Metropolis fantasy
(Japanese version is here)
I have been thinking about the concept of "Metropolis fantasy" for a long time.
I love the movie of "My Neighbor Totoro" by Hayao Miyazaki. It starts with the sense of excitement at the house they just moved into, and then gradually strange things start happening, leading them into a strange and wonderful other world in a really natural and seamless way. I have seen this movie many times and each time I like it more and more.
But on the other hand, I also believe that the people who will enjoy this movie the most will not be people like me who grew up in the city. I am sure that those who have passed through the countryside in their life experiences will be able to appreciate this film in more detail, recalling their own feelings and memories as well. A road along a rice paddy, a two-story wooden house, a well, a shrine in the woods. People who have nostalgia for those things have an advantage. Even if you don't live in the countryside, you may have stayed at a relative's house in the countryside a few times. I envy them.
I was born and have lived in the city all my life, and I have relatives only in the city, so there is a realm that I can't imagine. For me, the world of Totoro is a complete fiction, far from reality. When I see the actual countryside, I say, "It's just like My Neighbor Totoro," and use this movie as an analogy. But in fact, the order should be reversed. The countryside is the original landscape of the audience, and this film is based on that landscape and gives it a fantastical character.
If that is the case, is there a fantasy that really fits people like me who were born and raised in a city? If so, what form would it take? I became aware of the concept of "Metropolis fantasy" at some point in my life.
In the old days, The world was more fuzzy
On a different note, the words of Mr. Shigesato Itoi quoted by Mr. Takaaki Yoshimoto have stayed with me for a long time. Takaaki Yoshimoto said, "In the old days, the world was more fuzzy."
[Itoi] In the past, it was normal for people to be unstable. In other words, people in the time of The Tale of Genji really had ghosts.
...
For example, when you are walking down the street at night and you feel something following you, to modern people it is just their imagination, but people in the Heian period could not have been so sure.
I keep thinking about this quote. For those who lived in the Heian period, the supernatural things that could not be captured were definitely closer to everyday life. In the absence of science, they were able to exist because of the obscurity of the world.
In contrast, what about the modern city? The modern city has an extremely high resolution in all directions. There is nothing unclear. There is nothing that cannot be examined and identified. Everything is far from fuzzy. From one end of the city to the other, there is nothing that does not involve human intervention. In such a situation, even if I wanted to believe in ghosts, my knowledge of natural science would surely get in the way.
The "fuzzy stuff" is not limited to a sense of unease; in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Grim Reaper was often used as a motif in paintings depicting the horror of people dying one after another of high fever. It could be said that the Grim Reaper was present in people's lives at that time. Nowadays, however, we all know that the fear is an infectious disease called the plague, and we all know that hygiene, not prayer or witchcraft, is the only way to prevent it. There is no fear of the unknown there. Now that this has happened, it is difficult to see the Grim Reaper standing next to a sick human being.
But on the other hand, for humans, the uneasy feeling of the nighttime road has not completely disappeared. It is still present, in a niggling way. It is a different kind of fear from the fear of being involved in a crime on a nighttime street; it is a fear of seeing the blurring of the boundary between this world and the other world. In that sense, "ghosts" still exist. It is just that they are not in the classic ghostly form that everyone knows.
Others were once called gods. What used to be called divination. Curses, prophecies, messiahs, legends, yin-yang, possession, demons, parallel worlds, UMA, psychic powers, time leaps.... Some of them barely surface as occult, in the form of conspiracy theories and urban legends, but their quantity has decreased. The resolution of the world is too high. The "fuzziness" that originally existed should not be the only thing.
In truth, I believe there are still other gaps in the world that cannot be fully explained by science and technology. To be precise, they do not exist in the "physical world dominated by natural science," but they do exist in the "human mental landscape.
The concept that fills this gap has been kept in the back of my mind, with only one name: "Metropolis fantasy". I believe that even in contemporary cities, there are unstable oddities that seem to arise from the gaps between fluctuations and creaks. Not huge forces, but more micro forces. It is as if it has always been there, naturally, next to something alien. That is the feeling.
The fantasy of the past was fuzzy due to the lack of human touch, but urban fantasy is not. I think that Metropolis fantasy is a gap that belongs to no one and belongs to no one, created as a result of excessive repetition of human overwriting. It is like a fragment of street art that has been repeatedly overwritten and has lost its original form. I have been searching for something with this sense.
Metropolis fantasy
Last year, when I came across generative AI technology, I wanted to confront the theme of "urban fantasy" a bit more. AI is suited to create "gaps that belong to no one and belong to no one. What emerges from this space definitely belongs to no one.
This time, we made a video titled "Live Camera in 2024. It is a short movie based on actual live camera footage, and was released as a short video on YouTube. I am not sure what the images mean, but I hope you will think of it as part of the process of searching for the fantasy hidden in the city.
I will continue to try to capture the fantasy of the city through a series of studies. I may end up creating something misguided at times, but if I persistently walk around, I may find myself lost in some crevice.
Video is here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMWxI50W-896YdGrD9MC1WW7Vs7D72xN9
YouTube Channel "Praise Game Div."
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[Reference]
My Neighbor Totoro
https://www.ghibli.jp/works/totoro/
"It used to be more fuzzy"
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/3ds/interview/hardware/vol1/index8.html
Ghost painting
https://maidonanews.jp/article/12606808
The Grim Reaper at the time of the plague https://gendai.media/articles/-/73779?page=3
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