10/23/22

I hope you all had an amazing week and are very excited to buckle in for my little info dump to prevent me from going insane. 

I've been feeling just the slightest, small, little bit better this week. I think. School has been a lot recently and now I have my photography class to worry about which, by the way, I have one small thing to complain about in terms of school but I won't talk too long cause I think the last few posts have been too consumed by me and not art. If a school, for example, let's take my University, all decided on using one platform to organize all of our work, say Canvas, it should be illegal to use a different platform. That shit is so fucking annoying. All of my assignments are in one place, organized on Canvas Calendar, I can see everything I need to do in the order I can do it. But alas, this fucking photography class uses a different platform, which means I have to actively remember to check for assignments, too which I am not very good at. I can remember when I have to do assignments, but if I check for everything I have to do, and this fucking photo journal is not a part of it, but it's still due, but it's not there, but I have to do it, IM GOING TO FORGET. Anyways. I'm managing to stay on top of most of my classes, I have my religion presentation due this coming Wednesday, due Monday, and I haven't started writing my script yet, but I'll manage. If Christian Reid can do one thing it's bullshit successfully enough to make it seem legit. 

The important thing we have to discuss is that it is most definitely fall. Waking up in the south and seeing it 60 degrees outside is insane, and I will admit to ejaculating everywhere when I walked outside in a long sleeve. On top of that, the festivities are in full swing. Yesterday me and my roommates I, plus Abby's boyfriend went to Fear Farm! I was extremely excited, going to haunted house attractions was such a big part of fall growing up, so no matter what the event was like, I was going to have fun. Granted, Fear Farm is overrated to the max, costumes range between party city masks, and black face paint and the shit were walking through was 99% cornfield and the other 1% was cardboard cutouts mimicking a building. But I had a lot of fun, aided by the fact that I saw a guy I used to fuck with and it was providing so much entertainment in the lines, I was having a blast. Doing things with my roommates has been so enjoyable recently, granted, it's usually enjoyable, but emphasizing doing things, I couldn't be happier with my roommates. In addition, I'm going to make banana bread today, which aids in the fall festivities, and I'm going to make pumpkin bread and Halloween cookies, and it is going to be so fun, yay.  

Quick break to say my brain does currently not feel like it's functioning. I'm not 100% sure any of the thoughts I have right now are currently formed, at all, so I apologize if this sounds scattered. 

Speaking of Halloween, I wanted to kind of do a rough draft for my presentation right now, because I have some very interesting thoughts in my head regarding;

 DRESS AND RELIGION!

 From the start of human history, as we currently know it, religion has arguably been one of the main contributors to the culture of art, and how art changes over time. We see it in ancient archeological finds throughout all continents, pieces of art that tell us small amounts of information about the culture of said civilization and how they managed the world around them. We see it in the influence of Christianity and its fruition after the Greeks, Romans, and JEWS! Religion has always been the key to discovering how cultures interact and, most importantly, the symbols and relics that we can use as artistic inspiration now. This inspiration can be seen carried through art in the same way it always has been, but a more recent artistic development is how religion impacts fashion. One of the articles I read about this topic referenced a thought process used in fashion forecasts, in which one can predict the styles of upcoming years based on events and culture occurring today. The article stated that, beyond the consistent occurrences in punk settings, which I will get into shortly, religious symbols are often correlated to a group's desire for unity. Above all, religion is about community (usually) and brings people from all different demographics together under one idea. Thus when a group collectively experiences some kind of life-altering event, we saw it after 9/11, and more recently during the 2020 lockdown, symbols used in a religious context begin to make a broader appearance within fashion to reflect this. The way I have seen it, religious symbols appear most frequently under three different circumstances. The first, is religious unity, bringing people together under the pretense of religious communion. The second is in communities that juxtapose the ideals of a religion. We can see examples of this in punk settings, within Vivienne Westwood collections and, especially, Dolce and Gabbana, which is known on a smaller scale for their usage of especially Christian symbols repeatedly in their collections in a profane manner. The last is the passage of art. The recent Balmain collection for S/S 2023 during fashion week in (I think) Milan, in which graphics used from old renaissance paintings were used for glamorous dresses and suits. However, throughout all of these examples, the most dominant presence is that of Christianity. The Christian faith has arguably had the biggest impact on art globally, mostly in the West or North and South America. And while this makes sense from an American perspective, there is a good amount of material to work off of from other cultural religions as well. In the world, there are over 4,000 recognized religions, as well as additional folk religions still practiced by their respective groups. And with this comes a significant amount of impact on the overall culture of the regions these practices come from. However one of the things I found myself puzzling over during this research, was how to differentiate ethnic culture and religious cultural impact. Oh, I should also say the main point of my presentation is discussing the appropriation of religious symbols. For me, I think the key detail that creates a clear divide between the two is where the religion comes from, and how it existed in our culture in previous decades. Every religion has things that are and aren't okay, but what I'm going to discuss is what is culturally deemed okay or not. If we look at Christians, I would assume most Christians probably don't approve of people dressing as slutty nuns. The opposing example, if anyone remembers, is Nessa Barret shaking ass to a TikTok audio from the Quran. In the Christian example, it has a less negative impact on the general public because the symbols used have existed for so long in the media in a non-negative way, that seeing them used in an insensitive manner isn't as impactful. Looking at Islam, on the other hand, is quite different. Islam has not existed in our media enough, nor in a positive enough manner, to make profane usages of their symbols not appear insensitive. And I believe that's really what it boils down to, certain religions have existed in media for so long, especially Christianity which has not only existed but been shoved so far down our throats that one can feel it in their ass, that it is essentially open domain. The other argument, as I mentioned, is geographically where it comes from, and how informed we already are on the group. I feel like a lot of Americans, myself included, are drastically uneducated about other cultures, and know most of the details via the internet or stories told by others. So when you see a Christian girl disrespecting the religious practice of a group, it can not only be traced to disrespect of the religion but of the entire culture surrounding it. 

These examples are why Dolce and Gabbana's S/S 2023 collection is not seen as offensive by most fashion enthusiasts, but Gucci's use of the turban, often correlated to the practices of Sikhism, is. Why was the turban used, and what message was it sending to the readers of the visuals? If we see a collection featuring a drag queen in full dominatrix attire with a rosary, it reads as a statement on the culture we grew up in within this country, the cross-over of porn and religion is not at all a new artistic statement. We can recognize these symbols as things within our communities, the Churches located on every corner of a small town, the porn hid in the 18+ section of a video store. But what statement does it make for a non-Sikh designer, working for a non-Sikh brand, to use a turban on a runway with absolutely zero connection to religion? This reads as appropriation. If the meaning and significance of a symbol are otherwise unknown by a majority of consumers, there is no reason for it to be used, especially in this case in which nobody understood the significance of it behind the scenes either. 

I hope this all made sense, it helped get my thoughts a little better organized, though I'm not going to use this exact format for my actual presentation. I hope you all have a fantastic rest of your week, next time we talk it will be a special Halloween special, meaning it'll probably be two paragraphs long and only consists of me complaining about my costume. 

I love you all, thank you for reading, and I will come back next Sunday!!!

Love,

~Christian Reid