i think of it as “windows 95 optimism”. the suburb in which the first toy story takes place is in this world, i think.
a clean, peaceful, environmentally-friendly post-end of history world with slightly advanced technology. technology and how it’s used is extrapolayed from how people envisioned how the future of technology would look in the first half of the 90s.
toys, toy story 1, sim city, a whole mountain of edutainment cd roms
(though in the end, toys ended up being both pretty pessimistic about technology and almost exactly predicting the nature of warfare in the 21st century)
I think it’s descended from '80s high-gloss corporatism, too, and the ironic fashion commentary on it. A lot of Talking Heads constructs this mirrored steel tower and hyper-green lawn aesthetic, and importantly, it’s not just bitterly observed like an Updike suburban ennui – they understand and respect the longing for it, especially through Once in a Lifetime and Nothing But Flowers.
she has a lot of good and relevant marxist-influenced work about cuteness as a complex modern aesthetic category when applied to objects that i feel like would be productively compatible with this train of thought
Just got round to watching this on my watch later list and its beautiful. Tempted to show it to my students as well.
I was on track to start learning [British] Sign Language in 2020 but pandemic happen. Where I live, colleges that teach it are quite remote and the cancelled lessons put a damper on my ambition but this video reignited that interest. A valuable share.
Thank you I am glad you liked it. My students were really energized by it. I was basically trying to get them to think about how space affords many possiiblities, but as they become particular places they start to be used only in a few ways at most. They are writing about spaces on campus and trying to find a cultural story moving through them, a story that says this is a particular place with a few specific purposes. I told them they could do virtual spaces and that blew their brains a bit.
I also assigned the WorldsChat episode of @OneSecondBefore 's show!
Woah, that’s a high compliment, thank you! tbh one of my greatest aspirations as a filmmaker has always been to be some obscure weirdo whose shit is assigned in academia
