Monday, May 22, 2006

Daniel Mitsui: Increase the Number of Cultural Drop-Outs

Via Godsbody, a jeremiad from a master artist exhorting us to "stop drinking the vampire's blood" that is pop culture:
In our modern culture, intellectually insulting and aesthetically offensive art is not only ubiquitous - it is popular, and immensely profitable, in a way that it never was previously. And the reason is that the art of our modern culture is unnatural - it is not produced by a collective genius, piety and intelligence, developed over time through tradition. It is produced by an enormous machine - the industry of entertainment, which is governed only by its own avarice.
Part I

I think that the attitude of evangelization needs to be the same as that of true sacred art - we need to stop thinking about what effect we are having on our audience and altering our methods is anticipation of its response - and to simply be faithful. To communicate the divinely revealed truth in the most precise way possible, letting the message dictate the method. To do otherwise is to make the same mistake as abusers of the liturgy - it is to not trust our faith to succeed on its own merits. If we think that our message is so unappealing that it needs to be dressed up as something else, then we can expect everyone else to concur that it is indeed unappealing. Part II


Daniel Mitsui also has a post on music and one on Latin palindromes.

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