Quiet pills

Several weeks will go by.
Winter will come.
I'll still be hiding in the same room
With its two large windows.

I've never been safer, never lonelier.

Hollow bricks and translucent glass will keep me warm.
You will feel alive.  They will be cold,
And happy,
For I suppose things will have changed.

The world looks different from inside.
It has shrunk, it is shrinking
And in the end I alone will remain
And it will make no difference.

But the sun was shining yesterday,
And your flowerbeds looked nice.
Were you there?                                                                                                                                           ... ... ...

Several months will go by,
And spring will come.
I'll still be peering through the keyhole
Of my bedroom door.

I've never had such a feeling of emptiness.

You will tell me about the lush trees
Or the kids playing on the lawns
And from here,
I'll be longing for change.

I cannot look at the outside.
Not anymore.
And I expect it will someday dissappear
And I'll be swallowed up by void.

But you came to visit this morning.
You left a note on the desk.
I didn't see you.
I overslept.

Tim Burton bio

Tim Burton was born in 1958, in the city of Burbank, California.

He remains without question one of the greatest original film directors working in America today.

 Indeed, his talent and originality have kept him at the top of the profession where he occupies a very special place, somewhere between the mainstream and the avant-garde, in that region of cinema occupied by artists whose worldview is so unconventional that it attains popular appeal.

In 1989, Tim Burton directed the hugely famous Batman which, although his very personal film, was one of the most watched movies of all time and gave him unprecedented recognition in Hollywood, considering the originality and adventurousness of his previous films (for example Beetlejuice in 1988).

Edward Scissorhands (1990), another hit, saw him at the peak of his creating powers and established a fruitful working tandem with actor Johnny Depp who played in his 2005 film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and who became one of his most esteemed since their first film together.

In 1992, Batman Returns was a much darker film than the original, a reflection of how much creative freedom Tim Burton had won (seen as Warner Bros were reputedly unhappy with the final result).

And even though Ed Wood (1994), his loving tribute to the life and work of the legendary ‘Worst Director of All Time’ Edward D. Wood, Jr., was a box-office disaster, it got some of the best reviews of Burton’s career.

In fact, Tim Burton is known both for his dark, quirky-themed films like Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, or Dark Shadows (2012) and for blockbusters  such as Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Batman, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland (2010), one of his most recent films, which became the fifth highest-grossing film of all time.

Burton has directed 18 feature films as of 2014, and has produced 12 as of 2012 (among which the very nice stop motion tale called The  Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993).

All in all, Tim Burton’s films consistently challenge the spectator’s eye, push forward the bonds of filmmaking and bring to life previously unthinkable characters (like Edward Scissorhands).

Taken as a whole, his work consists on the confrontation of the fantastic and the real, and the consequences of these two worlds intermingling.

Big Fish, Burton’s 2003 effort, is no different. And yet, somehow, it is not really the same.

On the surface, it would appear to have all the characteristics of a classic Burton film: a magic screenplay, fairy-tale characters, flights of imagination, forces of nature (as well as the supernatural), far-fetched situations and vastly imaginative visual style and imagery. The movie is, in fact, packed with fanciful episodes that it begins to feel like a loose adaptation of The Odyssey, told from the mouth of an aging character named Ed Bloom, a story-teller and dreamer who sees the world with beautiful eyes. 

London Calling and the different forms of power

In 1979 The Clash released their third album, London Calling that contained a song with that same name:

  The clash is a British punk band created in 1976 and dissolved in 1986. Its members were 4: Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Nicky Headon; so simply a singer a guitarist a bassist and a drummer. Their music is not only punk but also a mix of ska, reggae, funk and rockabilly.

About the song London Calling, the first thing to know is where the title comes from. In the Second World war, when the BBC radio broadcasted in occupied countries the announcer often identified himself on air by saying "This is London Calling". The title itselfself clearly bears this meaning, this idea of fight against oppression and of facing danger, but a danger of a very different nature. 

The song starts with that idea of war with "now war is declared/and battle come down". The kind of war the band is announcing is explained by the next two lines. It would be a fight lead by "the underworld", some hidden silent force that has been growing under our feet. It is no other than "you boys and girls", the young, who live in this "underworld". The first stanza is then obviously about a recurrent topic in punk music: the empowerment of young people. But against whom are they fighting? Being punk it needed to be the establishment, seen trough the violent image of the "truncheon thing" that policemen hold and hit with. They don't seem to be afraid of it, because they metaphorically use the ring of that truncheon as a "swing", in a play on words with the musical genre of swing, and a humorous image to make fun of the police. They would be comparing the authorities' tools of repression with children's games, making them look ridiculous, something they needed the year Margaret Thatcher, the iron lady, won the elections. In this first verse there are two lines that seem to be out of place: "London calling, now don't look to us!/That phoney beatlemania has bitten the dust.". But looking closely we can see a warning about how this youth should act for change and lead the fight, and that is not blindly following musical idols for the sake of doing it, which is what they seem to think about the "revolution" caused by the Beatles in the 1960s and the bands all around the world that still copied their style in the 1970s, but doing things by itself. What allows to follow this interpretation is another couple of lines right at the beginning of the second verse:"London calling to the imitation zone/forget it, brother, you can go it alone!". It takes that idea of imitation that is implicit in beatlemania making it even more clear that they want to see the opposite, subversion, and then uses the second person to talk to every individual in that imitation zone to tell them that they have the capacity to act "alone". When at the end we can hear “yeah, I was there too/ and you know what they said?/ well some of it was true!” it really sounds like something someone would say about a revolution. The song starts out encouraging rebellion among young people, and by repeating "London calling" every two lines in some kind of partial anaphora, it gives the text a regular rhythm that goes together with the almost military rhythm of the music, apart from making it quite catchy. Repeating constantly these two words is also a reminder of where the message comes from. London is in this song the centre of a communication with the whole world, “the far away towns”, so it’s the place where everything that is said comes from.

Moving on to the chorus, it is clear that suddenly the message conveyed changes. The four lines of the chorus, slightly different from one another, show an apocalyptic panorama where human weakness against the power of destruction of our own universe, and at the same time our own power of destruction, are strongly felt. It is just a list, a descendent gradation of ways humanity could be destroyed, and the inspiration for this is simply the news in 1979. There is first of all a reference to a scientific theory that predicted our interglacial era would at some point come to an end, “the Ice age is coming”. Then on the opposite side, following the theory of an explosion of the sun that would engulf the Earth they say “The Sun’s zooming in”. The line “The wheat is growing thin”, a witty pun with the verb to grow, takes inspiration in the massive and particularly serious food shortages that NGOs and even the UN were trying to deal with at that time. So another apocalypse could be famine.  Further down we hear that “London is drowning”. That alludes to the concern about the river Thames causing floods that year that resulted in the construction of the Thames barrier in 1982. It’s not something that could destroy humanity but it sure would have been a great local disaster and cause many deaths. The chorus doesn’t only talk about how nature, with strength infinitely bigger than humans’, could end with our kind but also how we humans ourselves could be our own doom. There are two references to nuclear disasters in the chorus: “a nuclear error” and “meltdown expected”, probably both references to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident earlier that year, and reflections of the fear of a nuclear war at the beginning of a tense period in the Cold war. There is also a reference to the various oil crises the world had lived throughout that 1970s decade. The band imagines the collapse if “engines stopped running”, again, not apocalypse but a huge, socially dangerous crisis. The accumulation used in this chorus makes the feeling of anxiety grow stronger progressively.

That apocalyptic situation the chorus shows us, either caused by the power of nature, either provoked by humans themselves, sheds light on the verses and gives them a meaning that goes beyond the obvious subversive empowerment. Apart from explaining images like zombies of death, always a nice thing to include in a song for punk bands, it can make us see “the underworld” as some kind of dark safe place where survivors live, and the war not only as an almost metaphoric way to describe a fight against establishment but also as a disastrous consequence of a previous disaster that we need strength to face. The song then becomes an encouragement to survive the world and its hardships, set in this hypothetical time. Lines like “Quit holding out, and draw another breath” go in with that sense of a call to inner strength and courage, in a dangerous world where you “don’t wanna shout”. When in the final two lines of the chorus, after scaring us with the worst that could happen the singer declares “But I have no fear/’Cause London is drowning and I live by the river”, with that contradictory “’cause” that should be an “although”, he himself is showing his bravery, that consists in staying calm even when everything is falling apart. At the very end he goes even further and asks “and after all this, won’t you give me a smile?”, encouraging us, maybe with a touch of irony, to try and not let the most terrible things bring us down completely. London would also be calling at the power of our mental strength.

London calling is about three different forms of power. First there is the power of youth that gives change a chance through rebellion. Then there is the power of destruction that exists in the great forces of nature like the Sun, the climate or the earth and its products, but also within humankind that likes to play with fire. And last but not least there is another human power besides self-destruction which is courage along with the ability to cope with terrible things. We have seen three forms of power but there is only one location of power, in this case the power of communication, and it is London, just as it was in the Second World War. 

"Pop Art myths" review

The art exhibition "Pop Art myths" took place at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museun (http://www.museothyssen.org) located in the Paseo del Prado, in the city of Madrid, between June 10 and September 14, 2014.

It Showed works by more than 20 renowned pop artists essentially from the United-States, featuring the legends of Pop that are Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. But it also has a big selection of European Pop artists, notably British artist Richard Hamilton, Mimmo Rotella from Italy, Alain Jacquet from France, Wolf Vostell from Germany and two Spanish Pop groups: Equipo realidad and Equipo crónica. The show is unfortunately over now and is not going to travel to other cities.

Roy Lichtenstein Look Mickey, 1961 National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

                                                                                                                                                                                        

From the entrance Hall of the exhibition a bright yellow curved wall that welcomes the viewer already gives the general feeling of the show. It is a vibrant colourful compilation of collages, posters, huge comic book style paintings and strange readymades that awaken curiosity and sometimes even laughter. The title is not betrayed, founding myths of Pop Art were found on the walls of the Thyssen Museum. The exhibition was a great chance to see the 1961 Look Mickey painting by Roy Lichtenstein in real life, Some of Warhol's works on Marilyn Monroe or his Campbell's Soup paintings, and even one of Hamilton's "slip it to me" pins, for the viewers who didn't know them yet. But to anyone willing to look a bit further what was really worth seeing is the extension of Pop art outside the US and the way European artists brought Pop to their own culture, which could be seen for example through the living room by Equipo crónica, a tribute to Velazquez. The exhibition’s rooms were classified by themes like “interiors and still lifes”, “portraits” or “urban eroticism”, an organisation that gave logical order to the crowd of artists showed, but that was sometimes difficult to follow as so many Art works could not fit into one category. A very interesting room to look at was “history painting”, with works about Cold War and dictatorships that showed the connection of Pop artists with their time beyond consumer society, a political view that is too often forgotten along with the dialogue of these artists with the work of great masters, also showed in the "Art about Art" room.  The exhibition lacked however consistency on the side of photography limited to the bits of photos that could be found in collages. That flaw could be balanced by  taking a look at another museum in Madrid, the Reina Sofia (on a Sunday to get the tickets for free) were, simultaneously, a monographic exhibition on Richard Hamilton was showing, with a room full of his artist friends' polaroids.  Just as any other Pop Art show, "Myths of Pop Art" had a very strong capitalist society atmosphere, with numerous representations of mass consumerism goods like coke, Brillo soap pads and Hollywood film posters.

Andy Warhol
Heinz ketchup box and billo soap pads box, 1964
Mugrabi Collection

As a grade 12 High school student in Art and literature and I think I tend to feel very close to the youthful aesthetic of the comic book style paintings and the references to cinematographic art. Because I am so young but yet very interested in art I would consider myself an only mildly experienced viewer, nothing close to an expert. So when it comes to preferences I mainly play by ear. Being Spanish, it was to me a very nice surprise to find at the show national artists whose existence I knew of but that I had never thought of as Pop artists, so I payed special attention to them. My sensitivity is also on the side of the historical works shown, which refer to a past pretty close to our time that I did however not live myself, and that thus awaken some kind of fascination. It was one of the inexplicable yet fascinating works found in the history art room that particularly caught my attention:

Öyvind Fahlström
Red Seesaw,1964
IVAM, Institut Valencià d'Art Modern

 Fahlström's Red seesaw is a piece of Pop Art in every way.  It could be, I think, a great example to illustrate a definition of this movement. First of all the technique is original and innovative, because it's a mix of many disciplines: a montage with painted wood for the seesaw and painted paper mache for the frogs, collage and painting  on cardboard and steel wire to make some things pop out. Also the colours are bright and it very much represents American society in the 1960s. What strikes first is the compilation of humorous images of popular American culture like president Richard Nixon dancing with his vice president Spiro Agnew, dressed as a girl, a policeman with a huge hand, or the statue of liberty with a baseball bat (Fahlström lived in NY at that time), and absurd objects like what seems to be the pope, the flag saying "suck cats", the flying cat, the guinea pig and the pig's head. What lays behind however is much less humorous, as it is a clear metaphor of the fragile political balance in the US at the time of the 1968 elections and the Cold War. The image of the balanced seesaw shows an unstable situation and most importantly a tie between two rivals, the communist red frog on the left and the capitalist blue frog on the right. As it mainly shows the American political crisis, there are no communist images and most of the little cardboard images are on the blue frog's side. Nixon's dance with Agnew is probably a teasing critic to his electoral choices, and the policeman could represent the repression of anti Vietnam war protests on the streets. To continue around the Vietnam war, the baseball bat in the hand of the statue of liberty, looking towards the left red side certainly symbolizes the US's violence in that war. The cat flying on a bottle could be a funny way to talk about the space race, and would explain the "suck cats" flag on the red side. The symbols and jokes in that seesaw are so many and can be divided into so many layers that every little cardboard image could be analysed like this. That is why the more I look at that seesaw the more I laugh, and the more I understand the sharp political criticism it holds. To the hilarious irony that makes it in my opinion incredibly clever and meaningful (which originally is, I think, the purpose of Pop Art), there is a part of mystery added. Some images like the choice of the frog for the two sides of the cold war, the pope or the monkey remain inexplicable to me, maybe because I don't have the cultural tools to understand them, maybe because Fahlström wanted to remain partially cryptic. In any case it is also that part of misery that makes it so attractive to me. it feels in some way like an enigma. That touch of enigma added to the incredibly attractive Pop aesthetics, the dynamic format, the satire, and the apparently absurd jokes makes Fahlström's seesaw a fascinating piece of art that is strangely enough very little known. 

Sadly, as I said, the show is over and is not going to travel anywhere else. However, many of the Art works shown at the exhibition can now be found at the IVAM (Institut Valencià d'Art Modern), in the city of Valencia, Spain, where they belong. Some of them are the Red seesaw, a couple of Equipo crónica's paintings and a "slip it to me" pin between other Hamilton pieces. 

R.E.M. worksheet

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kL9nMlolm8wMaZk5Yk05_XISxHK82EMv4FerlO9I6Eg/edit?usp=sharing

Every Day is yours to win, R.E.M

The artwork of the album Collapse into now:

Album reviews:

Collapse Into Now isn't groundbreaking, but feeling comfortable in their old skin has produced R.E.M.'s best effort in years. (The Guardian)

What better band than R.E.M. to cover R.E.M? That's exactly what the longtime Athens, Ga. trio sound like it's doing on it's 15th studio album, collapse into now (Chicago Tribune)

Band's biography:

R.E.M. was an American rock band from Athens, Georgia, formed in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention because of Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's unclear vocals. R.E.M. released its first single, "Radio Free Europe", in 1981 on the independent record label Hib-Tone. The single was followed by the Chronic Town EP in 1982, the band's first release onI.R.S. Records. In 1983, the group released its critically acclaimed debut album, Murmur, and built its reputation over the next few years through subsequent releases, constant touring, and the support of college radio. Following years of underground success, R.E.M. achieved a mainstream hit in 1987 with the single "The One I Love". The group signed to Warner Bros. Records in 1988, and began to espouse political and environmental concerns while playing large arenas worldwide.

By the early 1990s, when alternative rock began to experience broad mainstream success, R.E.M. was viewed by subsequent acts such asNirvana and Pavement as a pioneer of the genre and released its two most commercially successful albums, catapulting it to international fame,Out of Time (1991) and Automatic for the People (1992), which veered from the band's established sound. R.E.M.'s 1994 release, Monster, was a return to a more rock-oriented sound, but still continued its run of success. The band began its first tour in six years to support the album; the tour was marred by medical emergencies suffered by three band members. In 1996, R.E.M. re-signed with Warner Bros. for a reported US$80 million, at the time the most expensive recording contract in history. Its 1996 release, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, though critically acclaimed, fared worse commercially than expected. The following year, Bill Berry left the band, while Buck, Mills, and Stipe continued the group as a trio. Through some changes in musical style, the band continued its career into the next decade with mixed critical and commercial success, despite having sold more than 85 million records worldwide and becoming one of the world's best-selling bands of all time. In 2007, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. R.E.M. disbanded amicably in September 2011, announcing the split on its website.

Personal review for Everyday is yours to end:

Every Day is yours to end is a very calm and soothing song with its sweet guitar arpeggios and simple beat. Despite the quiet, sunny feel to it and the encouraging lyrics that make it really nice to listen, it relies in my opinion too much on parallelisms and repetition, and sometimes fails to catch the listener's attention before the bridge comes and brings us something a bit different.

The message of the song and the DIY feel of the video interact with each other undoubtedly. It is a song and a video about everyday life, about how it's repetitive and sometimes uneventful, sometimes too hard. But it also and especially reminds us that it is ours and that we make it, and can make it the best life we can just being aware of that and trying. It is seen in that video made with everyday tools, in everyday settings and featuring anonymous people, but people who really look like they are being themselves. It is one more of those pieces of XXIst century culture about anonymous heroes, people who don't lose their hope and make life better day after day.

Notions:

It can correspond to myths and heroes because of that idea of the everyday life heroe.

The idea of progress appears in the sense of personal progress and locations and forms of power could be seen through the power the lyrics remind that all of us have on our own life. Spaces and exchanges is the only notion for which I can't  find anything in the song and video.

Classwork

Personal document: google is your friend

   The document below is a music video about Google created by two young brothers named Antonius and Vijay, also known as the AVByte brothers. They regularly post Broadway musical style songs about various topics on their channel AVByte (many of them internet related) and this is one of them. It was published in March 2013, one month before the official launching of the Google glass in the United States. The two composers and video makers, seen as they make a living out of YouTube which is powered by Google, are Google and more generally internet and technology friendly. It was then only logical for them to make a video like this one, about the Google search engine (not the whole multinational). 

   The video is built around six main characters, or more specifically singers, who are all supposed to be one of the six Google letters and wear a T-shirt with the corresponding colour. Then they also play the part of random internet users along with four other characters who appear more shortly. It all happens in one setting, an office that fictitiously could be a Google office or its headquarters. It can be seen as Google talking to us from home. The first 12 seconds are an introduction where they explain that when you are desperately  looking  for an answer, the best place to go to is Google. Then we can hear the chorus completing that idea and insisting on the fact that it is efficient and simple to use. The verses are structured around a series of examples of dumb doubts ("when is the fourth of July?", "If you want to mail a baby but you're worried it'll die") followed by the way you can find an answer to it on Google. They make references to popular culture featuring Slender or some wizard wanting to attend Hogwarts. The orchestration and the six singers have the typical feel of Broadway musicals, with a strong wind section, a syncopated rhythm and clear, vibrant loud voices.

   The message they try to convey is clear and simple, Google has made our life easier and has brought knowledge and skill closer to us. They want to insist on how efficient and fast a platform it is. One particular line is important "With Google by your side there's not a thing you can't achieve". It shows that it brings you the opportunity to easily find information, tips, and official websites for places or many other things. With Google we can't say we couldn't find the way, but they don't say "won't", for it obviously depends on each of us and not Google if we do succeed in the end. The dumb questions can be seen in two ways. Apart from making us laugh they could mean that Google can be an antidote to human stupidity: they will soon learn that Hogwarts is a fiction and that mailing babies is equally lethal and illegal. It can also be a little thought about the downsides in the sea of positive aspects intending to say that in all the years that Google has been around people have by no means become smarter. Generally though, what they say is that Google is a great tool for anything you need or want to do.

   The video is very skilfully made and carefully thought out. The vocals, the composition and orchestration show hard work and musical knowledge, the shooting and editing are good too and the image and sound qualities are very high. Obviously, as the song praises Google, it gives a very biased point of view and shows only a part of what Google actually is, forgetting many downsides. I agree with the positive aspects they give but I also think that we need to be really aware that Google classifies the websites based on popularity and not reliability. We can easily end up in front of information that is inexact or even completely false. Also because search engines make information so easy and fast to access , young people become lazy when it comes to actually learning the information they find online because if they need it again "one search will do the deed". They could be criticizing that with the dumb doubts and they also mention it in the questions afterwards but it's not clear enough. We are also losing the habit of searching in books, but it's sometimes necessary for specific information we won't find elsewhere. Also Slender's question "How do you make friends" is something the internet cannot give a full answer to. Google is still a brilliant tool if we use it in a careful and responsible way.

   In the description of the video, its authors mention the Google Glass, and that is because the Google Corporation is indeed not limited to the search engine but has more than twenty other services and websites of its own (Google+, Gmail, Maps, Hangouts...) that make it the giant multinational it is nowadays. Some of them are more used than others but they all aim to simplify our lives. So we could also ask ourselves, this time regarding the whole corporation, to what extent Google is our friend.

When technology is too much...or missing. A commentary on two videos.

Description

This video is structured around two main narrative voices and a character illustrating what the voice-over says while a singer often merely repeats or comments on what's just been said (as in a Greek chorus).

The setting is a Christian home and church and an office, so this particular context is very meaningful, making us understand that most of his life is conditionned by technology.

We can notice on various occasions that the main character is addicted to high-technology products, mostly smartphones.

He is shown as a family man unable to communicate with his wife, except through texting.

He is also shown as a church-goer incapable of attending worship without all his phones vibrating all the time, disturbing everyone around him and making him look like he's full of the holy spirit.

Finally, he is depicted as a computer geek whose life has become extremely complicated instead of having been simplified.His addiction to technology is also shown at the office where he is doing at least six things at the same time, none of them actual work.

Interpretation

Basically, this video means that high technology has become a religion for many people, even Christians who are not supposed to be materialistic.

Then, in a Christian lifestyle, quite a few church-goers and believers tend to focus more on materialistic issues rather than spiritual ones.

We can add that technology reigns supreme for many people who revere it as a God enlightening his followers.

 Also people will spend their life looking at a screen instead of actually living something real. The video might be humorous superficially but it is more than anything else a warning against the excessive use of new technologies.

The question is, is this a real progress for humankind?

Description

Two people are stuck on an escalator in a place that seems literally empty/deserted. The man looks upset/annoyed. He might be an office worker walking to his job. The woman claims that she is already late, so for her, this is the last straw. At one point, she ('s about to cry and) asks for a phone. As none of them have one, he screams for help but no one answers, then she screams for help without a response. In short, they both look helpless, clueless, powerless and even hopeless. There is a second part of the video that doesnt appear here where a technician comes to fix the problem, takes the escalator and gets stuck too.

 

Interpretation

 We can relate this situation to a fairly common one in real life : getting stuck in an elevator. The difference however, is  that in this situation, people have the right to panic/freak out/feel panicky whereas on an escalator, there is no reason whatsoever to be scared. It can also be a reference to Buñuel's Exterminating angel, where people are stuck in an open room for no apparent reason. this video is a good example of humour of the absurd.

This video points out the increasing dependence of human beings on technology (we can think of calculators). If it goes missing, it is as if a crutch had been taken away from them, so these two people cannot even walk up the stairs, which would be the normal thing to do. We could think that technological progress makes humans lazy or at least less prone to take initiative and think by themselves, less inclined to make efforts.

The Fanatic Geek

      This first document called The Fanatic Geek is a cartoon by Patrick Chapatte. It was published in the Herald Tribune, an international newspaper, on the sixteenth of May 2008, when that year's edition of the famous Cannes film festival had just begun.

     Although it is more than five years old, it tackles an issue that is still today a much-debated topic: piracy, which seriously affects the movies industry.

     What catches the eye first is the Cannes Film Festival logo that gives specific information about the place and the time the cartoon is set in. We know that the scene takes place in Cannes, right in the middle of cultural news at the time Chapatte drew it, and that it will be built around that context. Three people are standing in the middle: a man who, judging from his hairstyle and boots, could be an American film director signing an autograph, an elegant blonde woman who comes with him and a young person waiting to have his autograph signed.

     Taking up most of the space in the upper right corner there is a balloon with a shocking message for the director: that young man has illegally downloaded all his work. So the next thing we see is the director's face, strategically placed in the middle of the image to be focused on, and the least we can say is that he doesn't look pleased. That fanatic geek with his loose jeans and his "@" T-shirt sticks out in that glamorous environment with its long dresses, its flashes, its red carpet and its screaming fan girls. He represents the internet against the movie industry.

     What the author is showing through this cartoon is a new generation of young people who would rather look for movies, music, series... free on the internet than pay their creators for what they are, in this particular case, watching. The message he is trying to put across is that the internet is slowing down the industry that feeds cinema, and that young people, with their growing use of new technologies are continuously contributing to that form of theft. Why pay if you can get it for free? The cartoon itself is in a way a caricature of that situation, imagining an extreme scene (telling your idol you steal his work) in quite a humorous way. But the situation itself is completely real; millions of people nowadays discover the work of many artists without paying a cent for it, through the internet. Cinemas, CDs and even TV are being left behind.

     Although the image raises people's awareness on the topic of illegal piracy, its author doesn't bias it and chooses to keep an open mind on the topic to let us draw our own personal conclusion with our mind just as open. He simply shows the discrepancy between the industry and its young audience, caused by the raising new technologies. 

     In terms of composition I think the drawing is very well thought out allowing a simple representation of a problem that is proving more complex than it seems lately, with caricatured characters and one concise sentence. The scene chosen here is extravagant enough to make us smile but not to the point of exaggerating the problem itself or making serious generalized accusations. The way Chapatte looks at the issue of piracy here is clever enough to make us think and open a debate that is particularly important when film festivals take place, but we are left with the disappointment of never knowing his opinion for sure. It is nevertheless a very intelligent and necessary take on a difficult question of this new century where young people won't pay for what they can get for free and the arts industries are not willing to work for free. 

     But who should change and adapt to modern times? Free downloading of any copyrighted content is undoubtedly theft and should be punished more severely, but the audience won't stop looking for ways to avoid paying for it. Thankfully, illegal downloading is not the only way to get free content on the internet. Platforms like Hulu, Spotify or Youtube apply a different method to  keep their offer free for users and pay the creators: advertisement. Despite the fact that we all dislike adverts cutting our film on Hulu, and we complain about the fact that internet media is turning into TV, it is safe (unlike streaming websites) and a fair deal for everyone, until we find a better answer to the problem. To stop intellectual property thefts effectively, the film industry should find more ways of understanding the new audience's demands instead of fighting against the consequences of technological progress.