Novelty p0wn3d
I've been thinking a lot lately about how there is this constant pressure for novelty in certain segments of our population, to the point where something's value tends to run in direct proportion to how obscure it is. If, through some happenstance, this obscure art/product/whatever becomes popular, it is rapidly discarded as "played out", and is no longer considered to have any real value, in spite of the fact that the object of appreciation/now scorn hasn't changed at all.
It's like a lot of us are these gaping maws of boredom, that demand an unceasing flow of new crap. Art is no good unless it's novel and "edgy", pop music sucks because it's common and a well worn path. (unless its done by an obscure band, then its praised as being "pop perfect") Why does novelty have to be the hallmark of excellence? Why do we have to be in a constant state of having everything be new new new? The Egyptians managed to keep the same art for 1000+ years. Why do we need something new every two days? Are we that bored? Are we all that much of a slave to neuron saturation? Or is this all just a big game, and if it wasnt for the social aspect of getting to be the first on your block to have the new toy, and brag about/"share" it with all your friends, it wouldn't be an issue at all.
So, in the spirit of that. I am done with novelty.
It's played out.
Attention hipsters: I WIN.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how there is this constant pressure for novelty in certain segments of our population, to the point where something's value tends to run in direct proportion to how obscure it is. If, through some happenstance, this obscure art/product/whatever becomes popular, it is rapidly discarded as "played out", and is no longer considered to have any real value, in spite of the fact that the object of appreciation/now scorn hasn't changed at all.
It's like a lot of us are these gaping maws of boredom, that demand an unceasing flow of new crap. Art is no good unless it's novel and "edgy", pop music sucks because it's common and a well worn path. (unless its done by an obscure band, then its praised as being "pop perfect") Why does novelty have to be the hallmark of excellence? Why do we have to be in a constant state of having everything be new new new? The Egyptians managed to keep the same art for 1000+ years. Why do we need something new every two days? Are we that bored? Are we all that much of a slave to neuron saturation? Or is this all just a big game, and if it wasnt for the social aspect of getting to be the first on your block to have the new toy, and brag about/"share" it with all your friends, it wouldn't be an issue at all.
So, in the spirit of that. I am done with novelty.
It's played out.
Attention hipsters: I WIN.
posted by Steven Sanders | 10:45 AM
2 Comments:
I had that same thought LAST month.
This is kind of what I was inarticulately groping towards a couple months ago when you and Dawn and I were sitting around talking about the 'art world' - whether anyone admits it or not, the system exists to move art into the hands of buyers, and the way to do that is to artificially generate a sensation, ideally by having a bunch of gallery owners and critics and professors suddenly start pimping some guy as 'edgy' or 'pushing the envelope' or whatever. So there's this totally fraudulent sense of progress, as if today's art is somehow measurably better or whatever than something from twenty or a hundred years ago, while meanwhile students are being headfucked into believing that to be at all valid as artists they have to somehow magically come up with an idea that no human being has ever thought of before in the history of the world, which is an increasingly hopeless and moronic task.
Literature went through this, too, a while back, but eventually it occurred to people that audiences didn't particularly want to read wacky 'experimental' novels with multiple unnamed second-person narrators and jumbled chronology and no punctuation. I mean, even the most highfalutin' literary magazines publish stuff that, in terms of form and style, isn't too different from what was coming out fifty or sixty years ago.
I guess the reason books have gotten over novelty, while the music/art/design/fashion worlds haven't, boils down (as so many things do) to marketing - books are read by and sold to grownups, but most pop culture is consumed by kids or twentysomethings with too much disposable income, and kids love to feel like they're boldly going where no man has gone before.
Post a Comment
<< Home