I took this photo of myself because I got a hair cut! The image quality of this photo is really not that great! Ignore the image quality: this is a post about art and the meaning of cliches. I read David Foster Wallace’s book A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again a few years ago. Thinking that it might be useful for supporting my thesis, I re-read his essay E Unibus Plurum (link is to a forty-page pdf; don’t click it if you aren’t interested in reading it- it will take a while to load). I was shocked to see how my response had changed: a few short years ago, I thought this essay was totally genius. Now, it strikes me as unnecessarily dark and very dated. I’ve been thinking about my new-found distaste for the essay. I’m pretty sure it’s because Wallace begins by talking about writers. His humor is targeted directly at the kind of person who will laugh at the phrase: writers are creepy people. In other words, he’s targeting the essay at other writers. So many people see themselves as writers that this was kind of a genius move on his part: it makes his audience feel intelligent for understanding the quirky, vaguely sad self-observations (the underlying joke being, of course, that Wallace himself is a writer). Wallace’s work offers commentary on the state of the times in which they were written. Up until his death two and a half years ago, that was Right Now. His works tend to offer commentary on the phenomenon of irony in postmodern media; this irony is based around self-conscious awareness of cliches and other culturally “assumed” knowledge. Maybe that’s my problem with the work: it really feels like the kind of thing I would have found genius two and a half years ago, before I started thinking really, really hard about categorizations and the meaning of the word cliche. In the process of castigating pop culture for its dependence on cliches, Wallace turns the act of consuming media into a cliche. This is really dangerous, I think. As someone with a considerable renown as an intellectual figure, when Wallace talks about What It Means To Consume Media, people listen. When you state that something - anything, an action, person, time period, art movement - has a specific set of qualities, you give it a certain kind of power. This power is in constancy: I can talk about the modernist movement today in the same way I talked about it yesterday. Because discourse is what makes a set of ideas exist, the ability to be talked-about over a period of time is the greatest quality for the life of pretty much anything. Turning something into a cliche is, in many ways, the greatest bestowal of honor. It’s like saying that something is so successful at what it does that it has reached a level where it symbolizes its own function. For example, the cliche of young people posting photos of themselves to the internet symbolizes the function of posting a photo of yourself to the internet. If I were to make some self-consciously witty comment about how typical young-person of me it is to upload a photo I took of myself to teh interwebz, I would really be obscuring the fact of its function, which is that I want people on the internet to see my new haircut. This has nothing to do with whatever it is that makes it a stereotype. I would argue that nothing anybody does has anything to do with a stereotype - this includes the reviled act of American Media Consumption (the essay refers specifically to media-consuming habits of the population of the United States).The truth is, cliches prevent us from seeing the world for what it is. This really troubles me because it’s part of a culture that wants people to buy into a stable identity based around their tastes. If you “know” your tastes, you’re more likely to consume products that will support that part of who you are. All of a sudden, you have a stake in being someone with an interest in specific kinds of music, clothing, cars, whatever. It’s because it’s “you”. Such is the curse of a culture that supports individualism based not on our actions, but on the way we present ourselves to the world. It’s the illusion of self-control, and the ability to “choose” who you are based on a set of things that fall into easily-definable cultural cliches and categorizations is incredibly appealing to a lot of folks. Of course, we are not the music we listen to (that’s always a hard one for me to swallow), or the cars we drive, or where we went to school, or a cool shirt. Art that is truly beautiful to me stands outside of a need for people to identify themselves with it, because it requires the ability to enjoy something without seeing it as a part of who you are. Then you can really hear the music or see the movie. You don’t need to criticize it because you don’t agree with its content, or it doesn’t “fit” you. It just is what it is. Then again, I’m a bit of a utopian. I think it’s very possible for everybody to love all art. Why not? Why is it not possible? Every work of art, writing, music, and so on does something a little bit different. There is beauty in the fact that it is different. Outside of a cultural framework, or any cloud of concepts and commentary that comes with the work, there exists something made by an artist that satisfied her or him. That act of producing is so beautiful that I think it warrants a reconsideration of the constraints on enjoyment of beauty. Maybe I should go wash my hands now. And my neck. And my ears. Pink dye everywhere! emma

I took this photo of myself because I got a hair cut! The image quality of this photo is really not that great!

Ignore the image quality: this is a post about art and the meaning of cliches.

I read David Foster Wallace’s book A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again a few years ago. Thinking that it might be useful for supporting my thesis, I re-read his essay E Unibus Plurum (link is to a forty-page pdf; don’t click it if you aren’t interested in reading it- it will take a while to load). I was shocked to see how my response had changed: a few short years ago, I thought this essay was totally genius. Now, it strikes me as unnecessarily dark and very dated.

I’ve been thinking about my new-found distaste for the essay. I’m pretty sure it’s because Wallace begins by talking about writers. His humor is targeted directly at the kind of person who will laugh at the phrase: writers are creepy people. In other words, he’s targeting the essay at other writers. So many people see themselves as writers that this was kind of a genius move on his part: it makes his audience feel intelligent for understanding the quirky, vaguely sad self-observations (the underlying joke being, of course, that Wallace himself is a writer).


Wallace’s work offers commentary on the state of the times in which they were written. Up until his death two and a half years ago, that was Right Now. His works tend to offer commentary on the phenomenon of irony in postmodern media; this irony is based around self-conscious awareness of cliches and other culturally “assumed” knowledge.

Maybe that’s my problem with the work: it really feels like the kind of thing I would have found genius two and a half years ago, before I started thinking really, really hard about categorizations and the meaning of the word cliche. In the process of castigating pop culture for its dependence on cliches, Wallace turns the act of consuming media into a cliche.


This is really dangerous, I think. As someone with a considerable renown as an intellectual figure, when Wallace talks about What It Means To Consume Media, people listen. When you state that something - anything, an action, person, time period, art movement - has a specific set of qualities, you give it a certain kind of power. This power is in constancy: I can talk about the modernist movement today in the same way I talked about it yesterday. Because discourse is what makes a set of ideas exist, the ability to be talked-about over a period of time is the greatest quality for the life of pretty much anything. Turning something into a cliche is, in many ways, the greatest bestowal of honor. It’s like saying that something is so successful at what it does that it has reached a level where it symbolizes its own function. For example, the cliche of young people posting photos of themselves to the internet symbolizes the function of posting a photo of yourself to the internet. If I were to make some self-consciously witty comment about how typical young-person of me it is to upload a photo I took of myself to teh interwebz, I would really be obscuring the fact of its function, which is that I want people on the internet to see my new haircut. This has nothing to do with whatever it is that makes it a stereotype.


I would argue that nothing anybody does has anything to do with a stereotype - this includes the reviled act of American Media Consumption (the essay refers specifically to media-consuming habits of the population of the United States).The truth is, cliches prevent us from seeing the world for what it is. This really troubles me because it’s part of a culture that wants people to buy into a stable identity based around their tastes. If you “know” your tastes, you’re more likely to consume products that will support that part of who you are. All of a sudden, you have a stake in being someone with an interest in specific kinds of music, clothing, cars, whatever. It’s because it’s “you”.


Such is the curse of a culture that supports individualism based not on our actions, but on the way we present ourselves to the world. It’s the illusion of self-control, and the ability to “choose” who you are based on a set of things that fall into easily-definable cultural cliches and categorizations is incredibly appealing to a lot of folks.


Of course, we are not the music we listen to (that’s always a hard one for me to swallow), or the cars we drive, or where we went to school, or a cool shirt. Art that is truly beautiful to me stands outside of a need for people to identify themselves with it, because it requires the ability to enjoy something without seeing it as a part of who you are. Then you can really hear the music or see the movie. You don’t need to criticize it because you don’t agree with its content, or it doesn’t “fit” you. It just is what it is.


Then again, I’m a bit of a utopian. I think it’s very possible for everybody to love all art. Why not? Why is it not possible? Every work of art, writing, music, and so on does something a little bit different. There is beauty in the fact that it is different. Outside of a cultural framework, or any cloud of concepts and commentary that comes with the work, there exists something made by an artist that satisfied her or him. That act of producing is so beautiful that I think it warrants a reconsideration of the constraints on enjoyment of beauty.

Maybe I should go wash my hands now. And my neck. And my ears. Pink dye everywhere!

emma

1 year ago  Notes (1)
  1. tinyspirits posted this