Before rock's just part of the past
'Cause lately it all sounds the same to me"
The Ramones - Do You Remember Rock 'N Roll Radio
___________________________________
"And if you should become too solemn
It may affect the spinal column"
Boop-oop-a-doop!
Betty Boop M.D., 1932
____________________________________
do-doo-do-do - do-do-doooo-do!
"The question is: what is a mah-na-mah-na?"
"The question is: who cares?"
The Muppet Show, 1976
____________________________________
B 3 |-| 0 |_ |) !
T 3 h f (_) + (_) r 3 0 |= 3 n + 3 r + 4 | n m 3 n + !!!
Complete with painfully pianofortified 8-bit tootling.
So is the green thing supposed to be a... tree? pedestal? demon? A demon-tree pedestal perhaps? And is it standing on a spring? Is it a bobblehead demon-tree pedestal? With a manicure? Maybe it's what Torg and Riff tried to summon back in 1997 when they punctuated the very first Sluggy Freelance strip with the optimistic line "Yes! Spam Satan!" Early webcomics had little to no plot, flitting madly from one fancy to another, a mish-mash of vampire alien cyborg ninja ghost cowboys... who all happened to find themselves inexplicably enrolled in universities, living next door to hawt chix. In the Matrix. Sure, they were pixelated, crudely drawn at best and updated whenever, and more often than not degenerated into overly-intimate public confessionals for their authors' drunken 2 a.m. use, but we readers didn't care! These were comics, you see, and they were on the web. Pictures with words, on teh internets. This ain't your daddy's Peanuts. This is cybernutz.
Watch that Betty Boop cartoon. Sure, it came two decades after Gertie the Dinosaur, but most people had barely begun to realize the potential of animation and animators gloried in the malleability of their newly-minted medium, in purposefully <-moving-> their pictures. Or watch that ridiculous Muppets sketch. Television as a concept had been around for a while, sure, but black and white TVs had only proliferated since ~1950. Starting in the '60s these began slowly being replaced by color sets but only in the '70s did these become abundant enough in the U.S. for the NBC peacock to spread its plumage reliably. Nobody knew what a "mah-na mah-na" was and nobody cared because it gave you an excuse to watch flexible, expressive figures flailing madly about in all their garish technicolor.
In 2009 The Secret of Kells earned its spot in animation's "top" lists not only for its ornate detail, integration of music and playing with perspective, but for its infectious enthusiasm for the dark ages of illuminated manuscripts, when putting colored ink to paper and encoding thoughts in letters seemed in itself an act worthy of divinity. When striving for creative immortality lent some order to a mortally chaotic world.
Expressivity.
When a medium, genre or technology is still new, you can watch creators marvel at discovering their own ability to wield such Promethean gifts. They stretch their wings. They blaze new paths. Most of those are dead ends or at best only by-ways toward a more reliable road, but one can't fault the early wave of creators on their creativity. Their sheer exuberance remains charming long after their amateurish attempts are replaced with more accomplished works. However half-baked, this sort of early persona or production can remain inspirational in defiance of its flaws. As I mentioned some years ago, whatever you think of that crackpot "Saint" Francis of Assisi, his perceived enthusiasm and dedication, his mystical performance art have encouraged a surprising number of more creative minds over the centuries.
I think this more than anything has endeared both computer games and webcomics to me. I had a few superhero comic books growing up, and also a Sega Genesis. I tried newspaper comics and hand-held games. But these more reliable media also proved forgettable. Once I discovered PC games in all their expansive, nerdy, moddable, ambitious insanity, I never looked back. Webcomics didn't just fall unwittingly into random babbling, they delighted in being diametrically opposed to the endless repetition and stagnation of sitcoms, movie sequels and newspaper unfunnies. Here at last were people willing to try something. Computers had been around for some years before they became accessible enough in the '80s for random schmoes to start programming cheesy castles with flashing paintjobs and waving banners, and lo, 'twas glorious! The internet had been around for decades before it became accessible enough in the '90s for millions of random jokers to start trolling each other on message boards, and however ludicrous that turn-of-the-millennium l33t subculture may have been, it was also a creative explosion to rival any other in human history.
Video games have suffered more than one slump during their history. The latest was arguably caused by the same broadband internet usage which made them more profitable. Accessibility quickly gives way to mass-market dilution, market manipulation through advertising and centralization and all the other evils of capitalism. However, as I said back in 2013 larger publishers' increased focus on the more exploitable and controllable consoles and mobile games may be a blessing in disguise, leaving PC games as the artsy fringe of the industry. True enough, the recent accomplishments of RPGs and simulation games hint at a revival.
Webcomics have entered their own dark age. Though the first crop was often of low quality, it could never be accused of being as dull as the more modern, toothless snowflake outpouring of politically correct "heroes" - forcibly pan-ethnic, vegan, puppy-cuddling, heterophobic, androphobic, Europhobic, neurophobic stuffed shirts. Webcomics have become (potentially) profitable, genres and marketing strategies defined, authors more focused on staking out a Patreon market share than coming up with anything interesting. So, what next?
Each novel mode of expression must outgrow its Betty Boop stage. Pretty as they are, illuminated manuscripts make for inconvenient reading and the public eventually craves more nuance than pastel muppets can provide. But to come out of the inevitable slump after a creative explosion, creators have to remember that initial excitement of flowery embossments and oscillating pixels, of expressing with one's hands, of simply being and doing in the matrix. Integrate it into the excitement of previous eras. Color television did eventually improve... after the color stopped being mandatory and became only a useful tool.
No comments:
Post a Comment