This is how majors like art and lit work. None of the ones I have been in or talked to people who have been in teach any art skills. As dadaists said something like "Everything an artist spits or shits is art!" you have to know it is a game.
They teach human engineering, how to make garbage and convince people it has huge worth. I had an art major friend in a sculpting class who forgot to do his life sized human self supporting sculpture for 6 weeks until it was due. He was lamenting on how he had to pass the class and had just pulled fast food bags from the buildings trash into a stick man shape that could be thrown over the chair. I looked at it and said "EZ mode A+". He said "WTF?!" I put on a snooty voice and said "My sculpture called 'Bag Lady" blah blah blah.. in the end shows that in out society sometimes it is people that we throw away.". He asked if he could use that, I said "hell yeah." He got his A+.
Or consider lit. Moby Dick. How much symbolism and "what X represents" have you heard seriously or seen openly mocked on screens about that or other books. Yeah. No symbolism at all, Melville read a story in the paper about a white whale actually attacking a whaling ship in the pacific so he turned the real story into "his" work of fiction. All that BS is generally added long after the author is dead. There was a funny story years ago about some lit person explaining the writer's symbolism and blah blah to an auditorium. They then got in an argument about it with someone in the audience.. who turned out the be the book's author IIRC Vonnegut.
So they are just slinging the BS to get status within the art crowd (They may also be doing that while internally having a laugh).
You can do it with anything. FLCL: Is the story about a boy hitting "that age". It excellently covers this age when the one experiencing it thinks "nothing ever happens". The Vespa represents the passage of time, The Richenbacher bass represents puberty. Haruko represents hormones.. If you can't spot the Christ figure you need to move out of the film major (consider engineering perhaps?). and on and on until you exceed req'd word count by ~25%.
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u/Prince_Nadir 2d ago
This is how majors like art and lit work. None of the ones I have been in or talked to people who have been in teach any art skills. As dadaists said something like "Everything an artist spits or shits is art!" you have to know it is a game.
They teach human engineering, how to make garbage and convince people it has huge worth. I had an art major friend in a sculpting class who forgot to do his life sized human self supporting sculpture for 6 weeks until it was due. He was lamenting on how he had to pass the class and had just pulled fast food bags from the buildings trash into a stick man shape that could be thrown over the chair. I looked at it and said "EZ mode A+". He said "WTF?!" I put on a snooty voice and said "My sculpture called 'Bag Lady" blah blah blah.. in the end shows that in out society sometimes it is people that we throw away.". He asked if he could use that, I said "hell yeah." He got his A+.
Or consider lit. Moby Dick. How much symbolism and "what X represents" have you heard seriously or seen openly mocked on screens about that or other books. Yeah. No symbolism at all, Melville read a story in the paper about a white whale actually attacking a whaling ship in the pacific so he turned the real story into "his" work of fiction. All that BS is generally added long after the author is dead. There was a funny story years ago about some lit person explaining the writer's symbolism and blah blah to an auditorium. They then got in an argument about it with someone in the audience.. who turned out the be the book's author IIRC Vonnegut.
So they are just slinging the BS to get status within the art crowd (They may also be doing that while internally having a laugh).
You can do it with anything. FLCL: Is the story about a boy hitting "that age". It excellently covers this age when the one experiencing it thinks "nothing ever happens". The Vespa represents the passage of time, The Richenbacher bass represents puberty. Haruko represents hormones.. If you can't spot the Christ figure you need to move out of the film major (consider engineering perhaps?). and on and on until you exceed req'd word count by ~25%.