Our normal view of ideas is also a normative view; it embodies a canon or an ideal about which ideas we ought to accept or admire or approve of. In brief, we ought to accept the true and the beautiful. According to the normal view, the following are virtual tautologies - trivial truths not worth the ink to write them down:
Idea X was believed by the people because X was deemed true.
People approved of X because people found X to be beautiful.
These norms are not just dead obvious, they are constitutive: they set the rules whereby we think about ideas. We require explanations only when there are deviations from these norms. Nobody has to explain wy a book purports to be full of true sentences, or why an artist might strive to make something beautiful - it just "stands to reason".
Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Simon and Schuster, 1995
Some years ago, while I was undertaking postgraduate work, I took part in a composition workshop. Each of us was in a group and each group composed one part of a larger workshop item. After the first performance of this, we sat down to discuss it. The workshop tutor mentioned that one part of one of the items was 'beautiful', and there was a deathly silence.
American Beauty
Sam Mendes, Alan Ball, 1999
Analyse the effect of the change of music during the cheerleaders' dance sequence about thirty minutes into this film.
Analyse the concepts of beauty investigated in the film, especially to do with conformity/difference...
What, if anything, does the concept of beauty have to do with music?
"I'm not obsessing, I'm just curious"
The watcher and the watched/the filmmaker.
The artist and the art...
Drug culture and suburban morality
Ordinariness and beauty
"In order to be successful, one must project an image of success at all times."
- I got that homeless woman on videotape
- Why would you film that?
- Because it was amazing.
- What's amazing about it?
- When you see something like that, it's like God is looking right at you, just for a second, and if you're careful you can look right back.
- And what do you see?
- Beauty
Do you want to see the most beautiful thing I've ever filmed?... It was one of those days, when it was a minute away from snowing...and there was this electricity in the air...you can almost hear it...and this bag was just...dancing...like a little kid begging me to play with it...for fifteen minutes...
That's the day I realised there was this...entire life behind things...and this incredibly, benevolent force...that wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid...ever.
Video's a poor excuse I know...but it helps me remember...I need to remember.
Sometimes there is so much...beauty...in the world...I feel like I can't take it...and my heart...is just going to...cave in...
- Jane, he's a freak.
- Well then so am I. And we'll always be freaks and we'll never be like other people. And you'll never be a freak 'cause you're just...too perfect.
- Yow, well...at least I'm not ugly.
- Yes you are, and you're boring, and you're totally ordinary, and you know it.
I'd always heard you're entire life flashes in front of your eyes before you die. First of all, that one second isn't a second at all. It stretches on forever, like an ocean of time. For me, it was lying on my back at boy scout camp watching falling stars...and yellow leaves from the maple trees that lined our street...or my grandmother's hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper...and the first time I saw my cousin tony's brand new firebird...and Janie...and Janie...and Carolyn.
I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst, and then I remember to relax and to stop trying to hold onto it, and then it flows through me like rain, and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.
You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry, you will some day.
Beauty and the Beast