Sorry for the radio silence. I’ll be back tomorrow with a real post. In the meantime:
“I presume [he] means that inherently you cannot be commercial and artistic. You cannot be commercial and quality. You cannot be commercial concurrent with hav[ing] a preoccupation with the level of storytelling that you want to achieve. And this I have to reject. I think you can be. I don’t think calling something ‘commercial’ tags with an odious suggestion that it stinks, that it’s something raunchy or to be ashamed of. If you say commercial means to be publicly acceptable, what’s wrong with that?” — Rod Serling
What do you think?
(I think Rock On, Rod, in that big Dimension of Sight, Sound, and Mind in the Sky…)
14 Comments
October 23, 2006 at 2:25 pm
Reminds me of the constant literary vs. genre debate, or even just the need to define what ‘literary’ is, which often seems to imply that anything ‘genre’ can’t also be ‘literary’.
Commercial is a good thing, as far as I’m concerned. It just means that the story appealed to a LOT of people. Could be the author is known, or the story or writing was exceptional, or all of the above. Commercial and Quality are not mutually exclusive.
October 23, 2006 at 2:29 pm
Reminds me of this.
http://www.nationalbook.org/nbaacceptspeech_sking.html
I have this speech in my iPod.
October 23, 2006 at 2:30 pm
That is html at the end. I don’t know why that got cut off.
Sorry.
October 23, 2006 at 3:08 pm
I have gotten cranky in my adult years, and don’t have a lot of tolerance anymore for “artistic,” “literary,” “ponderous”–whatever you want to call them–novels. I call them boring. Yes, visually beautiful, excellent wordsmanship, but I need a story, not an exercise in language.
The two writers I view as being at the top of their game are/were J.K. Rowling and Charles Dickens. Novels full of rich descriptions and characterizations, but with plots that keep you reading way past your bedtime.
I need to be entertained in my leisure time. I don’t like movies that have impressive acting but totally downer endings, and I don’t like finely-crafted novels that leave me thinking, “So what? What was the point of all that?”
October 23, 2006 at 4:38 pm
There is a cancer that is called “intellectual elitist.” These uber brains alone know what is art, and what is quality.
If the average man likes it, it surely cannot be art. They are under-educated.
This whole mindset is bunk.
October 23, 2006 at 4:43 pm
I forgot a couple of points:
This mindest also pulls the focus off of the art and onto the critic, which is the whole point to this elitist drivel.
Humans have a built in beauty detector. Both of my daughters loved flowers and the sight of the moon hanging in the sky at a very early age. They needed no pompous twits to interpret beauty.
October 23, 2006 at 6:04 pm
I say, hear, hear, Rod!
I think part of the problem is “commercial” can often be perceived as “appealing to the lowest common denominator.” And the LCD, in turn, is perceived as being stupid or ignorant or without taste.
But society is much more complex than that, and I don’t think something can be commercial WITHOUT quality, generally speaking. Even, say, The Da Vinci Code, while containing flaws that drove me nuts, had A quality that justified its commercial appeal/success.
October 23, 2006 at 11:47 pm
Um, whoa. Can I say something on behalf of art? Art is beauty. Art is truth. Art is self expression in a close to pure form (so is screaming sometimes…). There’s nothing wrong with art. Societies without art (or who censor their art) are sick and dying…
There’s nothing wrong with being commercial either. It means something that money can be made on (which–okay–means appealing to the masses). Whereas it’s chancier to make money on art–although it can be done.
Yes, you can end up with idiots who think they are demeaning their art by making it more accessible, but they’re just idiots.
Something can be both artful and commercial. It’s just tricker than going one way or the other.
JMHO,
The Artist’s Daughter
October 23, 2006 at 11:52 pm
It’s all relative and in the eye of the beholder. How dare anyone tell anyone else they should or can’t like something – commerical or not.
October 24, 2006 at 12:01 am
catslady gets extra points for referencing my favorite twilight Zone ep.
I did not mean to make this an art vs. commercial debate. I just like what he said about how soemthing being commercial doesn’t mean it’s NOT art.
Most of my favorite pieces of art are increidbly commercial.
October 24, 2006 at 12:39 am
Hey, Heather, thanks for posting that link to Stephen King’s speech. I’d heard about it but never read it. What a great one!
October 24, 2006 at 2:28 pm
I think I have problems with the word “commercial.” I believe everyone is using it to mean “mainstream” here, but when I think of “commercial,” I think of something whose only purpose is to entertain. In Stacy language, commercial=fluff and mainstream=appealing to the majority (it can be fluff or it can be serious).
As for defining art, that is messy business which I prefer to stay away from.
October 24, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Well, we’re discussing the quote here, and in this case, Serling defines commercial himself, and he defines it much in the same way that you define “marketable,” i.e., “commercial means to be publicly acceptable.”
At the same time, I take issue with the use of the word “only.” Commercial means the work intends to make a profit. Does that mean that it lacks art? that is the idea Serling rejects here.
As for “entertain” — I think commercial art and non-commercial art can have entertainment as a goal. Teaching, preaching, questioning, crticism, etc… these are other goals which can be present in both commercial and non-commercial artistic projects. Those that do not have the intent to entertain alongside these other goals tend to be less commercial, however.
Serling had a television show, which is, by necessity, a commercial product. It needs to make a profit, or it will no longer exist. It was a television show which often tackled difficult and controversial subjects and made political and social statements. The stories were incredibly high quality, which is why they remain so popular– and moreover — meaningful– decades later.
My theory is that art is decided by history. Dickens didn’t think he was writing great literature, but now they teach him in school. Impressionism was originally rejected by the artistic establishment and greeted with hostility by the public. (though I suppose the impresisonist themselves thought they were making art).
I consider myself a commercial fiction writer. That’s different than writing mainstream. Commercial fiction writers are romance writers, science fiction writers, mystery writers — any writer whose work is intended to reach a large audience and make money. “mainstream” is the term they give to commercial fiction writing that is not genre.
October 25, 2006 at 11:18 pm
Commercial definitely doesn’t mean something is meant only to entertain. If you go beyond the realm we’re discussing and encompass, for example, non-fiction–a great many of those books are not meant to entertain at all. They are meant to teach, inform, inspire, and improve, and make a helluva lot of money doing it.