Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
RECENTLY, I went to see the film The Lives of Others. I found myself engrossed by the story, set in the days of the GDR, of a Stasi spy who gradually comes to sympathise with the writer whose life he is shadowing.
Having been moved in a way that almost never happens in my local cinema, I was eager to recommend the film to friends.
It was one of those rare moments when you wish that everyone you knew had read a book or seen a play or a film, so that you can talk to them about it. You feel like you’re going to burst if you bump into anyone you really like and they haven’t shared that same experience.
I started to phone friends. “Listen you’ve got to go to see The Lives of Others. You’ll really enjoy it... no, not enjoy... you won’t enjoy it... well, you sort of will, but not in an enjoy sort of a way... it’s moving... not in a mawkish way... but a good way... thought-provoking, but not in a dry way... oh, please go to see it – it’s a very good film.”
I realised with a sense of dismay that our vocabulary for recommending a work of art is incredibly impoverished. There is no word to describe that complex, thrilling feeling that a great piece of work gives you. Too often, I find myself saying, “It’s not something you’ll enjoy,” as though “enjoy” is the only possible rewarding experience that a piece of art offers.
We know there are other, richer responses. We know those moments when a work of art gives us them. It’s just we lack the words to capture that feeling.
It is very hard to find any cinema that doesn’t just offer the immediate thrills of chases and shootouts, kissing and weeping. How can it be otherwise when every film is tested before it is allowed into a cinema to see how much “fun” a test audience says it offers?
It is not just in the cinema. More than ever before, the word “fun” has slipped into our everyday vocabulary. We are all learning to impersonate the Californian teenager who is the contemporary role model for the world.
“How was your weekend?” “Oh, yeah – fun.” “How was the meal?” “Yeah, fun.” “How was the opera?” “Fun.” After all, if you’re not having “fun”, what kind of sad loser are you?
Increasingly, aspects of our lives that were never thought to be “fun” have been redesigned to bring them into line with this ruling concept.
Restaurants have always been places that stimulate and satisfy the palate. But more and more of them have become leisure experiences.
While the Happy Meal and the plastic giveaways dominate one end of the market, those that aspire to a classier image frequently offer the costumed staff and themed merchandising.
News wants to be fun. Documentaries want to be fun. The neologism “info-tainment” may sound ridiculous but it is a real concept. And it has changed our broadcast and print media over the last decade.
But can we honestly say that any of the greatest achievements of western culture are “fun”? King Lear or Anna Karenina, the Ring cycle or Crime and Punishment – it is not possible to describe them as “enjoyable” in any simple sense of the word.
They are stern, uncompromising, engrossing. In places, they are hard work.
Even work that offers a different world-view, a world-view that arguably offers more reconciliation and hope – Cosi Fan Tutti or Twelfth Night, say – can’t really be best described as fun.
And yet so many of the programmers, commissioners and funders – swimming as they are in our culture of perpetual enjoyment – seem nervous to offer anything that strays away too far from the world of “fun”.
“Come and slide down a great big slide in an art gallery,” they cry. Or “Look – we’ve rewritten Wordsworth in rap because he’s just not fun enough.”
The art of the communal spectacle, the site-specific piece, circuses and fireworks – all of these are much in favour with the arts funders and programmers.
They seem to offer a way out of the stuffy old buildings – the libraries, museums, galleries, theatres – that are blamed for excluding so many in an increasingly diverse society.
I don’t doubt that there is a shred of truth in this argument. But doesn’t much of this work just continue the oppressive sense of “fun and nothing but fun” that dominates our lives?
I have to confess something at this stage. These thoughts are not entirely my own. I’ve been thinking about this because last week I had a discussion with a group of teenagers involved in a youth-theatre project. Why did they get involved? I asked. What did performing plays offer them that nothing else could? There was silence for a moment and then a young man – about 16 – said: “I do this because everywhere else all I’m offered is fun. This is the only place where I can experience something that offers me a different experience.”
The simplicity, eloquence and intelligence of that young man blew me away.
If that is the future, we can expect great things of the artists of tomorrow. We can expect an art that isn’t fun – and what a relief that will be.
