So I was thinking about major money-grabbing corporations after reading Iceye's little post about the Nintendo DS. I... don't really have anything to comment on it since I don't know the first thing about Nintendo DS. However, it got me thinking about Quality again, specifically lack of quality, which I presume is what she implies about Disney in that post.
In the last post, I talked about what is good. Now I wonder, what is bad? Do I have any right whatsoever to declare a given piece of artwork "bad"? I... honestly can't come up with any arguments for this. It's easier to argue for good; this is something inexplicable that we feel, that resonates within us without rhyme or reason. This I can live with.
Bad art, though, comes with a more fundamental problem. At least when I see something that I think is beautiful and good, I know this. But bad art generally creates weaker emotions - generally, a failure to provoke any kind of thought or emotion at all is a sign of bad art (unless it's so bad it's good, but that's another thing - let's not bring comedy into this, comedy is the single most incomprehensible thing in the world to me). Bad art is bad because it doesn't do anything, much like a broken piece of machinery doesn't do anything. It's useless. It lacks utility.
But maybe that's just because I can't understand it? There's tons of art out there, that I would consider bad but which clearly resonates with people, clearly makes them feel very strongly about it. When teenage girls rail about Edward vs. Jacob, they do it because they have very, very strong feelings about it. As a matter of fact, the rabid devotion of a fangirl is probably a far more powerful emotion than anything I have ever felt as a result of any work of art. How can this be? How can there be so much fantastic, passion-inspiring, truly wonderful art out there that I just can't get?
In other words, this is my thesis: If I read, for instance, Twilight and don't feel very strongly about the book, that's a very sad thing, because it means I'm reading it wrong. Clearly there is a certain way of enjoying this book - a certain point of view - which makes it inspire true passion. Which makes it better than anything I have ever encountered. Failure to enjoy it is a tremendous loss, one which I can make up for with other works of art, but still. There's something here that I'm missing. That I won't be able to experience.
To use a poorly-constructed simile: "What if my true love really is out there, except we're both male, and we're both straight as arrows"? Something wonderful which you're missing out on because of preferences which you can't change, preferences which are just hard-coded into you for no good reason.
It's pretty sad, don't you think?
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I suppose one could say that with the right point of view anything could be beautiful. But can you also say that beauty has to be something rare? That art has to be the top of the pyramid? If everything was art, if everything was beautiful and inspiring and passion-evoking then... what? Would we even need "art"?
So if there has to be something "bad" to be something "good", the way we're geared have somehow split the world in three; the good, the bad and the in-between. I'm sure some find dismembered human bodies to be the most beautiful thing ever, but that might be a bit, shall we say impractical. So how those three are divided might have some purpose, whether that's evolutionary, governed by god, or whatever else.
For the record, I don't think bad art is art that doesn't do anything for me. Bad art is... not provocative or offensive, but I feel the *bad* as bad as I feel the good. Art that does nothing is just... noise in between. Filtered radio waves.
I was just at a dinner discussion with a leading philosopher of aesthetics. He would largely agree with Rik: bad art is that to which we are indifferent. But he had a neat twist on what good art it: Beautiful things, he argued, cannot be defined other than as holding a promise of future happiness. We cannot understand the form of this happiness, but we feel that if we make the beautiful work of art - or beautiful person, for that matter - part of our lives, our lives will be better, somehow.
By extension, it seems to me, if the happiness produced is instantaneous and understandable rather than prospective, we are not dealing with art.
Have we stumbled upon that elusive distinction between art and entertainment?
(Tangentical, sorry, but interetsing.)
Interesting thoughts, both of them... @Yeonni: I'd say I don't "feel" negative things about art in the same sense. Bad art is simply that which provokes no interest in me. Which is why I can get such entertainment from watching horrible B movies: There's nothing directly pleasant, but it's fascinating, like being hypnotized by a car crash.
@D: It may be that the difference between art and entertainment comes down to whether something is immediately pleasing, or whether it just promises something pleasing... I don't know. It's a theory, but I feel it has holes in it, somehow.
What my post comes down to is essentially this: Whatever I consider bland and uninteresting, I probably just consider "bad art" because I can't understand it. That would explain how other people can enjoy it, but I can't. There can't be any universal quality of "badness" to it, clearly, so there must be something there.
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