My definition of art is broader than that of most people I know. But it wasn't always that way - I bumped into a lot of interesting thoughts on my way through art history. And not just the art history I learned in school, either. I think, instead of telling you how I define art (which is the end result), I'll point out some signposts I saw on the journey.
Greek pottery, for instance, is considered art by most people. It's beautiful, it's old, and all the snooty people who tell you what you should think about things say it's art. But do you know where most specimens of Greek pottery in museums today come from?
Landfills. Ancient garbage dumps.
See, the Greeks liked their dishes and bowls and vases, but they also used them. They ate off them, drank out of them, and used them as the utensils that they were. And when they broke - when a plate was dropped, or cracked over time - they threw it into a big pit where all the cracked pottery went, and they bought a new one.
That's not to say that the pieces in museums today are ordinary dishes. They're more like fine china, or commemorative plates. The ones you only eat off on special occasions. But just think about how people in suits ogle them in museums. Could you imagine archaeologists, thousands of years from now, digging up our commemorative porcelain NASCAR plates and putting them in museums?
All we really have left of the Greeks are remnants of their buildings, and broken pottery. And we are so desperate to learn more that we root through their garbage, trying to mentally reconstruct their civilization from the crap they used in their daily life. Personally, I think the dishes I eat off of and the coffin I'll be buried in are the last things I'd want people to reconstruct the meaning of my life from. But maybe our daily detritus does say things about us.
But in the end, I'm not saying that Greek pottery isn't art. What I'm saying is: if the stuff Greeks ate off of and then threw away can be art, what else can be?
I probably haven't blown your mind just now with this essay, but if it has shifted your definition of art just a little bit, it has achieved its purpose.
Think about it. That's all I can really ask of you.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Thursday, December 16, 2010
A Tale of Two Christmases
Growing up, I had a Buddhist friend, a Hindu friend, a few Jewish friends, and some Atheist friends. All of them celebrated Christmas.
Not Jesus-Christmas, obviously. We all celebrated the other one... Santa-Christmas. Shopping-Mall-Christmas. That nebulous, month-long state of mind that comes from smelling snow in the air and hearing the same 5 jingling songs until you want to choke Bing Crosby to death with a candy cane.
Capitalist Christmas, that once-a-year time which convinces you affection and companionship really can be better summed-up in a Playstation than in, say, heartfelt words. Or actual companionship. But boy, doesn't it feel good... that blissful moment when the wrapping paper flies, before everyone goes into separate rooms to figure out how to use their unnecessary new gizmos?
And yet some Christians get their tizzy up in a bunch about how Christmas has become less Jesus-centric. "Happy Holidays" isn't good enough for them. They won't be happy until Wal-Mart greeters shout "Happy Birthday, Jesus!" as shoppers enter the store. But Happy Holiday-ers aren't anti-Christmas. "Happy Holidays" takes only one more syllable to say than "Merry Christmas," and it includes so much more: New Years, Hannukah, Kwanzaa... even Ramadan (if it happens to fall on December).
The truth is, all holidays undergo diffusion as they increase in popularity. Initially, holidays start off as specific remembrances of events. Over time, traditions crop up and branch further and further away from a holiday's meaning. Easter used to be about Christ's resurrection, now it's about a giant rabbit who hides eggs (where the eggs come from is not explained).
This diffusion of meaning is obviously problematic for a religion's believers, but it is beneficial to society as a whole. Only Christians can get excited about Christ's resurrection. Everyone can enjoy chocolate eggs.
My main point is this: it is not society's job to adhere to the strict traditions of a group's holiday. Especially when doing so would mean excluding people from the fun. If you want to "put the Christ back in Christmas," by all means, have at it. Put a manger on your lawn. Spread the gospel. Sit your kids down and explain to them why the guy with the brown beard is cooler than the guy with the white one. But don't expect the entire world to conform to how you want to celebrate Christmas. Let the nonbelievers have a little fun, too.
It's a holiday about peace on earth and goodwill toward men, remember?
Not Jesus-Christmas, obviously. We all celebrated the other one... Santa-Christmas. Shopping-Mall-Christmas. That nebulous, month-long state of mind that comes from smelling snow in the air and hearing the same 5 jingling songs until you want to choke Bing Crosby to death with a candy cane.
Capitalist Christmas, that once-a-year time which convinces you affection and companionship really can be better summed-up in a Playstation than in, say, heartfelt words. Or actual companionship. But boy, doesn't it feel good... that blissful moment when the wrapping paper flies, before everyone goes into separate rooms to figure out how to use their unnecessary new gizmos?
And yet some Christians get their tizzy up in a bunch about how Christmas has become less Jesus-centric. "Happy Holidays" isn't good enough for them. They won't be happy until Wal-Mart greeters shout "Happy Birthday, Jesus!" as shoppers enter the store. But Happy Holiday-ers aren't anti-Christmas. "Happy Holidays" takes only one more syllable to say than "Merry Christmas," and it includes so much more: New Years, Hannukah, Kwanzaa... even Ramadan (if it happens to fall on December).
The truth is, all holidays undergo diffusion as they increase in popularity. Initially, holidays start off as specific remembrances of events. Over time, traditions crop up and branch further and further away from a holiday's meaning. Easter used to be about Christ's resurrection, now it's about a giant rabbit who hides eggs (where the eggs come from is not explained).
This diffusion of meaning is obviously problematic for a religion's believers, but it is beneficial to society as a whole. Only Christians can get excited about Christ's resurrection. Everyone can enjoy chocolate eggs.
My main point is this: it is not society's job to adhere to the strict traditions of a group's holiday. Especially when doing so would mean excluding people from the fun. If you want to "put the Christ back in Christmas," by all means, have at it. Put a manger on your lawn. Spread the gospel. Sit your kids down and explain to them why the guy with the brown beard is cooler than the guy with the white one. But don't expect the entire world to conform to how you want to celebrate Christmas. Let the nonbelievers have a little fun, too.
It's a holiday about peace on earth and goodwill toward men, remember?
Monday, December 6, 2010
Dialogue in Stories
I was thinking about the kind of comics I write, and then for some reason I started thinking about the formal storytelling methods I was taught in school. I think I started thinking about those methods because so few of my stories follow them.
Traditional storytelling relies on conflict, which is traditionally described in the most boring general terms imaginable: internal and external. English classes manage to boil down every interesting thing that has ever happened into three unappetizing lumps: man vs. nature, man vs. man, and man vs. himself.
Jesus wondering why he has been chosen to save the entire human race, and whether he can go through with the necessary sacrifice, would be lumped into the man vs. himself category. And possibly man vs. nature, if you consider nature to be an aspect of God.
Actually, right there I've just shown how ill-fitting these categories can be, and that's to be expected, since they are generalizations. Generalizations, otherwise known as stereotypes, are usually ill-fitting when applied to individual cases. But that's not actually what I started this post to talk about.
The main reason my stories don't fit into traditional storytelling methods is because they tend to be mostly dialogue. And not dialogue designed to propel a narrative, or get my characters to grow and change as people. My characters tend to just sit around and chit-chat.
Now that I think about it, that tends to be the format of most sitcoms. Or talk-shows, for that matter. And reality shows. But why do people watch these things, if they don't conform to the traditional, accepted model of conflict, rising action, climax, resolution? I mean, sitcoms pay lip service to this plot model: Joey buys an ugly sweater, people keep telling him it's ugly, the situation climaxes when Joey's idol makes fun of the sweater at a public event, Joey realizes he has bad taste - burns the sweater, cue credits. But the audience doesn't give a flying Finn about Joey's sweater. The entire plot is just a bare string for the writers to hang jokes on. Joey's character doesn't develop, and things go back to normal for the next episode.
But I don't think the reason people watch these types of shows is because they're stupid or easy to entertain. People like dialogue-heavy stories because conversation is conflict. We don't spend the majority of our lives having meaningful moments that change our behavior and shape our perceptions of life. We spend most of our lives telling our friends how much we hate their favorite tv shows, or complaining about the service at restaurants, or saying as little as possible as the women in our lives spend 20 minutes arguing about which movie our group should see. We spend our lives talking.
And while it's easy to see the "external conflict" conversation can provide when we're arguing with someone else, conversation is also an internal conflict. Even if your position is clear in your mind, expressing it in a way that is concise and convincing is a challenge. And if you're actively engaged in a conversation (and not just reciting a list of your preformed opinions) you could find your opinions changing, even as you speak them. Have you ever spent half an hour arguing a point at a party, only to realize much later that you were wrong, and the other person was right? That's why people enjoy conversations so much - they can change the way we look at the world. Sometimes I'll see a movie I think is garbage until my friend explains why it's not. This kind of back-and-forth as two different perceptions clash is exactly what conflict is about.
Of course, all this time when I've been talking about conversation, I've really been talking about thought. Speech is just the output of thought. All that pondering and weighing and analyzing goes on silently in our heads. We merely pause it while we spit out words, and then we crank it back up again.
But all of this stuff is invisible to the audience, who probably want people to stop talking every once in awhile to blow something up or makeout, so dialogue doesn't get its due. Oh sure, people say they love wit, and quote lines that have nothing to do with the central plot, but at the end of the day they still claim to prefer dialogue that advances plot to lines that are "just" entertaining.
Here I think I've stumbled onto yet another topic, but I have to end this blog somewhere, so I'll just address it briefly. That topic is length, specifically, how films have condensed story-length, conditioning us to expect stories to only hit the big moments and barrel through the plot as directly as possible. But which have you spent more time watching in your life, films or tv shows? The Godfather or Gilmore Girls? The point being that dialogue that has no point is closer to real life, while dialogue that exists solely to advance plot is artificial, condensed for maximum dramatic effect. They are different, but not better or worse. Both have a place in culture.
I guess I subconsciously chose meandering dialogue. Well, looking at this post, it seems obvious why. Clearly, I like to talk.
Traditional storytelling relies on conflict, which is traditionally described in the most boring general terms imaginable: internal and external. English classes manage to boil down every interesting thing that has ever happened into three unappetizing lumps: man vs. nature, man vs. man, and man vs. himself.
Jesus wondering why he has been chosen to save the entire human race, and whether he can go through with the necessary sacrifice, would be lumped into the man vs. himself category. And possibly man vs. nature, if you consider nature to be an aspect of God.
Actually, right there I've just shown how ill-fitting these categories can be, and that's to be expected, since they are generalizations. Generalizations, otherwise known as stereotypes, are usually ill-fitting when applied to individual cases. But that's not actually what I started this post to talk about.
The main reason my stories don't fit into traditional storytelling methods is because they tend to be mostly dialogue. And not dialogue designed to propel a narrative, or get my characters to grow and change as people. My characters tend to just sit around and chit-chat.
Now that I think about it, that tends to be the format of most sitcoms. Or talk-shows, for that matter. And reality shows. But why do people watch these things, if they don't conform to the traditional, accepted model of conflict, rising action, climax, resolution? I mean, sitcoms pay lip service to this plot model: Joey buys an ugly sweater, people keep telling him it's ugly, the situation climaxes when Joey's idol makes fun of the sweater at a public event, Joey realizes he has bad taste - burns the sweater, cue credits. But the audience doesn't give a flying Finn about Joey's sweater. The entire plot is just a bare string for the writers to hang jokes on. Joey's character doesn't develop, and things go back to normal for the next episode.
But I don't think the reason people watch these types of shows is because they're stupid or easy to entertain. People like dialogue-heavy stories because conversation is conflict. We don't spend the majority of our lives having meaningful moments that change our behavior and shape our perceptions of life. We spend most of our lives telling our friends how much we hate their favorite tv shows, or complaining about the service at restaurants, or saying as little as possible as the women in our lives spend 20 minutes arguing about which movie our group should see. We spend our lives talking.
And while it's easy to see the "external conflict" conversation can provide when we're arguing with someone else, conversation is also an internal conflict. Even if your position is clear in your mind, expressing it in a way that is concise and convincing is a challenge. And if you're actively engaged in a conversation (and not just reciting a list of your preformed opinions) you could find your opinions changing, even as you speak them. Have you ever spent half an hour arguing a point at a party, only to realize much later that you were wrong, and the other person was right? That's why people enjoy conversations so much - they can change the way we look at the world. Sometimes I'll see a movie I think is garbage until my friend explains why it's not. This kind of back-and-forth as two different perceptions clash is exactly what conflict is about.
Of course, all this time when I've been talking about conversation, I've really been talking about thought. Speech is just the output of thought. All that pondering and weighing and analyzing goes on silently in our heads. We merely pause it while we spit out words, and then we crank it back up again.
But all of this stuff is invisible to the audience, who probably want people to stop talking every once in awhile to blow something up or makeout, so dialogue doesn't get its due. Oh sure, people say they love wit, and quote lines that have nothing to do with the central plot, but at the end of the day they still claim to prefer dialogue that advances plot to lines that are "just" entertaining.
Here I think I've stumbled onto yet another topic, but I have to end this blog somewhere, so I'll just address it briefly. That topic is length, specifically, how films have condensed story-length, conditioning us to expect stories to only hit the big moments and barrel through the plot as directly as possible. But which have you spent more time watching in your life, films or tv shows? The Godfather or Gilmore Girls? The point being that dialogue that has no point is closer to real life, while dialogue that exists solely to advance plot is artificial, condensed for maximum dramatic effect. They are different, but not better or worse. Both have a place in culture.
I guess I subconsciously chose meandering dialogue. Well, looking at this post, it seems obvious why. Clearly, I like to talk.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Flickr is for D-Bags and Commies
Just a short post to vent.
So I've been posting stock photography on 3 sites: deviantart.com, picasa, and flickr.
Deviantart is supergreat, but I've known that for years. The only annoying thing they do is occasionally shunt one of your photos into your 'scraps' section if they consider it too blurry for stock.
Picasa is okay. Except their interface for uploading photos is glitchy and annoying. And they have a 'total upload cap' meaning I can't upload to my account anymore. I guess I'll just start a new account if I feel like it. No biggie.
Flickr has a monthly upload cap. Which means that, to upload all the photos I've already uploaded to Picasa, I'd have to wait about 3 more months. Which is a pain, but it's a free account, so I can deal.
BUT
Today I find out that they only show your most recent 200 photos (if you have a free account). Then I click the link that explains this policy, and it takes me to their little legal 'f*** you, you cheap ****' page where it also says that a free account that remains inactive for over 90 days can be deleted at anytime.
Why would I keep posting stock if flickr is only going to show the 200 most recent pics? But I guess I'd have to upload SOMETHING every 90 days, just to make sure all my pics don't get deleted by some automated flickr drone. Well, **** that.
I know they're a business, but picasa and deviantart don't arbitrarily delete accounts. So I'm going to stick with them.
My picasa stock page: http://picasaweb.google.com/118207523053741040189/Stock1#
So I've been posting stock photography on 3 sites: deviantart.com, picasa, and flickr.
Deviantart is supergreat, but I've known that for years. The only annoying thing they do is occasionally shunt one of your photos into your 'scraps' section if they consider it too blurry for stock.
Picasa is okay. Except their interface for uploading photos is glitchy and annoying. And they have a 'total upload cap' meaning I can't upload to my account anymore. I guess I'll just start a new account if I feel like it. No biggie.
Flickr has a monthly upload cap. Which means that, to upload all the photos I've already uploaded to Picasa, I'd have to wait about 3 more months. Which is a pain, but it's a free account, so I can deal.
BUT
Today I find out that they only show your most recent 200 photos (if you have a free account). Then I click the link that explains this policy, and it takes me to their little legal 'f*** you, you cheap ****' page where it also says that a free account that remains inactive for over 90 days can be deleted at anytime.
Why would I keep posting stock if flickr is only going to show the 200 most recent pics? But I guess I'd have to upload SOMETHING every 90 days, just to make sure all my pics don't get deleted by some automated flickr drone. Well, **** that.
I know they're a business, but picasa and deviantart don't arbitrarily delete accounts. So I'm going to stick with them.
My picasa stock page: http://picasaweb.google.com/118207523053741040189/Stock1#
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