CMST 2000 Final Exam - Professor: Jeremy Citrome PDF

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Professor: Jeremy Citrome...

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Professor Jeremy Citrome CMST 2000-001 1. Adorno and Horkheimer believe that light art and serious art exists to please different types of people depending on their interests. Light art being forms of art that are general and very predictable; like radio or television shows. Whereas serious art is more of the type that does not conform to society's expectations, it is created out of want and not out of need for money. Depending on the type of person you are and what your interests may be, you could choose out of either for your entertainment, judgement free. However, to Bourdieu, the types of art should be distributed or viewed at depending on social class. Those that are more educated are of a higher social class and would therefore be able to have the mental intelligence and capacty to understand the deep layers that are associated with serious art. To him, with higher education comes a higher appreciation for the finer things in life, i.e. serious art. He believes that those who are less educated are able to be satiated by light art because they are not capable of understanding the true meaning depicted by serious art. He also believes that a connection is made when viewing art. So higher class people are more likely to relate to serious art because of what serious art depicts. And vice versa, lower class people (those less educated) are more able to relate to light art. He believes there should not be a mixture because it will cause confusion among the lower-class people who cannot understand the serious art. Personally, I am more on the side of Adorno and Horkheimer because I think art is for everyone. The artists surely did not have in mind who they intended the art for (in terms of social class). I think that art is created so that we all may enjoy it depending on our interests and feelings.

Sometimes, the same person may love both light and serious art depending on the day and their mood. That is perfectly okay in my views. I don't think that there should be any discrimination when it comes to art - there is something for everyone and no one should make aristocratic claims about who should or should not view the types of art.

2. Baudrillard and Barthes have in common the thought that much in society is done to pacify a larger evil. Barthes believes that by bringing light an evil doing about a society or a person or place, they are able to hide something much more sinister that they are doing. Baudrillard also believes that certain places that we go to or certain events that happen are there to hide a much more sinister thing: that the life we live and everything we think we are experiencing is all a reality. So, places like Disneyland and prison are neither real nor imaginary, instead they are formulated to force us to think they are places of imagination/reprimanding. Disney is made for us to think it is an imaginary world because it houses pirates, magic, and talking animals: things that do not exist in the simulated world we live in. So, it makes it the perfect place for us to be tricked is the fantasy land and distract us from the fact that the world we live in and walk in is the actual fantasy land. This is similar to Barthes views because he believes that we are able to hide from a horrible reality by admitting to a smaller evil. Essentially, producing a fantasy land to hide from a worse fantasy land. The notion that the fantasy lands we are placed into (Disney) is seemingly better than the world we live in, despite the fact that the world we live in is nothing but a simulation, is also prevalent.

I can see where this idea might derive from because it may seem as if everything that has happened in the world has only happened to distract us from even worse events. A lot of people seem to think that whenever something horrid happens to the world health, something significant happens in politics so that we are distracted from how quickly the world is crumbling. It makes sense to think like this, but I believe that it all happens by coincidence. That is, much of what we experience is, yes, evil; but smaller evil events do not just crop up in order to hide the larger evil. All of this cannot possibly be planned to satiate the anger of the society....