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Re: call a lostee a lostee

>Is propaganda really an excercise in creativity?

Yes!  

> I guess what I trying to ask here is this- is propaganda itself the 
> real potential art form, or is it the mastery of the actual psychology
of 
> (successful) propaganda??

Maybe both.  Any artist employs multiple skills . . . 
 
>but the practice of the  "art" of propaganda would depend on how
influencial they were on 
> others.  This form of "art" is always necessarily contingent on how
skilled  (or  "artfully") it is excuted, while >the other artistic
elements of  their presentation would be "art" necessarily by virtue of
their belonging 
> to "the  arts".  Does this sound right?

Holy smokes.  You have just walked through the back door into one of the
classic discussions of the art of rhetoric, which has always been
considered an art and has sometimes been considered an art without a
content.  I'm not quite "up" enough on my rhet theory to really frame it,
so I'll leave at it this: it sounds like the right sort of question.  Now
read the great classical rhetoricians, starting with Aristotle and not
leaving out Isocrates.  :)

I said:
> >So . . . Where is the line between propaganda and art, and where is 
> the line between beauty and ugliness?  These are not solvable 
> questions: it's enough to know that the questions exist.


Matt asked:
> Is it totally unsolvable?  . . . . Ayway, the above evokes the endless
porn debate- is it art?  I 
> myself think x-rated movies generally hold no more a valid claim to
having 
> artistic value  than anybody's home movies, (heck, much porn is
somebody's home 
> movies) but  the question is legislatvely unsolvable, as you've said. 
Porno is here to stay.

Slight correction: the intractable question is the one that asks exactly
where the line is between beauty and ugliness.  It's possible to say
certian things are ugly, others beautiful, and be confident in your
assertion.  It's just not possible to list certain sets of qualities and
say, "these make a thing beautiful, these make it ugly, whichever set of
qualities dominates the piece will determine its beauty or ugliness."

Porn is ugly, though.  (And let's not talk about it: let's talk about the
beautiful here. )  (Which is of course not to say that no one should ever
talk about the ugly.)

> defer to your superior intellect , and would never attempt to debate
you.

Pshaw.  I'm just a caveman.  (Extensively trained: it's all vocab.)

> How about me.  I only have the Norton Anthology of English 
> Literature Volume 1.  Do I dissappoint??

No: you're disappointed.

But, then, reading those suckers isn't as aesthetically pleasing as
reading a small volume by a specific writer, so maybe you're doing fine.

> One last thing, Fred.  You call yourself a "doddering old man"?  


:)  Just wanted to say that.  I'm only 27, and I only rarely feel truly
old.  :)

> (What is the...) Mattrick

Just a whim.  

That is all,

Fred
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