My experience as an artist has always been stone cold.
It’s always been harsh orange light and a dark empty street. It’s always been cold air and the moon jutting out to greet me. It’s always been the fear of the unknown, and then growing to accept it.
It sounds boring in conception, but for me, it was always a beautifully cathartic experience. I loved being alone and feeling the cool air on my shoulders.
And so the coolest thing ever for me was watching what made being alone so special for me translated onto the big screen. The lonely walks wouldn’t make me happy, per se, but it would give me that cathartic feeling of having your emotions torn apart and understood, something that I could never experience in real life.
So when I saw these experiences translated onto the silver screen, it was always the coolest thing for me. Something that I could relate to, something that has affected me so much, had gotten its representation on film, and for the first time, I feel proud of being an artist, proud of having to go through failure after failure to see something as inspiring as the greats capturing the same complicated feelings that I went through during my times of contemplation.
From the very start, Neon Genesis Evangelion captured the troubled emotions of an artist perfectly. I’m a fan of Hideaki Anno, because in his art, the raw emotion and his humanity shines through in a way where I can resonate so much with him. It’s why Ghibli movies such as Whisper of the Heart and movies about accepting yourself like La La Land affect me so much, because it tells the story of an artist, it tells you of how it feels to be someone who wants so bad for others to understand you, only to be hit with a cold, unfeeling society.
I’ve always been a bit of an aloof guy. I’d always talk about my feelings and emotions, but for most people, it would never connect. I’d have friends, but it’d always felt like we lived on separate planes of existence. The only place I’d feel at home was, well on the street, or on the computer screen where I could watch films. It would always feel frustrating that I couldn’t talk and talk to the artist or the director making the film, but to me, it would always be a more meaningful experience than an open mic session at school where everyone would be content to saying anything they wanted.
I love Eva because I can emotionally relate to it. I love La la land because I can emotionally relate to it. I love Whisper of the Heart, because it captures what it felt to be an artist, the silent, unfeeling atmosphere.
They’ve inspired me to try and make my own stories. I’ve always wanted to be able to recapture that, to make sure that legacy doesn’t die. Like Sebastian in La La Land, I want to make it so that, with as much exciting and amazing shows and movies that are put out, people never forget what it does feel like to be an artist, that as long as the cycle continues, there are some people who are alone, feel like art is there for them.
And this is why watching people call works of art overrated, calling La La land a shitty cringe-worthy musical film, watching a YouTuber who loves Beserk to death only to take a massive dump over Neon Genesis Evangelion for shits and giggles, watching people complain and complain about the CGI job in Attack On Titan’s newest season breaks my heart.
People create art to be able to express themselves in a way that they can never do in real life. In a culture that actively tries to control the way people think, artists can synergize with the most primitive human trait: emotions.
So when this art is dissected for all to see, when the hate starts coming, it’s hard to recognize that these are real people. People with real emotions and feelings, who only created what they thought was the most powerful and impactful piece they could create. BTS, Zack Snyder, Hayao Miyazaki, all they wanted to do was to tell the story that they wanted to tell.
In return, they receive hate, death threats, some edgy YouTuber saying that their show or movie is bOrInG aNd RePeTiTivE, and hide their own insecurities behind jokes just to piss off more people. I’m just saying, if your entire goal is to piss people off, you’re living a pretty sad life.
What’s the point? I write this shit for discussion, not hate comments. I didn’t post something online because I wanted people to tell me how wrong I was, I wanted people to tell me why I was wrong. I wanted to be challenged not by some bullshit logic but actual facts so that we can take the argument farther. I disagree with most of Joker as a movie because I feel that it misrepresents mental health, but that doesn’t mean I downright hate the film. That doesn’t mean I’m going to go on twitter to get all sissy about how Joker was a terrible film and that everyone who thought it was good was a fucking idiot.
We live in a place where people get flamed on twitter for liking a television show. People get flamed for enjoying things that other people hate.
I genuinely could not give two flying fucks about the political landscape right now. I couldn’t tell you the Vice President of the United States name, nor could I tell you the name of the California governor.
What I do care about is that the people who have visions and dreams are able to get their visions seen without some 40 year old man-child saying it’s stupid and repetitive and liberal.
People always bring up shit like “free speech”, and it frustrates the living crap out of me. Freedom of speech has never meant the freedom to take a massive dump on other people’s opinion on what is right. Freedom of speech is, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the freedom to have an opinion, to engage in civil conversations in order to push the human race forward.
That’s where the beauty of art lies. And we should really start giving these phenomenally brave artists the respect that they deserve.
