Response to video why beauty matters
In the video which is entitled, “why beauty matters”, Roger Scruton, who is the Director, focuses his arguments on the importance and the superior nature of beauty. His video is about the ugliness in modern art and culture and how we mainly need beauty for the sustenance of our lives. He directly analyses the importance of beauty in the arts and people’s life. He points out that, in the 20th century, beauty’s importance faded, and art aimed at disturbing and breaking moral taboos. He argues that beauty is categorized into human, artistic, and natural beauties. His view is that beauty is majorly a divine reassessment from the higher group.
Furthermore, a discussion on the fear of architecture is also contained, and how it tends to compare with other traditional forms. Beautiful things manage to attract people hence drawing respect and care for themselves yet, on the contrary, ugly things are repelled, attracting only destructors and this brings degradation for themselves. In Scruton’s view, modern art tends to attract bad manners, self-absorption and emotional isolation. He argues that what you read and listen to matters, and that aesthetics impact on everything in society.
While discussing artistic beauty, Scruton highlights the idea of taste and morality, using jokes and humour as a comparison. He points out that one’s beauty reflects his/her character. Since beauty ceased being important, our manners, music and language have become self-centered, offensive and loud. In the firm also, Scruton tends to oppose modern artists by mainly challenging them on the works which they do promote.
To him, beauty is a remedy for the chaos and suffering that we endure. To Scruton, losing beauty is like losing the importance of life. The importance of beauty includes shaping our world and getting to understand our nature. Killing off beauty will result in ugliness and isolation. Furthermore, beauty offers a consolation of the human being’s worthiness and dignity. Beauty’s demise has been accompanied by the disappearance of religion and values, making it hard to judge taste or proclaim values.
Sucron also illustrates two areas where lack of beauty has violated that which is sacred. Firstly, it is pornography, which he suggests that it has highly reduced a human being into an object, hence losing the spirit that makes humans beautiful. Secondly, it is kitsch, which is related to religious images. He points out that human beings are not purposeless objects to be used by others for mechanical advantage. He suggests that liberal elites, loss of religion and moral waste contribute to the lack of beauty. He claims that artists no longer illustrated sacred stories but instead discovered the stories for themselves by interpreting the secrets of nature. Furthermore, he explores the connection of art to western religion.
Scruton also points on the substantial impact of science on art, while also describing the link of spirituality and religion to beauty concepts. Furthermore, he disapproves modern architecture in the movie as he gives an insight to the community he grew in. His community was altered to make way for offices and bus station. He claims that the modernist new-styled buildings never considered beauty in their designation and therefore, the things you build can sooner be considered useless if you only consider utility. Years later, the offices were abandoned, and buildings destroyed, leaving the community in a state of neglect and ruined, hence this makes him claim that utility has become the new standard of measure. However, the utility is spoilt by ugliness. Furthermore, Scruton points out the basic principls of art.