#I have not felt great about my art or my contribution to the joker out and käärijä fandom recently | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

echristides-blog · 5 years ago

Text

Blogs

Methodology - 11/12/19

Dear Blog,

As a part time student at the beginning of a three-year journey of a qualifying degree and as placement won’t begin until January 2020 I thought I’d take the opportunity to embark on this adventure by looking into what spurs my curiosity and interest along the way, letting my intuition, reading and teaching guide my methodology and inform my self-growth:

My main approach was visual, searching for art exhibitions at galleries that really spoke to me and I felt very drawn to, this includes one film that was heavily based on the mental ill health of a fictional character. This method allowed me to experience, be influenced by the visuals as well as view the artist or subject through an art therapy lens - looking and thinking like a trainee art therapist. The most important part of this approach was supplementing my reflections with qualitative scientific input from art therapy literature and from peer-reviewed articles in related fields giving elements of validity and reliability whilst enhancing my learning as I explored different areas and possible meanings under the concept of art therapy.

Having come from a musical background and understanding the influence sonic environments have had on me, one blog is of experimental thinking - again approached scientifically, as I am interested in exploring the idea of using sound in an art therapy setting. My research has shown that this is still a developing area in the context of art therapy even though some professional writing has been contributed here. I feel this approach would have been more complete for me had I made some response art to an environmental soundscape.

Two blogs are purely experiential, based on the process of making my own piece of art and experiencing working with different art materials. I felt I had to document important realisations that shaped my understanding and learning of the art making experience for myself and also what it could be like for clients in therapy.

I also felt it was important to include some reflexivity in my methodology as this is key in developing practice and I hope this is reflected in a number of my blog posts. Because of this, I believe that a reflection on personal therapy could have been a good addition here.

Back to School! - 01/10/19

Dear Blog!

I have just come home from the ‘official’ first day at uni. Going back to academia makes me a little anxious… Will I quickly remember how to be a student again? How will I juggle work, study and life? I’m a little nervous about the journey the MA Art Therapy will take me on. Even though I have a cloud of thoughts above me, it was great seeing familiar faces from the Foundation course – we bonded and shared experiences so feeling that sense of safety was comforting… The Foundation taught me that Art Therapy is a creative route to better self-understanding but its unpredictable process is a little bit of a scary thought. I guess all these emotions will be coming into play at some point, this is an MA in Art Therapy after all.

Today was very exciting. In fact, as soon as our lecture on Research and Enquiry began I couldn’t wait to get started! This emotion continued throughout the taught lessons. I'm already thinking of areas in Art Therapy I want to explore; sound/music in art therapy, the intrinsic properties of art materials, gender in art therapy, art and psychoanalysis, art therapy and the criminal mind. So here I am, my mind travelling at 100 miles per hour after having a plethora of information thrown at us. Although I'm loving that we can navigate our way through the course, I do have to slow down as I know that my starting point is research, research, research!

I found it quite intriguing today that I started doodling during our Research & Enquiry class as I realised that I was doodling the same shapes I drew on the first day of the Foundation. Although the patterns were identical there were differences in size, in colour and they were positioned on different parts of the page in my notebooks. This was very interesting to me... (Interesting…a word I’m sure I’ll be using a lot…). I do wonder what the role of an intuitive image is? (Case & Daley, 2013: 124). While doodling has been associated with being disinterested in a primary task, recent research shows that the act of doodling releases mental stress, which in turn improves focus and helps memory and recall performance (Gupta, 2016: 17). Dr Robert Burns relies on doodling to reveal what is going on in the unconscious, claiming that the way that EEG leads transmit brain activity to a piece of paper, one’s hand also does (cited in Pillay, 2016). Even though I believe I could try to make sense of my doodling, I’m certain that art therapy theory, psychoanalytic theory and neuroscience could shed a lot more light here...

Word count: 434

(Doodling in first lesson Sep 2019)

(Doodling in first lesson September 2018)

References

Case, C. Dalley, T. (2013) ‘The Art Therapy Handbook’, London & New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Gupta, S. (2016) ‘Doodling: The Artistry of the Roving Metaphysical Mind’, Journal of Mental Health and Human Behaviour, Vol 21 (1), pp.16-19. doi: 10.4103/0971-8990.182097. (peer reviewed)

Pillay, S. (2016) “The Thinking Benefits of Doodling”, Harvard Health Publishing, https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-thinking-benefits-of-doodling-2016121510844 – Accessed on 02/10/19 at 19:15.

If ‘Joker’ (fictional character, 2019) was in Art Therapy… - Reflections 07/10/19

Dear Blog,

Last night I went to the movies to see Joker, a psychological thriller focusing on the main character’s mental illness. This film emphasized that what we are at birth and what we become and why, are very different identities. Everybody has a story...

The film makes it known that Joker was never really in a nurturing environment, loved or cared for and that he had a very dark upbringing. It was a memoir of the criminal before he became destructive to the world around him. Joker is a fragmented individual and sees a therapist who didn’t succeed in developing a therapeutic relationship between them. The irony is that Joker seemed to be collaborative during their sessions by opening up about his emotions but she wasn’t very interested in understanding him or responsive to his needs.

It made me think about the significance of the art therapist, the art therapy process and its multitude layers of containment through the different therapeutic relationships within art therapy. In his therapy journal he wrote “The worst part about being human is mental illness”, which striked me in particular as he was aware of his disturbances but was really struggling to deal with them. I guess he was trying to fight his demons alone. Mental illness is like being in a prison you can’t free yourself from and no one can understand the suffering if they haven’t experienced it. His sense of powerlessness lead to him making use of a gun - he used it for physical, emotional and psychological protection. It became his shield, forbidding anyone to upset him. It really saddened me that the therapist failed to create that “holding environment” and that she in fact discouraged emotional nourishment (Murphy cited in Liebmann, 1994: 16). What if he missed his last chance for positive change because the professional was incompetent?

Perhaps the art therapy setting and process would have been more suited to Joker as he is a very visual individual, constantly daydreaming and painting a clown’s face on his. His imagination made him creative but he was only able to be this expressive alone. It felt like he was self-soothing himself through his creativity but even his creativity was imprisoned in his own sense of self. Art therapy allows one to be free and creative through play in what Winnicott calls the “potential space - an environment which can tolerate the successes and failures of experimentation, but which is ultimately reliable” (cited in Liebmann, 1994: 16). We can’t release on humans the pain and aggression we can release in the art therapy room... His creativity could have been his way out.

Word count: 434

References

Murphy, J. (1994) ‘Mists in the Dark’, in Liebmann, M. ‘Art Therapy with Offenders’. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Joker (2019), [Motion Picture], Todd Phillips, USA: Warner Bros. Pictures – Viewed 07/10/19.

Sound in Art Therapy - Reflections 15/10/19

Dear Blog,

Yesterday in our Introduction to Art Therapy lecture we talked about how to approach our first art therapy session as trainees. How we could prompt a client if he or she is struggling to engage in art making was a question posed and this triggered a thought I have a lot of faith in... Although usually the visual sense for humans is perhaps the more dominant, we are nevertheless multi-sensory and senses can stimulate subjective experiences. Art Therapy is a creative way in to the psyche just as much as externalizing what is part of the psyche is – therefore, exploring creativity when utilizing art therapy is very important. “Sound can be an invasive phenomenon of everyday experience in that it assists our engagement with, immersion in and commentaries with the environment in which we live” (Taylor & Fernstrom, 2017: 4). I am very interested in non-musical sounds evoking memory and emotion as there seems to be a lot less written about it in comparison to great work on memory and music.

Sound has the capacity to mark time, place and narrative “making the past psychologically present or problematized, creating a dialogue between the present and the past” (Bao, 2013: 208) and we fathom sound in terms of phenomenology, memory, imagery, associations and even phantasy. As sound is tied to different experiences, the use of sonic prompts can elicit memories and involuntary memories. “Our ability to interpret the world around us crucially depends on how the brain organizes meaningful auditory information in memory” (Hendrickson, Walenski, Friend, Love, 2017: 2). This could strongly suggest that sound has potential to aid a client into and through the complex process of art therapy sessions. So, it can very much be considered to be a stimulant... Referring to good and safe practice, could it be risky for some clients to be played recorded sounds during an art therapy session? Perhaps it could be, but the acousmatic approach creates an illusion for the client, it allows the client to be connected and disconnected with the sound at the same time as the actual source of it would be unknown. Sound is also ephemeral and what could be triggered in the art therapy room when sound is played can be contained by the therapist, by being in the art therapy room and maybe even in the artwork itself. Furthermore, there seems to be a particular interest in the natural soundscape as a therapeutic resource and it being used as a calming agent (Franco, Shanahan, Fuller, 2017: 1). Of course, this is all very subjective but more research is without doubt needed here as I am a firm believer that nature can be a healer in many different ways...

The effect of sonic elicitation is multisensory as sound evokes visual, tactile and olfactory as well as auditory memories (Harris, 2015: 22) and this fits in to art therapy very well as art therapy is a whole body experience. It has been stated that multimodal sensory input can drive positive mental states such as tranquility, unlike monotony, which is a cause of stress (Franco, Shanahan, Fuller, 2017: 2). Allowing sound to play an active role in the triangular relationship (therapist-client-artwork), to prompt and be part of a therapeutic relationship seems to be a creative avenue to explore... And creativity is not just a non-threatening way to access and express memories and emotions but has the power to create a corrective experience in the brain (Perryman, Blisard & Moss, 2019: 80).

Word count: 563

References

Bao, Y. (2013) “Remembering the Invisible: Soundscape and Memory of 1989”, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Vol 7 (3), pp. 207-224. doi: 10.1386/jcc.7.3.207_1. (peer reviewed)

Franco, Lara S. Shanahan, Danielle F. Fuller, Richard A. (2017) “A Review of the Benefits of Nature Experiences: More Than Meets the Eye”, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol 14 (8), pp. 1-29. doi: 10.3390/ijerph14080864. (peer reviewed)

Harris, A. (2015) “Eliciting Sound Memories”, The Public Historian, Vol 37 (4), pp.14-31. doi: 10.1525/tph.2015.37.4.14. (peer reviewed)

Hendrickson, K. Walenski, M. Friend, M. Love, T. (2015) “The Organization of Words and Environmental Sounds in Memory”, Neuropsychologia, Vol 69, pp. 67-76. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.01.035. (peer reviewed)

Perryman, K. Blisard, P. Moss, R. (2019) “Using Creative Arts in Trauma Therapy: The Neuroscience of Healing”, Journal of Mental Health Counselling, Vol 41 (1), pp. 80-94. doi: 10.17744/mehc.41.1.07. (peer reviewed)

Taylor, S. Fernstrom, M. (2017) “Acouscenic Listening and Creative Soundwalks: Evoking memory and Narratives Through Soundscape Exploration”, Leonardo Music Journal, Vol 27 (27), pp.3-6. doi: 10.1162/LMJ_a_00999. (peer reviewed)

‘Protreptic’ (2018) - Reflections 26/10/19

Dear Blog,

I recently came across artist Despina Zaxaropoulou and her eight hour a day, three-week long performance Protreptic in Bangkok and became fascinated with the power in endurance art... I decided to watch a clip of the performance and view images taken from it without reading its short descriptive summary to have a more authentic response to it... Dressed in an almost completely transparent dressing gown, Zaxaropoulou lies silently and moves around on a wooden transporting container inviting audiences to interact with her... Her purpose was instantly and unmistakably made clear to me, it was that effective and meaningful... It pushes the artist’s physical and mental strength to the maximum, makes the power relations between artist and audience prominent and tests boundaries. She embodied herself and her inner reality into her artwork, becoming the image under the gaze and available to be physically handled by many different individuals. It was very interesting to see different reactions to Zaxaropoulou’s loss of autonomy and even though her body language seemed sorrowful... she was still objectified and touched in a sexual way by some. From a trainee art therapist point of view my immediate response was to want to create a safe space for her and hold that space for her... my mind couldn’t stop thinking about the significance of complete respect for the client’s intrapersonal meanings...

From an artist’s point of view I really admire her bravery in her performance. It made me question my own art practice and how stepping out of my comfort zone is something perhaps I should attempt more often as my artwork consists of only my own personal experiences, emotions, memories and fantasies. Although I felt very uncomfortable and bothered by the performance – Zaxaropoulou being exposed, vulnerable and receptive to many different interpersonal experiences, reminded me that “creative work has been associated with ‘a-ha’ moments of self-realization... that stimulate personal growth” (Hinz, 2017: 143). Being experiential is often about taking risks and experimenting with different environments, materials and exploring the psychodynamics. Sitting with uncomfortable feelings and being reflective as well as being reflexive is necessary for my own creative practice and development as an artist and as a trainee art therapist. These different thought processes have shifted my perception of me as an artist and have made me eager to transcend my boundaries and embrace challenge and uncertainty. They have spurred further curiosity for learning and I feel I need to honour those interests.

Word Count: 407

Reference

Hinz, L. D (2017) “The Ethics of Art Therapy: Promoting Creativity as a Force for Positive Change”, Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, Volume 34 (3), pp. 142-145. doi:10.1080/07421656.2017.1343073. (peer reviewed)

First Art Making Session in MA! - 29/10/2019

Dear Blog!

Today we finally made some art work at uni! And it was really, really, REALLY liberating. Since we started I haven’t had the chance to sit down and take my time to make art and today’s session just proved to me how long overdue it was to do so, especially being on this course...

We were told to bring wool and newspaper to today’s class last week, but we were only told today that we would each be making a person and I really enjoyed having that direction. I enjoyed working in silence in a quiet room, getting lost in the moment without any distractions as I was able to tune in with myself. Usually, I instantly get a visual response to an exercise but this time I hadn’t, so I knew I would go by my method of “what feels right” to make art. This is how I selected my materials and then let the process take its course. From the selection in front of me I ended up using only the earthy materials such as string, crinkled shredded paper, tissue paper, curly moss and stuck to earthy colours. It was interesting to me that I didn’t end up using every material I chose in the beginning, even though I tried to incorporate them, certain materials and colours didn’t feel suited.

I realised I was spending a lot of time on the legs and was feeling irritated trying to get them looking and feeling the way I wanted them to. When I became conscious of this, I started asking myself why the legs were so important to me...

I then worked on the arms, needing them to take a slightly firmer form but I still needed them flexible so I used curly moss. I wrapped the body in white tissue paper to give it a lighter, transparent feel visually. Finally, the head I felt needed “consolidating” so I sewed all around the newspaper with navy and beige string – as if I was bringing my thoughts together, sewing and securing them all in one place. Interestingly enough, I didn’t want to hide the newspaper effect and was picky only using parts of it that had no images but I only thought about how fussy I was after I had finished making my piece. At the time I only wondered why I chose those two shades of colour of string...

I instantly felt at ease with my creation and connected to the entire product. As I had some time left to reflect on it I thought about my emotional journey when making it; the time it took to get the legs looking springy and unrestricted – flexible and ready to run, made me think about how much I love freedom and spontaneity, it made me question if I am struggling with that part at the moment. The body felt as light as a feather, the arms were spread out and bendable... perhaps because I feel like I am on a new adventure. It wasn’t long before I realised that the head seemed to be the only solid and heavy part of the body... maybe because I have much to think about and organise at the moment... I felt I identified with my piece and my object became real to me, it had its own existence in the space and its positioning became an important decision. Today’s session seemed to have mirrored my invisible reality, it was enlightening and educational and even though not in a therapy session, felt the concept of the triangular relationship come alive.

Word count: 596

‘Same Bed, Different Dreams’ (2018) by Song Dong and Psychoanalytic Thinking - Reflections 02/11/19

Dear Blog!

I came across the works of Chinese artist’s Song Dong today in London’s Pace Gallery and was captivated by his art work Same Bed, Different Dreams (2018), which represents the expansion of Asian cities and their modernization that has not only changed the face of the cities but the citizens lives with it. His concept and artwork resonated with me on a metaphoric and symbolic level, and its title seemed to meet my intuitive feeling towards it quite well: that his artwork was dream related... It made me question if the title was a conscious or unconscious attempt to be ambiguous.

In Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams (cited in Strachey, 2010: 338-339) the unconscious surfaces when the censor is frail, which occurs during sleep and the repressed comes out in a dream-form... a dream is a thing that is pictorial and is capable of being represented. This to me was Dong’s unconscious sitting within the physical space – or should I say his psychical space – in concrete form.

A very large beautifully crafted, multi-coloured and polished dream-like case made out of many different windows in the centre of a pale room makes itself known. In it were household objects including crockery, pendant lights and decorative knick-knacks... objects that carry history, memory, emotion. Dong having constructed it by using rubbles from old Beijing confirmed to me that its every detail was meaningful and left me feeling that past and present were undefined here. According to Reiser (cited in Fonagy et al., 2012: 78), the manifest dream draws out past and current life issues and conflicts, in hope to resolve them. Perhaps these raw materials and objects inside are more raw than they seem… Dreams disguise impulses and substitute them with symbols – an operation accomplished by primary processes of the unconscious where the repressed return in confusing ways through visual imagery (Rocha, 2012: 20). Both, dreams and artwork have their own dimensional measurements and in Dong’s artwork, the dream could be preserved in the large dream-like case. The pendant lights dangling in it are lit up, which could suggest psychic activity. Lacan wrote that “dream is a phenomenon of psychic activity” because the unconscious is always at work and never sleeps... so perhaps this is what is being presented by Dong unconsciously (cited in Rocha, 2012: 17). Although the dream-like case is completely closed, one can still see through it, some windows are more transparent than others giving an indication that the hidden parts of the psyche are reachable through dreams. I have always been fascinated with how personal, mysterious, enchanting and unfathomable dreams are. I hope to inform my practice with psychoanalytic literature but I know that it could take me a lifetime trying to understand some of it. Even though exploring psychoanalysis feels like stepping into a whole other world, I believe it is a study that sheds light on the bigger, deeper and most complex parts of the psyche. Dong’s political artwork displays the relationship between his life and his art... And I can’t help but wonder if he was to bring this to an analytic setting, what would come up?

Word count: 510

References

Fonagy, P. Kachele, H. Leuzinger-Bohleber, M & Taylor, D. (2012) ‘The Significance of Dreams: Bridging Clinical and Extraclinical Research in Psychoanalysis’, London: Routledge.

Freud, S. & Strachey, J. (2010) ‘The Interpretation of Dreams: The Complete and Definitive Text’, New York: Basic Books.

Rocha, G. M. (2012) “The Unconscious: Ideal Worker?” International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 21 (1), pp. 17-21, doi: 10.1080/0803706X.2011.624546. (peer reviewed)

‘The Anthony Gormley Experience’ - Reflections 07/11/19

Dear Blog,

Today I finally managed to go and see Anthony Gormley’s exhibition and what an interesting one it was. I had booked my ticket last night for this morning as I wanted to go in with a fresh and clear mind to simply experience it. The focus was the body: we all have a body but the world within it, is unique every time. As I was walking around each room my responses to his different artworks were authentic and instant to what was happening in that present moment: What I was feeling, what I was thinking, what I remembered, what I imagined, what it made me question, what it made me want to do… it all came to consciousness. Seven rooms really spoke to me:

Clearing VII (2019) Approximately 8 kilometres of aluminium tube coiled against the space, restricted by the walls, ceilings and floor to bounce and expand. I felt I was in a child’s scribble and wanted to play in it – it activated a physical impulse and I felt I was part of the artwork.

Subject II (2019) A single life-size male body form made of steel bars became my complete focus and it was his posture that really captured me – he seemed sorrowful and I felt the impact of that emotion. Perhaps the heaviness of the material that he was made out of played a part in the intensity of that emotion making it more prominent that he was alone and seeming lonely in the space...

Matrix III (2019) An enormous cloud made out of steel mesh, its density increasing as you walk towards its centre and looking up at it whilst walking beneath it triggered a memory. I remembered swimming in deep water unable to see the world above it and swimming towards the surface – remembering the feelings of fear and relief that came with that experience, essentially reliving it.

Lost Horizon I (2018) Many identical male figures made out of cast iron, positioned in many different ways across the ceiling, walls and floor. Walking amongst these figures, I noticed that the male figure was Gormley. It made me think about him and his life experiences, every figure felt like it had a different story to tell about him. I became very aware of these presences in the room, I realized I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what I was feeling with each one but their presence was intense – making me think even more.

Cave (2019) A steel sculpture on an architectural scale imitates a hollow human form. Going through this hollow body I felt my visual, auditory and tactile senses heighten as it got completely dark; using my eyes to spot anything possible, my ears to hear what I could and touch to navigate myself though the darkness. At the same time I felt like I was walking into the unknown as sensations were very present but not obvious. This artwork stimulated and activated my body and mind together, and led to a combination of observations on the self, experiencing my own body as an entity – externally as well as internally.

Drawings II Exiting the Cave led to a room with more basic and natural material artworks. Gormley used his own blood to make drawings representing the interior of the human body, which I found very uncomfortable to look at making me want to turn away. I was quite surprised to have felt quite nauseous at the sight of that and it made me realise just how disturbing I found it. There was something about his blood, its varying texture in the artwork and being displayed for many years now that didn’t sit well with me at all and made me question why. Why was I affected this much?

Host (2019) Gormleys final room was kept separate by a single solid piece of stone, a room consisting of earth, water and air where water covered the whole ground. This room is the only room left uninterrupted by visitors. Still, it offered me an incredibly soothing experience by gazing at it and smelling the humidity that was produced – I was so drawn and nourished by it, I wanted to sit there. I realised this was the only room I felt so relaxed by as it made me imagine that I was looking out of a window to natural landscape, envisioning forests and being by the beach. It was the perfect note to end on as I felt safe near it... bringing to the surface my strong connection and love for natural surroundings… It also made me think about the counter-transference in therapy, the feelings a therapist feels in response to the client or the clients artwork as Gormley’s exhibition certainly did that...

This exhibition was all experiential reminding me of Hakomi Psychotherapy: based on mindfulness, Hakomi is body orientated psychotherapy accentuating somatic awareness (Rothaus, 2013: 208). The body is a powerful resource as it stores influential information and can guide us to deeper places in the psyche. It seemed as if Gormley took the role of the therapist using his artworks as experiments to evoke experiences for the visitors… gently accessing unconscious material and bringing it to conscious awareness so that it can be processed. Having gone first thing in the morning allowed me to be relaxed, and being calm helped me to be more open and receptive to new experiences when engaging with the artworks. This is a vital part of mindful self-study as it allows you to focus on body-mind connection in the here and now and “the quality of mindfulness heightens mental imagery”, which in turn could increase degree of healing (Morgan cited in Rothaus, 2013: 212). In an Art Therapy setting I could have externalized my body-mind experience, have the process and my artwork contained before safely reflecting on it… A really rich combination of approaches to consider…

Word count: 977

Reference

Rothaus, M. E. (2013) ‘Hakomi and Art Therapy’ in Rappaport, L. ‘Mindfulness and the Arts Therapies: Theory and Practice’, London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

‘Other Spaces: Vanishing Point & Our Time’, Psychosis & Realizations - Reflections 10/11/19

Dear Blog,

I have always had a very strong interest in Psychosis and having studied music even composed an electronic piece based on my understanding of an episode of Psychosis. My purpose of composing music like this was to try to interpret psychological disorders guided by my readings so that I can raise awareness on how difficult it is to be on the other side and to help me understand sufferers state on a deeper level. By doing this I felt I would be able to relate and connect better with these individuals. Vanishing Point and Our Time are exhibitions I visited that played with one’s visual perception. Both in dark rooms Vanishing Point used laser lights and projected beams of light to a vanishing point, and Our Time used smoke and a kinetic light installation that swung back and forth – both playing with reality and illusion.

Psychosis is the severe distortion or even erosion of the normal functions of perception, thinking and feeling and of the capacity to communicate (Sass cited in Killick & Schaverien, 1997:134). For me the visual nature of this exhibition resembled a hallucinatory experience placing me in the mind of a psychotic client. From a trainee art therapist point of view, this exhibition made me panic slightly at the thought of some tricky but vital questions… How could I contain a severely psychotic client? How would I approach this? Where would I begin? I took a moment to consolidate my thoughts and reverted to our core learnings so far… I have to create a safe and facilitating environment for the client, which means being resilient and being able to tolerate different behaviours, by providing safe art materials and a place where artwork could be stored, by having a regularity of sessions in that same space. With all clients and especially clients suffering with severe mental health problems, getting them to experience a level of relatedness to the art therapist through repetition is essential. According to Killick “containment can be mediated through the experience of continuity” (Killick & Schaverien, 1997: 50). And what if there is no artwork?! I remembered my tutors words: “It’s still art therapy!”.

I am also a very firm believer in body language as it is penetrative and a universal form of communication. Searle focused on the therapist’s facial expressions being fundamental for the symbiotic relationship between the psychotic client and the therapist stating that through the therapist the psychotic client can recognise their aliveness (cited in Killick & Schaverien, 1997: 219-220).

I am beginning to understand the complexities that come into play with the different clients and the importance of not being reactive to alarming thoughts but responsive – remaining patient and having faith in the process. This exhibition and the readings that followed highlighted that as a trainee art therapist I have to learn the language of each of my clients and adapt my way of working to their needs in order to get them to connect with me and engage in art making. Although I am trying to prepare myself for my upcoming placement as much as possible, I understand that I can’t know fully what to expect… The responsibility for improving the mental well-being of another and thoughts on what my counter-transference will be in the process, are thoughts that make me a little... or a bit more than a little nervous…

Word count: 552

Reference

Killick, K. & Schaverien, J. (1997) ‘Art, Psychotherapy and Psychosis’, New York: Routledge.

Charlotte Salomon’s ‘Life? Or Theatre?’, Looking at Her Paintings - Reflections 16/11/19

Dear Blog,

What an exhibition... I am so captivated by how deep and penetrating it was...

“The war raged on and I sat by the sea and saw deep into the heart of humankind”, she said and she really did (Salomon cited in Felstiner, 2009).

Salomon, a German Jew in Berlin lost her mother at the delicate age of 9 and grew up living in fear witnessing the heartache and devastation the Nazis spread when they came into power in 1933. Her father eventually remarried opera singer Paula Salomon-Linberg and Salomon fell madly in love with someone her step-mother worked with, Alfred Wolfson, only to be sent to stay in southern France with her maternal grandparents due to dangerous circumstances. After witnessing her grandmother hang herself, her grandfather brutally let her in on what was being kept from her all these years – that their seven family losses where suicides, including her mother’s.

“I will create a story so as not to lose my mind” (Salomon cited in Felstiner, 2009).

Salomon created a series of autobiographical paintings attaching tracing paper, writing words and melodies, adding a narrator and introducing characters giving them a theatrical effect... I thought about why she chose to paint the way she did...

Her paintings presented her internal and external reality in a very defined and cohesive manner. She used paint, a medium that could be messy and which can be daunting when there are issues regarding control (Robbins, 1987: 109). Everything happening in her life was beyond her control but her choice to use paint, for me, was a sign of wanting that power over how her life story was illustrated – a valuable challenge of tolerating all the toxic feelings depicting her struggle through life. This left me with an incredible impression of her inner strength and her being well-balanced. Perhaps her faith in religion gave her that power... “Dear God, just let me not go mad” (Salomon cited in Felstiner, 2009).

Her paintings shift from bright to dark colours and her writing from witty to grim as her story proceeds. They start becoming colourless and dull as she began feeling fed up with feeling fed up and she contemplated committing suicide herself. Colour communicates the felt experience and makes a visual statement about a person’s current state of being (Robbins, 1987: 107-109). Their flatness could metaphorically represent her lifeless life. But Salomon’s paintings were all of notebook size and of a repetitive style of painting completely limiting her body movement, which according to Robbins are signs of offering herself containment and of protecting herself (1987: 113).

Salomon seems to have had experienced cumulative trauma having lost her mother, being away from her father and her lover, being in the midst of war, not being able to communicate with her loved ones... Emotionally and psychologically exhausted by it all she fought to live every day. Her efforts at art therapy saved her, she confronted her harsh reality and realised that death can’t be worse than what she was she was mirroring in her images, which made her want to live... “I will live for them all” (Salomon cited in Felstiner, 2009). Research has linked psychopathology with avoiding thoughts, emotions and memories but Salomon engaged with her process over and over again...769 times before being killed by the Nazis (Skeffington & Browne, 2014: 116).

“Keep this safe, it is my whole life” (Salomon cited in Felstiner, 2009). Salomon’s artworks are incredibly inspirational and influential as they document honorable aspects about her and make it evident that she was her own art therapist. In an audio-visual recording at the exhibition, it was said that Salomon was an introvert. Externalizing her mental images the way she did, may have been a conscious wish to be able to communicate them to someone other than herself (Schaverien, 1992: 83-84). This was her life but I think it was her desire for it to be unreal, for it to be theatre...

I walked out of the museum feeling so moved and emotional over Salomon’s life story... her pain, her fear, her struggle. I was astonished at her outlook on life, how she relied on her creativity to regenerate strength and ignite hope in a dark hole. I felt very grounded by the way she made me think about the way I see my own life and how she made me look at it from the outside, as if that too were theatre...

Word count: 715

References

Felstiner, M. L., (2009) “Charlotte Salomon: 1917-1943", Jewish Women’s Archive. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/salomon-charlotte – Accessed 16/11/2019 at 17:15.

Robbins, A. (1987) ‘The Artist as Therapist’, New York: Human Sciences Press.

Schaverien, J. (1992) ‘The Revealing Image: Analytical Art Psychotherapy in Theory and Practice’, London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Skeffington, P. M. & Browne, M. (2014) “Art Therapy, Trauma and Substance Misuse: Using Imagery to Explore a Difficult Past with a Complex Client” International Journal of Art Therapy, Vol. 19 (3), pp. 114-121, doi: 10.1080/17454832.2014.910816. (peer reviewed)

‘Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece’ (2019) - Reflections 17/11/2019

Dear Blog,

I visited the National Gallery today to see Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece (2019). As well as being one the world's most famous painters, Da Vinci is known for having extensive knowledge in scientific subjects that fed into his artwork such as architecture, science, mathematics, engineering, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, palaeontology, cartography and the list goes on. This exhibition focused on Da Vinci's the Virgin of the Rocks (1508) by introducing unknown truths in four different rooms that allowed me to reacquaint myself with his famous painting ultimately making me see it in a new light.

Entering the Mind of Leonardo as he begins his journey of creating the Virgin of the Rocks, his thoughts are text written backwards and reflected on mirror surfaces so that they could be read easier. "He who is only good at painting figures seems to be a poor master" (cited at the exhibition). I wondered how he meant this.. I wondered how he meant "figures"… Could he have been insinuating that one can only master figures if his soul invests in it? Was he insinuating that a true artist should master how to depict elements of divinity in his figures? His connection to religion perhaps? An unclear yet powerful statement, where I felt he meant both... This mirror effect was done against a backdrop of the Italian Alps and it stated at the exhibition that many of Da Vinci’s geological sketches and observations were situated there so he must have felt something special about this location. According to Andric he was constantly striving for the heights, which could reflect his desire to elevate the spirit (2016: 7). This led me to think that he wanted viewers to experience the search for meaning in what is around us, to search for mystery that exists in the world and is to be sought and to acknowledge that we are part of this mystical and miraculous creation. According to Gal (cited in Vladislav, 2004: 53) searching is a method by which we implement and connect with faith, and is kin to art.

With this in mind I left that room to move on to the next looking for the bigger picture and tuning in with what was around me - a circular hall that connected all rooms in the shape of a cross. This reinforced the feeling that his own spirituality played a bigger part in this painting than I had thought...

The Studio. "The figure that does not sufficiently express with action the passions of its soul is not worthy of praise" (cited at the exhibition). Da Vinci refers to the "figure" again and its "soul". This seemed to imply spiritual art, which is dependent on the artist's capacity to understand spirituality and on the experience of the knowledge of God in order to achieve "art in spirit", otherwise known as iconography. (Vladislav, 2004: 58-60). Scientific investigation that was carried out on this painting using infrared reflectography and hyperspectral imaging revealed lost content beneath the Virgin of the Rocks we know today. So if we are to think of Da Vinci as an iconographer, this piece of work would not be one of self-expression or scientific precision but rather a method and practice towards transfiguration of his nature through his experience of the revelation of the holy by which he would be able touch upon the mystery of incarnation of the Divine (Vladislav, 2004: 56-59). His first attempt can't have been definitive enough in what he was trying to portray and it seemed Da Vinci was trying to transcend his painting methods and touch elements of divinity in his work, as if he was aiming for perfection.

How he achieved that was by mastering two techniques that were introduced in the third room - The Light & Shadow Experiment. "Your tongue will be paralyzed by thirst and your body by sleep and hunger before you can show with words what the painter shows in an instant" (cited at the exhibition). Da Vinci paid great attention to Chiaroscuro and Sfumato, skillfully shading and blending in colours. Translucent layers of paint are at once seen as ethereal and the light radiating is from within the figures outward, "enlivening the action of uncreated grace” – Da Vinci not only worked towards making an instant impression that he was depicting sanctity but also that he was able to do that, he had stated that "perfect faith is perfect knowledge" (cited in Andric, 2016: 9). It is through the artist's ascending journey looking for Truth that he begins to see that "good art" is done in a more human way and "spiritual art" is reflecting what he practices within (Vladislav, 2004: 62, 65).

The Imagined Chapel. The Virgin of the Rocks was to be an altarpiece for a chapel in the church of San Francesco in Milan but the church was demolished. Only artworks that have an adequate symbol of holiness used for uniting the invisible and the visible, where the artist contemplates the image of God within his own soul mirroring his glory, are able to have a permanent place in the church – works of art that are a shared activity of the Creator and the created (Vladislav, 2004: 62-63, 66).

I feel his in-depth knowledge into the order of the world made him search for the beyond, made him search for God. That this painting wasn’t about what Da Vinci is much known for – his scientific precisions in art and science, but much much greater than that.

Going to this exhibition reminded me of our lecture on Supervision. It made me realise that total objectivity when seeing a client's artwork is quite impossible as we all have our biases. It highlighted the importance of having a supervisor to see what I can't or to put me in different thought processes. Even though it takes some pressure off knowing that I am able to share clients artwork with another, it also made me feel that much more responsible to be open to seeing that there is more than just one way of viewing artwork and that it is important to try to look for those different ways and those details on my own before relying on supervision. Every different way of viewing artwork could lead to a real depth of one’s psyche just as the way I viewed Da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks. Moreover, my experience and reflection on this exhibition directed me into thinking about spirituality and religion in art therapy as it often is a big part of who we are and it can be a big part of our everyday life and lifestyle, which is an extremely interesting area to explore. It also made me think about art therapy in palliative care as end of life gives rise to the feeling of spirituality whether one has a faith or is agnostic or atheist. However, palliative care is an area I’m not ready to go into...

Word count: 1,134

References

Andric, N. (2016) “Religious - Philosophical Aspects of the Novel ‘The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci’ by Dmitrij Merezkovskij”, Russian Literature, Vol. 86, pp.1-20, doi: 10.1016/j.ruslit.2016.11.001. (peer reviewed)

Vladislav, A. (2004) “Art and Religion: Creativity and the Meaning of Religion of ‘Image’ from the perspective of the Orthodox Icon”, Theology Today, Vol. 61 (1), pp.53-56. (peer reviewed)

Experiential Workshops: Material Realizations - 02/12/19

Dear Blog,

We have now started our experiential workshops after having been given the foundations on art therapy theory and art therapy practice. I am gradually feeling teaching beginning to merge together - what feels like - "the separate pieces" of the first year of the course and I can now understand the direction in which it is going. (Now that I mention separate pieces I'm remembering my doodling on the first day of uni, how that too was separate pieces floating around in a section of my notebook page, maybe there's an emerging meaning...).

(Doodling in first lesson Sep 2019)

These workshops are familiarizing us with different art materials... Our first workshop was working with dry materials: marker pens, pencils, coal on sticks, chalk and pastels. The second workshop was working with wet materials: paint, water colour and ink, where different sized, shaped and type of paper were used in the first two workshops. The final workshop was with clay and plastecine. This was really great as it put me in a position to ask myself why I work with certain material and why I don't work with other, why I like some and why not other. It made me wonder to what extent is the use of certain material subjective and to what objective? Being restricted to a group of materials each time, allowed me to explore the intrinsic properties and to reacquaint myself with those I seldom choose when art making, but in this blog I will discuss material experiences that stood out for me.

I was instantly drawn to certain material: coal as I associate it with historical times and keeping warm in the cold, the mysterious effect chalk can have when it is smudged and its sharp dusty lines when it isn’t, ink reminds me of sentimental writers and poets of a previous era such as William Shakespeare, Edgar Alan Poe, William Blake and Ralph Waldo Emerson that I love to read, clay being 3D really brings emotions and thoughts to life in an organic way and requires a lot of physical handling that arouses the senses. I became aware that there were symbolic and metaphorical meanings behind the use of these materials that I identified with and this was confirmed to me during the art making and also in the way I used the material. As we were only allowed to use coal tied to a natural tree branch from a distance, I believe drawing a tree with it was from an unconscious driven force related to that. This generated further questions... What if coal wasn’t attached to a tree branch or natural object? What if it was attached to something else or not attached at all? How would this affect my art making instincts and decisions? Knowing how much I love nature, would I have felt disconnected to the art making process and art product if the medium in between wasn’t natural? Is this what it could feel like for a client with a disability?... Although I like using water colour with brush effects and layering different colours, I really struggled to use anything more than a single colour to do this as I found that the size and shape of the paper really influenced my working with this material. In a similar manner with regards to paint, although I tend to mix different colours to get blends as well as create thicker and looser blends, the workshop only had certain colours available that I couldn’t make use of in a satisfying way so having a limitation in colours became very frustrating... Why are certain blends so important to me?

(From left to right: paint, paint, ink, water colour)

(Coal)

Pencils and marker pens have never been a preferred medium for me even having rubbers provided in the workshop I found pencils were too definitive needing a lot of control to create something representative of me and marker pens rather aggressive and unforgiving, which in turn made me feel uncomfortable... But I questioned now if this is can be absolute as what is emerging in these workshops are the different material associations and the different experiences of their materiality in the structured workshops. It was intriguing to me that I actually ended up reacquainting myself with most of the materials through the different processes and my usual ways of creating art with certain material often changed. This stirred new emotions and I thought about how these processes made me feel... Ultimately, the material processes became unpredictable. At the beginning of this blog I wrote about the workshops familiarizing us with different art materials but I think it is wise to add, that they are familiarizing us with different art materials through different personal interactions. As an artist I am so use to having a variety of materials to choose from with no limitations where having directive workshops urged me to consider art making in another way as they tapped into something specific within me, perhaps contacting other areas of my psyche that I knew not about but thought I had, that are completely unconscious...

(From left to right: chalk, pencil, marker pen)

(Clay container)

Most importantly, these workshops have now started to make me think in more complex ways when considering clients and different settings... What are certain client groups in need of and how could I meet their needs? What could be helpful and what could be harming?...

Word count: 900

1 note · View note

ethanalter · 7 years ago

Text

Saturday morning scares: Animation writer Buzz Dixon on the art of creeping out kiddos

(GIF: Youtube)

It’s a scene that’s been rattling around in my head since I was 6 years old. Two colorfully-garbed youthful warriors are standing in front of a mirror when they rapidly, and unnervingly, start changing: One ages into a withered crone, while the other shrinks to the size of a mewling infant. For years, I couldn’t tell you the episode or even the show that sequence appeared in; it just existed in the recesses of my brain as context-free childhood nightmare fuel. Now it can be told: as a kid, I was scared beyond all logical reason by… an episode of Dungeons & Dragons, the short-lived Saturday morning cartoon based on the eternally popular role-playing game.

Specifically, I was frightened by the ninth episode of the show’s first season, “Quest for the Skeleton Warrior,” which had its first airing in November 1983, though I saw it a few months later on a scratchy taped-off-TV VHS dub. While not technically a Halloween episode, “Quest” had plenty of scary moments since the episode’s premise involved the characters — a sextet of kids transported from Earth to the magical D&D realm — confronting their greatest fears while navigating a mystical tower at the behest of the titular Skeleton Warrior. While the group’s stalwart leader, Hank, literally saw his world crumble around him, the brash Eric had the humbling experience of his face suddenly acquiring donkey characteristics, and shy Sheila was left completely and utterly alone. And then there were Diana and Eric, the confident tomboy and baby of the group respectively. Separated from their friends, they wound up in a room filled with mirrors, where they saw their reflections age in opposite directions: as Diana grew old and weathered, Eric reverted to infancy. And then that process repeated itself on their actual flesh as well, in a scene that warped my fragile little mind.

That transformation sequence also guaranteed that “Quest for the Skeleton Warrior” became the only episode of D&D I ever watched, which explains why the show title never came readily to mind until I recently tracked it down on YouTube again. Happily, seeing it again as an adult helped exorcise that particular childhood boogeyman, and it also provided me with the name of the writer responsible for those decades-old nightmares: Buzz Dixon, a veritable auteur in the world of Saturday morning animation, and one who cheerfully admits to trying to push the envelope what that now-vanished industry would allow during his decade-long tenure.

From the late ’70s to the late ’80s, Dixon either freelanced or served on the writing staffs for such shows as Thundarr the Barbarian, G.I. Joe, InHumanoids and Bionic Six. And as with D&D, he wrote some of the scarier or more mature episodes of each of those shows, often navigating strictly outlined parameters about what could or could not be shown to impressionable young viewers — like myself — on Saturday mornings. As my personal experience proves, he found ways to overcome those limitations. When I sheepishly confess that the de-aging scene from “Quest of the Skeleton Warrior” haunted me for years, he’s entirely sympathetic. “I can understand that. When I was growing up, I would see things that people would not necessarily think of today as being scary, but it left an impression on me.” In this wide-ranging discussion, Dixon lifts the curtain on the creation of his Dungeons & Dragons episode, as well as the Saturday morning do’s and don’ts when it came to horror and violence.

How did you initially get involved with writing Saturday morning cartoons? I was looking for a job as a driver, and I ended up becoming a writer! Just to briefly recap, I had been in the army, and as I was being discharged in 1978, I applied to USC’s film school and was accepted. But school didn’t start until October, and I was discharged in February. My wife and I moved to Los Angeles, and I started knocking on studio doors to get a job as a driver or in the mail room, just to get my feet wet. One of the doors I knocked on was Filmation Associates, five minutes after producer Lou Scheimer said, “We need to find another staff writer, and fast!” I had been a newspaper editor and a military journalist, and had a stack of short stories that I had written, but not yet sold. So it was one of those cases of being in the right place at the right time. By the time October rolled around, I was making a living writing animation and said, “I can put off going to USC for a year or two.” That year or two became a decade or two.

What were the general standards for the depiction of violence and horror in the world of Saturday morning cartoons? When I started in the late ’70s, there were already severe restrictions in place in terms of the violence. The networks could not and would not draw a distinction between cartoon violence — which would be Tweety hitting Sylvester with a mallet — and a Scooby-Doo episode where someone gets bonked on the head and knocked out with a frying pan. There is a qualitative difference, because Scooby-Doo at least has the suggestion that it’s occurring in the real world, not in the cartoon world. Parakeets and cats do not pick up skillets and smash one another with them.

In terms of horror, giant monsters were a lot more acceptable than human-sized monsters. And they tended to look goofy because they didn’t want to scare the kids too much. With Thundarr, for example, we were allowed to destroy any non-living thing we could throw at Thundarr. We could send robots after him; we could send a rock monster; we could send clay zombies! We did an episode called “The Brotherhood of Night,” which was about a tribe of werewolves. That was a line we had to walk carefully, because Thundarr could not do anything that would physically harm a werewolf. Conan the Barbarian would have waded into them and there’d be werewolf parts all over the place. But Thundarr had to fight them in a way that meant no permanent harm.

Thundarr wields his sun sword in ‘Thundarr the Barbarian,’ one of many Saturday morning cartoons that Buzz Dixon worked on. (Photo: Ruby-Spears / Courtesy: Everett Collection)

What were some of the do’s and don’ts for writing scarier episodes in particular? You couldn’t have an overt death threat. For example, it was considered pretty scary to lock somebody in a room. If you did that, there had to be a window they could look out of so that they weren’t trapped in the dark and that there would be some indication that they could get out eventually. If I remember correctly, we also weren’t allowed to tie people up, or if they were tied up in some fashion, it had to be some ridiculous sci-fi device that caught them. Real weapons of any kind were a no-no, and to be honest, I can understand that. You don’t want to have an episode where some guy is slashing away with a real sword, and then some kid goes in the kitchen and gets a carving knife. Then it became a question of, “What is something that kids are anxious about? That would resonate emotionally with them at that level?”

Was “Quest of the Skeleton Warrior” an episode that was assigned to you or did you pitch this particular story? I pitched it, if I remember correctly. I’d been asked to contribute to the show, and they said, “Anything that appears in the Dungeons & Dragons game, you can use.” In many cases, that meant that it had to be toned way down, but if it was a monster or an entity or something like that you could use it. I looked at the game, saw the Skeleton Warrior and I liked that look.

(GIF: Youtube)

I had also been dissatisfied with the type of Saturday morning cartoon with a bad guy who just acts bad for no rational reason. My favorite example is Super Friends; I know people love Super Friends, but say the Joker steals the Eiffel Tower. Who cares? Outside of the tourist industry, who is that going to impact? The Skeleton Warrior, to me, was a chance to do a character who was a villainous character, but you could understand the reason behind his villainy and what was motivating him. That’s actually a little more scary than the Joker or Lex Luthor being bad. Even kids at that young age understand there’s a right thing to do and a wrong thing to do, and can understand wanting something so badly they might consider doing the wrong thing.

The episode is centered around the characters facing their greatest fears. How did you decide what those fears would be? There were certain things I knew we couldn’t do. We couldn’t do fire, obviously, because that’s a very traumatic thing for a lot of people. Anything involving death or mutilation you also couldn’t do on the networks at that time. So it was trying to find something that kids could relate to and, conversely, nobody at standards and practices would go, “Oh, no, you can’t do that.”

(GIF: Youtube)

The disappearing staircase is a great idea that falls in those parameters, for example. Yeah, and that’s something that you can symbolize easily in animation. That was the other thing. It’s pretty hard to explain to a young audience what it’s like to wake up at three in the morning with a sense of existentialist dread. That’s a little difficult to animate! [Laughs] On the other hand, literally seeing your world falling apart around you is something that you can animate, and something that they can grasp fairly easily.

It was Diana and Bobby’s transformation that got to me. Something about seeing them age in opposite directions really unnerved my child brain. I tried to think of the kind of things that a child looking at it may not be able to verbalize, but would think, “Oh, yeah, I would hate to be even younger and smaller.” The little boy who was the barbarian always wanted to be grown up, and he always felt self-conscious about being the smallest and youngest in the group. So his fear would be to become even smaller, younger and more helpless.

(GIF: Youtube)

The girl who was getting older was aware of the fact that she was approaching maturity and whatnot. We didn’t want to get too psychological about this, but she wasn’t rushing forward to embrace that, if you follow me. She was kind of happy where she was and a little bit anxious about the responsibilities of growing up even though she did act maturely. So we pushed it in that direction.

The Pleasure Island transformation scene in Pinocchio always scared me for some of the same reasons; I still have trouble watching it today, to be honest. And this episode has a Pinocchio reference in it when Eric sprouts donkey ears. Was that intentional? Yeah. You’ve got to understand: my mother was Italian. I saw Pinocchio as a kid, and she said, “You don’t know half the story.” She drags out the real thing, and I was like “Oh my God!” What’s done in the Disney movie is really lightweight stuff compared to the original Italian illustrations. They had Dante to refer to! The Disney version is disturbing, but it’s cartoony disturbing. The Italian illustrations are going to mess with your mind.

(GIF: Youtube)

You mentioned earlier that weapons were an issue with many studios, but the D&D kids are each armed with a specific weapon. How did you navigate that with Standards and Practices? As I recall, the little boy has a club and he wasn’t allowed to use the club on a living thing. Now, he could hit the ground and cause an earthquake that knocked people over! Or if a boulder was rolling at him, he could swat it out of the way. But he couldn’t use it as an actual weapon, because, again, you don’t want somebody taking a baseball bat to their kid sister. There was also an archer, and that was a very, very tender issue, because they wanted to make absolutely certain those things were never used as real weapons against living things. Generally, the more magical or fantastic a weapon was, the safer it was to use in a story. Thundarr had a sun sword that’s just a hilt when its inert and when he turns it on, it’s like a lightsaber. You can’t find a weapon like that in your home, so that’s okay for Thundarr to use. Even then, though, he couldn’t use it against a living thing.

Did you intend for “Quest” to be scarier than the average D&D episode? I was certainly aiming for that. It was a little less action adventure-y and a little more scary. Obviously, when your main antagonist in the story is a skeleton warrior, you’ve got a horrific image right there. You either play into it or you play completely against it. You could do a story about a really nice, sweet skeleton warrior who realizes, “Oh, man, I’m scaring the crap out of everybody.” But that would not be this story obviously. With this story, I went, “He’s virtually a symbol of death. He looks like Death. Get as close to that as standards and practices will allow.”

How much of the episode were you able to see as it was animated? It varied from studio to studio, and it varied whether you were a staff writer or a freelancer. With Dungeons & Dragons, I was pretty much a freelancer and as a result, I wrote the script and handed it in. I don’t believe I ever saw anything until it actually aired. On other hand, when I was at a studio like Ruby-Spears, I’d spend quite a lot of time with the artists, because I wanted to make sure they understood what I was trying to do. And they appreciated the fact that I’d come down and listen to them. They would say, “It’s really difficult to stage something like this,” and I would go back and try to figure out a way of re-staging it that would be easier for them.

Were you happy with the finished episode when you saw it? Does it achieve what you set out to do? For what that show was, I was very happy with the outcome. I thought it worked well, and I think it still works well to this day. If you asked, “In the context of the entire Dungeons & Dragons oeuvre, could you have done something with this basic idea?” Well, yeah, but then it’s an R-rated movie. [Laughs]

youtube

As you moved through the industry and worked on different shows, did you always find yourself drawn to pushing the envelope and finding ways to make things scarier? You wrote an episode of InHumanoids that’s pretty intense. I’ve always been an envelope pusher, but I haven’t always pushed in the direction of horror because there are a variety of things that interest me and a variety of stories I’d like to tell. Interesting story about InHumanoids: Hasbro cancelled the toy line halfway through production on the series. They told us: “We have to complete the series and put it on the air. Basically, we don’t care what you do as long as we don’t get a complaint from the FCC.” We went, “Oh, really?” And we went completely nuts! I did a story where there’s a bunch of teenagers who had been turned into zombies and they’re walking through the streets chanting, “Kill, kill, kill.” The voice actors got to that part and went, “Whoa, wait. Are we allowed to do this?” We said, “Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry, don’t worry. By the time this comes to anybody’s attention, your checks will have cleared. Don’t worry.”

The monsters that populate episodes of ‘InHumanoids’ (Photo: Claster Television/courtesy Everett Collection)

Mind you, at the same time we’re doing InHumanoids, we’re also working on My Little Pony! At that time, we were all what I would call utility infielders. Each of us had a show assigned to us, but we helped one another all had input from some degree on every show that was being done by that studio. That fostered a good sense of competition in so far as everybody was striving to top what the other person had done. It reflected in the shows, I think; they stand up better than many other shows that were done at that time.

Were you at all worried thinking about kids at home watching zombies rampaging through the streets saying, “Kill, kill, kill”? To be very honest with you, no, I wasn’t worried. And the reason I wasn’t worried is that I had been a longtime fan of Japanese animation, so I knew they had been doing far more emotionally intense shows than we had been doing in the United States. By emotionally intense, I mean the stories involved the feelings and the relationships of the characters. What happened in the story had meaning and weight to the characters beyond just the action. That’s in contrast to something like Scooby-Doo where the kids were never personally at risk from whatever mystery was going on. They just stepped in to help. The Japanese would get the characters involved personally and emotionally in the story, and that actually scared off American networks because they were going, “We don’t want the kids to get worried or anxious.” As a result, all of these cartoons involved the characters coming at a situation from the outside, solving it from the outside, and moving on. It never personally affected them.

Saturday morning cartoons are long gone now. Were you sad to see that era draw to a close? Looking back on it, we didn’t realize what we were doing at the time with syndication. We thought syndication was just an additional market, and that there would always be Saturday morning. With traditional Saturday morning animation, you created a show, you showed the show to advertisers, and the advertisers decided if they want to advertise or not. Even in the ’70s, networks could run any kind of sports programming and get more ad revenue than they could with Saturday morning cartoons. However, the FCC required a certain amount of children’s programming from the networks and from the local stations, and it was just easier to block out Saturday morning. Once the syndicated market came along, stations that were network affiliates would run G.I. Joe and Transformers in their afternoon blocks. Then they’d say, “We’ve shown our prerequisite children’s programming. We don’t need Saturday morning. You can run sports, and we can all make more money that way.”

To be brutally honest, the majority of people were doing this stuff just to collect a paycheck. Very few people were doing it with the thought of, “I want to do something that will matter five, ten, 15 years from now.” Because it was all viewed as very ephemeral. You do it, you put it out there, and they’re going to forget it. Nobody in the late ’70s and early ’80s could anticipate that VHS and then other forms were going to completely revolutionize the way we consume media. If you’re willing to go on YouTube and poke around for 15-20 minutes, I don’t think there’s a TV show from the past that you can’t find.

(GIF: Youtube)

Could you do an episode like “Quest for the Skeleton Warrior” in today’s landscape for TV animation? I haven’t been involved in animation hands on wise for a couple of decades now, and primarily by choice. I’ve found other mediums more rewarding and more satisfying. I would say this: I have grandchildren, and I’ve seen some of the crap that’s on the Disney Channel. They get away with it because they’ve got a Disney logo on it, but I could not imagine that stuff flying if it wasn’t a Disney program. I mean that just in the sense of rudeness, and the snark level. What I have seen on Disney has not been exceptionally frightening. It’s like the people who are writing these specific shows are all aspiring sitcom writers and every script they write is an attempt to show somebody, “Hey, I could write a sitcom.” How about you write a script for a nine-to-ten year old audience that they can appreciate? With Saturday morning cartoons, it was referred to as a ghetto, but the fact was there was a set of boundaries and rules. You may have chafed against those boundaries and rules, but you knew what they were. If you could find a way of working within them, you could do quite a few episodes that would just be good, solid storytelling.

Dungeons & Dragons can be found on YouTube.