I want to elaborate in a more general way on one of the points I was making here, because I think there's some important insight there about the nature of art in the broad sense.
People talk a lot about the virtue of art as a vehicle for compelling self-expression, and it's easy to see why: so much good art is like that! It offers a view into other peoples' hearts and lives that's only otherwise achievable through deep intimacy. Art captures the intangible, abstract things that justify and dignify existence -- beauty, character, emotion -- and so it feels like proof that they're real; it's a collection of little miracles that help us to keep faith in things beyond bread alone.
But art is incredibly technical: its evocative potential depends on obscure and exacting skills which are themselves without beauty or feeling. Making art is like climbing a mountain to reach a shrine: you need to be good at climbing mountains, but it would be wishful thinking to imagine that that ability contains or expresses your motivating faith. People who value the climb itself don't care if there's a shrine!
Art is hard, and unlike climbing a mountain, it has the durable challenge of a competitive sport: to be good at it, you must satisfy an audience, which means being good relative to other artists. Making art is easier and cheaper than ever before, but our standards have become very high, because all of us have at our fingertips -- have even on the bus! -- faithful reproductions of humanity's greatest works, to say nothing of the suffocating crush of contemporary artists all shouting at the gate for a moment of our time.
Nor are the barriers only technical: art more than anything else is faddish, and demands mastery of a shifting social landscape. People prefer things within their frame of reference, but excepting the most cluttered pits of commodity art, they also crave novelty, and what's fresh today will be stale tomorrow. And because art is a centuries-long conversation between strong personalities, it's defined by cliquish and politicized "scenes" whose social dynamics always shape and often stifle the work itself. Art that fits poorly into this ongoing conversation will be seen as rude, foolish, or irrelevant, and keeping up with the constantly-shifting expectations and alliances is a job in itself. Contemporary artistic merit is a laurel reserved for devoted members of these often-obsessive, often-toxic social clubs, whose only saving grace is that there are hundreds to choose from.
So art is a gauntlet designed to keep success away from those who want it. The path is easiest, though, when exciting a feeling your audience already has, when giving them a welcome and familiar experience. That's why pornography, satire, commodity pulp, and humour based on discomfort or norm violation have the lowest standards of success: they're just "fluffing", and while they may show great virtuosity, they don't need it to gratify an audience.
Self-expression, though! That's one of the hardest things you can possibly do. At the most "relatable", your audience can simply imagine that it's their self you're expressing, and that makes it easier. But to genuinely express yourself, to be seen, is a form of domination. Do you understand?
The subject sees itself as objective; it is eroded by the subjectivity of others. When an artist powerfully and undeniably shares their own experience, we must either incorporate it into our own subjectivity -- allow ourselves to be changed so that it's all still "us" -- or else demean our own subjectivity by acknowledging it for what it is, by conceding emotionally that we we are all equal in selfhood. In a sense, that's a positive experience! It makes the world feel less lonely. But it's still painful and damaging to the ego, and so we don't make it easy. Because self-expression is a kind of domination, we admire those who do it well, but we raise all our defenses against it, and we are very unforgiving toward those they turn aside.
This then is the bait-and-switch. Yes, art can be sublime; it's a means of self-expression and can win you validation and understanding in the eyes of others; it can do things that are almost impossible without it. But that power is reserved for the elite at the expense of the aspiring; we do all we can to keep it out of people's hands. We want to be moved, but we don't trust others with the ability to move us, and so we fight back with all the strength we can bring to bear, and when someone manages to throw us to the ground anyway, we say then, very well: they've earned it.
