—Roger Ebert
Apparently, there's a big discussion going on about video games and if they can be considered art.
One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite a [sic] immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.
—Roger Ebert
I asked my wife what art was to her. She said "anything that's made". She also didn't want to talk with me about something as "deep" as what I had asked her right before bed.
By April 2002, however, controversy over the topic was still a legal reality as Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh, Sr., upon reviewing gameplay from "'The Resident of Evil Creek' [sic], 'Mortal Combat' [sic], 'DOOM,' and 'Fear Effect'" ruled in Interactive Digital Software Association v. St. Louis County that "just like Bingo, the Court fails to see how video games express ideas, impressions, feelings, or information unrelated to the game itself."
My initial feelings are that it's important to define art. After you define what art is, then you can see what different things match the definition. My wife said art is anything that's made. I asked if babies were art, and she said yes, they were. I asked if a refrigerator was art, and she said it was. She, also, didn't want to have such a heavy brain-meal before bed, so she could have been saying anything just to get me to shut up. Or, just as likely, she might have been serious. It's difficult to tell with her sometimes. Often, even she doesn't know what she's saying. Part of her charm.
The lines between video games and art become blurred when exhibitions fit the labels of both game and interactive art. The Smithsonian American Art Museum held an exhibit in 2012, entitled "The Art of Video Games", which was designed to demonstrate the artistic nature of video games, including the impact of older works and the subsequent influence of video games on creative culture. The Smithsonian later added Flower and Halo 2600, games from this collection, as permanent exhibits within the museum. Similarly, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City has aimed to collect forty historically important video games in their original format to use as exhibits to showcase video games as an art form. The annual "Into the Pixel" art exhibit held at the time of the Electronic Entertainment Expo highlights video game art selected by a panel of both video game and art industry professionals.
Personally, I think art is anything that causes an emotional response. While not everything that causes an emotional response is art, art must cause an emotional response. I think I believe this because I took art classes in school, and I was told certain things were art. I was told Van Gogh was an artist, and everything he created was art. But I'm color blind, and a lot of his work deals with colors, and upon visiting his exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Arts, many of his paintings looked like dark grey-green rectangles. The titles of these rectangles implied that there was supposed to be something going on within their frames, but I couldn't see it.
In 2006, Ebert took part in a panel discussion at the Conference on World Affairs entitled "An Epic Debate: Are Video Games an Art Form?" in which he stated that video games don't explore the meaning of being human as other art forms do. A year later, in response to comments from Clive Barker on the panel discussion, Ebert further noted that video games present a malleability that would otherwise ruin other forms of art. As an example, Ebert posed the idea of a version of Romeo & Juliet that would allow for an optional happy ending.
I live in a world where a minor handicap prevents me from seeing what others see. I sometimes cannot see the colors Van Gogh uses. Is that, then, the only thing that makes his works art? I don't think so. I saw "Starry Night" while at the DIA, and I really liked it. I stared at it for a long time. I got lost in it. It was fun, and I remember that well.
So what is art? Wikipedia describes it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art. Arguably, this article states that anything created by a human imagination or skill is art. A baby, therefore, wouldn't be considered art, as it requires neither skill nor imagination to create. Trees, mountains, wind, streams... none of these would be considered art, as humans didn't create them. A refrigerator could be considered art, as it takes some skill to create a refrigerator. I will probably use the following definition until a better definition comes along: art is anything a human creates which involves imagination or skill and evokes an emotional response. I think it's important to attach an emotional response to things which are art, because I believe art is something different than creation. If a child completes his homework assignment, I wouldn't call that art. But when his mother looks at the plate covered in glued-on macaroni, she has an emotional response, and suddenly the homework is art. It's that single emotional response that makes something art. If it's simply created with imagination or skill and no emotional response, it's homework.
So why the hell do I care about all this?
I think this hits a nerve with me that resonates into almost every area of my current life.
We live on this planet with over 7 billion others. Many, if not most, of those 7 billion people are trying to tell us what to do. And many, if not most, of those 7 billion people don't give two fucks about you or me, but they're gonna tell us what to do, how to feel, what is normal, what speed to drive, and they're gonna pass out their opinions like they're free, which they are. In fact, some people actually make their living giving out their opinions. Judges do. Critics do. Teachers do. Laws that we follow today are simply somebody's opinion from a while ago that enough people agreed upon and voted into law. Similarly, all the things which school children are subjected to as art are things which people agreed upon a long time ago, and now, today, I'm stuck reading "A Separate Peace" and "The Bell Jar" because some rich fuck decided it was art. I am learning what somebody else decided a long time ago I should learn. And you know what? I hated "The Bell Jar". It was boring and stupid and I read this emotionally charged piece of shit in high school when I was trying to sort out my own emotions and wondering why my dick got hard when I wore fleece pants.
Why isn't George Carlin's "A Place For My Stuff" routine considered art? It's just as musical as Chopin. It's as finely crafted as "Watership Down". It's as theatrical in performance as Henry Fonda in Clarence Darrow. Why isn't the movie Tootsie or Parenthood considered art? They are both as emotionally moving as Amadeus, certainly more so than Chariots of Fire, and both of those won Best Picture Academy Awards. Tootsie was nominated for Best Cinematography, meaning others recognized it for being skillfully filmed, yet it lost to Gandhi, and I was moved at the shot in Parenthood when Jason Robards pulls down the "no smoking" sign after he's passed out cigars in the hospital waiting room to celebrate the birth of his new grandson. Parenthood had two Oscar nominations, one for Best Supporting Actress for Diane Wiest (she lost to Brenda Fricker in the drama My Left Foot), and one for Randy Newman's original song, "I Love To See You Smile" (he lost to "Under The Sea" from The Little Mermaid), so we know that others agree there is artistic merit to this movie, as well.
I live in a world where I am moved every day by what others call kitsch, skits, and silliness. They call these things "low art" at best, with tones of disapproval. These pieces of fluff, they say, are not as meaningful or important as true pieces of art. These pieces are fun, but they aren't worthy of being studied in high school. The Mona Lisa is Art. "All In The Family" is not.
I live in a world where I am disregarded by almost everybody's opinion. And the way we have established education teaches me that I'm to disregard my own opinion in favor of somebody else's. I don't even know who's opinion was important enough or rich enough to force me into having to read The Old Man and the Sea, to watch Laurence Olivier in blackface in Othello, or to view Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, aka Whistler's Mother, by James McNeill Whistler as art, but I know they were forced into me as facts. Fact: the planets revolve around the Sun. Fact: water is one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms joined in covalent bonds. Fact: King Lear is Shakespeare's greatest play.
According to whom? And why must I answer this way in order to get a grade which allows me to pass high school and get a job where other people are going to force their opinions down my throat as if they were facts??
The answer: that's the way it worked.
Yes, "worked".
It worked that way when you had the power to grade me, to hinder me, to hold me down if I didn't do what you told me to. If I didn't answer the way you told me to. If I didn't rock your boat too much. Or more to the point, if I didn't do something which you perceived as rocking of the boat, but in all actuality was me growing into my own thoughts, feelings, and beyond the boundaries of the status quo into something that we could and SHOULD aspire to be. Something more than what we were. Something we might achieve ahead.
It worked that way in the past.
But not anymore.
Today, you have a choice.
You have a voice.
And I have a voice.
I am no longer being tested to see if I'm worthy of working for a living. I am no longer being evaluated to see if I can respond like a Pavlovian dog to your bells. I am no longer living in a world dictated by your opinions-masked-as-facts.
You.
Don't.
Own.
Me.
And so, to all those saying video games aren't art, I say...
You're Not Qualified.
You may say that you can't see the art in video games.
That is acceptable.
In saying this, you make yourself and your audience aware of your disability, like my color blindness.
I am unable to see some of Van Gogh's work.
You who cannot see the art in video games carry the same impairment.
You Cannot See.
You Cannot Hear.
You are blind and deaf and your opinion should be carried with the weight afforded to those who are blind and deaf.
From Hence Forward...
I Decree...
The Only Opinion That Matters...
Is Your Own...
And It Stops Where My Opinions Begin...
It Stops Where Other Opinions Begin...
And No One Shall Be Listened To Who Brings Shit Unto This World.
So Spaketh Me.
Fuck you, dick heads.
You can't tell me what to do anymore.
I've got a brain, and I have an opinion as valid as yours.
Whistler's Mother is just as artistic as the yellow smiley face seen on t-shirts typically accompanied by the phrase "have a nice day".
Donkey Kong is art.
Duran Duran, Van Halen, The Police, Michael Jackson, and Eminem hold the same artistic merits as Haydn.
To Roger Ebert, who is dead, I say you can win a competition or contest, but you play a game.
Films have winners in their competitions, musicians have winners in their competitions, and there are many Pulitzer Prize winners. Simply having a winner doesn't exclude something from being art. Similarly, there are rules to painting a picture in a similar way to the rules in a video game. It must be on a canvas of some kind. It must be visible. Of course you can bend, even break these rules, but they are still rules and do not disqualify something from being art.
You Who Say 'It Is Not' Cannot See And Are Disqualified From National Discourse.
My opinion about Van Gogh is valid-- the jerk doesn't paint as good as my wife-- but others will tell me I'm wrong.
Fuck Others.
Others said Little Big Planet 3 wasn't a good video game.
Fuck Others.
Others said that Ebn-Ozn was a joke band.
Fuck Others.
Others said that blah blah blah blah.
Fuck! Others!
I only give you power over yourself.
You no longer control me.
I have broken free and have seen the Matrix.
And the Matrix is me.
I control it.
You say blah.
I say, "shhhh".
This is the way the world works, you scream!
Shhh.
I know what's best!
Shhh.
You must listen to what I have to say!
Shhh.
Shhh.
Shhh.
Go to sleep, little man.
Go to sleep, little control freak.
Gooooooooo
Tooooooooooo
Sleeeeeeeeeeeeep.
Here
I Am King.
And I stop being king...
...Where You Start Being King...
Here Endeth The Lesson.
Unless otherwise noted, all quotes come from here:
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