the irresponsibility of screams and moans
Jun. 20th, 2007 12:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaI saw this quote by Pauline Kael in another lj and it got me thinking in a way a slew of recent meta posts on the subject haven't managed to: "Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools can't recognize."
Also, from the wiki:
Kael had a taste for anti-hero movies that violated taboos involving sex and violence, and this reportedly alienated some of her readers. She also had a strong dislike for films that she felt were manipulative or appealed in superficial ways to conventional attitudes and feelings.
Just, I think it's so true: irresponsibility as a valid, intrinsic source of pleasure, and not just of works dealing with the 'naughty', 'bad' or controversial subject-matter, but of all artworks. In dealing with weighty subjects (such as death, life, sex, riding the bus, etc), there are a million different approaches you can take, but the effective approaches will be the ones that seduce the viewer or reader in some way. Through language, rhythm, the framing of the piece or its structure, something will inevitably end up making the brutal beautiful. That's basically the nature of art, whether it's translated into myths and classic tragedies or into wham-bam hyper violent American movies (the frame changes, in other words, but the substance of the dynamic remains).
To be didactic, to be responsible, you-- the writer you or reader you-- must be emotionally detached; odd, since a lot of the people crying for greater responsibility have what may seem like excess emotional response to certain triggers in the artwork. But their response isn't to the work; it's to the basically superficial relationship the work has with their own internal world. They are seeing themselves more than they're seeing the 'picture'; in a way, all art wants you to see yourself in it, of course, but it's a self transformed. Art-- good or trashy or outright disgusting-- by its nature tends to want to seduce you, to take you on a ride, to communicate itself in bright neon colors, to reflect upon you. It's as irresponsible as any fling, as any infatuation, as anything where emotions are involved, unpredictable and seemingly universal but always feeling uniquely tailored to two specific individuals.
Once artwork becomes 'official' or 'canonized', for instance, to some extent it starts to bore most people sight unseen for exactly this reason: people don't want their entertainment-- or their art-- to be 'good' for them. I mean, on some level they do 'cause it feeds their ego and sense of self-importance a lot of times to own or be familiar with it, but the pleasure changes-- it becomes a selfish pleasure. If most people go to see the Mona Lisa, in other words, they'll stand there and go 'wow, that's the Mona Lisa! Wow!' without really... seeing it with fresh eyes, with eyes that are open to seduction. These people will probably have a more honest response to something they've got an actual emotional connection with, like a great photo of their favorite actress or a movie they watched at exactly the right time & the right place in their lives so that it clicked for them. What I'm saying is, you can't really grow to love Shakespeare, say, unless you don't care he's Shakespeare; I know this is true based on personal experience, at least. Reading Shakespeare's turns of phrase just makes me quite deliciously, squirmingly happy, because that man has a seriously hot way with words, know what I mean? He's got it going on. Mrrr. :D
Superficiality within art or entertainment always fails in terms of mass viewer response, too, forget critics. Everyone knows that mindless exploitative sequels suck, and once they cross that final boundary of being totally obvious they're just milking their audience, they stop making any money. Movies that really work are the ones that have fun with themselves; the ones where someone involved in them was on the ball, passionate about their performance, their movie. The audience always responds to this sense of 'realness', whether it's movie actors or writers or politicians or creature designers; the LoTR movies' success is a great example of passion at work, passion working. Ultimately, if you make something passionately, people will feel that love. If you make something just to make a quick sell, people may buy it, but they won't love it. The didactic or 'responsible' impulse, basically, is a way of valuing the end result (the 'message' or the 'sell') over the passion of the process, and thus is doomed not to have the emotional effect it aims for.
The other aspect of what attracts people is, of course, the shock value of stirring up controversy, of challenging assumptions and saying something bold & loud & quite possibly stupid (but LOUD). If you want to be heard, of course it helps to know your audience enough to know when not to shout, but generally speaking, people want their attention grabbed and molested roughly, with no lube :> The 'seduction' I mentioned is the 'slow and sensual' version, but that's not what you're going to be in the mood for every single time, generally. People look to both art & entertainment for everything they won't try or admit to wanting to try in real life, and have since the first mummers danced their first dance around the first campfire. Whether it takes the form of a deeply meaningful masterpiece (like, I dunno, 'A Clockwork Orange') or the next Hannibal Lecter movie, at its heart the process remains the same: get up in people's faces and scream bloody murder :>
Also, from the wiki:
Kael had a taste for anti-hero movies that violated taboos involving sex and violence, and this reportedly alienated some of her readers. She also had a strong dislike for films that she felt were manipulative or appealed in superficial ways to conventional attitudes and feelings.
Just, I think it's so true: irresponsibility as a valid, intrinsic source of pleasure, and not just of works dealing with the 'naughty', 'bad' or controversial subject-matter, but of all artworks. In dealing with weighty subjects (such as death, life, sex, riding the bus, etc), there are a million different approaches you can take, but the effective approaches will be the ones that seduce the viewer or reader in some way. Through language, rhythm, the framing of the piece or its structure, something will inevitably end up making the brutal beautiful. That's basically the nature of art, whether it's translated into myths and classic tragedies or into wham-bam hyper violent American movies (the frame changes, in other words, but the substance of the dynamic remains).
To be didactic, to be responsible, you-- the writer you or reader you-- must be emotionally detached; odd, since a lot of the people crying for greater responsibility have what may seem like excess emotional response to certain triggers in the artwork. But their response isn't to the work; it's to the basically superficial relationship the work has with their own internal world. They are seeing themselves more than they're seeing the 'picture'; in a way, all art wants you to see yourself in it, of course, but it's a self transformed. Art-- good or trashy or outright disgusting-- by its nature tends to want to seduce you, to take you on a ride, to communicate itself in bright neon colors, to reflect upon you. It's as irresponsible as any fling, as any infatuation, as anything where emotions are involved, unpredictable and seemingly universal but always feeling uniquely tailored to two specific individuals.
Once artwork becomes 'official' or 'canonized', for instance, to some extent it starts to bore most people sight unseen for exactly this reason: people don't want their entertainment-- or their art-- to be 'good' for them. I mean, on some level they do 'cause it feeds their ego and sense of self-importance a lot of times to own or be familiar with it, but the pleasure changes-- it becomes a selfish pleasure. If most people go to see the Mona Lisa, in other words, they'll stand there and go 'wow, that's the Mona Lisa! Wow!' without really... seeing it with fresh eyes, with eyes that are open to seduction. These people will probably have a more honest response to something they've got an actual emotional connection with, like a great photo of their favorite actress or a movie they watched at exactly the right time & the right place in their lives so that it clicked for them. What I'm saying is, you can't really grow to love Shakespeare, say, unless you don't care he's Shakespeare; I know this is true based on personal experience, at least. Reading Shakespeare's turns of phrase just makes me quite deliciously, squirmingly happy, because that man has a seriously hot way with words, know what I mean? He's got it going on. Mrrr. :D
Superficiality within art or entertainment always fails in terms of mass viewer response, too, forget critics. Everyone knows that mindless exploitative sequels suck, and once they cross that final boundary of being totally obvious they're just milking their audience, they stop making any money. Movies that really work are the ones that have fun with themselves; the ones where someone involved in them was on the ball, passionate about their performance, their movie. The audience always responds to this sense of 'realness', whether it's movie actors or writers or politicians or creature designers; the LoTR movies' success is a great example of passion at work, passion working. Ultimately, if you make something passionately, people will feel that love. If you make something just to make a quick sell, people may buy it, but they won't love it. The didactic or 'responsible' impulse, basically, is a way of valuing the end result (the 'message' or the 'sell') over the passion of the process, and thus is doomed not to have the emotional effect it aims for.
The other aspect of what attracts people is, of course, the shock value of stirring up controversy, of challenging assumptions and saying something bold & loud & quite possibly stupid (but LOUD). If you want to be heard, of course it helps to know your audience enough to know when not to shout, but generally speaking, people want their attention grabbed and molested roughly, with no lube :> The 'seduction' I mentioned is the 'slow and sensual' version, but that's not what you're going to be in the mood for every single time, generally. People look to both art & entertainment for everything they won't try or admit to wanting to try in real life, and have since the first mummers danced their first dance around the first campfire. Whether it takes the form of a deeply meaningful masterpiece (like, I dunno, 'A Clockwork Orange') or the next Hannibal Lecter movie, at its heart the process remains the same: get up in people's faces and scream bloody murder :>
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-20 11:38 pm (UTC)And when I saw the Mona Lisa? That's totally what I said. I had it on my watch face at the time too.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-21 07:31 am (UTC)It's just, reading post after post seeing things either like this (http://eye-of-a-cat.livejournal.com/203729.html?format=light) or reacting -against- things like that, I desperately want a larger picture there somewhere :> I don't even disagree that fiction can have an effect-- didn't I just post (http://lunacy.livejournal.com/355432.html) about that recently?-- but rather, people really seem to be barking up the wrong tree with the whole 'you go write your thing & I'll be over here lecturing you on how to separate the wheat from the chaff' shtick. *eyeroll* Something about the very idea of separating out the worthy from the worthless on basis other than sheer artistic merit just gives me a bad taste in my mouth. I love how 'worthless' is obviously something that isn't 'serious' or is 'pointless'. Like, obviously all the people getting twisted by the 'bad' art are only reacting to the stuff that is more Hannibal Lecter and less 'A Clockwork Orange'. Yeah, right. :>
It seems like what people are doing is totally ignoring the fact that the level of emotional investment that measures impact isn't directly correlated to 'quality' or 'seriousness'. Or like, they're assuming people are so easily manipulated that if you just write 'responsibly', they won't take the wrong things from your work. Riiiiiiiiight, because the Bible has done so well with that, ahahahahah. *facepalm*
Hahah, also, was there really a watch with 'wow, that's the Mona Lisa!' on it?? Awesome.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-21 10:47 am (UTC)Exactly! Most of my favourite books ever tend to combine unseriousness and quality together- one is a simply delicious read because of that.
Or like, they're assuming people are so easily manipulated that if you just write 'responsibly', they won't take the wrong things from your work. Riiiiiiiiight, because the Bible has done so well with that, ahahahahah.
Yeah! Or the Koran, or pretty much every religious book in existence. *rolls eyes*
wtf? i keep doing this
Date: 2007-06-21 08:28 pm (UTC)It's because telling people to write "responsibly" is a prehemptive move rather than a criticism after the fact. Criticism engages texts and start conversations whereas buzzwords "responsibility" rejects them entirely. Unless I missed it, no specific stories were addressed directly, referenced to the reading context, picked apart and criticised in terms of what they reinforce or how they are enforced by cultural and ethical problems. That's very different from how feminist and anti-racist criticism operates.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-21 08:36 pm (UTC)Yeah, I personally don't mind critiquing texts based on cultural/ethical issues/concerns (everything from feminism onwards... as long as you're a little more advanced than 'save the childrens!!1', I'm listening). I think the problem is really trying to step the flow in the first place, however you phrase it or whatever your emphasis, whether substance or framing. I think these people think they're just going for 'solutions' rather than the 'Ivory Tower' psychologizing/philosophizing of criticism (which most readers/writers tend not to care about anyway), but there's a -reason- people only critique after the fact. In free countries :))
no subject
Date: 2007-06-21 09:01 pm (UTC)And blah at the Ivory Tower rethoric. People always use it to justify using buzzwords instead of coherent arguments.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-21 09:06 pm (UTC)Re: wtf? i keep doing this
Date: 2007-06-21 11:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 07:53 am (UTC)