Roger Ebert is a Tool
August 7, 2007, by Erlog A few weeks ago Roger Ebert decided to post a response to Clive Barker’s comments concerning some statements Ebert made as to the validity of video games as art. In short, Ebert was talking some smack about video games as a medium. He doesn’t believe they will ever be “high art.” Well, I’m here to tell you that Ebert is a pompous tool.
Exactly What Sort of Tool
The very simple reason Roger Ebert is a tool is because he is very liberally using his public designation as a critic to criticize things that he doesn’t have any depth in. It would be akin to a food critic saying that he didn’t believe television could ever be art. Why should we care what a food critic thinks about something for which they really don’t have any appreciation? We shouldn’t.
Stick to your own kind brotha'...
This isn’t to say that Ebert is a bad movie critic. He knows a lot about movies. He has a great appreciation for them. He’s not too much of a snob, and the public seems to like him. However, he is arrogant to believe that anything he says about video games should be taken at all seriously. He’s out of his jurisdiction.
Why?
Let’s make this very clear, video games don’t need to be art for me to like them. I would like them just fine were they not. I’m not seeking any sort of validation for some ashamed pastime. I have a lot of pastimes. I watch a lot of television, and I listen to a lot of talk radio. I also watch a lot of movies, and read a lot of books. Some of the things I’ve listed here are considered art. Some are not. Believe me when I tell you I’m okay with this. I don’t need to pick just one of them to staunchly defend as art to make myself feel better.
Obviously video games are among the things in that list, and the reason I’m defending them is because I believe them to be art. It just cannot be any other way. They have to be art. The feelings I’ve felt playing video games have rivaled that of looking at paintings or watching plays or screening movies. I also play them with a critical eye much the way I experience other forms of art. To say that video games are not art, for me, would be to say that nothing is ever art because there hasn’t been a functional emotional difference in the experiences I’ve felt. To reconcile this, I must defend video games as art.
A Definition of Art
This leads me to a very important piece of this puzzle, my definition of art. For me, this lies in the feelings, and so my definition of art is very simple. Art is anything created with the intention of giving the user an emotional experience. It doesn’t matter the medium.
Now, here are the important distinctions. Just because something can be considered art doesn’t mean that it has any validity whatsoever. Lots of modern sculpture is hacky found object garbage, but I would be doing a disservice to both artists and viewers by saying it’s not art. I would be taking their experiences and invalidating them at my own whim. That’s just not fair. I would be considered an arrogant, pompous, prick to do so. This is especially the case if I was doing so from a soap box about a medium I had no appreciation for. *ahem*
Video games don’t have to be art for me to like them, but they do have to be art. It doesn’t hold up logically for them to not be. It doesn’t make sense that when you put forth a feeling in a painting it’s called art, but when you put that same feeling in a video game it ceases to be art simply because of the medium. That’s bullshit.
Conclusion
Ebert isn’t a bad movie critic, but he is a bad critic in general. He is mistaking his own personal prejudices over medium, and behaving as though this is a valid, learned, or rational point of view. He is arrogant for doing so.
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