Movies are Movies

Entertainment - (n) the act of entertaining; agreeable occupation for the mind; diversion; amusement.

Those of a pretentious mind always tend to frustrate me. In all honesty, I try to avoid being lumped into such quarters, but very often it is hard not to whenever you are passionate about anything, as I am passionate about movies.

There are so many pretentious filmmakers, critics, and filmgoers out there that it is hard not to be in a state of constant frustration whenever you are a fan of film. What so many pretentious folk consider what's "artistic" and what's not, is such a thin line that it is a wonder that they ever get any enjoyment out of movies whatsoever. This mindset has me sitting here wondering, what makes a movie "artistic"? I decided to go back to the beginning of this concept, "What is art?"

The official definition of art is," the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance." To put it simpler, art is whatever one person finds emotionally moving or satisfying, or something that has meaning to that person. What's funny, is emotion is often misinterpreted as simply meaning catharsis, or in other words that big weeper moment, but in actuality it means, "any of the feelings of joy, sorrow, fear, hate, love, etc." If this is emotion, and art has all to do with whatever emotionally satisfies a person, then wouldn't that make the spectrum as to what is "artistic" and what isn't a whole heck of a lot bigger?

Very often, the pretentious will disregard a large blockbuster purely because it isn't what they consider to be "artistic". Just because the film is full of explosions and has no real moments that provoke thought, doesn't mean it isn't "artistic". Art, as displayed above, isn't all about provoking thought, while it is included in the definition, so is emotion. There are many emotions, and is joy not one of them? If you find joy watching a film, then has that film not been transformed into a piece of art, regardless as to whether it is Sherlock Holmes or a foreign language-favorite like, A Prophet? This is where the pretentious fall off their high horse, because how can you argue a case such as this. Sure, you can not enjoy the big blockbusters, but why try and discredit the rest of us filmgoers by claiming we have no tastes in regards to movies purely because we enjoy something that you find deplorable?

I'm just going to go back to how I started this in talking about entertainment. Entertainment is anything that is, "an agreeable occupation of the mind." What is agreeable to one might not be agreeable to the other, so if I happen to find a blockbuster entertaining and coincidentally justify it as a piece of art, this does not mean that these are the only films in which I like, it just means that for the duration of that film I found the occupation of that film agreeable, as I very often do with what the pretentious tend to deem more "artistic" fare. So what is my point? Is that movies are movies, they are what they are and at the end of the day it doesn't matter what someone else thinks is "artistic" or not, purely what you think is "artistic" or not, and hopefully you will find some like-minded people to share those views.