I love the inclusion of modern technology into the scene. It’s wonderful.
Yes, this is exactly what I’m trying to do with secret project number one.
Yes, perfect. Good.
sudden flashbacks to Everworld
This is a thing that I’ve been dwelling on: the alternative development of aesthetics.
The short and sweet version is that we tend to associate certain patterns of clothing, decoration, and ritual with different kinds of behavior. It’s a worldwide thing, and mostly unconscious. Men around the world wear European suits when they’re doing business, unless they have a particular reason not to. Facial tattoos are for ‘primitive’ tribes and members of Western countercultures. Essentially the same furniture and building styles are seen throughout the wealthy parts of the world, and showing the different methods used by other cultures is meant to show how primitive they are.
This is all, of course, horseshit. Art, fashion, motifs—they’re all just the window-dressing of a culture, and say little about how advanced or worthwhile it is. The prevalence of European styles in architecture and clothing isn’t because they’re just better than the rest of the world’s styles, it’s because European culturally brutalized the rest of the world and other cultures had to change to blend in.
What if things had turned out differently? What if some culture had stood as another example of what could be? What if more and more advanced technology had been molded into those alternate aesthetics? What might the world have seen?
(Slightly tangentally: This is why I’m okay with Zecora in MLP. Her aesthetic is indicative that there are cultures in that world that haven’t been homogenized by imperialism. That seems like an excellent thing.)
A good point in the commentary!
But I sort of dislike how some of it is worded. Art, fashion and motifs are not just ‘window-dressing’ - and actually speak volumes about cultures and how advanced they were and are! They are results of hundreds of years of religious beliefs, philosophies, ideas and traditions. It’s because colonialism stomped down and eradicated those ideas and prompted the behavior and mindset that Western European civilization was the best, that said beliefs, technological advancements and art were appropriated, demeaned and exoticized. (When, in reality, many countries had made many great advancements and achievements in far less time than it took some of Europe, etc.)
It’s also important to portray even modernized (non colonized! As depicted here) cultures with care and accuracy.
Have some other small issues with this, but I guess… this is what I’m attempting to say. This is a good commentary! But probably could have been a little better worded, sorry. ^^;
