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Post with 19 notes
On Artists, Critics, Fans, & Haterz
To be alive today is to be witness to a period of massive transition in the way art is produced and disseminated. I think it’s great. I understand and sympathize with the hysteria that goes along with this (Who decides what is good?! How does anyone get noticed?! Is it dangerous to give everyone a voice?! For the love of god, how do we monetize this?!), but, like most of my generation, I find the changes in media exciting and democratizing, if occasionally disturbing.
What surprises me is how little the definitions and understanding of the roles of artists, critics, and fans have evolved given the extremity and swiftness of this (I cringe to write this phrase, but I’m at a loss for a better one) paradigm shift. Which is to say, I’m surprised people are still making distinctions between them as the line grows increasingly blurry.
Critics have long been vilified. “No one ever erected a statue to a critic,” Jean Sibelius once said. There has always been a prevailing attitude that critics exist for the sole purpose of undermining artists. How often have you heard an artist say “I don’t make art for the critics; I make it for the fans”? Critics are portrayed as hateful, bitter, craven, emotionless, and lazy. What right does anyone have to say about any kind of art if they aren’t participating in it?
This attitude is several kinds of ironic. Critics, firstly, are fans by nature. Nobody becomes a critic because they hate art; you become a critic because art so moves you that you are compelled to learn everything about it, to experience it as often as possible, and to contribute to the dialogue. Critics aren’t fans in the sense of being blind followers, but fans in the sense of having so much invested in art that they cannot remain silent. They are often the only ones who care as much as the artists.
Secondly, many critics are artists. Particularly in this day and age where the production of art is so readily accessible to so many, it is far from uncommon for people to be producing art with one hand and commenting on it with the other, yet there is a pervasive assumption that this is not the case. The image of the critic as a bitter failure in the art they critique is a wholly outmoded one. Now you see the word “hater” too often misapplied to anyone who offers criticism or raises questions; only the deepest insecurity could lead an artist to believe that critics are their enemies. Moreover, criticism is an art in itself. As with any craft, the quality and style of criticism has a great deal of range. Of course there are petty and pretentious critics, but there are also critics whose work is brilliant and challenging.
In the post-At the Movies world we have come to think of critics as people who say what is good and what isn’t. Thumbs up or thumbs down. That is at best a gross oversimplification and at worst an insult. It is the critic’s job to shed light on art. Sometimes this involves passing judgment, but more often it means finding what is important and compelling in a work of art and exploring that. Sometimes bad art does strange and interesting things (this is why I find Flashdance so arresting); sometimes art can be of high quality yet utterly forgettable. A critic is someone who wants to understand why that is.
There is also a generalized fear of negativity in our culture, a raw nerve that critics have the audacity to expose, and it is important that they do so. Art does not exist in a vacuum; any artist who wants their art to escape comment shouldn’t share it. Negative criticism, provided it is done thoughtfully and in good faith (which is how all criticism should be done), is neither bullying nor snobbery. It takes a great deal of courage to put your art out there; it also takes a great deal of courage to raise your voice against popular opinion.
Critics are, moreover, not solely interested in criticizing, which is not the same as critiquing. Critics are often some of the best champions of art and works of art. As I said before, they are first and foremost fans—they want art to be good, and when it is, they want to share it. We tend to focus on negative critiques because often they are funnier and easier to write, lending themselves to the stereotype that an artist works hard to produce good art, and it is the work of a moment for a critic to tear it down (nothing further from the truth if it is done well). It is infinitely harder, however, to articulate why something is beautiful and extraordinary. When critics do this successfully, they are giving a priceless gift both to the creator of the work and a voice to all the people unable to say why it moved them.
The artistic culture we live in is a participatory one, and it best rewards people who are involved in every aspect of it, who can realize that that being a toiling artist, a gushing fan, and a cerebral critic are not mutually exclusive identities. Socrates believe that the best way to engage with the capital-T truth is through interlocution, and we are fortunate to live in a time where that has never been easier. Critics, artists, and fans are no longer strangers to each other. Critics can respond to art, and artists can respond to their critics. When done in good faith, this is a remarkable gift, one not really available to other generations—to spoil it with antipathy and mistrust engendered by outworn stereotypes is a tremendous waste.
Photo reblogged from Wipe Your Feet with 86 notes
Tupac and I don’t care about your problems with our city
Perhaps I connect emotionally too easily. I pity the discarded sweatshirt and the broken coffee mug. Perhaps I’ve always wanted a home. A place where I understood the rules and cared mildly for the sports teams, felt nostalgic for the cuisine. Maybe I just moved here at the right time. Whatever it is, I love my city, and it hurts my feelings when you complain about it pitilessly.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t complain, of course. I am a complaint advocate of the highest order; that’s how things become great (or better), when you reconstruct them after they’ve been demolished. And of course LA’s budget is in the toilet, it has become the toilet, we take decades to find serial killers and oh how you hate the traffic, nobody reads a book anymore, everyone has an agent — you use the word “soulless” maybe, or invoke Bret Easton Ellis, and man, you never even think of what Tupac would say to you.
KDAY, this afternoon, was feeling Tupac like nobody’s business. Nothing but Tupac would do. Tupac after Tupac after Tupac, and I didn’t change it as I sat in the traffic — God, you think, how awful to be in a car with your thoughts, unable to move away from them! Don’t you just hate when cars and immobility converge! Doesn’t it get your goat almost as much as murder does! — wondering why I should take it so personally that a day spent in Los Angeles without hearing someone wonder why God would make a place so inhospitable to humanity is a day spent in the house not reading the internet or speaking with anyone at all. Why should I care? I live here and it feels as though it’s my hometown. It isn’t my hometown, not technically, but it seemed so happy to receive me that it became somehow mine. New York never loved me back as hard as Los Angeles: it seemed, from the minute I arrived, to want to have me as its own.
Los Angelenos are apologetic in a way that is indicative of some sort of heartfelt shame. We have prints of the Brooklyn Bridge in our studio apartments in Van Nuys. Why? Because living here breaks people? Does anywhere not break people? When I was living in West Hollywood, I had moments wherein I missed grit, energy, having good food close by — the things I’d enjoyed growing up in New York. I wasn’t a part of the scene, really, in Weho; living in the middle of BoysTown and being openly referred to as a “breeder” by my neighbors; it’s true that Los Angeles can be lonely, that it can feel as though it lacks community or convenience. Anywhere can be lonely. But how could I blame an entire city, the second largest in the US and with so many kinds of people, for ten blocks that made me feel chronically under-dressed?
Tupac was also born in New York, not moving to LA until he was in high school. I wonder if the east coast/west coast rap war had anything to do with Tupac getting sick of defending Los Angeles to people. If he was considered a turncoat or something because he loved California literally as much as he loved women, ostracized for giving up walking on a sidewalk. The thing I really don’t understand is the people who stay in LA as if waiting out a prison sentence, talking about how wonderful it will be to move to somewhere with a heartbeat but never actually getting the boxes from the moving company. Why would you put yourself through that, as an adult person? Surely there are zillions of places to live that are merely a car ride or jet flight away, surely there’s enough time to save $500 and just go, if being in your current zip code makes you feel like you’re covered in paper cuts and going for a long swim in a saline pool? Of course it’s still your right. I make my decisions and you yours. I have opinions about everything and so do you. You might not appreciate the Glendale Galleria as being the King of Malls and you might hate the smell of eucalyptus trees, the cat pee kind, I understand. But when you talk shit about my home, I want to invoke the ghost of Tupac so as to more poetically capture the things, it seems to me, you refuse to appreciate.
There was a rainbow visible from Silver Lake blvd. two days ago. North were the mountains, west was a freeway underpass with a guy passed out on some garbage, south was an American Apparel ad featuring a topless Asian toddler, and west was a goddamn rainbow the width of which implied that a pot of gold was chilling in Cypress Park. The fruit vendor guy was outside the Citibank, having recovered from being pinned between the bank’s sign and a mis-driven car a month ago, chatting with a kid who was buying a coconut. Miles away Molly Lambert, sometimes-New-York-Times-writer, was working on a Science Corner. In Pasadena, a kid taped a picture of the Empire State building to his wall. At home, six ripe lemons fell off the tree and were devoured by ants. In Westwood, an actor told his friend that he’d kill himself if he spent another three hours on the ten freeway. Through my radio, Tupac says, “Tupac cares, if don’t nobody else care.”
Yes.
Source: tesslynch
Bros Icing Bros →
I think it’s time that you and I sat down and had a little chat about bro culture.
This is hard for me.
I am [nearly done] going to school in San Diego. Now San Diego is a fine city, well-liked, but I have never particularly been a fan. For whatever reason, it just rubs me the wrong way, and I can’t quite feel at home here, in spite of its many admirable qualities. But as I am about to leave, it’s dawning on me that there is something about San Diego that (I really can’t believe I’m saying this) I’m really going to miss: bros.
I know, I know, San Diego doesn’t have a monopoly on bros. They can be found all over the United States. But I don’t anticipate living anywhere again where bro culture is so prevalent. And I secretly kind of love bro culture.
Now the both feminist and the quasi-hipster (I always want to refute this, but my closet gives pretty damning testimony to the contrary) in me have raised objections to this mild obsession of mine, and with good reason. There is so much to hate and to mock in bro culture. But, much like the Crank movies (which I similarly can’t help liking, in spite of innumerable reasons not to), bro culture anticipates and assimilates the mockery. Take, for example, my favorite aspect of bro culture, the portmanbreau. Like so many things that bros do, the portmanbreau is equal parts sincerity and self-parody, and it’s hard to argue with that. Unlike hipsters, whose greatest delight is in accusing each other of being hipsters with McCarthy-esque fervor, bros take (possibly misguided yet somehow endearing) pride in being bros and tend to have a pretty good sense of humor about it as well. I know this because, by God, I am friends with more than a few (I should say here that I differentiate between frat culture and bro culture, but that is a different matter which merits its own post, probably not by me) It’s hard to be ironic in the face of that.
When all is said and done, is this just a complicated defense of my reasons for icing my bros in the coming weeks (days? how long do we think this fad will last?) to as part of what I can only assume is a brilliant corporate conspiracy to get bros to buy Smirnoff Ice?
Yeah probrobly.
Post reblogged from novaya zemlya with 7 notes
An Apology (in the Socratic sense) For My Chosen Vocation
smart-tart replied to your post: aka: I don’t care how moving Spring Awakening is. Go away.
I love musical theater a TON, but musical theater kids bring out the Regina George in me so fast… Pros and amateur adults are different, but undergrad theater majors on down? Clam up weird kid, and stop hollerin’ sharp notes at me. /awful personTwo snaps on that. One-on-one or similarly small interactions can be great, even (like with Tessa and Geoff, if they don’t hate me after this, which, I wouldn’t blame them), but in a group? When the culture solidifies like in bad yogurt? Get me the hell out of there.
I don’t hate you at all, but let’s get one thing straight here before I begin my elaborate defense of my lifestyle—I am not a musical theater kid, and I do get a little weary of people making that assumption time and again.
I do not have a giant catalog of showtunes in my head. I will not sing them at you. I have never auditioned for a musical. When I went to New York in winter I saw zero (ZERO) shows. I have never seen Spring Awakening, and I have no desire to. Glee makes my blood curdle (although I think Jane Lynch is one of the most incredible working actors/comedians out there—I just wish to god she was on a show I wanted to watch). I can carry a tune okay, but my voice is far from performance-quality, and the most sophisticated dance I’ve ever mastered is the Macarena. There are a few musicals I like (I don’t think any from the past ten years, as I tend to hate belty, overwrought, diva-fests like Rent and Wicked). I feel the same way about the genre as I do about sci-fi—unlike a lot of people, I am not predisposed to dislike something because it falls in that genre, but it damn well better be good if it’s going to win me over. I do not hate musical theater kids (lord knows I’m friends with a handful), but both they and I would agree that I am not one of them.
I know that from the outside there is very little distinction between types of performers, and the fact that I act and improvise might lead you to certain conclusions about my behavior. Yes, communities of even non-musical theater kids can get petty and perform-y and drama-filled and, let’s just say it, gross, self-indulgent, and incestuous. This is generally why many actors (myself included) tend to cycle in and out of their respective theater communities (why, for instance, I didn’t audition for any shows this quarter). The flipside is that few people outside that community understand the kind of commitment and effort the work we do requires, and spending hours (and I mean HOURS) together in rehearsal does tend to cement us together in the same way it does for an athletic team at practice. And just as it’s wrong to assume that all athletes are dumb jocks, it’s wrong to assume that all actors are shrill attention-whores.
But that said, I’m not married to theater as a medium either. I would honestly rather make my career as a comedic character actor in film and television (see Jane Lynch reference above), which feels a lot of the time like it’s something I have to constantly be defending to people (except my parents, who inexplicably think this is a brilliant plan for me—thanks, guys). I think a lot of people think because I could do other things (e.g. be a writer, go to grad school, teach high school Latin, etc.), that I should do other things (the assumption that actors are actors because they are too dumb and egomaniacal to be anything else), and that too is frustrating. And whether or not anyone is willing to admit it, apart from those who have already “made it”, actors are still kind of seen as the undesirables of society, people who are tiresome and unpleasant to be around. The love the sinner, hate the sin attitude is also all too prevalent (“Oh you’re alright, I just think what you do is a frivolous and irrelevant waste of time.”) in a way that it really doesn’t seem to be for other types of artists (my sister, the wonderful monstrousmash, for example, doesn’t catch nearly as much flak for doing visual art). And maybe all of this blather doesn’t really help improve that image (“oh look, another insecure actor with no sense of humor about herself!”), but it’s not particularly fun to feel like you are forever apologizing for what you love to do.
Source: novazembla
