Big Macs and Superbowls

Welcome Comrades,


"Sundance is weird. The movies are weird - you actually have to think about them when you watch them."
Britney Spears, after attending the Sundance Film Festival, a forum for independent, non-Hollywood filmmakers


"Britney is absolutely right, and as an icon of popular culture, she should know. Unless we exert tighter controls on the media, we are in immediate danger of awakening the American public from their TV-induced coma."
Vice-President Dick Cheney

Ok, Ok, Dick Cheney didn't really say that, but can't you just hear it? Britney Spears did, however, make the first comment, confirming our suspicians that scantily-clad pop singers should 'shut the f*#k up!' Seriously, if Britney Spears opens her mouth, there's only one thing I think of, and it has nothing to do with music, movies or her opinions about anything. That's a subject for another website, though - one that requires a password...

The comment did get me thinking (uh-oh...) about art and modern culture. Shouldn't art be provocative? Shouldn't art make you think? The concept of entertainment in art is relatively new in historical terms. Entertainment was what the emperors of Rome gave the masses to placate them - gladiators fighting to the death and christians being shredded by lions. How exciting! They coined the phrase, "bread and circuses" to explain the effect. Give the rabble food to quiet their complaining bellies and spectacle to distract their questioning, rebellious minds and, voila! - you have a contented, obedient populace and a secure ruling class. I think we can safely modernize this phrase to, "Big Macs and Superbowls."

This policy didn't always work for the Romans. When the grain harvest from Sicily was compromised by drought or some other blow to the economy, the 'bread' part of the equation became unfeasable. In those desperate times, it was necessary to start a war. This allowed the emperor to get the hungry 'capita censi' (literally, 'head count') or common people out of Rome and into the army, then, off to some foreign land to forage for themselves. Hopefully, they would expand the empire and bring new agricultural resources under Roman control. Hmm, this sounds eerily familiar... Perhaps, the context is made clearer if we change our new catchphrase to, "S.U.V.s and Superbowls."

So, back to the future... Traditionally, art has always had a nobler purpose - to educate, to enlighten, to uplift... Of course, capturing the beauty of a vase of flowers in oils on canvas may not seem to have a noble purpose, but in terms of cultural importance, it's closer in atomic weight to platinum than any song by Britney. Art can be so much more. Art has levels and depth. Art has meaning. If it is allowed to be seen...

At the entrance to the Security Council chamber of the United Nations there is a reproduction of a painting by Pablo Picasso called, "Guernica." This area of the U.N. is where diplomats make statements to the press with this work as their background. One of modern art's most powerful statements against the evil and destruction of war, the Picasso work depicts the brutal attack by Nazi warplanes on a small Spanish village. On January 27, a curtain woven in the U.N.'s signature light-blue was placed to cover the painting. A diplomat stated that, "it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the U.N., John Negroponte, or Colin Powell, talk about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings."

If that doesn't make you think, I don't know what will.

I'm keeping my Britney Spears poster, though...

Hasta la victoria siempre,

TVD

--- 2/08/03

©2003 TVD