Opinion : adults should stop watching movies or reading books meant for children after they reach a certain age.
There are several erroneous assumptions in this. One is that there are clear demarcation lines in works meant for children and adults. Countless examples can be given to counter this. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is for children on the face of it but has hidden meanings and themes if you go deeper. Fairy tales with simple story lines have been shown to contain psychological archetypes. Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung spent their lives studying these archetypes.
Second erroneous assumption is that if an adult enjoys works meant for kids, it proves that his artistic taste is still childish. Nothing could be further from truth. It is possible for one human being to appreciate Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Yojimbo, Gangs of New York, Bugs Bunny, Harry Potter, Mozart, K-pop, 50 Cent, Jack Reacher, Haruki Murakami, Kazuo Ishiguro, John Grisham, Vikram Seth, Ian Rankin, The Great Beauty,and Avengers : Endgame. Why do these critics assume that our artistic tastes are rigid and compartmentalized? What we choose to watch or read at any moment of time depends on so many parameters like mood, inclination, background, culture, availability, emotional state, habit. And who has the right to be the so-called cultural police?
Our artistic tastes are a result of complex neurological and psychological factors that these critics never take into account. The artistic experience that each of us goes through is unique and is called qualia. It cannot be transmitted to another human being through words or any other means of communication. That’s why I can never experience what Pauline Kael felt when she saw The Godfather Part II.
This brings up another interesting point. Are culture critics as neutral and impartial as we expect them to be? How can they be? If a critic has intense dislike of the Fantasy genre, can we expect him to review Marvel movies without prejudice? It is a remarkably difficult task and yet, we never think about this aspect when we read reviews and sometimes treat them as gospel. Great example is Satyajit Ray’s 1955 movie Panther Panchali. After watching the film, some western critics were disgusted with the fact that the movie shows people eating with their hands. In a 1992 poll of 10 Greatest Films of All Time, the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound magazine rated Pather Panchali sixth.
Where does this leave the poor viewer? Listen to the revered critic or find your own way? Here are my simple rules for appreciating any kind of art, that in my case consists of mostly books, music, and movies.
Is it engaging?
The minimum expectation from any work of art is that it should engage the viewer. Note that engaging does not necessarily mean entertaining. Engaging simply means that the viewer is committed to sit through the performance because there is nothing else that he would rather do. It engages his attention. I do not subscribe to those works of art where the artist opts for being clever instead of imparting a memorable experience. A good example is the composition 4’33” by John Cage. Here, the musicians stay silent for four minutes and thirty three seconds. The idea is to listen to the natural sounds made by the audience in the absence of any music. Very clever and one may enjoy the performance once. But can you listen to 4’33” everyday the same way you can listen to, say, Beethoven’s Pastoral? You cannot. 4’33” fails to give me any repetitive experience. That’s the problem with clever works. They make a point and then their utility is lost.
Keep you art palette varied.
It is very easy to get overly familiar with your favourite art forms. If you listen to K-pop constantly, very soon you will prefer K-pop over other musical genres. While there is nothing wrong with that, it may put you in a rigid mind state where you are unable to appreciate Rock or Blues. This is the problem with most critics who write from their ivory towers. They have been consuming a certain type of art diet for such a long time that they are unable to appreciate art in any other form that does not match their arbitrary criteria.
This gives rise to arbitrary divides: high-brow vs low-brow, best sellers vs. literary, K-pop vs. opera, blockbusters vs. independent/auteur movies, entertainment vs. art and so on. There is also the mistaken belief that art that entertains is not really art and is easy to make. There is nothing wrong if art is produced solely for the sake of entertainment. Not every art should carry a message or has to be “meaningful.” If someone works 80 hours a week and wants to relax over the weekend with an entertaining, thrilling movie, who are we to tell him that he cannot do that? And that he should watch a “meaningful” movie instead?
Art cannot be bound by artificial and arbitrary rules that more often than not are a result of prejudiced point of views.
