-- "Ellynne G." wrote: >
On Tue, 20 Mar 2001 15:01:52 -0500 jacquispeel@netscape.net writes:
There does not seem to be much art in Federation
areas - public or
private (and dictatorships tend to go in for
monumental art)
Perhaps, they're a little like Pakistan or some of the more uptight regimes history has cranked out now and then who demolished all the old monumental art and the artists so that, by the time they got around to wanting to build some of their own, there weren't any artists (or the surviving ones considered it too risky to identify themselves) and nothing significant left to take the old name off and put a new plaque on ("Yes, children, this is Travis Square. No, the stories that the statue resembles, in any way, an ancient by the name of Nelson are completely false, the kind of lies constantly circulated by people like Blake."
All sorts of entertaining scenarios suggest themselves. Like the Federation A-Z that reads "Sleer Alley (formerly Servalan Boulevard, formerly Joban Road, formerly Travis Avenue)". I imagine the Federation probably has no interest in art (creativity and totalitarianism being unhappy bedfellows). But If they went for anything I imagine it would be of the Socialist Realist type that flourished under the Soviet Union. Or given the lack of dress sense shown by virtually everyone we see in the show, it could approximate to the brand of art favoured by the Iraqi regime which was once characterised as Totalitarian Kitsch.
Incidentally, I am reminded of the story about how the Soviet Union, in the Stalin era commissioned a statue of the poet Lermontov. A competition was announced and a number of sculptors sent in their designs. The winning entry was, of course, a statue of Stalin holding a copy of the works of Lermontov. I can just see that sort of thing happening a lot in the Federation.
Stephen.
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