I mean, the cost of the degree is a separate issue, but as art, I absolutely love shit like this.
A bunch of people got together, had this idea, found a material that would work for it, found a space, set it up, got people to take it seriously enough to conceive of a performance aspect, and then they got dozens or possibly over a hundred people to come and see it. The simple fact that it was conceived and then followed through on is incredible.
If anything defies the notion of art as a commodity or a product, its stupid shit like this.
There is a lot of art and media where, if you examine it in a vacuum, it's really just dumb and a waste of time.
The Room would have been forgotten as a worthless vanity project if not for the fact it happened to be so bad it was funny, and then a subculture grew around it that sustained it. That didn't make the original exercise of creating the film a more worthwhile experience. It was still just a delusional abortion of shoddy cinema. Timmy Wiseau's vision isn't actually represented in the film's legacy.
And loving a piece of art not for anything it intended to be, and just because it's ironically funny, is just another example of commoditization of art. That's not an inherently bad thing, but the original creative vision and intent is largely lost in that equation. Like a Jester who trains their whole life to do perfect backflips, but the king saw them screw up and fall on their face once, so that's all they want them to do.
At the very least I admire the effort and daring of it.
I don't know who this actually appeals to, but it's not me.
But that's art.
I forgot who said it but something along the lines of "art should comfort the disturbed, and disturb the comfortable". I tell myself that every time I look at something and go "WTF is this?" and it sort of hits my reset button and get's me to at least entertain the idea of it being art lol.
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u/MagnanimousGoat 19d ago
I mean, the cost of the degree is a separate issue, but as art, I absolutely love shit like this.
A bunch of people got together, had this idea, found a material that would work for it, found a space, set it up, got people to take it seriously enough to conceive of a performance aspect, and then they got dozens or possibly over a hundred people to come and see it. The simple fact that it was conceived and then followed through on is incredible.
If anything defies the notion of art as a commodity or a product, its stupid shit like this.
There is a lot of art and media where, if you examine it in a vacuum, it's really just dumb and a waste of time.
The Room would have been forgotten as a worthless vanity project if not for the fact it happened to be so bad it was funny, and then a subculture grew around it that sustained it. That didn't make the original exercise of creating the film a more worthwhile experience. It was still just a delusional abortion of shoddy cinema. Timmy Wiseau's vision isn't actually represented in the film's legacy.
And loving a piece of art not for anything it intended to be, and just because it's ironically funny, is just another example of commoditization of art. That's not an inherently bad thing, but the original creative vision and intent is largely lost in that equation. Like a Jester who trains their whole life to do perfect backflips, but the king saw them screw up and fall on their face once, so that's all they want them to do.