Was talking with the friend yesterday about "realism" in media, and how selective that idea of 'realism' is, because it would be practically impossible-- and nobody actually wants-- media that perfectly mimics real life. like imagine a show that followed real time 1:1 and never cut away from characters so we always got scenes of them going to poop and having a boring long meandering conversation on the way to work and so on. blah.
and then, you know, i'm scrolling through my dash, as one does. And lots of old art, or old art mediums, pass through my dash: theatre, poetry, dance, sculpture, music, embroidery, etc. And so little of that is "realistic" in the sense of "literal". Partly because that's impossible.
And IDK. I'm just wondering how much of the recent trend in desiring "realism" is because the last century or so has been the only time in all of history that we can truly be realistic in art. Like starting with photography, and then moving into films, which gain colour and sound, and then we move into 3D video games... And for the first time we're edging closer and closer to being able to capture 'The Real World'. And humans, we love a challenge. And this is a challenge; how much can we mimic reality in art?
And while I think I am still going to be annoyed by folks who set "realism" as the be all and end all of artistic merit, I feel like this perspective is helping me make my piece with it? Like for me it almost feels like a natural phase we (aka: artists and creatives writ large) have to go through. We HAVE these new tool, so we have this new thing to stretch towards.
But it is a phase. And I think once we work through it we'll see a beautiful space where we can go back to appreciating non-literal depictions of things in art forms again too.
