Comment by quuxplusone
3 months ago
Not scaffolding in the same way, but, two examples of "fetishizing accidental properties of physical artworks that the original artists might have considered undesirable degradations" are
- the fashion for unpainted marble statues and architecture
- the aesthetic of running film slightly too fast in the projector (or slightly too slow in the camera) for an old-timey effect
Isn’t the frame rate of film something like that?
The industry decided on 24 FPS as something of an average of the multiple existing company standards and it was fast enough to provide smooth motion, avoid flicker, and not use too much film ($$$).
Overtime it became “the film look”. One hundred-ish years later we still record TV shows and movies in it that we want to look “good” as opposed to “fake” like a soap opera.
And it’s all happenstance. The movie industry could’ve moved to something higher at any point other than inertia. With TV being 60i it would have made plenty of sense to go to 30p for film to allow them to show it on TV better once that became a thing.
But by then it was enshrined.
Another example: pixel art in games.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of pixel art and retro games.
But this reminds me of when people complained that the latest Monkey Island didn't use pixel art, and Ron Gilbert had to explain the original "The Curse of Monkey Island" wasn't "a pixel art game" either, it was a "state of the art game (for that time)", and it was never his intention to make retro games.
Many classic games had pixel art by accident; it was the most feasible technology at the time.
I don't think anyone would have complained if the art had been more detailed but in the same style as the original or even using real digitized actors.
Monkey Island II's art was slightly more comic-like than say The Last Crusade but still with realistic proportions and movements so that was the expectation before CoMI.
The art style changing to silly-comic is what got people riled up.
Hard disagree.
(Also a correction: by original I meant "Secret of" but mistyped "Curse of").
I meant Return to Monkey Island (2022), which was no more abrupt a change than say, "The Curse of Monkey Island" (1997).
Monkey Island was always "silly comic", it's its sine qua non.
People whined because they wanted a retro game, they wanted "the same style" (pixels) as the original "Secret", but Ron Gilbert was pretty explicit about this: "Secret" looked what it looked like due to limitations of the time, he wasn't "going for that style", it was just the style that they managed with pixel art. Monkey Island was a state-of-the-art game for its time.
So my example is fully within the terms of the concept we're describing: people growing attached to technical limitations, or in the original words:
> [...] examples of "fetishizing accidental properties of physical artworks that the original artists might have considered undesirable degradations"
Motion blur. 24fps. Grain. Practically everything we call cinematic
I wouldn't call it "fetishizing" though; not all of them anyway.
Motion blur happens with real vision, so anything without blur would look odd. There's cinematic exaggeration, of course.
24 FPS is indeed entirely artificial, but I wouldn't call it a fetish: if you've grown with 24 FPS movies, a higher frame rate will paradoxically look artificial! It's not a snobby thing, maybe it's an "uncanny valley" thing? To me higher frame rates (as in how The Hobbit was released) make the actors look fake, almost like automatons or puppets. I know it makes no objective sense, but at the same time it's not a fetishization. I also cannot get used to it, it doesn't go away as I get immersed in the movie (it doesn't help that The Hobbit is trash, of course, but that's a tangent).
Grain, I'd argue, is the true fetish. There's no grain in real life (unless you have a visual impairment). You forget fast about the lack of grain if you're immersed in the movie. I like grain, but it's 100% an esthetic preference, i.e. a fetish.
>Motion blur happens with real vision, so anything without blur would look odd.
You watch the video with your eyes so it's not possible to get "odd"-looking lack of blur. There's no need to add extra motion blur on top of the naturally occurring blur.
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I suspect 24fps is popular because it forces the videography to be more intentional with motion. Too blurry, and it becomes incomprehensible. That, and everything staying sharp at 60fps makes it look like TikTok slop.
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Great examples. My mind jumps straight to audio:
- the pops and hiss of analog vinyl records, deliberately added by digital hip-hop artists
- electric guitar distortion pedals designed to mimic the sound of overheated tube amps or speaker cones torn from being blown out
- Audio compression was/is necessary to get good SNR on mag tape.
true - but are you implying audio engineers are now leaning into heavy compression for artistic reasons?
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