Today's AT40

July, 1984.

We're painting (or failing to, as we keep having to spackle walls and that requires 24 hour drying time so we're at only 1 wall of 5 we can actually do today :( ) so I haven't commented much on this week of hits by Van Halen (Panama), Steve Perry (Oh Sherry playing now, the followup came on earlier), Ray Parker Jr (Ghostbusters), Chicago (Stay the Night), Night Ranger (Sister Christian - I still don't "get" what the hell he's trying to say in it), Lionel Ritchie (does it matter?), Elton John (Sad Songs) and many more.  Yeah, it was very much a "guy" summer.

Ok, Madonna's first big hit, Borderline, just broke the trend, but only for a bit as Rod Stewart (Infatuation) and The Cars (Magic) make their marks in the top 15.

Movie of the summer hit parade was Footloose, which so far has had 3 songs in the top including Kenny Loggins's I'm Free and Let's Hear it for the Boy (another breaking the guy thing going on).

Now, ZZ Top's Legs, one where, according to the lyrics, they AREN'T swearing on air, but damned if it doesn't sound like it:

Shes got hair down to her fanny.
Shes kinda jet set, try undo her panties

I kept hearing that second line as "She's got her tits set", as in, she's had either a job or a really good visit to Victoria's Secret.

And later:

Oh, I want her, said, I got to have her,
The girl is alright, shes alright.

I kept hearing as "Oh, I want her.  Shit, I got to have her"

Was it just me?

Another footloose song (Almost Paradise) and now Cindy Lauper's Time After Time (as Lady Leo posted last week!) and Duran Duran's Reflex.  Now Laura Brannigan's Self Control.

Bruce's Dancin' in the Dark comes in at #2, making a new #1: Prince's When Doves Cry, from Purple Rain.

Gotta admit, I kinda helped that: I bought the 45 for it back then and still have it now. :)

People and philosophies that simply try to hard...

There's a site out there with a major essay decrying Disney's Animal Kingdom, and specifically the Kilimanjaro Safari, for how the inacuricies between the real nature and the nature as Disneyfied are indicative of a larger "problem" with modern culture in how it presents a distorted vision of ourselves.

Disney's Animal Kingdom as a Projection of the Unconscious:

The site is part of a larger effort to reveal the way contemporary culture is turning our surroundings into a mirror that reflects back a distorted version of ourselves.

Well, two responses quickly come back.  The first is trivial but critical.  The second is more involved, less concise, and more revealing on the misdirected efforts of the site writers.

Response 1: Douglas Adams.

Art: none.  The purpose of art is to hold a mirror to the universe.  There simply isn't a mirror large enough.  See point 1.

Point one being, of course, that the Universe is bigger than the biggest thing ever, and then some.  Douglas always was a better writer than most, including me.

Response 2: Since when has art EVER presented an accurate vision of ourselves to ourselves.  If we really wanted to see ourselves in a true mirror, we'd look in the mirror.

We don't.

We don't want to see the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  We'd never tolerate it.  We'd never mentally survive.  To use a modern cliche, "we can't handle the truth".  Not because we can't imagine it or its consequences, but because we literally can't handle all the details.

All art is abstraction.  It is removing some (actually, most) details in order to make other details more prevalent.  It either shows us more clearly particular details we don't want to see, or shows us more clearly the particular details we absolutely want to see.  There is no in between.  In between is the reality we can't face because it is both too difficult and, more importantly, too complicated.  There are, literally, too many details.  The ability to not only be abstract (most animals have this capability) but to express that abstraction clearly to others, is a unique aspect of our humanity.

It is called communication.  We can not communicate every detail; there simply isn't time, and there certainly aren't enough words.  Try explaining the first 8 bars of Beethoven's 6th - Bernstein once took 15 minutes to describe everything that happened in those bars, those first 30 seconds of music, and still didn't cover "everything".  In fact, he probably described only 10 percent of all of the things going on during those 30 seconds.

We abstract.  It is the way in which we communicate.

Now, is communicating a distorted vision a bad thing?  No.  Rather, it's an inevitable thing.

The issue then is intent.  How is it distorted and what is the expected response of that distortion.  This is the question all recipients of art are expected to ask and answer, for themselves at least.  It is what makes art a participatory exercise even for the audience.

The conservation message, as presented by Disney, is an obvious distortion.  It is just as much a distortion of reality as their "true life adventures" were 50 years ago.  But then again, so was Wild Kingdom.  And National Geographic.  And every other nature series and every zoo on the planet that attempts to teach a conservation message in some form or another.

But how much of that is because the reality is simply so mind-boggling that it really can't be dealt with?

I have friends, including many here on LJ, who won't walk into the "ape" house at the National Zoo.  They simply can't deal with what they see as the forced imprisonment of our cousins, as if there was something distinctively separating our cousins from the other mammals (including the Pandas) in the park.

I say this.  1) there isn't.  Then again, there isn't much separating US from the rest of those mammals either.

and 2) Those apes are still alive.

The zoo is an artistic presentation of apes, warts an all, in a way we might be able to tolerate it.  Because we can't begin to imagine the reality of their existence in nature.

Trust me.  Don't read that article.  You would immediately want every single gorilla, chimp, bonobo, and orangutan on the planet in Western-style zoos, surviving, than have them being killed off in Africa by the excessive ignorance those people are following.  You would be praising the national zoo for its efforts to keep our cousins alive until the day when the men in Africa stop being f'ing assholes of the highest degree.

Is Disney's Animal Kingdom, with its separation of species to prevent predation, a distortion of nature?  Of course it is.  It's merely art.  A cultural artifact designed to communicate a specific message with an emotional content.  Does the impact of the marketplace change the message?  No, not really.  Popularity in art is measured in different ways, themselves reflective of the culture, but the desire of art to be popular is unchanging, nor does it change the message and the reason it is abstracted and distorted.

That reason is reality.  The reality that we literally do not want to ever see in our lives.  We really couldn't comprehend it all, in every majestic and gory detail, even if we tried.  It's simply too big.

The authors write:

The park is a giant materialized projection of the unconscious mind that has been turned into a fantastic environment. What it is really about is our narcissistic desire to feel like we are grandiose heroes and saviors, on the side of right, and our desire to enjoy the full-throated optimism that comes with the sense that the cup of the world runneth over and death can be conquered. It is about our childhood desire to see wonders and get prizes and surprises.

The park is similarly about our desire for quick and easy transcendence -- transcendence for the price of admission.

Today we call it "escapist fantasy".  If it was an older culture, we call it "myth".    This idea that it is "contemporary" culture that's got it all wrong, merely because it seems to be driven by marketplace values, is itself misleading: *ALL* cultures have gotten it "wrong".  They all have been misleading, have been distorting, have been promoting the "better" and/or ideal aspects of the society they developed in rather than present reality as it is.  It is how societies *survive* without going mad.  Hiding the worst or displaying that worst with an objectivity allows one to be able to relate to it without the guilty conscience that leads one directly to madness.  Again, "art".

So why should DAK, or any other aspect of contemporary culture, be any different from any culture of the past.  If it wasn't, would it really be "culture" anymore?

There are many ways in which the authors seem to think that art and "culture" should be bigger than it ever really is.

To them I say, "see point 1".