Comment by quuxplusone 3 hours ago
Not scaffolding in the same way, but, two examples of "fetishizing accidental properties of physical artworks that the original artists might have considered undesirable degradations" are
- the fashion for unpainted marble statues and architecture
- the aesthetic of running film slightly too fast in the projector (or slightly too slow in the camera) for an old-timey effect
- Audio compression was/is necessary to get good SNR on mag tape.
Another example: pixel art in games.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of pixel art and retro games.
But this reminds me of when people complained that the latest Monkey Island didn't use pixel art, and Ron Gilbert had to explain the original "The Curse of Monkey Island" wasn't "a pixel art game" either, it was a "state of the art game (for that time)", and it was never his intention to make retro games.
Many classic games had pixel art by accident; it was the most feasible technology at the time.
Motion blur. 24fps. Grain. Practically everything we call cinematic
I wouldn't call it "fetishizing" though; not all of them anyway.
Motion blur happens with real vision, so anything without blur would look odd. There's cinematic exaggeration, of course.
24 FPS is indeed entirely artificial, but I wouldn't call it a fetish: if you've grown with 24 FPS movies, a higher frame rate will paradoxically look artificial! It's not a snobby thing, maybe it's an "uncanny valley" thing? To me higher frame rates (as in how The Hobbit was released) make the actors look fake, almost like automatons or puppets. I know it makes no objective sense, but at the same time it's not a fetishization. I also cannot get used to it, it doesn't go away as I get immersed in the movie (it doesn't help that The Hobbit is trash, of course, but that's a tangent).
Grain, I'd argue, is the true fetish. There's no grain in real life (unless you have a visual impairment). You forget fast about the lack of grain if you're immersed in the movie. I like grain, but it's 100% an esthetic preference, i.e. a fetish.
I suspect 24fps is popular because it forces the videography to be more intentional with motion. Too blurry, and it becomes incomprehensible. That, and everything staying sharp at 60fps makes it look like TikTok slop.
Great examples. My mind jumps straight to audio:
- the pops and hiss of analog vinyl records, deliberately added by digital hip-hop artists
- electric guitar distortion pedals designed to mimic the sound of overheated tube amps or speaker cones torn from being blown out