How Is Art Different From Entertainment According to Your Textbook?

Confronted by the commonplace phrase "wholesome entertainment," former International Movie theater director Travis Anderson ready out to define the difference betwixt entertainment and fine art and why information technology'due south important.

YEARS AGO, WHILE SERVING Every bit DIRECTOR of BYU International Cinema, I noticed that when people in our culture reference "good, wholesome entertainment," they mostly apply the give-and-take "wholesome" in a foreign fashion. They typically don't mean that the motion-picture show, TV bear witness, music, or volume they accept in mind is actually salutary or edifying—which is how nosotros define the discussion, of form. They simply mean it is without objectionable content. I likewise observed that when people speak in this style, they almost always pair the word "wholesome" with "amusement" rather than with "education" or "art."

Granted, there is a certain logic to this pairing. After all, about education is edifying by its very nature, so information technology might seem redundant to say "wholesome education." And while amusement past definition is amusing, relaxing, and thereby rejuvenating, it is rarely edifying or nourishing in any substantial sense. By contrast, while art has the capacity to entertain, it is quite ofttimes a source of genuine edification. And so, wouldn't it seem much more reasonable for "wholesome art" to exist a mutual catchphrase than "wholesome entertainment"?

Aristotle conceded almost twenty-five hundred years agone that at that place is nothing wrong with entertainment. But perhaps because entertainment is its ain advantage, he too thought there is nothing inherently praiseworthy about information technology either. Predictably, he spoke very highly of activities that educate, noting that they cultivate a virtuous grapheme, amend the mind, and occasion what he called "intellectual enjoyment."1 But most people—today as in Aristotle's age—generally prefer entertainment to pedagogy and art. Why? Aristotle'south answer, in office, was that entertainment appeals primarily to the torso, while education and the more demanding forms of fine art (like dramatic tragedies in Aristotle'south day, and creative films, music, and literature in ours) generally appoint the mind. In fact, the sensual pleasures derived from entertainment often explicitly gratuitous us from our mental cares. By contrast, fine art and teaching require attentiveness and attempt. So, equally Aristotle as well pointed out, learning from the arts often involves some caste of mental or concrete discomfort rather than physical enjoyment. These differences readily explain why people will opt to watch a pedestrian Hollywood picture show instead of a cinematic milestone, or curl upwards with a cheap paperback novel instead of a literary masterpiece. People prefer entertainment over art and teaching because both art and education require work to harvest their manifold endowments, while most amusements demand no more than effort than reaching for a remote or pulling upwards a phone app.

And so, how has the hackneyed conception of "wholesome entertainment" become and so mutual- place? Peradventure because the phrase itself deceives us into thinking that effortless amusements are somehow benign despite the fact that many of them are not wholesome in the to the lowest degree, and sometimes not even innocuous. Activities that only entertain, similar binge-watching Television shows, playing figurer games, or escaping into trashy pop fiction and movies, can indeed be pleasing and relaxing, but they can as well waste our fourth dimension and money. They can erode rather than strengthen social bonds. And they can cause actual harm if nosotros overindulge in them—as evidenced past the volumes of research linking obesity, middle disease, loneliness, and low to inordinate fourth dimension spent with social media or in other solitary and seden- tary pursuits. Fifty-fifty when such entertainments are without objectionable content, they are not necessarily edifying. By dissimilarity, many forms of fine art—even when they are manifestly entertaining—can reenergize our spirits, expand our talents, strengthen our relations with others, and fan the flames of creativity and divinity within u.s.. Surely this helps explain why Brigham Young encouraged the pioneers at Winter Quarters to praise the Lord not simply with prayer but with singing, music, and dancing (D&C 136:28). In sum, art can be both entertaining and educational. In upshot, it tin can be genuinely wholesome.

Dangers of Applying a Negative Standard

Because entertainment is not necessarily edifying fifty-fifty when it is free from morally objectionable content, mere entertainment is the moral and educational equivalent of diet soda—no unwanted calories, peradventure, merely nothing very skillful for yous either. In upshot, when we approximate the worth of fine art solely by its entertainment value and lack of objectionable content, the results are bound to exist problematic. The reason is twofold. Offset, equally we have already established, the tendency of amusements to divert us from serious concerns and to please us without edifying united states, makes mere entertainment as likely to be harmful every bit beneficial. Second, value judgments made primarily with reference to a negative standard implicitly require an eye focused precisely on the bad rather than on the proficient. It is this negative focus I wish to talk over further, for its furnishings can be specially pernicious.

One unfortunate consequence of a negative focus when evaluating art is not only an inclination to throw out the infant with the bathwater, only an incapacity to see the infant at all. Conversations with people who have been offended past a book, film, or other piece of work of art often reveal they can remember footling or zippo good virtually the work in question, even when they admit the offending material was lilliputian. Their well-intended but immoderate focus on the bad apparently dulls their capacity to perceive the adept, even within works that others take found both artistically praiseworthy and spiritually uplifting. Then once again, as anyone with moral sensitivity is probable to inquire, in today's high-risk world of deceptive and destructive media, wouldn't it be irresponsible not to exercise at least some caste of agile surveillance confronting evil?

Well, aye, . . . and no. On the i hand, evil indeed demands vigilance confronting its insidious strategies and forms. On the other paw, we must differentiate vigilance from surveillance. The latter denotes the kind of obsessive attention to evil that is precisely the trouble. We don't vanquish evil or even avoid it past watching, monitoring, and studying it with singular focus. Life certainly demands a moral sensibility or standard with at to the lowest degree a few explicitly formulated "don'ts." But any moral standard comprised entirely or even predominantly of things to avoid—in other words, whatsoever moral outlook obsessively focused on the myriad textures and hues of evil's chameleon skin—is destined to be detrimental.

I call back in one case hearing of a visit Spencer W. Kimball made to BYU while he was President of the Church. According to the story, as he walked beyond campus one of his hosts noticed some young people who were perhaps inappropriately dressed. The host remarked, in a disapproving tone, "Will you just look at those students?" assuming, as the story goes, that President Kimball would endorse his implied criticism. Instead, President Kimball responded, "Yep, aren't they beau- tiful?" At present, I tin't verify this business relationship, and since information technology has something of an apocryphal tone it may non have actually happened. Just regardless of the story'southward veracity, its moral illustrates my betoken: Where in that location is proficient to be found, even where there might besides exist something bad, we should exist able to admit and benefit from the good. We should not refuse an occasion to praise simply because there may also be some reason to condemn, every bit if something is worthy of appreciation or capable of edification simply when information technology cannot cause any crime. Keeping our gaze obsessively directed toward the bad virtually guarantees we volition overlook the good.

Blinding the states to goodness is not the only problem with a negative standard, notwithstanding. Another is the unproblematic fact that whatsoever attempt to avoid the bad past making it the center of our focus is an enterprise doomed to failure. When I was first learning to ride a motorcycle, a more experienced passenger taught me a life-saving lesson: If you meet something dangerous in your path—road debris or patch of loose gravel, for example—don't attempt to avoid it by staring at it; instead, wait in the direction yous desire to go and your gaze will naturally direct you away from whatever you desire to avert. In other words, don't look where you lot don't want to go. However much we intend otherwise, we will inevitably go exactly where nosotros wait. The moral parallel is obvious. The only condom and reliable way to avoid the bad is to look constantly for the skillful. Focusing on the bad, however laudable 1'south intentions, volition e'er lead toward that very bespeak of focus. I believe this is why Christ teaches in the New Testament that the way toward a sinless life is not to study sins and their endless variants, as did the Pharisees, but to pattern our life after Him who lived without sin. I also think this is why wise spiritual leaders teach us to shell temptation by engaging our mind in some charitable or wholesome activity. Doing then will naturally incline us away from evil by directing our attention toward righteousness. And since nosotros can't be moving in two directions at in one case, whatever move toward the good is simultaneously a motility away from the bad.

Seeking Virtue in the Arts

In view of these inherent problems with a negative standard of judgment, why are we then easily and oft seduced into thinking we can become good solely by not being bad? What has happened to our notion of virtue that nosotros call up we tin achieve it but by avoiding vice? I will adventure a gauge that our leaders do non intend to endorse a negative standard when they counsel us not to see R-rated films or listen to music with explicit lyrics. They presumably do not intend that we evaluate our activities exclusively in accordance with secular and inconsistently practical rating systems. Nor practice they hateful to imply that all media without restrictive ratings are edifying. Later all, we do not identify something as "virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy" on the basis of what information technology is non, but on the basis of what it is. Consider in this regard the Thirteenth Article of Faith:

Nosotros believe in being honest, truthful, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing adept to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we promise all things, nosotros accept endured many things, and hope to exist able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good written report or praiseworthy, we seek afterward these things.

As Joseph Smith intimated, this article of faith paraphrases an admo- nition of Paul plant in his epistle to the Philippians: "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, any things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatever things are of skilful report; if there exist any virtue, and if in that location be whatever praise, remember on these things" (Philippians 4:8). Information technology is worth noting that Joseph's paraphrase of Paul mentions both chastity and virtue, which implies the one is not reducible to the other. Moreover, merely ane describing word is emphasized by beingness repeated twice. It is the give-and-take "virtuous."

Equally many are enlightened, the word "virtue" has an interesting pedigree in Western civilization. It is a word commonly used to translate the Greek arete—which is the give-and-take originally spoken by Paul in the passage in a higher place. Socrates first attributed systematic philosophical importance to this word by identifying its most general sense with a knowledge of the Good. For Aristotle, several generations later, arete designated

the point of moderation between 2 extremes, and could take the form of either a moral or an intellectual virtue. But in every case for the Greeks, virtue meant goodness or excellence of some kind—excel- lence of character or behavior, excellence in the operation of some part or task, or excellence of aspirations and accomplishments. In sum, virtue referred not just to a lack of bad qualities, just to an affluence of adept ones.

If we each pattern our own life after He whose nature was almost praiseworthy and exemplary, and so both chastity and purity of thought would exist necessary components. Yet, a virtuous life in the broader, more substantial sense suggested by Paul and Joseph Smith would also include other grapheme traits wise leaders and the scriptures so oftentimes praise: honesty, clemency, empathy, benevolence, hopefulness, humility, courage, temperance, and a thirst for knowledge and righteousness.

We cannot develop such traits only by evaluating our choices against a negative list of "don'ts." We must also actively seek the good—not only in order to practise good, but to become good. And information technology helps to recognize that when we are seeking what is virtuous in human art and learning, they rarely come up with everything objectionable completely refined out of them. Even the writings of Shakespeare, lovingly carried across the plains past our pioneer ancestors and so ofttimes quoted in LDS books and general conferences, contain their fair share of potentially objectionable fabric. Merely nosotros read Shakespeare despite that fact because at that place is so much to praise among what fiddling at that place is to condemn.

Learning to Recognize and Value Good Art

How, and then, do we seek later excellence when it is sometimes entan- gled with mediocrity and possibly evil, when both personal maturity and cultural sensitivities play such a determinative office, and when individual perceptions of good and bad often vary widely? On the one paw, we must indeed be selective. Brigham Young one time advised, "I cannot say that I would recommend the reading of all books, for it is not all books which are adept. Read good books, and extract from them wisdom and understanding as much as you lot possibly can, aided by the Spirit of God."two Then too, every bit Brigham Young also brash, we must exist open-minded and appreciative of all genuine truth and beauty—regard- less of its source: "Seek after noesis, all knowledge, and especially that which is from in a higher place"3 and "Let united states not narrow ourselves upwardly; for the world, with all its variety of useful information and its rich hoard of hidden treasure, is before u.s.a.."4 John Taylor similarly taught that nosotros should encompass whatsoever and all truth that is calculated to do good u.s.a., regardless of "what shape information technology comes in, who brings it or who believes in it,"5 and he recommended "education and intelligence of every kind."six

Now, none of these admonitions is an endorsement of fine art or amusement that is untruthful, degrading, gratuitously profane or tearing, pornographic, or otherwise harmful to the soul. Such material should indeed be avoided in our classrooms and in our private lives, even when that material might appear in a context that includes otherwise praiseworthy elements. Then in this regard, a moderate, mature, and prudently formulated conception of things to avert is appropriate and perhaps even necessary. In this respect, we should indeed accept a higher standard than that endorsed by the world at large. But that higher standard requires every bit well a high list of goods to pursue. Does this mean devotional fine art or fine art produced past and for Latter-day Saints is the simply kind of art we should create, view, and let others to view? No. Is art produced by the globe worthless or evil? Of class not. If information technology were, then nosotros could not praise a Greek tragedy or the Parthenon. Can we produce our own great artists by turning our back on what the Greeks, Romans, Renaissance Italians, French Impressionists, and other artists of the globe can teach us? Again, the answer is no. So, the real question is not, how do nosotros completely avert the world and its influence in producing, teaching, and appreciating art? Information technology is, how do we teach and acquire to seek after what is virtuous, lovely, of skilful report or praiseworthy in the world, and despite the world's failings? And how practice we carry out that search without single-mindedly looking for vice or its absenteeism?

Perhaps the first footstep in seeking edification in the arts would be to recognize that fine art is of import. Art is not always entertaining; some- times art educates and edifies in a decidedly demanding, unentertaining fashion. And good art, whether past entertaining, educating, or inspiring us, e'er enriches life in ways no other human enterprise can do. Hence, it should be taken seriously, and at times, with a sure degree of tolerance. As the Scottish philosopher David Hume once claimed, we should exist capable of excusing religious and cultural differences in works of art because it would be ridiculous to expect the beliefs and tastes of every culture to resemble our own. More importantly, information technology would be wrong to assume that artworks that manifest such differences cannot otherwise ennoble and educate us.7 In order for good art to reach that enrichment, all the same, nosotros need to learn and teach the language, history, conventions, and mechanics of the diverse arts. Such learning would constitute an important second step in seeking after virtue: acquainting ourselves with art that does not simply reflect our own views and preferences, only expands our appreciation for dazzler, truth and goodness across the confines of our private experience.

Lastly, all report and analysis of art requires substantial grooming and effort—which is partly why challenging fine art is often undervalued or criticized. When Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni screened his 50'avventura (Italy, 1961) at the Cannes Film Festival in 1962, he was literally booed off the stage. His moving-picture show was so intellectually demanding that even schooled and experienced critics were challenged beyond their expectations. Withal, after discussion and careful reflection they subsequently awarded his film a special jury prize for inventing a new movie language and for the singular dazzler of its images. And later that year 50'avventura was rated in a Sight and Sound critics' poll as the second best film ever made. (Information technology is currently number 21 on the Sight and Sound British Pic Institute's list of the Height 50 Greatest Films of All Time.)eight Real art volition always stretch our abilities in ways entertainment will non. And we must set up for such challenges. But that is part of what makes fine art praiseworthy.

Preparing to Create and Appreciate Great Fine art

Boyd K. Packer was one time asked in an interview, "Do you lot still call up that art makes a deviation, that the arts are important to us as man beings on this earth?" He replied, "Well, just erase them, and what would yous have? . . . It would be intolerable, detestable."9 President Packer didn't quite say, as did Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, that "the being of the world is justified just every bit an aesthetic miracle," but they both recognize that our existence would be miserable without art.10 When asked in the interview whether LDS artists should produce simply religious art, he answered, no—certain circumstances telephone call for devotional art, simply art need not be religiously oriented to be good: "You tin can practise anything y'all want," he explained. "Everything that is lovely, or praiseworthy, of practiced report—we seek after these things. . . . Members of the Church in the arts can do what they want. . . . But they ought to do it well, and they accept the right to practise it with inspiration."

Speaking specifically well-nigh how LDS artists can prepare to "practise it well," President Packer said that talent and inspiration are not enough; great artists, writers, and musicians need training—which ways, at least in part, that they need to larn what the globe can teach them. He specifically addressed turn-of-the-century LDS art missionaries who traveled at Church expense to study drawing and painting in the worldly salons of nineteenth-century Paris in preparation for painting the Salt Lake Temple murals. President Packer explained:

The temple was underway, and it was almost to the point where they were going to practise the interiors and the appointments, and and so they called to begin with 4 brethren and they sent them to Paris to report painting in order to do the interior painting. And I idea that that's a lesson because we have members in the Church who are in the field of the arts and who have an idea that "inspiration volition come, and I accept talent, and that'southward all I need." Well, they had inspiration, and they had all the talent, but they needed to exist trained, they needed to exercise the piece of work, to learn the fundamentals, the nuts, in club that they could produce works of art, particularly in the temple, that would exist creditable.11

He and then referred to Oliver Cowdery'due south failed endeavor to translate the Book of Mormon by relying only on inspiration, and said that just as Oliver Cowdery had to exercise everything within his power start, then too do artists. And nosotros might add: and then likewise do ordinary students and viewers of art.

We have to piece of work. We take to train. We have to acquire from the world and from the history of art, moving picture, music, and literature everything we can. And those of us who are teachers have a sacred obligation to help our students do all of this. Of class, we don't fulfill that obli- gation past teaching art history classes in which nosotros testify paintings and sculptures that are manifestly offensive or disrespectful of the human body and human relations. Just neither exercise we fulfill it by teaching a Shakespeare class in which we only read those passages that contain nothing that could possibly offend. We fulfill our obligation by care- fully and prayerfully deciding what materials to use and how to apply them, and by teaching others, through instance and principle, how to seek and recognize on their ain the adept, the truthful, and the beau- tiful—even when tainted, at times, by elements nosotros don't endorse but can nevertheless alibi when they're non also serious.

Seeing Life Whole

Brigham Young organized the Deseret Dramatic Association just two years afterward entering the Table salt Lake Valley in 1847. He opened the first playhouse west of the Missouri River only four years later. In 1853, he wrote the following virtually theater—though I call back nosotros can extrapolate his remarks to any and all of the arts:

Upon the stage of a theater can be represented in grapheme, evil and its consequences, good and its happy results and rewards; the weakness and the follies of man, the magnanimity of virtue and the greatness of truth. The stage can exist fabricated to aid the pulpit in impressing upon the minds of a community an enlightened sense of a virtuous life, as well a proper horror of the enormity of sin and a just dread of its consequences. The path of sin with its thorns and pitfalls, its traps and snares can be revealed, and how to shun it.12

Brigham Young suggests here that fine art has the capacity to nurture inside us an understanding of what Aristotle in the Poetics chosen "universal truths."xiii This capacity is perhaps what BYU's own Gerrit de Jong chosen "culture"—the ability to see life whole, a familiarity with "the best that has been thought and the best that has been done in the world."14 Such wisdom is not developed by limiting our experiences to artistic portrayals of what Brigham Young called the "good and its happy results." It too requires beingness able to acquire from wise, truthful, and tasteful representations of "evil and its consequences." It indeed requires an ability to see life whole.

Art can and sometimes should address troubling matters. Admittedly, since artists and teachers are no more perfect than the remainder of us, those treatments are sometimes less wise, truthful, and tasteful than they should exist. Just unless they suffer from serious flaws, we should exist able and willing to glean from them all that is proficient—and bargain judi- ciously with the residuum. I believe that when nosotros fail in our responsibility to require of ourselves, our students, or our children an engagement with great fine art, film, drama, and literature, merely out of fear that such works might offend or fall brusque of perfection—when we insist upon a sheltered, provincial experience of the world—nosotros silently conspire with each other to underwrite a cultural illiteracy that is tragic and spiritually stunting. We do each other no truthful service. Nosotros light no fire in each other's heart. And we decidedly do not seek after that which is virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy.

In the Italian film Cinema Paradiso (Tornatore, Italy, 1990), a father- less boy named Salvatore grows up enthralled by the movies he watches in his boondocks'southward only theater, even though every expression of love—every osculation, every embrace, every caress—is edited out of the movies past a well-meaning local priest. Simply Salvatore is himself loved and mentored by Alfredo, the kindly projectionist. Every bit Salvatore grows up, he falls in love with a cute girl, loses her, moves away, and becomes a famous movie manager. Though accomplished and celebrated, he finds himself dissatisfied with his empty life, perpetually unable to realize true love and happiness. When the wise former projectionist dies and Salvatore returns abode for the funeral, his aged female parent gives him a gift from Alfredo: a reel of flick composed entirely of the clips Alfredo had been forced to cut from the films the boy had watched while growing up. It is a breathtaking montage of love, passion, and life at its near beautiful. Cinema Paradiso, every bit the title intimates, ends with the suggestion that fine art can help us redeem an incomplete life: The affection that had been edited out of the protagonist's life by the tragedies of his fatherless childhood and lost dearest are restored to him from across the grave by someone who cared for him as much as any father. And art is the medium of that restoration.

In conclusion, I hope that, yes, we will exist wise in deciding what art nosotros encompass. Only I also hope our decisions will be judicious and not judgmental, aimed at seeking the skillful, rather than just fugitive the bad. I especially hope we volition redouble our commitment to kindle and rekindle in each other'due south hearts the passion for art, music, drama, philosophy, and literature that fired the flame of our own diverse searches after all that is virtuous and expert. For only thereby tin we realize the creativity and love of beauty and goodness that constitutes our true spiritual likeness to God.

Travis T. Anderson, associate professor of philosophy at Brigham Immature Academy, regularly teaches motion picture artistry and theory classes in addition to philosophy courses. He has mentored more 20 film projects for his students in film classes for the Philosophy Department and the BYU Honors Program. He directed the BYU International Cinema Plan from 2000 to 2007.

This article was adapted from a devotional accost given to Brigham Young University'southward Higher of Humanities on March 8, 2001. Visit https://byustudies.byu.edu/content/seeking-later on-good-art -drama-picture-and-literature to read the complete, unabridged version, "Seeking After the Skilful in Art, Film, and Drama, and Literature," get-go published in BYU Studies 46, No. ii (2007), pp. 231–246.

1. Aristotle, Politics, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Carlton House, 1943), section 1339a.

two. Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool: F. D. Richards, 1855–86), 12:124, Dec 29, 1867.

3. Brigham Immature, Heber C. Kimball, and Willard Richards, in "Sixth General Epistle, September 22, 1851," Messages of the Commencement Presidency, comp. James R. Clark, 6 vols. (Table salt Lake Metropolis: Bookcraft, 1965), 2:86.

4. Discourses of Brigham Immature: Second President of The Church building of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed. John A. Widtsoe (Common salt Lake City: Deseret Volume, 1983), 279.

v. "The Gospel Opens Advice with Jehovah: Paragraphs from a Sermon Delivered past President John Taylor, June 12, 1853," in Scrapbook of Mormon Literature, ed. Ben. Due east. Rich, 2 vols. (Chicago: Henry C. Etten, northward.d.), 2:224.

half-dozen. The Gospel Kingdom: Selections from the Writings and Discourses of John Taylor, ed. M. Homer Durham (Salt Lake Urban center: Bookcraft, 1987), 277.

7. David Hume, "Of the Standard of Sense of taste," in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), 247.

8. http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all-fourth dimension

ix. Boyd K. Packer, The Creative person and the Spirit: A Conversation with President Boyd 1000. Packer and James C. Christensen, videocassette recording (Provo, Utah: LDS Movement Picture Studio, 1998).

10. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. and ed. Ian Johnston, http://www.mala.bc.ca/~Johnstoi/Neitzsche/tragedy_all.htm. 11. Packer, Artist and the Spirit.
12. Discourses of Brigham Immature, 243.
13. Aristotle, Poetics, section 9.

14. Gerrit de Jong, "Fine art and Life," address to the BYU student body, Jan 5, 1953, ii, 50. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, accent in original.

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Source: https://humanities.byu.edu/the-arts-as-a-lens-to-see-whole-life/

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