TRAC2014: "Faking it" - Keynote Speaker Roger Scruton 

June 2021. Watched again

Thank you!

Tx!

The very same thing happened to operatic theatres.

@Sebastian...Good point. I agree...This is reminding me of a documentary on art I saw several years back. I think it was on PBS. This guy went around, and interviewed some of those inane artists (one of them might have been Damian Hirsch), asked them questions about their art, and just let them talk. Oh, gadz, what they said was so full of bs., I was cracking up. I was very pleased that the interviewer was showing the bs for what it was. The only time I have seen something like that. Unfortunately, it didn't change the promotion of all that bs.

There is pop music and hip hop too which is another version of pop . But there is good modern rock that is in a whole different creative world from pop and hip hop . Listen to the Steepwater Band or the Rival Sons or the Alabama Shakes , just to name a few , and there are many many more great bands of today . I'll name just two more out of the many if you will just look around , well three more Kevin Morby , Ray Lamontagne and the great venerable rock band the Black Crowes - wow , seriously...

I was shaken with instantaneous regret after watching it.

@@ethanwessel3911 Why?

@@michaelweber5702 Thanks...I am not a biggie on music, except maybe classical these days. Although, I like all styles if it is good. I will check those out.

@@michaelweber5702 Rock and good are words that really don't have much in common.

it seems you discarded the craft of thinking, without a doubt.

Actually, I approached art without focusing on the technical. I like all kinds of art. If I like it, I like it.

Dangerous? Drama queen.

mcoffely He is often portrayed that way...whether you personally think he is or not is besides the point

Zizek a celebrity philosopher. Haha from his wikipedia "In 2012, Foreign Policy listed Žižek on its list of Top 100 Global Thinkers, calling him "a celebrity philosopher,"[12] while elsewhere he has been dubbed the "Elvis of cultural theory"[13] and "the most dangerous philosopher in the West",[

Reducing art to the level of a mere "information system" is banal and insipid.

Certainly no more than calling it "authentic" or "fake" which amount to nothing more than terms for "stuff I like" and "stuff I don't like."

Travis Clark No, you have completely missed the point here.

Your evidence being? Scruton is defending a narrow western point of view that only applied to a narrow field of art from about the 18th C. on. It's useless and says nothing about how people actually create their own visual culture.

Travis Clark It's only useless to you because you clearly haven't the faintest understanding of what Scruton is actually talking about.

Maybe she is more intelligent too...Intelligence and knowledge are two different things

Simple isn't an insult

+BigHat FBW I would recommend listening to him again. He is not a comedian, that is true, but ask yourself what he 'should' have been here, and then ask why you think he should have been that. He's quite funny---that's why his audience laughs from time to time---but there is humor in him that is simultaneously very English (thus understated) and very pointed. He has a serious point to make in this presentation, and everything in his talk is directed to its end. He jabs at pretentiousness here, which is ubiquitous in western culture thanks to commercialism and self-centered individualism (we even demand of our relationships and thus of the most important people in our lives that they make us 'happy' without ever wondering just what 'happy' really is or what is our responsibility to them to make them happy) When listening to him, I am sometimes reminded of a character of Ashkenazy music, the sweet-sad quality that comes from a history of being persecuted. Roger I would think has had some sadness in his life, caused by people, who are very important to him. What did Shakespeare's Romeo say, _He jests at scars that never felt a wound_?

He’s very witty

This one didn't show up well on this screen; there are two colours there, not one... *Big laugh* I was pissing myself

You don't understand what Scruton means by "fake".

Of course I do. He means that it lacks a quality that he terms as "authenticity" but is a fungible term that can't be narrowed down to more than cold naturalism. He objects to the sentimentality of Murillo. But why? Why is sentimentality any more "fake" than the Bellini? I understand his terms, I just challenge his premise. It's Scruton that is creating arbitrary terms. Let's look at the paintings in their contexts and try to understand the change, rather than throwing around disparaging terms.

Yes I do "get" it. By that definition, most of the artistic production of people outside a narrow subset of Western Civilization is "fake." If sentiment and obviousness is a disqualifying characteristic for art, then nearly all of the art of India, and much of the Middle Ages is likewise, "Kitsch" and so is much of Dutch Genre and all of American Folk Art, primitive arts of Oceania and Australia, it goes on and on and on. It's a meaningless and arbitrary distinction for art. What is wrong with getting an emotional response from people? Why is this "cheap and vulgar?" Emotion is the principle way we communicate. This is just snobbery.

I know that Scruton hasn't said it, but his definitions here lead to that inevitable conclusion. It's Eurocentric and just irrational on its own grounds. Again, I admired Scruton a lot until this performance. I thought his defense of traditional aesthetics to be based on reason and not this simple bias. I can't accept a defense made on these grounds. Not only are they spurious and arbitrary, they do too much damage to too much that I admire.

Travis Clark You've been brainwashed by the cult of political correctness and the fatuous notion that everything is "socially constructed".

"Marx argued against alienation, and for the right of humans to a creative existence" And then his followers put humanity through a meat grinder.

Creative existence arises from the bedrock of comprehension of tradition and the necessary skill mastery in order to develop new techniques. Otherwise it is empty pretence and vacuous posing - which sums up the dominant popular wannabe culture.

I don't remember him using the phrase 'great art'.