If I Like It, Paint It Red
Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-1996)
The End of Evangelion (1997)
Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone (2007)
Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance (2009)
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Carnegie Library and Netflix
Last night I watched the latest episode of Mad Men, and I decided that I like the shorthand that Matthew Weiner uses at the start of a new season. If Don's reading The Inferno on a beach, I know that everyone will be thinking about death for the next ninety minutes. But when Roger sobs at the passing of his favorite bootblack, I rolled my eyes. Why contrive a second death? Why not end the episode with Roger getting a shoeshine instead?
Why am I okay with the obviousness of The Inferno but not the wooden kit of horsehair brushes left with Roger's secretary? Why is Neon Genesis Evangelion as compelling as it is ridiculous? If I never have to see another crucifix or hear Shinji complain about something ever again, it will be too soon.
I'm drawn to conspiracy theories because I'm cynical about the intentions of people in power. I romanticize otherness because it is a lazy way to be cynical, and many of my favorite movies traffic in exoticism for similar ends. When Gendo Ikari warns about the Dead Sea Scroll prophecies, I don't think about religious symbolism, but Victor Mature's nightclub in The Shanghai Gesture. Both provide the thrill of a secret history in which historical losers flourish somewhere.
There are big ideas in Evangelion, and silly ideas, too. My very favorite thing about the show is the weather. It's always summer, a summer without sea breezes and the lively "smell of putrefaction." An endless, sweltering summer - a summer that sits heavy on people's minds. But it looks, and sounds, like summer from a movie: the loop of cicadas, the bend of the horizon at sunset. There was no apocalypse if summer looks like that and refrigerators still run.
That, and the sense of scale. Characters talk as they ride an escalator together, but the escalator spans football fields. Tokyo-3 sinks into the earth, where a second city sits beneath it. Transports link across miles of road while modified power lines thrum overheard. It all gets back to atmosphere, and an ongoing joke about smart penguins, and the awkwardness of a show about high school kids beloved by men in their thirties.
But I do love it, more than I'll ever love Mad Men. I can't really say why.
The End of Evangelion (1997)
Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone (2007)
Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance (2009)
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Carnegie Library and Netflix
Last night I watched the latest episode of Mad Men, and I decided that I like the shorthand that Matthew Weiner uses at the start of a new season. If Don's reading The Inferno on a beach, I know that everyone will be thinking about death for the next ninety minutes. But when Roger sobs at the passing of his favorite bootblack, I rolled my eyes. Why contrive a second death? Why not end the episode with Roger getting a shoeshine instead?
Why am I okay with the obviousness of The Inferno but not the wooden kit of horsehair brushes left with Roger's secretary? Why is Neon Genesis Evangelion as compelling as it is ridiculous? If I never have to see another crucifix or hear Shinji complain about something ever again, it will be too soon.
I'm drawn to conspiracy theories because I'm cynical about the intentions of people in power. I romanticize otherness because it is a lazy way to be cynical, and many of my favorite movies traffic in exoticism for similar ends. When Gendo Ikari warns about the Dead Sea Scroll prophecies, I don't think about religious symbolism, but Victor Mature's nightclub in The Shanghai Gesture. Both provide the thrill of a secret history in which historical losers flourish somewhere.
There are big ideas in Evangelion, and silly ideas, too. My very favorite thing about the show is the weather. It's always summer, a summer without sea breezes and the lively "smell of putrefaction." An endless, sweltering summer - a summer that sits heavy on people's minds. But it looks, and sounds, like summer from a movie: the loop of cicadas, the bend of the horizon at sunset. There was no apocalypse if summer looks like that and refrigerators still run.
That, and the sense of scale. Characters talk as they ride an escalator together, but the escalator spans football fields. Tokyo-3 sinks into the earth, where a second city sits beneath it. Transports link across miles of road while modified power lines thrum overheard. It all gets back to atmosphere, and an ongoing joke about smart penguins, and the awkwardness of a show about high school kids beloved by men in their thirties.
But I do love it, more than I'll ever love Mad Men. I can't really say why.
posted by NPK at 5:52 PM
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