Here's an idea.
Actually, here's two shorter ideas.
We're taking this week off to relax and read comic books
and check Twitter on the beach while it's still
even remotely nice outside.
But we didn't want to leave you with nothing to talk about.
So here are two short ideas for you
to think on and discuss until we're back
next week with a full video and responses to the ALS Ice Bucket
Challenge comments.
OK, so idea number one, an oldie but a goodie.
In order for something to be a work of art,
it has to be practically useless,
which is to say, really, that the art
like aesthetic experience of an object
is mutually exclusive to any purpose it might serve.
Edward Bullough says that aesthetic experience occurs
with what he calls distance.
That distance might be represented
by the number of feet you have to stand away from something
at a gallery or a museum.
But really, there's a lot more to it.
Bullough talks about how works of art
can become, quote, "out of gear with our practical, actual
selves."
He calls this psychical distance.
And it doesn't mean that the aesthetically experienced
object becomes impersonal somehow.
On the contrary, it can become exceptionally personal.
But they do become removed from a relationship that
is defined by usefulness.
Now I don't know that I'm fully onboard with this idea.
And lots of very smart people are not.
But it always makes me think of kitchen tools.
You set it and you forget it.
Like my citrus squeezer.
Sometimes when I look at it, its objectness just
sort of retreats into itself.
And it becomes this insane, crazy shape and not the kitchen
tool that I use when I'm making cocktails.
For a moment, it becomes another object entirely
even though it is physically exactly the same object.
It stops being a tool and becomes an aesthetic thing.
Maybe this is the distance that Bullough is talking about.
What do you guys think?
In order to have an aesthetic experience,
does there need to be some kind of distance?
And while you're thinking about distance,
here's idea number two.
The Daily Show is a better news program than the actual evening
news.
I say this because the Daily Show constantly does something
that no other news broadcast does, at least not explicitly
or nearly as purposefully or frequently.
The Daily Show questions its own authority.
The Daily Show delivers news as entertainment
in a frame that openly mocks the hyper constructed messages
of other news networks while marking its own purposefully lo
fi hyper constructed messages.
The Daily Show is a reminder, one
that is, I think, more and more important every day,
that the evening news is not a service but a product.
You could argue that the acknowledgment and celebration
of the format's inherent shortcomings
does allow the Daily Show to double down
on the delivery of the entertainment news
from a belief driven standpoint effectively becoming
an even more egregious abuse of authority
than the things they lampoon.
But I still think, regardless of their political leanings,
that the critique communicated about the news
itself is a powerful and important one.
What do you guys think?
Does the Daily Show deliver an important and clear lesson
about how news is produced?
Let us know what you think about these ideas in the comments.
We'll be back next week, fresh faced and hopefully
not sunburned, with a full episode and responses
to last week's comments.
In the meantime, I've also put links to some fun things
to read and watch in the doobly doo.
And of course, you can say hi on Twitter, Facebook,
the subreddit, and IRC.
We miss you dearly, of course.
Hope you're having a good beginning of September.
And we'll see you soon.
OK, hold on.
Oh, hi.
You still here?
Well, while I have you for a second, I have a question.
I was thinking recently about maybe
doing, like, not a meet up but maybe, like, office hours,
where I just hang out in a place and just sit there.
Would you come and hang out with me, maybe
talk about movies and comic books?
It'll be in New York, because that's where I live.
So that's restrictive in some sense.
But it would otherwise be open.
What do you think?
Let me know.