I liked this too, think I saved it originally. Emotional states, and
their evocation, are, of course, what art is all about, ain't it? My
oft-stated claim that much of what goes on here is really the study of
_Aesthetics_ (remember aesthetics?- this is a song about aesthetics...)
falls back on my numbed ears....
(Aesthetics, is also, of course, the one reason Aristotle is never to be
forgotten. His Poetics is still the seminal, and the most relevant
aesthetic blueprint ever written.... IMHO.)
Anyway, I spent a good deal of time discussing propaganda with an actual
propagandist- a Soviet playwright. (I am ashamed to say I have forgotten
his name, his first name was Gregor, but it was many years ago, and many
of these discussions required vodka in prodigious amounts.)
Propaganda is, in a nutshell, sponsored art. It is a slippery concept,
and is, of course, what advertising is all about, and what I think Brodie
is trying to make the technology of memetics. (Otherwise I am still not
sure why he sees pricks in salad-dressing bottles....)
All religious art is propaganda. But- to a memeticist, I would think, all
art is propaganda.... Like I said, it is a slippery concept. (The
marxist, as well, considers all art propaganda.)
I was arguing, sometimes too stridently perhaps, for a 'pure' form, an
individual form, something unique, unfettered, but with a smile this
clever tool of the state would say-' Ah, and where is this vacuum from
which this art has risen?' I would, in my best
free-state-land-of-the-brave-john-wayne voice reply- 'from no vacuum,
kremlin-kisser (we were well into goodnatured insults by the seventh
shot), but from the verdant fields of freedom, from the untrammeled mind
of the freeman!'
I did a good McGoohan impression when I was a youngster....
Anyway, even then I knew he had good points. As he did I. We sank beneath
the table to our slumber without resolution. But Aristotle said it best-
catharsis.
There is no catharsis in propaganda. There is submission. (When it's done
its job, that is.)
But a very rich field of study.
But that is Aesthetics.... Ain't it? That's what it was called when I
studied it....
*****************
Wade T. Smith
morbius@us1.channel1.com | "There ain't nothin' you
wade_smith@harvard.edu | shouldn't do to a god."
morbius@cyberwarped.com |
********* http://www.channel1.com/users/morbius/ ********