Absurdist writing focuses on the inherent purpose of life being elusive or questioned, can use dark humor to comment on the human condition, and explores themes of existentialism and purposelessness.
Surrealism is marked by disjointed and occasionally fantastic imagery, irrational juxtaposition, and can be dreamlike.
While absurdism is a philosophy, surrealism is more of a creative tool. Surrealism is often used to assist the absurdist objective by emphasizing the incomprehensible, confusing, and irrationality nature of life, but can be used outside of absurdism as well.
Surrealist art depicts an absurd world in an extraordinary way: our lives are cornered by incomprehension; confused by an existence without obvious meaning; and death stalks our every step.
Camus states that humans question the world around us, but the world does not respond with clear, irrefutable evidence. ==The absurd experience is the disconnection we sense between our need for a place in the universe and our inability to find it.== Clinically this confrontation presents as existential angst, neurosis, or simple incomprehension.
The sense of absurdity is an uncomfortable, discomfiting awareness (not, strictly speaking an emotion)—a poignant self-consciousness. There is a dis- or mal-connection between an experience and its meaning. It can strike during the most mundane activities such as walking to a house of prayer, standing in a medical emergency room, or queuing for the bus. ==A person becomes aware—of their own doing, thinking, or loving, as if observing from afar, but it not making sense.== This sense of absurdity is experienced as dissonance, and in extremis may manifest as psychosis.
Absurdity is also the moment we look at ourselves without sentiment and quizzically understand our pretensions. Reflection on the absurd experience reveals ==how ephemeral, illusory, and fanciful the activities are that we hold so precious.== The facades we erect in our lives—a great curriculum vitae, impressive lecture-circuit credits, a fabulous income—all amount to naught since the impersonal cosmos renders our efforts meaningless and insignificant.
Existentialism discouraged individuals from feeling obliged to behave in a certain way due to social or cultural dictate. It urged people to create themselves according to their own feelings and thoughts and then act accordingly. Surrealist art also broke with artistic convention and aimed to be “authentic” in an existentialist sense. Surrealistic art asks the same life and death questions and faithfully reflects the existentialist experience and the philosophy of the absurd.
Conclusion:
During the second part of the nineteenth century changes were afoot in Europe. Society was beginning to swing from organized religion to individualism. Before this children grew up with a religious catechism and were taught what to think. Existentialists stated that instead we should first ask ourselves—what do I feel? Without a theological framework many questions arose, along with a sense of disorientation or dread. This was “the existential attitude or crisis,” which concluded that ==the world has no absolute meaning and life is absurd. ==The mortal question then became: what is the meaning of my life?
History repeats with institutional conditioning…from religion to media
Surrealist artists and philosophers of the absurd responded to the challenge of existentialism and confirmed that the quest for meaning is fraught with paradoxes and inconsistencies. However they also suggested a way to overcome the fear of death and emptiness of life—by grasping the life-filled moment, seeing it through, and struggling out the other side—if not happy, at least satisfied.
How did millennial comedy end up so disorientating, dark and strange? One explanation for all this un-realism is that it’s a response to a world that has stopped making sense. Philosophical absurdism argues that the universe is inherently irrational – a perspective rendered particularly apt by the unpredictable political developments of the past few years. But there’s something unique about millennials’ lot that contributes to this sense of meaninglessness. In 2017, the Washington Post asked: “Why is millennial humor so weird?”, positing the theory that ==as the economic climate has delayed milestones such as marriage, kids and home ownership, and external sources of meaning such as religion have faded away, life has started to feel unpleasantly rootless== (Alienation), something that is being reflected in a stranger, more chaotic form of comedy.
==This sense that the world is constantly, and violently, shifting echoes the feel of the internet==…[for instance,] the Adult Swim school of comedy is designed to “reflect the frenetic distribution of information on the internet – that’s why a lot of their shows are so chaotic and absurd.” Yet the internet has also revolutionised humour on a molecular level. Online, comedy has been evolving in double-time, twisting itself to fit the demands of the medium – namely its insatiable desire for immediate, easily digestible content. Not only is there no time for narrative online, there is rarely room for the traditional set-up/punchline structure either. Instead, things are funny because they are wilfully jarring and strange. As those on the right wavelength (and, perhaps, in the right age bracket) will know, however, internet-shaped humour is also characterised by a straightforward silliness, machine-tooled to pierce the panic-inducing online news cycle.
This series canbe studied with respect to a whole new emerging genre of disturbing viral videos that aim to shock and distract, by means of intriguing and make onequestion his/ her sense of self in the perceived reality for the duration of the shorts
the series’ overall presentation as a parody of children’s TV show, functioning as an elaborate metaphor for the loss of innocence from childhood to adulthood in society ingeneral
Self, Anxiety and Mediated Reality
The post-modern condition, if it is to be characterised by the many crisis, the crisis of identity and knowledge is particularly pertinent to this series.
power is negotiated through the charactersÕ developmentthrough the episodes and their gradual increase of knowledge of self, inopposition with the various forces that sought to entrap them.
Other forces that shape oneÕs indentity are also explored. In Episode 1,creativity is taught to the puppets by a talking sketchbook in a rather cheerfuland encouraging manner, until things got out of hand (involving gore and out-of-body experiences) and ended with the sketchbook claiming “let’s all agreeto not be creative again”, suggesting the paradox of creativity – that it is exists within limiting boundaries that is often imposed arbitrarily, by society and/ orindividuals, represented by the sketchbook, which assumes the role of the “curator” of creativity. The arbitrariness of such confines is illustrated by its proclaiming that “green is not a creative colour” and pouring black paint over Yellow Guy’s detailed painting of a clown, denying him his efforts. Pelling, oneof the series creators, when asked about how the film came about, said thatthe purpose was, ironically, “how not to teach something” and “how an abstract concept like creativity is kind of stupid when people try to teach it in alimited way that [they] do”.
Initially the title is contradictory in its grammatical structure since must people would want to be hugged when scared; the title may be carrying the same message as the narrative: a good thing (creativity) having the opposite result to what was originally intended. Moreover, the appearance of a children’s TV show creates an innocent and naive atmosphere which in turns forms enigma codes as it completely juxtaposes the title – why be ‘[s]cared’ in a safe environment.
Camus argues that awareness and acceptance of absurdity tends to drive people towards “revolt,” a ==feeling of rage and defiance towards the situation we’re in and a powerful drive to resist being broken by it.== This encourages us to affirm a better existence.
“…man sees freedom in a new light. Freedom is no longer seen as coming from God or some transcendent being or idea, ==nor is it freedom to work toward some future goal.== Rather, freedom is now seen as founded on ==the certainty of death and the absurd.== With the realization that man has only this present life as a certainty and with the further realization that no transcendent beyond this life is admissible, comes the freedom and release to live the present life fully. This does not negate consideration for the future, but it does not allow the future to rob man of his present.”
Camus suggests that revolt often leads to what he terms “rebellion,” which inspires us to seek a unity beyond absurdity and realize that everybody faces the same difficulties in the face of it.
Capitalism, as an economic, political, and social system based on private ownership, directed to the greatest possible profits for particular individuals and corporations, is, in our day, entirely absurd. It has no rational or orderly relationship to human life or to the future of humanity.
Generally a critique of children’s television shows. DHMIS points out how the media conditions children
Each episode consists of a lesson being taught to the characters based on a certain subject, deconstructing ideas about that subject in the media which are confusing, misleading, false, etc.
Episode one theme: Creativity
Give overview of storyline
Transition: modernist concepts such as identity, fragmentation, alienation and absurdity
There are two meanings of absurd: nonsense and meaninglessness.
Nonsense
Everything done in the video is nonsencial, which can be considered absurd
“The rules of the lesson become contradictory and nonsensical, before they eventually take an absurdly dark turn into psychedelic and frightening places. What starts as a comedic parody of these programmes explodes into scenes of violence, gore, and warped realities.”
Example: “Green is not a creative color.” Co-creator
Joe Pelling said the idea for this first episode came from the idea that ‘an abstract concept like creativity is a bit stupid when people try to teach it in a limited way’.
“In a similar fashion, the show itself is resistant to interpretation of an allegorical nature. Just as you think it might be coming to its own moral or intellectual lesson – it falls back into the absurd. Negating that build-up to realisation with gestures of irreverence taps into the anarchic glee at the centre of the best comedy. It’s expectation and surprise, set-up to reversal – a horrifying magic trick.”
Meaningless
Camus’ Philosophy of the Absurd argues that life is meaningless, a.k.a. inherently futile. This is based on the tension between humanity’s desire for meaning and the universe’s silent indifference
Based on Existentialism, which believed that people were born as blank slates, each responsible for creating their life’s meaning amidst a chaotic world.
Visuals
DHMIS is a surreal comedy…and surrealist art is all about depicting an absurd world in an extraordinary way: incomprehensible, confusing, and life-threatening
Text
Themes
Why did they get violent?
They could be broken by the absurd…but they could also be accepting it.
Awareness and acceptance of absurdity tends to drive people towards “revolt,” a feeling of rage and defiance towards the situation we’re in and a powerful drive to resist being broken by it.
They shock the notepad by going against their expectations of creativity
“To be alive is to rebel”
Death
Conclusion
“At its core, Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is a reflection of how adulthood, society, and expectations can be overwhelming and confusing for some. It asks us to think about our personal views and whether they align with the status quo. As viewers, we are encouraged to confront ideas that may make us uncomfortable in order to explore new perspectives and ways of thinking”
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very exisfence is an act of rebellion”