I don't get it ?
I don't get it ?
Thomas Wood
Ryan Peterson
It's basically just esoteric junk themed around 90s-early 2000s content of varying stripes. The bizarre aesthetics combined with a mild sense of purpose and mystery to what the characters are actually doing is enthralling for this aforementioned zoomer audience. It lacks much deeper meaning or thoughtfulness, but it's not 100% without merit.
Bentley Allen
>It's a waifu batman
Nicholas Brown
This. Although you might add, the nature of the current social media landscape, with the rise of TikTok, has caused YouTube to shift away from its old model of attempting to privilege the promotion of longer-form videos and return to its old policy of steering users towards short, highly-trafficked videos. To prosper in this niche requires a strong concept, easily grasped by a mass audience. In ENA's case it's simple: she's a cute waifu. Yes, there is the added element of the dadaist vaporwave aesthetic, which might seem at first to suggest a more original direction, but ultimately it is mere window-dressing to give ENA her quirkiness and stand out from the crowd. In short, it's not much different from so many other internet "cartoons" or "comics" that are little more than simple pastiches involving a (usually cute female) character, with no interest in storytelling as such.
Dylan White
i can understand the need for 'story' but what Ena and a dozen or so other experiences that Ena is parodying or using as homage have in common is using the aesthetics as story and dropping all formula.
There IS a story, it's all there just like it would be in a 11 minute episode of something somewhat surreal yet structured enough to 'satisfy' casual viewers such as Adventure Time or Chowder.
Even the minimal structure in these cartoons, however, is unnecessary. So you could call a Flapjack episode constrained to some degree and dependent on extended or interweaving surreal content "sound and fury signifying nothing" to apparently pad out the episode to audiences that must be told something has meaning or not (as if that worked in the first place, every fucking Marvel movie does this but even then not everyone 'gets it') instead of making up their own mind.
Every story has an essential philosophical or existential implication: "What if I", so when we watch some historical documentary the good ones bring you into that world and ask or imply to the audience: what would you do if the Nazis took over your city? or whatever.
Ena isn't a bunch of weird nonsense with no purpose. It's clearly asking: what if you were trapped in the 90s internet? How would you behave? How stable would you be? And, Is Ena a good example of how a person would behave in this situation?
These questions conflate and lead the viewer to experience some kind of sustained and minimal form of awe. I find the series fascinating. The story aspect (although never making 'sense' in an objective or superficial sense) is strong and presented through the aesthetics and nostalgia.
Jackson Hernandez
Not supposed to have depth, it's an excuse for aesthetic art and music. The artificial sense of depth was intentional because it's mimicking a Windows 95 FMV. Very little in the ENA universe is consistent but it gives the impression that it's all significant.
Grayson Parker
>everything I don't like was made for zoomers
Brody Adams
Communism
Alexander Hughes
what i'm getting here is that it's just artsy fartsy and not kino like Hands Up!
Jacob Sanders
>artsy fartsy
maybe, I think that's the gut reaction from 'non story' media experiences but I think Ena goes beyond that.
It's not really about how weird life is, it's about escape and nostalgia and how strange it would be and how dramatically it would alter your sense of reality and self. It feels like there is a deeper story (which might be pure projection, sure) but that all depends on basic story elements such as characterization and audience identification or willingness to suspend disbelief.
Nothing in Ena's world makes 'sense', but Ena, Moonie, and some of the dream figures she encounters have a kind of stability and identifiable traits. Even the world is consistently inconsistent. You know it will be weird, you can count on that as much as you can count on the characters 'feeling' like themselves. A strange experience.
But it doesn't feel like an artist masturbating and calling themselves a genius for it.
Xavier Evans
oh I'm sure that Joel is not doing this because he wants to be regarded as a genius. I'm sure this is all experimenting in the technical aspect for its own sake. That's the merit because it's less about the story and more about the method in which they tell that story. And thus, the production of highly experimented art for highly experimented art's sake is what I consider to be artsy fartsy
Logan Miller
It's just neat and Ena is cute. If you don't like it then that's fine.
Blake Peterson
i think shit like 'Un Chien Andalou' and other technical kinography requires a deliberate and conscious effort to divorce narrative from aesthetics (which might be impossible but you can try by quickly juxtaposing opposite aesthetics to 'confuse' audiences) where as Lynch and Eraserhead which seems somewhat inspired by earlier surrealism doesn't try to confuse or rapidly present meaninglessly contrasted aesthetics, instead there is merely no attempt to make overt sense of what's happening. The aesthetics tell the story in a naturalistic sense, where one dream image flows into the next like a conversation attempting some form of understated communication. Same with Ena, there is a 'method in the madness' and that's fascinating. But I don't believe Joel gives a fuck about story in and of itself.
Landon Gonzalez
yes, it works on tons of different levels but even the 'cuteness' of Ena is more complex than that, she's not fucking Smurffette or something. She's bizarre and her behavior and dialogue are strange and yet something captures your attention about her and you don't want bad things to happen to her while she navigates a universe where who is to really know if something happening to her is good or bad? It's fucking zen.
Kevin Long
Autism bait
Adam White
can't take dadaism seriously anymore because of rick&morthy pasta
Nathaniel Myers
It's meant to capture the vibe of trying to play a shitty confusing adventure game when you're a kid and don't understand what's going on. That's it, there's nothing more to get.
If you had that experience growing up then you'll get a huge kick out of these cartoons.
Gabriel Bailey
>enthralling for this aforementioned zoomer audience
I'm 33 and I like it because it reminds me of games I played as a kid, like I.M. Meen.
Chase Collins
>Communism
Jaxon Thompson
yes.
But TONS of great stories can be boiled down to a logline or mash up. The Godfather is about a reluctant son taking over his father's criminal legacy. Wizard of Oz is about a little girl who kills an evil woman and joins a bunch of strangers to kill another. You can be charitable, uncharitable or oblique about the synopsis of any story. The spirit of Ena is as simple as you say but it's done in a way that also appeals to anyone who feels alienated or even momentarily confused by various computer experiences or even more abstract memories of dreams.
Jacob Reyes
It's just abstract absurdism themed around the early internet. You don't need to think too hard about it.
Easton Howard
What's not to get?