Paranormal Artistry
Photography by: Andrew Uhrig
Art by: Emma Brigaud, Dale Lattanzio, Rebecca McHale, Clara Poteet, and Lillian Zhao
Model: Kaela Sung
In the wake of the 2016 election, absurdity began to feel more prevalent than ever. In this article, Joel Calfee explores the ways in which artists began to search for answers outside of their own world.
The past twelve months have been so utterly baffling and downright absurd that I could have sworn it was all a dream. The nightmarish feeling began last November, when the presidential election results rolled in. It felt surreal as I found myself clutching a sobbing friend who was dressed as Rosie the Riveter. In cruel irony her blue shirt, intended to embody hope, was stained with tears. This uneasy feeling resurfaced this past August, when I discovered that a radicalized white-supremacist had plowed a car into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, killing one woman and injuring two of my closest friends. I was even more convinced that I was trapped in a nightmare this past September, when I gathered with other William & Mary students to hear the vehement but anguished speeches of Dreamers, as well as other members of the community who were impacted or outraged by the rescindment of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy.
Unfortunately, there’s no waking up from these horrors. These days, I find myself more and more unmoved by the absurdity but troubled by the prospect of complacency. While my hopelessness has been growing, I have begun to look to artists for solace. As these bewildering events erupt around us, many artists are demonstrating their acceptance of absurdity in a different manner, one that was articulated by the French philosopher Albert Camus. Camus himself enumerated Absurdism, the school of thought which posits that humans who try to find some inherent meaning to their lives will be unable to do so, due to the indifference of our expansive universe and the impossibility of fully comprehending it. Absurdism states there are three ways that we can respond to the knowledge that this search is fruitless: commit suicide, take a blind leap of faith, or recognize the Absurd and embrace it.
Consider tense periods of history, such as the Cold War, and you will see that this third option has often been a natural response to such tensions. That was a time when the threat of nuclear warfare cast a daunting shadow over the world, leaving artists to interpret the chaos by exploring absurd fantasies. They responded by producing content like the supernatural program The Twilight Zone, and apocalyptic films, such as The Day The Earth Stood Still. These works brought attention to the possibility of mass extinction of the human race, a concept explored in the eschatologies of many religions.
Comparatively, in our modern society, it is impossible to ignore a glaring transformation in the work of artists searching for meaning during these distressing times and embracing the Absurd with extramundane recourses. Released this past July, the latest Gucci campaign, “Gucci & Beyond,” appears to be modeled after Star Trek or 2001: A Space Odyssey. Paranormal mystery series like The X-Files and Twin Peaks both made resurgences in 2017. Adam Gopnik, a journalist for The New Yorker, wrote an article last February supporting a theory that states our world is a computer simulation run by extraterrestrial beings. He went on to argue that a malfunction within the system could be the only explanation for all of the Stranger Things that have occurred.
Religion has always played a vital role in the world of art, but it currently seems more prevalent than ever. Note Kendrick Lamar’s album DAMN., released this past April, where religious commentary is woven throughout, interspersed with lines such as “the world is endin’, I’m done pretendin’.” Artists regard this era as particularly portentous, and therefore, they turn to faith for answers because it seems like the only choice. Religion has also been given a greater significance in the world of fashion, and this is exemplified by 2018’s Met Gala theme: “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.”
As these symbols of the metaphysical continue to make an appearance in popular culture, it make sense to think about them in the context of our own lives, where white supremacists continue to grow in number, where the threat of a nuclear attack from North Korea seems more plausible with each passing day, and where marginalized groups continue to fear how they will be oppressed in the future. The waking nightmares we endure make it nearly impossible not to embrace the Absurd. So, when we admire the work of these artists, I can’t help but wonder - are we looking to them for the answers, or are we simply comforted by the fact that they don’t have any either? As everyone desperately searches for meaning amongst the tumult, artists embrace Camus’s theory on the Absurd not by accepting it, but by seeking some sort of consolation.
are we looking to them for the answers, or are we simply comforted by the fact that they don’t have any either?
Originally published in ROCKET Volume VIII, Issue 1