Detta här är säkert inget nytt faktum, det har säkert varit såhär sedan urminnes tider. Det som är annorlunda idag är att, hela världen med hjälp av internet kan ta del av hur sjuka människor verkligen är. Det räcker med att surfa runt ett tag på internet för att inse att, en människa, det är inget att vara stolt över att vara. Kolla på "2girls1cup" så vet du vad jag talar om...

Klarar du att se "2girls1cup" utan att göra en min? Det gör inte farmor här iallafall... Icecream my ass...snarare Icecream from the ass!

Vad som nästan är ännu sjukare är att "2girls1cup" har setts av miljontals människor världen över...

Förstår du inte vad jag snackar om? - 2girls1cup

opinion by | Tom Topping

There is a video on the internet, doubtless, that the majority of our campus is aware of entitled “2Girls1Cup.” Indeed, this pornographic film has ballooned into a veritable internet cult sensation. For the sake of some readers’ stomachs, I shall forgo the particulars and give an overarching summary of the film—“film” being used here in the loosest sense of the word.

Essentially what it breaks down to is two girls appear on screen, they then engage in relatively conventional erotic acts until one of the partners produces a cup and proceeds to shit into it. From then on, they engage in various sexual activities involving the excrement, everything from smearing it on themselves to eating it. Giving in to my baser curiosities, I watched the video in full not quite knowing what to make of it. It certainly did not arouse me in any shape or form, I felt more like I was watching an exceptionally violent film that disturbs the viewer, but she cannot look away simply for morbid curiosity. Naturally, after that experience, I set out to study, for myself, what I thought I had just experienced.

Now, to summarize how I came to my current line of thinking, I should establish what I was interested in. I was interested in why 1) anyone would participate in something like this, and 2) why people are so fascinated by it. This essay does not intend to explicate those questions; however, during my research I uncovered a presumably farcical essay,  that argues that the video in question is, in reality, an empowering, feminist manifesto.

Naturally, I found the essay to be a rather funny jab at the expense of academia, but then I began to think more about the issue at hand. While this essay is obviously a joke, what if the video had originally been screened in the Guggenheim museum? Given that the museum is notorious for its avant-garde expositions, perhaps this would have been displayed in the selfsame fashion the essay presented the video.

Therefore, what I conclude from this line of thought is that what is and what is not art is highly contextual—nothing special there, any critic worth her Marxist-Reader-Response salt could tell you that. But the more salient point is this: with the advent of the internet academia especially should be troubled by the brewing crisis in the arts: the availability of mass-media to, crassly put, the masses. This phenomenon foists a crisis upon the academy because it will force us to radically redefine what we term “Art.”

Of course, our definitions of what are and what are not literature, art, films, poetry etc. have been under a deconstructive lens for some time now: witness the birth of the radical contextualization of Cultural Studies. Nevertheless, at least for my part, this conundrum evokes feelings of intense anxiety. What, if anything, is the role of artistic studies? Is there a “higher” nature to certain humanities? Is “high” literature or art even worth studying anymore? Does “high” art and thought simply boil down to bourgeois pretension? I certainly can not answer them in this essay.

Nevertheless, I think that this internet sensation should give us pause. Furthermore, I think that this nagging prospect, especially in the humanities, possesses possibly exciting, possibly dark conclusions. For example, presuming that the humanities moves in the direction of Cultural Studies and contextualizes and deconstructs the boundaries between all forms of expression, that should lead to a richer understanding the human condition, right? On the other hand, if the humanities are necessarily passive and standardless, is there anything that the humanities can comment on, or argue for or against? Shall the humanities simply boil down to journalism?

It seems that this composition only presents more questions than answers, but I think the gauntlet for the academy has been thrown down—nevermind whether or not the faculties at Oxbridge or Princeton recognize it.
This article originally appeared in The Monitor Volume 14 Issue 2, published April 28, 2008.

published Volume 15, Issue 1 on August 21, 2008