kingdrake1 replied to your post: it’s not wrong to comment on a visual aesthetic
i disagree with this. the aesthetic & intrinsic value are inextricable.sorry, i need to define my terms. when i say “aesthetic value” i am speaking in the context of the conversation i’ve been…
i started to expound in a separate post, but I’m not so sure the value of the art and the visual persona are so easily extracted from each other. Part of the power of Bruce Springsteen’s music is in his image as a working class guy. If he dressed like David Bowie or Britney Spears, it would undercut the effect music for a lot of people. If Tom Waits didn’t have his beat poet bukowski style, the neon lights on the album covers, his entire public persona, I don’t think that people would be able to relate the same way to his music.
Some personae are seen as more artificial than others — and a lot of time these break along gender & racial lines (i.e. the idea that V-nasty should act ‘better’ than she does because she’s white, her behavior must be necessarily ‘inauthentic’) but nonetheless public persona of every artist enter directly into how we receive that imo.
