h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Art 'isn't trying to convince, convict, persuade, buy, sell, or swing votes.' Are you sure? How come then, that the twentieth century's most famous novels include 'Animal Farm', 'Brave New World' and 'Nineteen Eighty Four'?

I think what literature does is explore a question. That question might be something political like 'What would it be like to live under a Stalinist type regime?' However, if you're thinking of, say Jane Austen, her novels sometimes ask the question 'How does a poor girl get to marry the man of her choice? .

Maybe what distinguishes art from entertainment is that the exploration of the question is honest. Entertainment doesn't care providing someone buys the stuff.

Because the twentieth century's most famous novels aren't usually art?

I'm not sure I would agree that the novels you mention are art - I think Orwell is high-toned propaganda for his ideas, which includes 'Down and Out in London and Paris'. I'm not convinced Ms Austen is art, either: I think she's entertainment. You can have very well-written entertainment, or entertainment that you think well of.

I also don't think any of those examples is completely honest. Depends on what you call honest, I guess.

What makes the difference between entertainment/propaganda and art might be the questions it asks - and how it answers them.

When you say 'art' the first thing I think of is certainly not literature and I do think quite a lot of art is meant to carry a message. Or most of it. The difference is in my opinion how the message is contained in the picture/sculpture/text.

Interesting point...I agree there's got to be content worth thinking about...

I was thinking a lot about the subject this morning, Tav, and here's what I'm trying to say:

Art - including writing as an art form - consists in not force-choicing the observer (reader, listener, audience) into a certain viewpoint, but helping her/him to think.

Take a Coca-Cola advert. No matter how elegantly it's presented, its task is to cajole the audience into accepting the idea that drinking Coca-Cola is a desirable thing. Nonetheless, the original glass Coke bottle is, in and of itself, a thing of beauty and well-designed. Alone, it could be aesthetically appreciated. In context, it either makes you want to drink Coke, or makes you mad because you hate Coke - a feeling I actually have about Pepsi commercials, because I dislike the taste of Pepsi.

Now look at Michelangelo's 'David'. If we started talking about what we thought it was 'saying' to us, we would quickly get into an argument. I will guarantee you that statue doesn't hit my visual cortex the same way it does yours. We might agree that it represents somebody's ideal of beauty, but beyond that, we're going to discuss and discuss...

Which is what we're supposed to do, I think. (I've been around enough German-speaking art historians.)

Now think about a story whose purpose is to help the audience pass time. It goes where it goes, predictably: nobody gets mad, because the story reflects the values of the time. If it does that - if it never challenges anybody's preconceived notions - then I say it's entertainment, not art. There is nothing wrong with that.

If it doesn't challenge the audience to form their own opinions, but instead tries to bludgeon them into agreement - I say it's propaganda.

I saw this wonderful movie last night. It's from 1970, and it's called 'Some of My Best Friends Are'. The whole story takes place in a gay bar in New York City on Christmas Eve. In 1970.

The story managed to show you how difficult it was to be a gay man in 1970, and how these gay bars were tenuous safe havens (they had to bribe the police, the owners were in the mafia, they had to hire women to dance because it was illegal for men to dance together). But not one line of the film was a lecture. The actors just showed real people in an engaging story. You had to do all your own thinking.

I think that film was art. I'm trying to inspire people to try it themselves, but you can't try it until you see what it is, right?

TL;DR summary: I believe there's a difference between entertainment, propaganda, and art. I think we can produce art only if we learn to recognise the difference.