Art and entertainment are curious things. Sometimes they can be the same thing. Art can be entertaining… and sometimes Art isn’t. Sometimes entertainment is art… but often it’s not. Both “art” and “entertainment” are subjective ideas. They’re not black or white or numbers that can be quantified. What one person sees as “art” can be viewed as trash by another. What one person finds entertaining, another can find boring… so they really are hard concepts to nail down.
Having said that, let me talk about art for a moment in my own subjective way. To me, “ART” isn’t just something pretty to look at, or watch or listen too. Art isn’t JUST a visual or audio manifestation of someone’s talent. To me, that’s just a craft…
To me, “ART” is what happens what an artist uses their gifts to EXPRESS something through their particular medium. ART is when an artist has something to say, a thought to express or a feeling to emote through their talent. ART then elicits a response from us, a reaction to the message, thought or feeling it conveys. Maybe joy or anger or fear… perhaps we approve or disapprove… but either way it is what art does.
Entertainment needs no message or feeling to accomplish it’s goals. A guy prancing like he’s on a horse with another guy running behind him slapping coconut shells together to sound like galloping hoofs isn’t art… but it is entertaining (depending on who you ask). Entertainment without art has value in and of itself.
However, I find it a little sad that for the most part, we, the movie going audience, seem to have lost much of our appreciation for art. Fewer and fewer films get made these days that actually have something to say. Films like Crash, Million Dollar Baby or even Little Miss Sunshine (these are just examples) struggle to gain an audience, while the majority of us flock (and I’m one of them) to see Jackass 2.
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH FILMS THAT ARE JUST ENTERTAINING. Hell, I don’t even WANT any art in The Transformers next summer. Just give me giant robots throwing each other through buildings and I’m as happy as a kid on Christmas. But I think it’s sad when we lean too far one way or the other. When we become so easily satiated with art in film that we no longer seek it out and actually seek to avoid it, i think it becomes a lugubrious commentary on us as a people.
We don’t want to be challenged, we no longer want to be provoked in our thinking. People don’t seem to want to engage their minds anymore when watching film (at least not en mass’).
Sometimes a few of us will lament there aren’t more films that “say something” or have more artistic value to them being made. But really… who is to blame? It’s not the studios who make the films. It’s not their fault. But rather it’s us. We tell the studios what kinds of films we want to see by what we go to… and for the last few years the strong and clear message we’ve been sending them is “GIVE US ENTERTAINMENT WITHOUT MAKING US THINK”. And they’ve obliged.
Entertainment for entertainment’s sake is great. I love movies that just plain entertain me. They have their place and I’m grateful for them. But I think a lot of us (myself included) need to expand ourselves a bit and pay a little more attention to the films that have something to say, movies that will make us think… movies that we agree or don’t agree with… movies that say something and elicit a response from us… movies that are art.
