OS POSITIVOS

fun and filth gone

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Notámos ontem a expo Manga nas alas nobres do British Museum e parece-nos que hoje podemos fechar capítulo em BD e museus, cultura com C grande com adenda rápida. A dois dias para abrir ao público o crítico cultural do The Guardian teve direito a preview, e as críticas are in: não são boas. Mashup em acelerado para brevidade:

This exhibition occupies the British Museum’s biggest exhibition gallery, the purpose-built space where it has previously shown colossal Egyptian statues and the sinister splendours of Assyrian palaces. How can you fill that space with comics? It turns out you can’t. It looks drab and silly.

It’s probably to the British Museum’s credit that it seems so uncomfortable in this pursuit of pop glory. It’s constantly deferring to what it thinks are the rules of the big mass culture out there. Do we really need the section on costumers who love to dress as manga characters?

I’m not knocking manga or its fans, but what has it got to do with the British Museum? We go there to have our eyes opened to artistic and historical wonders, not to get more of what’s on offer everywhere, 24/7. This exhibition is a tragicomic abandonment of a great museum’s purpose.
in "Manga review – where has all the riotous fun and filth gone?" 21 maio 2019

Desconhecemos as sensibilidades de Jonathan Jones em comics mas não parece ser estranho aos quadradinhos nipónicos nem o podemos acusar de desdém ao meio, pelo contrário, parece querer mais, e melhor, e faz recomendações.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi
I’ve rarely seen a show whose catalogue is so much more interesting than the display in the gallery.

Manga is not as clean as it looks from this exhibition, and the museum is not being entirely honest, in its desperation to create a mass culture blockbuster for all ages and attention spans. We are shown a few masterpieces of Japan’s superb artistic tradition and asked to see them as predecessors of today’s comic-strip scene, which is presented in a highly reverential and patronising way. On the evidence of this very odd exhibition, a lot of the riotousness has gone out of Japan’s graphic art since the 1880s. Today’s manga comics may be hugely popular in Japan and have a growing worldwide fanbase, but, as art, they don’t come near the verve and audacity of Kyōsai or Yoshitoshi.
in "Manga review – where has all the riotous fun and filth gone?" 21 maio 2019

...mas no processo, e aqui fechamos arco às nossas suposições em "o que os crescidos pensam de BD", acusa a desadequação manga-pop e a "factory-like nature of its production" ao espaço que ocupa.

It should have used the contemporary allure of manga to draw us into a huge survey of Japan’s art history. Instead, it expects us to seriously accept that manga’s big-eyed heroes and their (on this evidence) sentimental adventures are themselves as worthy of attention as a work by Hokusai. What’s next: Rembrandt meets Dennis the Menace?
in "Manga review – where has all the riotous fun and filth gone?" 21 maio 2019

Poderíamos — e haveremos de — debater essa desadequação entre suposições em arte, o lugar dela e entretenimento a consumo, mas por ora basta-nos tocar as bases e assentar factos. E esses são, como já sabemos, aos gentios a) a BD ainda não está lá, e b) por si apenas, não chega.


GoT e eleições: no último get together dos nobres a conselho de estado para decidir monarca é sugerido — e descartado à zombaria — que se deixe o povão escolher. Obviamente ignoram o processo democrático: povo vota governo, governo faz o que lhe mandam os lords do realm.

mo' filthy fun