The Arts in America

Do other countries have a bustling business in "sofa size" paintings? What is this American obsession with what I call "art by the yard"? I imagine a scenario in which two employees of the MOMA are discussing what the next show should be. After much discussion one exasperated participant screams out: "My god man! I don't care what it looks like! Just make sure it's SOFA SIZED!!"

Although there is not as much of a business for books these days, there is a similar phenomenon: basing how good a book is by how long it is, as in someone like Mitchner. The Harry Potter books kept getting longer and longer as the series continued. So for books what we have is literature by the pound. Yes, I know, not as many people read, and those that do are starting to go to e-books, but we are not totally to that point yet.

Music. Easy one there. Since the advent of rock it has been: "Let's see how much higher we can crank this up!" Actually the beginnings of this go back a couple of centuries as one orchestra became famous because they actually got louder as they played. Renaissance and baroque era instruments are not known for their dynamic range. Electronics have taken this to an extreme. Even worse, though, is that too many songs no longer have a dynamic range at all; they are as loud as possible all the time. There are discussions in trade magazines for those who produce albums about this very aspect. They talk of the overuse of "compression" which makes everything the same loudness level rather than having loud and soft sections. Anyway, here we have music by the decibel.

Movies have their own version, in "blockbusters" anyway. Big Summer and holiday movies are identified by how many "'splosions" (explosions) there are. You see this somewhat on TV as well in many of the shows that try to capture the audience of a show like Mythbusters. They take out all the science and such but keep the "booms!". For movies, the bigger the bangs, the bigger the bucks. Cinema by the megaton.

Art by the yard, literature by the pound, music by the decibel, cinema by the megaton. God bless America. Fits the American archtype. Go to anyplace that you can see groups of Americans mixed with large groups of other nationalities, somewhere like Disney World or the like. American are easy to spot. Compared to the other nationalities they are not exactly "svelt". Maybe that helps explain the whole Hummer popularity thing. "Don't care if built worth a damn or not, just make it HUGE!"

America: Home of the Monster Arts Rally.