The job of the artist differs from the job of art and that’s absolutely fine
It might be sacrilege to watch Lawrence of Arabia on your phone but it's still better than doomscrolling.
I posted an essay last week which was half memoir and half treatise on the shift from analogue to digital media, focusing on the ways in which it changed the cinema experience. Near the end, I made a little throwaway comment about how watching a movie on your phone while commuting is a bit like reading a poem:
At the same time, self contained films seemed to bypass the theatre and go straight to streaming where they might be played on a home projector or a 70-inch screen but are more likely to be watched on a phone during a commute. This is the kind of thing that makes the auteurs retch but, strangely enough, brings films closer to poems than they have ever been before – great works that can be caught in little snatches during fleeting moments of solitude.
That idea has been living rent free in my head since I wrote it so I thought it might be worth revisiting.
I'm sure you've seen a famous video of David Lynch getting uncharacteristically tetchy about people watching films on their phones. Like most rants, this is very entertaining but, near the end, Lynch drifts away from his usual avuncular self. (There’s a bit of swearing, so be mindful if you’re at work or in the company of innocents).
I don't think he's wrong in his conviction that a film watched on a phone is a weaker version of how he intended it to be seen. If someone is sat on their own in a living room with a mahoosive telly then they should definitely watch that film on the mahoosive telly rather than on the phone that they're idly scrolling through.
A few weeks ago, I covered the New York Poets for part of a lecture and showed a slide of a Jackson Pollock painting. I then went off on one about how I didn't really understand Pollock until I saw his canvases for real. Only then did I get a sense of a rhythm and musicality in those swirls and drips of paint.
Similarly, I might argue that you might not be able to fully understand a poem until you've read it aloud, or hear the poet read it aloud – to hear the nuances of the poet's voice as they declaim each line; or to feel the vibrations and music of the verse throughout your own body.
But not everybody can get out to a gallery to see Pollock's work for real; not everybody is able to declaim a poem aloud as they read through it in a library or on the top deck of a bus during rush hour. Some people live in cramped, crowded flats where they can't always choose what plays on the communal television.
Watching a film on a phone might be a weak version of the intended experience, but it might be a stronger experience than an hour spent scrolling through TikTok. Pinning a postcard of a painting onto a fridge door is a very weak version of scrutinising the original in a gallery but it brings more joy and colour to a kitchen than a bare fridge door might.
The best way of listening to Coltrane's A Love Supreme would have been to hear it live, then maybe a vinyl played through a top end turntable and sound system. But for most people the only option might be a set of cheap earbuds or a single bluetooth speaker. Be it through economic disadvantage or through disability, not everybody is able to experience a work of art in the way that the artist might have intended.
If anything, we live in a time when purveyors of content are trying to fill up all the tiny gaps in our busy lives where art may be able to find us and offer a moment’s respite and redemption.
I think it's absolutely right for artists to have exacting standards for how they want their work to be experienced. But the job of the art itself is not the same as the job of the artist. It is the job of the art to find the person that needs it in whatever situation it can find them. And if that means it needs to shrink itself to the size of a six inch screen or pare down its sonic expansiveness to a single, trebly speaker, then that is the job that must be done.
This is the first of an ongoing series of weekly, shorter posts from Rusty Niall to complement my longer essays that have settled into a monthly delivery pattern. Every week I’ll aim to send something interesting, funny or poetic to your inbox – all three if I’ve had my weetabix. I you like it then please share it with someone you think might like it too. Cheers.
Niall