Art in the Pre-Apocalypse

"Season: A letter to the future" reminds me of Japan (IRL), the only independent modern Asian country with its own logographic language and a democracy. And yet, it is aging and voluntarily dying. On the surface, cities are thriving. Art is everywhere. The season 4 opening music for Jujutsu Kaisen, "Specialz" sounds uplifting. My friend thinks "it sounds cool". Sure, the song was written for an anime about fighting brutal monsters. But the lyrics by themselves, tell a different story: "At the edge of the sumo ring, let's endure, Along the Tokyo front lines, it's only chaos. Media rushes among the sea of corpses and blood. Calmness or detachment are both forbidden" Deep down, Nippon is a country whose very name is internationally mispronounced; where homeless workers sleep in hidden cafes; where mothers take young children to a certain museum as a normal part of education, to witness children just like them, lying dead on exhibit for almost a century. Japan hides the pain in anime plots while trying to sell it as a cool product, or, while trying to sell a positive future to an ever shrinking group of children. It's a little sad. If Japan isn't haunted by the memories of humanity's past, I don't know who is. I cried when I saw the luck charms, toys and trinkets in an exhibit, laid next to the clothes, neatly cleaned after their passing, yet faded, but not as much as the nuclear radiations. These are the same trinkets and cute clothes we buy for each other today. Someone's kid, precious kid, died for the sin of our wars. And somehow I get to live, in America, and freely visit this country. Any reasonable person could ask Japan "where is the anger"? But I bet all the mother could say, is "we don't know, maybe it was our fault too". Because honestly, what can we do about something that had to happen, for the world to move on? So whenever I'm in Japan, I can't help but think all of this beautiful, modern miracle, will soon disappear. And all I could do was to take pictures, make backups, and hold on to memories. And "On the beach" reminds me of "Carol & the end of the world". It is a show about apocalypse and yet it does not show the actual end of the world. But the emotional moments it chooses to include, feel awfully familiar. Across continents, different languages and cultures, Carol shows us, that we are all just people, hidden behind something. I think most reasonable, intelligent people, share these sentiments. Most agree to do the right thing, if given a choice. But most only ever get a chance to tell stories, make art, or talk about it. And even that, feels like an unsurmountable challenge. To be Carol, is to take up this challenge, and find real friends to connect with, even when all hope is already lost, even if actions are no longer meaningful, even if everyone is already done with their lives. Even when the world is ending, we need to be better people. Yet, we don't get better. It's almost as if, we as a society are some anti-hero, like Bojack, that animated horse guy: We have genuine empathy and good intentions, and yet, we rarely dare to do anything about them. And when we do take actions, we hopelessly mess up the situation even more. We are not getting better, but we can't wallow in that depression either. Take Todd's advice for Bojack, as an advice for society: "We can't keep doing this! We can't keep doing shitty things and then feel bad about ourselves, like that makes it okay! We need to be better! Humans, just stop. We are all the things that are wrong with us. It's not the corrupt leaders, or the wars, or any of the shitty things that happened to us during WWII. It's us... Okay? It's us." "Man. What else is there to say?" That's also why, "How to ___ a pipeline" doesn't give me any urge for violence. In our situation, violence doesn't really make things better. Leaders clearly don't care about it. And violence simply removes all the good intentions, and momentums, behind a movement. But we still need a wake-up call for grounded, meaningful actions. Individuals should try to better our society in responsible, small steps. No matter how meaningless or how small those steps seem to be. And so, we make "art for no one" and we "can't bear to throw anything away". You remind me of Hamilton, or at least the artistic depiction of him in that musical: "Why do you write like you are running out of time?" Thank you for making these videos! I truly think they help people. (P.S. I also tried to send this comment as a super thanks on Youtube. But it did not show up. Thanks for reading this)

Mark

Watching this, the moment you discussed the acceptance/resignation of the examples before the protestations of Umurangi Generation, I was reminded of ‘The Last Night of the World’ by Bradbury; the mention the fact there are bombers may be one of the reasons it ends is so casual, so matter-of-fact, so "guessilldie.jpg" over something actionable.

Ariella Rovinsky

man, as an aussie this hit real hard. actually cried a little when you mentioned black summer, apparently I've still got a lot of trauma around that particular bushfire season. it's not surprising to me to see things both from this corner of the globe either by setting or authorship. climate change is already so real here, not theoretical, and it's crushing sometimes. but we're still trying. (no thanks to our govt that just allowed the opening of the third new coal mine this year)

Erin Kyan

I feel like this video could've been even longer, so many ideas and media to discuss. Thanks for this, it's given me a lot to think about. Things I don't really want to think lol.

AndreGG

Ending on Gris’ soundtrack, a game about grief, when talking about how the only sensible course of action is learning to fight, which means somehow grieving peace and comfort we all wish for… that hit hard.

Lunar

Another masterpiece. I don't know how he consistently fits so much insight into a half hour video!