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The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll This piece specifically tackles Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” poem, using a series of canned drum loops to represent each character as they appear in the story: a bubbly, woodblock-infused part illustrates the “burbling” of the Jabberwock, while a reoccurring jungle beat acts, literally, as a theme for the jungle itself. The storytelling is split between several outlandish characters, featuring a mysterious narrator, a sporty hardcore rap-rocker, a patronizing father, and an oily game show host whose final chummy end tag rattles off the booty of prizes gifted in return for the main character’s brave slaying of the Jabberwock. The visual end was acted out using a line of vending machine figurines called Homies™, all dressed in various inner-city garb; certain figures were sought out to play certain roles, such as the adolescent lead character who, in hopes of winning the acceptance of a drug dealing father figure, sets out to slay a Narc, envisioned by him as a monstrous Jabberwock. The fantastic imagery and ever-changing backgrounds (of jungle- and Sci-Fi-scapes) are meant to respresent the divorcing from reality that the protagonist must do in order to perform his goal; by imagining an otherwise blameless victim as threatening beast, he’s able to defer some of the guilt from his murder. The Jabberwock’s presence in this piece is ubiquitous even after the slaughter, giving a frighteningly unkillable shape to the lead character’s gnawing guilt. Absurdly comic, this is one of our most densely visual works, and features some of nearly every technique used for the other Instant Classics: stop animation, CG elements, 3D characters and sets, motion picture sampling, cut-outs from ads, and large amounts of compositing. |
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