Slop is Good Food: Relaxation v. Revelation
Okay, this one is getting the tags. I think it's important. Spread it around if you're so kind.
I've noticed that there has, throughout history, been an ever-changing term for 'art I like but feel a little bit bad about liking so much.' You know, terms like 'guilty pleasure,' 'slop,' etc. We enjoy them, but we use these terms that have intrinsically negative connotations when describing them, as if trying to preemptively acknowledge their flaws lest we be ridiculed for ignoring them.
Like so many things, that collective cultural guilt has its roots in classism and racism and it's wrong and I'm tired of it. It's part of the long-standing separation between so-called 'high art' and the mire of everything else implied to be 'low art.' And while I can't solve those deep-rooted cultural issues (or at least if I can, no one has told me how) as a professional author I'd like to propose something to salve them with my preferred weapon: words.
(Quick credentials blast: I've written eleven books across four series over the course of the last five years. Writing is my full-time job and I hear I'm at least decent enough at it to make a very comfortable living, for whatever questionable worth that has as a measure of skill. I care a lot about art and think a lot about art. Okay, we good? Good.)
First, it is important to acknowledge that the distinction between high art and low art has not persisted exclusively through the dark, evil will of the Mystical Cabal of Nebulously-Defined Bigots. The phrasing persists because it does actually touch on a very relevant difference between what I think most people intuitively understand as the two major types of art, particularly (but not exclusively) in longform media, i.e., TV shows, movies, video games, books, etc. Traditionally, 'high art' has an ephemerally different feel to it. It makes you think about things. It makes you have to wrangle with your own emotions. It makes you cry, or wonder, or do one of several other rather exhausting but rewarding mental activities. Meanwhile, 'low art' is just… fun. It's nice. It's funny. It's entertaining. It could not more obviously still be art, but it's… different. It doesn't move you on a deep level, and it was never trying to. If anything, it's a nice way to keep comfortably still.
AND THAT'S FINE, ACTUALLY. That's okay. It is, I would in fact argue, essential to the human experience and human society as a whole! News flash: people need to relax sometimes. Crazy idea, I know. We don't have to pretend it's somehow intrinsically low-brow to enjoy an action movie or laugh at a comedy sketch. That is a wretched thing to do to our own culture.
So that's where the alternative names I've been cooking come in: relaxation and revelation. I do think, as someone who likes to focus on the latter where possible, that both are immeasurably important. Art, when created for revelation, has immense potential to move and change a person. It is a teaching tool, it is an outlet for pain, it is a way to feel seen and understood and loved in a wide and often horrible universe. Much of my worldview has been fundamentally altered for the better thanks to transformative works of art, and they are so, so, so important to society and good for humans in general. All of that just… isn't a good reason to get weird and gatekeepy about it.
Because again, relaxation is also important. I imagine a hypothetically healthy person (I've never met one and I doubt you have either but thankfully that doesn't stop us from using them as a reference somehow) would take time to enjoy quite a bit of both. And all art (again, especially longform art) has elements of both, because it's all very subjective! A piece of revelatory art that is making a point about something you've already internalized and understood isn't going to rock your world, but it might be entertaining. And likewise, while I would be mildly concerned for you if you walked out of, say, Michael Bay's Transformers with a fundamentally altered outlook on life, my horror does not make your revelation any less valid. This is something I think we should work to internalize as a culture, and the first step for that is to stop using negative-connotated language about our own entertainment.
So yeah. Relaxation and revelation. Those are my suggestions. What do y'all think?
gracieabrams
theartofmadeline
romaincrisis
amandla
kianamaiart
izzy806
andulkaphoto
titsay
stormborns
