When I studied Shakespeare years ago I came up with a theory, and it has been blown out of the water. Historians have found out a lot about Shakespeare’s life, but not everything. We can read about where he was born and where he went to school. We read about whom he married and his theatrical company. But there is this mysterious gap. Between having a couple of kids and showing up in London as a playwright, there are seven years that have been nick-named the “lost years” because no one knows where he was or what he was doing.
So I figured all academia must be pretty dense. I read a bunch of plays and knew exactly where he must have been. He was in Italy. He always placed plays in Italy. His themes were so often pulled from Italy. He must have been in Italy.
After I solved that little problem for myself I continued on with my life without giving it a second thought. I fell in love with theater and acting. I decided that a performance is a great way to communicate ideas and I decided to go into film. Then I found out about the liberal arts and started studying them. And then I realized something: my old conclusion was probably wrong. Shakespeare didn’t need to go to Italy to get the stuff he put in his plays. There are good reasons for him to have been using that subject material without a tourist trip being the reason. How did I figure this out? I was introduced to the same subject material.
Shakespeare lived near the beginning of the age of reason. There was a revival of thinking. Where had a lot of thinking been done before this age? Well, ancient Greece was one, and Italy started building on their tradition. As this reason traveled northwest across Europe, there were definite traces of Greece and Italy mixed in the thinking.
I realized what this means. Shakespeare had a liberal arts education. He didn’t go to a school on being a playwright to become the most famous of all playwrights. He studied the classics and learned about human nature. He must have read books like Plutarch’s Lives and The Odyssey. He had a store of subject material that he had internalized and then was able to produce plays that could speak to the low life of the pits and the nobility in the balcony, and continue to entertain a couple of hundred years later. If you want to create classics, it’s a good idea to study classics.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Aristocratic vs. Democratic
The arts only affect the people who experience them. If you don’t experience something, you can’t be influenced by it.
As we learn about the arts, we focus on the arts of the aristocracy. Why? It is because the royalty and aristocracy ruled history. DeTocqueville mentions that in a democracy the arts will change, they will increase in quantity and decrease in quality. Is this bad? Michelangelo was a great painter and sculptor. His paintings cover walls and ceilings. His sculptures are of giant marble. But the only people who could afford them were Popes and the very wealthy people of Italy. Then look at the hundreds of small paintings created by the Flemish painters of the 17th Century*. These were paintings that could be bought by almost anybody. They were small and many could be quickly produced. Which ones influenced more people in the time they were made?
Is art supposed to tell us about the character of a people? Is it supposed to inspire? Should we feel something as we look at them?
In our world there is a conglomerate of art. There is ‘aristocratic’ art and ‘democratic’ art. It is easy to look at the grandeur of the former and despair about the quantity of the later that is produced by our society. Are we compromising quality for the sake of quantity? I don’t think that is the question. Art is created to be experienced. Art is supposed to make a difference, to share the mood of the artist in order to impact the world. We have democratic art because we are living in a democratic world. Everyone wants to have art in their home, and music to listen to.
We live in a world where the aristocratic art of the past has been moved out of the homes of the aristocracy and been put into museums where it can be view by the masses. That shows where the power in our society lies.
So what does this mean to an artist? Just like an author, an artist must know their audience. Who do they want to reach? Then art must be created for those people. Speak in a medium that will communicate the ideas you want it to, and that will be experienced by the people you want it to be experienced by. If you create aristocratic art, just know it will only ever reach a select audience. If you create democratic art, produce it in a way that more people will be able to experience it. Art is being produced for the masses right now for a reason. As an artist, I would rather create art to be viewed by the masses, not the few.
As we learn about the arts, we focus on the arts of the aristocracy. Why? It is because the royalty and aristocracy ruled history. DeTocqueville mentions that in a democracy the arts will change, they will increase in quantity and decrease in quality. Is this bad? Michelangelo was a great painter and sculptor. His paintings cover walls and ceilings. His sculptures are of giant marble. But the only people who could afford them were Popes and the very wealthy people of Italy. Then look at the hundreds of small paintings created by the Flemish painters of the 17th Century*. These were paintings that could be bought by almost anybody. They were small and many could be quickly produced. Which ones influenced more people in the time they were made?
Is art supposed to tell us about the character of a people? Is it supposed to inspire? Should we feel something as we look at them?
In our world there is a conglomerate of art. There is ‘aristocratic’ art and ‘democratic’ art. It is easy to look at the grandeur of the former and despair about the quantity of the later that is produced by our society. Are we compromising quality for the sake of quantity? I don’t think that is the question. Art is created to be experienced. Art is supposed to make a difference, to share the mood of the artist in order to impact the world. We have democratic art because we are living in a democratic world. Everyone wants to have art in their home, and music to listen to.
We live in a world where the aristocratic art of the past has been moved out of the homes of the aristocracy and been put into museums where it can be view by the masses. That shows where the power in our society lies.
So what does this mean to an artist? Just like an author, an artist must know their audience. Who do they want to reach? Then art must be created for those people. Speak in a medium that will communicate the ideas you want it to, and that will be experienced by the people you want it to be experienced by. If you create aristocratic art, just know it will only ever reach a select audience. If you create democratic art, produce it in a way that more people will be able to experience it. Art is being produced for the masses right now for a reason. As an artist, I would rather create art to be viewed by the masses, not the few.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Subconscious Communication
One of the powers of the medium of film: its ability to communicate with the subconscious. I remember hearing the story of the lawsuit about Coca-Cola when I was young. They switched out one slide of a movie released in theaters to say "You are thirsty. Buy a Coke." Their sales shot way up because of this. The people watching the movie couldn't actually read the message as it flipped by in just one frame of the show, yet their subconscious mind picked up on it.
Our brains are amazing, they never forget anything. Sure there are plenty of times where we can't remember anything, but it is still there, hidden away in our minds. Film uses a combination of fast moving pictures and layers of sound to tell stories, and half of what you experience in a film is just what happens in your subconscious mind.
Fun to think about as a film director...after all, what do I want to communicate with my audience? I'm not going to suggest they buy coke. (as a matter of fact I think that would be a really bad idea) However, I will want to communicate something. That's the whole point of being an artist after all.
Our brains are amazing, they never forget anything. Sure there are plenty of times where we can't remember anything, but it is still there, hidden away in our minds. Film uses a combination of fast moving pictures and layers of sound to tell stories, and half of what you experience in a film is just what happens in your subconscious mind.
Fun to think about as a film director...after all, what do I want to communicate with my audience? I'm not going to suggest they buy coke. (as a matter of fact I think that would be a really bad idea) However, I will want to communicate something. That's the whole point of being an artist after all.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Quotes
I was emailed a quote by Cicero which I wanted to share here, along with my variation.
"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."
-Cicero- 55 BC
"Your budget should be balanced, your account should be refilled, private debt should be reduced, the arrogance of consumerism should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to others should be curtailed lest you become bankrupt. You must again learn to work, instead of living on others assistance."
-Economist Director- 2009
I really do agree with Cicero, I think he is right on. Yet would people be so quick to share quotes like the first one if it was always paired with one like the second? Just something interesting to think about.
"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."
-Cicero- 55 BC
"Your budget should be balanced, your account should be refilled, private debt should be reduced, the arrogance of consumerism should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to others should be curtailed lest you become bankrupt. You must again learn to work, instead of living on others assistance."
-Economist Director- 2009
I really do agree with Cicero, I think he is right on. Yet would people be so quick to share quotes like the first one if it was always paired with one like the second? Just something interesting to think about.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Isn't it interesting how much time people spend pointing out the amount of debt our government is in? You take one look at the word "trillions" and you know that we are hopelessly buried, and it frustrates us citizens to see the ridiculous decisions our elected officials continue to make concerning our country's finances.
And yet, if we look at the overall situation, we would realize that the government is acting exactly the same as the majority of us citizens! We may not have trillions of dollars worth of debt, but our individual thousands seem as impossible for us to pay off as trillions are for the government.
What difference does it make to talk about the country's financial health? Unless you are a politician or talking to one, probably not much.
What difference would it make to actively improve our own financial health? Tons! So despite the fact that it's easy to talk, maybe we can step it up in our actions and actually make a difference. What a concept!
There are loads of places/people who give advice for getting a handle on one's personal economy. "Create a debt reduction plan" "Set aside a percent of your income for long term savings" "Follow a budget"...the list goes on and on. They are things we have all heard before. Learning how to do it doesn't seem so difficult. With so many resources out there, anyone should be able to figure out a way to get out of debt.
It is our responsibility to break out of the mold of our debt based society, and do what it takes to be good stewards of our resources. It requires acting upon the advice that is given though, and therein is the difficulty.I have been trying to budget recently, (it is one of my topics of inquiry) and guess what? It is hard to keep a budget. Good grief, it's hard to even balance a checkbook! It requires new habits and lots of discipline to develop them. Getting out of debt wont be easy, but it is worth it. It will change the economy of our nation if we all take responsibility for our personal resources. So what do I suggest? Pick a plan and follow it. Do what it takes, and actually act to get out of your personal debt.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Medium=Message
The medium determines the message. This is the thesis of one of my favorite books "Amusing Ourselves To Death" by Neil Postman.
It fascinates me how our society is so visual. I find myself falling asleep during a ten minute talk or loosing focus in a forty minute lecture, but I can stay up all hours of the night watching a movie. As I was writing a letter to my grandpa two days ago I discovered how difficult it is to express what I want to say without including a :) or ;) or :P. (And I knew my grandpa would not understand it if I included them, so I was working very hard not to.) It made me step back to take a look at myself though, and I realized I don't only use words to express my thoughts; I use images a lot of the time.
If the medium is the message, what is being said?
Written words take training to understand, they follow a logical flow, and they use only one of our five senses.
Film you understand instantly, is an emotion based medium, and is both seen and heard. (And what you hear is on multiple levels, you hear the lines of the actors, the score, and sound effects.)
So what can be said using film which is unique to its medium, as opposed to what can be said only, or best, by written words? And is there a way to bridge the gap and say something logical and exact in meaning in the storytelling and emotional medium which is film?
Just something I have been wondering about.
It fascinates me how our society is so visual. I find myself falling asleep during a ten minute talk or loosing focus in a forty minute lecture, but I can stay up all hours of the night watching a movie. As I was writing a letter to my grandpa two days ago I discovered how difficult it is to express what I want to say without including a :) or ;) or :P. (And I knew my grandpa would not understand it if I included them, so I was working very hard not to.) It made me step back to take a look at myself though, and I realized I don't only use words to express my thoughts; I use images a lot of the time.
If the medium is the message, what is being said?
Written words take training to understand, they follow a logical flow, and they use only one of our five senses.
Film you understand instantly, is an emotion based medium, and is both seen and heard. (And what you hear is on multiple levels, you hear the lines of the actors, the score, and sound effects.)
So what can be said using film which is unique to its medium, as opposed to what can be said only, or best, by written words? And is there a way to bridge the gap and say something logical and exact in meaning in the storytelling and emotional medium which is film?
Just something I have been wondering about.
Friday, September 25, 2009
A Brief Introduction
What are the economic philosophies that lead to freedom, prosperity, and happiness? As I was studying political philosophy and political economy last year this question became my personal inquiry. The economic structure of a nation or an individual is of great importance, and it is worth looking at to make sure it is good; and any problems are fixed correctly.
Another question that came to mind was: how would a modern philosopher or economist actually share their ideas with the world? No one I know (except for some crazy college students) are actually going to read "Wealth of Nations" or "Human Action" types of books. The mediums of today are film and music, and the one that I have chosen to effectively communicate through is film. It is a powerful mode of communication whose potential is waiting to be tapped. So the question here is, how do you make a philosophical argument using an emotion based medium?
Another question that came to mind was: how would a modern philosopher or economist actually share their ideas with the world? No one I know (except for some crazy college students) are actually going to read "Wealth of Nations" or "Human Action" types of books. The mediums of today are film and music, and the one that I have chosen to effectively communicate through is film. It is a powerful mode of communication whose potential is waiting to be tapped. So the question here is, how do you make a philosophical argument using an emotion based medium?
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