Eb-art

Editor's note: Let me first mention that the following is a topic that I could talk or write about for hours, so I'm trying to remain focused on a particular point. My hope is that we'll both benefit.

About a week ago, famed film critic Roger Ebert titled a blog post "Video games can never be art," sparking a debate that is now fully engorged (if you'll allow me some catachresis).

His blog, in response to a presentation given by thatgamecompany's Kellee Santiago, is actually Ebert's attempt to qualify the titular statement to the following: "no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form."

Since then, Santiago and thousands of others have responded to Ebert in defense of the medium. But, in my attempt to remain focused, my goal in this post isn't necessarily to defend video games as artwork. I'd rather spend this post discussing the meaning(lessness) of the term art and some of my own insights into updates in relevant discourses that Ebert seems surprisingly unfamiliar with.

It's nearly impossible to find any inherent or intrinsic qualities that pieces of art share. Considering even just the works that Ebert concedes are or can be art (poetry, film, novels, paintings, music), one of the only possible absolute qualities may be that they are created. There isn't anything concrete about the act and form of creation that is necessarily similar: poetry is written or spoken, film is (generally) filmed, novels are written (or perhaps more accurately typed), paintings are of course painted, and music is sung or played.

There may be a more abstract connection, i.e. art is works that are created to be beautiful, meaningful, emotional, or etc. This definition, however, is rather presumptuous and falls victim to what W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley would call the intentional fallacy. To summarize the concept with an example: it would be near impossible to classify Shakespeare's work as art under this definition because we can't rightly ask him if he created his works with the specific purpose of making them beautiful, meaningful, emotional, or etc.

Another possible absolute quality of art may be that it is consumed, though not in the ingestive sense. This, of course, places emphasis on the audience, rather than the creator(s). Again, there isn't necessarily a commonality in the way art is consumed; it might be read, watched, viewed, heard, etc.

Again, there may be a more abstract connection; art may be rightfully defined as works that are beautiful, meaningful, emotional, or etc. This definition is more useful and realistic because it is possible to ask (at least some of) the consumers of works whether or not they find those works to be beautiful, meaningful, emotional, or etc.

Unfortunately, this is also the point where the term "art" loses most of its meaning. The main issue is this: any of the qualities (beautiful, meaningful, emotional, or etc.) that most definitions ascribe to art are necessarily subjectively and relatively defined. To quote the cliché, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

If art is defined as works that are beautiful, meaningful, emotional, or etc., it is absolutely up to the consumer of that work to determine if it is beautiful, meaningful, emotional, or etc. because those are all necessarily subjective and relative terms.

Using this definition, the only reason any two people ever have the same concept in mind when one speaks "art" to the other is because there is a wide cultural overlap between those individuals' subjective perceptions of what is beautiful, meaningful, emotional, or etc.

Ferdinand de Saussure, in his "Course in General Linguistics," argued that language only gains meaning when it is social. In this sense, the word "art" only means the idea "art" because there is an agreement between speakers of that language that make it so.

The problem for Ebert and his opponents is that there is no agreement. When he says "art," he means X; when they say "art," they mean Y.

Now, to finally get to the point I'd hoped to reach originally: Ebert's X.

I think Ebert's clearest definition of "art" comes in the following segment:

Does art grow better the more it imitates nature [as Plato suggested]? My notion is that it grows better the more it improves or alters nature through an [sic] passage through what we might call the artist's soul, or vision. Countless artists have drawn countless nudes. They are all working from nature. Some of there [sic] paintings are masterpieces, most are very bad indeed. How do we tell the difference? We know. It is a matter, yes, of taste.

There are a few objectionable concepts in here, but I want to focus on his final question and answer. Here Ebert constructs a particularly circular and invalid argument: it is better because it is, and I know this because I do.

I almost always warn/chastise my students against/for using the "we" pronoun because it is almost always presumptuous. This is a perfect example. It's unclear who Ebert is referring to with this "we," but I imagine he might feel comfortable including some of the elitist cultural critics of the past, like David Hume who wrote "Of the Standard of Taste" in an attempt to universally define something that he admits is relative, Harold Bloom who is adamantly in favor of a literary canon, or Matthew Arnold who argued that the industrial revolution (and other things industrial) was in direct opposition to cultural progress.

Arnold's work, however, led to an important distinction that I think Ebert would be wise to learn: high art or culture vs. low, popular, or mass culture. Though these two concepts are also highly debatable and amorphous, the basic distinction would be useful for Ebert's conversation.

High culture is generally considered to include culture that fits norms, meets expert's (perhaps Ebert's) standards, and, in so many words, maintains and meets established notions of artistic merit.

Popular culture is, simply put, popular.

Much like any definition of art, both terms convey a particular set of subjective values, but the distinction, at least, is useful for this argument because it allows experts like Ebert to discriminate against works that they find particularly invaluable and unworthy of classification as high art, but it allows the rest of us to, as Gabe from Penny Arcade puts it, "simply enjoy the work of artists."

Quote of the Week:

"[T]here's nothing here to discuss. You can if you want to, and people certainly do, but there's no profit in it. Nobody's going to hold their blade aloft at the end of this thing and found a kingdom. It's just something to fill the hours.

Also, do we win something if we defeat him [Ebert]? Does he drop a good helm? Because I can't for the life of me figure out why we give a shit what that creature says. He doesn't operate under some divine shroud that lets him determine what is or is not valid culture. He cannot rob you, retroactively, of wholly valid experiences; he cannot transform them into worthless things."

Tycho from Penny Arcade

Some times, I just have to fill those hours...