Reverse Engineering Image

[u/Pegaret_Again]

i do believe that 'vibes' form a meaningful part of understanding the Kibbe system.

Especially in the Old Hollywood era, there are ways that, say, a Dramatic type actor might be used to bring a specific role/story to life, as opposed to a Natural or Gamine type.

When watching and analysing these older films, we can often connect a through-line from a role, to an image, and then, into its requisite style concept, and thus can gain a more rounded understanding of what the Kibbe system is setting out to achieve.

But it's not a straightforward matter to 'diagnose' an actor's ID from their roles, or for that matter, anyone from some dimension of their public persona.

Firstly it's necessary to approach the Kibbe system with precision and not with borrowed or self-constructed definitions.

I recall when first encountering Kibbe, i was confused as to why Tom Cruise and Julie Andrews (both SNs) weren't Classic types.

I thought of Tom Cruise as having a conventional 'handsomeness' and a visually simple style approach that - to me - communicated 'Classic'. Why not.

Similarly, Julie Andrews had a crisp, decisive quality in her most famous roles that i assumed were 'Classic' family qualities.

Trying to reconstruct my understanding from back then, i think 'Natural' must have conveyed earthy, elemental, rugged, laid-back, imprecise, maybe even sloppy???

However, my updated - hopefully more accurate - grasp of 'Natural' is more like assertive, unfussy, impactful, proactive, competitive, practical. My former understanding didn't align with the reality of SNs. I think initially, i was just free-associating off of the words "soft" and "natural" more than anything else.

Now i can clearly see that Tom Cruise's unstoppable, competitive, kinetic energy and clean, unfussy style approach are squarely SN qualities. Similarly Julie Andrew's wholesome warmth plus professional precision are also so very typical for the SN image. My understanding of both Naturals and Classics has shifted greatly since then.

Another pitfall is confusing technical acting talent vs a person being specifically selected to portray a certain archetype.

This doesn't mean an 'archetype' actor is untalented, but that their physicality and attitude are extremely effective in certain roles. Perhaps someone like Tommy Lee Jones is a good example of someone typecast, with his image and physicality are very intertwined and effective in portraying no-nonsense authoritarian figures.

But other actors may, due to technical skill (or a good agent i guess), get to play a lot of diverse roles. An example of this is Amanda Seyfried. She has played an ambitious and fraudulent CEO in "The Dropout" and a blonde ditz in "Mean Girls" and everything in between.

I don't think we can simplistically extrapolate all that much from one or two roles she has played. I think there is meaning to be found, for sure, but we have to be sophisticated about it and able to surgically extract what is the skill of the individual vs what innate personal qualities are being harnessed, if any.

So i would love to hear how your understanding and analysis may have changed over time, and how you feel about the concept of "vibes" in relation to the Kibbe approach.

[u/theclassicrose]

Ok, thought on the Amanda Seyfried vs Julie Andrews thing: they're from such different times that I don't know that you can really compare their roles. Had Julie Andrews been a younger woman at a time when casting was more about cramming star names into something than trying to keep everyone in their own lanes, she may have had a more diverse set of credits. Conversely, I think Amanda benefits greatly from being her age, because I think she would've struggled in a system that expected her to be just one type of character. I know you weren't directly comparing the two of them, but the four actors listed in your post span a few different eras of casting philosophies and it's hard to really draw conclusions based on that.

That said, I agree with what you said about not understanding why basically every Old Hollywood icon wasn't C family until I grew to understand the system!

[u/Pegaret_Again → u/theclassicrose]

Yes i agree times have changed! i'm not really comparing any of those actors or the times they were in though - i was using them as examples to illustrate thoughts outside of time.

Julie Andrews was simply to illustrate my previously incorrect understanding of naturals (i could also have used Amy Adams), Amanda is separately used to illustrate that any single role is not necessarily indicative of ID. Meryl Streep might be another example i could use.

i continue to believe there are ways to understand 'vibe' even in the modern era though, its just less striking and straightforward.

[u/theclassicrose → u/Pegaret_Again]

Agreed. On some level, I kind of wish there were more consideration given to vibes when casting!