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?

can they stand alone?

"An art which ever increasingly contains reference to its own history demands to be perceived historically," (500)

This quote from the Bourdieu excerpt piqued my interest because to me, it looks like a counterargument to my opinion about remaking stories over and over again. I'm of the opinion that recreating stories makes it far more accessible to people, and is an excellent way to keep around some stories that might otherwise be lost to time. Had Romeo and Juliet not be re-worked so many times, would it still be as prominent as it is? I tend to believe that you don't necessarily have to compare a re-worked story to the original--it should be created to stand on its own. I don't compare the Lion King to Hamlet every time I watch the Lion King, I just watch the Lion King because it's a good movie.

This quote, however, challenges my belief. From my understanding, it says that as a work is recreated and recreated over and over, you must continue to look at where it came from. My question here is, where do you stand on this? Is it alright for a remix to stand on its own, or is it important to remember the origin of said remix?

What makes "Great Art"?

I chose to watch Warm Bodies(2013) along with West Side Story(1961).  I found this version(Warm Bodies) of Romeo and Juliet to be entertaining.  The story was modified to fit pop culture and the intense interest in zombies and the apocalypse.  As I was reading Bourdieu's piece, he included a quote by Suzanne Langer that said, "But now that everyone can read, go to museums, listen to great music, at least on the radio, the judgement of the masses about these things has become a reality and through this it has become clear that great art is not a direct sensuous pleasure.  Otherwise, like cookies or cocktails, it would flatter uneducated taste as much as cultured taste." As I read this quote, I understood it to mean that great art is not something that can just be consumed, you have to be educated to understand the deeper meanings behind it.  Is Romeo and Juliet still a product of high culture?  Especially in the Warm Bodies adaption of the story, I feel like the story has been adapted to fit popular culture and has created new ideas that did not exist in the original story.  Besides R, the zombie, Romeo and Julie being the human, Juliet they were not really star cross lovers and there was less of a focus on the other characters except for the role of Nora as the best friend/advisor.  The major theme seemed to be that love and understanding can change even the toughest of hearts.  That seems to be quite different from the original Romeo and Juliet.

 Image Source: http://rebloggy.com/post/nicholas-hoult-warm-bodies/43178547120

Image Source: https://www.rappler.com/entertainment/20992-warm-bodies-tops-us-box-office

Baz Luhrmann more like Bad Luhrmann

"Even in the classroom, the dominant definition of the legitimate way of appropriating culture and works of art favours those who have had early access to legitimate culture, in a cultured household, outside of scholastic disciplines, since even within the educational system it devalues scholarly knowledge and interpretation as 'scholastic' or even 'pedantic' in favour of direct experience and simple delight." (499)

This "early access" to legitimate culture, whether at home or in school, that is mentioned in this quote from Pierre Bourdieu reminded me a lot of our class conversation from last week. Today, less and less children are reading Romeo and Juliet seemingly than ever before. If they're exposed to this story at all, it is likely through one of the adaptations produced in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries, whether it be West Side Story or Romeo and Juliet the film, or something of the like. I still find these adaptations to be less enriching of an experience than reading the original play, or seeing a live performance of it. But less enriching doesn't make these films or only seeing this story through the lenses of these films any less "legitimate" or favorable, rather they are just...not as aesthetically good, in my opinion. There were some choices made in both West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet (1996) and phew were they something. But I guess they are not any less legitimate...although we really should continue to challenge our children with what they read.

What is Art?

Romeo and Juliet has shifted into the category of “high art” due to its transformation from function to form; that is over time the play began to look less like our own world and more like that of a time bygone allowing it to take on an art aesthetic and move away from resembling our everyday life. The language began to sound less like that of our own and as a result required deeper thought to process and relate the story to our own lives. 

Adaptations, though, re-ground the original story in function. When the plot is re-imagined in our own world and is recognizable we are able to more easily process what we are seeing/reading/hearing. Adaptations allow a modern audience to have instantly recognizable feelings. Bourdieu describes in his article "Distinction and the Aristocracy of Culture" that according to theory emotion makes something ordinary. He writes, “a systematic refusal of all that is ‘human’, by which he means the passions, emotions and feelings which ordinary people put into their ordinary existence, and consequently all the themes and objects capable of evoking them: ‘People like a play when they are able to take an interest in the human destinies put before them’, in which they ‘participate as if they were real life events’” (177). An example of how Westside Story is “functional” as opposed to simply a subject of artistic form comes in the number “Gee, Office Krupke.” In the song the Jets sing satirically of how they ended up in their current situation. They sing of lacking parental love and care, i.e. social guidance to learn right and wrong. This song relates to a social function and as a result shifts it away from simply having an aesthetic form. 

https://ramblingrooby.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/jay-z-the-artist-picasso-baby-a-performance-art-film/ 

The Art of Love and Zombies

"A work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possess the cultural competence...the code into which it is encoded."

My experience with rewatching and finally finishing West Side Story then to jump into Warm Bodies was strange to say the least. The variations of the love of Romeo and Juliet, the remixing of the nurse and the two "houses" at odds with each other, even death is switched up a bit to accommodate to the remixed plot. I find it hilarious that these directors and writers can create the same premise but make it fit into the current times, especially in a zombie apocalypse.

The quote above I disagree with completely. A work of art can have meaning and interest for many people. You can show a random person who isn't fully culturally aware Warm Bodies, they'll still understand that it's clearly a zombie movie that wanted to jump on the zombie hype train of the time but make it a love story. Sure, they won't delve any deeper than that meaning for them but this quote seems to have a narrow view on what makes culture culture.

References and Popular Culture

"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."

For all the snobbery present in Bordieu's piece, he makes an important point. We use the media we produce and consume to communicate with others who share our interests, experiences, and beliefs, and over time this generated an ever-evolving lexicon of cultural shorthand. This goes far beyond the level of elitist snobs looking down on people who could not afford the education and access needed to consume media deemed "high culture" or whatever term is chosen to imply "too good for them". Members of a fandom will have inside references which someone who is a casual consumer of that text might recognize but not fully understand, and someone outside that group would miss altogether. Some of these are either so ubiquitous or so deeply rooted in the human psyche that they appear everywhere, crossing cultural boundaries at every level. Those are things like the Hero's Journey being a metaphor for the progression from child to adult and Rags to Riches reflecting the wish for a better life and/or power of human perseverance in the face of adversity.

As I said before, this lexicon is constantly in flux, even more today than in the past with the rise of meme culture and viral popularity of new media made possible with the advent of the internet and easy access to it with the rise of smartphones. with respect tot today's subject, I submit
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/opinion/west-side-story-broadway.html about the stereotypes and improper portrayal of Puerto Ricans in Westside Story, how the 1961 film still influences their public perception, and why it's time to let it go.



addendum;
For the sake of interest, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/06/star-trek-tng-and-the-limits-of-language-shaka-when-the-walls-fell/372107/
discusses the Star Trek TNG episode "Darmok", which involves a species whose entire language is comprised of references which all of them understand, but which are incomprehensible to anyone who does not have detailed knowledge of their history and culture.

Swine.

Pierre Bourdieu’s exploration of the intersection of class and culture (and its philosophical roots) underscores the persistent structures of power and capital. The discussion of form over function is an expression of privilege; as Bourdieu observes about eating habits, “the taste of necessity…favours the most ‘filling’ and most economical foods, and the taste of liberty—or luxury--…shifts the emphasis to the manner (of presenting, serving, eating, etc.)” (502). Food, like other artifacts of culture, becomes a means by which we express our social and economic status, because to have the space or “distance” to explore the form of food means we are not starving. At Marx’s funeral, Friedrich Engels commented that what Marx understood was “the simple fact that man must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing before he can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.”  This means, of course, that the superstructure in which culture is housed is necessarily exclusive to the bourgeoisie. (It’s worth noting that these are not observations rooted only in Marxism; western philosophy has long favored distant, rational “viewing” over, as Bourdieu puts it, “the primary stratum of the meaning we can grasp on the basis of our ordinary experience” [499], a viewpoint that not only privileges the educated but also men, as those two qualities were so often linked and as women’s experiences were considered too embodied and intuitive to discern “the secondary stratum of meaning” [499]. End of Marxist feminist rant.)

This all provides an interesting backdrop to question both the role of the artist and the role of the critic. Susan Boyle horrified the classical opera community, because the general public was unable to discern between an entertaining singer and someone with “real” artistic talent. The comments sections of the articles about Romeo and Juliet were filled with people who obviously felt their opinions were valid, and in light of Bourdieu’s article, were probably also expressing their own class status. How concerned are we with how our particular preferences express our education or class? (PS. I drink boxed wine.)

THE VULGAR

R from Warm Bodies: https://cnsbranches.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/warm-bodies-imagine-dragons-and-conversion/

“The denial of lower, coarse, vulgar, venal, servile—in a word, natural—enjoyment, which constitutes the sacred sphere of culture, implies an affirmation of the superiority of those who can be satisfied with the sublimated, refined, disinterested, gratuitous, distinguished pleasures forever closed to the profane. That is why art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfil a social function of legitimating social differences” (Bourdieu 503). 

With each remix we encounter, there’s different levels of enjoyment the audience gleans from it depending on the context of their past cultural consumption. For example, people who have never been forced to read through Romeo and Juliet may not recognize its influences in something like Warm Bodies on their own. Although they miss out on the references, they can still appreciate the story in that form because it’s zombies and comedy and love and entertaining. The problem becomes when people are so wrapped up in their sense of high culture that the existence of Warm Bodies bothers them because it distorts the refinement of the original text, and they’re so distracted by the changes to the story and their discomfort with the setting that they’re unable to acknowledge its natural value.