Phoebe Roberts

I like to say I try not to be an art snob. I’m sure people have laughed at me for that, as unfortunately I have a problem with coming off as snobby in life in general. But what I mean by that is that I try to judge art by its own merits, rather than by features that are measures of nature rather than quality. Genre, medium, and audience all create their own standards, and I make an effort to judge a piece by the standards it was designed to exist within. I’m not perfect about this; unfortunately I have my biases. I have zero interest in gross-out comedies, for example, and would be hard pressed to believe you can create a truly artful example of one. But I hate when people say that something is automatically a lesser piece of art just because it was, for example, aimed at children, or because it’s in a particular form. I think you can make powerful and technically accomplished macaroni art if you do it right.

By that same token, I try not to deify any particular form. I don’t think this is a big problem for most people or for most art forms, but occasionally you get somebody who sticks up for a much-maligned form by talking about it as if it has an inherent value that it automatically grants to any work in that medium. The best example I can think of that is fan fiction. Fan fiction is so often an so unfairly a whipping boy that a lot of people say its inherent populist and community-building features are automatically elevating. Personally I think it’s possible to both approve of the spirit a concept fosters even if you don’t really like the resulting examples it generates. I love that fan fiction has things like a lower barrier to creativity and a way of inspiring people to personal expression, but honestly I don’t really have the taste for the kinds of fanwork that avenue tends to produce. But I think you need to be able to separate quality from personal taste. Something can be good even if you don’t like it, and you can like something that isn’t good.

Art, man. It’s complicated.