N.P. censorship

[Ian Livingston]

Good question.  I have another:  is the 'new' a good in itself?
Westerners, especially Americans, seem to be guided by novelty.  I
recollect a song by Loggins & Messina back somewhere in the '70s about
how so much of what was offered up as desirable was the "same old wine
in a brand new bottle."  Not that 'antique' offers any successful
counterpoint, really, as much of the stuff I grew up using day to day
is now 'antique' and I'm not that old.  Merely a midlifer at 52.  But
quality also raises more questions, some of which Robert Pirsig
explored superficially in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
and Plato examined more closely a couple millennia ago.  What is the
good?  What is outside the good?  How much is subjective?  And how
much objective measure can we reference in determining the virtue of
something?

Well, I guess that gives me enough to think about today at the laundromat.

-i


On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 7:48 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "rich" <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
> To: "Ian Livingston" <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 11:00 AM
> Subject: Re: N.P. censorship
>
>
>> one's torn b/w decrying censorship and having to defend shitty art
>>
>> shitty in the sense of being so...obvious
>>
>> shocking doesn't work for me anymore I suppose
>>
>> just my opinion
>>
>> that graphically depicts a female middle school student, on her knees,
>> performing oral sex on a standing male middle school science teacher.
>
>
> Well. there is shocking and shocking.
>
> In art criticism the phrase is "shock of the new," a big deal when modern
> art was taking hold.
>
> But that had to do with aesthetically shocking.
>
> In the case in question, is the portrayal anything aeestically new?
>
> Important question.
>
> What happens when the shocking is really nothing new and therefore not
> really shocking but merely deplorable?
>
> P
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> On 3/25/09, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> This just struck me a somehow related to the topic of fascism (as in
>>> how it is that some come to think for many):
>>>
>>> http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090325/entertainment/sculpture_removed
>>>
>
>