Just Because It is Awful Doesn't Mean People Don't Love It

I think some art is definitely better than others. I think some writing is definitely better than other writing. I think any number of movies falter because they could have been better. 

I love lots and lots of things whether they are better or not. 

I personally feel that unless critics and editors and even some artists grasp this point, they will always be missing part of the creative process. Unfortunately, the only critic I can think of who entirely grasped this point was C.S. Lewis (it's wonderful that he grasped it; it's unfortunate that he seems to be the only one). 

In Experiment in Criticism, he compares "receiving" to "using" a piece of art. The receiver embraces the art, allows the art to overwhelm the receiver, fully experiences it. The user sees it merely as a vehicle, a steppingstone to a lesson or lecture or sermon (or an article about how clever the critic is or suggestions based on a clever idea the editor had once). 

In my thesis, I attempted to present a third perspective: readers and viewers who receive but then create fan-fiction or, even, non-fiction fan-self-help. They "use" but they use for an entirely individual purpose out of love of the thing itself. 

To return to Lewis, he proposed that rather than critiquing something by an outside standard, that it be critiqued by how it is read/viewed/experienced. If the reader goes back to a book over and over, allowing the book to be itself and fully embracing it creatively...hey, maybe the book has something to offer! 

To explore art in this way would change the equation from "you should read/watch what I like" or "you should do what meets a standard I've devised" to "what actually engages people."

I propose that part of what engages people is what engages many students in the classroom: the artists love what they are doing in the first place. My greatest disappointments with authors have not been lousy endings that don't adequately pay-off set-ups. Sure, in those cases, I'm disappointed, but I'll keep going with the author. 

My greatest disappointments--when I've actually given up on authors--occurred when the authors betrayed their own characters (sometimes to achieve a particular publishing end). They took a character with specific characteristics and rewrote that character in an almost cynical way to achieve a different result for the sake of a different book. They actually seemed to hate what they created. 

Almost everything else I can tolerate. Though I tend to prefer smooth writing and clever characterizations--and I love a really solid pay-off--I can adore a work for the sake of the thing that it does, the thing that the author loves, even if what it does is supposedly not very good by everyone else's standards. 

Hey, I love "Wolf in the Fold." So it's not great. So what?