I believe in eating the pear.

Last Wednesday I committed a crime. Upon finishing a fine meal in the college dining commons, I rose to collect a fruit and depart. As per the university’s fruit-in-hand policy, one is permitted to carry out either an apple, an orange, or a banana. Taking anything else out of the dining commons is considered theft, punishable by the unbearable weight of the lodestone of conscience upon one’s soul.

Nonetheless, like Icarus, I donned my golden wings, and also my coat and hat and gloves, and prepared to fly up to the glorious heavens. For in my sight was a rare and tantalizing vision- the illicit indulgence- the forbidden fruit-

The irresistible Asian pear.

I resisted. I suffered a brief flash of anguish. I meditated upon the law. I caved. I too-casually walked by the display of Asian pears and collected my prize. My fruit in hand.

I hate most pears. They are mushy and their flavor is repulsive. Asian and Bosc pears, however, are the exception to this rule, as they are crisp and sweet as the first rays of sunshine in spring. And so, when I took a first bite of my delicious guerdon later that evening, I was immediately flooded with joy. It tasted like warmth and a breath of clean air. The crunch of the pear was so refreshing, so soothing, so divine compared to everything else I had experienced in the week. It was immediate bliss.

I then proceeded to wrap the pear in a napkin and shove it back into my bag. Like a jilted lover channeling sadness into resentment, I told myself I would enjoy the rest of the pear more later. After all, when was my next chance to meet such a delightful pomaceous fruit in college?

This resentment bloomed into fury with myself the next day, when I unwrapped the wrapped pear.

At this point, you might expect me to say it had gone bad entirely- that it had been consumed by mold, or termites, or my roommate. The reality was even worse. I took a bite, and I noted that, through the night, the pear had become just a little worse. It was infuriating, feeling the slightly mushy texture, tasting the slightly soured flavors, and knowing how good the pear had been the night before.

I’m not new to this kind of behavior. As a kid, I always saved my Halloween candy for so long I would have the bulk of it hoarded in my closet by the next Halloween, at which point my mother would throw it all away in utter disgust. I have ruined so many things by saving them for later until they are gone. Every time I wait for the perfect moment to enjoy something, it becomes worse than it otherwise might have been. Ethereal, perfect experiences are not only for weekends, or calendar holidays, or special occasions. Every tiny piece of beauty and meaning and hedonism in this world may be enjoyed at any given moment. In fact, it’s meant to be. Things are meant to be used. Candy is meant to be eaten. Pears are meant to be eaten. Entertainment is meant to be enjoyed. Arbitrarily putting something off, in the hopes that waiting will make it sweeter, welcomes rot more often than it welcomes joy.

I continue learning this lesson every time I catch myself acting this way. I like to think I’m getting better at it. I like to think that, if I were to do it over, I would have enjoyed the pear in the moment, when it sparked joy. I like to think I will be better at seizing every tiny bit of beautiful life without worrying about timing it perfectly or recording it meaningfully or remembering it forever. So much of living is wasted waiting before the fact and inscribing after the fact. I want to eat the pear when I want to eat the pear, and I want to enjoy it.

*Note: this draft is very bad, I wrote it an hour before class on a day when most people didn’t even have a complete draft, and I am writing a completely new, different, better essay as I type this. Leaving this garbage draft here for posterity and to remind myself how it feels to ramble pointlessly around a bad idea.*

I believe in being bad at things.

Yes, I believe that productivity, excellence, and ambition are the virtues that keep the cogs of our societal machine turning. But being bad at something isn’t always a means to an end. It shouldn’t have to be a place where I don’t enjoy what I am doing, because I am angry with myself for not being better, or wistfully waiting for an improvement that lies ahead.

I believe in embracing the moment when one is bad at things. Sometimes, it’s good to just say whatever words are coming out of your mouth without trying to refine them into something perfect. There is a beauty in the raw vulnerability of imperfection. Sometimes that imperfection is a stop on the road to brilliance. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes you know that, considering the amount of time and effort you will likely commit to it, you might never be as good at something as you want to be, and that isn’t a personal vice.

When I was fourteen, I was possessed by some unholy desire to acquire and play a musical saw.

If you don’t know, a musical saw is a large handsaw that makes a wailing noise when you play it along its non-toothed end with a very well-rosined cello bow. I say “noise” because rational people don’t call this music. Unless you are one of the top musical saw players in the world, playing an incredibly acoustically convenient handsaw, the sound that comes out of this activity is likely to be incredibly awful. It’s sort of like an acoustic theremin, if a theremin had to take a breath between every other note that sounds like the scratching of a thousand nails on a crumbling chalkboard as a chorus of furious cats fought in the distance.

I was fooled by the beauty of musical saw players playing along with an orchestra’s heart-rending rendition of Ave Maria. Somehow, I thought I could make that abomination of an instrument sound good.

Weeks passed. I got my handsaw. I terrified the neighborhood children, who had decided there was an undead spirit of some kind making those awful sounds. It did not get any better. I didn’t practice as much as I wanted to. Did it make a difference? Doubtful. It seems like the musical saw is just a disgusting, difficult instrument and that we as a society should all move on from subjecting poor cheaply-made cello bows to the task of stroking unwieldy, rusting tools.

Or maybe, had I practiced more, I would have gotten into it. Maybe I would have discovered the secret combination for making the musical saw sound good. I don’t know, because it hasn’t happened yet, and improving my musical saw abilities is low on my list of priorities for 2020. It was a whimsical idea that fell on its face. For a summer I penciled saw practice time into my schedule and grew angrier and angrier with myself with each day that I avoided saw practice for other things. In retrospect, I cringe. Why should I feel guilty for not being good at something? Why should I feel guilty for the fact that I will never be good at it?

I had my experience. I attempted to play the musical saw. It sounded terrible. I found a few gigs getting paid to do it anyway; in fact, I believe my first-ever paid gig was playing Mo Bamba on the musical saw. I made four dollars and the memory makes me cringe, but someone actually requested that and was willing to pay all of four dollars for it. The fact that the recording literally sends a shudder down my spine is not my problem.

This failure wasn’t any sort of meaningful step on a greater journey. It didn’t motivate me to keep trying. It didn’t directly lead me to bigger and better things. It was just something I will probably never be good at. The musical saw serves very little purpose in my life, apart from being my go-to answer for “tell me a fun fact about yourself” icebreakers. But maybe that’s okay. It is not a moral failure to do something poorly and not make the effort to do it well.

Here is a list of potential passion blog ideas for the spring:

• Continue to do the Shakespeare blogs. This semester, I would have to delve beyond my first-semester musings on the costumes, design, settings, and so on. I would have to look at more fringe and unusual ideas for blog posts. For example, I might cook an Elizabethan dinner and document how it went and how it relates to Shakespeare’s plays.
• Perhaps I should recreate historical and famous meals from a variety of novels, paintings, and so on, describing the process and reviewing the original piece of culture along the way.
• I am interested in quirky pieces of local history in Pennsylvania. I might take advantage of this opportunity to learn more about them.
• I am interested in extinct species of vegetables.

Here is a list of potential civic issues blog ideas for the spring:

• This idea is inspired by a book I read last year called The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters by Tom Nichols. This book was about how the American public has lost respect for professional expertise, and the place of the everyday commonplace opinion has been elevated. I would look at prevalent situations influenced by this development in popular culture. For example, a swell in anti-science sentiment that influences a piece of controversial policy is an interesting case to discuss.
• History is doomed to repeat itself, right? I might write a blog pointing out contemporary events and how they mirror events in the past. I might also note how they were predicted by past pieces of culture, such as novels.
• A particularly interesting area of civic issues in contemporary news is environmentalism. As mentioned in the anti-science example above, sentiments for and against environmentalism are increasingly issues of common civic education.
• The growing tension between Russia and the United States, and the civil war in Ukraine, are contemporary issues of particular interest to me. World leaders’ manipulation of their audiences, particularly in this part of the world, is an interesting civic topic.
• In general, the rise of populism is a fascinating civic topic. I might analyze a different populist leader or rising (or fallen) politician each week.

Introduction:
To Vax or Not to Vax? That is the question. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a vaccination is defined as “a substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against one or several diseases”. Since the beginning of civilization, people have found methods of protecting themselves from various deadly diseases, and since the invention of the vaccine, the ethics of vaccination have been debated. Though vaccines bring injections to mind, numerous ancient methods introduced diseases to the body in small doses to prevent illness. One notable method in 15th-century China was grinding smallpox scabs and inhaling them in order to protect oneself (7). In modern times however, with the increased use and popularity of vaccines, many controversies have arisen. The term “anti-vaxxer” represents those who are against vaccinations today.

History of Vaccination:

Ancient civilizations in Asia may have started inoculating against diseases like smallpox as early as the year 200 BC (7). One common early method of inoculation against smallpox involved grinding up and inhaling smallpox scabs (7). The first successful vaccine injection was also a smallpox injection, developed by Edward Jenner in 1796 (6). A method called variolation, which involved scraping infected materials across the skin, was also used against smallpox (8). From then on, vaccine development exploded throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The development of viral tissue culture methods led to the famous Salk and Sabin Polio vaccines. The Salk Polio vaccine was a high point for the role of vaccination in public life, as thousands were saved from the disease. According to contemporary research, nearly 200 million illnesses, and approximately 450,000 deaths have been prevented in the US alone between 1963 and 2015 (5).

Despite this, anti-vaccine movements have existed as long as vaccination itself. Anti-vaccine movements thrived in England starting in 1837, when the government made smallpox inoculation mandatory (3). The Anti Vaccination Society of America was founded in 1879 (3), and the following years featured controversies and safety concerns about a variety of vaccines in a variety of stages of development. Even as vaccines continue to get safer and more precise, however, the modern anti-vaccine movement has re-emerged with a vengeance. Most notably, modern anti-vaccine advocates are concerned about vaccines causing autism-spectrum disorders in children. This idea came from an article printed in the British Medical Journal in 1998, which was denounced the very next month by the journal as “an elaborate fraud”(2).  The doctor responsible for the study had committed massive ethical violations and printed information the journal later said was incorrect, and lost his license to practice medicine in the UK. Nonetheless, the idea remained planted in the mind of the public.

Public Risks and Herd Immunity:

One of the most prominent issues that affects the general public is the crisis that is non-vaccinated individuals contracting a disease and spreading it to the vaccinated community. Once a non-vaccinated person contracts a disease it allows for it to be spread among the general population. The public risk that  not being vaccinated brings is something that is unprecedented because of the nature of herd immunity. Herd immunity occurs when a majority of the population is vaccinated. It stops the extreme spread of a disease or illness by stopping the transmission between a large group evidentially protecting the individuals that are not vaccinated from acquiring the disease. The only flaw that herd immunity has is the fact that around 90% to 95% of the population has to be vaccinated to properly protect everyone. Another big issue is that not everybody has the capability of getting their vaccinations due to insufficient funds or health reasons. Many of the prominent medical journals support getting vaccinated and offer free vaccinations if individuals are not able to afford it.

Celebrity Influence:

Vaccinations and the debate on whether or not to get them has been around for awhile and a huge factor in shifting opinions has been celebrities. Starting back in 1777, George Washington gave an order to have his men get the variolation for smallpox which helped the colonies win the war (9). At this time, Benjamin Franklin was also a promoter of variolation because he lost a child to smallpox, and did whatever he could to make sure families didn’t suffer (10). Some other notable celebrities who promote the use of vaccines are Elvis Presley, who publicly received the Salk vaccination against polio to show his support of the vaccine, Seth McFarlane, who has been on twitter recently promoting immunization, and even Donald Trump, who has recently shown his support of immunization. However, with a long, growing list of supporters, there is another growing list of celebrities who are opposed to vaccinations. Some of these include Jim Carrey, who wrote in The Huffington Post that vaccines aren’t fully researched and could be potentially dangerous, Robert F. Kennedy, who is the chair of the Children’s Health Defense, and Jenny McCarthy, who for the last decade has voiced her concerns for vaccines and how they supposedly caused her son’s autism (10). Celebrities, regardless of their stance, have a huge influence on the public, especially in the age of social media. Chris Altman, a pharmacist from Harrisburg, states “Celebrities have a strong influence just in general, it seems to me that they’re using those platforms to then push out their personal views on health care.”(10)

Why people don’t get vaccinated:

Ever since the first smallpox vaccine people have been against it. In the beginning parents were concerned about putting a needle in their children as it was a new thing to happen, now parents are still against vaccines, but not because it is a new concept. The four main reasons why people are against vaccines are for safety concerns, religious beliefs, philosophical reasons, or personal reasons (11). In current society many parents believe that vaccines lead to many health issues, which they heard about from either the media or another parent. Andrew Wakefield lead to many parents not vaccinating their kids when he falsely linked vaccines to autism. Once his findings were published, it lead to dramatically higher rates of parents not vaccinating their children (12).

Conclusion:

Taking into account the information provided by those interviewed and the sources used in this video, it’s easy to tell that vaccines are still highly controversial and the controversy is only growing. Public discussion of these issues is necessary to dispel misinformation and ensure the safety and comfort of the general public.

Works Cited:

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/

2: https://www.vaxreport.org/vax-january-2011/561-research-that-sparked-anti-vaccination-campaign-called-an-elaborate-fraud

3: https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/history-anti-vaccination-movements

4: https://measlesrubellainitiative.org/anti-vaccination-movement/

5: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170303163208.htm

6: https://www.immune.org.nz/vaccines/vaccine-development/brief-history-vaccination

7: https://www.historyofvaccines.org/timeline#EVT_1

8: https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.24.3.611

9: https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/blog/vaccine-celebrities

10: https://www.pharmacytimes.com/resource-centers/immunization/antivaccine-celebrities-have-inordinate-amount-of-influence

11: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15568260

12: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4869767/ 

Introduce the puzzle:

•How actors are treated now, celebrities

•How poorly they were treated in the past

•How did we get here?

Discuss theater in ancient societies:

•Rome (emperor decrees: Tiberius)

•Greece (philosopher quotes: Plato)

•China (travelling families)

•Japan (Kabuki: all-female)

Discuss ancient actors’ livelihoods:

•Frequency of actor slaves across cultures

•Prostitution

•Poverty, travelling (no home), inconsistent employment

•Decrees against their work

The beginnings of patron-actor relationship (Elizabethan):

•Public theaters attended by nobility

•Censors controlled plays put out during holidays

•Royalty could punish thespians for distasteful work

•Theaters were still ‘trashy’ but nobles liked them (Elizabeth)

How things changed (1700s) when rich bought theater entirely:

•Morally depraved becomes high fashion entertainment

•Censorship eliminates offensive sentiments

•Monopoly on the art

•Actors legitimized in hierarchy under nobles, paid regularly

Victorian Era, putting names to faces:

•Morality censorship (society punishes, not royals directly)

•Arts encouraged by royalty

•Women acting become much less taboo

•Middle class developing, opening theater back up to public

•Art examining societal problems

•More money for actors in middle-class pockets

•Photographs! Names have faces now

Early Cinema:

•Actors unnamed; producers fear having to pay more if names develop

•Actors ashamed: medium for uneducated working class, dull silent pantomime, just above carnival acts

Cinema explodes, with sound:

•Star system: new name, new brand, all about image

•Pick up promising actors and create personal brand, iconic persona that can sell products

•Image worth more than acting skills

•Arranging drama, dates, etc to gain publicity among starlets: modern celebrity rises as middle class want to meddle with non-royal people

•Everyone of every class sees acting in TV and movies and wants to know names of performers they like

•Film is accessible forever and everywhere: immortality for the artist

What does it mean?:

•Morality of pretending to be another person

•Enviable skill or shameful behavior?

•Actors’ backgrounds and survival changing over time

•What do people want out of art? Not just story. Recognition. Familiarity. Comfort. More art.

One of my favorite TED Talks is The Mystery Box by J. J. Abrams. A video of the talk can be found here:

This is a talk from J. J. Abrams, a filmmaker behind much of Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lost. He shows the audience an unopened cardboard box he bought as a child. The box cost $15 for a random assortment of what was supposedly $50 of magic trick equipment. Abrams explains that this box, which he has never opened, and probably never will, is representative of the essential ingredient of engaging writing: not what the audience sees, but what they don’t see. He goes on to explain how strategically withholding information has been essential to creating the strongest visceral emotions through a variety of film projects. It seems that, no amount of artful prose or fancy dolly shots will pack the same emotional punch as keeping the audience from seeing or hearing something. The talk shows a wide variety of examples as an essential visual aid.

He goes on to briefly touch on the mystery box within all of us. Each writer and creator draws from emotions within them, which cannot always be entirely expressed through sight or sound. Mystery is the most essential, most powerful, and, by its nature, the most subtle quality that makes art work. Allowing people to imagine the emotion or situation as they themselves would experience it brings the art closer to its audience.

Abrams obviously embraces these principles of writing throughout every project he does. Even in this speech, I found examples of the mystery box mindset. One place where it works phenomenally is in humor: keeping something undisclosed allows the audience to fill in with appropriately mundane or ridiculous things. There’s a quick joke Abrams throws in when telling a story from the set of Mission Implossible III, “And I learned this very early on in ny career- don’t hurt Tom’s nose. There are three things you don’t want to do, number two is don’t hurt Tom’s nose.” What are the other two things? it never comes up again. It’s a throwaway line, but it demonstrates the principles Abrams genuinely believes in as a writer.

I find the advice in this TED Talk invaluable both in my creative projects and in the way I live my day-to-day life. I try to be conscious of the way I withhold information to keep myself and my work interesting. What I really love beyond that, however, is Abrams’ obvious dedication to, and genuine belief in, this idea. He uses stunning examples, a great amount of humor, and a really powerful, unusual aid- the box itself, whose contents might not ever be known to anyone. The ideas are powerful, and Abrams expresses them through not just his content, but his demeanor, his humor, and his life.

How did acting go from a profession considered to be on par with prostitution throughout the 1600s to the pinnacle of glamorous celebrity today? True, super-famous actors are the minority of actors, but they are the majority of famous people recalled by most people. When, exactly,  did acting become a respectable profession with its merits tied to individuals in a way that led them to stardom?

There are many eras and potential factors to be considered in examining this cultural shift. I might examine the effects film had on this progression, as well as the changing attitudes of the Victorian era. I could go back further, citing Shakespeare and the Puritans, examining the ways people looked at acting in a time when theater was first being catapulted from a bawdy street corner entertainment to a show fit for a queen.

I’ll also be able to examine the pay of actors and the ways they were recruited and auditioned in different eras, and how this compared to how much they were respected and admired in society. How much were famous actors paid, and how did that change with the creation if film stars? While plays only pay as long as the actor works, films keep paying. How has that shift impacted the way actors are paid and viewed as established cultural entities? Even before film, stage acting crept out of shame into a certain limelight. Did seeing actors’ names and images in papers and theaters make them respectable? Or did being respectable make them well-known? The media and advertisement of theater, as well as the different sorts of work actors took on and the sorts of people that became actors, definitely impacted this shift. The most mysterious step in the process, I believe, is going from near-nameless actors to those that were household names. I’ll examine the way audiences went from expecting an anonymous portrayal of a character to an iconic individual mark of the craft.

Fine acting is obviously a great artistic skill, but, even when other artists were also looked down upon, theatre was often treated worst of all the arts. The cultural paradigm shift from despising the actor to embracing the actor’s stardom isn’t just a reflection of technological and social changes. It also reflects the way we think about the self, and about the ability to be other people. I would be able to analyze the moral values of different decades relating to the self, and how these correlated to treatment of actors. This seems like an exciting topic spanning some interesting historical periods and I cannot wait to explore it further.

Speech Outline:

1.  Introduction of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Room art installations.
2. Attention: think back to when you were in elementary school. You probably had to take part in some sort of concert, play, or pageant at some point. How many parents were there, watching? And how many were rushing around taking pictures or videos? I remember always begging my parents to record the plays I was in, and they always refused, saying they couldn’t enjoy it from behind the camera.
3. Topic: Close your eyes and stare out into the darkness behind your eyelids. Take a journey through the infinite space of abstract colors and shapes. Dissolve into it. How would you capture this experience? How would you convey it to others? And why would you want to convey it at all? Kusama’s Infinity Room art installations were originally made to convey a sense of the infinite, and the meaninglessness of the self. They’re now modern art’s top selfie booth.
4. HOOK: What do we all do when we see something beautiful? We take a picture of it home with us. We show it to our friends. All of us have done it. Has the value of sharing an experience eclipsed the value of the experience itself?
5. Establishing Credibility: I saw two of these rooms in the Mattress Factory art museum in Pittsburgh. I took pictures in both of them. So did everyone else in the rooms with me. I’ve been guilty of taking pictures of things instead of appreciating them.
6. Thesis: A cultural wave of individualism, driven by the anxiety and loneliness of youth, and captured in the new world of social media, is compromising our ability to appreciate the original message of art like Kusama’s, which embraces the meaningless, monotonous, infinite nature of the universe and the insignificance of the individual.
7. Preview: Today I will discuss the themes the art was originally meant to convey, the new niche it has taken up in the age of social media, and why an appreciation of the art’s original values is essential to the healing of an anxious modern world.

In order to discover the ways our individualism undermines Kusama’s work, we must first consider her artistic vision, beginning with the first Infinity Room in 1965.

The original function of the art installations.

subpoint 1 – The installations convey Kusama’s philosophy of Self-Obliteration- the individual blending in and disappearing into an abstract, meaningless, beautiful, endless universe, the individual self broken into shards thrown across every wall.

subpoint 2 – There is an essential comfort in forgetting the individual self. One cannot find empathy or appreciate beauty without leaving oneself. Most mental torments would be abandoned if the consciousness ceased to be able to consider itself as an entity, and instead looked towards the universe as a whole.

subpoint 3 – We need to realize the meaningless infinity of the universe in order to find meaning in our daily lives. The anxieties that seem so important disappear when one sees the infinite scale of things. This liberates the mind to choose what matters, and to focus with a renewed sense of calm and community.

With the advent of the personal cell phone camera and the burgeoning movement of cyber-individualism, the way the installations serve us today is drastically different from their original purpose.

The modern function of the art installations.

subpoint 1 – The art installations are now a trendy source of social currency. Posting pictures and telling stories from the rooms makes one seem cultured and educated. The physical beauty of the space decorates people’s virtual existence.

subpoint 2 – Hyper-individualism has created the modern space of social media, where people struggle to keep up a sparkling permanent record that boasts all the best parts of themselves. It is seen as a missed opportunity if one does not use this space to create an idealized self, displaying all of its brilliance, uniqueness, beauty, and culture. All the best must be on display for it to be worthwhile.

subpoint 3 – The art is serving the opposite of its original purpose. Instead of getting lost in infinity, viewers harness it for their desperate personal quest to share every scrap of joy and meaning. One must not only deal with a physical self, and how it is perceived, but also a second, idealized, customizable self.

The way we interact with Kusama’s art today is a sign of the unhealthy side of flourishing individualism. Our selfies hold clues as to how we might escape our modern insecurities about the design of the perfect self.

The anxiety that has changed the way we view these art installations would be assuaged by viewing them the way we once did.

subpoint 1 – Modern cyber-individualism creates the illusion of freedom surrounding one’s identity. It sends everyone into a tailspin, trying to control the narrative about themselves and make it favorable. This obviously causes stress, but it also is borne out of a cultural anxiety and loneliness. Our inability to embrace the idea of not always being an individual shows a fear of being unworthy without one’s individual achievements. In addition, the development of social media, for the first time ever, allows everyone to curate a perfect, interesting, beautiful self for all to see. This hasn’t ever happened in human history before. The self has never been as permanent as it is now. That’s an existential question all on its own, but the importance of this curated self makes the development of a perfect internet self on display more important than the curation of genuine experiences that impact the individual soul that no one else can see.

subpoint 2 – The existential fear of a generation, refined by helicopter parenting and a new age of hyper-security, sits with one question: am I good enough? The fact that everyone strives to refine a favorable individual narrative implies the collective fear that the answer is “No.” Everyone is trying to prove themselves through their identity, and is seemingly unable to accept their worth and value in the universe if that worth isn’t tied to their individualism.

subpoint 3 – People are lonely and afraid. Continuing the control-freak mission of creating a perfect self doesn’t make it any better. People resist letting go of the self and getting lost in the meaningless universe, but this is exactly what they need to learn to do. We must trust the world enough to get lost in it if we wish to see its beauty. We must accept that we have not squeezed all of the social value out of every opportunity, if we want to find value within our own existence.

We must question whether we come to art to absorb the artist’s intent or to feed our individual selves with its parts as we see fit. If we are to experience the art the way the artist meant us to, we must return to her philosophy.

1.  Kusama’s philosophy, and her method of physical immersion in it through art, are needed now more than ever, when collective insecurity drives the cultural narrative. A generation of anxious young people must return to the original purpose of the art that decorates their perfect, cultured social media pages.
2. In summary…
3. The purpose of the artwork is not getting photographic proof of having experienced it. The purpose of the artwork is to experience its message through its strong aesthetic language, and to glimpse the interconnected nature of the universe which the artist believes should be our ultimate comfort in existence.
4. Kusama’s art, and the comfort of her infinity, is everything we need. The anxiety of creating an ideal self, which is one perfect person in every environment, must be cast aside and destroyed just as one’s reflection is smashed into infinite pieces in the mirrors of the rooms.

Essay Draft:

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Rooms immerse the viewer in a world of strange shapes and colors that stretches out in all directions. The goal of her art is to smash the individual self into fractals and leave one gazing out into a nonsensical, infinite sea of space. Now, however, her work is known as the best selfie background on Earth. It has gone from representing getting lost to the very opposite: individual attention cultivated through social media. Hyper-individualism is thriving in modern young people’s culture of loneliness and anxiety, where people are desperate to feel unique and by posting the same art selfies and buying the same products. Every company is taking advantage of this cultural shift by releasing an ad campaigns about how individual and unique their consumers are. Few are more famous than Share a Coke, a campaign that encourages people to buy Coca-Cola bottles with their names on them. Even though the bottles are obviously not individualized in any meaningful way, the modern trend of fear-driven individualism makes this campaign work. This cultural moment of anxiety  is feeding advertising and changing the meaning of art. When Sharing a Coke – or a piece of art – becomes more important than the experience of enjoying the product itself, advertising thrives and art suffers. The commonplace of individualism is growing unchecked in a new social media environment, and Coca-Cola took advantage of this by seizing the moment of cultural change, captivating the right young audience, and using emotional appeals to promote the sharing of their product.

Soft drinks, especially Coca-Cola, have completely integrated themselves into the fabric of American life. I’ve been to restaurants that serve Coca-Cola to every table by default as one might serve water. Across demographics, people love soft drinks.  The Share-a-Coke campaign was one of the first major advertising campaigns to completely capitalize on the potential of social media as free promotion. Whether or not people bought Cokes with their names on them, they posted pictures or sent them to friends, increasing awareness of the brand and campaign. This was the first major advertising success of its kind, completely captivating audiences. As of this writing, over 662,000 Instagram posts are tagged #shareacoke, with hundreds of thousands more across related hashtags and other social media platforms. In a time when health-conscious movements of young people were starting to threaten Coke’s stance in American society, this campaign rejuvenated the image of the beverage, taking it from default sugar water in a restaurant to something new, fresh, and exciting to share with friends. Meanwhile, individualism, a traditional value in the Western world, has been given a digital facelift. The power to curate a perfect social media persona has completely changed the way people communicate, express themselves, and, most of all, choose what is important to them. In an age when both corporations and individuals can be called brands, the mental question of whether something can fuel one’s social media image often comes before all other priorities. The development of a persona that is charming, cultured, in-the-know, and unique can bring all sorts of social and practical benefits to the modern social media user, from finding professional connections to feeling closer to friends to making money from one’s image by promoting products. To fall behind everyone else’s social media curations, on the other hand, is to announce that one’s life (and, indeed, personality) is boring and out-of-touch. As this cultural realization was first developing, with a camera in everyone’s pocket ready to capture life’s most interesting moments, Coca-Cola seized the opportunity to turn this cyber-individualism into sales, promotion, and a “rebranding” of its product.

The Share a Coke campaign targeted a young audience of social-media-savvy consumers who respond well to appeals to individualism. Coca-Cola found millenials’ need for social connection in an increasingly digital age, and fulfilled this need by creating a product that started conversations and provided shareable content. As millennials struggled to cultivate interesting online personas, collecting social currency with photographs of interesting experiences, buying a Coke during the prime of this campaign was, for the consumer, an inexpensive way to connect with friends and publicly engage with something exciting and new. This need for postable and interesting experiences is born from social media’s cyber brand of hyper-individualism: everyone in Coca-Cola’s social young audience is in a race to stand out and find a validating sense of unique importance. Though most might assume the “Share” in Share a Coke means the traditional sharing of a physical drink, Coca-Cola reaped far more benefits from the digital sharing of drinks with friends’ names, even when the drinks were not actually bought. Though taking part in a trend like the Coke bottle pictures, paradoxically, invites everyone to do the same thing, it makes each individual feel that they have added another interesting tidbit to their social media identity. This desperation for a unique, perfect online persona flourishes in traditionally individualistic cultures that teach children the value of being different. While praising uniqueness, the culture of young people in the United States is increasingly characterized by loneliness and fear. Whether or not today’s young people are lonelier than those of previous generations (and there are some indications that they are), the commonplace of youth has long been characterized as a struggle to find one’s place in the world. Psychologist Erik Erikson’s famous psychosocial stages famously describe age 13-21 as a time of “Identity vs. Role Confusion”. This longing for a place in the world manifests as loneliness, which latches onto the illusion of control provided by a perfect, unique social media persona. Coca-Cola tapped into this anxiety by creating a campaign that made young people feel unique when buying and sharing Coke products in person and online.

Both art and advertising are driven primarily by emotional appeals. This is especially true today, as the advertising world has ricocheted away from full-page text advertisements towards video and image advertisements with low word count and high artistic appeal. Everything from colors to cinematography in a modern advertisement takes priority over an informational message, because the way we consume advertising – usually because someone has placed it in front of us, not out of an innate desire to view advertising for information or entertainment – requires a quick way to retain interest. This need for a way to hook the viewer has thrived in the age of hyper-individualism. Just as salespeople were always instructed to use the customer’s name, every mass-produced email listing addresses the receiver directly, and advertisements on the internet are increasingly tailored to the viewer’s interests and search habits. This sort of tailored message makes customers feel significant, important, and unique. Our need for this validation has skyrocketed, and advertising has found myriad new ways to fulfill it. This is the primary emotional appeal behind the Share a Coke campaign. People are thrilled to see not only their own names, but also the names of their friends, on billboards and in vending machines. The customer is struck by the feeling that tailored advertising is designed to convey- a feeling that fortune has smiled down upon them and matched them with the perfect product. This turns what might have been a plain bottle of Coke into a sale, and, often, that sale turns into free advertising through social media, as consumers share the experience that has made them feel special. 

The Share a Coke campaign was a smashing success for Coca-Cola because the advertising team behind it understood the cultural pivot represented by the rise of social media. They took a risk by embracing a new form of advertising, which paid off in years of free promotion from consumers, a new trendy face of Coke in the minds of the public, and, of course, sales. The internet individualism that drove the campaign, however, hints at a troubling reality. At no other time in human history did people have perfect, editable highlight reels of their best moments available to anyone at any time. As individuals use the internet to communicate more and more, and other methods less, the importance of this curated self only grows. This is the first time it has been possible to maintain such complete control of one’s image, and it has created a new desperation to be unique and on-trend, especially among young people. When curating one’s best self becomes a full-time obsession with capitalizing on any shareable content, advertisers will get away with far more than just getting us to Share a Coke. When enjoying art falls to the wayside and sharing it becomes the priority, all of humanity’s way of viewing the world has changed. The more we culturally value what others think over one’s own enjoyment, the more everyone’s lives, both real and digital, will be turned over to the personal gain of corporations.

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Rooms immerse the viewer in a world of strange shapes and colors that stretches out in all directions. The goal of her art is to smash the individual self into fractals and leave one gazing out into a nonsensical, infinite sea of space. Now, however, her work is known as the best selfie background on Earth. It has gone from representing getting lost to the very opposite: individual attention cultivated through social media. Hyper-individualism is thriving in a culture of loneliness, anxiety, and fear, where people are desperate to feel unique and by posting the same art selfies and buying the same products. This individualism feeds the advertising industry. Every company seems to be releasing an ad about how individual and unique their consumers are, but few are more famous than the Share a Coke campaign, which encourages people to buy Coca-Cola bottles with their names on them. Even though the bottles are obviously not individualized in any meaningful way, the modern trend of fear-driven individualism makes this campaign work. This cultural moment of anxiety  is feeding advertising and killing art. Capitalizing on having seen art is becoming more important than actually seeing it.