I didn’t make it to Brian Moriarty’s Apology for Roger Ebert at GDC due to having a conflicting work shift at the time, but the text has been posted online and a few people have been talking about it, so it’s been brought to my attention. I’ve been sick of the “are games art?” debate forever, because in my mind, there’s no debate because the answer is an absolute “yes”, but then I have to remember that when a lot of people say “art”, what they really mean is “great art”, or “high art”, or as Moriarty calls it, “sublime art”. And then, things start to get complicated.
I agree with Emily Short‘s assessment that there’s far too much human diversity in the world to be able to truly say that a “great work of art” touches everyone. I would also like to say — and I can’t possibly be the only one who’s ever noticed this — that the very way in which our culture labels things “great works of art” is steeped in unexamined privilege. As with history, art that’s preserved and remembered for future generations is that created by the winners, is it not? I mean, sure, maybe we’ll have the work of some token minorities sprinkled in for good measure, especially in more recent years, but it’s hard to deny that it’s old white dudes whose voices are, by far, the most dominant.
An online conversation from a few years ago comes to mind, when someone negatively compared a soliloquy in one of my games to that in Hamlet, stating that the latter was inherently superior due to its message being universal. And all the while, I was thinking, Hamlet doesn’t speak for me. Neither do any of the all-white-male Great Artists that Moriarty name-drops in his speech. Of course, we were all taught in school that we should treat Great White Dudes’ musings as universal, because we folks of marginalised groups are pretty much forced to understand the dominant culture as well as our own. Heck, it’s taken me a damn well long time to recognise and acknowledge the ways institutional prejudice has shaped my life precisely because of the fact that such standpoints were so rarely acknowledged in artistic media to which I was exposed growing up.
So you see, the very reason games are so compelling to me as an artist is that they’re more removed from notions of “high art” than any other medium. [1] There’s more uncharted territory and less tradition, fewer obstacles to surmount in getting unknown voices heard. And the ability to make choices that Ebert has famously derided is what gives the medium power for me; finally, now you have the chance to be in another person’s shoes and understand what’s possible for them, instead of seeing their lives play out before you in a detached manner! Talk about challenging and overturning the dominant paradigm!
Granted, the points regarding the difficulty in creating good art in a commercial industry do hold true, and it is indeed sad that most indie game developers, or at least the ones who gain the most exposure at the IGF and the like, are saying basically the same things as the heavily commercialised games except with a bit more edge and maybe some pixel art thrown in for good measure. But the potential to say new things and make more diverse voices heard is there, and I hope more of us take advantage of it in the years to come.
- Comics are a pretty close second, though. ↩
I know I suffer a little too much from social indoctrination visa what ‘good’ art is, but I like to think that I’m at least aware of my myopia. It would be nice if others of my race and sex could admit as much.
Let me first say that I agree fully with what Emily Short said about human diversity and that no work of art can be described as perfectly universal. In other words, no culture (in the vague sense of some group’s common characteristics) can be simply translated to another or be directly understood by it, and the same goes for individual traits. In particular, I really hate it when people try to tell you that everyone (and I mean ‘everyone’) should feel/think exactly the same way about some essential aspect of life – that there are correct templates for it. I don’t think anyone’s specific experience can’t be just reduced to an aspect of ‘universal human nature’ that we all share. However, despite the existing differences it seems we are also very similar creatures that can communicate with each other. And we are stuck with each other too. That’s why culture and art are such interesting territories. What makes them attractive is the diversity found within and the possibility of continuous learning, to gradually (and never completely) get to know each other.
Consequently, I find the claim that “the very way our culture labels things ‘great works of art’ is steeped in unexamined privilege” true, but hardly shocking or a reason to reject said label as unimportant. Trends, works of art, people who create art – all of this competes with each other, changes with time and/or dies. It’s more like forces of nature clashing than a fair contest, but could it be any different? There is no higher authority than history and where is war to reveal “the best” someone has to win. So what remains, what gets rewarded – deservingly or through dirty tricks – can be considered as the “Winners” – all of which had to be blessed with various privileges to make it there. At the very least with the privilege of surviving long enough to make an impact.
I certainly don’t like how Moriarty, Ebert and others continuously name-drop “Great Western Culture Artists” instead of giving good arguments and get all dreamy and sentimental about how those past celebrities are responsible for all the highs of human spirit and thought. But this “tradition that’s classist, racist, and sexist” that the “Great Artists” represent here is still the only Western culture that was being continuously developed through the last dozen or so centuries and it’s irrevocably embedded in all our civilization, language etc. (Stop forcing on me your Latin abbreviations, you nasty Romans!). No one has to bow before the dominant tradition/culture, but it’s still awfully, relevant, valuable, and at least as much build on positive emotions and thoughts as it was on destructive and prejudiced ones. All human.
“As with history, art that’s preserved and remembered for future generations is that created by the winners, is it not?”
No. Yes. Well… yes and no. Sure, most of the stuff we get taught in our history books is the history that’s written by the winners, but recently the trend has become to focus on micro histories, partly because all the big stuff has been done over and over again, but also because it’s a lot more interesting to read about people’s everyday lives than to read about what king So-and-so did and how many tanks were used in battle X. This focus on the history of mentality is not new either, it’s just that people seem to think children and students need to be taught the Big Picture. I’d rather see people be taught the methods of researching history, personally.
As for art, that’s a whole other can of worms. I don’t even like to classify things in terms of “art” or “not art”. If I like something, great. If not, maybe someone else will. And I don’t care if that’s an old-white-man Rembrandt painting, a video game, a children’s television show, or a landscape. The latter is not even art, but I don’t care. As long as it moves me in some way (preferably in a positive way, although feelings of Sehnsucht or the related Saudade are particular favourites of mine too), great. I don’t care about high or low art, the only distinction between the two seems to be price, really. They should call it high-priced and low-priced art.
And one more thing about privileges: of course you have to be privileged in some way to be able to create art. In the first place you have to have some talent. If not a talent for conveying beauty, at least a talent for coming up with cool ideas. And a tramp in the streets has less chance of succeeding as an artist than someone born into a rich family. Sad, yes, but it’s the truth of the world we live in. Oh, and “high culture” is not just a men thing either, there have been plenty of recognized women artists throughout history. You could argue that they have been painting in the same old, same old male chauvinist pig tradition, but is it really that? Couldn’t there be just a hint of something universal in there somewhere? Are we that different? Like Igor says, in some ways we’re all similar, and I think that does shine through in the art we create, no matter who or where we are.
Lee: Thank you.
Igor & Jan: Seems to me like the two of you recognise that privilege exists in the art world, as well as the world in general, but you appear to believe it’s not a bad thing, and probably something that’s deserved. I disagree, mainly because the rich and powerful tend to have become that way on the backs of others. (e.g. slavery, colonialism) And perhaps that’s valid if you have a social Darwinist view of the world, which I don’t hold. I believe the world would be a richer, more interesting place if everyone were given a fighting chance to create art, though I do recognise that most don’t have the calling for it. I can’t change the past, but I can have an effect on the future, so that’s what I’m working towards.
Also, I’m not at all surprised that there were recognised women artists throughout history, but why are so few of their names as well-known as their male contemporaries? (Hint: it’s not because the men were inherently more talented.)
And with that, don’t ever assume that because I identify as a feminist and call out sexism, I think of men as “pigs”. In fact, that’s far from what I think. Men are human beings and deserve to be held accountable for their actions, not be given excuses for bad behaviour on the basis that they’re animals and don’t know any better.
I wouldn’t say those privileges are deserved. I’m probably more of a defeatist than anything. Sure, I would like to see the world change, but I’m not sure if it ever will. Even people who start with the best of intentions often get corrupted when they’re in power, and most of the people with the amount of money necessary to change the world don’t feel the need to do so because they’re living in comfort already. Meanwhile, I try to make the best of it, and I applaud anyone who attempts to fundamentally change the world.
Your point about women artists not being well-known is a valid one, and that probably has a lot to do with the art critics and salons and what not mostly being a bunch of grumpy males. In modern times that’s completely different though, and present-day female artists are getting the recognition they deserve, to the point that it doesn’t matter who you are, it just matters if what you’re doing is good (which is of course subjective, but the people who control that – art critics, museum directors – are now women as well as men).
About the pig comment, well, it is how I feel about some men at least, but I’m not trying to give them an excuse. They’re not victims of a system, they created it (at least the men that have been in charge – there’s an important distinction to be made here). I do feel men and women are inherently different, and I hold women in higher regard than men… I hope it’s okay if I say that, or should such philogyny be considered as inappropriate as misogyny? I don’t mean it in a condescending manner, by the way.
Thanks for clarifying your point, Jan. As for your “philogyny” comment, I say, sure, it’s okay if you say that, because far be it from me to silence anyone’s honest opinions. That said, I don’t agree personally, in that I think most (and the most important) differences between genders are socialised, and prefer to hold women, men, and people of other genders to the same standards.
“Also, I’m not at all surprised that there were recognised women artists throughout history, but why are so few of their names as well-known as their male contemporaries?”
Because it’s not that history is written by the “winners” so much as it is written by those in power. The distinction, I think, is important-the winners may portray events with perfect, objective accuracy, but there is only so much that they can write about, and in the end they have to decide what’s important enough to mention. Throughout Western history, most people (including, sadly, many women) thought that women were simply not worth paying much attention to, and so their contributions are forgotten. For comparison, ask yourself how many times you’ve heard about the major European wars of the last few centuries, and then ask yourself how many times you’ve heard about the major African wars of the last few centuries. As Igor pointed out, our society is founded on the ideals of a specific culture with specific prejudices, and the collective biases of our past and present cultures are reflected in our accounts of history.
Going back to the “high” art/”low” art debate, I think part of the trouble in talking about what counts as art and what doesn’t is the confusion between the subjective *experience* of art-what Moriarty referred to as the “still evocation of the inexpressible”, which I think is a lovely phrase-and the object that *inspires* that experience. Any object can inspire art, but when we point at an object and say that it, itself, is art, we are making the judgement that everyone ought to have that same experience in response to the object. When we make that claim, we will always, sooner or later, be wrong.
Igor & Jan: Seems to me like the two of you recognise that privilege exists in the art world, as well as the world in general, but you appear to believe it’s not a bad thing, and probably something that’s deserved.
Deirdra: Personally I think some privileges are deserved, others not at all – many get replaced by new ones as times change, but their creation is a permanent part of human life and nature. Consequently, there’s a limit to how much we should devalue historical judgment, because its criteria of what makes something great or not are much more severe than, say, those of academic education, short-term consumer popularity, or of any temporary institution. And even those, flawed as they are, need to be there if we want things to have any weight at all, and we wouldn’t want to get rid of them in the name of absolute tolerance and equality.
“Heck, it’s taken me a damn well long time to recognise and acknowledge the ways institutional prejudice has shaped my life precisely because of the fact that such standpoints were so rarely acknowledged in artistic media to which I was exposed growing up.”
We are all shaped by institutions and people that are influential in our life. I’d say that the oppression of classes, belief-systems and of the individual in society in general have been heavily addressed in art already (both the popular and the “respectable” kind). And I’d agree that sadly the issues of race, gender and sexuality have been much less prominently expressed in Western art throughout the ages despite historical events showing they were always very important to people. I think we can thank the Christian Church in particular for that.
“Granted, the points regarding the difficulty in creating good art in a commercial industry do hold true, and it is indeed sad that most indie game developers, or at least the ones who gain the most exposure at the IGF and the like, are saying basically the same things as the heavily commercialised games except with a bit more edge and maybe some pixel art thrown in for good measure. But the potential to say new things and make more diverse voices heard is there, and I hope more of us take advantage of it in the years to come. “
I fully agree that contests and the public at large way to often reward audio-visual and technical craft before the value of what makes the actual content. And in popular perception “indieness” is becoming identified with something easily recognized visually, something you just throw in a game because everybody likes it – like zombies and elves. But that’s what happens when you “removed notions of ‘high art’” from a medium – you go for what attracts the most easily and what is immediately fun and everything else is secondary. I feel comics suffer from this problem just the same.
Hey Deirdra; I recently played Life Flashes By and found your blog through that. I hope you don’t mind my drive-by rambling, but this topic really interests me, and I think you raised a point that hasn’t been raised yet in this discussion.
Another way of arguing Moriarty’s point involves arguments you’ve made here: that because affluent white males have been the dominant paradigm, they have had the leisure to devote to experiencing things in interesting and perhaps “deep” ways, as well as the confidence and precedent to believe themselves capable of it. Not to mention they’ve had the opportunity to have their works of art accepted and understood by a broader audience than those who don’t fit. (A Room of One’s Own, and all that.) Consequentially, they have produced art that is… I don’t want to say “better,” but honestly, you could say that’s what I mean. I think there is a convincing dimension to this view, and as someone who is also very concerned with topics of social justice, it is profoundly depressing. (All those voices lost!)
So I agree with you regarding the universality of art, and the premise that Great Art represents humanity at its most basic is steeped in privilege; but I also balk at that suggestion a bit because of my experiences in the university, where my fellow literature majors would dismiss works of art that they felt did not “speak” to them outright, as if that were the sole determiner of a work’s value. Or who thought that, you know, Milton and V for Vendetta have equivalent artistic merit. Pop art has its place, and honestly I don’t think such a comparison gets us very far — they coexist! and thank goodness!- but let’s not kid ourselves here: what Milton does is, by the measurements of cultural importance and depth and plot progression and craft, probably far superior. So I do think that yes, you can judge quality (to some limited degree). I say this with many reservations and plenty of qualifications, but in the least, I feel like there is a difference between Milton and V for Vendetta and that we should be able to discuss it.
What does this have to do with games, though? The best examples of thoughtful game development that we have are wonderful and there’s nothing wrong with them, but I think there is still so much more we could accomplish as far as depth and craft are concerned. I want us to keep pushing in that direction, because with the realities of economy and publishers set against developers, their creativity is stifled already. It would be a shame if we couldn’t somehow create a gaming equivalent of Milton, in one form or another.
Hi, Arden! Thanks for stopping by, hope you enjoyed LFB, and glad you found my thoughts on this topic worthy of notice!
You’re absolutely correct about the “room of one’s own” issues involved, and their necessity for mastery of a certain craft — indeed, I touched on these issues in a previous post when reflecting on the privileges I’ve had that have allowed me to practise indie game development. As for the “judging quality” point, I can appreciate that aspects such as craft and cultural importance can be a half-decent “objective” measure of quality, though it does bring to mind that J. Evans Pritchard essay from Dead Poets’ Society that Robin Williams proceeds to instruct his students to rip to shreds. Then again, I’m biased in that I didn’t pursue much in the way of formal education in literature or art history (I majored in CS) and while I’m happy to appreciate those subjects from a distance, in that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, I’m a lot more concerned with what’s being done in the here and now, and how I can contribute to it.
I did enjoy it, in fact! LFB is a bold attempt to make a game that really says something, and I admire that.
Ha, I’d forgotten about that moment in Dead Poet’s Society. There is a distinct sense in which judging art like that is Not the Point, and I do think the best reason you can dig into the past is to be inspired by it in the present. I suppose all I want is for the game industry to stop being so complacent in general — but I admit the problems with that reach far beyond some kid’s notion that Halo is Great Art. Still, I can hope, right?
I just thought I’d suggest that one reason that specifically old white dudes (as opposed to other varieties of dudes) are so heavily represented in the pantheon of “great works of art” may simply be that European culture seems to have been the driving force behind the modern “great works” theory of art. The more traditional, universal view is one that finds art embedded in other cultural phenomenon: notably, religion, as with, say, the theater of the ancient Greek, the poetry and songs of the Classical Chinese, the dance and totems of Native American tribes, and so on and so forth. It may be that something like a “great works” theory — which tends to isolate art out from contexts like religion and domestic life, and transform it into something with its own, independent standing — has developed in other cultures at various times, but our modern conception seems to derive pretty directly out of European values, particularly arising out of the Romantic era (which may imply a more or less direct Roman influence).
As for why the bulk of the pantheon is made up of dudes, that may simply be an accident of history, the culture that gave us our “great works” attitude having been characteristically patriarchal. Or maybe it’s not so arbitrary: if the Romantic period really did do the most to contribute to our “great works” theory, then its emphasis on male artists may have been the unfortunate complement to its symbolic conception of the arts themselves as feminine (e.g. the Muses).