Art/Entertainment

[joanna bujes]

At 06:04 PM 06/10/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>What is the distinction between the two? Entertainment exploits the
>illusions that the average citizen has about their current social relations,
>while art explodes those illusions, attempting to gain insight into the real
>social relations among real people. Art can have entertaining aspects,
>especially drama (Shakespeare) or opera (Mozart), but entertainment rarely
>has an artistic effect because they are directed at two opposed purposes:
>Entertainment to exploit illusions, art to explode illusions.

It's more complicated than that; you're leaving out the audience. Thus, we 
can have concentration camp commanders returning home to listen to Bach and 
Beethoven. Did they hear the same thing as you? If so, how did they get up 
and go back to work the next morning?

You're also leaving out the artist: artists can think they're creating art 
when they're not. Example: Steven Spielberg. Or, they can be "entertaining" 
but with a quality of consciousness/sensibility that raises it to the level 
of art. Example: Billie Holliday, Robert Johnson, Daniel Defoe, Collette.

I want to agree that entertainment puts you to sleep, while art wakes you 
up; but there's a lot more to it than that.

Joanna