Art vs. Entertainment: A Bird's Eye View

[A transcript of my thoughts upon sitting down to write a blogpost on this subject.]

Alright! I’ve brewed some coffee, I’ve put my phone on airplane mode, and for the past year, I’ve curated concerts that help people dispel their musical preconceptions. I feel pretty ready to tackle this topic. Let’s get to work!

Hmm.

*sips coffee*

I’m stumped already.

Well that’s a bad sign! Come on, think! 

Hmmmmm.

At the moment, I see no good reason for the ‘vs.’ to squeeze itself in between these two fine words. I’ll take it out until I’m ready for it. Away with you, bearer of false dichotomy!

Ok. Art and Entertainment. That’s better.

You know, common words can be surprisingly tricky to pin down. How can we be sure we all use the same words in the exact same way? We can’t even be sure we all perceive colors the same way; my red might not be your red. And we’re supposed to agree on a definition for ‘art?!

***

I didn’t want to stoop to this, but I’d better check what Merriam-Webster has to say. 

Oh, that helped quite a bit! No kidding.

So if any creative act can produce art, art only requires an author. A three-year-old’s crayon drawing that her mom hung on the fridge? Yep, that’s art. The moment the three-year-old intends to draw, and that crayon hits the paper, art is in the works! It doesn’t matter what you think of it.

If anything that pleases or amuses is entertainment, then entertainment only requires an audience. I chuckled at a dog chasing its own tail the other day. So that dog provided me with entertainment. But because the entertainment was unintentional, it was NOT art.

The words refer to categorically different things. So why the “vs?” That’s one sneaky preposition. What’s really going on there? What’s this “vs” all about?

You know what? When people raise the issue of ‘art vs entertainment’, they’re really distinguishing between various works of art. At least ‘art’ as Merriam-Webster defines it.

This is getting confusing fast...

I’ll bold the Merriam-Webster definition of art. The art that encompasses all creative output. Within all art, people differentiate between ‘entertainment art’ and ‘true art.’

‘Entertainment art’ is deemed shallow. A commodity of disposable escapism. Whereas ‘true art’ is deemed deep. A shrine of beauty and lasting significance.

Moreover, there is an assumption that ‘Entertainment art’ is created in order to please. Whereas ‘true art’ is created in order to inspire/transform. As if artists create for only one reason or the other.

Because Mozart never wanted to entertain anyone, and The Beatles never wanted to create impactful music. Sure.

I have some mixed feelings here.

On the one hand, I’m all for celebrating the art that moves you. Great art has an incredible capacity to profoundly transform its audience. We should never forget that art can possess this power. Especially in the face of this kind of depressing farce.

On the other hand, denigrating art that ‘merely entertains’ sounds like a very easy way to dismiss art that doesn’t appeal to you personally. Too often, the purists of history have turned their noses up at jazz, musicals, comic books, pop art, or really any new art form with popular appeal. Categorically dismissing entire art forms as merely entertainment is ignorant, and frankly insulting. 

When Martin Scorsese likens Marvel movies to amusement parks, he’s dismissing the franchise as merely ‘entertainment’. By doing so, he trivializes both the artistic output of many brilliant people and its impact on millions of others. 

And yet: like Scorsese, I wouldn’t want Marvel movies to overcrowd cinemas to the point where independent movies cannot find a home on the big screen. We would lose an incredible diversity of artistic voices.

The bottom line of art cannot just be profit. The market will select for sequels and remakes of familiar stories over original ideas every time. 

I think the problem really does lie with the false dichotomy. The ‘vs.’ mucks everything up. We shouldn’t have to pick sides.

Instead, we should celebrate the fact that art has the power to affect us in many different ways. Art can amuse, delight, shock us, move us, make us question our beliefs, coax us to wonder, prompt us to dance, to shout, to flail about! (I’m getting carried away, clearly.)

But really: if all art made us feel only one way, we would have no use for any new art.

If the “arts vs. entertainment” debate must rage on—which I suppose it must—, let it inspire people to make cases for the art that they respond to, regardless of how they want to label it. In the aggregate, we will be able to see all the ways that art affects our lives. We’ll all be richer for it. 

Through Mixtape Series, my co-founders and I make a case for the aggregate. We pick musical fragments from several places of origin, and weave them into a unique tapestry. We tell our audiences: “come for what you know, stay for what you’ll love.” As the music seamlessly segues from the Beatles, to Antonin Dvorak, to Danish Folk Tune arrangements, audiences can hear how multi-faceted art is.

More importantly, they hear creative force springing forth from a common humanity. Joy, melancholy, ecstasy, nostalgia… we share all these experiences. And art from around the world reflects that.  In a way, Mixtape Series seeks to do away with the whole ‘arts vs. entertainment’ debate entirely. We’re in the business of dissolving boundaries, not entrenching them. We don’t really care how art is categorized!

I still need to write a whole blog post about the topic though. It’s really the least I can do for Maia!

*sips coffee*

…

*checks phone*

…

Oh well. I’ll get to it later.