Where is Today’s Rose?
In a podcast called “Works of Art by Agnes Martin and Hiroyuki Doi” he talks about Agnes Martin. There was a story that she took out a rose and asked if it was beautiful, then put it behind herself and asked the same question again. Both times the person said yes, it was beautiful. Then Agnes Martin said, “You see, Isobel. Beauty is in your mind, not in the rose.” This makes me think about how artists want to become famous in the art world, but they don’t try to bring out the beauty in their mind, rather they attempt to adapt to the beauty of the consumer’s and critique’s minds instead. I find that in today’s society many innovations, great opportunities, and discoveries for the normal person seem to have already been taken up.
For example, YouTube. Back in 2005, Youtube was created and was a platform for people to post videos for other people to see. The first person that comes to my mind is NigaHiga/Ryan Higa. He created an account and posted videos of him and his friends making funny skits like “How to Be Ninja”. The quality of the video was poor and it wasn’t really an “good” video by today’s standards, but he did what he liked and people watched it. I don’t think he created the video to please others but rather to have fun with his friends. Today, Ryan Higa has 21.4 million subscribers and is one of the most successful Youtubers on the platform. Same thing for PewDiePie, early videos weren’t that good and he was just playing video games because that’s what he loves, and now today he IS the greatest Youtuber on the platform. Both Youtubers today have a great setup for videos and the quality of them also increased. But today both Youtubers have admitted to facing burnout. Where they run out of ideas and don’t know what to do, take a break from YouTube because they notice they weren’t having fun and were just creating videos to create videos. The problem is both of them know when they had fun, the videos didn’t get as many views. Ryan Higa said it himself, he said he tries making videos he actually likes but every time he does, he goes too overboard on trying to make it as perfect as possible and in the end it just doesn’t perform well on the platform. So instead he opts out to make videos that other people like, to stay successful.
Even old tv shows played off of this sometimes, like ICarly or Dog with the Blog or Liv and Maddie, or Austin and Ally. All tv shows that glorified the internet and how it made them famous. Everybody loves the success stories and something they think they can do themselves, but tv shows can’t just make a show about that anymore because no child would relate to them, which is their targeted demographic. Today’s children don’t have the same opportunities of novelty advancements that I had or the generation before me had. In my opinion, tv shows today don’t have the same spark as the ones I watched as a kid. There just seems to be no new thing that seems like a quick path to fame, so they try to make something new and these new things don’t have that relatable event in real life that could apply. So they become lackluster. Even directors of tv shows have to try and please the audience rather than creating something, they themselves love. I cannot imagine a single adult creating tv shows like the new Ben 10 or the revamped beyblade and genuinely think that they would watch that themselves. I know numerous adults that still till this day rewatch things from Disney or nickelodeon from the list I put out earlier because it gives them a sense of nostalgia when everything was new.
Having no new innovations to get excited about and talk about is the cause of these Youtubers and directors seemingly having no passion in their craft. They can no longer bring out the beauty in their mind because that beauty is their own and the vast majority of people just don’t have the same image of beauty. All I can say is that I hope that people start bringing out the beauty in their mind and take a risk on doing and bringing out what they enjoy, taking that chance could be the next big thing, because I miss seeing that passion in my YouTube feed and my reality tv shows.
