Bethany Griffiths

Personally, I love the way in which Melanie Jansen has used her own perspective of being a person who communicates with others as the inspiration for her character. It is easy to tell from her detailed description of the internal struggles many with mental illnesses face that the subject matter of her character design is truly well informed, making it all the more believable and relatable to the topic of personal identity. 

I’m glad to see that Melanie decided to construct an identity that varied from “traditionally attractive” forms by focusing her creativity on an average-looking middle-aged man. Shining the spotlight onto people like this is what I believe is much needed from our media, rather than merely making background characters or personified jokes out of this age range of men that aren’t donning abs or sporting perfect skin. The fragility that exists behind masculinity is a topic that should be much more widespread, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Melanie’s representation of this. 

Through the lectures and classes I have partaken in during this unit, I have learned significantly more about what it means to represent people. How this can impact societal views and influence new waves of acceptance due to the capability of creating fictional beings that the public somehow relate to and/or sympathise with. 

To me, the coronavirus outbreak has demonstrated more than anything the lack of care that our conservative government has for the people of this country. With months of reports from other affected countries to respond from, their complete disregard of the threat of the virus hitting the UK is what I believe has lead to us becoming the worst hit country in Europe. Ministers stand at a podium praising the NHS as though they haven’t spent years abusing it. They treat our country as a business with complete disregard for human wellbeing, merely showing concern and making flashy Churchill-esque statements whilst the cameras are rolling in order to keep the votes rolling in. I chose to reflect these beliefs of the establishment’s ill-treatment of those without a booming media presence in my character design.

The Louisiana Cigarette Man lives by New Orleans, a mile or so from Cancer Alley, an area by the Mississippi river that houses multiple industrial plants.  He is an African American man of low income and has spent his life in relative poverty. Every morning, he sits on his deck chair at the front of his house and smokes a cigarette. Over time, and without him noticing, toxic fumes from the plantations neighbouring his low-cost home have mutated his anatomy to form one with his chair. As well as his respiratory system warping to form multiple mouths within his beard, each functioning only to smoke cigarettes. 

Such emphasis on cigarettes is brought upon by my understanding of impoverished people feeling so overlooked that they give up on the idea of bettering themselves. Instead turning to drink, drugs and gambling for short-lived bursts of satisfaction which ironically seem to place money back in the pocket of the rich man. Betting shops and pubs make up for a large quantity of businesses along poverty-stricken areas where I live in Liverpool. 

Although the subject matter is quite dark, I wanted to counteract the grittiness with more innocent and creative aspects inspired by Studio Ghibli. For this reason, the beard is shaped like a cloud of smoke and the face is comically wide. I did this because we are often more heavily impacted by lighter forms of media. A film intended for children is likely to teach a more impactful lesson than a horror film (excluding Get Out), so I created aspects of the Louisiana Cigarette Man that were digestible and visually appealing. After all, he’s a victim not a villain, he needs to be loveable. 

Prior to our introduction to makeup and prosthetics, I had never really considered the importance of the two in regard to the creation of a character. This prompted a cycle of deep thoughts considering the ways in which an audience or viewer can perceive a personality through the manipulation of appearance. As a film fan myself, I always love to consider the technical aspects behind any emotionally stimulating scene and the ways in which sound, lighting, cinematography and dialogue are used to manipulate our perceptions of onscreen events. Although I valued costume as an important factor in the formation of a character, the impact elicited by makeup was largely overlooked. Which, in theory, demonstrates the significance of its presence all the more; I never realised it was there. 

Of course I don’t mean this in the way that I’ve always found characters such as the Joker or the Ood from Doctor Who to be normal, everyday people. Rather, the makeup/prosthetics matched up with the characters so seamlessly that there was no point in which I questioned what face lay beneath. For this reason, I can envision this subject impacting not only my perception of what makes a character but also the considerations I make regarding the ways in which I wish for the model to emote/ be portrayed during photoshoots. 

When sucked into the world of a media product, whether that be the diegesis of a film or the narrative of a fashion show, regardless of how detached they are from the codes and conventions of society it is possible for them to be believable.  We as the audience can even take aspects of these worlds and apply them to our lives both consciously and unconsciously. And it is for this reason that films have deferred from giving antagonists deformities, which were previously used to connote a sense of brokenness within the characters persona. Although the film industry is still far from inclusive in my opinion (though they will use it as a buzzword to describe predominantly young, white, traditionally attractive casts featuring two or more young, traditionally attractive people of colour) this choice is certainly a step in the right direction. 

From what I’ve learned so far, makeup speaks for a character even when they aren’t talking, which constantly applies to models who typically reflect the personification of whatever product they’re selling without the use of dialogue. The way in which people are represented also hold a very important place in the world of makeup due to the huge impact it can leave on the way it teaches us to perceive people. This can therefore be manipulated for the better, and utilised to inform audiences against prejudices.

Throughout the duration of the academic year, no lecture has made a greater impact on me than Nick Almond’s Emerging Technologies in Fashion. The topics of AI, bitcoin and robots stealing my job stuck with me for days afterward – really brought on the existential dread. I had the same conversation six times in one evening, asking ‘How do you feel about AI?’ to every flatmate that was unfortunate enough to enter the kitchen that night. 

Their answers were each very similar, in summary viewing AI as potentially dangerous and mildly terrifying, but moreover stating that the future is unknown and we’ve not a faint idea of what is yet to come. This ideology is clearly backed up by Almond, as he quotes in his lecture “trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window”(Drucker,2020). 

I was enlightened by a certain portion of the lecture that was dedicated to the creation and purpose of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin. Prior to this lecture I was only familiar with the concept of Bitcoin as a meme, with the continual mockery of the individuals choosing to invest in it being labelled as overly ambitious idiots. However, after listening to Almond’s introduction and considering the treatment of Steve Sasson regarding his invention of the digital camera and the way in which his colleagues at kodak criticized the idea, I could agree that Bitcoin seems remarkably similar in terms of being an emerging technology that society is not yet ready to adapt to. In terms of the politics behind Bitcoin, I believe that people, more so than corporations, would significantly benefit with what could only be described as the disqualification of exploitative behaviour from banks and certain corporations. This I wholeheartedly approve of, and would wish to experience for at the very least a short portion of my life. 

All in all, the topics of the lecture remained in my mind for around a week, after reaching the conclusion that graphically picturing terminator-like scenes and worrying about how I’ll fend off the robots when I’m 80 isn’t a beneficial move for my mental state, I instead imagined what good technology could do. I remembered a futuristic advert I saw quite a few years ago, of a British primary school connected to a classroom from a different country. The screen connecting the two made it look as though the children were playing in one classroom as they interacted with each other and learned together, and with the realisation of how much technology has both taught and served us, I became pleasantly distracted from the idea of murderous robots.  

Drucker, P. (2020) ‘Emerging Technologies in Fashion’ [Lecture]. London College of Fashion. 14 April.