The Value of Art, or, "Bad" is in the Eye of the Beholder

[Wild Gazebo]

I don't think 'taste' and 'quality' have much in common. And I might suggest--if you are in fact curious as to how others attain their critical approach--to separate the idea of personal preference and cultural relevance. Just an idea to help you understand some peoples approaches to critique.

I don't think anyone...even the source...consider dismissive comments as factual or accurate.

 

[Merlion]

I don't think 'taste' and 'quality' have much in common

I dont see how, when speaking of a subjective issue, they can be anything other than the same.

Especially since if you accept the idea that they are totally seperate, that means anyone who likes something that doesnt meet your standard of "quality" somehow has defective taste.

to separate the idea of personal preference and cultural relevance. Just an idea to help you understand some peoples approaches to critique.

I've never said anything about cultural relevence. I've talked about inherent value as a result of time, effort, thought and feeling. And those are certainly seperate from personal preference.


However, in the case of subjective things like art, I dont see taste/enjoyment/prefence as being especially seperate from quality. Basically I agree with what Wombat said, with one added thing, essentially this: if you read a book, and enjoy it, its a good book for you. If you read a book and dont enjoy or dislike it, then its a bad book, for you, but will be good for someone else and still therefore has value.


However, cultural relevence is an interesting facet of this whole thing as well, but is also once again hard to define.

I don't think anyone...even the source...consider dismissive comments as factual or accurate.

I disagree...I've seen a good few who do, as long as their dismissive comments are backed up by a set of criteria set down by "experts", or if they seem to follow the majority.

That also doesnt change the fact that, at least to me (even though I realize the peices creator isnt being addressed or even seeing it) such statements are rude and unpleasant, and do tend to cheapen the person's opinion.

Also, honestly and I dont mean this to insult anyone, but to me claiming that an artistic (and therefore subjective) work is objectively bad and worthless, wether you have "expert" back up or not, is an act of ego and hubris.

 

[Wild Gazebo]

Perhaps if you simplified your approach to the topic without allowing the myriad of possibilities cloud your understanding.

Think of a small child learning to play violin (I'm not sure if you are familiar with this awful noise but I assure you it isn't pleasant). Contextualize this with the loving ears of a Mother and the acute ears of the instructor. Extrapolate that idea.

Most critics rise from within the field they critique.

I'm not really trying to change your mind--as I feel my opinions are very similar to yours--but you seemed generally interested in how subjectiveness could be navigated and, in fact, judged. I have spent a GREAT deal of time in the arts community on both ends of the critic's gaze.

 

[shilsen]

Perhaps if you simplified your approach to the topic without allowing the myriad of possibilities cloud your understanding.

Think of a small child learning to play violin (I'm not sure if you are familiar with this awful noise but I assure you it isn't pleasant). Contextualize this with the loving ears of a Mother and the acute ears of the instructor. Extrapolate that idea.

Most critics rise from within the field they critique.

I'm not really trying to change your mind--as I feel my opinions are very similar to yours--but you seemed generally interested in how subjectiveness could be navigated and, in fact, judged. I have spent a GREAT deal of time in the arts community on both ends of the critic's gaze.

Nicely put.

I think Merlion's missing the fact that there are degrees and levels of judgement between pure objectivity and pure subjectivity. Art and its judgement may be subjective in many ways, but to assume that means there's absolutely no basis for objective judgement is a little simplistic.

Similarly, Merlion's creating a simple dichotomy between derivative and original. Something can be both derivative and original, differing only in degree. It's a truism that almost all of Shakespeare's plots are partly derived from other texts. And after deriving the plots (or parts thereof), he changed a vast number of things to make the final product incrediblly original. It's not an either-or proposition.

And as for the idea that time and effort automatically gives something value, I have a bunch of freshman composition papers here that I'd like you to take a look at

 

[Merlion]

Think of a small child learning to play violin (I'm not sure if you are familiar with this awful noise but I assure you it isn't pleasant). Contextualize this with the loving ears of a Mother and the acute ears of the instructor. Extrapolate that idea.

I'm not saying people cant improve their skills in a given craft. I'm saying that just because a person doesnt like something, wether they have "credentials" or not, and/or just because a work of art or literature doesnt adhere to a certain set of rules or guidlines, wether layed down by "experts" or not, doesnt bereft it of value. Because as Wombat said, if someone doesnt enjoy a work, it means it didnt have value for them, but not that it is valueless universally.

Most critics rise from within the field they critique

Yes, I'm sure thats true. And?


It doesnt make their opinions anything more than opinions, or even neccesarily any more valid than anyone else's opinion.

I'm not really trying to change your mind--as I feel my opinions are very similar to yours--but you seemed generally interested in how subjectiveness could be navigated and, in fact, judged. I have spent a GREAT deal of time in the arts community on both ends of the critic's gaze.

I dont have a problem with someone having certain crtiteria or guidlines of quality of craft. You can determine what generally works well, and appeals to large numbers of people. Where I have a problem is when people decide that a work is objectively, totally "bad" and worthless, for everyone, no matter what, and that if you do enjoy it, its because your tastes are deficient.

And they generally seem to judge these things based on the notion that "expert's" opinions are more than just opinions, they are the final word of "good" and "bad" for everyone in the world, despite the fact that I dont understand how there can be "good" and "bad" in an area that by its nature is subjective. As I said you can maybe have standards of craft to a point, but even those are subjective.

Art and its judgement may be subjective in many ways, but to assume that means there's absolutely no basis for objective judgement is a little simplistic

Well ok. What are they then? And who decided what they are, and how? And how can those basis themselves be anything other than subjective?

Similarly, Merlion's creating a simple dichotomy between derivative and original. Something can be both derivative and original, differing only in degree

No, I'm not. The people I see degrading and belittling works because they use a plot thats been used before (despite the fact that as WayeLigon says, ALL the plots have been used before) are the ones making that simple dichotomy.

And as for the idea that time and effort automatically gives something value, I have a bunch of freshman composition papers here that I'd like you to take a look at

You really and truly believe that someone can spend time and effort, and thought and feeling, but the results are worthless unless they meet certain criteria set down by other people?

I just really dont see how thats possible.










And heres another issue as well. The issue of purpose, and the fact that a lot of something's value is based on wether it succeeds or fails at that purpose.

Me, I feel that most artistic works are meant to serve a couple of basic purposes. One, to bring enjoyment to their creator, and those that view/read/hear it. Two, to satisfy the creators creative impulses.
So to me, a work that the creator enjoys making, and that people enjoy experiencing, even if others dont enjoy it, has fullfilled its purpose, and is thereby of value.

Now of course some works are also meant to convey a certain message or feeling, and I suppose could be said to succeed or fail based on that, but again chances are it will succeed with some and fail with others

 

[ThirdWizard]

Two things: I mostly come at this subject from a poetry point of view, and I'm also looking at the subject from a small scale. I'm talking about things like word usage, sentence length, well written dialogue, adjective and adverb use. Little things. So when I say you have to look toward your contemporaries I'm talking about things like this. I'm not even discussing plots. Before you can learn to write well, thus, you have to read and assimilate these things.

I'll give an example. When writing dialogue, it is considered better to use he said/she said instead of words like "exlaimed" and "threatened." The reason for this is that dialogue which can infer these things itself, without having to explicitly explain to the reader is superior. Why? It's stronger, stands on its own, and the reader understands what is expressed as it is read. Is it okay to break away from this from time to time? Yes. Does that mean its a bad guideline? No. Dialogue that can accomplish this will thus be better than dialogue that can't.

Now, you can say that you love dialogue that explains in minute detail what it means. That's fine. But, that has nothing to do with whether something is written well. I'm talking about the written word and the craft of writing. Is it subjective? Well it obviously isn't objective, but so what? There's a gray area in between. If a critic says a text has weak dialogue, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to say, whether you enjoy reading it or not.

Take B Movies. B Movies are pretty bad. Just because people can enjoy them doesn't make them good. People enjoy them because they're bad. So people can enjoy bad things, and bad things can be enjoyed. That's okay. I enjoy some pretty bad things.

 

[Enforcer]

As one of the people who bashed Eragon (and has no problem using the word "sucks" to describe it), let me elaborate on why, I feel, it sucks.

The writing is inconsistent: Remember when he first gets the spiffy sword? To paraphrase, "It felt like an extension of his arm." Later, when he actually has to fight, the sword isn't like an extension of his arm, "it's as unwieldly as a club." What? Well is the sword balanced and easy to use or not?!? If the guy who wrote the book had said when the kid first got the sword that it was "surprisingly light and well-balanced, but without any training, it was as useful as a club to Eragon" or something along those lines, it would've actually made sense. But instead, as a reader, I had to jump back in the book to confirm the glaring contradiction. I think this is an example of objectively bad writing: you can't say one thing and then say the opposite just because, "Oh yeah, I'm gonna put in some cool sword-training parts with the Obi-Wan guy in the next few chapters, so Eragon should have a reason not to use the really cool sword that's like an extension of his arm right now. Hmm, now it'll be useless like a club, yeah, that'll work!"

The Eragon character also evokes the wrong emotions from me: I gave up on the book around the 30th time Eragon cried like a baby (yes, I'm exaggerating, but man did that boy cry a lot). Maybe other readers felt sorry for him and thus became more fond of the character and the book, but I wanted him to grow a pair and shut the hell up. Unsypmathetic on my part? Absolutely. Subjective? Yeah, probably. I also found Sansa Stark from George R.R. Martin's books (which I love) to be insufferable (although in the latest one she seems to be growing a spine, which is a nice development).

So why do I love A Song of Ice and Fire and hate Eragon? Partly because of the authors' decisions about who those characters (Sansa and Eragon) are supposed to be. It's okay for me to find Sansa Stark to be a useless twit who causes untold ruin for her family...she's supposed to be a useless twit who causes untold ruin for her family. Eragon on the other hand is supposed to be the first person in decades capable of freeing the kingdom from Captain Evil...crying every ten minutes doesn't really fit with that. Now, my preferences are more complex than this (Martin's writing has a maturity that "the kid" simply doesn't have, his sentences are tighter, his descriptions more vivid, his characters are far more three-dimensional, and his plots actually surprise you while still making sense when considering previous events of the storyline), but hopefully I've given you some idea of why I feel the way I do.

As for

You really and truly believe that someone can spend time and effort, and thought and feeling, but the results are worthless unless they meet certain criteria set down by other people?

Even though I'm not the person you said this to, yes, yes I absolutely do believe this with every fiber of my being. I'm sure Jessica Simpson (or this kid who wrote Eragon, or Uwe Boll, etc.) spends time, effort, thought, and feeling on her music, and it certainly makes a lot of money (hell, even Uwe Boll makes money after taxes are taken into account), but that doesn't mean that her music isn't absolutely worthless in my increasingly-less-humble opinion. Are concert halls going to play her music to sell-out crowds 100 years after her death? I doubt it, but yesterday afternoon's Mozart concerto at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was quite good.

However, you have made a good point about Poe, and maybe "the kid" will be the next Tolkien...I don't want to live in that world, but it's possible. The NY Times actually made that very comparison about the vividness in his sense of place! Though, not before noting why Paolini (now that I found the review I remember the kid's name) has serious faults as a writer:

Paolini does not yet have these strengths [Enforcer: strengths of fresh, non-cliched plots like Tolkien and Rowling]. He often slips into clichéd descriptions -- ''His tanned skin rippled with lean muscles'' -- or

B-movie dialogue: '' 'Boy!' roared Brom. 'You demand answers with an insolence rarely seen.' '' His prose can be awkward and gangly: ''Things that had been permanent and unquestionable were suddenly thrown into doubt. Eventually he had learned to live with it, but he always had a nagging suspicion that he had not been good enough for his mother. I'm sure there was a good reason for what she did; I only wish I knew what it was.''

The plot stumbles and jerks along, with gaps in logic and characters dropped, then suddenly remembered, or new ones invented at the last minute. And yet, as Beatrix Potter wrote, ''Genius -- like murder -- will out.'' ''Eragon,'' for all its flaws, is an authentic work of great talent. The story is gripping; it may move awkwardly, but it moves with force. The power of ''Eragon'' lies in its overall effects -- in the sweep of the story and the conviction of its storyteller. Here, Paolini is leagues ahead of most writers, and it is exactly here that his youth is on his side.

Personally, I agreed with the complaints in the above, but not with the statement "it moves with force." I thought it was awkward, slow, and uninteresting. And yes, it's derivative but sheds no fresh twist on anything. After all, Harry Potter is another story of "boy-with-great-destiny arises to overthrow great evil," it's also plainly derivative of earlier fantasy works, but the world of Hogwarts, the characters, and the plot that's fresh makes all the difference in the world. Eragon doesn't have this (unless the second half of the book got lots better), and adds nothing new or interesting to the fantasy genre, in my opinion. The fact that the writing is cliched, logic is only temporarily present, and many phrases are awkward are, however, objective complaints. Anyone can read Paolini and see that the writing is not as well-organized, vivid, or logical as other authors. That is why it sucks, and I don't care how much time Paolini spent on writing it or how much wealthier he is than me. *shrug* Take it or leave it, I respect your point of view even though I don't agree with it.

 

[Mallus]

Heh... a fantasy/science fiction reader who doesn't believe in bad writing is a little like a sailor who doesn't believe in the sea.

In a more serious vein, discussing art is tough. It is all subjective. No absolute authority or priviliaged frame of reference exists. However, that doesn't stop people from having informed opinions. And it certainly doesn't stop people from constructing frameworks that make informed and meaningful discussions possible.

To resort to crude analogy, I don't need to be able to state my absolute position in the universe in order to give someone directions to my house.

 

[Crothian]

I believe in bad writing. For most eople giving a clearly suported opinion on something is not that easy. It is far less brain power to go: That Rocks!! or That Sucks!!. I don't see how one can take these as fact though, though it may be a fact for the person writing it.

 

[Zaukrie]

I haven't read the books yet (my 10 year old has read them twice). However, the statement that he shouldn't cry because he is the hero makes no sense to me. I just spent 3 days and 2 nights chaperoning 5th grade students (yes, I know Eragon is older...), and one of the activities on this field trip was a ropes course. The kids that walked those 20 minutes 36 feet above the ground with no fear learned nothing, and didn't impress me. The kids that were crying, and terrified, and yet still made it to the end of the ropes course are my new heroes. Maybe, just maybe, Eragon is more of a hero because of his crying/fear/immaturity than some hero that just knows he's a hero and has no fear/growth.

(disclaimer, I have not read the books)