Sundog Rising!
Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog
As I Am Entertained, Therefore I Am.
Part Two
Thinkerbell
Our Premise So Far: Following up on Baudrillard’s System of Objects, modern western man takes the variety of choice in his consumption of material goods and entertainment as a basic right that serves to enhance his personal status and definition through his discrimination in making the selections he does. Question which movies or music he likes and you question his being. As a result some people take casual literary or film discussions far too seriously. To the point of becoming abusive.
This week’s question: Those insecure idiots aside, is it such a bad thing to define your essence through your choices in art?
Does your taste in books, movies, music and television shows define the person you become? Or does that taste develop as a result of the person you are?
I think mostly the second, but not without a touch of the first as well.
As I mentioned last time, more hours per day can be spent entertaining yourself to death than could possibly have been conceived of even thirty years ago. Entertainment 24 hours a day 7 days a week has never been present in such wild abundance and variety before. Faced with such a wealth of selection, you have to be discriminating in what you choose to spend your time on. You don’t watch the first TV show you walk in on when there’s a hundred other stations, and you don’t pick up the first book you find in Chapters and only buy that one either.
No, you PVR your shows and get back to them when you damn well please, and you narrow your search for a good book down subject by section by alphabetical grouping by shelf until you find something worth reading. Assuming you didn’t have a list of titles already made when you walked into the store.
Most of these selections are based on what you’ve liked before. Depending on what you grew up watching or reading, you contrive certain tastes and dislikes. Who you are obviously influences your final selections.
But in one sense, you do start off with a finite field to choose from influencing your development in what is available to you when you first set off into the welcoming arms of the media. I obviously had a much more restrained range to choose from when I started reading in the nineteen sixties than a new reader does today. Today’s barrage of availability must make it trickier to find yourself. But once you’ve got the general idea, that experience heavily defines future choices. As I just said, who you are influences your selection. But by the time you pass your formative years, how much has your early exposure to media with the particular options available to you also influenced the person you have become?
I’d say it’s a cycle that feeds upon itself. Opting for comic books over the Bobbsey Twins when I was seven definitely defined a lot of what my teenage years were going to be like. (Not that I never read another Bobbsey Twins novel.) And inculcating a love for comics as a central tenet of my developmental being still plays a major role in what I will or will not enjoy in my entertainment choices today.
Therefore, how viable a basis does developing into the person you are due to your entertainment choices represent? Are we cheapening ourselves somehow, when we say “I’m the man I am today because I started watching Dr. Who when I was six years old!”? And still do, fifty years later? (A practically unique example, but still …)
Obviously your worth as a person can be measured by the depth of your perception of and interaction with the world. Who would argue that beneath the surface banality of so much media there are no examples of the most insightful art produced in the last century? You have to dig for it, but isn’t that the point of becoming a discerning consumer? If it’s a matter of arguing that the quality of the person you are is dependent upon the quality of the material forming your perceptions, then books, movies, music and yes, even television can supply a perfectly nurturing environment within which to explore your better outlook.
So where does that leave us?
Your consumption of art within the entertainment world contributes to your development as an individual. This is not necessarily a bad thing as art can aspire to providing us with the greatest, comprehensive and most aesthetic explanations of our existence we have available to us. A valid field to draw from, indeed.
Hold it hold it hold it, though. Who let art into the discussion so sneakily? What about the guy who sits around on the couch all day watching reruns of The Simpsons? Or the woman hopelessly addicted to Sex in the City?
There’s a bit more thinking to be done here yet …
(to be continued)
*******
REALITY FICTION UPDATE!
And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?
Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.
But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...
What’s happening now?
As if this blog isn’t bad enough, Reality Fiction Too goes all Existential as well this week, in Episode Twenty, starting Friday. Will the characters discover that they really exist, fictionally, metafictionally, or at all? Or will they only find that everything to date has been some kind of big joke? (Other than the obvious.)
Continuing Friday at: realficone.blogspot.ca
REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE
EPISODE NINETEEN: ABDUCTION
Abduction/Apperception
EPISODE EIGHTEEN: MELODRAMA
“Terror in Tarnation! A Thrilling Narrative in Three Acts”
EPISODE SEVENTEEN: POETRY
“landescapes”
EPISODE SIXTEEN: SILLY EUROPEAN SPY SPOOF (DUBBED)
“Diet Ray of the Stars!”
EPISODE FIFTEEN: EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE
“The Shadow of Her Passion”
EPISODE FOURTEEN: FLYING:
“Sky Calling”
EPISODE THIRTEEN: SLAPSTICK:
“The Phantom of the Werewolf”
EPISODE TWELVE: DAIRY FARMING:
“Early One Morning”
EPISODE ELEVEN: BURROUGHS:
“Chapter Nine”
EPISODE TEN: WEREWOLVES:
“The Silver Solution”
EPISODE NINE: WRESTLING:
“Suckerslam XIV”
EPISODE EIGHT: JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:
“The Proud and the Senseless”
EPISODE SEVEN: THE JAZZ AGE:
“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”
EPISODE SIX: SUBMISSION:
“Re-Org”
EPISODE FIVE: MASQUERADE:
“The Eyes Behind the Mask”
EPISODE FOUR: SELF HELP:
“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:
Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”
EPISODE THREE: NUDIST:
“If You Have To Ask ...”
EPISODE TWO: FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:
“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”
EPISODE ONE: STEAMPUNK:
“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”
A J.H.B. Original!
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