Are books turning into reality shows?
On my last year in college I got a chance to do something I
hadn’t done for a while: to read modern, recent books. During the previous three I concentrated on reading old, classic books which
I easily found on the library.
My assigned reading was: Wide Sargasso Sea,
Fisher Child, Let the Great World Spin and Disgrace.
Something that all these books have in common
is the fact that they present explicit sexual content in their narratives. Of
course several classical books contain that (Madame Bovary comes to mind). The
difference is that these books contain explicit, frequent and more hard core
descriptions than we’re used to seeing in older books. Disgrace's first line is: “For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has to his mind, solved
the problem of sex rather well.”
My question is if this is something writers are
doing to catch readers’ attention. Just like movie directors know that “sex
sells”, writers could be assuming that readers can no longer stand three pages
without some action.
Is it a consequence from the fact that our society is
overly sexualized? Or an influence from Tv and movies that started representing
everything in a reality show style, where everything must be shown, where nothing
is taboo anymore?
All this is rather important because I’ve
always thought that despite the imminent degradation of Tv and movies, literature
would always be safeguarded. Apparently it’s not.
What do you think? Are the expectations of a
reader becoming more similar to the ones from a reality show audience? Did you
notice this trend in other books as well?
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Judgmental observer
The Conversion of the Way to Damascus - Caravaggio
A little bit of history
Date: 1601
Located in the church of Saint Maria del Poppolo, Rome, Italy
As the name says, the painting portrays the Biblical
scene of Saint Paul’s conversion. Before his conversion, it was his job to
persecute people who believed in Christ and he was on his way to the city of
Damascus to do precisely that.
“As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven
flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to
him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, Lord?” Saul
asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied." (Acts 9:3-5)
In the picture we see the shocked Paul fallen on the ground, his eyes closed
due to the light coming from Heaven.
A little bit of technique
A lot of people see flaws in this picture, such as the horse being
scrunched in the composition and such, but I have to disagree. The picture only has three “characters”: Saint Paul, the horse and the
groom. Saint Paul looks extremely amazed and in awe due to the fact that Christ
has just talked to him. He is on the floor, temporarily
blind, his arms incredibly expressive. The horse is very important too. Now, the Bible doesn’t say anything
about Saint Paul falling from his horse, but it was incredibly smart to put the
horse in the middle looking at his master kind of confused, wondering what just
happened. So Saul who was determined and conceited on the top of his horse is
now on the floor, blind. The focus, then, is on the fact that Saint Paul in the floor, the focus
is on the human aspect not on the supernatural aspect.
A little bit of enthusiasm
I love this painting because the conversion of Saint Paul is one of my
favorite episodes of the Bible. Visualizing Saint Paul falling from his horse
with his arms pointing to the sky only increases the dramatic aspect. However,
Caravaggio has another painting with the same theme:
The Conversion of Saint Paul - Caravaggio
I prefer the first one, because there's too much going on here. You almost don’t notice the horse or the light. And I prefer
Saint Paul motionless and static.
Maybe I’m off topic here, but I just remembered this looking at the
angel in the picture. There was this tv show called Touched by an angel and in one of the episodes, an angel says that God has this incredible gift of turning something
initially bad or sad into something good and beautiful. Isn’t this the case
with Saint Paul? He was the person who persecuted believers the most. God could
have punished him or could have advised the others apostles not to trust him, but He chose to talk to him and to turn him into an
apostle.
Of course, none of this has strictly to do with the painting. But the
way the scene is painted always reminds me of humility, of getting off our high
places on top of our horses and being amazed by the light of God. You can’t
see it, but I’m applauding right now.
Which painting do you
prefer? What other works from Caravagio do you like?
Hi, my name is Paula Peters and I’m into culture. To me, it’s not really enough going to museums or watching movies. Half the fun is talking about it. So, that’s what I’ll be doing here. I’ll post three times a week, so you can expect art posts on Mondays (a Caravaggio post is coming right after this one!), book posts on Wednesdays and movie posts on Fridays.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy it! You can reach me through the comments section or thecultureenthusiast@gmail.com
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