As fun as it is to watch Spider-Man being (reluctant eventual) friends with the Human Torch, I find it much more amusing to track Peter Parker's hilarious history with Johnny Storm.
"You changed my life with your insipring words" + fucking off immediately. Followed by "you sunuvabitch, you stole my girl with your wiley nerdy boringness!"(regarding a girl Peter actively could not give two shits about). Followed by years of teenage antagonism only evened out when they team up to build a dune buggy together.
I mean Johnny has every reason to get a dressing down. He's acting like a jealous neanderthal. Amazing Spiderman 21
Been trying to learn bookbinding (to mixed results) and from the looks of this I should have started simpler!
I made this zine last year to teach Japanese stab binding. It's a technique that every artist should know—with just a few tools, it's so easy to bind your own sketchbook or to make a physical version of your art/writing/etc. Download the PDF version (with bonus photos & tips!)
I miss when I would get Tumblr asks that actually said things and weren't just digital panhandling scams.
One guy doesn't know about the mutual dune buggy building! From his perspective his Nemesis just one day started thinking he's An Okay Guy, actually!
I mean Johnny has every reason to get a dressing down. He's acting like a jealous neanderthal. Amazing Spiderman 21
I don't even know the original scene, but this is perfect
Any x-files fans in the house? https://youtu.be/344hD4Hb5qU?si=G3rk2djJKz9kJy9f
I want to share ygo s0 with people so I uploaded whole season to youtube with the best translation and video quality I found: ⭐️the subs was carefully proofreaded; ⭐️the audio in the hand-digitized raws was fixed. Thanks to Bereke Scrubs! Amazing job!😍
“My body, my choice” only makes sense when someone else’s life isn’t at stake.
Love this song so much, best in the whole franchise
So does the guy know you're white-knighting for him on social media? Seriously tho chillax. I thought we were doing a bit? You know, since like I said earlier Spider-Man started off as literally just a masked wrestler...and that his particular level of wisecracking can only be obtained by a certified doofus. (As an out of character aside I'm not really sure how this level of role-playing works, I'm kind of new to Tumblr. Am I not supposed to acknowledge the bit? Was it rude to interact back? Sorry if I'm messing up your RP I honestly don't know the rules)
As much as I love how Batman went from respected lawman to urban legend, I feel people fail to appreciate the Marvel equivalent. Peter Parker's alterego went from 'literally a wrestler with a gimmick' to 'he might maybe have once been human? We hope?!' in the eyes of the average civillian/mook.
Like his origin is clearly human, he's a tv performer and it's understood that his webbing is a gadget he came up with for the schtick. Then a little later when the Xmen become more popular and have more of an effect on the Marvelverse, you get the whole 'mutant scum' angle. But it eventually becomes clear that no, whatever this guy is, 'typical mutant' ain't it. (The alien suit debacle does not help with this at all.)
By the mid 80s Spider-Man is basically a cryptid, helped along by how the choreography and art style changed enough to show him moving in a way that is very inhuman, striking from the shadows, gravity optional. There's a whole arc where he adventures overseas and just straight up passes for a supernatural being so as not to compromise his secret id.
Then whenever anybody interacts with him long enough for him to start quipping they realize he's just a huge dork. Like, you know the inhumanly strong man-shaped shadow that can tell you pointed a gun at him from two blocks away without looking? He's going to give you a punny nickname while tying you up with a semi organic compound hitherto unknown to science. It's so funny.
Note: this does NOT go in depth into all of the song's lyrics. I don't have time to recount two decades of his discography. This is just a summary of the performance itself.
Let's start with the first visual we get:
UNCLE SAM - most notably recognized from WWII American wartime propaganda, Uncle Sam is the personification of American patriotism and freedom. The term "uncle" is also evocative of Uncle Tom from Uncle Tom's Cabin, an abolitionist book that aided in inciting the Civil War. Uncle is also a very common term (both endearment and derogatory) towards Black men (eg. "unc"). Samuel L Jackson was fantastic.
Uncle Sam also resembles a circus ringleader, notable for my next point:
THE GREAT AMERICAN GAME - no, not Super Bowl. The GAG is us the people being pitted against each other: through late-stage capitalism, through the culture war, through class warfare, through being built of the backs of slaves. We are all players in the GAG because none of us on this site were the oligarchs seated at the inauguration.
This is also seen as Kendrick's stage was a Play Station controller. Not only did it remind of circus rings visually, but it was a game battle stage. The Great American Game is a battle royale of the commoners for the amusement of the rich whites.
Remember the foods / Them color was tin and brown / But now they 100 and blue - For this I'll just say, look what the last election said about lowering the price of eggs... and look at the prices now.
The revolution about to be televised / You picked the right time / But the wrong guy - Election 2024 once more.
THE FLAG DANCERS - yes, the dancers formed the US flag... off of the backs of Black people. Not a single white person in sight, and that's true of the cotton pickers in the fields. Plantations are part of how the US came to economic prominence after being a "backwater" colony. Remember tobacco? Cotton? Our bloodlines do.
The red and blue dancers are also notable for representing the Crips and Bloods, two infamous street gangs. The dance in Not Like Us is the Crip Walk. I recommend researching more on your own time about them, but just know they are a large part of the stereotype of Black people being "ghetto."
TOO LOUD, TOO RECKLESS, TOO GHETTO. Do you really know how to play the game? - This is exactly what Black people, especially Black men, get told all the time. It's why we change our names on resumes if they sound "too Black." It's why we codeswitch in non-Black company. This is especially rich considering how non-Black people love our culture and love to make money off of us, as the latter part of the quote points to. And it's even more profound during the Super Bowl-- the NFL is majority Black players.
STREET LIGHT A CAPELLA -- "thug" stereotype dancers to counteract the a capella connotations, with Uncle Sam then saying that Kendrick figured out "bringing other street guys around being a culture cheat code." Yes, this is a direct hit at Drake (listen to "Not Like Us") but also politically. Look up "model minority". Notably I would point to Candace Owens, or the Miami Venezuelan political group that's been in the news recently, especially as this directly led to Kendrick being surrounded by...
DANCERS IN WHITE -- it's white America. That's... that's the allegory.
NOT LIKE US TEASER -- Kendrick says "Not Like Us" is "their favorite song." -> he means white people specifically here. It comes after he's surrounded by all white dancers, the women around him who are his call and response are also in white (my opinion, they represent the industry). He's saying "Not Like Us" is the favorite of yts because it is about BLACK MEN FIGHTING. This again is reflected in the video game stage and ringleader Uncle Sam.
SZA -- instead of giving what they want, we see SZA. She's one of Drake's exes and Kendrick has always supported her.
ALL THE STARS -- This was in the first Black Panther movie, which I recommend you watch. Rest in Power Chadwick. Notably, this movie was incredibly mainstream as a major Marvel movie, and then we have Uncle Sam say...
"THAT'S WHAT AMERICA WANTS: NICE AND CALM. DON'T MESS THIS UP" -- translation: Marvel (the industry, America, etc.) wanted a safe, semi-pop song because white American likes safe pop songs, not Kendrick's usual heavy rap style about his life as a Black man! Don't mess up what you've got going mainstream for having this "Black rap feud" with Drake, who is an R&B model minority to white people because he's safe.
So what does Kendrick say?
IT'S A CULTURAL DIVIDE / IMMA GET IT ON THE FLOOR -- He was warned not to be political or apologetically Black for this Super Bowl performance, but he is using this big stage opportunity to speak out.
40 ACRES AND A MULE / THIS IS BIGGER THAN THE MUSIC -- 40 acres and a mule are what the freed slaves were promised. Instead, this land went to white sharecroppers. Research Jim Crow laws.
THEY TRIED TO RIG THE GAME / BUT YOU CAN'T FAKE INFLUENCE -- rig the election, rig the industry like with model minority Drake, rig the Great American Game with culture war to distract from active class warfare.
NOT LIKE US -- the only thing I'll mention because it made me holler is Serena Williams crip walking on Drake's metaphorical grave. She's another one of his exes.
TURN THE TV OFF -- exactly like he said! The TV is a distraction, the Super Bowl is a distraction, the mainstream news is often a distraction. Turn it off and get with your people!
GAME OVER — could not see this on my stream but at the end of the performance, the lights in the stadium spelled this out. The world is watching, America…
In conclusion, Kendrick Lamar is a visionary and thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
EDIT: just found out from a comment that this is bad art conservation practice :(
Thanks @moripartylove for setting me straight
I always smile when I see these types of videos, especially because of where they start. When lifting the veil of time, where to begin? The corner? The exact middle? No, the faces. Show us the smiles, the blush, the eyes. Pull back the shades on a soul-window hundreds of years distant.
It also takes art to restore old paintings that look like scabs...