Visual Narrative: Demon Spirit haunting (Essay)

Visual Narrative: Demon Spirit Haunting

             My visual narrative project tells a story my vacation to Java and my subsequent haunting by Balinese demon spirits.  The first two photographs in the gallery illustrate a paranoid feeling of being watched.  The second pair shows my horror at being tapped on the shoulder by a skeletal arm and the realization that I am not alone in my hotel.  The rest of the pictures in the gallery are the disembodied faces of the Balinese demon spirits who visit me in hellish waking dreams.

            The images of the masks are in some ways modeled after screen shots from a film called Mystics in Bali.  I saw the film a few years ago and despite the fact that it was really bad, in terms of production, acting, and, script, I saw a few images of floating masks that I really liked.  The images of these masks flying though the air attacking people were a little silly, but the masks themselves were memorable and seemed to possess a malevolent will of their own.

            The evil spirits that seem reside in many of these types of masks were what I was trying to capture.  I had some trouble setting the shots up because I was working alone and had to literally balance several things at once.  I had to do a lot of experimentation with the angles of the camera and multi-colored directional lights.  My hope, in setting the masks against a mirror, was to give them the appearance of floating in space.  In some of the photos, I feel like I was successful.  I think the monkey mask pictures look the best, which is why I have included so many of them in the gallery.  I took pictures of another mask, but they didn’t turn out as well, so I excluded them.  I am especially happy with the images that include myself.  This is for two reasons, I think that the inclusion of a living face adds story to the photograph and secondly, I’m simply proud of the fact that I lined them up correctly without being able to see the viewer.

            Overall, the feeling evoked by my project is meant to be that of fear, and to a lesser degree, intrigue.  I hope that my images are visually interesting regardless of narrative context.

Visual Narrative: Demon Spirit haunting (Gallery)

Demon Spirit Haunting

Self Portrait

            I thought that this photograph might be an appropriate one, given the subject matter with which we are dealing.  This is a picture of myself, in full zombie make-up.  In this photo, I am preparing for a very small role in a recently released film called Sick and the dead.  If you would like to see more, go to www.sickandthedead.com/.          

          In fact, the current popularity of zombie movies, from the resident evil franchise of games and movies to the remakes and spin-offs of George Romero’s classic films, are indicative of a trend of increased supernatural content in contemporary popular media.  Zombie narratives, like 28 days later and Shaun of the dead, aren’t the only supernatural entities to recently see a surge in popularity.  Vampires are as popular as ever, with such new editions as Trueblood, the hbo series and the twilight books, which are now becoming major motion picture releases.  The newest supernatural craze, in fantastic creatures, seems to be the super human/super hero. 

             Heroes is probably the most popular series on television and movie studios are capitalizing on films about countless old comic book favorites, including superman, batman, Spiderman, iron man, and the incredible hulk.

            I believe that the increase in demand for fantastical media is due to an overall increased demand for media content, of any kind.  While there seems to be a trend towards the fantastic, there does not seem to be a corresponding trend away from the realistic.  I cite the dramatic increase in popularity and frequency of reality television and even the slight recent increase in popularity of documentary films, like super-size me, grizzly man, and Michael Moore’s films as evidence.

            People want more media content because, with new technology, they now have the ability to consume media faster and on their own schedule.  I believe the desire for escapist media has increased at a proportional rate to the demand for all media and I don’t see either slowing down any time soon.