Things I Watched: Miss Hokusai - An Imaginative Search for Filial Identity

The endlessly re-created image of the The Great Wave Of Kanagawa bears an unshakeable print on the mind. I remember reading that it's one of the most reproduced images of all time. It's certainly the most well known Japanese painting ever-made, and its artist, Katsushika Hokusai, one of the most important painters to ever grace this blue planet we call Earth.

The subject of Miss Hokusai, a film I watched earlier this week, is not the great master himself but rather his daughter, Katsushika O-Ei. The film portrays her as a proud and independent artist. Very talented but struggling to emerge from the shadow of her father. He acts as a source of great frustration for O-Ei, who's still looking for that magical spark to call her own.

Influence is a key theme, both because the plot so heavily centres around the father and daughter relationship, and also because the animation revels in blurring daily life with scenes of majestic fantasy. These often come in waves, much like the great one Hokusai envisaged. They create an alluring spectacle such as when a great big dragon descends upon the obviously terrified citizens of Edo. Oh how I'm sure they laughed that day.

A more sombre moment comes midway through when O-Ei is commissioned to draw a painting of Buddhist hell (Jigoku). Her painting pulls no punches but it causes nightmarish daydream for its owners. To fix the painting, Hokusai emerges, adding a giant Buddha. It gives the family better peace of mind and acts a pivotal scene that highlights that while O-Ei's work might be great, it's still missing a vital element that will only come with age.

While Miss Hokusai isn't a major milestone in animation or anything like that, it's an earnest film that I enjoyed a great deal. It's not afraid to portray larger than life characters in ordinary ways in their down-time. It also does a decent job at making us sympathise with a young girl struggling to form an identity for herself.

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Things I Watched: Nightcrawler - A Night-time Drive Into Capitalistic Competition

There's a scene early in Nightcrawler that I think sums it up quite well. After stealing a bulk of scrap metal from a construction yard, main character Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) remonstrates with a foreman unwilling to take stolen goods of his hands. Instead of conceding defeat, he argues in depth about its 'real value'. At a different point in history, his business savvy might be rewarded, but here it’s cynically rebuffed. The conversation ends with Lou asking for a job. A real one, even if it’s unpaid; a perfectly viable way for people to earn their stripes in the current economy.

Lou Bloom is Nightcrawler's anti-hero - an under-educated, internet-addicted, twenty/thirty-something trying to make ends meet. When he stumbles on a horrific car crash, he learns the way of the Weegee: freelance photojournalists who shoot footage of criminal incidents to sell to media channels. Naturally, the bigger the story, the bigger scoop and anything highlighting white people being attacked in the suburbs is soup de jour. Lou's happenstance arrival on a crash prompts his way into the nebulous night-time world, leading to scrupulous moral decisions as desperately seeks to be first on the scene.

At its core, Nightcrawler is a film about excessive competition. It's main character embodies that: a man with terrible social skills, willing to exploit people, but only in the same way he knows they're willing to exploit him. His wicked combination of unemployment and great eye for visuals pushes him into self-employment, which he goes to any length to extend. In one scene, he arrives at a crash site before the police. Instead of helping the half-dead man, he drags him across the road so he can get a better shot. Not once does it cross his mind to help but he makes sure the TV station credit him as doing so. Good for the brand, you see.

That TV station in question is KWLA 6, a moribund channel with flagging ratings and a career-driven manager looking to change things. Cue Lou’s footage propelling both he and the station to new heights. It's a point that doesn't just reflect on them. It corresponds with the (unseen) audience's obsession to violence. Company profit and exploitation of fears are found in a two-way waltz. The channel is the puppet master and Lou certainly makes for an efficient puppet-for-hire.

While the film's main source of criticism is television - and thus somewhat anachronistic in today’s digital world - it feels relevant given how it basically reflects emerging social media-driven anxiety. Online media tends to engage with us in the same way as news channels, frequently exaggerating facts through emotional content. Fears and worries are exacerbated, even if it's good for the brand. I think there's a valuable lesson in that.

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Things I Thought: Working Freelance Can Be Quite Lonely

Over the past couple of months, one of the ways I’ve kept myself busy is by volunteering for a Film Festival.

Broadly speaking, this has meant spending a few hours each day to help promote the festival online. It’s been an interesting experience but it’s also been quite lonely too. I’ve been working from home most days and haven’t had the usual social experience of working with others. I’m not trying to complain because I value the organisation I work for but that’s just how it's been.

It’s the type of fate that I suspect more people are experiencing these days. Pulling up a list from the Office for National Statistics I saw this week, I've found that more people than ever are working in self-employed positions. It stands to reason that this is the case in the modern ‘gig economy’ but let’s assess the facts because they're quite interesting:

• Almost one million people registered as self-employed between 2008 and 2015.
• Overall part-time self-employment grew by 88% over the period 2001-2015.

Crikey.

Another big thing the report suggests is that dissatisfaction among self-employed people is quite strong. This is especially true for male workers – the bracket I personally fit into - although I suspect it’s a situation graduates face regardless of their gender. These are, after all, times where many feel the only way to advance their future employment prospects is by taking on unpaid work. I watched a brilliant film about this recently called Nightcrawler.

For me personally, one of the main issues has been location. After my tenancy ended back in January, I decided to move back to my Dad’s. This meant moving back to a sleepy market town somewhere in the East Midlands that doesn’t offer much by way of entertainment or inspiration.

In order to get out the house I’ve spent time in nearby coffee shops, so much so that I’m now on first name terms with most of the staff. This has been nice, although I’ve been careful not to spend all my savings on coffee and sandwiches.

I’ve noticed is that I’m not alone in this. Many people turn up around midday with their laptops in tow, seemingly to get on with work, or perhaps just to look for new jobs – something nobody really likes doing.

My observation is that Starbucks (one of the two place I tend to frequent) is now better at selling space rather than coffee. I’m undecided about whether this is a good thing but it's certainly been a mixed bag, especially when loud families arrive, or when, god forbid, kids turn up during the school holidays. Working on the weekends has been a complete no-go for these reasons.

More prescient, though, is the difficulty of working alone. It requires a lot of self-organisation and unfortunately I've sometimes struggled to work up the daily motivation to do what needs to be done. In order to help things, I've tried harder to maintain a more active lifestyle. I joined a gym and started bugging people to do things in the evening. Tennis in particular has been ace (try to ignore that pun).

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m wary in this shift towards self-employment. I don’t believe it’s feasible for everybody. I also doubt it's great for young graduates like myself who I suspect will always learn more from the people they’re around rather than just the work they do.

That's my point but I will accept it beats the morning commute on the Central Line.

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Things I Watched: Neon Genesis Evangelion - An Exemplary Exercise of Emotional Excess

If I were to rate the things I genuinely love then I’m fairly sure Neon Genesis Evangelion would rank somewhere close to the top. This I say somewhat self-consciously. Evangelion is, after all, a cartoon. One you’d be forgiven for thinking was aimed squarely at teenagers. I sympathise with this view but it's both true and isn't.

If you aren’t familiar then let me recap. Neon Genesis Evangelion is a science-fiction anime made in 1995 by Studio Gainax. It follows Ikari Shinji, a shy boy of fourteen who's suddenly called upon by his father to save the world. He's eventually joined by Asuka Langley, a feisty and obstreperous girl of around the same age, as well as Rei Ayanami, a shy and taciturn girl of, yeah, the same age. Together they become a jigsaw of confused teenagers sent out in giant robots to wage battles against strange alien creatures. One per episode.

I suspect this sounds like yet another typical wet dream teenage fantasy but the show eventually develops into something much more personal. The reason I like it so much is because it's concerned not only with heroic virtues, but personal flaws. The characters start well but end up going against traditional heroic conventions and by the end are just complete messes of people. The fate of humanity ends up in the hands of people desperately trying to keep themselves together, which while not thrilling, presents a unique portrait of each of the main characters.

One of major themes of the show is learning how to connect with others. It's an idea elaborated by the ultimate ‘project’ to reconnect the lost souls of the world, envisaged by Shinji's father as the only suitable approach when Shinji, Asuka and Rei are finally done battling the 'angels'. Much of the show revolves around a psychological process. Notably characters long for death as a way to reconnect themselves to their parental figures. Choice words like Thanatos (death) and Eros (love) appear on screen, as does the nontraditional approach of characters asking introspective questions through narration.

It's through these epistolary moments that we learn why the characters fight and submit to to what's expected of them. Long story short, they use it as a way to be valued by others, despite knowing they'll be hurt themselves in the process. This is also why one of the most interesting images are the characters being inserted into giant robots. The characters 'EVA' units act as literal cocoons; embryonic states that allow the characters to reconnect with their mothers whose souls are literally trapped inside. Yes, you read that correctly.

In a mid-to-late episode, Shinji becomes fully digested into his unit. Throughout the episode, we're taken on a journey into his psyche that piles on dialogue after dialogue about the origins of his anxieties. Owing to the Freudian imagery, when Shinji is injected into the EVA unit - a symbolic image that lends to the Oedipus Complex - it’s his way of taking control. His mother acts as a form of protective parent and, in allegiance, they have the potential to take down the most frightening of enemies. This often coming out in the form of an unrestrained manic beast which acts of its own volition.

If the show does take a misstep I feel it’s in its use of use religious symbolism. Some viewers fixate on this aspect a lot but it certainly doesn’t help how many references there are. For example, the characters fight against enemies called ‘angels’; explosions take the form of huge crucifixes; and a big element of the plot to the End of Evangelion film is lifted from the symbol of the Kabbalah. Personally I've always considered these elements peripheral or, at best, illustrative of one way in which humanity has attempted to find meaning for itself. Understandably others remain unconvinced.

While I don't expect Evangelion to resonate with everyone, I find it an exhilarating piece of fiction and I'm still in love with it after all these years. It's action-packed with engaging drama and charismatic characters. It also boasts references to existential philosophy, which is like so my bag. In the end it comes together like a piece of self-therapy - Brecht for the science-fiction age. It's excessive and angsty and baggy and very shaggy too but there's nothing quite like it.