{"id":11058,"date":"2018-01-17T01:30:11","date_gmt":"2018-01-17T01:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=11058"},"modified":"2018-01-18T01:34:47","modified_gmt":"2018-01-18T01:34:47","slug":"what-makes-some-art-so-bad-that-its-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/what-makes-some-art-so-bad-that-its-good\/","title":{"rendered":"What makes some art so bad that it’s good?"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Dyck<\/a>, CUNY Graduate Center<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Disaster Artist<\/a>\u201d \u2013 which just earned James Franco a Golden Globe for his portrayal of director Tommy Wiseau \u2013 tells the story of the making of \u201cThe Room<\/a>,\u201d a film that\u2019s been dubbed<\/a> \u201cthe Citizen Kane\u201d of bad movies. <\/p>\n

Not everyone likes \u201cThe Room.\u201d (Critics certainly don\u2019t \u2013 it has a 26 percent rating<\/a> on Rotten Tomatoes.) But lots of folks love it. It plays at midnight showings at theaters across North America, and it\u2019s a testament to a movie\u2019s awfulness (and popularity) that, years later, it became the subject of a different movie. <\/p>\n

We usually hate art when it seems like it\u2019s been poorly executed, and we appreciate great art, which is supposed to represent the pinnacle of human ingenuity. So, this raises a deeper question: What\u2019s the appeal of art that\u2019s so bad it\u2019s good? (We could call this kind of art \u201cgood-bad art.\u201d) Why do so many people grow to love good-bad art like \u201cThe Room\u201d in the first place?<\/p>\n

In a new paper<\/a> for an academic journal of philosophy, my colleague Matt Johnson and I explored these questions. <\/p>\n

The artist\u2019s intention is key<\/h2>\n

A Hollywood outsider named Tommy Wiseau produced, directed and starred in \u201cThe Room<\/a>,\u201d which was released in 2003. <\/p>\n

The film is full of failures. It jumps between different genres; there are absurd non-sequiturs; storylines are introduced, only to never be developed; and there are three sex scenes in the first 20 minutes<\/em>. Wiseau poured substantial cash into the film \u2013 it cost<\/a> around US$6 million to make \u2013 so there\u2019s some degree of professional veneer. But this only accentuates its failure. <\/p>\n

Good-bad art doesn\u2019t just happen at the movies. On TV, there was \u201cDark Shadows<\/a>,\u201d a low-budget vampire soap opera from the 1970s. In Somerville, Massachusetts, you can visit MoBA \u2013 the Museum of Bad Art<\/a> \u2013 dedicated to paintings that are so bad they\u2019re good. The poet Julia Moore<\/a> (1847-1920) was ironically known as \u201cThe Sweet Singer of Michigan\u201d for her deliciously terrible poetry<\/a>. And the recent film \u201cFlorence Foster Jenkins<\/a>\u201d tells the true story of an opera singer with a tone-deaf voice<\/a> so beloved that she sold out Carnegie Hall.<\/p>\n

In good-bad art, it seems that the very features that make something bad \u2013 a horrible voice, cheesy verses or an absurd storyline \u2013 are what end up drawing people in. <\/p>\n

So we need to look at what\u2019s \u201cbad\u201d about good-bad art in the first place. We equated artistic \u201cbadness\u201d with artistic failure, which comes from failed intentions. It occurs when the creator didn\u2019t realize their vision, or their vision wasn\u2019t good in the first place. (MoBA, for instance, requires that its art comes from genuine attempts.) <\/p>\n

You might think a movie\u2019s bad when it\u2019s very silly, whether it\u2019s \u201cSnakes on a Plane<\/a>\u201d or \u201cSharknado<\/a>.\u201d You might think that \u201cThe Rocky Horror Picture Show<\/a>\u201d is bad because it looks schlocky. <\/p>\n

But these films aren\u2019t failures. \u201cSnakes on a Plane\u201d is supposed<\/em> to be silly; \u201cThe Rocky Horror Picture Show\u201d is supposed<\/em> to look schlocky. So we can\u2019t categorize these works as so bad they\u2019re good. They\u2019re successful in the sense that the writers and directors executed their visions. <\/p>\n

Our love for good-bad art, on the other hand, is based upon failure.<\/p>\n

How not to appreciate bad art<\/h2>\n

So how could artistic failure ever be the basis for goodness?<\/p>\n

A pretty natural answer here is that we like good-bad art because we take a general pleasure in the failure of others. Our pleasure, say, at MoBA, is a particular kind of schadenfreude \u2013 the German word for taking joy in another\u2019s misfortune. This view doesn\u2019t have an official name, but we could call this \u201cthe massive failure view.\u201d (The great Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock held this view<\/a>, arguing that singer Julia Moore\u2019s earnest ineptitude made her work funnier.) If this view were right, our enjoyment of \u201cThe Room\u201d would be morally suspect; it\u2019s not healthy to get our kicks from the misfortune of others.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for lovers of good-bad art, we believe this \u201cmassive failure theory\u201d of good-bad art is false, for two reasons.<\/p>\n

First, it doesn\u2019t feel like we are enjoying pure failure in works like \u201cThe Room.\u201d Our enjoyment seems to go much deeper. We laugh, but our enjoyment also comes from a kind of bewilderment: How could anyone think that this was a good idea?<\/em> <\/p>\n

On his podcast, comedian Marc Maron recently interviewed Franco<\/a> about \u201cThe Disaster Artist.\u201d Maron was a little uneasy about the film; to him, it seemed as if Franco were taking a gleeful delight in Wiseau\u2019s failure. <\/p>\n

But Franco resisted this: \u201cThe Room\u201d isn\u2019t just great because it fails, he explained; it\u2019s great because it fails in such a confounding way. Somehow, through its many failures, the film totally captivates its viewers. You find yourself unable to look away; its failure is gorgeously, majestically, bewildering.<\/p>\n

Second, if we were just enjoying massive failure, then any really bad movie would be good-bad art; movies would simply have to fail. But that\u2019s not how good-bad art works. In good-bad art, movies have to fail in the right ways \u2013 in interesting or especially absurd ways. <\/p>\n

Some bad art is too bad \u2013 it\u2019s just boring, or self-indulgent or overwrought. Even big failures aren\u2019t enough to make something so bad it\u2019s good. <\/p>\n

The right way to appreciate bad art<\/h2>\n

We argue that good-bad artworks offer a brand of bizarreness that leads to a distinct form of appreciation.<\/p>\n

Many works \u2013 not just good-bad artworks \u2013 are good because they are bizarre. Take David Lynch\u2019s films: Their storylines can possess a strange, dreamy logic. But good-bad art offers a unique kind of bizarreness. As with the films of David Lynch<\/a>, we\u2019re bewildered when we watch \u201cThe Room.\u201d But in Lynch\u2019s movies, you know that the director at least intentionally included the bizarre elements, so there\u2019s some sense of an underlying order to the story. <\/p>\n

In good-bad art like \u201cThe Room,\u201d that underlying order falls out from beneath you, since the bizarreness is not intended.<\/p>\n

This is why fans of good-bad art strongly insist that their love for it is genuine, not ironic. They love it as a gorgeous freak accident of nature, something that turned out beautifully \u2013 not despite, but because of the failure of its creators. <\/p>\n

\"TheMaybe, then, when we delight in good-bad art, we are taking some comfort: Our projects might fail, too. But even beauty can blossom out of failure.<\/p>\n

John Dyck<\/a>, PhD Student in Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Dyck, CUNY Graduate Center \u201cThe Disaster Artist\u201d \u2013 which just earned James Franco a Golden Globe for his portrayal of director Tommy Wiseau \u2013 tells the story of the making of \u201cThe Room,\u201d a film that\u2019s been dubbed \u201cthe Citizen Kane\u201d of bad movies. Not everyone likes \u201cThe Room.\u201d (Critics certainly don\u2019t \u2013 it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":11059,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[3864,2933,2876,2225,367,581,2033],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11058"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11060,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11058\/revisions\/11060"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}