So if you own a house or car then it's distressing to see one destroyed in a movie? Both of those cost much more than a trumpet, and for many people are more personal and unique, but somehow most people manage to keep their eyes on the screen.
Depending on the context, probably? During my suspension of disbelief of the narrative, it might make me say "I don't like this destruction!" and to root for whatever might be mitigating the destruction
Honestly, outside the context of a movie or education, I find it pretty off-putting altogether. The videos of brand new cell phones being destroyed, TV's kind of less so but still, cars being crushed or vandalized, etc. If I put my psychoanalysis hat on (always dangerous when your subject is yourself, but anyway) I feel two big things:
1. A part of me just does not like waste. I'm keenly aware of our rampant consumerist culture's slow and continuing march towards collapsing our biosphere, and one of the ways those thoughts manifest themselves is being really upset with people buying products simply to turn right around and destroy them, while barely using them, usually for profit in the attention economy but sometimes seemingly just because they're wealthy and bored.
2. And another part: growing up poor, I'm keenly aware of how valuable things can be for people like me, who didn't grow up with much. Maybe that old computer that works fine that you're going to run tannerite through for a YouTube video means nothing to you, but I vividly recall many points in my life I could've really used it, and I know I'm the absolute opposite of alone in that fact.
The "artistic" angle that a lot of the outrage this is drawing didn't really hit me as hard as these things did, but that's just my subjective experience. I respect people who love these beautiful things and don't want to see (probably) completely functional, or even repairable, useful things destroyed so a multi-billion dollar company can sell more products. (And let's be honest, given the nature of video production, the ones we actually saw destroyed were likely a fraction of the ones actually destroyed.)
The artistic angle I do understand though is if it's done for something like a movie, it doesn't hit the same for me. When it's done to make other kinds of art, even schlocky hollywood crap art, at least that has... a result, I guess? It's destruction to create something. This was destruction for... another fucking ad. That will be forgotten in probably 2 weeks.
Edit: The more I've thought about it, the more gross it feels, and I find myself really sympathizing. Times are pretty tough right now and artists have it rough during good times. How would you feel if you, as a piano player, who hadn't gotten to play in years (or maybe even ever!) on a piano like that, how would you feel seeing Apple buy one that at least looks to be in perfectly good working order, and smash it, in the service of selling you a stupid iPad? I really think this is impossible to comprehend without taking into account that everyone is hurting right now: inflation, Bidenomics, whatever it is you want to call it: people are broke, our expenses are going up, and our salaries remain the same. Yeah, I totally understand why this ad in this cultural moment hit a nerve: a whole ton of people, especially creatives, are struggling right now and here's Apple, buying up a ton of awesome things, and smashing em to bits and being like "here, you don't need a piano, you need an iPad!" Yeah, no shit people are upset.
I remember Obama's "Cash for Clunkers" program where people were paid to pour sand in engines and run them to destruction.
This was all supposedly in the service of replacing them with more fuel efficient cars. The trouble was the numbers weren't run. To equal the emissions from manufacturing a car, a car would have to be driven 20,000 miles. One can easily see that the increase in fuel economy didn't add up.
Then there was the "create new jobs" fallacious reasoning, akin to the broken window fallacy.
I remember once watching some heist movie while recovering from a motorcycle crash, and the sight of all the faceless mooks crashing their bikes during its car chase scene was so viscerally uncomfortable that it took all the fun out of the spectacle. This had never been a problem before.
> So if you own a house or car then it's distressing to see one destroyed in a movie?
I think there's a difference between showing items getting damaged as a depiction of some sort of chaos or violence versus lauding it as being obsoleted by technical progress.
That's because the blown up car is not advertising anything.
Instead, imagine an ad extolling the virtues of public transport by blowing up cars in a parking lot. It sends the complete opposite message than what was probably intended.
Yeah, I do a lot of live recording from my piano to Mac and I was thinking the same thing.
But maybe the ad is saying - you're no longer programming a MIDI track, the AI piano player in Garage Band or whatever is just going to be indistinguishable from a real piano.
I wasn't initially bothered by it, but I think the people who are have a fair point especially about the generative AI implications of replacing real creative tools.
Yeah I don't care how good the AI is, it's not the same as the experience of playing a real instrument. It's taking away someone's creative experience and replacing it with a synthetic version. Even if the result is higher quality artistic output it eliminates the process of producing it which should not be discounted.
If I saw a house, that looked like the one where I grew up, being cheerfully destroyed to build a Walmart parking lot, yes I might get a little distressed. It would certainly not improve my opinion of Walmart.
if a car is like a tool that you tolerate in order to get to work, then no, you might even enjoy the recording of the enactment of a revenge fantasy you can't afford
if you spend your weekends polishing your car, buying aftermarket addons for it, modifying it, and/or considering which car to save up for next, then yeah, it's gonna fucking hurt if you watch a movie and see them blow up a car like the one you long for, especially if you think they did it for real instead of using cgi. and that's true whether that car is a lamborghini countach or a low rider
This comparison falls wildly short and completely misses OP's point.
Many people own cars, but only a small number of people are deeply into cars, and for one of those people I can definitely see a vintage car getting destroyed on screen causing a negative emotional reaction.
Many people own homes, but it's their own home that they get really attached to, not the abstract concept of a home.
My wife is a lifelong, fervent string musician and I have been with her in a film where she shouted out in pain when a string instrument was brutally destroyed. OP is talking about having that kind of attachment to an artform, not about causal ownership of objects.
