"The Varied Substance of the Arts," or "Why emma Loves Cinema"

From Art as Experience:

“The attempt at rigid classification and definition is not confined to the arts… Much ingenious effort has been spent in enumerating the different species of beauty after beauty itself has had its ‘essence’ set forth: the sublime, grotesque, tragic, comic, poetic, and so on… Unfortunately, esthetic theory has not been content with clarifying qualities as matter of emphasis in individual wholes. It erected adjectives into nouns substantive, and then played dialectical tunes upon the fixed concepts which emerge… Tendencies of experience do not have limits that are exactly fixed or that are mathematical lines with breadth and thickness. Experience is too rich and complex to permit such precise limitation. The termini of tendences are bands not lines, and the qualities that characterize them form a spectrum instead of being capable of distribution in separate pidgeonholes [sic]” (pp. 232-233) “Instead of being free to do what he can with the material at hand and the media under his control, the artist is bound, under penalty of rebuke from the critic who knows the rules, to follow the precepts that flow from the basic principle… Thus classification sets limits to perception… For new works, in the degree in which they are new, do not fit into pidgeonholes [sic] already provided. They are in the arts what heresies are in theology. There are obstructions enough in any case in the way of genuine expression.” (pp. 234-235)

Since the age of about sixteen or seventeen, due in large part to a high school boyfriend, I have loved cinema. Cinema is among my favorite artforms. And yet I absolutely hate to be asked what my favorite genre of movie is, because my favorite films are films that defy classification.

The merits of this particular movie could be argued ad infinitum, but one of my all-time favorite films is Joss Whedon’s The Cabin in the Woods. It was marketed as a horror movie and used an incredibly stereotypical title to evoke presumptions of the type of experience the viewer would have. It even came with this poster:

But then you watch the thing, and it’s nothing like the expectations you were expertly made to conceive. The dialogue and premise are hilarious, which makes me want to call the work a comedy, but it is also incredibly gory, wanting me to file it under “slasher-thriller.” And it even stands back and mocks the genre it pretended to belong to. When the characters are made to split up, notoriously the plot point in any thriller where they begin to experience peril, the observer-character takes a beat and simply says, “... really?”

All of this is to say that Dewey makes some excellent arguments. He quotes William James who says that the “tediousness of elaborate classification of things… merge and vary as do human emotions” (p. 225). Language is entirely insufficient to capture experience, and “not only is it impossible that language should duplicate the infinite variety of individualized qualities that exist, but it is wholly undesirable and unneeded that it should do so. The unique quality of a quality is found in experience itself; it is there and sufficiently there not to need reduplication in language” (p. 224)

Importantly, he makes the distinction that art is communication, but communication is not merely “announcing things… Communication is the process of creating participation, of making common what had been isolated and singular; and part of the miracle it achieves is that, in being communicated, the conveyance of meaning gives body and definiteness to the experience of the one who utters as well as to that of those who listen.” (p. 253) This is incredibly important when considering the “gulfs and walls that limit community of experience” (p. 109) that virtual learning could create. The idea of art as communication combined with the idea that “whenever any material finds a medium that expresses its value in experience - that is, its imaginative and emotional value - it becomes the substance of a work of art,” (pp. 237-238) we as music teachers have a unique opportunity to provide multiple modes of expression through the “gulfs and walls” that are not confined to spoken language. This is particularly comforting to someone who will have to assess the understanding of individuals who already don’t have a full command of language (kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders). There will be two large considerations: the material by which an idea is best expressed, and the material that speaks to the individual student in question. So not only should I consider allowing students non-verbal ways of expressing understanding or communal experience, but I should not limit any particular student to any particular medium for any particular assignment. Of course, students will need guidance, but Dewey was making an excellent case for UDL long before it was fully realized.

Dewey, J. (1934). The Varied Substance of the Arts. In J. Dewey (Author), Art as experience (pp. 222-

254). New York City, NY: Perigree.