An Animated Margaret Atwood Explains How Stories Change with Technology

The prob­lem with this isn’t so much what she says but the child­ish illus­tra­tions and mawk­ish music. It is as if she has to empha­sise what sounds fair­ly obvi­ous with even more obvi­ous and very infan­tile images and jol­ly, four year old type music, to con­vince a world of dim juve­niles almost cer­tain­ly in care when she’s talk­ing to adults who require a high­er lev­el. This is not my idea of what an illus­trat­ed, or ani­mat­ed video should be. I am try­ing to think of how the tech­nol­o­gy could be used to import a much more pow­er­ful artist. This would cause the sto­ry­line itself to break into a more imag­i­na­tive or chal­leng­ing realm, but so it should.

Inci­den­tal­ly, I am find­ing this every­where: ter­ri­ble pic­tures, no draw­ing abil­i­ty, prim­i­tive smi­ley faces, juve­nile umbrel­las, a tulip in cray­on, a sun, dis­mal and grot­ty cheer­i­ness and scruffy exe­cu­tion, gar­ish colours — a con­stant atmos­phere of denial, as if we must have these pic­tures because the real­i­ty is too ter­ri­ble to talk about. These are so bad they look as if they were done BY chil­dren, though not the child I ever was. Also, there’s a tired depres­sion in why they have to be so hap­py and so list­less.

Is this some­thing to do with the Inter­net, in the sense that every­thing has to be deliv­ered with emoti­cons, and now we have the most tawdry of art­work to do the same job? In GB, draw­ing is no longer taught in schools. No images real­ly get through unless they are sim­i­lar to the ones here — the rest are reject­ed, if they even exist, if they ever dare to. There’s a real prob­lem with cen­sor­ship of actu­al tal­ent, and the cause does rather seem to be this need to spread the word fast and opti­misti­cal­ly, instead of slow­ly and thought­ful­ly, though inten­si­ty in and of itself isn’t depress­ing; what is wrong with melan­cho­lia any­way.

I DEPLORE THE LACK OF DEPTH. It’s also insult­ing to an artist, or even a read­er, who under­stands things. Could we not have some good pic­tures, as ani­ma­tions, illus­tra­tions or book cov­ers? What is wrong with detail and emo­tion­al poten­cy — with art itself? Why not have some good stuff? Am I the only one say­ing this?

Am I the only one doing this.

No you are not alone, Jes­si­ca. How dis­ap­point­ing to have Mar­garet Attwood’s not very com­plex mes­sage deliv­ered in such a slight and signed form.
Who is this direct­ed at? Reach­ing out to some poten­tial extrater­res­tial who needs help with the basics..