FORT90 forum

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html

Once again, I fail to see why this guy gets so much respect and adoration, and this stems well before this crusade of his. So dude has semi-decent taste in films and is able to articulate his opinions well enough. Big whoop. But that's my attitude towards most critics, so there ya go.

Buuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnnnnn

i mean, it doesn't really help that the people he speaks to about this idea are generally pretty fucking clueless individuals

he's thoughtful and engaging, regardless of what one thinks of the end result.

games as art is just...weird. why do people care about it so?

more to the point dude wrote beyond the valley of the dolls and now has to talk through a speak n' spell so...

So... he deserves a pass for everything he writes from this point on, no matter how lazy it might be?

Sure, dude wrote a great movie, I'll give you that, but I still fail to see why his film criticism is so universally beloved. A friend could only muster up his "heartfelt love of cinema" as Ebert's greatest character trait. Big fucking whoop. He's not a horrible writer mind you (under normal circumstances), but I'm still convinced that people love him so much simply because he's able to better articulate why such and such movies are good or bad.

It's also worth noting that I generally agree with all his opinions on movies. But in the end... it's just fucking movies, and this coming from a diehard cinephile. Maybe if his pearls of wisdom was spent on something that's more important in this world, like politics or something. I dunno. Then again, I find most critics irksome.

Though that being all said, I guess what I find most offense about this particular piece is how lazy it is, like someone else wrote it. Then again, perhaps he felt no need to try considering the argument he was countering, that being Kellee Santiago's presentation, which was kinda worthless. Hence the easy zinger at the end.

but...but he was on tv! also the skinny one's been dead awhile no once cares about him

i think you can call that essay many things, but lazy isn't one of them. besides, i think this is completely on point:


i've never read any of ebert's film criticism, but i think his general draw was as a down-to-earth populizer of film criticism. the games thing is a recent windmill that seems to have come out of nowhere.

Um...

Wouldn't that be exactly the quality you'd judge a film critic by?

I guess so? Which again begs the question as to why he gets so much love and adoration. Some people act like he's just as important as the filmmakers themselves. And while its true that criticism is essential in any form of art (or so they say, I don't entire buy that myself, just repeating the popular consensus), some folks have a raging hard on for the guy.

To a large extent he's outlasted a lot of the folks working in the film industry at least in terms of continued output and longevity. When was the last time you cared about William Friedkin's output despite him having made two of the most important films, in terms of influence, of the 1970s? Or Francis Ford Coppola for that matter?

Plus Ebert has been able to cross over into popular culture and become someone who is known in his own right and not just as some guy with a semi-regular feature in a local paper. As a result he has become the general measure of Film Criticism.  That his "school" of criticism includes the notion of judging a movie based upon its own intents and purposes rather than some absolute measure of art makes his work accessible to the average movie goer. This isn't something universally beloved by Film Critics. Armond White for example has something of a monomaniacal need to take shots at Ebert and his approach any chance he gets.

Although probably outside of the scope of this thread I think the core of this particular issue has to do with tenuous definitions of art that rest mainly upon relatively contemporary notions of what "art" encompasses.

Well, that certainly goes without saying. Hence the primary confusion, though my biggest beef is how is how his negative attitude towards gaming is not altogether different than the hate film got during its infancy. I'm assuming Roger must know his film history. Which I know has been voiced about a billion times as well.

Also, a colleague of mine just informed me that he used to actually review games for Wired? This I'd love to see (I hear he actually did a very good job to boot).

Where's he is wrong is in his assumption that no one alive today will see video games elevated to the level of art. He is probably not taking into account the very possible advancements in medical science that will keep many of us alive longer than the previous generation. Tongue only somewhat in my cheek here.

I don't think the attitude is negative to gaming just negative to the notion that gaming is or can be an Art in the formal sense.  I think that is the key reason why he keeps coming back to the example of Chess, a game that has been of vital importance to many but for which no one ever considered attempting to argue that it was an art in the sense of the Western Tradition of Art. That doesn't mean it cannot have artistic aspects, aesthetic value, etc. but that its primary concern is not that of Art.

the disconnect, i think is that "art" means "important, meaningful, morally good" and whatnot to the audience, while ebert is using it in the far more formal sense fitz has pointed out.

and on that point i think ebert is basically correct. he misunderstands the intricacies of the form, but not the more general role of games in human life, i think.

The general role yes, but not necessarily the only role. While I think this whole argument is pretty damn silly, it's almost just as silly to shoehorn video games in as a sub-category of games when it's clear that they often reach beyond what games are (hence the comparisons to film and literature).

are tabletop rpgs art?

I think they can be, sure.

I wonder if pen and paper players ever get wrapped up in this one?

that's actually a question i'm asking some folks on another forum who are more pnp oriented.

Or "legitimate form of entertainment".

Art in the High Art sense doesn't not necessitate entertainment value.

In fact many things considered to have legitimate entertainment value are not considered art.  Like sports, sex, chess, finger painting with toddlers, catching stacks of quarters off your elbow, etc. Their lack of being Art does not invalidate their entertainment value.

True, I should have shortened that to "legitimacy" because that's what's really in play.

Who are you looking for "legitimacy" from?

Well, I'm not looking for legitimacy personally, nor am I really invested in video games on a personal level.

What I'm trying to say (and I blame my total of 7 hours of sleep over the last 72 hours for not doing it very well) is that the reaction to Ebert's article and others like it is because people personally invested in "gaming" desire a certain amount of cultural capital to be attached to their hobby and to have "gaming" have the same sort of "legitimacy" that's associated with more established/entrenched mediums, such as cinema.

So Ebert becomes important because he's exactly the kind of figure that bestows legitimacy by dint of being a kind of cultural arbitrator.

I think the mistake that may be made is in the notion of legitimacy via Art. 

There's no way in hell that video games are going to find themselves adopted by the High Art establishment of galleries, dealers and buyers.  It is simply not going to happen due to the cultural framework that exists around those institutions. If you are unfamiliar with how these institutions operate there's a fantastic book titled High Art Down Home that was an Ethnographic study of how High Art operates.

If the goal is social respectability going the viable recreational activity route holds more merit than attempting to charge the Art World. The last niche entertainment form that attempted to storm the Art World, Comics, certainly didn't attain what they were looking for. Yet it has largely become a major source of entertainment with a few odd pieces edging into the Low and Middle Brow end of Art.

Maybe I shouldn't say anything since I haven't read the book in question, or maybe it doesn't matter: I think it's impossible to say whether or not High Art will adopt video games many years down the road. People's perceptions might change, as might the form itself in some unforeseen manner (besides, the definition of video games is itself hardly set in stone). Not saying it will, I just don't it's fair to say that video games will never be acknowledged as something else by someone, period, end of story. It might take a while, a LONG while, well after we're all dead, but could happen nonetheless.

Well, High Art has already pretty much accepted video games in the sense that there is interactive electronic art that gets shown in major galleries -- Electroplankton on the DS was in part made by a major Japanese installation artist.

You're just not going to see games intended for commercial release considered as High Art or interactive High Art regarded as "video games".

Right, the same with say Summer Block Busters and Art Films. They're different categories and will be treated differently by the Art establishment.

Well, I guess it's a concession to believe that some folks in art world will consider video games art, but not this High Art quotient. Can't win them all.

But then again, you have filmmakers who in their prime were producing shit, and many years later, they are heralded as innovators or whatever. Fuck, Lloyd Kauffman if I'm not mistaken is getting all sorts of respect from the film elite. Not everyone, mind you, but some. And I can see something similar happening with games as well. Again, like I keep saying, it's hard to tell in my opinion, and while certain patterns will dictate that a certain quotient will always act and behave a certain way, things also always change.

i think one of the fundamental problems with "art games" is that they want to be more like a gallery installation and less like chess.*

the problem with the general over-the-top reaction to the ebert thing is that the engine behind a lot of it is this:

1) cultural icon declares games worthwhile
2) ???
3) respect!

otherwise why care what ebert, who everyone agrees is not really into the whole games thing on any level, thinks?

* it is entirely possible that i am "missing the point" of such exercises. such is life.

It has a much better chance of getting to the High Art world via the same kind of process as the Lowbrow movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowbrow_(art_movement)), which to an extent is how Kauffman is being repackaged for discussion in the Cinema end of High Art.

So Ebert doesn't hate video games anymore. Kinda. Sorta. Maybe...

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/07/okay_kids_play_on_my_lawn.html