PrintAs central as they are to our daily lives, arts and culture are all too easily dismissed as trivial distractions or wastes of our time. TV is the “boob tube”; movie reviews are “fluff pieces.” But as any number of clichés tell us, words—and theater, and music, and everything else lumped into the all-inclusive label of “culture”—have power.
Our third lead story, penned by the Eye's former managing editor for features Anneliese Cooper, highlights the arts’ all-too-often underestimated impact. Tackling the subject of the so-called celluloid ceiling, Anneliese points out that representation, or lack thereof, has a direct impact on perception. The pervasive absence of female directors, female writers, and even female characters in American film turns the idea that, as Anneliese puts it, “BOYS, GUNS; GIRLS, FEELINGS” into a self-fulfilling prophecy; the presence of women is treated as an anomaly in a world that’s supposed to mirror our own, and women’s absence comes to be the norm both on-screen and off.
The relationship between the action on-screen and the viewers who consume it also preoccupies “Are We What We Watch?”, Beth Tolmach’s feature investigating the possible real-life consequences of violence in popular culture. Like Anneliese’s lead, Beth’s feature examines the symbiotic relationship between popular culture and just plain culture: do violent movies, TV shows, and video games cause violence, or does our violence cause them?
Though Anneliese and Beth’s articles are especially straightforward in highlighting the impact the arts have on our everyday lives, the belief that arts and culture matter underlies every word The Eye has ever published, and the pieces in fourth issue are no exception. From an examination of Restaurant Week from the perspective of a college student to a survey of the rock musical and its target audience, this issue does anything but trivialize the importance of the arts. Read on, and if writing decidedly unfluffy pieces sounds like your cup of tea, email eye@columbiaspectator.com–we’re always looking for contributors.