the ramble dump
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
The Play's the Thing, Sometimes
Last semester I took a module on playwriting. It probably isn't something I'd have picked had I more of a choice (we had to pick a 'drama' module), but I'm glad that I did it. It was interesting.
As part of our reading for the module, we were given Stuart Spencer's The Playwright's Guidebook, a very useful book that breaks down the challenge of writing a play with a few handy 'tools', under the condition that any or all of these tools can be cast aside if they don't work. If nothing else, it's a book that can help you figure out exactly what it is you're trying to write in the first place. Which is usually a good place to start.
The playwriting module was specifically about theatrical plays; plays that are acted out on a fixed stage rather than radio plays or TV episodes or film scripts. In modern times and culture, the world of the theatre and its audience is pretty small compared to some other media. In the popular mindset, a lot of people assume that the medium has been superseded by film or television in most areas, apart from interactive performances like panto and other such quaint (and usually Shakespearean) experiences. As such, it's not surprising that the first thing Spencer does in his book is try to justify the worthwhileness of the play. He does this by placing it in a spectrum, like so:
The basic idea is that film, or any such screen medium, is based upon our mostly passive experience of images (and sounds) with very little conscious processing required. Prose, on the other hand, necessarily entails a more active process on the part of the recipient and allows more analysis on the part of a narrator within the text itself. By Spencer's own admission, this spectrum is not the whole story. He grants that these are 'propensities' and that both media are able to do other things. And theatre, he seems to say, shares all these propensities.
But I'm not so sure about this spectrum.
First objection: in Spencer's conception of prose, no distinction appears to be made between the author's contemplation and analysis within the text, the reader's less-than-conscious mental intepretation as they are reading, and their contemplation following this interpretation. Spencer dismisses the relevance of the latter to his spectrum in his evaluation of film because it applies to all media, so that can be put aside for prose too. But Spencer is still lumping together two different kinds of 'analysis': the first (A) entailing how the text is engaged in the analysis of some subject, and the second (B) entailing how the reader is engaged in the analysis of the text.
A visceral/analytical gradient makes sense in terms of the latter: at one end, the medium always requires the brain to take an active role in interpretation (because language is used); at the other end, it does not. Spencer himself points out that only a film with no dialogue would be completely visceral; a film with speaking characters would be a little further along the spectrum towards the analytical end because we'd have to interpret what they're saying, but it would still not be like a novel where everything about the fictional world is presented through language.
Does the visceral/analytical gradient make sense when applied to the medium itself, rather than a person's interpretation of it? It would seem to, by Spencer's logic: the camera, the narrative eye of the film, can be pointed at something in a way that is suggestible, but it does not pull apart or evaluate the subject in the way that the narrator of a novel can. Even if a film had a voiceover, this would merely be a voice overlayed; in prose, this analysis exists on the same level--in the language--as everything else that is presented about the fictional world, so it permeates and moulds the fictional world itself. In this case, 'visceral' means, in terms of the role of the narrative eye, to be a direct link with the fictional world without the narrator's interference. Prose has an intrinsic narrating voice, whereas film does not.
It's probably safe to assume that A is always followed by B, as long as there's a recipient around. So what's the point in making the distinction? Well, the kind of analysis involved in B can apply without A, meaning that a medium can require analysis on the part of the recipient courtesy of language, without having that other kind of analysis courtesy of the intrinsic narrator. Like in theatre, for example.
We can call theatre, as a live audiovisual performance, immediate and visceral. The use of characters with speech also gives it an analytical element. But there are differences here: plays (and, for that matter, films with speaking characters) are only 'analytical' in the sense of B, in that the use of language requires an extra layer of active interpretation on the part of the recipient. But this is only the interpretation of the speech of one of the characters--it is not the interpretation of the whole presented world. The physical presence of characters flat-out prevents the world from being constructed entirely of language; their words automatically become either the speech of a character or that of a voiceover--a kind of narrator on top, rather than there being an analysis intrinsic to the narrative. So for all Spencer's discussion of the various ways in which he describes media as either 'analytical' or 'visceral', his 'spectrum' only accounts for this in a more limited sense than he lets on.
It also needs pointing out that Spencer's designation of 'both' does not suggest a gradient. It suggests that prose has some properties, and film has others, and theatre has all of the above. Taking his admission that each medium has its strengths over the others into account, we might say that prose is better for analytical stuff than theatre but that theatre still has some aspects that could be considered analytical, in which case his diagram is not incorrect, albeit only true in a limited sense. But then if theatre is not the best medium for being analytical, and it is not as good as film for the visceral, what exactly is there to commend it?
Spencer is clearly trying to use this 'spectrum' to suggest that theatre gives you the best of both worlds. Evidence, in case you have any reason to doubt this:
So what's theatre good for? Well, there are a few advantages I'd be tempted to mark out in favour of theatre; 'propensities', as Spencer might describe them, if not necessarily always true. For one, as Spencer points out himself, theatre offers a different kind of immediacy: that of having live actors before you, and potentially an interactive element. Issues of narrative form aside, you don't get that kind of experience in either of the other media. It can offer a much more lucid, insistent encounter than mere images flashing before your eyes.
Secondly, the view of the stage does not have to be like that of the camera; i.e. the eye of the camera is necessarily framed, whereas the eye of the audience is not. Even if the stage has a proscenium arch above, it can be ignored entirely and in my experience plays have used to great effect a kind of fluid fragmentation of the stage in an utterly engrossing way, even with irrelevant props from the last scene still visible. Specific directorial decisions aside, I think the David Glass Ensemble's adaptation of Gormenghast had a much better chance at being successful in the theatre than the BBC's version on TV because, though neither could hope to achieve exactly what Mervyn Peake's prose does in the novel, the stage leant itself to a much more effective translation of the castle's sense of dreamlike fragmentation, abstractness and related psychological despair. As the price of its brand of intense focus, the camera is always finding a view with definitive edges, which Gormenghast does not have.
And thirdly, the biggest lesson I learned from trying to write a play: the theatre encourages a certain kind of discipline where it can be very tempting to get distracted in both film and prose. Character-be-damned spectacle has its place in the arts and the world would be a dull place without it, but it won't work on stage. And there's nothing like the theatre for having two people sit down and talk--though, granted, it'd have to be one hell of a well-written play for me to take that for an hour and a half without shifting in my seat.
There may be more advantages to theatre. I've seen a dozen or so plays by now that I can remember, and tried my hand at playwriting only for a very short time, so my experience is pretty limited. But though Spencer's experience of theatre will vastly outweigh mine, to me he seems to make the same infuriating mistake that so many people seem to make with their medium of choice: he has to insist that this medium is unconditionally the best--even after conceding a hundred different ways that it...well, isn't.
As part of our reading for the module, we were given Stuart Spencer's The Playwright's Guidebook, a very useful book that breaks down the challenge of writing a play with a few handy 'tools', under the condition that any or all of these tools can be cast aside if they don't work. If nothing else, it's a book that can help you figure out exactly what it is you're trying to write in the first place. Which is usually a good place to start.
The playwriting module was specifically about theatrical plays; plays that are acted out on a fixed stage rather than radio plays or TV episodes or film scripts. In modern times and culture, the world of the theatre and its audience is pretty small compared to some other media. In the popular mindset, a lot of people assume that the medium has been superseded by film or television in most areas, apart from interactive performances like panto and other such quaint (and usually Shakespearean) experiences. As such, it's not surprising that the first thing Spencer does in his book is try to justify the worthwhileness of the play. He does this by placing it in a spectrum, like so:
The basic idea is that film, or any such screen medium, is based upon our mostly passive experience of images (and sounds) with very little conscious processing required. Prose, on the other hand, necessarily entails a more active process on the part of the recipient and allows more analysis on the part of a narrator within the text itself. By Spencer's own admission, this spectrum is not the whole story. He grants that these are 'propensities' and that both media are able to do other things. And theatre, he seems to say, shares all these propensities.
But I'm not so sure about this spectrum.
First objection: in Spencer's conception of prose, no distinction appears to be made between the author's contemplation and analysis within the text, the reader's less-than-conscious mental intepretation as they are reading, and their contemplation following this interpretation. Spencer dismisses the relevance of the latter to his spectrum in his evaluation of film because it applies to all media, so that can be put aside for prose too. But Spencer is still lumping together two different kinds of 'analysis': the first (A) entailing how the text is engaged in the analysis of some subject, and the second (B) entailing how the reader is engaged in the analysis of the text.
A visceral/analytical gradient makes sense in terms of the latter: at one end, the medium always requires the brain to take an active role in interpretation (because language is used); at the other end, it does not. Spencer himself points out that only a film with no dialogue would be completely visceral; a film with speaking characters would be a little further along the spectrum towards the analytical end because we'd have to interpret what they're saying, but it would still not be like a novel where everything about the fictional world is presented through language.
Does the visceral/analytical gradient make sense when applied to the medium itself, rather than a person's interpretation of it? It would seem to, by Spencer's logic: the camera, the narrative eye of the film, can be pointed at something in a way that is suggestible, but it does not pull apart or evaluate the subject in the way that the narrator of a novel can. Even if a film had a voiceover, this would merely be a voice overlayed; in prose, this analysis exists on the same level--in the language--as everything else that is presented about the fictional world, so it permeates and moulds the fictional world itself. In this case, 'visceral' means, in terms of the role of the narrative eye, to be a direct link with the fictional world without the narrator's interference. Prose has an intrinsic narrating voice, whereas film does not.
It's probably safe to assume that A is always followed by B, as long as there's a recipient around. So what's the point in making the distinction? Well, the kind of analysis involved in B can apply without A, meaning that a medium can require analysis on the part of the recipient courtesy of language, without having that other kind of analysis courtesy of the intrinsic narrator. Like in theatre, for example.
We can call theatre, as a live audiovisual performance, immediate and visceral. The use of characters with speech also gives it an analytical element. But there are differences here: plays (and, for that matter, films with speaking characters) are only 'analytical' in the sense of B, in that the use of language requires an extra layer of active interpretation on the part of the recipient. But this is only the interpretation of the speech of one of the characters--it is not the interpretation of the whole presented world. The physical presence of characters flat-out prevents the world from being constructed entirely of language; their words automatically become either the speech of a character or that of a voiceover--a kind of narrator on top, rather than there being an analysis intrinsic to the narrative. So for all Spencer's discussion of the various ways in which he describes media as either 'analytical' or 'visceral', his 'spectrum' only accounts for this in a more limited sense than he lets on.
It also needs pointing out that Spencer's designation of 'both' does not suggest a gradient. It suggests that prose has some properties, and film has others, and theatre has all of the above. Taking his admission that each medium has its strengths over the others into account, we might say that prose is better for analytical stuff than theatre but that theatre still has some aspects that could be considered analytical, in which case his diagram is not incorrect, albeit only true in a limited sense. But then if theatre is not the best medium for being analytical, and it is not as good as film for the visceral, what exactly is there to commend it?
Spencer is clearly trying to use this 'spectrum' to suggest that theatre gives you the best of both worlds. Evidence, in case you have any reason to doubt this:
The fact remains that theatre is the most vigorous way of telling a story. How could it be otherwise? It is theatre that combines all the best parts of those other media we also enjoy.A strange conclusion for someone who has pointed out himself the kinds of things that prose and film can do that theatre cannot. The fact that film can hit us with an emotionally charged close-up is surely the best thing about it. The fact that in prose the whole world can be constructed from simmering, bubbling metaphor with an inconceivably subtle interplay between the meanings of every single word is surely the best thing about that. Those are the strengths of these media respectively. Theatre can do neither.
So what's theatre good for? Well, there are a few advantages I'd be tempted to mark out in favour of theatre; 'propensities', as Spencer might describe them, if not necessarily always true. For one, as Spencer points out himself, theatre offers a different kind of immediacy: that of having live actors before you, and potentially an interactive element. Issues of narrative form aside, you don't get that kind of experience in either of the other media. It can offer a much more lucid, insistent encounter than mere images flashing before your eyes.
Secondly, the view of the stage does not have to be like that of the camera; i.e. the eye of the camera is necessarily framed, whereas the eye of the audience is not. Even if the stage has a proscenium arch above, it can be ignored entirely and in my experience plays have used to great effect a kind of fluid fragmentation of the stage in an utterly engrossing way, even with irrelevant props from the last scene still visible. Specific directorial decisions aside, I think the David Glass Ensemble's adaptation of Gormenghast had a much better chance at being successful in the theatre than the BBC's version on TV because, though neither could hope to achieve exactly what Mervyn Peake's prose does in the novel, the stage leant itself to a much more effective translation of the castle's sense of dreamlike fragmentation, abstractness and related psychological despair. As the price of its brand of intense focus, the camera is always finding a view with definitive edges, which Gormenghast does not have.
And thirdly, the biggest lesson I learned from trying to write a play: the theatre encourages a certain kind of discipline where it can be very tempting to get distracted in both film and prose. Character-be-damned spectacle has its place in the arts and the world would be a dull place without it, but it won't work on stage. And there's nothing like the theatre for having two people sit down and talk--though, granted, it'd have to be one hell of a well-written play for me to take that for an hour and a half without shifting in my seat.
There may be more advantages to theatre. I've seen a dozen or so plays by now that I can remember, and tried my hand at playwriting only for a very short time, so my experience is pretty limited. But though Spencer's experience of theatre will vastly outweigh mine, to me he seems to make the same infuriating mistake that so many people seem to make with their medium of choice: he has to insist that this medium is unconditionally the best--even after conceding a hundred different ways that it...well, isn't.
Labels: films, gormenghast, i am the ramblemaster, language, literature, plays, shakespeare
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Don Quixote, Part I
'Now I must tear my garments, scatter my armour and dash my head against these rocks, and perform other similar actions that will amaze you.'
Don Quixote, or, in full, The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, is a novel of approximately 1,000 pages published by Miguel de Cervantes in two parts, the first in 1605 and the second in 1615. It charts the escapades and misadventures of, as the title says, the Spanish Hidalgo Don Quixote, who suffers from a strange sort of madness brought about by reading too many chivalry books. The deluded Don Quixote firmly believes that he is a knight errant and that the universe must work according to the laws of chivalry as he has read them, to the point that he imagines such things as a local farmgirl as a lady, princess and the subject of his affections despite never having seen her; an inn as a castle; and, most famously, the windmills of La Mancha as ferocious giants.
It's taken me about a month to read the first part. The book has followed me across Europe on my own adventures to London, Venice and Lake Garda. I finished it yesterday, and decided, because I had so much to say about it already, that today I'd write about what I've read so far.
Don Quixote begins as a simple, farcical parody of the chivalric romance genre that had been popular not long before the book was first published. It is episodic in format (like the books it parodies), chronicling various humorous encounters that Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza, have as they venture out and in his deluded way Quixote mistakes things for things that they are not. Characters and events more true to reality are forever conflicting with the archetypes of his books, triggering predictable but entertaining conflicts which usually end in the knight and his squire getting beaten to within an inch of their lives.
Cervantes writes a bit like Shakespeare in the way that the language flourishes, befitting of Don Quixote's lengthy declarations of the convoluted specifics of knight-errantry, but also just as impressive when Cervantes is being less tongue-in-cheek. No doubt credit is due also to John Rutherford, whose translation I read. The sentences are always lengthy, especially in dialogue, but even when Don Quixote is talking complete rubbish it can be absurdly captivating, flowing like a strange but fascinating dream, and sometimes I found myself just as caught up in it as the often staggeringly simple and naïve Sancho, who goes along, though often reluctantly, with everything that his master does and says.
As much as I was enjoying it, I did begin to wonder if its episodic format could really last for 1,000 or even 500 pages. But Cervantes, probably realising the same thing, soon introduces fresh ways to poke fun. The first is through having multiple narrators, supposedly historians who are recounting Don Quixote's life. One sequence stops suddenly half-way through as the narrator claims to have reached the end of the written records available, only for it to be continued by another in the next part, who introduces it with his account of how he is someone who enjoyed reading about the adventures so far and was disappointed that they didn't continue, only to then come across further writings by chance while out shopping, which themselves are supposedly written by some Moorish historian, which he then got translated. The story then continues just as it had done, but with Cervantes now able to play with the potential unreliability and conflict that different narrators might result in.
In this way and others, Cervantes plays with the literary conventions themselves as much as playing with the characters. This occurs on many levels, from satirical sonnets in his direct parody of chivalric romance, to detailed reviews by characters of invidivual chivalric books (and later other things); to constant switching between different sidestories, arrived at through the accounts of the people they meet (sometimes hopping between different people for different perspectives) or manuscripts they find - all continually distracting from Don Quixote's adventures and giving the novel a meta sort of dimension. These sidestories are often surprisingly sober compared to Don Quixote's misadventures, and most of the time seem to follow very conventional chivalric or romantic themes, with probably all of them involving some incredibly beautiful and virtuous woman and the conflicts of the men who have fallen in love with her, to the point that the beautiful women start to feel very generic and the stories a bit ridiculous, which is possibly what Cervantes intended. While all these sidestories appear to be delivered in a straight-faced way, it all gets very farcical when, through amazing coincidence, about half a dozen of the stories and their characters converge at an inn and are brought to their happy conclusions, following which the attention of all the characters is then brought back to the madness of Don Quixote.
This occasional sobriety also emerges in speeches made by the characters themselves. Towards the end of Part I, the priest and the canon discuss Don Quixote's madness, which leads them on to their shared loathing of chivalry books, which itself then leads on to deep discussion of theatrical plays (the new popular thing during Cervantes' time), in which the priest describes why he dislikes such popular things because they are made for the ignorant masses at the expense of real, intelligent, thought-provoking art. The fact that the novel so suddenly veers off into this expansive, philosophical conjecturing is something tongue-in-cheek in itself because Cervantes must know he's being so blatant in using his characters to put forward these opinions (in the same way that he cheekily reviewed other chivalric books at the start). They're still thought-provoking moments, though, and in the discussion of theatre it seems as though Cervantes is trying to make a serious point, although it's not always as clear if it's Cervantes' own opinion or if he's just playing devil's advocate.
Probably the most surprisingly lucid comments of all came from Don Quixote himself. In Chapter XXXVIII, as part of another lengthy speech on chivalry, he had this to say:
'A blessing on those happy ages that did not know the dreadful fury of these devilish instruments of artillery, whose inventor is, I feel sure, being rewarded in hell for his diabolical creation, by which he made it possible for an infamous and cowardly hand to take away the life of a brave knight as, in the heat of the courage and resolution that fires and animates the gallant breast, a stray bullet appears, nobody knows how or from where - fired perhaps by some fellow who took fright at the flash of the fiendish contraption, and fled - and in an instant puts an end to the life and loves of one who deserved to live for many a long age. And when I think about this I am tempted to say that it grieves me to the depths of my soul that I ever took up this profession of knight-errantry in such a detestable age as this one in which we are living, because even though there is no danger that can strike fear into me I am concerned when I think that gunpowder and lead might deprive me of the opportunity to make myself famous all over the face of the earth and by the might of my arm and the blade of my sword. But let heaven do what it pleases, for I shall be more highly esteemed, if I accomplish my aim, for having exposed myself to dangers greater than were ever faced by knights errant of centuries past.'
Don Quixote is clearly still under some illusion about the worth of his chivalric acts, and likely misguided with his quest to make himself 'famous all over the face of the earth', but the slightly frightening thing is that after reading that, I suddenly sort of understood his madness. Most of us like to feel that things have some sort of meaning; that we as people have meaning and that we can stand for something, which is increasingly difficult the more impersonal the world feels. The chivalric, noble values and the kind of honour that Don Quixote believes in may well be ridiculous and empty, but so is a world where you and your actions mean nothing and where personal responsibility, dignity or character seem to count for far less, and as Don Quixote (or Cervantes) himself points out, there's a feeling of some injustice in the kind of world that Don Quixote regretted to live in. There's always the danger that we can place too much importance on, and become deluded by, the overly romantic notions or ideals of traditions or past ways of life; but at the same time that Don Quixote's ambitions sound ridiculous, I felt, in this instance, that there was something, if not noble1, honourable2, admirable or praiseworthy, then at least in some way understandable - or even, dare I say it, reasonable - about the fact that he is trying anyway.
Finally, despite starting out as a simple episodic parody written for popular consumption3, through the development of its characters and exploration of its themes, Don Quixote exists as a good example that what can start out as the subject of a few laughs can soon go much deeper than first imagined, and although it is not the most tightly written of novels and of considerable length, it has remained interesting and enjoyable throughout. I'll be reading Part II before long.
1 2Both nobility and honour are themselves vague ideas and prone to romantic illusions of grandeur.
3 Interestingly enough, according to Oscar Wilde, this would prevent Don Quixote from counting as 'art', yet later on, the priest's discussion of popular theatre highlights some views of art that match very closely and specifically with Wilde's own.
Labels: don quixote, i am the ramblemaster, language, literature, oscar wilde, rabbit-hole theory, shakespeare
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Receptivity
Last month I read Oscar Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism, and mentioned that I'd pick out one or two other interesting points of those that it raises. So here's another:
Wilde's tone here, not surprising given the events of his own life, would seem to demonstrate a fair amount of scorn towards the attitudes of the general public. At a first read it might also come across as almost self-important, as no doubt Wilde viewed himself as one of these artists, with his dismissiveness of the idea of criticism. But Wilde makes a good point. In describing 'silly views' and 'foolish prejudices', he is not necessarily being dismissive of all the opinions a member of the public might have, but is identifying that such prejudices do exist.
This got me thinking about the way in which people do approach art: novels or films or paintings or whatever. To be 'receptive', do we have to accept absolutely anything as 'art'? Wilde never suggests that everything and anything can count as art, although for him it only seems to stop being art if it starts catering towards the wants of the population. Surely there's more to it than that, though. Is a person doing their own thing irrespective of the public, whatever it is, enough to qualify something as 'art'?
Wilde would seem to be referring to preconceptions and prejudices that might affect our appreciation of art that we have before we've even experienced it, which leaves it open whether or not he believes any kind of criticism can be applied to art (beyond for whom, or for what reasons, it was created) after the art has been experienced. He talks a lot about authority and how that has no place in matters relating to art, but what exactly does he mean by 'authority'? Does he mean that nobody can have an authoritative opinion on art, nobody can decide what counts or what doesn't, or just that any attempts to control art are unwanted?
We all approach things with our own ideas of what they should be, what it is that makes it good, and so on. For example, one might look with scorn upon the idea of techno or heavy metal as 'good music' because they define it in orchestral terms. One person might think that a good plot or realistic characters are important in a novel, whereas another might view the richness of the language itself as more important. I have a friend who gets set to rant every time Tolkien is even mentioned because it doesn't fulfill his own criteria of what makes a good story. An example Wilde uses is judging all literature by the standard of Shakespeare. We all appreciate different things. But that doesn't mean that other aspects of something, other qualities, aren't still there as something that can be appreciated by someone else. But what exactly counts as a 'quality'? This seems to depend on whether or not a person views a feature as something to appreciate. Is everything potentially something to appreciate?
Take, for example, a painting of a soup can. Or a steaming pile of shit. You might appreciate the simplicity, or maybe you could appreciate the irony of some kind of visual statement it's trying to make. In and of itself, it'd be hard to find a way to consider a pile of shit a work of art, but with context, maybe it could represent or show something else, and that would be its quality as art, whether everybody appreciates the statement made or not.
The point Wilde seems to be trying to make is that we should allow 'art' in all its forms, not seek to control it, not seek to define it in our own prejudiced terms. According to Wilde, it seems, everything is something to potentially appreciate, and what's where being receptive comes in. We should let art flourish, free from control through prejudices, so that we are enabling ourselves to truly recognise those things in art that ought to be appreciated.
But, of course, you can only appreciate something that's really there to appreciate. There's still some vagueness about what qualifies as something to artistically appreciate. How subjective is 'art' under Wilde's definition? Does objective quality come into it at all? Wilde's definition of what doesn't count as art is still hazy beyond his for-the-self/for-the-public distinction. What else might stop something being 'art'?
We might consider some so-called 'art' to be pretentious. If a supposed work of art is produced just to promote the artist's superficial image, for example, or if all the talk of irony or representation or whatever is really just about shocking the audience or being controversial in order to get a bit of attention, then maybe pretence is all that's there. While it isn't exactly catering to what the public wants, the art is still relying on the reaction of the public, in which case, according to Wilde, it ceases to be art.
So maybe, looking at it like that, Wilde's distinction is all that's needed in art's definition. Rather than including it in any kind of definition, however, maybe this distinction is put better simply in terms of avoiding anything that can affect our receptivity: for as long as we're attending to the public, more likely than not we're also attending to its prejudices and therefore restricting ourselves. Maybe art is mostly undefinable, or at least defining it is very difficult. There's a whole load of possible subjective and objective reasons for why a person might look at or experience a piece of art and find certain appreciable qualities in it. There's no reason why it has to be either-or. Maybe we shouldn't be trying to define it. The point Wilde is driving at with receptivity, and one that perhaps overrides all discussion of objectivity versus subjectivity, is that we need to be able to keep an open mind to truly appreciate anything.
If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the master is to play. And the more completely he can suppress his own silly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and appreciate the work of art in question. [...] A temperament capable of receiving, through an imaginative medium, and under imaginative conditions, new and beautiful impressions is the only temperament that can appreciate a work of art.
Wilde's tone here, not surprising given the events of his own life, would seem to demonstrate a fair amount of scorn towards the attitudes of the general public. At a first read it might also come across as almost self-important, as no doubt Wilde viewed himself as one of these artists, with his dismissiveness of the idea of criticism. But Wilde makes a good point. In describing 'silly views' and 'foolish prejudices', he is not necessarily being dismissive of all the opinions a member of the public might have, but is identifying that such prejudices do exist.
This got me thinking about the way in which people do approach art: novels or films or paintings or whatever. To be 'receptive', do we have to accept absolutely anything as 'art'? Wilde never suggests that everything and anything can count as art, although for him it only seems to stop being art if it starts catering towards the wants of the population. Surely there's more to it than that, though. Is a person doing their own thing irrespective of the public, whatever it is, enough to qualify something as 'art'?
Wilde would seem to be referring to preconceptions and prejudices that might affect our appreciation of art that we have before we've even experienced it, which leaves it open whether or not he believes any kind of criticism can be applied to art (beyond for whom, or for what reasons, it was created) after the art has been experienced. He talks a lot about authority and how that has no place in matters relating to art, but what exactly does he mean by 'authority'? Does he mean that nobody can have an authoritative opinion on art, nobody can decide what counts or what doesn't, or just that any attempts to control art are unwanted?
We all approach things with our own ideas of what they should be, what it is that makes it good, and so on. For example, one might look with scorn upon the idea of techno or heavy metal as 'good music' because they define it in orchestral terms. One person might think that a good plot or realistic characters are important in a novel, whereas another might view the richness of the language itself as more important. I have a friend who gets set to rant every time Tolkien is even mentioned because it doesn't fulfill his own criteria of what makes a good story. An example Wilde uses is judging all literature by the standard of Shakespeare. We all appreciate different things. But that doesn't mean that other aspects of something, other qualities, aren't still there as something that can be appreciated by someone else. But what exactly counts as a 'quality'? This seems to depend on whether or not a person views a feature as something to appreciate. Is everything potentially something to appreciate?
Take, for example, a painting of a soup can. Or a steaming pile of shit. You might appreciate the simplicity, or maybe you could appreciate the irony of some kind of visual statement it's trying to make. In and of itself, it'd be hard to find a way to consider a pile of shit a work of art, but with context, maybe it could represent or show something else, and that would be its quality as art, whether everybody appreciates the statement made or not.
The point Wilde seems to be trying to make is that we should allow 'art' in all its forms, not seek to control it, not seek to define it in our own prejudiced terms. According to Wilde, it seems, everything is something to potentially appreciate, and what's where being receptive comes in. We should let art flourish, free from control through prejudices, so that we are enabling ourselves to truly recognise those things in art that ought to be appreciated.
But, of course, you can only appreciate something that's really there to appreciate. There's still some vagueness about what qualifies as something to artistically appreciate. How subjective is 'art' under Wilde's definition? Does objective quality come into it at all? Wilde's definition of what doesn't count as art is still hazy beyond his for-the-self/for-the-public distinction. What else might stop something being 'art'?
We might consider some so-called 'art' to be pretentious. If a supposed work of art is produced just to promote the artist's superficial image, for example, or if all the talk of irony or representation or whatever is really just about shocking the audience or being controversial in order to get a bit of attention, then maybe pretence is all that's there. While it isn't exactly catering to what the public wants, the art is still relying on the reaction of the public, in which case, according to Wilde, it ceases to be art.
So maybe, looking at it like that, Wilde's distinction is all that's needed in art's definition. Rather than including it in any kind of definition, however, maybe this distinction is put better simply in terms of avoiding anything that can affect our receptivity: for as long as we're attending to the public, more likely than not we're also attending to its prejudices and therefore restricting ourselves. Maybe art is mostly undefinable, or at least defining it is very difficult. There's a whole load of possible subjective and objective reasons for why a person might look at or experience a piece of art and find certain appreciable qualities in it. There's no reason why it has to be either-or. Maybe we shouldn't be trying to define it. The point Wilde is driving at with receptivity, and one that perhaps overrides all discussion of objectivity versus subjectivity, is that we need to be able to keep an open mind to truly appreciate anything.
The moment [the spectator] seeks to exercise authority he becomes the avowed enemy of Art and of himself. Art does not mind. It is he who suffers.
Labels: censorship, i am the ramblemaster, morality, oscar wilde, philosophy, shakespeare, tolkien
