a standard Disney musical, the 70 minutes would contain maybe five or six songs, Nightmare has ten. And while ordinarily the purpose of a musical number is to condense story time - the use of music in 'Part Of Your World' expresses Ariel's emotional state far more succinctly than dialogue alone could - Elfman's songs are largely about expansion. Scenes such as the town meeting or Jack's Christmas experiments could have been half the length if their subject matter were just stated through characters. This is not a criticism (it's not that the songs are 'padding'), it's to emphasise how the story is told more through music and movement than through words.

Elfman is of course a hugely significant factor in the 'Burton feel' of many films, from Beetlejuice to Batman, from Pee-wee's Big Adventure to Big Fish, and the amount of work put into the film by him seals the deal for many that Nightmare must be a Burton film. So, not only is the story the result of four other people in addition to Burton, but the atmosphere created through the soundtrack is also the result of our associating Elfman with the director rather than anything that Burton himself has done. On top of this, there is the 'look' of the film to consider. We have already discussed how the aesthetic elements of the film are recognisably that of Burton - we could take a still from any moment of the film and be able to identify it as coming from his mind. But a film is more than still images, it is about how those images flow together to create movement - the 'look' of Nightmare is just as much about cinematography (the way in which the camera interacts with what's in front of it) as it is about character design.

Selick's personal stamp is most easily seen in the cinematography of the film; the way in which the camera navigates the spaces of the scenes are what most obviously draw comparison with James And The Giant Peach and Coraline. Take the opening sequence, 'This Is Halloween', for example. A casual viewer might only see the 'Burton-ness' of the scene, seeing the curved walls and wonky corners of the streets and buildings, the colourful creatures of Halloween Town, and the atmosphere created by Elfman's song, and make connections with other early films such as Pee-wee and Beetlejuice. But a more canny spectator will look at how the camera moves through the scene, how it skirts passed the scarecrow just as the wind spins it around, how it drifts through the street as each character sings their piece, and most strikingly how it circles around the effigy that reveals itself to be Jack Skellington in his big entrance, and see the hand of Selick at work. One aspect of stop-motion animation that often gets completely taken for granted is that camera movement has to be animated as well. The camera doesn't just float through a scene as animators busily attend to the character models. The movements just described above would have had to have been created frame-by-frame in conjunction with the character animation. This is a level of elaborateness that we often find in Selick but rarely find in Burton.

As this post has already run far longer than I intended it to, I shall quickly reiterate my main point about film authorship: when we think about the look or feel of a particular director's body of work, what we are really thinking of is not a personal vision or expression by some genius individual. Rather it is a collaborative work resulting from several parties all working towards a common artistic goal, a goal that it often shaped by the individual whose name appears above the title, but which is realised by the talents of many artists. When we think about the distinctive 'Guillermo Del Toro look' what we really mean the work of Del Toro's recurring team of designers (Mike Mignola, Wayne Barlowe, etc.) and production crew (such as cinematographer Guillermo Navarro) rather than just the director himself. But much as a band will be overshadowed by their front-man/woman, a film's production crew will often be overshadowed by the single person that we associate with that particular style - even when the person had precious little to do with the actual production of the film.

Happy Halloween!

                                                                                                                             - P. S.

Real-Life Superheroes

SOME THOUGHTS ON REINVENTING YOURSELF AS A MARKETABLE ICON

The phenomenon of ‘real life superheroes’ is interesting on several levels for several reasons. We could talk about the psychology of such people and why they would want to put themselves in such high risk situations? Is it the thrill of danger? A death wish? A genuine inability to see the real world as more dangerous than the fictional worlds of comics and movies? Or we could talk about the sociological conditions that have led to these groups of people springing up now. Is it some increased juvenilesation of culture that leads to grown adults playing children’s games out in the streets of major cities? Why now and not in the middle of the seventies? What differentiates these ‘real life superheroes’ from standard vigilantes or neighbourhood watch groups? They don’t actually, after all, really have superpowers.

But rather than pursuing these kinds of cultural questions I want to look at the element of this phenomenon that most strongly resonates with my personal interests, and also speaks to something quite fundamental to the phenomenon: the decision of ordinary people to do good deeds as someone else. The fascination for me is how these people – who I actually have the utmost respect for in terms of their altruistic intentions – feel compelled to reinvent themselves as marketable icons, as distinct entities that can be differentiated from other ‘products on the shelf’ thanks to a specific look, gimmick and name.

A 'marketable icon' is a pretty vague category. I don’t mean it to be taken literally, as something designed to be tied to particular advertising strategies, but rather that it is some kind of individuated entity, distinct from all others through a particular set of visual, and sometimes conceptual, codings which are – it must be said – usually enforced by copyright laws. Mickey Mouse is clearly a marketable icon. But so too are the Universal Studio Monsters, though as characters Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster are in the public domain and exist in numerous instances, it is their 1930s and 40s incarnations that remain the marketable icon. Would Kenneth Branagh’s take on the monster really have made a particularly good action figure?

This question is actually quite important, because the benefit of a marketable icon is that it can exist in a variety of media; movies, toys, posters, t-shirts, video games, collectible cards, etc. We can probably all recognise Robert DeNiro as a distinct individual, but he’s not a marketable icon in that he cannot be successfully translated into other media in the way that Frankenstein’s monster can. The simpler the figure, the more easily translatable to different contexts it is. Cartoon characters, monsters and superheroes are the most common kind of marketable icons that we come across in our day to day lives, not least of all because the genres that these types turn up in naturally lend themselves to extending into franchises of various kinds. Few superheroes only exist in one single issue of a comic.

Ownership of a marketable icon is also important. Icons are designed to be easily read as belonging to a particular company or group. Mickey Mouse does not endorse Warner Brothers products; Spider-Man is not going to convince you to eat Kellogg’s Frosties. DC and Marvel are the two biggest owners of marketable iconic superheroes, indeed, they each make sure to spread their characters across as many mediums as possible at any given time. Whatever variations Spider-Man might take across films, cartoons, video games or action figures, he is still recognisably the same icon that appears in the original comic.

The common academic cliché surrounding superheroes is that they are the myths of today, the equivalent of Hercules’ adventures or the saga of Odysseus. This is perfectly acceptable as an explanation, that superheroes feed a basic need that we have and have had since our earliest ancestors started telling each other stories. We like to invent people who are more than human so that we can aspire to be them. But Hercules wasn’t owned by a corporation. If an ancient Greek pre-school put on a play of The Odyssey, they weren’t going to get sued by the estate of Homer. The ownership issue surrounding superheroes is precisely what defines them from previous generations of heroes. We like to think that superheroes belong to us all, but they don’t, they belong to Time-Warner and Disney.

In the HBO documentary Superheroes (sometimes known as Real-Life Superheroes), we are shown the lives of a selection of would-be heroes who don costumes each night and set out into the city streets to fight evil doers. Of course, the majority of these are slightly overweight well meaning middle-aged men who are just comic book geeks living out their dreams. The documentary draws attention to the fandom of these men (and women occasionally) in a few ways. Self-proclaimed superhero Mr. Xtreme spends his days watching episodes of Power Rangers on TV. We are given the opinions of comics legend Stan Lee on the phenomenon of real-life superheroes (he’s a little concerned, obviously). During the interviews with Lee, Mr. Xtreme and another hero, Master Legend, the camera pans across posters and action figures of various Marvel superheroes. All of these associations seem perfectly harmless, even commonsensical, until one realises that HBO is owned by Time-Warner, who also own DC comics. The references to DC heroes are surprisingly sparse. Practically non-existent, in fact. The documentary functions as reverse-propaganda; Time-Warner tells us that the phenomenon is the responsibility of Marvel – DC comics don’t inspire such nutty behaviour, blame Disney (who also owned Power Rangers when the documentary was filmed).

This continues through what is not said by the documentary. Several of the heroes during the documentary cite the rape and murder of Kitty Genovese as a prime reason for their actions; the kind of apathy that led to her death, when there were dozens of people who could have helped her, is exactly what they’re fighting against. It seems highly unlikely that any of these people knew about this 1964 event through any means other than Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel Watchmen. In that work, the somewhat imbalanced but highly morally indignant vigilante Rorschach is inspired to become an ultra-violent crime-fighter because of the Genovese murder. Though the heroes of the documentary claim to be inspired by the real life event, they are actually replicating Rorschach’s actions, recasting themselves as the character. Their inspiration for becoming real life vigilantes is not a 1964 stabbing, but a seminal comic published by DC and owned by Time-Warner.

So why reinvent yourself as Rorschach? Why decide to put on a mask, kit yourself out with a variety of home-made gadgets, call yourself an odd name and fight the good fight? Why not simply do good as yourself? It seems to me that there are two answers. Firstly, there’s the desire to transcend the boundaries of your own identity and become the heroic figures of myth, to stop being Joe Nobody and become Hercules. These actions of vigilantism and charity are not about ego (well… mostly), or about making sure that your neighbours know all about the good deeds that you do. They are about the actions themselves, doing good for good’s sake and separating it from an individual person. But there’s also a more culturally specific reasoning behind it. As has already been said, nearly all of the known superheroes are owned by major corporations. The people don’t really own these heroes, the money-men do. But by becoming the next generation of heroes, equally distinct, equally iconic, equally ‘marketable’ (not literally, but I’d be happy to own a Black Monday Society action figure set), but not owned by any of the major corporate power brokers that dictate the majority of our day to day lives. Becoming your own marketable icon allows you to distinguish yourself from the rest of society, to be an individual in the crowd, to become that transcendent icon that Spider-Man is without having to put money into Sony Pictures’ pocket.

There is a third reason, of course, one voiced by another of the documentary’s subjects: “It’s hella cool!”

                                                                     - P.S.

Depiction and Fiction: An Epilogue

As an afterthought to that post, I thought I would quickly add one more example in the form of the ‘Dreamland’ amusement park – a fictional fairground that exists within the world of Satoshi Kon’s Paprika. It was one year ago today that I first posted on the subject of Depiction and Fiction in relation to this film, as a tribute to mark the death of Kon. He has now been gone for four years and as such I find this particular moment all the more pertinent.

The story of Paprika is about a machine that allows one to enter into another person’s dreams, and so we can read the name of the park ‘Dreamland’ as a play on this. Like the rides of Pooch Island, what we have here is a fairground that exists only as a depiction, with its rides and attractions only appreciable on the aesthetic rather than experiential level. But if we look at the mascot figures appearing on the sign, the story becomes more conceptually complex.

As many of the previous posts on this subject would have pointed out, we have a multilayered complexity to the mascot figures; they are animated depictions of model depictions of fictional characters – doubly-fictional characters in the diegesis of Paprika. But eagle-eyed viewers will notice that these figures are the lead characters of Kon’s last – still unfinished – film The Dreaming Machines. The moment is designed as an inside joke, a reference to a film still in preproduction, but it turns Kon’s film into a text-within-a-text, a fictional film that the characters of Paprika might go and see.

The fact that the film will probably never be completed makes this moment all the more bittersweet – our only glimpse of Kon’s final work will always be nestled within another fiction, a depiction of a film appearing in his actual final film. This makes the end of his career, quite fittingly, a little like a cinematic ouroboros, always conceptually folding in on itself, much like the subject matter of his work.

                                                                                                                             - P.S.

Depiction And Fiction: Evaluating The Virtual

When confronted with a character or an object that only exists as a depiction, we can comprehend it on at least two levels. We can think about the thing that is being depicted – the diegetic figure or object that exists within the story-world – but we can also appreciate the depiction itself, the skill with which the person or object has been rendered by the artist. Generally speaking, we tend to appreciate the craftsmanship of the depiction rather than the thing that is being depicted. We are impressed by the skill of applying paint to canvas in order to create the sense of a three-dimensional object. The paintings of Ron English are prime examples of this. We look at a painting like Road Story and are struck by the photorealistic quality of the image. The creation of space, distance, and solidity through the capturing of light in paint is artistic craftsmanship at its height.

But it is also true that the series of figures that populate English’s composition can be aesthetically evaluated on their own terms. Each of these improvisational mash-ups of toys and objects can be considered as a work of art in and of themselves, each with their own meanings and visual appeals. The creation process of a painting for English is a complicated and unusual one. Road Story looks like a diorama because that is essentially what it is. Or was, at least. English first makes the hundreds of figures that we see here, either drawing on his ever-growing army of mutant toys or creating new ones from scratch; then he arranges them in small settings until he has the effect he desires. He then takes a photograph of the arrangement and begins the process of recreating the image on canvas – sometimes slavishly following the photograph exactly, other times making changes to light, colour or composition as he goes along.

As such, we can see a painting like Combrat House as multiple works of art simultaneously: a collection of hand-made art-objects, arranged in a specific photographic composition, and meticulously rendered in paint. The clown-featured army ‘combrats’, the multicoloured dinosaur hybrids, the gasmask wearing Mickey Mouse pilots, not to mention the layers of stratum made out of hundreds of tiny figures, could all be appreciated as artistic endeavours in themselves, juxtaposing innocent iconography with associations of violence. On top of this, the specific arrangement of these figures within the setting is a work in own right, with the particular composition creating its own effects – for instance, the vibrant orange of the gas cloud emphasises the combrat on the left hand side of the image, while the multicoloured house on the right almost blurs into the vapour trail left by the pilot Mickeys. And finally we can appreciate the application of paint to canvas in the creation of this elaborate piece of work, how the flat image creates a sense of solidity and depth. But what distinguishes this example from the paintings of Todd Schorr or Robt. Williams (discussed in previous posts) is that the idiosyncratic toy collection of Ron English actually exists in the real world. We can easily evaluate the figures separately from our evaluation of the painting itself.

But when we are faced with virtual art-objects, which only exist within the painting, can we actually evaluate the object distinct from its image? Can we see past the depiction to evaluate the artwork within the fiction? Does the virtual art-object have less validity than the real one? If we return to a Robt. Williams painting we have previously discussed, In The Land Of Retinal Delights, we can better explore this question. Looking at the Tyrannosaurus Rex toy in the background of Combrat House, we can evaluate it in almost the same way that we can with the real dinosaur toy upon which it is based (other than its tactile qualities), as well as on additional aesthetic levels specific to the depiction. So why can’t we likewise evaluate the nonexistent objects of the Williams painting in the same way? The image provides us with a collection of meticulously rendered objects that span back into the distance, each one separated from the others, each with its own distinct look. Each one has had to be invented, imagined in three-dimensions in order to be successfully rendered in the two-dimensions of the canvas. Isn’t Williams here just as much of a toy designer as English is?

If we can consider an object that only exists within a depiction, with no solid reality outside of the painting within which it appears, as an art-object in its own right then might it be possible to extend this even farther into the realms of experiences and events? Can we comprehend and evaluate a theme park attraction or a work of performance art if it only exists within a filmic or animated text? A real amusement park like Disneyland is filled with rides and mechanical marvels that depict fictional conceits (the automata of Abraham Lincoln is an impressive depiction of the real historical figure, the ghosts of the Haunted Mansion depict diegetic ghosts). But what happens when people create non-existent amusement parks, which themselves only exist as depictions?

First, let us break from ‘Depiction and Fiction’ tradition and look an example from a live-action film. In Dark Castle’s remake of The House On Haunted Hill, we are introduced to the character of Stephen Price showing reporters around his latest amusement park on the day of its grand opening. He dismisses allegations of construction problems and health and safety issues with his rides. Suddenly the elevator that the characters are riding shudders to a halt and begins to rapidly fall back to earth. Yet, rather than crashing and killing them all, the doors simply open and reveal the top floor of the ride. The elevator is part of the ride, with video screens in place of windows to create the impression of free fall. When the press get on to the actual ride, similar moments of ‘orchestrated disaster’ follow (including a rail coming loose and flinging a carriage full of dummy patrons into oblivion).

These extreme thrill-rides would of course be impossible to make in the real world (or at least, impossible to make and not get sued). Their placement within a fiction film allows director William Malone imagination to run riot without the unfortunate repercussions of reality. But we as audience members vicariously experience these rides through the film. We are none the wiser than the press regarding the elevator or broken rail and so can extra-diegetically appreciate the ride on the level that it is meant to be appreciated within the story-world.

But this example is limited to the fact that recorded imagery is (largely) tied to real-life laws of space and time. The elevator with its video-windows was built as an actual model (though not as an actual elevator) on the film set. When we look at the paintings of Pooch Island, however, we are met with a greater variety of possibilities in the fictional rides. ‘Pooch Island’ is a loose conceptual setting for the paintings of tattooist-turned-fine-artist Pooch (real name Michael Pucciarelli), a kind of nightmarish Coney Island/Disneyland seen through the spectrum of Juxtapoz Magazine. Many of these paintings depict theme park rides and attractions, but more than a recurring motif that functions within the composition of the painting, these rides can be understood in terms of their function as solid attractions.

In all of these paintings, the depicted rides have a three-dimensional logic to them – although constructing any of them in reality would be impossible without unlimited funds. Each one is impossibly high, overlooking a vast landscape that stretches far into the distance, the angles of the rails do not always guarantee that patrons will be able to remain in their seats; gigantic figures loom threateningly over the tracks and it remains unclear if they are some animatronic part of the ride or a monstrous creature waiting for the right moment to pluck passengers out of their carriages. The rides also seem to play like conveyor belts to death – often the rails lead to unavoidable obstacles to oblivion. Luckily, most of the riders are monsters, devils or skeletons. Impossibly huge and dangerous though these rides might be, we can still appreciate and evaluate them in terms of their construction and function – even though this only exists on the canvas.

What we can’t do, however, is experience these rides in the way that we can the falling elevator of House On Haunted Hill (albeit in a second-hand capacity). We can only look at Pooch’s rides as constructs, as very big and elaborate objects. Is it possible, then, to evaluate something more fleeting if it only exists as a depiction? Can we evaluate a moment of physical activity that never actually occurred?

In Masaaki Yuasa’s Mind Game, we are given a complex tapestry of works-within-works (we are often treated to dream sequences or enactments of Manga stories that the central character is writing), but one of the most striking moments – for me at least – is a brief sequence when one of the characters entertains the others in what can only be described as an amazing piece of performance art.

The film has several other moments of ‘depicted-art’, that is, works that only exist as depictions of art within the story-world. A vast and elaborate collection of art-objects brings us back to Ron English – we can appreciate the artistic merit of these objects as objects (some real, some imagined), as well as the specific way in which they have been arranged and combined to create particular compositional effects, and finally on the artistic merit of the depictions themselves.

At one point, a character creates gigantic water-balloon sculptures filled with (what turn out to be) prehistoric fish.

These works are, unlike the object collection, less likely to occur in the real world. And yet, it is still possible to imagine an artist creating these same sculptures, filling them perhaps with real fish (or models of prehistoric fish). We can therefore quite successfully entertain the thought of how such artworks would be evaluated if they were to exist in the real world. But these are still just depicted objects. What about the performance?

It begins with the character appearing dressed in a mask and a costume with water balloon attachments on each breast and groin. There are hoses connected to the back allowing these balloons to be expanded with water.

The groin balloon is filled with an increasing amount of water until it is several times the size of her, and we can make out small baby dolls swimming about inside. The balloon is clearly representative of a womb – a monstrous womb for a horde of inhuman offspring. The girl takes a bow and arrow, and pierces the balloon – essential performing a self-caesarean.

Then she drenches herself in paint and throws herself up against a makeshift sail, leaving a crude imprint of her body in a running position. She repeats this in several colours until the circular piece of cloth has been covered.

Then the others take the cloth and run around with her in the centre. As they run faster, the images begin to blur and create the effect of a phenakistascope (an effect that can’t be captured with stills). As the painted imprint figures run around her, the breast-balloons expand and expand until they finally explode, raining water and glitter down upon the participants.

If this performance had occurred in reality, I for one would have been quite blown away by it. The events that comprise the performance are all achievable within the real world and the performance makes use of the body to communicate ideas about sexuality (expanding breasts), reproduction (the baby dolls), individuality (the repeated copying of the body in different colours), and physical achievement (the accumulated effect of the printed figures creates animation of a runner – combining both proto-cinema and sport). I could easily write an analysis of this performance as a performance. But, only being a depicted performance, one that exists as the end result of several animators drawing the events, can we really evaluate it in this light?

Just as I argued that Williams’ non-existent toys were just as valid as English’s real toys on an aesthetic level, I would say that in this instance we can certainly evaluate certain aspects of this sequence as a performance. Although we cannot talk about the impressiveness of the hydro-powered outfit (as it does not exist), or the physical achievement of creating the animation by hurling a painted body against a sail (as there was no real body performing these actions), we can still understand the events as a communication about bodies being expressed through bodies. To my mind, examples such as these demonstrate that we can always look through a depiction into the fiction that it conveys and understand it on its own terms.

                                                                                                                               - P.S.