Reflective Encounters

“Reposted creepypastas on TikTok are usually accompanied by the shot of a Cab Calloway-voiced ghost from Betty Boop in Snow White. The disconcerting plasticity of the character in that 1933 Max Fleischer cartoon is very much on display here in the more abstract Feed the Ghosted. Addiction-related imagery abounds and repeats in furious blinks, as disembodied tongues lick their way in and out and out of existence and disembodied eyeballs hungrily loll about. This gives the short a queasy sensuality to it all; a lurid quality that brings to mind Robert Crumb cartoons and Ralph Bakshi’s more risque animation.

A more contemporary point of reference would be Canadian cartoonist Michael DeForge, who shares a preoccupation with grotesque, bodily abstraction that unnerves the viewer with their dark eroticism. A soundscape ladened with heavy breathing adds to this sweaty concoction and gives the viewer the sense that they are witnessing something they probably shouldn’t: something private and terrifying.”

— Cathy Brennan