Artistic Merit in a Consumerist World
Artistic Merit in a Consumerist World
The year is 2021, and we are living in the age of consumerism.
From a sizable number of streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV, Hulu, Disney+, and more delivering new television seasons each week, to the hundreds of airing programs on dozens of television platforms like ABC, CBS, NBC and many more (not even mentioning regular cable networks like AMC or premium channels like Starz or Showtime). From the half-dozen or so films that come out in the United States each week (bound to increase as Covid-19 restrictions loosen this summer), to the hundreds more being produced by other countries each year Americans haven’t even seen yet. From the weekly release of a new video game from one of dozens of powerhouse gaming studios, to dozens of relaxing phone games you’d just like to sit back and play in your off time. From near-daily releases of new music from artists well-known and underground, to the daily publication of dozens of written works by household names and self-published ghosts alike. Seeing the landscape of media that is now stretched out before us—often completely accessible with nothing more than a computer and a decent Internet connection—can be daunting. Especially when it comes to trying to parse out what is and isn’t worth your time.
For the most part, people are more inclined to spend their time on the familiar. It’s why despite a year-long absence from movie theaters, Marvel Cinematic Universe films are poised to score at the top of the box office when they return. It’s why when a familiar name like Stephen King publishes a new novel, it manages to net successful sales with most people. We live in an age where enough content is being produced by familiar names—whether that’s a film company, a video game company, or even someone creating music—that we often find ourselves in a lull when it comes to what we are consuming. And this doesn’t have to just be with popular names. Even a familiar director, streaming service, or even franchise label, no matter how popular in the mainstream, can keep us ensnared in its familiarity. I know I’m guilty of this a lot, especially with music: I’m not too keen on stepping out of my comfort zone to listen to artists like The Weeknd or Ariana Grande when I’d prefer to loop Hozier or Sleeping at Last songs that I’m familiar with. The choices are there, but I’m not much willing to give it a chance because I don’t know whether I would be wasting my time or not.
Because that appears to be the crux of the issue when it comes to the amount of media that’s available for us to consume: Time. I’ve already mentioned the plethora of new films, television series, books, and more that come out every year. That alone would take someone more time than there is in a single year to consume, given how fast these types of media come out (don’t even get me started on endless “gacha” video games produced on a near-weekly basis in countries like China and Japan, which require players to login each day and do daily tasks to maintain progression). But this time sink doesn’t even include media on peoples “backlogs.” That TV show on HBO that recently ended you want to catch up on, but has over fifty hour-long episodes for you to watch that have come out in the last five years; all those films nominated for Oscars you never got around to seeing because they would take you two full days without sleep to finally watch; that author whose books you want to read but whose backlog of work is so extensive, you could be thousands of pages in before you’ve found a story of hers that catches you more than the rest. As if the current onslaught of newness wasn’t daunting enough, there are still centuries worth of art that you can get lost in for hours. Or, more intimidating still, you could have a buildup of series or pages or songs that you want to experience, but that you simply don’t have enough time for.
I’ll use myself as an example here because I’m a little crazy when it comes to the ambitions of what I’m able to consume. Bear in mind that I’m likely an outlier here, but that’s only because I’ve kept track over the last five years of what I’d like to experience and when. As of right now, there are over 1,000 books on my to-read list. Many of them are standalone, while others are part of different series (note that I only ever put the first book of a series on my list to denote the series as a whole, mostly to keep my sanity as close to intact as I can get it). My list of films to watch is just shy of 700, though it pales in comparison to a television list I’m too embarrassed to admit to here. Music-wise there are some artists I would like to check out—a dozen or so, perhaps—but they always fall by the wayside for the familiar. As do many video games, a list over 100 long that would probably take a good three months without sleep, food, or a toilet to complete.
This is insane. There is no conceivable way that I can get to all these pieces of media in my lifetime. I will die long before I’ve even scratched the surface of this insurmountable list. But that isn’t the worst part. I could live with that, because while I may regret that I didn’t pick up this television show or go see that movie while it was in theaters, media is not as important as life experiences and the time you spend improving yourself and the lives of those around you. But I’m not here to harp on that since that should be a given of the process of life. The worst part of wanting to consume so much media isn’t that I’ll never get to. The worst part is fearing that I’ll never get to experience the best pieces artists have to offer.
Humans have been natural storytellers since the dawn of our species, from cave paintings and oral tradition to our current ability to capture reality and fiction in as many ways as we can dream of. At its core, all media is a form of storytelling. Yes, even paintings or drawings, which are able to capture the feelings of artists or tell stories of their own through their lines—if you know where to look. And, as you can see by the number of things I’ve listed, there are a lot of stories people are just waiting to tell. But with that number of stories also comes what goes into a story. Yes, there are the general notions of plot, characters, and interactions therein that make up the bulk of every good story—with respective elements that are specific to a story’s medium (for example the writing style of a novel or the cinematography of a film). But there is also something deeper that every story must strive for, even if it’s simplistic: Meaning. Often people discuss meaning as the “theme,” especially in written works. And while there is a distinction between meaning and theme in the world of literature, I want to gloss over that distinction for right now and only focus on the idea of “meaning” as it pertains to all art.
Art that has “meaning” is a work—whether it be a novel, a film, or even a gacha game—that tries to tell more than just its story. While the story is the primary focus of the work, there is a secondary undercurrent to it, a message the creator is trying to convey through the elements of their story. In works that are considered “the best” when it comes to their ability to showcase “meaning,” these messages often come from the heart of the creator. The creator is trying to use their work as a vehicle to tell the audience something that isn’t just their story. A perfect piece of art—at least from what I’ve seen—is one that is able to tell a well-crafted story that sticks with an audience long after they’ve finished experiencing it. But that perfect art must also have “meaning.” It must be able to captivate the audience with a story, but also allow the audience to dig a little deeper. Give the audience a trail of breadcrumbs that leads them to understand what the creator was trying to say outside of just the story itself. A “meaningful” piece of art is one that can give audiences a great experience while showing them there is more under the surface.
Now, this is not to say that art that has meaning must use the story as a vehicle for said meaning. For instance, an author may be trying to craft a story about economic injustice, with bringing these ideas into the light acting as the meaning of the work. That’s all well and good, and an author is well within their right to ascribe whatever meaning they’d like to their work. But if the author decides to focus more on the meaning of their story than the actual story itself, then it won’t even matter what meaning they were trying to convey; the story falls flat because the author didn’t prioritize story over meaning, and the meaning now feels tacked-on and bland. The best creations are good at interweaving both story and meaning, as the best creators know that a good work must have both. In order for a creator to create something meaningful, they must focus on their story first. A story with meaning holds tenfold the impact of meaning without a story.
In arguing as to the importance of meaning in a story, I would point to the notion of artistic merit. While the term has been fuddled a bit in recent years, my opinion is that something with artistic merit is something that manages to hold meaning outside of its surface. So pretty much what we’ve been talking about so far. The difficulty of artistic merit in a world of consumerism, though, is that, when it comes to the media of today, because of its large quantity, there is no guarantee that everything has artistic merit. Granted this is often a personal contention: Someone could say that a film like John Wick, for instance, holds no artistic merit because it’s simply a string of choreographed fight scenes strung together by a flimsy plot. Thereby, there is no artistic merit because the meaning is not prevalent. At the same time, however, someone could say John Wick does hold artistic merit, as Wick’s path of revenge holds meaning because of its representation as his grief for the death of his wife and dog (Wick’s successive killings of Russian mob members a reflection of anger, the second stage of grief). Thereby, there is artistic merit, you just have to dig a little deeper to get there.
But I think the most important aspect of a work that deems it as “worthy” of being considered for artistic merit—and what strengthens the relationship between meaning and story—is PURPOSE. I capitalize it here in order to emphasize just how large of a role it plays when determining if a work’s meaning and story give it merit. In this instance, “purpose” would be why a creator has decided to create the work they’re making. While the story is what a work conveys on the surface while meaning is the deeper worth of that work and what it tries to say with its story, purpose is more personal to an artist. Every artist has a reason for creating something, a reason that the story and the meaning should be able to convey. That meaning is the “purpose.”
To further emphasize: Purpose alone does not determine if a work has artistic merit or not. As with the previous example, someone can go into their work with a sense of purpose determined to highlight economic injustices. But to do so only focusing on meaning while neglecting the actual vessel of the message—the story—the purpose too falters. Think of it like this: Purpose in a work of art is a roof. Meaning and story are the two foundations that purpose must be balanced on. If both foundations are not strong, then the purpose falters and the roof caves in. In other words: An artist who makes their purpose visible by creating a strong story that has a strong meaning because of that story has created a work of artistic merit.
And that is where the difficulty of our current creative world lies. How can we determine if the content we’re consuming has artistic merit or not? Is what we are experiencing in our commonplace media worth experiencing, or does it lack that deeper meaning and sense of artistic purpose striven for in works that have artistic merit? Much of this boils down to the corporatism of modern media, with focus groups and sales trumping any artistic motivation that putting out certain creative works may have. That is not a slight against any corporate entity that curates or creates content for the public to consume; that’s simply the way media businesses are run to ensure the money put into making a work of art is earned back. But once we fall into the familiar—once we’re only listening to the same songs on our playlists because they’re familiar tunes to our ears—we become docile to the possibility of stepping outside our consumptive comfort zones and experiencing creations we’d never think to try. I’m not here to preach that I’m not guilty of it, because like I said, it’s something I struggle with too, even as a creator who should be experiencing a plethora of different works to make his own shine brighter.
But it’s also important to at least acknowledge and analyze the purpose and meaning behind every story so that we can understand if it has artistic merit. Doing so creates a taste for such media in ourselves, no matter how objective or subjective that argument for purpose and meaning is. The important factor in all of this, though, is to find stories that put the story first and meaning second. A good story will manage to bring about meaning on its own. This goes for creators and consumers alike: When you are writing a novel, for instance, you don’t go into it with the meaning in mind before the story, because you are then tethering your story to an abstraction or a message that leaves no room for flexibility, resulting in a stilted product. In the same vein, a consumer doesn’t go into a work looking for meaning. We go into works searching for story. A story that can tell more than what it showcases on the surface, though, will always remain more impactful than a story that is a vessel for a message, as any story that is being made from the heart of an artist will always reveal meaning and purpose on its own. Those elements are important to a work of artistic merit, but if the work is coming from within the artist, then those elements will reveal themselves naturally.
In a consumerist world, then, it is the job of the consumer to be vigilant as to what stories creators are telling hold artistic merit. Perhaps those stories are popular in the public consciousness, or perhaps they are unknown or long forgotten. Their worth, however, must be determined by the strength of their stories and how meaning and purpose can be found when experiencing it. This essay cannot act as a guide to taste, as while I have my own personal qualities of what makes good and bad media, they will not be the same as yours. I hope you will consider this piece as a springboard for introspection as to what kind of stories you want to see told, what meaningful qualities you are searching for, and that it will inspire you to research works both familiar and unfamiliar to find something worthwhile that piques your interest.
According to science fiction author and critic Theodore Sturgeon, “ninety percent of everything is crap.” This law—Sturgeon’s Law—will inevitably ring true when there is such a vast array of media set out before us to pick and choose to spend our time on each year. It is up to us, then, as consumers and creators alike, to try and parse out the good from the bad through our own research, our own desires, and looking inside of ourselves to see what journeys we want to set ourselves upon in the vast consumerist landscape. We must not engage with media that does not hold the story above meaning, but also media that is absent of meaning and purpose. Doing so dilutes the merit of what is worth experiencing and what isn’t. It is better for us to engage with media that will stick with us long after the experience is over than with something we will never remember five or ten years from now. This trinity—story, meaning, and purpose—plays off itself, and it is only in searching for works that embrace this fact that we can dig through the thousands of works produced each year to find the hundreds that hold artistic merit.
And, of course, are worth our time experiencing.
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