There is an ugly flipside to all our talk in these posts about reclaiming the culture. And that is the sad fact that many people who make an attempt to create a culture or a work of art from a Catholic perspective are somehow dishonest about it. This is a difficult phenomenon to describe, so bear with me.
I have been to Catholic seminaries and retreat centers where, whether the mood is liberal or traditionalist, things are poorly maintained. The roof is leaking, the heat doesn’t work right, trash is piled up in places, bugs are crawling on walls, and to look around you you’d think that you were in a meth-lab infested trailer park. There is a neglect that is allowed to grow like a cancer. Usually the retreat attendees or the seminarians don’t complain. But something is icky.
In addition, there are Catholic media outlets that broadcast programming that’s not even up to amateur levels. One apostolate that specializes in audio material allows the audio they distribute to be occasionally inaudible or so poorly edited that a recorded speech will simply stop before it’s finished, leaving the listener hanging when the tape ends, so to speak. Now, I can understand an apostolate that specializes in evangelizing through audio recordings might have poor graphic design or cheap packaging, but if all you do is audio, why can’t you get the audio right?
And my company, the Theater of the Word Incorporated, does drama. It’s no secret that most Catholic or Christian drama companies do horrible work, ponderous, self-congratulatory, boring. Why is this?
I think it’s because it’s a ghetto out there. We really are in a meth-lab infested trailer park. Because the culture at large is so secular, and increasingly so anti-Christian, the market for the cultural work Christians do is more and more limited to the select few, the true believers, the fringe. So our artists end up working in a vacuum, where the market that exists for their work is a contrived one; and the patrons of Catholic art so forgiving and desperate that they take very literally Chesterton’s quip that a thing worth doing is worth doing badly – even though obviously a thing done badly is not worth patronizing, whether it be a book, a play, or a movie. If, for example, there were a real market for Catholic audio material, a company that put out shoddy work would be drummed out of business both by competing companies and by the public’s unwillingness to endure shoddy work. Since the market is just the ghetto, the persecuted few who are happy for whatever crumbs they can gather, such a situation can continue.
Therefore Catholic artists suffer from the same fate as secular “high artists”. A secular “high artist” is one who produces art for a contrived market such as the dilettantes who claim to admire abstract painting. We all know that “high art” is sterile because it isn’t popular, nor will it deign to be. Likewise, since what passes for Catholic art is not popular, our artists never face the music. They too adopt a certain disregard for what they do, and it shows up in neglect. They never have to confront the reality of what real people really want in art, or even in entertainment. And so they put out stuff that’s simply bad.
And why do we put up with this? Bad Catholic drama or music or television should be condemned as much as bad Catholic architecture, a thing people are willing to notice and complain about. Why should we not build shopping-mall churches? Because we’re doing it for the Lord, and we should be doing our best. Why should we not produce bad Catholic stories and poems and plays and movies and sculpture? For the same reason.
But the problem is once you start a downward spiral, it’s hard to break free. Whatever came first, we now have parishes that won’t pay what it costs to book a good theatrical performance because they don’t value the quality of a good theatrical performance because the producers themselves don’t value the quality, and even if they did they might not be able to afford to produce it for a market that won’t pay for it. Much of the bad Catholic cultural material that’s out there is free, and you get what you pay for; you can also only realistically give as much as you get paid for – so the neglect continues and festers, with both producers and consumers to blame.
Is there a way out? There is, and it’s they key to the new evangelization. People are still people, and they still respond to good art. The market has languished, but the need is still there and the demand may yet return, if both the producers and the consumers, the actors and the audience, the artists and the patrons, wake up to the need for the good, the beautiful, and the true, not the shoddy, the trashy, and the contrived – and demand the seriousness of commitment on both ends that will produce it – a seriousness usually measured by money.
Indeed, while the love of money may be the root of all evil, the disdain for money is akin to a Gnostic revulsion at the flesh. We will know that there’s a revival of Catholic culture when producers start spending time and money to produce good material, and patrons start spending time and money to enjoy it.
In short, it’s time for the poor mouthing to end – on both ends.
One need only read Exodus to see how best our best should be.
We need to get back to a love for true craft. The initial reason, for instance, that I do not like the paintings of Jackson Pollock is not because they are abstract but because he didn’t give a damn about permanence or craft. He just flung paint on unprimed canvas, with nary a thought about ‘fat over lean’ or anything.
Now just a few generations later and the museums already have the headache of keeping his work from falling apart, while encaustic work from before the time of Christ is still in pretty good shape. There is no way that one can restore such work of Pollock either, since it’s just splattered chaos. Where does the restorer begin?
God seemed to think the best quality craftsmanship was very essential for those led by Moses – not food, not comfort, but first building the temple.
Kevin, check out Ryan Hannigan’s art in the current issue of Dappled Things. You’ll feel better.
Same thing for liturgical music. Hymns selected from “approved” music books which are musically unsingable except by the female soprano who loves the “trills” and long notes and up and down the scale with no real rhythems anyone can follow. No one is singing along, some even try to read the music, but fail, and only ones singng are small choirs and the female soprano singing from the pulpit.
Abstract are is yesterday’s battle. The assumption here seems to be that “good” or “true” art must be representational. That produces whole square miles of bad figuration with a pious slant. A revival of Catholic culture is not the same thing as a revival of Sienese painting or sulpician imagery. The first is, alas, impossible and the second a saccharine nightmare. Why does understanding of the term “Catholic culture” have to have to imply visual art? Does it not have more to do with our prayer lives, with a return to fasting, to a sense of the sacred in our liturgy?
Yeah, I think that’s right. I also think that Christians in general shrank from the arts and the academy in the last century, and there is high skepticism amongst the brethern about art. I’ve noticed non-Catholic Chrisitians are afraid to do any art without some Scriptural text in it (except photography), while the Catholics do seem to venture a little further. We’re doing our second Sacred Arts Show in Lincoln, and the Lord’s hand seems to be on it. http://www.sacredartshow.com.
Also, our parish St. Theresa’s, did an astonishingly good job of Theresa’s Joan of Arc, including an original score and an original prologue. Most Chrsitian art is just preaching, but this stuff was taking risks and finding beauty.
Maureen, I didn’t see any complaint about the kind of art, but about its lack of quality. And Kevin mentions all sorts of media; his own happens to be drama. As Paul shows with Pollock’s stuff, however, the situation is not confined to Catholic art; it’s universal. I agree. The meth-lab trailer park is the culture at large, not just the Catholic one.
By the way, Kevin, I hope this is not too tacky, but can’t we take up a special collection or something to buy EWTN some films made *after* 1940? What’s on is Maureen’s saccharine nightmare rendered in film and proof that at least in this particular medium, older is very rarely better.
We will know that there’s a revival of Catholic culture when producers start spending time and money to produce good material, and patrons start spending time and money to enjoy it.
Why all this junk-mail commentary? Hey, Kevin O’Brien, maybe you guys should get a better robo spam filter to verify there are human beings writing these comments.
Just a thought!
I can understand an apostolate that specializes in evangelizing through audio recordings might have poor graphic design or cheap packaging, but if all you do is audio
These demand deposits usually account for a much larger part of the money supply than currency. Bank money is intangible and exists only in the form of various bank records.[url=http://www.facebookappsfree.com/]Facebook apps[/url]
I received 1 st mortgage loans when I was a teenager and it aided my business a lot. Nevertheless, I require the short term loan again.