In Pursuit of Greatness
MFA Thesis Film — 20 min, 10 Episodes
In Pursuit of Greatness is a 20-minute animated research film structured as ten episodic vignettes. Created using After Effects, Blender 3D, live-action chroma key, and compositing techniques, the project examines how nationalist ideology is learned, performed, and normalized through repetition, spectacle, and ritual.
Developed during the sociopolitical climate of 2016 in the United States, the film investigates the rise of nationalist rhetoric and its theatrical construction. Rather than directly portraying specific political events, the work constructs a fictional “yellow nationalism” as a satirical framework to analyze the mechanics of indoctrination.
The project asks:
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How does ideology become internalized through repetition and visual symbolism?
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How does spectacle transform aggression into ritual?
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What does it mean to actively “unlearn” inherited narratives?
Through slapstick humor and dark absurdity, the film destabilizes the visual language of power. Exaggerated costume, synchronized movement, and ritualized gestures reduce authoritarian performance to spectacle—revealing its structural absurdity.
This thesis also reflects a personal process of cultural self-examination. As an immigrant navigating identity within a politically charged environment, the work became a method of interrogating learned beliefs and examining how identity is constructed within larger sociopolitical systems.
The modular episode structure allowed each segment to isolate a behavioral pattern of ideological conditioning—summoning, obedience, fear, spectacle, mob mentality—treating narrative as a system rather than a linear story.
Ultimately, In Pursuit of Greatness explores how identities are manufactured through repetition—and how satire can function as a method of critical unlearning.
“We all learn every day. Not only do we educate ourselves for a better life, but we also learn from unintended exposure to information, including propaganda. It is easy to find the motivation to learn, and sometimes it doesn’t take any motivation at all, as in the method of brainwashing by repeated exposure to particular information. However, we hardly find any motivation to un-educate ourselves.”
“My thesis work has been a process of uncovering the embedded painful histories of myself through critical analysis; it was a process of investigation of the insidious force of our socio-political condition. It was an un-educating process, the removal of toxic knowledge, and of my previous cultural prejudice, of politically motivated privilege, brainwashed ideology, in order to learn and find my true self as an artist. The indoctrination that prevents the individual from “free-thinking” was peeled away in layers of misguided education. I used divergent thinking for the possible varied responses that define the creative process. It all started with searching for my own identity in a foreign country, and I found the connection of absurdity in the human condition within my socio-political surroundings, past, and present.”