True Art Is Incomprehensible: Difference between revisions

* ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]''. As [[Arthur C. Clarke]] put it, if anyone came out of the theater understanding everything that had happened, the filmmakers failed at their job.

* The soundtrack of ''[[Coraline (animation)|Coraline]]''. Much of it is composed of [[Foreign Sounding Gibberish]], yet everybody is yelling for an Oscar for it.

* The indie film ''The Artist's Circle'' pokes fun at this trope. The artist pounds a long steel rod into the floor of a warehouse, and critics flock to discuss its inner meaning. As the discussion continues, the artist keeps working on his "masterpiece", until the critics are completely encircled in upright rods like a cage. The artist then walks away.

* In [[Dreamworks Animation]]' ''[[How to Train Your Dragon (animation)|How to Train Your Dragon]]'', there is a scene where Hiccup draws Toothless in the sand while Toothless himself watches. After a short second, Toothless pulls a branch and begins his own sand drawing, which is an obscure mesh of lines that seem to have no real pattern. When Hiccup, who had been sitting in the center of this, stepped on one of the lines, Toothless would growl at him. Since this leads to {{spoiler|Hiccup touching Toothless for the first time}}, we're never treated to what this piece was supposed to be.

** Joyce's ''[[Ulysses]]'' is notoriously inaccessible, but deserves a special mention simply for the last chapter: eight sentences, though arguably not real sentences because of the lack of punctuation, spanning well over 50 pages and 4,000 words.

*** Most of ''Ulysses'' is written in immaculate English prose, and its reputation is more intimidating than its reality. Most attempts falter either at section 3, 'Nestor' (the crud inside the overly pompous and pretentious Stephen Dedalus) and section 14, 'The Oxen of the Sun' (the same, only Stephen is also very, very drunk). Stephen Dedalus is not meant to be a very likable character and both sections can be skipped without much loss to what little plot there is. Anyone who gets past that will have no trouble with Molly Bloom masturbating herself to orgasm, which is what that notorious last sentence is all about. It wouldn't be a tenth as effective or erotic written in grammatical prose, would it now?

** The curator of the museum also dismisses Nobby's suggestion that they label the empty frame that once held the stolen painting ''Art Theft'' as "foolish".

* ''[[Fudge|Fudge-A-Mania]]'', by [[Judy Blume]], has Peter and Fudge's little sister accidentally getting into an artist's paint and wandering over his canvas, leaving behind little blue footprints. The artist thinks it looks stunning and wants her to help him make more paintings.

* Modern poetry is Incomprehensible Art's most forbidding fortress:

** Cleverly subverted by [[Daft Punk]]'s video for Revolution 909 (incidentally, a song named after the aforementioned Revolution 9 by the Beatles) and Burnin'.

** Another Daft Punk video that ''looks'' like it fits the trope but then subverts it: "Around The World". At first it seems to be people in inexplicable costumes dancing... {{spoiler|until you realize they're actually moving in time to the song. Each costume is a different instrument - the babyheads are the bass, the skeletons are the guitar, the mummies are the drums, the girls in swimsuits are the keyboards, and the robots are the vocals.}}

* In music this trope is really [[Older Than Print]]. There were musical genres emphasizing complex and difficult-to-understand composition as early as the 14th century Ars Subtilior, or later the 16th century mannerism, that left us with a rich repertoire of very elaborate choral music. Contrarily to what modern avant-garde advocates would like to think, these movements have ''not'' been [[Vindicated by History]]: they went completely ignored for all the Common Practice period, and even today, while they do enjoy some revival, they remain largely a matter for specialists and connoisseurs. Instead, lasting success was enjoyed by much simpler pre-14th century Gregorian singing, or by 15th century Renaissance composers like John Dowland (the repertoire of whom is often covered by pop singers nowadays). Because the history of music is a succession of complex styles that make the theory of music evolve, but are not very successful in the long run, and simpler styles that enjoy great success for centuries, [[Older Than They Think|modern audiences get the illusion that incomprehensible music is a recent phenomenon]].

 

* ''Frankie Goes to Hollywood'' for [[Commodore 64]] consists of mini-games which represent songs on the Liverpuddlians' eponymous album. Watch [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFKkCQGp8XM&fmt=18 here] and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zg4prjaeUg&fmt=18 here.]

* ''[[Mother 3]]'' has the Nice Poser enemy, who is just a metallic man with a triangle for a head. His only ability in battle is to strike poses so incomprehensible that they cause [[Standard Status Effects]] to your party.

* Parodied in ''[[Grim Fandango]]'', with the Beat poetry at the Blue Coffin club in Rubacava. Manny can try his hand at reciting poetry [[Word Salad Lyrics|by stringing random verses together]]; getting applause depends less on the content of your verse and more on convincing the crowd that you're [[In with the In Crowd|one of them]]. At one point, Manny recites a poem and gets jeered, then the club's owner follows, reciting exactly the same poem, and ''she'' gets applauded.

* ''[[Grand Theft Auto Vice City]]'' has an in-universe example. Claude Maginot, who plays the father on the sitcom ''Just the Five of Us'', considers the show lowbrow beneath contempt. His idea of true art is a theatrical production called ''In The Future, There Will Be Robots'', which according to reviews, is "hard to put into words". (Which in turn, according to the VCPR radio hosts, means it must be good).

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Absurdity Ascendant]]

[[Category:Romanticism Versus Enlightenment]]

[[Category:True Art/Self Demonstrating]]

[[Category:True Art]]

[[Category:Truth in Television]]