Re: Mormonism is a cult
Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2023 12:06 am
Internet Mormons, Chapel Mormons, Critics, Apologists, and Never-Mo's all welcome!
https://discussmormonism.com/
I didn't really mean to say that. I'm just triggered by artists crying about being canceled, and that Guardian article hit the grating note. It's a "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" point, in my mind. Whatever art may be in itself, if it brings money and acclaim then those are given by the audience at its own sole discretion. Maybe the fame and wealth are just rewards for creating great things, but that's not actually guaranteed. The real bottom line, for hack and genius alike, is that people clap and pay, or do not, because they want to, or don't. If people boo and stop attending your shows, there is no court of appeal. You live and die by the passed hat.
Physics Guy wrote: ↑Thu Jun 01, 2023 7:45 amI didn't really mean to say that. I'm just triggered by artists crying about being canceled, and that Guardian article hit the grating note. It's a "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" point, in my mind. Whatever art may be in itself, if it brings money and acclaim then those are given by the audience at its own sole discretion. Maybe the fame and wealth are just rewards for creating great things, but that's not actually guaranteed. The real bottom line, for hack and genius alike, is that people clap and pay, or do not, because they want to, or don't. If people boo and stop attending your shows, there is no court of appeal. You live and die by the passed hat.
Physics Guy wrote: ↑Thu Jun 01, 2023 7:45 amSo for me the death of the author is only one side of the coin. On that side, sure, your works mean whatever your audience finds them to mean, regardless of what you think they mean. The flip side, though, is that your audience is perfectly well allowed to interpret your work in light of what they believe about you, if that's what they want. An artist cannot force their audience to consider creator and artwork together, but neither can an artist prevent the audience from doing that if it wants. Readers can bracket out the author's appalling politics and enjoy the story, or be moved to tears by stumbling prose because it's authentic. They're equally allowed to conclude that a hero can't write, or burn their copies of a great novel when the author is convicted of rape.
Physics Guy wrote: ↑Thu Jun 01, 2023 7:45 amI think there can even be some shrewd sense in keeping the artist's personal life in mind when contemplating their art. It's kind of like voting for political candidates based on character rather than policies: you're thinking about how they may react to unknown future crises. With some kinds of art, appreciation is a long process, and you don't always know where it's going to go in the future. The painting might hang on your wall for years before you notice that thing about it. The whole story might suddenly change on your fourth re-reading—or when you read some other book. Depending on what you know of the artist's character, you might be confident that these later discoveries will only make the work better, or you might be worried that the piece will fail to age well because a person like that might very well have produced something that looks deeper at first than it is.
This reminds me of the quip (it’s accuracy is, of course, debatable):To do anything less than create a narrative for his actions would brand Bertram as an idiot. And no man wants to be thought of as an idiot by either his wife or the rest of the world