So it's another Sunday night...so obviously I'm just sitting and doing what I do best-rambling on the internet.
Now that midterms are over I finally am getting the chance to talk about something that has been floating around in my head for at least the last week.
In Art History, the basic formula for our class is that we look closely at works of art. We look at what we can infer about the artist, the people in the picture, and naturally the society in which they were created. When we (Wellesley students that is) walk around campus, we see banners everywhere saying that we are the "Women Who Will". Everyone on campus has hoped that they will make a difference and change the world for better or die trying.
But we already have made a difference in the world. It's just that no one has talked about it yet.
Our legacy manifests itself in everything that we do, be it the clothes that we wear, music we listen to, books we read-basically anything and everything.
To quote from a movie about our fair college "What will future scholars see when they study us?"
It's a weird thing to think that one day Facebook might be used to study Anthropology; they will try to understand why it became so popular and attribute it to the something pretentious like "the allure of the shared experience". They will see pictures of Lady Gaga and think that perhaps she is the image of female empowerment for our decade(new wave of feminism: SCREW PANTS!!!). Memes will be deemed a significant art movement. Tweets, Youtube videos and blogs will be regarded with reverence that we reserve for precious historical documents. Hipsters will be the new hippies.
Weird, right?
To be completely honest, I don't really have a driving point that I wanted to stress. The fact that our society as a whole is not erudite and selfless does not make it illegitimate as a cultural study. And it's not like there haven't been awesome things happening in our country; great works of art have been made even though there's a lot of trash out there. Times are changing which is exciting and frightening and mind-blowing compared to other decades. Future history books might write something like this about our time:
"An era that glorified promiscuity, self indulgence and robotic vocals in electronic music"
That is our legacy so far. But then again, history is still being written so we'll see what happens.
Now that midterms are over I finally am getting the chance to talk about something that has been floating around in my head for at least the last week.
In Art History, the basic formula for our class is that we look closely at works of art. We look at what we can infer about the artist, the people in the picture, and naturally the society in which they were created. When we (Wellesley students that is) walk around campus, we see banners everywhere saying that we are the "Women Who Will". Everyone on campus has hoped that they will make a difference and change the world for better or die trying.
But we already have made a difference in the world. It's just that no one has talked about it yet.
Our legacy manifests itself in everything that we do, be it the clothes that we wear, music we listen to, books we read-basically anything and everything.
To quote from a movie about our fair college "What will future scholars see when they study us?"
It's a weird thing to think that one day Facebook might be used to study Anthropology; they will try to understand why it became so popular and attribute it to the something pretentious like "the allure of the shared experience". They will see pictures of Lady Gaga and think that perhaps she is the image of female empowerment for our decade(new wave of feminism: SCREW PANTS!!!). Memes will be deemed a significant art movement. Tweets, Youtube videos and blogs will be regarded with reverence that we reserve for precious historical documents. Hipsters will be the new hippies.
Future caption in textbooks: Example of an early 2000's Youth
Future caption: Group Portrait of 21st century musicians
Weird, right?
To be completely honest, I don't really have a driving point that I wanted to stress. The fact that our society as a whole is not erudite and selfless does not make it illegitimate as a cultural study. And it's not like there haven't been awesome things happening in our country; great works of art have been made even though there's a lot of trash out there. Times are changing which is exciting and frightening and mind-blowing compared to other decades. Future history books might write something like this about our time:
"An era that glorified promiscuity, self indulgence and robotic vocals in electronic music"
That is our legacy so far. But then again, history is still being written so we'll see what happens.
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