Some people have lofty, respectable goals in life: save lives every day at Seattle Grace Mercy West hospital, run the Boston Marathon, back-up dance with Justin Bieber*, etc.
* Actually, back-up dancing with Justin is my Number 2 Dream Job. I just wrote a really long tangent describing my ideal "Boyfriend" music video, but I'm gonna save it for tomorrow's post.
So anyway, my Number 1 Dream Job is to be the Pawnee Parks and Recreation muralist, and here are 6 reasons why:
1. The 1914 Pawnee Zoo, which housed a Jewish ornithologist.
2. Pawnee's Sunday Boxing matches in the 1880's.
3. The trial of Chief Wamapo, who was accused "being Indian," a crime punishable by death in 1834.
4. The Spirit of Pawnee.. there are like 10 scenes going on here. Like a Chinese man eating a hamburger.
5. The progressive wedding between a Wamapoke chief and a white woman which ended in a bloodbath.
6. The traveling magician who was burned at the stake for being accused of witchcraft in 1973.
If I've learned anything from being a studio art major, it's that it's a lot easier to paint a joke than to paint something you want to be taken seriously. It's also a lot funner to paint a joke (ZURICH DADA I'M LOOKING AT YOU). So why not get paid $10,000 for each one?! I'm telling you, this job would be the best thing ever, plus I'd get to use up that $20 tube of titanium white oil paint I still haven't finished.
Like everything else in Parks and Rec, the murals are exaggerations based on truths, and I'd like to argue that while the paintings are mostly for laughs, they also remind the audience of unattractive periods in U.S. history that usually get glossed over. This post isn't going to get into a tangled up argument about whether trivializing those events does more harm than good, I'm sure you can find plenty of those somewhere else. I just want to say that the murals are more than just jokes, and that their satirical take on politics has the potential to contribute more to our education and understanding of U.S. history than most contemporary art.
