Many things make people think artists are weird. But the weirdest may be this: artists’ only job is to explore emotions, and yet they choose to focus on the ones that feel bad.
This wasn’t always so. The earliest forms of art, like painting and music, are those best suited for expressing joy. But somewhere in the 19th century onward, more artists began seeing happiness as meaningless, phony or, worst of all, boring, as we went from Wordsworth’s daffodils to Baudelaire’s flowers of evil.
You could argue that art became more skeptical of happiness because modern times have seen so much misery. But it’s not as if earlier times didn’t know perpetual war, disaster and the massacre of innocents. The reason, in fact, may be just the opposite: there is too much damn happiness in the world today.
After all, what is the one modern form of expression almost completely dedicated to depicting happiness Advertising. The rise of anti-happy art almost exactly tracks the emergence of mass media, and with it, a commercial culture in which happiness is not just an ideal but an ideology.
People in earlier eras were surrounded by reminders of misery. They worked until exhausted, lived with few protections and died young. In the West, before mass communication and literacy, the most powerful mass medium was the church, which reminded worshippers that their souls were in danger and that they would someday be meat for worms. Given all this, they did not exactly need their art to be a bummer too.
Today the messages the average Westerner is bombarded with are not religious but commercial, and forever happy Fast-food eaters, news anchors, text messengers, all smiling, smiling, smiling. Our magazines feature beaming celebrities and happy families in perfect homes. And since these messages have an agenda — to lure us to open our wallets — they make the very idea of happiness seem unreliable "Celebrate!" commanded the ads for the arthritis drug Celebrex, before we found out it could increase the risk of heart attacks.
But what we forget — what our economy depends on us forgetting — is that happiness is more than pleasure without pain. The things that bring the greatest joy carry the greatest potential for loss and disappointment. Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need art to tell us, as religion once did, Memento mori: remember that you will die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it. It’s a message even more bitter than a clove cigarette, yet, somehow, a breath of fresh air.
A. happiness more often than not ends in sadness
B. the anti-happy art is distasteful but refreshing
C. misery should be enjoyed rather than denied
D. the anti-happy art flourishes when economy booms
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by (Edwin)Hubble
Questions 14 to 16 are based on a talk about business management. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14 to 16.
One of the first steps in examining your business idea is to do some research to get to know more about your market. Presumably you already know that a market exists for your product. If you have an idea for a business but you’re not sure whether a market for it exists or is big enough to support your business, you are getting ahead of yourself. If that description applies to you, you’ll need to take a step back and look at finding the right small business for you.
For those who believe that a market exists, but who want to know more about the size and shape of the market in order to forecast their chances for success, research is the best place to start. Researching your market to know more about your customers and your competitors is a critical step for small business owners. If Procter & Gamble puts out a product that doesn’t sell, they move on to the next idea. If you put out a product that doesn’t sell, you’re out of business.
When you conduct research, you’ll want to find out the following:
* Who are your likely customers Where do you think your business need to be (for example, if students are your customers, you may need to be near schools)
* How can you reach your customers Which marketing options will reach the most customers at the lowest cost
* How much will they pay for your product or service Are you planning to charge too much for your product or service Are you planning to charge too little
* Who are your competitors Have you also considered those who aren’t direct competitors but who might nevertheless compete against you (for example, if you sell an online magazine, you’re competing not just against other online magazines but against other products that occupy someone’s leisure time)
* How will you be positioned in the marketplace Will you compete with existing businesses head on or will you try to find a special place
A. big businesses can sustain losses even if they make a mistake in selecting new products
B. big businesses will be out of business if their new products are not welcomed by the market
C. small businesses can adjust their management quite flexibly to suit the market
D. small businesses can be flexible in deciding the price range for their new products
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