Art you not entertained?
âArt is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.â~Rita Mae Brown
During an interesting debate with fellow bloggers, it came to my attention that deep analysis of popular culture and the entertainment through various mediums (comics, film, music etc.) it churns out isn’t needed. The idea was, these things are meant to be just entertainment, not art. I thought the various mediums were pumping out art, not just entertainment. “Its just a comic.” “Its just a game.” Can anything be quantified as “just” anything? In my stubbornness, I wanted to shout out that art and entertainment were separate things, and to illuminate their differences and to show how they could be reconciled so we could do real criticism about what mediums produce.
Then the article morphed when I came upon my own realization.
I realized I had created a false distinction. Seperating art and entertainment is not sufficient. Its a false division. Regardless if low to high brow, objective and subjective. Entertainment wants to inform, even at a subconcious level, while art wishes to entertain, even if its just the artist themself. The truth, if we can attempt to discuss such an abstract thing, is that we are to be responsible for what we put out in our mediums. We ought to be willing to look at every aspect, inspect it, and critique (find merits and faults) it without fear.
“Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” - JOHN F. KENNEDY
As a society, it has been ingrained the idea of pass or fail, making money or losing money, to determine success. An idea that is anathema to experimentation. But from the low brow and banal to most experimental and high brow , the subject must be critiqued. Not to disparage the artist or the medium, but to elevate it, to improve it and to show how it has or will impact us. Whether its a toy that has dangerous characterizations, to a game to a comic to a novel to a film. We must criticize, for if we do not, we are irresonsible. Entertainment seeps into our culture, we consume it and digest it and process its contents through our own perceptions. We must be wary of what we are consuming.
If a person eats a doughnut, they are aware of the implications, yet can also enjoy it. Same with eating fruits and vegetables. The difference is unlike art, food has a tangible influence and rating. We want to know what our food is made of and how it has or will impact us. We see its effects on our health, and to remain ignorant is to become unhealthy, another thing we can see. To be ignorant of the art we consume, means to be ignorant of its effects on society and ourselves, something that we cannot easily see or understand.
Our responsibility; as educators, reviewers, commentators, bloggers and as human beings is to do this. This is, again, not to weaken or take the fun out of our entertainment but to strengthen it, to enlighten, to simply be aware. For without that, we are sitting at the doughnut shop becoming diabetic, becoming overweight, becoming sick, and dying. Because no one told us that we could eat something else, or ought to. We just consumed, and never questioned.
“I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.”- Socrates, Greek philosopher (469-399 BCE)
Resources:
A list of places you can go that are rampant with critical thinking of various mediums.
Son of Baldwin
DC Women Kicking Ass & SDCC Batgirl (Kyrax2)
Nerdy Bird & The Mary Sue
Too Busy Thinking About Comics & Sequart
Film Critic Hulk & Asking The Wrong Questions
Ars Marginal & Penny Arcade: Extra Credits
Just some of the sites I go to. Places I don’t always agree with, but they do help me think. For anyone out there reading, add in your own links to places that help you think. Enjoy, and I hope you enjoyed this article. I will be back to talk about individual stuff next time, but I wanted you all to know where I was coming from. Let everyone know what you think, here, tumblr, twitter, facebook or wherever you can find us :)
Images Courtesy of: Creativity Unleashed; Gladiator. Dir. Ridley Scott. Perf. Russel Crowe. Dreamworks Pictures/ Universal Pictures. 2000.; ProBlogger; Taught to Think; Homer Simpson Wikipedia ; Jodi Truscott Blog
