Cultural Events From the Past

Cultural Events From the Past

Postimpressionism reflects the art-for-art's sake spirit, while H.G. Wells debated that novels should be a sort of lecture, have morals, that they should affect the people who read them. What do you think on this? Which side do you take? Literature can serve numerous purposes; it can inform, entertain, comment on society, allow speculation, or a combination of things. By it is very nature, Wells' is right in some ways -- there is usually a moral point to a plot -- whether that plot be looking within ourselves or at our society, or imagining how things could be and attempting to remake the world, one step at a time. Since Wells' point was to comment on the condition of humans, his works tended to ask those big questions. It is hard to imagine, though, a poem, story, or work of art that simply "is" without allowing it to evoke something more within us -- our own brand of interpretation -- which makes the art real for us.

How did the new psychology influenced the birth of key movements in the arts: expressionism, dada, and surrealism? The so-called new psychology was really a product of the trends in enlightenment and focus on human actualization of the Age of Enlightenment forward. Freud, Jung and others began to legitimately peel away the layers of the conscious and unconscious allowing different forms of artistic expression to flow -- this happened in art, music, and literature in slightly different ways. Expressionism was an outgrowth of impressionism, which had its roots in the romantic movement, or the allowing of emotions and passions to rule what was being expressed. Dada and expressionism were somewhat reflections of the anti-rational mind -- a way to turn the classical world on its head and explore more of the unconscious mind.

Why did the airing of HG Well's novel "War of the Worlds" on the radio cause so much panic? What would it take to cause that type of panic from a Hoax like "War of the Worlds" in this day and age? First and foremost, the 1.2 million U.S. radio listeners who panicked on Halloween night, 1938, were part of a new technology that had not yet developed to the point in which the majority could critically analyze what came over the airwaves. To those early listeners, espcecially those who tuned in after the caveat about entertainment, the realism and stage-play of Orson Welles' broadcast sounded so real, and so plausible, that they could not help but believe it -- after all, it sounded like a news broadcast (Radio: Anatomy of a Panic, 1940). People have become far more cynical, and with the advent of the fantastic special effects that are now regular parts of modern media, it is difficult to say what would or would not be believed. Certainly, rather than one radio broadcast, the perpetrators would need to have global media pick up an event, or at least start a hoax small enough that it would spiral into the modern conscious as "real." This could be accomplished, say, with an ancient artifact proving the existence of an alien race; show footage of its discovery, validation by academics; then get comments from major governments and the Vatican and viola' - instant hoax.