Entertainment Weekly: This doesn’t exactly fit, but I thought a little bit of the Amish. The Jabari have a separate, traditional culture within a modern one. But then, the Jabari don’t lack technology. Winston Duke: Yeah, they’re not against technology. They’re against Vibranium. Their society is based around Jabari wood.
EW: That’s what we see decorating M’Baku’s throne room. WD: Yeah, this is something we didn’t get to interrogate deeply in the film, but everything for them is based around this Jabari wood that comes from this sacred tree. Everything in Jabari land is made out of this sacred wood that can essentially go toe-to-toe with a Vibranium sword or a Vibranium weapon because it’s this tempered, strong, treated wood.
EW: But it has its own mythology… WD: They believe it was given to them by Hanuman, the ape god. Meanwhile, the people of Wakanda will say, “No, it’s actually the Vibranium that’s seeped into the wood. That makes it stronger.” [Laughs] You have this whole divergence of ideas. They’re quite technologically sophisticated but it’s based around wood. Meanwhile, Wakanda proper is technologically advanced based around Vibranium. That’s kind of where they get separated, but it’s still the same house.
EW: What does M’Baku really want, deep down? WD: Where’s Wakanda going? How are they going to do that? T’Chaka (John Kani) is dead. I didn’t like the direction he was taking the country and now his son is going to take the throne, all these people have been asleep letting these people take control of the country for all these years, and we’ve just been watching from the mountains being like, “This isn’t right. My people have to live, they got to survive.” Instead of him just being this ostentatious dude who’s running around in a gorilla fur costume, he’s this guy who has deep attachments and needs. You can understand, “If I was in that position, I think I would have to make a similar choice.”
EW: M’Baku is a showman. WD: He is. He’s proud and he’s big, and he is a showman. It’s the idea that if I’m going to challenge and take over this country, I’m going to do it with honor and I’m going to do it in front of everyone the right way. I’m not going to use some subversive tactic to take over the country the way other people could.
EW:He does this chant, a kind of grunt that silences people. He’s frightening, and then immediately funny. He knows how to weaponize his demeanor. WD: It’s super fun to play, and we created the entire culture. The Jabari, similar to the Dora Milaje, believe in the oneness. When he speaks, he speaks in a “we,” but he doesn’t talk as a royal “we.” When he says “we,” it’s really we, like me and my people. That means a lot to him. When he speaks of the Jabari, he speaks of them as one.
HOLY SHIT I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE JABARI TECHNOLOGY THAT IS BASED ON WOOD, WOOD THAT IS INFUSED WITH VIBRANIUM BECAUSE EVERYTHING IN WAKANDA IS BASED ON VIBRANIUM, WAIT EVERYONE PLS TALK TO ME /RIGHT NOW/ ABOUT THIS
“When the movement or attitude of the player is obviously unnatural in turning his face towards the camera, he betrays by the act the fact that he is acting – that there is someone in front unseen by the spectators to whom the actor is addressing himself. Immediately, the sense of reality is destroyed and the hypnotic illusion that has taken possession of the spectator’s mind, holding him by the power of visual suggestion, is gone.” – Frank Woods
On January 4, 2017, SM Entertainment released two different versions of NCT 127’s “Limitless.” One, subtitled “Rough Ver.,” featured the group decked out in now-typical SM boyband madness (poodle hair galore, sports jerseys, and loud streetwear) dancing and mugging for the camera in an abandoned industrial space. The video alternates between lo-fi camcorder quality shots of the members chewing gum or practicing their moves, more typical dance sequences, and – most outrageously – a mixture of the two:
Since January 4, I’ve watched this video probably 20 times already, and I still haven’t stopped.
“Limitless” is not SM’s first foray into the faux arthouse style. Perhaps the most obvious is the promo film for f(x)’s 2nd album, which is smugly titled “Pink Tape Art Film.” "Pink Tape” starts with faceless shots of the members’ hands outstretched into a projector, cupped around a lit match, or reaching for something dangling from the ceiling, then segues into a colorful potpourri: the members dancing against projected images of flowers and mosaics, playing with bubbles, trying on clothes, re-enacting Magritte’s “The Lovers.”
There’s an air of art school project meets home video to “Pink Tape” – it’s nostalgic, youthful, and colorful, a summer afternoon you wasted with your friends writing a short movie that you film, complete with bad acting and homemade costumes. The promotional material around “Pink Tape” was just that, a story about the exhilarating feeling of your first crush and the whirlwind emotions of becoming an adult.
That’s not what “Limitless” feels like at all. Where “Pink Tape” is nostalgic, “Limitless” is creepy; where “Pink Tape” evokes memories of a simpler, more vibrant time, “Limitless” is confrontational, almost sinister, and one of the most interesting music videos to have come out of kpop in years.
It happened, I’m sorry; I fell into the professional League of Legends fandom and I fell so hard. In the span of less than a week I went from “lmao these guys are all ugly” to “ROX TIGERS IS MY PERFECT IDOL GROUP THEY EVEN HAVE A CAT PLEASE LOOK AT THIS VIDEO OF THEM IN SUITS.” I literally cannot get over how tiny Peanut is or how Smeb goes from dorky child to handsome namja older brother just by cleaning up, I’ve gone from dim memories of that one ESPN feature on Faker to poring over every piece of press on Mata’s move in and out of RNG, and I made the mistake of starting a gdoc of useful links that has since ballooned into multiple mini ship manifestos. I don’t know how this happened, except I know exactly how this happened, which is (1) highly specialised rpf (2) of select few (mostly Asian) young men who are famous for doing something very difficult, very time-consuming, and very useless (3) in groups (4) mostly on camera (5) completely isolated from the rest of the real world. It’s like my whole fandom life was leading up to this one thing.
“This is ridiculous,”I hear you saying, to which I say, just wait until I finish this “””””primer”””””, just in time for you to watch the 2016 All Stars events with me.
