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Opinion

PCJs do best to stifle new art forms

James Davis
Opinion Columnist 

If you want to attack environmentalists for being fanatical doomsayers, you should consider another group before doing so. They're just as prevalent as environmentalists and less justified in their prophecies. You'll see these Chicken Littles on both sides of the party lines, from Joe Lieberman to Dan Quayle, from Tipper Gore to Charlton Heston.

What to call these people? Prudes? Fear-mongers? For the sake of this article, let's just refer to them as "pop culture Jeremiahs," or, for the sake of brevity, PCJs. According to the PCJs, we, as a culture, are headed down a one-way street to idiocy and depravity. What we must realize, though, is that these reactionaries have been around for a long time. Society has been going to Hell since way before any of us were born, and -- newsflash -- we haven't made it yet. 

Anyone who's taken an art history class can testify to the artistic merits of impressionism. We don't see many talking heads railing against Claude Monet's "Water Lilies" on cable news, but had there been The O'Reilly Factor during Monet's debut, he wouldn't have received nearly as much veneration as he does today. The old, academic school of art wrote off impressionism as fluff. But despite these attempts to squelch the art form, its merits were resolute; that's why we study "Water Lilies" today. It's naive to assume that art only lasts because it panders to the public's base desires. 

Consider the idea of a novel. No one who's taken an English class, or even stepped inside a Barnes & Noble, will deny the importance of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen or Herman Melville. But before its inception into every public school's reading list, Barnes & Noble and Oprah's Book Club, the novel wasn't quite the esteemed object it is today. Dismissed as pedestrian, insubstantial and even immoral, novels once received criticism akin to that of Temptation Island. 

But people liked them. Despite what the medium lacked and its differences from previous literary forms, the novel engaged readers' minds. When a new art form gains popularity, people are interested for good reason. Pointing out the form's deficiencies is an easy first reaction. What's difficult, and ultimately more beneficial, is to figure how this form works. Why are people interested in the first place?

The intricacies of today's popular media, while unlike those that came before, are not beyond appreciation. Two forms of entertainment that came of age during the 1980s, hip-hop music and video games, both attracted scathing criticism as they grew popular. Even in 1998, Dr. Benjamin Spock saw video games as at best promoting hand-eye coordination and at worst promoting aggression, dismissing them ultimately as "a colossal waste of time." But consider the amount of problem solving and exploration a child undergoes while playing through The Legend of Zelda. 

Though it scared Dan Quayle senseless, hip-hop has endured its criticism for years because, at its best, it is challenging, engaging music. The layering of rhythm and tone in a well-made hip-hop album demands an immense amount of creativity and logic, and the result is intellectually stimulating for the listeners. 

Sure, simple, stupid video games are sold everyday, and bad, facile rap music works its way into MTV's rotation, but instead of dwelling on negative examples -- which are readily available in any art form -- we should analyze what constitutes the best examples of these media good and develop fair, comprehensive standards for criticism.

The human mind seeks to be challenged by entertainment. If we seek out an art form, it's not because we're trying to hurt ourselves. It's because we're excited, hungry for new stimulation. The brain is, after all, just another organ. Why would it choose to atrophy? Human beings have survived for years with pleasure, and it's about time we accept that not all pleasures are guilty ones.

Davis, an opinion columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at dancedancerevolutionary@hotmail.com.