Weekly Thoughts 2/24/24

I forget exactly why, but the other day I started thinking again about how people say Avatar: The Last Airbender and other American shows are anime. Like, it’s not anime. It doesn’t matter what art style they used, or what tropes are involved. Those qualities that Americans identify as “anime-like” are downstream of anime being Japanese. Being Japanese is why we call some cartoons and comics a different name. Asking a Japanese person if it counts as anime doesn’t prove anything, because you’re asking them if a cartoon is a cartoon; it doesn’t mean the same thing to them as to us. And it’s also like a white person asking a Black person if their rapping skills are good enough for them to say the N word, you know? No amount of copying cultural traits will make you non-white. It’s kind of a toxic white person thing, to be so enthralled with another culture that you think you’re entitled to claim it as your own if you do enough activities from that culture, a list you yourself determined.

Anyway, (at the time of writing) I just read Pompo the Cinefile 3, and it’s got me energized, as always. It’s a fast-paced, clear eyed story cram packed with information and opinions, and it’s exhilarating. Most of all, the characters are what shines. They’re uncompromising artists who truly believe in their high ideals and would go to any lengths for their art. And I have a lot of feelings about it all.

I’m really attracted to that view of art. You put your entire heart and soul into it, and if it doesn’t turn out right, you just keep going until it works out. There’s nothing except your dream, no time passing, nothing else in the world. As someone who has to work in the real world and who wants to have other aspects of my life fulfilled, it’s a terrifying view of art. Like the main character, Gene Fini, I could see myself getting completely swallowed up by work and putting myself into an early grave over art. Or at least, I see my emotions about it taking on that shape, and I worry about losing everything else. He’s a mess who constantly makes trouble for everyone and has no life outside of his work, and he’s constantly in a loop of misery and pain trying to fulfill all his goals. He sees it as worthwhile because he happens to be able to make good movies, and yet it never satisfies him. He’ll always reach for more. It’s that passion that makes art so precious and meaningful for people, and it’s a very attractive sort of prison to put yourself in.

But it’s a prison, right? It’s a dream, a fiction, not reality. You can push yourself forever and never get to the “awakening” Gene achieves in this book. An awakening he immediately after rejects as trash. Most people don’t get that far. The jerk who does a good job and gets a pass is a fantasy, and a toxic one at that. And that’s if you’re good at your job. This book also, though briefly, has a plotline where Pompo goes to school and sees what mundane life is like. She initially rejected it as conformist and robotic, but soon discovers that the simple joys of everyday life borne from that schedule are wonderful treasures in and of themselves. The ideal of the suffering artist is magnetic and powerful, but it’s a dream, one that breaks more people than it builds.

I had a teacher who didn’t want to put their life on hold for work, because asking others to suffer for them wasn’t worth the trade-off. Their work is good, but is any work worth losing out on your other life goals and the suffering of those close to you? Is the person who only has their work a grand artistic ideal, or does the ideal exist simply to justify their suffering and lack of fulfillment? Does any of this human element really speak to the value of the art itself, its quality? After all, for as much as creating art is a wonderful artistic experience, once produced, art exists in the minds of those who experience it. Work that people flop out without much thought or effort can genuinely change someone’s life, and few ever really know and truly understand the entire story behind how art got made. Knowing how much suffering went into making art doesn’t make it better, it just activates our sympathy and enhances our emotional connection. It’s a separate thing from the quality of the art, except for how it isn’t. Art is an experience, and anything affecting that experience is art. We all hold onto that fantastical ideal of the suffering artist because we can’t allow suffering to exist without reason.

And yet, I don’t think most of us truly appreciate art. I struggle with it myself, in a much relatable way as Gene discusses. It’s often difficult to actually appreciate and understand everything about the art you’re looking at right away, and it takes some time to sink in. Like how Gene rewatched movies obsessively, I like to reread books and rewatch shows and movies, so that I can figure out what’s going on. I found myself really connecting to the way he talked about only viewing movies in their logic because he has trouble grasping anything else. And I think more people than not out there are in a similar position, in terms of not understanding art right away. We’re now, more than ever as a society, awash in art. There’s so many books, movies, shows, photos, music, performance pieces, etc. than there ever has been. It’s offered to us mostly as entertainment, which I’m not saying as a knock. It’s a fine way to present it, to take away the stress of “appreciating art” from the masses, so that it can be enjoyed casually by anyone.

The problem comes from the attitude we approach it with. We view everything as a product, as a transactional good to be judged by an all-powerful customer, whose opinion, by definition and necessity, doesn’t need to include any level of expertise or appreciation. We think of art as just another piece of mass produced, disposable plastic trash that we can judge solely on a surface level and be the ultimate arbiter. That’s why there are so many people ready to embrace algorithmic generation as art. If you only view an illustration made by a passionate human with intention and themes as a transactional good, then it’s all the same to you. Even their story of suffering is just a PR piece designed to build support, and you have no real connection to their lives. They’ll do it anyway. It doesn’t have real meaning.

And that’s the rub. Suffering, like all life experiences, does have meaning, but at the same time, it’s not what makes art good. We idolize a suffering artist because it alleviates our own psyches, as averse to pain as we all are. If that’s the “cost,” the “reward” better be high. The greatness of art doesn’t come from darkness, it only comes alongside it, some of the time. Plenty of artists aren’t suffering, and had perfectly fine and happy lives. Different people are built different ways, and they don’t all have the same opportunities or support that others have. Some artists are like otters, who have to eat shellfish that their teeth aren’t meant to eat and destroy their mouths to live. From a logical standpoint, their suffering is just a natural function of their design. Instead of idolizing that, we should try to alleviate it.

At the same time, in this oversaturated world, we need to teach people to value art and open themselves to the vulnerability of being human. It’s fine to view things casually, and to value that casual experience. I think we have a tendency to teach people about valuing art in as much as we teach them about obeying authority or controlling their emotions, i.e. superficially and based on appearances. We teach kids that they need to like art or else be shallow, unthoughtful, and boring. But we don’t have common, robust tools for teaching kids how to appreciate art. We keep cutting those classes in school, after all, and treat the most common art forms as cheap distractions for a child. Movies, TV shows, that don’t count as “real art.”

At the same time, we hold up art as this unapproachable world separate from normal humanity. It’s a “talent” thing, a special spark, something that you shouldn’t touch unless you have it. You don’t want to be poor and suffering and doing something “meaningless,” in that it’s said not to have economic value. You should do something in the “real world,” as a blind worker drone. Those that have the talent should be dissuaded all throughout their lives and careers, until and unless they become wealthy or were already wealthy. We all rely on art to get through life and find joy and meaning, but we also, increasingly so, don’t have the means to properly support the growing class of artists. Many resent the money it costs them to access, and this resentment fuels the rise of exploitative digital technologies like streaming and algorithmic generation. A resentment produced by the same people who make the technologies. I’ve talked about it before myself, that with the way the economy is structured and how much the average person makes, $3.99 for a single issue comic is too much for what it is. But the issue isn’t that it costs four bucks. It’s that the national minimum wage is a little less than a third of the real living wage they’re depriving us of.

All of this is to say, instead of resenting artists for charging money for their work, we should demand compensation that lets us pay for it. Instead of viewing art primarily as a product, we should value it for what it is and teach people how to engage with it. Instead of birthing technologies of exploitation and theft to “democratize” art, we should teach people that creativity isn’t magic, that anyone can do it. I mean, I’m not one to say talent doesn’t exist, in the sense that there’s a reason linebackers in the NFL all have the same build and some are better than others despite equal passion and dedication. That said, art isn’t a hard numbers game, a goal-oriented metric where you can objectively identify quality and ability by results. Some people do it easily, others don’t. For however good I am now, it didn’t come naturally. I have dysgraphia and probable undiagnosed neurodivergences that have had a huge impact on how easily I can focus myself on a task and truly understand what I’m looking at or trying to do. But I apparently can’t stop unless I die, so here I am. And one assumes that qualities I can’t put into words or see properly have led to the strengths in my art today, and will continue to drive my growth. “Talent” comes in many forms and can be used in myriad ways and doesn’t replace hard work and learning.

Everyone can make art, and everyone can open themselves up to truly appreciate art. As you learn more, the “magic” of what anything in the world actually takes to accomplish disappears, and you learn it’s just…stuff you do? Simple, mechanical things that anyone can learn, and perform with varying degrees of success. You can just go get cake, whenever you want. The magic of life isn’t in fantasies of what ignorant debutantes imagine it’s like. The magic is in how we treat each other, how we reach out and make the world more than what we see. Art’s a great example. It’s not magic talent, nor is it some fantastical moment of connection to a higher realm. It’s just putting marks on a paper, until eventually you get an image that only existed in your head. It’s someone else seeing that image and having a reaction to it, slowly or quickly opening their hearts to a series of ideas and emotions that didn’t exist before.

That’s why I generally don’t think we should teach people to chase “dreams,” the big societal fantasies and ideals, because the reality can be far better, and we have the capacity to make it better still. There’s nothing noble about suffering for your art. Rather, it’s ignoble that we make people suffer, or teach people that it’s good for them to suffer because they could make something out of the experience. The Killing Joke didn’t make Barbara Gordon the Oracle, it was the creative team that followed. That’s actually something else in Pompo 3 that caught my eye. Gene isn’t solely being lauded as a genius and his suffering put on a pedestal. Everyone’s worried about what it’s doing to him. But they also work to support him the best they can, often by matching his energy and recognizing the ways they can alleviate his pain. Gene even has that breakthrough, that he’s only as good as the people around him, that his suffering isn’t alone in his basement obsessively taking notes on movies. And yet, it’s because of all the support he receives that he won’t give up his uncompromising stance on art.

That can, and should, look different for most people. You owe it to yourself to chase your dreams, and you owe it to everyone who helps you make it happen to take care of yourself so you can make your best work. You also owe it to yourself and everyone else to live all of life, not simply the passion. The best way to help with that is to appreciate what you see, to understand why you had this meaningful experience. And to demand material improvements, like raising the minimum wage, universal healthcare, and a UBI.