Questions from an uncultured barbarian

[void]

I have never quite understood the big deal regarding the following:


Poetry: What's so moving about a few poorly phrased sentences that occasionally rhyme? What makes a poem "beautiful"? It seems to me that whatever message the author is trying to convey via a bunch of comma separated, grammatically questionable sentence fragments could be much better expressed in a straightforward manner (e.g. "life sucks and so do you")


Shakespeare: An entire community within academia is dedicated to prostrating themselves before his writings for reasons that completely escape me. Sure, he employed an army of metaphors and his characters had an unhealthy obsession with indirect speech. But once again, what's the big frickin' deal? His atrocious grammar certainly didn't help matters (I'm kidding - I know the English language was quite different back then).


Opera: I'd venture that the vast majority of attendees at any given performance in North America don't understand the libretto. So why are they applauding? Is it because they can't accept the fact that they were just swindled out of $100? Speaking of ridiculously expensive tickets ...


"Professional" Wrestling: no, not that ...


Live theatre: Ah, there's the segue I was aiming for. I've been to one performance thus far (only because somebody else agreed to pay for me) and I was incredibly underwhelmed.


Visual art: This isn't as puzzling as the others. The viewer tries to decipher the artist's meaning - in many cases, even when no such meaning was intended. Besides pretense, what makes someone fork out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a painting?


I'm being cheeky of course, but I'm entirely serious about not being able to understand the aforementioned items. Somebody throw me a bone here. What am I missing out on?

[Marius]

Nothing really. IF you dont like art, literature/poetry, or music then your no better off then those who like it. To me all those things are kinda like a prefference. Some people use drugs while some go to the opera. You gotta understand that some people find pleasure in those things which you yourself are not attuned to. Your opera or poetry or shakespeare might be the sound of a really beefed-out car, or the intricate workings of a computer. why would you think your missing out on something if your not inspired or moved by poetry or opera?

[Ted]

I get what void is saying. Every other preference in the world has more direct/logical reasons for enjoying them. I think there's good reason why music isn't on that list because it's foolish to deny the hard work and skills that are involved.

My view is that although poetry, Shakespeare, opera, etc. are not garbage, they are severely overrated.

[qwerty123]

Some people like the aforementioned items because they feel smarter knowing or doing the activity.

Poetry can evoke intense emotion if one can access the time period and the emotion. Not all good poetry has to rhyme. A good poem might set up a scene, and in the very last line whack you over the head with something. It's also sometimes amazing how much a poem can say in just a few words. (Think of the average novel.)

This is one of my favorites:

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Shakespeare often referenced things about society or life and stated them poetically To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. Shakespeare is referenced in modern culture. I never went overboard with it, but knowing some shakespeare is part of some sort of cultural literacy.

Wrestling... I can't help you here.

Opera, I've never been.

Live theatre. If you ever had/have the chance to see Les Miserables on Broadway (or well performed) you might change your mind. The power from a live performance can be immense. It can also suck and you'll want your time and money back.

As you note, one might spend money on a painting to impress friends, or they have so much money they don't have better things to spend it on. If you were the "guy with the Picasso," that might carry some value in some circles. As for other aspects of art, people can find unintended meaning, but it is interesting to look at the painting with regard to its time period, as well as with the artist in mind. Often things are famous because they were the first of their kind. To the average person, it might look like a lot of paint on a canvas, but the painting may have been revolutionary. Some art is probably just garbage though. Again, there is no need to appreciate art, but it can give insight to the "human condition." It can also be a hobby, or inspiring. Sometimes it's just cool to think... Monet was right in front of this canvas. He looked at this very painting. He changed it, and paced and thought. He lost sleep over it, and worked for his version of perfection.



The more you know about something, the more you might see in it. As one collects the various fragments of an interest/hobby/passion etc.. it may become clearer and more exciting, or it may become boring and one will move on.

[Samoan Corleone]

Looking at your list, 2 and 4 were two of my favourite things during my high school days. There are plenty of life lessons in Shakespeare. Take King Lear: Never have children outside of wedlock, because such an act will come back to bite you in the ass when you're older.

4 was great, and it also contained an important life lesson: If you're JBL, you're incapable of just doing a standard clothesline.

[Cairech]

Greetings, Void.

My answers and opinions are:

Poetry is experiential. If you have struggled through a moment or an experience and lack understanding, a good poem can elucidate the experience. I find it is helpful to read them out loud. Beatnik coffeeshop is optional.

In my opinion, SHakespeare's greatest work was his expansion of the English vocabulary. He invented hundreds of words, such as "popular."

Opera...uhf. I don't get it either, which is peculiar because I love music and the stage. ::shrug:: I've heard it's on or off; you either do like opera or you don't. Very little inbetween.

Wrasslin': see "Opera"

Live theatre is so incredibly varied, I just can't generalize. Bad theatre makes me want to vomit, good theatre makes me stop blinking, afraid I'll miss something. It's like movies without the distance. It's like a CD verses a live concert.

Visual art took such a huge turn after photography was invented. Before that, the goal was to reproduce faithfully. After that, it's a contest to see what is original but still saleable. The thing to do is find artists that you like. It also helps to develop a strong tolerance to snobbery, because art galleries are full of snotty nouveau riche who aren't even bothering to study the paintings, they just want to be seen posing in their stupid over-priced clothes with an oversized glass containing one swirl of wine that they pretend to sip every half hour or so. Pissants.

Hope this was helpful, in some fashion.

[Ted]

4 was great, and it also contained an important life lesson: If you're JBL, you're incapable of just doing a standard clothesline.

I also enjoyed watching pro wrestling when I was younger. Sure it may be fake, but so are movies and myths. Funny story of why I stopped watching wrestling:

One day I was watching WWE when my aunt was visiting from another province. She had nothing else to do at the moment so she sat down to see what I was watching. Before long, one of the divas starting sticking a dog's ass into another diva's face. My aunt made an extremely disgusted expression and I haven't watched wrestling since lol.

[Hitorijime]

A lot of it is definitely personal preference. And it's also about being picky. If you claim to love everything, then you're not nearly as much of an aficionado as you'd like to think you are, because that means that you can't distinguish quality art from cheap knock-offs. It's like being a good cook; if you use cheaper, generic ingredients rather than higher quality ingredients because you can't tell the difference, then your dish isn't going to have that edge that makes it taste that much better. There are a lot of presumptuous people out there, though, who go to art exhibitions and concerts just so they can pretend to be cultured, or so they can show off what very little knowledge they have. Nothing is more annoying that going to an art museum and being stuck around people who rattle off random "facts" that they think they know about the artist or painting which often aren't even historically accurate. I once attended a concert series which consisted of four concerts, each about a month apart. In order to get tickets, you had to purchase for all four. The only concert that had a full house was the Beethoven concert. Why? Because Beethoven was the most well-known composer, and people wanted to be able to say that they had attended the Beethoven concert. Nobody cared about the other composers (Brahms, Elgar, Mahler), because they weren't as well known (to the uncultured, at least). And I'm not saying that this was the case for everyone, but most likely it was for quite a few people.

In terms of what the OP mentioned:
Poetry - you're not missing out of much. There are so many different types of poetry, and it can be really hard to wade through the fluff in order to get to the real stuff.

Shakespeare - I'm not a big fan, but I respect the impact his works had on the English language. Most of his stories weren't original, they were just retold, so I don't consider him a genius in that respect.

Opera - I happen to really like opera. But here's the thing: in order to fully enjoy an operatic performance, you need to research it beforehand. You don't have to necessarily read the entire libretto, but a basic knowledge of the plot is always helpful. An opera sung in English isn't necessarily more understandable that any other language, but many opera houses these days have screens that supply subtitles, anyway. But the main point of opera, in my eyes, isn't just to watch the story being played out. That's what live theater is for. It's more about the performers and what they can do with their incredible vocal cords. That's why people applaud, not because the fiery lover just stabbed the duke.

Pro-Wrestling - yeah, not going to go there.

Live Theatre - again, it depends on what it is you go to see. I personally like movies more than live theatre, but that's because there are more subtleties that can be conveyed in movies. But it also takes a strong actor to be able to make it through plays without flaw.

Visual art - Some people like sculptures, some like psychedelic splashed lines, I like landscapes. If you like it, you like it, and if you don't, that's cool, too.

[Prunesquallor]

It really depends. People can like them for different reasons.

I, personally, like anything with writing because I like to study writing, so I can appreciate the skill. Like, I can enjoy watching soccer and hockey games because I know the game and know just how amazing these guys are. Football? Golf? I don't know the rules (or care) so I don't see the skill the same way, and it's just a bunch of guys running around.

[Storm]

A lot of art is about evoking emotions. You seem to be looking at art purely to find it's "point" when art isn't always about the "point" - it's about placing you in the moment and then broadening that moment to all similar situations.
It's sort of like criticizing someone for liking good food - sure they could have gotten the same nutrients by swallowing a few pills, but that's missing out on so much.

Poetry: I don't like a lot of poetry. But a few poems have really spoken to me - mainly poems which really put you in the moment, really make you realize all the intricacies of the author's conveyance. Some poems do have "lessons," but to take the poetry part away, to present it in a one-liner, is crass, it's stealing the soul out of the conveyance.
Here is such a poem that I really like - without the metaphor, it wouldn't be very profound:
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Shakespeare: Ok, first off, Shakespeare is written in poetic form. People didn't actually speak like that when he was alive. Shakespeare isn't good because of his plots, it's good because of the way he said it.

Live theatre: Huge range of live theater. The magic in it is that you can feel more part of the story.

Visual art: Again, the point of visual art isn't just to "decipher the meaning" into a single sentence. A lot of times, it's to evoke an emotion, to amuse, to shine light on a larger theme. For instance, my favorite paintings almost always are pictures of the particular moment right before something happens. My avatar I like because you can read so much humanity into the woman. Where is she going? What is she thinking? What does the rainy weather symbolize?

There is a style of art done in China where large scenes are drawn on scrolls. The viewer is suppose to unroll maybe just a foot of scroll at a time - taking a metaphysical walk through the scene with the artist. To slowly imagine and take in everything that's going on. The "point" couldn't be made by just saying "Walks are peaceful."

[Cthulhu]

I have never quite understood the big deal regarding the following:

Shakespeare: An entire community within academia is dedicated to prostrating themselves before his writings for reasons that completely escape me. Sure, he employed an army of metaphors and his characters had an unhealthy obsession with indirect speech. But once again, what's the big frickin' deal? His atrocious grammar certainly didn't help matters (I'm kidding - I know the English language was quite different back then).

Opera: I'd venture that the vast majority of attendees at any given performance in North America don't understand the libretto. So why are they applauding? Is it because they can't accept the fact that they were just swindled out of $100? Speaking of ridiculously expensive tickets ...

I'm being cheeky of course, but I'm entirely serious about not being able to understand the aforementioned items. Somebody throw me a bone here. What am I missing out on?

Just out of curiosity, have you ever been to a live performance of either of these?

[Shadowgraphs]

I share your puzzlement over the widespread acceptance of pretty much all those things, especially Shakespeare. Yes, he had a few really good plays, especially The Tempest, but I don't know why most English-speaking intellectual types elevate him in our literary canon to the status of genius and treat him with such respect. Maybe we instinctually look to Elizabethan-era England as the point where English-speaking countries became prominent on the world stage and thus want to take a writer from that period as our "literary mascot," so to speak...?

I actually like opera myself (especially operas by Mozart and Wagner), but certainly not the culture associated with it. Instead of going to a performance and dealing with the bullshit that goes on, I'd recommend somehow procuring this performance of Don Giovanni, turning on the subtitles and enjoying both the music and the plot:

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[void]

Thanks for the responses folks. This has been illuminating.

[Hitorijime]

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Oooohh....I support this. Haven't actually seen it myself, but anything with Cecilia Bartoli is bound to be good. She is truly amazing.

[PeterIMC]

I have never quite understood the big deal regarding the following:


Poetry: What's so moving about a few poorly phrased sentences that occasionally rhyme? What makes a poem "beautiful"? It seems to me that whatever message the author is trying to convey via a bunch of comma separated, grammatically questionable sentence fragments could be much better expressed in a straightforward manner (e.g. "life sucks and so do you")


Shakespeare: An entire community within academia is dedicated to prostrating themselves before his writings for reasons that completely escape me. Sure, he employed an army of metaphors and his characters had an unhealthy obsession with indirect speech. But once again, what's the big frickin' deal? His atrocious grammar certainly didn't help matters (I'm kidding - I know the English language was quite different back then).


Opera: I'd venture that the vast majority of attendees at any given performance in North America don't understand the libretto. So why are they applauding? Is it because they can't accept the fact that they were just swindled out of $100? Speaking of ridiculously expensive tickets ...


"Professional" Wrestling: no, not that ...


Live theatre: Ah, there's the segue I was aiming for. I've been to one performance thus far (only because somebody else agreed to pay for me) and I was incredibly underwhelmed.


Visual art: This isn't as puzzling as the others. The viewer tries to decipher the artist's meaning - in many cases, even when no such meaning was intended. Besides pretense, what makes someone fork out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a painting?


I'm being cheeky of course, but I'm entirely serious about not being able to understand the aforementioned items. Somebody throw me a bone here. What am I missing out on?

I tend to agree with you. Most art isn't art but only the need for higher classes to pretend they´re sophisticated. However, in each art field there are real artists. But many so called artists are nothing more than the result of commercialization and again many people that have no clue but want to seem sophisticated. (not just in higher classes by the way, but they seem to have more time for it than other classes.)

[Shadowgraphs]

Oooohh....I support this. Haven't actually seen it myself, but anything with Cecilia Bartoli is bound to be good. She is truly amazing.

Yeah, she definitely makes a good Donna Elvira. Her rendering of this aria is perhaps the most unique I've seen:

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[metamagnet]

In response to the OP's topics (save wrestling, I kind of agree):
"Art is not a puzzle in which to solve but a field in which to play."
Art is also something that demands an emotional response of some kind. If you're not very emotional, then I can see art being quite boring, or hard to understand.

[Hitorijime]

Yeah, she definitely makes a good Donna Elvira. Her rendering of this aria is perhaps the most unique I've seen:

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:thumbsup:

Magnificent!