Owen: So, to recap from yesterday: We were having a very interesting conversation about the legitimacy of criticism when we were unfortunately relocated and our blogging devolved into Victor being really high and ranting about something. But I want to say that I really agree with what Victor said last night, which was that when you think about something for long enough, any criticism or analysis begins to see arbitrary, pointless and pointlessly subjective. But yet, I can't help but wonder why I feel emotions when I look at web comics and other forms of artistic expression. It's true that I can't really justify any criticism of web comics. But I can't help feeling what I can only describe as hatred when I read many web comics. Usually that hatred is watered down to mostly indifferent disdain, but it still exists.
Victor: I think these feelings you describe might have something to do with the fact that bad art still takes effort, and while you have empathy for that effort, the fact that it was sort of for naught (i.e. they wanted you to laugh and you didn't) is disappointing. You think: someone spent this much time and effort on this comic strip (for example) and was proud enough to put it on the internet so everyone else could look at it and laugh, and maybe his/her friends like it or even strangers like it but for whatever reasons (which are always contextual or "cultural" to a degree in a loose sense of that word) you don't care. And your own apathy towards this other human being trying to make art and communicate his own subjective universe in a way that is somehow "objectively" accessible fills you with a low-grade existential dread maybe? It's kind of sad to consider that anything can be removed of context is meaningless. It makes you wonder about why we do anything. I guess this only a negative thing if you have a qualitative definition of meaninglessness. The more meaninglessness bothers you, the more generally upset you are because the world is full of things that upon close inspection illustrate their own meaninglessness. Also, a joke in a comic strip has the disadvantage of not having the element of surprise that a joke in real life has, as it has an allotted spacetime that has been explicitly designated as a funny spacetime: there is an agreement that when you look at this space for x amount of time you are to laugh. It's the expectation that creates the disappontment, not the thing itself. The root of all suffering is desire. A person decides to read this blog and expects us to talk about why we hate certain web comics and instead they read us doing the old dorm room wankfest and they are disappointed.
Owen: I hate you.
Victor: Fair enough.
Owen: But I agree that the root of all suffering is desire, which only really applies to my life in terms of art.
Victor: And hats.
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2 comments:
Re: "The root of all suffering is desire." Baloney. What desires might a victim or rape or violence have had to cause their suffering? In what way is a baby born with cystic fibrosis suffering because of their desire? I have read two posts on this blog, and that's enough. You are far too stupid and sheltered to be commenting on things like this.
you could say a rape victim's suffering is rooted in the excessive desire of the rapist. or you could say the victim's desire not to be raped has caused them to suffer because they're being raped. which is different from blaming the victim, it's just attempting to name the suffering in a non-qualitative way. rape is wrong because it's about conflicting desires.
a baby cries when it's in pain because it feels on a primal level, a preference for not being in pain. that preference can be considered a primal desire.
we weren't trying to say that all suffering is preventable because not all desire is preventable. "the root of all suffering is desire" is just a helpful way to remember not to get too worked up about shit. it's a helpful model.
also, we don't really have an academically rigorous approach here on this blog about web comics, we're mostly just poking fun at ourselves and others and the pomposity of criticism in general. we're not really trying to be deep, in fact we're usually pretending to be "deep" because it's funny to us.
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