(December 22, 2019 at 10:49 pm)LBelacqua Wrote:(December 22, 2019 at 9:04 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Sure...okay. But, need it be Bach for me to be Sufficiently Moved by a melody? Need it be Twelve Angry Men or It’s a Wonderful Life to have the pillars of our human condition be stirred? I don’t think we should leave our values, and what should move our spirit, up to some small group of humanitarian “elites”. Some of the brightest creative minds killed themselves or drank themselves to death because they were so unhappy. It should be a collective effort. Regina Spektor’s song about a single mom of four who is dying of cancer moves me to tears, even though she won’t be in any history books. Watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia not only makes me belly laugh and appreciate being alive, but also reminds me of the mundane and collective self-serving cruelty people are capable of, though they likely won’t be remembered in fifty or a hundred years. I wept throughout the entire final installment of Stephen King’s the Dark Tower, but I’m sure they won’t be teaching it in any high school English classes. The human experience is what unites us. It’s what we can all relate to. Empathy, and a deep-seated, geneticsll driven instinct to care about the well-being of others. Just my two cents.
Thank you for finally getting us back to the OP! It's annoying that every thread has to start with barking dogs who attack me for saying things I've never said.
About the examples you give: I would never scold anybody for enjoying the books or movies they enjoy. I'm in no way against pleasure.
However I agree with the quote in the OP that cultural productions are not a fully-equal smorgasbord and if I like one thing and you like another there is nothing to it but personal taste. I do think that someone who has a complete command of Shakespeare's plays has accomplished something qualitatively better than someone who knows everything there is to know about the "Marvel Cinematic Universe."
And the reasons for this have to do with the role that the arts play in the place of religion. High quality stuff is high quality because it enriches life. It increases our knowledge of the world, exposes us to ourselves, demands our humility and skepticism, and makes us more empathetic to people unlike ourselves. Can I prove that these are positive qualities? Not empirically, no. But I still disagree with someone who says that the opposites are just as good.
Bad art will flatter us, push our contradictions out of sight, tell us that we are the best, and that how we do things demands no scrutiny. I think that once we learn how to spot these traits, a lot of what seems cool becomes a lot less enjoyable.
The extreme measures that readers of the Bible went to in past times has given us a legacy of subtle hermeneutics. Writers like Proust have a greater range of expression than more simple Aesop's Fables-type stories. Well-informed readers are sensitive to the narrative techniques and the various experiences these give us. (This is not just me; I'm paraphrasing Derrida.)
As an example: I grew up watching Kirk and Spock go through their weekly morality plays. To a kid, it seemed deep, and I don't regret watching those things. When I tried to watch the most recent Star Trek series, however, the ideological subtext was so horrible that I had to give up after two episodes. We are supposed to be cheered by the fact that the Star Trek world has great diversity of peoples -- black people and Asians and aliens all serving together. But this diversity is expressed because each type of person puts on the uniform of the quasi-military organization and has a chance to obey the Benign Captain. And what is the story about? Our hero starts a war that, although we don't really want it, we know we have to go through with because it is our moral duty. We are the good people and we will fight if we must. In other words, it's good old American values -- violence and power -- projected into the future and made tolerable because it's now a young person of color who starts the war. A viewer who watches unquestioningly will come away stupider and more accepting of America's tradition of solving conflicts through violence.
I take your point. I’d be lying if I said I’ve never secretly judged the people who tell me their favorite show is The Bachelor, or Real Housewives. I’ve definitely thought, “don’t you want more for yourself?” But, what values has religion bestowed upon society with its overarching command? I notice obedience, fear of the unknown, discouragement of intellectual curiosity and questioning of authority, self hatred, and sexual shame to name a few. I’d say religion has utterly failed to lift us up to our full potential. I’d say we’ve lifted ourselves up in spite of the primitive and barbaric ideals pushed upon us by Christianity, which to me, describes a very shallow and hollowed out interpretation of the human experience. So, if we’ve thrived despite religion, were the humanities the driving force? I’ll never attempt to undermine the value of the arts. But, good art imitates life, right? Does knowing and understanding good art inform our values, and What Is Good? Or, is truly good art the expression of an intimate and nuanced understanding of values we innately possess? Perhaps, simply the shared human experience, for better or worse, drives those things?
Nay_Sayer: “Nothing is impossible if you dream big enough, or in this case, nothing is impossible if you use a barrel of KY Jelly and a miniature horse.”
Wiser words were never spoken.
Wiser words were never spoken.
