Art and its many forms

Blog #2-Mark Lampert

           

Art is a very interesting part of society. Not only is it a form of expression, but also an important public forum, allowing us to convey something that simply talking about wouldn’t do justice for. Art has many uses, including entertainment, expression, pleasure, and many more. However, in my opinion, art is most useful when applied as a social critique. Art allows the unique opportunity to express how someone is feeling about the world and shape it into something that is meaningful to him or her. Later generations can then use art as a record of history, to explain the time period that the artist lived in and how they felt about it.

This is important because of the current problems facing our country today, like the economy, social inequality, racial tension, and the war in Iraq, to name a few. Artists are needed to express how things really are, to give their opinions on the state of the world, and to influence change. Popular artists in the music world have large fan bases, and can get their message out to large numbers of people through the Internet. With their popularity, they can create real change, and are often loved by the people, something the government today currently lacks.

            This leads into what I want to talk about today, a 2011 song by the artist Lupe Fiasco, called “Words I Never Said.”  A popular song reaching the top 50 in iTunes, it is an entertaining hip-hop style song with clear messages about economic inequality and government conspiracy. Specifically, the words  “Keep you at the bottom but tease you with the upper crust, you get it then they move it so you never keeping up enough” references the fact that many American families are struggling to even keep up with the middle class income, and when they make it there, the boundary is pushed up again. Another line “our child’s future was the first to go with budget cuts,” references the fact that education funding was severely cut by the government, sacrificing children’s education. These social critiques are in a song, which is a form of art, but just as important for society to hear than a politician giving a speech, and a much more entertaining forum. 

            This song represents the discontentment of American citizens with how things are being run, and influenced the occupy movement, which started last year in New York City, protesting against economic inequality. This song was not the sole reason for the movement, and I am not claiming that, but it was one of many reasons that change occurred and ensuring the status quo did not continue. That is why art as social critique is so important, so that we can realize what we as a society are unhappy with and try to fix it. If we never realize those problems, we can’t ever fix them. Art is everywhere, not only in museums like some people would believe. It can be dangerous, however, when the wrong message is sent out, like in some forms of music. That is why it is so important to make sure you realize what something is truly saying before you listen to it, and realize it may solely be a form of entertainment. Art can lead to change, but we want to ensure that it is a positive form of change first. It does beg the question: Where is the line between art as a critique and art as entertainment?