A2 Counterargument Post

In class on Thursday, we reviewed the principles of counterargument and how you might anticipate the objections of skeptical readers.  Based on the objections, questions, and alternative interpretations which your peers offered while discussing your Prewriting, draft a short, informal response.  You can directly address your peers if you wish ("Dave pointed out that many people who praise graffiti as art don't have to live in neighborhoods with graffiti...") or you may address the presumed skepticism of your intended audience ("Most music critics dismiss Top 40 songs, but...").  In any case, you should articulate a response to these possible objections.

Please post your response by 5pm on Friday (6/8).

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Write a short response arguing for whether or not Mister Brainwash's work should be considered "art." I realize that the term itself is fluid and open to various subjective interpretations. Indeed, that's the point—in arguing for Thierry Guetta's (Mister Brainwash) inclusion or exclusion from this category, you will bring into sharper focus your own (admittedly subjective) definition of what constitutes art. As such, you cannot opt out of the art/not-art binary for this response (though that is a perfectly viable stance for your second essay).

Please base your evaluation upon the content contained in the final 30 minutes of Exit Through the Gift Shop, which focuses almost exclusively on the creation and execution of Guetta's "Life is Beautiful" show in 2008.  In the section of the film, the people in the film are themselves wrestling with the same issue that I’m asking you to address in the bold-faced sentence above.

Please finish responding to this post by 5pm on Monday.  (Earlier is fine, too.)

Fisher, "High Art Versus Low Art"

The Fisher reading is a useful survey of the general high vs. low art topic, but as such, he never advocates a specific approach to the question. Consequently, the task of deciding which perspectives on the issue are most important, be it for your specific essay topic or the debate in general, is left to you.

1. An important point that Fisher makes early on is that the high vs. popular art distinction must be seen independently from the good vs. bad art binary. In other words, this debate is about more than our individual, subjective metrics of quality. Rather, as Fisher touches upon in a number of instances, these understandings of high and popular art have "been influenced by our tendency to grade the types of cognition and character involved in appreciating various genres and forms. As such, it appears to presuppose questionable traditional ideas about the value of various mental states and attitudes" (530). For example, the difficulty that sometimes accompanies 'reading' high art, a difficulty that we typically understand as just part of what it takes to fully appreciate its complexity, could be seen as reflecting a broader cultural belief that anything worth having must be worked for, that the greater the work, the greater the reward.

As I did in the example above, please isolate a trait you feel we typically associate with high or popular art (difficult to understand, worth a lot of money, mass-produced, age or historical precedent, cultural impact, and so on), and speculate upon what implicit cultural values, assumptions, or ideologies may be at play in our ascribing that trait to "high" art or "popular" art.

2. Briefly discuss an object that you believe should be reconsidered as 'higher' or 'lower' art than it is typically understood to be, or assert a similar categorical classification for an object that currently occupies an uncertain place in this conversation (not unlike our inability to unanimously place the Obama “Hope” poster, for example).

3. Respond to one of your classmate's classifications for #2. This does not mean a simple, knee-jerk, one-liner contradiction (e.g., “Dave says the Obama poster is low art, I say it’s high art). Rather, raise an issue that complicates this artistic classification, that reinforces it (“another element Dave neglected to mention that actually supports his classification of the Obama poster as popular art is...), or contradicts it, but explain your reasoning while taking into account whatever rationale your classmate utilized in their original post.

For those of you posting first, you can respond to one of the classifications we discussed in class on Thursday with the PowerPoint, or you can post your response to #1 and #2, then come back later after others have made their posts to answer #3.

Please finish responding to this post by 5pm on Sunday.  (Earlier is fine, too.)