Please help me understand literature

[JamesGold]

If the purpose of literature is to convey a (often philosophical) message, it generally doesn't do a very good job of it. Either the message becomes obscured (deliberately, it seems) by the fictional story it's buried in, or the author belabors the message to the point of annoyance, or both. If you as an author want to convey a message, why shroud it in a long-winded story? Just come right out with it. Write a philosophical work and spare your readers the trouble of slogging through rambling dialogue and unnecessary detail.

As a reader, if you want philosophy, read philosophy. If you want entertainment, read books meant to entertain. When you read books that try to do both, you'll probably end up bored and annoyed like me.

I picked up The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky a couple weeks ago and I'm about half way through the novel. The story is not entertaining, there's tons of fluff, and the philosophical message is belabored. Yes, Dostoevsky, we understand that you believe that simple faith trumps analytical skepticism. We see over and over how the novel's characters of faith (Father Zossima, Alyosha) have a positive effect on the world around them while the characters of doubt (Fyodor Pavlovitch, Dmitri, Ivan) end up destroying themselves and those around them. That's all well and good, but what have you got to back up your philosophy? Who says non-believers can't have a positive effect on the world? This is, after all, a work of fiction, where the author can manipulate the story in whichever way he pleases to support his particular philosophy.

As you can see, I'm a little frustrated with literature as a whole right now. Is there something I'm missing, some perspective on literature I haven't considered that could possibly redeem it?

[Professor Chaos]

I think you need to read literature with the mindset of it being a story first and foremost. The philosophical message seems more profound in reflection when you consider how it fits within the framework of a story. The better the story, the bigger the message seems as it is weaved nicely within a good foundation. The philosophy is exposed and shown through the story, after all. I know the NT in you, craves more depth for explanation, but that's really the limitations of novels. You gotta use your imagination to reveal the finer qualities and richness of the philosophy. Take the idea and paint it across the novel in retrospect, as you interpret.

I think you are looking for a philosophical message as your primary quest within these novels, when it is best as a secondary quality. It is implicit, not explicit.

[Skinart]

This is why I stick with science fiction for my fix of entertainment and philosophical message. Literature bores me storywise. Somehow it seems like a contrived bit of rhetoric built around an ending first and the science fiction usually feels like exploring an interesting thought experiment where the author didn't know going in where they would end up.

[ACow]

I picked up The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky a couple weeks ago and I'm about half way through the novel. The story is not entertaining, there's tons of fluff, and the philosophical message is belabored.

I too started reading that book on recommendations. Funny you should say that, I just saw it on my book shelf before I sat down. I haven't finished it, I can't say I ever will. I found it dull, pointless, meandering. And I am not by any means a light reader. But hey, at least its not Ulysses...sometimes I think literature could do well from the Australian phrase "Get your hand off it, Daryl".

That being said, I just had a thought. American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis. Could the reader just be "told" the message/philosophy in that book? No. It is not possible. That's like being told you understand love because someone comes up and tells you about it. They have to experience it themselves, the nausea, the surface appearance, the mundanity, the madness, the violence. Literature, in that sense, serves a purpose.

[MoneyJungle]

If you don't enjoy the actual experience of reading literature don't bother with it. I don't find much value in having forced myself to read books I didn't like because I thought I should (I did this a lot in my late teens/early twenties). You might also be surprised at how books that were once unbearable can become wonderful if you pick them up a few years later. My somewhat recently adopted policy of capriciously dropping books and starting others at the drop of a hat has increased my reading pleasure quite a bit. Don't let the tweed jacket crowd impose their tastes on you. Life is too short for that shit.

[composer]

This is why I stick with science fiction for my fix of entertainment and philosophical message.

Agreed, I found literature to be one of the weakest arts. I did a deep study of Shakespeare, deep reading and studying the plays chronologically. Pretty good writing overall, delicious use of irony but ultimately doesn't hold a candle to, say, music. Primarily words are a means of intellectual communication, which I think limits their expressive ability.

[YHWH]

you were supposed to enjoy it. if you don't, I see no reason to be bothered with it.

edit: I'm practically echoing moneyjungle, i'll try reading the thread before responding from now on.

[YHWH]

Agreed, I found literature to be one of the weakest arts. I did a deep study of Shakespeare, deep reading and studying the plays chronologically. Pretty good writing overall, delicious use of irony but ultimately doesn't hold a candle to, say, music. Primarily words are a means of intellectual communication, which I think limits their expressive ability.

wow :facepalm:

[V Profane]

But what about the simple pleasure of a well crafted sentence? A mellifluous word? A delicious turn of phrase? A pretentious rhetorical question?

[Skinart]

You're just taking the piss now ain't ya?

For my money, the most well crafted phrase I've ever run across--and I do delight in clever and elegant usage of language--can beat the compact compleat cathartic comprehension of the well said, "Fuck."

It's the duct tape of the English language.

[starjots]

I stopped reading Crime and Punishment halfway through for the same reasons you clearly stated. Guess I didn't want to hear about simple faith leading to redemption for whacking an innocent old lady in the head with the blunt end of an axe. I thought it would have been better to not be a stupid grub fucker in the first place (this is a concise description of the 'hero' of the story).

On the other hand, a novel without some sort of underpinning philosophy or message doesn't sound like it would be very entertaining. You say why not write a philosophical work, but there are a few reasons to embed a message you think is worth spreading around in a novel. First, a lot more people read novels and writers like to eat. Second, a lot more people read novels and you get the message to more people. Third, sugar-coating a message inside a story is more likely to get past the reflexive "BULLSHIT" response we all have when we read something that doesn't entirely conform to our narrow world views. A novel may be more effective vehicle for influencing people or even changing their mind.

[JamesGold]

Maybe Dostoevsky just sucks balls.

[synagogue]

I generally agree with the assertions in the OP, so far as the vast majority of the books on most (American) school reading lists are concerned. There are some authors I'd consider to be exceptions, whose works I feel do have legitimate bearing in "reality" (Hermann Hesse is one off the top of my head).

Dostoevsky is good to me in small doses. I own 3 or 4 of his novels but have only finished and/or thoroughly enjoyed one, "Notes From the Underground", which is relatively short.

[composer]

wow :facepalm:

YHWH, fuck off.

This is becoming a habit.

[Neville]

wow:facepalm:

[Chunes]

I actually prefer works of literature that infuse the author's philosophy into the work, but it has to be subtle and fictionworthy. Fahrenheit 451 is a good example.

[Flatchett]

Is fiction sans "philosophy" possible?

[stuck]

I'm gonna overreach here, but...

The goal isn't really philosophy or entertainment. The goal is something like empathy and magic.

Shakespeare is great because of the way he understands the human condition. Dostoevsky is the same.

Read some Borges for the Christopher Nolan stuff.

[wote]

Maybe Dostoevsky just sucks balls. Also keep in mind that if you are used to modern books (or other media), those written decades or more ago might be tough slogging. Not only are languages and standards for writing evolving, but so are the stylistic tastes and interests of authors and their readers. The term "literature" is not limited to what's been in the canon for the last 100 (or more) years. As others said, you might appreciate works you used to hate more later. There's no harm in starting with material that would appeal to you for now... unless you're taking an elective course or something. In that case, there are always Coles Notes or whatever it is in the US. Sometimes I kind of wish I'd used those when I was in school. I did well enough without them, but when I consider all the additional structural and thematic details I could have learned about, I'm shocked I never bothered.

[naruto littles helpers.jpeg]

As a reader, if you want philosophy, read philosophy. If you want entertainment, read books meant to entertain. When you read books that try to do both, you'll probably end up bored and annoyed like me.
i think philosophy is inescapable. almost everything, but certainly a work of art which seeks to portray reality in some manner, suggests a philosophy about existence, however shallow it might actually be.

your insistence on such a work having to be within some clearly definite mode of writing might be the problem. if that's your first attempt try a work that's not so demanding of your time. there's so much variety to what is considered literature, a tradition that spans hundreds of years, i'm sure there's something that you might like. try out kafka's short stories, for example (a personal huge favorite).

[giegs]

If literature has any one goal it's certainly compartmentalizing the human experience.

Dostoevsky isn't for everyone.

Composer's hierarchical ranking is sublime.

Re-reading great works of literature throughout your life can provide a sounding board for changes in personality and understanding that might otherwise never be noticed.

What are your thoughts on inconclusive, meandering, non fiction?

[djm]

Literature does not exist to be understood, but it can help you understand, if it has a point (and it needn't) then it is that it may help one glean insights into oneself and the world as oneself perceives it.

Mans quest to assign meaning erroneously to things, or see patterns where there is only the flotsam and jetsam of lifes detritus, is his greatest folly. It has whatever meaning you take from it, and that meaning is yours and yours alone, it does not require understanding en masse.

[YHWH]

YHWH, fuck off.

This is becoming a habit.

I know, I should have been acquainted by now with the level of obtuseness you project and ignore your posts and move on like everyone else does, but I'm surprisingly baffled every single time.

[MacGuffin]

If the purpose of literature is to convey a (often philosophical) message, it generally doesn't do a very good job of it.

I burst out laughing with the first sentence. That is not the purpose of literature! It can be one of the reasons used by an author, but not too often, and often done badly (see Ayn Rand).

Literature is to convey a human experience/viewpoint to readers. To make them think, or feel, or perhaps both.

[stuck]

I burst out laughing with the first sentence. That is not the purpose of literature! It can be one of the reasons used by an author, but not too often, and often done badly (see Ayn Rand).

I came this close to suggesting he go find some Ayn Rand.

[outmywindow]

Literature and/or fiction sucks, and PUA and/or ladder theory: INTPc's two most frequently recurring thread topics, each as full of false bravado and mistaken expertise as the other.

[djm]

Literature and/or fiction sucks, and PUA and/or ladder theory: INTPc's two most frequently recurring thread topics, each as full of false bravado and mistaken expertise as the other.

PUA threads I just find funny (haha rather than peculiar), such is the stupidity of it's advocates that their hapless exploits have a certain entertainment value.

Literature sucks threads do annoy me though, stupidity is sometimes funny, but gratuitous philistinism is another matter.

[stuck]

Literature and/or fiction sucks, and PUA and/or ladder theory: INTPc's two most frequently recurring thread topics, each as full of false bravado and mistaken expertise as the other.

Well I gave my disclaimer. It's hard to boil down 30+ years of being a smug prick into one inedible, two-sentence ball of intellectual asstar. Yet we persist, madam.

yet we persist

[asperger]

Agreed, I found literature to be one of the weakest arts. ...

From my perspective their esteem is more equal, and Shakespeare's reason enough; again, for me.


Primarily words are a means of intellectual communication, which I think limits their expressive ability.

I'm not sure how to interpret that. Words are very closely linked to ideas. Oddly this makes them much more concrete than musical utterances. That concreteness limits/defines their domain within aesthetic space, same as the abstractness of “pure” music limits/defines its domain.” But each within their domain have comparable* expressive range. (All IMO.)

*Yes, yes, it's apples to oranges and entirely subjective. But there you have it.

[Skinart]

Well I gave my disclaimer. It's hard to boil down 30+ years of being a smug prick into one inedible, two-sentence ball of intellectual asstar. Yet we persist, madam.

yet we persist

How about:

Literature is a marvelous Shibboleth. It is so delightful how effectively it has sorted you.

(I just creeped myself out.)

[outmywindow]

Well I gave my disclaimer. It's hard to boil down 30+ years of being a smug prick into one inedible, two-sentence ball of intellectual asstar. Yet we persist, madam.

yet we persist

I should have clarified. I meant the people who start the threads or defend the OPs, not the people who refute them.

Mmm, intellectual asstar...

[Cervus]

i think philosophy is inescapable. almost everything, but certainly a work of art which seeks to portray reality in some manner, suggests a philosophy about existence, however shallow it might actually be.
Well said.

@James:

As already mentioned by previous posters, I also agree, trying different authors will help one find one's favorite literature style. Try Camus, Sartre ,Chekhov, Isaac B. Singer.....

[asperger]

Kafka -- my personal favorite -- probably because his metaphors were instantly clear to me (whether or not those found meanings were "correct").

[YHWH]

I automatically dislike anyone that dislikes kafka. one must be subhuman to dislike kafka.

[Aaaw]

Is there something I'm missing, some perspective on literature I haven't considered that could possibly redeem it?


Agreed, I found literature to be one of the weakest arts.

And here I was thinking INTPs were meant to be expansive thinkers.

[Bking]

Listen to audiobooks that are made for developing that specific desire. Then use it till you forget your using it. Like learning to type.

[fduniho]

Literature is to convey a human experience/viewpoint to readers. To make them think, or feel, or perhaps both.

Agreed. One of the reasons I like Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein better than any movie adaptation is that it better conveys the experiences of Frankenstein and his monster. Unlike the movies, it provides a sense of what it is like to be each of them.

[JamesGold]

I'm getting a better idea of what literature is and how it should be interpreted, which was the intention of this thread. Aside from the somewhat caustic remarks (*glares*), I appreciate the comments.

[Ptah]

Literature = *snore*

[outmywindow]

Literature = *snore*

You speak like someone who never has any interesting dreams.

[asperger]

You speak like someone who never has any interesting dreams.

Ooooo. I wonder if that is true and if so is it generally true????


I think dogs and pigs have intesting dreams. Looks so from the outside anyway.

[HoneyCyclical]

I wonder what pigs dream.

[YHWH]

probably of wackyland (http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/NiDAG7WK5c0/).

[Ptah]

You speak like someone who never has any interesting dreams.

In fact, I rarely do.

In any event, I don't see people's interest in literature. Nor do I get its distinction from basic "fiction".

*shrug*

[Skinart]

Agreed. One of the reasons I like Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein better than any movie adaptation is that it better conveys the experiences of Frankenstein and his monster. Unlike the movies, it provides a sense of what it is like to be each of them.

It also leads to a completely different outlook on the underlying thesis--or did for me. The movies all take this 'dangers of science' approach. What I get from the book is, 'the danger of a father abandoning his child'.

[fduniho]

In any event, I don't see people's interest in literature. Nor do I get its distinction from basic "fiction".

Perhaps this distinction can be drawn. Literature will reveal something of the human condition, such that you can come away from reading it feeling more elevated or more enlightened, but some fiction just panders to interests in sex or violence, such as in lurid romance novels or pulp fiction adventures. When I read Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights I took away from it the experience of what it can be like to deeply love someone. When I read Armageddon 2419 A.D., I got nothing from it, and I found the relationship between Buck Rogers and Wilma Deering boring and uninteresting. While literature seeks to inspire and ennoble, bad fiction seeks just to excite and titillate.

[Skinart]

What I like is good. What I don't like is bad.

[Ptah]

Perhaps this distinction can be drawn. Literature will reveal something of the human condition, such that you can come away from reading it feeling more elevated or more enlightened, but some fiction just panders to interests in sex or violence, such as in lurid romance novels or pulp fiction adventures.

Like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. That is, I see nothing non-subjective in nature to distinguish "literature" from the general term "fiction".

[stuck]

A look at wikipedia shows that literature is both fiction and non-fiction.

But by all means, let's continue this hilarious folk etymological scrimmage.

[Skinart]

Just remember the primary rule. Distill it into two asstarry sentences.

[Roger Mexico]

Nor do I get its distinction from basic "fiction".

This is a pretty good summation of how I feel. I've found that when people use the word "literature" in a certain way, they're referring to the idea of a canon*, which is IMO a steaming pile of shit from a bull who has been eating horseshit.

Now, I definitely prefer the fiction that I read to be thick, dense, complex, and heavily informed by what you might call "philosophical" ideas if you're predisposed to make an arbitrary distinction between philosophy and fiction/literature. (Works like Thus Spoke Zarathrusta and even, technically, Republic would fall into both categories, so I don't see the distinction as being absolute.) I love Thomas Pynchon but don't have much use these days for Chuck Palahniuk. (both being "postmodernist" authors, but one being full of interesting thoughts about meaning/morality/normalcy/etc. while the other just cranks out calculatedly shocking "weirdness" and basks in the adulation this somehow elicits)

Philosophy as an intellectual discipline is about abstracting generalizations from the little points of data you gather by observing the world directly. Writing fiction is basically a process of inventing little points of experiential data so that a person can think about them in the same way they would think about a literally real event that they witnessed or participated in. Vis-a-vis yourself as a reader, I don't think it really matters who made up the story as long as it stimulates your mind in a way that you find rewarding.

I don't know, personally I liked Notes from Underground, but probably that was because it was short. I don't think I could handle hundreds and hundreds of pages of ponderous meditation on faith vs. doubt or other such boring aspects of the "human condition." (In college I majored in history--you know, stuff that actually happened--and had a somewhat scoffing attitude toward people I knew who chose to spend 4+ years overanalyzing some bygone era's equivalent of movies and television.) I never really had much interest in literature from what I think of as the autumn years of the European feudal aristocracy. (So Jane Austen, Baudelaire, most of the "great Russian novelists.") Basically I just don't give a shit about what those authors evidently spent their time thinking about. For my money, there's nothing so emblematic of "academia's" collectively idle, useless, masturbatory preoccupation with trivia and self-congratulation as when a bunch of elbow-patched-tweed-jacket-and-beret types want to sit around drinking expensive wine and discuss their love of Shakespeare." Fuck Shakespeare. He's dead. He's been dead for hundreds of years. He's famous because people back then had nothing better to do than watch remakes of ancient Greek tragedies with added fart jokes, and because a lot of these people were in awe of his ability to write words down on paper. The only time in my life I can recall being interested in Shakespeare was when I heard some archaelogist had found cannabis resin on a pipe they dug up outside of his house. (Carbon-dated or whatever to find that it was likely used while he was alive.)

...

Now, Gravity's Rainbow (Pynchon) just like... cracked my skull open and made signals start jumping between my synapses along paths that didn't previously exist. I've found that when people ask me what I like about it, I can't even give a summary description of the ideas in it--I want to say "just read it"; the intellectual value is not so much the substance of the content as the mental work you have to do to process the content. Its "philosophical" message is so broad, convoluted, and scattershot that I can't imagine reading these ideas in the form of an essay that meticulously works through their logic and carefully establishes proof of each one--if it were even possible, the resulting document would be a huge, difficult, and mostly pointless pain in the ass to read. ("In this essay I shall address what the fuck S+M has to do with ballistic missile technology...") As a fantasy/spy novel that revolves around a potentially psychic sex addict with an irresistible subconscious desire to make love to Nazi rockets, however, it makes for an enjoyable way to spend several hours a day for several weeks.

My $00.02: The point of philosophy is to carefully keep track of everything we can claim to "know" about reality on a certain very abstract level. The point of (good) fiction is to help us understand how and why we are trying to understand reality in the first place.



*Meaning some body of non-factual literature that ostensibly contains information without which a person cannot consider themself "educated." Otherwise known as "boring shit they make you read in English class"

[starjots]

Literature vs. Fiction

Well, I'm going to cop out and say it is all relative folks. There is a difference but only you can figure it out. Most fiction you read and you forget. It is entertaining like an episode of XYZ. It leaves almost no trace behind, much like the taped message at the start of Mission Impossible. Literature is fiction that happens to connect and make some impact upon your brain and how it does business. You remember it and it changes you.

Being social, we have folks who like to put certain works of fiction in the literature bucket because they think these should subtly alter the mind of a moderately intelligent homo sapien. Much fun is had comparing these buckets.

[Cbug]

Fiction acts as an emotion simulator and a guide to visions in the mind's eye.

[fduniho]

Like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. That is, I see nothing non-subjective in nature to distinguish "literature" from the general term "fiction".

The word is used in two senses. In one, literature just refers to anything written, and in this sense we may describe even pornographic writing as literature. In this sense, literature includes both fiction and non-fiction, which is a non-subjective way to distinguish it from fiction. In another sense, the word has normative value, describing a certain kind of writing that has more value than other writing. Within the context of fiction, we might distinguish literary fiction from other forms of fiction. But instead of starting with that, I'll mention some other types of fiction first. One is what I'll call sensationalist fiction. This is fiction that seeks primarily to arouse and titillate, relying on lurid or sensationalist accounts of sex, horror, gore, violence, action, or adventure. The appeal of such fiction is not so much in the story itself but in the detailed events of the story. This category of fiction largely includes the genres of Romance novels, Westerns, Spy Thrillers, Murder Mysteries, Horror novels, and Pulp fiction. Another is what I'll call polemic fiction or didactic fiction. This is fiction whose main purpose is to communicate a philosophical or religious perspective or to teach a moral or lesson. Examples include Ayn Rand's novels, C. S. Lewis's novels, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the Left Behind series, Aesop's Fables, and the Berenstain Bears books. It may also include the genre of Christian Romances, but having never read any, I couldn't really say. A third category is what I'll call speculative fiction. This is fiction whose main purpose is to open the mind to other possible ways the world could have been or might become, focusing not on the way things actually are but on other possible worlds, where some things are different than reality as we know it. This largely includes the genres of Science Fiction and Fantasy. One last category is what I'll call introspective fiction. This is fiction in which you get an inside look at the character and the humanity of the central characters, and through this lens you may experience something of what it means to be human that goes beyond your usual experience or which gives you insight on what it means to be human. In this sort of fiction, the author shares more of himself than in the other sorts I described. It is not so much the mere spinning of a tale but a candid look into the human condition. This sort of fiction doesn't easily lend itself to specific genres, which may be one of the reasons much of it gets grouped together under the classification of literature, used in the normative sense. Novels like Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein are of different genres and superficially deal with different subjects, but they all throw a light on the human condition in a way that many other novels do not.

[Ptah]

In another sense, the word has normative value, describing a certain kind of writing that has more value than other writing.

It is this meaning that I refer to when, in response to things like this:



Novels like (whatever) all throw a light on the human condition in a way that many other novels do not.


... I say, like beauty, this is quality found in the eye of the beholder. Hence, subjective.

So, in this sense literature = fiction. In the broader sense, literature = anything written. In either case, nothing whatsoever objectively distinct about it (intrinsically).

[fduniho]

... I say, like beauty, this is quality found in the eye of the beholder. Hence, subjective.

So, in this sense literature = fiction. In the broader sense, literature = anything written. In either case, nothing whatsoever objectively distinct about it (intrinsically).

Although the blind cannot see light, light is still something objective, not subjective. The categories of fiction I described are objective categories. An inability to discern between them does not mean they are subjective. With respect to literature in the normative sense, there may be borderline cases that discerning people will disagree on, but there will also be many cases that they will agree on. The same holds true with other categories considered objective. For example, people disagree on what counts as a living person. Some say a fetus is a living person and some deny this. Just because there is disagreement over this borderline case doesn't mean that the concept itself is subjective. I don't think there is any controversy that you or I count as living persons.

[Flatchett]

I don't think there is any controversy that you or I count as living persons.

Hmm.

Hmmmm.

Hmmmmmmm.

[asperger]

It's passing strange how diverse lives, experiences, and nervous systems can be. I have been most drawn to Shakespeare when in bouts of severe depression and thinking of suicide as a possible solution while still looking for reasons behind when and why one chooses life – or not. But I grant these are plays and all plays suffer in the reading. Still, it's rather sad that someone cannot see even the possibility that there exist those who value Shakespeare for “legitimate” reasons. Such pronouncement feels to me breathtaking in its hubris.

[MoneyJungle]

It's passing strange how diverse lives, experiences, and nervous systems can be. I have been most drawn to Shakespeare when in bouts of severe depression and thinking of suicide as a possible solution while still looking for reasons behind when and why one chooses life – or not. But I grant these are plays and all plays suffer in the reading. Still, it's rather sad that someone cannot see even the possibility that there exist those who value Shakespeare for “legitimate” reasons. Such pronouncement feels to me breathtaking in its hubris.

If I didn't believe on a fundamental level that it is nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune I'd have offed myself a long time ago. Not that this conflict isn't an ongoing theme in my life.

I sometimes question my motives for enjoying Shakespeare. My enjoyment of his plays hasn't really ever impressed anyone that I know of. I barely make ends meet in spite of having read a few of his plays. Still, I often feel like I'm fapping in the mirror when I read a passage of Hamlet for the upteenth time.

I guess therein lies the "objective value." Even if I am just measuring myself against the self I loathe, it is valid self-examination. It's not the warm blanket my base mind often hungers for but I gain something regardless of whether my reasons for reading Shakespeare are legitimate or not. The same can't be said for a lot of things I read.

[wote]

I find much of this thread to be just that sort of breathtaking... on multiple levels.

[puzzled-observer]

The same holds true with other categories considered objective. For example, people disagree on what counts as a living person. Some say a fetus is a living person and some deny this. Just because there is disagreement over this borderline case doesn't mean that the concept itself is subjective. I don't think there is any controversy that you or I count as living persons.
The meaning derived from a word (i.e. the concept that the word refers to) is always subjective. Sure, agreement or disagreement doesn't make something objective or subjective. What makes something subjective or objective is whether it exists within the mind or outside the mind.

[Ptah]

Although the blind cannot see light, light is still something objective, not subjective. The categories of fiction I described are objective categories. An inability to discern between them does not mean they are subjective. With respect to literature in the normative sense, there may be borderline cases that discerning people will disagree on, but there will also be many cases that they will agree on. The same holds true with other categories considered objective. For example, people disagree on what counts as a living person. Some say a fetus is a living person and some deny this. Just because there is disagreement over this borderline case doesn't mean that the concept itself is subjective. I don't think there is any controversy that you or I count as living persons.

"throw a light on the human condition" != light qua electromagnetic phenomena.

[asperger]

Not that this conflict isn't an ongoing theme in my life.

I found that the problem improved greatly in the second 30 years. (better medications?)

[Roger Mexico]

Sorry, but this:


... One is what I'll call sensationalist fiction. This is fiction that seeks primarily to arouse and titillate, relying on lurid or sensationalist accounts of sex, horror, gore, violence, action, or adventure. ....

is little more than elitism.

People have said this already, but "literature" is just a word that means "things which have been written down." You can use the word to refer to, say, the literature of a certain culture or a certain historical era--meaning things that people are/were writing and reading within the subclass of humanity you want to examine. It's a shorthand that prevents you from having to write the words "fiction and poetry and philosophy and..." over and over again. You are, IMO, misusing the word if you're trying to make a categorical distinction between the things that smart, educated, sophisticated people read and the things that the (in your view) mongoloid masses use to fritter away their free time and meager earnings.

I don't mean for this to get personal, but there's a certain mentality out there about this subject which alternately amuses and irritates me: people who read "literature" instead of "fiction", watch "films" instead of "movies," read "graphic novels" instead of "comic books," and--my personal favorite--enjoy "erotica" instead of "porn." It's like these people are embarassed about their own taste in entertainment and are trying to compensate for, or conceal, this shame by acting like there's an objective dividing line between what they like in a certain genre and what other people who like the same genre should feel ashamed of.

For instance, I have this utterly Oedipal hatred for Star Trek. My parents were huge fans, so probably my earliest act of pre-adolescent rebellion was to develop an equally geeky love of Star Wars, which they disparaged as "space opera," Dungeons and Dragons in space, not "real science fiction." I think it's precisely the whole conceit of scientific veracity that irritates me about Star Trek. (First, it's bullshit to begin with--you're telling me that intelligent life developed on hundreds of planets, thousands of light-years apart, under God knows what order of magnitude of variability in environmental conditions, and the principal difference between most of these species is that some of them evolved little furrowed ridges in the middle of their foreheads? AAAGH!) When I hear this line of argument/criticism, it makes me want to grab the nearest Trekkie, shake them violently, and yell "Stop pretending you watch this because you're hoping to get a free lesson in astrophysics! You're in it for the Campbellian archetypes just like me--spandex-clad Odyssei thrusting their phallic vessels into the primal womb-symbol of the interplanetary void. Kirk is the hip, swinging older brother who gave you your first hit off a joint for your 13th birthday. Picard is the sternly compassionate math-professor father who made you watch this shit from infancy because he liked to watch it while he was smoking dope in college. Cisco is 'the black guy,' so he can only afford to command a used space station next to an intergalactic highway on-ramp. You like to watch these larger-than-life characters shoot each other with laser beams and then quip pithy one-liners. You prefer your heroes to ride spaceships instead of horses simply because you're a nerd and you find that kind of backdrop more relatable. GOD STFU!"



Look, the point of my first post wasn't to rag on people who like Shakespeare.... Okay, maybe that was kind of the point, but the other part of the point was that just because you get something out of reading Shakespeare doesn't mean that I am going to get anything out of it. Maybe I find Rob Schneider movies to be equally insightful about "the human condition." Both are forms of entertainment--there's nothing wrong with entertainment. I've found that what makes me like a particular book/movie/etc. has as much to do with the experiences/thoughts/feelings that I bring to it as the content the author chose to put into it. There isn't objectively "good" and "bad" literature--there's literature with greater or lesser appeal to my tastes, which are a reflection of my personality. (Although there is certainly literature which has obviously failed to achieve the effect its author was hoping to create--that is another subject entirely.)

Another example--Watchmen (the movie) sucked balls . Maybe I'll give the "Graphic Novel" [*ahem! [I]Garcon, would you bring me another eclaire, sisvousplaiszeseszz?] a try some day, but I don't think my problem with it arose from anything that was lost in the translation. It annoyed me that it was constantly congratulating itself for making a "contribution" to the extant body of comic-book literature which was utterly redundant and unnecessary. Just off the top of my head, the X-Men franchise had been "Deconstructing the Superhero Concept"--with an eye toward its political complexities--for something like 20 years by the time Watchmen was originally published. (1986?) The difference is that X-Men wasn't full of gratuitous attempts to convince its fan base that they were a smarter, "cooler" breed of human being than people who read Superman.

Wankers!

[YHWH]

There isn't objectively "good" and "bad" literature--there's literature with greater or lesser appeal to my tastes, which are a reflection of my personality.

but are there "good" and "bad" tastes?

[kuranes]

but are there "good" and "bad" tastes?I thought of you when he said "films" vs. "movies". :-) You Roland Barthes readin', form over content'n, film watchin'......

[Roger Mexico]

but are there "good" and "bad" tastes?

From my perspective? Yeah, sure. If someone recommends a new author/whatever to me, I'll be more likely to follow up on it if I know they prefer Philip K. Dick to Robert Heinlein.

You're asking if some people are better at choosing their entertainment? I would say no, since "good" entertainment is a question of what appeals to a particular person.

[YHWH]

I thought of you when he said "films" vs. "movies". :-) You Roland Barthes readin', form over content'n, film watchin'......

form over subject, content is to a large extent form. that's why 2 movies with the same exact plot and basic characters can end up one as a masterpiece and the other as a piece of shit. same goes for all forms of art, it's the most obvious in painting since the subject is literally the support for the form. (that's why I hate people who point to a painting and ask "and what's that one about?". IT DOESN'T MATTER YOU SAD FUCKFACE.

as for "films" vs. "movies", I don't care about the semantic dispute but I believe there is hierarchy in arts, some works are brilliant and others are mediocre or terrible, nothing is objectively good or bad, but we can judge what's good and what's bad within the "boundaries" of all arts based on qualitative criteria (creativity, aesthetics, psychological depth, imagery, novelty, etc.).

[asperger]

Look, the point of my first post wasn't to rag on people who like Shakespeare.... Okay, maybe that was kind of the point, but the other part of the point was that just because you get something out of reading Shakespeare doesn't mean that I am going to get anything out of it.

Exactly. No one can look into another's heart and know which songs will make it sing or cry nor those to which it is tone deaf. The error of hubris is to assume one's own heart is the standard by which all others must be judged.

[Ptah]

Exactly. No one can look into another's heart and know which songs will make it sing or cry nor those to which it is tone deaf. The error of hubris is to assume one's own heart is the standard by which all others must be judged.

Which is another way of putting what I was getting at -- it's all rather necessarily subjective, insofar as you're going to define "literature" in terms of some such an appeal (ie, "the human condition", etc).

[MacGuffin]

Look, the point of my first post wasn't to rag on people who like Shakespeare.... Okay, maybe that was kind of the point, but the other part of the point was that just because you get something out of reading Shakespeare doesn't mean that I am going to get anything out of it. Maybe I find Rob Schneider movies to be equally insightful about "the human condition." Both are forms of entertainment--there's nothing wrong with entertainment. I've found that what makes me like a particular book/movie/etc. has as much to do with the experiences/thoughts/feelings that I bring to it as the content the author chose to put into it. There isn't objectively "good" and "bad" literature--there's literature with greater or lesser appeal to my tastes, which are a reflection of my personality. (Although there is certainly literature which has obviously failed to achieve the effect its author was hoping to create--that is another subject entirely.)


I'd like to jump on the "all art is subjective and therefore equally valid" bandwagon, but I can't. It's just not true. I like "literature" and I like "sensationalist fiction". I don't have to force myself to pick the elitist canon and pretend to enjoy it more than the magazine articles I read on the subway. I can enjoy both. It's like when I see those "post the embarrassing songs you like" threads. I post songs that I think others would be embarrassed to like, but I'm not really embarrassed by the things I like. I downloaded Mötley Crüe's greatest hits two weeks ago, and I gleefully enjoy them as much as the little-known but critically acclaimed Wrens album I put on repeat the other day.

So I do enjoy both. What I will NOT do is equate their artistic merit. I love Star Wars as much as anyone, probably even you. I like it more than Shakespeare, but there is no way I would say that Star Wars and Shakespeare are equals.

I think people are too egotistical to admit that every piece of pop culture trash they like doesn't stand up to pieces of art that have withstood generations and centuries and are still enjoyed to this day by people around the world.

One doesn't have to enjoy every anointed piece of art (I find Virginia Woolf boring). What I won't say is that my lack of enjoyment somehow negates the artistic worth of something that carved out its place in history before I was even born.

[Ptah]

So I do enjoy both. What I will NOT do is equate their artistic merit.

Depends on what constitutes such merit. For instance, there is the "technical" criteria and there is the "aesthetic" criteria. Some even judge "merit" on the substance (the subject) involved.


I love Star Wars as much as anyone, probably even you. I like it more than Shakespeare, but there is no way I would say that Star Wars and Shakespeare are equals.

Equally meh-tastic, if you ask me. However, perhaps there is an argument for Shakespeare having demonstrated more of the technical kind of artistic merit. I just don't care to find out, for what of that bore's work I've absorbed so far leaves me on the edge of falling asleep. So much for shedding a light on this reader's human condition. So much for the objectivity of "literature" so defined.


I think people are too egotistical to admit that every piece of pop culture trash they like doesn't stand up to pieces of art that have withstood generations and centuries and are still enjoyed to this day by people around the world.

Perhaps. But just because something is popular over the ages as such doesn't make it good (of high artistic merit). Not technically, not aeshetically, not in terms of subject matter, and not necessarily.


One doesn't have to enjoy every anointed piece of art (I find Virginia Woolf boring). What I won't say is that my lack of enjoyment somehow negates the artistic worth of something that carved out its place in history before I was even born.

Consenus (in tradition or otherwise) != truth, != good. Also, overall (fully criteria-inclusive) "artistic worth" is (necessarily) a personal evaluation, not a social one.

That mobs of people across history have lauded (and/or reviled) some work of art doesn't say or mean anything more than just that. Moreover, this says more about (most) people (and their herdish mentality) than it does about the art, nevermind how the art may (nevermind should) appeal to other (simply different if not less herdish) people down the road.

[MacGuffin]

Depends on what constitutes such merit. For instance, there is the "technical" criteria and there is the "aesthetic" criteria. Some even judge "merit" on the substance (the subject) involved.

Equally meh-tastic, if you ask me. However, perhaps there is an argument for Shakespeare having demonstrated more of the technical kind of artistic merit. I just don't care to find out, for what of that bore's work I've absorbed so far leaves me on the edge of falling asleep. So much for shedding a light on this reader's human condition. So much for the objectivity of "literature" so defined.

Perhaps. But just because something is popular over the ages as such doesn't make it good (of high artistic merit). Not technically, not aeshetically, not in terms of subject matter, and not necessarily.


I agree with most of this, but usually something that survives for ages does have high artistic merit. Otherwise it would die out with the innumerable other pieces of art that did not survive in the public consciousness. And note that public consciousness doesn't mean enjoyment. Nearly everyone knows Einstein was a genius, but few actually understand and can explain his work. Yet he survives.


Consenus (in tradition or otherwise) != truth, != good. Also, overall (fully criteria-inclusive) "artistic worth" is (necessarily) a personal evaluation, not a social one.

That mobs of people across history have lauded (and/or reviled) some work of art doesn't say or mean anything more than just that. Moreover, this says more about (most) people (and their herdish mentality) than it does about the art, nevermind how the art may (nevermind should) appeal to other (simply different if not less herdish) people down the road.

I believe one can divorce personal aesthetic merit from a larger sense of cultural aesthetic merit. And I think art that survives generations does speak more to "less herdish" people. Shakespeare doesn't survive because the masses like him. Most people in my experience hated being forced to read his plays in school. Hardly anyone read them for enjoyment. It's the elitists that keep him alive. That read and study his works. Adapt them like Kurosawa did into different forms for others. Millions of people tune in each week to watch American Idol, not listen to Mozart.

[asperger]

... usually something that survives for ages does have high artistic merit. Otherwise it would die out with the innumerable other pieces of art that did not survive in the public consciousness.

Yes, I agree that time, though an imperfect operator, best threshes wheat from chaff. And by implication that there is a distinction between the two – just as I believe there is a distinction between art and entertainment. I'm just not egotistical enough to make pronouncements beyond the scope of personal taste and am content for time do the rest.

[stuck]

*another placeholder post until yet another NF comes and schools us*

...i mean, seriously.

and my sympathies are honestly towards all of youse guyses. I wish, with my little shriveled void of a soul, that NT thought were more represented in art. Hell, that's the biggest reason I came here in the first place. (http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?35928-INTP-artists-come-out&highlight=)

I'm so furious that I can't even articulate my thoughts. Getting routed by NFs so fucking thoroughly and consistently. The horror.

[MacGuffin]

*another placeholder post until yet another NF comes and schools us*

...i mean, seriously.

and my sympathies are honestly towards all of youse guyses. I wish, with my little shriveled void of a soul, that NT thought were more represented in art. Hell, that's the biggest reason I came here in the first place. (http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?35928-INTP-artists-come-out&highlight=)

I'm so furious that I can't even articulate my thoughts. Getting routed by NFs so fucking thoroughly and consistently. The horror.

It's okay, stuck. It's like your own music, someone may like it, someone may not. It's all subjective and devoid of context! There's no point in expending effort or "improving" your skills.

You're welcome.

[stuck]

I take the default position until the rest of the evidence comes in, when a shimmering chimera descends from a hypercube and explains the purpose of irony while giving me a ruff handy under my filthy tunic.

Help me blast a meme-sized womb hole through the nonsense, guys! 20 centuries of stony sleep etc.

What I mean is that this internet, the forum, this is our chance! It will never ever happen if we don't learn what the fuck the NFs and SFs have been doing for 10,000 long years of pwnery. Gotta learn the rules to break em, guys. It's not about 'the masses' or 'the elite': art is one living organism that starts at the venus of willendorf and ends up with Lady Gaga. Fucking deal.

[wote]

@stuck: If you find a way to convince people to let their guard down to this idea, I'd love to see it. I got weary of the nonsense long ago (IRL). But at the same time, if they don't know enough about a field of endeavour to understand it, people might have their opinions and speculate about it, but they should know they don't have the authority to dismiss it outright. In my view, when people attack persons engaged in literary criticism and interpretation in such a way, it's exactly the same thing as attacking scientists for scientific research simply because they don't understand the benefit of whatever is under study. We may have ceased to evolve physically, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to evolve culturally (in every way that we can, as ethically as we can).

[outmywindow]

I don't know why, but I have the very strong desire to point out that the exact phrase "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" first appeared in a novel written in 1878. The sentiment was also used by Shakespeare in the form "beauty is bought by judgement of the eye," from "Love's Labors Lost."

Whether or not an individual enjoys consuming literature (fiction and non-fiction alike), to claim that it is either worthless or unimportant is as absurd as an artist claiming the same of physics. Namely, it is impossible to live one's life free of direct influence from either, no matter how vitriolic one may feel about one or the other.

[Roger Mexico]

I don't know why, but I have the very strong desire to point out that the exact phrase "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" first appeared in a novel written in 1878. The sentiment was also used by Shakespeare in the form "beauty is bought by judgement of the eye," from "Love's Labors Lost."

Whether or not an individual enjoys consuming literature (fiction and non-fiction alike), to claim that it is either worthless or unimportant is as absurd as an artist claiming the same of physics. Namely, it is impossible to live one's life free of direct influence from either, no matter how vitriolic one may feel about one or the other.

My favorite Shakespeare line is the one where Hamlet says "bunghole."

OK, if I don't enjoy it, and it doesn't provide me with information about the actual world I inhabit, (which is the difference between things I don't quite understand that Einstein wrote down and things I don't quite understand that Shakespeare wrote down), of what does the value consist, exactly? How do I benefit from reading Shakespeare if I find it boring?

I need to insert a caveat here: literature can be incredibly valuable as source material for historical scholarship. It is often a good way to find out what people were thinking about in a given society, and how they were thinking about it. But the value of a piece of literature in this capacity has basically nothing to do with its aesthetic or technical level of quality. I've read large chunks of Mein Kampf--even if you set aside your emotions about the philosophy it expresses, it is a terrible, terrible book from a technical perspective. It is incoherent, rambling, full of atrociously confusing mixed metaphors, and just obviously written by someone with no clue about what makes for a "good" piece of autobiographical/polemical writing. Nonetheless, it is an "important" book because lots of people read it and, partly as a result of reading it, went on to do things that it would (IMO) behoove us all to understand. You could certainly make a case that Shakespeare has a similar value to the study of Elizabethan England, but this is generally not what tweeded, bereted vinophiles mean when they say it's "important"--they seem to think that anyone and everyone would benefit from reading it, and reading criticism of it, and fucking memorizing it, completely out of its historical context.

So, here's your chance. Like O'Reilly says, "keep it pithy," but explain to me: what the fuck is so important about it? Why is it ostensibly of more intellectual value to me than something of a similar depth/complexity/etc. which is less venerated by self-important Ivy League twats but more directly relevant to my life/interests/etc.? I happen to think* that Ghostface Killah is at least as technically gifted a poet as Shakespeare was. If you're opposed to making 9th-graders memorize Wu-Tang Clan songs but in favor of making them memorize passages from Hamlet,** fucking justify this position. GO

In case this helps, my view is that making kids memorize it serves the purpose of indoctrinating them with an ideology that validates the class/culture hierarchy they live under. If you tell them it's important, you're also telling them to listen when people who know more about it than they do tell them what to do. Pure and simple.


*[seriously; I was joking about the Rob Schneider thing, but I am serious about this]

**[heheh. heheheheh. BUNGHOLE!]

[stuck]

Sometimes it takes repeated exposure for art to be understood. I thought Shakespeare was fairly incoherent in high school, but upon repeated viewing, I understood it better. Autechre turned from noise into sublime music over a two month period.

In essence, stretching your mind is fun because you can then enjoy more things in the long run. You become a more interesting person who can communicate effectively with more people- just like speaking a language. Art is especially fun because it has elements which are cross-cultural, meta-cultural, etc. etc. etc.

The 'fan mindset' requires you remain open to something that might not immediately make sense- kinda like what those star trek writers do, albeit mapped out to the precious second between commercial breaks.

Why would Shakespeare be of more interest than comparable contemporary art? Got me there. I'd rate them about equal. Every scene -every scene- has its share of stuffy pricks. Those people serve to stabilize art, to fund it, and to kill genres with the massed suffocation of their methane before the genres get too boring.

Shakespeare does still apply to your life. The themes never change- love turning to hate, jealousy, hate turning to love, revenge... and Shakespeare carefully shows the motivations logically evolving, such that anyone could identify. It rings very true to life, if you're paying attention. Some novelists do that pretty well, but Shakespeare remains one of the greatest. I don't hear that type of thing in rap- and I am a fan of rap.

[Roger Mexico]

Skills

"Lost among the miracles, I stand alone and have grown into a being that's sitting on top of thrones. I've known for many years that I would turn to rust--I find a reason for another breath. Before my return to dust, I become one with science and mathematics and the rising of the sun."

"How come he mad?"


More later, but I'd like to distinguish between "important-because-others-are-interested-and-thus-knowledge-of-the-thing-facilitates-communication-with-said-others", and "important-because-the-thing-in-itself-is-intrinsically-valuable."

[asperger]

[More later, but I'd like to distinguish between "important-because-others-are-interested-and-thus-knowledge-of-the-thing-facilitates-communication-with-said-others", and "important-because-the-thing-in-itself-is-intrinsically-valuable."

Quoth Ayn Rand, "Value presupposes to whom and for what." Thus "important-because-the-thing-in-itself-is-intrinsically-valuable." is an empty concept regardless of how popular it may be.

[Ptah]

Quoth Ayn Rand, "Value presupposes to whom and for what." Thus "important-because-the-thing-in-itself-is-intrinsically-valuable." is an empty concept regardless of how popular it may be.

Agreed. That said, there are objective ways (involving objective measurements) by which one can choose to value something. Still, it's a choice, hence rooted in personal motive (in reference to a personal value-system, however implicit or otherwise).

So, in the case of "literature", one can value it for certain features of its technical craftsmanship (based on objective measurements as such). That's fine. One can also value it for personal reasons (say, affininty for its subject matter and/or aesthetics). That's fine, too. But to think it has any "value in itself" apart from these two types of evaluation is ... delusional.

[Roger Mexico]

^Alright. Those are valid points. Sloppy language on my part. So, correction--substitute "valuable to me" or "valuable to the individual per se." The distinction is between knowledge of the work as cultural currency (in other words, value/utility as determined by popularity) and a (subjective, yes) value that can be placed on it independently of any need or desire to share knowledge of it with others.

(Although the larger point I'm getting at is more about the idea that one must place this independent, personal value on it.)

[wote]

Agreed. That said, there are objective ways (involving objective measurements) by which one can choose to value something. Still, it's a choice, hence rooted in personal motive (in reference to a personal value-system, however implicit or otherwise). Double blind taste tests?


But to think it has any "value in itself" apart from these two types of evaluation is ... delusional. But who seriously thinks that is the case, and isn't just being self-important or naïve?

[asperger]

But who seriously thinks that is the case, and isn't just being self-important or naïve?

I do not believe that things have intrinsic value. So -- you call'n me "self-important or naïve" are ya, are ya huh?! ARE YA! :duel:

[stuck]

The important step between the objective and the subjective, in this case, is the culturally defined. Culture, comprised of both elite and of the masses, is a kind of temporary objectivity. The cultural value of art is high because it's hard fought among living, vital people, and because it links subjective experience with something bigger- this kind of temporary objectivity. It's like language. You're not going to escape from the way your brain had to form in order to communicate your thoughts, just as you're not going to escape the cultural reverberations of our great artists.

All you're doing now is trying to fight a cultural war. You think you're loosing Jormungandr from his grip, but I tell you you are just lopping the head off of a hydra.

[asperger]

Jormungandr -- Ooooo -- I didn't even know Loki had children!

(good post, I'm still mulling it over)

[wote]

I do not believe that things have intrinsic value. So -- you call'n me "self-important or naïve" are ya, are ya huh?! ARE YA! :duel: Well, I was talking about people who claim that there IS such a thing as intrinsic value... :P

[asperger]

Well, I was talking about people who claim that there IS such a thing as intrinsic value... :P

:sadbanana: Oh . . . . . Sorry.

[Roger Mexico]

The important step between the objective and the subjective, in this case, is the culturally defined. Culture, comprised of both elite and of the masses, is a kind of temporary objectivity. The cultural value of art is high because it's hard fought among living, vital people, and because it links subjective experience with something bigger- this kind of temporary objectivity. It's like language. You're not going to escape from the way your brain had to form in order to communicate your thoughts, just as you're not going to escape the cultural reverberations of our great artists.

All you're doing now is trying to fight a cultural war. You think you're loosing Jormungandr from his grip, but I tell you you are just lopping the head off of a hydra.

Again, I'm fine with the idea of art/etc. as a psychological window into a particular culture--even/especially the culture I live in and have grown up in. Just because something has been influential does not make it "good" vis-a-vis my subjective experience of consuming it. With that kind of "value," context is everything.

And, look, I'm fairly "elitist" as far as my personal taste in books and music. IMO (gonna stop putting this in because it should be obvious at this point), Lady Gaga is crap. If you ask me what kind of person is likely to enjoy her music, and I'm feeling undisposed toward lengthy theorizing, I am rather apt to simply say "stupid people" or people with "simplistic" tastes. (Or, more often, people with a pronounced herd-animal approach to aesthetics--fuckers.) My point is that this is just my reaction to hearing it, as someone who spends his free time thinking about these things. You could just as easily refer to those same fans as people who would rather listen to something catchy and simple because they have 'better' things to do than the quasi-work involved in appreciating, say, Converge. I have identified this arrogance as a vice of my own, but find that some people's similarly unjustifiable arrogance displays a veneer of learned "objectivity" just because their tastes happen to mesh with centuries' worth of the ruling classes congratulating themselves for being more skilled aesthetes than those whom they rule. Or, worse, they have subordinated their self-worth to the ideology promulgated by these elites, and feel that when certain ("high") art doesn't appeal to them, the problem is with themselves, but when other ("fringe," "weird," etc.) art doesn't appeal to them, it is because the latter group of artists deserve contempt for being deviant.

I am merely Heimdallr, sounding the Gjallarhorn.

[Roger Mexico]

P.S. Interesting tidbit: long ago I watched a "making-of" documentary about Star Trek: The Next Generation. Apparently the scripts for that show (don't know about the others) were a collaboration between two distinct groups of writers.

The first group would develop pretty much the entire dramatic content of each episode--plot, dialogue, etc. However, when they reached a point where they wanted to inject some scientific/technical terminology, they would just put the word "tech" in brackets. (E.g. "Well, sir, we can't do that because of the [...TECH...]. We'll have to try swinging from the doorframe and kicking people in the stomach instead.")

When the first group had finished (i.e. basically written the entire episode minus the science), the second group of writers would go to work on the bracketed sections. Their job was to come up with plausible-sounding scientific explanations for the generic plot devices (e.g. "the engines aren't working") that the first group had already come up with.

So a lot of the "science" was basically window-dressing, or at least incidental to the dramatic elements of the show, which were pretty standard swashbuckling-adventure melodrama.

[wote]

:sadbanana: Oh . . . . . Sorry.

Hey no worries. And I can duel you in the Creative Expressions subforum any time you want. ;)

[stuck]

Well my point of view is that I'd love to wave a magic wand and liberate everyone to appreciate a vastly broader range of human thought. That is my cultural function as an artist. Binary thoughts awaken something within me, and I want to break them.

I'd have this conversation the other way with people who think there's inordinate value in the classics, if I felt they were stifling themselves by selectively ignoring information.

I'm not unaware that this role I want to play is, itself, a cultural phenomenon. The role of the artist, critic, public, and patron are fluid. Probably the highest level of power you could achieve in the framework of objective/subjective/cultural that I've laid out would be to understand and change the inter-relationship of all three. To try to comprehend this power takes a near-omniscient grasp of the present, what is possible, what is ignored, what is happening. Now, for instance, there are new forms of art that are being made increasingly by passionate amateurs.

What's the result of this? If you are clever enough to see into a possible future, you could influence people's subjective views, which then could change objective reality.

Why does it matter? If someone has already explored your point of view and systematically recontextualized or nullified it, you will have been declawed of your cultural power at a certain level, and it will take a lot of union-forming at comicon to get you to actually change something.

Ironically, the people most adept at ignoring the present are artists. This is because they invariably have better filtration systems in place so that they are not inundated with a flood of contradictory information as they try to do their work. They're usually the ones who are clothing their cultural assumptions in the language of objective fact. The fans of these artists then go on to mirror these cultural values, albeit in a debased and rudimentary manner.

[C.J.Woolf]

The important step between the objective and the subjective, in this case, is the culturally defined. Culture, comprised of both elite and of the masses, is a kind of temporary objectivity. The cultural value of art is high because it's hard fought among living, vital people, and because it links subjective experience with something bigger- this kind of temporary objectivity. It's like language. You're not going to escape from the way your brain had to form in order to communicate your thoughts, just as you're not going to escape the cultural reverberations of our great artists.

I think of culture more as a shared subjectivity. If the members of a social group all have a blind spot, then their culture will have that blind spot too. But yes, at its best a culture will be more objective than any individual can be.

A thought: The fact that we're discussing culture sets us apart from the masses who take it for granted.


So a lot of the "science" was basically window-dressing, or at least incidental to the dramatic elements of the show, which were pretty standard swashbuckling-adventure melodrama.

Real science fiction has never been popular culture, and most creators of popular culture know some of the tropes but not the essence of science fiction, so that is to be expected.

[C.J.Woolf]

Ironically, the people most adept at ignoring the present are artists. This is because they invariably have better filtration systems in place so that they are not inundated with a flood of contradictory information as they try to do their work. They're usually the ones who are clothing their cultural assumptions in the language of objective fact. The fans of these artists then go on to mirror these cultural values, albeit in a debased and rudimentary manner.

Ah, so culture can be more objective than individuals because culture's creators are more objective? Yeah, I can see that.

[stuck]

You could just as easily refer to those same fans as people who would rather listen to something catchy and simple because they have 'better' things to do than the quasi-work involved in appreciating, say, Converge. I have identified this arrogance as a vice of my own,

I know you have pride in this view. Why?

I guess you got hit in the right way by this particular math-core meme. You got it, and should be congratulated. Why are you then going on to use your aesthetic wisdom to try to devalue other art?

Maybe you don't actually understand Lady Gaga, or mexican tribal, or [...] or [...], because you're not an initiate.

It's telling to me that you denounce one elite while aligning yourself with another. In fact, everyone is like this except for people who aren't.

The vice harms nobody except for you, who peg your identity to something so fleeting. You're essentially signing yourself up for more cognitive dissonance, wielded like a pompadour to project your sensitive brain from hearing anything but the beach boys.

Honey your tongue with apologies for being human.

-it's been pointed out to me that i'm being a total dick! cool. i didn't know i had the foolhardiness left in me for that. no hard feelings, anyone. i'm simply saying that you are all just as big dumbasses as i am.

ok ok.

Here's what rubs me wrong: phrasing the question in a negative annihilates any possible non-meta response. OP said basically "tell me why I should like this fucking garbage." Since it's culture we're talking about- not objective OR subjective, you're going to get every response under the sun. The responses will always bear the mark of the frame the responders are carrying.

Ask a critic if you want to learn all about the critic. Ask a fan if you actually want to learn something about the art.

[Roger Mexico]

form over subject, content is to a large extent form. that's why 2 movies with the same exact plot and basic characters can end up one as a masterpiece and the other as a piece of shit. same goes for all forms of art, it's the most obvious in painting since the subject is literally the support for the form. (that's why I hate people who point to a painting and ask "and what's that one about?". IT DOESN'T MATTER YOU SAD FUCKFACE.


See, this isn't my approach to evaluating art at all. What I think of as "good" and "bad" art is largely a matter of resonance/dissonance between the form and the subject. In film, for example, it is a glaring artistic error/shortcoming to include elaborate images which, while perhaps aesthetically pleasing in and of themselves, occupy so much of the viewer's attention that they become a distraction from the progression of the narrative. This is what separates mere ephemeral spectacle from a film which is of artistic/intellectual consequence. (See above note about including "IMO" in every statement of my opinion.) This is what gives a film an "enduring" quality--in the sense that I will return to the film and watch it repeatedly--or fails to. For instance, "action-comedies" are usually a dicey proposition for me. Right now, I'm thinking of the relatively recent crop of hip, self-aware, "ironic" action films (Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Lucky Number Slevin, Smokin' Aces, etc.). The cast's attempts at deadpan nonchalance drain the fights of emotional consequence--if even the characters can't be bothered to show concern regarding the outcome of a contest, why should I become invested in the details of its resolution? Instead of arousing my primal glandular response to vicarious life-or-death combat, fight scenes become mere technical showcases of choreography--effectively dance segments which serve as interludes to the narrative film itself. I saw something once where one of the Wachowski brothers talked about their approach to fight scenes in the Matrix films. (The first is a personal favorite, which I have seen many times.) He characterized their approach as making sure that "the action tells the story," i.e. that the physical action on screen serves to advance the development of the film's themes just as much as the dialogue does.

So, yes, it does matter what art is "about," because if it isn't about something, there's not much reason to pay attention to it.


I'd like to jump on the "all art is subjective and therefore equally valid" bandwagon, but I can't. It's just not true. I like "literature" and I like "sensationalist fiction". I don't have to force myself to pick the elitist canon and pretend to enjoy it more than the magazine articles I read on the subway. I can enjoy both. It's like when I see those "post the embarrassing songs you like" threads. I post songs that I think others would be embarrassed to like, but I'm not really embarrassed by the things I like. I downloaded Mötley Crüe's greatest hits two weeks ago, and I gleefully enjoy them as much as the little-known but critically acclaimed Wrens album I put on repeat the other day.

So I do enjoy both. What I will NOT do is equate their artistic merit. I love Star Wars as much as anyone, probably even you. I like it more than Shakespeare, but there is no way I would say that Star Wars and Shakespeare are equals.

I think people are too egotistical to admit that every piece of pop culture trash they like doesn't stand up to pieces of art that have withstood generations and centuries and are still enjoyed to this day by people around the world.

One doesn't have to enjoy every anointed piece of art (I find Virginia Woolf boring). What I won't say is that my lack of enjoyment somehow negates the artistic worth of something that carved out its place in history before I was even born.

You're missing my point if you think I'm arguing that Star Wars and Shakespeare are "equally valid." First of all, art is not something which can be "valid" or "invalid." More to the point, how can two things have equal values on a scale that doesn't exist in the first place? Saying there is no objective standard merely fixes the locus of evaluative authority in the subjective reaction of the audience, with no particular viewer having the authority to determine how any other viewer "should" evaluate the work in question. You are free (free, I tell you!) to believe that Shakespeare is the greatest writer who ever lived, and make decisions about devoting your time to his work accordingly, just as I am free to believe that Repo Man is the best movie ever made in the history of cinema. Since the value (as distinct from the "importance") of a work of art is purely a function of its audience's subjective experience of it, how can you possibly justify a statement that another person is under some kind of obligation to "appreciate" it? There is no contradiction between the two viewpoints, unless for some reason you want there to be a contradiction.

[stuck]

In film, for example, it is a glaring artistic error/shortcoming to include elaborate images which, while perhaps aesthetically pleasing in and of themselves, occupy so much of the viewer's attention that they become a distraction from the progression of the narrative.

Ever seen any Peter Greenaway films?

---and, The Matrix wouldn't exist without the innovation provided by decades of martial arts films, which are all about elaborate choreography placed baroquely around the scantest of plot scaffolding.

[Roger Mexico]

Ever seen any Peter Greenaway films?

No. Should I?


---and, The Matrix wouldn't exist without the innovation provided by decades of martial arts films, which are all about elaborate choreography placed baroquely around the scantest of plot scaffolding.

Yes, I seem to recall us having this discussion about the Beatles some time ago. (Unless I'm confusing you with Bass n Treble for some reason--apologies if so.) Personally, I tend to prefer to witness the immanent emergence of progression within an art form from its current evolutionary apex than ruminate on its origins. This will inherently be a partial reflection of the greater resonance of its content with my own life due simply to a more proximate date of creation. (And since I spend a lot of my time ruminating on the backstory of present-day trends in the more empirical realms of society/culture/politics that necessarily provide all art with its context--I have my hobbies and you have yours.)

As an aside, you are employing a counterfactual. Counterfactuals are fallacious historical reasoning. The Matrix could very well exist without these earlier films--you and I have no way of knowing that it could not. All we can reasonably assume without qualification is that the more recent film wouldn't contain direct allusions to the earlier films if the earlier films never existed.

And I happen to like some of the martial-arts films you refer to. If the central thread of a story revolves around the comparative skill of its characters in some particular domain (e.g. fighting), then elaborate visual exploration of this theme is entirely appropriate.

I'm not actually attempting to "devalue" anything. I suppose I'm guilty of using nominally judgmental language, but my purpose is to liberate this language from the burden of representing authoritative, non-subjective "truth." I get why people who don't like Pynchon don't like Pynchon; I get why people who don't like Converge don't like Converge. I don't literally believe that these people are "stupid." I mean that I like these things because I find they reward a part of my consciousness that likes to put a certain kind of energy/effort into its engagements with diversions from literal lived reality. It's fine to stipulate that others' schemae for making aesthetic choices can legitimately include things mine does not, and not include things which mine does include. Likewise, it's legitimate for my schema to include/exclude a different set of things than others' do. Even--and I think this is the crux of our disagreement--if the schema at variance with mine is not that of an individual but one attributed to a collective entity of which I am otherwise a part. (E.g. my "culture.")

[stuck]

No. Should I?

Prospero's Books is all about massively overwrought visuals at the expense of a coherent story. It's beautiful.

My point is that I don't care what you don't like unless I care about your opinion. However, I do care about what you do like, especially if your opinion differs from mine.

wrap yer fucken branes around that one!

[outmywindow]

I'm not actually attempting to "devalue" anything. I suppose I'm guilty of using nominally judgmental language, but my purpose is to liberate this language from the burden of representing authoritative, non-subjective "truth." I get why people who don't like Pynchon don't like Pynchon; I get why people who don't like Converge don't like Converge. I don't literally believe that these people are "stupid."

If only you'd said this sooner. I've been sitting here this whole time thinking how much you sound like a fundamentalist Christian who, while claiming to want to participate in an objective discussion on faith vs secularism, insists on calling his opponents heathens. You're doing your arguments a disservice by clothing them in such off-putting language; I'd have participated a lot more in this thread* if I wasn't confronted with the immediately palpable impression that as someone who enjoys reading and thinking about one type of book over another, I was automatically being lumped into the "self-indulgent [...] twat" category. The funny thing is, most of the "literature" I read is not fiction, but nonfiction historical texts either of the period or of later origin.

And watch out you don't trip over the ad hominem I'm about to throw out, but as a history major, 99% of the rest of the world sees you as just as self-indulgent and twatty as you see the literature majors to be.

Congratulations, Roger Mexico. You've succeeded in both making yourself look snobbier than the "twats" you so dearly despise, and in getting me publicly flustered. Enjoy it, else my embarrassing lack of self control will have been for naught.





*not that my contribution has necessarily been missed

[stuck]

I think we need a pretentious twat-off.

I'll win, and feast on the bones of my lessers. I named my cat after a historian.

[Skinart]

My point is that I don't care what you don't like unless I care about your opinion. However, I do care about what you do like, especially if your opinion differs from mine.

wrap yer fucken branes around that one!

Actually, that's a pretty simple twist of yarn. You prefer to increase your ability to perceive. When presented with something you don't like, it is far more fascinating to learn why another does like it, than to learn why they don't like something else. The former is useful information about how to observe, the latter is useless junk and does nothing to help you enhance your faculties for observation.

Furthermore, the former is usually gaining information about the subject being observed, the latter is gaining information about the observer. If you don't care about the observer, the information is irrelevant.

It's a restatement of your previous argument, if you want to learn about a critic, ask a critic. If you want to learn about the art, ask a fan.

[C.J.Woolf]

I named my cat after a historian.

Which one?

[stuck]

I feel... validated.

[stuck]

Which one?

Plutarch.

/validity

[C.J.Woolf]

Plutarch.

/validity

Plutarch had a lot more than nine Lives, but an inspired choice nonetheless.

[stuck]

Plutarch had a lot more than nine Lives, but an inspired choice nonetheless.

how... did i never notice that?

[MacGuffin]

You're missing my point if you think I'm arguing that Star Wars and Shakespeare are "equally valid." First of all, art is not something which can be "valid" or "invalid." More to the point, how can two things have equal values on a scale that doesn't exist in the first place? Saying there is no objective standard merely fixes the locus of evaluative authority in the subjective reaction of the audience, with no particular viewer having the authority to determine how any other viewer "should" evaluate the work in question. You are free (free, I tell you!) to believe that Shakespeare is the greatest writer who ever lived, and make decisions about devoting your time to his work accordingly, just as I am free to believe that Repo Man is the best movie ever made in the history of cinema. Since the value (as distinct from the "importance") of a work of art is purely a function of its audience's subjective experience of it, how can you possibly justify a statement that another person is under some kind of obligation to "appreciate" it? There is no contradiction between the two viewpoints, unless for some reason you want there to be a contradiction.

Your personal value does not have to jibe with the overall value for a work of art (in which "importance" does play a role). But yes, you can appreciate things you don't like. One should appreciate Robert Johnson when they spend a lot of time blasting Led Zepplin. I appreciate Virginia Woolf for the excellent writer that she is, even though I find her works boring.

I appreciate a lot of things, even if they don't excite me.


And, look, I'm fairly "elitist" as far as my personal taste in books and music. IMO (gonna stop putting this in because it should be obvious at this point), Lady Gaga is crap. If you ask me what kind of person is likely to enjoy her music, and I'm feeling undisposed toward lengthy theorizing, I am rather apt to simply say "stupid people" or people with "simplistic" tastes. (Or, more often, people with a pronounced herd-animal approach to aesthetics--fuckers.) My point is that this is just my reaction to hearing it, as someone who spends his free time thinking about these things. You could just as easily refer to those same fans as people who would rather listen to something catchy and simple because they have 'better' things to do than the quasi-work involved in appreciating, say, Converge.

Oh shit, not only am I stupid for liking "Bad Romance", I'm also stupid for liking punk rock? Punk rockers were practically savants within their genre if they learned five chords.

So...

High-brow "literature" sucks, as does "simplistic" music. Where, oh where, is the appropriate middle ground?

[Roger Mexico]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand...

I've managed to hurt INTPc's feelings.

Sorry. Really. I thought we were all having fun.

Time to call it a night.

Good night.

[Roger Mexico]

And watch out you don't trip over the ad hominem I'm about to throw out, but as a history major, 99% of the rest of the world sees you as just as self-indulgent and twatty as you see the literature majors to be.

Congratulations, Roger Mexico. You've succeeded in both making yourself look snobbier than the "twats" you so dearly despise, and in getting me publicly flustered. Enjoy it, else my embarrassing lack of self control will have been for naught.


Actually, I'm quite aware of that. Seriously, no offense.



High-brow "literature" sucks, as does "simplistic" music. Where, oh where, is the appropriate middle ground?

MC Hawking

[MacGuffin]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand...

I've managed to hurt INTPc's feelings.

Sorry. Really. I thought we were all having fun.

Time to call it a night.

Good night.

There are no feelings hurt!

It is all fun. This is a good conversation.

[YHWH]

See, this isn't my approach to evaluating art at all. What I think of as "good" and "bad" art is largely a matter of resonance/dissonance between the form and the subject. In film, for example, it is a glaring artistic error/shortcoming to include elaborate images which, while perhaps aesthetically pleasing in and of themselves, occupy so much of the viewer's attention that they become a distraction from the progression of the narrative. This is what separates mere ephemeral spectacle from a film which is of artistic/intellectual consequence. (See above note about including "IMO" in every statement of my opinion.) This is what gives a film an "enduring" quality--in the sense that I will return to the film and watch it repeatedly--or fails to. For instance, "action-comedies" are usually a dicey proposition for me. Right now, I'm thinking of the relatively recent crop of hip, self-aware, "ironic" action films (Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Lucky Number Slevin, Smokin' Aces, etc.). The cast's attempts at deadpan nonchalance drain the fights of emotional consequence--if even the characters can't be bothered to show concern regarding the outcome of a contest, why should I become invested in the details of its resolution? Instead of arousing my primal glandular response to vicarious life-or-death combat, fight scenes become mere technical showcases of choreography--effectively dance segments which serve as interludes to the narrative film itself. I saw something once where one of the Wachowski brothers talked about their approach to fight scenes in the Matrix films. (The first is a personal favorite, which I have seen many times.) He characterized their approach as making sure that "the action tells the story," i.e. that the physical action on screen serves to advance the development of the film's themes just as much as the dialogue does.

what you're railing against wasn't my case. aesthetic value is the opposite of "aesthetically pleasing". aesthetically touching or moving or inspiring or shocking or challenging is more what I'm pointing at. as for the plot being a support, I never claimed it shouldn't be a proper fitting support.


Ever seen any Peter Greenaway films?

I thought The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover was delicious.

[bobby]

the only problem i see here is that they make you study some particular pieces of literature in school. why do they do that? why are you made to study those pieces of literature and not others? something must be regarded as special about these particular works for them to be singled out. well, what is that? those in favor of making kids study these chosen works need to make the case for it.

i dont doubt that there is much that you can learn from works of fiction - that's not the issue. the issue is picking out some particular works which (i assume are meant to) have valuable lessons for any and everybody.

[YHWH]

kids can read as many books as they please other than those picked for practical reasons.

[Roger Mexico]

kids can read as many books as they please other than those picked for practical reasons.

Ok, consider my erstwhile belligerency an "irony fail."

I got an education degree/teaching license last year. In my classes we spent a lot of time talking about Paolo Freire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire), who is famous for writing up the pedagogical theories he developed while teaching illiterate Brazilian adults to read and write.

Freire's theory makes a distinction between actionable knowledge which directly enhances a student's ability to do something, and what he calls "banking" pedagogy, in which the student is treated as a sort of passive receptacle for information which the teacher wants to store in their memory for some unspecified use in the remote future. The main intent behind Freire's literacy classes was to help his students (who were mostly poor, rural farm workers) develop the skills and vocabulary they would need to start political organizations. He based his methods on audiovisual associations between pictures of scenarios which would be very familiar elements of his students' lives, and text which described these scenarios, often in terms of interpersonal power dynamics. (E.g. "the boss is accusing Steve of slacking off.") Within this theoretical framework, memorization of literary texts which the upper classes enjoyed reading--and which focused on topics that would be commonplace in the elite's lives but not the lives of the underclass--were a blatant example of the at-best-useless (and at worst, politically insidious) "banking" approach to the teaching of literacy. The ability to recite passages from Shakespeare or Don Quixote or whatever is the Portuguese equivalent of these works might enhance your ability to entertain the guests while you serve food at an upper-class dinner party, but it doesn't really contribute to your ability to exercise agency over your own life via written language. What it will do is subtly influence the development of your personal value-system to resemble that of people in the social stratum that produces and predominantly consumes this literature. If that value-system tends to imply that some people are rich and powerful while others are poor and subjugated because the poor and subjugated group is less intelligent or otherwise "inferior," well, then... you should see where this is going.

I was a student teacher in a high school social-studies classroom for the entire 2009-10 school year, and spent the second semester as the primary instructor for a 9th-grade "Global Studies/World History" class. (Where you've got one year to teach the kids everything they "need to know" about the rest of the world outside of the United States, so they can then take a yearlong U.S. History class two years later.) To be clear [sorry again, OMW], I'm quite aware that huge portions of what is taught in high school history classes is pretty much trivia. As much as I've come to be skeptical of the whole premise of compulsory "education," I do happen to think there's a justification for making certain components of social studies a mandatory part of every student's schooling, if anything is going to be "mandatory"... bla bla bla. (Maybe not even history, but certainly government/civics, for example) For one thing, I believe that a certain level of contextual knowledge about contemporary political issues is an obligation that attaches itself to the right to vote. (E.g. "Why are Europeans more numerous and, on average, wealthier than any other ethnic group in the United States, despite the fact that the U.S. is not located in Europe?") However, a lot of what I was literally required by law to make these kids understand falls, in my estimation, rather distinctively outside that category of information. What it does (if you bother to pay attention to it, which many kids do not) is fill up your mental RAM with tidbits of information about certain people and events deemed "important" enough to warrant storage in your brain.

What struck me is how certain topics aroused a lot of interest and discussion from the kids, while they were indifferent to others and, most perplexingly, almost actively resistant to learning about yet other topics. Most interesting to me was that I would often get lively discussions going at times when I was between lesson segments and took a few minutes to field questions from the kids--completely contrary to certain conventional wisdom, they would lose interest and stop paying attention when I got back to subjects which were "gonna be on the test." (Said conventional wisdom holds that students will be more motivated to learn if promised the extrinsic reward of a higher grade for doing so.)

So, I've noticed there's this pervasive attitude in the teaching profession that you are the teacher because you know what the kids "need to know" better than they do. (Totally understandable, BTW--I definitely felt this way at times.) It then often follows that if the kids aren't showing interest in what you're teaching, you either reprimand them for not being more "focused" or you alter your presentation of the material in the hopes that the content will become more "accessible." If the disinterest persists, you will sometimes hear teachers lamenting along the lines of "kids today are just hopeless; they can't be bothered to learn anything important; all they care about is their Dan Fogelberg and their Pac-Man video games..."

Here's the thing, though: I had an increasingly difficult time rationalizing my critiques of the kids' preferences in subject matter. Like, here's a list of some of the "hit" topics that most of them wanted to talk about: terrorism, immigration, nuclear weapons, war in the Middle East, the growth of the Chinese economy. For one of my "work samples" I got to have full creative control on a unit about the war in Iraq. (Showed them snippets of the Oliver Stone movie about George W. Bush, and held a mock convention to draw up a post-Saddam Iraqi constitution.) This produced some rather impressive discussions about what it would take for there to be "peace in the Middle East." I felt like I finally had most of them "with me" at the end of this unit (as in, willing to trust me when I said "trust me, you'll want to know this...") but I rather abruptly "lost" many of them in the course of this utter albatross of a required unit on the Russian Revolution that I had to do after the Middle East unit was finished.

Sorry for the rambling, but here's the kind of distinction I'm trying to address:

(those of you more literarily-/artistically-inclined, please let me know if it's not clear how the basic idea applies to your own fields)

To the extent that I'm an "expert" on anything, it's modern European history. (My major/concentration in college) You cannot possibly have an insight-producing comprehension of modern European history if you don't have a basic working knowledge of what happened in Russia in 1917 and how this affected the rest of the continent/world/etc.. In the parts of my brain that assume everyone else in the world is an aspiring professional historian, I think of this as "vital" information because... well, you can't live your life in the modern world without being affected by the reverberations of the Russian Revolution.

BUT...

If I step back and remind myself that not everyone is a historian, or wants to be, it becomes readily clear why my students wouldn't really give a shit about the Russian Revolution--the government it produced ceased to exist shortly before they were born. I can say "you know, when I was in elementary school, the Soviet Union was still seen as powerful enough to rival the global military and political influence of the United States--isn't that interesting?" but this doesn't constitute an answer to the kids' implicit/presumed question "OK, but why do we need to know this stuff? What does it have to do with us?" They aren't likely to have to vote in an election where U.S. policy toward "Communist Russia" is a major issue. If I'm going to say "learn this or you'll be sorry," it really behooves me to be able to clearly identify what it is that my students won't be able to do without this information, and what the consequences of this inability would be.

So, Discussion Question 1: What, exactly, would I not be able to do had no one ever (quasi-)forced me to memorize Shakespeare, and what would my life be lacking were I unable to do this?

[stuck]

Well, then, is any art that doesn't liberate the worker immoral?

[Roger Mexico]

P.S.:

As far as the "universal themes" issue, well, if they're really universal, then won't they tend to show up one way or another in pretty much any piece of literature/art/etc. that I happen to pick up? (Going by Campbell and Jung here, although others could no doubt be cited.) SO, wouldn't it make it easier to appreciate/explore these themes if I could pick the literary vehicle that it's easiest for me to work with because the setting/etc. is most relatable to me?

Like, take rap music, for example. (And I should point out that I was the classic 90s-middle-class-white-kid-listening-to-gangsta-rap; that a form so ostensibly preoccupied with the concerns of a relatively specific subset of the American population has become a sort of globe-spanning artistic "common language" surely speaks to its transcendent qualities, no?) The whole modus operandi of hip-hop as an artistic movement is basically about portraying modern, everyday life in epic terms. Like, Stuck, man, no offense, but what rap music have you been listening to if you haven't picked up on the generally central themes of love/hate, victory/defeat, triumph/destruction, loyalty/betrayal, integrity/corruption, revenge, hubris, etc.?

My understanding is that Shakespeare wasn't writing in the "standard English" of his time, but was taking license with new constructions in a way that ended up profoundly influencing the development of English as we understand it today. (See, I did make a brief stab at being a linguistics nerd, but this ship of dreams quickly beached itself on the coral reef of failure.) I guess it can't compete on the "test of time" thing, but isn't this kind of process--distributed among millions of innovators working with extensive ongoing knowledge of one another's work--blatantly evident in hip-hop?

Why dwell on how "great" Shakespeare was? If your goal is to teach about the English Language Itself, why not simply treat it as a living thing and acknowledge that "skill" is a matter of widely variable purposes being accomplished?

[Roger Mexico]

Well, then, is any art that doesn't liberate the worker immoral?

YES (http://www.primitivism.com/case-art.htm)

Seriously, though, I have little use for moral imperatives on this subject, so no. Why would validation of art that implicitly justifies "the worker's" oppression be a moral imperative?

[stuck]

Excuse me as I type this one-handed. There's a massive palm headed towards my face. I own it.

You provide a great example. Yes, the themes are present in rap. In Shakespeare, he shows them meticulously progressing along the classic tragic greek lines, filled out with insanely well-crafted language. Rap, by contrast, has much of the latter, but little of the former- even when we're talking about story rappers like slick rick, nas, common, and dare i say eminem. Those guys are great, to be sure, but they don't quite do that, do they? Who does? FUCKING SHAKESPEARE. Like Dante, nobody has ever quite done that. Or like Cervantes, or Borges, or Dostoevsky. They're all so blessedly different in style and execution. And yes, if I compare apples and oranges, I will prefer both, thanks.

WHO LISTENS TO RAP GRANPAW I GOT THIS FRIDAY SONG

[Roger Mexico]

So his skill consists of imitating other authors who were considered "important" before he was?

[stuck]

No, his skill consists of his skill. The content might be similar, but again, not quite.

1. Why are we reading the greeks?
2. When did "enjoying the classics" become conflated with "cramming the classics down everyone's throats"?

[Skinart]

Seems the right moment for this ol' chestnut.

I don't believe any of you have ever read PARADISE LOST, and you don't want to. That's something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic, just as Professor Winchester says, and it meets his definition of a classic -- something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

[Roger Mexico]

1. Why are we reading the greeks?


That's easy--"we" (Westerners) read the Greeks (I presume you mean the ancient Greeks) because they remind us of ourselves. The ancient city-states of what is now Greece constitute, in many historians' estimation, the earliest examples of a civilization which displays the traits that these historians would regard as the essential, defining characteristics of "Western civilization." (Which are hard to summarize, although I was somewhat pleasantly surprised to encounter a not-bad simplification in 300--basically a tendency to distinguish between a secular, directly observable reality and a mystical/sacred realm that exists outside of our perception and can only be inferred. This distinction informs everything from the "scientific method" to the idea of deliberative "government by consent of the governed.") In studying them, we study ourselves. "We" (again, Westerners) are interested in them because we are interested in ourselves. We look for elements in their art that we can interpret as analogues of our own worldview.

My tentative contention at this point would be that all art basically serves this purpose--a more or less sophisticated Rohrschach test. We contemplate the art-object and, in so doing, direct our subconscious to project itself onto the object contemplated. Thus we end up gazing at a reflection of ourselves calibrated to appear as "other," such that we can contemplate ourselves as we would contemplate the "other." This is why the "quality" of art has everything to do with those who are assigning value--like you said, "ask a critic if you want to learn about the critic." I would add "ask a 'culture' how it feels about a work of art if you want to learn about the culture..." (And also, although it seems a bit too obvious to bear lengthy pointing out, "ask a fan if you want to learn about the fan")

I don't know, but I would assume that there are suriving works of art with a comparable historical relationship to other (non-Western) cultures, and that people within these cultures like to read them. "We" probably read them less, collectively, than we read "the Greeks," while the Greeks are probably somewhat less of a fixation in cultures which do not claim a direct ancestral relationship with them. This will all be complicated, of course, by the fact that (ostensibly) Greek-derived cultures have, in relatively recent historical terms, spread their memetic seeds into many other cultures by means of plain old military/economic (and thus educational and communicative) hegemony. So there will be some enhancement of interest in the Western artistic tradition stemming from the perception that the Western classics are icons of a more powerful--and thus, in some ways, "superior"--culture.

In short--No, it's not because they're "just that good." It's because they happen to 1. be of interest to "us", and 2. have survived in accessible form up to the present day, due to a whole raft of complicated interrelated forces, many of which have absolutely nothing to do with "The Classics'" intrinsic goodness or badness as works of art. (For instance, if I'm not mistaken the Iliad is simply the oldest work of ancient Greek literature to have survived intact, in its entirety, up to the present day. It is of interest to scholars of both literature and history precisely for that reason, not because it is necessarily "better" than contemporaneous works which we do not have access to--there's no way to know, so we work with what we have.)



2. When did "enjoying the classics" become conflated with "cramming the classics down everyone's throats"?

Not sure, honestly. The jumping-off point for this little tiff seems to have been my overly colorful expression of my feelings about Shakespeare (which were evidently taken far less sarcastically than they were intended, and were honestly intended as just that--an expression of my subjective experience). Ironically, these comments were made in support of a thesis that specifically allows for appreciation of Shakespeare or any other work of art to be legitimate. OP seemed to basically be asking if he was doing something wrong by failing to find personal value in authoritatively ordained works of "great literature." I was responding in the negative--that he should not be ashamed or feel he has overlooked something in these works if they do not "speak to him," because whether they speak to him or not is simply a reflection of ways in which his own personal reactions to art follow different criteria than those of the ordaining authorities.

I only ever meant to quibble with the idea that Jane Austen novels and Harlequin bodice-rippers represent two separate genres. (they are both "romances")

Never at any point did I suggest any reason that anyone cannot enjoy Shakespeare--obviously, many people do. What seemed to be controversial was the proposition that a person could read Shakespeare and not derive reward from it, without having failed to "understand" it in some way. I guess I took the controversy as statements akin to "but, but, but it's Shakespeare!" and felt that I would like more of an explanation for this attitude than had yet been provided, the reasons for canonical veneration of Shakespeare being less self-evident to me than they apparently are to people who agree with said veneration.

I perceived an ought in your responses. Was this a misperception on my part?

[MacGuffin]

I will say that I respect someone that has read Shakespeare on their own and decided they don't like it. At least they made the attempt to understand themselves.

[stuck]

Oh, I thought I had answered. No, I don't feel there's an "ought".

I think much of what you're saying is very interesting, Roger Mexico, even if you're tilting at windmills a bit (imo).

[Roger Mexico]

For the record, my time spent as a teacher did leave me with a lot of... questions about how our school system determines its curriculum.

(E.g. the Oregon state history standards go into anal detail about a large number of topics which are arguably of little interest to non-specialists, but there is literally no mention of the Civil Rights Movement--!--or even the word "racism." Everyone I know teaches it, of course, but technically you aren't required to. WTF seriously)

And I'm hitting a point in my life (I turn 28 in a few weeks) where lack of "new information" is far less of a problem than signal-noise ratio. Maybe I'll try to get into Lady Gaga for my own edification at some point in the future, but right now I have to confess I find it extremely annoying and actively avoid it.

[YHWH]

I see what you're saying and it's consistent but I don't understand why you're undermining the value of something that so many live for. I wouldn't want to live without art being crammed down my nostrils since the day I experienced consciousness, it's very subjective but it's no exaggeration and it's the same for too many for it to be considered unnecessary or simplistically labeled as entertainment, life would just be miserable all the time. students should be introduced to more art but I think some of it should be compulsory for practical reasons.
I was going to expand but I hate myself already for this corny NF dripping crippled mess of a post. I feel sick, and a little hungry. I'll close my eyes now.
ll

[asperger]

I see what you're saying and it's consistent but I don't understand why you're undermining the value of something that so many live for. I wouldn't want to live without art being crammed down my nostrils since the day I experienced consciousness, it's very subjective but it's no exaggeration and it's the same for too many for it to be considered unnecessary or simplistically labeled as entertainment, life would just be miserable all the time.


http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/reviewofbooks_article/4132/

And thank you for your post.

[bobby]

I think some of it should be compulsory for practical reasons.

what practical reasons?

[Roger Mexico]

I see what you're saying and it's consistent but I don't understand why you're undermining the value of something that so many live for. I wouldn't want to live without art being crammed down my nostrils since the day I experienced consciousness, it's very subjective but it's no exaggeration and it's the same for too many for it to be considered unnecessary or simplistically labeled as entertainment, life would just be miserable all the time. students should be introduced to more art but I think some of it should be compulsory for practical reasons.
I was going to expand but I hate myself already for this corny NF dripping crippled mess of a post. I feel sick, and a little hungry. I'll close my eyes now.
ll

OK, well I increasingly live for opportunities to experience complete personal control over the disposition of my time, energy, and what I called "mental RAM" before. I have a good personal sense of what art is going to reward me for devoting attention to it. (And part of that is an ability to intuit when a work of art is going to challenge me and expose me to new ideas.) Maybe there are people in the world who suffer from deprivation of art to such a degree that they will benefit from someone cramming it up their nostrils, but, at least in a culture as media-saturated as the United States, I suspect they are few in number.

It all being subjective means that issues of power/freedom/oppression inherently come into play when you're talking about making people consume art they haven't specifically chosen to consume.


what practical reasons?

Exactly. This. This is the million-dollar question.

[YHWH]

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/reviewofbooks_article/4132/

And thank you for your post.

thanks, still in the beginning, quite interesting so far, illustrates to a certain extent my position but with much more clarity, except for valuing some forms of art over others, but that was a trivial statement.


what practical reasons?

they're introducing kids to literature through let's say Shakespeare. Shake's oeuvre is a sample that they can explore together. almost all art forms cannot be fully enjoyed without initial guidance. I don't see what's wrong with that. I actually think kids should be initiated to music, visual arts, films in much the same consistency.

[JamesGold]

I just can't seem to lose myself in any sort of fiction. I read the words on the page but I'm not engaged in the story. Literature (not just mere fiction, pfft) is even more boring. I'd like to think my inability to get engaged in the stories is because the stories themselves are shit but I think the issue is me. Is not liking fiction/literature an issue?

[stuck]

I just can't seem to lose myself in any sort of fiction. I read the words on the page but I'm not engaged in the story. Literature (not just mere fiction, pfft) is even more boring. I'd like to think my inability to get engaged in the stories is because the stories themselves are shit but I think the issue is me. Is not liking fiction/literature an issue?

Yeah, it's you, but it's not a problem. Different things can gain different meanings and greater significance as you age. Just stay open and periodically give things another try. You don't need to punish yourself by finishing everything. Eventually, you might be able to see a pattern in why you didn't like/understand things.

That's my greater point. Yes, people should be exposed to art, because it has the potential to enrich their experience. They shouldn't be graded on it. Opt in kinda thing, aka. totally not gonna happen.

[asperger]

I just can't seem to lose myself in any sort of fiction. I read the words on the page but I'm not engaged in the story. Literature (not just mere fiction, pfft) is even more boring. I'd like to think my inability to get engaged in the stories is because the stories themselves are shit but I think the issue is me. Is not liking fiction/literature an issue?

Even Kurt Vonegut :shock:

[JamesGold]

Yeah, it's you, but it's not a problem. Different things can gain different meanings and greater significance as you age. Just stay open and periodically give things another try. You don't need to punish yourself by finishing everything. Eventually, you might be able to see a pattern in why you didn't like/understand things.

That's my greater point. Yes, people should be exposed to art, because it has the potential to enrich their experience. They shouldn't be graded on it. Opt in kinda thing, aka. totally not gonna happen.

Yeah, I guess I'll come back to it later on and see how it goes. Funny, because when I was younger I had no problem getting into books. I remember reading a 150 page children's version of Robinson Crusoe at age 10 in one sitting. It was mesmerizing. Survival stories are cool. Hey, maybe I just got somewhere.


Even Kurt Vonegut :shock:

Dunno, I haven't read him. Recommended?

[asperger]

I haven't read him. Recommended?
Sirens of Titan
Breakfast of Champions
Cat's Cradle
and more

[Skinart]

I've found that the line between fiction and non-fiction isn't nearly as arbitrary as it looks. When I was younger, I read mostly fiction and didn't much care for non-fiction reading for pleasure because it seemed dry and tedious. I didn't get lost in it the way I did in fiction. It was just words on a page. Eventually I learned to get somewhere close to the same experience reading textbooks, but that was just because I could get away with reading textbooks in class and sure as hell wasn't going to pay attention or do homework.

In college I gradually lost my pleasure reading and spent more and more time in non-fiction books on math and sciences. The only pleasure reading I had was graphic novels, but that was partly because I enjoy the form and partly because it met my needs for pleasure reading--fast.

When I graduated, I looked forward to having time to get into reading novels again, but found I couldn't manage it. I tried, but things had reversed for me. It was like grade school but now fiction was words on a page and non-fiction could swallow up time. But I very much wanted to enjoy fiction as I had, so I pressed on. I can now get lost to a limited degree in fiction--enough to enjoy it again, but I usually don't get fully swallowed up anymore. But that has more to do with needing to be aware of my surroundings and having other responsibilities that intrude on my ability to lose myself. It still happens.... I was late to work just yesterday.

[C.J.Woolf]

Sirens of Titan
Breakfast of Champions
Cat's Cradle
and more

Slaughterhouse-Five
Welcome to the Monkey House (collection of short stories)

[Roger Mexico]

Yeah, I guess I'll come back to it later on and see how it goes. Funny, because when I was younger I had no problem getting into books. I remember reading a 150 page children's version of Robinson Crusoe at age 10 in one sitting. It was mesmerizing. Survival stories are cool. Hey, maybe I just got somewhere.


I mean, it's worth asking yourself why you enjoy certain books but not others. Something about survival stories appeals to you, interests you. What is this "something," and what is it about yourself--your personality, your life experience--that makes it interesting? By exploring these aspects of the stories you choose to read--and using this exploration to discover other stories you might like--you are learning about yourself.

E.g. I think a lot of my strong response to Pynchon was about the way he seems to capture the dynamics of intuitive thinking. (I.e. that tenuous gray area between fantasy, paranoia, and "Eureka!" moments of sudden inexplicable insight.) I wouldn't have thought of myself as "intuitive" before reading him--or at least not to a pronounced degree--but the crack-like effect his writing has on my brain presumably means he's tapped into a cognitive process that I engage in all the time without really thinking about it as such. I know people who can't stand him because of his information-dense, circuitous approach to telling a story. They find it confusing and impenetrable. I get this, and I don't look down on these people for feeling that way--it just happens to flip mental switches for me that these other people don't want or need flipped.

[d100la]

Throws out 2 cents

Literature is an encompassing composition of a persons (authors) point of view. If for some reason you disagree with it/don't like the style/find it boring, find another book that deals with the same issues (and preferably written better), or SparkNote that shit (if needed for school with no way of getting out of it). You can also utilize SparkNotes as a means of getting interested in the book, cheating on exams, and saving countless hours of reading when you can get THE SAME DAMN POINT from reading a single paragraph. Just sayin'.

And fiction does the same job (if not better), in expressing philosophical ideas, but it ALL depends on the author

[JamesGold]

If nothing else good came of reading Los Hermanos Karamazov, I wrote a killer essay on it for my AP Literature exam. Woot.

[euterpenc]

Judging by this thread, many INTPs seem rather alienated...