Let’s talk about art, and let’s start with music. When I was doing a lot of dating, a question that often came up was what sort of music I liked. Often - and still to this day if you catch me in the right mood - my answer would be “I like to listen to terrible music.” This is an answer that of course is designed to be funny and sarcastic. An asshole answer. But, like many asshole answers, it hides a sort of gleaming truth. The fact is, I discovered long ago that most of the music I like - most of the music I really like - is stuff that most other people would find pretty unlistenable. Terrible, even. In the beginning, when people asked, I focused on music that I sorta liked, that I knew was palatable to most people. I like Paul Simon, for example. Saw him in concert and he was amazing. I like Madonna. I like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
But if you told me that I never again could listen to Madonna, I wouldn’t really be that sad. Madonna is music I listen to when somebody else puts it on. When it’s on at the gym or in the grocery store. When I’m alone, in my quiet moments when I want something that I and I alone will listen to, I listen to terrible music. I listen to Freezepop. I listen to 8-bit chiptune versions of old 80s hits. I listen to the Goonies soundtrack on repeat. I listen to Blue Man Group and They Might Be Giants. And that’s just the more normal stuff. I listen to people playing bells in pentatonic harmonies. I listen to a webcomic writer who has a side gig writing intentionally bad rap music that he goes out of his way to beg you not to listen to. I listen to video game soundtracks. I listen to crap. If you had to sit and listen to my musical catalog, you would probably conclude 2 things: 1) I might be insane, and 2) please don’t do that again.
Smash cut to the last 4 days, where I’ve been replaying a video game that I consider one of the best, if not the best video games of all time. It’s called Star Control: Origins. For the moment, it doesn’t matter much what it’s about. It’s a sequel to what’s widely considered one of the finest games of all time, Star Control 2, which came out 25 years ago and I played in high school. Star Control: Origins (SCO) is, in short, sublime. It is well-paced. Comedic. Entertaining. Well put-together. It flows naturally from story-beat to story-beat like a well-written science fiction novel. It has some fun game mechanics and some surprises. It is perfect? No, of course not. It has occasional typos and game bugs now and again. Parts in the middle drag a bit. Some of the bonus content is a little soft. It gets too easy near the end. And yet, if I were trapped on a desert island with only one game, this is the one I would take.
Thing is: I’m pretty much the only one. Oh, there are people that like SCO well enough. It has about a 60% review rating on Steam. One famous critic gave it the 4th best game of 2018. But mostly it was met, commercially and critically, with a collective yawn. It didn’t sell all that well. It ended up mired in this weird legal controversy I won’t go into. And it sat in the shadow of its predecessor, which was, as I mentioned, a game that would sometimes get mentioned in top 10 lists of best video games of all time. Nobody is clamoring for a sequel.
Here’s a little secret: I think SCO is better than the old version. Sure, Star Control 2 is a classic. I had lots of great hours with it. But it’s showing its age. First of all the technical details are limiting. The art is very, very old. The music is 1980s era video game music. The dialog is all told in text. You can’t speed the text up. The game is paced the way games of that era were paced: which is to say, slow. Games back then were expensive and were measured on the number of hours of gameplay they provided. The first 2 hours of the game all you do is run around and collect minerals. Yes, there’s some amazing writing. Yes, the world feels alive. But it takes a long time to get there, by modern standards. So, yeah: the modern one is just way better.
To put this in context for those of you not up on video games, I just tried to convince you that The Monkees are better, musically, than The Beatles.
So here’s the thing I finally learned about art, and beauty: it really, truly is in the eye of the beholder. Now, I do think there is such a thing as bad art, or artlessness. There is art - a lot of it, really - which is so lacking in skill, or message, that nobody would seriously consider it to be good. And of course, there is some art which rises to a level that few seriously question its quality. (a la the Beatles, or Shakespeare). But there is a wide, vast gulf in between of art which speaks to some people, but in a really, really uneven way.
I think Clue (the Movie) is superior filmcraft to Gone With The Wind.
I think the filmmakers behind Marble Hornets, the YouTube series, are better than the ones behind the movie It.
I like Star Trek: The Next Generation better than 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I think the Mona Lisa is honestly kinda boring, art-wise.
And, yes, I like The Monkees better than The Beatles.
And I’m OK with that.