The surrealism of Super Mario Bros. would seem to be self-evident but, as PBS’ Idea Channel on YouTube says, perhaps it has been around for so long that its non sequiturs are taken for normal.
Its wide acceptance (and a catalogue of work spanning more than two decades) may make the Super Mario Bros. franchise the world’s greatest piece of surrealist art. It’s a great argument, but first, let’s understand what surrealism is.
This video gets the conversation going with a discussion of surrealism and its essential qualities. Simply being bizarre isn’t what makes something surreal. And the video points out that the surrealism of an interactive medium can end up having real-world applications, in ways a static painting could not.
C’mon, maybe it’s a Sunday, but you can still learn something today, too. I did.
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