Linkblogging

[brigdh]

1. Snake has virgin birth. This is even creepier than that shark virgin birth a year or two ago, because these babies also have freaky genes. MUTANT SNAKES: DO NOT WANT FOREVER.

2. Kids Reenact Project Runway (video) - Hahahaha, this is hilarious. And helps me get over my bitterness regarding the winner of this season.

3. Towards a Steampunk Without Steam
4. Stupid Things We Say - Two articles about the imperialism/colonialism/racism/sexism/etc of unexamined steampunk. I love the idea of "cotton gin punk" so much. I would totally be all over that genre. Whereas steampunk- there's a lot of interesting things happening in it, but the genre itself is not what I would have chosen to be the next big thing. I still miss cyberpunk! Why did we get tired of that?

5. 50 Reasons to be Pretty Damn Euphoric You Live in New York City - OH GOD I MISS NYC SO MUCH. (Although Jesus, what's with the bitterness in the comments?) Cardiff can bite me. I want New York.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I am glad it's not just me who is suffering without our city. I have lists, LISTS of things to do when we're back.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

1)Be in New York
2)Be a New Yorker
3)Be living in the place where New York is.
4)Being surrounded by people who live in New York.
5)Enough with the bells already...

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, yes.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Thank God, someone to whom I can mutter under my breath about Project Runway. Is it me, or have the past couple of seasons been bizarrely high on the melodrama and soap opera, and bizarrely low on the details and process behind the actual clothes? I can't find any meaningful video of the show in its Bravo days to double-check this, but I seem to recall that for its first couple of seasons at least, what was fascinating about it had a great deal to do with the fact that you could follow the designers' thinking as they conceptualized and then constructed their garments. And the little mini-interview/diary segments were more about the work they were doing than about their feelings, relationships, and issues.

Now? I don't share your bitterness about Gretchen because I'm not sure she didn't deserve to win. I'm not sure she did deserve it, mind you; but it seems entirely possible to me that the disconnect between judges and audience has to do with the fact that we couldn't see what was going on with anybody's collection. The way her pieces moved on the runway suggested to me that it might well be that they were beautifully cut, in interesting and non-intuitive ways, and that if we had been shown that we'd have understood why two of the judges felt so strongly that her work was better than Mr. I-Have-a-Story's work (I don't mean that to be snarky, I'm just blanking on his name).

I wanted a closer look at what she was doing -- but then, I wanted closer looks at what every single one of them was doing. Those pleats that the raving beauty with the long hair was doing to construct armor-like shapes! The way Crying Boy was cutting and draping his really lovely plain gowns! Why couldn't we see some of that? How are we supposed to follow the judging if we don't see the technical aspects of the work? And besides, without seeing that stuff the shows themselves are incredibly boring. Ivy is mean, everybody misses their mommies, and when we are very lucky Tim Gunn arrives and provides a moment of good company. And all the while, you know there's stuff you want to see happening, only the show won't bother to give you that part.

Seriously, am I misremembering? Was it always like this, only for some reason during second season or so I didn't mind?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Heh. I didn't start watching until the third season, so it's quite possible that it was different before that. I suspect the move to Lifetime has caused problems, though; the season in LA was incredibly awkward and full of bizarre judging, and this season also really seemed to emphasize the cattiness between the designers. I suspect part of that is just the change in the world since seven years ago.

This is my theory: everyone (more or less) now watches or has seen at least one reality TV show. It's becoming more of a standardized genre like any other; there are archetypes for characters, there is a standard plot arc, there are even stock phrases (the most common of which is probably "I'm not here to make friends" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w536Alnon24)). So people who want to be on a reality TV show have these models to follow, with the understanding that to do so is likely to result in more screen-time for them (and possibly a greater likelihood of making it to the next week. Racheline thinks Project Runway lets the drama factor influence the judging, but I remain idealistic and hope that PR doesn't, even if other shows do). And the producers follow along, because it's an easy way to construct an episode and a season.

But I agree with you, and really wish they would focus more on the actual making of the clothes. Particularly I wish the runway segment was longer; especially in the early episodes, when there's a lot of designers, it can be blink-and-you-miss-it. I'd like more than 2 seconds to see the finished outfits. I really do not care about all the interpersonal squabbles. I try to not judge people for their pettiness (especially since I think they are all way, way more sleep deprived than is obvious watching the show), but perhaps I am more used to traveling somewhere and living in confined circumstances with strangers than the average fashion designer, but it really is the same shallow shit over and over again. And once you've lived it a few times, it no longer makes interesting TV.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Ahhh. The reality-show-tropes explanation makes sense to me -- or as much sense as it can given that Project Runway is the only reality show I've ever seen even a single episode of. I found it by accident in what I think was the first season; I was channel-flipping in a desultory kind of way and there it was. It had a certain 'We're making this up as we go' kind of manic energy and improvisational quality, and it says something about it, I think, that while I remember the designers gleefully figuring out ways to make clothing out of trash (or maybe hardware-store stuff), if Tim Gunn was there I didn't even notice him. It was more like the Make Blog than like Days of Our Lives.

I have the sense that the judges do let personal factors influence their judging, but not necessarily that the personal factors that make a difference are the ones calculated to drive the reality-tv drama. This past season I suspect that while Mondo (I remembered his name!) really is a tremendously gifted designer, a certain amount of his success came down to the fact that the judges really just liked him, and were moved by his character and determination. Similarly I think Michael C. made it through a few squeakers because the judges were aware of the drama around him and either sympathetic or unwilling to give the detractors the satisfaction of getting rid of him. But my feeling was more that the personal stuff came into play in close decisions, where the judges could have gone either way, than that they were letting the need for onscreen drama drive their results.

Especially since these episodes have to be edited and shown long after the actual events. And given how much material they shoot, I'm fairly confident that any result can be built toward when it comes time to construct the aired episode. You decide to use all of Mondo's private angst about his family and his HIV status after he's won, and you know you'll be doing the full storyline with it. There's probably a lot of strong material from each of the contenders that would be pulled out and worked with if they'd wound up winning.

At some point last year the preliminary application for the show came over my email -- I gather that they like recruiting candidates from the art-craft and costume communities -- and it certainly looked like they were looking for genuine talent. I was more struck, though, by the degree to which they expected you to surrender all possibility of privacy before you'd even made the first cut. I'm not surprised so many of the on-air contenders seem genuinely desperate to win: it's the sort of thing that I can't imagine agreeing to if you had a lot of options in your life. And that also may feed the drama.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

You know much more about the actual process of clothing design than I do; sadly, my judgment often just comes down to if I, personally, want to wear it. And I'd much rather wear Mondo's prints and bright colors than Gretchen's line, which seemed to be entirely brown. And a particularly ugly shade of brown. But that's pretty shallow of me, so I am willing to defer to your sense that she had interesting things going on.

There's probably a lot of strong material from each of the contenders that would be pulled out and worked with if they'd wound up winning.

Definitely. I often try to guess who's going to win each week just based on who got the most screentime, because it does often tend to heavily favor the winner and loser.

and it certainly looked like they were looking for genuine talent
That's good to know! Though I'm not surprised about the privacy issue. It's why I have absolutely no desire to ever be on a reality TV show. It's the nature of the beast: they need drama, and often the most dramatic aspects of a person's life are what they would prefer to keep private.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

which seemed to be entirely brown.

And yes, that's a perfect illustration of my issues with what they're showing us!

It was brown. Brown, brown, brown; and if they were rich and subtle colors in person (which might well have been the case; I went to a fiber show over the weekend where almost everything I looked at was brown, and a riot of color nevertheless), you certainly couldn't see that in the few seconds the pieces were on your screen. All you could really see were the overall shapes and how the clothes moved, and not much of that.

Gretchen's runway pieces did move in really interesting and fun-to-wear-looking ways, or at least some of them did, and since I have come to learn that the way fabric moves around you as you walk or run or twirl is generally a function of cutting and draping as well as initial choice of fabric, and since after all two of four judges were willing to fight to make her the winner, I conclude that there's a good chance that those are really great clothes. Especially since one could potentially order them in something that wasn't brown.

But I don't know for sure. Because blast it, the show didn't give us a good look at the clothes. What do we know? We know they're brown. It's no wonder the popular reaction to the finale is so violently opposed to the judges' decision; they were so busy telling us how everyone felt that they forgot to show us the contest.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, well, I am glad to prove your point. And I don't even have anything against brown, particularly! I am wearing brown today. It is my favorite of the neutrals. But yes, I could say much more about Gretchen collection than that.

I often wish they would use Tim Gunn as a judge. I've read that he doesn't want to, because he feels it would keep him from being objective when giving advice to the designers, but I think having a judge who's watched the process of putting the pieces together would really help. More focus on any part of the actual design part would be good, because if I just wanted to watch interpersonal squabbling, there are plenty of other shows I could turn to. Sadly, Project Runway seems to be slowly sliding toward matching the reality genre rather than distinguishing itself. I'm hardly claiming that reality TV is some important, beautiful mode of story-telling, but it is a bit depressing to see it reduced to cliches and stereotypes so quickly.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

You know, I have to say it's pretty funny how many people have been mourning cyberpunk when discussing steampunk, as though there haven't been major aesthetic and literary movements between the two. But then, I was never a huge fan of cyberpunk, so maybe aficianados have been clinging to it and see more of a continuity. Me, I really dig some of the possibilities of steampunk, but I agree with all the various discussion critiquing how the vast bulk of it isn't exploring those possibilities. I want more cotton gin punk and Weird West that tackles the bullshit of Manifest Destiny and deconstructive Victoriana and workers' uprisings and alternate histories where the various Western European and U.S. empires came crashing down and and and. Otherwise, please, let's move on to something else, world.

Also, I'll take Cardiff, you can have NYC. ;-) Actually, I totally feel you. Tampa's quite lovely and the humidity seems to be helping, but I miss California like burning.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Really? I hadn't seen other people mentioning it, but I do not the follow the genre discussions that closely. I feel like steampunk certainly has a lot of potential (particularly, as you say, in the cotton gin punk and Weird West aspects of it), but all it really comes down to is that I have an emotional connection to computers and disintegrating skyscrapers, and gears and trains and bustles and corsets and so forth just do not get the same reaction from me. YMMV, obviously. Oh, I could do pirates, though. Is there pirate steampunk?

Hee, sounds like a good trade. I've only ever spent about five days, total, in California (I'm a bit more familiar with Florida, but not much), but I'd really love to spend more time there someday. Even though I suspect I am an East Coast girl at heart, I would definitely leap at the chance to live in California for six months or a year.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

The two articles to which you linked are but part of a much larger and on-going conversation that seems to be coming to a head, and yearning for the halcyon days of cyberpunk popularity has been much expressed in the conversation. Me, I think I'd have to be more interested in urban landscapes and corporations to really dig cyberpunk. Weird West and cotton gin punk touch more on my personal background, and I like the aesthetics better.

Piratepunk/sailpunk is one of those perennial subgenres, I think, and while there have been a few breakout examples, the subgenre itself has not yet risen to prominence the way cyberpunk or steampunk have. I would love if it did, though I suspect the end result would go the way both of those mostly have, with an emphasis on a particular aesthetic and not nearly as much critical examination of the underpinnings of the worldview as one could wish.

California is awesome, though pricy as hell. And if you want to visit Florida again, well, we have a dedicated guest room, big enough for two people. ;-)

[arabesque]

...woooooooow, that snake.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I KNOW RIGHT?!

MUTANT SNAKES

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Wait until they are teenagers. Trained in Ninjutsu!

Re: MUTANT SNAKES

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

XD I love this idea.

Re: MUTANT SNAKES

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

And looking for REVENGE!

Why did we get tired of that?

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Cyber Punk assumes that the U.S. has gone to Hell in a handcart, and the rest of the world has moved on without it. Bad genre! Bad!

Steam Punk assumes that the U.S. is really the British Empire and shall civilise the other, hence lesser, nations.

Which imaginary world would most people in the U.S. live in?

Re: Why did we get tired of that?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hahahahahaha. Sadly, very true.

Re: Why did we get tired of that?

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

Sadly, that's pretty much exactly how it keeps playing out, despite the potential for all kinds of criticism and deconstruction.

Re: Why did we get tired of that?

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Good points! Though I do think another factor is so much of what cyberpunk told us would be THE FUTURE is here.