Saturday, September 13, 2014
The problematic word
The word "Relatable" is not as problematic as the author makes it seem. She goes on to explain that the word "Relatable" back in Shakespeare's time meant that something was explainable that it wasn't what it means today. In society today we use it as a way to use as an example if thats a way to put it, but we use it as an example by saying that if we do something like go to parties in college or we stay up all night that it is relatable to every other college student. The word itself has a different meaning from when Shakespeare was around it's the natural cycle of society changing things to suit them. Yes, it is a pain sometimes because even today there are words changing meaning and words being created by younger generations but in the end that generation views these changes as being helpful or make it easier to say things or give meaning to things its just the natural cycle of english. So for the author to go and say that it's a problem is crazy because it happens all the time, yes these days if we go through things that we can't relate to we end up rejecting it like the author said but it's the way things are, these days if we can't see things picture perfect or an almost exact picture of what we have gone through we seem to just reject it and that isn't always good but to go and say that the word is problematic is hard to back up because many people are now accustomed to the new meaning and have grown to accept it as the norm. So i disagree with her when she says its problematic because even though it may not be recognized as the true meaning "relatable" has changed whether they like it or not.
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I disagree with you on how "relatable" isn't very problematic. I think that "relatable" poses a major threat when analyzing and critiquing works of art. I do agree with you on how our generation tends to reject a book, movie, song, etc. if it doesn't create some kind of personal connection with us (in other words, if it isn't relatable); but we shouldn't just accept this as some kind of norm and let this happen. The heavy emphasis on relatability has blinded this generation. It hinders our ability to truly observe and appreciate great works like they should be. If we constantly obsess over whether or not a work of art is relatable, then we won't be able to focus on the more important attributes that it brings to the table such as the creativity, the imagery, the types of thoughts that it provokes, etc. This will only have a tragic affect on the amount inspiration that we gain from these works of art, which has helped each and every one of us create something special of our own. I think that if we viewed everything this way, our world would become a very dull and boring place. Much of the music that we listen to today would only be a combination of monotonous notes and meaningless lyrics all because it wasn’t “relatable”. Many of our favorite books would only seem like a collection of unstimulating words and sentences to us just because they weren’t “relatable”. There would be very little inspiration. I consider this to be a major problem.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the word “relatable” is as problematic as the author makes it seem. Society nowadays isn’t appreciating Shakespeare because it’s not “relatable” when honestly it doesn’t have to be relatable, by our generation’s definition, to be a magnificent and brilliant piece of work. Shakespeare is extremely talented and for our generation to say “Shakespeare sucks” because his work is not relatable is indeed a misfortune on our part. Someone who is truly educated on the time era of Shakespeare and understood what relatable meant back then could probably understand and see the quality of his work. Yes, I agree it is a pain that words are constantly changing meaning but that is inevitable ad whether we like it or not we can’t change that. We can only expand our minds and learn about words and their meanings from different time periods. I disagree with “if we can't see things picture perfect or an almost exact picture of what we have gone through we seem to just reject it” because, I feel as if not everyone does that. If we all rejected what we couldn’t relate to we would never learn or grow as a person. In my opinion, if someone rejects everything they can not relate to that makes them a simple-minded, and ignorant person. In the end, we need to remember that the works of era’s past cannot be appreciated with a closed mind.
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