Globalisation and Sustainablility

I don't know what to make of globalisation, honestly. I mean the definitions I hear, the socialist and capitalist, both leave a bad taste in my mouth. They both seem to have connotations of fascism to me. I guess I'm just new to this concept, I mean I've always somehow encountered it but no one's ever really explained it to me. Basically, from what I can understand, the general definition is of globalisation is the act of political and/or sociological influence from one nation to another, operating on a global scale. There are apparently definitions exclusive to socialists and capitalists.

The socialist definition is, and I quote, "The process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together. This process is a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural and political forces." So, from what I can gather from this, it basically means every culture applying their social, economical and political standards into one sustainable global culture. This is a very ambitious... no... naive idea. There are far too many things to consider and to eliminate in order for this idea to be successful. I mean there's the ethics of each culture for starters, because different cultures will find some things unethical whereas others won't, causing far more chaos than order. There's also the fact that different cultures succeed in terms of economical stability. Some have a very stable, and even beneficial system as opposed to others which effectively screw over the country, but there are still people that will find reasons to support their bad economy. There's also factoring in political forces, which, again, there are still people that will hold onto their political views very strongly, so expecting everyone to follow one imaginary global view is asking far too much. This goal of globalisation basically forgets that people are not only each unique individuals but also animals that will fight if there is any disharmony, whether that's regarding their views, their economy, or pretty much anything that contradicts what they stand for. That's the reason their are wars and crime in the world, and bringing all these people together would be like mixing the wrong kinds of acids, causing a lab to explode.

The capitalist definition is, "The elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result". This seems to be the definition people tend to focus on, since it relates to westernisation/americanisation. It basically eliminates any borders that block economical negotiation and exchanges between different cultures, essentially benefitting from their better economy. It's a system which has benefitted the country and its industries for years, but at what cost? Well there's advantages and disadvantages to this system. Firstly, let's just say there's a reason people here "globalisation" and immediately think of the terms "westernisation/americanisation". American culture has become the most dominant and well-known one in the world and it is because of how capitalist the country is.

One thing that brings my piss to a boil is when people start going on about "Mcdonaldsisation". It's basically a term that interprets McDonalds as a dominant symbol of America, as it's probably the most popular food chain of all time and it just happens to be from America, and it's considered a symbol of American society that often finds its way into other countries. They appear in countries all around Europe, Africa, Asia, pretty much every where, really. I still don't see what the problem is, though. I mean I'll accept the complaint that they often buy out smaller independent businesses, as does as Starbucks too, but how is McDonalds affecting society exactly? They aren't taking over every country, they're just there to give people a taste of American culture, much like how places in Briatin like Yo Sushi give people a taste of food from a different culture, and you always have the option of simply not going to one too. It's not affecting other local restaurants because they make a decent wage from tourists, and locals anyway. It's just a god damn fast food restaurant at the end of the day!

American culture has become considered by many as the ideal way of life, and it is because of the way it is portrayed by the global media. The ideal lifestyle by many different cultures is usually what american culture has deemed ideal. And I mean everything. The way they speak, the stereotypical patriotism (not just for your own country but even for America), and the typical portrayal of family life. That's not all, the television shows, movies, journalists, and video games are usually the american too, hence their global success; their portrayals of American life influences society in different cultures. Just listen to what Craig Ferguson says here:

He basically explains that being young, and stupid is considered the most ideal lifestyle, and I would add wealthy to that as well because it supports his theory on "why everything sucks". American youth is portrayed very often in the form of reality shows such as Jersey Shore, My Super Sweet 16, and America's Next Top Model, and the appeal of these shows is that idea of wealth among young people, and it glorifies the notion that young people can be successful without really doing anything of worth or benefit, and just being stupid all the time. This notion has been carried over to UK culture too, with shows like Big Brother, X Factor, and Britain's Got Talent. Not only that but many countries around the world have their own versions of these shows, because American media's glorification of success has had that strong an effect on society around the world.

There are advantages to Americanisation, though. The ideals that they often go on about but never really follow are great. Freedom of speech is one I adore, as well as equal rights to all races and genders. There is also the lesson of working hard to follow your dreams, which really contradicts the glorification of young wealthy idiots from the last paragraph (no wonder this concept if often forgotten). In terms of animation, key area I've been meaning to focus on but just sort of procrastinated, the American style of this, and hell even filmmaking, is probably the best around. Cartoons like Loony Tunes, Tom & Jerry, and Disney all have positive influences on animation around the world. Just look at how anime is often influenced by American media. Cowboy Bebop is one of the best anime series ever and it has very western connotations, within the soundtrack, the western and film noir influences, and the action. The same goes for live action cinema and its influence over there. John Woo, director of Hard Boiled, The Killer, and even went on to make Hollywood films Face/Off and Broken Arrow, is influenced by the western style of action films, and pays tribute to them constantly, while arguably ding what American action films do even better! There are times when Japanese and American styles are combined and work incredibly well together. Pacific Rim and Godzilla are two of the best kaiju movies of the past two years and they were both Hollywood films, but they were mainly influenced by Japanese movies, like Pacific Rim was influenced not just by other kaiju movies but also mecha animes, like Gurren Lagann and Evangeleon. There are also cartoons like the Avatar franchise, Samurai Jack, Boondocks, etc. that are often called "American Anime", since their art styles are that similar to Japan's however, they still incorporate the animation style of the west, following the 12 principles of animation, being animated at 24 fps, and being able to do very exaggerated poses and facial expressions. One thing I will say is that the portrayal of Americans in Japan always brings a smile to my face.

"AMERICA!"

So while globalisation can have its disadvantages, there are still reasons why it can have a positive impact on the world. You just have to know where to look. It's also worthwhile to know what's actually positive and negative about what's being brought over to your culture. I mean Americanisation has its place in history as possibly the most negative lifestyle to influence yourself but it's not all bad. You can still enjoy a McDonalds quarter pounder with cheese while enjoying other people's food, I mean they're a heart attack in a bun but still pretty damn good. I wonder why I talked about America the whole time, though. I guess it's because it's all I was taught about regarding globalisation, like it's the most negative aspect of it, and people have a tendency of only focusing on that. Maybe someday we'll actually talk about the impact other cultures have had on us, and maybe look at the positive impact americanisation has had, while not forgetting the negative ones. Screw that though! They just built a new Starbucks down the street! Time to whine and complain about America ruling the world and poisoning our drinking water with their presence! Us brits are far too PERFECT for american things!

Censorship and 'Truth'

I'm a little on the fence with this subject matter. Granted, I am completely against censorship of the truth, however with art I'm not 100% against censorship. On censorship of truth, there is no good excuse to me on censoring real-world problems. For example, photography depicting what is happening in third world countries, and an army battlefield being manipulated removes any validity that it ever had. This is because the images in a photograph affect the context behind it greatly. True, some photographs aren't manipulated, but images of corpses from enemy soldiers, even citizens of countries, images like that tend to be censored to maintain the view that the soldiers defending our country are heroes, so the idea that they are performing such amoral things wouldn't sit right with people. Although, I would argue that these images would only affect people's views on war, and whether it is really always an ethical way of solving our problems, but no screw thinking about things, let's just lead on that war is right by hiding the truth from people. So you'd think it was just the negative truth being censored right? It actually goes both ways.

Remember the Haiti earthquake from 2010? The news reports covered basically enough (or at least as much as they could) to get an idea of how bad it was for the time, but after a while, they just started making up stories about the Haitians rioting for the aid being given to them and that it got to the point where they just started fighting over empty boxes, as pointed out here by in Charlie Brooker's Newswipe. You can clearly see in the news footage that the Haitians were playfully slamming and chucking the boxes to each other, essentially making the best of the situation they're in. Not only that but they conveniently have no visual evidence of their claims that they're brandishing weapons at each other; they even admit this but follow it up with "it almost doesn't matter" (Yes, lady. Yes it does). I can think of two reasons they would make such bizarre claims like this. Either they needed more viewers and had to tell a more "interesting" version of what was happening to grab more of an audience, or they thought people were losing interest in these events so they had to make up some more negative news about Haiti. I feel like the former is more likely, but I mentioned the latter since it would seem like the fake news reports had the best intentions, but I still find that unethical because lies are still lies, and the ends don't justify the means.

What about censorship of art though? Am I against that? Well... It depends. Some aspects of art may be deemed inappropriate depending on how well it translates to different cultures, and rightly so. Pokemon had that very notorious episode that caused literally hundreds of children to have seizures, so it's no wonder it was banned and was refused to air in different countries. I can't exactly say the same for the way they used to treat moments in the show where they would reference Japanese culture, such as the characters clearly eating rice balls but being called "sandwiches" or "donuts". It used to happen a lot with localised kid's anime, in which 4kids, the company behind the American dubs of anime, would pretend they weren't made in Japan to be more appealing to kid's audiences. I guess they thought a culture shock would be too off-putting for younger viewers. It also used to happen in video games during the 90s when they were being released outside of Japan, Nintendo or Sega of America would make changes to the graphics in order to be appropriate. Final Fantasy VI (among pretty much every other Japanese RPG at the time) would have towns with Bars or Pubs in them, but were changed to Cafes by merely changing the text on the signs!

Trust me, inside it looks just like a bar, nothing like a cafe.

Not only this but stuff like religious references, such as spells called "Holy" or random crosses or something like that, were taking out as well. I think this just shows that the MPAA and BBFC tend to focus on how children's parents respond to material relating to alcohol, tobacco, and other stuff that you'll find in Japanese children's programming and gaming. They are afraid of annoying parents because they'll switch off the TV if they don't like what their children are watching. If you ask me though, that's more of a problem with the parents being too overprotective of their kids, and no TV show, film, or video game should suffer because of their negligence. It's no wonder children's entertainment acts like it has a gun to its head all the time.

Censorship is a rough subject. No matter what intentions people have, there will always be some dominant power that doesn't see it their way and will decide to censor it because of it. Whether the intention is to entertain people or to give people the harsh truth about the real world, someone with enough power to alter how the message is told by changing its connotations will end up getting their hands on it. Some people can't handle the harsh truth though, but it's unfortunately wrong to omit the truth no matter how bad it makes them feel. Would you rather your doctor give it to you straight or let you suffer without you realising it? That's my philosophy. With censorship of entertainment, I'm against censorship of that unless it's something that can genuinely harm people, otherwise, don't touch something that's not yours.

Ethics - What is Good?

Themes of ethics are ones that I particularly enjoy exploring, because good and bad morals have changed completely throughout the centuries. Even nowadays it's difficult to determine whether certain things are ethically good or bad, and that's the most fascinating thing about. We often turn to the law or religious books to decide where we stand on our ethics, since they are decided by large groups to define. However, these contradict what true ethics are. There are plenty of theories that contradict each other, but I for one follow the Subjective Relativism theory, in which there are no universally decided morals, just what we decide for ourselves. I also think Cultural Relativism is defined from this, in which ethics are derived from our cultural understanding of them. Meaning some things are ethically wrong in one country but not in another country. This is, however, due to what I stated about law and religion deciding our ethics.

While I do see the importance of law and order, they don't entirely define our ethics, because some laws are ethically wrong overall, such as the law that gay people can't get married. It's an unfair law but still a law nonetheless. These are also ethics decided for us by the government, and following ethics enforced by others is a detriment to society.

There is also an issue of self-righteousness due to the connotations of ethics. If a person does something that they think is right and tells people how right it was then that's the type of mentality that can lead to fascism. Hitler, for example, did what he did because he believed it was the right thing to do and refused to accept that it wasn't, and he got that much power because he led people on to believe it was right as well. The mentality still exists as well, as there are plenty of political groups out there, KKK, UKIP, BNP, and EDL, that strongly believe what they are doing is ethically right to point where logic and reason is not a factor anymore. Their goals are set in stone so there is nothing anyone can do to prevent it. That's not how ethics work in a perfect world, because one man's ethics should not be enforced onto other people, otherwise large groups of fascists will continue to be a problem. Although there is also an essence of ego-gratification in this, which is an uncontrollable aspect of human nature. It works in the way that a person will have similar ethics to a group and said group will use that to manipulate this person to join them, and once that person feels accepted in the group, they get the urge to enforce the ethics onto others, and as the numbers increase, so does the satisfaction of the group members.

I always love exploring themes like this, because they inspire a lot of ideas regarding character traits and motivations. I also think there are issues that can be addressed within a narrative about this that can lead to some very memorable storytelling. In fact, they are commonly used as themes in The Legend of Korra, since the villains in that series are all portrayed as villains with a tonne of layers that define their motivations through what they deem as right.

City and Film - Memorable Landscaping in Animation

An admirable trait for visual mediums is often the ability to portray a city setting in a memorable fashion. It is a common trope among film noir that the city setting is emphasised greatly and portrayed in a dark manner, with heavy shadow, edgy locations, and high contrast streetlights in a nighttime setting. In sci fi films set in the future, it is often imperative that the city setting be as imaginative and ambitiously designed as possible. This is why films like Blade Runner and Metropolis are popular examples of future settings.

The use of architecture is not only limited to live-action film either, cartoons like Batman: the Animated Series, and Futurama focus greatly on the city and landscapes. The video game, The Wolf Among Us is deliberately film noir inspired in terms of approach towards the areas of the city scenes are set in.

It is common for animations that take place in a fictional world to take inspiration from real life and other fictional settings and landscapes. For examples, there is an area in Dark Souls called Anor Londo that is based on the Milan Cathedral, and was remarkably designed to make the player feel accomplished as they make it there. In fact Dark Souls is known very well for its ability to tell the story in the architecture. Similarly to how Adventure Time hints at its backstory, the areas in Dark Souls are designed with mise-en-scene that effectively hints at the game's lore.

Consumerism - Persuasion, Brand, Society, Culture

Consumerism is something I am both for and against. I am for consumerism because it has and still does help the country develop, but the means in which consumerism is taken advantage of are still really unethical. The consumerist society is all driven by the products we buy and the gratification society gains from it. The devices we own, the movies we watch, and the objects we bought, they are all drawn by our egos and the sense that we our accepted if we own these products. Granted, after looking at psychoanalysis (which does play a large role in consumerism), I've grown to accept that our culture is solely driven by the things we own, since changing this would be like changing human nature, almost impossible. We all have a tendency to compare ourselves to others, and advertisers take advantage of this to sell their products. Again, it's unethical but effective, and it seems to be the only possible method towards advertising at this point.

My problems with consumerism come from personal feelings of anguish, having never owned a smart phone whereas literally everybody I know owns one. It's a really dumb thing but what with most of the marketing these days being focused towards people that own smart phones, I sometimes feel left out. This because I don't own a god damn phone. This is exactly what the companies that makes these products want me and everybody else to feel. It's a screwed up system indeed, now that a product as simple as a portable phone can cause disharmony because of consumerism.

Knowing this would be beneficial if I wanted to be an animator for advertising companies, since I know it's all about ego gratification, and what we as a society deem pleasurable.

Studio Brief: Creative/Animated Visual Response

Since my essay for this module is about how executive producers change stories and narratives to suit their needs, my visual response would have to be appropriate for this. I want to see if I can incorporate this into animation, but given the time restraints, I may not be able to be too overly ambitious with this. I was thinking if I did make one, it would have to be purely visual-driven, and not fully animated. What I mean by this is the animation would have be very cheap and simple, which I can totally do. This could actually be beneficial as well, to see if I can be entertaining without actually using "good" animation.

Think of something along the lines Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt or South Park, which get away with being rather crappy looking by being hilarious and fun to watch.

My idea is to take the feedback given by network executives, vocalise them, and animate the reactions in whatever context comes to mind. I'll choose from a list I made by looking at the twitter account @TvNetworkNotes, which posts real responses given to writers, directors, artists, etc. by network executive producers. This would of course be purely comedic and satirical, because these notes are rich with material!

I'd do several takes for each note and animate each of the audio samples depending on how much time I have, but I imagine this would be no more than 1 minute long, depending on how much time I have. It's something that relates to my point about executive producers changing material, not entirely getting the point of the stories, and trying too hard to pander to audiences, even if it means affecting the quality of the product.

Psychoanalysis: How it can Apply to Animation

This is a very deep and complex look at how humanity functions beyond our animalistic desires, and how we differentiate to each other. I can't exactly summarise everything beyond the great Sigmund Freud's amazing "Mind's Three Structures" theory - Id, our deep and natural desires as a species; Super Ego, what we call our conscience, basically governs how we act socially and what we see as right and wrong; Ego, how we act consciously depending on what the super ego convinces us - but it is very important as a tool for understanding characters and being able to write them in such a manner to make them realistic.

There are multiple versions of this metaphor that depict the position of the super ego differently.

Of course, naturally the human psyche is split into far more elements than just those three, but this is just a summary, following the rule of thirds, that shortens them down to three. How this applies to animation is not really any different to any form of media. As I said, characters are far more engaging within a story when the character is written with their psyche in mind. If a character has this level of depth, audiences will engage with them far more and understand their actions. 

Psychoanalysis can also be applied to stories depending on their genre. A psychological horror like the Silent Hill games for example will take advantage of the character's emotions, desires, and nature. They also tend to adapt to the player's gaming habits and use them to affect the story and scare them. Movies and TV shows use the human psyche for surrealist purposes, like portraying characters as unconscious beings within a dream-like atmosphere. Un Chien Andalou, for example, is deliberately made to resemble a dream, and they do so by having no consistent narrative structure or characters, but the characters act like they lack any ego or even super ego and therefore act very strangely. This is basically showing how people would act given the mentality of the unconscious mind.

I will definitely be incorporating Psychoanalysis to my future projects, as I am very enthusiastic about the idea of making psychological horror/thrillers. It is also useful to me for satirical purposes, as I feel like psychoanalysis factors a lot in most of the issues we face, and I enjoy poking fun at human nature because it's something we can't control.