Stuff Wot I Had Not Considered

I saw a smaller youtuber talking about movies and she mentioned her belief that "Hollywood movies" - like, normal movies I guess she meant - are destructive to our psyche. 'Our' referring to we the viewing audience and society at large. She didn't elaborate in the video I saw; I'm going to search out a more detailed explanation if she ever recorded one.

Then just now I happened on a Terry Gilliam video where he discusses Spielberg Vs Kubrick and the idea of art/movies as a challenging or thought provoking idea vs movies as comfort food. Here's that short video from about ten years back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAKS3rdYTpI

I'd never thought about these things - or never in a serious way, at least.

I think it's because when I began developing my comic, it took all or most of my creative focus. Developing characters, deciding on relationships between them, and brainstorming plots for the series. I didn't consider whether it was aiming for a thought-provoking or comforting effect on people.

Or more accurately, I made those decisions automatically, establishing Typical Strange as a sit com, with standalone stories that would also allow for sit-com type callbacks and continuity. Would the stories be thought provoking and ambiguous? Or tidy little comfort-food things? I guess probably the latter moreso - but my concern was more about just telling somewhat cohesive stories with characters people would hopefully enjoy.

I've found that plenty challenging, and I think a whole lot of my own individuality is there on the pages of my comics. Of course, structure is not the enemy of more confronting or complex or ambiguous themes and ideas - the two can work together to create that. This is not a question of structure vs unstructured - although being too "paint by numbers" in structure can possibly be a bit limiting. I guess that's my big takeaway personally, since I can be a bit slavish to structure and hesitant to step out too much.

Anywho, just pondering these sorts of things today.

Have a good one!

Banes

PQ me an image, 800 px wide if you want to create a Mary Sue for next week's Newspost. I'll put any entries in a comic as well as here. Have 'em sent to me by Tuesday night, around midnight, no matter what your time zone.

Bye for now!