[HN Gopher] Maya Angelou partnered with Hallmark
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Maya Angelou partnered with Hallmark
Author : samclemens
Score : 41 points
Date : 2021-04-09 05:00 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.neh.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.neh.gov)
| rectang wrote:
| > _In response to her new detractors, she unapologetically stated
| that she undertook the Hallmark enterprise because she wanted her
| work read and put in the hands of people who did not buy books._
|
| The Hallmark Card medium is extremely demanding in terms of not
| only brevity but clarity. Angelou was setting herself up to write
| something compelling for a mass audience.
| slibhb wrote:
| Some poets have a way of acknowledging tragedy while infusing
| their poems with meaning, hope, and vitality. Angelou's poems
| come off as kitsch to me (including the excerpts in this
| article).
|
| Did Eat Pray Love make people's lives better? Perhaps. But that's
| not the definition of literature.
| [deleted]
| rectang wrote:
| > _Angelou 's poems come off as kitsch_
|
| For context, here's some sample "kitsch":
| Some Kind of love, Some Say is it true the ribs
| can tell The kick of a beast from a Lover's
| fist? The bruised Bones recorded well The
| sudden shock, the Hard impact. Then swollen lids,
| Sorry eyes, spoke not Of lost romance, but hurt.
| Hate often is confused. Its Limits are in zones beyond
| itself. And Sadists will not learn that Love,
| by nature, exacts a pain Unequalled on the rack.
|
| > _But that 's not the definition of literature._
|
| Sounds like "literature" is ripe for disruption, if the
| gatekeepers of "literature" are determined to keep people like
| Maya Angelou out of it.
| arkitaip wrote:
| >= Sounds like "literature" is ripe for disruption.
|
| This is the most embarrassing thing I've read on HN - this
| week. But please let the literary world know what disrupting
| their world would mean, we could all need a laugh.
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| I think it went over your head.
|
| Parent post is being sarcastic in response to GP post
| calling Maya's work "kitsch" and "not literature".
|
| Maya is clearly an excellent artist and writer so if her
| work is "not literature" then perhaps the GP poster, in all
| their wisdom, has the means to "disrupt" a long tradition
| of substandard writing.
| jpxw wrote:
| > the gatekeepers of "literature" are determined to keep
| people like Maya Angelou out of it.
|
| What do you mean by this?
|
| If you're talking about race, then in my experience the exact
| opposite is true
| rectang wrote:
| According to the gatekeeper of "literature" in this thread,
| it's not race, but "kitsch" that disqualifies Angelou.
| Spinnaker_ wrote:
| It's all a replay of Harold Bloom. "They say all bad
| poetry is sincere. And Maya Angelou is very sincere." He
| laments that her work achieves undeserving canonical
| status, and no one wants to disagree for fear of being
| called racist.
| chestertn wrote:
| I totally agree this is kitsch and not worthy of being next
| to great American poets such as Whitman or Elliot.
|
| I wonder if people will read her in 200 years.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Eliot is overrated in my opinion, although I do still enjoy
| his writing. Complicated does not always mean good. It's a
| little surprising to me that you don't see Whitman as
| kitsch, things like this definitely are:
| https://waltwhitman.com/i-saw-in-louisiana-a-live-oak-
| growin....
| slibhb wrote:
| I don't like her poetry. You do. Fine. I'm allowed to share
| my negative appraisal.
|
| Regardless, if there was an attempt to "keep Maya Angelou
| out," it certainly failed. My comment about "the definition
| of literature" was about Eat Pray Love not Maya Angelou. My
| point was that literature (or art) is not "something that
| makes people feel good".
| borepop wrote:
| >literature (or art) is not "something that makes people
| feel good".
|
| The notion that art can't be "good" if it makes people feel
| good is really misguided, in my opinion. People turn to art
| for all kinds of reasons, but most of all because of the
| satisfaction involved in consuming it. Even if a story is
| tragic or explores sorrowful experiences, we derive
| aesthetic pleasure from the recounting if it is well done.
| Art is not cheerleading, but neither does it need to be
| just some predictable narrative about how life is terrible
| and hopeless.
| klodolph wrote:
| > The notion that art can't be "good" if it makes people
| feel good is really misguided, in my opinion.
|
| Speaking of literature, I don't think that reading of the
| parent comment is correct. The comment was saying that
| "making people feel good does not make it
| art/literature," where you're discussing something else,
| which is "making people feel good makes it not
| art/literature".
|
| The original comment was something like, "Perhaps Eat
| Pray Love made people's lives better, but making peoples
| lives better does not make it art/literature."
| [deleted]
| blowski wrote:
| My opinion is that art is not concerned at all with how
| it's received, only with how it's produced. If you are
| doing something because you think it will be popular then
| you are in business, not art.
|
| Of course, people do have reactions to art. But that
| doesn't change the artistic value of the original piece.
| If they did, then the artistic value of something would
| change over time, which seems counter-intuitiive to me.
|
| The interplay between the artist and the consumer of
| their art is a separate piece of art in itself, which may
| or may not have been "designed" by the artist.
| krapp wrote:
| Was the Sistene Chapel ceiling art or business? I'm
| reasonably certain Michaelangelo was concerned with both
| how it would be received and whether or not it would be
| popular.
| blowski wrote:
| We all as human beings seek the approval of our peers, so
| to some extent, few things are ever "pure art" by my
| definition - including the Sistine Chapel.
|
| But art is the product of a vision, the result of some
| internal feeling. Sometimes their vision is likeable, and
| that's a happy coincidence. Other times it's not, but
| maybe the artist gives up a little bit of their vision in
| order to make it more likeable. At some point, they've
| sold so much of it that you can't really call the product
| art any more.
| marcinzm wrote:
| You didn't just say that you didn't like it. You claimed
| that it's not literature. Or in other words, you first
| paragraph is fine as an appraisal, your second paragraph is
| gatekeeping.
| slibhb wrote:
| No I didn't. I suggested that Eat Pray Love is not
| literature on the basis that it makes people feel good.
| My point was that "whether something makes you feel good"
| has no bearing on whether that thing counts as
| poetry/literature/art. I tried to make that point in
| response to the linked article.
|
| If it's "gatekeeping" for me to claim that "X isn't
| literature" then I guess I'm a "gatekeeper".
| cortesoft wrote:
| > If it's "gatekeeping" for me to claim that "X isn't
| literature"
|
| Yes, that is pretty much the definition of gatekeeping.
| Igelau wrote:
| You keep saying that word. Is there some postpostmodern
| meaning of "gatekeeping" that I'm not looped in on? We
| just hurl it around now and hope that bystanders mistake
| the people we disagree with for oppressors?
|
| (The downvotes indicate the arrow hit the mark. No lie, I
| sincerely appreciate the confirmation.)
| pessimizer wrote:
| The modern meaning of "gatekeeping" is when you call
| anything that people buy shit, and you give a reason. The
| only appropriate long-form emotion is breathless
| enthusiasm. Dislike must be exclusively expressed in
| tweet-length insults calling the fans of a thing names.
|
| Saying why anything is better than anything else is
| violence. Withholding your approval for a reason makes
| you basically a cop. If you give a reason why you hate
| something everyone else likes, you're basically saying
| everyone is stupid but you. That makes you a "bully."
|
| Imagine being accused of somehow oppressing one of the
| most successful (and dead) people in a field for
| venturing that their mass appeal might be due to their
| _mass appeal._ Imagine that in a thread about a poet
| writing for a _greeting card company._
|
| -----
|
| edit: this is why downvotes for real disagreement will
| always be good.
|
| If someone makes a bad argument for why something is bad,
| you should usually downvote them for the quality of their
| argument and move on. Exceptions are if someone states a
| falsehood as a fact, maybe leave a note and a reference
| to correct the falsehood so it doesn't continue to
| circulate. Or if you find yourself having to argue
| extensively to disagree, you are involved in a productive
| discussion and you shouldn't downvote anything that leads
| to productive discussion.
|
| But never argue against argumentation, reason against
| reason, or argue that the act of distinguishing between
| things at all makes one a bad person. Just downvote and
| move on.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| It seems like just a more dramatic way of calling
| something a no true scotsman fallacy. To be actually
| gatekeeping you'd have to have the power to discourage or
| prevent people from entering a field, and be wielding
| that power inappropriately.
|
| It's one of a few words that seems to be going through
| inflation at the moment, like gaslighting.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Not quite. The modern usage of 'gatekeeping' just means
| that you're posturing like you want to keep people from
| entering the field, not that you can actually do it. The
| definition on r/gatekeeping (which is as good of a
| canonical source as any) is "When someone takes it upon
| themselves to decide who does or does not have access or
| rights to a community or identity."
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Yeah I get that some communities have that definition,
| but that's inflation on the meaning of the word, ie using
| a term with an emotional punch for a much more minor
| infraction.
|
| Disagreeing over the definition of "art" is about as old
| as art itself, its not gatekeeping in any sense unless
| the person you are disagreeing with is an art historian
| and is excluding works that don't fit their definition,
| or something like that.
| Igelau wrote:
| Maya Angelou was a living legend. She is not being
| gatekeepered by a HN comment. Especially considering the
| context is the availability of her work in greeting cards.
| That's as mainstream as access gets. That word doesn't mean
| what you think it means.
| shaunxcode wrote:
| Potent and precise. Kitsch is art for arts sake. This is art
| for life's sake.
| phnofive wrote:
| I feel the same way about a lot of poetry, but I think
| kitschiness is a cultural thing, not a personal perspective.
| How would you define it?
| slibhb wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsch
|
| Kitsch is an imitation of art with exaggerated
| sentimentality. Kitsch offers shallow emotional gratification
| with no investment.
|
| This may seem subjective or culturally relative but I don't
| think it is. I think the weight of many opinions across time
| gives these things a certain solidity.
| detaro wrote:
| Kitsch is not an _imitation of art_ , plenty of art is
| Kitsch.
| phnofive wrote:
| The appropriate level of sentimentality or depth of
| emotional gratification are of course subjective. I don't
| think Maya Angelou's fans appreciate her work ironically.
| chestertn wrote:
| See how heartbreak is depicted, for instance in a masterpiece
| like Paris, Texas and in a random Venezuelan soap opera.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| People make distinctions between "high culture" and "low
| culture" in cultural analysis now, because it turns out
| that gatekeeping literature means we only really have an
| accurate picture of what _elite_ culture in the past was
| like, not what the lower classes actually lived, perceived,
| and experienced.
|
| Also, some of our literature started off with not great
| origins one would really attribute to the "proper" form of
| literature today.
| kryptiskt wrote:
| Yeah, high culture often loses in the long run. The first
| Swedish literature that survives in living form (that is,
| it's read outside of seminars) is Carl Michael Bellman's
| drinking songs. They have outlasted all the overwrought
| poems that his contemporaries put out. I guess it helps
| that they're really very good.
| chestertn wrote:
| Well, I tried not to get into the "low culture" vs "high
| culture" debate by just trying to put an example that I
| thought it would be agreeable to most people. In Paris,
| Texas we see an slow but deep study of a character that
| has been broken and at the end we have a cathartic moment
| when we understand and maybe empathize with him. In
| Venezuelan soap operas (not all of them I guess, but many
| hilarious examples) you see characters that respond in
| unnatural and superficial ways to forced situations that
| are just created for the sake of melodrama and shock.
|
| You can might think that "low culture" and "high culture"
| is a product either of gatekeeping or there's some sort
| of socio-cultural relativism. I would disagree.
|
| I think that one can develop "taste" for good things over
| time by study, reflection, and criticism. TV shows that
| looked to me funny and enjoyable 10 years ago when I was
| in college now appear to me badly written, lazy, and
| vapid. So I do not think that good and bad in art is
| relative.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| As an example of overdramatic "high culture", Juliet
| fakes her death, Romeo sees her "dead" body and kills
| himself by drinking poison, Juliet wakes up and attempts
| to first kill herself by kissing him and receiving the
| poison, and when that fails stabs herself to death with
| his dagger.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| just providing an alternate viewpoint. I think a lot of her
| poetry is deeply meaningful while still being simply phrased.
| one of my favorites: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-know-
| why-the-caged-bird-si...
| dcist wrote:
| What does this have to do with tech?
| marcinzm wrote:
| Per the HN rules:
|
| >On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.
| That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to
| reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that
| gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I really don't like to waste time talking about whether a
| post is or is not off-topic but...this one's a stretch for
| me.
|
| I'm glad others in this thread seem to be finding enjoyment
| though.
| blowski wrote:
| The post itself isn't very interesting, but the
| conversation is insightful.
| Leparamour wrote:
| > If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be:
| anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
|
| There must be an intention behind that rule. If not, what
| differentiates HN from Reddit? Pretty much anything gratifies
| at least someone's "intellectual curiosity".
| xenophonf wrote:
| > _Pretty much anything gratifies at least someone 's
| "intellectual curiosity"._
|
| Hence why this is on topic.
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