On Banning Bad Art

[wolffyluna]

(Crossposted from tumblr)

I don’t participate in fandom debates, or broader debates about art, that often. This is deliberate; I think I’m more likely to create the fandom/art culture I want to be in by making the art I want to make, rather than by arguing with people.

However, I’m writing this because I think it would be useful to articulate where I come from in such discussions, and also so I have a document I can link to if I need it.

My opinion is basically this: you can’t ban bad art without also banning good art, and that the removal of bad art is not worth the loss of the good art.

I’m using ‘ban’ a little loosely here. I don’t just mean government censorship. I don’t just mean books being removed from libraries. I don’t just mean telling people not to write a ship or trope because it’s problematic. I’m talking about the whole constellation of making it so people can’t access certain art, or preventing certain art from ever being made.

I am also using ‘good’ and ‘bad’ a little loosely. A work can be bad due to being poorly crafted, or offensive, or completely fumbling while trying to handle a difficult topic, or just being kinda creepy and making you concerned about the creator, or something else entirely. And this looseness is deliberate, because whether art is good or bad is subjective. The amount of times I’ve seen one piece of art prompt some people to go ‘this is voyeuristic and creepy and very unrealistic in a way that makes me both want to headtilt and vomit’ and others go ‘finally! Someone gets it!’… is a lot. But even disregarding that kind of subjectivity, it’s basically impossible to make rules or guidelines that only includes the bad stuff, even if everyone agreed what is bad. I can’t think of any sensible, relatively objective rules that say, would ban ‘What the fuck, Ecchi industry, WHAT THE FUCK’ no.99 without also banning, say, Revolutionary Girl Utena.

This may also be me, but when I’m creating, I can’t tell whether what I am making is good or bad. I can try my best to make sure it’s good? But I can’t judge it myself all that well. If I wanted to not make bad art– and I have to never make art at all.

And I think, fundamentally… the good art is worth it. The world is better for good art (even if people don’t agree whether it’s good) existing. People often talk about the bad effects of art, but it feels like the good is forgotten.

And the good is worth it.

Comments

[feotakahari]

I find that the people who’re involved in banning art often take a deontological view—art is bad if it contains specific things, regardless of how the things are handled. I once told the head mod of TV Tropes that his stated rules for banning entries about “pedo porn” would disallow Lolita, and I’d like to see protections for artistically valuable things that are less famous and might be deleted on sight where Lolita wouldn’t be. He deleted the page for Lolita, saying it was pedo porn and only pedos defend it.

(The page was eventually restored, but I got myself banned in the process.)

[lb_lee]

My main thing is, it's basically impossible to make good art without making bad art first. If there's no way to share bad art and otherwise learn from it... uh. You ain't going to be getting much good art.

So the whole thing kinda causes the exact problem it's hoping to avoid.

--Rogan

EDIT: Also, I've seen the claim of "bad art" disproportionately applied to marginalized art, so you know. There's self-interest. I want to keep selling, and to keep buying, my preferred work!

[wolffyluna]

Yeah, that's one of the big reasons you can't ban just bad art.

I thought about including the fact that the powerful often wield censorship against the less powerful, but I wasn't quite sure how to work that in with out spreading my argument too thin? But it is a thing. (Also, the strange tendency for works that are considered to be morally corrupting/likely to destroy The Innocence of the Youth to be autobiographies written by Certain Demographics, Gee I Wonder Why)