So I am very excited for Arcane. I have watched the Enemy music video dozens of times at this point. During these viewings, I have noticed (at least) two homages to the influential photographer Gordon Parks.
The first being with Jinx and the bug that crawls out of her mouth. This is obviously similar to Gordan Parks' image of the boy and a june bug.
The second is when Piltover Police are walking by Jinx, Vi, and unnamed character and then Jinx raises her arm to point her finger gun at the police. This is a clear nod to Parks' photograph of 3 young boys, the middle one with a toy gun pointed to screen left.
I think these are amazing artistic references by Riot. Especially with the type of story Arcane is shaping up to be. A clash between the lower class in Zaun and the powerful elite in Piltover. The dichotomy in the world of Arcane could be interpreted as a metaphor for the class and race struggles of Black Americans. So it makes complete sense why Riot would choose to reference these works by Gordon Parks. As Nerdwriter1 said in his video essay of Kendrick Lamar's ELEMENT music video:
> Gordon Parks, one America's all time great photo journalists and film makers. Parks was the first prominent commercial photographer to capture the black experience for a nationwide audience. His work in the inner cities for LIFE Magazine (1968) was hugely important during that period, and the power of his photography is that it forces people to see what would otherwise remain invisible to them.
I just thought this was really great work by Riot, referencing a legendary photographer who captured real world images of the same type of struggles we may see in Arcane.
Huge shoutout to Nerdwriter1, who brought Gordan Parks' work to my attention in his video. I would have never knew about these references without his work.
If I got the formatting correct, everything should be sourced in this post.
** Edit: Huge shoutout to the animation studio Fortiche! Riot has wor
... keep reading on reddit ➡
does anyone have a copy of this book or know a way to get access to it? I need it for my ethnic studies class but the cheapest one I can find is $300.00. I figured if any online community could help me it would be this one. Thanks!
UPDATE:
my professor thought the price had dropped and has said he'll put some copies in the library and we don't have to buy it. 👍🏼
I'm currently reading the excellent "Architects of the Resurrection; Altirí na hAiséirghe and the Fascist new order in Ireland" which documents the Irish Fascist group, Architects of the Resurrection and the conditions that existed prior to their emergence. This book is absolutely brilliant and demonstrates that Irish liberal democracy was not pinned down (as we tend to assume it was) in the eyes of the people and there were anti democratic undercurrents in Irish society. However, I have one question that the book cannot answer (it only covers from 1919-39 in the first chapters): was Fenianism/Republicanism against liberal democracy prior to 1919-21? I've heard brief indications but nothing solid. Irish Nationalism of the sort espoused by Patrick Pearse always vaguely reminded me of Pan Germanism and Folkism in regards to rhetoric (I could easily imagine Pearse saying "Blood and Soil" if the land issue was still going as strong as it was in Parnell's time).
I've already read (skimmed) "Beauvoir and her Sisters" by Sandra Reineke (as well as her "Border Crossings" article from 2009) and "Only Paradoxes to Offer" by Joan Scott, but I've failed to find much about abortion practices during the eighteenth and nineteenth century beyond the quick mention of the French Revolution and the 1810 law in the Napoleonic code. I've also read I know this might be a little too niche to find anything on this specific topic, but really anything that has a good summary of abortion practices in France prior to the twentieth century, even if it's just a chapter or two.
Thank you so much in advance from a future (wannabe) historian! :)
In the 1997 poem Five Ways to Kill a Man, Brock proposes four cumbersome ways to kill a man in chronological order:
- "make him carry a plank of wood/...and nail him to it."
- "take a length of steel/.../and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears"
- "blow gas at him"
- "fly/miles above your victim and dispose of him by/pressing one small switch"
And at the end he suggests a "simpler", "direct", and "neat[er]" way: "to see that he is living somewhere in the middle/of the twentieth century, and leave him there". Was the postwar mid-twentieth century truly the deadliest time in history for the average person? Even compared to being an early Christian in the Roman Empire/a knight in the Wars of the Roses/an infantry in the Somme/a civilian in Coventry/Dresden/Chungking/Hiroshima? If not, why might he suggest that?
https://preview.redd.it/8wre5j5nat981.png?width=1527&format=png&auto=webp&s=016f5f7d885685871bf73a6cba5be972f6d5cf65
