Film can be art, dammit!

I went to every university class¹ I had for the first six months of this school year² — I don’t anymore. One of the main reasons for my absence is that I just couldn’t bear the arrogance of the “prestigious art educators” and the “art experts.” My, oh my, how mighty they feel themselves to be.

I remember a discussion about the position of film in the whole “what is art” dilemma. Could you take a guess how it went? To summarize it: film is not (high) art, it’s entertainment. A main factor to that conclusion was the fact that movies are made for a large audience, by a lot of people. Oh, but theatre is art though, even though it can be made for a large audience, by a lot of people.

Is the movie Gandhi by Richard Attenborough art? It’s a greater masterpiece than most modern-art paintings made nowadays, but art education will disagree with me on that. Somehow film can’t be art by default, just because it’s entertainment.

Is it entertainment by default? Was it entertaining to watch Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ? Maybe if you were Eric Cartman it was — but if I may speak for myself, I didn’t have an entertaining time while watching the blood wrenched “biopic.” Was it art? Many may debate if it was moral art, if Mel Gibson’s creation was ethical.³ Yet, he had a message with the movie, created it in a way that would get peoples attention. It’s art, even if I don’t agree with what he was trying to tell us with it, and even if I don’t agree with the way it was created.

To go a little further: can television be art? Perhaps if you think television only consists of “The Bold and the Beautiful”-material, you’ll answer in disagreement. I do think a television series can be art. A perfectly-crafted, insightfully-written and superbly-acted television (mini)series⁴ could in my book be much more of an achievement than, for example, the alleged “art creations” Frank Stella makes.

Seriously, what is this, that and this?! Is that supposed to be art? What does it mean, what is it trying to tell me, how should I react to this? If the supposed reaction is to be angry at the art institutes for embracing these pieces of Stella-crap, then I guess I’m in the clear because that is exactly the reaction I’m having right now.

Where was I? Right, television. Think I made my point there. Now to talk about the other side of the issue. With all the foregoing material I’m not trying to say that every movie, that everything made on film is art. Just as not every painting is art, not every movie is. Anything Uwe Boll has ever made, is a good example of what will never become art. (Maybe you can consider it “anti-art.”) But I am saying that just because a movie was made for entertainment purposes, it still can be art.

The 1959 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer epic, Ben-Hur, was created for two reasons: money and entertainment. Was it a masterpiece, a work of — wait for it, art? Yes, it was. (I repeat, even though I don’t agree with the highly-religious content of the film, I can consider it art.) Was it any different with this years, Jon Favreau-directed, summer-tentpole superhero flick (what an introduction) Iron Man? No, it wasn’t. In my opinion⁵ Iron Man was not only a superb movie, it was also cinematic art.