The question, “what is art and what is not?” Has been one I’ve thought about on occasion. Not so much that its consumed my life, and not too little that I struggled to come up with an answer before writing this. In fact I found my answer to that question before I even sat down to write this. When thinking of art one might think of a painting or a drawing or something along those lines. However I’m sure if somebody were to ask you if films were art you would say yes. If somebody asked you if TV Shows were art you might be more hesitant but still say yes. But if I asked you, do you think the WWE is art? You most likely say no and think less of me because I even mentioned the WWE. But I argue that the WWE is art. I say this because when you think about it, is the WWE not a play? Actors on a stage creating a story with props and an audience. The only difference is that the story involves many more sweaty muscular men then something like Romeo and Juliet. One might then bring up the issue of the quality of art. Would you really say that a drawing made by a 5 year old is in the same category as the Mona Lisa? Yes. I would. The conclusion I mentioned earlier, the one I came to before writing this, is that everything is art. It’s just that not all art is good.

Whenever discussing shows or books or comics I see people say that a thing they personally dislike is not considered art. I jokingly say that I feel the same but in reality I don’t. The idea of a certain artforms being viewed as lesser is common amongst people I’ve met. Kristina Maija Peterson of the website Terra Kind Studio writes, “Generally Speaking, High art refers to painting, sculpture and music, and the study of these disciplines. Art that is classified as high art is made to carry a deeper meaning than what appears on the surface.” (Peterson) She also writes soon after that low art, “was to differentiate between classical methods of making art and textile art.”(Peterson) If we use these definitions then that leaves out many very prevalent artforms from being considered high art. Which is why I’m not personally fond of the terms in the first place. Its all just Art. It’s very common for people who read comics to be asked, “why don’t you read real books?” Real books. People don’t consider comics to be books. They are lesser because they are not comprised purely of words. The audience of these lower artforms are usually people who are considered to be maladjusted or simply not developed. Children and man babies read comics, Only smelly basement dwellers play video games, etc. These ideas have thankfully been going out of fashion but for a good while this was the Consensus. The themes of these stories are assumed to be juvenile as well. Good guys beat bad guys, justice always prevails etc.

With the label of being low art there comes the idea that the piece of art cannot say anything meaningful. However These mediums can deliver messages just as well as high art can. I believe that these forms of low art work even better than high art actually. Low art is usually more widespread which means greater access to the messages they’re trying to deliver.

I personally know that these lower artforms have taught me. For example, video games are seen as a lower artform. But it is one of these video games that made me think about life in a whole new way. In Suda 51’s Killer7 you play as a group named the Smith Syndicate, made up of 7 assassins that all share the same body your goal is to kill the leaders of a terrorist organization and work your way up to it’s leader to save the world from falling into war. The odd thing about Killer7 however is that the game technically takes place in a Utopia. The first cutscene of the game states that in this timeline world peace was achieved when every nation on earth decided to fire their nukes into the sky and have them all explode to rid the world of nuclear weaponry. However as you can tell from the synopsis I gave, conflict still exists. That’s the point of the game. On the surface it seems to be an examination of Japanese and american relations but the message of the game is Simple. Utopia is unachievable. Conflict is the predetermined path of humanity and we will wage war and murder each other for all eternity. It’s bleak, it’s dark, but the story is a sort of black comedy in how absurd it is. So I like it.