Further Education of a Packbat: Weird is Scary?

[packbat]

Warning: The below post may be disturbing to some (although, if I guess rightly, not to most of you), due to allusions to violence and sexuality and odd attitudes thereto. Will lj-cut on request.

This afternoon on DeviantArt, among the popular images was this sweet little image, painted with the artist's blood.

Upon my showing it to my roommates, I got two reactions: "He's a psycho. His girlfriend's going to die", and "Yeah, whoever did that is a f–g." (Mealy-mouthed ineffectual obfuscation of sexual ephitet courtesy me. Yay PC!)

This shocked me. Utterly. Because when I looked at it (and I guessed the painter was female, but I honestly don't know) I saw a ... well, I hesitate to use the term, given the potential for confusion, but some sort of Neopagan – in this case, a believer in some sort of special symbolism of nature and primitive rituals (primitive being purely non-derogatory here). The type of person who's gutsy enough to put off bandaging a smashed finger long enough to use it as an ink dispenser, but who's no more likely to commit murder than, say, the average deer hunter. Not enough even to encourage suspicion. (As for my bewilderment at the ephitet – well, that'll have to wait for another post.)

Thinking it over, I can understand why I was naive to expect that. In fact, thinking it over, I would flatly expect that reaction, had I thought about their worldviews before I spoke. But coming from my upbringing, and (to be honest) hanging out on the Web as much as I do, I seem to have somehow managed to broadened my schema of "people like me" so much that I forget that some of these people are actually scared of each other.

Comments

Please *don't* LJ-cut

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

Hunh. Interesting. My reaction is certainly not that s/he's neopagan. Aside from the wolf-motif, I see nothing there to give that impression, just an artist who saw an opportunity to use an unusual medium. I'm as curious about what gave you the impression he* was neopagan as the assumption of your flatmates that he was a psycho.

I don't think he's especially likely to commit murder, but it IS somewhat weird for someone to smash their thumb and think "hey cool! I can paint with this!" I can understand why your flatmates were weirded out.

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*And while the artist could be male or female, I certainly get a masculine impression. *shrug*

Re: Please *don't* LJ-cut

[packbat.livejournal.com]

I ... probably have an overly broad definition of neopagan. However, the wolf motif, combined with the implied veneration of blood, implied a certain veneration of nature and the primal to me. I might be incorrect in leaping from there to a whole category of belief systems. (This may not be relevant, since I didn't know it at the time of my initial reaction, but the profile and the most recent journal post have additional hints: interest in Celtic music (weak, I know), answer to "How did you come up with the name".)

Oh, and I'll grant you "weird" in a second. I'd point out, though, that it wasn't a spur-of-the-moment thing – in a comment, the artist mentioned having been waiting for the opportunity for a while. Which changes things some, although it makes it no more mainstream.

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

Well, I didn't see an implied veneration of blood and therefore didn't get anything else from that. Interesting.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Well, to me, the tagline ("Say it sincerely... say it with blood") seems to imply (if not state flat-out) that blood is to be valued as an indicator of sincerity. 'Veneration' might be the wrong word, but that reads as an expression of a religious feeling to me.

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

Ah, see, I just read that as being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, a reference to the old stereotype of one's "heart's blood" in poetry and the like. Nothing religious at all.

Like I said, interesting.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Could be, could be. I know I tend to take the literal meaning – I'll try to remember that sometimes people aren't.

[kirabug.livejournal.com]

My first reaction is that I don't buy it. First, blood darkens pretty darn quick, so to get that shade of red the blood would have to be close to still-wet. I don't know any artists willing to risk their scanner glass with a smear of something as difficult to remove as blood. Granted, watercolor paper holds color really well, but, well, just seems suspicious to me.

Second, it must've been one hell of a smash 'cause that would've taken a lot of blood to actually spread with a brush and not have it all coagulate on the brush.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Well, just hitting up Wikipedia seems to lead to some dude named Bruno Guillaume (http://www.artabus.com/guillaume/) who's done some blood painting (http://artscad.com/A.nsf/Opra/SRVV-6MDNX5) (which even stayed pretty red), so it can't be all that impossible. Besides, if I remember anything from good ol' Dorothy Sayers, I gather that blood can stay fluid for a good several minutes (though probably not an hour in air, normally).

As for the extent of the damage – yeah, there was that one comment about hands shaking during the painting....

[kadyg.livejournal.com]

I like it. I like that the media is blood (or at least blood-like) and the subjects are predator/carnivors in a "tender" pose. Sort of a reminder that under every beast is a cuddle bug. Or that no matter how fierce we are, no one wants to be alone. Or I'm overthinking this and my art major is showing.

As to the the "f_g" thing - yeah, it baffles me too. I used to work in a kitchen where everything was 'gay". "That movie was gay." "I can't use this pan, it's gay." I finally made them stop while I was around (I was in charge so I could do that) by pointing out that a saute pan cannot love a pan of the same sex and that the military has given us many excellent swear words that are much more fun to say and make more sense in context.

I still wince when I hear it now - both for the implied queer-bashing and that "gay" is such an unoriginal insult.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

I agree – if I may indulge my own pretensions, it seems to expand the image of fierce and primitive beings to include a genuine tenderness. It's clever.

On the latter topic: you know, I wonder if it's a lack of perception thing. Why, they'd never go out and stone a homosexual to death! They're just making a joke! Why, plenty of their friends are ... well, maybe not.

Definitely ditto on both counts, though.

[bourgeoisify.livejournal.com]

Well, the story of how they got the "ink" for the painting makes my stomach churn more than anything. It's surprisingly less morbid than I thought it would be, it's almost too cute to be painted in blood. Hmmm.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

That's the weird bit – the meaning the artist ascribes to blood is very different from the societal consensus. It's like standing in an elevator facing away from the door – it breaks the unspoken rules.

[bourgeoisify.livejournal.com]

I now want to try that in an elevator just to mess with people.