welcome to my brain

While thinking more about Bordieu's essay and our discussions in class, I have been asking myself this question:

Is the "intellectualism," or "elevated-ness" (not sure if those are even words, but you get my drift) of a piece of art determined by our perception of it?

In other words, could the way in which we consume a piece of art determine the high-ness of that art? I was kind of talking about this before in my Journey post, but I think I was talking more about how I was mad that some random rich people get to determine what good art is. This post is more about the idea that maybe the "good-ness" of a piece of art is determined by how we look at it.

Bordieu says that "a work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code, into which it is encoded," and I think he's right about that. A person who grew up in a poor part of the inner-city probably has the cultural competence to decode a Lil' Wayne rap song, while a person who grew up in a mansion in an affluent area most likely would not have that same cultural competence, therefore, the Lil Wayne song means nothing to him.

That's not really my point, so let me start to make it. I think--and this is my opinion--that most college professors don't listen to rap music (at least, the rap music of today.) I have also heard many people say they don't think rap music is actually music (mostly rich, old white folks) and I don't think it's a stretch to say that most of the CEO's in the business world today probably don't listen to rap, either. To put it in Bordieu's words, rap music is widely considered to be "lower, coarse, vulgar, venal, servile," and not worth the time of those who can be "satisfied with the sublimated, refined, disinterested, gratuitous, distinguishes pleasures forever closed to the profane."

But, if someone in the academic world decided to analyze a rap song to find out the cultural meaning, if they looked at it in an intellectual way, does that make the piece of work "refined?" I've heard of that before. Would that rap song then be considered a piece of high art, because it's been intellectually examined and analyzed?

More on this later!

Dr. Powers mentioned something a few weeks ago in class about how Homer might have never even existed, and it got me really interested. No, I'm not talking about Homer J. Simpson, I'm talking about Homer, the ancient Greek epic poet, who wrote the poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. Well, that's what I learned in school, anyway, and that's what I've always believed, because my teachers told me that. Apparently, this has been a widely-debated question for a long time, as it has its own name: The Homeric Question!

The main sub-questions in that question are: Who is Homer? Is the work of "Homer" by one author, or multiple authors? and, by who and when were these works composed?

According to M.L. West's article "The Invention of Homer," the epic poems of Homer are actually the collective work of generations of poets.

So, why should we believe that someone named Homer couldn't have existed? How in the world could someone attempt to prove that? West writes: "Homer is not a traditional Greek name, and hard to account for as such. No person is actually known to have been named Homer from before Hellenistic times." A Wikipedia article on the Homeric question examined the probability that the name Homer reflected the fact that there were multiple authors, not just one person:

"As further evidence for the theory that Homer is really a name for a series of oral-formulas, or equivalent to "the Bard" as applied to Shakespeare, the Greek name Homēros is etymologically noteworthy. The word is identical with the Greek for "hostage". There is a theory that his name was back-extracted from the name of a society of poets called the Homeridae, which literally means "sons of hostages", i.e., descendants of prisoners of war. As these men were not sent to war because their loyalty on the battlefield was suspect, they would not get killed in battles. Thus they were entrusted with remembering the area's stock of epic poetry, to remember past events, in the times before literacy came to the area."

Also, a Wikipedia article (I know, Wikipedia isn't the most reliable, but I think this is pretty accurate) says that an analysis of the structure and vocabulary of the Iliad and Odyssey shows that the poems consist of regular, repeating phrases; even entire verses repeat. This raises the question: "Could the Iliad and Odyssey have been products of Oral-Formulaic Composition, composed on the spot by the poet using a collection of memorized traditional verses and phases?" This oral tradition is typical of epic poetry in a primarily oral culture. And the article says that poets within an oral tradition often create and modify their tales when they perform them, so the chance of one author named Homer actually borrowing pieces from other poets is likely.

So, the chances of Homer actually existing seem to be slim. I'd be interested in doing more research on the viewpoint that Homer did actually exist, because it seems like the research I found mostly focused on proving that he didn't exist.

On a really funny note, when I went to Google images and typed in "Homer" to try and get a picture of what he supposedly looked like, all I could find were pictures of Homer J. Simpson. Awesome! Maybe the creators of "The Simpsons" named him Homer because he's so dumb, and it's funny that he would be named the same name as the wise, classical poet. Haha!

In class the other day, Dr. Powers was talking about the gender connotations of being creative, and how creativity is placed in a few different categories. Let's take a look at this.

Which one of these people writes poetry?
1. The captain of the varsity football team
2. The shy, skinny boy who wears tight pants and eyeliner
3. The manager at McDonald's

Hmm...I wonder which one most people would pick? I don't want to be stereotypical, but I guess I am. I think I'd probably automatically pick the shy, skinny boy who wears tight pants and eyeliner to be the poet out of this group. And why is that? I think because being a poet and a writer is seen as a feminine thing. That's kind of weird, because traditionally, many of the famous writers of the "classics" (whoever picks those, I don't know) are men. If a man is a writer, I almost always automatically assume that they don't like sports. Why is that? I guess it's a product of my upbringing, or of the gender expectations and roles that were placed on me. So it's my impression that men who are literary are not as masculine as men that play sports. (Sorry, Dr. Powers!) I know this isn't true, but it's my first impression when I think of that. Another interesting thing, though, is that artists are thought to be more sensual than non-artists. But maybe this only applies to musicians, or filmmakers, or painters or sculptors? I'm not sure. I just know that my perceptions of gender roles as related to writers and artists are waaayyy off and outdated. Does that jock write poetry? Maybe! Either way, I don't think art, or creating art, is either masculine or feminine.

Here's a video of an artist that absolutely busts down any gender conventions we might have about art. Is he masculine? Is he feminine? Hmm...I'm not sure. But is he awesome? ABSOLUTELY! Go, Boy George!