Disney Disney Disney

So the Disney film I want to talk about is The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame was, of course, a novel by Victor Hugo before it hit the screen in any form.  The 1923 film with Lon Chaney became one of the most famous adaptations of the book for a while, and several other film adaptations came after.
However, the Disney version became a very important spin on this work.  Its music, style, and changes to the story have been very influential on later retellings of the story, and it is not even considered one of Disney's more popular films.
I think the music is probably the most influential aspect of Disney's Hunchback.  For all its flaws, it has some of the most heartfelt, beautiful, and just fun songs of any Disney film.  This music has a tendency to translate well into other mediums, which is why stage versions of Disney's Hunchback tend to be more popular than other variations of the show.
For example, this German production Der Glockner Von Notre Dame, which combines elements of the book and the Disney film, has been accepted as a very successful and popular staging.
Compare to Notre Dame de Paris, which is not based on the Disney version.  It was a popular show in France, but it failed in the United States and other countries.  The music is less varied and the choreography and costuming are odd for the story.
Of course this does not mean that all stagings of Disney's Hunchback are going to be more successful than shows that do it differently.  The idea here is that going in a very different direction has to be done very, very well, because there is already a very compelling and well-loved version of the show, different versions need to be that much better.

Fan community

It is hard to consider myself a member of a specific fan community.
I like so many things that I have difficulty dedicating my interest to one specific thing, and even when I do, I rarely participate in fan discourse beyond casual comments and conversations with my friends.
That said, I think it may be best if I talk about a series of observations relating to multiple different fan bases that I could tentatively consider myself a part of.  Here we go:

Steven Universe!
The target audience for this show is mainly children, but the community I generally have contact with are people in their late teens/early twenties.  Many of these people are women.  Many of these people are queer.
Steven Universe is really notable for a lot of reasons: it is one of the first (or the first?  I think the first) Cartoon Network cartoon(s) created by a woman.  It has a cast of diverse characters of multiple races, body types, and genders, including nonbinary genders!!!  Its main character is a young boy who, unlike many young boys in cartoons, is earnest and sweet and thinks the world of the women in his life without being ashamed of it or shamed for it.  It actively attempts to dismantle harmful tropes in its narratives.  It portrays characters dealing with the loss of a loved one in ways that are painful to watch and realistic.  Possibly most notable, it portrays two characters of the same gender kissing and being very obviously in love- and in case people try to say their relationship is platonic, this relationship is brought up again and very clearly established as romantic a few episodes later.
It is no wonder so many queer teens and young adults are drawn to it.
And that is what a lot of the discourse and values of this particular faction of the fan base are about: the importance of this show's positive portrayals of things that are often portrayed as negative.  Something many people have brought up is that if they had been able to watch a show like Steven Universe when they were children, it would have helped them a lot in regards to coming to terms with aspects of themselves or their identities that they spent a considerable amount of time struggling with, or continue to struggle with.
Additionally, many members of this fan base are also fans of anime, who appreciate its clear influence on the show's art, plot points, and even specific choreography.  Shipping is also a major aspect of this show's fan base, and it is also a show that is often cosplayed because the character designs are clear and simple, and because so many people have been heavily impacted by specific characters.

Twin Peaks!
I am not sure I am an active enough member of the fan community to know a lot about it, but I really like this show and things have been really buzzing, so I think it is worth discussing.
I think the primary areas of concern right now are:

1. Will Twin Peaks FINALLY get a third season? for the love of god
2. Will David Lynch be working on that season?????  

These are the big questions, and this is all anyone has really been talking about for the past several months.  Twin Peaks has a huge, outspoken fan base, but for some reason, nothing ever seems to work out.  The original season three?  Cancelled.  The series of films to tie up the series?  We got one.  

But what is really cool about this fan base is that people are acting on it, and that the cast of the show is heavily involved.  

Things really started picking up for all the fans of the show because we heard it was going to be picked up for a third season 25 years after the fact.  Everyone was on board and people were getting hopeful.  The entire season was written by Lynch and Mark Frost.  And then it was revealed that Showtime was not going to give them the money Lynch felt was needed to fund the show, so he left the project.

This sparked a lot of talk, and on the 25th anniversary of Twin Peaks, this adorable video of the cast was released.  Fans were encouraged to add their own "Twin Peaks without David Lynch..." and to sign a petition.  

Since then, the many of the actors have stated that they will not participate in the new Twin Peaks if David Lynch is not working on the show.  

At this point, either the season is going to be cancelled, or Showtime is going to get David Lynch back on the project.  There is a fifty-fifty chance.

For a show that stopped running in 1991, this is a wild time.

Other than current events, I know a few things about fan feelings about the show: things got pretty bad when Lynch left season two, Annie is an okay character but she and Cooper are a terrible fit, the pilot that Audrey had a fling with never should have existed, James and Donna are boring as hell, Agent Cooper is perfect and Audrey is perfect and they should have ended up together, the Horne brothers are adorable, Gordon and Shelly are adorable, Fire Walk With Me is almost too brutal, and the cliffhangers left on season two ought to be illegal.

Always Sunny!

Honestly I do not even know what to say about this fanbase and I probably should have thought of something before uploading the picture.  

I think this is a great show that gets dismissed as an immature comedy, but it is actually really clever and satirical.  What I love about it is that the characters, although likable, are pretty much always very wrong and they are never praised for doing terrible, terrible things, and the audience is never really asked to sympathize with them for doing terrible, terrible things.

Again, the people I tend to talk to about this show are queer teens and twenty somethings, so the depiction of queer characters comes up a lot as something very important.  It has been confirmed that three members of the main cast are queer, but we are not really sure who two of those characters are.  What we do know is that Mac is gay or bisexual.  This is a problem because Mac is very religious, and he hates homosexuality.  Mac is very much in denial.

Oddly enough, this resonates with a lot of queer people who were pressured by their religious families and community members to deny those aspects of themselves.  And the show does not condemn him for his sexual orientation.  

I am struggling to really speculate on this so here are some things that are important to a lot of Always Sunny fans in the form of a list:

• Mac is in love with Dennis
• Charlie is asexual or demisexual
• The gang are terrible for each other but none of them can function without each other
• Danny DeVito
• Dennis is also a little bit in love with Mac
• Sweet Dee is probably the most brutal character on the show
• Dee and Charlie are a little bit in love but will never ever tell anyone
• Rickety Cricket is the gang's Picture of Dorian Gray, becoming more and more unstable and deformed as the show goes on
• Frank is Charlie's dad
• Dennis is bisexual probably

Anime/Manga

Although I do not necessarily think it is important for artists to know how to draw anime/manga, I do think people going into a creative media profession would do best to have at least a basic understanding of it because of its influence on the art world.
The influences of anime and manga are ubiquitous in art, particularly in contemporary animated shows.  A lot of the people working on contemporary cartoons grew up watching anime, and this is really obvious in shows such as Steven Universe, Star vs. The Forces of Evil, and The Legend of Korra.  Even in shows before those, such as Totally Spies!, Teen Titans, and Avatar: The Last Airbender, there was a clear influence.  And before those, anime influence in Western cartoons has been marked from the 1980s.  There is even a Wikipedia page about it.
So the influence of anime on Western cartoons is undeniable.
Anime has also had a big impact on a lot of filmmakers, such as Quentin Tarantino and Guillermo Del Toro.
Being able to recognize these influences is an important aspect of art history.

Ms. Marvel Appreciation

This is a really interesting comic, and what I really like about it is that it is going back to more classic comic element roots with a contemporary spin.  Way back when, a lot of people struggled with relating to characters like Superman and Captain America because in their original incarnations, they were too perfect.  So we began to see more relatable comic characters, the most notable being Peter Parker's Spider-man.  And what is great about Ms. Marvel is that we are seeing the same thing happening again with a new hero.  A lot of new comic fans have difficulty getting into pre-existing series because there is so much going on.  This is particularly true of Marvel, which has basically gone over the top with alternate universes and different planets and magic and a whole variety of lore.
But Ms. Marvel just goes back to the fun, simple idea of an ordinary girl in extraordinary circumstances.  And just like the writers knew Spider-man's fan base of nerdy teen boys (presumably), the writers of Ms. Marvel have recognized that their contemporary audiences are diverse.  Of course, female fans and POC have always been there, but Marvel's acknowledgement of their presence reflects a refreshing shift in perspective.
And Kamala is a fantastic character to personify that shift in perspective.  She feels like an outsider, not just because of her nerdyness, but because of her cultural background.  She is witty and sarcastic.  She is emotional and vulnerable and strong.  And she is just fun to read about.
She is reflective of a generation of fans that have grown up reading comics and relating to the characters, and she is basically living the dream of becoming one of her heroes, with all its perks and drawbacks.
Ms. Marvel has also been extremely successful, which really shows that the excuses people have made: that nobody wants to read about a female superhero, or a non-white superhero, or someone with a perspective shaped by her culture and religion (unless that culture is American and that religion is Christian), are all untrue.

Professor Incognito

Are there any prominent symbols in the story?  If so, what are they and how are they used?

The author uses the idea of opposites to reflect this idea of double lives and secret identities.  All of the major themes of the story are represented as binaries: good and evil, hero and villain, future and past, earth and space.  In the context of the story, these ideas are presented as two sides of the same coin, leading up to the ultimate decision presented to Nebula: to be mortal enemies, or to be co-regents in the oncoming Martian invasion.  Ultimately, each of these binaries is representative of
Nebula and Professor Incognito and their relationship to each other.

What connections did you make with the story?  Discuss the elements of the work with which you were able to connect.

This is an interesting story to try to connect with because we only hear the voice of one character.  We get hints of Nebula through Incognito's impression of her, but the voice is largely his.  And although it is a very typical villainous voice, he is a character that I could see myself grow to appreciate.  The non-evil aspects of his life could be seen as very relatable.  And, being personally sensitive about my height, I tend to connect with any male character under 5'5".


What changes would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium would you use?  What changes would you make?

This is a pretty malleable idea that could, although it is probably most effective as a written work, be easily translated into a short film, video game, or comic.  The reason I say it is most effective as a written work is because it reads as a sort of long monologue, and in another medium, elements would need to be redacted in order to break up the monotony- or not.  In a game, I could see it as a file that the player stumbles across to reveal backstory.  The gist of it could be relayed by a character projected on a screen, but the additional backstory in the form of written files could be made available to the player.  This is a good concept for a game because of the first-person narrative.  In a film, this (shortened), could easily be a scene that comes after following Nebula on a journey as a protagonist.  Or, as an experimental short film, the viewer could be put in the position of Nebula as the plot is slowly revealed.  It could be a scene in a comic, but the lengthy text would have to be shortened even more, unless it was revealed as a sort of extra in the form of a couple pages of prose.

Grunge did not die for this

So what is a hipster?
According to my buddy, Ren, who seems to know more about it than I do ("Because I hate hipsters." - My buddy, Ren) they are middle class kids who want to be different and cool like the grunge kids of the 90s, so they wear a lot of plaid.  And grow beards.  And play acoustic instruments.  Or something.  Except that at this point in the year of our Lord, 2015, hipster as a subculture has become so popular that it is no longer hip to be hipster.
Also according to my buddy, Ren, even though he is not a hipster, because he has interest in things that are not popular to mainstream audiences, he is probably more hipster than self-proclaimed hipsters are.  And then he went on a bit of a tirade about how hipsters say they like Twin Peaks but they do not really understand it.  (Which is a viable complaint when you are as passionate about Twin Peaks as my buddy, Ren.)
So I am going to classify hipsters in the style of my buddy, Ren.  Hipsters are people who want to be ahead of the curve, so they wear plaid and play acoustics and grow beards and wear fake glasses.  The dictionary definition is:
a person who follows the latest trends and fashions, especially those regarded as being outside the cultural mainstream.
-which is both less specific and less disdainful.  But it does still fit.

Now, I have difficulty with really explaining this with things that exemplify what hipsters really are.  And a large part of that comes from my confusion with the differences between hipster, alternative, and indie subcultures.  Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was one of the first works that came to mind, but although some of the characters featured in the universe of Scott Pilgrim might be hipsters, the story is largely one of the indie music scene.  And the film and comic series Scott Pilgrim itself has certainly gained enough popularity that it would be considered too mainstream to be hipster.

Hipster characters in a non-hipster work

Or maybe a show like Portlandia works, which is still probably too mainstream to be hipster, but nonetheless features many characters that would probably fall into the subculture.  With the coffee shops, underground music, and eccentric 20-somethings galore, the show itself sort of presents us with a bizarre, sometimes abstract world, that seems to be filled with people who might be considered hipsters.
Even though it might not be a hipster work in of itself, it is a show that regularly parodies hipsters.
In fact, here is a link to 15 Spot-on Hipster Parodies from Portlandia, which shows this quite well.

Battle of the Gentle Bands!

I am just grasping at straws, here.

According to this list of The Most Hipster Musicians and Groups, Neutral Milk Hotel is the most hipster band.  I know some NMH fans who would be offended by this assertion.  Nevertheless, Neutral Milk Hotel live at the Ottowa Folk Festival seems pretty damn hipster to me.
One of my favorite bands, Fleet Foxes, is #5, so here is one of their music videos (one of my favorite music videos) for good measure.

So hipster music, in contemporary terms, seems to have moved on from jazz to more folk-like songs to accentuate the sort of natural quality of hipster style.

Hipster in contemporary terms is such a broad style that it more than anything seems to be general mainstream youth style than an anti-mainstream subculture.  They have good music.  They have good coffee.  I can dig it.

Colorless World

What are the primary features of this world--spatial, cultural, biological, fantastic, cosmological? 

The world presented to us in Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is a very interesting one due to its isolation, relationship with the spiritual, and relationship with the past.  We view the world largely from Tsukuru's perspective, and as he grows, the world seems to grow with him, spatially.  We begin in Tokyo where he works and attended school before we travel to where he grew up.  Tsukuru, a character that has made few travels in his life, is very connected with these places.  It is worth noting that Tsukuru realizes that although he spends all of his time in train stations, he never thinks to get on a train and travel.  And to that point, despite the fact that we know there is a world outside of the world that Tsukuru experiences, our world only broadens with him.  He finally travels to another country at the end of the story, pushing the boundaries of the world both Tsukuru and the readers experience.
The story takes place in Japan and thus Japanese cultural and social conventions are used throughout the story.  The connection to trains in particular has an interesting effect.  Public transport like trains are not used as widely in the US as they are in Japan, so it is likely that Japanese audiences are better able to relate to this aspect of the story.  Also important are naming conventions and the meanings behind those names.  Names in Japan tend to carry importance in regards to their meanings, and the idea of colored names would not have worked as well if the story had been in another country or culture.
The story deals with time in an interesting way.  Events that took place many years before the present day of the story are described in exquisite detail, which not only gives the readers perspective on who Tsukuru is, but how he is still impacted by the past.  The narrative is nonlinear and almost dream-like.  It feels as though we are traveling around with Tsukuru as he experiences not only the present world, but the world of his memories as he becomes lost in the emotions of his past traumas.  
Tsukuru's world is also one in which supernatural occurrences and dreams tend to carry importance.  There are moments when the events of the story are even scary, but like Tsukuru, the readers never really learn the truths behind these occurrences.  We never know if they are real or fabricated, but they carry weight within the story.