what a nightmare.

Last year, The Nightmare Before Christmas was released as a special edition DVD, and along with it came a newly remastered double-disc soundtrack. The bad news? A handful of lousy covers from bands like Fall Out Boy and Marilyn Manson. Here's his version of "This Is Halloween":



The first YouTube comment for this video reads thus:

DarkDemonicMari (1 hour ago) Marked as spam

"omg, that was a great video. you did a really great job! I love how Marilyn see's things differently than everyone else, and how artistic he is. He really doesm't care what everyone else thinks about him, and I admire him for that. I also love The Nightmare Before Christmas. Having him sing that song just brought more, artistic-ness and creepiness to the song. I mean, it created a whole other darkness to the movie...I love it man!"

Is it just me, or does DarkDemonicMari sound like Manson's publicist presenting the ideal response to their little marketing venture? A little too giddy, if you ask me. Then again, her name is Dark Demonic Mari. And I find it funny that the song she heard provided more "artistic-ness and creepiness" to the original track, because the song I heard was silly, obvious, cliched, stupid and unnecessary. Kinda like goth culture as a whole. And it seems to me that if Manson "sees things differently" and "doesm't care what everyone else thinks about him," he would deliver a less predictable interpretation. And I won't even comment on Panic! At the Disco's version of the song, because it is bloody fucking awful.

If I recall, the lesson Jack Skellington learns in The Nightmare Before Christmas is that appreciation doesn't require appropriation. Jack hijacks Christmas, and after applying his own Halloween values to it finds that he's created something that bastardizes the essence of each world. He realizes that the idea of Christmas, no matter how foreign or different it appears to him, is valid and admirable in its own form and deserves to be left that way. Shame that Manson couldn't agree in regards to the soundtrack, which is already phenomenal without being dumbed down to the language of teen angst.

The problem I've always had with Marilyn Manson is that he speaks so eloquently about his art while his art tends to say nothing other than "Boo! Don't I disturb you?" In a way, like a musical Witkin. What I fear is that young people viewing Nightmare for the first time will go buy the soundtrack and forever associate the timeless story with these hardly-timeless bands. Hopefully, though, they will hear the bonus demos Danny Elfman recorded himself and understand that these songs, and this movie, are brilliant without distorted guitars, heavy drums and angry vocals.


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another psychedelic page of my childhood.



Let's all get twice as high as a butterfly. ...Wait, go twice as high.
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black eyed girl.

It seems DeviantArt is chock full of young emo kinds taking emo pictures of themselves in emo poses amidst emo locals. Some guy called saturdayx has accumulated a disgusting amount of fans based entirely on this formula. It's the same kind of glamorously self-deprecating, narcissism-masked-as-irony style that is all too present in Myspace photo galleries. Depressed for success, as I like to call it.



So what are we to make of the Swedish photographer 8032? At first glance she seems to fit the bill of a young, emotionally self-obsessed girl, eager to express her emo-ness through thick eyeliner and short dyed hair. But her work cannot be fully appreciated until you open her gallery and see that her pictures comprise a series of self-portraits, taken almost daily, that are nearly identical from one to the next. Aside from a few earlier, conceptual photos, these snapshots are not concerned with outfits, backdrops, or any kind of context. It's just her face. Over and over again.



What she has done is avoided leaving any trace of emotional imprint on her gallery. 8032 offers no information regarding herself or her photos, only that she is 14 and from Sweden. She has chosen a 4 digit number for herself, and instead of poetic titles hinting at the feeling behind each photograph she gives them names like 6085 and 8.204. Her expression in each photo doesn't lean too far in any particular emotional direction; she smirks in a few, but mostly she just stares at you blankly. Even when her face is flushed and wet from crying, she appears only concerned with getting that neutral, wide-eyed look.



Could 8032's whole gallery be a critique of young photographers presenting the superficial in place of the emotional? Is she pointing out that you can photograph your own face every day and still never capture a glimpse of who you are? Are her photos a testament to the aesthetic power of a pretty young girl, who can attain legions of admirers by simply photographing her face? Could she be the most thought provoking artist I have ever run across on DeviantArt? Or is she just a teenager striving to get that perfect self-portrait?

In any case, her page is more interesting because of its mystery. And maybe she's making the world a better place with her pictures. Oh, look - She changed her hair color.
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