Of course it can. But A: the "masses" have simply become accustomed to the antics of the shock jockeys, and no, there probably are no longer any depth of depravity that an artist can sink to that will shock the masses any longer and B: the philosophical sensibility of modern art is also the philosophical sensibility of the modern elite.
So, err, who exactly are artists expecting to "shock"? The elite that already agrees with them, or the masses that have long since stopped paying attention?
You want to shock? You're going to have to attack the dominant philosophical sensibility, not echo it. I'm not sure the artists have been echoing the dominant elite sensibility so monolithically at any point in history since the Enlightenment.
>the "masses" have simply become accustomed to the antics of the shock jockeys, and no, there probably are no longer any depth of depravity that an artist can sink to that will shock the masses any longer
Just the other day there was an article on here about some guy outraged about big breasted women in comic books for adolescent boys, comics about as wholesome as Family Circus in the grand scheme of things. A certain group cheered as GTA V was pulled from stores in Australia on account of their petitions, and they almost got Hatred banned from Steam too. Respected news organizations like the BBC publish such articles without the faintest hint of irony: https://a.pomf.se/odchri.png
If common people are actively protesting, petitioning, and colluding to censor art for portraying elements of the human condition as banal as sexuality and violence, we still have a long way to go towards mass enlightenment.
That said, if you can name any sacred cows ripe for the slaughter, I'd be happy to listen.
The author isn't outraged at all. He wants something different for his daughter than is available at the store, and he tells the tale as if he gained new perspective, but there is nothing resembling protesting, petitioning, and colluding to censor art in the article I link.
I was more referring to ancillary incidents like the GTA V recall with the line about protesting etc, but come on. There has probably never been more comics available for young girls in history. That article reads as half "I took my kids to a seedy place because I'm a shitty parent that can't be assed to do any kind of research, and it's your fault" and half "I'm wildly exaggerating my experience because it will make for a great piece of anti-sex feminist agitprop."
> “All their…” …and her voice dropped to a whisper… “boobies are hanging out, Dad. These can’t be for kids, and comic books are for kids, and kids aren’t supposed to see that. That Wonder Woman looks like she’s in a video, and I don’t know who that is, but it’s not Harley Quinn. Harley Quinn wears clothes.”
Yeah, I'm sure his kid said this.
EDIT: Damn, random anonymous downvoter on HN, downvoted within less than a minute of my reply to an article that fell off the front page hours ago. This is not the first time you've done that, either. Do you just sit there refreshing the comment pages of "problematic" posters all day? Do you have an RSS feed of my posts? Did you actually write a downvote bot to police a glorified reddit clone? I'm flattered to have made your list, but jesus christ, go outside or something.
You're probably right about /newcomments, but it seems uncannily common recently, even with posts that have nothing to do with politics.
As for the article, I would summarize it like so: "I'm drawing a link between mild fanservice in superhero comic books and male chauvinism and sexual harassment in the tech industry, and also think of the childrens." Seems pretty anti-sex to me.
Downvotes can be accidental; incorrect downvotes are normally corrected pretty quickly; commenting on your downvotes is risky because that can attract more downvotes; downvoting for simple disagreement is acceptable on HN.
I'm well aware of all that, but with all of the intentional unjustified downvoting that goes on around here, I'm happy to burn some meaningless internet points calling people out on it from time to time.
Downvoting for disagreement is allowed, but I still think it's a dumb policy. I upvote people I disagree with all the time for moving discussion along with pointed questions, so it's saddening to see people downvoted or be downvoted myself merely for holding an opinion contrary to the hivemind. Not because I give a flying fuck about internet points, but because it reflects poorly on the community and its capacity for debate. But then again, I think upvote systems are dumb to begin with.
link is too strong a word. He draws a parallel between the situations, but doesn't say the one is causing the other, just that they have some similarities.
You just named them. You want "shock", you have to offend the dominant philosophy of the elite (and especially the art elite), which is liberalism.
That said, there's still a difference between "I'm shocked, shocked I say! Everybody come join me in telling me how good I am for being shocked!" (both major dominant sides do this today), and actual shock. All of your examples are the former. I'm not sure there much left for the latter.
Later edit: I'm an audience the shock artists would love to "shock", and my parents are nominally their exact target, and let me tell you that if my father woke up one day and read that an artist had literally crucified himself unto literal death in Times Square, he still probably wouldn't be "shocked" in any sense the artist would have been looking for. Maybe conservatives in the 50s could live in a bubble, and I do mean only maybe (many of them were in a vicious war, after all) since I didn't live then, but I know for a fact today that "the masses" are already used to swimming in a culture they don't own.
Further, upon more reflection: "The masses" don't respect the shock artists today. It's hard to imagine how to shock people who don't respect you. Also, if you examine the theory of why the artists are trying to be shocking in the first place (in a nutshell, turning conservatives into liberals by "shocking" them out of their "comfortable" world or something), it's pretty difficult to draw a sensible cause-to-effect line on the whole theory anyhow. Given that one of the few scientifically-well-established differences between the two cultures is in their reaction to "disgust", stimulating conservative's "disgust" reaction (the usual shock approach) seems more like a way designed to make conservatives more conservative rather than less.
Perhaps the most rebellious thing you can do to the liberal elite is to be a white person, marry another white person, and have a lot of children. No wonder they hate the Mormons so much!
I agree with your thoughts about "shock" as we know it being a tool of political conversion that modern conservatives have learned to tune out, but I wouldn't discount the effect of some different kind of shock on modern liberals. Certain people pretend to be shocked and offended when anyone so much as disagrees with them, but they're mostly using this offense as a tool, part (as you say) "look how offended and thus good I am!" and part "now I have another person to point to as the source of 'the problem.'" But I am genuinely curious about how one would go about actually shocking those people. What first comes to mind is outspoken, public, mass disagreement with liberal norms, done proudly and on the public's own terms rather than the meek "give me a chance, guys, I so agree with you about X Y and Z but maybe W" contrarianism you usually see. I think this is exactly why people have gotten themselves whipped up into such a furor over Gamergate and anonymous messageboards; the offended have done an excellent job of reframing the controversy in terms of misogyny and neckbeards, but the sheer magnitude of the response on both sides indicates that some kind of shock is afoot.
So, err, who exactly are artists expecting to "shock"? The elite that already agrees with them, or the masses that have long since stopped paying attention?
You want to shock? You're going to have to attack the dominant philosophical sensibility, not echo it. I'm not sure the artists have been echoing the dominant elite sensibility so monolithically at any point in history since the Enlightenment.