To preface: this is the biggest quote ever... actually an excerpt from NEA Chairman Dana Gioia's 2007 commencement address at Stanford University. PLEASE READ THIS... and respond. Thanks.
THE CHALLENGING PLEASURES OF ART
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"There is an experiment I'd love to conduct. I'd like to survey a cross-section of Americans and ask them how many NBA players, MLB players, and American Idol finalists they can name. Then I'd ask them how many living American poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, and composers they can name. I'd even like to ask how many living American scientists or social thinkers they can name. . .
The loss of recognition for artists, thinkers, and scientists has impoverished our culture in innumerable ways, but let me mention one. When virtually all of a culture's celebrated figures are in sports or entertainment, how FEW POSSIBLE ROLE MODELS WE OFFER THE YOUNG.
There are so many other ways to lead a successful and meaningful life that are not denominated by money or fame. Adult life begins in a child's imagination, and we've relinquished that imagination TO THE MARKETPLACE...
Everything now is entertainment. And trhe purpose of the omnipresent commercial entertainment is TO SELL US SOMETHING. American culture has become one vast infomercial...
Don't get me wrong... I love entertainment. And I love the free market... the productivity and efficiency of the free market is beyond dispute. It has created a society of unprecedented prosperity. But we must remember that the marketplace does only one thing-- it puts a price on everything.
The role of culture, however, must go beyond economics. It is not focused on the price of things, but on their value. And, above all, culture should tell us what is beyond price, including what does not belong in the marketplace. A culture should also provide some cogent view os the good life beyond mass accumulation. In this respect, our culture is failing us...
I worry about a culture that bit by bit trades off the challenging pleasures of art for the easy comforts of entertainment. And that is exactly what is happening-- not just in media, but in the schools and in civic life.
Entertainment promises us a predictable pleasure-- humor, thrills, emotional titillation, or even the odd delight of being vicariously terrified. It exploits and manipulates who we are rather than challenges us with a vision of who we might become. A child who spends a month mastering Halo or NBA Live on XBox has not been awakened and transformed the way that a child would be spending the time rehearsing a play or learning to draw.
What is the defining difference between passive and active citizens? Curiously, it isn't income, geography, or even education. It depends on whether or not they read for pleasure and participate in the arts. These cultural activities seem to awaken a heigthened sense of individual awareness and social responsibility...
Art is an irreplaceable way or understanding and expressing the world-- equal to but distinct from scientific and conceptual methods. Art addresses us in the fullness of our being-- simultaneously speaking to our intellect, emotions, intuition, imagination, memory, and physical senses. There are some truths about life that can be expressed only as stories, or songs, or images.
Art delights, instructs, consoles. It educates our emotions. And it remembers. As Robert Frost once said about poetry, 'It is a remembering that which it would impoverish us to forget.'"
This excerpt was on the cover of the Orem Public Library newsletter Sept/Oct 2008.
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3 comments:
So true. There's a reason I don't let LMS wear clothes with Dora or Disney Princesses plastered all over them- my 2 year old does not need to be a billboard for someone else's ad campaign (especially one that we pay them for the privilege of being a part of). I shudder to think what will happen in a few years when she becomes aware of Hannah Montana, High School Musical, or whatever is being pushed at the time. I don't have anything against them individually, it's the over-marketing and the fact that they are everywhere, and on everything: clothing, shoes, snacks, hair doo-dads, school supplies, halloween costumes, you name it, their picture is plastered on it. Instead of cultivating creativity, this cultivates the pressure to conform and be the same as everyone else (gotta have it because everyone else does), and it's affecting younger and younger children. Rampant consumerism is not a good thing, especially when we allow it to take over and rule our lives.
love this quote. i know that i have always been really moved and at times obsessed with the arts---dance, music, poetry, film, paintings. as read this i realized that i haven't been doing a good job of seeking out current representations of these art forms. what a great reminder that there is so much out there to explore and make available for my kids. thanks!
Ironically, the things we call culture now: art, music, theatre, literature, etc. originated as forms of entertainment as well. As we know, entertainment of every kind has the capability of promoting good or evil, social agendas or commercial agendas, and so on. This concept is not new. Even the Bible was manipulated to benefit those in power.
If we lived "back in the day", would our Mothers have wanted us to read Chaucer? Were there parents who told their children that going to the theatre or listening to the music that we now believe to be inspired masterpieces was evil, or a waste of time?
Times change, culture changes. Over exposure to art can be just as damaging to a child (ballet, dance, choir, piano, violin, etc every day all day) as too much time spent playing video games and watching TV.
Pop culture is here to stay. Rather than fighting to eliminate it, lets seek for education, exposure, and most important of all, balance.
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