Philistines

What just REALLY pissed me off: people who miss the point of art. In any form.

I just saw a segment on VH1 in which 15 people consecutively failed to realise WHY Alanis is naked in the "Thank U" video. What is WITH these people, are they RETARDED? Thank you is all about the change in her attitude between the albums... she was bitter and unhappy before, but after the huge success of the first album she felt sort of guilty and fake, and she didn't like that, so she decided to be even more honest in the second album, showing that she really wasn't as extreme as that, that she has a softer side, that sometimes things are her fault and not somebody else's. The nakedness is a symbol of her new honesty, I mean, surely that's obvious? She's certainly not trying to be sexy -- what with stringy hair, pale skin and thunderthighs -- so there's gotta be some other reason, right people? But nooooo, people see naked and they think she's trying to be a slut. It pisses me off.

And of course, this is just one symptom of a wider problem. People miss the POINT of songs so often! "Hook" (by Blues Traveller) is a sarcastic song about the way people don't listen to the lyrics of songs and just like, duh, the hook, and yet I've actually HEARD people saying they don't like anything except the hook in that song! Dammit, that's annoying! It just gets me angry to think how often the real messages in songs and art must be overlooked -- does this happen all the time, or are these just isolated examples? I would have chosen the latter before, but after those 15 idiots on VH1 I'm not so sure. VH1 has some kind of show like that, doesn't it? It puts groups of people to watch and comment on videos, and they always get them amazingly wrong? Housewives watching rap videos and preschoolers watching romantic videos and stuff like that.

It makes me think there's no POINT in creating anything original. Since the meaning seems to lie more in the observer than the artist, the only people who will understand are other artists. And then, who knows if its the real message? I often think I must be reading too much into a song -- finding more meaning than they probably put in there. Is that worse than missing the intended meaning? It makes creativity seem such a sham. Which pisses me off, because I love to create stuff, and now it seems there's no point.

Oh well, that's my bile for today.