"Work it, make it, do it,
Makes us harder, better, faster, stronger!"
-Kanye West
In class we spoke of Habermas and his tendency toward the high modern aesthetics of the early 20th century. He challenges the completion of and fulfillment of modernity because of its ever changing qualities. He believes that modernity is not complete but continuously evolving.
We can see that this is true because modernity is a push and pull between Traditionalism and Avant-Gardeism. Traditionalism breaks from the past and Avant-Gardeism deals with being ahead of everything else. Tradition keeps us holding onto what has happened and what we want to translate into the future (nostalgia regarded in a negative sense). Avant-Gardeism forces us into the future because it breaks from tradition and puts us ahead.
I saw the idea of Avant-Gardeism through Kanye West's "Stronger" music video. His video breaks many traditions of past music videos during the era in which it was released. He depicts a future-esque scene that was very new and upcoming for the time. Audiences reacted positively toward it because it was a show of what we can expect from future life. It is the summation of breaking tradition and moving forward. Even in his lyrics, Kanye talks about what we want from the future: "harder, better, faster, stronger."
We are moving into this incomplete modernity through pop culture such as this song because we're mentally acclimating to the idea of what we want from the future. This idea of Avant-gardeism relates to our desire to move forward and achieve new ends. What we expect from modernity is apparent to me through this music video and interests me in viewing others of its kind and completely difference in order to see the many variations of Avant-Gardeism.
Stronger by Kanye West
Makes us harder, better, faster, stronger!"
-Kanye West
In class we spoke of Habermas and his tendency toward the high modern aesthetics of the early 20th century. He challenges the completion of and fulfillment of modernity because of its ever changing qualities. He believes that modernity is not complete but continuously evolving.
We can see that this is true because modernity is a push and pull between Traditionalism and Avant-Gardeism. Traditionalism breaks from the past and Avant-Gardeism deals with being ahead of everything else. Tradition keeps us holding onto what has happened and what we want to translate into the future (nostalgia regarded in a negative sense). Avant-Gardeism forces us into the future because it breaks from tradition and puts us ahead.
I saw the idea of Avant-Gardeism through Kanye West's "Stronger" music video. His video breaks many traditions of past music videos during the era in which it was released. He depicts a future-esque scene that was very new and upcoming for the time. Audiences reacted positively toward it because it was a show of what we can expect from future life. It is the summation of breaking tradition and moving forward. Even in his lyrics, Kanye talks about what we want from the future: "harder, better, faster, stronger."
We are moving into this incomplete modernity through pop culture such as this song because we're mentally acclimating to the idea of what we want from the future. This idea of Avant-gardeism relates to our desire to move forward and achieve new ends. What we expect from modernity is apparent to me through this music video and interests me in viewing others of its kind and completely difference in order to see the many variations of Avant-Gardeism.
Stronger by Kanye West
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