i'm rich

i have $5,323,023.00 dollars in neopets money. i wish these were real dollars, though. =/



i finally finished my paper that had been driving me nuts for a few days now. i'm not sure how it is, which really bugs me because it's about a topic i've been thinking about long before i took this class.

we watched "triumph of the will," and were asked to evaluate whether we would consider it a great film. i kind of went through this already in an academic setting four years ago with "birth of a nation." but it truly is one very confusing topic. how do you evaluate art? can you separate form from content?

i came up with three factors that contribute to your ultimate judgment:
1. how well you understand the medium
2. what the content actually is
3. just how good you deem the artwork to be, which is really the balancing act of the first two points.

i said that the more you understand a medium, the more likely you are to be able to appreciate a work solely for its technical merits. considering i know very little about early film making and i care very little about film making in general, i found it hard to appreciate "triumph of the will" for what leni riefenstahl was apparently able to achieve. i dunno, i can't tell. i just have to take your word for it.

second, i said there's this spectrum each person constructs in going through life every day, making compromises on things that offend you. there are things that are going to piss you off more than others, right? well, for me, hitler's pretty far to the right on that spectrum. a movie about how great he is pisses me off. had the movie been about a different controversial topic i feel less strongly about, i might have had a different opinion.

third, i thought the movie was boring as hell. i fell asleep. that can't speak well for it.

anyhow, i feel i broke it down well in my mind but i'm not sure how well i explained what i was thinking. we'll see.

what do you think, though? should art be evaluated based solely on what the artist did technically? or do you consider the content?