Author: Hunter (---.uu.net)
Date: 05-27-2004 22:23
Hi Jonathan,
I haven't forgot about you. I have been thinking about this stuff. I read a godawful lot of Kuspit's The End of Art, poked around in the Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, and read a bit from a few other sources. I also have that list of authors you gave me. Thanks for that, but one thing at a time!
First, I think you've written a very interesting collection of articles. I could write quite a lot in response, but I haven't had the time to do that, so maybe I can write a little.
Cutting right to the heart of the matter, I'm just not convinced that playing an rpg is art. Maybe in the postmodern sense where everyone is an artist, roleplayers are artists practicing their art; but I don't see it. Even as performance, it's weak. Of course, I think, most so-called performance art is weak. A woman decides to sit naked in a gallery space for a week. That's her performance. She calls it art and the braindead postart-driven fine art community gives her an award for doing that. Postart is Kuspit's name for the block of art that followed Modernism. He refers a lot to Kapsow's Happenings and similar conceptual weirdness, basing a lot of it on Duchamp's thinking, while admitting that the real art is probably in films. The woman sitting nude in a gallery space... I didn't make that up. I read about it in ArtNews a few months ago. If I were less lazy, I would provide more documentation. Anyway, if you're using such low standards for art, then yeah, any table of 14-year-olds rolling d20's to slay orcs and dragons will qualify as a group of budding young artists giving a performance. I'm not buying it, not entirely.
I had the pleasure to see the performance of a woman who spent her life learning classical Mudra Dance, part of the Art of Bharatnatyam from India. Now THAT was a performance. First, the poses and movements were extremely graceful. Then, nearly every associated movement, including a complex system of hand signals and even facial expression and movements of the eyes have a meaning. That "dance language" is then used to tell stories. This woman dedicated her life to that art, and her performance was exquisite. Of course, her performance is based on tradition, so in innovation-crazy Western culture, you could say her technique was excellent, but her performance was completely unoriginal. Still, the performance was amazing. By comparison, rpg players are pathetic dilettantes.
Now, that last bit was harsh, but roleplaying is just a hobby, after all. Real art requires real commitment. You hold the position that roleplaying is art. I think, usually it's not... But it could be. I see your position as a point of aspiration for serious players, possibly more applicable to "In" players than "Out" players. The problem is not with the players, I think, but with the games. "In" players tend to shun system. This leaves them free to concentrate on the performance. I recall John Morrow once claiming that when he's in character, he forgets to spend resources or do other game-related things because being in character requires his full attention. I've experimented enough with the Immersion thing to know it takes a lot of effort, so I don't doubt him. Yet, the mechanics of most rpgs demand that the player step out. The player has to throw dice, manage resources, etc. in order to determine the outcome of events. The player then has to think about strategies, separate what he wants to do from what he thinks the character would do in that situation. All of this puts the player more in the mindset of a player playing a game than an artist giving a performance. But you've probably thought through most of that, and will deal with it in your own games.
Thanks for the articles,
Hunter
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