Reaching Back to Thursday
To revisit something: “it’s just about football.” Yes and no. I think this gets at the difference between “plot” and “theme.” When I approach a show from an aesthetic perspective, I am often looking to interrogate what values–implicitly or explicitly–that show challenges or reinforces. If I watch a show and every character is straight and in a heterosexual relationship, then that show is supporting a particular worldview. If I watch a show and several characters are in queer relationships, then that show is supporting a worldview. It isn’t that one ideology is necessarily superior to another. Rather, I am asking us to recognize that any show is always, already “about” more than it might appear on the surface.
So, yes, in the sense Friday Night Lights portrays the kinds of decisions and difficulties one faces playing high school football (or growing up in high school, or being a parent, etc). The joy of victory and the agony of defeat etc.
But, in the course of doing so, the show also unconsciously portrays and reinforces a number of values about not only football, but also what constitutes a life well lived. ANY SHOW does this. This is what I mean. Sometimes it is obvious, but not always. (Hence Battlestar Galactica, a show about humans running from robots in space is also a show about terrorism and a show about the confrontation between science and religion; Buffy the Vampire Slayer is about a girl killing vampires and demons but is also commentary on traditional expectations of gender/sexuality; Batman is about a guy chasing villains but also about the emptiness of vengeance and managing one’s demons, etc).
Dali and Surrealism
First, a picture that many of you have seen:
Perhaps fewer will have seen Gene Pelham’s photo upon which Rockwell based the photo
. Here’s another worth considering:
And one of Dali’s:
And another Dali
:
Let’s compare:
What do we “need” to “appreciate” the second work, by Jackson Pollock as art?
And what of Marcel Duchamp’s sculpture, “The Fountain”?
Homework
Game Journals (finish that game!)
Read Baraka’s “Revolutionary Theater”
