Thursday, June 7, 2012
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).
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I made the argument that fashion isn’t high culture but rather low culture. The counterargument that one of my peers made was that if an individual’s fashion choices are high culture can an innovative designer be high culture too. While I can see how someone would argue that fashion is high culture, I feel as though it isn’t high culture because it lacks complexity and originality. Fashion is a cycle styles and trends repeat themselves. What was in style in the 70s and 80s is coming back in to style today.
ReplyDeleteTo me all that most designers are doing in present day society is taking the idea of what was once popular and reconstructing it to be popular today. Designers can get away with doing this because their buying demographic of who is buying their brand named items were too young to know that the particular style was popular in past years. Although there is a few designers who have creatively produced a brand that is “high” fashion worthy, it is still inspirited and modeled after what has been done in the past. Basically, I do not see fashion as “high culture” but rather low culture because it is not creative and uniquely developed and produced by the designer.
One of my arguments is that architects are currently paying more attention to the looks or the design of a building rather than determining if buildings actually serve their function. Will brought up the counterargument about what if the original motive of the architect is to design a structure that looks amazing, but does not really care about its actual function. Sure, it may be a waste of money for the clients, but then I “technically” cannot criticize that architect because his/her intention was to make a magnificent looking building and was not concerned with the people who would use it afterwards.
ReplyDeleteWhile this may be true, and some architects may think that way, I am almost sure they would not like to gamble with the liability of having a building injure or even kill people (at least in the US). Plus, building codes do not allow architects to completely design a structure without considering the inhabitants it will possess. If architects completely ignore the fact that people will actually use the building, then they cease to be architects. They become sculptors or artists because their works of art are designed to aesthetically please while people walk around it; they do not invite an individual to enter its physical boundaries and actually remain inside. Lastly, if the building looks great, but the clients are not happy with it, they will most likely destroy the building and replace it with another, which does not leave a good impression on an architect’s name.
My main argument is that documentaries should be considered lower on the art status scale because they both rely too heavily on entertaining to retain the audience's attention and fail to provide key insight into a culture's issues and events. One of my main argument is that documentaries rely on entertainment and critical acclaim to gain praise from a wide audience, which detracts from the goal of creating art for the sake of art. My groupmates main counterargument was that many "high" pieces of art also entertain but that doesn't necessarily make them
ReplyDeletelow" art.
While I can understand my group's viewpoint, conversely, there are many forms of entertainment that aren't art as well, sports being a prime example. Sports and certain forms of entertainment may have an artistic quality to them, but they are strictly separated from art. Originally, the higher art forms, the symphony and painting, were limited to the upper classes on society because the elite were the only ones with time and resources to experience high arts. Yes the high arts were entertainment to them, but they were also not disperses among the masses. The goal of entertaining art in the present seems to be to attract attention and support. Whereas traditional high art was made to be significant works of art and were entertaining as a consequence, documentaries are entertaining which detracts from their art value, because of the present need for art to be entertaining in order to be commercially successful. So the revenue motive plays a bigger part in documentaries than other forms of high art.