#(once again because of external validation. there was a contest and the more you wrote the more entries you got to win stuff.

[notsosilentsister]

One of the great advantages of my current unglamorous office job is that it doesn't entirely consume me. I can have a bit of a one-track mind, so that's usually a risk to consider. But this is a job that I can mostly leave behind at the office, there are weeks on end when it's quite possible to quit on time and I almost never work on weekends. It's marvelous. I've finally accomplished the sort of circumstances that would allow me to indulge a writing habit. Now I only need to develop the writing habit.

So far I've mostly used my new-found work-life to become marginally better at playing the piano. This has been taking me hours and hours of almost daily practice, because I have no talent for it whatsoever, which is rarely conducive to a steep learning curve. It's my favourite thing to do right now.

I wish I could practice my writing like I practice my piano. It's maybe worth examining why - if I already have a fun hobby I clearly enjoy, why do I wish to exchange it for another one? - but that's a question for another day. Or maybe - probably! - that's already the answer and the same thing that makes me think I should be writing rather than playing piano is what makes it so hard for me to do it.

Obviously some part of me thinks that my writing should be more than "a fun hobby"; obviously my complete lack of ambition and pretense with regard to music is what makes the piano practice fun, and the regrettable existence of such things in regard to my writing is what's holding me back.

It's not like I'm never sad that I don't have much of an ear for music. But I really don't think about it very often. The convenient thing about not having much of an ear for music is that you only notice half the beats you miss, whereas the tragedy of the talented person is that they quickly reach a point where their taste and judgement exceed their skills and things get frustrating. With piano, that point is still comfortably far away for me.

I'm of course not completely immune to the poison of comparison. A couple of days ago I made the mistake of watching one of those progress videos on youtube. Even with my underdeveloped listening skills, I couldn't help noticing that this person's "two weeks of practice" sounded like my "10 years". I sulked about it for an evening, and then I got over it, got back to my piano and happily hacked away again. So I'm not very good, and very likely never will be, what else is new? This hasn't stopped me so far, why should it stop me now? I've never been in it for external validation. (In the past other kids used to  point out to me that my singing/dancing/etc. is very off, due to my complete lack of rhythm. Admittedly, this hasn't happened in a while, but I wouldn't necessarily interpret that as a sign of progress. More likely, my peers, now being grown ups, have just gotten more polite.) I need to impress no one but myself, and I'm impressed enough if I can hit the keys in the right succession, never mind stuff like fluidity of scales, brilliance in tone, accentuation, phrasing, or you know, actually keeping the beat.

Writing used to be my thing. I was that insufferable kid who always volunteered when a teacher asked who wanted to share their work and I lived for those occasions when the teacher would pick out my piece as an example to read out in class. German was the subject where my teachers changed most frequently, and they didn't always necessarily have the same idea of good writing, but I always won them over quickly enough. I was so convinced of my skill that I guess most people just went along with it. I won the local library's writing contest twice, at 13 and at 16.

There was a more important, nation-wide contest I participated in at 18. I remember my mother's relief when I placed under also-ran. "You see, it's all so subjective; you can never know what someone might like!" For a moment, she had been worried I might have seriously considered pursuing this as a career. Of course I kept considering it. I had participated in the contest to get used to losing, to toughen myself against rejection. This was only supposed to be a start.

I actually kept writing a fair bit during my first years at university. A German magazine maintained an online platform, where people could comment on articles and post their own stuff. Editors would pick user-generated content to feature next to editorial content on the frontpage. I made frontpage once or twice. In retrospect those were probably my glory days. Then I kinda stopped writing in German (for pleasure, I mean.  I wrote a diploma thesis in German, but I don't count academic writing for the purpose of this text).

And now I find it hard to go back. I have decided I will - of all the people I can think of right now, who would conceivably read my stuff, most have already expressed a preference for German - but something in me still resists the idea.

I used to go without glasses for long periods, because I have, at more than one point in my life, lost them and been too lazy to replace them for months. I'm shorted-sighted on one eye, and far-sighted on the other, so I tell myself one cancels out the other. Fact is, I do see better with glasses. I only notice how much better when I finally get new ones after all. And I still hate it the first couple of days, because it just feels weird. German for pleasure feels just as weird to me right now, but I am sure I would get used to it again quickly enough. This is no explanation.

(I do think my German prose was ... less prosaic? Downright purple, at times. My English tends to be plainer. Maybe I lost the guts for swooning. I just don't think it's a problem that can be solved by switching back to German. But it's probably worth a try.)

It is very easy for me to write biographical stuff like this. Also, fairly unsatisfying. I usually find myself quite fascinating. Putting it black on white however tends to crush the illusion. Still, I might be doing more of this for while, to get back into the habit and such.

#writing #personal #diary #journal #about me #at least I've finally figured out how to insert read more again

[celestius]

When social desirability determines artistic quality

In the last couple of months, I have run into several instances of the projection of desirable social stances on the reception of artistic works. The worrying amount of cases when a project was lauded for portraying/implementing (especially racial)  topics well and therefore considered to be of high quality, or conversely criticized for it and therefore considered bad on an artistic level made me consider the level of impact I personally believe a portrayal of particular contemporary opinions on judging art should have.

First off, I would like to say that even from my point of view, it´s a sliding scale that cannot really be applied across the board and each case should be considered differently based on a number of criteria.

(Most of my examples below pertain to the topic of race because it is both most obvious and because it finds much more representation that can be examined, thus giving it a "head start" over topics concerning for example gender)

For the longest time, I was completely unbothered by what some people pejoratively describe as pandering to a preferred social opinion. I never felt like the tendency was very strong or at least not strong enough to warrant examination in light of many other considerations that influence people´s opinions. The first time that the topic really hit me was after I saw Black Panther (and yes, I still bitch about it to this day :)). My best friend and I walked out of the theater and were both unpleasantly surprised by how shockingly mediocre the movie was. What added more oil into the fire was of course the hyperbolically positive response from the critics. The difference between the aggregate score among critics (88) and regular moviegoers (66) marks one of the biggest on the site, and most definitely the biggest for a high-profile movie. As sidenote: a score of 88 would make it by the far the best Marvel movie ever made, which is a claim so preposterous even all those who five-stared it can´t honestly believe. To be even more explicit, the movie would be completely destroyed without its social element, as it simultaneously commits the worse crimes brought against Marvel movies (repetitive formula, generic villain etc), while failing even on a formal level - terrible choreography, uninspired and unclear directions, and even CGI (!). Why such difference between the two scoring mechanisms? Although there are probably some people who rated it poorly because they are simply racist, the majority of critical opinions that one can find for example all over reddit clearly addresses actual issues with the movie regardless of its social message. I think that even those who initially lauded it as groundbreaking, game changing etc etc are now aware of the fact that in spite of how admirable its stance is, it doesn´t automatically make it a quality product.

Even the way that people introduce the validity of their opinion on BP betrays how strong it´s external aspect really is. Most posts on the topic were prefaced by the person´s racial background, so you would read things like "As a person of Jewish heritage..." or even worse "Not even my friend who´s from Kenya thought it was good...". All of these heavily implying that in order to have an opinion you actually have to EXPLAIN your ethnic claim to that opinion, because if you´re white and didn´t like it, you´re obviously racist (evidenced by the absolute shitstorm of racism charges brought down upon the first reviewer who DARED give the movie 7/10, meaning he must be racist because there is no other explanation). Conversely, having to support your opinion by "being from Kenya" means basically saying "My opinion is more defensible than yours because I´m from Africa". Without a doubt, one´s social and racial background does influence their opinion, but to such an extent that you have to provide your color of skin or country of origin so it´s more credible? Absurd. Even the idea of saying "I am black/white and therefore have more to say on the matter" is ludicrous, as no person from any group can claim to know or represent its opinion. By that logic I should be able to represent the opinion of all whites or males, because those are my (many) reference groups.

I absolutely admire and support the many ways in which BP did represent change, and I agree with its "message", if it could be called that, 100%. I am willing to read 50 articles on how much it contributes to the topic and portrayal of race. But that does NOT make it a good movie. It merely makes it a movie with a great message, but we should not let that blind us to its flaws or worse, flat out reconsider its artistic value in the light of what it says.

One of the controversies heavily discussed in the Czech Republic recently was the complete absence of black people in the Czech video game Kingdom Come. Its creator, Dan Vávra, strove from the beginning to make the game as realistic as possible, after which he attracted significant heat and even proposed blockage in several foreign countries, simply because he refused to include an ethnic group for whose presence in the Czech lands of the time there was ZERO evidence. The obvious hysteria over what is socially desirable and what is actually true show that for many people, truth is something to be bent  if it doesn´t align with our direction, rather than something that we can at the very least use to move forward or reflect on an era that was not necessarily up to our current standards.

Videogames in particular attract the attention of critical masses which are very little or often not at all interested in how good the game actually is, but once again chiefly in how it handles a certain topic. The relative failure of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was undoubtedly supported by the controversy of their use of the word "apartheid" to describe the rift between humans and cyborgs (because apparently the word is copyrighted by Africa and can only be used in that one particular case :)) even though it´s always been very common to apply terms from an actual conflict or problem to it´s fictional counterpart to signify their similarities, the moment someone broaches on the heavily tabooed topic of racial oppression, the roof is on fire. Mankind Divided was also criticized for the in-game posters "Aug lives matter" that actually preceded (!!)  the BLM movement, but even if they did not, transforming a particular zeitgeist into metaphoric art is not criminal. I see no controversy regarding the use of the "not my---" phrase, even though by the logic above we should say "No, that´s only to be applied to Donald Trump and that´s so serious that you should never use it in any other contest!". I wonder how many words and concepts that aren´t going to offend anyone we´re going to have left in the end.

For my last example, I am going to switch from the problem of race to the problem of violence. Both seasons of Punisher, even though beloved by its audience, were harshly torn down by the critics. The main reason provided? Apparently it does not deal with gun violence well (= so not how we want it to), "it´s the wrong show a the wrong time" (because its premiere had to be postponed THREE times because of public shootings; when in reality, he situation in the US is so horrendous when it comes to mass shootings and gun control that if they had to take a break every time there was a shooting, the show would never get released. The way America is now, there is simply never going to be a good time to release a violent show).. But once again - how Punisher addresses this topic is considered more important than how good a show it actually is. As I mentioned above, even for me, it´s a sliding scale. Based especially on what a work of art sets out to do, we can expect it and judge it based on how it deals with a certain topic. In a documentary, I expect certain social sensibilities and a focus on a particular topic. How well it manages to capture or examine this topic could very well be a major part of how good it is in my eyes. But a show about a gun-toting vigilante should seriously not be described as bad just because we believe it owes us something in the way of portraying a real life topic. It owes us nothing. It only owes us to be a good show.

One of my friends, who grew up during Communism, made an excellent point once: his grandfather was a music conductor and opera writer. The value of all the music he played or wrote was primarily considered based on how well it represented the Communist ideals. Some plays were considered better and some worse based solely on their political desirability. The way things are judged now seems to him to be no different from that era, with the extremely important distinction that all the movements today have a noble goal in mind. That is without a doubt what powerfully sets them apart from whatever came before. LGBTQ, movements for the rights of minorities, acceptance of those who are different in any way - all these have very little to do with some sort of patriotic propaganda and rather with honest care for other people. They are truly noble goals. And yet in spite of that I believe that it is still wrong to project how much we want these to be communicated and represented on the perceived quality of the art. At worst, we are no different from the Communist propaganda that required art to align with its opinions if it were to be good, and at best we create a Clockwork Orange scenario in which we are simply forced to compulsorily choose good over evil. I am not against a society formulating which opinions it supports or finds desirable - after all, any society with laws an an educational system automatically does it. I am not at all against an ongoing debate on how the portrayal of these opinions helps or hurts a particular group of people. What I find unacceptable, however, is the idea that any of these make a work of art better or worse.

(Also, Black Panther sucks. In case it wasn´t clear after the three posts I made about it on this blog  :)))