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speedy_m
= Frankofile =
Canada
3581 Posts |
 Posted - 06/23/2003 : 12:45:18
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It would seem that all of us (forum members) have a fairly steady diet of "good" music. Personal tastes aside, no one lists commercial/mainstream crap as their favourite. So musically we're all fairly inide, underground leaning. Music as art. How does this apply to other art forms for everyone?
I get very hot and bothered when it comes to music and people treating it like simply "entertainment" and can thus justify shaking their bon-bon to Ricky Martin, but what about, for instance, movies? I've watched and enjoyed enough fluff movies, and lately I've been thinking, "how is it different?". Sure, music is more important to me, but I still beleive art is art. So I guess I'd like to discuss this issue. Television, books, movies. Some of this has been addressed in the "favourite movie and book" threads, but I'd like to discuss the ideals of "guilty pleasures". |
Edited by - speedy_m on 06/23/2003 13:06:23 |
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Cult_Of_Frank
= Black Noise Maker =
Canada
11687 Posts |
Posted - 06/23/2003 : 14:15:31
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A person doesn't always want to think and absorb and be absorbed in depth and meaning. Sometimes it's just good to let loose and enjoy something for what it is - a cheap laugh, a dancy beat, a fast-paced bit of fun. I admit that as a 'musician' (I'm not 100% comfortable using this term in reference to myself, but I do play/write music I guess, so...) I am less inclined to enjoy the dancy beats even when at the bar, but I suppose I still dance to it in the rare occasion that I'm caught on the dance floor. Certainly I would never listen to that stuff on my own, nor purchase or support it in anyway, but there's a time and place for everything. Even feces has a quaint little ceramic pot. :)
Movies I'm less critical on: if I go to see a Jim Carrey/Adam Sandler/___ movie, I know what I'm expecting. I mean, sometimes they're just too stupid to enjoy (Scary Movie, for example) even though you know going in they're going to be stupid. I haven't seen Dude Where's My Car for this reason. But generally their biggest problem is that they are formulaic and predicatable and maybe that the jokes have been done before (or too many have been seen in the trailer). Anyway, like the bar, you know what you're getting into before you go, so I suppose if you don't enjoy it at all, you don't go, or you do go and take it for what it's worth.
Finally, video games, though I do consider myself very much in the video game scene, I generally follow the same rules as movies. Yeah, I've been playing Hitman2 lately, and I've played some other less than scrupulous games including GTA3, but I know what it is and I know that it's just for pure fun and not because it is art. Sometimes it's fun to just get in and drive/shoot/whatever without bothering with the artistry of it. And then there are games like Mafia & Max Payne & as someone else said, any LucasArts adventure, which allow you to do the same but set a higher bar for all involved. These games I buy even though I may have already finished them because they need support - as with music. And then there are the games like Deer Hunter and so forth that I would be offended to find on my computer.
I guess, long story short, it's OK to let go and not think sometimes, as long as you are in fact letting go in the first place. And as long as you find your way back. |
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speedy_m
= Frankofile =
Canada
3581 Posts |
Posted - 06/23/2003 : 15:38:13
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Well Mr. Dean, your point is well heard. I guess my question is, why don't I feel that way about music. I'll watch the dumb movies and play the bad games, but I will not tolerate bad music. Why?
I've been meaning to read Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy for years. Is it all it's reported to be, Pioneer? |
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NimrodsSon
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1938 Posts |
Posted - 06/23/2003 : 16:05:45
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speaking of dumb and dumber, the 2nd one was absolutely the worst movie I've seen in my whole life. It should have never been made, but it might have been OK if they made it a couple of years after the first one and it still had Jim and Jeff. I was also an extra in this movie, but can't be seen.
Anyways, as for what you're saying, I agree with COF. Movies are something that I just watch for fun and entertainment, and not for the art part of it. I, myself don't enjoy movies like Eraserhead and stuff that a lot of y'all like. But music is something that I really get into, because it's really spiritual and it makes you feel good, or bad, or what not. I don't listen to music and get up and dance. I sit, stand, or lay down calmly and take it in and absorb it into my brain. That's what's so great about it! You can't sit and absorb a movie. Hell, I LOVE Pink Floyd, but I can't stand The Wall movie, because I'm just not into that form of art. |
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Erebus
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1834 Posts |
Posted - 06/23/2003 : 16:09:06
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| Some philosophers have regarded music as the "core" art, combining pure form via mathematics with pure substance via emotion, with a directness unmatched in the other arts. To the extent that that's valid, it would make sense that the degradation of music would constitute the greatest aesthetic blasphemy, either by expressing pedestrian form or invoking debased substance. High standard is in the nature of music. It follows that the broader the appeal of the music, the more likely it is that either form or substance, or both, is commonplace, and hence appeals to the common as something accessible to them. The exception would be that rare music that appeals across virtually the whole of a population with such obvious quality that even the snobs can't condemn it for its popularity. I can't account for that, any more than I can explain how certain acts of nobility appeal across social boundaries normally defined in the most partisan terms. The question being asked here is "What is quality?" |
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NimrodsSon
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1938 Posts |
Posted - 06/23/2003 : 16:10:48
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| I have no idea what the hell you said, but I agree |
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blackpurse
= Cult of Ray =
USA
299 Posts |
Posted - 06/24/2003 : 05:57:55
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quote:
Originally posted by speedy_m
It would seem that all of us (forum members) have a fairly steady diet of "good" music. Personal tastes aside, no one lists commercial/mainstream crap as their favourite. So musically we're all fairly inide, underground leaning. Music as art. How does this apply to other art forms for everyone?
OK, I'll bite:
I think also a lot of us here, being into our definition of "good music" are sometimes reluctant to admit their musical guilty pleasures as readily as we admit our visual ones. Every now and then you'll get somebody who will admit that there are days when only AC/DC or Madonna or whoever will get the job done, but being a forum dedicated to a guy who specializes in music, I think we're often careful, lest we "get kicked out of the party and they won't give you coke anymore" (remember that line from "Decline of Western Civilization"?).
I'm kind of a movie snob too, but I have a penchant for Ahh-nold and Clint (inherited from husband), as well as sappy girl movies like Fried Green Tomatoes.
I think what really gets my goat, (and I suspect many others here), is that while we like our junk food, we by and large have a good musical diet because it IS important to us, yet we are often surrounded by people for whom music is wallpaper (I use this phrase a lot to describe this situation). Their indifference to the fact that we're surrounded by dreck is infuriating. I posted in another thread about Milwaukee's Summerfest, and how depressing it is to me, to see hundreds of thousands of people be TOTALLY SATISFIED by all the dreck they book, that they get REALLY EXCITED about lame local acts like The Love Monkeys (yes they are as mediocrially vile as the name suggests), and equally thrilled about Good Charlotte. (Taht they were playing Summerfest made HEADLINES!) while somebody like the Rev. Horton Heat gets relegated to 2 in the afternoon on some obscure stage on a Tuesday. And then the director whines in the media "Why isn't SUmmerfest taken as seriouisly as festivals like Monterey or New Orleans JAzz/Pop" Because, you ditz, Monterey and New Orleans are about MUSIC, while Summerfest is about middle of the road dreck and money and food -- it's a damn great church festival but that's about it. (Truth in labeling, me and husband are going this Thursday to see Peter Gabriel, and on Monday to catch Lewis Black -- musician that he is !!!??? -- and perhaps the Foo Fighters). Summerfest is a "music" festival built for those very people -- people for whom music is wallpaper and who look to Clear Channel Communications to put that wallpaper up for them. And we get infuriated because we want to shake those people and say "There is SOOO MUCH MOre out there if you'd only look."
I'm sure that film buffs and art enthusiasts have the same thing to say. Shit, who's the hottest artist out there? Thomas Fucking Kinkade, "Painter of Light" -- that's who. Yeeeeeeeccccchhh. So maybe I'm not as indifferent to other art forms as I first admitted to being. I think those who have a rich musical diet may not necessarily be as well-rounded to other art forms as they'd like, but I suspect we're more open to richer forms of film, art, dance, etc. I mean, we're waitnig to find out if we can get a print of a MArk Mothersbaugh postcard for frankly, less than your typical patron pays for a Kinkade landscape. |
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blackpurse
= Cult of Ray =
USA
299 Posts |
Posted - 06/25/2003 : 07:37:54
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Thinking more about this, a place where there is certainly a huge dividing line between the "meat" and the "candy" is in the book publishing world. We all scoff at Danielle Steele and Tom Clancy, etc., while we're all good little literary boys and girls devouring the latest Donna Tartt (I haven't started this BTW, has anybody else had a chance… I loved "the Secret History") . I realized this when we started discussing "Hitchhikers". It certainly wasn't written as a highbrow novel, but those of us who do read the highbrow crowd, by and large, enjoyed it, and the other Adams Trilogy books. I remember reviewing it for my college newspaper back in the early 80s. The marketing lit I got with it seemed to indicate it wanted to be not necessarily included with the highbrow crowd, but at least referenced to it: "If Tom Robbins and Kurt Vonnegut had a son, this is the novel he would write…. But he'd get sued down to his skivvies because Douglas Adams has already written it!" And I had to admit, it had the same worldview, distrust of institutional (but resigned acceptance) governemnet, our "heroes" were everyday joes caught up in extraodinary situations (and wonderfully nonchalant about it all, by and large) -- yes, it was quite Vonnegut and Robbins about it, without the Pynchon paranoia that such writers usually get caught up in (which also usually elevates them to highbrow status!). So will it get its place on the student bookstore list for "Literature 250: Postwar English Language Novel"? Unlikely, though I would argue that it should be in a booklist that included Vonnegut, Robbins, Heller, Pynchon, Bellow, et al.
There's a danger in saying something's good or bad simply because its highbrow or not. Remember all that BS with Jonathan Franzen dissing Oprah, even though frankly it was Oprah's recommendation that tripled his sales and turned his book from just some ivory tower cocktail discussion into a mainstream hit. You could see that he was TERRIFIED that he's lose his seat at Truman Capote's table: "Oh no," you could just hear him fretting, "What if Norman Mailer's in a grocery store behind some fat lady in the express line, a Lean Cusine and the latest 'Weekly World News' in one hand, and a paperback copy of my 'The Corrections' in the other -- I will be considered lumpen -- Quelle Horror!" Franzen seemed to be worried that if Oprah's mainstream crowd accepted him, he wouldn't be taken SERIOUSLY by the people whose attention he really wanted. (Fun ironic note for the asshole: The Corrections was about a mainstream american family -- he wants to write about them, all smug and comfortably distanced from them, but he wants nothing to do with them!) Kurt Cobain suffered from this same crap -- the old "Indie Cred" bullshit that some would argue he killed himself over. And people forget that today's mainstream pop often becomes tomorrow's classics: we study Dickens as classics in school, yet almost all of his works originally appeared as serial stories (then the equivalent of soap operas) in London broadsheets. Musically, in the 20th Century, Sinatra was considered garbage (because his audience was screaming teenage girls -- what the hell do they know about great music), Duke Ellington's jazz music was considered lowbrow, Elvis was just some southern piece of white trash, and don't get certain people (including Sinatra himself, who had been elevated to classic by then) started on the Beatles (again, their original audience was screaming teenage girls, who couldn't possibly know a great song if it hit 'em in the ass). Yet all three are now considered to be important, groundbreaking artists/styles studied in the finest music schools. In film, its only been recent that Alfred Hitchcock is being recognized as the genius artist that he was -- because he was working in what was considered a trash/lowbrown idion: horror/suspense, and because frankly, his work was and is popular. Yet you look at the techniques he employed and in many cases pioneered, the thought that went into every scene, he was just as disciplined and masterful as any other "serious" director of his or any time.
These days, there are many university departments that are studying pop culture as a highbrow institution in and of itself. (and of course, being pooh-poohed by the classicists across the hall from them). However, they're not studying pop culture and analyzing it line by line per se the way comparative literature profs do, but more from an anthropological perspective: how does this work reflect that culture that produced and consumed it? Why is this work popular -- is it ringing a common bell or is it simply easily digestable, blah blah blah. It’s a fascinating analysis that I myself admit being sucked into -- Peter Gularnick's Elvis biography is a prime example that I devoured in three days and loved because it didn't just study Elvis, it studied the southern culture that produced Elvis and the mainstream culture that bought and eventually drugged him up and watered him down.
So I guess what I'm trying to say here is that in both music and literature, I really do try to be a populist and understand the value in pop culture, although I lament the fact that there isn't necessarily always room for both candy and meat in the same cultural stomach. I'm just glad there's at least a market for both -- and I am a consumer in both markets. The pop market is just easier -- its in your face, while you have to sometimes really hunt down the meatier stuff. The fact that one can -- and should -- study a pop culture phenomonon like Elvis in a serious academic way is a paradox that I admit poses the question: is this feeding my snob appeal and my guilty pleasure simulteneously? And is there anything wrong with that?
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Leah
= Cult of Ray =
United Kingdom
314 Posts |
Posted - 06/25/2003 : 08:21:38
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I personally count listening to the Pixies as a guilty pleasure simply cos I still about once a week get around to playing the odd track or two.
Another thing I refer to as being something I'm very fickle about admitting to is reading my horoscope. Mainly coz I KNOW its drivel but well sometimes you have to cast a little further out...
I do have a line in really bad girlie albumns which used to get played whenever my best pal and I got ready for a night out...
Every choice human being strives instinctively for a citadel and a secrecy where he is saved from the crowd -
Nietzsche |
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speedy_m
= Frankofile =
Canada
3581 Posts |
Posted - 06/25/2003 : 08:24:51
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| Thank you blackpurse. That was a very interesting read, and precisely the type of commentary I was hoping to find. You seem resigned to that fact that the "candy" will always be there and that you will be attracted to some of it, though your final question leads me to beleive there is some part of you that still feels guilty about it, if only a little bit. My original sentiment stemmed from my own feeling of guilt when taking in a movie such as "Van Wilder", and laughing my ass off, when I would chastise someone for polluting my ears with the latest Christina "VD" Aguilera clap-trap. At minimum, you've given me several books I know I must read, and something to think about all day. Which is good because cubicle life doesn't usually afford one much opportunity to use one's brain. |
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Carolynanna
>> Denizen of the Citizens Band <<
Canada
6556 Posts |
Posted - 06/25/2003 : 08:31:09
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Cubicle life,
Isn't it worthless, lonely, useless and a complete waste of your time? |
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blackpurse
= Cult of Ray =
USA
299 Posts |
Posted - 06/25/2003 : 09:01:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Carolynanna
Cubicle life,
Isn't it worthless, lonely, useless and a complete waste of your time?
The pay's damn good. At least in IT/MIS it is. As I wrote in a song for one of my old bands "You'll bitch at me for selling out, but I ain't losing sleep... I'm a whore and you're a whore, the shame's in being CHEAP!" |
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Carolynanna
>> Denizen of the Citizens Band <<
Canada
6556 Posts |
Posted - 06/25/2003 : 09:03:21
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| I totally don't get paid enough. |
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Cult_Of_Frank
= Black Noise Maker =
Canada
11687 Posts |
Posted - 06/25/2003 : 10:04:57
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<cue the sarcasm> I get paid WAY too much.
Yeah, this is all food for thought, but I suppose everything has it's place and if you enjoy it, why should you deprive yourself. I'm not going to stop watching hilarious comedies because I know there's stuff with more substance out there, I'll just try to do both. One foot in two worlds, that sort of thing. The movies like Van Wilder are entertainment and every bit as important to me as movies with artistic merit or even the cross-over entertaining movies that also have some artistic merit (Kevin Smith and Usual Suspects come to mind).
I guess the main difference is that with music, I don't find the 'candy' to be all that sweet... I honestly don't enjoy listening to it, so why would I. |
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