Update 20 and a Thought on News

Some Thoughts

So, I've recently begun writing for an online publication called Pixel Dynamo. What I've been writing is news, so I thought I should say a little something about "news" itself because, at least what I'm writing, is certainly a pop-cultural phenomenon.

Update 14

Progress Report

As promised, here is a sample taken from the end of the first part of part one. You may or may not recognize it, as it's a re-working of my series on Art.

Art: and the Artists Who Make It

We’re more than matter. The material universe is not the extent of the universe that man inhabits and that he is capable of seeing and thinking about. But, it is the place he sees and moves around in and it takes up a lot of his attention. Good works of art bring the world of the mind, the world of moral choice and consequence, the world of beauty, into the physical world in a way that makes them obvious enough to be contemplated, making it possible for man to look out and above the physical into the larger and more important universe.

Art: Why make it?

So we’re coming back around. Two thousand and some words later, we’re back to the really pivotal question that will help us answer the question we started with.

Why make art (in our new, limited sense)?

I hadn’t realized until now what a delightful sort of trap I’d lead myself into by taking this road in the past several articles.

Man

Art: What is it? (part 2)

(This is part 2. Read part 1 first!)

The first way I thought of distinguishing between the art that includes spatulas and the art that includes The Odyssey was to say that the first has to do with needs and the second does not. But then King Lear said to me “O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars are in the poorest thing superfluous.” by which I understand him to be saying that, if we reduce our considerations to “needs”, we might find we slip down a pretty steep slope and end up with little or nothing left.

Art: What is it? (part 1)

Before we begin, I’d like to lay a little ground work. This series of articles is not about the word “Art.” It is about something in the universe for which, I think, it is suitable to use the word “Art” as a name. This is an important distinction. It is possible to have conversations about words, and they can be very interesting and beneficial. But, when we are using words to their purpose, we are trying to look past them in that we are looking at something else through the use of them. This means that the definitions I give of “Art” here may not be the only suitable ones, but I intend them to be useful ones, because I intend them to point out and describe things out there in the universe.

Artists: What Are They Good For?

I recently had the opportunity to contemplate some of the pop-culture of a century ago: I went with some friends to the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia. It was an interesting and thought provoking trip. After we’d seen the sculptures and were on our way home, talking about Rodin’s departure from classical standards of sculpture, a question was posed: what authority do artists have?

Novelty (2 of 2)

Same genre? Maybe. Same premise?
on occasion. But not necessarily the same
 story.

So, last week, I contrasted the desire for novelty with the penchant for classification and pigeon-holing, and I suggested one thing that can explain both impulses: the desire for an emotional fix. We want things that are the same (in general outline) as what made us feel good before, but we want them to be different (in particulars) because the same old concoction doesn't do it for us anymore.

Is there anything more elevated to say about novelty? Because, if we leave it at that, we leave ourselves looking like some ridiculous cartoon donkey, chasing a carrot dangled in front of our nose that’s hung from a pole tied to our back. ‘Worse than that donkey really, because we’re smart enough to see what’s going on, but we continue the futile chase anyway.

Well, fear not, I’m not going to leave anyone looking like an ass. I think there’s definitely more to novelty than that.

When I asked a friend of mine whether doing the same thing again (in film for instance) could be worthwhile, she gave an insightful answer which was also unintentionally amusing. She said that someone else making a movie over again might be worthwhile because they would do something new and different with it. She was shocked when I pointed out that she’d just said doing the same thing again could be good, because it might be doing something different for the first time.

But, like I said, it is an insightful answer to the question, because she wasn't talking about changing superficial things (actors, setting, etc.) so we'd recapture our buzz. Her answer had to do with the way we apprehend and appreciate ideas. A particular artistic subject, a particular idea, isn't always (or even often) exhausted by a single treatment. Consider that, to spite the fact that different works are critiqued for being too much like each other, we do watch and read some works over and over again and, more importantly, we understand more about them and find more to see in them when we do (at least in the good ones).

Well, in a similar way, a writer or filmmaker revisiting an idea (or even a set of ideas, even a plot-line) can throw different things into relief and help us consider and appreciate new facets of the same ideas. Just as seeing something for the second time enables you to focus on the subtleties you missed before, and watching something again ten years later brings to bear all that experience you've gained, so having someone else think about the ideas and consider how to present them will contribute something to your consideration.

This is the value of novelty in general, whether it’s a novel approach to previously told stories, or something that has actually not been done before; to the extent that it helps us know the truth and appreciate the beautiful, its a good thing. Even if we have to get over initial disappointment at the lack of buzz, we might find something worth while on the other side of withdrawal. 

Now, whether movie-makers do this at all frequently, or it justifies throwing hundred million dollar budgets at the same ideas again and again, is another matter.

© 2014 John Hiner III

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Sequels

What makes a sequel a sequel? Well, the smart-ass response is that it’s a story that comes after another one; you know, in sequence. But, that obviously isn’t a sufficient definition. Every story involves a sequence of events, so some of the events come after other ones. Chapters come after chapters, “books” (as in the Lord of the Rings) come after “books”, but they aren’t sequels in the sense that “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” or Karate Kid 2 are sequels.

Lucky the kind, helpful girl I met in California, after braving the wrath of her brutal, psychotic boy-friend to choose me, unceremoniously dumped me for some football player like a shallow airhead. Otherwise I never would have met you. 'Hope they don't make a third movie...

What Is There to Talk About?

The Paragon of Animals is pouring this coffee.

In “The Good, the True, and The Beautiful”, I mentioned that the line between artist and audience isn’t that dark when they both strive towards the titular ideals. That’s a nice sounding, vague sort of thing to say, but it bears a lot more thought. If pop-culture is a big conversation about goodness, truth, and beauty (or, at least, if it is forced to be by me) what is there really to say?

Consumerism

Not pop-culture

What is “pop-culture”, and why should we care?

It is art, recently produced and intended to please an audience, as well as the concepts, clichés, and conversations that inform, surround, and result from it. This will be our working definition. Star Wars, Super Mario Bros., zombies, Chuck Norris, NCIS, Freddie Mercury, and the Ninja Turtles all fit into it nicely.