[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why do we think of things as beautiful?
Rick Rosner: According to off the top of my head yesterday when I thought about it for like a minute maybe because we at base with the deepest feelings we have when we perceive beauty is we associate things we perceive as beautiful with ideas of safety and of everything’s going to be all right. There’s stuff that we’re hardwired to think of as beautiful which is mostly sexual stuff. It’s an easy argument to make that we see sexually healthy people we’d like to bang or healthy people we’d like to bang as beautiful. That’s kind of a fairly hardwired response. We probably have other responses that are associated with beauty that are more or less hardwired but maybe not and you don’t need the hard wire to make the argument that when we see order in the world and tranquility and nature, these are associated with safety and good outcomes.
Now I have to flesh out the argument but when we look at the natural world, it has creatures and plants that have evolved to be attractive to other animals at least attractive to Insects. So you get the bright colors of flowers that signal insects. I think what I have to do is think more about this because I’m just going to be bullshitting and it’s not going to be a good discussion even though I think my main thesis is correct.
Jacobsen: What is the main thesis as a primer with this session?
Rosner: The things we see are beautiful. We associate with positive outcomes for ourselves and the people we care about. Landscapes, flowers, cityscapes, animals; they’re the beauty of nature, the beauty of majestic human-made structures are at the sloppiest level. They’re symbols of order and order in which we belong. They’re comforting. Beauty is kitsch that’s easy really forced beauty. Right now on the screen for instance. Google is throwing up this painting as one of its screen savers that looks like a crappy Thomas Kincaid painter of light. It’s got snow-covered cabins and actually it’s a bad painting because it’s got A-frame houses in the painting with which have roof slopes of 75 degrees; these are super duper A-frames and they’re covered with two feet of snow and that doesn’t happen. Well you’re from Canada, you know you can’t have a roof with an angle a 75 degrees and expect that two feet of snow is going to stick to that roof. It’s a dumb painting but it’s got that tranquility,that natural quiet snow covered tranquility that speaks of comfort and safety.
I think we talked about kitsch before. Its art that’s more easily that it’s slutty art; its art that makes itself super easy to appreciate that all the decorativeness and the emotions are right there on the surface cherubic kids and porcelain moms and daughters and that stuff evokes positive emotions.
[Recording End]
Authors
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Founder, In-Sight Publishing
In-Sight Publishing
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Rick Rosner 