emissorries
I do not know where they came from but I hope they go back there soon!
If I draw another scene like this I will likely want to call the image “undignitaries.”
I will avoid talking a great deal more about the hat video. Not that I couldn’t spend a year explaining every inch of everything that went wrong, or that I do not have copious personal notes and screen captures detailing each, but since I solved most of it I no longer dwell on it. I was able to do what this helpful person suggested I do about disney movies, because the problem actually no longer exists, which I do not reckon will ever be the case for disney movies. Quite to the contrary, there will only be more disney movies, even ones that alread existed and used to not be disney movies. The hat video did not improve my life or expand my audience or make me optimistic about being able to do that regularly but it felt like a better use of time than the usual uses of my time that do not improve my life, and so feels like an improvement in comparison.
I do however feel bad for talking so harshly to that person even though it wasn’t the first time and it would not have been the last time either if I had been any less than so displeased and displeasing that the person would abruptly cease contact with me, and the initial reprimand was even less nice than that. I am an angry aunt who writes letters to tv stations in my spare time who nobody is worried about being disinherited by since I never married and don’t have any money. The idea of being understood even it means being alone is more appealing to me than getting along with people who just want me to smile and shut up and bake cookies for them.
Oddly enough that person seemed outwardly supportive when i complained about one specific property which I referred to as dintydoone, even if he did not seem to care about or grasp my specific complaints, but whoa don’t touch disney. Don’t mess with my zootopia. The collective lowering of standards and standardization of homogeneity dinty and friends inflicted upon imaginary internet culture in four years is significant but less than one tenth of 1% of the profiteering brainwashing and brainscrubbing and brainshining disney has inflicted upon actual world culture even in the same period. I am a joke with no life, and the undead can only go undetected for so long when they pretend to be otherwise.
And I think this is why I have failed to expand my audience for YEARS; people constantly come in with totally wrong expectations, talk up how much they love what I am doing, and then get far away once they realize what I am actually doing. People who would accept that truth are presumably put off by whatever is giving all those wrong expectations. I of course blame nemitz.
I made some music that caused me to think of hats, and made a picture to accompany that. Then I thought I should have a little animation for it since I have not posted any in a long time. Then I decided to spend three days straight cramming as much stupid trash in there as possible, then spent two more days on it. Then youtube played a series of tricks on me resulting in a “final” product with a number of anomalies that I could fix but don’t want to reupload and make re-public after three past attempts the same day. However they occur too near the end to be at fault if anyone shuts the thing off in disgust.
Then after nearly a week I put up another version
Also it is a bit long and I couldn’t choose from the two closers I considered. A sensible person would split this into two videos and solve both problems. Indeed.
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artichoke this website is a mess. On tuesday i am going to upload another version of the same dumb video and actually look it over properly, in the intended context. And pog willing it will be acceptable and I won’t have any major reservations about its state that allow my mind to justify spending more days making “last minute” revisions after quickly sorting out the one thing I was actually supposed to be doing.
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I have now updated the video and believe that I will not do so again for a much longer period than elapsed between its other updates.
Sharing a house with my niece, I have seen more than my share of popular media that I would otherwise have pledged to avoid, and it has helped, forced me to discern the truly awful (Finding Dory) from the bearably mediocre (Brave) and occasionally something that isn’t even bad. I can take the 2016 [disney] Jungle Book better than 2017 [disney] Beauty and the Beast since Jungo isn’t trying to closely imitate the earlier disney cartoon while selectively changing things to be more twitter-morality acceptable, while meanwhile totally failing to be as good in the scenes that are completely analogous. It isn’t, like Maleficent, depending on you having seen the old (disney) movie so it can tell you how WRONG that movie is. But 1991 Beauty and the Beast is a different sort of thing from 1967 Jungle Book since it came out within the lifetime of most of the jerk hipsters who NEED a replacement version that is less interesting and more “social justice”y. Maleficent had its own amount of that, but foremost its goal was to emphasize how perfect its star/producer is. 1991 Beauty and the Beast is considered obnoxious fandom required viewing more so than Jungle Book OR Sleeping Beauty, but Jungle Book least of all since that doesn’t have a princess in it who needs to be retroactively transformed into a more substantial and empowered character. I hadn’t even seen 1967 Jungle book all the way through until literally last week because i never wanted to. Which is not to say its remake lacks elements that exist only to get the attention of annoying people, like putting a cowbell focally in the Christopher Walken character’s treasure heap. but it isn’t shoehorning in every song or lame imitations of the old version’s dance sequences. The two songs it does carry over are briefer, and the first is relevant to distinguish that the bear character is more fun-loving than anyone else in the jungle, who never even taught Mowgli what a song IS. The second song is a sinister/surreal counterpart to the first song, sung by an enormous megalomaniacal gorilla who is only trying to seem fun. Almost the opposite of the original character. Which actually was an original character, having no counterpart in the actual Jungle Book books. Yes, the B&B remake did something similar with Gaston, changing fun to sinister, but in that case it comes across more like they aren’t ALLOWED to make the guy likeable even for a moment because internet than a creative decision. And since the film is a scene by scene recreation of the old (disney) version, that change really stands out to me.
Gaston’s divergence from the previous film, with regard to how he initially treats Maurice, is not significant enough to disprove my assertion that the film sets out to impersonate and swap places with the other, since otherwise it does, before and after that point. 2016 jungle book differs from the cartoon at the start, middle and end. 2017 Beauty and the Beast does so sporadically and strategically.
2016 jungle book is not a scene by scene recreation. It is not trying to re-appeal to the same people as the old one. The 1967 edition is silly. It is a cartoon. It KNOWS it is a cartoon. The newer film recognizes the change in medium and tells a different story with many of the same elements, and without trying to put itself over and diss the old one. And I am not of the opinion that the cartoon is perfect, either; Mugly just ends up near Man Village without ever resolving to go there, so he doesn’t need to grow as a character. He never shows an interest in technology so it is less clear why anybody is worried he will get addicted to fire. There are prolonged interludes with the elephants and vultures that do not accomplish anything except remind Shere Khan that everyone else in the jungle is an idiot. Apparently Walt Disney was obsessed with celebrity voiceovers, if not as obsessed with building the entire movie and marketing campaign around that as the current company is, and wanted the Beatles to voice the vultures and thought the novelty of that would be enough to justify giving them what feels like 15 minutes of screen time just saying “so what do you lads wanna do?” “don’t start THAT again!” But John Lennon knew specifically that he didn’t wanna do that and I suppose the others weren’t even asked but the scene wasn’t cut or redone, either. But I don’t dwell on this all day and all night because it is a dumb cartoon. It isn’t like Moana with the stop and go “you can do this! no you can’t do this! yes you can! no you can’t! now let’s have a montage where you prove you can do this! now let’s have another mopey interlude where you think you can’t” which also I am supposed to see as socially progressive since the female protagonist is more competent than the male one and neither is caucasian (and I acknowledge that cartoon Mowgli is literally Christopher Robin with a different haircut despite being in India). The obnoxious David Bowie tribute can’t be deleted without leaving a hole in continuity whereas if necessary you could skip 1967jb’s vulture section.
and so
When I read about 2019 lion king, months ago by now, I had never so profoundly wanted a film to flop. It seemed like it wanted to combine the worst traits of Maleficent and Beauty and the Beast Remake, What with loads of inappropriate celebrity non-actors in major roles, especially Beyonkay Knowles, who is about the only person I can think of who would be presented as less fallible than Angelina Jolie, and the source film being in recent memory and precious to dumb fandoms which will hype and buy into it whatever it does. Jungle Book 2016 is cited as inspiration but only on the technological side, even though the cartoon is more visually engaging.
Instead of two songs that nobody trendy cares about, we get four incredibly annoying songs from the earlier film that are supposed to already long since be seared into your memory, with the one bearable song about the one bearable character left out. As of february apparently it is back in, but then THAT means you’re literally recreating the old movie. Then you get a talentless ass like Billy Eichner, whose lame to fame is going outside and yelling embarrassing things at people while filming them and periodically reminding you he is gay like you couldn’t tell. And he’s not taking over the minor Bobcat Goldthwaite role, he’s being Timon, who sings a lot and is impossible to not see. I never liked Timon, but I learned to appreciate Nathan Lane in theater roles unrelated to the Lion King. Because he is actually an actor, even if I don’t think he is funny. Billy Eichner is nothing if he isn’t funny except loud (which is annoying) and gay (which is irrelevant). The hog is voiced by Seth Rogen, who I also don’t want to hear singing, or at this point even talking. I would say I don’t want to hear him breathing but that seems like i want him to die, when I merely want him to not exist.
John Oliver, why is he there? Why cast him as Zazu, the worst character? Just to make sure there isn’t one person left that I enjoyed in my late-night-comedy-liking years and haven’t yet developed a grudge against? I got past Andy Richter being a voice in both Father of the Pride AND Madagascar but my understanding is that, at least in the latter role, he was actually doing a voice, not simply talking like Andy Richter so you hear him and think “oh that’s tv’s Andy Richter” because he probably actually auditioned for the role rather than receiving it in an award show gift basket. Can someone I don’t hate in a role that I do make the role more bearable? Not at my position in life, no. They might as well have had Billy Eichner do that one also.
Keegan Michael Key, another person I used to find interesting, has a role, but one of the hyenas which as I indicated I don’t remember noticing much from the cartoon. And I should be glad it is an ex-Mad TV person rather than an idiot from Saturday Night Live for a change. Considering that the film’s whole concept, recreate something that already exists and change a few aspects while mugging for applause each time a character I am supposed to already be familiar with appears for the first time is more or less what Saturday Night Live does now. But Phil Lamarr is also from Mad TV and has considerably more voice acting experience. Experience is irrelevant; Key was only cast because he is in stupid ads and Barack Obama likes him.
The top-billed actor is Donald Glover whose name looked mildly familiar to me, but what from I could not place. But apparently he is best known for an audio production called “This is America.” Something I heard last year, thought “this is terrible” and then forgot about and eventually learned had won six billion awards. That seems about right. That has really been Lion King’s legacy in my life. That which I find unremarkable at best becomes essential to the lives of others and shoved at me and heralded as the best there is perpetually. THIS is America. We make annoying movies set in other countries filled with lame comedy, irritating songs and fake contemporary morality and then tell ourselves it is the greatest accomplishment in the history of humanity even while constantly criticizing “america,” whose frivolous brainwashable marketing-addicted and disseminating consumers and above-the-law corporations this would be impossible without. ESPECIALLY if it is done in rap form. Because rap is new and speaks truth to power despite being older than me and totally appropriated by commercialism. The Media is controlled by white people who are afraid of looking racist if they claim to not like rap and conveniently enough the performance art presented as blackest is not terribly difficult. Anybody who looks the part can be trained to rap. Even if they have a weak voice and can’t talk very fast, hey hooray we trained the public to pretend they think digitally augmented barely-human vocals sound good! Convincing the public they like rap leaves you the most options. I don’t recall that the item in question contains digitally augmented vocals or that the new lion king contains rap, but Glover wasn’t hired for being an actor suited to the part, that is the point. I would be surprised if a single person in the cast was. Image is everything. Especially when the people are invisible. Anyway the magic of the Lion King is that it is bad enough on its own non-merit to not need rap to make itself worse.
The race-bait matter may be contemporary; it wants to compensate for the majority of television’s and cinema’s existence when no black people were allowed, except in demeaning roles, so I can accept that, for a few more years, possibly. I won’t pretend I like rap or the Lion King, though, because I don’t, and I shouldn’t have to.
1994 Lion King was a big line in the sand
I was not keen on lions already; I didn’t understand what made them “king” of “the jungle.” They don’t live in jungles and tigers are bigger than them!
And I really really hated the film! I remember hearing that the middle kid from Home Improvement was the voice of Simba, and not knowing why I should care or why he was a big deal. But I was SUPPOSED to know, and I didn’t go searching for the information. I thought talking feral animals were stupid and boring in general. I thought it was dumb that the prey had to KNEEL, on ONE KNEE, before these creatures that were going to kill them, and that I was supposed to think that was the right way of things. I hated simba bragging about being king and all these much bigger animals had to do what he said even though he wasn’t actually king yet, and compensate for his ignorance amidst that; when he says “everybody look left” they actually have to go RIGHT to match bratty dumb Simba’s viewpoint. I thought aging from child to adult in two seconds was extremely stupid. Especially in 1994, I had been in special education a year or two years and considered that all this garbage screwing up my life, probably for good, that I had no say in, in the DISNEY story this period of life is so easy and without consequence that you can skip it and be exactly where everyone else told you you would end up. I didn’t think it was funny that Pumbo and Timmy ate bugs. I ate a worm and got in big trouble, but oh ha ha when disney characters do it, it’s FUNNY! And they really don’t taste like chicken. They taste like dirt. Why does this wimpy scavenger know what chicken IS much less what a dead one tastes like, and why would Simba be expected to also know? I swear to you with complete sincerity those are the things I was thinking about. I literally didn’t remember anything that happened after the Hakuna Potata segment because I was so fixated on not wanting to be in the theater. I wanted to go home and play Donkey Kong on the Super Game Boy, so it isn’t like my standards were particularly high (though I’d still rather play that again than any Donkey Kong game released since then). In fact it was a long time before I realized that “caaaaan you feel the LOVE” song I used to get bothered by when buying pringles and 32 ounce Snapple at a local store was from a movie I had already seen. But it was four years before I had home internet access and yet longer before fan-wankdom controlled all discourse, so I was able to avoid alienating every single person who loved this thing, and I had emulators to keep me occupied even when video games tried to turn on me the same way that cartoons did, including a particularly shoddy and ubiquitous one based on The Lion King. Now Lion King wants to come back and really challenge my devotion to despising it. Well you know what, I’ve been alienating everyone I know by complaining about their false gods for half my life now so it is much, much too late to do any more damage. This isn’t something that is made to be remembered. Just to get press, get money, get awards and get lost. If it wants to supplant the old one, it may be my guest, put my apathy to the test. At least Josh Gad isn’t in it.
sometimes it is a relief to no longer care.