JM: If you wish you can skip the rest and simply answer three questions (if you have the time): (1) As far as I can see narrative nearly always presents an implied teleological view of the "world" that it creates. Where as I think (though it is hard to completely believe) that their is no narrative that actually matches the universe. Biological evolution for example is not teleological. We seem to map the teleological view that narrative presents onto what we believe to be the universe. I believe that this is one function of all narrative. In this sense the stronger the narrative the bigger the lie. What would this do to your conception of the truth-value of art? (2) This is related to the false presentation of cause and effect that is implicit in all narrative. When ever a narrative breaks, transitions or cuts, or puts into relation, there is an implied causal relationship between the two sides of the "chiasma". This is especially true in visual narratives such as movies. It seems to me that this implied causal relationship is (probably) always false. Doesn't this undermine, at least in part, the truth function of narrative art? (3) You still have answered the question about pleasure, pain, laughter, anger, etc. ... the range of emotions that I often look for in my art.... beauty, fear, awe... What if art can be great simply by making "meaning" out of all of this, and making us feel that the "world" cares for our individual meaning where it does not? What if art is partially a form of solipsism, where once again we can experience our emotions as the center of the universe? This is Utopian wish fulfillment and I believe that we need it, so that we can be altruistic and giving at other times. That is why the delusion that art offers us is not reactionary but simply one of our ways of making it through a scary world.
If art is primarily, mostly or even partially brought into being so as to make a landscape of order rise above what would otherwise seem unintelligible, and there is always some aspect of art that forces order in ways and places where such order does not exist, then where are you as far as the truth value of art? For me such narrative structures are essential to narrative no matter how "untrue" they are. I believe we need the order the narrative presents.
The rest is further explication: I would really like to know how you fit the above into your view of truth-value.
No matter if you accept my pluralist amendments of art or not, what you do is strip art to something that would create awful art that I, and most people, would not enjoy. I don't find my point of view pessimistic. I find it liberating to realize that their is no teleology to the universe and yet to also realize that we falsely create teleological narratives every time we create. If you find this a pessimistic conclusion then I am not sure how long you will hold on.
Reactionary or not; the questions are basically simple. Are narratives "compelling" or not? If they are compelling they give a false view of reality. If they are not compelling they usually are not worth reading. So lets look at narrative arts and those alone. ("Compelling" is simply my short hand for all of that which keeps us reading or listening and hungering for more of a character, to see the character in our mind, to know what is going on, to try to figure out the game of the narrative, and to hope for resolution or mystery or both.)
Most narrative arts present "heroes" or protagonists that are central to a story. Those protagonists are often "great" egos presented in special situations. Even the everyday vain (Becky Sharp) or stupid (Emma Bovary) or deluded (Don Quixote) protagonist we, in our own vanity, heighten into imaginary characters bigger than life. This satisfies our need for "greatness" in the universe, where once again we can be the perfect center of attention, as we all think that we should be in our imaginations. In those special narrative situations of the novel there are also particular heightened moments and turning points and conversions. Narratives are presented as if the patterns of narrative were somehow part of a teleological reality. Most if not all of narrative works this way and whether we are talking about heroes or anti-heroes, whether the narrative (naively or not) presents these "protagonists" as characters we should identify with (Odysseus, Aeneas) or offers these protagonists as people we should not identify with (Quixote, Bovary, Karenina) because they are bamboozled by the same kind of narratives that we are of course at that very moment reading; we still identify with the loved or hated consciousness, we still get drawn into the narrative that tells us that when "things" happen they have meaning. This is simply one aspect of art, whether the art is good or bad. Good narrative art is compelling and in order to be compelling it draws us in and in order to draw us in it gives us false notions about the construction of reality, cause and effect, meaning, etc. Enjoy it, you need it. As Hemingway once said, why should people be operated on without an aesthetic. Art is often the opium of the modernist intellectual. (Take Flaubert, Elliot, or Joyce) Sometimes we need opium (or Scotch), just to get through life. You may say that this is not the whole of art; and I am not claiming that it is. But it is one aspect of art that you leave out in your advocacy of truth value.
Also aspects of narrative art that have no truth-value as far as I can see are rhythm, pacing, arc, mystery, pleasure, pins and needles, arousal, involvement, pretty descriptions, wish fulfillments, etc., etc. For me, if the narrative arts is without such things then much or great art will simply fade away. And also most of these things are not only illusions but are systematically misleading about life. If you "believe" what narrative tells you about the possible narratives intrinsic to the universe then you are being mislead from the get-go. I simply don't get why you insist on making all art into something that will fit into a program of social transformation?
>
> >You don't need good art to tell the truth. Bad art can also help an
> >oppressed class or people to understand the world.
> >
>
> good art is truth. bad art isn't. (and don't mistake me here for being
> some kind of elitist or art snob - buffy has it's moments). the ability
> to clearly distinguish good from bad exists and that is what i have been
> trying to underscore throughout this debate. bad art - if valorized by
> those in authority or if it simply exists in the relative market-based
> realm of "art is ultimately all a matter of personal taste"- does
> precisely the opposite of your contention. it prevents the oppressed
> from understanding the world.
>
And once again, as far as I can tell most good and great art that has survived, in its day helped the oppressors as much if not more than anyone else. This is mostly accidental. Most of the people who had the leisure to make and participate in excellent art were of the oppressing classes until very recently. It is possible that their was good and great art that didn't survive because it was in ephemeral mediums. And maybe this was the only art that the oppressed classes could create through history -- singing, dancing, story-telling around the fire. But how are we to know? The fact is that the great art that we have had that has survived is as likely to help the ruling ideology survive as anything else. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20061006/b03f8c87/attachment.htm>