The Grotesque and the Age of the Ugly

"Grotesque" is one of the words the meaning of which will vary, even significantly, with context.  In the world of art, it may be fanciful and absurd and not necessarily ugly and repulsive in an exaggerated sense.  It need not be disturbing, in other words; it may even be considered playful.  But in other contexts the grotesque is abnormal, monstrous and ugly, malformed.  Which I think is to say disturbing.

The word seems apt to our times and the state of our world when given its darker sense.  Of course we have more than our share of absurdity now, but the absurd is always with us as is war and the poor.  It's part of the nature of our beastliness.  There is nothing remarkable about it. What we also see, though, is ugliness.  This is an ugly time and place.  

The grotesqueness of the 20th century is typified by its monstrous nature.  It was a century of colossal monsters--Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot.  Mass murder by ideologues characterizes that era.  It's quite early yet, of course, but judging from what has taken place in the 21st century we won't have such monsters.  Instead, this century will be full of nasty, spiteful, self-righteous, bigoted, ignorant, loud and vulgur figures.  Ours is the Age of the Ugly.

Consider the picture appearing at the start of this post.  It's one of the grotesque figures appearing in the margins of the remarkable Luttrell Pslater, a version of the Book of Psalms prepared in the 14th century at the behest of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, lord of the manor in Irnham, England.  This document is considered of great significance for its portrayal of life in medieval times in that area, on parchment.  People are shown engaging in a variety of agricultural and rural pursuits.  Sir Geoffrey appears in full armour.  The delightfull pastime of bear-baiting is shown, chickens are fed, corn harvested; people dance, wrestle, play, work.

Amidst the psalms and the illustrations there appear abnormal, impossible creatures like whatever is shown above.  Perhaps I speak only for myself, but these creatures, made up as they are of the limbs and faces of different animals and peoples, and sometimes other things, may well be absurd and even amusing in a certain sense, but overall have a nightmarish quality to them.  They're creepy.

Illustrators and scribes of medieval times are known to have drawn odd and humorous figures on manuscripts of various kinds.  One can imagine that they would want to add some frivolity to what must have been very difficult work.   But I find it hard to characterize this particular drawing as comic.  I wonder what was the artist thinking, and I doubt he was trying to be funny.

It was a very religious time, a supernatural time, and the work being prepared was religious in nature.  Are such illustrations intended to contrast with the scenes of normal life depicted for the purpose of noting that the unnatural and demonic inhabited the same world and were among us, even though unseen?  Do they in some way mock the people shown, especially the high and the mighty?  Are they intended to reflect people as they in fact are and not as they appear--show normal people to be abnormal, twisted and repulsive if their true characteristics are known?

It's hard to say what kind of art will be created in this century.  I suppose there will be those who actually paint in addition to those who generate computer images of various kinds (at least, I hope there will be such artists).  How will the shoddy, craven, venal people, high and low, we see all about us be portrayed by our artists, if not engaged in gun fights and car chases and sex, all of which seem ubiquitous in our entertainments?  

Artists of the grotesque in this era won't create incredible, fanciful creatures or combinations of them, or even monsters, I think.  Instead I imagine them drawing misshapen, grubby, rat-like characters engaged in mean and petty acts, disgusting rather than disturbing, tiresome instead of fearful, farcical rather than absurd.

Compared to What

There are more than one versions of the jazz composition Compared to What.  My favorite is the live version performed by Les McCann, Eddie Harris and others at the 1969 Montreux Jazz Festival.  I wish I could say I was there for the performance, obviously because in that case I would have been there for the performance (I'm not sure how or why "wish I could say" came to be used in this manner).  It's a great performance of a great song.

Judging from the lyrics, the song is a social commentary of the kind popular in the late 1960s, which as far as jazz is concerned may have been unusual even then.  Jazz isn't commentary; at least not commentary in the form of comment.  The comments made expressly in the song are rather interesting though, at least to me.  "Tryin' to make it real compared to what?"  Compared to what, indeed.

Real, compared to what?  It may be a philosophical question, of the kind debated no doubt futilely over the years.  What is real?  What does it mean to be real?  The question "compared to what?" should be asked whenever such "questions" are raised, at least for the purpose of determining what is actually being asked--if anything.  It isn't clear to me anything is being asked if that question is asked in response to the question being asked.  Real compared to a dream?  Real compared to a hallucination?  To make a comparison one must be able to compare one thing with another.  We already know there is a difference, so it's foolish to act or think as if there is none.

Consider what Wild Bill James is saying in the quote appearing at the head of this post.  The use of the words "ought to be" is interesting to me.  Why does he assume we should be what he claims we have the ability to be?  Assume he's right, and we have these resources we fail to use.  Who's to say we can use them to their fullest extent?  If we can, who's to say that we should?  Perhaps we don't for a perfectly good reason.  Perhaps we wouldn't be recognizably human if we did.  

Such a quote (like the quote referring to truth's or an idea's "cash value") suggests that James may have been the American thinker some say he was (in the sense that Bertrand Russell thought the Pragmatists were typically American because they were concerned with what works, not with what is true).  James seems to be complaining that we aren't as productive as we could be.  Just think of what we could accomplish if we tried hard to do as much as we can!  Shoes for industry!  Shoes for the dead! (Does anyone remember the Firesign Theatre?)

Well, he may have meant something like that, but I would guess he refers more to the human condition than human potential.  James was more psychologist than philosopher--some would say, of course, that he was more a novelist than either a psychologist or philosopher.  He said that what we experienced in life was in the nature of a blooming, buzzing confusion, if memory serves.  Dewey made the same sort of point, though in a less felicitous way, when he wrote that we only think when we encounter problems, otherwise living almost automatically, by habit.

Perhaps Compared to What the song wonders just what it meant to say in 1969 that one was trying to make it real.  Real, compared to the president's war, to preachers preaching, to old ladies and their dogs, etc.?  Remeber when people said such things as "I'm trying to find the real me"?  As if they were not what they were.  The unfortunate fact is that all of it was real, just as all of it is real now.  Perhaps we can make it, ourselves, our lives better.  But we're real and other persons and things are real, not dreams or hallucinations, no matter that we are or they are good or bad.