Rhetorical analysis: “Is art a waste of time”
Jaelen Jackson
ENG 110
Professor Oliver
9/20
The essay “Is art a waste of time” is an essay about forms of art such as books, movies, and paintings. The essay is written teetering on whether art is a useful part of society, or could the time spent by those creating art could be better used helping others. When it comes the authors opinion on this I was honestly confused. The author doesn’t necessarily pick a side when it comes to this argument. The author uses the prospective of those who considered themselves to be part of the “Effective Altruism” movement. They have very specific views when it comes to art. For example, an EA says, and I quote “With reducing suffering, we care about reducing the quantity that exists, but with artwork, it seems you’d only care about existence in a binary fashion. So, if all art already exists in some measure isn’t that good enough?” The author uses these views to construct an argument for the paper, but to me the way it was written, it doesn’t seem like he agrees with their views. This is obviously contradicted by the essay itself because as I read through, I did get the feeling the author was losing his own belief in arts roles in society. Finally in the last paragraph the author admits in an almost half baked way that he doesn’t align with effective altruism beliefs, and is quote, “not ready to give up writing” but again as mentioned above, the bulk of the essay rebukes art having a role in society in general and claims that the time artist spend creating is inherently selfish when put into comparison with what they could be doing to better society as effective altruists attempt to do. The author also only really refers to the opinions of those effective altruist he was with while writing his script. They seem to be a pretty modern and credible group. This adds another layer to the confusion on the authors views. Considering they’re a credible source logic employs their views on art are valid, regardless the author is still unclear with his position in the argument. With that being said, formulating new ideas based off their somewhat biased beliefs when it comes to art isn’t necessarily the best way to base an argument about art and its value.
Overall, I think the thesis on this paper is somewhat muddled because of the opposing views going on within the writing. The author clearly didn’t completely agree with the effective altruistic prospective on art, but still used it as the base of his argument. Then finally at the end, to me, rebukes everything in the essay.
