Art vs entertainment: Spider-Man and Martin Scorsese

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Although it might be difficult to believe, there really are people on this planet who have never seen a film set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Such people even managed to resist the urge during the peak of the Infinity War and Endgame craze, leading one to assume that they must have been cursed by an ancient Egyptian tomb to never set foot in a cinema. However, I came across one such bizarre case in my own life. One of these holdouts, as rare as an oasis in the Sahara, worked in the same office as me—and by a series of unusual coincidences (not that unusual), they went to go see Spider-Man: No Way Home as their first exposure to the Marvel formula several months back.

I expect many people have their own impressions about the relative strengths and weaknesses of that particular film. However, those impressions are largely besides the point of this little natural experiment. After all, regardless of what one thinks of this particular film, the audience member in question undoubtedly did not share them. In fact, even after watching the film, they are entirely unequipped to have a conversation about the film on its own merits. This is because Spider-Man: No Way Home offers a screenplay that is unfathomable as an isolated work of art.

Even before this latest Spider-Man flick, there have been Marvel films that do not work in isolation. Indeed, the concept of a sequel film has always demanded a degree of prior investment on the part of the audience. However, this film took the rather drastic step of expecting prior investment in films that were decidedly separate from Marvel’s project of “extended universe” filmmaking: for those who are utterly unaware, the film’s core plot is a crossover with the two major Spider-Man film franchises that existed prior to Marvel’s current reimagining of the character. Needless to say, my associate had not seen those films either.

It is in this context that one cannot help but consider what the relationship between art and entertainment is in an age where a person of reasonable intelligence cannot walk into a cinema and comprehend the basic contents of the largest Hollywood blockbuster of the year. The much-celebrated director Martin Scorsese made headlines a few years back after referring to MCU films as “not cinema”. The full quote is rather reminiscent of the spectre of modernity rising back to life to deliver a searing indictment of the state of postmodern film:

I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema. Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.

Martin Scorsese

However, it is hard to take even this quote on face value. The discussion of the dichotomy between “art” and “entertainment” dates back centuries. And at the very least it has become widely understood that it would be nothing more than simple snobbery to insist that everything that entertains inherently lacks artistic value. Still, the particular comments that Scorsese made exist in a more contemporary context, and regardless of what one thinks of the artistic value of Marvel’s films, it bares re-examining the question of what separates “art” from “mere entertainment” in the current age.

Art Driver

Well, that is enough dancing around the problem, let us try to define “art”. There is, of course, no way to define art that will perfectly satisfy all of the various nuances and connotations that the word can carry. Like many elements of human society, art ultimately rests on the pornography standard of “one knows it when they see it”. A painting is art; spilling some paint while you’re redecorating the living room is not art. However, if that spilt paint has some aesthetic qualities that lead to it being recognised as “artistic” by an audience, no matter how small, it would be futile to insist that it is in fact not art due to its serendipitous creation.

This positions art as a uniquely intense case of the “I know it when I see it” phenomenon—art is fundamentally a reaction on the part of the audience, not an inherent quality of the work itself. Art is the crystalised output of the act of witnessing art, which conspicuously lacks a neat verb to describe itself. When humans encounter something which evokes a profound reaction, and which does not serve a clearly utilitarian pragmatic purpose, they label that event “art”. However, there is one notable exception which will assist us in narrowing down a functional working definition of art. Art must create these particular responses on the part of its human audience, and it must also be filtered through a human creator or intermediary of some sort: No matter how profound the experience, witnessing a pleasant view from atop a high place, or looking at the stars, or hearing the unique sounds of nature all cannot be art. However, capturing the essence those things in a painting, photograph, or song would all qualify as art.

In the most basic terms, art is when one human creates something that other humans recognise as art; this is opposed to the unmediated experience of encountering art-like phenomena in one’s own subjective relationship to nature, or any other aspect of the world outside of humanity. This definition captures enough for one to discretely categorise art and understand it within the “know it when they see it” framework. However, it still falls short of capturing the deeper essence of art. While we can use this to sculpt out an outline of the vague concept, it lacks the substance of that concept. In other words, we still need to find a purpose for art. If art is meant to evoke something, what is the meaning of that evocation, and why do we need to categorise it in the first place?

In an earlier post, we encountered the theories of Viktor Shklovsky, who argued that “art exists in order to restore the sensation of life, in order to make us feel things.” However, his perspective, which was tailored to the creative art of literature, fails to capture the full breadth of how the word “art” is used. Would anyone truly argue that the “art” of sword-swallowing exists to restore the “sensation of life”, as Shklovsky put it? This is obviously not so; the word “art” is oftentimes used to describe particular human skills, and these skills cannot be analysed with the Shklovsky framework of replicating sensations. It would be one thing to simply dismiss this meaning of art as separate from the creative process that Shklovsky described, but this would be a crucial error. While human language does have many quirks and coincidentally mixed meanings, it would confuse the issue to attempt to prescribe meaning in order to fit a neat theory rather than simply describing the meaning of the behaviour in all of its inherent chaos.

The creative arts that Shklovsky managed to capture in his definition are not “art”, but instead “an example of art”: This distinction is subtle, but important. As we already discussed, art is not a property inherent to the output of an artistic process, but rather the result of the response of the audience. Put another way, art is not the response it evokes in isolation. Rather, art is the process of creating itself within the minds of the audience. When we recognise something within ourselves that was evoked not by ourselves, but by another human’s efforts, that is art. Creative works are a prominent example, but many skills can be artforms within this framework. Art is not defined by a single reaction to it, but by the profundity of observing the “excessive communication” of humanity itself.

Let us briefly clarify and expand on that point. Not every activity that humans carry out is, or even can be art. This is why we insist on the (sometimes fuzzy) distinction between artistic and non-artistic skills. In order to understand the meaning behind this distinction, we should analyse a skill that can be both artistic and non-artistic: Chefs occupy an interesting space as they are seen as the provider of a pragmatic craft for the sake of the clear biological need for food whilst also demonstrating skills that are oftentimes discussed in terms of art. Why is it that a celebrity chef creating an elaborate dish is considered art while cooking chicken nuggets in your pyjamas is at best a skill? The simple answer is unsurprisingly that the former is something that most people cannot do. However, the full answer is more subtle than that. There are many skills that we cannot easily replicate, but the ability of Greg from accounting to rapidly format a spreadsheet does not become the kind of spectacle that can be “art”. Remember, art doesn’t just involve the skill, it involves the experience of an audience witnessing a human activity.

There have been several different definitions of art in this post so far but let us bring together all of these disparate strands together and offer another, final, definition that clarifies the nature and purpose of art—at least, as well as can be done in a simple blog post. Art is something which does not have a clear utilitarian purpose; art is something that cannot be experienced within a solitary, subjective experience of nature, it requires other humans; art, in the Shklovskian sense, imparts the sensations of life that we are not directly experiencing; lastly, art is not something that can be replicated by the audience. That previous idea requires some last-minute clarification before we offer our final definition. We already established that art cannot be a skill that is easy to replicate, such as the separation between artistic cooking and routine home cooking. This is because a skill that is easy to replicate is something that the audience can experience in their own subjective relationship to the world, not through other humans, violating one of our earlier definitions.

This is the essential theme between all of these characteristics of art: Whether it is creative art, a demonstration of a unique skill, or an extreme application of a routine skill, it becomes artistic when the audience is experiencing something that extends beyond what they can reach solely within themselves. The intermingling of an audience with an artist that creates something that they recognise as the product of a human beyond themselves is the key precondition to art. Finally, to conclude the issue, art is the process of evoking a response in other human beings by using some skill to demonstrate our respective individuality. Art is when we come together to prove that we are separate.

The Age of Entertainment

Revisiting Martin Scorsese’s review of the MCU in consideration of the above definition that we managed to reach (at last) affords a slightly different reading of his criticism.

I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema. Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.

Martin Scorsese

Scorsese is not, as many falsely assumed, arrogantly attacking Marvel’s films for lacking in the technical capacities of the artform of cinema, which he himself displays. Instead, he is accusing them of failing to convey the experiences of “another human being”. It is an argument that is amusingly similar to Nabokov’s suggestion that premodern literature was fundamentally composed of the “nonartistic exaggeration of familiar emotions meant to provoke automatically traditional compassion in the reader.” It is essentially an argument that Marvel’s films are merely a demonstration of a skill being used to entertain others, not the artistic creation of an experience that connects the audience to humanity beyond themselves. Hence, the comparison to theme parks.

In the contours of modernist artistic theory, this argument is a serious one. Under the modernist conception of art, each work of art is a complete and stand-alone composition that allows the artist to create a full artistic experience, one that communicates to the audience an entire experience “beyond themselves”. A work which does not allow the audience to connect with a wider human condition beyond their own subjectivity cannot be recognised as true art, no matter how entertaining it is. In this framework, doing so is merely a demonstration of a compelling skill that excites the minds of the audience. This does not mean that artistic expression is not entertaining, as the spectacle of demonstrating the profundity of art is itself part of the point. Rather, art and entertainment are separate goals in this model, which coincidentally overlap as a by-product of the artistic process.

With such a mindset, it is easy to see how Scorsese might interpret films that chiefly entertain, such as the MCU, as something akin to theme parks—works that entertain, but are not real art. However, the limitation of the modernist mindset is precisely that it cannot see how ambiguous it makes the issue by insisting on such rigid barriers. Basically, why are theme parks not art? Is the entertainment of others not precisely a reflection of something beyond our own subjective experiences?

Take, for example, my intrepid co-worker venturing in to see Spider-Man: No Way Home without any of either the wider context of the MCU or the previous Spider-Man film franchises. What they witnessed was clearly not the mindless, automatised sentimentality that Nabokov criticised, nor the empty display of technical skill that Scorsese hinted at. Spider-Man: No Way Home contains elements and plot ideas that would be considered excessive and bizarre within the modernist conception of a “pure entertainment” work. Those who walk in off the street would not be treated to an easy to understand and entertaining thrill ride, but instead an impenetrable web of in-universe (and inter-universe) references that elevate metatextual discourse to the level of pure text. Basically, like my co-worker, they would experience a theme park ride that they fundamentally cannot appreciate and understand.

Such an experience is not crafted for the modernist interpretation of art as stand-alone pieces of communication. Theme park rides are not art in isolation, but they are artistic precisely in the context of the creation and appreciation of the craft of theme park rides. While many enjoy the output of the skill that goes into an individual theme park creation as a matter of simple entertainment, there are many so-called theme park fanatics, those who travel around to various theme parks, especially around the United States, in order to sample the various nuances and intricacies of each theme park. By processing the metatext of theme parks beyond the mere entertainment of their base text, these consumers elevate the activity to an artform by becoming cognisant of the individuality communicated by the differences between these theme parks. Fanatics, or fans, of the MCU function in much the same way.

The extended universe format of MCU films incorporate this metatextual layer into the base text of the films. These fans do not consume the works at the level of individual artistic creations, but instead assess the connections and differences between the various works in the creation of an expanded universe. Fans of Marvel works are less likely to fixate on the particular emotional impact of an individual film, but instead discuss the progression of various characters and themes that accompany the various “Phases” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For example, the particular artistry that created the moment of the character Tony Stark’s death in Avengers: Endgame is seldom discussed without the explicit context of the various references and parallels to the Iron Man films of Phase One of the MCU. This same scene is also discussed precisely in the context of the moment serving as the climax of Phase Four, and whether it adequately followed up on the dramatic conclusion of Avengers: Infinity War.

Among the wide array of different kinds of fans, this metatextual behaviour among MCU fans is actually relatively moderate. There are numerous groups of fans which could have served as the subject of this post whilst displaying even more extreme fanatical behaviour. Still, what is dramatic about the MCU films is the extent to which the films they rely on utilise this database-like consumption to fuel their own sense of purpose. We have already discussed how Spider-Man: No Way Home relies on a wide array of references not just to the MCU, but to the wider history of Spider-Man in cinema, in order to deliver its unique flavour of entertainment. And this style of composition is increasingly standard among MCU films. A more recent release, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, continues to demand that audiences engage with ideas that are exterior to the film itself in order to elicit the full experience. Its marketing was positively saturated with hints towards a crossover with the previous film universe of X-Men. And the film itself is littered with references to the director Sam Raimi’s history with The Evil Dead franchise.

Psychoanalyst Tamaki Saitou described the behaviour of otaku, an extreme manifestation of this kind of consumer, in the following way:

In fact, otaku discover a multilayered reality even in the fictionality of fiction. They see and enjoy reality in terms of every standard by which fiction can be judged, including not just the quality of anime characters but also the script and character design, visual direction, marketing, criticism, and particular points of appreciation. This is the otaku’s special ability. When this is developed sufficiently, it becomes the three abilities that Okada describes as the “eye of the aesthete,” the “eye of the master,” and the “eye of the connoisseur.” Otaku do not just command a great deal of information, they must also be able to identify instantaneously these different standards of fictionality and shift to the appropriate level on which to appreciate them. This means not just falling in love and losing oneself in the world of a single work, but somehow staying sober while still indulging one’s feverish enthusiasm.

Tamaki Saitou

Leaving aside discussion of the relative merit and sophistication of MCU films, it is difficult in light of the contemporary cultural orientation of fans to consider them anything but artistic. Just like any form of art, this is not fundamentally due to the qualities of the films themselves. The films are being shaped by and responding to these fans, to be sure, but art is and always has been defined by the experiences that audiences have as they encounter it. Indeed, as we previously established, art is only defined by the collective process where it creates itself in the mind of the audience. It is therefore impossible to separate “art” and “entertainment” as separate creative processes in an age with fans that recognise the “fictionality of fiction” and engage with a multilayered, metatextual reality. Even without the “psychological experiences of another human being” that Scorsese seeks in his vision of cinema, a contemporary alternative has evolved where the craftsmanship of creating entertainment in the age of the database demonstrates the individuality of humanity, and therefore creates art as an inherent by-product of its own existence.