Thursday, September 16, 2010

Art imitates life - ours is boring and loaded with violence

Are humans designed to be boring?  I don’t think so.  But for some reason there are certain people hell-bent on making and keeping us that way.  Start with religious rules and…actually…end with them too because those are what are used to influence civil rights and laws.  They’re also what have worked their way into jurisdiction of the media with “decency” codes. 

There was a short time however, when even “the church” opened its collective mind when it came to art.  The Renaissance was a glorious time when the human body was depicted in all its naked glory, when minstrels wrote and performed bawdy love songs and plays were filled with bright costumes and beautiful words.  Admitted women were not allowed on the stage or in the pulpit but they still adorned themselves in fabulous garments and danced with equally graceful and stunningly clad men.  Art was not boring.

Last night America again showed how much fear there is of “breaking the rules”.  Really?  Aren’t we programmed to take risks, push the envelope?  Look at the Goddess’s creation, filled with bright colors, bird that soar high and luxuriously furred quadrupeds. Mother Nature’s music is a cacophony of chirps, screams, howls and barks.  Nothing boring there.  So why have we allowed religion to take that out of spiritual writings and replace it with this austere, domineering, and judgmental deity with no spirit of adventure, beauty or curiosity? 

No people, if The Fates had wanted us to listen to boring balladeers for all of our existence on this plain, no one would be born with the talent to dazzle the eye, ear, heart and brain like Michael Jackson, David Bowie, Madonna, Christina Aguilera, or even Motley Crue.  It should not have been a risk for any of them to create the art they have.  It should not have been considered risqué to view their performances.  Life should be exciting not boring. 

I do not understand how we have come to romanticize war, murder or other forms of physical violence.  How did these become acceptable risks?  Yet we run from art that is considered even the littlest bit edgy.  Art tribes/communities are looked on by outsiders as odd, weird, hopefully go unnoticed and disappear.  Yet people will pay money over and over for movies still being made about World War II, Korea and Vietnam.  Gore can run deep and wide on the screen but a glimpse of breast or upper thigh is gasped at.  People, the human body is far more beautiful all in one piece than ripped apart on a battlefield or in a dark alley. 

Where did we lose our way?  How do we find it again?  When will beauty and creativity be exonerated, worshipped and encouraged again?  When will minstrels, actors, painters, sculptors, writers, etc. be allowed out from under their rocks and appreciated in all their weird eccentricness?