Okay Class, stop sniffing your Sharpies in a futile attempt to reach a state of intoxication and try to take notes using that writing instrument and what brain cells you have left. Remember, if you can, that information you believe to be useless is, indeed, of no value whatsoever if you are unable to apply it in real-life situations, or at the very least for pc gaming “cheats.” Otherwise your very existence is no better than a work of fiction and bears no resemblance to any human being, past or present, living or dead. (Or in your cases, “living dead” or zombie, if you prefer, or the more inclusive term “differently animated.”)
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Aristotle, in Poetics, slops the pearl that “art” is a “representation of reality.” By this definition, presentations of the creative sort contain something, if only a je ne sais quois, that can be recognized as a reflection of the human condition and the historical present. Reach back in time to The Epic of Gilgamesh, and out of the cuneiform pressed in clay comes the tale of a king’s hubris, lust for immortality, and ultimate understanding of his place in the world. Fast forward and select at random. “The Counsels of the Bird” by Rumi, Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Eliot’s “Quartets,” “The Short Happy Life Of Francis MacComber” by Hemingway. Consider Andy Warhol’s body of work as a commentary on the superficiality of modern culture; look at the content of films, popular songs and television programs, comic strips and “illustrated novels,” with their wide diversity of theme and thought. All these arts, of varying degrees of cultural significance, may be seen to generally adhere to Aristotle’s commentary.
They represent reality. They do not create reality; they are not a direct experience of reality; they do not encompass the fullness and mystery of reality, or of life and death. They are not meant to serve as a replacement for reality.
Yet some may not be aware of this subtle distinction between Art and Life. Therefore, we find a warning label sewn into the famous Superman costume admonishing those who can read that the garment does not confer upon the wearer the ability of physical flight. Further, this type of error in understanding may be seen in other scenarios that demand a degree of discrimination in determining that which is likely fact from the absurd. In ancient times, for example, some viewers tended to to believe the “daytime dramas” they received on black and white screens were what are now called “Reality TV” programs; others were convinced that there was actually a sport known as “championship wrestling,” as opposed to the acrobatic entertainments now designated by similar names.
Human perception being what it is, an audience may be neurologically disposed to “believe its eyes,” as legends of audience reaction surrounding the first screening of the Lumiere brothers’ “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat” attest. One might also consider that reaction– a screaming rush to the exits– as giving the lie to the idea that “perception is reality.” Nonetheless, subsequent manipulation of media and the exploitation of its consumers for social and political purposes remains a constant.
Anti-war films portraying American efforts in a negative light may fail at the box-office, but they are viewed, and color perceptions, globally. Potty-mouth humor encourages the same. Celebrity glamour promotes superficial ideas of beauty. Novelty wears thin. Longing for something more interesting to fill the existential void in everyday life, many are attracted to acting out pointless fantasies and other futile, chaotic behaviors. Stoked with the belief that lack of responsibility equates to freedom, men remain in suspended adolescence long after they belong to a “youth culture,” and women are left to deal with it.
Parents insist perpetually that their children know the difference between such things as movies and real life, yet experience as well as education impacts character and a moral sense. One need not be a neurologist to speculate that vicarious experiences that permeate consciousness through a saturation accumulated over time have telling effects as well, if only in the ways the world is perceived. As is often suggested, one of these effects is a “numbing” of awareness and empathy in terms of viewing genuine violence and acts of evil perpetrated against others.
That said, if such children and adults do indeed understand the differences between those things which are staged and contrived to represent reality and those which are directly recorded as actual events in progress, sans commentary and for all practical purposes impossible to manipulate, there can be no equivocation over the facts brought to light by the “underground” media coming out of the immediate crisis in Iran via internet resources.
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Such communications are as close to naked truth as media technology can deliver, in a revolution that will be televised, whether it fails or succeeds, without stage blood or the kind of editing designed to evoke a predetermined emotional reaction.
This is information that demands a response to be applied in a real-life situation; the stakes are genuine, and human freedom and dignity hang in the balance. The whole world is, as always, watching, while the response so far from the American Executive Office is most generously described as “measured.”
Train’s coming…
–SG
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