Louca Pit
The Obscene Onzini
After an onstage accident, fictional magician Olivia Onzini begins seeing physical censor bars all over town. Just what is going on here?!
In this cartoony short film that touches on the topics of clickbait, cancel culture and social media, the characters get caught up in an exaggerated misunderstanding that comically ramps up in scale within its short runtime.
Hi! I’m Louca Pit, the creator of this short!
Originally, I wanted to make a film about the dangers of censorship! However, in trying to narrow the topic down, I eventually landed on the relevant topic of the dreaded “cancel culture” phenomenon. When I read up on its history I came to a realization… Cancel culture is a good thing, right? It only exists to call bad people out on their bad behaviour. Thanks to cancel culture, toxicity is finally being removed from places where that toxicity has remained on top for far too long! So then… Why is it that it has such a negative reputation?
Vision
(If you’d like to read back on my research, it’s logged in my thesis, in the included PDF file! Sadly, though, for any English-speaking readers, this thesis is written entirely in Dutch.)
This is when I started to distinguish between “Original Cancel Culture” and “Infamous Cancel Culture”… The conclusion I came to was that this “Infamous Cancel Culture” is actually one that isn’t as common as people believe. It’s mostly a perception shaped by fear mongering in the news and exaggerated descriptions from other people. When somebody truly gets “cancelled” over something insignificant, people also usually forget about it pretty quick, and ultimately there’s little to no consequence… THIS was the form of cancel culture I wanted to depict in my film. The kind that seems like the end of the world, the kind that everybody fears, the kind that we’re all told we need to watch out for… Yet also the kind that will be shoved aside as soon as something more interesting happens, ultimately rendering it all pointless at the end of the day. Aren’t we silly?
Goal
My first goal with this film is to tell you that you have no reason to fear cancel culture.
The infamous form of cancel culture is one that is ultimately insignificant, the only people truly losing their careers to this trend are people in power who have been getting away with bad behaviour for years. So… Don’t worry! It doesn’t apply to you!
At least, I would hope so.
I don’t know who you are.
My second goal is that hopefully, after seeing this cartoonish scenario play out, you yourself might become a little more aware of the amount of haste that is involved in our current internet culture.
Currently, people feel as if they’re expected to deliver their opinions on the latest hot topics as quickly as possible. We have to get our hot take out before someone else says it first!
However, this kind of rush can often lead to misunderstandings. Many people, for example, don’t even read an article before shaping their own opinion about it, or even sharing it to prove a point!
Ideally, I think we could all learn to scale it back a little… That’s why with my movie, I’d like to ask people to take it a little slower. You really don’t have to rush out an opinion, you can take your time to check out what’s really going on first! And, well, it’s okay to not really have any opinion on something, too! If this film can get somebody to read into things before making a judgement about them, or even just be more mindful about checking their sources, then my film is a success!
Deze pagina is voor het laatst gewijzigd op 16 juni 2022
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