Arts/Aesthetics Versus Entertainment/Mass Media
Some of my college students can tell me more information about what is happening on reality shows than if I ask them who are: Jonathan Swift; Sojourner Truth; Othello; Hamlet; and Don Quixote. They blink with cow eyes. I had one student tell me he was the only one laughing at an episode of South Park that was making references to Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” I worry about the “dummying down” of America. My generation is not the only one concerned with this dummying down; the next generation is as well. I refer to my own son, Vincent Carbone, as an example and his piece on this topic:
Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention?! Unless you're like me and as a child, you were told your attention was at a deficit, in which case forget it. Go back to your Twitter, Facebook and Netflix. Hold up, what was I saying? Oh, that's right, attention. Now it could be just me, but it seems like recently our attention has been pulled in too many directions. Correction, the problem begins with what exactly is brought to our attention and what is tucked away without a second thought or mention. Maybe it's because our perception of what's important has become completely distorted. Or maybe it’s because the media dwells on what they think sells and passes it off as reporting. It's no secret really; we all know, sex sells and if it bleeds it leads. Don't believe me? Trust me. I have a degree in broadcasting from a state university. And so maybe this is why in a country where every 9 seconds a woman is raped or beaten, a man like Chris Brown is still worth 22 million. So, pay attention, I hope you're sitting because what I'm about to say is no joke, but I really wish I was kidding. Did you know about 21,000 a day starve to death, most of which are children? So, let's say it costs less than 5 dollars a day to feed a child who's starving. Imagine what we could have done with the 40 million Kim Kardashian has made for doing absolutely nothing. So, when did this nation of revolution become a wasteland of political and pop pollution. I look around and see my generation being choked by the hands of litigation. Man, I'm sick of hearing more problems and fewer solutions. So, let's buck up and make some improvements, it's easy; here's a few to start with: unemployment, student debt, marriage equality and school shootings. In the 60's many died in the name of peace and equal rights through desegregation. Yet somehow today, it's believed to maintain peace by resisting restrictions on automatic ammunition. Pay attention because if you think I'm blowing it out of proportion, I dare you, look in the eyes of a parent from Connecticut or Colorado and tell them it isn't an issue. Listen up, I'm just getting started. Because while in some states it's still illegal for two men to get married, in those same states if you’re straight, all you need is to be 16 with the consent of a parent. So, by that logic, apparently two children understand more about the union of marriage than two people who've been told all their lives that their love was a choice and not inherent. So enough of the b. s., give us some news that's actually worth reporting. Did you hear about the 17-year-old who in her spare time discovered a nano particle able to detect cancerous cells and destroy them? Or how some men, women, and children are still living without their freedom? Or how one brave little girl named Malala stood up to the Taliban for her rights to an education? But yet ladies and gentlemen, Miley Cyrus was considered for Time magazine's Person the Year. And while veteran unemployment is on the rise, Snookie, Honey Boo Boo, Jerry Springer, Parez Hilton and Justin Bieber have careers. So, pay attention, because if there's one thing the media can teach us is that what matters isn't achievement but rather appearance. No matter if you can't sing, dance, act, all you need is auto tune, Photoshop and a sex tape to be famous. Otherwise, Mia, Kim and Paris would still be nameless. So, let's start a revolution and on your next Facebook post, name one doctor, farmer, or teacher you remember the most, one soldier, firemen, paramedic, policemen, Peace Corps volunteer, social worker, tutor, activist, advocate, or after-school coach, or the child of a broken home who will grow up to become CEO. How about the single mother doing the best she can while going to school online, the Vietnam vet volunteering at the soup kitchen in his spare time. Let's celebrate who matters, not who do nothing but pollute our minds. Pay attention and listen, this isn't a "down with America!" because this is the home of the brave. But let's be brave enough to believe our home can still be saved. So next time let's all pay more attention than what we once gave. Please pardon the interruption, thank you for listening and have a nice day. (Carbone)
The “cocooning” that Faith Popcorn warned us about in 1992 is happening, but in more ways than just not wanting to leave the house. We “cocoon” with our laptops, tables and smartphones. All those that tap phone keys are all so busy being engaged with someone else, somewhere else. Watch them with those that they are seated with and notice most are not “being in the moment.” Personal, “real-time” interaction is a dying art. The Buddhists believe in, “being in the moment means being mindfully aware of what is going on right here and now” (Wildmind Buddhist Meditation). In my opinion, this “not being in the moment” is an offshoot of the mass media phenomenon. There is a need for the arts, aesthetics, entertainment and even mass media. The latter two have not become an addition to the first two, as may have been intended, but are becoming combatants in the war of “winning minds and hearts.”
The world has, indeed, changed since the time of Plato. Here, I am arguing for the arts and aesthetics and defending that there is a place for entertainment and mass media in society, and Plato wanted to rid us of the arts and aesthetics in his Utopia, never mind entertainment and mass media! In 360 B.C.E. in book ten of Plato’s The Republic we are instructed how the arts are detrimental to man’s higher pursuits. Plato makes a great argument for the banning of the painter, “as (s)he is nothing more than a “creator of appearances…not speaking the truth…” (Plato, The Republic 459). The poet is just as corrupting of Utopia, as (s)he is considered by Plato to be, “…an imitator, and therefore, like all other imitators, he is thrice removed from the king and from the truth. (460) The main cause for Plato’s desire to ban the painter, the poet and the actor is due to their producing and engaging in an, …inferior degree of truth… inferior part of the soul… because he awakens and nourishes and strengthens the feelings and impairs the reason. (469) His reasoning is that: the imitative poet implants an evil constitution, for he indulges the irrational nature which has no discernment of greater and less but thinks the same thing at one time great and at another small-he is a manufacturer of images and is very far removed from the truth. (469)
His concern was twofold; the imitative was not truth and the passions raised by the arts stymied the increase of happiness and virtue, as evidenced here:
And the same may be said of lust and anger and all the other affections, of desire and pain and pleasure, which are held to be inseparable from every action in all of them poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled, if mankind are ever to increase in happiness and virtue. (470)
I understand Plato’s desire to bar from the “perfect state” those that would turn citizens away from the highest pursuits; truth, virtue and happiness, but we are not able to abide in a perfect state due to us being imperfect beings, as the character Ronnie Cammareri in the movie, Moonstruck, points out: We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die. (Jewison) We do not live in the perfect state, nor should we want to as evidence by the movie Equilibrium. In Equilibrium we get a glimpse of life without aesthetics. The premise of the movie is:
In a futuristic world, a strict regime has eliminated war by suppressing emotions: books, art and music are strictly forbidden and feeling is a crime punishable by death. Cleric John Preston (Bale) is a top ranking government agent responsible for destroying those who resist the rules. When he misses a dose of Prozium, a mind-altering drug that hinders emotion, Preston, who has been trained to enforce the strict laws of the new regime, suddenly becomes the only person capable of overthrowing it. (Wimmer) Our reality is that when creativity is restricted, we are living under a tyrannical dictatorship. I refer to the Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova, and her poem, “Requiem,” concerning life after the Russian Revolution: Not under foreign skies protection/ Or saving wings of alien birth – /I was then there – with whole my nation –/There, where my nation, alas! was.
INSTEAD OF A PREFACE
In the awful days of the Yezhovschina I passed seventeen months in the outer waiting line of the prison visitors in Leningrad. Once, somebody ‘identified’ me there. Then a woman, standing behind me in the line, which, of course, never heard my name, waked up from the torpor, typical for us all there, and asked me, whispering into my ear (all spoke only in a whisper there):
“And can you describe this?”
And I answered:
“Yes, I can.”
Then the weak similarity of a smile glided over that, what had once been her face. (Akhmatova)
In a communist society, we have a restriction of the above expression. Only state-approved forms of expression are legally allowed. In a capitalistic society, we have a “for sale” sign on many forms of expression. A socialistic society may be the fulcrum to gain balance. To understand the great Socialist/Communist Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engle, I turn to Stefan Morawski and his article, “The Aesthetic Views of Marx and Engels.” Morawski states that: The discussions of Sickingen and the Sue novel, the most sustained writings by Marx and Engle on aesthetic matters, are a primary source…the observations and remarks – mostly stem from Marx – from the tally of aesthetic disiecta membra. (Morawski) Morawski discusses the: …fundamentally mythological postulation that aesthetic phenomena are to be regarded as a cultural activity of homo sapiens in his slow progress to self-realization within the matrix of his socio-historical processes. The non-isolate phenomena of the arts, which variously depend on the other manifestations of culture, social, political, moral, religious, and scientific, in turn influence other spheres of activity. (303)
While Marx and Engle are in agreement with Plato that the artist, whatever the discipline, is a form of” reflection” on reality, I do not hear the condemnation of the artist as I do from Plato. We must keep in mind what Paul Watzlawick says, “The belief that there is only one
reality is the most dangerous self-deception” (Watzlawick).
Morawski explains that: The continual dynamic flux and change in aesthetics and the arts derive chiefly from the rise and decline of the always complex ideological outlooks…are conditioned by the general contractions and evolution of class society. (303) He also delves into the “dynamism” of the “crystallized” and the “emergent” attitudes.
Where Marx and Engle make the case of the “function” of the arts and aesthetics is when they express: …irrepressible desire of men for emancipation from tyranny, injustice, and hunger…man-the-maker, homofaber…might gain the capacity to exchange his collective toil and oppressive ignorance for a mode of social being…homo aestheicus he might freely and creatively achieve the totality of his potential faculties. (304) Isn’t this the reason why we create?
As Robin Williams, who plays John Keating, in Dead Poets Society says:
We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be? (Williams)
The artist has a place in society. John F. Kennedy may have said it best during his speech at Amherst College in honor of Robert Frost:
When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment. The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure… If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.
If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style. In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society--in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having" nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope…
I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment, and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world which will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction. (J. F. Kennedy)
Marx and Engle stressed the “elements” of art that would be “significant” human labor, social revolution, and communism. If we take the definition of communism and multiculturalism we get Communism: A theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state. (Dictionary.com)
Multiculturalism: “The preservation of different cultures or cultural identities within a unified society, as a state or nation” (Dictionary.com). If we take the core of “in common” and “unified society” we can see this blending happening now. It may be with mass media/entertainment that we first break the taboos of society. The inclusion of entertainment and mass media as important, legitimate forms of expression, and even a catalyst for social change, reminds me of Katsumoto, a character in the movie, The Last Samurai. Toward the beginning of the story he states, “The perfect blossom is a rare thing. You could spend your life looking for one, and it would not be a wasted life” (Zwick). As Katsumoto lies dying, and sees the cherry blossoms floating in the air, he says, “They are all perfect” (Zwick). This may sound extreme when it comes to mass media and entertainment, but the sentiment that there is value is in all creation. If the arts and aesthetics are for the highbrow, then is mass media and entertainment for the lowbrow? Maybe there is truth in Richard Peterson and Roger Kern’s “highbrow omnivorousness” hypothesis?
Their article, “Changing Highbrow to Omnivore,” dealt with musical tastes, but presents a viable reason for the increase in mass media and entertainment as well: Appreciation of fine arts became a mark of high status in the late nineteenth century as part of an attempt to distinguish "highbrowed" Anglo Saxons from the new "lowbrowed" immigrants, whose popular entertainments were said to corrupt morals and thus were to be shunned (Levine 1988; DiMaggio 1991). In recent years, however, many high-status persons are far from being snobs and are eclectic, even "omnivorous," in their tastes (Peterson and Simkus 1992). This suggests a qualitative shift in the basis for marking elite status--from snobbish exclusion to omnivorous appropriation. Using comparable 1982 and 1992 surveys, we test for this hypothesized change in tastes. We confirm that highbrows are more omnivorous than others and that they have become increasingly omnivorous over time. Regression analyses reveal that increasing "omnivorousness" is due both to cohort replacement and to changes over the 1980s among highbrows of all ages. We speculate that this shift from snob to omnivore relates to status-group politics influenced by changes in social structure, values, art-world dynamics, and generational conflict. (Peterson) What Omar Lizardo and Sara Skiles says concerning the Peterson & Kern empirical test of their ‘‘highbrow omnivorousness’’ hypothesis is that:
…Peterson and Kern take this as evidence that high status individuals’ cultural consumption patterns had shifted from a ‘‘snob’’ regime in which lowbrow genres were shunned, to an omnivore regime in which there is no incompatibility between the consumption of low-status cultural forms and traditional high status offerings. This empirical generalization led to a rethinking of the principles of organization of the cultural stratification system of contemporary societies, as well as a reformulation of the types of status displays and habits of cultural engagement that serve to define high status in the modern system…‘elite taste is no longer defined simply as the expressed appreciation of the high art forms and a corresponding moral disdain of, or patronizing tolerance for, all other aesthetic expressions.’ Instead, ‘the aesthetics of elite status are being redefined as the appreciation of all distinctive leisure activities and creative forms along with the appreciation of the classic fine arts.’ (Lizardo) I agree with their hypothesis, but I also suspect this shift may have a purpose as a vehicle for entertainers to increase their own value, therefore, their salaries. The inundation of mass media and entertainment has been a device for not only entertainers but for sports figures and politicians as well. We are made to feel out of the loop if we do not know what is and how to use a hashtag. Or is there a more insidious purpose in mass media and entertainment gaining popularity? Are their growing use and popularity another form of pacification of the masses? Do mass media and entertainment equate to food stamps and free cell phones for the poor? Are there those in positions of power helping to keep the uneducated, poor and marginalized people in our society lulled into a form of sleep? Conspiracy theories abound, but what if? What if it is a plot like in the movie, Snowpiercer, in which, as the plot is:
Set in 2031, the entire world is frozen except for those aboard the Snowpiercer. For 17 years, the world's survivors are on a train hurtling around the globe creating their own economy and class system. Led by Curtis, a group of lower-class citizens living in squalor at the back of the train [called freeloaders] are determined to get to the front of the train and spread the wealth around. Each section of the train holds new surprises for the group who have to battle their way through. A revolution is underway. (Bong)
The “freeloaders” are made to understand their place when Minster Mason, the conductor’s eyes and ears, lectures them against attempting to upset the balance of the status quo: Order is the barrier that holds back the flood of death. We must all of us on this train of life remain in our allotted station. We must each of us occupy our preordained particular position. Would you wear a shoe on your head? Of course you wouldn't wear a shoe on your head. A shoe doesn't belong on your head. A shoe belongs on your foot. A hat belongs on your head. I am a hat. You are a shoe. I belong on the head. You belong on the foot. Yes? So it is. In the beginning, order was proscribed by your ticket: First Class, Economy, and freeloaders like you. Eternal order is prescribed by the sacred engine: all things flow from the sacred engine, all things in their place, all passengers in their section, all water flowing. all heat rising, pays homage to the sacred engine, in its own particular preordained position. So it is. Now, as in the beginning, I belong to the front. You belong to the tail. When the foot seeks the place of the head, the sacred line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe. (Bong)
At the end of the movie, when Curtis makes it to the front of the train to confront the Conductor, Wilford, he finds out the truth about the “revolt” he led: Wilford explains that he and Gilliam [his counterpart that lived in the rear of the train] have been secretly working together for years, and periodically orchestrate rebellions as a means of population control onboard the train. Things got a little out of control this time though, and Wilford lost too many from his side, which is why he ordered Gilliam to be killed. (Bong) Maybe the storyline is a bit outrageous, but it is interesting in that we are, metaphorically, trapped on/in a ball speeding through space, dealing with the same
issues as these passengers. Maybe mass media and entertainment wasn’t intended to be a source of power. Maybe mass media and entertainment are like tattoos; in that they are as Major Charles Emerson Winchester III says, “Tattoos are the poor man's way of investing in art” (Stierrs).
Works Cited
Akhmatova, Anna. "Requiem." Poetry in Translation.
A. S. Kline, 2012. Electronic.
Carbone, Vincent. "Pardon the Interruption." 2014. Print.
Dead Poets Society. Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Robin Williams. 1989. Film. Dictionary.com. 2015. Electronic. 2015.
Equilibrium. Dir. Kurt Wimmer. Perf. C. Bale. 2002. Film.
Kennedy, John F. In Honor of Robert Frost. Amherst, 26 October 1963. Print.
Lizardo, Omar and Skiles, Sara. "Highbrow omnivorousness on the small screen?"
Poetics (2009): 1-23. Print.
M*A*S*H. Dir. Larry Gelbart. Perf. David Ogden Stiers. 1972. Film. Moonstruck. Dir. Norman Jewison. Perf. Nicholas Cage. 1987. Film. Morawski, Stefan. "The Aesthetic Views of Marx and Engels." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 1970: 301-314. Electronic. Peterson, R. & Kern, R. "Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore." American Sociological Review (1996): 900-907. Print.
Plato. The Republic. 360 BCE. Print.
Popcorn, Faith. The Popcorn Report: Faith Popcorn on the Future of Your Company, Your World, Your Life. New York: Doubleday, 1991. Snowpiercer. Dir. Joon-ho Bong. 2013. Film.
The Last Samurai. Dir. Edward Zwick. Perf. Ken Watanabe. 2003. Film. Watzlawick, Paul. How Real Is Real? Vintage Pages, 1977. Print.
wildmind buddhist meditation. 2015. Electronic. 2015.
