We shall by morning/Inherit the earth/Our foot’s in the door.

You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide February 22, 2007

Posted by amanda in : Uncategorized , trackback

I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between talent and personality. By “personality” I am referring to it in the most pejorative sense of the term. Harkening back to a question posed by professor Emerson in an earlier post (specifically the Dixie Chicks post): When do artists cease to be artists and begin being “personalities”?
I cannot help but gender my response. I think that artists turn into (or are turned into) personalities when they threaten the status quo. We are happy to indulge an artist, whether they be poet, author, singer or celebrity as long as they are merely entertaining us, but as soon as they say, paint or write something controversial we begin to scrutinize. We are particularly unforgiving when the artists in question are women. In the last century when we’ve had this explosion of mass media it seems we’ve used it to bully people into submission. We put these women on pedistals, examine their lives, point to their flaws and say “see? you don’t want to end up like them” and of course we don’t! I love the Dixie Chicks, but I would never want to have death threats or scandal, and similarly I love Sylvia Plath, but i would never want my personal life or tragedy capitalizied on or exploited. But at the same time as much as i don’t wish to emmulate their lives, it doesn’t mean i’m not listening to their messages or ignoring their contributions. I guess what it comes down to is that it doesn’t really matter….it is irritating and shameful that these extreme liberties are taken at the expense of these strong women’s privacy and dignity, but the smart people know what to listen to and in the end the legacy is in the art, if only because the art lasts longer!
This might be a simple sentiment and an overly-reductive answer to a complicated question, and i’m quite possibly idealistic, but that’s what I think!