Hacker News Reader

Comment by StavrosK | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't everything be solved by simply turning the bull to face in a different direction?

Wouldn't everything be solved by simply turning the bull to face in a different direction?

Imagine that they do that and then the girl changes position to be in front of the bull again. And then again and again. What a coward bull!

That would be er, bullying, wouldn't it?

No, because the girl would not be fearless anymore.

And why not solve it by turning the girl to face in a different direction?

Because the girl is facing exactly where the creator meant it to be facing.

Which if the bull turned away it wouldn't anymore.

So the difference in the end would be just who has to turn:

- The statue that is there for decades.

- The statue that is there for less than one year.

If people where not doing this about (what they think in their heads is) some politically correct argument but about art (which is the point of the author of the article) than the answer would be obvious.

Interesting. I'm actually ambiguous on the political perspective, but I fully disagree that the answer is obvious. Why should longevity protect a work of art from being subverted? On the contrary; to paraphrase Stroustrup, I'd say there are only two kinds of monuments: the ones that have been subverted and the ones nobody cares about. Fighting that is tilting at windmills.

I don't know, if you wrote a sentence saying "America is great" and someone came and appended "but women aren't afraid of it", that would change your sentence in ways you didn't intend. It's not longevity that drives you to defend your sentence, but the fact that you didn't intend it to read that way.

One could put a pair of sunglasses on the girl and subvert the subverted ad. The fact that this isn't allowed proves its the real act of art.

The girl is facing where it's meant to be facing, twisting the meaning of the bull into something the creator did not intend. The creator of the bull can't turn the girl, because it's not his statue, and the creator of the girl doesn't want the girl turned, because that's where she wants the girl to be facing.

The creator of the bull, the person who doesn't like this situation, can only affect his statue. Therefore, all he can do is turn the bull.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com