How to assess art remains a fervent debate among virtually all commentators. With the fluidity of newer mediums such as television and online streaming of videos and music, advertisement has become seamlessly embedded into most mainstream art and entertainment. Even films, which ostensibly have an iron clad barrier between themselves and the commercials that plague television, have often become billboards for each other, with one film serving as a marketing pitch for the next in a given franchise. Because of this commercial entrenchment, there should be a new framework to look at art that attempts to assess them in an objective that doesn’t demand a critic sort out what is marketing and what is genuine story. This is where the six stages of abstraction can be utilized.
Before diving into the stages, it’s important to make a quick note on author intent. It is crucial to understand that the intent of author, director, screenwriter, creator, etc. is not only irrelevant to this scale, but in fact is intentionally disregarded, even where it is transparent or stated. Unless the director revealing the plot and purpose of the film appears within the film itself, it should be ignored. The goal here is not to try to suppose or interpret what an author is saying or why, unlike with most schools of literary criticism. Instead, it is to take an audience driven approach and try to understand how a work will be perceived from that perspective.
Additionally, a note is necessary on conscious and subconscious. This is not a psychological or neurological paper aiming to make grand statements about the human mind and its inner workings. When the term “subconscious” is used, it’s meant to invoke the idea that there are aspects of the world, and in this case art, that our brains might recognize before we do. For instance, there is a famous study where a person is asked to pick from two seemingly identical decks of cards. Each time they choose a red card they are given a monetary reward. Unbeknownst to them, one deck is stacked with significantly more red cards. People will begin to choose the stacked deck with more frequency, but when asked will not recognize that they are doing so. The “subconscious” in this sense does exist; there are things minds recognize before they reach the point where they can be fully understood or articulated.
Stage one: literal. In this stage, the piece or art is fully transparent. Almost all audience members can easily interpret the piece of art and it’s relatively free from any subtext, underscoring, meta commentary, etc. Any tension derived from the work is based on a direct challenge with clear stakes that present either a moral vacuum or no moral weight at all. An example of this could be an episode of the children’s shows Dora the Explorer or Blues Clues where minor challenges are presented to the characters; while not a necessary feature, this could also include intentional breaking of the fourth wall in an instructive way, such as is featured in the previous shows or a show like Sesame Street.
Stage two: liminal. Unlike with the literal stage, there are some elements that may work on the subconscious level. If Dora the Explorer is literal, than Bluey would be a good example of a liminal show. There are elements of Bluey that may pass through the understanding of the primary audience, but because of cultural references or socialization they sense that the product is more complete and cohesive, even if not directly understanding the reference. Think of the way even a young child who has seen few of the Rated R war movies from which this became a trope will instantly recognize a large man in a military uniform smoking a cigar as a tough and stern figure of leadership. Titanic uses this strategy overtly to elevate its historical drama by using existing tropes and archetypes to generate certain reactions from the audience to cement their attachment to the characters, a fact that James Cameron himself has articulated. The liminal stage certainly can be found in attempts at high art, but it is primarily found in works made for a young or very main stream audience, and when done perfectly it will elevate those works just enough to make them stand out against their contemporaries.
Stage three: Subliminal. Lin-Manuel Miranda often cites the songs the character of George Washington sings in his historical musical Hamilton as typically being musically reminiscent of an older era of hip hop. He said this was done intentionally to evoke a sort of earned gravitas for the character, as well as emphasize his age and experience contrasted with the more youthful titular character’s. This is a good example of the subliminal stage. Audiences certainly could recognize this, especially if they were particularly attentive and knowledgable music fans, but most almost certainly don’t; many however will feel this when they hear George Washington’s songs, even if they don’t actively recognize it. Other examples of this are when Samuel L. Jackson’s character in The Avengers lectures an unseen group of elderly generals on why the superhero team will work, mirroring how many fans felt at some film critics’ initial reaction to such a large and ambitious film project, or how the gleam had been removed from certain characters’ eyes in The Thing if they had been turned to make them look a little less human. All of these are recognizable, but mostly only upon later reflection. This is the mark of the subliminal stage.
Stage four: Abstracted. Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers is the best representation of the abstracted stage, where a work becomes so esoteric in its meaning that only a close read or intense prior knowledge can illuminate its thesis, or even its core themes. To the uninitiated, Korine’s bizarre 2009 film is a jumbled mess of strange elderly people acting in absurd ways including but not limited to acting out the title of the film. It’s statements about materialism, consumerism, alienation, and reacitonarism can all be concluded with enough time and knowledge or if one knows Korine himself and he simply tells you specifically you the thesis, but most audiences would be totally lost by its content. This is not because most audiences are too ignorant to understand it, but because it has been intentionally made in a way that is meant to make it difficult or at least unpleasant to understand. Starship Troopers is another flawless example of this where many viewers and critics alike were flabbergasted at the rigid and stilted acting performances and seemingly fascist politics before realizing later on those were the purpose of the film.
Stage five: Distorted. This is certainly the most difficult category from which to find an example because by definition if the work of art is understood at all it fails to be in this category. Distorted is for works whose metaphors are so difficult to interpret that only a micro community the size of a small friend group could possibly glean what they actually mean. Artist Rafael Bestard’s painting Shout comes close, as does the music of the band Silver Daggers. The latter of which has apparently scrubbed most of their YouTube channel and turned off comments on what remains, but their used to be fervent debate as to their quality in which those defending them could only respond in a plea to not dislike them only because they’re music sounds so grating and unpleasant; they frequented LA music venue The Smell where they had, if not a following, at least enough of a relationship with someone to keep playing there for a three or four year stretch. Whatever themes their music contained however didn’t disseminate even into the broader LA music scene.
Stage six: Reliteral. When a work is so far removed from its intended meaning that it actually circles back around and is read with a new interpretation totally independent or perhaps even antagonistic to the authorial intent. The best example here is The Simpsons episode Homer’s Enemy. Written by Simpsons’ legend and vaguely Reagonesque conservative John Swartzwelder in 1997, the episode features a hard working American man, Frank Grimes, who pulled himself up by his bootstraps to get a low level job at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. He becomes increasingly frustrated by Homer’s continued success despite his laziness that he eventually snaps and accidentally kills himself by touching exposed wiring. The episode is meant to be a stern criticism of the average American worker and an appreciation of the hard worker, but Swartzwelder instead created a circumstance in which audiences rooted for Homer to keep getting away with being lazy and for the uptight Grimes to get his comeuppance for generally being a dork and opposing the more funny and charismatic Homer. The episode loops all the way around so that it’s meaning becomes obvious but also completely antithetical to Swartzwelder’s intention.
The goal here isn’t to provide a perfect metric with which to judge art work, but simply to better uncover how non-literal language works in a variety of artistic mediums and how we can interpret that to make other specific assessments about its quality. This should not be take as a one to one if a work is in this stage it’s good or bad. The cited episode of The Simpsons is one of the best of the entire series, and beloved by many; Hamilton is a clunky ahistorical muddle mess of millennial humor; Bluey and Dora the Explorer are both highly effective children’s shows, with the former having a sizable adult audience as well. None of these stages or even a writer or artist’s desire to be in a specific stage precludes its success or quality, but it does reveal something important: how and why the work’s meaning is or is not understood.