scribbles 3 -
scribbles 2 - 10/2/2024
Texhnolyze's Doc (above) and Hopper's Morning Sun Woman (below)
What I find interesting about this image is Hopper's composition still maintains just enough life and humanity in it and that becomes clear when juxtaposed with the scene from Texhnolyze.
The most immediate difference is the absence of warmth in Doc. Artists will take every opportunity to highlight and often times exaggerate to great effect the warm hues emanating from the face, hands and toes; the Woman's choice in clothing is also, at least superficially, an obvious indicator to this warmth, and on a deeper level this pink dress stands in defiance of the sickly painted walls (the above image has been altered for whatever reason, but the original has sickly green walls). When it comes to the composition, the most alarming thing to me is the placement of both women. In Hopper's painting, he's placed her in a fairly predictable spot within the frame where her illuminated front contrasts with the shadowed portion of the wall and her shadowed backside contrasts with the lit wall giving the focal point of her silhouette a very strong read. This placement also serves a symbolic role. Compositionally, if she were to not break the rectangular shape of the lit wall, the image would have another layer of rigidity in this already heavily uniform world she inhabits. The image itself isn't symmetrical, but it's clear the world is supposed to be perfectly constructed and balanced, devoid of flaw or personality. This asymmetry in her placement within the composition is at odds with and unbalances the world, while balancing the composition. Additionally, if we look further into the symbolic nature of shapes in drawings, her body is clearly a triangle which represents stability and power. All of this comes together to tell a story of a Woman clinging to life and her humanity despite the oppressive environment she finds herself trapped in. Her choice of dress, her compositional placement in breaking the shape of the cast shadow on the wall and then her pose itself in defiance of the claustrophobic perpendicular world all stike me as a symbolic act of resistance however insignificant and futile they may be. They are the last remaining bits of agency she has left before she's eventually subsumed.The shot from episode 20 of Texhnolyze (2003), titled 'Hades', may look to be nothing more than an homage with small differences for legal reasons, but I think there's much more to it. At its most base level, Hopper's painting serves as a wonderful foundation for the themes and mood it's trying to convey with Texhnolyze's Surface world. Where Hopper's painting depicts a claustrophibic room whose walls look to be mere inches away from the bed, Doc's room and bed look too large for her. It could very well be an overlooked drawing error, but I think it adds something to the shot. I believe she looks exactly how she feels: small and insignificant. Doc is what Hopper's Woman is ultimately fated for -- emotional and spiritual death. Doc has given in, she has failed to break up the shapes that make up this composition and the world she is trapped in. She is now no different than the windows, walls and furniture. The shot is not of a woman sitting on a bed, but is just another object occupying this room, compositionally, she's just another shape. Those particularly acute readers familiar with Texhnolyze have undoubtedly raised their eyebrows when I emphasized the word 'shape'. In this context it is referring to the 'Shapes' -- former humans that have given themselves entirely to Texhnolyzation and the ideology of Kanno, Texhnolyze's antagonist. By the very end, the Shapes cease to work, their bodies take root into the earth where they'll 'live' for all eternity. Although we know Doc won't live for much longer on the Surface world, for that brief moment, she not only becomes one of the Surface-dwellers, but she is also emblematic of the Shapes. All reliquinshing their humanity and agency to become an inanimate object.
Relevant quotes from Texhnolyze episode 20:
'No one is alive here.'
'They just sit comfortably and wait as the human species moves through its final days. You're right. This is Hades.'
'I'm already one of the dead.'
tags:
#composition / #theater / #texhnolyze / #2024scribbles 1 - 10/1/24
mere days away from silent hill 2's remake, the following is something i wrote in regards to what was very likely only for promotional purposes and not necessarily indicative of the final product, especially considering a great deal of very warranted backlash was seemingly addressed to varying degrees by the devs since. the original date of this short writing was 3/2/23.
It seems all subtlety is lost on the Remake devs. they see the original scene and in their attempts to recreate it they assume there was no significance in having the camera far away and looking down at James and the lake beyond him.
The mostly stationary camera has a peculiar voyeuristic quality to it which is aided by the lateral tracking of the camera when James walks left or right, as if we're following him at his same walking pace. It feels like the player inhabits this world as an onlooker and yet completely detached from the world James moves through and interacts with. I think this fits perfectly with the clear disassociation James experiences in the mirror scene just prior. Perhaps this view the player is experiencing is in fact how James feels at this very moment? Detached from the world, acting as an observer rather than a participant, he watches himself move about this world from afar.
I think another reason for the camera looking down at the earth and not giving any attention to or indication of the sky is to give a subtle sense of claustrophobia, dread and doom. Without the sky, we feel boxed in by the world around us, natural or otherwise. It's by no mistake that the sky is associated with heaven. It's unexplored and uninhabited space, it's freedom from the shackles that bind us to the earth, it's hope. Something as simple as pointing the camera away from the sky and keeping it bound to the earth will always give this feeling of hopelessness and inescapability.
tags:
#composition / #arcade / #silenthill / #2024