James Franco

I just read blog entries that James Franco posted on Huffington Post. What a person. Last week at the Arclight, we went to see Captain Phillips. And throughout the whole movie I struggled with the questions of whether I liked it or not. What a stupid waste of time. When I was at the Hawaiian restaurant I was trying to explain to Jordan what the difference would be if humans were no longer on autopilot. If we had accrued our own ways of eating, speaking, walking, dressing... and weren't carbon copies of the actions of our ancestors. Would we innovate? Would we would be able to be interested in new things without a feeling of anxiety and foreign territory? If originality was innately natural and instincts, habits, behaviors of a kin was the opposition, it's quite the wonder what humanity would have become. Would hierarchy be still a means of determining power? If we longer felt the need to compete for the same tasks, if we accepted diversity and appreciated separate thought for the evolution of all instead of competition, would we in fact be a community in our tasks of creation and export? There seems to be a missing conception at first appearance. For if we were actually almost completely individual without the "proper" etiquette that floods our physical action, what would be our source for need of community? Our social instincts are absolutely reliant on our survival. So, what exactly is the individual and what exactly is the other, the socially adapted being? What do they seek? The individual is certainly the artist and seeks truth. The other seeks love, comfort, conformity, acceptance. Naturally, all persons possess this duality that seeks different and, often times, conflicting themes. The loving husband, grateful and supportive for his family, may still seek a mistress in the absence of viewers, in complete discretion. The question I have been battling with for some time now has been what essences of me are left that are of the individual? Does it remain dormant and seethe through pores once hailed? Or does it dwindle and the remains are as small and as meaningful as a penny? After reading some of Franco's blogs, I've realized that viewing art and an artform isn't about liking or not liking a piece. It's as objective as reading a textbook. It doesn't have to be your favorite artwork. You don't have to hang it on your wall. You don't have to reread the story a million times with excitement. It's about what they're communicating. I much rather experience art and have no one to talk to than be able to tell everyone what I don't like about it. Judgements are for the person void of artistic meaning and about aesthetics rather than communication. Booorrriinnggg.