Meaningful Fragments

            “Genre is a minimum-security prison” (p. 70). Genre is said to be a way to join books that have similar subjects or that address similar topics. However, I strongly believe that genres are not necessarily that stable. It is true that books have specific genres and that almost all of them have been categorized by this manner. However, after reading a book or watching a movie, sometimes you are not satisfied with or do not understand why that genre was given to the piece of art if it fits in another one. A work could even change from one genre to another as it develops. Django Unchained and Never Back Down are examples that reflect this issue. Therefore, genres are not as secure as they seem to be. There are certain times when you feel that this categorization has been given arbitrarily and could have been modified to be more exact.

            “Our culture is obsessed with real events because we experience hardly any” (p. 82). I believe that the less an individual has of a certain object or experience, the more desire he has of that thing. Therefore, if people are not living what we call real experiences, then their desire for real experiences will increase. We might consider real events every event that happens to us; however, this is reality to us, not to the rest of the people. In fact, once you realize a moment is reality, that moment has already passed as is no longer reality. Therefore, there are very few, if any, real moments in our lives which make us eager for real events.

            “We live in difficult times; art should be difficult (my goal is to make every paragraph as discomforting as possible)” (p. 84). Reading an easy novel, watching a movie that is easy to understand or looking at a work of art that has no profound meaning has to real charm. We live in a time where the more difficult a work is, the more it attracts and engages the audience since they feel it is their job to decipher the hidden message. Shields even provides an example of this idea in the very same fragment he uses to explain it. This fragment is confusing and not completely coherent. Nevertheless, once the reader understands it, he comprehends a profound meaning that can be applied to real life.