I don't understand why you insist on forswearing the familial side of "grown-upitude" in so vehement and public a way. Of course, there's nothing wrong with not having a wife and kids, and if you wish to renounce them, that's your choice. But to announce that you are doing so on the back of "cultural responsibilities" seems a bit presumptuous and insulting.
There's also a major paradox at play here: you are frequently ebullient and effusive in your appreciation of art, and perhaps crave to find fellows "for whom any given work of Andrei Tarkovsky trumps even the most deluxe package of holy matrimony and reproduction". But what, about your favourite works of art, do you find moving? I'd hazard a guess that you aren't merely on some death-and-erasure trip, that your favourite works also push some of the buttons that reflect your metaphysical entanglement with love, yearning, fear, community etc., in short, the things that relate to your being a human being LIVING in the world, and the things (along with death) that give art its power.
And yet, you seem to imply that your ideal peer group would comprise people who renounce the same things that you do on the back of a "cultural responsibility". But to what culture, can I ask, would you all duty-bound? Would it be the a culture bound up with the world, or merely one bound up with art? Would you recommend that all serious artists be as martyrs - make these sacrifices so that others could enjoy their efforts? It seems that if all artists thought the same as you do then the only ones fully equipped to enjoy art would be those who had made similar sacrifices. And unless you're thinking in terms of posterity, even this would surely be untenable after a while, because all these serious artists and art appreciators would eventually die out.
I really think it's unhealthy to decide, as a twenty-something, that "cultural responsibility" betokens the renunciation of all the things you mentioned, as it is to wonder where you might find a group of Tarkovsky acolytes who would place even his most minor work above their wife and kids (whom, according to you, they probably shouldn't have anyway). It's not either/or; just look at James Joyce. Not everything is black and white, not all thirty-something dads are semi-bearded Spiderman fans, not all abnegators are artists.
That seems all in order. I don’t know if I find anything particularly “moving” in art, Tarkovskian or otherwise, but certain creators definitely impress the hell out of me on the regular. I shy away from making anything resembling a recommendation to “all serious artists,” or even a recommendation to “artists,” or even a recommendation to “people other than me.” (None of this applies to non-Colin Marshalls — er, non-this-Colin Marshalls.)
Colin’s observation that “it’s not either/or” checks out, though that he makes it tells me that I failed to get across in the original post that I meant to talk about two ends of a spectrum. On the one end, you’ve got the beardo dads (i.e., who take familial responsibilities seriously) who limit the bulk of their cultural experience to those directly descended from Marvel comics (i.e., who cast off cultural responsibilities). But why, in my generation, have I seen so little of the other end?
I'm not sure that being married-with-kids has much to do with it. The beardo dads have shown that it's not a lack of time if they're able to delve deeply into super-hero related culture.
If you're asking why a greater number of people are interested in easily accessible art based on characters that they grew up with rather than impenetrable, glacially paced Russian art-films from fifty years ago (don't get me wrong, I'm a Tarkovsky fan), well it's a shame but it seems pretty unavoidable.
Posted by: Quinn | May 07, 2011 at 06:28 PM