Day 130

'Joker of the Pack', Pen and Marker on Paper

Today's drawing was a swift one as I hadn't much time to spare but one I think that illustrates a point. Often throughout your life you'll find yourself to have close friends that you'll see and spend time with regularly. This is something that evolves greatly over time also as there are people that you grew up with, went to school with, went to college with, worked with, lived with and any other number if iterations of people that you did something 'with'. Over time many of these people enter your life make there mark and leave again without a trace, whilst others cling on for dear life for the fear of losing you. All throughout those relationships there is always one common factor, that being the pack mentality, you will always find that there are a core group of friends that are all connected. The dynamic of the group, especially if any film or sitcom throughout the years is anything to go by, will comprise of some or all of the following... the leader, the joker, the serious one, the geeky one, the know it all, the idiot, the fanatic, the loser, the stud, the ugly one, the badass, the camp one, the weird one and again any number of variations on a character with a singular personality. The point then I have so far been avoiding but will now hopefully hammer home eloquently and with great perspicacity is... that no one is truly as one dimensional as most film, TV and media portrays. Instead we are an amalgamation of many of these personality traits so much so that we are indefinitely unique, multi dimensional and capable of being any one of the aforementioned archetypal characters at any given time. The portrayal of people in films and TV as having a very clearly defined persona is probably just a means of outlining what we are supposed to think about that the person straight from the outset. They create something that is one dimensional so that it is easily digestible and instantly recognisable, so that we can decide this is a good guy, that is a bad guy, I should hate that one, I should like that one, it is now time to be sad, it is now time to cue the applause. The unfortunate knock on effect of this is that we assign these perimeters to the relationships that we have in our own lives likening everyone we know to some character we've seen on the latest episode of whatever, sometimes even going as far as to complete one of those quizzes on Facebook with the title, 'Which (insert socially relevant film/TV show here) character are you?' when the truth is we answer the question in such a way as to end up being our favourite character anyway. I think though that it is inevitable that we do this as it's something that is deep seated in our nature to judge, form opinion and label something as we see fit. In fact it's pretty much what I've been doing all along with the spurious drivel I tend to compose and attach to each of the drawings on a daily basis. So by complaining about this does that make me a hypocrite... I suppose it does but then by admitting I'm a hypocrite that would suggest that I am in fact not being hypocritical, I think I'll leave you with that notion to allow it to gestate and possibly bemuse you.