In the comments of my post about Creative Freedom, Melly raised a great point:

“Not all art is pretentious and not all pretentious creations are art.”

This is true. Unfortunately, however, there is guilt by association. A lot of unassuming, genuine art is tainted by pretentious creations. The bad apples.

As I said in the previous post, the root of this pretentious art is an obsession with creative freedom.

Most creative people have high respect for creative freedom. So when you add these things together, you begin to see the problem.

If pretentious creations come from an obsession with creative freedom, and most creative people value creative freedom as being extremely important, then creative people need to watch out for this.

Intention plays a large part as well. When you let the reader or audience know that you are “Doing whatever I want,” you are sending them a message that you are intentionally disregarding their interest or enjoyment in the piece. Personally, when I see a piece of art, read a book, or watch a movie that does this I get angry. I become offended.

The audience is not there for the creator’s amusement.

The medium can be a sandbox of creativity for the creator while they are simply practicing, or playing. Sometimes this happens during the creation of ‘real work.’

But when it’s done well, the audience won’t be aware that the author was playing, or toying, or goofing off. To them it’ll just seem fun or well-crafted.

The exception is when the audience is meant to participate in the work, such as in standup comedy. Magic shows are another example. Video games are yet another.

Comedy, magic shows, and games get away with amazing degrees of nonsense simply because suspension of disbelief is easier when the audience participates.

To be sure, a lot of art relies on interpretation. When the interpretation of the entire composition becomes the responsibility of the audience, that’s pretentiousness.

As the creator, you have to provide some direction. Otherwise, what have you actually done? What work have you done? What ‘creativity’ has taken place?

There should be clear and obvious direction somewhere within the composition.

I buy a product because it imparts some benefit. I watch a film to be interested, informed, or entertained. I read a book to either be informed, interested, or entertained.

Audiences are fickle. We’re just human. We like to see order and a point to things.

As a writer, defy that at your own peril.

To clarify on my last post, creative freedom is good and healthy too. My point was that it’s no guarantee of quality work.

If you ask any creative person, they will tell you how important creative freedom is, to them and others. Few talk about creative challenge and constraint.

Creative challenge would say, “Let’s write a story set only in a phone booth.” Hence the movie Phone Booth.

This is what I mean by the difference between freedom and challenge. Le Artiste would say, “Nah, the whole thing a phone booth? That’s too constricting! I need 500 locations. Or the 18th Century English Countryside! The American West! Ancient China! Outer space!”

Of course sinking into relativism–all choices are equal. But a phone booth lends immediate creative challenges that compel the writer to be innovative. The differences between ‘anywhere’ and a phone booth are vast. With the phone booth you’ve got to think of every conceivable option to keep the setting fresh and alive. How will it be compelling? That’s not stifling. That’s creativity itself grabbing you by the shoulders, shaking you and screaming, “You think you’re creative!? Yeah? Well, creatively solve THIS!”

We all want creative freedom. But we all need creative pressure.

Otherwise we’d never get anything done.

When starting a new project, do you run towards creative freedom? Or do you stop and ask yourself, “What would really challenge me?”

In the great debate between art vs. entertainment you encounter the root of the issue, which is creative freedom vs. creative challenge.

I’m going to propose something that might be controversial; The two are mutually exclusive.

If you are pursuing creative freedom, you’re opening up the field or playground. You’re avoiding concrete choices. You’re just playing. You’re being whimsical. Following your muse, or fancy. Whatever your heart’s desire.

When you choose a creative challenge, you are confining yourself to a structure. You are picking a certain problem to work on. It is the opposite of opening the playing field; You’re closing it. You’re narrowing things down. You’re making choices. Each choice you make rules out another. Of course, you can change your mind at any time if you choose, but this is moving towards creative freedom again and away from creative challenge.

As I’ve posed in the past, it’s like quantum entanglement and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. You can’t have both creative freedom and a creative challenge at exactly the same time, on the same item.

Now of course, in any area of your writing you can choose a creative challenge in one area, like plot, and choose creative freedom in another such as prose–choice of words. But these are two different elements that make up the story. You cannot choose a highly structured plot, and then decide you don’t want a highly structured plot at the same time. You have to choose right there and then between creative freedom and creative restraint.

In my experiences being around creative people, nine times out of ten creative people will rush towards creative freedom. Many creative people even dislike the idea of creative challenge. They don’t like constraints or structure. They don’t want to be limited in any way, even if such limitations would make their work better. They just want to be free.

But as we all know, freedom is a great responsibility. In being free, we are free to be ignorant, free to be wrong, free to create poor work, free to be lazy, free to be egotistical, free to… well, you get the point.

To reign some of these things, it means we need to sacrifice some of our freedoms.

I think it is worth it. In fact, creative excellence demands it.

To take creative freedom to the extreme, you could write a novel in a completely fictional language without ever providing a legend or translation to the reader.

Imagine a novel written in a gibberish language that no reader can decipher. This is an extreme example, but it is in fact a creative freedom that a writer might choose. It is safe to say that nobody would read this novel. Few people would even care about it aside from the author. And this is exactly the problem most authors have with their creative freedom. They take it as a war cry, an absolute decree.

The reader must suffer for the artist’s creative freedom! It’s art, damn it!

I’m going to go off on an example of a film I recently watched. The film was Silence Becomes You, starring Alicia Silverstone. After sitting through 2 hours of this film, I still didn’t know what it was really about. The only summary I can give you is this;

There are two sisters who live in their parents house. Their dead parents were magicians or artists, or both… it’s unclear. The sisters try to seduce men into the house where they engage in a love triangle of mind games.

There are all kinds of mystical scenes and sequences. Strange visual effects, and strange things happen. If this sounds really vague, that’s because it is. You see the camera go in and out of focus on objects around the house, like glass ornaments and knick-knacks. There is a sense of color and art through the house. The wallpaper looks like desaturated and distressed tie-dye. The winter outside the house is beautiful, I must admit. There are several shots that fade in and out of focus, showing snow and ice. Lots of just random, artsy imagery. In fact, much of the film is composed of this imagery. Visual poetry.

The sisters have visions of their dead father and mother, in between interacting with this man. The sisters say cryptic things to each other, like “You can never leave the house!”

I was led to believe maybe this was a ghost story. But the writers and filmmakers never really make that clear. To be honest, I don’t know what the story was about.

All I know is, somebody spent a lot a money ($6 million) and filmed something very artsy. It’s undissectable. Inscrutable art.

To me, this is the highest definition of what art is–it’s something that is impossible to interpret in any ‘pure’ sense. It’s elusive.

It is the fascist dictatorship of absolute creative freedom! Without creative constraint or challenge, it is impossible to convey any one specific thing. It is impossible to have definition. It is impossible to have any kind of fixed, defined, or meaningful communication.

I don’t know what I got out of Silence Becomes You. I feel like I wasted two hours of my life. I’d like those two hours back, please. Art or not. I respect the creator’s artistic license and sense of freedom. But I expect them to define something, to communicate something. I didn’t get a single thing out of that film. I’d rather slit my wrists than read an 800 page novel of Silence Becomes You.

A reviewer on IMDB.com agreed with me fully when he said:

“Things I would rather do than see this movie: 1. Shoot myself in the foot 2. Eat shards of broken glass 3. count grass blades in the yard 4. Have an enema 5. See the proctologist”

Maybe I get too worked up about this stuff, but I feel it’s important to have a thesis or a point for the reader to take home with them after finishing your story. Is this reviewer, or I being too extreme and judgmental about art?

Maybe.

As the writer you have to say something. It doesn’t necessarily have to be deep or profound. It just has to be there. A definition. A thesis. A statement. A question. A provocative idea. Even if it’s just mindless entertainment, a catchy yarn. Especially if it’s casual entertainment!

In order to do that you need creative challenge and restraint. Creative freedom leads you in the other direction; Into the murky depths of ambiguity, vagueness, and uncertainty.

A good question would be, why do creative people love ambiguity, vagueness, and uncertainty? Why do creative people enjoy the avoidance of definition, avoidance of classification, or of categorization?

Is it pure love of irrationality? Or is the the conscious and unconscious desire for pure freedom from any kind of constraint? Including the freedom from recognizeable subject matter and a story with a point?