Reading 5

"On Beauty and Being Just," by Elaine Scarry, brought up a few arguments that I had never thought about before.  As an artist, I am constantly thinking of the visual affects objects or anything around me have, whether that is beauty, or a deeper emotional response from something.  I liked that Scarry related the idea of beauty to objectification.  I agree, that whether the thing of beauty is a human, animal, or object, giving it the title of beautiful makes it into just a thing for someone else’s pleasure.  I think that creating something to be the object of someone’s pleasure isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it depends on the intent of the thing itself.    

I was also very interested in how the reading made me think deeper about the everyday labels we apply to people and things around us.  I had never thought about how the label of beauty could “distract attention” from something else.  I think the author is asking people to look deeper than the first visual response they get from looking at something, and to start thinking about a more emotional or mental response to the things around us.