Is Art a Waste of Time?

Part 2

After reviewing and going over Rhys Southan’s text one more time, I gathered much more information about the text compared to the first time reading his essay on art. Reading his essay for the first time was very confusing to me. It was confusing to me because it seemed like he was going back and forth about deciding if art was useful to society or not. He had stated “I think this world would be unlivable without art” which made me think that he was on the side of all the artists in the world. He states a couple things like this, so I have no doubt that the essay is going to about how art in necessary in life and without it, life would be boring. Then out of nowhere, Southan’s states “Artists, meanwhile, paint the beautiful landscape in front of them while the rest of the world burns”. He also stated, “Perhaps they should think about ditching their dreams” for a job “with higher expected returns”. This is saying how artists should quite their dream of being artists and should get a job that can actually pay to support one and his/her family.

Once I read the essay for the second time, I really tried to dig deep in the text so I could truly understand and I think I figured it out. I realized when Southan seemed like he was truly talking bad about artists, he was telling the EA’s view on how they see artists role in society. Rhys Southan is an artist himself who writes very dark comedy scripts. I also came to the conclusion that Southan’s true belief on artists role in society is whenever the text is praising artists and the effects they have.

Truthfully, glossing the text of this essay didn’t help benefit me in any way. When I was reading, I could normally figure out the meaning of words that I didn’t know off the top of my head by reading the surrounding text. What truly benefitted me was reading the essay for a second time. The second time reading the essay, I could really focus in on specifics unlike the first time reading the essay when I was oblivious to those specifics and who was truly talking at that time. Discussing the text in class also helped me out significantly because when I was confused about some parts of the essay, my partners could help me out and vice versa. I think discussing in class is one of the best ways to truly understand something because who have the perspective of so many others.                                       ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism )