Salon.com > Samuel Sattin

We let Charles Krafft fool us

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:25:00 +0000

CHARLES WING KRAFFT, the self-taught painter turned postmodern ceramicist, is famous for his ‘Disasterware’ collection, a term he coined for the melding of violent, often Fascist imagery with tawdry vessels. He’s fashioned everything from ceramic grenades with bio-weapons decaled in antiquated blue to perfume bottles appliquéd with swastikas. Krafft’s work has been featured in prominent news outlets such as Harper's and The New Yorker and is on permanent display at the Seattle Art Museum. He’s received endowments from the Soros Foundation and the NEA. Enthusiasts celebrate, or at least used to celebrate, what they believed to be Krafft’s insidious sense of irony that took a darkly comedic take on twentieth-century disasters, not to mention a vicious stand against political iconography in all forms. In 2009, art critic Jen Graves of The Stranger featured Krafft’s ceramic AK 47 on the magazine’s cover, admittedly duping herself concerning the artist’s perceived identity as an ‘iconoclast.’

“Django Unchained’s” secret political triumph

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:02:00 +0000

  OVER THE WEEKEND I had the luxury of seeing Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino’s slavery-centered revenge fantasy. Like everything the gore-obsessed culture monger has produced, from Pulp Fiction to Kill Bill, I found myself wrapped up in a narrative so inventive I was in no time cheering along as the taskmasters bled out. I’ve had long conversations with more film-savvy friends on Mr. Tarantino’s artistic merits. Sure, some of them are enamored, but others find him too liberal with his tendency to borrow—more of a master of post-modern pastiche than an authentic auteur, while posing as the latter. I can’t say I don’t sympathize. As someone interested in authenticity (in literature, especially), I can’t fault those who take Tarantino’s obsession with Kung Fu movies, Spaghetti Westerns, and scene stalking to task. Still, with each release I find myself unflinchingly in awe; whether or not I’m being spoon-fed what’s already been done, Tarantino’s films accomplish the goal of playing with a viewer’s perception of past and present. He does wonders with rendering violence surreal, while, of course, polarizing the hell out of his audience.

Who will be the Maccabees?

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Have you ever read an old comic book?

By old, I mean from the 1940s and 1950s, the genre’s Golden Age, when "Superman," "Batman," and "Wonder Woman" were just being scribbled to life. Since I was weaned on comics from the '80s and '90s — titles like "Sandman," "Swamp Thing," "X-Men," "Hellboy," all of which were captivating, literary, and, to those willing to overlook popular stigmas, sophisticated — it was difficult for me to access early "Superman" archives in any genuine emotional sense. Though I ended up reading them through, I found the content, while left-leaning and vivid, very much a product of its time, sometimes gruff, sometimes macho and, as far as current standards go, predictable. The main interest I took was historical, anyway, a glimpse into wartime and American identity as portrayed by Jewish immigrants, with identities of their own. But being brought up around the onset of the millennium I often felt as though I was being asked to marvel at the genius of a fort composed from twigs and mud, knowing all too well that the museum housing it had walls concealing reinforced titanium.

Dungeons and Dragons: My dorky literary muse

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 16:00:00 +0000

“Writing is all about character.”

That’s what they tell you, right?

By they, of course, I mean the majority of professors in MFA programs in Writing the country over–MFA programs, it might be said, that have propagated in recent years like churches of a new religion, departments filled with spectacled prophets at the pulpit, elating the instantly talented, while leaving the unlucky, or underdeveloped, to recoil from the successes of their peers.

Brooding around classroom tables, graduate writing students are set up to test their might. Their mentors, published authors of various degrees of repute, discuss prose and structure, poetics and politics, honesty and art. Character, however, they tell you–especially in fiction–is the key to a good story. And they tell you this essentially because they are correct. There are many things that novelists have to learn in order to actually turn their scribbles into marketable merchandise, and those things don’t necessarily need to be learned by dishing out the equivalent of a down-payment on a home. But if I walked away with anything from my MFA, it is that character is what makes a book readable. For someone, anyone, to pay tens of dollars to read what someone other than them has decided is worthwhile, they should be able to do so knowing that the imaginary people they’ll be spending the next 20 hours of their life with are at least a little complex (unless superficial husks are your shtick).

Has the apocalypse gone the way of vampires?

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 17:00:00 +0000

SCIENCE FICTION HAS gone apocalyptic over the last fifteen years in ways unseen in previous generations. I’m talking about American science fiction in particular, because, save for maybe the Japanese—whose techno-horror productions like Akira and NG Evangelion are pretty much responsible for rewriting my brain’s comfort-code—nobody does paranoia better than us. Yes, Americans have been tasting the terminal in genre since the Cold War, for obvious reasons, including fear of nuclear fallout, political takeover, terrorism, immigration, disease, overpopulation, your quotidian laundry list of modern dreads, really. But not since the nineteen fifties have we gone so goddamned mad for Armageddon, to the point where literary agents are calling for a decrease in post-apocalyptic submissions, and four out of every six movie trailers begins with some part of Manhattan or Los Angeles being torn the fuck apart. Deep pulsating bass rumbles through the theater. BaBOOM—the bowels loosen. Mechanical tentacle beast eviscerates Time Warner Center. From the Dark Knight Rises to The Road (the book, not the movie, because why? Really.), we find gritty ruin encroaching on civil society, steadily increasing its output year by year, either directly preceding doom or setting the scene in doom’s scorched aftermath. Our entertainment industry is snowballing extermination to the point where I imagine another decade down the line every film made in America will obliterate earth in the opening credits. Just to get it over with.