Tuesday, November 13, 2007

A term that serves to degrades the user

I heard a self professed “freethinker” say the Flying Monkey Arts Center “looks wayyyyy too artsy fartsy for my tastes”. Too many times I’ve heard the expression “artsy fartys” used to denigrate creativity. It is a term used by the ignorant who think creative people are outside their capability for understanding. They relish their self inflicted ignorance of creativity wearing it like a badge of honor. I’m particularly disturbed by a person who calls themselves open minded using this term. This person is really a self claimed atheist who likes to claim she thinks outside of the restriction of dogma, but is in fact encased in her own restrictive inhibitions to examination of the world. She slaps a label on a concept that she thinks is cute but is really belittling.

I’ve heard others use the term in question. Why do they fear opening their minds to someone else’s creative expression? If they don’t like it, fine, they should say so, but don’t degrade it with shitty “cutesieism” rational. Don’t turn it into an “us verses them” issue. The artist is trying to open lines of communication. Take advantage of that opportunity and explore.

They only good thing about that term is it goes a long way towards identifying fakes and I guess I should be grateful for that.