I think there are several issues with the ambition and scope of your assignment in academic and intellectual terms: certainly, if you write this assignment with all those paragraphs just talking about different attractions that are now defunct, you're going to struggle to meet the assessment criteria.
My previous feedback on this essay idea has always been that you need to put your interest in these rides into a much more historical 'non-theme park' context and I think you're confusing your enthusiasm for attractions with the actual question - which is about the archiving of different experiences and a perceived hierarchy in terms of what is 'valuable' in terms of culture and what is not. I guess what I'm really saying here is it is this debate - the discussion around what is 'good culture' (worth documenting/archiving) and what 'bad culture' (not worth documenting/archiving ) - that is REALLY what your assignment is about - and is where the early part of the assignment should focus. In order to get things back on track a bit (and stop this assignment becoming an enthusiast's love letter to theme park rides) I think you need to look at the ideas of Clement Greenberg and his writings on the Avant-garde and Kitsch - for Greenberg, popular culture was kitsch: ' vicarious experience and faked sensations' (which for critics, might describe theme park rides perfectly!). What I'm saying is I think you need to spend time with people who disagree with you about the 'importance/value' of theme parks rides; you need to establish the arguments which dismiss theme parks as of no-value in terms of design, art and human experience so you can then argue against those ideas, and perhaps use some/one of the specific case-studies as your evidence for challenging this view. Other writers who have critiqued the 'fakeness' of theme park environments are Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrillard:
You could also look at the writing of Neil Postman 'Amusing Ourselves To Death' .
So my advice is this: right now there is no theoretical content anchoring your interest in this subject and it's a problem - so step one, you need to ask yourself why it is that theme parks are NOT taken seriously as 'art' or as 'culture' - and I think you'll find the answer not by researching those attractions, but by looking at the classical distinctions made between 'good art' and 'bad art' or between 'high culture' and 'low culture' - and you'll quickly see how experiences characterised by high-levels of immersion, 'fake realities' and manipulation are largely distrusted. If you start with the idea (not yours, but most art critics) that theme parks are, by their very nature, kitsch, then I think you'll be able to put your discussion into its proper academic context.
OGR 02/03/2019
ReplyDeleteHi Louis,
I think there are several issues with the ambition and scope of your assignment in academic and intellectual terms: certainly, if you write this assignment with all those paragraphs just talking about different attractions that are now defunct, you're going to struggle to meet the assessment criteria.
My previous feedback on this essay idea has always been that you need to put your interest in these rides into a much more historical 'non-theme park' context and I think you're confusing your enthusiasm for attractions with the actual question - which is about the archiving of different experiences and a perceived hierarchy in terms of what is 'valuable' in terms of culture and what is not. I guess what I'm really saying here is it is this debate - the discussion around what is 'good culture' (worth documenting/archiving) and what 'bad culture' (not worth documenting/archiving ) - that is REALLY what your assignment is about - and is where the early part of the assignment should focus. In order to get things back on track a bit (and stop this assignment becoming an enthusiast's love letter to theme park rides) I think you need to look at the ideas of Clement Greenberg and his writings on the Avant-garde and Kitsch - for Greenberg, popular culture was kitsch: ' vicarious experience and faked sensations' (which for critics, might describe theme park rides perfectly!). What I'm saying is I think you need to spend time with people who disagree with you about the 'importance/value' of theme parks rides; you need to establish the arguments which dismiss theme parks as of no-value in terms of design, art and human experience so you can then argue against those ideas, and perhaps use some/one of the specific case-studies as your evidence for challenging this view. Other writers who have critiqued the 'fakeness' of theme park environments are Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrillard:
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Travels_in_Hyperreality.html?id=YFDOAwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality
You could also look at the writing of Neil Postman 'Amusing Ourselves To Death' .
So my advice is this: right now there is no theoretical content anchoring your interest in this subject and it's a problem - so step one, you need to ask yourself why it is that theme parks are NOT taken seriously as 'art' or as 'culture' - and I think you'll find the answer not by researching those attractions, but by looking at the classical distinctions made between 'good art' and 'bad art' or between 'high culture' and 'low culture' - and you'll quickly see how experiences characterised by high-levels of immersion, 'fake realities' and manipulation are largely distrusted. If you start with the idea (not yours, but most art critics) that theme parks are, by their very nature, kitsch, then I think you'll be able to put your discussion into its proper academic context.