alright sorry everyone because this isn’t the kind of post i usually make but there’s something driving me up the wall and i need to talk about it. it’s a rant about art being understood as a product, related to GDT’s Frankenstein and media literacy… it’s basically a stream of though written down and i don’t think i’ve even written everything i would have liked, so just to avoid clogging everyone’s dashboard i’ll just put it under the cut.
i’ve been incredibly hyped about Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein for the last few months; watching and analysing all and any content related to it (director and actors interviews, thinking pieces, reviews, theories and analysis by fans, etc). I though i had missed the chance to watch in the cinema, had resigned myself to watching it at home. And then i was lucky enough to find a local theater that still had showings and changed my whole weekend plans so i could go watch it. And just like i hoped, i absolutely loved it.
What im trying to say with all of this is i understand the love for the movie and i’m as obsessed with it as the next guy.
The thing is, tell me why, every time i engage with any related content i always have to find at least one (and often many more) comments about it needing a sequel.
Don’t get me wrong, like i said, absolutely think it’s a masterpiece and would love to see more of what Guillermo del Toro has to offer for this universe. How he’d deal with the complexities of the Creature discovering who he wants to be.
But this movie has been a love piece that has been worked on for so many years, so many attempts and changes and evolutions. The man has a journal full on inspirations, thoughts and designs with no margines left for annotations for fuck’s sake.
Why, when we get something this amazing and beautiful. Something that has clearly been created, constructed and nurtured with pure love and passion and dedication, why is the first thing that comes to people’s minds asking for more?
Are we seriously that done for as a society —so used to the capitalist impulse to consume and discard— that when we’re presented with a piece that could make us discover something new with every watch, find a different meaning, metaphor or reference, the only thing we can ask for is a shiny new one?
We have an amazing mind such as Guillermo del Toro’s, who creates so much before even making the movie, who doesn’t fear sharing his knowledge and processes so others can adapt it, who rejects the idea that the director is a mysterious genius in a glass box. Someone that refuses to let art become an utility.
And all that comes from it is just the capitalist understanding of art, a product that has been made to be consumed, to be watched. and then it can’t be cherished and understood as for what it is, but as to what can come from it. it has to be discarded and hounded for more, for new.
Going back to when i was in the cinema; we only got one trailer before the movie started, a new adaptation of Dracula, a different version of the topics that feed Frankenstein. i made a comment leaving the cinema to my friend, who so graciously adapted their schedule to come to the showing with me. i mentioned how it was of no surprise to me that media that fed from romantic pieces were making a comeback.
We live in such a detached society, an effort for a supposedly “knowledgeable and well-informed” population, that has just been turned against us and made to be the thing that leaves us both without information and connections. we’re going through new “industrial revolutions” that just prove all we have always been was a cog working in the machine, a piece considered replaceable. A moment in history where art has stopped being human expression and instead is constantly trying to be substituted by a logical process made by a machine.
Of course in such a context we’d resonate with the movement that didn’t want logic and reason, but rather emotion and feeling.
And that is what makes me question: why now that we have pieces that remind us that art is the process and the creation, that art is what makes us feel and think and resonate with others. why now that we have the chance to remember that this is what being human is all about.
Why do we just look at it as the end product and ask for more to be delivered?
