A passage concerning whether terror is more powerful than art in todays society (and even dialogue--political, philosophical, personal, etc) from a highly interesting article I read last week:
'Some weeks seem to have been foretold by Don DeLillo. This past one, dominated as it has been by the unedifying soliloquy of Cho Seung-hui (the Virginia Tech killer), with the banal detail of television packages mailed amid slaughter, and the viral spread of the killer's monomania across the internet (necessitating the downloading of Flash players) feels like one of them.
When he first became a novelist in the late 1960s, DeLillo had two files on his writer's desk in New York; one was labelled 'Art', the other was marked 'Terror'. No writer since has been as alive to the congruence of violence and its media. The currency of our age, he has long argued, has become 'bad news, sensationalistic news. It has almost replaced the novel, replaced discourse between people ... your TV set has become an instrument of apocalypse'. Acts of random horror played on a loop on the networks, obsessively talk-showed and blogged, become self-fulfilling prophecies.
'People talk about the killing, but they don't talk about what it does to them,' DeLillo suggests. 'The truth is we don't know how to talk about this. Maybe that is why some of us write fiction.'
Even so, the writer of fiction, he contends, particularly the writer of fiction in America, is engaged in a losing battle. His or her imagination is not as powerful in shaping the present and determining the future as that of the dominant creative force; 'Art' is not up to 'Terror'. Long before such a theory was easily imaginable, DeLillo wrote: 'In a repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption, the act of terror may be the only meaningful act ... people who are powerless make an open theatre of violence. True terror is a language and a vision. There is a deep narrative structure to terrorist acts and they infiltrate and alter consciousness in ways that writers used to aspire to.'
I've thought about this since I read it (and of course, Ive read most of DeLillo's books). And this quote really hits me: "the act of terror may be the only meaningful act." I find myself largely agreeing with the statement, with reservations. Is terror now the only meaningful act in modern society? Is this the only thing anyone cares about? IS this the only way one can open a dialogue with the world? It is surely not art, which only has impact if its commercialized drivel like American Idol singing, or the latest superhero movie.
Fear, terror, sensationalism; its an eternal circle we're trapped in. I must confess I dont know if terror is the only meaningful act. It seems to me that terror is the only act that impacts and affects peoples lives (the rest they ignore), yet I dont think terror opens up a meaningful dialogue. Few seem to want to understand the motives or underlying reasons for the terror, to open a dialogue with the terrorist, and to confront the explicit condemnation the terrorist makes with his terrorist act. Instead, we seem obsessed with the act itself. With the terror or violence itself. Few Americans have even bothered to recognize the obvious symbolism of 9/11. Perhaps then, all dialogue is gone. Only fear and commercialism is left. Then, even through terror, one is misunderstood or ignored.
'Some weeks seem to have been foretold by Don DeLillo. This past one, dominated as it has been by the unedifying soliloquy of Cho Seung-hui (the Virginia Tech killer), with the banal detail of television packages mailed amid slaughter, and the viral spread of the killer's monomania across the internet (necessitating the downloading of Flash players) feels like one of them.
When he first became a novelist in the late 1960s, DeLillo had two files on his writer's desk in New York; one was labelled 'Art', the other was marked 'Terror'. No writer since has been as alive to the congruence of violence and its media. The currency of our age, he has long argued, has become 'bad news, sensationalistic news. It has almost replaced the novel, replaced discourse between people ... your TV set has become an instrument of apocalypse'. Acts of random horror played on a loop on the networks, obsessively talk-showed and blogged, become self-fulfilling prophecies.
'People talk about the killing, but they don't talk about what it does to them,' DeLillo suggests. 'The truth is we don't know how to talk about this. Maybe that is why some of us write fiction.'
Even so, the writer of fiction, he contends, particularly the writer of fiction in America, is engaged in a losing battle. His or her imagination is not as powerful in shaping the present and determining the future as that of the dominant creative force; 'Art' is not up to 'Terror'. Long before such a theory was easily imaginable, DeLillo wrote: 'In a repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption, the act of terror may be the only meaningful act ... people who are powerless make an open theatre of violence. True terror is a language and a vision. There is a deep narrative structure to terrorist acts and they infiltrate and alter consciousness in ways that writers used to aspire to.'
I've thought about this since I read it (and of course, Ive read most of DeLillo's books). And this quote really hits me: "the act of terror may be the only meaningful act." I find myself largely agreeing with the statement, with reservations. Is terror now the only meaningful act in modern society? Is this the only thing anyone cares about? IS this the only way one can open a dialogue with the world? It is surely not art, which only has impact if its commercialized drivel like American Idol singing, or the latest superhero movie.
Fear, terror, sensationalism; its an eternal circle we're trapped in. I must confess I dont know if terror is the only meaningful act. It seems to me that terror is the only act that impacts and affects peoples lives (the rest they ignore), yet I dont think terror opens up a meaningful dialogue. Few seem to want to understand the motives or underlying reasons for the terror, to open a dialogue with the terrorist, and to confront the explicit condemnation the terrorist makes with his terrorist act. Instead, we seem obsessed with the act itself. With the terror or violence itself. Few Americans have even bothered to recognize the obvious symbolism of 9/11. Perhaps then, all dialogue is gone. Only fear and commercialism is left. Then, even through terror, one is misunderstood or ignored.
