Food for Thought?

Photo by Judith G. Klausner

Personally, I believe that art, as a form of self-expression is representative of a particular culture or society. Anything can be considered art as long as it has some meaning to it. An Oreo will always just be an Oreo – even with cameo portraits carved onto the fillings – unless it is given a deeper meaning or purpose by the artist. In this case, the Oreo along with the other materials used in the From Scratch series by Judith G. Klausner gives us further insight to the modern American society.

From Scratch is a series of artwork by Judith G. Klausner made up of detailed Victorian-styled cameo portraits carved out of Oreo cream, hand-cross-stitched Chex cereal and extensive bread embroidery. Her choice of materials are designed to address the gender issues within American culture.

The photo above is an example of how Klausner uses ordinary, packaged food and turns it into some thought-provoking piece of artwork. When more and more people are criticizing processed foods, Klausner defends it with the reason that they provide women with a choice to pursue a career outside of the household. In other words, her art commends the role of processed food in helping women break away from traditional gender roles.

The availability of processed food has undoubtedly made life easier for women who are struggling to juggle a full-time job as well as other household responsibilities. Although packaged food may not be the best choice health wise, Klausner makes a fair point to defend her art, saying,

“The food on our table may not be as tasty as it once was. It may not even be as wholesome. But it is important to take a step back and recognize the trade that has been made, and that what we have gained is not to be undervalued”

She urges us not to overlook the benefits offered by packaged food and how it has given so many women in America a chance for a life they wouldn’t have had fifty or sixty years ago. But is this a reasonable trade? Is it justifiable for us to sacrifice health for a career?

Judith Klausner’s use of Oreos, gummy candies, Chex cereals, ketchup and barbeque sauce to create her art positively illustrates these overly processed food. She takes the food that we perceive as fake and commercialized and turns it into something amazing. Her work inspires us to rethink our preconceived ideas of the role that processed food plays in our everyday lives. It is interesting to see how something so commercialized and overlooked by the majority can be employed as a positive social commentary. Art gives us the chance to look at something from a different point of view.

In the past, Klausner worked with insects and fingernails as well as other materials that would freak out the general public. With From Scratch, she now has a more widely acceptable art form, making it easier to spread her message. As she said in a recent interview with DigBoston.com, “One of the interesting parts about working with food is that it’s a much more relatable material. What I was going for was to help someone look at something differently.”

Is Classical Music Worthy of Our Time?

In recent years many Symphony Orchestras have suffered from pay-cuts, and mostly lack of appreciation from the general public. I go to the symphony at least twice a month to enjoy the music. My exposure to classical music was present since birth. My parents are both professional musicians, so I really heard a lot of it. The first instinct I had was to fight music any way I could. I started taking piano when I was six years old then I picked up the flute. However, I have met many people my age who don’t even know what a symphony is. If it doesn’t have a catchy tune that repeats over and over about someone who’s done you wrong, then why listen? Why Listen? Classical music is unique in that it doesn’t have lyrics. This is a problem for the majority of the general population. Many people need to have lyrics to know exactly what the song is about. Classical music is thought provoking. It makes everyone think just a little bit more about what the music could be about. It doesn’t spell it out, so it is up for interpretation. However, if you factor in what the composer was doing when he wrote this piece, when it was composed in relation to history, and in what country, you may very well get chills. Why Listen Live? Every musician has their own experience they bring to the table. Let’s take an orchestra for example, even a local one like the Columbus Symphony. Each one of these members has dedicated their entire life to playing their instrument. What people witness when they go to concerts is not only one person’s dedication to their instrument but about 50 or 60 people’s dedication. That is 4 hours of practice (on average) a day for their whole life. That’s a total of 60 full days a year spent working to perfect this craft. And, isn’t because they know they will find a job, it is because they love play their instrument. The orchestra produces its sound because of what each individual has experienced in their lifetime. Each person on stage has their own story, and usually they’ve done some pretty incredible things. Differences Between Classical and Popular Music. Unlike popular music, symphony orchestras can play live music and it won’t be considered a “cover.” The pieces written for the orchestra are not only written by one person, but they are incredibly intricate. Symphonies matter because of the meaning behind the beautiful melody, or the angry harmonies. They are not spelled out for the listener, so most people just don’t bother. People view popular music as the people’s music, and it is very convenient to only have to listen to a 3 minute piece of music as opposed to 15. But, why should that stop us from being interested and educated about this unfamiliar art? Why do people think that classical music isn’t interesting enough or too “too boring.” Dying Art Form. Many orchestras are suffering from the lack of interest in the general population. They are also suffering from the lack of interest in their management. Many donors or board members for orchestras all over the country donate time and money because it is socially the right thing to do in the upper class. Many people don’t care about the music programs in schools with levy’s failing left and right, so why should they care about professional musicians? The reason in my opinion is that music is human nature. Music is one thing that has been around for centuries and centuries. Music makes people feel happy or sad based on the chord structure, based on the key signature. The time signature in music makes them want to dance, whether it be slow or fast. Popular music is also human nature. Ke$ha has a place in the music world just as the New York Philharmonic does. I personally wouldn’t want to be listening to Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 at a club or a party. But why give Ke$ha a chance, but not the New York Phil? Music affects how we are, it affects our mood, and it affects our life in more ways than we realize. All anyone needs to do is give this kind of music, this kind of art a chance.

To "Art" or Not to "Art"

As I was trying to find a unique form of art to explore that also serves as social commentary, I stumbled upon Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung's Page. He uses popular culture, political figures, historical references and imagery found on the internet to a new image or video that questions identity, politics, sexuality and power. You might ask if this is real art since he is essentially using someone's original piece to supplement his own. I would say it is still is. His art has a motive, while others seem to don't (David Smith's sculptures as seen above) ... 

I took a Freshman Seminar last quarter on how we can use child psychology to understand what it means to be human. We read Descarte's Baby by Paul Bloom and he featured a chapter about art. We considered what it means for something to be art. A way that art is really different from other objects is that all other artifacts are designed for a purpose, but "there is nothing less useful than a painting or a sculpture, and the very idea of using one for a functional purpose betrays misunderstanding" (Bloom 86). So what is the goal of art? Some people find it pleasurable to engage in purchasing outrageous and unnecessarily expensive art because they serve as displays of status and power. Others go for the intellectual appeal. They like displays of skills, and conversation that can be provoked by visitors to their house. In addition, realistic pictures can serve as a substitute for the real thing. Examples are beautiful portraits of nature and scenery. For me, I would call something art if the creator intended for it to be art. It all comes back to intention.
 
Back to Kenneth's art, the piece I will focus on is his "The Fast Supper" and "Fat Free Nirvana". He is depicting the contemporary societal problem of obesity by using historical references. He satirizes the famous "Last Supper" painting by Leonardo da Vinci by showing Jesus consuming large amounts of fast food and unhealthy snacks, growing more and more obese until he finally explodes. This definitely fits into the category of social criticism because he is trying to raise awareness about the dangers of obesity. The fact that he used a famous religious event to parallel this growing issue is to relate the magnitude of the fast food industry in American society. Another detail is that all the foods on the table are labeled with religious terms and symbols, which seems to say that Americans treat their fast food as a way of life, like religion. The explosion of Jesus symbolizes his core message that Americans need to adopt better eating habits and stop the dependency on fat, greasy foods before health problems kill everyone.

In the "Fat Free Nirvana", he presents the solution to the fast food and obesity problem by showing how the man lost weight by eating more fruits and vegetables. But at the end, it showed a emaciated man, and I think that admonishes against the other side of the issue, anorexia. He did a really great job portraying this issue impacting America. Do you think his videos are effective?

For it to be effective, social critique should be reproduced and distributed to the masses. Hung does exactly this because the two videos are available to anyone around the world with Internet access. Granted not everyone has access to the Internet when considering third world countries, but computers are becoming more prevalent in our lives. I think art can produce "real" political, social change if the medium can be widely seen by everyone and internet is certainly the way to go for this. Art does provide a social good even with Kesha's Animal album. She has a song entitled "We R Who We R" and it can be interpreted to mean "be yourself". Granted her other songs on the album are more provocative and doesn't offer socially good messages (i.e. "Take It Off"). Nevertheless, classical music, such as Mozart might do society more good than popular music like Kesha, but they are both still forms of art. Both of the artists spend time creating their sounds intended for an audience to hear it. What do you think of Kesha's music as art?

Do you think social criticism will become more prevalent in art form?

Post Number One

In Robert Yates’ Revolutionary Road, there was an underlying misogynistic theme. April was inferior to Frank and the wives of suburbia liked this masculine/feminine lifestyle. In contrast, The Huffington Post’s blog: “The Phony ‘Gender Wars’” talks about how women are becoming “a more powerful economic force than men.” Women are starting to break off on their own and are no longer thought of as weird or abnormal to raise a family on their own or be single. According to Eric Klinenberg’s new book Going Solo, “Marriage isn’t cool anymore.” Women are getting ahead in their careers and their financial situation.

Unlike the 1950s, the 21st century is a place where less people are concerned who brings home more bacon. Women felt contained by their house, by their ‘picture window’. Women could vote, but their economic opinions, and independence hardly crossed the minds of most males. Women are now financially more independent and have the public opinion more on their side. However, the question arises: Do some relationships falter because the woman makes more money? Does being a dominant male matter anymore?

Single women today have been more of a role model now then ever. Television shows make the single life out to be something to strive for. Women no longer need to have a man involved in their life to make them happy. Although there are definitely exceptions to this rule, the majority of books and TV shows today make the woman out to be a strong and defined individual. They are not tied to a man.

This blog post was written by Rick Newman (male) and this even shows that the views of men have changed from the 50s. In the past several decades, masculinity has shifted in the sense that it is no longer based around women, and being the one holding the job. Masculinity in that sense would be a complete turn-off for any women now. Newman argues that the “winner-take-all competition between the two genders, an oversimplified meme that has set off plenty of hyperventilating in the media.” I think he is right about this. I think the media sometimes unnecessarily embellishes the “gender wars.” Women who try to get ahead of men shouldn’t be worried that they are in competition with are men. They should worry about how they win. Even though there are some people who are blatantly sexist, I believe the majority today are not.

The housewife/house-husband debate is still going on. If the wife makes more money than the husband does she work and he stay at home? How does that affect his ‘masculinity’? Is he being contained?

However, to flip the views of the 1950s upside down and say that men should be stay-at-home dads and the females should work, or else the female is not feminine may seem very strange, and my guess is that not many men would like that. There would probably be a handful of men who would be thrilled by this idea, just as there are only a handful of women. The ideal life for a woman is different now. Maybe every woman in the 50s wanted to be a housewife, just as the majority of women now want to have a career. I couldn’t imagine having the life April Wheeler did in Revolutionary Road, but I wonder if it was just because of the containment of society or would I still want to have a career as I do now if I lived in the 1950s?

Men Resisting Containment

This blog by Etan Thomas, author of Fatherhood: Rising to the Ultimate Challenge depicts the modern day father’s resistance towards society’s efforts of containing men to traditional gender roles. In his post, Thomas talks about how a Huggies commercial portrayed dads as being incapable of taking care of their own children. Outraged by what he thought was an unfair portrayal of men’s role in child rearing, the author did some research to prove that this “helpless” image of fathers who cannot care for their kids without the help of women is more of a gender stereotype than a fact. He uses his personal experience as well as evidence from the U.S. Census to further successfully prove that men are not as inept at taking care of children as implied by the commercial.

Even though society has made all sorts of progress in promoting gender equality, some stereotypes remain. In my opinion, this blog post shows efforts of resisting containment. Men no longer have to and neither do they subscribe to the traditional gender roles that were most popular in the 1950’s. In our society today, it is becoming more and more common for men to take on the role of stay at home dad while more women are entering the work force.

This commercial by Huggies however successfully exhibits how society constrains individuals’ choices such as men who decide to stay at home and raise their kids. In the 50’s Cold War era, women were the ones being forced to abide by the socially accepted roles assigned to them. It is interesting to see how men today are now faced with a similar situation and how they react towards it.

Stay at home dads today are commonly mocked and insulted by people who do not understand why they do it. In a passage by Roland Martin in the authors book mentioned earlier, Martin points out that there are many other commercials, not just this one by Huggies, insinuating that mothers have a better relationship with their child than father’s, who are described as impatient and useless when it comes to household matters. Whether we are aware of it or not, any attempt to stray from social norms are never reacted to positively. This is why there are many people who try to contain these men who are proudly taking care of their kids and they are doing it well. People who just don’t get it may be hostile towards these fathers just because they don’t comply with what society deems is “normal”.

However, these fathers are not just letting the negative remarks slide. They are taking action and refusing to be made fun of for what they do. They demand respect and recognition and I think they deserve it. Women are constantly being praised for their work at home as a mother and are always told to be proud of what they do; why should it be any different for men? Isn’t the modern American society aiming towards gender equality?

SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, What?

Recently a plethora of piracy bills have surfaced. SOPA and PIPA were initially designed for companies to block the domain names of web sites that are capable of, or seem to encourage copyright infringement (but there is still a way to access them through a numerical code) and to allow rights holders to cut off the source of funding of any potentially infringing web site (i.e. advertisements, search engines). The difference between these two bills is that SOPA targets all sites that may have copyrighted material, while PIPA only targets those that are solely copyrighted. What I don't understand is why these bills are needed when we have the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to allow right holders to request the legal removal of their content. Also, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has the ability to sue perpetrators for copyright violations (e.g. illegally downloading music). The newest bill called CISPA provides a mean for companies and the government to share information with one another to fight against cyber threats. This bill has gained many supporters in Congress and in the corporate world. CISPA transfers the burdensome task of regulating its user's content and activity to a government entity and this makes a company's job more simple. The reason why companies like Facebook and Microsoft are supporting CISPA rather than the other piracy bills is because it is beneficial for them to do so where SOPA could have potentially harmed their business. The opposition is against it because they worry that the bill could be used as a simple way to spy on people. Many are concerned about the ambiguity of the term "cybersecurity threat". What constitutes such a threat?

Containment is obviously inherent in these bills because they are trying to censor what is on the internet and the bills are too broad that they can be interpreted in many ways and therefore they can be abused. The main problem is that the piracy bills censor the tool that provides a means for the infringing content to exist on the internet rather than the content itself. If we were to create another bill (on top of these three...), the most logical way would be to create one that targets a specific type/genre of content. Will another one surface? Another reason why it's an example of containment is because the bills place power in the hands of rights holders and the government, and it has the potential for abuse. The rest of the population is being contained from information, and we would not know why because they would have dealt with it before we are even aware of it.


The author is someone that works for the i09 blogs, which focus on the subjects of science fiction, futurism, and advancements in science and technology, so I am assuming that they have credible knowledge on the topic (ethos). The audience is for anyone that uses the internet because these bills will affect them and their free internet viewing pleasure. The purpose is to inform the general public, and to persuade them to take action for what the law is trying to do whether you agree with them or not. A popular backlash that occurred was the blackout of Wikipedia, which caused quite an uproar by the general public. The persuasion is effective because it informs, but also encourages the readers to think for themselves on these issues.

In order for a legitimate privacy bill to arise, these ideas need major revision and specificity needs to be added.

Do you find the piracy bills helpful to society? Censorship is the other major issue. Free speech is being contained, and many would argue that it violates the first amendment. For me, censorship is great for substance on the web that does more harm than good. Examples are pornography and illegitimate sites that portray false information. I can see why many are worried about censorship because we are giving the government more power, and who knows what they might do next if we let them censor.

http://io9.com/5900962/why-microsoft-and-facebook-are-pro+cispa-but-anti+sopa?tag=censorship