Art and the American Dream

In Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own, she states that the most basic needs for genius are money and privacy. If people have the money for the resources they need for genius and the privacy to do so, then they can achieve whatever they set their mind to. In American society, we are apt to say that this statement is not true--at least the part that talks about money--because we were taught from a very early age that anyone can achieve anything, no matter what their initial earning is. However, this expectation of artists is a detrimental one since it offers no support and, creates a skewed idea of art in American society.

Nowadays it is becoming extremely hard to create new, independent artists because we as a society have refused to provide the money or support for prospective artists. In our society, we believe that art and culture is merely a luxury and should not be prioritized. Schools are cutting more and more money from the budgets of their arts programs and are limiting the resources needed for artistic development. Not only that but arts colleges are quite hard to come by and can be extremely expensive. It is extremely difficult to create new artists in this society, especially those who come from low income backgrounds. What else is that art has taken a greater focus to making money than has to artistic expression. All the time we see artists today trying to create business in ways that artists would not have twenty or thirty years ago, with music videos sponsoring products and artists putting their songs on advertisements.

So it is clear: money has a greater sway over us as a society than art does, but art needs support of its own and it has a very important purpose. Art is a way of seeing the world in new and great perspectives, it shows what it is like to live the life of another and shared a little bit of truth about humanity. Where would we be as a society without the satirical writing of the seventeenth century, or the psychedelic rock bands of the nineteen-sixties? Our society needs to create a solution for this problem, and not just use the American dream to push it under the rug. What the artists in our society need is a support system that connects the successful to the aspirational and a better attitude towards art. We need to remove the idea that art is used to entertain and make money, but rather is meant to catalyze the progression of humanity.

Are We All Unstuck in Time?

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 depicts many strange and unsettling opinions about life and the world around us. Some of them that leave readers confused and exhausted by the novel, without any motivation to search further into the novel’s ideas. One of the novel’s most profound ideas is the concept of time that is expressed. Throughout the novel, Vonnegut argues that time has no subsequent order and is an illusion. He tells the story of Billy Pilgrim in a way that has no real beginning, middle, or end and tells the events of Billy’s life with no particular order. Throughout the novel Billy Pilgrim is “unstuck in time,” meaning that he lives his life in no order, sometimes he lives as a baby and sometimes he lives as an old man. Billy actually gets an explanation of what he is going through once he is abducted by and meets the Tralfamadorians, an alien species that can see in four dimensions. In the novel, the Tralfamadorians affirm the reality of Billy’s experiences and teach Billy that time as he knew it is not real. These beliefs about time may seem groundbreaking and a little bit outlandish, but in reality, there are similar ideas that are widely accepted in the scientific community.

The concept of time in Slaughterhouse 5 shares many characteristics with the B-Theory of Time, which is a notion of time that is typically used in theoretical physics. The B-Theory of Time was derived in 1908 by J. M. E. McTaggart in his book, The Unreality of Time. In this book McTaggart suggests two different theories of time: the A-Theory, which argues that time exists as we know it, in the past, present, and future, and the B-Theory, which suggests that the notion of a subsequent order of time is merely a psychological one and that time is an illusion. This idea explains that events are not categorized as past, present, and future, but rather are categorized as earlier than, simultaneous to, or after other events. Not only is this a compatible theory of time amongst physicists, but it relates a lot to what Vonnegut calls being "unstuck in time." Perhaps we are all like Billy Pilgrim, existing now as what we once were and will be and traveling through a fleeting and imaginary present without even realizing it.

Correct and Incorrect Applications for Cultural Relativism

In in the article The Challenge of Cultural Relativism, Ruth Benedict argues against cultural relativism because it is both useless and can lead to negative consequences in society. She says that while the teachings of cultural relativism can be useful, such as the idea that people should be more understanding of other culture’s customs and how most customs are not objectively right or wrong, but it should not be used in every day principle. However, Benedict believes that in less trivial matters, such as anything proven through science, that there is an objectively correct belief. She uses the example of the world being flat versus being round. While most cultures do believe the earth to be round some cultures believe it to be flat, and whether or not these cultures are right is not relative; the cultures that believe the world to be flat are objectively wrong. Benedict argues that without some idea of what is objectively right or wrong, then moral progress will never occur both between societies and within societies.

An example of the ongoing battle for and against cultural relativism are the differences in the treatment of women between Islamic and Western culture. In some cases, the differences between morality in women between the two cultures are relative and are neither right or wrong. Any way a woman dresses is neither right or wrong and there is no “universal truth” to how a woman should correctly clothe herself. Whether or not a woman should wear a hijab or a burka or nothing of the kind is only dependent on the cultures themselves and does not need to be applied to a universal accord. However, such matters as what a woman wears is trivial and there are many other aspects to the treatment of women in Islam, mainly in extremist groups, where an objective moral code should be used.

For many extremist groups in Islam, honor killings can be quite common. It is reported that around 1,000 women die in Pakistan due to honor killings despite the disapproval of such acts that are typically expressed in Islam. These acts are perpetrated to bring back honor that was supposedly lost by a “disgraced” family member. In extreme cases of Islam, the targets of such killings are typically women who disgrace their families in whatever way their families deem provocative. These acts are not in any way acceptable for the ideas of cultural relativity. Murdering someone for not living up to one’s expectations should never be accepted and should never be tolerated because it is moral in the culture where it is practiced. This also touches on Benedict’s opinion that all societies have universal morality on certain subjects, such as murder. These actions are not only disapproved by Western Society but also disapproved by most Muslims, therefore, honor killings do not deserve to be treated as a different custom by another culture, but as a crime against humanity that needs to be fixed.

When someone says the word "hero" to you, what is the first thing you think of? A brave, strong man with unfaltering courage and loyalty? Is this man a leader? A sort of warrior king who leads his men into glorious battles? If you had said yes to any of these guesses, then you are describing a typical epic hero, a common archetype in ancient literature, including the epic poem Beowulf.  It is also no wonder that this image of a hero still lingers in your mind, before classical and modern literature these epics telling of fierce warrior heroes used to be the main source of literature, and are the basis of how we see heroes today. However, I'm sure that if you think about the idea of a hero a little bit longer, your thoughts stray from the classic, brute-force, warrior that I mentioned earlier. Perhaps this new hero that you thought of is a little more complex than that. Maybe the hero now is not just a big strong man, maybe he's more human than that, a little too human perhaps, maybe he has flaws so grand that they eventually lead to his downfall, maybe he's not a he at all. That is because over time, literature has grown more complex than the simple epics where heroes are exactly alike and where morality is black and white, and from it has created more complex heroes to write about. So if these two characters are so different, how is it that they fill the same purpose of a hero? What exactly is a hero? A hero is a symbol of goodness and or human struggle that is meant to connect with every reader, the only reason why these types of characters are different is because they serve to connect with the values of the societies they come from.

Beowulf is the epitome of the typical epic hero. He is a man of superhuman ability that excels in strength, cunning, and military prowess, which is a common feature in epic heroes. He is also of noble birth and is a great leader who is respected by almost all men (with the exception of Unferth), and leads his men into perilous yet, eventually, victorious missions due to his incredible courage. As far as his personality goes, he does not express very complicated traits. In his epic, Beowulf is described as wise, fair, good, and a tad boastful here and there when it is needed. These characteristics however, are not observed in every hero in modern literature. The fact that these characteristics make up a hero are all to do with how people lived at the time Beowulf was written. Then, life was hard and treacherous. People did not live much past thirty, and neither in the security of a nation or country, but rather lived in uncertainty, under constantly warring tribes. People were ruled under one man, a king, who would establish a certain hierarchy amongst his people, and people truly believed that some people were born better than others. To create a heroic character who would bring comfort and pride to these people, he had to be a well-born man with an affinity to leading people and militaristic tasks. He also had to be extremely healthy and extremely strong, along with the ability to be fair and wise in his decisions yet courageous at the same time. All of these characteristics put together create an incredible, larger-than-life person, who would help people escape their grueling and unsure lives. These traits differ from the heroes we know today because now we don't need as much grandeur in a hero. In more certain, better connected, easier times, people need a different kind of hero to inspire them.

If you look in modern literature and culture--now that we possess televisions and the ability to watch stories, instead of just reading them--you will notice that a typical hero is much different than the ones from ancient epics. An example of a typical modern hero would be that of Jay Gatsby from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. In this 1925 novel, Gatsby is a lot more human than the ancient Beowulf. He has no extreme strength or military credit besides serving as a major in the first world war, neither is he exceptionally wise or a great leader. The only thing about him that puts him above the typical human is that he is known to be a clever businessman who is extremely wealthy because he owns a series of drug stores. In fact, he is even demoted from that status when it is discovered that he was born from two poor farmers in North Dakota and owes his success to smuggling alcohol for the Jewish Mafia. Despite all that though, Gatsby is a remarkably kind and genuine person who constantly aspires towards his dream of being with the girl he loves, even though that it eventually leads to his downfall. These characteristics may not be very useful to the values of the original readers of Beowulf, but they mean very much to people today. Gatsby's characteristics teach us many things about values and the modern life. In a world where boasting and measures inspired by greed are daily occurrences, a genuine person from humble beginnings who has miraculously risen to the peak of social and economic status is the measure of a true hero. Gatsby also represents a darker purpose to modern literature as well. Because of his eventual downfall that came with his everlasting hope, he teaches readers that the world is more vicious than it seems, and sometimes the best will fail in their pursuits. Modern society has become a lot more cynical in recent years, and the tragedy surrounding Gatsby appeals to us along with his previous victories. So if the modern world has no use for heroes such as Beowulf, why is it important that we read about them today?

While there may be some aspects of these epic heroes that disconnect with modern life, there are some similarities between them and heroes today. Between the grand, epic heroes such as Beowulf and the more human and flawed heroes of modern literature such as Jay Gatsby; there are common personality traits that separate them from everyone else. Both of these characters portray some sort of honesty along with fair judgement of character and the ability to achieve to great dreams and goals. Such traits are common in most heroes because they do not portray the needs of specific time periods, but the perpetual needs of humanity: hope for progression and connection with others. Despite how time changes the needs of society, kindness the ability to reach goals will always bring to light humanity's true desires and will always be requirements of true heroes.