Book/Introduction
Dead ends in how we talk and think about Art, and how we eventually produce it
Any alarmist paper about dead ends in Art will probably try to sell itself as objective, but it will necessarily fall short. The writer’s conclusions must be based on a personal distaste for the current state of things, but since taste is subjective, the reader can choose to believe the writer or not, no side will be wrong, and that will be the end of it.
There is, however, a particular judgment criterion that tries hard to be objective: whether or not a given work of art proposes something “new” (or, more accurately, “sufficiently new”) to a given individual. But it is certainly not free from value judgments, namely that “new is better.” Such value judgments are implied whenever you read ads about the newest product.
What the glorification of the new suggests is that “genuine” or “great” works are always “new” and “unique,” while lesser works are always the same, to the point that some critics simply avoid writing negative reviews, because it would get tediously repetitive. All bad works share the same typical traits: bad music fails to move the listener; bad films are poorly acted, too unrealistic or don’t have enough character development; and bad novels are weighed down by weak plots or conclusions, an uninteresting subject matter, unsympathetic characters, an unengaging writing style, etc. The point is that clichéd works lend themselves to clichéd reviews.
But the real issue is not the clichéd nature of bad works, or even the clichéd nature of their reviews (and yes, it often happens that the critic is accused of not writing an especially ground-breaking review either, especially by vexed fans). The point is that positive reviews sound as clichéd as the negative reviews. For example, great music moves the listener; great films are well-acted, realistic and have a good deal of character development; and great novels have great plots and conclusions, an interesting subject matter, sympathetic characters, an engaging writing style, etc. No matter how unique, great works seem to invariably result in clichéd reviews.
Positive reviews are clichéd in such a way that it can apply to another work by changing a few details (e.g., names of characters, actors and locations in a movie review), and nobody would know. So much for the uniqueness argument; the uniqueness of a work is typically captured by saying that the work is unique. In general, the objective terms describing the content (as opposed to its context), when they’re not descriptions for the blind/deaf, can apply verbatim to works considered inferior. The only difference is whether or not the critic likes it. For example, a film praised for being “very realistic” can simultaneously be thrashed elsewhere for the same reason, e.g., the story moves too slowly. A novel praised for its sympathetic characters can be panned because those sympathetic characters are too one-dimensional. And a work praised for being “unique” can be lambasted because it “tries too hard to be smart for its own sake.”
This fundamental weakness in value judgments—namely, the lack of causality between the content under review and opinion—is sometimes dressed in a pseudo-objective formulation when the critics try painstakingly to be fair to multiple audiences. As a result, there can be an eerie resemblance between a movie review—“If you like action in your movie, then… If you prefer feel-good endings, then…”—and a fridge review—“If you want a through-the-door water dispenser… If you need a full-height freezer, then…”. Take a look, for example, at this book review (emphasis mine):
It is brave, then, of the much-decorated Chinese-American novelist Yiyun Li to have written a book with largely unsympathetic characters in unadorned prose. […]
I imagine most people’s reaction to the book will be dictated by their tolerance for her semi-aphoristic authorial proclamations and the mannered faux-philosophical dialogue, both of which confused and confounded this reader. Reading it, I felt Moran, Ruyu and Boyang were hedged by the past, but also, in the end, by the author.
❞As a consumer of reviews, addressing this fundamental weakness comes down to filtering the noise, i.e., assessing how much the judgment values apply to you, possibly discounting them completely. You know, going in, that the most popular works may be exactly those you’re trying to avoid, especially and most ironically if you’re after something truly new, as a run-of-the-mill superhero movie will always be more popular than a Gaspar Noé movie.
As a reviewer, you may either accept the fundamental weakness as a necessary, yet benign evil, or do something about it. Recognizing the weakness—i.e., matters of taste and opinion—takes awareness, not because it’s well-hidden, but because it is so common and natural that we don’t even have the idea of questioning it. The method for pointing out matters of taste and opinion is the same used to separate science from pseudo-science, namely falsification. For example, if you read “the multiple character arcs keep the story interesting” or “the humor provides a welcome relief to the serious theme,” you can see those statements are just unsupported opinions if you can “falsify” them, i.e., substitute contradictory statements for them without hurting the appearance of logicality, for example “the multiple arcs made the story confusing” and “the humor didn’t fit the serious theme at all.” In other words, opinions—whether something is interesting, whether the humor works—are best left as private matters; people can see for themselves, without the help of so-called “experts.” In art, the “expert” is typically a highly educated person who states the obvious in unobvious ways that somehow fool you into believing that their opinion have more weight than anyone else’s. If such a person, say Umberto Eco, were to describe the sense of insecurity in our society, we’d get something like this:
The comparison is picturesque, but it has the strengths and weaknesses of harmless analysis. I don’t need the comparison between “bandits, vagabond hordes and wild animals” and terrorists to understand the dangers of air travel, thank you. Likewise, I don’t need to be told about the quality of the acting in a movie. I can decide for myself if it was good enough for me. In fact, the arbitrary quality of any judgment criterion comes out best when it conflicts with our most sincere judgment. For example, you’re thoroughly enjoying a musical act, when someone says it’s bad because the singer is “not pitch perfect.” Even if it is true, the relevance of that statement from one individual to the next is extremely variable.
The arbitrariness also comes out when the judgment criteria are viewed in their juxtaposition. Each judgment criterion makes sense on its own, but their juxtaposition, in the larger context of the complete review, is a non sequitur. For example, there is no logical connection between statements like “the singing is pitch perfect” and “the lyrics are authentic.” From a logic perspective, it’s apples and oranges. Why would the reviewer feel compelled to have both in the same review (in fact, I could see someone arguing that being pitch perfect is the opposite of authenticity)? If we think twice about it, the only way both statements can make sense together is by interpreting them as value judgments. Value judgments tend to coalesce together. In fact, the whole review implies a bottom-line value judgment that encompasses the juxtaposition. What is the point of saying that “the woodwind is particularly song-like and soulful in the second movement, where the intensity of the tempestuous outbursts is all the greater for the classical restraint” (random quote from the BBC website), if not with the tacit understanding that all of this is a “good thing”? As an exercise, where is the overall coherence in the following:
The key word is in the last line: “gorgeous.” When trying to infer an overall meaning from such disjointed multidirectional discourses, only a value judgment can really tie everything up in a neat package. Remove the value judgments, and what you get is disjointed multidirectional mumbo jumbo.
When an art debate—the crowd favorite “What is art?” and its innumerable variants, such as: “Are video games art?” “Is a Renaud Lavillenie jump art?”—reaches its end, there’s a sense of fatalism, of being resigned to the fact that “everything is just a matter of taste.” You like something or you don't, and you can’t do anything about it. You were born with this taste, or this taste was programmed into you, with nothing to ever discover, and no amount of dissertation will change that. It's like a joke that leaves you unamused, so the joke is explained to you, which all but ensures that the joke is never going to be funny. Taste in art and jokes is too personal to be communicated meaningfully. And while there are communities of taste, one finds out with experience that the consensus on which these communities are founded is first and foremost superficial and coincidental, and that agreement based on taste is akin to deaf people talking to each other.
Excising the value judgments from a review works around the fundamental weakness of subjective opinions. But even then, it just leaves us with a random juxtaposition of mostly objective statements about content. Something fundamental seems to be amiss, that can’t be captured by a random collage of objective statements: (1) contrary to taste and feeling, this something is objective and thus communicable, (2) it addresses content not only objectively, but also holistically—i.e., it addresses the meaning of juxtaposition—and (3) it is easy to overlook for a variety of reasons.
This essay prepares the reader for this dimension of interpretation and communication which is missing from reviews, even and especially when they are positive. Therefore, it is far from being yet another general theory about what Art is or should be, which works are good or bad, or a recipe for producing great art. The particular content that I discuss will demand self-discipline in interpretation and communication. The difficulty is not so much in the way we talk about it, but rather in the fact that the language of value dominates how we think and consume art. Bad works are clichés, and so are their reviews. But the reviews of great works are clichés as well; in fact, the most unique works can be clichés when viewed through the lens of reviews.
It is all about abandoning general theories of what is good/bad, binary value judgments and their cousin, categorizations, in favor of tackling works in all their individuality, with an expanded critical awareness of the cliché. Saying more or less covertly that a work is “absolutely genius” does not exactly honor individuality. And if exposing the pseudo-universality of value judgment-based reviewing is going to be what it takes to address the gap between interpretation and uniqueness in art, it should also be how we address “universal” theories about art: by seeing in them the ubiquitous, unconscious clichés that pervade our thinking and needlessly prevent us from precisely describing uniqueness as a potential gateway to enjoyment.
An issue not of value, but of the interpretation that precedes value
The dead end is not art (although it can ultimately be), but interpretation. The answer to that is a “new style” of interpretations without value judgments. If a work is at least somewhat unique, so is its new-style interpretation. A new-style interpretation doesn’t demand that you accept or agree with it. Instead, its purpose is to highlight some uniqueness in the work. You are free to judge the value of the revealed uniqueness on a per-case basis, and even if you don’t like the interpretation, you can still come away having learned something new because the interpretation is objective. It first and foremost covers ideas that seemed new to the critic, not the critic’s audience. In a lot of ways, a new-style interpretation is successful before it’s even read: it achieves its purpose at the exact moment the uniqueness of a work is thought by an individual in a clear, objective light. The ability to communicate that uniqueness is a side benefit.
This essay has the following demographics in mind:
- Those who feel that boredom or routine are progressively taking over their enthusiasm for art and/or talks about art
- Those who have given some art an honest try, listened to what enthusiasts had to say, but came away unimpressed despite understanding said enthusiasts perfectly
It doesn’t try to make believers out of non-believers, or to convince people happy with art that there is a dead end in art, like some kind of missionary trying to sell paradise to perfectly happy aborigines. The fact that it only prepares people for interpretations that are only as unique as the work that underlie them, makes it fundamentally down-to-earth and anti-“big theory.” It doesn’t need to be linked to a subculture, to the philosophy of art or some grand purpose in the history of art or human knowledge, although I do try not to repeat what others have already said. I find it better to quote them, pages if necessary. The reason for the essay is extremely banal: boredom. Boredom from reading the same reviews/opinions. Boredom toward a peculiar mode of consumption accepted as universal. The essay articulates the reasons that underlie this boredom, and provides the means for escaping a cycle of consumption/production where reviewers/artists/consumers influence each other through superficial communication. But first, we need to question what is never questioned.
