Determining the Value of Art for
Ourselves
The quality and
value of various art pieces has been debated for thousands of years. Everyone has different expectations of what
art should be and from what sources good art can be found. However, people generally agree that the
search for such art is noble and important for both individuals and society as
a whole. The question of what makes art
“good” or “bad” is a complicated one and (much to the chagrin of opinionated individuals
such as myself) probably has no definite answer. Instead of making arbitrary value judgments,
examining which works of art are more or less enriching to an individual is a
more pragmatic and achievable goal. Through
careful self-reflection a person can discover what art will be better or worse
for them personally. Too often people
pre-judge art based on its genesis and their expectations; this causes them to
spend their time—and often their money—on art that is not as enriching as other
art would be, as well as causing them to miss opportunities to be enriched by
art which they have judged to be of no value.
Consider this
evocative monologue, which has been deliberately removed from context: “The
question that once haunted my being has been answered. The future is not fixed, and my choices are
my own. Destiny has one great test in
store for us all. Has mine already come,
and have I failed it?.... A deed once done cannot be undone, but it may yet be
mitigated.” This quote poses interesting
philosophical questions, leading one to consider his own past actions and
experiences. Reflection on this may lead
a person to ask if there is a “great test” lying in wait at some point in his life,
or if he has already faced it. If he
feels he is still preparing for such a test, this may even stand as a wake-up
call, helping him understand that he will want to be ready when that time
comes. When I first heard these words I
was a child, too young to fully understand their significance, and certainly too
young to know what the word “mitigated” meant; but still, they had a profound
impact on me. At the very least I gathered
that my decisions were important, and that I would have to live with the
choices I had made after the fact. It
may be surprising to those unfamiliar with this monologue to know it was
delivered by an introspective, gravely-voiced, fifteen-foot tall,
half-raptor/half-robot transformer named Dinobot, a character in the Canadian
children’s cartoon series Transformers:
Beast Wars.
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| I wonder if this thing has an RSS feed. |
In 1995, two
cartoon scriptwriters—Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio—where asked by Hasbro and
the animation company Mainframe to create a television show loosely based on
the 1980’s Transformers cartoon. Transformers
was a dying franchise at the time, so Forward and DiTillio were chosen for
their acclaimed work on similar shows and given free-reign to do whatever they
wanted with the series within reason.
They created new characters and set the show in another time period in
order to give themselves room for their ideas and creativity. In the first episode, an exploring team is
shot down by an enemy war vessel, each travel back in time during the accident
and crash-land on a prehistoric world.
They then go on to wage the Beast Wars, named such because on this
planet they must transform into animals instead of the usual cars and
planes. This may sound like typical
sci-fi fanfare—and in many ways it is—but infused within are layers of careful
thought and more than a few memorable characters. Forward and DiTillio worked within the
framework of a small budget and very limited resources, but by focusing on what
they could do rather than what they couldn’t, they created a show that would go
on to be a cult classic with a strong following. In the Beast
Wars featurette “Remembering the Spark”, Forward and DiTillio explain how
they wanted to deal with complex issues like military intrigue and treason,
philosophical questions such as the need to fight against tyrants despite a
desire for passivism, and of course, as Dinobot’s earlier quote explains, the
place of fate and destiny in the lives of the characters. They gave the robots souls (called sparks),
conflicting desires, and individual ideas about warfare and honor. They effectively created a many-layered world
in which to explore different situations and concepts.
Even though DiTillio
and Forward knew they were trying to make something new and interesting, they
admit they didn’t realize how special many fans felt Beast Wars was until later on.
Years after its final season, DiTillio said of the show, “It all came
together in Beast Wars. That was the thing
I got many, many letters on…. [about] episodes that had touched people’s hearts.” And Bob Forward remarked: “When I meet fans
[now], and they just tell me how much… [Beast Wars] meant to them, I almost
want to cry. I almost want to
apologize. I almost want to say, ‘I’m
sorry! A lot of the time I was just jamming something out [against a
deadline]. If I’d known it was going to
affect you this much I would have tried harder at it.’ But still, I think the sort of free-swinging,
swashbuckling spirit that Beast Wars had made it…. [That] gave it part of its
charm.” The two worked on the show for
the entirety of its run, and fifteen years after it’s release, DVD sets of its
three seasons are still being printed and purchased (quite a feat for such a
small-budget endeavor), the characters and plot lines are still actively
discussed on web-forums, and some of the voice actors are still attending
animation conventions to meet fans, sign memorabilia, and speak on public
panels where—in addition to dialoguing and answering questions—they re-enact
scenes or improvise as favorite characters from the show.
I am not ashamed
to say (nor am I alone in saying) that it is one of the most personally
important pieces of art I’ve encountered in my life. It changed how I see the world and how I see
art. There is an ethereal, ineffable
quality to some of the finest episodes that is at once unmistakable to the
astute viewer and very difficult to describe.
I am by no means sounding the battle-call to encourage the reader to
seek out and experience Beast Wars
for himself; more simply, I would like to elucidate how something of great
artistic value to me came from a source as improbable as a children’s cartoon
about transforming robots. Because of
what it is—a computer animated TV show for children—many people might never take
the time to consider it, judging it as not for them or not of worth. Even more likely, they will never hear of it,
for the following is large, but by no means to the point of being pervasive. Even if a person does happen to start the
series based on a favorable review or the recommendation of a friend, he might
turn it off after the first cheesy voice-over, dated rock guitar riff, or
awkwardly animated fight scene, never revealing what is to be found beyond the superficial
glance because he had simply not expected to find anything of worth.
Conversely, many
millions of people have spent the time and the money to see director Michael
Bay’s 2007-2009 Transformers movie
franchise despite over-whelmingly negative reviews by professional
critics. The second film in the series, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, received
a rating of 3.5/10 from the media review website Metacritic and only 21/100 from Rotten
Tomatoes, both sites give an average score based on dozens of professional
reviews. Regarding the quality of the
film, respected film critic Roger Ebert said:
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is a horrible experience of
unbearable length…. To save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue
up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots
and pans together. Then close your eyes
and use your imagination. The plot is
incomprehensible. The dialog of the
Autobots®, Decepticons® and Otherbots® is meaningless word flap…. The
human actors are in a witless sitcom part of the time, and a lot of the rest of
their time is spent running in slo-mo away from explosions.” I
could include hundreds of similar reviews and statistics from other critics and
websites about all three films, but the point is clear: despite record-breaking
viewership and undeniable financial success, the films were not well received
by professionals.
The creation of
Bay’s Transformers films was very
different from that of Beast Wars. The project began as a live-action film about
G.I. Joe, but after the war in Afghanistan began Hasbro and Dreamworks Pictures
decided a Transformers film would be more timely. One man wrote the first draft based on ideas
by Steven Spielberg and Don Murphy, then two other screen-writers were asked to
re-write it including ideas by Spielberg, Murphy, Tom DeSanto and a number of
others involved in the project.
Spielberg felt the focus should be a responsibility motif about a boy
and his car, Murphy was interested in the films mirroring some of the disaster
films that had been popular around that time, and DeSanto explained that he
wanted to produce the movie because he believed a truck transforming into a
robot had not yet been captured on film, and that people would like to see it. At this point Spielberg asked Michael Bay to
direct. Bay admitted he was not excited
about the project, dismissing it as a “stupid toy movie,” but agreed because he
had always wanted to work with Spielberg.
Once Bay came on he explained that he was interested in making a movie
with a lot of military action and asked for the script to be re-written
again. He also expressed interest in the
novelty of watching cars transform in live action, stating, “By
adding more doo-dads and stuff on the robots, more car parts, you can just make
it more real.” In counterpoint to the two-man team who had a
clear vision of the concepts they wanted to include, dozens of individuals had
their fingers in the Transformers
pie. This is not inherently negative,
but it’s easy to see how such a development might lend hand to the incoherency
many critics have complained about, and how it could decrease the probability
of the viewer finding something truly enriching.
Interestingly, all three of the recent Transformers films are on the list of the fifty highest-grossing
films of all time. The third installment
alone generated over a billion dollars at the box-office, not including DVD and
associated merchandise sales. A strong case
could be made that the films are not as bad as the reviewers say, that the
public has voted with their money and declared the films to be the kind of art
they want, or even that “good” and “bad” are irrelevant in what people choose
to watch. But please keep in mind I am
not suggesting these films should not be enjoyed, or that anyone who likes them
is wrong to do so. What I am suggesting
is that because these were high-budget Hollywood films staring attractive and
recognizable actors, many of the general public assumed before ever seeing them
that they were worth the money and time required and never fully considered the
potential benefit of seeking out something better for themselves.
The question of
how much art affects us is central to my claim that seeking out more enriching
art is important and worth the time and effort; if it does have a considerable
effect, then of course people would want to intake more enriching art, but if
it does not, than anything that entertains will suffice for artistic
needs. Serial rapist and murder Ted
Bundy claimed that pornography played a serious role in his interest in murder,
and many other convicted criminals have expressed similar sentiments. In their point of view, what they took in had
a serious impact on them. Certainly not
everyone who has viewed pornographic material has gone on to become a serial
killer, but it is striking evidence that we should carefully decide what art to
focus on. In the 2009 documentary Kimjongillia, which documents the
real-life stories of North Korean prison camp survivors, one young man relates
the emotional account of his escape at the age of twenty-four. He was born in the camp and lived there his
entire life until he was assigned a new duty in one of the more secluded areas. It was during this time he had the following
experience: “There were smuggled books
circulating in our camp. The Count of Monte Cristo. Anna Karenina. Resurrection. I think The
Count of Monte Cristo touched me the most.
Reading Monte Cristo gave me the idea to escape North Korea. [And] if I ever got out, I would take revenge
like him.” For this young man, art had a
very dramatic impact; it opened up new possibilities to him, and indeed, went
on to change nearly every aspect of his life.
He escaped in the early 2000’s and is still alive today, consider how
his life might be different if instead of thought-provoking and enriching books
circulating the camp, there were only base thrillers, formula romances,
or—Heaven forbid—a 90-page Scholastic novelization of the second Transformers movie. These are extreme examples, of course, dealing
with situations and actions the vast majority of us will never face or be in,
but the concept is sound. If art has such
an ability to change us, and if each of us will react differently to different
art pieces, then we should take great care to intake the kinds of art that will
be most personally enriching, and not through laziness or ignorance take the
course of least resistance by seeking out only the art that is most popular and
easily accessible.
It is my firm
opinion that many of the people who have enjoyed the Transformers films may not be fully analyzing their worth, or, potentially,
lack thereof. Not everyone will gain as
much as I have from the Beast Wars
series, but it is important to ask ourselves—outside the framework of
popularity and funding—where we will find value in art. And if anyone feels that they have wasted
time and money on art of lesser worth, they need not despair. There is still time; it may yet be mitigated.
- MA 11.19.2012
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