Carrol Cox wrote:
>(1) I don't see how commodification as such tells one anything at all
>about the quality of art.
>
It doesn't. I was trying to make a larger point about how art is
transmitted and transformed.
>(2) There is no reason to see "folk art" in and of itself as providing
>any guidance to the quality of the art produced.
>
That wasn't my argument.
>(3) It is also deucedly difficult to define folk art; I don't see how
>the early rock bands were any less or more folk art than the Border
>Ballads or Gospel music.
>
Right. One can argue that early rock is a form of urban folk.
>To start with the category ("folk art,"
>"gospel," "commercial rock") and from that beginning imply that any
>judgment of quality follows is (I think) closely analogous to ad hominem
>arguments in a debate. There is a tremendous quantity of really vile art
>produced by the folk, most of it perhaps thankfully lost in the debris
>of time.
>
The argument was about the relation of high and low, rather than good
and vile. I was actually arguing against the notion that low = vile.
>(4) Shakespeare certainly tried hard to commodify his work -- and as far
>as we know he seems to have succeeded in doing so.
>
He tried to make a living at it without an aristocratic patron; so, in
that sense, he had to write to/for his very mixed audience of urban
tradesmen. That's not the same thing as the creation of Disney art, the
very point of which is commodification.
>(5) I agree with Doug (perhaps going beyond his point) that
>"authenticity" is an obnoxious standard for any kind of achievement. In
>fact until the world was pretty well commodified no one worried about
>authenticity.
>
Well, duh!
>It is a category only important to bourgeois intellectuals
>under reasonably advanced capitalism.
>
And this is not ad hominem?
>(6) The world is oversupplied to the nth degree with great art (not just
>good but great, great meaning it can be equaled but not surpassed).
>
Possibly the stupidest thing you ever wrote.
> As a
>result great art is no longer a shared experience, since almost everyone
>makes his/her own selection out of the surplus of great art.
>
Is that the result of the "greatness" of the art or of the drive to
differentiate yourself from others on the basis of money, status, taste,
etc?
>But that
>means that great art is no longer great art, because the _use_ of great
>art is as a shared treasure, through which people share their
>understanding of the world, not a merely private experience through
>which one nurtures his/her sense of living a richer life than "those
>others" do.
>
That's not the fault of the art but of our cultural habits.
>True wit is nature to advantage dressed / what oft was
>thought but neer so well expressed.
>
Well, you could say this is just the 18th century justification for the
social superiority and advantages of the cultivated man.
>The two greatest European novels, in
>_my_ experience, have not been on any of the lists people have been
>posting: _Mansfield Park_ and _Charterhouse of Parma_. Each is far more
>illuminating of life within a capitalist world than (say) _Ulysses_,
>_War and Peace_, or _Moby Dick_.
>
OK. Whatever.
>(7) And what good is the Iliad in a world in which 99 out of a 100 of
>those who read either think Achilles is a thug or, if they see him as
>the tragic figure he is, see his tragedy in Aristotelian terms, a
>tragedy grounded in an error. But the poem portrays how he stands up
>under a tragedy not brought on by anything he did but imposed upon him
>from without.
>
....what "good" should it be? It will be taken as the reader is able to
take, understand, etc. Some, in an effort to understand it will enlarge
themselves a bit. Some, not.
Joanna
>
>
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