Despereaux's Nose

Every day on my way to work I get the visual equivalent of a wet handshake.  Despereaux, diminutive mouse of questionable French lineage and hero of his own film, looks at me from behind the moist pink bulb of his all-too realistic nose. It is hard to say exactly what is so off-putting about Despereaux's nose, but it is up there with Edward G. Robinson's lips for Hollywood's most disturbing creature effect.

Far more unnerving than the Saw posters in every subway and bus stop, Despereaux's nose is grotesque in its perfection.  Too perfect.  A textured, glistening fob of digital perfection.  The amount of man hours placed in getting the moisture to sit just right, to make the skin look like living tissue: it all strikes me at the same time and my body invisibly lurches.  I get the icks and shudder. 

What merit is there in making the eye believe that this hero mouse has an ultra-realistic nose?Ultra-realism is, of course, unrealistic.  Nobody sees the world with the level of ultra-fine detail apparent in most computer animation.  The visual sourcing for most computer animation seems to be early Renaissance masters, like Fra Angelico and Piero Della Francesca, where a certain stiffness reigns amongst the figures but the perspective and level detail feel infinite. There is no call to summarize, no need to make it into a cartoon.  The surface is full, because funding is in tact.  

But if Fra Angelico painted on his knees for the greater glory of god, what exactly is Desperaux serving?   If his nose is just a symptom of our own technological superabundance, a widget on the way to an artificial age, what instinct in man calls it forward? Our own love of artifice? We normally call this level of detail pornographic, as in nothing is left to the imagination. I hate to think of what the future of porn will be once the kids who grow up on Despereaux come of age and bring their libidos to bear.  If they are subversive they'll just keep the lights off.   

  

Eyes on the Sidewalk

Community is what happens with your eyes when you walk down a busy sidewalk.  It may seem appropriate to look at your fellow pedestrians, but this can lead to brief, intense eye contact that may or may not have a life-threatening edge to it.  Looking is not recommended for all neighborhoods.  Most of the time you will find the bland expression of a body in transit.  Other times you can find some sublime little in-roads into the lives of total strangers.  

The supercilious, the doomed, the cantankerous, the lost, the famous pretending to be nonchalant. I can cast expert side glances and take in the full amazingness of a man in a lavender linen suit with matching hat without fully acknowledging that the man exists. The city can be downright hallucinatory without the occasional confrontation of eyes.  It is good to be warned off by the occasional bloodshot set or to be staunched entirely by people who are weeping openly on the city's sidewalks. 

Searching stranger's faces is an odd preoccupation. It may be a way of humanizing the otherwise anonymous millions I live beside.  In some small towns, eye contact is not only expected on Main Street, but should normally be attended by a greeting: a smile or a wave hello.  Here, the eyes are almost too much.  Thankfully when you are in public in New York, you are also alone.  There are just too many people to keep track of and the sidewalks are so regularly scandalized by freak-outs that people maintain the general law of live and let live, so long as their space (or sense of fashion decency) is not invaded.  

More frightening than the bloodshot daggers, which normally speak of a day of unending frustration, are the eyes that void their neutrality and suddenly want to be friends.  Every now and then an eager little glance is shot back from the pedestrian crowd, happy in a schizophrenic kind of way, intense and entreating, "Friend?" A total stranger? Either a small town soul bursting with naivete or the more likely predator scouring the streets for the small town soul to prey upon.  Whenever I come across one of those, I normally walk on so much the faster and ensure my expression has switched to neutral.  I'll scan the sidewalk for gum or the skyscrapers for cracks and plow ahead.