Ranting about art and whether or not it is a reflection of society

Dear readers,

There has been something vibrating through the depths of my mind today. I always hear the term that "art is a reflection of society" and I wanted to say I disagree.

More accurately, I would agree if there was a modifier so that we could discuss the statement with out discussing all art. I would like to argue that society can be a reflection of our art as well as our art reflecting our society with neither being mutually exclusive or necessary in the discussion of a definition.

My main point of disagreement is that an issue may not necessarily have been discussed before the art piece debuted. For example, Mae West was addressing issues about homosexuality in the ninety twenties Broadway scene and is considered the reason for the Wales Padlock Law. From this we can gather that the art is not necessarily a reflection of society but a critique of social practices which is part of changing the public opinion and causing the society to change and reflect the art.

My next point of disagreement comes off the last point. I think the reason why we try to define art as such is because it is easy. Defining art as a reflection of society does not take much discussion on the part of any person discussing the topic. It is a simple categorization that is easy to justify but that doesn't make it right; in fact I would say that that is part of what makes it wrong.

Art is not easy to categorize because a lot of art is not made to fit firmly into a category. For example, today my roommate and I finished our journey through Bioshock: Infinite and as the credits rolled he looked at me and asked "so what genre do you think that was?". The obvious answer is, of course, first person shooter. However, as Ken Levine once pointed out, its kind of silly to categorize a game based on its camera angle. When you think about it he is completely right: Would you put Call of Duty next to Bioshock or Bioshock: Infinite?

So what category is Bioshock: Infinite? It is a drama, to an extent it is a tragedy and to another extent yet it was a science fiction adventure. Of course it was about none of that because art contains subtext. That subtext is why you cannot easily categorize any form of art.

With that we return to the question: Is art a reflection of society? Not strictly, while society can be reflected in the art we make, our art is often reflected in our society. We shoot ourselves in the foot trying to categorize some things that we take it too far and try categorize a subject that is too broad such as art. What people who say those words don't get is that any definition you make for art is lacking. No matter how encompassing you make your definition you will be forgetting something and you will have to either defend your definition or extend it.

So, you may ask, why have I wasted your time? I'm just trying to get this off my chest before finals are done to all those people who tell me that art is "simply just" something. Art is neither "simply" or "just" something but Fucking Obnoxious Things are both those. So perhaps one should decide if they FOT or art is a reflection of society.

Now I'm just ranting,

Mike Hand