Discussion 2: Dr. Strangelove
1.
Plato’s thought experiment on a chair explains why he felt that way. According to
Plato, the concept of a chair comes from God for its ideal and true nature. That
concept is relayed to humans but gets murky in the way as we dimly conceive the
re ections of the word of God.
In the next step, the making of the chair, the maker reinterprets the less than ideal
concept of the chair, already causing it to be twice removed from the truth.
3.
All mass-marketed lms would be kitsch and not art according to Clement
Greenberg because, to him, if anything is representational in form or pretends to
follow a prescribed formula, then it is kitsch and cannot be art. (Page 45)
Greenberg felt that any object more concerned with commerce than truth was
kitsch. (Page 37) As mass-marketed lms tend to be formulaic and commercial,
they are kitsch, as remarked by Greenberg.
4.
German expressionism is an art form that creates a dystopian vision of the future,
creates art that is dark and shadowy, and creates distorted images at odd angles.
(Page 41)
5.
Chiaroscuro is the treatment of light and shade in drawing, painting and in movies,
and it is employed in paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci, Caravaggio, and American
lm noir movies. (Page 45)
6.
Stanley Kubrick called 2001: A Space Odyssey, a moving picture. (Page 42)
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While we are reminded of the horrors that were the outcome of the mission
commander, Captain Viscount Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys' decision to abandon
the ship through the painting the Raft of Medusa, we witness a similar act of
destruction caused by the decision of Brigadier general, Jack D. Ripper, to launch
nuclear weapons on the Soviet Union in the parodical presentation, Dr.
Strangelove. In both situations, we are taken back into historical episodes wherein
we witness a seemingly average person in command starting a chain of events that
cause massive destruction.
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2.
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And nally, a painter paints mimesis of the chair. In doing so, he paints an imitation of
the chair, which happens to be a re ection of the made object that is an imperfect
re ection of the concept, which was all a mere interpretation of the original pure
idea, to begin with. Therefore, causing the art to be three times away from the truth.
(Page 12)
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Answers to the questions of
7.
Positive contagion is de ned as the theory that an object’s value increases based
on its proximity to a celebrity or a signi cant historical event. By that de nition, the
most popular or attractive the movie star the more likely a lm might become
popular. (Page 45, 46)
8.
Positive contagion is not a good method for assessing the quality of an art piece
as it attributes its value to contact with a celebrity or a historical event without any
concern to the quality and the communication of the art piece. Though classic
movies have become commercially and economically successful based on the
star's popularity, the method is awed, proved by the examples of ops in the
movies, where several name-brand stars paired up with awful consequences.
(Page 46)
9.
Geometric construction, speci cally a process called triangulation using the golden
triangle, is used as the mathematic relationship in creating a composition in the
painting the Raft of the Medusa. (Page 29)
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10. The author eliminates the size of the work, the time it took to make it, and because
of the distrust in the Western educational system, expert opinion for quantifying the
worthiness of the Raft of the Medusa as art. (Page 35, 36)