On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 8:36 AM, joseph berg <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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 > - A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula. H. L. Mencken
