How important is it that art be good?

I’ve been having a crisis of faith in the arts. For a while I thought this was because I’ve stopped believing that “art can change the world”, or that art is necessary for life, but that’s not really true. I think you can point to examples where a work of art really did change the way people talked about something, for good or for ill. And as for the necessity of art, I still believe that art makes life bearable, that it makes it easier to get through the day, that it lends people perspective and inspiration in vital ways.

I’ve been telling people, by way of introducing how I’ve been feeling about art, that I keep thinking about Bruce Springsteen, widely regarded as a very good artist. Bruce Springsteen is a liberal Democrat who refuses to let Republicans use his songs in their campaigns; and yet, Republicans (in New Jersey, at least) keep wanting to use his songs in their campaigns. Republicans, such as Chris Christie, love him. If you listen to “Born in the USA” even literally just I mean my God literally actually once, you can tell it’s not a patriotic song. Let’s say Springsteen is as good, as successful, as an artist can be – you would think you would not be able to come away from his songs a conservative, and in fact seeing the activism in his songs is dramatically undifficult, but he is beloved by legions of Republicans who listen to his music and remain Republicans. What hope is there then for the rest of us to make art that is good for the world? In fact, if Springsteen’s music is helping Chris Christie get up in the morning and do damage to the state of New Jersey, then Springsteen is having the opposite effect of what he intends as an artist. And if he has to release statements outside of his artistic works clarifying their meaning, clarifying that he does not want his music to be used to help Chris Christie get up in the morning and do damage to the state of New Jersey, then his art does not stand alone, which is damning, since plenty of would-be revolutionary artists whose work is much less eloquent hope to have some effect on the world just by virtue of their art, without needing a political side discussion about it.

Art is a challenge to the idea of a rational political discourse based on moral suasion. For reasons fundamental to the human psyche, if you show a person the image of a weeping, bleeding refugee, that person will be more moved than if you simply assert that refugees exist and that they need our help. Art – at least in its political forms – exists in that space of irrationality, complementing political discourse by exploring what kinds of images, motions, sounds, juxtapositions, and narratives cause us to cry, to laugh, to be revolted; to feel pity, anger, fear, or catharsis. So if art is to improve the world, you have to establish that it is better, all things being equal, than straightforward political or philosophical discourse, and I’m skeptical that it is, when it so often seems to require reams of attendant commentary.

Straightforward political or philosophical discourse seems to have room for more nuance and compassion these days, too. Art is subject to certain inherent biases: it’s easier to write an artistically compelling dystopia than an artistically compelling utopia; it’s hard to affirmatively propose policy positions in art, but it’s comparatively easy to make the bad side effects of a given policy, even a good policy, brutally vivid. Even though art is supposed to be the best field of human endeavor for demonstrating human complexity, I’ve come to feel that just talking to people lets you convey a two-pronged idea like “these people are doing evil and they must be stopped, but they are still human and stopping them needs to be limited by certain human rights considerations” better than art can, at least as I’ve been taught to analyze art. Since art makes you feel, it can make someone look good or bad, but it can’t exert control over the audience’s subsequent action plans in the way that straightforward political speech can.

Of course, even if art doesn’t improve the world, or rarely does, it makes life bearable. Sometimes it’s just pretty or thrilling or has a beat, and this is enough to make it an important – indeed, indispensable – part of everyone’s life. But it’s important for everyone to realize that this use of art is morally neutral. (This was actually one of the best parts of of Mad Max: Fury Road, the best movie of the millennium so far. By having the warboys drive to the strummings of an electric guitar, the film delivered an amazing rebuke to so much bullshit about the inherent goodness of art; art inspires everyone, including the evil.) You don’t have to invoke Leni Riefenstahl to recognize that the power of art can be used for good or for ill.

On the other hand, the power of empiricism and rational moral suasion has a slight bias towards the good, because good policy is necessarily based on correct assessment of the state of the world. Disciplines such as science, philosophy, and formal logic, to the extent they are used correctly (which, to be fair, it is hard to do: hence why I say a slight bias towards the good), rely on facts and put in place mechanisms to protect themselves from falsehood in ways that art does not. Art is above all concerned with what people feel – a fictional story can ring true; an absurdist poem can reflect how the author truly views the world – and it wouldn’t be art without that concern. Of course this doesn’t mean that fiction, or the suspension of disbelief, or the idea of self-expression, are enemies of progress or anything. I think they’re necessary for all sorts of reasons, and I’d hate to live in a world without them. Primarily I want to re-emphasize my earlier point: art, like rain, falleth on the just and the unjust.

None of this fully explains my crisis of faith in the arts. Good entertainment, even if it comes at the risk of inspiring a terrible governor, is still a worthwhile human pursuit, just as farming is still a worthwhile pursuit even if Donald Trump eats your corn. But what hit me today is that I’m less concerned with whether art is worthwhile and more concerned with whether it is worthwhile to insist that the art be good.

All our faves are problematic. I’ve had a few conversations about the your-fave-is-problematic Tumblr and things like it. In particular, I’ve pointed out that we don’t have a good word for the opposite of “problematic” – a word that asserts that while there might be moral problems with a given work, it adds enough positive value to the culture to outweigh those problems. (This is basically how I feel about Game of Thrones, and also pretty much everything I like.) But even without such a word, I think these conversations are starting to happen. I keep coming back to an issue of the webcomic Oh Joy Sex Toy by Erika Moen, in which 50 Shades of Grey is discussed. While Moen recognizes that the relationship depicted by E.L. James is wildly unhealthy, she also says she’s not into policing what people find sexy, and neither am I. Are we assuming that all or many of James’s readers are going to end up trapped in abusive relationships because a book they liked said it was okay? Even people who would never consider the plot of 50 Shades romantic or even tolerable are at risk of ending up in an abusive relationship. Are we going to tell kinky people that all their porn has to come with disclaimers about how consent works? That strikes me as paternalistic.

And once you commit to not judge people for their porn, you start having to not judge people for their other artistic preferences. If it helps them get through the day… I’ve been dating someone who’s a huge Miley Cyrus fan, which is relevant given that Miley Cyrus is poorly regarded in the kinds of your-fave-is-problematic circles I move in on the internet. He also isn’t a Beyoncé fan; Beyoncé, conversely, is admired to the point of adulation in my internet circles. He says that he doesn’t think there’s anyone else who’s doing what Miley is doing for sex-positivity. And two things: first, how does one even debate this question? Isn’t it entirely subjective? And second: what a stupid thing to get into a fight about. That’s what I keep coming back to. If good art were really better, really more morally uplifting, than bad art, wouldn’t it be worth getting into fights about? Wouldn’t it be worth choosing friends and lovers on the basis of shared taste?

And, like, is it? We’re well into a cultural discussion of the perils of internet negativity. Authors and creators are savaged online for the slightest missteps, or for just being who they are instead of something different, and this is not good. And the backlash against liking things “ironically” may be a decade old at this point. So yelling at people for loving the wrong things seems like encouraging them not to love anything, or to pretend not to love anything. Meanwhile, the creators themselves (including, noteably, the aforementioned Miley Cyrus) are telling us, as in”We Can’t Stop” to “forget the haters”. The idea of “haters” is basically a repudiation of criticism as a legitimate project at all; to call someone a hater is to assert that their criticism is not motivated by a love of the art form but rather by jealousy or by an inherently dyspeptic personality. Which is maybe ridiculous, but we should probably all examine the ways in which our attitudes towards works of art are shaped by countless things besides abstract investment in aesthetic brilliance.

People are different, yo. I happen to think Game of Thrones is contributing hugely to culture; I think its depiction of sexual violence is justified by what it’s trying to do, and fuck it, just fuck it, I think George R. R. Martin should win the Nobel Prize in Literature. There. I said it. It’s out. But that’s a topic for another post. So yes, I think it’s an important work, to the extent there are important works. But am I going to tell someone who may be a survivor of sexual violence that they “have to” watch or read the series or the books, which might be genuinely triggering to them? No. I’m not about that life. Any individual work is basically dispensable. Nothing is above criticism, or mandatory. Through all these examples, the basic thread is: if someone loves something, or can’t stand it, who am I, with my own biases and limited perspective, to judge?

And given the vast degree of subjectivity involved, if you can make a work of art that is as good as it can be and it still doesn’t attain or deserve immortality, and it still can’t reach everyone, and it’s still at risk of misinterpretation – then is it worth trying to make art good? How hard should you be willing to try?

I don’t think we can dispense with the idea of quality entirely, and the difficulty of working out this contradiction is, I think, where my crisis is coming from. I’ve argued in a previous post that you can actually measure works ethically against other works, and I stand by that argument. I can’t help feeling that representation matters, that truthfulness matters – that at the very least, I can’t feel comfortable being moved by a work if I think it’s telling lies about the universe. “Problematic” does exist. And in practical terms, there are certain artistic choices I do judge as reflecting on you as a person, like if your favorite movie is American Sniper. So you should be more judgmental than zero percent, but less judgmental than a hundred percent; that much is clear. I just don’t know if there’s an effect. I don’t know if any setting on your judge-o-meter prevents bad art from being made or makes art any better: Jurassic World was a complete trainwreck, and yet it made so much money that I doubt any power in the world short of a meteor strike could prevent a sequel.

I’ve tried to elaborate why I’m having a crisis, but I think the real reason is just that my belief that getting art right is worth yelling at people about has waned over the years. Anything within my own power, I continue to make as good as I can, because I wouldn’t be satisfied otherwise, but when other people and their priorities are involved things have changed. When I directed a play senior year of high school – a five-minute one-act comedy – I was a stickler for having the actors not wear any jewelry or un-play-related accessories; it struck me as important. It wouldn’t, now. Not worth escalating the level of conflict over. When I directed a play junior year of college, one of the actors said in the postmort meeting that I could have stood to be stricter with the cast, and I feel kind of guilty that my artistic project – which I did and continue to believe in – didn’t feel worth the trouble of interpersonal conflict. There are things in the world which do feel worth escalating a conflict, though. My open question is: under what circumstances is artistic quality one of them? And is it worth pursuing something I’m so ambivalent about?

Maybe this can be a stepping stone to a discussion not just about my own career choices, but about the value of aesthetics in general. If an artistic genius, indispensable to the quality of a work, is a personally repugnant human being, should that person’s career be protected and nurtured? When you phrase it that way, the value of art seems less unalloyedly noble. If we look at social life as a series of choices to either defuse conflict or escalate it, then art is not on a special pedestal beyond assessment: its value, too, has to be traded against that of other human needs. And I’d like to start thinking about that value in more frank and precise terms.