Are Television Commercials Art?

I went recently with a few friends (thanks again) to the most recent British Arrows awards. They’re an award show for the best advertisements on British television. Every year, they ship the films all the way overseas and bring them to The Walker Art Center, where they’re shown for about a month, several times some days. I don’t ever hear any of this about, say, the awards for British television shows. Much ado about advertising, I suppose.

What strikes me as oddest is that these are shown at the Walker Art Center, not some odd theater somewhere in the city. The presupposition of this arrangement- one that kept coming into my thoughts during the showing- was that these advertisements were art.

Could it be true? Are advertisements a form of art? My first response was no. The point of art is to express oneself. Advertisements don’t show what the artist is thinking, but only what the creator of the advertisement wants people to think.

This does raise some questions. For example, during the early days of classical music, all music was commissioned for religious services, by the church, for the church. It was, in a way, an advertisement for the church. But those who were writing for the church certainly felt strongly about religious ideals, and were certainly expressing something of themselves when they wrote Gregorian chant.

The adverts we saw were nothing like Gregorian chant. They exploited our emotions for profit and played to archetypes for laughs and connection.  Except, of course, that there were political nonprofit ads and public service announcements. There’s political-based art, isn’t there? In addition, some of the advertisements were really quite funny. Isn’t a comedy film a form of art? A satire, at least? Where does that line come in? Would we consider Dr. Strangelove “art” but not Mean Girls?

You could argue, then, that advertisements, as film, are art, but not good art, because they don’t reflect any emotions. But I enjoyed going to see the Arrow Award winners. Most of them were quite funny. (One of my favorites is at the bottom.) Is it possible that something can be art and be good but not be good art?

Perhaps art is, more than anything, a lens. The lesson of the Arrow Awards is that anything created can be looked at as art. Everyday objects, even the most functional, have an art and creativity in their creation. Look at the furniture wherever you are. Someone had to come up with aesthetically pleasing shapes for it. The computer you’re working on is probably either square and techy or attractively sleek. Someone had to come up with those designs as well. Even nonfiction writing has an artistic component to it. When people make things, they want them to be appreciated. Why not appreciate them? 

The Best Songs of 2012

I’ve been working for a while on this year-end song list. I did it mostly by combing lists of the best songs of the year, and found fifteen I really liked. Presented in ascending order so that you don’t just scroll to the bottom to see the top song.

1. Grimes, “Oblivion”. What’s left to say about Oblivion? On an album (and a career) full of electronic arcana, Grimes layers low, dark hooks with her high-pitched, mousy voice. It’s a dance floor hit, a work of odd creativity, and the summoning of some otherworldy spirit, all wrapped into one.

2. Alabama Shakes, “Hold On”. Alabama Shakes put together a truly wonderful soul song for the modern era. Singer Brittany Howard shows the combination of vocal energy and restraint that makes for great R&B vocals, a skill that many singers today lack. The band’s music sounds thoroughly old-school, but the lo-fi bluesy sound wasn’t a gimmick, as it is for many retro stars.

3. Frank Ocean, “Thinkin Bout You”. Displaying the inverse talent of the above song, which conveyed energy through restraint, Ocean stole the stage with a low-key jam. His tale of first love is captivated the ears of mainstream and indie listeners alike as nothing else this year.

4. Dirty Projectors, “Gun Has No Trigger”. As often happens with the Dirty Projectors, the lyrics aren’t exactly clear (a political skewering? a drug anthem? free-form surrealism?), but the effect of this mysterious song isn’t lost on us. The group strips away its usual arcane rhythms and noises for a simple but effective Bond-theme-esque hit, rising the tension to a boiling point with incredibly controlled voices.

5. Of Monsters and Men, “Little Talks”. It takes a special kind of indie pop song to chart as high as Of Monsters and Men did this year, and “Little Talks” was just that hit. Their cheery love song harnesses careful guitar strums, bouncy horns, and the tale of two star-crossed lovers riding a boat to safety.

6. Usher, “Climax”. The brainchild of producer Diplo (“Paper Planes”) harnessing Usher’s surprisingly good voice, no pop hit caught the ear of critics this year like “Climax”, an addictively sweet breakup song.

7. Lianne la Havas, “Is Your Love Big Enough?” Other critics have called it “the best pop song this year that no one heard,” and rightly so. Havas’ genre of not-quite-pop-but-not-yet-soul wasn’t made for Top 40. But the single, youthful yet wise, sweet yet substantial, is surely the sound of  a star in the making.

8. Psy, “Gangnam Style”. No, it’s not ironic appreciation. While some critics have compared Gangnam Style to the drab pop hits of LMFAO, the devil’s in the details. Where most pop bands put laziness, hedonism, and nihilism, K-pop star Psy brough real energy to the table to make this year’s catchiest song.

9. Plan B, “Ill Manors”. British rapper Plan B dissects the class tensions of modern-day London in this overseas hit. At turns sardonic and violent, “Ill Manors” is the near-official theme song of the 2011 London riots.

10. Japandroids, “The House that Heaven Built”. Though I’ve heard punk songs with more complicated chord progressions- I’m not certain there’s even a third chord- Japandroids’ shouty energy can fill an arena like no other song this year, and still feel a bit constrained.

11. Kendrick Lamar, “Swimming Pools (Drank)”. As part of Lamar’s favored theme of peer pressure and group dynamics, “Swimming Pools (Drank)” dissects tales of alcoholism with a sociologists’ skill. He blends current trendy production and techniques with his early-nineties-style low-key, free-form rapping style. It all fits together perfectly.

12. Jessie Ware, “110%”. British pop star Ware sings with such subtlety she’s almost muttering, and the washing instrumentation is similarly low-key. But the end product is as comfortable and warm as a blanket. It’s just a shame Ware didn’t make it properly overseas.

13. Beach House, “Myth”. It’s not the dream-pop perfection they reached with their 2010 hit “Zebra”, but the Baltimore duo is just as much a master of the genre as they were then.

14. Chromatics, “Kill for Love”. Chromatics captured the essence of the new-but-retro synthpop sound making the rounds in the music world with “Kill for Love”. It’s the kind of song you’d hear in a movie like Drive, all substance but no gimmicks, the instruments of 80’s pop grown out of awkward maximalism into an impeccably sleek sound.

15. First Aid Kit, “Emmylou”. I’m not certain what it is that sets this slow country ballad a cut above the rest. Is it the band’s inclination towards hooks? The singers’ soft voices? The wall-of-sound atmosphere?  But there’s no uncertainty that this rising country duo, at only 19 and 22, have made their mark on this year’s music.

Why Won't the World End?

I hope everyone is having a wonderful apocalypse today. I know I am, just like I was having on last October’s apocalypse. Though I don’t remember how the apocalypse went for me last May. And on Y2K, I didn’t even know the world was ending. You would think my parents would somehow give me the memo, but no.

I’m beginning to notice a pattern here. Despite all of the rigorous testing and thorough examination of claims through the scientific method that goes into determining the dates of the apocalypse, the world just keeps refusing to end. It’s almost looking as if people want the world to end- like they can’t wait for it or something.

It seems like every time I turn around, a different group of Christians/New Agers/cultists/general multipurpose oddballs are screaming about doomsday. People get deep into these things. One article I saw from the two failed Harold Camping apocalypses[1] featured complaints from two children whose parents were so devout in their belief that the world would end that they refused to think of the childrens’ futures, including impending college decisions. Even without all of these predictions, facts about the predicted apocalypse remain worrisome. For example, according toReuters, close to four in ten Americans believe that climate change is theresult of the biblical end times.

Knowing the little that I do about psychology, this seems utterly absurd. Evolutionarily speaking, all human urges should derive from three needs: self-preservation, sex, and filial preservation, which allow one’s genes to replicate. The end of the world would kill you, kill your children and therefore your entire genetic investment, and prevent you from ever having sex again. It would also destroy the entire purpose of many people’s lives, which is providing for the security of the future of the world.

My initial reaction is that believing that the end of the world will happen to you, right now, could be a form of egotism. Essentially, the world that I live in, the world right now, is the most important world that has ever existed, and all of human history has been leading up to my accomplishments.

There are other social-psychology principles at work here. There’s the human inclination towards blind trust. If a charismatic, authoritative-looking person is telling you the world is going to end, you might believe them, no matter how illogical their logic. There’s also confirmation bias. If you’ve started to believe something, you will do almost anything to protect that belief, to avoid cognitive dissonance and/or the recognition of your own stupidity. There was plenty of confirmation bias (people seeking out information that matched what they already know) in this apocalypse, thanks to Nostradamus, The Discovery Channel, and the usual idiocy coming out of the New Age movement.

The biggest draw, however, is a bit more logical: the apocalypse is the ultimate solution to all of the world’s problems. We are facing, as a world, issues with extreme weather and global warming, hunger, poverty, disease, discrimination, war, and government corruption. People tend to believe the world’s problems are worse now, because they can see the pain people feel now, even though, really, all of the issues I just mentioned except global warming have gotten exponentially better since the dawn of civilization. It’s nice to believe in a simple solution to all of the world’s injustices.

Remember, many apocalypse preachers believe in an afterlife where all people will be judged and they can retain meaning from their lives, not the extinguishing of all humanity. It’s generally not the atheists shouting the end of the world. (The exception is ecological catastrophe, which isn’t actually the end of the world, but sounds more interesting if you cast it as that.) Studies show that marginalized groups tend more frequently to believe inthe impending apocalypse and, therefore, return of justice.  

Well, unfortunately, there is no such cosmic justice. It looks like humans will just have to fix our social problems on our own. Oh, well.

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[1] I shouldn’t have to use the plural “apocalypses”. It doesn’t make any sense.