In an earlier blog I presented my stance on art, that it is a means of communicating feelings in general whether it comes to an issue, or a reflection of the author's or artist's heart. When the question was posed during Language Arts pertaining to the distance one should put between the author and his work I immediately began applying the concept of hyperreality to the situation because after all the question deals with art which can be commonly threaded with hyperreality. Say someone writes a TV show like The Simpsons, or for that matter, Family Guy, which portrays a disfunctional family, and somewhat parodies life in general; using extreme cases to bring out flaws in society in which the author critiques. The author may deny that this picture of family is healthy and that all families should be this way because it may be his utmost intention to discourage this kind of view of family, thus critiqueing it to show people the insanity of living in such a manner. Without the authors disclaimer though, it is hard to see what kind of an affect they are trying to have on their audiences. In fact they could actually be making light of a disorderly family presenting it as a norm, a celebration of disorder in the family. It can be hard to draw the line where the author stands in all of this. I do not think this excuses the affect it has on its viewers. The author might claim though, that his audience misinterpreted his piece and that he was not trying to be demeaning to the family structure. However, he still wrote the script and presented it to viewers on which it has an impact through hyperreality. Reality and hyperreality are sometimes hard to distinguish between and whether the author knows it or not he is portraying a piece that could victimize people to hyperreality. I also still hold to the view that inevitable art communicates truths held by the author. They are presenting what they believe, how they view things, so the work lies close to their heart and the distance between the artist and his work becomes very thin.

What did I just write?

Of Innocence and Pools of Ink

The dark......... It hides. It can distort and make things scarier than they really are, like transforming a coat hung over a chair into a blood chilling monster. Dark is the absence of light and light within literature is commonly contrasted with the dark, symbolizing good and evil, etc. "Adolescence~II" depicts a young girl, "at the edge of darkness," not immersed in, but rather more so interacting with the dark world around her. Her interaction, or debateably her lack thereof, subtley points to a greater signifigance of the nature of her response to the shady aspects of her environment.

At the edge of darkness......

From this line, the reader can be drawn to the logical conclusion that the girl is still oddly separated from the darkness around her. Despite her interaction with the dark, which will be covered later, she is still portrayed as on the edge, like looking into a pool of black, not immersed at the moment, but just as if she is sticking her toe in. It seems that maybe this pool of black is still foreign to her, giving reason to fear jumping in or just not knowing how to interact with it period. The latter manifests itself when dark figures begin to emerge from the background of the bathroom............


The Night Dwellers

Three seal men appear in this dark world and begin to question the young girl. "Can you feel it yet?" They pause only to recieve no response, for the girl does not know what to say, or how to respond. "They chuckle, patting there sleek bodies with their hands. Well maybe next time," they say as," they rise, like glittering pools of ink under moonlight and vanish." It's almost as if they are swimming in the dark. They have become accustomed to it, having, "eyes as round as dinner plates," and, "sleek bodies," that glitter, "like pools of ink," as they rise and vanish back into nothing. They are a sad resemblance of men who have jumped head first into the pool of inky blackness that represents anything from drugs to promiscuous behavior. The seal men are aware of their behavior and have willingly dove head in, but the girl still sits on the edge of darkness and although she does not carry out an in depth interaction with these night dwellers she has a much different interaction with the night.

Punching Holes in Innocence

As they vanish the seal men leave behind holes that ther girl clutches to. This could be the holes left in her innocence. The girl seems to still be young and naive to whatever is happening around her because of her nature of innocence. She does still interact with the dark describing night as resting, "like a ball of fur on my tongue." The interaction seems to be negative leaving her mouth dry and her arms still clutching to those holes. Because of her innocence, she is unable to interact completely in the way that the seal men do to the darkness that is found in the bathroom. Although, it may just be a matter of time, with age, and the persistence of the darkness that her innocence will be picked clean; and she too will swim with sleek body and dinner plate eyes in the pool of inky blackness.

"Adolescence - II"

"Adolescence Two" is postmodern in nature because of its depiction of such elements as fragmentation and a dehumanized subject. Fragmentation is portrayed when it describes, "the Venetian blinds slicing up the moon," (3061 Line 3). The light from the moon is spread on the tile floor as if the character is living in her own little fragmented world. This world is blurred between right and wrong as shadow and light contrast with each other on the bathroom floor. "Three seal men," enter the scene, "bring[ing] the scent of licorice," in with them. These might be literal people or items of symbolism that represent something else entirely. The three seal men could represent the upheaval of the girls stomache's prior meeting with alcohol. This also celebrates the loss of innocence as it pertains to drunkeness and responsible behavior displaying the postmodern tenet of the celebration of disorder.

Words and Reality

The breakdown of words and meaning lie within both an inadequate system of language and in an inadequate understanding of reality. Margaret Atwood's piece, "Toast" displays the misleading and confusion that can come from our language, such as when she uses toast to describe one thing and then another thing. In fact whenever one comes down to it, thing is the final explanation for just about everything when one runs out of words to describe whatever it is they are trying to describe. Life is therefore a thing in and of itself that is ultimately unexplainable by words, for words by this logic have signs, but no signifieds. A distorted perception of reality can also be blamed for the loss of meaning, from my belief as a Christian that the Fall contaminated our whole order of existence and twisted what was once reality. We can never know the true meaning of things because reality is distorted and has fallen from what it once was. Without answers as to what the reality previously entailed, there is no true meaning found, only a likeness. Because of the mix of these two man is incapable of finding meaning in words or in this "thing" called life.

Disclaimer: I'm just throwing this out there.