ProjectTrinity said:
I couldn't quite figure out if I agreed with you completely or disagreed vehemently. If possible, could you expand on said elitism? Not trying for snark; genuinely curious.
I'm a lit studies major, so my general opinion of academic elitism comes from my experiences in that field. Basically, the academic community has the really narrow definition of what is and isn't literature. For example, anything that you could easily attach a genre to - like mystery, fantasy, or science fiction - goes right out without any consideration. As if that wasn't enough, a lot of them start throwing out things that use anything vaguely resembling a formula to such an extent that if it isn't a character centered story about people who do absolutely nothing but discuss current political and social issues, it can't be considered real literature. The worst of them go so far as to throw out things that make any sense and will only consider the stuff by people like T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Henry "I don't know the first thing about motherfucking good sentence structure" James as worthy of reading. While at least the first two had a few good works that I did enjoy, my disagreement is that not all art has to imitate that to be art.
My question is this: Why can't fantasy and science fiction have the same literary merit as Victor Hugo, or Charles Dickens? I ask this question expecting those I ask to set aside whether or not they actually think any of what's currently out there is and just consider why it can't? Or how about children's work? Why does writing for children automatically mean that your work can't be as good as stuff meant for older audiences? Or, like the case of this review, why must we assume a supernatural romance aimed at teenage girls automatically has to be as bad as Twilight?
The simple answer I give to these questions is there is no reason why it should be so and I argue that we really have to stop thinking like that because it's hurting art.
Think for a second about how many people on this site actually argue vehemently that video games shouldn't be considered art because when you say art, they think that art has to be, as the Extra Credits crew so wonderfully said, a "French arthouse" production. The pretension and elitism of the academic community hurting the evolution of art and storytelling by insulting and talking down to the "average person" for not being able to see the "brilliance" of what it chooses to hold up and the reaction of most people to this insult is to shun anything that even remotely approaches that definition, despite the fact that a lot of what the academics hold up can make for good storytelling and artistic elements when done properly.
So that's what I mean.
