My mom got me the first issue of Shortcomings as a Birthday present. I had invested so heavily into AT in my teens that it felt weird seeing him again, seeing those characters and backgrounds, those performances, on my birthday.
I liked AT so much. I identified with him. He was like me. He would be someone I could go see a show with, or go to a cafe with. For me, he was the face of late 90's indie music, and in a lot of ways he still is. If you like Death Cab For Cutie you probably also like AT.
The acting in Shortcomings is really weird. It's like all the characters are trying to 'joke around' with each other in an 'I am real, I am being real with you' kind of way. They remind me of characters in a reality tv show. Like they are overperforming their sincerity in order to offset their own inherent falseness.
Somehow I found his old insecurities more endearing, more relevent. Like, why the need to distance himself from performance art? Why not put that time into actually addressing Asian identities? I wish that scene girl talked about Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik, since AT's stand-in obviously didn't know about them. I wish AT talked about having an Asian mom, and how that translates sexually.
edited twice because it was a really shitty 'review' putting emotion where there was none.
3 comments:
I don't know why, when given a pencil and a piece of paper, you'd want to make something that looks like film. Just cut out the middle man and do something lense based.
I think I understand AT's desire to control every element (expressions, etc) as something he couldn't control in film/video. I think he's trying to act as translator between these media, kind of making graphic adaptations of imaginary films (which in turn were probably adapted from imaginary short stories).
Not to be confused with AT.
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