Super Lucy

            I had been reluctant to tell my landlord about the flea problem I have because I figured that he’d just say that it was my fault for having cats. But late on the Wednesday morning of October 19^th there was a knock on my door and it turned out to be the exterminator, showing up without two days notice and saying that he was there to treat my place for bedbugs. I told him that I hadn’t seen another bedbug since the one I’d killed a month before and that the problem I had right now was fleas. He said that’s a different treatment using different chemicals, but that I’d have to make the same basic preparations as for bedbugs. He said he’d see about the arrangements.

            A few minutes later my landlord called me, angry about hearing there were fleas and, as I suspected, blaming me. I told him that one could get fleas from pigeons on the window ledge, from mice, from raccoons and from all kinds of ways besides having pets. He said something about closing down the second floor and then hung up.

            Shortly after that though, Raja phoned back to tell me that the exterminator would be coming for the fleas next Tuesday, then grumbled to someone at his end, “Fucking (something indecipherable) and hung up.

There are usually no classes prior to ours in the room where we have our Aesthetics lectures, but on Wednesday there was one. A bunch of my fellow students were sitting out in the hall and one of them struck up a conversation with me, asking how I’d liked the quiz. I told him that it seemed easy, but the questions might have been trick questions that I didn’t catch the meaning of. We chatted on a variety of topics. We both belong to Woodsworth College though he hasn’t taken advantage of any of the grants they offer like I have, mostly, he says, because his parents pay his tuition. Tim is Korean and also a Christian who goes to church regularly for the sense of community. I told him that I’m not convinced there’s a god. He said it’s ballsy to be an atheist because of the danger while floating free without a guiding philosophy of turning to nihilism. I told him what Nietzsche said about Christianity having so deeply permeated our civilization that it’s impossible to even be an atheist without having Christian values. We talked about the United States and what a fucked up education system they have. Of course that led to us talking about Donald Trump. I said that Trump is showing recognizable signs of losing his mind. Tim went to have a cigarette before class started.

            I noticed Professor Russell standing nearby and asked him if the deadline for the essay was midnight on October 27^th. He confirmed that it would be one minute before midnight.

            In the lecture we finished up our talk on Wollheim’s idea of criticism as retrieval. The aim is to reconstruct the artistic process. The important part then is the intention of the artist and so Wollheim is defending Intentionalism.

            However, it is impossible to reconstruct the artistic process.

            The revisionist view counters that we should make the artwork speak to us today. We can just make something up if it speaks to us.

            Wollheim admits that it is hard to reconstruct the artistic process but that sometimes it can be done, so why not do it if it helps us understand a work of art?

            When you think about it, it’s usually easy to figure out an artist’s intention.

            Devlin added in Wollheim’s defence that a certain amount of evidence is in the artwork itself, so maybe partially reconstructing the process is a worthy enough goal. But with revisionism one is not even allowed to try.

            Another objection to Wollheim’s view is that the reconstruction process is superfluous and misleading.

            The work will do what it is meant to do and if it is successful we don’t need to figure out intention and therefore we don’t need reconstruction. But if the process is not successful then the result is a failed work of art that is not worth reconstructing anyway because reconstruction would only lead us astray. Instead we should think of criticism as scrutiny and examine the work as it is. This draws on Conventionalism, so it’s not about intention. We need to know the context, the conventions and the history to find the meaning.

            Wollheim’s response is that there is no such thing as interpretation without reconstruction. This doesn’t do much to defend his view. It seems like Actual Intentionalism without committing. Criticism as scrutiny, intention and process.

            Wollheim says that the work is evidence for reconstructing.

            The scrutiny view is Wollheim’s view but backwards. Use the creative process as evidence for figuring out what the artwork means now.

            Wollheim says revision renders the process irrelevant, while scrutiny turns the process into mere evidence. Retrieval recognizes the importance of the creative process from which everything flows.

            Scrutiny says that if a painting looks like a bird even though the artist’s intention was to depict a sunset, then reconstructing the process arrives at the painting being of a sunset. But scrutiny says, fine, use the creative process to find out how it came about but the fact that we see a bird is also evidence.

            Wollheim says that we cannot put meaning onto an artwork and that the other4 two views take the importance away from the artist’s intention.

            The rest of the lecture was on Art and Ethics.

            Are ethical flaws also artistic flaws? Can a racist joke still be funny? Devlin said that he’d considered bringing examples but it is possible inappropriate. So just imagine for yourself a beautiful photograph that is designed to objectify women. Would an equally beautiful photograph that does not objectify women be a better work of art?

            This is not about value.

            Autonomism says that ethical flaws are not artistic flaws. Ethics is irrelevant to art because they are two different things. The photograph that objectifies women should maybe be destroyed because it is ethically offensive, but that does not mean it is not a great work of art.

            Contextualism rejects Autonomism and says that ethical flaws sometimes contribute to the artistic merit of a work. Ethics can contribute to the flaws of an artwork but also can contribute vitally to the greatness of the work.

            Moralism rejects the other two and says that ethical flaws are always artistic flaws.

            Just assume for simplicity right now that ethics is an objectively discernible quality.

            On the way home I stopped at Hitech Direct and bought a new computer mouse. I noticed while I was there that on their shelf behind me they had the same wifi adaptor that I use. I asked if it was possible for them to wear out. He told me that it wasn’t and that if the signal is getting weaker it’s just because of increasing interference. I continued along College to Lansdowne, and went buy a few things at No Frills, They had local apples, and so I bought some of the shiny, crisp Courtland breed. Grapes were very cheap, so I got two bags. I bought some cinnamon-raisin bread, a pork roast, some yogourt, some old cheddar, some skim milk, mouthwash, and most important of all, coffee.

            Lansdowne is still closed off south of Dundas because of construction that seems to have been going on since the beginning of time.

            When I got home I plugged the new mouse into my computer and it didn’t work at all.

            That night I watched a couple of episodes from the sixth season of I Love Lucy.

            In the first, Lucy had put a trophy on her head that Ricky was supposed to present that night as a lifetime achievement award to a famous jockey. It was down over her eyes and the handles were sticking out from each side like ears. Ricky had to leave for work but would meet her at the banquet and so he told her to get it off her head and bring it down to the ceremony later, then he left. Lucy went to take it off but couldn’t budge it. Ethel called a silver smith who said he could get it off but she’d have to come to his shop on Bleecker Street. Ethel told her that it would be quicker to take the subway than a taxi, so Lucy put a wide brimmed hat and a veil over the cup and they went. This was the first time in the history of the show, in which Lucy and Ricky lived in New York City that the subway had ever been shown. Of course it was probably shot in LA though. At Bleecker Street they were getting off but Lucy became separated from Ethel and, since the cup was over her eyes, she was effectively blind and didn’t realize that the oncoming passengers had jostled her back onto the train. On top of that, the hat and veil had been pulled off, so everyone could see that she had a cup on her head. She tried to get off at the next stop but the outgoing stream of people met with the incoming stream and she was back on the train. She finally got off at Flatbush Avenue. Finally a cop came up and asked her if she needed a policeman. Of course he hadn’t said that he was a cop though and she couldn’t see him, so she said not to bother calling a cop because you know how those guys are. They’ll ask a lot of questions and just make things worse. In saying that though she put her hand out and touched his badge, to realize her mistake.

            In the second show she dressed up like Superman and met George Reeves as Superman. It’s funny that they didn’t say it was George Reeves, even though it was clearly the actor that plays Superman in the story, they referred to him as Superman the whole time. I guess they wanted to keep up the illusion, just in case children were watching.