All Your Modern Mythologies Suck
I think I may have wasted years of my life as a human art slop generator. That is a hard thing to admit, but looking deeply at my career in the mobile games industry, I have to be honest with myself. AI slop is what we call the inauthentic mass marketing specific content that AI is able to generate on the fly. I can't help but reflect on the type of content I produced over many years as a working 'artist'.
This rant has been building up in the back of my mind for quite some time. I've been doing research on varied topics when I write content for HEAVYMETA. When researching exploitation of Comic Book Artists for previous pieces, my thesis on modern media became even more crystallized. The majority of content that the corporate machines created over at least the past 50 years is slop. My personal opinion is that this has something to do with the mindset focused on hyper-productivity. Productivity and authenticity are concepts that are largely in opposition to each other.
When studying the Christian Saints, and how the Catholic Church was an early pioneer of marketing methods we use to this day. How the Saints operated in a space in the collective consciousness where superheroes, to a lesser degree, operate today. I have to admit, the media I grew up loving, Comics... Is largely a downgrade in my view in terms of what the stories represent. The most well-known of these heroes, Superman, Batman, and Spiderman have something in common. Something I would call a 'Scientismic-Cosmism mythology'. Their stories rooted in a 'reality' the collective likes to believe is well understood, ultimately reinforcing an external authoritative worldview.
Spiderman, bitten by a radioactive spider endowed with its abilities. Here science is effectively a God of some sort for all intents and purposes. Batman, a rich kid whose parents were killed by some insane grinning miscreant, because the State is too lax. A small mix of ironic fate caused by failed governmental systems. The answer to this failure: a billionaire secret cop. Then there's Superman, the pinnacle of materialist cosmism: A flawed alien God. Could rule the world, instead chooses to work a shit job. In every case these characters only work to support the system as it exists. It could be said they are just extensions of the State in one way or the other ultimately.
I am not naive in the fact that the Saints also reinforced a particular worldview. In fact at some points, if history is true... One could meet a horrible demise by going against the popular opinion of the church. Still, the essence of ultimate defiance always persists in stories of martyred Saints. Each Saint's story is a deeply personal journey that ultimately leads to the ultimate sacrifice, just for a simple idea. For each, the ultimate authority that governed them existed completely outside the realm of the material. This in itself is an idea that any authority in the earthly realm would have trouble contending with. Additionally, because they are linked with religion, each story carries weight in the collective mind forged over thousands of years.
When I see a bunch of superheroes lined on the page together, all wearing their underwear outside of their pants... It makes me wonder if that pioneering style isn't some inside joke on the dumbing down of the populace. So I looked up the origin, likely to do with the strongman in traveling circuses... So all your superheroes are circus performers.. And some of the most iconic villains? Literally clowns. The whole pantheon is just a circus, strongmen in tights against painted clowns. This says a lot on its own lol. There is definitely some formulaic structure in most modern superhero stories. This is because of the tendency to produce with the sole intent being to create more and more sales. I don't pretend to know the answer... These tactics work many times and do produce sales. So is the problem really the corporate machine, or is it the millions of seemingly mindless consumers? Both?
This stings a bit when I look at the body of work I created as a working artist. I always tried to put my personal touch on anything I worked on... But even so. Mesmerizing effects and animations to keep eyes glued on those match-three symbols... Or those spinning slot reels... It leaves me feeling dissatisfied. Maybe I am being too harsh, I wrote this with the intention of being provocative. Look at the heroes that inspired you, what do they really represent? Why is it that they inspire you? If you aspire to be a professional artist, is it simply to get paid for doing something you enjoy? This was the case for me, I did it for years and feel it left some sort of void I want to fill with the work I wanted to create from the beginning.