Writers.....

I don't think the characters of a story or a TV show nessacarily represent what the writers believe. At times, yes, maybe they do. But I think writers aim towards pleasing the audience and the audience is going to be made up of a variety of people. There are aspects of many beliefs and values in TV shows. Writers pull from all types of sources to create something new and original. I believe they will occationally include their own beliefs but we have no way of determining which beliefs those are out of the vast amount represented in TV shows. To be a writer you have to depict situations and elements of life that maybe you do not agree with but you think should be included in the script your writing. Writers know not everyone gunna like it and not everyones gunna dislike it, there will always be controversy. They can only hope that somewhere it spoke to someone, made someone laugh, made someone cry, made someone think, etc.

Who decides what art is???

Well I think culturally, the public decides what art is. The general opinion decides what to put in museums, what to hang around cities, etc. But I don't think anyone person or group or people can call something art and only then does it begin to be art. I think art is personal to each person especially to the artist themself. An artist can create something that the general public might find completly hideous and resfuse to call it art, but despite that opinion that artist still had meaning behind their work and it means something very personal to them and that is what makes it art. Now I'm not saying that just anyone can throw paint on a canvas and call it art. I believe when someone is creating something they should have a connection with it. When a person chooses to make a living off of creating their art because they put their life and their emotion into a peice and they don't do it for any financial or societal status, it is then I think they are an artist. They don't do their work to profit or to recieve any gain but because there is so much more worth in the emotion and the meaning in the artwork. But I don't think there can really be a right answer to this question. Art will always be debatable and controversial, enlightening and offensive, also ever-changing. The most beautiful things in life are those which cause people to awaken and to question and to debate. Some will consider certain things art and other things no where near their definition of art. But thats what makes the concept of art so incredible, it can't be defined. And I don't think it really ever will be, that would take away the mystery that lies within it.

Forgetfullness

There is a great amount of disorder shown in the poem "Forgetfullness" by Billy Collins. The poem is focused around the effects of aging and shows a dehuminized subject. He writes, "one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemishpere of your brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones." This line not only shows the loss of memory but it also mocks the retirment of people as they age and move away to warm southern climates. The poem continues to describe more aspects of memory loss and the person of old age becomes more and more dehumanized as they are characterized only by there memory loss. Billy Collins poem also shows disorder in the pattern that its written. For example the first stanza has 7 lines and the second has 3 and the third has 2. His poem has no specfic order in which its written and is scattered to maybe portray his message more effectivly. The scattered writting represents the scattered memory of the old.

Words&Meanings

I believe the breakdown of words and meanings lies in an inadequate system of language. Language can be easily distorted and even render itself meaningless when certain words are abused or overused. We dicussed in class how when describing an object we ultimatly are reduced to using the word "thing" to describe it. I believe this just shows the limit that our language creates and we can no longer describe something in words once we reach the point of just calling it a thing. But fortunatly language is not the only way in which we communicate what objects are and what they do. Humans can also do this through action. We use actions and expressions and art to describe things that cannot be verbalized. Many emotions and meanings are often depicted through music because language can not do them justice. In this way I do not believe that it is an inadequate understanding of reality from which the breakdown of words and meaning lies but simply that we as humans have not created a language that can fully embrace the whole of reality. As finite beings we of course will never fully understand reality because there are so many lessons, one person cannot possibly learn them all throughout there whole lifetime. But the understanding of reality that we do have and experience I think is expressed best when no words are used at all.