Aesthetics // Current TV

Full With Noise: Theory and Japanese Noise Music

"Full with Noise,..." is about noise music, specifically the version that... more

worrg
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Temporary Hegemonic Zones + First NSK Citizen's Congress + Victory Under the Sun (1988) documentary

Attending a sprawling congress for Neue Slowenische Kunst's imaginary state... more

worrg
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Phenomenal Groupon Offer in Pembroke Pines FL

Kaizen Beauty Academy is the most prestigious house of beauty and etiquette in south... more

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Latest News Faberge Spider Brooch

Recently Complete News Updates Today Faberge But Spider is all that is on my mind... more

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Republican vs Democrat: Fave TV Shows.

The Real Difference Between 'Republican' TV and 'Democratic' Shows? How They Portray Identity

You don't move to a new town, take a new job, or make a new friend to stay the same. But you don't want to lose your soul, either. The human psyche lives between those two contradictory drives: be constant and be flexible. That's mirrored in the aesthetics of our stories, where plots fall on a spectrum from, say, Mad Men (where identity is flexible, and characters change in response to their profession, which is always what it is) to Modern Family (where identity is constant, and life's demands change for the characters, who are always what they are). If you generally prefer stories in which the hero has a true self (main challenge: finding a place in the world), you may be deeply and temperamentally different from someone who leans toward the other kind of story—the one where self changes under pressure (main challenge: making a place in the world). For instance, according to a study released last week, "true self" television appeals more to Republicans, while "flexible self" shows lure Democrats.

Those aren't the categories used by the researchers at Experian Simmons (the firm's John Fetto thinks Democrats just like "shows about damaged people," as he told Hollywood Reporter). But I think different instincts about identity are the real divide between the top Republican-favored programs (which included "Modern Family," "V," and "Lie to Me") and those with more Democratic fans ("Mad Men," "30 Rock," "The Good Wife"). To see "Democrat" protagonists as "damaged," you have to imagine that they have some unchanging essence that they failed to protect. But Liz Lemon's story isn't about her resisting "the suits"; it's about how she changes in response to them.

A couple of caveats: No show is purely one type or the other, because all stories mix the two sensibilities. And plenty of Democrats like shows on the Republican list. The difference, though, is that Republicans like those shows more, and they shun the ones that appeal most to the Democrats.

Still, that's a real contrast, which may mean that Experian Simmons' findings should be added to the burgeoning list of studies that are finding links between temperament and political ideology.The Real Difference Between 'Republican' TV and 'Democratic'... more

UtopianSky
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Christmas Tree Topper Thomas Kinkade

Take, for instance, the work of one of the most recognizable Christian artists, Thomas... more

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Vicarious by Nature: VbN's Organic, Recycled Fall 2010 Lookbook

Vicarious by Nature (VbN) is an eco-friendly brand that represents men’s and... more

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WTF?! Dirty Megan Fox Gets FREAKY With Naked Mannequin (Photos)

Megan Fox in the cover girl for the latest issue of Interview Magazine and she’s... more

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"Best Of" Celebribabe

The 99 most beautiful women in the world ---Not every walking physical ideal can be... more

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Humor Studies: Can a landscape be funny?

In college I did a lot of research in humor studies. In this video I give an... more

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Design Annual 2009 - Communication Arts Annual

The finest design solutions of the past year were chosen by our distinguished jury... more

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God’s 7 Principles of Artistic Purpose

Check out these 7 precepts for guiding and directing your creativity...... more

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SpaceCollective; An Awesome Window Into Mind,Reflection and Exploration

"It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison, and yet not free —... more

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What Can't Art Just Shock?

"Dash Snow, the New York artist who died this month, was responsible for a rolling piece called Nest Project. It consisted of shredded paper, bodily fluids, and graffiti about bestiality, Abraham Lincoln's drinking binges and a "gang bang at Ground Zero". As one writer said after Snow's death: "He simply didn't give a shit." Most people would not regard this as praise for a working artist. Proper nihilists don't bother to make art, and if they were forced to do so – under, say, a community service order – why would they bother to make it any good?

Perhaps, as people said, Snow was just out to shock. What's wrong with that? Nobody seems to think there's anything wrong with art being poignant just for the sake of being poignant, or angry just for the sake of being angry, or beautiful just for the sake of being beautiful. So shock seems a perfectly legitimate effect. It is a slightly lumphammer approach, though, because shock is an unsubtle state. To be "in shock" means your faculties are more or less paralysed. These will tend to include the aesthetic, emotional and discriminatory ones. And if you've really shocked the audience, you may find yourself running out of moves. Soon you're playing the fire alarm, not the piano.

There's extremity of form (Stravinsky, free verse, cubism) and there's extremity of subject matter. They don't necessarily go together, though they often have. In literature, Burroughs, Ballard, Hubert Selby Jr and their like were formal experimentalists as well as experiential extremists. Shock comes in and out of fashion but largely has two purposes. One is to kick against internalised rules and formal conventions. The other is to kick against externally imposed norms, such as censorship and social disapproval.

What's interesting is that, when it comes to shock, the different arts seem to be out of phase with each other. The big shock of modernism arrived in verse, painting, music and dance at around the same time: the beginning of the 20th century. In terms of material and subject matter, though, the genres are all over the place. For the last few years, being shocking has been one of the qualities most prized by critics and collectors in the visual arts. Rotting meat, funny plastic kiddies with penises instead of noses, sex and drugs, self-exposure, bodily mutilation and so forth. While shock and going to extremes is still hotly important to the producers and consumers of fine art, other art forms – ones that have struggled harder with censorship and notions of decorum – seem to be well over it. Theatre's last major convulsion of shock was probably a decade or so ago, with work by the generation that included Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill.

Literature has left all this even further behind. Somewhere between Ulysses and the unbanning of Last Exit to Brooklyn, books established the right to say whatever they liked – and they now do so with gay abandon.

So why is it that fine art still seems to be fighting these battles? It was in fine art, after all, that these battles were first and most decisively won. You could look at a Courbet or a Schiele quite happily, while the Obscene Publications Act was still breathing down the necks of other artforms. It can't but make shock retro: artists whose primary concern is still to Question The Very Nature Of Art, end up playing more or less sterile variations on Manzoni's tinned poo and Duchamp's pissoir.

But hold. I don't want to piss on Dash Snow's grave. And yet – don't you think? – it's what he would have wanted.""Dash Snow, the New York artist who died this month, was responsible for a... more