the-doomed-posts-of-muteKi

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Sumac
@Sumac

That’s right, on this very Zune. I was in college and working summers doing graveyard shifts at a warehouse, pulling 11 hour shifts 7 days a week. I would eat two dinners cuz i had burned so many calories at work, then shower and collapse into bed to cry from burnout and overwork.

Curled up all exhausted and cozy, well fed and freshly cleaned. I’d bundle up in my big fluffy comforter, the sun shining through the blinds and the morning birds chirping away, i’d boot my zune up and watch an episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion. I wouldn’t have the energy to sit on a couch, to play games, or do pretty much anything after work except watch from bed and fall asleep.

Yeah, the Zune isn’t the ideal format for watching shows with lots of visual detail and nuance. That matters, but it matters much less than all the circumstances of life around the viewer. If i sat down on the couch and watched a good dvd transfer on a nice big screen, i’d have had a horrible time. I’d be stressed and uncomfortable, and wouldn’t have the privacy to let my emotions flow freely around my family.

As it is, the tiny format allowed me to watch a formative show in my one place of comfort, in the brief window of pleasure i had each day at that point in my life. It elevated the experience of watching Eva to something so vital and restorative, nothing i’ve watched before or since has carried so much emotional weight and importance for my life.

This is why i ultimately think people who look down on people who watch movies on their phones or laptops are grossly out of touch. Imagining that everyone is at the same place in their lives as you and insisting they experience things the way you’d want to displays a lack of empathy and just a misunderstanding of the emotional context of art.

I don’t like watching shows and movies on my phone now, but forcing yourself to experience art in the context a creator prefers can rob yourself of a truly singular emotional connection to art. Take it as you will, where you can, how you like.


the-doomed-posts-of-muteKi
@the-doomed-posts-of-muteKi

I think the more you know about how the animation industry actually operates, the more you realize that watching evangelion after an emotionally and physically draining work shift on a small device in the most private circumstances you can muster on the one electronic device you call your own is about as close to the original context of its creation as you can get


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in reply to @Sumac's post:

"but it matters much less than all the circumstances of life around the viewer."
I Am Not Going To Lie (and i mean this in the most positive way), this is sort of the same intent as the message of, "this is a theatre experience" but for a different experience/setting.

Truly! Demanding fidelity to some benchmark of technical quality or environment misses out on entire ways of BEING as it pertains to engaging with art, and can potentially remove all potency / connection / emotion / availability. I appreciate director Errol Morris' nicely dismissive response (which mirrors your own story):

How do you feel about that phenomenon? When something has played amazingly in a theater and then the only option is a smaller screen.
I really don’t care. The first time I watched Giant, I watched it on a two-and-a-half-inch black and white TV screen. It’s never played quite as well since then.