1941 - Disney animators went on strike after Walt Disney refused to let his workers unionize. The workers were angry about unfair policies on pay and benefits. On the picket line the animators lynched and guillotined an effigy of Walt Disney himself.
After four months Walt Disney caved to the demands and let the workers unionize, striking a deal
which included the reinstatement of employees fired before the strike,
equalization of pay, a clearer salary structure and a grievance
procedure.
[source]
(this is a remake of a post that was deleted by @staff)
I will be honest guys, the Red portrait of king Charles is gorgeous asdfghjkl
it’s a bad portrait. Like. Objectively. It does the opposite of what’s intended. It looks like the painter is insulting him. If it was in a contemporary gallery with no context you would see it immediately as the ambivalent criticism of Charles’s reign, how he fades into the overwhelming red background as a tiny little figure, small and insignificant, insufficient for the clothes he’s wearing. It reminds my of Goya’s portraits, how they were so ‘realistic’ that they ended up making these great figures look pathetic to the viewer. So these are our rulers?
the sheer novelty. the surprise and shock, the kinda cunt it’s serving for no reason. I. I love it. It’s an incredible portrait by Jonathan Yeo. By the sheer fact that Charles, the man, is impossible to portray as greater than man because he’s just such a nothingburger of a dude. So a portrait made to make him look huge and interesting made him be swallowed in red brushstrokes. The butterfly, that reminded me immediately of “ we will all laugh at guilded butterflies”, draws more attention than him. It looks like an omen. It looks like a warning in all this red. Something is not right here.
This is the best royal portrait ever 10/10
This is a painting of a monarch whose individual personality and even bodily presence are a mere footnote within the legacy of bloodshed that built the throne he occupies. This is the only way it’s possible to depict him. It’s a photograph of his soul
And I think all of that is entirely deliberate!
I think Jonathan Yeo meant this portrait to be absolutely all of those things, he just can’t be very vocal about the paintings true meaning. Yet.
I’ve done this on another post, but let’s compare that portrait up there to some other portraits Yeo’s done.
Here’s actor and activist Idris Elba, whom colleagues have described as warm and friendly, open-hearted, with an emotional intelligence that makes him capable of being very honest and vulnerable with the character he’s playing:
Here’s Jony Ive - who founded Apple with Steve Jobs and was chief design officer responsible for some of the more popular artistic choices, who recently left the company because the culture had gotten so toxic and shitty. He now works more in private design, so he has more artistic freedom and he can be less in the public eye:
Yeo’s even previously painted British heads of state. Here’s the phenomenal Baroness Doreen Lawrence of the labour party, a Jamaican immigrant who turned the tragic murder of her son into a lifelong campaign of quietly and steadily dismantling systemic racism:
To me, all these portraits are deeply personal, conveying the sitter’s character with empathy and quiet dignity.
Elba is leaning forward in an intimate friendly gesture. He makes eye contact with the viewer but his face is turned slightly to the side, inviting but not confrontational, his brows slightly drawn together thoughtfully. His hands are natural and relaxed. He’s shirtless - not to be a beefcake thirst trap (okay maybe just a tiny little bit), but to convey how emotionally naked he’s willing to be.
Ives is literally putting a lens between himself and the viewer - we have to look closer to see his face, but when we do we see his eyes crinkled with a hint of good humor. The perspectives are all distorted, but the main thing we see is the hands that have physically built so much of the technology we use. And even outside the phone screen he’s still enased by a circular frame within a frame, indicating yet another layer of separation between the subject and the viewer.
Lawrence is radiant, proudly upright and implacable as a mountain, her head held high and her hands folded before her with a self-contained air of calm determination. And even though the background is a chaotic sea of looming shapes and quick brush strokes, her eyes keep us grounded, even pinned in place. We’re the viewer, but she is studying us.
And then, on the other end of the personality spectrum, here’s noted asshole Damien Hirst, who frequently makes the news for being racist and sexist and just generally a really slimy piece of shit. His most famous works are the animal carcasses suspended in resin-
-yeah, that. That guy. He’s made all the money in the goddamn world three times over for pieces like that, and he still seems like he’s on a personal mission to make everyone around him as miserable as possible.
Here’s Yeo’s portrait of him, seated on a leather throne, dick bulge at eye level, contained in one of his own tanks:
Here’s the droopy and melancholic portrait of the famously pompous and insufferable John Cooper Clarke, self-described “original punk poet”, who was recently booed off stage for making super transphobic remarks, and whose most famous quote is “I read Kerouac at 12 and decided I could do better”:
And, most notably for the argument I’m making here, here’s D-Day veteran Sgt Geoffrey Pattinson, and see if you can spot the extremely subtle use of color theory here:
My conclusion: Jonathan Yeo paints very good portraits, and sometimes his subjects are very bad people.
And I think he brings absolutely all of his artistic talent to the Charles portrait.
@chromegnomes is absolutely right; it is the only possible way to depict him. It is a photograph of his soul.
And that’s precisely why it’s so ugly and uncomfortable to look at.
People have said that Charles has a “complicated legacy”, which is what people say when someone has an objectively horrible legacy that they are still personally benefiting from. But the people who still tolerate his extravagant gilded existence to “honor historical tradition” will find absolutely nothing to like in this portrait. All the gold and brass and pomp of his uniform, all the military accolades for his colonial warmongering, all the fabulous ostentatious wealth he was born into and has spent every second of his life surrounded by - which would have been rendered with glittering precision and care in a traditional royal portrait - they’re all dingy and washed out and already fading. The medals aren’t even clearly marked enough to really know what they are; it’s all sound and fury, signifying nothing.
The butterfly that was included as a nod to his honestly extensive conservation work (because let’s give the little bit of credit where credit is actually due) stands out as the one bright point of beauty and authenticity - but it’s dwarfed by the only other visible object, the sword, and it’s being swallowed up by that lurid, putrid background that seems to seep out of Charles’ uniform. The dark tips of its wings are the most high-contrast part of the painting except for Charles’ black hollow eyes that stare into nothing. And, most significantly in my opinion, the butterfly isn’t actually touching him, or connected to him in any way. It just exists alongside him, but it doesn’t need him.
His face is painted in such a way to detail absolutely every wrinkle without ever being able to completely cover up the blood red background, and below the sunken shark-like eyes, the artist has included that vapidly pleasant plastered-on smile with nothing behind it that is practically the royal uniform by now. I think the angle is also deliberately chosen to be unsettling: many portraits are traditionally done either head-on, ¾ profile, or full profile. Charles is none of these - his head is tilted juuust a few degrees off kilter. It’s not quite right. And he’s looking off to the side very slightly; his thousand-yard-stare is kind of drifting over the viewers shoulder. He can’t look us in the eye.
And there is no way, there is absolutely no possible way that an artist who is smart enough and skilled enough to imbue all his other portraits with so much meaning and symbolism and indicators of the subject’s character - there’s no way that’s not intentional.
But… Yeo lives in London. He’s still working on other royal and aristocratic portraits. He still has to live in that society, and he still has to get paid.
So of course he has to toe the line, at least until Charles dies, and say that the vivid blood-soaked red is to symbolize the “”“vibrancy”“” of this terminally ill octogenarian, to bring a “”“modern contemporary feel”“” to this 19th century colonizer.
The king saw the painting when it was about halfway done. Yeo tells BBC News’ Katie Razzall that Charles was “mildly surprised by the strong color, but otherwise he seemed to be smiling approvingly.” He adds that when Camilla saw the portrait, she said, “Yes, you’ve got him.”
Listen, I work in memory care and end-of-life care, and we only say someone “seems to be smiling approvingly” to comfort the family when someone is so far gone they clearly don’t know where they are anymore. His ex-wife Camilla, who probably has more good reasons to hate him than any other single human being alive, looked at this haunting vision of hell and was like YES PERFECT.
This is all completely intentional. We are all picking up on exactly the message the artist was trying to convey. Yeo is trying to tell us, loud and clear, that something is not right here. It is absolutely an omen.
Op is right; it is insulting him. And it is supposed to make us look at this pathetic villain, who is currently toddling through the final days of his unfairly long and lavishly useless life, and think “these are our rulers?”
EDIT: I can’t believe I got something so obvious so colossally wrong, but Camilla’s not his ex-wife, they are very much married. Thank you everybody who corrected me, and if you’ve reblogged the old version of this where I stick my foot in my mouth up to the knee, could you please reblog this version?
Stu, let me ask you a question: how did you not realize until then that you had too many eggs? Nobody sells eggs in a big cloth-covered basket, so you must have done that yourself. That means you spent god-knows-how-long opening up twelve whole cartons of eggs, carefully placing each egg one-by-one inside a big basket, and then covering it with a big picnic cloth… and at no point- at no point- did you ever stop and think “gee, there might be TOO MANY FUCKING EGGS HERE”
The reason you can drive a car everywhere is because people put roads everywhere. People are capable of putting safe bike and walking paths and public transit infrastructure everywhere too. Asphalt and gravel roads are not naturally occurring. You being tied to your car if you want to “go anywhere” isn’t a feature of cars it’s a construction as artificial as the car itself
The “freedom” that comes with cars is also possible with other things. Car manufacturers have brainwashed you into thinking it has to be this way. There are places in the world you can leave whenever you want on a whim and go wherever you like on transit or on a bike. This function is not unique to cars. Cars are just the only thing in many parts of the world that get any attention from those funding the infrastructure.
Expanded public transit and bike paths and train service and walkable cities and towns mean freedom. Cars do not need to have a monopoly on freedom.
Get yourself a granny cart for your big shopping trips. Also some cities have companies that have hourly rentals for cars or vans. And you can get more stuff shipped to you than you think. Also in places where bike infrastructure is good, cargo bikes are a thing.
Yeah I go grocery shopping a couple times a week and occasionally get an Instacart order on top of that because there’s a target and a little grocery store near some other places I go and I can pick up pantry staples there on the way home and either go out of my way to get specialty stuff on one of my days off or get it delivered. I’m almost never carrying more than what two grocery bags and my backpack can handle. Like I often just buy veggies and eggs and milk on my way home from church or a friends house. In a car-free existence you can just casually incorporate errands into your daily routine. You don’t need to go out of your way to go to the grocery store because there’s one right there
Genuinely the biggest barrier to being able to walk or bike or tale transit everywhere is the design of our cities, almost every issue people come up with that has do with using one of these to get around can be fixed or dealt with, we use cars not because they are the best way to move around but rather becaus they are what our cities are built for
Literally the only situation where a car is necessary that I can think of is moving houses or buying furniture and you can have someone else deliver furniture or move for you, so even in that situation you don’t need a car because furniture stores often have delivery trucks and moving companies exist
This is - disingenuous at best. It ignores physical disabilities.
My car is the most important accessibility aid I have, bar none.
If I had to walk to and from the grocery store, I would never go shopping. Especially if I had to carry/drag things back to my house. A walking path or bike path cannot fix chronic pain and fatigue.
It can’t make my knees hurt less. It can’t do ANYTHING about what the Texas sun does to my lupus.
It doesn’t change the fact I wouldn’t have the spoons to go to the store every few days. I go every couple of weeks because that’s what I can plan for. I can choose the day. I can plan for what I’ll need. I can set my life up for the day I’ll be laid out.
Without my car, I could not go to and from work - because I don’t work at a singular location. I go from client to client.
My clients are disabled. Many housebound. Reliant on me to help them get out of their houses to shop. To participate in the world. They can’t use public transit, because that many people? Bad news. Waiting for a bus during a panic attack? Not great.
Being able to get into a car with a person they trust to help them leave RIGHT when they need to?
That works.
My car lets me deliver services to other disabled people. Services I could not provide using even GOOD public transit.
Wanting walking paths, bike paths, more stores closer to people is GOOD.
But please don’t ignore folk with food intolerances and food allergies. Smaller stores can’t carry the variety needed to cater to us. The big stores can.
Genuinely, the biggest barrier to physically disabled folk being able to bike or walk or take transit everywhere isn’t JUST the design of our cities.
It is the cost of doing the physical activities. Something which cars reduce.
Setting up your own car to accommodate your needs is much easier than relying on public transit to have the accommodations you need, because there are so many permutations of that.
And that’s just physical disability. That doesn’t get into folks with neurodivergence. Or folks with mental illness.
Car free isn’t an idyllic lifestyle for everyone. There are a lot of us who wouldn’t be functional people in that world.
People like me.
I’ve talked about this at length before but I’m tired of coming up against this over and over again. Cars will still exist. The fact remains though that if society was designed correctly then a) it would be easier to get around as a disabled person without a car because accessibility is a part of people-centric infrastructure b) the vast majority of people wouldn’t need or even want cars so people who do drive would have much less traffic and safer roads to deal with and c) a lot of people currently isolated because they can’t drive because of their disability could gain a lot more independence than they currently do.
That’s a pretty cool political opinion you got there dude. Did your web of online friends and mutuals who all subconsciously monitor each other and self-correct in a panopticon-esque fashion to ensure that your views all stay in line with each other’s at all times pick it for you?
“I’m safe from having my political views dictated by others because I’m catholic” is probably the funniest thing you could add to this
That’s a pretty cool political opinion you got there dude. Did your web of online friends and mutuals who all subconsciously monitor each other and self-correct in a panopticon-esque fashion to ensure that your views all stay in line with each other’s at all times pick it for you?
“I’m safe from having my political views dictated by others because I’m catholic” is probably the funniest thing you could add to this
there are not many posts like this out there but shoutout to trans women who like their voices, shoutout to trans women who like having a dick, shoutout to trans women who are butch, shoutout to trans women whose transition has been ‘unconventional’, shoutout to trans women who will never pass and dont care to, shoutout to trans women who are tall, shoutout to trans women who break the binary that was reinvented in progressive spaces. you people are so fucking incredible.
It’s weird to me seeing how common it is for people to not know how to swim, so I wonder if it’s a region specific thing, or did I just grow up somewhere where swimming lessons in public schools is a normal thing
Someone asked me why I give my creatures top scars and it’s to remind people of the trans existence. Should my work ever become widely popular, I want it known a trans man created the art. If my art is still loved when I’m gone, I want those scars to remind people of my identity and existence. To give these creatures my scars is a reminder of trans existence baked into the work itself. It cannot be removed. My creatures are protectors, warriors, and carry with them a greater existence than a simple two-part binary. With their scars, I call out to all the trans people who live in this generation with me. I pay homage to all those who paved the road before us. I plant a message to those who will come after us that we were here.
So, yes, I give my creatures top scars. Not as an aesthetic or fad, but as a permanent mark of who I am. And, as a signal to all my peers that we are not alone and we will always exist.
An autistic child in their natural state will most likely be bullied on a regular basis.
They often have to actively suppress anything that makes them stand out.
Some are able to succeed at this, and people stop bullying them.
But they’re then invisible. They still have no friends. They still miss out on any experiences that require friends.
When they ask how to make friends, everyone assumes that they’re not even trying. Everyone assumes that they’re doing nothing even though they’re burning themself out just to be invisible. They’re told “talk to people” or “just be yourself”.
But that’s what they were bullied for. They never had a chance to learn how to “talk to people” or what “just be yourself” even means.
So then, every once in a while, they take a wild guess at how to interact with others. And they get bullied again.
Then they stop doing the wild guess that caused them to be bullied. And they’re back to being invisible.
Some are able to
succeed at this, and people
stop bullying them.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
send this to anyone making the “Jewish people are unsafe in pro-Palestine student camps” or “Jewish people are unsafe out on the streets” arguments right now, and also just share it around because it is funney
“Put it all in his pussy” I love it. He just wadded it all up and shoved it right in there. Crammed it all in. That expression should be commonplace too.
for some reason i can’t stop thinking about how, after the cops cleared out hind’s hall, they brought all the students one by one in front of news cameras, faced them towards the camera and ripped their masks off. i remember some, perhaps with genocidal parents, desperately trying to keep their heads angled down and away from the camera’s gaze. some calmly stared it down. i only watched a few.
to me it symbolizes the essential unity of the repressive apparatus; the nominally independent media company and the equally nominally independent municipal police department uniting to keep the colonial machine going, no matter the cost, but there was also something almost pornographic in the unmasking. one wonders how many of the nypd officers ripping off the protestors’ masks fantasized about doing the same to regular american civilians during the height of the pandemic.
for some reason i can’t stop thinking about how, after the cops cleared out hind’s hall, they brought all the students one by one in front of news cameras, faced them towards the camera and ripped their masks off. i remember some, perhaps with genocidal parents, desperately trying to keep their heads angled down and away from the camera’s gaze. some calmly stared it down. i only watched a few.
to me it symbolizes the essential unity of the repressive apparatus; the nominally independent media company and the equally nominally independent municipal police department uniting to keep the colonial machine going, no matter the cost, but there was also something almost pornographic in the unmasking. one wonders how many of the nypd officers ripping off the protestors’ masks fantasized about doing the same to regular american civilians during the height of the pandemic.
Now that Twitter’s URL has officially changed, lets all join hands and remember that Elon Musk threw away one of the most recognizable, established brands of the past decade due to his personal chuunibyou fascination with the letter X.
People love reblogging this post and saying “well, this is just what happens when an (undiagnosed) autistic person has too much money”, as if the reason Musk had bad taste is autism - implying autistics inherently have bad taste - and not that he’s the lamest type of chuuni known to man.
“Chuunibyou” of course, being a Japanese slang term (literally meaning “8th Grader Syndrome”) for people whose idea of “cool” aligns with what an 8th grade boy would find cool, even though they really should’ve grown out of that by now.
So, y'know, the type of guy who thinks the letter X on its own is so cool that he keeps trying to use it as a brand. Before twitter, he tried to turn Paypal into X.com. His aerospace company is called Space X. It’s embarrassing.
And as an autistic person it’s frankly offensive to go “well yeah, that’s just what autistic people are like right? Thank goodness most of them don’t have the money to do this - or else they would, how cringe”.
