When playing Curtain, the graphics jumped out immediately to me, as it did for much of the class. I really liked the graphics — at first they unnerved me, but there is something about that discomfort that I find the most compelling about the game. At first, I couldn’t figure out why it the graphics felt so familiar to me. I then realized that they felt like a deep fried meme — Curtain, or at least the development of it, predates the origin of deep fried memes in 2015 (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/deep-fried-memes). And yet still, maybe there is something to be said about the cultural zeitgeist at the time that the developments happened around the same time.
In both cases, the “deep frying,” or over pixilating/filtering of the images, provokes a feeling in the viewer. In the case of Curtain, it creates a sense of unease, of intrusion that reflects the players intrusion into this relationship. In the case of the memes, it invokes a sense of irony and humor; I cannot even fully articulate what feeling these filters create, but all I know is that something in the absurdity in “deep frying” old memes made them funny again back in the late 2010s.
In both of these situations, the creators of Curtain and deep fried meme generators use this over pixilation to subconsciously create a reaction in the viewer.
This is a very neat post! I never would have thought to connect “Curtain” to memes, but I actually agree with you on the point of both evoking reaction (however conflicting) through the “deep-fried” format. I guess this is just one instance where the format became more nauseating that I could bear. This is a great post — nice work! :>