Kit n” Caboodle:What does it all mean?
About a year ago while watch?ing television, I saw a program where a group of psychology students visited a zoo and had an elephant paint a composi?tion for them using acrylics.
Naturally, the elephant sim?ply smeared paint all over the canvas in an array of colors with no form or purpose to his actions; he simply followed the command of his trainer.
When it was all done and dry, they took it to a posh gala event where works of art by various modern artists were featured and hung it on the wall not telling anyone that it had been painted by a pachyderm.
For the entire evening, critics sipped wine and viewed the art commenting that the painting by the anonymous artist was a very powerful piece.
Some said the artist was obviously making an emotional statement about the human condition, another said the art?ist obviously is a very techni?cally conscientious painter and all agreed it was a very good piece.
At the end of the evening, the hosts of the event stepped forward and revealed the anonymous artist was in fact an elephant, after that, there was not one face in the crowd that wasn”t red from embar?rassment.
Could the elephant truly be a marvel of the animal kingdom and possess a natural gift and talent for painting?
Or were the critics think?ing of their own reputations by shamming their way around a piece and creator they obvious?ly knew nothing about? Hmm, let”s try another one. Once in one of my writing classes, the instructor gave us an assign?ment to write five haikus on any subject matter or theme we desired we then had to share with the rest of the class by writing them up on the white board anonymously.
Being my usual absurd self, I posted some very simple yet silly ones and sat back to watch others try to decipher them.
When we came to the critical thinking portion of the assign?ment, I actually could not stop myself from snickering.
One of mine read as follows: “Slowly the fish swims, round and round inside his bowl, black cat licks his chops.” The class made a big show of inter?preting this piece as a metaphor to the inevitable hardships of life. The fish being us, the bowl being our secluded lives, the cat representing the world and the color of the cat symbolizing bad-luck or struggles ahead of us.
No, actually the poem was just about a cat watching a fish in a bowl. As human beings, we have a habit of seeking mean?ing and purpose in almost everything we are confronted with, even when there is obvi?ously none.
In film school, we talked a lot about how American cin?ema has a tendency to push the endings as quickly as they can, while foreign films have no qualm with pacing the sto?ries or neglecting endings all together.
We love closure and seem to take any lack of information or answers to our questions as a personal insult.
Nobody likes to be made a fool of and everyone hates feel?ing like they”re stupid, but that doesn”t mean we have to BS our way through things just to save face.
There is nothing wrong with stepping back and simply enjoying something for what it is without purpose or sym?bolism and if we don”t know or understand something, we shouldn”t feel embarrassed. Just ask before you make an assumption.
