An exercise in hypocrisy.

How do I go about writing this post? Hmmmm. Well, I can start off by saying this assignment is ridiculous and stupid. This exhibit had nothing to do with Blade Runner, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Metropolis, or The Machine Stops. But Surge, Metropolis was a giant city, and Do androids dream of electric sheep touches upon the theme of overpopulation in relation to limited resources. Yes yes, that is true, but they are just themes that are touched upon; they are not fully expanded ideas. If we had been assigned to watch Wall-E then, yea, I would say this exhibit is related to our assignments.

Overall this exhibit emphasizes the issues of over population, limited resources, class struggles, and solutions to all those problems. Typically, Sci-fi stories are meant to be used as cautionary tales, urging society to change to prevent a bleak outcome. So why is it that for a sci-fi class we would be required to go to a exhibit that explores city expansion as a solution to the serious problem of over crowding, seriously, why?

The only positive thing I can say about this exhibit is that it truly is a work of modern art that belongs in MOMA: it is pretentious, full of facts, and absent of anything the average person would consider art. It definitely took the concept of found art and raised it to a whole… nother…. level (if you understood the reference, thank you, lol).

The greatest strength of this exhibit is also it’s greatest weakness, for you see, again, it is truly a work of modern art. Not only does it present information as art, it present IMPORTANT INFORMATION as art that you must PAY to see. It’s not like the information presented here was the kind of information that everyone should have access to. After all, only those pretentious enough to constantly keep up with the MOMA’s exhibitions should be aware of our ever changing environment, and how the SERIOUS issue of overcrowding is going to effect us both now and in the future.

I guess, now that I’m thinking about it, there is a correlation between the texts we have analyzed and this stupid MOMA exhibit. Both simply present the idea of overcrowding, but fail to truly elaborate as to why it is an issue or propose any sort of legitimate solution to the problem.

This better have been the first and last time we ever have to take the time to do something this stupid. I mean seriously, I could have used the combined time I spent there and writing this, to jump in front of a truck or something. That would have been a much better use of my time.

That’s enough ranting for now; I have made my aversion to this assignment and modern art very clear at this point. All in all this was just a waste of time. The echibit only connects to or readings very loosely. Perhaps, a better assignment would have been to go down to that human body museum, at least there we could argue whether or not the subjects were real or not. After all they were once living, but are they still real considering how many chemicals were used to preserve the bodies. Hell, for all we know it’s a scam, and those bodies are just sculptures. See how it would have been a much better assignment than this?

6 thoughts on “An exercise in hypocrisy.

  1. Wow, this is the most honest post I have ever read. Dude, I said the SAME thing to my self while I was there. Like what the? Don’t get me wrong the exhibit itself was GREAT and full of important information that we ALL need to be aware of but, kind of has nothing to do with androids or bounty hunters.

  2. “It definitely took the concept of found art and raised it to a whole… nother…. level (if you understood the reference, thank you, lol).”

    LOL I got your MAD TV reference there, nice touch.

    I did think it was strange as it didn’t really have much to do with androids, machines taking over, etc. I stopped by that crazy music exhibit which I was mesmerized at but with this one, I like you enjoyed it but failed to see much of a connection. I guess the closets thing I cam up with in my blog was the issue over population and how we could live in world like that in The Machine Stops, where we’re at a point where since everyone’s running out of space, we live in small congested spaces that might resemble the “cell.” Best thing I could come up with though.

  3. Surge, you have some good points here (about the inaccessibility of some modern art – both in terms of concept/abstraction and admission fees), & I appreciate your honesty. That being said, just a friendly reminder that, while these posts are relatively informal responses, you should still tailor your tone and diction (language/word choice) to the context (a class, graded assignment) & audience (professor, classmates, public more generally). Also, I would hope that you would give your professor a little more credit in terms of choosing (with great care/deliberation) a “text” for us to explore together, and not dismiss it as “ridiculous and stupid.”

    Part of becoming a critical thinker is to be able to–even when you don’t agree (emotionally or logically) with something–to be able to still treat it on its own terms, and to try to work with it. Also, while there are indeed some superficial connections (urban landscapes), there are actually deeper, important, and thought-provoking connections to the texts we’ve read this semester (and will look at going forward), Science Fiction as a genre more broadly, and our work together in this course. Let’s discuss in class, and continue the conversation online next week.

    • I kept all of that in mind, there was no disrespect intended here. I have paid attention to your intentions in choosing the works we analyze. Which is why I’m surprised we haven’t talked about Metropolis, Do androids dream of electric sheep, and the machine stops, as a whole in class; there are just so many common themes. That said, as someone who stays aware of global changes, I must be honest about the exhibit itself, not the class. And I found it ridiculous, laughable, and yes, stupid that this information is something that is displayed in a museum for profit. But of course I just because I hate it, that doesn’t mean I will not analyze it. After all I had to analyze the exhibit as a whole to make the argument that I did. I noticed that it was an exhibit in a museum that you have to pay to get into; furthermore, only those with a college id can get in. That says a lot about to what kind of people this exhibit caters to. It’s basically saying that anyone who is not well educated is not allowed to access this information., and I have a major problem with that.

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