On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 8:31 AM, joseph berg <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 7:14 AM, William Conger <[email protected]>wrote: > >> An interesting article in today's NYT contains comments by leading >> critics about >> the diminishing role of shock in the arts, or the difficulty of doing >> anything >> as art that is also shocking. >> >> Almost nothing seems to shock us anymore in the arts because the last >> boundary >> is the imaginative separation of life and art, regardless of efforts to >> breach >> it. The most vulgar, violent, bizarre imagery in the arts is always, >> well, art, >> and thus safely distinguished from real life. We can calmly watch a >> cimema >> rape, murder, and mayhem, knowing that it occurred on the screen, in >> imagination, and not in real life. We can enjoy looking at a Peter Saul >> painting >> of the same -- so beautifully painted -- and walk away feeling good. So >> argue >> the people quoted in the article. >> >> But the ancient Romans went one better. When they put on a show of rape, >> murder, mayhem, they did it for real. As everyone knows the fighters in >> the >> daily Coliseum (and elsewhere in the antique world) the 'entertainers' >> actually >> killed each other; the misfit Christians were tossed to the lions for >> real. Now >> today that would be shocking. so there really is one shock line that >> hasn't yet >> been crossed. Maybe. It the early 70s there were rumors of so-called >> porno-snuff films in which female victims were actually said to be killed >> or >> "snuffed" on screen. I don't know if any of those rumors were true, but >> the >> idea alone was horrifying. Maybe the next action movie will record the >> actual >> shootings and axings of the actors. Then the audience can send flowers to >> their >> families. >> >> I once suggested that since the museum is the only venue where >> moral-societal >> views can be tested or transgressed in neutrality, such as 'safely' >> displaying a >> desecrated flag or religious image, they should be the location of state >> executions. That would bring home, i think, the reality of 'official' >> murder, >> making it a topic for moral discussion, at least. It would be far more >> shocking, I'm sure, that the blandly reported executions now going on >> behind >> prison walls. >> >> On the other side of the issue, one can say that the shock-bar has been >> crossed >> so many times that most people are now numb to the usual, everyday sort of >> transgressions like four-letter words and all sorts of sexually explicit >> imagery, to say nothing of headless, blown-apart corpses and blood puddles >> covering our living rooms in lurid 3-D TV imagery. It's freedom of >> speech of >> course. But I'm not sure that the proof of freedom of speech needs to be >> a >> great loss of civility and dignity. Why is it that freedom of speech is >> mostly >> exercised with extreme vulgarity and incivility? I can't get past page >> one of a >> daily free newspaper in Chicago without reading the f-word in several >> hyphenated >> forms. If I were to complain, I'd be blasted as a terrible >> anti-free-speech >> person, a Republican, or worse. What ever happened to well-reasoned >> language and >> good ideas? Aren't they the real substance protected by free-speech? >> >> If you want to do something radical in the arts, try doing something >> that's >> civil, passionate, and thoughtful, without the f-word and its variants in >> deed >> or image, if you can. How did Montaigne manage to write so much without >> resorting to ugly language? There's a model for the real free-speecher >> radicals >> to follow. >> wc >> >> > - Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a > steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions > of modern life - its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness - conjoin > to dull our sensory faculties. > > Susan Sontag > - *It*'*s* *hard* to be subversive in an age that retains no shared values to subvert. Geoffrey Woolf
