Valid Reasons to Hate on Art
lrios.bearblog.dev
lrios.bearblog.dev
I try hard not to be that person.
I like a lot of "weird" art, architecture, music, etc. I'm a jazz musician, and my preferences within jazz are somewhat on the experimental / artistic side of jazz.
It's amusing but sad to watch people in conversations, including friends and family members, struggle to say something when they find out that I like jazz. Or they're trying to work out a nice way to say that they'd rather not attend one of my performances.
Honestly it's OK to tell me that you hate jazz, since I already know it. Most people hate jazz. It's OK to tell me that my lengthy, obnoxious bass solo was a bit much. It's true. My feelings are not hurt. The world needs weird art, someone needs to make it, meaning that some kinds of art won't please everybody, or sometimes even anybody.
1. What you like in art/music happens to be weird, so by definition only liked by a small minority
2. What you like in art/music has to be weird because you want to feel like you're pushing the boundaries, which is a very "art-y" thing IMO
It is also funny to read about how historic audiences responded to weirdness – and almost all of this music modern audiences would listen to and go "yep, that's classical music."
"Weirdness" is what pushes art forward, sort of by definition. And people will dislike it, also by definition.
1. People like different things for different reasons.
2. You think people who appreciate things you don't like are forcing themselves to like it to be twee and artsy, because you can't actually imagine someone who has radically different tastes from yours.
Your comment has a lot of the same energy as this xkcd guy: https://xkcd.com/1534/
People actually do like beer.
(2) certainly does describe some people.
There IS some pleasure in learning about things before your friends do. They, on the other hand, have probably learned about YOU that you often get into things that really are terrible.
Apparently if you like whatever's on the radio this week, this requires no special analysis, you pass as normal. But if you don't, that must be a reflection of attention-seeking.
What makes it funny is that people who think like this never seem to notice the neuroticism and empathy-weaponization inherent in the need to bucket other people's taste like that.
I'm not good or prominent enough to have a hope of affecting boundaries in a widespread fashion.
The things that propel this activity are really pretty primitive: A love for the music itself, a feeling that it "deserves" to be performed, even if to a limited audience, pride in the craftsmanship involved, and the social hang.
I responded that it was "just noise", barely music. He challenged me to get precise about what I meant; all music is "just noise" and I should strive to articulate what I meant by it.
A lot of the stuff we listened to was bizarre - e.g., someone slowly lowering a metal chain onto a cymbal and running that through an effects chain.
But it was clear that that's really some people's jam, and while I'm allowed to hate it, it's good to have a clear picture of why I do.
You jump in fetish porn channels telling them they are gross, but you have moral responsibility to do that. You shittalk Star Wars while watching together, but you are just bonding with the people on the internet that gave bad review. You comment under official channels on twitter, but this doesn't matter, they are rich anyway.
You never dislike indie, or even if you do you never comment it, because that would be bad. Except you do because feedback is important, and artists always thank you for your negative feedback.
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I kinda think that it is good if groups can create spaces to themselves where random people don't show up, and shit there. (Not taking to the extreme, and also not groups bonding against vulnerable minorities.)
While your 5th point is valid, you have every right to talk, even after they told you to shut up (and they have every right to tell you to shut up over and over again), also this is a very important right that is worth preserving in general, you still can be considerate. It's just you hurt people for a moment of satisfaction. (((And they choose to be hurt also for a moment of satisfaction.))) If you have better things where you can feel good, why not do those instead. E.g. where are your arts?
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> When you release your work, as an artist, you are tacitly agreeing to those terms.
They choose to be vulnerable, not because they want to be hurt, but despite of it. They want to please people even if some assholes will jump in and insult them only because they can. It just hurts people and makes them to create and share less value, for no benefits?
I disagree. It's better in general not to go around judging people's morality, and if you can't manage that, try to keep your moral judgments to yourself. This situation is exactly what that evidently hated phrase "it's not for me" was invented for.
Banal as it sounds, "it's not for me" has been holding society together for hundreds of years, whereas "you are bad for creating or liking this" has never helped anybody.
> However, an important caveat here--expressing your distaste for a work on moral grounds is a great way to spark a discussion with friends and family members.
Usually it's not a discussion, usually it's a screaming match. Nobody learns anything, nobody changes their mind, everyone becomes their worst self. Our culture is filled with these discussions, I'm tired of them.
You do realize that this is, itself, a moralizing statement, don't you?
I also suspect nobody really adheres to it, either. People simply say "don't judge other people's morality" because they don't want themselves or others to be judged by the default/most common cultural standards. But as soon as you tell other people to judge or not to judge, well, you're judging.
Nope, I thought about that. Morality is about good and evil, not effective or ineffective, productive or unproductive.
I don't disagree with providing feedback, but to "hate on" something is very different than providing feedback or constructive criticism. And of all things, more so art than anything else. Art is someone's personal expression. To "hate on" it is implicitly an attempt to invalidate that person's expression, if that were even possible. Are you being a judge of what someone should or shouldn't be expressing?
Per the author's "not my cup of tea" comment, I do believe that is actually a better approach. Because you are simply expressing that it's not something that you connect with/enjoy/appreciate/etc. and making your comments about yourself. When you "hate on" someone's art, you're completely missing the fact that your strong feelings are _yours_ and that the artist's expression is completely independent of that (whether others share your sentiment towards the work or not).
Art that does not give the intended feeling, idea, or understanding is not worth the name art.
The banana duct-taped to the wall could be considered "art by a lazy person", yet at the same time, it was actually a very authentic expression (in this case, an expression that was more along the lines of satire). The "artist" was having an internal experience that he chose to express as a banana on the wall with a piece of duct tape. The artistic expression was a social statement, a joke, a protest. And that's ok.
The hard work of satire is figuring out the best way possible to make the satire.
A younger gentleman sat down on stage, plugged in a bass guitar and sat with it. He strummed it a couple times and then put it on his lap. He then jammed a butter knife into it. I thought it was a weird weird tool to use to tune a guitar, but whatever.
Then he pulled out a bow and began fiddling that butter knife. It was the most wretched sound I've ever heard intentionally amplified.
It was horrible, and he wouldn't stop. I finished my drink and looked around the room. Everyone was locked in, some even nodding their heads as though there were some rhythm to nod to. There was not. There was no discernable difference in pitch or tone no matter where on the knife he played. If he could predict the sound being made before he made it, it wasn't obvious.
I had a great seat in the middle of the bar and didn't want to lose it for my friend's show, so ordered another drink. But the guy was relentless, and the crowd was relentless in their appreciation. I slammed the drink and gave up the best seat in the house to smoke outside until it was over.
My friend's performance was excellent (which I watched later from the back of the room). Later I was with him and a couple other patrons and tried to describe how awful the knife guy was. The others who saw it said I was being closed-minded. I worry they cannot hear well.
The only art in that room was watching that crowd accept that wretched noise as performance, simply because the person making it happened to be on stage.
It is indeed a thing. Some people are really into it. Some friends of mine probably would have been riveted by that butter knife show. I recommend reading the RYM reviews for Merzbow, which contain both yours and fans' takes: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/merzbow/pulse-demon/
And it goes deeper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harsh_noise_wall
> The movement is spearheaded by French musician Vomir, who described his aesthetic as "no ideas, no change, no development, no entertainment, no remorse"
It is surely an interesting conversation to find where each person's limit for "music" (or art!) resides.
Chicago.
You cannot fathom that other people might have different responses to it?
I like noise. Not everyday, but I do go to concerts of it. Next you will reveal to me that the sensations and feelings I get to experience are just a construct and I am inflicting this only because it's on stage?
You can stare at a blank wall for hours, convince thousands of others to do so, start a movement behind it, write, talk, sing, do what the masses need to do in regards to that blank wall.
I still won't call the blank wall "art". I will absolutely call your ability to get everyone else to do so "art".
I'm allowed. As are you.
No need for a hypothetical!
here are some plausible entry points to this bizarre non-genre. any number of these could be interesting to consider:
- the opposite of a thing is often part of the thing. think about of how a good illustrator is super conscious of negative space. is noise the opposite of music?
- every musical note contains a series of overtones. ask a string player to demonstrate "harmonics" if you're unfamiliar with the concept. i couldn't really hear them until i learned how to listen for them. it's possible the knife-guitar player was doing something with overtones. it's also possible that the people nodding along spend a lot of time playing amplified music, and have suffered hearing loss that changes the threshold at which they can comfortably perceive the overtone series. (or they could've just been entirely deaf)
- some people are interested in asking the question "what even IS 'music,' anyway?" noise music is a flippant answer to this question. But it's an answer nonetheless.
- "what even IS 'a performance,' anyway?"
- if you're a driver, it could be important to get a feel for your vehicle by doing things like flooring it and slamming on the breaks. if you're a painter, it could be beneficial to get to know your paint by making a big goopy pile of it somewhere. if you're a musician?
- knife guy almost certainly didn't start out immediately loving unlistenable noise. he probably was exposed via a gateway drug like ambient music, and built up a tolerance over time. same way i learned to love "spicy mustard."
- it's all just a big scam, but if you want in on it you have to pretend to be into it. maybe it's a scam we can live with. musicians don't really make much money anymore.
- human beings are fucking weird. we tend to like things just because we're familiar with them. the fact that people enjoy noise is a hilarious example. you might enjoy learning a couple of the big noise names (merzbow is a good one, lou reed metal machine music is a classic) and continuing to dunk on noise fans because it's funny and we deserve it.
I've seen good drawings made with ballpoint pens and with markers. Beyond the fact that it's more difficult to get consistent strokes with them, I don't see anything wrong with using such media.
Also, people become better with lots of practice, so who knows what will happen ten years later. In the meanwhile you can give them a link to https://drawabox.com/
So sometimes when you read that excoriating review you think yes I'm not alone. I'm not mad. That was thoroughly bad. And you remember that it's important.
Say you've just exited from a cinema, and vent to your friend/SO: "Sheesh, that SUCKED. I want my 2 hours of life back!". Overall, a perfectly common, normal sentiment. Not profound criticism, but it wasn't trying to be. And sometimes you'll have a friend in a group that'll rant about how much they hated this for a bit.
Now in modern times, you get a million do the same thing except on Twitter, or the subreddit for that particular work, and suddenly the creators get flooded with an absolute torrent of hate that can go on and on for days. And then when 1% decides to discuss their thoughts at length they can create discussions spanning months, videos, and conversations with people who actually participated in the work and have that last for years.
That can be awful for the people at the receiving end of it, when most of the people participating aren't really doing anything unusual. It's just incredibly magnified due to the new ability to have a million people spontaneously gather up and discuss how much X sucked.
I think it's just common courtesy to be more restrained in a more public setting. Just like I wouldn't say "hey this book was trash" to the author's face, because that's a possibility when posting online. Also, when you say something online, it's easy to take something out of context, like a joke. Therefore, isn't it reasonable and decent to be a bit more restrained when posting on a medium with a wider reach?
For example Twitter can be very public or quite tight knit depending on how you use it, and you can move between spheres pretty much by accident. Respond to the wrong person, use a popular #tag, and suddenly you went from talking to your 10 friends to the entire world.
Or even somebody else can do that to you, if some well connected person thinks your take was hilarious and retweets it.
Therefore, there are no invalid reasons to hate on art.
The only valid question is: which social circle can you share that opinion with?
Social circles are two-way streets. In my opinion you can share your opinion with the entire world but no one has to engage with you or listen to you. The law even protects your right to disengage from an individual who is hell-bent on getting you to engage with them.
Few people want to hear an unsolicited opinion about anything, not just art.
This has suddenly become a public conversation, for the first time that I can remember, because of the advent of social media.
Hot take alert: We hear a lot about social media creating echo chambers, but I have a pet theory that the real problem with "the news feed" style Facebooks and Twitters is that people actually aren't echo chambered enough. Hear me out.
I think it's a good thing that the Internet has given everyone a voice, but it's a double edged sword because everyone, as individuals, needs the tools to be able to listen to the voices of their choosing.
I'm a huge fan of pre-mobile / pre-social media forums. In my opinion they more closely mirror the way that people tend to socially organize offline: through shared special interests and hobbies.
Outside of work, my wife and I are performing magicians by hobby. We are members of our local Magic Circle. I can't remember ANY instance in the 12 years that we have been a part where a conversation has devolved into a flame fest of people shouting at each other over their personal opinions about art and/or politics. We are there to bond over a common interest. Nothing else matters.
Social media opens a firehoze of unsolicited opinions and while you can block and mute certain individual voices that you find persistently annoying, it is very lousy, by design, at giving you a narrowly defined topical feed. "The algorithm" is constructed purposefully to take that control away from you. And as we all know, it tends to push the most controversial, incendiary, emotion-inducing content to the top because that's what people engage with.
To compound that problem, people visit social media mostly on their free time as a form of entertainment. They just got off of work, or they are taking a break or they just had to deal with their 2 year-old throwing a temper tantrum. They come in, pre-exhausted, looking to unwind and all they want is cute cat gifs but instead they get some random asshole's unsolicited opinion about current President or Star Wars.
So yeah, I just went off on a rant about social media when the topic is whether we have valid reasons to hate on art. My point is that I don't remember anyone ever telling anyone else that can't hate on something prior to the social media era for fear of hurting a stranger's feelings.
Around here, Germany, art critics are celebrated for their often acerbic criticism. E.g. look for Marcel Reich-Ranicki on youtube, though I don't know if translations really convey everything properly :) Also, talking about the quality of anything isn't considered "intelligent" or "honest" around here if you don't talk about negative aspects. If you just say nice things, you are quickly considered dishonest, a salesman or dimwitted. Of course you need to state some valid-sounding reasons for anything negative, same as for the positive aspects, otherwise you'll be considered shallow or dimwitted as well.
Not sure that's true from what I've observed but I've always taken that advice as meaning "if you're going to criticize, find something positive to say first", not "never say anything negative". And I've never really thought of it as applying so much to criticizing art that's in the public sphere.
It's not about whether the reviewer is right; the sommelier knows where the reviewers tastes lie relative to her own. If something is too nutty for the reviewer, it may be just right for her.
I think this also applies to art criticism. The way someone complains about (or praises!) a movie or book can tell me a lot about whether I'll like it, regardless of whether I agree with them.
But I must comment on
> Reason No. 2: The Work is Morally Abhorrent
Is this ever a sign of our times? On with the morality! All_the_time, must we not ? I think the morally abhorrent should be celebrated in its own right, for it provokes in you emotion, and that's one of the things art should do.
By the putting of pencil to paper, entirely from the imagination of some feeble mind ? Whatever, it's not for me, and I'd maybe piss on it for a lot of reasons, but not from a point of some moral superiority.
Something created from actual abuse of real, living beings, or using such material as a reference, that's beyond the question of morality, that's beyond criticism of art, that's ethically wrong and should not enter into a discussion of art, and the police be informed.
[asked where a comedian should draw the line] "There are no lines. There are no lines. I say, erase all the lines."
**
Art does not all have to pretty landscapes.
He makes a spirited defense of the role of the critic, and I say in the intro that I don't GAF about Rotten Tomatoes or MetaCritic; I just read him, and whoever's writing on Roger Ebert's site these days. I want to know what the movie's like and if I should see it, not some stupid average rating from 100 would-be "critics". After I see it, I want to understand it better.
A real critic helps you understand what a work is about, and what's good or bad about it. A high school dweeb's opinion or a shill's is worth what you pay for it: nothing.
Of course it can hurt your feelings as an artist. I've had a video up on YouTube for over 15 years now, and my expectations on the comments are so low that I'm amazed when someone actually gets it completely. But after you read a few drive-by opinions by someone who completely missed the point, you just say "ok, you didn't like it, that's life."
I would really recommend ReverseShot for probably some of the consistently best writing on film: http://reverseshot.org/
David Bordwell's blog is also pretty interesting (for those who don't know, he is an extremely well known film scholar with a focus on Hollywood cinema). http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/
Little White Lies out of the UK is also pretty good. It has extremely good art and graphic design in magazine form.
I've heard NYRB satirized as "New York Reviews of Each Others' Books"
I'm very excited for a recent newbie: The European Review of Books, for its focus on non-english works which I think is an enormously untapped reservoir. They publish annually; the format is like a book.
I can also pay the Kirkus Review $450 to get a "professional" review. I passed on that one, too.
It's interesting to be on the other side of this game.
So they have an incentive not to say anything to make an author discard it.
Someone spent a lot of time doing something you can't do, paying attention to details, honing a skill, reflects years of practice and fine craftsmanship? It's probably "good" art.
That being said, people like to piss on other people's work because it's a lot "easier to criticize than create". There's a distinct change you simply don't appreciate how hard these things are either. Do you have the time/energy/dedication to do the thing your criticizing? Consider that first. Artists are a necessary part of society and sometimes they need an attaboy too.
So i hope it's not just "valid", but it's a "business".