From My Sketchbook:

From My Sketchbook: worthwhile thoughts in search of a context.

.

.

.

“Fame is immortality.”

                                  - Anonymous

.

.

.

.

feeling old.

If you know me, you know I am currently a full-time student, and I spend a lot of time around people much younger than myself. At first I was weirded out a bit, but I’ve long since gotten used to it. Today I saw a girl, maybe 19-20 years old wearing this shirt:

At first I was like “Hey, cool!” and then I was all “wait, no!”
See, that shirt was one of the first t-shirts I ever bought at a concert. I bought it at my first Pumpkins show, in November of 1996 at the Worcester Centrum. It was the Infinite Sadness tour, I was 16, and it was awesome.
I bought that shirt, in retrospect one of the ugliest SP shirts ever, and wore it proudly. It’s long gone now, and I can’t remember seeing another for a long, long time.

Anyway seeing that girl in that shirt today, I immediately thought “wow, cool, haven’t seen that one in a while”. Then I realized, wait, she couldn’t have been older than 5 or 6 when I forked down like $30 for it at a merch booth.
This is a vintage shirt for her. She may even be wearing it ironically.
I bet she never even listened to Mellon Collie on cassette…

Pure Poetry

 Brooklyn, NY

As someone who periodically has to fight the urge to over-apologize – using the word “sorry” in place of phrases like “my condolences”, “that sucks”, or “what?” -I can appreciate when someone is clever enough to blend an offending act into an apology for that act and arrive at a single gesture.

Bravo, Mr. Sorry.

Kafka as Opera: La Porta della Legge

I was skeptical when I heard that an opera had been produced based on a story by Franz Kafka. It seemed unlikely that the medium of opera would be able to replicate the proper sense of overwhelming hopelessness. But it turned out my perception of what opera is – or has the potential to be – needed some revision.

Composer Salvatore Sciarrino’s La Porta della Legge is an operatic interpretation of a Kafka short story The Way of the Law that was included as a parable in his posthumously published novel The Trial. It is a story told to the main character that serves as a metaphor for the novel’s central plot. In the parable a man is trying to enter “the door to the law” which is guarded by a man who casually waits by the door and merely tells the unnamed protagonist that he may not enter, but that he may be granted access later. This permission to enter never comes and his inklings towards entering without it are thwarted by the gatekeeper’s promise that he is merely the lowliest in a series of doorkeepers. Over the course of the opera the protagonist grows old and dies waiting just outside the door. As the protagonist slowly dies the doorkeeper begins to close the door. It is revealed to the man that this door was meant for him alone. This is why in all the years he has spent there no one else has come seeking entrance.

While in description this may sound a bit like Waiting for Godot there is little to no humor here and the story. It – like so much of Kafka’s work – is intentionally created to be a frustrating endurance trial for the reader. But that is the point; through repetition you actually begin to feel for and identify with the helpless, dying, old man. It is not designed to tell you a story; it is designed to make you feel one. La Porta della Legge attempts the same.

The opera is presented in three parts without intermission. All three parts are the same aforementioned short story. Each told in it’s in its entirety. Each painfully beginning anew.

The stage is perfectly minimalist, consisting of only curtains, an illuminated scrim and a single chair. The story begins without preface; the two characters already performing their duties, one hoping to enter the other refusing permission. Essentially every utterance and gesticulation for the duration of the piece is a slight variation on this simple relationship: the man steps towards the door. The gatekeeper raises his hand. The man asks permission to enter. The gatekeeper says “maybe later”, etc. All in Italian with English supertitles which, in retrospect, were probably not necessary considering each sentence is repeated so many times that their exact meanings are unmistakable by the end.

It would have been easy for Sciarrino to “liven up” the opera by producing a score that was energetic or exciting. In fact the gatekeepers repeated refusal would have been perceived as comedic, as opposed to tragic, if the right musical cues were employed. But this is where Sciarrino has proved his vision for the opera. The sonic environment is dominated by the slow atmospheric interplay between the bassoon and upright bass, heavily punctuated by unpitched percussion and backed by what sounds like waving sheet metal. It is a full orchestral score that feels like silence, solitude, and unease. In fact, the score has several moments that are reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann’s compositions for the old Twilight Zone series, which is somewhat apropos of the subject matter.

The subtlety of the gatekeeper’s – Michael Tews – vocal performance is one of the few satisfying elements of the opera. Every line, which is neither really spoken nor really sung, branches off from a harmony with the swelling orchestra and seems to materialize from within it. It is almost impossible to discern where one ends and the other begins. This is an interesting compliment to his posture which is not unlike a bully in an old silent picture – nose up and chest puffed out – as he indirectly mocks the hopeful man wasting his life, begging for admittance.

The perpetuity of the man’s predicament is clocked by the third and until now overlooked character in the opera: that being the gate. The gate has been elegantly created by the arrangement of three curtains and, over the course of the first part of the performance slowly and almost imperceptibly increases in aperture, revealing more and more of the brightly illuminated scrim, until it engulfs the background. This white background remains for the second part of the performance, which is a reiteration of the first.

The only major differences between the two parts are that the man now faces the audience – implying that the perspective has been reversed – and the performer Ekkehard Abele, the man in the first part and a baritone, has been slyly replaced by Gerson Sales, a countertenor. Once I notice that the curtains are beginning to close I realize that this, the second part of the opera, is going to be a complete duplicate of the first. After having endured the first half an hour of such slow development – now knowing exactly how it was going to end, that there was no enjoyment to be had, and that the curtain was going to move in increments like the second hand of the clock in a doctor’s office – the prospect of having the story begin anew borders on horrifying. In fact a number of patrons walk out as they realized what is happening. Thankfully the person sitting directly in front of me leans over to her companion and whispers, “This is fucking tedious”. This last draws my attention from myself allows me to smile on behalf of Kafka. It would ultimately sell me on the success of the work as a whole.

The curtains in the second part separate the audience from the actors as it fully closes on the man dying on the floor. By this point I feel not for the main character, but like him: Actually enduring a portion of what he does. Suffering, unlike those who chose to walk out, for my inability to leave in spite of the fact that I already know that in the end I will not be rewarded for my endurance.

Even thought there are technically three parts to it the end of the second is actually concludes the story. The third part, which follows, is more of an epilogue. It lasts only a few minutes and is yet another repetition of the story, but this time as a digital projection with scores of images of the two actors who played the man staring through their respective doors hoping for entrance. While I can’t say how many images of the men rolled by I wouldn’t be surprised to find it was the same as the number of tickets sold to the performance. But this is just a passing thought.

In the end I would recommend this opera to any fans of Kafka, subscribers to existentialism, people excited for contemporary art, or just those who have a high tolerance for tedium. Beyond that I think the average opera patron, at least as I deduced from the other attendees, may want to sit this one out.

-July 2010

Pristine Failures – Patrick Lee in Chelsea

The recent Patrick Lee exhibit at the Ameringer McErney Yohe Gallery was a collection of contradictions masquerading as a relatively straightforward portrait exhibit. On one level, you have photorealistic likenesses of such marvelous quality that the technique itself could be a satisfying spectacle if it was depicting the most mundane subject one could dream up, whatever that may be. On another level, these are drawings of drifters, outlaws and gang members—people who operate outside of civilized society and who would, one would think, be more accurately expressed through crudity of drawing.

Typically a subject executed in a contradictory way is either a sign of irony or sarcasm, but the literature accompanying the show claimed that Patrick Lee’s drawings humanize his subjects. If this is the case, the choice for this execution and display locale is curious. How can these drawings humanize someone we have no prior experience with, someone we have not yet had the chance to perceive as anything but human? This is different from a photographer who shoots unflatteringly close-up celebrity portraits; that situation makes you confront what you already know, or think you know of the subject.

The presumption is that the drawings humanize the stereotypes they represent, but can a subject represent a stereotype and be emancipated of it simultaneously? I personally hadn’t seen these men as outlaws until I read the text. For example, All for the Money (2010) would not have had the appearance of anything but what I would call “a dude with a tattoo” before I read the press release supplied for the exhibit. Now I see a sensitive drawing of a criminal. Does that mean Lee’s attempts were successful? To see this humanization, one has to step back and project the stereotype from which the subjects were freed back onto them, at which point they are re-objectified, since that projection is the crux of what a stereotype is. In a social context, this would be the equivalent of me introducing you to someone you’ve never met by saying, “This is Steve, he’s not really an asshole” before Steve ever has the chance to speak. In the end, the nature of the work prevents me from being able to judge whether Lee’s intent was achieved.

This issue ran through all of Lee’s portraits; asking many questions and offering no answers, but unlike a complex conceptual piece this exhibit seems ignorant of its own contradictions, and these contradictions lead one to stop asking questions at all.

LOST in NYC

J.F. and I had the pleasure of visiting the Vilcek Foundation yesterday and checking out the exhibit of props and such from LOST. The exhibit seeks to celebrate the international nature of the show and it’s makers, but even if you don’t really get that from the show, it’s still really awesome to see this stuff in person. A personal favorite is Daniel Faraday’s notebook, from one of my top episodes, “The Constant”. The show closes today so if you haven’t seen it, you’re pretty much out of luck. Enjoy the pics though!

piece of wall from the temple

Mr. Cluck costume, Jacob’s clothes

Dharma Van

Dharma clothes, hatch door

jacket Ben wore when he turned the wheel

painting from inside the Swan hatch

the magic wheel!

secret door from Ben’s closet

Jughead, the hydrogen bomb

inside Jughead

photos of creators and actors

photos of creators and actors

Sun’s clothes, Hurley’s comic, Charlie’s ring

Sawyer’s letter, Hurley’s discman, Locke and Hurley’s Oceanic tickets, Sayid’s photo of Nadi

Rousseau’s music box, Sawyer’s copy of Watership Down, Kate’s toy plane

close up on Charlie’s DriveShaft ring

Hurley’s lotto ticket, Connect Four from the mental institution, Sawyer’s glasses

bottle of messages, Locke’s knife

Faraday’s journal

Penny’s letter to Desmond, Kate’s dress

Naomi’s sat phone, Ben’s fake passport, Sun’s business cards, Faraday’s journa

close up on Ben’s fake “Dean Moriarity” passport

Dharma rum, Ajira Airways tickets, Locke’s suicide note

Close up on Locke’s suicide note

photo of 1977 Dharma recruits

Ajira airways tickets

photos of actors and creators

Richard!

Dharma food, Apollo bars, Desmond’s photo with Penny, print outs from the Swan hatch

Dharma food, Apollo bars

Dharma food, Apollo bars

close up on Desmond’s photo and print outs

photos of actors and creators

mast of the Black Rock

Hurley!

Eric escaping through Ben’s secret door

Masters of the Universe: Creating the Most Powerful Toy Line of the 1980’s

The following is a short paper I wrote for my History of Industrial Design class. Enjoy.

Masters of the Universe: Creating the Most Powerful Toy Line of the 1980’s

Growing up in the early 1980’s, I feel privileged to have been a child during a golden age of toys.  Specifically, action toys and figures aimed directly at young boys, such as myself.  Star Wars and GI Joe were the titans of the industry in those days, until 1982, when Mattel introduced a new character with the generic name of “He-Man”.  He-Man, and his colorful cast of friends and enemies, experienced an explosion of popularity that would see the Masters of the Universe line become one of the greatest success stories in toy history – only to sink to the bottom in a couple of short years.  As a young boy, however, I was blissfully unaware of the business behind the scenes.  I was interested only in the bizarre looking characters and the innovative action features they possessed.  I certainly had no idea that He-Man would be an important part of my life over 25 years later.

Mattel was founded in 1945 by Matt Matson and Elliot Handler, the name “Mattel” coming from a combination of their names [1].  The two of them began by manufacturing dolls from the scraps of picture frames.  Ruth Handler, Elliot’s wife, would eventually become president of the company, and is credited with creating the “Barbie” product line in 1959[2].  Mattel had a monumental hit with Barbie, and found success with Hot Wheels toy cars, not to mention many preschool and toddler toys.  In the early 1980’s though, they were struggling to attract the young male customer to their brands.  Much like the world of film, Star Wars had altered the landscape of toys permanently.  GI Joe had been a dominant force for Hasbro since the 1960’s.  Mattel was desperate to get a foothold into the male action figure (MAF) market.

While many designers and marketing people toiled away at Mattel’s Southern California headquarters, the creation of He-Man is often credited to Roger Sweet, a designer that would work at Mattel through most of the 1970’s and 80’s.  Outside of Mattel, Sweet held a design position at Walter Dorwin Teague Associates and helped design the interior of the Boeing 747 jumbo jet, along with the packaging for Downy laundry detergent and Scope mouthwash[3].  Though there are some people that would challenge the assertion that Sweet was the sole creator, or even a co-creator, of He-Man, Sweet laid out his argument in print in his 2005 book “Mastering the Universe: He-Man and the Rise and Fall of a Billion Dollar Idea”.  In his book, Sweet tells how Mattel president Ray Wagner, still smarting from declining the Star Wars license, put the call out for a heroic, male oriented action figures.

Sweet, an athletic man who enjoyed working out regularly, sought to “beef up” the action figure to unprecedented heights.  A marketing study by Mattel showed three themes to be worth exploring as action figures: “Space Military a la Star Wars”, “Current Military a la GI Joe”, and “Barbarian Monster Fantasy”[4].  Using these themes, Sweet went to work creating three prototypes.  Using Mattel’s “Big Jim” figure, he added clay to exaggerate the musculature of the figure.  He also cut and glued the arms and legs into more bent, action ready poses.  Sweet outfitted each of the three figures differently: one for space, one for the military, and one as a barbarian.  He came up with the name “He-Man” as a generic catch-all, “He-Man” could be anyone or anything, in any time period or setting.  Sweet showed these prototypes at product conference, where they were in direct competition with other action figure concepts.  Allegedly, Wagner was so taken with the He-Man figures that he gave them his approval with the phrase “Those have the power”[5], a phrase that would become synonymous with the He-Man in time.

Another important note on the creation of He-Man is the persistent but seemingly false story that He-Man was initially supposed to be Conan the Barbarian.  The story that is often repeated is Mattel had secured the rights to produce action figures for the Schwarzenegger-starring action film, but upon seeing the final product, balked at releasing toys from a movie with such graphic violence and sexual content.  So Mattel simply changed the hair color of the figure from black to blonde, and Conan transformed into He-Man.  While it’s true that Mattel did for a short time own the license for Conan, they apparently dropped it well before the He-Man concept was developed, and Conan is not officially recognized as an inspiration for He-man.  Supporting this claim is that the first Masters of the Universe toys were produced in 1981, a year before the release of the Conan film [6].  In fact, the estate of Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Mattel regarding He-Man in 1984 that was ultimately thrown out of court[7].

What would separate the Masters of the Universe toys from others on store shelves was the variety of characters and action features.  Mattel was extremely creative, especially early on, using a very limited amount of sculpted parts.  Since creating molding tools for toys is very costly, it was decided that there would only be two different torsos used – a muscular human form, like He-Man himself, and a furry form, like Beast Man.  All figures would share the same lower torso featuring fur shorts.  There would be three varieties of arms and legs – human, furry, and reptilian, like the ones used for Skeletor[8].  These body parts could be used in any colors or combinations, and in conjunction with attachable armor and accessories, could be used to create any number of different characters.  Typically the head would be unique to each figure, though eventually even heads would be repainted to create a new character. Some figures would earn themselves new molds later in the life of the line, but these original pieces would always serve as the foundations of the figures.

A perfect example of this ingenuity is the character of Stinkor.  Released in 1985, this “Evil Master of Odors” consisted of the repainted body of Mer-Man, from 1982, wearing the armor created for Mekanek, who was released in 1984.  Stinkor was also one of two figures whose “action feature” was scent related, the other being Moss Man.  To give Stinkor his distinctive odor, patchouli oil was mixed into the plastic while molding the figure.  25 years later, many Stinkor figures still retain a whiff of that signature stink.

Nearly every Masters figure featured the trademark “Power Punch” feature that would allow you to twist the figure at the waist and release, causing an internal elastic band to snap the figure forward in a punching motion.  The Masters preliminary design team created dozens of unique features, like Ram-Man’s projecting torso, Man-E-Faces rotating faces, or Kobra Khan’s water-spitting mouth.  While many successful figures hit the market, many more died on the design table.  According to David Wolfram, a design manager at Mattel, sometimes the design team would go a bit too far: “They’d promise all these great features that [the figures] would do, and there’s no way they could ever do them. So we had to go back and try to give some reality to their ideas. Sometimes we’d actually design [their ideas] just to show them how bad they would actually look or work. They’d fall in love with their ideas without any thought to cost, safety or practicality.”[9]

With the help of Filmation’s animated He-Man and the Masters of the Universe syndicated into homes across the country, Masters of the Universe had domestic sales worth $250 million in 1985.  The next year, that number reached a truly amazing $400 million[10].  Mattel, of course, wanted to keep that momentum rolling, and flooded toy shelves with Masters product.  An avalanche of product, a mediocre feature film release, and the aging of the target market made 1987 a disastrous one for Mattel and the Masters of the Universe.  Profits made a precipitous drop from $400 million in 1986 to a paltry $7 million in 1987[11]. Mattel’s marketing department had succeeded where Skeletor had failed so often – they had defeated He-Man.  Not surprisingly, this decline in sales would spell the end of the Masters toy line.  Mattel would launch a short-lived He-Man revival in 1989, in a space themed cartoon that would not achieve nearly the success of the original.  Personally, I have vague memories of the “New Adventures”, as I had moved on by that point.

He-Man and his friends were not done with me yet, though.  In 2002, Mattel would again resurrect the Masters with a brand new toy line and cartoon. Featuring modern takes on the classic characters, with a bit of a manga infusion, the line would have strong sales, mostly with older collectors though, not kids. I was one of those collectors, having just graduated college and having a little disposable income for the first time.  I would become deeply immersed in the line, collecting it twice over (one set opened and one mint-on-card, of course) and ultimately setting in motion the chain of events spanning almost 7 years that finds me here now, studying toy design at FIT and collecting Mattel’s current incarnation of He-Man, in the Masters of the Universe Classics line, sold exclusively online to the adult collector market.  It seems that I will always have a place in my heart, and toy collection, for my favorite heroic warrior.

Bibliography

1. Sweet, Roger, and Wecker, David. Mastering the Universe: He-Man and the Rise and Fall of a Billion Dollar Idea.  Cincinnati: Emmis Books, 2005.

2.  Chavis, Jason. “The History of Mattel Toys.” eHow. <http://www.ehow.com/facts_5234373_history-mattel-toys.html>.

3.  “Barbie’s Beginning.”  Dolls4Play. <http://www.dolls4play.com/barbiehistory.html>.

4.  “Roger Sweet.” Wikipedia. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Sweet>.

5.  “Masters of the Universe.” Wikipedia. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_the_Universe>.

6.  Herman, Paul. “Another Thought #2.”  Robert_E. Howard.org. <http://www.robert-e-howard.org/AnotherThought2.html>.

7.  Middaugh, Dallas, “They Were Masters of Their Domain,” ToyFare Magazine, August 1998.

8.  Jones, Tamara, “Mattel Tries to Stage a Revival Floundering He-Man Brought to Life and Told to Hit the Road”, Los Angeles Times, March 15, 1987.

All images taken from http://www.he-man.org, except for the photo of myself, which was taken by one of my parents.

---

[1] http://www.ehow.com/facts_5234373_history-mattel-toys.html, May 7, 2010

[2] http://www.dolls4play.com/barbiehistory.html, May 7, 2010

[3] http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Sweet, May 7, 2010

[4] Sweet, Roger & Wecker, David. Mastering the Universe: He-Man and the Rise and Fall of a Billion Dollar Idea (Emmis Books: Cincinnati, 2005), 76.

[5] Sweet, Roger & Wecker, David. Mastering the Universe: He-Man and the Rise and Fall of a Billion Dollar Idea (Emmis Books: Cincinnati, 2005), 91

[6] http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_the_Universe, May 11, 2010

[7] http://www.robert-e-howard.org/AnotherThought2.html, May 11, 2010

[8] Sweet, Roger & Wecker, David. Mastering the Universe: He-Man and the Rise and Fall of a Billion Dollar Idea (Emmis Books: Cincinnati, 2005), 107.

[9] Middaugh, Dallas, “They Were Masters of Their Domain,” ToyFare Magazine, August 1998, 20-23.

[10] Sweet, Roger & Wecker, David. Mastering the Universe: He-Man and the Rise and Fall of a Billion Dollar Idea (Emmis Books: Cincinnati, 2005), 144.

[11] Jones, Tamara, “Mattel Tries to Stage a Revival Floundering He-Man Brought to Life and Told to Hit the Road”, Los Angeles Times, March 15, 1987, 2.