i wonder if the neko one would be explicable as parody

[mc776]

http://taxidermied.livejournal.com/42521.html

Also, just because it deserves a mention, HOLY FUCK WORST APOSTROPHE MISTAKE EVER


EDIT: Googling the guy out of trainwreck syndrome. Seems like he's made a bit of a name for himself. And the more I read, the less I like.

Nevermind the art thief issue for now, but let's just consider what we could presume to be original material. My gripe is much simpler: Todd Goldman represents and fosters everything that I find degenerate about Western civilization.

First off, a very simple four-part theory of good art. I will assume that art, as an endeavour, should ideally help people find virtue and goodness in their lives. This is merely an extension of a purely utilitarian view on what good means; if your idea of good does not involve such utilitarian assumptions, this standard may not make a whole of of sense. Art, in my view, is anything created through a person's will that has some kind of communicative, aesthetic value; by "communicative" I mean to include the aesthetic portion, so abstract works of course also count even where they carry no express message.

With that in mind, good art should have at least one of the following characteristics:

1. It should inspire noble sentiments to remind the audience that there is something greater that they can aspire to;
2. it should inspire disgust and pity, holding up a mirror to help the audience understand and hopefully address their own flaws;
3. it should please the aesthetic in support or propagation of some ethical principle or mythopoeic narrative that helps the audience better themselves in a given way; or
4. its very production should showcase some technical merit in furtherance of one of the above, with the proviso that the ultimate motive of the work not itself be reprehensible for some other reason.

Mere entertainment, in this set of standards, amounts to little more than an incentive to bring the audience to the work. An important incentive, but

Example: 300. Its explicit purpose is 1). Unfortunately, it also does 3), in such a bumbling and unsympathetically simplistic way that it undermines its own purpose.

Example: Bridge to Terabithia. In a few respects a bit short of 4), especially given what the audience had been told to expect by the marketing campaign, but all three other criteria are well met.

Example: South Park. I can't think of any non-ironic, non-"ironic" expression of 1), which given the art style (combined with the nature of comedy itself) is just as well. I see enough of 2) for a yes on that count: enough satire is "internalized" by the protagonists that we can empathize with the flawed characters qua flawed characters. 3) is demonstrated, and even explicitly flaunted in the episode where they make fun of Family Guy. I'll leave evaluation of 4) to the reader.


Now let's take a look at Goldman's work, namely the pictures I linked to above. I've decided to decline to go over any particular one with description and all, but rather to address them generally with examples as needed; so do take a look and keep that window open to see for yourself.

Criterion 1): Surprisingly enough, I do see something here, most obviously in "Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them". The general exhortation to be more assertive and less reverent to unexamined social norms is on its face a good message under any standard that values free speech. Such an exhortation must still be supported by some context to be of any worth. I see no indication from these messages that any such norms should actually be examined; rather, they seem to be disregarded wholesale ("Sometimes I like to run...") except where it serves the speaker ("Spandex is a privilege..."). Ultimately the pictures just exhort people to be rude.

There is another criterion 1 issue, but I'm going to address that in criterion 4.

Criterion 2): Some of the statements (e.g., "I don't repeat gossip...") may be understood as coming from sympathetic characters. My gut instincts tell me that it would be far too charitable, however, to ascribe such creation of sympathy to even a token attempt to fulfill criterion 2. The only other example I can find of similar issues is "Smoking kills...". In both of these, read in the context of "You say I'm a bitch...", exhude a certain smugness that, far from indicating an admission of fault, openly exhorts the wrongdoing described.

Criterion 3): I wish to address this under criterion 4, as my impressions are inextricably bound to the technical expression of these ideas. This is also the issue I had deferred above under criterion 1.

Criterion 4): In terms of the humour, almost utter failure. I say almost because I did smirk at "Spooning leads to forking". But I smirk at just about any stupidly cutesy reference to the word fuck as a bad habit. Someone of similar background as myself but better restraint over wholly prurient pleasures would not find it unfair to call it an utter failure. All the jokes are trite beyond rehabilitation; it is only a little less obvious in the ones whose main punch lies in shocking the viewer, simply because the viewer is inevitably distracted by the sexual or other reference. Perhaps one day they may gain some value as an attempt at camp. That day is not today.

In terms of artistic technical merit, every picture except "Smoking..." and "Golddigger" (and maybe "Spooning...") consists of an extremely crude image that but for its straight, smooth lines, looks like it had been drawn by a small child. This is, of course, not simply because the artist is incapable of any better: the style is a deliberate capitalization on the primitivist "noble savage" ideal, the return to some mythical childlike innocence that has been espoused in our mainstream literature since the Romantic era. The implied narrative, of course, is of civilization's fall from nature's grace: we as adults have been somehow corrupted to a point where only a crude developmental atavism will be able to save us. This narrative is problematic on two counts.

First, there is the now trite irony that such an ideal is being packaged and marketed and sold quite profitably as a commodity. We see this everywhere, I won't go into detail. Suffice it to say that anyone who can afford good publicity has not attained such a return.

Second, aside from those who have profited from packaging and marketing and selling the atavistic ideal, such an ideal has helped no one. If anything, it's done considerable damage to anyone who has accepted it in good faith. Without devaluing other causes of what are of course complex issues, I blame on this meme the following:

• the Unabomber;
• the grassroots, anti-intellectual, anti-rational fundamentalism that, if aggravating and harmful in the past, now spreads like a cancer through the greatest bastions of both Christianity and Islam;
• any countless number of aspiring bad artists who believe that their creativity will take them anywhere, leaving their actual technical skill in gross neglect;
• both great totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century, the Nazis sacrificing all human decency on the altar of unthinking passion and the Communists doing both that and systematically undermining their own nations' entire cultural superstructure as sophistication-ergo-corruption; and
• the great systematic breakdown of civility and rise of everyday unavoidable anomie, as indiscriminate love of diversity of views seeps from substantive to merely formal matters to the result of much of my generation being lost or isolated for want of any proper early childhood guidance in the most basic of human interactions.

In short: I do not think highly of the "crude+attitude=fresh+honest" meme.

I do not deny that people find entertainment value in the pictures; Goldman has received a good deal of money and publicity for his works and to dismiss the demand as stupidity would be to fall into that very trap of cynicism the promotion of which I find his (and others') work disturbing.

One thing remains to be clarified. By this harsh criticism of Goldman's work I do not mean to refer solely to Goldman's work alone. Far from it. I've seen (and done) this kind of thing for years, and after the novelty of "attitude" wore off the problems and grievances I've expressed in this post had been sitting and building up in the back of my mind for quite some time. I had better things to do, naturally, and didn't bother to go further; today's sudden distraction, however, got me thinking about it again, and the work I've seen just happened to serve as a near perfect example of why so much of what passes for art has become utterly irrelevant in the past couple decades.

Comments

[vaecrius.livejournal.com]

Merely allegations of intellectual property violations.

[helarxe.livejournal.com]

I meant the plagiarizing "art"... some trendy teen cartoon thing?

[vaecrius.livejournal.com]

That's about it. I'd thought you took one look at that and not bothered reading the rest. XD Basically, this guy is to Jhonen Vasquez what Rob Liefeld is to Stan Lee, albeit with an additional difference in medium.

Anyway, I've just elaborated on this post with a rare longish rant further expounding on my own thoughts.

[helarxe.livejournal.com]

Nice rant you had there :)