Bad Art Can Inspire

There is a scene in Cloud Atlas[1] where a clone watches a piece of ancient media. It is a scene where a dignified man informs a woman that he would be subject to criminal abuse. The clone repeats these words to herself and it is with these words that she defies her owners and oppressors.

It is a beautiful set of scenes, especially as the narrative peels back and you see the origins of that movie, where Timothy Cavendish, a vanity press publisher, repeatly tries to escape from his nursing home. He is old and British and he has comic air about him as he bumbles through his scenes. He utters that all important line in deeply indignant voice, full of bluster as he tells the nurse that she can’t keep him there: “I will not be subjected to criminal abuse!”

I love these scenes.

I love how they show that art, flawed art, can inspire. That words and ideas gain a life of their own outside the context in which they were written. I love how ideas can resonate across time and how they change but that’s not bad thing.

I love how it shows art can transcend that petty, petty framework of what its stated explicit ideology is or all the talk or role models and so forth. Not that that original context or authorial intent isnt’ itself important as well, but I sometimes think we forget that art can inspire despite itself and its origins, and that the consumption of art isn’t a static process.

The act of reading imbues the art itself with new meaning and that is no bad thing. Certainly we don’t always know why something resonates and sometimes things may seem to resonate for all the wrong reasons.

But all that doesn’t matter. Or rather, it does and it doesn’t.

I want to take that in my stride when talking about art. The relationship between reader and writer is not a simple one. And I want to be pluralistic in my approach. To acknowledge that what inspires another is not the same as what inspires me, and that’s okay.

I often cite the example of The Little Mermaid. It has long be loathed by many feminists as a story where a woman gives up her voice to be with a man.

But that is certainly not the only possible reading of the text[2]. Young woman seeking to escape the kingdom of an egotistical patriarch and carve out her own identity away from him at great personal cost is an equally possible reading. Given what we know of Hans Christian Andersen writing the work, the inspiration for the story likely came from the tragedy of a love that cannot be spoken, one that is very likely gay[3].

We have oft as a fandom, as readers, needed to remind ourselves that it is ok to like problematic things, but what I want to say is a step further than that: It is ok to be inspired by problematic art.

I know it can come across that way, but this is not meant as a backhanded compliment. That bad stories can inspire. That problematic stories can inspire.

I would happily launch into a thousand word treatise into my complex feelings about Hunger Games[4], but it is still heartening to see the Mockingjay pin on the clothes of protesters during the Women’s March. I’m not happy that Leia being rescued is a seeming constant in Star Wars, but I am still personally inspired by the image of her with a blaster. I was moved to tears when watching Donnie Yen fight in Rogue One, even as felt deeply frustrated by a lack of female characters and extras. I would wax lyrical about Batman and how problematic him being a rich man who beats up mentally ill people are, but that doesn’t make his appearance during the Umbrella Revolution any less spectacular.

All created stories are likely problematic to a greater or lesser degree. They are finite and therefore cannot be a facsimile of reality. The act of choosing what to write will necessitate omission. And whilst not all acts of omission are by any means equal, it is inherent to the art form. This is not cited to forgive all shortcomings of any given work, but it’s okay for them to be flawed.

It was a realisation that I found personally liberating, the thought that our icons and iconography can come from flawed sources. I don’t need to curate the source of my inspration. But more than that, the work I create doesn’t have to be flawless. I’m not off the hook, but I don’t have to be perfect.

We can love flawed things[5]. Flawed art can inspire.

Bad art can change the world.

[1] Cloud Atlas is a strange movie. It is ponderously, fascinatingly awful. Discussions of it are often overshadowed by the directors’ decision to put its actors in thick makeup to change their race and gender and age, but there is more to it than that. Little of it is relevant to this specific discussion. Suffice to say the film intercuts between six narratives of different time periods and genres, heavily implying that the same souls are incarnating in different bodies.

[2] Or Disney movie. They are, of course, very different especially in ending. Ana Mardoll provides a very detailed dissection of the problematic and laudable aspects of the Disney film, for example.

[3] There is a lot of ink spilt over the subject and even more conjecture. Many have have concluded that the object of this unrequited passion is his male friend Edvard Collin, thus meaning some do read The Little Mermaid as gay allegory. Despite the genders of the actual protagonists of the story.

[4] The Hunger Games has many, many things in its pages and for all that I love ruthless Katniss with her bow and survival skills, I’m not at all keen on love triangle and the way it draws on the big city vs. small town dynamic. It’s themes lean heavily on the idea that big city folk are all decadent and foppish in contrast to the virtuous salt-of-the-earth small towns. The films especially play up this aesthetic as visual shorthand with eccentric fashions on the city folk. But really, I’m just bitter about the mines being closed.

[5] Within limits and it’s also okay to decide that that new context has stripped the original text of its power.