Lecture on Phobia in America

As children we fear things that as adults we might find silly
such as monsters or things under the bed. As we grow older
we develop phobias, which are irrational fears of a certian
object or idea such as an enclosed space or heights or even
light. phobias cause a person to feel alone and isolated in their
mind. He then described how fear could be mental, emotional,
and physical and how humans and animals both suffer from
fear.

The study of phobias and fears in centuries old. Expression
of Emotion: Man and Animals written by Charles Darwin says
that the emotion of fear is innate and is not something that is
taught to us. That fear however and be enhanced or guided by
outside influences such as the media as Barry Glassner explains
in his book The Culture of Fear. He blames the media for
creating some diffrent kinds of fear in people by sterotyping or
emphazising different people or groups in a negative way.
Sean Quimby, the lecturer, thought that there were two trends
in American life. The first is a dogged fantasy of invasion and
the second is the gradual emergence of therapeutic culture.

Quimby suggests that America has an obsession with being
invaded. The first example that he gives is Madison Grant’s The
Passing of the Great Race. In this book Henry Osbourne
explains that the greatest threat to America is that the Aryan
race might be dying out becasue of the inter-marriage
between Aryans and non-Aryans. As his second example
Quimby used the 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds and the
panic that followed from people actually believing that an alien
invasion was taking place. Princeton Professor, Hadley Cantrill
commented on this naiveté of the American public by saying
that it was due to Americans’ inability to distinguish reality
from fiction.

The second trend that Quimby talks about is the
therapeutic culture of fear. He spends much less time talking
about this aspect than the first and his only example was God.
He says that God is now being absorbed into this path of fear
in a way that people’s belief in a higher being helps alleviate
the uncertainty and horror of phobias.

While i enjoyed the lecture and the question and answer
session afterwards the speech tended to jump around alot and
did not present a clear thesis. Quimby gave quite a few
examples of fear in America but it did not seem to have any
real unifying themes and it did not seem to have any order in
the order the examples were presented. The lecutre also
was a bit short. It was schedculed to be an hour, but in reality
it only lasted around half an hour. It would have been a much
better presentaiton if Quimby had gone more indepth on some
topics and lengthened the presentation more.

Binh Danh exhibit

Binh Danh is recreating one of the most emotionally powerful news articles during the Vietnam war.
 the way that he redid the pictures helps to make the connection between the soldiers and
 the war stronger by using leaves that came from the jungle. viewing these photos and their 
original versions reminds me of some of the different news agencies doing the exact same 
thing for Iraq war except that they have a record for the entire war and not just one week. CNN and the New York Times both have a list of deaths from the Iraq war. the 
CNN version is more like the original Life magazine article with the faces in a year book style 
while the NYT version is artistic in that the photos of the dead make up a collage of one of 
the dead soldiers. even though Binh Danh was to young to remember the actual war it has 
affected him greatly. He is trying to convey a neutral view at the cost of war that cant be 
replaced.
i viewed the exhibit more as just portraits of people in a new and inventive way than dead 
soldiers from the Vietnam war. Sontag believes that there are two attitudes about what is 
material for the camera. the first is that anything photographed has either beauty or 
interest and is therefore art. the second is that everything needs to be photographed so 
it can be analyzed later on. Sontag states that "According to one attitude there is nothing 
that should not be seen according to the other there is nothing that should not be recorded." 
i agree with her that every photo is either art to someone or a document to be reviewed. i also believe that something 
can be both and that is what i got out of it. it is an art work that people can look at for purely 
its artistic value and be amazed at the detail that he was able to extract from the leaves. 
it is also a document that exists to be looked at later so that we dont forget these mistakes 
and remake them in future.       

first assignment

               Art is what ever we ourselves decide it is. One of my favorite art peices  found on deviantart.com in early 2004. I think the first time i saw 
this picture i stared at it for about 20 minutes trying to figure out a whole backstory for what was 
happening in the picture. I have also come back to this painting several times because it just looked 
so good. It was so memorable because the water and the clouds seemed so tumultious while the little 
girl and her mother seem so calm. Also the fading sun and  her umbrella have the same colour and is such a contrast to the grey of the sky, sea and destroyed buildings. most of the sky is covered by dark rain clouds swirling around except for a few spots where the sun shines through as it is about to go under the horizon. in the middle of the picture there are 2 women withere their backs toward us on a set of stone stairs that lead to nowhere surrounded by whirling waters and destroyed buildings. One of the women is a little girl who has a closed umbrella in her hands and is looking back towards us and the other seems to be her mother.She has her umbrella opened hiding the top 
half of her body creating a beautiful silhouette after which the peice is named. what makes this 
diffrent is that it is digitally painted as opposed to what i usually like in art which are photographs. 
this picture invokes feelings of sadness and shock. im not sure exactly what the purpose of this 
peice was or even if there was a purpose. the artist said that he wanted the work to speak for 
itself and i think that its better that way.
                                 de Duve spent most of the article trying to define what art is. he went through lots of 
diffrent point of views to try and come up with a definiton to what art was. his first conclusion after pretending to be an alien was that art is what humans call art. his second conclusion was that art is what we call art. he found that those were not adiquite to define art and finally said that art is waht each of us 
as individuals decide is art. he also says that as long as we are to true to what we really love and 
not trying to be a snob or a snob in reverse art can be whatever we want it to be. i agree completely 
with de Duve, i think that anything can be art this doesnt mean that since everything can be art nothing will be art because not every peice of art will be art to everyone else.