The Genres Ablaze: Critical Looks at Sci-fi and Fantasy

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Genres Ablaze: Critical Looks at Sci-fi and Fantasy

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Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

The word "genre" only has so much meaning. It's either a critical term or a marketing one.\

We all know where I stand

# ¿ Mar 17, 2019 00:29

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 12:04

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Thranguy posted:

Agents and buyers everywhere would disagree, I imagine.

The capital value of an artwork is not a measure of artistic value

# ¿ Mar 17, 2019 00:59

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

FactsAreUseless posted:

Agents and buyers aren't critics.

I would argue that all readers are critics, but unfortunately our culture has been brainwashed by capitalism to confuse financial merit for cultural and artistic merit

# ¿ Mar 17, 2019 01:01

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

FactsAreUseless posted:

I think being a critic - or at least reading critically - takes training and knowledge. I would say every reader has the capacity for it but that doesn't mean they're doing it.

Well, I argue that criticism is simply exploring the relationship between reader and text. Even the most superficial assessment of a text is still a critical response. The goal of training and study is simply to expand the toolkit one uses.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2019 01:09

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Thranguy posted:

They are in the business of quantifying and predicting what will be found entertaining, with enough success that it isn't viable to dismiss their methods as pure voodoo. If it is possible to do this for profit motives it is also possible for criticism to be in informed by those methods.

No it isnt.

You havent clarified why we should accept commercial value informs artistic value

# ¿ Mar 17, 2019 01:20

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Thranguy posted:

But the idea that commercial value is a proxy for popular appeal should be obvious,.

It isnt, that is my point.

Thranguy posted:

and to deny that popular appeal has a part in measuring artistic value is intolerably elitist.

And here comes the classic "reject a capitalist paradigm of value and you are just elitist"

# ¿ Mar 17, 2019 01:37

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

onsetOutsider posted:

The one criteria by which every novel should be judged... is it a "smasheroo"?

Or, if you are Eagleton, "how much does it make us want to smash the system"

# ¿ Mar 17, 2019 01:43

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

I absolutely agree with Quantum that the big failing of traditional education about literature is that it treats the text as a puzzle box to be unlocked. Nothing is as tedious and soul-draining as looking for "symbols" in a text.

The two most miserable experiences I can remember in high school were The Scarlet Letter and Lord of the Flies, and both of thes books were essentially hijacked in the name of a sort of objective puzzle solving reading. I hope one day to return to those books, especially Scarlet Letter, and allow myself to find my own way through the text instead of having to decode what it means that the seaweed made a green A.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2019 18:26

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

MockingQuantum posted:

I'm sort of lucky that I dodged both of those, I got to see Frankenstein and To Kill A Mockingbird murdered instead, and I had read both before they got forcibly deconstructed, so at least I had a chance to enjoy them on their own merits.

Fortunately I didn't recall hating the experience of reading TKAM, which is ironic, because in adulthood I do really dislike the book

# ¿ Mar 17, 2019 18:36

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Patrick Spens posted:

Can you expand on this? Because it seems obviously wrong to me.

Because commercial success is a representation of the text's success as a product, not as an experience. It is taking art and rendering it Pepsi.

Besides that, even as a product, the measurement is false. The idea that the "appeal" (as ambiguous a measurement as one could ever assume to ask for) can be determined through popular success is the same that suggesting Coke is better than Pepsi on an objective level because it sells more worldwide. And that is something as superficial as a soda flavor. Imagine taking that same broken logic and trying to extrapolate it into art.

Measuring the success of a product only speaks to its qualities as a product. You cannot measure to the artistic merit of something through the lens of product and consumption. The idea that we can is part of the cultural brainwashing of capitalism.

MockingQuantum posted:

I'm sort of lucky that I dodged both of those, I got to see Frankenstein and To Kill A Mockingbird murdered instead, and I had read both before they got forcibly deconstructed, so at least I had a chance to enjoy them on their own merits.

I think I lucked out the most in never having to read The Old Man and the Sea in high school because its one of my favorite books, but I absolutely know high school would have killed it.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2019 18:42

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Thranguy posted:

Most art forms originated in popular entertainment, including all or nearly all of the storytelling arts. (The remainder originated as entertainment or status-signaling for cultural elites.) A criticism that lacks any language or interest in discussing what makes such a work succeed as entertainment has lost something fundamental and important, whether out of pure hipsterism or foolish Marxism.

You are deliberating obfuscating my objection to your argument. Plenty of critical readings look at reasons behind why a text became popular. There are entire schools of sociological criticism that look at the unique factors in a culture that lead to a text becoming well-known. No one is arguing there is no value in exploring why a text hit a zeitgeist.

The issue is your assertion is that its success as a "product" is a way to measure its success as "art." This is the point of saying you take art and render it pepsi. At some point in a capitalist culture, everything becomes a "brand" or "product". In this way, things either become successful or non-successful not because of the merits of the text, but because of the merits of the brand associated with the text. A brand being recognizable ends up becoming a selling point for the brand, and at that point the actual merits of the text are entirely superficial. High sales speak more to the success of marketing and distribution than they speak to the success of the [i]text[i]

Also, please explain to me how Marxist criticism is foolish :allears:

onsetOutsider posted:

i won't speak for thranguy, but my interpretation of his post was not that the factor of "entertainment" is in any way superior or more essential than any of the other factors focused on in literary critisism. just that it should be considered as well. and that dismissing it out of hand is to ignore a large part of how the literary world functions

Entertainment is not discounted in criticism. Any good subjective criticism will look at what elements of a text create significance for the reader and respond to them. The issue is that "high sales" doesn't equal "more entertaining." The problem with using sales to measure "entertainment" is that it is trying to use the market to assert a subjective value.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2019 22:02

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

I appreciate the Xenogears ref by the way

# ¿ Mar 18, 2019 01:26

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Patrick Spens posted:

But the idea that capitalist brainwashing the the only connection between "people spent money on a thing" and, "people liked a thing" is nonsense.

I have bad news for you

# ¿ Mar 18, 2019 17:37

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Flesnolk posted:

You can’t blame literally everything on “capitalism exists”.

I also have bad news for you

# ¿ Mar 18, 2019 18:31

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Copernic posted:

By treating people purely as outputs of a system you dispossess them of a common humanity capable of acting. People can be good and bad, lazy or hardworking, irregardless of the system they were born into. By simply ascribing results you don't like to 'capitalism' you ignore the possibility of a deeper human impulse at work. Would a communist or socialist country necessarily break the connection between popularity and value? And why?

And of course purely Marxist criticism is never intersectional. I know people like to claim that it is, but allowing that class and economic life is just one of many, many influences on someone's life and views is too far for marxists to go.

Also the use of heuristics and mental shortcuts like "popularity generally assures quality" is inherent to humanity, to the extent that denying it is not a triumph of logic but a denial of who we are. Just read Kahneman.

Critiques should also include self-awareness and the possibility of a definitional problem, especially with something as vague as entertainment. I think we should be rightfully skeptical of the idea that the vast majority of people are wrong. If I like something everyone else ignored it is not evidence of my superior taste.

Ultimately, relying on "capitalism!" is surface-level analysis. Any honest analysis much include a comparative look to determine if there is any validity to it.

You could have saved a lot of time by understanding my criticism instead of going off on a rant that has nothing to do with it

Also lol you are seriously citing an economist?

# ¿ Mar 18, 2019 22:42

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Copernic posted:

what.. what do you think marx is...

is this one of those things like when people try to claim Le Morte D'Artur is fantasy because it has magic in it

# ¿ Mar 18, 2019 22:53

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Also before we get there, yes Marx spoke on economics and yes he had economic theories but to label Marx as primarily an economist is to absurdly misrepresent the function of his writings.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2019 22:57

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

onsetOutsider posted:

Can you explain your argument better then? I'm really struggling to understand what you mean if Copernic's excellent post didn't address it.

my big issue is with this part

quote:

By treating people purely as outputs of a system you dispossess them of a common humanity capable of acting. People can be good and bad, lazy or hardworking, irregardless of the system they were born into. By simply ascribing results you don't like to 'capitalism' you ignore the possibility of a deeper human impulse at work. Would a communist or socialist country necessarily break the connection between popularity and value? And why?

And of course purely Marxist criticism is never intersectional. I know people like to claim that it is, but allowing that class and economic life is just one of many, many influences on someone's life and views is too far for marxists to go.

This goes onto a big treatise on how humans are complex when nothing I originally said would have suggested anything about this.

My evoking of capitalism is because capitalism has turned art into a "product" or "commodity" in which its value is determined by profitability and sales. The idea of art as a product is an extremely contemporary one. I mean, Walter Benjamin was the first one really talking about it and that was in the mid-1930s. I am not saying people's preferences or behaviors are solely controlled by capitalism, as his reply seems to suggest. Instead, I am saying the fundamental premise of art as product, which implies the value of the art can be determined by its effectiveness as a product, is a capitalist premise. Because it is.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2019 23:36

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

pile of brown posted:

Isn't the entire history of art riddled with commodification? Art has been supported by patrons and commissions for centuries before the 1930s

Patronage is not the same as commodification

# ¿ Mar 18, 2019 23:40

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Thranguy posted:

People have been buying books and theater tickets for centuries as well. It almost makes more sense to talk of the art-ification of commodity in the case of the narrative arts rather than the other way 'round.

Ok, let's start with a simple question

Have you read Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction?

# ¿ Mar 18, 2019 23:49

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

onsetOutsider posted:

I know that's in no way what I believe. My favorite movie genre, for example, is one that I find extremely entertaining, and it also famously panned critically: horror.

Indeed. I am not arguing that point with you. I am arguing it with Thranguy.

Thranguy specifically said sales success can be inferred to be a representation of entertainment and popular enjoyment, which I am arguing against. I do not know your position.

Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Mar 19, 2019

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 00:00

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

onsetOutsider posted:

, but it's also ignorant to claim that the only possible factor that goes into financial success is everyone being sheep and blindly following advertising or whatever.

I never said that

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 00:16

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Patrick Spens posted:

I'm having a hard time separating that from, "commercial success only tells you about success of a product, not about the qualities of the work."

how?

A commercial product being successful only tells you that it was successful as a commercial product

Patrick Spens posted:

"Qualities" not "quality." Coke isn't good for you, but the combination of sugar, spice and acid is *tasty.* Mel seems to be saying that wide commercial appeal is utterly divorced from any traits inherent to the work.

No, I am saying that commercial success is only a reliable indicator of commercial success

Thranguy posted:

Just now, so likely not as deep a reading as one might want. But initial impressions: The author seems to be focused tightly on the visual arts, broadly, and far less about the narrative arts, only touching on film versus theater in relation to the differences between photography and presence.

Likely because he wouldn't have a leg to stand on; the idea that only the people who heard the tale straight from Homer's lips had the authentic experience of the epics is facially absurd.

Also, far more talk of auras and authenticity than one would expect from someone operating in a materialist tradition.

Let's play a quick game of "Hey, maybe if I don't know the foundational works of critical theory maybe I should read them instead of assuming that I, guy on the internet, have the perfect come back to one of the foremost thinkers of the 20th century"

Like straight up you read a wiki summary of one of the most important books of the last century and are swaggering in here like a drunk who thinks that champion boxer over there doesn't look that tough.

Your vanity is obstructing your intellectual growth

Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Mar 19, 2019

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 00:42

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

onsetOutsider posted:

Yours is inhibiting your ability to make convincing arguments.

Right now it seems the conversation has hit a standstill, and opinions aren't going to be swayed by analogies and put-downs.

I am not interested in convincing you, I am interested in presenting the historical and rhetorical basis for modern criticism.

Whether you choose to acknowledge it is up to you.

There is no point in convincing you the great thinkers of the last century are right, because they have already been proven right. My goal is to show you what their arguments and perspectives are. You have to walk that path yourself.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 00:57

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Patrick Spens posted:

Ok, but is commercial success connected to anything about the products/works? Is it completely arbitrary/market based what leads to one work being widely popular and one being ignored? Or is there some difference between the actual objects of coke and club soda that explains the vast difference in popularity? Is it that there might be a difference, but capitalism messes things up so much that we can't actually tell?

Excellent question. The point is that if you wish to consider commercial success, you must consider that commercial success is attributable to a wide variety of factors that might have different levels of influence on each item. We can ascertain reasons why a commodity was successful, but that may be due to a complex network of reasons. To assume we can make a direct correlation between the success of the product and the quality of the product is to be reductive to the point of meaninglessness.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 01:07

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Zoracle Zed posted:

at least Tor Books has never funded South American death squads

Yes but they have funded Piers Anthony and that's probably worse

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 01:32

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

I appreciate sham making a less pissy and arrogant summation of the point

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 01:40

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Thranguy posted:

I'm not saying a thing can't both be trash and have popular appeal, just there are components to popular appeal intrinsic to the text (ie not just marketing and luck) that can be understood and studied, retrospectively and, with less certainty, predictively. With enough predictively value that people can successfully make careers of it.

If that were true the correlation between training and success would be much higher

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 01:45

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

onsetOutsider posted:

Ideally in conjunction with exploring the "objective" quality of the work.

There is no such thing

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 01:47

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Thranguy posted:

No, to talk about fiction while not having, while actively abjuring a vocabulary and toolset for discussing entertainment value.

Subjectivity in itself denotes entertainment value

The problem with your system is that it denotes a book which scores 1 entertainment point for ten people is more objectively entertaining than a book that scores 9 entertainment points for one person

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 01:57

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Note: entertainment points are not a real thing, it's a metaphor

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 01:59

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Sham is better at this than me

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 02:06

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

A dragon can still be an acorn though

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 02:07

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Bilirubin posted:

Has anybody said that "entertainment value" does not equate "artistic quality" yet? Because that is also a consideration.

I mean would you consider Dan Brown "artistic"?

Would you consider dan brown entertaining

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 03:09

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Thranguy posted:

I would ask for evidence of their having been proven right, but first I would have to know what the heck 'proven right' even means in this context.

By creating a working paradigm which successfully disentangles meaning and allows for later critics to build off of

but again, no, congratulations. You have discovered the emperor has no clothes.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 13:27

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Bilirubin posted:

Sometimes art challenges and is uncomfortable to downright repulsive. In Pollock's case he was trying to capture on paint the action of his body, which I'd argue he succeeds at quite well (a sale of 200 million smackeroos? good lord), but may not if you aren't appreciating the metacommentary of the piece--to a more casual observer (not consumer--other than 200 mil boy, see Mel and Sham's argument above), a painting is supposed to be OF SOMETHING. Lots of art challenges this central premise. Sometimes it takes time and consideration to elevate one's appreciation (see pop opinion now on Mapplethorpe's photography vs back in the 80s).

That said, I agree with your spit balling.

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that art primarily causes an emotional response because jangling keys in front of an infant creates an emotional response, but one would hardly call it art.

Art creates meaning for the subject.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 14:53

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

The_White_Crane posted:

How do you tell that meaning was "successfully disentangled"? What's your metric for "success" here? It seems to me like you haven't actually addressed his -- to my mind not wholly unreasonable -- question of why you expect everyone else to blithely accept the assertion that "the great thinkers of the previous century" have created some kind of platonically ideal method of viewing literature within which all present-day discussion must be constrained.

Do you not see why an academic tradition that goes as far back as classical greece and has its tendrils in every epoch of history might have self-evident relevance?

Critical Theory has been debated and argued and refined through the recorded history of humanity, its not unreasonable to expect someone who wants to engage with the idea of criticality to understand criticality. No one is saying that there is a single canonical way to interpret literature. However, I am saying that there are entire schools of thought that have resolved debates people like Thranguy keep trying to bring up.

The issue is that there is a fundamental arrogance in assuming you can see through the veneer of all of critical theory to such an extent you do not even have to be mildly familiar with the context of 20th century discussions on the topic to be able to say that they are obviously untrue. In the same way, its not anyones responsibility to convince you of the validity of the sum total of critical discourse.

I mean, Thranguy was trying to discount Walter Benjamin on the strength of a wiki summary.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 15:02

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

The_White_Crane posted:

Can you define "meaning" here?
I find it very difficult to conceive of anyone deriving meaning as I understand it from a Pollock painting, or most pieces of music without lyrics

I guess we need to clarify your definition of meaning then, because there is self evident meaning in both of those examples

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 15:03

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Lets take this Pollock painting

Granted, I am primarily a textual critic rather than a visual arts one, but I can still find multiple angles of meaning or significance here

The one that sticks out to me the most is the significance of the futility of representational art in the mechanical age, as written about the Lyotard in "The Post-Modern Condition." The painting acts as a rejection of the notion that art must be representational, and that the quality of the art is determined by the quality of the representation. In the age of the photograph, the art of representation has been perfected. In that perfection, the visual arts have been freed from the obligation to depict the physical world as it is. This painting is a representation of the freedom of modern visual art having been released from the bonds of representation. The painting is allowed to present meaning that is not explicitly representational, but rather visceral.

It is also a rejection of the labor theory of value that is sometimes applied to Art. This states that the value of an artwork can be determined by the impossibility of someone replicating it. This, again, goes back to Benjamin's "The Art of Mechanical Reproduction." Now that the Mona Lisa can be reprinted hundreds of times, the "talent" that made the Mona Lisa existant is no longer as valuable a commodity. In the same way it is a rejection of the representational merits of art, it is also a rejection of the complexity merits of art. Something being difficult to do is no longer valuable when it can be easily replicated.

Thus, the painting is a challenge for the viewer to establish value in a modern environment in which our previous metrics of value have been overriden by the growth of industry. There is a reason why Pollock is called "modern" art. Not because it is contemporary, but because it is art that speaks to the era of modernization and industry. The painting is a challenge for us to recreate our senses of value in an alien environment, in which our own industry has stripped our traditional sensibilities.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 15:26

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 12:04

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

The_White_Crane posted:

If these things were really as obvious as you imply, it wouldn't take you more than a sentence or two to explain how they are "self-evident".
So by all means, articulate the meaning of Pollock's Autumn Rhythm for me.

Are you familiar with Platos cave?

# ¿ Mar 19, 2019 15:31

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Genres Ablaze: Critical Looks at Sci-fi and Fantasy

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