Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Create art about whatever you want but if you bind it with your identity and sexuality you're more an idealogue than a craftsman.


This is a bad take both on the nature of art and Wendy Carlos.

Art encompasses all aspects of the human experience. How could this not include identity and sexuality, and yes, the treatment one lives through as an aspect of those things. Also wrong is the supposition that a ideological art is somehow a lesser form of creativity. Some of the greatest works in history were made by "ideologues", and made specifically as tracts for their beliefs, either expressly or subtextually. To demand that art be politically inert and sanitized of the identity of its creator is to demand art that says nothing to the viewer and means nothing to the artist. It is to chide a mural for not being a wallpaper.

But even then: Wendy Carlos is perhaps one of the weakest examples of someone doing this, as the article itself makes abundantly clear. Her identity as a transgender woman was something she had to hide for over a decade, and even then the social stigma has driven her into seclusion ever since. Rather, the story of Wendy Carlos is one that massively underscores the sheer importance of having the loud-and-proud expressions of people's identity and experiences that we're (and I am) fortunate enough to have today. If you don't like that, well, maybe you can be the one to close your blinds this time.


Bingo, you get it exactly. It's Wendy's reluctance to "flaunt" it that makes her all the more appealing as a person. I understand that she regrets her time in seclusion, but it makes her unassailable as somebody who was "throwing it in your face."


You seem to think that an artist by default creates art that is purely impersonal and unconnected from who they are and then manipulatively goes back to add stuff that you don't like. But it's the other way around. If the work is divorced from who they are in favor of consumer needs, it's just craft. Art is inevitably personal.

So what I think you're really asking for is for people to hide who they are if you don't like parts of them.


Prince, Beyonce, Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe are ... ideologues? Their identity and sexuality is right up front in their art.

Or when it's straight and cis you don't feel the same way?


There is nothing more closely tied to your identity (and consequently, your sexuality, which is strongly intertwined with your identity) than art.

In fact, that is the one thing that sets art and craft apart. So for 'ideologue' insert artist. A bricklayer is a craftsman.


Ridiculous assertion. You're guilty of engaging in ideology just by suggesting it.


I’ve known about her for years and didn’t know she was trans until reading these comments. It’s not really part of her music in anyway.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: