TechNews | Tuesday, February 11, 2014

 

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Response:

Art, the lowest form of entertainment

Reno Waswil
TECHNEWS WRITER

Last week, Austin Gonzalez
[TechNews’ Opinion Editor] wrote an
Opinion Section article about what he held
to be the lowest form of entertainment, going
as far as to call it the lowest form of art, and
I feel obligated—having strained myself over
this question and having had many times to
re-evaluate my notions about the topic—to
critique it. He maintained the entire genre
of horror to be the all-time lowest form of art
achievable, arguing that “there are exceptional
pieces, but horror remains the tag of the greatest
collection of garbage to pass off as art,” putting
forth his definition of art as, “an attempt to
create emotion in the viewer.” Though, as he
does, I think such a complex question as “what
is art?” cannot, in good conscience, be summed
up in so few words, and I have no real vested
interest in the genre at all—I do not consider
myself any more knowledgeable or fascinated
by horror than anyone else—and I do admire
Austin’s recognition of the expectations that can
be found in horror as it could in literally every
other tag someone at one time or another can try
to pass off as art. I find fault in, even in accepting
his assumptions, singling out an entire genre as
the lowest form of art.

I will concede that the media released
under this genre, ignoring that the diversity
of this genre with respect to its subgenres is
as broad as the term art is to the genre, shows
the positive characteristics of originality,
creativity, and depth is far outweighed by that
which is lacking those traits. Gonzalez’s article
mentions some of the most famous examples
of it in horror, but I say don’t criticize the
label it is given, criticize the means by which
it is produced. The extent to which horror is
uninspired is the same extent to which every
genre in popular culture is uninspired; it just
takes a cultured palate to recognize it (definitely
not saying I have a great one though.) One may
be biased against certain general classifications
of the art but that by no means makes that
classification diminished in artistic value and
certainly not diminished in entertainment value.
The experience involved in being really, truly
afraid, that which goes far beyond the cliques
clearly outlined in last week’s article, is one of

the most powerful emotions one could feel. The
truly heart-wrenching, mind paralyzing stimuli
that go much deeper than what is used in the
most mass produced of the material definitely
is worth’its merit in why the consumption of art
is truly beneficial; seeing and understanding the
most sincere commodities of humanity.

Of course, art that is so encompassing
of the ranges of human complexity and emotion
and by proxy, the best and most deserving of
the label as “good” art, is that which cannot
be easily applied to a genre, but I say the un-
inspiration of horror is equal to that of any
other genre out there (unless it is specifically
labeled as something using or denouncing the
positive attributes but that is another argument).
Think of the tendency for comedy to use the
worst cliques and rely on the most terrible
and unoriginal topics to hyperbolize and find
humor in, not to mention the tendency to have
quantity over quality with the garbage that is
thrown in, and to have no deeper meaning and
lose what redeemable quality it might be trying
to convey. The industrialization of comedy has
even demanded that a laugh track be put behind
some television sitcoms to ‘encourage’ laughter,
which may be even worse than the tactical
periodic jumps in horror.

Even worse is that which associates
itself to the label of tragedy, or the slightly less
stark but much used drama, which is so easy to
manipulate that elements of it are thrown with
disregard for deeper development into every
single example of every other genre. From the
perspective of Greek philosophy, pain—the
major motivator in this genre—is the same as
fear, only felt in present or retrospect, rather
than for some future event, so how can it be
considered any different? The act of getting
to know a character that dies could be just as
methodologically applied as a scary face when
we least expect it.

Many may disagree with me, and I am
not saying I didn’t like the film overall, but the
opening scene in Up was about as mechanical
as it comes, or at least as much as the Grudge or
Iu-on movies where the scary girl with hair in
her face crawls slowly down a dark, uninviting
hallway (though I must admit I did not see the
Iapanese version). They both, in me, elicited a
response, but I can easily observe from a sort
of objective point of view that they are, in their

nature, not very deeply inspired with the full
force of the emotion.

Someone getting his or her heart
broken is another example of a pandering to
dramatic and tragic pain without an extreme
form of introspection and practice and
creativity; for example, think of the stunning
passion in the following infamous lines:

“It’s not like you to say sorry; I was
waiting on a different story,

This time I’m mistaken, for handing
you a heart worth breaking,

And I’ve been wrong, I’ve been down,
been to the bottom of every bottle,

These five words in my head scream,
‘Are we having fun yet?”

They are almost laudably insincere,
and I am sorry for alienating people that might
like the band Nickelback or the song “How
You Remind Me,” but I chose it simply as an
extreme case of the kind of thing used to such
an unparalleled extent in music though we as
a public not only accept it, but embrace it, is it
really better than horror?

The leniency with which we as the
public that consume the easy to produce,
(though it all takes some skill and inspiration to
be sure, even “Paranormal Activity” style hormr)
superficial, and uninspired entertainment can
definitely be strained, as it seems to have been
for Gonzalez and his begrudged genre, but
I would recommend not forgetting that the
best cases of all art, which I would say might
be considered Edgar Allen Poe (author) is for
jorror, Douglas Adams (author) is for comedy,
and Jeff Magnum (musician) is for tragedy,
are equally exhilarating no matter the genre,
because they take so much from you and leave
so much for you. All genres display some
aspects of deceptiveness and insincerity, and
I feel like I cannot allow even one genre to be
broadly disgraced, thereby raising the others,
as a mere matter of opinion, though mine is as
legitimate as (most) everyone else’s and I cannot
take offense to disagreement. I also cannot
really in the end criticize people for what they
might consider their guilty pleasures, but I ask
the reader not to ever think that there is no art
that would put the rest of it to shame, and we
should all be looking for and respecting that
rather than calling out any specific genre as
marginally inferior.