Your minutes are up now (9/21/09)

Journal:
Read Four by Christopher Shin. No monologue for me. The only character whose type I fit has one monologue and it's extremely passive. Maybe something from True West? I'm not sure. I need a contemporary dramatic...

Grade: 100
5th - 7th period: Headshots
8th: Looked for monologue

Debate Notes:
1. Should art always show good triumphant?
If that is how the events truthfully play out, then yes. While I believe an unhappy ending is fine where it's warranted, an ending completely devoid of hope is very rare. Even if you take some of the unhappiest endings of all time, there are still sparks of hope, however dim, at the end. For example, the Capulets and the Montagues resolve their feud over the deaths of Romeo and Juliet. Horatio lives on to tell Hamlet's story and Fortinbras takes over Denmark.

And even if the ending for the subjects of the work of art are dismal, the hopelessness of it is the hope of changing the way people see things after seeing the hopeless art. For example:
While it seems rather hopeless for the young boy, who is moments from death, but the photo stands as an icon of awareness of the devastating famines that have plagued Africa for years and continue to this day.*

2. Should art follow truth without concern to social codes and moral values?
Yes, of course. Although, I think if there's anything frivolous about the breaking of the conventions, it's just as bad as conforming to bad ones. It's like a high schooler running down the hallway screaming "fuck you" to everyone he passes. There's no real purpose for it besides to shock people.

I think it should have a justifiable (by the artist) reason for breaking the "rules."

* (The photographer of this photo committed suicide three months later. Thought that was an interesting bit of information.)