Heightened Senses

Warning- Explicit and Vulgar – Art detached from Beauty.

I’m glad that the Huffington Post says that people are somewhat disturbed about this…

But if there’s any example from this year to suggest that the feminist project has gone rather wrong – might it not be this? In what universe of the preposterous does this in any way advance the cause of treating women with dignity? How will this in any way truly return the social and spiritual position of our sisters to where it ought to rest?…affording them their right as those sacred beings created by a loving God, those hosts and nourishers of the seeds and saplings of the miraculous human project and endeavour, those beings upon whose arrival into the world is described in the prophetic literature as a “Mercy” from God upon their fathers…

Perhaps I’m more disturbed by the fact that people find this ‘funny,’  – maybe I’m just a prude or someone lacking in sophisticated taste. It’s interesting that the ‘artist’ seeks to show what the woman’s body is ‘capable’ of,  a self-proclaimed feminist whom I suspect seeks the liberation of the female from the objectification of the world and socioeconomic structures around her,  she goes ahead and commodifies it.

My friends of a conservative, religious or more pious temperament than I, I apologise if I’ve subjected you to this. But it was almost too disturbing not to share. Because of the dating system I can’t tell whether this piece was published last week or in April…

Maybe the point of this is not to demonstrate any sense of beauty – her art is a tool (or perhaps in this case, an end) for/of social activism and agenda politics or campaigning) – and I’ll admit I’m not familiar at all with the philosophical debates about aesthetics or what the literature in the study of the fine arts has to say about this, but for God’s sake, can’t art be just a little beautiful?

My soul is crushed, hurt, wrenched – the centuries of struggle faced by our sisters ought, I pray, not have peaked at this postmodern (?) expression of tragic irreverence and self-contempt. What hurts more is that I’m reading on my social media feed that people find this ‘funny’. But they’re not to blame. What categories of distinction do we have in our linguistic and moral currency to actually tell us what ‘this’ piece actually ‘is?’

Please don’t ask me to dismount from this supposed high horse, because I promise you that this comes from a place of concern from just another ordinary and person just like you.

A friend of mine suggested postmodernity, this socio-intellectual age in which we find ourselves, is basically a symptom of the decadent pathology of late-stage capitalism…

I’m not an apocalyptist (if that’s a word)…but sometimes I lament that Marx was way off….

…Maybe what’s needed is not a Revolution, but a Flood.

——————————————-

Ignore the title, if you prefer, above the  following video, but Mr Winter gives a much better account of what beauty might actually look like.