I guess people just decided to post these on the main page, so I guess I'll follow the crowd. Don't want to make waves after all...
I chose an image that overlaps my own research. I write a great deal about cultural convergence in video games and this image is an important one for the narrative of Warhammer 40,000 which really interests me. The image represents the turning point in the internal universe of this particular story: a point at which the tragic villain betrays Goodness and irrevocably changes the course of the narrative(s). If this were a scene from Paradise Lost (and it can be thought of that way since Warhammer 40K is a clear remediation of Milton), this would be the scene in which Satan betrays God and is soon to be cast from Heaven.
I also like the picture because it's visually elaborate and baroque, overflowing with detail in the particular visual style cultivated by the publishers. It gives the eye a great deal to focus on even though the overall composition of the painting - the lines and positioning of figures - clearly guides the eye along a particular trajectory from the lower right to the upper left, establishing the narrative of the piece. The Emperor of Man (on the right) is confronting his first son, Horus (on the left) and their placement causes the gaze to follow from the Emperor to Horus across the big red eye in the middle (which, as per the story, symbolizes the moral and spiritual decay that stands figuratively and literally in this case between the two figures).
I have a couple problems with the image though, mostly because it troubles the morality tale being told. Horus is clearly higher and perhaps even taller than the Emperor, putting him at a rhetorical advantage where the Emperor ought to occupy the "high ground". This positioning also puts the Emperor as confronting Horus, stability confronting chaos - God confronting Satan - instead of the other way around. The over-eviling of Horus is also a problem for me (he's obviously the evil one, dark and covered in blood and decapitated heads), and for me this stylistic choice erases the tragedy of the narrative. Horus - and Milton's Satan - are compelling because their stories are partly tragic, and I don't see Milton's Satan as bright red and carrying a pitchfork any more than Horus ought to be bedecked in the trophies of his victims.
Those critiques notwithstanding, my preferences aren't set in stone. The moral and rhetorical ambiguity that the positioning of the figures lends them can be interpreted as following the story. For Milton, God's place is somewhat troubled and we are invited to entertain the logic of Satan's position. For Warhammer, the Emperor is even more ambiguous and distant than Milton's God - the Emperor occupies a troubled space between mortal and god - and there is always a question of his intentions, methods, and morality. The Emperor is "goodness" and "justice" are less clear than God's, so the image here implies that troubling.
The thing about this whole post, though, is that the image is and must be intertextual. It's part of a Convergence of media - video game, book, and painting - and requires interpretation in that respect. Only as a piece of Convergence Culture does the piece have useful narrative context.
Larkin, your image is unexpected and totally awesome - what a cornucopia of insanity! I know almost nothing about video game culture, which may explain why this image knocked me out with its hilariously opulent, grotesque theatricality. When I initially scanned your post, I picked up on the character of Horus, which made me think of the opening lines from Iron Maiden's song Powerslave "Into the abyss I'll fall/the eye of Horus." That tangent led me to pick a Maiden album cover for my post.
ReplyDeleteSo speaking of convergence culture and intertextuality, do you think it's possible for an image, or song, game, book, or other cultural product NOT to be intertextual? And what determines a text's intertextuality? Is it the author's intentional intertextual references? Or the unintentional intertextual connections a viewer/reader makes? Both? Do you think most gamers would make the Milton connection and other extensive historical and literary connections you make? Does it matter whether they do?
I think there are definitely levels of intertextuality but I'm growing into the idea that all text is remediation (which may mean no text is remediation, but whatever). I don't think it's possible to produce text without remediating some other cultural artifact, symbol, topoi, narrative etc... And if you somehow managed to do that, the text wouldn't have any relevance because there would be no cultural benchmarks to "read" from - no contextual grammar with which to interpret the text. In that sense, I think the author can only intentionally add to that intertextuality, though there is always intertextual discourse happening apart from that intention.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if gamers get the Milton reference as much as I do - I wrote extensively about Milton for my Master's work - but I think that, in the West at least, the story of Warhammer 40K will touch a subliminal cultural narrative and that a reader will on some level recognize the Biblical/Miltonian topos even if they can't name it. If they have a literary education as I did, though, it will definitely make the "reading" richer for them!