<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"> <title></title> </head> <body> Carrol Cox wrote: <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid443A90C3.47F28ACE@ilstu.edu"> <pre wrap=""> (1) I don't see how commodification as such tells one anything at all about the quality of art.</pre> </blockquote> It doesn't. I was trying to make a larger point about how art is transmitted and transformed. <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid443A90C3.47F28ACE@ilstu.edu"> <pre wrap=""> (2) There is no reason to see "folk art" in and of itself as providing any guidance to the quality of the art produced.</pre> </blockquote> That wasn't my argument. <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid443A90C3.47F28ACE@ilstu.edu"> <pre wrap="">(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. </pre> </blockquote> Right. One can argue that early rock is a form of urban folk. <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid443A90C3.47F28ACE@ilstu.edu"> <pre wrap="">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.</pre> </blockquote> 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. <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid443A90C3.47F28ACE@ilstu.edu"> <pre wrap="">(4) Shakespeare certainly tried hard to commodify his work -- and as far as we know he seems to have succeeded in doing so.</pre> </blockquote> 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. <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid443A90C3.47F28ACE@ilstu.edu"> <pre wrap="">(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. </pre> </blockquote> Well, duh! <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid443A90C3.47F28ACE@ilstu.edu"> <pre wrap="">It is a category only important to bourgeois intellectuals under reasonably advanced capitalism.</pre> </blockquote> And this is not ad hominem? <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid443A90C3.47F28ACE@ilstu.edu"> <pre wrap="">(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).</pre> </blockquote> Possibly the stupidest thing you ever wrote. <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid443A90C3.47F28ACE@ilstu.edu"> <pre wrap=""> 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. </pre> </blockquote> 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? <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid443A90C3.47F28ACE@ilstu.edu"> <pre wrap="">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. </pre> </blockquote> That's not the fault of the art but of our cultural habits. <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid443A90C3.47F28ACE@ilstu.edu"> <pre wrap="">True wit is nature to advantage dressed / what oft was thought but neer so well expressed. </pre> </blockquote> Well, you could say this is just the 18th century justification for the social superiority and advantages of the cultivated man. <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid443A90C3.47F28ACE@ilstu.edu"> <pre wrap="">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_.</pre> </blockquote> OK. Whatever. <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid443A90C3.47F28ACE@ilstu.edu"> <pre wrap="">(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.</pre> </blockquote> ....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 <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid443A90C3.47F28ACE@ilstu.edu"> <pre wrap=""> </pre> </blockquote> </body> </html>