OBEY THE LOSER: A portrait of a wannabe.

Recently I've been getting into the art of Shepard Fairey (unfortunate name, I know) and his OBEY poster and sticker campaign. In case you're not familiar, he's the one who did the iconic Obama campaign posters and stickers with slogans like "Yes we can," "Progress," and "Hope."

Like any artist, there are bound to be dissenters, people who just don't like them no matter what. One outspoken OBEY hater is Mark Vallen.

OBEY kicked off as a sticker campaign back in 1989, and quickly became a social movement of semi-graffiti artists plastering buildings and signs with OBEY artwork, sometimes their own property, sometimes not. Fairey often uses images of iconic political figures and old propaganda posters from around the world set against slogans, usually containing the word OBEY, that tend to make people stop in their tracks and think, "Is that sticker/poster/t-shirt ordering me to.... do something?"

Stickers usually have catchy slogans or mildly funny puns that tell you about the person who stuck it there. In contrast, OBEY art often causes the viewer to react in a way that tells them something about themselves. Just the word OBEY gets a knee-jerk reaction from most people right off the bat.

Art that asks you to appreciate it for what it is, makes you feel nice or happy, art that makes you laugh; well, that's one thing. Art that presents an unpleasant reality and thus demands an actual cognitive decision to either change your behavior or ignore that reality is something quite different.

So in my newfound obsession with OBEY art, I've been browsing the web for resources, information, web images and articles and then I came across this article by Mark Vallen, an artist himself, who calls Fairey out as a plagiarist and says his work is "...machine art that any second-rate art student could produce." Right there I had to stop and ask myself, What is this guy's motivation? Why rip on Fairey? I read on.

All in all, this wannabe "scathing" article is quite facile in its attempt to smear Fairey and misses the point of his art entirely. Vallen accuses Fairey of ripping off propaganda poster art without crediting the source, then shows you a mere handful of examples where the original source art could be found and possibly attributed. But even Vallen couldn't find information on all the original artists he shows as evidence against Fairey, hence this caption beneath one of the comparisons:

Left: Fairey’s plagiarized poster. Right: Original street poster from Czechoslovakia’s, Prague Spring - Artist unknown 1968. The poster depicts a Soviet Red Army soldier in 1945 as a liberator, then as an oppressor in 1968.]

That's right, "Artist Uknown." How exactly does one credit an unknown artist?

Furthermore, what you have to realize here is that much of the art where Fairey references propaganda posters, which is only one facet of what Fairey produces, comes from the "Artist unknown" category. This is specifically because the original propaganda was not initially created as fine art, it was, by definition, political propaganda. There is no legal stance on using old propaganda images, and even if there was, there is virtually no one to ask permission for use, no estate to contact, and no one to credit with a reference or a thanks. You've just got an old poster seen in a book or on the web somewhere with a thought provoking image. The source is often only as specific as the country of origin and the year it was seen.

Other referenced works that Vallen shows you where there is a known original artist are oftentimes in the public domain anyway, or else are used in such a way that does not infringe on any copyright law. It's like sampling in rap.

Consider Jay-Zs Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem) where he samples the eponymous song's chorus. Does Jay-Z credit the musical Annie in the title of his song? No. Of course, since it's a musical to which someone owns the rights, Jay-Z did have to get permission to sample the song. So there was an estate to contact, and someone owned the rights to the music, therefore Jay-Z did what the law required.

But a great deal of older music is in the public domain and therefore fair game to sample as freely as you like, which is exactly what many rappers and electronic artists do all the time. I believe the limit is fifty years for music to be considered public domain, but I'm not sure if that has changed recently.

To me then, when Fairey references old propaganda posters from World War II, some of them from countries that don't even exist any longer, this only adds more weight to the question: Who is he supposed to credit?

"A special thanks to some unknown Fascist/Communist/Racist poster-making guy."

And then there's everything else in Fairey's portfolio; portraits of celebrities or musical artists, album covers and concert posters, repeating designs and logos of many shapes and sizes. And all of these pieces possess that trademark muted palette of typically three-to-five colors, the bold, graffiti-stencil simplicity, and oftentimes the use of attention-demanding slogans; giving his entire catalogue a pleasing cohesiveness rare even among top-notch graphic artists. A cursory glance through his work gives the viewer all they need to identify OBEY art whenever they come across it in everyday life. It's simply that iconic.

But the thing I found most surprising about this smear piece against Fairey is that the author, Vallen himself, is an artist. After reading the piece, I noticed the Main Gallery and Punk Portraits tabs on his site, so I clicked immediately, expecting to find artwork at the very least on par with what I've come to expect from Fairey. I mean, you don't just trash someone's art because they're better at it than you are, right?

Well, you can decide for yourself, but in my opinion, Vallen has all the talent and self-deluded bravado of a ninth-grade art major, nowhere near half the attention to composition or eye for color that Fairey possesses.

I find it even funnier that Vallen's Works for Sale page consists almost entirely of pieces that look like bad rip-offs of OBEY propaganda-style art. But notice one detail, Fairey's OBEY sticker campaign initially launched in 1989, and almost all of Vallen's pieces for sale here were made in 1987 of before. Does that strike you as odd? Maybe Vallen is just mad that Fairey was able to do something interesting with the poster-style art to which people actually responded, while his own art collects dust, soon to be forgotten.

Where Fairey has earned a place in pop-art history, and even a clothing line; Vallen has got a bunch of boring portraits of people you've never heard of that he can't sell, likely because the viewer goes away from Vallen's forgettable art unchanged. Where Fairey has an entire subculture (for better or for worse) of people using his stickers, or stencils based on his images, as thought-provoking graffiti; Vallen has a sneeze of a Wikipedia entry that no one seems interested enough to update, making it even harder for me to source information on Vallen without relying almost exclusively on his own poorly designed, self-promoting website. For a guy who claims to be making Art For A Change (which is his website domain name, by the way) it seems few are taking notice of that change.

Those who can't, teach. And those who can't teach, are supposed to teach gym class, or so they saying goes. Time to join the ranks of your fellow whistle-blowing burnouts, Vallen. Cause at least in gym class, if your students want a passing grade, they must...

OBEY

ADJ

Theophiliacs

For the few of you who actually read my blog, just wanted to let you know that for the moment I am getting involved in theophiliacs.com with Jeremy Gharnieh and some of his buddies. It's the self-described Most Prestigious Post-Evangelical Tea Party in the Twin Cities. Whatever that means. 

This is not to say that I won't be posting here or anything. I likely will, whenever normal life things happen worth blogging about that wouldn't fit there, and granted I have time to blog here as well; but I will probably be more active over there since that is the... oh, what's the right word, the mode my mind is in right now. But I would bet anyone who had any interest in my ramblings here would probably be even more engaged at theophiliacs, with a lot more viewpoints to choose from and lively discussion to boot.

See you all there,

ADJ

Burning Down The Shack.

I was a little hesitant when my wife came home with a copy of WM. Paul Young's new "bestselling" novel, The Shack. To be fair, however, I know many people who I respect that told me they enjoyed the book. So, as tedious as the overall plot idea sounded, I decided I was game and flipped open to the first page. It begins:

"March unleashed a torrent of rainfall after an abnormally dry winter. A cold front out of Canada then descended and was held in place by a swirling wind that roared down the Gorge from eastern Oregon. Although spring was surely just around the corner, the god of winter was not about to relinquish its dominion without a tussle."

My first thought was, "Without a tussle? The god of winter will not give in without a tussle? Isn't a tussle what three year old girls get into over a Barbie? Hardly appropriate for the god of winter if you asked me." And in like manner follows the first four dreadful paragraphs. 

Let me get you up to speed on Novel Writing 101. First, never start a novel with a trivial, forgettable line. Your opener needs to be solid and it needs to establish your mood, character or plot strongly. Second, never, ever start a novel with a four paragraph description of the weather. You need substance and authority from the very first line or you lose your reader before they even get as far as the cash register.

Here are some good first lines, presented in no particular order.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." ~A Tale of Two Cities

"It was a pleasure to burn." ~Fahrenheit 451

"Call me Ishmael." ~Moby Dick

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." ~Genesis 1:1

"First, Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, then Tyler's pushing a gun into my mouth, saying the first step to eternal life is you have to die." ~Fight Club

These lines all establish something important, something vital to the narrative they set up, each in their own way. 

So, while I knew I wasn't going to be blown away by the writing, I wanted to at least get through the first chapter before I gave up on the novel altogether.

Lo and behold, starting with the fifth paragraph Young suddenly begins to earn a little respect with me. 

We see the main character, Mack, braving the adverse conditions to check the mail, where he receives a mysterious note, responds emotionally and then, on his trek back to the house, we even get some humor as the main character slips and falls. I really enjoyed a lot of this. 

The key element that makes this section suddenly work is Young is now  "Showing vs. Telling." 

He could have just told me these things; It was cold. Mack got a note. Mack was upset. Mack fell. Instead, he showed me all of this through events and exposition. 

Interestingly, this fifth paragraph renders the previous four all but superfluous, as they serve only to "tell" the reader things about the setting. The fifth paragraph and on has action, character development, and we get plenty of information about the weather conditions as Mack interacts with nature. We have the character in the setting, not just near it, or watching it from a distance. I no longer need to be told it's icy out, because I am shown through the character's actions. That's how you establish setting, not with a movie style panoramic shot of scenery. This isn't a screenplay, it's a novel. 

And the development keeps moving. Mack calls the post office, so I learn it must be a small town since he seems to know the mailman and the post office worker. When we find the mail hasn't been delivered the note gets more mysterious. Later, when Mack intentionally lies about the note to his wife on the phone, suddenly I really care about this little piece of paper and the plot has me by the throat. Young built tension, established a good deal of foreshadowing, and developed several characters through their interactions.

In this first chapter, the build up is great (once we get past the opening scenery.) The author has shown me a great deal and, despite himself, gotten me interested enough to continue reading.

Sadly, the book begins a slow descent from there. We get a flashback to the ill-fated camping trip, the jumping off point for the main conflict of the story. On the way to the campsite, one of Mack's daughters asks that he tell her a story, so he does, going on about this Indian Princess who, to sum up, becomes a salvific figure to her people akin to the Christ narrative. It's a somewhat ham-handed literary allusion, but I was willing to allow it and move on.

Young, however, apparently thinks his readers are complete idiots, far too daft to understand the relationship between the two stories on our own, so he goes on the literally spell out, via Mack's internal thoughts, that the Indian Princess is, in fact, a direct literary allusion to Jesus Christ.

Using a poorly drawn allegory to illustrate a point is one thing, but then to immediately follow that with an am-I-talking-slow-enough-for-you explanation of the illustration is just plain bad form. Alluding to the Bible is almost as common as alluding to Shakespeare in the world of literature, and if you aren't confident enough in your craft to establish a cogent literary allusion that you can trust your readers to understand, you may as well take up surfing. I got your point, Young, no need to hit me in the face with it.

After this, the novel drags on with entire chapters of tedious dialogue which could have been, no, should have been summed up in a handful of paragraphs. Instead, we get every single melodramatic line from every possible auxiliary character imaginable, characters that should be set in the background at best, all which serves to bring the plot to a near stand still. These sections read like a first draft, where you lay out all the events you want to happen in your book, then go back and make it interesting and, frankly, pick up the pace a little bit. But it looks like Young's editor gave up completely after the first chapter, since from that point on the novel is almost entirely "telling" me what is happening. This happens, then this, then this, then this person says this, then this happens, blah, blah, blah.

We eventually get to the novel's namesake shack, a building which, against all odds, appears far sturdier than the rickety plot which has been laid out before us thus far. This is where the novel crashes and burns from a literary standpoint. 

Now I don't how to put this any more eloquently, so here goes. You simply cannot just make your characters say exactly what you want your readers to get out of the novel. This is another basic element of Novel Writing 101. Even if you're writing with an agenda, even if you're making a point, you don't just have your characters come out and say that point. Sure, these conversations make an okay first draft, but you have to go somewhere with it. We get literally chapters worth of some of the most awful, one dimensional dialogue I've ever read.

It'd be like having a novel which revolves around the unsanitary conditions of the meatpacking industry, only all your main character ever says to other characters amounts a series of points about how poorly animals are treated and how dirty everything is. Just have him sit in the break room all day and complain about it to other workers. That's not a novel, it's preaching.

Now take The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. This novel singlehandedly drew attention to the abhorrent conditions typical of turn of a century meat packing plant by revolving around a character who works in one. Sinclair didn't design a character with a previously established vested interest in worker's rights, animal rights and sanitary food preparation, then have him sit down and with other characters to talk about those conditions for half the book. He showed the character in those conditions, interacting within them, trying to make a living despite his surroundings. It's a good novel in and of itself, and it makes a point without needing its characters to verbally spell it out.

However, this is exactly what we get with The Shack. We get is a guy who needs to find deeper meaning in his relationship with God and, since Young apparently ran out of ideas for plot after the first chapter, he literally sits his main character down with God and, through Mack, asks God the 'tough questions' that we all deal with as twenty-first century human beings. Then Young asserts his best guesses at plausible answers to these issues via his (unbelievably cheesy) version of the Trinity.

Not only is the dialogue bad, but the characters are equally poorly drawn and pedantic. It becomes a theological conversation where the turns are as predictable as a Saturday morning cartoon, and much less entertaining.

If I wanted to get preached at, I'd go down the street where the crazy homeless guy shakes his Bible at passersby and rattles on about Armageddon. 

Likewise, if Young wants to write theology, he should skip fiction altogether. It's not a bunch of bad theological ideas, it's just a lazy framework through which they are put forth.

I know I'm being fairly critical here, but I am a Christian, and I take it personally when a writer gets away with publishing a book this bad and then it hits the bestseller list as every last consumer of Christian entertainment eats it up for no better reason than because it's a Christian book by a Christian author. 

So take this for what it is, merely my opinion of this most recent popular Christian novel. But I bet in ten years, no one will remember this book with much more thought than, "Oh, I think I read The Shack. What was it about again?"

Surprise!

I don't like getting calls from Private numbers. It's usually my doctor's office, reminding me of an appointment and no matter how often it happens, getting blood drawn still sucks. I mean, all these needle pokes and not even a tattoo to show for it.

However, yesterday's call was unique, quite bittersweet.

*Ring ring* (I'll just pretend I have a normal ringtone for the moment.)

"Hello?"

"Anthony, this is your doctor's office."

"What's up?"

"Well, you said to let you know if an opening came up, for a biopsy... well... we have one for this afternoon. Three o'clock?"

"Oh. ... Sure. Let's get it over with."

And that was that. Unlike my last biopsy, I didn't have to look forward to it for several weeks, only a couple hours, which I spent at Guitar Center trying to decide between a Fender Blues Jr and a Vox AC15. (And trying to think of a way to convince the wife to let me spend 4 - 600 on an amp.) I think the consensus is I'll be looking for a used Blues Jr on Craigslist.

To be honest, though, I would certainly prefer to have a biopsy sprung on me like this rather than have it marked on the calendar and in the back of my mind for any amount of time. Sure, there were nerves to deal with, but not nearly as much.

Julia and I rolled into the office around 2:45, I get blood drawn and next thing I know I'm half naked under a pastel patterned hospital gown getting my yearly bone marrow done.

It still hurt more than we'd expected, but that's certainly no reflection on the doctor or his ability. He and his assistant were fantastic. I just couldn't relax. I couldn't shake the fear that it would be like the first one, which sucked, since I would not be completely under like last time.

Being awake for the procedure just doesn't work for me, so after all was said and done, the consensus was that it would probably be a good idea for me to be under general going forward, since that first experience is just so cemented in my head.

I know it's all mental, it's all in my head, but it doesn't seem to change anything. And I know I shouldn't be disappointed by that, since it's out of my control to a degree, but I can't help but feel like I should be able to ... get over it.

I learned to swim to get over a fear of water. I took a couple rock climbing courses to get over the fear of heights. But there really isn't a practical way to get over the fear of someone drilling a hole into your hip and aspirating a piece of marrow. Getting more informed as to what goes on during the procedure and what they are looking for has certainly helped with fear of the unknown, but the thought that I'll have to do this every year for the rest of my life tends to put things in perspective as well.

So... now we wait for the results, I guess. So long as nothing changes I'm good, and I'm not really worried about that I guess. Cancer doesn't scare me nearly as much those huge biopsy needles.

And you know, I've never really asked, Why me? Through this whole Leukemia thing, I've never really wondered if there was some reason. And I don't think there is.

There are some people that would say (and have told me) that any sickness is a result of spiritual problems and, you know, God can't heal you if you don't fix them. Whatever. There are other people that say, "All things happen for a reason." While I don't disagree with that, I'd much rather focus on the good things I have going for me than to try to deduce some larger, cosmic purpose for cancer in my life. Cancer sucks, but I have a baby girl on the way who is going to be just awesome. How can I possibly get caught up on something so negative when something so amazing is happening in my life.

Now... I don't know how to wrap this up eloquently, and it almost seems wrong to not make some huge, well worded point at the end, but here goes.

To me, it's all about perspective. Some would say (and have told me) I'm in denial, but they're wrong. I accept all these things in my life, but I choose to spend my time and energy on the ones that matter most to me, and those are the people I love. Everything is just details.

Burn After Reading.

What a disappointing movie. I finally get the car back so I take the wife on a much overdue date. We decide to check out Burn After Reading because, judging by the trailers, it should have been hilarious. Sadly, the 30 seconds of clips you get in the preview are some of the best stuff the movie has to offer.

Don't get me wrong, Pitt and Malkovich are great, but when don't they deliver? Unfortunately, Pitt's role was small and short lived, and even Malkovich seems to have been brushed aside to make room for Clooney and MacDormand. Clooney was okay, sort of funny when he tried, but you knew he was trying so it still fell flat overall. As for the rest of the cast, I'll quote Simon Cowell and say, "That performance was forgettable."

The problem was that the movie left me feeling much like the way it portrayed the CIA; "Well, report back to me when ... it makes sense." The plot never felt like it got going. There was all this build up, some great twists began to develop, but the pacing dragged on and the story never made you want to root for anyone because you weren't sure who was supposed to come out ahead. Everyone was backstabbing everyone else, but somehow you just didn't care.

I won't give anything away, since I'm sure many will still go and see it regardless of anything I say, but if you do, at least catch a matinee so you don't feel quite so taken after the fact.

And with any luck, when the DVD comes out, the package will read, "Burn After Watching."