Upon reading the critically acclaimed short story “Sleep-over” by Bonnie Jo Campbell, I started pondering the duality between the concrete and the amorphous that seems to tear apart the enthusiasts of artistic works. This story, like much of the amorphous literature that appears in many textbooks and highbrow publications, lightly touches on the elements that make up a traditionally story, without making them the focus. There are people with names, but very little is established about them, making them seem to be empty characters. There is a series of events, and there is a little bit of a conflict at one point in this series of events, but there is little in the way of story building (by which I mean a conflict-driven escalation from one event to another with “but” or “therefore” transitions). The story offers some little facts and ideas, in this case suggesting a connection between Frankenstein’s monster and the sexual desire to piece together the perfect woman, but it artistically leaves the meaning of the story up to the viewer. While intellectuals naturally cling to amorphous art because it requires thinking, this type of work tends to lack substance to the same degree as that which is entirely concrete.
To clarify what I mean by concrete, I am not simply referring to work that is physical. Work that is concrete is structured, based upon guidelines that have been previously established, and its meaning is perfectly visible. Pop music, for example, is generally concrete in that the structure is standard and predictable, and one does not have to think deeply to understand the meaning of the song. The concrete art is easier to sell, in much the same way that processed foods are more accessible to the public than filet mignon, but is also easier to criticize. Concrete art is cliché, lacks depth, and requires no thought. For this reason, lovers of music that is abstract and rule-breaking have a great excuse to enjoy scoffing at Beliebers and Directioners. The concrete art, to the thinking person, tends to sit in the mind rotting like a useless, dull log.
The amorphous art, however, is harder to criticize, although it too frequently lacks substance. It refuses to take the form of its predecessors in its medium, flowing and expanding in any direction the mind takes it. Modern poetry very often – although certainly not always – strives to defy guidelines and let the language run wild, without conveying any particular meaning, but instead vaguely suggests potential meanings. The meaning comes from the interpretation, not from what the writer infused into the work. The potential problem here is that, by leaving meaning up to the interpreter, the work lacks intrinsic meaning, and can therefore be said to be meaningless. This is dangerous because, without a defined meaning or purpose at the core of the work, there is no gravity to keep the interpretations (which may be foolish if the interpreter happens to be an unintelligent person) from flying out to idiocy and beyond. The boundless nature can allow the art’s supposed, projected, or imagined meanings to spread like wildfire.
In the Web 2.0 age, fanfiction is blossoming like never before. While the best television series are developing clearly defined characters dealing with blatant conflicts, they are also gesturing towards possible alterations in the story, and new ideas that could be explored with many of the shows’ core elements. Since fanfiction is so enjoyable for so many people, it would be fascinating for a television series to suggest possible character traits and storylines, and then leave the rest to the viewer to determine. This would, of course, not be a television show, but rather a prompt for creating one. It is the established structure upon which an infinite number of ideas can be built that seems to make media great. This allows fans to have more fun building things in the sandbox than they could in a bottomless pit.
That being said, it should be obvious that not all artwork that has depth or mental malleability is necessarily bad. Science fiction series such as The Twilight Zone and Star Trek may be mostly remembered for the concrete elements, such as spaceships, robots, and scary aliens, but they have had a lasting impact because of the concepts they explored and the ideas they proposed for us to ponder. The works of Robert Frost have been analyzed to the extreme due to their vast interpretability, although the non-thinker can see the stories and concepts that he made apparent. Once, after saying his poem “Stopping by Woods,” Frost asked his audience about the meaning of its repeated last line, with a tone that scoffed the critics and commentators who had assumed great and deep meanings. While some might suggest it meant “bringing his off-balance terza rima to closure,” but Frost informed them that it simply meant he wanted to go to bed. Perhaps we ought to join Frost in mocking the sophists who attribute to artwork meanings that are not apparent, since seeking deep meaning in that which lacks it is more superstitious behavior than intellectual behavior. Instead, we should appreciate a work’s interpretability, if it has depth allowing for such (as Frost’s works certainly do), but at the same time appreciate what the apparent, intrinsic meaning is just as much.
Imagine, then, a Brubeck world in which works are strong both concretely and amorphously. Ideally, this creates a concrete-amorphous balance, with great weight and power on each side of the scale. There is great danger in going too far either way, although it is not necessarily completely unacceptable. The deep thinker is certainly free to sit happily on one side of the see-saw enjoying 2001: A Space Odyssey, so long as he/she does not despise the fellow on the other side enjoying Transformers 17: Age of Explosions. It is best, however, to create works that limit the extent to which they lean to either side – Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” leans towards the boundless while still maintaining a hummable tune, and The Lego Movie is formulaic while still suggesting ideas about theology and society. Rather than creating works that are dull as a log or run rampant as a fire, try building a campfire that uses both elements to their maximum amount of enjoyment, with the log and the fire each giving meaning and purpose to the other. In other words, when people criticize films, songs, or any similar works for being too simple, shallow, and formulaic, what they are truly criticizing is a lack of balance in the concrete-amorphous duality.
