Art for Art's sake?

When you enter "Frank Yang" into the search bar of YouTube, the site returns amateur videos of hardcore workout sessions. But don't be quick to judge. View more videos posted by YouTube user digitalairair, and you are opened to the expressive, artistic, fucked up world of Frank Yang and his quote-unquote art.

The first Frank Yang video I experienced was a compilation of shots of Yang destroying his room wearing nothing but his mother's tiny underwear. With his brother on the bed screaming "how long is this going to take clean up?!" he tears up his belongings with rage and disgust. These action shots included scene cuts of Yang vomiting, reading out of a dream journal about eating out his mom's pussy, playing the fiddle, and masturbating. The first thing that came to my mind was: What. The. Fuck. It was like watching a car accident; it hurt to watch, but I just couldn't look away. Immersing myself in this video was like watching a psychotic rage party at the local mental hospital. Was this even real?

The video was aptly titled Entropy aka Ultimate Workout. On a sidebar next to the video, an artist statement is given. It explains the origins of the video are that for years he has been fighting entropy by "by meticulously cleaning, maintaining, and organizing fruitless material objects in a habitual manner." In addition to wrestling entropy, he eloquently concludes that we define who we are by the objects we keep, and that his ragefest and video was his way of putting an end to his personal consumerism.

But my question was, was all of this really necessary? Yang concludes "If nothing else, the result of this disturbing anarchic served as a kind of wake-up call, as it raised interesting questions about the nature of my identity and my relationship to the world I made." Whatever makes you feel better, dude. He categorizes his video under comedy. I'm pretty sure that's the only funny thing about it.

Have You heard?

It is a ripe Rhode Island morning. Three-Fourths of the Griffin men are present at the kitchen table. Dog and writer/actor Brian begin to read the Quahog Informant. Peter, father and head-of-the-household asks Brian to view said periodical. As Peter flips through the Informant he confusingly grunts into the paper. Peter inquisitively asks about the absence of an important piece, which he had thought to be missing from his periodical.

Concerned, Brian asked Peter for further explanation. Peter claims:

“Well there seems to be an absence of a certain ornithological piece; a headline regarding mass awareness of a certain avian variety.”

Inquisitively, Brian wonders what Peter is talking about, Stewie, Peter’s baby, then quickly warns Brian to not be so inquisitive. Suddenly, Peter jumps up from his chair and with an animated glaze in his eyes, starts metrically pumping his arms up-and-down. As Brian stares questioningly in Peter’s direction, Peter begins to clarify that,

“Oh, well a bird-bird-bird. B-bird’s is the word. Brian! Don’t you know about the bird? Well Peter’s gonna tell you about the bird! Oh, well a bird-bird-bird. B-bird’s is the word. Surfi-“

Suddenly, in the midst of his explanation, Peter starts to experience what seems like a seizure. He cannot speak clearly, and muscle spasms are overtaking his regular bodily movements. Peter suddenly falls to the floor, shakes and vocalizes uncontrollably. After a few moments, he takes a deep breath, and falls lifeless onto the tile floor. As drool is foaming out of the side of his mouth, Brian rushes over to help. Flabbergasted, Brian asks if Peter is all right. In the middle of his inquiry, Peter wakes up to finish his explanation.

“Bah-pa-pa Ooh-mow-mow, Bah-pa Ooh-mow-mow, Bah-pa-pa Ooh-mow-mow, Bah-pa Ooh-mow-mow, Bah-pa-pa Ooh-mow-mow, Bah-pa Ooh-mow-mow, Bah-pa Ooh-mow-mow!”

As Brian stares blankly at Peter rhythmically pumping his arms up-and-down, Stewie pulls a revolver from his baby jumper and proceeds to put the barrel in his mouth. Although he did not succeed in taking his life, these actions show that songs that are repetitive in nature can ultimately cause an individual to want to inflict bodily harm on himself or others.



(Parry, I chose to focus on a scene from Family Guy instead of a movie. I hope you can understand:)