Abstract of the article and why it matters
Art portrays idealism. At least, we want art to portray idealism.
We can use art to understand what our views of life really are. When an injustice is portrayed in art, our reaction to it can help us understand our views on justice. If the reaction we have is fury, we value justice in life. Roll our eyes and it means we do not believe such injustice could happen in life. If we quietly nod along, we worry that injustice indeed is common in life. Art can thus give us a shortcut to self-understanding.
Introduction
When my son was five years old, he was enamored by stories, especially the ones that talked about good and evil. He worshipped superheroes. That was just an extension of his love of the police. A large part of his play centered around defeating bad guys.
Then one day, we were watching a nature documentary where a group of wolves were trying to catch a deer. In his infinite five-year-old wisdom, he turned to me and said, “Wolves kill deer because they need to eat them. They are not bad guys.”
What my son had hit upon is an important principle of art. Art involves human principles and morals. Even anthropomorphic art is about humanity, not about the animal being portrayed. Unlike real wolves in the wild, anthropomorphized wolves killing a helpless deer in a story are designed to portray bad guys.
Unlike real wolves in the wild, anthropomorphized wolves killing a helpless deer in a story are designed to portray bad guys.
An example of how we view art
Art talks about how human principles and morals should work. We root for the moral man and want to see the immoral ones get their comeuppance. While looking up reviews for the movie It’s a Wonderful Life (IWL), I came across a two-star review on Amazon that said, “From police shooting at a guy because he doesn’t know his name, to the main bad guy stealing $8K and getting away with it, this movie just makes zero sense across the board.”
When it’s fake
Let’s deal with the first accusation about police procedure. Yeah, that sucks about most movies and TV. The flagrant refusal to portray how law enforcement happens in real life is so ridiculous that I have stopped paying attention.
Case in point, please refer this. There are ninety-two brave FBI officers that have laid down their lives in the line of duty in the one hundred- and fifteen-year history of FBI. That is too many, of course. Even one is one too many. But how many FBI agents have you seen “die” on screen?
In the TV series Bones, I counted about six in the span of a few seasons. And mind you, these are supposed to be just a tiny subset of FBI agents, just the ones that encountered our lead characters in a meaningful way. By extrapolation, working for the FBI will probably cause you to die within a few years.
So yes, what IWL showed was nonsense in this case because that does not happen in real life.
When it’s not fake
Let’s examine the second accusation. Now, even though the reviewer accuses Potter of stealing the money, Potter does no such thing. He simply finds the $8K (in today’s terms that would be about $150K) that belongs to George Bailey’s firm and decides to keep it instead of returning it. He’s not a thief. He is just unscrupulous.
Here is an interesting statistic. In 2019, there were about 7 million property crimes resulting in a loss of $15.8 billion, putting the average theft at $2250. Given that the average amount is quite large, I’m guessing, at the absolute minimum, there were at least 3 people who got away with a theft of $150K or more, just in 2019.
So yes, what IWL showed was nonsense because… uh, because, well, uh … because real or not, I DON’T LIKE IT!
To summarize, the reviewer does not like it that police procedure portrayed in the movie was not real and that the state of justice in the world portrayed is real. That’s contradictory. Is the reviewer crazy? No. The primary concern is not about whether what the movie shows is real, but about whether what the movie shows is morally right.
The primary concern is not about whether what the movie shows is real, but about whether what the movie shows is morally right.
Idealism in Art
Unless the movie was making some statement about how morally correct police procedures are not being followed, the movie must show the cop following the correct procedure. Otherwise, it is not morally right. Similarly, unless the movie is making a statement that the world has no justice – which it isn’t because all is right with George Bailey in the end – the reviewer expects Potter to get his due. Because in art, we don’t want to see reality. We want idealism.
Viewers hate Potter for being unscrupulous. We want him to get his due throughout the movie. When he takes money that does not belong to him, a part of us lights up with the thought – “Awesome. Now he’s going to get caught!” And when he doesn’t, it makes us mad.
Idealism vs. realism
Many authors pride themselves on creating “morally gray” characters to lend more realism to their plot. Put another way, they don’t portray ideal people in the story. But they still let the less “gray” character win against the more “gray” one. Or if the characters are all irredeemable, they end the story with destruction of the corrupt system. Writing a story where a bad guy triumphs over the better guy (not as a cliffhanger bait to get to the next book but as a definitive end, and not as a question thrown at the audience but as a simple factual statement) is not a recipe for great artistic success.
Morality in art is about how morality should be in the world, not about how it is.
Quick digression. The only exception here would either be art based on a true story or a tragedy. Why a true story can be an exception is self-evident. Real life isn’t always ideal. A good tragedy, like Greek tragedies, is constructed in art to not to suck your soul but to make you more aware of your values. But a bad tragedy, like Soviet tragedies, is a propaganda piece as discussed in another article.
This need for idealism is also why people wanted Eliza Doolittle to marry Henry Higgins in Pygmalion, as we discussed here.
How many times have you heard someone criticize a story saying, “I’m better off watching the news than reading that”? That is the ultimate insult the audience can throw at a story; that the movie cannot even be as decent as real life. Because morality in art – barring the exceptions we discussed – is about how morality should be in the world, not about how it is.
It is interesting why we think the bad guy getting comeuppance is how morality should be. But that is a topic for another article.
References
- Article exploring why some viewers did not like the movie It’s a Wonderful Life
- FBI’s Wall of Honor
- FBI 2019 statistics on crime in the United States
- Article exploring how assumptions shape art
- Article about why Shaw’s Pygmalion did not have a conventional ending but the movie My Fair Lady did
For comments or questions on this article, please email nayana@tobeandwhattobe.com
Article image courtesy: Peter Hoare from Pixabay
