BEEF! BEEF!! BEEF!!!
"BEEF" (Screenshot/Netflix, 2023)
Show Review
On Douban, there's an interesting review that reads "everything everywhere all fucked up" to this show, which contrasts with the phrase from the movie "Everything Everywhere All at Once".
Everything Everywhere All at Once is about the triumph of existentialism over nihilism. BEEF rages against life, exposing its chaotic and ever-changing nature, where chaos and confusion are the norm. While the choices of existentialist believers are undoubtedly important, life will not necessarily follow their chosen paths. "Everything Everywhere All at Once" represents humanity's attitude towards the world, while "Everything Everywhere All Fucked Up" represents the world's impact on humanity. But what is the world's attitude towards humanity? The world does not have an attitude towards humanity; it operates logically, and adapting to its changes is the key to living.
I really loved the last two episodes. The intense argument in the jungle in darkness is particularly serene. Anxiety, anger, unease, envy, and suspicion are insignificant in the face of nature.
In the end, Ai Weiwei remarks that the Chinese lack the middle finger attitude, and that this is true not only for China but for the whole of East Asia.
Episode Title Card
Episode title cards | BEEF (Netflix, 2023)
“A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms” by Pieter Aertsen (Episode 1)
Artwork by David Choe (Episodes 2-10)
“When I prepared the PowerPoint pitch for buyers, I wanted a very bombastic title card to catch everyone’s attention. I had loved the 16th-century painting ‘A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms‘ for some time, and I felt the look and themes of the painting fit the mood of the show,” Lee told IndieWire. Lee planned on using classic paintings in the public domain for all 10 episodes to convey a sense of bombast and the subversive glee of puncturing it, but he found an even better solution on set.
“David Choe, who plays Isaac, suggested I use his paintings. He stopped showing his work publicly over a decade ago, so he had hundreds of paintings no one had ever seen,” Lee said. “He graciously allowed me to pick the ones I felt fit the episodes the best.” Choe’s work is an excellent match for the series, frenetic and brimming over with messy emotion — whether that emotion is desire, longing, or something uglier.
Lee then had the title text custom-designed to fit each painting. “I worked closely with the company Sarofsky in designing each title. We used a lot of late ’90s and early aughts albums and magazines as inspiration, specifically Ray Gun,” Jin said. “The font was also customized by Sarofsky. We went through hundreds of fonts and ultimately landed at Balboa, but needed to tweak a few things to our liking.” The tweaks do their small smart to turn the screws as the series progress, looking like increasingly manic screenprints of something that should be a lot more elegant and orderly.
But Lee credits a lot of the title cards’ impact to composer Bobby Krlic (also known as The Haxan Cloak), whose work in TV and film tends to be a grandiose celebration of the twisted and fucked up, from “The Alienist” to “Midsommar” and “Beau Is Afraid.” “For me, Episode 3 feels like the perfect marriage between the painting and the score,” Lee said, and indeed the pounding drum and discordant horns somehow capture Danny’s panic at being spotted by Amy’s daughter as he tries to commit some light arson and Amy’s fake smile as she says a new chapter is about to start for her family.
While Lee loves that moment, his favorite painting is the finale’s “Figures of Light.” “It captures an outpouring of experience that mirrors how reality shifts for Danny and Amy in the show’s finale and even a sense of perspective,” he says. “The figure in the painting is peering down at the mess on the ground in the exact same way the high-top camera shot comes back on Danny’s and Amy’s wrecked cars.” Whatever turn each episode of “Beef” takes, the opening titles are the show’s way of yanking on the tripwire that makes the characters fall.
Reference
- https://www.indiewire.com/2023/04/beef-netflix-opening-titles-artwork-david-choe-1234827318/
- https://thetab.com/uk/2023/04/11/beef-art-meaning-title-intro-302756
- https://www.reddit.com/r/BeefTV/comments/12f32cn/beef_season_1_discussion_megathread/
- https://eggsaladstain.tumblr.com/post/713860900244865024/episode-title-cards-beef-netflix-2023-a-meat