Trickle Down Entertainment: How Art Reaches The People
From the Church to Hollywood Cinema, art always ends up in the hands of the masses, and yet, even when it changes hands, it never truly leaves them.
Art and aesthetics are pursuits that people have undertaken from our earliest days as hunter-gatherers, as made evident by cave paintings all over the globe and sculptures like The Venus of Willendorf. But as time passed and civilization established itself, art developed two main trends that continue into the modern day; High art and low art. The main distinction between these two, is class in true human fashion. Do not consider this an endorsement of one over another, but a purely categorical distinction between two classes and the trends of art that they produce.
Not so Humble Origins
High art is perhaps best characterized by the Catholic Church, although the concept of high art goes back as far as we’ve had civilization. Much of the masterful artwork of the Renaissance was commissioned by particular churches, guilds, or even wealthy individuals, depending on the scope of the project and the reputation of the artist at the time. There are many works by masters such as Michelangelo and da Vinci that were never commissioned and mostly worthless during the time that were alive that sell for millions now, purely out of the legacy these artists had. There is a modern reflection of this in the form of Michael Jackson’s post-death sales.
These same wealthy churches, guilds, and wealthy persons would also employ craftsmen, in order to construct brilliant works of architecture. Works of such complication that it could sometimes employ workers for a lifetime. These workers and artists didn’t have to come from the higher classes, more often than not they were simply talented lower class people that were encouraged financially to pursue their talents.
As time went on and industrialism made things like pigments and dyes and brushes and tools more available, the capacity to make art of a quality resembling the masters of the Renaissance increased by leaps and bounds. A good example is the thousands of landscape artists exhibited throughout Europe and North America by hobbyists, once the techniques were more exposed. Once again, the landscape had changed hands back to the lower classes, after the masters of the Renaissance had made it into high art with the use of unprecedented (at the time) detail.
The American High Artist
With that preamble, lets examine the Americas more closely. There is shockingly little high art to be found in the histories of Canada and the United States, mainly because for most of that history, they have been shaped by the hopes and dreams of the lower classes. Enter; the age of the low artist.
Art produced in the Americas has primarily been out of passion or hobby, not as commissioned by the wealthy for the most part. In the public consciousness, American or Canadian artists can scarcely be named pre-1900’s. As far as the general public can tell, all of the masters were European. Even though Dali and Picasso were not Renaissance masters, they were still at the forefront of artistic expression. That is of course, until America came to become a dominant power after WWI and WWII. That is when America enters the stage, and their history of producing almost exclusively low art is put on full display. Andy Warhol depicts this best with his works of Campbell’s soup cans and Marilyn Monroe, and even coined the term “pop art”, a rather apt synonym to low art. Once again, high and low art changes hands, and Andy Warhol makes paintings of everyday objects and sights into something the upper classes will pay thousands for.
Lets shift gears. The 60’s are practically ancient history, the pyramids are seen in many classrooms, and the Renaissance masters are immortalized by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Rembrandt, Dali, Warhol, Michelangelo, everyone knows them, let’s get to the point. Does high art exist in any capacity that isn’t just the worst kinds of art students producing works of purely shock value? Is bougie woke students painting the human anus in spectacular detail and laser light shows coming out of people’s buttholes really what this has come to? Is this really the last stop for art? No it isn’t, high art still exists, however it has abandoned the traditional art scene for now.
Plays, paintings, three-mediums, and so on; all of those things are relics of a bygone age for the most part, and are either marketed to tasteless rich people by progressive art dealers or used for money laundering schemes. The purpose of these is to use as a signal by the upper classes that they “truly” appreciate the products made by the lower ones, such as paintings of buttholes. Modern high art looks more like Roman graffiti in 4k ultra high definition produced by cheap hacks trying to make a name for themselves with shock value and a “progressive” brand image. This is distinctive of low art trends, and appropriately American in that sense. However, there was a ray of hope for high art, and it came in the form of television programs and cinema.
The American Monet
The silver screen baby! That’s where high art resides nowadays and between the 60’s and early 2000’s. Commissioned by wealthy Hollywood producers, or by film and broadcasting studios and produced for the sake of spectacle and adoration of all classes, this is high art’s new home in the modern day. Bob Ross, a man with a reputation for teaching television audiences all over the world the joys of painting, might be the American Monet. While Bob Ross painted almost exclusively landscapes, a historically recognized form of low art, Bob Ross’ work was commissioned by PBS (remember those guilds from the Renaissance?), and combined Ross’ talent and passion for easy painting with his own charming personality. Both his art and his calm demeanor are what popularized his work. He put a face and personality atop of his landscapes, contributing to their value. His works are spectacularly beautiful, and his television show is so timeless that it has continued to air in encore-form on a 24/7 stream on Twitch TV. I for one would pay more for a Bob Ross original, than any of that art student crap out of a New York exhibit.
Bob Ross is just a popular modern example of television and cinema as high art, and like Warhol was mentioned above, cinema exchanged hands from being low to high art. Cinema’s origins were that of low art and was mostly a lower class technological novelty that allowed them to enjoy the comforts of the upper classes, who still preferred stage plays. But hey, the invention of the camera meant anyone could get a family portrait, or watch some of the earliest examples of animation and that was downright groovy in the days of the wild west.
Cinema Closes in on Dogma
Films and TV shows have only recently fallen off the wagon of high art, despite having larger budgets than ever and require an entire cast of talented people to complete. It had all of the makings of high art. Timeless classics like Seven Samurai, Rocky, and Lord of the Rings have much of the same makings as Renaissance paintings, sculptures, and architecture, as discussed above. Their aesthetic holds a message and depicts a story, however these timeless classics are no longer dogmatic in meaning and are sometimes left to the viewer to decipher any significance from. It wasn’t until around 2012-2014 that cinema begins it’s exit from the stage of high art, with the rising popularity of films based on Marvel comics, appropriately labelled as “capeshit”.
Marvel films depict the same tired out heroes from the pop art of the 60’s with a progressive message that beats the viewer over the head with this dogma. Iron Man resides in the minds of progressives in much the same way that the story of David and Goliath was remembered by the faithful of days gone past. Like the art students that paint buttholes, this is the aesthetic side to the establishment of progressive dogma, and the linking up of progressives from the lower and upper classes begins with these aesthetics. In the place of saints, progressives now have the wisdom of Dr Strange, the personality of Iron Man, and the strength of The Hulk. These dogmatic superhero films have almost completely taken over the silver screen, and what we are witnessing in Hollywood is the bleeding edge of how high art transitions to low art.
The Transition Phase from High to Low Art
With the silver screen taken over not quite completely, but almost completely by dogmatic progressives, this leaves the artists that want to say anything else little choice but to seek alternatives. The days of non-dogmatic film may not be dead, but good film certainly seems to be in short supply. So where does one go these days for quality viewing? Youtube of course.
User generated content is how cinema is returning to the hands of the lower classes, and it started with programs like America's Funniest Home Videos (AFV), which first premiered in 1989. That’s the thing about art, is that no matter what it never completely changes hands between upper and lower classes. Mediums may be dominated by either upper or lower classes, but it is never consumed completely. AFV was the beginning of something that the Soviets may have branded as “The People’s Film Distributor”. Which is now what Youtube has become.
Of of the key factors that made cinema into high art in the first place, was distribution methods. Back in the day, transferring video files via the net was completely unfeasible, which meant that distribution was handled originally exclusively by cinemas and theatres, since who’s got the space for a projector? Then as time went on, this was juiced down to the form of consumable VHS tapes and later, DVD formats. Blu-ray as well, but nobody cares about blu-ray. Youtube was the end of these material distribution methods, and anybody can upload their video projects to the website. This method is much more easily distributed to any audience, big or small and allows for some degree of permanence via central digital storage.
So if Bob Ross brought traditional art to television under the commission of PBS, becoming a bastion of the preservation of both traditional and high art, then who shall we champion as the hero of low cinema? The truth is that there is no single hero to pin the credit on, Youtube was/is really that convenient. Low cinema simply has too many creative heroes to name, but for our purposes we will go with the case of James Rolfe, AKA The Angry Video Game Nerd on Youtube.
A Nerd and His Camera
James Rolfe began uploading videos on Youtube in 2004, which makes some of his content practically ancient in internet years. Rolfe’s success lies in his very emotive expressions about playing frustratingly terrible video games, which people often view with rose tinted glasses. This fit into the niche of the already established gaming subculture, which already had become notorious for expressions of anger and frustration.
Rolfe would continue to run with this character of The Nerd and even add campy, low budget special effects and costumed characters that invoked feelings of nostalgia from both his own childhood spent watching films from the great age of cinema between the 70’s and 90’s and the same feelings for them his viewers have/had.
This would eventually come to peak in 2014, when Rolfe had gathered a large enough following and a crowdfunded budget of around $325,000 USD, and produced and directed his very own feature length film centered around his web series, which by this time had grown into sketch comedy, livestreams, and diversified into other forms of media, like movies and board games instead of sticking to the rigid character of The Nerd.
Ditching Hollywood
Rolfe’s career as a filmmaker exhibits how cinema has moved back into the hands of the lower classes. He’s also far from the only internet personality with this kind of success. Youtube is chock full of niche filmmakers produced by hobbyists and those that feel a true passion for creating and sharing whatever it is they film, ranging from DIY projects and tutorials on craftsmanship, to media reviews, grassroots animation, sketch comedy, traditional TV programming, and even an internet personality based TMZ-style tabloid. All of this “folk cinema” exists on Youtube and other streaming sites as Youtube continues to catch flak for it’s terms of service. Filmed and produced by people who otherwise, would have spent their entire lives waging away, had it not been for the mass adoption of video streaming as a distribution method.
For all of it’s flaws and mismanagement, Youtube has brought something akin to movie stardom and the opportunity to become a dedicated filmmaker to the masses. In addition, now tons of people know what it’s like to deal with a censorship bureau and producer in the form of Youtube and other streaming terms of service. At least for now, the future of cinema looks to be decentralized out of Hollywood, and I couldn’t ask for a better way to ditch Hollywood.
Your’s Truly,
Subcultural Research Lab.
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