Coilhouse readers located in the Yay Area! We’re doing a shoot for Issue 05 next weekend in San Francisco, and we need two volunteers! We can’t reveal the content of the shoot, other than to say that the subject is one talented performer, and that there’s some beautiful custom-made outfits involved. Other than that – no spoilers for the readership! Especially since Issue 04’s not even out yet. The shoot will be either on Saturday or Sunday of next week in a studio. We’re looking for the following people:
Makeup Artist. Must be good at beauty and fashion makeup. Please provide a link to portfolio.
Assistant Photographer. Must be a photographer experienced with lighting. Please send portfolio. Having a car a strong plus!
The shoot will be a fun creative collaboration, and we’ll be happy to hear your ideas once we fill you in on the subject. I’ll be the photographer on this – hence the image above, in lieu of the real subject of the shoot, which you’ll soon find out.
Via Stylecunt & Haute Macabre – the good cop & bad cop of alt fashion – comes the discovery of Marko Mitanovski, a Belgrade-based designer with a penchant for ruffs, asymmetrical corsets, antler-shaped hairstyles and elongated, knife-shaped fingertips. Mitanovski’s recent Renaissance and Elizabethan-inspired collection, entitled Lady Macbeth, was splendidly captured by Coilhouse favorite Peter Ashworth. The richly hued orange-lavender series provides an upbeat look at Mitanovski’s rather somber designs, and can be seen on Ashworth’s site. Expect for Mitanovski’s designs to appear in the next Lady Gaga video in 3… 2…
The Flora and Fauna tag on Coilhouse reveals many wonders. From actual, real-life creatures – such as the rare, flightless spotted kiwi that made an appearance in yesterday’s BTC, the furry and feathered stars of Larytta’s living kaleidoscope, some stylish camel- and Ninja Turtle-shaped poodles, the memorable, never-safe-for-work Pigbutt Worm, to the imaginary – demonic insects,furry fungi – it’s one exotic menagerie of creatures you either wish you had as pocket-sized talking sidekicks, or hope your enemy encounters in an empty locker room. But there’s one thing missing – weird, real-life plants. Of which there are plenty. The Corpse Plant, for instance, emits the scent of rotting meat to attract bugs. Black hollyhocks are “rock stars of the plant world,” according to Scottish gardener Diane Halligan, explaining that black flowers “seem to rebel against nature and draw us to their nonconformity.” The sleek appearance of Nepenthes ampullaria’s “scavenging cannibal leaves” rivals 1stAveMachine’s bio-electronic botanical fabrications in terms of futuristic style. To name just a few.
But the real star of today’s post is the Rose of Jericho – the “resurrection plant” that can be found in the deserts of Mexico and the Middle East, and possesses the seemingly magical ability to, when placed in a bowl of water, become green and lush in a matter of hours after appearing brown, brittle and lifeless for years. When the plant is removed from water, it shrivels up again, until the next time it’s placed in water. This can be done many times over. One romantic caption from the YouTube video above reads, “it travels blown by the wind, where there seems to be no life, its roots have no home and seem dead, but its heart is emerald green-blooded and it opens wide to the slightest presence of water, then it goes back to sleep… and so it goes, eternal.” The Rose of Jericho is said to have many magical properties; some believe that letting it bloom inside the home brings luck in money, while others believe that carrying bits of the plant on one’s person can keep away negative energy. Even if none of that is true, there’s something deeply hypnotic and perhaps even spiritual to watching this plant unfurl. Especially in the clip below, when set to Clint Mansell’s music for Requiem for a Dream. (By the way, these plants are available in most botanical/witchy stores for under $10.)
With Sesame Street celebrating its 40th birthday this week, many blogs are reflecting on the show’s greatest moments. While most of these lists celebrate the show’s charm and humor, Sesame Street should also be honored for its commitment to social issues. Last week, SocImages uncovered this touching clip from the 1970s:
Gwen puts the above segment with Jesse Jackson, titled “I Am Somebody,” in the following context:
In the early 1980s the Reagan Administration engaged in an active campaign to demonize welfare and welfare recipients. Those who received public assistance were depicted as lazy free-loaders who burdened good, hard-working taxpayers. Race and gender played major parts in this framing of public assistance: the image of the “welfare queen” depicted those on welfare as lazy, promiscuous women who used their reproductive ability to have more children and thus get more welfare. This woman was implicitly African American, such as the woman in an anecdote Reagan told during his 1976 campaign (and repeated frequently) of a “welfare queen” on the South Side of Chicago who supposedly drove to the welfare office to get her check in an expensive Cadillac (whether he had actually encountered any such woman, as he claimed, was of course irrelevant).
The campaign was incredibly successful: once welfare recipients were depicted as lazy, promiscuous Black women sponging off of (White) taxpayers, public support for welfare programs declined. Abby K. recently found an old Sesame Street segment called “I Am Somebody.” Jesse Jackson leads a group of children in an affirmation that they are “somebody,” and specifically includes the lines “I may be poor” and “I may be on welfare” … I realized just how effective the demonization of welfare has been when I was actually shocked to hear kids, in a show targeted at other kids, being led in a chant that said being poor or on welfare shouldn’t be shameful and did not reduce their worth as human beings. Can you imagine a TV show, even on PBS, putting something like this on the air today?
In response to Gwen’s post, SocImages reader Ben Spigel agues that Sesame Street would not shy away from doing something like this even today. He writes, “the Children’s Workshop, which produces all the Sesame Streets, has been very proactive in dealing with contemporary social issues. For example, they produce an Israeli-Palestinian version of Sesame Street, and their HIV-positive muppet for the South African version. In the American version, there was the very public change in Cookie Monster’s eating habits.”
The Palestinian version of Sesame Street, titled Shara’a Simsim, dates back to 1996 – an archived NYT article from that time chronicles the show’s tense beginnings. Since the show’s initial concepting phase, there existed a debate among the producers as to what kind of approach to take. Would it be unrealistic to show a world in which Israeli and Palestinian children played together? Yes, they decided – for the time being. In 2002, the show producers’ complex quandaries were revisited by the New York Times in the wake of 9/11. Now in its fourth season, Shara’a Simsim is a popular show for children that places an emphasis on giving children positive role models. On the Sesame Street Workshop site devoted to Shara’a Simsim, executive producer Daoud Kuttab (who you’ll remember from both the 1996 and 2002 NYT articles!) says, “giving children hope would be a major accomplishment.” And here’s a clip:
Morning, late-risers! To kick things off this week, a simple post with two tags: “Cthulhu” & “Stroke Material.” What more could you ask for in life? This eye-popping drawing, titled Sashimi’s Revenge, was completed in Photoshop by illustrator Serge Birault. In addition to the above, not to be missed on Birault’s site is a charming homage to Lux Interior of the Cramps.
Right around Issue 03, our lovely copy chief Joanne Starer sent all the editors of Coilhouse a condensed document of guidelines based on the Chicago Style Manual. It tells us to spell out whole numbers one through one hundred (unless they are percents), italicize titles of books, newspapers & magazines, omit spaces around our em/en dashes, and many other such useful things. That was all fine and good, until today: the day that FakeAPStylebook on Twitter shook the world of journalism to its very foundations. The feed has amassed over 8,000 new followers in just two days, and it’s no wonder why: all issues of grammar, capitalization & punctuation have finally been revealed. This incredible new resource finally provides clarity to crucial concepts that the heretofore-accepted AP Style Guide completely overlooked. For example:
Use the quintuple vowel to transcribe the utterances of small children, “Daaaaaddy, I waaaant a Pooooony!”
Since the 1986 edition, the plural of McDonald’s is officially McDonaldses.
“Batman” may be used informally (“let’s go, Batman!”) and “The Batman” formally (“Mr. President, this is the Batman”).
The word “boner” is not capitalized, regardless of size.
Use a possessive proper noun in front of a movie remake title to convey crushing disappointment. (e.g. Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes)
In the news industry, an ’80s celebrity sex scandal is known as a “trifecta.”
Do not change weight of gorilla in phrase, “800-lb gorilla in the room.” Correct weight is 800 lbs. DO NOT CHANGE GORILLA’S WEIGHT!
“Your” and “you’re” may be used interchangeably if you are an idiot.
Avoid using the letter ‘G’ as it is unlucky.
The numbers one through ten should be spelled out while numbers greater than ten are products of the Illuminati and should be avoided.
The above is a short but fascinating trailer for Dreamworlds 3, an hour-long documentary on the use and abuse of women’s bodies in modern-day pop music videos. You needn’t be a scholar of gender studies or media literacy to appreciate what you see here. If you’re a fan of thoughtful video editing, deadpan humor, or the ladiiiiies, this one’s for you.
Narrating over a relentless cascade titillating music-video imagery, Jhally finally explains the problem of sexual objectification in our culture in a way that does not, unlike many other texts that deal with this, make you feel like a real shit for objectifying others in your mind, or for wanting to be objectified. This point comes into clarity at the 29:30 mark:
There is nothing inherently wrong with [the techniques of objectification] in and of themselves. It is not that it is always negative to present women as ready to be watched, or wanting to be watched. We all – men and women – present ourselves to be watched, to be gazed at. We all – men and women – watch attractive strangers with sexual desire. To treat another as an object of our desires is part of what it means to be human. The problem in music video and in the culture in general is that women are presented as nothing else. If the story about femininity could be widened beyond sexual objectification to include many other qualities of individuals – [intellectual, emotional, spiritual, creative, etc] – then there would be no problem with a little objectification as a sexual aspect of femininity, to be balanced out and integrated with many other human qualities. The problem is that in our contemporary culture, the complexity gets crowded out by a one-dimensional femininity based on a single story of the body.
Click here for the full-length feature. It has a stupid watermark on it, but the documentary’s compelling enough that it really doesn’t matter. Even if you don’t have time to watch the whole thing, the 5-minute version included here stands as a fascinating vignette on the subject on its own.
Dreamworlds 3 is only one of several media literacy titles that Jhally’s produced or contributed to over the years. Here are a few other favorites:
Dreamworlds 2 – Same as the above, but retro! Made in 1995.
Advertising & the End of the World – A discussion of advertising’s promise to deliver happiness, society’s high-consumption lifestyle and the coming environmental crisis.
Reel Bad Arabs – On the vilification of Arab characters in the American cinema.
Wrestling with Manhood: Boys, Bullying & Battering – Focuses on “professional wrestling and the construction of contemporary masculinity, they show how so-called “entertainment” is related to homophobia, sexual assault and relationship violence.”
You may have already seen this photo at BoingBoing or elswhere, but it’s too charming not to include here. Strange creatures from a strange world gazing at other strange creatures from another strange world. This photo was taken with a point-and-shoot camera by a hobbyist photographer, who was attending the aquarium with her friends during Dragon*Con. The photographer, positivespace on Flickr, had this to say about the photo in the BB comment thread:
For what it’s worth, the only editing I did in Photoshop was a small amount of cropping (apparently trying to center an image crouching while dressed as the third Good Fairy in a hoop skirt and a giant stuffed bra was difficult… who knew?!).
I was very lucky with this photo. Awesome environment, awesome models (my lovely friends) and, IMO, an awesome point-and-shoot camera. I basically wandered by this window, saw a great opportunity, directed my friends to stand under it, stuck the camera on Auto and fired away.
Michael Doyle over at Burnlab reports, “I stumbled across this clip from The Year of Living Dangerously this morning while doing a search for Vangelis [the seminal electronic music composer responsible for the Blade Runner score]. Ripley and Mad Max making out to Vangelis = awesome.” Aww!
Remember the Coilhouse ode to ruffs? And the slightly shorter ode to digital artist/photographer Natalie Shau? Well, here we have two great tastes that taste great together. I could easily see this image, titled Dominion, on the cover of Elegy. I love the colors, the wallpaper, the texture of the ruff. The waist is maybe a bit too Ralph Lauren-ish – if you’re going to make it that small, I feel like it should look obviously cinched, like Mr. Pearl – but I love everything else about it. Go Natalie! For more new work, check out her site.
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