Re Cheerskep's comment below, agreed. But if we agree with Cheerskep, then his ornamental words, meant to convey his disparagement and authorial superiority, such as 'fatuous' and 'careless', are themselves improper and too limiting.
I suggest it's better to take Mamet's comment as a philosophical premise and to refute it as Cheerskep began to do with his sentence beginning with "It is" but to replace the suddenly awakened word fatuous -- like a dragon's head emerging from the foggy pond -- with something less vehement, more intellectual, such as 'wrong' (no dragon, merely a floating stick, after all). But once Cheerskep expressed his pugnacious judgment with the word fatuous, he was on a roll, as theater folk say, and soon felt compelled to add the word 'careless' in case the reader skipped over 'fatuous' without being tripped. Even though Cheerskep's logic in refuting Mamet's aphorism is correct and needs no support from dismissive words like fatuous and careless, he can't seem to resist the opportunity to set fire to the crown he fashions for Mamet with the phrase "Mamet, a very smart guy.." So what do we have? After learning that Mamet is a very smart guy (Is that because he is a successful guy?) we learn that he's full of it (say the word shit to yourself), fatuous (rhymes with flatulence, as you instantly recognize) and is careless, too (careless is easily equated with fatuousness, thus offering redundance for hyperbolic exclamation), all of which enables us to raise Cheerskep'sperspicuousness above Mamet's which , of course, is the real purpose of Cheerskep's comment. Can you tell I'm reading Proust? Ha ha, I love Proust. He's so funny. You laugh and don't even squirm as he weaves his hypnotic web round and round. wc ________________________________ From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tue, January 1, 2013 9:04:23 AM Subject: Re: degraded aesthetics In a message dated 1/1/13 7:16:51 AM, [email protected] writes: > On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 8:21 AM, William Conger <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > ...I think the best art alerts consciousness to an > > invisible and supremely confident presence that we can suddenly imagine > as > > ourselves growing beyond ourselves. > > > > > If that means that art should sensitize us, I agree. > > But that is only one of the many things that art can do for its audience: > > - The job of mass entertainment is to cajole, seduce and flatter consumers > to let them know that what they thought was right is right, and that their > tastes and their immediate gratification are of the utmost concern of the > purveyor. The job of the artist, on the other hand, is to say, wait a > second, to the contrary, everything that we have thought is wrong. Let's > reexamine it. > > DAVID MAMET, *Salon* interview, 1997 > Mamet, a very smart guy, is nevertheless often deeply full of it. And I've had evidence that he is loathe to reconsider anything he says once he's said it. He is not an expert on "Reexamining" his own pronouncements. Once he's said it, thou shalt be satisfied with it. Here are two mistakes in those few short lines: It is fatuous to assert what "THE" job of either the 'artist' or the 'mass entertainer' "IS". It is both careless and dim to assert that "EVERYTHING" we have thought -- no matter how narrow the subject -- is ever wrong.
