Hands intertwined behind her back, my grandma stares earnestly. It is a white box on the ground, sitting there, seemingly staring back at her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later, my grandma asks what I thought of the box. I tell her honestly that it confused me, that I\u2019d much rather spend my time staring at Degas\u2019 or Halestines\u2019. If we\u2019re going to go to an art museum, then I want to look at real <\/em>art\u2014real stimulating, beautiful, sophisticated art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Grandma tries to tell me that the white box sitting on the hardwood floor is art too. I don\u2019t respond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My mom and I sit uncomfortably as a nearly naked dancer on stage slithers across the floor as a man reads spoken word. She hops and rolls to the ground. She twitches and convulses. She looks as though she\u2019s been possessed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We share a glance. And after the show\u2019s over, Mom says, \u201cNext time, let\u2019s just go see ABT\u2019s rendition of The Nutcracker<\/em>.\u201d I agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cArt,\u201d to me, has always been entwined with beauty. Art is something that stimulates us, makes us feel something, or transports us to another time and place. Art is not a white box I have seen and ignored before, nor a quivering barefoot dancer. To me, the most attractive pieces of art are those that are beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After our conversation in class, I began to think about this definition of art within the context of Noir. Professor argues that this is simply a different kind of art\u2014one called \u201cStreet literature.\u201d It cannot be compared to Jane Austen or Shakespeare because it does not attempt <\/em>to be Austen or Shakespeare. It exists entirely within itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trick Baby <\/em>is based upon the real story of White People\u2019s, or so the story goes. It is crude and explicit in more ways than one; explicit in its graphic nature, and explicit in its obvious and unclouded language. Admittedly, I have grouped this book into a segment of my brain called \u201cWeird Art I Don\u2019t Understand and Probably Won\u2019t Explore Again.\u201d Iceberg Slim\u2019s novel sits alongside the white box, the barefoot dancer, and several poems and songs I can\u2019t make sense of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As an English major, I am aware that I cannot ignore art that makes me feel uncomfortable. I know that the purpose of an Arts and Letters degree is to broaden my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, after watching Sweet Sweetback\u2019s Baadassss Song, <\/em>I did notice that there is a \u201cline\u201d to be crossed, whether we want to admit it or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Black Noir is a descent into darkness and it explores raw and graphic truths about the Black community. Because I am reading Black Noir with a background of 13 years of white, Catholic education and morals, it feels strange and crude. But it is still a type of art, albeit not a type I particularly enjoy when it becomes too explicit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stories like Trick Baby <\/em>help expand my definition of art and force me away from my bias towards white morality. However, I keep thinking about the first scene of Sweet Sweetback\u2019s Baadassss Song, <\/em>which is essentially a rape of a 13 year old boy that may or may not have happened in real life. We all acknowledge that this is immoral, that this scene is not art, and that it is excessively graphic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, why do we not apply this same argument (that we cannot impress our white, Christian morality upon a Black piece of art) to this first scene? I argue that there is a distinct line between what is immoral and moral. Discovering this line and adhering to it does not necessarily make us close minded, but instead, makes us equitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I do think that Sweet Sweetback <\/em>and Trick Baby<\/em> are a type of art, but not one I would reach for first. However, just because Black Noir embraces the dark, I do not think that it is necessarily wrong to read it with a different set of morals. Black Noir cannot escape interpretations grounded in white morals, nor can it ignore objective immortals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hands intertwined behind her back, my grandma stares earnestly. It is a white box on the ground, sitting there, seemingly staring back at her. Later, my grandma asks what I thought of the box. I tell her honestly that it confused me, that I\u2019d much rather spend my time staring at Degas\u2019 or Halestines\u2019. … Continue reading “I hate modern art.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4361,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4361"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions\/240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}