The next time someone accuses something of having “style over substance” (or vice versa) I will have a fucking fit. Style vs substance is a false dilemma.
I was thinking about this while noodling around on my new bicycle. One of the reasons why I picked the bike is that it is mostly unbranded — and the few points where logos do exist, I can simply remove them. I realized that when a bicycle is ugly, it isn’t because the designer neglected to make it beautiful; it’s because they started with something beautiful and marred it.
Also just read this review of the new director’s cut of Dark City, a movie that I thought was nearly perfect to begin with. First, the style vs substance bit: “Even harder to believe though is that some critics attacked Dark City upon its release for being a case of style over substance. It is more of a case of both visual style and philosophical substance.” Like Blade Runner, the new cut was “perfected” by removing stupid hand-holding voiceover narration.
