The current value of American art to its curators is to be ranked and categorized for "Best of the Year" consideration, to find its way into a gallery or museum or to "go viral." We have made art a competition. This is not true, though it is permitted. The last time I saw my roommate from my freshman year, we discussed 2014's Games of the Year, a tradition we've reduced in scope since 2010. We came to concordance upon Blizzard's collectible card game "Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft," a game we've each played for countless hours. Rather than discuss its nuances or celebrate our other favorites, he proceeded to list off the year's releases and determined whether or not we had enjoyed each before we parted.
This weekend, I saw Studio Ghibli's "The Wind Rises," the conclusion to a quest to watch every film by the acclaimed animation studio. It was the film I had expected; that is to say, it brought me greater joy and deeper sorrow than I could have imagined. Little could be said that would be enough for this love story about the power of beauty. Yet I then swiftly found myself escaping acquaintances and already discussing why it hadn't won "Best Animated Feature" and the prospected chances of Isao Takahata's beautiful "The Tale of the Princess Kaguya" for this year's Academy Awards.
Is this art? To idly discuss how our tastemakers will evaluate the life stories and myths of our heroes? To chart against other valuable expression, as every year-end list demands? And does that mean you'll drag your feet to play "80 Days" or “Style Savvy: Trendsetters" because they're not making these placements? Because the fact that “Style Savvy" might be inferior to 2012 contemporaries like "Journey" or "The Walking Dead" doesn't relate to the fact that it's a fantastic life sim and fashion game, unlike any other.
The truest problem of this kind of ranking is found in the discussion of this year's Academy Awards and the "Selma snub." The conversation is a larger act of erasure than the nominations themselves. Nominating DuVerney for best director or Oyelowo for best actor would not change the fact that American film audiences have ignored a black perspective in 2014. Films like "Belle," "Top Five," "Dear White People" (playing this weekend at WUD Film's Marquee) and "Snowpiercer" have been brushed aside to make "Selma" the only film representative of people of color.
Art consumption culture allows those authors not seeking to win awards to slip into obscurity. Our obsessive ranking and canonizing leaves us rereading "The Great Gatsby" six thousand times rather than celebrating 21st century fiction. And, worse, when we do pay attention to modern art, we place more value on our own taste response than the content of the art itself. When we do this, we stifle the expansion of our understanding of human experience and we smother what can only be seen if it winds up on a curator's list of "hidden gems."
This problem is exacerbated in video games because they come in so many forms. If you really want to test your tolerance for "ranking culture" (as well as your own patience), take some time to listen to the Giant Bombcast's Game of the Year deliberations. Every year they've catalogued the process in podcast form; determining a Top 10 and an eventual Game of the Year has never taken less than three hours, forcing discussions that compare the value of "Animal Crossing" and "BioShock."
It's insanity. The end list is a mess of what was argued for well and what beat out its competitors in the same "category;" "Mario Kart 8" may knock "Super Smash Bros." off the list because they're both by Nintendo, reducing hundreds of people's isolated work to one identity and ignoring the fact that the two games are alike in multiplayer mustached plumbers alone. This is how it's done everywhere that considers accolades to be worth a conversation rather than anonymous voting, the populist decision almost always trumping that with a real identity. As someone who's participated in similar deliberations and made his own Top 10 list, I can state that the cutoff is arbitrary and the final decisions are almost always a bit embarrassing two years later.
Every week, too many games, movies and albums to play them all. This is why reviews and accolades began; to filter these down to a manageable sum of content. But it's come to define the way we approach art. So what I'm asking for is the following: Go buy a game like "The Sims 4," "Deadly Premonition," "Mini Metro" or any other game that is missing curators' wrap ups. Go see "Inherent Vice" while it's still in Madison. And, please, spend more time considering every aspect of the art you celebrate other than "Do I like this? Would it make my Top 10?"
