Do you hear the people sing?
Theater, art, music, television, movies. Creative distractions from our everyday lives. As we prepare to alter our cable and internet providers, i find myself wondering: How damaging is the mass availability of art and information to people actually caring? If i want to know about what's going on, there are thirteen different website i have bookmarked and a dozen others i could probably name off the top of my head. And you all, whatever your interests may be, have access to equally vast resources via the internet alone. When you add in television and print, it's almost overwhelming. Does the ready access to such a wealth of information encourage the masses, or discourage them, figuring that if anything important happens someone will notice and bring it to their attention? We tout any new way to assault the populace with information as progress, but without monitor or filter can it actually discourage us from taking the time to know? I beleive so. I firmly beleive in the freedom of all forms of transmitting information, but i feel it's time for us to step and and increase the monitoring of such sources. No matter what form information comes to you, take a moment to assess it's veracity. If we all do a little to make sure what we come to know is accurate, everyone instantly becomes ten times as well-informed. Different opinions will always persist, but they should be based on fact, not mutually exclusive misperceptions. The average in this country should always have the power, because THEY are the majority. That's how "average" works. To quote Richard Jeni, "The average person is just that: average." (Perhaps someone else said it first, but that's where i heard it- see, this is me doing my part to ensure you, dear reader(s?), aquire accurate information.) Do your part. Help society learn, and society will educate you in turn.
posted by Mike Pumpkinhead at 4:22 AM
4 Comments:
"Creative distractions". I would like to address this phrase. I haven't exactly thought this through with any sort of focus or intent, but it seems to me that these arts are much more -- or rather, to some, or perhaps, can be much more -- than mere distractions. To some, they are the primary focus, to some, they are that which everything else revolves around. It's another way to leave a legacy, right? So many people are concerned with this. Have kids -- carry on the name, the genes, the memory, whatever. Write a book, a play, a song... something that will live on past the brief sojourn on earth that we each call "our lives". We love, we live, we grieve, we create. In my more cynical mindframes, the creation seems most... vital.
Of course, this is coming from someone who spent her evening singing showtunes and doing the No-Pants Dance.
You conflate art and media in your argument. Except in that load of crap abstract everything is art argument, media and art are very seperate things.
"Media" means "a mass form of communication." Now, CNN and rembrandt may be communicating very different things, but they're still communication. And one can overload on communication of any sort. If you can look at 15 million works of art a day, can you really care as much about them as you do if you can only see ten a day? That's my point. Too much of a good thing, as it were. If you want to take issue with something i wasn't actually saying, go for it, and kudos on using the word 'conflate', which i had to look up, but at their basest level art and cnn convey information- just very different kinds. As for the term "creative distractions", i meant in the passive, enjoying way, not in the active, creating way. Yes, there are many who earn their living creating such things- but still, painting, for example, is not making dinner, or paying your cable bill, or hanging out with a friend- that's what i mean when i say "everyday lives."
I didn't use the word to sound pretentious, I would think you know me better than that. I also don't agree with what you're saying now that you clarified your argument. I think that if you look at fifteen million pieces of art work a day you won't care less. I think you will be much more particular in what you like. At that point you will be numb to the "typical" art, but when you see something unique and creative that can rejuvinate the feelings inside you that made you want to see 15 million works of art a day. Art has a special quality that makes someone take a step back and say wow. That is why it is different from media. I agree that all modern art is trying to say something, but I still don't think that makes it the same as media.
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