I feel like “Comparison is the thief of joy” should only really be relevant if someone is comparing their work to the work of others in an effort to put themselves down. Saying a piece of art is entirely without some kind of inspiration is a tad narcissistic.
Yes, comparing one’s work to the best is the context of the saying. Like someone just starting to learn guitar comparing their playing ability to Hendrix and being discouraged.
Neat!
Going to play devils advocate here and propose if any critique is valid because art is interpretive then any critique of the critique is valid by the same rules. Just because you have an opinion doesn’t mean your need to share it is more valid than an artists want not to hear it, Just because someone made something and you didn’t, does not give you free reign to critique unasked. Has real, 'WELL IF I CAN"T CATCALL A NICE LADY THAT MEANS I"M BEING SILENCED" vibes.
Love learning everything we say to everyone is a faux pas
I think some of y’all are taking this too seriously. It’s clearly tongue in cheek if you ask me. It’s like “shhhh don’t spoil my fun” when you’re at a bar proposing a clearly ridiculous idea to your friends and one of them breaks down the issues. I don’t think you’ll find a serious painter out there who thinks their work has no inspiration from other artists/works
I’d rather have 10 of the kind of friend who breaks down the issues than 100 yes-men. Seems like you think the opposite…
That’s a pretty big leap from what I said and a really unnecessary dig at me personally. I’m not sure how you can read “this is tongue in cheek” and get “you only want to be surrounded by yes men” unless you’re squinting really hard and actively looking to be a jerk today.
You don’t have to be a yes man to entertain an idea and have fun with the thoughts with the people you’re coming to this social gathering for, without saying it’s a good idea. Like, if I said “aw man, let’s feed billionaires to Capybaras, it’ll fix all our problems!” It’s way more fun and engaging to get “dude, totally. What if we like, seasoned em first, maybe boiled em alive like lobsters!” than someone taking your clear joke, and going on about how that’s murder, and Capybaras don’t eat meat. Do they? I dunno.
Side note: pretty sure they’re omnivores
As for the yes-man thing, I feel like you’re over-fixating on the fact that questioning the idea is negative. It can be fun to consider something that is clearly a joke, semi-seriously, with obvious hints of sarcasm and dry humour involved… I think we just have a different idea of what qualifies as a denial of the idea here. I don’t think anyone denying the idea of Capybaras eating millionaires constructively is taking it seriously.
Better to just not talk to people.
This is my favorite approach.
Yeah I figured this was going to be about how bad it is to try to compare yourself to the greats and that you’ll never be as good as them.
If I’m working on something and you compare me to somebody that’s famous for that shit I’m going to take it as a compliment.
“… I was just going to say that it reminds me of a girl, that I once knew, see her face-”
Comments like that don’t have to mean the artist’s work is unoriginal or entirely derived from something else. It can be a comparison to something else you’ve enjoyed or a mention of a niche that work might fit nicely in.
You see it with video games all the time. For example someone might comment on how Trepang2 reminds them of FEAR. It’s a more concise way of describing it as an action FPS with horror elements. It’s not meant to belittle Trepang2.
Also, any artist who thinks they have created something completely original that has no comparisons needs a reality check. Everything is like something else, or was inspired by something else.
Even abstract art has comparisons.
I think you’ve both missed the point. The problem isn’t suggesting that it is similar to other work, but comparing it in the first place. Until someone starts doing so, the art is free and stands alone. As soon as something is categorised and genre-matched, suddenly it is no longer judged in isolation as to its effects on the observer.
Does that matter after someone has observed it though?
If it was bringing people in because it was advertised as being adjacent to something else sure it might be relevant because you are setting up expectations and the adjacent work might overshadow the newly created art. Palworld could be considered an example of this. People were calling it Pokemon with guns and getting incredibly high expectations in the lead up to its release.
In the situation where someone has experienced it themselves and then went on to make comparisons I don’t think it does matter. They could be making those comparisons so that they can figure out what aspects they like or to explain an abstract concept. I made a post a while ago about The Father, mother!, and The Fall all having scenes with a sense of spiraling hopeless confusion and looking for other movies that felt similar. It is tricky to explain without comparisons.
Yeah. Even things that would later be marked as the starting point of a new genre were compared to other things upon their release.
I love the Fallout series and I feel like it’s a great example of it. The creators have talked in depth about all the media that inspired the games and Fallout has since gone on to be the inspiration for a slew of games like the Metro series and ATOM RPG.
Yes, how dare someone try to engage with the artist. Art is for looking at, going “hmm that’s nice” and then never talking about it again.
I took it as “you’ll fuck up what he’s working on by saying it looks like something that it wasn’t going to be but now that you mention it fuck now they can’t unsee it and the whole feeling for the piece is fucked if I finish it now”
Nice? That’s your takeaway?? Wow!
- The artist you just pissed off
“oh, it’s a preformance piece, neat”
I always hate whenever someone criticizes a work of art and then there’s some smoothbrain response to the criticism that essentially says “just let people enjoy things.” This happens a lot with contemporary film and television. How about you let people engage with something and critically think about it, even if the things they have to say are mostly negative. If you like something, great. Another person not liking something doesn’t mean you suddenly aren’t allowed to like it, either.
A lot of the times I feel that response comes from the person who likes a thing having not really critically examined something in the first place. What can seem like obvious flaws to someone who is examining the thing can be completely overlooked by someone just enjoying it.
When another person starts coming out with “x is trash because y” it actually can rob them of that joy. Now they ARE thinking about those things. What was once a no-strings fun thing is now riddled with flaws.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with examining something critically, or just enjoying something without a critical eye. I’m just trying to understand the legitimacy of both sides.
This basically puts the onus for another’s enjoyment on everyone except for the individual enjoying the thing, though. Which I’m not saying is categorically wrong in all cases. If you have a child/niece/nephew/etc. who really enjoys, say, Harry Potter, and you go “well, J.K. Rowling is a transphobic neoliberal and Harry Potter is a story about only fighting against fascism and bigotry when it actively threatens dominant, existing modes of power.” In that case, you are actively robbing enjoyment of something from someone who should be engaging with things uncritically. If you say it to an adult, who should have already developed that degree of literacy, and they complain about having their fun ruined, then they’re basically asking to be infantilized.
Realistically, I don’t expect people to just deny expressing criticisms. What I’m asking for is to read the room, and understand that it IS a legitimate concern for some people. If someone actively expresses that they don’t want to hear the criticism, you’re crossing from simple chatting to actively ruining something for someone.
Plus it’s an incredibly one-sided and myopic reading of the work that even a child can easily see through.
If anything, it’s an overly generous reading of a work whose themes and characterization come across as remarkably shallow when examined by anyone with even a hint of genuine critical literacy. I guess the main takeaway is “read another book.”
And I guess the reason you read the whole thing is…that it was so awful? Be honest with yourself.
It’s certainly not without its faults. (One thing I NEVER see mentioned is the excessive fatshaming, I guess there’s not room for more than one narrative at a time.) It is, however, a book written for children and teenagers. And for what it is, the plots and themes ask more of, and give more back to, young readers than so much of the other drivel that is readily available to them. I know this, since I read to my own children and teenagers every day, and buy them books to read for themselves. There is a reason the Potter books are still as popular as ever.
If we’re being honest, the real issue is that Rowling is now le diable du jour, which means everything she ever did is now material for our daily two minutes of hate. The books have to be completely without merit as well because it’s just not possible to hold even mildly conflicting views simultaneously.
And I guess the reason you read the whole thing is…that it was so awful? Be honest with yourself.
I guess the reason I read it is because I was a child and enjoyed detective fiction, which is all Harry Potter effectively is: detective stories with wizards. I read a lot of stuff as a kid that wasn’t very good in retrospect. I also read a shitload of Hardy Boys, and most Hardy Boys novels are fucking awful. Something being entertaining to you when you’re a kid that you can acknowledge was shit when you’re an adult is a normal part of growing up. I’m sure you’ll get there yourself, someday. Or maybe your ability to parse literature will suffer from arrested development. Who can say?
It is, however, a book written for children and teenagers. And for what it is, the plots and themes ask more of, and give more back to, young readers than so much of the other drivel that is readily available to them.
The argument that something should be considered good because there exists other things which can be considered significantly worse is not a very good framework for arguing for the quality of a work of fiction. This is classic “damning by faint praise.”
I know this, since I read to my own children and teenagers every day, and buy them books to read for themselves
The foundational premise of this argument is that you know something to be true because you perceive it to be so. This is like me saying that I know I’m a good cook because I cook every day and enjoy the food that I make for myself. It ignores the obvious possibility that your personal standards for what you are doing are simply garbage.
If we’re being honest, the real issue is that Rowling is now le diable du jour, which means everything she ever did is now material for our daily two minutes of hate. The books have to be completely without merit as well because it’s just not possible to hold even mildly conflicting views simultaneously.
If we’re being honest, her books are simple, accessible, designed for mass appeal, relatively thematically shallow, and were at the time of their initial publication outrageously overhyped because she did what J. J. Abrams does with every single t.v. show he’s ever made and allude to an elaborate set of mysteries that actively drove fan engagement via wild speculation about the future of the series between novels. To add to this, the average American reads so little that for many of them, the novels were the only major series of fiction they’d ever voluntarily read, so there was a period of time on the internet where every piece of fantasy fiction in any medium got immediately compared to Harry Potter. This is admittedly not Harry Potter’s or Rowling’s fault, but it was fucking annoying and served to drive negative sentiment for the series.
I don’t know about “thief of joy”, but I do think this is a particularly lazy way to engage with the world. Instead of saying “this reminds me of [other thing]”, describe the aspects you notice and appreciate. Why would someone care about what you have to say if you can’t be bothered to at least give that much? If I spent weeks working on something and someone let me know in passing that they are capable of categorizing it amongst their other thoughts, how is that valuable to me?
Of course, if you prefix it with “omg that’s so cool, it reminds me of…” it’s going to be a very different feeling, so I think this is a bit subjective anyway.
People comparisons are even worse. “You remind me of…” is such a weird thing to hear without a lot more context. I always respond with something like “oh no, really?” as a way to non-confrontationally hint that this might not always come across well, but I feel like anyone who would do this probably does need the confrontational approach.
As a bass player, I cannot count the amount of times I’ve had someone here I play bass, and then scream, “SLAPPA DA BASS MON!” in my face.
You’re not funny, it’s not clever, go die in a hole.
I used to play a bit of bass and I knew a guy who said this to me all the time, along with doing an air bass motion.
It used to make me cringe massively but I never said anything because he was a good guy, plus he had Aspergers so I didn’t want to sound cruel.
But yeah. We don’t all play funk/soul bass.
This comic reminds me of a comic I once saw…
Yup. I lost count of all the comics I’ve read that end with “Shhhhhh…”
