Tuesday, March 3, 2020

EVERYTHING is part of a class system, bummer

"A work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code in which it is encoded." (499)

I'm starting to notice that so many things bring me back to "The Educated Imagination" by Northrop Frye, and because it was happening so frequently, I thought about why. I guess it's because Frye was kind of spot on. I think that his essay has a great deal to do with what we talk about in class, and thats because it contains a very valuable and universal message. We honestly don't have much, if ANY, originality. To create, we must learn, and as we've learned from Bourdieu's piece, to consume we must learn. If we did not understand the 'code' of what we are consuming, of course it would seem like nonsense. I honestly had a hard time understanding a lot of Bourdieu's essay, but I think I got the main point (?) that because we must learn to consume, and because what we learn is influenced by our social status, what we ultimately end up consuming reflects said status. So I guess if I had any questions to ask about this, it would be what is the solution to escaping this subliminal class system of culture? Do we need to make everything much more accessible? Is this even possible? And most importantly, IF it's possible, why has it not been accomplished?


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