A blog servicing Mr. Ferencz's students.
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Friday, November 22, 2013
E.C. - Juniors - Uncanny Images
Let's create a library of uncanny images! Post a link to an uncanny image and please explain why you find this particular image to be uncanny. Explain what is both familiar and unfamiliar about your image.
This eerie and well-known monster from Courage the Cowardly Dog (a show that masters the uncanny) is King Ramses, who sends plagues to Courage and his family to get back his precious slab. His silhouette and appearance creeps out not only children, but adults as well by breaking the animation style of the show and using CGI, which the animators occasionally used to make viewers feel uncomfortable. The structure of the show, and the types of villains is familiar, but this sudden change of style is not, especially since the background is the usual style, but Ramses' CGI, skeleton-like head stands out, the contours of his face ominously lit, an effect that is only aided by his spindly figure the sways unnaturally in the wind.
This picture is unheimlich to me because part of this person's tongue is a zipper. The tongue and mouth are familiar to me. The zipper is also familiar to me. However, part of the missing tongue replaced by the zipper is unfamiliar since I've never associated those two things together. The zipper tongue is a twist on the familiar mouth, which we all see on a daily basis.
This is an image of a dog with human eyes and lips. If someone were to walk down the street and pass by this dog, that person may or may not give it a second glance. This is because many of a normal dog's features are still there such as its familiar silhouette and ordinary fur color. However, with a closer look, the dog's face is uncanny. The dog's eyes are distinctly human and even have a set of eyebrows on top. Its lips are set the same way a human's are. It even appears to have a forehead with wrinkles. The dog in the picture looks a bit judgmental, which is a human reaction. Seeing a human's features on a dog is uncanny because it mixes the familiar with the foreign. If the features were not human and the silhouette was not that of a dog's, then the picture would not be uncanny. The picture would be entirely foreign and would give no sense of oddness or comfortableness.
This is a picture of a boy at Disneyland with Mickey and Minnie Mouse. I found this picture to be particularly strange an uncanny because they don't look like today's Mickey and Minnie Mouse. The thing that stands out the most is probably the nose/mouth. They're so exaggerated and elongated from the contemporary and familiar face. The picture is also very creepy because the costumes don't seem to have an apparent emotion or feeling and this sense of unknown emotion is why we find this creepy. Even though the costume can be distinguished as Disneyland characters, there's something off.
This is a picture of Justin Jedlica after undergoing over 110 plastic surgeries in order to transform himself into the human Ken doll. I find this picture to be uncanny because his face seems to be so unatural. Human faces don't have the characteristics of his face. His lips are extremely wide and his jaw line seems to have been tampered with multiple times. Overall, there is a very fake feeling when looking at him. Something is off about his whole look and I can't really put my finger on it, but i feel like his face is weird looking. What is familiar is that he has the appearance of a human, but something about his appearance makes it seem almost cartoon like. He also seems to have some sort of glow in his skin which seems almost too perfect.
The popular "face swap" fad across the internet is a prime example of playing into what the general public considers to be uncanny. Here, we see the face of a man and his baby swapped. The two faces presented are perfectly normal, provided they were attached to the proper people. This is because we all associate a certain physique with the baby and the man respectively - we expect the face of the baby to be smooth, small, and rather innocent. In contrast, we expect the face of the man to be large and developed. By swapping their faces, the result is a complete contradiction of our expectations, inspiring discomfort in some people, myself included.
Looking for pictures is rather difficult! I don't actually have a folder full of uncanny pictures on my desktop... But strangely, my friend sent me a few, which is quite... uncanny!!
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UBbOqWYLJWk/Ul7S2WZ5ekI/AAAAAAAAHvE/NpuSsDdFhvY/s640/Pennywise.jpg The teddy bear here has teeth and like you'd expect, because of that, it's not your typical cute and cuddly stuffed animal. In fact, I wouldn't want to have this bear. It's like mutilating the bear, putting the teeth in it (that was probably what was done to get the teeth in...). We're used to teddy bears being cute, but this is not cute. Although those teeth are (more or less) human teeth, it looks strange on a bear. It probably wouldn't look as weird if the teeth were bear teeth, but that's not the case. To make things worse, the proportions aren't right. The mouth seems much too big for a teddy bear of that size. Although it has elements of things we're used to seeing, put together, it's uncomfortable to look at. Let's keep cute teddy bears cute, and leave them the way they are!
This is a picture of a woman hugging a man. However, at the angle the picture is taken, the woman's head is not visible so it looks like a man with a woman's legs. The idea of someone hugging another person is normal and so is the image of the human body. The short shorts, heels, and shaved legs are all associated with females so when looking at the picture, it confuses the viewer to see a man's head on what appears to be a woman's body. This picture makes the viewer look twice in order to make sense of it; however, for that brief moment, the mind is surprised at the abnormality of the picture.
This is a picture of a doll. Something that seems so familiar and harmless to us. Yet it's these very types of harmless things, when twisted out of our comfort zone, that creep us out the most. The doll has a distorted, possesed body figure.Notice it's uncanny skinniness and torn cheek. The mangled face and thin fingers are not what we would see in our everyday children's toy. The whole image is hard to look at because it perverts something that we normally perceive as so harmless. This is also why possessed women and girls appear in horror films and not men. Their creepy, uncanny behavior in these films is chilling and sharply betrays our expectations for women.
This is a pretty simple example of an uncanny image. The picture is very familiar to us, it's just a guy with a beard. Yet something throws us off in this picture, and obviously it is the guy's missing forehead/top of head. This picture is similar to the plastic surgery photos that were shown in class, since both are a distortion of the face/head in some way (and it is usually easy to describe the distortion). Even though this image is simple, it is a good way to better understand the idea of uncannyness, due to its simplicity.
http://craftastrophe.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/whos-your-dada-toilet-paper-cozy-doll.jpg This is an image of a baby behind a trash can at first glance. It looks familiar because its a baby, who's kind of chubby with big eyes. But as you start looking at this picture more you wonder why the baby is holding a pair of scissors, or why his head is actually in the garbage can. The weird ears on top of his head are creepy but the most uncanny thing is the reflection on the trash can. I guess the reflection is physically possible but it just gives me an uncomfortable feeling looking at that. And the feet and hands of the baby looks distorted too, as if the fingers and toes were melted together.
This is an image of the popular Family Guy dog, Brian Griffin. I found this image uncanny because it's a dog that engages in all the activities an adult human would do. He is familiar because of his humanistic traits and his lovable character. However, he is a dog. A dog that can talk, walk on two legs and have affairs with women. He also engages in intercourse which is truly unfamiliar for a normal dog.
http://hackneycitizen.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/flying-dog-credit-last-tuesday-society-009.jpg This is an image of a fake "flying" dog at a museum. The image seems familiar because at first glance, we recognize the animal as a dog. However, it's unfamiliar because there are brown colored bird wings sticking out of his sides. His mouth is open in surprise; the outline of the mouth and its face expression gives us the impression that the dog is looking at something, but we can't tell what he's looking at. We are used to seeing dogs walk on the ground, not float in midair. There also seems to be something sticking out of his left foot.
The famous Slenderman is an uncanny figure. He is an unnaturally tall, thin, faceless man that wears a suit. In this picture, Slenderman is innocuously holding hands with a girl. It is somewhat familiar as it depicts a man and a girl posing for a picture. But, it is unnatural and unfamiliar when this man is disproportional and wears nothing but a suit. Furthermore, he has no face. The girl is indifferent and shows no emotions despite standing next to the uncanny figure.
http://www.allweirdpics.com/pictures/One_Of_The_Boys.htm In this picture a woman appears to be in a body building contest. She is flexing and behind her are also other guys flexing. The woman and the men have extremely ripped bodies. Its uncanny because generally people think of women as soft and gentle. Yet in this picture, the woman is given a very masculine pose with a masculine body while wearing a bra. Her sex and body are contrasting each other and it makes people feel uncanny because of how unnatural it is.
http://i.imgur.com/BIFUs.jpg I found this picture in particular to be very uncanny but at the same time somewhat familiar. The figure in the center of the image seems to resemble a human in robes. There is a visible head, a face, and a pair of arms. The uncanny part is the fact he does not appear to have skin, resembling a skeleton or a ghoul. In addition, his face only has a pair of gaping sockets without eyeballs. Not only is the figure uncanny, but so is the surrounding area. What appears to be a sun is emitting streams of an unknown substance and the area around the figure is clouded in some sort of fog. The final uncanny part of the photo is the beast, or what appears to be a beast, in front of the figure. At first glance, it appears to be some sort of wolf, but the uncanny part is the face of the beast. Although almost indiscernible, it radiates a malicious vibe.
I found this picture strangely uncanny because I at first couldn't understand exactly what this picture meant. There was something strange about this picture that drew me towards it. I suppose at first glance, i had no idea what I was looking at. It seemed to be a model of two lovers. Its a romantic quote to say that two lovers share everything. But this model shows two lovers sharing the same organs, such that they are so intertwined that one cannot exists without the other. To me it seems to be mocking traditional corny things one hears in relationships such as: "we'll share everything together","I can't live without you", and 'To death do us part." I found this uncanny because we all know what organs looks like and we also all have ideas of how love is suppose to be, and this image is a grotesque combination of the two.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8mhs7_AvMOw/UjhUQVmj7RI/AAAAAAAAAHc/yTXv4Xd9QOs/s1600/Courage_the_Cowardly_Dog_intertitle.jpg
ReplyDeletehttp://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqgv2xQM841qmfoslo1_500.gif
This eerie and well-known monster from Courage the Cowardly Dog (a show that masters the uncanny) is King Ramses, who sends plagues to Courage and his family to get back his precious slab. His silhouette and appearance creeps out not only children, but adults as well by breaking the animation style of the show and using CGI, which the animators occasionally used to make viewers feel uncomfortable. The structure of the show, and the types of villains is familiar, but this sudden change of style is not, especially since the background is the usual style, but Ramses' CGI, skeleton-like head stands out, the contours of his face ominously lit, an effect that is only aided by his spindly figure the sways unnaturally in the wind.
http://files.sharenator.com/weird_piercing_piercings_714079_471_341_Weird_Funny_Pictures_amp_Fails_lol-s471x341-110848-580.jpg
ReplyDeleteThis picture is unheimlich to me because part of this person's tongue is a zipper. The tongue and mouth are familiar to me. The zipper is also familiar to me. However, part of the missing tongue replaced by the zipper is unfamiliar since I've never associated those two things together. The zipper tongue is a twist on the familiar mouth, which we all see on a daily basis.
http://pinktentacle.com/images/10/human_faced_dog_1.jpg
ReplyDeleteThis is an image of a dog with human eyes and lips. If someone were to walk down the street and pass by this dog, that person may or may not give it a second glance. This is because many of a normal dog's features are still there such as its familiar silhouette and ordinary fur color. However, with a closer look, the dog's face is uncanny. The dog's eyes are distinctly human and even have a set of eyebrows on top. Its lips are set the same way a human's are. It even appears to have a forehead with wrinkles. The dog in the picture looks a bit judgmental, which is a human reaction. Seeing a human's features on a dog is uncanny because it mixes the familiar with the foreign. If the features were not human and the silhouette was not that of a dog's, then the picture would not be uncanny. The picture would be entirely foreign and would give no sense of oddness or comfortableness.
http://i.imgur.com/swPsikK.jpg
ReplyDeleteThis is a picture of a boy at Disneyland with Mickey and Minnie Mouse. I found this picture to be particularly strange an uncanny because they don't look like today's Mickey and Minnie Mouse. The thing that stands out the most is probably the nose/mouth. They're so exaggerated and elongated from the contemporary and familiar face. The picture is also very creepy because the costumes don't seem to have an apparent emotion or feeling and this sense of unknown emotion is why we find this creepy. Even though the costume can be distinguished as Disneyland characters, there's something off.
http://content3.promiflash.de/article-images/w500/justin-jedlica.jpg
ReplyDeleteThis is a picture of Justin Jedlica after undergoing over 110 plastic surgeries in order to transform himself into the human Ken doll. I find this picture to be uncanny because his face seems to be so unatural. Human faces don't have the characteristics of his face. His lips are extremely wide and his jaw line seems to have been tampered with multiple times. Overall, there is a very fake feeling when looking at him. Something is off about his whole look and I can't really put my finger on it, but i feel like his face is weird looking. What is familiar is that he has the appearance of a human, but something about his appearance makes it seem almost cartoon like. He also seems to have some sort of glow in his skin which seems almost too perfect.
http://i.imgur.com/AWRr4tH.jpg
ReplyDeleteThe popular "face swap" fad across the internet is a prime example of playing into what the general public considers to be uncanny. Here, we see the face of a man and his baby swapped. The two faces presented are perfectly normal, provided they were attached to the proper people. This is because we all associate a certain physique with the baby and the man respectively - we expect the face of the baby to be smooth, small, and rather innocent. In contrast, we expect the face of the man to be large and developed. By swapping their faces, the result is a complete contradiction of our expectations, inspiring discomfort in some people, myself included.
Looking for pictures is rather difficult! I don't actually have a folder full of uncanny pictures on my desktop...
ReplyDeleteBut strangely, my friend sent me a few, which is quite... uncanny!!
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UBbOqWYLJWk/Ul7S2WZ5ekI/AAAAAAAAHvE/NpuSsDdFhvY/s640/Pennywise.jpg
The teddy bear here has teeth and like you'd expect, because of that, it's not your typical cute and cuddly stuffed animal. In fact, I wouldn't want to have this bear. It's like mutilating the bear, putting the teeth in it (that was probably what was done to get the teeth in...). We're used to teddy bears being cute, but this is not cute. Although those teeth are (more or less) human teeth, it looks strange on a bear. It probably wouldn't look as weird if the teeth were bear teeth, but that's not the case. To make things worse, the proportions aren't right. The mouth seems much too big for a teddy bear of that size. Although it has elements of things we're used to seeing, put together, it's uncomfortable to look at. Let's keep cute teddy bears cute, and leave them the way they are!
http://cdn.viralnova.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/perfect-angle6.jpg
ReplyDeleteThis is a picture of a woman hugging a man. However, at the angle the picture is taken, the woman's head is not visible so it looks like a man with a woman's legs. The idea of someone hugging another person is normal and so is the image of the human body. The short shorts, heels, and shaved legs are all associated with females so when looking at the picture, it confuses the viewer to see a man's head on what appears to be a woman's body. This picture makes the viewer look twice in order to make sense of it; however, for that brief moment, the mind is surprised at the abnormality of the picture.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3t3r6z2kzxw/T0zRYu_l-aI/AAAAAAAADvs/c2cIZGG-RNY/s1600/Freud's+Uncanny002.jpg
ReplyDeleteThis is a picture of a doll. Something that seems so familiar and harmless to us. Yet it's these very types of harmless things, when twisted out of our comfort zone, that creep us out the most. The doll has a distorted, possesed body figure.Notice it's uncanny skinniness and torn cheek. The mangled face and thin fingers are not what we would see in our everyday children's toy. The whole image is hard to look at because it perverts something that we normally perceive as so harmless. This is also why possessed women and girls appear in horror films and not men. Their creepy, uncanny behavior in these films is chilling and sharply betrays our expectations for women.
http://latestwebstuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/A-Man-With-No-Forehead....jpeg
ReplyDeleteThis is a pretty simple example of an uncanny image. The picture is very familiar to us, it's just a guy with a beard. Yet something throws us off in this picture, and obviously it is the guy's missing forehead/top of head. This picture is similar to the plastic surgery photos that were shown in class, since both are a distortion of the face/head in some way (and it is usually easy to describe the distortion). Even though this image is simple, it is a good way to better understand the idea of uncannyness, due to its simplicity.
http://craftastrophe.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/whos-your-dada-toilet-paper-cozy-doll.jpg
ReplyDeleteThis is an image of a baby behind a trash can at first glance. It looks familiar because its a baby, who's kind of chubby with big eyes.
But as you start looking at this picture more you wonder why the baby is holding a pair of scissors, or why his head is actually in the garbage can. The weird ears on top of his head are creepy but the most uncanny thing is the reflection on the trash can. I guess the reflection is physically possible but it just gives me an uncomfortable feeling looking at that. And the feet and hands of the baby looks distorted too, as if the fingers and toes were melted together.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/Brian_Griffin.png/220px-Brian_Griffin.png
ReplyDeleteThis is an image of the popular Family Guy dog, Brian Griffin. I found this image uncanny because it's a dog that engages in all the activities an adult human would do. He is familiar because of his humanistic traits and his lovable character. However, he is a dog. A dog that can talk, walk on two legs and have affairs with women. He also engages in intercourse which is truly unfamiliar for a normal dog.
-Brian Ryu
http://hackneycitizen.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/flying-dog-credit-last-tuesday-society-009.jpg
ReplyDeleteThis is an image of a fake "flying" dog at a museum. The image seems familiar because at first glance, we recognize the animal as a dog. However, it's unfamiliar because there are brown colored bird wings sticking out of his sides. His mouth is open in surprise; the outline of the mouth and its face expression gives us the impression that the dog is looking at something, but we can't tell what he's looking at. We are used to seeing dogs walk on the ground, not float in midair. There also seems to be something sticking out of his left foot.
http://www.treadwells-london.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Slenderman-irl.jpg
ReplyDeleteThe famous Slenderman is an uncanny figure. He is an unnaturally tall, thin, faceless man that wears a suit. In this picture, Slenderman is innocuously holding hands with a girl. It is somewhat familiar as it depicts a man and a girl posing for a picture. But, it is unnatural and unfamiliar when this man is disproportional and wears nothing but a suit. Furthermore, he has no face. The girl is indifferent and shows no emotions despite standing next to the uncanny figure.
http://www.allweirdpics.com/pictures/One_Of_The_Boys.htm
ReplyDeleteIn this picture a woman appears to be in a body building contest. She is flexing and behind her are also other guys flexing. The woman and the men have extremely ripped bodies. Its uncanny because generally people think of women as soft and gentle. Yet in this picture, the woman is given a very masculine pose with a masculine body while wearing a bra. Her sex and body are contrasting each other and it makes people feel uncanny because of how unnatural it is.
http://i.imgur.com/BIFUs.jpg
ReplyDeleteI found this picture in particular to be very uncanny but at the same time somewhat familiar.
The figure in the center of the image seems to resemble a human in robes. There is a visible head, a face, and a pair of arms. The uncanny part is the fact he does not appear to have skin, resembling a skeleton or a ghoul. In addition, his face only has a pair of gaping sockets without eyeballs. Not only is the figure uncanny, but so is the surrounding area. What appears to be a sun is emitting streams of an unknown substance and the area around the figure is clouded in some sort of fog. The final uncanny part of the photo is the beast, or what appears to be a beast, in front of the figure. At first glance, it appears to be some sort of wolf, but the uncanny part is the face of the beast. Although almost indiscernible, it radiates a malicious vibe.
http://metamedia.stanford.edu/imagebin/plastination-one.jpg
ReplyDeleteI found this picture strangely uncanny because I at first couldn't understand exactly what this picture meant. There was something strange about this picture that drew me towards it. I suppose at first glance, i had no idea what I was looking at. It seemed to be a model of two lovers. Its a romantic quote to say that two lovers share everything. But this model shows two lovers sharing the same organs, such that they are so intertwined that one cannot exists without the other. To me it seems to be mocking traditional corny things one hears in relationships such as: "we'll share everything together","I can't live without you", and 'To death do us part." I found this uncanny because we all know what organs looks like and we also all have ideas of how love is suppose to be, and this image is a grotesque combination of the two.