Thoughts on book The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris.

In a chapter called the Stimuli Struggle, Morris describes how selective enhancement of events in drama and literature and stylisation in the arts,reveals how cultures and societies emphasis and exaggerates selective aspects of reality that are deemed vital and important to them.This is similar to the way caricature artist does a portrait.Every day life is made up of many repetitive routines and tasks for even the most important and what are described as extraordinary lives.In our culture through the medium of cinema,drama and t.v.the uneventful and the ordinary is ignored,this creates a sociological caricature of reality.This is why I admire the art of Edward Hopper so much,Hopper emphasises how life is lived through the ordinary and repetitive,and the individuals in these lives are isolated and lonely through their longing for the extraordinary and the excitement that our culture values so much,and that are really only manufactured and marketed by the various commercial media. 

Dali