There are some cyclical traditions regarding our consumption habits. It’s only logical that we eat the seasonal fruits we have at our disposal when the time comes, or that we prefer some indoor activities instead of going outside because inclement weather dictates so. With movies, it’s still the same.

I don’t have to tell you about Christmas movies or Specials, or how with All Hallows’ Eve, it would be a crime if it doesn’t come with a good serving of thrilling paranormal flicks or grand-guignolesque splatters. But beyond all those festivity-flavored movies, sometimes new trends appear seemingly from nowhere which mix a particular season with an unexpected type of movie. And in the last few years, that’s what happened with creature-featured Survival movies.

Open Water, The Shallows, Crawl, 47 Meters Down, Beast… It’s interesting because most of these movies usually fall in the aforementioned horror genre, but there’s something unique about these stories: first, it’s indispensable that they have the main villain in the form of an animal or beast, avoiding the supernatural origin; and second, they usually are set in natural landscapes or everyday places, avoiding the dark, scary places like haunted mansions or remote villages. Some even prefer a setting of paradisiacal beauty or a holiday destination, which could be one of the specific reasons these movies work so well in the summertime.

Having that in mind, I think it’s easy to know where it all began: the seminal work of director Steven Spielberg that changed the rules of the game in Hollywood, Jaws.

Beyond being considered the first film that kickstarted the “blockbuster era”, the movie about a man-eating shark became the blueprint for creature features. Titles like Orca, Piranha, Barracuda, or Tintorera were many of what we call today the “Jawsplotation films”; and they had different degrees of success. They were basically “water park slashers”, with their fair share of bloody deaths. But what these movies lacked was the adventurous tone mixed with an authentic sense of character drama that the Spielberg film had in spades. Jaws had real people with very understandable motivations, instead of being a bunch of bird-brained teens waiting the be the next redshirt.

Nevertheless, even when Jaws transformed cinema forever and it’s still a good example of how you should do a monster movie, I think that’s not the kind of tense, raw, nerve-racking experience that now we identify with the summer creature survival film; the movie that marked this subgenre the most is probably Cujo.

Where Jaws was epic, Cujo was claustrophobic. Where Jaws was entertaining and sometimes funny, Cujo was bleak and despairing. The horror movie based on the Stephen King book starring a snarling Saint Bernard was a perfect high concept: a mother and her son are trapped inside a car and must escape before the rabid dog and the heat outside kill them. Cujo didn’t have the best critical response at the time, but it became a pop culture icon and had a similar impact regarding its premise to what Die Hard achieved with a guy trapped in a building.

And here’s the thing: even when it is its most memorable element, the story of Cujo was not about an angry pooch, but a disintegrating marriage. A premise shouldn’t be the totality of the story (that’s obvious), and curious enough, the new batch of survival thrillers understand this very well: they all share characters that are hurting in the present due to an event from the past, so they travel to a different place to leave that pain behind. The protagonists of these movies have a desire to heal and make peace with their traumas, but somehow, that pain awaits for them as an inescapable new kind of animal.

So then, what do all that have to do with Summer?

Summer holidays are perfect to take time for ourselves so we can forget about our jobs and other social anxieties. We can relax, at last, go to placid and beautiful places and have a mojito. However, deep inside we know those issues are still there. Stalking. Waiting. Poised before they pounce on us. And they always get us just when the holidays are over. That’s why we have the dreaded Post-Vacation Blues. We expect summertime to fix everything, but that never happens. Even when we travel to the most remote place in the world, like the characters of these survival movies do, our problems don’t volatilize when we put distance in between.

We have to face them.

Survival movies are here to remind us that the struggle is necessary to be happy, that we must choose our fights and be ready to beat our enemy instead of running away. Another thing these stories also have in common is that the protagonists never have any kind of supernatural gift because they are like us. And like them, we don’t need superpowers to endure, because we are stronger than we think we are. Yes, it’s not going to be a harmless experience, but all scars tell stories that remind us of those fierce battles.

Because the experience we learn from Survival movies, be it against a hungry shark or an angry lion, is that Summer can be a time to think “We’ve made it this far. We can fight what it’s ahead of us”.

To learn, we need repetition, but is re-experiencing stories more than just a hedonistic ceremony?

There was a time in which you had a favorite movie. Just one. THE one.

That moment in which you were awestruck by a particular filmic experience, with you being no more than a pink-cheeked baby. Images that burned into your retinas irrevocably, which won’t leave you even when you closed your eyes and tried to sleep; scenes that played in an eternal loop inside your brain like a GIF.

And then, after you soaked all that movie up for the eleventh time like a frozen lemonade in the heat of August, your disproportionate and bobbly kiddy head would look to your parents and demand of them with imperious need: “play it again!”

You probably still can think about those days.

Humans are strange animals, but we are still mammals. We love to play it safe; we crave the familiar because we feel more secure that way. It especially occurs when we are children, and we recur to those experiences because they comfort us. But they also make us learn.

Now let’s go back to our adult lives (I guess all of you, dear readers, happen to be grown-ups?). You probably never watch a new release twice. Nor read the latest NY Times Best Seller more than once. And playing that open-world JRPG that lasted two hundred hours again? Forget about it.

Our time is limited, and the entertainment is overabundant. Also, our worn and aged brains cry out for the new and exciting. We wouldn’t be paying like five or so streaming services monthly if it weren’t like that. Even when we are nostalgic and want to live again that story that changed us forever, we generally would be more enticed to check out a newer entry to the same saga or franchise. Worse still, we would watch/read/play that modern title knowing beforehand that it would be much, much worse than the original.

Some of you would be thinking “hey, I already watch old movies! I’ve seen Star Wars five hundred times!”. And I would believe you. Many times we revert to our infant brain state and fall into the need for comfort. It happens when we feel down, and those re-experiences of what we love and cheer for really help us. Psychologists call this “volitional reconsumption”. It’s a very common usage of those movies, books, or games that are a part of you, but you rarely take something new out of them; which makes sense because we are seeking the familiar. That’s one way we can use the stories repetitively: to heal us. However, there’s the other extreme; and that is to use those multimedia experiences as drugs, to hide out from reality. There are always two sides to the same coin.

But, far from Pop Culture icons, it’s not so common to consume something for the thirtieth time. If we don’t have any emotional attachment to that media, we don’t care if those movies or books are very high-quality or genre-breaking or made Spielberg cry. Without nostalgia, without us open to the experience… we tend to forget those creations. And yes, I guess lots of you, fellow Nerds, still discover new stories and go back to them like five times in a row, but it’s unlikely that the audience would return to any piece of media if it’s not connected to a strong emotional response. Who would watch/read/play something again if it wasn’t a groundbreaking experience in the first place?

And because of that, I think we are missing a lot if we don’t recover and reanalyze those stories we already know.

Be it because there’s a new sequel or remake and we want to remember the older entries to see how they measure up, or because we want to show it to someone we know who hasn’t experienced it before, or maybe because we want to classify the previous works of a renowned creator; there’s always much to re-discover about the stories we consume. And when we make that little effort, sometimes, the magic happens: we find a new detail we weren’t able to understand before, or we realize we were unfair with a particular work because our context (a precise moment of our life, the people whom which we were sharing the experience, etc.) wasn’t the most favorable to make us click.

I still remember the first time I saw The Nightmare Before Christmas: my family rented it so all the children could watch it on Christmas Eve (and because I adored everything Tim Burton). And after only a few minutes… I HATED it. “Songs? Like in Disney films? In an exquisitely animated dark and bizarre world? They really screwed it up completely”. Or so I thought. Years later, when I wasn’t an edgy prepubescent smart-ass, the movie got on my way again. And that time, I got it. I felt the child-like adoration for Christmas and Halloween. I understood how a personal obsession can hurt others, no matter how well-intentioned it was in the first place. And I cried when I empathized with the melancholy of Sally and Jack and how they triumph over their lack of a meaningful existence with acceptance and love.

If it weren’t because I was studying animation and gave it a second shot, maybe I’d still remember that film not as the classic it is, but as an annoying kiddy musical. And the movie didn’t become better with the years as it were a wine, nor it was ahead of its time in any sense; it’s still the same now as it was in 1993.

Because stories don’t change over time, it’s us.

There’s something delightful and painful at the same time when you reread a book or rewatch a movie, and suddenly you’re aware of the passage of time. You notice how you’re older now than the main character that you looked upon when you were young, or jokes that made you crack, no longer amuse you. It serves as a re-evaluation, as an anchor point from which you can testify how some things mutate too fast and others stay the same no matter what. We can give a new perspective on ourselves and what surrounds us.

Stories are about change, about growing up, about transformation. But where all these media stay unchanged, we mutate into different beings. They remind us of the choices we’ve taken over time and consider how happy times, sad times, and hard times are all part of what we are at this precise moment. And ain’t it great that a piece of fiction can make us discover how we have improved in our lives?

It’s hard to write about visual arts. About their mannerisms and references. About their intricacies and how they are hidden from the most casual viewer. And, of course, about how their most obvious strokes and excessive quirks are equally difficult to discuss.

However, I think it’s necessary to talk about them.

Regarding art — and the people who devote their lives to it — , we, as an audience, tend to take a lot for granted. Sometimes, we romanticize it, describing it as a calling for those to happen to have the gift. Others, we treat it as a bodily function. Like something the artists need to throw out in order to keep up with their lives, freed (momentarily) from that unbearable weight.

And, I’m not gonna lie, I think there’s some truth to that. Especially that last assertion…

But I am not so interested in philosophical or academic discussions about art as in its power to inspire.

Some of you may happen to be reading this entry thanks to its title. Or maybe you know me beforehand and you think I can articulate something minimally insightful about my obvious interests in illustration and narrative arts (and I hope this doesn’t disappoint…), but I wonder how many of you had a moment in your lives that changed everything; all because you saw a particular image.

For me, it happened when my folks brought me a collection of dinosaur books from the Natural History Museum of London. Needless to say, that made me obsessed with those ancient reptiles (for life). And, needless to say, that obsession accompanied me until the debut of a certain movie called Jurassic Park. Because this article is not about the Dinomania of the 90s, I will spare you the details about what this specific phenomenon did in my childhood brain and how impulsed a need to have EVERYTHING that had to do with dinosaurs. That said, a certain (and very desired) book came to my little hands: The Making Of Jurassic Park.

Again, this is not an exercise in nostalgia. I loved the movie, thus I wanted to have cool dinosaur images and so, but this book made so much more for me; it sparked my interest in HOW the Steven Spielberg film was made. And even when I was amazed by the engineering of the life-size animatronics and the groundbreaking special effects, something more caught my eye: there were a bunch of illustrations that preceded all the magic that appeared in the film. It was those concept sketches and key arts that immediately put me to draw. I wanted to emulate the lines and colors of Crash McCreary and Craig Mullins. And I couldn’t stop.

That was the first time that I understood that, aside from a cultural or emotional expression, visual arts could be a job.

It may seem like a naive revelation, but I was 9 at the time. I couldn’t even fathom that this was possible. For me, drawing was an activity only reserved for children that, with time, adults happen to forget — except for cartoonists… But with that discovery, I had a new goal, something to pursue. And I learned more about animation and comics, and the processes that make them a reality. I bought more books and magazines on the subject, whenever I managed to grab some of the very few that there were released and translated to my language. Some years later, I pursued a career to study filmmaking and digital media.

All that because of a book.

Today, finding a Making Of book of a movie/series/game is not precisely hard. Their production has become more and more widespread and not only of the newest productions but also of some all-time classics. In some ways, they have become another merch item linked to a transmedia marketing strategy. A luxuriously printed compendium of beautiful images to put on our shelves. A souvenir of our experience with the work.

I may be sounding more cynical than I pretend, suggesting that art books are relegated to the mere cravings of a collector, so I must clarify that this is a good thing. These types of books were a rarity before, so it’s only positive if there are more of them now. And even when some of them really could be seen as a cash grab, they are more than a catalog of postcards; they are also a logbook of the creation of an audiovisual work. Again, they uncover an “arcane” process to us mortals.

This brings us closer to how these stories are (pre)visualized. How the most abstract concepts are translated to a visual language. How elements from our past and our present can permeate in new cultural artifacts. And, what I think it’s a most important life lesson: they show us how some of those images “fail”, so they are discarded to make room for more purposeful ones. That way, they de-romanticize this type of work, as they prove that every endeavor of this kind is made possible thanks to experimentation and — when the work is big enough — collective effort.

And then, there are the artists.

The art books demonstrate how a career in visual arts is indeed possible, yet they also make us discover the people that are behind the curtains. They are the architects who make the works we love come true. That’s why I can’t tolerate when a new art book is released and they don’t credit their artists. How can you make something that basically consists of the creations of a group of professionals and then not giving them recognition? It’s ridiculous. And inexcusable.

(Which may be related to the wrong turn that many of them have taken towards the NFT craze, but that is a topic for another day…).

Social media hasn’t been very kind to visual artists in general, with their illustrations also uncredited, plagiarized and many times downright stolen. That’s why it’s so vital that we never forget that creating the things we admire there are people who try to make a living with their craft.

Beyond unveiling the secrets of the industry, these books are a testimony of the great talent that goes unnoticed in all of these audiovisual projects. And what is more important: with their work, these professional artists transmit to us whatever inspired them so that it can inspire us.

Let’s give them the importance they deserve.

And let’s support them in any way possible!

The frowned face of the maleficent sorcerer denotes surprise. And fear.

His mortal enemy, a young warrior whose insignificant existence was nothing but an amusement mere minutes before, has become more powerful than he would’ve ever imagined. The sorcerer had murdered his brother years ago, and now the young warrior is driven by an unstoppable desire for revenge. The warrior roars like a lion, concentrating all his strength in a mighty blow. His arms are imbued with supernatural power, orange bolts of lightning that emerge due to the rage in his heart. Fists and lightning impact into the sorcerer’s chest, knocking him off his feet. The sorcerer falls from a balcony, unable to elude his deadly fate: a trap made with a bed of spikes. Impaled by the razor-sharp blades, the evil sorcerer exhales his last breath. From above, the young warrior sees his enemy defeated, with a spike protruding out of his chest.

Then, the sorcerer’s corpse deteriorates incredibly fast, turning into a mummy just before he becomes an explosion of light that engulfs the arena.

There’s no open-wide ripped thorax nor are there guts twisted in a spiral around the spikes. Not even blood coming out of the mortal wound nor forming a pool underneath his dead body.

That’s the climactic fight of Mortal Kombat.

Back in the 90s, the game became an instant classic thanks to its shameless (and at the same time revered) regurgitation of various B-Series movies and action figures’ sources of inspiration. But what nobody could have suspected is how its movie adaptation, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, has now achieved cult status. Even the newest film adaptation takes cues from it and homages its banging main theme. Even the latest entry in the video game saga has paid homage to it. For many, the 1995 film is the best game-to-movie adaptation to this day.

And curious enough it doesn’t have what was precisely the original selling point of the franchise: gore.

I’m sure that this was somewhat a complaint back in the day for those fans who expected a good bloodbath like in the game. And that brought me to the next question:

Why do some audiences crave violence so much in fiction?

We could say violence and media have a long story together. We’ve been drawn to visceral and aggressive scenes from the dawn of times. Bloody battles have been captured in art forms as old as cave paintings or funerary vases. In fact, in Ancient Greece, they even had a specific word — sparagmos — for how an animal or human sacrifice was torn apart in a Dionysian rite.

Centuries later, it’s not that we have changed much with our Call of Duties and our Saws.

In many games, comics, and movies, gore is treated as a playful spectacle and grotesque parody. The more splatter, the better. In games like the aforementioned Mortal Kombat, violence is used to distance itself from other fighting games and arcades, but also as a way to humiliate the rival and as a celebration of our victory. The problem, though, is the law of diminishing returns: every new entry in the saga becomes less and less impactful in its use of gore because the players are increasingly insensitive to it.

How to make the blood and guts matter again?

What Mortal Kombat teaches us is that is all a matter of contrast. You need to stage the violence differently from what you had before if you want it to stand out. However, it also can be of good use when it’s used in limited ways. Many stories are restrained and peaceful… Until they’re not. Blood and gore serve as a signal that punctuates the escalade. That shit has just hit the fan.

You probably know of that little film called Psycho. It still is one hell of a movie, and it’s amazing how it made its most violent scene — one of the most iconic of all time — without gore. Really. If you didn’t know that, go watch it. The knife NEVER touches the woman. And it happens in one of the most simple settings ever: a shower. I talked about how horror is more powerful when it brings the mundane in another of my articles, so maybe you should check that out…

However, you can be affected by blood even when there are buckets of it throughout the story anyway. There’s another video game that repeats the shameless brutality of Mortal Kombat (this time with a subjective POV!) but also integrates it into the narrative with great results.

In Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus — a game that sets you in a post-WWII dystopia in which the Third Reich has conquered the USA — you have a feeling of jubilee every time you exterminate a nazi with a hand ax. Its gunplay is fast and energetic, and every single shot makes your whole body rumble. I don’t think its viscerality is matched by any First Person Shooter out there, honestly. And the game doesn’t stop at that, as it generates a side effect to all that violence: it also makes you wonder if you’re becoming a monster. But even that effect somewhat fades away after several hours of non-stop nazi hunting.

Then, a fascinating change occurs right in the heart of the story.

A moment, not spectacular, not glorified, that made me connect with the main character in a way all the previous shootings and cinematics couldn’t before (somewhat of a SPOILER ahead!): the moment they kill you.

Of course that scene is a plot device. Of course it’s presented in a non-interactive video. And of course you, as a player, are killed (a lot) through the game as it happens with almost every action game in existence. But what set all this apart for me was how, when you become ONE with the main character, when you understand his motivations as well as when you control his god-like fury to annihilate your enemies and you think you are invincible, then the narrative tells you both the hero AND the player that you are not untouchable. It’s not a scene more violent than what you have already seen, but it gets you right in the guts because the game reminds you that violence, even if it’s justifiable, always leaves a mark. And it’s not always the physical mark that leaves a bigger scar on you.

It reminded me a lot of Robocop and its exaggerated use of gore to make it almost a caricature. Its director, Paul Verhoeven, sustained that the more extreme and splashy the violence is depicted, the less you can take it seriously. But in the one scene where the main character is viciously assassinated… it’s too much to handle. Verhoeven wanted a pivotal scene in which the violence was used differently than in the explosive action that is so characteristic of the film. He even compared what occurs to his protagonist to the crucifixion of Christ. He needed it to feel different. So in that scene, there’s more tension, no usage of music, and the cartoon-like splatter is replaced by a more realistic approach. And it’s brutal and terrifying.

And this leads me to talk about one of my favorite shows from in recent years…

On its surface, it’s one of those edgy animated TV series made for “adults” -ahem- which mixes even edgier elements like barbarians, zombies, and dinosaurs. And lots of blood and gore. But the dozens of us (dozens!) who followed Genndy Tartakovsky, one of the most genuine wizards of animation of our time, and were awaiting Primal eagerly, we knew it was not just a show about the glorification of violence or a darker new interpretation of our Saturday morning cartoon of yore.

Although in a way, it’s a lot like that.

Primal delights itself, like Mortal Kombat did, playing with multiple inspirations to achieve an exciting package. The pacing is as kinetic as you could expect from an animated series of around 22 minute long episodes but there’s another element that makes its visual part even more prominent: it’s a show with no dialogue. So — music aside — the animation and the editing carry all the weight of the storytelling. This makes Primal go straight to what we want from this show: adventure, action, cool monsters, great fights, and gallons and gallons of blood.

Or is it?

Don’t get me wrong, Primal has all of those in spades, and then some. But even when its duration or lack of talking characters seem like a limitation or an excuse to indulge in the more awesome elements, the show manages to focus on what really matters: its Themes.

Just from the beginning, Tartakovsky and his team make a declaration of intent when we are witnesses of the first action in the first few seconds of its running time: the killing of a living creature with a spear. This tells us two things right on; first, this violent act is only just an iota of what we’re going to see in the subsequent minutes, and two, the blood-soaked weapon is as much the tool of destruction for the character as it’s an extension of him. Spear — because of course that is how the character is named in the credits — has to face a world dominated by a constant cycle of violence. It’s all about survival. Or so it seems…

Not too long after that first scene, Spear loses almost everything he had in the world except the weapon that gives him his name. It happens in a very cruel and savage way, and all he can do is watch helplessly. And even when his suffering pushes him to a brief attempt at revenge (and suicide — this show is BLEAK), he remembers that is more important to live one more day. And to live, he must kill again; but his survival depends on how he chooses his prey. What appeared to be an exciting, fast-paced, gory entertainment turns into a more reflexive show. The way Primal addresses violence goes from spectacle to trauma to an empty repetitiveness. Spear is left with nothing but loss as the only meaning of his existence. As if life itself was a predator that constantly bites the main character until he’s only a hopeless skeleton. The amazing thing with this show is that what I’m describing here is not the entire season, but the first ten minutes…

After that, is when the story reveals the most important piece of the puzzle.

Spear has an encounter with a big dinosaur not too different from those which tore his life apart. Hungry and desperate, he sees how this thunder lizard snatches his lunch right in front of him. Spear can’t take it anymore and follows the dinosaur to its den just to discover that the giant reptile is a mother trying to feed her two chicks. Before he gets to decide whether to attack or run, Spear and the mother are ambushed by the same vicious pack of dinosaurs that he confronted before, and thus, he’s involved in a scene almost identical to the one that caused his trauma. He’s condemned to relive his pain over and over again. But something has changed: Spear witnesses how ANOTHER character suffers an equal fate. In a kill-or-be-killed world, for the first time, he puts himself in the shoes (paws) of the Other. And this is the start of a powerful bond between two characters, different and the same, that choose to be together to face the constant hardships of life. They both grieve, but they have each other.

It’s only fitting that this show is called Primal. It is aggressive and blunt, but also incredibly honest.

For years there has been much ado about how violent media can be damaging or how it can desensitize us; however, the question should never be about violence itself, but how it’s used. The context is everything. In stories like Primal, Robocop, or Wolfenstein II, violence gains thematic relevance. They demonstrate that gore and bloodshed can be used in funny and de-stressing ways, but then they go further and make violent portrayals meaningful. And if it’s articulated in the right way, violence becomes cathartic. Characters that have to go through a painful experience make us feel connected to them — we empathize with them — but it’s also a powerful tool for learning.

These kinds of stories show us how we can, if not overcome pain, at least make it more bearable when we can’t avoid it. That and how to understand others as much as ourselves when they are hurt.

After all, “if you prick us, do we not bleed?”.

I don’t think I’m the only one in saying this: the way Japanese artists depict food is amazing.

The first time it struck me was watching Dragon Ball back in the 90s when I was a child. I was already used to seeing lots of subject matters translated to the animated medium, but Goku, the main character, devoured dozens of bowls as they were the spinach that made Popeye strong — with the difference that here food had no use in the plot. It was not the surprise of seeing a cartoon character eating so much that had an impact on me, though… It was how mouth-watering the food seemed.

I didn’t even know what those dishes were made of in its day, but my stomach was growling just the same.

With time, I realized that this wasn’t something exclusive of Toriyama’s most famous work, but a very distinctive feature of these comics and their animated adaptations. I also discovered a trope among many of their main characters: the way they enjoy eating so much.

I wish I knew more about Asian culture and their philosophy around food… Nevertheless, what I do know is that if there’s a common denominator among every human culture, that’s cooking. And coming from Spain (although I suspect that anyone who comes from another Mediterranean country will feel exactly the same), where food is treated almost like a religion (scratch that — it IS a religion), I couldn’t but empathize and envy those characters.

In fact, Spain has its own share of food-lovers characters, being Carpanta by Josep Escobar the most famous of them all. But cartoonish characters such as Carpanta usually were a reflection of the picaresque novels; a social critique that depicted the starvation of the deprived people of the Spanish post-war era. It wasn’t “pleasure” what they obtained when they get to sink their teeth into their much-desired food, but the luxury of surviving one more day.

Furthermore, even when the food was a key element of those comics (or at least, its function as a McGuffin), those stories weren’t really about it.

Some years after I saw Dragon Ball, following a phase in which I was put off by Japanese comics because I mainly consumed the same teen-targeted stories again and again (that’s your Shonen and your Shojo), I found by chance a new genre: the Cooking Manga.

Tired (at the time) of battling demigods and magical girls, discovering that comics could also portrait everyday lives was incredibly refreshing. And for the first time, gastronomy was at the heart of the story.

This particular “work manga” came out in the 1970s, when the economy had a rapid acceleration and the middle class had the possibility of eating out and trying new and exciting flavors.

Among the titles that are part of that specific genre, there’s one that is practically an institution in Japan and that turns out to be one of the longest-running series in the history of the medium; Oishinbo, also called A la Carte.

As a work, it is pretty straightforward and with a friendly and cartoonish art dressing, but as I mentioned before, the food shines with its own light. Its structure is also delicious, as they are usually self-contained chapters in which a specific dish or ingredient is discussed. The premise is simple: a couple of food critics must find Japan’s “ultimate menu”, and in each episode, they meet and help chefs and foodies to discover a new culinary aspect so we, the readers, can learn about it too.

That said, it seems that it has a similar approach to a Netflix documentary, but it has its part of drama as well, not far from how it is embodied in a Shonen. In particular, there is a “villain” with more experience and power than the protagonist who also wants to get the most idiosyncratic menu of the country. And as you could expect… He is the father of the protagonist.

I told you that there was drama…

Not every cooking manga is about competitiveness and honor, though. My personal favorite has to be Kodoku no Gourmet (translated in some countries as Solitary Gourmet ) written by Kusumi Masayuki and illustrated by the master Taniguchi Jirō. In it, story development is reduced to a minimalistic excuse: a salesman called Inogashira Gorō looks for restaurants and food booths when he’s hungry.

But where the plot is just the seasoning, the emotion becomes the main dish.

I remember it was my father who bought this manga, attracted by the simple fact that Japanese food was at its center. At first, I thought that it was going to be very similar to Oishinbo; and yes, you can find in Solitary Gourmet a similar educational or cultural purpose. There are panels that explain with careful detail each one of the dishes, its price included. But what left an impression on me was that the artist devotes himself to draw the necessary space and detail on every page to make you feel the same as the protagonist. It portrays the food as something that soothes the main character's soul, and in the poetic lines and framings of Taniguchi, his emotions are directly projected to the reader.

Few literary works can have the power to make you savor a soup or a stew, but this manga absolutely succeeds at it. And as happens with the titular character, you feel better afterward.

Little by little, I’ve been finding more comics about food in the West too, some of them inspired by the Cooking manga genre or the Asian culture. It’s the case of Anthony Bourdain’s Get Jiro! or his latest, Hungry Ghosts, where the renowned chef expressed his love for Japanese folklore and gastronomy to write an anthology of short horror stories.

Disgust and nastiness are another way to explore how we interact with food. It’s about how it makes us feel at a visceral level, but it doesn’t always have to be pleasant.

However, where I think this culinary comic subgenre has flourished regarding how it displays food and emotion is in its digital form.

There are LOTS of webcomics in which food is an important ingredient of the story. Some of them even challenge the very conception of the medium (like Drawing Recipes — is it a comic or is it an illustrated cookbook?), but they usually share the love for cooking. This new form of gourmet comics is a perfect match of another genre that thrives in this newest expression of narrative arts, and that’s the slice of life. As it happened in this Japanese genre, it’s only natural that a new generation of creators wanted to express themselves by depicting the most mundane scenes. And, as it also happens with its manga ancestor, most of the time it doesn’t even rely upon an elaborate plot.

Feelings are as centric here as the food itself, making an interesting mix. This way you can learn new recipes for your repertoire but at the same time, you empathize with a character. Like in Solitary Gourmet, the stories depicted in these comics nourish our minds because the artists who craft them act as passionate chefs that pour nothing but soul into their creations.

This always makes me remember that cooking and comics are artifacts of cultural transmission; food can act as a story (depending on the vegetables of the season, the origin of the ingredients, temperature…) and, likewise, narrative art can feed our spirits with messages that are vital for our survival.

If they are genuine and sincere, they both have something to teach us and make us feel and be better.

These comics have become something beyond eye-candy for me, and what I have discovered is that I especially enjoy them because ultimately, they are about creation.

Because that’s how any creative process is like: a set of techniques, practices, cold sweats, and self-doubts in pursuit of achieving the necessary harmony between all the ingredients to imbue the result with purpose and sense.

As happens with cooking, comics are something magical — alchemical — when it all comes together, but it’s not about having the best possible final product…

It all makes sense when it’s destined for others to enjoy.

They are as much about producing something to be proud of as it is for sharing a part of yourself.

After all, a good meal always tastes better with company.

Spoilers are all around us. This is obvious; there has never been a period like this before in which we were more surrounded by info and media. And regarding entertainment, gone are the times in which you had fewer channels on TV than the fingers of your hand and a cinema with one or two movies in its billboard. This means lots of films, uncountable shows, never-ceasing comics, and a continuous cascade of game releases and services… All of them with stories to tell.

And to be spoiled.

But let’s be honest here. Although there are billions of stories out there to entertain ourselves, there are always a few of them that stand out above the rest, be it for production values, for having the hottest actors of the moment, or because it is the fiftieth adaptation of a revered franchise or universe. Sometimes even a mix of all those. And as an audience, we cannot help but flock to them, although most of the time, those factors I cited before are only the first little push. Because what we really want, as the social animals we are, is to share our experience with others.

Remember Avengers: Endgame? Emotions were on edge for most of the people who wanted to watch the film and then… Someone leaked a few of the most pivotal scenes. And of course, Disney went on full damage control mode. Their genius countermeasure? They even made a campaign out of it.

Needless to say, it worked like a charm.

Not because it refrained people from looking for those spoilerific (and blurry) clips, but because it put everybody on the notice that those existed. Of course, this #DontSpoilTheEndgame hashtag went viral and many fans started to take drastic measures to avoid the plot twists… But also tempted a bunch of movie enthusiasts to actively search for them before the movie was released. It made the movie even more important than already was. It made it something you MUST experience. And surprise: with those clips in the wild, it cemented the need of those who already wanted to see the movie, but also encouraged those who spoiled themselves to increase their anticipation for it. It became the perfect marketing storm.

You know the results: it made it to the top of the most grossing films of all time (for a while).

What got me is that, when the dust settled after all that maelstrom of emotions, fast food promos, and Funko Pops, there wasn’t much else to talk about.

I mean, there certainly was some discourse about the movie, but more about (again) the emotions and the experience itself or if it lived to the hype, instead of what it tried to articulate. Also, once that film was “consumed”, the audience only started thinking about what the future would bring in that continuum of movies.

We tend to think that these movie-going experiences (and their literature or gaming equivalents) are going to be life-changing. That they’ll be some kind of epiphany that would alter our boring, repetitive daily routine and would prevent us from thinking about the emptiness of existence. But after we’ve been exposed to all of that we still feel incomplete, so the search to get a new fix begins again. We can’t help it.

FOMO. Our Corporate Overlords’ favorite marketing tool.

Not too long ago, the Mystery Box philosophy became the new rage, infecting Hollywood and other media. Basically is the storytelling equivalent of click-baiting. However, fictional narratives have not always relied on that. Writers like Stephen King do the exact opposite. Look at this example from Pet Sematary (if you haven’t read it, maybe you should avoid the next line…):

“And Gage, who now had less than two months to live, laughed shrilly and joyously.”

Wow… If that’s not a SPOILER with capital “S”, I don’t know what it is… It’s gut-wrenching, devastating, categorical… Yet it is a page-turner, for sure. Foreshadowing is a very powerful tool, and King really knows his craft.

Some of why that rings true is explored in a little experiment made in 2011 for Psychological Science. Authors Jonathan D. Leavitt and Nicholas J. S. Christenfeld concluded that people “are wasting their time avoiding spoilers” and that spoilers “enhance enjoyment by actually increasing tension”.

Soooo… Yes, having some pivotal info at the beginning of the story doesn’t only save us time, but gives us something we want to check by ourselves. To see HOW those events happen or if the narrator is to be trusted.

It’s not too different in journalism, where you first expose the theme and then you articulate it and add to it. It’s about giving context, not hiding information. Yet we read an article because learning about what it has to say is the real experience. We want to know if there’s something important in there.

Because when we find useful info, we remember it.

In video game design it’s said that, above the thrills and superficial aspects, it’s learning what makes a title FUN. Learning as the opposite of getting bored.

As human beings, we love to learn new things. And that knowledge and pleasure become even deeper if we re-experience them again and again. Or why do you think we tend to revisit books, movies, and games even when we know them inside out?

But before I get to the end, please understand: we all love a good twist ending. And some storytellers have made them an integral part of the experience. It’s logical if we don’t want to be robbed of the surprises that a piece of work may grant us. On social media, we shouldn’t spill these spoilers freely without warning because there are lots of people out there that were already in line to see the new movie, read the new book or play the new game. It’s a matter of respect (so don’t be a cyberbully). But perhaps it is journalists and communicators who shouldn’t treat those spoilers as a sacred thing only because that would keep potential audiences away from their content. We need a deeper analysis of the stories that interest us instead of following the big companies’ marketing plans; not doing so turns essays into advertisements.

I take that, if you have made it this far, it’s because the SPOILER warning in the subtitle above has not deterred you from continuing reading… Has this essay changed your view about spoilers? Do you still think they are an essential part of our enjoyment or do they make stories more disposable?

Are movies or literature a lesser art form because of it?

Does it matter?

Ultimately, I don’t think it does, as long as we keep talking about them.

Carlos P. Valderrama
@Valderrama_CP

Oh… Hi! First of all, thanks for stopping by.

This is my first of (hopefully) a regular series of articles about pop culture ideas I can’t help but overthink. Because English is not my first language, the fear of making a fool of myself has prevented me from taking the first step. That, and the tiny little detail of thinking that I couldn’t provide something of value to anyone.

Who has not felt like this before?

I don’t have a monopoly on truth, nor I’m what you’d call an expert in any matter. So then, why am I finally doing this? First of all, because you only have to check your social media of choice to realize that there are too many voices out there talking about what they feel like — and it’s not like they always have a profound understanding of the subject itself.

And before sounding (even) more pedantic than I am, I think this can be a positive thing. Let me explain.

On the one hand, every one of us has that need to communicate, and we resort to that kind of behavior because we want to make sense of all those ideas and themes. And some of those themes aren’t always vital or life-changing. On the contrary: we love to talk about the most trivial ideas because they’re everywhere and every one of us crashes with them more often than not. As the Danny Elfman song said, [we] “can’t get away from the little things”.

But on the other hand, I’m tired of all the noise. Social media has become almost an OBLIGATORY part of our lives. Everybody has something to say, but because we are so many, our messages must never pull any punches: they must be blunt and big. That’s why I wanted to write this way. To have my space. To share this cozy room with you. Instead of throwing grandiloquent headlines to grab your attention, here I can write at length, even if it’s only to make questions, instead of providing answers. And thanks to this approach, I don’t have to fall prey to the Bigger Themes.

Now, what better medium to talk about the themes that assault us than stories? I’ll go straight to the point: I LOVE genre movies and literature, especially Horror. It hasn’t always been like this, but I’ll spare you from telling you the story of my life… The crucial thing that made me fall in love with these types of stories is that it takes the things we want to keep hidden and brings them all out. It confronts us with our taboos, our fears. In that way, the horror genre talks about ourselves in a much more sincere way than other kinds of fiction. Horror isn’t usually about what we deserve or what we can aspire to; it vivisects us and shows us who we really are. Because of that, it’s a genre that upsets or offends people, and that turns it into a niche.

And you guessed it: that’s also the reason horror isn’t precisely the most laureated genre on award seasons or why some authors prefer to distance themselves from the genre (rebranding their stories as psycho-thrillers, dark fantasy or so) to avoid scaring the mainstream audience.

But in the last few years, a phenomenon happened on the cinema front… Horror movies mutated. Maybe I’m being oversimplistic here, but I noticed that there were, in a nutshell, two types of horror: the intense but vacuous Ghost Train kind of flick and the profound, socially conscious supernatural drama. The former I don’t have much to talk about because they themselves have few things to tell (and probably that’s an article for another time…), and the latter is what has propelled horror films to a new “Golden Age”. Or so a bunch of critics says.

Mental issues, the alienation of minorities, migration problems, cancer… Thanks to these Bigger Themes articulated on that new strain of cinematic horror, the genre became relevant to the mainstream audiences and better regarded by critics. And yes, I KNOW most of those issues were contained in lots of horror movies from the past decades, but it was different before: their messages were buried under a blood-red color wrapping. Those movies knew that their main mission was to scare the crap out of you in the theater and then, after you’ve experienced them, leave you with something more to think about. At least that’s what the best ones did.

I realized this when, a few weeks ago, watched Body Bags for the first time. I adore anthology films (and I miss this format a lot nowadays) and it had John Carpenter as a master of ceremonies, so it was a win-win. Of the three shorts included here, two of them were directed by the master himself and, particularly, the second one grabbed my attention. Because this movie was a horror-comedy, the whole package was supposed to be very tongue-in-cheek, but this segment called “Hair” was especially funny.

That was until it made my skin crawl.

Instead of presenting a very significant social or psychological issue, it revolved around a very “lesser” theme: the idea of losing your hair.

I know, I know… This surely sounds like a silly premise and it even had some campy B-movie tropes in there but the story reminded me of a fear lots of us have felt at some point in our life. Primarily men, probably, but lots of women too. That disdainful feeling about your body, of how you start to transform into some abject being incapable of being loved… It doesn’t have to be about your hair in particular, but about other physical imperfections you discover that there weren’t there before. It’s about the disintegration of your own self as a whole. It’s about getting old. Add some body horror to the mix and -voilà!-, the movie has you running to the nearest mirror to check if your scalp is more noticeable now or if you have a blotch where there shouldn’t be.

When the movie ends, you know that you had a great time… But that fear doesn’t leave you so soon.

Movies like Hereditary, Suspiria (the newest one), It Follows, or Get Out are as necessary today as ever (and I love them in their own right), but the more these kinds of movies stick to be important, the more I feel like the “terror” is secondary. I enjoy them, for sure; but it’s more like an intellectual experience than a visceral one. They make me learn about a theme because I sympathize with the characters and the situation they have to go through. They provide me a new point of view. They educate me.

However, because some of those Bigger Themes are so important, I experience the stories from the outside. I witness them, but I’m not as involved.

When the scale of the problem is too big, it needs more context. As an audience, we need more info to be able to understand an issue, be it socio-political, economic, or medical. Unlike mundane problems, those haven’t an instant impact on us.

And if you think this article is an argument about “keeping politics away from horror”, please don’t.

Every story is political, whether you notice it or not. Whether you like it or not. Instead, this is me complaining about some movies and how they’re used as Ted talks before they provide an audience a way to be involved. To be bystanders instead of accomplices.

Ultimately, I don’t think that’s a problem. One of the best things about horror is that it can have many forms. It’s vital that it communicates its messages so they permeate us as individuals and as a society. But at the same time, horror films should not be ashamed of being “unimportant” and “trivial”.

Some of these new horror films understand it and, like the greatest classics from the past, mix the Bigger Themes with the mundane. Watching movies like His House, not all of us would fully understand what it is to be a refugee from a war-torn South Sudan, but any of us would know for sure what it’s like to be anxious to belong when you move to a new place or the crawling, poisonous feeling of guilt that doesn’t let us sleep. And those little things are what makes us connect.

Stories are always empathy machines and, in particular, horror films make us feel vulnerable and thus, more open to feel like the characters and to understand their problems.

Maybe it’s just when they are put together with small ideas it’s easier for them to get under our skin?

Carlos P. Valderrama
@Valderrama_CP