This topic came up in a discussion between a bunch of friends and I, and in my typical long-winded style, I wrote a forum post that was, for all intents and purposes, a Not A Blog™ entry. Due to “popular” demand, I’m reposting it here.

The whole conversation got started by the question “Does shock value in art have value?” with a partial-but-not-exclusive look at this in the movie Boядt. This is something I’ve been thinking about very much since my art school days and this conversation gave me a chance to coalesce some thoughts on the subject that I’ve never really formalized.

I believe a parallel can be drawn between shock value and swearing. Some people I know casually swear. They don’t do it to be offensive, but in some places, or around some people, it would be considered very inappropriate. Likewise, swearing itself is just words—not even words, simply sounds that we can make that our culture, in this time, has deemed “bad”.

“Shocking” art is a more encompassing version of the same. However, the same pitfalls that accompany swearing also accompany shock. Regardless of your situation in life, if you walk around swearing all the time, people will tend to think less of you because you appear uncultured, base, or rude. (Similarly, I feel this way about people who don’t capitalize and punctuate sentences online. Misguided stereotype? Most likely, but I can’t help it. It’s a reflexive bias.)

The usage of swear words in art is, in fact, one way to inject shock value into that art. However, in the same way that people look down on those who wontonly swear, so to do people tend to look down upon art that is overtly shocking. Those who don’t, don’t need the message. That’s the crux of the whole situation.

Another danger in producing shocking art is that it’s difficult to control—and this turns the tables, as it were, on the artist. The artist, so offended by some cultural slight that they must create a shocking work of art, is now the one being shocked—shocked!—that the public at large does not understand it, and is offended. How can one be offended at other people being offended at you? This is hypocritical. The artist insults small-mindedness, yet reacts in a small-minded way. One who creates intentionally shocking art must be careful of this.

To answer the question, “does shock value have value?”, one must look at it, not from the perspective of the artist creating the art—no matter how noble their motives—but at the culture that is receiving the art. The audience for any piece that is shocking is those who will be shocked. If you’re not shocked, you’re not really the audience—or you are insomuch that you become a part of the “scene”, if you will, but not that the artist is trying to convince you of anything. (That is to say, metal heads are part of the metal scene, and are considered part of the whole shocking genre by those being shocked.) Those who are being shocked are the ones who need the message.

Here is where art meets advertising. What is one thing that routinely backfires on advertisers? In fact, such a campaign has never been successful (unless tongue-in-cheek). The answer is obvious: campaigns that insult their target market. Nobody sells products by telling their audience how stupid, dumb, and small-minded they are. No one likes being insulted and demeaned simultaneously. We take our business elsewhere.

Any time a position is advocated in art, it is being advertised. It doesn’t matter that “high art” seems like it should be a world apart, or that “low art” is low and so should be allowed to get away with this kind of thing because it has no pretenses. It doesn’t matter when the purpose of your art is to get your point across. You’re advertising a position. Unfortunately, any overt shock value you put into your art is going to turn away the people who disagree with you—the very people you’re trying to convince.

Returning to the idea of death metal fans for a second. Here is a group that listens to music that is considered by some to be “shocking”. However, the intent of the media isn’t to shock all the people who don’t like the music. It might be an enjoyable side effect, as it creates exclusivity and boundaries within a culture, but death metal isn’t solely trying to advocate any particular viewpoint or political position—and when it does, it does so to those within the fanbase, not to the public at large.

The distinction can be made thusly: if the art isn’t trying to sell some point of view or some message (or if the message is tertiary to more important things, like action and style), the shock value isn’t really important. Death metal isn’t trying to tell your grandma that the system is corrupt. It’s not “selling” anything outside its circle, and so while some people get off on shocking people by the way they dress and the music they listen to, they’re not doing it for that purpose alone. They like the music at least a little, or they wouldn’t be listening to it in the first place.

Boядt is a complex subject piece for any number of reasons: the fact cameras were present is a big one. Anyone who’s worked in the industry knows that as soon as you turn a camera on, everyone’s personality changes, so that fact alone challenges the assumption that these scenes are representative of peoples’ “true” actions. Also that the Borat production crew lied to get their way into these situations necessarily throws doubt on everything they do—and everything they stand for. They want to illuminate the deceit happening in America, so they deceive everyone to do so? Why am I not impressed?

But more to the point: the people seeing this movie can be broken down into three major groups.

1. Those who get the joke, although they may or may not like the movie. These people already realize there is bigotry and may consciously be trying to rid it from their own lives. The movie serves to convince them of nothing; they’re not the target audience. They might also be shocked by the movie, but not for reasons Cohen intended.

2. Those who don’t get the joke, but like the movie. These people are turned on by the schadenfreude (unprovoked, in some cases). They are not shocked by what goes on; they find it funny. But neither do they care what the larger message is, and because of this, they’re not in the target market, either, except insomuch as they have money and will spend it on the movie.

3. Those who don’t get the joke and are shocked by the content of the movie. These are the people who are largely bigoted and racist—and they don’t even recognize it in themselves. They need to be convinced—but the fact that the movie is so insulting will prevent them from seeing any sort of flaw within themselves.

Cohen has specifically said in interviews that he made the movie to highlight the bigotry in America. Fair enough, except the people who know this don’t need to be told there’s bigotry in America, and the people who don’t know it will not be convinced by the movie. In other words, the movie is supposed to do one thing—and it doesn’t even do that well. The reason is because, as I’ve shown, the “intellectual” part of the movie is completely overshadowed by poop jokes. It’s shocking to those who need to hear, so they don’t listen.

(Strictly speaking, the point of Boядt is to make money, which it did very well. But in light of the “highlighting bigotry in America” line, this seems disingenuous. In this broad, equivically fallacious, sense, shock does have value: monetary value. All those poop jokes are dollar signs.)

This applies to almost any piece of art you can imagine. The most effective art is not that which is beat-you-over-the-head shocking. It’s what a professor of mine in college called “time-bomb insulting”. You word an insult in such a way that people don’t realize they’ve been insulted until they’ve thought about it (and are far away from you). The best art will make someone uneasy because it challenges assumptions without pointing the finger. It doesn’t belittle any particular person and the person who needs to be convinced can approach the art without being turned away at the cultural door. The best art will raise one’s level of cognitive dissonance without insults. Get people to think about the subject at hand. You don’t do this by telling them they’re dumb. Quite the opposite. You do it by assuming they’re smarter than they are.

This is the ultimate problem with much art (of all forms) today: no one gives their audience credit. If you start from a position in which you assume the audience is smart to begin with, and talk to them as equals, you can lead them around through all sorts of reasoning. They’ll suddenly find themselves trapped in a work which they disagree with, but they don’t know how. If that makes them think about the subject, you’ve already done more than shocking art ever could.

-Ted