Epic facebook argument about film, negros, and the definition of "art"

Disclaimer: The last names of the following have been removed to protect the innocent.

So my friend Cuyler was tagged in one of those Facebook surveys and was asked to list a movie he hated. He chose Transformers 2: Revenge of The Fallen for obvious reasons. Lulz ensued. Here is the transcript (warning: words-a-plenty)...

Original Wall Post:
A movie you hate: this one is difficult. It seems that for the last decade Hollywood has only wanted to make movies that bend your mind with how terrible they are. My point is that I have a lot to choose from. But I chose the Michael Bay Transformers sequel, which is somehow even worse.

*First few posts omitted due to lack of relevancy*

Bryant:
I liked it. It wasn't a cinema masterpiece, but it was great for what it was... an action, sci-fi, blow-shit-up adventure.

Cuyler:
i disagree. if the movie was pure 2 hours of robots fighting, i'd be totally on board. but no. the movie's confused about what it wants to be. a teen comedy? high action adventure? space opera? ancient astronaut story? romance? coming of age? instead it tries to be all things and misses all the marks.

Mike:
I've found whether or not someone likes this movie to be a great Rorschach test for whether or not I can trust their recommendation on any movie.

Bryant:
I don't think that's true. You've got to have the comedy. No one's going to sit and watch robots fight for two hours. You also have to have a story as they are setting up a franchise. No different than Iron Man 1 & 2 and Thor. They are setting a story out to bring all of SHIELD together.

Mike:
My Rorschach theory serves me well.

Bryant:
Doesn't mean anything to me though. We all have different tastes in movies.

Cuyler:
you do have to have comedy. that's not my beef. lots of great serious movies have comedy. my beef is that it's not sure what the hell it's doing with itself, so instead of writing jokes that make sense with the characters, it has farting robots, robot testicles, humping dogs, and humping robots. pretty much 3rd grade humor. in the first one, we watched a robot pee on a dude. oh, also: racist stereotype bots. not even used for any real reason, other than michael bay probably thought they were super funny.

Bryant:
Well, I get what you're saying, but at the same time you have to look at the directed demographic. Remember I work for a studio. They tone things down so that those outside the target demo will also like it, but you want to keep the target happy. I also didn't think that they twin robots were racist at all. The actors voicing them, and the director himself, both gave the reasoning behind them.

Cuyler:
right. i think there's a difference between toning it down and outright mocking your audience's intelligence. i think TF 2 flirts with that line and crosses it regularly. but, people totally love it, so maybe i'm giving the public way too much credit.
as for their rationalization, they can rationalize as much as they want: they have big lips, bug eyes, buck teeth, and talk like people that you'd see on maury.

Bryant:
Well, there are times when people just want something mindless to go see. Take me for instance. I love sci-fi, sports, action, comedy and military. Not a big fan of westerns, thrillers or horror. Dramas, documentaries or indie films? Can't stand them. Most people don't want to go to the theater, sit there for two hours after dropping $20 a person to watch reality. I have my own reality. People want an escape, an adventure. TF2 did a good job of just being mindless.

Eh, coming from a mainstream studio, with large name actors and crew? Working here in HW I can say that people are way too PC for that. If it truly was racism, those people would never work in HW again.



Cuyler:
i totally want escapism too. i just don't think that escapism has to mean you shut off your brain when you walk in the doors. and the 20 dollar price tag is the exact reason movies are failing as an art form. i still haven't seen thor because i quite literally cannot spare the expense. I absolutely don't want to see reality, which is part of why the last good movie i saw was rango.

and HW is super PC, at least on paper, but people know what sells, and black stereotypes are hilarious. it's what tyler perry and eddie murphy built their careers on.

Bryant:
Well, the movie doesn't cost $20. The studios don't pay the theaters hardly anything per ticket. That's why a medium soda is $6 or $7 in places. They've got to make money somehow. Studios also make some movies like TF2 as the lowest common denominator to appeal to the widest audience so that they made the money to make the dramas, indies and other Oscar films that very few people watch. I mean, look at most years for the Oscar Best Movie. More people will have seen TF2 in a year than will have seen all of the best movie nominees combined. You add in skyrocketing salaries for talent, cost of materials and so on and so on you get studios pumping out these big movies simply to make money. Its a vicious circle.

As for Murphy and Perry, black people can be racist in HW. That's the way it is everywhere in America. Only blacks can make fun of blacks. Everyone can make fun of white people.

*Irrelevant comment here by yours truly about why Michael Bay sucks*

Cuyler:
and if black people want to make fun of black people, what studio exec is going to say no? everyone knows it's hysterical. you can't watch any, ANY, trailer for a kid's movie without some black stereotype telling someone off, or giving a profound, "oh hyyeeeeeeeelllll no!" i think it's worse than outright racism: it's objectification for the sake of money. at least when tom sawyer says "nigger jim," there's a reason. buck-toothed robots that make jokes about yo momma? no reason besides money.

Bryant:
Well, but you could take those same robots and apply them to Colorado. None of the blacks I've met in Colorado talk like that. In fact, the largest "black" community in Colorado are all the wiggers as we call them in Florida. Those robots sound like many of the white punks, or Hispanics here in Colorado to me. The problem is that people see things based on their own prejudice. Having grown up in the South, these robots never even remotely crossed my mind as being black. Blacks in the South don't talk like that.

Me:
It's "urban". It doesn't matter if the characters are necessarily representative of a black person, but that entire persona does in fact stem from modern black culture. Wiggers are called wiggers why? Because it's a contraction of "white niggers". Niggers being a derogatory term for blacks. Thusly, any way you slice it, them robots is niggas.

Bryant:
Yes Chris, I know what a wigger is. I grew up where I had more blacks in my school than Colorado has as a state. As for the two robots, and Jar Jar, it never once crossed my mind that they were "black" characters. Jazz was more "black" than these two robots. I just don't see racism everywhere. The first time I even thought about them being "black" was when people said something to me... and up to this point not a single person that has said something to me was anything other than white.

Me:
You're missing the point, it doesn't matter whether or not they're meant to be black. The point is, these robots are given such a persona to fill a quota, not because it speaks best to their character or is meaningful to the plot. Execs say "hey, kids love robots. can we have a robot that talks like inner city kids to secure that market?". And Bay - having no artistic integrity - has the production team slap together a slang-spewing, "urban" robot whose sole purpose is to attract one more demographic than needed.

Bryant:
Why should Bay have artistic integrity? He's not an artist.

Cuyler:

but he is. he's just a terrible one. with no integrity. and if he's not, he's even worse then: someone parading in an artistic medium who couldn't identify "art" if it pissed in his eye. and then we pay him for the privilege of pissing in our eyes.

Bryant:
Eh, your definition of an artist is different than mine. A producer/director is not an artist. They just make sure that what someone else wrote, or what someone is acting as, is done faithfully to the script and fits the screen.

Me:
Film is a passion of mine, and I'm kind of insulted by your interpretation of a director as nothing more than a mediator for the work of others. Terry Gilliam is an artist. Tim Burton is an artist. Ridley Scott is an artist. If you try to tell me otherwise, you need to have your head examined.


Cuyler:

i don't see how a director isn't an artist. when a good director is attached to a project, he can add just as much as an actor, writer, set designer, costumer, animator, and so on.

Me:
I will grant you that a hired gun like Michael Bay - who is attached to a project because he's good at managing large sums of money and has no integrity, and thus gives little opposition to the studio's decisions - is not really an artist. But to say that a "director" isn't an artist, just by extension of being a director, is a flawed statement.

Bryant:
Eh, and studios, writers and so on don't like that. Directors are meant to make sure that something translates to the screen well. I don't see that as an artist no different than someone who translates Japanese into English. Just not an artist to me. Or if we have a project at work and I get my hands on it and change it for the better. I'm not an artist either.

Cuyler:
i still disagree. writers and studios might not like "that," but sometimes what a writer has written won't translate well, or there's a hole they didn't see. plus, when a script is just a spec script, there are no mentions of camera angles and movements. that's the director's job, and there's a lot of artistry that goes into placement.

Me:
Most directors worth their salt are hands-on. They are involved in the creative process from day one. They don't come in on the last day of pre-production, read the script once, and then hop on the set. They're the ones who ultimately decide what that monster you think is so awesome will look like, or how an actor carries a part. To a good director, a script is more like a basic guideline. Unless, like I said, you're a hired gun.

Bryant:

America's definition of an artist is pretty wide. There's a large canvas in the NY fine art museum. Its probably 5'x8'. Its painted on solid color of blue. Nothing else. No brush strokes or anything. Just blue. Its selling for millions. Sorry, because some guy painted blue on a canvas does not make it art, or him an artist.

Cuyler: comparing a blue canvas to darren aronofsky is like comparing a tangerine to a sewing machine. they aren't even remotely the same thing.

Bryant:
Eh, this we will have to agree to disagree. My idea of an artist is the classical idea. Not the contemporary American one.

Cuyler:
this isn't contemporary anything, nor is this agree to disagree. there is no way you can say straight faced while knowing anything about direction that it's not an art.

Me:
Okay, Bryant, I'll bite. The classical notion of an artist is someone who creates something provocative using skill, experience, and talent. A good director does all of these things, so even by the "classical" definition, he is still an artist.

Bryant:
I work with directors. I don't see them as artists at all. They are managers. The classic definition of an artist has nothing to do with being provocative. An artist is someone who practices any of the various creative arts, such as a sculptor, novelist, poet, music or painting. A filmmaker is someone who came along more recently and therefore is not part of the classical definition.

Me:
Sounds you work with some extremely soulless directors then. An artist is measured by the love of his craft. Films are a collaborative effort, but the difference between an artist and just a director is night and day. Its the difference between Bladerunner and TF2, or Edward Scissorhands and Gigi, Requiem for a Dream and Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.

Cuyler:
so then by this "classical" definition, movies aren't art? At what point do they stop being art? writing? art direction? set design? acting? and in what way is the collaborative process of movie making not a creative art?

i also question what directors you work with. true, they do a lot of managing, but seriously: find a good movie, i mean a good movie, and watch the director talk about it. There's real art there. a small sample is arronofsky's commentary on the fountain (which he directed). every scene transition has a slow zoom from a dark to a light space to mimic the overall movie's transition from earth to heaven. he said that. no one made that up. that sounds like a statement of artistic intent.

Bryant:
If a director gets involved like you state, they aren't being a director. They are becoming a writer, because they are rewriting parts of a movie. Look at the Jack Ryan movies. Other than Red October, they didn't stay true to the books. The director went from simply directing to rewriting the movie. And that is the reason writers and execs don't really like that.

Me:
So unless he does the bare minimum, a director isn't being a director? I didn't say that by extension of being a director, you're automatically an artist, but you certainly aren't automatically NOT one either.

Bryant:
The contemporary definition of an artist is one that is skilled at a particular task or operation. That's just retarded. Under that definition anyone can be an artist. The best busboy in the world is now an artist.

Cuyler:
i don't see why this definition of artist is so offensive. there is art in everything. i'm fully prepared to believe that i could see a busboy who's so good at what he does that i have to stop and consider what it really takes to do what he does.

Bryant:
I don't think its offensive. I just don't think its true. I think its another example of America today. People wanting to make more of something than what it is to feel better about themselves. He's not an artist. He's a freaking busboy. That 400 lb woman isn't big boned. She's freaking fat.

Cuyler:
it still doesn't describe why deciding on placement of people, objects, and emotions to evoke intended reactions isn't artistic.

Me:
Subscribing to a more generalized definition of "artist" doesn't mean you have to think every thing anyone has ever made ever is art. If it doesn't provoke you in a meaningful way, then it's not art to YOU. If you're saying film doesn't provoke you in a meaningful way, and by extension, the director is not an artist... then you are in the wrong field, my friend.

Also stop citing "America" as the cause for the apparent dissension of "art". Film is considered art in other countries too.
I cite French director Jean Pierre Juinet. He is an artist. Watch his films and tell me you disagree.

Bryant:
He may very well be an artist, but not because he's a director.

Cuyler:
see, i don't think this is a discrepancy of definitions of art. the problem is that you say movies are art, though they don't conform to your "classical definition" being a new art form. but then you go ahead and say that everyone else (or most everyone else) is in some way an artist, except the director, and it doesn't add up. a chain is only as strong as the weakest link, and if the weakest link is arguably also the biggest link, then there's no way you should even think movies are art. which you do. which conflicts with the idea of "classical" art.

the other problem is that you say directors aren't artists, but we're citing example after example in which directors are required to make artistic decisions, or have artistic intent, but you still refuse to consider that directing is artistic. and that's where i can't believe that it's simply agree to disagree.


At this point Bryant stopped posting.


TLDR:
Some guy named Bryant countered our criticisms of Michael Bay's artistic integrity by saying he's a director and directors aren't artists. Cuyler contests this, as do I. Bryant then unleashes a torrent of disjointed arguments about how directors contradict the "classical" definition of an artist. We cite several examples as to why he's wrong. He pussies out by taking an "agree to disagree" stance. The end.