I recently saw David Lynch’s 2001 film Mulholland Drive with some friends. It’s a challenging movie whose plot becomes more complicated and less comprehensible as it goes along; by the end, you’re left wondering what took place at all during the final half-hour. But while I was left bewildered—and, subsequently, almost enraged—my friends viewed the same movie in a much more positive light.
This experience, along with an essay on architecture in a new online magazine called Works in Progress and the book The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, got me thinking more deeply about what we consider a work of art, why some people like specific works of art better than others, and the strange dynamics of accessibility in the art world. Prepare for a jumbled, possibly incoherent series of words.
Perhaps the world of movies is the best place to start. Movies—or films, if you want to be pretentious about it—are probably the most accessible forms of art ever created. Everyone has seen several of them, often varying in quality, and viewers often know the directors’ names of films they really enjoy. It’s also common knowledge that some movies are better than others, and that some are absolute trash that should be studiously avoided. Even the least-plugged-in movie watcher knows that the next Marvel movie will almost surely be of far lower quality than even the worst movie by Quentin Tarantino. Unfortunately, the incentives of the film industry appear to be guiding directors and film studios toward reboots, blockbuster superhero movies that are almost wholly unoriginal, and sequels. Other than Oppenheimer and Barbie, for instance, very few movies in the past 10 years or so have been both original in content and hugely successful at the box office. (That Barbie has apparently already convinced Mattel, manufacturers of the doll upon which the movie is based, to sign multimillion-dollar contracts with film studios to create other movies based on different toys is an indication that Barbie was the exception to the rule rather than the beginning of a new film paradigm.)
But there’s massive daylight between movies that everyone sees but knows, deep down, that the content is not very good and films like Lynch’s Mulholland Drive that are critically acclaimed yet are almost incoherent. I tried to make the case to my friends who enjoyed the movie that its plot was self-indulgently opaque, its central mystery intentionally unsolvable, and that therefore it simply was a bad film. Reason, apparently, is no magic bullet: Their retorts suggested that the movie’s more ridiculous elements were what made it good; that the unsolvable quality of the movie reflected real life’s enormous complexities; and that other movies that have similar time-bending plot elements, like much of the Christopher Nolan suite, are gimmicky because they are internally coherent. “Art” is in the eye of the beholder, they say. No kidding.
Mulholland Drive is widely considered by the critics to be one of the best movies to come out thus far in the 21st century. But if the average person enters a movie theater that shows old-ish films to view it, he is unlikely to be similarly moved.
Let’s now move into the realm of literature. I’m known by some as something of a snob when it comes to novels, yet by others as more of a literary heathen. This is perhaps best demonstrated by my relationship with Stephen King: I enjoy his books (to the point where I’ve read more books by him than by any other author), but I don’t think they’re real literature. If given the option, right now, to read either War and Peace or The Shining, I’ll pick the former while wistfully dreaming of the latter.
I spent most of eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh grade reading thrillers about CIA agents—particularly the Mitch Rapp series by the late Vince Flynn. I also enjoyed reading James Patterson, David Baldacci, and other authors whose names on the covers of their books are in larger print than the title of the book. For those types of novels, the title is secondary: You’re buying the words of the author, the thrill of the narrative, and the reassurance that you’ll have a hard time putting down the book even if you struggle to remember anything about its plot a year after you finish reading it.
In twelfth grade, I took an AP Literature class, and learned a term that forever changed my approach to literature: formula fiction. Authors like the ones I had been reading weren’t creating their own stories out of whole cloth, I discovered. Instead, large publishing houses have pre-packaged narrative formulae that they contract out to aspiring or successful writers to fill in the skeleton with their own characters, settings, and other particulars. That’s why the flow of a Patterson or a Baldacci are always the same: They’re effectively the same story, just sandwiched between covers with different words on them. That’s why James Patterson has been able to write over 200 books. It’s not like he’s coming up with something entirely unique each time. He’s simply filling in the holes with a different set of characters and MacGuffin for every novel he writes.
Some of the most critically-acclaimed novels, however, have the opposite problem. Instead of being too formulaic, they are too creative, and their plots or symbolism are lost to the general reader. This is particularly true, I think, of modern writers. I suspect this is because modern writers want to produce something entirely original—a task that becomes increasingly difficult as more original content is produced. Authors then feel they have to resort to weird plot devices like the tangled maze of self-referential endnotes in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. (To be clear, I have not read Infinite Jest, so I don’t want to cast aspersions on it. But the book is notoriously complex, and many find it unreadable on that basis.)
That complexity and resulting incoherence is the basis of the essay on architecture by Samuel Hughes that I mentioned earlier. It’s called “Making architecture easy,” and it argues that because architecture is the art form experienced by nearly everyone, it has to appeal to more people than just a rarified elite. To do that, argues Hughes, it’s important to define one’s terms. “A[n architectural] style is ‘easy,’” he writes, “if works in it can be enjoyed or appreciated, at least on a basic level, without much work.” In contrast, “a style is thus ‘challenging’ if works in it require a lot of work to enjoy.” He cites Brutalism as the quintessential example of “challenging” architecture: To most people, Brutalist structures look like large prisons, while many architecture experts see its appeal. In order for most people to appreciate the buildings they see, then, the buildings should be designed in such a way that the general public finds them appealing and easy to understand.
This is nearly the opposite view articulated in Ayn (pronounced “INE”) Rand’s The Fountainhead. Rand’s protagonist, Howard Roark, is an architect who builds using a unique, modern style. At the beginning, Roark can find almost no work because nobody wants his buildings. Rather, the major architectural voices of the day—including the antagonist, Ellsworth Toohey, who is a notable critic of all things individualistic—argue that all architects should build in a traditional style, adorning their buildings with Roman columns, Renaissance-inspired masonry, and Victorian wrought-iron fixtures. In other words, the builders should stick to the tried-and-true, “easy” method of architecture advocated by Hughes in his essay.
In classic Randian fashion (her works are notorious for this), Roark, who is superhumanly principled and righteously consistent, wins out over the long run. Rand’s argument, then, is that “easy” architecture is for chumps, and that man should design sleek, modern buildings that appeal to his own vision.
The funny thing about Rand, though, is that this seems to be the opposite of what she argues when it comes to literature. In one humorous scene, a group of tastemakers—including the notorious villain Toohey—discuss a terrible play that they nonetheless praise as visionary. The critics then pronounce the play to be the best one written in years, and those who read the critics are then hoodwinked into thinking that the play is far better than it actually is. Without attempting to suggest that Rand is being inconsistent and hypocritical in this (if I thought about it more, I’m sure I could prove the opposite), I’ll just note that this scene is indicative of the Lynch film I discussed earlier.
Sometimes, film and literature critics have an Emperor-Has-No-Clothes problem. The critics praise a unique, complex, and weird piece of art as the best of its kind. Consumers either skip it entirely because, for instance, it’s a film that’s only shown in off-beat, niche theaters in upstate New York, or they are led to believe that it’s a really good piece of art despite its incomprehensibility. That leaves a third group of people who find it, consume it, and reject the critical consensus, thinking that the critics have no idea what they’re talking about and that the artifact isn’t what they would call “art.” That’s how I felt about Mulholland Drive, and it’s how many people feel about classic literature and modernist architecture.
I’m not sure there’s a real conclusion to be drawn here. I’d like to say there’s a happy medium between the art that the critics can’t get enough of and the products enjoyed by the masses. (Perhaps Stephen King is, in fact, that happy medium when it comes to literature.) Or, perhaps the more you know about a form of art, the more you align with the critics. There’s also the perennial argument that all art is subjective, and that any attempt to rank one piece of art above another is simply misguided because there’s no real truth.
Whatever the answer to this conundrum, I’d like to leave my readers with a piece of advice when it comes to consuming art. Don’t just settle for the familiar. It’s tempting to reach for a Patterson when you’ve always enjoyed his books. But do some research and find another author who is less well-known but more critically-acclaimed. Chances are, you’ll get more out of this experience than you would if you stuck with the tried and true. Still, don’t let the critics—or the people who hang on every word of the critics—lead you astray. Don’t just accept their opinion because you think they’re more knowledgeable than you are. Keep in mind what they have to say, but never treat it as Gospel truth. Finally, it’s okay to have guilty pleasures. I’ll always prefer a Stephen King or a David Baldacci when I’m on the beach, or after I’ve read a string of intense, thought-provoking books. It’s always good to keep yourself grounded in the everyday world of art, even if your more literary friends look down upon you for doing so.
sometimes when i see a painting or sculpture that i don't like, i feel i can objectively proclaim it bad. and those that disagree, well they're just idiots or unenlightened or trying to be contrarian or trying to be cool. some find robert maplethorpe a genius while others find da vinci a pedestrian hack. both are right? nah, both are wrong. while power (critics) wants us to view things their way, art and what we love really might be the last bastions of what make us human. hard to define it and we'll spend hours debating it but, in the end, we know it when we see it. viva la difference.