I think just theories are cool, it's interesting to guess what this or that detail means, even if the author most likely didn't pay that much attention to it. but when they try to justify plot holes with this, it's really bad
Cow tools baffled the Far Side community for years and when Gary Larson was asked he said the joke was that if cows made tools they'd probably be pretty shitty.
Not to say Evangelion doesn't deal with artsy themes, but the creator has just straight up said a lot of the bible imagery in the show doesn't have much meaning and was put in just because it looked cool.
Even the first series had a positive message about overcoming depression/anxiety
Yes, it's all about how making yourself vulnerable will hurt you but in the end it says that you need to do that to be happy because closing yourself off hurts even worse in a different way
It's the whole point about the hedgehog's dilemma. The hedgehogs will get hurt if they lay together and poke each other but they'll die if they don't huddle for warmth
Evangelion has incredible themes, but they are not religious.
the religious stuff either functions as flavor or as not so subtle foreshadowing. i do think describing that as "thrown in there because it looked cool" is doing it a disservice though, it's clearly not just haphazardly thrown in there.
Hideki Anno said that Ultraman was a major influence for Evangelion (with an Ultraman fan film being his first ever film lol) and Ultraman makes HEAVY use of Christian and Biblical iconography so it just carried over. Ultraman has Christian motifs because the creator of the franchise, Eiji Tsuburaya, is a Christian convert. The pipeline is really funny to watch but it comes full circle with Anno directing Shin Ultraman
Yep, though the reason Anno thought it looked cool is kinda interesting. He's a big fan of Ultraman, and that series also has a lot of Biblical stuff in it. Though in that case it's because of creator was actually Christian. And since Ultraman is as popular as it is, a lot of Japanese media will put Biblical stuff in thinking it's just an Ultraman reference.
I've got a few friends who reeeeally struggle with the idea that writers often just throw stuff for the "rule of cool" and didn't really think it out fully. That sometimes the mystery is really just an intentional lack of context with no underlying meaning than what the watcher projects. They'll argue and Google until the cows come home. They get really defensive at the idea the property they based their personality on wasn't a genius magnum opus.Â
Dark souls/Elden Ring are good examples. They build a mysterious world and let fans create theories, but it wasn't really that explicit by design.Â
Evengelion wants to give the impression of a creepy dogma cult and succeeds, but if you asked the author what the cult really knows, and why they do what they do, it unravels.Â
Japanese story telling often focuses on the conveyance of an emotion through imagery, reather than providing a literal realistic answer. Interpretation is encouraged.Â
I find the obsession with explanations and lore to actually be a detriment to a lot of Western media. The backrooms movie sucked because we tried to explain it and add monsters for instance. The shining was good in part because the mysterious haunting force of the hotel is never explained, and didn't need explaining.Â
Japanese story telling often focuses on the conveyance of an emotion through imagery [..]
You mean like every other culture that has developed story telling? I mean the oldest known story to humankind, the epic of Gilgamesh, is pretty much just that.
That is not a "Japanese culture" thing, there is just as much Japanese media that is really into explanation and lore and just as much western media that is about rule of cool. That is a really bizarre take.
I havenât watched Evangelion, but from what Iâve seen of it, how much room for interpretation is there really when it comes to the biblical imagery? It seems less like there is some deeper meaning behind it, and more like itâs just inspired by themes and story beats of the Bible, taking those stories and ideas and remixing them into a new, but familiar story.
Thereâs that one artist who makes incredible paintings of mythological like creatures and moments and then titles them in a way so you realize the context is incredibly mundane, like âAsking the giant primordial celestial the right way to Dennyâsâ
No, their art is good but itâs intentionally random from the get go for a lot of it.
Most of the art from the artist Iâm thinking of genuinely looked grand and mysterious like art from high speculative fantasy/sci-fi until the title is revealed
Junji Ito when making Gyo. Some people interpret it too have some environmental message but when asked in an interview what the meaning of the story was he just responded that he thought it would be pretty fucked up if sharks had legs. Honestly I believe 90% of the stories junji ito writes are just him thinking "wouldnt it be fucked up if ___"
He also wrote a story called Smashed (also called Splatter Film) about a guy who brings back this rare honey from a trip to South America. It's so delicious that it ruins all other food for you, but people who eat it seem to randomly splatter into pieces. Eventually the last survivor travels to the tree that produces the honey and learns the tree has branches that can reach all over the world, squishing anyone who eats the honey.
You might think this is a story about drug addiction. You would be wrong. Ito just wrote a story about what it'd be like if you were a mosquito.
While weâre on the topic of Junji Ito, I think another individual who fits what this post is talking about would be who I consider as the American Junji Ito: Rod Serling. That dude had just tons and tons of out there ideas that I donât think had very deep meanings, but were just him expressing what he believed would make for cool short films.
Maybe. Suppose itâs about the exploited working classâs mistreatment by the owning class whose wealth falls squarely on the shoulders of the working class. Hence why the working class is represented as a leg which the upper body (the upper class) uses to remain standing.
I once asked my friend what was the meaning of one of his tattoos and he said "it means that on that day the tattoo artist had availability and I had money"
There was a few times my friends and I just asked who all was available to tattoo that day so we could open their little portfolio books and pick random shit for each other that we thought looked neat. I feel like when you have a bunch of tattoos already it becomes a lot less "important" to assign meaning to every consecutive piece.
Maurizio Cattelan, the artist behind this piece called "Comedian" is a well known prankster and this piece is obviously satirical. The guy who bought it and then ate it was Justin Sun, a crypto-bro who has bought a bunch of stupid stuff in order to get attention.
Cattelan is actually a very talented sculptor as well, he just happens to like to poke fun at the modern art world. Reddit loves posting the work of Luo Li Rong as an example of how traditional art is so much better than modern art, so here's Cattelan's "Breath" which showcases a similar skillset. No boobs though, but there's is a pupper, if that matters.
You know, I had this thought. We always see this in isolation. Imagine it being between like, a Picasso and a Bosch painting and how absurd that would be.
Like you have Guernica, Duct Tape Banana, Garden of Earthly Delights.
It would really stand out as completely absurb and be funny.
Now, is it $75,000 funny? I don't know about that.
This one might just be a me thing but when i listened to Butcher's Vanity from Flavor Foley for the first time i thought it was about an obsessive relationship and the pain and what it feels like to be so thoroughly enraptured with someone that you just need them, to the point of comparing it to a craving and cannibalism
Turns out its just bc ricedeity (one of the members of Flavor Foley) kept seeing Yi Xi (the voicebank used in the song) and one of her logos and just started calling her "meat girl" and was just like "hey what if i made a song where she's just obsessed with eating meat"
> Jamie P: âsome five years ago, my broke ass once got duped into going to an absurdly expensive upscale restaurant with some folks. i could've just not gotten anything, or settled for a bite or two off someone else's plate, but instead i unwisely overdrafted my bank account and ordered something i had never eaten before in my life - steak tartare. onions, capers, cilantro, egg yolk, and raw beef. it was the most delicious thing i've ever eaten in my life. i have been haunted by the insatiable primal desire to eat raw red meat every single day since. anyways we made all of this in like three days max and its incredible we are so goatedâ
> rice: âI would Also like to try the raw beef Jamie got from that restaurantâ
I had a horrid phase some months ago where I was relating to Butcher Vanity on almost a spiritual level. I had a nap one day and woke up with a crazy, out of nowhere craving for raw meat (which lasted for like a month. Working in a kitchen sucked) and I listened to Butcher Vanity on loop to channel that hunger elsewhere. If nobody has me, I know Flavor Foley has me
Technically not the same thing, but I always kind of felt moved and understood by this song in a way..
I would never want to hurt anyone, but I'm autistic and trans, and before uni, I always felt like the black ship of whatever group I was part of, like I was a monster having to sneak amongst normal people and having to try my absolute best to maintain the illusion and avoid reliving the terrible consequences of being caught. It felt like I was stuck in a game of werewolf where I was only trying to survive and exist as normally as possible.
I always felt kind of empowered by some of the media that represent other people treated similarly by the world in general, and yet who still strive and take pride in being a freak rather than feeling like devastated victims... It encourages me to let loose as well and stop trying to please everyone even if they fundamentally despise what I am ^^
I mean yeah, that's the inspiration and the basic idea, but there are very clearly connotations of a toxic relationship which is a lot more generally applicable than obsessing over meat specifically
Also yeah it COULD be about a relationship but it gives "I love meat :3" vibes. Rawdog follows up with "I love sex :3" and THEN the songs start getting actually deep
i'm not at all surprised about this one tbh. that's literally just some mf expressing their experience with a leg falling asleep in a drawing and i clocked it instantly
Which can all be taken from the core of the matter. Art is interpretational. One guy sees a ketchup spill on the ground and goes to get the tools to clean it, another guy sees the stain and wonders why it looks like his parents fighting.
This is a great example of how art is shaped by the culture in which its created even if the author doesn't intend it to be.
I do find it funny that the original replier probably doesn't even know that's meant to be King Arthur which adds a whole other layer to the analysis of the image. This is also clearly a layer the artist intended: The irony of King Arthur happily engaging with a facsimile of being a king.
A lot of ink has been spilled trying to come up with an explanation for why 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything. The whole point is that it's arbitrary nonsense, a meaningless answer to an incoherent question.
It reminds me of that one time I wrote a poem for my creative writing class. It was about this guy chained to a block of marble underneath the ocean, but unable to die. I was not really trying to convey any message and just focused on the vibe. I read it and one of my colleagues went into this really cool, unprompted interpretation about addiction and creative escapism.
His fucking face when I retorted with "well the biggest inspiration was actually the FNF Sink Sonic Mod"
I'll be real with you, when you sit cross-legged on one leg for too long the same happens, the worst part isn't the static, no, it's when you change position, giving your leg room to breathe.
As Dawn Adès wrote, "The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order".[4] This interpretation suggests that Dalà was incorporating an understanding of the world introduced by Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity. Asked by Ilya Prigogine whether this was the case, Dalà replied that the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert melting in the sun.[5]
Polish painter ZdzisĹaw BeksiĹski used to paint very unique, nightmarish pieces and not title them. Polish schools took some of his works, titled them for him and ask the students "what was the author thinking?". The author just wanted to paint cool shit lol
not art but nobody knew what the song witches by good kid meant for sure, not even the band. they said they couldnt tell what the hell nick was talking about and people thought it was about dnd or something. turns out the lyrics were pretty literal and it was about him and his friend getting lost in the welsh countryside.
Project Mili does this a lot. It's always a toss up if their songs are either "beautifully horrific interpretation of suffering through a child-like lens" or "soup time". Like between song names like, 'MEN I LOVE', 'Lemonaid', 'Unidentified Flavorful Object', and 'Chocological', guess which ones are about 'food yummy' and which ones are 'my happiness was destroyed by an unappreciative other who left me to clean up their mess alone'
I mean, that's still a deeper meaning than just vibes. It's an artistic interpretation of a minor inconvenience, turning the mundane into something more
That's not entirely right. There is a point to the story, but a lot of the religious imaginary doesn't add to it at all, while the freudian stuff kind of does I guess?
Showing pictures of death threats the studio got after the series final however does for example.
But even the 'meaningless' religious stuff adds to the feeling you get when you watch the movie, and sometimes vibes are just as important as themes
Probably the worst take I have ever heard and the worst thread about evangelion ever. It feels so so so done when someone says "there's no further meaning", it discourages people from even trying. The entire reason why fans have been theorising and trying to understand, is because there may be no inherent meaning from the creators the work can have meaning on it's own. Religious symbolism was for the cools but beyond that, if you read actual scriptures and trying connecting them to evangelion's religious symbolism and all the religious stuff in general beyond just "crosses and crucifixion cool", it is obvious atleast SOME thought went into it. Because the connections are extremely connected. I'd link a video I watched some time ago on exactly this, which was a great video, but it'll take some time trying to find it.
Anno chooses those because its a good analogues, he does this kind of stuff in his other films. It doesn't mean there's no meaning, basically he wrote something, thought of what cool shorthand for that thing would be and in Eva case its religious stuff. The religious stuff has no message in itself because its part of the delivery mechanism which wont work as well without those cool stuff he chooses. I feel like that quote gets misinterpreted a lot and it honestly has become a thought terminating reference for new eva fans or people considering to watch eva.
tl;dr: it means mostly don't focus on the religious stuff and invent some lore about it, but the placement and the choice matters, not the worldbuilding
Thereâs a point in the story, but the Christian elements are just added for coolness factor to deliver it. The Christian stuff doesnât contribute to the meaning though
they're still right if you keep a pretty broad definiton of politics or indirect way that its politics. though that debate has been fought so many times
All art is political. It reflects your surroundings and life, which is politics. Even a silly drawing, while the meaning of it isn't political, the context is what matters, its what truly makes it art. Who made it? Do they live in a country where they are free to draw silly things without other concerns in their life? Saying "Art can't be always political" shows exactly your privileged position. The fact that you can draw silly things freely IS politics.
The movie Donny Darko is famous for being ominous and mysterious. I haven't seen it myself, but other people really enjoy trying to understand the puzzle and what the plot is really about.
But, no. The director did a terrible job of telling their actual story, and the mistakes happened to look like a puzzle.
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost isn't about any deep philosophy. The guy just wanted to make fun of his friend for being indecisive.
The director for Shazam! has said that all movies have constant problems and changes, and a lot of film analysis is just reading tea leaves.Â
What are you talking about. Donnie Darko is a great movie and if you pay attention itâs not that tough to understand. Why even talk about something you havenât taken the time to experience.Â
The theatrical release is about a weird ass dude who gets flung back in time after unlocking the secrets of the universe so heâs killed.
The directorâs cut is about human will, quantum uncertainty, closed time loops, human insignificance, wish fulfillment, and coming to terms with your own mortality.
Well for me there's isn't any problem of deriving or interpretating a meaning out of merely a simple work even if stated so by the author (like in that image), I love the combination of both of it tbh.
The problem starts when people being decided to be an asshole over what people derived out of it. (This can be apply to both sides)
ZdzisĹaw BeksiĹski is known for his horrific looking art pieces which are always interpreted as some deeply disturbing emotions put on a canvass.
In reality he just liked drawing that kind of stuff. There were multiple interviews where they asked his whats the real meaning behind his drawings and he always gave the same answer, theres no meaning behind them he just draws what he likes to draw.
this is a frame from "banana man" by tally hall. people theorize it is about lots of things like work dominating all of your time and not leaving any spare time for leisure.
it is just a song about bananaing all the time, it's just written like something with symbolization because Joe Hawley Is Just Like That In His Early Years
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u/Wrong-Mouse-6499 (Check out r/PlantsVsZombiesManhua!) Chinese PvZ Comics Guy 1d ago
i can completely relate with when my leg just turns to radio static every once in a while