According to Wallace Stevens, the main difference between entertainment media and Art derives from the intention behind the act of creation. Entertainment media, much like Art, use common devices to manipulate the emotions of the audience. But entertainment media does not intend to make the audience think, or react, or process ideas. People go to movies, or watch Fox News in order to escape from the every day ordeals of mental and physical effort. In contrast, Art makes the audience fundamentally reassess its understanding of the human experience. To appreciate Art, you must fully commit mentally and engage with a piece, critically examining what it means in relationship to your life.
Entertainment media perpetuate the “destructive habit of unthinking response.” It does adheres to specific, proven formulas of entertainment. The audience knows it will not have to fully engage to understand what is happening. Wallace goes on to say that human life is neg-entropic, “because its subsystems feed energy back into one another and thus are self-enriching, regenerative.”
If we were to apply Wallace's standards of entertainment and Art to today's society, television shows like those on Fox News, as well as the vast majority of Hollywood blockbusters, would obviously fall under the category of entertainment. Fox News especially is not interested in bringing up critical, life-altering questions common within Art. Instead, its goal is to have its audience unquestioningly absorb its message as a reaffirmation of preexisting notions, repeated ad naseum.
Websites like Youtube and Facebook, would have to be considered Art. The audience in these cases actively engage in the creation and appreciation of the media. Web 2.0 sites have taken Wallace's idea of feedback to the extremes. There is now more feedback (chats, likes, comments and wall posts) than there is actual 'content,' making it very difficult to draw a line between content and feedback.
I agreed with you that Facebook can be a form of Art. I think it depends on the intention of the user though. Allot of Facebook interaction is based on the same story lines found in movies: drama, gossip, and bragging. These forms of interactions with other people reinforce entropic feedback. Even though they do engage in feedback their stimulation rests in drama.
ReplyDelete