Art and Today ('Wide Art')

 
Art is a very 'wide' concept. The art I'm discussing here is all of it. The widest of the wide. Every single form. And why am I discussing art? Because I want to.
  Let's go: I don't like art that deals with current events or anything political. Bam. I've told people that, and they don't like it. No sir, they don't. Here is my argument.
  Art based on events that have happened recently is, in my opinion, the weakest kind there is. These events touch us already. Take something like a massive natural disaster; we don't need art to make us emotional about it. We see the news, we hear the stories of pain and suffering. We feel for those people, even in the tiniest way. Putting art into the equation turns the whole thing into melodrama, a charade. The artist is using painful memories to add power to their work. Rather than using their own artistic power to move us, they feed off what we already have - that's a lack in ability.
  I'm not saying using our experiences to affect us is bad. I'm saying that manipulating events that have already been slammed in our faces by the media isn't the pinnacle of originality. The true beauty in great writers like Kurt Vonnegut and Shakespeare is that their works possess the ability to have us relate to current events without naming any. Take a look at "Slaughterhouse-Five". It was written in 1969, almost 25 years after World War II. And yet it not only vividly describes WWII, but also makes a powerful bridge to the events of today. The descriptions of destruction, patheity, and suffering apply today as much as they ever did.
   Consider "Romeo and Juliet". Some people love and respect it, some hate it. And yet what does it do? It conjures emotions. That's what artists should strive to have the ability to do: take a fairy-tale like "Romeo and Juliet", something that has absolutely nothing to do with anything going on right now, and make it touch us. For some people, it can connect their real world problems to those of the characters.
  Next topic: POLITICAL ART! OH YES. I think that art should never be political. While some consider that to be be the main purpose of it, to rally the people, I seriously disagree. That's what protests are for. Seriously.
  What I'm trying to say is that we should simplify. We should get to the core emotions of life rather than focus on specific events. So yeah. I like pie. See? That's a life-long emotion that shall never leave me. That's what art is all about.

Feo.