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ppl who cleave to the belief that ‘immoral’ art/fiction can do mind-altering harm often use the same line of reasoning to conclude that consuming ‘moral’ art/fiction makes you a morally better or more empathetic person. It’s a seductively easy and romantic binary to agree with...
and one I fundamentally disagree with. There’s a lot of elements at play with buying into that idea; art & stories are so often peddled as ‘empathy machines’. Disgust and offense and generally feeling bad are easy to categorize as ‘immoral’ lol so i understand the inclination
How the formers plays out: Engaging w/ a work because it features a character of marginalized identity or explores a subject that you have little experience in SEEMS valuable therefore engaging w/ it makes you a morally upstanding person. Valuable and moral become interchangeable
For the latter: If the art or story makes you feel bad or you think has the potential to make others feel bad, triggers a bad memory, or grosses you out than the work is immoral and wrong. So easy to just categorize everything to the nearest associated moral feeling.
I think there’s also an element of the arena where this is spoken about obviously, an element of performance to have these conversation or tirades against creators online, the momentary power it allows you to feel, the easy win of being ‘good’ in front of others, etc
If your reaction to art is painful (notice I’m not saying ‘if art causes you to be in pain’), that doesn’t mean it’s immoral nor does it mean the art lacks value. If yr experience of the work lacks value, then thats your own unique experience with the work.
Consuming art by someone you later find out DID something immoral also doesnt make you immoral retroactively either. There is a sense, based on the idea that art can harm or better you, that it has this mind-altering power! It doesn’t! As an artist, i know how sad that sounds lol
Is art inert? No, but i think the power people ascribe to art is beyond rational proportion. there’s no single equation to divine all the possible variables of how our personal life experiences will react with a piece of art, what that reaction will dredge up in you.
Is art impossible to judge then? No but I wish people would understand how personal and subjective their experience and subsequent judgments of the work are, how hypocritical and biased their responses can be. Let the truth of your own experience in, thats where the value is
re: the phrasing of "art causing you feel something" versus "your reaction to the art", i don't like the implication of the former wording that art is an active particpant in the exchange MAKING you feel something, giving the art both will and greater power than your perception
