Tag Archives: Art

Swashbuckling Dreams

The music is still playing in my head.

Its the normal mark of an auditory learner, I think, to have permanently lodged in our short-term memory the most recent song that was playing before we parked the car, or got off the bus. You know what I mean…you’ll be humming it to yourself all day until you’re finally leaving the office, or until you have the chance to listen to something else while you plow through your paperwork. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in that…it just means that music’s staying power and beauty isn’t lost on you.

The music in question has been playing in my head since last night. Its not the last thing I listened to on the flight home from the family’s Thanksgiving celebration, its not the jazz I played while reading last night. It the theme song to the DVD I finished watching last night in order to return it to Netflix this morning, and it was (cough)…it was an (looking down, shuffling feet)…it was sort of an…a 1980’s superhero cartoon theme song.

Okay, I said it. I’m out of the closet now. Last night’s bedtime entertainment for me was a DVD of the top five episodes of the first season of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. I remarked to Karen that something about the sounds of the opening credits and theme song/voiceover took me back to my elementary school days, back to a simpler and innocent time. Maybe I was just justifying it to myself…maybe. More likely, I was justifying my viewing choice to her…but that’s okay, she loves me and accepts me. What was profoundly of interest to me last night, though, was watching an animated fantasy series from my elementary school years through the lens of education and sensibilities that come with me in life currently…sort of a metaphysical inspection, if you will. All good science fiction (and all good stories of any genre) have a meta-message of some variety, and animated series are no different. I’m not aware of scholarly discussion about He-Man, although that’s not to say that it isn’t out there, but I remember the series being of intense interest to me in my young impressionable years. I remember talking on the playground to another guy one morning, the morning of the day that He-Man’s premiere was due to air. He asked me if I was going to watch it. I responded with an enthusiastic “yes!” A girl was there. She shook her head and turned to friends to discuss how incredibly immature this was.

He-Man was controversial in the animation world because of its previously un-matched violence in American animation. I can see overtly masculine images and appeal in the show now…it was, and is, all about connecting to a young male audience. He-Man was, simply, the hero we all hoped to be, the other identity that I knew lay somewhere underneath my nerd’s exterior, that would surface and run to the rescue should the need ever arise in one of my peers…preferably an attractive one of the opposite gender.

I remember having a dream about a beautiful girl that needed help. I ran to her aid, leading the others in my elementary school class behind me. I was the heroic leader, charging forward to save her honor. Very He-Man-like. I always liked that dream.

You see, every boy…every man…everyone…dreams of being a hero in some regard. We long to leave a legacy, to depart this realm with the knowledge that we’ve accomplished something, that our lives stood for something and will leave something positive in their wake. Deep down, I always wanted to save the damsel in distress. I always wanted to be a hero to those in crisis. I always wanted to save the day.

Not long after I was out of college, I was driving somewhere after work one afternoon. I remember that my mother was in the car with me. I was  navigating out of a parking lot, when an elderly woman mis-judged a turn and hopped a concrete barrier that stood in the way of a large, ravine-style ditch. Her car slammed down on the concrete barrier rather violently as her tire slipped off the edge. Liquid immediately began flowing from underneath. I got out of our vehicle to smell that it was fuel. She had ruptured her fuel tank, and was attempting to rock the car back over the barrier, creating  the risk of potentially making a spark. While someone else called the police, I convinced the woman to place her vehicle in park, and assisted her away from the car until emergency crews arrived. I felt like a superhero. I felt like I had saved the day.

Maybe I’m making too much of a relatively minor incident, but I like to recall that moment sometimes in the belief that I helped someone. Perhaps I entered the field I’m in with a sort of superhero complex, wanting to save the world, one client at a time. Perhaps that is the alter-ego of the writer…perhaps I write as Clark Kent, while convincing myself that I can leap tall buildings in a single bound as I go to work each morning.

Perhaps that’s pretty sad, but I take comfort in the fact that I can at least know that I’m trying to make a difference to others, even if I don’t succeed. And I’m not alone, because, if I were, fantasies like the world of He-Man and countless other superhero adventures wouldn’t resonate with humanity like they do, existing cross-culturally in genres of literature around the world.

If the only person I’ve ever helped was the elderly woman that day, then I feel like I counted for something. Even if there was no theme music playing or light flashing of magical swordplay.
That, I think, is why He-Man takes me back to a time of innocence, when I dreamed of what I wanted to accomplish, of the difference I wanted to make. And, that is likely why these stories appeal so heavily to me today, because I hope that I’m not through making a difference quite yet.

That’s what I’m thinking, anyway. I may even have more to say later this week, because Inhumanoids is next in the cue.

Photo Attribution:

The Pressure is in the Process

Continuing the train of thought from last week’s post, I was having a conversation with a friend this week about language and its reduction to a utilitarian value…that Western culture, specifically in the U.S., views language only as a means to an end, valuing succinct bullet points and brevity as supreme qualities because of the manner in which they enhance production value. The conversation led us to a similar conclusion about our culture’s view of humanity, and perhaps the conclusion that the degradation of the English language is due (at least in part) to the humiliation and de-humanized perception of men and women as lacking inherent self-worth.

At the end of the day, social improvement and reformation accounted for, any industrialized culture will always fight a losing battle to maintain the view that a human being is inherently valuable. The reason is because progress and production are supreme, and thus the things that an individual can make and build take priority over that person’s well-being…are seen as being more important to the whole than the person is himself. Individuality is one of the first casualties of this war, and self-esteem quickly follows, because that is simply a luxury one cannot afford when one is trying to make a living.

Certainly, history shows us that we’ve made progress since the industrial revolution. However, materialism and morality remain mutually exclusive, and thus progress will always be the enemy of personhood, at least at some level.

Lewis spoke of the danger that accompanies the power of art. We are created as creators, and thus are engaging in our supreme life-giving capacity when we engage in creativity. There is danger in idolizing and worshipping what we’ve created, however, in permitting it to become something that its not. When our creation…be it a painting, a novel, a city, a new computer, whatever…assumes a perceived supremacy over the life of the person who is creating it (or facilitating its creation) then we’ve degraded that person. Creating is life-giving, unless we, in doing so, take life. I fear that’s what may have occurred as we’ve began to value the product over those involved in the process.

Perhaps to regain a recognition that each person we pass on the street and pay for our lunch and drive past in traffic is, in fact, a person and possessor of hopes and dreams and creativity just like our own, is to regain a passion and a love for our language. Sadly, as long as we continue to treat each other barbarously, then we will treat our words barbarously, as well.

What, When, Where, and the Lack of Anything Else


This post runs the risk of not letting well enough alone, but I just can’t help myself.

America’s public education system requires an extreme overhaul. The damage done by No Child Left Behind has been extensive, and is obvious to me even from the outside. My observations have been confirmed by several friends who are actually in the profession of teaching. The quality of public education, however, leaves me baffled. History is taught selectively, English is taught only for technical purposes and thus without a true love for the language, and math and the sciences reign supreme.

As I’m looking at doctoral programs and preparing to take the GRE, I’m abruptly struck by just how little math I actually remember. I’m also struck by the inaccuracy of every teacher through my early college years who claimed that I would use these skills every day of my life. I’m scratching my head as to why, with technology available to take care of things like balancing our checkbooks and calculating tips and splitting tax on receipts (the only things I use math for as a someone who is not a scientist or engineer), that such enormous emphasis is placed on numbers.

Yet, our students are required to become proficient in mathematics that at least half of them won’t have any constructive use for after college, and the sciences…well, all must fall before the altar of science, as it has become the new religion.

What leaves me bemused here is the gradual shift, based on a desperation to be competitive in the industrial world, to worship the “how” while ignoring the “why.” I’m not saying that math and the sciences aren’t important, they certainly are. They are important because they explain how things work, and give us a greater insight into the functions of our own bodies, our own psyches, our environment. They provide avenues for creativity by which new ways to master our environment are invented.

They stop, however, at the “how.”

As to the “why,” that is answered by the disciplines that are relegated to the background and barely given any educational attention because they don’t make money or produce industrialized goods. “Why” is for the realms of spirituality, the arts, and philosophy. These are the disciplines we at best tolerate as necessary for those unscientifically gifted, and at worst (in the case of spirituality) condemn as living in an unquantifiable fairy-land. More frequently we give those dedicated few who choose to seriously pursue these disciplines a nod of appreciation, and look forward to consuming the entertainment value of their work and study, while the rest of the world goes about the “important” work of furthering our industrialized progress.

In worshipping the “how” in this way, we’ve all but forgotten the “why.” We’ve replaced our search and innate desire to find the “why” with the material goods and so-called progress that our industrialized ventures yield, and believe them to be the “why,” failing to see that this industrialized obsession is exactly that which has cost us our ability to perceive the value of humanity.

Still, progress must be made, and so the “how” continues to be emphasized in educational reform legislation. The banner flying above the political slogans for educational reform invariably includes technology, math, and science, so that our students will grow to adulthood with the ability to solve complex calculus and apply it to engineering problems successfully, while being illiterate to Faulkner or Steinbeck or Salinger, and being unable to recognize the purpose of valuing poetry instead of technical manuals. As such, history will become suddenly malleable, able to be re-written with each new textbook revision because those who are well-read enough to know the difference will be such a small minority of a voice.

The past will be whatever they say it was, and we’ll be reduced to robots that are valued only for what we produce, not for who we are.

Oh, wait. We’re already there.

………..

LP’s, EP’s, and MP3 Brevity


Remember when men were real men, women were real women, and albums were…well…not singles?

For that matter, remember when singles and EP’s were released in specific distinction against an album? In days of yesteryear, there were a few albums by intentional artists that were not just a collection of many songs, but a musical and lyrical journey that had a definite beginning, middle, and end…a plot, if you will. Albums by the likes of Bob Dylan or U2 or Pink Floyd, or any number of amazing musicians and lyricists that aspired for more than pop fluff, whatever their genre, to make a complete work. You didn’t just listen to a group of great songs with those albums…you went along for a ride that had a departure and an ending point.

I think we’ve lost that in our current mode of a la carte shopping. Recently I was browsing iTunes upon a recommendation from a trusted blog to check out a new band. I liked some of the tracks, and some had too much of a folk feel for my taste, so I purchased the tracks I liked and left the rest. Don’t I have the right for that? Certainly. Is it a good idea? Not necessarily. I have a feeling that the entire album might be a story, that it would take me on a specific journey were I to have purchased all of the tracks and listened to them from beginning to end. My excuse was that I didn’t want to spend the money on an entire album…yet I would spend money on a novel, knowing up front that I won’t like every chapter, simply on the principle that a plot takes us places we don’t like to go in order to weave a complete story. I wouldn’t just buy a few chapters from a novel…I wouldn’t get the entire experience.

Yet this is the sort of consumerism that drives our perusing of art. I choose music as an example partly because it is (arguably) the most dominant and easily accessible medium available today, but the ramifications extend far beyond this. Continuing with the example, though, I think that many artists surrender artistic merit for the sake of a business model, focusing on releasing individual tracks that will hook a listener, because that individual track is more likely to be purchased than an entire album.

I suppose, however, that there could be something said for the discovery. I’ve ended up purchasing albums from artists that I discovered through Starbucks free “Pick of the Week” program, albums that I likely wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. Similarly, I wonder if the reader of Salinger’s chronicles of his fictional Glass Family, reading them as individual short stories, would have made the immediate connections that were more accessible to me reading them collected in Nine Stories.

Of course, the immediate literary answer to this is the poem, which is often meant to stand alone, at least when printed in literary journals. Yet, even here the poem is often a “chapter” in a larger story when read in the context of the collection in which it was intended.

A friend recently referred to Twitter as “a 160-character literature sniper.” His comment, while perhaps a bit over-stated, leaves me to ponder the result of our “sound-byte” culture, where one of the reasons for independent, briefer snippets of art removed from their context aren’t always just to serve as samplers, as it were, but often the recourse of those too impatient or too distracted to read an entire book, or to listen to an entire album by one artist (remember those friends that used to incessantly change the television channel or radio station?). At least full length movies can still hold us, although the descriptor of “epic length” is enough to keep some from the theatre.

What stories do we miss by not taking the time to take in the journey in its entirety? Is this perhaps metaphorical, indicative of our tendency to compartmentalize ourselves away from experiencing anything at its intended depth in the name of experiencing many things in the same time frame? Does this pose a warning to a mindset of quantity’s perceived supremacy over quality? Perhaps it does.

Or, perhaps I’m just over-analyzing.

Perhaps.

(Photo Attribution:

After Glow

Yesterday afternoon I succumbed to Karen’s wishes in which movie we would be seeing at the local theatre. The final decision was a $1 showing of Star Trek, which neither of us had managed to take in at the time of its initial release. I’ll condense my overall feelings about the movie by saying it was well done, though slightly courageous in its far-reaching impact to the Trekkie universe specifically, and the science fiction genre at large, a genre which I happen to hold very dear.

This came after a long and occasionally heated debate between Karen and myself after adjourning to a nearby Starbucks to discuss what we had seen. Of the group of people that went, Karen and I were alone in our discussion. In retrospect that was the thing about the afternoon that stood out the most to me (I’ll save my conclusions about science fiction for another post), because I think its indicative of how we take in entertainment and treat art in our culture overall.

One of my acting professors in college said that part of the experience of theatre was going out for a cup of coffee after the show with the group you saw the show with to discuss the show. A play or a movie of any quality (okay, okay, I know that can be hard to come by in Hollywood) is going to present questions for discussion, hard issues with which we should wrestle, predictions or revelations of current and future cultural flaws that merit exploration. Should we fail to bounce these ideas around in our minds at least, and at best work them through in conversation with others, then they fall flat. A critical part of the experience is lost.

Similarly, think of the last time you read a good book. Did it not immediately produce a recommendation to friends? That recommendation likely included a synopsis of why you thought so highly of the book. If the person to whom you recommended the book read it, then you had a great deal of potential discussion in which to engage afterward. For example, I recently began exploring Salinger’s short fiction at the recommendation of a friend. After reading Nine Stories, we began discussing Salinger’s stories over our weekly coffee meeting. Not long ago, I recommended this same collection to another friend, who is reading it currently. He wants to talk about it as well. The cycle continues.

To be fair, some of those who watched the movie with us yesterday discussed it with us following lunch today. I’m glad…the movie is actually too good to waste by not discussing the story arc. Whatever the issues a movie or play or book presents, it merits discussion, whether you agree with it or not…discussion about whether you agree with it or not, and why. I’m hoping that this lack of discussion I’m observing is an exception rather than a rule. I hope that, if it is more commonplace, that it is not due to an eroding of critical thinking on a large scale. I’m more inclined to ascribe it to the passivity with which we consume art on demand, immediately leaving one story to latch onto another, without ever taking time to process what it is we just experienced. I think this passivity is more often the case because when I see friends become involved in discussion about a film or play or book, they seem to latch onto it hungrily, eating the thoughts ravenously and finishing with eyes that gleam in want of more.

This is indicative of how little it actually occurs, in any case. Let’s talk more over coffee, shall we? Besides, a cup of coffee after every movie may even boost our economy. See? Everyone wins.