The Day After Doomsday-Skeates/Ditko/Colletta-1976
Not much to this but an interesting late collaboration at DC between the two Steves, Skeates and Ditko, with some nice inking from the ever-controversial Vinnie Colletta.
I can't look at a dude dressed for war standing over the corpse of a giant cannibal mutant* without thinking of that damned anime Attack on Titan.
*Happens more often than one might think!
Haven't seen/read enough about Attack on Titan to judge the intent, but what I have seen disturbs me because it is a propagandist's wet dream. Human-looking-but-not-really-human monsters, committing unforgivable atrocities that make coexistence impossible, slow and mindless yet controlling most of the world by sheer force? Angry young militant men and women walled up in a ghetto, enthusiastically embracing their bloodlust to become mankind's last hope in a kill-or-be-killed world? You can take any conflict, past or present, and plug the combatants into either role depending how you feel about them. It's perfect.
So perfect it makes me paranoid. Is the perfection an accident, or the application of the principles of propaganda without malice simply for mass appeal? Is it part of some media-conditioning plot also involving the embrace of Nazi and/or fascist elements in other manga, anime, etc. (for example, Full Metal Alchemist) and wrapping it up in bloody violence and cool theme music?
I'd watch more to find out, but (a) the gruesome violence turns me off, (b) the gas-powered wire-harpoon gear the heroes employ is even less plausible than Spider-Man's web-shooters, and (c) frankly, I'm afraid to.
Outcomes don't simply come either as a result of conspiracy or of accident, but of spontaneous order. (The order itself may be desirable, undesirable, or a matter of indifference.) A culture as such is a spontaneous order. Story-telling, whether it be propaganda or otherwise, partcipates in that spontaneoous order. The most successful story-telling, whether it be propaganda or otherwise, taps into the the most affecting formulæ and presumptions of the culture in which it participates.
2 comments:
I can't look at a dude dressed for war standing over the corpse of a giant cannibal mutant* without thinking of that damned anime Attack on Titan.
*Happens more often than one might think!
Haven't seen/read enough about Attack on Titan to judge the intent, but what I have seen disturbs me because it is a propagandist's wet dream. Human-looking-but-not-really-human monsters, committing unforgivable atrocities that make coexistence impossible, slow and mindless yet controlling most of the world by sheer force? Angry young militant men and women walled up in a ghetto, enthusiastically embracing their bloodlust to become mankind's last hope in a kill-or-be-killed world? You can take any conflict, past or present, and plug the combatants into either role depending how you feel about them. It's perfect.
So perfect it makes me paranoid. Is the perfection an accident, or the application of the principles of propaganda without malice simply for mass appeal? Is it part of some media-conditioning plot also involving the embrace of Nazi and/or fascist elements in other manga, anime, etc. (for example, Full Metal Alchemist) and wrapping it up in bloody violence and cool theme music?
I'd watch more to find out, but (a) the gruesome violence turns me off, (b) the gas-powered wire-harpoon gear the heroes employ is even less plausible than Spider-Man's web-shooters, and (c) frankly, I'm afraid to.
Outcomes don't simply come either as a result of conspiracy or of accident, but of spontaneous order. (The order itself may be desirable, undesirable, or a matter of indifference.) A culture as such is a spontaneous order. Story-telling, whether it be propaganda or otherwise, partcipates in that spontaneoous order. The most successful story-telling, whether it be propaganda or otherwise, taps into the the most affecting formulæ and presumptions of the culture in which it participates.
Post a Comment