tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post2483091061482559474..comments2023-10-03T11:41:21.191+01:00Comments on The Truth About Lies: Ugly poetry (part two)Jim Murdochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-53728540905348359232012-06-27T12:52:57.837+01:002012-06-27T12:52:57.837+01:00Art, I agree with you especially regarding the fac...<b>Art</b>, I agree with you especially regarding the fact that people become desensitised but that happens with all things and not just horror. There <i>will</i> be kids who hid behind the sofa when the daleks appeared on <i>Dr Who</i> but I still think that despite its fauxness the fact that people <i>want</i> to look at horrible things says something about how they view ugliness. Ugly is ugly. It doesn’t matter that there’s a man on the inside of the costume. There was a man on the “inside” of Joseph Merrick. People—those who flocked to the freak shows at the time—didn’t see that; they only saw the deformities. We are fascinated by variations on the human form whether that be the girl with three breasts in <i>Total Recall</i> (who wasn’t ugly) or John Hurt’s performance in <i>The Elephant Man</i> which despite all his efforts to present Merrick as human couldn’t do anything but present his deformities as they were. I’m not really concerned about drawing a distinction between entertainment and art here—that only indicates the motives of those involved—it’s the fact that anyone would <i>want</i> to incorporate ugliness in their project; they do it because ugliness matters. There was a time—I’m thinking fifties science fiction—where aliens were ugly creatures with monstrous intentions towards humanity. Now that’s not always the case and the first reaction when the kids see a monster is to try and communicate with it rather than immediately looking for a means to destroy it before it destroys us.<br /><br>Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-46807419378254426802012-06-26T20:32:15.813+01:002012-06-26T20:32:15.813+01:00But that's not really dark, Jim, that's FA...But that's not really dark, Jim, that's FAUX (false) dark, or Hollywood dark. I mean, they think "Twilight" is dark, when it's about the fluffiest teenage romance series to become popular in decades. It's shallow dark, not real dark. <br /><br />Real dark is Goya, is "Guernica." Real dark is Auschwitz. <br /><br />Faux dark is popular precisely because it pretends to be dark but isn't really. It's just titillation. There's no real threat, no real danger. There's no real jeopardy because in most TV shows or movie series you know that the heroes are going to survive no matter what, so that they can return next week. It's just shallow shivers. <br /><br />That BBC series "Touching Evil" was more dark by far, for example, than any of these current shows that claim to be going darker this season; that's because it got really into the deep psychology of the dark side. <br /><br />Most contemporary horror films keep getting more gory and explicit (the current wave of post-Japanese horror is the goriest ever, including "Saw") because it's all about titillation. You have to keep making them worse because people do develop tolerance. That's been known in horror move making for decades. After awhile, people just laugh. After all, even if they jump from fear in the theatre, they know they're still going to go home afterwards, and still be alive and unmaimed when leaving the movie house. <br /><br />So that's fake, too.<br /><br />The scariest movies I've ever seen are the ones that rely more on suspense, on psychological terror, rather than gore. Some of those still stick with me years later. It's what you DON'T show that's most frightening. <br /><br />Horror movies are ridden with clichés for the same reason that the Pollyannas like clichés: they're shallow, they're not really threatening, and so forth.<br /><br />All of this is faux. Even the ugliness and horrific makeup you see in horror films is faux, for these reasons. It's meant to shock, but not really to scare. Not to REALLY be dark, just to pretend to be. That's why it's still just entertainment, rather than art.Art Durkeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07463180236975988432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-65014235110011159072012-06-26T18:20:31.325+01:002012-06-26T18:20:31.325+01:00And yet dark is popular, Art. I listen to actors t...And yet dark is popular, <b>Art</b>. I listen to actors talking about the upcoming season of whatever show they happen to be plugging and they all eventually say something along the lines of, “It’s much darker this year.” So ‘dark’ sells. Is ‘dark’ the same as ‘ugly’ though? I think that it is essentially. Batman was a joke for decades thanks to Adam West & Co and then overnight he was transformed from ‘Caped Crusader’ into ‘The Dark Knight’ and he’s never looked back. The Batman Miller envisaged was not pretty or even handsome. He was still principled but those principles had taken a battering. It was the same with some of the Watchmen and the public lapped it up. And all you have to do is look at recent trends in filmmaking to see that it’s not just pretty that sells. I’m thinking here of horror films like <i>Hostel</i>, <i>Saw</i> and <i>The Human Centipede</i>. I’ve seen none of these and am highly unlikely too. There are ugly things people have to get used to and there are those we don’t. I can’t imagine horror poetry. I’ve seen people try to incorporate gothic elements into their poetry and it is, to use Stephen Fry’s graphic term, “arse dribble” of the lowest order. <br /><br />I agree with Lao-tse. As the Book of Common Prayer puts it: “In the midst of life we are in death.” When I try and explain abstract art to people I generally point to nature: where are the straight lines in a sunset, eh? “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” may not explain why but it does acknowledge that we all see things differently. I gave up a long time ago trying to work out why I found one woman beautiful whilst another—who clearly was good-looking—did nothing for me. Apart from having the requisite number of body parts I really don’t have a type. Every now and then in a shop or walking down the street someone will catch my eye and distract me for a few seconds and they’re usually <i>not</i> especially beautiful in the conventional sense but they have a certain something. I don’t think I’ve ever been stopped in my tracks by anyone’s ugliness though. I don’t know why Pollock’s art moves me and Rothko’s doesn’t. I don’t hate Rothko’s paintings but when I listen to people go on about them I scratch my head. I don’t think they’re ugly but I don’t think they’re beautiful either. What I am willing to say about them is that they’re sincere. I’ve seen documentaries about Rothko and so I know he wasn’t a con artist unless he was also conning himself and there will be those who will believe that he was. I’m not that cynical. I think he was broken in that way all true artists are and that gave him a unique perspective on what he saw in the same way that no one I imagine, not even another synesthesiac, could hear Messiaen’s music the way he could. That’s the challenge in art be it visual, aural or written down.<br /><br>Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-65856821791778169952012-06-26T17:02:38.704+01:002012-06-26T17:02:38.704+01:00Here's a longish quote from Alan Watts (from &...Here's a longish quote from Alan Watts (from "Om: Creative Meditations") that says it all rather well:<br /><br />•<br /><br />Lao-tse says, "To be and not be arise mutually." The yang and the yin principles create each other. They are likened to the southern and northern sides of a mountain: the north side, the shade; the south side, the sun. Obviously you cannot have a mountain with only one side.<br /><br />Human beings who do not perceive this principle are always trying to have the yang without the yin. They want the light without the dark, the good without the bad, the pleasurable without the painful, the life without the death. This, of course, is profoundly illogical. . . .<br /><br />The fellow who complained to God that the stars were badly arranged lacked an adequate perspective on this galaxy. We are in the galaxy and close up it does look as if the stars are randomly scattered. But if we were to go away to a tremendous distance we could see that this galaxy is beautifully formed as a double helix. . . .<br /><br />The universe is a self-surprising arrangement, so as to avoid the monotony and boredom of knowing everything in advance. And you and I have conspired with ourselves to pretend that we are not really God.<br /><br />But of course we are.<br /><br />We are all apertures through which the universe is looking at itself.<br /><br />Perhaps because artists were beginning to have a glimmer of this, at a certain point in the development of painting, they began to tire of copying people, trees, clouds, and water, and asked themselves why THEY could not create works of nature. <br /><br />And so they did.<br /><br />JAckson Pollock, in dripping paint on canvas, actually let this watercourse thing happen without copying anything. The artist must be in a certain state to do this, because there is something fundamentally different between fine abstract painting are mere mess.<br /><br />A lot of people thought that any child could do abstract painting, so they set out to make abstract paintings that no one found interesting because they were just terrible. And some people took typewriters and him them several times with a sledgehammer and then mounted them on blocks of walnut and called them "Opus 14" or whatever. And they were completely phony.<br /><br />But it was obvious that Pollock and many other abstract artists were not phonies, though it was impossible to explain why.<br /><br />In the same way it is impossible to explain why the patterns in water, clouds, or mountains are beautiful. . . .Art Durkeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07463180236975988432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-60550610606604965592012-06-26T16:50:02.149+01:002012-06-26T16:50:02.149+01:00I've got one or two of Seidel's books on m...I've got one or two of Seidel's books on my poetry shelves, and recall reading them with interest, although I haven't looked at them recently. The thing that has to be remembered about Seidel (and also about Roethke, come to think of it) is that most of his critics confuse "beautiful" with "pretty" the same way most people confuse those two rather different things; and also that most of Seidel's critics fall into that category of literary and existential Pollyannas who never like to even admit that life has a dark side, much less investigate it. Seidel is hardly the darkest-minded poet on the block, and not even the most sinister.<br /><br />So much for that. <br /><br />Most people DO confuse "beautiful" with "pretty." They like pretty (sentimental, shallow) things, and avoid unpretty things. They prefer paintings of pretty country scenes to "Guernica" or any of Goya's paintings. They define anything that doesn't make them feel nice as being ugly. These are the people who reject any art that pushes them to think or feel things they don't want to think about, or feel. And let's be honest: that's most people, most of the time, including many artists. While we're being honest, let's remind ourselves that most clichés in art and literature alike are seen as "pretty" by most people, which is why they keep getting used. Only artists seem to actually dislike clichés in art.<br /><br />Most people also prefer not to think about death, especially their own. But it's art that addresses the ephemeral nature of life that has been recognized for centuries as among the greatest art ever made. From Basho to van Gogh, from Rilke to Andrew Wyeth, it's art that addresses those things in life that are universal and permanent (love, life, death) that is the art that endures. <br /><br />As for the artist's duty to society, the idea that artists should only make uplifting art is again the Pollyanna narrative. In fact, the artists' duty to society is to reflect events and meanings as they exist, to be mirror, not to make them pretty or palatable or safe. As you say, part of the social duty of art is report truths about life that the news does not. Art can get at what we all think about something in ways that the news cannot. Interpretations and meanings beyond the facts of the case. <br /><br />Nonetheless Keats was exactly correct when he wrote "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." That's because Keats did NOT make the common mistake of equating beauty with pretty. If you read his poetry and letters, that's obvious. In no way is Keats' "beauty" the superficial beauty raised up in opposition to ugliness. His "beauty" was the beauty that comes from knowing the truth, regardless of how ugly the truth appears to be. Keats was not afraid of the dark, nor of the dark side. <br /><br /> I don't give a damn about prettiness. I never have, especially in my own creative work. What I try to go for, and often get criticized for doing, is going after the truth, which has its own inherent sublime beauty whether or not it's pretty.Art Durkeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07463180236975988432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-17899408420694718392012-06-25T11:37:17.406+01:002012-06-25T11:37:17.406+01:00Pylons have lost their ugliness—or at least a subs...Pylons have lost their ugliness—or at least a substantial degree of ugliness—because of familiarity. It’s like smell, <b>Tim</b>. You see them on all the cop shops, the novice steps into the crime scene, retches, covers their mouth and, on occasion, rushes from the room to vomit whereas the pros are just getting on with their job. I doubt there is an uglier smell—if smells can be described as ugly (I don’t see why not)—than a dead body and I doubt even morticians and forensic pathologists ever get to the stage where they consider it beautiful but then I’m reminded of Peter Greenaway’s film <i>A Zed & Two Noughts</i> where twin zoologists Oswald and Oliver gradually become obsessed with images of growth and decay, watching videos on the origins of life and creating time-lapse video of decomposing life forms. But is it art? Reaction to the film was certainly mixed. Bugs are ugly and as a kid my initial reaction was always one of revulsion but that really does fade quickly and after a while I was more interested in observing them—albeit at a safe distance—than treading on them. I suppose it’s like colour. I remember a young boy being asked to identify a man in a group and he said something like, “The man with the blue jumper on,” which was right; it also happened that he was the only black man in the group. He can’t have been ignorant of the fact that the man’s skin was a different colour but that wasn’t what he saw first. Now had that boy lived in the States at the start of the century it would have been a very different repose. I wonder if Keats of Shelley would even recognise Edwin Morgan’s poem—the one Marion mentioned in her comment—as poetry? <br /><br>Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-82393113754256890432012-06-25T09:12:24.908+01:002012-06-25T09:12:24.908+01:00"Poetry wants to be pure, but poems do not. ...."Poetry wants to be pure, but poems do not. ... but many of the elements, taken in themselves, may actually seem to contradict that end" - It's easy to believe that in the old days Paintings had to be of beautiful things painted beautifully (adding gold leaf to make sure). Words though are always grubby, second-hand, so there might often be a contrast between the effect of the whole and its parts - irony? transcendence? <br /><br />"poetry has learned how to be ugly" - Maybe in the "sounding ugly" was the first step. There's also the "Pylon poetry" idea - the discovery of beauty in what others might think ugly. A wrinkled face for example, or a scrap-yard.Tim Lovehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00578925224900533603noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-56566223901433941792012-06-25T07:55:20.960+01:002012-06-25T07:55:20.960+01:00Beauty is a matter of taste, Ken, and tastes chang...Beauty is a matter of taste, <b>Ken</b>, and tastes change. Women used to walk around with parasols hiding from the rays of the sun and the next thing you know they’re stripping off and lying out in it all day long. People are sheep. I’ve watched fashion trends come and go over the years: <i>this</i> is the way you must dress to be “normal” and then overnight people are saying to you, “Are you still wearing that old thing?” It’s true what you say about different but as soon as some celebrity is caught on camera being different a [whatever the collective noun for designers is] is sitting down, frantically copying the design and rushing them into production so that we call <i>all</i> look different. Laughable really.<br /><br>Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-34327171231529983632012-06-24T19:05:00.690+01:002012-06-24T19:05:00.690+01:00Ugly is good, I think.
It's like physically,...Ugly is good, I think. <br /><br />It's like physically, the perception of what is beautiful is perpetuated by the beautiful people. <br /><br />Perhaps what is considered ugly is only different and different is such a good thing, really, I think.Ken Armstronghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07775956557261111127noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-75623797614338008402012-06-24T18:25:01.067+01:002012-06-24T18:25:01.067+01:00It’s interesting that you should mention that poem...It’s interesting that you should mention that poem, <b>Marion</b>, because I had it in mind last week when I wrote a love poem would you believe of all things. The imagery in the poem has stayed with me when so many other poems have long been forgotten. Perhaps ugliness is more memorable than beauty as pain is so much harder to forget than pleasure. We never did any Edwin Morgan at school but this one would have made me sit up and pay attention as did Larkin. I equate beauty to entertainment—we like to look at pretty things but they’re so often insubstantial or at least ephemeral. Ugliness is like meaning—and so many meanings are let’s just say not pretty—and that’s why I read, to dig inside things.<br /><br />I’ve never seen Venice, <b>Duncan</b>. It’s not a city that calls out to me, none on the Continent really do; I don’t really feel very European that way. I do know that every time I’ve tried to write a poem to commemorate or celebrate something it’s fallen flat on its face. Prose I can force but I’m a bit precious about the poetry and just wait for the mood to come which it does at all kinds of weird and generally inopportune moments. I don’t think beauty is well served by words actually. They never do what they’re trying to describe justice. Ugly things are so much easier to translate into words.<br /><br>Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-50264531760134989622012-06-24T17:23:31.895+01:002012-06-24T17:23:31.895+01:00Nice posts, Jim!
For many years I tried to write ...Nice posts, Jim!<br /><br />For many years I tried to write a poem about how beautiful Venice is. The two poems I managed were awful. Then, out of the blue, in difficult circimstances, this line came to me: "For all its beauty, Venice has been cursed." And three hours later I had a sonnet. Soon afterwards I changed two words and added a comma. It's a very rare event for me to rewrite so little. Perspective is what makes poetry.Danish doghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08020527943859347043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-20687046487036282122012-06-24T11:20:11.957+01:002012-06-24T11:20:11.957+01:00There's only one poem I can think of that, aes...There's only one poem I can think of that, aesthetically-speaking, I really can't stand - Edwin Morgan's In the Snack-bar. I think it's a horrific poem, ugliness doesn't cover it. Obviously it's a very good / well-written poem and very effective (and I can appreciate that now) but it is ugly, depressing, verging on soul-destroying. If there was one poem that we studied at school that could have put me off poetry for life, it was this one.Marion McCreadyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04657757253873577465noreply@blogger.com