1 post tagged “alter ego”

Sometimes I swear I bring being introspective to a whole new level.

If anyone's been paying attention to my work, whether my journal writings, stationery, scribbles since high school, you might have noticed that I would occasionally tag them with - Captain Kaputnik or CaptainKaputnikLives. If you watch any of my films, they're all credited as "A CaptainKaputnikLives Production." Few people know this but Captain Kaputnik is the name of my alter-ego/muse/imagination/inner child. Whenever I think I'm growing up too fast I think of Captain Kaputnik as a raw form of my creative core and it brings me back. I don't know his role, how I actually communicate with him or what he does but he's just a center of focus on which I sometimes depend on for creative strength. The 'Lives' part at the end of his name, the fact that I don't uses spaces when I write CaptainKaputnikLives, has a lot to do with perpetuating, continuity, perseverance and immortality.

For the first in a long time I thought about the etymology of this name. It's such a Jewish/American name and some random Sabahan girl picked it up to name someone/thing so personal to her. I mean, Dave Berg was born in Brooklyn, man. Come on.

When I was a kid, maybe around 9 or 10, I picked up a comic book that was lying around the house - Mad's Dave Berg looks At Our Sick World. In there was a comic about this kid who was writing on the walls of this building repeatedly, "Roger Kaputnik Was Here" when someone asks him what he was doing. Roger tells him that it was so that long after he died, people would know that a Roger Kaputnik had lived. The irony was that the building was actually to be demolished.

I don't recall ever having read into that comic before or if its content had any particular affect on me but ever since I could remember, it's always been a compulsion for me to preserve my mortality and the world as I see it. I'm a passive existentialist (if there's such a stupid thing) and the thought of that building which was to be demolished stunned me. Not because I didn't expect it but because it was such a significant metaphor for me hidden in the back of my mind to not have noticed it before, to have subconsciously noticed it when I was a child. Terre Thaemlitz even goes so far as to write about how MAD's Dave Berg and Roger Kaputnik introduced him to post modernity. I was exposed to the concept of post modernity when, come again??

I don't remember if I understood Dave Berg's work then but I found his cartoons humorous without always knowing why. His drawings were arousing, emotionally, intellectually, erotically. His work came out in the 70s and I don't know if it was a drawing typical of that era but it always affected me how his characters were all drawn with dramatic creases on their faces and each individual tooth that appeared when he drew snarls onto his people felt so real to me. I've always felt that comic books have shaped who I am today since Batman Forever was the first movie that had ever affected me, leading to me wanting to do film - but this is a totally different side of me altogether that has had comic books as a catalyst. I didn't expect to be so involved

And wait, there's more. Upon further research, I found out that Roger Kaputnik is the name of Dave Berg's alter-ego. It was a name which he gave himself when he was younger. Captain Kaputnik was a name I instinctively gave my alter-ego when I was 14 or 15. My alter-ego was inspired by someone else's alter-ego? What a mind trip!

I can't say that I've ever been a huge fan of Mad Magazine. I read it if it's there but generally I used to think that some of it was stupid. Now I realise that it's very representative of American culture and humour, of course I wouldn't understand all of it. The same way I don't always get Australian humour.  Mad Magazine, American Splendor, Saturday Night Live are things I have to take time to appreciate. Okay, maybe not SNL, it's just stupid.

I'm trying to see how all of this relates to me; what this coincidence is trying to say. If you're new to reading me, I have a long record of coincidences in my life. So far, all the ones I've experienced have led to places, people, landmarks, experiences that I had to endure for whatever reason which made me stronger but this was in me all along. I wasn't led anywhere. I guess it was a personal rediscovery that was made when I was trying my hardest to find my place in the world. My muse reminded me he was real. I don't know if this makes sense to you or if it's even interesting. Maybe you think I'm weird now but isn't this strange? There's so much Freudian shit tied to it too at the same time. I'd be a psychoanalysist's idea of fun, for sure.