I Laughed And I’m Not Sorry
Currently doing the rounds, The late Norman Rockwell depicts Modern America:
Oh, there’s more. Not all of it savoury.
Update, via the comments:
There’s some discussion below about the aforementioned unsavoury content – the anti-Semitism and so forth. I did wonder about whether or not to link to the full selection, or what I assume is the full selection. But on balance, better to have the wider context, I think. Regulars of this site are, after all, grown-ups and can make up their own minds without my hand-holding.
And in case it needs pointing out, the basic juxtaposition that runs throughout the series – those jarring ideals – does rather throw into relief some fashionable assumptions of our time. The Forties’ suits with pronoun pins, the applauded looting, classroom violence, transgender sports, the Pride-obsessed educators with big, phallic balloons, etc. There is, I think, a certain… resonance.
The Rockwell aesthetic and period setting invites the viewer to imagine how one’s grandparents or great-grandparents might have reacted if faced with our time’s more modish pieties. A borderless, degenerate, bug-eating dystopia in which childhood is bureaucratically sexualised, and in which sporting unfairness and feral selfishness are met, by our betters, with pretentious approval. It’s very now.
Also, open thread.
*snort*
It’s quite a thing.
I could of course go on.
The A.I. still struggles with hands, but I think it’s captured… something.
Touché.
The A.I. still struggles with hands…
Indeed.
Somehow, I missed that one.
It doesn’t have much of a problem struggling with the anti-semitism. I’m just curious if it was intentional led down that path or if the A.I. was just playing to an internet zeitgeist…so to speak.
I’m still processing some of the recurring themes. But yes, it’s hard to fathom how much of it is steered and how much is not by human hand.
[ Added: ]
I did wonder about whether or not to link to the full selection, or what I assume is the full selection. But better to have the wider context, I think.
It doesn’t have much of a problem struggling with the anti-semitism.
Yeah, it kind of veers straight off into Der Sturmer territory — a softer, gentler Sturmer. Wasn’t expecting that, at all.
Not sure what that says about either LLMG AI or the version of America on the internet it feeds off of, but probably nothing good.
Not sure what that says about either LLMG AI or the version of America on the internet it feeds off of, but probably nothing good.
A bit of a clue in the name “Norman Lincoln Rockwell” as George Lincoln Rockwell was founder of the American Nazi Party.
OTOH, you have to admit it does a good job with the LSTMiG23++ teachers.
There are a lot of cookie cutter characters, so I can’t be shocked about an “old jewish shopkeeper” prompt generating similar output. I don’t see how stereotypical images (which are generally valid — basically by definition) could be considered “anti”. Compare to the rest of the characters who also lack much variation.
Similar anti comments could be directed toward all of the various “vibrant” characters in every image, which is exactly the point of the work. Again, stereotypes exist for a reason and 99% of this site’s content wouldn’t exist if they weren’t true.
Oof.
Re the above. And of course this.
In sixteen years of doing this, I’ve heard people say, many times, that the purpose of art – practically its sole purpose – is to transgress and disconcert.
I wonder if the series above is what those people had in mind. Though I’m guessing not.
Ooft. Some of those are rather close to the bone, aren’t they? Particularly that one with the teacher holding a tray of rainbow wiener-balloons.
And in the intervening seven years the application of such an incredibly stupid idea/policy has spread far beyond the schools and into the greater society resulting in far more serious consequences. People, many people, are now dead because of it. Gee, who could ever have predicted such a thing? I mean out loud and stuff. In front of people that they know in meat space.
Also…re-reading some of the comments, that being seven years ago, I’m guessing per his prediction that Tim Newman is now a complete and utter misogynist by now. I’d be really surprised if not. I know I am. Though I kinda already was back then.
Definitely not.
The ‘the purpose of art’, as defined by our ‘betters’, is to transgress the rules of civilised behaviour and disconcert the civilised. To épater les bourgeois to borrow a phrase.
Well when you consider that our betters tell us, and no one ever pushes back on this when it is stated (well I have but never seen anyone else question its sage validity) that the purpose of journalism is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, rather than…you know…report what happened…like facts and shit…why expect any greater purpose for art? Everything must be political. If you object, you are the one making things political. Easy-peasy if you just lie back and accept it.
Joe Ego: It’s not so much the ‘Old Jewish Shopkeeper’ stereotype that worries me, as that in so many of the images, the OJS is administering poison to innocent children. Hence the Der Stürmer vibe.
What Sue said. It wasn’t the stereotypes per se. I did search, in vain it turns out, for some possibly obscure Rockwell painting of Jewish Americans. Failing that I noticed the generated depictions in question had a number of children in them. Then I saw the poison markings and…well…it all mode sense.
Meanwhile in England’s green and pleasant land the PM has committed an unbelievable act of transphobia, at least according to the easily deluded.
Wow that’s pure, uncut antisemitism, straight up,no ice. Unbelieveable. This person, whoever they are, is clearly a racist.
Yes. See update to post, above.
And yet, the basic juxtaposition that runs throughout the series does rather throw into relief some fashionable assumptions of our time. The Forties’ suits with pronoun pins, the applauded looting, classroom violence, transgender sports, the Pride-obsessed educators with big, phallic balloons, etc.
There is, I think, a certain… resonance.
Looks to me like an obvious case of this AI conspiring to commit criminal damage to ULEZ cameras.
Oh, it’s a toaster-oven you say?
As you were.
[ Post updated. ]
Apparently, there are more of them. I’ve no idea if they’re by the same person or if it’s become a genre.
.
..
In my industry of professional photography, AI-generated images have become a big controversy, especially since the US Copyright Office (USCO) has ruled that such images cannot be copyrighted as they are made by machine, not a human. But I suspect that things will change as the technology progresses. Recently, a woman wrote a graphic novel in which every image was generated by Midjourney. Initially, the USCO granted a copyright when she registered it but then rescinded it and granted her a partial copyright for her text and the placement of the images.
I can imagine the arguments on copyrights when cameras became more widespread, saying that the machine, not the human, created the image, and eventually understood that the camera was simply a tool, much like a paintbrush. So too I expect, since all of these images are created with text prompts, that the algorithm will be recognized as a tool for the human’s creativity in writing the prompt.
As both photographer and lawyer, I am eager to see how this plays out. And how it changes our ability to recognize when things are fake, like this little girl and her dog that I created in Midjourney.
Has anyone here been to Disney’s California Adventure? There is, or maybe was, a fake billboard, I think it was for a fictional suntan lotion, as you made your way towards the roller coaster. I always found it jarring because it depicted a vintage 50’s scene that never was, with a cast of racially diverse young people yukking it up in a beach setting. It wasn’t the presence of minorities in the picture, it was the rewrite of history that bothered me. I suspect a number of people walked by it and thought yes, that was how golden life was in California “back then,” with things like Jim Crow reserved for those “other states in the South.” That is the same feeling I get looking at the pictures that are the subject of this post. They romanticize and depict as wholesome something vile. In short, I’m on the downslope of my uncanny valley looking at these.
In a follow up to my comment above, found the fake billboard at Disney’s California Adventure that made me uneasy. Paper towels, not suntan lotion.
Well say what you will about California but on racial matters they were significantly more progressive, in the positive sense of the word. That image would fit that era of California, and it’s clearly meant to portray California specifically, than any other part of the country at the time portrayed. It is a bit of a stretch though.
I just said something nice about California. That felt weird.
[ Finishes compiling tomorrow’s Ephemera, presses schedule. ]
The first one is brilliant.
The better ones do, I think, capture something of our times. It feels very now.
In sixteen years of doing this, I’ve heard people say, many times, that the purpose of art – practically its sole purpose – is to transgress and disconcert.
And with that midcentury Americana material in particular, we’ve come to expect that when the media shows us those images it’s to subvert them. The horror movie schema: the brittle facade of wholesomeness over the disgusting violent reality. The comedy schema: those whitebread Americans need to get over their fear of the Other and open their societies up to wise minorities in order to have color, flavorful food, and sexual fulfillment. So for these AI images the wise minorities of the comedy schema have circled around to the horror movie side as a thin facade of health and happiness that’s hiding a disgusting reality.
The image of the happy family eating bugs: before bugeating became part of our utopian plan, that would have been in the horror movie schema (sophomore essay: bubbling up of the repressed sexual guilt underlying “happy” family life, fear of post-nuclear wastelands), and now it could be part of the comedy schema (sophomore essay: a satire on white people’s fear of the Other, of foreign food, of contamination).
(sophomore essay: a satire on white people’s fear of the Other, of foreign food, of contamination).
OR (sophomore essay: a satire on white people’s cultural appropriation in eating food from less-white cultures).
Great, isn’t it? Damned both ways!
I wonder if this was a point of inspiration.
I wonder if this was a point of inspiration.
In related “protest” news, if you laugh at this one, you are a horrible person.
I put this into the same box as the various rainbow-haired teachers depicted in the other images. Not all progressive, secretive neo-pronoun selling teachers appear as depicted in these images – they’re just usually overweight and unnatural in appearance. Similarly, not all of the people selling kids on poisonous chemicals and cultural programs are OJS but it approaches usefulness – a foreign influencer acting in a greedy and malicious fashion who is commonly, to a surprising degree, jewish.
Well, thank God they’re sending their best 😂
Laughter is only one of many appropriate responses to these hysterics.
Well, you see, Joe Ego, of those “people selling kids on poisonous chemicals and cultural programs” who are Jewish, next to none are the ones wearing hats and beards. The latter, identifiably religious Jews, are mostly culturally conservative and have no truck with said cultural programs.
Well, only if you ignore American-born Japanese people who went through some shit that even American-born German people didn’t go through in either WW1 or WW2.
Yes, let’s put these not-at-all-unstable-or-manipulative people in charge.
[ Post updated again. ]
let’s put these not-at-all-unstable-or-manipulative people in charge
It’s possible to read her response with sarcasm quotes around “journalistic objectivity” – that is, she’s calling out their refusal to acknowledge what she believes is unarguable truth by hiding behind a facade of “presenting both sides”.
The irony is that there’s never been any such thing as “journalistic objectivity” and that the media does do exactly what she’s saying – they’re just on her side. She’s just upset because they’re not on her side loudly enough.