In the Article, “Art, Entertainment, Entropy”, Wallace Stevens claims that commercial entertainment is a never changing cycle of recycled plotlines. As consumers, we neither want to work to create a need for artistic feasibility in the world of commercial entertainment, nor are we provided with opportunity to give feedback in the entropy of the commercial world.
Today, however, we no longer stand in line at the movie theaters behind the college drop out who braids his hair and smokes pot. The year is 2010 and I suppose most people would like to believe that today we are more advanced than some Dylan diggin’ hippies. Currently we are in the booming days of Internet and all the technology that complements it. So we must be much more advanced right?—Wrong!(At least according to this blog prompt that’s what we’re conforming to say…funny how that works)
In all actuality, it appears that the world has made an effort to try and to create change—an escape from the commercial media—however the very efforts made towards combating the commercial media [With internet and websites such as Youtube, Facebook, and even Blogger] has caused the reverse effect: a state of entropy, if you will.
The obvious need for alternative media has arisen through the process of critique. Unfortunately along with that critique the media still exists in our lives plagues us with mixed messages. A great example of this is the ever-popular Youtube.
Youtube was built upon the idea of creative freedom, a place for filmmakers, actors, activists, and ad-busters. It was a place to escape the commercial entertainment industry and replace it with an arena for growth and change. Now however, Youtube has been taken over by commercial interest and is a breeding ground for this brain washed entropy that we call the media. On any given day on Youtube you can search for a video about prank calls and find a 15 second commercial about AT&T. You can subscribe to your favorite make-up tutorials and be distracted by the bright flashing ad on the side advertising Covergirl products. The space once intended for creativity and a new voice, has been hi-jacked by the commercial entertainment industry and literally stopped anything new (art) from becoming valid.
Wallace says in the article, “Everytime man makes a new experiment he always learns more. He cannot learn less.” While this might be true, it is hard for me to imagine that Wallace meant that by trying to produce a new creative forum, that we would learn attempting originality is pointless in this consumer driven society.
No comments:
Post a Comment