Era of mindless art

So I woke up a fine Saturday and logged in to Facebook and Twitter. And the trending news obviously caught my eye. It was the news of Chetan Bhagat’s new novel “Half Girlfriend” which is due to be released this October. The book is made available for pre-order and websites started to crash. That is the level of craziness people have for him in India. Not just that, we live in a era where, Sunny Leonne gets the most views in Youtube, Yo Yo Honey Singh (as he is called) is considered as a Rap guru, Salman Khan and his copied movies get over 200 cr within a week and where Chetan Bhagat becomes best-selling author. As my friend pointed out rightfully so, the Mayans predicted the end of the world two years early.

 

 

There was a time, when pioneers in music, film, and writing industry set precedent by delivering master-pieces one after the other, and set examples to inspire and innovate a larger crowd for something moral, and good. But now we have a circus of synchronized nut crackers who do not at any point are obliged to think and act. The only thing required is to sell. And they do not have a problem in doing so either, thanks to the target audience.

I am not stating that they should not do their business and neither am I anyone to point out their duties and responsibilities. I am just sharing an observation that the journey from the beginning of the entertainment industry up to this point today, we have experienced not evolution, but a massive stagnation and even set back in progress in respective areas. Where once we had great literature works, like War and Peace, Pride and Prejudice to Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, we have today literature works (if they are anything like it) like, Revolution 2020, One Night at the Call Center and Can Love Happen Twice.

The worst part is, despite having no class; such pieces have become a populist’s tool. People want to read them, watch them, and listen to them. The intellectual crowd is shrinking at an alarming rate and the clown car seems to be increasing every minute. What we watch on screen, read or listen to has a great impact on us as individuals, and this scenario here is in no way helping us create a better society; in fact it is obliterating it.

Pablo Picasso once said, “The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls”.
Aristotle said, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things but their inward significance”.

I don’t know what the current art is washing off our lives or what significance are they representing. I am confused and confounded.