While it is intuitive that there exists an inseparable parity between art and entertainment, there is also a large philosophical tradition that seeks to segregate the two realms. Here, I argue that an artist can also be an entertainer by virtue of the shared value of pleasure associated with both practices. First, I examine their conceptual divide. Following which, I discuss Shusterman’s pragmatist viewpoint and the shared value of pleasure. Lastly, I give examples of auteur filmmakers who, through their proper artistic vision, also bring entertainment to audiences. Having done so, I reasonably conclude that a true artist can also be an entertainer.
Some aestheticians have noted that, historically, academia has not been kind to entertainment and the like. Some see it as popular/mass art or low art, in contrast to serious/hermetic or high art. It is often represented as kitsch, pseudo-art or a failure to achieve proper or ‘pure’ art. It is a commercial mass medium. An industry operated solely to appease and delight consumers. One’s enjoyment of entertainment requires little to no mental effort because entertainment serves only to deliver on the desires and reinforce the worldviews of the audience. In automatic contrast, pure art (the works of “true artists”) is an independent, insular realm that has purely aesthetic goals. Proper art functions as an exhibition of aesthetic excellence, the purpose of which is to reward just that kind of appreciation, namely, aesthetic appreciation.
For Carroll (1992), this conservative and contentious philosophical tradition of “art for art’s sake” was largely the result of Western aesthetics misconstruing Kant’s theory of free beauty as a theory of art. Where, in fact, it was a theory of beauty as exemplified by our appreciation of natural wonders like birdsong and flowers, and of non-representational art such as music without text. On this misguided view, proper artworks are denoted by their capacity to elicit cognitive appreciation from audiences, free from external and instrumental values (e.g. emotional, functional, moral etc.). For brevity, I will only say that proponents of this sort of view will not be able to discuss the aesthetics of entertainment as anything but a category error or pseudo-art.
Carroll’s understanding sees entertainment as mass art, i.e. art that is designed to be experienced by a mass audience – mainstream cinema, TV, radio, photography, pop music, video games, etc. Practically speaking, it is art that, by virtue of technology and industrialisation, can be mass reproduced or delivered across wide distances, thus becoming art for the masses (in a non-political, numerical sense). By virtue of this design, mass art can tend to be formulaic and repetitive. While critics denounce these traits as failures to achieve proper art, Carroll counters that such traits are essential to their very existence as mass art. Repetitiveness and adherence to formulae are what makes such works accessible and easily comprehensible to the mass audience. Thus, a work is one of mass art (or entertainment) if it is an artwork distributed on a mass-scale, deliberately designed to gravitate towards accessibility and ease-of-consumption in its structural traits (e.g. content, intended affect, narrative form, etc.)
To reinforce Carroll’s view, we look to Shusterman’s (2003) pragmatist insights on entertainment. Through an etymology of the notion, Shusterman contends that: 1) entertainment is often identified together with art as a coherent or subsuming category, and 2) the arts themselves are often described as forms of entertainment. For him, the conceptual parity of the two relies on their shared giving of pleasure. Quoting De Montaigne and Schiller, Shusterman espouses the importance of this pleasure (also amusement, diversion, recreation, etc.) to life, in that it allows us to rejuvenate and relax our minds. Even contending that it is a component of the “perfection of life”. He argues that when entertainment diverts the mind, it does not diminish it by distraction, but rather, strengthens it with relief and alternative exercise by means of a shift in focus and style of activity. Thus, the innate pleasure involved in entertainment should not demean it, but rather, elevate it. Shusterman’s pragmatism declares that if one values the ends (i.e. pleasure), one should also value the means of achieving those ends (i.e. both entertainment and art).
Noting the views of T.S Eliot, Shusterman affirms that enjoyment of the arts occurs not just in sensory pleasures but also cognitive ones, such as an expansion of understanding or worldview. Thusly, Eliot challenged the dichotomy between high art and popular entertainment, instead seeing a continuum. He insists that the good poet ‘would like to be something of a popular entertainer… would like to convey the pleasures of poetry”. Eliot also noted the naivety of thinking that audiences of high and popular art were disparate, just as it is naïve to believe that high art cannot be widely appreciated, or that popular art cannot attain proper aesthetic excellence.
I, thus, argue pragmatically that art and entertainment are not mutually exclusive practices. Both deal in pleasure and stimulation for its own sake. For art, this is a disinterested, independent pleasure that stimulates via the audience’s capacity to appreciate aesthetically. For entertainment, this is an interested, dependent pleasure that stimulates via the audience’s desires and expectations. Whether the artist/entertainer cares about the audience uptake, or whether the work in question stimulates with aesthetic or instrumental means, only serves to mediate the location of the artwork within the spectrum of art-entertainment. Note that this spectrum is not categorically denotive; Even at the extreme “pure entertainment” end, the work in question is still a work of art (i.e. an artefact of creative expression crafted to bring pleasure).
Figure 1 provides examples of what are, in my subjective view, notable works of film across the spectrum of art-entertainment in the artform of cinema.
Fig. 1
|
Pure art |
Art |
Artistic Entertainment |
Entertainment |
Pure entertainment |
|
Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975), Gaspar Noé’s Enter The Void (2009) Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin (2013) |
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Wong Kar-Wai’s In The Mood For Love (2000) Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie (2001) |
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy (2003) Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) |
Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) John Woo’s Hard Boiled (1992) Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz (2007) |
John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) John McTiernan’s Die Hard (1988) The Russo Brothers’ Avengers: Endgame (2019) |
For cinema, artworks can take both forms and achieve both ends. The difference has not to do with quality, but form and intention. A ‘pure art’ film is intended to challenge and disrupt audience’s expectations and understanding. It fully immerses the audience in the auteur director’s vision, even if it is difficult to appreciate or understand. The arthouse director does not regard the commercial or consumer appeal of their works but instead focuses solely on their own artistic expression. An ‘art’ film, then, is similarly an auteur’s complete creative expression but with a secondary focus on audience uptake and the commercial viability of their work. On the other end, a ‘purely entertaining’ film simply seeks to generate attention and arouse generic emotional responses (e.g. amusement, awe, melodrama, suspense, horror, moral victory etc.) by utilising familiar techniques. A film that ‘entertains’ aims to do this as well, but perhaps with a creative flair or distinctive style that reflects the unique artistic inclinations of the creators. Lastly, films that entertain artistically, toe the line between the two functions and forms. These are auteur-led films that have goals of both artistic expression and audience enjoyment and, thus, take the cinematic form necessary to achieve both goals.
In sum, I contend that art and entertainment are not disparate practices but are two ends of a spectrum of the arts, sharing a principal goal of providing pleasure. Pure artists achieve this goal solely through aesthetic means, while entertainers achieve this through the desires of the audience. Yet a “true” artist, capable of the former, can also gravitate towards the other end and entertain audiences. Such is the practice of the auteur directors listed in the center of Fig. 1.
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