mia and klimt

Mia and Me is a kid’s show about Mia,
I as­sume,
who is a teenage girl who goes back and forth be­tween be­ing a real world
h o r s e g i r l
and an al­ter­nate di­men­sion
f a i r y g i r l
who is re­spon­si­ble for the safe­ty of the world’s only winged uni­corn.

This show is for chil­dren, it’s not that well-writ­ten, and I hon­est­ly doubt any­one in­volved in the act­ing or writ­ing ends is hav­ing a ca­reer af­ter this.

So why am I bring­ing it to your at­ten­tion? Be­cause it gets one thing fan­tas­ti­cal­ly right: In­tro­duc­ing kids to the art of Gus­tav Klimt (1862–1918).

Every char­ac­ter de­sign in the fairy world is based on Klimt’s icon­ic work. The most ob­vi­ous are the King and Queen of, uh, the land. Look, I watch it with my niece while cook­ing din­ner okay, I’m not ab­sorb­ing every lit­tle plot de­tail. I’m here writ­ing this be­cause fuck­ing LOOK AT THEM and their dumb son while we’re at it.

The use of gold! The use of shapes! THOSE HAIR­STYLES!!

Try as I have, I can­not bring my­self to give a sin­gu­lar fuck about these weird fairy peo­ple (and I could eas­i­ly marathon watch Just Add Mag­ic with­out my niece around, if I had Ama­zon TV at my own house) but it is SO PRET­TY and SUCH an ex­cel­lent vi­su­al homage to Klimt’s work.

There’s no doubt the in­flu­ence is in­ten­tion­al, I knew that be­fore googling any­thing. Last night, I watched an episode with my niece, and when they went to re­al­world! Mia’s bed­room, The Kiss hung in the back­ground. I paused the episode to give my niece a crash course art his­to­ry les­son, what I could re­mem­ber from al­most a decade ago. I told her who Klimt was, when he paint­ed, how pop­u­lar his work has be­come as mass-pro­duc­tion of art has be­come com­mon­place. How the aes­thet­ic of the show is an in­ten­tion­al de­riv­a­tive of his work.

I mean, she’s six. She didn’t give a sin­gle shit. She’s not watch­ing for in-depth art nou­veau his­to­ry, she’s watch­ing for the badass uni­corns and the
h o r s e g i r l
dra­ma. So I shut up and went back to mak­ing din­ner.

BUT I GOT THE OP­POR­TU­NI­TY TO TRY. You must un­der­stand, I’m a foul-mouthed sex-pos­i­tive new­bie co­me­di­an with an anti-au­thor­i­tar­i­an streak, I don’t get to share a lot of my in­ter­ests with this small fam­i­ly mem­ber. It’s this and 10% of my fa­vorite board games.
 
 

—mel­ony ppenosyne

Flom­mist Mel­ony Ppenosyne is a writer and weird artist type. In the last year alone, she’s trav­eled to Vir­ginia as a com­pet­ing poet, co-writ­ten a play on men­tal ill­ness that is present­ly be­ing pro­duced, and craft­ed a pub­lished es­say check­ing the priv­i­lege and scope of art gal­leries. Copy­right © 2016 Mel­ony Ppenosyne. Pic­tured up top: Gus­tav Klimt, Sto­clet Frieze (with ad­di­tions), 1905-11.

MOR D’ARTÍCULOS  MOR FLOMM !

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