A Sucker Emcee was the first performance that i have seen in this style; I am glad to say it was a delight. I entered curiously and came out fascinated.It started off with 3o minutes of hip hop music, some of which i recognized others that i did not. The stage looked like something you would see at a stand up comedy act. The wall behind the stage was a brick wall decorated with a lot of fancy lighting equipment. The program interestingly said it was a one man show that included a Dj. I didn’t know what to expect and quiet frankly i sat down with a negative attitude due to the hour, however a couple of minutes into the show, it went away.

The show started out with a casually dressed Craig, a.k.a. muMs, an actor and playwright. There were no props and no changes of scenery; all that decorated the stage was the changing of lights, Dj Rich Medina and the actor. He began his performance rather quickly and his prologue, his poem about fear, was a little difficult to understand at first. I hadn’t realized that the idea of fear was supposed to be the prologue until after the show. However it smoothly led way into his narrative. MuMs told the story of his life but his acting and emotional detachment from the script made it seem otherwise. And that was the beauty of it. He told us how he was introduced to rap and hip hop, his childhood, college life and his present. He told his narrative through first and 3rd perspective, almost as if he was telling us about someone else’s life. After the show as muMs was describing his process and thought process it was interesting to see that he seemed like an entirely different person than his actor self. While he was performing, he was powerful and wholeheartedly explained every detail, as opposed to his “blandness” after words.

My favorite performer was actually Rich Medina. He and muMs had such great connection, but i was actually enamored with Rich’s facial expressions. His love for his work was definitely seen through his music and liveliness. I enjoyed the fact that Rich laughed, participated agreed and enjoyed the performance as if it was his first time watching. I’m sure that muMs would have been powerful without rich but the Dj added something special to the performance. what i enjoyed was that it was not your modern day music (thank goodness), some pieces were classics and others  weren’t even hip hop. Everyone was tapping or nodding along.

Every community could have appealed to this performance. Even if hip hop isn’t the normal for each individual. The principle of overcoming fear and having the courage to follow your life and dream applies to all. It doesn’t mater where you come from, life exists when people choose to follow passion.

I haven’t really valued the song Cool Kids that much up until this week. Echosmith, does a fabulous job of taking a simple idea and creating a relatable and very catchy song. Listen to it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSCzDykng4g , Now Think About it. It’s sad to say that at one point of our lives we have all wished to be a “cool kid,” whatever definition it had for you. This song is  relatable because the general idea that people have about what being a cool kid meant, is having a lot of money and being snobby. I believe that there are nice people among every economic and social status, however the general public seems to coincide the idea of wealthy folk as proud and spoiled creatures. For the case of my argument i will go along with the general idea of the mass and agree that “rich people” tend to be superficial. This song is the epitome of what it means to be wealthy and part of the uptown crew. For example, some lines of the song like “Nothing can bring them down,” “…their invincible,” and “they live the good life,” are just few examples of what people think when they are competing with those of the upper class. If your wealthy, you obviously have no worries, you have everything you want and don’t need and life is perfection. Who wouldn’t want to be a “rich kid?” Even if “they [cool kids] don’t know where they are going,” they still happen to fit in and be just fine. Why can’t it be this simple for everyone else? It shouldn’t be to difficult to achieve right? Wrong! Us normal folk must work to survive, we must have a plan and we must succeed at at.

 Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Arabia We’d All Be Kings are perfect examples of how unrealistic it is to reach toward a dream that simply, and sadly, cannot be. Not all dreams are possible to obtain, but come on. Where is the common sense? Breakfast at Tiffany’s starts out with a beautiful young adorned in jewels and dressed as if she were worth a million bucks. She’s strolling  outside of Tiffany & Co. and eats her upsetting little breakfast staring into the store. We later see her entering her very small unfurnished and disorganized apartment. Its confusing at first but little by little you realize that this silly little women is as superficial as can be. She is an extremely naive woman who believes that she will be successful if she can get her hands on a rich man. She believes that nothing bad can ever happen in Tiffany’s and therefore belies that if she acquires a lot of money everything will be alright with her as well. Her dream is out of reach but she refuses to realize that what she desires is unattainable. In arabia we’d all be kings follows the same principle. The play involves many simple minded people with high hopes of “success.” Lenny an alcoholic ex convict tries to regain his manhood after being raped in jail, his girlfriend Daisy wishes to find herself a real man, Demaris wishes to gain money and become successful by owning a gun and becoming a prostitute,and Charlie believes himself a Jedi warrior who longs to protect chickie, skank’s girlfriend. They all wish to be something better than they are. However, as the playwriter depicts them, they are all “scum.” Most of them are either alcoholic or drug addicts, and they are proud and foul mouthed. They all lack self pity and lead their lives with a sense of humour. Extremely unrealistic and just sad.

By definition, a class is the system of ordering a society in which people are divided into sets based on perceived social or economic status. I personally believe that we should all live uniformly without problems statuses or stereotypes.Sad to say the perfect world that i create in my head does not exist and cannot exist. We are human, therefore we need to survive, and therefore money is important and so is being at the top. When we are born, we are automatically thrown into a social status full of stereotypes and then thrown again into an economic status full of even more stereotypes. We then live our  lives trying to compete with everyone in this world.

This is where the artists of the world come into play. Part of their work revolves around  their surroundings, their beliefs and influences. Social and economic status, whether they agree, disagree or both, is one of the topics that is portrayed by them. For example, Melissa Hillman, aka Bitter Gertrude, brought up Class division in theatre in one of her blogs. She wrote about the difficulty that play-writers of races, other than Caucasian, have in becoming successful. She brings up the problem that critics are only interested in popular and well know playwright as well as those who put in a lot of money into their production. She says that those who’s wish to be successful in theatre face two challenges. The first is “…the mythology of the importance of New york, a class based mythology that places New York above everything else.” And the second is  the mythology of “money=importance.” She says and states the sad truth that if your not a play  created in the heart of in new york and if your not a play has a lot of money in its budget, it wont succeed. This is sad and untrue because there are a lot of plays that are brilliant and beautifully written that are not in new york an have small budgets. David Rubenstien says, “The world is a complicated place, and there’s a lot of division between people. The performing arts tend to unify people in a way nothing else does.” He is correct, the world is complicated and divided but sadly preforming arts does not unify people. Apparently it is something meant for the wealthy and of “correct race,” both to create and watch.

Class division is something that is very hard to ignore. Movie artists also bring up the distinction between classes in their films. The most compared classes are the upper and lower classes. Stereotypically, the higher class is portrayed at the egotistical money hungry,greedy people. The middle class is the moral hardworking class, that have the blue collard jobs. And the lower class are like the untouchables, they resort to immorality to survive and must fend for themselves doing “bad” things. In Oliver stones film, Wall Street, He compares the middle class to the upper class. Bud Fox, the antagonist was born into a middle class family and desires to live the better life. His ambition leads him to follow in the footsteps of Gordon Gekko, a greedy “upperclass man” in wall street. From the beginning of the film, Stone sets us up with the idea that money is important the american dream is to have money and live in new york and that without it your a nobody. Bud fox says to his father carl, that in order to be somebody he has to live in new york. As bud acquires more wealth he moves to a new apartment with a view of the city and buys fancy suits and starts dating a “rich girl.” He slide into the wealthy life style because thats what wealthy people do, they just get more things because they can. Bud loses sight of his humble background and becomes more like Gekko, a stereotypical rich man. Oliver stone portrays what the general public thinks. Not everyone who is of the upper class is superficial and not everyone who is in the middle class is hardworking or morally perfect. However this is what Oliver stone captures about the view of the public.

In his film Taxi Driver, Scorcese focuses on the lower class but makes reference to the middle and  upper class through the politicians and Betsy, as well as the stereotypes between black and white people. Travis Bickle, an honorably discharged Marine, takes a job as a taxi driver mainly in Brooklyn and Harlem. He watches porn films, writes in his journal about the scum of the streets and contemplates about his loneliness and boredom. He falls for a girl of the middle class, and their relationship is doomed from the start because they are of different classes. Bickle does things that she does not approve of but he sees as normal. Bickle also talks about the garbage that he sees on the streets. Prostitutes, pimps, and black people. He is uncomfortable with all of this but Scoroscece shows that it is what the lower class life is about.

How can anyone have a concrete definition of what art is? The word art has no limits, no boundaries. I used to believe that art just meant colors, paintings, drawings things of that sort. But now i understand that art can be anything you desire.You can create anything and call it art if you please. Why would you neglect someone the right to call their creations art? Art is something unique that people create, using their imagination or skill, with the resources they have. Art can be a representation of an idea, or some form of an expression of a belief. It can vary from the simplest of things to the most complex.

I obviously do not believe that the only art that can be found is in a “Brooklyn Museum” or “El greco.” How the owners of the museums choose what goes into them baffles me. I have yet to see museums that show graffiti or food in them. I believe everyone is an artist. You can be a culinary artist or a animal grooming artist or a tattoo artist. I have nothing against museums. They are inspiring fascinating and captivating, but i feel they lack modern day work.  I want to go to a museum that infuses everything in it. Not your classic sculptures of people with no arms or splattered paintings. I want to go to a musuem that captures the audiences view of what art really is. I want to go to a museum that plays music, that has a tattoo gallery, and that has pictures of street art.

These two works were created by a piecer named Chris Saint. He is very well know in California. He, as well as his clients consider the work that he does art. He expresses his creativity through his unconventional. He is happy doing what he does because he gets to follow his passion as well as make his clients happy. If that isn’t considered art i don’t know what is. Art does not have to be conventional. It can be something created for self fullfilment or to express emotion. Art shows our true colors. We identify ourselves with what we create. It isn’t logical for there to be a standard.