Retro

Hi, I'm Matt. I'm a fourth year student currently working my way though to get my degree. Though I mostly have an interest in illustration and design, I'm currently working on getting an BFA: Interdisciplinary (inadvertently making me a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none). other than art, I enjoy video games, comics, sci-fi/fantasy, old cartoons and other general nerdiness . I'm also teaching myself to sculpt (mostly using Super Scuply).

I very much agree with a lot of what Elizabeth Guffey was saying about retro, describing it as "...not just a recapitulation of the past; it focuses on the recent past, even if it might seem to have slipped out of sight only yesterday." Even more than that, I think retro is not-to-distant-past nostalgia that has to be experienced to be truly appreciated. You cant just have shag carpet, you've gotta walk on it. You gotta play an 8-bit video game console. You gotta watch a 3D movie with those red & blue lens paper glasses.

Speaking of movies....

On of the things that Guffey mentioned stuck out to me. She was referencing how Peter Bogdanovich's "The Last Picture Show" and it's attempt to create an authentic 1950's motion picture, but lacked the imperfections of authenticity.
It reminded me so much of Robert Rodriguez and Quinten Tarantino's 'double-bill' film "Grindhouse." It was meant to reference theatres during the 60s and 70s that offered low-quality, low-budget "B-Movie" films that contained graphic depictions of sex and violence at a cheap price. The Grindhouse experience consists of two movies "Planet Terror" (directed by Rodriguez) and "Deathproof" (directed by Tarantino) and is complete with 'pops' in the sound, washed-out/scratches/burnt (and even a "missing reel") sections of the film, fake 'trailers' for other grindhouse-like movies, as well as an intermission, and stock inserts of dated-looking theater messages.
It's admirable what they tried to create here; a retro, movie-going experience referencing a moment in pop-culture. However, similar to Bogdanovich's film, Grindhouse suffers from immersion-breaking issues. Excluding the production and admission costs, Grindhouse's main issue is the fact that Hollywood is often plagued with poorly directed, and acted, high-budget films that Grindhouse unfortunately seems to fall in with that lot, and the fun of watching a "so bad it's good" movie is lost. Still, boiling 'grindhouse' down into a style of cinema is an interesting concept and one that sold Grindhouse so well as a retro idea in the first place.