The Purpose of New Film Criticism
What is the Purpose of Art?
Why have so many people created, published, and distributed art for free? Why do humans create stories, always digging deeper for different ways to project the darkest energies of our nature through fictional narratives, songs, and paintings? What is the value of art in our lives beyond a distraction from the mundanity of working to die poor enough to have just survived? How does art impact the experience of thriving in our short, mortal lives? And what does it mean to succeed in life? Let’s begin there and work backward.
First, I define thriving as consistently experiencing joy through the common experiences of being alive. Being alive means engaging with other human beings through the experiential field of time, space, memory, emotion, and behavior. A single word that better represents this complex concept is Relationship. Our mortal lives are composed of relationships. We feel isolated inside, but we are deeply connected to objects and people who move through time and space with us. Life is a relationship that operates on multiple levels, and thriving means consistently experiencing joy within it. Art is one of the primary means of bringing joy to individuals who create culture together through relationships.
Art is a critical component of a healthy society. We are blessed and cursed to live in a golden age of commercial art. Movies, records, TV shows, and novels were already big businesses when nearly everyone alive was born. However, over the past three decades, new digital technologies have been applied to art, leading to an explosion of choices. What we have now is an industry of commercial art that consistently delivers mass distraction and cheap indoctrination, with very little transcendence—the most important word in our limited human language. There is so much noise and very little signal. Critical analysis and effective communication are how we separate signal from noise in art. But modern criticism, supported by corrupted journalistic institutions, has failed us all. We need a better intention for cultural criticism, one that moves beyond petty worship of the artist, which the Auteur Theory can’t seem to get beyond.
In the simplest definition, to transcend means to go beyond. Consider James Joyce's definition of “Proper Art,” one of the most effective in establishing a universal moral framework for analyzing and appreciating art. In his early novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce lays out a framework that divides art experience into two orders: Proper and Improper. So, immediately, we have a moral framework applied to the interpretation of art, which is important because using such a framework to categorize our responses moves us beyond personal opinion. However, the framework also ensures we do not stray from the personal experience of art as the focus of analysis and interpretation. This moral categorization is important because the immediate reaction to art is just an opinion, and everyone has one; almost none are interesting beyond conveying an emotional state of agreement or disagreement. We commonly call these emotional, gag-reflexive reviews “hot takes.” These inciting opinions are rarely insightful. Opinions are not proper criticism. Rather, it is the measured reaction and analysis of one's experience, projected through a consistent moral framework, that constitutes proper, practical criticism. Let’s call this New Criticism. Most of what passes for film criticism today is emotional reaction rather than effective critical analysis.
So, what does Joyce mean by "Proper" Art? Joyce's young protagonist, Stephen Daedalus, creates this moral framework of artistic assessment because he seeks a transcendent experience of being alive while expressing himself through art and faith. Stephen seeks to experience the sacred inside the profane. Is it possible to touch something beyond death and corruption? The character cries out, "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken." We are each trying to awaken from the nightmare of history that forces us to suffer during our short lives. Where is the joy?
For individuals, activities like meditation and peak-performance athletics are avenues to personal transcendence. They are behaviors that can elicit a sense of freedom in a moment of perfect kinetic motion that feels like standing still. People in these situations (and other extremes) have described this sensation of being wholly aware and outside their bodies, an external presence monitoring their being from the outside in. To transcend is to turn the soul inside out, and art can also encourage transcendence, but on a much larger scale with far more cultural impact. Art is an experience that begins in the minds of individuals, often working together to produce works of complex human expression that inspire others to transcend their current state of awareness and suffering. Art can turn everyone’s soul inside out at the same time.
Joyce’s name for this experience is aesthetic arrest, a prerequisite to transcendence and the product of experiencing Proper Art. This experience is deeply mysterious, fundamentally related to dying and being reborn every time one encounters a work of art that speaks to them on a soulful level. Like meditation and athletics, art can serve as a cultural channel to transcendence by employing the artist as a conduit between personal breakthroughs and cultural ones. Breaking through together is necessary to awaken from the nightmare of history we all feel trapped inside.
But let us define Proper Art by first exploring what it is not. In Joyce's definition, Improper Art is of two orders: Pornography and Didacism, and each intends to suppress and emotionally move the experiencer of art either toward it or away. A work of art is pornographic if it seeks to draw the viewer toward it in the act of possession that is not just sexual, though sex is a powerful facet involved in pornographic art. Seeking to possess and retain is the dragon in the human heart, guarding gold with no use for its value. Didacism, on the other hand, is any work of art that intends to push the viewer away with fear and loathing, often through violence (though violence is also a factor in pornographic art, usually working through concepts of social justice on a spectrum of vigilantism). With Improper Art, there is rarely a breakthrough into transcendence; instead, it often becomes more of an emotional prison than a release.
We can each determine our emotional state after viewing a film. Over time and with consideration, our feelings will change and grow nuanced as we repeatedly watch the same movies, think about them, and discuss them through the architecture of this moral framework of Proper and Improper Art. Like there is no faking an orgasm, there is no faking a transcendent breakthrough when experiencing art. We can lie to others about these experiences, but we cannot lie to ourselves. When we become sensitive to our emotional reactions to Cinema, we can distinguish between Proper and Improper Art, which marks the beginning of New Critical analysis and communication. Improper Art can be enjoyable, like masturbation, but it will never beat the experience of being with another person consensually and joyfully. This is analogous to the difference between experiencing Proper and Improper Art.
When we understand what it means to experience Proper Art, we quickly move beyond the moral framework of pushing and pulling people in anger and lust. In Joyce's view, Proper Art consistently elicits aesthetic arrest, meaning the art neither pornographically pulls the experiencer towards it with desire nor does it didactically push us away with loathing and fear. We, the experiencers, are consistently held in stasis, allowing us to potentially transcend beyond ourselves and the limitations of our cultures and individual situations. An experience of Proper Art can awaken us from the nightmare of history.
Like meditation, athletics, and intense emotional experiences, art can be a tool of transcendence, allowing the perpetual sufferer to become the penitent, joyful, and to move through the world in goodwill and gratitude. When we apply this moral framework to the consideration and communication of our experiences of art, beyond initial reactions and emotional hot takes, we cultivate a better understanding of what it means to be alive together. This experience drives a deeper and more important cultural conversation about art. Hosting better conversations is the purpose of New Criticism.
