I'm agree with Sontag's remark, below. I once had the honor to meet her at a private party and she was a big girl, very imposing. That hair! I'd never disagee with her, not then, not now. wc
----- Original Message ---- From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thu, September 27, 2012 1:31:38 PM Subject: Re: shock 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
