People need to listen to real music - Page 9

Right, and I kept telling you how you're wrong, and you kept arguing nebulously and circuituously, oftentimes by revising what it is you said and/or bringing up shit completely and entirely unrelated to the conversation, until you presented what is the same ho-hum, simple argument that you presented on page like four. So, because you've proven yourself at the very least incapable of close reading, one last thing and I will avoid this topic permanently:

"Some art IS objectively better as a work of art" presumes that "art" can be given a definite standard objective shape to which all other things may be compared. You are then making the tacit assumption that, say, a piece of baroque or romantic or classical composition from centuries ago may be compared to a pop song written a year ago usinfg the same rubric. You are comparing two pieces of music vastly different in their composition, in their uses (in their given times), in their audience, and in the materials available to these people. This method of criticism in practice is akin to the following:

Dear 50 Cent,
You suck because Scriabin wrote in the octotonic scales and because Mozart wrote Italian opera.
Sincerely,
phosphorylation

or, alternately,

Dear Alexander Scriabin,
You suck because 50 Cent spits hot fire.
Sincerely,
phosphorylation

You're comparing apples with dodos.

When I said you argued nebulously, it's because you've left undefined what it is that makes "true" "artistic" form. By your criteria, I must say something meaningful and/or I can say something deceptive because it's ironic. Or I must produce something original and/or I can do something intentionally unoriginal in order to be ironic or engage in postmodern pastiche. Or I must produce something cohesive and/or I can be purposefully and intentionally self-interrupting and schizophrenic. Great theory. Really clears things up.

In such a situation, there is no standard against which I may determine artistic value. All there is, instead, is the incredibly vague idea of what "art" is, looks like, and sounds like, coming from people who think there's no scholarly debate on Shakespeare, that there aren't accomplished musicians and composers who think Beethoven is uninspired tripe (like, I dunno, Karlheinz Stockhausen), who think there's no scholarly artistic discourse on pop music, and who should probably brush up on art theory and art itself - all art - from the last fifty to one-hundred years, if only to familiarize themselves with how the very form has changed, and how any concept of an objective standard has eroded and died.