Our Responses to Beauty

Discussion

How do you feel about plastic bags? What is your emotional response to them?



Listening comprehension

• Watch an extract from American Beauty (2000) with the sound down. The extract is probably drawn from the original silent film entitled Variations by Dorsky.



• How do you feel about the plastic bag in the film?

Watch the extract again with the commentary from: Ricky: Do you want to see the most beautiful thing I’ve ever filmed?, then answer the questions that follow.

Questions When did Ricky film the bag?
What does he compare the bag to?
For how long was the bag caught in the wind?
What did the bag make Ricky realize?
Why does Ricky make videos like the one of the plastic bag?
Why does Ricky say “Video’s a poor excuse…”?
Fill in the gaps below:

Ricky: Do you want to see the most beautiful thing I’ve ever filmed? -
It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from ____________ and there’s this __________ in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, ____________ with me. Like a little ______ begging me to play with it. For ________ minutes. And that’s the day I knew there was this entire ______ behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent _________, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be _______, ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me ___________... and I need to ___________... Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the ________ I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.From American Beauty (2000)– Screen play by Alan Ball, directed by Sam Mendes.

If you now find the bag beautiful or even see it in a different light then you have been shown up as having made a mistake about beauty. According to Elaine Scarry, professor of aesthetics at Harvard University, making errors about beauty reveals much about how beauty is allied with truth.


Now think of examples of your own and to write down how you felt afterwards. Share your experiences with the class.



If beauty is allied to truth as Scarry argues then it makes sense to surround ourselves with it and train ourselves to see it.


Listening Homework


Listen to the radio program with Harvard professor of aesthetics Elaine Scarry and architect Moshe Safdie. While you listen answer the questions below. Be prepared to discuss your answers in class.

http://theconnection.wbur.org/2002/03/27/the-return-of-beauty

1) According to Elaine Scarry, what did the Greeks think being in the presence of beauty could do for people? (From around minute 2)

2a) According to Moshe Safdie what is the definition of beauty in architecture? (from around minute 4)

2b) What is ‘fitness’ according to Moshe Safdie ? (from around minute 10)

3) According to Elaine Scarry in the 80s and 90s, the act of staring at beautiful objects was wrongly judged as destructive. Explain this. (from around minute 6 :20-9 :50).

4) Why did Plato love beauty? (around minute 12 :30)


Links

'On Beauty and Being Just' by Elaine Scarry -Tanner Lecture Yale University -


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© All Copyright, 2007, Ray Genet