Higher and lower pleasures
I used to think that talk about more sophisticated forms of art providing “higher forms of pleasure” was mere pretentious, but meditation has shifted my view here by making me more conscious of how experience operates.
Art can do two things. It can provide immediate pleasure. This is all that “disposable ” entertainment provides.
Or it can shape the way you can make sense of the world. For example, it can provide you with a greater sense of purpose, that allows you to push through obstacles with less suffering. As an example, let’s suppose you watch an inspirational story about someone who grinds at work (such as the Pursuit of Happiness). Perhaps before you watch it, when you’re at work, every few minutes you think, “I hate my job, life is suffering, someone please shoot me”. Perhaps after that your work becomes meaningful and you no longer are pulled down by such thoughts.
Another example: there is a scene in American Beauty where Rick Fitts calls a scene with a plastic bag floating “the most beautiful thing in the world”. We can imagine that this teaches someone to appreciate beauty in the everyday.
Over a longer period of time, you’d expect to increase your utility more by watching something that positively transforms the way that you experience the world than something that just provides immediate pleasure.
(This post is in response to the Astral Codex Ten post Friendly And Hostile Analogies For Taste).
One of my favorite banjo solos is in this video: (Gimme Some of That) Ol’ Atonal Music—Merle Hazard feat. Alison Brown . It’s extremely relevant to the post, as well—making the point that there are multiple levels to art appreciation. The video makes the distiction between emotion and thinking, or heart and brain, but your distinction about timeframes and types of impact (immediate pleasure vs changing/improving future interpretations of experiences) is valid as well.
That said, I’m not sure that it’s the art which contains the differences, so much as the audience and what someone is putting into the experience of the art. Ok, both—some art supports more layers than others.
I like this framing.
An alternative framing, which I think is also part of the answer is that some art is supposed to hit a very large audience and give each a small amount of utility, and other art is supposed to hit a smaller, more specialized, audience very hard. This framing explains things like traditional daytime TV, stuff that no one really loves but a large number of bored people find kind of unobjectionable. And how that is different from the more specialist TV you might actually look forward to an episode off but might hit a smaller audience.
(Obviously some things can hit a big audience and be good, and others can be bad on both counts. But the interesting quadrants two compare are the other two).
Given how art is produced, I do not think there necessarily needs to be such a strong divide. Can’t think of a form of art that cannot combine High and Low pleasures in one continuous piece, with even a small modicum of effort from the artist, because peppering a High Pleasure piece with a dash of Low Pleasure is not particularly difficult. The reverse is harder, but doable as well.
Some examples of such combinations:
an epic fantasy/sci-fi movie that lures the viewer in through Low Pleasure gratification of cool special effects and action sequences, but builds up to High Pleasure of philosophical introspection (DUNE is a good example, but Gladiator is possibly better)
A dance performance that combines the Low Pleasure of the sheer eroticism (or even straight up pornography) of a fit human body with the High Pleasure of watching an outstandingly complex display of emotion through movement
a painting of a battle, that on the surface simply titillates through a blatant display of interesting violence, but also inspires deeper feelings of patriotism, moral introspection, and the awe at the depth of history and the indomitable nature of the human spirit.
I feel like there is a tendency to rather snobbishly assume that Respectable Art should be entirely devoid of Low Pleasures, and thus remain an acquired taste that only the patient, relatively idle, and well educated can get into. As if it was supposed to be hard to like at first, to dissuade “casuals” and thus gatekeep it for the snobs.