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Description

Whether Babylon knows it or not, the elephant getting hauled up the hill in the prologue is a multi-faceted extended metaphor for the movie. On the one hand, for the grueling uphill struggle transitioning from one technology to the next (and all the palms that needed to be greased along the way); on the other hand, it is also the spectacle the industry uses to distract others from seeing the human carnage both directly and indirectly associated with its production as they are carted down the stairs and dragged comatose out the back. Both in and outside the context of Babylon, much has been written about that carnage -- the buried dead of the previous culture (the silent film stars who didn't survive the transition to sound, folks with once-permissable, "alternative" lifestyles branded deviant and disgraced/excommunicated in anticipation of the Hays Code, etc...) whose remains wind up an inextricable part of the foundation for the new culture rising in its place.

Essentially told as the death of silent Hollywoodland/the birth of Hollywood in three parties:

-- the "wake" that opens the film (being the death itself and the electric discharge of energy precipitating it);

-- rigor-mortis: being the rigid, formal luncheon 'serving up' the stars of yesterday to new Hollywood's carrion-scavenging, wealthy (and investing) elite; and finally,

-- decay: accompanying a consumptive gangster into a corrupt, subterranean carnival of the damned in the blockhouse;

Babylon is not a feel good epic. Wearing on its sleeve a title openly referencing a Biblical city doomed and destroyed by its own transgressive excesses, it was clearly never intended to be anything else. Consequently, I felt very strongly that, unlike the film's commercial marketing campaign focusing exclusively on the party atmosphere of the prologue, my Babylon jacket should embrace the overall affect of the film as a whole and not turn its back from either the figurative light or its correlating darkness.

While ultimately mixed on my feelings about the movie itself, I am an unreserved fan of the score. I took this jacket's creation quite seriously and pondered it for a long time -- even attempting one or two unsuccessful drafts of the same concept (the first attempt barrelled headfirst into the darkness -- featuring a considerably more disturbing and much deader elephant) before finally arriving at this more tonally balanced composition. As usual, I work for my own satisfaction; however, if you like what I've done, perhaps I've made something for you as well.

Description

Whether Babylon knows it or not, the elephant getting hauled up the hill in the prologue is a multi-faceted extended metaphor for the movie. On the one hand, for the grueling uphill struggle transitioning from one technology to the next (and all the palms that needed to be greased along the way); on the other hand, it is also the spectacle the industry uses to distract others from seeing the human carnage both directly and indirectly associated with its production as they are carted down the stairs and dragged comatose out the back. Both in and outside the context of Babylon, much has been written about that carnage -- the buried dead of the previous culture (the silent film stars who didn't survive the transition to sound, folks with once-permissable, "alternative" lifestyles branded deviant and disgraced/excommunicated in anticipation of the Hays Code, etc...) whose remains wind up an inextricable part of the foundation for the new culture rising in its place.

Essentially told as the death of silent Hollywoodland/the birth of Hollywood in three parties:

-- the "wake" that opens the film (being the death itself and the electric discharge of energy precipitating it);

-- rigor-mortis: being the rigid, formal luncheon 'serving up' the stars of yesterday to new Hollywood's carrion-scavenging, wealthy (and investing) elite; and finally,

-- decay: accompanying a consumptive gangster into a corrupt, subterranean carnival of the damned in the blockhouse;

Babylon is not a feel good epic. Wearing on its sleeve a title openly referencing a Biblical city doomed and destroyed by its own transgressive excesses, it was clearly never intended to be anything else. Consequently, I felt very strongly that, unlike the film's commercial marketing campaign focusing exclusively on the party atmosphere of the prologue, my Babylon jacket should embrace the overall affect of the film as a whole and not turn its back from either the figurative light or its correlating darkness.

While ultimately mixed on my feelings about the movie itself, I am an unreserved fan of the score. I took this jacket's creation quite seriously and pondered it for a long time -- even attempting one or two unsuccessful drafts of the same concept (the first attempt barrelled headfirst into the darkness -- featuring a considerably more disturbing and much deader elephant) before finally arriving at this more tonally balanced composition. As usual, I work for my own satisfaction; however, if you like what I've done, perhaps I've made something for you as well.