Art has, as one of its functions, the function of producing psychological effects in an audience. Some of these effects are simple folk-psychological states (joy, rage, fear, sadness, etc.) and other are more complex (sublimity, reverie, ecstasy, etc.). Art-as-Affect requires knowledge of that which will produce a desired emotional state in the audience. And this requires knowing the audience.
In more objective terms, art also has a function of offering commentary and judgment on aspects of the human condition which may be universal, and yet must be realized in particular representations. Art, especially literary art, commonly identifies that which is good vs. bad, preferable vs. non-preferable, prudent vs. imprudent, possible vs. impossible, selfish vs. altruistic, etc. This also requires knowledge of the audience. In different times and places, there are different particularizations of these categories.
Kenneth Burke notes such particularization Baudelaire's poem Femmes Damnées which translated to "damned women" or "condemned women." Why are the women damned? Because they are lesbians and our poet is writing in the 19th century (i.e., he was writing about forbidden and condemned love). Cyril Scott's 1909 translation of the poem reads, in part
Thus, to properly discuss the emotive and formal properties of art we have to be able to say something about the politics of the age as setting about boundary conditions of the good and the true. We must know of the ideology of the age. And even in contemporary art, such as film, we would do well to note how ideology intersects with the production aesthetic outcomes.
Beowulf, for another example, has been long-noted to be the first great epic English poem. The poem is preserved for us in a single source, the Nowell Codex which is thought to have been written around the year 1,000 and which was damaged in a fire in 1731. Some commentators on the poem have lamented the "vandalism" of the poem at the hands of Christians who altered the original story into the one we find in the Nowell Codex. This is a somewhat curious idea as every story is story of its time -- Beowulf is a story of its own time (the time of the European transition to Christianity) and every history age is an "age of transition." The first thing any historian will note before embarking on a discourse about a historical period will be the obligatory cautions that the age was not monolithic, that its boundaries are hard to define and that the age was one of transition. Beowulf thus being a thing of its time reflected the ideology of its time, and being an age of transition, it harbors certain ideological tensions. The paganism which preceded Christianity made certain things "sayable" and "expected" on a folk tale and the Christianization which followed put its own spin on matters. And today we find Beowulf arguably most vandalized by being turned into what looks like a video game cut-scene by Robert Zemeckis (2007), but this too is just another adaptation. If what the scribe who penned the Nowell Codex was a Christian "vandalization," it is one we cannot not without noting how ideology intersects with form. If it isn't a vandalization, there are, nevertheless, tensions within the text which are best understood as ideological fault lines of a tale in transition -- there is no "pure" "untouched" and "non-ideological" Beowulf -- it comes to us as a tale of heroism. It always was and always shall be a tale, no matter how it is adapted, from somewhere, and that somewhere will always carry ideological freight.
We have to carry this freight and examine it, however, to consider the other functions of art, even if we attempt more or less objective analysis without getting into politics. This is what I am talking about when I speak of cultural coding. We cannot speak about a cultural product without also speaking about the culture itself (its values, ambitions, its "realisms," its truths). On this score we are all les damnés.
In more objective terms, art also has a function of offering commentary and judgment on aspects of the human condition which may be universal, and yet must be realized in particular representations. Art, especially literary art, commonly identifies that which is good vs. bad, preferable vs. non-preferable, prudent vs. imprudent, possible vs. impossible, selfish vs. altruistic, etc. This also requires knowledge of the audience. In different times and places, there are different particularizations of these categories.
Kenneth Burke notes such particularization Baudelaire's poem Femmes Damnées which translated to "damned women" or "condemned women." Why are the women damned? Because they are lesbians and our poet is writing in the 19th century (i.e., he was writing about forbidden and condemned love). Cyril Scott's 1909 translation of the poem reads, in part
You, to whom within your hell my spirit flies,
Poor sisters — yea, I love you as I pity you,
For your unsatiated thirsts and anguished sighs,
And for the vials of love within your hearts so true.
Today, the poet would have to write poem on a different particularization, as lesbianism is rather pedestrian. The point of the poem may have been, in part, to say something about sexual politics, but it was also there to offer a feeling and a general statement about the universal predicament of forbidden love--the double bind of wanting to follow one's heart and what is "proper." Poor sisters — yea, I love you as I pity you,
For your unsatiated thirsts and anguished sighs,
And for the vials of love within your hearts so true.
Thus, to properly discuss the emotive and formal properties of art we have to be able to say something about the politics of the age as setting about boundary conditions of the good and the true. We must know of the ideology of the age. And even in contemporary art, such as film, we would do well to note how ideology intersects with the production aesthetic outcomes.
Beowulf, for another example, has been long-noted to be the first great epic English poem. The poem is preserved for us in a single source, the Nowell Codex which is thought to have been written around the year 1,000 and which was damaged in a fire in 1731. Some commentators on the poem have lamented the "vandalism" of the poem at the hands of Christians who altered the original story into the one we find in the Nowell Codex. This is a somewhat curious idea as every story is story of its time -- Beowulf is a story of its own time (the time of the European transition to Christianity) and every history age is an "age of transition." The first thing any historian will note before embarking on a discourse about a historical period will be the obligatory cautions that the age was not monolithic, that its boundaries are hard to define and that the age was one of transition. Beowulf thus being a thing of its time reflected the ideology of its time, and being an age of transition, it harbors certain ideological tensions. The paganism which preceded Christianity made certain things "sayable" and "expected" on a folk tale and the Christianization which followed put its own spin on matters. And today we find Beowulf arguably most vandalized by being turned into what looks like a video game cut-scene by Robert Zemeckis (2007), but this too is just another adaptation. If what the scribe who penned the Nowell Codex was a Christian "vandalization," it is one we cannot not without noting how ideology intersects with form. If it isn't a vandalization, there are, nevertheless, tensions within the text which are best understood as ideological fault lines of a tale in transition -- there is no "pure" "untouched" and "non-ideological" Beowulf -- it comes to us as a tale of heroism. It always was and always shall be a tale, no matter how it is adapted, from somewhere, and that somewhere will always carry ideological freight.
We have to carry this freight and examine it, however, to consider the other functions of art, even if we attempt more or less objective analysis without getting into politics. This is what I am talking about when I speak of cultural coding. We cannot speak about a cultural product without also speaking about the culture itself (its values, ambitions, its "realisms," its truths). On this score we are all les damnés.
Last edited by Corax; 04-05-22 at 08:06 PM.