Category: Uncategorized

I’ve always supported the idea of humor as an art. Even more so when that art has a point. What a commentary on our country’s current political and social climate that quote on quote fake news sources such as Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” and Stephen Colbert’s “The Colbert Report” are actually offering up more accurate and intelligent sources of news than most of the cable networks are. Recently, John Oliver has joined the humor news world with his own show on HBO, a network that allows him a bit more freedom to critique and criticize the overall failures and incompetencies of our government. I want to share two segments of John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight,” both of which provide sharp, nuanced looks into two problems that are rarely viewed in changing ways. The first regards the country’s mass incarceration system, a problem– as you know if you’ve read Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow”– that is so heinous and out of control it has both liberal democrats and conservative republicans scrambling together to find a solution. John Oliver hits all of the important facts in just over 15 minutes, all the while capturing the scope and enormity of the problem while also making hilarious jokes. This is a hard thing to do!! But perhaps, he figures, one way to get people to finally start paying attention to this problem is to make them laugh. Well, here you are:

The next segment is much shorter, but provides a hilarious situation in which John Oliver, frustrated by the lack of visible representation in many aired debates on climate change, brings in 97 climate change scientists to argue against 3 climate change skeptics, so as better to match the actual representation of the ratio between believers and non-believers. The way he builds up to this moment is also extremely funny and, again, provides a new perspective on the issue. Instead of asking Americans whether or not they believe in climate change, he argues, polls should test whether or not Americans are wrong about something that is certainly happening. One more to enjoy here!

Let me start this by saying that I do not hate Edgar Allan Poe or his writing. In fact, I quite enjoy the things I have read that he has written. Instead, I hate how America has turned his name and works into a shorthand for “intelligent” or “gothic” (Hot Topic gothic, not art/architecture gothic). This has become such a pandemic that just hearing the name Edgar Allan Poe makes me groan in exasperation. Yes, his writing is interesting and deserves analysis, but why has this racist, obsessive, alcoholic become Hollywood’s poster boy for those quirky intelligent types that they love?

I understand why society might have chosen him. Everybody recognizes his name, he can be difficult to understand for people not used to literary analysis, and his writing is usually very dark and intimidating. Do you also know why I don’t understand it? Because everyone and their mother has read him, everyone has watched or made some sort of parody/interpretation of “The Raven”, everyone likes his writing. This is not a unique thing anymore. We can’t separate the goths from the populars by their appreciation of Edgar Allan Poe anymore. Lets, as a society, stop pretending that he is some sort of genius that only the most macabre can understand.

The use of Edgar Allan Poe in the way that I have described is my definition of pretentiousness. Your TV show does not become more intelligent because you added some slight allusion to “The Fall of the House of Usher”, your character is not more sympathetic because they carry around a copy of “Annabel Lee”, and you movie certainly is not worthy of praise just because its some action-ized remake of “The Telltale Heart”. I am not going to sit here and pat you on the back because of these things. If you actually did something new and interesting with it, then I might consider it, but until then, you still have a lot to prove to me.

I think the thing that pisses me off the most is that I can no longer read an author’r work without feeling like a pretentious asshole for liking it. So America, save me and start using other amazing literary works for your metaphors. Want your character to look intelligent? Have them read Faulkner. Want to add some darkness to you plot? Base it off of HP Lovecraft. Need some witty allusions? Feel free to use James Joyce. There is so much out there to work with, so why don’t you? I will stand by the sidelines waiting while you make some oh-so romantic reference to “Romeo and Juliet”.

I hate the word smart. It comes steeped in so many connotations that I’m always skeptical when someone uses this word to describe me. A on a paper – smart; correct someone’s spelling – smart, maybe a know it all, but smart; remember the name of the man whose assassination was the catalyst for WWI (archduke Franz Ferdinand) – smart. Smart can mean dorky, smart can mean pretentious, smart can mean you’re expected to have all the answers. Frankly, I don’t want to be smart. Cue gasps (sorry mom and dad).

What I do want to be is educated, intellectual, motivated, maybe even talented. To be labeled as smart comes with too much baggage and the wrong kind of assumptions. Take me and my step-brother, for example. We both went to the same high school and college, we both got about the same grades, thus both of us have been called “smart.” But we’re completely different. He can look at a textbook and memorize it’s contents, I need to take thorough notes and study. He’s an excellent test taker, I’m average. Where he excels in the ability to retain information, I excel in hard work. We got the same grades because where I was struggling to understand concepts he was struggling to put forth the effort. I work harder, he knows more facts. So who is “smarter?”

Take jeopardy, the game where your smartness means nothing if you can’t hit the buzzer at exactly the right time, and if you are able to do both, well, that’s just talent. A baseball player or coach’s ability to analyze the game, know the physics, strategy, and history of the sport, is that talent or smarts? Every time someone refers to someone else as “smart” I start thinking about how different that person’s brand of smarts is from mine. No he just works hard; no he just knows facts; no she’s just talented; no he’s all talk; no she just has a big vocabulary. Not smart. None of these qualifications for smart seem to add up to anything cohesive. Street smart, book smart, hard working, photographic memory – these are all contradictions, yet they all fall under the category of smart. With this, the whole ideology behind smart begins to unravel itself.

The concept of smart is a flawed one; it is a generalization that seeks to rank individual worth, but as I’ve hopefully shown, we all express completely different types of smarts. I think it’s time to develop a new go-to vocabulary to acknowledge people’s strengths, then we can step back and see how interdependent we are on one another instead of trying to make a hierarchy out of the rigid smart/dumb binary we are so wrapped up in. If it weren’t for the science minds out there, I wouldn’t have a computer or an iPhone, and if it weren’t for people like me, those people wouldn’t have art and literature or this blog for that matter. I’m throwing smart out in exchange for creative, articulate, and educated, what about you?

Our generation has been defined by technology. From iphones to ipods, surface pros to high performance computers, we have grown up in an age where Google always knows the answer, you aren’t dating until it is Facebook official, and leaving home without your phone simply isn’t an option.

Technology has allowed for new types of art to develop and flourish but it has also changed the way which the classical arts are experienced and pursued. The Metropolitan Opera in New York City is one company who has accepted the challenges and advantages which technology presents. In 2006, the Metropolitan Opera launched their program “The Met: Live in HD” which live streams opera performances to movie theaters around the world. The live transmissions has made the physical location of the operas more accessible, and while a movie theater experience is different than an opera house, the transmissions have added a aspect to the performance – the art of filmatography.

Designer Lesia Trubat González created a wearable electronic called E-Traces which has added an additionally layer of art to the classical art form of ballet. The concept of the technology is to capture the movements which occur during dance and translate them into a two dimensional visual experience. The sensors are attached to the pointe shoes and, when in contact with the ground, the sensors record the pressure and movement of the dancer’s feet then sending a signal to an electronic device which shows the data graphically.

While E-Traces is not revolutionary, it is an interesting application of how technology can impact the manner in which art is experienced. This technological advancement, along with programs such as “The Met: Live in HD”, have provided new avenues to experience the classical arts making them more accessible and practical in today’s technology infused society.