william_kent
Well-known member
antlers, kettle drums, and funny horns
Overall "aesthetic" systems
- Thread starter IdleRich
- Start date
mixed_biscuits
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They try to hide it but the antlers always give it away
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
Have we actually done a thread on the whole internet aesthetics thing - cottagecore, dark academia, cabincore, goblincore etc?
I mean, those essentially _are_ attempts to produce overall aesthetic systems, but they seem to be doing it in a more self-conscious way - like, "what would be the most appropriate music to complement my cabincore aesthetic" - than just being a bunch of stuff that's evolved together organically.
I mean, those essentially _are_ attempts to produce overall aesthetic systems, but they seem to be doing it in a more self-conscious way - like, "what would be the most appropriate music to complement my cabincore aesthetic" - than just being a bunch of stuff that's evolved together organically.
I think @linebaugh posted a 'dark academia' playlist once.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Is that the one where people try to look Miskatonic but usually end up looking a bit Hogwarts?
IdleRich
IdleRich
Ooh, this is deeper than anything I'd thought of but go on...
IdleRich
IdleRich
Heroin chic is an aesthetic of sorts I guess. Not a full system of the type I mean by a long chalk - or at least that's what I feel although you have heroin books, films etc What is the difference though, help me put my finger on it?
Anyway, I mention heroin chic cos apparently Rick Owens is trying to revive it. Recently he did a shoot with a guy I know and some other well-known junky musicians... amusingly the set was very tightly controlled with no drugs whatsoever allowed... I wonder if it will see the light of day.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I was gonna mention goth.
I think the ones of more interest to me are the ones that don't come from music. I think music scenes are one thing, something that is kinda real in a sense, and then all these other bits might join on. But cyberpunk comes out of an imaginary world and is thus much more artificial and, for the purposes of this thread at least, pure in some sense. Albeit pure artifice.
sus
Moderator
What do you think the difference is?
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Maybe fandoms are more passive/reactive in that they aren't driving the aesthetic system forward? I'd imagine most fanfiction stuff measures itself by how well it stays within the aesthetic system defined by the original content, rather than by how well it pushes the boundaries, but that could be a limited perspective.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Well I retracted that a little, maybe a fandoms is just a subset of these systems. But I just think I was defining it as something that went beyond one specific imaginary world to tropes that would be recognisable in many. And then expand beyond that in another direction into the real world.While writing the first post I was wondering how much this thread might overlap with the "who invented orcs?" thread or whatever it's called... but that doesn't have that expansion into reality.
I think you could say it for any country, really, but it just popped into my head because of what shiels was talking about the other week and the Martin McDonagh discussion a while back. Ireland as this set of quaint signifiers.
The American Wild West might be an even better example. You could immerse yourself in that as a total lifestyle. Get the clothes, get a ranch, shoot guns, model yourself on John Wayne.
ghost
Well-known member
Let's not pretend that Cyberpunk isn't just "Hong Kong in the 90s" with flying cars added
IdleRich
IdleRich
Maybe so, but if that was called into existence by Neuromancer and Bladerunner etc then that makes them all the more powerful no?
As an aside, off the top of my head those are THE ur-texts of cyberpunk right? What else? How about films? I'm thinking, er, Bladerunner... what are the other defining works of art?
As an aside, off the top of my head those are THE ur-texts of cyberpunk right? What else? How about films? I'm thinking, er, Bladerunner... what are the other defining works of art?
Yeah, they are. Burning Chrome came before Neuromancer, but I don't think it had the same cultural impact. It was the warning shot.
GIBSON
I was afraid to watch Blade Runner in the theater because I was afraid the movie would be better than what I myself had been able to imagine. In a way, I was right to be afraid, because even the first few minutes were better. Later, I noticed that it was a total box-office flop, in first theatrical release. That worried me, too. I thought, Uh-oh. He got it right and nobody cares! Over a few years, though, I started to see that in some weird way it was the most influential film of my lifetime, up to that point. It affected the way people dressed, it affected the way people decorated nightclubs. Architects started building office buildings that you could tell they had seen in Blade Runner. It had had an astonishingly broad aesthetic impact on the world.
I met Ridley Scott years later, maybe a decade or more after Blade Runner was released. I told him what Neuromancer was made of, and he had basically the same list of ingredients for Blade Runner. One of the most powerful ingredients was French adult comic books and their particular brand of Orientalia—the sort of thing that Heavy Metal magazine began translating in the United States.
But the simplest and most radical thing that Ridley Scott did in Blade Runner was to put urban archaeology in every frame. It hadn’t been obvious to mainstream American science fiction that cities are like compost heaps—just layers and layers of stuff. In cities, the past and the present and the future can all be totally adjacent. In Europe, that’s just life—it’s not science fiction, it’s not fantasy. But in American science fiction, the city in the future was always brand-new, every square inch of it.
I was afraid to watch Blade Runner in the theater because I was afraid the movie would be better than what I myself had been able to imagine. In a way, I was right to be afraid, because even the first few minutes were better. Later, I noticed that it was a total box-office flop, in first theatrical release. That worried me, too. I thought, Uh-oh. He got it right and nobody cares! Over a few years, though, I started to see that in some weird way it was the most influential film of my lifetime, up to that point. It affected the way people dressed, it affected the way people decorated nightclubs. Architects started building office buildings that you could tell they had seen in Blade Runner. It had had an astonishingly broad aesthetic impact on the world.
I met Ridley Scott years later, maybe a decade or more after Blade Runner was released. I told him what Neuromancer was made of, and he had basically the same list of ingredients for Blade Runner. One of the most powerful ingredients was French adult comic books and their particular brand of Orientalia—the sort of thing that Heavy Metal magazine began translating in the United States.
But the simplest and most radical thing that Ridley Scott did in Blade Runner was to put urban archaeology in every frame. It hadn’t been obvious to mainstream American science fiction that cities are like compost heaps—just layers and layers of stuff. In cities, the past and the present and the future can all be totally adjacent. In Europe, that’s just life—it’s not science fiction, it’s not fantasy. But in American science fiction, the city in the future was always brand-new, every square inch of it.