“True art, when it happens to us, challenges the ‘I’ that we are.”
I’ve been an shambled academic for almost two decades now. This may be the most on-point essay I’ve ever read. Absolutely mind blowing.
Tag: link
10 Photographers You Should Ignore
To the extent that Bryan Formhals and Blake Andrews call bullshit on all the one-dimensional hangers-on who trot out influence as justification for shit work, I agree–vociferously, in fact.
What really grinds my gears is the unqualified ‘ignore’ in the title.
Do they mean stop ascribing undue merit to slipshod homage to great work the image maker does not understand? If so, ‘ignore’ is not even close to the appropriate word. ‘Emulate’ is closer.
Or, do they mean pay no attention whatsoever to the work of these artists? Overall, the commentary suggests–nominally–such isn’t the point.
Why use ‘ignore’ though? I understand & sympathize with–although I can’t join in–the anti-MFA fervor. But there seems a cynical underlying critique of the enduring relevance/importance of photographic masters due to a perceived diminution of the merit of the original in the face of wide spread, soulless counterfeits. I call bullshit on that notion. It’s identical to saying that because an ‘Xtian’ murders an abortion provider or a ‘Muslim’ detonates a suicide vest on a crowded bus that these religious outliers are endemic of the religion they claim.
As criticism its lazy, sloppy and condescendingly douche-baggy.
And I am reserving comment on the Stephen Shore entry; its Philistine insights act as a bellows on the embers of outsize violence smoldering within me.
Pulling Back The Porn Blanket
Why society should learn what porn is not.
I agree that it is fucking tiresome when cocksocks add weight to their lazy assumptions by deploying loaded terms in knee-jerk fashion.
Insofar as those idiots have made ‘porn’ a ubiquitous designation for what ought to be termed ‘explicit’ or ‘adult’, I am on board with Eliot’s critique.
However, piling the erotica vs porn dichotomy on top of the porn/not-porn question adds complexity when less was sought. (Not to mention bestowing an enormously fucking problematic privilege on authorial intent in relationship to post non-authorial interpretations–i.e. I, the author, intended it as erotica not porn and therefore it is erotica. Larry Flynt would have been happier than a pig in shit with such a distinction to claim.)
Eliot wishes to distinguish between pornography and erotica. Where pornography is defined by obscene content and little, if any, artistic merit and “erotica is art or literature that focuses on the emotional connection as well as the sexual experience.”
And just so you know: porn and erotica are never-the-twain-shall-meet, 120% incompatible.
I am going to try hard but fail miserably at overlooking the fact that Eliot uses E. L. James 50 Shades of Gray as an example of the focus on emotional connection in erotica. By dint, she is suggesting 50 Shades of Gray is ‘art or literature’; a suggestion to which anyone who gives a single good goddamn about literature will take umbrage– James is a qualitatively fucking atrocious ‘writer’. (EDIT: Ms. Eliot. She never labels 50 Shades of Gray is erotica, merely points out that it “focuses on complex emotions.” My post hoc fallacy bad and apologies all around.)
I realize this suggested framework is very loosely inspired by Audre Lorde. And I must confess an inexcusable lack of familiarity with her writing considering what I know of her life deeply impresses me. Still, I think there’s a point that someone along the line missed.
For good, bad or ill, attributing the designation of porn to content for nothing more than sexually explicit content is one way the word is used in ordinary language.
Labeling something with the term ‘porn’ doesn’t happen in a vacuum, however. There is context to consider. The three examples Eliot mentions in the first paragraph all share a similar feature: the Puritanical conceit wherein graphic depictions of sex are fundamentally obscene.
Yes, it’s facile sanctimony and moral outrage as an avoidance strategy for avoiding the ’rough ground’ of grappling with what obscenity entails.Yes, things shouldn’t be done that way. Words have meaning and should be used correctly. But to suggest different categories for various depictions of sex based upon criteria misses what original made new categories fucking necessary.
This whole porn vs. erotica dichotomy is a straw man.
Now, if you really want to make porn mean something more instead of less specific–as the blanket metaphor suggests–let’s have a conversation about obscenity not governed by reactionary responses. While we’re at it, let’s discuss if and to what extent producing work for profit can ever be creatively meritorious.
Acetylene Eyes 