Reasons for Applause

[heslopian]

Does anyone else get sick of how bad art is often praised simply for being innocent and family friendly, or, at the other extreme, gross and depraved? Shouldn't those things be incidental to qualities like acting, direction, nuance, prose style, poetic technique and so forth?

Two examples in the medium of film:

Pink Flamingos, a 1972 American film, written, produced and directed by John Waters, the so-called "Pope of Trash," is praised as a cult classic seemingly just because it features an overweight transvestite (Divine) actually eating dog shit. Actually, no visual trickery involved. The plot, such as it is, follows Divine as she battles to become "the filthiest person alive."

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, a 2005 British film, about a lonely old woman (Joan Plowright) who moves into a city hotel and befriends a handsome but impoverished young writer (Rupert Friend). Cue whole slop buckets of schmaltz and characters so thin they belong on a catwalk, this was still loved by critics.

[billy]

i was never really into the arty farty type of film that tries to extend the boundaries so to speak.
i enjoyed the book clockwork orange but not so much the film. i think they screwed up.

that said who dictates what good art or bad art? i have to admit that cows cut in half and building draped in white paper don't rock my boat. i can and do see the symbolism in such works but for me it's the very symbolism that detracts from what i perceive as art.

so a house covered in paper represents how we ruined the landscape. a small piece of text could have done the same thing much better.
dissected animals in formaldehyde are no better, nor a toilet on a wall etc. for me art is much more than representation or symbolism,
i don''t what it is but for me a lot of the crap out there on the screen and in the galleries isn't art.

[billy]

for me people like vargas don't create art, they're not artists.
they create something but i wouldn't call an emaciated dog tied to wall art,
personally i think he should be tied to a wall and starved till his hip bones push through his skin.
we could call the work "what a cunt"

i know lets nail a muslim to cross or a christian to a bomb. sorry but some of that shit offends me. if thats what art is about then i don't like it. that they call it "my art" offends me even more. they say shit like "i bleed for my art" pity some of the fuckers don't die for it.

[heslopian]

I agree. I don't know what exactly art is, but I know it isn't simple behaviours. Me humming as I walk down the street isn't art. Vargas starving an animal to death isn't art. John Wayne Gacy dressing as a clown and raping and murdering little boys isn't art. The latter two are just examples of sick, depraved actions. The point of art, like religion, I feel, is to conncect with and help people come to terms with their existence.
People like Vargas aren't artists, you're right. They're not even human, I think.

[billy]

for me art is an act of putting a little piece of yourself into something.
many ultra modern artists seem to put little piece of other living or dead things into their work.
and yes, art doesn't have to be a reproduction of detail, it can be a picaso or dali, it doesn't have to be angelo
s david. it can be a mavis mclure figure or a stylized mother to be by henry moore, a pice of 3d street art.
what it can't be, is a literal dead animal or half a dead animal or an animal near death. Hitler's team would skin tattoos off dead jews and make lampshades out of them as though it was hide. was it art? they thought it was but i don't.

[srijantje]

when i see a painting or read a poem and it hits me in the gut,for me that's art

[heslopian]

"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?" - Emily Dickinson

[addy]

Yeah, I think it's hilarious. These snooty, arty, people who look down on pop culture media for appealing to "shallow, mucky tastes", yet there they are praising so-called artists for equally shallow reasons and practicing the same kind of lemming behavior: "all the other snobs are talking about it, so it MUST be good!"

BTW, I know lemmings just got a bad rap from an urban legend... figure of speech, no offence to them.

[digna_sofia]

I actually have similar sentiments applied to literature. ^^; Shock value or moral grandstanding seem to get in the way of outstanding storytelling and overall thematic structure. And in an attempt to justify it, they just try to slap meaning into any old thing.

Pissing blood, for example, has no true meaning beyond the gut-wrenching disgust. People just say it symbolizes some shitty thing like "enthusiastic self-abuse" or "world poison".

[srijantje]

did andy warhol start the trend?