Mega Glalie is Literally Hitler

Intention and Context

As I procrastinated doing this assignment, I decided to play a couple rounds of Pokémon Shuffle, a match-three videogame available on mobile devices. I had been stuck for days on stage 120, Mega Glalie, and had been increasingly frustrated with my lack of progress. As I eventually turned to the Internet for advice, I stumbled upon a quote from a redditor referencing another character in the game: “Onix is literally Hitler.” Of course, I had not reached that particular stage yet, but that his/her sentiments echoed mine as I faced my own ruthless opponent.

It was interesting that Adolf Hitler, a man so widely regarded as evil, could be referenced in such a trivial context, essentially becoming a pop culture reference in the process. I remembered comparisons of Obama to Hitler that eventually became a meme, complete with joke Photoshop images comparing the two. Hitler was eventually compared to everything from videogame companies to the Kardashian family. The humor lay in the obvious faulty comparison, as well as relatable frustrations with the non-Hitler entity. This became the primary inspiration for my project.

Process and Product

With these ideas in mind, I had to somehow visually equate a fictional creature to a man responsible for millions of deaths. To do so, I chose the obvious solution of placing one character in the setting of the other, while keeping both elements identifiable.

I began looking for images I could incorporate into my work. I started by taking some screenshots of Pokémon Shuffle gameplay at various stages and transferring them to my computer. The game does not provide quality images, so I also looked up a few higher resolution images of Mega Glalie. In the same way, I found several images of Adolf Hitler. Now I had to put them all together using GIMP.

My first attempt was pretty straightforward. I imported a “Game Over” screenshot from one of my losses, then pasted a headshot of Hitler over Mega Glalie. After using the eraser tool to make the image fit into the background, I examined my work. For something I spent 10 minutes on, it looked decent and managed to capture my intention.

Next, I tried another, opposite approach: pasting Mega Glalie onto an image of Hitler. I imported an image of Hitler mid-salute with hand outstretched, then pasted the Pokémon over his face, erasing parts of it to make the hat more visible. Under his hand I added images of frozen tiles from the game to more closely associate the image with the game. 

Critique

Both products are amusing at the very least, as Hitler and Mega Glalie both appear very out of place in their respective images. In this way, I believe I have managed to match intent and outcome effectively, creating something that other players of Pokémon Shuffle can identify with.

The works’ value as “art” is questionable though, with the overall quality held back by my lack of GIMP or Photoshop ability. Each image took me less than 20 minutes to produce, which means it would have taken a marginally experienced user less than 5. As a result, they consist of pasted images with little editing, and are therefore worth very little from a technical perspective. Still, I can envision better produced versions of these images appearing on a poster or t-shirt. 

Reflection

Surprisingly, I had a difficult time even coming up with an idea for this project, with my eventual product partially the result of procrastination. The actual creation process seemed easier, since there are so many prefabricated elements on the Internet that I can directly copy. Therefore, the hard part of creating art in this manner is bringing these elements together in a way that communicates a coherent idea. 

If I were to do this project again, I would spend more time actually learning how to edit images to better incorporate each component into its surroundings.