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Flesnolk posted:Good genre fiction is an oxymoron. The term in itself means it's not good enough to be real fiction. Ah yes, the well known distinction between "real" fiction, where the book is really not factual and "fake" fiction, where you can't be certain it's not a true story!
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Mar 17, 2019 00:08
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Bilirubin posted:Thinking about this more, I suppose it could be following a definition of skillful--not everyone can entertain. But I usually think of art as enabling us to perceive the world from a different perspective. See, that's interesting to me, because I'd argue that many works of art in fields like painting and sculpture absolutely don't serve that purpose. If you look at, for example, something by Jackson Pollock, how on Earth can you use this  to see the world from a different perspective? I mean, I find some works of abstract art beautiful, but I wouldn't say that they're meaningful, certainly not in the sense you're suggesting. Hmm. I suppose, just spitballing on the spot, I might contend that art is the creation of a work which intends to produce an emotional effect in the consumer, and that the quality of a work of art can best be judged by the extent to which it succeeds in producing the desired effect.
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Mar 19, 2019 11:00
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Mel Mudkiper posted:By creating a working paradigm which successfully disentangles meaning and allows for later critics to build off of How do you tell that meaning was "successfully disentangled"? What's your metric for "success" here? It seems to me like you haven't actually addressed his -- to my mind not wholly unreasonable -- question of why you expect everyone else to blithely accept the assertion that "the great thinkers of the previous century" have created some kind of platonically ideal method of viewing literature within which all present-day discussion must be constrained.
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Mar 19, 2019 14:56
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I fundamentally disagree with the idea that art primarily causes an emotional response because jangling keys in front of an infant creates an emotional response, but one would hardly call it art. Can you define "meaning" here? I find it very difficult to conceive of anyone deriving meaning as I understand it from a Pollock painting, or most pieces of music without lyrics, but I'd find it equally difficult to credit an assertion that those things aren't art.
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Mar 19, 2019 14:59
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Do you not see why an academic tradition that goes as far back as classical greece and has its tendrils in every epoch of history might have self-evident relevance? If it's relevance is self-evident, convincing people of its validity should either be unnecessary or trivial, surely? Mel Mudkiper posted:I guess we need to clarify your definition of meaning then, because there is self evident meaning in both of those examples You keep doing this, is the thing. You've done it in a bunch of arguments, in fact. When someone asks you to explain something, you proclaim "it's self evident!" or something along those lines, and deflect the discussion onto how ignorant the questioner is for not being familiar with the authorities you're arguing from. If these things were really as obvious as you imply, it wouldn't take you more than a sentence or two to explain how they are "self-evident". So by all means, articulate the meaning of Pollock's Autumn Rhythm for me. Edit: Look, I'm not arguing that the historical tradition of critical study is in toto irrelevant, but it seems to me as though you're using your familiarity with it and others' ignorance as a blunt weapon by referring to it as a monolith and claiming the arguments of others fall flat because of it, rather than actually refuting peoples' arguments by referencing that tradition. The_White_Crane fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Mar 19, 2019 |
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Mar 19, 2019 15:22
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Lets take this Pollock painting "I can find" is a pretty far cry from "self-evident", though, isn't it? Mel Mudkiper posted:The one that sticks out to me the most is the significance of the futility of representational art in the mechanical age, as written about the Lyotard in "The Post-Modern Condition." The painting acts as a rejection of the notion that art must be representational, and that the quality of the art is determined by the quality of the representation. Firstly, it only can be considered a rejection of the idea that art must be representational if you accept that it is art. Now I do, as it happens, but if someone's starting from the premise that art must be representational, then this painting is ergo not art but something else, and fails to say anything about art. Mel Mudkiper posted:In the age of the photograph, the art of representation has been perfected. In that perfection, the visual arts have been freed from the obligation to depict the physical world as it is. This painting is a representation of the freedom of modern visual art having been released from the bonds of representation. People were making non-representational art long before the photograph, though. Hell, look at the Islamic world, where representational art was explicitly forbidden. To say that only because of the perfection of representation via photography have the visual arts been released from the necessity of it seems to presume that necessity in the first place, which I don't think is supported by history. Mel Mudkiper posted:It is also a rejection of the labor theory of value that is sometimes applied to Art. This states that the value of an artwork can be determined by the impossibility of someone replicating it. This, again, goes back to Benjamin's "The Art of Mechanical Reproduction." Now that the Mona Lisa can be reprinted hundreds of times, the "talent" that made the Mona Lisa existant is no longer as valuable a commodity. In the same way it is a rejection of the representational merits of art, it is also a rejection of the complexity merits of art. Something being difficult to do is no longer valuable when it can be easily replicated. I don't see how this painting represents a rejection of that theory in any specific fashion, unless your argument is that it was "easy" to produce and thus inherently rejects the idea that art derives merit from being difficult to produce, in which case A) I'm not sure I accept the premise that it was easy to produce, and B) see my earlier point about this relying on your initial acceptance of the piece as art.
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Mar 19, 2019 15:44
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I think the problem I'm having here is that from my perspective, if you have to look for meaning in something, that's not what I'd call "self-evident". Hmm. I'd maintain that meaning requires two things. 1) Intent to convey information on the part of the creator. 2) That the creation successfully conveys that information to the audience. For example, if I scream an incoherent series of vowels, and you go "Aha, they're lamenting the injustice of global capitalism!" when in actual fact I just hit my thumb with a hammer, that's not meaning. On the other hand, if I say "Kill the rentiers and their lackies!" and you promptly stab your landlord, I don't think much credence would be given to my claim that I meant that to mean "Invest your money wisely in ethically run co-operatives!"
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Mar 19, 2019 16:02
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Mel Mudkiper posted:You do see the issue with using Muslim art to be refutation of a critique of western traditions yes? If you want to limit your interpretation to "western traditions" maybe don't say "art" when you mean "western traditions". 
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Mar 19, 2019 16:04
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Death of the Author. The creators intent doesnt matter, all that matters is the interplay between observer and observed, reader and text, listener and sound, etc. I'm perfectly willing to accept that one can find interpretations of an art piece that weren't intended by the creator, and that art pieces can convey information about the creator that wasn't information they intended to give, but I take issue with calling that meaning. When we say, "he meant to catch the bus", we ascribe intent to the actor. When we say "I didn't mean to break that vase", we disclaim intent. It's inherent in the word. Mel Mudkiper posted:It seems self evident when discussing modernism ... Do we need to keep a counter or something? Edit: Mel Mudkiper posted:Also, I did not try to find meaning. I found meaning. What I tried to do was qualify my meaning through a critical toolkit. I was not finding a response, I was refining my response. I truly don't mean to sound like a dismissive rear end in a top hat when I say this, so I apologise if that's how it comes off, but I'd contend that you didn't find meaning in the painting so much as you invented a narrative about it. The_White_Crane fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Mar 19, 2019 |
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Mar 19, 2019 16:08
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Why are you using grammar as a foundation for criticality? Why has your version of criticality adopted a use of a word which runs entirely contrary to every other use of it? Look, my perspective on Death of the Author is this: You're making up your own story about a piece of art and trying to find justifications within the art to support your created narrative. The narratives you create may be more or less reasonable, but they're just that: narratives you create. They say more about you than they do about the art, and to pretend that they have some kind of objective value and that other people are obliged to form their own opinions of the art in light of them is insupportable as far as I'm concerned. The_White_Crane fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Mar 19, 2019 |
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Mar 19, 2019 16:19
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:That sort of thing is pretty standard for lit-crit. There are lots of terms of art. I mean, that's true, but "lots of people do it" doesn't invalidate my point that what's being called "meaning" here is nebulously defined and not congruent with the usual understanding of the word. I'd object less if someone could actually define what meaning is supposed to be in the critical sense, but as far as I can tell it seems to be "whatever someone says they see in this Rorschach blot".
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Mar 19, 2019 16:29
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Mel Mudkiper posted:B. I loving care about this poo poo. One of the parts of caring about this poo poo is caring about the millennia of critical tradition that has lead to the current moment. If I let a bunch of people arm chair theorize about art without chiming in with actual sources, it creates this idea that critical theory is not an academic field but instead a sort of unimportant diversion that anyone can take part in without taking it too seriously, like croquet on a sunday afternoon. See, this is a fair point and I don't want to succumb to the "my ignorance is as good as your knowledge" trap, which I must acknowledge I may have been doing, but... It seems to me as though there's an inherent contradiction between claiming that Death of the Author means that the only important thing is the interplay between the art and the audience, and simultaneously claiming that people need "actual sources" to back up their interpretations. You say "It's irrelevant if you agree with my interpretation because it is my interpretation", but if you're going to take the tack that your interpretation isn't subject to dispute simply because it's your own, what's the point in harking back to the established tradition?
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Mar 19, 2019 17:06
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I am not saying people need sources to back up their interpretations. I am saying people need sources to back up their assertions. We interpret art constantly, whether we do so consciously or unconsciously. Even the most untrained and simple mind still interprets what they see. Its why i said "its irrelevant if you agree with my interpretation." An interpretation is a wholly subjective and intimate relationship between reader and text. Now, if I want to make an ASSERTION about art, such as "Art is something that evokes emotion" or "this art has no meaning", you need to have a framework in which to make that statement justifiable. Ah! There we go. Thank you, I think that was the missing piece. I was, without really thinking about it, presuming that all interpretations are automatically assertions, which probably says something unflattering about my psyche. But if one draws that distinction (and I think it's an excellent one), then it clears up most of my complaints about your position.
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Mar 19, 2019 17:28
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Mel Mudkiper posted:No worries, glad we could come to a consensus on this.    FWIW I appreciate your willingness to continue engaging with me and presuming sincerity on my part rather than assuming I'm just trolling. I must admit I sometimes play devil's advocate or pose my questions in deliberately provocative ways (which is probably a habit I should try and break), but I'd never ask something I didn't actually want an answer to.
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Mar 19, 2019 17:43
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Bilirubin posted:really hamfisted and obvious writing, which doesn't match with my impression from the rest of the book (so far). Does match my experience of Jemisin though. To make sure she was being properly sledgehammer-subtle with her metaphors in the Broken Earth series, her oppressed group are "Orogenes", offensively nicknamed "roggas". Edit: Oh god, I didn't even notice until I had to type it, but "orogene" is an anagram of "negro" with a couple of extra letters stuck on. The_White_Crane fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Apr 9, 2019 |
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Apr 9, 2019 14:52
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The DPRK posted:Is there any difference between a human that can turn into a dragon and a dragon that can turn into a man? Well since Mel has proven that anything can be a dragon, including butterflies, Li Po says the answer is that all endeavor is ultimately futile.
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Apr 15, 2019 09:49
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ShinsoBEAM! posted:It borrows pretty heavily from Chinese Fantasy, and has spaceships and aliens. *sucks teeth* Oooh, don't say that! Mel will come and kick the poo poo out of you for saying that Journey to the West is fantasy.
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May 15, 2019 16:49
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Sampatrick posted:Show don't tell makes me think of some guys opening up a gay bar on a military base BRB writing a pitch for HBO.
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May 22, 2019 09:21
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nankeen posted:fantasy, science fiction, horror, magical realism, "young adult", all of these terms are just insulting and unnecessary attempts to define the indefinable, and from now on i will make it my mission that if i hear any man invoke these terms, i will slay him Fantasy! Science Fiction! Horror! Magical Realism! Young Adult! By your powers combined I am Captain Genre!
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Jun 1, 2019 16:30
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Finicums Wake posted:call me pleonasm Ishmael?
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Jul 1, 2019 10:54
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Sampatrick posted:JK Rowling is a transphobe so gently caress her and gently caress everything she wrote
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Jul 2, 2019 16:55
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Boy, I sure am glad they burned down the old expanded universe to get rid of the horrible trash it was full of and replace it with better stories!
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Jul 3, 2019 10:29
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We'll go through them like a vibroknife through ferrocrete! It's as clear as transparisteel!
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Jul 3, 2019 11:24
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I'll just leave this cursed image here:
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Aug 7, 2019 08:56
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No her big thing is to create a setting where people have magic superpowers that lead to them sometimes wiping out entire towns completely by accident, then portraying them as unfairly repressed and trying to make them a metaphor for the treatment of black people in the U.S.
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Oct 2, 2019 11:08
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quote:Janel shares some personality traits with Khirin as well. She is bold, snarky and very determined, Why it's almost like the author can't write different character types! 
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Dec 6, 2019 10:34
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(Also as a queer person the idea of using stallion/mare/foal/gelding to discuss people's gender identities or orientations makes my eyebrows reach the loving stratosphere.)
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Dec 6, 2019 11:23
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anilEhilated posted:I'd love to see a dragon interrogate imperialism. quote:Arguthax lifted the tax collector in one enormous talon. Wisps of flame showed around the edges of his teeth, as he shouted "From where does your political structure derive the legitimacy which grants it the moral entitlement to tax the unwilling?!"
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Dec 6, 2019 12:40
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Look, I found his autobiography: The cover character even has his haircut. 
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Feb 11, 2020 12:02
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 Look, I'm not current with all these Star Wars, okay?
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Feb 11, 2020 17:08
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 11:55 |
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Catfishenfuego posted:My friend found a vintage erotica novel they bought me for my birthday and the opening line is "Jorge's ejaculation of sperm lacked enthusiasm." So I'm going to nominate that as the best sex line and also best opening line ever written. I like that they felt the need to add "of sperm" just to make sure you didn't think he was making a sudden exclamation.
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Mar 13, 2020 12:17
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