Complaining comes easily for me, but I’d rather be positive and creative than negative. Here’s a strategy I try to employ when I see some art I just don’t agree with.
First, I must be very careful about how I use words like “good”, “bad”, “right”, or “wrong” to describe art. Someone decorating his house in colors I don’t like isn’t wrong. If he likes it, then it’s working as intended. If the artist’s intent is clear, I can point out elements that support or detract from that goal, or I can make a judgement on whether that goal is good or not. For example, if a director says his movie is about the horror of random violence, but the movie has cool, fun car chases with lots of collateral damage that doesn’t upset the protagonists, he’s failed to make random violence horrifying, and it’s appropriate to use the word “failure”. On the other hand, if a movie is set in World War One and doesn’t address the themes that I think are important about World War One, that’s not a failure of the movie. That’s a mismatch of expectations. I might make the argument, “It’s irresponsible to represent WWI in this way,” but I can’t say, “The writer forgot this obvious thing.”
I don’t have much to say about art that doesn’t do anything for me. What really sticks in my mind and bugs me is art that does a lot of things that move me, except for That One Thing. I’m more likely to pick a tomato slice off a delicious hamburger than I am to try to eat a salad made entirely of ingredients I dislike.
I’ll think something like, “That scene was so emotional, but she should have said this instead.” How presumptuous to think that I know the character better than the person who plays her every week! What I see as a mistake is a mismatch between the version of the character the actor knows & expresses through her acting, and the version of the character I’ve constructed in my mind. My version of the character has gone through three lossy conversions:
- The actor doesn’t have the opportunity to express all she knows about the character in the scenes in the show.
- I don’t notice or remember everything the character did
- The mental model I build based on those actions is strongly colored by my own beliefs and experiences.
Not only do I lack the knowledge required to tell the actress how to play her character, but I don’t have the relationship to start that conversation. She’s doesn’t even know I exist. So thinking about how to “fix” that “missed opportunity” in whatever art I’m mostly enjoyed is wasted effort.
Instead of complaining about someone else’s art and trying to fix it for him, I draw inspiration from the parts I like, and make a new thing that includes other things I like. What’s my version of Character X? What would this setting look like through my philosophical lens? Understanding what I don’t like about a thing and how I would build it differently forces me to examine and explain my beliefs, which is great for life, not just art.
I throw out ideas that I’ve generated in this way pretty often. If I’m applying my strategy correctly, they won’t sound like sub-tweets.