"Snakes on a Plane" is a better movie than "Oppenheimer," or Why Artistic Categories Can Make It Easier to Talk about Art
Pretend with me for a moment. I bring you into a room where you find a Red Box, a Blue Box, and a Yellow Box. In front of them is a pile of poker chips also colored red, yellow, and blue. I ask you to sort the chips into the box with the matching color. Easy peasy, right? There’s no value judgment about which color is “better” than the others– there’s no hierarchy. It’s a simple matter of categorization.
The philosopher and historian R. G. Collingwood did the same with art, focusing on differentiating kinds of art according to their differing purposes. But as Michael Rushton found with his Substack post “A is for Art,” people get all het up about such categories because they think you’re setting up a secret hierarchy that is going to end up dissing the stuff that they enjoy. If you are talking about this in theater, inevitably somebody is going to say, “Hey! It can’t all be Beckett!” (For some reason, it’s always Beckett.) Or, just as commonly, “You watch what you like, and I’ll watch what I like.” End of conversation.
Admittedly, Collingwood makes it hard to avoid this, because he starts out by separating things into two categories: art and pseudo-art. That…wasn’t wise, because people see the word “art” as an honorific, the top of the heap. So right away, their hackles are up. Then he separates the “pseudo-art” into three subcategories: “craft,” “magic,” and “amusement.” I’ll define those below, but first I want to state foundational principle that I intend to use for this discussion. Like the red/yellow/blue boxes I mentioned above, I am not setting up a hierarchical value structure with my terms. This isn’t about creating piles of bad/good/better/best, it’s about identifying kinds of “art” with different purposes. To help us remember this, I will employ Collingswood’s definitions, which are useful, while using entirely different terms that (I hope) will minimize defensive reflexes. First I’ll define the categories, and then I’ll discuss why they might be useful.
- Art as Craft
- Instrumental Art
- Art as Entertainment
- Art for Reflection
Craft is the creation of objects that have a useful purpose and are an end in themselves. Making, say, a table is a craft, and it creates something that is used in normal life. Whether the table is beautiful is secondary to whether it does what it is supposed to do.
Instrumental Art is the creation of something that is not an end in itself, but is designed to accomplish another purpose. For instance, a ritual–say, a rain dance–is designed to appease the rain god and result in precipitation. The example Rushton uses is a good one: “The singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before US sporting events is a similar thing - the words of the song don’t matter (I’m not sure how many Americans could pass a quiz on the War of 1812), it has nothing to do with sports; what matters is that this is a thing we do, as a collective…“The Star-Spangled Banner” is meant to promote a shared patriotism and respect for the armed forces and its veterans.” Likewise, agit-prop performances are instrumental in that they are designed to convince spectators to take political action or to vote differently.
Art as Entertainment involves objects whose primary purpose is temporary escape. Turning again to Rushton, entertainment “is all about the moment, stirring emotions in the audience - laughter, suspense, horror, romance, awe at a technical achievement - but leaving no trace.” The film Snakes on a Plane is all about thrills and suspense, and afterwards you don’t head to the pub to discuss the deeper meaning of legless reptiles in a flying machine.
Art for Reflection are objects created to express an emotion in a way that inspires a spectator to think more fully about the meaning of that expression later. This definition uses only part of Collingwood’s actual definition, which is for him entirely about an artist expressing their own personal emotion (and only emotion) with little concern for the effect on the spectator–in other words, the expression is an end in itself. I would add to that: if “entertainment” provides immediate experience of escape but “leaves no trace,” then by contrast objects of “reflection” are designed to lead to further thought after the experience is over. It leaves a trace.
My goal with these not-fully-developed definitions is to create separate boxes–and remember, no box is better than the other–that we can use to separate various art-objects. There could be more or fewer boxes, but the purpose is distinction. We’re separating apples, oranges, grapes, and bananas. Judgments regarding value take place within each category–whether a Pink Lady apple is _better _than a Honeycrisp takes place within the Apple category, for instance–but we’re not rejecting a banana because it isn’t crisp enough! Each category has different criteria of judgment.
By using these categories, we can more easily have a discussion about whether, say, Snakes on a Plane is better than, say, Con Air in the “Entertainment about dangerous air travel” category. And frankly, one movie is clearly better than the other, with Con Air the hands-down winner no question about it. So if, in the midst of the inevitably heated discussion at the pub that would follow such a provocative statement, someone loudly declared that Con Air was a lousy movie because “what am I supposed to DO about the problem of convicts hijacking a plane?,” I can turn to that person and calmly say, “Dude, what are you talking about? It’s not an instrumental movie! Go buy us another round of beer and while you’re at it get your head straight.” Similarly, if at the pub after a production of Waiting for Godot someone said, “Sheesh! That was super-boring–no explosions at all!” I could calmly respond, “WTF are you talking about??? It’s not an Entertainment play , but one that is supposed to make your reflect! Get us some more nachos and don’t come back until you have thought about what you’ve done.”
So many potentially violent pub brawls could be avoided by simply employing these categories! (Because all discussion of art takes place in pubs.)
Are there art objects whose category might be ambiguous? Sure. For instance, was Barbie a “Reflection” movie or an “Instrumental” one? Or maybe it was pure Entertainment? What about Oppenheimer? For most things, however, it’s reasonably clear what purpose they serve and what category they belong in so we can move on to a different topic: what makes an Entertainment movie, say an action film, especially entertaining, and why is Con Air better than almost any other Entertainment action movie including *Die Hard"? Sorry. I’m revealing my biases.
As a Drama professor who taught a lot of courses on dramatic literature, I almost always taught plays that fell into the Reflection category. Why? After all, I’m a big fan of farces, but I rarely taught them in class. Why didn’t I do a semester-long course called “Door-Slamming Underwear Farces in the 20th Century”? Probably could have packed the house. The reason I never did is that it’s really, really difficult to talk about door-slamming underwear farces once you’ve covered the “it was SO hilarious when the pastor had his pants stolen and then he fled into the room where the Bishop was waiting for him” parts. It’s not a disdain for humor qua humor (when discussing door-slamming underwear farces, one must use qua to restore one’s dignity), it’s a recognition that the Entertainment category is designed to “stir emotions while leaving no trace.” It’s made for consumption, not reflection. It’s potato chips.
What if these categories were used for awards? Maybe more comedies would win Oscars if they weren’t competing for Best Picture with Oppenheimer or Schindler’s List. “The nominees for the Entertainment Category are…”
Anyway, the goal of this whole thing is to make conversation about the arts easier to have, because let’s face it, we seem to have lost the ability to talk about the art that we encounter in a way that allows us to share our thoughts, feelings, and ideas in a way that makes sense. And that makes me sad.