Good Entertainment and Great Art
Part of an ongoing conversation:
I am shocked that I find myself in the position of having to defend the proposition that Mozart is fine art, and that fine art is nobler and deeper than popular entertainment, dance tunes, jingles, yodeling, and such. Since my tastes are notoriously philistine, the irony of this should be lost on no one.
No one is disagreeing with the idea that fine art and good entertainment needs must be judged by different standards. The thing that makes fine art fine is that it is judge by fine standards. What makes popular entertainment popular is that it is judged by its entertainment value alone, and judged by nothing deeper. But I direct your attention to what that implies:
The thing that makes great art great is that it contains all that makes good entertainment good, except more of it.
I can recall periods in my life when my musical taste improved rather than changed, grew to encompass more rather than merely shifting loyalty from one thing to the next.
Profound is not the same as shallow, even if you are in the mood for shallow, because the profound also has a surface as shallow as anything with a surface. The difference is that the shallow has no depth. A Shakespeare sonnet about love is about the same emotion as a Beetles tune that says “I wanna hold your hand yeah, yeah, yeah” but there is also more to it.
There are some books simply not worth reading twice. They are not really about anything, and invoke nothing aside from a pleasing way to pass the time. There are popcorn movies not worth seeing again or thinking about, because there is nothing to think about. The movie craftsman did not put anything to think about in the movie. But it is OBVIOUS that not all books and not all movies and not all symphonies and operas are like this.
Now, if there is no objective standard of beauty, then there is no such thing as art we should, a civilized men, learn to appreciate even if we did not appreciate such in youth. There is no study of art. There is no thought to it. As an artist, I can tell you that this is merely not true.
I, for example, can write a creditable fight scene with all the blood and thunder of a true pulp tradition, mere action with nothing more. There is a craft to it, which is not to be despised.
But a true poet like Homer can also write a commentary about the deep issues of the day and the deep issues of eternity, then he has done something more than just write a fight scene — even though his fight scenes are, well, Homeric. To an unlettered man, A Homeric fight scene might seem stiff and unnatural, and the Homeric metaphors unwieldy.
That unlettered man is not representing an opinion worthy of respect: his taste is untrained. It is not a matter of opinion, he is merely wrong, or, rather, he is unable to appreciate great art or to support his opinion with rational argument or reference to what makes it good. Again I insist there is no dishonor to this: there are popcorn movies I like and crappy pulp novels and comic books and dance tunes. I myself am often in the mood for a hot dog rather than a gourmet feast. There are good hot dogs and bad ones. There are also bad gourmet feasts. But to call a hot dog a gourmet feast is egalitarianism gone mad.
As with writing, so with music, and all other fine arts.
I insist it is not merely a matter of better and worse. I have seen bad fine art, and, in the modern day, things called art which are Lovecraftian abominations and frauds. I insist that a great novel or a great symphony is trying to touch eternity, even if it fails miserably, and light entertainment or jingle tunes are not even trying. They are meant to be enjoyed once and thrown away. The final cause is different.
I do not know what other word to use than “obvious” to describe the difference between beauty and pleasure, art and decoration, deep and shallow, thoughtful and thoughtless.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
