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Modern art
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this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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Some are saying things, some are just doing stuff because they can. I'm not convinced it's any less sane than, say, working in finance. It's definitely less harmful.
The thing about art is that it's whatever you can get away with. Sometimes that leaves room for powerful critiques of the system, sometimes it's just random stuff. In order to survive in capitalism, artists have to keep producing art. This means that they're incentiveized to produce things that are meaningless... Which is what most people in society do most of the time.
So these folks take some drugs and externalize the absurdity rather than fume in an office for decades before snapping and shooting a bunch of people or just offing themselves. Is it crazier to throw the absurdity of society back in it's face, or pretend that any of this is OK?
Edit: How many people reading this are pretending to work? You could be outside touching grass. You could be inside by a fire. Every minute you spend pretending to work is a waste of your life. Imagine if you threw your computer against the wall, walked out of the office, covered yourself in paint, and started flopping against a canvas like a fish. Would you experience more joy than you are experiencing right now, trapped at work pretending to do something meaningful? Yeah, I'm gonna go back to work but I'm also not gonna judge.
I agree, you do have a point there.
But that still doesn't make it good art. Sure, we aren't doing anything productive as well, but at least the only ones that we lie about how productive we are, are our bosses.
Some of it forces you to think about what you're doing with your life. That alone is a redeeming value. Most of that means nothing to me or is funny out of context, but the context could make everything. Or it could be bad. I'm not sure that it matters, but it's really difficult to impossible without knowing the context (like, who's the audience).
If I made a joke about tech, I'm guessing you might get it but most folks wouldn't. Does that mean the joke isn't funny or that the other people just aren't in on it?
Depends on the joke I guess. If it's something more commonly known, even if it is about tech, it would be funny for most people. Like the CD-ROM as a cup holder thing, that would be funny for most people.
Most people have this notion that tech people are like robots and get nothing outside of tech. That is true for most (I have to admit), but then you run into an odd ball like me. I've been to operas, plays, art exibitions, concerts (alternative music mostly). And I do enjoy doing all of that. Well, art exibitions not that much... depends on the art I guess. But yeah, I am very much into classical music, as well as the theater.
My point is, I like to dwell on social problems and constructs and why things are like this or like that and how we could make them better. And I agree, most of the questions regarding these things came through art (lyrics or a dialogue in a play). So it's not that I'm cluless about life and how things work IRL. I do consider that it's a shame that we have to do meaningless things in order to make ends meat, but that's how life in this society is. I'm not delusional that a single individual (or even a million) can change how the world works. Thus, I do respect what the artists are trying to say, but they don't usually offer solutions, just make us aware of the problem. Yes, I do agree that that is good as well, but I've seen this pattern over and over. Point to the problem with no real advice on how to solve it. I'm a problem solver, I don't like it when a problem has no solution and becomes circumstance. Thus, simply pointing out to me that there is something seriously wrong with this or that is just not enough. Sure, if it's entertaining, as an art exibit, OK, I can go with that... but that alone is just not enough to move me.
This is why I like movies like Fight Club. They don't just point to the problem, but take real steps into solving it, no matter how absurd those steps might be (like banks have no backups of records offshore 😂). They still tried and had a step by step plan of doing it. That is what I like, a plan of action. Something that might not be thought of all the way through, but still, it's a step in the right direction, and maybe we will change the plan when we see things aren't what we thought.
People usually refer to me as the "gets the job done" guy. I either do it right or don't do it all. I don't like half baked solutions or endless meetings with nothing concrete to show for at the end. I would rather just start doing something about it, even if it's wrong, then adapt the course of action, than just analyze to death and not actually do anything about the problem at hand. Sure, analysis is a very important part of planning, but from what I've seen so far in life, people do just that with no real incentive to actually start doing something about the problem. And that bugs me A LOT.
So, Fight Club is about how masculinity within patriarchy destroys men. A man who is an isolated consumer isn't allowed to cry because he's confirming to masculinity, he has a mental breakdown and turns to expresses his sadness as violence. At the end of the book he gets in to every fight until his cheeks wear away and he's described as looking like a jack-o'-lantern. After he confronts Tyler and shoots himself, he becomes catatonic and lives in a mental hospital.
The fact that the plans wouldn't actually do anything are part of the point. It's just an unfocused attack on a system that dehumanizes. In the end, it just becomes part of the system he attacked. Which is also his critique of what became ecofascism.
The author is gay. A big element of masculinity is cisgendered heterosexual, as least in the US context and especially in the late 90's when he was writing. He was excluded in some ways from masculinity at that time, while socialized in it. So he has a lot of reasons to explore and decompose masculinity.
Brad Pitt, when playing Tyler, understood the critique as well and continued to push on the what masculinity means. While regularly playing an architypical man, he's often worn dresses. The fact that he can do both demonstrantes the malleability of the definition of masculinity (this is also called "queering" masculinity).
I know all this because that's one of my favorite movies/books. I was in highschool when it came out. I was studying AP English, so I decided to my final paper on absurdism and antiheroes in Fight Club, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and The Good Soldier Ŝvejk. But even after reading it and having a ton of context, I actually didn't really understand it. It wasn't until years later that I was able to revisit it through the lense of feminism that I understood how much of Fight Club is actually feminist.
Even though all the information was available to me, I still didn't get it. Fight Club, Starship Troopers, Rick and Morty, and other films and media that criticize masculinity, violence, and authoritarianism are so often misunderstood by their fans... Like the point of Nirvana's In Bloom. Could the fact that the majority of people who watch these movies completely miss the point make them, by definition, bad art? They fail, fundamentally, to relate their ideas. Isn't that a problem?
I don't think the fact that people don't understand a piece of art makes it bad, and I'm really careful about criticizing art without having context.. especially if I'm not the audience.
Context is super important. For example, a lot of people don't realize that the whole "modern art is shit" meme was super important to Hitler. He claimed that Jews were creating "degenerate art" that degraded German culture. They did art shows that were compilations of things they didn't like or didn't understand before burning them... Kind of like this compilation. So things like criticizing the concept of modern art (especially out of context) or taking about sterilizing people with disabilities that I always push back on. A lot of people don't know the connections with those.
I work in computer security now, and have for like 15 years or so. Almost every vulnerability is someone trying to solve a problem they don't fully understand. Occasionally someone will try to solve a problem that isn't a problem at all and make a problem in the process. Some problems people keep trying to solve when they really need to step away and let a professional handle it, like cryptography.
I've seen too many people make a huge mess trying to solve a problem they didn't totally understand or didn't comprehend the impact of a solution.I always ask myself if a problem needs to be solved before trying to solve it. In a world where people are making money off genocide, starving people, inciting terrorist attacks, and making life unlivable on the planet, is some people acting silly really a thing worth fighting against? It just feels a bit like punching down.