From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V13 #75 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Tuesday, March 9 2004 Volume 13 : Number 075 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Back when you could still be post-modern on purpose... [Eb ] Re: Back when you could still be post-modern on purpose... [The Great Qua] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 17:25:02 -0800 From: Eb Subject: Re: Back when you could still be post-modern on purpose... >What performance art is still being done? The closest thing I can think of >is "The Waking Life," and that's not really the same thing at all. "Soy Bomb." ;) And I guess Ann Magnuson pops up now and then? Is "Christo" still wrapping trees and things? Eb ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 20:30:17 -0500 From: The Great Quail Subject: Re: Brelinmaniax! Culture war escalates... Rex, > Fair enough. Unlike Jeme I wouldn't be surprised the these folks didn't know > who Gray was, but I would feel a little old (so you've got me there) and not a > little sad as well. Part of it is that you simply don't take stock of every > figure from your youth every year, one by one, saying, oh, is he still valid? > Do people still pay attention to her stuff? So when one of those names comes > back around, it can be a little surprising to realize how much cultural > currency they've lost while you weren't paying attention. Man, that is all too true, and well put. When I taught high school, I was always surprised at how cultural referents would change, right in front of my eyes. > I think what Jeme and Eb > and I are missing (not to put words in anyone's mouths) are the cultural > wild-cards, the less-categorizable figures who were more visible back in tha > day. I think there are fewer "celebrities", or household names, representing > the fine arts or literature or underground/experimental sensibilities these > days. I think that you came from a very different "household" than I did! My parents still don't know who any of those people are -- nope, they are Elvis fans. (Though my mom is no a huge Tom Waits fan.) >>> You think "Blue Velvet" is more gentle than "Pulp Fiction?" > > God yes. It's the sensibilty. Lynch is appalled at what he's compelled to > represent, as I usually see it; Tarantino gets off on it. I disagree. I think that the "sweet" aspects of "Blue Velvet" are terribly ironic, and I warrant that Lynch certainly "gets off" on his violence just as much as Tarantino -- in fact, Lynch's violence seems a lot more creepy and disturbing, because it is less improbable, perhaps, more realistic. But seriously -- you don't come up with scenes like Dennis Hopper's and not have a certain fascination for violence. I do not think Lynch is "appalled," nor is he "compelled" to represent anything. >>> U2, REM, and The Smiths are certainly not in the category that Rex was >>> describing. They're just pop bands. > > That's true, although REM and maybe sort of the Smiths skirt the area. Man, U2 is the best band since the Beatles, and I know the truth of it! You unbelievers may throw your rocks! Bone will protect me! > Another possibility is that the corporate > machine has become more efficient and speedy at co-opting avant garde > sensibilities... I think that is a very good point. > As Jeme said, we know where they are now (and > I'd say they're farther out of the spotlight than they were, or than Quail > sees them as now), But partly because of their own creative decisions! Does anyone really think that "Feelings" is as good as "Remain in Light," or "Life on a String" as good as "Mister Heartbreak?" >but where are the emerging figures of their ilk? Why are you all Bjork haters, man? And again, Beck! Beck! Beck! Beck! > Ah well. There's certainly some nostalgia informing my position here, but I > am pretty damned sure, Quail, that it's worse than you think. What? My hearing aid is turned off, hang on.... > But as I see it, yeah, the general > corporate climate is such that very little that's not easily grasped and > market-tested slips through... do you not agree that there's more truth to > that than there was in 1985? Yes, I do. But I am not ready to sound the death knell, especially in the days of the Internet and MP3s. But I have to say, I certainly agree with your above point -- and I also agree that right now, much popular music sucks, and corporate rock is the scourge of the earth. But there is still great stuff out there, as good as Laurie Anderson and David Byrne. Oddly the optimist, - --Quail ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 17:31:19 -0800 From: "Rex.Broome" Subject: RE: fegmaniax-digest V13 #73 Quail: >>Actually, now that I think about it, Korn and their ilk may be actually >>less simplistic than the hair bands.... I had a friend who listened to Korn >>and those groups, and their lyrics weren't *that* bad, just not my cup of tea. >>A bit too theatrically self-pitying. Equally one-dimensional. We've just switched out hedonism for angst, because that seems more artistic. >>What about Radiohead? ...dunno... I feel like their popularity is a sort of "some cereal, s'posed to be good for you" thing. If the masses were really into experimental music, the charts would look a lot different. Look at the popular bands who are always referred to as being Radiohead-like: far less challenging fare like Coldplay, right? >>Bjork? Coulda been on my initial list. The Sugarcubes were an '80's phenomenon. Miles, would you be able to run down a few of the faces in Wire's "Eardrum Buzz" video? I know Bjork was in there but I seem to recall a few non-musicians in there who might fit comfortably alongside my earlier list. >>Sigur Ros? Less visible, I'd say, than anyone on my '80's list. See Radiohead comments above: these guys are not in the Top 10. >>Norah Jones? Huh? This I don't get. What's challenging or artsy here? She can sing and all, but she seems to embody a comfy nostalgia that's the very antithesis of avant-garde bleedover into the mainstream. >>Eminem? Well, he can go fuck himself, is what I say. I am tired beyond words of the rush to look cool by calling Eminem the new Dylan, inevitably written by people way farther along into, and more deeply in love with, their midlife crises than I am mine. And yes, I have heard his records. Likes to whine a lot, doesn't he? None of which is in line with my original point, but I thought I'd have a go at that list for the sheer hell of it. It's good to have you back, Quail!!!! - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 14:41:32 +1300 From: grutness@surf4nix.com Subject: Re: haikus >Another list I'm on started a "missed-show haiku" thread. I thought that >was a delightful concept, and gave it an extra effort. Here was what I >came up with...and you? Shriekback, so I'm told Once played in our little town I had pleurisy Midnight Oil came too I did not find out until After they had been Final Verlaines gig - Retrospective sturm und drang - I was out of town From: Tom Clark >Max screws up Haiku >Is he dyslexic, or what? >It's five seven five Well, who really cares? It's the thought, not scan, that counts So fuck you, Tom Clark! James - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 18:03:27 -0800 From: "Rex.Broome" Subject: If it's too artsy, you're too old Quail: >>I think the real difference here is that you and Rex -- and >>myself -- were more plugged into the scene at the time. Things made sense >>to us in a way that they may not make sense to us now. We were more a part >>of the cultural scene, and there was a coherence that seemed "natural" to us. Maybe. Sort of. But there's an odd youth-centricity to that POV that should be examined. Art and entertainment are not by definition for the young. Yes, that's how they're marketed these days (which is part of my beef), but it's just not so. Might be a little more to the point to say that this stuff was happening in our "formative years" and therefore made a bit more of an impression on us. And we didn't have as many distractions as we (presumably) do now as adults. But honestly, look at the artists and works that have been name-dropped in this exchange... I think they're mostly going to be more constructively evaluated by folks our age, with more experience and acumen and more just-plain-having-absorbed-stuff under our belts, than by the 16-year-olds we were when we first encountered them. We're not as old as any of us seem to think we are. I mean, who creates this stuff? Who evaluates it, writes the reviews and academic assessments of culture and its artifacts? Not teenagers. People like us. More or less. Wow, this coversation turned out a lot differently than I thought it would. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 18:41:08 -0800 (PST) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Back when you could still be post-modern on purpose... I'm gonna try to cut this down to the point rather than responding to each niggle. On Tue, 9 Mar 2004, The Great Quail wrote: > I am not sure how you can disentangle popularity with "cultural > acceptance" and "mainstream recognition." Bingo. There was a distinction in the past. This is exactly what _I_ (can't speak for the others) have been trying to express this whole time. Today, they are one and the same. The mainstream culture ONLY recognizes that which is popular. If you fill arena, you can be a punchline in a talkshow monlogue. If your movie has lines around the block, you'll get a mention on a sitcom. Used to be that you didn't have to be enormously POPULAR to get that kind of media attention (and subsequent cultural acceptance). You could put some weirdo on The Tonight Show for six minutes and people would sit there and try to grok it or just laugh or something. Today, they're going to turn the channel, so you've got to pitch the mass appeal. [snipped out of order for clarity] [of Laurie Anderson] > > Uh... really? Because she used to appear on network television. > > So did Andy Warhol. What the heck does that prove? I guarantee the > average person in 1985 did not listen to Laurie Anderson, nor did they > know who she was. YES! You could turn on the television (to one of four or five channels) and see something that totally challenged the cultural norm. > Well, I personally don't like "Sex in the City," but regarding "The > Sopranos," of course it's groundbreaking television, and I won't get > drawn into the tedium of discussing something that should be > self-evident. A guy who goes on and on about differing frames of reference is hiding behind "self-evident"? > The problem is, you define groundbreaking as "something I have never > seen before, except maybe back in the 1980s when I first discovered art > in college." Well, I was nowhere near college in the 1980s... But being novel is only one aspect of being ground-breaking. It has to also be clearing a place upon which a foundation might actually be built. No use breaking the ground if you're not going to put some structure up in that place. There's lots of folks out there kicking up dirt, but who's breaking ground and why aren't their names on everyone's lips? They used to be. > Also, "The Wire," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," "Six Feet Under" -- all these > HBO shows have redefined or refined what "good" television can do, just > as much as "Twin Peaks." Six Feet Under is quite good... but certainly nothing more than a family drama that attempts, as much and in exactly the same way as any family drama ever has, to address modern issues facing people. Curb Your Enthusiasm is maybe a good example of something that attempts to take the art in another direction and is being pushed into the mainstream, but it's also a great example of the mean-spiritedness Rex lamented. I've only seen two episodes, but they were both nothing but this guy making fun of everyone that wasn't in show business and/or ultra-wealthy and displaying over and over again his total inability to relate to the real world or deal with life in anything but the most superficial way. > > There isn't any kind of greater exploration of humanity there. It's > > not what you'd call avant-garde. > > I do not accept your definition of the avant-garde as that which enables > a greater exploration of humanity. Well, that's more in my definition of art... but you gotta be art to be avant-garde art. I wouldn't call The Sopranos art. It's a product of TV-craft, but it doesn't take that extra step to become a work of art. > Furthermore, I disagree with you: I think these HBO shows *do* explore > humanity in interesting and even fresh ways. Again, I'll give you Curb Your Enthusiasm as trying to do that, but the reality they're trying to reflect doesn't relate to anyone outside of Hollywood. > >> What about the surprising popularity of films like "The Lord of the > >> Rings?" > > > > Is there anything more simplistic than a good v. evil fantasy tale? > > That is reductionist and I think you know it. But anyway, I meant the > films in the context of them being such an epic, complicated, strange, > rich fantasy. What of it? I don't think it's surprising at all that these films were popular. They had an enormous promotional budget and they were special-effects epics. They were based on proven material with an existing, devoted fan-base and something like fifty years of anticipation (as well as three solid years of hype before the first film was released and a release schedule for film distribution and video in multiple sets designed explicitly to draw in a larger audience for each consecutive piece). This really has nothing at all to do with what's being discussed here. > > I don't think you'd compare it to, say, Eraserhead. > > Well, of course not. But "Eraserhead" also has numerous failings; nor is > it *meant* to be compared to "The Lord of the Rings." You can't just > scare up a bunch of art films and lament that the popular masses haven't > flocked to the banner of "Eraserhead!" Otherwise, all we'd have to watch > would be the Kremaster Cycle! Well, there you go. The Kremaster Cycle. Could Jay Leno use The Kremaster Cycle as a punchline and get any kind of laugh? Nope... but you could get a laugh using Eraserhead in the mid-80s. Why? Because people recognized it. Most people had NEVER seen the film, but they knew what it was and they had a vague idea that it was disturbing, confusing, and hard to watch. That's all that really matters for a joke. > > But what WOULD you compare to that? > > Just did. I would also add the Brothers Quay, and numerous wacky Asian > films. And more, but again, I feel like I am just treading water. And > believe me, there are no shortage of inscrutable film-student works out > there. So why aren't those referenced in conversation with non-specialists? > > What is a modern experimental work that is well-known and referenced > > in the mainstream today? The closest you might get is Pi, but can you > > name-drop Aronofsky as a punchline for Jay Leno in the same way that > > Johnny Carson did DID with David Lynch in 1984? > > Well, the fact that the guy was supposed to direct the next Batman film, > and that "Requiem for a Dream" was up for an Oscar for best supporting > actress, doesn't exactly put Aronofsky into "Eraserhead" territory! And > by 1984, Lynch had directed "The Elephant Man" and "Dune," not exactly > obscure films. But that's exactly why Pi is in Eraserhead territory! You just made my point. The two are pretty handily analogous... so why isn't Aronofsky a cultural touchstone today in the way that Lynch was twenty years ago? > And I am saying, this is nothing more than a nostalgic trip down memory > lane for you guys! Laurie Anderson did what she had to do, she sort of > lost focus, and now we have Squarepusher or Bjork or Matmos or someone > else to do something new with technology and music. And where are Squarepusher and Matmos in the cultural consciousness? Way, way, way back. > (And Lord knows, all those cats are in their 30s, which only shows how > out of touch I probably am with the real cutting edge!) I mean, come on. > You think that anyone who actually makes a few bucks is a corporate > shill, and you don't really like much new anyway, unless it passes some > sort of "sincerest pumpkin patch in the world" test. I like all kinds of new things... but LIKING IT isn't what we're talking about. I don't know why you keep insisting that we're telling you that the art of the past is better in any way than the art of today. The difference is the lack of mainstream awareness of the avant-garde. > > For this one, anyway, I would say Wayne Coyne fits fairly well. > > Yeah, I can buy that, sort of -- though Coyne doesn't pull together so > many threads into a syncretic whole. Well, I think maybe that IS your age showing a bit. He has different referents and maybe you just don't catch them all. > Heh. But seriously, you overestimate Mapplethorpe's "cultural impact." He got mentioned at my mother's rural Oregon church repeatedly. That's a pretty far-reaching impact, if you ask me. Today, the most you'll get is a broad condemnation of the art world. The specific artists and works are irrelevant. > > To beat the horse, Pulp Fiction was 100% mainstream. Look at its box > > office ranking for the year. Compare that to Blue Velvet. > > And if "Pulp Fiction" would have tanked, you would be holding it up as a > work of genius. I bet back in school, if too many people started liking > your band, you found someone new to listen to, eh? Gads, no. You're totally missing the point here. I'm not saying that Pulp Fiction ISN'T a work of genius... it really is! It's mean and it appeals to the very worst in people and re-enforces some things that I find absolutely abominable, but as a creative work it stands up quite well on its own. The point is that it was hugely popular and therefore its cultural impact is a result of its popularity. Used to be that a thing could have that same broad impact without actually even reaching most of the public directly. There was an awareness of what was going on beyond actual, first-hand experience. > > What about it? Punk rock was poorly understood by much of the > > mainstream, but at least it was recognized and on the radar. What > > compares today? > > Sorry, I meant it as an example of something from the 1980s that was > decidedly not gentle, and certainly a bit mean-spirited at times. I was > probably being unclear, and that should count for the following, too. Well, instead of apologizing for being unclear, why don't you read what I wrote and respond to that? What is there? > > Spalding Gray was cutting-edge performance art. Which modern > > cutting-edge performance artist is having his work filmed by acclaimed > > directors? > > Again, I was talking about non-gentle stuff from the recent past, such > as Karen Finlay and Chris Burden. But to answer your question, I'm not > sure. What performance art is still being done? The closest thing I can > think of is "The Waking Life," and that's not really the same thing at > all. There's all kinds of performance art still being done... it's just not on the mainstream radar anymore. Go down to whatever passes for your local bohemian district and look on the telephone poles... or check out the gallery notices in the back of your weekly. Hell, we have performers here at PICA all the time (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art). The people who perform there are nationally known, but only within very tight circles because it's only viewed by people who are already predisposed to liking "that sort of thing". > > In the 1980s, you could see a concert film at the cineplex or the > > mall, today they're at "the art house" pretty much exclusively. > > Well, back in the 1980s we didn't have cable TV and home surround > systems. There are zillions of concert films on TV and available on DVD. Right! That's part of the problem, surely. People can pick and choose the sort of thing they see, so they only see the things they're likely to enjoy. If it's too weird or challenging, you can just pick up something else tomorrow night. The glut of choices allows people to safely ignore the periphery. That's what I meant by "false tolerance". People aren't REALLY understanding, they're just willfully ignorant. It's possible, today, to just shut out whole sections of the world and still feel like you're getting a complete experience. As I mentioned before, the "free speech zones" are the perfect example. You can celebrate people's right to have differing opinions, but that means NOTHING if you don't listen to those opinions and try to come to an understanding. In the same way, it means NOTHING to support diversity at the public library or record shop or on television if you're not going to experience as much of that diversity as possible. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 21:24:30 -0600 From: "Fortissimo" Subject: Re: Brelinmaniax! Culture war escalates... On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 17:02:49 -0800, "Rex.Broome" said: > Jeme: > >>This plays into your idea of being "more interdisciplinary" -- if I don't > >>take that to mean that the work necessarily bridges media or incorporates > >>multiple crafts and take it, instead, to mean multi-dimensional and > >>incorporating more human traits. I find a one-dimensionality in modern > >>art. It's a kind of primitivism, I suppose, but I see it more as a > >>charicature of emotion. > > I think you're pointing in the right direction there... and I think that > one-dimensionality is really (often, anyway) imposed by commercial > concerns. There's a bigger emphasis on ease of explanation these days > (what might be called packaging or branding or some such thing), maybe > based on an assumption that attention spans continue to shrink. I'm not going to get into this point by point, but I think something we could all agree on (since it's a matter of fact, not conjecture or taste) is that there are far more media outlets and more variety of media, which means that cultural work is narrowcast in a way that just wasn't possible before. Paradoxically, while there are more media outlets, the ownership and control of the media is more concentrated than ever. And yes, that ventures into politics - but in a way it doesn't have to, since it's simply true: fewer people making decisions as gatekeeper almost inevitably narrows the range of cultural production that will come through that gate; more gates means the content coming through any one gate can be even further narrowed. To me, this means that (as I think was the original point) the "avant-garde" is more distant from the "mainstream" - but it doesn't therefore mean the avant-garde doesn't exist. And in an odd way, that narrowcasting *can* make it more available. I mean, in 1982 you pretty much had to know the right people or live in the right town to hear the first R.E.M. record (and I'll concur with Rex on the early work of that band being essentially an art project in sound); same thing in 1978 or so with Laurie Anderson. Artists doing work that crossbreeds avant-garde ideas with popular genres today would probably put their stuff up on the web...and while it's stil a case of needing to *know* about it, access isn't the problem. I'm tempted to assign the following project to my students (who are, uh, not avant-garde): go online, and find the weirdest music you can. I suspect they could find some plenty-weird stuff. If that project were undertaken in, say, Nebraska in 1978, I'm not sure what they'd be able to dig up: two or three Xenakis LPs from the public library? Also, I'll defend Bjork and Radiohead: even if you don't like what they're doing, Bjork in particular does some rather startling work with sound texture, arrangement, and composition; Radiohead's songs are more straightforward (critical babbling about "difficulty" is grossly overstated) but it's hard for me to accept that they're not aiming to write provocative music before all else. I think proof of that is that they did *not* release "Still OK Computer," "Even Better Computer," and "Shootout at OK Computer." But they're exceptions, and explainable: Capitol thought they were getting "that band that did that 'Creep' hit" and it's only because _The Bends_ spawned about five moderately popular singles/videos that they didn't just dump them, I'm guessing. Bjork's on Elektra (not quite a major label; still rather boutique-y) primarily because of the popularity in the '90s of the Sugarcubes - but her music has struck off in radically different directions from that band's work. (Still, whoever kept them on those labels deserves some sort of credit - I don't think sales initially would have been enough on their own to "justify" keeping them.) You might read this essay: - some thoughtful comments on avant-garde vs. mainstream, with Radiohead as his main example. - ------------------------------- ...Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com/ :: Miracles are like meatballs, because nobody can exactly agree :: what they are made of, where they come from, or how often :: they should appear. :: --Lemony Snicket ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 21:31:03 -0600 From: "Fortissimo" Subject: Re: Brelinmaniax! Culture war escalates... On Tue, 09 Mar 2004 20:30:17 -0500, "The Great Quail" said: > >>> You think "Blue Velvet" is more gentle than "Pulp Fiction?" > > > > God yes. It's the sensibilty. Lynch is appalled at what he's compelled to > > represent, as I usually see it; Tarantino gets off on it. > > I disagree. I think that the "sweet" aspects of "Blue Velvet" are > terribly > ironic, and I warrant that Lynch certainly "gets off" on his violence > just > as much as Tarantino -- in fact, Lynch's violence seems a lot more creepy > and disturbing, because it is less improbable, perhaps, more realistic. > But > seriously -- you don't come up with scenes like Dennis Hopper's and not > have > a certain fascination for violence. I do not think Lynch is "appalled," > nor > is he "compelled" to represent anything. I think you're both right: Lynch "gets off" on his violence, and he's appalled by that fact. But he also has this strangely sweet and optimistic side, and it is *not* ironic. I think people who misread that aspect of his work as ironic miss a huge part of what makes his art work. YMMV... Tarantino's violence is cartoonish, in that it's stylized, textual, and usually not particularly representational: it's an aestheticized or ironized object. Emotional reaction is seldom the point. You can criticize that perspective (and I think Jeme did so last year) but it's different from, say, the fetishization of violence as power, or as cheap adrenalizer. Lynch's violence *is* very humanized - and if it's aestheticized, I don't think it ever allows you to forget its human costs. > Man, U2 is the best band since the Beatles, and I know the truth of it! > You > unbelievers may throw your rocks! Bone will protect me! Is that the same Bone those apes were tossing into the air at the beginning of _2001_? Looka me - I'm avoiding work! - ------------------------------- ...Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com/ :: Solipsism is its own reward :: :: --Crow T. Robot ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 19:53:09 -0800 From: Eb Subject: Re: If it's too artsy, you're too old >Wow, this conversation turned out a lot differently than I thought it would. Best thread in awhile, though! Eb ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 23:02:01 -0500 From: The Great Quail Subject: Re: Back when you could still be post-modern on purpose... Jeme writes, > I'm gonna try to cut this down to the point rather than responding to each > niggle. And I am only posting to things that do not advance an argument I found pointless; though I heartily disagree with most of what you say. In fact, sometimes I don't know why I discuss things with you, it makes me feel cheerless and dirty, like having a desultory masturbation session in some Stalinist housing block. > You could turn on the television (to one of four or five channels) and see > something that totally challenged the cultural norm. I am baffled by this statement, and can only stare at my modern zillion channel digital cable-equipped TV, recall my old 4-5 channel TV from the 1980s, and conclude that your television set came from a different universe as mine. > A guy who goes on and on about differing frames of reference is hiding > behind "self-evident"? Not hiding from anything -- except maybe slogging into another pointless argument with one of your highly idiosyncratic viewpoints. > Curb Your Enthusiasm is maybe a good example of something that attempts to > take the art in another direction and is being pushed into the mainstream, > but it's also a great example of the mean-spiritedness Rex lamented. I've > only seen two episodes, but they were both nothing but this guy making fun > of everyone that wasn't in show business and/or ultra-wealthy and > displaying over and over again his total inability to relate to the real > world or deal with life in anything but the most superficial way. But the ultimate joke of that show is that Larry David himself is a giant asshole; and the ultra-wealthy and show-biz people are as equally speared as clerks and waiters. I can certainly understand how you might see the show that way after only two viewings, but it's a lot more self-aware than that. > Again, I'll give you Curb Your Enthusiasm as trying to do that, but the > reality they're trying to reflect doesn't relate to anyone outside of > Hollywood. I disagree -- I mean, I've never even been to Hollywood and I relate to the show. > Well, there you go. The Kremaster Cycle. Could Jay Leno use The > Kremaster Cycle as a punchline and get any kind of laugh? Maybe not, because Jay Leno is a wanker and his audience is...God only knows! I mean, my grandmother likes Leno. Could Jon Stewart use that line and get a laugh? Maybe. > So why aren't those referenced in conversation with non-specialists? Maybe you just need to get out more. > The two are pretty handily analogous... so why isn't Aronofsky a > cultural touchstone today in the way that Lynch was twenty years ago? I think that he's not as unique, he's not as controversial, and he's not as deliciously weird? I don't really see them as that analogous, to be honest. But I'm sure you can argue it either way. I mean, I like Aronofsky, but he's no David Lynch. >> Yeah, I can buy that, sort of -- though Coyne doesn't pull together so >> many threads into a syncretic whole. > > Well, I think maybe that IS your age showing a bit. He has different > referents and maybe you just don't catch them all. Really? I mean, David Byrne worked with a lot of talented people and pulled together a lot of different cultural and musical strands to make the Talking Heads. While I don't doubt Coyne's creativity and rock credentials, I don't see him at all as an analogous figure. (Which is not to say that the Flaming Lips have not absorbed and transformed numerous rock and pop traditions!) >> Heh. But seriously, you overestimate Mapplethorpe's "cultural impact." > > He got mentioned at my mother's rural Oregon church repeatedly. That's a > pretty far-reaching impact, if you ask me. So he was demonized for a while. So was Murphy Brown. So is Janet Jackson. And Rosie O'Donnell. I was only addressing the fact that it was not his talent as a photographer that brought him mainstream awareness. > Today, the most you'll get is a broad condemnation of the art world. The > specific artists and works are irrelevant. Maybe you forget the elephant dung on the Virgin Mary debacle? The Brooklyn Museum vs. Mayor Giuliani? > Well, instead of apologizing for being unclear, why don't you read what I > wrote and respond to that? What is there? Because I don't want to. I don't feel the need to argue every point you bring up. It's tiresome. I will only discuss as much as I enjoy discussing. And besides, your points were predicated on a misunderstanding. (But to answer your question anyway -- what about gansta rap?) > There's all kinds of performance art still being done... it's just not on > the mainstream radar anymore. >Go down to whatever passes for your local > bohemian district and look on the telephone poles... or check out the > gallery notices in the back of your weekly. Hell, we have performers here > at PICA all the time (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art). The > people who perform there are nationally known, but only within very tight > circles because it's only viewed by people who are already predisposed to > liking "that sort of thing". Eric Bogosian, Spalding Gray, Karen Finlay, Chris Burden, Laurie Anderson. Ok, So it had its moment in the cultural spotlight, so what? > Right! That's part of the problem, surely. People can pick and choose > the sort of thing they see, so they only see the things they're likely to > enjoy. If it's too weird or challenging, you can just pick up something > else tomorrow night. The glut of choices allows people to safely ignore > the periphery. See, here's the big difference between us, I think. I have faith in people. I am generally an optimist -- hell, I even *like* most people. I try not to insult their intelligence by assuming they have bad taste. There have always been people with bad taste, and people with good taste, and people with no taste (the worst of all.) Unlike you, I feel the Internet and cable and so on -- more choice! -- has actually exposed more people to new things. And frankly, running a site that deals with artists such as Borges and Joyce and Garcia Marquez and even David Lynch -- well, the experience has only confirmed my belief. I think that today, there are more opportunities for people to expose themselves to new things, and many of them happily take that opportunity. Of course, some don't, and remain happy with their Clay Aiken and Michael Bay movies, consuming only what is readily available from MTV and Disney and Coca Cola and so on. But back in the 1980s, I knew plenty of people who were the same way. > That's what I meant by "false tolerance". People aren't REALLY > understanding, they're just willfully ignorant. Well, now that you've cleared that up for us, we can all begin our long road to self-actualization! Just let me know when I can report to my re-education camp! - -- Quail ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V13 #75 *******************************